09/12/14 – John Feffer – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
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Got a few people in there today.
All right, our first guest on the show today is our friend John Pfeffer from Foreign Policy in Focus.
And here's a couple of articles for you.
First of all, NATO poised to escalate tensions over Ukraine.
That one's at Interpress Service, ipsnews.net.
And then there's this other one, The Cold War Never Ended.
That's running at fpif.org and also all over the place.
I think we're running it at antiwar.com and it's over at the Huffington Post and all these other things too.
So you can find that pretty easily, The Cold War Never Ended by John Pfeffer.
Welcome back, John.
How are you doing?
Pretty good.
Thanks for having me back on the show.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here and very happy to have you writing so I can read you and learn stuff.
First of all, let's talk about this NATO summit in Wales and what it means really for the future of NATO and particularly when it comes to the far eastern reaches of Eastern Europe.
Pat Buchanan said on this show, he said, Scott, Ukraine is east of what we ever called Eastern Europe back in the day.
And this is way over there.
But anyway, so I guess just, yeah, give us your kind of overall, what you think we need to know about it, if you could.
Sure.
Well, first of all, you know, NATO was up until relatively recently in crisis.
It didn't have much of a reason for existence.
It was having difficulty getting members to pay up.
There's an obligatory 2% of GDP that members are supposed to spend on their military budgets.
And NATO members were just not doing that.
They were balking at contributing to finishing things up in Afghanistan.
Of course, the war in Afghanistan had been largely a failure.
And so up until, you know, the crisis broke out in Ukraine earlier this year, NATO really was losing its bearings.
But then suddenly, of course, this crisis emerges and NATO positions itself as really the only alliance, the only military instrument in this situation that can do anything.
So the ministers who gathered in Wales last week suddenly had renewed purpose.
Now, what they ultimately did was they kind of came up with a compromise.
The members from Eastern Europe, Poland, the Baltics, were pushing for a much harder line against Russia.
They wanted 10,000 troops stationed permanently in Poland.
They wanted missile defense to kind of be retrained against Russia.
And NATO said, well, we're not going to do that, but we will put together this rapid response force of 4,000 troops that will be able to respond in about 48 hours if something comes up.
And that was kind of a compromise.
Now, they talked about other things.
They talked about ISIS.
They talked about other out-of-area operations.
But I think people were really focused on what is NATO going to do about Ukraine and is it going to accelerate membership for countries like Georgia and Moldova, which basically they did.
Yeah, which basically they did, you said?
Yes, for Georgia in particular.
Ukraine membership is not yet on the table.
That may happen down the line.
It's something that the current Ukrainian government is pushing for, but NATO wasn't really prepared to answer that question in Wales this time around.
Thank God for that at least.
Yeah, I saw the banner on CNN said that something along the lines of NATO membership for Ukraine is not an option.
And I just, oh, thank God.
I mean, it's crazy, but that had never turned them off of the idea before, really.
And they've been saying it since the Bush years that they wanted to bring them in.
And I was really worried that that was exactly what they were going to say this time was that, you know, hey, here's something.
I bet that would make us look like real tough guys, right, and then do it.
You know, what they have done is bad enough, really, with the rapid reaction force and the announcement of upcoming training exercises with the Kiev military, which I guess they say isn't going to include Americans at least, but still.
That's pretty bad, but at least they're putting off any more talk of actually bringing them into NATO now.
Well, for the time being.
I mean, this is going to be a key issue in the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
Obviously, Russia doesn't want that on the table.
Ukraine, if it were smart, would basically trade that for the best kind of deal it could get with Russia.
It would say, look, we'll put a moratorium on all discussions of NATO membership.
If you start up our fuel shipments again, if you withdraw your artillery, if you stop funding the separatists in eastern Ukraine, if you stop insisting or pressuring for our actual independence for this area.
I mean, so Ukraine could use this strategically.
And in the best case scenario, that's already what it's doing.
You could say that essentially Ukraine pushed the issue in order to have the best possible bargaining position with Russia.
However, I think in reality there's a strong group inside the Ukrainian government that honestly wants NATO membership and thinks that's ultimately going to be the best thing for them.
But I hope there are some strategic thinkers there who are really thinking simply in terms of bargaining.
Well, yeah, it's a pretty tough line to take.
I had Jack Matlock on the show, and I asked him about, well, so what about the theory, it makes sense, at least superficially, because maybe valid but not necessarily sound, but what about the idea that, well, you bring a country under your nuclear umbrella, and that means that the Russians can grit their teeth if they want, but they can't do a damn thing about it.
They're our ally now.
We ran off with them.
We stole them from you fair and square, and we're keeping them, and you can't do anything about it.
And then what are the Russians going to do about it?
And his idea was, you know, hell no.
This is the line they have said before, and they meant it over their dead bodies and absolutely not.
But I guess I'm saying it seems to me like it makes sense on that superficial level that that is the thinking in Washington, D.C. and in Brussels, whether it has any real relationship to reality or not is something else.
But, you know, honestly, if I were in Ukraine, if I was in Kiev, and I was assessing the state of the Ukrainian military compared to the Russian military, I would honestly be saying, look, I want some heavy hitters on my side too.
I would like to have NATO behind me, just as all the countries in Eastern Europe basically battered down the floor to get into NATO over the last 10 to 15 years.
But, you know, a longer-term perspective, as you said, I recognize that Russia sees Ukraine as part of its larger sphere of influence, that this is not going to fly in terms of geopolitics, and that it will ultimately rebound in a very negative way for the country as a whole.
So my hope is that out of these negotiations with Russia, that kind of more strategic thinking will take hold in Kiev.
You know, what's interesting too, I wonder what you think about this, John, is I interviewed John Mearsheimer, I'm sure you saw his piece in Foreign Affairs about how the West got us into this mess kind of thing.
And yet, for him, and I understand, he's a professor and a brilliant genius, and he's, you know, in an ivory tower, and he thinks like an ivory tower guy.
So I asked him specifically, though, are you sure that this is all just a matter of sort of academics, where these liberals have convinced themselves that, well, yes, we must spread, as, you know, Bill Clinton called it, free markets and democracy, meaning the EU and NATO.
And we must just keep spreading it and spreading it, because, wow, what a great thing that we all believe in.
And that basically it's as simple as that, that, you know, this is the position of the liberals, the liberal interventionist part of the establishment, and they believe it, and until someone like comes up with a specific theorem on paper, or something, as an academic exercise that says they're wrong, they're just going to keep at it.
And in a sense, he describes it as sort of a total unreality, right?
Like they are so ivory tower and academic about it that they're not actually looking at the real facts on the ground and the real country, you know?
Like they're only looking at the map on the page and not the real place.
Oh, crap.
But anyway, so I'll go ahead and finish up what I asked him, and you can answer when we get back from the break.
I said, yeah, but what about interests?
Don't the neocons hate Russia and want to destroy it for daring to be independent from America and this kind of thing?
And he seemed to think, no.
Like, no, really, it's just this is neoliberalism.
This is what they believe in is spreading peace and freedom this way, even when it's not peaceful, and it leads to crises like this.
Anyway, so we'll be right back with Jon Pfeffer in just a sec.
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Thank you.
All right, you guys, welcome back.
I got Jon Pfeffer on the line.
He's at Foreign Policy and Focus.
And here at IPSnews.net with NATO poised to escalate tensions over Ukraine.
It was a big, long, complicated mess, but basically I was asking Jon before the break about whether the American foreign policy establishment and NATO are just sort of sleepwalking, bound by this old doctrine, or whether there are other motives and interests at play here that maybe are being somewhat left out.
Yeah, I think one of the things we should remember is that back in the 90s, you know, Russia and Yeltsin was basically on board with this entire market push.
And the United States might not have been happy about its meddling in Moldova or in Georgia, but it basically said, look, that's Russia's sphere of influence.
But the terms of the deal changed when Putin came on board, and the United States never really adjusted to that.
And I think that's ultimately what we're talking about.
We're talking about a U.S. establishment which still maintains its basic foreign policy from that period of time, but Russia has pushed back.
It has said more aggressively, look, there's a line you can't pass, and we're not really on board any longer with an imposition of your brand of democracy and of economic reform.
We've revitalized our energy sector.
We now have enough funds to build up our own military, to push through our own kind of economic development model.
So, hey, back off.
All deals are off from the 90s when you were talking with Yeltsin.
Yeah.
And so I guess let me ask you about the situation with Moldova, if I can.
I just read a thing that said that Yeltsin had put troops there at the Trans-Dniester back in, what, 93?
And are they still there then, Russian quote-unquote peacekeeper types there?
Yeah.
I mean, essentially, Trans-Dniester has declared its independence.
Moldova doesn't really have any jurisdiction over this breakaway province.
It's somewhere in between what the status is for Crimea today and the status for eastern Ukraine.
In other words, it's broken away from the government of Moldova, but it hasn't been incorporated into Russia, nor has it declared, well, it's declared its independence, but that independence hasn't been acknowledged or recognized by anything except a couple of breakaway countries of their own.
So that's the status right now.
But there's speculation, of course, that Putin has this, of course, Novorossiyskaya understanding, Novorossiya, this new Russia, that will encompass all of the major Russian-speaking areas of the Mirror abroad, that his push for eastern Ukraine is a way to essentially build a bridge to Trans-Dniester, possibly to incorporate those sections of Georgia that broke away.
So that's the kind of larger picture that some imagine Putin is pushing for.
I suspect he has less grandiose ambitions, but he does certainly see that his own political fortunes are definitely connected to how he stands up for ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in the Mirror abroad.
All right.
Now, I'm sorry, I'll ask you to try to stay as far away from that microphone as you can, and I will turn up your volume here.
It just sounds really bad.
Are you on a different phone than last segment?
No, but maybe it's the meteorological condition.
Somebody don't like it.
No, I don't know.
Well, now, so, wait a minute, let me make sure I understand you right, John.
I mean, it sounds like if the Americans and their counterparts in NATO were talking about bringing Moldova into NATO, or even, I don't know how far out, how many steps there are on the path and whatever, whatever, but that's some real hardball when the Russians have already this obligation to this breakaway strip of land by the river there.
Yeah, well, this obviously will become a bone of contention.
What constitutes Moldova?
What constitutes Georgia?
These are, I mean, this isn't unprecedented.
Of course, you know, both the EU has had to deal with that around Cyprus.
There's the issue with Kosovo, of course, as well.
So, this is not an unprecedented issue, but it is definitely not an easy issue.
And, really, the question becomes whether NATO decides it's going to make a compromise in order, in other words, to get most of Moldova and most of Georgia into NATO, they'll acknowledge the existence of Transnistria or South Ossetia or that they'll push for some kind of a settlement such that both countries in their entirety enter the alliance.
Yeah, that's just crazy.
Seems like, well, I don't know, I think I can speak for all 300 million Americans when I say I don't care who has sovereignty over the Transnistria or whatever, and sorry for them, you know, even if somebody comes in and bombs them all, I don't care about that either.
I mean, in a personal way I do, but as far as what my government should do about it, I don't even want my government to know about it, John, much less take a side in the damn thing.
This is crazy talk.
Moldova, that's on the far side of God knows what from here.
Right.
Well, you know, the other issue here is that we've been essentially blaming Putin for reviving the Cold War.
And one of the arguments I make in the recent article is that we really fail to understand that we had an opportunity to completely deinstitutionalize the Cold War, in other words, to eliminate the very institution of the Cold War.
And we failed to do that.
We didn't disband NATO.
We didn't abolish our nuclear weapons.
We essentially kept all of the infrastructure alive for the Cold War.
So if we talk about who's responsible for the Cold War still being around, much less being revived, it's really our responsibility.
We had an opportunity to transform the security architecture of Europe, along with the Europeans and the Russians, and we failed to do that.
And so, you know, we can only blame ourselves for what's happening now.
Well, you know what?
I think it should be pointed out that just because that's a little bit of a fringe position in terms of what we're all supposed to think according to the government and TV and all the think tanks and whatever, that is the obvious truth for anybody between John Pfeffer and Pat Buchanan who cares at all about just peace and liberty in America at all.
We didn't have to expand NATO like this.
We didn't have to keep doing this.
It was mostly a Lockheed project and a neoconservative kook project, and they just about ruined everything with all of this.
We could be a normal country in a normal time, as Jean Kirkpatrick, a neocon herself said back at the end of the Cold War, and instead the American people let the establishment get away with this craziness.
But it seems to me that the policy, their consensus policy of picking this fight should be the fringe position and just the basic obvious default mainstream centrist agreed upon, you know, consensus of everyone should be that this is crazy.
The Soviet Union is gone, and so NATO should be gone too, and it doesn't have to be this way at all.
It's so frustrating to me that, like, yeah, John Pfeffer and Pat Buchanan have it exactly right from different points of view, obviously, about this exact same thing, and any average American that you grab out of their suburban home and ask them would agree, but in Washington, D.C., it's unheard of, right?
Well, yeah, that's on the push side.
We have to recognize that there was a pull side as well.
I mean, I spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe, and the consensus opinion over there, and I'm talking across the political spectrum, left, right, center, was to push for NATO membership.
Now, that doesn't mean it should have happened.
I'm just saying that there was a perceived need on the part of Eastern Europeans to be part of an alliance, because they were worried about Russia.
They were worried about Yeltsin.
I mean, this is long before Putin came along.
So we do have to acknowledge that, but that still doesn't absolve us, the United States, of the responsibility of saying, look, we understand your security concerns, but we're going to work with you and with Russia to come up with a new security architecture.
That should have been our position.
I actually thought that's what was going to happen.
There was a lot of talk about that in the 1990s.
They created the NATO-Russia Council, and they talked about, you know, creating a One World White Army of the North, basically, by bringing the Russians into NATO as a full-fledged member at some point.
By the way, whose position was that?
I mean, it seemed like, you know, Bill Clinton would talk that way, but then again, he did the war against Serbia to break off Kosovo, too, which was clearly a very anti-Russian position.
So maybe the idea had died by then.
But whatever happened to that, does anybody believe that anymore in D.C.?
Well, yes.
I mean, I think if you look at someone like Michael McFaul, I mean, he was our former ambassador to Moscow.
I mean, I would think that's basically his position.
But what's happened is that the climate of opinion in Russia has moved so dramatically away from that.
I mean, McFaul, when he was there in the 90s, the Carnegie Council, I mean, you could find a consensus of opinion among the elite, among the intellectuals, certainly among politicians about Yeltsin, that this was a viable option.
But that disappeared in Russia.
And part of it was a kind of rise of nationalism, a reaction against Yeltsin, a reaction against the complete siphoning out of all the billions, hundreds of millions, billions of dollars out of Russia through the liberal reform.
So this backlash had a number of different components.
But one of the options that disappeared as a result of that backlash was this option of working with the United States on security issues.
And you're absolutely right.
The war in Kosovo could be seen as the turning point.
This is the point at which Russian leadership said, OK, it's obviously not possible to work together with NATO because it goes against our geopolitical interests.
It goes against our alliances with Serbia, et cetera.
Again, not that I'm in favor of even having NATO, much less bringing Russia into it, but certainly it goes to show that it didn't have to be the way it is now from a number of different perspectives there.
And I'm sorry because we're way over time and I've got to let you go, but thank you so much for your time again, John.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
All right, everybody, that is John Pfeffer.
He's at Foreign Policy in Focus.
He's written NATO poised to escalate tensions over Ukraine.
And also the Cold War never ended.
The first is at IPS and this one is at FPIF, Foreign Policy in Focus, fpif.org.
The Cold War never ended.
A very interesting article.
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