Robert Scheer & Ray on Ukraine/Russia/US

By Ray McGovern, March 10, 2022

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-role-has-the-us-played-in-the-ukraine-crisis/id1054586928?i=1000553642149

Robert Scheer and I covered a lot of ground on Russia, Ukraine, U.S., China, and Europe yesterday for his Scheer Intelligence podcast.  After seeing the March 2 salon at which John Mearsheimer and I spoke, Scheer asked me, in effect, to do a follow-up on some of the key issues discussed.

The YouTube video of that salon has already gotten over 700,000 hits. (See: https://raymcgovern.com/2022/03/06/starring-nuland-pyatt-in-their-own-words/ , which embeds the more polished video of that salon and includes the intercepted conversation between Victoria Nuland and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, as they plotted, en clair, the Feb. 22, 2014 coup in Kyiv.) Thanks to YouTube, which posted that conversation, news of the upcoming coup — including the key dramatis personnae — were publicly available 18 days before the coup itself.

Watching the YouTube video of that salon, Robert Scheer was particularly struck by former senior Pentagon adviser/MIT physics professor Ted Postol’s alarming remarks during the Q&A.  (As if still more strategic uncertainty were needed today!), Ted reminded us that the Russian early warning system cannot immediately detect the firing of ballistic missiles wherever they are — on land or sea.

I was happy to be able to note for Scheer’s podcast listeners that the Committee for the Republic has invited Ted Postol to lead a salon on Ukraine and Nuclear Risk on March 17 at 7:00 PM Eastern. The Committee’s salons are free and open to all.

Starring Nuland & Pyatt in Their Own Words

By Ray McGovern, March 6, 2022

Some readers may be among the 300,000-plus, who have already watched Wednesday’s salon featuring universally respected (until Wednesday, at least) professor John Mearsheimer and me — with Q&A input from Amb. Jack Matlock, physics professor/former Pentagon adviser Ted Postol, Susan Eisenhower, et al. The salon was sponsored by the Committee on the Republic.

A technical glitch prevented me from including a short, highly revealing intercepted conversation between then-Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Victoria Nuland and the de-rigueur deferential/submissive U.S. ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt. 

Hearing Is Believing

In a word, you have to hear them plotting the coup (over an open telephone) to believe how confident they were that their coup plans would land “jelly-side up”, as Pyatt put it. (The conversation was posted on YouTube on Feb. 4, 2014; the coup came 18 days later.)

The good news is that the folks at Consortium News have been kind enough to insert the Nuland-Pyatt conversation into the original video (while smoothing out smaller glitches), and have just posted their edited version on YouTube. See minutes 24:40 to 29:00 of:     

‘Jelly-Side Up’; And Biden Ready to Make Coup ‘Stick’

Hear Ambassador Pyatt reassure Nuland (his superior), “We could land jelly side up on this one.”

And hear Nuland say she has word from Joe Biden adviser Jake Sullivan that Vice President Biden is willing to lend his gravitas as VP “to get the details to stick” (Minutes 28:49 to 28:56).

Where Are They Now?

Victoria Nuland: Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (number 3 at State)

Geoffrey Pyatt: U.S. Ambassador to Greece

Jake Sullivan: Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

Joe Biden: President of the United States of America

John Mearsheimer: Still universally respected by those able to think amid hysteria

Irish Wisdom on ‘Nothing People’

By Ray McGovern

This just in from a cousin in Co. Tipperary, courtesy of his deceased wife who hung it in a prominent place on the wall. Just decades ago, she herself might have been hanged on the wall by a vicious Empire in its last throes.

The Nothing People

They do not lie;
they just neglect to tell the truth.

They do not take;
they simply cannot bring themselves to give.

They do not steal;
they scavenge.

They will not rock the boat;
but did you ever see them pull an oar?

They will not pull you down;
they’ll simply let you pull them up, and let that pull you down.

They do not hurt you;
they merely will not help you.

They do not hate you;
they merely cannot love you.

They will not burn you;
they’ll only fiddle when you burn.

They are the nothing people;
the sins-of-omission folk;

the neither-good-nor-bad-
and-therefore-worse.

Because the good at least keep busy trying,
and the bad try just as hard,

both have that character that comes
from caring, action and conviction.

So give me every time an
honest sinner, or even a Saint.

But, God and Satan,
get together,
and protect me from the nothing people.

(Anon)

Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine – Event Tonight

COMMITTEE FOR THE REPUBLIC
                                     
Ray McGovern
John Mearsheimer
                                     
Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine
                                     
Wednesday March 2nd, 2022
7:00 PM (EST)
                                       
RSVP: Events@CommitteefortheRepublic.org 
Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/7812458066
To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To an empire, everything looks like a crisis to justify a multi-trillion-dollar military-industrial-security complex as dictatress of the world. The crisis du jour for the American empire is Russia‘s aggression against Ukraine. The political establishment and the mainstream media assign responsibility to President Putin’s megalomaniac ambition to recreate the Soviet empire. The Committee welcomes Ray McGovern and John Mearsheimer as a breath of fresh air. They shoulder the United States with a fair share of the blame: the never-ending expansion of NATO cheek by jowl to Russian borders provoked the invasion; Russia fears nuclear weapons on its borders as more menacing than the Cuban Missile Crisis was to the United States. Ray and John will offer some thoughts regarding how to bury the hatchet and move forward. We all look forward to what we know will be a robust discussion.

John Mearsheimer returns for the third time as a salon speaker. We hosted John for his trenchant analysis of the abject failure our quest for global dominance and for his courageous book with Steve Walton the liability of American support for Israel. John is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He graduated from West Point (1970), has a PhD in political science from Cornell University (1981), and has written extensively about security issues and international politics. In 2003, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2020, he won the James Madison Award, given by the American Political Science Association to “an American political scientist who has made a distinguished scholarly contribution to political science.” His principal work on Ukraine is “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin,” appearing in September-October Foreign Affairs 2014. The video of his talk has been viewed more than 9 million times:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= JrMiSQAGOS4.

Ray McGovern is a long-time Russian specialist. After serving as an Army combat intelligence officer in the early 60s, Ray joined the CIA’s analyst ranks. His first portfolio focused on the Sino-Soviet conflict, which was deftly exploited by Nixon/Kissinger (with more than just interpreter assistance from our own Chas Freeman). As chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch, Ray’s analytical team supported the SALT negotiations and he was in Moscow for the signing of the ABM Treaty, cornerstone of strategic stability for the next three decades. Ray correctly predicted Brezhnev’s invasion of Czechoslovakia but incorrectly predicted Putin would not invade Ukraine. Ray thinks the new Russia-China entente helps explain Putin’s gamble. See Ray’s website raymcgovern.com and posts on antiwar.com
The Committee for the Republic is a citizen-based, non-partisan, nonprofit organization founded in 2003. The Committee sponsors speakers monthly on challenges to the American Republic, including the military-industrial complex, too-big-to-fail banks and U.S. competitiveness.

For questions or requests email events@committeefortherepublic.org

The Committee for the Republic
40 Springwish Lane
Flint Hill VA 22627
USA

Scott Ritter & I Talk Ukraine on Today’s The Critical Hour

By Ray McGovern, Feb. 25, 2022

As Russian forces began to surround Kyiv, Scott and I took a whack at discerning the implications, and what might lie ahead — in the immediate future and over the longer term.

We called to mind that the Feb. 22, 2014 U.S.-sponsored coup (appropriately dubbed “the most blatant coup in history”) was followed by atrocities against Russian-speaking Ukrainians in Odessa on May 2, 2014. Just ten days later, Donetsk and Lugansk broke away from the central government in Kiyv.

Such key events are far from forgotten in Russia, and undergird Moscow’s current determination to prevent such atrocities in the future. Putin, of course, has homed in on the murders in Odessa.

What has emboldened Putin, to the point of invading Ukraine, was also discussed, including what role Chinese President Xi Jinping may be playing simply by having Putin’s back. A good bit of time was devoted to China and its surprisingly strong support for Putin — against the backdrop of the China-Russia “Joint Statement” issued during Putin’s Feb. 4, 2022 visit to Beijing for the first day of the Olympics. China’s recent statements and behavior on the issue of Ukraine have put real meat on that key document and its implications.

The Feb. 4 “Joint Statement” stated that the two sides:

“reaffirm that the new inter-state relations between Russia and China are superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era.  Friendship between the two states has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.” 

Yet, there remain unsettling indications coming from Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, Antony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan that senior administration ‘dolts’ (copyright North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) in the Washington Swamp still don’t get it.

Critical Hour Interview on Ukraine Invasion

By Ray McGovern, Feb. 24, 2022

On today’s program I was asked to comment on what Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine actually means for a “New World Order”. It means a helluva lot, actually.

The biggest — and most significant — surprise/shift is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s unmistakable support for what Putin has done, DESPITE China’s long-standing, consistent, principled policy on the importance of non-interference.

I had titled my Feb. 22 article What Accounts for Putin’s Assertiveness on Ukraine? ); the short (but game-changing) answer was China. ( See: https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2022/02/21/what-accounts-for-putins-assertiveness-on-ukraine .)

I did not think at the time that Putin would order an invasion of Ukraine, partly because I “knew” China would not countenance such a violation of its oft-stated policy against violating another nation’s sovereignty. Wrong. It turns out to be pretty clear that Xi approved the invasion. This is BIG.

In a fresh piece I penned after this interview, I suggest that this is a liminal time, and that the old Soviet concept of the “world correlation of forces” remains of key importance.  Owing to the new Sino-Russian alliance, that balance has now shifted to the West’s disfavor.  See what you think.