Summary
➡ The speaker, a Cold War veteran, criticizes Washington’s aggressive stance towards Russia, which he believes is unnecessary and dangerous. He suggests that the U.S. is provoking Russia to justify its actions and gain public support. The speaker also discusses Russia’s patient response to U.S. provocations, including accepting the American coup in Ukraine and the buildup of the Ukrainian army. He concludes by suggesting that the U.S. is trying to sour relations with Russia to the point where they cannot be repaired, in the hope that the Russian people will eventually turn against their government.
➡ The text discusses the political tensions involving the U.S., Russia, and Iran, and speculates on Trump’s potential strategies. It suggests that Trump might use his influence to motivate Americans to support a war with Iran, which could benefit Israel and reestablish U.S. authority in the Middle East. The text also discusses the possibility of NATO falling apart due to Trump’s lack of support and the rise of parties opposed to globalism. Lastly, it explores Putin’s strategy in Ukraine, suggesting he has avoided taking over to not confirm Western propaganda about rebuilding the Soviet empire.
➡ The text discusses the geopolitical tensions involving Russia, the U.S., and the Middle East. It highlights the limitations on missile range and the potential for escalation in conflicts. The text also explores the different motivations behind the U.S.’s involvement in Ukraine and the Middle East, with Ukraine being about asserting American dominance and the Middle East about Israel’s expansion and control over resources. The potential for these conflicts to escalate into nuclear war is also discussed, with the outcome depending on various factors, including Washington’s decisions and the reactions of other nations.
➡ The situation between the U.S., Israel, Iran, and Russia is tense due to Iran’s increased uranium enrichment and potential for a nuclear strike. Russia’s S400 air defense system in Iran makes an air attack risky, suggesting a ground attack may be necessary. However, the U.S. military’s morale and strategic advantages have declined, making an attack difficult. Additionally, the U.S. dollar’s status as the world reserve currency is threatened, which could lead to economic instability.
➡ The text discusses the potential downfall of the U.S. dollar due to the country’s aggressive foreign policies and sanctions, which are pushing other nations away from using the dollar as a reserve currency. It also touches on the U.S.’s vested interest in preventing Europe from advancing financially. The text suggests that the U.S. has control over European leaders and media, but notes that resistance is growing in countries like Germany. The discussion ends with concerns about escalating risks and the need for accurate information in today’s world.
➡ Visit canadianpreparedness.com to buy top-notch survival equipment at great prices. Use the code ‘preppinggear’ to get a 10% discount. Remember, being prepared is key to thriving in tough situations. Stay safe.
Transcript
In the war games, we lose every time. You have to realize that this is extremely risky. You are playing with Armageddon. World War Three is already happening. This is a house of cards, and it is in the process of collapsing right now. You’re going to see an economic crash the likes of which we’ve never. Hi, folks. Canadian prepper here today on the channel, I have Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, who served as the US Assistant Secretary of the treasury under Ronald Reagan. He worked for the center of Strategic and International Studies, served on corporate boards, and is also a former Wall Street Journal editor, as well as author of a number of books and various articles.
He’s very prolific in terms of his commentary on geopolitical events. And it’s a pleasure to have you on today, sir. Well, thank you very much. I just want to give you the floor to talk about and share your perspective on what’s happening with Ukraine, Russia, Naito, and what we can expect from the Trump administration. Maybe we could start there. Well, we don’t yet have a Trump administration. True. And it’s not clear we’ll get one, since so many of his appointments are unacceptable to the ruling establishment. His Attorney General nominee has already been eliminated, and I suspect Robert Kennedy will face a similar challenge.
And the tools are Gabbard. Interesting. And, of course, Trump’s foreign affairs military departments, they’re, for the most part, warmongers allied with Israel against Iran. So it’d be difficult in the Middle east for Trump to achieve any restraint on Israel, and therefore, getting that situation solved will be difficult. What I would begin with is to point out the seriousness of the current situation. I don’t know if anyone has said it or acknowledged it, but the United States last Sunday declared war on Russia and carried in this declaration NATO, which means the entirety of Europe and Canada. This declaration of war was declared when Washington gave a green light to the use of U.S.
missiles fired from uranium territory by American and NATO personnel into Russia and they made this decision in the face of the strong statement by the Russian government that any such action means the United States is at war with Russia. So Washington knew what it was doing when it did it. When it did it. So we see now the United States made a decision to go to war with Russia. This is especially puzzling in view of not only the dire warning from the Russian government, but from the recent reconstruction of Russian war doctrine, which now permits the use of nuclear weapons against the west in the event that any country allied with the west that launches an attack on Russia can expect retaliation along with the entirety of the Western world.
So given that the Russian government has also said that they know for a fact that the Ukrainians lack the capability of firing and targeting these missiles into Russia, that the responsibility rests entirely on Washington and NATO. So when you see the Washington make a decision to go to war despite these obvious warnings and despite the enormous risk, you’re looking at a level of irresponsibility that suggests insanity. It looks as if the United States government is insane. And when you see that this is egged on by the British Prime Minister Starmer, and you come to the conclusion that the British government is also insane, and you wonder about the people who elect governments that are so irresponsible they will go, they will take a country to nuclear war.
Over what? Over Ukraine. The British government has zero interest in anything that happens in Ukraine. The only interest the United States has is that it makes Ukraine sell to agribusiness and to blackrock the farmland in exchange for the weapons the United States gives them. So the United States is in the position of acquiring the ownership of Ukrainian farmland. But this is not a reason to risk a nuclear war. Well, do you think that they think Putin is bluffing like it? Clearly they. They must, because I know you say they’re insane, but I mean, I can’t help but think they got to have some kind of plan.
They must have war game. This. The Pentagon must have thought this through. I mean, we can talk about Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan’s statements that he made yesterday. Did you hear that? Yes. So he basically is saying that they’re ready to fight a limited nuclear war with Russia and they’ll still have nukes left to spare, essentially. So what do you make of this? Because is it possible to probe a little deeper with respect to this insanity hypothesis? Well, first of all, the Rear Admiral that made this irresponsible statement has violated the rules that govern the military. The military is not allowed to make policy statements.
He should instantly be removed along with his commander. Because the Russians have taken this statement by this utterly stupid rear admiral as a policy statement. And so they see this as the United States preparing for nuclear war with Russia. Well, they have been suspecting this for some time and now some totally stupid rear admiral confirms it. Well, this makes the risk now higher than ever. The only thing that can restore this type of situation is that this admiral is instantly removed and that serious reprimands are handed out. Because if you’ve got your military convincing a powerful enemy that can wipe you off the face of the earth that they’re prepared to go to a nuclear war with you, this is worse than insanity.
Now you ask, do they believe Putin or they think he’s bluffing? I don’t know. They have reason to believe he’s bluffing because as many of the leaders in the west and the neoconservatives in the United States have said, and we do not have to worry about Putin, he never does anything. Well, what they are overlooking is that Putin is not looking for an excuse to go to war. He doesn’t want war. So he is going to overlook as much as he can. But as the provocations continually to worsen, at some point he can’t overlook them. His response to the missiles being fired into Russia, of course the missiles had no effect.
They were all intercepted. It may well be that Putin has come to the conclusion that the American weapons are essentially useless and can’t harm Russia and therefore he shouldn’t be worried about them. That’s one possibility. But what he actually did was in reply to the missiles the United States launched into Russia, he gave a demonstration of a new Russian missile, an intermediate range cruise missile that travels about 10 times the speed of sound, that it is a very high level hypersonic missile that was designed to carry nuclear weapons and he used one with conventional weapons to completely obliterate Ukrainian war facility.
And he said, we just wanted you to know we have these, they’re deployed and if you persist in these attacks on Russia, very bad things are going to happen to you. Well, it would be a mistake at this point to think he’s bluffing. I think the Russians and Putin have absorbed about all of the abuse they can absorb. It’s reaching the point where to maintain the confidence of the Russian people in the government, they have to quit accepting provocations. So if you look at it that way and you add to it irresponsibility of this American rear admiral in making a policy statement that the Russians understand as a policy statement, they don’t understand that this is some idiot shooting off his mouth.
Of course the United States is not prepared for nuclear war. Is nowhere near close to prepared. They could not possibly expect to do well in such a war. But the Russians don’t necessarily know that. And they say, oh my God, they actually are getting ready for this. Well, that’s kind of a hair trigger. And so you ask yourself what is wrong with Western leadership that they produce hair triggers with nuclear war? This is insane. It certainly seems like they’re a way to rationalize it. Look, you’re not old enough to have lived through the core, or at least you don’t look it.
Maybe born, you know, in the late phases of it. Yeah, born then. Yeah. I professionally lived through it. We never took anything like these risks. Anyone who had done it would have been instantly rebuked, fired, career ruins. No one ever called the Russian, the Soviet leadership names. Yeah, I mean, it would be unthinkable to shoot missiles into Russia during that period of time. Be unthinkable. And anyone who fought it or said it, that’d be the end of their career. I know this. I was very heavily involved in the Cold War. I was a trustee of the Committee on the Present Danger.
I was appointed by President Reagan to a secret presidential committee to assess the CIA’s opposition to Reagan ending the Cold War. My colleagues at the center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University were Henry Kissinger Brzezinski, James R. Schlesinger. The sort of behavior we have seen from Washington for the last 17 years toward Russia is inexplicable. They have created an enemy that they have no reason to have and they have convinced the enemy that we’re out to destroy them. It seems like they’re trying to provoke a response. I don’t think so. I don’t think so.
What good is. What good do they get out of provoking a response? Well, it seems like they might have more justification then for continuing and build more public support for whatever it is they’re trying to do there in the first place. Well, my view is the response would put an end to the West. So let’s maybe talk about that. It’s an act of suicide to convince a military power as strong as Russia that you’re out to get them. It’s an act of suicide. And this requires stupid people, insane people. There’s no other explanation. So what does that.
Would you go up to Mike Tyson and start insulting. Oh, thanks. Even at 58, I wouldn’t mess with that guy. No. What do you Think the crossing of that red line, do you think it’s going to be the further shooting of missiles? And what do you think his response is going to be? Be next, like what is the next rung of the escalation ladder at this point? I think that Putin will ignore as much as he possibly can because unlike Washington, he understands what nuclear war means. There won’t be any Russian admiral or general that stands up and says we’re ready for nuclear war with Russia and we’ll have some missiles left over, over, I mean, with America and we’ll have.
None of them would speak this way. There’s nothing Russia has done that’s been provocative. Nothing. They’ve accepted provocations. They accepted the American coup in Ukraine which overthrew a government they lived with, worked with and imposed an anti Russian government. They accepted the eight year American European deception of them about the Minsk agreement. They accepted the eight year buildup by the Americans of the Ukrainian army. They accepted during those eight years the assaults by the Ukrainians own the Donbas Russians. They accepted the assault on the Crimean bridge. They’ve accepted all the insults, the sanctions, for example, the seizure of their consulate embassies in San Francisco and their assets.
They’ve accepted all of the weapons systems sent by Washington and NATO to Ukraine. Every one of these weapons systems the west said would never be sent. They were all sent one after the other. They’ve accepted the deaths of their soldiers that these weapons systems have have caused. They’ve accepted the prolongation of their intervention in Donbass that these weapon systems have caused. And now they have accepted the first missile strike, though they did give a demonstration of what awaits. So clearly the Russians aren’t looking for war. Well, who’s looking for war? Clearly Washington and NATO. Why? Because they keep doing these provocative things, one after the other after the other.
Well, to repeat myself, Putin doesn’t want war. He doesn’t need it. There’s no interest in it. He’s nothing to gain by. He’s basically a humanitarian. He doesn’t like people being killed. That’s the reason he did not invade Ukraine. He entered. Don boss. Yeah, some people. Don boss at the request of the two independent republics and his special military operation was limited to clearing the Ukrainians out of Donbas. What is Donbas? It’s the western and southern part of Ukraine that was formerly part of Russia, but which was attached to Ukraine by Soviet leaders for administrative and political reasons.
So this population in Donbas, this eastern, southern, they are not Ukrainians. They’re Russians. They’re Russians who were picked up by Soviet leaders and placed in the Soviet province of Ukraine. It didn’t make any difference at the time because all of it was the Soviet Union. It mattered only when the United States broke up the Soviet Union and started making independent countries out of former Soviet provinces. Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, the entirety of Central Asia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, all of these were provinces like states of the Soviet Union. Well, when they broke off Ukraine sits, Khrushchev had attached Crimea to Ukraine.
Now Crimea has been part of Russia since 1700. The Russians took it from the Turks, the Mongols. That’s where the Russian Black Sea base is. So the Russians were given a 50 year lease. Well, when the Americans overthrew the Ukraine government and installed their agent, the fate of the Russian Black Sea base was up in the air. And the population in Crimea voted overwhelmingly to be returned to Russia. So did Don Bosco. Now, Putin took Crimea back into Russia and refused Donbas. And this was a fatal mistake because if he had taken donbas back in 2014, there would have been no Ukrainian conflict because nobody was going to directly attack Russia.
But he was trying to avoid the Western propaganda that he was going to rebuild the Soviet empire. And he said, well, you know, if I take them back, Washington will say I’m recreating the Soviet empire. So he came up with the Minsk agreement. And the Minsk agreement which he came up with in 2014, left Don Bosc in Ukraine, but gave Don Bosc some autonomy. They would have their own police, their own courts, so they could not be persecuted by the Ukrainians. Well, he got the Donbas republics to agree. He got Ukraine to agree. France and Germany were supposed to be the enforcers of the agreement.
And as later both the Chancellor of Germany and the President of France said, we used it to deceive Putin while the Americans built the Ukrainian army. So you can’t find anywhere in this story any Russian responsibility for this crisis. They’ve done nothing. They had to protect the Russian populations that were part of Russia that had been stuck in to Ukraine when Russia and Ukraine were the same country. So then it begs the question, what do they hope to accomplish then with these long range strikes? If Russia is claiming that, or it appears as though, I mean the storm shadows, the ATACMs are limited, so they can only inflict, at least in theory, a minimal amount of damage.
Perhaps the capabilities of these weapon systems is far beyond what Ukrainian drones are able to accomplish. But if Putin is just in this game of waiting for inauguration day, was it a good decision then? To use this weapon, because obviously, that’s like admitting that whatever Beto is doing right now is having some noticeable effect. That’s a relevant question. I can answer it. They’re hoping to poison the relationship so badly that Trump can’t repair it. You have to remember, remember what they did to Trump in 2016. He gets elected. So what does Obama do in the two and a half months between election and inauguration? He seizes the Russian consulates in San Francisco.
This is a highly illegal and improper act that violates all diplomatic protocol in order to poison the relationship. What else does he do? He has a CIA director, John Brennan. He has the Department of Justice, the FBI concoct a Russiagate hoax that made it impossible for Trump to normalize relations. So here we see the same thing. The Biden regime is poisoning the relationship as bad as they can, so Trump can’t repair it. Why do they want the relationship unrepairable? Because the neoconservatives who are behind this, their plan, and they believe in this, is that if they can keep the war going long enough, the Russian people will turn against it the way the Americans turned against the Vietnam War and overthrow Putin.
So the game plan behind all this is a neoconservative notion that this is somehow a drain on Russia, it’s inconsistent with the Russian population willing to endure it forever, and that at some point, the pressures will come on Putin and he will have to step down or be removed, in which case he’s more likely to be replaced by somebody much fiercer. Right, but the neoconservatives, I’m not saying they’re correct in their expectation, but this is what they think. And so. And of course, all of this is egged on by the American military security complex because it involves money and power.
They make a lot of money out of the weapons, and of course, they get a lot of power out of running the show. So if you take the neoconservative notion that eventually the Russian people turn against it, this is why they’re so desperate to keep the war going, and that this determination to keep the war going, it gets support from the military security complex because of money and power. So that’s the story. And if you look at it, you see that these neoconservatives and this military security complex, they’re insensitive to human life. The. It’s their agenda, their money.
That’s all that counts. And I think that’s the reason the risks are taken. They discount them. What else do you think they might do if this plan to put pressure with long range missiles. Are they just going to keep doing this or do you think they have some other provocation plan? I think if Trump gets in, the provocations will stop. You know, he’s been making these short speeches, picking out various groups to present their harmful presence and agenda to the American people. He needs to do that on the neoconservatives. He’s got to define them as warmongers who are dangerous to us and to the world.
Well, why do you think he hasn’t done that yet? Because he came out the other day and he gave his fairly standard, you know, I’m the only one who can stop World War Three speech. But he hasn’t commented on the long range strike issue yet or this new recent round of escalations, this seminal moment with the use of the hypersonic weapon. Yes. I don’t know. I don’t know. I assume that if he’s responsible, if he’s a responsible person, that he has gotten in contact with Putin or at least attempted to get in contact to give reassurances that once he’s in office, this policy stops.
You recently wrote an article that I cited in a video where you talked about how you thought that it was odd that the deep state permitted, quote, unquote, Trump to win and that there might be some ulterior motives with him perhaps being the military expansionist president. Can you maybe expound on that article and that line of thinking? Because I thought that was a very novel take on things that I hadn’t heard before. Yes, that applies to the situation in the Middle east more than Ukraine. And of course, there’s a huge support for Israel in the United States, for Israel’s position.
And Iran is seen to be the obstacle to Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. Iran is the supplier of the Hezbollah militia that has kept Israel from conquering Lebanon. Israel’s been trying for years and years and years and twice were defeated by the Hezbollah militia and sent fleeing for their lives. The wanted Israeli army was simply run off the battlefield twice by a militia without an air force, without tanks. So Iran is held to be responsible. And Iran, of course, has been erroneously connected with 9, 11. Iran has been painted as some sort of a monster or some sort of a great enemy of America ever since the Shah was overthrown.
The Shah was our puppet. We used to control oil and waterways. And when we lost that control of oil and waterways, Iran simply became a huge enemy, a bugaboo that has been demonized ever since. So this is the attitude of people that Trump has appointed, like his secretary of defense, his national security advisor, his ambassador to the UN his ambassador to Israel, his Mideast envoy. These are all people in that mindset. Well, the bet I think of the American establishment was, you know, we want this war with Iran to clear things up for Israel. Moreover, if we get rid of Iran, we can reestablish our authority over the Middle east, over the oil, over the waterways.
But Camilla, she hasn’t got it. She can’t motivate Americans to join up and go fight Iran for Israel. She can’t do it. She hasn’t. But Trump has all these patriots behind him. Trump can do it. So let’s let him win and let’s do everything we can to see how that he staffed up with people that will go in this direction. Well, it looks like that’s what happened. You would think if Trump is going to. Now, first of all, let me say you can. There are two ways you can look at this. You can say, well, you know, Trump is the kind of guy who thinks if you present tremendous force, the opponent is more likely to compromise, to give up, on the other hand.
But I think that would be a misreading of Russia, China and Iran. I don’t think that will work. But on the other hand, if he really wants to end the situation, you would think he would have at least some of his appointees who were open to the viewpoint of the opponent, pull the other side and work toward finding common ground. But he’s got nobody committed to finding common ground. They’re all committed to prevailing. So now this was, this was my speculation. We’ll see how it unfolds. Now, it could well be that the situation in Europe is such that the Europeans say, you know, we’re not into this.
Nuclear war is not something we banked on in this attack on Russia, in this effort to discredit Putin, and because we’ll be the victims. And this not so you could see NATO crumble. I mean, it’s entirely possible already. You know, you’ve got the Hungarian Viktor Orban, and he’s saying, you know, that the Americans are crazy and that you better pay attention to what Putin’s saying and we’re not going to be here. Well, this could spread. We know there’s widespread disapproval of the German people. The German government, the same in France, that the French president is in a minority position.
His party, he rules through coalition. The same in Germany. The German government actually collapsed the other week. It’s not quite clear what government they got There’s a rise of parties that are hostile to globalism, that are hostile to the European Union, who want their own ethnic country. And these are the ones that are rising, not the ones that support globalism, the European Union, NATO. We see already what looks like regrets on the part of the Swedish government in joining NATO because the other day they warned the people to prepare for war, including nuclear war. Well, this is an indication that they don’t feel secure in this situation.
They had nothing to gain by joining NATO. All they did is expose themselves to retaliation for NATO actions. So it’s possible NATO could fall apart, particularly as Trump doesn’t support it. Trump hasn’t, you know, he says we have to rethink NATO. What’s it doing? What’s it for? And we see the effort of Washington to turn NATO into a global thing. Not the North American Defense Organization, but they’re trying to move it into Central Asia, they’re trying to move it into the Far East, Taiwan, Philippines, China. You know, in other words, they’re trying to turn it into some form of American Legion that they use around the world.
And whereas its whole function was to protect Europe from the Soviet Union, which is gone. So I’m long winded. But, you know, the media doesn’t give you the story. And even the alternative media, a lot of the alternative media, thanks. Putin invaded Ukraine. He didn’t. He invaded Donbas. And it wasn’t an invasion. He accepted the invitation to enter Donbas, by Donbas, to evict Ukrainians from Donbas. And that’s what the fighting has been. There’s been no effort to conquer Ukraine, which is the basis of my three year criticism of Putin. I said, look, you should have knocked Ukraine out in three weeks.
He’s never done anything to stop Kiev from having the ability to continue the war. Why do you think that is? Why has he let all the embassies? Why does he let this pantomime theater continue? The reason was to avoid confirming Western propaganda that he was rebuilding the Soviet empire and would eventually take all of Europe. This is the propaganda in the West. To what extent is he willing to accept all of these sacrifices that have had to be made? And just to clarify, I know some of the critics will probably say, oh, well, you know, he extended well beyond Don Mass.
He went into Kirsten and he had these other oblasts. But I’m sure somebody is going to be critical of that statement that you made. But why do you think that he’s left Kiev intact in spite of all of the continued sacrifice, like Is there not a breaking point in which he says enough is enough? I mean, I know there’s rumors today that there was they evacuated the embassies recently, and I think they evacuated some of their parliamentary buildings today because they thought that they were going to be attacked or something. Are we approaching that point where he might be truly considering removing the leadership in Ukraine, or does he even have that capability? Of course he has the capability.
I mean, the Russians have the capability of destroying Ukraine whenever they want to. Nobody can do anything about it. I think that he has a policy and he’s just staying with it. And I think what happens doesn’t depend on Putin. It depends on what Washington does. You see, when Washington, Washington gave the okay for the missiles, they put constraints on it. It said they could only be used in the Kerch region because that could be considered part of the war front, because that’s where the Ukrainian army had invaded Russia outside the area of the combat. And that’s why they were able to go in there.
There weren’t any Russian forces there. And so the argument is, okay, Kirsch was part of the combat area. So it isn’t really shooting things into Russia, it’s shooting into the combat area. And then they said, Washington said, and the missiles have to be limited to 186 miles. They can’t go beyond 300 kilometers, which is 186 miles. I think you can’t fire the missiles any longer distance than that. So you see, this is kind of like the first step in the foot in the door. And of course, the next provocation will be, well, you can only go 250 miles and you can only add this other province to it.
And I think this is what Putin is looking at happening and what he’s trying to forestall by this demonstration of the hypersonic missile. So initially, Putin can say, okay, it’s limited and the range of the missiles are limited, and let’s see what they do next. So it really, what happens is really going to depend on what Washington does next and whether they can do enough soon enough to cause the thing to explode before Trump gets there. Because Trump, you think, is going to focus more on the Middle East. It seems like there’s two warring camps, that there are a group of neocons perhaps, that are more focused on the Middle east and then another group that is focused on maintaining instability in Europe for whatever reason.
Is it possible that we see both conflicts continue to intensify, or is it pretty much inevitable that if a war with Iran starts, they’re going to have to remove themselves from the equation in Ukraine. These are very good questions. You are very perceptive. Let me point out that there are two different reasons that the reason for the Ukraine conflict is different from the Middle East. Remember now, when the Soviet union collapsed in 1991, the instant response from neoconservatives was the Wolfowitz Doctrine, which declared that the principal goal of American foreign policy was to prevent the rise of any country, especially Russia, that could constrain American unilateralism.
In other words, it was a declaration of American hegemony over the world because the only constraint on American unilateralism had been the Soviet Union, and it collapsed. So the Americans were no longer constrained by Soviet nuclear weapons. China in 1991 was seen to be nothing. And it would be 50 years, the authorities or the experts said, before China would begin to be anything. They overlooked that the American industry would create China by offshoring American manufacturing to China. And so they declared this doctrine of hegemony. And when Putin in 2007 at the Munich Security Conference said, we don’t accept this doctrine, that’s when they turned on Russia.
So they’ve been after Russia since 2007. And so the Russian thing is to reassert American hegemony. Now, in the Middle east, there are two aspects. One is to get rid of Iran, which is a constraint on Israeli unilateralism. See, we got rid of Iraq, which was a constraint, and Libya, which was a constraint. And Obama was going to get rid of Syria, which was a constraint. You may remember the Americans concocted this alleged chemical attack by Assad, that Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people. And Obama had said, well, this was the line in the sand he’s crossed.
We’re going to invade. Well, before the Americans could invade, the next morning, the Russian air force was in Syria. And that told them quite clearly they weren’t going to be able to invade. So we tried to overthrow Syria with the CIA’s jihadist mercenaries, the ones they used against Gaddafi in Libya. And the Russians and the Syrians defeated them, but Iran is still there. So getting rid of Iran gets rid of the constraints on Greater Israel. You may remember, maybe it was a couple of months ago, Netan Ayu himself, the Prime Minister of Israel, held up a map of Greater Israel.
It goes from the Nile to the Euphrates. Now, the official narrative is there’s no such thing. There’s no such thing. But here’s the Israeli Prime Minister on television holding up the map. And then a Couple of weeks ago, one of the ministers in Netanyahu’s government said, well, actually, great, Israel is bigger than that. It includes Saudi Arabia. Well, the Americans don’t know these things. And if they know them, they would say it’s fake news. But the Arabs know them. And one consequence has been Saudi Arabia conducting joint military exercises with Iran. Now, these are enemies within the Muslim world, which has been split since the fight over Muhammad’s succession in the seventh century.
You know, so this type of development. So partly it’s going to clear out Iran for Israel, and partly it going to clear out Iran. So we again control the oil flows and the waterways. So that is a different. I mean, they’re related in some sense. But Ukraine is about assertion of American hegemony and getting even with Russia for rejecting it, for challenging it, for getting in the way. And whereas the Middle east is about Israel’s expansionist goals and about America regaining its control from Iran over water and oil. And so they’re both a serious problem. Either one of them could explode in nuclear war.
I don’t think the Russians or the Chinese can tolerate an American attack on Iran. The Chinese are heavily invested. They get a large percentage of their energy there. They have to be worried about cutoffs from energy, particularly if they’re facing conflict with the United States. Russia has to know that if Iran falls, the CIA has a clear shot to be pumping jihadists into the Russian Federation. Russia has many Muslim elements. And to restart something like the Chetnan war that was going on years ago, where we had gone in and stirred up the Muslims in Chechnya against Russia, and the Russian army had to go in, Putin had to go in.
And it’s a minefield for Russia to let Iran suffer. Some kind of American, Iraqi or operation or like Afghanistan or Libya, they can’t tolerate that. So though most of our discussion has been about Ukraine, the situation is just as dangerous in the Middle East. And so we’re back to what’s going to happen. I don’t know. It depends on how crazy Washington is, how determined they are to poison the relationship such that Trump can’t do anything. If they’re so determined, they’ll take enormous risk. On the other hand, we don’t know what impact these risk because they’re brand new.
This demonstration of the hypersonic missile has just hit Europe. It’s just now entering their heads. You know, if that’s nuclear, we’re gone. Maybe we better listen to what Putin says. Maybe he does mean it. So it’s possible that there’s a sobering operation starting in Europe and that they will put the brakes on Washington by not cooperating. So it’s not without hope. But it still remains the pertinent question why is Washington taking these risks? But you have to realize that this is extremely risky. There are high Russian officials who say you are playing with Armageddon. Like the Pentagon must have some military understanding of the situation such that they must have war game, that there are even if a line is crossed, that it’s not going to evolve to the mutually assured destruction level immediately.
Like they must have some. They must know that there’s certain things that would need to be triggered for it to escalate to that point. Like are you of the belief that as soon as the first nuke is used that it’s game over? Or is there other gradations between then and full blown nuclear war? I have no idea. It depends on reactions. And of course the media never gives a truthful account. I think that in the war games, the ones we run, we lose every time. Even with China, the war games they run with the US and China, we always lose.
That’s with conventional weapons, nuclear, conventional, whatever, all of them. I think the Pentagon is what blocked for so long Biden’s approved green light for the missiles to be used. You know Zelensky was lobbying Biden for the missile permit. The British Prime Minister Stormer was lobbying him. The French President was lobbying and Biden was not giving approval. The Pentagon blocked it because the Pentagon said we don’t want to risk being drawn into a nuclear confrontation with Russia. So how did they get the Pentagon’s permission? Well, I think I told you. They said, look, it’s limited to the battlefield, it’s limited to Kirsch, it’s limited to 186 miles.
This is not a blanket permission for them to fire missiles all over Russia. And I think this made it impossible for the Pentagon to say no. They accepted it with these limits. Now I’m not sure that missile attack we launched actually was within Kersh. I think it may have been outside the borders. It was somewhere near the Ukrainian Belarus border. Whether it was still in Kirsch, I’m not certain, but I don’t think it was. But maybe it was close enough. Well, I think the Russians said they shot down some storm shadow over Bryansk. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that’s what it was.
It was Bryansk. So if the next strike is longer and somewhere else you may see the Pentagon refusing again, I’m not sure how this Rear Admiral Buchanan got off the reservation and made a policy statement, because American officers, certainly general officers, are not allowed to make policy statements with respect to Iran. What is the likelihood that that situation escalates after Trump gets into office? Because it seems like everything is pointing towards that. They’ve continued to say that they’re going to do a response to the most recent Israeli attack, although we don’t really know what the extent of that truly was.
There’s a lot of debate around how successful it was. Operation True Promise three, it’s being termed. Termed is going to allegedly commence at any time. The Iranians typically have shown that they take their time with these things. They don’t succumb to the pressure of public opinion. So do you believe that that situation is going to escalate due to recent developments of the condemnation by the IAEA of Iran that they are now going outside the boundaries of what was originally agreed upon for their uranium enrichment? And now the Iranians have actually responded and said, yeah, we’re going to start enriching more uranium now as a result of this condemnation.
So it seems inevitable then, that we are going to see either a nuclear Iran or some perhaps even preemptive strike by Israel or Iran retaliating. Like, it seems like that situation is now very much in play. Yes. Well, we can’t know. I think for a long time, Russia was sitting on Iran. If you think back the minute the Israelis went into Gaza, it was a perfect time for Iran and Hezbollah to attack. They would have overrun Israel. Israel wouldn’t exist right now. If Hezbollah had entered Israel when the Israeli army was in Gaza, it had been the end.
And we know the Iranians have proved they can defeat the Iron Dome and penetrate Israeli airspace. And they have massive amounts of missiles. So a missile attack launched by Iran, an invasion by Hezbollah, Israel would not exist. Well, they let. They gave away their strategic advantage. That did nothing. It did absolutely nothing. I think Russia was sitting on. It’s Putin. He doesn’t want conflict. I think now Putin realizes that he can prevent conflict. You keep in mind that last Israeli attack on Iran, they did not dare enter Iranian airspace. They launched the attack. It was a standoff attack launched from Iraqi airspace.
Why? Because the Russian S400 air defense system apparently is now in Iran and nothing can penetrate it. The Israelis would have lost their air force. The Americans will lose their air force. So the question is, how do they attack Iran? Not in the way that Israel has prevailed in the past with their American F16s. They can’t enter the airspace, so they have to launch standoff attacks. And those attacks apparently were a massive failure because of this S400 air defense system. So it may well be that attacking Iran now has to be a ground enterprise. And maybe that’s why the United States has aircraft carrier task force, a division of soldiers, all kinds of repositioned fighters.
But I don’t think it can happen. The supply lines are too great for the United States, and all of the American bases in the Middle east are subject to the Iranian missile strikes. So it could well be that the situation has developed to the point that the kinds of tactical and strategic advantages the United States and Israel have had in the past are gone. And so they can’t do anything. That may be. I don’t know that, but that may be the fact. And it may well be that there are people in the Pentagon who understand that.
Now you have to understand the United States military has had a terrible time under Obama and Biden. A DEI policy has been put in place where promotion advancement is a question of race, gender and sexual preference. The army, the American military has been demoralized. People won’t join it. They can’t meet their recruitments. Traditional American military families discourage their children from continuing the tradition. It could well be there’s nobody with any sense left in the American military. I think there are, because the Pentagon, until Biden, until the missile attack, was limited in its approval. The Pentagon blocked it.
So it may well be the loss of strategic capability or dominance. We no longer have dominance. We do not even have dominance over Iran, much less Russia and China. That these are realities that the kind of ideological, ideologically motivated people like the neocons have ignored out of hubris, but are coming face to face with. So the whole thing could stop. It’s entirely possible, I think, that Putin’s whole attitude in all of this, and I think the reason he’s tolerated all these provocations, is he’s just gonna let it go step by step and hope at some point it stops.
And I think the whole point of that hypersonic missile demonstration was just to let the world know that the end could be near. So I don’t think we should give up hope. I can’t tell you or speculate, you know, what anybody is going to do at any point in time. But I do think the correlation of forces no longer favor the United States. The correlation of forces. There are too many countervailing powers. The Israelis have had a difficult time even with a militia. You know, Hezbollah is a militia. There’s no air force, there’s no Navy, there are no tanks.
So it’s kind of like us, the kind of trouble we had with the Taliban. The great powerful American military is being defeated by a Taliban militia, a few thousand people with AK47s. It’s not the conclusion that anything else will come of this, but I think it’s correct to be worried about the risk. Well, they seem to be. They seem to be like that. There’s no reverse gear. It seems as though until somebody pushes back significantly, they’re going to continue to, you know, straddle that line of nuclear failure. And I’m not sure if we’ve really approached that yet because they seem, they’re reluctant, but it seems as though they could definitely push a little further.
Hopefully cowardice, you know, over overrides the insanity at some point and they realize that, hey, I don’t want to die either. So in light of this then, and maybe the best case scenario, how does the euro finance guy. So how would the global reserve currency, the US Dollar, be impacted? Should things remain in a certain stasis, like if Iran doesn’t progress, if Russia doesn’t progress and Russia establishes itself in the eastern part of Ukraine and there’s some kind of detente, what does the outcome for the dollar? Do you have any thoughts on that? Oh, yes, I have many thoughts and I’ve expressed them many times.
The danger to the United States has never been its budget or trade deficits. And the reason is that the dollar is the world reserve currency. And so how does the world keep its reserves? It keeps its reserves. United states debt, so U.S. treasury bonds. So if American indebtedness rises, it just means the reserves of the world banking system rise. In other words, there’s an unlimited demand for American debt as long as the dollar is the reserve currency or the primary reserve currency. Now, where the system becomes endangered is with the dollar loses this role or loses much more.
It’s already lost a good bit of this role. For example, the Russians have zero reserves and dollars China is unloading in their dollar reserves. Russia and China accumulate gold as reserves. No doubt other countries see the danger in having reserves in US Dollars because it means if you don’t do what the United States tells you, they can seize your reserves. So the percentage of world reserves that the dollar have declined, if they decline too much, then the debt becomes a problem. The Federal Reserve would have to buy the debt. And what would be the consequences of that? We really don’t know.
Would it be inflation? Would it simply. Most likely the consequence it would not directly drive up the prices, it would drive down the dollar in foreign exchange markets, so the dollar would collapse in value. And since the United States has offshored its manufacturing, it would dramatically raise prices. So the United States would simply dissolve in inflationary chaos. So this is that danger. Now, if BRICS succeeds in establishing its own payment mechanism where they don’t need the swift clearing system, they don’t need Washington’s approval, where sanctions can’t touch it because it’s brics, if they succeed in getting this, I think you’ll see more and more countries signing up with Russia and China because they are the ones that are rising.
The United States can’t even close its border. So when you look at it this way, this is another very serious problem. It’s been ignored. The stupidest thing Washington ever did to its power was sanctions. Because the sanctions is the first alert the world got. You can’t trust having your reserves in dollars. Well, no normal government would short itself of its strongest power, which is the reserve currency. If you’re the reserve currency country, you have no problem paying your debts. You have no trouble. You print money to pay your debts. You have no trouble financing your debts.
But isn’t the reserve currency isn’t an integral part of that America’s ability to project military power? Like if it can’t do that, if it can’t suppress Russia to an extent, if it can’t suppress Iran and China, so where does the breaking point happen then? When these states reach a, you know, breakaway level where they no longer are contained by that U. S. Military power and it appears as though this is what’s really pushing or is this part of the neocon thing? Like, I don’t think they even think about it. No, no, they think of hegemony in terms of force and intimidation.
I don’t think they know anything about economics. As far as I know, nobody in Washington don’t know, none of them, that they’re, they’re ruining their power base by scaring people away from dollar reserves. I don’t, you know, what good did the sanctions on Russia do? None. It helped Russia. It made Putin wake up. That globalism was a danger to Russia. It was a hoax. It makes Russia dependent on others. And now the Americans were going to take advantage of this dependence. So what did Russia have to do? It had to turn inward and develop itself. I think this lesson has gone all over.
They say, you know, globalism that works for the Americans and don’t work for us. So it helped the sanctions help the Russians. Now if it hurt us, why because it made people say, oh look, they stole the Russians foreign reserves. Well, if you are the reserve currency and people can’t trust you not to steal their reserves, they’re not going to hold their reserves in your currency. And so this is the dynamic that the idiot Americans brought on themselves with the sanctions. And you’re asking how far will it go? Well, as I said already depends on how successful the BRICs are in creating an alternative payment system.
And if they’re successful, it’ll go very badly for the dollar and this will be another crisis that lands on Washington and how will they deal with it? Client, seems like there’s one other thing here that perhaps we haven’t touched on and it pertains to the dollar and it’s to do with the euro. Because there’s also a vested interest in ensuring that Europe can’t get ahead financially and industrialize. And there’s that old saying that I’m sure you know, that NATO’s role is to keep the Russians out and the Americans in and the Germans down, that sort of thing.
There seems to be inverse relationship with the dollar and the euro in terms of as being used as a reserve currency. And right now the USD is winning because people are have their doubts about Europe. Doesn’t US stand to benefit from continuing a war in Europe at some level to continue the Russian severance from the European economy? Well, yes. I mean, when we blew up the North Sea pipeline, we devastated Germany. I mean, the energy situation worsened. We now have the German automobile industry talking about relocating abroad in the United States. This sort of attack on Europe was supported by Europe.
They still cover up for us. The Americans blew up their energy supply. Now you would think the Germans would be just mad as all get out. Instead and they help create fictions that Ukraine blew up the pipeline. You know, look, they clearly are still very controlled. Yeah, they’re very controlled. Now I said this before, many times. I’ll say it once more. When it turned out that my PhD dissertation chairman became the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security affairs, he called me into the Pentagon and he asked me to go to Vietnam to take over the aid programs.
This was during the Vietnam War. And I told him I didn’t want to take over the aid programs in Vietnam. And I used the opportunity and I asked him, I said, how does the United States always get foreign countries to do what we want? He said, money. I said, oh, you mean foreign aid. No, no, we give the leaders bagfuls of money. We own them. They report to us. He didn’t approve of this, but it was a longstanding policy. He couldn’t do anything about it. I suspect that. And remember, too, what the German newspaper editor, Udo U Copti, said some four or five years ago, he wrote the book, purchased journalism.
He said, there’s not a single journalist of significance in Europe who is not on the CIA’s payroll, myself included. He said, I published many things. They hand me to publish. Well, if we can control the explanations. We own the press, we own the leaders. To speak of any independence in Europe is nonsensical. There are no sovereign countries in Europe, so it’s only a matter of time before they’re. And for that matter. And for that matter, Canada isn’t either. Oh, for sure. Yeah, We’re. We’re definitely there. It’s only a matter of time, though, before people catch on to this and start resisting, which I think is what you’re seeing in countries like Germany with the.
The party that has the majority of votes. I can’t remember what it’s called. It’s like a Christian party or something. You’re seeing a lot of these nationalist parties starting to emerge, I think, in resistance to this US Hegemony. Yeah, yeah. And you see, now, this can make the American establishment more desperate and more reckless. They can say, look, we’ve got to do something while we still have some power, because it’s fading. It’s fading. So I think we’ve had a good discussion, and I very much admire your perception. And you certainly aren’t anybody. You’re nobody’s fool, that’s for sure.
Occasionally they get me for a short period of time. But you were in shorter and it’s. Yeah, I thought that. But I think we’re correct to be very worried that the risks are intensifying and that Putin is running out of ability to ignore provocations. And I’m convinced he will ignore them as long as he can. He’s not looking for an excuse to go to war. He’s looking for any possible excuse to avoid it. And the downside, of course, is that encourages the Americans to provoke more because he hasn’t put down a strong foot. I thought he should have put a strong foot down three years ago or eight years ago, but he’s never put it down.
And so you have this view that we don’t have to pay attention to him. He never does anything. Well, he never does anything as long as he can’t afford it. But when he can’t avoid it, you’ve got to be worried then about what he does do, and it’s serious and we should be concerned about it. But we have reason for hope, for all the other reasons we covered. And I just have one final question for you. You bring up something very important. Have you. Are you familiar with Sergey Kuraginov? No. He’s a. He’s a Russian, a very, I think, well known, like, Russian pundit, Putin advisor.
And his whole philosophy has been, we need to use. We should have used nukes from day one. Oh, yeah, I know this guy. Yeah, I know this guy. Kind of an extreme point of view, but kind of in line with what you’re saying is that if you don’t do something sooner than later, the risks actually get higher for a greater conflict emerging. That’s right. That’s been my position and my worry. And yes, I do know this guy and I wrote about him. When that became public, I wrote about it and said, well, you know, he’s really right.
I don’t think they should use nukes, but they should have done something sooner because I think we’re now locked into the belief that if we just don’t go too far at once, we can always take another step, another step, another step, and eventually get. So this is the danger. And I think Putin himself brought that danger on. It was his reticence, his hesitancy, his willingness, rationality. Yeah. Well, I want to thank you for coming out today and I really appreciate you taking the time. Where can people find more information about you and where can they find more of your work? Well, I run this website.
It’s just my name, Paul craigroberts.org O R G.org and I put my thoughts there. And I have a lot of guest contributions that are sometimes full articles, sometimes just links. And I try to cover the real challenges that we face and to make people wake up and see that there’s more at stake than. What am I. How am I going to entertain myself this weekend? Yeah, Well, I tell you, we got an interesting 58 days or so ahead of us, so we’re going to have to keep in touch because I have a feeling that this won’t be our last conversation, so.
Well, I enjoyed talking to you. I really did. I didn’t know of you, but I think we’re lucky to have you. That’s a very intelligent opportunity and I appreciate having it. Yeah, I’m just trying to keep people prepared, but also informed. That’s. That’s a good commodity nowadays, is information. It’s so hard to. It’s not only about, you know, beans, bullets and band aids. It’s all about information nowadays. So it’s become the hardest thing to get is accurate information. Absolutely. Well, thanks a lot, sir. I appreciate it and we will talk to you soon. Well, thank you.
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