We Must Mobilize the World To Stop the War Drive / Richard Sakwa
This is the edited transcript of an exclusive interview with Prof. Richard Sakwa, conducted for EIR and the Schiller Institute by Mike Billington, Feb. 20, 2023. Prof. Sakwa is a Russia scholar and prolific writer who has written extensively on Russia, Ukraine, and world affairs. Subheads and embedded links have been added.
Mike Billington: Hi, Professor Richard Sakwa! This is the second time we’ve had the opportunity to interview you. In the course of this interview, we’ll be mentioning several of the books that you’ve written over the years.
Until recently you were a Professor of Russian and European Politics and then Head of the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. You are now retired and devoting your time to writing, which we’ll discuss in the context of the interview. Do you want to say anything else about your history?
Prof. Richard Sakwa: No, that’s the main thing in many ways. But just to say that, yes, I focused on Russian politics, but by force of necessity, over the last decade or so, I’ve been working on international politics and international affairs bouncing between Russia and international affairs, given the developments in world politics. In my view, you couldn’t understand one in many ways without the other. So that’s the only gloss I’d add to what you said.
The Real Story of the Ukraine Government Since 2014
Billington: Professor Sakwa, you became very well known most recently with the publication of a book called Frontline Ukraine, published just months after the 2014 coup against the elected government in Ukraine, the Maidan color revolution. Your book played a significant role in exposing the fake news about the so called “heroic democratic people’s revolt,” which is still the myth peddled in the West about what the Ukraine government is, which was actually imposed on the country by the Obama administration, with Vice President Joe Biden and State Department official Victoria Nuland leading the way. These two are in fact still running Ukraine policy, now from within the Biden administration.
In your view, sir, what is the real story of the Ukraine government since the 2014 Maidan coup?
Prof. Sakwa: There’s two things to say. First, the actual events of from 2013 into 2014, which ended up with a change of regime in February 2014. I think a lot of evidence has come out, even more than when I first finally revised the book, 2015-2016, about the actual events on the Maidan. Excellent scholars— Ivan Katchanovski, Gordon Hahn, and others—have forensically identified the actual sequence of events, including the shooting in the days up to the 20th, 21st of February that year. They demonstrated that the shooting came from parts of the square and buildings around it which were occupied by the demonstrators, the insurgents, call them what you like. In other words, it was a type of “false flag” event, and that’s quite enormous.
We have not only the evidence of these scholars, but also the fact that the Ukrainian government has not proceeded in all these years, even before the war, with prosecutions about who was responsible amongst the Berkut [Ukrainian Special Police] allegedly. That is implicit evidence, to say that these scholars who argue that it was a false flag are correct.
When Vladimir Putin was asked by BBC’s David Frost, March 5, 2000, “Can Russia join NATO?” Putin replied: “And why not?”
This doesn’t deny the fact that the Maidan itself was a complex event. Many layers were involved, and one of them, which one has to give recognition to, was the aspiration for a cleaner and better government, one which I fully endorse. I don’t think that was a way of going about it, but it was certainly that aspiration and need, because then and, of course, before the war, Ukraine had become the poorest country in Europe. The standards of living—perhaps the figures don’t reflect the reality, but nevertheless its GDP per capita was remarkably low. That’s the first thing to say, that it was a complex event. I think that the Western vision of the “Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity” presents a distorted picture of what happened.
Second, what did happen was that the balance within Ukraine shifted dramatically. I don’t know whether you’ve had a chance to look at a book by Nicolai Petro called The Tragedy of Ukraine. He puts it, building on and developing our work, [in terms of] the division within Ukraine between, on the one side, the Galician nationalist vision of Ukrainian development, compared to what he calls the Maloros [“Little Russian”] vision. That is the Russophone vision—a multicultural, inclusive, tolerant, generous vision. Yes, I will accept that the Galician version, at times, at best, does have a civic vision of Ukraine developing, but it’s always based on exclusion, partiality, division, whereas the Maloros idea, at best, is just to take pride in the character of the Ukrainian state, made up of many different parts, different peoples. I’ve always argued that this vision, a pluralistic vision of a multicultural, multi-dimensional Ukraine, including in foreign policy, would have been far better.
Since 2014, we’ve had a single, one dimensional… The Galicians won, and they’ve been consolidating their victory ever since. It’s been a catastrophe for Ukraine, for Europe, for Russia and the world.
Who is Vladimir Putin and What Does He Want?
Billington: You’ve written several books on Vladimir Putin personally. He is now portrayed in the West as the epitome of evil and the head of a dictatorial government committed to reviving the Soviet Union. Who is the real character of the man, and what does Putin aspire to?
Prof. Sakwa: I think he is a complex political phenomenon. But I will immediately argue that the idea that Putin is intent today on re-establishing some sort of Soviet empire is completely mistaken. My understanding of this war—and I’m willing to openly debate many aspects of it—is that it was provoked by an intensifying security dilemma. It’s been one which was already identified by Gorbachov and then Yeltsin in the 1990s— the expanding NATO is only one part of it—but an expansive political West against Russia.
Putin himself began as perhaps the most pro-Western leader Russia has ever had. Some of your viewers and listeners may have watched a marvelous video by Vladimir Pozner. He was a very well-known broadcaster in the late Soviet years, during perestroika. This was in his speech to Yale University in 2018, “How the United States Created Vladimir Putin,” in which he argues that this pro-Western person who understood the security dilemma of NATO’s enlargement…. In a famous interview with David Frost, Putin was asked, in the year 2000: Can Russia join NATO? And Putin said, “And why not?”—the idea being that if NATO enlarges, there would inevitably be, sooner or later, a new type of iron curtain between its leading edge and those excluded, obviously, Russia itself. So, Putin has a complex political mentality.
I will say that since 2012, when Putin came back for the third term, domestic politics has clearly taken quite a sharp authoritarian turn. In part this was provoked by the growing complexity and contradictions with the political West, but not entirely. In fact, the two fed on each other: the political West expanding, Russia becoming more authoritarian. It led to what I argue, certainly in the political West, is a hermetic type of politics closure. The inability to listen—not even any more talking about empathy, let alone sympathy—but an inability to listen to the concerns of others.
You don’t even necessarily have to agree with Russia’s view that NATO enlargement was a danger. I think it was perceived as a threat. And as any realist scholar of international politics will say, it’s perceptions that matter as much as fact.
I also think that in factual terms, there was an implicit threat. In other words, Moscow has to be responsible for its own actions. But for us as scholars and as observers, it’s the situation which we analyze, neither to endorse nor to condemn, but to understand how we got into this extraordinary mess and how we basically forced or made Putin into an enemy where he could have been a good ally and a good friend.
What Is the Character of the Russia-China Relationship?
Billington: The greatest fear amongst the AngloAmerican oligarchy is that Russia and China will fully join forces and, as they often say, take away the nations of the Global South “from us.” Their view is that these countries belong “to us”—the former colonies are again being treated as colonies.
What is the character of the growing cooperation between Russia and China? And what do you see as the role of the Belt and Road Initiative within that cooperation?
Prof. Sakwa: Well, certainly to start with, the Belt and Road Initiative: Already, some $100 billion has been dedicated to it in various schemes. It’s a transformative vision of development, of global development with China at the center. Of course, these things have a geopolitical edge to them, but above all it’s a sign of China becoming a mature power and with the resources to provide development aid to the rest of the world.
Some of it may have been ill advised investments, like the ports in Sri Lanka. But above all, I think much Western criticism of “debt trap diplomacy” is way off. It’s potentially a huge boon to development, global development, to alleviate poverty, to support education, and so on.
But of course, it’s embedded in that larger dysfunction, which is, we are seeing the emergence of a new pattern in global politics. On the one side, we have—I use this term, the “political West.” I don’t mean the cultural West, the West with its roots back in Greece, in Greek tragedy even, Greek culture, Roman law and Christendom and so on; or even the civilizational West, which is that 500 years of Western colonialism, imperialism, occupation in Latin America, North America, etc. The political West is a function, a political body, a political entity that took shape during the Cold War. It’s the Trumanite state. It’s militaristic; it’s expansionist; it’s hermetic. As I said, it cannot listen to views from outside. There’s plenty of good things in it—you could say Wilsonian idealism at its best—but at its worst, we’ve seen a succession of wars from Vietnam onwards, and earlier interventions.
This political West is now balanced by what we could see as the embryonic emergence of a “political East,” that is, Russia and China together, also certain allies in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, also the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. There are tensions between them all, yet this political East is beginning to emerge not simply as the analog of the political West. That’s quite important, because the political East precisely repudiates the “bloc” politics, the militarism and so on of the political West. It offers with the Belt and Road Initiative and the like, an alternative model of global politics.
“The political East is informed by certain fundamental principles—including the Bandung Declaration of 1955.” Pictured: The Asian-African Conference in session in Bandung, Indonesia, April 24, 1955.
I’m not saying that the political East is without blemish and without sin, but I am saying that potentially within the framework of the political East, which includes for example, certain fundamental principles—I have in mind the Bandung Declaration of 1955 as developed in 1960 with the Non-Aligned Movement. It also has a strong developmental edge. Again, we don’t have to fully buy into [everything]. Some of the slogans— “win-win,” the “community of common destiny,”— these Chinese foreign policy slogans, I think they are important; I think they do mean something. They offer an alternative to that political West. It’s not simply a question of authoritarianism versus democracy.
Another principle in the political East is the ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) tradition of non-bloc politics, of sovereign internationalism: “Sovereignty will develop in our own pace, our own way, but we’re internationalists at the same time”—as opposed to the political West, which is developing what I nowadays call a type of “democratic internationalism”—the view that if you’re not a democracy, you are an outsider. And at worst, you are ready for regime change.
Now, I’ll condemn many of the authoritarian systems across the world, but I think that the way to work with them is within the framework of the UN Charter, as I think we talked about in our earlier interview, that Joint Statement of February 4, 2021, where Russia and China vigorously restated the fundamental principlesof the Charter international system, of the UN system, and the centrality of the UN. Now that’s the political East and the political West.
There’s also the Global South, which of course is now becoming a subject, as you suggested, for struggle between the two emerging “entities.” I won’t call them blocs because the political East isn’t quite analogous to the political West, yet there is a tussle. We see it with the strong-arm tactics by the U.S. in voting patterns in the UN, in international organizations and even the OSCE (the Organization for Security and Economic Cooperation in Europe), which of course is a European body, but we see it everywhere. So that, in my view, is the big picture at the moment.
Why a World War Aimed at Russia and China?
Billington: You published another book in 2021 titled Deception: Russiagate and the New Cold War, which appears to be about the so-called political West, using your term. Our EIR has published extensively on the role of British and American intelligence in setting up the lies about Russian subversion of the U.S. elections and of their control over Donald Trump.
What was your conclusion and what was the “deception” that you refer to, and how do you think this contributed to the extreme danger of not just the new Cold War, but a full-scale new U.S./NATO world war against Russia and China today?
Prof. Sakwa: I think EIR is absolutely spot on in identifying Russiagate for those two elements you mentioned. First, that it was a massive act of deception. There’s been no evidence—in fact, it is more and more that we understand and have more data, we can see that, for example, Trump did not collude with Putin. There’s no evidence to this day, any proof that Russia was responsible for the hack of the Democratic National Cancilleria del Ecuador/David G. Silvers WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange: Russia didn’t hack the DNC computers. 24 China-Iran-Saudi Arabia: A Renaissance for Diplomacy EIR March 17, 2023 Committee; that the goal of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange and all of that was literally as publisher. And Assange himself says it wasn’t the Russians who gave it to him or an intermediary. The Christopher Steele dossier has been demonstrated to be completely false, both in its form and in its sources. The [George] Papadopoulos case, which EIR and your colleagues have looked at quite intensively.
So, it’s quite clear it was a massive act of deception. But this wasn’t just a deception on the American people. What it’s actually done is poisoned and stymied and closed opportunities to shift out of the Cold War mentality. And in fact, it intensified it. The first result, of course, of Russiagate was that it constrained Trump’s opportunity for diplomatic maneuver, and in fact, he had to prove how tough he was against Russia. Of course, he did that, upping offensive arms sales to Ukraine and all the rest.
“Many of the actors involved in the Russiagate deception are also involved in the anti-diplomacy which led to the war” in Ukraine. Here, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan leads the pack, followed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, at the U.S. State Department, Feb. 8, 2023.
So, Russiagate is still the underlying refrain which got us into this war. It was the Democratic Party, quite explicitly. Interestingly, many of the actors involved in that Russiagate deception are also involved in the antidiplomacy which has led to this war. Above all, Jake Sullivan, Biden himself, and Victoria Nuland. Jake Sullivan, in particular, was quite explicit in propounding the Russiagate falsehoods as a way, an instrument, of beating Trump, forcing him back into his corner and quite explicitly used this as a political tool, hopefully to the Democrats’ advantage. But what it has done, it has shown that particular elite constellation at the top of the Democratic Party today was so vested in militarism and NATO enlargement that once they took office, despite the talk of trying to balance relations and indeed much talk about focusing on China rather than Russia, the Russiagate legacy blends directly into this war.
What Is Required To Break Through the Media Control?
Billington: On the war, the greater war in the making, which is now openly discussed everywhere, I think there is finally emerging a realization of the danger of a global war, potentially nuclear war. The Washington, D.C. event yesterday [Feb. 19]—I hope you had a chance to watch some of what took place at the Lincoln Memorial yesterday on the “Rage Against the War Machine”—demonstrates the emergence of a peace orientation, and more important even than the pro-peace orientation is the explicit denunciation of the right versus left, blue versus red, the divisions that are the core used by the oligarchy, keeping the population quarreling among itself rather than uniting against either the economic disintegration that’s taking place across the Western world nor against these wars, and especially the potential of a full scale nuclear war.
This event yesterday had several thousand people and thousands more watching online. Several similar events are planned for next weekend across Europe, in Germany and France. And then you have the UK. Now, the UK, as everybody knows, is now watching strike after strike, almost the whole population is revolting against the extreme inflationary destruction of the standard of living across the country. How much popular opposition like we saw yesterday do you believe is required in order to break through the media control in shaping the acceptance of this division of the world into warring blocs? What’s required?
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