I want to share a story today about thinking and how we seem to, in many instances, have lost it.

In a past life, I was in graduate school, in London, studying international relations.

I was in my MBA program and I figured out a way to get overseas. And these were my electives,

international relations. It was an interesting period of time. I had a chance to intern in the

American embassy in London, had a chance to meet many diplomats. That was an interesting

experience. Definitely, let's just say, lots of fat to cut.

You could see it back in the day. This was 1994. So in one of these international relations classes,

I was tasked with defending no NATO expansion.

This was only three years or so there since the USSR had fallen apart.

And NATO expansion was all the rage.

Now, I was no grand international relations expert, but like any subject, you get into it, you learn.

And I was up against somebody who was taking on the NATO expansion side.

And you could see that this guy was well respected in the school, probably had perfect grades and all that kind of stuff.

And he had to, again, defend expanding NATO.

So we had a debate.

I don't recall all the details.

But I do recall that I destroyed this guy in the debate.

Because it was quite simple.

If you took NATO a Western military alliance

and put it up against the border of Russia after the Warsaw Pact had gone away,

then you were going to have problems. As an ex-person noted, and I will read this in a few minutes,

it was the same when the Russians put missiles in Cuba. The Russians don't want missiles in Ukraine.

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