102124 Brandon J Weichert

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, good to have you here. Jimmy is my name.

(00:04):
How's everybody doing? I hope you're doing well. It's a
Monday edition of the radio show. If you're listening in
real time, it's back to the Future day. This is
a day that Marty McFly October the twenty first aspired
to get to. Of course, he only wanted to go
as far as twenty fifteen. Looking back, can you blame him?
Would you really, if you got to choose, would you
want to come to twenty twenty three? I'm twenty twenty four.

(00:26):
I'm thinking no, twenty fifteen is probably a good choice
for him, And to be good to have you here
on the radio show. And we'll do lots of news
talking to talk about over the weekend. Of course, we're
an elections season and you're inundated with television ads, radio
ads and making sense of it all right here, at
least that's what we try to do. We also try
not to talk all politics all the time, because that

(00:47):
would drive all of us insane, including myself. Let's talk
about something that has pre eminated and overridden into just
kind of exacerbated the political talk. I don't think it
necessarily has to be a red topic or bluetop, but
it has become part of the lexicon, and that is
the nation of Ukraine. And how much money to give them?

(01:08):
Is there accountability? Should we give them any? I mean,
you've heard all the discussion, and a lot of you.
Up until Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine a year and a
half or so ago, a lot of you didn't know
much about Ukraine, didn't know the history of Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
But now you do.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Let me bring into the conversation a gentleman who's been
with us before. He always writes great books. His latest
book is called a Disaster of our Own Making, How
the West Lost Ukraine. I bring into the conversation Brandon J.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Wikert. Brandon, welcome back to the program sir, how are you?

Speaker 3 (01:39):
I am very well, Thanks for having me. It's good
to be back again.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Great to have you here.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Up until a year and a half or so ago,
when Putin decided to invade Ukraine, a lot of folks
didn't know much about Ukraine. They just knew it's somewhere
over there in Europe, and it probably used to be
part of the old Soviet Union, but it wasn't top
of mind. It wasn't part of our awareness, wasn't part
of our lexicon. And now of course has become the
fodder for political discussion, the political campaigns, presidential campaigns, what

(02:08):
people say they're going to vote for or against in Congress,
and you say, hey, all this problem we have in Ukraine,
don't be blaming at all on Putin. We owe some
of the blame to ourselves here.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
That's correct, and it's unfortunate that I have to say that.
I wish it wasn't the case. But beginning after the
end of the Cold War, Russia was broken and could
not do anything even if it wanted to. It was
up to the United States and NATO to make a
better world, basically, and all that happened at the end
of the Cold War was the US pivoted and they said, well,

(02:41):
we're going to now try to encircle post Soviet Russia.
We're going to try to absorb as many of those
Eastern European states into NATO as possible. And we basically
spent a decade throughout the nineties and early two thousands
turning Russia, which wanted to be a friend of ours,
into an enemy again. And now here we are in
twenty twenty four, staring down the precipice of World War

(03:05):
three with news because now the Russians are saying the
NATO and Americans are not allowed in Ukraine, and the
NATO and Americans are saying, we want Ukraine as part
of our alliance. And that's that's where we're that's where
we're headed right now, World War three.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Branda J.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Wickert is my guest. His latest book is quite fascinating.
It's called a Disaster of our Own Making How the
West lost Ukraine. For me, it's a late high school,
early college when the Soviet Union fell. But a lot
of folks listening out there, they're grown adults. They don't
remember the fall of the Soviet Union. So you just
said something that might have shocked them that the fall
of the Soviet Union, when the walls came, when the

(03:43):
wall came down East West Germany, Gorbachev was the whole
thing fell apart the for the Soviets and the Communist
they wanted to be our friends. Unpacked that because even
people that might have been grown adults there didn't realize.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
That, right. Well, so what happened was Gorbachev was Gorbachev
was removed in a coup at the end of the
Cold War, and Boris Yeltson replaced him. And Boris Yeltsen
was a He was corrupt like every Russian leader, but
he was pro American, pro wes, pro democracy, pro capitalism.

(04:18):
He was basically everything we wanted in a Russian leader.
And we spent that nineteen nineties era under Bill Clinton
basically trying to screw Boris Yelton over it. Every turn.
We gave him bad trade deals. We you know, we
tried to basically encircle Russia, and you know, the concern

(04:39):
from US was, hey, Russia is going to become a
villain again. But ultimately, as I show him the book,
it was not a fate comp lead that that was
going to happen. What we ended up doing was every
time we failed to live up to our promises or
every time we undercut promises that we made to the
Russians and the post Cold War era, the Russian people
started looking at around, saying, Boris Elson's getting pushed around. Clearly,

(05:03):
the Americans don't want to be our friend. We're going
to look for somebody else, like Vladimir Putin and his
cadre who are known as the Siloviki to make Russia
great again. And so we basically set the conditions that
allowed for the rise of Putin and his more hard
nosed Siloviki to come to power in nineteen ninety nine.

(05:23):
It did not have to be this way. In fact,
I show in the book initially Putin came in still
trying to be friends. In fact, he offered he said
to Bill Clinton and Bill Clintons last year, he said, hey,
why don't you let Russia join NATO, just to let
us know that NATO's not about coming after Russia. And
Bill Clinton laughed him out of the room. Well, had
we done something like that, as crazy as it might
have sounded, it might have actually prevented a lot of

(05:45):
the problems we're in now right now with Ukraine.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Let me ask you a question that is oftentimes I
think of all these wars that we seem to have
to get in involvement, sending arms, sending money over to Ukraine.
You got the Israeli funds, and you know I'm all
for help in your allies. How much of this goes
back to the warning of Dwight David Eisenhower's that'd be
where the military industrial complex. We can't let Russia be
our friends because all the military contractors, the military industrial

(06:11):
complex are making a heck of a lot of money,
and so therefore peace is not necessarily what we ultimately
want because we have this underbelly of this complex. And
Eisenhower warned is against that needs us to have an enemy,
because if we have an enemy, we're going to make
a heck of a lot of people rich.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
How much of it goes back to that, Well, it
goes a lot of that back to that. There's a
reason that I think it's seven of the wealthiest zip
codes in the United States ring Washington, DC. They're not
you know, nuns that we're giving money to. This is
defense contractors and they're lobbyists. That's wh who's allowing these
seven wealthiest counties around DC to be wealthy. Victoria Newlan,

(06:49):
who just recently left the State Department, she admitted and
she's very pro Ukraine war. She admitted to the public
that well, don't worry about all the money we're giving
you ain't because ninety percent of that's coming back here
to the United States, which she really means is ninety
percent of that's coming back to lobbyists and defense contractors.
It's not coming back to we the people, it's coming

(07:11):
back to empower the war machine. And it's very interesting.
All this heated up in Ukraine after Afghanistan wound down,
so basically they were looking for a new market. There's
a reason also by the way, that Hunter Biden, the
current president's son, was put on the board of the
largest natural gas company in Ukraine, Barisma. He was put

(07:31):
on the board along with j. Koper Black Jakova. Black
was former CIA Counter Terrorism Center director and once you're
in the CIA, you're never really out. They put the
first son on the board with one of the senior
members of the CIA, because this was always the CIA
operation was to empower Ukraine, to use it as a

(07:53):
cudgel against post Soviet Russia as part of a larger
plan to basically collapse the Russian state so that we
don't have to worry about Russia anymore.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
The voice of Brandon J.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Wikert, his latest book is called a Disaster of our
Own Making, How the West Lost Ukraine. You might have
remembered talking to him about his book The Shadow War,
I RAN's Quest for Supremacy or Biohacked China's race to
control life. But this book is called a disaster of
our own making? How the West lost Ukraine. You kind
of dove in there. Let's back it up. We talked
about Putin. Putin wanted to be friends, said let's join NATO.

(08:27):
We said, screw you, it's not going to happen. And
so then fast forward to a couple of years ago.
Putin decides to go into this place called Ukraine and
the whole world gets into itzz. He takes us to
the brink of World War three. Help us understand we
weren't paying attention to what was happening. Why was Putin
feeling threatened by Ukraine? What did NATO and or the
United States have to do with that? Talk about what

(08:49):
led up to the invasion of Putin because we weren't
paying attention to it.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
Well, we have to go back to the end of
the Cold War to understand really what happened. Because at
the end of the Cold War, George H. W. Bush
and its Secretary of State James Baker negotiated a deal
where basically we promised the Gorbachev we would not move
an inch eastward with NATO beyond where it was as
long as Germany was unified, and then, of course we

(09:14):
broke that promise within a year or two. Another promise
we made in nineteen ninety four under Bill Clinton was
that in exchange for getting Ukraine to remove its nuclear
weapons arsenal, which was the third largest in the world
in nineteen ninety four, in exchange for doing that, we
promised informally that we would protect Ukraine if Russia ever invaded. Now,

(09:37):
the Russians what they were getting out of that deal
was that they didn't know about this mutual defense thing.
But the Russians thought, Hey, by getting the nukes out
of Ukraine, then we'll give the Americans what they want,
which is that Ukraine will be an independent country. The
Russians did live up to their end of the deal.
They made sure that Ukraine was independent for the first
time in almost a century, and they and they left

(10:00):
it alone. But Ukraine being so close to Russia, they
always wanted to keep an eye on it, the same
way we keep an eye on Mexico because it's so
close to us. So they always had influence because there's
a lot of Russian speakers that live in eastern Ukraine.
The Russian naval base has been in Crimea for like
a century or two, and so the Russians were always
going to have influence there, but they said, we'll leave

(10:22):
it independent as long as it's not part of NATO.
But beginning in two thousand and four, NATO started really
banging the drums to expand in the Ukraine, and they
even tried to support a coup and the Orange Revolution.
At that point, Putin said, I can't trust the Americans.
And then what happened was ultimately the pro Russian element
rose to power. They actually managed the country fairly well.

(10:45):
They weren't pro Russian in the sense that they were
always doing what the Russians wanted, but they were affiliated
with Moscow. We didn't like that, so in twenty fourteen
we overthrew that government. Putin snapped, and that's when he
invaded eastern Ukraine and annexed crime and then for years
after there was a frozen conflict. We made a deal
with Putin again saying hey, we'll respect what you've done

(11:08):
as long as you don't go any further into Ukraine.
It was called the Minsk ac Cords. And then Angela Merkel,
the former chancellor of Germany, finally admitted recently. Yeah, the
West was never serious about respecting those agreements. We were
basically preparing for getting Ukraine to go to war with
Russia over control of eastern Ukraine and Crimea. And then
finally in February of twenty twenty two, Putin said I'm done.

(11:29):
I've had enough. There was a series of provocations the
Biden administration engaged in at sea in the Black Sea
against Crimea, and Putin thought, you know what, Biden's weak
and he's not going to leave me alone. So now
is the time to try to take what I want.
And that's the history of the war real quick.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Before we got a couple more minutes here. I want
a couple more questions. Why is it the Merkel, l Angela, Merkel,
NATO of the United States weren't just happy to leave
Ukraine alone, Let the Ukraine be independent? I mean, why
what was our interest there other than the military industrial complex?

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Why did we keep taking that scab?

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Well, I think one of the things is the elite
in our country and in the West, most of them
did not see the fall of the Berlin Wall coming.
They did not see the collapse of the Soviet Union.
They had basically programmed themselves to be at war with
Russia no matter what. So it's sort of like, you know,
an itch that never goes away, So they're going to
scratch that itch even though they're no longer the Soviets

(12:29):
in Russia, because it's easy. Everything kind of geared toward
conflict with Russia. Then there's also the fact that when
the Soviet Union collapse the Cold War ended, NATO is
a giant bureaucracy. What do bureaucracies do. They try to
justify their own existence and continue to expand we see
that in our own government. With the end of the
Cold War, NATO pretty much should have been wrapped up

(12:50):
because its mission was over. It was a success. But
rather than do that, Europe and America tried to find
a new mission. For ten years. You know, NATO was listless.
But the one thing that they knew is, hey, there's
still Russia next door, and if we absorb Eastern European countries,
they're not going to want Russia next doore. So here's
how we justify NATO's existence and we keep funding it.

(13:12):
Is now it's no longer about stopping Soviet communism. It's
now just about stopping Russia. And so that's sort of
the military industrial complex plus the need of gureacracy to
justify their own existence. That's how you have this current war.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yeah, bureaucracy never seems to shut itself down once they're there.
It's a it's in a peatridition that just continues to grow.
And that's what we see with NATO. Brandon j Wikert
is my guess. His latest book is called a Disaster
of our Own Making? How the West Lost Ukraine?

Speaker 2 (13:42):
Brandon J. Weikert, you mentioned and a lot of.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Folks have said we're teetering towards the tip of World
War three. Early on of the Ukraine battle with Russia,
we said, oh, don't worry, we don't want it to
be a part of NATO. Now the United States is
actively saying we want you to be a part of NATO.
We've once again rescinded what we had committed that we
don't want to be a part of NATO. Now we
say we do. How does this thing, I guess wrap up.

(14:07):
I'm guessing Putin thought he would have more military success there,
but he doesn't seem to be giving up. The United
States seems to be kind of how much more money
do we have to send for this stalemate that is happening.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Where do we go from here?

Speaker 3 (14:19):
Well, what's going to happen is the Russians are not
going to let go of eastern Ukraine or Crimea. It's
never going to happen, no matter how many troops or
money or weapons we throw at the Ukrainians. They're literally
running out of people in Ukraine, and they're running out
of people in Russia too. But Russia is a bigger country,
and they've already been pulling on other allies like North Korea,
so they're going to be you know, they're going to

(14:41):
hold on to that part of Ukraine. If, however, the
western part of Ukraine does join NATO, that is probably
going to lead to full blown war. Putin will at
that point consider using nukes. He's already said as much,
and is completely useless because we would be absorbing basically
a giant welfare state into NATO Western Ukraine, because Western

(15:02):
Ukraine is not a viable country anymore. But NATO doesn't care.
They absolutely want the territory and they will do whatever
it takes to absorb, but even risk nuclear war with Russia.
In fact, that serves nata's interest because then NATO really
can't justify its own existence saying, see, we need to
be around because Russia is now going to go go
to nuclear World War three with us. So it's sort

(15:23):
of a self fulfilling prophecy going on here.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
The voice of Brandon J. Wiker.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
The book is called a Disaster of our Own Making?
How the West Lost Ukraine? Brandon, the folks want to
follow your work, get a copy of the book.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
Where do they go?

Speaker 3 (15:36):
Serve well? Anyway? Books are sold Amazon dot com, your
local bookstore. You can follow me on Twitter at we.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
The Brandon, We The Brandon Brandon. I appreciate your time,
your expertise on the topic. Thank you very much for
hopping on the program.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
Brandon J. Wikert.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Again, fascinating book on topic and kind of educate yourself
what it's not just about putin going into Ukraine. There
was a long build up to that, and it's yeah,
just read the book. I think you kind of got
a flare for it. But it is fascinating history, and
when you understand history, it all makes a heck of
a lot more sense. A disaster of our own making?

(16:12):
How the West Lost Ukraine? All right, good, to have
you here on the radio show. Jimmy is my name, Pleasured, pleased,
and thrilled. Don't forget this hour of the program brought
to you by Dan Caplis. Dan Caplis Law a serious
firm for serious cases. When we come back here from
this upcoming break that's forthcoming, I want to go through
some reminds you of the guests that are coming up,
talking about a couple of other local stories. The Broncos

(16:35):
didn't play this weekend, so therefore it's a win for
all of us. The Dallas Cowboys didn't play yesterday, so
therefore it's a win for everybody. I got yesterday to
a little football party in this way, said Jimmy. The
Cowboys fired their coach, And I mean, how did I
miss that? Well, people spread fake news very easily. They
read didn't say, well it's fake I looked it up.
There was I guess a trend line on Twitter over

(16:57):
the weekend, Dallas fires coach talking about a women's women's
volleyball or women's basketball team fired their coach. But evidently
everybody ran with a story with fake news that the
Dallas Cowboys had fired their coach. I would not have
been sad, but I'm like, I didn't miss that story.
I promise you I would have known, but they didn't. Anyway,
good to have you here. The Steemers won last night.

(17:18):
They won with Russell Wilson at the Helm. How do
you like those How do you like those apples? Everybody
stand by. Jimmy's on the radio. Lots more to get to.
I promise you. Jimmy Lakey's six hundred KCl