85722 - Transcription: Podcast With US #141: Wartime and big chessboard

N. Lygeros

It’s very important to be clear and coherent about the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel. There is no opposition, we don’t have to choose one of them. In fact we don’t have two chessboards. In reality we have only one chessboard which is now bigger with many more players on it and we have to think more in the framework of game theory to understand why some countries play with this kind of behavior in one of them and not in both of them because we have to understand their big strategy. The idea is not to separate the two conflicts but to organize our thoughts in a bigger one. And we can see that Russia and China are with Iran and of course with some Arabic countries which are not neutral. On the other side we have Europe and the US with Israel and not only and we have some players who are rather neutral at least for the moment. The idea is to understand that we have a combination which looks like another Cold War with some warm points of course but there is no position, it’s only a combination. So, we have to think the two conflicts as one war. We are in wartime, this is sure, but the chessboard is bigger. And we have to keep this in mind to understand the deep strategy of all the players and not only to think that there are two local points.