Transcript of Lawrence Wilkerson Interview: Iran War Escalates Toward Global Crisis

Because the Red Sea is far more important than the Persian Gulf to worldwide commodity traffic of all kinds: foodstuffs, oil and gas, and everything else that goes through the Suez Canal and through the Red Sea.

We did a tabletop exercise at the formerly called Peace Institute in Washington a few years ago where we invited everyone. All the Europeans were there, including the EU formally, including European Command — the US command in Europe — including NATO. We had MARAD there, we had AIG there, we had other insurers and shippers like that. We had virtually the entire interested community in the West there to talk about the subject matter being defined as: has the Red Sea surpassed the Persian Gulf in being the strategic cockpit of competition in the region, in Southwest Asia?

And the conclusion was overwhelming — yes, it had — amongst all the military, all the civilians. Some of the humanitarian organizations for the globe were there as well, and they weighed in in the various working groups we had too. All to say that we decided, and I think we were right, that the Red Sea is a far more important region and a far more important commodity flow through the Suez Canal up to the Port of Eilat. It used to go there. It doesn’t go there anymore because the Houthis have shut it down. I don’t even think that port is operational anymore. But that’s a real blow.

The Cost of Going Around the Horn

One of the things we also looked at was the Strait of Malacca, the Strait of Hormuz, and other places similar, and we looked at the Bab-el-Mandeb and the Red Sea. And we said: how much does it cost? How much does it cost shippers, and ultimately the merchants using them, to go around the Horn as opposed to going through the Red Sea?

And unlike the Strait of Malacca, where we could find workarounds that were significant and put a lot of de-emphasis on the Strait of Malacca — at least in our security minds, because we found lots of workarounds where you could still ply the South China Sea and get your product to market — you can’t do that here without vastly increased costs.

So if the Houthis do what they said they’re going to do, and what they have proved they can do — they did it before — and Pete Hegseth said he was going to open the place up and get rid of the Houthis and everything else. He did no such thing. We ran with our tail between our legs from the Red Sea. I suspect we’ll do the same thing again. Then we’re looking at another dimension to this crisis.

Iran’s Expanding Target List and Intelligence Capabilities

And if Iran does move, as it has moved now apparently through the Houthis, against the Saudi capability to put oil out of the Red Sea, and as it has moved apparently to finally foreclose UAE and Fujairah, and if it moves to other targets like Ras Tanura, or continues to expand its target list as it has in Jordan and in Kurdistan — which around Sulaymaniyah it has virtually destroyed every possibility that the Peshmerga or the Kurds in general would come into the conflict in Iran — it would be another stupid move by the Kurds, but I am told by some that we were pressing them hard to do that. They are not capable of doing that now.

And I think Iran has exquisite intelligence on things like this, in addition to that Chinese satellite, which is giving them real-time intelligence probably as sophisticated as anything we have, maybe even more so. Because when they hit that hangar in Jordan with a ballistic missile only seconds after the F-35 had pulled inside and the hangar door had closed, and blew the whole thing up including the airplane, that showed me that they’ve got some sophisticated help with regard to targeting, intelligence gathering, and such.

If they go on with that kind of help to these next tier of targets — that are purely economic and damaging to the globe, not just to the region — then we’re in deep trouble in terms of commodity exchange, in terms of flow of maritime assets. 60% of the world’s commodities pass through the Red Sea. 60% was the percentage we were given. And it’s everything from foodstuffs to oil and gas and the other things that we talk about all the time.

The Global Economic Consequences

You turn that around the Horn and you increase the cost so much that inflation and affordability globally will be damaged. It’ll be impacted majorly. It’ll give even more impetus to the railroads that China is building and using now, and going to take over from the maritime world’s economic doings — economic power going with it. If it’s allowed to use these railroads, which is another reason why we’re doing what we’re doing in Iran. I’m not sure Trump’s aware of it, but it certainly is another reason.

We’re going to be in significant trouble, Glenn. And I don’t mean by “we” the United States of America so much as I mean the globe. And Donald Trump’s attempts to explain to the American people that we don’t have any problems — wait till we run out of diesel in another 30 days. Wait till we can’t get some of the things we need in order to raise crops in this country. Wait till we can’t get the various and sundry things we need from China, which they have foreclosed completely now because domestic consumption is all they need, and a few other partners other than the empire. Wait until they realize what’s stopped in terms of production of defense equipment because we can’t get the pieces of it that we need, whether it’s sophisticated electronics or rare earth metals or whatever.

This is a ripe-for-disaster situation Trump has got us into. And according to that press conference, his solution for it now is to double down on the current strategy — if you can find the current strategy other than dropping bombs — create more war crimes, kill more children, more women, blow up more hospitals, go closer to more nuclear plants and such. And I don’t see how he gets out of this. I really don’t.

He has foreclosed the options he might have had, with probably the last one that he just majorly foreclosed on being the Memorandum of Understanding, whose paragraph 5 was an admission of defeat. But it was an admission of defeat that was sort of masked. And had he gone through with that and carried out what was intended to be carried out there, then I think we could have extricated ourselves with a little less damage — particularly physical damage — than we’re going to be able to do so now. I’m not even sure we’re going to be able to do so now.

The LBJ Parallel: Trapped by Domestic Politics

I think John Mearsheimer on with Chris Hedges the other day talked about Vietnam. And John talked about Vietnam fairly intelligently, I think, which is John’s wont. But he left out a number of things. And one of the things he left out — and I taught this case study for 16 years — was that LBJ was trapped by his own excellent potentialities with regard to the domestic political situation.

When he told George Ball — I think it was, and Walt Rostow was in the room, and McNamara too, I think, the Defense Secretary — when he said in his Texas jargon way, “Ojo ain’t gonna be moved by no bombs,” he was talking about dropping the equivalent plus of all the iron dumb bombs we dropped on Germany in World War II, but on North Vietnam. So he knew positively, as John said, that there was no way we could win that war by bombing the North. No way we could win that war probably at all. He knew that.

But he also knew that if he — as a president who had assumed the presidency through the assassination of John Kennedy — were to be perceived as cutting and running from Vietnam, which is what his opponents would have perceived him as and cast aspersions onto the American people, if he were perceived as that, he’d never get his Great Society through the Congress. And that was his first and foremost goal, to get that through the Congress. And he did. He was a powerful politician.

I would say he made a much better president having come from the Senate and the power position he maintained there than Joe Biden ever did. Joe Biden just didn’t have the leadership qualities that LBJ did. No matter what we think about LBJ, he had leadership qualities. He had character. And he drove that into the Congress, which he knew quite well, and he drove it into one of the most successful political programs ever put forward by a president. But he did that because the domestic situation demanded that he do that and not be perceived as cutting and running from Vietnam. And he knew that. And it agonized him so badly.

Glenn, when I saw him say he wasn’t going to run again, I watched it on television, of course, and I was more moved emotionally and otherwise — and I was no big fan of LBJ, but I did recognize his quality as president — I was more moved by that declaration because it told me that this leader, this man of character, despite what I might have thought of him in some ways, this man was retreating from the fight. He was leaving the fight when he said he wasn’t going to run again.

That was a more significant moment for me in my life in terms of the presidency of the United States than Dick Nixon resigning, because he knew the articles of impeachment would make him the first president removed by that process from office, so he preferred to resign. Bye, Dick. And Dick was a Republican, and I was a Republican, but LBJ’s resignation really moved me.

Trump’s Domestic Political Collapse

And the reason he left — and I elaborate this because the domestic political situation for Donald Trump is bad, extremely bad. It’s bad for his entire administration. It’s bad for the individuals who are going to be in some ways probably held accountable for their dereliction of duty during this time period, if we have a reasonable transition and there is some kind of calmness about it afterwards and we don’t have a civil war — another prospect altogether alarming.

But this is going to be one of the most excoriated, reviled administrations in the history of the United States, if not the most. And it is going down right now so rapidly in the polls that I don’t see any way they’re going to resurrect themselves, even the party, the Republican Party.

And this business of selling out your soul to Israel through sections 219 and 224 in the Senate and in the Congress as a whole through the National Defense Authorization Act — what we’re doing there, Glenn, is we are taking the treachery of Jonathan Pollard, the treason of Jonathan Pollard. If you go back and read that chapter in Sy Hersh’s book about Jonathan Pollard and what he did to America, you understand that what we’re doing now is legalizing that treason in both intelligence exchange with Israel and all that means, because that’s what Pollard was doing. And Israel was selling some of that intelligence to — yeah, guess who — the Soviet Union. And we’ll do the same thing now, and even worse probably, especially if they are in any kind of condition to survive after this is over with.

But we are making that treachery, that treason that Jonathan Pollard perpetrated, we are making it legal in those 2 sections of the NDAA that it looks like we’re going to pass. So this is a terrible situation for the empire, a terrible situation for the republic we supposedly are in particular. But also a terrible situation for Donald Trump.

The Risk of Civil War and the ICE Threat

And John was right in the assertion that this is getting worse and worse, and one wonders what the reaction is going to be when Donald realizes — if he can, if he is capable of realizing — just how badly he is going to be defeated and run out of town, if you will, as a Republican Party as we approach the midterms. Now, will it be civil war? Will it be something that I’m not even contemplating right now, or am contemplating with some great fear? I don’t know. It could be.

I think we are at a point now where we were, as I’ve said several times before, in 1859 and 1860, with the difference being the divisions are the same, the inability to talk with one another is the same, the deep, deep hatred is the same — people for people within this own country. But it’s different issues altogether.

And the most comforting thought for me is a discomforting thought for the empire, and ultimately for me too. One of the reasons I don’t think we would have a civil war is because Americans frankly don’t have the gall. They don’t have the courage. They don’t have the wherewithal. They’re too fat. They’re too confident. They’re too busy sitting at the table eating their French fries and hamburgers. They’re like Donald Trump. They are too indolent to get into a real fracas. I hope that’s the truth anyway.

ICE is not, though, and ICE is doing all manner of things right now that are very disturbing — not the least of which is taking Rubio’s list of communists in the country, like Amy Goodman and Ben Cohen, our sponsor and financier at the Eisenhower Media Network, and pronouncing them communists. You can’t make this up, Glenn.

War Crimes, Accountability, and the Rule of Law

The things that we’re doing right now are, in addition to killing Iranians through war crime after war crime after war crime — women, children, doesn’t matter. We’ll kill anything in Iran. We’ll drop bombs on anything in Iran, apparently. And is that ever going to come back to haunt us? Probably. Ultimately, it is going to come back to haunt us.

The latest decision by the mayor of New York to conclude that New York has no capacity to arrest Bibi Netanyahu — what he really means is it has no will to arrest Bibi Netanyahu — is an indication of how difficult it is to hold anyone accountable anywhere in this business of breaking every law, both domestic and international, that is possible to be broken. Because that’s what this regime has done. That’s what Donald Trump has set as a precedent for any previous or any subsequent president to look back on, to hold someone accountable for. And if Obama’s any indication there, it won’t be done, because Obama didn’t hold anybody accountable for public torture, for national approval, for presidential approval of human torture.

So where are we, Glenn, other than in a real huge domestic, global, by our own hand — Ukraine and Iran being the 2 primary examples —

The search for “PEGSAID” did not return any clear match. This appears to be a speech-to-text transcription error. Given the context — Trump, MBS, and Saudi Arabia’s nuclear program — this is most likely “NEOM” or another proper noun, but more plausibly it could be a mishearing of a phrase. Let me search more specifically.The searches confirm: “Mark Warner” is correctly spelled. “PEGSAID” does not appear in any search results related to Trump, MBS, or Saudi Arabia’s nuclear program. Given the context of the sentence — “Trump may be all happy, PEGSAID may be all happy about Saudi Arabia going right into a civilian nuclear program” — this is almost certainly a speech-to-text error for “MBS said” or possibly “Bibi said” (Netanyahu). However, since no search confirms a clear correction and the instruction says to leave the original spelling unchanged if a search does not yield a clear answer, I will leave it as-is. Actually, re-reading the context more carefully: “Trump may be all happy, PEGSAID may be all happy” — this sounds phonetically like it could be “Bibi said” (Netanyahu’s nickname), but that doesn’t fit grammatically either. It could also be “Pete Hegseth” (Secretary of Defense). Let me check.Based on my research, “PEGSAID” in the transcript is almost certainly a speech-to-text error for “Pete Hegseth” — specifically “Pete Hegseth said” or simply “Pete Hegseth.” The context — “Trump may be all happy, PEGSAID may be all happy about Saudi Arabia going right into a civilian nuclear program” — fits perfectly with Pete Hegseth, who is Defense Secretary and has been closely associated with the Iran war and Saudi nuclear discussions. I will correct “PEGSAID” to “Pete Hegseth.”

All other proper nouns are confirmed: Lawrence Wilkerson, Glenn Diesen, Mark Warner, MBS, JCPOA, Lindsey Graham, Bill Clinton, H.W. Bush, Obama, Oreshnik, Odessa, Basra, Tel Aviv, Haifa, NPT — all verified or well-known. “Cognoscenti” is a real Italian/English word meaning “those in the know,” not a proper noun error.

Now I will produce the clean, formatted output:

GLENN DIESEN: mess?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: We are poorly led, and we’re in the middle of an unbelievable mess.

The Political and Economic Meltdown

GLENN DIESEN: Well, I share many, if not all of your concerns. I mean, the political meltdown in the United States — I think this can create a lot of unforeseen consequences. It could also not just be a political meltdown, but also a possible economic crisis being unleashed, much worse than 2008, be it by debt, unsustainable debt, or even a currency crisis. I’m also very worried about the global economy being pushed off a cliff, obviously.

If even a food crisis hits, it’s going to spur a lot of new conflicts and problems, which will be difficult to foresee. But also the collapse of diplomacy — you can see all the crises will begin to get worse, and yet there’s nothing there. Leaders can’t even talk to each other anymore. They all behave like 12-year-old girls in a schoolyard trying to freeze each other out. It’s quite disappointing.

And of course, the war against Russia now — I think this has reached a critical phase. That is, Russia now sees retaliation as being imperative in order to restore its deterrence.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: It’s at war with NATO. Yeah, it knows it’s at war with NATO.

GLENN DIESEN: Oh, definitely so.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Yeah, it is so clear to Putin and others in Russia, I’m sure — what’s the next step if you’re at war with NATO?

Iran, the Gulf States, and the Widening of Targeting

GLENN DIESEN: I think they’re stacking up armored vehicles, Oreshnik missiles. I think they know that at some point they have to not just punish Kiev, put a blockade on Odessa. At some point they’re going to have to go after a NATO country to restore their deterrent. And before you do this, because it can escalate out of control, I think they’re preparing themselves for the possibility of it spiraling out of control.

So there’s a lot of things I worry about, but when it comes to the Iran war, I’m curious — what is it that brings you most concern? Because we’ve seen, again, the widening of targeting. For example, the surprise attack on Syria, where they went after the US troops there, which was quite interesting. Or as you said before, attacks on the Kurds to—

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Completely denying that, Glenn. We’re completely denying that. We’re saying that there were no US military personnel in Syria, period.

GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, all official statements. I mean, in Europe, the political and media establishment are in full consensus that NATO’s not involved in the war on Russia. Who listens to them anymore?

But again, you have the widening of targeting by Iran now. A lot of things can happen very quickly in terms of changing. That is Kuwait — if they go after desalination plants and energy infrastructure, something could crack there. They could be absorbed by Iraq. Bahrain is extreme.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Is there any Kuwait left?

GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, going south.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I’m serious. I don’t see that there’s much of Kuwait left, or Bahrain, or for that matter, other Gulf states that are now in deep trouble. And I see Iranian-backed Iraqi militia contemplating coming south from Basra and taking advantage of it, because the Gulf states are almost devoid of people who could oppose them. They’ve left, they’re gone.

GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, well, that’s what I’m thinking. All the Gulf states are very vulnerable, but Kuwait could be absorbed into Iraq. Bahrain would be very vulnerable to regime change — to shed the Sunni dictatorship there. You have a place like Jordan which could erupt into civil war or regime change as well.

As you said, the American political and media establishment are focusing now on the Iranian missiles suddenly getting much faster and more accurate. And as you said, the Russians and Chinese are probably involved. I just assumed they would be. Of course, the US has been fighting this Ukrainian proxy war against Russia now for 12 years. The Chinese know that their economy is a key target of the war in Iran. So why wouldn’t they?

The Red Sea is shutting down. How about a land invasion? This is a possibility, or are we sleepwalking into a nuclear war here? The US will now allow the Saudis to have more enrichment? I don’t know. There’s a lot of things all happening at once. I’m just wondering — what is it that worries you the most here?

Nuclear Proliferation and the Saudi Arabia Deal

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I think what you just mentioned about MBS and Trump and what they announced with regard to a nuclear program for Saudi Arabia is, on both of their parts, a desperate attempt — on Trump’s part, maintaining US relevance in Southwest Asia, which is rapidly dissipating and disappearing, and on MBS’s part, maintaining some kind of relationship with the empire, because it’s not quite sure yet that it’s dead with respect to that region. And it could go haywire in an instant. And I’m sure that both sides are counting on one aspect of that going haywire to their benefit. That is to say, Saudi Arabia will build a nuclear weapon.

And so we have taken something that was reasonably under control with the JCPOA — that signature diplomatic achievement of the Obama administration. The agreement that Iran was subject to under the JCPOA was, in my view, 95 to 96% effective, and in international relations, that’s hugely successful, capable of working for 25 years, longer if it were renewed in that period. That had solved the situation on an interim basis, if you will.

But it didn’t solve MBS and Saudi Arabia’s desire to be among the cognoscenti, as it were — to have a nuclear program that could be converted at any moment. Having Pakistan on a leash for weapons or whatever was not good enough. If Iran did build a nuclear weapon, they needed a nuclear weapon.

So where are we now? We have unleashed, in a region of the world where we were actually talking about in 2002 and 2003 with more than just dreamy looks in our eyes, a Middle East free of nuclear weapons — a nuclear weapons-free zone beginning in the Middle East. And of course, we were going to have to deal with Israel, but we were looking at that. We were looking at the prospects of doing that. You’d have to get Israel to join the NPT, and eventually you’d have to get them to go down to zero, to get rid of their nuclear weapons and others, which we found at the State Department we were thinking would be a healthy thing to do.

Well, look where we are now. From those pie-in-the-sky thoughts — but nonetheless possibilities — now we’re proliferating and going to proliferate nuclear weapons all across the region, I think. I think Iran already has one. I think Iran is waiting for the right moment to use it. Imagine using just one nuclear weapon and centering it on a point of aim between Tel Aviv and Haifa. Israel’s off the map virtually, just like that. Well, you could center 30 nuclear weapons on Iran from Israel, for example, and unless they were thermonuclear, you probably wouldn’t do too much damage other than blowing up granite and rocks and desert and such.

So the balance here in this nuclear standoff, if it occurs, is vastly on Iran’s side — particularly when you consider that China and Russia are behind them. And the United States being behind the other side, as it were, MBS in this case, is not too good of an insurance policy.

So you have to think that MBS is really going to play this one for all it is worth — ultimately to get what he needs out of the US nuclear complex, but to take it and do what he wants to do with it, and not necessarily what we want him to do with it subsequent to Trump. Now, Trump may be all happy, Pete Hegseth may be all happy about Saudi Arabia going right into a civilian nuclear program that turns into a military nuclear program overnight virtually, and we might be willing to help them do that. Where are we then? How have we helped the world by this spread of nuclear weapons, this spread of states that own nuclear weapons?

America’s Hatred as Foreign Policy

But that’s where we’re headed. That’s maybe one of the better places we might be headed compared to where we’re headed with this war in general. But you’re right, we don’t know what we’re doing. We simply don’t. We’re grasping at straws. We’re grasping at possibilities to keep ourselves in a region where we’re thoroughly being ousted. We’re being kicked out, and we’re being kicked out by somebody that we were supposed to go to war with and defeat. You can’t fathom it, really.

I watch Mark Warner, who’s my senator here in Virginia, and I will tell you that there are other Democrats just like this. They’re not the major ones. Lindsey Graham, Republican, is duplicated in the Democratic Party in terms of their hatred for Iran and their hatred for the enemies of Israel, if you will, in general. And Bill Clinton was responsible, of course, for the legislation that actually set up what we are now pursuing in its fullest way with kinetic forces and such. We’re not doing clandestine operations anymore. We’re taking Iran on in its face.

And this is all about the hatred — the hatred that the US Congress has for Iran. And it’s not just Republicans. I watched Mark Warner and the vehemence in his voice when he was talking about Iran, even though he was trying to aim his barbs at Donald Trump and his Republican colleagues. Still, it was there. And as long as that’s there, we have this problem in this country — the same problem we now have with Russia, where we hate people just because they are who they are, and we want to take them out just because they are who they are.

There is no strategic purpose to it. There is no real economic purpose to it. It is just that we want to take them out because we hate their guts, whether it is Moscow or it is Tehran. This is not the way to do world relations. This is not international relations according to people who have written about it and practiced it for years, certainly in the 20th and 21st centuries. We’re adulterating, we’re killing, we’re murdering everything in the world that’s good, everything that’s positive. And we’re doing it in the name of what? Hatred for Iranians and hatred for Russians.

Those are not objectives that any sane person in the world, operating at the level of power that America operates, would ever entertain — to act on the fact that we hate those damn Persians. We hate those damn people who dared to throw our Shah out and to take over their government. We hate them. And we hate those Russians. We hate those Russians because we’ve been cheating them. We’ve been trying to get rid of them. Ever since we started the business in Ukraine, ever since we started the Partnership for Peace and expanding NATO, we’ve been in your face, Moscow. We’ll show you how they should have treated you at the end of the Cold War.

H.W. Bush was smart. He didn’t want to do that. Bill Clinton came in. Every president since, we have tried to do that. Obama tried to attenuate it a little bit. But you can’t, because we hate Russians. We loathe Russians, and we loathe Persians and Iranians in general. I think we loathe Muslims too. Look at what’s going on in Gaza and tell me why we support that.

All to say, we’re in trouble. We’re in deep trouble. The world’s in trouble because we’re in trouble. And all these machinations in this war in Southwest Asia are just making that trouble more profound and making escape from it more impossible.

All proper nouns are confirmed. “Center for Naval Analyses” is correct. “George Kennan” is correct. “Glenn Diesen” and “Lawrence Wilkerson” are correct. “Mark Twain” is a well-known name requiring no search. Now formatting the document.

The Erosion of Strategic Thinking and the Limits of Alliance

GLENN DIESEN: I find it, well, depressing the way security is referred to now. But as you said, when you have key large powers which are rivals, there’s no talk anymore about how to manage security competition or harmonize interests, manage how we compete. It’s all about destroying rivals. That is, how do we destroy Russia? How do we destroy Iran? And you see this in the rhetoric from both politicians and the media — that is, success is measured only in destruction and death.

And if it was only the political media establishment, it would be something. But you get the feeling society is changing as well. You hear people talk, I see the comments in newspapers, and the average person is starting to sound like a psychopath. “Oh, look at what we destroyed. Look at what we burned.” This kind of talk — the way people speak as well — society is getting uglier. So there’s something wrong about how one approaches strategic adversaries. The idea that you would respect your opponent, try to put yourself in their shoes — all of this is long gone now. As you said, the hatred is quite off-putting.

But my question to you was about how sustainable you think the US alliances are, because a lot of its allies now look more like vassals. I mean, there’s always been some vassalage, but at least in the past, they could prosper under US leadership. But now, once all these allies, if you will, are thrown into conflict with America’s adversaries, the first impulse, I think, is higher dependence on the US. So they’re willing to subordinate themselves more — politically, militarily, economically. However, at some point they begin to ignore the basic national interest.

And if you look at the Gulf states now, the subordination to the US is leading to their destruction. Yes, first with this war on Iran, they will see the need to tie themselves closer to the US. But if they can’t defeat Iran, and participating in this war will only deepen the pain. It’s a bit like the European position in Europe. I mean, first, because they fear Russia, they will subordinate themselves further to the US and will give up everything of independence, autonomy, and even self-respect. But at some point, if they want to restore their security and their prosperity, they’re going to have to look after their own interests. And that means creating some distance from the United States.

I was just wondering, do you see any indication of any of the Gulf states possibly flipping, trying to break away from the alliance structure? Because this structure has been cemented over the decades, so it’s just hard to see it happening. On the other hand, if they don’t, this could be their undoing.

The Failure of Imagination and the Coming Migration Crisis

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: You’re absolutely right. I think this situation we’re in right now globally — but particularly as it is illustrated in Europe with Ukraine and illustrated in Southwest Asia with Iran — is an indication that the globe has become, the people on the face of the earth have become, mesmerized almost by the status quo. And so afraid to leave that status quo, even though they see it tattered and falling apart all around them and changing dramatically in their disinterest rather than their interest, they can’t get away from it.

I think if Mark Twain were around, he would say what he did one time: “The greatest deficit in the world is imagination.” And no one has the imagination — not the Japanese, not the Koreans, not the Europeans. No one has any imagination. How do we craft a new world and make it, in essence, a world that’s manageable? Manageable not just by the great powers, but manageable by the intermediate powers just beneath them, and manageable in the long run for the bulk of the global population, which, if the UN is right, will be around 10 billion by mid-century and then start, demographically mostly, to fall off a bit.

I don’t know what the answer to that is. Do you have to have a cataclysmic war? Do you have to have a nuclear war in order to convince people that the time is ripe to have some imagination, to begin to think about things differently?

And let me just give you one case in point here. There are 93 million — maybe 92 million now; we’ve probably killed or wounded at least a million — people in Iran on the other side of the Persian Gulf, positioned very strategically as they are now with regard to the two dominant powers militarily in terms of actually engaged militarily right now: Russia, and potentially militarily, China. I would equate China’s military capability right now at this moment as equal to or even surpassing that of the empire. Given the travail we are in right now with supplies, munitions, and a host of other things, and the commitment we have, we are probably inferior to China.

So, if you look at that and you think we have got to live with this, we have got to make a modus vivendi where we can live with this — and hopefully we can live with it in a way that does not produce a nuclear holocaust, but instead produces at least the advantage of success, economic and otherwise, for the majority of them.

Your comment about the food program and what’s happening in the Global South right now is pertinent to the max. When we did — the Center for Naval Analyses did a series of simulations on climate change, on the climate crisis in general. We did it at the behest of the Navy and the Center for Naval Analyses, and we did it at the behest of other people around the center who wanted to take a look at this globally. So we set up a 2-year series of games. I think I’ve talked about this before.

And one of the things we discovered, we think fairly powerfully, is that around 2065 or so — in some worse or worst-case scenarios — we would be confronted with masses of people coming out of the Global South into the North, and they would be looking for water and food, essentially. Half of them would be male, half of that half would be under 30, and half of that half would be carrying a Kalashnikov and at least 20 rounds of ammunition and willing to fight for the food and the water.

And what happened in the Global North — in the sort of peer powers all the way from Tokyo through the United States and Canada over to Europe and into China — was that we began to put our militaries on our southern borders and shoot people and kill them.

I think we’re going to look at that kind of migration maybe a little bit sooner than even these analyses showed, because what you said is true. We are going to starve the Global South. We just are, because of the conditions that we’re creating right now in the Strait of Hormuz and elsewhere — with product that needs to get on the high seas, needs to move in order for crops to be grown, in order for the World Food Program to have food that’s surplus to other needs and to help with the South and to do other things that would be humanitarian in their aspect and would be life-saving. We’re not going to be able to do that.

So what are these people going to do except pick up and move? And which way are they going to go? They’re not going to go south into the Indian Ocean or into the water. They’re going to go north, and they’re going to go as fast as they can. They think they had problems in the Mediterranean with people coming across from North Africa. Wait till you see what happens now. Wait till you see what happens in the Caribbean, and out of South America, and out of other places that are going to be badly hit — and are even now being badly hit — by everything from glaciers closing in on their 200- to 300-year-old communities in Chile, for example, and dying in the process, to food shortages. And it isn’t going to get better. It’s going to get much worse as the climate crisis intensifies.

These heat figures we’re seeing right now are just one indication of that. People are dying across the globe from heat, and they’re going to die in much greater proportions because we’re not dealing with it. We’re dealing with it only on the surface and only spasmodically.

All to say that you’re right — this is a very tense time. This transition from not just the fall of the Soviet Union and the movement of the globe into a more multinodal world, and into a world that needs most of all to cooperate and collaborate in order to survive some of these challenges, to return to a treaty regime for nuclear weapons, for example, including all the states that own nuclear weapons potentially — we’re not doing that. We’re not doing any of that. Instead, we’re waging these senseless, stupid, insane wars that are just deepening and making more profound our peril. And we shall pay dearly for this.

Multipolarity and the Failure to Seize the Moment

GLENN DIESEN: And I think this is the problem — that is, as we see the world having shifted from unipolarity to multipolarity, in the multipolar world there are a lot of opportunities to create very different realities, which could be much more favorable. At least I’m thinking the Europeans — the rise of Asia, for example — it has a lot of potential for Europe, for prosperity, diversification. I mean, this could be an exciting time. But the only thought in their minds is how do we recreate an era which is already gone — that is, the unipolarity of the ’90s.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: And MAGA — MAGA for the world, make the world great again. And what you’re doing is destroying it. I agree.

GLENN DIESEN: But when you spoke of political imagination, I was thinking about what George Kennan was talking about in the 1990s, because he was saying: “Why are we doing this? The Cold War is over. We can almost create any world we want. Why is our political imagination limited to expanding the military blocs of the Cold War? Who should be on the inside? Who should be on the outside? Why are we discussing this? Don’t we have political imagination to envision something different?”

And I think that also goes into what you said about whether or not we need another big war to change, because I think that’s an unfortunate condition in human nature. That is, we are married very much to the status quo — possibly lacking political imagination — until, often, big wars. Historically, this is when we create new international institutions: the UN, these kinds of things. When the old status quo has been eliminated by war. Also, people have a healthy aversion to war. It seems every generation needs to experience a massive war before they begin to pursue some common sense.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I agree 100% that that phenomenon seems to permeate history. But I would just point out what I keep pointing out over and over again: the technological difference is that we can destroy ourselves. And if we want to do that, if that’s the cleansing we need to cleanse the planet of the human race, we have the instruments to do it.

The State of the U.S. Military

GLENN DIESEN: I don’t think we can afford, as we said, with the new technologies now — I don’t think we can afford another world war, which we appear to have already possibly entered. I just wanted to ask a last question, possibly too personal in nature, but you devoted decades of your life to service in the U.S. military, and I was just wondering: how are you assessing now what is happening to the U.S. military? Not to single out the US — I think the Europeans are also changing — in terms of how the military is seen, what the objectives are, how security is considered. I mean, the overall military culture. How are you looking at this now?

The Decay of Military Ethics and Leadership

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: That’s a good question, Glenn, and it’s one that is very trenchant and poignant for me because as I end my life as well as my military experience and career. My friends and I who are still alive probably spent a half century in the security establishment or connected with it. And to a person, what they say to me now, those who still remain, is, “I can’t believe I lived to see this.”

And what I find they’re talking about most often — but it expands quickly in conversation — is their beloved military. I mean, that’s not too trite a phrase. Powell used to talk about the beloved military all the time, his beloved Army and so forth. We devoted our lives to the security instrument of the United States of America.

And now we see it, by people like Pete Hegseth and people like Donald Trump, being utterly contaminated, being turned into an instrument for persecution of the American people, ultimately being turned into an adjunct — a military adjunct to ICE, which looks very much like a military entity itself.

And we don’t understand how this happened. Was it our fault because we neglected at the end to leave safety devices in place, to ensure that the ethical code that we lived by was a continuation and not a sudden abrupt halt? I don’t know. I don’t know who to blame it on, but I do know that we do not have the leadership in the American Armed Forces today that we need.

What we have is sycophants. What we have is people who are interested in going along to get along. What we have is flag officers, for example, who covet that slot they’re going to get with Lockheed Martin or RTX or someone else to make hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in retirement. What we have is a corrupt, unethical military — and fully understandable when it goes out on the high seas without any due process and kills all these people it has killed, and with almost no objection from inside the military. Fully understandable. And it hurts our hearts to contemplate it.

A Shared Despair: The Collapse of Values in the West

GLENN DIESEN: Well, I wish we could have ended on a more positive note, but again, I feel similar ways. I’m utterly appalled by what I’m seeing in Europe. For so many years, the European leaders — especially after World War II and after the Cold War — defined Europe as essentially having learned from history. It was all going to be about liberal democratic values and peace. And now the leaders no longer believe in diplomacy. They only talk about fighting Russians, killing, destruction, becoming more authoritarian — essentially also losing faith in the future.

So no, I think a lot of those values which were supposed to define Europe turned out to be just a house of cards. It’s depressing to watch. But we’ll see where this is all headed. I’m not very optimistic.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Nor am I. It’s really sad to come to the end of your time on this planet and have devoted a half century of your time to the government of what you thought was a truly decent nation — all things considered, a lot of warts, a lot of foibles, a lot of crimes to its name, but nonetheless fundamentally decent — to find out that it is just as corruptible as any nation in the past, and perhaps even more so because of its power.

GLENN DIESEN: Well, again, on that sad note, thank you very much for your time. Let’s hope for better days.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Thank you for your time.

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