The Highwire with Del Bigtree - ON THE VERGE OF WWIII?

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

With US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s latest announcement that Ukraine will join NATO, a longtime redline has been crossed with unclear and potentially world-altering consequences. We breakdown the latest in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and what these events mean for the world.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

As people are watching this, they may say, why is a globally front-running health journalist show dealing with man-made disease, talking about military things? Well, sometimes you have to pause because world events start to really coalesce really fast. You have to pause and say, what are we doing here? Let's look at some of the evidence and let's pay attention. So something just happened recently that has a lot of people talking, a lot of people pumping the brakes. And it was our Secretary of State Tony Blinken. He said something during a press conference that had people's ears perk up. Take a listen.

All right. We're also here at NATO to talk about the summit that's upcoming in the summer in Washington, celebrating the 75th anniversary of the alliance. Ukraine will become a member of NATO. Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership and to create a clear pathway for Ukraine moving forward. We've done a lot of work on that over the last couple of days here. In Brussels, a lot more work to be done between now and the summit.

But we will see, I think, in the summit, very strong support for Ukraine going forward in its relationship with NATO. Now, there's an interesting point there for people that miss what's going on. That summit's going to be in July, by the way, 9th through 11th in D.C. But having Ukraine joined NATO, NATO is a defensive military grouping of countries, 32 countries, to be exact. And what that means in plain talk is if Ukraine joins NATO is allowed into NATO, they have a pact. If anybody in NATO experiences an attack or is under military conflict, everyone will join. So you can do one plus one equals two at this point because Ukraine is in military conflict. If they join NATO, that means the EU and the U.S. would have a green light to join into this

conflict. Why is this a problem? Well, this has been a promise for a very long time to Russia and the Soviet Union that Ukraine would not join NATO. In fact, it's always called a red line. Thanks to George Washington University's National Security Archives, we actually have the transcript in 1990 to win at that time, Secretary, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker met with Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbyshov. And they were discussing it was the fall of the Soviet Union just a year prior. I'm sorry, it was the fall of Germany just a year prior, East Germany, West Germany, they were unifying Germany at that point.

And a lot of superpowers had vested interests in what direction Germany was going to go, the U.S. and the Soviet Union primarily. So this meeting took place in Moscow, and we have the transcript here. I'll read right from it. And this is U.S. Secretary of State James Baker. He says, and the last point, NATO is the mechanism for securing the U.S. presence in Europe. If NATO was liquidated, there will be no such mechanism in Europe. We understand that not only for the Soviet Union, but for other European countries as well. It is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence

in Germany within the framework of NATO, and not an inch of NATO's present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction. So to that, Mikhail Gorbachev obviously agreed to that. So there was kind of a loose promise there, not an inch further. I would imagine that conversation is happening because of a tension that Gorbachev is having. Like, wait a minute, you know, the walls coming down, you're all moving in here, NATO is taking over, and frankly, it feels like you're all lined up against us. What is your plan? I mean, we've always been worried about like all these paranoid people with their finger on the button. Yeah, exactly. And Russia has a reason for that because in World War II, Operation Barbarossa was commenced by Germany in which they invaded Russia,

partly through Ukraine. It's the biggest land invasion in U.S., I'm sorry, in world history. So we're talking millions of This was the biggest war known at that point throughout World War II. So what's also going on is Putin has somewhat responded to this movement. And listen to what he had to say. Take it a listen to this. I want to, I'd like to say, I've got to, but I'd like to you'd like to hear me all of the end of the end of the

and denies it to their readers, and users, and the internet. But you know, or not, that if Ukraine will be in NATO, and, and the military way will be to be in the

European countries automatically will be in the warian conflict with Russia. Of course, the potential of the

Union of the and Russia we are not we also we also we also is one of the one of the

different but many components, even many there, will be able to in this conflict, from my own,

and you even don't even you'll just not when you'll do you but you President of the

he doesn't and I don't and I don't and I don't so he is here and he's and muced me

six hours Wow, I want to take a second here because we are we're going into space that we, you know, tend to avoid Jeffrey.

We had a lot of conversations this week. is this, does this fit the culture of what the Highwire is talking about? But I think I said very simply when we were discussing it, if we have a nuclear war and our mission statement is dedicated to eradicating manmade disease, we have a manmade disease, we have a problem in which that so many people across this world, maybe all of us, get sick. We know where this goes.

And for all of those, like I am not a sympathizer in any way, you know, with Putin. In fact, I find it shocking that the people are like, he's a dictator, he's a lunatic, he's a warlord, is a warmonger, whatever it is, that they would say the best thing we should do then is put back him into a corner where this crazy person has no other options. What he says there is so chilling that I know at that point, if they join NATO and I'm in the middle of a, I mean, you know, in a war with Ukraine, I will be outnumbered. You will now have every ability to beat me. It's not lost on me that that's the case.

So what do you think I'm going to do? I only have one option then, because I still have some of the best nuclear weapons in the world. And we all basically know how that ends and nobody wins. I mean, it's really, really chilling stuff. And I guess do we say, oh, he's bluffing. Oh, he's bluffing, don't worry about it. Really?

I thought you just said he was a lunatic. Which one is it? Right. And this isn't something he did. This is a speech that just came out of left field, as we just showed since at least 1990. there's been talks about not doing this, not expanding Ukraine and having them join NATO. So this isn't something that policymakers definitely know what they're doing.

And to really understand this story, the recent history of this, if you will, we have to go back to the Secretary of State, Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Newland. And at the time in 2013, there was something called the Maidan Revolution or the Maidan uprising in Ukraine. This was basically civil unrest because at the time, the Ukrainian president, turned away from the European Union to sign a deal and turned towards Russia to sign an economic pact. And that led to an uprising in the country. The U.S. was heavily involved in parts of that uprising. And in 2014, Victoria Newland was caught on a call.

This went out to all the press. It was released. She was caught on a call. This was the headline intercepted F-bomb phone call shows the U.S. role in Ukraine. And she was on a call with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. And they were talking about which government to install, which people they wanted to install that were friendly to the West when the regime toppled, which eventually it did. The president was ousted he had to leave the country. And so from that point on, the U.S. was really kind of in a poll position seat because Ukraine, as you know, turned towards Europe and the United States.

But Newland was still had her hands in this as well. So she helped with the sanctions. This was the headline U.S., Europe weighing potential deeper Russian sanctions. That's Reuters. And remember, the sanctions were to stop. Russia from invading Ukraine. We were told us why we were doing that. More on that in a second, but obviously that didn't work. And then in 2020, Newland penned this in foreign affairs, pinning down Putin in which she called in this article for expansion of NATO, a wider expansion of NATO

with Ukraine involved in that. And so that brings us to, you know, so Newland's an interesting character in this space because she's really just has her foot on the gas in this conflict, we're really charging towards this conflict with a lot of, it seems like, blunders to make Russia really just cause this invasion even faster. But we go to the current headlines now. Biden warns, warns risk of nuclear Armageddon is highest since Cuban missile crisis, which is ironic because during the Cuban missile crisis, that was John F. Kennedy's tenure. That's when Russia put military armaments in Cuba on our border. So that was obviously a really big deal for us. And that took about two weeks to really figure that out.

But so let's look at some of the headlines here because we're not only talking about, I can't believe I'm reporting on this, but potential nuclear war, but we're talking about military mobilization for a greater war in Russia and Europe. These are the headlines just over the last two months. This is France. I'm going to go through these. This is in February. Macron stands by remarks about sending troops to Ukraine.

This is in January 24. UK Army chief says citizens should be ready to fight in possible land war. New York Times, February, 2024. Germany braces for decades of coming. confrontation with Russia, March 24, Vandalin asked Finland to prepare EU for war. And then here's another one, UK and other NATO allies urge to consider conscription. That's a draft as Ukraine war enters third year. I mean, these aren't just one-off topics.

This is preparing, I mean, psychologically, you've got to understand what is doing the populations as well. This is preparing them for a potential engagement. I mean, I don't know if everyone, you know, this is where we're going to play both sides to. How many people want to go to war at this point? prolonged war with a superpower with nuclear weapons, who says he's going to use them if this happens. But Ukraine has a problem at this point, because this is in March, just the end of March. Draft dodging plagues Ukraine as key faces acute soldier shortage. So there seems to be an inflection point here.

They have a soldier shortage. They're running out of money, armaments. And so we're talking either a peace deal or, you know, troops and armaments from other countries have to join this fight, it seems. And for the U.S. purposes, let's remember just about a month or so after the invasion in 2022, Russia's invasion to Ukraine, we had Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who was the head military guy, quote, this was in CNN. Austin says U.S. wants to see Russia's military capabilities weakened. So we were told that this is supposed to help the democracy in Ukraine and to fight, you know, one of the world's most brutal dictators. But then you have Lloyd Austin saying, we want to basically see Russia weakened to a degree it can't. do these kind of things. So that's an interesting angle there. I mean, that's, that's been the conversation. Is this a proxy war? We're just using Ukraine to wear down Putin, which means

all of those. I mean, I think we're in the hundreds. Aren't we reaching somewhere near a half a million Ukrainians are now dead in the middle of this conflict? Soldiers. It's extremely dire. I mean, it's really, really bad. And to think that we're just using them. And now pressing Putin to bring all of the NATO military upon him. It's, uh, we, I mean, I, you know, these are things. I mean, I grew up. My parents, I've said it before. My parents were hippies. I grew up anti-war. Uh, war is not the answer. Uh, but these are the types of things I was always warned. Uh, if war mongers take over your country and you start, you know, you know, kicking the hornet's nest, that's how you start World War III. It's just, it's really, really chilling because these are commentaries and conversations

now that we only heard about before I was born. It's the first time I've really seen these kind of conversations in my lifetime. Right. And these narratives do weave into health, well-being, wellness, because obviously what we talked about at the top there, but for the U.S., they're talking about the Senate foreign aid package, which is currently up for a vote, is another $60 billion that's going to Ukraine.

So the Cato Institute did some calculations of all the money that has went to Ukraine, including if this $60 billion package passes, the interest. This is what they found. The high costs of war, Ukraine aid could top 240 billion. This is at a time when the U.S. has extremely high inflation. Grocery bills are through the roof. People are having a hard time even affording or buying houses at this point. And, you know, speaking about those sanctions, those are supposed to stop all of this from happening, sanctioning Russia. What it actually did is it caused them to run into the arms of China. This is Reuters just recently, China to foster new cooperation and consolidate friendship with Russia.

Now you have two of the largest commodity producers in the world that have basically cozied up to each other and have turned their back on the West and the European Union and made life harder for them as far as energy and oil and things like that. So geopolitically, there's a lot of things moving right now, a lot of big movements. And it'll be interesting to see how this shakes out because this will have decades-long consequences for several countries, including ours. Wow. All right. Well, let's keep our eyes on it. I mean, these are very scary developments. Certainly not moving towards the evolution of humanity,

which is their way to establish peace. Haven't we had enough wars? Or any way we can just say, you know, can we all just get into having strong economies and making sure our populations thrive? We've got to keep attacking each other. And man, that nuclear, I thought we were beyond that. I thought we were beyond threats of nuclear war.

And here we are. Exactly. It's really, really dire times and it really sad times too to have these conversations with these leaders.