{"id":39070,"date":"2022-02-19T22:51:05","date_gmt":"2022-02-20T06:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=39070"},"modified":"2022-02-19T22:51:05","modified_gmt":"2022-02-20T06:51:05","slug":"ray-mcgovern-on-russia-and-ukraine-a-light-conversation-on-dark-subjects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/19\/ray-mcgovern-on-russia-and-ukraine-a-light-conversation-on-dark-subjects\/","title":{"rendered":"Ray McGovern on Russia and Ukraine: A Light Conversation on Dark Subjects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our discussion started with a key question: Why is it that Secretary of State Antony Blinken seemed at sea when asked why Russia would invade Ukraine? Yesterday, on Morning Joe, Blinken was gently asked: &#8220;What would be the upside for Putin by invading Ukraine?&#8221; Strangely, it seemed clear that Blinken had not thought that one through. After a minute of circumlocution, he gave up and said we should &#8220;ask Putin.&#8221; (See <a href=\"https:\/\/raymcgovern.com\/2022\/02\/17\/no-thinkin-blinken\/\">No Thinkin&#8217; Blinken<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"spreaker-player\" href=\"https:\/\/www.spreaker.com\/user\/radiosputnik\/the-russian-invasion-seems-to-have-been-\" data-resource=\"episode_id=48790294\" data-theme=\"light\" data-playlist=\"false\" data-cover=\"https:\/\/d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net\/images.spreaker.com\/original\/d94cdb720ae1cad0e4fd69c61fad47fb.jpg\" data-width=\"100%\" data-height=\"400px\">Listen to &#8220;The Russian Invasion Seems to Have Been Either Canceled or Was Never Planned&#8221; on Spreaker.<\/a><script async src=\"https:\/\/widget.spreaker.com\/widgets.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Has President Joe Biden not yet asked Putin? Has U.S. Intelligence &#8220;assessed&#8221; why in the hell Putin would do such a dumb thing? &#8220;Morning Joe&#8221; might have suggested to Blinken that he ask his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov the next time they meet [that, reportedly, will be next Wednesday in Europe].<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>As an aside, I noted that Blinken does not know how to pronounce Foreign Minister Lavrov&#8217;s last name &#8211; and usually mispronounces Ukraine, as well. (In both cases, the accent is on the last syllable.) This is not mere pedantry; a country&#8217;s&#8217; top diplomat really should show enough respect for foreign counterparts to pronounce their names correctly &#8211; especially easy ones with only two syllables.<\/p>\n<p><b>China: the Key to Putin&#8217;s Assertiveness<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Speaking of disrespect, reference was made to the &#8220;attitude&#8221; that top Chinese diplomats encountered on the part of the Blinken\/Sullivan duo in Anchorage last March. This is far more serious than the nicety of taking the time to learn how to pronounce a counterpart&#8217;s name correctly. The Chinese were insulted at the imperious behavior of Blinken and Sullivan, and refused to be talked down to.<\/p>\n<p>Putin suffered a similar indignity at the hands of Joe Biden himself at their summit in Geneva on June 16, 2021. Biden&#8217;s words on China showed him to be woefully misinformed about the &#8220;world correlation of forces&#8221; (to borrow an old Soviet term). He seemed to be stuck in a several decades-old paradigm of Sino-Russian hostility, a reality that President Richard Nixon was able to leverage into key arms control agreements with Moscow during the early 70s.<\/p>\n<p>In<a href=\"https:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/mcgovern\/2021\/05\/25\/is-the-biden-putin-summit-doomed\/\"> my first piece <\/a>on the strategic backdrop for that June summit, I noted that the triangular relationship had drastically changed in recent decades and that, although the triangle may still be equilateral, it is now essentially a matter of two sides against one &#8211; with Washington odd man out.<\/p>\n<p>This is basic: How could any U.S. statesman be unaware? How could it be that foreign policy &#8220;experts&#8221; could be telling Biden that the US can still try to play Russia and China off against each other amid the radically changed &#8220;correlation of forces&#8221; today?<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the president at his solo, post-summit press conference:<\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;Without quoting him [Putin] &#8211; which I don&#8217;t think is appropriate &#8211; let me ask a rhetorical question: You got a multi-thousand-mile border with China. China is &#8230; seeking to be the most powerful economy in the world and the largest and the most powerful military in the world.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Plane-side just before departing Geneva, Biden added:<\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;&#8230; let me choose my words. Russia is in a very, very difficult spot right now. They are being squeezed by China. &#8230;&#8221;<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Putin and Xi Give Biden a Tutorial<\/b><\/p>\n<p>During the second half of 2021, the presidents of Russia and China spared no effort to demonstrate that their strategic relationship &#8220;in its closeness and effectiveness, exceeds an alliance.&#8221; (See: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/12\/15\/world\/asia\/china-russia-summit-xi-putin.html\">Putin and Xi Show United Front Amid Rising Tensions With U.S. (<i>New York Times)<\/i><\/a>. They were at pains to demonstrate that the triangular relationship did indeed amount to two-against-one.<\/p>\n<p>Particularly striking is the high-level official commentary now coming out of China explicitly endorsing Putin&#8217;s policies. In the past, China typically bent over backwards to avoid getting involved, even rhetorically, in contentious problems on the other side of Eurasia.) Not any more.<\/p>\n<p><i>Newsweek<\/i> just published <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/world\/china-us-should-oblige-russian-legitimate-reasonable-concerns-in-europe\/ar-AATZADc?ocid=msedgntp\">China: US Should Oblige Russian &#8216;Legitimate, Reasonable Concerns&#8217; in Europe<\/a>, by Tom O&#8217;Connor.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s an excerpt of O&#8217;Connor&#8217;s article:<\/p>\n<p><i>China has called on the United States to satisfy Russia&#8217;s security concerns regarding NATO expansion in Eastern Europe as a crisis along Ukraine&#8217;s borders drags on, with Washington warning the Kremlin could order an invasion at any minute.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Moscow has repeatedly rejected the notion that it is planning to attack its neighbor, and Beijing has joined in cautioning against hyped-up potential war scenarios.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;Disseminating disinformation and creating an air of tension is not conducive to resolving the Ukraine issue,&#8221; Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters Thursday. &#8220;Clamoring for bloc confrontation and wielding the big stick of sanctions will only impede dialogue and negotiation.&#8221; &#8230;<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;The U.S. side should value and accommodate Russia&#8217;s legitimate and reasonable concerns over security protection and play a constructive role for all parties to seek a political settlement to the Ukraine issue on the basis of the Minsk II agreement, rather than hype up and sensationalize the crisis and escalate tensions,&#8221; Wang said.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>This is new &#8211; and important.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>This originally appeared at <a href=\"https:\/\/raymcgovern.com\">RayMcGovern.com<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer\/briefer of the President\u2019s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our discussion started with a key question: Why is it that Secretary of State Antony Blinken seemed at sea when asked why Russia would invade Ukraine? Yesterday, on Morning Joe, Blinken was gently asked: &#8220;What would be the upside for Putin by invading Ukraine?&#8221; Strangely, it seemed clear that Blinken had not thought that one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-39070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39070"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39072,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39070\/revisions\/39072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39070"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=39070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}