and your security policy analyst in the office of the u. s. secretary of defense. many thanks. thank you. good. ah, now it is rare of late for moscow, anita, as we've just been speaking up to even talk, never mind agree and issues, but could a glimmer of diplomacy be in the year following this week's summit cross talk debates on dates next? ah, i emotions medieval institutions and then i go to like technology and the combination of free st. very. you could say historically distinct fix fixes with in our psycho physical makeup. i have rendered us pretty

dangerous to ourselves to the, to the planet. and now we have e cigarettes, i just heard that it was a healthy alternative to cigarettes. and do we trust tobacco companies with their message that these new products are actually going to reduce these sugars are making the tobacco up and it over to yours? with

hello and welcome to cross off. we're all things are considered. i'm peter lavelle . over the past 2 and a half years, russia, nato of agreed on very little. if anything, however, both agreed to meet for a high level meeting and they did in brussels. both sides made their case. nothing was really resolved lots of words. what happens next may be actions ah, cross sucking nato and russia. i'm joined by my guest, david swanson, in charlottesville. he is a director, a world beyond war dot org and del mar. we have scott ritter. he's a former intelligence officer in the united nations weapons inspector, and in prague. we have brad blankenship. he is a column this at c g t n. and a freelance reporter appreciate. why are gentlemen cross talk rules and effect, that means you can jump anytime you want. and i always appreciate, let me go to scott 1st here. scott, what is your major take away from this meeting that we had between russia and nato?

because the way my out will reading of is would be the americans and nato in general. this don't take this very seriously. and they always end up saying, well, we just need to talk more. well, when russia showed up with 2 documents saying we got to, we need your reaction to this. we want legally binding agreements and you know, where we stand, but the americans, i didn't take it very seriously. that's my take away. what do you think scott, with the united states and nato was trapped by, you know, 2030 years of, um, of precedent to that is precedent about totally disregarding the legitimate national security interest of russia. and um, you know, using uh, the a, you know, manufactured threat of russian aggression as a justification or continued expansion of, of, of, of its geographic boundaries. and the expansion of it's a global role. so, you know, there is going to be very difficult for the united states, nato to, uh,

back away from a, from this stance. so it would be akin to us surrendered in russia. knew this going . and i mean that's the frustrating aspect of is that there was never any chance or a genuine negotiations because well, sides are trapped by their respective positions. rushes position of course, is that he cannot accept of you fumey elation of military power on its orders. that this is um, an existential threat, and one only has to understand russian history and the importance of a june 22nd 1941 to know where the russians are coming from. as of course, with nazi germany and baited a setting off for years of hell off for the russian people in for europe as a whole, are russia's hope here wasn't to get the united states or nato to, to come to an agreement. or their hope was to drive home the reality of the consequences of failure. um and kit europe, european nations theresa there hand and say, hey, wait a minute. um,

maybe war isn't in our best interests and i think that's happening right now. i think we, we've seen the seeds of doubt being sewed enough, france and germany and elsewhere where they're beginning to question the wisdom in the by ability of the hard line stance, taken by the united states, nato. you know, it's got a david, david, i mean, what was south and burn the head of a of nato. he constantly says like a broken record that nato is a defensive alliance. what kind of defensive alliance needs to constantly expand? because it seems to me that it has to expand to justify its existence, and it's expanded so much to russia's borders that now they can say, but see now there's a threat here that though it was, the expansion itself was what created the threat in the 1st place explained your view is how a defensive alliance has to keep expanding. david, well, i think you're forgetting the wonderful services nato has done in places like afghanistan and libya and the incredible success of 30 straight years and running,

containing the warsaw pact to the point where it practically doesn't exist. i mean, this is incredible. success for natalie. you're absolutely right, there is no purpose for nato. i eat, you know, it's, it exists out of bureaucratic inertia, out of obedience to the united states, out of the drive for weapons sales to eastern europe, and out of the need to maintain this mysterious substance called credibility. oh, which is not maintained by keeping the promise not to expand nato by adhering to the anti ballistic missile treaty or the intermediate range treaty or any agreements i even committing to maintain future commitments on that's all out the window has nothing to do with credibility. it's just belligerence, it's just hostility. i and that drive a risks, escalating this risks. conflict between nuclear governments and this is what nato has become. you know, a brand. i mean, one of the things,

it's very interesting to me because i am old enough to remember probably the oldest one on the program to remember is it, we had a process during the cold war, the helsinki final act, where it was rip, made it very clear that, you know, security is indivisible, you cannot attain security when you're risking the security of another state. and this is exactly when nato still needed. i mean that this was a framework during the height of the cold war. there was a recognition that, you know, you cannot have security at the risk of another nato doesn't recognize that any more. go ahead, brad, him and prague. well, that's exactly right, right at the end of the cold war in 1990 u. s. secretary of state james baker, under george bush, the 1st one george bush. i had made a deal of gorbachev and told him if you worked with us on the reunification of germany and allow germany unified jerry, me to ally with the west. nato will not expand one inch eastward. this was a verbal commitment. there was nothing signed. and ever since,

that nato has moved east or multiple times through the 1990 in 2000. and each and every one of the, from the russian perspective, is it trans aggression that the violation of that verbal agreement made between the united states and russia. and now finally as nato is potentially about to be russia border. now russia is saying that this is a red line, and it's not even, this is not an arbitrary red line. this is literally a red line. this is right at russia border. and we don't even have to ask ourselves how the united states was react, that there was a military build up on its border. everybody remembers in the united states, 1960, to the cuban missile crisis. when there was a build up soviet ballistic missiles in cuba, and now was that described in the near a cataclysmic event that could have ended the world. why is it that we in the west or especially in washington, don't see. russia has a legitimate national security interest and not have a weapon build up on its border with the border with ukraine, where most of the russian population lives in striking distance in moscow. how is

it that we can sit here in the united states? american diplomats can look at russia situation and not even understand that they have a legitimate national security interest when we're militarized around its border, especially caucasus right in eastern europe, going right to russia's doorstep. for me, i haven't trouble seeing this as diploma. so we have tried and said that he's going to focus on diplomacy, diplomacy. first, we're not going to fight wars and regime changing. we're going to focus in diplomacy. how's this diplomacy when you, when you came in display the most basic people skills that they didn't, scott, i'm glad that brad brought up the cuban missile crisis, because we go back in time. i mean khrushchev, we say, well, cube is a sovereign country, it can have any kind of weapons. it was going to have to be alliance relationships at once. and kennedy made it very clear. he said, if you don't take those missiles out, we will. why is this a reverse situation? because it seemed very clear to me, and this is what the russians referred to as military technical measures. ok. i

think that saying pretty much, you know, what a kennedy said. you put these missile systems in there, you don't take them out, we will and i think that's what they are, that basically where we're at right now. i mean, this is so downplayed in western media. this is a really huge story. and i think brad and all 3 of you were right is, isn't it just kind of arrogance and inertia? go ahead, scott. well, we didn't, we have to preface this discussion with the, the, are the prior actions of the united states. so during the cold war of, you know, we viewed the soviet union at that time as a, as an equal part. um. and so when we enter into agreements, they were bilateral in nature, their binding to, oh huh. you know, the anti ballistic missile treaty was one of the bedrock or no arms control agreements. the intermediate nuclear forces treaty another and de tional arms control agreement. each arms reduction pretty uh, united states has violated healthy. we've withdrawn from 2 of them. um, you know,

and, and so we've created a situation where a by withdrawing from these treaties which and, you know, brought a modicum of stability. um, where now redeploying, a ballistic missile defense systems into europe. oh, and we're getting ready to deploy intermediate nuclear forces in to europe. we've reactivated the 53rd artillery, a group in germany. anybody who has a cold war veteran knows that that's the old pershing to brigade that, that, that, you know, corporate, she her into the hearts of the. so it's because a persian to fire missile that would be in the kremlin in 5 minutes. we're reactivating that we're going to deploy a system called a dark eagle sometime this year, which is a hypersonic, a missile capability. we're reconfiguring um, our yo so called only anti missile system into a potential ballistic missile delivery system that could deliver both. i'm

a cruise missiles and i'm a sim, 3 missiles. it can vary for surface to surface use that the russian to say this is totally unacceptable. now, i think russia will do 2 things. one, they'll say, i understand that these are now become targets. so anybody who co host these understand you are now a target. and what i mean target, i mean nuclear because shall, we'll reintroduce a system similar to the us as 20, which was the intermediate range missile, the brochure to europe. and it was the mutual fear person to and as, as twice the letter d i n f treaty. because both i drill as we don't want the world to end tomorrow, which is what was going to happen. a rush is this going to simply re deploy a modernized version of the us as 20, which every capital in europe under risk? great. now what now what you have a, we have a situation now where we could have military conflict. mitchell mentored conflict in ukraine that could spread other areas and be

a trigger for regional nuclear war. in russia sit at the moment, you fire, look on russian soil, we unleash everything. so that global and i, li, should nothing to united states has done, has engendered regional or global security. and it's been very bad for american security. most americans wake up, you're worried about coded, we're worried about the economy. we should be worried about whether or not we're going to be alive tomorrow, because if we continue down this path, we won't be, we'll all be dead, the world will be dead. we don't take the stick, but a global nuclear annihilation is serious as we used to. i mean, again, i was in the military in the 1980s. we trained every day for the potential new her conflict and we understood the consequences, which is why i was a willing participant in the intermediate nuclear forces treaty. i was one of the 1st inspectors on the ground in the so union help get rid of these weapons as i, as a military person recognized. oh, important. it was for security united. well, it seems like it seems like no one in washington, brussels has a memory of the,

of the, of that kind of the lemma. here, i'm going to jump in here gentlemen, and we're going to go to a short break. and after that, i shall break. we'll continue our discussion on nato and russia. stay with parking it really is happening here and i wasn't a house on the door and then to be known, lay as the home of the coin city, and were witnessing the demise of gold as the monetary demonization. thanks time, july, an annual festival in saint petersburg dedicated to dust ifc. ah, the great writer, thinker and psychologist, people often turn to his worth to understand russia and russians, perhaps even themselves. he put a single movie to see what they think about the matter vehicle of wiley, fini. changing a rita, transforming them as they read. that's

a dust i asked is unique ability to stay ascii wants to tell us, you can better yourself. he makes you face your true self serve. are we good man? beyond conventions, rules of schemes, beyond boundaries and time. dostoevsky is a global brand whose classics, as everyone knows a never out of style with . oh ah, welcome back to cross hawk were all things are considered on peter labelle, tremonti. we're discussing nato in russia. ah.

okay, let's go back to david in charlottesville. let me read to you something that the ahead of nato sells hamburg had to say, quote, allies on their side, reaffirm nato's open door policy and the right for each nation to choose its own security arrangements. ok. but i see that that somehow excludes russia from doing exactly the same thing that he's claiming nato countries have. why or our, or does he just simply have no interest section. and understanding that the, the country that nato is faced up against has no legitimate security rights because that's how i read it. go ahead david. i actually agree with you, you know, for almost a month now, u. s. media has been telling me that russia has this outrageous catastrophic list of demands that will start a new cold war. and you have these 5000 word articles about this list of demands, but they don't show you the list which he in his a 100 words. i and, and,

and russia had 8 demands, 3 of them were, we recognized the u. n. we talked to each other, we stopped calling each other adversaries. how outrageous the other 5 are, the exact demands that the united states would make of russia, if there was a missile in cuba, right? stop putting missiles on our border, stop putting troops on our border, stop doing military games on our border stop. i stop a enlarging nato and stop it is supporting your so called security at the expense of ours. you know, these are absolutely reasonable things to sit down to discuss. if you think of russia as a partner in a discussion, rather than a misbehaving child to be kicked around to set an example to all the other misbehaving children in iran and korea and, and a china and around the world. so, you know, nato is not interested in resolving this. i,

the last thing i want is russian missiles in, in the western hemisphere. but if you see that you will see the double standard play out quite starkly. you know, brad, 11 of the odd wrinkles in all of this here is that when nato and russia meant it meant a nato, dis, one to harp on ukraine and not on not to go address the 2 documents that are the russians, very thoughtfully, are formulated about a pan european security about security for everyone, but know the u. s. and it's always one to focus on ukraine. but the irony is, of course, is it all the united states and other members of nato said that they wouldn't really do anything if there was a conflict between russia and ukraine. i mean, that is this absolute lunacy. so the whole focus is on ukraine. but we're not going to do anything about it here. i mean, what is the national security interest to nato and to the united states separately for you know, what is the importance of ukraine after all? because as i keep telling people, the more ukraine's western friends help them,

the smaller ukraine gets amazingly. go ahead, brad. yeah, i mean, whenever i hear this invoked by the united states national security interest, i honestly, i don't know what it means. i mean, i know i know what it means, but when you're thinking about national security, you're thinking about sovereignty territorial integrity by law. this is what the americans are talking about whenever they're talking about national security, we had to ban why way from the u. k. because the national security interest, we just heard vince cable on monday said had nothing to do with that and had to do with you know, competing business interest for united states and orders from washington. this, this doesn't mean anything when we're talking about national security interest. how does it have to do with ukraine? it's not because this is an existential threat to ukraine or to the europe. that is to say that if nato didn't expand ukraine, what it actually endanger europe, existentially in some way, or the united states, of course, not. it has to do with,

with the geo political interests of people in washington or people in brussels at one to contain russia. i mean, actually, i saw quite revealing off a while ago, i forget who is barbara. there was some former american diplomat who said that we have to contain russia. we is in washington to contain russia. keep him completely out of europe to be any kind of geopolitical game changer and focus them into asia, forcing russia to become an asian power to compete with china, to keep their training russian alliance away from each other. and i just laughed. wow, really like that's your strategy because you understand that they already know that if they were fighting a 2 front conflict, trying to rush that this would be an unwinnable conflict and even acknowledge now that potentially just one of them would be unbeatable in of itself. but i think that genuinely this is what they're trying to do. i mean, they're trying to completely be hard line with russia, keep them kimberly,

out of europe for them to can be with china. and this is going to be hilarious. i think next month when vladimir putin goes to b j, i think that will be a very upsetting announcement from him. with regards to china for the west. i think this is a fail. see it or you know, scott, you, you've been around the block for awhile and i know you're history and, and disarmament in it's commendable. it seems to me that the to washington has lost that. i mean, when i think of anthony blinkin and jake sullivan, i mean, they're not really high octane thinkers here. um, you know, i mean what, what is the strategy here? because you know, to try to dina a, it's either, you know, push russia into asia or d, lincoln from china. i mean, the, this is kind of like cartoonish for me because they're not thinking about geo politics. there's such a like, mean hatred here. i mean, we're dealing with states and diplomacy and negotiations, but that doesn't mean that that doesn't have anything to do with this process right now. either the, the, the of the americans go, they make,

make their barking demands. and then you know, say they're not listening and they leave here. i mean, i mean, do you want to have to get back into that business of disarmament? i mean, to have to, we live another career of doing that. go ahead. scott, remember before there was disarm, i'm also probably the only person on your program right now that i spent many years training actively training to close with and kill russian soldiers. that was my mission. and i understand what that chase. i understand what that was required back to the 1980s. the size of the military forces require the training commitment required. oh, it was immense. and i also understand that the u. s. military today can't do that. well, we don't have the ability to wage or skill ground warfare and europe. well, that's why i always, you know, back in the, in the cold war days, we had a class of american diplomat in a class of american military officers. i mean, we had foreign airy officers or soviet specialists. i was one of the people who

studied the soviet union early to go to war with how to live in can come out of the speech. we have led to disarmament. we don't have this today. we're missing an entire class of diplomatic military intellectual instead, but we have is what i call the class of guten whispers. and this is where a jake, so that in a 20 blanket come in, they're not even clever enough to be put, whispered, because they don't know anything about russia, but they're surrounded by people who have spent their entire life focus solely on vladimir putin there and criticizing him and personifying russia in the person of russia's president, to the extent that anything that vladimir putin says or does, is inherently evil and must be opposed. and that's what we have right now. as you said, it's cartoonish in nature because this is bateau bullwinkle. you know, boris and natasha kinds and it's not reality. and it's going to lead to disaster

because again, i'll leave it with this. we can't fight a war in europe today. we cannot, neither can europe, neither can nato nato knows this. i've challenged anybody who's affiliated with nato. tell me how nato can mobilize an armored core in 10 days. you will never get an answer cuz they can't, they would be able to do it in 10 weeks. rush on the other hand, can put 2 combined arms army that are trained for deep offensive operations in the field was in a week. this is the 1st garge tank army in the 20th combined armed army. oh, former cold war formation station to these germany that were destroyed in whoa, whoa, whoa. european piece in the aftermath of the solution of warsaw pact to paul the so union, but were brought back in the dean because of the expansion of nato. so nato, by expanding as triggered, russia couldn't afford armed formations, that can destroy nato in a heartbeat. and fatal doesn't seem to realizes,

absolutely, absolutely. and, and, and david, let me go to you. i mean, what are policy makers expecting here? because it seems to me when i look at the, the, the jake sullivans and they anthony blank. and i mean, they're just playing to their bubble, their, their russo phobic bubble, the russia gate friends. ok. because these 2 guys were brush, gators ok a big time. and it seems to me that they're playing to a domestic audience here. they're not taking in these talks. i was gonna say negotiation, but they're not negotiations at all. i mean, i can understand it's already been said in this program that both sides are locked into their specific world view. i mean, that's fine. i mean, russia is, sees an existential threat. but in the american and western policy makers are just, you know, that they have to play into this, you know, being who could be more, russo phobic, and who could be more dastardly. and who can demonize more? that's a lot of foreign policy. actually, henry kissinger said that, and i'm not usual to, to quoting henry kissinger. david your thoughts the,

the problem of course, is that the more right wing outlets in the u. s. corporate media are already screaming for actual hot war between the us and rush, and the rest of the u. s. media has been known to follow the more right wing us media and the u. s. permit has been known to follow the mainstream corporate u. s. media, so this is a danger, i mean, i know people in ukraine who think of a, despite the situation being on russia's border, not the u. s. a think of russia and the u. s. as, as equally horrible menaces in this, but they don't think either side really wants war. they think nato wants ukrainian nato, but not to actually join in any ukraine wars as article 5 would require. and they think russia wants nato out of ukraine, but doesn't actually want another afghanistan war or, or any sort of occupation. and so everybody wants a neutral ukraine,

but nobody wants to say it and nobody wants to act to make it happen. and so things may spiral out of control in a way that very few people actually desire debit. david, if i could stay with you, i agree with you completely. but if things go the wrong way, who gets punished the most? it's ukraine, the country. they don't want to say once they capture, i mean they're the ones that are on the front line here. i mean, i find it really extraordinary. they talk so much about it, but to the ukrainians that have the most to lose, at least initially david, well, at least initially is the key, right? because as scott and others have pointed out, we're dealing with nuclear weapons here. and we're dealing with war mania in the u . s. media that prefers air war to ground war i and prefers nuclear war to no war and you've got ols, even in recent years, of the u. s. public thinking a nuclear war would be okay. out of incredible ignorance of what it means to have a nuclear war. and yes, the people of ukraine are already suffering from this dramatically and would suffer

the most and the most quickly. but the entire world could be destroyed. yet while gentleman again seems to me the people in brussels in washington are to sleep walking us all into tragedy. it's all the time we have many thanks them, i guess in delmar charlottesville, and in prague. and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at ortiz, see you next time. remember rostock rules with yes, no. oh, look, we're in fact will you? i, lisa typical. there is only 9, but already a university student that away national. what if,

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the west went to fall as be frank, in violation of all international obligations and common sense they chose to escalate this situation. russia's foreign minister at death and hold back during his annual press conference with one topic dominating forks and major circle of roth. once again, i'd line moscow's red line. also coming up, the cia has reportedly been trailing a late. you korean special operation seems on us territory amid wanting tensions with russia yet, more twists in the saga involving tele superstar novak brokovich. the world number one is visa is revoked once again by australia. meaning he could face a 3 year entry plan.