I mentioned in a recent post that I do follow the weekly interviews that John Mearsheimer does with Andrew Napolitano on the latter’s podcast. Mearsheimer is one of the leading American foreign policy scholars and he knows what he’s talking about, even though his takes are sometimes annoying. (1) I also wrote that Napolitano himself seems to me like a rightwing crank in his general political outlook. But Napolitano can also be a competent interviewer.
Still, if you check the current Wikipedia article on Napolitano (2), you can read about his record as a rightwing pundit. It also notes that he identifies as a “Traditionalist Catholic,” i.e., very conservative in his political, social, and ecclesiastic views. Basically a flaming rightwinger, in other words.
But as I also said, there is a segment of the political right in the US, generally of a more libertarian/Rand Paul kind of view, that is also skeptical of an interventionist foreign policy and is therefore open to some of the analyses of foreign policy “realists” like Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt and “restrainers” like Andrew Bacevich and Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute. So progressive and antiwar liberals sometimes find the proverbial political “strange bedfellows” at sites like Antiwar.com or even (gulp!) The American Conservative.
Which brings me to this video (3), which I’m going to imped here for easy access, though it also creeps me out. It’s a 1 ½ hour video of Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov being interviewed by Napolitano, along with Larry Johnson (who had a few years of experience as a CIA analyst and has been critical of US foreign interventions) (4), and a blogger named Mario Nawfal that I don’t remember encountering before, but whose YouTube channel page make him sound like a real pro-Russia fanboy.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia’s YouTube channel also carries the interview. I’m sure that version will get more than enough clicks without me adding a teensy bit to the traffic by posting the link here.
Napolitano’s YouTube channel provides this description:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov answers questions from American bloggers Mario Nawfal, Larry S. Johnson, and Judge Andrew Napolitano in Moscow. The discussion covers important aspects of the changing perception of the United States under President Trump and how this affects relations with Russia and President Putin.If it seems like Lavrov has been the Russian Foreign Minister forever, it’s because he’s held that position since 2004.
Lavrov shares his views on what is happening in the United States, marking a return to normalcy after a period of significant political divisions. He analyzes the profound changes in US culture and politics over the past decades, focusing on how these changes have affected public opinion about Russia. The Minister also touches on Christian values and their impact on bipartisan politics.
Sergey Lavrov emphasizes the importance of understanding these changes in shaping future relations between the countries. During the interview, he addresses not only America’s domestic issues, but also the global challenges facing the international community today.
This discussion provides a unique opportunity to look behind the scenes of the current geopolitical situation and understand the complex dynamics between two great powers, Russia and the United States.
For people who want to get into weeds of the various official positions on the Russia-Ukraine War and other Russian foreign policy perspectives of the moment, an hour and a half of the Russian Foreign Minister holding forth has some inherent interest. It’s pretty dreary stuff, though. He talks about the virtues of the Putin regime’s Russian Orthodox Christian nationalism and rattles on about the important of “Eurasia,” one of various fuzzy ideological concepts which is part of the ideological atmosphere around Putin’s politics, the latter involving for Lavrov some vague idea of a European security organizations composed of various unspecified nations, but open to “all” countries of Eurasia.
But whatever skills Napolitano has as an interviewer, he appears to have left them behind in the US on this trip to Moscow for the Lavrov interview. Lavrov repeats a narrative of Russia-Ukraine relations in which Russia is the soul of Christian virtue, while Ukraine and its Western sympathizers have been perfidious actors since anyone can remember. He makes various false or seriously distorted claims that get no challenge from the three “interviewers.”
Johnson staring at 48:00 in the video asks a question this way: “I’m not sure I trust my own country. And I know the Russian government is quite sincere and looking to pursue a diplomatic solution.” He then raises the obvious and much-discussed idea that Trump’s administration is trying to improve relations with Russia to draw them away from aligning with China. (“Now, I try to say that’s foolishness because unlike the United States, the Russian government takes its agreements seriously and adheres to them.”
Except, you know, when they don’t. (5)
I can imagine an American representative saying something flattering and sycophantic like this is a closed official diplomatic negotiating session. But while I freely admit to never having interviewed a foreign minister, good grief! This isn’t even pretending to ask a probing question. And since none of the three “interviewers” challenge some of the obviously controversial factual claims Lavrov makes, this comes off as fairly pitiful. Johnson also asserts to Lavrov that the US government has a “desire to destroy your country,” apparently including the current US administration as having that desire.
For a more reality-based and less bizarre news analysis for the current moment, this one from Times Radio, associated with the conservative Times of London, featuring Scott Lucas of the Clinton Institute of University College Dublin with the provocative title, “Putin will reject Trump’s Ukraine ceasefire deal despite Trump’s pandering.” His take on the diplomacy of the particular moment sounds credible (6):
Notes:
(1) Isaac Chotiner recently interviewed Mearsheimer and tried to make him sound like a Putin apologist. Mearsheimer responds, seemingly patiently, explaining his particular evaluation of the state of the great-power competition between Russia and the US. He argues there as he has for the last three years that Putin and the Russian government have never explicitly declared an intention to take over all of Ukraine. But commentators operating on a simple Munich Analogy model insist that the Russia-Ukraine War has to be the start of a much bigger war intended by Russia. Why John Mearsheimer Thinks Donald Trump Is Right on Ukraine-Isaac Chotiner. New Yorker 03/11/2025. <https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-thinks-donald-trump-is-right-on-ukraine> (Accessed: 2025-13-03).
(2) Andrew Napolitano. Wikipedia 02/28/2025.<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Andrew_Napolitano&oldid=1278106085> (Accessed: 2025-03-12).
(3) Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov - w/ Judge Napolitano, Larry Johnson, & Mario Nawfal. Judge Napolitano-Judging Freedom YouTube channel 03/12/2025. <https://www.youtube.com/live/nNJOUy_luDM?si=oW_YjVpuGqBYnSdq> (Accessed: 2025-03-12).
(4) Larry C. Johnson. Wikipedia 11/10/2024. <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Larry_C._Johnson&oldid=1256471086> (Accessed: 2025-03-12).
(5) BTW, while some people in Trump’s team may have some such notion of strategic planning in foreign policy, the Orange Anomaly has shown no evidence of such a thing.
(6) Times Radio YouTube channel 03/12/2025. <https://youtu.be/F0qgEkfZDWA?si=rreNY74OvmVpsrjJ> (Accessed: 2025-03-12).
No comments:
Post a Comment