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PAUL JAY: We're in a very dangerous moment in various places in the world. Just to add-
LARRY WILKERSON: Paul, we're exactly as you just characterized it, and what we have in Washington is a bunch of amateurs with no experience. I include Rex Tillerson in that. That is not what you want on your team when you're in this kind of situation.
PAUL JAY: And, a very divided Washington. I'm reading reports, I don't know how credible they are because obviously I'm not so sure of the websites I've been seeing them, but apparently a real split between the Pentagon and sections of the CIA, which apparently don't buy this policy of maintenance of the Assad era, or what should I say, accepting Assad is going to stay in power. There's sections of the CIA that are continuing to fund and arm anti-Assad Islamic forces in Syria, and that the Pentagon is seriously at odds with these people in the CIA. Have you heard this?
LARRY WILKERSON: I haven't. My question there as always, and has been recently, does the president know about this? Does McMaster know about this? Is this happening beneath their watch, as it did with Ronald Reagan with the Contras and Sandinistas in South America, Honduras and Nicaragua? Ronald Reagan did not know everything that Bill Casey and his minions were doing, including Bob Gates. There were things going on between the president's watch, if you will. Who cares what the reason was, dotage, or inattention, or whatever? That happens from time to time with the CIA. When you get these internecine bureaucratic battles beneath it, it gets even worse. I wouldn't be surprised at all, because I have seen it before in the historical record, in the archives, in testimony. It's there.
PAUL JAY: Maybe we should welcome it. If everyone in the state, and the deep state, and the Pentagon, and CIA were all monolithic in their view of what to do next, we might be a lot closer to an attack on Iran and Iraq. Maybe this is a good thing. They can't execute much of anything right now.
LARRY WILKERSON: You've got a point. I've often said, and from time to time Colin Powell and I would joke about that the best thing going for us was incompetence.
PAUL JAY: Yeah. I think I've been saying that. "Welcome the circus and chaos of the Trump show, because the alternative is worse." Some questions from viewers here. Mr. Wilkerson, do you think Europe is going to break with the United States over the attempt to isolate Russia?
LARRY WILKERSON: I think Putin is doing a real fine job here in terms of Russian interests. He's getting Erdogan to the point where I think Erdogan's going to probably break out of NATO. I'm not totally sure that's going to happen, but it's looking ominous. That would be the largest, most capable land force in NATO outside the U.S., leaving. That would be, in my mind, the beginning of the unraveling of NATO.
He's also making significant progress in a little place called Mitrovica, the northern province of Kosovo, where UN and U.S. forces in small numbers are. He's infiltrating the northern part of that province, Mitrovica, which is the northern part of Kosovo. We've all forgotten about Kosovo since Bill Clinton bombed it for 180 or so days and Milosevic went to the International Criminal Court, and died in the process, but it's still there, and the Serbs still very much want it back. As Putin is wont to do, and he's crafty at this, he's moving his pawns, and he's moving his knights, and he's moving his bishops on multiple chessboards. One of the things he's doing in Kosovo is threatening to take it back over for the Serbs and the Albanians.
We're talking about all manner of things going on right now. I wonder if they're even on the agenda of the National Security Council.
PAUL JAY: What does Putin and Russia get out of this? I would have thought that Putin's primary objective should actually be to try to ease the tensions with the U.S. in order to get the embargo lifted and get these big energy plays going on that Tillerson, Exxon, and others want to do. Why poke the American eye here?
LARRY WILKERSON: Two reasons, I think. One, he discovered this early on and he's maximized it, it is what Russians want. Not every one of them, but a majority of them, and so he's staying very high in the polls, and he's staying very politically successful with the Russian electorate because of what he's doing. That's probably his primary reason.
His secondary reason is he's having fun. I mean that. I think he's actually having fun poking his fingers in the eyes of the superpower, and doing it where he can do it and when he can do it, and not risking anything really on his own behalf. He can pull back almost anywhere where he is if he has to. The only place where he's really exerted himself in a way that sort of exposed some flanks was Syria, and yet even there, he had Damascus on his side, he had Tehran on his side, and I think ultimately he had Turkey on his side. He's about to strip Turkey away from NATO. He's already seen the United Kingdom stripped away from the Union. I'd be chalking up my blackboard. I'd be going, "That's another one. That's another one. That's another one."
You say, "Why is he doing this?" None of this threatens a global conflagration. What it does is threaten the hegemony of the United States, and particularly where it makes Russia vulnerable. He's doing it the same place the Soviets did it, on the plains of Europe. That's where I'd be doing it if I were he. I wouldn't be in Vladivostok. I wouldn't be looking for the Japanese or the northern territories or whatever. Maybe I would eventually, but those things are probably unmanageable, undoable. Besides, the Chinese are taking over the far east of Russia, if you've looked lately.
He's got European Russia. He's got NATO as his enemy. All the exercises the Russian military has conducted since 2012, 2013, 2014, the scenario they conduct those exercises is an invasion by NATO. That's what Putin uses to mobilize, raise the morale of, conduct the training of, and write the doctrine of his armed forces, a NATO invasion. We say, "NATO's not going to invade Russia." That's not what Putin and his generals think, and if you were in their shoes, you probably would guard against it, too. That's what their doctrine, their exercises, and everything reflects. You've got to put yourself in the other person's shoes, and I think too, as I've said, you've got to understand how shrewd Putin is.
PAUL JAY: Yeah. It's not so different than the American shoes. He's got his own military-industrial complex.
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