The Duran Podcast - Russia Victory or Political Settlement in Ukraine - Chas Freeman, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

Russia Victory or Political Settlement in Ukraine - Chas Freeman, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Hi, everyone, and welcome. My name is Glenn Diss, and I'm joined today by Alexander McCurris and Ambassador Chas Freeman, who was also a former Assistant Secretary of Defense. And I thought what I really wanted to discuss with two of you today is Trump's return to the presidency. This is, of course, a very different world he's seeing as he comes back after four years. I think usually in the final weeks of an outgoing government, there are some efforts to assist the new government which is coming in as a smooth transition. But it appears the Biden administration has tried to disrupt, I guess, some of Trump's objectives, especially towards the Russians, by escalating the war and pushing new sanctions. In addition, I guess Trump is also being left with a genocide in Palestine. and also Syria, which is now run by Western-backed jihadists. So it's a very different world.

But I thought maybe you can start with Ukraine, because I guess this is the area where there's perhaps some reason for optimism, given that he recognizes some of the mistakes or NATO's role in starting this war, even though he's blaming it, of course, on Biden. But is there any possibility, do you see any summit coming? How do you view this scenario, Ambassador Freeman? I think Trump is working on a summit with Putin, and I think it is very important to note that,

unlike the Biden administration, which for four years did not communicate at all with the Russians except on the battlefield, Trump is prepared to talk. In fact, he wants to talk. I'm not sure he will like what he hears, response, but at any rate, this is a big change because it overcomes the aversion to diplomacy that the outgoing Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, has displayed at every stage of the administration.

But he inherits a terrible series of crises and messes, if you will. Ukraine is obviously a major one. That is to say, the United States and NATO gambled in Ukraine and we've lost. And the question is, how much have we lost? And that is what is to be worked out, presumably in the negotiation that Mr. Trump says he favors. But in addition to that, there is an impending war with Iran. There is the complete loss of American moral authority globally because of our support for genocide in Gaza and for aggression against Lebanon, there is, as you noted, the collapse of

Syria with many questions about which direction it will travel in. And finally, I think not least, there is escalating possibility of war with China over the Taiwan issue. So the Biden administration did not improve the world. It left behind it a terrible legacy for its successor. Its successor, of course, unlike Mr. Biden, is unpredictable. Joe Biden was completely predictable. He was a cold warrior. He was a self-proclaimed Zionist. And Mr. Trump seems to dislike globalization, but love old-fashioned imperialism. Or at least he's striking that pose, perhaps as an opening to a negotiation. He has a history of engaging in thuggery, bullying, and the like, as a prelude to opening talks.

Just remember the talks that he had with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un, which were preceded by outrageous threats of warfare and fire and havoc, but which ended in an attempt unsuccessful to produce a solution in the Korean Peninsula. Here, I just want to make one final point in that is Mr. Trump has brought with him an entourage. One person I know said he traded in the clown car for a clown bus and filled it with people of dubious qualifications. Remembering his first term in office and the antics of people he had brought in like John Bolton, who was in large measure responsible for the failure of the effort. to make a peace with North Korea, among other.

We don't know whether Mr. Trump will in fact be in charge. Elon Musk seems to think he's in charge. So I think there are many imponderables. But at least we can say that a willingness to talk has replaced an unwillingness to talk. And of course, as Richard Nixon observed, it isn't always better to talk than not to. It depends

if you know what you're going to say. What is Mr. Trump going to say? We don't know. I was going to actually ask about this because I sometimes get the sense that with Trump, he seems to think that if he meets someone, if he meets someone

like Putin or Xi Jinping, and he says he also wants to meet, and the same was true of Kim Jong-un before, that the fact of the meeting, it's is enough to deliver an agreement. And I don't think that that's how things are going to play out at all, especially not over every one of the conflicts that you've just been outlining. China, Russia, Iran. I mean, there is going to be an awful lot of detail and an awful lot of

hard work to run through. And I do wonder whether Donald Trump understands that and whether he's temperamentally, the sort of person to actually do the kind of thing that some presidents in the past, that Kennedy and Johnson at Glaspera, Nixon, of course, and Reagan all did, which is, you know, actually go through these things, look at each problem by itself, understand how everything relates to everything else, and, you know, work through the detail, and finally come to an agreement which the other side can work with. I just make that general point about Trump because many people, he's also got this idea

that he's this great deal maker, that he thinks that, you know, you're aiming to do a deal with the other side. And that concerns me because I have been involved in negotiations in the commercial world. I've never been involved in diplomatic negotiations, but my sense of the two is that they are completely different. And I think if Trump thinks that the one is like the other, then I think he's profoundly wrong. Well, his background, of course, is in New York real estate, which is a field in which there is absolutely no ethical standard applied.

it is very much dog-eat-dog. His preferred negotiating style, as I said, is to open with a bluster and threats, which I don't think endears him or my country to those with whom it's negotiating. On the positive side, however, even though he is clearly a narcissist and imagines, as you suggested, Alexander,

that simply exposing other people for the glory of his presence will endear him to them and give him an in with them in a negotiation. I think this is a really questionable assumption. But in any event, I think you have to work on relationships in order to solidify them. You cannot build them in a single encounter or a photo op at the DNZ in Korea. Anyway, he is a narcissist, but on one issue, he appears to have understood the viewpoint of the other side, and that is Ukraine. He has said that he understands that the push to extend the American sphere of influence in Europe to the very border of Russia and implicitly to then station American troops and equipment in Ukraine aimed at Russia. was something that the Russians could legitimately object to.

So that is something. On the other hand, narcissism is not compatible with empathy, which is the essential ingredient of all diplomacy. And so a superficial encounter over a chocolate cake at Mara Lago with Xi Jinping and a visit to Beijing in which the usual barbarian handlers put on the proper sort of show to ingratiate Mr. Trump, or a visit to Riyadh to talk to Mahmoud bin Salman,

when a PR firm has been hired to project pictures of Mr. Trump on the buildings in the Saudi capital. All these things don't add up to what I think Mr. Trump imagines, as you suggest. So it's very hard, and particularly so when you look at the issues that are involved, you know, in Ukraine, in addition to the question of Ukraine's place in European security architecture, whether it is neutral as it was born or whether it is incorporated into the American sphere of influence or whether it is partitioned. And if the partitioning results in a peace agreement or has some sort of battle line permanently etched on the soil of Europe in the form of a demilitarized zone, these issues are very difficult.

There are three issues, at least in Ukraine. One is what started all this, which was the question of the rights of linguistic and cultural minorities, Russians, Hungarians, Romanians, Slovaks, others in Ukraine. Of course, the most important are the Russians, who were about a third of the former Ukrainian state, undivided Ukrainian state. That requires attention from a body like the Commission on Security and cooperation in Europe. It's of concern to many countries in Europe. It was an essentially ingredient of the Austrian state treaty of 1955,

which stands as a model for a settlement in Ukraine, creating a neutral, independent, prosperous and democratic Austria with respect for the rights of linguistic and cultural minorities. So that's one issue. There is the issue of where the Ukraine-Russian border is, which is something only Ukrainians and Russians can solve, although others may kibits, others may join in and provide gratuitous advice.

In the end, Kiev and Moscow have to work that out. And then finally, of course, there is the overarching question of what should replace the current turmoil and conflict in Europe to enable stability and peace to reduce the Russian's sense of threat from NATO and NATO's sense of threat from Russia. This is something that requires the United States to the center, but it also requires other NATO members

and the NATO Secretariat. And so this is enormously complicated, and on several occasions I've noted that it, It resembles nothing so much as the peace of Westphalia in its complexity. And in some ways, it resembles that because what is required to restore peace and stability to Europe is a new paradigm, a new arrangement, a new framework for managing security issues. That could be something like the concert of Europe, which was an inclusive arrangement, which incorporated the defeated French

into stabilizing things for roughly 100 years, a few skirmishes, but mostly peace in Europe during that period. Or it could be something else, but this is not an easy topic. And restoring respect for sovereignty, for the rule of law,

ending the expansion of lawlessness, which I liken to the, you know, lawlessness is a force. We don't talk about the speed of dark. We talk about the speed of light, but dark also has a speed. And lawlessness has a speed. And it is expanding globally. And it has seized the throat of Europe. So lots of issues.

You ask whether Mr. Trump understands all this? I would say there's no evidence that he does. he's not famous for his literacy on diplomatic history or other matters that are relevant to the task before him. But we will see. We will see. This was my thought because, well, even if you put Trump aside, what is required for peace in Europe now, it would have been so much easier three years ago, but of course now things have changed dramatically. So not only are we speaking about a neutral Ukraine, but of course these huge territorial concessions which are required.

And also underpinning the whole thing is, as you mentioned, Ambassador, the notion that we really need to have what we never had after the end of the Cold War, which was this mutually acceptable, was Cold War settlement. Now, I wonder, again, what it could look like, because I saw very recently now National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan explaining why the Biden administration had enhanced security and he essentially said, you know, NATO expanded, we weakened the Russians, we weakened Iranians, we weakened China.

All of this was a very strange way of looking at security. So we are stronger, they are weaker. It looked, because you just refer to the piece of Westphalia, but the whole outcome of Estfalia was because no one actor was able to dominate. but so far it looks the main approach to security is how to restore absolute dominance again so how do we restore another Roman Empire as opposed to having

accepting a balance of power and it seems again Trump is different from the Biden administration but he also seems that it's leaning towards security through US primacy so you already answered it to some extent, but what would be the possible framework, even though Trump might not approve of it?

Well, I'll make two comments. First, on Anthony Blinken's interviews, which are very revealing because he frames everything as a zero-sum game, and no effort to produce a mutually beneficial, mutually agreeable, interdependent result. In four years in office, he never once visited Moscow. Sergei Lafroff, who's the very able foreign minister of the Russian Federation, has encountered him or ricocheted off him at various international conferences, but he has not been in Washington for five years. So there's been a total absence of diplomacy.

I would add that clearly, Mr. Blinken, and I presume President Biden's concept of security, is you're either with us or against us. You can see this in his treatment of China. He says, well, the Chinese and the people who work for him and said the Chinese are not neutral. On Ukraine, they're helping the Russians by trading with them, selling things to them, and so forth. well, the Chinese did not cut off trading with the United States or until very recently until provoked by export controls did not apply their own export controls. They are neutral unless you take the view that you're either with us or against us.

So basically if China doesn't sign on the dotted line with American policy, it is against him in Mr. Blinken's concept. And therefore there's no point in talking to the Chinese or to the Russians. as he explained. So all of this is very counterproductive. One has to hope that the Trump administration will replace that with at least a greater openness to understanding the viewpoint of the other side

and where people stand. You ask what the framework might be. I will immodestly refer to the, partnership for peace, which I synthesized. I was clever enough at the time, this is now 30 years ago, to avoid taking any credit for it and attributing it to General Shaliki Kusveili and others, and they all contributed. General Chuck Boyd, who was the deputy commander at Vihangan of the European Command under Shadiq

Kassfili, and I had a conversation which had. educated me on the potential for using humanitarian assistance disaster relief and other peaceful measures other than war or operations other than war to build a framework for peace in Europe. The partnership for peace had two characteristics and these, I think, remain relevant. At least the first one was to try to give the countries of Europe, those who were willing to define themselves as European, because part of the effort was to avoid proclaiming who wasn't European, to let them decide what level of effort they will put into acculturating themselves, assimilating Western European defense standards, political, military culture. And this involved having them get rid of the Soviet system of having a military defense minister, subjecting the defense ministry budget to parliamentary review, having a good deal of transparency in defining defense policy. And so that was one thing. And that involved

that involved a restructuring of the political realities, which happened in Eastern Europe. We never expected that the Russians would follow this because their own tradition is much great, longer, and quite different. But at any rate, it took hold. The second element, equally important, and my view was that the members of the Partnership for Peace had to master the 3,000 so-called Stanags or standardization agreements for military operations, the doctrine for military operations developed by NATO, which is still the only multinational alliance that has developed standards that will enable those of its members who are at odds with each other, don't speak each other's language and have a good deal of antipathy to cooperate in military operations.

So a Greek, Alexander, and a Turk can conduct the joint search and rescue operation, even as they have many other differences. So this was important because it required real effort. And our prediction, most of which was correct, was the Czechs who are the most Teutonic of Slavs, very efficient, would very rapidly master these standards. The Poles would try to fake it. The Hungarians would try to avoid it. But at least those who were in the OSCE basket at the time, the Tajik's, the joy,

origins, others, who are argued, there's no argument that Tajikistan is part of Europe. And we were looking for a European-wide security architecture, which is what we still need. Even though, Glenn, as you've pointed out, the future framework for security is going to be Eurasian rather than simply European. That is to say, Europe is a peninsula on the Eurasian landmass, much like India. India and it is going to be seen in that light in future now that European global dominance has receded. Anyway, this was a framework that offered a choice.

It could be a pathway to membership in NATO. That was a learning experience. It was tutorial. To enter NATO, you had to transform your political culture with regard to. regard to the defense policies, and you had to be able to contribute as well as consume the security provided by the alliance. You had to contribute to it. So, Portuguese had to be willing to die for the polls and vice versa. That is the genius of the alliance. Anyway, that was one path. the other was a path to a cooperative security system in Europe.

And that is why, built into this, there was a U.S.-NATO-U-S.-Russia NATO Council. It is why we expected the Russians to train some of their troops, the NATO standards, to become interoperable, so as to be able to cooperate. And it is also why we did not expect Ukraine to seek membership in NATO. So that was then. I would argue this is still irrelevant. You know, a lot of water has flown over the dam, but the basic opportunity to build a cooperative security system in Europe

that can perform the functions of the concert of Europe, which began with a very difficult effort at reconciliation in the Congress of Vienna. Something like this is what is now required. Will we rise to the challenge? I'm not very optimistic. What do you say to those? And I've had quite a few people who contact me about this, who say that the quest for peace in the war in Ukraine has come too late,

that we've now reached that stage in the conflict where the Russians are clearly winning. I don't think anybody who is serious about understanding the conflict doubts that, that given that the Russians are winning, given how mistrustful of us they say they are, and probably indeed are, given how intractable the whole conflict has been all along, that a negotiated piece of the kind that might have been possible three years ago is now a mirage and that what's going to happen is that there's going to be a situation where the Russians breakthrough and it will be they who basically decide when the moment comes to try and agree

some kind of arrangement perhaps with us. In other words, that the initiative is now so much with the Russians that it will be they who will decide, not just to a great extent the form of the peace, but the timing of it? Well, I will start by saying that I am a retired diplomat, and optimism is to diplomats as courage is to soldiers. So you have to believe you can accomplish something. You can charge the hill and take it, even though the odds may be poor, that you'll survive the effort.

We need to try. So that is the first point. The second point is, you're absolutely correct. terms are largely going to be dictated by the Russians. And the question really comes back to the issue of empathy that I mentioned. Can we understand and accommodate the legitimate concerns of the Russians? If we cannot do that with respect to the three issues I mentioned, which are, you know, the status of Russian speakers who might remain in a rump version of Ukraine,

the issue of Ukrainian neutrality and the question of a broader security architecture for Europe that reduces the perceived threat on both sides, if we cannot do that, then indeed it is too late. But I'd argue that we need to try. And I'm encouraged by the fact that Mr. Trump seems to be willing to make that effort. Whether he's up to succeeding at that,

or whether the people he's appointed, General Kellogg, for example, are the correct envoys to pull this off is another question. But I don't have any doubt at all, having observed both Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lathrov, that they are up to a negotiation. They will be tough. There will be no ceasefire in Ukraine until there is a negotiated set of principles to ensure that their interests are accommodated in the future rather than simply as was the case with the Minsk Accords

dismissed as irrelevant. They are not going to allow the West to play for time. Their defense minister is saying very clearly that he expects that Russia must be prepared to fight all of NATO within a decade. So their view is typically Russian. Glenn, you're an expert on Russia, I am not. It is pessimistic.

That is their nature. And maybe that's realistic. But anyway, we need to understand that the willingness of the Russians to accommodate is limited. I mean, I have thought that the best solution for the annexed or semi-annexed oblasts in East. and southern Ukraine would be for the Russians to put them to shelve the issue for a time. Say, okay, well, they are autonomous regions of the Russian Federation. They will remain that for 20 years. At the end of 20 years, there will be a referendum in which they can determine whether they wish to fully join the Russian Federation,

whether they wish to join, rejoin Ukraine, whether they wish to become independent neutral buffer states, between Russia and Ukraine, and we will do this democratically, since we are not the autistic autocrats that you imagine we are. The reason I come up with this is Russia has a serious problem. It's not just the product of the outrageous disinformation campaigns that have been waged during this war by both sides, but the West has essentially been brainwashed into believing that the Russians are nothing like what they are,

and they've said things which they haven't said, they've declared objectives which they haven't declared, they are committed to achieving objectives, which they will know they cannot achieve. All these things have colored Western opinion about Russia, and Russia has to recognize that it has an image problem and take measures to address it. So the one reason I favor the sort of shelving of the issue in the Donbass and South,

if you will, is that I think this would put the lie to a lot of the Western propaganda. I don't have any doubt at all since these are Russian-speaking areas that they would opt to go back to Ukraine, given the nature of Western Ukrainian nationalism. So I think the risks are very small for Russia. The question is, you know, it wins if they become part of Russia, it wins if they become buffer states, Russian buffer states, Russian speaking, buffer states. The question is, does Russia understand what Churchill meant when he said in victory magnanimity? Or is it wedded to obdurate insistence on maximalist goals? I don't know.

But I think that the people who are in charge of this in Moscow are sufficiently equipped with San Juan, that they could indeed come up with a compromise like that. I would also add that I don't think, since there are these three issues involved, I don't think a ceasefire can take place until there's an understanding on the rights of Russians in whatever remains of Ukraine. I don't think a border can be agreed until that is the case. And I think that as was the case in the Korean conflict, the fighting will continue as the negotiations proceed.

This is not an on-off switch. There is no Gordian knot you can cut in Ukraine. It is a tangle of issues, which will require much time and effort to unravel if we ever can. I agree, though. I think a key problem here is you mentioned brainwashing or at least the mindset we now have because we seem to be very far away

from what we're discussing towards the end of the Cold War, the whole principle of indivisible security. There is security for all, otherwise it will be security for none. Instead, we're having this rhetoric where we assume that Ukraine is a beacon of democracy, Russia's a dictatorship. The Russian objective in Ukraine is to wipe Ukraine off the map

and just acquire a new territory in some Tsarist expansionist agenda. And also in the wider regional competition, that NATO is simply a force for good, and Russia doesn't really consider it a threat. I mean, we are so far away from sharing any common reality with the Russian. So it's the whole. idea of coming together with a common security deal. I think it's going to be very hard. But also the former formats, you mentioned a few of them, for example, the partnership for peace.

I think that had well the intention, but I think the way it ended up was, it was seen as a stepping stone by the Russians to simply bring countries into NATO. Same as the NATO Russia Council. It had some good ideas behind it, but at the end, the main complaint from the Russians was it was a way for the first to meet. NATO countries come with a common position and then they meet with the Russian to have most asymmetrical power when they negotiate. And also even if they would want to take into account anything Russia had to say, they already agreed all these countries.

So there was very little maneuvering to move once they actually met with the Russian. So it became a form of a NATO unilateralism that masqueraded as multilateralism, sorry, something that included Russians. And lastly, as we saw with the NATO-Russia Council, once it was really needed, such as in 2008 with the invasion of Georgia, when we have conflict with Russia, we don't believe in diplomacy, so we suspend it. We say, well, now we have a conflict, so now we won't talk to you anymore.

This is the one time we need the diplomats, who we need these institutions, and we throw them all aside. So it would be hard. But beyond those notes, I also, wanted to look at what you think is the role of the Europeans. I know Alexander and Alex have been talking about the Europeans. Should Trump include them into this discussion with the Russians? Because so far, it looks to me, they've been mostly spoilers. They seem very afraid that peace might break out. They indeed, the French and the British, they even joined in on

sending these missiles now to Ukraine with this direct attacks on Russia. which is aimed to sabotage Trump's peace efforts. They join in on this sanction. So they seem to be very eager to not get a peace with Russia. On the other hand, if we leave out the Europeans, again, it goes against the principle of indivisible security. And, you know, everyone being a stakeholder. So I'm just curious if you thought about what the role of the Europeans might be. Because sometimes, you know, as a European, nonetheless, I have to say,

it almost sounds better just to leave us out of this because we're not going to have anything productive to contribute. That's a lot of implicit questions. Yeah. Let me start by saying, obviously, the partnership of peace, as such, is dead. It exactly served the purpose that you describe.

That was the choice that we made. It was driven by the 1994 and 1996 elections in the United States. It was a decision by the Clinton administration to go for ethnic voting by Eastern European and people of Eastern European origin who have a well-founded fear

of Russian aggression and dominance. So what might have been was unimaginatively set aside in favor of a continuation of the Cold War with Russia and designated as an enemy rather than as a partner. That's dead.

But the concepts behind it are not. And so the question then is, can someone come up with a framework that does the things that the Partnership for Peace could have done as a cooperative security instrument? And I think that's a challenge for people. Here, I would say that I do, like you, I do not look for many creative ideas from Europeans.

This is not an age of giants among European statesmen, as far as I can determine. And if we have a problem in the United States with a rather strange demagogic felon as our president, Europe isn't doing a lot better, in my view. So, yes, I think we cannot look to Europe. Europeans for the sort of initiative that they really should take. I mean, I should say you really should take because I'm not European.

Melville, the great author of Moby Dick, said, if you kill an American, you shed the blood of the entire mankind. And that is, we are not European for better or ill. Europeans should take the initiative to solve the problems of European security. Europeans once did that. I've referred several times to the concert of Europe, the Congress of Vienna. Europeans failed notably on a number of occasions to do that, especially after World War I, when they chose to excommunicate both Germany and Russia. I mean, Russia rather relished being excommunicated.

but the consequences of this were World War II and the consequence of World War II was the Cold War. So can Europeans rise to the occasion? That's a challenge for you. But in the absence of Europeans doing so, I think the Americans, we Americans, have got to take the lead. And I'm hoping that Mr. Trump's desire to go down in history

as a great figure and win the Nobel Prize, maybe Glenn you can influence the committee in the other country over there to give it to him. You know, this, I'm hoping, will incentivize him to find people who can come up with a viable concept, who can understand Russian fears. And Russian fears are not groundless.

European geography means that there is no substantial barrier between Moscow and the Pyrenees and there is no substantial barrier between Moscow and Ulan Bata and the reason, and this means that Russia continually gets invaded by Mongols, by Germans, by French

and fears invasion by Americans. The only effort we made to do that in Vladivostok during the October Revolution was a disastrous failure, which should teach us something. But anyway, the Russians are rightly fearful. They don't trust anything but agreements that are anchored to substantial interests

on the part of those who make those agreements. And in fact, trust does not come into this. You have to be sure that the other party, as very substantial reasons of self-interest do what it has agreed to do. So if we have a negotiation, it's going to be a bit of a shock to the West, which has been deluding itself about what is happening.

It's going to be very tough. And as Alexander said, it may very well fail. It may be too late. But the notion that somehow Europe would benefit from a division into rival military blocks, which is essentially what we've been attempting to produce between us and the Russians, this is something that an intelligent European should find preposterous and should goad people to action. So you can explain perhaps why.

why it hasn't. I can't. I cannot understand it at all, and can I say that I have never known, in my own lifetime, a situation where in post-war Europe, we have been uniformly more hawkish than the Americans on relations with Russia.

I mean, I say that. I mean, obviously, there have always been hawks in Europe, you know, very heartline hawks. but there have always been strong voices, very strong voices, de Gaulle, Thatcher, in her own way, others who've spoken for detainte and, you know, process of Vili Brandt, whatever, the fact that we have absolutely no one at all who is in any way like that, it still astonishes me.

I mean, I cannot understand it, given that we are talking about peace, stability, and security in our own continent, in our own neighbourhood. And when you said about not wanting divisions and military blocks in Europe, I would have thought that the need to avoid that ought to be obvious to Europeans most of all, given the history.

Anyway, what I wanted to ask a further thing is this, because you read Americans, you read people like Eldridge Colby and people like that, who at some level I'll come across as being a bit more realistic. But what they seem to be saying is we really don't want to think about or worry about Europe too much anymore because we've got more important things to worry about, which is China. And they seem to want to be more confrontational with China, or at least they take the relationship with China as being more important

than the situation in Europe. I wonder whether that is actually possible, whether the United States, in the present world, can prioritize China over Russia in quite that way. Of course, China is a much more powerful country. It's got a vastly bigger economy. It is equivalent to the US in some ways. But Russia remains,

major power, and of course it is a major power in Europe, and Europe is still, I think, very important for the United States. So I don't think you could just part one problem so that you can focus on the other. I think you have to deal with both at the same time. I mean, at least that's my own view. I agree with you. What drives the Psychotic America? view of China, and I use that word advisedly. I'm sure you're aware of the difference between a neurotic and a psychotic. You know, a psychotic believes that four, that two plus two is five, and he's prepared to kill you to ensure that you don't contradict him.

Whereas a neurotic, he understands that two plus two is four, but is very unhappy about it. We are neurotic about Europe and our primacy in it. But it is not effectively challenged despite Ukraine. Precisely because of the subservience of self-appointed vassal states, if you will, in Europe, the absence of any challenge to American thinking from Europeans, which I will offer a partial explanation for that, and that is it's a freebie. What do you risk by being more belligerent than the United States? you're basically saying, well, let the stupid Americans go and take the brunt of the issue.

And, you know, we'll be protected by them as we always have been, and we don't have to do very much. There's, there are cracks in that. There's a lot of hedging going on in Europe now with defense budgets. But Europeans have not come to the logical conclusion, which is that a united Europe, Europe in which the military industrial complexes of independent countries are merged, in which there are common purposes, in which there is a common ability to use force, is superior to one where there are national champions in the armaments industry and so forth. So that is, I think it may be unfair to Europeans, but I don't think that's an absolute.

factor. So the question then, you mentioned, Reg Colby, he represents an ancient argument in the United States, which is very evident in World War II, should we give priority to the European theater or to the Pacific theater? And for the reason I mentioned, namely, our primacy in Europe really is not challenged, but it is under challenge in the Pacific, you get the sort of argument that Colby makes. I agree with you, however, you can't make that kind of division anymore for precisely the reason that Glenn has argued European security is now a portion of Eurasian security.

In a sense, the thing that American strategists always feared, that is that there would arise on the Eurasian continent, McKinder-like, some kind of hegemonic country, empire, or alliance has been produced by American policy. We have managed to unite countries that with a long history

of mutual distrust and even warfare, Russia and China, Russia and Iran. I mean, think of the Persian contest with Russia, historically, and Turkey, which we haven't mentioned. I think Turkey is on the verge of becoming a major problem for Israel and therefore for the United States.

And the importance of this just cannot be overlooked because you cannot conduct an effective policy toward a vast number of issues without either the support or acquiescence or at least not a lack of opposition from the Turks. These issues include relations with Russia, relations with Ukraine, the Black Sea, the Caucasus Central Asia, West Asia, including Palestine, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, the Persian Gulf. Central Asia, of course, includes Afghanistan, the Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus, Greece, the Balkans, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, you know, 2 billion people who are Muslims, very much influenced by Turkey. Anyway, we have neglected that relationship. We let it drift. And the Turks, like the Russians, have now given up on Europe. And they have reoriented themselves to the south and east.

And so they now have a de facto border emerging with Israel and Syria after they whack the Kurds, which they're going to do. So this is a very complex world that is emerging, and as Glenn said at the outset. It does not have much resemblance to the one that Mr. Trump experienced in his first term. We really have had it at Seiten Venda. And this is one of those moments when history takes a new direction. so it has not ended, of course. So I think I'll leave it there,

but I basically totally agree with you. You cannot make, you cannot compartmentalize the world in the way that we prefer to do. Of course, from the military point of view, it's logical. You keep one front quiet while you address another, but this doesn't work. North Koreans in Kursk are an indication of how the world has changed. Regarding Turkey and Israel clashing, I assume this would be within Syria.

I agree. I think the Kurds will probably be, wants to suffer the greatest now, as Turkey looks to, well, of course, weaken their position, but also HTS wants to consolidate its grip on Syria. But how do you see this confrontation playing out? Is it sharing a de facto border if you consider, well, Turkey to be in control of HDS? Well, the objectives of the two countries are completely opposite. Israel has always wished to fragment Turkey, I mean Syria, into four or five little statelets, which he could then divide and rule and manipulate.

And Turkey is very much focused on a unified Syrian state in which the Kurds are removed from autonomy, or subjugated, if you will. And Turkey is a champion of Sunni Islam and was never comfortable with the rather strange al-Awhite version of Shiism that commanded authority in Syria, I think the Israelis are beginning to understand that while they may have opened the door

to an attack on Iran across Syrian and Iraqi territory, Turkey could be a much bigger problem for them in Syria than the Iranians have been. Turkey is playing for leadership of the Sunni world. People talk about neo-Ottomanism and so forth. This is an oversimplification. But Turkey is, as I indicated earlier, occupies a pretty central position on a lot of geopolitical issues. And it is beginning to exert itself on all of these. So I should have mentioned you can't have a policy toward the EU without considering Turkey, NATO. So I think I don't know how this is going to play out, but I don't believe this is going to be an amicable relationship. given the very justified feeling of the world's Muslims and others, including myself,

about the utter depravity of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. To rather big questions, but I get to put them rather simply, do you think Trump himself understands how damaging what Israel has been doing in Gaza and elsewhere, has been to the international position of the United States. And there is another thing that, again, I get the sense sometimes that Justice Trump seems to believe that if he establishes friendships or what he thinks of friendships, if he meets with particular leaders, this is going to somehow solve problems. I get the sense that he has something of a similar idea about NBS,

about the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, that a lot of the problems, of the problems of the Middle East can somehow be sorted out through some kind of relationship, some kind of agreements with the Saudis, which MBS is going to make with him. And I wonder whether perhaps he's overestimating, again, his own influence with the Saudis. And in fact, I'm misunderstanding both what the Saudis can. actually do in the situation in the Middle East that we have at the moment. And what they're anyway prepared to do, because of course they no doubt have their own interests and their own ideas, just saying.

So, I mean, I think he's going to push for normalization, as he would put it, between relations between the Saudis and the Israelis. I wonder whether even if it happens, it's going to have the stabilizing effect that he expects. and whether in fact it's going to be quite as easy to achieve as he seems to think? There's a lot in that question. Absolutely, I said the was. Yes, you did.

First of all, I think the Abraham Accords are on life support. They may have the continued loyalty of the rulers who reach those agreements, but Hamas has to succeeded entirely in restoring the issue of Palestinian self-determination to a central place in the politics of West Asia and indeed globally. And that cannot be belied. The main purpose of the Abraham Accords was, of course, to set the Palestinian issue aside and achieve acceptance for Israel in the region where it has been established.

You know, some of us think it might have been better established in Bavaria, but anyway, it ended up in Palestine. So this is the first thing. The second thing is this is true in Saudi Arabia too. That is, the public is totally aghast at what has been going on in Gaza and with Lebanon and so on. And the odd effect of this, what has been happening, is that, instead of an anti-Iranian coalition with Israel and the Gulf Arabs coming into being, we're seeing the beginnings of an anti-Israeli coalition between Iran and the Gulf Arabs coming into B. Why? Because Israel has established itself as the hegemon in the Levant.

And its ambitions seem to have no bounds. The foreign ministry in Israel now boldly contains this map of Israel, which shows it extending to the Nile in the West and to the Euphrates to the north and east, and absorbing all of Jordan, part of Saudi Arabia, all of Syria, Lebanon, part of Iraq, and so forth. So there is a reason for people, when confronted with this kind of hegemonic impulse by a country that has shown it has no compunctions, it is totally ruthless, to bring out. band together. I mean, hegemony always generates its own antibodies, and that is happening for Israel. Finally, I would just say with regard to Saudi Arabia, which I know well, it is, it has changed rather fundamentally in a number of ways. The first change was when King Salman

exceeded his throne in early 2015. He engineered a constitutional change, which I'm using Constitution in a sense of political science, not a document. That is to say, the Saudi system had been based on the achievement of consensus through widespread conferencing. And nothing happened without the consensus being verified as representing supermajority. That went away. And by stages we arrived at what is essentially, essentially one-man rule, an autocracy. The royal family, the Saudis who had consisted of multiple lineages, all of which had power and had to be consulted, that's been dispensed with.

Now the power is in the hands of Mohammed bin Sama'an. Muhammad bin Saldman may resemble Mr. Trump in a way. He is very transactional. He put on a brilliant show for Mr. Trump when he visited Riyadh, the first one. time, ingratiated himself. He had the help of some very good public relations firms to design what he did, which was quite impressive. You know, the picture of Mr. Trump projected under buildings, so forth and so on. But this was a transaction. And there were particular reasons for it having to do with, for example, the murder of my friend Jamal Khashoggi.

in the Saudi consulate general in Istanbul. So that's gone. But what has also happened is that Saudi Arabia, which began some years ago, to diversify its international relations, there is no replacement for the U.S. as a military partner for Saudi Arabia, because no one else has the power projection capability.

There are replacements for the United States as a supplier of arms, and we're seeing others get into that area, including China. But basically the Saudis have decided that they can't have all their eggs in one basket, as they used to do, especially not when the United States is notoriously Islamophobic and headed by someone whose response to an attack on Saudi Arabia's crown jewels, the oil facilities at Upkig was to say, well, that has nothing to do with us. I mean, where was the effort to protect Saudi Arabia?

Is American protection of Saudi Arabia credible to Saudis anymore? So I think this is a very different relationship. And if Mr. Trump's, you asked at the beginning, does he really understand how much the world has been alienated by American policies under Mr. Biden? I think he doesn't, just like the Biden administration, doesn't. I mean, this incredible exit interview with Anthony Blinken, he expressed the view that we had strengthened our reputation globally. The outgoing ambassador to Beijing, Nick Burns, who's a very able, very diplomat, said the same thing. So this is part of the mantra of the departing Biden administration, which is desperately attempting to craft some kind of legacy.

other than the legacy of ashes that it leave. Yeah, my last question is just about some of Trump's last comments in terms of his ambitions for Panama, restoring the control of the canal, conquering Greenland, although I guess as you mentioned before, he usually starts with a big bluster, the Danes seems to be ready to make a compromise already, so it might get a lot what he wants without doing any much more.

But of course, Canada, which for me appears quite absurd, to be honest, at least the least likely of these three to be successful in. So how do you interpret his new territorial ambitions in the Western Peninsula, and I'm sorry, Western Hemisphere? The great stage of the United States is two wide oceans, the Panama Canal that enables communication between east and west coasts of the United States on a reasonable basis rather than having to go around the Cape of the Horn in South America. And the blessings of a very copious,

and other agricultural land and water and other resources. These are our great advantages that we've separated from Europe and Asia, as Bismarck remarked by the company of fish. One other great advantage we've had is that we're bordered on the north by the Canadians, not the Russians or the Germans or someone equally fierce. and I went to the National University of Mexico for a while. I love the Mexicans, but they are no challenge to the United States. Therefore, what Mr. Trump is doing potentially by picking a fight with Denmark,

which is, after all, a member of the EU and NATO, and Greenland, therefore by extension is a member of the EU, by picking a fight with the Panamanians in reviving Latin American fears of the Monroe Doctrine, and by picking a fight with two peaceful neighbors, he is jeopardizing our strategic position in potentially catastrophic ways, whatever his intention may be. So I think we need to recognize that. One final comment, and that is the Monroe Doctrine, which established an American sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, supported by the British Navy, because we didn't have

the ability to enforce it until the turn of the 19th, 20th centuries. This is contracted. South America is no longer under American dominion. And you can look at trade statistics and everything else. You can see the independent posture of Lulae and Brazil, after all, a member of the bricks. China is the dominant economic relationship with all countries in South America, with one or two exceptions. And the European Union is now making a play for Mercosur and so forth,

very intelligently because this is a growing market. And it's an alternative to the disruption that Mr. Trump clearly wishes to engineer in world trade. So I come back to what I said earlier. Mr. Trump does not like globalization, but he loves old-fashioned imperialism. I don't think that is a basis for running a long. alliances. So if alliances are our strength rather than our liability, which is a question, that is not easy to answer, he's put them in jeopardy. You know, he might actually succeed in forcing Europeans to come to grips with reality and get off their collective butts and do

something other than be passive. You know, I wouldn't mind seeing that. Nor would I. Ambassador Freeman, you have been extremely generous with your time, and you've answered all our questions very well. I have none, no more questions to ask, just to say thank you for coming on this program. Well, I'd say thank you for doing what you do,

and I hope I didn't detract from it. You've massively added to it. Thank you, sir. Thank you.