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March 27, 2019 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
21:56
Escalation: Is Russia In Venezuela A New Cuban Missile Crisis?

A Russian military transport arrived in Venezuela this past week bringing tons of aid and also nearly 100 Russian military advisors. Reportedly this included cybersecurity experts. Moscow claimed this was pre-planned and related to a nearly 20 year old cooperation agreement with Caracas. US neocons looking for regime change are claiming it is a new Cuban Missile Crisis. Who's right? Is Venezuela about to escalate out of control?

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Big Problem Ahead 00:07:14
Hello everyone and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
How are you this morning, Dr. Doing doing well, doing well?
And let's talk a little bit about Venezuela today.
But before we get into Venezuela, you know, I wanted to just make one comment, you know, because really still in the news is the, you know, the investigation and Mueller's report, and that looks like it's going to be going on for a long time.
And it's pretty amazing the people who sort of lost out on that.
There's no humility and no shame.
They're on to the next thing, and they're going to keep that going forever and ever.
But it looks like they don't even need to do that because there's another case.
And this is more local, but it's a reflection of our judicial system.
And that's that smallet thing in Chicago.
How could anything be, you know, so seemingly so clear-cut?
At least the charges were made, and all of a sudden it is gone.
So I would say that we have a big, big problem.
It's throughout our whole society, and so much of it is related to the justice system.
So it's a shame as far as I'm concerned, you know, about that.
But I guess that'll be around for a while, too.
But I want to talk today again about Venezuela, you know, and the escalation that's going on there.
And we have talked about that recently too.
You know, the Russians are defending their turf the way they see it.
You know, they have investments there.
China has investments there.
There's oil there.
And there was an election and people are arguing who got elected and who kind of devotes and whatever.
And I see that as a Venezuelan problem and not a justification for us saying, hey, you know, it's a mess down there.
We have to come to our rescue.
And we are the exceptional nations, the most powerful nation in the world.
We know everything.
We have all wisdom.
So therefore, we're going to pick a guy.
And we do.
We pick Guaido and say, well, you know, he says he's in line and he qualifies under their constitution, which is questionable and something I don't want to get into as much as I want to make the point that, you know, they have a problem.
And we've contributed to that problem over decades because we have not been willing to talk to or trade with the country.
Oh, they're communists.
Well, you know, we've dealt with communists before, like the Chinese and the Russians and the Soviets and all along.
But one example that I think is a good analogy here is the policy that we had with Cuba, you know, for 40 or 50 years because we were fighting communism, and yet we solidified the power of the guy we hated.
And that thing is still going on.
So here we are obsessed with getting involved even before the crisis became so major, you know, and we've been involved with our CIA and, you know, trying to undermine that government for a long time, which is the principle that I wanted to address because I think we shouldn't do it.
I think it's wrong.
It's not part of our Constitution.
And there's too many unintended consequences.
And it tends to backfire.
And we have said it so often.
The policies fail.
They fail.
And yet we continue to continue to do it.
But right now there's this big, big fight over there, but it looks escalation.
And, you know, the Russians have sent some planes in there.
They talk about food and soldiers.
And I'm sure there's some weaponry and this sort of thing.
And their argument, well, we're their friends and we're an ally and we have this.
So, well, I think that this is not going to go away, but I still believe that we're not going to have U.S. troops marching in there.
We probably already have special forces and CIA troops around there, but we're not going to march in there, and I don't think we're going to have that guerrilla war, which would be very, very bad.
I hope we have more brains than to start that fight, especially with Russian troops in there.
But Russia is obviously wanting to protect their interests by getting one step up.
So somebody says, see, it's the Russians' fault.
So they're escalating it.
If you look at the big picture, it's not quite so easy to place blame like that.
That's true.
And it's really tiring, again, to have to deal with the issue that if you oppose what is really probably the most transparent regime change that we've done, if you oppose that, you're a commie.
Just like if you oppose the Iraq war, oh, you'd love Saddam Hussein.
When you oppose the overthrow of Gaddafi, oh, it's just because you love Gaddafi.
And Syria, oh, you're an Assad lover, you love Assad.
It's really tiring to have this always thrown at you, even at times by libertarians.
The idea that somehow, if we don't like what's happening, we know that regime changes are always based on lies every single time.
We've just had a big debunking of lies with the Russia gate, but somehow if we say they're lying to us again, this is all lies, oh, you're just a commie.
It's just tiring.
Well, the one thing is, is that the American people have to be waking up a little bit and say, you know, I'm not going to believe anything they tell me anymore.
But there's a lot of people susceptible and are gullible.
They hear and say, well, this is what they're telling us now.
But some of them really want to hear what they want to believe and there's no evidence for it.
So all you have to do is have a demagogue out there.
And they feed into that.
But that, of course, gets people mistreated.
That's why I think the position of personal liberty and non-intervention and trying to be as honest as possible and present the facts and not taking these sides when it's not in our interest and is so unnecessary because our national security is not threatened.
That's why it bothers me the most, and I've said it many times, this whole argument that people get drafted and sent off.
I think of the draft because I was drafted for national security purposes, to save the Constitution.
And even on the Middle East, that was the excuse all the time to protect our liberties.
And you never heard anybody on the media say, yeah, thank you for your service for protecting my Constitution and my freedom.
That's why I went to Iraq.
And you never hear somebody on the media say, tell me, what did you do?
Why am I safer now because you're over there?
And why are those individuals who either were killed or lost limbs?
Explain it to them.
So that's why there's just no doubt in my mind that the problem of the world, and there will be plenty and they'll exist forever, can be better sorted out if you have just a few people getting together in a few countries and saying, look, we're going to mind our own business, which has happened throughout history.
Why Mind Our Own Business? 00:14:31
It's not like it never happened before.
And we just need more of that.
But it's up to us since we right now are in the driver's seat because we have the financial wherewithal, we have the military, and we have the attitude that we own the world.
So that is the reason why I think that it's very important that we continue to get the message out there from our viewpoint and why we would be better off and why we can't afford this and why the world would be better off.
But it's a tough slog.
It is.
And the neocons depend on lies and deceptions.
The thing is, if you're anti-war, you can't repeat war propaganda, which is what they do.
So the whole commie thing, your commie, if you disagree, I mean, there's a couple of myths I think it wouldn't be bad to dispel.
First of all, the idea that Maduro did not win the election.
Okay, we don't know that if it was free or fair.
However, we know that he did win because the other guys didn't run.
Imagine if Trump had pulled out and then Hillary won.
He said, well, that's not fair.
She got all the votes.
If they wanted to get the votes, they shouldn't have won.
I found a couple of numbers that are sort of interesting and I'll be accused of defending Venezuela, but I just want to look in context.
Personal income tax rate, for example, because you talk it's a communist country.
It's 34% across the board.
That's high.
I don't like that.
In Germany, it's 49.8%.
In France, it's 45%.
Percent of total employment in the public sector of Venezuela is 29.
That sounds terrible.
But France is 24.9.
Norway is 37.8.
So basically in there, number of government-owned enterprises, that's another good indication of socialism.
Venezuela has had 511.
That's a lot.
That's terrible.
But next door in Brazil, they have 418.
So yes, it's a dumb system.
It's a bad situation.
But it's not North Korea.
Yes, and we've been involved for a while.
A lot of people don't realize that, but we've interfered in the way we throw sanctions around.
I mean, ever since in the last couple of years, we just put more and more sanctions on them.
But we had a couple of our leaders speak out about this.
Pompeo was at it again, as well as our illustrious advisor to the President Bolton.
He's going to tell us what to do.
But Pompeo said that this whole thing about the Russians sending those airplanes, that's unconstructive.
It's unconstructive behavior, and he better quit.
So we're not going to let him go.
But sometimes this will be a lot of talk because it's not just going to go away, and we're not going to march in with the troops, but we're going to put on more sanctions and do different things and keep punishing the people.
And that's the other thing that we don't talk about a whole lot.
But when we put on these sanctions, we're always trying to punish the leaders.
But the leaders never get punished.
The people suffer.
The people are supposed to rebel and throw out those bad guys.
But it just hasn't worked that way.
And yet, this is what we're doing right now.
And Bolton, of course, had a few words to say.
And he knows our history.
He said we should follow the Monroe doctrine.
But I would say he only knows half of the history.
He doesn't know the whole thing because I think the Russians know our history because they talk about, well, if you were following the Monroe Doctrine, maybe you wouldn't be on our borders pestering us to death.
And that was part of the doctrine as well.
Yeah, the other half of it.
You know, Pompeo, you mentioned, he actually made a joke when the electricity went out, the misery that happened when it went out.
And we don't know if it was sabotage or if it's just because they probably have some pretty junky old stuff that they don't take care of.
We do know that there has been sabotage.
We know from Stuxnet that the U.S. does get involved in sabotaging foreign countries that way.
But he laughed.
He put out a tweet.
He just thought it was funny.
Maduro's going next.
The lights are out.
And for Bolton, I think we have some tweets here to look at.
That's always entertaining.
I'm not sure if we have them, but it's always entertaining to watch what Bolton's up to.
But he's feverishly meeting with other Latin American defense ministers.
And I don't know if that's for show or if it's he's actually trying to get them on board.
So I guess we don't have the tweets there.
So he met with the Brazilian defense minister.
And that's okay.
He met with the Brazilian defense minister and he tweeted out something suggesting that, hey, we got the Brazilians on board for military intervention.
And right afterward, there was a clarification.
The Brazilian defense minister said, we don't believe we're not going to be involved in the military at all.
He also met with the Honduran defense minister.
So he's either, at the very least, he's trying to show Venezuela, hey, I'm meeting with these guys.
We're putting all the ducks in a row.
Psychological warfare, maybe.
Yeah, and you know, when the lights go off, too, their system hasn't been known for having the best power system in the world.
They've been made fun of because they don't have many likes at nighttime.
But at the same time, it just seems like these two times a little bit more than coincidental, and we just wonder who's accomplishing that.
Is it just a coincidence?
But if my assumption is right, we're not going to be landing a large number of troops and initiating the guerrilla warfare.
There's going to be a lot of activity.
But the one thing is, is our position has been pretty adamant.
We have taken this position that the Russians just can't get away with this, and we have to take care of it.
So my concern for escalation would be that there will be an assassination.
And if that happens, which would fit the opposition the best would say, oh, the people finally rebelled.
It was some very patriotic Venezuelan that decided that they were going to assassinate Maduro.
But that's pure speculation.
But sometimes that's the way these people think.
Because I'm sure he has to be concerned about assassination all the time, but it isn't from his own people.
He probably has to worry about some of those people that support the guy we picked.
And you know, it just shows how ridiculous interventionism is.
We didn't like Saddam Hussein, so we invaded the country.
We didn't like Iran either.
What's the result?
You know, Iraq and Iran are joined at the hip.
We don't want the Russians hanging around in the Western Hemisphere.
Okay, whatever.
But our foreign policy drove Venezuela into the arms of the Russians.
The sanctions, trying to undermine them constantly, instead of engaging them with trade, so we drive them into the arms of the Russians, and then we start screaming, oh my gosh, the Russians are here.
This is not rocket science.
Yeah, they don't seem to catch on.
And I think that it's all a reflection of bad judgment and also a reflection of those individuals who make the mistakes will never admit there's a mistake.
I mean, just thinking back to the Mueller report, the diehard.
They said, oh, no, the proof is there.
He didn't prove that he didn't do this.
This sort of thing.
So they never quit.
And that's the way this will work.
And you won't hear the 10 years or so history of what went on in Venezuela with our media because it's pretty solid now right now.
But did it fit the scenario of the anti-Russia thing?
We have to have a Cold War.
And that worked out with Syria and other places.
Even though it's so disappointing to me because after 89 and 90, there was reason to be excited about what was happening in the world.
All of a sudden it settled down, but it didn't take long.
And when I heard we were trading with Russia and traveling better, I thought there's no way we're going to have a conflict.
And I don't think we're on the verge of the conflicts we used to worry about, but there's enough conflict to have a pretty hot going Cold War.
And that's what I think is wanted.
I don't think the Boltons of the world say, you know, what we need is to have the tanks roll and have a big fight.
I don't think they plan those kind of things.
They just plan to have moderation and antagonism.
And we need more weapons, we need more airplanes, we need more ships, and we need to do this.
And then guess what?
There's a financial group of people in this country, everywhere from the bankers down to the people who build the guns and the planes, you know, are delighted with this because it's usually at the time they have the budget coming up that there's usually a crisis.
Oh, yeah, well, we really need more money, not less.
And it's not an accident that those counties all around DC are the wealthiest counties in the country.
It's not because they're making wonderful computers or things.
I went back and watched a video from our old friend Gerald Salenti that he did a moment or so ago about Venezuela.
And he made a really good point.
And I think this is what Bolton is trying to do.
I think he realized, I think we realized, particularly now with the Russians there, we can't go in like we're, you know, like D-Day and land there.
I think they're trying to get the countries around to either allow some kind of an insurgency, either U.S.-backed or U.S. armed, or to get involved themselves.
I think that's what Bolton is up to.
But Salenti made a great point.
He said there are already 3 million Venezuelan refugees right now with the economic crisis, all kinds of problems.
If they allow this to happen, if they go all in and overthrow, they're going to have three times that much, probably even more.
I think that's why the countries around are resisting.
They say, we don't want this.
This is going to destroy our economies.
Yeah, but they don't come up with much of a solution for it either because of the conflict.
Because basically, we see the response of what a country like Russia and China does.
Very often, it's a reflection and a reaction to what we have done.
But the way the message that we get here in this country is that they've always started it.
They're unconstructive, and therefore we have to act and do these things.
And they're talking about putting on more sanctions on more people.
How can they put more sanctions on Venezuela?
What are they going to do?
That's crazy.
So I would just close something that I've said before.
To oppose U.S. government regime change propaganda, places like Venezuela, doesn't mean you're a commie.
It doesn't mean you love Assad.
You're opposing war propaganda.
But if you repeat war propaganda, you don't get to go claiming, hey, I'm not interventionist.
You're repeating it, as Caitlin Johnstone, who spoke at our conference last year, said, you're an unpaid war propagandist for your government if you do that.
So pay attention.
It's not just about fighting war.
Really, it's about fighting war propaganda, which is what we're trying to do.
Very good.
And I would have to say that the escalation is continuing.
I don't think it's rapidly escalating and that we're a lot worse off today than we were yesterday.
But there's been a steady escalation here in the last year, in the last several months.
And I think that that will continue.
The thing that I worry about most is not so much that our policies will become outwardly aggressive and we'll start dropping bombs in Venezuela, although we participate in dropping bombs on Yemen, and we're still doing that.
So we're not guiltless.
We're guilty of that.
So, I think that the biggest thing will be that the problems will get worse and will involve other people getting involved and trying to act in our behalf.
But it really boils down to whether or not we should even be involved there in a military sense.
Yes, we should be involved.
People say, Oh, you guys are isolationists, you don't want to do anything.
Matter of fact, I think we're the opposite of the isolation.
The isolationists want to isolate people, put on sanctions, put on terrorists, and drop bombs on people.
So, that is not what we're advocating.
We want to deal with people who are imperfect because it just happens that our government is imperfect too, and that the correction for this is more interreaction with the people.
And I've often made this statement, which I absolutely believe that when two countries get together, how about the young people in America and the young people in Vietnam or Iraq?
The young people at the age of 18 to 25 have a meeting and they get together and say, Let's have a vote.
You know, we're pretty bored now.
Let's have a war.
So, the people in Vietnam and the people in the United States, yeah, let's have a war.
And the young people get together and they have a war.
No, they're the last ones that want the war.
The war is done by government agents who live off war.
And it's not something new or different.
It's been around for a long time.
And that is the reason that the libertarian principle of minimizing the power that is put in the hands of the government makes the difference.
And our founders tried to limit this activity by preventing the imperial presidents from making all these decisions and saying the president's not allowed to do these things.
He's not supposed to be allowed to put on sanctions and penalize people and drop bombs and go to war without a declaration.
It was not meant to be that way, and yet it failed.
Our Constitution has failed on that.
So, the big challenge is: how are we going to restore an interest in having a policy which is closer to what was intended?
And there's no easy answer to that.
My only thing I can think of that we are obligated to do is spread a message of peace and prosperity and why that is the principles that we should follow.
And we will have a much better chance to promote peace and prosperity throughout the world.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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