Welcome to Keith, and I don't tread on anyone in the
Libertarian Institute. Today I'm joined by Kyle
Anselone, news editor at the Libertarian Institute, to give a
summary and analysis of Scott Horton's book Provoked, How
Washington Started the new Cold War with Russia and the
Catastrophe in Ukraine. Kyle if people.
Want to find your work? Where is the best place for
people to go? Well, you know, just like the
author of the but Scott Horton, the best place to find almost
all my work is the Libertarian Institute.
As you said, I'm the news editor.
So every day I'm putting out news stories and also a Daily
News roundup and my show Conflicts of Interest.
And then I also write op eds and viewpoints.
I actually have one up at the institute today.
Also, I have a brand new show, the Kyle Landslone show.
So everybody head on over to YouTube, subscribe.
Right now I'm putting out about one episode a week.
It's a pretty high production, high quality show.
I I'm really proud of it and that people seem to like it so
far. I just saw your video on Syria.
It's on my watch later list. I will get to that by today.
I love Kyle's conflicts of interest show.
So links to those will be in the description.
This book provoked is separated into sections based on
presidents of America starting at German reunification, Bush
senior. And then it ends with, well, the
election of President Trump in 2024.
Today we're going to be discussing Bush senior, Bill
Clinton and Bush junior. So starting with Bush junior,
Bush senior, what evidence does Scott provide that NATO made
commitments that the North Atlantic Trade Organization
would not move one inch E after German unification?
Yeah. Well, Scott has read all the,
you know, books from the people who were in the government at
that era, at that time, and also all the reporting that was, you
know, said at that time. And what he's able to really go
through and document. And also the national security
archives, which have released some of the documents about the,
you know, private correspondence, what Secretary
of State Baker said to Gorbachev or whatever other Soviet
official. And I think, Keith, what is
powerful in like maybe the 1st 10 to 15 pages of this book and,
and this is that section is where they're going through and,
and where Scott is going through and documenting all the
different levels of the promises that were made specifically to
not expand NATO eastward of a reunified Germany.
And initially they were even saying that, you know, we want
to reunify Germany, but we don't want to expand NATO to East
Germany. They, you know, realize how can
you have a state where half of it's in the alliance and half
isn't? And so, you know, ultimately
they do make, you know, the whole Germany a member of NATO,
but and it's not just from the American officials, you know.
Scott documents, I believe German, British, French
officials all reiterating the Baker the American pledge not to
expand NATO eastward of a reunified Germany.
And there's also what you know is explained in there isn't just
that they were pledging to do it, but why they were pledging
to do it. And it was that the Cold War was
over and that there was no need to immediately provoke the
Russians by starting to absorb the Warsaw pad countries, by
starting to absorb the former states of the Soviet Union into
an alliance that is inherently anti Russian.
And so this is, you know, what was laid out early on and yet
they they did it anyways. That's the amazing thing that
Scott's sources are not like infowars.com.
His sources are George Kennan. His sources are Pat Buchanan,
William Perry. He has Ambassador William Burns.
He has Fiona Hill as his sources.
That's what's just so mind blowing about this book.
And, and, and the elected leaders themselves, this, you
know, Pat Buchanan, of course, is, is making the argument
against NATO expansion. But again, a lot of what's in
like the first dozen pages or so.
And look, I mean, everybody, this is a massive, massive book
here. I'd, I recommend that you buy 2
copies, 1 you can make like a hideaway book, hollow it out and
put whatever goodies you don't want people to find in there.
And then the other copy you read yourself and read, I mean, the
first 10-15 pages, Keith, are absolutely, I mean, just it,
it's so detailed and so meticulous.
And really I, I, I mean, knowing what we know now, if you just
know what's happened from 2022 onward or I guess really, you
know, 2014 onward or something like that.
If you read the first 10, 10 to to 15 pages, you go, oh, my God,
the Americans knew what expanding NATO to Ukraine would
do, and yet they they did it anyways.
Here we have every American official saying they're not
going to do it. And they're telling their Soviet
counterparts they're not going to do it.
They're telling the Europeans they're not going to do it.
They're telling the Soviets they're not going to do it.
And they're all saying this for very specific reasons, Keith,
that this would be too provocative.
It would start a new Cold War, essentially.
You know, they were saying that they were happy that the Iron
Curtain was gone, right? We no longer have a line drawn
across Europe. And there's, you know, one side
each. And there's a potential war
that's going to break out, right?
Europe was going to be the battlefield of a major war if
the US and the Soviet Union or NATO and the Soviet Union ever
went to war. And that was something that was
taken off the table when the Soviet Union collapsed.
And the American officials at the time were saying this is a
good thing. Let's not start expanding NATO
because, you know, then Russia's going to get anxious and they're
going to form some new alliance. And that's going to just create
a, a new Iron Curtain somewhere in Europe, right?
It won't be the Elbe River anymore.
It would be, you know, in the Baltic states or something like.
But they, they didn't want that to happen.
And and that's exactly what we ended up doing by expanding NATO
more and more eastward. So if you had to pick one piece
of evidence that verifies this claim, that the understanding
was that if Germany's allowed to peacefully reunify East and
West, then NATO would not expand eastward.
Is it that James Baker, Mikhail Gorbachev meeting is at the
meeting that Baker had with Helmut Kohl, the I believe,
Chancellor of West Germany or Genscher?
If you had to pick one, what would it be?
I mean, I would pick the Gorbachev one, but I, I think
the importance of provoked isn't that, you know, 'cause you could
learn that particular quote from anywhere, but when people, you
know, use that quote in an argument, you'll have a Bill
Kristol type or someone else try.
I had to explain it away and say, oh, well, you know, he was
really saying this and that and, and, and try to come up with all
these counter arguments. And what you have in provoked is
the totality of the statements made to Russia that, you know,
it was the number of guarantees at the different levels that
really expressed how much that that you can't take this back.
It wasn't, you know, someone off statement that was just floated
out there and Gorbachev happened to take it too seriously.
No, this was something that was re reiterated time and time
again from the Americans, from our allies to our Russian
counterparts. And it would, you know, it was
meant to reassure the Russians that we wouldn't go down the
road and while telling the Russians and speaking among
ourselves why this is a good idea.
And and again it just it it. It happens anyways.
So what is the problem with NATO expansion?
Don't countries join voluntarily this purely defensive alliance?
Yeah, well, I I mean you, you know, at the core of it Keith,
it's an anti Russian alliance. And so from the perspective of
Moscow, even if it you know, it's just defensive, you now
have an alliance as directly set up against you on your very
border. You know that be becomes highly
problematic. But of course, Keith is not just
a defensive alliance, it's a massive military machine.
You know, we could look at the wars in Afghanistan or Libya as
examples of, yes, NATO does go to war aggressively and has
really messed up the world in doing so.
I mean that the war in Libya has that massive repercussions, the
latest of which we just saw this weekend with the overthrow
Bashar al-Assad and Al Jolani. Keith, al Qaeda, the the guy who
founded al Qaeda in Syria, the AL Nusra Front is now the ruler
in Damascus, a Saudi jihadist is, is ruling Damascus.
I mean, this is this is Osama bin Laden's dream, and it's a
result of an aggressive war wagering by NATO.
And so, of course, there's a lot of reason that the Russians
would be very concerned and skeptical with NATO being that
this label is a defensive alliance when clearly it's
waging offensive wars. But there there's a lot of other
reasons, Keith. Whenever we expand NATO to a new
country, we start having what our first temporary and then
become permanent deployments of military equipment to these
countries, right? You know, now there's 4000
German troops stationed in Lithuania right before the war
in Ukraine broke out. American National Guardsmen were
in Ukraine on the front lines of the Ukrainian civil war,
training the Ukrainian soldiers on, on how to carry out about
operations. These are American Florida
National Guardsmen, right? And so the idea that Russia
would be concerned about NATO expansion is because it comes
with so much more than just the status of a defensive alliance,
right? It's not just a declaration that
if you attack Lithuania, then we're going to attack you back.
It's a a declaration that Lithuania is going to be made an
American military outpost right on Russia's border.
They regularly carry out war games in the Baltic states
within 100 miles or so of the Russian border.
You know, preparing for a ground war with Russia right on the
Russian border. Or maybe keep the most
provocative they have every year and believe these are the
steadfast noon NATO war games where they conduct nuclear
drill. So they, you know, take
airplanes, right, that could carry nuclear weapons and they
fly them within, I think, 15 miles or whatever the the
airspace line is of the Russian border and turn around to
simulate what it would be like for the nuclear air raids on
Moscow or Russian cities. And so these are huge
provocations. And yet it goes on time and time
and time again. And that's why Russia is so
opposed to NATO expansions, because it's not just some
defensive alliance. It's this massive military
machine that's constantly threatening and poking at
Russia's borders. It's amazing because people
don't really consider the fact that one a war guarantee to
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia that puts obligations on all of
Americans to potentially get conscripted and pay for a
military conflict. If there's some border dispute
between any of these countries, it's a few politicians putting a
massive obligation on the domestic American population.
So the idea that it's voluntary is just like me saying Connor
Freeman and I had a discussion, Kyle, you're going to pay for
the bill when him and I go out to dinner.
Well, if it's voluntary between a few politicians in America and
a few politicians in Romania, you're still putting massive
obligations on tons of strangers, not to mention the
moral hazard it creates. It basically says to these
people, hey, here's a blank check, you can pick any fight
with any regime you'd like and you have the full force and
backing of the US military. My gosh, think of the moral
hazard that creates. It's like every drunk guy at a
bar being best friends with the big bodybuilder in town.
Well, now you have reason to go around picking fights when you
otherwise had a incentive to be a little more humble and a
engage in a few more cost benefit analysis before picking
any fights. I want to go back to what you
said about Afghanistan. Afghanistan was NATO's first
ever declaration of war. Think it would have been around
48. So for like 50 or so years,
Eisenhower and Truman always thought it was going to be in
Berlin, that that's where the big conflict would take place.
Thankfully, Germany was able to reunify peacefully.
It's like you got this great deal and they still provoke an
issue on the European continent. But when it comes to lessons we
can learn from NATO's first ever declaration of war in
Afghanistan, what else is there before we move on to Clinton?
Well, Scott has a whole other book for that called Fool's
Errand Keith, where, you know, you could really learn of all
the consequences. But of course we saw during the
Biden administration it, it was a 20 plus year failure.
We wasted hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars.
We lost thousands of American lives.
We killed 10s of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands
of Afghans, mostly innocent civilians or just local fighters
who were opposing the American occupation of their country.
And the Taliban are in charge of Kabul now.
So, you know, what was it all for?
And it just it, you know, it kind of on its own face shows
what an absolute failure that the war in Afghanistan was.
Yeah. Well, I at, you know, some point
early in my political, you know, research project, I thought that
the Taliban and al Qaeda were more or less the same group.
And by being at war with the Taliban, we are at war with al
Qaeda. Was there any evidence?
Is this, you know, an organization that has a lot of
ties? Are these totally separate
groups or did they literally just declare war and start a
regime change operation against a totally irrelevant group?
Yeah, Well, I, I mean, keep the, the al Qaeda presence, the
jihadist presence, the, you know, international Islamic
fighting presence in Afghanistan is a legacy of the American
regime change operation, our dirty war against the Soviet
occupation in the the, the communist government of
Afghanistan and Kabul. And so, you know that the reason
that there's even these international jihadists in
Afghanistan is largely because the Americans put them there.
So anyway, when Osama bin Laden ends up in Afghanistan, he's not
necessarily welcomed by the Taliban in Kabul, but they also
say that they're not actively going to kill him before 911.
During the Clinton years, they had given American signals that
they are willing to let the US conduct air strikes to kill
Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. You know, they indicated that he
was no longer under their protection, saying to the
Americans that you could you could do what you want to him.
And yet the Americans didn't take the opportunity to kill
Osama bin Laden then. So I think that, you know, kind
of shows, Keith, that this wasn't some close relationship
between the Taliban and al Qaeda.
The I think the Al Qaeda presence in in Afghanistan made
the Taliban very uneasy and they rather than be gone.
Certainly. I remember in Fool's Errand, he
cites an article from October 14th of 2001 from the Guardian
where Haji Abdul Kabir, the Deputy Prime Minister of
Afghanistan, member of the Taliban, basically said we'll
hand bin Laden over to any third country if the Americans provide
proof. It's like, well, this isn't just
me saying the Taliban are a bunch of good guys.
You can say they're as evil as you want.
They just don't want a war with the Americans.
They're domestic imperialists just like every other political
organization. They just didn't have a big
incentive to have a war with NATO or the United States.
And seeing that article when I read Fool's Errand was it's so
mind blowing I go they offered to make it so we didn't have to
have this war in the 1st place and Bush went along with the
operation anyways. Just sickening.
Let's move on to Clinton. Wait, I make one more point on
the the HW Bush chapter. And so like the first half of
that chapter I think does it and it goes all the way through the
chapter. But the first half is like
really just drilling you hard that Washington that our allies
made the promise not to have NATO expansion and the reason
they were making that promise to the Russians.
The second-half of that chapter starts to get into this was all
a ruse, right? Like, I guess before reading
this book, Keith, kind of my initial thought was that the HW
Bush administration made this promise.
And then it's kind of the dynamic of American politics,
right? Where every single president
ratchets, ratchets up the tensions in the situation a
little bit more. So Bush says we're not going to
expand, and then Clinton does it.
But it was clear that even in the Bush HW Bush administration
that they were planning to expand NATO and that they knew
that that they were leaning you, you know, leading the the
Soviets on to get them to believe that they were not going
to expand NATO in order to have the conditions in Eastern Europe
so that they could span NATO, right.
Like, they didn't want a new Iron Curtain to come down.
They didn't want the Soviets to get anxious right away that the
situation in Europe was going to one day threaten Russia.
And So what they were telling Moscow was not only that we're
not going to expand NATO, but we're going to shift the whole
purpose of NATO. It's going to become a political
institution. And we're going to look at other
institutions to dominate the security landscape of of Europe
and that Russia and its former republics, the former Soviet
republics would be integrated into that security partnership.
Now this gets more explicit in the wise guy, I think more
nefarious under the Clinton administration.
We could get into that. But I just want to make it very
clear that that I think one of the things I learned in the 1st
chapter of this book, and you know, I'm somebody who has
worked the antiwar.com for five years, Keith.
And I was shocked by this is how explicit the Bush administration
was that this really was a ruse, that they were phrasing this in
a way, and that they were setting up a situation so that
they could sell this to the Soviets and at the same time
start plotting in the back rooms their NATO expansion.
That, I think is one of the great contributions that
libertarianism has to this, you know, entire discussion where
it's very typical to say, well, if you give someone something,
they're always going to want more.
And that almost always applies. Almost everyone is always
looking to increase the amount of resources they have access
to, the amount of social power they have, the amount of money
they have. But it's really only the free
market that has a true check and balance.
And by allowing you to disassociate with bad actors.
Could you imagine if they had to raise money for these wars
voluntarily, if they had totally volunteer armies who they could
negotiate with and people had the freedom to disassociate
with? There's no way any of this
destruction could be that would be likely to occur if people
could just stop funding it if they don't want it.
I mean, people clearly say, look, we basically don't see
any, you know, reason to fight a war.
Over who rules the Donbass region?
Nope, send the ban to rights the long range missiles, says the
Biden administration. It's just so sickening.
So that's why I think libertarianism is so important.
The freedom to disassociate with bad actors, as opposed to states
who coerce you into funding things against your will.
Let's get into yes. Oh, I was just going to add a
lot of times, Keith, they have to actually.
It's not only that we had don't have an option.
They openly lied to us and all this is covert.
I mean, I guess the, the funding of in support for Ukraine was a
little bit more explicit, but for a long time, I think from
like 2013 until 2015, the Obama administration was running, no,
I think it went into the Trump administration, the CIA ground
branch was running an operation where they were bringing
Ukrainians into the United States of America.
And I mean, knowing the number of neo Nazi fighters that are on
the ground in Ukraine, you have to wonder about if some of these
people were like why nationalist extremists were coming to the
United States and getting training from the CIA and then
ship that to Ukraine. If you look at you, you know,
the initial war in Syria, this was AUS dirty war.
It wasn't something that was open to the public.
The CIA was secretly shipping the weapons and from Gaddafi's
looted stockpiles and the jihadists from the Libyan
Islamic Fighting Group, the veterans of al Qaeda in Iraq to
Syria to carry out another regime change operation there.
And so there, you know, there's just so much of this, Keith,
that isn't even that we, we don't have the ability to object
that we don't even know about it.
They, they lied to our faces about it.
And then, then they carry out these essential apps for
treason. And that's what Operation Timber
Sycamore was. They got weapons from Libya,
took them to Turkey and then from Turkey they sent them into
the moderate rebels in Syria. Yeah.
OK, let's get on to Clinton. NATO expansion into Czech
Republic, Hungary and Poland. What do we need to know about
NATO expansion under Clinton? What was the general response by
Russia at the time? Anything you have on what's
referred to as the fourth round of NATO expansion, because it's
usually started the first round, is back in 1952.
This was the first round of NATO expansion after German
unification and the fall of the Soviet Union.
Yeah. And, and so I think with the
Clinton administration, the, the thing I picked up most from
Scott's book, Keith, is just how much that the the Clinton
administration was really looking to deceive the Soviets.
As I said, there was some concern right that there a, a
new Iron Curtain would be drawn that the, that Moscow would get
really concerned if they they were explicit about their plan
to expand NATO all the way up to the Russian border and not
include NATO into the alliance and so.
And not include NATO into the alliance or.
Russia, Russia into the alliance.
It's. Excuse me there.
Yeah. According to According to Putin,
he did ask both Bill Clinton and Bush Junior for what they
thought about Russia joining NATO.
Right. Well, in, in even before that,
in like 1993, in the early Clinton administration, they're
talking to Yeltsin and the Russian government and they're
saying that, you know, we want to have a, a European security
structure and implying to the Russians that NATO isn't meant
to be an exclusionary alliance, meaning, you know, week, not
that maybe one day that you could join.
And so the, the purpose of all of this, Keith, is so we could
start adding countries like Poland and Hungary into the
alliance without the Russians thinking that this is an anti
Russian build up, which of course was a lie, right?
Because we continue to expand the alliance.
We tried to expand it into Ukraine.
And we make it clear to the Russians eventually that there's
no way that they would ever join the alliance.
And so again, in the Clinton administration, you you have
this December where we're not really going to use NATO as a
defensive alliance is more a political stretcher.
It's going to be a European structure.
We're going to have the, you know, these other kind of
defense structures that are going to somewhat supplant NATO,
like the European Security Council, things like this that
were supposed to to at least what the US was saying, kind of
take over for NATO in what was the the security of Europe.
And that was all likee that they never intended to do all that.
They just want to expand NATO, keep it as a military alliance
and keep it as an anti Russian military alliance.
But at least, you know, for the 1st 15 years or so after the
Cold War, they didn't want the Russians to believe that this
was explicitly an anti Russian alliance.
It's really only, I think after like Bucharest in 2008, where we
make it very clear that we're going to expand NATO to Georgia
and Ukraine and have made it clear to Russia that they are
never going to be members of the alliance.
That Russia really understands that this is a alliance meant to
surround Russia. This is a anti Russian alliance
meant to surround Russia. And and that that's what the
Clinton administration is really trying to lie to to Yeltsin and
the Russian leadership about. I want to play Gorbachev's
comments. It is a 2 minute clip.
So this is Gorbachev responding to NATO expansion to Czech
Republic, Hungary and Poland in the late 90s.
Ninety 7 or 99. I believe it's a mistake, it's a
bad mistake. And I'm not persuaded by the
assurances that we hear that Russia has nothing to worry
about, that that was abruptly suspended or terminated in 1990.
You cannot, you may not humiliate a nation, a people and
think that it'll have no consequences, no strategy.
So my question is, is this a new strategy?
I feel that if I feel that if the same kind of games continue
to be played, if one country plays some card against the
other country, then all of those problems, all of those issues
that we've been mentioning today will be very difficult to
resolve last night, pre elections, political pluralism,
the problems of concern to you. If not, it'll be more difficult.
Thank you. So going back to the 90s, this
was still the issue. There were so many off ramps,
this was so avoidable. Anything more on NATO expansion
before we get into Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya?
I mean, yeah, there's so much more we could say, Keith, but I
think we can move on to Bosnia. Let's move on to Bosnia.
What do we need to know about Bosnia?
Well, Keith, I guess the first point to make is that, you know,
one of the surprising things to me is that there were a lot of
off ramps to this, you know, particular little incident here
where during the Bush administration, there was
something called the Lisbon Accords that would have resolved
the situation potentially without any fighting at all.
And it was the Bush administration that came in to
our allies in the the those were the Bosnian Muslims and kind of
told them, like, look, you really shouldn't this deal
because maybe we're going to give you some more support.
And then there was something at the end of the Bush
administration that also could have resolved it.
I believe the fighting had began at that point.
And the Clinton administration basically hinted that, you know,
don't take any deal because we'll give you even more
support. And, you know, this just
continues throughout the conflict where we're constantly
promising one side of this conflict that, you know, don't
take any of these ceasefire deals because you're going to
get something really big from the American side.
And of course, the Americans being the world empire, Keith,
and having this massive military force, they understand that even
if with with a little bit of action, we could have probably
hugely tipped a favor in their side.
So that's that's the one point I want to make is just how
avoidable it all was. The second point I think the
more relevant one to today is just how many of the, you know,
international jihadist militants post Afghan war post, you know,
kicking the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
They're kind of homeless, right? They, they can't necessarily go
back to their home nations because look, Saudi Arabia
doesn't want to love Osama bin Laden types coming home because
they might have aspirations on overthrowing the king and
installing, you know, a more jihadist style government.
And that's how a lot of you, you know, where Gaddafi was squashed
and had they gone back to Libya, Al Qaeda or Assad?
Had they gone back to serious the Dom, had they gone back to
Iraq? And so these people are
relatively homeless and their only skills, as explained in
Provoked Keith, is basically being a jihadist fighter.
And so now there's a Muslim cause to fight for in Europe.
And the Saudis are, you know, happy to ship them off there.
You know, the king doesn't want them coming home, but he doesn't
mind them waging this international Islamic Jihad
abroad. And so the Saudis are spending
hundreds of millions of dollars to ship and equip these jihadist
fight Al Qaeda linked fighters in in Bosnia in the mid 1990s.
And of course, you know, this is also important, Keith, because
maybe that that movement kind of ends up getting extinguished.
But rather you have a whole nother generation because of
course, you know, I think a couple of things that I've
learned from watching conflicts over the past 10 years is the
lunatics are the most effective fighters.
And so while it's nice to think you're going to have moderate
rebels in Libya and Syria and in Ukraine, you're not the, the
jihadist, the people who are willing to, you know, walk into
a crowd and blow themselves up. You know, the Islamic State
types, you know, the people who are really willing to go on
these very likely high death operations that are the ones
that that will do most of the fighting in the dying, who are
going to end up with the most power because they're going to
do very well on the battlefield, especially if they you, you
know, at the moments where they have relatively competent
military commanders or ample US support like they did in Libya
or Syria. So, you know, I think this is a
real problem and a real opportunity to have had that
movement essentially be extinguished.
But rather you have them going into Bosnia.
And I'm sure you know it. It creates legend and, you know,
news stories, right? Like, this is a whole nother
generation. And so you have people who get
interested in it like that that aren't even fighting there or
you meet fighters there. You develop new connections.
And all this, I think, really helps to propel al Qaeda into
its next major action, which is, of course, attacking the United
States on 9/11. Yeah, I always assumed there was
some selection process with every moderate rebel.
When you're trying to overthrow 1 regime and get people to, you
know, fill the power vacuum that comes through, I can't imagine
like you just go knocking around doors, people call, see if they
can get a couple weeks off work so they could take time and
overthrow the domestic government.
No, it's only going to be these crazy psychos.
On average. It's not just like there's every
Thomas Jefferson waiting to seize the throne of a former
Rock King George, Georgia or anything.
So in Bosnia, the NATO alliance was more or less on the side of
these jihadists, these Mujahideen fighters.
Who were they fighting against in Bosnia?
My my understanding is their main opposition was the the
Serbian, the Bosnian Serbs. And you know, essentially what
you have happened here, Keith, is just not a consistent enough
American policy. And so, you know, this is the
breakup of Czechoslovakia. And rather than allowing either
this to break up in a way where it like, fully breaks up and all
these different ethnic groups get their own states, it allows
certain states to break off initially, but then decides to
pump the brakes on it. And so when it starts pumping
the brakes, now people are asking, OK, so am I going to be
a minority group in a state that's ruled by a different
ethnicity, a different religion? And these were real questions
and things that people are willing to go to war over.
And so, you know, I think really it was the Lisbon agreement that
was squashed in the late Bush administration, the HW Bush
administration that kind of, you know, provokes the fighting to
break out between the Muslims and, and the Bosnian Serbs.
And, and that's ultimately which leads to I, I, I think there,
you know, the statements of there's ethnic cleansing in
Bosnia and there's a genocide going on end up being a little
bit overstated, particularly by the US in order to sell the war
to the Americans, the American people.
But the same time you, you know, there is unnecessary killing of
civilians here, Keith, there is a lot of war and fighting going
on. And unfortunately a lot of
people dying. The US carries out fairly heavy
air strikes as well. When it comes to Kosovo, what
are the main lessons we can learn from the Kosovo section of
Provoked? Stay stay out of these
entanglements. I guess is is the main 1 Keith
the lessons right? I mean it's the same lesson that
you learn time and time again. I guess one of the things that
occurred to me as I've been reading provoked so far, Keith,
is just how evil the American side has been through all of
this, right? And it's no different between
what happened 30 years ago and them trying to lie to the
Soviets to convince them that, oh, NATO expansion isn't a big
deal to the same thing they're doing today in the Indo Pacific.
Building up all these alliances surrounding China and trying to
convince China that this isn't some kind of anti Beijing
policy. It's just it, it's simply
absurd. Are, you know, getting involved
in these little wars in Eastern Europe in or in Central Europe
and trying to break up these countries in the way that the
United States want it? It simply doesn't work.
Whenever you try to do this, it first creates violence.
It creates, you know, anti American sentiment in these
countries. And then ultimately, a lot of
times it goes the exact opposite way that the Americans want, or
at least that the American people want.
Like, I, I think Washington is probably happy and that Gaddafi
no longer rules Libya and that they prefer a weak Libya, like a
failed state where, you know, there's this migration crisis,
hundreds of thousands of people have died trying to get from
Africa to Europe. There's all these, you know,
slave trade going on. Just horrific situation in
Libya, right? The situation for the people of
the Libya and neighboring countries is significantly worse
because the US overthrew Moammar Gaddafi, right?
All, all that that's true. I think Washington prefers that
they, I'm sure they would say that they prefer Libya as a
flourishing democracy, but that's not an option.
So if the options are Gaddafi or a failed state, they prefer a
failed state because Gaddafi can stand up to some of the things
that the US is trying to do in the region or Israel is trying
to do in the region in particular.
The same thing with Assad. I mean, it's absolutely too
absurd to say, Keith, you know, would you I prefer Bashar
al-Assad, a somewhat secular dictator who at least allows
Syria's Christian and other minority communities that live
in Syria? Or would you rather have Al
Jilani, a man who on 9/11 saw what Osama bin Laden did and was
inspired to fight on the side of the jihadist, not not the
Americans, right? He wasn't like your neighbor who
saw 3000 people die on 9/11 and thought, I need a signed up for
the US military to protect America.
He saw that and thought, oh, we actually could fight the
Americans. I'm going to go and join al
Qaeda in Iraq. This is a man who was allied
with al Baghdadi, the, the, the leader of ISIS and the, there's
American pundits today, Keith, telling us that that is
preferable, that Jolani is preferable to Bashar al-Assad.
It, it's insanity. But this is this is what these
people do, and even prime. Minister of Israel A Hood Barack
is on camera explaining, well, Netanyahu actually has a plan to
start supporting the Muslim faction in Palestine, Hamas,
because this will weaken the Palestinian Liberation
Organization and the Black September fronts, you know,
responsible for the the Munich event in the terrorist operation
in the 80s or something. They constantly, I mean, when
you look at the eight years of Bush Junior, the assumption was
we need a big government because we got to be protected from
radical Islam. Forget the entire Cold War.
This is a new justification for why we need a big government,
radical Islam. It's been around since the year
600 AD, but 2001 is when we really need to step up the fight
against them. OK, even if you believe that, if
you believe that, you. Have to look at all these
counter. Examples.
You have to be able to look at the Bosnia example and Libya.
Not to mention Scott makes the case that the US was basically
the Air Force for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from what,
2015 to 2020 while fighting the Houthi regime and Lloyd
Austin's. Like, I got so mad I almost
wrote a letter that that that's the defiant spirit we have among
the political elites today. Anything else on Clinton before
we go to Bush Junior? Yeah.
Again. You know, for anybody who's
reading the book, there's a million things that me and Keith
are leaving out that's in here. However, I think it's going to
take Scott like a month to to actually do the audio book, to
read all these chapters. And so, you know, we can't get
into all of it, but. But there's so much more in
there. Yeah.
So so let's talk about the the Bush, the Bush blunders.
Who was George Bush? 'S first phone call when it
comes to major leaders after the attacks on September 11th.
Oh, Vladimir. So I mean, this is, this is so
foundational to, to my worldview, Keith, because I, you
know, you were, I think just a couple years younger than me,
but I was just old enough to kind of understand what was
happening on 9/11. I was 10 years old at the time.
And I remember everybody made a really big deal out of Vladimir
Putin being the 1st. World leader to call Bush after
the attacks and this is what supposed to signal what was
reinforced to me by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2
which was that the Americans and the Russians were friends now
and so Russia was going to allow the Americans and I think they
did to use Soviet bases in the you know former Soviet Central
Asian republics I think Uzbekistan and a couple other of
these countries they provided bases that allowed Americans to
get it their troops into to Afghanistan.
Now I don't know maybe Putin had some grand planned here Keith
where he was going to essentially transport the
Americans to their empire doom in Afghanistan and this was just
a law employed by him but I think in reality it was a real
effort by Putin and the Russians to signal going forward that we
do not want to be enemies with the Americans.
I think at that time, Putin was still very much interested in
integrating Russia into kind of the Western world and the
Western world economy. There was.
There's a lot of benefits to Russia economically.
That's why they built the Nord Stream one and two pipelines and
all these other pipelines that bring energy into Europe because
they wanted to be a part of the European economy and the
European order. And it was really Washington
that insisted that that cannot happen.
And so. Yeah.
Keith, you know, that is a
really important point to constantly made to the American
people, that Vladimir Putin the, the, the guy that we're now told
is Hitler was the guy who called and helped our president on
America's worst day. Oh.
Yeah, exactly. So when it comes to something
like Nordstrom, I can just imagine explaining this to my
great grandfather who witnessed to Mass wars between the Germans
and the Russians. The fact that these people have
some sort of significant amount of trade making it in their
interest to not go to war with each other.
This would have been an absolute dream come true.
So the fact that there's like no investigation as opposed as to
what actually happened when it comes to the blowing up of the
Nordstrom pipeline. Basically, I heard it was Putin
for a year and then Seymour Hersh said, well, it was
actually the Florida divers. And then the New York Times
comes out and says, well, it was actually the Ukrainians who was
behind Nordstrom. I got to.
Say of the the major narratives put out is certainly the one put
out by Seymour Hersh makes the most sense.
The one that's put forward by the Western intelligence
community is that some Ukrainians on a small yacht were
able to plant these explosives. It just seems like two major of
an operation and and Seymour Hersh is able to lay out a lot
more details and explain and how the Americans were able to get
it done. There's at least some evidence,
you know, the location of the ships, the timing of the war
games and things like that that do back up Seymour Hersh's
story. That being said, it hasn't been
confirmed in a way that I feel comfortable saying that that's
exactly what happened. I and Keith, this is something
that I was wrong about after the Nordstrom pipelines were bombed,
I really didn't think it was the Americans.
I it was I think the largest release of methane in the
history of the world are something like, you know, this
is a a major environmental catastrophe, right?
This is an act of economic terrorism on on Russia, and the
idea that you would blow up some civilian infrastructure that
brings natural gas into Europe into Russia, one of the core
members of the NATO alliance just seemed too stupid to
believe. That being said, I never thought
the Russians did it either. But at this point, I think the
most compelling case is that the Biden administration was behind
it. So.
This is gas going from Russia to Germany, correct?
Yes, yes. OK, I just want to make.
Sure. That that that's what I thought
it was. So briefly as far as NATO
expansion under Bush, we have expansion into Bulgaria,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
This is a whole section in provoked people can check out.
One thing I wanted to ask you from this section in particular,
what was the ABM treaty? Yeah.
So this is the. Anti ballistic missile Treaty
and it was essentially a a treaty that was set up to
guarantee that the US and the Soviet Union, this was during
the Nitzen administration 1972 wouldn't build anti missile
systems. And the idea, Keith, is that
this ensures mutually insured destruction, right?
That no one side could ever shoot down all the other side's
incoming missiles and therefore would have the ability to carry
out a nuclear first strike on the other side.
So the Bush administration exited from this treaty.
I think really that the significance here, Keith, is
that the US takes after they exit from this treaty, they go
ahead and they start to put their Aegis ashore, anti air
defense systems or they start to plan to under the Bush
administration in Poland and Romania.
Now the reason that this is so provocative is these systems
while they shoot could fire the Aegis ashore are the Aegis anti
missile systems, which are on the law of American destroyers
and other naval craft. They can also fire Tomahawk
missiles, which the US used to feel the variant of which could
fire a a nuclear weapon. And so we'll put a nuclear
armed, potentially a nuclear armed cruise missile launcher
within range of Moscow And and that was just too much for the
Russians to tolerate. And so I, I think that's the big
part of the US gain now the, and, and I'm sure that was a
part of the plan all along, right?
You know, we're, we're going to get out of this treaty and then
we're going to tell the Russians that we're going to build
missile defense systems in Eastern Europe.
But it has nothing to do with Russia.
This isn't about the Russians, It's about the Iranians.
We have to make sure Iran, which doesn't have missiles with the
range to hit Europe or Poland or Romania, we have to make sure
that they're not going to fire a nuclear weapon which they do not
have at Poland or Romania. So it, it's just completely
absurd. It's absolutely obvious that
this isn't about Iran, it's about Russia.
And then they also tell the Russians, well, look, you know,
these are kind of minor missile defense system.
So it's not like, you know, this could really prevent a nuclear
first strike or Russian nuclear strike on Europe.
And So what are you so nervous about?
Why do you why do you care that, you know, we're we're developing
are we're putting these systems into Eastern Europe?
And the answer is, is because of the launchers, the MK41
launchers that can fire the Tomahawk cruise missiles.
And so, yes, that, you know, the US says this is a defensive
system, but it's just like a great the metaphor for the whole
alliance, Keith, right where, you know, we say it's defensive,
but really it's it's an offensive weapon because sealed
in a defensive package. This is from a section.
Titled Nyet means Nyet. The memos In February 2008,
Ambassador Burns William Burns, the US ambassador to Russia,
wrote a memo for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice titled
Nyet means Nyet. In the memo Burns wrote during
his annual review of Russia's foreign policy, January 22nd to
23rd, Foreign Minister Lavrov stressed that Russia had to view
continued eastward expansion of NATO, particularly to Ukraine
and Georgia, as a potential military threat.
While Russia might believe statements from the West that
NATO was not directed against Russia, when 1 looked at recent
military activities in NATO countries, establishment of US
forward operating locations, etcetera, they had to be
evaluated not by stated intentions, but by potential.
Lavrov stressed. That maintaining Russia's sphere
of influence in the neighborhood was anachronistic and
acknowledged that the US and Europe had legitimate interests
in the region. But, he argued, while countries
were free to make their own decisions about their security
and which political military structures to join, they needed
to keep in mind the impact on their neighbors.
During a press briefing January 22nd in response to the question
about Ukraine's request for a MAP NATO Membership Action Plan,
the MFA said a radical new expansion of NATO may bring
about a serious political military shift that will
inevitably affect the security interests of Russia.
The spokesman went on to stress that Russia was bound with
Ukraine by bilateral obligations set forth in the 1997 Treaty on
Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership Ownership, in which
both parties undertook to refrain from participation in or
support of any actions capable of prejudicing the security of
the other side. The spokesman noted that
Ukraine's likely integration into NATO would seriously
complicate the many sided Russian Ukrainian relations and
that Russia would have to take appropriate measures.
The spokesman added one has the impression that the present
Ukrainian leadership regards rapprochement with NATO largely
as an alternative to good neighborly ties with the Russian
Federation. Ukraine and Georgia's NATO
aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender
serious concerns about the consequences for stability in
the region. Not only does Russia perceive
encirclement in efforts to undermine Russia's influence in
the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled
consequences which would seriously affect Russian
security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is
particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over
NATO membership, with much of the ethnic Russian community
against membership, could lead to a major split involving
violence or, at worst, civil war.
In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to
intervene, a decision Russia does not want to have to face.
For the last three sections of this book, I wanted to invite
Dave Decamp on. Dave Decamp is the news editor
of antiwar.com. He's also the host of Anti War
News with Dave Decamp. Check out the links in the
description to his show on X for that.
So Dave, the next chapter that we're looking at is the Obama
chapter. What would what was the Maidan
Revolution? Yeah, so.
I mean this was the. Major turning point here for the
current crisis, the current war that we're in.
I'm sure you went over the promises for NATO to join
Ukraine, but that kind of, you know, went away for a little
while when Viktor Yanukovych was re elected.
And the Maidan was this overthrow of Yanukovych that was
totally backed by the US and other Western powers.
And you know, they were completely, it was completely in
your face, completely in Russia's face.
You had these American politicians going over there and
speaking to the protesters, Victoria Nuland bragging about
all this funding that the US has given Ukraine, essentially
funding the opposition, funding these Ng OS involved in these
St. protests. And then you had kind of, you
know, the extremist element of it, the the far right.
I know that word has lost its meaning over the years, but when
we're talking about Ukraine, you know, we mean it kind of in the
traditional. Sense that you.
Think of it far right, you know, Nazi sympathizers, the
descendants of the the collaborators with the Nazis
during World War 2. They were kind of the, the, the,
the muscle for the overthrow that ended up with Yanukovych
fleeing Russia under the threat of violence from these these
gangs on the street. And it was successful.
It was a successful US backed overthrow of, of Yanukovych, of
this more Russian friendly leader.
What was? Discussed on the phone call
between. Victoria Nuland and Jeffrey
Pyatt. Why is this important?
Well, this was huge. I.
Remember when this came? Out, you know, because there was
all this talk about the US being involved in this, in these
protests and, you know, clearly again, we saw the, the
politicians speaking and everything, but you didn't
really know exactly the extent. At least I didn't at the time.
I wasn't as into, and I'm sure Scott did at the time.
But and then this phone call came out and it's Victoria
Nuland, who's basically the American point man point woman
on this coup at the time, talking to the US ambassador to
Ukraine and and discussing who should be in the next government
and who they mentioned yachts Anuk.
Yachts is the guy is kind of the famous line from that.
Well, F the EU is what everybody, you know, what kind
of what the news media went with.
But the big story there was they were discussing who should be in
the next Ukrainian government. And then yachts Anuk was the
Prime Minister after the overthrow.
How was did the? Maidan revolution split
Ukrainians in the east and West, so you had.
You know this more. Pro western government come in
and western, you know, in the sense of Europe and the US, but
also in the sense of western Ukraine.
And they were very hostile to the Russian speakers and the
ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, in Crimea.
And you know, the this gets into the the Donbass war and
everything in in Donetsk and Luhansk, the eastern oblast,
where there was a, a civil war after.
And, you know, they, they rejected this post coup
government and, and they had some at first, as I understand
it, pretty simple demands that they wanted Russia to continue
to be an official language. That was something that the post
coup government wanted to get rid of.
They wanted their own control over, you know, who is their
governor and, and who was in power.
And this led to the civil war, which I know we'll get into.
So that was basically, you know, the split is that you have this
openly hostile government coming into power in Kiev and the
people in the east who are more aligned with Russia didn't like
it. They rejected it.
What was? The anti terrorist.
Operation that Scott discusses on page 324.
So this is the war, the start. Of the war in the Donbass, when
you had these, you know, they call them separatists, but their
original thing that they wanted was more autonomy and again,
just respect for the Russian language.
Just just a big part of this thing.
And Ukraine launched this so-called anti terrorism
operation. And this was the start of the
Donbass war that continued from 2014 to the Russian invasion
that started the war we're in now.
And you know, it was a stalemate for a while, but this was
unfinished. You know, it was a frozen
conflict and it actually did ramp up before the invasion.
That was a kind of another factor in the Russian invasion.
But you know, what Scott gets into in the book, which is
really important, which I didn't, you know, remember this
I didn't realize was how the US was completely, you know,
backing this encouraging Ukraine to launch this war instead of,
you know, meet some of these demands from these Eastern
Ukrainians. And also we we learned in very
recently as well from the New York Times earlier this year
that the CIA, you know, immediately was involved with
the in this war, built up all these intelligence spaces.
There was another report from the Washington Post that came
out last year that said how. That they got.
To work right away building up Ukraine's intelligence agencies
so they can, you know, commit assassinations behind enemy
lines. They can gather all this
intelligence about the Dom Bass forces, which did have some
support from Russia. You know, as Scott says,
deniable special forces were sent over there.
So it was a huge intelligence haul for the US And really,
again, like it, you know, for someone like me who's critical
of US intervention, when those reports came out, like I knew
that the CIA was involved. But the extent it's really
unbelievable. And and, you know, when we talk
about this, you always got to put the shoe on the other foot.
It's like we can't even imagine a similar situation in the US on
the Canadian border or something or on the Mexican border where
you know, the the Russia intelligence is involved in in
these wars. But anyway, it is this was just
such a big provocation really, the US encouragement and US
involvement in this war. What were the?
Minsk peace deals. The Minsk deals were meant to
end the. War and give these the the
autonomous republics give them a bit of autonomy, but they were
to remain part of Ukraine essentially they were going to
agree to have their own elections and again give them
some sort of autonomy. And they were negotiated by they
were brokered by France, Germany and and and Belarus.
It took place in Belarus. And, you know, we've since
learned from basically all sides, Poroshenko, who's the
president at the time, Merkel, who is the German Chancellor at
the time, that their view of those agreements now is that the
purpose of them was to give Ukraine time to fight this war,
basically, essentially saying that they never intended to
completely fulfill those and end the war.
They wanted to get ready for a war with Russia.
Now, that could also be kind of a space saving thing for Merkel
and these other Western officials involved because they
received a lot of criticism, especially in from the Russia
Hawks in the US who didn't want anything to do with a peace
deal. But it is important, you know,
from Russia's perspective, if those deals were fulfilled, this
whole thing, and, and, you know, if NATO didn't get so entrenched
in Ukraine that this whole thing could have been avoided.
Let's move on. To the Trump.
Section of the book Why is Russiagate relevant and what
were the Russiagate claims and were any of them founded, well,
Russiagate? I mean, man, there's so much to
get into it with Russiagate. And, you know, a big thing is
that it's very relevant because we don't know if if Trump would
have been such a Russia hawk if not for Russiagate.
There's all these claims that, you know, the big claims were
that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
And then the other claim was that, you know, Russian
interference swayed the election.
And what they narrowed it down to was Facebook ads was about
like $100,000 in Facebook ads that some Russian troll farm
took out. And then the allegation that
Russia was behind the DNC emails that were published by
WikiLeaks, which never proven, you know, despite even though
that is out there now, if you ever read any mainstream
reporting that mentions that they they call it like the
Russian leak to the DNC. And Scott gets into all this in
in the book. But again, I think, you know,
the reason why it's so relevant, again, is because Trump did.
Kind of have some. Instinct to be less hawkish on
Russia. He ended up being very hawkish
on Russia. But if Russiagate didn't?
Happen. Would that have been the case?
You know, I guess we'll never know that answer, but I, I think
it played a big role in pushing him to take this harder line
against Russia to do things that Obama didn't do.
Sebastian Gorka. Claims that Russia that Trump
ordered the killing of like 300 Russians in Syria.
Probably like Wagner associates or something.
Do you know anything about this? Is that what you're referring
to? That's one of the things, yeah,
I mean that. Was in Syria that's something
that they like to brag about I mean, I, I haven't seen Trump
mention this but a lot of these Trump allies who are more
hawkish say, you know the number I've heard is 180 and they were
Wagner mercenaries in Syria. They were just kind of moving
toward AUS base and the US attacked them and bombed them
and killed a lot of them. And I mean, you know, that's
basically Russian forces. So yeah, you know, things like
that. Also tearing up the nuclear arms
control treaties and giving. Missiles to.
Ukraine, you know Trump saying, oh, Obama only sent them pillows
and blankets for the Donbass war?
Well. I just remember.
Russiagate being Hillary Clinton said on the debate stage, 17
Intel agencies, civilian and military have confirmed that
Russia was the one who hacked my emails.
I know President Biden said 51 intelligence officials, 5 CIA
directors from both parties have confirmed that what he's
referring to my son's laptop is a Russian plan.
I know they said that Putin was ordering the assassination of
Americans in Afghanistan and paying the Taliban for this.
I mean, this is just, they're just setting the stage for
creating the evil guy who it seemed like they wanted a regime
change war. Do you know anything about them
wanting a regime change war, or is it just to weaken Russia like
the Defense Planning Guidance memorandum said?
Just weaken all competitors so we could beat the dominant
force? Yeah.
You mean a regime change? War actually in.
Russia in Russia against Putin. Yeah, I.
Mean, I think that's kind of a. Maybe a dream of some of these
people, but I don't think they actually have plans for regime
change. I mean, unless, you know, you
never know. Some of them probably wish that.
But you know, I think the purpose is to really just hurt
Russia as much as possible, hurt its allies.
And right now, I mean, today you see Syria, Bashar al-Assad just
fell. One of the real big reasons why
Hillary and these people really wanted to go after Russia was
because Russia intervened on Assad's side in that war.
And Biden's speech that he gave after Assad fell, you know, he's
celebrating it even though these al Qaeda linked militants are
the ones who took power. He's saying, oh, this is the
first time ever that Russia couldn't defend this regime, You
know, gloating over the fact that you're crediting, crediting
Assad falling to the US support for Ukraine.
So it's all connected, you know, they're just, it's all, it's all
right if al Qaeda wins just so. Long as Putin feels bad to make
him humiliated, we can give Al Qaeda its own country.
Scott mentions War Games on page 480.
What are these? Why are they significant?
So he. Gets into this.
Report from Rand, which is a Pentagon funded think tank
called Extending Russia. And basically all these ways
that they could hurt Russia, put Russia under pressure.
And that includes war games. And one of the things that was
very provocative that NATO was doing in Ukraine was conducting
big war games. And whenever you see the press
releases them, they talk about these things like they're just
routine business, you know, nothing to worry about here,
these big war games. And they were actually doing
bombing runs in the Black Sea, like getting 12 miles off the
coast of Russia at one point not long before the invasion.
These are things we covered at antiwar.com, which a lot of
people might think were insignificant.
But again, you put the shoe on the other foot.
If Russia or China is doing big war games in Mexico and South
America, up in Canada, the US would not be happy about it.
And essentially, you know, that think tank Rand, the idea was to
kind of put the pressure on them to to make them nervous.
And this is definitely a big thing that that led to the
invasion, just this presence of US and NATO forces actually in
Ukraine and and in the Black Sea.
There was a big provocation. In 2021, a British warship
sailed 12 miles off the coast of Crimea.
And it was a big deal. Russia fired warning shots.
There is US surveillance planes kind of hovering above.
You know this was all meant to provoke, as the title of Scott's
book implies. What was the INF?
Treaty The INF Treaty was. A really important treaty that
got rid of intermediate range ballistic missiles that the US
and the Soviet Union both had deployed in Western and Eastern
Europe. And these were nuclear tipped
missiles that, you know, could reach Moscow and in minutes.
And the INF Treaty was signed in 87 and it got rid of these
missiles. It totally banned the
development of these short and intermediate range missiles and
the Trump administration pulled out of this in 2019.
And this is one of those examples of Trump being a Russia
hawk. They claimed Russia was
violating the treaty with one of its missiles.
And as far as I understand it, there were some real genuine
concerns there with this this Russian missile.
But Russia also had a a legitimate grievance with these
anti ballistic missile systems that the US was installing in
Poland and Romania because they could fit Tomahawk missiles,
which are have a range of 1000 miles.
So any land based version of the Tomahawk would be banned under
the treaty. But instead of negotiating
anything, Trump pulled out of it essentially because they want to
deploy these missiles to Asia to encircle China.
And we're seeing that happen now.
They sent this new system to the Philippines, but the Biden
administration recently announced that they're going to
send these intermediate range missiles to Germany to station
them in Germany in 2026. And they announced that during
the recent NATO, NATO summit. And that was the thing from
reading all the Russian statements that the Russians
were the most angry about was the this announcement of these
missiles being sent over there. So the INF treaty that that's a
big deal that Trump got got rid of that because now this could
lead to just another missile build up.
And it's, you know, when the US and Russia are on this path and
there's barely anybody's talking, it's just it's not a
good thing. What was the?
Open Skies Treaty. So the Open Skies Treaty.
Was another Cold War era treaty that allowed unarmed
surveillance flights over each other's territory.
And these days it's not really necessary because you have
satellite images, you know, satellites can pick up anything
that really a plane, surveillance plane can now.
But again, it was, you know, a trust building thing.
And another one point I wanted to make with the INF that I
forgot is that Russia offered over and over again for a kind
of a unilateral deal with the US for just a moratorium on the
deployment of INF missiles in Europe because they both
actually wanted to deploy them in Asia.
But Open Skies was similar. Trump pulled out of it and
Russia offered to renew it with Biden and Biden.
When Trump pulled out of it, Biden really criticized Trump,
saying it was reckless. But then when the Biden
administration came in, they said, hey, Russia said, hey,
let's renew this treaty. It it didn't apply just to the
US and Russia, all the NATO countries, you know, and other
Russian allies. But the the Biden team said no.
So it was just another, you know, example of this just
crumbling arms control treaties you.
Mentioned that Trump. Actually gave missiles to
Ukraine where he said Obama only sent them pillows and blankets.
Anything else on the Trump administration before we move to
Biden? Yeah, I mean the Javelins.
That was a big escalation. Again, like Obama, even though
he backed this coup against Ukraine and, and they supported
and they set up all this Intel and eastern Ukraine and they
supported the war and encouraged them to to fight it.
He wouldn't, you know, go take this step of actually sending
them what's become known as lethal aid is what they call it
because they gave a military aid.
They gave him some vehicles and other stuff, but they wouldn't
send the missiles. So Trump came in and he sent the
missiles. He signed off on the first one
in at the end of 2017. And it went over there in 2018,
the first shipment. So that was a big escalation.
And he was encouraged by his, you know, hawkish allies like
Lindsey Graham. There's a famous video of
Lindsey Graham and John McCain talking to Ukrainian soldiers in
2016, in December, right before the new year, saying 2017 is
going to be the year of offense. We're going to go back to
Washington, and this is right before Trump's inaugurated.
And we're going to tell them why you need these weapons.
We're going to get you what you need.
And that's who Trump listened to when he took that step.
We're going to make the case against.
Russia. That's what he said when he's
going to go back to Washington. Sickening.
So in the Joe Biden chapter, I want to give you as much leeway
on this one just because there's so much to tackle.
Tucker Carlson's thesis is roughly, Russia said Ukraine
into NATO is a red line. Kamala Harris spoke at a NATO
summit, saying Ukraine will join NATO.
Putin finally invades days after.
Considering this had been a civil war going on for eight
years or so at the time, do you agree with this thesis that it
was as a causal result of NATO expansion and because of what
Kamala Harris said at the NATO summit?
Yeah, I mean, I agree. That it was NATO expansion.
It was very clear that that's what this was about.
And Kamala Harris's comments could have been the thing that
finally made him go ahead with it.
But there were other things happening at the time.
Again, in the Donbass. The war was really ramping up.
The attacks were really ramping up.
And there was, you know, there was negotiations for months
between the US and Russia before the actual invasion.
And the, and Russia gave them a list of security guarantees.
And the big one was NATO. They wanted to guarantee that
Ukraine would not join NATO. And Biden even said publicly in
2021, like, oh, you know, we'll, we'll be able to work that out.
Ukraine's not joining NATO anytime soon, saying they're too
corrupt, which is funny to hear Biden say that with his history
in the country, you know, and also, you know, he says that
they're too corrupt to join NATO, but they're not too
corrupt to send them billions and billions, 10s of billions of
dollars in weapons and direct financial aid.
But anyway, so they were negotiating and, and the US sent
back another long detail thing. And the only thing that they
were really willing to negotiate was missiles in Europe.
But they did not address this issue of NATO expansion.
They just wrote it off. They blew it off.
And there was a State Department official, I meant to double
check his name before we did this, but he did an interview
with the War on the Rocks and he was asked.
Did you guys you know? Negotiate, take this seriously,
this this issue of NATO, of giving Russia a guarantee.
And he said no, basically, Nope, we can.
We didn't even engage with that at all.
And again, that was the main thing.
And now we saw there were negotiations.
And really what I think should be the biggest scandal of the
Biden administration is discouraging, you know,
sabotaging the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in
the beginning of the war because even Zelensky was saying that
they don't need NATO. And Ukrainian officials have
said since that Russia's main demand in those negotiations was
neutrality. All the other stuff was direct,
you know, about de nazification. That was all kind of minor
compared to neutrality was what they wanted.
They were willing to pull out of all the territory that they
captured at that point. But, you know, the US just
wouldn't. Biden wouldn't give them
anything on on that, even though, you know, he made it
clear that he could have, you know, in his kind of off the
cuff comments to the media. You.
Had a great post. On X, about how, you know, if
there's a nuclear exchange and millions of people die, at least
we will have fought the fight of who gets to rule.
Donniston, Luhansk, It was something like that.
But it was so brilliant that it's like, do you realize what?
This is over, actually. So when it comes to what Putin's
public justification was for invading, on page 516 to 519,
Scott goes over this. What is this war really over
again? It's.
It's over. NATO's presence in Ukraine, it's
over bringing this alliance to Russia's border and wanting to,
you know, he mentions in the, the, the what Scott covers of
Putin's justifications of, you know, talking about all of the,
the war games and the, the troops being there.
And it's, you know, it's about the US not letting Russia have
this small sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, in Western
Russia. And that's, you know, as Scott
makes this case. I mean, that's what this is
about about. And all the people, Ukrainians
and you know, have their own reasons to fight, I'm sure.
But they got caught in between two superpowers and and they've
paid the price, unfortunately. As far as deciding who rules
over this Donbass region in eastern Ukraine, isn't that also
relevant? Whether those people answer to
Kiev or they answer to Moscow, isn't that a significant factor
in deciding which territory is going to answer to which regime?
Yeah, well, I mean that is. What?
What the actual fighting is about now, it is that it's about
these territories and also Kherson and Zaparosia, which
Russia controls some of them, and Putin saying, you know, for
him to make peace, Ukraine has to withdraw from the territory
that it controls in those regions and those oblasts.
And that is what is going to happen.
You know, they're going to negotiate some kind of deal
eventually over who rules those territories, who who they answer
to Moscow or Kiev. And right now, Moscow has the
upper hand, has time on its side.
So I don't think they're going to be quick to, you know, if
Trump comes in and and like he promises, works to end the war,
Russia is not just. Going to accept any old.
Deal, you know, I, I, I think they have the upper hand here
and I think it probably it's going to end with Russia
controlling those territories. Maybe not the whole thing, not
the whole oblast, but whatever they control now, Dave Dekamp
is. The news.
Editor@antiwar.com. He's also the host of Anti War
News with Dave Dekamp on X. Today's book is Provoked, How
Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the
Catastrophe in Ukraine by Scott Horton.
Dave Dekamp, thank you so much for your time, brother.
Thanks, Keith.