For Pacifica Radio, February the 15th, 2022.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
Alright y'all, welcome to the show.
It is Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm the editorial director of Anti-War.com and the author of the book, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism.
You can find my full interview archive, more than 5,600 of them now, going back to 2003, at scotthorton.org and at youtube.com slash scotthortonshow.
Alright, introducing the great Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and chief of their Soviet division back in the day, and he spent this entire century being a great anti-war activist, co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, and now full-time writer at Anti-War.com as well, I am so proud to say.
Welcome back to the show, Ray.
How are you, sir?
I'm doing well, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
Very happy to have you here.
So, there's so much going on.
Let's start with the bottom line, which is, if I may sum it up, your position, sir, is that the Russians never were going to invade Ukraine, and this whole thing is essentially a tempest in a teapot built up in Washington, D.C., starting last November, but what is the real context?
What is the threat from Vladimir Putin, and what should Americans be concerned about here, Ray?
Well, Scott, I cut my teeth on analyzing Soviet Union and Russia, and we used to be heavily dependent on what Russian and Soviet leaders said.
I mean, like, empirical analysis of what they said today and what they said yesterday and how it differed and what they might say tomorrow.
So, it's kind of a con to suggest that we practitioners of that art can't make reasonable conclusions based on what we know of what has been said before and what we know, more important, of a leader like Vladimir Putin, who has been in charge now for almost 20 years.
Now, when I say, as I have been saying for two and a half months or so, the Russians would be stupid to invade Ukraine, I wonder why nobody pushes back on that.
In other words, if they're going to invade Ukraine, they have to have a reason.
They have to have a plan, you know.
It's not like invading Iraq like we did back in 2003.
It's not like invading Afghanistan.
The Russians usually have a plan, right?
Now, what possible plan could they have?
I mean, tell me, what would they do day two or day four?
Who in their right mind would invade a country that used to be prosperous, a country that used to be the breadbasket of Europe, and now is a basket case given what Victoria Nuland and other people in our State Department did to it by fomenting a coup in February 2014.
Now, it is the poorest country in Europe.
Now, it's going downhill very quickly.
So why would Putin want to invade that?
Plus the fact that looking at Putin over the years, I see him as a very cautious, very cautious, very discreet.
He will always use other measures rather than brute military force.
Why?
Because he's afraid.
He's justifiably and understandably afraid of what the crazies in Washington or even Kiev might do if they had a justified, in quotes, reason for doing it, that is employing military force.
So relax, folks, relax, listeners.
It's not going to happen.
There'll be no Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Will there be threatening presence around Ukraine?
Of course there will.
Will there be practice landings in the Black Sea?
Yes, there will.
They're going on today.
But the whole thing is a political maneuver.
And white people can't understand that massing troops can be a political lever, as well as an indicator that those troops will do something really stupid.
White people can't understand that.
It's kind of hard to explain.
Yeah.
All right.
And hang on one second, Ray.
We're going to do a little fundraising here.
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All right, now, talking with Ray McGovern here on anti-war radio this morning.
Luckily, again, on the subject, of course, of the Ukraine crisis right now.
It's true, Ray, isn't it, that the Ukrainian government has been saying since November that we don't really know what y'all are talking about.
We don't think the Russians are invading.
And then I guess they played along for a little while to get some weapons.
But then, even in the last couple of weeks, Zelensky has been saying essentially, geez, we wish Joe Biden would shut up.
You're crashing our economy.
We don't even think this is a real threat.
But you're causing all these other consequences for us.
So, I don't know, how much longer before the Americans just declare victory and declare that their Homer Simpson bear spray has kept the bear away and that they succeeded in deterring the evil Putin from his dastardly plans, and then we can go back to talking about dancing with the stars again or something.
Well, it all depends, really.
It all depends on track two.
And what I mean by that are the negotiations going on now between the U.S. and Russia on things that really matter.
Now, Putin has been complaining well before 2014, but when the coup happened in Kiev in 2014, he complained loudly that he had to annex Crimea.
Why?
Most important, those are his words, most important was the prospect of having so-called ABM sites put in Crimea.
Now, ABM sites shouldn't be a real big threat because they were characterized as being a defense against Iranian, mind you, Iranian ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, neither of which Iran had at the time.
Then there was the agreement where Iran could not possibly do that for five, ten years, and yet these ABM so-called missiles kept going into Romania and Poland.
And what's funny, too, I'm sorry, but I have to add here, if people aren't that good on Southwest Asian and Eastern European geography, take a look at a map and tell us what you think about Iran's threat to Poland.
Sorry, Ray, go ahead.
Well, it was laughable, and Putin called us out on that, you know, but nobody played that in the press.
So these sites keep going in.
They're already operational in Romania.
They're almost there in Poland.
And so what's the threat?
Well, as Putin himself has said many times, the threat is this, to be crude about it, the holes, the capsules into which these so-called ABM missiles fit are exactly the same ones into which things like Tomahawk missiles fit.
Okay?
Now, Tomahawk missiles, the subsonic cruise missiles, endanger a good portion of Russia's retaliatory nuclear force.
And so Putin, you know, he's thinking about defending his country.
He knows that the ABM treaty is dead, the ABM being the anti-ballistic missile treaty.
So what do the Americans have in mind?
Oh, what they have in mind is building faux ABM sites to fit the Tomahawk missiles, which endanger Russia's strategic force.
That's what it's all about.
Now, guess what?
When Putin called Joe Biden and said, look, please, let's talk, and Biden must have said, well, wait a second, our negotiators are going to be getting together in Geneva in just 12 days.
What do you need to talk about?
Well, what came out of that was Biden assured the Russians that the U.S. has no intention of putting offensive strike missiles in Ukraine.
Big deal.
Okay?
Then the next question would be, how do we prevent them from using Tomahawks in Romania and Poland?
Well, what the U.S. offered to do was the time tested tactic of inspections.
You know, trust, but verify.
In other words, you're saying, Ray, that Biden's climbing down on all the important parts of this.
In fact, even that counteroffer as it was leaked, it's full of all this bluster.
But boy, on the substance, it says we really need to sit down and talk about this over and over again.
Yeah, that's right.
The notion that Putin is lusting for a piece of paper signed by the U.S. that Ukraine will never become a member of NATO.
Well, that's a propaganda ploy.
Why a signed piece of paper?
Because in the next sentence, Putin always says, you didn't give us a signed piece of paper when you promised not to expand NATO one inch to the West.
Now we're going to require a signed piece of paper.
Does it mean anything?
Putin points out in the next sentence that, you know, a signed treaty about ABMs or a signed treaty about intermediate nuclear forces, the U.S. left that without so much as an explanation.
So the signature doesn't really mean much.
Biden himself is saying there's no prospect Ukraine entering NATO, quote, in the near term.
So that's rhetoric.
What really matters are these offensive missiles that could be put in these same capsules in Poland, Romania, and they're still negotiating, of course, about Ukraine.
But Biden has already promised.
That's the outcome of that very hurried, demanded call by Putin just 12 days before the negotiators got together on the 10th of January.
So these things are real.
And if they're being negotiated quietly, that's good.
If we don't know about it, well, it's too bad.
But it's better that way because the military industrial complex is going to jump all over this.
Now, Raytheon makes Tomahawk missiles and Lockheed makes parts of them and Lockheed makes these other missiles that are high altitude defense missiles.
So these things are real problems for Biden.
Whether he can face into the Mickey Matt, what I call the military, industrial, congressional, intelligence, media, academia, think tank complex.
And that covers pretty much the Mickey Matt.
Whether he can face into them is an open question.
But so far, he has given on essential points.
And even though Biden, even though Blinken as recently as four hours ago announced, oh, the Russians can invade, the Russians can invade.
I mean, they're beginning to look pretty stupid.
But as long as he can say that in one voice and then have his negotiators look into these offensive strike missiles and the other, you know, there's some prospect this thing will go away.
All right.
Now, so talk to us about America's, well, the American people's greatest long term allies, the Germans.
They're really helping tamp things down here, aren't they?
Well, you know, I always love it when the Germans help nullify and interpose between me and the federal government.
Sometimes we're really counting on them.
Well, as you know, Chancellor Schultz appeared in Washington this past week and he had a press conference after the talks with Biden.
And Biden made bold to say, look, if the, I want to quote the White House press release here, if Russia invades, and that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2.
We will bring an end to it.
Question.
But how will you?
I mean, how will you do that exactly?
Since the project in control of the project is within Germany's control.
President Biden, we will.
I promise you.
I'm sorry, Ray.
Let me just interrupt to clarify here for people not familiar that Nord Stream 2 is this gas pipeline, natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, and then the money flows the other way that the Americans object to strongly for, they say, strategic reasons.
But as Rand Paul points out, for mercantilist reasons, too, they have Texas natural gas companies that want a monopoly on selling to Germany.
Instead, that's a big part of it.
Sorry.
Hang on just one second.
Hey, guys, anybody who signs up to listen to this show by way of Patreon will be invited to join the Reddit group.
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This is so cool.
The great Mike Swanson's new book is finally out.
He's been working on this thing for years.
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And as he explains on the back here, all of our popular culture and our retellings and our history and our movies are all about the height of the American war there in, say, 1964 through 1974.
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Find out in Why the Vietnam War by the great Mike Swanson, available now.
But anyway, go ahead.
So the Americans under Obama, Trump and Biden, they've tried to stop this project, but the Germans just keep steaming ahead anyway.
So now I'm caught us up.
Go ahead.
Yeah, well, they've invested $11 billion, a billion with a B in it.
And it's really essential for supplying Europe with with natural gas.
They need to heat their homes, for God's sake.
So here's Biden getting up with the chancellor of Germany and saying, we will stop it.
And then they turn to the chancellor.
Do you agree with that?
We will always follow unanimously the NATO.
In other words, circumlocution.
I mean, Schultz gave it gave it a new name.
It was it was very artful.
He said everything but what the press wanted him to say.
And that is, yes, Germany will cancel Nord Stream 2.
Nord Stream 2 is really, really big.
Germany is a big factor now.
And, you know, Schultz goes back to Berlin and he said, look, folks, it was all predicated on this hypothesis that that Russia is going to invade Ukraine.
You know, it's not going to happen.
So it's all subjunctive.
So give me a break.
I didn't say yes.
I didn't say no.
But you want me to say, well, give me a break.
More important than Germany is China.
And I would like to just make sure that I include the fact that what accounts for Putin's assertiveness after being sort of Mr.
Milk Toast at the first at the first summit in June 16th last year.
He all of a sudden got really assertive.
And now we know what he's sort of demanding.
Well, what happened?
Well, he found out at the June 16 summit that Biden was from.
Biden had been very poorly advised on the real correlation of forces in the world.
And that is Biden told Putin, we know that you're being squeezed by China.
We know you have a long, long border.
China aspires to be the military dominant factor.
We know you've got real problems with China.
Putin turned to his advisors and said, where the hell did he get all this?
And the next several months were spent by Putin and Chinese President Xi trying to give Biden kind of a school lesson in the fact that the triangle, the triangle of relationship between Russia, China and the United States has changed markedly.
China and Russia are together and they've found all kinds of expressive ways to do to reassure people about that.
They talk about an alliance that exceeds in in warmth, in closeness and in effectiveness.
The traditional military alliance.
So Biden got religion.
He asked his folks about that.
Oh, yeah, actually, Putin's right there.
They're very close.
They're not at loggerheads.
And he changed his, changed it.
Who wants, does our, does our military want to, to deal with a two front war with the two most powerful other countries in the world, Russia and China?
I mean, they have to be crazy if they think that you can take on, take them both on.
Even Brzezinski said we don't want to do that.
So I think the military and the other people said, let's let's be a little more realistic here.
China is backing Putin on the core interests, on his approach to NATO.
And that's big because it's all but unsaid.
It's unsaid, but all but clear that if there's a flare up, if there are hostilities in the West, there's a likelihood that China will flex its muscles in the South China Sea and perhaps even the Taiwan Straits.
Nobody wants that.
We can't deal with that.
We're going to lose.
That, I think, is the realistic thing that was being that was being taught to Putin after his, his real major gaffe bragging about how he told the Russians how scared they should be about being squeezed.
His word squeezed by China.
All right.
Hold on one second.
I got to raise some money for KPFK.
Sure.
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All right, you guys, and we are talking with Ray McGovern here about the contest for influence in Eastern Europe right now.
And so, Ray, could you please fill us in on what all has been accomplished at the talks there on Thursday?
Yeah, well, the Normandy format, which is Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine, met again two weeks after they met in Paris.
And they met again this time in Berlin just yesterday.
Now, the only readout we have is from Russia.
And here's the TASS roundup here.
Did not bring results.
The talks brought no results.
The parties could not overcome differences regarding the Minsk agreements.
And that was said by the Russian participant Dmitry Kozak.
Now, that's bad news.
That's bad news.
What does that mean?
Well, the agreements that they're trying to implement include not only a ceasefire along the line with Donetsk and Luhansk, they include a regional autonomy for those two provinces.
And they include a change in the Ukrainian constitution.
Now, is this some pipe dream?
No.
It was approved by the UN, for God's sake.
The Ukrainians have been dragging their feet.
And Ukrainians don't really matter to us.
Not out of a hill of beans.
It's the U.S.
It's the Victorian rulers that are saying, hang tight.
No concessions here.
We don't want any regional autonomy for Luhansk and Donetsk.
What we'd really like to see, Sotovoche, is a kind of limited Russian invasion of Ukraine.
And then we can kill Nord Stream 2, which is so critical to Russia and to Western Europe.
That's what Nuland wants.
She said she wanted that six weeks ago.
And that's the name of her game.
Now, whether she's in charge or not is really the question.
She, of course, was responsible for going to the UN for that debacle.
But whether she's guiding the negotiations, the ones that really matter, the ones on intermediate range and short range ballistic missiles, which of course the treaty called intermediate range nuclear missiles, which was, you know, annulled just about 10 years ago.
If that comes back into being with inspections, you know, with inspections, trust but verify, then that could have a real calming effect on all this.
Suffice it to say, again, that they are negotiating on this.
They are being very quiet about it.
And not even the press is giving it much play.
But the hope is there.
And that's one reason why I think Putin would never invade Ukraine.
All right.
Now, give us just one minute, if you could, about the importance of the character of our current CIA director, William Burns, and, you know, his unique character and what that has to do with how this is playing out now.
Well, everyone I know and some have worked very closely with Bill Burns say that he's an honest guy and that he's he's about as smart a guy as you're going to run into.
OK.
Now, he was told by by Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, look, net means net, no Ukraine entry into NATO.
He was told that in 2008.
And he explained quite, quite deftly why that would be, why strategic interests would impel Russia to to react very, very strongly.
Now, that was 2008.
So do the math.
What's that?
14 years ago.
Now he's CIA director and now Biden is using him as a kind of unofficial emissary, not only to Russia, but also to Ukraine, which we find out surreptitiously.
So is Bill Burns playing a constructive role as one of the adults in the room?
I think the answer is yes.
And he said in his own memoirs that the Russians are right and we're wrong in terms of pushing the envelope in Ukraine.
So that's just come out by some industrious investigator who who actually read Bill Burns as memoirs.
It comes out just the opposite of how Biden and Victoria Nuland are talking.
And so there's some hope there.
There may be other adults in the room, but I think the one that really counts is Bill Burns.
And I hope I'm right on that.
You know, one can always hope.
But there there was someone who told Biden, look, you better get off this, this, this hook.
You better start negotiating, because Putin not only is serious this time, but he has China.
He has China at his back.
We can't afford a two front war.
Aren't you guys?
That is the great Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, former chief of the Soviet division over there and now regular writer for Antiwar dot com.
His latest is Putin is not stupid.
And that's good.
He's at Antiwar dot com slash McGovern.
Thank you again, Ray.
Most welcome.
All right, you guys.
And that has been Antiwar Radio for this morning.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm the editorial director of Antiwar dot com.
I'm the author of Enough Already.
Time to end the war on terrorism.
Find my full interview archive at Scott Horton dot org and YouTube dot com slash Scott Horton show and donate today to KPFK.
Just go to KPFK dot org or call 818-985-5735.
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And thank you very much.
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See you next week.
I'm Scott Horton.
Have a great week.
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