Garland Nixon hosts Ray McGovern & Scott Ritter on Saturday Morning Live!

KGRaS transcript part 1 , and video link

Greetings to my dear readers. Today we feature a link and transcribe for your viewing and reading pleasure. Hear Ray McGovern speak Russian (who knew?) and Scott Ritter reconsider his most recent considerations, somewhat. Like Garland says, Man, this stuff is too damm important. Hang on to your herstory hat, read it in writing, and rest assured all mistakes are mine.

(warm-up chit chatter)

Good morning…as you can see we are friends and we’re just kind of hanging out here so we’re chatting with you .

My name’s Garland Nixon. And welcome to my channel. Today we are gonna have an exciting and informative conversation with two of the most knowledgable and experienced intellectuals in the field of military intelligence and international relations : Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern.

Let’s Talk.

Follow me on Rokfin https://www.rokfin.com/garlandnixon

{1:00} (Start of show, originally livestreamed )

Garland Nixon:

Good morning and welcome to my channel on YouTube and on Rokfin.

Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years from the adminstration of John F Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s daily brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan, & Ronald Reagan’s five most senior national security advisors.

Ray co-created in 2003 Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity to expose how Intelligence was being used- falsified - falsely, to justify the war in Irag. Ray has a BA and an MA degrees, both from Fordham University, they are in Russian history, language and literature with minors in theology, philosophy and classics. He holds a certificate in theological studies from Georgetown University and is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program.

Scott Ritter is a former US Marines Corps Intelligence Officer, and the author of

Scorpion King: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.

He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF treaty. He served in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf war and from 1991 and 1998 served as the Chief Weapons Inspector with the UN in Irag. Mr. Ritter currently writes on issues pertaining to international security, military affairs, Russia and the Middle East as well as arms control and non-political proliferation. {Non-proliferation..}

Garland Nixon:

{2:40} Guys, welcome. Well let’s start here. There’s a lot of things we want to get started on and i want to start by asking you guys two different questions.

We’re gonna start with you based on your expertise and then we’ll get into some things that we can all talk about.

GN: Scott! Give us an update. What is the status of the - the special military operation in Ukraine as you see it.

Scott Ritter:

Speical Military Operation (SMO) is unfolding as Russia has envisioned, they are in the process of liberating, capturing, occupying- whatever term you want to use - the Donbass,, they have successfully linked the Donbass with Crimea, with a landbridge.

They’re in the process of destroying the bulk of the Ukrainian army, and i think Russia is finding itself in a position it probably didn’t anticipate when they started this Special Military Operation (SMO) that is, things have …developed …in terms of Nato’s and the United States support - level of support to Ukraine. We see the Ukrainian military reconstituting a significant combat capability both outside of Ukrainian territory - we know that right now there’s Ukrainian military formations undergoing advanced training in the use of Western artillery pieces in Poland and in Germany.

Similar training is taking place regarding armoured vehicles, tanks that are being provided; and what this means is that even though Russia’s in the process of destroying a significant force - 40 to 60, 000 Ukrainian troops in Eastern Ukraine, Ukraine is reconstituting a combat capability {that} if not addressed, will create the potential for a lengthened conflict.

We’ve seen that the Ukrainians have ability to carry out combined arms operations as we speak. We see successful counterattacks in the Kharkiv or Kharkov region. We see Ukraine attempting counterattacks in the South toward Kharson (?) so, the idea that the Ukrainian military has been completely eliminated as a fighting force is a flawed concept. They are suffering significant losses.

But unless Russia - broadens its Special Military Operation (SMO) , and probably to the point of changing it from a Special Military Operation (SMO) into a war - that includes the totality of the Ukrainian battle space, this is a conflict that is becoming dangerously close to being unwinnable by Russia.

Meaning that, while they can achieve their special military operation (SMO) objectives in the Eastern Ukraine, with 200,000 troops they’re not able to prevent Ukraine from re-arming and re-equipping when Ukraine is being provided with tens of billions of dollars worth of equipment by Nato. Look we saw this in Vietnam, we saw this in Irag, we saw this anywhere and the Russians saw it in Afghanistan.

SR: Anytime you provide your opponent a safe space to build up military capability you’re never going to win.

The North Vietnamese had the Ho Chi Min trail, Laos, Cambodia…in Afghanistan the Russians saw that the Afghan rebels had Pakistan.. in Irag the Shia rebels were able to use Iran as an area for refitting re-equipping retraining etcetera. So long as Russia allows Nato and Ukraine virtual hands-free access to Western Ukraine for training , and for places in Poland , Germany and elsewhere, to equip without fear of Russian attack, this is a conflict that Russia’s gonna have a very difficult time controlling.

They’re winning in the East. That’s what they said their objective was all along. They’re accomplishing that objective. That’s a Special Military Operation (SMO).

But we’re talking war right now.

I don’t think Russia’s made that transition,yet…

This is a de facto proxy war between the West and Russia using Nato - or using Ukrainian forces as the sword for Nato. The Goal of this is to bleed Russia dry. And if Russia doesn’t change the dynamic, then, the reality is , Russia will be bled dry. {8:01} This is a conflict, this is extremely bloody. Zelensky’s indicated he’s willing to mobilize a million people. And if you…

Its one thing to say I’m gonna mobilize a million people. Its another thing to say I’m gonna mobilize a million people at the time when the West is ready to provide you with the funding that makes this capable and the equipment that turns a million people into a real military threat. So, I see what ‘s been happening this last couple of weeks as what makes this really decisive, this military aid that the West is providing is changing the dynamic. And if Russia doesn’t find a way to address this meaninfully, to eliminate it as a military capability, then , so long as Russia seeks a limited objective operation that’s all their gonna get, but the conflict will never end.

Ukraine, i don’t see Ukraine surrendering anytime soon. {9:00}

Garland Nixon:

We’ve got an interesting article that came out today that’s gonna address just that issue, and we’re gonna talk about that next , the two of us, all of us, but first, Ray McGovern, i had something i wanted to touch on specifically with you, and that is,

GN:

Regarding a conversation between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin in December, and some things that happened afterwards, if you could clarify your understanding of that and how that created the dynamics to get us where we are today.

Ray McGovern: {9:34}

Yeah, Garland, it seems to me very important. Now, i’m an old criminologist, right, and i used to read the press black and white, okay, and you can glean all kinds of things from reading the Russian press. This has been missed, perhaps deliberately in the US , in the Western press, and that is simply this:

RM: In very late December of last year PuTin made it clear that he needed to talk to the President of the United States like right away, like now. {10:05}

Negotiations between Russia and the United States were to start in just 12 days, but Biden sensibly said, Allright, let’s talk. They talked on the telephone on December 30, 2021. What happened?

There was no real readout from the American side, but the Russian side said two things, Number 1, that Biden had promised to take personal charge with what was going on with respect to negotiations and making sure that they were done accurately and with a modicum of trust.

The second thing, more important, according to the Kremlin readout now, Biden promised not to put offensive strike weapons in Ukraine. OK. The wherewithal for them are already well established in Romania, all it takes is a little disc to change them from so-called ABM sites to Cruise Missile or even faster missile sites, ah, in Poland they are almost there.

So here’s Biden making a very strong pledge saying , “Allright, we talk about Poland and Romania later, but be reassured, Vladimir, be reassured , we are not- (as he put it) we have no intention of putting offensive strike missiles in Ukraine.”

BIG DEAL. Did the US contend with, or did they criticize, or did they paw-paw or did they say, that’s not right ? No , they didn’t. They just let it stand.

RM: {12:03} What happened? Well , 12 days later, the negotiations began, it looks like, it looks very much like, the US side forgot about the promise. Or that they told Biden the following morning,

“Joe, for God’s sake, this is our ace-in-the-hole, Man. that We could put {first} strike weapons in there, forget about what you told PuTin that you would do.”

Now, this is all based on what we used to call Media Analysis, it was a very lucrative practice, you had to know how to do it and basically, you had to do the work. When Bill Casey came in , as Ronald Reagan’s head of the CIA, he was astonished. He said, “ Most of my military people, most of my political people, on the Soviet Union at the time, just read this stuff, and 80%, (his words) 80% of their conclusions is based on open sources, this is terrible. We need spies…”

Come on. That ‘s always been the case. It’s been a kind of , a neglected area, shall we say, lately, and i just put out an appeal to my colleagues ,

Am i wrong in thinking this means something? Was there a promise? and was it the case that the US didn’t dispute that? That much is clear.

What kind of reaction would you expect on the part - the President of Russia, Putin or anybody else, to see that he might be being diddled again, that he can’t trust the President of the United States, to get his act together with respect to his advisors, and you know, this is not a secondary issue. Actually, Its been called a secondary issue, but its the strategic issue that worries Putin the most , he said that, he said that in very declarative terms

“Look , you put those ABM sites in, or circling us, and we know what they are, like the ABM sites against Iran, like you say, they can be converted into offensive strike missiles.”

Here, Biden promises not to do that in Ukraine, and all of a sudden that evaporates into thin air. Now , i haven’t had a chance to talk to Scott about this, and i’m wondering if he has noticed the same thing, and if so, whether he places the same emphasis on its importance.? as i do.? {14:20}

GN: Scott, your thoughts on Ray’s question?

SR: Well, look, i’m not going to ever challenge Ray’s ability to carry out open source analysis, he’s a master of the art. And i’ll also never question the ability of the United States to say one thing and do another; when it comes to national security we are the ultimate liars. We’ve lied to everybody. We don’t know how to tell the truth when it comes to national security and it’s clear that the United States views, … Look, we withdrew from the INF treaty for a reason.

Allright, its not, this wasn’t an accident. People say, well that was Trump, No, Obama wanted to withdraw from the INF treaty, the military’s always wanted the United States to withdraw from the INF treaty, we withdrew from the INF treaty for a reason.

And the reason is - we believed that it was in OUR national- OUR national security interests, not Europe’s, not Poland’s, not Romania’s, OUR national security interests - to be able to employ intermediate range missiles, conventional and potentially nuclear, on European soil - in a way that threatened Russian security.

We had seen a situation where Russia had developed a sense of immunity, i would say, from American first strike. You know, Russia has a lot of things to worry about. You know, We’ve been sailing destroyers up thru the Northern straights, and everybody’s like, Well, that’s no big deal, that’s just Freedom of Navigation, well, …when the destroyers are equipped with Cruise Missiles, nuclear capable Cruise Missiles, which if launched from that location can hit Russian missile silos very quickly, Russia says, well, wait a minute, that gives you the potential for a decapitating first strike.

And so Russia realigns its forces, maybe deploys some SARMAT missiles (?), or potential SARMAT missiles out of the immediate strike range, but now we’re deploying Intermediate Range missiles into Europe that can strike these capabilities.

The bottom line is we’re hazarding, we’re penetrating, we’re bursting, Russia’s nuclear deterent bubble, and that’s what our goal has been all along.

We have insane people who operate our strategic forces

and who come up with strategic…

Rather than figuring out how to reduce the threat of nuclear war, these idiots are actually thinking that they can configure a force structure in a manner that will enable us to win a nuclear war. {17:22}

SR: And , so , did Biden get ahead of his…, you know its happened before. Rejkavic (?) 1986. Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan had an epiphany when he got shot. He was laying in bed and he watched an ABC series called the Day After and he went , Oh Good Lord, How realistic is this? and he talked to his scientific advisors, and they said, That actually made it look pretty cool , as opposed to what it would really be like, and he said, but that was pretty terrible. And then he said, yeah, no, Nuclear war will be about the worst thing you can imagine.

Nuclear war will be about the worst thing you can imagine.

& Then he was briefed on ABLE ARCHER 83 which was a Nato-US exercise of Nuclear Launch capability, and he found out that the Russians didn’t know it was an exercise , they actually thought it might be the real deal and that Russia mobilized and put on high alert its nuclear forces, and Reagan went, “Oh my god, are we this stupid?” This is Ronald Reagan. Arch conservative. Evil empire. And he went, “This is ridiculous.”

{18:27}

SR: He (Reagan) sat down with Gorbachev, and, outside of his advisors, Richard Pearl(?) and company , and he said, Hay, Gorby, why don’t we just get rid of ‘em all? Why don’t we just get rid of them all?

Gorby went, Great idea. Except, you got this thing called SDI, strategic defense initiative, if you guys would drop SDI, we’ll get rid of all nukes. And they were that close. That close.

Unfortunately Reagan was married to SDI, Gorbachev hadn’t quite been advised by his people that SDI would never ever ever ever work under any circumstances and we should the Russians just let the United States bankrupt itself, but the point is, we were that close, that close to doing something.

Because Reagan got ahead of his people. I’m not saying Joe Biden is Ronald Reagan, i’m not saying he has vision, i’m saying that Joe Biden may have honestly believed something, because as soon as Reagan came back and briefed his people, “Hay , guess what i just did…” They freaked out. They literally flipped.

And they started pushing back. You found out how little control the president of the United States has over actual national security policy.

All of his advisors screamed, moved around, manuevered, whispered, boom , boom, next thing you know he found out he wasn’t able to do it.

He was barely able to get the INF treat off the ground, and that only then because Richard Perle (?) and other people resigned in protest.

So my point is , Joe Biden could very well have, in good faith, good faith, told Putin, Yeah, we’re not gonna do this…. Meanwhile, the the the the the warmongers back there are sitting there, “No No dude we’ve just spent literally billions of dollars building up a weapons capability. We pulled out of a damm treaty and we got all the chess pieces moving so that we could do exactly what you said we’re not gonna do.” {20:22}

SR: Yeah so i think Ray’s on to something. i don’t trust anybody in the United States establishment who deals with nuclear force structure and things of this nature. Because i used to believe, back when i was a junior member of that team, that we actually wanted to get rid of these weapons. That our goal was to create a framework of stability that would enable us to back away from the abyss. I’m now convinced that all of the people of my mindset and Ray’s mindset and others have been retired or pushed out of the way and there’s a new generation of… WARMONGERS. Literally there’s no nothing else to say. These are people who worship the concept of nuclear - not just deterence, because deterence means we’re gonna prevent anybody from ever using them, - but nuclear dominance. &

The United States seeks to be a nuclear dominant power in the world today.

& the more we lose our conventional capabilities, the more the world realized just how dysfunctional we are from a conventional standpoint , the more these these these generals and admirels say, the only thing we have left that gives us dominance is nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons capability, so let’s play your strong card. This is an empire going down, but we still have the ability to destroy the world, and the people who believe in sustaining this empire, are starting to say the only way we can sustain this empire is by not only having a credible nuclear capability but one that we’re willing and able to use. {22:03}

Garland Nixon:

Ray Mcgovern, i got an important question for you, but first i want to remind our people, everybody here, we got, my gosh- 650 viewers right now, i’m also on Rokfin . We’ve got a , and this is very important, we’ve got a disinformation government defense (?) board right now, splits, so we never know when people like Garland and Ray and Scott will be thrown off of any particular platform, including YouTube, so i would ask everyone also to go to my Rokfin page, i put the link in the chat, so please, click on that, go to my Rokfin page, become a member of Rokfin, as i said, we never know when, Scott’s already been tossed offa Twitter , & we never know when the three of us will be off youtube or wherever, but Rokfin is a good alternative. Also we do have the opportunity here to do on Rokfin you can do the tipjar, here you can do superchats things of that nature which allows me to help get this thing going and get my website going, allright.

GN: Ray, this is important. Ray…

Ray McGovern: Garland, Can i interupt? i’d like to comment on what Scott just said.

GN: Certainly, certainly.

{23:13}

RM: Yeah, i know this from being on duty with the CIA and heading up the Soviet foreign policy branch.

We worked to conclude the first major treaty on arms control, which was the AntiBallistic Missile Treaty (ABM) .

Many of your viewers are probably too young to realize the significance of that , but up until then , there was this balance of terror, where there was sort of the notion that one side could get predominance over the other side to the point of making a first strike - a first strike with nuclear weapons and then escape any retaliation. This was sort of a pipe dream but it was - you know it was worrying because if one side believed that, they might try it.

So we worked damm hard in the early ‘70’s, ‘70 & ‘71 in Hellsinki and in Vienna with the strategic arms limitation team . The negotiators. And in May of ‘72. & I had the priviledge of being there in Moscow. The ABM treaty was signed. And what did it do? It limited each side to well, initially two ABM sites, hardly enough to defend against a first strike, you know, hardly enough to have a credible deterent, OK, and then we reduced it after two years to one.

Did the Russians cheat ? Well, Reagan asked us. Not Reagan but Nixon in this case he said, Nixon. Nixon says , “Will the Russians cheat?” and we said , “Probably,” and he said, “well, how soon can you find out?”… we asked the experts…satelite managers and all that kinda stuff the people who know the resolution of the images and they say , We can tell you in about a week. and so

We told the President , Nixon and Kissinger, “well, we can tell you in a week,”… That’s good enough. did the Russians cheat? Yes the Russians cheated. What did they do?They put this monster ABM site way out in Kranstnarearsk(?) way the hell out in Siberia. It stood alone, its clearly what it was designed for, and what did Reagan do? He didn’t threaten the Russians, he said , “Look, we detected this, here are the images, we need to talk.”

So they did talk. That’s the way we used to do things in those days. Right okay. and Finally,, finally the Russians said, Okay, Allright, its an ABM site, we’ll destroy it, and they destroyed it.

So , trust but verify, Dovary No Provary (?) well that started with Nixon, and the short answer here is that, that regime that balance of terror , that that was real, and really was kind of a deterrent to both sides existed for 30 years, count’it , 30 years, from ‘72 until 2002, when Richard Perle (?) and John Bolton and the rest of Cheney and Bush’s advisors said, Well, let’s ditch that treaty. Okay.

RM:

Now this is equally important. {26:34} The Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty that was signed in ‘86, no ‘87 , right Scott? yea, ‘87. Well i was there for that , too. Now what happened?

I mean, it wasn’t like, forbidding the…implacement of nuclear capable missiles … THEY WERE ALREADY THERE. They were in place; right, the Pershing-2’s were in Europe, and the SS-20’s were all over Europe and Asia as well. Now, Scott wrote the book about this. Literally. He was an IF inspector.

What happened? The two sides were smart enough to say, You know, we used to have this balance of terror where we had a deterent under the ABM treaty , now its even worse, then we had 30-35 minutes of warning now we got 6-9 minutes with these INF with these missiles the SS-20’s and the Pershings, that makes no sense at all , we need more time , more warning from launch to impact time , so let’s destroy a whole class of intermediate range nuclear missiles. Right, McGovern says, right, That’s not gonna go anywhere, Guess what? They did it! Reagan and Bush did it.

Now , what‘s my point? Well, my point is {28:00} that the warning time went back up from 6 to 9 minutes to 30 minutes or so, and now, Trump in his wisdom, and Obama before him, in deferrence to the US military, who can only be described as crazy, as Scott has, has said No, Let’s make it - Let’s make it so we can put these intermediate range nuclear missiles in Poland, Romania, and maybe Ukraine. That was my point about this earlier stuff.

now , I hope you don’t mind me mentioning this Scott, but Scott has written a book - a real book, of his experience watching the destruction of these SS-20’s in then the Soviet Union, and his experience and what this meant, how the warning time was broadened again.

Now what is it down to ? Well, If you include Finland , and Scott is right, what is it about 3 minutes warning time?

SR: yeah.

RM: now what is PuTin going to do? He’s gonna automate his response system, we’re all gonna be fried as soon as somebody detects some kind of missile whether its a scientific research missile from Norway or whatever, we’re all gonna be dead. Okay, that’s how stupid this whole thing is, its not illusory, and its not that we’re warning about something that shouldn’t be taken seriously , it should be , and

what really bothers me and what i’ll say lastly is that: Our national intelligence director’s pretty nonchallant about it.

they say, “ well,Yeah, Putin’s up against the wall. If PuTin considers himself under an existential threat, well, then he might , ah, consider using nuclear weapons, and if he starts to lose in Ukraine, that would be a factor..” well, what’s the conclusion to that? well , “he’s gonna lose in Ukraine,”

he can’t win in Ukraine and then we’re all fried.

This is Saturday morning, but who wants to be fried? And i’ll let it go at that.

{30:06}

GN: you know Scott, that’s the actually the perfect sequeway for what i was gonna say next. Couple a’ things going on, i’m gonna put it together, this is all gonna make sense.

Number 1. Finland and Sweden say we wanna {get} into Nato, a lot of background on that. Now we hear Turkey sayin, Uh - Uh, There’s , There are NO circumstances in which we’re gonna vote for that, and they have to have, we don’t know yet, but they do have to have , they do have to have Unanimity in order to get that done.

I read an article today, in RT, Andrei Shushjienjioff(?), he says, Ukraine could just be the start of a bigger crisis, and Here’s what i think Scott, i’m gonna sum this all up.

In December, the Russians sent a written demand, a set of written demands to Nato-US, and Ukraine wasn’t all of it, it was

We want you to back up to back where you were before like ‘96, we want these missile launchers gone…they didn’t just say We Want Ukraine.

Is it possible that , Russia’s doing a SMO in Ukraine, and after that’s over, they say, Now let’s revisit those demands, we told you to get the hell off of our border, are you ready to talk now, ? Or , does this SMO expand?

Has Russia just decided , Look , this game of building up to our border; either we’re gonna fight you off or you’re gonna get off, that’s not gonna continue…

I mean that may be a little more … i may be adding more, put it all together Scott with your expertise and make some sense of it.

{31:47}

SR: Well i mean, we know that Russia submitted on December 17th of last year {2021} two draft treaties, one to the United States and one to Nato. & There’s similarities in both, namely that Russia said, we, In Addition to our Demands on Ukraine, which basically hinge around the issue of permanent neutrality, that Ukraine can never join Nato, and Russia rejected the idea of the Eastward expansion of Nato , up to its borders; they said, We have to come up with a new framework for security in Europe, that the current situation that exists is unacceptable. Unacceptable. Unsustainable, that we Can’t have, the expanded Nato starting to absorb non-national military capacity.

What that means is Poland has its own army. Russia’s never objected to Poland having its own army. What Russia objects to is that Poland’s soil is used for instance for an American ABM site/ offensive ballistic missile site. There’s now an American core structure, headquarters, 5th core i believe it is, in Poland, where you have the- we’ve built a base where we have the permanent prepositioned stocks for a heavy armoured brigade in Poland. We are looking to perhaps put more heavy armoured brigades in Poland. From a Russian perspective this is a nonstarter. Its just literally they can’t allow this, its an existential threat to Russia.

The same thing with the deployment of Nato battle groups to the Baltics. i mean , the the absurdity of a German armour, reinforced armoured battle group deploying to Lithuania, I mean, anybody who’s (mumble) association (?) of history should just say, “what?”? OH No No, that can’t happen.

But it happened. The Brits have a group there, the French, there, others rotate in. In Romania we have a permanent capability, in Romania. We’re making a US naval presence in the Black Sea de facto permanent, we’re flying our B-52 nuclear capable bombers on offensive proflight profiles right up to the Russian border and then veering away.

The Russians have taken a look at all of this and said, '“Nope, its just not, it's not going to happen.”

So the Russian policy is , Rollback. Now, they wanted to do it thru negotiation, and the best way for them to start a negotiation would be to make sure that they have a buffer of neutrality that separates them from Nato; Ukraine was an important element of that . BeyellaRus is supposed to be an element of that. Finland was supposed to be an important element of that.

But the point is, some people say well, the Russians have an history , and Ray knows this, of putting - all sides do, of putting extreme positions forward , negotiate backward, to a common ground. That may have applied in the Soviet Union times when the United States and the Soviet Union viewed each other as equal, but Russia has been coming at this problem from a position weakness for two decades. When Vladimir Putin started putting his marker down saying , “I’m a little concerned about what you’re doing,” we ignored him.

… because he’s Russia, Russia’s weak , we don’t have to pay attention.

So Putin gradually built up Russia’s strength, but you, he still put his position in, and the US refuses to negotiate. What happened in December is Russia’s back is literally up against a wall. There’s no more Negotiation. There’s no backwards. There’s nowhere Russia can go. Russia’ s against the wall; and Russia said this is the Position, this is what MUST happen, not what we want to happen, what we’re willing to negotiate backward from;

There WILL be a redefining of European security framework that has Nato retreating to its pre-1997 borders. That doesn’t mean that Poland stops being a member of Nato, that means that Poland can no longer host any non-Polish Nato military capabilities. Same thing with the Baltics. This is a demand from Russia. Not a request. A demand. And we need to understand that. That No matter what happens in Ukraine, that demand still exists.

Now Russia, they’re very reticent. You don’t hear the Russians broadcasting their strategy and their objectives and stuff, you just have to take what they say at face value. {37:01} I think Russia believes that the combined impact of a Russian military victory in Ukraine, with the devastating economic consequences of Nato and Europe trying to stand up to Russia with sanctions, and the immense expense that will come with trying to retool Nato - cause Nato is a joke .

Literally It is A joke of an organization. The British saying that they want to provide military guarantees, security guarantees… Britain can’t deploy anything anywhere anytime, that’s it. They’re a joke.

We can go on. The Germans. The Germans had to basically cannibalize the totality of their armoured force to get that armoured unit up to Lithuania. The idea that Germany now can what ? They can deploy troops into Poland?

Even if history would allow that to happen, there’s nobody Germany can deploy. They have nothing. The Romanians have nothing. The Polish army is a joke. If they try to have a massive exercise today, a mobilization, 60% of the Polish military would be in the barracks because none of their stuff works. That’s why they’re in the process of swapping {their} old stuff out to get new stuff. This whole Ukraine thing is one big arms exchange scam.

But my point is , Russia is hoping that the expense of trying to stand up to Russia would be too much for Europe. Now, Is Russia right on this? I don’t know.

i don’t know, its hard to predict the future; if the West senses weakness…on the part of Russia, If the West senses that while Russia could seize the Eastern part of Ukraine but not finish the job, that might bring some resolution to this. Turkey, you know everybody’s applauding Turkey, but Turkey didn’t oppose Finland joining because that is a suicide pill for Nato, it IS, but that’s not why Turkey said No. Turkey said No because the Scandinavians provide safe haven and succor to the PKK, to the Kurdish groups, they say You guys support Terrorists, we’re not gonna allow a repeat of the Greece situation where, Turkey said Greece can rejoin Nato and Greece turned around and stabbed Turkey in the back, according to the Turks.

So the Turks aren’t willing to allow that to happen. But it has nothing to do with the security threat posed by Finland joining Nato.

The same thing with Slovakia’s objections. Its not that, Oh My God we would never let Finland join because that would be the end of us all, its - No, we’re pissed off at them, excuse my language, we’re irritated with them about their policies towards Croatia and things of that nature . These are things that the United States and others can seek to paper over with incentives, bribery, cajoling, threats, etcetera. The point i bring up is that Finland’s still a big problem, and Russia’s not backing down, and, they will not allow Finland to join Nato, that’s my firm belief. They will not allow this to happen.

That means that Russia will destroy Finland as a modern nation state before they allow Finland to join Nato. Ah, Sweden, i think Sweden would pay a price, but Finland is on the chopping block. Their head is there. And there’s nothing that can save Finland.

And that’s the point i tried to make with Ukraine. there’s Nothing that can save Ukraine, Ukraine is gone. Because Russia eventually is gonna transition away from a SMO to a war and they are going to eliminate the western Ukrainian safe haven , they are gonna destroy Kiev as a political center of gravity, and they’re gonna do the same thing to Finland, and Nato can do nothing to stop them, because Nato has nothing to stop them, except nuclear weapons, and Russia has its own nuclear capability. {40:54}

But this is a very dangerous situation because the more Russia acts out in this manner, the more difficult it is for Nato, because, you have a lot of people saying, oh , we can’t push Putin into a corner, remember gotta give Putin an offramp, you know,.the opposite’s true too. You can’t push Nato into a corner. You can’t push the United States into a corner. There’s gotta be an offramp.

And i can’t imagine a scenario that has Nato saying , Yeah we’ll allow this new European security framework, after Russia destroys both Ukraine and Finland. I can’t imagine a scenario where Nato’s gonna go, well, now we want to back down, No , i think its gonna double the resolve.

And its gonna end up with a war in Poland. Because Poland’s just an insane nation in the Baltics. These are crazy nations that should never have been allowed into Nato. They view Nato as the shield and the sword that they can employ against (inaudible) They have centuries worth of grievances building up {41:58} and i see nothing but trouble , danger looming. I don’t see a negotiated settlement here, i don’t, and i don’t know if Russia’s strong enough to win against everybody.

Russia’s strong, Russia has capability, but the idea that Russia, even under general mobilization , would be able to successfully push back against a resolute Nato that itself mobilizes might be wishful thinking on the part of the Kremlin, so we’re headed in a direction where neither side will back down

and neither side is being afforded a diplomatic offramp, and that just spells trouble for everybody.

GN: Ray let me give it to you, there’s plenty to talk about Ray, but i think there’s something i ‘d like you to add to this.

Russia can’t lose this. If you study Russian culture, again you see what’s going on with them, you understand that Russia sees Hitler, they see Napolean, and they see this as another great patriotic moment, but , they got a big brother who sees the same, and that’s China, and so we’re talking about, that’s why unfortunately World War 3, but we’re talking about China saying, we can not allow Russia to lose, its an existential threat, because if Russia loses , it strengthens the EU, the US says to the EU , “come on, let’s go get China,”

And this thing goes really bad, so i see China doing everything up to and including military action, they see this as an existential threat also, in any rate , put all this together, Ray McGovern, make some sense of it.

{43:39}

RM: Well, as you know, Garland. as Scott knows, i’ve been stressing the Chinese aspect of this for half a year now, since it became clear that Putin was given to understand by Joe Biden, that Biden had been advised that China and Russia were at loggerheads, as Biden said explicitly, China is squeezing Russia, its got a long border, and its got pretensions to be a major military outfit, there in Asia, and its squeezing Russia, Russia’s got this big problem.

Well the rest of last year, that is after the June 16th summit between Putin and Biden, the Chinese and the Russians made it quite clear, that not only is China not squeezing Russia, but it has sort of like a fraternal embrace around Russia, and that they have what’s tantamount to a military alliance.

Now, why is this important? Let’s go back to the strategic situation here. And on March 1st, 2018, when Putin got up and he said, “Look, I’ve had it up to here with the West not listening to me, I am about to show you videos of five new weapons systems that the West can not defend against, they’re hypersonic many of them, some of them go around the South Pole, they’re not gonna be able to build ABM’s around the South Pole, this is what they are, and he showed them, and he said, “Now , willya listen?” and the West didn’t listen.

so It built up, 4 years later, 3 years later, in 2021, was not only the strategic missiles, and not only the intermediate missiles, that Scott and I have been discussing already in Romania, or potentially Romania, Poland , perhaps even Ukraine, but the strategic situation had changed.

Still , would PuTin have invaded Ukraine all by his lonesome, all by himself, as my my my grandchildren say? No way would he.

He has China at his back. China has made it very clear that it supports Russian objectives towards Nato, and partly for the reasons you mention , Garland. They realize they’re the next target, for God’s sake, and if Nato succeeds in defeating PuTin or driving him into a corner, China is next.

I mean ,they don’t have to be paranoid about that, they read the US Pentagon documents. China is enemy number 1. Russia doesn’t make it to the first tier, for God’s sake, they’re number 4, i think. and that’s just a month ago. So.

My point is simply this. {46:34} That Putin went into Ukraine with tacit understanding from President Xi of China. That is big. That changed the whole equation. Not only the strategic and tactical military equation, but when PuTin says that he went in for two express purposes, deNazification and demilitarization, he is capable of achieving those, what happened, he is gonna probably in the next couple of weeks, what happens after that? that’s what Scott rightly points out, is a real problem.

Last thing i’ll question is this: Couple of weeks ago we were talking, we were saying , well you know, when Nato puts in those new 155 Howitzers, they gotta move by train, they’re gonna be detected, Russia’s gonna blow the hell outta all the new equipment that comes into the Ukraine.

Since then, they’ve hit many railheads, they’re hitting many dumps, ammo dumps and so forth, well, what do we think now? Well, its billions and billions, but if they can’t get in without being destroyed, what does that do to the equation? Scott, do you have any ideas on that?

SM: Well the thing that frustrates me…{47:56}

End of part 1. Tune in to KGRaS for part 2, coming very soon, or just watch the video if you have time. Thanks for reading.

Regards and blessing be to you.

Grasshopper Kaplan.

We shall transcribe part 2 for you as soon as we get a few more hours to focus cleared up, thanks for your eyeballs.

You can hear the music of Grasshopper Kaplan in his YouTube channel, which nasn’t been turned off yet…