Kees van der Pijl is a Dutch political scientist who was Professor Of International Relations at the University Of Sussex. He is known for his critical approach to globalism and has published a collection of books including Flight MH17, Ukraine and the New Cold War.
Which is the focus of the following conversation.
Malaysia Airlines MH17
Basically, what happened is that a commercial aircraft, flying between Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down while over Ukrainian airspace and everybody was killed. The official story is that Russian military – as usual – took it down with a Buk 9M38 surface-to-air missile.
Because, you know, Russian man bad.
And because, you know, official stories are always true.
Kees’s book, however, challenges the mainstream narrative, suggesting that the Ukrainian military was likely the guilty party.
On 17 July 2014 Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down amid conflict in Ukraine, a crisis that led to a NATO-Russia standoff and the onset of a new period of East-West confrontation.
This is the first scholarly work on the Ukrainian unrest and the tragic downing of MH17. It offers an analysis that challenges the Western consensus surrounding these events, emphasising the geopolitical and economic context of the West’s standoff with Russia, the BRICS bloc, and the struggles over the EU’s energy supply.
Based on previously unpublished government and NATO documents as well as a wide array of sources this book offers an analysis of global political economy and contemporary debates about Russia and East-West relations.
Kees has a remarkable insight into global geopolitics and his critique of NATO is absolutely worth listening to.
