Okay so

 

today we are going to get into the first interview that Politico magazine did with Fiona Hill, just a few days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. if you want to read the first piece I did on the later interview that magazine did with her it's located here.

(It's a lil confusing but the later interview was the one I did a piece on first, the earlier interview conducted just a few days after the invasion and that is the one we are going to look at today.

Again, as I said in the first piece, "Of all the "talking heads" asserting that they are "experts on Russia, The Kremlin, Putin etc"? I like her the most, even though I disagree with her on a few points. The first interview was long, (as is this one) excerpts and my comments (in parentheses) follow:

‘Yes, He Would’: Fiona Hill on Putin and Nukes

"Putin is trying to take down the entire world order, the veteran Russia watcher said in an interview. But there are ways even ordinary Americans can fight back."

"For many people, watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine has felt like a series of “He can’t be doing this” moments. Russia’s Vladimir Putin has launched the largest ground war in Europe since the Second World War. It is, quite literally, mind-boggling."

(The same people that told you he wouldn't invade are the same ones who think he wouldn't use nukes, they were wrong then and they are wrong now.)

"That’s why I reached out to Fiona Hill, one of America’s most clear-eyed Russia experts, someone who has studied Putin for decades, worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations and has a reputation for truth-telling..."

"Hill spent many years studying history, and in our conversation, she repeatedly traced how long arcs and trends of European history are converging on Ukraine right now. We are already, she said, in the middle of a third World War, whether we’ve fully grasped it or not."

(That was Feb 28th and people including those in power still haven't been able to come to terms with what is being played out in front of them.)

“Sadly, we are treading back through old historical patterns that we said that we would never permit to happen again,” Hill told me."

"Those old historical patterns include Western businesses who fail to see how they help build a tyrant’s war chest, admirers enamored of an autocrat’s “strength” and politicians’ tendency to point fingers inward for political gain instead of working together for their nation’s security."

(100% agree with all of that except, "Western businesses who fail to see how they help build a tyrant’s war chest", they knew but in their collective greed? They just dont care.).

“Ukraine has become the front line in a struggle, not just between democracies and autocracies but in a struggle for maintaining a rules-based system in which the things that countries want are not taken by force,” Hill said. “Every country in the world should be paying close attention to this.”

(So Sadam Hussein should have been able to sell Iraqi oil for Euro's instead of $'s then right?)

“Every time you think, ’No, he wouldn’t, would he?’ Well, yes, he would,” Hill said. “And he wants us to know that, of course. It’s not that we should be intimidated and scared…. We have to prepare for those contingencies and figure out what is it that we’re going to do to head them off.”

(Exactly.)

"The pretext (for the invasion) is completely flimsy and almost nonsensical for anybody who’s not in the echo chamber or the bubble of propaganda in Russia itself."

(Kinda echos our pretext w/Iraq 2.0 dont ya think?)

"Putin doesn’t even seem like he’s trying to make a convincing case. We saw the same thing in the Russian response at the United Nations. The justification has essentially been “what-about-ism”: ‘You guys have been invading Iraq, Afghanistan. Don’t tell me that I can’t do the same thing in Ukraine.”

(That is 100% correct and it's exactly the point he is making to the rest of the world. Remember, the # of countries that have condemned his invasion are fewer than the ones who havent. The world needs what Russia has, oil gas minerals etc, it's just a fact and Putin knows it and knew it b4 the invasion.)

"Reynolds: So Putin is being driven by emotion right now, not by some kind of logical plan?

Hill: I think there’s been a logical, methodical plan that goes back a very long way, at least to 2007 when he put the world, and certainly Europe, on notice that Moscow would not accept the further expansion of NATO. And then within a year in 2008 NATO gave an open door to Georgia and Ukraine. It absolutely goes back to that juncture.

"Back then I was a national intelligence officer, and the National Intelligence Council was analyzing what Russia was likely to do in response to the NATO Open Door declaration. One of our assessments was that there was a real, genuine risk of some kind of preemptive Russian military action, not just confined to the annexation of Crimea, but some much larger action taken against Ukraine along with Georgia. And of course, four months after NATO’s Bucharest Summit, there was the invasion of Georgia. There wasn’t an invasion of Ukraine then because the Ukrainian government pulled back from seeking NATO membership. But we should have seriously addressed how we were going to deal with this potential outcome and our relations with Russia."

(Yeah, we should have cause we sure weren't ready for this.)

"He’s said, (Putin) repeatedly, that Russian and European borders have changed many times. And in his speeches, he’s gone after various former Russian and Soviet leaders, he’s gone after Lenin and he’s gone after the communists, because in his view they ruptured the Russian empire, they lost Russian lands in the revolution, and yes, Stalin brought some of them back into the fold again like the Baltic States and some of the lands of Ukraine that had been divided up during World War II, but they were lost again with the dissolution of the USSR. Putin’s view is that borders change, and so the borders of the old Russian imperium are still in play for Moscow to dominate now."

(I've published things on here about Ukraine's changing borders over the years as well, the fact is they see their world differently than we see ours.)

"Reynolds: Dominance in what way?

Hill: It doesn’t mean that he’s going to annex all of them and make them part of the Russian Federation like they’ve done with Crimea. You can establish dominance by marginalizing regional countries, by making sure that their leaders are completely dependent on Moscow, either by Moscow practically appointing them through rigged elections or ensuring they are tethered to Russian economic and political and security networks. You can see this now across the former Soviet space."

"We’ve seen pressure being put on Kazakhstan to reorient itself back toward Russia, instead of balancing between Russia and China, and the West. And just a couple of days before the invasion of Ukraine in a little-noticed act, Azerbaijan signed a bilateral military agreement with Russia. This is significant because Azerbaijan’s leader has been resisting this for decades. And we can also see that Russia has made itself the final arbiter of the future relationship between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Georgia has also been marginalized after being a thorn in Russia’s side for decades. And Belarus is now completely subjugated by Moscow."

"But amid all this, Ukraine was the country that got away. And what Putin is saying now is that Ukraine doesn’t belong to Ukrainians. It belongs to him and the past. He is going to wipe Ukraine off the map, literally, because it doesn’t belong on his map of the “Russian world.” He’s basically told us that. He might leave behind some rump statelets. When we look at old maps of Europe — probably the maps he’s been looking at — you find all kinds of strange entities, like the Sanjak of Novi Pazar in the Balkans. I used to think, what the hell is that? These are all little places that have dependency on a bigger power and were created to prevent the formation of larger viable states in contested regions. Basically, if Vladimir Putin has his way, Ukraine is not going to exist as the modern-day Ukraine of the last 30 years."

(Thats a lil chilling considering the fact that we have told Ukraine recently it might want to consider negotiations with him.)

"Reynolds: How far into Ukraine do you think Putin is going to go?

Hill: At this juncture, if he can, he’s going to go all the way. Before this last week, he had multiple different options to choose from. He’d given himself the option of being able to go in in full force as he’s doing now..."

(He was always going to go, 'all in" and we have yet to see "full force" even with the latest sets of missile barrages.)

"Now, if he can, he is going to take the whole country. We have to face up to this fact. Although we haven’t seen the full Russian invasion force deployed yet, he’s certainly got the troops to move into the whole country."

(This is why I like her, "Although we haven’t seen the full Russian invasion force deployed yet..." find you another analyst that has said that, and I might add, we still haven't seen  "the full Russian invasion force deployed yet." Keep in mind this interview was conducted on Feb 24th, 4 days after the invasion.")

"Reynolds: You say he has an adequate number of troops to move in, but does he have enough to occupy the whole country?

Hill: If there is serious resistance, he may not have sufficient force to take the country for a protracted period. It also may be that he doesn’t want to occupy the whole country, that he wants to break it up, maybe annex some parts of it, maybe leave some of it as rump statelets or a larger rump Ukraine somewhere, maybe around Lviv. I’m not saying that I know exactly what’s going on in his head. And he may even suggest other parts of Ukraine get absorbed by adjacent countries."

(He will end up taking the whole country as we turn toward the pacific, but taking the whole country ASAP was never in his calculus. Keeping food and energy prices high when there is already systemic inflation in the Collective West, as well as depleting our weapons/munitions, and spending $ he knows we dont have all exacerbate all of our own problems internally. It's assisting an internal collapse that has already been under way for some time. What would we do if we were him? Sit around and wait for our adversary to get stronger? And then make our move? Or help our adversary strangle itself to death that it was already in the throws of?)

"Reynolds: So step by step, in ways that we haven’t always appreciated in the West, Putin has brought back a lot of these countries that were independent after the Soviet collapse back under his umbrella. The only country that has so far evaded Putin’s grip has been Ukraine."

"Hill: Ukraine, correct. Because it’s bigger and because of its strategic location. That’s what Russia wants to ensure, or Putin wants to ensure, that Ukraine like the other countries, has no other option than subjugation to Russia."

"Hill: It may not just be the presidential calendar, the electoral calendar. He’s (Putin) going to be 70 in October. And 70 you know, in the larger scheme of things, is not that old. There are plenty of politicians out there that are way over 70.

Reynolds: But it’s old for Russians.

Hill: It’s old for Russians. And Putin’s not looking so great, he’s been rather puffy-faced. We know that he has complained about having back issues. Even if it’s not something worse than that, it could be that he’s taking high doses of steroids, or there may be something else. There seems to be an urgency for this that may be also driven by personal factors."

("Or there might be something else." Dick Cheney, former US VP stated "He's cold, calculating, almost like a machine." Dont even get me started, another subject for a different day.)

"Reynolds: What have we learned about NATO in the last two months?"

(Remember this was published on Feb 28th of this year.)

Hill: In many respects, not good things, initially. Although now we see a significant rallying of the political and diplomatic forces, serious consultations and a spur to action in response to bolster NATO’s military defenses."

"But we also need to think about it this way. We have had a long-term policy failure going back to the end of the Cold War in terms of thinking about how to manage NATO’s relations with Russia to minimize risk. NATO is a like a massive insurer, a protector of national security for Europe and the United States. After the end of the Cold War, we still thought that we had the best insurance for the hazards we could face — flood, fire etc. — but for a discounted premium. We didn’t take adequate steps to address and reduce the various risks. We can now see that that we didn’t do our due diligence and fully consider all the possible contingencies, including how we would mitigate Russia’s negative response to successive expansions. Think about Swiss Re or AIG or Lloyds of London — when the hazard was massive, like during Hurricane Katrina or the global financial crisis in 2008, those insurance companies got into major trouble. They and their clients found themselves underwater. And this is kind of what NATO members are learning now.

("we didn’t do our due diligence and fully consider all the possible contingencies, including how we would mitigate Russia’s negative response to successive expansions." Somebody keeps saying that we overextended our security agreements. Who is that?)

"Reynolds: And then there’s the nuclear element. Many people have thought that we’d never see a large ground war in Europe or a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia, because it could quickly escalate into a nuclear conflict. How close are we getting to that?

Hill: Well, we’re right there. Basically, what President Putin has said quite explicitly in recent days is that if anybody interferes in Ukraine, they will be met with a response that they’ve “never had in [their] history.” And he has put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert. So he’s making it very clear that nuclear is on the table."

(Somebody keeps saying he was all in from the start.)

"Putin tried to warn Trump about this, but I don’t think Trump figured out what he was saying. In one of the last meetings between Putin and Trump when I was there, Putin was making the point that: “Well you know, Donald, we have these hypersonic missiles.” And Trump was saying, “Well, we will get them too.” Putin was saying, “Well, yes, you will get them eventually, but we’ve got them first.” There was a menace in this exchange. Putin was putting us on notice that if push came to shove in some confrontational environment that the nuclear option would be on the table."

(Russia and China both know their window of opportunity is now and that it will only be here for a limited amount of time. Again, if we had the opportunity to take out our adversaries? What would we do in that situation? And lets not forget Hypersonics do not have to have a nuclear warhead to be effective.)

"Reynolds: Do you really think he’ll use a nuclear weapon?

Hill: The thing about Putin is, if he has an instrument, he wants to use it. Why have it if you can’t? 

(Russia has the largest stockpile of "battlefield" or tactical" nukes than any other nuclear power, by far, the largest amount, that old adage is true, "Everything looks like a nail to a hammer".)

"He’s already used a nuclear weapon in some respects. Russian operatives poisoned Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium and turned him into a human dirty bomb and polonium was spread all around London at every spot that poor man visited. He died a horrible death as a result."

"The Russians have already used a weapons-grade nerve agent, Novichok. They’ve used it possibly several times, but for certain twice. Once in Salisbury, England, where it was rubbed all over the doorknob of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who actually didn’t die; but the nerve agent contaminated the city of Salisbury, and anybody else who came into contact with it got sickened. Novichok killed a British citizen, Dawn Sturgess, because the assassins stored it in a perfume bottle which was discarded into a charity donation box where it was found by Sturgess and her partner. There was enough nerve agent in that bottle to kill several thousand people. The second time was in Alexander Navalny’s underpants."

"So if anybody thinks that Putin wouldn’t use something that he’s got that is unusual and cruel, think again. Every time you think, “No, he wouldn’t, would he?” Well, yes, he would. And he wants us to know that, of course.

(Again, he thinks: Y'all use drone strikes on wedding parties (Yemen, Afghanistan) whats the difference. And especially, "What does the rest of the world see as the difference?" The world just doesn't see us as the hero's of WW2 any more, regardless of how we like to view ourselves.)

'Hill: It’s not that we should be intimidated and scared. That’s exactly what he wants us to be. We have to prepare for those contingencies and figure out what is it that we’re going to do to head them off."

(It's 9 months into this conflict and we still haven't figured out "those contingencies" yet. But gas prices are low, keep buying stuff everybody etc...)

"Reynolds: So how do we deal with it? Are sanctions enough?"

(Can we just shut up about sanctions? Please? Can somebody please show me where sanctions have ever had the desired effect we wanted?)

"Hill: Well, we can’t just deal with it as the United States on our own. First of all, this has to be an international response."

"Reynolds: Larger than NATO?

Hill: It has to be larger than NATO. Now I’m not saying that that means an international military response that’s larger than NATO, but the push back has to be international."

(To many other countries want what the Russians are selling and they couldn't careless about some international borders that have changed time and time again down through history. It ought tobe obvious by now that "The (international) push back" hasn't been nowhere near large enough and it wont be. This was all a part of the calculus goin in in the first place.)

"Hill: If people look back to the history of World War II, there were an awful lot of people around Europe who became Nazi German sympathizers before the invasion of Poland. In the United Kingdom, there was a whole host of British politicians who admired Hitler’s strength and his power, for doing what Great Powers do, before the horrors of the Blitz and the Holocaust finally penetrated."

"Reynolds: And you see this now?

Hill: You totally see it. Unfortunately, we have politicians and public figures in the United States and around Europe who have embraced the idea that Russia was wronged by NATO and that Putin is a strong, powerful man and has the right to do what he’s doing: Because Ukraine is somehow not worthy of independence, because it’s either Russia’s historical lands or Ukrainians are Russians, or the Ukrainian leaders are — this is what Putin says — “drug addled, fascist Nazis” or whatever labels he wants to apply here."

(I'm not saying he has the right to do what he is doing but that much like Mrs. Hill suggest, we should have done better due diligence with what would be the eventual Russian response if we keep expanding NATO and we just didn't do that, we never took their concerns seriously we just march on eastward like a bull in a china shop never think what might be the out come someday. When a country (even one with the GDP of Italy) tells you repeatedly over the course of decades, dont keep inching up to our borders there will be consequences for you one day? Maybe you should sit down and try and work something out, we never took that position. Were us, we will do what we please, was more our position and it ended up getting us into the pickle that we are faced with today. 

Also? "Unfortunately, we have politicians and public figures in the United States and around Europe who have embraced the idea that Russia was wronged by NATO and that Putin is a strong, powerful man and has the right to do what he’s doing" never forget that this is the richest man in the world and he has operatives all over the world, $ talks I've heard.)

"So sadly, we are treading back through old historical patterns that we said that we would never permit to happen again. The other thing to think about in this larger historic context is how much the German business community helped facilitate the rise of Hitler. Right now, everyone who has been doing business in Russia or buying Russian gas and oil has contributed to Putin’s war chest. Our investments are not just boosting business profits, or Russia’s sovereign wealth funds and its longer-term development. They now are literally the fuel for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine."

"Reynolds: I gather you think that sanctions leveled by the government are inadequate to address this much larger threat?

Hill: Absolutely. Sanctions are not going to be enough. You need to have a major international response, where governments decide on their own accord that they can’t do business with Russia for a period of time until this is resolved. We need a temporary suspension of business activity with Russia. Just as we wouldn’t be having a full-blown diplomatic negotiation for anything but a ceasefire and withdrawal while Ukraine is still being actively invaded, so it’s the same thing with business. Right now you’re fueling the invasion of Ukraine. So what we need is a suspension of business activity with Russia until Moscow ceases hostilities and withdraws its troops."

(Unfortunately "The world needs their oil, gas and minerals more than they care about Ukraine's freedom " somebody said very early on in this conflict.)

"Russia would not be able to afford this war were it not for the fact that oil and gas prices are ratcheting up. They’ve got enough in the war chest for now. But over the longer term, this will not be sustainable without the investment that comes into Russia and all of the Russian commodities, not just oil and gas, that are being purchased on world markets. And, our international allies, like Saudi Arabia, should be increasing oil production right now as a temporary offset. Right now, they are also indirectly funding war in Ukraine by keeping oil prices high."

(I think we all know now which side the Saudis are on with OPEC+ recent decision to cut 2 million barrels of oil a day from production.)

"This has to be an international response to push Russia to stop its military action. India abstained in the United Nations, and you can see that other countries are feeling discomforted and hoping this might go away. This is not going to go away, and it could be “you next” — because Putin is setting a precedent for countries to return to the type of behavior that sparked the two great wars which were a free-for-all over territory. Putin is saying, “Throughout history borders have changed. Who cares?”

(So where is this  "international response to push Russia to stop its military action?" It's 9 months in. It's just not gonna materialize and were already looking toward the Pacific and whats getting ready to happen there.)  

"Reynolds: And you do not think he will necessarily stop at Ukraine?

Hill: Of course he won’t. Ukraine has become the front line in a struggle, not just for which countries can or cannot be in NATO, or between democracies and autocracies, but in a struggle for maintaining a rules-based system in which the things that countries want are not taken by force. Every country in the world should be paying close attention to this. Yes, there may be countries like China and others who might think that this is permissible, but overall, most countries have benefited from the current international system in terms of trade and economic growth, from investment and an interdependent globalized world. This is pretty much the end of this. That’s what Russia has done."

(His plan was never to stop at Ukraine. "a struggle for maintaining a rules-based system in which the things that countries want are not taken by force." Try selling your countries oil in another currency besides dollars and see what happens to you, this is the system we are fighting to protect and he is fighting to destroy. "...but overall, most countries have benefited from the current international system in terms of trade and economic growth, from investment and an interdependent globalized world..' 100% agree.)

"Reynolds: He’s blown up the rules-based international order.

Hill: Exactly. What stops a lot of people from pulling out of Russia even temporarily is, they will say, “Well, the Chinese will just step in.” This is what every investor always tells me. “If I get out, someone else will move in.” I’m not sure that Russian businesspeople want to wake up one morning and find out the only investors in the Russian economy are Chinese, because then Russia becomes the periphery of China, the Chinese hinterlands, and not another great power that’s operating in tandem with China."

(Those two will eventually turn on each other but that is a ways down the road yet. Regardless of the outcome of the war? Putin has already, "blown up the rules-based international order." It was never really just about Ukraine. He has already won, even if he looses.)

"Reynolds: The more we talk, the more we’re using World War II analogies. There are people who are saying we’re on the brink of a World War III."

Hill: We’re already in it. We have been for some time. We keep thinking of World War I, World War II as these huge great big set pieces, but World War II was a consequence of World War I. And we had an interwar period between them. And in a way, we had that again after the Cold War. Many of the things that we’re talking about here have their roots in the carving up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire at the end of World War I. At the end of World War II, we had another reconfiguration and some of the issues that we have been dealing with recently go back to that immediate post-war period. We’ve had war in Syria, which is in part the consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, same with Iraq and Kuwait."

All of the conflicts that we’re seeing have roots in those earlier conflicts. We are already in a hot war over Ukraine, which started in 2014. People shouldn’t delude themselves into thinking that we’re just on the brink of something. We’ve been well and truly in it for quite a long period of time."

"Hill: But this is also a full-spectrum information war, and what happens in a Russian “all-of-society” war, you soften up the enemy. You get the Tucker Carlsons and Donald Trumps doing your job for you. The fact that Putin managed to persuade Trump that Ukraine belongs to Russia, and that Trump would be willing to give up Ukraine without any kind of fight, that’s a major success for Putin’s information war. I mean he has got swathes of the Republican Party — and not just them, some on the left, as well as on the right — masses of the U.S. public saying, “Good on you, Vladimir Putin,” or blaming NATO, or blaming the U.S. for this outcome. This is exactly what a Russian information war and psychological operation is geared towards. He’s been carefully seeding this terrain as well. We’ve been at war, for a very long time. I’ve been saying this for years."

"Reynolds: So just as the world didn’t see Hitler coming, we failed to see Putin coming?

Hill: We shouldn’t have. He’s been around for 22 years now, and he has been coming to this point since 2008. I don’t think that he initially set off to do all of this, by the way, but the attitudes towards Ukraine and the feelings that all Ukraine belongs to Russia, the feelings of loss, they’ve all been there and building up.

What Russia is doing is asserting that “might makes right.” Of course, yes, we’ve also made terrible mistakes. But no one ever has the right to completely destroy another country — Putin’s opened up a door in Europe that we thought we’d closed after World War II."

("He has been coming to this point since 2008" interesting, since the financial crisis he's been coming to this, as well as Georgia etc...)

"What Russia is doing is asserting that “might makes right.”

(How dare they do what we've been doing! 

The nerve of these people!)

"No one ever has the right to completely destroy another country."

(Maybe somebody should go say that to the Iraqis, the Syrians, the Libyans, the Afghans and the Vietnamese. Yeah and I know,  Mrs. Hill stated that we have done some awful things as well etc...)

The whole reason I wanted to this piece after doing the one on her interview just a lil bit ago is this: 

something jumped out at me as included in this interview that wasn't included in the later one (Discernment alert) although you would think it should be and that was this:

“Well you know, Donald, we have these hypersonic missiles.” And Trump was saying, “Well, we will get them too.” Putin was saying, “Well, yes, you will get them eventually, but we’ve got them first.”

She was at that meeting.

Why did she bring up Hypersonics in the 1st interview on Feb 28th and didn't bring them up in her interview with the same news outlet on Oct 17th?

Fiona Hill: ‘Elon Musk Is Transmitting a Message for Putin’

A mind with discernment would notice such a thing and want to know why that is.

I've been saying for some time now, the fact that our adversaries have weapons we dont have and that we dont have a defense for is much more prevalent in our countries decision making circles than you could ever imagine.

God Speed everybody.

Journey well my friends.

I love you baby.