Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 11/22/23 James Carden on Israel’s Role in the Ethnic Cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

James Carden returns to the show to discuss the Israeli role in Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Carden explains what the enclave was, and he and Scott run through the historical and geopolitical context behind its recent downfall. They then also discuss the ongoing destruction in Ukraine and the war in Gaza, as well as Biden’s strange new Israeli diplomat.  Discussed on the show: “Israel’s Other War: Ethnic Cleansing in the South Caucasus” (Antiwar.com) “Tel Aviv’s Man in Washington” (Antiwar.com) James Carden is a columnist and senior advisor to the American Committee for US-Russia Accord (ACURA) and a former adviser on Russia policy at the US State Department. His articles and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications including The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Spectator, UnHerd, The National Interest, Quartz, The Los Angeles Times, and American Affairs. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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slash Scott Horton's show. Hey, you guys, on the line, I've got James Cardin. He's a great guy. Dude, we've been talking for years. a real expert on Russia. He is the senior advisor to Accura. That's the American Committee for U.S. Russia Accord. And of course, he also writes for TAC, as we affectionately call it, the American Conservative magazine at the Americanconservative.com, as well as responsible statecraft. We're the very best friends of ours formerly from Tech. Also write. Welcome back to the show. How you

doing? I'm doing all right. Great. Happy Thanksgiving. Yeah, you too, man. Happy to have here and appreciate you making some time for us. Let's talk about Nagorno-Karabakh. First of all, that ain't even the extent of it, but let's just start there. Can you explain for the audience in case they might never heard of a thing? What is Nagorno-Karabok and why might they be interested? Sure. So Nagorno-Karabah was, until last month, a Armenian Christian enclave within Azerbaijan. And it is a piece of territory that Armenia and Azerbaijan have been fighting over for a very, very long time. And after the fall of the Soviet Union, so during the Soviet Union, this is sort of important. Nagorno-Karva had the status of a autonomous region, but after the Soviet Union ended,

it became an area of dispute between, as I said, Azerbaijan and Armenia. And for three decades now, Azerbaijan has had its eyes on that piece of real estate. given the fact that Azerbaijan has made a lot of money from its oil and gas deposits in the Caspian Sea, they were able to build up their military and with the support of their regional patron and ally Turkey. They were finally able to expel 120,000 Armenian Christians from their ancient homeland, Nagorno-Karabha. And this was done with the enthusiastic support of not only Turkey, but of Israel, who has become Azerbaijan's main arm supplier.

So it's a genocide that happened in real time before the eyes of the world, and it didn't receive very much attention. So I went over to Armenia last week and talked to some people, try to figure out what was going on, and I did it to raise some awareness of what had happened and why. Man, so, well, I didn't even realize that you had been over there, so that's really great. So, first of all, though, I have to ask you, since you're, you know, zooming out talking the international politics of the thing, what about the USA? Because Azerbaijan is a very close client state of America since the 1990s, correct? Well, the USA has played, this will not surprise you or your listeners,

a rather unhelpful role in the region. So it's sort of analogous to the role the United States played in Georgia. when we supported the anti-Russian pro-Western government of Mikhail Saakashvili, which resulted in Russia's invasion of that country in 2008. Having not learned the lesson then, we went on to support another pro-Western anti-Russian coup in Ukraine in 2014. We all know where that has led us. And something similar happened in 2018.

in Armenia when a Armenian parliamentarian and former journalist with the support of George Soros also came to power in what is called the so-called Velvet Revolution. He is also anti-Russian pro-Western and this fellow has proven to be extremely reckless and incompetent and he's managed to tick off just about everyone in the region. And unfortunately, because he managed to alienate the Russians by cozying up to us really cleared the way for Azerbaijan with the help, as they said, of Turkey and Israel, to ethnically cleanse this ancient Christian community

of Nagorno-Karabha. So, you know, we seem to follow the same playbook in the post-Soviet space. What I mean by the post-Soviet space, obviously the states that used to comprise the 15 republics of the Soviet Union. And it always kind of seems to end up badly for those countries. So that seems to be what is happening there. Yeah, no, I mean, that's huge and important. So this is straight out of that phrase from Henry Kissinger, which it is for,

from the middle of a sentence where he's warning not to, I forgot who it was, he's saying not to abandon in this case, but he's saying we'll be known as having this reputation that to be America's enemy is dangerous, but to be our friend is fatal. And he was, I'd have to go back, I'm sorry, I forget who it was that we were setting up and betraying that time. But you're saying that what happened here was it wasn't that Russia did a color code of revolution in our media. You're saying America did a color code of revolution in our media or something, you equivalent to that, which removed a pro-Russian government there that would have previously stood against Azerbaijan going this far, and they maybe wouldn't have dared then.

But since the Americans put this guy in, he wasn't willing or able to put up a fight and resist. And America sure wasn't going to back up any threat of his against the Azerbaijani's. Is that what you're saying? Pretty much. That's pretty much. And so they went ahead, and that was what allowed them to take advantage of that circumstance and push things this far.

Well, that sure answers a lot. Right. So the attitude of the Russians is basically, look, you're cozying up to the Europeans and the Americans. You're bringing our adversaries into the region. We're not going to lift a finger to help you out. And, you know, that's also true in regard to, you know. By the way, let me just add here real quick, because, I've been reading and writing a lot about this, that it was, I think, the Brits with not much help from the Americans that did the coup in 1993, and they overthrew the first democratically elected, maybe it was the second democratically elected president of Azerbaijan and replaced him with the former KGB dictator and put him back on the throne. And now he's died and this is his son. And this is the American client that we backed there all this time since Bill Clinton.

And we have this really unfortunate habit of also backing kind of radical Islamists. I mean, this fellow is, you know, very, you know, very much a, you know, Muslim supremacist. Yeah, you helped the Americans and the Brits back the Islamists in Chechnya against Russia in 99, 2000 there. And in Kosovo, right, and in Syria. Right. And then, of course, we're backing. I know you're not allowed to say this in Washington, but we happen to be backing a regime that is very cozy to the proud heirs of Stefan Bandera in Ukraine. So it's an odd sort of foreign policy where we're on the side of neo-Nazis and Islamist extremists. But that's Well, look, it's either that or let the pipeline run through Iran, and Israel says that's not allowed. Right.

So a lot of moving parts, and I thought it was worthwhile to sort of go over there, especially now when, you know, the headlines are dominated by the Israeli war on the civilian population in Gaza. I mean, that story has been so dominant that it is even. set aside or push to the back burner what's going on in Ukraine. It's quite a remarkable and sickening story that's unfolding before our eyes there in the Middle East. Yeah. And now, remind me, James, how many people are we talking lived in Nagoro, Conradbach? Because it's over. They cleansed every last one of them out of their bayonet point, right? But how many people we're talking about? Under 20,000. Man. So, when this does get, I don't want to segue all the way Nagaza here, but it does bring up the way

it's a fraught controversial thing and rightfully I guess about this word genocide. We're here I don't think they massacred anybody. They just said or else. I mean there had been some fighting previous to that but with this ethnic cleansing campaign

on the other hand they have now completely obliterated Nagorno Karabok as an Armenian enclave here and this little you know state within a state that they've maintained all this time. And then, but if you use the G word, it sounds like you're using the H word and talking about that time where millions of people were gassed and, you know, carbon, you know, exhaust piped to death there and machine gun to death by the Germans in the Second World War. And so, you know, I don't know, you're not, you're not trying to conflate the two, but you're using one word to describe both things. So could you explain a little bit about that, please?

Oh, of course. I don't want to, when you use that word, there is, as you rightly point out, a danger of appearing to downplay of the horrendous crimes perpetuated by the Nazi regime in mid-century. I'm not trying to do that at all. in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was adopted by the United Nations after the war, defines it this way as a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. So it's a broader definition than the one that I think is commonly used. So it doesn't have to mean gas chambers and other associated horrors. It does mean the annihilation

of a specific ethnic group from their traditional homeland. And that's exactly what happened in October in O'Gona, in O'Garola. It's also in the process of happening. with many, many more deaths right now in God. So look, when we covered this in October, it seemed like there wasn't a peep from Washington, D.C. And I remember even talking to a friend of mine who's an Armenian-American who was covering this. And, you know, it could just be, too,

that I'm ignorant of things going on that are just, you know, outside of my line of sight here. but it seemed like where the hell are all the Armenians? I mean, in L.A., they have their own town, Armenia town, out there, you know, like in Glendale, just like you have little Korea town and all that in L.A. where you have these different sort of little ethnic enclave neighborhoods there. And I'm going, you're telling me all the Armenians in L.A. can't do a damn thing about this.

And I know that BTC pipeline is really important to Big Brother, okay? I get it. But there's a lot of Armenian Americans. In fact, I was having a conversation last week with a guy who was saying, oh, no, we got huge enclaves too in Boston and in Michigan and different places all around where Armenians kind of congregate together and live together in American cities. And so they've got to own some congressmen. They've got to have some kind of Jews. And then we did see that the U.S. Senate said they want unanimously voted. Unanimously, James, said they want to. who cut off all military aid to Azerbaijan. But that raises all kinds of questions about what that really means, whether they're just playing because they know that the House and Biden won't go along or whether they really mean it. And there's a real question of America's future relationship with Azerbaijan because somehow little D democracy in America is meaningful

when up against the interests of pipeline. politics and preventing oil and natural gas from going through Russia or Iran when that's, you know, the empire's highest priority over there? What do you make of it all? Well, I think that's exactly right. The priorities of the United States government are clear and the priority is cheap energy. In terms of the Armenian community here, I, too, I'm a newcomer to the subject. I will say that, and man, do I dislike? being on the same side as this person, but I feel like I'm going to be struck down. But I will say that Congressman Adam Schiff actually is responding to the popular will of the community that he represents out in Los Angeles.

You know, he was mysteriously good on Yemen for a bit there, too. I couldn't attribute motive. I wouldn't want to. Yeah. So he is responding, obviously, to the calls from his Armenian, his rather large Armenian constituency, also he's calling for resolutions seeking the suspension of American military A to Azerbaijan. I don't think it's going to get very far. I think that the priorities are clear and the priorities are cheap energy. And I don't know if it's about the price so much as it's about making sure it. doesn't run through Russia and Iran and they don't get their cut well you know there is obviously an Iranian aspect to this both the United States and Israel share an abiding paranoia with regard to the Iranians and um Azerbaijan's not only wiping out that enclave in their corner Carabarba they are now threatening to take by force sovereign Armenian land and form a corridor connecting it to Turkey.

That would shut Iran out of the region. It would block the Russian and Iranian project of connecting Iran to the greater Eurasian economic union. So when, you know, American policymakers see something that is bound to upset Iran, they're going to, you know, turn a blind eye towards the collateral damage. And that's exactly what we're seeing there. And, of course, there's an Israeli, you know, the Israeli-Iranian aspect to this, you know, Israel is obviously very publicly Azerbaijan's main weapons. supplier, but it also has reached numerous agreements with Azerbaijan, whereby Azerbaijan allows Israeli foreign intelligence, military intelligence, to use their territory to carry out covert operations against Iran. So that's part of Israel's motive as well. And this is all

very well known within Armenia. And so, you know, Israel has been no friend to the Christian community of Armenia. Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them. But now you can get the e-book. All the war lies. by me for free.

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to book your next eye exams provided by independent optometrists. You know, back in 07, I interviewed Arnode Debar Grav, the late, great reporter from the Washington Times and UPI, who's like very close with the Reaganites. He's the guy that interviewed Mullah Omar right before 9-11, and Mullah Omar told him, Osama bin Laden is like a chicken bone stuck in my throat. I can neither swallow him nor spit him out. Same guy. So he reported, and I talked to him about it then, that Israel had air bases in Azerbaijan, that they were prepared. And this may have been part of Cheney's idea of the end run that David Wormsler had leaked of the end run to force Walsh into war with Iran by having Israel start it and provoke Iran to strike back against American targets. And, you know, I know that that sounds kind of far-fetched. It was originally reported by Stephen Clemens, but then the New York Times, the Washington Post and Barton. and gellman all three confirmed that story that david warmser was going around publicly blabbing

about that that was their plan and he was dick cheney's middle east advisor the author of the clean break strategy anyway so that was a big part of it was yeah Azerbaijan was going to be the launching pad or a possible launching pad for Israeli airstrikes against iran during that time and it would have been the first half of o seven if i'll be vague enough yeah so it's a longstanding project and when i was um i was talking to to some think tankers in Armenia, they pointed out that Azerbaijan had, well, Azerbaijan had, I can't, the history there is very tangled with regard to Nagorno-Karabah, but a couple of years ago in 2020, Azerbaijan made an initial gambit for Nagorno-Karabah, and they ended up with about 30% of the

territory there. And what they did was construct two airports. Allegedly they were civilian airports, but that apparently is not the case. And they're airports that the Israelis use to, you know, launch, you know, covert operations against Iran. So this is an ongoing relationship. yeah well i had a real dangerous one um you know especially in the current circumstances but uh so listen um can we switch gears a little bit in the last few minutes here to your real speciality which is america's relationship with russia and of course currently the horror show taking place in ukraine now almost two years into it's unbelievable isn't it um can you tell us go ahead anything on on your mind there. No, it's just so unbelievable because it's something that didn't have to happen.

And a lot of people like us were saying it didn't have to happen. This could have come to a peaceful settlement. But, you know, Washington insisted on taking a different path. And so now we have probably we're approaching half a million Ukrainian casualties and probably very likely over 100,000. Russian casualties. And what you have is the wholesale destruction of the Ukrainian state, which is now going to be really nothing more than a rump state. And what we're going to have is a division of Europe running through Ukraine. None of this had to happen. There were alternatives, and the alternatives were refused. And those of us who floated alternatives were you know, constantly smeared as being Russian apologists and Putin puppets and unpatriotic or whatever.

So it's a horrible, horrible tragedy. But I have a feeling that history is going to repeat itself in that the people who were most enthusiastic in pursuing the war policy aren't going to pay a price at all. It's going to, the same thing is going to happen that happened. after Iraq. No one's going to pay any reputational price at all. And that's another tragedy, because we never really seem to learn from our mistakes. Yeah, it is amazing to see some of the recent statements. I don't know about the government ones, because, you know, I saw where Michael Tracy was pointing out that the Americans have been saying for a long time, that, well, of course we're going to end up having to negotiate, but we just want to make sure we're in a

position of strength to do so, and we'll fight forever to get into that position of strength, which as you and I both understand, they're not getting into here. So they're kind of, you know, little trial balloons about possible talks seem pretty weak in the circumstances. However, it does seem meaningful that you have, you know, like the likes of morning Joe and Zabigna-Brasinski's daughter up there saying, ah, geez, everybody knows. were going to have to, you know, the Ukrainian is going to have to give up at least two of the four of them provinces, huh? And shrug. And Richard Haas, who was calling for regime change a year and a half ago, is like leading the chorus here for some kind of negotiation. I guess has been reported in a couple of places as to have been leading some back channel talks along these lines even. So at least they're beginning to admit, if not their fault, the truth. truth and that maybe there's a different solution, yeah, at least possible, then just keep fighting forever in a war that they are acknowledging literally can not be won.

Yeah, I mean, I'm glad you brought up Mika. You know, a friend of my family was a consultant for CBS in the 80s and actually taught a young Mika how to use the teleprompter. And I asked him, you know, what she actually like is she is stupid as she appears to be. And he said, yeah, doing the weather would be a challenge for her. You know, this, her and Joe are just, you know, pathetic. And, but they continually have on, you know, people, you know, people like Richard Haas are now, you know, starting to get, you know, starting to see reality. But it's, it's really, it's really too late.

Yeah, it's, it really is something her job up there. And Morning Joe, for that matter, he's as dumb as she is. Both of them, all these people, you know, Christian Amampur, she was talking with Ehud Barak, and he was saying, yeah, you know, yeah, there's tunnels under there. We built them. And, and Christian Amampur, which, you know, someone might think that she's not,

just an anchor, but is somehow a journalist who, or at least is a lady who reads books and knows things or something unlike maybe just like the blondeest hairdo on Fox or something. I don't know. But she says to Ehud Barak, come again.

Did you misspeak just now? And he goes, no, man, I'm telling you, we built that. Of course, we used to control that whole area. And we built all that stuff just because we're out of space. We wanted more space to help people, and it was the only reason

we built those rooms down there, you know, and the whatever, so they just, uh, for the campus itself was, you know, it's a very crowded ghetto there, the Gaza strip. Anyway, which the thing is, if she was just on Twitter or just, you know, looking around in meaningful

written journalism, she would have known that a few days before, at least. You know what I mean? That story was out. We ran that on anti-war.com, I think, three or four days before she said that to Barack, which goes to show that even quote-unquote italics, I guess, Christian Ammanpur, she only watches TV news. She doesn't really know anything. She knows as much as her viewers do, which is the most surface level, nothing.

Not a thing, but she's a very dangerous character. You know, I think she actually deserves, I don't know if credits the right word, but Lane perhaps. You know, her reporting from Sarajevo back in the 90s, basically single-handedly launched the United States into intervening in the region. So she's a long-time war propagandist. There's nothing new about that. Of course, she's married to Hillary Clinton's former, you know, spokesperson. I think she even married him in the middle of the Kosovo War, right, Jamie Rubin? That does sound right, yeah.

And then in terms of the Israeli thing, you know, I mean, this is a very, what's really interesting about it when it's, I mean, it's, as I said, sickening, but it's interesting in that it's a very public genocide. They're not really trying to hide their tracks. They've actually been very honest about what it is that they are attempting to do. I mean, you had, you know, a former, I think, interior minister recently go on Israeli television and say that, you know, with regard to southern Gaza, this is a direct quote. We need to turn into a soccer field, and we need to take advantage of the destruction and tell countries that each of them should take a quota of Palestinians. It can be 20,000 or 50,000, but we need 2 million people to leave. That's the solution for Gaza. So this, besides being, you know, a horrendous crime.

Well, let me interject right there real quick, because it is a very interesting deal of the way they've done this. It seems very coordinated, but there is a little bit of speculation involved in it. But you have multiple, and in fact, well, I should clarify, you do have government officials saying this as well, but you also have many former officials coming. out. Like, as you just quoted, Ilet Schockett, the former interior minister, and then a major general, Giora Island, the former head of the National Security Council, had also written some things like this. And this is reminiscent, probably, of Donald Rumsfeld,

getting all the former generals to come and get their briefing every day and then go out and bum rush the TV and put this stuff out there and try to make it look independent. And in other words, they probably would not be doing this if the government had not said, hey, listen, we need you guys to lead Operation Trial Balloon Front on this. And we're going to start putting out this messaging, you know, mostly from sort of former officials, but to normalize a thing and see what kind of reaction we get, that kind of deal. Is that about right? Yeah, that sounds right.

But Netanyahu himself basically quoted a piece of, I think it was scripture. that seemed to signal, you know, give the green light. Amalek, he called them, which was an enemy that God told the ancient Hebrews to murder every last one of them, including their babies and everything. So, and of course, people in his cabinet have, you know, refer to the Palestinians as human animals, et cetera. So I have a new piece up on anti-war.com today that talks about the, you know, role that the members of the Israel lobby play in the administration and the shaping the administration's

policy. Oh, really? I'm so sorry. I missed that, man. I'm at least a day or a week behind on everything, James. You want to talk about that? Please do. Well, you know, it's interesting.

Last week, Joe Biden, because he doesn't have a secretary of state. that actually knows what he's doing. So he's been relying on people like William Barron's and other people to deal with the heavies in the Middle East. And last week he sent over a guy who's not very well known outside of Washington. He's Biden's senior advisor for energy policy. And his name is Amos Hotstein. And I thought it was interesting that the more I dug into his background, the more kind of trouble I got. Hutchstein isn't an American. He was born and raised in Jerusalem. He served in the IDF.

And then after a short stint at a PR agency in Tel Aviv, he came to the United States and went right to Capitol Hill and landed a gig. And in a very short order was one of the staff directors to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. There's no record of Mr. Hotstein having gone to university or any sort of academic or real world expertise in energy policy. but he goes from the IDF to Capitol Hill and then right up the ladder, right up the greasy pole in Washington. And he found himself as head of the energy portfolio during the Obama administration at the U.S. State Department.

It seems at a minimum to be sort of odd that we have a... um israeli representing the united states government uh during uh these uh negotiations he was sent over by biden uh this week to try to head off a expansion of the war um between israel and lebanon so um things like that don't get a lot of attention here but i think that is really strange i mean if you said It is odd. And I did run, you know, I approached the State Department, you know, just questioning, you know, who is this guy, you know, what's his background, what's his education? They refused to answer me, even though they, they, of course, have all the information on him because he worked for the State Department for over six years.

I did run the story by a very well-known Middle East hand in Washington who knows all the Obama, Biden, Middle East players, he seemed to signal that I was on the, he did signal that I was on the right track. I wasn't being unfair. So, you know, it's, it's sort of troubling. It's sort of troubling that we have someone who, in this fellow's parents still live in Jerusalem. So he, you know, he has, he may well be an American citizen and he may, he may well be a loyal one. But, But, you know, there is such a thing as the appearance of conflicts of interests here. And it would seem that he has those. And, of course, as I point out, after he was done overseeing the energy portfolio at the

State Department under Obama and Clinton, he ended up, surprise, surprise, with a board seat on a Ukrainian gas and oil company. Well, and after he went over there, Israel bombedon more and killed civilians and journalists more. So, anyway, that's up at anti-war today. Yeah. Wow. And can you go back to just real quick here? I mean, is this really just an absolute vote of no confidence by the president and his own longtime right-hand man, Blinken, that he doesn't?

He won't send Blinken to go and talk to Israel to handle this kind of thing? Well, he did send Blinken over initially, and Blinken went on kind of a shuttle diplomacy sort of tour, where, you know, with the exception of the Israelis, no one wanted to meet with him. So, you know, that's why he's been kind of forced to send Burns, who everyone basically respects. and this fellow this fellow hotstein uh blinkin is obviously the worst secretary of state um that perhaps we've ever had since pompeo or the two rice well yeah the thing with the trump administration you know whatever one's objection you know whatever one's objections are you know the fact of the matter is is that Um, he, his foreign policy hasn't, wasn't half as destructive as, as the Biden, Blank, and Sullivan wrecking crew.

I don't know, man. Operation Syria during Hillary and Kerry was pretty dang bad. Yeah. Pretty bad. Yeah. Exactly. As in high treason at like the worst ever committed by any Americans on behalf of al-Qaeda. And this is basically Obama's 13.

turn. Yeah. You have a lot of people shuffling in and out and therefore you have a lot of the same policies. Yeah. Well, certainly true. All right. Well, listen, I'm sorry, I got to run, but great to talk to you again. Great work as always. And keep submitting articles to anti-war.com. We're so happy to have you, James. Well, thanks very much. Have a great holiday. Absolutely. You too, man. All right you guys. that is James Cardin. He's at Accura. That's the American Committee for, they changed the name of it, U.S. Russia Accord. And also he writes for Responsible Statecraft and the American Conservative Magazine. And here he is at anti-war.com with Israel's Other War, ethnic cleansing in the South Caucasus and his brand new one, Tel Aviv's man in Washington. Well, he's just focusing on the one this time. You know, the Scott Horton show, anti-war radio, can be heard on KPFF. 90.7 FM in LA. APSradio.com, anti-war.com, Scott Horton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.