Is there any hope that Biden will extend an olive branch to President Putin? He could, but — unlike Trump — he knows quite well that the war machine would eat him alive.  Should a U.S. president wish to reduce tensions and make war less likely, that president must be able to move adroitly, step-by-step, sometimes in secret — as President Kennedy demonstrated. And look what happened to him.

I believe all successor presidents are quite aware of what happened to JFK, and why.  (The best book on this is James Douglass’s “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters”.)

The Security State (SS), with the FBI, CIA, & NSA in the lead, has just won big, even as the danger of exposure seemed to loom large.  ( See: https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2020/12/04/barr-kicks-durham-can-down-the-street/  and https://www.opednews.com/articles/1/FBI-Another-Fraud-on-the-by-Ray-McGovern-Assange_Fraud_Media_Russia-201230-938.html .)

The SS functions as enforcer for the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank) complex.  Improved ties with Russia are to be thwarted at all, repeat all, costs.

If extending genuine olive branches is out of the question, will Biden, during his proverbial “honeymoon period”, at least be able to extend the New START treaty limiting strategic arms?  Will even this small step be thwarted, lest it lead to a step-by-step relaxation in U.S.-Russia tensions?  The treaty expires on Feb. 5, 2021, so we’re likely to know soon enough.

In the full (13 min) interview I gave yesterday, I had time to do a short tutorial, citing a number of not well known “flat facts” — very unlike those to be found on the pages of the the Washington Post.

Ray McGovern. Former longtime CIA officer, who served as chief of the CIA’s Soviet analysts division, chaired National Intelligence Estimates, and prepared the President’s Daily Brief. He is also the co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. https://raymcgovern.com/