EXCLUSIVE: While left leaning voters in the United States are having a conniption fit over the possibility of a Trump presidency, Hillary Clinton has been quietly building a bridge to a sect of Cold War nostalgic neoconservative policymakers in Washington, D.C., getting regular advice from the likes of Project for The New American Century (PNAC) co-founder Robert Kagan, and Center for New American Security (CNAS) member and former Cheney staff member Eric Edelman.

This neocon collaboration was mostly done under the radar until recently, when Foreign Policy Magazine announced that “young foreign policy professionals” in collaboration with The Center for New American Security would be hosting an official fundraiser for Hillary.

The event was especially notable for me, having just wrapped production on a 7.5 hour documentary series ‘A Very Heavy Agenda‘ about the new neocons in D.C., who have reinvented themselves to maintain credibility and influence in foreign policy making–most notably interventionist ideologue, Robert Kagan. The final installment of ‘A Very Heavy Agenda‘ shows how Hillary invited them into the U.S. State Department while at the same time Kagan’s wife Victoria Nuland served as Assistant Secretary of State of Eurasian Affairs. 

Originally I intended to go to this event to tell Kagan about ‘A Very Heavy Agenda’, but instead we ended up having a very revealing and candid conversation about Ukraine. Journalist Rania Khalek accompanied me to this unusual fundraiser. 

I detail the surreal experience in the latest Media Roots Radio podcast with Abby Martin, where I play the recording in full. Full transcript below.

Robbie Martin: I wanted to know what your feeling was on Hillary’s approach to Ukraine, is she going to send the weapons to the Ukrainian army?

Robert Kagan: I mean, I’m sure, I mean the answer to that question is I don’t know. I know she cares a lot about Ukraine and certainly cares more about it than the current president does

Robbie Martin: With arms, why do you think the president has sort of dragged his feet?

Robert Kagan: Uh, because he said to me because he doesn’t want to get into a nuclear war with Russia.

Robbie Martin: That’s literally what he said?

Robert Kagan: Yeah, I don’t think…he’s not…he’s through with his agenda with Putin, I don’t think he cares about Putin anymore at all, I think he’s hopeless–uh, he thinks Putin is hopeless, but he says, he thinks Ukraine is part of Russian sphere of influence, and it means more to them than it means to us and therefore we shouldn’t escalate in a situation like that, that’s why he doesn’t want to send arms.

Robbie Martin: He actually said he doesn’t want a nuclear war over Ukraine?

Robert Kagan: He did, ‘I don’t want to have a nuclear war over Ukraine’–my response is well who do you want to have a nuclear war over? Do you want to have a nuclear war over Estonia? I’ll go down the list, Germany?  If that’s your going in position, then okay, fine. Whatever nuclear countries don’t want, we won’t do.

He proceeded to speak about the importance of the NATO alliance and how Hillary Clinton understands this better than Trump. 

Robert Kagan: I think that my instructions are to–uh, explain to you why Hillary Clinton would be better for the U.S. transatlantic European relationship than for alliances than Donald Trump, um, I’m going to operate on the assumption than all your mental faculties are intact and skip past that. I mean for me, I gotta tell you quite honestly if Donald Trump wins the election, the transatlantic relationship would be item number 10 or 20 on my list, given the threat that I think he poses to our democracy, which is fundamental, and if America is capable of electing someone like Trump and he does behave in the kind of way that I think he will behave, our ability to lead our ability to show…act as an example, our ability to–you know–have close relations with other democracies is going to be severely damaged.  I’m going to operate on the second assumption, which is that Donald Trump doesn’t win the election and that Hillary Clinton does, a horrifying as it is to even have to think about that prospect.

I think that American’s understanding of the value of these alliances and the value of america’s role in sustaining these alliances, I think Americans have either forgotten it or are too young to remember. You really do have to have some history in your mind, in order to understand why we are out there,  why any of these things matter. You really have to have some memory of of what the world looked like before the United States created this international system based very heavily on the two pillars of our European relations with our allies and our relations with our allies like Japan and Korea and Australia and others. People have to remember that in the absence of that structure, uh, we saw what happened in the first half of the 20th century. Two world wars in both theaters and it was the American commitment to move beyond its own borders and not think narrowly about its own interests, but to regard its interest more broadly to include becoming in effect a European power, with American forces in place to keep the peace and becoming an Asian power with American forces in place to keep the peace in both regions. Uh, before that they had both been engaged in cycles of warfare for quite some time. It was really the American role and sort of putting a plug in some of those conflicts it was created the extraordinary period we’ve been living through. And that’s another thing I think Americans just don’t understand. I don’t think they realize because they’re so focused on the things that have gone in recent years, and things have gone wrong they went wrong during the Cold War too that they miss the sort of basic underlying unusual quality of the international order that we’ve been living in. Um, I’ve been reading all kinds of people saying American foreign policy for the last 25 years has been a disaster, in my view American foreign policy for all its failings–and I’ve commented on those failings myself–has nevertheless continued an extraordinary success. It continues to be a period of great power peace. 

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Robbie Martin AKA @fluorescentgrey

Media Roots is proud to present the followup to American Anthrax, A VERY HEAVY AGENDA by Robbie Martin.

A VERY HEAVY AGENDA follows the trajectory of neoconservative ideologues behind George W. Bush’s foreign policy and who continue to influence the Obama presidency.

The documentary will be released in three parts, starting with Part 1: A Catalyzing Event which comes out Thursday October 15th on DVD & Video on Demand

Post-9/11, the War on Terror had outlived its usefulness.

          
the U.S. needed a new enemy, so they chose an old one – Russia.

Part 1: A Catalyzing Event  10.15.15

Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld were ubiquitous in the news media as they took every opportunity to market an aggressive preemptive war policy to America. But from where did their ideas originate? A tightly knit and eminently well placed group of neoconservative thought leaders, chief among them Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan.

Part 1 begins in the panicked weeks after 9/11, as Kagan et al. seized upon the hysteria surrounding the anthrax letter attacks to further shape America’s perception of reality, planting the seeds for endless future military engagements. George W. Bush may have been understandably perceived as an idiot, but watching these wonks and academics drive the ideological engine for his administration belies a much more sophisticated strategy.

Part 2: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The New Neocons  11.1.15


After the Cold War, the US-NATO reach expanded significantly to take in most of the old Soviet Union clients in the Warsaw pact. Neoconservative darling Robert Kagan and his diplomat wife Victoria Nuland played key roles inside and out of various administrations and think tanks as they greased the skids for a US-sponsored coup in Ukraine.

Part 2 shows the resurrection of old cold warriors from beltway depths to deliver blatant propaganda with techniques reminiscent of a Red Scare era that had only just faded from memory. US-funded outfits like Radio Free Liberty are pitted against Russia Today as each nation accuses the other of waging an ever more desperate and transparent “Information War.”

Part 3: Maintaining the World Order 11.15.15

“When the Berlin wall fell, our work wasn’t finished.” – Victoria Nuland, November 2013

“Fuck the EU.” – Victoria Nuland, February 2014

While stage managing the American empire has undoubtedly proved to be a more difficult task now than in the bipolar world of the Cold War, it is not for lack of greed or hubris that the Kagans and others continue to sell their vision. Did they create these ideas because they truly believe in America’s right to be the dominant force in the world? Or, do these ideas help sell weapons and control resources like oil and rare minerals?

Part 3 shows footage of an obscure PNAC member (Thomas Donnelly) taking credit for the ominous “New Pearl Harbor” phrasing in the notorious ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’ document. But the evidence shows the genesis of the concept to be patriarch Don Kagan, in conjunction with his son Fred, in prior writings that call for ‘a catalyzing event’. Other newly sourced footage shows the pair advocating for a US military ground invasion of Palestine on September 12th, 2001 and displaying an unnerving prescience about the 9/11 attacks and subsequent anthrax letter attacks.

“We’re an empire now and when we act we create our own reality, and while you’re studying that reality—we’ll act again, creating other new realities which you can study too. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do” – Karl Rove

When you take stock of the mindset of people who not only have access to the nexuses of power, but who trade in forming and widely disseminating arguments that justify bringing America closer to a potential nuclear confrontation with Russia, it shows something more plainly Machiavellian at work, with an aim ultimately much more sinister than simply spin.

Produced/Edited/Created by: Robbie Martin
Scored by Empire Files theme song composer: Fluorescent Grey 

A Very Heavy Agenda is a joint production between Media Roots & RecordLabelRecords
More information, Video On Demand/DVDs of A Very Heavy Agenda here

Follow Robbie Martin on Twitter @FluorescentGrey

US government officials are calling to overhaul the state funded media apparatus and focus on counter-propaganda against hostile nations, according to a report seen by Reuters.

The study was written by two former Western state funded news employees, Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) governor and Radio France Europe/Radio Liberty vice president, who declared the US is losing the information war to its adversaries. Despite its annual $730 million budget, the BBG is asking Congress for an additional $15 million to combat Russian media specifically.

It’s not just BBG media outlets pumping up anti-Russian rhetoric – the entire Western establishment has resurrected the Cold War hysteria. Corporate media has become a disaster porn factory, terrorizing people with constant fearmongering about ISIS and Russia.

RT was created to put out the Russian perspective to the world, one of many viewpoints necessary to form opinions about global affairs. People watch foreign backed stations because they know the value in another side to the story, and they’re smart enough to navigate around obvious state biases.

What US officials don’t seem to grasp is that Russian media’s success is only due to the abysmal failure of American media to provide citizens with real news.

I joined RT because it gave me the space to critique empire, corporatism and militarism while providing a crucial platform to whistleblowers and activists. People want unfettered, raw truth about issues that most impact their lives, and Breaking the Set helped fill that void.

I never produced a pro-Russian story and stayed true to my moral compass by speaking out against Putin’s policies several times. Yet people still diminish my three years of paradigm challenging content on the network as mere “Russian propaganda”.

When in Berlin, I joined Jasmin Kosubek on RT Deutsch’s Der Fehlende Part to talk about RT vs. MSM media wars.

Abby Martin on RT vs MSM Propaganda Wars

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Watch the interview in German here. Check out all full episodes and segment breakdowns of Breaking the Set here.

The media propaganda double standard is being reinforced everywhere. At Colombia Journalism School, there’s a student program called “RT Watch” that’s “keeping an eye” on the Russian backed station. And while the project clearly exists to mock and undermine the network, I was happy that one of the students interviewed me and published it in full on their website.

It’s easy to ride the wave of ridicule, but until the establishment turns a critical eye at its own media cesspool, it will never be able to comprehend why Russia is winning the information war.

Abby Martin | @AbbyMartin

Photo by Wikimedia Commons