Watch the full episode HERE
Flashback: As Ukraine’s loss becomes inevitable, travel back with us to some of the key moments of System Update’s coverage of the war.
Featured in this ‘System Update Flashback’ are previous interviews with John Mearsheimer, Michael Tracey, and John Diesen.
Most Americans are now turning against this war. They do not want any more of their taxpayer dollars going to this war. Congress has already authorized over $110 billion, and there's just no end in sight to this war. The only possibility – if the United States doesn't withdraw or forge a diplomatic solution finally – is just to keep spending tens of billions and hundreds of billions of dollars more to destroy Ukraine, to kill Ukrainians, and eventually probably have to then pay for the reconstruction of that country through all kinds of private hedge funds and investment funds, like BlackRock and JPMorgan and others, which are very excited as well about this war.
Public opinion makes no difference. They sufficiently propagandized the public to get the public onboard at the start of the war in a bipartisan way and the fact that Americans are now wanting to get off their ship does not mean that this ship is stopping to let them off. In fact, it is escalating in terms of how quickly it seems to be moving. From the Associated Press earlier today, the headline “Biden will ask Congress for $13B to support Ukraine and $12B for disaster fund, an AP source says.”
So that's $25 billion. You'll notice they pared the war spending with a disaster fund so that that way anybody opposed to the spending package will instantly be accused of opposing the $12 billion in humanitarian spending. Here are the details. The AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden on Thursday will ask Congress to provide more than $13 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine, another massive infusion of cash as the Russian invasion wears on and Ukraine pushes a counteroffensive against the Kremlin’s deeply entrenched forces, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
The last such request from the White House, made in November, was met and then some — Congress approved more than what the Democratic president had requested. But there’s a different dynamic this time. (AP News. August 10, 2023)
In fact, you'll recall that in May of 2022, President Biden originally requested an allocation of $33 billion for the war in Ukraine. Congress received it, arbitrarily threw another $7 billion on, just locked it up to $40 billion, and just rounded it up by $7 billion to $40 billion. And that was really the only time Congress was required out in the open to approve a standalone expenditure. That was when every single Democrat – as well as every single Democrat-leaning independent, such as Bernie Sanders in the Senate, the entire squad in the House, every last Democrat – every single one of them, voted YES, and, as usual, they got enough support from the Republican establishment, from the neocon and pro-war wing of the Republican Party to pass that $40 billion expenditure by a very lopsided bipartisan majority. They had already approved it very early in the war, $14.9 billion, which they were drawing down rapidly. So, before you even blinked the United States has spent $60 billion on the war, which is almost equal to the total military budget for Russia for the entire year, which is $65 billion.
So, in a matter of three months, the U.S. blew through $60 billion and the same thing happened in November when Biden had made a request and then Congress not only approved it, but lost a bunch of money on top of it, and the Associated Press says:
A political divide on the issue has grown, with the Republican-led House facing enormous pressure to demonstrate support for the party’s leader, Donald Trump, who has been very skeptical of the war. And American support for the effort has been slowly softening.
The White House also is expected to ask for $12 billion to replenish federal disaster funds, according to the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly about a request that had not yet been made public and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. (AP News. August 10, 2023)
Note here, just as an aside, this rotted journalistic practice that they just give in an email to anybody without even bothering to pretend to have a reason for doing so. The justification here was they were given anybody in order to speak about a matter not yet public, but obviously, the source was authorized to leak this. They wanted to kind of do a test case. It's not like some inside the government whistle-blower. This is just a Biden official going in wanting to announce it through the Associated Press and not wanting to be named. And of course, they immediately grant that anonymity so that government officials can do everything in secret.
Biden and his senior national security team have repeatedly said the United States will help Ukraine “as long as it takes” to oust Russia from its borders. Privately, administration officials have warned Ukrainian officials that there is a limit to the patience of a narrowly divided Congress – and the American public – for the costs of a war with no clear end. (AP News. August 10, 2023)
As you likely know, we've been reporting on this for a while, as the public support for the war has been eroding – or softening, in the words of AP – the attempt has been made propagandistically to convince Americans that there's this great counteroffensive coming and all you have to do is hold on a little longer. The counteroffensive is going to be this explosive momentum change in the war. The Ukrainians are going to break through these incredibly entrenched defensive lines the Russians have spent months entrenching and building and that is going to finally be what enables the Ukrainians to expel Russians from their land. Remember, Russia occupies more than 20% of the Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which they have had possession of since 2014. I don't know how you perceive it, but for me, I have a very hard time envisioning Ukraine driving Russian soldiers entirely out of Eastern Ukraine, all of those provinces in eastern and southern Ukraine, that they are now very aggressively occupying, as well as Crimea.
The problem has become that both sides – Russia and NATO/U.S. – have asserted absolutist goals as their non-negotiable, uncompromising demands for ending this war. The Russians have made unequivocally clear that they will never accept being expelled from these territories in Eastern Ukraine, which they claim has been used to oppress and mistreat Russian-speaking ethnic Russians, as well as to allow all sorts of Nazi battalions to fill up in that region and to threaten Russia as well with the presence of NATO on their soil. Meanwhile, the U.S. has said we will never allow this war to end if it means the Russians gain even an inch of Ukrainian territory as a reward for this invasion. And so, the war by design, in terms of the framework that has been imposed, the framework asserted by Western leaders is almost designed never to end. If it does end, it's going to be a very long time before it does. Joe Biden is saying, as are the Democrats, that we're going to keep putting money into this war for as long as it takes. That is, by definition, an endless war.
So, this $110 billion on top of, now, this $25 billion that Biden is seeking, is just a very starting point for what the U.S. will end up spending if, in fact, Joe Biden gets his way and continues to have the authorization to spend as much of your money as he wants to fatten up the armed industry to launder money through the CIA, to pour all this money into the most corrupt country in Europe – a country, by the way, where Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and his family, have not only been aware of the corruption but participated in that with Hunter Biden making a huge amount of money in Ukraine in order to sell his father's influence and access to his father during the time that his father was vice president and basically running Ukraine.
US Exploits Navalny Death
It'd be one thing if Alexei Navalny were some sort of gigantic figure in Russia. The only reason you know the name now is because the West has turned him into this mythological figure. There was a documentary made about him. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2022. All of Hollywood stood and cheered for this documentary about the hero Alexei Navalny. In Russia, he's a minuscule figure. He's not some giant of the Russian political stage. He is useful to the West for propagandistic purposes, and that is why you have this incredibly inflated imagery of what he is.
Do you remember when the proof of Russia's totalitarianism was that the opposition leader was barred from the ballot and then imprisoned? Isn't there a situation similar to what we have in the United States? Isn't it the case that the primary political opponent of the current government in Washington is in the process of being stricken from the ballot because of judges and Democratic Party leaders bringing cases to have him struck from the ballot and is in the process of being criminally prosecuted by Democratic Partizan prosecutors like Fani Willis in Georgia, Alvin Bragg in New York and the Obama DOJ? Why is it that when we hear that Russia is banning from the ballot the primary political opponent of Vladimir Putin and then trying to imprison him, we make one conclusion, but then here in the United States, the exact same thing is happening with an actual significant political figure—not like Navalny, but Donald Trump was actually the president already, narrowly lost in 2020 and is leading almost every opinion poll for 2024. When he is struck from ballots, when he is threatened with in prison, a completely different narrative about that is presented, even though the same acts. I know a lot of people just intuitively believe this is what propaganda does; this is what tribalism does. We just inherently believe that when it seems like the two things are the same, the fact that one is happening in the United States and the other is happening in Russia means they're completely different. Question whether or not that's what you believe, because you're an American, because you were born in the United States, because you've been told from childhood, but that's how you should see the world.
Here is Reuters. Now this is not R.T., this is not Sputnik, this is not Tucker Carlson—whoever you want to dismiss as some sort of pro-Russian source. This is Reuters, in 2018 which said the following:
Putin nemesis Navalny, barred from election, tries political siege
Opinion polls put Navalny's support at less than 2 percent and many Russians, who still get much of their news from state TV, say they do not know who he is. (Reuters, February 21, 2018)
He's incredibly more famous and more notable and more popular in Western political capitals than he is in Russia. The idea that he's a threat to Vladimir Putin, in any way, is laughable. Let's try and remember as well a couple of things about who Alexei Navalny is—the new hero of Western liberals.
From Yahoo News, yesterday:
Alexei Navalny's 'far-right racist' past back in spotlight after Putin-critic's death
As world leaders pay tribute to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, some have drawn attention to some inconvenient aspects of his past. (Yahoo News UK, February 18, 2024)
Really? What's inconvenient?
…as Western politicians pay their respects, some more uncomfortable aspects of Navalny's career have been brought back to the surface.
"Navalny took part in the Russian March, an annual demonstration that draws ultranationalists, including some who adopt swastika-like symbols," Rahman tweeted.
Oh my, that is uncomfortable.
"He has never apologized for his earliest xenophobic videos or his decision to attend the Russian March.
Rahman appeared to be referring to a notorious video from 2007 in which Navalny appears to compare Muslim immigrants in Russia to "cockroaches" as he advocated for gun ownership.
In another video, he is dressed as a dentist and appears to compare migrants in Moscow to tooth cavities, Radio Free Europe reports. He says: "I recommend full sanitisation. Everything in our way should be carefully but decisively be removed through deportation."
Shortly before releasing both clips, Navalny was expelled by the liberal Yabloko party over his "nationalist activities", having participated in the Russian March, an annual rally associated with ultra-nationalist far-right groups chanting slogans such as "Russia for ethnic Russians". (Yahoo News UK, February 18, 2024)
Anyone in the United States who has a past like that, who called immigrants cockroaches, who advocated handing out guns as a way to exterminate them, as cockroaches should be exterminated, who attended an actual neo-Nazi march—I don't think they would be described as having an inconvenient or uncomfortable past. Yet it is amazing, just like we find in Ukraine with all the neo-Nazi militias that the American liberals love and want to arm, that if you're somebody who doesn't love the Democratic Party in the United States, you will get called a Nazi and a fascist and a white nationalist, and American liberals and Western liberals try to have you barred from the internet and fired from your job and basically expelled from decent society in every way. And then Western liberals encounter actual Nazis. People with actual neo-Nazi ideology, with actual overt ties to white supremacist, neo-Nazi groups and they want to embrace them. They want to arm them. The hero Navalny. Here's the hero Navalny, in 2007.
Alexei Navalny: Hello. Today we have to talk about insect control. No house is safe from cockroach infestation. Eeeww. Or a fly gets in through an open window. We all know the cure against flies. A fly swatter, a slipper against a roach. But what to do if cockroaches are too big and fly too aggressively? In such cases, I recommend a handgun (as he shows a handgun). Yes, to allow firearms.
Anybody involved in an ad like that in the United States would be deemed a Nazi for the rest of his life. The Western media looks at this, and because of his propagandistic value, they turn him into some kind of like civil liberties leader. Of course, the same exact thing has been happening for the last two years in Ukraine. For the last decade in the Western press, every time the Azov Battalion has been referenced, it has been described as a neo-Nazi group, as a group with Nazi ideology. And to this day, you see, the Azov Battalion, their leaders and their soldiers, they have all kinds of neo-Nazi insignia on them.
Here's how The New York Times tried to grapple with this, in June 2023.
Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History
Don’t you love these words? Oh, uncomfortable, inconvenient, thorny—when they're talking about actual neo-Nazis.
Troops’ use of patches bearing Nazi emblems risks fueling Russian propaganda and spreading imagery that the West has spent a half-century trying to eliminate.
So far, the imagery has not eroded international support for the war. It has, however, left diplomats, Western journalists and advocacy groups in a difficult position: Calling attention to the iconography risks playing into Russian propaganda. Saying nothing allows it to spread.
Even Jewish groups and anti-hate organizations that have traditionally called out hateful symbols have stayed largely silent. Privately, some leaders have worried about being seen as embracing Russian propaganda talking points. (The New York Times, June 5, 2023)
That is how The New York Times has grappled with the fact that we are arming actual neo-Nazi militia groups in Ukraine.
As I said at the start, there is a similar case to Navalny’s dying in prison. Although this is a case where the person who died in prison was an American citizen, his name is Gonzalo Lira. We covered this case on last week's show when we interviewed his father. You may recall that Gonzalo was in Ukraine, he married a Ukrainian woman, in 2016, and he was an outspoken opponent of President Zelenskyy and of the war. Because of that, he was twice arrested. The U.S. government never once uttered a word of protest about this American citizen being arrested, even though he posted a video pleading for the government to help, and he warned that if he were arrested a second time, he would die in a Ukrainian prison. And he did die in the Ukrainian prison, just as he predicted, at the age of 55. And he was in prison solely because he criticized President Zelenskyy and the NATO-U.S. narrative about the war. And you would think that when it happens to an American citizen who dies in a Ukrainian prison after criticizing President Zelensky, all these people who are so deeply concerned with civil liberties in Russia, might have something to say about that. After all, this is not a Russian citizen, this is an American citizen, and it's not done at the hands of a foreign government on the other side of the world that is our enemy but an allied state that we are funding and financing. They killed an American citizen for the crime of speaking out against the war and there's barely any media coverage of this. It happened just last month. Because that has anti-propagandistic value because it shows what a joke it is the claim that Ukraine is a democratic state.
One of the very few outlets that covered the death of Gonzalo Lira in prison was the liberal tabloid Daily Beast. They ran this article in January 2024.
It's a repulsive, repugnant headline designed to justify Gonzalo's death.
Gonzalo Lira, a blogger who pushed Kremlin propaganda in Ukraine, died after apparently coming down with pneumonia.
Lira was arrested in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region in May 2023 and charged with spreading Russian propaganda by posting videos that cheered on the Kremlin’s acts of aggression against Ukraine. After being released on house arrest, he was jailed again in July after fleeing while out on bail, though he claimed in hysterical tweets to followers at the time that it was all part of an attempt by Ukrainian authorities to “disappear” him.
Right-wing pundits back home in the U.S. soon seized on his unfounded claims to criticize the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine, holding Lira up as a “journalist” they said had been unfairly persecuted by authorities in Kyiv. (The Daily Beast, January 17, 2024)
In other words, Gonzalo Lira deserved to die in a Ukrainian prison because he had the wrong views about the war in Ukraine. He was a pro-Russian propagandist, therefore, he deserved to die. And if you think I'm exaggerating, even though I just showed you this repulsive Daily Beast headline that was obviously designed to stir up hatred and contempt for Gonzalo Lira.
Here is Mark Thiessen, who used to work in the Bush White House and is now a columnist for the Washington Post. Classic warmongering neocon, the kind that cheered the Iraq War and the War on Terror and every single war since. You know that type. He was one of the few people in the media who actually acknowledged the Gonzalo Lira’s case, and this is what he said, to distinguish it from what happened in Russia.
How is it that the people who pretend to be so upset, so angry, so enraged by the fact that Vladimir Putin imprisoned somebody for their political views and then allowed them to die in prison, can turn around and justify the same exact thing when done by Ukraine, but this time to an American citizen. He's essentially saying Gonzalo Lira deserved to die in prison because during wartime he criticized the government. That's exactly what Vladimir Putin's view of Navalny is. We're in war time, and we're not going to allow people to criticize the government, our war effort, after all, says Mark Thiessen, no country could possibly allow during wartime any free speech. These people do not care in the slightest about civil liberties. They don't care about that at all. It is a pretext, a tool to bludgeon foreign countries that we want to demonize, to continue wars against. And the way you know that it's a pretense, that there's no sincerity or authenticity in the belief is that they will turn around and justify the same exact acts by the United States government or our allies, as I just showed you, they'll say they'll either ignore it because they don't care about it or they'll say Gonzalo Lira deserved to die because he had the wrong views. Exactly what Vladimir Putin says about Alexei Navalny.
Interview with Prof. John Mearsheimer
G. Greenwald: You've referenced a few times, not just a few times, but a few times, even in this conversation, many times since, including your article, that the Russians regard NATO expansion into Ukraine or significant Western influence into Ukraine as some grave threat to their security as basically an existential threat. And you also talked about how the Russians believe the West can't be trusted. One of the big agreements that are often cited by people like yourself, even leftist scholars like Noam Chomsky, as well, is the fact that when Germany reunified, which is obviously a huge threat to Russia, they agreed to accept that, provided that NATO never move one inch east beyond Germany. And of course, NATO has repeatedly moved well east closer and closer to the Russian border. But the argument is we did do that. NATO did move east toward the Russian border. Russia never went to war over that. What is so uniquely threatening about Ukraine from the Russian perspective that they consider this particular kind of expansion to be an existential threat?
Prof. Mearsheimer: Well, it's right on their border and it's a huge piece of real estate. The first tranche of NATO expansion, the first major tranche, took place in 1999, and it involved Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Now, it's important to understand that the Russians screamed bloody murder about that expansion, that first tranche, but they couldn't do anything about it. They were too weak in 1999. This is before Putin even becomes president. Yeltsin is the president at the time. So, the Russians were too weak to do anything about it. But furthermore, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are quite a distance away from the Russian border. The second big tranche takes place in 2004, and this is when the Baltic states come in. This is when Romania comes in, Slovenia and a few other countries. The Russians again scream bloody murder, and there's not much they can do about this one either, because they're still too weak. This is 2004. Putin has been in power for four years. The Russians are coming back from the dead, but they're not all the way there yet. Furthermore, although the Baltic states are close to the Russian border, they're really not a meaningful threat in any way. Then the next big expansion is going to be Ukraine and Georgia. That's the third big trudge. And the Russians put down their foot and they say that this is not going to happen. And just to focus on Ukraine, you want to remember, Ukraine is a big piece of territory right on Russia's border. And the idea that that's going to be a NATO member and that the Americans may be able to put missiles that can hit Russia on Ukrainian territory is unacceptable. Furthermore, there's a very important naval base in Ukraine, in Sevastopol, which is located on the Crimean peninsula. And from a Russian point of view, the idea that the Crimean peninsula is going to become part of NATO and that Sevastopol may become a naval base is just unthinkable. This, again, is why Bill Burns, who's now the president of the CIA, the head of the CIA, said in 2008 that Ukraine was the brightest of red lines. It really was or is of major strategic importance to the Russians. It's just very different than the Baltic states. It's very different than Finland, Poland and so forth and so on. So, the Russians are deeply committed to making sure that Ukraine never becomes a member of NATO, or if it does become a member, it's a dysfunctional state and basically useless for NATO.
G. Greenwald: So, the argument of people who see the world through the NATO and EU and U.S. perspective is twofold. One is that no one was really talking about putting Ukraine in NATO. Secretary Blinken, when the Russians objected, defended this principle, this open-door principle that we're never going to close the door on anybody, that everyone has the right to join NATO if we want them to. We're not going to tell Ukraine they're forever out. But that there was no real movement to put Ukraine into NATO and that secondly, even if Ukraine did become a NATO state, NATO is purely a defensive alliance that doesn't have a history of attacking anybody. All that it would do is be extending its defensive umbrella over Ukraine at Russia’s feet. The Russians’ fear of NATO on the other side of the border was illusory because NATO isn't the kind of military alliance that historically has gone and invaded other countries or conquered them. What do you make of those two claims?
Prof. Mearsheimer: This is simply not true. After the Biden administration moved into the White House, in January of 2021, on a number of occasions over the course of 2021, and early 2022, they made it unequivocally clear that the commitment or pledge that was made in April of 2008 in Bucharest was alive and well. They said it in a statement that was made at the Brussels NATO Summit, in June of 2021. They said it in a very important strategic document. It was issued in November 2021. And when the Russians wrote a letter, on December 17th, 2021, asking President Biden to put in writing, that Ukraine would not become a member of NATO, Tony Blinken made it clear to the Russians that we rejected that request and that Ukraine would become a part of NATO. That's part one of the story. Part two of this story is that Ukraine was effectively a de facto member of NATO by early 2022, the Russians made it clear that they appreciated this fact. We were arming the Ukrainians. We were training the Ukrainians. We were recruiting, including them in military exercises that we ran, that NATO ran. We were obsessed with interoperability between Ukraine and NATO fighting forces. So, Ukraine was well on its way to developing the military capability to be a NATO member. This idea that there was no chance that Ukraine would ever become part of NATO is a fiction that proponents of the war have invented to defend themselves. It makes no sense at all. Now, with regard to your second point that NATO's a defensive alliance is very important to be clear. […]
G. Greenwald: That's not my point. That's the point of people who would be arguing against you. But go ahead.
Prof. Mearsheimer: Okay, sorry. The second point is the argument that NATO is a defensive alliance. It's not an offensive alliance. There's a very important concept in the international relations literature. It's called the security dilemma. And the security dilemma says that it's virtually impossible to distinguish between defense and offense, whether you're talking about weapons or military strategy, or military plans. So, you can have an alliance that you think is defensive in nature but if you're standing on the other side of the line, it does not look defensive in nature. It looks offensive in nature. Just let's go back to the Cold War. NATO had what I believe was a defensive strategy, but that defensive strategy involved lots of German and American and British armored divisions and mechanized infantry divisions. And in a crisis, what we planned to do was take all those NATO mechanized divisions and armored divisions and move them up to the inter-German border, close to where the Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces were. Well, if you're a Warsaw Pact general or a Soviet general sitting on the other side of the inter-German border, and all of a sudden you see German armored divisions and American armored divisions marching towards the border, are you going to say to yourself, those are defensive divisions? I don't think so. Are you going to be able to distinguish whether they're defensive or offensive divisions? I don't think so. The result is what we have with regard to narrow expansion into Ukraine is a situation where on the Western side we think this is a defensive move, whereas on the Russian side, they think that it is an offensive move, whereas we think we are containing the Russians, the Russians think we are encircling them. This is the security dilemma. And people who make arguments about particular weapons or particular strategies or particular alliances being defensive in nature are whistling in the wind. It's a meaningless argument to make because you can't distinguish between defense and offense.
G. Greenwald: Let me ask you about the change of government in 2014. We all have heard the secret tape recording that's no longer secret, where Victoria Nuland was speaking to the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine at the time, and she expressed her very strong views about who ought to be the new president now that the democratically elected leader was removed from office before the constitutional termination of his term – obviously, with a lot of U.S. aid, the U.S. senators marched to Kyiv and made no secret of the fact that they were […] that effort and we have this little scandal that gets talked about as a domestic scandal where Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, was on the board of Burisma for $50,000 a month because they wanted his help in dealing with some of their potential legal problems. And instead of paying a son of a Ukrainian official, they paid the son of an American official in recognition of that who wielded real power in Ukraine, especially after the change in this government. How did that look, this change of government in 2014 and the subsequent influence of the United States in Ukraine to Moscow?
Prof. Mearsheimer: Well, I think that what happened in 2014 with regard to ignoring Victoria Nuland’s behavior was seen by the Russians as a mortal threat. It's important to emphasize here that the Russians are deeply concerned about NATO expansion into Ukraine, for sure, but they're also concerned about EU expansion into Ukraine, and they are also deeply concerned about a potential color revolution in Ukraine. This is where Ukraine becomes a liberal democracy that's allied with the West. So, if you actually think about the West’s strategy vs of Ukraine, it has three prongs to it, right? First is NATO expansion. Second is the EU expansion. And three is a color revolution. And the Russians worry about all three. And what happened with Victoria Nuland and the events in February of 2023 is that the Russians were spooked, not by NATO expansion per se at the time, but by a potential color revolution and also by EU expansion. Those were the two big issues on the table at the time, and the Russians clearly view this as a mortal threat, and that's why they took Crimea and that's why the war, in effect, or the conflict in effect, started back then. So those events in 2014 in which the United States was involved, exactly how much involvement we had is unclear at this point in time. There's no question we were involved but the level of involvement remains to be determined. But the Russians saw that as a threat, and that's what precipitated the crisis in February of 2014. With regard to Joe Biden's son, I don't know enough about that to have a strong opinion. I don't know enough about what Hunter Biden did, what Joe Biden did, or how the Russians view it. So, I have to plead ignorance on that particular issue.
G. Greenwald: But regardless of the specifics of that case, it is true, that after that 2014 change of government, the United States played a much bigger role in the internal affairs of Ukraine.
Prof. Mearsheimer: Oh, absolutely. There's just no question about that. No, we're joined at the hip with the Ukrainians. You were talking about Barack Obama before, being smart enough not to arm the Ukrainians. And you're absolutely correct. It was Donald Trump in December 2017 who decided to arm the Ukrainians. But Obama agreed to train the Ukrainians. Obama wanted to put limits on our involvement, for sure. He was a cautious man. And I think deep down inside, Obama understood that this whole situation was a potential disaster. But you don't want to underestimate the extent to which Obama moved the United States and Ukraine closer together after 2014. And again, Victoria Nuland worked for President Obama. And by the way, it was now President, then-Vice President Biden who handled the Ukraine portfolio in the Obama administration. I don't think most people realize that. But Obama delegated the Ukraine portfolio to Joe Biden, and Joe Biden worked closely with Victoria Nuland in 2014 and afterward. And this is why when Joe Biden moves into the White House, in January 2021, he really turns the pressure up on the Russians over Ukraine. 2021 is the year when the really big trouble starts and it's Joe Biden who is in the White House, starting in January 2021.
Michael Tracey Interviews Glenn Diesen
M. Tracey: One thing I've been struck by is that if you survey some of the coverage in the West, in the U.S., UK, etc., there's this note of triumphalism about how Russia has now suffered the most far-reaching invasion since World War II, and that's supposed to be inspiring optimism about the trajectory of this conflict. Whereas my instinct is okay if that is true, and I think it probably is, you can correct me if I'm wrong, then that should really be extremely foreboding and ominous, just in terms of the potential for this now to escalate. I mean, if we really are making direct tactical comparisons between the current status of this war to World War II, then maybe people ought to brush up on the history of World War II just in terms of the epic cataclysm that it was for humanity, especially in terms of the psychic impact, it's hard to gauge or quantify, but given the strength of World War II lore in Russian society and how it's used to justify this current war effort, I've heard Putin even try to kind of situate the Ukraine conflict into the broader spectrum of Russian history that kind of connects it or puts it in a continuum with World War II. And if that is true, and then, yeah, this latest development can further bolster that kind of thematic tie between World War II and the current conflict, that really should make us all a bit apprehensive or concerned, shouldn't it, about what this could potentially result in, rather than something to celebrate, which is kind of the tone that you see in most of the Western media.
Glenn Diesen: Yeah. The celebration is very strange because, besides the civilians which they killed, a lot of the Russian troops killed – they were part of the special military operation. There were, as you said, that were conscripts serving in the army here on the Russian territory. So, celebrating kind of shows how the war mentality has become much uglier, I guess, over the past two and a half years. But also Kursk, the historical similarities – I saw what I thought was a retired German general, at least top officer, making this comparison as well, that this is where they suffered in World War II and almost framed it as a do-over. It was quite absurd. You also have German military leaders arguing that because the Ukrainians have had such success in Kursk, they need to send extra weaponry to support this. So, they’re very openly participating now, actively becoming part of this war and not in the defense, but then in the offense into Russian territory. No one can argue Russia did the same to Ukraine and all this is all fine and well, but this is NATO's indirect involvement in the invasion of Russia. And, one has to look at the perspectives of the Russians as well, because this now puts us in the category of Napoleon and Hitler. We don't have to agree with these comparisons, but the perceptions do matter in international politics and this is how more and more Russians are actually seeing this, that this is a fight for, that this has always been an existential fight and this has only been proven over the past two weeks. And, that there doesn't seem to be much appreciation of what we have done. I mean, Washington and Brussels, what this all mean? If you look at the incoming, the new foreign policy chief of the European Union, she argues that “We can't have diplomacy with Russians because, you know, they're bad people” and also, a possible victory could be defined as breaking Russia up to many parts is just very, very radical [in] the way we're talking. What's most unsettling about this is once these World War II, comparisons were made, it's not done with shame. It's such self-righteousness and virtue behind it “that we're fighting this good fight” but a large part is because key facts about this war from day 1, in 2014, has kind of been scrapped from the narrative. So, if we look at what we actually have done over the past decade, it's quite reckless and dangerous. You're not really allowed to make this argument in Europe, because if you criticize our side, that means you're taking the Russian side. It's all narrative driven so it's very difficult to have any sensible discussion about. I'm also very much taken aback by this, now, comparisons to World War II. If it's just the Russians making it will be one thing, but when these comparisons come from the West as well, it's very concerning.
M. Tracey: Well, even going back to the early stages of the invasion of Ukraine, you had lots of indications on the part of American elected officials of the legacy of World War II, we need to ramp up our, quote-unquote, “arsenal of democracy” which was the famous Franklin Roosevelt slogan for funding the military-industrial complex to wage World War II. The U.S. Congress passed a Lend-Lease legislation which was actually never utilized, as far as I know, which is sort of strange, but they did it maybe as a symbolic showing of solidarity. They passed the Lend-Lease legislation, which would have enabled the U.S. to basically just send armaments to Ukraine without ever potentially being repaid. Now, Congress decided instead to enact these incremental supplemental funding bills that were not structured as a loan. But now, like even Donald Trump is saying, “Oh, gee whiz, it's going to be so great, because now we can structure all of our further provisions to Ukraine as a loan.” So, the World War II iconography and rhetoric have kind of been a feature of the U.S. depiction of the war for quite some time, but, obviously it takes on a different tenor when we're talking about an ongoing invasion.
One thing I wanted to ask you about that adds to the sense of the potentially impending doom is the situation in the Middle East, in particular, the relationship between Russia and Iran. We've heard lots of reports about increasing operational ties between Russia and Iran with Russia supplying some of these showerheads, I think they're called drones, to Russia for use in Ukraine and also Russia pledging certain resources to Iran in turn. There was a report, maybe last week or a few days ago, of Putin issuing a cautionary note to Iran to limit the scope of its potential retaliation against Israel and, obviously, the relationship between Israel and Russia is also quite complicated. So, what is the role of Russia in kind of managing this potential upcoming escalation that we've been told for now, a couple of weeks could be imminent at any moment, between Hezbollah and Iran retaliating against Israel for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, in Tehran, and also the assassination of the Hezbollah commander in Beirut? Because it could be another potential theater in a more wide-ranging conflict that could have ominous echoes of World War II or a more globally oriented conflict. So, what's the role of Russia, as far as you can see in the Middle East conflagration that could be potentially imminent?
Glenn Diesen: Well, a part of it you can link to what's next in our forecast. Well, great geostrategic shifts of Russia from greater Europe to greater Eurasia and greater Europe simply means that for the past 300 years, since Peter, the Great, whenever Russia wanted to modernize, it's always looking towards Europe, to Europeanize Russia more. And even since the days of Gorbachev, they wanted to create a common European home or a greater Europe. This was effectively canceled with NATO expansion and the West toppling the government in Ukraine, in 2014, putting the final end to it effectively because this showed that Ukraine could not be a bridge that would gradually integrate Russia into the West, instead, it would be a frontline. So, this was why was very dramatic. And this is when Russia began to diversify its economy over the past 10 years, in which it would then integrate more towards Eurasia. So, China, India and all the others, Iran as well, for that sake. And then, not just diversify but decouple a bit from the West, by creating new economic infrastructure, with China obviously taking the lead.
This is quite relevant if you want to look at the partnership with Iran because, if you only go back to 15 years ago, the Russians would have used that partnership or friendship with Iran as a political currency, they would put sanctions, they would trade away this relationship if they might get an entry ticket or whatever the West will dangle in front of them. But this was a way of trading to get closer to the West. Since 2014, Russia has now pursued what they call greater Eurasia and this is very different.
Of course, Iran is elevated to one of the strategic partners because when Russia looks east, they can only integrate with the Chinese, as the Chinese economy is much, much stronger. Now, India, Iran, all these countries have much more importance. You saw that, after the Russian and Iranian cooperation in Syria, which was very limited, the Russians and Iranians looked towards how they could expand this to a real strategic partnership, along the lines of Russia and China. And, I think, this is something that has really developed over the past two and a half years, because Iran has sent these Shi'ite drones and assisted Russia in many ways, as in this, you know, most dire time when Russia sees itself as fighting an existential war. Meanwhile, the Israelis, with whom Russia has always had very good relations and always tried to manage and show respect for their mutual security concerns and interests, Israel turned out to supply weapons and training to the Ukrainians, which then destroyed that partnership. So, you saw a huge shift: the partnership with Israel declined and Iran is now elevated to her strategic partner. So, this is a huge shift, which will also impact the wider region.
How Russia responded to the attacks on Iran and the conflict in Gaza is that they have taken a very strongly sympathetic and aligned themselves very closely with the Palestinians and also given Iran a lot of support. Their main concern is that, once the Israelis strike Iran and continue these provocations, that, yeah, this is a way of, essentially provoking an Iranian response to drag the Americans into this war because they're in very deep trouble at the moment. They're stuck in Gaza, they're in a conflict that they don't want with Hezbollah, which is very difficult to manage, and now they want to go out to Iran as well. So, they really need to pull in the Americans. This is effectively the dilemma for the Iranians do they restore their deterrent to strike hard, or do they avoid taking this risk which pulls the Americans into a wider war? So, for this reason, the Russians have been urging restraint from Iranians, but as you can expect, the Iranians maybe don't want to take that lesson from the Russians because look what happened to the Russians, they showed restraint with NATO and NATO only responded by then being more and more emboldened to escalate further and further. So, this is a concern for Iran. If they take the Russian advice and they'll strike back, then, you know, why wouldn't Israel bomb Tehran again tomorrow and kill some other top officials? So, this is the main concern. But that being said, the partnership between Russia and Iran obviously continues to grow economically and then the military sphere is also now institutionally with the SCO and BRICs.
M. Tracey: And finally, obviously, we're in the middle of a presidential election cycle in the U.S., and that's the frame through which much of what goes on in Russia is viewed in the U.S., for better or worse. Obviously, there's this long-standing caricature of Trump as somehow collusive in hock with Russia. I think anybody who's rational probably should realize that that was nonsense at this point, but it kind of continues to linger. And then as far as Kamala Harris is concerned, we don't know what her independent policy views are on virtually anything. Obviously, you could infer that she has this association with the Biden administration in which she has been vice president but in terms of her own personally articulated views, despite her being coordinated into the Democratic nominee, through sort of backhanded maneuvers, she's yet to really articulate a policy platform for any appreciable extent. So, how does that impact, I guess, your general assessment of the current state of affairs? Trump was just, once again, bragging, yesterday, how tough he is on Russia, how Putin actually complained to him that Trump was excessively, quote, “brutal” on Russia by imposing sanctions by killing the Nord Stream pipeline. Obviously, there's been some news lately about the ultimate fate of that Nord Stream pipeline but Trump takes credit for economically ending the Nord Stream pipeline even before Biden took power. And you have people like Mike Pompeo who are in the orbit of Trump, who are basically talking about a quote-unquote “peace deal” in Ukraine that would involve escalation in Ukraine. Obviously, the status quo with the Democrats is to support Ukraine for as long as it takes, as much money as it takes, whenever escalations come to pass, without any real, discernible policy objective in sight other than this kind of inference that one can make about apparently aspiring for some version of regime change. So, it seems like a pretty disastrous muddle for both parties at this point which, you know, maybe explains why Russia doesn't seem to have quite as strong of a preference this time around. Obviously, it's hard to tell with any precision. But what's your sense now of the Russian perspective of the 2024 U.S. presidential race?
Glenn Diesen: Well, as you said, I don't think they see it as mattering that much. Obviously, Kamala Harris will be a continuation of Biden. She doesn't say much about foreign policy, which means that the people behind Biden would likely continue the policies. They're behind Kamala Harris as well. I wouldn't expect any big changes. So, it's, continue doubling down this continued escalation in this proxy war with the Russians. With Trump, it's a bit different. Again, he's spoken many times about the need to end this war and how horrific it is, how not achieving their objectives is a waste of money, and again, he really wants a return on investment in terms of empires. Also, the selection of Vance as his VP, I think that's also quite indicative of the direction he wants to go on Ukraine.
That being said, he said a lot of this already, back in 2016. He was getting along with Russia, would be a good thing, but what did he really do? He continued a lot of the economic coercion, he contributed to the military escalation with the javelins, which then, you know, Obama said he didn't want because it could lead to war. So, he didn't really – I'm not sure what good policies, how he improved relations with Russia and I think this is a problem. I don't think it really matters that much if his a Democrat or Republican. Keep in mind that this is a big boulder which has been rolling since 2008. In 2008, was Republican Bush who pushed for NATO to offer future membership to Ukraine despite the Europeans warning strongly against it, that this will trigger where we are now. After that you had Obama, he also didn't want to escalate, but again, he contributed to escalation. Then you have Trump. He, also, with the javelin continued escalation. Then you have Biden where things really heated up very quickly. So, it could be a good idea to get Biden out because both him and his family have too much influence or at stake in this Ukraine war for the past decade now. So, it could be positive to have him out. But overall, I think the Russians learned the most that it doesn’t really matter who sits on the throne, that this limits to how much the policies can change. Yeah. That being said, I think if you look at their statements, obviously, Trump's advance ticket would be much more favorable to Russia but, as you suggested, Trump markets himself as this great dealmaker, he will come to the Russians and present a deal. This is not a deal that the Russians will likely be able to accept because in any good deal, you need trust and why would they trust anything that the U.S. and NATO put forward? Because we already sabotaged and undermined every agreement we had with them, every peace agreement to Ukraine over the past 10 years. So, what are the Russians going to do? They're gonna demand to hold strategic territory to prevent it from falling into the hands of NATO in the future and irrespective of Trump being genuine in this effort, will walk away from Ukraine and allow it to be neutral, I think, you don't know who the next administration will be. The next government will come in, they will again rip up all the agreements – that has been done before – and they might have to fight this war all over again. So, I think, in the absence of trust, that the Russians will have very hard demands. And I don't think that will be easy for Trump to accept. So, he will do what he usually does, which is max pressure, and, again, that will contribute to further escalation. So, I wouldn't necessarily look towards the American election for a solution to this conflict.
