I couldn’t disagree with you more and neither could these people...:-)
Arnaud Bertrand@RnaudBertrand
Fascinating interview by @gregtabibian
of Alain Juillet, former head of France’s intelligence services DGSE (French CIA equivalent) under Chirac: https://youtube.com/watch?v=AQhGxsprH8A
I’ll translate and summarize what he says about Ukraine, and notably on the origins of the war.
He says everyone saw the Ukraine war coming, that “only those who know nothing about this matter can say it was a surprise”.
To him, the main reason is because the West “refused since 2014 to tell the Ukrainians to respect the Minsk agreements”
He says “the French, the Germans, the Russians and the Ukrainians signed the Minsk agreements in 2014 but the Ukrainians didn’t respect the agreement during the entire period since. And the Russians were telling us all the time to get them to respect the agreement but we didn’t.”
He says it’s unacceptable to invade a country but he also says that “we are co-responsible for it.”
The host notes that “former foreign ministers of France like De Villepin or Védrine are accusing the Americans of being responsible”.
He replies: “yes, that’s what I am saying.”
On the promise made to Russia in the early 1990s not to expand NATO he says that former french Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, who was in the negotiations, is adamant that everyone at the time (including Baker and Kohl) agreed that NATO would not expand East of reunified Germany.
He said the Americans weren’t true to their word and pushed for the eastern expansion of NATO “in total contradiction with what was said [to Russia]”.
He says the long-term origin of the divide in Ukraine dates back from the opposition between the Austro-Hungarian empire and the Russian tsarist empire.
He adds that since then there’s been a divide in Ukraine between those two sides.
He reminds that during WW2 the “Austro-Hungarian side” fought alongside the nazis while the Russian side fought against them.
To him today is “clearly a continuation of this, it’s being going on for 300 years.”
The host asks him if the Maidan revolution in 2014 was organized by the Americans.
He replies: “One thing that particularly caught my attention is Victoria Nuland, who is currently the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, saying that...”
...it cost the U.S. $5bio to get into Ukraine and that they weren’t going to leave now after that. What does that mean, Madame Nuland? She is by the way the same one who, when told the Europeans weren’t happy, said ‘f*ck the EU’. So it’s pretty clear...”
He adds that what happened before the Maidan revolution was Ukraine forbidding the Russian language:
“You have 40% of the population that speaks Russian.
So you forbid a language that large percentage of the population uses under the pretext that you don’t like the Russians.”
He states that it’s “not serious, it’s not possible. That was already a very bad start.”
What happened after is that “they took the Azov battalion and the others and told them to go to Donbass to hit pro-Russian Ukrainians on the head.”
“What they also did was cut the water supply in Crimea. That was before Putin took it back.
So there was a terrible anti-Russophone/anti-Russian population policy in Ukraine. That’s what people don’t realize in the West.
It’s no wonder the Russian side reacted.”
“Putin, seeing that, he isn’t stupid. He sees people who are on his side getting oppressed, he’s not going to go against them...”
The host asks him why the Americans train and maintain close relations with extreme right groups like the Azov.
He replies that “those militia, given their ideology, we could be very confident that they were going to fight against the people in Donbass.”
“They were the perfect representation of the Western side of Ukraine and of course they hated the Russians.”
To him it’s wrong to think there are no nazis in Ukraine. “When Hitler invaded Ukraine, Stepan Bandera, who was a Ukrainian nationalist, saw it as an opportunity to be...
...freed from the Russians by siding with the nazis.”
He adds that “the Das Reich nazi division that committed the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre [a famous massacre in France committed by the nazis during WW2], they were all Ukrainians, 95% of them were Ukrainians.”
He continues: “When they say today ‘there are no nazis in Ukraine’, I say ‘who are you kidding?’.”
He adds: “It’s obvious in Ukraine there is a divide between those with pro-Nazi tendencies - not all of them of course, there are also decent people who are neither nazis nor...
...Russians but simply Ukrainians - but you do have strong tendencies on both sides as well. [...]
He adds that “unfortunately these are things we can’t say on mainstream media because if you say something like this on official TV they cut you and never invite you again.”
On the interdiction of Russian media like RT in France he says: “I thought we were not at war? If we are at war, it’s normal to forbid the enemy’s media on our territory but if we’re not at war, what allows us to ban some media just because we disagree with their views?”
“This is called a thought crime. That’s very serious. In the country of liberty it raises a certain number of issues... I’m not defending RT at all, that’s not the issue, it’s a question of principle.”
That’s the gist of it.
Alain Juillet is an old time “Gaulliste”, which in foreign policy means he is very attached to an unaligned and independent France, i.e. not blindly following the Americans on their crusades like France has done with our latest presidents since Sarkozy.
His uncle Pierre Juillet was Jacques Chirac’s mentor (the last French president faithful to Gaulliste principles in foreign policy, famously refusing the Irak war) and his grandfather was De Gaulle’s classmate so you can hardly find anyone more Gaulliste than him!
His views on the origins of the conflict largely correspond with what the immense majority of top strategic thinkers believe ⬇️
How long can this disconnect between what those “in the know” believe and what the public at large is told continue?
_____________________
February 28, 2022
How Western Strategic Thinkers Warned US-NATO over Ukrainian Conflict
By Prnigeria -March 5, 2022
Russia-Ukraine
How Western Strategic Thinkers Warned US-NATO over Ukrainian Conflict
By Rnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand)
*1. George Kennan,* America’s foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy. As early as 1998 he warned that NATO expansion was a “tragic mistake” that ought to ultimately provoke a “bad reaction from Russia”.
*2. Kissinger, in 2014*. He warned that “to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country” and that the West therefore needs a policy that is aimed at “reconciliation”.
He was also adamant that “Ukraine should not join NATO”
*3. John Mearsheimer -* arguably the leading geopolitical scholar in the US today – in 2015: “The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked […] What we’re doing is in fact encouraging that outcome.”
*4. Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador* to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, warning in 1997 that NATO expansion was “the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat […] since the Soviet Union collapsed”
*5. Clinton’s defense secretary William Perry* explained, in his memoir, that to him NATO enlargement is the cause of “the rupture in relations with Russia” and that in 1996 he was so opposed to it that “in the strength of my conviction, I considered resigning”.
*6. Stephen Cohen,* a famed scholar of Russian studies, warning in 2014 that “if we move NATO forces toward Russia’s borders […] it’s obviously gonna militarize the situation [and] Russia will not back off, this is existential”
*7. CIA director Bill Burns* in 2008: “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for [Russia]” and “I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests”. (He was then Ambassador to Moscow in 2008 when he wrote this memo). He is now director of the CIA. ‘08 memo ‘Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines’
*8. Russian-American journalist Vladimir Pozner*, in 2018, stated that: NATO expansion in Ukraine is unacceptable to the Russian, that there has to be a compromise where “Ukraine, guaranteed, will not become a member of NATO.”
*9. Malcolm Fraser, 22nd prime minister of Australia,* warned in 2014 that “the move east [by NATO is] provocative, unwise and a very clear signal to Russia”. He adds that this leads to a “difficult and extraordinarily dangerous problem”.
*10. Paul Keating,* former Australian PM, in 1997: expanding NATO is “an error which may rank in the end with the strategic miscalculations which prevented Germany from taking its full place in the international system [in early 20th]”
*11. Former US defense secretary Bob Gates* in his 2015 memoirs: “Moving so quickly [to expand NATO] was a mistake. […] Trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching [and] an especially monumental provocation”
*12. Pat Buchanan*, in his 1999 book A Republic, Not an Empire: “By moving NATO onto Russia’s front porch, we have scheduled a twenty-first-century confrontation.”
*13. In 1997, a group of individuals including Robert McNamara, Bill Bradley & Gary Hart* wrote a letter to Bill Clinton warning the “US led effort to expand NATO is a policy error of historic proportions” and would “foster instability” in Europe. Today it’s fringe, traitorous position.
*14. Pat Buchanan,* in his 1999 book A Republic, Not an Empire: “By moving NATO onto Russia’s front porch, we have scheduled a twenty-first-century confrontation.”
*15. Dmitriy Trenin* expressed concern that Ukraine was, in the LT, the most potentially destabilizing factor in US-Russian relations, given the level of emotion & neuralgia triggered by its quest for NATO membership.
*16. Sir Roderic Lyne,* former British ambassador to Russia, warned a year ago that “[pushing] Ukraine into NATO […] is stupid on every level.” He adds “if you want to start a war with Russia, that’s the best way of doing it.”
*17. Even last year, famous economist Jeffrey Sachs*, writing a column in the FT warning that “NATO enlargement is utterly misguided and risky. True friends of Ukraine, and of global peace, should be calling for a US and NATO compromise with Russia.”
*18. Fiona Hill* :”We warned [George Bush] that Mr. Putin would view steps to bring Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO as a provocative move that would likely provoke pre-emptive Russian military action. But ultimately, our warnings weren’t heeded.”
*19. Aleksandr Dugin*, in 1997, had predicted everything that Putin has done, in his book “Foundation of Geopolitics.”
Everybody knew that trying to rope Ukraine into NATO was crossing Russia’s red line, but now people would like to hold up Russia as a villain. After having done everything to teeter on the redline. And this happened only AFTER Biden came to power.
