Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 10/9/26 Larry Johnson: Sanctioning Russia Won’t Work

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

Scott interviews Larry Johnson about the status of Washington’s campaign to weaken the current Russian regime. Discussed on the show: “Dispatch from Moscow: The Collapse Narrative Keeps Missing the Real Russia” (Sonar21) “The Human Cost of The War Nobody Is Counting: Sulfur, Fertilizer and an Email from Florida” (Sonar21) Larry C. Johnson is a former CIA officer and intelligence analyst, and a former planner and advisor at the US State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. Follow his analysis at Sonar21   Sign up for the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom at scotthortonacademy.com For more on Scott's work: Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott's other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott's books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/43D82oY (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/4eMQblu Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/4a5fKvx Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tax Attorney Matt Sercely https://agoristtaxadvice.com; Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com; and Crowdhealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/ (use promocode Horton) You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/ or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app: https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yes, sir, it's the Scott Horton show brought to you by expat money. That's expatmoney.com slash Scott. Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest. Reporting to the American people, what's going on in this country? Because the babies I'm anxious. We're dealing with Hitler revisited. This is the Scott Horton show. Libertarian foreign policy, mostly.

When the president visit, that means that it is not only... We're going to take out seven countries in five years. They don't know what the fuck they're doing. Negotiate now. End this war. And now here's your host, Scott Horton. Aren't you guys introducing Larry Johnson again? You know him, a former CIA officer and now a great war analyst.

Pretty good anti-war guy, I think you could say. Here is his great website, Sonar 21. What you want to do is sign up for his email list. And that way you'll get his article every single more. He's got a great piece here. And if it ain't by him, it's by a guest, but usually it's by him. And it's always just really in-depth, crucial information.

Couldn't recommend it. Welcome back to the show. Larry Hayden. Thanks, man. Hey, and always honored to be with you. Cool. Yeah, good to have here. So, I want to ask you about so many different things.

I guess let's start with Russia. You had this piece here. Russia is not collapsing, a reply to Khan Kaufflin. And now I know that you went to Russia recently. You talked with Sergei Lavrov and all kinds of things. But I want to start with this about the economic war against Russia. And, you know, there may be a parallel here or two with Iran if you want to tie that in. We have had sanctions against Russia for a long time.

And although, you know, in stages, they've gotten much and much worse at different times. And same with Iran. And then the idea is that, well, yeah, if you mess with Uncle Sam, and the Treasury Department will come and destroy your economy. Ask the Venezuelans. You know, you thought communism was bad. Just wait till our embargo hits your ass, you know. So, but then, so how come it's not working, Larry,

because Iran and Russia were supposed to have given up by now. Well, we haven't figured out. It's like we've got these Eskimos in Alaska, this January, and we're going to prevent them from getting snow. We're going to cut you off from snow. And they're like looking at you going, what are you talking about? So here's Russia, self-sufficient in oil, self-sufficient in gas, self-sufficient in food, self-sufficient in every major natural resource that a country needs in order to not only survive,

but to run industry. And we decided, oh, yeah, we got this great idea. We're going to embargo them and cut them off from the global economy. That's the one country in the world that you could literally build a wall around it and it would function fine. They'd go on about their life. In the 1990s,

with the breakup of the Soviet Union, Boris Shelton said, we don't need to make any more of our aircraft. They had commercial jet lighters. We'll stop that. We'll just buy it from Boeing and Airbus. And that's essentially what Russia did for the next, you know, 25 years until started the special military operation and

the immediate imposed sanctions. Boeing, we're not going to sell you any more planes. We're not going to give you any parts. Same for Airbus. So the Russians went, okay, so they reopened their domestic commercial airline business. They've now rolled those planes out, and they're great. And they're cheaper than Airbus than Boeing. In fact, In fact, I think we'll see in the coming years, they will be competitive alternatives for Boeing in places like South America, Africa, and Asia. So, again, once again, just the stupidity of Western policymakers thinking that they're all, we're really going to hurt Russia. And Russia's, you know, they've got, they're like Eskimos, man. They've got all this snow.

they don't care if you try to stop ice deliveries to them because they can make their own. Yeah. Well, it makes sense. It's the same thing really if the world tried to put a blockade on the United States of America. I mean, we just happen to be rich with everything that we need. And it would suck.

It would, you know, distort our prices. And we would have to adjust for sure, but we'd be okay. And so, yeah, it makes sense in the way that you put it there. Now, of course, they are having to spend a lot. I don't know, you know, the exchange rate, and how much, you know, and how anyone calculates it or what the truth is versus the narrative. But they are spending a hell of a lot on this war.

Yeah. You can read the Washington Post that that's really bad for your economy if you're Russia. The same Washington Post will say, that's great for your economy if you're America. Right. You can tell you that. Go ahead. The difference is the Russians are, you know, they get bang for their buck. So we just learned first of August the general dynamic.

I was forced to suspend a contract they had with the Department of War, the Pentagon. They got paid $530 million to build a plant that would make artillery shells. It was right outside of Dallas, Texas. And after two and a half years and $530 million, they had produced a grand total of zero artillery shells. Now, you compare that with Russia, who back in April of 2022, they were producing 450,000 artillery shells a year. But as that war heated up, they recognize, okay, we got to boost production. Well, this year, they're doing 4.5 million shells per year.

And even Mark Ruta, the NATO Secretary General, conceded, Russia is building more artillery shells in three months than NATO and the United States combined can build in a year. So, yes, they're spending a lot of money, but they're getting bang for their buck. It's not going, you know, $530 million gone? What the hell did they do? What did general dynamics do with it?

You know, no accountability. It's just, ah, you know, well, right. In fact, they ended up getting some more grants from the federal government for other projects. It's like, if you can't deliver on this one, how can we trust you to deliver on anything? So it hasn't, so far it hasn't skewed the Russian economy to the point that they're having to make sacrifices. The rest of the economy is functioning normally. if anything the complaint is they don't have enough workers. Think of that.

You've got low unemployment. Oh, we need more workers. Well, you know, every country in the world would love to be blessed with that kind of problem because you can solve that with bringing in folks from outside. Yeah. Not in, I don't mean it in like a negatively personal way or whatever, but just it's interesting to me for a larger point, I guess. Can you tell us a little bit about who Khan Coughlin is, who's making this case?

Is he just a journalist or something? Yeah, he's just, he's a British journalist. I think he writes with a, if I recall it, he's with the telegraph. And he's conservative and he's been a pro booster of the war. The problem is he painted this picture of Russia in this dire economic situation, losing. And, you know, it just, it doesn't. match up with, you know, at least what I saw on the ground. Now, I wasn't out on the front lines. But what you do, let me tell you what you don't see in social media.

Russian social media is not controlled. You can, people are free to post whatever they want to post in the same way like they do in Ukraine. In Ukraine, you see multiple videos of these cemeteries with freshly dug graves stretching to the horizon. You don't see that in Russia. And I guarantee you the Russians would be reporting that if it was happening. So, yes, they've suffered casualties, but not the massive, massive numbers that Ukraine has. Yet the West persists in saying, oh, that Russia is too slow on the battlefield, that Russia is suffering enormous losses.

And again, the math, when you sit down and look at what the size of the Russian Army was back in April of 2022, what it is today, basically double the size, what the number of people recruited each year. And within that recruitment every year, there's also people who sign contracts, whose contracts come to an end and they get out. but Russia consistently has been signing up 30,000 soldiers, 30,000, about 35,000 new soldiers per month, every month since January 2023.

And that's why the army's grown. If they were losing, as the Ukraine claims, 30,000 a month, that means Russia, in order to have grown its army will have needed to recruit 60, 65,000 a month. Well, they're not doing that. It's 35,000. So, and I asked the retired general, Genni Bursinski, he used to be active with NATO

when the Russians were still on friendly terms with NATO. And he said what's going on is just the instructions to the Russian army at the outset were minimal, your casualties. Putin didn't want them running operations that were going to risk large number of Russian casualties. He said if you're slow moving, you're slow moving, that's fine.

But we're going to minimize the casualties. And that's what they've done. Man, it's so cool. I own Liberty Stickers again. Liberty Stickers.com. Everyone else's stickers suck. But these ones are really good. Like, for example, this one I made back years ago.

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and he will help you construct your taxes in such a way where you pay the absolute minimum. That's agoristtaxadvice.com for Matt Sersley, agoristtaxadvice.com. So a few things there, but I guess one of them is, and this has been bothering me, whatever, I guess the whole time, but particularly has come up a couple times this year. When we had this propaganda campaign in the spring in the early summer there about how, boy, Ukraine is sure taking it to Russia now, and they're turning the tide now. And what we're going to do is we're going to force the Russians to the table. We're going to hit them so hard.

They're going to have no choice but to surrender now. and there was an article in the telegraph that said Russia is near defeat. Now's the time to finish them off while we got them on the roads and all this kind of thing. And like, whatever, man. I've lived through this over and over again. So I know that this happens all the time.

But it seems to me, does it seem to you, like to kind of a weird level, there's an unreality, like a level of experts who believe such absolute idiocy about their own policy as they're implementing it, where as compared to any idiot on Twitter who can see right through what they're doing and what they're saying

and don't believe it for a minute. But like in Washington, and I know it's always like this, like some people are lying and some of the others work for them and are supposed to believe it and kind of repeat it and whatever, the media,

whatever, they build a consensus. But it seems really dangerous if you're really building your war policy on the same propaganda. You're just telling the people, the people. You're supposed to know that you're lying and still base your battle plan on the truth and not the smoke that they all seem to be blowing and inhaling back again, hotbox style, you know? Yeah. Well, look, you've laid that out extensively in your book Provoked, which I understand

you're coming out with a new edition, an updated version. Yes, sir. I have fixed one million typos and a couple of minor errors. So far nothing narrative changing, but just a couple of dates wrong and stuff like that. Yeah, but as you've documented in that, this entire self-delusion on the West, trying to present Russia as this aggressive military force. You know, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the new Russian state, apart from this, we'll call it the invasion of Ukraine, the only other time Russian troops went outside of Russia for military action was in Georgia. But that, despite Russian, you know, Western claims that this was aggression by Russia, ignore the fact that Russia still had peacekeepers in Obsessia, Ossetia, and Abkhazia, never separating, you know, they had these ethnic conflicts between Georgians and these locals. And so Russians had peacekeepers in there since 1991.

And lo and behold, in July of 2008, NATO decided it was a good idea to launch attacks against those Russian soldiers. Georgia did. And Russia punched back quick and, you know, defeated him. So apart from that, Russia hasn't been off on military adventures. Russia has not been – the only other time they went out was in 2014 invited by the government of Bashar al-Assad, hey, come help us. And they said, okay, we'll come hell. That's it. In contrast to the United States constantly intervening in the military and in the civil affairs of other countries with military force.

And I mean, you go back before Vietnam. But it's continued from Vietnam on up to you just look at the list of countries where you want to talk Libya, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen. So, you know, we got quite, and then, you know, the Balkans, you got to mention Serbia. So, you know, we're the ones who's the actual aggressor, and yet we continue to project onto Russia that they are what we are instead of acknowledging that the Russians are very, it sounds contradictory, but it's a conflict diverse, and that's because of the losses that they suffered in World War II. I had a chance to visit while in Moscow a private military museum. Now, it's owned by the guy who'd be, he's the equivalent of the owner of Lexus Nexus. Okay. That's how he's made

his money. And he took all of his money, or a good portion of it, and he built these four buildings, military museums. One building's filled with tanks. One buildings from like World War I up to Cold War. one's filled with artillery pieces, one's filled with staff cars, and one is just a narrative. But on the narrative building on the wall are all of his family members who died in the great patriotic war. So, I mean, they still remember this to this day. And just as a side note, the tanks in his tank house, they all work. There's a, There's a Sherman tank that was used in Brad Pitt's movie, Fury. So when you see Brad Pitt and that's the tank, and it runs.

And I climbed inside a T-34 tanks. It's right next to the Sherman. And the guy said, you want to start it? And I go, oh, hell yes. So I got to start a T-34 tank, and loud as can be. But the point was, I said, okay, Jane Fonda. You, traitor. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, but what was interesting is it was a reminder of the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union back then. Because at one point in the exhibit, they bring out a Thompson submachine gun and hand it to me. So, you know, I checked to make sure it was unloaded. It was. But the reason they have Thompson submachine guns is we sent shiploads of those to the Russians to help them fight the Nazis.

And the staff cars, there were dodges and fords and Chevys. And then the Russians made their knockoffs of those. But the point was we had a very close relationship with the Soviet Union during World War II. And then at the end of that war, man, we pivoted, did a 180 and said, okay, now you're the enemy. Yeah. And then when the Soviet NFL, we kind of made friends with them, but then screwed them and made enemies out of them again anyway and started another Cold War.

So I'm really interested in your time spent talking with Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister there. He's been for the minister since I don't know when, but I know for a very, very long time, virtually, Netanyahu, virtually Putin's entire regime there. And so I know you sat there and got. his side of the story and all that. But then again, I know you're CIA and you're a patriot and you're no dummy.

You're not just going to let this guy buffalo you and blow a bunch of, you know, smoke up your rear end and tell you about how everything is, you know, from Russia's point of view. Or, you know, you're not going to let him get away with telling you what to think here. So tell us what he said. And then if you could, like tell us how much of that's, you know, really right and how much if you think that, you know, he's being uncharitable to the American side of the story here, if at all, or what's the deal with him? And what was it really overall that he told you is the most important part there?

Yeah, so this is my second time to sit down and have sort of a conversation with him. Be it, I was in a group. I was accompanied by John Mearsheimer, Alistair Crook, and Judge Napolitano. And then Alistair's wife, Asley, she's a scholar in her own right. But the previous one was Judge Napolitano, myself, and Mario Nafal. And in this session, LeVroff was, he was much more relaxed. You know, the first time we did it, you know, he was very professional, answered our questions.

There was no tap dancing. And he gave very in-depth answers. But this time, there was no. no limits on what you could ask. And, you know, I think you've talked to John Mearsheimer before. John, John's not some shy retiring wallflower. You know, he asked very tough, direct questions, which he did. And Lavrov answered, you know, wasn't hesitating.

I did, I did start the evening off. We had the four of us, five of us had been at the new economics school doing the seminar that afternoon. and then we got into the van to drive to what's called the foreign ministry residence. It's actually, it was actually the former home of Laurentia Beria, sort of a dark place from the Soviet era. But it's a place where they hold official functions. And the word came, no ties. Get your ties off.

So, okay. And so I took one of my Florida shirts for Lavrov. because when he came in, I said, hey, you know, he recognized me and smiled. And I said, you know, I've known as Larry the shirt Johnson. So I'm giving you one of my shirts. And he goes, is it used? And I go, no. Come on, it's brand new.

And he said, thank you. But the two big takeaways was one, at the Anchorage Summit, Putin made concessions to Trump. that he was going previously said that we were not freeze in place the line of conflicting hirsaan and zapparisha he agreed to do that provided that trump got the agreement to of ukraine to withdraw wait do we know that that's true or he just claimed that to you that that put the way down on that at anchorage is that right yeah he wouldn't have said that if it wasn't true because he back, you know, and then he was, Go ahead.

Yeah, he was, you know, and he said that's what, they've really, this is why he said in public that Trump is agreement and capable. They've had, they had an agreement in place. And they go back, they continue to decide what happened. On that point, Larry, was that already reported somewhere else to? No, no. That's one of the things that they read on for this.

This is like, you only heard this from Lavrov this day. Right, right. Because the reason I'm, I'm dwelling on this is because this, to me, is just absolutely crucial. And it's something that I have seen reported numerous times, I believe, twice in the Wall Street Journal. And I believe both times, now, maybe only was the first time was in the Wall Street Journal. And I forget what the damn second one was. But in the journal, they claim to be quoting Russian sources. It wasn't coming from America saying that the Kremlin told us this.

It was Russians telling them this, that if we could just get the Donbass, we might be willing to freeze the line in Ziproja and Kersan. And that's how it's just absolutely crucial. And it seems like nobody else ever picks up on that. But because, you know, under, as we've discussed before, under Russian law, they passed a law and Putin signed it, that all of Zproja and all of Kurson belong to Russia. Right.

I mean, one third of Kerson is on the other side of the river. Yeah, they weren't going to... They weren't going to cede control of it, per se, and to say, oh, it's no longer part of Russian territory, but they were going to freeze the line, and they were going to stop the military activities at that point, as a gesture of goodwill, if you will. Okay, but then not necessarily that they were willing to negotiate

even a permanent piece based on those lines? Correct. Yeah, he didn't say that. But you've heard that, have you heard that too since then the way I have? That floated before? Well, I had seen it reported, like you said, in the Wall Street Journal, and I always discounted it because I said, hey, the Russian, Russia has been uncompromising on this. But that was the biggest surprise, and Meersheimer wrote about it and actually did a video on

it as well. The Russians got a compromise on something. They're not going to walk backwards, but they could draw a line where it is and say, okay, well, we're not going to go further like we had sworn to before. And that's at least something. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I think they were, until recently, are willing to make compromises. And I asked Lovroff again to clarify because the first time we met with the judge and Mario and myself, he brought out and said, look, that agreement we signed in Istanbul or that we had a tentative agreement with Ukraine in April 2022. He said, the Ukrainians are the ones who brought that to the tape.

We were essentially agreeing to what the Ukrainians offered. And so I made a point of asking him, I said, you know, Mr. Foreman, I just want to go back to something you said previously, just make sure I understood it properly. This is what I thought you said. Is that what you meant? He goes, no, absolutely. That's what happened. So he's insistent that, and that agreement, that would have left the Don Bass under the control of Ukraine.

Right. So this notion that the Russians were uncompromising is just, you know, it's not backed up by the facts. Yeah, I mean, I think what it did on, as far as they got on, the Dombast was punting on the official status. Right. And therefore agreeing then, though, that the official status would be settled diplomatically. Correct. And not that they, it's not that the Russian signed on the dotted line of the Ukrainian proposal 100%. But it is the case that it was the Ukrainian proposal that they were basing their entire negotiation on at that point.

and that the Russians did sign off on virtually all of it. I forgot even now what the discrepancy was, but it was small. And the way that they had settled, it was sort of like the Lisbon Agreement in Bosnia. The way they had settled the question of the lines was to punt till later. Let's solve the conflict now.

Let's agree to stop fighting now. And then we'll figure out how to solve the lines at the table in six weeks, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. And so, which, of course, America really feel too. Actually, all they wanted, all the Russians wanted was security for the Russian speakers, that their rights would be protected and security for the Orthodox clergy, that they would not be persecuted or have their churches

confiscated or that they'd be attacked. That's what that was in the Constitution. Yeah. And Zelensky initially agreed to it until Boris Johnson, no relation, and Joe Biden intervened with Lloyd Austin. and tagging along and change, really changed the course of history in a very negative way. Yeah. All right.

In fact, speaking of that, zoom out, Larry, to orbit, man. Look down and stretch your timeline out to like a century or two. I know you're really sharp on this stuff. You studied this your whole life. What does this mean for the future of the relationship between the rest and, pardon me,

the West and its eastern most frontier here, the Russian state, the Russian civilization. I mean, we've been back and forth with them for 250 years now. Yeah. And, you know, Daryl Cooper one time said to me like,

I don't know how they're going to forgive us for this for 200 years, man. Yeah. No, I think I think Daryl's right on that. I mean, to go back and look at the history between Russia and the United States starting under Catherine the Great. And, you know, the fact that John Quincy Adams

was the U.S. ambassador to that court and that, you know, Russia intervened in the American Civil War to try to keep the Brits and the French from going in, intervening on the side of the Confederacy. So we've actually, we've had these relationships that we just, you know, we blotted out. We don't want to remember it because that would require us to treat Russia differently. But is Sergei Kadaganov, you know, I become friends with Sergei. And back in his sort of epiphany came in 2014. He said up until then, he said, I was really a Europhile. I felt our future was we were more European than easterners that we needed to work closely with Europe.

But he was finally convinced there's zero future with Europe. And he said, we need to turn to the east, to Siberia, to China. and, you know, he's been a big advocate of that, and that has, we've seen a shift in the Russian attitude and the Russian people that, yeah, shifting to the east. It's not like, you know, back in the 70s during the Cold War, boy, Western culture was so influential, rock and roll, blue jeans, you know, McDonald's, but it is, the appeal of the West has abated. it's no longer what it was. And they recognize their future is in the East, which, you know, is particularly, this is devastating for Europe. Europe needs the natural gas and the oil that Russia produces.

But because it is now rejected that, it's paying higher prices for a commodity now that has been an even shorter supply because of the shutdown of the Strait of Hermuz. And it's economically devastating for Europe. They may not recover from this. Hey guys, me here for crowdhealth at join crowdhealth.com slash Horton. And what it is is it's a replacement for insurance. It's not insurance. It's crowdsourcing instead.

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join crowdhealth.com slash horton. Hey guys, if you sign up for my substack at Scott Horton's Show.com, then you get all the shows a day early and without ads. Pretty good, right? Scott Horton Show.com. Hey, look, guys, Scott Horton Show and Scott Horton Academy, swag. Just look at the YouTube channel there and under every video. There's links to all the stuff. You know, I interviewed Ben Aris from B&E in Tele News, former telegraphical order,

and Russia expert and stuff. And you know what he told me was he said Putin has still not turned to the East. Putin still is an Atlantis or a, you know, a Europeanist and has not changed his orientation in that way that many people in this government have, but he still thinks that, of course, I mean, what are you

going to do? Russia is a white Christian civilization. It's the eastern part, the eastern front of the West, but it's not an Asiatic culture by and large. Regardless of what it looks like on the map, you know what I mean? In fact, Putin back in the 1990s

told Madeline Albright, I think it was in the 90s. Or maybe it was like in early 2000. He says, oh, no, it wasn't Albright. I'm sorry, it was his biographer. He says, well, look, we like to dress up and eat with chopsticks and stuff sometimes. Like, it's fun. But come on, at the end of the day, we are a European civilization.

Then the interviewer says, but what if they won't have us? And I forgot what he says. We have to figure that out. But like, but we got to try. Anyway, so Ben Harris told me that hasn't changed, even after all of this, that Putin is still a Western-facing Russian leader here. Yeah, I disagree a little bit with Ben on that. It has changed in terms of the relationship with Xi Jinping and with China. Now, one of the things, Joyce, I'm sure you've run across it as you've been writing,

that the attitude in the United States in particular among academics and so-called, called experts, is that, oh, the China is just going to swallow up Russia. And there's just, Russia's just going to be some step and fetch it for China. And Russia is going to be humiliated by them. You know, I'm not picking up any of that vibe. You see a lot of the Chinese have an active tourist trade in Moscow. The Chinese are moving around. The Chinese vehicles are becoming much more prevalent because

frankly, they're terrific vehicles and they're relatively inexpensive compared to the stuff that was coming out of the West. Well, we're boycotting, right? We won't sell our cars to them anymore. So we're just pricing and putting ourselves right out of another big market. Yeah, and these Chinese vehicles, they're comfortable. I've been in them. I've been in what's called the Exceed, which is sort of a compra,

It's comparable to the Kia tell you ride, an SUV. So it, but man, it's got bills and whistles that the, the key, I had a Kia tell you right at one point that the Kia didn't have. So, you know, the Chinese are expanding that way. But there is, you know, when you look at the growing importance of the Shanghai cooperation organization, the SEO, I think it has been, you've seen that reflected in the The anti-European sentiment has been reflected in recent statements by both the foreign ministry, the threats that were made to Europe regarding Kaliningrad,

because after repeated threats of the Europeans that were going to basically attack it and take it. Putin at the Valdei conference, he made it clear. Lavrov made it clear. It's been sent out in letters saying, we'll use every weapon in our arsenal against you if you attempt this, which is a, they didn't say we're going to nuke you, but that was the way to say we're going to nuke you without using the word nuke. Man, I'm so glad you brought that up.

I had seen that and, you know, the article at anti-war.com had the Russian threat, but it didn't have the antecedent. And I was like, what in the hell is going on here? And then only it was after that. Someone had asked me an interview, I think. And it was only after that where I read, where it was this same guy, he keeps popping up like a bad penny since the 1990s,

Anne Applebaum's wife, Radislaw Sikorsky, the Polish former everything minister, who he was the one, I mean, look, when he makes threats like this, it's not the same as just some pundit.

I mean, he was the former minister and the foreign defense minister, I believe, and saying, yeah, maybe we should put a blockade on and or,

take Kaliningrad away from the Russians. And so this is the most predictable, obvious, you know, flashpoint and potential for war. I mean, this, go ahead. Well, no, you had General Donovan, the head of USUCOM, your US-European command, make the same threat. Like, oh, really? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, he said, we'll take it in two days. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. And you don't realize it was while I was with John Mearsheimer and I were together up in St. Petersburg. And one day they took us on a boat trip to what's called the Peterhof. Peter I first had built this magnificent residence that really became Catherine the Great's residence. And it's about a 45-minute boat ride across this body of water. the opposite shore is Finland.

So, I mean, it's not like these countries are all far away. Up there in the Baltic Sea, they're all, you know, sort of clustered together. Yeah. Here, let me pull this up. I know I'm being redundant here from previous interviews, but not everybody watches or listens to every interview. But let me show this on the screen here for people who aren't familiar. This is just crucial as can be here. share this screen here.

So here's Kaliningrad, is this little strip of Russian land, naval base in a city here on the Baltic Sea between sandwich, between Lithuania and Poland. And he separated away from Belarus, which is a Russian close ally, by Lithuania here. And along this, you see this sort of straight border

between Poland and Lithuania is what's called the Swaliki Coralchi Corrid, door, and this is where there's a railway through here where the Russians are able to provide resupply and everything to their military base. And now, Pat Buchanan in 1999, when he warned against expanding NATO, he said, and of course it wasn't to low forward that they brought in the Baltics, but they were talking about it at the time. And Pat Buchanan said, if we go so far as to bring the Baltic states into NATO here, at that point then, from Russia's point of view, we will be stranding Kaliningrad behind NATO lines,

which is just fine in normal peacetime when everyone's getting along with the drunken pushover puppet government of Russia. But at some other point in time, this could absolutely be a flashpoint to nuclear war. And we saw at the start of the war with Ukraine, where Lithuania actually closed the railway, and the Russians threatened to bomb them.

And the head of the Defense Committee of Lithuania's parliament told the New York Times layer. He goes, look, we would never talk to the Russians this way or treat the Russians this way if we weren't members of NATO. But since America's our tough guy, big brother at our back, then that means that we could do whatever we want. And like the most idiot moral hazard, right?

Like, Alan Greenfield promised to bail out my bank so I can invest in whatever, you know, idiot green technology you can come up with. Yeah, this kind of thing. So we've written them this moral hazard for Lithuania to pick this fight for us. and for the Poles to pick this fight for us. This is how World War II started.

On the other side of Poland, there, this German city, and the Germans wanted a corridor to this German city, and the Poles said they would rather England and America fight about it. And then they lost themselves to Soviet communism for 75 years. Yeah. Yeah, no, it is one of these pieces of territory that could be a real flashpoint. And, you know, as you can see, that Baltic Sea that goes up, they're up there at the top where it says Finland,

that little inlet that's on the far right-hand side at about the 3 o'clock position, that's St. Petersburg. And the Peterhoff is just on the south shore of Russia about halfway to Estonia. And so, I mean, these countries, they're right next to each other. But after Russia issued that threat, you saw a complete change in tone from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia,

before they'd been yapping away like angry little dogs. And all of a sudden they went, okay, maybe we need to back off. This isn't such a good idea. Because they're so small that Russia could overrun them in a heartbeat. But Russia doesn't want to. But I did have a chance to interview and talk to a number of people, a couple of Lithuanians that had escaped Lithuania

because their political views were such that they were trying to protect the Russian language. Instead, they became objects of political persecution. One of them, a fellow named Ruslan, he'd actually run for mayor of, what was it, Riga, and it may have been Latvia, but, you know, the persecution of the Russian culture is real in these tiny, tiny little countries. I mean, the population in each of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, each of those countries, I think the Queensboro and New York City is bigger than those countries. Yeah, I mean, it's obviously a major mistake for them

to pick those kind of fights with their Russian minorities. When you have ethnic and religious minorities in your country, and especially they're tied to the state next state, door. I mean, look at all the Germans that live in what's now France, because those lines all the time. But since World War II, you had like a million or two million Germans live in France. Nobody cares because they're free. So they're not like ready to break out into warfare all the time because they don't really have anything to fight about. The French are not consistently persecuting the Germanic people of their east. You know what I mean? But so this is obviously a huge part of the

contention of what's been happening in Ukraine since Obama. over through the government there, and they launched the war in 2014. And if you were trying to write the Russians an excuse to invade the eastern part and or all of any of the three Baltic states, this would be how you do it, is let them be able to cite actual examples

of Russian-speaking people in their countries actually having their rights to pride because that's the whole point of the states, of course, right? is pretended is they're the security force. They have to protect those people if they need protecting. And that's, again, have to be used for the war in Ukraine right now. Yeah. So, I mean, let's take your case.

You're barely old enough to remember the Cold War and all of its glory. I mean, you were just growing up back then. I am old enough to remember. And you could, back then, you could spell out what our issues were with us. Soviet Union. They were promoting international communism. They were involved with supporting what they called liberation movements, which we saw as a threat to democracy. There was a genuine ideological struggle between the East and the West. And yet throughout that period, we didn't demonize the Soviets. We talked to them. Even when Soviet pilots were shooting down American pilots,

In Vietnam, we still talk to them. We negotiated the Salt Treaty, two of them, two versions, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. So we found a way to talk to them without demonizing him. Now I jump ahead and you look at Russia as it is today. Russia is not a communist state. Russia is not hauling people off the Lubyanka or Siberia in Germany. roves as, you know, we were told during the Cold War. And I asked John Mearsheimer this the other

day. It's a video that's going to post later today on countercurrents. But I said, can you explain to me this Western, I'll call it irrational Western hatred of Russia and a Putin in particular? And he's like, yeah, that's a tough one. It doesn't make sense. It's not like Putin did, has this a list of charges against him of all these terrible things that he's done. And when you step back and looked that Russia is an Orthodox Christian country, that's what they are. Now, they also found a way that like with the Muslims in Chechnya, they told him and said, hey, you're Russians, you practice Islam, we're going to leave you alone. Live your religious life as you see fit. But just remember, you're part of Russia, and the Chetachans go, amen, that's good. We're with you. So the Russians have

figured out a way to deal with all these sectarian differences that here in the United States, we are terrible at handling. But I still come back to it. Why the Western hatred of Russia? It's irrational. I mean, it's at such a level of vitriol where they're comparing Putin with Stalin. It's like, are you people really that historically ignorant? Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah. Mm, Moondos artisan coffees.

Explicitly, Scott Horton Show-flavored coffee. From Moondos artisan coffees, get it, they hate Starbucks, because Starbucks supports the war party. But Moondos Artisan coffees, they support peace. And so here you go. Scott Horton Show flavored coffee. It's part Sumatran and part Ethiopian, all mixed together and tastes so good in the morning and also in the mid-afternoon if you start getting sleepy.

Scott Horton.org slash coffee. Get you some. All right, you guys, me here for expatmoney.com slash Scott. And what it is is it's this great guy, Mikhail Thorup, and he's a world traveler and a real expert in what you can do to buy property and invest in property. overseas, protect your assets, and look into even living overseas if that is your interest. And if you just go to expatmoney.com slash Scott, you can get this free handy booklet, plan B residences and instant citizenships.

That's expatmoney.com slash Scott. Yeah, no, I'm with you. I mean, the whole thing is completely nuts. And it's, I think Mearsheimer is, well, he's certainly right when he says, that what happened was is after the loss of Crimea, after the overthrow of the government in 2014, they had to come up with a story for why this happened. If you listen to that Victoria Newland phone call,

the whole thing is her and Jeffrey Paiett, and they're going, we got to glue it, we got to stick it, we got to midwife it, we got to make it sale, we got to get it done before Putin can torpedo it. But then they didn't do that. The whole thing was a giant, god-dang disaster, and it blew up immediately

into the loss of the Crimean Peninsula and the outbreak of war in the east as all the people that eastern regions refuse to accept the rule of the new junta and they turned into a disaster. So then they had to invent, as this is Mearsheimer, they had to invent a story about what happened here.

And what happened here was Putin is a very bad guy. And even though we've liked him and gotten along really well with him for 15 years, now all of a sudden we hate his guts and he's Joseph Stalin, he's a psychopathic killer, and he's trying to recreate the Soviet Union because otherwise this is all Barack Obama's fault.

And we can't have that. And so it's Putin. He's evil. He did it. Now, I actually differed with Mir Schimer a little bit about this last time I talked to him because I was saying America was picking on Russia long before then. Yeah.

All of the pipeline wars of the 1990s and into W. Bush, all the color-coded revolutions and, you know, Cheney's Vilnius speech of 2005 and all of these things. they were laying down the gauntlet picking a bite with Russia way before that anyway. That was what he was reacting against so badly in his angry Munich speech of 2007. It was like, listen, you guys, you're really putting me in a bad position here, and you won't like me when I'm angry.

So what are we doing? You know what I mean? It was what that speech was about. So, you know, clearly America started way before that, but I think he's right that they didn't really come up with their narrative about what was going on here until they really were compelled to come up with a story after the loss of Crimea. And that story was Putin woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, Larry. And now, as Conneleez-R-R-I said, well, this isn't the Vladimir Putin. I know.

Why? I think he has a mental illness now or something. Yeah, right. In other words, you caused this conflict and you refuse to take responsibility for it. Thanks. You know? No, exactly right. And, you know, as you and I have talked before, as I went back and looked at sort of the press coverage. The first, up until 2003, Putin got pretty favorable coverage in the West. But then what happened was the Gulf War, invasion of Iraq, 2003. And when he came out strongly against what the United States was doing, that's when the public opinion

or the sort of what Washington was saying about Putin, that's when it's changed. Now, what's interesting is we didn't have a similar change in attitude towards England or France. I mean, yeah, we called them, you know, the French bunch of surrender monkeys and that kind

of thing, but we didn't have the same vitriol directed at the French and Brits that we did at Putin. And from then on, then Putin became, quote, this aggressor. And it was in the aftermath of that that British MI6 began mounting these, you know, the poisoning of people to make it portray, try to portray Putin as this guy out of control, killing Brits.

When in fact, you know, the evidence really points to MI6 role, these were intelligence operations, part of a broader information operation campaign. And, again, one of the lingering things driving the anger was, Putin stopped the rape of Russia by the West. When he called the oligarchs in in the summer of, I think it was 2002, and just said, this stealing of our resources and selling them out to the West, that's going to stop. And you oligarchs, you're going to stop meddling in politics.

You can make as much money as you want. Government's not going to bother you. But you get involved with politics. I would put you in prison. Yeah. Was it a threat? Yeah. but, you know, let's say the proofs in the pudding, when you go back to Russia today

compared to what it was, what I'm told it was in 99, by an American buddy of mine who lived there at the time. It is nine-day difference. Prosperous, safe, beautiful. And it's just, it's like you wish, I call it, it's a cross between New York City and Washington, D.C., in terms of both the size, government buildings, some of the architecture, but it's clean and it's safe. Yeah. You know, it's such a paradox and it seems obvious to me that like, well, America was on this jihad against communism after the Cold War there. Stop being Stalinists.

Stop being Maoists. We're sending Milton Friedman over there, sort of a half-ass libertarian, to teach you, cooks about property rights and prices. See, you got to have problems. that way you know how to distribute your goods and services on the market there. And, well, then what do we think was going to happen? Obviously, they stopped starving to death and they started making things out of metal. Dude, now they've had prosperous, capitalistic economies.

And so now they're able to stand up for themselves. If you wanted to keep your boot on their neck, well, why not tell Milton Friedman to pipe down? Why not help marginalize Dang Xiaoping and promote Maoism, among the Chinese and keep them starving. Well, because that would be evil, right? We're glad that we talked them out of Marxism. Marxism is a good way to starve people to death. If you want to be prosperous,

you need prices and property rights. And so, well, good, but then that means we don't have the right to be mad at them, Larry, when they can now afford to have a Navy that floats, that they can afford to defend themselves when we are absolutely encroaching in their spheres of influence. Well, if you go back and start

But most Americans are not familiar with the history, the 50s and 60s with relations between China and Russia. After the death of Stalin and Khrushchev emerging, Mao Zedong, man, he didn't like Khrushchev at all. And he thought he was sort of wimpy on communist principles. So, I mean, they had a genuine ideological disagreement. And the United States worked to help split those two that they, didn't work together. There was only in the 1970s, you know, again, when Kissinger with Dixon engineered the raw pro schmalt with China, that this was, again, this policy was intended to keep Russia and China apart, develop closer relationships between the United

States and China. And it's sort of succeeded, but now we're at a stage where you don't see Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping arguing over who. who's the better communist or who's the most authentic communist? That doesn't even come up in conversation. And hell, you'd be even the hard press to argue that Xi Jinping is actually a communist. Man, they've got, you know, what they're doing on a, on the capitalist front is unbelievable. Putin is certainly not a red. I mean, even when he was in the KGB, who sided with the right wing against the commies?

Like when they did their, in August of 91, he sided with the reformists. Yeah. Yeah. And he's a genuine Orthodox Christian. You know, people say, oh, that's just put on. Well, he's a lot more observant about it. And than any of our recent presidents, referring to Trump, Biden, and Obama. So it's one of those things that I think the entire world,

world order is changing now. And what's happening in West Asia with the Persian Gulf, with the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, it has completely disrupted the global economy. And the West is having trouble coming to grips with that reality. I like it. When they shut down the Strait of Hermuz, this is the equivalent of amputating, let's say, amputating the legs of somebody. Now, an amputation that immediately imposes physical limitations on you is not necessarily the condition of the amputations permanent, but there are things you can do like at prosthetics and physical therapy, and you can rehab yourself so that you can get some mobility.

You never recover what you had before, but you can recover some of it. When you look at the economic effects of the cutoff of 20% of the world's supply of oil, sour, high sulfur oil, by the way, 25% of the supply of liquid natural gas, 25 to 30% of the world's supply of sulfur, 25% supply of urea, and 40% supply of helium. these touch most industries, not just one isolated. It affects farming gets affected in the worst because it leads to higher prices of nitrogen for fertilizer

and at least to higher prices of diesel to operate farm equipment. So we're starting to see more farm bankruptcies this year than ever before. The helium itself is critical in making computer chips. We're in the midst of an AI revolution. What do we need? More computers. And so the price of those computer chips is shooting up at the very time that we say we need them. Sulfur is involved not just with the production of fertilizer.

It's also a critical ingredient in processing metals like copper and nickel. And some of these effects are immediate. Some are going to be delayed. We're going to experience global food shows. shortages next summer. And it's unavoidable now. And there's nothing we can do about it. That's the damn shame about it. So here we've created an economic catastrophe in the Persian Gulf. And, you know, despite Trump's claims to the contrary that, oh, plenty of oils flowing, it's alive, it's not true. the effects are now being felt here.

So I just, you know, here in Manatee County where I live, price of groceries since February have gone up 33%. 33% increase in the price of food. One of my friends is a rancher out in East Manatee County. He said the combination of the fertilizer. and the feed prices and diesel. It's making him almost impossible to operate. And he may have to shut down.

I got a note the other day from one of my readers. He lives here in Manatee County. He works at Mosaic Mine Company. And that was in one of the articles that I wrote about the human cost. And he got called in Tuesday with all the other employees at this mine, mining company that's out in East Manatee. and just north in Polk County, and they were told, hey, guys, we're going to shut down the mine in six months.

You're going to be without a job. We'll try to find these jobs on the inside, but if we can't, you're going to have to, you're going to laid off. So, like I said, this is, and why? Because the price of sulfur has gone up so dramatically because of what got caught off in the Persian Gulf. So it's cascading. And it's not going away anytime soon.

And we had the head of Ramco say yesterday or day before yesterday that it's going to be a minimum of two years to repair the damage that's been done to the oil infrastructure in the Persian Gulf. Another energy analyst who I put a lot more stock in a fellow named Carl Miller, he says this can be five years. So take your pick, two years or five years, but that's two years or five years of global economic disruption. Yeah, but you know what, in the end, the Israeli cooks will be able to blow up the Al-Axam mosque and rebuild the temple and start to be practicing animals and inaugurate the Antichrist. So come on, man, it's all. It's the war in the end, Larry. Yeah, good point. I forgot about that.

I'm just kidding. There's no such thing as that. All right, listen. Thank you for doing my show. I'm sorry we had so little time to talk about Iran. I'm pretty sure you got to go hard out. I know I do. but let's come back and do a whole show about Iran sometime very soon.

Yeah, well, Iran and the Houthis. Watch the Houthis carefully. They may actually take out the regime, the Saudi Arabian government. Well, in that interesting way for you to leave it. So maybe I'll start next week. Preview of coming attractions. All right. Thanks, I appreciate. All right, my friend. Thanks.

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