Glenn Diesen - U.S. Think Tanks - Soft Power & Hard Power

foreign news and conversation the topics tonight how the United States military industrial complex has used think tanks to hijack EU policy making we're also going to talk about a new book that's coming out later this year the think tank racket managing the Infowars with Russia and finally we're going to talk about the United States use of soft power around the world my guess has been here many times before he's a professor at Southeastern Norway University he's been employed by the Moscow higher School of economics he's a regular contributor to RT and he's an expert at the valdi discussion Club he's often described in the media and by some of his colleagues as a Russian propagandist I'm very happy to welcome back to the show professor clendees and Glenn welcome back to the show uh thank you for having me back on Regis well it's always a pleasure and everybody loves you they love your commentary you are extremely bright intelligent and well informed and I think one of the foremost experts on Russia Russia foreign policy and Russian history so tonight I want to begin with the title of an article you just penned for RT it was how the United States military industrial complex has used think tanks to hijack EU policy making now when and why did you decide to write this article well uh the article um is uh based on a book uh which I've uh which I wrote on the same topic because usually when you address uh Power it is common to divide into three different categories you have um well you have a governments then you have Private Industry and then you have Civil Society now I find it interesting that the kind of work or cooperation that exists between civil society and governments which is why we have for example think tanks and ngos that would probably be the best example of cooperation between governments and think tanks uh sorry between government and Civil Society now it is quite important because there's a lot to be gained from this in order to diffuse power not to have everything concentrated in in the government so to have this cooperation with these organizations from Civil Society however uh what one also has to recognize once you have this diffusion of power away from government towards civil societies someone can seek to harness that or hijack it or well use what word you want but to manipulate civil society and we've seen that the United States has been quite successful at this in terms of developing think tanks uh but also ngos so for example when you look at uh you know the color revolutions or the Arab Spring different uh regime change taking place around the world we always see it as a popular Uprising but what's quite interesting is the ngos which are facilitating all of this they're always funded by the US government and we can go deeper into that later on but then on the other side you also have think tanks which are this uh uh well you can call them uh advisory organizations or you have a performing expert opinion which can help governments to well develop the the best possible policy but my interest was how their power has grown so immensely over the past years or past decades and also who's actually funding them because they have they're funded by a very special interest very special interest that primarily the weapons industry and then I try to look at you know how does this influence the policies given that they have so much air control especially in the US in American politics so uh the question I want to ask is and I'm looking at a list here now of more than 50 think tax in the United States uh several of them are very well known others are not so well known but I'm looking at uh the Rand Corporation the Heritage Foundation Brookings Kearney endowment the Cato Institute and I could go on and on and on with this list now who are these people what makes them so-called experts to be employed employed because they're paid and paid very well uh in these think tanks and people in the United States are going to be very familiar with the term think tank we don't have to come up with a synonym they basically know that but who are these people how do they get there um well uh regarding your list all of them uh are heavily funded by the weapons Industries with with one exception I'm not 100 sure about the Cato Institute to be honest I'm not saying they're not I just uh I'm a bit uncertain so I'm not sure if I would put them on the list without double checking it but um uh but we always had through history uh you know private uh well governments seeking counsel or advice uh from uh from well Civil Society from their own organizations so the idea behind it is not bad because usually if well as the world becomes more complex that's when we really think tanks began to emerge because we elect these politicians uh for example in U.S into Congress they're supposed to make all the best decisions this is how democracy works but have a look at the people we elect in uh they're not Geniuses they are you know they're limited capabilities even the smartest ones of them they're not able to understand uh have the in-depth understanding about the complexities of everything from you know Local Economic policies uh World domestic International economics to have security from you know Zimbabwe Brazil Indonesia to have an old understanding of fiscal policy trade relations this is um becomes very very complex so as the world becomes more and more complex we do need it is it makes sense for politicians to seek some outside experts and well historically we had some cooperation between government and Academia but academics often well we tend to be less interesting often because it's a lot of discussion about theories and models and often focusing on very narrow aspects so what the think tanks come and offer is very specific policy advice which is why many of them appeared after the first and second world war um because they have very specific specific background and something to contribute with now so so I I don't want to dismiss them out of hand but but the problem is especially since the 1980s um they began to get more and more influence in many ways they start to three main areas I would identify the first is they they end up writing the majority of all of this reports and Analysis which are then given to the politicians to to make decisions and you know they also give this testimonies in Congressional hearings um so that's one where the indirectly impact them but the second one is uh is uh is the actual people who they hire because they have a tendency also to hire the actual politicians so if you look at about people entire pretty much all over the Bush Administration for example came from the project for a New American Century which is which would greatly influence the policy of invading Iraq you had the same with uh Barack Obama obviously and his um most of his stuff or came from the top staff they you know they were attributed by the New York Times sorry the New York Post to have been able to make Obama change his mind regarding pulling out of Iraq um and also influences pulses in Afghanistan and it kind of this goes on and on so you have this hiring your higher former government officials out of government you give them this cushy jobs as fellows where they can stay relevant and then once they're done once they're able to get into government they still remain fellows and you know working for these think tanks or they're on a temporary break but anyways they still have that close affiliation and then so this is another way to gain influence or policy and the third one uh would be media because when the media wants expert opinions they we all see that they think tanks tend to dominate they have their main experts coming out and often they present themselves as being you know we're in objective neutral we're just working for this Think Tank a researching policy so it's um which which could be all fine and well but what one has to recognize then is an immense amount of power shifts from the policy makers who were elected to the people who they're getting advice from and that's the thing thanks so the problem then is who are funding them and this is the main problem because this is this is not this is a very open secret this is the main criticism of the think tanks this is that they have a business model in which they have to sell influence because why would you invest millions and millions of dollars into think tanks well you want something in return and what do you get in return well well we can look at the ones for financing it often you know they get money from foreign governments to make sure that they have a you know good uh that they think tanks are advising them to keep good relationships to these governments so the Arab states for example they're quite active in funding they think thanks uh but the dominant financier would be the military-industrial complex they fund so pretty much uh all of them uh with a few exceptions and it's uh it's a vast amount of money and so the problem we then have is you create a business model in which a military solution or militarism becomes the go-to solution to all your problems uh again it's no need to scream conspiracy theory this is this is the business model and this is uh it's been criticized also by many within the Think Tank Community some who would like for think tanks to have its original purpose which is um yeah to to help form a good policy so your question uh sorry for going on but your question about what what makes him so special uh initially what what should have made them special was their expertise but what makes them special now is uh to a large extent their willingness to to to repeat uh what what they're told to say so uh to follow yeah to follow the guidelines of whoever is financing them and push that policy if you have the right connections and you're able to push for these policies then then yes you have um that I think that's what makes you special now so I've compared it to hyper capitalism in which in hyper capitalism every aspect of social life is run by the market and the think tank industry I would say it signifies that even foreign policy is now outsourced to the market uh when we create this uh yeah pay-to-play scheme in which uh policies are determined by the highest bidder which is always yeah the military-industrial complex yeah well the Cato Institute is funded by Charles Koch and some of his oligarch billionaire buddies uh the National Endowment for democracy uh Ned Ned is funded by the United States Congress itself um and then you have the Rand report or the Rand corporation that I think is directly funded by the military-industrial complex in other words the weapons manufacturers um it's really incredible that there are so many of them extremely well funded uh you know by really rich very rich individuals or collections of individuals but as you mentioned there's a massive amount of money coming from the military-industrial complex it's incredible the influence that they do have now and you know you mentioned that uh these policy makers implementers in the United States Congress number one they're not necessarily very bright people number two they stay there and they remain there to remain in power and to become extremely wealthy how do they do that well uh they get money from a variety of sources including some of these um think tanks now you mentioned ngos earlier and I I want to shift the focus to non-governmental organizations there have got to be I don't know hundreds Maybe and I know that Congress through the NAD National Endowment for democracy gives grants more than 2 000 a year to ngos around the world who are working get a load of this I want your comments for Democratic goals in more than 100 countries now to me that that's a joke demo to funding number uh working for Democratic goals around the world are these not the people the very people who are on the ground who are funding protests funding color revolutions uh and the like in these hundred or more countries around the world yes uh okay I cannot just address one thing before I answer that that is you mentioned the Iran Corporation I would just like to point out that this is the one if I'm not mistaken who gets the most money from the weapons Industries to begin after World War II uh largely uh being the intelligence agencies uh you know who the hired in to make analysis and uh and and we also see that they've had more or less a finger in planning a lot of the wars for if not all the wars of the United States and if most people have probably seen doctor strangelo uh sorry Dr Strangelove how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb uh again it's a classic if you haven't seen it everyone should see it um the the Daniel Ellsberg the the one who leaked the Pentagon papers during the Vietnam war he he argued that this movie Doctor Strange law is a satire based on Rand Corporation however in his his per his uh from his perspective it it was more of a documentary than a satire that's in his words because he was so close to reality how how extreme the militarism becomes when everything needs a military solution because that's the business you're in and uh so I would advise everyone to also read the report about 300 Pages plus from round report in 2019 which is extending Russia if you want to understand a bit about how one of the most influential think tanks have influenced the U.S policy you should read this report because the whole report is about how you can weaken Russia and you know create as much problems as you can so internally of course destabilize the country they even refer to navalny renowned then in Ukraine will create conflicts threatening to expansion try to pull the Russians more into donbass to bleed them both in terms of soldiers and money and this was 2019 so so this obviously has some impact on how the War Began uh reduce Russian influence in Moldova try to decouple Central Asia from Russia again destabilized Russian borders also the the Azerbaijan conflict as long as can destabilize Russian borders destabilizing it internally it will have more instability and that will give America benefit so and all of this of course is written in the language of very cold strategic interest we can adversaries and Destroy them but when you see this filtrated into the media it's all colored in the language of democracy and freedom and human rights but obviously this is not not what the main the main policy is is all about so so sorry I just want to add that since you mentioned ran because they're quite quite interesting um in regards to this ngos um they're also quite interesting because the National Endowment for democracy it was actually established in 1983 and would you guess who gave the inauguration speech for it because that's also quite interesting W bush no that was uh Ronald Reagan and oh Reagan himself yeah the Reagan himself and the main argument was that you know that the CIA got caught all the time attempting to topple government interfering in the Democratic process and this cost a lot of embarrassment so you have this concept of a hiding in plain sight so why why hide what we're doing we can just do it in the open just call it the democracy and of course this is problematic because you're trying to now create uh yeah you're creating ngos in order to harness or hijack the Civil Society of other countries and of course people can say oh but you know democracy is important yes of course but if you're an American imagine if the Chinese or the Russians or any other countries who is not friendly to the United States would set up ngos in order to organize civil society and and mobilize them um would they trust that to that the Hostile government should organize their Civil Society I mean only a few months ago you had the Michael McFall which is the former U.S ambassador to Russia arguing that the main objective for Russia that for the United States and its Partners in the years to come is to sow divisions Within Russian Society to weaken put in as much as possible and this is the problem if you only have democracy by definition it's a pluralism and in a democracy you want to have you want to have a pluralism of ideas and but you want to have order you don't want to have a chaos well what would be the main objective for the United States to be to organize Civil Society in for example Russia would it be simply or would just want democracy and freedom or would you want to sow a Discord do you want to have divisions and weaken the country from within again it's not a conspiracy theory which is why Americans would never permit Russia from from interfering in their Civil Society anyways sorry but just very I always get sidetracked by back to Reagan he gave the speech I I want to stick with this yeah the National Endowment for democracy because I knew that the reason it was founded and by the way George H.W bush was Ronald Reagan's uh VP former uh uh director of the CIA and it was a cover for the CIA that was doing these undercover operations influence around the world so they just changed the name they funded the heck out of it and it still is it not the CIA that's involved in all of these countries under the disguise of spreading freedom and democracy and funding ngos is it not really still the CIA it is and this is also the the irony because we should have started by uh yeah just specifying what acronym stands for ngos is non-governmental organizations however the US government funds the National Endowment for democracy as well as Freedom House and it's often staffed with people with close ties to the U.S intelligence community so former CI directors for example uh Wesley he was leading it in in Ukraine so it's uh so it's you know it's um it's it's a better cover and but you're also right the Alan Weinstein who was a co-founder of the national dominant for democracy even was quoted as saying that you know what we're doing today was done covertly by the CIA previously and you have uh and this was the Reagan's argument as well we should stand proudly in the spotlight Where We Belong we shouldn't we should be proud of our message we shouldn't hide anymore about what we're doing uh so that's that's the main idea just do it in the open and then there's nothing to hide um and if anyone criticize your interference well you say that to just hate democracy so it's um it's uh yeah it's a very sneaky way of uh of of doing things but uh but obviously the the main objective is not to promote democracy it's either to solve divisions in other countries or to remove governments but um but this is also why it's important component of propaganda because people don't often misunderstand propaganda because it's used you know in everything these days but one of the reasons why most of the literature on uh on propaganda recognizes that the United States was actually more effective in propaganda than for example the Soviet Union was because the Soviets they were you know everything was the government and you you know they you know other people in the government positions they were just uh spewing out a statement after statement which you know we we knew where it came from what made the British and American more uh skilled at propaganda is they were laundering their propaganda through private institutions because a key component of propaganda is Source credibility if if uh if you have two people they might say the same thing uh it can be immensely more credible if it comes from a for example a trustworthy source so if this is why when people refer to RT the Russian media uh company as a propaganda it's I I find it to be my counter argument is everyone knows who it is it is funded by the Russian government they would like the English-speaking world and the rest of the world also to have an understanding from the Russian perspective you know where they're coming from you know they're seeing the World Through The Eyes of Russia This Is Not Great propaganda great propaganda creates Source credibility and that's why ngos are so good because it's still the same people who run it as when it was the CIA but it has more credibility because now it's not a uh you know intelligence agency in the shadows toppling governments no no it's a democratic NGO it's standing up for civil society promoting you know liberal values it's uh it's uh it has much more credibility and I think that's what why the ngos have been so successful in all this cover color revolutions they are they have the source credibility and that's kind of half the job when you want to make a excellent propaganda well you mentioned several areas in this part of the world anyway uh Eastern Europe uh Central Asia the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan the United States ngos are in both countries uh Georgia and um and upkazia also involved in conflict with the United States is very actively involved in both of those countries uh you mentioned Moldova we probably should also mention Belarus that the United States tried to overthrow lukashenko uh it's obvious to many people probably more so in this part of the world what the United States is really doing and how they're doing it and the your description of propaganda was really really very outstanding um let's shift gears now I want to come to this new book that will be coming out later this year and the topic is closely related to what we're talking about the think tank racket the subtitle managing the infowar with Russia let's talk about that Glenn in in the light of how these think tanks operate and and this book tell me about this book um uh and and when is it going to come out um yeah good question I have to check with the publisher I think it was it's supposed to come out in October if I'm not mistaken um yeah I think it's October uh all the manuscript has been uh submitted and all editing has been done so uh I don't think there should be any delays it might even be August but uh I have to look that up to be honest I lose a bit track sometimes um but uh uh but but yeah it does Focus uh yeah on these think tanks how they become largely an instrument and uh of of influence uh in in the United States and um uh obviously Russia has a one of the reasons I also wanted to focus on Russia besides yemi being a scholar who primarily works on Russia is that Russia has always had a very Central role for uh the military industrial complex in the United States uh keep in mind the US didn't have this in the past this was um this was created because it faced the Soviet adversary after the second world war and um you actually had the uh President Eisenhower in his farewell speech as most are probably heard or read where he wants against this creeping influence of the military industrial complex and again it's not it's often comes up in this conspiracy theories but but again this was the president of the United States stepping down and his main argument was simply that the the military industry in the United States was getting so powerful that it forms a new center of power now what many people don't know is that Dwight Eisenhower in his notes initially wanted to refer to it as the military industrial Congressional uh complex so this was he wanted the Congress in there as well to point out uh well how a huge military industry gains more political power and but again I think it was alienating probably more of the political class by by criticizing uh the empowerment of this industry so he they took that out and just ended up with the military-industrial complex um but of course it does mean that Russia is the only concern if especially around African countries uh you you find a lot of apprehensions but not just think tanks by the way but also ngos in which they feel that uh you know part of their development of States means they have to have a more open Society uh more democracy and again this is what we claim that we want but once the societies become more open they become more vulnerable to external uh manipulation and interference and that's to a large extent what these think tanks and all all do and uh also becoming a growing problem in the European Union by the way uh in which they think tanks are yeah marching around giving giving advice and also um yeah throwing a lot of money around in Brussels to shape policies so but again my main focus was Russia simply because this huge military industrial complex emerged under during the Cold War and when the Cold War was over the the military or the arms industry had a problem where will our income come now and actually if you look at the debate about expanding NATO because uh now it seems as uncontroversial everyone sees it as being and not provoking at all but in the 90s you saw that this was very dominating uh or a leading idea that expanding NATO would be a horrible mistake even Clinton said in January of 94 if we expand NATO we might redivide the Europe again between east and west and you know his defense minister uh what is his name William Perry said that there well pretty much the whole Administration recognized this would alienate Russia but you know who who cares they're weak that was the argument but but but from going to being very much opposed to it to being for it there was many variables uh influencing this obviously you had lobbying by the Eastern European countries one to be you know maintain dividing lines but also be in the right side of them but it's also the the military-industrial complex was quite interested because they lost their whole business after the Cold War and but by expanding NATO this was something in the 90s in New York Times all of them wrote a lot about was that would be a huge Boom for their Industries because now you'll bring in all these new countries and they would have to get it aligned with the NATO standards they would have to get rid of their Soviet weapons by American instead so this was a huge business so uh so we so the economic incentive there meant let's throw away the piece we made with Russia and make some money of course the thing tanks on the only ones who are pushing in this direction but that was one of the variables so you can kind of track their think tanks role in terms of shaping Russian policy um yeah all the way until present time in the the war in Ukraine yeah you know I have taken exception to Saint Ike Saint Eisenhower uh this great post-war president he wanted a country about the military industrial Congressional Congress Ray my friend Ray McGovern talks about that plus he adds the media and Academia in that complex but Eisenhower was in power for eight years and didn't do anything to stop it I mean I I think that you know a five-star Journal hero of World War II in the western world he basically let it happen in my opinion but I don't want to linger on that I want to go back to the information war with Russia now I have been of the opinion since I've been coming to Russia since 2016 and now living here for three and a half years I have said repeatedly that I think that Russia and by the way I've had several Russians uh agree with me Russia is not even in the information war with the United States compared to what the United States is doing if you look in terms of of weapons or assets or so many different ways of conducting this information War Russia is not even in the game I'd like your thoughts on that you may disagree with me I don't know but but that's been my feeling no I agree and I think uh yeah people don't recognize how how powerful the the information were the propaganda has been not just from the United States but the West overall because um yeah we talked about Source credibility but a key uh objective in propaganda is also to sell um to sell political uh well to sell political messages so it's a little it's good to think about it as marketing because uh in in marketing you don't you know buy a car because you need Transportation it becomes a status symbol you know when you buy when you sell a close it's not just you know to stay warm it's you know selling sex or sex symbols so you know you have you have um yeah this is effectively why propaganda should be understood as the marketing of politics uh and there shouldn't be any surprise that uh Edward Bernice which was the nephew of uh Sigmund Freud uh you know as an expert in group psychology he looked at how uh this uh this propaganda tends to work and that's why I actually had he had he's the well the Godfather of the American propaganda but he started off with a career in in marketing so you know promoting cigarettes to women so how do you get women to smoke well you promote it as Freedom so it's called the Torches of Freedom it was about emancipation of women you link that ideal ideal about emancipating women to the cigarettes so of course there's nothing to do with it but once you can do it then it works and then from there on he went into politics and then you have uh for example in Guatemala they privatized uh or on the been privatized they they had a lot of a lot of this work a new worker lost coming out and the United Fruit Company looked out to lose a lot of money so he was marketing you know how this country had changed so the very much the capitalist president was portrayed us or sold to the American people as a communist and at the end you could then intervene militarily and remove him so this is how propaganda works and this is largely this the same formula that the West has used always against Russia it's uh we it's power politics but it's sold as freedom and democracy so this is it's it's always the same thing and we can look at Ukraine as well everything is you know about Freedom democracy democracy versus authoritarianism but behind the scenes is really nothing to do with democracy I mean we try to pull the ukrainians into into NATO since 1991 pretty much all the way to 2014 and during this time only 20 percent of ukrainians actually wanted to join NATO but of course if you you follow the think tanks reports and rhetoric and arguments it's uh you know everyone has this clear image that the ukrainians have just been trying to get out of the Russian Shadow for years and years and then and then finally 2014 came we came along we helped them with the Democratic Revolution but again all the facts show the country so um so it's all about selling it so what's what's there did we try to pull in a Ukrainian population who didn't want to join NATO and how it's sold well who is just helping them to spread democracy and we'll see what happens since the coup I mean we we the Americans especially have been you know cheering on you know purging the Orthodox Church there so killing off a religion of Freedom um purging the media there's no more free media anymore in Ukraine all of it's now under the control of zelensky all political opposition has been purged uh the main opposition leader was arrested so any freedom was eliminated in order to make Ukraine a front a Frontline State and again this is horrible well what we've done to the country which also made Russia react in the way it did uh which is uh yeah terrible for Ukraine but again we're only selling that we're standing up for them we're trying to help them and when you have this powerful um this powerful propaganda it's uh that the facts become quite pointless they they lose a lot of their value because people only interpret the world through this lens so whatever we talk about not just Russia but any international relations we always talk about Freedom versus authoritarianism in the past before you know World War II uh during you know colonial days it was more about civilization dude versus The Barbarians so you always have good versus evil and as long as you can have this focus it doesn't really matter no matter what the facts are because you always end up with the same um it will all the facts don't matter let's say if we invade a country well before it was to spread Civilization now it's to spread the Democracy if Russia invades someone is to expand an Empire it's to destroy Freedom it's to spread authoritarianism so it's it's done for evil when we do it is we do it for good so in other words the fact the act of uh invading no longer matters because it has to be interpreted through this filter which is good versus evil or main main propaganda filter we have is everything is democracy versus authoritarianism even though it's nothing anything to do with democracy which by the way this war also has nothing to do about democracy so I would like to know what your opinion is why Russia has not been able to compete very well in this information war game why is that uh yes good good uh good question uh I I don't think they use the with the source credibility I don't see them yeah infiltrating uh private institutions to the same extent uh or even close by uh also I I don't see the another key component I also don't see this um development of uh some kind of prism of how how to interpret all events as being a kind of a struggle between good and evil I don't see any of this at the uh well at all um well and um well they have some of their own but but but not no no no not not to the same extent but why I'm not quite sure it's a it's a great question um yeah no I'm uh Amit I have to think about this one yeah well you know I think during the Soviet era the Communist era uh they did a pretty good job I think in the information War they had a lot of com a lot of countries believing in you know the rights of the worker uh in you know in the sharing the former the the development of a more social environment in many countries and they were feeling this very strongly and then the Soviet Union collapsed and from my point of view since that time nineteen 87 or so a perestroiken glasnose and then we get into the Putin era um I think Russia didn't really even have a very strong ideological Center or Focus I know some people have been critical about that I think kurganyon probably is one of the foremost that that I'm familiar with that has said this is a problem for Russia but anyway it's uh well they have discussed this idea of a national idea or a ideology something you know to mobilize Unity among the population usually it's been reliant on yeah a lot of conservative values but in terms of functioning outside of Russian borders I know Russia frames a lot as you know struggle against the hegemony but this is a lot of how much of the world actually sees the struggle at the moment but that's also part of the time we're living in with the decline of the U.S Empire but uh but I think also a part of the problem is why why we might be a bit more uh disposed to to this kind of a propaganda in the west is we are uh we have different political objectives we are we are pursuing uh all Global Primacy or or Collective hegemony across the world quite quite open about it now the problem there is once you promote the hegemony you have to promote Universal values something that includes all uh which kind of overrides sovereignty something which gives you the right often to present we all represent other peoples so uh meanwhile if you're looking for if you want a multi-polar system uh if this is the case then you want to have um focus on on distinctive civilizational values so this is ours this is yours because you want to prop up sovereignty you don't want to give legitimacy to intervening in others Affairs this has been a problem since well this has been an issue since uh you know peace of Australia in 1648 because back then you had the Catholic Church who had the you know represented Universal values taken uh you know Elevate themselves above everyone to create claim the right to small sovereignty or or representation of all of humanity and then with the Reformation it breaks down and then thereafter you have more focus on distinctive values distinctive culture distinctive civilizations so given that during under Marxism uh or the Soviet era when the Russians had both the capabilities and intentions of pursuing hegemony I guess they're more tools and inclinations towards pursuing uh yeah narratives and uh information Wars and propaganda which appeals to yeah the common the common International store yeah some human freedoms which is supposed to Trump all sovereignty but that could be one aspect I guess yeah I have to give President Putin more than anybody else on the planet right now credit for promoting uh a multi-polar world based on the strict observance of international law the U.N chart of the fundamentals of the U.N Charter the sovereignty of all Nations uh diplomacy versus confrontation and the idea that it's all about the development of all peoples and not a win-win and not a a zero-sum game but a win-win vision I think this is very powerful and I have to give Putin credit for that I'm not sure that even a lot of my Russian friends really understand that yet and and are involved in promoting that idea or even supporting it but really when when I look at some 80 to 85 percent of the rest of the world they are all wanting to leave the United States Empire and are all talking now and working towards this multi-polar world they're all concerned about their own sovereignty so I think this is ringing loud and clear with the rest of the world and I would have to say that I think in that context Russia and China also supporting this along with the brics the sco asean uh they're winning this information war with the rest of the world and it's not really directed uh right at the United States I find that really interesting and I do have to give Putin at least credit for being I think uh the number one spokesperson and leader for that I wonder what your thoughts are on that yeah well I think China has also been hammering away kind of strong on this one and again it goes back to the same conflict if you see the main tensions now being between I know often you know portraying us being you know someone trying to challenge overtake the United States hegemony but but it's really the U.S pursuing unipolar World versus the rest which are seeking multipolarity now again once we have um if you want multipolarity then you have a balance of power your many centers of power in such a system you want Sovereign equality each state to have equal uh all sovereignty and this is uh pretty much what the United Nations and international law is based on Sovereign equality and uh but if you're a hegemon if you want to dominate the world uh which again is built into the U.S security strategy then you also you're immediately in Conflict the unipolar moment is immediately in conflict with international law because then it's Sovereign equality what you want to do is you want to have an ideology which uh which facilitates hegemony and that's why the United States has challenged international law with what it calls the rules-based international order and as it always pointed out what are the rules who's making them and there are no specific rules but the US are making them and it's it's always to serve very specific immediate interests and and this is the problem because well what we're saying with the rules based International order what does it mean well usually they say well it's international law plus humanitarian law but but what it really means is [Music] that liberal Democratic Values should be able to to sometimes give exemption to international law and who or Who's the champion of liberal democracy or the United States says well that's us in other words what you've done is you create a course of exception in an international law but it's reserved only for the United States and its allies because of course you can't have humanitarian interventions from China Russia because you know they don't have the same values as we do that's the main argument so so you know every country has to abide by the U.N Charter an international law except for NATO countries under the U.S leadership because we can interfere in other countries because we're promoting democracies with our ngos we can topple governments because you know it's Democratic revolutions we can invade countries through humanitarian interventions so we can do all these things and but it's reserved for us and that is the rules-based international order which is not you reject Sovereign equality you have Sovereign inequality because we have the right to make others to deprive others of sovereignty if they don't follow our liberal values but of course if you look beneath the liberal values what is it consistent no of course not you know if you look at the issue of uh you know territorial integrity versus self-determination which was the issue in Kosovo we said no we need self-determination Kosovo should be able to succeed from Serbia okay well then we come to Crimea well no no no obviously they want to succeed as well every poll will show this but no no here we have to prioritize territorial Integrity of Ukraine how about Taiwan well since secession as well so it's just it's and this is what propaganda is if if you're pretending that you're promoting liberal values much like the ngos you're just promoting democracy but you're only promoting those values in in your opponent's countries or in specific incidents then the common denominator is not democracy it's it's a strategic interest and if you're pursuing power interest and selling it as promoting you know values of human progress that's propaganda you are now taking one thing which is power politics you're dressing it up and selling it as democracy and freedom that is the marketing of politics this is propaganda and this is what we do and I think we get so lost in our own propaganda times we we we don't realize what it is because we've convinced ourselves propaganda is when uh you have Russian State tv disagreeing with us that this is this is propaganda but you know that's we've redefined the concept yeah you know I participated in a a webinar with people from Western and Eastern Europe maybe I think there are eight or ten of us and I participated as the only expat American living in Russia but all of them were talking about the United States use of soft power in their countries and we're talking about Germany we're talking about Austria we're talking about France we're talking about uh Serbia we're talking about there was a woman on from Armenia how the United States is directly influencing their politicians in a whole variety of ways uh also the populations with these color revolutions that we're talking about and so I think the soft power is what we've been talking about has been extremely effective for the United States and still is its intent in this part of the world is to sow Discord and chaos to create these issues for Russia but Glenn I want to ask you this before we finish the United States hasn't just been using soft power they've been using and I don't know if we want to call it hard power because many people would say well that's War that's direct conflict but the United States has over a hundred military bases in 90 countries is that hard power or soft power that's tremendous influence that's occupation in many countries and also how do sanctions fit into this a sanctioned soft power it would appear to me that their hard power and their relief Declarations of War but I'd like your thoughts on this subject well I think it's good to think about it on a scale because soft power usually refers to all power usually means you're doing something if you can make someone do something they would otherwise not have done then you have power over them soft power is more a cultural attraction or the ideals so it's again very very soft you don't have to course anyone uh they essentially yeah making up almost their own mind to emulate um military force obviously is the hardest form of power and if you have a huge Empire like the United States with uh with the military stretching around you can extract a lot of power in many ways you can use it coercively to undermine other countries but you can also use it for security dependence again the United States the main influence it has in Europe is that they're all the largely Finance European security now this is during peace time they can't they can't convert this really into a lot of political influence but when you have War such as now in Ukraine and the Europeans feel very vulnerable and they feel they're more reliant on this security from the United States then the United States can really cash in now is the good times they've never been able really to convert this economic uh the sorry security dependence into economic loyalties but now in Europe we're doing uh well as macron would say we become vassals we we've become very obedient because uh well we need the security guarantees from the United States so you can use military power in a different ways the economic aspect is I would also call it uh economic coercion if you use it in the form of sanctions of course there doesn't have to be course if one of the things that annoys the Europeans is when you for example use the Swift payment system which is American or use the US dollar you have to abide by U.S decisions they have extra territorial jurisdiction so the U.S can put sanctions for example the Americans put sanctions on on Iran after the U.S Broke Free of the nuclear agreement and the Europeans wanted to follow the agreement but the U.S can now punish the Europeans because if they don't also break the agreement and follow American sanctions then they can be you know they they can be fired they can be fined so the Americans that find the you know French banks you know energy companies Brazil they essentially putting unilateral sanctions and forcing the rest of the world to abide by it um now the the problem of sanctions of course is they work best when it's temporary and there's an absence of Alternatives which is why they were so effective during the unipolar era in the 1990s because if you sanction someone they have nowhere else to go the problem now is you have a multipolar world you have new centers of powers emerging and also the US tends to go it goes after larger countries it's now putting all these sanctions on Russia it's threatening China and also the sanctions against Russia are well never ending I can't they become so ingrained I can't imagine being able to remove them anymore so so in other words countries learn how they have to learn how to live without you in a multi-polar world it's not so hard um so the America so the Russians for example doing everything they cannot to decouple from American Industries because you know access to them can be used as a weapon uh decouple from a swift payment system the couple from the US dollar uh we used to be less dependent on the transportation corridors that is uh um the physical corridors which are controlled by the U.S Navy so all of these things are happening and it's not just the United States because any country know that they could be next on the list especially China but also secondary sanctions because we're also threatening friends and allies we're threatening uh South Africa do you trade with Russia we might sanction you too how about India sanction you too you know the turkey we we go even after our own friends so this is the this is the main problem and so now the whole world kind of woke up going listen why should we be dictated to by the United States and you know Russia has shown you can make other arrangements now you know circumventing the US dollar and the Chinese are going with it the Indians the Turks South Americans everyone is on board nobody wants to be Hostage to the us and this is the main problem of uh this is what I have been wanting for many many years and people often mistake what I'm saying as being anti-American in some way but my main argument is this this uh pursuit of global hegemony it's not in America's interest because it's temporary by definition or the not definition but it's a temporary phenomenon because over time not only does the U.S exhaust its resources and compelling uh it's physical resources I mean military economic but also it loses its legitimacy for Empire because the hardware has to you know go to to keep Rising centers of power down the less legitimacy will have so in the 1990s everyone was celebrating America you know the main foreign policy of China Russia was to get along as well as possible with the Americans and but now of course it's the yeah it's gone uh quite other way so the legitimacy for Empire has gone the money behind them is gone the military power for Empire is gone meanwhile the rest of the world is seeking all this economic and Military Partnerships to balance the U.S so it's a sorry for the long answer but it's just it's I feel it's uh it's a it's a very self-defeating self-harm policies which are being pursued and uh there's no ability because of all this uh Think Tank influence and propaganda to change it because uh going down this path of Destruction has now there is no acceptance for any more uh descent away from this political path yeah I I would just add a couple of things to that um I don't recognize the United States of America my country anymore in addition to what you've just been describing uh the social fabric of the United States is being torn apart the government is obviously corrupt they're not representing the will of the people and congress's approval factor is in single digits uh they don't trust the president they don't trust the courts and so you see not only this political Discord but social Discord you see all these issues about immigration divisions between religions um personalities and politics versus issues and substance and what I see is I think what you're talking about the same kind of thing that happened to the Roman Empire in all subsequent Empires they overextended there was corruption and they lost their their really moral integrity Glenn I want to thank you so much this has been a fascinating discussion uh it's always a pleasure to have you I look forward to having you back again very soon [Music]

Channel: Alfredo Bolduc

Views: 369

Keywords:

Id: dj5RUFSjqKM

Length: 61min 43sec (3703 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023