Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Scott Horton Explains It All

Sept. 25, 2022 - Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith

01:28:29

Scott Horton Explains It All

# zaporizhzhia vladimir putin victoria nuland american interventionism boris johnson cia special operations dave smith donetsk foreign policy hypocrisy gideon rose hunter biden jake sullivan john mearsheimer kherson luhansk nuclear escalation scott horton tulsi gabbard ukraine war

Scott Horton argues the Ukraine war stems from a blocked April 2022 deal for Donbass autonomy, with U.S. interventionism and CIA special operations effectively making America a co-belligerent against Russia. He critiques the dismissal of Putin's nuclear threats regarding annexed territories like Kherson, linking current escalation to historical appeasement errors similar to post-WWI Germany. The discussion highlights bureaucratic incompetence in avoiding direct negotiations over 31 weeks despite mutual nuclear capabilities, warning that reckless policies risk a catastrophic conflict comparable to the Cuban Missile Crisis rather than achieving regime change. [Automatically generated summary]
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Zooming Out On What Matters 00:02:35
	Fill her up.
	You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
	We need to roll back the state.
	We spy on all of our own citizens.
	Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
	If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
	Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
	You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
	Here's your host, Dave Smith.
	What's up, everybody?
	Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
	I'm Dave Smith, and I am joined by a great guest to the show tonight, someone who's my favorite guest to have on the show, who we have on all the time.
	And he is, of course, the great Scott Horton, author of Enough Already, author of Fool's Errand, and more recently, Hotter Than the Sun, time to abolish nuclear weapons, which is very relevant to the conversation we're going to have tonight.
	So, hey, Scott, how are you, buddy?
	Hey, Dave, I'm good, man.
	How are you?
	Very good.
	And I'm looking forward to seeing you in a couple of days because I'm going to be out there in your neck of the woods.
	Oh, yeah.
	We're going to have a lot of fun.
	Yeah, we are.
	Austin, Texas, by the way, I just checked today.
	I believe there are four tickets still available for the late show at the Creek in the Cave on Sunday.
	The early show is sold out.
	But if you want to come, grab tickets right now.
	And if they're, they might be sold by the time you go to grab them.
	But if you want to come, move quickly, comicdave Smith.com.
	The ticket link is up there.
	So, okay.
	So let's start talking about some of the stuff that's been going on recently, particularly as it relates to the war in Ukraine and with what Vladimir Putin just said the other day.
	I'll preface this.
	I said before the show, this is like when I interview Scott, I always, it's just, I'm winding you up and I want to let you go on all of this stuff.
	But I will say, I would preface this by saying, I think that in general, the American people are just so easily distracted by all of these issues that just don't matter as much as some.
	And I like to pride myself on trying to focus on the things that matter the most.
	I talk about this a lot on the show, trying to zoom out and say what's really important here and what really matters.
	But I got to say, I'm as guilty as anyone on this.
	We all get sucked into these.
	You know, there's a male teacher who just got, you know, giant boobs, you know, or something like that.
	And everyone's talking about it on Twitter.
Treating This Like War 00:15:01
	Yeah.
	Well, I don't know if you saw the one that I'm referencing, but it's very weird.
	I've seen that episode of South Park before.
	So yeah.
	It was, it was that basically.
	But, you know, the Martha's Vineyard stunt that just happened that was, you know, and it's, it's a lot of fun to talk about these things.
	And they expose different things about the hypocrisy of the liberals or the, you know, the fact that the Republican governors would pull this stunt or all of that.
	But man, with all of these different things that Americans are completely consumed by, it seems like there was not nearly enough attention paid to something that just happened that seems like a really big deal.
	And this is what Vladimir Putin just said the other day.
	And he seemed damn serious when he said it.
	And basically what he said is that if the Russian, the integrity of Russia's territory is threatened at all, he will use nukes.
	Now, I'm anyway, I recommend people go over to antiwar.com, read all this stuff.
	I always suggest people go check that out.
	But tell us, Scott, what exactly is going on with this?
	Well, look, I mean, the worst part of that, I mean, what you just said is absolutely accurate, but he's also expanding the territory of Russia.
	Is right, you know, he's announced he's holding these referendums, these plebiscites, which, you know, there's no reason to presume their legitimacy in any way.
	But whether you like them or not, regardless, they're the pretext for him to reabsorb the southern coast of Ukraine into the Russian Federation, into the old Russian empire.
	And so it's a matter of what, days or weeks?
	He's officially, you know, before it was the independence of the Donbass that he was securing.
	Now he's going to formally annex the Donbass, Donetsk and Luhansk.
	But he's also talking about Sabrosia, which is above Crimea, north of Crimea.
	I'm sure I'm pronouncing that wrong, but it's sort of like that.
	And Kherson as well, which is northwest of Crimea on the way to Odessa.
	And from there, it ain't far to Moldova.
	And it looks like I don't know if they're going to take Odessa or not.
	They very well could.
	But he's announced essentially that he is annexing the far eastern regions of Ukraine and the southern coast, at least all the way to Kherson.
	So if that's the case, I mean, we're talking about legal fictions here anyway, these lines on maps here.
	So if in two weeks from now or three weeks from now, after these, you know, plebiscites have been held and the paperwork has been shuffled, and Putin is saying that this is now Russian territory, then it sounds like what you just said applies to any Ukrainian government attacks, even on Russian forces in Kherson or in Zaprozia or in the Donbass or any of these places that were considered Ukrainian territory as of today,
	although under Russian occupation.
	So, you know, they keep saying that this guy is the most dangerous psychopath on the planet.
	Maybe he is.
	And, but they keep trying to push their luck.
	And, you know, this whole thing, as I've told the story before, was essentially brought on by American interventionism in the region and our refusal to negotiate the Biden government's refusal to negotiate in good faith with Putin after provoking this crisis one year ago by bringing Zelensky to DC and inviting him to join NATO and having the State Department issue new papers and reports about the process of integrating Ukraine into NATO and all this going forward,
	which is what led to the buildup and all the heightened tensions and led to the war.
	So, you know, essentially the argument of the Hawks the whole time.
	I swear to God, it's like 20 years ago with Iraq, where just the Hawks are so full of it, but they're so right and so self-righteous, just no one can contradict them.
	You know, like Kathy Young in that debate at Porkfest, where she's saying, you know, how can we not support the Ukrainians by giving them these weapons to fight when they want to fight, when all we're doing is getting them in worse and worse and worse and worse trouble?
	You know, and we know now, we already knew that the Ukrainians and the Russians were negotiating in April when Boris Johnson, the prime minister of Britain, intervened and stopped them and threatened to end of all American and British support if they continued.
	Obviously, at American behest, he did that.
	Well, now we know, extra confirmed from Fiona Hill, the hawk, writing in Foreign Affairs, that they had an agreement in principle, essentially in pencil, but not pen, you know, handshook, but not signed, saying, okay, this is the deal.
	And the Russians were willing to withdraw all the way out of, you know, to positions from before the war, back to Russian territory, as long as the Ukrainians would be willing to recognize, you know, this enhanced autonomy, essentially respect Minsk too and the enhanced autonomy of the Donbass and forswear membership in NATO.
	And so they had a deal.
	They could have ended this war in April, and they would have, you know, maybe they would have lost the Donbass.
	It sounds like they would have even been able to keep the Donbass region under enhanced autonomy, you know, strong federalism, but it would still be Ukrainian territory.
	But no, the Americans helped them by pouring in all these weapons and pouring in CIA and special operations forces to help them continue the war.
	So now they've just lost it worse, or they're losing it worse.
	And what, you know, what precipitated this major escalation by Putin was a major win by the Ukrainian side.
	On the, you know, 12 days ago, the weekend of September 10th, they had major victories in the Far East and they had lost a bunch of forces doing a feint, basically a diversion attack near Kherson, again, northwest of the Crimean Peninsula there.
	While then they launched a massive assault in northern Luhansk, right?
	Uh, near Kharkiv and drove the Russians all the way out of the northern part of Luhansk, but at a cost of many men, I don't know how many thousands of men, um, and at a cost of even further and worse losses in the diversion assault at uh Kherson.
	Um, but so when the Russians lost all this territory, if you go back to the media, go look at blue check Twitter as of you know, September 11th, 12th, 13th, and it's all whoop, whoop, look at how great Ukraine is doing, and the Russians are humiliated and surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away, mocked the guy from Reuters and all of this stuff.
	But what do they think that they're doing?
	The Russians have a 400,000-man army so far.
	They've used 120,000 men, and now you just made them mad.
	Well, and did you just look at the map?
	And so if I'm not mistaken, he just called another 200,000 reserves up, 300,000 reserves up.
	Okay.
	So, so what he's done now, now, so what that means is reserves, meaning essentially retired army who can be recalled to service.
	And then that means all the active duty army who are stationed everywhere else, they are now free to go to the front because their jobs will be filled by the reserves.
	And they're also, you know, double down on conscription, increased the penalties for anyone going AWOL, and they started conscripting people out of the jails, anti-war protesters out of the jails.
	And, you know, I had read that, and, you know, I never really trust much reporting about what's going on in Russia, but I heard this from somebody who knows somebody who was literally conscripted out of a Russian jail for protesting against the war there.
	So they are, it's not a full mobilization, but it's about a half mobilization.
	And they're still not calling it a full-scale war.
	They're still calling it a special military operation.
	But they are, and I don't know what it's going to look like, Dave, but yeah, I mean, you got it right.
	They just, they sent in this whole war so far as they've had about 120,000 men in there.
	Now they've just called 300,000 reserves, potentially freeing up 300,000 men to go to fight.
	And then, so what's that going to look like?
	You know, probably a bloody, you know, I really hope there's not a fight for Odessa.
	I mean, it'd be horrible, horrible fighting there.
	One of the things about Odessa is there's vast underground catacombs all throughout the city.
	So it'll be, you know, for waging an insurgency, it's a great place to fight.
	But in terms of anything being over, short and sweet, no chance.
	So it'll be a long, protracted fight.
	But, you know, let me just say that the reality here is, as you, as you, you know, put it very well in the introduction here.
	I mean, we're what we're up against is the news cycle.
	We're like, you know, thank goodness Ukraine came and saved us from the germ, right?
	We might have been under lockdown forever if it hadn't been for this, you know?
	But then, yeah, some trans bathroom issue or some other thing comes out, immigration or something, and then the war takes a back seat.
	It's a war and it's a war with Russia.
	And the Russians have said from their point of view, which is this is simply a matter of opinion, but you can't argue that it's really outright wrong that they're at war not with Ukraine, but with NATO in Ukraine.
	And the Americans have said, you know, in the New York Times, the lawyers say we are co-belligerents under international law.
	This is what you call a co-belligerent in a war.
	Yes.
	We're part of it.
	And you have, yes, you have people.
	Look, I mean, like, this is almost like where I want people to like, you know, even the ones who are a little bit on the fence, because I'm surprised by how many people give me pushback when I talk about this.
	But look, you have people like Max Boot saying, like, flat out, like, no, we're at war.
	It's not just Ukraine's at war.
	We have to treat this like we're at war.
	And you have people who, you know, don't occupy any real position of authority, but people like Joe Biden saying that the position is that Putin has to be overthrown, that our position is regime change in Russia.
	And that's, again, he's just an old demented guy, but he's someone who some people listen to.
	And so that you're like, okay, that's a pretty big deal.
	That's like, you know, somewhat relevant.
	And then you have, as you just pointed out, Putin saying that if his territory is infringed on, he will use nuclear weapons.
	And now there's kind of a debate about exactly where his territory lies and where, and then, you know, if Ukrainian forces were to breach actual, like proper Russia, what that might mean and how he might take that, you know, essentially after we've been sending all of these weapons in, yeah, you know, the lines get kind of blurred about who exactly he is at war with.
	And the fact that people wouldn't see this and look at that and go, okay, no matter what you think about this, even if you were arguing that NATO was completely justified to move all the way to Russia's borders, or if you were arguing that, you know, that that 2014 coup actually had nothing to do with the U.S., even, yeah, there were some NGOs funded by George Soros who gave some money to some militias.
	And yeah, you know, there were some American, you know, members of the State Department who were talking about who should take over the government.
	But I don't believe that this, even if you believed all of that, wouldn't you have to concede that the number one priority here, like the number one priority in the history of humanity is to make sure that we de-escalate this conflict that could go hot nuclear.
	I'm not exaggerating when I say this is in the history of humanity.
	I guess depends on how you define humanity.
	You know, they say, Scott, I don't know if you know this, but they say a million years ago that we almost went extinct.
	We're not a great bottleneck.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	Now, technically, it was others say there was a great flood.
	Yeah, that is true.
	But there's, there was a, um, it's not technically, as far as I understand this, I'm no expert, but not Homo sapiens, but like Homo erectus type, you know, pre-humans.
	They say all of the genetic evidence points to that we almost went extinct around a million years ago.
	And some like our numbers were really dwindling down.
	And then we somehow were able to procreate and survive.
	But literally, since then, like this might, this might be the closest, certainly in my lifetime, you could argue during like the Kennedy administration and stuff, but coming this close to a, like where you have someone like Putin, even if you're saying he's this belligerent, you know, crazy person, okay, but he's saying he's going to use these nukes.
	So wouldn't that be the number one concern is to take that off of the table and try to de-escalate this.
	And yet I'm really blown away by the fact that when you say this, you get enormous pushback.
	I've been getting pushback.
	I get a lot of people who agree with me, but I've been getting pushback just from like tweeting about this stuff.
	People like, no, we got to make Putin pay.
	You know, and it's amazing, no matter how good people seem on some of these issues, when the moment really comes, when it's really like push comes to shove and all of the propaganda is really intensified, it's amazing how many people buckle and just don't use common sense.
	I remember thinking, you know, I remember thinking after when Trump got elected and it was like, wow, look at this, man.
	Trump's running on ending the wars.
	And all of a sudden, Laura Ingram and Tucker Carlson and all of these people are talking about how much these wars were stupid and we shouldn't be fighting them.
	And then I remember when Trump killed Soleimani, and then there was all of this war propaganda with Iran.
	And I remember going on a, I went on Stephan Molyneux's show because he invited me on and goes, hey, you want to come argue?
	You want to come make the case where we shouldn't go to war with Iran?
	And I was like, yes, absolutely.
	Back then, he had a big audience of right-wingers before he got deplatformed off everything.
	And I remember getting so much pushback from them.
	Like, no, we got to smack around.
	We got to let him know.
	And it's like, wow, you guys were, you sounded like you were so good a minute ago.
	And now I'm hearing even from libertarians who are going, well, I don't know.
	I mean, he invaded a sovereign territory.
Thanking Our Sponsor Sheath 00:04:04
	Come on, man.
	Look, 20 years ago today, some jackass in my cab told me, Hey, look, if Iraq didn't do 9-11, then why are we attacking him then?
	Right.
	Of course, we have to do what we're doing or we wouldn't be doing it.
	It's all just circular reason and question begging.
	And yet, come on, man.
	You know, I guess people get all emotional about red, white, and blue, and like blaming America first and this kind of thing.
	But what if I just blame Bill Clinton, the facebiting rapist, Jeffrey Epstein's friend on his plane to Thailand?
	We know what that means.
	Like, oh, Mossad, you got me.
	Just keep getting me laid and we're cool.
	That guy, the butcher Waco, the guy who was paid by Chinese intelligence to put their guy in the Commerce Department to license three-stage missile technology transfers.
	That guy.
	Well, he had an Eastern European policy that was counterproductive for American national security needs.
	Dave, I just blow your mind.
	And then get this.
	You know who came after him?
	George W. Bush.
	Yeah, the same guy who did those things that you're thinking of.
	All of them.
	And then him, after him, the pendulum swang, swung, and we got, we went right to reason in the form of Barack Obama, who just did a great job for Al-Qaeda in taking their side in Libya, Syria, Yemen.
	Also did a bloody coup in 2014 in Ukraine that led to this crisis, just as Bush had vowed to bring them into NATO.
	So, I mean, forget partisanship and forget nationalism and patriotism.
	Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Obama made bad decisions sometimes, including in their Eastern European policy.
	That shouldn't really hurt anyone's feelings at all to have to admit that, like, oh, yeah, that's pretty bad stuff that they did.
	And then, of course, what did Donald Trump do?
	They framed him for treason with Russia because he said he wanted to get along with Russia.
	And then, in order to prove he wasn't a traitor, he dumped a bunch of weapons into Ukraine.
	You might remember he was impeached.
	Let's see, the one, two, the third time ever an American president was impeached.
	It was for holding up an arms deal to Ukraine for a little bit.
	They said they didn't even notice the delay in the arrival of equipment.
	Anyway, and he made it that much worse.
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	All right, let's get back into the show.
	I bring this up a lot on the show.
	And I've, look, I've been, uh, I had a debate with uh um Styx Exenhammer, who's a very, very popular YouTuber, um, and I, someone I like and respect a lot.
Extorting Ukraine For Burisma 00:05:58
	And then I really argued a bunch with Tim Poole, someone I also like and respect a lot about Trump's legacy.
	And I've, I think I've established from going over this that I am not a fan or a supporter of Donald Trump, as I've made very clear on my show, but also on these other big platforms.
	And all of that, Trump, there's a million things bad you could say about him.
	But isn't it amazing that he was impeached for what they called a quid pro quo with Ukraine?
	And it goes like this: that what he wanted was that they investigate Hunter and Joe Biden.
	And if they don't do that, they won't get these weapons.
	And the funny thing about it is like, that's the media narrative, that that's what's so terrible that he did that.
	Now, even if that, let's say he got all of that, you could certainly argue that, well, I mean, all foreign policy is a quid pro quo.
	And, you know, this, you could argue that this was in the best interest of the country.
	But the issue, I guess, ethically would be if it was just in his personal interest, not the nation's interest, whatever.
	But the point that no one ever seems to focus on is that he never got the investigation on Hunter and Joe Biden, and they did get the weapons.
	Like, even if even if he tried to negotiate this deal, the great negotiator, Donald Trump, that's not what happened.
	What happened was Hunter and Joe Biden were never investigated.
	Nothing about them ever came out to light other than from the crackheads laptop.
	And he gave them the weapons that even Obama wouldn't give to them.
	It's just so bananas that that doesn't become a big part of the story.
	Right.
	And of course, even the background to that was Joe Biden's bragging on C-SPAR at the Council on Foreign Relations, how he outright extorted the president of Ukraine into firing the attorney general because the attorney general, contrary to what you just said, was investigating Barisma and he wanted that shut down.
	And all the media coalesced around the narrative that no, no, no, Biden wanted that attorney general gone because of how corrupt he was.
	He was Mr. Corrupt Guy, and we had to replace him with a less corrupt guy.
	And it had nothing to do with Barisma investigations because those were all dormant.
	They're dormant.
	And it was like spider hole, Saddam Hussein spider hole or white separatist Randy Weaver.
	You're not allowed to talk about these investigations without saying dormant.
	It's like, you ever see that episode of the A team?
	Oh, you're too young.
	There was this episode of the A team where anytime somebody said scenario, Hannibal would get hypnotized and have to do whatever they said.
	Same kind of thing here.
	Anyway, these dormant investigations, they were dormant, Dave.
	And so there's no reason in the world why Joe Biden would want to fire an attorney general who was just sitting on some dormant investigations.
	But the problem with that is Matt Taibbi speaks these languages and is a reporter and just let his fingers do the walking and got on the phone and found, and everyone can read his sub stack all about in-depth, how he showed that no, in fact, those investigations were quite active at the time that Joe Biden was demanding that this guy be fired.
	And then he was replaced by a guy who was far more corrupt and finally shut those investigations down, just like in what you would have suspected.
	So now take your same thing about the narrative about Donald Trump and his impeachment here and the media saying this is outrageous that he would demand an investigation and then they don't want to know anything about what needed to be investigated about the vice president's son sitting on the board of this gas company,
	which, you know, I don't know if I learned this from Taibbi or not, probably that the reason that Barisma hired Joe Biden's son in the first place was because they were in tight with the government that Joe Biden had just overthrown.
	They were friends.
	Kolomoyski, one of the major, I think the primary owner of Barisma was close with Yanukovych.
	And so in order essentially to protect himself after the new Ku regime took over, did he hire Yatsinook's little brother or Poroshenko's cousin?
	No, he hired the vice president of the United States' son to sit on the board and along with Kofer Black, the former CIA officer, counterterrorism officer, to come and sit on his board to provide him protection to keep him, you know, from being so isn't there something interesting there?
	It's almost like the same thing.
	It's almost the same thing that Burisma was doing is what Putin is doing is they went, look, we're going to go right to the source.
	We're not going to pretend that what we're really dealing with here is this new Ukrainian regime.
	We know who it really is.
	It's America.
	And so in the same way that they went and said, look, rather than just bribing one of the members of the new regime, we'll go right to the source and bribe the son of the then vice president who's who is in charge of Ukrainian policy.
	And Putin at the same, in a similar way, is saying, well, we're not going to blame or not solely blame Zelensky and his government.
	We're going to say, no, this is America and Britain, America, the whole, you know, kind of global liberal world order.
	And look, there's a real, there's a real rub here, which is, you know, if this was any other group of lousy Democrats from wherever USA, that would be one thing.
	But it's Joe Biden as the president right now.
	Victoria Newland is his assistant secretary of whatever to Europe.
	I forget the exact title, but And Jake Sullivan, who was his national security advisor during this time, is his national security advisor now.
	He was vice president then under Obama.
	So all these people have an avowed vested interest in pretending that all of this is Russia's fault.
America Bowing To A Bully 00:12:28
	None of this has to do with any reaction from any mistakes they have made or miscalculations they have made.
	And by the way, let me make a tangent there real quick.
	The leaked phone call from Victoria Newland and Jeffrey Pyatt plotting the coup from that the Russians intercepted, presumably the Russians intercepted and leaked on YouTube two weeks before the coup in February of 2014.
	They say in there, we got to move fast.
	We got to midwife this thing.
	See, we got to glue it.
	We got to make it sale before Putin can torpedo it.
	That's what Pyatt says, right?
	We're in a hurry here.
	We got to get away with this thing before they can stop us from getting away with this thing.
	Yeah.
	And that's what Gideon Rose says on the Colbert report too, the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine says.
	And some idiot Ukrainian nationalist attacked me and said that this was my characterization of the situation when, no, I was quoting directly Gideon Rose, the editor of Foreign Affairs, saying to Stephen Colbert that, see, Ukraine is like Russia's girlfriend, but he's kind of this loser from the ghetto.
	And we want her to come away with us, the nice guy from the nice side of town, the European Union.
	And then later he says, Ukraine is sort of like robbing to Russia's Batman, and we're trying to break up their partnership, right?
	These are Gideon Rose's words, the editor of Foreign Affairs Journal's words.
	And he says in there, I forget the exact words to paraphrase here, but something very close to, and we got to get it.
	Oh, they talk about how we got to get it done while Putin is distracted with the Sochi Olympics.
	And Colbert, this is old, you know, Comedy Central Colbert.
	Yeah.
	He says, well, so how come we're not just spiking the ball in the end zone and laughing in their face and saying, ha ha, we stole your country away from you.
	And Gideon Rose says, because we're trying to get away with it while he's distracted with the Sochi Olympics before he can react.
	And I forget, there's a better punchline on the end of that.
	Yeah.
	Everybody can go watch the video themselves.
	You can find this.
	We got this.
	We pulled this video from, I found this on the old Comedy Central archive sites.
	And I got Brian cut it down to like a Twitter video.
	And then me and you and a bunch of people tweeted it.
	And we got like close to a million people extra to view this.
	But you really should go watch this.
	I mean, it's unbelievable that they were just, it's like what they now say is like, oh, this is kind of a conspiracy theory that we were involved in this coup in 2014.
	You're like, they were bragging about it at the time.
	They were telling you, no, we're doing this.
	Like the editor at Foreign Affairs was saying, no, no, no.
	Like, don't believe Dave Smith or Scott Horton.
	We are doing this.
	Whereas the aliens just come to get you?
	No, I thought I had it in my, I have all my Victoria Newland coup clips, but I don't have my Gideon Rose clips in the right folder, I guess.
	Next time.
	It's on my Twitter.
	I'll put it in the description of this episode so people can click on that if they want.
	But yeah, anyway, the point being that I was making was simply that these guys think that they're smart and they think that they can just do whatever they want and it'll be fine.
	And I've heard multiple anecdotes as I've been researching this for the book that I'm writing too, where as Joe Sorencioni, the America's leading expert in explaining Vladimir Putin's point of view, he said, you know, he had a job in the State Department in the Obama years on an advisory panel kind of a thing.
	And the Russians would say, listen, we're really concerned about these anti-missile missile launchers in Romania and Poland and their dual use potential for offensive weapons and these things.
	And that the Obama administration, and this goes for all of them from Clinton all the way through, they would just outright dismiss the Russians' concerns.
	They would say, either, come on, everything that we do is perfect and holy and defensive.
	And they know that we would never attack them.
	We would never do anything offensive with the thing that we're doing.
	And they're just pretending to be concerned because how could they possibly be concerned about a thing that's not concerning?
	And then failing that, they would say, yeah, but what are they going to do about it anyway if they don't like it?
	Because we're us and they're just Russian now.
	They're nothing compared to the power that they used to be.
	And we can do whatever we want.
	And you know what, man?
	There's this great article in the New York Times Weekend Magazine from 2018.
	It was totally okay for people in polite society to admit how the Ukraine crisis was America's fault in 2018 because it was in the middle of this low-level dirty war in the Donbass.
	But it was before the heightened tensions made that so politically correct.
	You're never allowed to say that or whatever, that kind of crap.
	But so in here, actually, the premise of the whole article is: hey, America's Russia hands.
	If you're so smart, how come our relationship with Russia is a total disaster right now?
	And this is where you might have heard me quote before Bill Clinton's man, Strobe Talbot, saying, geez, should we have had a higher, wiser conception of America's national interests instead of just getting away what we could get away with in the short term?
	Yes, Strobe, thanks for nothing, pal.
	But anyway, what I was bringing up here was, and I don't know, Dave, but it sounds believable to me.
	They interview a guy, I'm almost certain his name is McCullough, something like that.
	And he worked for W. Bush.
	I want to interview this guy, maybe.
	He worked for W. Bush, and he was the Russia desk.
	And his idea was we should be smart along the lines, so to speak, at least, of John Mearsheimer, and we should recognize Russia's interests and we should deal with them on a reasonable and respectful basis and try to get along in the world and not push our luck.
	But as he complains to the New York Times, he wasn't in charge of our Ukraine policy.
	And the New York Times writer says, Well, look, man, you say you want to have this whole policy where we're trying to figure out how to get along with Vladimir Putin.
	You say that you had agreement with Connolly Zerice that this was the policy that you wanted to have.
	So, you know, what's going on over at the Ukraine desk?
	And he goes, Well, I don't even know those guys.
	I have no influence over them whatsoever.
	The Ukraine desk is an entirely separate organization of whatever, six nitwits who do whatever they want.
	And the Russia desk and the Ukraine desk don't even coordinate their policy because what does one have to do with the other anyway, dude?
	And this is George Bush.
	This is Connolly Rice's National Security Council, right?
	And they can't do their job well.
	You know, they, you know, here, I have right here, I want to show you.
	And I think I owe you an apology, Dave, because I'm pretty sure.
	That's bright.
	I got a correction for you here.
	I'm pretty sure I had said on your show this was from February the 2nd, 2008, but I was wrong, dude.
	It was February the 1st.
	So sorry about that.
	But it's at Wikileaks.
	Sorry, I'll turn that off in a second.
	I know I don't look good in this.
	Net means NET, Russia's NATO enlargement red lines.
	So thanks to Chelsea Manning for liberating those documents and leaking them to the World Heroic, World Historical Hero publisher, journalist Julian Assange, sitting in prison at Joe Biden's behest in Great Britain right now.
	And what it is, is it's our current CIA director, William Burns, telling Condoleezza Rice that Sergei Lavrov has made it clear.
	That's the Russian foreign minister, in no uncertain terms, that we absolutely cannot bring Ukraine into NATO or Georgia.
	They're going to completely flip out.
	And he says in there, you can read it in the strongest language that a guy as polite as Lavrov ever uses.
	This could lead to war.
	There could be a civil war in Ukraine, and then we might have to take a choice about what we have to do about that.
	And we don't want to have to make that choice, Mr. Burns.
	You read me was our current CIA director.
	It's the guy who wrote all this stuff down.
	So they know exactly what it is that they're messing with.
	And they just think that they can get away with it.
	And back to the beginning of the story here.
	I mean, we're eight months into this war.
	We've got tens of thousands of people killed.
	I don't know if it's more than 100 yet.
	You know, a lot of refugees just fled, but in combat deaths alone, it's tens of thousands of casualties killed and wounded.
	And we have the repeated threat by Vladimir Putin and his men that they would use nuclear weapons.
	You know, the Americans treat this like they're just pushing around Saddam Hussein, who they know good and well can't fight back, right?
	Paul Wolfowitz said, Iraq is doable.
	That's why we're going to Iraq because they're helpless.
	Not because they're a threat, but they're treating Russia like it's just Saddam Hussein and they can just slap Vladimir Putin around.
	And what is he going to do about it?
	But he keeps saying, well, I might split atoms over your head.
	I might use some together.
	And they refuse to listen to that or take that seriously.
	On one hand, they say he's the most dangerous person on the planet.
	On the other hand, they refuse to take it seriously when he says he'll use nukes and they dismiss it.
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	All right, let's get back into the show.
	In all of these other wars that we fight, and I mean, particularly with Stom Hussein, but the argument was that, well, he has weapons of mass destruction, which, you know, obviously he didn't have what they were claiming he had.
	And then with the buildup to Iran, of course, it's always like, well, they're developing these nuclear weapons.
	And the argument is always like, well, they're so crazy that if they had these weapons, they would use them.
	But now, as we're going after Vladimir Putin, it's like no one's even denying.
	Obviously, we know for a fact that he has all of these weapons.
	And like, if you're saying he's this crazy, well, then, okay, shouldn't that be the concern?
	What's very bizarre to me is one thing there, Dave, is look, it's not like America should just bow down to a bully who says, I have an H-bomb and I can do it, sure.
	But we shouldn't provoke an unnecessary conflict like this when that's actually the true history of what's happened here.
	As we put him in this situation, it doesn't justify what he's done.
	He could have gone far shorter war and figured out other things to do.
	But that's it's not the case that this is just a madman with nukes blackmailing the whole world into going along with his thing.
	This is a guy who's saying, Look, you keep putting me where my back is up against the wall, and you seem to forget I've got Homer.
	Well, so that's that's a different scenario, you know?
	That's good point.
	So a lot of a lot of the pushback that you get when you take this position is that people will say, Well, you know, if I argue that, like, look, the biggest priority should be that we don't go to nuclear war with Russia.
Not Just A Madman With Nukes 00:15:11
	Like, that's the biggest priority in the history of humanity since a million years ago, like I was saying before, right?
	If I make that point, what a lot of people say is they go, oh, so you're just saying that anyone with nuclear weapons should be allowed to do whatever they want to do.
	And then if they threaten nuclear war, we have to back down.
	But I think what you just said is basically the counter to that.
	That no, no one's saying that, oh, okay, if they were to just say, hey, we're going to have this like, you know, whatever, if Vladimir Putin were to say, no, we're taking over, you know, England, let's like imagine he gets that far, like that England doesn't have a right to defend themselves.
	We're just saying that, like, hey, look, this is a border dispute that we very much provoked and that this is not worth even going down this path where we might end up in a nuclear war over it.
	It's like, why would we do this?
	Right.
	That's exactly right.
	And so look, I like this anecdote because it goes to show the mindset of these Democrats, man.
	It's the National Intelligence Director.
	I'm sorry, her name is escaping me.
	It's right on the tip of my tongue.
	Oh, not the torture lady.
	Is it Gina Haspel?
	No, it's the other lady.
	That's the torture lady.
	Yeah, that's the torture lady.
	No, no, no, it's the lady after again.
	Abru Hain.
	Yes.
	Yes, yes.
	Abigail Haynes.
	Wait.
	God, something like that.
	Anyway, so she tells the Congress this thing.
	I'll get to it in a second.
	That night, there's a news hour, PBS News Hour, and it's John Mearsheimer, the good guy from the University of Chicago, versus Evelyn Farkas, the Obama National Security Council official.
	And they both agree, as it's set up by the newscaster, they both agree with everything that the National Intelligence Director said.
	And what she said was this kind of syllogism, because the question was asked to her.
	So she answered: Russia would never use nukes unless they were attacked with nukes first, or if they feel like the territorial integrity or the existence of their state is threatened.
	As you and I understand as libertarians, any government identifies itself with the existence of the country at all and feels like if their government falls, then the entire country is at risk because who's going to protect the country if not us? says the state, right?
	So they would consider any existential threat to themselves as an existential threat to the country itself.
	So, in other words, if Russia lost a humiliating defeat in Ukraine, say, and that could really destabilize the government in Moscow and delegitimize it and lead to its potential collapse, that they could see that as a reason to use nukes because that would be a threat to Russia itself from the point of view of the Russian government.
	And they agree about that.
	And then they agree that America's policy in Ukraine is to make Russia lose.
	Well, John Mearsheimer says this is absolutely crazy.
	Now, this guy is not anti-war.com.
	He's the dean of the realist school of foreign policy from the University of Chicago.
	He is a Henry Kissinger, real politic, great power politics guy, not a neocon, not a liberal internationalist, and not a Ron Paul non-interventionist.
	Okay.
	He's a realist school theorist.
	And he's saying this is absolutely insane.
	This is like if it was 1963 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, pardon me, 62 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Jack Kennedy refuses to speak to Khrushchev, which is not the history, right?
	The reason we live through that is because they did talk.
	And because Kennedy backed down in secret, agreed to pull the missiles out of Turkey that he should have never put into Turkey in the first place, which is what had provoked the Russians to put their missiles into Cuba.
	So they compromised.
	They both backed down and humanity lived to tell the tale.
	Now here we are in a 62 level era of brinksmanship and our side refuses to talk to them.
	It's been eight months since our Secretary of State spoke with their foreign minister.
	Hold on, let's just be clear about this because I said- Oh, wait, one more thing.
	Farkas says, oh, come on, they won't use nukes unless they warn us first.
	But they have warned us first.
	Britain and his National Security Council chief and his defense minister and his deputy defense minister and his foreign minister have all said, you know, this could go nuclear if you guys keep pushing.
	It seemed like Putin's speech yesterday was quite a warning.
	I mean, again, this isn't to say, ah, God.
	He used the N-word, man, the real, the bad one.
	Yeah.
	He did in the speech.
	We think they're all, they're all bad, but there's one that's worse than the other.
	A real, real bad one.
	So, right.
	And just to be clear, because, God damn, I mean, there's so many, there's people who, for whatever reason, it's so funny when the, like, I've talked about this a lot on this show before, but it really is a fascinating, interesting thing.
	And this is why I, you know, like my heroes are people like Harry Brown.
	And, you know, like I always talk about that piece, when will we learn, written on September 12th, 2001, because it's just so ballsy on the day after 9-11 to write that point.
	And it's very easy to say now.
	You won't get any shit for saying that now.
	But then it was really dangerous.
	Oh, they threatened to kill him.
	Yeah.
	And it's unbelievable how much they can create these situations.
	I remember talking about when Donald Trump said he was going to pull all the troops out of Syria, and then he just ended up scrambling them around.
	But when he said he was going to do it, everyone's like, the Kurds, you know, like that's just this narrative they create.
	You're going to abandon the Kurds.
	Even though all America does is abandon the Kurds.
	Still, that's that, you know, it's like, all of a sudden, this is an outrage.
	You know, it's, it's, it's amazing how they're able to create these situations.
	But so when you talk about this now, you get all of this stuff.
	Like if I go, hey, I said, I tweeted today that the number one priority of the U.S. government and all sane people should be negotiating a peace with Russia.
	That should be the number one priority.
	And people are like, oh, so you're pro-Putin and you're all this stuff.
	It's like, I don't know.
	If you were against invading Iraq, then you're pro-Saddam, I guess.
	It's just too stupid to try to even respond to.
	But just to be clear about this, so people understand, like you talked about before, the negotiations that were on the table between Zelensky and Putin that were called off by the British kind of our proxies.
	But what, like, to be perfectly clear, what is the negotiation between America and Russia and the communications has been nothing, right?
	This is for for how long now?
	31 weeks.
	Yeah.
	I mean, in this situation, who can defend that?
	Who can defend the idea that with the two biggest nuclear powers in the world, they're not talking with each other?
	Man, I really feel foolish and naive, frankly, remembering back to when the fighting first started.
	I just was like expecting this clamor to be going on behind me and with me that like, well, we have to negotiate right now to bring an end to the fighting now.
	Now that it's come to this, we can't let this go on.
	We can't have a violent conflict with Russia right on Russia's border.
	Picture a map of Eurasia in your head real quick.
	When we fought a proxy war with Russia in Vietnam, and the Russians were backing Ho Chi Minh to a degree, I think more than the Chinese were, but they had an entire China between them and Vietnam.
	They didn't give a damn what happened in Vietnam, the Russians.
	The same way we didn't.
	The same way our government didn't either.
	That's right.
	This is right on their border.
	This is absolutely the most crucial issue.
	And, you know, back to what we were talking about before with the CIA on the ground, the New York Times bragging that our, I mean, first of all, everybody knows that they trumpet it all day, the $50 billion worth of arms that they've appropriated.
	And every time they send a new shipment of however many tens of millions of dollars worth, they announce it.
	I mean, they just brag about all of that.
	But then the New York Times, you know, has reported we got CIA on the ground and special operations forces on the ground, essentially coordinating the war for the Ukrainians.
	Just think if you put this shoe on the other foot for a minute and never even mind if all this was going on in Mexico, which is, you know, or in Canada.
	But just think about if this was going on even in Iraq, where really Iraq is none of America's national interest whatsoever.
	It was just that George Bush invaded it was the only reason that it mattered because he had put our soldiers there.
	But what if it had come out and we had known that Vladimir Putin was backing the Sunni-based insurgency, that he had special operations forces and FSB agents on the ground working with Sarkawi to plot the Sunni insurgency against the United States?
	Don't anyone misunderstand me.
	I'm not saying that's true, but I'm saying if that had been true and we had all known that, as our guys are getting blown to bits by truck bombs over there and landmines, that that really was like in Charlie Savage's absolute ridiculous lies about Afghanistan.
	Right.
	Like that was really true.
	Yeah.
	What if that had really been true?
	The Russian bounties hoax, but really true and on a mass scale and they brag about it.
	Yeah, we're pouring $10 billion, $20 billion, $30, $40, $50 billion to help Zarkawi kill Americans because we just want to see dead Americans going home and we want to see America weakened.
	And they just brag about it all day, every day on their cable TV news channels and in their newspapers in the way.
	I mean, it sounds absolutely insane.
	And by the way, you know who was doing that?
	Our allies, the Saudis.
	They were the ones backing the Sunni-based insurgency against us in Iraq all through Iraq War II, in case anyone was curious about that.
	It's all in the book.
	But enough already, by the way, you got to read enough already.
	But when you put the shoe on the other foot like that, and again, never in mind if this was happening in Mexico right on our border, right?
	If this had been happening in Iraq, if the Russia bounties narrative had been true and to this degree, America would have attacked Russia.
	We would have had a nuclear war with them.
	George W. Bush would have told Vladimir Putin, you stop this tomorrow, or I'm going to kill you and your capital city, and we'll see who else, pal.
	And Dick Cheney would have said, you have to.
	And he would have said, okay, Vice.
	And by the way, Putin would have never done that.
	He had no interest whatsoever in doing that.
	In fact, he was helping us fight against the Sunni-based insurgency in Afghanistan.
	And when Obama took the side of the Sunni-based insurgency in Syria, he's the one who finally intervened and carpet bombed their suicide bombing asses right off the planet again.
	It was, you know, he was the hero of the war in Syria when Barack Obama was backing Osama bin Laden's men.
	That's all in the book, too.
	Yeah.
	No, look, you're, yeah, you're right about it.
	So what?
	All right.
	There's a couple directions I want to go here.
	But so before we switch gears in a way, in a sense, what do you think is happening right now in this conflict?
	I know there's been like all of this propaganda that is saying that, oh, the Russians are taking these losses.
	That's the eye of the storm now, man.
	Right.
	I mean, they did.
	Look, they, they, they, obviously they did take some losses.
	They took a big hit there in northern Luhansk.
	But my guess is that it's going to get much worse now.
	That Putin is not going to take a loss here.
	And listen, I, you know, as long as I'm talking about Mearsheimer, Mearsheimer wrote another thing, I think it was for foreign affairs, which good for them for running this stuff.
	I mean, they ran a good thing by Trita Parsi about the Iran nuclear deal, too.
	I'm almost certain it was in foreign affairs, where Mearsheimer said, Look, man, we could have a nuclear war here.
	And he outlined it.
	And again, you've got to always keep in mind, we're talking about a government program here.
	And that's in Russia and in America.
	Foreign policy is decided by these ridiculous committees, by the social psychology among a bunch of different cabinet officers fighting over their status and all these weird things that are not how your doctor's office is run or any other kind of thing, right?
	It's more like a school, right?
	Zero tolerance.
	The valedictorian has a butter knife.
	She's still expelled because we have a zero tolerance knife policy.
	And there's no adult with a brain who can change what the words say on the paper.
	It's that kind of level of bureaucratic kind of stupidity baked into all of this.
	And so the premises are simple.
	We cannot let Ukraine lose.
	Russia must lose.
	And we refuse to back down from that.
	And we'll pour in as many weapons as we can.
	And if it comes down to it, Mearsheimer is afraid they'll put in American ground troops because the very territorial existence of Ukraine will be absolutely in jeopardy.
	And that could come, as we were already discussing, much sooner than later.
	Biden could tomorrow say, no, that's it.
	I'm putting the Marines in there.
	I'm not letting this go any further.
	We're going to stop it.
	And now you got a war, a real war between NATO and Russia right on their border.
	That could happen.
	The I don't want to overstate this because I don't really believe it, but what the hell?
	It's within the realm of possibility.
	The Ukrainians press their advantage and they start completely kicking Russian asses all over eastern and southern Ukraine and making major advances.
	Putin can't afford to lose any more than Biden can afford to lose.
	So once neither side will give up and neither side is really in a position to win in a full knockout blow, both are determined beyond reason, especially the American and Western side, to see their side prevail.
	And that could very quickly lead to nuclear brinksmanship very quickly.
Churchill Hitler And The Unnecessary War 00:08:28
	And again, they've warned over and over again that they could use nuclear weapons in this circumstance, and including they threatened to nuke the United States of America.
	And if you look at Putin's declaration of war, he threatened to bring the fire here.
	Yeah.
	Do you think there's one of the big responses, the pushback that I get from this is that people go like, well, look, you make a deal with Vladimir Putin.
	You know, they go, that's just appeasement.
	I think one of the greatest myths.
	Just turn around the other way.
	The same thing with the bully thing.
	Who's the nuclear arm bully determined to have their way?
	Why do we have to believe that it's Putin?
	Why does it have to be that America is Christopher Reeves virgin Superman who's never told a lie, never committed a sin, 100% scouts honor?
	No, America is the government that has murdered 2 million people in the last 20 years.
	2 million of them.
	America.
	Who started this war, really?
	It's funny to me.
	And I think it's because of the kind of like the Chamberlain story and World War II and how that's been like kind of become the, I don't know, what has to be the basis of all foreign policy that so many people believe that appeasement is what really fails.
	I would say to these people, go read Pat Buchanan's book.
	Go read Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War.
	It's really great book.
	However you feel about Pat Buchanan, really great book.
	But, you know, it's like this idea that appeasement is really, that's what leads to the worst thing ever in the world happening.
	And you're like, but really?
	Is that the story of the 20th century?
	I mean, is it strictly the story of the 20th century that appeasement is what leads to disaster?
	Maybe aggression is what leads to disaster sometimes too.
	In fact, look, you know, I'm glad you bring that up because people always with Putin, they want to make the analogy to Hitler.
	But I think the analogy is, you know, he's much more close to Hindenburg, right?
	And this is the guy who preceded Hitler.
	You know, this is, as I tried to make the case in my debate with Kathy Young about this, that America is essentially treating Russia post-Cold War the way Britain and France treated Germany post-World War I.
	And what they should have done was not humiliate and beat them and kick them while they're down and demand all these war reparations and strip them of all their territories and all these things that made the German people so, first of all, just absolutely destitute that they were willing to turn to communists and fascists to solve their problem in the first place.
	And then ultimately to the Nazis to restore all their lost glory and the rest.
	Right.
	It led to then the worst catastrophe that ever happened as the result of that.
	So, you know, always with the, as Robert Higgs, I think he coined this phrase talking about FDR's antics in the lead up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, where he criticized them for the historians for always truncating the antecedents, meaning leaving out what America did to provoke the fight that now they're in, which you always find.
	And look, like I didn't go to college, man.
	What do I know?
	But I have heard of. the appeasement theory and the spiral theory and this and that, all the different international relations theories of, you know, crisis prevention and escalation avoidance and all of these things.
	Sometimes it's right to appease.
	Sometimes it's not.
	You could argue that the Russians have been appeasing America this whole time, that Vladimir Putin should have drawn his red line hardcore and backed it up back in the George W. Bush years and let them know, look, if you put anti-missile missiles in Poland, I'm going to attack those with cruise missiles.
	Yet means net, you heard me.
	Maybe he shouldn't have appeased Barack Obama by authorizing the aggressive war in Libya, which they promised Obama and Hillary promised was just a no-fly zone to protect the poor people of Benghazi, which then turned into a bait and switch for a full-scale regime change against Qaddafi, which led to unlimited catastrophes in terms of the spread of jihadi terrorism through the crisis of the 20 teens and all of the rest of that.
	They've been appeasing us this whole time.
	You know, George W. Bush tore up the anti-ballistic missile treaty.
	Donald Trump tore up the INF treaty.
	And, you know, all of them have had these massive exercises with American long-range bombers and attack boats and ships in the Black Sea and the Baltic Seas and the Oshtok Sea that's in the far east there near Vladivostok.
	I mean, what if the Russians were practicing first strikes on North America all the time?
	Again, it sounds absolutely crazy.
	They wouldn't dare.
	But we do that to them all the time.
	All the time.
	We fly our nuclear bombers 12 and a half miles off of their coast to force them to light up all their defenses so we can practice which radars we have to take out when we do this for real.
	And as the soldiers say, you fight like you train.
	They keep training for attacking Russia with nuclear bombs and right in their face all the time.
	And again, with these MK-41 missile launchers, the Mark 41 missile launcher.
	I mean, if I tell you they put in these missile launchers and they say that, no, they're anti-missile missile launchers for shooting down missiles from Iran, not from Russia.
	Georg doesn't have missiles that can reach Poland.
	They don't have nuclear weapons to put on them anyway.
	And then if I tell you, but oh, yeah, by the way, it's just a total accident and coincidence and meaningless coincidence that these same Mark 41 missile launchers can also fit Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can be tipped with thermonuclear H-bombs that are now, you know, 15 minutes flight time from Moscow or 30 minutes flight time for Moscow.
	I mean, you think the Russians just don't care about that?
	Well, you know, Obama's White House told CNN to tell us that it doesn't mean anything.
	Don't worry about it.
	You know, there's a quote from Jack Matlock, who was the second to last ambassador to the Soviet Union.
	And he met at some club in New York where I guess Putin was in town for the UN or something.
	And Matlock said to him, he goes, listen, you know that missile defense is just a ripoff.
	It's just a boondoggle.
	It doesn't work.
	It's all just to steal money from the American taxpayer.
	So if we're ringing your country with anti-missile missiles, you shouldn't fear that or react against that.
	And Putin says, look, I mean, first of all, geez, couldn't you subsidize some other part of your economy instead of the anti-missile missile department, you know?
	But secondly, he says something to the effect of, I'm in charge of security around here, man.
	What do you want me to do?
	You're ringing my country with anti-missile missiles.
	I got to presume that they work.
	And then what do I got to do?
	Obviously, build more missiles.
	And it was three years after that.
	That was in 2015.
	It was three years later in 2018 that he announced that whole new generation of Russian nuclear weapons that he said in this speech, that this was a direct reaction to George W. Bush tearing up the anti-ballistic missile treaty, that he had ordered this weapons development program.
	Then, so now we're in a nuclear arms race with Russia again, and they're ahead.
	All right, guys, let's take a quick moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is yokratom.com, home of the $60 kilo.
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	All right.
Biden Canceled Strategic Ambiguity 00:13:24
	So, all right, look, we're as we come, we're coming to the close of the show.
	Let me ask you, dude, what do you think?
	Knowing all this shit that you know about this, what do you think is going to happen here?
	I don't know, man.
	I mean, I try not to be like a ridiculous alarmist.
	That's kind of why I dropped the ball on predicting the invasion.
	I've been predicting the invasion for seven years.
	And then when it's about to happen, I'm like, nah, Biden's going to negotiate a solution here somehow.
	By the way, it is funny.
	It is really funny.
	I should say, and I want to let you finish, but it's funny that the thing you get shit for the most is that you didn't predict this happening right when it happened, even though you've been the guy predicting that this could happen the entire time.
	You were the guy talking about Nyet means yet on my show for years before anyone was thinking about the idea that Vladimir Putin would actually lay down the red line and have this offensive campaign in Ukraine.
	And yet, as soon as it was coming, and then the administration was like, there's going to be this false flag attack.
	We have Africa.
	And we were all like, you have no fucking evidence that this is coming.
	And by the way, just, I know this doesn't age that well, but we were right about that.
	Me and you both were right when we said this is complete bullshit.
	And it was bullshit.
	But okay, we have to admit.
	And by the way, did invade.
	I did also quote not just Nietz Means Niet, but also Vladimir Putin and his threat to the Italian diplomat to the EU in 2014 when he said, and I'm sure you remember me telling you this back years back too, that you know we could be in Kiev in two weeks.
	And for a while, I had screwed that up and I thought that was in the Nyet means yet thing.
	And then I remember that.
	No, no, no, that wasn't Lavrov.
	That was Putin that said.
	That's right.
	Yeah.
	That's right.
	So, and, but look, one of the reasons I got it wrong was because on December 30th, Putin and Biden talked on the phone.
	And the readout said that Biden told Putin, look, man, you got to believe me.
	I have no intention of putting missiles in there.
	And you want to do inspections in Poland.
	We can do that.
	So it looked to me like they were willing to negotiate enough.
	But that was wrong on my part.
	That was the thing that I got wrong wasn't how serious Russia was.
	The thing that I got wrong was that I thought that Biden was willing to try to negotiate to prevent the war from happening when really he wasn't.
	He was only willing to throw against us and say, You and Warren, you better not.
	But he was, and we know Derek Chollett, people can look this up.
	Derek Chollett admitted in a podcast for War on the Rocks that they absolutely refused to put NATO membership for Ukraine on the table for discussion.
	They would not even talk about it.
	So that's all you need to know right there, you know, as far as that goes.
	But part of that is because, and it's because my disposition as like a former conspiracy nut in the 1990s was a lot of the stuff that I thought was going to happen didn't happen.
	And so then I learned a lesson from that that, you know, all this kind of alarmist stuff a lot of times doesn't really pan out.
	And usually, you know, a lot of bad things happen, but it's not usually the worst case scenario that you can think of.
	And that has been my experience.
	And maybe only just because I can think of some really bad scenarios.
	That word keeps coming up, man, like I got hypnotized, right?
	But I'm the one who keeps bringing it up and hypnotized myself like a chain.
	But so that was one of the reasons I got it wrong is because I didn't want to be too alarmist and be like, oh, no, Dave, the sky's falling.
	And then have to come back and be embarrassed that it didn't fall, right?
	Turns out I got to be embarrassed that it was falling and I missed it.
	But so then I got the same emotions about our current situation, right?
	I don't want to sit here and tell you like, well, yeah, we're dead, dude.
	It's a nuclear war.
	I don't see a way out.
	I don't know.
	It looks to me like they have got themselves in this completely intransigent kind of mess where nobody feels like they can back down, even though it's totally unnecessary.
	And I look at Joe Biden and I think that, yes, this could be how the world ends, that these people are essentially as incompetent as they could be in charge of power that should just never be available to human beings.
	And I really don't know.
	You know, I got to tell you, look, like I guess the way to put it would be, my gut tells me everything's going to work itself out somehow.
	I'm not that afraid, right?
	But in my brain, I'm like, yeah, I don't really see too many ways for them to back down from this.
	And they seem to just keep making worse and worse and worse decisions.
	And let me just throw in here at the end as just a side bit about China that Biden has for the now fifth time or now fourth time essentially canceled strategic ambiguity and announced that we would go to war for an independent Taiwan.
	And in a way that he promised we would not do in Ukraine, right?
	That we'll give you arms, but we're not going to put our guys.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, he keeps saying, no, we absolutely will.
	But that would also almost certainly lead to a nuclear war because as our Navy red teams have found out over and over again, we lose that war if we fight.
	Taiwan is too far from California to maintain these supply lines, you know, well, to do this well.
	And the Israelis sold the Chinese our sea skimming supersonic missiles that, you know, have a longer range than our planes, than our aircraft carriers' planes do.
	So, you know, if we try to engage them, our ships are sunk.
	And if we lose thousands of sailors to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, Dave, thousands at a time, then what do politicians do about that?
	Say, I was wrong.
	I shouldn't care.
	Beijing, take Taipei.
	What the hell do I care about for most anyway?
	They're not going to do that.
	They're going to do the wrong thing and make it worse.
	They're going to say, oh, yeah.
	And then they're going to escalate.
	And these are all, it's just completely crazy.
	You know, in the old days, they had this whole scare that world communism was going to take over the whole world.
	There's no world communism now.
	There's no ideological campaign to rid the world of America, to conquer and destroy us and replace our system with some other thing.
	Not that there ever really was then, but at least you could point at the USSR and China as the big red sploshes on the globe and go, wow, that's pretty impressive.
	Not like Baghdadi's caliphate.
	It was something, you know?
	But now what do we got?
	We got red, white, and blue Republican Russia led by essentially a corrupt, strongman, Republican populist type, you know.
	Yeah, that's not so alien from our society that we have to be gripped in.
	you know, existential mortal combat with the entire human race in the balance to prevent them from what?
	Ruling the Russian-speaking union of eastern Ukraine that used to always belong to Russia for 300 years anyway?
	That's so bizarre.
	And look, we got to wrap here, but do you have any thought?
	I'm like, it was something to see Joe Biden, who's just clearly, I mean, I don't want to sound like Sean Hannity or something like that, but is clearly a guy who is, I don't know, is he really running the government?
	No, I mean, they keep contradicting himself.
	But he comes out and says that, yes, we would send military in to defend Taiwan.
	And then the White House goes, no, he didn't really mean that.
	That's like, wait, who's who's making the call to say the president didn't really mean that?
	Like, who's overruling?
	Who's the White House?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	I was talking with a friend about that earlier.
	So like, okay, if he's as senile as he seems to be, who's really running the government?
	It can't be Jake Sullivan.
	He's just the national security advisor.
	So it would have to be Blinken, I guess, because I don't think Lloyd Austin is that anxious.
	And it sure as hell ain't Kamala Harris, right?
	Like somebody, maybe it's Jill Biden, right?
	Like in the Roosevelt days or in the days.
	Yeah, maybe.
	You know, I don't know who's, we need a Bob Woodward book, right?
	Of all the gossip from the, from the principles committee level of these people backstabbing each other and talking about, you know, who's in charge.
	I'm sure there's competition right now over it.
	Look, yeah, exactly.
	Because if it is, say it's Blinken, well, there's an anti-Blinken faction.
	That was what my friend was saying.
	Whoever it is, there's somebody else wishes it was them because it ain't Biden.
	And just like you're saying, this is so important.
	It really is important that you have the president says this, but the White House says that.
	Well, who is the White House?
	Is that his chief of staff?
	Or it's the National Security Council?
	Or who is?
	It's not the State Department of the Defense Department.
	Evidently, probably, right?
	It's not Blinken.
	It's coming.
	But who is it coming from?
	If it's not coming, who's the White House if it's not Joe Biden?
	And by the way, you know, strategic ambiguity was supposed to mean that we smartly refuse to say exactly what we'll do in a given situation.
	It wasn't supposed to mean that our leader is so damn senile and no one on earth, no intelligence agency on earth even knows who's in charge.
	So you don't know what the hell is going to happen if you take a risk.
	That's an entirely different kind of ambiguity and one that I could do without, please.
	And by the way, there's no reason to think that China wants to invade Taiwan.
	The one most likely thing to provoke them to do so would be America bolstering their move to declare independence, which is exactly what we're doing right now.
	And Congress is just passing this bill where now we're going to give them an embassy and we're going to change all their titles in the documents to make everything sound more like they're a country.
	And they want to declare them an official non-NATO ally, equivalent to Japan.
	But we're talking about a renegade province of a foreign sovereign state.
	And people act like Taiwan is a sovereign nation.
	But no, it's not.
	And it hasn't been American policy that Taiwan is a sovereign nation for 50 years, five zero years since Nixon went over there and told Mao Seitong when he was still breathing.
	We don't give a damn about Formosa.
	We'll recognize Beijing.
	We'll give Taipei's seat on the Security Council to you, and we'll recognize mainland China's government.
	Geez, this is 20 years after the civil war.
	It's amazing.
	It's amazing that Americans, and this is something I talk about a lot on the show.
	It's amazing that Americans can't break out of the empire mentality, even as much as our country is crumbling.
	That we can't break out of the mentality.
	Well, you see, so many people will say things like, you know, if you just go like, hey, we need to work out a peace with Russia.
	They go, oh, so you don't care about Ukraine?
	And if you say, hey, we can't defend Taiwan, they go, oh, so you don't care about the freedom of Taiwan.
	And you're like, dude, Washington, D.C. can't even keep freedom for people in Washington, D.C., let alone the United States of America, let alone Canada and Mexico, let alone Taiwan.
	I root for the freedom of everyone, but the idea that we must be the ones, you know, who make sure that there is freedom in every corner of the earth with the, you know, with our military, who's just known for spreading freedom.
	Yeah.
	It's just, it's, it's unbelievable to say.
	It is.
	And look at the people in Mariupol.
	They're dead.
	Their city's lost.
	You know, the Russian, Vladimir Putin said in his declaration of war, he goes, look, the Soviets drew these borders.
	Lenin and Stalin drew these borders in a way where all these Russian speakers were thrown in with Ukraine, but what the hell?
	They were all under the rule of the Kremlin anyway.
	So that's how that was.
	Then Khrushchev made this weird decision where he gifted Crimea to Ukraine, which, you know, caused problems later, obviously.
	But then Gorbachev let him go.
	And he says, these are all bad decisions.
	But he says, look, we were living with it.
	What are we going to do?
	But he says, independence for Ukraine wasn't good enough.
	The Americans would not let Ukraine be independent.
	They decided that Ukraine was either going to be dominated by them or by us.
	And we've decided it's going to be us, not them.
	That's it.
	And that's the truth of it.
	And look, we used to have a deal in the Cold War.
	Austria was neutral.
	They weren't part of the Warsaw Pact or NATO.
	And they stood in between.
	That was when the wall first started coming down.
	It was the border between Hungary and Austria was the first border that came down where people from the East were able to flee into the West in 1988.
	Well, we're now four solid clicks east of Austria.
	Why couldn't we just let Ukraine have that kind of neutrality in between us and Russia?
	You know, again, as, just as you're saying, going crusading around the world, making everything okay for everyone, making everything okay for everybody.
Mainstream Media Arguing About Wars 00:05:07
	Look at what we've done.
	And this didn't have to happen at all.
	Ukraine could be a crappy little sovereign nation putting about its business, trying to get by in the galaxy like everybody else yeah, and instead look at what USA has done to them, putting them in this mess.
	Let's you and them go fight when them has the ability to kick these guys's complete ass, which is what they're doing.
	It's just a catastrophe, And that anyone could look at the, after the war on terror and go, well, we got to find something also, you know, beneficial to do something, something else, something new to do with our national security establishment now after all of our great successes in Iraq and Libya and Syria and Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen.
	We're not even done yet.
	We're still killing people in Somalia and Yemen.
	We still have troops occupying Syria and Iraq.
	We still got special operations forces troops in all across North Africa chasing Hillary's ghosts from the Libya war.
	And Americans think that they got the right to dictate right and wrong around the world that to imagine themselves as the heroic interveners on the behalf of the weak against the bullies.
	Man, you know, the old trope is, I want some of what you're having, but I think what it is is these people need to take some LSD and really kind of look inward and ask themselves if they really believe the stuff that they hear themselves saying.
	You know?
	Yeah, maybe that, maybe that would be, maybe that would be the solution.
	Yeah, it is.
	Big national acid trip, man.
	Let's do it.
	It is pretty incredible that after all of this kind of, you know, the war on terrorism, which of course you've written two great books on, and me and you have been podcasting about for quite a while now, that it's kind of like as there's almost no longer a justification that even that even anyone in the establishment is willing to really put forth.
	Like no one, look, even when you, as I said, was to me the craziest moment in your debate with Bill Crystal was when someone in the audience asked him, what was the last American intervention that you could defend?
	I forget exactly what they said, but when was the last time America intervened that it really worked out well?
	Or something like that.
	And he goes, well, I would say Kosovo.
	No, Bosnia.
	Bosnia.
	Bosnia.
	94.
	Yeah.
	You even went back.
	That's right.
	He went back to Bosnia.
	And you're almost like sitting there and you're like, wait a minute, you're going back to 94.
	You're going back.
	Like, I'm, I'm 40.
	You're going to when I was eight.
	The guy who you've been supporting every one of these wars.
	And you're going.
	And it's almost like they're not even attempting to defend any of these wars.
	Almost everyone will just concede.
	Nowadays, when I go on any of the fucking, you know, mainstream shows and argue with people about the wars over the last 20 years, they all go, yeah, you're right.
	No one's even arguing.
	I mean, in the New York Times, some of these Democrats said, I got it.
	It's in the book in the notes in there somewhere.
	I have to find it for you, but it's, I don't think it's blinking, but it's, I think, as a State Department officials telling the New York Times, he's going, look, we really botched the whole war on terrorism thing, but this is our redemption.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	The redemption is.
	Yeah.
	But like you said, it's not just pushing around Saddam Hussein or Muammadafi or something like that.
	Now we want to push around Russia and China.
	That's just really something.
	Oldsters say people like Pat Buchanan and Ray McGovern, who were around for the last Cold War, were adults and involved in that time.
	Buchanan worked for Nixon and Reagan and Ray McGovern and CIA and stuff.
	They said they never talked about the commies the way they talk about Putin.
	Oh, he's scum.
	He's a murderer.
	He's a killer.
	He's a thug.
	He's a whatever.
	They talk about him like he's Omar Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, right?
	Who's just nothing but a suicide bomber, right?
	The lowest absolute scum that can still parade as a human on the planet.
	But it's like, you know what, man, I don't think that that's really why.
	And look, when Pat Buchanan is saying we never spoke about them that way, and we knew better than to, that's serious.
	You know what I mean?
	That they just treat this guy that he has no legitimacy as a leader whatsoever.
	When it's just not true, he's extremely popular in his country.
	And I'm not saying he's a legitimate leader.
	I don't necessarily know anyway.
	Yeah.
	But, you know, he ain't just a thief and he ain't just a head chopper and he ain't just some psycho madman in the way that Baghdadi really was.
	Yeah, right.
	When I say no one's a legitimate leader, I mean, no, you know, these government officials in general aren't legitimate leaders.
Officials Are Not Legitimate Leaders 00:05:22
	Well, it's the amount of power, too.
	At some point, you got to take a man seriously when he can kill every major city on your continent.
	Yeah.
	And you're just going to have to like show some respect and lump it.
	You know, it's like it really makes you wonder, like, how far do these people think they can push it?
	And why are they not concerned?
	I understand.
	I understand why the Bush family isn't concerned about Saddam Hussein.
	I don't understand why Blinkett is not concerned about Vladimir Putin.
	Well, they just look, they just turn it all around.
	Like, no, you're right.
	He's as dangerous as you say he is.
	That's why we have to stand up to him.
	Yeah.
	That's why we have to do what we're doing.
	All right.
	Well, look, we got to wrap on that.
	This is, it's, it's quite an interesting developing situation.
	And it does, if nothing else, I got to say, this is the most important thing.
	It's the most important thing that everyone should be focused on.
	We get distracted with all this other bullshit.
	I got to say, I believe I mentioned this before when you were on the show, but I give credit.
	I've been harsh on Tulsi Gabbard on many issues where I think she could be better.
	And I've complimented her a lot on the things she's good on.
	But one thing I really got to say that I will, you know, as much as I've said, oh, she's good on foreign policy, but not good enough, and some of her other issues that I don't like, she did say, I remember this, in the 2020 debates, where they say, what's the most important issue?
	And she would say, nuclear war with Russia.
	And back then, I kind of felt like it just, I would have said, like, Yemen or something else like that.
	If we were talking about the foreign wars, what was the worst thing?
	By the way, 1833stopwar.com.
	Go check that out.
	We're doing a big push in the Libertarian Party to go try to do everything we can to put political pressure on our elected representatives to bring this war to an end.
	And it's going very good so far.
	So please go check that out.
	But she was saying at the time, this is way before the war in Ukraine.
	She was saying that, like, look, all of this stuff about saying that Russia interfered with our election and that we, you know, accusing the president of being a Russian agent and all this stuff.
	She goes, this is like provoking nuclear war.
	And I did agree, but I think maybe I didn't take that as seriously as it needed to be taken.
	That all of this, like, all of this hawkishness, this incredibly insane posture toward Russia for years and years now has just been so like reckless.
	Like the stuff, as you alluded to earlier, the stuff about having bounties on U.S. soldiers' heads in Afghanistan, all of the lies that have been told about Russia from our intelligence community, not from random people, from our CIA, our CIA saying these things.
	You know, wow, this was really reckless.
	And now when it comes to a hot war on Russia's border where we're pouring in billions of dollars in money and weapons, you're like, Jesus fucking Christ.
	Yeah.
	This is insane.
	She's really good on this stuff.
	In fact, when I gave that two-hour speech right after the war broke out, and then I published the article version, she sent me a nice note.
	Oh, because you had mentioned me on Rogan right at that time.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	And so she had, I guess, enough already had come back to her attention.
	And then she said, I read your thing about Russia and Ukraine.
	It was really great.
	So when I ever finally finished the book version of the thing, hopefully I'll be able to get an endorsement from her for it.
	But yeah, she seemed to be, you know, really up to date on this stuff and really care a lot about it.
	And remember now, there was the war in the Donbass going on still, the sort of what they call the low-level fighting during that time.
	So that goes to show that, you know, it was not in the news cycle, but it goes to show she was clued in enough to know what was going on and the danger of escalation there and what that could lead to.
	I have to say one last thing just to end here that I meant to ramble this earlier.
	People like, I don't know, Buchanan, but certainly Ray McGovern and Eric Margulies, who is famous for covering the Afghan war in the 1980s and wrote War at the Top of the World and American Raj, which are just both absolutely spectacular.
	Ever since 2014, they have said this is the worst tension between America and Russia at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
	And, you know, Eric Margulies is friends with a bunch of spies and diplomats in France.
	He's like a hoity-toity guy sometimes with a tuxedo and a fancy dinner party with these sort of ruling elite types in some of these countries in Europe and stuff.
	And so he's meeting with like these high-level foreign diplomats in France and they're telling him they're terrified there's going to be a nuclear war.
	And this is back in 2014, 2015, that they're just absolutely terrified.
	This is the worst thing since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
	No one will listen.
	No one will talk to each other and treat each other fairly or listen with decent respect.
	And we don't know what the hell is going to happen.
	But, you know, it would make sense for you and me, Dave, to be afraid in our ignorance, right?
	These people are afraid in their detailed knowledge and expertise.
Stop Flirting With Nuclear War 00:00:42
	They're really worried about what we're being driven toward here, you know?
	Yeah.
	God damn.
	For all the other problems we have, just stop flirting with a nuclear war with Russia.
	Seriously.
	Stop flirting with a nuclear war with China.
	Jesus.
	That's right.
	No H-bomb wars and we can work out the rest of this stuff.
	Yeah, really.
	God damn.
	God damn.
	All right, Scott.
	Well, thank you very much.
	As always, dude, it's always a pleasure talking to you, man.
	And I'm looking forward to seeing you out in Austin.
	If we don't go to nuclear war before the next couple of days, then I'll be out there.
	Probably squeaking a comedy shower, too.
	Yeah, you know, let's get a couple of good laughs in before that.
	Good times.
	All right.
	All right.
	Thanks, everyone, for listening.
	We'll be back next time.

Chapters

00:00:04 Zooming Out On What Matters
00:02:39 Treating This Like War
00:17:40 Thanking Our Sponsor Sheath
00:21:45 Extorting Ukraine For Burisma
00:27:43 America Bowing To A Bully
00:40:11 Not Just A Madman With Nukes
00:55:22 Churchill Hitler And The Unnecessary War
01:03:51 Biden Canceled Strategic Ambiguity
01:17:16 Mainstream Media Arguing About Wars
01:22:23 Officials Are Not Legitimate Leaders
01:27:46 Stop Flirting With Nuclear War