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Dec. 16, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:38
Scott Horton : How DC Provoked the Cold War
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, December 17, 2024.
I'm so happy to welcome back our old friend, my longtime friend from the Libertarian Institute and Antiwar.com, Scott Horton.
Scott has, of course, been a little scarce lately because he's been working on his magnum opus, which is truly a magnum opus.
It is now the standard work in the field called Scott, a pleasure, my dear friend.
Welcome here.
Congratulations on the publication of the book.
I see that in one of the Amazon rankings, it's already number one.
Well, well deserved.
I was privileged enough to get a PDF version of it a while ago.
I can't say I read all of it, but I read substantial parts of it.
I was thrilled to write a blurb for you and even more thrilled to see that you took the blurb and printed it on the book, and I'm very grateful.
Tell us the thesis of the book.
Tell us what we already know, that the United States is the chief cause of war in the world.
Well, first of all, thank you so much, Your Honor, for having me back on the show.
It's great to be here with you.
And I can't tell you how much I appreciate the great blurb that you wrote for the book as well.
I really appreciate that as much as anything.
As far as the story, your audience knows it well.
It really begins with the end of the last Cold War.
And essentially, the Americans promised the Soviets they would not take advantage if the Soviets would let Eastern Europe go.
And that was H.W. Bush told that to Gorbachev at Malta in 89. And the rest of the promises not to expand NATO and not to take advantage were all deceptions.
And it was before Bill Clinton ever even came to town, H.W. Bush was already lying to the Russians, telling them what they needed to hear to get them to acquiesce to American plans to expand influence in Eastern Europe.
The famous defense plan and guidance from 1992, you know, has obviously...
Dominance in the Middle East and dominance in Eastern Europe as well, right there, just like you could read in the PNAC document years later.
And Rebuilding America's Defenses from 1998 says the very same thing.
So the neoconservatives took the lead, but it was the rest of them too.
And through shock therapy, economic policy, through the Balkan Wars, and for that matter, Libya and Iraq and all of the wars that America has done by going around the UN Security Council and...
Never even mind the U.S. Congress and waging these illegal international wars.
NATO expansion deep into Eastern Europe.
Missile defense systems in Romania and Poland, which are fired from dual-use launchers, the Mark 41 or MK 41 missile launcher, that can host Tomahawk cruise missiles that can be tipped with hydrogen bombs, and especially now since President Trump tore up the INF Treaty.
And then, of course, it's the endless promises, not just of NATO expansion, but the promises to bring Ukraine itself into NATO.
And, Judge, what I found in writing that book was never even mind our heroes like Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan and others who knew all along, Ted Galen Carpenter and others who were so wise about this from the very beginning, back in the very early 1990s.
And not only that, but you had skeptics like George Kennan and leaders of the foreign policy establishment who were against it.
But then not only that, Your Honor, but you had even the hawks, people like Brzezinski and Kissinger and the leaders of the expansion movement, even they oftentimes said, well, of course, we have to make a special case for Ukraine.
And the model was obvious.
Ken Pollack is another one.
People might remember that he and his buddy O 'Hanlon were kind of partners in lying us into war in Iraq 20 years ago.
They were sort of solidified liberal support for Bush's war.
That's what a mainstream foreign policy consensus guy he is.
And he wrote a whole monograph about how we need to do this in 2017.
Oh, right.
That was the deal.
Because of Russiagate, no one paid attention to him.
But it was a smart proposal.
And it was essentially to ensconce.
Permanent neutrality for Ukraine, just like we had in Austria during the last Cold War with the Soviet Union.
And that was Stalin's Soviet Union until the 50s, you know.
And it was Khrushchev's after that.
Khrushchev was one of Stalin's absolute worst henchmen.
So this was the evil empire then.
But it made sense to ensconce permanent neutrality for Austria and for Finland during that time.
And it worked to keep...
American and Russian troops out and to prevent fights over these countries during that time.
So everybody knew, even the hawks and the expanders knew, this is how Ukraine should be treated, but then they did it anyway.
And of course, W. Bush bears a huge share of the responsibility for his Bucharest declaration in 2008.
And then, of course, has been covered in depth on your show, Barack Obama and Joe Biden and their role in the Maidan revolution of 2014, which led to the civil war, the loss of Crimea and the civil war in the East and ultimately the Russian invasion in 22. And if you just look at the year 21,
when Joe Biden's first year in office, essentially, he knew that the war was coming.
But instead of being willing to negotiate in good faith, he essentially just told Putin that, one, you don't have anything to worry about.
It's purely a defensive organization.
All those defensive wars we keep waging and all that, notwithstanding.
And on top of that, just you got to face down the bully.
And so he expanded promises.
He had the State Department and the Defense Department both re-announce their intentions to bring Ukraine into NATO, eventually de jure, but immediately de facto, and especially by what they call interoperability, and that is regularizing their military forces with ours so that if we were at war with Russia,
they would be one of our auxiliary armies, whether they had an Article V guarantee or not.
Essentially, they were being made.
As Professors Mearsheimer and Walt said for years, de facto members of NATO.
And that was seen as a security threat to Russia.
And I'm sorry for rambling on, but let me just finish by saying that the book is called Provoked, Not Justified.
And I do not agree that...
The Russians had no choice but to do this.
But what I am saying is that the Americans put their back up against the wall and that they made this war very likely to happen and that they did not do what they should have done and should have been willing to compromise and negotiate over in order to prevent the war from happening.
And further, they said that the reason why is because they wanted to weaken Russia, as they say over and over again, kill Russians, send them home.
Send them home in body bags.
Cost Russia money.
And a lot of times, you'll remember, Judge, they daydreamed that even Putin's government would fall and he'd be driven from power.
And maybe we'd even break Russia into 15 pieces and colonize it all.
And all of this stuff is...
Oh, decolonize it all, I mean.
And that's the mindset of the American empire and how they generated this.
Self-fulfilling crisis, knowing all along that this is what they were doing, how they did it anyway.
I'm going to bring you back to December 2013.
I'm not even going to tell you who this is, but you'll know in a heartbeat.
Maidan Square, a million people, English to Ukraine, translation, Joe Biden's then best friend.
In the United States Senate, Chris cut number 14. People of Ukraine, this is your moment.
This is about you, no one else.
This is about the future you want for your country.
This is about the future you deserve.
A future in Europe.
A future of peace with all of your neighbors.
The free world is with you.
America is with you.
I am with you.
And the destiny you seek lies in Europe.
Ukraine will make Europe better, and Europe will make Ukraine better.
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!
You know, I've been getting myself in trouble with this lately, Judge.
Well, I'm saying anyway.
More and more, yeah.
People used to get mad at me for calling George Bush such a big dummy all the time because it sounds like I'm letting him off the hook, saying that he meant well, but he made bad decisions.
Well, I think, you know, it's a little bit true.
I don't think it really lets him off the hook.
But I think it's the same thing here, where I'm going to get in trouble.
Not to, certainly never to justify anything John McCain ever did in his entire lousy life, but I think he and Joe Biden both truly exemplify, don't they?
The self-righteousness of the American empire.
Never mind Korea and Vietnam and Guatemala and Iraq and all of the horrific sins of the United States since inheriting the world empires.
Just remember World War II, that time we saved the French from the Nazis.
Wasn't that a proud moment?
And so that's their entire mindset, their entire outlook.
And John McCain and Joe Biden both always talk in these absolutely simplistic and, frankly, idiotic historical analogies about they are Churchill and FDR facing down the evil Hitler.
They know.
They're never the bully.
They are the...
Like the star player on the baseball team who faces down the bully.
They're the hero jock who faces down the bully, and they're sure of it, even though it's not right.
But they're so self-righteous, all of them.
And W. Bush, too.
You think about all that smoke he was blowing about spreading democracy.
He had to have believed a third of it or something, right?
They're doing the right thing for the world and they know it.
You listen to them talk about it over and over again.
They talk about World War II and they talk about bullies on the playground.
Over and over again.
They say, well, you know, if there's a bully on the nose.
At the risk of dragging you into politics where I don't really want to go.
But I have to ask you this.
Do you see any better situation coming on January 20th?
Think Marco Rubio.
Think Mike Walls.
Think Sebastian Gorka.
Well, the president...
Didn't mean to make you sick, buddy.
That was a bit of a punch in the gut there.
Well...
I'm looking for silver linings.
The bright spot, Your Honor, is that he's appointed not Marco Rubio, but a special envoy already, General Kellogg, to be the one to solve the Russia-Ukraine problem.
And so I'm not the biggest fan of Kellogg.
He's a pretty run-of-the-mill kind of a guy.
He was Mike Pence's foreign policy advisor and a run-of-the-mill kind of army general in his outlook, I think.
But he's not Marco Rubio, the absolute idiot hawk, you know, dumb child who has no business being anywhere near a lever of power whatsoever.
So at least it reminds me of when he appointed Khalilzad to solve the problem with the Taliban.
I still don't know how he did it, but he got a real genuine promise out of Khalilzad not to drag this thing out, but to really see it through and sign a deal.
And a deal he did sign with the Taliban on February 29th.
Of 2020 to get us out of that war.
And so if Trump is determined to do that, if his orders to Kellogg are, you solve this, and he really means it, then the war is solvable.
It's an unnecessary war.
It didn't have to happen on either side.
Again, put 49% at least to the blame on the United States side.
But the Russians didn't have to do this either.
They could figure out a way to compromise from their side as well.
I have...
I am much more pessimistic about the Middle East.
Oh, I would share that pessimism.
I mean, even the one bright spot in his foreign policy team, Tulsi Gabbard, is an ardent Zionist, as is everybody else whose name I just mentioned.
I haven't even gone through half the names, even the domestic people in his cabinet.
Our ardent Zionists.
I mean, does Syria still exist as a geopolitical entity?
How much of it has Benjamin Netanyahu stolen just in the 10 minutes that we've been talking to each other?
I know.
What is he going to do with Syria?
Your Honor.
Okay.
Let's go back 10 years, okay?
The caliphate in...
We'll go back 11 and a half first.
In June of 13...
ISIS seizes all of Eastern Iraq and breaks with Jolani's group, al-Nusra.
Essentially, this is Al-Qaeda.
This is...
The Iraqi-dominated faction of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria splitting from the Syrian-dominated faction of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria, I guess.
They consolidate eastern Iraq and then one year later they roll into, pardon me, eastern Syria.
And one year later they roll into western Iraq.
They seize Mosul and Fallujah and Tikrit and Samara and all of predominantly Sunni western Iraq.
At that time though, I was telling everyone, people can find my interview with Tom Woods about it then.
This would be summer of 14. Tom Woods, I say, listen, we don't have to do this.
This is horrible, but even more to the point, we could just stop making things worse right now because, in fact, the Islamic caliphate, the Baghdadi caliphate is surrounded by enemies, and they'll be taken out eventually Iran and Shiite Iraq in alliance with Assad and Hezbollah and Russia.
And, of course, Jordan and Saudi want to keep them out.
They're not going to keep supporting them when they threaten their own borders.
And the Kurds, of course, in northern Iraq and in eastern Syria.
So the caliphate is finished anyway.
But that's not the same situation here.
Now they went west and they took Damascus, as they had decided against doing back in the last decade.
So now...
They're not surrounded by enemies at all.
They're surrounded by friends.
The Iraqi Shia are an entire western Iraq away in Baghdad and east of there.
They're not coming unless the caliphate comes to western Iraq again.
Then they'll fight and that could happen.
But for now, they're surrounded by friends.
They're surrounded by Turkey in the north and Israel in the south, Jordan under American and Israeli control.
And the only threat they have, Russia's nowhere to be seen.
They're busy in Ukraine.
Iran is nowhere to be seen.
They've got their own problems and I guess don't want to feel their entire kid's force there.
Too late now anyway.
And so the only enemies that they have are Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
So who's going to fight?
Oh, and the Syrian Kurds.
But America is protecting the Syrian Kurds, but America's not going to lead the Syrian Kurds in a war against the Turks, are they?
The Turks are the ones backing al-Qaeda there.
We could have a war within NATO right now.
The headline on antiwar.com today is America and Turkey are trying to negotiate a line between al-Qaeda forces and Turk forces on one side and Kurdish forces on the other with America on the Kurdish side.
And they've failed to come to a deal.
I'm not saying it's going to lead to war.
That's how divided the interests are in Syria now.
And we're about to have, and look, Baghdad, one more thing, sorry.
Baghdadi is a little bit less crazy.
I mean, pardon me, excuse me.
Jolani, the current Al-Qaeda dictator, is a little bit less crazy than Baghdadi, the dictator of 10 years ago.
He was bin Laden on...
This guy is under American public relations tutelage here.
But that doesn't mean that he can control all of his guys who are essentially all bin Ladenites.
And if he's going to be that moderate and suck up to America and suck up to Israel, then he's not going to last.
And we're going to have essentially a bin Ladenite state in central and western Syria.
And then who's going to be there to do anything about it?
If it's literally another caliphate, who's going to do anything about it except the USA?
Donald Trump, I think, within a year is going to, he's either going to accept the Bin Ladenite state in Syria, or he's going to do like Obama and blow it up again.
He'll probably do whatever Bibi Netanyahu wants if Bibi is still in power.
That means let it stay there then.
Say again?
That means let it stay there then.
Correct, correct, correct.
So the state of Syria really, the country of Syria really no longer exists as a geo.
I just wonder if the US, a la East Germany, if the US will dominate probably the area from which the oil is produced, no?
Well, yeah, and they're already there.
Trump left them there.
Trump ordered our troops out of Syria three times and was countermanded by his own Pentagon and the deep state, if you want to call it that, the permanent establishment, three times, and he backed down three times.
And the troops are still there.
Conoco oil is stealing the oil.
And we have...
See, now, part of the argument for keeping us there...
Was that we have to protect, we have this Al-Tamf base, it's called, right at the border of eastern Syria and Iraq and Jordan.
And that was there to block the so-called land bridge of Shiite power, basically one highway, literally, from Tehran through Baghdad, through western Iraq into Syria, through Damascus and on to Beirut.
You know, it's a different series of roads, obviously, but, you know, quite literally, you could travel by truck from Tehran to Beirut because George Bush gave Iraq to Iran's best friends.
So that was why, even if they didn't get rid of Assad last time, they kept our troops camped out there at Al-Tomp to close off this so-called land bridge and prevent the Iranians from being able to just deliver whatever weapons they want to Syria and Hezbollah by land.
But now that Assad is gone and the Sunni bin Ladenites rule Syria, then the only real excuse for keeping our troops there is not to prevent Iran from arming Hezbollah because they wouldn't be able to get through anyway.
It would only be to protect our allies, the Kurds, from our allies, the Turks.
Okay, got it, got it, got it.
Before we go, can Donald Trump end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, as he said about a dozen times during the campaign?
Yes.
Yes.
I think, you know, I just saw this morning the Jeffrey Sachs interview on the Tucker Carlson show.
Oh, I think we're losing you, Scott.
Oh, yeah, it looked like we froze up there for a second.
Sorry.
Okay, go ahead.
Joe Biden continues to send billions.
Possibly.
Although, once Trump is there, the presidency in Kiev will be wise to go along with his wishes and not defy him too much.
I hasten to add here, and look, I try not to predict the worst things and whatever.
What do I know about the future?
But in the past, Your Honor, there have been very far right-wing...
Even outright neo-Nazis.
Who are, you know, extremely influential within Ukrainian armed forces and militias who have threatened repeatedly to kill the previous President Poroshenko and Zelensky as well if they ever seek peace with Russia.
That would be forsaking all of the martyrs who died in the war so far.
And as even Andrew Kramer at the New York Times has reported, these are credible threats.
These guys literally could reach out and touch the president there if he is not protected.
Scott Horton, it's a pleasure.
Chris, put the book up again.
The book is Provoked, How the United States Started the New Cold War.
It is so thoroughly researched.
There's nothing like it in the post-911 era.
No serious indictment of the United States foreign policy comes close.
I strongly encourage you to have it.
Give it as a gift at Christmastime.
Have your children read it because they won't see anything like this in government schools.
Scott, it's a masterpiece.
Thank you very much for your time.
I hope you'll come back again and join us.
Thank you so much, Judge.
And, of course, any time I'd be happy to.
All the best to you.
Thank you.
Coming up later today, the other Scott at 2 o 'clock, Scott Ritter, and at 3 o 'clock, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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