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