Patrick Armstrong: Russia, the NATO “Paper Pussycat” & End of U.S. Empire
Geopolitics & Empire
Geopolitics & Empire
4.2 • 568 Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2020
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Retired defence analyst Patrick Armstrong discusses US-Russia relations, the Arctic, that NATO is really a “Paper Pussycat”, and how Russia’s military is extremely well prepared for conflict. He gives his thoughts on the reactions to COVID19 by Russia and China which seems to say they initially may have thought it to be a bioweapon, tied into their fear of the propensity for declining empires (e.g. United States) to start wars as they collapse. He also gives his take on the elections and internal discord paralyzing the United States which he takes to signal the end of empire, a “race between imploding and exploding, fusion or fission.”
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Show Notes
RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 3 DECEMBER 2020 https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2020/12/03/russian-federation-sitrep-3-december-2020
Website
Russia Observer https://patrickarmstrong.ca
About Patrick Armstrong
Patrick Armstrong was an analyst in the Canadian Department of National Defence specialising in the USSR/Russia, having started in the time of Chernenko.
He was a Counsellor in the Canadian Embassy 1993-1996, retired in May 2008, and has been writing on Russia and related subjects on the Net ever since.
He has written for various websites and discussion groups – some since departed and some still there, and started his own website with the intention of it becoming a repository for his writings.
Generally speaking, the predominant theme of his career was that we had a great opportunity when the USSR disappeared to make a more cooperative world. Instead, we have steadily turned Russia into an enemy – and a much more capable one than we casually assumed in the 1990s.
So here we are today. Paying for our arrogance, incompetence and maybe worse.
But he hasn’t given up hope.
More information here https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2017/10/26/how-i-got-here/
*Podcast intro music is from the song “The Queens Jig” by “Musicke & Mirth” from their album “Music for Two Lyra Viols”: http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Geopolitics and Empire podcast is joined by Patrick Armstrong. |
| 0:03.8 | He has no relation to our previous guest, Martin Armstrong. |
| 0:07.5 | Now retired, Patrick was an analyst in the Canadian Department of National Defense, |
| 0:12.6 | specializing in the Soviet Union and later Russia. |
| 0:15.4 | He was also a counselor in the Canadian Embassy. |
| 0:17.8 | These days, he provides extremely insightful and valuable analysis via his website, |
| 0:23.6 | Russia Observer at Patrick Armstrong.C.A., as well as on strategic culture and elsewhere, |
| 0:30.4 | we'll be discussing all things Russia, the American Empire, and U.S. Russia relations. |
| 0:36.0 | And I was thinking perhaps we could start chronologically at the dawn |
| 0:39.6 | of the unipolar moment in 1990, where the U.S. instead of deciding to be flexible and work with |
| 0:46.4 | other nations, it went full-spectrum dominance on Brzezinski's chessboard with its project for |
| 0:52.8 | a new American century and attempted to |
| 0:55.0 | completely eviscerate Russia by backing a Yeltsin coup until, I believe, Putin stepped into the fray in |
| 1:02.1 | 1990 to bring Russia back from the brink. So Mr. Armstrong, you know, you had many years, |
| 1:08.7 | you work on these issues. And so could you tell us, what was your experience and understanding of, you know, what happened in the 1990s? |
| 1:16.2 | I was dumb enough to believe. |
| 1:18.2 | And frankly, I worked in the Department of National Defense, okay? |
| 1:20.9 | So you'd think they'd be pretty hostile to the Soviet later to Russia, but they weren't. |
| 1:26.2 | They were extremely open to the notion that the whole thing |
| 1:30.3 | was changing and that we could talk to the Russians and cooperate with them. I attended our first |
| 1:35.5 | staff talks, military to military staff talks as the sole civilian on either side of the table. |
| 1:42.5 | I can't remember. It's on my website. |
... |
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