Interviewed Tuesday on the Real News Network, Ron Paul Institute Academic Advisor Lawrence Wilkerson warned that following the advice of “warmongers like Senator John McCain and his cohorts” to “arm majorly” the Ukraine government is “probably one of the fastest ways” to deepen, widen, and make more profound the Ukraine crisis.
Wilkerson, a professor at the College of William & Mary and former US Army colonel, explains in the interview with host Sharmini Peries the disadvantageous position the US would be entering by choosing military escalation:
We’re 6,000 miles — depending on what part of us you want to look at — we’re a long way away.
Let me just add that that makes the problem, the military problem, significant. And I frankly cannot believe that former military people in some respects are talking about this in the way they are. Putin is operating on what we in the military call interior lines. We would be operating on the opposite of that. What that means, in very basic terms, is he’s got a few kilometers to go — difficult, to be sure — over land, and he can reinforce and he can put major force to bear. We have got how many miles? Two, three thousand miles of water to go over, and we’ve got lots of land to get through, too, once we come to a friendly port.
This is not a thing we want to get involved with, because he owns all the escalatory chips. He owns the military situation.
Instead of escalating the war in Ukraine, Wilkerson suggests seeking a settlement that removes foreign influence:
The solution is we get together and we talk and we agreed that we’re going to take our hands, military and otherwise, off Ukraine. We probably — we, the United States — probably make a very forceful announcement that we are not contemplating NATO membership for Ukraine. And we discuss where we’re going to draw the line as everybody goes back to square zero and quits shooting and killing each other.
Watch the complete interview here:
Read here a fascinating January 30 article by Rupert Stone (an RPI contributing writer) in Vice regarding Stone’s discussion with Wilkerson centered largely on the US government’s torture program.
