Tony Shaffer | Shadow Dance of Russian Politics and Western Perceptions

I believe we should have a good relationship with Putin. I know this sounds contradictory, but it’s not simply because someone is a thug who runs a country a certain way, by the way, accepted by their culture, they culturally accept. Judge. It’s not my job to judge them on what they, the Russians, believe is in their best interest. It’s not my job. Amen. If they think that they love Putin, God bless them, go love Putin.

I don’t, I don’t care. Not my deal. But the issue becomes, why does the neocons wish to actually, in my judgment, interfere within the inner workings of the russian republic? Why are they interested? What’s your best take on that question? The neocons have always had this odd combination of totalitarianism and a thirst for conquest. It’s almost like they’ve read the book 1984 and recognized that a permanent state of war would benefit their political aspirations.

And it seems to me that poking the russian bear, literally and figuratively in this case, has given them what they want, some level of authority and power that allows them to use essentially military conflict and international friction as a tool to maintain their political influence. Because that’s what it does for them. If you just sit back and look at what it does for them, for the neocons, this gives them relevance and purpose in life to basically be a bully.

They are the political bullies of today’s political landscape. They are. If you look at a high school bully, judge, and you look at what they do, it’s like, I think it’s almost the same thing. And so I think that’s why they do it, because they’re a bunch of bullies who have no other purpose in life except to trouble those people around them and those institutions that will give them power.

The other day we interviewed Scott Ritter from Moscow, and he had a colleague with him, a fellow who’s a financial guy, investor, builder, developer, but also an official in a regional government, part time official. And we had a translator. And this fellow Alexander answered pretty directly the questions that I put to him. And there were two takeaways. One is Putin is immensely popular. You’re talking about 82% to 86% approval rating.

Right. And the other is, I said to him, what do the russian people think of Joe Biden? And as soon as the translator translated that question, I saw a big smile on his face, and he said to me, judge, you’re not going to believe it. We have a phrase here in Moscow that is very common, and we all say it to each other every day. Thank you, Joe Biden.

And I said, what do you mean? He said, thank you for the sanctions. Big deal. We don’t have McDonald’s anymore. We’re now financially independent, and our economy is better today than it was two years ago. Yeah. And Putin gets the credit for that. And so that’s the point, is that Putin has overcome every challenge brought to him by the feckless and destructive foreign policy of the Biden administration.

The other thing that’s happened, know, some of the folks I listen to call it the project Ukraine. That is to say, the western neocon effort to do this. Right. The neocon effort was founded in the concept of two outcomes they were seeking. First off is the removal of Putin, because I think they wanted to carve up the russian republic. I really do believe that. I think they thought, oh, much like someone, a short corporal in the 1930s, I will not mention his name, believed that, oh, Russia’s frail, and you just knock the door and it’s going to collapse.

Well, that wasn’t true. And secondly, they wanted to actually sell out Ukraine. They believed, the neocons believed. And this is what I think was one of the underlying functions. Not about democracy, not remotely about democracy. And by the way, Putin’s motivations aren’t exactly all just about securing the Russians in the four provinces within Ukraine. There’s more to it than that. But the economics of this was what I think drove a lot of folks to support it.

Blackrock and others really thought they were going to come in after the destruction of Ukraine, which is pretty much done, and then rebuild it. Huge investment opportunities. So, so much of what the neocon mantra is all about is, what can we destroy to rebuild again? I’m not a neocon. I’m not remotely a neocon. I don’t think we’d be friends if I was a neocon. No, I’m just speaking truthful here.

But I just see what they do is destructive use of money and resources for purposes of trying to upend political regimes they don’t like. And they don’t like Putin. I think Putin symbolizes a failure on their part. And then Ukraine was going to be their big Christmas turkey to carve up. Has Putin humiliated Joe Biden in Ukraine? Yes. .