The Ukraine conflict has morphed from a regional skirmish into a tinderbox threatening to ignite the entire Euro-Atlantic order. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, the sharp-eyed economist and former Reagan administration official who has long dissected the machinations of empire, sees this not as mere happenstance but as the inevitable fruit of Western hubris and Russian restraint pushed to its limits. In a recent exclusive interview on the Prepper News YouTube channel — titled with alarmist flair, "Putin's War with NATO is About to START!" — Roberts lays bare the spiralling dynamics of the war, painting a picture of a conflict careening toward escalation unless cooler heads, perhaps embodied by a Trump-Putin détente, intervene.
Drawing from his decades of insight into geopolitical chess, Roberts argues that Vladimir Putin's measured approach, once a virtue of caution, now risks unravelling into a broader conflagration with NATO. As Europe rattles sabres and the U.S. unveils a new National Security Strategy under President Trump that nods toward "strategic stability" with Russia, the question looms: Is the world sleepwalking into World War III, or can pragmatism still avert the abyss?
Roberts' analysis, rooted in a lifetime of challenging orthodox narratives — from his tenure as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury to his prolific writings on the erosion of American sovereignty — cuts through the fog of propaganda like a Melbourne wind. He doesn't mince words: The war in Ukraine, now grinding through its fourth brutal year as of late 2025, was never about Russian revanchism but Western encirclement. "Putin had advanced warnings of Western intentions," Roberts notes in the interview, referencing Moscow's ignored pleas for a mutual security pact in December 2021. What followed was a predictable tragedy: the 2014 Maidan coup, the betrayal of the Minsk agreements, and the West's eight-year build-up of a 600,000-strong Ukrainian army, all while dangling NATO's olive branch just out of reach. Russia's 2022 intervention in Donbas, Roberts contends, was a defensive necessity to shield Russian-speaking populations in Luhansk and Donetsk, territories historically yoked to Russia by Soviet fiat, from what he calls a "Nazi-like" onslaught backed by Washington.
Yet, it's Putin's operational restraint that Roberts identifies as the conflict's Achilles' heel, a strategic timidity that has allowed the war to metastasise. Why, he asks, limit strikes to Donbas? Why spare Ukraine's electrical grid, a vulnerability that could have crippled Kiev's war machine in months? "This slow advance allowed Western escalation," Roberts explains, ticking off a litany of provocations: NATO-supplied HIMARS rockets, ATACMS missiles raining on Russian soil, drone swarms targeting Moscow's fuel depots and even its strategic bomber fleet. Putin, ever the statesman, has downplayed these as "terrorism" rather than casus belli, a diplomatic nicety that Roberts sees as emboldening the hawks in Brussels and D.C. It's a pattern, he argues, echoing Russia's 2008 Georgia incursion, a swift, contained victory without imperial overreach. But patience has a shelf life. With Russian casualties mounting and domestic nationalists baying for blood, Putin faces mounting pressure to unleash "sufficient force." As Roberts quotes him: "If they want war with us, it won't last long." Translation: NATO's expeditionary forces, if they dare cross the Rubicon, would face annihilation, not through nukes, but conventional missiles packing nuclear-equivalent payloads, without fallout.
This spiral, Roberts warns, isn't abstract; it's accelerating in real time. Europe's chatter of a "war footing" — from conscription drives in Germany to France's fevered pre-emptive strike fantasies — signals a continent unmoored from reality, clinging to unity through the spectre of the Russian bear. Meanwhile, the U.S. National Security Strategy, freshly inked under Trump's "America First" banner, offers a glimmer of sobriety amid the storm. As reported by The Gateway Pundit, the document prioritises "re-establishing strategic stability with Russia" through vigorous diplomacy, aiming to end the Ukraine quagmire swiftly to avert "unintended escalation." It skewers Europe's "minority governments" — Poland's Tusk, the UK's Starmer, Zelensky's beleaguered regime, Macron's France, Germany's Merz — as purveyors of "unrealistic war expectations," propped up by censorship and arms dealers while a silent majority yearns for peace. The strategy even hints at deeper fissures: NATO's potential dilution as migration swells non-European majorities in member states, eroding the alliance's foundational ethos. For Roberts, this is validation of his long-held thesis: The war is Washington's proxy to preserve hegemony, a "Euromaidan" engineered to fracture Russia-Europe ties and corral Finland and Sweden into the fold. But with Trump's return, a bilateral Putin-Trump accord, bypassing the Euro-globalists, could freeze the frontlines, redirect frozen Russian assets to reconstruction, and forge a non-aggression pact dissolving NATO's eastern menace.
Sceptics might dismiss Roberts as a Cassandra, his views too contrarian for the echo chambers of CNN or the BBC. Yet, his prescience is borne out by the timeline: What he flagged in July 2025 as an "ever-widening war" now manifests in NATO's flirtation with pre-emptive strikes and leaked Macron-Merkel whispers of distrust toward Trump's peace overtures. On X the discourse echoes his urgency: Users amplify clips of Roberts decrying Putin's "Goody Two-Shoes" strategy as perceived weakness, inviting NATO's madness. One post from early December captures the zeitgeist: "Paul Craig Roberts warned that this was bound to happen almost 4 years ago, because the Goody Two Shoes Putin's strategy for this war is seen as weakness, reluctance, lack of confidence on the part of the Kremlin." Another urges: "Folks need to listen to Paul Craig Roberts about Ukraine. Putin is bullshi**ing! Putin tolerating a … Nazi leadership in Ukraine. What the hell is Putin doing?" These aren't fringe rants; they're the raw pulse of a public increasingly weary of endless proxy bleeding.
At its core, Roberts' vision is one of squandered opportunities and manufactured crises. Putin, he insists, seeks not empire but equilibrium; a NATO retreat from Russia's borders, a mutual security architecture ending three decades of post-Cold War betrayal. Zelensky? A non-entity, a Western puppet incapable of delivering. "What's the point of talking to Zelensky?" Roberts quips in a July interview, echoing Putin's own calculus. The real interlocutor is Washington, and with Trump eyeing a "land swap" laced with reconstruction strings, the stars may align for de-escalation. But Roberts tempers optimism: The U.S. military-security complex, neoconservative diehards, and Europe's war-profiteering elites will fight tooth and nail. Inflation gnaws at Russia's resilience, the EU frays under energy shocks, and Ukraine's frontlines buckle, yet the West's delusion persists, mistaking restraint for retreat.
As 2025 wanes, Roberts' clarion call resonates: The Ukraine war isn't spiralling by accident; it's a symphony of Western provocation meeting Russian forbearance at the precipice. Putin stands prepared, not eager, but primed, to end it decisively if pushed. For NATO, the choice is stark: Pivot to stability, as Trump's strategy urges, or court the "short war" Putin has vowed. In Roberts' unflinching gaze, history doesn't repeat; it escalates. The question isn't if the storm breaks, but who survives the deluge.
Putin's War with NATO is About to START! Exclusive: w/ Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: