Jim Jatras: US-Russia Tango In Syria Is Really About Iran And May Lead To WW3

Jim Jatras:                           It looks like that is coordinated with these latest accusations on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, which, unfortunately, looks like it will lead to military action as early as tonight Washington time. Where I am it’s a little after 10:00 p.m., and the talk is now within a few hours we should be launching an attack against Syria. I had hoped that that would have been held off until the OPCW investigators, who are on their way to Damascus, would have had a chance to look at the evidence. Honestly, I think there are people in this town, and certainly in London and some other capitals, who don’t want there to be an independent investigation, that do not want their handiwork being exposed.

Jim Jatras:                           This has nothing to do, really, with chemical weapons at all, in my opinion. It has to do with the fact that at the end of the Cold War in 1991 the United States emerged as the sole Superpower, unipolar moment and all that. There are people who are willing to risk plunging the world into a third world war to preserve that global hegemony against a Russia that’s reasserting its own national interests, and, of course, also China.

G&E Podcast:                     Let’s just backtrack a bit. You are a former diplomat. Can you tell us about the significance of the recent, unprecedented, expulsion of Russian diplomats from the U.S. and the E.U.? I don’t think this even happened during the first Cold War. It’s quite startling. As you mentioned, it’s fabricated chemical attacks with the neo-McCarthyism, and now this expulsion. If we put that all together what does this mean?

Jim Jatras:                           I think what we’re seeing is the kind of demonization against a target country, and especially its leader, personally, in this case Vladimir Putin, that we’ve see so many times in the past, whether it was Milošević in Yugoslavia, or Saddam Hussein, or Muammar Gaddafi. Everybody is Hitler. We call it “The Hitler of the month club”, is that we frame the target as this horrible, evil person who must be destroyed. Animal Assad now, President Trump is calling him. That means that the rules of normal conduct are suspended because, after all, if you’re literally Hitler nothing could be out of bounds. I think that’s the kind of mentality that’s being used here.

Jim Jatras:                           Right now Russia is the target country. Syria, of course, too, but Russia is as well. The fact of the matter is Russia’s not a pipsqueak little country you can do this to. Let’s remember that what was done with the expulsion of these diplomats, supposedly based on the Skripal case, and the certainty that the Russians did it, even though there’s no evidence that they were involved at all, but a lot of evidence that MI6 was involved. That this is part of isolating and setting up a country for regime change. I would also add that the latest round of America sanctions, which seemed designed to … I think the thinking is if they can put enough squeeze on Russian oligarchs, and, of course, Russian rich people are oligarchs, but America rich people like George Soros or Zuckerberg or people like that, they’re not oligarchs. That they somehow can stage a coup to remove Vladimir Putin from power. Anybody that knows anything about Russian know that that’s not going to happen. This is not the 1990s when the oligarchs are powerful enough to do that.

Jim Jatras:                           All it means is that, I think, the Russians are increasingly going to take the view that they are being targeted for destruction, that war is going to become inevitable. That’s a very dangerous notion that should end up in their consciousness because where does that leave us, then? What steps may they take on their side in anticipation of hostilities that may, to them, appear inevitable? This is far more dangerous than what we saw even during the first Cold War. No Soviet leader was ever demonized, not even Stalin, ever demonized in the way that Putin is.

G&E Podcast:                     Going back to the deep state you mentioned, at a university where I was teaching years ago I would introduce these topics with my students, and people on campus sometimes would mock this idea of deep state and conspiracy theory. I even Skyped people like yourself into my classrooms. We talked to Peter Dale Scott, who they call one of the grandfathers of the deep state, deep politics term. You recently wrote a piece called Mikhail Octavian Trump, that the best we can expect from President Trump is make some kind of deal with North Korea, not bomb Russia, withdraw from Syria, avoid impeachment in order to preserve some semblance of the America republic.

G&E Podcast:                     However, it seems that, in this moment in time, Trump is, perhaps, forfeiting everything he campaigned on if he goes through with the Syrian attack, which is not unlike every predecessor. Obama, “I’m going to close down Guantanamo.” A year later nothing happens. Pull out of Iraq, they put more troops in Iraq. Then you say that this will have fatal consequences for Washington, and usher in or accelerate the collapse of the empire. We’re hanging by a thread. Can you tell us more about the situation Trump finds himself domestically with the deep state? I understand they just raided his lawyer’s home.

Jim Jatras:                           That’s right. I’ve been saying, maybe my timeline is a little wrong, but I’ve been saying that our situation here in the United States, or let’s say on the eve of the 2016 election, was, in many respects, comparable to the situation of the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s. A system that had become completely unworkable, that urgently needed some kind of reform. That’s what Gorbachev tried to do. Instead of saving the system and revitalizing it, he ended up destabilizing it further toward its inevitable collapse. I think that there are other examples like that in the past. The most obviously one being Octavian in the late Roman republic who replaced it with the principate. That’s what we tend to think of as the empire, which, I would argue, wasn’t the death of the republic. In many ways the only way the republic could have been salvaged at that time.

Jim Jatras:                           I think if you look, for example, Madeline Albright has this new book out where she’s warning against fascism. Everybody’s a fascist, Trump’s a fascist, Putin’s a fascist. Viktor Orban is a fascist. I think there is a counter movement against the dysfunction of the neo-liberal globalist order where people want to return to their roots, return to some sense of identity and of self-respect, and in many cases return to religion, as we’ve seen, not only in Russia, but in Poland and Hungary and other countries. I think to some extent Trump was tapping into that revival of traditional American identity, which, as we know, is synonymous with racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia and so forth because the globalist order doesn’t like that kind of unique respect for one’s own tradition and culture.

Jim Jatras:                           I think that’s all the more reason why Putin needs to be destroyed because, in many ways, he is seen as kind of the prototype of a, let’s say, a new return to the old ways. A new return to the old bedrock sources of social tradition and strength. I think even China is doing this in its own way, except their values are not Christian, they’re Confucian, and I respect that. Those are not my values, they’re China’s values. I don’t see anything wrong with that. I think that it’s a complete reversal of the Maoist anti-Confucian campaign whereas now Confucian thought as very highly-respected in China. I think this is a positive development.

Jim Jatras:                           I think the global order is very much opposing that, and that is, at least in our country, center within the organs of government, which are, in some ways, kind of like the old Soviet nomenclature. They have their genetic code. They do what they do. Then don’t even necessarily think, the people are just cogs in a machine, but they see Trump as a threat to that machine. They’ve don everything possible to neuter him, and especially to make sure he cannot deliver on his campaign pledge to reach out to Russia and to, basically, end the new Cold War and what has now developed into a regime change impetus from Washington. That’s what scares me very much because these people, I don’t think, fully realize the danger of the course that they’re setting us upon.

G&E Podcast:                     Just to add to that, I spent three weeks in Russia last year. We went with a group of 30 Americans. We met with people Vladimir Pozner, Gorbachev himself, and spent time with normal Russians. Now living also in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, even my Russian language teacher last night was commenting that the people, in general, here espouse these religious, traditional more conservative values, the majority. The Western Europeans and Americans need to come over here, and they can’t just call out Putin when the population itself espouses these values. To move on, just briefly, you mentioned the chemical attack. The Russians warned a few weeks ago that any future chemical attack in Syria would be a false flag operation. The U.S. track record in Iraq and Libya are full of holes, no WMBs, Hillary’s emails proved that they went into Libya for the gold, the silver, the oil.

G&E Podcast:                     The Russians have a clean track record under Putin in terms of foreign military adventures. The Georgia war in 2008 was instigated by Georgia and backed by NATO, for example. These white helmets, Russia’s UN representative stated, I guess just today, to the U.S., “You don’t want to hear that no signs of a chemical attack have been found in Douma. You’ve only sought a pretext, and it was eagerly provided by the white helmets provocateurs.” Who do we believe then?

Jim Jatras:                           Well, that’s right. In fact, there’s even a film that’s come to everybody’s attention, well, of course, not being reported in our media, but shows a training exercise that the people, the emergency workers, showing kids how to lie down, applying phony foam at the mouth and so forth in preparation for exactly this sort of thing. It’s very interesting to compare Douma to the other accusations of chemical use in Syria. In those other cases, for example, the one that occurred in Idlib in April of 2017 that Trump, for the first time, responded with military force, although, people characterized it as proforma, as a kind of demonstrative strike, was that nobody disputes there was a chemical attack of some sort. Although, the ones saying that Assad was not responsible for it differ on whether there was a chemical storehouse there that maybe was bombed by a Syrian air force raid, or if it was a deliberate release of the chemical agent by the terrorist in order to blame the government. Something there definitely happened.

Jim Jatras:                           I noticed that today, and the last couple of days, over the incident in Douma the Russian and Syrian side are saying specifically there was no chemical attack at all. It was all staged. It was all phony, and that their inspectors went there and could detect no evidence of chemical weapon use. I find this very interesting for a couple of reasons. One is, every time you get one of these incidents, whether it was the shooting of the Russian ambassador in Turkey, whether it was the guy who plowed down all those people in Marcé with the truck, you have people popping up on the internet and saying, “Oh that’s all phony. It was all staged. That really didn’t happen,” et cetera, et cetera. I generally don’t buy into that.

Jim Jatras:                           I tend to think most of these things, most of them, anyway, are real, unless I have good reason to think otherwise. When you look at the films that are being shown of Douma, they really do look rather fishy. You don’t really see much of anything, except some hosing other people off with bare hands and no breathing protection or anything else that would indicate concern over a real chemical attack. I really do wonder what the story is there.

Jim Jatras:                           That leads us to the other key. Unlike the other cases where in Ghouta 2013, or in Idlib in 2017 the area was still controlled by the terrorist forces whether Jaysh al-Islam or Al Islam, et cetera, et cetera. You could make a plausible case, “Well, the inspectors can’t go there. It’s not safe.” Why wouldn’t it be safe since these are wonderful freedom fighters? I don’t know, but as everybody knows they’re really Al Qaeda linked terrorists. In the case Douma on the very day that the attack occurred, Jaysh al-Islam had negotiated with the Russians an evacuation of Douma. The area is now back in government control, and the inspectors are being invited in. They can actually go to the site and firsthand collect samples and conduct a real investigation. That is, evidently, what the Western powers fear most of all.

G&E Podcast:                     Yeah, indeed. Getting into the meat of the conflict, previously NATO commander Wesley Clark warned us that the Pentagon planned to take out seven Middle Eastern countries, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Yemen are more or less down for the count. Syria and Iran remain. As we speak, U.S. warships and aircraft are currently hovering off the coast of Syria preparing for strikes. What do you think is going to happen, and is Syria part of a larger game between the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran, Russia? What’s going on here?

Jim Jatras:                           I would, in fact, say it’s really not about Syria at all, just like the problem in Ukraine is not really about Ukraine. It is a theater in a much broader conflict. Obviously, with respect to Ukraine the real objective there is Russia, that having a regime change in Ukraine where then we could draw Ukraine into NATO. For example, people will say, “Well, the Russians shouldn’t have seized Crimea.” Maybe they shouldn’t have, but I don’t know what their alternatives were because if they hadn’t you can bet your bottom dollar there would already be a NATO base in Sevastopol.

Jim Jatras:                           As far as Syria goes, it’s not really so much about Syria. It’s about Iran, Iran, Iran, that if you look at the team around Trump, if you look at his first trip overseas, first to Saudi Arabia and then to Israel, who are really calling the shots on America policy. People like me thought we were voting for put America first, not put Saudi Arabia and Israel first, but that’s what we ended up with here. Yes, they see Iran as their regional adversary, and they want the Americans to do their dirty work for them. Given how much influence the Israelis and the Saudis have over the America nomenclature, they have managed to have Trump dancing to their tune.

Jim Jatras:                           Now, maybe he was never anything but a fraud. I don’t know. I think the fact that he keeps saying, “We want to get out of Syria. We want to get along with the Russians,” indicates to me that, at some core, he really wants to do these things consistent with what he said in the past, but for whatever reason he has found himself like a wheel attached to an axle, and all he can do is spin. It’s very, very sad, but I think the fact is is that we are carrying out the wishes of other countries in the region. We don’t have a dog in that fight if you look at our national interest, but, unfortunately, our national interest have very little to do with it. That there are other countries, and, I would say, very powerful interests within the United States that want to make sure that Trump goes down the same dismal road as Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

G&E Podcast:                     He does, indeed, sound like sort of a prisoner, as you say. Maybe that explains why one week he says, “Let’s get out of Syria,” and then they push him to bomb Syria. You wrote another piece where you cited James Mathis declaring that great power competition with Russia and China is now the primary focus of U.S. national security, and that this is a World War I scenario. The Chinese and Russians did not veto the UN authorization for kinetic action in Libya the last time, and neither of these activated a world war scenario. The UN Security Council failed to pass resolution on Syria today, but Nikki Haley has previously stated that, “Come hell or high water the U.S. is going into Damascus.”

G&E Podcast:                     This morning I was watching a Russian TV news segment where they were discussing Russia’s options, all of which are no good. If Russia stands down it basically folds, goes home, and signs its own political and military death sentence, writing itself off from geopolitical games in the Middle East and the world. Even if Russia doesn’t respond, the situation could still spiral into a war. If Russia does respond it could, obviously, escalate quickly. Is Syria the geopolitical red line in this game of empires, and what do you think can happen from here? What can Russia do?

Jim Jatras:                           It largely depends on what the Western powers with our Saudi friends, who, of course, we know are so passionate about democracy and human rights that they will definitely be part of the intervention in Syria as well, assuming it occurs as, I think, is almost certain at this point. It really depends partly on what the magnitude of it is, how many Russians are killed, if any Russians are killed.

Jim Jatras:                           If you listen to the America media, if you watch Fox News on the right, or MSNBC on the left, who are virtually identical on this issue, by the way, if the issue is raised, as it sometimes is, but not often, what happens if some Russians get killed? They tend to respond with kind of almost like a bloodthirsty glee of saying, “Well, if they do, they’ll remember what happened a few weeks ago in the Euphrates when some of their forces or contractors crossed the river there and tangled with the Americans and we slaughtered them in droves. That really bloodied their nose, and they’ll think twice before they do something like that again because they’ll get worse next time.” That’s the kind of mentality we’re dealing with here.

Jim Jatras:                           Now, maybe some of the people in the professional military, I am the son of a career Air Force officer, will be a little more realistic this. When General Gerasimov said that they would respond with a counter attack against the attacking forces in such an eventuality I don’t know he was just blowing smoke. I don’t think he was saying that without authorization, but it does put the Russians in a bind. If they don’t do anything, you’re right, they’re slinking away with their tail between their legs and signing their own geopolitical death warrant.

Jim Jatras:                           Now, maybe they’re saying to themselves at that point, “We know war is coming. War is inevitable.” As Vladimir Putin has said growing up on the mean streets of, in his case, not Saint Petersburg, Leningrad, that if you know you’re going to be in a fight, and it’s inevitable, you strike first, and at a time and place of your choosing. Which is, itself, a very, very scary thought, to think that we could end up in a direct war because the other side decides it’s inevitable, and they strike first in a way that’s most advantageous to them. I hope we don’t get to that stage.

Jim Jatras:                           What they may have decided is if that’s true that they don’t respond in Syria because they’re biding their time strategically. Or, they may decide that we are weak enough now in comparison, or at least within the theater, that they can strike back, bloody our noses back, and then we’re still left with the same strategic standoff, the same balance of terror, but then the ball is in the Americans’ court to see how we’re going to respond. I don’t know. You know that kind of gaming is happening in various people’s minds, but you don’t know what kind of conclusions they’re reaching.

Jim Jatras:                           One of the fears I have is that if we attack Syria, kill a bunch of Russians, and then they do respond, and then kill some Americans, the hue and cry in this country will be deafening, “The Russians are killing Americans.” Nobody will say, “Yeah, but didn’t we kill some of them first?” Because that won’t matter because we are, let’s say, very cheap with the blood and lives of people in other countries, but anybody who impugns anybody on our side, well, they’ve done something bad to Americans, so that’s a different scale of values entirely.

G&E Podcast:                     That’s the American exceptionalism. What of international law? Now we’re seeing false flag operations, basically, openly being carried out. The UK handling of the Skripal affair was a violation of international law and protocol. The U.S. breeches of UN protocol in the past with Nicaragua, the case in the 80s, Nikki Haley now saying, “Even without a UN resolution we’ll go in.” What’s happened to international law?

Jim Jatras:                           It is not a factor at all. Just as the U.S. Constitution is no longer a factor here domestically, the international legal system and the UN charter is simply not a factor. That’s why, by the way, you start getting suggestions from various quarters that the single country veto of the permanent members has to be dispensed with, or at least Russia’s veto has to be dispensed with, has to find a way to circumvent it. You hear this all the time. For example, even in 1999 when the attack was launched against Yugoslavia about Kosovo you heard people say, “Well, we couldn’t get it through the Security Council, so we decided to work through NATO instead.” As though NATO is a legal equivalent of the Security Council and confers any legitimacy on it. We have simply lost the language. If you listen to any of the discussion on the floor of the Congress or anywhere in the America media, you very rarely will hear anybody say, “Gosh, is this legal?” Even under America law they don’t even raise the question of whether it’s legal, much less under international law. It’s simply not a factor.

Jim Jatras:                           You mentioned exceptionalism. Look, exceptionalism means different things to different people, depending on the discussion. I think America is exceptional in some ways. It’s exceptional in the way every country is exceptional. It’s my country. You have your country. He or she has his or her country. There’s only one country for each of us, and it’s unique in that way. We also, I think, have a decent American exceptionalism in the sense that the ideals of the America Revolution, that people should govern themselves, their rights should be respected, they should be able to be governed with their consent. I think that was unique and exceptional in world history, and was an inspiration to many people around the globe.

Jim Jatras:                           What I don’t think anybody should respect is this kind of exceptionalism of extraordinary privilege where we can do things that violate the sovereignty of other countries, violate the solemn treaty obligations that we have signed, and that serve as protections for us as well as for other countries, and say, “It’s okay because it’s us.” I would say that’s the kind of exceptionalism of Bolshevism. In fact, what’s his name, what’s his name, Mr. Larov, whom I greatly respect, said in 2007 that America policy is reminiscent of the experience of Bolshevism and Trotskyism, that we are the vanguard of all progressive humanity. We can do what we please because history is on our side. In fact, you hear this phrase all the time, that the Russians are on the wrong side of history. What are we? We all a bunch of Marxist or something? Who invented this stuff? Now, I almost feel sometimes when you look at the way Russia is that it took 75 years, but the whites finally won the Civil War, but, unfortunately, the reds control Washington and London.

G&E Podcast:                     I would completely agree with you. I personally espouse the original exceptional America values, although I have a problem because I have three citizenships now.

Jim Jatras:                           What’s your third one?

G&E Podcast:                     Croatian and Mexican now. I just got-

Jim Jatras:                           Mexican, I forgot Mexican. We’ll have to build a wall to keep you out.

G&E Podcast:                     I was referring to Putin’s opinion piece in the New York Times that he wrote in 2013, if you recall-

Jim Jatras:                           Yeah.

G&E Podcast:                     … about this problem of the American exceptionalism. Finally, what about the information and media war? I’ve spent two years in my spare time building up this channel, and it’s moving along. Now we’re seeing independent media being completely shutdown almost on a weekly basis. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google are literally terminating accounts. You’re a frequent guest on Russia Today and other news media. Russia Today America has just been kicked out of Washington D.C. last week. It seems the censorship is intensifying, and reminiscent of Nazi Germany or Soviet Union. What’s your take on the media situation?

Jim Jatras:                           In 2016, I published a paper called “How American Media Serves as a Transmission Belt for Wars of Choice”. It got into all the issues of the Deep State and atrocity porn and how the media served as like a, I wouldn’t even say a servant, but as an integral part of the ruling establishment, and used these visuals to justify these aggressive policies. That what I hoped would be new, it’s not really the existence of foreign outlets like RT or Press TV or any of the others, Al Jazeera, that give us another point of view, but the existence of the internet and all the alternative media, which operate, in a sense, kind of the that Samizdat did in the Soviet Union and other communists countries.

Jim Jatras:                           The problem is is that even though the truth may be out there against the propaganda campaign, it doesn’t become realized until the media itself acknowledge it or pick it up. You end up with this sort of two-tier reality where the media report everything that the government says, and then you have the other media coming from the outside or within the alternative media, and that, unless it’s reported in the official media, is conspiracy theories. The truth is out there, but as you’re right, what they’re trying to do is progressively police it.

Jim Jatras:                           We’re finding now not only shutting down things like RT, but also I noticed also here in Washington they dropped CGTM, the Chinese station. That, as far as the alternative media goes, social media goes, we are seeing a lot of pressure to police the media for not only Russian bots, but for hate speech. Basically, the official ideology will become the judge of what is fake news, what is real news, what is healthy debate versus illegitimate speech like “hate speech”.

Jim Jatras:                           Yes, I think that the organs of official media are working together with the authorities to shut down these alternatives, and also to cast dispersions on the personalities and integrity of the people who appear on them, like yours truly, where you’re made out to be the equivalent of Lord Haw-Haw and Tokyo Rose during World War II. I fear that the event of hostilities, that that becomes something that is actionable from a legal point of view once the time comes.

G&E Podcast:                     So you’re saying you’re not a Russian agent.

Jim Jatras:                           No, I’m not a Russian agent. I have this crazy idea I’m an American agent. Back in the old days when I worked with the Senate after my State Department years we used to say, as conservatives, “You know what we really need at the State Department is an American interest section.” Especially for those on the conservative side of the spectrum who want to preserve what’s left of the American nation and thought that Trump was our friend by saying he wanted to make America great again, preserve our national and cultural identity, if he goes into Syria or he does go down this road I think it would be something close to the ultimate betrayal.

G&E Podcast:                     Any final comment or thought to leave us with?

Jim Jatras:                           Despite everything, I try to be an optimist. I look at the fact that, look, in 1917 and through the civil war in Russia, through everything that then ensued, I’m sure a lot of people despaired that their country could ever be itself again, but it turned out it did. I think it’s something close to a miracle, maybe it is a certifiable miracle in that respect. I don’t know that we will be that lucky in our country, especially given the fact that this could unfold in the context of a global war. Somebody asked me, “Are you talking about the first Word War?” I said, “No, this could be the last world war,” that if this goes terribly, terribly wrong we may never get a chance to recover our country, even through an improbable or circuitous path that may last over several years or even decades.

Jim Jatras:                           I want to believe that something good will all come out of it, but right now things are looking very, very bad. I looked at Trump’s election as kind of the last gasp or the last chance for our country to rescue itself from the direction it had been going. I spell this out in that 2016 study that I mentioned. If it goes wrong I don’t think we get another chance, not in a way that is foreseeable to us right now.

G&E Podcast:                     All right, it’s tough these days to keep an independent opinion, and we do hope you continue your important work and analysis, Mr. Jatras.

Jim Jatras:                           Thank you.

G&E Podcast:                     I will post the links. You’re on Twitter. Your website’s JimJatras.info. Thank you again for this interview.

Jim Jatras:                           Thank you, Mr. Moric.