In this episode of The Duran, Alex Cristoforo and Alexander Mercoris join host Alex Blumberg to discuss the rise of the neo-conservative foreign policy establishment in the United States. They discuss the role of the Biden administration, the previous administration, and the entire history of the neocon infrastructure that led us to the Ukraine conflict, and how it all came about. They also discuss the current state of affairs in Ukraine and Russia, and why the U.S. should be worried about it. Alex is a journalist, YouTuber, and World Traveler, and world traveler. He is also the co-founder and co-host of the popular online news site, the Duran. He is a fellow member of the "The Duran" team, and is one of the most astute and penetrating sources of foreign policy information in the world. He has been with us for a long time, and we are so grateful to have him on the show. He's a great friend of ours, and a great ally of the show and we hope you enjoy listening to this episode. If you like what we're doing, please consider becoming a patron or a supporter of our show. We'd love to hear from you! and share it on your socials! Timestamps: 1:00:00 - What's your favorite part of the podcast? 2:30 - What do you like about the show? 3:20 - How do you feel about it? 4:10 - What would you like to see more of it in the future? 5:40 - What are you would like to hear us talk about it again? 6: What are your thoughts on a bit more? 7: What's the most important to you? 8:00 9:00 -- What would your biggest takeaway from this episode? 10:30 -- What are some of your biggest pet peeves? 11:40 -- Why do you want us to do more on this topic? 12:00 | How do we need a better? 13:30 | What is your biggest weakness? 14:00-- What do we want to see? 15: What is the worst thing you're looking for? 16:20 -- How did you think of this episode so far? 17:40 | What are our biggest takeaway? 18:10 -- What s your biggest problem? 19:30
00:00:01.000I'm really privileged to be joined by Alex Cristoforo, who is one half of the team, the Duran team, which is probably one of the best sources of foreign policy information, the most astute and Piercing that I know of.
00:00:17.000They're a very, very popular online news service called the Duran.
00:00:21.000His partner is Alexander Mercoris, and he was on here originally, but we had problems, so we're going to just go forward with half the team.
00:00:31.000Alex Christoforo is a Cyprus and Greek-based geopolitical analyst.
00:00:35.000He is a journalist, YouTuber, and world traveler.
00:00:41.000And I've been following you guys for a while and just loving, you know, really learning so much.
00:00:46.000I want to have the two of you back to talk about China.
00:00:49.000But today, if we can, let's talk at least just a little while about Ukraine.
00:00:54.000You published recently a comprehensive history that showed the role of the Biden administration, the previous administrations, the entire kind of historical neocon infrastructure.
00:01:09.000And purposely, it appears precipitating this conflict and the desire that they have to, you know, to destroy for a balkanized Russia.
00:01:19.000You are not a sympathizer with Vladimir Putin, are you?
00:01:54.000But you can't put an end to this conflict until you understand how you got here.
00:01:59.000And that's what we've been trying to uncover and to share with our audience.
00:02:03.000And we talk about the history all the time on this show.
00:02:07.000But why don't you give us kind of, because you've just written a really brilliant synopsis.
00:02:12.000It was actually from, yeah, we actually did a show with Professor Jeffrey Sachs and he put out an article with the synopsis and we discussed it together.
00:02:22.000And we've been going over the history of Ukraine for a while now.
00:02:41.000And it really is the story of the rise of this group of neocons and how they've now managed to take over much of the State Department and much of the Biden White House and actually every administration even preceding the Biden White House.
00:03:00.000There's been this neocon presence that has been growing over the many decades, and it's now come to a point where these neocons are taking us to the brink of an absolute catastrophe, which is a conflict, a direct conflict between NATO, the United States, and Russia.
00:03:18.000When we say a conflict between NATO and Russia, U.S. is NATO.
00:03:21.000So you're really looking at the U.S. facing off against Russia.
00:03:30.000With the destruction of Russia, it's on their minds, it's on their brains 24-7, and it's taken us to a very dangerous place.
00:03:41.000And let's go through some of that history, because there was a time when the Democrats opposed the neocons, and there was a time after the Iraq War.
00:03:52.000The neocons, of course, got us into the Iraq War, and that was one of their When they published PNAC, the project for the New American Century, back I think in 1999 or somewhere thereabout, they basically said, we want to do eight wars, and one of those was Iraq.
00:04:12.000And they had to lie to us to get us into Iraq.
00:04:15.000They had to pretend that it had something that Saddam Hussein had some responsibility for 9-11 wars.
00:04:21.000And then they had to pretend that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
00:04:26.000But two years, three years into that war, when all of those stories were discredited, a lot of those, the neocons were really in malodor across both political parties.
00:04:36.000And at that point, you know, I think most of us believe that they were headed for permanent exile.
00:05:20.000Well, Biden just said he wants to go back to Syria.
00:05:23.000I'm worried about Syria, to be honest.
00:05:26.000I think everyone is rightly focused on Ukraine.
00:05:30.000And we're covering Ukraine a lot, but Syria worries me because the United States is in a very vulnerable position there.
00:05:40.000They're occupying a part of Syria, but all of the people, all of the countries surrounding this occupying force in Syria, they're now pushing for the U.S. military to get out.
00:06:01.000And I'm very worried about the situation in Syria.
00:06:04.000Something could go awfully wrong there.
00:06:06.000The Syrian government, Iran and Russia, they were conducting military operations because of U.S. Reaper drones that were active in the area.
00:06:15.000And the Biden White House came out with a statement the other day, and they said that they've warned Russia to not operate in the area that they're occupying.
00:06:25.000And they're exploring their options as to how to confront the Russian Air Force there.
00:06:31.000So, you know, it really worries me because everyone's focused on Ukraine, but something could go wrong in Syria.
00:06:36.000And of course, you could have a chain reaction, which can carry over to Ukraine.
00:06:40.000So it's not a good situation in Syria either.
00:06:43.000Talk about the deadlock right now with Ukraine becoming part of NATO, because that's very, very interesting, because you actually have some of the neocons who are now stepping up and saying, we don't think Ukraine should be part of NATO. And explain that paradox.
00:07:02.000You know, the Ukraine and the NATO situation is something that has been...
00:07:12.000In the works, since 2008 is when the discussion of Ukraine entering NATO was seriously considered.
00:07:23.000And it's at that time period that Russia warned the United States NATO, the collective West, not to do it.
00:07:31.000Don't put Ukraine into NATO. They accepted many other countries into NATO. Of course, we have the Baker Gorbachev-Bush promise we're not going to go one more inch to the east.
00:07:46.000Russia accepted many countries to the east to enter NATO, but Ukraine was the red line.
00:07:52.000And I think a lot of the White House administrations, including the neocons, They believed that Russia was bluffing because Russia accepted all of these other countries into NATO and they didn't really give much pushback.
00:08:04.000I think they believed that they could also bring Ukraine into NATO.
00:08:09.000And the year up to the special military operation and the conflict in Ukraine, the collected West, they seemed intoxicated with this idea of bringing Ukraine into NATO.
00:08:21.000I remember the Munich Security Conference, which took place about two weeks before the February 24th invasion of Ukraine.
00:08:30.000Everyone at that conference was so excited with the prospects of bringing Ukraine into NATO that Russia was looking on and they sent their final warnings and they were building up their forces.
00:08:44.000And there was a lot of talk about a potential Russia incursion into Ukraine.
00:08:48.000But even at that point, the leaders of the European Union and the United States, it seems like they didn't believe that Russia would actually call the bluff.
00:08:58.000And it was at that conference when Zelensky started to talk about Ukraine even obtaining nuclear weapons.
00:09:06.000And at that conference, you had Kamala Harris, you had Ursula von der Leyen, you had Olaf Scholz.
00:09:12.000All of these collective West leaders were at that conference, and not one leader decided to push back against Zelensky's statement.
00:09:21.000Not one leader came out and said, there is no way that Ukraine is ever going to obtain nuclear weapons.
00:09:26.000Ukraine is not going to be entering into NATO anytime in the future.
00:09:30.000There was no talk contrary to what Zelensky was saying.
00:09:34.000And I think that was the point where Russia said, okay, we have to do something now.
00:09:39.000We have to find a way to bring Zelensky to the negotiating table to grab the attention of the collective West so that they can understand our security interests and And to make sure that Ukraine never enters NATO. And that's when they launched the operation on the 24th of February.
00:10:01.000They almost succeeded in bringing Zelensky to the negotiating table and signing an agreement, pledging that Ukraine would not enter NATO. And that's when Boris Johnson flew into Kiev and then the war changed.
00:10:16.000Yeah, end of March, beginning of April, when Putin, about three weeks ago, actually showed the agreement that was signed.
00:10:22.000And it seems pretty clear that Putin was very confident that if he put troops in, that the West would be forced to come to the negotiating table.
00:10:33.000And he was probably surprised at that point.
00:10:37.000He put a minimal number of troops into Ukraine, clearly not wanting to take over the entire country.
00:10:44.000But just to bring them to the negotiating table.
00:11:26.000It reverted to an extent back to the Minsk agreements so that the Minsk agreements can start to be enforced as well.
00:11:33.000And it looked like disaster was averted, but we don't really know what promises were made to Zelensky when Boris Johnson flew into Kiev, but it was after that meeting in Kiev that they tore up the agreement, and that's when the conflict shifted to the war that we have today.
00:11:51.000And to get back, and that's a very good synopsis, to get back to my original question, the kind of the tide has turned where you now have some of these neocons who are actually saying, well, wait a minute, maybe we made a mistake.
00:12:08.000I think they felt that they would have already brought down Russia, and the extraordinary resilience that Russia has demonstrated economically.
00:12:20.000Where they outmaneuvered the West and, you know, all these sanctions that were meant to destroy Russia actually ended up strengthening it.
00:12:28.000And then Putin's popularity, I think, has never been better.
00:12:34.000Oh yeah, his popularity is at an all-time high.
00:12:38.000I flew into Moscow just the other day beyond the ground to see what it's like.
00:12:43.000And I can tell you right now that you walk through the streets and you understand that...
00:12:49.000They've managed to weather the storm of the sanctions quite well.
00:12:54.000I think they're even surprised at how well they overcame the sanctions.
00:13:00.000The plan was to implement these shock and awe sanctions.
00:13:05.000And the belief was that Russia is this country masquerading as a gas station, gas station masquerading as a country, whatever John McCain said many years ago.
00:13:19.000the neocons, they've internalized this belief that the Russian economy is weak.
00:13:24.000It's the size of the economy of Delaware or Iowa or something like that.
00:13:29.000And if they put these shock and awe sanctions in place, the economy would crumble, the government would collapse, and we would revert back to, say, the 1990s, where things were good for certain powerful people in D.C. where things were good for certain powerful people in D.C.
00:13:48.000And You know, it didn't work out like that.
00:13:51.000Putin, to his credit, the Russian government, not only Putin, his entire team, they've been preparing for this since the Maidan coup in 2014 and probably even before that.
00:14:02.000They had everything in place to push back against the sanctions, and it worked.
00:14:10.000And not only that, they pivoted very quickly east.
00:14:15.000Very quickly towards China, very quickly towards BRICS. You know, a year and a half ago, no one was really talking so much about BRICS. I mean, it was there.
00:14:25.000Russia, India, China, South Africa, but it wasn't talked about the way it's being talked about now.
00:14:32.000It wasn't seen as a peer rival to say the U.S. economic architecture and economic structures.
00:17:13.000And they can't lose and they will not lose.
00:17:15.000But by continuously escalating, Biden has pushed the US into an impossible position and he's pushed NATO into an impossible position.
00:17:25.000And he needs to find an off ramp, but he has these neocons whispering in his ear.
00:17:30.000And unfortunately, Biden continues to listen to the neocons.
00:17:35.000And instead of finding some sort of diplomatic solution with the Russians, I still believe the Russians are open to negotiating and diplomacy.
00:17:44.000I don't believe they've completely shut that door.
00:17:47.000But Biden is not listening to people in his administration who are saying, walk through that door.
00:17:53.000Instead, he's listening to the neocons who are trying to slam the door shut, and they're calling for more escalation.
00:17:59.000Yeah, I mean, part of the problem is he has a domestic political problem, is if we don't win this war, we've been told that we're winning.
00:18:08.000We've been told all these lies about the war.
00:18:11.000And if he suddenly walks away from the war with a settlement that puts Ukraine in a worse position than the Minsk Accords, and a worse position than the April 2022 agreement, Biden politically...
00:19:13.000He's now in a campaign, and I don't see him pulling back.
00:19:18.000I just don't see how he can do it at this point.
00:19:22.000No matter how many Ukrainian kids die, The tragedy is the hundreds and thousands of people that are dying on both sides, but especially on the Ukrainian side.
00:19:35.000And we're getting reports now on the front lines that the military is not even sending the armored vehicles towards the front line, of which they haven't even been able to get to the first line of defenses.
00:19:48.000They're still trying to get through this gray zone area and try to get through the mines that the Russians have placed before they even get to the first line of defenses.
00:19:58.000The vehicles have all been destroyed and burned.