rewarding children are persons they should be afforded. the right to life is every other person they shouldn't be murdered. just because mom thinks that can be murdered. the overturning of roe vs wade. well, it's a tremendous victory. it's historic victory. now rogan must be very clued. health life of women, this nation. a now at risk. mm . ah. hello and welcome to cross top where all things are considered. i'm peter lavelle. it is said talk is cheap, but loose. talk about dirty bombs is nothing less than dangerous with both russia

and ukraine preparing for new offensive. the west is not shy, talking about nuclear weapons. is the west thinking the unthinkable? ah cross sucking the unthinkable. i'm joined by my guess peer in menu. well, tom men in brussels. he is a lecture at lee only university and in pens mania. we have ted see he is a conflict consultant and retired us foreign service officer or a gentleman, cross ok, rose in effect, that means you can jump anytime you want. and i always appreciate, i mean, not a ted 1st intense, many. are you looking at the 3 of us right now? we're pretty much the same generation um and we grew up being children of the cold war. not to think about the unthinkable. having loose talk about nuclear weapons. but here we are, ted. it's almost in a casual way, it's being referenced in the media and by some western politicians. having said

that, the russian side is never once even mentioned, it is reacted to western commentary. but it does not proactively say we're going to use these weapons. there is not one case where you would know that following western media. ted, that's absolutely right. there's been a lot of very lose talk. you've got to former high ranking us military official saying that the u. s. should join a multilateral military force in ukraine, which is to say to take this thing from a proxy ward was shooting war with russia. unfortunately, on the other hand, you mostly got people like retired admiral mike mullen, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under president george w bush and president obama saying this talk is great job. i've been talking about arm again. we have to back right off that we have to get to the negotiating table soon by one means or another. so it's not total insanity in the west, but my god,

there's a lot of talk taking place here manual in brussels again. you know, i want to go back to kind of when we were young men, there was the worry about having a limited nuclear war in europe. and now here we are all about 40 years, 50 years later with or we're hearing people talk about the unthinkable here. which i find is, is quite astounding because when i look at europe and i look at the united states, what is the national security interest of ukraine for the, for the united states in europe, please explain that to me because i can understand it, go ahead and brussels. yes, actually your there was or who is if she are doing the court, all of her and nuclear war could o q e in the charter of europe. and because her aware or nuclear weapons seen us nuclear weapons in russia, in soviet union, at the time and the european. so we're feeding back to the could be view your of

the arctic, the t r 2 of his nuclear war. and this is why your united kingdom on france decided to have your own nuclear bomb or to, to have your own new situation policy deterrence policy, we say in english. and now we, we are, we are back to these talks about to meet new class strikes. but i think today, or this is more a communication wall. i think you're a very same a huge communication campaign to try to depict russia as her, as e r grace or on potentially using the nuclear bumper. limited nuclear bombs, but i don't think it is gonna happen because it's part of the ser, oh, of, of the sure, the communication wall and the russia i never mentioned

joel, distressed, but they were nuts to user nuclear bob instead of a extreme case. so for the threats to, to vital interest of russia and we are not, there are 2, you can't one of the, you know, this all started lisa, the recent iteration of this as a potential dirty bomb or false flag, which and we've all been expecting ever since the start of this conflict, because as i said in my introduction, the ukrainians and the russians are preparing for new offenses, probably sometime in the middle of nic month. and then ukraine is going to be overwhelmed numerically. and so i'm not surprised or looking for a false flag of course, detonate something and blame the other side. that's the shorthand of it here. okay . which of course will create a coalition of the willing. i'm sure you've heard that phrase before to, to escalate this conflict here. and the only way the west can really escalate is to

go new killer. because for, for the everson in ever since the end of the cold war, the united states have been fighting herds been in the middle east. ok. they don't have that conventional capacity. and that's why you go from selling used or giving use jump to the ukrainians. all the way to the ultimate weapon, and that's the west has done that, not russia. go ahead. well, we've got the added complication, peter. the nato is in the process of practicing nuclear bombardment in europe. yep . under the rubric of steadfast noon, which it does every year. and this actually, when i was at nato, i worked with the us mission to data from 2008 to 2011. when i retired from the foreign servers. and this drove home to me, the absurdity of the whole prospect of nato being, you know, a meaningful participate in any european conflict that involved the russian

federation. because back in the day when they designed these plans, nato was in west germany. the worship courses were in east germany, and you could lie a few 100 kilometers at the most who could knew someone. so it made sense to use small, single engine, jet aircraft, carrier, nuclear weapons. i mean, it didn't make a huge amount of sense, but at least you could sort of envision it these days to even get to territory where you could drop a nuclear weapon. if you're talking about starting in germany, which is where us shared nuclear gravity, bombs are kept, kept in the netherlands, belgian, germany, italy, and turkey. god, help us about getting a new u. s. b 61. gravity bomb nuclear bomb from germany to russian territory. you're going to have to fly thousands of kilometers. you're going to have to refuel in mid air, not once, not twice, but several times. and you're going to have to have

a whole armada of conventional aircraft flying with you so that you can try and penetrate brush and airspace. this is insane. this is a declaration of war. it's an act of worrying before you drop anything. so, you know, people talk about signaling using nuclear weapons, you can't signal using these things. by the time you take off, you committed an act of war. so you know, they're still exercising with this stuff. that's what steadfast noon is. that's getting good at this ridiculous mission of taking f sixteens. for god's sake, i mean nuclear bombs onto them and pretending that they're going to fly to russian don't. is there any, any reason to doubt that this is not a credible nuclear deter it? as far as prison is concerned, it's absurd on its face here because we go back to pair menu. well, i mean, this whole talk, this loose talk is a form of escalation in itself because the nato doesn't know really what to do.

it's got it. it's painted itself into this corner and it's lashing out and that's the ultimate fear is going new killer, obviously appearing menu. well, one of the things i've noticed that it goes all the way back to 2014. you hear this all the time in western media to give the russians an off ramp to give potent an off ramp. ok, which is a coated language for me. is it? how did, how does the westgate out of the predicament that it's put itself in? it constantly is having and so the west is looking because if you look at austin, you look at a cellphone bird. you look at a barrel. if nato, if russia wins, it's the end of the west, but they, it's russian not phrasing it that way. it's the west raising it though, they're phrasing it as an existential thing, not the russian. so it's almost so you know, this is a, they're, they're predicting their own future in a very bizarre way. go ahead in brussels. this i think your vis country too,

as a lot to do, we for the future are international order and are actually the wish to wind survive, who will not disappear but in the future are murky. put our old or the west to will not be able to dictate everything. any mo, that's her. that's a problem from the western part of you. actually, or b, sir, is conflict in ukraine, is accent, arranging the process to walter murphy put on war. yep. and if we look at the different to appease those are in 2011 nay to was still able to, to do originally changed in libya. but then in syria, it failed to which were the rigid change because russia intervened in cedar yang to present 15. then he read the retreat of her washington under a nato from

a. i've got his son in 2000, the 21. and then it ver, russia special operation in ukraine. after order negotiations where a close down or from the, from the, from the ne to member states because they didn't want to negotiate in europe and security arrangement and vis means. but what have of a result of his conflict in ukraine are probably that you quinn will be a territoriality fragmented but unconvinced. but nato will not be able to enlarge any more a to ukraine. he's a future, a interactive really well. i agree with you because this is the list as a new guy about one more minute. this is the limits. i, mrs. do or die for nato in nato is going to lose this and it's lose it badly. and the very idea of having nato is going to be put into question because no one's

going to want to join an organization that loses ted. well, this organization hasn't had any reason. the dissolution of the soviet union, full stop. it doesn't have a reason to exist, it can't find a reason to can't agree on. and natal requires consensus and all of its members state to do anything. and it's never been able to agree, for example, it rushes the enemy until the start of this current on colored net. and now a lot of loose talk is being flung around about how russia the enemy nato could never agree on that before. germany would never agree to that language. they couldn't agree that iran was an enemy because turkey wouldn't agree to that language. and now all of a sudden you've got, again, the nuclear exercises. you've got the mysterious demolition of natural gas pipelines to western europe. got the provision of advanced guided missiles advanced and the radar missiles advance ship missiles to ukraine. some forms that

have never been provided to any other l i have. i have to jump in here guys. we have to go to a hard break. and after that hard break, we'll continue our discussion on the unthinkable. stay with our team use the the ah. ringback ready of course she changed spencer with forced national leader, which was obviously due to a controller like from when to do or no but hold a

moment with respect to copy from or in a ah ah, with a

a get ah welcome back across stock were all things are considered on peter level to remind you we're discussing the unthinkable. okay, but 1st off we have another guest joining of the discussion here. we have richard black in ashburn. he is a former virginia state senator. welcome to the program, richard i her. i know you listen to the a little bit of the 1st part of the program. so i'm gonna start off with a different topic. we've already seen how it well, a white austin, the defense secretary. he made a very clear the, the object of the united states is to weaken russia. well, maybe it, well,

maybe it won't. ok, but it to so far it really hasn't. it only has done as we can europe severely, and we'll see how the impact is on the united states. so why are they doubling down on something that doesn't work ok, weakening russia hasn't come about richard? well, this is, this is not a short term project. if you go back to, to 2014, when under the obama administration, the decision was made to overthrow the government of kiev and install essentially a more or less on top of government. and, and then flood weapons soon with the, with a view toward, toward building up a very large ukranian force. there is so much money invested. there is so much momentum. that is, i think, many people make a mistake. why?

thinking of this war as something that began on february the 24th. and when, when russia came across the border, russia had managed to stay out of this war from the time that it started back in 2014. at that point you had this, this revolutionary hunter which took over in and, and one of the 1st things they did was to remove russian as an official language from the constitution. 30 percent of all ukrainian or native speaking russians. many of them on the border. and and so in the don boss and in crimea, paper just said ok, we're, we're out of here. we're going to do this. and so the war began, and this was, this was a very hot war. this was not just some little border answer. we had 14000

people killed before russia ever entered the war. right, well, i mean, richard, if i could point out here those, the almost 15000 the are referring to are in the don bass. and those were killed by ukrainian forces supplied and money by nato. to be very clear about that, those 15000 people are not remembered. and richard is absolutely right. this is going on the 8th year of this complex. let me go to a peer menu. well, we keep hearing whatever it takes for ukraine. i mean, as a european, does europe have the stomach for this? do they are leads or do they represent the popular well, i mean, is it something that people in europe are really gung ho for? because i mean, i can read the papers. i can see oil prices, i see energy prices here, and it looks very doom and gloom. is it all worth it? ok, because we're, we're facing a rupture here. i don't know why the russians would rebuild nor stream. i don't know why. so someone can blow it up again. i mean, this is a,

a turning point in european history. go ahead and brussels. yes, we see quite amazing situation. where are you c or v, sir? a european union member see government, son on nato members, state governments are and lining themselves on nerve inara chief on decisions. so to sanction rush out we've, we've washington or vo, i can see a mini peeper or a disagree. but to i, i knew were experts i know so military or peeper, or citizens who totally disagree. we visser approach delivering your weapons to ukraine, having sanctions against russia, which dummy cheese, european economy. they are demonstrations indifferent to us. but the main stream media does not speak about that just or a relay or ver, nora,

chief of her nature, all member states governments and are the must. atlantis ceased one and her except for hungary, which shows a different position or view. your opinion of many citizens is not taken into account on vis, vis you will create. i think you're a crises of political crises. it's a future because are the governments i have a feeling does not represent the mainstream opinion of people in europe who were not stupid. they defeated the v. a euro. understand that this policies are damaging a european economy for a job or to the car interest. and certainly not europe and geopolitical each of the, of, of crises. we'd come in a few months in a few know europe, but everything would come. it will come about, you know,

all 3 of my guest here. you know, we have the, the g 7 and we have the european, me and putting a price cap on russian energy. i think they get, have to worry about price caps on american energy going to europe. that's going to be very serious because the americans are making money, hand over fist. ok, what they want to deny the russians they want to take for themselves at the expense of europe. ted, explain to me, you know, that we have, we talked about in the 1st part of the program, this loose talk about nukes, you know, to make it normalized thinking and all that. but they don't want to negotiate. i mean, if we were on the point of armageddon, wouldn't that be the reason to start talking? but we don't see that we see loose talk and we see see this very rigid position, explain the logic or maybe it's not logical at all. go ahead. i have no explanation to your i honestly don't. 954. the dawn of the thermo nuclear age. then prime minister, winston churchill said, meeting george to jaw is better than war. 4 years later, his successor,

carol, mila said george is better than. ready more war now, he was in australia at the time and maybe he thought he had to speak to the natives . i don't know, but same general idea. ok. diplomacy talk more importantly. listen. if someone says they've got read lines ok, maybe you respect them. maybe you don't, but for heaven's sake, hear them out. and that's what's been signally missing. but then, the whole process of nato enlargement has been a series of selective deafness moments on nato and us behalf. when russia says, hey guys, we're not your enemy. stop moving towards us. you know, they let 3 bull take republics in, you know, boom, boom, boom, all of a sudden, 2008 comes along ukraine and you're both promised. eventually,

membership and nato promised, which means needed. it's something that they couldn't deliver on. so it's pissing off russian russia for no good reason. it's trying to like cheer up ukraine in georgia at that point, i suppose, but to no good in because it could do nothing to make that come true without getting rush on board would you couldn't do because they've been ignoring russian red lines. so to go back to the beginning to talk, you also have to be really willing to listen, and that's something that nato and the west not done here. well, i mean, richard, i mean you didn't say the men sca cards directly, but you were making reference to it in your 1st answer here and that's a good jumping off point here. i mean i'm, i'm no go jason's, i want to see this conflict come to end. as soon also, i want to see the death and destruction come as soon as possible for everybody involved here. but there were that there was the minced process, the, the bridge, and the germans, and the french signed off on it. the, the courts themselves were,

i went to the united nations security council. this, it was a legal, international document, but they weren't fulfilled the end. and we know that now that the former president push ankles head out, we never took it seriously. we're buying time stilton burge was bragging. how we use that time to help you. great. i mean, they're all liars, they're not people to be trusted. and so, you know, when you the even the thought of coming to the negotiating table, will these people lied to us for 8 years? why are they going to tell us the truth now that the west has done this to themselves? they did not keep their agreements. go ahead, richard. well, that's true. and, you know, i think people have forgotten. but about 2 months after russia crossed over the border, russia and ukraine were engaged and productive peace talks. and they had hammered out the basics of a peace agreement when, when bore she also unexpectedly, lordship, lawrence johnson and force johnson johnson,

and ordered them essentially to cut off the peace talks and get back to war. we had no intentions. we have such an enormous investment in war that we were not about to to let this i and now hopefully we're getting closer to an end point. but i'm not sure. i worry somewhat about an october surprise we, i agree with you, but you know what? i mean, let me go back up here menu because we're rapidly running out of time. i don't think it's a coincidence. i'm obviously a cynic here, but you know, it's last year the afghan. griff came to an end. and now we have the ukraine graft . i mean, there's so many interested parties not to see this complet come to an end, and it gets down to this greed material interest. and this in suffer a bull russo phobia wanting to punish russia, which is only damaging thus far,

mostly the west and putting the global south in danger. go ahead and brussels. yes, actually are we know jeeps, but to her country? sure was. are i said a re h and there are, by of the west to supported ukraine at the time, a winner or russia decided to, to or organize referendum enough of ukraine. and to because then you were each was b is sort of you reverse cbre situation off to watts and dirt referendum where organize any weight or the people decided to rooney, 5 or russia? i know we are in the situation where the could not to we v ukrainian, the army offense. you prevent if you situation, this is why they try to escalate or weaver propaganda are a narrative of for of a new cra, whoa, an o. so got to you,

russia is supposed to lose the wall but. ready not to what we are seeing on the field on butter fee to do because of a situation is quite to frozen. and know is a rare bessie bur. these territories are dumb bus, but also will cast an up or g i. there really faded russia and rock shot an army. we do everything to rates for the rest of for a country. all right, i'm going to jump anyway, right now we've run out of time, gentlemen, it's fascinating discussion. but the pain dial is going up in the pain is only hitting certain people, and that's the west in the global south. not russia. many, thanks them, i guess in ashburn, brussels an intense mania. and thanks to our viewers for watching us here, darky. see you next time, remember, cross with

ah, wish, the most all who are so for this russia is the aggression. no. if answered much about by munich, what's more than 2 months, 2 years with us. we have any quality for russians. can all we gotta do is just feed them over the head and just tell them the right way to live there is going to do. yeah, just a little bit, a boy with my gloves, with the

new for, for insurance. i don't care about with our season at the washer to work. so i was at the watch with with when i was showing wrong, when i just don't know. i mean you have to say proud

name becomes the advocate and engagement. it was the trail. when so many find themselves worlds apart, we choose to look for common ground. a good deal. ukraine has lost sovereignty, as being directly used by the us as a battering ram against russia. and say, ukraine is being constantly pumped with weapons at the top level. western foreign policy. oh, go ahead with russia nuclear power and what was his output to the test with c and ground test with romanian sen slams. the country is presidential.