Hungarian scholar George Szamuely
tells Ann Garrison that he sees a 70 percent chance of combat between NATO and
Russia following the incident in the Kerch Strait and that it is being fueled
by Russia-gate.
An Interview with George
Szamuely
George Szamuely is a Hungarian-born scholar and Senior Research
Fellow at London’s Global Policy Institute. He lives in New York City. I spoke
to him about escalating hostilities on Russia’s Ukrainian and Black Sea borders
and about Exercise Trident Juncture, NATO’s
massive military exercise on Russian borders which ended just as the latest
hostilities began.
Ann Garrison: George, the
hostilities between Ukraine, NATO, and Russia continue to escalate in the Sea
of Azov, the Kerch Strait, and the Black Sea. What do you think the latest odds
of a shooting war between NATO and Russia are, if one hasn’t started by the
time this is published?
George Szamuely: Several
weeks ago, when we first talked about this, I said 60 percent. Now I’d say,
maybe 70 percent. The problem is that Trump seems determined to be the
anti-Obama. Obama, in Trump’s telling, “allowed” Russia to take Crimea and to
“invade” Ukraine. Therefore, it will be up to Trump to reverse this. Just as
he, Trump, reversed Obama’s policy on Iran by walking away from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise
known as the Iran nuclear deal. So expect ever-increasing US involvement in
Ukraine.
AG: NATO’s
Supreme Commander US General Curtis M. Scaparrotti is reported to have been on
the phone with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko “offering his full
support.” Thoughts on that?
GS: There has
been a proxy war within Ukraine since 2014, with NATO backing Poroshenko’s
Ukrainian government and Russia backing the dissidents and armed separatists
who speak Russian and identify as Russian in Ukraine’s southeastern Donbass
region. But in the Kerch Strait the hostilities are between Russia and Ukraine,
with NATO behind Ukraine.
A shooting war will begin if it
escalates to where NATO soldiers shoot and kill Russian soldiers or vice versa.
Whoever shoots first, the other side will feel compelled to respond, and then
there’ll be a war between Russia and NATO or Russia and a NATO nation.
We don’t know whether NATO would
feel compelled to respond as one if Russians fired on soldiers of individual
NATO nations—most likely UK soldiers since the UK is sending more of its
Special Forces and already has the largest NATO military presence in Ukraine.
Russia could defeat the UK, but if the US gets involved, all bets are off.
AG: It’s hard to
imagine that the US would allow Russia to defeat the UK.
GS: It is, but
on the other hand, the US is the US and the UK is the UK. The United States
might well be ready to fight to the last Brit, much as the United States is
definitely ready to fight to the last Ukrainian. There are already 300 US
paratroopers in Ukraine training Ukrainians, but the British would be well
advised that words of encouragement from Washington don’t necessarily translate
into US willingness to go to war.
AG: The US
Congress passed a law that US troops can’t serve under any foreign command, so
that would require US command.
GS: Yes,
and without that, any British military defeat could be blamed on traditional
British military incompetence rather than US weakness or foolish braggadocio.
AG: This latest
dustup between the Russian and Ukrainian navies took place in the Kerch Strait.
I had to study several maps to understand this, but basically neither Russian
nor Ukrainian vessels, military or commercial, can get to or from the Sea of
Azov and the Black Sea without passing through the Kerch Strait. That doesn’t
mean that neither could get to the Black Sea, because both have Black Sea
borders, but they couldn’t get from ports in the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea
and back.
And neither Ukraine nor Russia can
get from the Black Sea to Western European waters without passing through the
Bosporous and Dardanelles Straits in Turkey to the Aegean and Mediterranean
Seas, and then further to the Atlantic Ocean through the Strait of Gibraltar,
which is bordered on one side by Spain and the British territory of Gibraltar,
and on the other by Morocco and the Spanish territory Ceuta. So there are many
geo-strategic choke points where Russian ships, naval or commercial, could be
stopped by NATO nations or their allies, and Ukraine has already asked Turkey
to stop them from passing through the Bosporus Strait. Thoughts on that?
GS: Well, of
course Ukraine can ask for anything it likes. There’s no way in the world
Turkey would try to stop Russian ships going through the Bosporus Strait. That
would be a violation of the 1936 Montreux Convention and an
act of war on the part of Turkey. It isn’t going to happen. As for the Kerch
Strait, it is Russian territorial water. Ukraine is free to use it and has been
doing so without incident since 2014. The only thing the Russians insist on is
that any ship going through the strait use a Russian pilot. During the recent
incident, the Ukrainian tug refused to use a Russian pilot. The Russians became
suspicious, fearing that the Ukrainians were engaged in a sabotage mission to
blow up the newly constructed bridge across the strait. You’ll remember
that an American
columnist not so long ago urged the Ukrainian authorities to
blow up the bridge. That’s why the Russians accuse Kiev of staging a
provocation.
AG: There’s a
longstanding back channel between the White House and the Kremlin, as satirized
in Dr. Strangelove. Anti-Trump fanatics keep claiming this is new
and traitorous, but it’s long established. Obama and Putin used it to keep
Russian and US soldiers from firing on one another instead of the jihadists
both claimed to be fighting in Syria. Kennedy and Khrushchev used it to keep
the Bay of Pigs crisis from escalating into a nuclear war. Shouldn’t Trump and
Putin be talking on that back channel now, no matter how much it upsets CNN and MSNBC?
GS: Well, of
course, they should. The danger is that in this atmosphere of anti-Russian
hysteria such channels for dialogue may not be kept open. As a result, crises
could escalate beyond the point at which either side could back down without
losing face. What’s terrifying is that so many US politicians and press now
describe any kind of negotiation, dialogue, or threat-management as treasonous
collusion by Donald Trump.
Remember Trump’s first bombing in
Syria in April 2017. Before he launched that attack, Trump administration
officials gave advance warning to the Russians to enable them to get any
Russian aircraft out of harm’s way. This perfectly sensible action on the part
of the administration—leave aside the illegality and stupidity of the
attack—was greeted by Hillary Clinton and the MSNBC crowd as evidence that the
whole operation was cooked up by Trump and Putin to take attention off
Russia-gate. It’s nuts.
AG: Most of us
have heard Russia and NATO’s conflicting accounts of why the Russian Navy
seized several Ukrainian vessels in the Sea of Azov. What’s your interpretation
of what happened?
GS: As I said, I
think the Russians had every right to be suspicious of the intent of the
Ukrainian vessels. The Ukrainians know that these are Russian territorial
waters. They know that the only way to go through the Kerch Strait is by making
use of a Russian pilot. They refused to allow the Russians to pilot the ships
through the strait. Whatever the Ukrainians’ ultimate intent was—whether it was
to carry out an act of sabotage, to provoke the Russians into overreaction and
then to demand help from NATO, or simply to go through the strait without a
Russian pilot in order to enable President Poroshenko to proclaim the strait as
non-Russian—whatever Kiev’s intent was, the Russians were entitled to respond.
The force the Russians used was hardly excessive. In similar circumstances, the
US would have destroyed all of the ships and killed everyone on board. Recall,
incidentally, Israel has seized Gaza flotilla boats and arrested everyone on
board. In 2010, the Israeli Navy shot nine activists dead during a flotilla boat
seizure, and wounded one who died after four years in a coma.
AG: Don’t
the US, Ukraine, and the UN Security Council refuse to recognize the Kerch
Strait as Russian territory, and insist that Russia’s claim to it violates
various maritime treaties? I know the UNSC refuses to recognize the Golan
Heights as Israeli territory, not that that does Syria any good.
GS: According
to the 2003 agreement, Russia and Ukraine agreed to consider the strait as well
as the Sea of Azov as shared territorial waters. From 2014 on, Russia
considered the strait as Russian waters, though it’s made no attempt to hamper
Ukrainian shipping. The Azov Sea is still shared by Russia and Ukraine. During
the recent incident, the Ukrainian Navy acted provocatively, deliberately challenging
the Russians. As for what the UNSC accepts, how would NATO respond if Serbia
entered Kosovo on some pretext or other?
AG: OK, now
let’s go back to NATO’s Exercise Trident Juncture, a massive military exercise
on Russia’s Scandinavian and Arctic borders that concluded on November 24, one
day before the Kerch Strait incident. The first phase was deployment, from
August to October. The second phase was war games from October 25th to November
7th. The war games were based on the premise that Russia had invaded
Scandinavia by ground, air, and sea. They included 50,000 participants from 31
NATO and partner countries, 250 aircraft, 65 naval vessels, and up to 10,000
tanks and other ground vehicles, and I hate to think about how much fossil fuel
they burned.
The final phase was a command post
exercise to make sure that, should NATO forces ever face a real Russian
invasion of Scandinavia, their response could be safely coordinated in Norway
and in Italy, far from the war zone.
So George, do Scandinavians have reason
to worry that Russia might invade any of their respective nations?
GS: Not at all.
This is ridiculous. It was the largest military exercise since the end of the
Cold War, and why? Why did they do this? Russia isn’t threatening Scandinavia,
but it’s more likely that it will if NATO continues conducting war games on its
borders. Right now tension between East and West is escalating so fast that a
single event could be like a match that triggers an explosion, and then
there’ll be a war.
AG: There was a
recent Russian exercise, or joint Russian and Chinese exercise, based on the
premise that the US had invaded Korea, right?
GS: Right. But
it wasn’t anywhere near Europe, so it wasn’t threatening the Europeans. It took
place in eastern Siberia, so it shouldn’t have caused panic in NATO countries.
It shouldn’t have caused panic in the US either, because the Pacific Ocean
separates the US and the Korean Peninsula.
What’s striking about Trident
Juncture is that it involved Sweden and Finland, both of whom are traditionally
neutral. They were neutral during the Cold War, not joining any alliances.
Finlandization came to mean a foreign policy that in no way challenged or
antagonized the USSR. So now here’s Finland rolling back that policy and
joining NATO in this massive military exercise to stop nonexistent Russian
aggression.
AG: Has Russia
ever attempted to seize territory outside its own borders since the end of the
Cold War?
GS: No. Russia
never attempted to seize territory outside its own borders. The case cited by
the West is Crimea, but that was really an outstanding issue that should have
been addressed during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin, the
drunken, incompetent stooge that the US installed, just neglected it.
The Russian-speaking and
Russian-identified people of Crimea were unhappy about Ukraine claiming
sovereignty over them. They had been an autonomous republic within the USSR,
and after its dissolution, they still retained their constitutional autonomy.
That’s what gave them the right to hold a referendum to join the Russia
Federation in 2014.
If the West is involved in an
uprising, as in Ukraine, it recognizes the “independence” of the government it
puts in power. It won’t recognize the constitutional autonomy of Crimea, which
predated the 2014 Ukrainian revolution or illegal armed coup, whichever you
call it, because it wasn’t part of their plan.
AG: The NATO
nations and their allies say that Russia invaded and occupied Crimea, violating
Ukrainian sovereignty according to international law. Democracy Now’s Amy
Goodman referred to the “illegal annexation” of Crimea at least three times
after the Kerch Strait incident. How do you explain the presence of Russian
soldiers in Crimea prior to the referendum?
GS: They didn’t
invade and occupy Crimea. Their forces were there legally, according to a
25-year lease agreement between Russia and Ukraine.
Crimea had been a part of Russia for
more than 200 years. For most of the time, during the USSR era, it was an
autonomous republic within the Russian Federation. In 1954, Khrushchev
transferred some degree of sovereignty over the Crimean Republic to Ukraine.
I’m not entirely sure why he did that, but the issue wasn’t that important then
because Ukraine, Russia and Crimea were all part of the USSR.
Khrushchev didn’t envisage an
independent Ukraine walking off with such a prize piece of real estate. Crimea
is not only a huge tourist destination, it is also the site of Russia’s primary
naval base on the Black Sea in Sevastopol. Yeltsin failed to address the
problem in 1991. Since then, every time Crimeans talked about holding a
referendum on their future, Kiev threatened to use force to stop them. Kiev
would have used force again in 2014 if the Russians in the Port of Sevastopol
had not left their Crimean base and made their presence known.
AG: The US, aka
NATO, has an empire of military bases all over the world, and troops right up
against Russia’s borders as in Exercise Trident Juncture. Does Russia have
anything remotely like it?
GS: No. Russia
does not have military bases outside its borders, which are now more or less as
they were in 1939, when the USSR was surrounded by hostile states that were
more than happy to join Hitler. So it’s ridiculous to tell Russia, “Don’t worry
about our troops and war games all over your borders because we don’t really
mean any harm.” Washington is calling Russia an existential enemy, and the UK
is promising to stand shoulder to shoulder with its NATO allies and partners
against “Russian aggression,” which is really Russian defense. So now we have
an explosive situation on the Ukrainian and Russian borders that could easily
turn into a shooting war.
AG: I read some
US/NATO complaints that Russia was conducting exercises on its own side of the
border. And last week NATO accused the Russian military of jamming its signals
during its rehearsal for a war on Russia’s borders.
GS: Yes, that’s
what the US considers Russian aggression, even though its troops and bases are
all over the world and all over Russia’s borders.
AG: Competition
between US and Russian energy corporations is one of the main undercurrents to
all this. The US State Department even said that Europe should abandon the Nord
Stream-2 gas pipeline project with Russia because of the Kerch Strait incident,
but that received a cool response, particularly from Angela Merkel. What are
your thoughts about that?
GS: Well,
obviously, the Trump administration is determined to push the Europeans to give
up on natural gas from Russia and to opt, instead, for US liquefied natural gas
(LNG). The problem is that LNG shipped across the Atlantic is much more
expensive than natural gas piped to Europe from Russia. So it’s clearly not in
the interests of the Europeans to have a bigger energy bill. Look what’s happening
in France. Ordinary people are not making so much money that they can afford to
shell out more for energy, particularly when there is no need to do so. Some
countries such as Poland are so imbued with hostility toward Russia that
they’re willing to pay more for gas just to hurt Russia, but Germany won’t go
down this path.
AG: Anything
else you’d like to say for now?
GS: Yes, I think
it’s amazing that this many years after the Cold War we’ve reached a point
where there’s almost no public criticism of a policy that has led to the US
abandoning a major arms control agreement, namely the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed in 1987.
There’s almost no public criticism
of the US getting involved in an armed confrontation on Russia’s doorstep, in
Ukraine, Syria, Iran, or conceivably even Scandinavia. There’s almost no public
criticism of roping formerly neutral European powers like Sweden and Finland
into NATO military exercises.
Given the fact that the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that went
into effect in 2011 will expire in 2021, and given that there’s nothing on the
horizon to take its place, this is an extraordinarily perilous point in time.
And much of this has to be blamed on
the liberals. The liberals have embraced an anti-Russian agenda. The kind of
liberal view that prevailed during the Cold War was that we should at least
pursue arms control agreements. We might not like the Communists, but we need
treaties to prevent a nuclear war. Now there’s no such caution. Any
belligerence towards Russia is now good and justified. There’s next to no
pushback against getting into a war with Russia, even though it could go
nuclear.
Ann Garrison is an independent
journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire
Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict
in the African Great Lakes Region. She can be reached at ann@anngarrison.com.
