XPost: alt.fan.noam-chomsky, alt.politics

Noam Chomsky: A Left Response to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Noam Chomsky speaks with Bill Fletcher, Jr. about the geopolitical
stakes of the war in Ukraine and how the left must respond

April 8, 2022. The Real News Network.

The ongoing war in Ukraine is a humanitarian disaster with tremendous geopolitical, economic, social, and climate-related repercussions that
are being felt throughout the world. How have these horrific events
come to pass? What will the short-term and long-term effects be on the
people of Ukraine, the people of Russia, and on the global political
order? And what does a principled, internationalist, anti-imperialist
left response to the war in Ukraine look like?

In this special discussion, world-renowned linguist and analyst Noam
Chomsky speaks with legendary activist and socialist Bill Fletcher,
Jr. about the roots of Russian aggression in Ukraine, the background
to the conflict, the US role, and how the Left can respond.

Bill Fletcher Jr.: Greetings. My name is Bill Fletcher, and I want to
welcome you to what I know is going to be a fantastic discussion.
We’re going to have a discussion, an exchange with Dr. Noam Chomsky
about the Ukraine war, the impact on the left in the United States,
and where do we go from here? And I want to thank you for taking the
time to join us for this program.

This program is brought to you by Liberation Road. Additional sponsors
include the Institute of the Black World 21st Century, Legacy of
Equality, Leadership, and Organizing in Seattle, the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, the Center for Global
Justice, the International Marxist-Humanist Organization, Global
Studies Association of North America, Communist Party USA, LeftRoots,
the Working Families Party, Grassroots Global Justice, Malcolm X
Grassroots Movement, the Canadian Socialist Project, and the
Organization for Black Struggle in St. Louis. And a special thanks to Convergence magazine and The Real News Network, without whom this
would not be possible. And we’re very, very gratified for their
involvement.

We wanted to have a discussion with Noam Chomsky, an internationally
known iconic figure, and someone who has brought great wisdom and
analysis in looking at the international situation, and has been
outspoken on the Ukraine crisis and the Russian invasion. But we want
to probe a little bit deeply this evening and look at some issues that
go beyond what’s often covered in the media.

So let me just start with a few stipulations that Noam Chomsky and I
came to, in the interest of time. One is that we stipulate that NATO
is not a defensive alliance. We further stipulate that when the Warsaw
Pact was dissolved, NATO should have itself been dissolved. And we
finally stipulate that the expansion of NATO, particularly with Bill
Clinton and George W Bush, was wrong and provocative. Those are the
three important stipulations in the interest of getting right into
some central questions that many of us on the left seem to be
avoiding. With no further ado I want to welcome you, Noam, to this
discussion. Thank you very much for doing this.

Noam Chomsky: Well, I think these stipulations are correct, and I
would like to add another which I think is also beyond discussion.
Whatever the explanation for the Russian invasion, an important,
crucial question, the invasion itself was a criminal act, a criminal
act of aggression, a supreme international crime on par with other
such horrific violations of international law and fundamental human
rights like the US invasion of Iraq, the Hitler-Stalin invasion of
Poland, and all too many other examples.

So why did it happen? Well, there is a background. The background is
what you’d begun to discuss. If we go back to the early 1990s when the current issue begins to develop, the Soviet Union collapsed, President
George HW Bush, his secretary of state James Bakker, and negotiated
with Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian leader. In the background were the
major German political figures: Hans Genscher, Helmut Kohl. Germany
was directly involved in this. And they reached an agreement. The
agreement was, it was a firm, explicit agreement. There’s been a lot
of provocation about this. So if you want the details, I’d simply
suggest looking at the authoritative National Security Archive, which
has the original documents easily accessible.

The agreement was that Russia would agree to allowing Germany to be
unified and to join NATO, which is quite a commitment on the part of
Russia if you look back to the history of the 20th century. But they
agreed on the condition, the explicit formal condition, that NATO
would not expand one inch to the east. That commitment was adhered to
by President Bush. Bush number one. The early years of Clinton
followed for a couple of years, he kept to it too. By 1994, he was
already talking from two sides of his mouth. I’m now quoting and
paraphrasing Ambassador Chas Freeman, one of the most astute, highly
respected American diplomats who was directly involved in all of these
issues at the time and has been since.

As Freeman points out, Clinton started talking out both sides of his
mouth. To Russia, he was saying we’ll live up to the agreement. In the
United States domestically, addressing ethnic minorities like the
Polish population and with an eye on domestic votes, he was saying
we’ll do something to bring frontline states like Poland, Hungary,
Slovenia into NATO. He was getting harsh condemnation of this from his
close friend, supposedly Boris Yeltsin, who he helped keep in power by
direct interference in Russian elections. Yeltsin was strongly
objecting, objected again in 1996, 1997. Clinton went ahead anyway and
broke the agreement to Gorbachev.

He invited Poland, Hungary, Slovenia into NATO. The Russians objected,
but didn’t do much about it. 1999, it’s a complicated story, can’t go into the details, but the Clinton administration decided to bomb
Serbia, a close Russian ally, didn’t even bother informing the
Russians. There was a pretext. The pretext was to stop Serbian
atrocities in Kosovo. A slight problem with that pretext. It requires
inverting the chronology. It wasn’t a pleasant place, but the
atrocities were the predicted and anticipated consequence of the
bombing. There is no ambiguity about that. There’s been a lot of lying
about it, inverting the chronology, but it’s very firmly established.
Well, that was, first of all, a crime in itself, but also it
instigated huge atrocities exactly as was predicted by the Commanding
General, Wesley Clark, but also was undertaken in a way to humiliate
Russia. The same was true later under Obama with the bombing of Libya,
and of course the Iraq War in 2003. Russia didn’t like it, but
accepted it.

George W Bush, he just opened the doors, invited, frankly, everybody
and all the former Russian satellites into NATO. Also in 2008, W Bush,
the second Bush, invited Ukraine to join NATO. That was vetoed by
France and Germany, but it was kept open on the table in deference to
the United States. Just about every high-level US diplomat who had any familiarity with the situation, including the current head of the CIA
and others, warned once again that this is extremely reckless and
dangerous. These are Russia’s red lines, the heart of their
geostrategic concerns. The US went ahead.

It continued. The US backed, some say helped instigate the 2014 Maidan Uprising, which led immediately to almost direct efforts by what’s
called NATO, meaning the United States, to help integrate Ukraine more
or less within some kind of native style framework, sending weapons,
training and so on. The most significant current information that we
have is an important document of the Biden administration, September
1, 2021, you can read it on the White House webpage. I’ve quoted it a
number of times in material. You can find the truth out and it’s worth
paying attention to. It’s been silenced by the US press, I haven’t
seen a single reference to it. But we can be certain that Russian
intelligence was reading it. What it says, it calls for, I’m quoting
it, “Providing Ukraine with advanced anti-tank weapons, with a robust training and exercise program in keeping with Ukraine’s status as a NATO-enhanced opportunities partner.” Basically opens the door wider
for Ukraine to join NATO.

I’ll quote it again, “Finalized a strategic defense framework that
creates a foundation for enhancement of US-Ukraine strategic defense
and security cooperation with advanced weapons training and so on,
again in keeping with Ukraine status as a NATO-enhanced opportunities partner.” Well, that’s last September. That’s the latest, most recent official statement that we have about US policy to go back.

Bill Fletcher Jr.: Noam, so you’ve laid out important background on
the US side of this equation. What I want to try to get at right now,
then, is how do you analyze the Putin regime? Let me just cut to the
chase. On the night that the invasion was launched, Putin did
something that I thought was highly unusual. Instead of harping on
NATO, which probably would’ve scored him a lot of brownie points, he
ended up denouncing the national existence of Ukraine, calling it
national fiction. And elaborating things that he had started talking
about in the summer of 2021 himself that claimed that Russia, Ukraine,
and Belarus were all the same people.

And it was a very weird thing for Putin to be saying at that point,
when he’s trying to justify an invasion. He was basically saying, you
have no reason to exist, we’re coming in. And so I want to know from
you, how do you analyze the Putin regime? It’s so curious, Noam, it’s
like the Russians are very tied in with transnational capital, yet you
have a regime that has a nationalist expansionist agenda. What do you
make of that?

Noam Chomsky: Well, that was indeed the announcement on the eve of the invasion. And I presume he was stating what he has already always
believed. As he stated publicly many times along with many other
Russians, the decision of Gorbachev to break up the Russian, the
Soviet system, which was in fact an imperial system in which Russia
had non-Russian satellites that it controlled, breaking up. The Soviet
Union, he said, was a great tragedy and strategic error. This is often
quoted. He also said something else which is rarely quoted. He said
that anyone who wants to reestablish the Soviet Union and its former
borders is out of his mind. And in fact, that’s true.

Russia has, whatever Putin may believe, they certainly haven’t even
the minimal capacity to do anything like… Russia is a state with an
economy roughly the size of Spain and Italy, a weak, kleptocratic, raw
material exporting state. With a big army, huge army, and advanced
weapons, nuclear weapons. But a declining kleptocracy based on raw
materials export. It’s not about to conquer anybody. Inconceivable.
Ukraine is indeed a special case, as it’s been for 30 years. Well,
that was Putin’s statement. But there were also official Russian
statements at the same time about what their precise goals were in
Ukraine. They were coming from Sergey Lavrov, foreign minister, other
leading officials. They stated that the main goals were neutralization
and demilitarization of Ukraine. Secondarily, establishment of what
they call security, meaning taking over the Donbas regions. Crimea is
just off the table. You may not like it, but it’s a fact of life.
Those were the official statements about the invasion.

What Putin has in the back of his mind is of interest to people
concerned with his mind. I’m not. I’m interested in the policies.
Well, those policies are basically within the framework of what
everyone knows is the possible negotiated settlement. It’s been true
for a long time before the invasion, it was quite clear, stated
clearly, that any peaceful settlement of the Ukraine conflict will
have to involve what Lavrov called the main goals: neutralization of
Ukraine and what they call demilitarization, which means removing
military weapons that threaten Russia. In other words, in status,
they’re very much like Mexico.

It’s not written on paper, but everyone with a brain functioning knows
that Mexico cannot join a Chinese run hostile military alliance
within, to quote Biden’s position, within a Chinese regime enhanced opportunities partner with China, providing robust training and
exercise programs with the Chinese army, and placing weapons on the
Mexican border. All of that is just so far out of the question that
you can’t even begin to discuss it. Well, that’s essentially what
Lavrov, the official statement, was proposing for Ukraine. Whether it
could have worked we don’t know, because the effort wasn’t made to try
it and see if it could work. Maybe. Instead, what we had was Biden’s
policy statement, which I quoted now.

Bill Fletcher Jr.: But here’s my concern, Noam. In 1994, the
Ukrainians and Russians signed the Budapest accord in which, as you
know, the Ukrainians gave up their nuclear weapons. And they had the
third largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. But they gave it up on a
condition that Russia would never attack them. And it would be
interesting if they hadn’t signed that pact, what kind of discussion
we’d be having today. But leaving that aside for a second, that was
the agreement. There was very little interest in Ukraine joining NATO
until 2014 when Crimea is seized and the Russians start supporting the secessionist movements. And so I’m concerned. When you’re talking
about the issue of Russians warning security, it doesn’t sound like
they want security, it sounds more like they wanted a satellite state.

Noam Chomsky: Is Mexico a satellite state of the United States?

Bill Fletcher Jr.: That’s a very interesting question. For much of the
20th century, it was [crosstalk] essentially a neo colony.

Noam Chomsky: Austria wasn’t anybody’s satellite. Finland wasn’t anybody’s satellite state. Unlike Mexico, they were neutral. Austria
was neutral by treaty. Finland neutral by treaty. They could be as
much part of the West as they liked. They became Western oriented and
what we call capitalist democracies, integrated totally into the
Western system. They had constraints. They could not enter into a
hostile military alliance run by the United States which carried out
military maneuvers on their territory and placed offensive weapons
aiming at Russia. Is that an infringement of sovereignty? In some
sense, but it certainly had no effect on the life and practice of
Austria, Finland, Switzerland, Mexico, and so on. That’s the status
that could have been, that might have been achieved for Ukraine if the
United States had been willing. Well -

Bill Fletcher Jr.: But why the United States? When you place the
responsibility on the United States, and I keep wondering about 2014.
If the Budapest accord said Russia would not attack Ukraine in
exchange for the nuclear weapons, and in 2014, the Russians,
disenchanted with what was happening in Ukraine, seize Crimea and
promote a secessionist movement in the East, how does that lead the
Ukrainians to even believe that the Russians could stand by a treaty?
If they broke one. They broke a major one. So I understand what you’re
saying about Austria and Finland. I mean, it makes perfect sense when
you have that kind of neutralization, but this was after Ukraine had
been the subject of Russian abuse.

Noam Chomsky: Certainly Ukraine could not assume that Russia would
abide by treaty anymore than dozens of countries around the world
which have been subjected to US military intervention could have faith
that the United States would observe a treaty. Remember what the
Russians did in Ukraine is, of course, criminal. I have to applaud The
New York Times editors a couple of days ago for quoting the Nuremberg principles and pointing out that Russia violated them by committing
“the supreme international crime,” which differs from other war crimes
in that it includes the accumulated evil of the whole, everything that
follows.

Yes, good for the New York Times editors to recognize, to quote that,
as far as I know for the first time in response to Russia’s violating
it. But of course the US violates it routinely, just constantly. The
US violated it when it invaded Iraq, when it bombed Serbia, when it
overthrew the government of Chile, Guatemala, Iran, just go on. I
don’t have to go on with this.

Bill Fletcher Jr.: No.

Noam Chomsky: It violates it constantly.

Bill Fletcher Jr.: Correct.

Noam Chomsky: It constantly violates the UN charter, the supreme Law
of the Land according to the Constitution, which bans the threat or
use of force in international affairs. Can you think of a single US
president who’s lived up to the US Constitution? Well, I can’t. Of
course, they all violate the supreme Law of the Land and nobody trusts
them. The question is, are the circumstances such that the great
powers will live up to their commitments? Not because they’re nice
guys, they aren’t, but because those are the circumstances.

So let’s suppose that the United States, since the 1990s, suppose it
had abided by the warnings of a whole host of US senior statesmen:
George Kennan, Ambassador Jack Matlock, Reagan’s ambassador to Russia, leading Russian specialist Chas Freeman, who I quoted, another
ambassador. Directors of the CIA including the current director. Not a
long list of other high-level diplomats and government advisors who
had made it clear and explicit that though Russia would tolerate a
violation of Bush’s commitment and regular humiliation up to a point,
they did have a red line. The red line was, again, Georgia and
Ukraine, which are deep within the Russian geostrategic heartland, as recognized on all sides. So that was the red line.

Well, suppose the United States had agreed with these high-level
advisors and diplomats and world opinion, and Germany and France, for
example, and had recognized the Russian red lines, and agreed to a
status for Ukraine that was comparable to Austria, Switzerland,
Finland, Mexico, and so on. Would Russia have invaded? We don’t know
for sure, but I think there was a way to find out. That would be by
withdrawing the September 2021 policy statement which I quoted, and
agreeing to enter into negotiations to see if the general agreed
guidelines could be met. Only one way to find out, to try. The US did
the opposite. To quote Ambassador Freeman again, the US has chosen,
quoting him, to “fight to the last Ukrainian.”

In other words, to abandon any hope for a peaceful settlement and to
ensure that the worst will happen. Well, I think Ambassador Freeman is
quite accurate. Now, would the Russians have committed the supreme international crime anyway? We don’t know. I don’t know. Nobody knows.
But there were ways to try to avert it, and those ways were not taken
and are not being taken now. If you take a look at the current
situation, there are two major countries that could do something to
try to alleviate the horrors in Ukraine. One of them is China. China
could certainly do more to try to move towards alleviating the crisis,
press towards negotiations. And I think China should be criticized for
not doing that. But the criticisms cannot come from the United States
without ridicule because China is following US official policy.
[inaudible] on the US side, it’s fight to the last Ukrainian and block
the prospects for peace.

When President Bush says to Putin, you’re a war criminal, we’re going
to bring you to war crimes trials, that’s saying, you have no escape.
The only choice for you with your back to the wall is either commit
suicide or use the capacity that you have to destroy Ukraine and to
move on to nuclear war. Again, I’m paraphrasing Ambassador Freeman and
others who have any concern for the welfare of Ukrainians. Those are
the options. With Ukraine we don’t know until you try.

Bill Fletcher Jr.: So I hear you. The part of my concern though is… So you’re attributing a lot to the role of the US, but every NATO country
has a veto over the entry of another country into NATO. So despite
what the United States was pushing, there were at least two NATO
countries, Germany and France, that were against the introduction of
Ukraine into NATO. Putin knew this. He knew this. How do I know he
knew it? Because I know it. And if I know it, Putin knew it. So the
question then is if Putin knew that there were vetos against Ukraine
going into NATO, despite all of the hoopla from the United States,
there’s something that’s missing here. And then you add onto this, the claims by Putin that this campaign is about denazifying Ukraine. I
mean, it’s almost laughable when you look at the fascist character the Kremlin. I mean, maybe we disagree, or I’m not sure. But what am I
missing?

Noam Chomsky: You’re missing the nature of international affairs. In international affairs, the fact of the matter is that the United
States has overwhelming power. Other countries exist, they can do
something, but when the United States lays down the law, they follow
it. We know that, Russia certainly knows it. Take our actions. Take
for example, our 60-year war against Cuba, including Kennedy’s
terrorist war. Brutal, harsh, destructive sanctions, the entire world
opposes them. Europe opposes them. Take a look at the United Nations
vote. Last vote was 184 to two against them. United States and Israel. Israel’s a satellite, it has to vote with the United States.

So universal opposition, but universal adherence to them because
they’re terrified of the United States. Other countries won’t violate
US sanctions, even though they oppose them and hate them, because they understand international affairs. They understand that the United
States is a violent, rogue state, we should do what it wants. Do I
have to run through the history on that?

Bill Fletcher Jr.: No, you obviously don’t. But Germany had
substantial business dealings with Russia.

Noam Chomsky: Right.

Bill Fletcher Jr.: France was not interested in some sort of European conflagration. All I’m saying is that it’s one thing to go along with
US policy when it’s far afield. What we’re dealing with Ukraine,
though, was right in the face of the Germans, the French, and other
Europeans. And the NATO countries, at least two of them, bigger ones,
were saying they did not want Ukraine in.

Noam Chomsky: And they’re saying other things too. They hate the Cuba sanctions. They hate the Iran sanctions. They hate lots of other
things that the United States does, but they adhere to them because
they’re terrified of our violent rogue state. They adhere to them. So
they oppose them.

Now to get back to your question, if there had been anyone in the
Kremlin with any resemblance to being a statesman, what they would’ve
done is quite different from what Putin and the hard men around him
decided to do. They would’ve exploited the opportunity to bring France
and Germany into an agreement, pretty much along the line of
Gorbachev’s common European home, without military alliances. France
and Germany, as you mentioned, have very good reasons to want to
pursue this possibility. President Macron of France, actually, in a
very limited way tried to pursue it with his abortive interchanges
with Putin.

Would’ve been a very sensible thing to try to do. That requires statesmanship. Okay. Would it have worked? We don’t know. Putin and
his circle didn’t try. They reached for the guns right away, the way
other great powers do, like the United States. It was a criminal
decision. And from their point of view, an utterly stupid decision.
What Putin did was provide the United States, on a silver platter, the
greatest gift it could imagine. It handed Germany and France over to
the United States. Placed them deep in the US’s pocket, now totally subordinate to the United States, when Russia’s interest, including
his interest, would’ve been to try to draw them out of the US orbit
and into a framework of the kind that Gorbachev outlined. Which was
not new, incidentally.

A major issue right through the Cold War since the Second World War
has been, what will be the status of Europe? Will Europe be
subordinate to the United States within the NATO framework, so-called Atlanticist framework? Or will Europe become an independent force in
world affairs along the lines that the goal outlined, as he put it,
Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals with no military blocks?
Basically Gorbachev’s vision. And that’s been on the table for 75
years. Major issue. The United States, of course, approves the NATO
Atlanticist framework. Again, if there was a statesman in the Kremlin,
they would’ve explored the goal list, Gorbachev’s vision of a European common home with no military alliances.

Instead, what they did is reach for the revolver, carry out criminal aggression, severely harming themselves, giving the United States the
greatest gift it could imagine. Going back to China and the United
States, you can imagine a reason why neither of them, why they’re both essentially following the same line, fight to the last Ukrainian and
don’t do anything to enhance the possibilities of peaceful settlement.
In fact, undermine them, in the case of the United States, by backing
Putin to the wall with no escape hatch. A plausible explanation for
this joint stand of China and the United States is that they both see
the evolving situation as pretty much to their advantage. In the
Chinese case, it’s driving Russia into becoming a subordinate to the
Chinese growing system.

China is developing a huge system of development loans extending
through central Asia, incorporating South Asia, moving to Turkey soon,
probably to central Europe, moving to Africa, to Southeast Asia, even
to US domains in Latin America. If they can draw - Russia’s already
part of it, but if Russia can become a subordinate member of it,
providing raw materials, heavy weapons - Its specialty - But nothing
else as it declines, that’s to China’s advantage.

What about the United States? Putin, in his criminal foolishness, gave
the United States everything that American strategists could want, put
Europe deep in the US’s pocket, now they do whatever the United States
says. In fact, they’re going quite wild. Like in Italy, canceling
lectures on Dostoevsky, kicking Russian cats out of an international
cat conference. US hawks couldn’t want anything more.

Also, increasing their military expenses. There’s joy in the Lockheed
Martin headquarters, you can be certain. Also, there’s joy in the
ExxonMobil headquarters because what’s happening, one of the most
important things that’s happening, is that the slim chances of
escaping disaster, catastrophe by destroying the environment, those
slim chances are being reduced, may be eliminated. The offices of
ExxonMobil, the joy is overflowing, not concealed. They’ve got these
annoying environmentalists out of their hair. They now want to be
loved, or as they put it, they want to be hugged for their work
because now they’re saving civilization by increasing the production
of fossil fuels and driving the world to total catastrophe. They want
to be hugged for it. So there’s plenty of joy in august strategic
circles and military production, fossil fuel circles. So why do
anything to try to save Ukrainians? Why not continue to fight to the
last Ukrainian?

Bill Fletcher Jr.: So Noam, you are placing a lot of emphasis on what
the role of the United States has been in laying the foundation for
this crisis. And I want to better understand what’s going on in the
Putin regime. You have talked quite eloquently about the criminality
of the Putin regime. I’m thinking about what Putin did to the
Chechnyans. I’m thinking about what was done with the Russian
intervention in the Syrian uprising and the brutal bombings that the
Russians were engaged in, and other kinds of activities. And in that
sense, I see a line that goes from Chechnya to Ukraine that is not
just about the role of the United States, except and insofar as
perhaps competition. How do you look at that?

Noam Chomsky: Chechnya was ugly, vicious, destructive, but it is
within the Russian Federation. Ugly, we’ve got plenty of examples.
Take Syria. Syria, what was happening, it was criminal and murderous
and destructive. But if we want to know the reasons, they’re not
obscure. The United States, France, Germany were supporting opposition
forces, which by 2013, 2014 were mostly Jihadi forces, which were
fighting against the recognized government of Syria. The government
that has a seat in the United Nations and is internationally
recognized, they were trying to overthrow it. That’s a Russian ally.
The CIA was providing advanced weapons to the opposition forces,
advanced anti-tank weapons, which did stop the Assad armies. Quite
predictably, it didn’t take a genius to predict it. I did, many other
people did. The Russians reacted.

They came into the war, really for the first time, moved in to destroy
the CIA-supplied anti-tank weapons. Then they went on to continue to
support Assad’s brutal, vicious effort to reconquer Syria, horrible atrocities and so on. Technically it’s not criminal, certainly not
illegal, but it’s criminal in the moral sense, not in the legal sense.
Well, that’s [crosstalk] Syria. That’s what happened in Syria.

Bill Fletcher Jr.: Yeah. Well, I mean, if we had more time, I’d like
to go more into Syria, in part because I think that one of the things
that you’re discounting is that there was a real uprising in Syria.

Noam Chomsky: In Syria -

Bill Fletcher Jr.: In Syria, there was a real uprising, and the US was
very ambivalent about that uprising for a while. But I wanted to get…
That could be for our next interview Noam, but for this one -

Noam Chomsky: You have to understand in Syria there was an uprising
that was part of the Arab Spring.

Bill Fletcher Jr.: Right.

Noam Chomsky: A democratic reformist uprising. Assad crushed it with
extreme violence led on to the civil war -

Bill Fletcher Jr.: Correct. Yeah.

Noam Chomsky: …In which gradually the Jihadi forces pretty much took
over. You can debate the details. But by 2013, 2014, according to the
most informed observers that I know, there was a largely Jihadi based opposition. Which the US was supporting, attempting to overthrow the government, a brutal, murderous government, responsible for most of
the crimes, but happened to be the internationally recognized
government, which is a Russian ally. So when it got to the point that
the CIA was providing advanced weapons by 2015, not surprisingly,
predictably the Russians move in to destroy them. Then it went on to
the rest of the destruction of Syria. Is it pretty? No, it’s very
ugly. Nobody believes that the Russians are saints, but they are an
imperial power, minor in comparison with the United States. As I said
before as an economy, they’re on a par with Italy and Spain. They have advanced weapons. We don’t have to recall that Russia was invaded,
virtually destroyed, twice in the 20th century by Germany alone.

Now the idea of an advanced, a hostile military alliance run by the
world’s most powerful and indeed most aggressive state, which is
providing in last September, enhancing its strategic and defense
cooperation with Ukraine with a robust and exercise program in keeping
with Ukraine’s status as a NATO enhanced opportunities partner,
serious threat to Russia translate [crosstalk].

Bill Fletcher Jr.: Is it really -

Noam Chomsky: …China and Mexico.

Bill Fletcher Jr.: Is it really a threat? I mean, we’re talking about
2022. It’s not 1941.

Noam Chomsky: I’m talking about 2021.


[continued in next message]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)