00:03:51.760and everyone will know this, it's Blue Nun
00:03:53.360Liebfahermilch, I think it's called in German
00:03:56.600made it a household name. Fascinating individual. The documentary here particularly interested me
00:04:03.800because what this guy, Peter Sichel, was saying at the time, that America was acting on a skewed
00:04:14.060interpretation of its own intelligence and creating consequences. His argument, his thesis,
00:04:23.080fundamentally was that had Mohammed Mossadegh who was the Socialist Prime
00:04:29.860Minister, Nationalist Prime Minister of Iran, not been overthrown in 1953, the
00:04:38.800Ayatollahs wouldn't have overthrown the Shah in 1979 and Iran would basically be
00:04:45.520a responsible standard member of the family of nations actions that go back to 1953 and i wonder
00:04:55.720when all the journalists were talking yesterday about attributing to the war in iran the decisive
00:05:04.360influence in the midterms the u.s midterm elections this week perhaps one in ten thousand
00:05:12.560One in 100,000 Americans walking around would be thinking of the name Mohammed Mossadegh, but the ripples of consequences and unintended consequences continue to have effects.
00:05:27.680My guest today, Stephen Kinzer, appeared in that documentary. We saw him in the trailer and he has written two of the great books, both on Iran and also we're going to discuss it a little later on the show about on Ukraine as well.
00:05:44.620Let's talk, firstly, he wrote All the Shah's Men, An American Coup, and the Roots of Middle East Terror.
00:05:53.520Pretty authoritative book, but pretty instrumental in explaining how we got to where we got now.0.73
00:06:05.800I have been trying to get you on since the spring.
00:06:09.940I can't wait to start getting into some of these things.
00:06:14.620So, by the way, you were station chief for the New York Times in Berlin, the same city as Peter Sichel, where you were there in the 90s as you had the special responsibility of watching these countries coming in from Central and Eastern Europe out of the USSR.
00:06:37.080and then you became the station chief in Istanbul in Turkey
00:06:43.240and now I think you're a senior fellow, a journalist obviously
00:06:47.000an author but a senior fellow in international relations at Brown University
00:07:05.620Had it not been for the overthrow of the socialist prime minister back in 1953, Iran would be a secularish modern member of the family of nations.
00:07:18.820That's a pretty powerful thesis considering the consequences of that event in US politics that reach down to us today.
00:07:27.820And what was it all about back in 1953? Oil. This is one of the ongoing rhymes in history.
00:07:44.600You're right. So you can't really understand the Iran story without understanding its beginning.
00:07:51.140I think there's an impulse in the United States and maybe in many countries to think that crises just suddenly emerge spontaneously because maybe somebody's evil or somebody wants to do aggressive things.
00:08:04.740That's not the way the world works. Crises are caused by things.
00:08:09.340And after America intervenes in a foreign country, we quickly forget that we ever did it.
00:08:15.700But the people in the target country do not forget that memory burns in their hearts and minds and
00:08:22.900souls over generations. And that's what's happened in Iran. So briefly, here's the story. After the0.61
00:08:28.980Second World War, Iran finally tried to consolidate the democracy that was promised in its constitution
00:08:37.460of half a century earlier. Free elections were held, a parliament emerged, and the most popular
00:08:44.260figure in the country, Mohammad Mossadegh, was elected as prime minister. Now, in that period of
00:08:51.420Iran, there was one overwhelming reality, and that is that Iran is sitting on an ocean of oil,
00:09:00.500but all of the oil was owned by one British company, which in turn was owned by the British
00:09:06.460government, 51%. So what it meant was that Iranians were living in some of the worst0.99
00:09:13.000conditions in the world, while every factory in Britain and every bus and lorry in Britain was
00:09:22.300running on Iranian oil. The Royal Navy, which projected British power all around the world,0.84
00:09:28.260ran 100 percent on Iranian oil. So it was natural that when finally Iran had a democratic leader,0.50
00:09:36.080that leader would have to respond to the popular demand. And at that time, the popular demand
00:09:42.920was very clear. We have to take back our oil. And that's when the Congress, the Parliament of Iran
00:09:51.580voted unanimously to proceed with the nationalization of the oil reserves of its own
00:09:58.120country. That set off a huge crisis because not only the British, but the Americans who also had
00:10:04.500deep interest in Iran were horrified, not just because they might be losing access to Iranian
00:10:10.600oil. But something even worse might happen. If all the countries in the world that produce goods
00:10:18.000would follow this example and nationalize their resources and sell their products for prices that
00:10:24.680they set, the whole world economy would be thrown into upheaval. So it was important for the
00:10:31.940americans and the british to crush mossadak uh that's when the cia wants to let me that's that's
00:10:42.300when the cia launched let me cut in here a moment steven um so you have the real politique elements0.96
00:10:51.000here that the you that the uk um this is pre-58 so pre-sewers so the the uk still had the fag end0.75
00:10:59.420of its 200, 300-year-old empire, still thought of itself as an imperial power,0.63
00:11:05.680though by far and away it was fundamentally America as the leading empire at that stage.
00:11:12.660But the UK still had delusions, imperial delusions, and was dependent on Iranian oil.
00:11:21.500Mossadegh himself, it's fair to say, probably made, in every key decision he made,
00:11:29.420He made the wrong decision for his own sort of political future, seemingly unable to predict how some of the things that he was doing would go down first with the UK and then at the UK's behest with America.
00:11:47.080i would suggest he made the wrong call on on so many issues and allowed himself to be played into
00:11:55.440the narrative which the ca was feeding out there that iran would sort of the nationalization of
00:12:01.760oil that put to the side iran was going to sort of slip from being a socialist country into a
00:12:09.340a Soviet satellite country, there's no evidence of that.
00:12:14.420Mossadegh himself was quite clear in his public comments,
00:12:18.960his condemnations of communism, but those were the days in the 50s,
00:12:23.020and that's all it took, the mere indication of Soviet sympathies,
00:12:28.840even where they didn't exist, and he created the situation, I think,
00:12:33.040in which the Americans, Kermit Roosevelt Jr., came in
00:12:38.280and basically overthrew the regime from the inside with huge amounts of American taxpayers' cash.
00:12:47.300I'm going to come back. Let me do a quick shout out to our sponsor of the show, Steve,
00:12:52.020and then I'll come back to you and we'll pick up on that point.
00:12:55.580Two key articles, folks, that we're pushing every week when I come here on the show.
00:13:00.900The first one is this from the Financial Times, the world's most authoritative financial newspaper.
00:13:08.280Gold drops below $4,000 spot price per ounce.
00:13:16.120And then this article here on the screen,
00:13:19.000Investors predict new record price for gold within two years.
00:13:22.080Those articles are about two or three weeks apart, but they complement one another.
00:13:28.720Well, if you consider the fact, thank you very much, Denver.
00:13:32.600If you consider the fact that gold was at about $4,500 a few months ago, down to $4,000,
00:13:40.760and then interpret in that other article about the record prices,
00:13:47.480what you are going to trace is a shape that resembles a hockey stick.
00:13:52.760Gold is coming down, and then it's going to skyrocket up to record prices.
00:13:57.900That's not Ben Harnwell saying that. I'm not a speculator.
00:14:00.060That's the Financial Times saying that.
00:14:01.960If you are listening to this and you want in on the action and you don't see why only central banks and billionaires should be hoovering up gold, you want in on the action, speak to Philip Patrick and his team at Birch Gold Group.
00:14:18.140Excuse me. Text Bannon to 989898 or go to birchgold.com forward slash Bannon.
00:14:26.440Speak to Philip Patrick and his team. Get them on the phone and ask them, for example, how you might convert an old IRA into an IRA in physical gold.
00:14:39.300That will help you get in on the action.
00:14:41.440and also whilst you have them on the end of the phone
00:17:58.080took the other share, that all changed because the Shah wasn't a threat to US interests.
00:18:10.800But when Jimmy Carter pulled the rug, the consequences of that is, totally misreading the Ayatollah,
00:18:18.400the Ayatollah could legitimately be indicated to be someone far more antagonistic to American interests.
00:18:27.320And the Mossadegh regime in 1953 was upheld by the Mullers to a certain extent. They were a key part of his coalition and they felt his overthrow quite considerably.
00:18:40.480So there's a straight line. It wasn't, as you said in your introduction, Stephen, these consequential events don't take place in a vacuum. They have causes. And I don't think people truly appreciate that the 1979 revolution that brought in the Ayatollahs was fundamentally, the line there started off in 1953.
00:19:03.760Would you mind just allaying the relationship between those two events for our audience?
00:19:11.880So the CIA, as you pointed out, overthrew Mossadegh in 1953 with the cooperation of the British Secret Service MI6.0.68
00:19:21.100As a result of that coup, we placed the Shah back on his peacock throne.0.68
00:19:25.680He had fled the country, came back after the CIA coup.0.78
00:19:29.180The Shah ruled with increasing repression for 25 years.
00:19:33.760That repression produced the explosion of 1978-79, which we call the Islamic Revolution.
00:19:41.540That's what brought into power this clique of fanatically anti-American mullahs who have spent the last decades working very intently and sometimes quite violently to undermine American interests all over the world.
00:19:54.980Now, the key event that consolidated religious rule and consolidated American hatred of Iran was, of course, the hostage crisis when American diplomats were taken hostage in Tehran right after the mullahs overthrew the Shah's regime.
00:20:12.440Now, in the years that have passed since then, several of the hostage takers have written memoirs or articles explaining why we did it.
00:20:24.600Of course, in the West, and certainly in the United States, we understood why they did it.
00:20:28.440It's because they're savage nihilists who have no respect for any law of God or man and just want to create havoc.
00:20:35.700But actually, of course, there's another reason.
00:20:42.440It said, in 1953, the Shah had been chased out of Iran, but the CIA, working from the basement of the U.S. embassy, organized a coup and brought the Shah back, and we had to suffer under him for 25 years.
00:20:59.560Now it's 1979. The Shah has fled. The same Shah. He's in the United States. And so it's now our fear that 1953 is going to be repeated, that CIA agents working in the basement of the U.S. embassy are going to organize a coup and bring the Shah back.
00:21:19.440What would lead us to think that was possible? Because it already happened once. So that 19530.66
00:21:26.880experience is what caused the extended hostage-taking crisis, and that hostage crisis
00:21:35.520still dominates the world's image of this regime. Without the 1953 coup, none of that would have
00:21:43.600happened, and it's quite possible, as you suggest, that if left alone, Iran could have evolved into
00:21:50.220the most important Muslim democracy in the Middle East, and that could have had a real
00:21:56.400impact throughout the region. The opposite happened. The Americans gave the clear signal0.50
00:22:02.600to other countries in the region that we are not interested in democracy, because that just
00:22:07.340produces popular will that's going to oppose the interests of foreign companies and corporations.
00:22:13.600What we prefer is a repressive government that will give us access to resources.
00:22:19.680A rising generation of leaders all over the Middle East heard that message.
00:22:23.840And when you look at the Middle East today, you can see it's a result of that conclusion.
00:25:20.680In the final 90 seconds, if you wouldn't mind, just explain, come back to this point,
00:25:26.880about how a socialist nationalist prime minister in Iran
00:25:33.700trying to act in his own country's best interest
00:25:39.060had been turned because of his nationalization program of the land, for example.
00:25:43.800It wasn't just the oil trying to nationalize the land as well,
00:25:48.720the aristocracy's land, and put a 25% tax on that for the poor.
00:25:53.560Just give me a very quick synthesis on how a leader in a foreign country trying to act in their own country's interest was spun by the American US intelligence community into someone who was decisively antagonistic towards American national interests.
00:26:13.400During the 1950s, there was a group of leaders emerging from colonial rule who were very
00:26:22.860nationalistic, but they wanted to be neutral in the Cold War. They had countries to develop
00:26:29.380that had been left in ruins by colonial powers. They wanted to spend their efforts building
00:26:35.340schools and roads and hospitals, bridges, infrastructure. They didn't want to get
00:26:40.740involved in the Cold War. But the Americans could not accept this. We hated neutralism during the
00:26:46.7401950s. And the reason was that that Alan Dulles, the head of the CIA and others around him,
00:26:54.000propagated this view that these guys are not really neutralists.
00:26:58.320Hold on to this. We'll come back. We'll pick it up in two minutes.
00:27:00.980One of my favorite days of the year, Veterans Day, is coming up and Birch Gold Group is
00:27:04.960commemorating it with something i think you'll really appreciate from now until 30 october for
00:27:12.540every ten thousand dollars you purchase from birch gold you get a free patriotic silver round
00:27:18.480and there's no limit on how many you can earn what's more birch gold can help you convert your
00:27:24.680existing retirement savings into a gold ira without spending a dime in taxes or penalties
00:27:30.800For current and former military, they will waive fees for the entire first year on purchases of any amount.
00:27:39.300Birch Gold has earned an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau and served tens of thousands of customers,
00:27:46.440a lot of them viewers and members of the War Room posse.
00:27:51.320I trust them, and I think you'll see why.
00:27:54.120Text my name, Bannon, B-A-N-N-O-N, to 989898 for a free information kit and to claim eligibility for your free silver on a qualifying purchase before 30 October.
00:28:07.500That's Bannon, B-A-N-N-O-N, to 989898.
00:29:37.020allfamilypharmacy.com slash Bannon, code Bannon10 for 10%.
00:29:41.700thank Michael Kuntzler and his team for putting this company together. Great service.
00:29:47.580If you're serious about preparedness, like the War Room is, and I am specifically,
00:29:54.900you're going to want to head over to preparewithbannon.com right now. Let me tell you why.
00:30:00.580Our partners over at My Patrons of Bly are the experts when it comes to emergency food,
00:30:05.560And they're serious about making sure you have what you need.
00:30:10.100In an honor of National Preparedness Month, they're giving every customer who gets their best-selling three-month emergency food supply kit a 72-serving mega protein kit free.
00:30:23.200That's 90 days of real food security with more than 2,000 calories per day and 100% of 12 essential vitamins and minerals.
00:30:31.680Plus, the free protein kit gives you real beef and chicken, red beans, black beans, and pinto beans to ensure you've got what you need on hand for any emergency.
00:30:42.940More protein, more variety, more substantial meals when you need it the most.
00:30:48.640Go to preparewithbannon.com now to take advantage of this great deal.
00:30:52.800The food is easy to prepare, packed and durable buckets, and designed to last up to 25 years when stored properly.
00:31:00.380This is not the time to assume you'll find out what you need later.
00:31:05.720Visit preparewithbannon.com and build your 90 days of real food security.
00:31:11.320Remember, our own landing page with MyPatriotSupply.
00:31:25.460And it's where all the biggest voices in conservative media are speaking out.
00:31:29.040download the getter app right now it's totally free it's where i put up exclusively all of my
00:31:34.720content 24 hours a day you want to know what steve bannon's thinking go to getter that's right
00:31:39.300you can follow all of your favorites steve bannon charlie kirk jack basova and so many more download
00:31:45.400the getter app now sign up for free and be part of the movement steven and let me just pick up
00:31:52.460that point if i may but you're joining us back now in this interview with steven kinza steven if i if
00:31:58.680If I may just pick up that point, you were saying you were making the argument that neutrality has been switched effectively by the U.S. intelligence community into into the argument.
00:32:08.980It's not really neutrality. It's it's covert anti-Americanism.
00:32:14.240Yes, the idea was that these guys were actually pernicious liars and they pretended to be neutralists.0.53
00:32:22.240Actually, they're probably tools of the Kremlin.
00:32:25.660And what the Russians have told them is, pretend to be neutralists.
00:32:29.380Then one day when we're ready, we'll call you.0.52
00:32:32.000And then overnight, we're going to turn the country into a communist Russian satellite.0.73
00:32:36.400So this was a fantasy that drove operations against Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala,0.67
00:32:44.420Sukarno in Indonesia, Lumumba in the Congo.
00:32:47.760These were all people who were only trying to develop their own countries.
00:32:50.640But we transformed them into monsters who actually were witting or unwitting servants of the Kremlin.
00:32:58.640And that justified our covert actions against them.
00:33:03.520All right. This is fascinating. This really is fascinating.
00:33:08.760OK, so now we're going to switch to your book, Boiling Point, which is, and I quote, let me quote the New York Times' review of this.
00:33:17.020So they said this book may be the most comprehensive accounting of the United States' long involvement in Ukraine from the end of World War II until the Russian invasion.
00:33:27.260I would suggest that your thesis is quite closely aligned with that of Professor Mearsheimer, who famously, we talk about this on The War Room quite a lot,
00:33:45.300What Professor Mearsheimer had said before the Russian invasion back in February 2022,
00:33:54.120he'd said that the US was leading the Ukraine down the primrose path to its own destruction
00:34:03.040and said that America would fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian.
00:34:11.880Quite prophetic in how things have turned out.
00:34:15.300And you've written this book, this amazing book, which I very strongly recommend, detailing chapter and verse in this.
00:34:27.440Let's start off then, let's go back, let's not start off in 2022, let's start off in 2014 with the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian Ukrainian president.
00:34:43.360Because I think that's probably a good starting point on this.
00:34:46.240One, of course, could go back further to the fall of the Berlin Wall
00:34:51.080and the assurances that America made to Russia on NATO expansion.
00:34:57.380In fact, we could actually literally do start there.
00:35:34.880Certainly one of the similarities between what happened in Ukraine and what happened
00:35:40.180in Iran back in the 1950s, was that the CIA, or let's say American operatives, decided that they
00:35:49.720were not willing to let history take its course. They wanted history to go the way they wanted it.
00:35:54.560They wanted to shape it. So where do we start this story? My book, Boiling Point,
00:35:59.440it tells a history that stretches over 75 years. That's how long the United States
00:36:05.920has been seeking to push Ukraine into conflict with Russia. It started in 1947 when the CIA
00:36:14.320began dropping armed commandos into Ukraine with the goal of fomenting a guerrilla uprising against
00:36:21.420the Soviet government. It stretched all through decades until 1991 when Ukraine finally became
00:36:28.840independent. Then it moved into a new phase, which was trying to rid Ukraine of its neutrality.
00:36:37.100When Ukraine became independent, they put that in their constitution, that Ukraine would be
00:36:41.600permanently neutral. But we didn't like that. And through a series of operations that cost
00:36:49.460millions and millions of dollars, the CIA worked to change public opinion and change political
00:36:55.380opinion towards a more favorable approach to the United States. After spreading so much money
00:37:01.580around Ukraine, there was, as you point out, an uprising beginning in the end of 2013,
00:37:08.000finally succeeding in 2014 in overthrowing the neutralist government and replacing it
00:37:15.220with a government that was essentially a proxy of the United States. Then we move into the next
00:37:20.900phase, which is now that we have the friendly government, we're going to pour weapons into0.87
00:37:25.140Ukraine and tell them we not only want you to confront Russia verbally, but we want you to0.54
00:37:31.080confront Russia militarily. And that's what I think Mearsheimer meant by fighting to the last
00:37:36.780Ukrainian. We've had U.S. senators say things like, this is the best money we've ever spent0.94
00:37:41.740because we're killing Russians. We're not losing any Americans. As if the tens of thousands of
00:37:47.260Ukrainian kids who are now dead mean nothing. This is one of the most outrageous parts of the
00:37:52.680Ukraine war, that the Ukrainians are just roadkill. They're just collateral damage in1.00
00:37:58.760America's great desire to wound Russia. So I tell this story in Boiling Point over 75 years.0.87
00:38:06.060And my final point is that if you want to look at what happened on the day of the invasion,
00:38:11.380February 24, 2022, you can see something very clear. Russia's the aggressor and Ukraine is0.84
00:38:18.900the victim. But that picture should be seen as the culminating frame in a long movie that lasted0.90
00:38:27.22075 years. And unless you understand that 75-year history, you can't understand why Ukraine exploded0.83
00:38:34.380into war. Tell me something, if you wouldn't mind, perhaps from the Russian perspective,
00:38:41.380here um it seems to me that had the situation been reversed no u.s president would have tolerated
00:38:48.500similar maneuvers by foreign power on its on its border um my surprise was wasn't that putin so
00:38:58.340much invaded ukraine in february was it end of january end of february 2022 it took him so long
00:39:06.440to get round to doing um from the russian perspective here in terms of uh concerns
00:39:16.040about ukrainian neutrality ukraine joining nato and what have you there is this um suggestion
00:39:25.780that america just misread the situation didn't understand what russia's red lines were and let
00:39:33.480Perhaps it's a cynical take, Stephen, but let me throw a cynical take to you.
00:39:40.700America knew exactly what the consequences would be and deliberately provoked it.
00:39:45.360Not because it wanted to contain Russia, not because it cared anything about Ukraine.
00:39:51.000You just illustrated that certainly wasn't true.
00:39:53.380But because, if I might use the term, the American military industrial complex was able to make hundreds of billions of dollars out of this war.
00:40:04.520Would you go that far? Would you be that cynical?
00:40:08.820I don't think it's cynical. I think it's clear.
00:40:11.200The American planners of this project must have thought it's a win-win for us.0.51
00:40:17.120So we're going to push NATO right up into Russia's face.0.56
00:40:22.100And Russia will be able to react in two ways.0.95
00:40:25.620Either Russia will say, well, there's nothing we can do about it, and that'll be great for
00:40:30.300America, because we've then got our nuclear weapons right on Russia's border, and we can0.63
00:40:34.440proceed to the next step, which is trying to subvert Russia itself.0.64
00:40:37.920If, on the other hand, the Russians decide they can't accept this, they'll invade Ukraine,
00:40:42.860and then we can paint Russia as the brutal aggressor.0.84
00:40:45.740So it works out great for us either way.
00:40:47.860I don't think we misread what the Russians would say.
00:40:52.500Actually, if Joe Biden had just pronounced five words, Ukraine will not join NATO, this
00:42:19.280I mean, I would like to see a world where we're not obviously like most people,
00:42:25.640because I make no money out of warfare,
00:42:27.540so I don't want to see a world that's constantly at warfare with one another,
00:42:32.060at a world that's peaceable and prosperous.
00:42:34.920And one of the ways to get there is I think if countries were to apply this simple rule, do not do unto others that you would not have done unto you. That would be a good starting point, I think, when it comes to international relations. Just give me a reading on that, if you wouldn't mind Stephen Kinzat, and then we'll move on with the last point I want to run past you this evening.
00:42:58.900Scholars and international relations experts have this phrase called indivisible security,
00:43:03.540which I think is something that you're talking about. What it means is that no country has the
00:43:07.340right to advance its own security in ways that threaten the security of another country.
00:43:14.340So we observe that, but not with Russia. The real problem behind all of this conflict in Europe is
00:43:20.520that we never developed a new security architecture after the end of the Cold War. And that led a lot
00:43:26.820of people to pursue their own agendas. So what we should have done is do something like what
00:43:32.360Metternich did after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. He had a Congress of Vienna. Let's invite
00:43:37.580all the leaders of Europe to figure out what's going to be the new world. But instead, the United
00:43:43.080States elected to simply re-divide Europe, just like it was in the Cold War, only with the dividing
00:43:49.480line being several hundred miles to the east. And in my book, Boiling Point, I point out that
00:43:54.900This is one of the reasons that war exploded in Ukraine.0.69
00:43:59.720All right. Let me give a shout out, if I wouldn't mind, to Jim Rickard.
00:44:08.040And I'll come back and round off with Stephen Kinzer in just a moment.
00:44:12.520Jim has got a special offer on his strategic intelligence flagship newsletter,
00:44:21.740An offer at $17.76, a figure not chosen by chance.
00:44:32.240I pay several hundred dollars a year to subscribe to Strategic Intelligence,
00:44:38.160and I pay that, and I think it's worth every penny, every cent.
00:44:44.080But Jim's making this available for the War Room Posse at $17.76, $17.76.
00:44:51.740And he's so confident that you are going to appreciate it, as I do.
00:44:59.100He's offering it on a risk-free basis for 90 days.
00:45:08.620If you do like it, you can continue with it.
00:45:11.740If you want to sign up for this, and I do strongly recommend this,
00:45:14.880is one of the things that I actually put my own hand in my own pocket to pay for this
00:45:22.020myself. I do recommend it, and you're paying a fraction of what I pay for this. I say through
00:45:27.720clenched teeth, RickardsWarning.com. RickardsWarning, all one word, RickardsWarning.com. You go there
00:45:37.680and sign up for that newsletter. All right, back now, round off the show with Stephen Kinzer.
00:45:43.920Stephen. So another thing here, thesis, that is tied in with your book is the number of people like Victoria, Newland, Richard Holbrook, etc., etc., whose families come from Central and Eastern Europe.
00:46:02.920They come, parents, grandparents come to America, but they're still very much bringing with them a strong sense of protective sentimentality.
00:46:16.520Let me put it generously like that for their original countries of origin, and that's fine.
00:46:21.680But it gets to a point where America as a nation is being guided by people who are bringing these personal familial nations of origin with them to the policy making table.
00:46:40.960So that America's interests aren't being decided in the line of what benefits America, but to some extent what benefits as well these other countries of origin.
00:46:54.900And of course, you know, I mentioned this in passing, we don't have time to discuss this right now, but the Israel situation, which also had an impact on the US midterms, plays into that as well.
00:47:11.340Give me your analysis, seeing as you have written this book, on that fact, on people like Victoria Nuland and what she was doing.
00:47:18.740Do you actually, I mean, let me ask you straight away, was she acting when she was Assistant Secretary of State?
00:47:26.620Was she acting in America's interests there or in Ukraine's interests?
00:47:32.000She did have the phone call, the famous phone call, three weeks before the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych with the U.S. ambassador in Ukraine,
00:47:41.120basically where they'd agreed they were pulling the plug and they were deciding which leaders they were going to install to replace them.
00:47:48.460And lo and behold, it was exactly as they had planned in that leaked phone call.
00:47:53.560Just to the degree that you feel comfortable, just give me a couple of minutes on that, if you wouldn't mind.
00:48:00.100So one of the points that I make at length in my book, Boiling Point, is that we had this remarkable, actually completely unique phenomenon in the history of American foreign policy.
00:48:11.240And that is that a whole group of emigres from Eastern Europe or children or grandchildren of emigres came into the U.S. foreign policy apparatus and took control of our policy toward Ukraine and Russia.0.83
00:48:25.380These are people who had grown up hating Russia, and in many cases, they had good reason. If you read the history of Poland or the history of Ukraine, you can understand why some people that flee those countries are wanting to devote their entire life to getting revenge on Russia.0.85
00:48:44.480They penetrated the American foreign policy establishment with the goal of turning the
00:48:50.520United States into the instrument of their revenge against Russia for what they considered
00:48:56.160to be its immense crimes against their families, their countries, and all of humanity.0.50
00:49:01.680Now, they may have been correct in their passion, but they distorted American policy.
00:49:07.180You asked if Victoria Newland, who's one of these people, was acting in the interest of
00:49:12.640the United States or in the interest of trying to destroy Russia and promote war in Ukraine.
00:49:19.780I think she would say all of those go together. Her argument would be that whatever is good for
00:49:25.080Ukraine is good for the United States. But that's not true. In fact, we had this whole group of
00:49:31.420people whose roots, family roots lie in Eastern Europe. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Madeline Albright,
00:49:37.960Alexander Vindman, Anthony Blinken. There's a whole list of them. And they are the ones who
00:49:44.460made American policy toward their homeland. So their entire lifelong obsession was to somehow
00:49:52.000punish, weaken, or destroy Russia. That may have been a reasonable response, given the way they0.98
00:49:58.560grew up, but it shouldn't have been the motivator for American foreign policy. So it would be
00:50:04.500equivalent, for example, suppose there were a nice young Congolese diplomat in the United States.
00:50:09.580Family came from the Congo, came to the United States. He entered the State Department. Would
00:50:14.440you want that person to be the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, which every Congolese person has grown up
00:50:21.660to hate justifiably? No, it's just not right because you don't want someone to carry their0.99
00:50:27.600family and communal hatred into the American foreign policy process. But that's what happened.
00:50:34.060That's one of the reasons why America was so determined to use Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia.
00:50:42.320It's because these officials who had grown up absorbing anti-Russia passion with their mother's milk were the ones who essentially not just executed the policy, but made the policy.
00:50:54.680And that's part of what produced the war in Ukraine, as I point out at boiling point at great length.
00:51:00.620i am we have like 60 seconds left so i don't have time to ask you where whether you would have put
00:51:08.100henry kissinger in in that in that list that you produced um just a few moments or so go so look in
00:51:14.480the time remaining to us just very very quickly if you wouldn't mind denver if you wouldn't mind
00:51:18.800running through the books um on screen steven just where can people go to to look at these books
00:51:25.700um read the reviews consider buying them um and following the thank thanks very much that's let's
00:51:32.420start with that one boiling point where do people go and screenshot this get ready to screenshot
00:51:36.580this folks to take the book well the easiest place to go is some mass uh source like amazon but i
00:51:44.920always recommend that people go to their local independent bookstore because those bookstores
00:51:49.340are such an important part of our cultural ecosystem and order your books there you can
00:51:53.760read about the books on Amazon, then once you decide which one you want to buy, order it from
00:51:59.840your independent bookseller so we don't need to fatten the purses of the Amazon giants.
00:52:06.980Stephen Kinzer, very, very grateful that you've taken the time to join us this evening and come
00:52:12.400back again soon. My thanks to Robert Veal, America's Voice, and Vittorio Santifranco
00:52:17.240for running this show together. God bless, folks.
00:52:19.300Most Americans are forced to spend too much money on health care and getting too little in return.
00:52:25.140If you're one of the millions frustrated by traditional health insurance, I want to tell you about America's health share.