By Robert Scheer and Ray McGovern / Original to ScheerPost
In the fifth episode of “Playing President,” Ray McGovern, 27-year CIA veteran and briefer of five presidents, continues to make sense of the world to “President” Scheer, who prepared for this role through his decades as a journalist, including in-depth interviews with five presidents from Nixon to Clinton. This week, McGovern briefs the president on Vladimir Putin’s visit to China and his meeting with Xi Jinping. McGovern also provides the crucial context on the historical relationship between the two countries, drawing on his extensive experience analyzing interactions between countries that frequently find themselves on the U.S. foreign policy radar.
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Transcript
This transcript was produced by an automated transcription service. Please refer to the audio interview to ensure accuracy.
Ray McGovern: Good morning, Mr. President. I’ve given you the president’s weekly brief in order to suggest we turn to current development number one having to do with Putin’s recent visit to China. I would like to refer you to what the diagnosis that we make in the CIA is and see if you have any questions as you read along and if there are questions or, puzzlements, please just let me know.
POTUS: Ray, you’ve been in this thing for 27 years there, and I trust you, I respect you, but this is the exact opposite of what I thought was going to be happening. China is supposed to be on the ropes. We got tariffs against them, sounded the alarm about their interference in the world economy, about their grabbing these islands and everything.
We got Japan, Korea, our Korea, South Korea, Philippines, they’re all united. On the watch for China. Taiwan is more independent now. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the two China policy, but it’s still, it’s very rocky. And Russia is supposed to not be a factor at all. They’re supposed to be on the ropes there with Ukraine.
Losing and everything. You then send me this memo. I looked at it before and, you make it sound like two against one and this alliance. How did this happen? If it’s happened, what’s going on? Don’t the Russians know they can’t make anything and the Chinese are in trouble and you make it sound like these guys are winning.
McGovern: Oh, Mr. President, tectonic changes take a lot of time, but this is the culmination of a process that Putin himself started about 20 years ago. He and Xi have met over 40 times, some of those virtual, but most of them in person. They are very much together now and Russia is supporting China vis a vis the Taiwan problem, and China is even more important, supporting Russia in Ukraine.
Matter of fact, it took most of us by complete surprise when Putin went up to China before the invasion of Ukraine. He persuaded Xi Jinping to acquiesce or to even support this, which is against their whole core principle of [inaudible], no interference, in the affairs of other countries. So that relationship has blossomed now, and what we have is a situation where Putin went to Beijing on Thursday.
They had extensive consultations. They issued a statement, a joint statement that just won’t quit identifying themselves together as a force to be reckoned with. And the atmospherics of it were reflective of the substance. As a matter of fact, even the New York Times today, it talked about this very warm embrace.
There’s even a clip that we stole from the New York Times, not stole, but we have it. I’d like to show that because it shows as Putin was leaving, as he was leaving Beijing to go to Harbin, Xi went with him, plane side and, He, what he did was, why don’t you watch it here.
POTUS: Hey, Ray, with all due respect, you call that a warm embrace. What, is it? What I did with Netanyahu, it was much closer, much tighter. And we’re fighting like cats and dogs now, I didn’t read that into that at all. the fact is, aren’t these countries, Russia and China, they’re on the ropes. And, we got these new tariffs, that we’re putting in there. They’re not going to be able to get the advanced chips. And what do they got? And Russia can’t make anything. What are you doing there? You doing PR for them? What’s going on? That doesn’t look so threatening to me.
McGovern: Mr. President, that was just an ostentatious display of goodwill. People tell me that people in the Orient and specifically Xi Jinping is not given to giving those kinds of embraces. You saw that he took the initiative there. Actually, there’s an authenticity to their relationship. We should hit home here in Washington.
Russia is not on the ropes. It’s GDP is going three, four percent a year. Whereas the Western Europe, the rest of the Europe is not doing very well at all. And Beijing is doing just fine. And so what we’re trying to get you to understand is that after years of being at loggerheads, Russia against China, it’s quite different now.
And they are a combination to contend with. But more since there used to be this triangular relationship, you’ll remember, Mr. President, now it’s really two big sides, Russia and China, and the U.S. at the short end of the stick, because most of the world happens to identify with Russia and China, particularly over sensitive issues like Ukraine and like the Middle East.
POTUS: Ray, do you guys over at the CIA, you ever talk to the people in the Pentagon? You ever talk to people in state? What’s going on here? We just put in a set of these tariffs to put the Chinese economy under some warning that they’re going to lose their big market here in the United States, that they’re going to be in trouble.
They’re not going to get the advanced chips. And what has Russia got except this oil, which you can get elsewhere? And why are you singing their praises? What’s going on here?
McGovern: We’re saying that there’s been a shift in the balance of power, Mr. President, and the U.S. can’t work its will around the world the way it used to. And the sooner that people face up to that fact, the better. The New York Times headline betrayed a kind of exceptionalist attitude. What did it say here? Oh, here it is. “Xi’s warm embrace of Putin means defiance of the West.” So the West, tells what’s possible here. You shouldn’t be getting together.
And with this attitude, all I’m saying is that the U.S. policy has served to drive them together. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and that’s gone in spades now for two decades. We just want to make sure you’re aware of that. This most recent visit by Putin to Beijing issued, was the occasion for the issuance of an 8,000 word statement, a joint statement.
And in that statement, Beijing, really identified with all of Russian foreign policy aims to include, here’s from the joint statement, Mr. President, this is important, we condemn the expansion of military alliances, NATO, and we condemn military bridgeheads close to the borders of other nuclear powers, particularly with the advanced deployment of nuclear weapons.
And their means of delivery. Now that goes in space here when we’re talking about the kinds of installations that are in Poland and in Romania now, in other words, the U.S. has put missile bases in Romania and Poland, and the Russians can’t figure out what kinds of missiles are in there because there are capsules, caps on the capsules, so to speak.
And they could accommodate ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, anti-submarine missiles, and missile defense missiles. Unable to determine what’s there puts the Russians at a guessing game, and as they pointed out, just ten minutes, flight time between these, these installations in Romania and Poland gives them, gives them concern. Actually, our next current development goes into this in some detail, Mr. President. Unless you have more questions on this one, let’s go to the next one, I would suggest.
POTUS: Let me just throw this in here, I’m talking to a lot of people and it’s pretty clear.
That this is the alliance of the authoritarian regimes and we stand for freedom and democracy and that’s what we have to do. They’re trying to intimidate us and, we’re just going to stick to this policy. And I have to point out to you, that we got the majority of people, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, think I ought to be tougher.
And the Russians had better. And Chinese, my God, what are they doing? They’re going to get Trump and he’s going to be their worst nightmare. And I think the voters in this country, even at small group of people in Congress, some Democrats who favor a more peaceful, what they call it, or capitulation, they’re not going to go for Trump. I’m all they got. And I think not just from an electoral point of view, but the posture of America. This is no time to cave. And I’m really surprised that a guy with your early military background and your years in the CIA are expecting me to become an appeaser to these, what?
They’re still communist countries, aren’t they?
McGovern: One of them still is, yeah, China. Russia, not so much.
POTUS: Yeah, but always like that. All right, what else you got?
McGovern: Just to respond to that, Mr. President, we try to look at these things subjectively. Aside from any policy preferences and just for the immediate, coming months, we fully expect.
Both Xi Jinping and Putin to be looking at the evolving rhetoric associated with the campaign and they won’t be choosing who their favorite is. All they’ll be saying is, my goodness, what do we make of all this or what’s going to happen? And how should we attune our relationship with first and foremost Ukraine?
To make sure that this doesn’t get out of completely out of hand. So let’s get to the second thing here. It’s the second, current development. I have it in my hands here. maybe could you, Max, could you put that up on the screen here? And, Mr. President, would you, read it and give me any comments that you might have on it?
It has to do with US missile bases in Europe that most people don’t know anything about, but which the Russians see. As an imminent threat. And, let me give you a chance to read that Mr. President and, to raise any questions that they may come into your mind and I can certainly, explicate it, in greater length.
POTUS: Ray, we’ve been through this before and again, there is no… Russia doesn’t have the kind of power, we don’t even know if half of this stuff works. We got a lot of intelligence that shows that they got. Stuff that doesn’t work or, I don’t know, at some point their military is going to revolt and get, as they almost did last few months ago against Putin.
I don’t see Russia as a significant, after all, the Cold War, they lost it. And, what are they going to do? And we got the entire rest of Europe united. And these missiles are, the Poles want them, the European countries want them, the Baltic nations want them. And, they’re gonna, they’re gonna be able to put up whatever force is needed to control this truly weakened Russia.
And we know China’s never gonna, they don’t back them with Ukraine, they’re not gonna do anything. I think these are paper tigers. to use an old Chinese description.
McGovern: I remember that description. I think it doesn’t fit this scenario, Mr. President. What we have here is the kind of threat that the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was designed to prevent.
You, you’ll remember back in the ’80s, ’87, I think, it was when Gorbachev suggested to Reagan, Hey, who needs these intermediate range ballistic missiles? We got the ICBMs, the intercontinental ones. These are just, these are 10 minutes away. Let’s destroy them. Now, everybody at the CIA said, yeah, They’re going to destroy a whole class of nuclear weapons, right? Reagan listened, and guess what happened? They destroyed them. They destroyed a whole class of medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles going from 500 kilometers to 5, 500 kilometers. Destroyed. Missiles in place. Armed. Okay. Now, what happened?
In 2019, Mr. Trump got out of that, arrangement. And so what happened? We had already put missile bases in Romania and Poland, and the Russians were very itsy about this. Very, they didn’t know what kind of missiles were in these silos because the silos the capsules are capped and they can’t really tell whether it’s a ballistic missile.
Or whether it’s a, anti ballistic missile or whether it’s an anti submarine missile or a cruise missile. They’re in something of a dilemma. And what happened, Mr. President, I think you may recall, that at the end of 2021, so before Ukraine got out of hand, Putin addressed his defense ministry and all the senior admirals and generals And he said, look, we’re gonna really fix here because, there are these missiles in Romania and Poland, and eventually they’re going to be in Ukraine.
And even as things now stand, Romania and Poland, they’re just about 10 minutes away from Moscow. If they get hypersonic missiles, if the U.S. finally gets them and puts them in Ukraine, you’ve got four to five minutes for me to decide. Whether to blow up the rest of the world. So this is quite a fix. Now he said that at a public meeting on December 21st, 2021.
So what happened? Next thing you recall this. Putin calls the White House and says, I have to talk to you, Mr. President, I have talked to you, Mr. Biden and, to your credit, you took the call and his, concern, of which we know from the readout. Was, how about these intermediate range ballistic missiles?
The Russians call them offensive strike missiles, okay? And the readout of that meeting on the 30th of December, right before New Year’s Eve 2021 was, Mr. Biden said that the U. S. has no intention of putting offensive strike missiles in Ukraine. Whoa, there was great rejoicing in Moscow on New Year’s Eve.
And they wanted to get that down to brass tacks, but three weeks later, so December 30th, then January 21st, in Geneva, Tony Blinken told Foreign Minister Lavrov, forget about it. We assert, the right to put offensive strike missiles anywhere we want in Ukraine. Maybe we could talk about limiting them in some way, okay?
Lavrov recently revealed that’s what happened. And then of course you have the invasion of Ukraine. What, just a month later, that wasn’t the only reason for the invasion of Ukraine, but the Russians are very, worried about what’s in those capsules in Poland and Romania. And they’re hell bent to determine that none such capsules will go into Ukraine.
So that’s the background of all this. You probably…
POTUS: Ray, you’ve been in the CIA for all these years, and I, this is what we used to call MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. And they should be worried. That’s why we have these missiles. And they should be scared of us. They get back in play the game the way they’re supposed to and pull back, and get out of the Ukraine besides we’re going to win there soon we’re putting in a 60 billion dollars, that’s not chump change and that’s going to turn the whole tide You know that and I know that so you’re nothing to do about it.
McGovern: Mr. President with all due respect We don’t know that matter of fact we think we know just the opposite. That money is not going to change anything. There are enough troops in Ukraine. even if those weapons get there in a couple of months, it will be too late. And so what we’d like to impress upon you is that Russia has all but one in Ukraine.
Only the only decision that Putin has to make is how fast he goes to the Dnieper River, if he goes to the Dnieper River. And if he gets in a dust up, and this is important Mr. President, if he gets in a dust up with NATO forces, God forbid U. S. forces, You can expect some real saber rattling in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits because they’re in this together now, and hopefully no one wants a two front war.
POTUS: Okay Ray, we’re gonna wrap this part up, I think the Chinese, they wanted to sell us stuff. And we’re closing off that market and they’re going to get the message. And Russia can’t do anything for them. It’s the West. They want to sell stuff in Germany, France, U. S. And, they’re going to have to pay our tariffs and, follow our rules.
And, it’s not an alliance that scares me. They’ve got nothing going.
McGovern: Mr. President, our calculations on the electric vehicles, for example, even if we put a 100 percent tariff on them, they’ll come to just two thirds the price of the best, or the most common, electric vehicles that we produce here in the States.
But they don’t need our market, Mr. President. Please realize they don’t need our market. They are selling like hotcakes in Europe. the price of these electronic vehicles, just out of this world in terms of the appeal. And, the tariffs are going to work just like the sanctions with Russia. In other words, they’re not going to work.
They’re going to find other ways to get around this. And what we’d like to just impress upon you is that Russia and China. are in a virtual alliance. They even had a military section in this joint statement. All right.
POTUS: I got to cut you off here, but I just want to tell you something, and I’ll go, I’ve gone this far with you, but you’ve been around a long time, and we hold the marbles.
We, this is America and we got what the world wants. And, China was giving a free ride by us. We bought a lot of their stuff. Russia’s got nothing to offer. And I just want you to go back and see if there’s some people over there in the CIA that have a clearer picture than you do, Ray, because this stuff you’re telling me makes me question your knowledge here. And it’s very different than what we’re getting from the state department and every other agency. So I think you’re, I don’t know what’s going on here, but you’re just trying to frighten us and it won’t work because this is America. I’ve told our people, I’ve told the voters that I’m not going back on it.
We’re America. We’re number one and we make the stuff the world wants. We’re going to make it better. We’ll make a better electric car here. We don’t need their electric cars. You’re going to be choking on them. They’ll just be, what are they going to do? Eat them. General Motors is going to make a better electric car and they’ll make it fast.
So let’s drop this now, but I’m I’m concerned about where you’re getting your advice here, right? I don’t want to I don’t know go check with your other folks back there at the CIA and see if you’re really Reflecting what they’re thinking.
McGovern: Yeah. Mr. President suffice it to say that I do check with the good analysts that we have back there still, not the ones that will say what they need to say to get a career promotion.
And we’re really concerned that you are being misinformed by these people who tell you that the U. S. is number one still. I hate to break it to you, but that’s no longer the case. The reason that we focused on this visit of Putin to Xi Jinping is to tell you that there’s two against one, and those two together are more powerful now than the United States, and we say that with great confidence.
So we say that with a little bit of sadness, but that’s the situation as we see it. If you have something specific you’d like me to look into, like the electric vehicles and that kind of thing, what the tariffs are going to do, I’d be happy to look into that. But our consensus is that no longer are we exceptional.
We are number three to the number one to China and Russia, who have become number one and actually have the support of most of the global South as well, given all the troubles that exist not only in Ukraine, but in the Middle East. So that’s our, consensus. We’re not very popular in circles here in Washington, but we try to tell it.
Like it is, we could be wrong, but we don’t think we are.
POTUS: All right, get on with it. You got that other item or that’s it.
McGovern: That would be it, Mr. President, unless you have questions. There’s been a lot going on.
POTUS: Yeah, you haven’t even mentioned what’s going on here with the Gaza, the West Bank and Netanyahu, but I’ll let you keep that for the next time.
That’s, disturbing me more than anything. I went to Morehouse College and the students didn’t even stand for me. And then we get, all this criticism and I can’t get Netanyahu to pay attention. He doesn’t even return my calls anymore, whatever problem the Russians have in the Ukraine, there’s nothing like what we got going on with this Gaza business.
McGovern: Sterile. Mr. President, our, our appreciation of this is that, there’s only one way to stop this, and that really, redounds on your power to either give or deny, more arms aid to Israel. Were that spigot to be turned off, it would all stop. By the way,
POTUS: Ray, as long as I got you here, I assume this is a carefully controlled line.
Did we kill the prime minister there in Iran?
McGovern: Mr. President. Come on…
POTUS: Ray, if you guys did it, let me know. I gotta know, okay?
McGovern: Mr. President, as you probably know, the CIA is divided into two parts, analysis and operations. Even someone like a briefer of the PDB to the president is not informed about things like that. We don’t know, I don’t know what happened.
You ought to check with the operational part of the CIA to see if they know something that maybe the Israelis did. the jury is out. Apparently there was bad weather there.
POTUS: Ray, last thing here, you keep, you’re being a little bit of a drama queen here, and this stuff about the world’s gonna explode and everything.
We had the missile crisis, you may remember, you were around then, and, I think what we got here is, two weakened powers. You say two against one. First of all, we got Japan. We got, Western Europe. We got, Israel. We got, what are you talking about? Saudi Arabia I’m about.
to make a deal with. They’re looking pretty good. Hope they don’t kill any more journalists while they’re at it. That didn’t play so well, but, You’re, you seems to me you’re an alarmist. What is this two against one? we got, we got the power, most powerful countries in the world, agree with us.
And, what’s motivating you? What’s happening here? You’re losing your spirit, your patriotism?
McGovern: Mr. President, patriotism, is a real value, but it doesn’t enter into intelligence analysis. When you say we are the most supportive countries in the world, Western Europe and Eastern Europe are pretty much going down the drain.
Partly because of the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline. But let’s get back to what we were just talking about in terms of what the Russians are really, concerned about. We talked about these intermediate range ballistic missiles, which were prohibited in the INF Treaty, and which now are proliferating.
In Romania, in Poland, and the Russians say that you made it undertaking not to put them in Ukraine and then Blinken reversed that three weeks later. So let’s look at what the Russians are looking at in terms of these intermediate range ballistic missiles. The same thing happened, as you correctly noted, in 1962 when intermediate range ballistic missiles were placed by Khrushchev Cuba.
Now I have a, here’s a map that, that I just made. It’s a crude map, but if you look at that inner circle there, that denotes where the bombers that we found in Cuba could reach. if you lived in Florida, you had a problem. Now the, next circle up were the SS 4s. Now the SS 4s were the surface to air, surface to surface missiles that we knew proliferated within, Russia.
And that had, had been emplaced in Cuba without our knowledge, and we didn’t discover them until the warheads were also in there. Now, what’s the point here? The point here is that, they had the capability of hitting Norfolk or Savannah or Washington in 12 minutes. 12 minutes, okay? that’s how long it would take a ballistic missile, a generic ballistic missile, in Poland or Romania to get to Moscow.
If you put them in Ukraine, as you told Putin you weren’t going to do. And then it’s about four or five minutes, particularly if they’re hypersonic missiles. Now what did we do? We put in a blockade, okay? If you look at the left hand part of that map, you’ll see that we put our Navy in between the next shipments of the Soviet weaponry.
Now, those happened, luckily, to be the SS 5s. If you see the, if you see the circle on the outside, the biggest circle, Those would have had the range to hit pretty much everywhere in the U. S. except parts of Washington and Oregon, okay? We prevented them from arriving. What’s the point here? The point here is that when Kennedy learned this, and as I say, he learned this belatedly, after the missiles were already in there, he had to make a big decision.
May we have the next slide, please?
This next slide shows the map that, there it is. Okay. These are the maps. This is the, map that shows where the missiles from Poland and Romania, where they’re in place now, where they could hit Moscow with a gen, just a generic ballistic missile. So you see nine minutes from Poland. 10 minutes from Romania.
if you take arbitrarily Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, it’s seven minutes. Okay. And that’s before these missiles are hypersonic, hypersonic four to five minutes. So what did, Kennedy do? He said, look, we’re not going to allow that. He blockaded, he called it a quarantine against the law and Khrushchev, luckily, Thankfully, backed off, pulled those missiles out, brought it back to Russia.
We made a side deal where we would pull some missiles out of Turkey, but that wasn’t part of the basic arrangement. So what I’m saying here is that the same threat is perceived by Russian leaders. That Kennedy perceived back in 1962 with very intermediate range ballistic missiles in Poland and Romania already, Putin complaining, that if they put in Ukraine, my God, that’d be four or five minutes away if they have hypersonic missiles, which the U.
S. will eventually get. Bottom line here, my God. If you were Mr. Putin, would you want to be faced, as Kennedy was, with a threat of this nature, and in Putin’s case, five minutes to decide whether to retaliate with nuclear weapons? I don’t think anybody would want that kind of thing, and that’s why there’s so much emphasis, not only in Russian statements, but now in that joint statement with China, saying, bringing these intermediate range, or what the Russians call, offensive strike missiles in, in range of Moscow and other fields, or bases in, in Russia is a very, destabilizing thing.
And I just want to make sure that you know that not only have the Russians complained about this, not only were they given to believe that you had ruled out such deployment in Ukraine itself. But now the Chinese have weighed in and say, yeah, the Russians are right about this. No one should put offensive strike missiles toward the border of another nuclear armed state.
Last thing I’ll say here is that, it was President Kennedy himself who said in that wonderful American University speech, he said, look, he said, the thing we have to avoid above all, is to give a nuclear armed country a choice between humiliating defeat or using nuclear weapons. Now, that’s almost coming into being now in this situation in Central Europe.
And, people should be mindful of the fact that even the Russians now have threatened to do exercise, they’re, doing exercises with them. Tactical nuclear weapons. That’s a first. That’s unprecedented. cooler heads need to prevail. And somehow, some kind of modus vivendi, like the INF Treaty back in 1987, needs to be worked out so that people are not on gross alert, ready to respond to a perceived threat with only five or six or seven minutes to response time.
POTUS: It ain’t gonna happen, Ray. The Congress doesn’t fear, they’re not afraid of Russia or China. and I’m, I agree with them. These are washed up powers and we’ll take our chances. they can’t push us around and, we’re just going to have to hold firm for democracy. We built these weapons to preserve democracy.
That’s why we put them in there, to preserve democracy. The other guys don’t see it that way and they want to attack us. it’s their loss.
McGovern: Yeah, it is a difference in perception, Mr. President, we might hold that we put it into preserved democracy. they, for their part, see, an immediate threat and, And if we don’t understand that, and if we don’t take measures to recognize their, their concern, this other slide that has just been put up is, indicative of, how easy it was to identify, SS 4, namely Intermediate Range Nuclear Weapons in Cuba.
That’s an SS 4 site. Now, we had similar pictures of about a hundred SS 4 sites in the Soviet Union at the time. And when we saw this one, it was as though there was a big placard over this saying Hey, in case you didn’t realize, this is an SS 4 intermediate ballistic missile site, alright? there was no denying what they had put in there.
Thank goodness, Khrushchev had the good sense to say to his military, Look, nothing ventured, nothing gained. We tried this gambit. Kennedy is damn serious here. we don’t want nuclear war. We need to withdraw. Now, I think that Putin and Xu looking at the same kind of circumspection on the part of the West, rather than to create this unnecessary 10, 5, whatever minutes warning time, are occasioned by these missiles.
they would like that to, to, to disappear. And after all, as I said before, 1987, they did disappear because we destroyed a whole class of intermediate ranking U. S. officers. Hey,
POTUS: Ray, we gotta go, but I gotta ask you the real question. Sure. Are those guys nuts? here, okay, Russia, we know, it’s a bankrupt country, they can’t make stuff and everything, but China, they had a good deal going.
We’re buying all their stuff. We were investing in there. Is this guy Z out of his mind? What is he doing? Why is he getting all involved with Russia and all this stuff? What’s in it for them? We would have loved to buy their cars, I can’t say that. You’ll get all these auto workers upset with me and everything.
But the fact is, we buy a lot of their stuff. we just don’t want to get into the high tech stuff, we want, we’ll buy every t shirt they ever make, we’ll buy, even, okay, we’ll buy a bunch of cars, as long as they’re not the fancy ones. but, what, that, I, don’t know, you don’t have, I don’t know if anybody’s got the answer, but I’m just wondering.
from where I sit, whether they understand, they’re taking on the United States of America. Do they understand what we got? What weapons we got? What power we got? are they losing their minds?
McGovern: Mr. President, they’re inclined to look at the map, okay? And they see the United States very far away from China, and they see U.
S. warships flying right off the Chinese coast and in the Taiwan Straits. In other words, from the Chinese perspective, they’re being provoked. They don’t know quite why, but they are. As a matter of fact, the Chinese chased away, just ten days ago, a, destroyer that we had put out there, which had violated their territorial waters in one of those islands.
The Chinese are confused as to what we mean, and it doesn’t help to have a Secretary of the Treasury, Yellen, yelling at them for overproducing things and making it difficult for our economy. And it doesn’t help to have Secretary Blinken go and say, look, you’re the reason we’re not winning in Ukraine because you’re giving us all manner of economic support.
It’s your fault! Now, the Chinese have responded to that by saying, Hey, look, don’t make us the scapegoat just because you’re losing in Ukraine. it’s a matter of clarification of thought, so to speak. It’s a matter of realizing that These other people look at things very, differently, and Putin himself tried to say this in a New York Times op ed.
Now, Mr. President, you may, you were vice president at the time, but you may not remember that after Putin helped Obama avoid an open attack against Syria, when the Syrians were accused, erroneously, of using chemical weapons, Putin said, look, we’ll have the Syrians destroy all their chemical weapons under U.N. supervision on a U. S. frigate that all set out to destroy these weapons. How about that? And war was avoided. Okay. Now, at that precise time, early September 2013, this op ed appeared. And what Obama said was, This is the high point of our trust. There is increasing trust between our countries and between President Obama and me personally.
But I object. I have to say, I object, says Obama, says Putin. To what Obama said just last week about the U. S. being exceptional, and that makes them very distinct and gives them extra credit, okay? I don’t think there are any exceptional countries, writes Pugin. I think there are some countries farther from democracy, others closer to economics, some are poor.
But when the Lord looks on all these countries, he finds them all exceptional. Equal. End of this op ed. Now, I was reliably informed Putin wrote that himself. So the way they look at it is U. S. exceptionalism used to be after the war, after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the way they look at it, it ain’t so anymore.
And so we, China and Russia, Can get together and prevent the U. S. from doing the kinds of things they might be inclined to do if they could pick at us individually.
POTUS: They’re not going to get away with it. We are the United States. And they don’t like my putting the right spin on it. Wait till they hear from Trump. All right. See you next week. If you still got this job, I don’t know. Okay. Take care.
McGovern: Thank you, Mr. President.
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Robert Scheer
Robert Scheer, publisher of ScheerPost and award-winning journalist and author of a dozen books, has a reputation for strong social and political writing over his nearly 60 years as a journalist. His award-winning journalism has appeared in publications nationwide—he was Vietnam correspondent and editor of Ramparts magazine, national correspondent and columnist for the Los Angeles Times—and his in-depth interviews with Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev and others made headlines. He co-hosted KCRW’s political program Left, Right and Center and now hosts Scheer Intelligence, an independent ScheerPost podcast with people who discuss the day’s most important issues.
Ray McGovern
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27 years as a C.I.A. analyst included leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and conducting the morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).