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Who Makes US Foreign Policy? - Col. Lawrence Wilkerson on Reality Asserts Itself (1/3)
- October 3, 14
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. This is another edition of Reality Asserts Itself. And the reality asserting itself these days is more than troubling. Geopolitical rivalry is intense and sharpening. Ukraine is just one recent symptom of the issue. The climate is apparently already affecting the United States, according to the latest scientific reports, and the IPCC report is saying that we are facing severe crisis as we move further into this century. Yet public policy is nowhere near catching up to the extent of the crisis. The underlying economic crisis has not been dealt with. The issues that led to the financial collapse in 2008 have not been addressed. The issues of too-big-to-fail, the issue of massive financial speculation and gambling that triggered the crisis have not been mitigated in any serious way by legislation. And most predictions are we're heading into another global, deep recession sooner than later.
Now joining us in the studio to discuss a very serious situation is Col. Lawrence Wilkerson. Larry is a retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson is an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. He also instructs a senior seminar in the Honors Department at the George Washington University entitled "National Security Decision Making."
TRANSCRIPT: (SNIP) Full Transcript at:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11839
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN:
JAY: Has the American elite, including that section which profits on near war and profits on actual war--but in general has there come to a conclusion now that war with Iran is not good for the overall interests of the Empire, but if you want a really good Cold War, a really good arms race, then Russia's the right one to do it with?
WILKERSON: That's an interesting speculation. I think--and this is a good development in my view, but for different reasons than I'm going to tell you. (I don't want war. That's the biggest reason.) I think what's happening is people are beginning--people, these people I'm talking about, who really understand the dynamics in the world--and some of those are in the White House, no question about it. Some of them are people bearing the burden of public policy. No question about it. I think they're beginning to understand that this is not about nuclear weapons. This not about Iran's nuclear power. It's about power. It's about who's going to be the hegemon in the Gulf. Who's the most stable country in western Asia? Iran. Who's the country with the most cohesive population? Iran. Who's the country with the most potential for the future? Iran. Not Israel. Not Afghanistan. Not Iraq. Iran.
JAY: Not Saudi Arabia.
WILKERSON: Not Saudi Arabia. Iran. So if you're going to have a relationship with someone that's going to last and endure and enhance your power and your interest over time, you need a rapprochement with Tehran regardless of what kind of government might be there. And it is not the best government to the world, but we've never had a problem with that in the past. So I think that's taking over. And so you're seeing that become a new objective. However it might be sold rhetorically, it nonetheless, I think, is a new objective of that NSC staff that's really caring about American policy and so forth. We might disagree with it, but I think they do care. And what's happening on the other side, with Ukraine and with Russia, of course, is what you just said: hey, we long, we yearn for the solidity and the stability of the Cold War, and my God, Putin's giving it back to us. Let's accept the offer.
JAY: Now, isn't this what McCain ran on when he ran for president? It was all about the return of the evil Russian Empire.
WILKERSON: John never saw a Russian he liked.
JAY: I mean, it was all about Georgia, it was all about the coming fight with Russia. The current sort of American role in the Ukraine and, you know, what--I mean, I don't think one can exaggerate the American role, in the sense there were plenty of internal factors in Ukraine that led to the overthrow of the president and so on. But the Americans are certainly up to their eyeballs.
WILKERSON: Yeah, we were there fomenting regime change, if you will, just as we were in Caracas, as we were in Damascus before.
JAY: But can you--is there any sense--is this coming from the Obama administration? Or is it coming from--and this is where I get to who makes U.S. foreign-policy--how many lines of this kind of policy exist that kind of circumvent the White House and the National Security Council?
WILKERSON: I don't think they necessarily circumvent it. I think they are at times in tension within it, but I don't think they necessarily circumvent it, like, for example, Dick Cheney did in the Bush administration. I think what you have is you have people like Samantha Power and Susan Rice who are right-to-protect-people. This is very traditional. This is messianic Christianity manifesting itself in a secular way. This is we have to bear the brown person's burden, you know, we have to go fix these problems in the world. So this is not something new. It's just got a more sophisticated manifestation in 2014. And it makes a difference. It made a difference in Somalia when Madeleine Albright and Boutros Boutros-Ghali were pushing for state building in Somalia, when any anyone with a brain could have seen impossible task, you're going to fail, and you're going to have to leave ignominiously, which is exactly what Bill Clinton had to do. It manifested itself in the Balkans and in Kosovo. Two days of bombing and Milošević'll cave. Seventy-eight days later and the threat of ground forces and Milošević finally caves. So there's that strain, a messianic strain that's always been there. Then there is a strain of real power, realpolitik. And that's people who are actually trying to achieve American interests, whatever they may be, and the way they think they should be achieved. I would put President Obama in that category. And then you've got people who are closet neoconservatives, who really do feel that America has to assert itself periodically at a minimum in order to teach the rest of the world that it can't climb the hill on which America is the king.
JAY: But Ukraine is setting up we have to teach Putin a lesson, except you helped create the conditions where you have to teach Putin a lesson--
WILKERSON: Well, of course.
JAY: --and more or less play into Putin's hands. I mean--.
WILKERSON: Well, this is a chess game, to a certain extent, played on multiple levels simultaneously. And when you have a person like Putin with the capabilities that Putin has--I would suggest to you that the KGB and the GRU or NKVD, whenever you want to talk about, were probably the best intelligence people in the world for a long time. When you've got those kind of capabilities, you can do things, and particularly when you're operating on interior lines. I'll take you into a military jargon here. Interior lines means I've got a border with you and I can move my tank 15 feet and kill you. But I am the person going to contest that tank, and I'm 10,000 miles away, and I've got to fly my tanks into your country before I can even take you on. The advantage of operating on those interior lines is really, really huge. It'd be like us doing something in Mexico and Russia trying to object or us doing something in Cuba and Russia trying to object. It's really difficult. You can do it, but it's really difficult. So there are a lot of things operating with respect to Crimea, Ukraine, Odessa, and so forth, Georgia, right now that play into what some of these people, like, I think, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, would love to see happen, and that is the development of a new Cold War, a new Cold War with old antagonists.
JAY: Which I don't think was Obama's plan.
WILKERSON: No, I don't either.JAY: It was McCain's plan, which is why it seems like Obama is getting cornered.
WILKERSON: He's playing catch-up in certain respects.
JAY: Completely. I mean, his Asia pivot had nothing to do with this.
WILKERSON: Well, here's the real--this sometimes drives me, you know, to drink. When Jim Baker and George H. W. Bush really accomplished what I think was one of the real diplomatic feats of the end of the 20th century, the reunification of Germany, whether we agree with that or not, they did it, and they did it without a shot being fired. It was wonderful to watch H. W. Bush do that, and Jim Baker. But one of the reasons they could do it was because they assured Gorbachev, and later Yeltsin, that NATO would be quiescent, it wouldn't move, it wouldn't threaten Russia. In fact, I was there when we told the Russians that we were going to make them a member, we were--observer first and then a member and so forth. Well, that fell apart on the fact that they perceived right quickly that we weren't really serious. And then we start, under pressure from Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and others, to sell weapons to Poland and weapons to Georgia and weapons to Romania and everybody else we could bring into the fold. Under those pressures and others, we started to expand NATO and stuck both our fingers in the Russian eye, so to speak, immediately. It's clear to me why Putin responded in Georgia and why he's now responding to Crimea in Ukraine. This is what great powers do when they get concerned about their so-called near abroad. So we have as much fault here as anybody else in this situation, and I don't think President Obama--I think he bought it when he came in. He did not realize--why should he? He didn't have the experience in this regard. He didn't realize what we we're doing and what might come about from what we were doing, and he just went along with it.
Full TRANSCRIPT AT:
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