Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 11/9/23 Ted Snider: Ukraine Would Have Fared Better Without Washington

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

Ted Snider joined Scott on Antiwar Radio this week to discuss the war in Ukraine. Snider explains that we now know that early on, both Ukraine and Russia were willing to stop the fighting and work things out peacefully. But the U.S. put a stop to the talks and urged Ukraine to fight. Now Ukraine has suffered heavy casualties, blown through its defensive resources and lost territory its own generals say they’ll never win back. Snider berates U.S. officials for putting Ukraine in this position and argues that negotiations must start now before Ukraine needlessly loses even more. Discussed on the show: “Three Major Events in Russia the World Didn’t Notice” (Antiwar.com) “U.S., European officials broach topic of peace negotiations with Ukraine, sources say” (NBC News) “Ukraine Has Lost the War” (Antiwar.com) Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in U.S. foreign policy and history. He is a regular writer for Truthout, MondoWeiss and antiwar.com. To support Ted’s work, you can make a PayPal contribution at [e-mail]. 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: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRj Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, November 9th, 2003. I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all, welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton, on the editorial director of Anti-War.com, and the author of Enough Already, Time to End the War on terrorism. You find my full interview archive, almost 6,000 of them now, going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show. And you can follow me on Twitter, if you dare, at Scott Horton Show. And our guest today is our good friend Ted Snyder,

and he writes for us at the Institute and at anti-war.com. And he's got these, well, a lot of stuff, but two very important articles. We're going to focus on the show today. Three major events in Russia. The world didn't notice. And Ukraine has lost the war. Welcome back to the show, Ted. How are you? I'm good. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me again. Yeah, absolutely. Happy to have you. So, listen up, L.A. This guy is one of the most astute American, sorry, Canadian observers of this terrible war in Ukraine as it's developed over the last almost two years now, unbelievably, Ted. Well, I know there was a little bit of talk out of Washington, D.C., that NBC story said that they're about ready to wash their hands of this thing. But I wonder, what all's going on in D.C. and what all is going on in the war?

And what all, as you say, what are these three things going on in Russia, too? The floor is yours. Yeah. So, I mean, the three things going on in Russia that didn't get a lot of notice of both international and domestic. The one you were talking about the NBC article was interesting. And it came out. There was a constellation of articles that came out of the same. same time that are showing this growing pressure on Zelensky to perhaps recognize that Ukraine's

not going to win the war, that they're not going to achieve their policy goals on the battlefield, that the longer they try, the worse it might get. And so it might be time at last to turn to the negotiating table. The NBC article was interesting, Scott, because it showed really different language than Washington has used before. It suggested that U.S. and European officials have begun to broach the topic with Zelensky of what it might take to negotiate an end of the war, and it also used language of what Ukraine would be willing to give up. So this is really the first time you're seeing leaking into the public, you know,

American, European officials, not only saying that it might have to come down on negotiations, but that Ukraine might have to give stuff up. And, you know, there's only, there's only really two things that they could mean by Ukraine give stuff up. And that would be territory and NATO ambitions. So that was really interesting. Well, I mean, what you're telling me is they should have negotiated in the first place, Ted, it sounds like. So, I mean, that's just the most tragic thing of the war of all, right? Like, it was really clear in the first days, the first weeks, especially March and April, that first year in Istanbul.

It was really clear that Zelensky was entirely willing to negotiate the war, even before the war, Zelensky was talking about, you know, we'll give up our near aspirations, let's talk. And it was really clear in Istanbul. There's no doubt anymore in Istanbul. I would argue there's no doubt anymore in Istanbul that a tentative agreement between Ukraine and Russia had actually been initialed by the two sides. It had gone that far where Russia had said they would pull back to their pre-war lines and Ukraine would give up its NATO aspirations. They had agreed to that. And this is the tragedy, Scott. The war at that point could have been over before it had escalated into a huge war.

before the massive loss of life, before the massive infrastructure damage. Ukraine and Russia were willing to end the war, and the states wasn't. It's really clear now that the states, in fact, the evidence is getting stronger every week, that the U.S. said no to that. And the result has been, as you said, almost two years of horrific loss of life, horrific war, that in the end has come down to Ukraine being, not in a better position on the battlefield to go to the negotiating table, as Biden kept saying. They're in a worse position on the battlefield than they were when they first reached an agreement with Russia.

And now they're being pressured to reach a new agreement with Russia that's going to be worse than the one that could have had two years ago. So they're going to come out of this war with a worse agreement they could have had and hundreds of thousands of more deaths because the U.S. said no. You know, and we know the U.S. said no, not just because Russia has said that, but because the Turkish officials in Istanbul have said that. And the former German Chancellor Schroeder, who was there, he was asked by Ukraine to negotiate. He's gone public recently said that Ukraine said no because the Americans told them it so they had to check everything with the Americans. So this is a horrific war that need not have happened. And now U.S. officials are saying to Ukraine need to talk about you need to give up. But remember that what they have to give up, the land, they wouldn't have had to give that up at the beginning because the additional land had to been taken.

They could have had the Minsk Accords where that land would have just been autonomous. Now the agreement is going to have to give it up altogether. So what Ukraine's going to have to give up now is much worse than they would have had to give up before. And they've bought this worse settlement at the price of hundreds of thousands of lives. That's the tragedy. This is all on the U.S. You know, that's the tragedy. Yeah.

And of course, we had Ukrainian officials that talked to Ukrainian proffta right away and told the whole story too. And that came from their side that they felt pressured by Boris Johnson. that, boy, I guess we better do what you say. Yeah, it seems pretty clear that during those Istanbul talks, Johnson showed up and told them that, although you may be willing to negotiate with Putin, were not, there's also a lot of stories. I haven't seen this absolutely confirmed, Scott, but there's also a lot of stories that Johnson said something like, we want you to keep on fighting. If you do, we'll give you all the weapons you need for as long as you need them. And so, you know, Zelensky walked away thinking he kind of had that, that guarantee of as long as much as you need for as long as you need them. And so, so there was that, you know, there was that pressure too.

And the thing is, you know, as long as you, as much weapons as you need for as long as you need them, for what? It's become really clear now. I mean, first of all, not news. The Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed, right? but Scott, it hasn't just failed. What happened on the counteroffensive is that Russia took up a strategy of going on to the defense of not trying to acquire territory, but just watching the Ukrainian troops flood in to their defensive lines and just devour them. So through this war of attrition, they just devoured Ukrainian soldiers and devoured Ukrainian equipment. And people talk about this sort of this stalemate where in a counteroffensive, Ukraine's only managed to gain 70.

kilometers of land. And in the months before that, Russia was only able to acquire, you know, six kilometers of land. And this is just a complete mistake of metrics, right? Because because it's true that Ukraine's fighting to gain land. They have to. They're trying to kick Russia out of their land. Russia's not fighting to gain land. Russia's fighting to be the Ukrainian army. And the way they do that is by sitting where they are and just, you know, mowing down. So it's not true that it's at this sort of of stalemate. And what's happened in the Ukrainian counteroffensive is because of this, they haven't just failed. They've had such a massive loss of men and arms that they're now

completely vulnerable to a Russian counteroffensive. And so what you're starting to see slowly now is that Russia is moving these defensive lines forward, and they're slowly and methodically acquiring land at enormous lost Ukrainians. So the counteroffensive actually reduced Ukraine to a position of vulnerability, that they're now exposed for the situation to get much, much worse on the battlefield than it is now. And you're seeing huge loss of life again. And also this sort of newfound ability of Russia to almost at will shoot planes out of the sky. They're air defensive improved. They're just, they're downing, you know, Ukrainian planes. And they're taking out the leopard tanks at a sort of astonishing rate.

And, you know, Zolushni, the Ukrainian commander in chief, has said that even those sanctions were meant to make it so Russia couldn't continue to finance their war machine, they're producing weapons at an increasing rate, whereas he said, no matter how many weapons you give Ukraine, they can't get enough. So Ukraine's weapons are going down. So you've got this sort of war of attrition right now. where in the long run, Ukraine's going to run out of weapons. And as a number of people have said now, and I'm talking not just like Western

Contents, I'm talking about politicians in Zelensky's inner circle and others who are saying that not only can't we get enough weapons, even if we got enough weapons, we don't have enough men left to use them, that the raids of death has been so high. So just in this horrific position now where Ukraine has not enough weapons, not enough men, and Russia is getting stronger and stronger. If the goal of the West was to weaken Russia somehow, the exact opposite has happened, and the future on the battlefield looks really bleak. So you're getting these U.S. and European officials now starting to talk about to Zelensky's.

You've got to get off the battlefield. Zelensky, by reports from Time magazine, the people around him have begun to worry that his intransigence, that he's going to win the war, this belief he has that's going to win the war. His inner circle have called it messianic and delusional. They say they're trying to tell him they can't win, and he's not listening. And they're even saying that that's making the battlefield worse because they're saying Zelensky's unwillingness to see how the battlefield has changed has made him unable to adapt to it. And he's still fighting the war like it was months ago.

And you're getting commanders in the field now, just openly disobeying orders from Zelensky. You're getting the orders from the top coming down, telling troops to take towns or to advance. And you're getting commanders in the fields just refusing. And a senior Ukrainian military officer defended that idea that they refuse them saying that they have to second-guess orders from the top, because orders on the top are increasingly disconnected from the battlefield reality. So this is very ugly situation. And, you know, as you know, it's led to this kind of open battle now between Zelensky and his generals where he wants to do everything to defend

these towns like Pachmout and Avdivka, I'm sure I'm saying these wrong. And the generals just say that this has just been done with the cost of enormous amounts of lives for nothing. And you're getting the sort of, for the first time, I think, these, rifts that are being made public between the president and the generals. Give me just a minute here. At the Libertarian Institute,

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So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety. I don't have a deal with them, but the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug of salt or anything else you buy from Amazon.com by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at scotthornton.org. So keep that in mind. And don't worry about the mess.

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Ukraine has lost the war, he writes. And I think, you know, this is not exactly your style, but it's what we're talking about in essence. But I think it's worth emphasizing, as Glenn Greenwald did in a recent interview, the just absolute depravity and war guilt on the part of the Americans and the Brits and the other allies who have helped push this war, who've done everything they could to obstruct peace, when, as you and I have known and said, and as Greenwald has known and said, and so many others have known and said all along, Ukraine can't push Russia out. It's Russia. They got millions more men, zillions more dollars and resources. They're right there adjacent. And sooner or later, they're going to win.

And America can make it tough for them. But ultimately, Ukraine's going to run out of guys. So if this is about actually caring for the people of Ukraine and trying to do what's best for them at all, then America would have encouraged. them to negotiate. Listen, you guys really need to implement Minsk, too, so that we can avoid further violent conflict here. And instead, they were not willing to negotiate. They would have rather had a war at the Ukrainian's expense. And this is the most cynical thing in the world that someone

could do. And I know that it bothers people because, you know, we're from here. It's our government's doing it. And are you really saying that they're that bad? That they would knowingly get a friend into a fight. They know he's going to lose just because, well, he'll get some blows in and that's good enough for us. I think there's so much to say about what you just said. And I would go way beyond cynicism. This is moral depravity. It's moral depravity because the U.S. knew that Ukraine couldn't win the counteroffensive. And they pressed them to do them. And I'm not quoting word for word, Scott, but I'm paraphrasing. It's pretty close to a quote. I don't have it in front of me. The U.S. knew they'd lose the counter-offensive, but they pressed them to do it because they thought they would be willing to take the massive losses.

They trusted to Ukrainian ingenuity to try to find a way to win when they couldn't win because they thought they'd be willing to take the massive losses. So the U.S. used Ukraine to advance their own foreign policy goals, because don't forget, we already talked about this. Ukraine had satisfied their foreign policy goals in the first days of the war when they agreed to an end with Russia. And the state said, no, we need you to go on because, and I'm quoting out, there are bigger issues, right, than Ukraine's goals. So Ukraine had satisfied their goals. The U.S. pushed Ukraine to go on fighting to meet U.S. foreign policy goals, knowing that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians would die thinking that Ukraine would be willing to take that loss. And when I say in my article, Ukraine has lost the war, yes, that's an inflammatory title. I don't usually write like that.

It's not my words, right? Zolushni, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, said, this is a stalemate. And he went on beyond this as a stalemate, and he said, there is not going to be any breakthrough. We're not going to win. And he wasn't just talking about a stalemate, Scott. He was talking about a loss because he went on to say that a stalemate means a long war of an attrition, and a long war of attrition favors Russia because we're going to – so he's saying, Zolushni's saying, we've lost. And as you said, that's because Russia has three or four times the population.

And despite what you read in the Western media, Ukrainian soldiers are dying at way greater rate than Russian soldiers. So you have a smaller population with greater deaths. They're running out of people. They're drafting older and older people. They're drafting people with medical conditions. There's even stuff in the media today all over the place. You know, thinking of drafting women in and not like doing whatever.

Ukraine's going to run out of arms. They're going to run out of people. They're dying for a war that they had stopped because of their, foreign policy goals. They're dying for U.S. foreign policy goals. That's not just cynicism. That's moral depravity when they actually have, you know, words out of the states out of Washington saying we knew they'd lose this. We just thought they'd be willing to take the deaths to advance American foreign policy goals. Yeah. That's just depravity. And again, you're right. They not only didn't push them at that table, they didn't push them at Minsk. We know now from everybody's admissions that

Minsk was just a sobriphic. It was designed to put Russia to sleep and pretend there was a peaceful solution. They always intended this military solution. These were American goals, America blocking diplomacy from the beginning, using Ukrainian lives to fight America's war. That's beyond cynicism. That's moral depravity. Yeah, I mean, the whole thing is just as ugly as can be. And look, so if people are just kind of, you know, tuning in to TV news, there's a pretty simple narrative here, though, which is, look, our ally is being attacked by this evil right-wing fascist state, and we have to help them.

And how could we not? And so even if they are going to lose eventually, they're asking us for the help, defending themselves from a purely aggressive invasion from this monstrosity next. store, this revanchist Russia trying to recreate its evil empire. Ted Snyder, what about that? Yeah. So, of course, there's absolutely no evidence in the written record. There's absolutely no historical evidence that Russia is trying to recreate any kind of Soviet empire. Not only have they not tried to take over any other territory, but Scott, they could have taken over Ukraine any time they wanted in in 2014 when Russia took back Crimea, when Putin did that, he was acting under authorization of the parliament to act in Ukraine at large, not just in Crimea. And so he had permission

to take the Donbass at that time. He had the military force to do it. He had the excuse to do it because ethnic Russians were being persecuted and killed. So he had the reason, he had the means, he had the permission. Putin didn't act on it because he didn't want the Donbass, right? He trusted to the Minsk Accords. He wanted a solution that would protect Russian ethnic and keep the Donbass Ukraine. He didn't want the Donbass. This was not about expanding the Russian Empire. He could have. He didn't want to. When you see this stuff on the news, they're entirely ignoring the history of, you know, NATO promises not to expand Ukraine, not to advance to Russia's door, not to arm Ukraine to the teeth and make the sort of anti-Russian bridgehead, you know, a threat to Russia.

It ignores the entire history by this ridiculous word of the unprovoked attack, right? It was an attack. What Russia did was illegal. Fine. No one's saying that war is a good thing. You know, you and I both work at anti-war. We don't believe in war. But this idea that it was unprovoked is historical amnesia to the worst degree.

It was nothing like unprovoked. And yes, so you can say Ukraine asked us for our help. But again, that ignores what we just said. Ukraine had reached a settlement. They weren't asking for our help anymore. Ukraine had reached a settlement, right? We won't be in NATO. You pull back, right?

They'd reach the settlement. It was beyond them asking for help. It wasn't Ukraine asking America for help after that negotiated settlement. It was America asking Ukraine for help. It was America asking Ukraine to fight their war for them, that will give you the intelligence. the arms, the training, and the money, but we'll use your Ukrainian bodies to do it. So if anybody says that Ukraine was asking for American help, Ukraine had already reached their

policy goals. America was asking for Ukraine's help. And the help they were asking for is help us to fight Russia without any loss of American lives. Help us to weaken Russia at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives. It's America asking for Ukraine's help, not Ukraine asking for America's help. And it's Ted Snyder from anti-war.com here on anti-war radio with us today. And I got to ask you about this, because as I know you remember, at the start of the war, the Americans thought that the Ukrainian military would be smashed immediately, that Russia would be dominant at least east of the Nipa River,

or at the very least, in the Donbass, that is Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts there in the far east. but maybe the entire eastern half of the country. And then the question was how much further they're going to go than that? And then the plan then was we're going to support essentially the Ukrainian Mujahideen. We're going to support rebels, some moderate rebels, and, you know, led by the Azov Battalion and I guess the remnants of the army. And they're going to fight an insurgency behind enemy lines. That was already plan A. So now plan B actually kicked in because the army held together.

a lot better than anybody thought. And then now here it is, it's a year and three quarters later, and the army isn't smashed yet. It's not an insurgency yet. It's just, as you said, a very failed and terrible conventional armored and infantry offensive here. But I wonder if you think that they're perfectly happy to go back to Plan A, call it Plan C now, that, well, we'll just go back to insurgency. If the army can't really maintain and the Russians are able to, I guess, weaken it to a a certain point and then really strike and crush it that, well, whatever, we just give everybody a musket and tell them to go hide behind a tree.

Yeah, I don't know the answer that, Scott, because I don't know if the U.S. has a policy. I don't know if they have a plan C. They're scrambling right now. I don't think they know what they're doing. And I don't know if they read that plan A right either. Look, I don't, nobody knows what Russian intended to do in the first days of the war, whether they didn't take Kiev because Ukraine's army held together or not. But I mean, I think it's just as likely that Russia did a quick strike into Kiev with the idea that we're going to terrify them into a settlement.

And look, maybe we'll get lucky and take it really easily. But if we don't find – and don't forget, you know, people talk about this Russian failure. And we keep coming back to the same thing, Scott, that it's the central thing. Don't forget that if Russia's goal was to go in quick on Ukraine, terrify them into a quick settlement, they did. Right. Kiev immediately called for settlement. They immediately negotiated stop. They immediately initial it. The state stopped it. It's not clear that Russia's initial strategy failed, right? If Russia's initial strategy failed, it may have been because they underestimated the cynicism and depravity of the states and blocking it, blocking settlement. And what are they going to do now? Look, Ukraine risks being turned into, you know, what some people call a rump state. I'm not exactly sure what that means. they're losing the east. If Russia continues into Odessa and takes the seaports, what you end up with is a Ukraine with no economy, no people. It's not really clear how the U.S. could really use that for anything. It would be much more advantageous for the states and for Ukraine to quickly

settle now while Ukraine can remain a viable economic state. Right now, the Russians aren't taking Odessa. It's not even clear that they're moving to do that, right? If they just stop now and get rid of this plan, A, plan, defense, whether it's a guerrilla war or a proxy war or an all-out war, you still have a Ukraine right now that exists as a state that could function. But, you know, if they go on, if they keep fighting in any way, the trend right now is just that Russia is getting stronger and stronger and stronger. And if you try to fight that war, you just might lose all of Ukraine. Would you end up with guerrilla warfare after?

Look, that's part of the reason why Russia doesn't want Ukraine. It's part of the reason Russia never wanted Ukraine. Part of the reason they don't want Ukraine is how would you possibly manage Ukraine? It's not that Russia wants Ukraine. You're talking about a security system in Europe that never got solved after the Cold War. It's not that Russia wants Ukraine. It's that Russia doesn't want Ukraine into the Western NATO sphere. They don't want NATO on their border anymore than the U.S. wanted Russia

in Cuba. It's not about wanting Ukraine. It's about it's about setting up a security system in Europe that nobody set up after the end of the Cold War that could bring peace. And part of that is a neutral Ukraine. And Ukraine was totally willing to sign on to that. Yeah. Well, let me ask you, Ted, because about a year ago, uh, was last September, actually, the weekend of September 11th, 2022, the Ukrainians had their greatest victory where they pushed the Russians out of Harkiv province and a little bit, I think, the very northern part of Lujansk, and out of about half of Kurson, push them back across the river, right? And so at that time, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Millie, said, hey, you boys better quit while you're only this far

behind. That's as good as it's going to get. And I think now it would be a really good time for you to see if you can get the Russians to come and talk. But they didn't do that. And so now here it is. It's more than a year later and the Russians have officially annexed all four of those provinces

in the law and signed it and everything. And I wonder if you think it's even within the realm of possibility that the Russians would be willing to compromise and give up to and keep to or whether no, really, they've already lost everything between La Hansk and Crimea. And

And the only question is whether they're taking Harkeith back and or taking Odessa. But they're not going to retreat at all. How much of that do you think is even negotiable? Have the Russians even signaled that they're willing to negotiate at this point? So I think there's three things to say that. The first is to go back to the first part of it. And be real quick because we're almost out of time. Okay.

I'll skip the first one then. I'll skip the first one. I'll go to the second one. Millie was sagely saying they'd reach an inflection point that. that stopped now. It's going to get worse. He was right. It got worse. So now Russia has these four provinces instead of two. Will they give them up? The first two, the Donbass? No. The second two, it would be very difficult to give them up. Russia has said that we won't give them up. They have not, however, clearly defined the boundaries of those provinces. Is it possible they'd be willing

to take up some of them west of the river? Yes. possible that they promised not to take Odessa? Yes, they're not giving back Crimea. They're not giving back to Donbass. Might they negotiate parts of the other ones? I think they might. Do I know? Absolutely not. But they might.

But Millie was right that if they don't do it, then it was just going to get worse. And if you don't do it now, it is just going to get worse. Russia's terms will get harder and harder and harder. It's just going to get worse. As for those early victories, too, Scott, those happen because Russia

very strategically pulled back their troops, Ukraine did not defeat a well-defended, fortified Russian army. They never have. They haven't won a single battle in a single place where Russia has decided to defend. And right now in the town of Avdivka, where this battle is going on again and they're defending that town, you know, Russia's probably on the verge in the next weeks or months of taking that town. And if they do, that breaks the front. They can spread through the Donbass and lock down those those territories in the Donbass they want them from the beginning, it's not going to get better.

All right, you guys, that is Ted Snyder, regular contributor at the Institute and at Anti-War.com. Thank you so much for your time, Ted. Thanks, Scott. Aren't you guys, and that's it for Anti-War Radio for today? I'm your host, Scott Horton, editorial director at anti-war.com, and author of enough already.

Time to end the war on terrorism. Find my full interview archive at Scotthorton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And follow me on Twitter. at Scott Horton Show, and I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.