 Welcome to CN Live, season four, episode one. Is there a bear trap in Ukraine? I'm Joe Laurier, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News. Tensions between the United States and Russia are as high as they have been in decades, perhaps since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The seeds of the current crisis go back to 1990, when former US Secretary of State James Baker promised to last Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev that in exchange for agreeing to the unification of Germany, NATO would not expand eastward. Baker's President George H.W. Bush never accepted that promise, and it was reneged on by the Clinton administration. Today, there are 30 NATO members, including all three Baltic states boring on Russia, as well as former Warsaw Pact members, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Slovakia. Ukraine was promised membership in 2008. Just before this NATO expansion began, Brzezinski, Ignu Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, wrote in his 1997, 1997 rather book, The Grand Chess Board, that if Russia lost Ukraine, it would cease to be a European power. Brzezinski argued for US world primacy or domination, requiring control of Eurasia. Brzezinski was an advisor to the Obama administration in 2014 when the US backed a coup in Kiev that overthrew a democratically elected president leading to the rebellion of two Eastern Ukrainian provinces and Crimea voting to rejoin Russia amid unproven allegations that Russia invaded Ukraine. A 2015 accord that would give the Eastern provinces autonomy has never been implemented by Kiev under US pressure. Biden was the vice president at the time of the coup and he was given a key role to midwife, the overthrow of the elected government and then became Obama's Ukraine viceroy. Biden's son suddenly wound up on the board at Burisma, the biggest gas company in Ukraine. After the chief prosecutor announced Burism was being investigated, Biden demanded his firing and threatened to withhold an IMF loan. If he wasn't, he was fired that day. Biden publicly bragged about it. Now Biden is president. Many US progressives feared that the man who was the biggest cheerleader for the 2003 invasion of Iraq would be a hawk on Ukraine too. Amid fears of a Kiev offensive in the East, Russia has deployed now 100,000 or so troops near but not on the Russian-Ukrainian border. At the same time as Russia proposed two draft agreements with the United States and NATO that would roll back deployments in the new NATO members near Russia and would prevent Ukraine from gaining membership. Russia arranged diplomatic meetings last month with NATO and the US to discuss its proposals but those meetings have been portrayed by the US and its media as efforts to stop an imminent Russian invasion which Moscow has denied planning. Even the Ukrainian president, other senior Ukrainian officials and Ukrainian intelligence have denied an invasion but at the Security Council on Monday, Ukraine's representative ignored his president and took the US hard line against Russia following it appears the instructions of his foreign minister who may be in a power struggle with the president. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has been speaking on the phone with Vladimir Putin and told the European Parliament last month that a new security architecture for Europe should include Russia, what Russia is demanding but France's representative at the UN totally ignored this as well and took a strict hard line NATO position. Putin on Tuesday said the US had ignored Russia's proposals and that it was trying to draw Russia into a war in order to weaken it would further sanctions. It seems that Russia and the US are dangerously inhabiting different worlds. The US leaders understand at all what Russia is talking about and why it's doing what it's doing is the US setting a trap for Russia. There is precedent, April Golaspie the US ambassador to Iraq told Saddam Hussein that the US had no position on into Arab disputes as Saddam was raised was poised to invade Kuwait. The invasion went ahead and the US took the opportunity to destroy the Iraqi military which had had built up to fight Iran during the 1980s. Muzhinsky again armed jihadists to lure Russia into invading Afghanistan and during the Carter administration and it ultimately helped destroy the Soviet Union the way the US seems now would like to bring down Putin's Russia. That intervention by the US and Afghanistan also spawned al Qaeda. So if Kiev launches an offensive, how will Russia react? What are Russia's other options at this point? What are NATO's and United States's options? And what independence from the US does Ukraine have left? To answer these and other questions were joined from upstate New York by Scott Ritter a former US Marines counterintelligence officer and chief UN weapons inspector and from London by Alexander McCuris a political analyst and editor in chief of the Doran. Welcome to both of you. Alexander let me start with you. I just like to know broadly if you think there's something in the background that needs to be added to tell us how we came to the situation we're at now and where do we stand now? Well, I think that you at your summer is actually pretty accurate and very comprehensive. What I would say is I think that there has been a lot more understanding in the West of what they've been doing towards Russia than, oh, sorry. Sorry, am I asked to stop? We hear you loud and clear Alexander. Okay, okay. So I think there's been much more calculation about some of these American moves than it's not just a case of two countries operating in different universes. I think that the decision to move NATO eastwards which bear in mind was happening in the 1990s started in the 1990s at a time when the United States was also micromanaging or trying to micromanage Russian policies, Russian domestic policies was a very calculated move, maybe not at the very highest level, you know, the president and people of that kind, but I certainly think that the United States knew perfectly well what it was doing. It was basically acting to knock out once and for all a former and potentially future international rival and competitor. So I think the United States has had a longstanding policy of pushing back Russia, pushing it to the point of driving it out of Europe. I think there've been other countries in Europe that have been quite keen on that policy. Also, I think what has now happened, however, and I think this is perhaps the other dimension, I think there's now this astonishment and dismay that the Russians have said enough, we are now drawing red lines. You can't move beyond these red lines. If you start moving beyond these red lines, we are in a position to respond. Our military has been rebuilt. Our political system has been rebuilt. Our economy is now much stronger than it was. We've now got a network of international alliances or at least friendships or strategic partnerships, as they call it. We've got a friendship with China at our back. We're on good terms with India. So we are in a position now to do that, which we were not able to do before in the 1990s and early 2000s. And we, which is to say, so far, but no further, you've now reached the stop and you have to accept this stop. And this huge anger that we're now seeing is the fact that people in the West, the Western powers find that very difficult to accept and come to terms with, they've become accustomed to thinking that they can roll NATO eastwards. They can tear up treaties with the Russians, disregard Russian concerns. And as a result, this huge anger when they've discovered that finally at last, the Russians are pushing back and are pushing back in ways which show that they can actually enforce their red lines. Scott, would you like to add to this? I mean, I'm in full agreement. What we're seeing today is the byproduct of a concerted effort by the United States and NATO to contain and control Russia, to ensure that Russia never again emerges as a Soviet-like adversary or a counterpart. But I would also add this, that back when I was doing the Soviet thing back in the 1980s and early 1990s, the United States didn't get it perfect, but we had populated our diplomats and our military ranks with genuine experts on the Soviet Union, people who knew and understood of the reality of the Soviet Union. And as a result, could accurately discuss what was important to the Soviet Union, what the Soviet Union way of thinking was, et cetera, so that our policymakers could predict Soviet reactions and come up with a variety of options to resolve these, hopefully in a peaceful manner. But if not, to be prepared with real options to confront any potential Soviet aggression. We took the Soviets seriously because they were a serious opponent. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the United States stopped taking, this was instantaneous. I recall that I was brought in, I was, the CIA tried to recruit me back in 1992 as an analyst. And when I went and interviewed with the head of, it was no longer sova, it was no longer Soviet affairs, it was now Oreo, the office of Russian, Eurasian affairs. So automatically we see a demotion of Russia in the mindset it's now part of Eurasia. But I was told that my way of thinking, remember at this time I was, all of 32 years of old, so my way of thinking was already outdated because I was painted by my experience in the Soviet Union. That the fact that I reviewed the Soviet Union in Russia with respect was not tolerated. They literally cleaned house, brought in a new school, a new wave of analysts. And this was in the State Department as well. And these are people who were part of the exploitation of Russia, the Yeltsin years where we were in there buying elections. And remember we bought the 1996 election. There's no, just literally no doubt about that. This is about the economic exploitation of the former Soviet Union where we were trying to get our Western oil companies in it. On terms, it would be unacceptable to any other nation because Russia was a defeated nation. That's how we viewed them. We were pressuring Russia. And then when Yeltsin's health and corruption conspired to compel his removal from the scene and Vladimir Putin, the surprise pick emerged. We were shocked when Putin said, no more. Russia will no longer bow to the West. But we never took it seriously. We never took him seriously. And I can tell you why, one of the reasons why I know they didn't take him seriously is for the last 20 years since Putin came into power, all we've talked about is Vladimir Putin. We haven't talked about Russia, the reality of Russia. The fact is Putin is not a dictator. Dictators don't win elections by 56% of the vote. Putin is a byproduct of Russian democracy, however flawed that may be. Putin is also a prisoner to a Russian bureaucracy. Russia is a huge landmass, very difficult to govern. It can only be governed by this gigantic civil service that transcends every aspect of Russian life. The civil service defines policy, defines the means of implementing policy and brings policy decisions up to the executive who makes decisions. Nobody today in the United States is talking about this. All we talk about is Vladimir Putin, the impulsive leader. The gambler, the irresponsible leader who's threatening the world with his actions. No, Putin's Russia today knows what they're doing. They've taken a long look at this problem and they recognize two things. One, NATO in the United States, because we haven't taken Russian seriously, no longer have a range of viable options to confront Russia. And two, Russia, because they have taken NATO in the United States seriously, has a plethora of options available to confront NATO in the United States. Yeah. Well, first of all, can I just say, again, this is in danger of becoming too much, I was agreeing, but that is exactly correct. Can I just make a few observations? Firstly, this idea of Brzezinski's that without Ukraine, Russia is no longer a European power. Well, that theory has now been tested to destruction. And of course, Russia lost Ukraine in when the Soviet Union collapsed. And surprise, surprise, it is still a major problem. If you want to conceive of it as a problem in Europe, it is still proving impossible to construct a security architecture, a stable security architecture in Europe without Russia. Even without Ukraine, Russia remains the most powerful country, the biggest country in Europe. Some people in Europe, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, for example, understand that. But I think there are still many people in London, in Washington, who don't understand it and who still talk about Russia as this declining power, this waning power, this force that is lost. Somehow it's energy that can't really push back. So that's the first thing I wanted to say. The second point, and this is, I think, a point which I absolutely want to endorse what Scott said just now, which is that this idea that all policy in Moscow is made by one person, that there's only one policymaker. I will be listening to people like Secretary Blinken saying this. This is completely wrong. Russian policymaking at the moment and, in fact, through most of Russian history, but certainly now is extremely structured. It goes through a very complex process. There are a whole apparatus of policymaking. And when Scott talked about this huge bureaucracy, this huge system of government that exists in Russia, it's important to remember that Putin himself is a creation of it. He emerged from it. He is not somebody who came from outside it. So Scott is absolutely right that this is a very structured, very calculated policymaking machine because it functions in a way that is very different from that of, say, the United States. It has been making decisions over a fairly long-term. One mustn't fall into the trap of talking about the Russians as if these grandmasters or things of that kind. But they do have longer time horizons than Western policymakers tend to do. And they have incrementally built up their armed forces. They've reorganized their economy. They've done all kinds of things. They've sorted out their international systems in a way which I think Western powers don't fully understand or have not fully understand. And I think what has been happening over the last few weeks is that as this crisis has deepened, and it's a little mysterious to me why we are even in a crisis, but maybe we'll talk about that in more detail. But as this crisis has deepened and as Western governments have been looking at their options, they are starting to recognize to their own shock the point that Scott is making, that they are short of options, that the economic sanctions that they're talking about are not going to be as devastating in Russia as they imagine. That if they try and make them more devastating, they could have very dangerous spillover effects for Western economies. That Russia is not isolated internationally in the way that they also imagined. And here, again, Scott is better at discussing these things, that the Russians have a far bigger range of military options than the West could possibly imagine and that the option for the West of taking on the Russians in Ukraine simply does not exist. It is not practical. So this has been a realization that has come as a shock. And again, it also explains, I think, some of this extreme anger that we're seeing at the moment, because, suddenly, people are realizing, well, we thought we had all these levers we could pull, all these buttons we could press, and we've discovered that perhaps we can't. What I would also add to this is, first of all, we're supposed to be in opposition. I'm finding out that we actually agree on everything so far. So I'll try and push the envelope here a little bit. But again, I think what I'm about to say is it's fact-based. Russia is the one who initiated the current crisis. I mean, we can go back and say, no, wait a minute. It goes back to NATO expansion, et cetera. Yes, that's old history. This crisis was defined in 2008 when NATO at the Bucharest meeting said, we're considering letting Ukraine and Georgia in. William Burns, who at the time was the US ambassador to Moscow, wrote a cable that basically accurately defined the Russian position. And he was open about it. It was no NATO expansion. This is a red line. So in 2009, February 2009, when Burns wrote this cable, the United States knew that this was a red line that could, if we pushed it, lead to confrontation. The Russians were very open about it back then. There is no secret. And the reason why I bring this up is if the Russians in 2009 were defining a potential crisis between the United States and NATO and Russia over Ukraine, that means that today what we're looking at isn't a policy that's been made up on a whim, what we're looking at are Russian actions that are part of a very concerted effort to bring together a confluence of diplomatic, economic, military policy options. And when Russia decided to act, because again, it was the Russians, the Russians tested the system in April of last year when they mobilized 100,000 troops and brought them into the western and southern military districts to see what NATO's response would be. And they saw what NATO's response was. They listened to the rhetoric. And then they demobilized. And then in November, they remobilized. This time they knew exactly what it was doing. There's an American fighter pilot. You might be familiar with him. John Boyd, the Udalloo, the Observe-Orient Decide Act, decision-making cycle. Russia initiated this crisis knowing that they were inside NATO in America's decision-making cycle. Russia has predicted every outcome. They have a policy option for every outcome. And they've defined this crisis. And I believe Russia has a clearly defined end game that they're going to achieve because NATO in the United States simply have nothing to put on the table, but rhetoric. I mean, it was embarrassing what happened at the United Nations where all we have is this empty rhetoric. Okay, you spoke loudly in New York. Now what are you going to do? Nothing. Russia has an entire menu of options to draw from. Yes. I agree about the UN session. I'm not quite so sure that the Russians did initiate this because certainly there was a major build-up of forces by the Russians in the spring. The complicated, the very strange facts about this latest development, this latest alleged build-up, or build-up that we're hearing about is that, of course, all of the claims about it are coming exclusively from the Western side. The Russians say, we're not going to invade Ukraine. We have no plan to invade Ukraine. This is not what we're considering doing. We have our red lines. We will defend our red lines. But we're not planning to invade Ukraine. We're not even confirming that we actually have undertaken this huge build-up. And I wonder whether the Russians actually have undertaken a build-up in exactly the kind of way that Scott is saying. Because, again, I stress this. I'm talking now as somebody who's not a military man. I understand that you don't keep troops in the field, especially in winter for long periods of time. What I am hearing, and I am not, again, this military person, is that what has been happening is a steady incremental build-up of logistics, of barracks, of all sorts of things which has been going on for some time, the tempo of which accelerated after the events of the spring. But that this is a rather more steady, cumulative build-up rather than this vast, gathering of forces, ready to pounce. In some ways, maybe, if we're talking about this incremental build-up, building up barracks, building up bases, establishing supply lines, all that kind of thing, that I can imagine is actually more intimidating. But that may suggest the timeframe for any Russian move. We have to perhaps look at what would cause a Russian move. But the timeframe would be a lot longer than just an attack in February, at least that's what I think. And if that is correct, then, of course, the West suddenly, or at least the United States and Britain, suddenly hyping up the rhetoric around all of this and the kind of way that they did, may actually have played into Russian hands because what we're actually seeing, and this again goes a little bit to what Scott was saying about angry rhetoric at the United Nations, lack of options on the actual table. What we're actually seeing is that in the negotiations, and Lavrov was actually quite interesting about this, he said the Americans are now starting to talk about things that they weren't prepared to talk about before. It's not enough for us now. It doesn't address our core issues. But once upon a time, these were important issues for us. So they're starting to talk about intermediate nuclear force weapons. They scrapped the INF Treaty, but now they're talking about taking steps that might revive something very like it. We proposed to them some time ago, steps involving deconfliction and not holding exercises close to borders and keeping our airplanes distant from each other. They weren't interested now before. Now suddenly, this former proposal of ours has become a proposal of theirs. So you can sense that the ground is gradually shifting, and I by the way do agree that there is an end game here. But I wonder whether the timeline is rather longer than Scott says because we're talking about a kind of buildup of massive forces on the border. That suggests that there's a definite plan for an invasion within the next few months, or at least an option for an invasion, and I'm not convinced that is the case. I must have been misunderstood because under no circumstances is Russia going to invade Ukraine in the near term. There's literally nothing for Russia to gain from this. It's common knowledge in Russia that they can crush Ukraine like a bug anytime they want to. People can say whatever they want about Ukraine, its military capabilities, they're nonexistent in a modern combined arm setting. Russian artillery will devastate Ukrainian command and control. All these javelin missiles that we're sending to them are operated by infantry in the open who will die instantly and suddenly. And then the Russians operate mass armored formations better than anybody. They will penetrate the Ukrainian defenses, destroy Ukrainian logistics, and any war with Ukraine will be more about processing prisoners than about killing people because Ukrainians will surrender in mass. This is what you do when you have overwhelming force. It's one thing to sit there and stare in a CNN TV camera and talk about bravely you're going to fight the Russians. It's another thing to be confronted by 170 Russian armored vehicles and realize you're going to die unless you put your hands in the air which they're all going to do. But Russia doesn't want that because let's say they defeat Ukraine. Then what? It's a disaster for Russia. It's a disaster for Ukraine. It's a disaster for Europe. That's not the end game Russia wants. Russia wants Ukraine and NATO to say Ukraine will never be a part of NATO. And they have a plan for this. The plan and I believe they've executed part of this plan brilliantly. And the first part of their plan was to present NATO in the United States with written treaties, finished draft treaties that specifically outlined the full extent of Russia's position with no negotiating room. Now, if I were the United States and NATO, I would have rejected these out of hand and never responded to them in writing and told the Russians, if you want to play this game, we ain't playing that game. Here's a table. We're sitting at the table. If you want to come and talk to us, we'll talk to you. But I'm not going to play this game of you give us things and we respond in writing. But we didn't. We responded in writing. Now the Russians have trapped the United States and NATO into a position that says there are no spheres of influence. This is very critical because it's one thing for the United States to say that we know America operates in a very hypocritical fashion. Europe, on the other hand, does have a conscience, at least old Europe. That's going to talk about Poland and the Baltics. They don't. But not when it comes to Russia, but France, Germany, Italy, Spain, even England understands, the United Kingdom understands that when you commit on a matter of principle, that you have to adhere to that principle. And so when you say there are no spheres of influence, countries are sovereign and they have a right to pick and choose their alliances. That's an absolute. And what's Russia doing right now? Russia's coming to America's hemisphere, meeting with the Cubans, the Nicaraguans and the Venezuelans, to discuss a military type arrangement that could result in a Russian naval squadron plying the seas of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. The United States has already said, you can't do that because that's our sphere of influence. And we won't allow it. And the second Russia catches America in this trap formally, it's going to further divide NATO. And that's another one of Russia's goals. Look, Russia's already achieved a massive goal. We have Hungary traveling to Moscow, entering a gas agreement and saying, the sanctions stuff is nonsense. So already we see a split. Croatia says, not our troops. Bulgaria says, not our troops. Turkey has said, you're trying to provoke a war between us and Russia that will harm Turkey. We're not on board. Germany has said, if you abandon this, if you cut Russia off from the Swiss, if this system is going to collapse and we collapse with it, there is no NATO unity. It's efficient. And Russia's going to further divide NATO when they confront them with the hypocrisy of the stance that they had committed to in writing, which was a failure, I believe, on the part of Jan Stoltenberg. Yes. Well, I have to say, I'm not going to say, I find Stoltenberg the most extraordinary man. But can I just say something about the Russians, which is, of course, the one thing that makes me feel that is that I mean, they're not just talking about Russians with chess players and playing chess. I think it's completely misunderstanding. What they do is that they approach international affairs very much as lawyers do. It has a very, very much the approach of a lawyer. You set out a position, which on the face of it is a reasonable one. You invite negotiations. You then start using those negotiations to start your own legal position. And then gradually, incrementally, you improve your position to the point where the other side is forced to concede. This is very much the sort of thing you do. You have to be very, very careful. By the way, I should say I've been in negotiations with, in my previous things, I've been in negotiations with Russian business people and legal people, and I've seen how they do this. And this is a classic example of what has happened. I don't know why the United States took the surprising step of saying that they were going to discuss the security guarantees that the Russians were looking at. We're asking for. I completely agree that that was a mistake. I think that the United States should have said this is completely unacceptable. We're not even prepared to discuss this kind of thing. Instead, we had the mood music coming out from Washington. Yes, we're going to discuss this and we're going to get into those kind of discussions. But ultimately, we're going to stick to these points of principle about NATO's open-door policy. And that has, of course, allowed the Russians to bring up, firstly, all those promises that were made in the 90s, in the early 1990s, not a step eastern, all of that. But also, they've now homed in on all these other agreements, which they're claiming also, in effect, rule out eastward expansion, the Astana Declaration, the Istanbul Declaration, the OSCE founding documents, things of this kind, about the indivisibility of security in Europe. And remember, the OSCE is the organization for security and cooperation in Europe. So it's supposed to be... They have a good legal point to make. And the United States and NATO, finding themselves faced with this kind of line of argument, have no very coherent response to it. In fact, they've got no coherent response to it. And that has now put them, in effect, on a kind of defensive, in diplomatic discussions. They're not really wanting to address this issue, because they don't really want to. They can't really find a response to what is set out in these two declarations. And, of course, so they send documents to the Russians, which basically ignore this topic. And then, exactly as a very good legal firm does, that the Russians are now responding by sending to each and every member of the OSCE to the other member states. They're saying, well, look, this is the issue of indivisible security. We haven't been able to get light from the Americans about this. We haven't been able to get light from NATO about this. What do you think? What is your opinion on this issue? And, of course, we see, as Scott says, countries like Bulgaria, Croatia, they're becoming increasingly nervous, and they're all going to be hurriedly consulting to come up with a common position. And that's going to create more divisions and more splits and more misunderstandings and more arguments. Because, to be very clear, the West is not united about this. Because from a European point of view, from the point of view of Germany, of France, of Italy, the central European states, old Europe, whether they have conscience or not, they have vital economic interests. They have vital security interests as the Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said. They need Russian gas. They have to have some kind of payment mechanism with the Russians to pay for that gas. As Macron has said, the Russians are part of Europe. We have to create a security architecture with them. So we can't afford to take this extremely hard line that some people in Washington and London may be talking about. Because if we do, that is going to impinge directly on our fundamental economic and security interests. So here are the Russians. They're coming up with all these demands. They're asking us. They're asking for direct explanations from us. You know, in relation to these legal points, which of course they're pretty strong on. They've clearly researched very carefully what do we do? What exactly do we do? And eventually, in any situation where you are in a legal argument, and you know, I've had experience of this, when one side talks principle and the other side talks reality, it is the side that talks reality that always wins. I mean that's, I mean it's that I could say for an absolute fact. I've seen it many times. And people who come to these kind of disputes saying, you know, it's the principle of the thing. It's a point of principle that I'm going to hang out for. Well, those sorts of people always and invariably either back down or lose completely, especially given that in this case, and just before we went on this program, I read article 10 of the Washington Treaty. It is a legal principle. It is a principle, this open door principle. It is a principle which doesn't exist. It hasn't, it isn't in article 10. Article 10 doesn't say in any country that applies for NATO membership is entitled to it. It says that NATO is able to invite countries to join it if they enhance the security of the Euro Atlantic area. So even on that point, they are on very shaky ground. Again, 100%. I would add to this also that not only is Russia prepared for this extensively from a diplomatic standpoint, you're right. Look, I didn't deal with them as businessmen. I dealt with them in an arms control environment. And I would tell you that in every conflict we had with Russia based upon treaty interpretation, they were 100 times more prepared than we were. They had their act together. And frankly speaking, they prevailed because they were right on a matter of law. And if you're dealing with a treaty, that is law. So I have the highest respect for the Russians and I agree with you totally on their approach. But I'll also say this. Putin's Russia understands what weakness is because they live through Yeltsin's Russia and they will never again allow that to occur. And the Russia of today isn't just smarter than the West because they are. They're stronger than the West because they have made themselves so. Russia had a wake-up call in 2008 when they fought that short little war with Georgia. I've spoken to Russian military commanders and I've listened to their interviews and at the tactical level, they were stunned at how good the Georgians were because, I mean, I'm not bragging, but Marines had gone in and trained Georgian small units. And these guys were maneuvering effectively, using effective cover techniques, using fire maneuver. Well, it's a small unit level. What the Georgians didn't have were tanks and aircraft and artillery. And the Russians were getting their butts kicked at the small unit level, but then they brought in the mass and they just rolled over the Georgians. But the Russians looked at that and said, this is a defeat for us. I mean, everybody's calling it a Russian victory. It's an embarrassment. We performed poorly. We have to change the way we do business. And from 2008 on, Russia has totally redone the way it operates to the detriment of NATO. You know, Russia had built up a military that was based on the Brigade Combat Team level because Russia actually believed when the Soviet Union collapsed that they would never again be called upon to fight a large land war in Europe. But because of NATO expansion in 2016, Russia reactivated the Combined Arms Army concept. Not just in terms of building an organization, but training an organization. Russia today can put three combined arms armies online and operate as a cohesive, singular entity. NATO cannot put a corps in the field that operates as a single entity. NATO, you see Stoltenberg again bragging about these battle groups that they sent to the Baltics and to Poland. These are reinforced battalion-sized units. 1,500 men for Germany to put its battle group into Lithuania, I believe is where it's at. Germany had to cannibalize its entire armored force to get one battalion out of barracks in the field. NATO doesn't have a military. Not only that, NATO can't have a military because to rebuild would require expense that the European economies cannot bear. So Russia knows that it has this advantage, but Russia isn't bluffing. I will say this, I agree with you. I think Russia has a timeline through the summer of diplomacy, but at some point in time, Russia cannot, the time is Russia's friend in the short term, enemy in the long term. The longer you give the United States and NATO to react to Russia, to think about it, to consolidate positions, to come up with maybe an effective sanctioning plan, to come up with a military option the weaker the Russian position becomes. Russia is not going to cede the advantage to NATO in the United States. And there will come a point that if Russia doesn't get the result at once through diplomacy, and I believe we actually had a Russian Deputy Foreign Minister say this just the other day, they will destroy Ukraine as a modern nation state. That's Ukraine's future, and Ukrainians need to know this. And I think that's the point Russia's making, Ukraine can sit there and play all the games they want. But at the end of the day, this is going to end badly for Ukraine. Ukraine will never be a NATO member, ever. Don't even consider it. Now Ukraine can pretend to want to be a proxy of NATO, which will lead to its destruction. Or Ukraine can accept some sort of compromise outcome that respects its sovereignty, but doesn't have it being part of a military alliance. That is, as we now see, configured to confront Russia. That's the sole purpose of NATO today, to confront and contain Russia. It is not a defensive alliance. It's very much an offensive, aggressive alliance, maybe not to invade Russia, but containment is an offensive strategy. Can I just say one thing, because I have been to Russia quite a lot, not very recently, because obviously of the pandemic issues, Russia quite a lot. And my overwhelming impression going back is that first of all, certainly on an issue like the current one, the current crisis that we're in, Russian society is pretty united. I think that this is something that people do need to understand. The idea that there's going to be some kind of uprising against the government, that people are going to back down, that this is a misunderstanding completely. But the longer term perspective, the thing that the Russians really want is time and space to sort out their very pressing internal problems. They are very, very conscious of the many problems that their economy, their society still has, and in fact still has, and it's got major problems. And this is something that flows from the top all the way down. Now, the problem that we have found ourselves in, the reason we are in this very difficult position with the Russians is that the Russians have come to believe, and I think rightly believe, that until they sort out their problems with the West, they can't sort out those internal problems too. In other words, that the two are now connected. So they have to sort out these issues with the West. The security architecture in Europe, primarily the relationship with the United States, in order to get back to that position where they can increase living standards, improve their education system, provide themselves with a healthcare system that is up to modern standards, do those sorts of things, which Russian society wants, and also by the way, and this may surprise some people, political changes, which I think many Russians would also like to see. So this is something which I think Westerners don't understand. This is not a country that he's looking for war. It is not looking for aggression in any way. It is wanting the time and space to sort out its problems, and it has come to believe that until it sorts its security issues with the Western powers out, that will not be possible. And one of the interesting things that is happening, and this is I think something which Scott has direct experience of, is that a lot of Russians are now talking about the previous period of detente that existed in the 1970s, which is relatively brief. But what the Russians remember is that what brought that about was again, or at least what the Russians believe brought that about, was a steady increase, a major increase in military power in the fact that the Soviets were able to achieve nuclear parity with the United States, that they were able to build up their forces to the point where the United States was forced, the Western powers, as the Russians did, were forced to the table and came up with all that elaborate system of agreements that we remember from the Cold War. And I think that if we understood this, if we understood that this is what the Russians want, and we engaged them in a serious way, looking at their actual legitimate security concerns. Every country has legitimate security concerns and came to that kind of framework, that conceptual framework about security in Europe, which would allow the Russians to focus on building up, sorting out their internal problems in the way that I said. Well, what we would very quickly find is that tensions in Europe would decline and relations between the West and Russia would improve. It is not unreasonable what the Russians are asking for. And Scott talked about the destruction of Ukraine, which is a real possibility. If there's a major crisis, it is not difficult to see how Ukraine could be destroyed. I mean, again, I have contacts there. It is a very fragile polity. It's military. I mean, again, I'm not a military person, but I've been reading articles of the British newspapers, people going to the upfront lines, and the impression is of a military bogged down in trenches, really lost any ability to engage in manoeuvre warfare. Soldiers not coming across as particularly, morale being particularly high. So Ukraine needs that space, that peace as well if it is to succeed as a country. So let's put aside these Brzezinskian fantasies about dividing Russia from Ukraine, pushing them out of Europe. Let's put all that aside. Let's look at our joint interests and secure the peace in Europe. And at that point, relations between the United States and Russia would improve. And if there was that real improvement in relations between the United States and Russia, some of the other problems that are building up in the international system, including problems in the Far East and elsewhere would start to abate. It is a clear way forward. It's obvious, actually, if you spend any time there, if you start talking with Russians. And it's a tragedy that there are still so many people in the West who can't see it. I'll have to jump in, but I got my dogs doing their thing right now. What I would say to add to this discussion is the concept of Russia wanting and desirous of internal political reform. It's something that the United States ignores to its detriment. We focus on a couple of years ago, Vladimir Putin orchestrated a change in the Constitution, the Russian Constitution, that gave him electoral viability into the next decade. This was not something that Vladimir Putin wanted. In fact, he wanted the exact opposite of this. If you look at the internal Russian discussions that were taking place, Putin wanted and wants and is desirous of genuine democratic reform inside Russia. We talked about the Russian bureaucracy and the Russian apparatus. The civil service there, the Russians recognize that it's inefficient, that Russia is a nation that expends a lot of resources because of systemic inefficiencies that could be improved and enhanced with genuine democratic reform. Genuine democratic reform means reform that comes from within Russia. What it doesn't mean is reform that's funded by the West. Russia learned in the 1990s never to trust Western sources of income when it comes to building democratic movements. They learned in the 2000s that not only do you not trust them, but you have to view them as nefarious. We now know that British MI6 and the CIA, using various proxies and cutouts, were funding individuals like Navalny and other so-called democratic movements not for the purpose of creating genuine democratic reform, but for creating disruptive political opposition that targeted Vladimir Putin. Putin knows that the Russian democracy cannot withstand an unchecked challenge from the West. That is, if you opened the doors and said, come on in, fund whoever you want. I'm going to put all the ideas on the table that Russian democracy is not resilient enough to withstand that and that Putin's Russia would seed control to the West and you'd end up with a Yeltsin-like reality. So Russia right now has to buy, and I like the idea of time and space. Time and space. Russia needs the security necessary to trust itself to evolve in a way that promotes genuine democratic reform. Putin is not a dictator by choice. First of all, he's not a dictator. He's a long-serving president with extremely powerful executive powers, but he's not a dictator. But he doesn't govern today by choice, but rather necessity. I believe that if Putin thought for a second that he could genuinely trust Russian democratic institutions to put politically viable candidates on the ballot and have a free and fair election so that the people that emerged would serve Russia, Russian interests and not other interests, he would back out today, but he's not. And therefore, what this tells me also is that Putin's goal and objectives between now and let's say 2036 aren't to preserve the power of Putin, but rather to find a way that Putin can have a viable successor that promotes genuine democratic reforms as opposed to continues a failing model. I don't even think Vladimir Putin himself would sit here today and say the model of governance that we have in Russia today is a superb model that deserves to be going on unchecked for decades. Reform is recognized as being needed in Russia, but it has to be reform that's divorced from the corruption of Western money because Western money comes with so many strings attached that it would just destroy Russia if Russia ever allowed it to operate unchecked. This is why Russia is passing law after law after law that targets foreign agents, et cetera. It's not just a matter of retaliation for what the United States is doing to RT in America. It's a genuine national security need. What we do in the West is we take on the Russians at those things that they are extremely good at, foreign policy, diplomacy, military affairs, even some areas of technology. Of course, that is the side of Russia which is extremely strong, but if you do spend time in Russia, as I have done, you do realize that there are lots of other things where the Russians are not as well organized, far from being as well organized as they could or should be, and as they aspire to be. And it's important to say that this is a highly educated country. People aren't very well aware of those kind of problems, and they talk about them with each other. But this is, I think, one of the fundamental differences, one of the great changes that has taken place over the last 30 years. Whereas back in the early 90s, the consensus amongst Russian society was that the way to achieve these changes in Russia was through intense engagement with the West. In fact, even if you like, joining with the West, today the sentiment in Russian society needs very widespread, and I think people in the West are not aware of the extent to which it is widespread. The sentiment in Russian society is that these changes can only happen once we have pushed the West away, because these attempts by the Western powers in the 1990s to micromanage Russian politics, to micromanage Russian economic policy, and these attempts also to promote all kinds of political figures in Russia, some of whom, you know, might have interesting ideas, but others, one has to say, are not the kind of people that I think most Russians would want to see leading their country. I think this overt interference in Russian affairs has made Russians extremely skeptical to put it mildly of Western attitudes and Western intentions towards Russia. And of course, if we want to talk about political space, promoting certain political figures in Russia in that kind of way robs space that could have been filled by others who would have been more attuned to Russian realities. So we have mismanaged our relations with Russia extremely badly. This is an opportunity. This crisis is an opportunity, maybe the last opportunity to sort them out and to find a way forward. And if we do that, the benefits would be enormous. We would have a genuine peace in Europe, of a sort that we have not had since that crisis in July 1914, where if you lived through European history, you will know how tense the situation in Europe has always been. I think Americans, by the way, because they're not part of our continent, don't understand that we've never found in Europe that sense of complete stability that in the United States people take for granted. I wonder if I could jump in here and ask a couple of questions that arose during your discussion. Both of you talked about an end game of Russia but I would like some more to flesh that out a little bit and how will we reach there? Will it require a red line from Europe, in a sense, with the U.S.? Clearly the red line for Russia began with Putin's 2007 Munich Security Conference speech and then we now see a very strong red line from Russia. Will France and Germany have to draw some kind of red line with the U.S. in order to reach the end game that Russia wants? And I'd like to explain what that end game is. Well, if I can just start with this, I think we are actually heading there because we see that alongside the negotiations that are taking place between the Americans and the Russians, there's also a parallel series of negotiations which is now taking place between the Russians and the French. And let's be absolutely clear, the French are talking with the Russians but it is inconceivable to me that they haven't discussed this with the Germans and the Italians and others. And in fact, we've had two conversations between Macron and Putin on consecutive working days on Friday and Monday. They've also had conversations on Tuesday between Putin and Mario Draghi, who is the Italian Prime Minister, who's a close ally of Macron. And we've learnt yesterday that Macron is now heading to Paris and he's going to be negotiating directly with Putin there. So he's going to have a summit meeting at some point probably in February after the Winter Olympics with Putin. So there is a negotiation of some kind happening along the European track too. And the very fact that the Europeans are discussing these issues, these security issues with the Russians, and if you read the readouts that the governments have been publishing, it's quite clear that they're talking about the overall security architecture in Europe. I mean, Macron in his speech in Strasbourg a few weeks ago actually said as much. The very fact that the French are doing that, the Europeans are doing that, shows that to some extent, the Europeans are now imposing red lines. They're saying, look, we can't just press ahead with these sanctions that you're talking about. The whole idea of disconnecting Russia from Swift is unreal. We're not prepared to send arms to Ukraine. None of the big European countries, apart from Britain, is sending arms to Ukraine. France isn't, Germany isn't, Italy isn't. So none of those core countries are doing that. We want to instead engage with the Russians. We want to find a way forward. We are unhappy about this rhetoric that we see pouring out of Washington and London. We don't think it's helpful. And by the way, on that topic, the Ukrainian president appears to think the same. And can I also say that one point where I didn't fully agree with you, Joe, was in your characterization of what the French ambassador did in the UN Security Council. Because even though he repeated all the standard talking points of all the other Western ambassadors, the tone in which he did so was profoundly different. He spoke in a far more measured and respectful way. I mean, contrast that with, say, the way the British were talking and the contrast is striking. So already in a way, in a sense, the Europeans are not perhaps imposing red lines exactly, but they are saying to the Americans, look, we can't just rush off into an out confrontation. We have to talk to the Russians. We have to talk about security matters. We have to look at the situation in Ukraine itself. We are trying to restart these negotiations in Ukraine. We are looking for some kind of de-confliction on the ceasefire line. And ultimately, if we come back to what happened in the late 60s and early 1970s, which as I said has some parallels to what is happening today. It was to some extent the Europeans themselves who led that process. It was Willy Brandt who came along with Ostpolitik. It was De Gaulle who talked about a Europe, you know, from the Atlantic to the Urals. And the word datante, of course, of that period, is a French word. So it was the Europeans to some extent their push that led to that relaxation intentions, which took place in the late 60s and early 1970s. And I have to say, I think what is probably going to happen, and maybe red lines is not exactly the right word, but I think what is going to happen is they're going to say to the Americans, look, this can't go on in the same way. We've now reached the point where we're hitting the wall with the Russians. The Russians have all these options, the kind of options that Scott was talking about. So let's sit down, let's talk with them, let's see what we can agree. So obviously Ukraine isn't going to join NATO. Nobody believes it is. Let's talk about starting to dismantle some of these forces that we've cited in Europe, in Eastern Europe. And let's start talking about giving the Russians something like the legally binding guarantees that the Russians are looking for. Maybe we can't just say that countries must never join NATO, but maybe we can find ways of actually making NATO less important. And maybe we can also say that, you know, countries may not join NATO, but Ukraine isn't going to join NATO anytime soon. And the criteria for NATO membership are such that it really does have to enhance peace in Europe, which is, after all, what Article 10 says. So I think that we will see the Europeans playing an ever more active role from this point on. I think where Macron has gone, others will follow. I think the Germans certainly will. There's been some very interesting statements from Friedrich Metz, who is the new leader of the CDU. And that's Merkel's party, who will one day quite possibly become German Chancellor. He now says that disconnection from Russia's disconnection from the Swiss, very bad idea. It's a non-starter. But he's also saying things like the association agreement between Ukraine and the EU, which is the starting point of the crisis in 2013. That was a serious mistake. It failed to take into account Russia's legitimate economic interests. I mean, Metz is saying that that kind of conversation is already taking place in Germany. So, you know, expect some kind of move by the Europeans eventually to dial down the tension to try to find a modus vivendi with the Russians, which perhaps and hopefully this time with the ideological issues of the Cold War behind us will actually lead to a true and secure peace. Well, I would add to that, you know, the Russians have an appreciation of history that their American counterparts seem to lack. Joe, you mentioned in your at the beginning, you talked about, you know, we reached a crisis in relations that we haven't seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The reason why I bring that up is in the United States, if you ask people about the Cuban Missile Crisis, it's a resounding victory for John F. Kennedy. We forced the Russians back. We forced the Russians to stand down. We forced them to take missiles out of here. What Americans don't realize that what triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis was American missiles in Turkey and in Italy, the Jupiter missiles, that Russia said is intolerable. We're not going to do this. Operation Anidar, which is the name of the Russian operation to send missiles to Cuba, was seen as a counter to that. The Cuban Missile Crisis was viewed by many in Russia as, if not a victory, at least a positive outcome because they got the Jupiter missiles out of Turkey and they got the Jupiter missiles out of Italy. The other thing is, you know, Kennedy's assassination sort of shut the door on his developing relationship with Khrushchev. Had Kennedy survived, we would have seen, I believe, a dramatic change in trajectory between American and Soviet relations that would have accelerated arms control, that would have created a completely different security framework in Europe. I mean, keep in mind that in 1961, you know, we weren't talking about German unification. We were talking about a peace treaty. We were still dealing. We were only 16 years removed from the end of the Second World War. Berlin was an occupied city. Germany was an occupied sector. Even though the American forces in Germany were occupation forces. So Kennedy and Khrushchev were developing a dialogue that had it been given a chance to mature, would have produced, I think, a dramatic outcome. The reason why I bring this up is that the Russians don't view crisis. Like we're viewing this as a new Cuban missile crisis. You know, zero-sum game, we got to kick their butts, force them to back down. The Russians are saying we're viewing this as a crisis designed to engender a positive outcome for everybody. The Russians don't believe that they have to be the ones to win everything. They believe that there needs to be balance. And I think that the Russian approach to this, you know, again, we talk about the Russians seeking to divide NATO. They aren't trying to divide NATO to destroy NATO. That's not a desirable outcome. They're trying to create fractures in NATO that promote the very discussions that Alexander was speaking of. To promote, to empower Macron to intervene diplomatically and politically. To give Germany the power to oppose unilateral American dictates. So this is the Russian approach and this is the Russian endgame. It's a far more mature and balanced endgame than the West thinks. The West thinks that a confrontation has to be a zero-sum outcome that we have to prevail. All the Russians want is stability, time and space. Yes. Can I just add to that? And again, endorsing entirely what Scott says. But again, from my interactions with Russians at every level of Russian society, except the very elite level, which I've never come across. But this is the most historically minded country society that I have ever come across. I mean, even Russians, ordinary people that you meet, have a knowledge of history and an understanding of history that you will not find matched in most Western countries. And this is, I think, very much a product of Russia's historical experiences. And one consequence of that is that the Russians have a very, very clear understanding of the limitations of their own power. They have no intention of getting into a situation of trying to dominate the whole of Europe. I mean, even the exercise of dominating Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union was more than they were really able to afford to do. That isn't part of their end game at all. As I said, they are very focused on their internal problems, which are very real. They want time and space to sort them out. They do not want a situation of hegemony. I mean, they know perfectly well that is beyond their strength. They want peace. And what they see is that the endless eastward expansion of NATO, the endless rhetoric that has been directed at them, the positioning of all these forces in Europe, the talk, the language that people like Zhezhinsky come up with, all that doesn't promise peace. It promises threat. And they have to counter it. So in that respect, their actions are responsive. Alexander, any country that has faced and fought down to major invasions of Napoleon and Hitler will have a sense of history. I think that other countries, not the American leadership, diplomatic and political. If anything, their understanding of Russian history begins around 1991, maybe 1945. But the Russian identity, of course, so strongly wedded to those, especially, of course, the Nazi invasion that they defeated. I need to write a reply about what I said about France. I think you're probably right. That wasn't the venue for France to lay out their differences with the United States. But being a creature of UN headquarters myself, having covered it for 25 years and having been in background of the record briefings with the French ambassador once who was saying that NATO really has no reason to exist and they stir up these tensions. I almost fell off my chair and he was admitting this. And then the next day went into the security counseling and completely blasted Russia. So for me, it was another example of that's the game that's played at the UN. It's not just the game that's played at the UN, Joe. It's the game that's played all the time. I mean, I've encountered this. I mean, you know, I maybe as I'm not at the top of British circles, but I've met people in the British foreign policy bureaucracy. And they will tell you in private things which are completely different to what they will say publicly. I mean, and that's in Britain. If you go, of course, to Germany or France, then the dissonance becomes much greater. What I think needs to happen now is that people need to put that dissonance away and start to talk about what they really think. And I think there's a wide understanding in Europe, in capitals like Paris and Berlin. By the way, in my opinion, there's a wide understanding amongst many people in Poland as well. That may come as a surprise to many people. But there is a wide understanding in Europe that this has gone, this adventure of pushing eastwards has gone as far as it can go. It is now becoming extremely dangerous. The moment has come to pull back. And it's better if you're faced with a situation where you have to retreat, where you retreat in an orderly way by coming to an agreement. I think it was Bismarck who once said the secret of politics is a good treaty with Russia. It seems to me this is a war that only the British and the Americans really want, at least the way they're speaking. It's an Anglo-Saxon break which we saw with France over the submarines of Australia, for example. You can go back to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. You remember Rumsfeld's rhetoric about old Europe and new Europe? And then what was that again? Britain and the United States, of course, in the lead. And then they had some Eastern European countries that were along with them as their coalition of the willing. And of course, states in the Gulf. The end game. Is the end game to get these treaties agreed to by NATO and the United States to end a NATO expansion? What is the end game as you think Russia is defining it now? And how are they going to get it? You said they will get it. The end game is to get a legally binding treaty-like agreement with the United States and NATO that provides Russia with security guarantees that are satisfactory to Russia. How will they get it? They're working to that. In order to get this, two things have to happen. One, the United States needs to be confronted with the reality of the ultimate failure of their position. And the United States needs to be confronted with, for instance, the notion that to continue to push forward aggressively, especially not against Russia, per se, but to compel Europe to come along, will create more harm in Europe than possibly you could get in the outcome. And as soon as the United States realizes that to continue to push forward aggressively will dismantle the very unity that they need to push forward aggressively, they're going to have to reverse course. In order to achieve that, Russia needs to chip away at European unity. And they're doing that right now very successfully. I mean, we're looking at the dramatic collapse of NATO as we speak. There is no NATO unity. There is no NATO unity. I mean, I don't know how many times I have to say it. Turkey is not on board. Bulgaria is not on board. Croatia is not on board. Hungary is not on board. France is not on board. Germany is not on board. Italy is not on board. I mean, there is no NATO unity. Now, if Russia acts precipitously, then of course you could engender NATO unity, which is why Russia will never act precipitously. Russia is winning this game. But the beauty of Russia winning this game is that they're not trying to run up a 45 to nothing sport. What Russia wants at the end of the game is a 7-7 tie. That's it. They just want a tie. They want everybody to take a step back and go, okay, we're done with this nonsense. Let's learn to live in peace and harmony. Russia, and this is a big mistake that's made in the United States. And I hope that Europe is not falling prisoner, although I see in some of the rhetoric, the concept that Vladimir Putin is seeking to reinvent the Soviet Union. The last thing Vladimir Putin and any Russian one is to reinvent the Soviet Union. I think there's unanimous agreement that the Soviet Union was a fundamentally flawed state. And that one of the reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed was because of its inability to sustain itself from a logical legal perspective. The Russians know this, they're honest about what happened. Putin's concern isn't so much the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the abandonment of Russian people in the former Soviet Republic. One of the things he said is that when the Soviet Union collapsed, 80 million people, probably the wrong number, became homeless overnight. Meaning all the Russians that lived in the former Soviet Union, when those republics stopped being part of the Soviet Union, became homeless people. And they were Russians without a home. And he felt that the Soviet Union abandoned them. This is why it's one of the greatest tragedies in modern times. But he doesn't want to reconstitute the Soviet Union. What he wants is to have time and space. I love that I'm stealing that. Thank you very much for putting that in my brain, but it's, it's just so correct. If we recognize that, then we, there's no harm that can come from giving Russia time and space. I mean, only good things can come from it because imagine if you're the Europeans, you know, Macron has sit there and said, you know, we don't, let's back up for a second. The United States has been bullying Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union. We have, we have imposed NATO expansion. And you brought up Joe, you brought up the Gulf War. One of the reasons why, you know, we talked, you know, Donald Russell talked about old Europe. And we were seeking to expand NATO is that we recognize that our imperial ambitions in in the Middle East and counter to the principles of old Europe. But we could bribe New Europe, the Eastern Republics with the NATO membership and the magic, you know, gold coin of the realm, if they supported us, this is why we saw Polish special forces joining in the invasion of Iraq. This is why we saw Ukrainian troops occupying Iraq. It was an embarrassment for Poland and Ukraine that were involved in this, but they did so because they were being bullied by the United States into this. Afghanistan is another example of this. If people say, you know, NATO came to, you know, invoke article five to support the United States, only only to fly aircraft over American territory. That was NATO AWACS that came over and there are some ships operating the Mediterranean. Afghanistan was an article four intervention, not an article five intervention, it wasn't coming to the defense of America, it was to support goals and objectives abroad. NATO bought into what America was saying about nation building about preserving democracy about engineering stability, and they were abandoned by the United States. It was a humiliation for NATO, the way the United States withdrew from Afghanistan. So NATO's Europe is sitting there, they don't trust the United States anymore. They don't trust the United States but they have no other option. It's a model of behavior that requires a military component that no longer exists and therefore Europe is singularly in need of American military power, which no longer exists. So, but Macron has said, it's time for Europe to consider its own military institution. Europe can't afford its own military institution. If that institution is to be built to confront Russia. So Europe knows that the best way forward is to take Russia out of the equation as an adversary of potential military conflict. It's based on building European security structures independent of NATO therefore independent of American control that focus on the things that are important to Europe, namely immigration. That that's a very important thing. You know, and maybe dealing with, you know, some some minority issues that might spring up in the Balkans every now and then but the bottom line is Europe doesn't need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on military institutions that have only one viable utility which is confronting Russia. And I think right now, you know, we're seeing the end of NATO, we're watching NATO default. It doesn't mean that NATO is going to disappear overnight. But NATO has reached, you know, this is the battle of Gettysburg. This is Pickett's charge. This is the high water market. They will never get any further. They have lost. They've been swadering the defense. They're now we're going to see a retrograde. It took Grant many years to defeat Lee after Gettysburg. He was defeated. NATO is defeated now. Now Russia has the job, the difficult task of managing the defeat of NATO in a manner that promotes genuine Russian security and that doesn't happen with a zero sum outcome. It doesn't happen with Russia dancing in the zen zone and spiking. It happens with Russia working with France and Germany and other European nations to manage the decline. I agree with this completely. And can I just say, for me, the whole point of when this whole adventure of putting NATO eastwards really ended was when the Western powers faced with the situation in Ukraine in this crisis this autumn and winter said that they were not going to send troops to Ukraine. Now, the moment they did that, it seems to me, the moment they said in effect that they're not going to fight for Ukraine, the whole idea of Ukrainian membership of NATO basically died. And with Ukrainian membership, the idea of Ukrainian membership dying, it's exactly what Scott said. That was the picket's charge, if I got that right, in Gettysburg. It was the furthest point from this point onwards. The only way is to start retreating. Now you can either retreat in a disorderly way or you can withdraw in an orderly way with your dignity intact and your interests protected. It will require wisdom in Moscow, obviously, and it will. I mean, you know, this isn't something we should take for granted, but you know, I think of balance, I agree with Scott. I think it is there. As I said, the Russians have an understanding of the limits of their power, something which the Americans, by the way, never seem to. But anyway, the Russians certainly do have that. It will also require a lot of wisdom in Europe. And we see the glimmers of it starting to appear. We see people like Macron and, you know, give the man his due. He's taking quite a political risk with what he's doing. So I would also add that the line he's taking plays very well in France and will certainly help him get reelected in April. But, you know, having said that, we see glimmers of that in France. We see glimmers of that in Germany. We now have to consolidate that and move forward and secure that lasting peace in Europe, which is there. It's just over the horizon. What it needs to do, what we need to do is we need to get past this particular crisis, acknowledge what has happened, except that there's this idea that you can, this foolish idea that you can drive Russia out of Europe, break it up even. I mean, I saw some people talking that kind of way, you know, sever Ukraine from it, and this will, you know, secure forever some kind of Western hegemony and, you know, we'll be in, you know, the end of time end of history type thing. But all of that way, put it in a draw, it's obviously failed and make a real and lasting peace. The opportunity to do that is there. A crisis can be both an opportunity and a danger at the moment where all very conscious of the danger, but the opportunity is also there if it is handled with skill and wisdom. And there are glimmers of that skill and wisdom there. Let's see whether they can be built upon. I agree with Scott, by the way, I think that I'm not quite sure how this is going to develop. I'm not sure what kind of game plan the Russians have. But I would have thought that over the course of this year, we're going to see significant movement take place. We're going to start seeing certainly the Europeans start moving more towards some kind of understanding with the Russians. And the Americans will probably follow because they won't want to be left behind. That's my own sense anyway. I think the Russians do have a plan. They've given us some insight. First of all, one thing that we haven't talked about too much today is Ukraine's domestic problem. You know, the United States in Europe can sit there and talk about Ukraine joining NATO, etc. Zelensky's on the cusp of political irrelevancy. He's facing an economic crisis. He's facing political crisis. Indeed, some people believe that he started this Russian confrontation back in the spring to divert attention away from his own real domestic problems. Now, the reason why I bring this up is you notice that one thing Zelensky and every post Yanukovych Ukrainian leader have opposed is the Minsk Accord. One of the reasons why they opposed the Minsk Accord is if you reintegrate the Donbass into the political entity of Ukraine, you significantly weaken Ukrainian nationalism because now you have hundreds of thousands of pro-Russian voters. And you have pro-Russian voters who will bring prosperity and peace with them. And I think this is Russia's goal. Russia doesn't want to create an independent Lugansk in Donbass. Russia wants that to be part of the territorial whole of Ukraine because it enhances Russia's political control over Ukraine. It's not that Russia wants to dominate, but it creates a Ukrainian state that isn't inherently anti-Russian. So I think what we're seeing is that while Russia is working with France and Germany, Russia is also working on and notice that the failure of diplomacy on the part of the United States opened the door for the Normandy format. The one avenue of diplomacy that's functioning today in a viable and productive manner is the Normandy format. And that could lead, if it reaches what it's supposed to, is the conclusion of the Minsk Accord with Ukraine doing that which is necessary to bring Donbass back in. And once that happens, I think that's sort of a game changer internally. Zelensky will not survive. There will be a new Ukrainian leadership that will be far different in its approach towards Russian relations than Zelensky is. And with Georgia, because Georgia is the other part of the equation that we aren't talking too much about, but Georgia is also part of the 2008 Bucharest summit, et cetera. In Peskov, the spokesperson of the Kremlin had a very fascinating interaction with Farid Zakaria a couple of weeks ago. And Peskov doesn't speak words that haven't been carefully vetted and thought out. Peskov's not me to get on TV and just say whatever the hell's in my mind. Peskov, when he speaks, he speaks with the force of Russia. And Peskov, in answering the question about Georgia, and I know Georgia answered because my wife is Georgia. She's from Abkhazia, from Sukhumi. She lost her home. This is a very personal issue for my family. He, Peskov said, when it comes to the issue of Russian peacekeepers withdrawing from Georgia. First of all, the fact that he would even couch it in those terms is a fundamental shift from what Russian peacekeepers withdrawing from Georgia. In order for that to occur, there would have to be fundamental changes of reality on the ground that created a security environment conducive to the withdrawal. What he is saying is that Russia is open to the return of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Georgian sovereign control, if the conditions can be created that may protect Abkhazian and South Ossetian rights and D protects security, which means Georgia would have to commit to not being a member of NATO. I think Russia is moving to take Ukraine and Georgia off the game board, so to speak. So that it's no longer a case of Georgia and Ukraine raising their hands saying we want to be members. It's Georgia and Ukraine saying we're not even thinking about NATO membership anymore. And in doing so, you resolve the need to compel NATO to have an embarrassing retreat from the open door policy. Because I do think that that's a problem. No nation wants to be humiliated. No nation, no organization wants to be seen as being defeated. If there's a way to retreat from this problem, that recognizes the reality that Ukraine and Georgia will never be part of NATO without forcing NATO to lie prostated at the feet of Russia. I think that's good. And I think that's the direction Russia wants to go. They don't want, as I said before, to spike the football in the end zone. That's not what they're looking for. I agree. I just add to that. I mean, again, I read all these articles that appear in the media in Britain and the United States about Ukraine and plucky Ukraine, the way in which Ukrainians are going to fight and, you know, fight to the last man and all this. I wish people didn't write like this, because firstly, it imposes on Ukraine something that Ukrainians themselves absolutely do not want. I mean, you know, we should be very, very careful about talking about another country or encouraging ideas about another country like that. When that country, you know, could face itself in all kinds of problems. But beyond that, it is a Ukraine that does not exist. Anybody who is familiar with the situation in Ukraine now knows how tired and war weary the population of Ukraine has become. Now, I'm not an international affairs academic, but I understand that there is a concept in international affairs studies, which is that, you know, you have a situation in conflict where parties have become incredibly hard positions have hardened. People find it extremely difficult to withdraw to retreat from those hard positions. And in the meantime, because they can't retreat the costs of not retreating mount the problems eventually become unbearable, the costs become unbearable. And suddenly they retreat from those hard line positions and a deal is finally done. And the conflict is ended. I understand that there is a whole literature about this in conflict, in conflict relations and conflict and ending theory. Now, I think Ukraine is exactly in that kind of position at the moment the Ukrainians are still talking about, you know, we can't possibly sign up the Minsk accord if we do our country will disintegrate. We will never be able to accept that. And, you know, we're going to we're going to go on fighting to get Crimea back. We're going to get the Donbass back. We're going to do all of those things. I think with every single passing day, we are in reality getting closer to that point when Ukrainian society, and including by the way the Ukrainian elite as well, say, look, this isn't working. We're not going to join NATO. We're not going to join the EU. We are seeing a situation where our country has become in per capita terms the poorest in Europe. If there's a war, our wealth will, such as it is, will go. If we're oligarchs, and there's a war, we will lose our factories. We will lose all of those things. So at that point, eventually, suddenly, you will see a shift. It can't be done by Zelensky, obviously. I mean, he's over committed to one particular line. It can't be done by Poroshenko. But I think we are very, very close to that position now. And I think that Ukrainians have felt that they've been pushed into a war or there's all this talk about war that we've heard over the last few weeks. We know perfectly well that if there was a war with Russia, whatever the outcome of that, whatever the effect that would have on Russian-Western relations, it would be the end of Ukraine. And why would Ukrainians want that? So I think that it's good that Scott has brought up the issue of Ukraine again. I think we are much closer to a settlement of that conflict now than we have ever been, despite the fact that people are still sticking to these very hardline positions. Because behind them, you can see that the cracks are growing. I think then, Alexander, that there's little chance of an offensive by Kiev in the East. And if there were, how would Russia respond? I mean, Putin would get help from the Duma if he didn't help in some way. How would Russia respond if there were an offensive? And how likely do you think there will be one? First, let's deal with the second. If there was an offensive in Eastern Ukraine, Russia would back the militia, as it's called, in Eastern Ukraine. And if there was a chance of a Ukrainian breakthrough, I think the Russians would respond and respond decisively. I mean, I don't think this is speculation actually. I think if you look at the comments and statements that Russian officials have made, including Lavrov, including to a great extent Putin himself, I think this is absolutely clear. I think it's one of the points where we can be absolutely clear about what the Russian response would be. Now, if you'd asked me this question about Ukraine starting an offensive in Eastern Ukraine three, four, five, six months ago, I decided it's a distinct possibility. What has rather changed my mind is some reporting that's been done in the British media. We've had all kinds of British journalists, Luke Harding, for example, amongst others, but people like, you know, the Financial Times and whatever, and they've been touring the front lines and talking to Ukrainian officers and soldiers. And I have to say, the overwhelming impression I've got, and this is, I'm not a military man, but it was just my impression, is that this is an army that's going nowhere. It's bogged down in trench warfare. It's very demoralized. It's generals even said at one point, if there was a war with Russia, it would all be over in a few hours. They gave themselves, it seems to me, even less prospects than Scott is giving them. And I mean, that's what the generals say. What must the soldiers be thinking? And, you know, they must be hearing what the generals are saying about them. So I just can't really imagine this army in the condition that it is at the moment, even if you give them javelin missiles and all those other things. I cannot see it launching that kind of offensive. Now, I may be completely wrong, as I said, I'm not a military person, I'm not a military analyst. It may be that the Ukrainians have cards up their sleeves that I don't know about. But I have to say, I'm much less concerned about that possibility today than I was a few months ago. I'm in total agreement. I am concerned about, you know, first of all, that when we speak of the Ukrainian military, we have to understand that it's not a regular military. I mean, they had a regular military, but a lot of the, there's many militia type units on the front line. Some of the militias are legitimate local militias, village militias, city militias, regional militias. Some are nationalist militias coming out of western Ukraine, the Azov brigade or battalion and others. Who are, as we speak, launching mortars on a daily basis into the Donbas. So there is already military provocation going on, but Russia manages that by continuing to provide covert support to the pro-Russian forces. Russia has a very good intelligence service. There will be no Ukrainian surprise attack. And so it's just a non-starter. I don't think Russia would ever allow the attack to get off. I think Russia would send signals to the Ukrainian leadership, the generals, whom they are in contact with as we speak and say, stand down or you will all die in the story. And the Ukrainians know this. So no, there won't be, there won't be a fence. I'll bring up one other thing too. This talk about the Ukrainians wanting to close with and destroy the Russians, that they hate them so much and so viscerally. A lot of people miss the story about the Ukrainian soldiers that were in Afghanistan. There was a bunch of them, about 2,000 of them. They weren't regular Ukrainian army. They were contract soldiers that the United States and NATO encouraged to take on contracts to provide security for certain aspects of Afghan government functioning. They were abandoned by NATO in the United States. They were abandoned by NATO in the United States when the Afghan government collapsed. You know who went in and rescued them? The Russian government. The Russian government. The Ukrainian government went to Russia and said, hey, we got some Slavic brothers in trouble here and the Russians went, we got you. We got you covered. And the Russians got them out. That is the reality. These people don't hate each other. There's political difficulties. There's no doubt about that. There's some resentment about Crimea and there's some resentment about Donbas. At the end of the day, given Push comes to shove, I believe that the Ukrainians and the Russians want nothing more to live in peace. These are people that fought together against Nazi Germany. They were part of the same Soviet Union. I mean, we didn't get this extreme shift in Ukrainian nationalism until the very end of the Soviet Union period. In the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s, Ukraine was a viable functioning member of the Soviet Union. It wasn't until the very end that you started to have these Ukrainian government coming in. But I just think that the West has created a straw man that doesn't exist. And they're sitting there talking about this independent Ukraine. First of all, this I might get some pushback. I don't know Alexander, but I don't view Ukraine as a functioning viable nation state to begin with. I think only one third of it was artificially attached at the end of the Second World War and populated by people whose identity is Polish, not Ukrainian, and are deeply resentful. The population of Lvov does not sit there and say, we identify with Kiev. Given the choice, they're aligned with Warsaw tomorrow. The people in the East would align with Moscow tomorrow and the people in the center just want peace. I don't see this concept of a united Ukrainian state, I think is an artificial construct. That doesn't mean that Russia wants to break it up, but I think it does mean that Russia understands the reality of Ukraine far better than we do. This artificial construct in Russia is dealing with reality and the fact that the Russians went in and pulled out 2000 Ukrainian soldiers from Afghanistan when they were abandoned by NATO in the United States resonates amongst Ukrainians far more than we in the West understand. The thing to understand about Ukrainians and Russians, and this is at the official level and at every level, is that they are in continuous communications with each other to a degree that is not, I think, understood. So, for example, again, Scott's point about Ukrainian offensive, the Russians would certainly get wind of it, and there are lines of communication all the time between Russian official Russians and official Ukrainians. They may be completely informal, but they talk to each other, they meet in places, they meet in Switzerland, they meet in all kinds of places. This is not two separate worlds. It's one world in which there has been a massive quarrel. People misunderstand the dynamic of this. Now, is Ukraine viable as a state? I think it would have been viable as a state if it had been left alone. If it hadn't been subjected to a tug of war, I think it could have clanked along reasonably well. It has many, many, many problems, partly because it is not a coherent entity. Because it's not a coherent entity, governments have tended to be weak. That has allowed very powerful oligarchs and those kind of things to emerge. It's got those problems of political control, which strong governments and strong entities don't have, over mighty subjects, as we call them in Britain. But, you know, potentially, it could have worked. It cannot work whilst it is subjected to the kind of stresses that it has been subjected to over the last 20 years. I mean, this attempt to sort of pull it away, yank it away from Russia, with which it is both geographically extremely close and culturally and economically very tightly integrated. And when we say culturally integrated, it's important to understand that Ukrainians and Russians are heavily intermarried, lots of people in Russia have family in Ukraine, lots of people in Ukraine have family in Russia. People have moved backwards and forwards across the border continuously. Odessa, which is the one Ukrainian city, I know reasonably well, feels itself to be profoundly Russian. So, I mean, it's a misunderstanding to think of these two as natural enemies. And it has come back to the point. I mean, it's people have created a Ukraine, which you read about in, you know, the Washington Post or wherever, which to a great extent doesn't exist. They have a national extremist problem. I mean, the Bandera worshipers clearly played a role in the coup. They've never had any kind of support electorally, but that's got to be an issue that would have to be resolved. It was absolutely does. And of course, they do exist. But of course, the always to remember about that is that there is a very, very strong reaction against those kind of people in Ukraine itself. One of the reasons why, you know, there were the uprisings and they were uprisings in, you know, Eastern and Southern Ukraine in 2014, not in places like Odessa and Kharkov and wherever. What was in Donbass was because people in that part of Ukraine didn't want to have, you know, were very, very alarmed at seeing these sort of people, these sort of people, right sector Bandera types, all those sorts of people start to float to the surface in Kiev and play such an instrumental role in taking power in Ukraine at that time. Definitely, there is a problem that that problem does exist. And part of the reason is quite virulent. However, is because it's the people who are who drive it a sense in a way, their own weakness. They know that this they're not representative of larger Ukrainian society, and that their power at the moment is basically leveraged on a very artificial set of circumstances, which could change very radically. If things were to sort themselves out. So coming back to the point that Scott was making about, you know, an hour's old battalion might want to start a war. It's not just because these people are fervently anti Russian that they might want to start a war. It is because they know perfectly well that in a piece, a peaceful environment, their influence, their leverage over Ukrainian politics would disappear. And the fact that they are actually quite in a marginal force in any normally functioning Ukraine. That would that would come to the surface very quickly. There is, of course, also, and this has to be addressed to this fundamental sectional difference. Western Ukraine is profoundly different from Eastern Ukraine. It's very different from central Ukraine. Western Ukraine has a long history of deep resentment about the fact the way it was sovietized, the fact that it was taken over by Stalin, the way in which the Ukrainian Catholic Church, the Unite Church was persecuted by the Soviets. So that there are very strong real grievances there, which can, which could be addressed and can be addressed. And if they are, I'm sure, again, that we will see some of these ultra radical people start to everway. Russians are very well aware of problems of Western Ukraine. I certainly do not think that they want to go there. So, I mean, there are these problems in Ukraine, but that doesn't mean, as I said, it is the kind of country that people in the West are making making out that it is. As I hear silence from Scott, I think this might be a great opportunity to thank both of you for an extraordinary conversation. We cover a lot of ground, maybe as much as we can in one day. So I thank Alexander in London and Scott in the upstate New York for joining us on CN Live. We'll be back to this subject, obviously, and maybe we'll have both of you on again. So, for CN Live, this is your lawyer signing out. Until next time, goodbye. If you are a consumer of independent news, then the first place you should be going to is consortium news and please do try to support them when you can. 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