The recent United Nations vote to condemn Russia for the war in Ukraine saw unlikely allies in Russia and the United States, which both voted against the resolution. On this episode of the ScheerPost podcast, Ray McGovern joins host Robert Scheer to discuss what this vote means and how a potential new peace with Russia is reminiscent of the days of John F. Kennedy and the Soviet Union. Ray pays tribute to Aaron Bushnell, the Air Force serviceman who set himself on fire in protest of the genocide in Gaza and points out how Trump’s peace in Europe sets up a glaring contradiction for his attitude in the Middle East.

CreditsHost:

Robert Scheer

Executive Producer:

Joshua Scheer

Video Producer:

Max Jones

Introduction:

Diego Ramos

Transcript

This transcript was produced by an automated transcription service. Please refer to the audio interview to ensure accuracy.

Robert Scheer

Hi, this is Robert Scheer with the new series on ScheerPost podcasts, because we’re still going to keep Scheer Intelligence and other channels. But here I’m going to do a weekly show with Ray McGovern and maybe other people. But right now it’s set for the Ray McGovern show or the odd couple from the Bronx. I’m not sure how to describe our relationship but it’s a trajectory. We both grew up in the Bronx around the same time after World War II. Ray went off to join the armed forces and then the CIA for 27 years where he was the Russia expert and briefed three presidents—[Richard] Nixon, [Gerald] Ford and Ronald Reagan. 

I went off into journalism. I was a critic of the CIA’s secrecy and their overthrowing governments. And I wrote quite a bit about that for Ramparts and right up through my 29 years at the LA Times and elsewhere. And so we are just different trajectories for two guys in the Bronx. But oddly enough, we’ve ended up seeing things in pretty similar fashion, particularly regards the deep state. And what I want to talk about today, I’m going to let Ray take over the whole show. But really, I want to talk about this historic moment where Donald Trump seems to be bringing in far more sweeping changes than even Richard Nixon did when he did the opening to Red China. We learned we could live at peace with China. We didn’t have to be at constant war. It basically ended up ending the Cold War. 

Now we’re in a situation where, and I’ll let Ray tell the story, but the US and Russia voted the same way in the UN. I’ll let him talk about that, but the whole attitude towards the Ukrainian war now has shifted radically. So tell us, Ray, is this a historic moment? What does it mean? What’s happening? And you are the guy who had the inside government view for all those years and thinking about Russia. How did it happen that Donald Trump is somehow now, what is he, going for the Nobel Peace Prize?

Ray McGovern

Some people are suggesting that. Can I be heard? Can you hear me, Bob? Yeah, you can. You know, I’d like to start out on a really serious note, at least for me. Today is the first anniversary of the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell. He was aghast at what was happening in Gaza. I have his final remarks here. As he was setting fire to himself, he said, I will no longer be complicit in genocide in Gaza. I am about to engage in extreme act of protest. And then as he lit himself a light, he screamed several times, “free Palestine.” 

Now that’s one thing, but the day before he did that, he put a Facebook entry. And this is what I’d like to just suggest is really important to me and perhaps important to others. This is what he said, quote, “Many of us like to ask ourselves. What would I do if I were alive during slavery or Jim Crow South or apartheid? Well, what would I do if my country was committing genocide? The answer is you’re doing it now. You’re doing it right now.” End quote.

Now, I start out on that note because in my view, and this was not shared by everyone, we’re about to reinstitute the genocide operation within the next week or so. I believe that [Benjamin] Netanyahu is going to thumb his nose at our president and our president will not object, but rather acquiesce. The end of phase one ceasefire is on Saturday, March 1st. Now, we thought that there might be an extension for phase one of the ceasefire. And actually, the terms of the agreement allow for that. And what’s his name? Steve Witkoff was tearing his hair out this Sunday on TV saying, we’ve got to get an extension. We’ve got an extension. Why do we have to get an extension? Because the Israelis reneged at the end of last week, that is last Saturday, when four Israeli hostages were released, one of them actually kissed her Hamas captor on both sides of the cheek, thanking him for good treatment. 

And then Netanyahu said, we’re not going to release the, what is it, 620 Palestinian people who were all set up to be released that same day. And his objection was the way in which Hamas released those hostages. That was an artificial explanation. That’s where we are right now. Now, Witkoff, the tough real estate guy, he was going to go to Tel Aviv tomorrow. OK. And you know what he does. He reads the right like, sit down, Bibi. Sit down, Netanyahu. This is the way it’s going to be. What happened? Today he canceled his trip. Now, Witkoff is a smart operator. He’s not going to go unless he knows he’s going to be successful. Now, meanwhile, back at the ranch, the U.S. National Security Advisor has said, we support anything at all that Netanyahu will do. And for Netanyahu’s part, he says, you know, we have a secret agreement, a secret agreement.

We had it with Biden as well as Trump now. At the end, when we created the ceasefire, the secret agreement says that I can resume the attack on Gaza anytime that I consider it—the ceasefire—to be untenable. Bottom line here is that as much as this sea change in relations with Russia and with Europe, how important that is, this is my immediate concern. What’s going to happen? Well, Trump’s going to, in my view, now again, not everybody agrees. Everybody thinks that a lot of people think Trump, he’ll send Witkoff and Witkoff will do the same thing. I don’t think so. I think Bibi is twice as clever as even Trump. And I see a renewal of the carnage of the genocide in Gaza starting next week. 

And that’s why I thought it was appropriate to cite Aaron Bushnell’s parting words. What are you doing about it, you Americans? Well, you asked what you do about it. That’s what you’re doing. You’re doing about it right now. And most Americans are doing nothing. And there’s no more excuse about not knowing about it. It’s out there if you care to look. Sorry for the little, I’m sorry, no, I’m not sorry, Bob. I just hear really strongly about this. And I think we need to think about what we as a nation have become if we not only tolerate but acquiesce in and arm with 2,000 pound bombs, genocide don’t blanche before the word.

Robert Scheer

So you’re basically saying we’re not moving to a different New World order or understanding because most of the world now considers what’s happening, what Israel’s doing as genocide and the solution of one state and kicking out, the ethnic cleansing of the entire Palestinian population which was suggested in part by President Bush for Gaza, you’re saying that’s in the offing. That would, I think, prevent any kind of new world order that Trump has otherwise suggested. Because by contrast, with intensifying the war in Gaza and in the West Bank on the part of Israel, as far as Ukraine, he seems to have some kind of plan for actually ending wars, which he promised in the campaign. 

And he shocked everyone, particularly the Europeans, by actually suggesting something you might want to talk about, that Ukraine started this war, that Ukraine has to end it. What’s going to happen there?

Ray McGovern

Well, Bob, I don’t see any organic…

Robert Scheer

Talk a little louder Ray, because I can’t hear you. I don’t know about the rest of the folks.

Ray McGovern

Okay. I see no organic connection between the two, that is Gaza and what Israel is doing there, namely genocide and what’s happening in Europe, which is a far more hopeful thing. In other words, I think we have to be discriminant in how we attach these. After all, we know that Trump is unpredictable. He likes to create chaos and some of the stuff that he’s doing seems to bear good scrutiny in terms of getting rid of this old Shibboleth of Russia trying to take over the rest of the world or maybe just the rest of Europe or maybe just the rest of Ukraine. That’s the good side. 

I don’t see any organic connection there. I think we could talk about the sea change. I would call it a liminal change, a threshold change here where the United States is now together with Russia of all people saying, look, this war has to end. It’s not just the fault of Russia. This was provoked, provoked up the kazoo, if I can use a Bronx expression, and we can prove that. And besides that, we have to get back to the original agreement, which we made just six weeks after the war started, namely in March-April of 2022, and deal on that basis, recognizing that in the interim, Russian troops have acquired more territory that has been incorporated in the Russian Federation.

Now, there’s room for negotiation there as long as the US and Russia get together in a way that they haven’t been getting together over three years, since the president’s talk. But there is room for rapprochement. They’re rebuilding their diplomatic relations and they have all kinds of little focus groups working on various aspects of how to repair this, among them, of course, Ukraine. So I see great hope there. And you’re right, Bob, this is a sea change. This is something, well, I’ve been around a while, right? And so have you. I’ve seen this about three times in the past. One was when President [John] Kennedy really kind of proposed what Trump is proposing now. Look, Russians are human beings. Let’s reach out to them. Let’s not demonize them and let’s see if we can work with them. You know what happened to Kennedy, right? 

Okay for that reason in my view I would parathetically say Bob that this could happen to Trump The stakes are so deep and what I saw today, Dennis Kucinich, bless his heart, and his wife Elizabeth, who is equally smart if you can believe it, well, I can believe it very well because I know her, they wrote a piece that won’t quit in talking about the military industrial complex. Who is profiteering from these wars—Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing, BAE—and how their stock has plummeted over the last week. I mean, let’s face it, Bob, peace is not good for business, especially for what our current Pope called the blood-soaked arms trade.

Now what happened in Europe? Oh, as the Kuciniches point out, citing chapter and verse, their arms makers, their military industrial complex is flourishing. If you had stock in those, they went way up in the last week. Why? Because Europeans made it clear they want to continue the damn war. Now it couldn’t be more, it couldn’t be put better in bas-relief, so to speak, to show by figures. And I’d ask one other thing here, add one other thing. I remember last, last, no, the fall before last, when the Senate was grappling with whether to give, I think it was about $60 billion more to Ukraine. It was clear that Ukraine was losing, but it was a big push to give them $60 billion more. Okay. Now each one of those senators—I watched the whole thing, okay—each one of those senators said, now, wait a second, realize people and viewers, we’re not giving this money to Ukraine. We’re giving it to our military industrial complex, the people who build the weapons. Those are the people that will create jobs for you and enhance their standing and their wealth. So look, don’t be misguided. We’re giving this just to Ukraine. No, no, it’s staying here right in the United States. 

Every one of those senators justified giving 60 billion more if that’s what it was, if I recall correctly, to Ukraine on those reasons except Chris Van Hollen from Maryland. Now, Chris was really the outlier here, but he’s restrained himself. He said, you know, this is pretty callow. This is pretty obvious. I’m not going to say that this is really for us. It’s not for Ukraine. Last thought here, Trump now is making a big, big thing of these grants to Ukraine. They shouldn’t have been grants. They should have been loans, right? Like the Europeans, they’re going to get payback. What did Biden do giving all this money away? So, hey, here’s how you can repay us, Ukraine. You got mineral wealth. Let’s do a deal. You can pay us back gradually by letting us have your mineral wealth. That’s a canard. That all started with Zelensky when he made the mistake of saying, you know, maybe you could have some of our mineral wealth. And now Trump and as people are playing that very adroitly saying, yeah, okay, yeah, that’s what we should have. But no, that’s not going to happen. Most of that mineral wealth actually is in places that Russia controls right now. So it’s complicated, but it’s hopeful on Ukraine.

Robert Scheer

Well, but let’s talk about it realistically, because as you say, Trump can shift course quite quickly. But let’s focus on what is really startling about this. And the connection with Israel and Gaza and West Bank is here Trump is going to give Netanyahu, well, I can’t say Biden held back, but any idea that there’s going to be a meaningful peace alongside ethnic cleansing and everything. The turmoil in the Middle East is going to continue and intensify and everything else. We see no vision there. On the other hand, you have this moment. I’d like you to deal with the specifics. I mean, Putin has responded to Trump’s call for a cut in military spending, very dramatic cut.

And also there’s talk about cutting back nuclear weapon modernization and so forth. And Putin said he thinks the Chinese might go for this. So that’s why I brought up the Nobel Peace Prize or something. It’s been given to other presidents for just talking about peace. Obama got one. Didn’t do much in that direction. What I’m asking is, I mean, Trump prides himself on these great deals, the art of the deal. Is it realistic to think that we might actually cut back military spending in a significant way, the way that Eisenhower suggested, although he himself wasn’t able to pull it off? Is that really in the offing? Is there any possibility that nuclear weapons can be cut back? what would that do to our military industrial complex?

Ray McGovern

And that’s the question, Bob. You know, if it can be done, this is a very rare chance. And you know, I’ve lived a long time. I’ve never seen a better chance. The military industrial complex gave three times as much money to Kamala Harris as it did to Trump. Okay. That’s one thing. Their stock is now going down. They have great, great influence in Congress, which appropriates the money, right? Okay. So that’s what Trump faces. It’s a formidable foe. In addition to that, you have all these crazy people who think that Putin is the devil incarnate, and not least the American public that has been brainwashed, and I use that term advisedly, brainwashed to thinking that the Russians want to take over the whole world still, even though the Soviet Union fell apart. And that will stop with Ukraine. They’re going to go to Poland, the Baltic States and the rest of it. As one of their experts, what’s her name? Fiona Hill famously put it in a New York Times op-ed. You know, what the Russians want is to chase us out of Europe and to say, look, don’t let the door hit your backside on the way out. New York Times op-ed.

Robert Scheer

Yeah, I mean, but this is all rhetoric. I’m asking is, in fact, I mean, China is the second largest producer of military goods now, not at all in the same league as the United States. But our world economy has been dominated by military spending. In the case of the United States, it’s half of our discretionary spending, the money that’s not locked into paying veterans benefits and Social Security and so forth. So of the money we actually have to spend on improving everything from highways to education, whatever, half of that, or approximately half of that goes to the military. If you’re talking about, and this is something the first President Bush talked about before 9-11, in that short period when Donald Rumsfeld was running the Pentagon and he said, we can cut back, the Cold War is over.

And the first President Bush had said something like that. It would be an amazing irony and very significant shift if under the bellicose Donald Trump and make America great again and all that, there was actually significant reduction of arms, military spending. It’d be the best thing we could do for dealing with climate change. That’s the great waste is war and preparation for war. And he does, and some of the people around him, I don’t know how he brings along the Republicans in Congress, because they like military spending every bit as much as the Democrats. He’s got, assuming he doesn’t plan to live forever and has been president, he has to be looking for what he is going to be remembered by. This would be a big tribute if he could pull that off and including holding back on nuclear weapons modernization. Lots of luck with trying to do that. But I mean, let’s talk about it as a serious concept because Ronald Reagan considered it, others have considered it. What happens if he actually starts to make progress here?

Ray McGovern

Well, there are going to be a lot of industrialists and a lot of Wall Street, what the Russians used to call, [inaudible]. That was a real new word in Russian for me. Krov is blood. Pit is to drink. Wall Street’s bloodsuckers. Okay. There are lots of people going to be really hurt if this succeeds. And that’s why it’s a formidable, formidable aspect here that Trump needs to overcome. What he’s got going for us is an enlightened populace. Now we don’t have that yet. That’s where you and I come in, Bob. That’s what we have to educate our fellow Americans to say this is the biggest fraud that you can imagine and it can be attenuated. Now the president that I go back to is President John F. Kennedy, who is the reason why I came into Washington and started this work.

I was a major in Russian and when he said, see if they can do something for your country, that sounded really good to me because I feared the Russians and I worked hard against the Russians as hard as anybody else. But then Kennedy said two months after I entered the central intelligence agency, namely on June 10th, 1963, he said, look, we have to recognize that Russian children are the same as our children, that the Russian people cherish the same things for their children. We just escaped blowing up the whole world in the Cuban Missile Crisis just a half year ago. Let’s reach out to one another and try to understand each other rather than vilify each other. And as a first step, I’m going to have my negotiators go to Geneva and work out a limited test ban treaty. And in the interim, no testing on the part of the United States. And we will not resume testing unless somebody else does. Whoa! Now the military industrial complex, especially the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went up in arms. There was so much against that, but he made it stick and he got Congress, who are artful politicking, he got Congress to approve that first arms control negotiation. Now, what about today?

The START Treaty, which is a successor of all these treaties, one of which I participated personally in, that is the ABM Treaty 1972, he’s got the START Treaty, which runs out almost exactly a year from now. That can be continued, that can be modified in a good way. So things are looking up. It’s going to take a long time. Right now, we’re at the point of the talking to each other after three whole years of no talking. Now there’s going to be a detente, okay, then a rapprochement where we not only talk to each other, but see that we all do, we do have common gains. And one of those gains is not to spend ourselves into oblivion, but to take care of the folks at home. Now, as soon as these talks progress, as soon as things are normalized and we have an embassy functioning again, and the Chinese are into this picture for the first time. You’re right, Bob. There’s a prospect that people will see the sensible thing to do, work out arms control agreements where there is doveryay, no proveryay, trust, but verify. And I know these things can be verified. That first ABM treaty in which I was a participant, I was in Moscow when it was signed, we had Nixon and Kissinger asking us, well, suppose the Russians cheat. 

Do you think they’ll cheat? Probably? We don’t know. Well, how soon can you tell? So I went back to all the satellite guys and all the people who collect this information. How long could they cheat before we find out? And I went back and I said, well, probably a week to 10 days. And Kissinger said, that’s good enough. If we can verify. Did they cheat? Yeah, they cheated. They created this mammoth ABM radar system in place called Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. We found it. We raised it with the Russians. We showed them the pictures. And finally, when Gorbachev came in and said, all right, that was a violation, we will tear it down. So these things are possible with a modicum of good will and good sense because neither Putin nor Xi Jinping want to be involved in the endless arms control, an arms race with the United States, which has unlimited funds to do that, given how corrupt the system is.

Robert Scheer

But that’s history, Ray. What I’m trying to get at here, we don’t have much of a peace movement anymore. And it just seemed that we were actually, a month ago, we were talking about the possibility of nuclear warfighting in Europe. Would the Russians use that if they do it and so forth? And suddenly, there’s actually discussion of the most significant criticism or change in reliance on nuclear weapons, but also on these big armies. Under Biden and now under Trump, the Western Europeans are being encouraged to spend more money on the military. They’re now, I never thought I would live at a time since I’ve heard about Trump, that he would emerge, that he would be being attacked as a peacenik, right? That he’s being attacked now, not in obviously and unfortunately not in relation to Israel and Gaza. There he’s still the expected warrior wanting to make things more violent and worse. I tried to grasp the significance of he sticks to this. And we haven’t talked about the posture in the UN in regards to Ukraine. 

He’s basically challenging the whole narrative of the Biden years that Russia wanted to conquer Europe, that Russia was aggressive, and then also that China is. And by inference, if we then get it back to competing with China on economic terms and not building bigger carriers and everything and threatening each other and so forth, that would be a great change for the better. It’s odd that we have Trump the warmonger here in the Middle East, and then we have Trump, the peacemaker here, which one’s going to prevail? And is he going to even be able to survive in either role? I don’t know. Can he pull it off? And what is your reading? mean, some of these guys, like our secretary of state, you thought he was a warmonger. He wanted to go war even with Cuba, where his family came from at some point. But now he acts like a peacemaker and is actually being attacked by the Europeans who are, you know, no, they want to warm up. Then there were other contradictions. The German election, for example, where how do these other right wingers in Germany, but are they more peace-like than the Greens were? The Greens, after all, had come to really embrace NATO and NATO expansion or that. How do we read what’s going on? Now, if you were still advising the president, let’s just end this with kind of recap of Ray McGovern as the presidential briefer who talked to Nixon. 

We’re not talking about history you don’t know. You talked to Nixon or Nixon’s top aides. You did the same with Ford who replaced him and then you did the same with Ronald Reagan when he was awake and when he was alert but you briefed his top people. What would you be saying right now? Let’s just end this with one of our famous Ray McGovern presidential CIA briefings. 

Ray McGovern

Well, Mr. President, Putin is very welcoming of the notion of normalizing relations. He sees a lot of advantage to his own country and tamping down the hostility. He sees great benefit in your people like Marco Rubio of all people saying, look, it is quote, dishonest to think and to propound the idea that Ukraine could win a war against Russia, period, end quote. Dishonest. Now, Mr. President, Putin is aware that way back, well, 10 years ago now, Obama said the same thing. He said, the worst thing we can do to the Ukrainian people would be to give them the idea that they could prevail against a much more powerful Russia right in its neighborhood. And there was a deputy secretary of state at the time who said, you’re right, Mr. President. Matter of fact, if we gave the Ukrainians some arms, which you have prohibited offensive arms, they would be able to match it, the Russians, they would be able to double it. They will be able to triple it. They would be able to quadruple it.

Now, who was that deputy secretary of state? His name was Tony Blinken. Now, he comes in with sleepy Joe Biden and he persuades the president, oh, we can prevail in Ukraine. And if we don’t, well, we weaken Russia. And that doesn’t matter because we’ll fight this to the last Ukrainian. That’s over. That’s over, Mr. President. So as far as Putin is looking forward to this, he wants a deal, not just on Ukraine, he wants better relations. And in the final analysis, he doesn’t want to spend more on arms than Khrushchev did when he and Kennedy came to these arms control agreements. The last thing I’ll say, Mr. President, is have a good taster, taste all the food that you served in the White House. You know what happened to President Kennedy. I do not exaggerate. There’s so much at stake for people who really are powerful and rich and have people they can employ to put something in your food or into your diet coke. Please be careful.

Robert Scheer

All right, that’s it for this edition of ScheerPost, our weekly, every Tuesday conversation with the former CIA presidential advisor who advised, well, in different ways, other presidents, but the three main ones were Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. And the fact is at the end of Reagan’s years, he met with Gorbachev, actually considered banning all weapons, so even both Nixon and Reagan certainly had reputations for being strong and opposing communism and so forth. They both ended up saying, can live with these people. Now the Russians of course rejected communism on their own terms and Putin has defeated a communist candidate, but has an alliance now with China that seems to hold. And of course, peace with China, which is still a communist country is very much in the air or the possibility or possibility of reversing that. So I’ll leave it on that. We’ll revisit this next week. But that’s it for this edition of the ScheerPost.

Ray McGovern

Could I add one word? You mentioned Reagan. Yeah, you know, I was very much on active duty, as you mentioned, from 1981 to 1985. I briefed his very top security advisors, including the vice president, secretary of state. Reagan came to have a measure of trust in Gorbachev. He never learned quite well how to pronounce Gorbachev, but he gained too much. They met in Reykjavik, Iceland. And the rapport was such, and their common desire to put a rein on this incredible Star Wars, which never work, and trying to, in other words, they came to such a level of trust that Garavachev says, hey, Ronnie, let’s limit, let’s prohibit all nuclear weapons. We could do that. We’re the superpowers. Let’s do it. And Reagan said, oh my God. And he went back to his advisors. And his advisors were tied in with the military industrial complex that wanted to build this ABM Star Wars system, which we all knew would never work, could always be defeated. And they said, but Mr. President, what will happen to your Star Wars impenetrable dome that we couldn’t do that. And so Reagan went back and said, no, I can’t do that. That was a key point. I was there. I was supporting that from headquarters during the eighties, ‘87, I think it was. And so it happened before. This time Trump doesn’t need to try to get reelected. Trump is capable of doing incredible things that no one expected and he has the support of people at the top of the justice department, the FBI and the national intelligence director. I see a possibility that he could achieve what others have not achieved unless he meets the fate of John F. Kennedy, which I do not rule out for the moment.

Robert Scheer

Well, that’s a good point on which to break it. And again, next Tuesday, another edition from ScheerPost, our weekly show with Ray McGovern. I want to thank our executive producer, Joshua Scheer, getting these things edited and posted. I want to thank Diego Ramos for writing the introduction, Max Jones for doing the video version. I want to thank the JKW Foundation in memory of a very independent writer, Jean Stein, for providing some funding for supporting it and the Integrity Media and Chicago, Len Goodman, a well-known lawyer there, for also giving us some support for keeping independent journalism alive. See you next week with another edition of this ScheerPost audio podcast. Take it from there.

https://scheerpost.com/2025/02/25/the-us-finally-recognizes-russia/

 

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