This is Mike Billington. I’m speaking here with Chas Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, a China scholar and expert, and a general political commentator on many, many subjects, having to do with the current disintegration of the world into a war policy. I’ll just give the update that we heard this morning, that there was a second attempt on the Armavir radar site. You might have heard this already. It did not succeed in this case, in addition to the attack on the Orsk facility, which was back on the 26th. But it’s clear that this is more than one. These are very serious attacks on the nuclear early warning radar system of the Russians. I’ll ask you to give your comment.
Chas Freeman: I think there is a basic rule of statecraft in the nuclear age, and that is that no great nuclear power can afford to appear to be undermining the nuclear deterrent, or the strategic defense of a rival. And yet, that is exactly what Ukraine, apparently acting as a proxy for the United States, is doing. It is attacking the Russian early warning system, which is an integral part of Russia’s nuclear deterrent. This is a strategic assault on Russia, and it will probably draw a strategic reaction. The fact that we have not seen a particular action from the Russians to date is not reassuring. It probably represents the deliberations in Moscow about how to respond without starting World War Three, which is not an impossible outcome, if this strategic rivalry continues uncontrolled. So this is a very serious development.
It has, as you indicated, all the earmarks of a systematic effort to undermine Russian strategic security. Two attacks to two sites. I believe there are ten such sites protecting Moscow. This represents an effort to knock out 20% of Russia’s early warning system. It is not insignificant. I also understand that unlike the United States, which relies heavily on satellite, spaceborne detection systems, the Russians are heavily dependent on these ground stations. The net effect of eliminating these is to reduce warning time very substantially, leaving the Russian leadership with almost no time to make a decision about how to respond to a detected possible attack. This is particularly alarming because there have been in the past mistaken detections of such attacks, and it has only been the actions of responsible officials on the Russian side, given the time to deliberate, that has prevented them from responding to a perceived nuclear attack with their own counterattack on the United States and other targets.
The most remarkable thing, reflecting the strategic complacency and lack of intelligence of much of the West, is the extent to which this danger has not been identified in the mainstream media. I know that your own Executive Intelligence Review and the Schiller Institute have issued a warning, and covered this issue carefully. But that is not true of the mainstream media, which suggests a level of military and strategic illiteracy on the part of the current crop of journalists. That is quite frightening.
Billington: There was apparently one article in Newsweek, and that was about it.
Freeman: Newsweek is not a highly regarded source of information these days, much to my distress; it was an important publication.
Billington: And a related issue. Could you comment on the situation in Ukraine? It’s widely considered now that Ukraine has lost this war already and is just being pushed to continue seeing its population slaughtered by continuing a losing war. What’s your view of this?
