 Welcome to this episode of News Clicks Mapping Forged Lines. In this show, we look at key geopolitical developments and their impact across the world. Today, we'll be talking about the impeachment of Donald Trump, the proceedings that are happening right now, and its implications on the politics of the region where Russia and Ukraine are located. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Purghais. Hello, Prabir. Prabir, so this week is a key week for the impeachment proceedings. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee is going to see, to draw up the articles of impeachment. First of all, they're going to see if there is a case for impeachment in the first place. And we'll get to that a bit later. But before that, a lot of the narrative that was going on during the impeachment proceedings, the hearing of the witnesses, was about how the so-called quid pro quo efforts of Trump ended up weakening a crucial ally that was Ukraine, which was a bulwark of, say, force against Russian aggression. And that was the whole narrative that was being battled. So could we talk a bit about what exactly is the kind of so-called bulwark that Ukraine is? And what is the situation there? You know, first is we don't really understand the United States politics sitting from outside, because we seem to have originally seen the Republicans as a party of war, and the only people therefore who could do peace were the Republicans, because anything the Democrats would do would then be really targeted as surrender to the Russians, to the Chinese, to the Reds and so on. From that, we now seem to see Democrats as a party of war, which is now saying there shouldn't be no peace with Russia, and everything should be in the precinct from the prism of Russia subverting archie allies, and Ukraine is being now talked about. Now interestingly enough, Ukraine is not officially the American ally. In fact, Ukraine was positioned in between the two blocks for quite some time, and Yanukovych was trying to play one against the other and preserve a certain degree of mobility or flexibility of the Ukrainian government, partly because Ukraine is next door to Russia. There is a huge section of its population who speaks Russian or are ethnically Russians. A lot of its economy is tied up to Russia. It has to sell or used to sell to Russia, and therefore its natural trading partner was Russia. As against this, trying to tie up to the West has the problems that it would mean that what Ukraine would supply would therefore be only raw materials or its people, and that was not going to give Ukraine as good a terms of integration or trade as the trade with Russia was. Therefore, Yanukovych was trying to play both sides, but all of it collapsed because as you know the Maidan revolt which was backed by various forces including obviously NATO, and you had US senior government officials of the United States going and even talking to the Maidan people at the end of which Yanukovych ran away essentially and Poroshenko came into power. Now what is forgotten is there is a larger picture here of NATO, which when the negotiations had taken place over Germany was supposed to stop at the German borders. This was the assurance given to Gorbachev during that time that if you let Germany reunify, then NATO's eastward march would not take place and stop in Germany. Not only didn't it stop, but it advanced in the Baltics, it advanced with Poland, it advanced with Romania and now the next one was Ukraine. Now it is really ringing in whole of Russia with NATO countries and also mounting various missile brigades over there which can hit Russia including strategic missiles. All of this is called anti-ballistic missiles, but as you know the difference between ballistic missiles and anti-ballistic missiles are not that significant, it can be turned one to the other quite easily. So all of this is what Russia was reacting to and this is in a longer sense term is a huge issue for Europe because it means Russia should be ringed in the battle over dominance of Europe only waged between really the United States by its proxies and Western Europe essentially would not be able to integrate in the Eurasian land mass which is really Russia and China, the big markets and lower down with India, but they would be tied up to the United States. This is a larger geo-strategic picture when you talk about Ukraine and it's also interesting to see actually whenever Ukraine ceasefire has been announced or has been negotiated it has been with the European countries and Russia along with the Ukrainian forces and unfortunately most of those agreements have remained dead on water because the United States didn't back them at all, in fact it backed the other side Zelensky came into power with the argument that we will seek peace because one part of Ukraine which is also ethnically Russian has decided that it doesn't want to be part of what the Maidan regime brought out which was old-fashioned Nazis and they had been a part of Hitler's armies, they had been a part of the programs over there against the Jews and they essentially were the ones and there are again forces which have been openly talked about as fascist forces by European countries and by even the United States. So those are the forces who had dominated the Ukrainian government and wanted a fight with first the eastern part of Ukraine which was fighting to keep its autonomy and wanted to succeed virtually which Russians have backed politically but not for cessation. So they wanted more autonomous eastern Ukraine and not a Eastern Europe which tries to become a part of Russia so that Russians have never supported but effectively what has happened is any attempt to reach peace has been sabotaged Zelensky again came on the platform that he wanted to settle the issue with eastern Ukraine and also reach some agreement with Russia and try for a peace with Ukraine. This seems to be anathema to the section of the Democratic Party who have talked about Trump and Ukraine's tie up and the fact that Trump tried to pressurize Zelensky to investigate Biden. Now we have discussed this earlier the question is Trump seems to have acted crudely presidents of United States of course do all of these things but do they do it that openly do they pick up a phone and call the president of another country do this or do that those questions will leave to the US Senate and the US Congress the point that I am making is the issue if you take Ukraine and Russia then obviously this is a much more a matter of Europe and this is the fact that we are seeing the Democratic Party claim that Trump is some way or the other a stooge of Putin, a stooge of A, a stooge of B and is trying to do various things actually exposes that this country today the United States cannot cannot really sign any agreement because you one side signs agreement other side pulls out we saw Trump pulling out pulling out of the Iran agreement and now we see Ukraine whatever they do whichever part come party comes into power if they want to force to settle Ukraine then they will get Iran if they settle Iran then they will get Ukraine this seems to be the kind of policies each party is playing with the other and the net result is we really have a situation where no piece is possible anywhere in the world because the United States domestic squabbles will see to it whether it's Iran or it's Ukraine a piece doesn't take place right and what you're also seeing is that the Democratic Party in its as part of its campaign to discredit and definitely if possible try to impeach Trump is actually legitimizing the understanding that the US by default is a country which has the right to interfere anywhere in the world because among other things Joe Biden openly went on record to say how most how he had helped overthrow that government and so this is a one aspect that's never really being questioned in these hearings at all because even those career diplomats who testified during the hearings and spoke out against Trump were widely celebrated but the underlying underlying aspect that they all supported we are supposed to be the global policeman has not been questioned at all that's the interesting part because all of them are talking about that opening a investigations against what Biden and his son were doing in Ukraine is somehow a treasonous right exactly affair but openly subverting Ukraine's democracy Ukraine's limited shall we say democratic elections that's entirely legit and this is also part of what the US has done if you remember there was a time magazine year year cover which celebrated that the United States won the election for Yeltsin okay nobody contests that nobody says well you know that wasn't supposed to be done the you are United States has openly militarily invaded I think in the last 50 years more than 90 countries nobody questions that in the United States till the body bags come home which it did in Vietnam otherwise it's perfectly okay as long as it is drones it is other instruments of war not directly people the United States losing its soldiers so this is one part of it but you know if you take the question of Ukraine itself there is also enough grounds to show that the Democrats have been involved with Ukraine or Ukrainians in the US elections in 2016 elections if you argue that Trump was being helped by the Russians again as we have said earlier also the click farm which we're trying to get clicks we're trying to get clicks on both sides the fact they got more clicks from Trump's it's simply the fact that Trump's supporters are probably more active in some such click bait operations and they're more prey to fake news than other parties are but if you leave that out there were clear Ukrainian fingerprints against Trump because they thought that the Trump could mean some re-approach with Russia and this is not in the interest of the Poroshenko regime at that time and they were trying to help it's argued there is Chappul Chalupa who was a part of the Democratic National Committee's effort she was a contractor there there's an argument that CrowdStrike is a ethnic Ukrainian who runs that company though a US citizen and somehow the crowdstrike fingered the Russians without much evidence and even today that those servers of the Democratic National Committee has never been forensically examined by the US intelligence agencies though they have given reports regarding the that but based purely appears on the CrowdStrike report so all of this would seem to indicate that intervention in US elections is all right as long as it happens to see that the Russians are the main enemy if there is any attempt to have a re-approach even which is the interest of the United States itself that should be endured and this is really a part of what I would say is the continuous dominance of the war lobby in the United States and what somebody has called the never-ending wars which the US today sees it as this pre primary economic activity war industry of different kinds is what really drives the US economy and therefore they can ever let go of the of the wars and I think one of the articles that I saw recently written by an ex-army officer is that as the wars become against smaller and smaller countries that the US wages the number of medals the generals wear on their chest seems to be growing now apparently the generals have seven rows of medals on their chest while in the after the second world the world what they had only three so you can see that there is a war industry and there is a war veteran industry which is decided by how many medals you get and that is what you wear to the TV stations and that determines also the amount of money you get as a consultant and as a media commentator and finally to look at the impact of all this inside the United States itself like you mentioned is an extremely complicated process and the Democrats themselves seem to be in a bit of a fix there is one side arguing against doing any of these proceedings there's one side calling for a censure motion which would basically end the impeachment process there and there's definitely a hard line side which wants to go ahead with the impeachment process nonetheless so do you think that if there is this process does go ahead there is any possibility of Trump actually being affected by any of these proceedings or is he actually likely to benefit you know one thing is the crystal ball gazing for predicting elections a very very risky exercise if I look at the crystal ball I have not been a very successful one it came to Indian elections so why should I be better off on the American the United States elections I would say the core base of Trump does not seem to be affected by this by all the figures that we see of the polls that are taken right now regarding which section approves or doesn't approve of Trump interestingly enough Trump's base does not seem to have shifted so the elections then boil down to what is called also the Electoral College and that does not correlate with the population because you know Hillary won three million more votes in Trump did except Trump won the Electoral College so as long as you have the Electoral College skewed skewed towards those states which have less people but comparatively more representation the Electoral College I think Trump seems to be safe there are three or four states which are called the swing states but that would depend on who the Democrats put up if they put up somebody like Biden somebody like now the guy who was thrown his hat in the ring the former mayor Michael Bloomberg Bloomberg the five former mayor of New York and a billionaire is going to throw his billions into the ring of course Trump is a failed billionaire because his real estate business actually always made losses and he's the most the richest bankrupt American ever probably but if you take blim Bloomberg or Biden I don't think Trump would really face a problem if it came against somebody who also can turn against him the base which is affected by all that's happening in the United States like Bernie Sanders then I think you could have a different kind of election but I look looking at the fact the Democratic National Committee is in really in hawk to the Clinton Clinton as machinery I don't think there is any chance of there being able to get the nomination so you are looking at a weak opposition finally to Trump and I don't think that with the Senate majority that Trump has there is any chance of an impeachment finally going going through so what you are seeing is a shift from the real policies that today be devil United States how to shore up its fully flagging infrastructure it's really if you see go to United States you will see that the air for instance the airport the roads all of this really look relatively a third world shall we say that compared to what you see in China for example so I think this is the crisis that the US all the political parties want not to face and the result therefore is talking about how to make America great again and how to find a few more wars Trump is not withdrawn from our war he said more soldiers to Syria he wants a war with Iran he has done shadowboxing with North Korea but almost wanted to war at one point so it's not that there has been any change in Trump's war policies except that he wants to find different sort of countries than what the Democrats want to fight so I think both sides really are looking at policies to distract attention of the people from the real issues and as long as that continues if a Biden wins a Trump wins or a Bloomberg wins I don't think it's going to make a difference to rest of the world we are still going to see the United States wage war against the the people of the world and against the planet itself if we look at climate change to other things that are happening thank you for being that's all we have time for today keep watching news click