Scott Ritter and I Debate U.S.-Russia-China

By Ray McGovern

Scott Ritter and I continued our “Lincoln-Douglas-debate” routine today on The Critical Hour, with a spirited discussion of the objectives and behavior of Russia, China, and the U.S. on the Ukraine imbroglio. A remarkable China-Russia “Joint Statement”, published today with President Putin in Beijing for the Olympics, provided an excellent peg.

In my view, Putin is flying home with a gold medal. It has become increasingly difficult to ignore the new strategic reality that the erstwhile U.S.-Russia-China triangle has evolved from an equilateral triangle, so to speak, into an isosceles one with the U.S. getting the short end.

Two Against One

Today’s rhetoric/choreography was aimed at showing the “unprecedented” (Putin) closeness of today’s Sino-Russian strategic partnership, and brought to mind the publicity given to the highly scripted first minute of the Putin-Xi virtual summit on Dec. 15. (See China Gives Oomph to Russia’s Nyet-on-NATO: https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2022/01/31/china-gives-oomph-to-russias-nyet-on-nato/ .)

In December President Xi told Putin that “in its closeness and effectiveness, this relationship even exceeds an alliance.” ( See: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/world/asia/china-russia-summit-xi-putin.html .)

Today’s 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.”

Putting these remarks into some specific context, I called to attention the statement that “the Russian side reaffirms its support for the One-China principle … and opposes any forms of independence of Taiwan” and that “the two sides oppose further enlargement of NATO”.

Of equal importance is section that states:

“The sides call on the United States to respond positively to the Russian initiative, and abandon its plans to deploy intermediate-range and shorter-range ground based missiles in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe.”

Actually, the U.S. “non-paper” responding to Russia on this key issue is “positive”, as can be seen in the text of the “non-paper”, which was leaked to Spain’s El Pais.  ( See “US Makes Putin Offer He Can Hardly Refuse: https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2022/02/02/us-makes-putin-offer-he-can-hardly-refuse/ .)

Scott Ritter took issue with many of my observations — “vociferously”.  He sees a very real risk of war, since Russia has clear military advantage; he believes Putin is not “bluffing” with all those troops deployed near Ukraine.

CrossTalk: Despair or Hope on Ukraine?

By Ray McGovern

This week I welcomed having a few more minutes than usual on TV to discuss NATO/Russia/Ukraine and to offer some guesses as to what may be in store.

The CrossTalk program was pre-recorded on Wednesday morning (EST) Jan. 26th — i.e., just before Secretary of State Blinken announced that Ambassador John Sullivan had handed over Washington’s response to the proposals Russia gave the U.S. on Dec. 15 (and made public two days later).

(Significantly, Blinken made a point of asserting that the U.S. document was sent with the blessing of President Joe Biden, and that Biden was intimately involved in its drafting, making some personal edits. Putin has asked the president to remain personally involved.)

CrossTalk host Peter Lavelle invited Phil Giraldi and Pierre-Emmanuel Thomas to be on with me. The show has gotten close to 20,000 views on YouTube.

Ukraine/U.S./Russia: Current Media Frenzy

By Ray McGovern

On The Critical Hour today, I was asked to discuss the latest drivel from British intelligence about Russia planning a coup in Kyiv, and to put it in context. What came immediately to mind was the spurious British intelligence report of Sept. 2002 warning that Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons that could be used just 45 minutes after he gave the order. ( See: Perfidious Albion Giving Grist to NYT https://raymcgovern.com/2022/01/23/perfidious-albion-giving-grist-to-nyt/ )

That one helped start a war.

Our discussion focused on the truly remarkable performance of the corporate media, incessantly beating the drums for more aggressive action against Putin “if/when Russia invades Ukraine”.

Then, at mid-afternoon came word that the Pentagon had just raised the alert status of 8,500 troops, reportedly to bolster NATO’s Quick Response Force, so I drafted a piece for antiwar.com, which will be the next posting here.

Perfidious Albion Giving Grist to NYT

By Ray McGovern

British ‘Intelligence’ is still weaving whole cloth for the [David] Sanger Sewing Machine, just in time for it to be “wowed at” on today’s Sunday TV talk shows.

This time it is the Russians, who supposedly are, in addition to everything else, now plotting a coup in Ukraine [Ed. like the West did exactly 8 years ago?].  ( See this morning’s piece co-authored by Sanger: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/22/world/europe/ukraine-russia-coup-britain.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20220123&instance_id=51083&nl=the-morning&regi_id=69540701&segment_id=80520&te=1&user_id=e69a6cb2bbba5cd47ffe27ec9fb45fbe  .) 

This episode brings a wicked flashback to Sept. 2002 when miscreants in British ‘Intelligence’ astounded the world by reporting that Saddam Hussein could order a chemical attack that would go boom in just 45 minutes! That piece of fabricated ‘intelligence’ was seized on to help get Congress to approve the US/UK attack on Iraq.  (If memory serves, it also was given pride of place on the Sunday TV talk shows — as was the case this morning with the latest British drivel.)

The “Lord Butler report” in July of 2004 poured discredit on that ‘intelligence’ and the way Tony Blair used it. https://irp.fas.org/world/uk/butler071404.pdf

Even former CIA Director George Tenet, not particularly known for his honesty, seemed to lapse into momentary truth, when he alluded to that British report on Iraq as the “they-can-attack-in-45-minutes shit”.  Yes, that’s how he described it to Bob Woodward later.  It would have been nice if Tenet had had the courage and integrity to have told the rest of the world THEN, before Cheney and Bush created havoc in the Middle East.  Tenet was one of the few acutely aware of what was going on and — specifically — how intelligence (over which he had purview) was being politicized.

We in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) tried to warn President George W. Bush that attacking Iraq would bring “consequences likely to be catastrophic”. See our “Powell’s UN Speech and the Case for War”, Feb. 5, 2003 ( https://consortiumnews.com/2003/02/05/powells-un-speech-and-the-case-for-war/ ). Neither Bush nor Cheney were listening to us; they were listening to Cheney.