Former CIA Analyst: Sarkozy Can Say ‘I Told You So’ on Ukraine This Winter as Europeans Freeze
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A former top US intel analyst told Sputnik that while those in the Western halls of power might object to Sarkozy’s frank assessment of their proxy war in Ukraine, soon the wisdom of his words would be proven as they are forced to choose between peaceful coexistence with Russia or supplying Kiev with tactical nuclear weapons as Europeans freeze.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently attracted ire from Western ideologues for pointing out that Europe and Russia will have to live together after the present conflict in Ukraine is over and that the only way to end that conflict is to recognize that Moscow has legitimate security concerns and red lines.
Radio Sputnik spoke about the situation with Ray McGovern, who served as a CIA analyst for 27 years, during which his duties included chairing the National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President's Daily Brief. In January of 2003, he co-created Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
“ I think he's a little late to the party talking about that, but better late than never. You'll recall that what [former US Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld called pejoratively ‘Old Europe’, like France and Germany, they wouldn't cooperate with the attack on Iraq because they didn't believe there were any weapons of mass destruction there. Can you believe that? Well, it turns out they had it right. So ‘Old Europe’ may come to the fore again. And Sarkozy is just the first hint of this,” he told The Critical Hour hosts Garland Nixon and Wilmer Leon.
“It's going to be a very long, cold winter in Europe, ‘Old Europe’, as well as ‘New Europe’ - the New Europe being Poland - all the ones that are militating for a real, real battle with Russia, the Baltic states, for example. And when people kind of realize because they feel cold - in other words, they feel something physical to all this - they're going to ask: ‘well, why is it that we don't have cheap Russian gas anymore?’ ‘Why is it that the sanctions are hurting us more than they're hurting the Russians?’ ‘Why is it that we can't even sell much to Russia anymore?’ They're going to ask these questions, and Sarkozy is going to be the wise man. He's going to say, ‘well, I told you so’, and maybe, just maybe, these politicians that are really pretty, pretty unknowledgeable - political hacks is what we're going to call them - that are now in charge in Berlin and in Paris, may be on their way out,” McGovern said. “I think that may happen as soon as it gets cold.”
25 August 2023, 13:19 GMT
“Truth be told, Ukraine can't last another week without extensive US financial support. Congress is beginning to wake up now. It's going to be an election year. There are strict limits as to how much more support Congress is going to appropriate for Ukraine. Isn’t $115 billion enough? And what did it buy? A bunch of destroyed Western equipment and an offensive that petered out - the celebrated counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces. It's going to come to a hard reality in the West. And you know, just as with Vietnam - just as with Nicaragua, for God's sake - once the Congress wakes up and listens to the people and then the people say, ‘well, you know, couldn't this money, couldn't these billions be spent to help our schools, to pay our teachers, to keep people out of poverty?’ That's going to be an election-year issue. So I don't think Zelensky is very long for this world or it remains to be seen how they get rid of him,” McGovern said.
The former CIA analyst turned to a particular statement by Sarkozy in which he said that the two sides should engage in discussion “to see at least if we can get out of it other than by annihilating either Ukraine or Russia.”
McGovern called it a “poor choice of words,” but noted that doing just that has always been the goal of Western support for Ukraine since the 2014 Euromaidan coup that brought the present ultra-nationalist government into power.
“He or she who would annihilate Russia will be in turn, quickly annihilated,” McGovern pointed out. “So there is a degree of unreality here. Now, you're quite right in pointing out that by stressing the Russian aspect of this thing, it all comes home to roost. And you don't have to look any farther than that our defense secretary [Lloyd] Austin remarked several months ago that the name of the game here is to weaken Russia. As a matter of fact, what he said was, ‘we're going to move heaven and earth to weaken Russia through this.’”
“And now we have other people saying, ‘yeah, well, the Ukrainians still have some young kids and some old guys like me, we’ll throw them into battle and see what happens’. That's awfully cynical. And worse still, we have headlines that are saying, ‘you know, it looks like the Ukrainians are getting a little cowardly, they're showing casualty averseness, they are averse to casualties’. My God. I mean, is it 300,000, conservatively estimated? Isn't that enough? There have got to be more casualties? You know, they're proving the truth of the early adage that ‘we're going to fight this thing till the last Ukrainian,’” McGovern said.
19 August 2023, 01:06 GMT
The hosts asked McGovern about a recent article in which he suggested that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan might resort to “mini-nukes” like the low-yield tactical nuclear warheads the US has developed in recent years if all other attempts to defeat Russia by arming Ukraine with conventional weapons fail.
“What we have here is a really ridiculous situation where they decided on [giving Ukraine] cluster bombs. My God, 111 countries in this world came out against cluster bombs many years ago. So what's next? Nukes? No. Mini-nukes? Would Sullivan and Blinken and [Undersecretary of State Victoria] Nuland opt for mini-nukes rather than to lose?”
“My point here is they have a personal stake in this. And that is that the election is coming up, and there's a lot of evidence that not only Hunter Biden, but his dad too, were deep into bribery and graft. Okay. Blinken started this campaign where 51 intelligence managers said, ‘[the story about] Hunter's laptop smells of Russian disinformation. All the earmarks of a Russian [op]’. Okay, so who did that? Blinken did that and it's provable. Now, how about Sullivan? He’s responsible for the whole Russiagate thing. In other words: the DNC hack? There was none - and it's provable now by sworn testimony. So all four of these guys have to worry about,” McGovern said, suggesting an incoming Republican administration might seek to prosecute them.
“Now, this is not something I joke about. This is a real personal thing now. These guys have a personal incentive to make sure they don't lose so badly in Ukraine that they lose the election and suffer the fate of what I think an incoming Republican president, whatever his name is, will wage on them.”
22 August 2023, 03:12 GMT
McGovern noted that there are some speculation and rumors that one reason Biden has pushed so hard to keep Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government alive is that Kiev has some kind of damning dirt on the Bidens, especially concerning Hunter’s time on the board of Burisma, a gas company that did business in Ukraine and which was investigated by the Ukrainian government.
“I certainly wouldn't rule it out. I mean, unless they burned all the information as soon as Zelensky came in, the records on Burisma and all that skullduggery that was going on there, they must indicate what our Congress is now unveiling. And that is, you know, all kinds of bribery took place. And, you know, you don't give a guy like Hunter Biden a job on the board of Burisma and pay millions of dollars unless you're getting something for it.”
