Yuval Noah Harari: "None of us would be alive if Putin was in charge in the 1980s"

Today's interview is with Yuval Noah Harari, Israeli historian, professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of the bestsellers Sapiens: "A Brief History of Humankind", "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow," and "21 Lessons for the 21st Century". In his books and public speeches he explores how biology and history are connected. For Russian version please go to    • Юваль Ной Харари: «Если бы в 91 году ...  
00:00 Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli military historian-medievalist and futurologist who has articulated the major problems humanity will face in the twenty-first century and described ways to solve them.
02:40 We already have new problems, and at the same time old problems are returning. Mankind lived in the most prosperous era because people were working to create a new kind of world order that was not perfect, but which was better than anything we had before. Now everything is falling apart. We have a COVID-19 pandemic again, we have a war going on now, the famine is coming back.
05:31 After four months of war, the military budgets of countries have grown. Humanity's advances in health care and advanced technology were made possible because military budgets were small. The way Putin built his war machine was made possible by the fact that for many years he neglected health care, education, and the welfare of the people and spent money on building his palaces, tanks and missiles.
10:28 Putin has already lost, however successful his military operation may have been. The purpose of the war was to destroy the Ukrainian people. Putin has constructed a fantasy that Ukrainians want to be part of Russia. Zelensky would run away, the Ukrainian army would surrender. He has failed miserably. Putin is making Ukrainians and Russians enemies with his own hands for generations to come
15:08 A nation is one of the best stories humans have ever created if we get it right! A nation is about loving the people around you. Good nationalism is about paying your taxes. Right now, patriotism in Russia is to build a tank and go bomb the cities of a neighboring country. Joe Biden suggested that Zelensky evacuate from Kiev, he expected Zelensky to agree, assuming that human life carries more weight than state interests. But Ukrainian society disagrees. The U.S. really didn’t believe that the Ukrainians had any chance. The Ukrainians understand that the Russians will not stop there. If you listen to what Putin says in his February 24th declaration of war, and then again and again: the goal is the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. The Soviet Union was guided by the past. The best time was when we fought the Nazis. Let's bring that time back.
29:55 People can't just completely abandon their history. Every nation tends to create a distorted image of the past. Nations need the help of a therapist. But people don't want to hear the whole truth. It's too painful. You look in the mirror and think your nation is beautiful, better than all the others. You risk falling into the trap of fascism.
33:47 Nationalist populism is gaining popularity in the world. In India and Brazil, people are voting for it. It is important not to fall into the trap of talking about it as an either/or choice. There is no contradiction between nationalism and liberalism. Ukrainians are fighting for it. Ukrainians are fighting to join the European Union.
39:33 The end of the culture war in the West between conservatives and liberals is a necessary reaction to the war in Ukraine. The West has been more united and more active than anyone could have imagined before the war began. This must continue because this war will be a long one. The West must not only win the war, it must win the peace. Russia is part of the West and Europe.
43:44 The reaction of the Russians, who are not protesting, a lot of people, pretending nothing is going on. This war started as a war of one man, one Putin. But even after Putin dies, the hatred will persist.
47:38 Gorbachev saved us from nuclear war. The war is now on for the breakup of the Soviet Union. I began to admire Gorbachev even more, because if someone like Putin had been in power then, none of us would be in power today
52:02 Humanity is now on the brink: pandemic, war, and now famine. The horsemen of the apocalypse. And this is artificially created. It didn't start with a pandemic. We need to come together and build a better global order than what we have now. We have technology, science, economic resources, but no political wisdom. The Russian people can make a different choice, elect other leaders, a different political system, at least trivially begin to be guided by their own selfish interests. That's what the Ukrainians did, they chose democracy. That's why Putin is really afraid of the Ukrainians - primarily because of this.