Nuanced. - 193. Scott Horton: Did Washington Provoke the War in Ukraine?

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Scott Horton, author of Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, joins Aaron Pete to discuss how U.S. foreign policy shaped the war in Ukraine. They break down NATO expansion, the 2014 coup, and media narratives, challenging the idea that Russia’s invasion was unprovoked. Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host, Aaron P. What is happening in Ukraine? What does it mean to be anti-war? I am speaking with the author of Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. We discussed 9-11, the war in Ukraine, what resolutions look like, and how Canada fits into all of this.

My guest today is Scott Horton. I am so excited to be able to speak with you today. I have been able to watch you with Dave Smith, Pierce Morgan. I've been able to enjoy a lot of your independent talks, and it has just been a privilege to learn from you and hear your perspectives on important issues. And I thought your interactions have been very thoughtful on the Pierce Morgan show. And you do a very good job of conducting yourself. But first, may I ask you to briefly introduce yourself? Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that. I'm Scott Horton. I'm basically a Ron Paul libertarian type from Texas.

With a focus on foreign policy, the director of the Libertarian Institute, the editorial director of anti-war.com. I've done 6,000 interviews since 2003, and I've written three books, Fool's errand on Afghanistan, enough already on the war on terrorism, and now provoked on the new Cold War with Russia and the Ukraine war. Can I first ask about how your philosophy developed? I find you and individuals like Dave Smith, you have like a really well-grounded philosophy that I think so many people, lack. Even if people don't agree with your perspectives, you can't disagree that you have a really strong foundation in which you come to your conclusions, that you can kind of follow your thinking all the way through. And again, some people might not agree with you, but I think that's very impressive and something that I find rare. Where did that come from for you?

Well, I just believe in freedom. I mean, that's all it is. Libertarianism is essentially the unified field theory of human liberty. So lots of people believe in freedom, but the Libertarians are the ones who've thought all of this stuff through. And so that goes from political and, well, first of all, natural rights theory for almost all of us. But also political theory and economic theory, we're very closely tied to the Austrian school of economics because they are focused on the individual acting person, acting in what they hope is their own best interest, as the basis of civilization, which is really right. So, like, did you just stumble upon, up across this in school?

Were you interacting with other thinkers? Well, I mean, first of all, I learned about the difference between having a republic and an empire from Star Wars when I was a boy. Right. And then I studied a lot of the founding fathers stuff before I really got into contemporary libertarianism. I had first been exposed to libertarianism directly through Harry Brown, who was a really great candidate for president in 1996. But from what I knew then, from, you know, TV and books and newspapers and whatever,

seemed like the libertarians were just kind of the reason magazine kind of went, like, oh, wow, dude, we're like atheists. Isn't that edgy or whatever, you know? So I would rather pal around with the right wingers because at least they cared about the branch of idiots. And that was what I was interested in was like the actual atrocities that the government was committing. And really like what the shape of the 21st century was going to be. And so the right wingers, the anti-government right, were better on that at the time. I didn't really find really good. Oh, and of course then there was Ron Paul, but he was a Republican congressman.

but a libertarian and an Austrian economist and absolutely my hero, the very best guy. So I was following him all along, of course, as well. And then once the terror war started, I started getting more serious and got the internet, started reading anti-war.com all the time. And that led me over to Lou Rockwell.com and the Mises Institute, which I should have known about the Mises Institute,

because on the creature from Jekyll Island, which is G. Edward Griffin's book about the Central Bank, On the back, there's an endorsement from Mark Dorton, who I just interviewed the other day, the great Austrian economist for Mises, had endorsed Jekyll Island. And it's funny, because I even remember seeing, oh, Ludwig von Mises Institute, and just thinking, well, whatever that is, their one economist was, like, so capitalist, he decided to endorse this book. But they couldn't possibly really be that good, or they wouldn't even be a thing with a fancy name like that.

And I, that was in, like, 95 or something. And I wish I had really gone ahead and looked into it. That was probably even before Rupbard died when I read Jekyll Island. But I didn't, I found out about the Measons Institute again, really after Rock War II or in the run-up to a Rockwar II when I was reading anti-war.com and Lou Rockwell.com all the time. And then that's where I found there really is a libertarian movement of real grown-ups and experts and economists with nice suits and stuff who are really hardcore anti-government extremists just like me in the liberal. Rockwell, just a Romando-type model, which is the Rothbard, you know, sort of right-wing populist libertarianism. Interesting. And what has it been like? I feel like you are very good at remembering information, understanding kind of the lineage of how things have come about. How much studying

do you feel like in reading and research, do you feel like you've had to do in order to start to be able to present books like the book provoked? That's a good question. I mean, I, As I said, I've done 6,000 interviews since 2003. And I probably could have started writing books before I did. I wrote my first book in 2016 and 17, came out in 17. And I could have written that book sooner, probably. But my education really was reading Anti-War.com, being an assistant editor at that time, and later opinion editor of Anti-War.com.

So my job was not just reading all the news all the day, but I'm thumbs up or thumbs down on all the viewpoints. And so we're running all these articles, and there's some really great anti-war writers in America over all these years, that it's our privilege to spotlight their work. But that means I got to read all of it every day. And so that was a huge thing. And then also I mentioned Justin Romando. He was the original editorial director of anti-war.com and co-founder with Eric Garris. And he was our premier writer, our head contributing writer, who wrote behind the headlines. And he died back in 2019.

But for many years, like, I don't know, 10, I was the, my words, the link monkey. My job was filling his article with hyperlinks proving that he was right about everything. And if he was wrong about anything, I'd have to fix it and make sure that it was right, because I just thought his articles were the most important thing in the world going on at that time. that so for me to be part of helping to perfect those i thought was more important than me even writing articles on my own and then what that amounted to was you know a three or four hour deep dive three nights a week on all these subjects and he was right about everything um and so there was no conflict there wasn't difficult at all you know what i mean it was he and and from the first time

i read him uh that's justin romando again at antiwar dot com the first time i read him i thought man And how does this guy know all of this stuff? It's just sort of like the way you guys talk about me. Because he wasn't in Washington, D.C., but somehow he just knew everything about these neoconservatives and who they were and what they were up to and how they were lying us into war. And he had been so good on the Balkan wars before that. And then really, I would say at least through the first Obama term, he was the most important writer in America. i mean bar none uh so working for him and and my job being essentially you know leaving no claim unsourced in his articles was really a great way to learn a lot of this stuff as well and then

just paling around with gareth porter i'm not sure if you're familiar with him he's pretty old and he's been writing a book about the first cold war for the last few years now so he's kind of been away but he was he's my favorite guy i've interviewed him more than 500 times and he's he's just absolutely the man on everything about iraq war two and afghanistan and see i think he was writing a book during syria but iran and iran's nuclear program he wrote the book on that called manufactured crisis and he is just the greatest debunker of all things petraeus and every claim that they made about the terror wars and all of that and he's another great mentor of mine one and it feels like an obvious question but to be anti-war i don't know it seems a bit tabby

right now, can you describe what it means to be actually anti-war? Well, look, I mean, America's the world empire. None of this is legitimate at all. None of this is, oh, we got to go stop the Wehramont because they're taking over all the Western Europe or whatever. There's nothing like that, and they have to just absolutely lie their

ass off to you all day long. You know, Dick Cheney, in 2002, in August of 2002, Dick Cheney went to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He told a giant crowd full of guys who fought in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam and Iraq War I,

give me your boys. I need them because Saddam Hussein is going to give nuclear weapons to Osama bin Laden. See, that's how much the war party respects you. Zero. They'll lie right to your grandpa's face. Okay? They think that you are the scum of the earth. So, you should also consider them that same way.

that's absolutely how they talk about you know george bush's mother barbara bush said people are always asking me about the casualties of the war well oh what was the exact quote i don't want to flub it i had a second ago it was oh that's just not relevant so why would i waste my beautiful mind on something like that right in other words all of us the 350 million of us we're the the help, okay? We're the gardener at best. They don't care about us at all. We're not even the garbage men to them. I revere garbage men, but I'm saying in their eyes, they don't give a damn about us. They lie from morning to night to get what they want. And so they'll portray anyone from David Koresh to Saddam Hussein to Vladimir Putin and claim that they're all Adolf Hitler.

They're all going to take over the whole world if we don't stop them. Which, again, think of how little for you they show when they shovel s like that in your face like how could you take it how could anyone tolerate it and you looked at you know the book is called provoked not because i'm saying oh russia had no choice in the book is you know their the war is justified because that's not the title the tiles provoked because what did they say the american war party what did they say about the war in ukraine unprovoked attack unprovoked attack in fact you're not allowed to call it anything but an unprovoked attack when you say it. It's just like when they murdered Randy Weaver, they go, or sorry, his wife and son, they would say, white separatist Randy Weaver, white separatist,

Randy Weaver. Or they found Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in the ground. They go, he's in a spider hole. Saddam Hussein's spider hole. He was hiding in a spider hole, spider hole, spider hole, spider hole, spider hole. You have to call it that. An unprovoked attack. Well, why? Are they insistent on this public relations terminology. It's because they provoked it. It's because they're guilty. And they don't want you asking questions about why would Russia do such a thing. You're supposed to receive the wisdom from them. He did it because he's Hitler. Yeah, he's been in power for 25 years already, but anyway, he's Hitler and he's decided to do this because he woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, right? Condoleezza Rice, who helped pick this fight when she was

Secretary of State for W. Bush. In the start of the war in 22, or the start of the worst part of the war in 22, she said, this isn't the Vladimir Putin I know. But yes, of course it is. He's not mentally ill now. He's not a megalomaniac now. He's the same clerk that he's always been. What happened? What happened was USA, in the form of Joe Biden, if that's not believable enough to you, picked this fight through at the very least absolute diplomatic malpractice. They screwed up everything. These are the masters of the universe. You know it.

Your dad knows it. Your next door neighbor knows it. We're number one. America is the superpower, which means that at the very least, their diplomacy absolutely failed to prevent this war. Worse, they caused it. Of course they did. You know, they caused September 11th, too.

Not that they did it, but they caused it to happen. They refused to protect us from their own terrorist mercenaries that then they turned against us through their horrific Middle East policies. And then they walk away with their hands in their pockets whistling while our towers full of civilians get knocked down. And their own damn Pentagon gets hit. I think that's an important follow up. Can you, for people who might not understand, what do you mean when you say that they also contributed to what happened on 9-11. Okay, so we'll get back to Ukraine because that's a fun one too.

Let's talk about the Middle East here. Everybody knows this. America backed the Mujahideen freedom fighters in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, USSR communists in the 1980s. They even made Rambo 3 about it, where he goes over there and he helps the brave warriors, okay? They were the freedom fighters. That was mostly the posh tune.

militias. But it also included the international Islamic brigades. In other words, Muslims, but especially Arabs, but Muslims from all around the world, came to Afghanistan on Saudi Arabia, America, Britain, and Pakistan's dime, and with Saudi and Pakistan doing most of the organization. And they brought in Muslims from all across the Middle East, but including the Philippines and the United States and Chechnya and all over the place to come and to fight against the godless communists who had control of Kabul at that time. That war ended in 1989 with a humiliating Soviet with withdrawal and defeat. And then the Mujahideen kept fighting and the various warlords kept fighting until they hanged and killed the Kami dictator Najibullah in 1991.

As soon as they were done from that, they moved on to Bosnia, where America supported their side there as well. They also helped support Azerbaijan in their brief war with Armenia in 1992 over Nagorno-Karabakh. And they supported them in Bosnia through 1995. They supported them in Kosovo in 1999, and they supported them in Chechnya from 1999 through about 1994 or 95, sorry, in 1999 through 2004 or 2005 at the earliest, maybe even after that. And so these are the bin Ladenites. This is the international al-Qaeda terrorist network, the same one that attacked the United States. Now, a lot of people, I think, oversimplify it and say, well, yeah, they did 9-11 too.

But the thing about it is this. I think there's a lot of like left-hand, right-hand, not working together kinds of things when it comes to this government. and the American policy was we like these guys. They do our dirty work in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan before that, wherever we need it. And for some of the Mujahideen, their attitude was we like the Americans. They help us in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya. But some of them in their leadership, especially bin Laden and Zawahiri and the leaders of the group, they had a broader vision, which was much more like this Leninist global revolutionary type of a thing,

starting, of course, with the Middle East. But importantly, because, as I said, this was an international movement of all of these terrorist mercenaries from all around the Muslim world who were there to fight. Well, when they kind of had downtime and they were trying to figure out what to do, there's all this inertia for everybody to split off and go fight their local jihad in Egypt or Jordan or Syria or wherever they're at, right? But bin Laden's trying to hold the thing together. So what he got everybody to agree about, instead of we should do what Jimmy wants or we should. should do what Bobby wants. It was, let's all do what I want, which is attack the United States. We'll all work together on that goal, because once we get the United States to react and invade Afghanistan, then we'll be able to replicate our war against the Soviet Union,

bog the Americans down, bleed them to bankruptcy, force them out the hard way, the same way we did the Soviet Union, and then their freedom of action will be limited in the future. then we can wage our local revolutions in the Middle East without Uncle Sam getting in the way. And you see what happens when, and this was all Obama's fault, we were too rushed for time. But when America, well, first W. Bush and especially Obama, helped to build the caliphate for these cooks back in 2013 and 14. Remember Baghdadi and the ISIS caliphate, then they said, well, we can't tolerate that. So they bombed it right off the face of the earth again, right? Even though they had helped to create the thing, it was too much.

And so they proved the al-Qaeda theory right. As long as America, the world empire is around, to bomb our revolutionary movements there, we can never win. So what we need to do is just keep fighting till we're done with them, till they withdraw, and then we can have our way. Now, the thing that bin Laden didn't anticipate is that Israel hates the Shiites more. And that means America hates the Shiites more, even if it was bin Laden and the radical edge of the Sunni Wahhabi movement, who hit our towers. Our government doesn't care about that because Israel first. So when they followed Israel's instructions and invaded Iraq, that only backfired. I don't think this is what Israel really wanted. It was a complicated scheme, and it didn't work out. And they ended up, it was what they

call in soccer, an own goal. They ended up putting their enemies, well, their regional rivals, the Iranian Shiites, their best friends in power in Baghdad. That whole terrible war, rock war two of your childhood. That was all America fighting for the Shiites they hate against the Sunnis because it was supposed to work out and it didn't. But then they realized their error and they've been working on taking out the Alawites in Damascus ever since. Because the Alawites in Damascus, even though it was a Ba'ath party like Saddam Hussein, they were not Sunnis or there were a lot of Sunnis in it, but the leadership was not Sunni. They were Alawites and they're very closely tied with the Shiites and had an alliance with Iran, which they used to help Iran back Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, who aren't our enemies, they're Israel's enemies.

So, in other words, when they say America's interests and Israel's interests in the Middle East are the same, no, they're not. They're 100%, 180 degrees contrary to each other. The Israelis hate the Shiites, the Iranians who, and now Baghdad, Tehran, now Baghdad, up until December, Damascus, and Hezbollah and southern Lebanon, that's their axis of evil. Whereas the people who knocked our towers down are the radical Sunni bin Ladenites from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, especially, and Chechnya and all these other places where they're radical Sunnis. And so that's why when al-Qaeda, literally, al-Qaeda in Syria, took over the government in Damascus in December, which was Obama's dirty war from 10 years ago, finally played out. They didn't just go east into western Iraq this time. They went west and they sacked Damascus. And Hezbollah was too weak and Iran was too weak and Russia, well, I don't know, Iran just wasn't there. And Russia was too weak to intervene to help them. And so they lost. And

then that's what's happening in the news right now. Who's killing the Christians and the Alawites in Syria? It's the bin Ladenites. Why? Because thanks Obama. That's why. Because it was America's policy under Obama to make up for W. Bush's blunder in Iraq. We couldn't re-fight Iraq War two and kick the Shiites out of Baghdad and give it back to the Sunnis. That was too much. But we could overthrow Assad in Damascus. So, in other words, Ronald Reagan intervened on behalf of these cooks in order to fight the Soviets. Bill Clinton supported, and H.W. Bush, but especially like Bill Clinton, supported their efforts in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Chechnya, and Azerbaijan. And then after September 11th, W. Bush used them as an excuse to invade Iraq, which was

partially at Israel's behest. And the neoconservatives, of course, were working for Israel's interest and pushing for that war. But then that empowered Iran and the Shiites. So then that necessitated what they called the redirection, and America tilting back towards al-Qaeda. Because the Saudis don't have an army, except us, or al-Qaeda suicide bombers and head choppers. And so America's, in other words, USA has backed Osama bin Laden's men this whole time, except for right after September 11th, when they fought them for a month and a half in Afghanistan before letting them go. And for a few years in Iraq War II, where they fought on the Shiite side against al-Qaeda in Iraq, in Iraq War II. All the rest of the time, America's on the side of Osama

bin Laden. wow I know it really sucks and I'll tell you what too the FBI has entrapped a lot of cooks into a lot of fake plots in this country but I'll tell you something else too there's been some real ones there was a guy who tried to blow up he was from Denver tried to blow up the subway in New York there was a guy who there's very few that really were genuine that got busted but there are a few that got away with it like the guy in San Bernardino that shot up the city council meeting there was a guy who set off

bombs on a marathon route in New York and New Jersey, which I think luckily no one was hurt in that one, but it was a legit attack by these guys. Of course, the Boston bombing of 2013, hell, go back to the CIA attack of 1993, where a guy blocked the double left turn lane and got an AK-47 out of the trunk of his cab and shot up a bunch of guys waiting to turn left into Langley headquarters, go back to the First World Trade Center and all this. There have been real attacks by these guys. Orlando was a... another one where this guy, he had never been over there. He was from here, but he signed up to the ISIS agenda and then look at New Orleans. You know, it got all fuzzy because of the weird

attack by the pro-Trump guy, the soldier with the PTSD problem out in Las Vegas. It muddied the whole water. But what happened in New Orleans on New Year's, man? It was an American soldier who was a Muslim convert, who's obviously radicalized by the recent war in Palestine, who went and ran down a bunch of people on Bourbon Street celebrating New Year's. And, you know, he recorded himself complaining, you know, his manifestos on the way down there. And they haven't released those yet. We don't know for sure. I'm only betting you, but I'm betting you.

What he was ranting about in there was Israel, killing Palestinians on America's dime. And then so who had to pay a bunch of innocent party goers, right, in this terrorist attack? And so the more that our government won, continue. to support these cooks, these absolute murderous monsters, as you've seen in the news, just the past couple of days, what's happening in Syria. As much as they continue to support these guys, but while still supporting Israel against the helpless Palestinians, and while still having troops occupying Saudi Arabia, I mean, pardon me, I don't know if they're still in Saudi, but occupying the Gulf states, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, which is still wholly

Arabian Peninsula territory to them, troops in Syria, troops in Iraq, and supporting every Muslim dictator over there. Our government, it's just like the 1990s still. Our government supports these terrorists. They motivate them to attack us, the innocent civilian population of the country, and then they do nothing to protect us from them. And so it's a real danger. I think it's a real danger. I think New Orleans is, in a sense, we got lucky compared to what could happen. if just think about and he had a gun too but they just wax him as soon as he got out of his truck there were just cops right there blew his head off like luck of the draw that that was where he crashed that they were right there to kill him because he got out of that truck with a rifle and just imagine

what like a team of five guys you saw him hijack a plane and crashed into a tower that was five guys did that you imagine five guys with good rifles and skills hitting what name your soft target the damage that could be done in this country. And that's the kind of fire our government is playing with. It's really heavy first to start to understand, like, how much you know about the topic and how sometimes arrogant, I think, people are when they think they understand these issues. Like, it's just humbling when you go through some of these things. Like, that's a lot of information to retain.

And so there's probably only a select few that actually understand these issues, the history of them, how they've come about and the players actually involved in making some of these decisions where so many of us, like, I want to get into your book provoked, like my normal person understanding watching the news is that on February 22nd, 2022, Russia invaded a sovereign country called Ukraine, and it was the first full-scale war in Europe since World War II. That is my cursory understanding of such an issue, and that's what we hear in the news. That's what we talk about. To your point, we hear that it was not provoked, that Ukraine was just minding their own business, and all of a sudden these people start crossing their border and attacking. Would you mind responding to that tertiary understanding? Yeah, I mean, the very bottom line is the issues, the primary issues were America's continued sort of slow motion integration of Ukraine into the NATO military alliance, giving them essentially de facto membership.

but without the full war guarantee, at the same time, continuing to support Ukraine in the civil war in the east of the country, which was supposed to have been settled by a peace deal way back in 2015, which Obama and the UN Security Council both rubber-stamped and was supposed to be the deal, and that we know now, because they boast and brag about it now, that they never meant to live up to what was called Minsk, too. They never meant to implement it. They were just biding their time to build up Ukraine's military, to fight more in the future. And it was a terrible mistake.

The whole policy, essentially, from the point of view of the Ukrainian politicians who went along with America on this, is they committed treason against their own country because they let America essentially get them into a war that they can't possibly win. And so I'm not saying treason like they're selling themselves out to the Russians. I'm saying by pimping themselves out to the Americans, they've let America put them in a situation where they're just being completely smashed and, you know, losing not everything, but so much in a war that was an unnecessary and quite provoked war. And as I say, the subtitle of the book is how Washington started a new Cold War with Russia

and the catastrophe in Ukraine. So Kiev played their role. But it's, again, America's the superpower. And Joe Biden was the world emperor at the time. So my understanding, like the counterpoint that I think. I think I've heard people make to you is, well, isn't this proof that they needed to join NATO? Isn't this evidence that they should have gone down this path? And I've had the privilege of watching that one, is it Stephen Colbert interview where he talks about how they were, we're trying to pull Ukraine over to our side.

And I think the only, I'm in Canada, and we have a lot of Ukrainians in Canada. And I'm just curious with our relationship, like the thing that I hear in Canada is like those are like we have a lot of families. over there. We want to protect them. They want to be more like us in the West. They have relatives over here. That's their relationship. How do we kind of process the fact that within at least my borders, we do have a lot of family there. So there may be a goal of kind of aligning our government so that they have the same mindset. Yeah. The problem is there's 7,000 miles from here and they're stuck next door to Russia. So we can figuratively move them west, but we can't really move them west, can we? And so.

So they are stuck next door to a major power that's not going to tolerate there they have since the breakup of the Soviet Union tolerated their independence. They're not going to tolerate them becoming essentially a major outpost of an adversarial imperial power, which is the United States. As Putin put it, America's made a colony out of Ukraine. This wasn't a question whether Ukraine was a lot to be independent or not. It was a question of whether, as you just said, referring to that interview with Gideon Rose, who is the editor. of Foreign Affairs, the most important foreign policy journal in America, the Journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, explaining to Stephen Colbert back in 2014, we're getting away with it, he, he, he. We're breaking Ukraine and Russia up, and we're taking Ukraine off with

us. He says, Russia is like a ghetto boyfriend, and we're trying to get Ukraine to trade up to a nice yuppie, the European Union. And he says, and Colbert says, well, geez, how come we're not spiking the football and celebrating this. And he says, well, because we're trying to get away with it, while Putin's distracted with the Sochi Olympics, we want to just, you know, run off and get away with the whole thing. And Colbert says, oh, I get it. Hey, you, hey stupid, you'd be distracted by all these shiny gold medals. We're just going to run off with this country. And you're not going to notice. And Gideon Rose says, yeah, pretty much, pretty much. Well, like the next day, two days later, the Russians took back the Crimean Peninsula.

So I guess he wasn't that distracted with the Olympics after all. And by the way, why did he just spend $40 billion on the Olympics? Because he was trying to kiss your rear end. He's trying to suck up to the West and trying to get along with us and impress us as being a member of our world order as best as he could. But that's not good enough. You've got to be either drunken Boris Yeltsin on your knees, willing to do whatever he's and steal whatever he's told, or you got to go.

And it's the same thing with the Victoria Newland phone call, the infamous phone call where she's deciding who should be the prime minister, and she's deciding who ought to run the country. And clearly is the one calling the shots in the phone call, the leaked phone call with her and Jeffrey Paiott. And they both say over and over, we got to glue it, we got to stick it, we got to midwife it. We got to hurry up, we got to make it sale before Putin can

react and torpedo it, right? So in other words, just like Gideon Rose, well, Stephen, we're going to be really sneaky and get away with it. But they don't get away with anything. The whole thing is as blatant as it could possibly be just another color-coded revolution sponsored by USAID and the NED and the IRI and the NDI and the NDI and all the George Soros foundations. And they come in there and they spend all this money and support all these people and get their way. They've done it over and over again, as I demonstrate in the book, they've done it over and over again, going back to the Balkans in the 1990s, and really going back to the struggle against the communists in the old Cold War.

But in our era, they've done this thing over and over again. And so they are clearly the ones who picked a fight. Now, there is, of course, the circular reasoning that you cite that, well, that's why Ukraine has to be in NATO, and that's why they should have been in the first place, and then Putin would never try this. But that's not true. What it is is if they had gone ahead and given Ukraine a real invitation to join NATO, Russia would have invaded then, and they would have broken Ukraine then before the ink could be dry, before the documents could be signed, or the ceremony could be held. They were never going to tolerate Ukrainian entry into NATO.

So no, it just would have been an earlier war. That's all. And again, see, this is actually what they call begging the question. It doesn't mean raising the question. Raising the question is raising the question. Begging the question is when you assume your conclusion, right? It's baked in to that argument. You're supposed to already accept the unspoken premise, which is that they did this for no good reason that any reasonable gentleman could understand. It's not about that. It's just about imperialism.

It's about rebuilding the Soviet Union. It's about self-aggrandizement for the Russian dictator and all of these things. They're trying to preclude the discussion that we're having, which is what did Joe Biden do? his entire career long to make this happen. And the answer is, he expanded NATO right up into their business. And as his, at best, ham-handed attempt to dissuade this intervention after it was really, I think the last straw was probably Donald Trump's government, whether he knew it or not, I don't really know, but his government tried to overthrow the government of Belarus again in 2020. They had already done two times before. And I know Lyle Goldstein, the expert from,

formerly from the Naval War College, he said that he thought this was the final straw, not just for Putin, but for the entire defense establishment in Moscow, that they just decide the Americans are relentless. We have to draw a line. We can't let the war in Ukraine go on. We have to intervene in Ukraine. And that was decided by them after the failed coup in Belarus. And then so what does Biden do? Biden comes in and says, you better not. And by the way, Yes, I'm bringing Ukraine into NATO. Yes, I'm expanding defense interoperability and exercises and training and weapon sales. And so in Biden's past for his mind in the year 2021, now's the time to be tough and threaten the Russians that we're only going to escalate.

We're only going to bring Ukraine closer. We're only going to build their military up. And that'll deter you from invading. but that's why they were invading. So all he was doing was making the emergency more dire from the Russian's point of view. And then he would threaten them, you better not do it, or I'm going to back your enemies in Ukraine, but he refused to negotiate in good faith. And the real horrible irony of this is that the stricture that Ukraine cannot join NATO,

and that's got to be written into a treaty. That was what Russia was demanding. That's got to be written into a treaty, and it should be written into the Ukrainian constitution. that should have been fine. Not just Biden, hold that thought on Biden. The entire American foreign policy establishment knew for 30 years, even as they expanded NATO, that of course we're going to have to make a special exception for Ukraine.

We're going to have to give it some kind of neutral status because a contest with Russia over Ukraine is just going to lead to a war and probably a Russian occupation of the east of the country and this kind of thing. They all knew that all along. Well, same for Joe Biden, too, said, I'm not bringing Ukraine. into NATO? All I'm doing is I'm having my State Department issue statements saying you're

damn right I'm bringing Ukraine into NATO. But come on, don't be ridiculous. You can't bring Ukraine into NATO. That would cause a war with Russia. You can't bring Ukraine into NATO. Their democracy and their economic system are way too corrupt to be brought in fully into the EU or NATO. And so, no, of course we're not going to do that. However, you, despicable dirty Ruski, you can't say that we can't bring Ukraine into NATO. And we'll be damned if one of the reasons we're going to bring

you, we're not going to bring Ukraine into NATO is because that's what you said. No third country can tell us what second country we can't bring it into our alliance, and we are willing to put Ukraine into a war with you on that

high principle. Not that we're willing to fight it ourselves, thank goodness. The big thing that stands out to me is that one, it's very humbling to start to take two perspectives on so many of these issues. And I think that's your normal lens of viewing things through, but I don't think that's normal peoples. I don't think we do a good job of looking inward. And Dave Smith talks a lot about this of like, put yourself in their shoes. Like if I'm in Canada and the United States was being taken over by Russia or China or something, somebody else, how would we like having somebody else on our borders?

Like just reverse the psychology in your own head, how would we respond to this? Because now many people go, well, now we have to get Ukraine into NATO. Like we have to because they're in the circumstance and it's like, okay, but what's the outcome of that in five years and like what's the response to that going to look like? And when you switch your shoes, you start to go, oh, well, we wouldn't like that. And when we had things going on in Cuba with Russia, historically, the European United States did not like that. And for good reason, because their viewpoints aren't aligned, one piece that I just want to get your feedback on. Hold that, are we out of time? Because I got

a comment on that, if you got a sec. No, we're not, we're not out of time. We got time left. Let me just say about that real quick. Sure. That, first of all, you're completely right. And of course, I'm an American, so I've been telling the story the other way. And I think any Canadian can also imagine this scenario, too, where the Russians intervene in y'all's elections over and over again and even overthrow the government in Ottawa because you just won't vote right for the pro-Russian guy. They install their own group in there. Then they declare war against dissenters in British Columbia

who refused to agree to the new ruling junta, and they threaten to kick America out of our naval bases in Alaska. What do you think America would do in a situation like that? It's a different question when it's like, what would Canada do? What would America do if this was going on in Canada? And the answer, of course, is we would roll our tanks to our tanks to Ottawa and probably nuke Moscow, right? It would be war is what would happen. And one more thing about that is there's this great journalist named Christopher Lane, who I can't remember what

auspices. I think he was doing a story about something else or somebody. He was talking all these generals at the Pentagon. And he was asking them about Mexico and China, same scenario. But the way he set them up, though, was he didn't set it up like it was the premise to another question kind of thing. He just asked him straight, what would we do if the Chinese started pouring all this money into elections in Mexico or even overthrew the government in Mexico? And then the new regime, the new pro-Chinese regime started building military base, starting allowing China to build military bases on our border. And so what would we do? And they all said the same thing. One threats, two sanctions, three invade, four, nuke Beijing. Right? There's no way in the world we'd tolerate that.

And then he says to them, how do you think Russia feels about us in Ukraine? crane and then they say to him whoa dude we like totally never thought of that huh geez what do you think jimmy right this is you can read this in harpers it's um Christopher lane with a why in harpers wrote about that the day went oh my god total failure

of imagination we never thought of it like that yeah i couldn't agree more and then so i see and i interview a lot of Canadian journalists and and do my best to interview American journalists as well, on like the collapse of journalism while all of these things are going on. So we're not getting the highest quality research news information in regards to making informed decisions about how we might respond to these issues. The one piece that I have heard, and I think it's low-hanging fruit, I think it's incredibly

disrespectful, but people accuse you of using Russian talking points when you go on Pierce-Morgan, people accuse you of being a Russian shill and sharing that type of information. And how do you, you talked about the Olympics and how Russia was trying to build relationships with the U.S. and trying to move forward in a different way. And I do think that's sympathetic to perhaps. It might be true, but like that sounds sympathetic. How do you grapple with that and make sure that you're not misunderstood on that front? Well, look, I just tell the truth the way I see it. Depending on the circumstance, I'll give some disclaimer just so I think if people are going to, you know, honestly. misunderstand but as for what eric garris from anti-war dot com calls aggressive misunderstanding like

i really don't care um what people say i mean the fact of the matter is i'm from texas so i barely even give a damn about washington dc i certainly don't care about moscow what interest do i have in common with russia none right so i don't care about that it's just that obviously my government is the worst and most violent organization on the planet Earth. It was perfectly PC to say so when Martin Luther King said so in 1968, that my own government is the greatest purveyor of violence on the face of the earth. And there's certainly the greatest purveyors of dishonesty other than maybe Israel, but they're responsible for all that too.

So, you know, whatever. I'm not impressed by any of that. Anyone who reads my books? I mean, my other books are explaining why Al-Qaeda did it. Somebody think I'm signing up with the Salafees to go cut people's heads off? Right? Like, I just spent all this time warning you how dangerous these psychopathic murderers are and how our government supports all these psychopathic murderers

and turns these psychopathic murderers against us and then does nothing to protect us from these psychopathic murderers. I guess I'm just carrying water for the psychopathic murderers. No. What I'm doing is I'm tattletailing on the U.S. government you. Bill Clinton is a traitor. Bill Clinton backed Osama bin Laden. And that's why George W. Bush's government didn't stop 9-11, because we like these guys. Right? This is, you know the story. Your audience probably has heard the story of Zacharias Musawi, who was the guy who was arrested

in Minneapolis, Minnesota. You've heard this part. He wanted to know how to fly a jumbo jet, but he wasn't interested in learning how to take off or land. So the guys at the flight school went, what's going on with this guy and called the FBI on him? This is in August of 01. And so the local FBI in Minnesota called Washington and said, we want to search this guy's things. And they had called intelligence in France,

and the French government said, this guy and his brother are both recruiters for al-Qaeda in Chechnya. thing, there's your tie to a foreign power. Now you can get a warrant to search, to go totally fishing on this guy. He's not an American citizen, and we have a reasonable, objective belief that he is an agent of a foreign terrorist group. So you don't need probable cause to find a specific evidence of a specific crime. You now have fishing expedition license to take this guy upside down by his ankles and shake him and see what you can find. And they were not allowed by the FBI office

when they were not allowed to go to the FISA court to get the FISA warrant to search the guy's stuff. Why? Because we like Al-Qaeda in Chechnya. They're not terrorists. They're freedom fighters. They're good guys. And so they were denied. And then on September 11th, even on

September 11th, they call Washington, said, now can we have our FISA warrant? And they said, no. And it was only when the director of the CIA, George Tenet, said, I wonder if this has anything to do with that guy in Minnesota. Let's get a warrant and search his

stuff. Only then were they allowed to go and get a warrant, and then what did they find? Papers in his pocket and at his apartment that tied him directly to the terrorists in Florida, directly to the lead pilot hijackers. In other words, if they'd been allowed to do their job,

in August, they would have stopped the September 11th attack. They could have rolled up the entire September 11th attack, except that they were up to their eyeballs in high treason, supporting the bin Ladenites, even though the bin Ladenites had already blown up our World Trade Center in 1993. They'd already killed our guys training the Saudi National Guard in 95. They blew up our barracks full of airmen in Kobar in Saudi in 1996. They blew up our embassies

and killed hundreds of people in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi Kenya in August 98. They bombed our USS coal at port in aid in Yemen in 2000. And America, the government, the government, the government was still backing these cooks anyway. So maybe I'm off on a tangent, but that's not support for al-Qaeda. That's telling you the truth about how we got into the war on terrorism in the first place. It's the same thing here. Why in the world would I care about Russia? And honestly, like, where in the world, as any honest person ever seen Russian talking points? I wrote a thousand page book. 477,000 words. Think I crib that from some Russian website I can't read? Give me a break. And no one who reads my book can come away saying that. The only way they can say that is if they sent

a copy to the Kremlin and said, man, you guys could use some talking points. Horton's done the work for you. This is the truth. This is how America picked this fight. And it's all George Bush and Bill Clinton and George Bush and Barack Obama. And yes, quite a bit Donald Trump, although not nearly as bad as the others, and Joe Biden's fault, and John McCain, and Victoria Newland, Robert Kagan's big, fat, disgusting wife. So I think it's really important to underline. Your book is 678 pages, and you have 1,712 references, which is really... No, no, no, no. I got 7,900 citations. 6,000 footnotes, 7,900 citations. And anyone can go to Scott Horton.org slash provoked slash notes. And there they all are 400 pages worth of footnotes for

you there. Yeah, fair enough. There's way more of research that you've done on that. But I just want to say, yeah, that's just like chapter one or chapter two. Whatever number you said, that's just like through Bill Clinton or something. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So I wanted to acknowledge a lot of people might be wondering, like, why aren't I debating you on these points? And I think the, the, that work is. You can try. I would not succeed. But you have already spoken to Wesley, General Wesley Clark and had that conversation and been able to have a really in-depth discussion. I've watched it three times, just blown away by the interactions, by how respectful and how well you know your stuff. And I could see Wesley Clark's face going like,

this guy knows, like, he knows everything about what we're talking about. Like, there was not a footnote, a point that you didn't make where he wasn't like, okay, like I didn't know he was going to raise that. Oh, I didn't know he remembered. Like all of those pieces. You can just see the look on his face and I thought that was so rewarding to watch. It reminded me again of like Dave Smith when he's debating Chris Cuomo. Like he knew his stuff and like the person was not ready for that kind of interaction. It was still super respectful, but I highly recommend people go check that out because that's a really thoughtful discussion on our path forward.

And I just wanted to get your reflections on that discussion because he made a lot of points about how now it does look like maybe Russia's heading for the border of Georgia and they're starting to inch that forward. What is your reaction to the points that he was trying to make? Because you didn't get a lot of time to respond. Yeah, I don't think I did address that particular point. And I really don't know what he's talking about that. They're getting closer to Georgia. I mean, the big fight in Georgia now is that the anti-American parties won. And there's nothing that they can do about it. And they poured as much money as they could in there. But it wasn't enough to make the difference this time. And they have overthrown the guys.

government in Georgia before. So I don't think that there's much to that. But like overall, I guess, so here's the thing about what happened with Wesley Clark is I was on the Morgan Show the week before and with five heads in boxes. And then they brought on Clark and very quickly became just me versus him. But he got way more time than I did. And I didn't get a chance to address a whole bunch of points that he raised. So then I says on Twitter, I says, hey, how about you guys go ahead and have me and Clark back on

but just the two of us was something like equal time here to talk about this. So they said, all right, bet, how about Monday morning? So I was like, all right, then let's do it. So I was in Nashville to do the Candace Owen show, and they had me sit in the back of a van in the hotel parking lot and just do the thing. It was actually a pretty cool little deal. Nice guy, too, the video van guy. And so now I knew going into the thing, you know, I have my problems with Clark,

and I quote him in the books and things that you'll be pretty shocked to hear him say. you'll disapprove of him on a few things. But I know going in there that like the social psychology of the situation is that he's a four-star general and a former presidential candidate, or not a nominee, but a candidate for president in 2004, and he's the former Supreme Allied commander of NATO forces in Europe and help run the Serbian war for Bill Clinton. So I knew going in there that with Pierce Morgan's audience, essentially no one has ever heard of me before, right? 1% of the audience or less even has any idea who I am. So I can't come out and start accusing him of things, particularly when, and I do, I have some, like, more firsthand journalism about this, like people who were there who I know, who I've talked to about it.

But essentially, I can't really confront him about the war in Serbia other than why I read it in the newspaper, right? Whereas he was there and can say, no, that that's not right. And then I don't have really a leg to stand on. So I don't really have, I'm not in a position to directly accuse him of things in this debate. Like, if I interviewed him one day, I could ask him about those things, but I can't really confront him about him, like, in this context, really. Right. And then, so if I can't, then I have no actual, like, legitimate cause to disrespect him in any way.

If I can't back up why I don't respect the guy, you know what I mean? Then I'm just, you know, so the whole social psychology of the situation is I've got to be as professional as I can and just politely disagree with the gentleman. right like what else am i going to do but then the thing of it is just like he said and this comes up from time to time is that the war party doesn't know what they're talking about or if they do that's fine but they can't withstand the scrutiny that comes from dealing with the antiwar dot com crowd we just know too much for them and the same would be true about dammick adams over at the ron paul institute or a lot of other great libertarians who are good on this stuff but you mentioned dave smith dacamp kyle an zelone any of us would have done the same job um against him

And so then that was it. I mean, the interview started with, geez, Al-Qaeda over through Damascus over the weekend. What's up with that? Wharton, you go first. So I just, like, laid it all out. And then what's he going to do? Argue with me. Can't argue with me.

So he goes, yeah, that's pretty much right. He essentially concedes the whole argument that, like, yeah, it's not good. And then when it came to the war in Ukraine, you know, he insists but can't really, demonstrate that, well, no, Putin is just very aggressive, right? This isn't a reaction just because I say so, really, but he didn't, I have all this argument that I can build and did build about why it was a reaction to what we were doing, and just look at what the terms of the proposed treaty were, right? Like, he was, you know, there was a whole discussion going on here. Couldn't really argue with that other than to say, no, no, no, he's just looking for

excuses to rebuild the empire, which is, again, the same old kind of question begging stuff. justifying his reaction as the initial action when it's clearly not. And then when I said that, look, Ukraine's losing the war. It's been all downhill since September 29, sorry, September 22. It's only getting worse for them. That was their last big win was at Kurson and Harkiv in September of 22. And they've been doing nothing but lose men and territory and money since then. And their population fleeing elsewhere and all the rest of this.

And so it's time that we admit the truth about this because otherwise we're doing the same thing that happened in Vietnam, the same thing that happened in Afghanistan, where the losing side just insists that if only we stay longer, it's going to work at some point. But they don't really have an argument as to how or why. And they end up losing anyway, but just with more people killed and more resources wasted. And I was one of those who said that about Afghanistan all along from 2001 all the way through. and I was right the whole time and I was still right when Donald Trump finally called it quits and made the peace deal with the Taliban to get

out of there and then Trump the reason, I mean, pardon me, not Trump, Biden, the reason it all went to hell was because Biden kicked the can down the road. If he had stuck by Trump's deal, we'd have been out by the first of May 2021. And so Biden, by delaying

withdrawal, he just stupidly, like the Taliban didn't delay their takeover the country. If we had been gone by May, the Taliban still would have taken over Kabul in August, and then we'd have had that decent interval where everybody can look away, instead of having it all happen while the Americans are standing there and getting suicide bombed at the gate of the airport on the way out, and just the whole catastrophe of the way that they did that. But anyway, same thing here. You can sit here and insist, and every time I go on the Pierce

Morgan show, including the last time, and whatever, when we talk about this, General Clark said the same thing. Well, we just can't allow this. Yeah, well, who are you to disallow it? You're not in any position to uncause it from happening. It's already a done deal. Look at how much territory they've already taken. They're only taking more and more all the time. So then Clark said to me, okay, you're right. Oh, I should, I should end. There is one solution. That would be to send in the American military. Our third infantry division, our Marines, our 82nd Airborne, our Navy, our Air Force to blast those Russians out of there. That would work at incredible cost and the likelihood of full-scale thermonuclear war, full-scale combat

between NATO and the Russian Federation and H-bombs going off over cities. Over who controls the Donbass? No, I don't think so. Nobody's really proposing that. The worst Warhawks say, we can't allow this, but then they don't say, send in the 82nd Airborne. So what They say? What is their solution? They don't have one. None of them do. And when I said, Clark, come on now, you keep dodging the question. What if you crane can't win? This is actually had been asked by Jenk Younger on the original show. And he had dodged the question then. You never answered, Jank. Answer me now. If you crane can't win, which they can't, now what? We got a deal. It's only getting worse for them. Like, why? Are we pretending here? What are we doing? And then he said to me, okay, yes, but we shouldn't talk like. that. Because that, you know, kind of undermines our position for negotiations. And then I joke to Clark, I think I said, the same thing that when this happened between J.D. Vance and Richard Hananya on Twitter last week, or a few weeks ago, was, I don't think the Russians are learning anything from me when I talk about where their soldiers are on the ground

in Ukraine. Admitting the truth of this is admitting why we should. negotiate now. You're saying if we admit the truth, then that's going to undermine our position negotiations, because then the Russians are going to find out that right now they own a fifth of what we used to call eastern Ukraine and have now renamed it, Russia. I think they know. I mean, they passed a law, and Putin signed it, you know, officially incorporating these four provinces into the Russian Federation. So what are we talking about? And for a four-star general, that's his argument? That's the best he's got, because we don't want to admit the position of weakness that we're in, because then the other side that's in the position

of strength, we'll find it out. I mean, come on. And the idea that we make foreign policy, you know, along those parameters, right, based on, like, cheap public relations instead of doing the right thing. I mean, it's no wonder when you look back at the war in Vietnam. Like, how did this last? Well, you had a bunch of near-do-wells whose interest it was in to keep it going. That's what.

And they didn't want to admit defeat because that would be admitting defeat. In fact, we have LBJ on tape saying on the phone, I can't be the first president to lose a war. So on that basis, we're going to continue it and kill another couple of million guys and another few tens of thousands of Americans. Conscripts because LVJ doesn't want to go down in history as the first president to lose a war. But then he did anyway. Yeah. That's probably the roughest thing is that these are people. lives that are having to fight in these circumstances and that's so easily lost when you get into the abstraction of land and who gets what and how are we going to divide this is that people

have to die. People have to be forced into conscription and fight wars on other people's behalf over ego and a sense of pride and a sense of national unity and these pieces and people actually have to pass away for that. I apologize. I have kept you incredibly long, but I want to ask one more question, because it's topical, at least in my country. We're dealing right now. Former Prime Minister Trudeau basically came forward and said he does think that President Trump is interested in redrawing boundaries, in working towards a new negotiation on where our boundaries are. How do you, as an American, consume that information? You mean, as far as Eastern Ukraine? No, within Canada, that they want to rewrite the Canadian

borders. I don't know about that. You know, Trump talks really crazy about a lot of things, and I can't imagine that he really means to incorporate any part of Canada into the United States. I mean, to what end? I mean, nothing but cost and no gain. And, you know, it's just, and even like it's just basic Republican consultants would tell him, like, by hook or crook or anything you could possibly do. You're just importing a bunch of Democrats, right? They're never going to be right-wing voters, the Canadians. They're always going to be the liberals. So it's just like adding another organ to the union or something. Why would we do that? It makes no sense to do that. So, you know, possibly he has in mind,

you know, trying to control as much of the Arctic as he can. That's clearly what's behind all his talk about Greenland and the rest of that. That's where the competition is, is for the Northwest Passage with Russia and China. But, We can have all the bases in Canada we want just by asking or, you know, politely insisting. We don't need to steal Canada to build a military base there. We have bases in Greenland already, for example. And not that Greenland's part of Canada, but you see what I mean. America's the world empire.

We can have our Canadian bases, just the same as we have overflight rights for our nuclear bombers, too. You know what I mean? Like, you guys are. You're stuck between us and the Reds. Well, the Russians now, but you know what I mean? So Scott, I really have to appreciate you. I've been looking forward to the the opportunity to speak with you for a very long time now. I've been following your work fascinated by your book and by how you conduct yourself in these very important interviews that really like enlightened people like myself to think more critically about where do my position stand. How did I come to these positions? And and you make these points about unprovoked unprovoked. Like that's what run ran through my mind. That's what I've heard on all television shows within Canada. That's, That's my understanding, and I liked when Eric Weinstein coined the term intellectual dark web, you are a true example of that. Again, people can disagree with you.

I think they have a tough time debating you on such a topic, but you can't dispute that you come to these conclusions and this information based on citations, references, a deep understanding, a long time of studying this. And that gives us all a pause to want to work harder and learn more about the issues that we're going to have strong positions on and be humble as we walk towards. a deeper understanding of these issues and I just I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with someone who has like such a strong foundation of a philosophy and then comes to conclusions because you can see where you come from on them and I think there's a lot to learn about that and not pretend to understand these issues and yell louder than others you you are a very admirable individual and I appreciate you for your time well thank you very much for having me and I would just remind your audience that the book is like one-third citations so it looks intimidating but

It's really a decent enough reading. I really hope people get something out of it. I couldn't agree more. Keep up the great work. How can people follow along with your work? I'm at Scott Horton.org, Scott Horton's show.com, Libertarian Institute.org, antiwar.com, and Amazon.com.

Sounds good. Perfect. All right. Thanks a lot. Thanks again.