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LARRY WILKERSON: Yes.
PAUL JAY: They make enormous amounts of money, not just producing weapons for Russia but selling them abroad. There's enormous competition with the West.
LARRY WILKERSON: Oil and arms. That's Russia's economy.
PAUL JAY: Let's not forget the wealth that has flowed up to a tiny handful of Russian oligarchs. It's pretty good to have an external enemy you can focus on and not have focus on how much wealth your friends have made. Very much like the United States.
LARRY WILKERSON: Yeah. If Putin has a problem that I imagine is on his agenda almost weekly if daily, it's the flight of capital out of Russia into better investments because a lot of those oligarchs don't necessarily trust the situation to endure.
PAUL JAY: All right. I've got a lot of questions here from people watching live, so let me try to get another one. Here's Laudon1780 on YouTube: Colonel Wilkerson, do you see any moves to further drawn eastern European countries into the Russia-U.S. conflict, such as Moldova, and do you expect sudden changes of governments there?
LARRY WILKERSON: In a certainly way I do, but I think it's probably going to happen, what we're calling in the academic community, in a democratic way, but that democracy's going to be illiberal, not liberal. That is to say, they're going to use elections, more or less, to bring in more or less right-wing types. We've already seen that in some of the countries. We've seen Germany's AfD, for example, increase its membership in the German legislature. I think that's the shrewd way it's going to happen.
I think we're going to see ... Because of this social media, and because of other means of communications now, this is something that probably has never happened before, not in the modern world anyway. We actually have Nazis in Europe communicating with Nazis in America. We have alt right in Europe communicating and planning in some cases with alt right in the United States. This is a global movement of fascist-like, Nazi-like tendencies, and Putin is going to play that. I'm not saying he's that kind of person. He could be, I think, but there are plenty like that. Ukraine is full of them. Ukraine has got people who would love to go back and put the swastika back up.
PAUL JAY: Just had an essentially pro-fascist protest or rally there of about 60,000 people a few weeks ago.
LARRY WILKERSON: Yeah. Of course, sometime ago, our CIA was supporting some of those groups because they opposed the Russians. This is a new phenomenon, I think, to have this kind of global communication and global propaganda amongst people from Charlottesville, Virginia, and people from Kiev, Ukraine.
PAUL JAY: Here's a question from Joseph Ballin on Facebook: What is the U.S. and Chinese interest in Zimbabwe, and can China continue to keep the U.S. out of Zimbabwe since Mugabe was outed by his own ruling party? How much of this coup, or essentially a coup in Zimbabwe, is just internal politics, or does it reflect any U.S.-China contention there?
LARRY WILKERSON: I think it reflects mostly the had to go nature of Mugabe. I think he had to go, and the forces that were gathering were going to get rid of him. What happened, I think, and we may get as bad a replacement because of this, is that we had some people consult the Chinese, and the Chinese probably said, "America plays this game all the time. Russia is back in this game. We don't play this game much. Let's give it a shot, and let's give it a shot in the region of the world where we're trying to spread our capital, and to interest countries in being more not subservient, but more in the line of Chinese succession than that of America, or Europe, or anyone else."
Most of this is for economic reasons. I was talking to a Chinese scholar the other day, and I said, "They're playing their hand there, seeing what it's like to be like the United States, seeing what it's like to court another government, to maybe assist a coup, and maybe bring a more favorable government in their own interest into being." I don't know if it's going to pan out that way, but I can see President Xi, and I can particularly see some of his security advisors, being more likely to do some of these things in the future. After all, these people have more money than you can shake a stick at. They have their land route going across central Asia, their sea route coming out of the South China Sea going all the way to Iran.
The other day, I'm reading a National Geographic, Paul, and the guy is walking across central Asia. He's a photographer. He's a travelog guy. He's walking. He says, "One of the things I encountered the most, and everywhere I went, was the BRI, the Belt Road Initiative." Signs of it are everywhere, from just small traders, to oil and gas pumping lines, to trucks, to you name it. The language similarities with Xinjiang province and Turkic languages in general, he said, "This is incredible." He said, "This is what's happening."
The Chinese have so much money. Most of it they got from us buying their products, of course, them and others in the world. They're investing it everywhere. We can't possibly compete with the Chinese. When we do, Paul, we have to go to the mint, we have to get the paper and the ink, and we have to print the money.
PAUL JAY: All right. A couple of Saudi questions here. I'm going to combine them. Greg Underdahl, I'm probably mispronouncing Greg's name: What is Colonel Wilkerson's take on former Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the Congressional investigation into 9/11? Graham's assertion that the FBI is aggressively covering up Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11. Then Christopher Thomas Collier on Facebook asks, "You've said previously that Saudi Arabia may not last more than a few decades. Do you think Prince Mohammed bin Salman's recent actions will accelerate that?" Start with the 9/11, and then we can get to the future of the Saudis.
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