Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Phil Gunson
Phil Gunson is a Senior Analyst for the International Crisis Group.
Episode Summary
This week on One Decision, hosts Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain's MI6, are joined by Venezuela expert Phil Gunson, Senior Analyst for the International Crisis Group. In this conversation, the hosts discuss the new pressure campaign the Trump administration has placed on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his regime, including the recent air strikes on drug boats off the Venezuelan coast. Gunson, who lives in Caracas, Venezuela, explains how Cuban intelligence continues to help Maduro maintain control over Venezuela and its military, why the military sees no benefit in turning against Maduro, and how gold mining and evading sanctions keep the regime financially afloat. The conversation explores why Maduro's dictatorship continues to endure, the divided Venezuelan opposition, and the risks of the next dangerous power struggle if Maduro falls. Gunson also shares vivid insights into daily life in Caracas, from blackouts to food shortages, and shares his thoughts on what it would take for Venezuela to move toward democracy.
Listen & Subscribe
- Watch on YouTube
- Listen on Apple Podcasts
- Listen on Spotify
Transcript
COLD OPEN
Gunson: He is moving around from place to place. He's, when he appears in public, it's at very short notice and generally surrounded by civilians as a kind of human shield. Is this backlash against people like Maria Corina Machado? Sometimes, of course, what happens is that the geopolitical situation changes, and the external conditions become unfavorable to dictatorship.
Ruffini: How does this end? Does he, do we just have to wait for him to die? Chaos is easy to create. It's stability that's hard to create.
INTRODUCTION
Ruffini: Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of One Decision. I'm Christina Ruffini, joined, of course, by my cohost, Sir Richard Dearlove. And today, we're gonna talk about Venezuela. Sir Richard, I feel like this was a topic I covered so much during the first Trump administration. Pompeo, every third word out of his mouth was Venezuela. And then it all just kind of got quiet for a while, especially during the Biden administration. Now it's back in the news cycle. What's your take on where we are with this, Richard?
Dearlove: Well, I'm a historian, so I think there are echoes of the Monroe Doctrine in all of this. But a new interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, and Trump taking what looks like a very aggressive line. The strange thing to me is once you've deployed an aircraft carrier and all the other kit that is now threatening Venezuela, you can't exactly allow Maduro off the hook, can you? Because if you do, it looks like a defeat.
Ruffini: I mean, what is the intention of The United States? Well, it's funny you should bring up that exact position because I think our guest today has brought up that exact point. So let me bring him in. We're gonna talk with Phil Gunson. He's a senior analyst for International Crisis Group. He covers Venezuelan politics, and he's actually been living in the country for twenty five years now. And you're joining us from Caracas with a pretty solid Internet connection. I'm very impressed. Thank you so much for making the time.
INTERVIEW
Gunson: Thank you. Well, don't say it too loud, or the Internet connection will collapse as it fairly regularly does. So let's just take advantage while it's still operational.
Ruffini: I mean, fair enough. Honestly, we have a hard enough time with Richard when he's in Cornwall, so it wouldn't be the first time. But you two also have a connection. You both stayed at Cambridge.
Dearlove: Yeah. I'm actually intrigued. Maybe we can clear this point up. Explain to me your Cambridge connection because I think you probably realize I was, recently until well, until 2015, I was master of Pembroke and the deputy vice chancellor of the university.
Gunson: Yeah. Well, I read English at King's College Cambridge, in the 1970s. That's how old I am. And you guys never even tried to recruit me while I was there. I was kinda disappointed. I mean, yeah, I thought that's what people went to Cambridge for. They get recruited by one side or the other, and there's not even a single whisper.
Ruffini: Phil, I am curious to know how you went from Cambridge to Venezuela and how you ended up, you know, studying this part of the world and living there for so long.
Gunson: But I arrived in Venezuela when Chávez had just taken office in early 1999.
Ruffini: Oh, wow. So, I mean, you've been there through all of this, the ups and downs. What is your take of the Trump Venezuela approach? You know, he says he sort of, quote, made up his mind about Venezuela military action. What does that actually mean?
Gunson: Who knows? I mean, it's really difficult to get inside Mr. Trump's head. But, you know, as you mentioned in the introduction, this is the second go at maximum pressure on Venezuela. Right? Because during the ill-fated interim government period under Guaidó, we had maximum pressure without the deployment of military forces.
Ruffini: Although they kept saying all the options were on the table. Every time. Every time we asked Pompeo, he would never rule it out. And I remember saying, say what you will about the Biden administration. As soon as they ruled that out, people knew they could get away with things. To me, that was, like, one of the few things they did right, whether it was BS or not. But now, you know, to Richard's point, you've got carriers moving down there. They're blowing up these boats that may or may not be drug runners. I mean, they seem to mean business, but what happens if the maximum pressure two point o doesn't work?
Gunson: As I don't think it will. I mean, I think it's based on false premises. It's based on the idea that if you shake a big stick, then whether Maduro will get scared and run away or the military will overthrow him. I don't think either of those things is going to happen. The problem is, of course, that they've created this momentum now, which is hard to stop. And as you rightly say, it's difficult for the fleet to just sail away without some kind of mission accomplished moment. And it's hard to see how they can get that. The problem is, of course, when you start to articulate it that way, it sounds almost like you're saying, you know, please don't go away without blowing a few things up. That's not what I would advocate for because I don't think even if they start blowing things up, that will achieve what they're seeking to achieve. So Richard will correct me if I'm wrong, but I mean, you know, historically, if you want regime change, you have to put boots on the ground. The two things go together. You can make a government collapse by throwing bombs and rockets at them, but replacing it with something else is a rather more complicated operation that requires, among other things, maintaining internal security.
Dearlove: I absolutely agree with that analysis. Unless you actually do put boots on the ground and start intervening and you sort of have military presence in the capital, you're not going to have any impact. I think one of the key questions seems to be the loyalty of the army, and if the loyalty is to be shifted, don't you need to have a military presence to persuade those officers that are sitting on the fence, as it were, to come down on the side of a new regime? Otherwise, they're not gonna risk their futures and their careers. It seems to me if you just drive ships up and down the coast and blow up a few boats, nothing's gonna happen.
Ruffini: Phil, why hasn't the military defected from Maduro, and what's your gauge of how strong that support is?
Gunson: Well, you know, it's hard to see what's going on inside the military. It's a bit of a black box. The Venezuelan military is under heavy internal surveillance.
Ruffini: From whom?
Gunson: Cuban intelligence, working for Maduro, and Venezuelan intelligence trained by the Cubans, and they watch the military very, very closely. There are over 170 military officers in detention right now suffering really, really harsh conditions. And that's one of the reasons why the military is unlikely to overthrow Maduro because they know very well at an individual level what would happen to them if it went wrong, if they failed. So as I say, it's difficult to know what goes on inside, but there's no real reason to imagine that overall those people in uniform are any less discontented than those people out of uniform because they earn terrible wages. They eat very badly. Unless they're corrupt, taking money from drug traffickers or whatever, their income is miserable, and there's no reason to think that they wouldn't welcome a change of government. But of course, to get from here to there is not easy. And Chávez and later Maduro made significant and very, I think, successful efforts to restructure the military in such a way that it's very, very difficult for a group of dissidents within the military with sufficient power and operational command over the bits that count, you know, the tanks and the planes and so on, to get together and spend enough time together without being detected to mount a coup.
Dearlove: How crucial is the Cuban presence in keeping Maduro in power? I mean, my experience of Cuban intelligence is that they're pretty professional. In fact, they're rather sophisticated and rather good, and they're not to be underestimated.
Gunson: Yeah. No. I mean, they were trained by the German Stasi, and they are very good indeed. They've even infiltrated The US on a number of occasions. And I think that they've been extremely important because Cuba itself is in a very bad state right now. And I imagine that quite a few of them have gone back home. I'm not sure what the size of the Cuban presence is now, but they've passed on their techniques to the Venezuelans. And I'm sure that there are still Cubans around, including very close to Maduro in his own security detail, because he trusts them more than he trusts the Venezuelans on the whole. They were benefiting from their relationship with Moscow. They were benefiting from the relationship with Cuba. Both of those countries have had other things and their own financial difficulties.
Ruffini: The thought was for a while that eventually the lack of resources and support would kind of starve Maduro of his position. He would not be able to pay the army. He would not be able to pay people close to him. He wouldn't be able to pay off the drug lords and the other guerrilla groups, and he would get ousted. But he has endured, I think, longer than a lot of people in the West estimated he could. How is he doing that, and what resources does he still get from places like Cuba, Russia, elsewhere?
Gunson: Yeah. He's managed to maintain the loyalty of the armed forces, which is crucial because he clearly doesn't have popular support. I mean, he lost an election in the middle of last year, which he refused to concede. Well, of course, there's oil, you know? Despite the fact that the oil business is, you know, there's a story they told me when I first got to Venezuela, that the best, the most profitable business in the world is an oil company. And the second most profitable business in the world is a badly run oil company. So that's what, I mean, Maduro, this is not a narco state. This is fundamentally a petro state still. And what they did actually, they've done a number of things once really heavy sanctions came in under Trump one. First of all, they opened up the mining region with enormous environmental cost. The environment is being absolutely destroyed down in what they call the mining arc down in the southeast of Venezuela. They're mining gold primarily, but they're also mining diamonds. And Venezuela is quite mineral rich. It has coltan and it has a number of other things. But the gold has proven very important, both in keeping the military on side because, of course, any general worth his salt now has a gold mine. And also some of that money goes into the treasury. A lot of it goes into people's pockets. Most of it is smuggled one way or another. The other thing is they found out how to get around sanctions by talking to the Russians and the Iranians and other people who've been sanctioned for a long time. Those same networks have been used by the Venezuelans. Sanctions, as we know in the case of Cuba, for example, don't generally bring down governments either. Cuba's been going for what, sixty five years or so, under extremely heavy sanctions, and Maduro keeps the military on side by allowing them access to all sorts of illicit activities with which they line their pockets.
Dearlove: One of the logics of the situation that we're talking about must be that Maduro himself is a target, a significant target for the Americans because rather than putting boots on the ground, you could gamble by, as it were, taking out Maduro with a Tomahawk or some other precision weapon. There must be a situation now where Maduro is sort of sleeping in a different place every night or moving around continuously because there's plenty of precedent for The US doing that sort of killing. I'm thinking about the assassination of the head of the Iranian Quds Force way back in the first Trump administration when he was visiting Baghdad. Is that the sort of feeling, the sense in Venezuela at the moment, that Maduro is personally threatened?
Gunson: Yes. Absolutely. And he is taking precautions. He is moving around from place to place. When he appears in public, it's at very short notice and generally surrounded by civilians, as a kind of human shield. I'm sure that must be keeping him awake at night and other people at the top of the civilian authorities and also in the military. But they know very well that that's a serious possibility. But on the other hand, is it enough to make him leave the country? I think the reason why it's not enough to make him leave the country is because, however risky it might be to stay, it's more risky to leave. This is a guy who's been indicted in The United States on drug trafficking charges. He's a wanted man. But also there's a serious chance that, if the International Criminal Court case proceeds — it's in the investigative stage — if it proceeds to the point where charges are laid, then Maduro could end up with a warrant out for his arrest internationally, for crimes against humanity. So this is not a guy who can go off into exile and feel comfortable.
Dearlove: I was actually going to ask you, maybe this is a slightly different tack but something which was important, although it seems to have dropped off the radar politically at the moment, which was the Venezuelan claim to the Essequibo region of Guyana, which looked like Maduro trying to open up strategically with Russian support another front in Latin America, a sort of major geopolitical distraction. Has that now faded away?
Gunson: Well, it's faded for the time being, yes, because clearly, with a massive US fleet offshore, Maduro is not going to make any move that might justify The US intervening militarily. So the Guyanese, I think, are safe for now. It's a massive claim, as you said. It's two thirds of Guyanese territory. The Chávez government and the early years of the Maduro government, they played that down a lot. They needed the support of Caricom, of the Caribbean countries, and the Caribbean countries are solidly behind Guyana on this one. So they really played down the claim to the Essequibo. It revived for a number of reasons. One, because of course Guyana struck oil in a really big way. Guyana is now producing roughly the same amounts of oil as Venezuela is, so that made the Essequibo much more valuable than it had been before. But also I think there was a need that Maduro felt to hype up the nationalist rhetoric in an attempt to sort of wrap himself in the flag if you like and get Venezuelans to support him even aside from political differences, to support him on the grounds that he was pursuing the national interest. And most Venezuelans do believe that the Essequibo belongs to them.
Ruffini: I do wanna ask you about something we were talking about, which is the narco issue. And, of course, this has been at least on the face of it, the reason the Trump administration is making these strikes of these boats. My first question is, we mentioned how incredibly unpopular Maduro is. Is there a chance that these strikes could backfire and he could use them? I mean, he's already trying to use them to get the population more on side. As much as people hate Maduro, is there a chance that this could win him some political capital, or are they just two separate issues?
Gunson: Well, there's a degree to which people on the moderate end of the opposition who oppose the idea of US intervention are, I suppose, being less critical of Maduro at the moment and more critical of the opposition leadership. And to that extent, there's a kind of a backlash against The US, not so much in favor of Maduro because, you know, he's extremely unpopular, but that is to some extent an issue.
Ruffini: Who replaces Maduro if and when he does go? Because it's not just the opposition. Right? There is the military. There's different guerrilla groups. There's all kinds of factors. It's not likely going to be clean, and it may not even be settled for quite a while.
Gunson: And whoever replaces him could be worse than Maduro. That's also a possibility. There's some people in the opposition who say, but it couldn't get any worse. We have to do this. Everything is so terrible, it couldn't get any worse. But of course it could get worse. The thing about countries, there is no bottom really, you can keep on going down forever. The circles of hell are infinite, unfortunately. And so I do really worry about that. And if you think about it, The United States and the Venezuelan opposition has spent the last few months telling the Venezuelan military that they're basically narco terrorists. What are they gonna do one day? Even if, let's suppose that Maria Corina and Edmundo González, whom we haven't even mentioned, who's the guy who actually won the election last year, is an exile speaking — supposing they come back in and they take the keys of the Presidential Palace and they sit behind the desk and then they go, oh, we better ask somebody to take care of internal security. They go and knock on the door of whoever's the top general who's left after all the dust has settled and they say, we know we said some bad things about you, but would you mind helping us out here because we have a little problem with internal security? I mean, I don't quite see how that conversation is going to go really. I don't think it's going to go well. And I think there's a lot of people in the military who will say, well, screw that. Either, we're not gonna salute these people. The opposition in Venezuela forever, almost since Chávez came to power, has swung between moderates and hardliners. It's a broad coalition. There's a dozen, maybe 20 parties involved in opposition politics. They come together, they split up. But the essence of the division in the heart of the opposition has not been ideological. It's been over strategy. And the hardliners have always stressed instant results, shortcuts, whereas the moderates have always said that we need to talk, we need to negotiate, we need to participate in elections even when they're not free and fair. Right now, the opposition leadership is dominated by the hardliners in the form of Maria Corina Machado and her allies. And the moderates are in bad shape. They're quite quiet, but they do oppose US intervention. So yes, I suppose they try not to be directly critical of her because she's still very popular, but that strain exists. And I think if this current operation fails, Maria Corina's standing, her political future, is going to decline very rapidly because she promised more than she could deliver once again.
Ruffini: I've also found it very interesting, and other US journalists have pushed her quite hard on this, is she seems vaguely supportive of these strikes even when people have said, you know, but there's no, these are extrajudicial killings. You can't prove that these people are running drugs. What if it's an innocent person? And she has said, you know, we've tried everything else. The drugs are what's propping up Maduro. We have to take him out. And if this is what we have to do, this is what we have to do. It's a striking stance to take for someone who just won the Nobel Peace Prize. And I gotta tell you personally, I have quite a few friends who are in the Guaidó government here, who worked for the ambassador here when there was a whole operation here, and I've heard the same thing from them. And I've been very surprised by that. And I do wonder if a divided opposition is a good or a bad thing for an American administration that is hoping to eventually replace Maduro.
Gunson: You're right. She has been very supportive. She has said that Trump is doing exactly the right thing. To some extent, the whole underpinning, the pretext, if you like, or rationale, the justification the Trump administration is using for all of this stuff, it has been provided by the Venezuelan opposition. It was developed and embroidered in The United States, but all this idea that Maduro emptied the jails and sent dangerous criminals to The US to undermine The US Government, that he's sending drugs to The US with the same idea, that he's a terrorist — all of this stuff has been used not only to justify the extrajudicial killing of dozens of Venezuelans in the waters of the Caribbean, but it's also being used to deprive them of TPS, of the temporary protection that they enjoyed under Biden, and actually, Secretary of State Rubio supported very strongly in his previous existence as a senator.
Dearlove: Phil, in your article in Foreign Affairs, you're arguing really that negotiation and maybe a diplomatic approach is going to provide a solution, whereas a military intervention is just going to create massive uncertainty and possibly catastrophic results internally. But if you are thinking about somehow a negotiated settlement, can you really negotiate with a crocodile? I mean, what sort of endgame might a negotiation produce? Because I can't see Maduro ever agreeing to step off and leave and go and live in luxury in a neighboring country. As you've already said, he may be subject to an International Criminal Court indictment.
Gunson: Yes, I think we have to be absolutely straightforward. First of all, the Maduro government has a long history of reneging on commitments made at the negotiating table. It's used negotiations as a means of kicking the can down the road. It's not a reliable negotiating partner. I don't know if you can negotiate with a crocodile, but I do think you can negotiate with any rational being because negotiations aren't about being all pally with your negotiating adversary. You can negotiate with people you cordially loathe and detest provided that the conditions are right. And I would say that the conditions right now are not right for negotiation, because obviously Maduro has a better alternative, which is just staying in power and sticking it out. So I'm not saying that negotiations can happen right now or that if they did, they would lead anywhere in particular. I'm saying don't go in and break everything because it's the only way, because it's not the only way. And I don't think that simply saying negotiations haven't worked up to now, so let's go in and smash things and see if, when the pieces fall, if they fall in a better order.
Ruffini: What has it been like living in Caracas for the past twenty years? You've seen such highs and lows in the wealth of the city, the situation of the economy. I remember, I use this example all the time, of reporting that shows and doesn't tell, something I think we all could do a lot more of these days, but, you know, I digress. I remember there's a BBC report when the economy really started tanking, and the situation in Caracas was especially bad a couple years ago, talking about how tailors were making a lot of money because the average person had lost 15 to 20 pounds and didn't have money for new clothes. So the people doing well in the city were the tailors who were taking in people's pants. I'm wondering if that's an experience that resonates with you, with people you know, and walk us through the highs and the lows of having been there throughout these kind of remarkable times and why you're still there.
Gunson: Yeah. Well, actually, funnily enough, my mother-in-law, she's a seamstress. She does sewing and she did make money exactly for that reason because people were getting skinnier and they needed their clothes taken in. That's absolutely true. We've been through all sorts of things. We've been through acute shortages of gasoline. We've been through periods —
Ruffini: In a petro state, mind you.
Gunson: Yeah. In a petro state where you literally had queues kilometers long of people waiting sometimes for days, literally for days, to fill the tank. We've been through lengthy periods when basic goods were almost unobtainable and the only way you could do it was to queue for hours at the supermarket in the hope that there might be something left by the time you got there at the subsidized supermarkets, the state supermarkets, or you had to have connections on the black market and pay through the nose for flour or sugar or, you know, just the basics, cleaning equipment, all this kind of stuff. So we've been through that. We've been through coup attempts. We've been through Trump's maximum pressure. Yeah, it's been a rough — it's been a roller coaster really. And it's also been particularly harsh for anybody identified as a dissident. But of course, I'm a journalist by profession. Those of us who do politics in this part of the world, this is what we sign up for, I suppose. I can't say it hasn't been interesting. Also Caracas is a terrific place to live even if it's badly run. The climate's great. Generally speaking the sun shines, the people are cheery. A beautiful country, and one day I hope it will be a beautiful, well-run country.
Ruffini: Has there ever been a point in the last couple years where you've thought, screw it, I'm out of here?
Gunson: There was a period of a couple of years. I think the point at which I thought I might have to leave was when we had a nationwide power cut that lasted about four days, which meant of course no internet, no cell phones mostly, you felt really cut off. It was really difficult even to pay for stuff because there was no way of using a card. You had to pay in cash. That was the point at which I thought if this is the beginning of something much worse, then I won't be able to work here. There's no way, I won't even be able to do my job. And of course, there were also periods when it looked like the space for any kind of independent analysis or even holding meetings was going to just be reduced to nothing. But so far that hasn't happened. It's important to point out that this is not —
Ruffini: That was gonna be my next question, is you still feel like you can do your job there. It sounds like you can have this conversation with us and not necessarily expect someone to knock on your door, which I find very interesting.
Gunson: Well, you know, I always keep half an ear on the door just in case. If I visit The States now, I feel like I have to scrub my social media accounts. My colleagues say, you know, it's nerve wracking that, you know, being anybody who dissents at all from the government line. Unfortunately, looking at it from here, you get the sense sometimes that I've seen this movie. It doesn't end well. Trump is behaving — the parallels with Chávez are just extraordinary. The things that he does. Even everyday stuff that you probably don't even think of as something that happened down here in Venezuela. We go, oh yeah, I remember when he took over the statistical institute so that we couldn't have independent statistics anymore. And then they stopped giving statistics altogether. How Chávez would lie just all the time. Everything was a lie. Everything that came out of his mouth. So, yeah, we see lots of parallels. But as far as my position is concerned, I'm all over the media, as you know, at the moment because there's so few people left in Venezuela who can do this. And my position is, well, I'll carry on doing it until I can't. They have ways of letting me know. But on the other hand, to some extent, the things that I say presumably are things that they rather like me saying. Like, I don't think it's a good idea for The US to invade Venezuela. Maduro is not actually the head of a narco terrorist cartel. I said this loud and clear, to such an extent that the criticism I'm getting and the abuse on social media that I'm getting is coming from the opposition people, not the government.
ANALYSIS WITH SIR RICHARD DEARLOVE
Ruffini: How does this end? Do we just have to wait for him to die? What do you see as — you were talking about you look forward to a time when this country can basically live its best life in the sun with its amazing people and, I will say, fantastic cuisine. How do you get to that point?
Gunson: Gosh. I think he's gonna survive this episode. Let me say what my preference is, first of all. I think that the way to ensure a stable, peaceful transition to a more democratic situation is through a thorough set of negotiations. And unfortunately, there's no way around that, difficult though it is. And the only way you're going to have negotiations is when both sides reckon that there's no alternative. If both sides go into it thinking that they can use negotiations in order to clobber the other side and to take power, that's not how it goes. Negotiations have to be give and take, and that's a very difficult, painful process. And so long as, for example, the opposition counts on The United States to resolve its problem, the opposition won't go into talks. And so long as Maduro thinks that he's better off sticking to what he's got at the moment rather than negotiating any kind of exit, then he won't negotiate, or when he does, it'll only be to buy time. Sometimes of course what happens is that the geopolitical situation changes and the external conditions become unfavorable to dictatorship. And that's what causes dictatorships to fade away or to negotiate their exit. Sometimes it comes about because the people in power get old and die and they haven't prepared any generational relief, any new generation to take over. But it is very, very difficult to predict. I always say, I suppose it's a sort of a get out of jail free card, but I always say, well, there's always an X factor that nobody's even thought of. And I used to say this about when is Chávez's government going to come to an end? And I'd say, because of something that you haven't even thought of. Well, how did it end? He got cancer. It came completely out of the blue. Nobody expected it.
Dearlove: Of course, we then thought Maduro wouldn't last six months and here he is, twelve years later. Well, I think it's gonna end. I'm not an expert, but I think it's gonna end. I think it's gonna end badly. And the reason I think it's gonna end badly is because I think Trump is overcommitted. You can't put all that kit off the coast of Venezuela and then go home with your tail between your legs leaving Maduro in power. So my expectation is something is going to happen. What exactly and what the consequences will be, well, very, very hard to predict. I think, Phil, I share your uncertainty about power vacuums after regimes are deposed, what the hell happens next? And it could be pretty messy. It could be very messy, particularly given the very constituents that you've described to us that make up the Venezuelan power structure and all these people that have informal relationships or formal relationships with Maduro. I think it's worrying. Anyway, on that optimistic note, I'm gonna conclude.
Ruffini: Well, that was a hard cut, that would be a hard conversation, as you mentioned, but I think this was an easy conversation. Phil, you're absolutely fantastic. I learned so much. Thank you so much for taking the time. We really, really appreciate it.
Gunson: It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
Ruffini: Thank you very much, Phil. It's great. For more conversations with leading decision makers and thinkers, check out 1decision.com and our YouTube page where we have additional videos, commentaries, and explainers. I'm Christina Ruffini. Thank you so much for listening.
