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Jan Øberg, ph.d., er freds- og fremtidsforsker og kunstfotograf,
Direktør, The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF, Sverige, https://transnational.live

Jan Øberg kan kontaktes her: oberg@transnational.org

Interviewet er på engelsk p.g.a. international deling.

Lydfil: 

Afskrift: 1. del om Ukraine-Rusland-U.S.-NATO krisen:

Michelle Rasmussen: Hello. Today is February 21st, 2022. I am Michele Rasmussen, the vice president of the Schiller Institute in Denmark. And I’m very happy that peace researcher Jan Oberg agreed to this interview. Jan Oberg was born in Denmark and lives in Sweden. He has a PhD in sociology and has been a visiting professor in peace and conflict studies in Japan, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, part time over the years. Jan Oberg has written thousands of pages of published articles and several books. He is the co-founder and director of the Independent TFF, the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research in Lund, Sweden since 1985, and has been nominated over several years for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Our interview today will have three parts. The danger of war between Russia and Ukraine, which could lead to war between the United States and NATO and Russia, and how to stop it.

Secondly, your criticism of Denmark starting negotiations with the United States on a bilateral security agreement, which could mean permanent stationing of U.S. soldiers and armaments on Danish soil.

And thirdly, your criticism of a major report which alleged that China is committing genocide in Xinjiang province.

A Russian invasion of Ukraine, which some in the West said would start last Wednesday has not occurred. But as we speak, tensions are still very high. You wrote an article, Jan Oberg, on January 19th, called Ukraine The West has paved the road to war with lies, specifying three lies concerning the Ukraine crisis. Let’s take them one by one.

You defined lie number one: “The Western leaders never promised Mikhail Gorbachev and his foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, not to expand NATO eastwards. They also did not state that they would take serious Soviet or Russian security interests around its borders, and, therefore, each of the former Warsaw Pact countries has a right to join NATO, if they decide to freely.” Can you please explain more to our viewers about this lie?

Jan Oberg: Yes, and thank you very much for your very kind and long and detailed introduction of me. I would just say about that point that I’m amazed that this is now a kind of repeated truth in Western media, that Gorbachev was not given such promises. And it rests with a few words taken out of a longer article written years ago by a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who says that Gorbachev did not say so. That article was published by Brookings Institution. Now the truth is, and there’s a difference between truth and non truths, and we have to make that more and more clear when we deal with the West at the moment. The truth is, if you go to the National Security Archives in the U.S., if I remember correctly, the George Washington University that is well documented, their own formulation is that there are cascades of documentation. However, this was not written down in a treaty, or signed by the Western leaders, who one after the other came to Gorbachev’s dacha outside Moscow or visited him in Kremlin, and therefore some people would say it’s not valid. Now that is not true in politics. If we can’t rely on what was said and what was written down by people personally in their notebooks, etc.

George Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, James Baker, you can almost mention any important Western leader were unanimous in saying to Gorbachev, we understand that the Warsaw Pact has gone, the Soviet Union has gone, and therefore, we are not going to take advantage of your weakness. James Baker’s formulation, according to all these sources, is we’re not going to expand nature one inch. And that was said in 89, 90. That is 30 years ago. And Gorbachev, because of those assurances also accepted, which he’s been blamed very much for since then, the reunification of Germany. Some sources say that was a kind of deal made that if Germany should be united, which it was very quickly after, it should be a neutral country. But the interpretation in the West was it could remain a member of NATO, but would then include what was at that time the German Democratic Republic, GDR [East Germany] into one Germany. You can go to Gorbachev’s Foundation home page and you will find several interviews, videos, whatever, in which he says these things, and you can go to the Danish leading expert in this, Jens Jørgen Nielsen, who has also written that he personally interviewed Gorbachev, in which Gorbachev, with sadness in his eyes, said that he was cheated, or that these promises were broken, whatever the formulation is.

And I fail to understand why this being one of the most important reasons behind the present crisis, namely Russia’s putting down its foot, saying “You can’t continue this expansion up to the border, with your troops and your long-range missiles, up to the border of Russia. And we will not accept Ukraine [as a member of NATO]. You have gotten ten former Warsaw Pact countries which are now members of NATO, NATO has 30 members. We are here with a military budget, which is eight percent of NATO’s, and you keep up with this expansion. We are not accepting that expansion to include Ukraine.

Now, this is so fundamental that, of course, it has to be denied by those who are hardliners, or hawks, or cannot live without enemies, or want a new Cold War, which we already have, in my view, and have had for some years. But that’s a long story. The way the West, and the U.S. in particular — but NATO’s secretary general’s behavior is outrageous to me, because it’s built on omission of one of the most important historical facts of modern Europe.

Michelle Rasmussen: Yes. In your article, you actually quote from the head of NATO, the general secretary of NATO, back in 1990, one year before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Manfred Wörner, where you say that in these documents released by the U.S. National Security Archive, that you just referred to, “Manfred Wörner gave a well-regarded speech in Brussels in May 1990, in which he argued ‘The principal task of the next decade will be to build a new European security structure to include the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations. The Soviet Union will have an important role to play in the construction of such a system.’ And the next year, in the middle of 1991, according to a memorandum from the Russian delegation who met with Wörner. He responded to the Russians by saying that he personally and the NATO council, were both against expansion “13 out of 16 NATO members share this point of view,” and “Wörner said that he would speak against Poland’s and Romania’s membership in NATO to those countries leaders, as he had already done with leaders of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. And he emphasized that we should not allow the isolation of USSR from the European community,” and this was even while the U.S.S.R. was still alive. So it must have been even more the case after the U.S.S.R. collapsed, and Russia emerged.

Jan Oberg: Well, if I may put in a little point here, you see, with that quotation of a former NATO secretary general, compare that with the present secretary general of NATO. Wörner was a man of intellect. The leaders around him at the time in Europe were too. I mean, those were the days when you had people like Willy Brandt in Germany and östpolitik [East policy], and you had Olof Palme in Sweden with common security thinking. We cannot in the West be sure, feel safe and secure in the West, if it’s against Russia. Which does not mean at all to give into everything Russia does, but just says we cannot be safe if the others don’t feel safe from us. And that was an intellectualism. That was an empathy, not a necessarily a sympathy, but it was an empathy for those over there, that we have to take into account, when we act. Today that intellectualism is gone completely.

And it is very interesting, as you point out, that 13 out of 16 NATO countries, at that time, were at that level, but in came in 1990 Bill Clinton. And he basically said, well, he didn’t state it. He acted as though he had stated it, I don’t care about those promises, and then he started expanding NATO. And the first office of NATO was set up in Kiev in 1994. That was the year when he did that. And that was a year when I sat in Tbilisi, Georgia, and interviewed the U.S. representative there, who, through a two-hour long conversation, basically talked about Georgia as “our country.”

So, you know, it’s sad to say it’s human to make mistakes, but to be so anti-intellectual, so anti-empathetic, so imbued with your own thinking and worldview, you’re not able to take the other side into account, is much more dangerous than it was at that time, because the leaders we have in the western world today are not up to it. They were earlier, but these are not.

Michelle Rasmussen: Lie number two that you pointed out, “The Ukraine conflict started by Putin’s out-of-the-blue aggression on Ukraine and then annexation of Crimea.” What’s the rest of the story here?

Jan Oberg: Well, it’s not the rest, it’s the beginning of the story. You see, people who write about these things, and it’s particularly those who are Western media and Western politicians and foreign ministers, et cetera, they say that it all started with this out-of-the-blue invasion in the Donbass, and then the taking, annexing or aggression on, or whatever the word is, Crimea. Well, they all forget, very conveniently, and very deliberately — I mean, this is not a longer time ago than people who write about it today would know — that there was a clearly western assisted, if not orchestrated, coup d’état in Kiev in 2014. After, I won’t go into that long story, after some negotiations about an economic agreement between Ukraine and the EU, in which the president then jumped off, allegedly under pressure from Putin, or whatever, but there were a series of violent events in Kiev.

And it’s well known from one of those who were there, and participated, namely the assistant secretary of State for European Affairs, Mrs. Nuland, and she’s given a speech in the U.S. where, if I remember correctly, she says that the US has pumped $5 billion into Ukraine over the years, to support democracy and human rights, et cetera, and training courses for young NGOs, et cetera. And it’s obvious that that operation, that ousting of the president, he had to flee to Russia, and the taking over, partly by neo-Nazis and fascists who were present and who probably did the beginning of the shooting and the killing of people, that all this had to do with the promise that was given to Ukraine years before that it would be integrated into the Euro-Atlantic framework. And then it was kind of stopping and saying, we don’t want that anyhow. We will negotiate something else, and we will look into what Putin has to offer, etc.

But that that, in Putin’s mind, in Russia’s mind, meant that NATO would be the future of Ukraine. And Russia had, still has, a huge military base in Crimea, which it had a lease on for, at the time, I think it was 30 plus years, meaning should Ukraine, which was clearly signalled by the western NATO member’s leadership, enter and become a full member of Ukraine, then he would look at a Russian base, either being lost or you would have a Russian military naval base in a NATO country.

Now I’m not saying that that was a smart move. I’m not saying it was a legal move, but it’s very difficult for the western world to blame Russia for annexing Crimea. If you look at the opinion polls and the votes for that, if you will, voting ourselves back to Russia — you know, the whole thing was Russia until 1954, when Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine, and he was from Ukraine himself. And so this happened three weeks before. And I’m amazed that it should not again be intellectually possible for people who witnessed this — The other thing we talked about with 30 years ago. There might be some young fools who would not read history books.

But what I’m talking about was something that happened in 2014, and there’s no excuse for not mentioning that there’s a connection between that coup d’état, and the influence of the West in Ukraine in a very substantial way, and what happened in Donbas and Crimea.

So I’m just saying, if I put it on a more general level, if we look at today’s ability to understand, describe, analyze issues as conflicts, we are heading for zero understanding. There is nobody in the press, and nobody in politics who are able, intellectually, to see these things as conflicts, that is, as a problem standing between two or more parties that has to be analyzed. And conflict resolution is about finding solutions that the parties we have defined as parties, and there certainly are many more than two in this very complex conflict, can live with in the future. What we are down to in banalization is that there is no conflict. There’s only one party, Russia, that does everything bad and evil and terrible, while we are sitting in the receiving end, being the good guys who’ve done nothing wrong in history. Who could never rethink what we did or say, we’re sorry, or change our policies, because we are right. There’s only one problem. That’s them. We’re down now to the level in which these things, also the last three months, the accusations about Russia invading Ukraine, has nothing to do with conflict analysis. It is purely focusing on one party, and one party, by definition, is not a conflict.

We are not party to a relationship anymore, and that makes a huge difference, again, from the leaders and the way of thinking and the intellectual approach that existed 20-30 years ago. And one reason for all of this is, of course, that the West is on his way down. Secondly, and they feel threatened by anything that happens around the world. And secondly, when you have been number one in a system for a long time, you become lazy. You don’t study. You don’t have as good education as you should have. You bring up people to high levels who have not read books, because we can get away with everything. We are so strong militarily. And when that happens, you know, it’s a slippery slope and you are actually on board the Titanic.

This is not a defense of everything Russia does. What I’m trying to say is there is a partner over there, by the way they call us partners in the West. We call them anything else but partners. We don’t even see them. We don’t listen to their interests. We didn’t listen to Putin when he spoke at the Munich conference in 2007 and said, ‘You have cheated us.’ And of course, when Gorbachev, 90 years old, says, you have cheated us, he’s not even quoted in the Western world, because there’s no space anymore for other views than our own. You know, this autism that is now classical in the Western security policy elite is damn dangerous.

Michelle Rasmussen: I want to just ask you shortly about the third lie, and then we’ll get into what you see as the solution. The third lie you, you pointed out, was that “NATO always has an open door to new members. It never tries to invite or drag them in does not seek expansion. It just happens because Eastern European countries since 1989 to 1990 have wanted to join without any pressure from NATO’s side, and this also applies to Ukraine.” And in this section, you also document that Putin actually asked for Russia to join NATO. Can you shortly, please explain your most important point about this third lie?

Jan Oberg: Yeah, well, it’s already there since you quoted my text, but the fascinating thing is that you have not had a referendum in any of these new member states. The fascinating thing is, in 2014, when this whole NATO membership came to its first conflictual situation in the case of Ukraine, there was not a majority, according to any opinion poll in Ukraine. There was not a majority. And I would say it’s not a matter of 51%. If a country is going to join NATO, it should be at least 75 or 80% of the people saying yes to that. Third, and it’s not something I’ve invented, it is NATO’s former secretary general Robertson, who has told the story. I think it was first released in the Guardian, but it’s also in a long podcast from a place I don’t remember, which the Guardian quotes. He says that he was asked by Putin whether, or at what time, or whatever the formulation was, NATO would accept Russia as a member.

This probably goes back to what you had already quoted Wörner, the NATO secretary general for having said, namely that a new security structure in Europe would, by necessity, have some kind of involvement, in a direct sense, of Russia, because Russia is also Europe.

And that was what Gorbachev had as an idea that the new [common] European home, something like a security structure where we could deal with our conflicts or differences or misunderstandings, and we could still be friends in the larger Europe.

And that was why I argued at the time thirty years ago that with the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, the only reasonable thing was to close down NATO. And instead, as I said with Clinton and onwards, the whole interpretation was we have won. The Western system, the neoliberal democratic NATO system has won. We have nothing to learn from that. There’s nothing to change now. We just expand even more.

And the first thing NATO did, as you know, was a completely illegal. Also, according to its own charter, the invasion, involvement and bombing in Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia was not a member. Had never been a member of NATO, and NATO’s only mission is paragraph five, which says that we are one for all and all for one. We are going to support some member, if the member is attacked. Now, it had nothing to do in Yugoslavia. That happened in 1991 and onwards, all the nineties. And you remember the bombings and 72 two days of bombings in Kosovo and Serbia. And it’s nothing to do — and there was no UN mandate for it. But it was a triumphalist interpretation. We can now get away with everything, anything we want. We can do it because there’s no Russia to take into account. Russia could not do anything about it. China could not do anything about it at the time.

And so, you get into hubris and an inability to see your own limitations, and that is what we are coming up to now. We are seeing the boomerang coming back to NATO, the western world for these things. And then, of course, some idiots will sit somewhere and say, Jan Oberg is pro-Russia. No, I’m trying to stick to what I happen to remember happened at the time. I’m old enough to remember what was said to Gorbachev in those days when the Wall came down and all these things changed fundamentally.

I was not optimistic that NATO would adapt to that situation, but there was hope at that time. There’s no hope today for this, because if you could change, you would have changed long ago. So the prediction I make is the United States empire, NATO, will fall apart at some point. The question is how, how dangerous, and how violent that process will be, because it’s not able to conduct reforms or change itself fundamentally into something else, such as a common security organization for Europe.

Michelle Rasmussen: Well, I actually wanted to ask you now about the solutions, because you’ve been a peace researcher for many decades. What what would it take to peacefully resolve the immediate crisis? And secondly, how can we create the basis for peaceful world in the future? You mentioned the idea that you had 30 years ago for dismembering NATO and the founder and international chairman of the Schiller Institute, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, has now called for establishing a new security architecture, which would take the interests of all countries, including Russia, into account. So how could we solve the immediate crisis? If there were the political will, what would have to change among the parties? And secondly, what needs to be done in terms of long term peaceful cooperation?

Jan Oberg: Well, first of all, the question you are raising is a little bit like the seventh doctor who is trying to operate on a patient who is bleeding to death and then saying, “What should we do now?” What I have suggested over 30 years is something that should have been done to avoid the situation today, and nobody listened, as is clear, because you don’t listen to researchers anymore who say something else that state-financed researchers do. So it’s not an easy question you are raising, of course. I would say, of course, in the immediate situation, the Minsk agreements, which have not been upheld, particularly by Ukraine in establishing some kind of autonomy for the Donbass area. Now that is something we could work with, autonomous solutions. We could work with confederations, we could work with cantonization, if you will. Lots of what happened, and happens, in the eastern republics of Ukraine. It reminds me of a country I know very well, and partly educated in and worked in during the dissolution, namely Yugoslavia. So much so that it resembles Granica. Ukraine and Granica in Croatia, both mean border areas. Granica means border, and there’s so much that could have been a transfered of knowledge and wisdom and lessons learned, had we had a United Nations mission in that part. A peacekeeping mission, a monitoring mission. UN police and U.N. civil affairs in the Donbas region.

If I remember correctly, Putin is the only one who suggested that at some point. I don’t think he presented it as a big proposal to the world, but in an interview he said that was something he could think of. I wrote in 2014, why on earth has nobody even suggested that the United Nations, the world’s most competent organization in handling conflicts, and, if you will, put a lid on the military affairs, for instance, by disarming the parties on all sides, which they did in eastern and western Slovonia, in Croatia. Why has that not been suggested? Because the western world has driven the United Nations out to the periphery of international politics..

I’ve said Minsk. I’ve said the UN. I’ve said some kind of internal reforms in Ukraine. I have said, and I would insist on it, NATO must stop its expansion. NATO cannot take the risk, on behalf of Europe, and the world, to say we insist on continuing with giving weapons to, and finally making Ukraine a NATO member. You can ask Kissinger, you can ask Brzezinski, you can take the most, if you will, right wing hawkish politicians in the West. They’ve all said neutrality like Finland or Switzerland, or something like that, is the only viable option.

And is that to be pro-Russian? No, that needs to be pro-Western. Because I am just looking like so many others, fortunately, have done at the Cuban Missile Crisis. What would the United States — how would it have reacted, if Russia had a huge military alliance and tried to get Canada or Mexico to become members with long-range weapons standing a few kilometers from the U.S. border?

Do you think the US would have said, “Oh, they were all freely deciding to, so we think it’s OK.” Look at what they did during the Cuban Missile Crisis. They could not accept weapon stations in Cuba.

So, one of the things you have to ask yourself about is there one rule and one set of interests for the Western world that does not apply to other actors? If you want to avoid Russia invading Ukraine, which all this nonsense is about repeatedly now for two or three months. Look into a new status where the East and the West and Ukraine, all of it, can sit down and discuss security guarantees for Ukraine.

President Zelensky has said it quite nicely, I must say. If you don’t want us to become members of NATO, and he says that to the West, because he feels that it has taken a long time for the West to act, and he last said that at the Munich Security Conference, I think yesterday or two days ago, by the way, interestingly a man whose country is going to be invaded any moment, leaves the country and goes to a conference to speak which he could have done on Zoom.

I mean, the whole thing doesn’t make sense, like it didn’t make sense, was it on the 18th or 17th when all the West said that they’re going to invade Ukraine, and the Russian defense minister was sitting in Damascus and Putin was receiving Bolsonaro. I mean, don’t they have intelligence anymore in NATO and Washington?

So long story short, sit down and give Ukraine the guarantees and non-aggression pact with both sides or all sides, clearly limited non-nuclear defensive defense measures along the borders, or whatever, integration in whatever eastern and Western economic organizations.

And I would be happy to see them as part of the Belt and Road Initiative with economic opportunities. There is so much Ukraine could do if it could get out of the role of being a victim, and squeezed between the two sides all the time. And that can only be done if you elevate the issue to a higher level, in which Ukraine’s different peoples and different parts and parties are allowed to speak up about what future they want to have in their very specific situation that Ukraine is in. It is not any country in in Europe. It’s a poor country. It’s a country that has a specific history. It’s a country which is very complex, complex ethnically, language wise, historically, etc.

And that’s why I started out saying confederation. I said something like a Switzerland model, something like Cantonization, or whatever, but for Christ’s sake, give that country and its people a security, a good feeling that nobody’s going to encroach upon you..

And that is to me, the the schwerpunkt [main emphasis], the absolutely essential, that is to give the Ukraine people a feeling of security and safety and stability and peace so that they can develop. I find it very interesting that President Zelensky, in this very long interview to the international press a couple of weeks ago, say I’m paraphrasing it. But he says “I’m tired of all these people who say that we are going to be invaded because it destroys our economy. People are leaving. No business is coming in, right?”

Who are we to do this damage to Ukraine and then want it to become a member of NATO? You know, the whole thing is recklessly irresponsible, in my view, particularly with a view of Ukraine and its peoples and their needs.

So I would put that in focus, and then put in a huge UN peacekeeping mission and continue and expand the excellent OSCE mission. Put the international communit, good hearted, neutral people down there and diffuse those who have only one eyesight, only one view of all this. They are the dangerous people.

Michelle Rasmussen: And what about the more long-term idea of a new security architecture in general?

Jan Oberg: Oh, I would build a kind of, I wouldn’t say copy of, but I would I would build something inspired by the United Nations Security Council. All Europe, representatives for all countries, including NGOs, and not just government representatives. I would have an early warning mechanism where the moment there is something like a conflict coming up, we would have reporters and we would have investigations we would look into, not conflict prevention.

My goodness, people don’t read books. There’s nothing about conflict prevention. We should prevent violence. We should prevent violent conflict, but preventing conflicts is nonsense, life is getting richer. There’s not a family, there’s not a school, there’s not a workplace, there’s not a political party, there’s not a parliament in which there are no conflicts. Conflict is what life is made of. Conflict is terribly important because it makes us change and reflect. I’m all for conflicts, and I’m one hundred and ten percent against violence. But people will say “Conflict prevention is something we should work, on and educate people in.” Nonsense from people who never read books, as I said.

So I would look for something like common security. The good old Palme Commission from the eighties, which built on defensive defense. The idea that we all have a right, according to Article 51, in the UN Charter. Everybody has a right to self-defense.

But we do not have a right to missiles that can go 4,000 km or 8,000 kilometres and kill millions of people far away. Get rid of nuclear weapons and all these things. It has nothing to do with defensiveness and common security, and I say that wherever I go and whoever I speak to. Get rid of nuclear weapons and offensive long range weapons.

The only legitimate weapons there are in this world are defensive ones, and they are defined by two things. Short distance, ability to go only over a short distance, such as helicopters instead of fighter airplanes or missiles.

And second, limited destructive capacity because they’re going to be used on your own territory in case somebody encroaches or invades you. But nobody wants to have nuclear weapons or totally super destructive weapons on their own territory because they don’t want them to be used to there. So just ask yourself, what would you like in Country X, Y and Z to be defended with? And that’s a definition of a defensive weapons. If we all had only defensive military structures, there would be very few wars, but they would also not be a military-industrial-media-academic complex that earns the money on this.

The whole thing here that the big elephant in the room we are talking about is, well, there are two of them, is NATO expansion, which we should never have done this way. And secondly, it’s the interest of the military-industrial-media-academic complex, as I call it, that earns a hell of a lot of money on people’s suffering, and millions of people who, at this moment while we speak, are living in fear and despair because of what they see in the media is going to happen. None of what we see at this moment was necessary. It’s all made up by elites who have an interest in these kinds of things happening or the threat of the Cold War. And even if we avoid a big war now, and I hope, I don’t pray to anything, but I hope very much that we do, thanks to some people’s wisdom, and it’s going to be very cold in Europe in the future after this.

Look at the demonization that the West has done again against Russia, and to a certain extent, of Ukraine. This is not psychologically something that will be repaired in two weeks.

Michelle Rasmussen: Yeah, and also, as you mentioned at the beginning, it has also something to do with the unwillingness in part of certain of the Western elites to accept that we do not have an Anglo-American unipolar world, but that there are other countries that need to be listened to and respected.

Jan Oberg: Yeah, and you might add, what the West gets out of this is that Russia and China will get closer and closer. You are already seeing the common declaration. We will have friendship eternally. And that’s between two countries who up to the sixties at some point were very strong enemies. And the same will go with Iran, and there would be other countries like Serbia which are turning away from the West. We’re going to sit and be isolating ourselves because, one, we cannot bully the world anymore, as we could before in the West. And secondly, nobody wants to be bullied anymore. We have to live in a world in which there are different systems. This Christian missionary idea that everybody must become like us. We opened up to China because then we hope they would become liberal democracies with many parties, and the parliament is awfully naïve. And time is over for that kind of thinking.

Michelle Rasmussen: I want to go into the other two subjects. Firstly, the question of the negotiations between Denmark and the United States in the context of the political, military and media statements of recent years alleging that Russia has aggressive intentions against Europe and the U.S. the Danish Social Democratic government announced on February 10th that a year ago, the U.S. requested negotiations on a Defense Cooperation Agreement, and that Denmark was now ready to start these negotiations. The government announced that it could mean permanent stationing of U.S. troops and armaments on Danish soil. And if so, this would be against the decades-long policy of the Danish government not to allow foreign troops or armaments permanently stationed in Denmark. And you wrote an article two days later criticizing these negotiations. Why are you against this?

Jan Oberg: I’m against it because it’s a break of 70 years of sensible policies. We do not accept foreign weapons and we do not accept foreign troops, and we do not accept nuclear weapons stationed on Danish soil. I sat, for ten years, all throughout the 1980s, in the Danish Governments Commission for Security and Disarmament as an expert. Nobody in the 80s would have mentioned anything like this. I guess the whole thing is something that had begun to go mad around 20 years ago, when Denmark engaged and became a bomber nation for the first time in Yugoslavia. And then Afghanistan and Iraq, and it means that you cannot say no. This is an offer you can’t refuse. You can’t refuse it, among other things, it’s my interpretation, because you remember the story where President Trump suggested that he or the U.S. could buy Greenland, and the prime minister Mette Frederiksen said, ‘Well, that is not something to be discussed. The question is absurd,’ after which he got very angry. He got personally very angry, and he said, ‘It’s not a matter of speaking to me. You’re speaking to the United States of America.’ And I think this offer to begin negotiations must have come relatively shortly after that, as ‘This offer is not something you should call absurd once again.’ I’ve no evidence for that. But if these negotiations started more than a year ago, we are back in the Trump administration.

And secondly, what kind of democracy is that? We do not know what that letter in which the Americans asked to have negotiations about this, when it was written and what the content of it was. But what we hear is that a little more than a year ago, we began some negotiations about this whole thing, that is behind the back of the parliament, and behind the back of the people, and then is presented more or less as a fait accompli. There will be an agreement. The question is only nitty-gritty, what will be in it.

In terms of substance, there is no doubt that any place where there would be American facilities based in sites, so whenever you’d call it, weapon stored will be the first targets in a war, seen as such in a war, under the best circumstances, seen by Russia. Russia’s first targets will be to eliminate the Americans everywhere they can in Europe, because those are the strongest and most dangerous forces.

Secondly, it is not true that there is a no to nuclear weapons in other senses than Denmark will keep up the principle that we will not have them stationed permanently. But with such an agreement where the Air Force, Navy and soldiers, military, shall more frequently work with, come in to visit, etc., there’s no doubt that there will be more nuclear weapons coming into, for instance, on American vessels than before, because the cooperation would be closer and closer.

Jan Oberg: And there the only thing the Danish government will do is, since they know that the “neither confirm nor deny policy” of the U.S., they would not even ask the question. If they are asked by journalists, they would say, “Well, we take for granted that the Americans honor or understand and respect that we will not have nuclear weapons on Danish territory, sea territory, or whatever. Now the Americans are violating that in Japan even. So, this is this is nonsense. There would be more nuclear weapons. I’m not saying they would go off or anything like that. I’m just saying there would be more undermining of Danish principles.

And then the whole thing, of course, has to do with the fact that Denmark is placing itself — and that was something the present government under Mette Frederiksen’s leadership did before this was made public — is to put 110 percent of your eggs in the U.S. basket. This is the most foolish thing you can do, given the world change. The best thing a small country can do is to uphold international law and the UN. Denmark doesn’t. It speaks like the U.S. for an international rules-based order, which is the opposite of, or very far away from the international law.

And secondly, in a world where you are going to want multipolarity, a stronger Asia, stronger Africa, another Russia from the one we have known the last 30 years, etc., and a United States that is, on all indicators except the military, declining and will fall as the world leader. This is, in my view, be careful with my words, the most foolish thing you can do at the moment, if you are a leader of Denmark, or if you leading the Danish security politics. You should be open — I wrote an article about that in a small Danish book some six or seven years ago, and said “Walk on two legs.” Remain friendly with the United States and NATO, and all that, but develop your other leg, so you can walk on two legs in the next 20, 30, 40 years. But there’s nobody that thinks so long term in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and there’s nobody who thinks independently anymore in research institutes or ministries. It’s basically adapting to everything we think, or are told by Washington we should do. And that’s not foreign policy to me. There’s nothing to do with it.

Jan Oberg: A good foreign policy is one where you have a good capacity to analyze the world, do scenarios, discuss which way to go, pros and contras, and different types of futures, and then make this decision in your parliament based on a public discussion. That was what we did early, 60s, 70s and 80s. And then also when you become a bomber nation, when you become a militaristic one, when active foreign policy means nothing but militarily active, then, of course, you are getting closer and closer and closer down into the into the darkness of the hole, where suddenly you fall so deeply you cannot see the daylight, where the hole is. I think it’s very sad. I find it tragic. I find it very dangerous. I find that Denmark will be a much less free country in the future by doing these kinds of things. And, don’t look at the basis of this agreement as an isolated thing. It comes with all the things we’ve done, all the wars Denmark has participated in. Sorry, I said we, I don’t feel Danish anymore, so I should say Denmark or the Danes. And finally, I have a problem with democratically elected leaders who seem to be more loyal to a foreign government, than with their own people’s needs.

China and Xinjiang

Michelle Rasmussen: The last question is that, you just mentioned the lack of independence of analysis, and there’s not only an enemy image being painted against Russia, but also against China, with allegations of central government genocide against the Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang province as a major point of contention. And on March 8th, 2021, the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington published a report The Uyghur Genocide, an examination of China’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention in cooperation with the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights in Montreal, and the next month, April 27, last year, you and two others issued a report which criticized this report. What is the basis of your criticism and what do you think should be done to lessen tension with China?

And also as a wrap-up question in the end, if you wanted to say anything else about what has to be done to make a change from looking at Russia and China as the autocratic enemies of the West, and to, instead, shift to a world in which there is cooperation between the major powers, which would give us the possibility of concentrating on such great task as economic development of the poorer parts of the world?

Jan Oberg: Well, of course, that’s something we could speak another hour about, but what we did in our in our tiny think tank here, which, by the way, is totally independent and people-financed and all volunteer. That’s why we can say and do what we think should be said and done and not politically in anybody’s hands or pockets, is that those reports, including the Newlines Institute’s report, does not hold water, would not pass as a paper for a master’s degree in social science or political science. We say that if you look into not only that report, but several other reports and researchers who were contributing to this genocide discussion, if you look into their work, they are very often related to the military-industrial-media-academic complex. And they are paid for, have formerly had positions somewhere else in that system, or are known for having hawkish views on China, Russia and everybody else outside the western sphere.

So when we began to look into this, we also began to see a trend. And that’s why we published shortly after a 150 page report about the new Cold War on China, and Xinjiang is part of a much larger orchestrated — and I’m not a conspiracy theorist. It’s all documented, in contrast to media and other research reports. It’s documented. You can see where we get our knowledge from, and on which basis we draw conclusions.

Whereas now, significantly, for Western scholarship and media, they don’t deal with, are not interested in sources. I’ll come back to that. It’s part of a much larger, only tell negative stories about China. Don’t be interested in China’s new social model. Don’t be interested in how they, in 30 to 40 years did what nobody else in humankind has ever done. Uplifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and creating a society that I can see the difference from, because I visited China in 1983, and I know what it looked like back then when they had just opened up, so to speak.

And what we are saying is not that we know what happened and happens in Xinjiang, because we’ve not been there and we are not a human rights organization. We are conflict resolution and peace proposal making policy think tank. But what we do say is, if you cannot come up with better arguments and more decent documentation, then probably you are not honest. If there’s nothing more you can show us to prove that there’s a genocide going on at Xinjiang, you should perhaps do your homework before you make these assertions and accusations.

That’s what we are saying, and we are also saying that it is peculiar that the last thing Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state, did in his office, I think on the 19th of January last year, was to say I hereby declare that Xinjiang is a genocide, and the State Department has still not published as much as one A4 page with the documentation.

So, I feel sad on a completely different level, and that is, Western scholarship is disappearing in this field. And those who may really have different views, analyses and question what we hear or uphold a plurality of viewpoints and interpretations of the world, we’re not listened to. I mean, I’m listening to elsewhere, but I’m not listened to in Western media, although I have forty five years of experience in these things and I’ve traveled quite a lot and worked in quite a lot of conflict and war zones. I can live with that, but I think it’s a pity for the Western world that we are now so far down the drain, that good scholarship is not what politics built on anymore. If it, I think it was at a point in time.

So what is also striking to me is, very quickly, the uniformity of the press. They have all written the day that the Newsline report that you referred to, was published, it was all over the place, including front pages of the leading Western newspapers, including the Danish Broadcasting’s website, etc., all saying the same thing, quoting the same bits of parts from it.

The uniformity of this is just mind boggling. How come that nobody said, “Hey, what is this Newlines Institute, by the way, that nobody had heard about before? Who are these people behind it? Who are the authors?” Anybody can sit on their chair and do quite a lot of research, which was impossible to do 20 years ago. If you are curious, if you are asked to be curious, if you are permitted to be curious, and do research in the media, in the editorial office where you are sitting, then you would find out lots of this here is B.S. Sorry to say so, intellectually, it’s B.S.

And so I made a little pastime, I wrote a very diplomatic letter to people at CNN, BBC, Reuters, etc. Danish and Norwegian, and Swedish media, those who write this opinion journalism about Xinjiang, and a couple of other things, and I sent the all our report, which is online, so it’s just a link, and I said kindly read this one, and I look forward to hearing from you. I’ve done this in about 50 or 60 cases, individually dug up their email addresses, et cetera. There is not one who has responded with anything. The strategy when you lie, or when you deceive, or when you have a political man, is don’t go into any dialogue with somebody who knows more or it’s critical of what you do.

That’s very sad. Our TFF Pressinfo goes to 20 people in BBC. They know everything we write about Ukraine, about China, about Xinjiang, et cetera. Not one has ever called.

These are the kinds of things that make me scared as an intellectual. One thing is what happens out in the world. That’s bad enough. But when I begin to find out how this is going on, how it is manipulated internally in editorial offices, close to foreign ministries, etc. or defense ministries is then I say, we are approaching the Pravda moment. The Pravda moment is not the present Pravda [newspaper], but the Pravda that went down with the Soviet Union. When I visited Russia, the Soviet Union at a time for conferences, et cetera, and I found out that very few people believed anything they saw in the media. Now, to me, it’s a question of whether the Western media, so-called free media want to save themselves or they want to become totally irrelevant, because at some point, as someone once said, you cannot lie all the time to all of the people, you may get away with lying to some, to some people, for some of the time.

Michelle Rasmussen: President Lincoln

Jan Oberg: Yeah. So the long story short is this is not good. This deceives people. And of course, some people, at some point, people will be very upset about that. They have been lied to. And also don’t make this reference anymore to free and state media. Viewers may like to hear that may not like it, but should know it, the US has just passed a law — They have three laws against China — How to intervene in all kinds of Chinese things, such as, for instance, trying to influence who will become the successor to Dalai Lama, and things like that. They are not finished at all about how to influence Taiwan, and all that, things they have nothing to do with, and which they decided between Nixon and Zhou Enlai that America accepted the One-China policy and would not mix themselves into Taiwanese issues. But that is another broken promise. These media are state media in the U.S. If you take Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, they are those, particularly the latter, who have disseminated most of these Xinjiang genocide stories, which then bounce back to BBC, etc. These are state media. As an agency for that in in Washington, it’s financed by millions of dollars, of course, and it has the mandate to make American foreign policy more understood, and promote U.S. foreign policy goals and views. Anybody can go to a website and see this. Again, I’m back to this, everybody can do what I’ve done. And that law that has just been passed says the U.S. sets aside 15 hundred million dollars, that’s one point five billion dollars in the next five years, to support education, training courses, whatever, for media people to write negative stories about China, particularly the Belt and Road Initiative. Now I look forward to Politiken [Danish newspaper] or Dagens Nyheter [Swedish newspaper] or whatever newspapers in the allied countries who would say, “This comes from a state U.S. media” when it does.

And so, my my view is there is a reason for calling it the military-industrial-media-academic complex, because it’s one cluster of elites who are now running the deception, but also the wars that are built on deception. And that is very sad where, instead, we should cooperate. I would not even say we should morally cooperate. I would say we have no choice on this Earth but to cooperate, because if we have a new Cold War between China and the West, we cannot solve humanity’s problems, whether it’s the climate issue, environmental issues, it’s poverty, it’s justice, income differences or cleavages, or modern technological problems or whatever. You take all these things, they are, by definition, global. And if we have one former empire, soon former empire, that does nothing but disseminate negative energy, criticize, demonize, running cold wars, basically isolating itself and going down.

We lack America to do good things. I’ve never been anti-American, I want to say that very clearly. I’ve never, ever been anti-American. I’m anti empire and militarism. And we need the United States, with its creativity, with its possibilities, with what it already has given the world, to also contribute constructively to a better world, together with the Russians, together with Europe, together with Africa, together with everybody else, and China, and stop this idea that we can only work with those who are like us, because if that’s what you want to do, you will have fewer and fewer to work with.

The world is going towards diversity. And we have other cultures coming up who have other ways of doing things, and we may like it or not. But the beauty of conflict resolution and peace is to do it with those who are different from you. It is not to make peace with those who already love, or are already completely identical with. This whole thing is, unfortunately, a conflict and peace illiteracy that has now completely overtaken the western world. Whereas I see people thinking about peace. I hear people mentioning the word peace. I do not hear Western politicians or media anymore mention the word peace. And when that word is not, and the discussion and the discourse has disappeared about peace, we are very far out.

Combine that with lack of intellectualism and an analytical capacity, and you will end up in militarism and war. You cannot forget these things, and then avoid a war. So in my view, there are other reasons than Russia, if you will, that we’re in a dangerous situation, and that the danger has to do with the West operating, itself, at the moment. Nobody in the world is threatening the United States or the West. If it goes down, it’s all of its own making. And I think that’s an important thing to say in these days when we always blame somebody else for our problems. That is not the truth.

Michelle Rasmussen: Thank you so much, Jan.

Udgivet på Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) tidsskrift bind 49, række 2 den 14. januar 2022. Her er en pdf-version:

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Kortet på side 15 viser NATO udvidelse, hvis Ukraine og Georgien bliver medlemmer.

The following is an edited transcription of an interview with Russia expert Jens Jørgen Nielsen, by Michelle Rasmussen, Vice President of the Schiller Institute in Demark, conducted December 30, 2021. Mr. Nielsen has degrees in the history of ideas and communication. He is a former Moscow correspondent for the major Danish daily Politiken in the late 1990s. He is the author of several books about Russia and the Ukraine, and a leader of the Russian-Danish Dialogue organization. In addition, he is an associate professor of communication and cultural differences at the Niels Brock Business College in Denmark.

Michelle Rasmussen: Hello, viewers. I am Michelle Rasmussen, the Vice President of the Schiller Institute in Denmark. This is an interview with Jens Jørgen Nielsen from Denmark.

The Schiller Institute released a [[memorandum]][[/]] December 24 titled “Are We Sleepwalking into Thermonuclear World War III.” In the beginning, it states, “Ukraine is being used by geopolitical forces in the West that answer to the bankrupt speculative financial system, as the flashpoint to trigger a strategic showdown with Russia, a showdown which is already more dangerous than the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and which could easily end up in a thermonuclear war which no one would win, and none would survive.”

Jens Jørgen, in the past days, Russian President Putin and other high-level spokesmen have stated that Russia’s red lines are about to be crossed, and they have called for treaty negotiations to come back from the brink. What are these red lines and how dangerous is the current situation?

%%Russian ‘Red Lines’

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Thank you for inviting me. First, I would like to say that I think that the question you have raised here about red lines, and the question also about are we sleepwalking into a new war, is very relevant. Because, as an historian, I know what happened in 1914, at the beginning of the First World War—a kind of sleepwalking. No one really wanted the war, actually, but it ended up with war, and tens of million people were killed, and then the whole world disappeared at this time, and the world has never been the same. So, I think it’s a very, very relevant question that you are asking here.

You asked me specifically about Putin, and the red lines. I heard that the Clintons, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry, and many other American politicians, claim that we don’t have things like red lines anymore. We don’t have zones of influence anymore, because we have a new world. We have a new liberal world, and we do not have these kinds of things. It belongs to another century and another age. But you could ask the question, “What actually are the Americans doing in Ukraine, if not defending their own red lines?”

Because I think it’s like, if you have a power, a superpower, a big power like Russia, I think it’s very, very natural that any superpower would have some kind of red lines. You can imagine what would happen if China, Iran, and Russia had a military alliance, going into Mexico, Canada, Cuba, maybe also putting missiles up there. I don’t think anyone would doubt what would happen. The United States would never accept it, of course. So, the Russians would normally ask, “Why should we accept that Americans are dealing with Ukraine and preparing, maybe, to put up some military hardware in Ukraine? Why should we? And I think it’s a very relevant question. Basically, the Russians see it today as a question of power, because the Russians, actually, have tried for, I would say, 30 years. They have tried.

I was in Russia 30 years ago. I speak Russian. I’m quite sure that the Russians, at that time, dreamt of being a part of the Western community, and they had very, very high thoughts about the Western countries, and Americans were extremely popular at this time. Eighty percent of the Russian population in 1990 had a very positive view of the United States. Later on, today, and even for several years already, 80%, the same percentage, have a negative view of Americans. So, something happened, not very positively, because 30 years ago, there were some prospects of a new world.

There really were some ideas, but something actually was screwed up in the 90s. I have some idea about that. Maybe we can go in detail about it. But things were screwed up, and normally, today, many people in the West, in universities, politicians, etc. think that it’s all the fault of Putin. It’s Putin’s fault. Whatever happened is Putin’s fault. Now, we are in a situation which is very close to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which you also mentioned. But I don’t think it is that way. I think it takes two to tango. We know that, of course, but I think many Western politicians have failed to see the compliance of the western part in this, because there are many things which play a role that we envisage in a situation like that now.

The basic thing, if you look at it from a Russian point of view, it’s the extension to the east of NATO. I think that’s a real bad thing, because Russia was against it from the very beginning. Even Boris Yeltsin, who was considered to be the man of the West, the democratic Russia, he was very, very opposed to this NATO alliance going to the East, up to the borders of Russia.

And we can see it now, because recently, some new material has been released in America, an exchange of letters between Yeltsin and Clinton at this time. So, we know exactly that Yeltsin, and Andrei Kozyrev, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs at this time, were very much opposed to it. And then Putin came along. Putin came along not to impose his will on the Russian people. He came along because there was, in Russia, a will to oppose this NATO extension to the East. So, I think things began at this point.

And later on, we had the Georgian crisis in 2008, and we had, of course, the Ukraine crisis in 2014, and, also, with Crimea and Donbass, etc.

And now we are very, very close to—I don’t think it’s very likely we will have a war, but we are very close to it, because wars often begin by some kind of mistake, some accident, someone accidentally pulls the trigger, or presses a button somewhere, and suddenly, something happens. Exactly what happened in 1914, at the beginning of World War I. Actually, there was one who was shot in Sarajevo. Everyone knows about that, and things like that could happen. And for us, living in Europe, it’s awful to think about having a war.

We can hate Putin. We can think whatever we like. But the thought of a nuclear war is horrible for all of us, and that’s why I think that politicians could come to their senses.

And I think also this demonization of Russia, and demonization of Putin, is very bad, of course, for the Russians. But it’s very bad for us here in the West, for us, in Europe, and also in America. I don’t think it’s very good for our democracy. I don’t think it’s very good. I don’t see very many healthy perspectives in this. I don’t see any at all.

I see some other prospects, because we could cooperate in another way. There are possibilities, of course, which are not being used, or put into practice, which certainly could be.

So, yes, your question is very, very relevant and we can talk at length about it. I’m very happy that you ask this question, because if you ask these questions today in the Danish and Western media at all—everyone thinks it’s enough just to say that Putin is a scoundrel, Putin is a crook, and everything is good. No, we have to get along. We have to find some ways to cooperate, because otherwise it will be the demise of all of us.

%%NATO Expansion Eastward

Michelle Rasmussen: Can you just go through a little bit more of the history of the NATO expansion towards the East? And what we’re speaking about in terms of the treaties that Russia has proposed, first, to prevent Ukraine from becoming a formal member of NATO, and second, to prevent the general expansion of NATO, both in terms of soldiers and military equipment towards the East. Can you speak about this, also in terms of the broken promises from the Western side?

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yes. Actually, the story goes back to the beginning of the nineties. I had a long talk with Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the Soviet Union, in 1989, just when NATO started to bomb Serbia, and when they adopted Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary into NATO. You should bear in mind that Gorbachev is a very nice person. He’s a very lively person, with good humor, and an experienced person.

But when we started to talk, I asked him about the NATO expansion, which was going on exactly the day when we were talking. He became very gloomy, very sad, because he said,

[[[begin quote indent]]]

Well, I talked to James Baker, Helmut Kohl from Germany, and several other persons, and they all promised me not to move an inch to the East, if Soviet Union would let Germany unite the GDR (East Germany) and West Germany, to become one country, and come to be a member of NATO, but not move an inch to the East.

[[[end quote indent]]]

I think, also, some of the new material which has been released—I have read some of it, some on WikiLeaks, and some can be found. It’s declassified. It’s very interesting. There’s no doubt at all. There were some oral, spoken promises to Mikhail Gorbachev. It was not written, because, as he said, “I believed them. I can see I was naive.”

I think this is a key to Putin today, to understand why Putin wants not only sweet words. He wants something based on a treaty, because, basically, he doesn’t really believe the West. The level of trust between Russia and NATO countries is very, very low today. And it’s a problem, of course, and I don’t think we can overcome it in a few years. It takes time to build trust, but the trust is not there for the time being.

But then, the nature of the NATO expansion has gone step, by step, by step. First, it was the three countries—Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic—and then, in 2004, six years later, came, among other things—the Baltic republics, and Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. And the others came later on—Albania, Croatia, etc. And then in 2008, there was a NATO Summit in Bucharest, where George Bush, President of the United States, promised Georgia and Ukraine membership of NATO. Putin was present. He was not President at this time. He was Prime Minister in Russia, because the President was [Dmitry] Medvedev, but he was very angry at this time. But what could he do? But he said, at this point, very, very clearly, “We will not accept it, because our red lines would be crossed here. We have accepted the Baltic states. We have retreated. We’ve gone back. We’ve been going back for several years,” but still, it was not off the table.

It was all because Germany and France did not accept it, because [Chancellor Angela] Merkel and [President François] Hollande, at this time, did not accept Ukraine and Georgia becoming a member of NATO. But the United States pressed for it, and it is still on the agenda of the United States, that Georgia and Ukraine should be a member of NATO.

So, there was a small war in August, the same year, a few months after this NATO Summit, where, actually, it was Georgia which attacked South Ossetia, which used to be a self-governing part of Georgia. The incumbent Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili did not want to accept the autonomous status of South Ossetia, so Georgia attacked South Ossetia. Russian soldiers were deployed in South Ossetia, and 14 of them were killed by the Georgian army. And you could say that George W. Bush promised Georgian President Saakashvili that the Americans would support the Georgians, in case Russia should retaliate, which they did.

The Russian army was, of course, much bigger than the Georgian army, and it smashed the Georgian army in five days, and retreated. There was no help from the United States to the Georgians. And, I think, that from a moral point of view, I don’t think it’s a very wise policy, because you can’t say “You just go on. We will help you”—and not help at all when it gets serious. I think, from a moral point of view, it’s not very fair.

%%A Coup in Ukraine

But, actually, it’s the same which seems to be happening now in Ukraine, even though there was, what I would call a coup, an orchestrated state coup, in 2014. I know there are very, very different opinions about this, but my opinion is that there was a kind of coup to oust the sitting incumbent President, Viktor Yanukovych, and replace him with one who was very, very keen on getting into NATO. Yanukovych was not very keen on going into NATO, but he still had the majority of the population. And it’s interesting. In Ukraine, there’s been a lot of opinion polls conducted by Germans, Americans, French, Europeans, Russians and Ukrainians. And all these opinion polls show that a majority of Ukrainian people did not want to join NATO.

After that, of course, things moved very quickly, because Crimea was a very, very sensitive question for Russia, for many reasons. First, it was a contested area because it was, from the very beginning, from 1991, when Ukraine was independent—there was no unanimity about Crimea and it´s status, because the majority of Crimea was Russian-speaking, and is very culturally close to Russia, in terms of history. It’s very close to Russia. It’s one of the most patriotic parts of Russia, actually. So, it’s a very odd part of Ukraine. It always was a very odd part of Ukraine.

The first thing the new government did in February 2014, was to forbid the Russian language, as a language which had been used in local administration, and things like that. It was one of the stupidest things you could do in such a very tense situation. Ukraine, basically, is a very cleft society. The eastern southern part is very close to Russia. They speak Russian and are very close to Russian culture. The western part, the westernmost part around Lviv, is very close to Poland and Austria, and places like that. So, it’s a cleft society, and in such a society you have some options. One option is to embrace all the parts of society, different parts of society. Or you can, also, one part could impose its will on the other part, against its will. And that was actually what happened.

So, there are several crises. There is the crisis in Ukraine, with two approximately equally sized parts of Ukraine. But you also have, on the other hand, the Russian-NATO question. So, you had two crises, and they stumbled together, and they were pressed together in 2014. So, you had a very explosive situation which has not been solved to this day.

And for Ukraine, I say that as long as you have this conflict between Russia and NATO, it’s impossible to solve, because it’s one of the most corrupt societies, one of the poorest societies in Europe right now. A lot of people come to Denmark, where we are now, to Germany and also to Russia. Millions of Ukrainians have gone abroad to work, because there are really many, many social problems, economic problems, things like that.

And that’s why Putin—if we remember what Gorbachev told me about having things on paper, on treaties, which are signed—and that’s why Putin said, what he actually said to the West, “I don’t really believe you, because when you can, you cheat.” He didn’t put it that way, but that was actually what he meant: “So now I tell you very, very, very, very clearly what our points of view are. We have red lines, like you have red lines. Don’t try to cross them.”

And I think many people in the West do not like it. I think it’s very clear, because I think the red lines, if you compare them historically, are very reasonable. If you compare them with the United States and the Monroe Doctrine, which is still in effect in the USA, they are very, very reasonable red lines. I would say that many of the Ukrainians, are very close to Russia. I have many Ukrainian friends. I sometimes forget that they are Ukrainians, because their language, their first language, is actually Russian, and Ukrainian is close to Russian.

So, those countries being part of an anti-Russian military pact, it’s simply madness. It cannot work. It will not work. Such a country would never be a normal country for many, many years, forever.

I think much of the blame could be put on the NATO expansion and those politicians who have been pressing for that for several years. First and foremost, Bill Clinton was the first one, Madeline Albright, from 1993. At this time, they adopted the policy of major extension to the East. And George W. Bush also pressed for Ukraine and Georgia to become members of NATO.

And for every step, there was, in Russia, people rallying around the flag. You could put it that way, because you have pressure. And the more we pressure with NATO, the more the Russians will rally around the flag, and the more authoritarian Russia will be. So, we are in this situation. Things are now happening in Russia, which I can admit I do not like, closing some offices, closing some media. I do not like it at all. But in a time of confrontation, I think it’s quite reasonable, understandable, even though I would not defend it. But it’s understandable. Because the United States, after 9/11, also adopted a lot of defensive measures, and a kind of censorship, and things like that. It’s what happens when you have such tense situations.

We should just also bear in mind that Russia and the United States are the two countries which possess 90% of the world’s nuclear armament. Alone, the mere thought of them using some of this, is a doomsday perspective, because it will not be a small, tiny war, like World War II, but it will dwarf World War II, because billions will die in this. And it’s a question, if humanity will survive. So, it’s a very, very grave question.

I think we should ask if the right of Ukraine to have NATO membership—which its own population does not really want— “Is it really worth the risk of a nuclear war?” That’s how I would put it.

I will not take all blame away from Russia. That’s not my point here. My point is that this question is too important. It’s very relevant. It’s very important that we establish a kind of modus vivendi. It’s a problem for the West. I also think it’s very important that we learn, in the West, how to cope with people who are not like us. We tend to think that people should become democrats like we are democrats, and only then will we deal with them. If they are not democrats, like we are democrats, we will do everything we can to make them democrats. We will support people who want to make a revolution in their country, so they become like us. It’s a very, very dangerous, dangerous way of thinking, and a destructive way of thinking.

I think that we in the West should study, maybe, a little more what is happening in other organizations not dominated by the West. I’m thinking about the BRICS, as one organization. I’m also thinking about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in which Asian countries are cooperating, and they are not changing each other. The Chinese are not demanding that we should all be Confucians. And the Russians are not demanding that all people in the world should be Orthodox Christians, etc. I think it’s very, very important that we bear in mind that we should cope with each other like we are, and not demand changes. I think it’s a really dangerous and stupid game to play. I think the European Union is also very active in this game, which I think is very, very—Well, this way of thinking, in my point of view, has no perspective, no positive perspective at all.

%%Diplomacy to Avert Catastrophe

Michelle Rasmussen: Today, Presidents Biden and Putin will speak on the phone, and important diplomatic meetings are scheduled for the middle of January. What is going to determine if diplomacy can avoid a disaster, as during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Helga Zepp-LaRouche has just called this a “reverse missile crisis.” Or, if Russia will feel that they have no alternative to having a military response, as they have openly stated. What changes on the Western side are necessary? If you had President Biden alone in a room, or other heads of state of NATO countries, what would you say to them?

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: I would say, “Look, Joe, I understand your concerns. I understand that you see yourself as a champion of freedom in the world, and things like that. I understand the positive things about it. But, you see, the game you now are playing with Russia is a very, very dangerous game. And the Russians, are a very proud people; you cannot force them. It’s not an option. I mean, you cannot, because it has been American, and to some degree, also European Union policy, to change Russia, to very much like to change, so that they’ll have another president, and exchange Putin for another president.”

But I can assure you, if I were to speak to Joe Biden, I’d say, “Be sure that if you succeed, or if Putin dies tomorrow, or somehow they’ll have a new President, I can assure you that the new President will be just as tough as Putin, maybe even tougher. Because in Russia, you have much tougher people. I would say even most people in Russia who blame Putin, blame him because he’s not tough enough on the West, because he was soft on the West, too liberal toward the West, and many people have blamed him for not taking the eastern southern part of Ukraine yet—that he should have done it.

“So, I would say to Biden, “I think it would be wise for you, right now, to support Putin, or to deal with Putin, engage with Putin, and do some diplomacy, because the alternative is a possibility of war, and you should not go down into history as the American president who secured the extinction of humanity. It would be a bad, very bad record for you. And there are possibilities, because I don’t think Putin is unreasonable. Russia has not been unreasonable. I think they have turned back. Because in 1991, it was the Russians themselves, who disbanded the Soviet Union. It was the Russians, Moscow, which disbanded the Warsaw Pact. The Russians, who gave liberty to the Baltic countries, and all other Soviet Republics. And with hardly any shots, and returned half a million Soviet soldiers back to Russia. No shot was fired at all. I think it’s extraordinary.

“If you compare what happened to the dismemberment of the French and the British colonial empires after World War II, the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact was very, very civilized, in many ways. So, stop thinking about Russia as uncivilized, stupid people, who don’t understand anything but mere power. Russians are an educated people. They understand a lot of arguments, and they are interested in cooperating. There will be a lot of advantages for the United States, for the West, and also the European Union, to establish a kind of more productive, more pragmatic relationship, cooperation. There are a lot of things in terms of energy, climate, of course, and terrorism, and many other things, where it’s a win-win situation to cooperate with them.

“The only thing Russia is asking for is not to put your military hardware in their backyard. I don’t think it should be hard for us to accept, certainly not to understand why the Russians think this way.”

And we in the West should think back to the history, where armies from the West have attacked Russia. So, they have it in their genes. I don’t think that there is any person in Russia who has forgot, or is not aware of, the huge losses the Soviet Union suffered from Nazi Germany in the 1940s during World War II. And you had Napoleon also trying to—You have a lot of that experience with armies from the West going into Russia. So, it’s very, very large, very, very deep.

Michelle Rasmussen: Was it around 20 million people who died during World War II?

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: In the Soviet Union. There were also Ukrainians, and other nationalities, but it was around 18 million Russians, if you can count it, because it was the Soviet Union, but twenty-seven million people in all. It’s a huge part, because Russia has experience with war. So, the Russians would certainly not like war. I think the Russians have experience with war, that also the Europeans, to some extent, have, that the United States does not have.

Because the attack I remember in recent times is the 9/11 attack, the twin towers in New York. Otherwise, the United States does not have these experiences. It tends to think more in ideological terms, where the Russians, certainly, but also to some extent, some people in Europe, think more pragmatically, more that we should, at any cost, avoid war, because war creates more problems than it solves. So, have some pragmatic cooperation. It will not be very much a love affair. Of course not. But it will be on a very pragmatic—

%%The Basis for Cooperation

Michelle Rasmussen: Also, in terms of dealing with this horrible humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and cooperating on the pandemic.

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yes. Of course, there are possibilities. Right now, it’s like we can’t even cooperate in terms of vaccines, and there are so many things going on, from both sides, actually, because we have very, very little contact between—

I had some plans to have some cooperation between Danish and Russian universities in terms of business development, things like that, but it turned out there was not one crown, as our currency is called. You could have projects in southern America, Africa, all other countries. But not Russia, which is stupid.

Michelle Rasmussen: You wrote two recent books about Russia. One is called, On His Own Terms: Putin and the New Russia, and the latest one, just from September, Russia Against the Grain. Many people in the West portray Russia as the enemy, which is solely responsible for the current situation, and Putin as a dictator who is threatening his neighbors militarily and threatening the democracy of the free world. Over and above what you have already said, is this true, or do you have a different viewpoint?

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Of course, I have a different point of view. Russia for me, is not a perfect country, because such a country does not exist, not even Denmark! Some suppose it is. But there’s no such thing as a perfect society. Because societies are always developing from somewhere, to somewhere, and Russia, likewise. Russia is a very, very big country. So, you can definitely find things which are not very likable in Russia. Definitely. That’s not my point here.

But I think that in the West, actually for centuries, we have—if you look back, I have tried in my latest book, to find out how Western philosophers, how church people, how they look at Russia, from centuries back. And there has been kind of a red thread. There’s been a kind of continuation. Because Russia has very, very, very often been characterized as our adversary, as a country against basic European values. Five hundred years back, it was against the Roman Catholic Church, and in the 17th and 18th Centuries it was against the Enlightenment philosophers, and in the 20th century, it was about communism—it’s also split people in the West, and it was also considered to be a threat. But it is also considered to be a threat today, even though Putin is not a communist. He is not a communist. He is a conservative, a moderate conservative, I would say.

Even during the time of Yeltsin, he was also considered liberal and progressive, and he loved the West and followed the West in all, almost all things they proposed.

But still, there’s something with Russia—which I think from a philosophical point of view is very important to find out—that we have some very deep-rooted prejudices about Russia, and I think they play a role. When I speak to people who say, “Russia is an awful country, and Putin is simply a very, very evil person, is a dictator,” I say, “Have you been in Russia? Do you know any Russians?” “No, not really.” “Ok. But what do you base your points of view on?” “Well, what I read in the newspapers, of course, what they tell me on the television.”

Well, I think that’s not good enough. I understand why the Russians—I very often talk to Russian politicians, and other people, and what they are sick and tired of, is this notion that the West is better: “We are on a higher level. And if Russians should be accepted by the West, they should become like us. Or at least they should admit that they are on a lower level, in relation to our very high level.”

And that is why, when they deal with China, or deal with India, and when they deal with African countries, and even Latin American countries, they don’t meet such attitudes, because they are on more equal terms. They’re different, yes, but one does not consider each other to be on a higher level.

And that’s why I think that cooperation in BRICS, which we talked about, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, I think it’s quite successful. I don’t know about the future, but I have a feeling that if you were talking about Afghanistan, I think if Afghanistan could be integrated into this kind of organization, one way or another, I have a feeling it probably would be more successful than the 20 years that the NATO countries have been there.

I think that cultural attitudes play a role when we’re talking about politics, because a lot of the policy from the American, European side, is actually very emotional. It’s very much like, “We have some feelings—We fear Russia. We don’t like it,” or “We think that it’s awful.” And “Our ideas, we know how to run a society much better than the Russians, and the Chinese, and the Indians, and the Muslims,” and things like that. It’s a part of the problem. It’s a part of our problem in the West. It’s a part of our way of thinking, our philosophy, which I think we should have a closer look at and criticize. But it’s difficult, because it’s very deeply rooted.

When I discuss with people at universities and in the media, and other places, I encounter this. That is why I wrote the latest book, because it’s very much about our way of thinking about Russia. The book is about Russia, of course, but it’s also about us, our glasses, how we perceive Russia, how we perceive not only Russia, but it also goes for China, because it’s more or less the same. But there are many similarities between how we look upon Russia, and how we look upon and perceive China, and other countries.

I think this is a very, very important thing we have to deal with. We have to do it, because otherwise, if we decide, if America and Russia decide to use all the fireworks they have of nuclear [armament] power, then it’s the end.

You can put it very sharply, to put it like that, and people will not like it. But basically, we are facing these two alternatives: Either we find ways to cooperate with people who are not like us, and will not be, certainly not in my lifetime, like us, and accept them, that they are not like us, and get on as best we can, and keep our differences, but respect each other. I think that’s what we need from the Western countries. I think it’s the basic problem today dealing with other countries.

And the same goes, from what I have said, for China. I do not know the Chinese language. I have been in China. I know a little about China. Russia, I know very well. I speak Russian, so I know how Russians are thinking about this, what their feelings are about this. And I think it’s important to deal with these questions.

%%‘A Way to Live Together’

Michelle Rasmussen: You also pointed out, that in 2001, after the attack against the World Trade Center, Putin was the first one to call George Bush, and he offered cooperation about dealing with terrorism. You’ve written that he had a pro-Western worldview, but that this was not reciprocated.

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yes, yes. Afterwards, Putin was criticized by the military, and also by politicians in the beginning of his first term in 2000, 2001, 2002, he was criticized because he was too happy for America. He even said, in an interview in the BBC, that he would like Russia to become a member of NATO. It did not happen, because—there are many reasons for that. But he was very, very keen—that’s also why he felt very betrayed afterward. In 2007, at the Munich Conference on Security in February in Germany, he said he was very frustrated, and it was very clear that he felt betrayed by the West. He thought that they had a common agenda. He thought that Russia should become a member. But Russia probably is too big.

If you consider Russia becoming a member of the European Union, the European Union would change thoroughly, but they failed. Russia did not become a member. It’s understandable. But then I think the European Union should have found, again, a modus vivendi.

Michelle Rasmussen: A way of living together.

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yes, how to live together It was actually a parallel development of the European Union and NATO, against Russia. In 2009, the European Union invited Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, to become members of the European Union, but not Russia. Even though they knew that there was really a lot of trade between Ukraine, also Georgia, and Russia. And it would interfere with that trade. But they did not pay attention to Russia.

So, Russia was left out at this time. And so eventually, you could say, understandably, very understandably, Russia turned to China. And in China, with cooperation with China, they became stronger. They became much more self-confident, and they also cooperated with people who respected them much more. I think that’s interesting, that the Chinese understood how to deal with other people with respect, but the Europeans and Americans did not.

%%Ukraine, Again

Michelle Rasmussen: Just before we go to our last questions. I want to go back to Ukraine, because it’s so important. You said that the problem did not start with the so-called annexation of Crimea, but with what you called a coup against the sitting president. Can you just explain more about that? Because in the West, everybody says, “Oh, the problem started when Russia annexed Crimea.”

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Well, if you take Ukraine, in 2010 there was a presidential election, and the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] monitored the election, and said that it was very good, and the majority voted for Viktor Yanukovych. Viktor Yanukovych did not want Ukraine to become a member of NATO. He wanted to cooperate with the European Union. But he also wanted to keep cooperating with Russia. Basically, that’s what he was like. But it’s very often claimed that he was corrupt. Yes, I don’t doubt it, but name me one president who has not been corrupt. That’s not the big difference, it’s not the big thing, I would say. But then in 2012, there was also a parliamentary election in Ukraine, and Yanukovych’s party also gained a majority with some other parties. There was a coalition which supported Yanukovych’s policy not to become a member of NATO.

And then there was a development where the European Union and Ukraine were supposed to sign a treaty of cooperation. But he found out that the treaty would be very costly for Ukraine, because they would open the borders for European Union firms, and the Ukrainian firms would not be able to compete with the Western firms.

Secondly, and this is the most important thing, basic industrial export from Ukraine was to Russia, and it was industrial products from the eastern part, from Dniepropetrovsk or Dniepro as it is called today, from Donetsk, from Luhansk and from Kryvyj Rih (Krivoj Rog), from some other parts, basically in the eastern part, which is the industrial part of Ukraine.

And they made some calculations that showed that, well, if you join this agreement, Russia said, “We will have to put some taxes on the export, because you will have some free import from the European Union. We don’t have an agreement with the European Union, so, of course, anything which comes from you, there would be some taxes imposed on it.” And then Yanukovych said, “Well, well, well, it doesn’t sound good,” and he wanted Russia, the European Union and Ukraine to go together, and the three form what we call a triangular agreement.

But the European Union was very much opposed to it. The eastern part of Ukraine was economically a part of Russia. Part of the Russian weapons industry was actually in the eastern part of Ukraine, and there were Russian speakers there. But the European Union said, “No, we should not cooperate with Russia about this,” because Yanukovych wanted to have cooperation between the European Union, Ukraine, and Russia, which sounds very sensible to me. Of course, it should be like that. It would be to the advantage of all three parts. But the European Union had a very ideological approach to this. So, they were very much against Russia. It also increased the Russian’s suspicion that the European Union was only a stepping-stone to NATO membership.

And then what happened was that there was a conflict, there were demonstrations every day on the Maidan Square in Kiev. There were many thousands of people there, and there were also shootings, because many of the demonstrators were armed people. They had stolen weapons from some barracks in the West. And at this point, when 100 people had been killed, the European Union foreign ministers from France, Germany and Poland met, and there was also a representative from Russia, and there was Yanukovych, a representative from his government, and from the opposition. And they made an agreement. Ok. You should have elections this year, in half a year, and you should have some sharing of power. People from the opposition should become members of the government, and things like that.

All of a sudden, things broke down, and Yanukovych left, because you should remember, and very often in the West, they tend to forget that the demonstrators were armed. And they killed police also. They killed people from Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions, and things like that. So, it’s always been portrayed as innocent, peace-loving demonstrators. They were not at all. And some of them had very dubious points of view, with Nazi swastikas, and things like that. And Yanukovych fled.

Then they came to power. They had no legitimate government, because many of the members of parliament from these parts of the regions which had supported Yanukovych, had fled to the East. So, the parliament was not able to make any decisions. Still, there was a new president, also a new government, which was basically from the western part of Ukraine. And the first thing they did, I told you, was to get rid of the Russian language, and then they would talk about NATO membership. And Victoria Nuland was there all the time, the vice foreign minister of the United States, was there all the time. There were many people from the West also, so things broke down.

%%Crimea

Michelle Rasmussen: There have actually been accusations since then, that there were provocateurs who were killing people on both sides.

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yes. Yes, exactly. And what’s interesting is that there’s been no investigation whatsoever about it, because a new government did not want to conduct an investigation as to who killed them. So, it was orchestrated. There’s no doubt in my mind it was an orchestrated coup. No doubt about it.

That’s the basic context for the decision of Putin to accept Crimea as a part of Russia. In the West, it is said that Russia simply annexed Crimea. It’s not precisely what happened, because there was a local parliament, it was an autonomous part of Ukraine, and they had their own parliament, and they made the decision that they should have a referendum, which they had in March. And then they applied to become a member of the Russian Federation. It’s not a surprise, even though the Ukrainian army did not go there, because there was a Ukrainian army. There were 21,000 Ukrainian soldiers. 14,000 of these soldiers joined the Russian army.

And so, that tells a little about how things were not like a normal annexation, where one country simply occupies part of the other country. Because you have this cleft country, you have this part, especially the southern part, which was very, very pro-Russian, and it’s always been so. There’s a lot of things in terms of international law you can say about it.

But I have no doubt that you can look upon it differently, because if you look it at from the point of people who lived in Crimea, they did not want—because almost 80-90% had voted for the Party of the Regions, which was Yanukovych’s party, a pro-Russian party, you could say, almost 87%, or something like that.

They have voted for this Party. This Party had a center in a central building in Kiev, which was attacked, burned, and three people were killed. So, you could imagine that they would not be very happy. They would not be very happy with the new government, and the new development. Of course not. They hated it. And what I think is very critical about the West is that they simply accepted, they accepted these horrible things in Ukraine, just to have the prize, just to have this prey, of getting Ukraine into NATO.

And Putin was aware that he could not live, not even physically, but certainly not politically, if Sevastopol, with the harbor for the Russian fleet, became a NATO harbor. It was impossible. I know people from the military say “No, no way.” It’s impossible. Would the Chinese take San Diego in the United States? Of course not. It goes without saying that such things don’t happen.

So, what is lacking in the West is just a little bit of realism. How powers, how superpowers think, and about red lines of superpowers. Because we have an idea in the West about the new liberal world order. It sounds very nice when you’re sitting in an office in Washington. It sounds very beautiful and easy, but to go out and make this liberal world order, it’s not that simple. And you cannot do it like, certainly not do it like the way they did it in Ukraine.

Michelle Rasmussen: Regime change?

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yes, regime change.

%%The Importance of Cultural Exchanges

Michelle Rasmussen: I have two other questions. The last questions. The Russian-Danish Dialogue organization that you are a leader of, and the Schiller Institute in Denmark, together with the China Cultural Center in Copenhagen, were co-sponsors of three very successful Musical Dialogue of Cultures Concerts, with musicians from Russia, China, and many other countries. You are actually an associate professor in cultural differences. How do you see that? How would an increase in cultural exchange improve the situation?

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Well, it cannot but improve, because we have very little, as I also told you. So, I’m actually also very, very happy with this cooperation, because I think it’s very enjoyable, these musical events, they are very, very enjoyable and very interesting, also for many Danish people, because when you have the language of music, it is better than the language of weapons, if I can put it that way, of course. But I also think that when we meet each other, when we listen to each other’s music, and share culture in terms of films, literature, paintings, whatever, I think it’s also, well, it’s a natural thing, first of all, and it’s unnatural not to have it.

We do not have it, because maybe some people want it that way, if people want us to be in a kind of tense situation. They would not like to have it, because I think without this kind of, it’s just a small thing, of course, but without these cultural exchanges, well, you will be very, very bad off. We will have a world which is much, much worse, I think, and we should learn to enjoy the cultural expressions of other people.

We should learn to accept them, also, we should learn to also cooperate and also find ways—. We are different. But, also, we have a lot of things in common, and the things we have in common are very important not to forget, that even with Russians, and even the Chinese, also all other peoples, we have a lot in common, that is very important to bear in mind that we should never forget. Basically, we have the basic values we have in common, even though if you are Hindu, a Confucian, a Russian Orthodox, we have a lot of things in common.

And when you have such kind of encounters like in cultural affairs, in music, I think that you become aware of it, because suddenly it’s much easier to understand people, if you listen to their music. Maybe you need to listen a few times, but it becomes very, very interesting. You become curious about instruments, ways of singing, and whatever it is. So, I hope the corona situation will allow us, also, to make some more concerts. I think it should be, because they’re also very popular in Denmark.

Michelle Rasmussen: Yes. As Schiller wrote, it’s through beauty that we arrive at political freedom. We can also say it’s through beauty that we can arrive at peace.

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yes, yes.

%%The Role of Schiller Institute

Michelle Rasmussen: The Schiller Institute and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, its founder and international President, are leading an international campaign to prevent World War III, for peace through economic development, and a dialogue amongst cultures. How do you see the role of the Schiller Institute?

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Well, I know it. We have been cooperating. I think your basic calls, appeals for global development, I think it’s very, very interesting, and I share the basic point of view. I think maybe it’s a little difficult. The devil is in the details, but basically, I think what you are thinking about, when I talk about the Silk Road, when I talk about these Chinese programs, Belt and Road programs, I see much more successful development that we have seen, say, in Africa and European countries developing, because I have seen how many western-dominated development programs have been distorting developments in Africa and other parts of the world. They distort development.

I’m not uncritical to China, but, of course, I can see very positive perspectives in the Belt and Road program. I can see really, really good perspectives, because just look at the railroads in China, for instance, at their fast trains. It’s much bigger than anywhere else in the world. I think there are some perspectives, really, which I think attract, first and foremost, people in Asia.

But I think, eventually, also, people in Europe, because I also think that this model is becoming more and more—it’s also beginning in the eastern part. Some countries of Eastern Europe are becoming interested. So, I think it’s very interesting. Your points of your points of view. I think they’re very relevant, also because I think we are in a dead-end alley in the West, what we are in right now, so people anyway are looking for new perspectives.

And what you come up with, I think, is very, very interesting, certainly. What it may be in the future is difficult to say because things are difficult.

But the basic things that you think about, and what I have heard about the Schiller Institute, also because I also think that you stress the importance of tolerance. You stress the importance of a multicultural society, that we should not change each other. We should cooperate on the basis of mutual interests, not changing each other. And as I have told you, this is what I see as one of the real, real big problems in the western mind, the western way of thinking, that we should decide what should happen in the world as if we still think we are colonial powers, like we have been for some one hundred years. But these times are over. There are new times ahead, and we should find new ways of thinking. We should find new perspectives.

And I think it goes for the West, that we can’t go on living like this. We can’t go on thinking like this, because it will either be war, or it’ll be dead end alleys, and there’ll be conflicts everywhere.

You can look at things as a person from the West. I think it’s sad to look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and those countries, Syria to some extent also, where the West has tried to make some kind of regime change or decide what happens. They’re not successful. I think it’s obvious for all. And we need some new way of thinking. And what the Schiller Institute has come up with is very, very interesting in this perspective, I think.

Michelle Rasmussen: Actually, when you speak about not changing other people, one of our biggest points is that we actually have to challenge ourselves to change ourselves. To really strive for developing our creative potential and to make a contribution that will have, potentially, international implications.

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: Yes. Definitely

Michelle Rasmussen: The Schiller Institute is on full mobilization during the next couple of weeks to try to get the United States and NATO to negotiate seriously. And Helga Zepp-LaRouche has called on the U.S. and NATO to sign these treaties that Russia has proposed, and to pursue other avenues of preventing nuclear war. So, we hope that you, our viewers, will also do everything that you can, including circulating this video.

Is there anything else you would like to say to our viewers before we end, Jens Jørgen?

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: No. I think we have talked a lot now. Only I think what you said about bringing the U.S. and Russia to the negotiation table, it’s obvious. I think that it should be, for any prudent, clear-thinking person in the West, it should be obvious that this is the only right thing to do. So of course, we support it 100%.

Michelle Rasmussen: Okay. Thank you so much, Jens Jørgen Nielsen

Jens Jørgen Nielsen: I thank you.

Formand Tom Gillesberg: Godaften og velkommen til disse spændende tider, hvor vi på den ene side har dette utrolige momentum, som Kina har formået at skabe globalt for økonomisk udvikling, for opbygning, for industrialisering, for infrastrukturprojekter, der, i lighed med, at det er lykkedes med at løfte 700 millioner kinesere ud af fattigdom, gør det muligt inden for en overskuelig årrække at flytte alle mennesker, der lever på Jorden i fattigdom i dag, ud af den.

Det perspektiv har nu, som dem, der har fulgt med, vil vide, fået en utrolig vigtig opbakning i form af, at Emmanuel Macron, den franske præsident, har besluttet sig for, at det projekt, som kan skrive ham ind i historiebøgerne – og tro mig, det er, hvad det drejer sig om for Macron som præsident; han skal lave noget ’stort’, han skal blive en stor personlighed – det er at gå med i det kinesiske Silkevejsprojekt, i Bælte & Vej Initiativet …

… Nu er Donald Trump på vej, eller er måske ankommet, til det Økonomiske Verdensforum i Davos i Schweiz, som har fundet sted her fra den 23. jan. og slutter i morgen (26. jan.), og så må Trump jo så give afskedssalutten …

Men der er en meget stor delegation fra Kina, inkl. hans [Xi Jinpings] vigtigste økonomiske rådgiver, Liu He, som netop er blevet valgt ind i Politbureauet i forbindelse med den sidste partikongres, men som allerede i en årrække har været en meget tæt rådgiver til Xi Jinping i økonomiske spørgsmål og i en omlægning af den kinesiske økonomi, hvor man dels sagde meget direkte, at, man har et korttidsmål for den kinesiske økonomi, som er at øge pr. capita-indkomsten fra $8.000 til $10.000 inden 2020, og gerne mere. Jeg vil bare sige, at lige dér, i en nation med 1,4 mia. mennesker, hvor ambitionen er at hæve den gennemsnitlige indkomst med 25 % i løbet af to år; det er ret vildt! I Danmark er man glad, hvis man har en reallønsfremgang på 1-2 % – 25 % på to år, wow! Men det sagde han faktisk. Og så fortsætter man derfra, men på længere sigt, så drejer det sig om at få den kinesiske økonomi fra at være meget statsstyret til at være meget selvkørende i form af udbud og efterspørgsel. …

Men, siger han, så er der tre kampe, der skal kæmpes på vejen: For det første, så skal man forhindre eller stå imod de risici, der er netop nu, frem for alt økonomiske risici; så skal man reducere fattigdommen, og så skal man have udryddet forureningen. Det er det, det drejer sig om for det kinesiske lederskab.

Og som sagt, centralt i det her er risikoen, den finansielle risiko, risikoen på den økonomiske front, som man i Vesten ikke vil tale om! Men som er helt centralt i det, Kina gerne vil diskutere, inkl. nu, i Davos. Chefen for den Asiatiske Infrastruktur-Investeringsbank (AIIB) og en hel masse andre kinesere, der også er til stede; man vil forsøge at sætte på den økonomiske dagsorden: Hvad gør vi ved disse systemrisici, der er netop nu? Hvordan forhindrer vi, at det går helt amok? Fordi, som bl.a. White, der nu sidder i OECD, men som tidligere også var i Bank of International Settlements (BIS), og som har været ude mange gange med kritik – han er cheføkonom hos OECD nu – jamen, man har et problem. Man er fanget, fra de vestlige regeringers side, fra centralbankernes side, i en meget uheldig situation. Man har, siden 2008, lavet alle disse kvantitative lempelser; man har pumpet penge ud og pumpet penge ud og pumpet penge ud. Nu, med en stigning i inflationen rundt omkring, er der ingen snak; man skal til at trække nogle af de penge hjem igen. Man skal til at have mere normal, økonomisk aktivitet; man skal til at have stigende renter. Problemet er bare, at man har skabt en kronisk afhængighed i store dele af den økonomiske verden af gratis kapital. Man snakker åbent, i Bank of International Settlements eller andre steder om, at disse ’zombie-banker’ eller snarere ’zombie-firmaer’; dvs., at måske 10-20 % af de store firmaer rundt omkring ikke kan overleve, den dag, de ikke kan låne pengene gratis. Det er ligesom danske landmænd, for den sags skyld, de har et kæmpe gældsbjerg, men det er ikke noget problem, så længe renten er lav; skal du så til at betale 1 %, 2 %, 3 %, det samme, som nogle danske husejere kan få grå hår i hovedet over; det gør en mega forskel. Der er stor forskel på at køre rente- og afdragsfrit, og så til bare at skulle til at betale renterne. Når du går fra nul til noget, er det rigtig hårdt. Om det er 10 eller 20 %, det er et enormt højt tal, som står til, at de store virksomheder – allerede nu er der General Electric og en række store firmaer, der allerede nu går ned med flaget, fordi bankerne ikke vil blive ved at låne dem penge. Men det er toppen af isbjerget. Det her venter på at ske …

 

Hør hele Tom Gillesbergs analyse af de seneste politiske begivenheder: Video og lydfil.

 

Lyd:

14. nov., 2017 – EU’s højtstående repræsentant for udenrigsanliggender og sikkerhedspolitik, Federica Mogherini, samt 23 EU-forsvarsministre, underskrev i går i Bruxelles et dokument, der kræver konkrete skridt til dannelse af en »militær forsvarsunion«. Der skal udarbejdes flere detaljer til EU-topmødet i december, hvor man på dette møde ønsker at underskrive et juridisk bindende dokument. Dette er ikke hær for hele Europa; dokumentet forudser fælles udvikling af våben, koordineret indkøb af våbenudstyr, koordineret forsvarsresearch og sandsynligvis også skabelsen af regionale forsvarshovedkvarterer (som overlapper parallelle NATO-planer).

Projektet, der foreløbig ikke engang identificerer en fjende, som europæerne skal forsvare sig mod, skal foreløbig have et budget på €5 mia. Hvorvidt dette er en »milepæl i europæisk udvikling«, for nu at bruge den tyske udenrigsminister Sigmar Gabriels noget pompøse ord, vil vi få at se. EU promoverer det som en faktisk reducering af udgifterne fra medlemsstaterne, under sloganet, »mere forsvar for færre penge«!

Briterne støtter projektet, men de tilslutter sig imidlertid ikke, ligesom Danmark, Island, Malta og Irland heller ikke gør. Ikke-NATO-medlem Østrig vil imidlertid tilslutte sig, og rygterne siger, at Sverige og Finland, der ligeledes begge ikke er NATO-medlemmer, vil også samarbejde med projektet.

Foto: Federica Mogherini – en EU militær union? 

Leder fra LaRouchePAC, 12. januar, 2017 – Ingen mennesker i USA kan undgå at mærke den anstrengte atmosfære af forventning, der gennemtrænger disse første dage af året 2017. På den ene eller anden måde er Bush/Obama-tyranniets seneste seksten, blodige års vante sandheder ved at være forbi; vi står alle ansigt til ansigt med det ukendte. Omkring denne udvikling, og sættende betingelserne for den, er en fuldstændig ny, revolutionær situation på hele det internationale plan, som det store flertal af amerikanere ikke har den fjerneste idé om.

Samtidig er nogle af vore lavereplacerede lakajer for Det britiske Imperium, i takt med, at dagen for indsættelse af den nye præsident nærmer sig (20. januar), hvide i ansigtet af frygt. Vil de miste nogle af deres privilegier? Hvad vil der ske med dem? De synes at være ved at gå fra forstanden med deres skrigeri om stadig mere vilde fupnumre imod den nyvalgte præsident. I stedet for denne galskab skulle de hellere se til, at de »fortryder, angrer og gør godt igen«, som patrioten Andrew J. Bacevich skrev 9. jan. i en artikel.

I mellemtiden håber det, af de store nyhedsmedier ignorerede, og derfor ukendte af dem, der læser disse, store flertal af amerikanere, der har måttet bide i græsset i seksten år og længere, at de omsider kommer på en bedre kost.

Men vi står alle, uden undtagelse, og stirrer ind i ansigtet på det ukendte og uforudsete – det uventede. Og de, der først lander på deres fødder igen, parat til at handle, så det skaber resultat, vil starte ud med en stor fordel. Vi må være disse første. Det bliver ganske bestemt ikke de ynkelige lakajer i pressen, eller bureaukraterne uden samvittighed, og som i øjeblikket (men ikke ret meget længere) står i spidsen for »efterretningstjenesterne«.

Og derfor er der ingen, der ved, hvad de skal gøre. Hvordan kan vi undgå et overhængende kollaps af finanssystemet? Hvordan kan vi få en reel, økonomisk genrejsning? Hvordan passer vi ind i det globale system? Hvor er menneskeheden på vej hen? Kun de af os, der har kæmpet for at gøre Lyndon LaRouches opdagelser til vore egne, kender blot de første skridt til besvarelse af disse presserende spørgsmål.

Det er af disse grunde, at alle lige pludselig lytter til os. De kræver at forstå LaRouches Fire Love – for hvem ellers har svaret? Uden afgørende input fra Lyndon LaRouche, vil vi ikke blive i stand til at komme ud af dette rod. Og læren af gårsdagens LaRouchePAC-mission til Capitol Hill går endnu videre end til en ny modtagelighed for genindførelse af Glass-Steagall, og især for LaRouches Fire Love, efter Hamiltons principper. Den går videre end det, til at omfatte det enorme indtryk, som dér blev skabt, af Schiller Instituttets musikdirektør John Sigerson, med sin briefing om højtideligheden den 7. jan. ved Tåremindesmærket i Bayonne, New Jersey, hvor Schiller Instituttets New York Borgerkor deltog. Dette repræsenterede sjælen i Manhattan-projektet, et af Lyndon LaRouches seneste store bidrag til at redde USA, og menneskeslægten.

Og I har endnu ikke set det halve af det!

Leder fra LaRouchePAC, 10. januar, 2017 – Med blot få dage tilbage af sit præsidentskab fortsætter Barack Obama med at optrappe en potentiel krigskonfrontation med Rusland, mens hans regimeskiftkriges dødbringende kaos, i Libyen, Yemen og Afghanistan, fortsat forværres.

Foruden en ny, hurtig deployering af yderligere 6.000 soldater til Ruslands grænser, med fuld jord-og-luft kampbevæbning, er Obama og hans Pentagonchefer gået i gang med at skabe en 2.000 mand stærk »dræberenhed«, der skal uddannes til at myrde nordkoreanske ledere. Obama har indledt, været med til at starte eller fortsat ni separate krige, mens han har været præsident, alle uden bemyndigelse fra, eller blot væsentlige konsultationer med, Kongressen. Han er den eneste præsident i USA’s historie, der har været i krig hver eneste dag i to konsekutive embedsperioder, som kongresmedlem Ron Paul påpegede på sin webside 9. jan. Hans dronedrab stiller George W. Bush’ i skyggen, og hans erklærede politik for dronedrab fjerner grundlæggende set enhver grænse for præsidenters magt til at dræbe via droner overalt i verden.

Nogle af disse handlinger, såsom Obamas massive, $115 mia. store bevæbning af saudiarabiske styrker for at bombe og invadere Yemen, har haft et sandt folkemord til følge; nogle af disse handlinger har næret fremvæksten af flere terroristgrupper; andre truer med generel krig med Rusland og/eller Kina.

At denne krigspræsident kan prale med en Nobels Fredspris er en vederstyggelighed og en trussel mod freden, både i krigen i Syrien, og i hele verden.

Den 9. jan. krævede Schiller Instituttets præsident Helga Zepp-LaRouche, at præsident Obama tilbageleverede Nobels Fredspris, som han fik i 2009 kort tid efter, at han overtog embedet. Pentagon har netop annonceret »dræberenheden« i Korea – en afgående præsident sammen med en koreansk regering, der selv er ved at blive fjernet gennem en rigsretssag! – samt de store, nye styrker, der nu deployeres, for at »standse russisk aggression« i Europa.

Det er nødvendigt at respondere til sådanne eskalerende krigshandlinger i Obamas sidste dage i embedet, med et krav om, at han omgående skal tilbagelevere sin Nobels Fredspris; og at dette krav udbredes internationalt og fortsætter efter, at han har forladt embedet.

Hvis Obama tvinges til at opgive sin uretmæssigt tildelte Fredspris, vil hans administrations forsøg på at tvinge det tiltrædende Trump-team til at fortsætte disse krige og stormagtskonfrontationer blive slået ned. Hans sidste øjebliks optrapninger er nu i færd med at skabe så meget kaos og forvirring for hans efterfølger som overhovedet muligt.

Krigene, og truslerne om krige, kan få deres helt eget liv, med mindre de tilbagevises, og det på en synlig og stærk måde.

For fredens og udviklingens skyld må Obamas fredspris inddrages eller opgives.   

    

Wiesbaden, 30. juli 2016 – Det tyske luftvåbens webside rapporterede i går om, at general Harald Kujat (pens.), tidligere formand for den tyske Forbundshærs generalstab (2000 – 02) og tidligere formand for NATO’s Militærkomite (2002 – 05), for flere uger siden holdt en tale til en forsamling på flere hundrede personer ved de det Tyske Luftvåbens Skole for Officerer uden Kommission, i hvilken tale han opfordrede til en Marshallplan for Syrien. General Kujat sagde: »Det er nødvendigt at stabilisere landet, etablere en overgangsregering med frie valg og støtte demokrati og genopbygning, i lighed med Marshallplanen for det tidligere Tyskland efter krigen.«

General Kujat samt en anden taler, Wolfgang Kubicki, næstformand for partiet Frie Demokrater, besvarede begge et spørgsmål om faren for krig i Europa, med »der er ingen, der vil have én«. Dernæst tilføjede general Kujat: »Men en utilsigtet handling kunne eskalere, og dernæst forårsage en krig«, og at konflikter i århundreder er begyndt på denne måde. Rapporteringen fortsætter, med en parafrase af Kujat, med, at »NATO-øvelserne, der finder sted på Ruslands vestlige grænser, bidrager ikke til at lette spændingerne, og de stempler Rusland som en modstander. Kubicki talte om en upassende ’raslen med lænkerne’«, der underminerer indsatsen for en fælles sikkerhedspolitik med Rusland, som blev påbegyndt i 1990. Kubicki trak paralleller til den tyske udenrigsminister Steinmeiers tidligere angreb på »NATO’s raslen med sablerne«.

Begge talere afviste også at bruge Bundeswehr internt i Tyskland imod terrortruslen og påpegede behovet for at udvide politiets kapaciteter. De står fast på den tyske forfatnings klarhed omkring magtens deling, som ikke bør undermineres.

General Kujat er meget kendt for at være streng i spørgsmålet om, at Forbundsdagen er den instans, der kan bemyndige militære deployeringer til udlandet Anvendelsen af NATO AWACS-fly, som til dels bemandes af tyske tropper, til indsats i Syrien, hvor potentialet for hændelser med russiske luftstyrker kunne finde sted, er en sådan principsag. Den tidligere statssekretær til Forsvarsministeriet og tidligere OSCE-vicepræsident, Willy Wimmer, sagde i går til Sputnik Tyskland, at et amerikansk NATO AWACS-fly og et saudisk AWACS-fly muligvis havde været involveret i det tyrkiske luftvåbens nedskydning af et russisk Su-24 bombefly i november 2015. Agenturets engelske tjeneste, Sputnik International, rapporterede i dag om Wimmers bemærkninger.

Foto: Harald Kujat.