08/10/16 – Alastair Crooke – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, introducing Alistair Crook.
He is a former British diplomat who is a senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy.
He is the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum, which advocates for engagement between political Islam and the West.
Well, that's very interesting.
He writes a ton of really interesting stuff for Bob Perry's site, consortiumnews.com, always very high-level information for you there.
Stalling Obama's Overtures to Russia is the name of this one.
Welcome to the show, Alistair.
How are you doing, sir?
I'm fine.
Thank you very much.
Great pleasure to be with you.
Very happy to have you here.
I've been a big fan of your writing for quite a long time now, and happy we finally had a chance to speak here.
So yeah, this is a really important one.
To sum up real quick, I think you're saying that Obama and Kerry actually meant to strike this deal with the Russians, or mean to strike this deal with the Russians to basically join our air wars together and lump al-Nusra in with Islamic State as the targets in Syria, but you're saying that the permanent government in the United States is moving to do everything they can to thwart the president and his secretary of state on this particular issue.
Is that correct?
It's partly correct.
I think that what we have seen very clearly during this period is that Russia, particularly President Putin, has been insistent that they should try and start direct cooperation with the United States in the war on terror, as he would describe it.
Why?
I think because it's been very clear from what Putin suggests is that he sees a dynamic which is leading inevitably towards some sort of escalation of tensions between the United States and Russia, and that unless that can be diverted, this dynamic can be sort of pushed towards a more positive, towards a more useful direction, then war will be inevitable.
He said that at Sochi, and he said it again in St. Petersburg, he said, can't you see, I mean, talking to Western journalists, he said, just follow the dots, can't you see that if things go on as they are, yes, it will lead to war.
And he said, you know, you just have to look and you have to understand the situation.
So he's been fairly clear about that.
Now, what I think we've seen in Washington has been a divide about how to react to this initiative by Putin.
On one side, there are those that believe and want to see Russia, if you like, put in its place to be humbled somewhat and not to become a powerful influence in the Middle East.
And that whereas Ukraine was one area in which it could be done, then now it is seen that Syria is an area where it's important that Russia does not prevail too well.
And so I think we've had this sort of struggle going on within Washington, and on the one hand, you have the head of CIA, Brennan, and then you have also Ash Carter, both of them favoring pushing hard on Assad and on Russia and Syria.
And I think there was also, if you like, a desire on the part of the president to try and pull some sort of cooperation to find some sort of cooperation with Russia.
But in practice, what we have seen during these past months, is that the negotiations have been drawn out, the negotiations have been elongated about how Russia mustn't bomb Al-Qaeda, that was Al-Nusra as it was called then.
And what has happened has been very clearly as we now see the arming and the preparation for a mass attack on the Syrian forces in Aleppo, which is now still underway, heavy fighting.
So we're talking between 5,000 and 10,000 jihadists, led mainly by Al-Nusra, by Al-Qaeda, and all of them operating jointly together, trucks crossing from Turkey with weapons, with money, with support directly for these groups.
So a real attempt.
So in a sense, what we have seen is that Washington has played for time, and tried to, if you like, prepare for this attack on Aleppo, in order to have a better negotiating hand in any future settlement or solution that might happen in Syria.
But it's a very dangerous game, because if it falls, and if Aleppo falls, I don't think it will, but if it fell, it would fall to the control of Al-Qaeda.
We should be quite clear about that.
The other groups are quite insignificant in the total.
So it would be a major shift in the Middle East, with the control passing to very radical Islamist movements.
All right, now, so yeah, you pointed out that it was at the Aspen Security Forum, where the CIA chief, John Brennan, had said that we need to have some sense that Assad is on his way out, there can be a transition, but it needs to be clear that he is not part of Syria's future.
And I guess I could see that as basically just throwing a monkey wrench in the works there, and preventing, you know, John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov from being able to finalize the deal.
Is that basically what was happening there with that statement, do you think?
You said it exactly.
Because the whole understanding with Putin was that, let us lay aside the question of the future of the Syrian government of the presidency, it will be a matter for elections and discussion later, let's get on and deal with the threat from terrorism and the threat from Al-Qaeda and Daesh, ISIS, in the region.
So if you go back to that old discourse, which had been dropped at the time of the Security Council resolution, early, certainly by the beginning of this year, then, you know, it is exactly what you said, a monkey wrench shoved into the works.
And why is this happening?
I think the reason that this is happening is because there is a bigger game at play, a more important one, which is that for some of these figures, and these are influential players in Washington, they want to keep the prospects of the old foreign policy, the foreign policy to which they've adhered for 30 years, and which there is a wide support in conservative circles, and in democratic conservative circles, for the foreign policy that has been pursued during this time.
And that foreign policy seems to be under threat at the moment domestically in the United States.
And the way to make it very clear and to try and keep that going is to, if you like, is to focus around an enemy, a clear enemy that is a threat to the United States and around which all people, bipartisan, we can come together and face a single threat.
And that seems to be to be Putin and Russia at the moment.
And I don't think it's any coincidence that we've seen the language in which the Republican presidential candidate has been termed by various, I mean, quite senior commentators as effectively an agent of Putin, a Manchurian candidate, as an agent in place, as someone who will unknowingly become a willing agent, an unknowing agent of Russia.
I think all of this is really part of a single piece of, if you like, trying to preserve the old politics against a very strong challenge of those who are saying, well, that old politics should go.
And we need to think afresh.
Many things, including NATO and including our relations with Russia.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it's funny, I keep bringing this up because it keeps coming up.
The great Pentagon reporter, Mark Perry, I asked him and he confirmed to me that the generals, at least in the Pentagon, believe all their own lies about Russia right now.
And the coup in Kiev in 2014, never heard of it.
Don't know anything about it.
2004 either.
NATO expansion.
Yeah, it's a thing.
But what does that have to do with anything?
Everything is Putin's fault.
He's the one who started everything.
You know, we're the Israelis.
He's the Palestinians.
Anything we do is a response to his aggression.
And that's the way it's framed permanently.
And that there's really no dissent or discussion inside the higher levels of power where where you or I might hope that someone is saying, well, listen, you know, if we want to ratchet up the full Cold War, but we're all the way to Russia's borders now, we might not really get to have a cold one.
As you said at the beginning of this thing, quoting Putin, he said, this is the path to war, not Cold War.
This is the path to war because we're not talking about drawing a line halfway across Germany.
We've now drawn the line between Latvia and Russia.
And so or, you know, they even talk about, you know, eventually still bringing Ukraine into NATO, bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO and these kinds of things.
And so but where you or I might hope that there's Alistair Crook in D.C. who gets to at least say his minority report and be listened to for a minute, apparently, no, there's only consensus.
Yes, I think you're right.
I think this is why it is so dangerous and is so difficult and why the McCarthyite language of trying to pin Donald Trump as being the candidate of the Kremlin in the U.S. presidential race is difficult, because it silences voices who want to point out, you know, that this is not just, you know, oh, well, you know, we know this politics, this is the old politics, it's safe politics, it's secure politics.
What Putin is saying is very clear.
The change in the nuclear posture that America is taking now, the change by which anti-missile systems are going to be set up right up on the Russian border so that there is almost no time.
It's about five minutes reach to Moscow.
But of course, now it is even closer to St. Petersburg.
We've seen during this lead up to the recent NATO summit that took place in Warsaw at the beginning of last month, exercises that are done right on the border, that is 80 miles from St. Petersburg.
And just to make sure that the Russians understand the message, for the first time, German troops were included.
This sends a very strong signal to Russians, I mean, German troops on the borders with St. Petersburg again, missiles being put in Poland and Romania, targeting their system.
And Putin has said very clearly to the West, if we pursue this type of encirclement with these type of missiles, it means that the old system of mutually assured destruction or MAD no longer holds true.
Because with these anti-missile missiles on our border, we have no retribution.
We have no second strike.
Whatever happens, it's not possible.
And therefore, Russia has only one alternative.
And he said this publicly, said this very explicitly.
He said the only choice we have is to go first strike.
We cannot have it.
And so we are pushing it.
And indeed, just as you said, the NATO statement was not just unbalanced, it was an embarrassment in that Russia was blamed and President Putin for everything, from what's happening and the failure of the Minsk Accords on Ukraine.
And of course, the Minsk Accords are a two-sided process.
It's not simply one side.
But just to make the point, they invited President Poroshenko to be a sort of witness in honor to the placing of all the blame on Russia.
So the Russians see this, and they believe, and many in the Russian leadership do sincerely and genuinely believe that the West is preparing for war, a major war.
And after many years, Russia now is just beginning to now deploy itself to face a major war in Europe.
It is very dangerous.
So it's not we can just go on as we were in the tension, because if you push too far, if you corner Russia too much, push it into the corner, it will feel it has no choice but to react, to make a statement and to say this far, but no further.
That's when we get to the point where we could end up with a real war.
Well, now, so as far as their perception, I wonder whether, you know, I'm just being naive and thinking that D.C. only wants a Cold War because, hey, what a great way to make money and what a great way to get some medals on your chest and what a great way to, you know, beat the Republican this year and whatever these kinds of things, but maybe they're right.
I mean, when you talk about the putting in, you know, withdrawing from the anti-ballistic missile defense treaty and putting in the anti-missile missiles into Eastern Europe and all of this stuff, maybe they really are contemplating a first strike on Russia.
Maybe they are brave enough to think that they could take out enough Russian nukes on the first pass that the few left over we could shoot down or maybe we just lose L.A. or something like that.
But acceptable losses and then we could really have benevolent global hegemony without the Kremlin in our way, what do you think?
There are very serious people in Russia who worry that actually this is not rhetoric, that this is not just good for the election process.
It's not just about giving NATO a new, if you like, mission in life.
It's not about binding the Europeans into NATO and re-strengthening NATO's, if you like, influence amongst a rather factious European grouping.
There are many serious Russians, including people like Gorbachev and others who've spoken out and who've said, no, we believe that they are preparing for war.
They are now renewing their nuclear arsenal, renewing their nuclear weapons.
We see all these signs of this.
And a very influential general who is part of the government, who is a pro-Putin man, recently wrote an article in which he said very clearly, and he didn't name Putin directly, but it was clear from his context that he was speaking about Putin.
And he said, Putin, the leadership has neglected to prepare us either for a near war or for a far war, either militarily or economically.
And we need to mobilize economically and we need to prepare for this war now.
And then that was taken up subsequently by many other Russians, including a very senior retired general who said, what this man has said is absolutely right.
We are not prepared for what the West is preparing against us.
So this is a serious debate and a serious challenge to Putin.
People think it's Putin that is leading it.
Putin is not.
It is other people who are accusing Putin of being too friendly to the West, of appeasing the West within Russia, and not preparing Russia for the threat that it may face.
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Now there's a really interesting subject that we hardly ever hear anything about.
The people who are all to the right of Putin.
And we only kind of hear them in, you know, certain anecdotes, basically, like when Putin offered Russian help after September 11th, it's reported that he had to kind of face down the right wing in the military and say that, you know, I know it's kind of weird to let the Americans right in our soft underbelly down there in Central Asia and help them like this.
But we're going to score a lot of political capital off of this being nice to the Americans.
This is a good way to for us to be, you know, friends with them and that kind of thing.
It's going to be worth it.
Trust me.
And he won that kind of bureaucratic fight, but only ended up with egg all over his face for going along with us.
But I wonder how dangerous they are.
I guess I've heard it said before, Alistair, that in a sense, this is Weimar, Russia.
And what we're doing now is, you know, we we basically beat them in the Cold War as World War One.
But now we're sticking it to them with our own version of the Versailles Treaty.
Instead of letting victory be good enough, we're rubbing their nose in it to the point where who knows who comes after Putin?
It could be a lot worse.
Well, let me let me be quite clear that even these people who've spoken out against Putin are not wanting war with the West.
They believe that it will be a disaster for everyone concerned, but a complete disaster for for Russia particularly.
So I don't think that they're wanting it.
But the divide, there is a divide in Russia.
There are particularly an economic elite that adheres quite closely and would like to see Russia more closely integrated with the West.
And they have been mostly associated with former President Medvedev.
And in a sense, Putin was supposed to bring the balance between that group and another group which wanted to recoup Russian sovereignty, nationalism and culture away from globalism and to strengthen the economy, not to be vulnerable.
They are not strictly a war party in that sense, but they are people who feel that they want to make Russia a strong, sovereign, proud nation again.
And you could call them the sovereigntists, it's a rather ugly word, if you like.
And there's a touch of course, Russian nationalism in it, but they are not inherently a war party and they're not inherently, if you like, anti-Western.
They are competitors of the West, sure.
But we have competitors and we do business with competitors.
But they're not, if you like, a war party, which is why I think there is very much an untested area of foreign policy.
In the past, President Obama tied a great deal of emphasis on his relationship with Medvedev.
And when Medvedev didn't stand for second term, Washington pretty well washed their hands of Russia and said, okay, if he does, we can't do business.
We can't talk to them.
Putin is a tyrant, he's authoritarian.
It's actually worse than during the Reagan administration in the sense that there is almost no one who will get up and argue the case for some sort of detente or understanding with Russia until now.
And I think that it is quite wrong to see them purely as aggressors against.
They will stand up for their interests, just as the United States will.
So Putin, above all, is someone who knows how to be pragmatic and how to talk with people who are opposed to him politically and still come to some understanding where mutual interest can be pursued.
Well, yeah, I mean, you're certainly right about the propaganda campaign in America now, not just against Trump and Russia, which, you know, is a great avenue for the Democratic Party this year.
But on virtually everything, I mean, they're just they're doing everything they can to turn Putin into this hate figure, you know, on the level of Saddam Hussein, meaning where we could never negotiate with him.
Right.
He's he's so crazy and so evil and so bad to his own people.
There's only one thing to do, fight him.
And even Hillary Clinton actually literally compared him to Adolf Hitler.
Exactly.
And this goes back, you know, this goes back and has a long history in American thinking.
It goes back to people like Carl Schmitt, who had great influence amongst those in the Chicago school and in the wake of the Vietnam War, who argued that the only way after the problems and the protests of the Vietnam War to bring the United States people together was to have an enemy, an enemy that was so black and white that the idea of mediating, of negotiating was impossible.
If these people were evil, how do you negotiate with the evil and the evil axis and the evil that was then attributed to the Soviet Union was precisely designed to preclude the idea that you can talk to these people, that there's anything to talk about.
And of course, this is, as you rightly imply, I mean, an extremely dangerous position for the United States and for the West to put ourselves into where we say, we can't talk to these people.
We've got nothing to say to them, because of course they have.
And as I say, one of the reasons, one of the prime reasons Putin entered into Syria was not to, if you like, humiliate the United States.
But if you look at everything he said from the beginning is we want to cooperate with the United States against terrorism in the Middle East.
This is the threat, our and your national security interests intersect in the Middle East in defeating ISIS and the other radical beheading mobs in the region.
And we can do that together.
And he did this to try and push the dynamic in a more positive way.
Unfortunately, I can't say that it's been very successful so far.
And that's, of course, why he's under pressure from the people who will point and say, look, all America did during the ceasefire that they asked for and that they agreed.
And this is, this is in the public domain, is they stuck in another 3000 tons of weapons into the people during the ceasefire, after the ceasefire had begun in February of this year.
They've been preparing and organizing and playing a part in preparing this big body of extremely dangerous men to fall on a civilian city and to take it in the interest of weakening President Assad and in the interest of, if you like, weakening the position of Russia in this in this process.
I mean, if you think about it, only to allow those people, whether into a city where there's a large group of Christians and there are minorities led by Al-Qaeda and others of that nature.
I mean, it's an extraordinary thing, the Western sort of thinking that we've got ourselves into the position of being, if you like, indirectly allies of people who who behead not only adults, but small children.
It's an incredible position we find ourselves in, I think.
Well, and we've been in this incredible position since at least 2011.
But the real crazy part is that we're now this conversation is taking place.
This is, you know, note for the future historians looking back.
It's now two years after the declaration of the caliphate, and they still haven't been able to turn the ship of the empire around from let's get rid of Assad or at least let's continue to to back some of his jihadist enemies, if not all of the different factions against him.
And and so, yeah, beheading children and the rest of this.
These are bin Laden night terrors.
As you say, the dominant faction Al-Nusra is still sworn to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the butchered New York City.
No question about it.
But the part that I don't understand, I admit, I still can't understand is how come they can't?
I mean, I know they can't admit that they were wrong, but how come they can't just turn around anyway?
And if not outright a lie with the Russians, at least sit back and let the Russians kill the Al-Qaeda guys and admit that, you know, the game is up.
Putin called their bluff last year, right?
The end of last year, he said, no, that's it.
I'm intervening.
I'm not going to let you overthrow Assad and the Baathist government here.
So our bluff's already been called.
So how in the world are we still back in the Al-Qaeda guys?
If apparently Obama doesn't want to see Assad overthrown, it's just because the CIA does or what the hell is going on here?
I, as I said, I think it's a much bigger game than just Syria.
And for these people like Brennan and for Ash Carter, I think what we're talking about is, is, is in their perception, their view of it is they're trying to save foreign policy.
That if they feel that America does not succeed in Syria and cannot prove that it has the strength to oust Assad, that Russia will be strengthened.
They're trying to preserve the idea that NATO might lose its position, might lose its sense.
The whole foreign policy edifice, they feel, will be destroyed and will fall about because if you like the cornerstone of the whole structure of the primacy of nature of NATO and its ability to exert hegemony in any zone, in any area of theater of combat, will be removed.
So they are fighting for the last 30 years ideas, neoconservative ideas of America's place as a benevolent hegemon of its control of the, what they would call is the law-based, rules-based order of the financial governments of the global system.
Yeah, but isn't that crazy?
I mean, don't get me wrong.
I agree with you that that's what they're thinking, but isn't that hyperbolic beyond all reason?
Whether Assad stays or goes is whether the new order stays or goes on a global level.
Just you know, if, if, if someone is ever able to thwart our will ever anywhere, then that'll be our whole bluff called?
It's both reckless and actually desperate, and I think it's a sign of desperation.
American position and American influence in foreign policy, of course, will still exist.
Whatever happens, Assad is not, you know, this is not going to change the whole of the, if you like, geopolitical situation in the world.
It will have a big impact in the Middle East, what happens in this battle that is going on now.
No doubt.
But of course, I mean, America's power is not going to disappear in a flash, and NATO disappear in a flash once what happens in Aleppo becomes clear.
You're quite right.
It's not connected with the real world.
It is, if you like, a virtual world of thinking that is quite separate and is actually permeated with fears and anxieties, which are their own demons.
These are not real fears.
These are not real threats.
Russia is not threatening the United States.
Assad is not threatening the United States.
Daesh and ISIS are, but these are mostly the demons that are coming out, and the demons that the Pentagon warriors, the war party are trying to fight, come from their own imagination.
These are not real threats, not real warriors that they're fighting.
They can try and kill them, but they're trying to kill images.
They're trying to kill mirages.
These are products of their own psyche, not necessarily real threats.
Europe is not threatened by Russia, nor is America directly threatened.
Sure, we're going to compete with Russia, and Russia will have its interests, and we will have ours.
That's normal business.
That's called diplomacy.
It's not a real threat to the West, as it stands.
All right, Shaul, that is Alistair Crook.
He is a former British diplomat.
He was a senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy.
He's the founder and the director of the Conflicts Forum, and he writes regularly at ConsortiumNews.com.
It's always really great stuff.
We ran this one, I think, yesterday on AntiWar.com, stalling Obama's overtures to Russia.
Thank you very much for your time, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me on your program.
I really appreciate it.
All right, Shaul, and that's The Scott Horton Show.
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Thanks.
Hey, Al.
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