Episode 277: "NATO Taunts Russia" with Stephen Bryen and Brandon Weichert

"He who tries to defend everything defends nothing."

    ~  Frederick the Great of Prussia

This episode examines the three explosive national security crises the United States and world are embroiled in today, any one of which could escalate into igniting a World War III.

Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Hamas and Taiwan/China. 

Disturbingly, there’s a lot of sabre rattling with far too many politicians in both Europe and the United States engaged in reckless rhetoric. 

To provide cogent analysis and a healthy dose of sobering realism at a time when we face dire risks, Bill is joined by national Security experts and returning guests Stephen Bryen and Brandon Weichert.

Dr. Stephen Bryen, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, has over 50 years national security experience including many stints in the Pentagon where he became one of the world’s leading experts on the arms trade.

Brandon J. Weichert, author of The Shadow War: Iran's Quest for Supremacy is publisher of the Weichert Report and author of the soon to be published A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine.

 

Some excerpts: 

 “The neoconservative, neoliberal cabal running Washington believe fully that they have to fight everywhere all the time to preserve America's unipolar standing and our hegemony in the world. But this quest for hegemony has led to the absolute destruction of America's post-Cold War primacy,” warns Weichert. “And if we are not careful, in the next six months, we will not only lose that primacy., but we may become like the declining Ottoman Empire or Austro-Hungarian Empire on our way out. We’ve overcommitted and overextended, and we’re paying the price.”

“NATO is flirting with war and extinction,” worries Bryen. “France is now "officially" sending troops to Ukraine and NATO countries are demanding strikes deep inside Russia.  Meanwhile the US has secretly made a "policy shift" that somewhat falls short of what Zelensky wanted, but opens the door to deep strikes by the US on Russian territory.”

“It’s very hard to see how NATO could defend Poland or the Czech Republic or Estonia. These are not easy countries to defend, and NATO doesn't have today the core countries of NATO, the French, the Germans, the British, it doesn't have the wherewithal to do it. It doesn't have the army or armed forces. It doesn't have the air defenses. It doesn't have the air forces, it doesn't have the tanks. It doesn't have anything sizable enough, and the ability to actually logistically move it to the battlefield.”

“So the notion of NATO fighting a war, which is what French President Macron and all these clowns are essentially taunting the Russians with, is a very dangerous thing because it means that Europe could be enveloped in a war can't win.”

“Russians have developed a pretty sizable air defense capability,” explains Bryen. “They have very good artillery capability. They have increasingly shown their capability with drones and drone warfare, none of which we’re prepared for, and our best tank, the Abrams, which our only tank, we’ve put all our eggs in this one tank. The Abrams is a disaster.”

 

“The think tank community and the Biden Administration have a plan to contain Russia by rolling it back to its medieval borders, so that it's never again a threat to Europe and the West,” marvels Wiechert. “This is utterly fantastical thinking, this is childish thinking. Russia is not going to let it happen without a fight.”

“Well, their plan not going to happen,” agrees Bryen. “The underlying error, and I think it was a huge error, was that we should confront a nuclear power, a significant nuclear power with the dismemberment. We were going to break up the Soviet Union, now Russia. We're going to dismember it, and we're going to sponsor the opposition in Russia, and somehow create this great transformation. But we're messing around with a nuclear power.”

 

“We’ve essentially forced the Russians into the arms of the Chinese through our policies, which was complete stupidity,” says Bryen.

The neocons are very explicit the US must be the unchallenged superpower. In every place in the world, in every region, we must dominate. 

This is the thinking that got us into the Middle East. This is the exact thinking that led us down the wrong path in Iraq and then the Arab spring.

“They believed the notion that there was going to be only one superpower and it was going to be the United States,”reminds Bryen. “And since we were to be the only superpower we had to take on these responsibilities. Well, we weren't the only one superpower, and today, we’re just one of three, and increasingly the weaker of the three.”