Brian Berletic: U.S. Is Grooming Europe for War with Russia

Añadido: 2026-04-29

[00:00:00]Welcome back. We are joined today by Brian Berlettic, a former US Marine, a political analyst, author, and also host of the New Atlas. And I will leave a link to his podcast in uh the description. Uh thank you very much for coming back on.

[00:00:15]>> Thank you so much for having me back on.

[00:00:18]>> So you often make the argument that the US pursues uh strategic sequencing that is uh more or less a staged approach to how it confronts rival powers. So essentially seeking to take on one at a time and um for this reason when the US engages in negotiation or peace you make the point that it's essentially delaying tactics just setting it up for later time or at times it can also include a different division of labor that is to outsource some of the war to allies and uh well I thought about you and I was reading the this recent speech by Elbridge Colby the US under secretary of war for policy in which he makes it uh well I would say unmistakably clear that the US is not seeking to put an end to the Ukraine war rather it's outsourcing it to the Europeans who should continue to fight and escalate. I I was wondering how did you make sense of this speech?

[00:01:19]It's just a update of the division of labor that US secretary of defense Pete Hexf announced at the very beginning of 2025 almost as soon as the Trump administration came into office. Uh he talked about how the US needed to pivot elsewhere. Now we know to Iran and ultimately onward towards China. and he said Europe is going to take over uh basically feed itself next into this proxy war taking place against Russia in Ukraine. That is exactly what Europe did. He told Europe they are going to spend more on defense and they have and he told them they're going to uh double down on their support for Ukraine and they have done that as well. And we're watching the natural progression of of all of this uh take shape into Europe itself throwing itself into this proxy war against Russia itself. It's extremely dangerous, very concerning. Uh the rhetoric coming out of Russia knowing and seeing this taking shape themselves uh is very very concerning.

[00:02:23]And unfortunately that's that's what this was always going to end up being anyway. And I distinctively remember warning people that didn't matter who you voted for in 2024, this is exactly what was going to happen. The whole reason the US was fighting this war against Russia and Ukraine in the first place, and it is a US war on on Russia, simply being fought through Ukraine.

[00:02:43]Again, go back to the 2019 Rand Corporation paper extending Russia. The whole purpose of this is to create one of many dilemmas for Russia. They're doing a similar uh strategy toward Iran and ultimately China. Create all of these dilemmas and extend Russia as much as possible. It was never their intention to overwhelm and defeat Russia with just this war against Russia in Ukraine. It was just one of many policy options that were in that policy paper that have since uh been implemented. And one of the things they were talking about was destroying Russia's energy exports to to Europe and uh how the US was going to ramp up LG exports to Europe. At the time it made no sense because Europe still had access to plenty plentiful reliable cheap Russian energy. And they said even in the paper they said in peace time this has a very low likelihood of succeeding except it has succeeded. And do you know how they managed to make it succeed? They took peace time and they simply turned it into war time. And the only way this policy of keeping Europe dependent on American energy and off of Russian energy and extending and undermining Russia is by keeping the war going. So there was never any intention at all ever of the US wanting to make peace with Russia. And this is the exact same reason why the US has absolutely no interest in making peace with Iran because ultimately all of this against Russia and Iran is meant to target not just China but also Asia. I would I would argue that the war on Iran and disrupting all energy coming from the Middle East and disrupting not just China's supply of energy from the Middle East, but all of Asia's supply of energy from the Middle East. This is simply the US doing to Asia what it has already done to Europe. They cut Europe off from Russia from from energy through war and now they're using war to cut Asia off from energy from the Middle East.

[00:04:47]>> Yeah. It's a I guess what's very frustrating about this whole thing is that all the evidence is there yet uh there seems to be this very deliberate desire to just live in our own fake little world. the the the way it's being sold essentially as you know you can look towards the people who discuss the benefit of the Ukraine war from Graham McConnell Kellogg Romney you know the list is long where they make the point oh this is going to be a good war we can fight with Ukrainians uh we don't have to waste our own soldiers and using Ukraine to knock out Russia we can focus on the Chinese instead it can be said in the open but again it's not a world which these people are comfortable living in with So they they essentially ignore it. And the same with what you said with decoupling Europe from Russia in terms of energy. This is a disaster for Europe. But uh you know they said this long in advance. All the strategic documents say Nordstream is a bad thing.

[00:05:47]Then of course uh just as they said they would they knock out Nordstream and then uh you know they can sell all the stories. Yeah. It's a Russian playbook.

[00:05:57]Obviously Russia destroys its own infrastructure. we we repeat it even when it's uh exposed and we say okay well guess Russia didn't do it anyways we will embrace any ridiculous story as opposed to face reality so it's uh yeah it's it's quite weird that this is actually real but um but uh it seems if now not if it seems kind of obvious that the goal is to outsource the war to the Europeans which will essentially make the Europeans into the new Ukrainians and um these escalations they wore me though because primarily well the main two things is the massive drone program which is done very very openly and um it's becoming very hard for Russia not to respond to this and making matters much worse. We know now that attacks are coming out of NATO territory that is out of European states uh than the Finland and the Baltic states. All of this is happening while the US is pulling back and handing this war to the Europeans which seem to be very eager to take over. I mean, do you think the Europeans are being set up for war?

[00:07:08]Yes, absolutely. And I I would say the Americans are backing away in in the sense of absolving themselves of responsibility, but they're very much still involved in the war. The the US command is still in Germany overseeing the entire war. all of these drone strikes deep inside Russian territory.

[00:07:26]Again, according to the New York Times itself and and as is obvious to to all of us who know the the intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance capabilities required to do this effectively, it had it had to always have been the US. They admit it was the the CIA and the US military overseeing this drone program striking deep inside Russian territory. Not only that, but also the maritime drone attacks taking place all around the globe, targeting tankers carrying Russian energy exports.

[00:07:54]So, the US is still very much deeply involved and overseeing this entirely, but they're absolving themselves of responsibility and they're they're putting the Europeans out there in the front and and also, as you mentioned, getting the Europeans ready to to be the next proxy into the breach as Ukraine slowly rumbles. I think you will you will watch a very gradual incremental salami slice approach. Uh having the Europeans just get a little bit more involved. Uh there was a a little bit of a scare where people thought maybe British warplanes were trying to intercept Russian drones over Ukraine.

[00:08:34]Uh but they might they might just have floated that story out there just to test test the waters a little bit and they might actually start doing things like that to incrementally get Europe more and more deeply involved. they're already utterly involved in in the war.

[00:08:49]Uh there the US is fighting Russia through Europe just as much as they're fighting it through Ukraine in in many ways. Uh we we know that European weapons are going into Ukraine. And as you mentioned the drone production, we we knew this wasn't really all taking place inside Ukraine and all all of these weapons, missiles, even tanks that that they say Ukraine is is making, they're not making any of those. It's all being built all across Europe in the United States in in other US proxy territories and then it's simply being finally assembled in Ukraine and that's how they can say it was made in Ukraine.

[00:09:27]And so it's it's a whole process been taking shape for for years the the whole course of this proxy war. And unfortunately it does look like Europe is going to end up uh in almost indirect conflict with Russia. And people will say why is Europe doing this? because this doesn't serve their interests at all. But this is the danger and the power of American political capture over these countries. They they control the information space. They control the political space. Uh US corporations are working in tandem with some of the largest European interests. But American interests are are actually uh dominant even in in Europe in many cases. And so this is this is why this is happening.

[00:10:11]And this is the same reason why we watch the uh the Persian Gulf Arab states go along with the the US war of aggression against Iran. This is why we're going to watch countries like Japan, South Korea, the Philippines. They'll go along with US escalation visav China. Even though their largest trade partner import and export is China, they'll go along with it because their governments are politically captured. And ultimately those handful of individuals this is this is how elite el elite capture works. Those handful of of individuals work for US interests at the expense of their own country's interests. They are their position is owed to the US and they do everything on behalf of the United States.

[00:10:56]this incrementalism it's really yeah it it's very subtle because you don't notice it from day to day but given you know this war has been going on at least since the Russians invaded more than four years now the rhetoric and openness uh it is quite evident what has happened for example in this country in in Norway uh when the Russians invaded we had a prime minister who made it very clear that under no circumstance would we send weapons uh to a war in to a country at war. Uh now, of course, four years later, it's not a single member of parliament who opposes sending weapon.

[00:11:31]Not a single member of parliament suggests that we should even talk to the Russians. Uh while today, I looked in the paper and I see a headline that uh Norwegian drones will kill Russians.

[00:11:42]This is it. Uh so there's no more pretense. Uh you know, the hatred is already out there. The the intention is there. And uh it's uh you know it would be have been unthinkable to have this kind of language and position. It's only four years ago. But it's it's this incrementalism. It builds up all the centers being wiped away and uh it's uh yeah it's quite it's kind of frightening when you see um yeah the this shift and how the public just walks along and follows this. But uh I wanted to ask though about this concept you just brought up the elite capture because if you live in Europe, you tend to get the impression that a lot of these political leadership they um well they weren't they were trained if you will very closely with the United States. Uh sometimes their loyalties are also not very clear. I mean this is not um shouldn't be controversial to see to say that Europe has a very denationalized political leadership uh very much influenced by the United States but how do you see the the US the Europeans what what kind of instruments are there for this elite capture?

[00:12:54]>> I think the European Union itself played a central role in all of this. The European Union was essentially a layer of bureaucracy. the US draped over continental Europe and smothered inter uh individual uh national sovereignty and and we can see how Europe systematically searches for hunts down and eradicates any any sense of national interests within the entire European Union. And I I I can't remember what the referendum was for, but it was maybe Ireland being part of the European Union or something like that. And and there's many many examples of this. I'm I'm sure you could provide several as as well being in Europe where they have the referendum, it doesn't go the way they want it. So they just hit the information space for a year or two and then they do it again and again and again and again until information space has been sufficiently manipulated and they get the results that they want. Except that's not that's not actual self-determination. that's using the the illusion of democracy and self-determination uh to manipulate and control people and to to channel them in a direction that is actually objectively contrary to their own best interests and having all of these European countries collectively placed under the European Union and subjected to a collective foreign policy that is detrimental to all of Europe's best interests and each individual member state's best interest how how is that is objectively against the best interests of big business in Europe ordinary people across Europe all kinds of of uh groups of people big and small all across the continent and you can see how it has harmed Europe uh over and we could just talk the last you know since 2014 actually and before 2014 I actually thought there was a good chance that Europe would work its way out from under US uh subordination because there they were building the Nordstream pipelines.

[00:14:59]They were working closely with Russia and with China and I thought for sure that they were going to to make it but then again the US provoked war and under war you have you have so many options to manipulate people emotionally, politically, economically in terms of of military power and that's exactly what they did. They used the conflict they created with Russia in Ukraine to upset that process that was taking place to cut Europe off from Russia and also to begin the same process of cutting off Europe from cooperation with China. And so all of their alternatives were removed. the US literally just blew up Nordstream and and then uh through the the persistence of this war with Russia, they've forced Europe to cut all energy incrementally off from from Russia. And so this is what has fully and completely subordinated Europe to the United States. And so primarily the European Union, there's a lot of institutions and programs the US runs in Europe very similar to the National Endowment for Democracy uh by parallel or adjacent organizations and institutions both American government programs and private corporate foundations and they've just chipped away at it. like you say, uh, it happened so slowly, people really didn't notice it until it was too late. And they've already accumulated this huge amount of power over Europe, and there's really nothing Europeans can do now to organize against it, unfortunately.

[00:16:34]>> Well, the EU is uh has a very interesting history. It has a tendency of looking at opposition as a temporary speed bump to over be overcome. that is um uh well for example the EU constitution they wanted to have back in 2005 u two of the few countries who had a referendum on it France and Netherlands said no so then they sat down and think okay how can we overcome this obsession okay let's reframe it as a treaty instead so they made it into the Lispan treaty essentially rewrote it and just packed it in as a treaty so there wouldn't have to be a referendum uh but then of course the Irish still needed a referendum and they also voted no And then he had a you know a campaign to well re-educate them enough pressure and he they made them vote again the following year uh and then they got it right and yeah this is how it uh advances and they've all this way of reassuring that you know as the EU you know takes on this power you know they're still going to have a a unanimous decision making these kind of things but now you see Vanderland say well we can't have this this makes us a hostage to unable to make decision, we have to be able to defend ourselves. So, so now of course they're going to centralize more and more power.

[00:17:50]Something that's causing yeah quite a lot of tension. So, it is um it's becoming a very well I would put it as an ugly project, but uh I'll probably get in trouble for calling the EU an ugly project now, but uh this is what it's become. Uh however, the the when whenever you look at how uh the United States is trying to put uh Russia on hold that is handed over to the to the Europeans is obviously because well they couldn't defeat Russia and the United States has other objectives. The main adversary of the United States, the mere peer main peer rival would be China.

[00:18:29]Then um how do you see China fitting into this wider sequencing logic?

[00:18:35]Because you know they they seem to be dep prioritized at this moment. The the US is still in Europe is still fighting Iran. We're not seeing that much uh uh pressure against China at the moment.

[00:18:48]>> I would argue that the the US war of aggression against Iran is actually a direct move against not just China but even US allies. I would call them proxies in Asia. And uh if you look at the the energy exports from the entire region, not just from Iran to China because Iran was basically exporting almost all of their energy to China.

[00:19:09]That that has been reduced um ma mainly through the US blockade. The US is is lying. They're not they're not controlling all shipping in and out of Iran. Uh but they are turning back some of those ships and that and a lot of those ships are bringing hydrocarbons to China. But the problem is the whole conflict and this was they knew this was everyone knew this was going to happen if the US attacked Iran. They knew they would close the straight of Hormuz. They they knew Iran would retaliate whatever you hit inside Iran. They were going to hit in uh any country hosting US troops which is practically every country in the region. And that's that's what happened. And it reduced uh gas production and then therefore exports and also oil exports. And it got so bad that there are countries now here in Asia. Countries like Vietnam, Japan, South Korea that are buying more gas now from the United States than they are from the Middle East. And this is unprecedented because they got virtually all of their energy from the Middle East. Some of these countries, 90% or more of their energy came from the Middle East. Now they're buying it from the United States. And just like the US did to Europe uh visa v Russia, they had all of these LG export projects that they were building that people said, "Why are you building this? There's no way you're going to compete with steady, reliable, cheap gas from the Middle East." Except the US always knew that we're getting these ready for a reason.

[00:20:39]Just like we were getting LG export projects ready for Europe for a reason before it was economically viable. We we were getting them online and ready because we knew we always knew we were going to start a war with Russia in Ukraine and we were going to force Europe off of energy from Russia and we would have the solution already there in the process of coming online and they are doing the exact same thing. So I stumbled across this Alaska LNG project uh run by Glenfarn and that that's exactly what it is. They've been working on it for years and it it makes no economic sense. And if you look at presentations from like last year, 2025, that they were sitting there basically pleading with the audience, yes, this makes economic sense. Uh they mentioned contested waterways many, many times because they said if Asia is getting energy from us in Alaska, it's it's like a virtual pipeline. There's no way anyone can touch it. And there's so many other contested waterways that aren't very safe out there. But they didn't say that well it will be the US and its war of aggression against Iran next year that ends up closing those waterways and making this otherwise unviable project suddenly viable. So it it was a it was a definite premeditated conspiracy. They are doing exactly to Asia what they have done to Europe. And of course how does this affect China? First of all they're they're deliberately cutting China off from energy from the Middle East. that was like half of their imports of energy were coming from the Middle East. But then now they're forcing countries in Asia, not just US proxies like Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, but even countries like Vietnam to place themselves under energy dependence on the US. And that gives the US extraordinary control and and leverage over these countries strategically, politically to to basically transform them into what the US has already transformed Europe, visavv, Russia. They can transform these countries in Asia into battering rams all aimed at China. So it will accelerate that process that was already underway. and and what they're doing is essentially surrounding China with hostile nations that are dependent on the US for energy. Really have no other option. You know, people could blame Vietnam for buying energy from the US, but what was their alternative? It's it's mainly cooking gas at this point, not buy it, and then just leave tens of millions of people without cooking gas.

[00:23:08]It it really wasn't an option. So the US got got a lot of countries in Asia exactly where the US wanted them and they had the solution already in the works and ready to take advantage of it.

[00:23:21]There's a there's literally a national council of energy dominance uh created by the US government for this specific purpose and it has transcended it's not President Trump doing this. This began all the way under the uh Obama administration and it has been incrementally advanced every single administration since then. And the eventually the US will have Russia and China in a situation where they're surrounded by hostile US proxies and the US will be chipping away at Russia and China themselves. Just like the US is just outright attacking Russia with these drones. they will begin a process of of doing something similar with China almost almost certainly. I mean this is what they're openly preparing to do.

[00:24:10]>> Yeah. No, it's um sometimes you wonder why the different leaders don't appreciate what's happening because uh on one hand the the Trump is talking about how he wants the Ukraine war to come to an end because you know he's so appalled by all the killing and you know even though the US is still up to its eyeballs in terms of how it's involved.

[00:24:33]Uh but at the same time I saw the US only yesterday was US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. he was in Croatia is uh you know promoting Trump's peace pipeline uh peace yeah Trump's peace pipeline uh framework in which he advocated how uh all these countries who have always been dependent on Russia for energy well that's a horrible position to be in so they would all be liberated now and they would have now American energy and again it's yeah it's very in your face but at the same time it it also begs the question well the only reason Why they would go for more expensive and I would say less reliable American energy would be because the war is going on. So uh you know to what extent can they afford to actually let the war uh die out. I mean towards the end of the cold war Gorbachov you know he made a ar point to the to the Americans that is if you know we put an end to the cold war we we also have to recognize and and manage what this means for the power structures because the whole alliance systems which put Washington Moscow in a I guess a very powerful position had become dependent on war so if we end the cold war we also have to keep our hawks in mind that we have to walk away from some of this uh but it doesn't look like the US is prepared in any ways to walk away from this war. It's just shocking that the yeah the the European leaders don't don't seem to mind that uh they're just going to be de-industrialized and be put in a situation of perpetual conflict with you know the world's largest nuclear power. It's um yeah, no, it's hard to see why, but uh uh but what do you see being um the possibility though of keeping this uh Iranian thing going on long enough? Because in Europe, you can hand over the war to the Europeans. Fine. Uh they seem more than willing to throw away their economies and send their sons and daughters uh to die. But uh in the Middle East u you know you can't hand over the war to the Gulf States. First of all they don't have the capability but also they they're not willing to fight either. How long can the United States keep in keep itself in this position because it's bleeding out as well in terms of ammunition?

[00:26:50]Well, at at the level that they were expending munitions from from the beginning of this most recent phase, because again, the US has been on and off at war with Iran since the end of the Biden administration. Actually, people remember Israel as on behalf of the US attacks Iran in late 2024.

[00:27:10]At that at that level of munition expenditure, there's no way they could continue sustaining it. But of course there's a ceasefire right now except uh ceasefire or no ceasefire the amount of energy coming out of the region and and going to Asia has been has been strangled and it has been reduced significantly. Uh I I would I would summize that if energy does start flowing through whether it's from Iran or for from some other states in the region uh the US will just start it again for a week or two weeks uh strike at maybe Kar Island. Uh have Iran retaliate against energy production in the Persian Gulf Arab states and reduce all of that capacity again and and thus reduce exports out of the region. So again, the US has been building these otherwise completely irrational LG export projects to Asia. The only way they make economic sense is if this war with Iran continues. And it doesn't have to continue at the pace US was was pursuing it in the beginning. They just got it going. They did this initial damage. Some people are saying it might take a year or more for some of the damage to be repaired in terms of of energy production and exports in some of the Persian Gulf states.

[00:28:26]So all they have to do is maintain that and just keep the flow of energy under threat and reduced while they make this transition. We remember that the transition from Russian energy to American energy is it in terms of Europe that's still actually taking place. They they still haven't completely cut themselves off from Russian energy. So it's a process that's going to stretch over uh a couple of years. Uh the US wants to accelerate this as quickly as possible, but there's also a limit to how fast they can speed through this.

[00:28:55]They don't want to do it overnight uh because it would be too obvious. That's number one. Number two, it might it might create so much instability that nations might say, "Look, enough is enough. We just you no matter how much we benefit from US policy, this is going to just literally just destroy our country, which it's going to do anyway.

[00:29:15]that these these people need to be kept in the delusion that somehow they're going to benefit by by cooperating with the US through every part of this and that that includes the Persian Gulf Arab states uh proxies of the US hosting US troops and no matter what they say publicly they're benefiting from this relationship and they feel they're so far insulated from the worst consequences of it. I'm sure the US made all sorts of assurances to them, to their European proxies, that somehow down the road, this will all be better for them. That's what convinces them to go through these very, very difficult times. That and the fact that ultimately, if everything goes completely wrong, they have the financial means to just leave and go somewhere else and leave everyone in their country behind. I mean, that's that's ultimately what will happen to the Ukrainian population. Their uh their US proxy leadership could just leave and go somewhere else if everything went totally uh catastrophic. And so that that's unfortunately where we're at, which means there won't be peace in Europe. There will not be peace in the Middle East. And this conflict is eventually going to migrate its way directly to Asia. If you're here in Asia, of course, you see the US trying to encourage the Philippines to become more more militant towards China over these could they're like World War II rusted out shipwrecks that they're fighting over. It makes no sense at all.

[00:30:40]But the the Filipinos are doing it because the US told them to because they're politically captured by the US.

[00:30:46]So that's why they're picking a fight with their largest import and export trade partner. And Japan, we see them becoming increasingly militarized. I was just watching a a Senate hearing where they were celebrating how how bold Japan has become, how they're going to start exporting weapons. They're making US Patriot missiles and exporting them back to the US. It's it's surreal, but it is actually happening. And considering the direction everything in Europe went and everything in the Middle East, the direction that has gone, I don't know why people would not expect and just assume it's going to continue in that direction here in Asia.

[00:31:24]Well, um, yeah, Romano Pro, the former Italian prime minister and also former president of the European Commission, he made the prediction that, uh, at some point Russian gas will will start to be sent again to Europe, but only once the Americans have taken control of the pipeline infrastructure, that is to be able to get their cut. Uh so it's uh I think people they do you know be behind all this rhetoric of you know Russia did it or people on the sailboat I mean all of this stuff is all the nonsense. Uh I think you know some people know what's happening but as you said there's no way of breaking out of this either. Uh we also don't see that the the connectivity connectivity between many of these Eurasian powers it's also increasingly by land. I mean both the Chinese as well as the Russians have a very you know heavy landbased infrastructure connecting with uh with Iran be it the road, rail, energy. Uh how how do you see this fitting into the wider calculations of the United States to I guess disconnect Iran as a you know very strategic piece of real estate?

[00:32:39]>> Well though that's true. Uh the the belt and road initiative is is one massive Chinese project that stretches across Eurasia and even beyond that the massive uh uh reserves that China built up. I mean this is all evidence that China knew this day was coming and they invested heavily in preparing for it. Uh Russia as well. I I remember again before 2014 I was wondering, you know, why why is Russia building its military up in the way that it was because it it seemed excessive at the time. But of course, they could see all of this coming and they were preparing for it.

[00:33:17]Iran has been doing the exact same thing. the the mosaic defense that I spoke about at the very beginning of the conflict which almost certainly helped them prevail through at least this phase of the war. Um that was something that they had been preparing for years. The ballistic missile program and as you mentioned there's these linkages between Iran, Russia and China over land. I don't think that there's sufficient enough for say Iran to export energy to to China to replace what they were doing by sea. I mean just transporting by sea is so much easier than say by rail. If there was a pipeline that would be a different story but there is no pipeline. Not that I know of. Uh so they prepared for this. The question is did they prepare enough for this? And what can say Russia, China and Iran together do to say help the nations in in Asia that are now being forced to pick between no energy at all or placing themselves uh under US energy dependence which is a horrible place to be because they're not just going to sell you gas.

[00:34:23]is an extra cost is as expensive as it will be. There's always an additional cost of a polit political uh exchange that needs to be done. The US will expect and and they will use that energy as leverage. That's the whole reason they set this up. This is the leverage that they have over Europe whether Europeans were agreeable to what they were telling them or not. And it will be the same case for Asia. So we have to kind of wait and see what's how this all works out. I I I know that Russia, Iran, and and China prepared for many many years, decades in some cases, uh for this eventuality, but I'm not exactly sure how much they can do for say the rest of the multipolar world.

[00:35:05]The US is is pretty much trying to destabilize, strangle, and knock over and leave Russia, China, and Iran isolated and alone. I don't know. I don't know what they can do. We have to I I have to look into it more.

[00:35:22]Regarding just as the last question uh about this division of labor as you define it, what happens if these strategic allies uh do not want to play this role or take on this burden?

[00:35:35]Because I guess one of the lessons from the Gulf States is, you know, what is the benefit for us? We host all these American bases and it doesn't give us security. Instead, it it will crush us.

[00:35:46]And you know, I'm assuming or hoping that one day the Europeans will come to the same realization that um you know, why why did we accept uh you know being frontline states for the United States as opposed to finding uh a common security architecture with the Russians as you know we initially agreed in the early 90s you know which would have prevented all of these uh conflicts and wars and of of course the in East Asia as well. I mean why to to what extent what happens? So if these allies be Philippines or or any others Japan realize that uh this is not a great division of labor that is they will be destroyed in in order to you know contain or weaken an adversary of the United States because I I keep making the point well I don't understand why the Ukrainians will continue to fight you know they could have gotten a good deal any time over the past well better deal at least was looking now over the past 12 years, every day the deal will get much much worse and you know the US isn't there to help them. Uh I'm just what happens at some point surely the allies must recognize that uh this uh I guess burden sharing is hardly equal.

[00:37:06]>> You're absolutely right. If Europe and that includes Ukraine or these countries in East Asia, Japan, South Korea especially, if they had independent leadership, sovereign leadership, of course, they would say this arrangement makes absolutely no sense. The US is a liability, is is not going to protect us. Protect us from what? What war would would South Korea be having with either North Korea or China when they're China is their their largest trade partner?

[00:37:36]imports and exports. Why why would China want to go to war with these countries that they're doing business with? And the same goes for Ukraine. Russia had no intentions of going to war with Ukraine before 2014. Uh they Ukraine's one one of its largest trade partners at that time was Russia. And the only way this was flipped upside down was because of political capture by the US. They got the independent sovereign leadership.

[00:38:04]However imperfect it was, people could argue how how well that that government worked for the Ukrainian people, but they scooped it out and they replaced it with a handpicked client regime. And then they built up a whole structure around it to make sure that client regime stayed in power. Again, back to the New York Times admitting that the CIA took over all of their internal security apparatus. That means that no matter how the Ukrainians feel about it, the US is going to be able to keep their handpicked plant regime in power in Ukraine.

[00:38:36]Unfortunately, they they seem to have the ability to do that through the European Union all across the rest of Europe. Also in Japan, in South Korea, it doesn't matter who the Japanese people or South Korean people vote for, they always get an obedient proxy uh to the US. And so when you're faced with that sort of situation, unfortunately, there is no way out. This is why Ukraine is being consumed by this proxy war. You you you said it perfectly. It makes no sense for Ukraine to continue. They had so many possible ways to get out of this and they haven't. It's completely irrational and it can only be the result of being politically captured and an irrational handpicked client regime put in place serving US interests at the expense of Ukraine. Same goes for Europe. Same goes for East Asia. And I I honestly don't know what the solution is. I mean, obviously the people inside these countries need to try to find a way to organize against this, but it's just it's just so hard when your information space is under American control, your political space is under American control. And in many cases, US troops are literally occupying your country. South Korea, Japan, the Philippines host US troops. Europe, I'm sure you know, hosts thousands and thousands of US troops in in many countries across Europe. And so it's it's an empire. And so how do you fight an empire when you're inside and underneath the empire? It's very difficult. So there's no good answer to to that. There's no appealing answer to that question. I I guess it comes down to people dissatisfied with this working together with multipolarism to undermine the power the US uses to capture and control these countries and try to reverse it and try to help one country after another out from under US subordination and we got we got to hope that that that can work and we have to try to work towards that.

[00:40:29]Uh well let me squeeze in one last last question that is uh well if that's the allies what about the opponents because it appears that whatever you know goodwill or enthusiasm there was uh about the Trump administration that has faded away and um you know I remember I was at the Valdai meeting where the the Russian president attends as well uh when Trump was uh reelected and uh you know the there was you know some genuine optimism that I think you know that they thought this is someone we could work with uh you know get an end to this century of hostility between us and Russia I mean rationally why do we have you know what what are really our conflicting interest uh especially now that the world becoming more multipolar and you know they they many believed in the rhetoric uh I yeah again to focus on past tense I think this is all gone away but that's kind of my point there appears that many are waking up now to this uh strategic sequencing and um well most of America's adversary if you see the Iranians you know after two negotiations where they were where it was said they were close to deals before they had this surprise attack and now of course after two of these uh yeah fake negotiations they now had the negotiations in Islamabad which were also well I would put frame it as a hoax. It doesn't seem very serious in any way. All the US committed itself to the starting point of the Iranian 10point plan. It was thrown out the next day. So, it doesn't mean anything. And the same with the Russians. They saw seven years of nonsense over the Minsk peace agreement. The Istanbul agreement was sabotaged by the US and UK. And now, you know, Trump has been uh just uh pulling them along all, you know, these are not serious negotiations anymore.

[00:42:28]And uh I think the Chinese will also come to this realization, if they haven't already, that the US isn't looking for a way to harmonize interest and manage competition. They're looking to knock out their rival. So, what does this mean? Do you think diplomacy is just dead? Are we heading towards world war? How do you see this?

[00:42:48]People have to understand that the the whole reason there was no change with the incoming Trump administration is because presidents are in charge of nothing. Congress is in charge of nothing. It is the unelected corporate finance here monopolies inside the United States that are running everything that are benefiting from everything. A $ 1.5 trillion defense budget that is the arms industry benefiting from that. big oil is benefiting from these projects that they proposed got approved by the US government under Obama, Trump, Biden, the the current Trump administration, projects that made absolutely no financial sense at all until wars of aggression were fought by the US to make them viable. So when you have interests like that who are driven by perpetual power and profit and ultimately global domination, you you cannot deal with a country like this uh with diplomacy in the the way we we think about diplomacy.

[00:43:39]You there's there's nothing you can say to to it's like trying to negotiate with a virus that's eating your body alive.

[00:43:47]you you need to identify how it works and how to displace it uh from the global body and push it back to a more proportional role with within the the the the global network of nations. And that's what that's what multipolarism basically is. That's what is driving it.

[00:44:10]It is displacing US-led unipolar hijgemony. It is offering alternatives not just in terms of how countries interact with one another but corporations uh goods and services that countries can get access to without fueling the corporate financier interests that are driving US uh foreign and domestic policy. And so this is this is what's going to have to happen.

[00:44:35]People are going to have to forget about AC you know the US will never accommodate anyone anywhere at any time.

[00:44:42]they will never accept, you know, being a part of of the multipolar world. They want global domination. So, as long as that's their obsession, multipolarism has to be resolute in displacing them from around the globe because everywhere you don't, just like a virus inside your body, if it's in that part of the body, it's going to to eat it away and eventually every everyone will get sick and die. And as you know, as goes with viruses, they end up killing their hosts in the process. And that's what global empire has always done has become unsustainable and it itself ends up collapsing. And so this is this is why multipolarism is so necessary. This is why that that is the solution. And I think I think Russia, China, many other countries have always understood this.

[00:45:32]They use diplomacy as a way of trying to make this transition from USled hegemony to a multi-polar world as painless as is possible. But as you can see, there's still tremendous death and destruction and instability caused through this process. We could only hope that it continues transitioning in the right direction and it minimizes the death and destruction caused by by US aggression.

[00:45:56]Unfortunately, I I still think it's too little at this point.

[00:46:00]>> Yeah. Well, you once told me that um uh to understand what the US is doing, uh don't listen to the words coming out of their mouths uh in Washington. Look at the policy papers which have been funded by the arms industry through the think tanks they fund. And um yeah, sadly that appears to be uh very very very very true. And um uh yeah, it's I just think we're moving into a very dangerous area now that uh essentially the the vassels of the US is now signing up to be to go all in as frontline states while the adversaries have now become you know have woken up to know that there are there is no diplomacy anymore. There's only delaying inevitable war. So it's um yeah it's not a great position to be in.

[00:46:55]Anyways, uh thank you so much for taking time. Do you have any final thoughts before or final words before we wrap up?

[00:47:01]>> No, I just a lot of people uh feel depressed when they hear these type of conclusions. But again, multipolarism is a real thing. Everyone on every level big and small can invest in and that's it's our only hope and it's what we have to try to do and even you and I uh creating alternatives to western media basically western propaganda. We try to offer an alternative to what uh US special interests are trying to force people to listen to and believe. This all I think does make a difference and we all have to in our own way continue trying as what what else can we do and as always thank you so much for having me on.