The NATO enlargement, as you know, started in 1999 with Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia was extremely unhappy about it. But these were countries still far from the border. Russia protested, but of course to no avail. Then George Bush Jr came in when 9/11 occurred and President Putin pledged support. And then the US decided on 20 September 2001 that it would launch seven wars in five years. You can listen to General Wesley Clark’s online talk about that. He was NATO Supreme Commander and in 1999 he went to the Pentagon on 20 September 2001 and was handed the paper explaining the seven wars. These, by the way, were Netanyahu’s Wars. The idea was partly to clean up old Soviet allies and partly to take out supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah because Netanyahu’s idea was there will be one state, thank you, only one state.It will be Israel. Israel will control all of the territory and anyone who objects ,we will overthrow . That’s US policy until this morning.We don’t know whether it will change now. The only wrinkle is that maybe the US will own Gaza instead of Israel owning Gaza, but the idea has been around at least for 25 years. It actually goes back to a document called Clean Break that Netanyahu and his American political team put together in 1996 to end the idea of the two-state solution. You can also find it online. So these are long-term events, these aren’t is it Clinton is it Bush or is it Obama.
That’s the boring way to look at American politics as the day-to-day game, but that’s not what American politics is.
As you know, Viktor Yanukovych was elected in 2010 in Ukraine on the platform of neutrality. Russia had no territorial interests or designs in Ukraine at all. I know. I was there during those years. What Russia was negotiating was a 25-year lease to 2042 for a naval base, that’s it. Not for Crimea, not for the Donbas, nothing like that. This idea that Putin is reconstructing the Russian Empire is childish propaganda. Excuse me, if anyone knows the day-to-day and year-to-year history, this is childish stuff which seems to work better than adult stuff.
The United States decided this man must be overthrown. It’s called a regime change operation.There have been about 100 of them carried out by the United States, many in your countries and many all over the world. That’s what the CIA does for a living. Okay, please know it’s a very unusual kind of foreign policy, but in America if you don’t like the other side you don’t negotiate with them, you try to overthrow them, preferably covertly. If it doesn’t work covertly, you do it overtly.You always say it’s not our fault, they’re the aggressor, they’re the other side, they’re Hitler. That comes up every two or three years whether it’s Saddam Hussein, whether it’s Assad, whether it’s Putin, that’s very convenient. That’s the only foreign policy explanation the American people are ever given anywhere. Well, we’re facing Munich 1938, can’t talk to the other side, they’re evil implacable foes.That’s the only model of foreign policy we ever hear from our mass media and the mass media repeats it entirely because it’s completely suborned by the US Government. I begged the Ukrainians and I had a track record with the Ukrainians. I advised the Ukrainians. I’m not anti-Ukrainian, I’m pro-Ukrainian completely. I said save your lives, save your sovereignty, save your territory, be neutral, don’t listen to the Americans. I repeated to them the famous adage of Henry Kissinger: that to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal. Okay, so let me repeat that for Europe: to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal. Trump does not want a losing hand, this is why it is more likely than not this war will end because Trump and President Putin will agree to end the war. If Europe does all its great warmongering, it doesn’t matter, the war is ending so get it out of your system.
Please tell your colleagues it’s over and it’s over because Trump doesn’t want to carry a loser. That’s it, it’s not some great morality.
He doesn’t want to carry a loser. Ukraine is a loser. The one that will be saved by the negotiations taking place right now is Ukraine. Second is Europe.Your stock markets are rising in recent days by the horrible news of negotiations. I know this has been met with sheer horror in these chambers, but this is the best news that you could get now. I encouraged them.They don’t listen to me, but I tried to reach out to some of the European leaders. Most don’t want to hear anything from me at all.But I said don’t go to Kiev, go to Moscow. Discuss with your counterparts. Are you kidding, you’re Europe, you’re 450 million people, you’re a 20 trillion economy.You should be the main economic trading partner of Russia.Its natural links by the way.
If anyone would like to discuss how the US blew up Nordstream, I’d be happy to talk about that.
On the Middle East, by the way, the US completely handed over foreign policy to Netanyahu 30 years ago. The Israel lobby dominates American politics. Just have no doubt about it. I could explain for hours how it works. It’s very dangerous.
I’m hoping that Trump will not destroy his administration and worse the Palestinian people because of Netanyahu whom I regard as a war criminal properly indicted by the ICC.That needs to be told. No more that there will be a state of Palestine on the borders of the 4th of June 1967 according to international law as the only way for peace. It’s the only way for Europe to have peace on your borders with the Middle East. It’s the two-state solution. There is only one obstacle to it by the way and that is the veto of the United States in the UN Security Council. So if you want to have some influence tell the United States drop the veto.You are together with 180 countries in the world. The only ones that oppose a Palestinian state are the United States, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Paraguay.
So this is a place where Europe could have a big influence. Europe has gone silent about the JCPOA and Iran. Netanyahu’s greatest dream in life is a war between the United States and Iran. He’s not given up and it’s not impossible that that would come also and that’s because the US in this regard does not have an independent foreign policy. It is run by Israel. It’s tragic. It’s amazing by the way and it could end. Trump may say that he wants foreign policy back.Maybe I’m
hoping that it’s the case finally.
Let me just say with respect to China, China is not an enemy, China is just a success story.That’s why it is viewed by the United States as an enemy because China is a bigger economy than the United States.
Russia is not going to invade Europe. This is the fundamental point. It may get up to the Dnipro River, it’s not going to invade Europe. But there are real issues. The main issue for Russia was the United States because Russia as a major power and the largest nuclear power in the world was profoundly concerned about US unipolarity from the beginning. Now that this is seemingly possibly ending. Europe has to open negotiations directly with Russia as well because the United States will quickly lose interest and you’re going to be living with Russia for the next thousands of years. Okay, so what do you want? You want to make sure that the Baltic states are secure. The best thing for the Baltic states is to stop their Russophobia. This is the most important thing. Estonia has about 25% Russian citizens or Russian-speaking citizens, ethnic Russians. Don’t provoke the neighbour, that’s all.
This is not hard, it really isn’t hard and again I want to explain my point of view. I have helped these countries the ones I’m talking about, trying to advise. I’m not their enemy, I’m not Putin’s puppet, I’m not Putin’s apologist. I worked in Estonia, they gave me, I think it’s the second highest civilian honour that a president of Estonia can bestow on a non-national because I designed their currency system for them in 1992. So I’m giving them advice, do not stand there, Estonia, and say we want to break up Russia, are you kidding? Don’t, this is not how to survive in this world. You survive with mutual respect, actually you survive in negotiation, you survive in discussion, you don’t outlaw the Russian language. That is not a good idea when 25% of your population has Russian as a first language. It’s not right even if there weren’t a giant on the border. It wouldn’t be the right thing to do, you’d have it as an official language, you’d have a language in lower school, you wouldn’t antagonise the Russian Orthodox church. So basically we need to behave like grown-ups and when I constantly say that they’re acting like children, Sonia always says to me that’s unfair to children because this is worse . We have a six-year-old grand-daughter and a three-year-old grandson and they actually make up with their friends. And we don’t tell them go, just ridicule them tomorrow .We say go, give them a hug and go play. And they do.
This is not hard by the way.