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All right, you guys, introducing Lyle J. Goldstein.
He is a research professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
And he's a regular writer at thenationalinterest.org.
This one is called Europe is stuck between the United States and Russia.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing, Lyle?
Great to be here.
Thanks very much for having me.
I do want to mention that I am a government official and I should say up front that these are my own views and don't in any way represent any kind of official assessment of the U.S. government.
I could have guessed that from what you wrote in the piece here.
Okay.
So, you know what, you start off this article listing the different increments and episodes of heightened tensions between or, you know, I guess illustrating the heightened tensions between the United States and Russia just in the Trump years, never mind anything happened since the Cold War, but just since Trump, who, as you say, is supposedly soft on Russia or under the influence of Russia, he's actually ratcheted up quite a few areas of conflict over there.
Could you talk a little bit about that for starters here?
Yeah, I think this is missed on a lot of people.
As you just mentioned, people are often accusing Trump of being a Russian stooge and somebody who's very controlled or something by the Kremlin.
I find that very ironic because relations with Russia really have been in a tailspin.
Now, it started before Trump came to office, but it really continues to spiral downward.
One can give several examples, but I think the most important examples would be Ukraine, of course.
Early on, when Trump came into office, he ordered that Ukraine be given lethal weaponry, and that's a major step, something that the Obama administration was unwilling to do.
Those weapons are on the battlefield, and that increases the danger of escalation, in my view.
In Syria, there have been pretty intense interactions between U.S. and Russian forces, including fatalities there.
Again, if one's concerned about escalation, and that's my primary concern in this important relationship, then we have to be worried.
One can look at Venezuela, but really, in almost every direction, arms control, you name it, the relationship is really on a downward trajectory with little sign of bottoming out.
This is exceedingly dangerous.
I don't have to review, I don't think, for your listeners, the dimensions of the Russian nuclear arsenal to make sure they understand that if President Putin has a really bad day, then so will we.
You know what?
I'm glad you brought that up.
Here's the thing about that.
It goes without saying, constantly, that in the event of a war with Russia or China, a real war, that we're at risk of seeing the widespread use of strategic nukes.
We're city killers.
The end of at least northern human civilization, if not all of it.
Yet, it goes without saying so much that it actually ends up sort of not counting in the discussion at all.
We hear discussions constantly about what it would be like to have a full-scale tank war with Russia in Eastern Europe, or what it would be like to get into a big air-sea battle with the Chinese off of their coast, as though H-bombs don't count.
Just because everybody knows they do so much that they're never even brought up or brought into the discussion at all.
But in reality, you can't fight Russia without losing your hometown, and that should be said every time.
And you know what?
You might go ahead and remind us.
How many thousand H-bombs are we talking about or pointed at us right now?
I think the number is somewhere around...
Well, you know, H-bombs are a different category, but there we'd have to say upwards of a thousand or more, and then thousands more, maybe slightly smaller.
But I mean, yes, these are city busters.
I mean, I can't agree with you more, Scott.
I think that my view on this is every single article written about the U.S.-Russian relationship, in a kind of mature and sophisticated article, would devote one or two paragraphs at least to this problem.
That is, you know, we have to keep this relationship on track, lest something go horribly wrong.
Now, you're right that I think people have gotten so used to the idea of mad, you know, mutually assured deterrence that they think that this is a non-issue.
But I would beg to differ.
I mean, we can point out so many circumstances where we were right up on the edge with Russia.
I think we can even say recently we were on that edge.
And I'm not, you know, I cut my teeth as a Ph.
D. student on nuclear strategy, and I can tell you with great confidence that there has been no, you know, kind of grand breakthrough that suddenly means that these weapons are off the table or something.
And I can tell you that, you know, on a daily basis there are, you know, Russian submarines are out in the Atlantic, and these submarines are armed with missiles that would, you know, really mean the destruction of American cities and, by the way, command and control nodes and other things within, really within minutes.
That is well under an hour.
I mean, that could create terrible destruction in the United States, the likes of which we've never seen.
So, I mean, the point is this is a game that we shouldn't even contemplate playing.
And yet, all trends are in the direction of preparation for such a conflict.
And that, to me, shows just how far off course we are with...
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Well, underlying it all, of course, politically is all this narrative about Russian intervention, and, you know, from CNN's point of view, you're Chamberlain at Munich for daring to even think of these kinds of things from any point of view but the most hawkish American nationalist point of view at all, which is really dangerous.
I've heard it compared to, you know, previous Red Scare times during the Cold War, but dumber.
Where, you know, at least back then, there really were Reds in the State Department, some of them, and most of them weren't loyal to the Soviets after the break, after the end of World War II, but there was at least a kernel of truth to it, where this is really all America's NATO expansion and provoking a reaction, the way that they've done overthrowing pro-Russian governments on their periphery and all this stuff.
And what have they ever done other than take back their peninsula without killing anybody to do it?
But it makes it difficult to discuss when this side is so responsible for escalating all the tensions, and it's just absolutely verboten to talk that way among, as you said, serious adults, writing serious articles or things like this very often anyway.
Yeah, I mean, the hysterics on Russia have reached certainly nothing I've ever seen in my lifetime, and it's really very troubling, I mean.
But, you know, if you just push and scratch around a little in this area, you find that it's really built on very little actual fact, so I think we have to keep making this argument, and that, you know, it seems to me that mature adults can at least agree on some basic facts, which we've already hit on a little bit, which are, you know, that we live in a nuclear age where, you know, small countries too, but mostly major countries are in danger of going eyeball to eyeball, and the fate of the world is in our hands in that sense, that we just have to work around these small problems, and, you know, we certainly don't have to like everything that Russia does, and we certainly probably won't like them, but we have to find a way despite that to get along, and at least, you know, keep a modicum of cooperative demeanor, so I really find it incredibly troubling when, as you say, all the media pundits, and not to mention, you know, congressmen and so forth, that they very, you know, without even a thought, they want to label Russia constantly an adversary and so forth, and to me that is a huge, huge mistake.
The minute, when you start using this vocabulary of adversary and whatnot, that's when you start walking down this road of, you know, of actively planning for war, and, you know, I've lived in Russia, I was there last in 2017 a couple of times in both Vladivostok and in Moscow, and I can tell you that, you know, you don't have to be an expert on the Russian national psyche, as I am a little bit, but you don't have to be one to realize that given Russia's history, you have a very deep level of paranoia there, and this is not something, again, we want to play into, so we should be very cautious in our relations with the Kremlin, that's what I've been advising all along, so I don't think, you know, to me it's simple common sense for smart people to realize that we've got to find a way to get along, and talking about, you know, stealing emails or Facebook ads, I mean, that's just a bunch of silliness when we're talking about the fate of the world and thermonuclear weapons.
Yeah.
Alright, so to get to the heart of this piece for the national interest, then you're talking about these gas pipelines, the Nord Stream and the Turkish Stream pipelines, and the importance of American policy, and I guess attempting to prevent the Russians from expanding their natural gas exports to our allies in Europe, and so I was wondering, first of all, if you could get into a little bit of, you know, where these pipelines are, and where they are in terms of their progress to being complete, and that kind of thing, and why it matters so much to the US.
Well, these pipelines, the truth is, in my view, they don't matter very much to the United States, and quite frankly, I find it a little strange that many of our strategists and politicians seem to want to discuss them endlessly.
I mean, they do matter a lot for Russia, they do matter a lot for Europe, but, I mean, basically these two pipelines have become kind of a victim of the very hostile US-Russian relations, and we seem to be engaged in a kind of belated, frankly, effort, because the pipelines are nearly complete, basically to undermine and, if you will, destroy these projects, which I think, again, for American leaders, this is kind of a nice-to-have, or it makes them seem, appear to be strong on Russia and this kind of thing, but to me, what's happening is they kind of become, let's say, throw more logs on the fire of this kind of Russia threat hysteria, and, of course, from the Kremlin's point of view, or really any Russian point of view, these are hostile acts that the United States is taking, and I am concerned that when a country is, like Russia, is, you know, believing across the spectrum, more or less, that the United States is treating it as an enemy, then Russia will, you know, will retaliate, and, you know, there are things that Russia can do to us below the nuclear threshold that would make life very uncomfortable.
I mean, here one can think of, for example, and this is an unpleasant issue, but Russia, for example, has a lot of influence in Afghanistan, undoubtedly, and if Russia wanted to put the heat on the United States in Afghanistan, it could do so.
Now, I don't think they have done that, and I don't think they will, but I think if this situation gets worse and worse and worse, we could literally be paying with American lives for this kind of stirring up these difficulties.
Well, and lucky for them, in Afghanistan, we back the same side as them, so if they have more influence than we do, and they can use those guys against us, that's sort of the same way our friends the Iranians have our guys held hostage a little bit fighting Iraq War 3 1⁄2 in the Anbar province right now.
Well, in some ways, if you will, America is fighting a war in Afghanistan to help, you know, arguably we're doing more there to help Russia and China than we are to help ourselves.
I mean, in other words, both Russia and China would be threatened by a Taliban regime, if you will, in a way that the United States wouldn't really be, so I've argued on Afghanistan that we should stop carrying their water, their problem, not ours, but I mean, in my view, Russia, because of its geographic centrality, and its, you know, kind of expansive foreign policy, if you will, that Russia becomes critical to the solution in places like Iran, but also places like North Korea, Afghanistan, you know, go down the list, Syria, of course, so if we treat Russia like an adversary, if we try to basically destroy its economy as we're doing with this pipeline, this pipeline legislation, then we certainly can't expect any Russian help in these circumstances, and very often, as I was hinting at, that Russia will be working against us, and that could endanger American lives and make these situations much worse than they are.
All right, well, look, I know I'm just as biased as can be against America's role in creating the new Cold War here, and it sounds like, you know, more or less, your opinion is in line with mine about who's zooming who here and what's really happened.
It seems to me like everything Russia has done, the very worst things that they've done, such as backing the separatist side in the war in Ukraine for a couple of years there, and, you know, the civilian casualties that have come with helping Assad win the war in Syria, that all of that is still in direct reaction and pretty much straight defensive moves in reaction to American foreign policy in, you know, doing two coups in ten years in Ukraine, and including putting in a government that declared war on the people of the East, those were the ones that Putin was supporting there, and then, of course, supporting the so-called moderates and their jihad against Assad there for so many years, and leading to a real threat of ISIS or al-Qaeda taking Damascus before Russia finally intervened outright in the fall of 2015.
And so, I don't mean to say that they're innocent, just that the worst things that they're doing still seem to all be in response to what could be pretty fairly called American aggression, or American provocation, or some kind of euphemism, if you prefer that.
But so, I wonder, is there really any kind of other devil's advocate side of the story here other than just American, you know, military and defense, you know, corporate interests have a great stake in creating a new Cold War so they can sell more subs and aircraft carriers and long-range bombers and nuclear missiles?
Well, I think you put it pretty well.
Russia's, generally Russia's disposition has been defensive both in Ukraine and even to a degree in Syria as well.
I mean, they you know, we forget, but with the collapse of the Soviet Union, really all these all around Russia's periphery you had very complex situations of identity and sovereignty, religion, all these issues were kind of up in the air and in a state of chaos and really, I view Russia's kind of central goal has been to kind of, as it were, to bring order to these areas and also to protect the modicum of Russian influence and its own security, indeed.
And, you know, to me it was going to be plain as just clear as could be that Russia would not allow Ukraine to enter a kind of Western orbit and I mean, you know, for years I think people said these were obvious red lines and I think many leading strategists in the West, you know, Mearsheimer, for example, University of Chicago, Stephen Walt at Harvard, I mean, you know, these are some of the leading strategists who have said, look, what the West was trying to pull off in Ukraine was really over the line and, you know, now of course, unfortunately the people of Ukraine have suffered terribly for being this football between the two powers, but yeah, generally I think we've kind of, as it were, overplayed our hand and we need to realize that these are incredibly complex situations, whether it's Syria or Ukraine, and understand that we just kind of have to let the chips fall where they may and not try to control every situation or view it in zero sum terms.
I think it's very dangerous.
You know, people who play up the Russian threat sooner or later they will bring up the Crimea as their kind of premier example of Russian aggression and here I really think that we need to consider carefully the history you know, all those people who are drumming up the Russian threat seem never to have heard of the Crimean War, which, you know, Russia lost about a quarter million soldiers defending Crimea from the British and French in the 1850s, so it doesn't seem to occur to them that this ever occurred, you know, even though that's where Tolstoy actually got his start as a writer, was in these battles, but I mean, the idea that Russia is going to kind of part with Crimea forever really was never in the cards, and that was, you know, they insisted all along that they would keep that port, so, you know, and again, they don't want to consider the history that Khrushchev just basically gave Crimea to Ukraine on a lark and it never meant anything, so to put the future of European security, of U.S.-Russian relations, to make it all about the fate of Crimea is a huge mistake, a mistake of ethical proportions, and I think, I would, you know, urge everybody who wants to talk about the annexation of Crimea to read some history, you know, let's really understand the history of Crimea, then we can talk about what its meaning is and how to settle this case so that, you know, we can support stability and prosperity in the area, because, you know, most Ukrainians know very well they're not getting Crimea back, and they would just like to live in peace, and that's all they wanted, mostly.
And speaking of the history there, I think it was Eric Margulies told me that the Russians or Soviet troops of whatever nationality had, that they had lost hundreds of thousands defending Crimea from the Nazis in World War II as well.
Absolutely, in fact...
So that's like a huge Alamo, that's like an Alamo times 10,000 and just a few decades ago.
Well, that's right, you say Alamo, I say Gettysburg, but...
Yeah, well, I'm a Texan.
This really would be Russia's Gettysburg times two.
In fact, of course you know, Scott, all about the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, that really changed the tide.
We talk a lot about D-Day, but we all, I think, know that it was actually Stalingrad that really defeated the Nazis and turned the tide.
Well, the battle before Stalingrad, of course, took place in Crimea, and actually it was the fact that Soviet troops held out in late 1941 going into 1942 in Crimea and tied down a huge amount of Nazi troops, and it was an incredibly bloody battle.
Again, on the...something like a quarter million Soviet soldiers lost just in that battle.
That enabled Stalingrad to happen.
So this really was the crucible of the fate of the world was in Crimea, and believe me, Russians have not forgotten that for a moment.
And again, when they retook it in 2014, no one was killed.
The only shots that were fired were warning shots.
And I saw the video, and the Russian soldiers tell the Ukrainian soldiers, you boys need to turn around and go that way.
And they do, and that's it.
Not so much as a single skirmish in the entire thing.
And by the way, I should point this out too, because it's so important, James Carden pointed this out to me, that from a British parliamentary report, they highlighted the fact that, well, it was at least three, I think it was four, former Ukrainian presidents signed a letter saying, now is the time to kick the Russians out of the Sevastopol base.
And that that was the final straw, the one that never got any coverage or attention at the time.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I mean, let's recall here that we have a new president of Ukraine, and I'm quite hopeful that Mr. Zelensky will go in a different direction.
I mean, the jury's still out, but it seems by almost every reckoning that he has been elected on more or less a peace platform.
That is somebody who is going to say, no, we're not going to fight endlessly with Russia as part of this new Cold War.
That is destroying Ukraine, and that we need to go in a new direction.
So I'm hopeful that there will, I've understood there has been a phone call between Putin and Zelensky, but I think it would be extremely painful, of course, but I think it is time that Russia and Ukraine reconcile, and we should be doing everything we can to support that effort.
That's exactly what needs to happen.
Hang on just one second for me.
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Before I let you go, back to the main point of this article, too, about the Germans and the Russians, and America working so hard to try to divide the two over these pipelines, where there could be, for all I know, billions of dollars worth of American gas exports to Europe at stake over whatever period of time, but as you point out in your piece here, the relationship between Germany and Russia, that's priceless, and so anything that we should do, or anything that we can do to support peaceful interaction between those two societies in any sense, we should do, and we should welcome anything that's going on there.
At the expense of some natural gas sales, who cares?
We'll sell that gas to somebody else.
Well, that's right.
I mean, the gas is gonna flow, you know, and determine mostly by price, and by the way, the price of course vastly favors the pipelines over shipping it across the ocean, so I mean, it's really not, if we let economics determine this, I think the pipelines will make economic sense, but your point is really fundamentally correct, and let me just share one insight from when I lived in Russia and in Moscow.
I can tell you that in a very dark time, I lived there in the mid-90s, and the place was like rock bottom.
It was very sad and depressing, but I will tell you, all around Moscow you could see these Mercedes buses running around, and they were kind of brand new, and it was actually amazing to see this city that seemed like it was falling apart, but all these old ladies and so forth, and poor pensioners and so forth, running around on these beautiful Mercedes buses, and I thought to myself, how could this be?
And it came out that these were given as aid by the German government, and of course this is part of Germany's kind of if you will, a blood debt to Russia that they know about, and I went elsewhere in Russia, deep, dark Siberia for example, again at a very tough time, and you would see these old ladies collecting reparations checks from the German government, and so what I'm saying is that this relationship is very delicate, it requires the utmost care to keep Russia-German relations, there's a lot of promise there Germany's worked very hard so that many Russians are not anti-German, which is amazing, having suffered millions of casualties in World War II, so we have to support these efforts and look to further cooperation the only way that Eastern Europe is going to be peaceful and prosperous in the future is if Germany and Russia get along well, and we should as you said, we should certainly support that and we definitely don't want to divide them, I mean there's talk now we want Germany to vastly increase its defense expenditure I don't think so, I think that's a bad idea, I mean sure maybe they could do their part a little more, and I'm not opposed to more kind of European defense initiatives, I think that is a good idea and I'd like to see more German leadership there, but does anybody want to see a Wehrmacht that has 5,000 tanks ready to roll into the Baltics?
I don't think so we shouldn't even conceive of such things the Germans themselves don't want to have anything to do with that kind of future yeah, as Doug Bondo always points out, the fact that the Germans apparently don't feel the need whatsoever to expand their military force right now, ought to be all you need to know about what Russia is really up to the Germans can't afford to have rose colored glasses on when it comes to stuff like that, if there was really a Russian threat they would have to start preparing for it, they apparently don't perceive one but they know the history, and they know that it's really, it's inconceivable to any viable future in Europe that Germany would be fully re-armed and re-militarized, it's just if the French or the Dutch or the Poles would go crazy, they won't accept that either so it's, nobody wants to go there the Russians don't want to go there we can calm tensions down if we go about it if we make intensive efforts there it doesn't require some kind of massive military response at all it's so ironic, it seemed like, alright, you know a Republican, a capitalist, you know, skyscraper tycoon from New York City, who just literally wraps himself in the flag and wraps himself around it he could make peace with 10 Mao Tse Tung's from a point of view like that, you know, he could go from Tehran to Moscow to Damascus to Pyongyang and drop all tensions with everybody, kill them all with kindness the position of strength that we're in, we have so much to give and so little to lose and him, with the character that he is you know, the place that he fits in the scheme of things and the spectrum he could knock them all dead, and then they came up with this ridiculous Russiagate thing, that I just thought it wouldn't stick, because essentially they're calling him a commie, but he couldn't possibly be, right?
But then it didn't matter they turned it into a criminal investigation, and they hung this thing around his neck for essentially three years almost and they just made it seem to enough Americans, I guess, as plausible, that anything that he would do to improve America's relationship with Russia, which was part of what he explicitly campaigned on was a signal of his high treason, that he was some kind of Manchurian candidate, and all this stuff, like remember when he went to Helsinki they called it the treason summit, because he went to Helsinki and didn't accuse Putin of rigging the election for him right there, in front of everyone or whatever which there was no way he was going to do, but that he wouldn't was proof that he was Putin's puppet, and all this stuff even though I'm just talking about the last couple of years, it's almost hard to believe how crazy all that got, but look at how destructive it has been framing the whole debate about Russia, and their aggression, and their threat to all of us they're trying to destabilize us I'll tell you Scott, I have followed every bit of the Russia investigation, not because I've wanted to because I really view it as a really a pile of stinking brown stuff it's really kind of farcical and most of the times I've just been chuckling about it but some of my favorite examples of how bizarre this is people with a straight face will argue that the Facebook ads were some kind of great influence, when it's been shown that at least half the ads were undertaken after the election and then actually I noted the Washington Post for example which has had very poor biased reporting I think in general on this, but they had one good article that actually analyzed, well okay, if this was such a sophisticated campaign to undermine the election, then in theory you would expect that the ads were primarily in swing states like Florida, these key swing states, but that's exactly opposite of the case most ads were in places like New York or Maryland states that aren't even really on the fence a lot of this stuff is just completely bizarre this idea for example of that if some members of the administration or even before the inauguration had contacts, for example like Flynn, I think he's been treated horribly by the way, this guy's a hero and here we are trying every which way to take him down, but I mean if you wanted to make an accusation against Flynn, I think you would argue that this is a Turkish influence scandal, I mean there it probably was inappropriate that he took this kind of Turkish money to do some lobbying and didn't disclose it, fair enough, so why aren't we talking about a Turkish influence scandal, what is it about the Russians that's got everybody so obsessed and then I could go on and on, but about e-mails and so I just find it crazy that a stolen e-mail whoever you think took this e-mail, but that one stolen e-mail can torpedo one of the world's most critical bilateral relations, again it seems laughable, and then I won't even go at the area of, seems like the U.S. does more election interference than any other country, so I mean I personally find it astounding that real journalists, let alone scholars, people who are supposed to be thoughtful about these things take this issue of Russiagate seriously, I personally, I continue to read about it because I have to, but I consider the whole thing worse than a joke kind of a nightmare at this point.
I'm worried about the fact that, well not the fact, but I'm worried that it's going to take 15 years or whatever, like Iraq War 2, before anybody admits that yeah we should have never done that, we should have never believed in that, that wasn't really true you know, like even Waco, it took about 5 or 8 or 10 years or something before people said yeah that probably wasn't a suicide was it, the narrative just sticks, it's so powerful and with Iraq War 2 now everyone agrees we shouldn't have done that, everybody but Bolton agrees we shouldn't have done that but think of how long it took before they would admit that, and none of them ever saying yeah that was my fault, you know, sorry Yeah, well you're exactly right, and here, I mean, one reason the Iraq War I think the fiasco of the Iraq War has come out powerfully is because we can see the number of lives and families that have been ruined, right, I mean the costs are in front of our face, but in this case it's going to be harder to see the impact, and you know, Americans are kind of blissfully ignorant of the fact that, again, this kind of nuclear issue hangs over their heads, they don't realize the dangers that's one, and two, the billions, really, tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, Scott, spent on this new Cold War but, you know, people don't seem to be thinking about the fact that, you know, what else could we be doing with that money, you know those could be in people's pockets, that could be sending their kids to college or paying for healthcare or whatever, but I mean, that money is being spent on, you know, new missile defenses a whole new series of new nuclear arms and not to mention all those, quote, cyber warriors who are running around looking at Russian trolls all day, I mean that in itself is costing billions of dollars what a waste of time, I mean, it's such a, to me, this is, I've seen this with my own eyes, the amount of effort now going at the so-called hybrid war or cyber warfare, I think it's a travesty.
Yeah, you know, it's funny because back at the end of World War II and the dawn of the first Cold War the argument was that we're not talking about any old Russian empire here, okay, this is communism and so that's different and that's why we have to have NATO and that's why we have to have the United Nations and the permanent American dominance and wherever in the world we can establish it, but don't worry, it's just temporary until the communist menace is gone but now here we are and we've got the palest of shadows of comparisons to the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation you know, the whole idea there, as true as it wasn't, was that they were really determined to overthrow the whole world and create, you know, global communism ruled out of the Kremlin and that we were defending all of the rest of humanity from this onslaught that you can't even pretend that about Russia right now in any way and yet somehow, it turns out you didn't even really need to scare the hell out of them, Harry, you can just do whatever you want, tell them that they hack some emails or something and sell some Lockheed products to Ukraine no problem.
Yeah, I agree, I mean I spent a lot of time reading about one of my heroes, George Kennan and even he, who many regard as the author of containment in some ways he created the policy at the beginning of the Cold War in the 50s, but he himself very much came to regret that people had taken his words way too far, they had militarized the policy, that this would lay the groundwork for Vietnam and so forth but you're right, today we don't have anything like that, and this idea that somehow we're going to create an Eastern Europe that has no Russian influence, I mean it's completely ridiculous and you see that all around Eastern Europe, I mean in Ukraine obviously, but throughout, I mean places like Hungary and the Czech Republic, I mean they don't conceive of an Eastern Europe without Russia, I mean the idea is ridiculous, just look at history and culture and so forth, so it's why we are striving to decouple Russia from Europe this to me is the road to perdition because this will just inflame, divide these societies and create more and more tension, which brings us closer and closer to something very tragic a kind of war of apocalyptic proportions and by the way, I think we mentioned, we might discuss China for a minute but a lot of the same, very same, China of course is much more powerful than Russia, but a lot of the same unfortunately tendencies are at work, and it's funny, I constantly see people saying one group will say, well China is not really a threat they're reasonable, the Russians, it's the Russians that are crazy and bent on defeating liberalism or something like that, and then another group will say no no, the Russians are harmless and they're declining anyway, but it's the Chinese who are really this rising power that are bent on destroying the United States and a lot of it, forgive me, is BS, it just doesn't hold up What do these two countries have in common as their problem?
Us, the world empire, the actual world empire Let's face it, both these countries have enormous problems they're very insecure, very paranoid, they've both been invaded dozens of times more or less, and we don't want to poke them it's not that they're harmless I am for a strong defense within reason but we're constantly now resorting to threat inflation, and by the way Scott, I'll tell you straight up because I know you said you have your head often in this war on terror in Afghanistan I think there's a tendency among strategists they're tired of thinking about Iraq and Afghanistan and Iran all these very hard issues that were painful and that we seem to have made a lot of screw-ups, let's say, and so this is much easier to think about let's put all of that Middle East stuff aside, let's just focus on Russia and China, because it's an easy strategic problem, but that may be very tempting but it's also a bad idea It makes sense that from their point of view, I guess if you can build up a giant cold war and not ever have it lead to a nuclear war then that's far preferable to losing in Afghanistan permanently, you know?
That's embarrassing as they say, not that there's any accountability for it Exactly right, I mean there's a lot of people who, I hate to say it but it's a kind of psychological reaction I think many of us are not proud of what has gone on the last 10-15 years in American foreign and defense policy and so let's, again, just put it all aside and talk about defeating communism, or go back to those glorious 1980s when we had a huge military and we knew exactly what the problem was to me that's very simplistic thinking, the costs of this new cold war are immense, and if you think that we can avoid war over thorny issues like Taiwan or Ukraine or Syria, I think you're wrong, unfortunately those issues are so fraught with danger I don't think Americans have a clue what they're getting into, so we need to be very cautious, it's not to say we shouldn't have red lines, we probably do need to create some new red lines but we have to be defensive, we have to be reasonable these red lines have to be defensible, and moreover I don't think I think if we draw them right, this will never come up because I myself believe that neither China nor Russia are interested in taking over the planet or something like that, I mean, sure, do they want influence in their neighborhood?
Absolutely.
Do they want greater security?
Yes.
But it's not a threat to the United States at all.
Alright, well listen, I'll let you go, but I sure appreciate your time on the show today Lyle, it's been great.
Thanks Scott, I enjoyed it, take care.
Alright you guys, that's Lyle J.
Goldstein, you can find him over at the National Interest, nationalinterest.org this piece is called Europe is Stuck Between the United States and Russia, and he is, again, research professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute at the United States Naval War College.
Alright y'all thanks, find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow Oh yeah, and read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan, at foolserrand.us
