Transcription
Any solution right now. The way to a solution lies in immediately ending the genocide that's underway, the mass starvation that's underway, which the US again denied yesterday in the UN Security Council, uh, which Israel has denied, but which the whole world sees before our eyes that at least half a million people are being starved to death right now before our eyes.
Uh, and so this has nothing to do with Kushner and Blair. Uh, this has to do with ending a genocide. Uh, it has to do with creating a state of Palestine immediately. Uh, and it has to do with this uh absolutely fascist government in Israel uh being stopped by uh by the United Nations.
As somebody who follows uh global south politics pretty closely um including you know Russia and China uh India as well India is a separate case here um when is the world going to do anything about what's happening in Gaza I think the UN obviously has the United States sitting on the security council and and will veto it but it feels like there's and very little pressure brought to bear from the global south. South Africa obviously took Israel to the ICC and was joined you know um at at some significant risk by a number of other countries from the global south. Uh but that's about it. Like is there no counterveailing force that exists on a kind of just moral and ethical level willing to push back against this genocide? In other words, if the Chinese and the Russians don't see it in their specific national interest, are they okay to just set sit back and allow a genocide to unfold? Is that the is that the realist politics that we live in? Am I too naive to expect that? I'm like, there's got to be somebody that's going to do something about this, but there isn't.
Like what have you seen from? I I think that there are uh uh probably three arenas that we should consider. First is the battlefield itself where Israel is mass murdering the Palestinian people. I don't expect uh any of the regional powers to land troops uh or to be in a direct war uh over this issue. So I don't expect Russia or China or any of the Arab countries to land troops and open a war with Israel.
The second area is on the diplomatic front. Every single day there is a worldwide condemnation of Israel. Some of which gets reported uh in uh the US, most of which does not. The Security Council meeting yesterday was an overwhelming condemnation of Israel's genocide and starvation, but it doesn't get uh even mentioned. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation had a meeting in Jedha uh on August 25th condemning this. That's 57 uh Muslim majority countries. The bricks condemn this routinely. China, Russia, Brazil, uh, India condemn this routinely. It doesn't get picked up. So, they don't intervene on the battlefield, but they are not sitting back or complacent or winking uh at Israel, but they don't do uh more, let's say, than condemnation.
The third would be an increasing set of measures that I think should be taken. I think Israel is courting suspension from the UN General Assembly. I would recommend it uh because I believe that this is a completely lawless, murderous, genocidal regime. I don't think there's any other country in the world remotely doing what Israel is doing in terms of uh the the violence and the mass murder and the mass starvation. So there could be uh Israel's suspension from the UN. This was uh at least raised at the OIC meeting. There could be a break of diplomatic relations which I think should be in the cards. there could be a suspension or end of the so-called Abraham Accords. Remember, of course, I think everyone knows the US military is all over the Middle East. Uh in a way, the Middle Eastern countries often feel more like occupied countries than they do with sovereigns. They worry that if they are too vocal, the United States will do something, overthrow their regimes, ferment unrest, do the things that the United States covert operations do for a living. So I think that there is some trepidation there. But the fact of the matter is um both the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and most other groups in the world and I would say the UN General Assembly more than 180 of the 193 countries are openly gassed. But I think stronger measures are needed right now. Uh, and these are measures that might be blocked if it's through the UN, but could be taken by dozens or well over a hundred countries on their own, breaking diplomatic relations, putting on uh boycots and sanctions. Israel is completely out of control. Mass starvation is not an acceptable policy for the world. It should not be tolerated one moment longer.
And what do you make of the American politics? There's just a poll that came out yesterday. I don't have an element for it, but I don't know and I don't know if you saw it or not, but 77% of Democratic voters say this is a genocide. You know, I mean, it's a it's an overwhelming consensus among the Democratic base. And yet, you only have a handful of Democrats who are willing to say it. The leadership of the Democratic party, Hakee Jeff and Chuck Schumer and the like, are still very much, you know, anything for Israel and whatever Apac wants us to do. And look, I don't expect these people to be moral actors, but you would think at some point there would be a political calculation, like a cynical political calculation that occurs. And it's genuinely perplexing to me at this point that that hasn't happened. Obviously, I understand, you know, the money of of Apac and their affiliates, Democratic Majority for Israel, etc., But it still doesn't seem like that would be sufficient to keep them from seizing what is a genuine wide openen obvious um political imperative and political opening in the landscape. You what is your assessment of what keeps these politicians so tied to the status quo with regard to you know Israel and their commitment to allowing Israel and facilitating Israel's uh commitment to this genocide.
This is a an an excellent and very important question and it starts with the fact that in foreign policy uh public opinion plays almost no role in the United States in general. That's true across wars. Uh that's true across almost all of the issues uh that uh we have foreign policy. Uh this is a executive branch uh largely uh covert. Um it's very heavily CIA uh and national security uh driven rather than uh any publicly driven uh decisionmaking. Uh Congress is pretty much useless across the board in foreign policy and has been for uh a long time. Uh, of course, uh, the Congress is suborned by the military-industrial complex to begin with, by the military contractors. Uh, and then there are the specific issues uh of Israel. So, you mentioned of course the biggest one, which is the Zionist lobby, the Apac and others. There's just a tremendous amount of buying of votes and corruption and threats against individual congressmen. I'm sure that the Epstein files play some role in this. Epstein was a a Mossad uh agent and there's no doubt that there's blackmail involved in this in some way or another that we don't fully know. The CIA Mossad relationship dates back many many decades. Mossad does murders on behalf of the CIA. Uh they deeply share intelligence. The CIA is the single most powerful agent of our foreign policy. Uh and so this is not only the Israel lobby because after all, by the way, the Jewish community is profoundly unhappy with what's happening. Of course, there are Jews that support Israel, but there's a vast community of Jews that is completely agassed and disgusted and also reviled at what Israel is doing because it it um Israel claims to do it in the name of world jewelry. That is an obscenity. I would say Israel is doing it in the face of opposition uh of world jewelry. Uh so this is another element the CIA Mossad linkage that go uh quite strongly. They are very powerful in Silicon Valley right now. Palunteer is is is the AI murder inc company of the world. It does the targeting. We know that Microsoft and many other companies are deeply involved with Israel. There's a lot of money uh in all of this. The Israeli stock market has been up during this war. So, there's a a lot of uh corruption, blackmail, campaign finance, deep state, CIA, Mossad relations.
But I have to tell you, saying all of that, it's still shocking. It's still shocking because we don't have genocides before our eyes this way. All recorded day by day. All with the thank you of the Israeli ministers Smotric and Ben Gavir every day explaining that it's a genocide making no bones about it, being very explicit about it. Um so your question hangs there even after all of the explanations. It is a puzzle. Uh how corrupt can America be? We're plumbing new depths basically. Truly.
Yeah. And while we have you, I wanted to ask you about the newest piece from you that that I read that may not be the most recent piece that you you wrote, but called a new foreign policy for Europe in Horizon's magazine. um taking a look at the historical relationship between Europe and and Russia and envisioning a new kind of path out that doesn't involve Europe constantly invading Russia and and then at the same time having this uh fear uh that Russia is going to invade them. Can you talk a little bit about what do you lay out this this vision that you presented here and and what's been the reaction to it?
Basically Russia for more than 200 years going back to Napoleon, certainly including Hitler, including the remilitarization of Germany by the United States after World War II in in the years immediately following Nazism and by the way bringing a lot of Nazis to uh leadership of West Germany, including the new intelligence agencies led by the chief Nazi intelligence official for Hitler, for Eastern Europe, Galen, the Russians said, "What are you doing?" You know, again, we just lost 27 million people. But the western idea going back absolutely to Napoleon uh in his invasion uh in 1812, going to Palmerston and Napoleon 3 in their invasion of Russia in uh 1853. Going to Germany's attack and war on Russia in August 1914. going to Hitler's invasion in 1941 and then going to the creation of this military machine of Germany after World War II. There's never been an honest moment of discussion about what a real security arrangement in Europe would be that respects Russia's security as well as Europe's Western Europe's security. Russia is to an important extent Europe, but I'm talking about the nonRussian western part of Europe. And that's what has been needed all along. But the United States has refused. The British, which ran the world up until basically World War II, were completely rousophobic from the 1840s onward. And then the United States took over in 1945. And our goal from 1945 onward was first to defeat the Soviet Union and then I watched with my own eyes in shock by the way after 1991 that our goal continued to be even after the Soviet Union was over, communism was over and so forth, our goal continued to be now we defeat and divide Russia. Well, eventually uh after uh so much provocation uh with the US uh being the the major impetus to a coup in Ukraine in 2014, expanding NATO, dissing a peace agreement called the Minsk 2 agreement in 2015 and so forth. Eventually it came to full-scale war. Uh and then when it did in February 22 after maybe you could say 180 years of provocation or maybe you could just say 30 years of provocation or maybe you could say 8 years of provocation from the Maidan coup. Then we said you see Russia unprovoked expansionism. It's unbelievable how primitive uh this discussion is. I once counted in between February 2022 and uh February 2023, I had an assistant count the number of times that the New York Times used the word unprovoked to characterize the Ukraine war and it was 26 times that we were able to count that in the opinion pages of the New York Times. So basically there's a propaganda war. Now Europe is uh so uh devoid of uh sense and diplomacy. Trump uh this is not exactly Mr. Diplomat. Uh there's just confusion and the war will continue until the confusion is sorted out. So, what I've been saying to the Europeans who don't like my saying it, uh, but I'm going to keep saying it, is they need diplomacy with Russia, not through the White House. They don't have to meet Zalinski, who rules by martial law in a complete contradiction to the real interests of Ukraine and to the public opinion in Ukraine, which wants this war to end because they're suffering in Ukraine. I the Europeans meet with Zilinski a thousand times but they don't meet with Putin once and this is what passes in this pathetic way for foreign policy right now. So my article is huh do something different talk directly with your counterparts understand that there are real security issues that need to be solved.
One other thing I might add which is almost never mentioned but absolutely at the top of mind for Russia for more than 20 years is that in 2002 the United States unilaterally abandoned the anti-bballistic missile treaty. From Russia's point of view, that was a threat of a decapitation strike by the United States because the idea of the anti-bballistic missile treaty was to prevent a decapitation strike by making it plain that there would be a credible deterrent, a second strike. But with the anti-bballistic missiles, a decapitation strike becomes a possibility. So the Russians said after 2002 you have completely destabilized the nuclear arms control framework. It's in that context that the United States was pushing missile systems in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. These Aegis anti-bballistic missile systems overthrew the government in Ukraine. built a 1 million person or man army in Ukraine under Trump by the way who calls himself the man of peace. He armed Ukraine in in the first term to a million man army the biggest army uh in Europe. Um, and then in 2019, Trump walked out of the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty, basically destroying the nuclear arms control framework while also pushing missile systems and US military bases up to Russia's nose. This is why we're in such a dangerous, unstable mode. And there's such lack of clarity and honesty for one moment in any of this. Trump, by the way, one of his many many weaknesses, but one of his great weaknesses is the confusion of speaking truthfully to the American people in a speech, for example, which he never gives, versus a truth social post with eight exclamation points and capital letters, which is not the same thing as trying to explain what is happening and how we get out of this. He probably doesn't have the capacity to do what needs to be done at just at an individual level. But we lack any clear understanding and that's why there is so much instability and Washington is is is completely incoherent because there is no clarity of policy from one moment to the next.
Professor, last question for me. Uh, let's say, you know, going back to Israel and Gaza, let's say the world does nothing and this final solution is allowed to just unfold. What does that mean for the future of the world?
The world is in the most dangerous state since the end of World War II. Uh, and the doomsday clock, which portrays how close we are to Armageddon, uh, puts the clock at 89 seconds to midnight, the closest that it's been since, uh, the clock was unveiled in 1947. Uh, we have no rules of the road right now. We have no clarity. We have no consistency of policy. and western values has been exposed to mean open genocide. So I would say that we're in an extraordinarily dangerous world and uh Trump who uh in his delusion uh calls himself a president of peace is a a is complicit in an open genocide that the world sees. And I travel all over the world all the time. Everybody knows. Everybody knows what's happening right now. Uh and uh this is a tremendous tremendous risk to global security and to any place of the United States uh in the international system which is being squandered. I think it's also a fundamental risk to Israel's survival. Uh, Israel banks entirely on the United States for its survival because virtually every other country in the world is a gasast at the crimes that Israel is committing. And because, as you pointed out, the American people are also a gasast. It's a pretty uh pretty uh slender and fragile uh thing to depend on the United States when public opinion is against you as your sole source for survival. So I think Israel has put itself at absolutely mortal risk. Of course, it's mass murdering the Palestinians. So I'm not expressing that in sympathy. I'm just stating a fact that this is wildly against Israel's security interests.
Well, Professor Sax, it's always a privilege to get to speak with you. Thank you so much for spending some time with us. A pleasure to be with you.
The basic idea of the United States, Britain, France, especially if there is an idea, these are three imperial powers. The idea is we determine the bottom line. So we are the ones that determine the outcomes of a conflict. That's the mindset. Of course they don't. Uh this is the postimperial postwestern imperial world. But the western imperial powers believe that they determine the outcome. And so in the case of Ukraine, the idea has been well yes there will be a ceasefire but according to uh Mcronone or Starmer uh NATO will enlarge and Russia will have to accept XYZ and ABCDE EFG and so forth. And so there's no attempt to get to the core politics at all in the Middle East. The same is true. Uh the unspoken part of all of this is Israel's uh uh claim to have its say and way in the Middle East in terms of territory, in terms of crushing, even exterminating the Palestinian people if that's what it came to. I think that they would not hesitate to do it as they have shown in Gaza. That's the unspoken part. So the western uh side, these imperialist powers think that the idea is to impose that outcome. Maybe they quibble about the tactics. But what was fascinating to me in terms of political rhetoric, although not surprising, Israel attacks Iran and what happens in the rhetoric of all of the West so-called these G7 countries. The immediate response is not Israel should not have attacked Iran. The immediate response was Israel has the right of selfdefense. It's so surrealistic, so Orwellian that it doesn't even pass the uh the propaganda test for 5 seconds. But this is exactly what happened the day after Israel's uh unilateral attack in the context of negotiations to end Iran's nuclear weapons program definitively with with the international monitoring was not to say why did Israel do this in the context of ongoing negotiations or Israel shouldn't have done this or Israel even did do this. The politics that Europe displayed in the UN Security Council as I nearly fell off my chair at each statement was that Iran must not escalate and uh some of the ambassadors speaking. For example, the absolutely shameless presentation by the Danish ambassador on the Security Council didn't even mention that Israel had attacked Iran. This is the UN Security Council. They couldn't even figure out the day that they were there, the day after a unilateral unprovoked attack in the context of negotiations that Israel had attacked Iran. The only statement made by the ambassador of Denmark was that Iran was out of compliance with the IAEA as if Israel is not. Israel isn't even a signatory to the IAEA and is the nuclear power of the region and never allows inspections. But the Danish ambassador only attacked Iran for being out of compliance without noting the negotiations and still less without even mentioning that there had been an attack by Israel on Iran that day and statements by the Israeli leadership that it would kill the leadership of Iran. No one said boo about that. So this G7 is pathetic. You know, Trump came, he went, didn't matter. It's pathetic. Then one of them posts something Mcronone and Trump disses the post of of Mcronone. These are children that have no respect for us as citizens. And this is sad because these children don't know how to play together. I don't even among themselves, much less with the rest of the world. But they have their hands on the nuclear arsenals that can destroy all of us and we don't hear an honest word about it.
Well, so yeah, we see the surprise attack during negotiations on nuclear reactors in Iran, which you know should have had made everyone very very alarmed. Uh but I guess it had the same reaction as the attacks on yeah Russia's nuclear deterrent two weeks ago. It there's nothing instead. Yeah, I saw as well the European leaders arguing that well the Iranians are to blame and they have to deescalate and it but it does it did sound something similar to what Netanyahu was saying cuz he was making a speech saying uh you know we we have the right to defend oursel and also after uh the regime change after destroying the government of Iran the people there would welcome it as a liberator welcome welcome them as liberators and they would live peacefully side by side after the regime had been destroyed. I mean, do these people actually believe this or is this uh just shameless war rhetoric knowing that uh well, Israel's partners will uncritically just repeat whatever they say.
I don't know whether they believe it, but it's not the first time they say it. They've been saying it for 30 years. Uh Netanyahu and his uh American backers issued a document in 1996 called Clean Break. Clean Break explains the political strategy that's been underway for the next 30 years, which is that Israel will not negotiate with Palestine uh and and therefore will embroil the entire Middle East in war uh bringing the United States in to do its bidding. and that the key is to have regimes in place that will uh go along with this. So the idea all along has been that the uh 5 to 10 million uh Jews in Israel will determine the politics of the roughly 400 million Arabs in the Arab world. and of course vastly larger numbers if one includes the Islamic world. So they've said this all along and they've acted on that basis because every word you heard visav Iran Netanyahu I mean almost to a word used the same rhetoric in the fall of 2002 testifying in the US Congress about how glorious it will be when Saddam Hussein is brought down. How across the region people will celebrate. In fact, he said specifically, when you bring down Saddam Hussein, young people in Iran will rally to the cause. They will see the end of desperatism and so forth. And the same has been believed about each of these leaders, uh, Gaddafi, Assad, uh, H Saddam Hussein, the Ayatollah. The idea is this mythical thinking that you kill them uh you replace them and then the replacements do your bidding. They fall into line. So if you ask me do they believe it, I think they do believe it because it's their strategy. It's not merely their tactic. Uh it is their long-term strategy. Uh and they built an apparatus around it. Israel is an assassination machine to a large extent. Mossad is an assassination organization to take out leaders that it opposes believing that it will thereby result in leaders that uh uh that uh will support their cause.
I should say by the way this resonates with the United States. The US with 4% of the world population roughly 4.1% has tried to run the rest of the world population. It does that of course with military bases all over the world roughly 750 military bases in 80 countries. But it also has to rely on something more efficient it believes and that is regime change. Uh because the US doesn't have the manpower to put its Roman legions, if I could use the analogy, all over the world. It needs to have governments that fall in line with it. It has a lot of vassal states. The Europeans are are vassal states uh in this way. But the idea has been regime change as the most important instrument that the United States has because it doesn't want to be and can't be an occupying force. So it has to impose friendly regimes. So this fits maybe it fits the imperial model going way back that you put sat trappies in or you put local vassel states in uh because you can't really occupy every place if you have your eye on global control.
Well, my last question is uh how will this affect the wider world? Uh how will Russia, China, other large powers react to this? Because obviously this is not this is not a good day for a diplomacy in the faith they would have in diplomacy with the United States. but also to what extent you see the possibility of this war spreading because I've seen some reports already about uh Russia and China uh resupplying Iran uh after they were attacked.
If history can can be our guide and it's a very imperfect guide to be sure because every circumstance is different the current approach will fail. Uh either the military bravado by itself will fail because Israel will not have the uh wherewithal or even Israel and the United States will not have the wherewithal to defeat Iran. That's possible. I'm unfortunately not enough of a military expert to give any authoritative reading on that. But we do know the vastly exaggerated estimations of Western military power is part of this story. Uh the United States has not won wars for decades. Sometimes it's had military victories, but it's rarely actually won a long war. Um and so from uh Afghanistan to Vietnam to uh countless other places, this kind of approach has not worked and it may lose directly in the aerial battles and in the air defense and in uh Iran's ability to counterattack and destroy uh critical locations in populated Israel. It may fail just on that basis or it may fail on the basis that the nuclear activities of Iran escalate in result and are not stopped by any of this or in the fact that there is no regime change. Uh they're trying I think a decapitation not only of the military and scientific leadership but of the political leadership as well. This is likely to fail but not impossible. This is an assassination uh machine. They have targeted drones to the apartment buildings and apartment uh floors and flats specifically. though they within with Mossad's methods which is a an assassination unit uh they've made some progress but that can fail I think is more likely than not to fail even if it were to succeed it doesn't occupy a country of more than 90 million people that is a big spread out diverse and in many ways technologically sophisticated country so rarely do a Do air strikes actually change the fate of politics or nations? It hasn't happened in most of the time. So I believe we're on a path of extraordinary risk and danger and typical bravado and overestimation of uh Israeli and western capacity. That has been the general rule uh overestimation of what the western advantage brings because the most fundamental factor of our world today is multipolarity. It is that the western dominance these G7 leaders uh do not run the show and do not have the decisive military advantage to run the show. But in the end, each of these blows and the counter blows bring us closer to nuclear annihilation because the even more fundamental truth is that we have nuclear arms all over the place. And not only does Iran have Russia as a backer, it also has Pakistan as a backer. Uh, and the idea that this is just a unilateral show of nuclear armed Israel versus the Islamic world, uh, versus Iran versus the Arab world. This could really get us all killed. This kind of delusion.
Well, Professor Saxs, uh, thank you, my friend. I appreciate, uh, your time. This is um yeah, it's incredible we ended up in this situation. I think everyone realized how crazy and um yeah, insane such an attack would be and that's exactly how it's turning out as well. It was so crazy that I didn't think it would happen. Honestly, this is my naivee, I have to say, because I constantly overestimate the uh uh idea of a rational response to our circumstances. And I underestimate the hubris, the arrogance, the uh uh the uh hatreds and the readiness of people like Netanyahu to bring us to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. By the way, I have to say, and I should add, there is some group, bizarre as it sounds, that looks at the prospect of nuclear Armageddon and shrugs their shoulders and says, "Well, that's all biblical prophecy in the book of Revelation." I get my email from American Christian evangelicals who are the major voter base for Israeli extremism. And I get letters explaining to me, Mr. Saxs, it's all in the prophecy. And the darker things get, the more these are sign of the times of the coming Armageddon. That to me is perhaps the most terrifying point that some people on this planet