Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 1/27/23 Ted Snider on the Missed Opportunities to Avoid War in Ukraine

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

Ted Snider is back to discuss his recent article for the Libertarian Institute. In it, Snider documents the many chances that were missed to avoid the war in Ukraine and a handful of opportunities to stop the war after Russia invaded. In this interview, Scott and Snider examine that history. They agree that the unnecessary nature of this war makes the present bloodshed that much more tragic. And that the war will probably end with similar conditions to what would have come about through talks and agreements before the war, which renders further fighting to be largely pointless.   Discussed on the show: “The Missed Opportunities of the War in Ukraine” (Libertarian Institute) “Time is not on Ukraine’s side” (Washington Post) “The U.S. Approach to Ukraine’s Border War Isn’t Working. Here’s What Biden Should Do Instead” (Politico) “The First Months of U.S. Relations with the New Russia, 1992” (GWU National Security Archive) “Diplomatic Cables Show Russia Saw NATO Expansion as a Red Line” (ACURA) “Zelensky Flounders in Bid to End Ukraine’s War” (Foreign Policy) “Fact Checking Zelensky on Non-Alignment” (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. 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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All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director, of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron. Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more the 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at Scott Horton.4. You can sign up the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. Hey, guys, on the line, I've got Ted Snyder again, and of course, he's a regular contributor at anti-war.com, but I just hired him to write for the Libertarian Institute as well. And he's got his first piece. It's going up today. It'll be up by the time you'll hear this. The missed opportunities of the war in Ukraine. Welcome back to the show. Ted. How you doing?

I've done great. Thanks, God. Thanks for having me. And we're very happy to be writing for the Libertarian Institute. So thank you very much. Great. Well, we're very happy to have you. And I only hope that you don't write so much that you burn yourself out and quit writing in here. Because, man, you write a lot. Unfortunately, right now, the world just keeps tossing up stories. I wish it wasn't. Right. But it is, yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you. All right, listen. So, obviously, you've been writing about a ton of stuff, but especially on the war in Ukraine. and you have some really great background here in your first piece for the Institute today, the missed opportunities of the war in Ukraine. So you start out, I think, you know, it's quite apt. You cite Connolly's Reiss and Robert Gates and their recent piece about how, boy, have we gotten Ukraine into trouble.

And their country's completely ruined. And the war has been a total disaster. and that's why we have to triple down now before it's too late. Yeah, I mean, they made the right observations on the wrong conclusion. Scott, this is like, to me, what's so, so, so sad about the war on Ukraine is that it's just, it's devastating Ukraine, one, and two, is that it didn't have to happen, and that's sort of the tragedy. But, like, yeah, I mean, Gates and Rice write this piece for the Washington Post, and they kind of summarized by saying that the economy is in shamans,

that millions of people have fled, that infrastructure is being destroyed, and that a lot of the most valuable land in terms of like agriculture and especially industry and mineral wealth is in the hands of Russia. So it's like, it's a destroy. And they don't even go into enough the details. You know, as of a few days ago, estimates were that like a fifth of the population of Ukraine have left, like almost 18, almost 8 million people. That's 19% of the country has left. So the country's shrinking. The number of Ukrainian soldiers, which, you know, it's so hard to get an accurate report, but the West keeps trying to portray this as like, you know, around Bahamu, Russia is like walking over their own dead soldiers,

like Ukraine's just mastering them. And the truth seems to be the exact opposite. You know, one Ukrainian commander in Bahamud actually said that we're about to run out of people, right? He said the exchange rate of Russians to Ukraine is in favoring the Russians and we could run out of people. And there are estimates that, you know, Ukrainian soldiers are dying in the hundreds and hundreds of days, 300, 450 day. And German intelligence says that just in the one battle in Bachm, just that one battle, the Ukrainians are losing triple-digit soldiers a day. So we're talking hundreds of deaths, millions of refugees leaving the country, infrastructure destroyed,

this country's being just late to waste. And it didn't have to happen because there were opportunities before the war to avoid. it and there's been opportunities since the war to end it and that it's just going on anyway is that's the tragedy yeah now i want to uh before we get into the meat of this article here and this is just a speculative type thing but you know well for example in november of 21 samuel char up from the rann corporation wrote a thing in foreign policy that said look if we want to avoid this war we're going to have to really implement Minsk to the current Biden policy of warning Russia that you better not while offering

maybe some inspections for our missile launchers in Poland or this and that kind of tinkering around the edges of the controversy, that's not going to cut it. But if we really end the war in Ukraine, that will really put the burden back on Putin to justify any intervention at all. And we should really do that. And they didn't do that. They spent the rest of November, December, January, February, Tell him Putin, you better not, but refusing to really negotiate with them in good faith. And I wonder if your interpretation is there, to paraphrase Zabigna Prasinski, about 79, that, well, we weren't necessarily trying to provoke them into invading, but we were knowingly increasing the probability that they would.

Yeah. And I wonder if you think that that was what was going on here, that they really wanted to see Russia invade Ukraine and get bogged down in the mud there. You know, I hate to speculate. because I always feel more confident going by the actual historical record, people have said and done. But if you look at that record, if you look at that evidence, it's hard not to at least, you know, suspect that. You know, it's been pointed out before Nikolai Petrov pointed us out that there's really three wars going on in here. There's the war within Ukraine.

There's the war between Russia and Ukraine. There's the war between Russia and NATO. And it seems pretty clear that if we'd stop the war in Ukraine, you know, between the war. the east and the west between Donbath and Ukraine. If we'd stop that war, that would have taken away a lot of the reasons why Russia wanted to go into Ukraine for this war. It was something that could have been done. It should have been done. Putin was still trying to do it. Putin was committed to the Minsk courts right up to the very, very end. The states, at least officially endorsed them, but never pushed in my piece that you're putting up today. I actually talk about

three different historical instances where the states failed to push. They could have done it. Everybody wanted it done. It could have been done. And they didn't. And they did the opposite. They did the opposite of Minsk. And if Angela Merkel's right, you know, if she's right, then Minsk was really a pretense to give Ukraine time for a

military solution. And a military solution means that they were all along setting up this. military confrontation. So when you ask me if I interpret that way, look, I don't know if Merkel's telling the truth, but if she's telling the truth, she says that is what happened. That's what she says. She says that we lulled Russia into a calm while we set it up to make this war an inevitability. Yeah. And you know, if you go through, and I have, you go through and look at all the different times that they invoke Afghanistan as the model in December. of 21 and January and February

of 22 that we're going to do just like we did with the Mujahideen. And this is just a few months after America's humiliating defeat and withdrawal from Afghanistan after supposedly attempting to clean up from the consequences of the last time that they did this. And

Hillary Clinton famously on MSNBC said, oh, well, you know, there were some unintended consequences when we did it in Afghanistan before. But anyway, this is after 20 years of terror war that she's supported as a senator and a secretary of state the whole time, you know, uh, it's some unintended consequences, but anyway, it worked great. Yeah. And so that's what we're doing again. I mean, Bergenzinski has so clearly said that

this was a trap, that we laid a trap for the Russians. And, and, and when he was asked later, you know, this led to, um, you know, Al-Qaeda and everything was it worth it. Um, and, you know, Bergerzinski, I can't remember exact words, but he said, he said, of course it was worth it. You know, history will remember the, you know, the defeat of Russia as a much bigger thing than the, than a temporary appearance on the stage of it. Although, you know, to his credit, sort of a little bit, that interview was from 96 when, you know, the worst that they'd done was, you know, attack the Cobar Towers.

That might have even been before Cobar Towers, which they blamed on Iran. But, you know, there had been a couple of small al-Qaeda attacks. I guess there's the First World Trade Center, you know, and its potential destruction there. But he was basically, they were asking him about the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and he was going, who cares about that compared to the liberation of Eastern Europe? I'm not certain if they asked him again after September 11th, if he would be, you know, quite so

flip about it, but still do, you know. Because the idea is what he said, oh, who cares about some stirred up Muslims when we liberated Eastern Europe? And whether or not that was the, you know, the intent of drawing Russia into Ukraine, whether that was the intent before the war, there's certainly been signals that that's been the intent since the war. Oh, who cares about some stirred up Nazis? Yeah, we...

And look, by the way, I mean, this is important, right? America's going to betray these Nazis at some point. They're not all Nazis, and I'm not saying they're all Nazis, but some of them are, and you're just like not all the Mujahideen were Osama bin Laden, but some of them were... Yeah, but, you know, I think the point I want to make is that when you were asking whether the states deliberately drew Russia in, I think that I think the point is that whether we can,

know that or not. Since the war began, that seems to have been the point, right? Because in, you know, in the talks in Istanbul, when Ukraine, this is just like a month into the war and Ukraine is prepared to negotiate to end the war. You know, Russia and Ukraine are both, they've come to a tentative agreement and they've sort of settled the war that satisfies their interests. But at this point, the states and UK step in and they say, no, this is bigger than Ukraine. That's a quote. this is bigger than Ukraine. This is bigger than your interest. We need you to go on fighting for U.S. interests. And at that point, Scott, at that point, I think U.S. has to some extent own this war. They become as responsible for the war as anyone because Ukraine and Russia were ready to end

Ukraine and Russia's war. And the states says, no, you've got to fight on for our interests, which Austin says is weakening Russia. So at this point, I think you can say whether the States intended before the war to draw Russia and to weaken them. By March of 2022, this is, this is now a war with the U.S. intent to use Ukraine to weaken Russia. All right, now, but if I wrote for Commentary Magazine, I would say that all of Putin's complaints are pretext and that what he is, is he's Stalin or at least he's, you know, Tsar Vladimir the Great, who wants to recreate the old Russian Empire. That's what, uh, Ron DeSantis says.

Yeah. So, Scott, they can say what they want. And, you know, to, I'm quoting, you know, Jeffrey Roberts right now,

who's like, you know, and I said something similar a second ago to you, but quoting Jeffrey Roberts, you know, an eminent, highly respected Russian scholar.

And, you know, he said you can try to read people's minds. You can, you can set up all these reasons. You think Putin did it and then look for evidence. That's all very dangerous,

he said. What you really need to do is you need to go by the historical record. of what was said and what was done. And there's absolutely nothing in the historical record to indicate any of that. There's nothing in the historical record.

There's nothing in Putin's speeches to indicate that he's trying to recreate a Soviet empire or Russian empire, that he's trying to conquer this or that. The historical evidence seems very, very clear. And the security guarantees the security request that he sent to the stakes just before the war and to NATO's Ford make it very, very clear. clear, that what Russia kept saying is we don't want, A, Ukraine and NATO, B, we don't want

NATO in Ukraine, meaning even if Ukraine doesn't join NATO, you can't load Ukraine up with NATO weapons and NATO infrastructure. So we don't want Ukraine in NATO. We don't want NATO in Ukraine, and we need to settle the Menske courts. There were other things about where weapons can be and stuff, but this is consistently, those three things have been consistently what Russia's been saying. And it's not, it's even a mistake to say Putin. It's not Putin. It goes long back before Putin that Russian leaders were saying Ukraine can't join NATO and NATO can't be in Ukraine. You know, Minsk starts later. So of course that's Putin. But this is, this is a long Russian thing. And, you know, people, DeSantis can say he wants. People can say what they

want. But there's nothing in the historical record that provides evidence for those claims. You know, even Michael McFall after Putin took Crimea, you know, Obama to Jeffrey Goldberg said, come on, he's reacting to what we just did, you know. He didn't have this. This isn't part of some grand plan. In fact, he wasn't even going to do it. And then he changed his mind and did it. And McFall admitted the same thing that, you know, and McFal, for people who aren't familiar, the former ambassador to Russia and an absolute hawk and smears Putin with bad motives no matter what on, on, on. all the time no matter what but even he just said come on all this stuff about he's trying to

recreate former glory of this and that that's not true he's reacting to what we're doing to him that's all look it's nonsense and and there's a and i wish i had the memory to quote dates and numbers to you i don't but there's a very long history of referendums in crimea and in the donbass that indicate that that crimeans wanted to either have autonomy within ukraine or or to be part of Russia, there were, there were referendums in the, in the Donbass in 2014, where Putin had to discourage them from having a referendum on joining Russia and to limit it to just autonomy, because he didn't want them in Russia, right? The Donbass was very valuable to Putin as being part of Ukraine.

I mean, it gave him a Russian voice. It gave him, it gave him a, you know, a sort of proxy vote in the Ukraine. It kept them out of NATO, did a whole bunch of stuff. And Putin was discouraging the Donbass from joining Russia. And he had opportunity before that, you know, in Crimea, Putin was actually resisting these things. Crimea was a reaction to the coup in 2014 that he seems to have decided very quickly and took Crimea very easily. And an enormous majority of Crimeans wanted to rejoin Russia. But also in the Donbass.

This has not been a long-term plan to take the Donbass. Don't forget, in 2014, when Putin annexed Crimea, he was acting under authority by the Russian parliament to use military force, not in Crimea, but in Ukraine. And he didn't. He could have taken the Donbass then. It would have been easy. Militarily, he could have taken the Donbass easily. He had a Donbass population that wanted to join Russia. He had a Donbass population that was being persecuted by Ukraine.

nationalists. So here you've got an ability to take the Donbass, a reason to take the Donbass, and a Donbass that wants you to take it. That was 2014. For eight years, he didn't take it. He didn't want to take. This was not a

long-term plan. These were reactions, and the Russian hardliners have been incredibly critical of Putin for not taking the Donbass in 2014. They say you could have avoided all of this. if when you took the Crimea, you took the Donbass,

you never should have trusted the Germans and the French. Putin said, I trust the Germans and the French to implement Minsk. And I really think we can resolve this by having the Donbass become, you know, autonomous with Russia, sorry, autonomous within Ukraine, you know, a non-military solution. We can trust the Germans and the French. And now those hardliners are saying to Putin, you were a naive fool for trusting the Germans of the French. and now America will even admits it.

So these were not long-term plans. This was Putin responding to what he saw as western encroaches upon Russia by NATO spreading and by changing Ukraine, by pulling Ukraine into the Western sphere through a coup that took out of a sympathetic to Russia government and put in a sympathetic to America government or to the West government. So these were responsible. not long-term plans. These were what Putin would argue

were defensive responses to the exact two kinds of encroquements that we've been begging you not to do since the end of the Cold War. And that's expand NATO to Ukraine and pull Ukraine into the Western sphere. So, you know, that's the historical record. Not that this is a long-term plan

of Putin's a lifelong dream to, you know, to reinvent empire. There's no evidence for that. Oh, and you know, I got some work for you, Ted. I don't know if you saw this, but Tom Blanton, and I forget the co-authors name there at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, they just posted some new documents. The other day, I saw that guy, Ken Rothrock, the Russia reporter, posts them. And they were talking about, it's 1990 and Gorbachev is talking about the very sensitive situation of the ethnic Russians being left behind in Ukraine and how we need to have a comprehensive deal explaining exactly what everybody's rights. and responsibilities are so that this doesn't turn into a major problem, et cetera, like that.

Mm-hmm. Brand new out. I hadn't had time to really dig into it, but I saw it. No, I didn't even know about that. Yep. I haven't seen that. Yeah. Sorry, hang on just one second.

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And there's free shipping, too. I don't know if you saw Bronco March teach his new piece at Accura, where he did a deeper dive into the WikiLeaks and found a bunch more warnings from our friends and allies all through the time period about Ukraine and NATO expansion and the rest. No, I saw the headline. I haven't had a chance to read the article yet. Yeah, it's great.

He's got, you know, For the likes of you and me, he's got, I don't know, 15, 20 new documents in there. We love to read, so. These warnings go back forever from Russian presidents and Soviet presidents from Gorbachev through Yeltsin to Putin. They go back to Western leaders warning the states, you know, Germany and England and France warns states. They go back to American officials warning the states about NATO expansion. And then there's a whole subspecies of warnings that they don't talk about NATO expansion. but talk particularly about Ukraine being the red line,

that even if you do expand, you can't expand, you know, to Ukraine. This was, these were not, these were not secrets that this was, this was provocative. And, you know, Putin, there's a great, I can't remember if we talked about this last point, but there's this moment where it was a, it was a televised thing in Russia. I haven't seen it. I've read the transcript where Putin turns to Sergei Lavrov. And, and he says,

we need to get guarantees now about NATO expansion to Ukraine. This is just before the war. And he says, and this time they need to be written down, right? And then he explains later because last time when they weren't written down, they didn't happen. And he said that very, very clearly. And then within days or weeks of that, they do present the U.S. with these security proposals that ask the U.S. to write down, you know, legally written down guarantees that Ukraine will be part of NATO. And we know now from other documents and what other people have said that the states didn't just say no to Russia.

They actually told Russia that discussions of Ukraine not joining NATO or not even, they're just off the table, they're not even on the table. And Putin said at that moment that he said the states just completely ignored our security concerns. And he said then, big surprise now, he said then, and if they don't do that, we'll have to have what he called the military technical responsibility. So, you know, he said, despite what other people say about the motivations were, right, he was very, very clear, not just on the public record speaking, but in documents he presented to the states and NATO that you need to stop this open door policy to Ukraine. We need to talk about this. We need a security arrangement in Europe that takes everybody's security in. The state was completely unwilling to discuss it. Putin told them if you don't discuss it. There's going to have to be a military solution. And then there's this big surprise, including by me, who really thought what he was going to invade. You know, but that's what Putin said, right? Yeah. So these were his concerns.

His concerns were Ukraine and NATO and, you know, that Don Bass and Minsk, and those were the concerns. Yeah. And Minsk presented a number of opportunities to prevent the war. They could have pressured Poroshenko to sign Minsk, and they didn't. they could have supported Zelensky in his attempts to sign Minsk and they didn't and on literally the weeks before the war when Putin was furiously calling Shulsa Macron and saying Minsk will stop this you guys need to pressure Ukraine though and they didn't three massive missed opportunities any one of which could have been taken right Zelensky was you know Russia thought Zelensky was going to fix things here's this guy who said we're going to make peace with Russia, we're going to sign Minsk, and Russia thought there be cages. And Zelensky was willing. It was the states who didn't support him and do it. It was the states who made it so that Minsk couldn't be signed. So there was these three opportunities to never

let this horror happening. And I think you mentioned last time that Emmanuel Macron had promised him. No, you're right, and we are doing Minsk, I promise. We are going to make them implement the thing. And then a couple days later, it was clear that. No, we're not because France ain't driving. yeah someone else must have told you that i didn't i haven't heard macron say we promise we'll do it i didn't i didn't actually know that line um yeah i think he had really given putin an assurance that you have my word we're going to do this minsk thing you know we're going to implement it just like you're suggesting here and then he just wasn't in a position to make that happen you know when when zolenski was first elected i try to remember the exact quotation when zelanski was

first elected like on the eve of his election he said, we're certainly going to continue with this men's process. This is what we're going to do. And early on in his time, in his, early on in his election, just after his election, he met again with France and Germany. And he signed a document. I can look it up what we're talking about. But he signed a document again reiterating elections in the Donbassum and autonomy.

I mean, Zelensky came into office intending to do this. there was no way he could do it on his own because pressure within ukraine was going to push him way off that path but with american support on that path he was going to do it and if the states in russia and france backed him zolenski was going to do what you know they promised him inskin this wouldn't have happened um it was it was that you know this it was the states and the western powers who really made it so zelanski couldn't do it this war this is the tragedy of this war scott is that it could have been avoided. Instead, there's all the suffering.

And in the end, in the end, and I don't want to make predictions, because I hate predictions, it's probably in some way going to end exactly the way it would have ended if it never happened. Right. With some kind of agreement on autonomy in the Donbass,

and some kind of agreement that Ukraine won't be in NATO and some kind of security guarantees for Ukraine, that's what could have been signed before the war ever happened without a fifth of the Ukrainian population and being forced out of the country and tens of thousands,

maybe hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers killed already. And it's not going to get better in the next couple of weeks, right? It's not going to get better. And look, I mean, when Millie, oh, and by the way, the document you're talking about there

is the Steinmeyer formula. I'm getting that from your article, from your new article here. It's good that you can remember what I was I always joked it half the article. No, I got it right in front of me. I was thinking, oh, man, I don't think I have that in the book.

I need to plagiarize Ted some more. I'm still in your link, at least, you know. But this is, I mean, this is Zelensky early on in his presidency saying, we'll do it. Yep. And then importantly, too, you link to this piece in foreign policy by Justin Lynch that says, you know,

Zelensky flounders in bid to end Ukraine's war. Pushing a controversial peace agreement, the new president faces blowback in Kiev, that he may not be able to over-examine. come. In other words, Zelensky was elected, as you say in your article with a lot of support from the South and East and the people who wanted the peace deal. He's a Russian speaker. He's only just learned Ukrainian in the last couple of years. I forgot exactly how far East he's from, but still. But then in the capital city, you got right sector and C-14 crawling around.

And when they threaten to kill and or just overthrow the government in Kiev, as the New York Times has admitted, that is not an idle threat. These men have proven they have the ability to, you know, certainly overthrow the government. They've done it before. Yeah. And this was not, this was a small percentage of people in the Ukraine with an inordinate amount of power and the ability to act on that power. And that power got elevated after, you know, the coup in 2014. And Poroshenko already knew that the Minskicords would face huge pressure from Ukraine. I don't think he says he knew it would never happen.

He's one of those who said it was a fake because of that pressure. That pressure intensified for Zelensky because Poroshenko was, you know, pre-2014. And he didn't have to face the stronger, you know, right sector and the other. kind of nationalist parties. And so Zelensky really had to face it. And he faced enormous pressure, as we've talked about before, possibly, possibly mortal pressure. And, you know, Stephen Cohen and others have pointed out that, you know, Zelensky was

never going to be able to implement the Minsk courts without U.S. support. But he could have with U.S. support. And the U.S. knew that. And Germany knew that. And France knew that. And they did nothing. And so they allowed that situation to get worse and worse and worse. And, you know, the states, the states was actually at times angry with Europe for wanting to support, you know, Donbass autonomy, and we're actually pushing further even then for Ukraine to take all the territory back.

So these are not new things. There are things that the states have been doing that Putin's been watching and getting increasingly concerned about over the years. And finally, I think it was the, was it the Russian ambassador to Washington that it said at one point that, that, you know, everything we've tried have been. rejected, we're being backed and backed and backed into a corner. And so, and this is the time when Putin says to the states with these security proposals, we need to resolve this. And I think we can, right? I think this can be resolved by Minsk. We need some kind of security guarantees on, you know, Ukraine and NATO. And the states won't even talk about it. They knew what would happen if they didn't talk about it. They had the three opportunities with Minsk to, to not let it happen.

then once the war once the war does start there's still opportunities to stop it like on the on the eve of the war you've got we just talked about Putin presenting the states with with security you know options that

easily could have prevented the war even if they hadn't agreed to everything to start talking and then and then you've got we talked before the which to me is like this doesn't get talked about enough this is really the most upsetting one to me is that the Istanbul negotiations where where you've actually got Ukraine and Russia,

they actually have a tentative agreement. Even the most hostile people to Russia say there was a tentative agreement. So there's a settlement within reach. And the states and the UK fly in, and they bust it up. And what I think is the most, this is the line for me,

that's the most horrible line maybe in the whole war, is when the State Department actually says, this is a war that's in many ways bigger than Russia. It's bigger than Ukraine. So Russia and Ukraine are ready to stop the war on Russia and Ukraine's terms. But the state says that's not enough. It's bigger than your terms. We need to pursue our own foreign policy goals with Russia and therefore the war is going to continue. So for me, whoever you blame for the start of the war, clearly Russia bears responsibility for fighting. It's illegal to start a war. But by April of 2020,

Ukraine and Russia, this is key for me. By April of 2022, Russia and Ukraine have agreed to stop the war. It's the United States and the UK that says, no, you have to keep fighting for our goals. So if Russia started the war in February, it's ready to end by April. Now we're fighting a war because the state says we want a war. So after April, the U.S. bears at the very least co-responsibility for the war. So, Scott, that was the next huge chance they could have stopped the war was in the talks in Istanbul when the two warring sides were ready to stop the war. And then the last one is just within the last few days, you know, when when Western militaries start to think that the wars wreak this inflection point. And inflection point means that Ukraine's

reek the apex. They've taken the land they can take. And concerns amongst Western military analysts that seem to be very much bearing out right now that if the war goes on longer than this not only will ukraine not retake more land but russia will probably start taking land and so remember it was at the beginning of november back a few months ago that chairman of the joint chiefs of staff milly said listen you guys did a great job taking back kursan city there let's quit while you're behind but only so far behind but there was real like he didn't say this but i sure inferred that he meant to say you guys are losing mariapole never mind just um you know the donbass you're losing that area of zabrocia um oh blast too in that

uh in that so-called land bridge between donetsk and crimea but hey you know what you could have not listen to us and sign the peace deal a year ago, right? But so, and, and, and he's presumably speaking for the rest of the chiefs there. And then you got Anthony Blinken puts a story in the New York Times saying that, no, he disagrees with the military guys. They don't know what they're talking about. He thinks they should push their luck further until they're in a better position of strength, which is, I guess, what this tanks and Crimea talk is about. And yet, how transparent is it when they admit that, well, look, we're just doing this for the public relations so it looks like we're in a stronger position so we can negotiate. You give away your whole advantage when you

put that in the newspaper, you know? Yeah, and Scott, look, Biden, Biden wrote this in New York Times too in his op-ed piece in New York Times, and they've said consistently since then that our goal is to put Ukraine in the strongest position possible on the battlefield to put them at the strongest position possible at negotiating table. So if in November we've reached an inflection point where Ukraine is now at the strongest point on the battlefield, then if you're telling the truth, now's the time for negotiations, right? But the pressure them not going to do that. They're a fork in a road now. Ukraine's gone as far as they can with the weapons they've got. So negotiate or give them more bigger weapons. And they chose give them bigger.

weapons. And for me, that's the sixth missed opportunity. There was this moment at this inflection point where you've put Ukraine at the strongest position on the battlefield. They're now at the strongest position on the negotiating table. Negotiate. And they missed that opportunity and they chose to escalate again. And that's the sixth lost opportunity. By the way, most of those weapons aren't going to get there in time to have any relevance in this war. So pushing them past that inflection point is going to mean what? It's going to mean that thousands more Ukrainian soldiers are going to get killed in Bahmoud over the next few days. From everything I read, Russia will probably take Bahamut the next few days.

That means that leads to the possibility, I'm not a military analyst, but that leads to the possibility of tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops being surrounded by Russian troops. It means that the Ukraine can no longer supply their troops in that part of the Donbass. It gives Russia the chance to take more of the Donbass. It's the, for Ukraine, this is a disaster. while America pursues their policies against Russia. And the sixth and the last sort of vile missed opportunity so far was that we really were at that moment the state said it's time to negotiate.

And instead of negotiating, they just pushed the war on more. Well, I think there's a real question to this day about what the radical right would do to Zelensky if he did try to make a deal here. You know, they said before that they'd kill him. I don't know why they would change their mind about that. I mean, if the Ukrainian military as a major organized force is smashed and the Russians just take what they want and Zelensky signs on the bottom line, these four oblasts belong to you now, the Nazis aren't going to accept that. They may or may not kill him, but they're going to keep waging an insurgency of some kind or another against the Russians.

And then at that point, there's not going to be a Ukrainian military to reign the military. Not that they ever were able to before, I guess. And I don't know enough about this to speak much about it, but you know, what is Zelensky's out now? If he continues to fight more and more Ukraine is going to kill, the infrastructure is going to get more and more devastated. The worst part of the war is still to come for Ukraine, right? So if he keeps going, Ukraine is devastated. At some point, does that affect his popularity?

If he doesn't, and he signed the agreement, as you said, he failed. the same force from the right as before, but worse now, because now you've got the rest of the country saying, what? You put us through all of this just to do what you're going to do then. It's difficult, it's difficult to know how Zelansky gets out of the position that the Americans have helped to put him in. It's scary. Give me just a minute here. At the Libertarian Institute, we published books, real good ones. So far we've got Will Griggs's No Quarter, Sheldon Richmond's coming to Palestine, and what social animals owe to each other, and four of mine, fools Aaron, enough already, the great Ron Paul,

and my brand new one, hotter than the sun, time to abolish nuclear weapons. And I'm happy to announce that we've just published our managing editor Keith Knight's first one, the Voluntarius Handbook, an excellent collection of essays by the world's greatest libertarian thinkers and writers. me. Check them all out at Libertarian Institute.org slash books. And for a limited time, signed copies of enough already and hotter than the sun are available at Scott Horton.org slash books. Hey guys, I had some wasps in my house. 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 assault or anything else you buy from Amazon.com. by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at scothorton.org. So keep that in mind. And don't worry about the mess. Your wife will clean it up. All right, so I wanted to go back to a point that you made before about Putin's security proposals and all of that. One of the things that I just find this entertaining in a way, I guess, is, and this is because, I guess, maybe I'm very middle-aged right now, and I don't want to admit it.

So I keep insisting to myself that 1997 was just yesterday. But according to our media, it's ancient history. 1997 was the year after 1897. And nothing that happened then matters or could possibly matter. And Putin obviously is a dishonest guy or a crazy guy that he would even bring up an agreement from 1997 at all. Who could imagine that an agreement from 1997 would still be valid in any way? Don't you know America's word doesn't last that long? Which agreement do you mean?

And it's the founding act. It's the founding act for the NATO-Russia Council and the promise that America would not move military forces into Eastern Europe. And they got it in writing, but it's just an assurance, not an agreement and not a treaty and a thing. and I just found this great quote I'm sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. Well, I just found this great quote from Bill Clinton here.

And this is Bill Clinton for you. No one will be surprised to hear this from him. He says, what the Russians get out of this great deal we're offering them is a chance to sit in the same room with NATO and join us whenever we all agree to do something. But they don't have any ability

to stop us from doing something that they don't agree with. They can register their disapproval by walking out of the room. And for their second big benefit, they get our promise that we're not going to put our military stuff into their former allies who are now going to be our allies, unless we happen to wake up one morning and decide to change our mind. Yeah, and decide to change our mind. If you look back at the founding act, Scott, and again, I wish I had the memory to just bring the words up to my brain now. I don't. But if you look at the – I've written about this on Antwera before, so you can Google it.

But if you look at the founding act, it was a bluff from the beginning, and the language was so slippery that it, you know, it implied promises to Russia that were not promises to Russia. And the sophistry of the U.S. position is, you know, brought into highlight when you look at the founding act, which said, if I remember, I think you just said this, that the U.S. can't have any – permanently, sorry, NATO can't have any permanently stationed, you know, military in former Soviet Union territory. And then a few months ago, Biden announces that they're building a permanent military base in Poland. And Putin says, what? Founding Act, no permanent military, and what the state says, and this isn't Clinton, although it's such Clinton-like language, right? What the state says is that this is not a permanent military base because the soldiers will be cycle. through it. They won't be permanent. As if that's not the case of every military base in history of world, right? That what makes it, the base is permanent, but it doesn't count because the

soldiers aren't there eternally. We cycle them. This is just total sophistry. And, you know, Putin's a lawyer. Putin knows the law. He liked legalese. And, you know, when you take the broken verbal promises of NATO expansion after the Cold War, and then, you know, then you get the twisting out of the written promises of things like the Founding Act. This is why Putin said this time, it doesn't matter if you tell us Ukraine's nod into the near future. It doesn't matter what you tell us, right? This time we needed in legally binding language.

And they weren't going to settle for anything less this time because they've been burned by taking American promises. They've been burned. And that's why these security proposals that Putin brought was this time he said, these have to be in writing. We need to put in writing that Ukraine won't be a member of NATO, that we won't have a hostile alliance right on our border. And don't tell me it's not a hostile alliance, right?

What does it mean when you bring every single country into a military alliance except us and then butt it right up to our border, right? How could you interpret that as anything but hostile? And so we need written security guarantees. And when you tell us it's not even on the table, then there'll be a military solution. And then don't act surprised when there's a military solution. And I'm not saying it's right to the military solution.

I'm a pacifist. I don't think it's right to ever of a military solution. But don't act surprised. Yeah. Well, and I think it's important, too, that this is not just coming from the Ron Paulians and the Ted Snyders and the critics of the world. And we have, well, I'm writing a book about this right now. And I get, there's a thousand quotes from all the most powerful and well,

well-informed and influential people in the foreign policy blob saying that exact same thing. We're just moving the dividing line. Scott, including the current head of the CIA, who's been the main negotiator for the U.S. And they'll say things like, look, NATO is a defensive alliance. Never mind those wars that we started and stuff, but we swear we're really not going to attack Russia. Are you crazy? We're not going to do that. We really are just consolidating our position.

Eastern Europe so that Russia doesn't invade Eastern Europe, but as long as they don't invade, then we won't have a problem. But, however, still, we also have to recognize how that looks to the Russians. It still looks pretty aggressive to them. And so we need to take those concerns, right? These are the people who are actually implementing the policy are saying, yeah, you know, I'd freak out if I was them too. So we better do a little bit of eggshells and try to negotiate in a way and make them feel better about what we're doing, not just kick sand in their face and call them bad words and insults them

and cause worse problems. And it isn't just how it looks to Russia. Days after NATO made its first expansion into, I forget now if it was a Soviet or Baltic territory, I forget which one they made like the most provocative. Poland, Hungary and Romania was the first. Yeah, that was the first. But I mean, like days after they made sort of the most provocative encroachment

into former Soviet territory might have been the Baltars. I can remember they bombed Kosovo. Yeah, no, it was right out. It was the day, it was like three weeks after those first three nations were brought in in 99, in the spring of 99. And so, you know, Yeltsin looks out and he says,

you told me this was defensive. You moved closer to our borders. Then you bomb one of our allies. I believe that was the moment, too. I have to check my facts. So maybe don't put me on the radio. I think that was the moment that Yeltsin first reminded the states

that you're dealing with a nuclear power. You know who we are. Be careful. You know, that was then, so they'd do that. And then you get Libya, right? So where, you know, NATO goes completely around the security council again. And so, you know, Russia's saying like, if you were a defensive alliance, first of all, the Warsaw Pact is gone, defending from whom?

Second of all, why are you swallowing up every single country but excluding us if it's defensive? Third of all, why are you bombing Kosovo in Libya? That's not defensive. Neither Libya nor anyone in Yugoslavia was attacking or bombing the United States. That's not defensive. And then they see them moving closer and closer. They're coming into Ukraine. Ukraine's being flooded first with defensive weapons very early and then.

flooded with, um, you know, lethal weapons, um, flooded with lethal weapons, um, flooded with infrastructure, flooded with trainers, um, training them to use what, on whom Russia is saying, right? So, they're scared. Right. Absolutely. All right. Listen, um, I still got a little bit of time. If you do, you want to talk about your new piece at anti-war.com today, too? Um, sure. Fact checking Zelensky. on non-alignment. What do you mean by that? So

Zelensky made a speech the other day. I think he was talking to the Ukraine and Parliament's annual message and he made this comment where he said that Ukraine has helped the West find itself again that it's United the European Union

and helped Europe and most of the world I'm quoting this part, helped Europe and most of the world feel that being neutral is, pardon me, immoral. so Zelensky's he's claiming that it's showing the world again that being neutral or non-aligned is not a moral position and you know Scott I think there's some truth to Zelensky's first claim that it helped find the West again that with some really important outliers it has to some extent united Europe and NATO but I think it's not true that it's shown the world that it's immoral to be non-aligned I think what we

seen in the last year is in fact a kind of strengthening of the non-alignment movement that huge organizations like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that represent 40 to 45% of the world have neither sanctions nor condemned Russia have continued to trade with Russia, have continued to push for not a unit polar world, but a multipolar world. You've had several countries in Africa and the Middle East and Latin America who have stayed out of the sanctions and remain neutral, either because they see this is just another, you know, Western and European war that doesn't affect them, or that it hurts them, or that they remember what the states has done to them and don't believe

American language about non-intervention and respecting territorial borders. So, if, Russia, they call this the global majority now, where more than half the world has decided to stay non-aligned. And that doesn't mean they're siding with Russia, right? It means that they're not siding with Russia or the states and looking out for their own interests. And you get countries like Saudi Arabia who have this kind of mantra now, which is, yes, we're strategic partners of the United States, but we're strategic partners of China too, where we're

partners of Russia, too, and we need to look out for our own interests and not getting drawn into this. And I think you're seeing actually a massive growth of the non-aligned movement. So I think although Zelensky is talking about non-alignment becoming immoral now, I think in some ways this war has given an impetus to the non-aligned movement. There's all kinds of countries now applying for membership to Bricks and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Oh, is that so? Yeah, there's tons of countries. I mean, Iran just got into the SCO and Indonesia and Saudi Arabia and all kinds of countries applying for membership for these bodies. And these bodies are not, again, I don't want to make this sound like they're like supporting the war of pro-Russian. These are bodies that say that we're not against anyone, but we're aligning together to enforce a multipolar world where it bowels. is U.S. leadership, where it's not one country telling me what to do. It's a way of preserving

neutrality or non-alignment. And so I think that, I think that what Zelensky said about the second part is, is, is not true. I think that this war has actually hurt the states in that way, that if, if the American goal was to, this is how we started the show, was to weaken Russia and to protect their own spheres of influence and to, to remain the goal. global, you know, hegemon in this unipolar world. I think it's done the opposite. It's pushed Russia closer to China. It's pushed Russia closer to India. It's pushed Russia closer to Iran and Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Venezuela and South Africa and much of Africa. South Africa just conducted massive military drills with, you know, China and Russia. So I think in this attempt to preserve

hegemony and preserve a unipolar world, I think it's having the opposite effect. It's actually strengthening the multipolar world. And, you know, one of the things I talk about it in articles is how many different movements there are underway in the world right now to escape the U.S. dollars as a currency that you've got, you've got Saudi Arabia saying they're prepared to start trading oil outside the U.S. dollar now. That's serious. You've got, you've got Bricks and the SCO talking about trading their own currencies. You've got Latin America talking about developing a unified currency. You've got, you know, all the world. And they're partly scared, you know, what these countries just saw is that the U.S. has the power because they control the dollar

to completely disable or to attempt to disable your economy. They froze up Russian funds. They sanctioned Russia. I mean, these countries are very aware that this can happen to them too. and they're looking for ways to trade outside of the dollar and that's this is this is not making neutrality immoral right this is actually it's been it's been an i think an incredible boost to neutrality yeah it's interesting i mean in europe it's gone the other way of course where now we have sweden and finland joining nato and you know increased troop numbers any argument that man we should disband nato and get the hell out of there get rid of the organization just turn it into simply a treaty that, you know, call us if you need us, but we're going home for

now kind of thing, anything like that. That's off the table for years and years and years in the future now, you know? You're right, but I think even within Europe, you've got France and Germany, for example, insisting that we need to resolve this war by taking seriously rush concerns about Ukraine and NATO, by looking at security arrangements that this is what Macron shows was saying, like word for war, that we need to resolve. to have security ranges that take into account, you know, Russian's core needs. So even within Europe, although there's the sort of tightening of Europe, there's still like the two biggest countries in the EU who are outliers with the states

and saying, no, we need to start talking to Russia now about taking their security concerns seriously. And I think it was Macron that said, you know, that specified Ukraine and NATO. And, you know, Schultz was saying we need to look at ways very quickly to reintegrate, Russia into the community after the war. So even even in Europe on the sort of NATO agreement and superficial agreement, there are divides here, right? That there are countries that are going well beyond what the U.S. wants to negotiate with Russia. Yeah. Well, you know, right after the war started, Doug McGregor, unfortunately, a prediction that didn't come true said that, well, the Germans are going to step in here in demand and into this before too long, just like

they had done with Minsk 1 and 2. That, come on, man, we're, you can't, it's fine from over here in North America. You can, you know, it's like Carlin said, playing with toys in the sand or whatever. This is all abstract fun from here. But for Germany, this war in Ukraine carries real consequences and for decades. And, I mean, they're, first of all, with refugees and all of that, but their relationship shit with Russia going forward here and all of these things it's they have so much more at stake but i guess that you know their country their government is just so under the thumb of the united states they just don't have the independence well scott this has always been the problem because if you go back to 2008 at the famous you know nato bucoress summit in 2008 when george bush comes in

and says let's bring ukraine into nato all the way back then it was germany and france that said no. And the only reason why Ukraine didn't get, you know, NATO ascension in 2008 is because through a really weird and misunderstood negotiation, they managed to water down the language to a promise that they joined and not. So Russia, so Germany and France have always been kind of outliers in this, and they still are. And this is why Macron is still saying to Bush. You didn't really make it into the American media after Macron met with Bush, the American media about how they all agreed. And then just before he leaves the country, he gives an interview on French TV. And he says straight up, we need to start negotiating, taking, you know, Russia's security concerns early. And he called them

legitimate, I can't remember exact wording, but he called them, you know, legitimate security concerns. And then they couldn't stop Bush from announcing that, well, we're going to bring them in someday. We're not giving them an action plan, but we're promising one soon. You know, those reports that Condoleezza Rice and some of the Eastern European members of NATO, some of these people kind of huddled and talked about, what are we going to do about, you know, Bush saying we want to bring Ukraine into NATO now? And there's reports that Germany and France actually wanted something much stronger, that they really wanted to not do it,

and that almost somehow in some kind of accidental way that Angela Merkel-American never figured out. this kind of line came out about the promise. And at that point, one official, I forget it was a European or American official. Again, my memory's gone. Turned to somebody and said, do we just put Ukraine in NATO? I think Germany and France wanted a much weaker statement in 2008, and it's not entirely even clear. I've heard language be blamed. I've heard that they didn't have their interpreters there, and they were all trying to mumble in like half Russian.

but I don't know. But Germany and France didn't want Ukraine and NATO in 2008. And they're still expressing that concern now that we need to negotiate this. Remember, the states are saying that this is not on the table. We don't negotiate Ukraine and NATO. And Macron's saying, no, we have to exactly negotiate Russian security concerns and talk about Ukraine and NATO. Yeah.

All right, man. Well, I've got to read up on Fast and Furious in the CIA and Mexico. co for my next interview. But this is always fun. This was fun. This always is fun. I love talking to you and reading your great stuff, Ted. Thanks, God.

It was great talking to you. All right, you guys. That is Ted Snyder, of course, regular contributor at anti-war.com. And now also at the Libertarian Institute as well, check out his brand new one. His first one at the Institute is called The Mist Opportunities of the War in Ukraine. and at anti-war.com today, fact-checking Zelensky on non-alignment. The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.