Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/18/22 Doug Bandow on Yemen and Ukraine

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

Scott talks with Doug Bandow about the escalation of the war in Yemen and the tension with Russia over Ukraine. Bandow explains why the Hawk’s characterization of Iran’s involvement in Yemen is deceptive. They also discuss how it’s in the interest of every faction with decision-making power to keep the war going. Towards the end, they turn to the situation in eastern Europe. Bandow points to a number of topics that often get left out of discussions on this issue— such as the misdeeds of Ukrainian Nationalists and NATO’s history of pushing Russia around— that help to paint a more realistic picture of what is happening.  Discussed on the show: “Biden Administration Goes All in for Saudis and Emiratis” (Antiwar.com) Dave Smith explaining the Yemen War to Joe Rogan Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a regular contributor at Forbes Magazine, the National Interest, and elsewhere. He’s on Twitter @Doug_Bandow. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.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 all right you guys on the line i've got the great doug bondo he is senior fellow at the kato institute and contributing editor at antiwar dot com he wrote the book foreign follies and about

100,000 articles about why America's government ought to be doing less in the world. And so happy to have you back on the show here, Doug. How are you, sir? Always happy to be on. Always good to talk to you. Great, great. So first of all, let's talk about the worst thing in the world. And then second of all, we'll talk about the potentially worst thing in the world. So first then would be the war in Yemen. Biden administration goes all in for Saudis and Emirates. And if we had more space the headline would have read one year after promising to end the war in Yemen or at least American support for the Saudi and UAE war against Yemen. So what is this escalation to which you refer? Well, what we see is we're now putting F-15s over there so we can shoot down drones from

the Houthis. The USS Cole is going to be moved to a more advanced position. And beyond that, they're talking about declaring the Houthis to be a terrorist organization just as the Trump administration had done. And actually coming into office, one of the good things they did was eliminate that designation. Now they're debating, putting it back on. But the big thing is putting, you know, actually U.S. forces in that really would be shooting for them, you know, against, you know, the Houthis, against the Yemeni insurgents. That is a step, you know, up that we have not had in the past. Yeah, and I guess they did send the F-22s to the UAE,

so I guess that means, I mean, it was funny, the way I read it, they spun it like it was some kind of anti-aircraft, like what, they're going to shoot down drones or something? Sounds more like they're going to be used for airstrikes inside Yemen, do you think? I guess they're going to hit drone bases with U.S. jets. I mean, they presented it as being a defensive measure, to shoot down drones. I think for them to actually put

U.S. forces directly into action, I mean, that would be an incredible escalation. How do you shoot down a drone with an F-22? Isn't it, doesn't the drone travel like 20 miles an hour or something? Yeah, I mean, the problem, you know,

they travel real low. I mean, it's trying to, the idea of kind of buzzing. I don't know how they planned on doing that. If there's, if there's a maybe if they're over the ocean i i mean i can't imagine doing it overdeveloped territory it's very hard to see how they would do that i don't know i mean i agree it sounded very strange but i don't believe that this administration wants the blowback that would come from directly

intervening in the war i mean because this would allow this would be something a dramatic change from even trump and to be allowed people to accuse you of being more warlike than donald trump even though he didn't start any new wars ironically but still for the for biden i think it'd be the last thing he needs is that kind of controversy that would reinforce the whole debate over yemen it would bring it to a whole new level uh and i think it'd be much tougher for him you know there are some democrats who will vote and say yeah yeah you know send weapons to the saudis you let them kill people we don't care but if suddenly american jets are doing the you know the shooting and the killing wow yeah it's just amazing now in your piece

you clearly identify the Saudi and UAE side of Perth C's USA as the aggressors here. And I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but I think it's pretty important actually that recently our friend, the comic Dave Smith, was on the Joe Rogan show and gave a little spiel about Yemen for a while. And that got quite a bit of attention. And then what happened was there's this other very important internet show with millions of viewers, the Tim Poole show, that had a conservative report. Republican congressman on there who said, oh, this Smith guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Everybody knows that what's going on here, essentially, is that Iran has invaded Yemen. And the Saudis are trying to prevent the horrible Iranians from taking over this place. And that's what old Dave Smith doesn't mention.

So I wonder if you could talk about what is the truth of Iran's role in the Yemen war, as you understand it. Are the Houthis an invasion force from Persia? if you listen to you know the Saudi lobby you'd certainly think so now it's quite outrageous I mean look let's be clear the Houthis the group's formal name is Ansar Allah and it's called Houthis because that was the name of the first leader who was killed as part of kind of early early revolt now this is not a friendly organization this is not one that we would welcome in America. And it's not a pro-liberty organization. We have no illusions about that.

It treats other Yemenis pretty badly. It's committed its own atrocities. So, I mean, no one should be out there saying, oh, aren't these wonderful people? They aren't, nor the Iranians. But the Houthis are Yemeni. The Houthis have been involved in fighting the central government since the mid-2000s. They started their fight against the previous president, Sala. Now, he was tossed out as part of the Arab Spring. The new guy came in Haughty, who wasn't particularly kind of popular. So the Houthis joined

with Sala, the guy they used to fight. You know, two in 2014-2015, toss out Hottie. So they drove him from the capital. They took control of the capital of Sona. This is all internal stuff. I mean, if you want to read about Yemeni history, you should go, you'll, get a good book on it,

get a good study on it. You know, the specialists out there affirm, the Houthis are not Iranian proxies. The Houthis are, I mean, they're called Zadis. They are Shia, but they're not the same kind of Shia as Iran. Now the distinctions utterly escape

me, but there is a difference that is significant. They're actually closer to Sunnis than other Shia. And they've never been controlled by Iran. These are folks who come from, you know, very much Yemen. And in the history of Yemen, I mean, you go back about 60, 70

years. I mean, one of them was the kingdom. Excuse me. One of them is a British protectorate. There were actually two of them. You know, people talked about south and north Yemen. At one point, the Egyptians were shooting at the Saudis because the Saudis were supporting the royal government against the military insurrection that was supported by the Egyptians. And eventually both those guys got tired of it and the royals got beaten anyway. You know, they eventually united the two countries and then all of the fighting basically went internal. That's when Salah took over.

I mean, there's a history here of decades of internal fighting, confrontation, trouble, discord, et cetera. So, I mean, it's a very complicated situation. The Houthis are part of that, and they're part of that internally. Now, so in 2015, the Saudis decided, and this is when our friend Mohammed bin Salman, at that point he wasn't crown prince yet. He was deputy crown prince, took over his defensemen.

and apparently decided he'd show how tough he was. So he figured he'd have a short little war, kick out these insurgents, put Hadi back in power. They have a puppet ruler who's going to listen to you, put him back in power, and it'd show how great they were. And this is supposed to last a few weeks and everything was supposed to go swell. Well, that was seven years ago. So obviously things didn't go terribly well. So the Iranians show up, why? Well, because the Saudis, who are supported by the most powerful country on Earth, that's sells them tens of billions of dollars of weapons, plus unitions, plus services those weapons, plus provides personnel to provide intelligence, plus early on was providing refueling for the planes.

So the Houthis needed some weapons, so the Iranians were happy to oblige. The Saudis gave the Iranians a perfect opportunity to bleed them, because it turns out the Saudi military isn't very good, and it has lost to the Houthis. So, yes, the Iranians are supporting the Houthis, but guess who started supporting who first? The U.S. is supporting the Saudis. The notion that this is somehow the Saudis, now, the Saudis didn't want the Houthis in charge of Yemen, and great powers, you know, like to meddle in next door neighbors, the U.S. certainly knows that. But they turned out they blundered it away.

But this has nothing to do with kind of, oh, we've got to stop the menace of Iran. the Saudis in Yemen, Emirates, the Emirates and Saudis created, they're the main players, they created their own coalition that at one point had, you know,

Sudan involved in some other countries. You know, this was all local geopolitics that actually didn't have much to do with Iran. The fact that Iran is involved today is a response to Saudi Arabia and the Emirati is getting involved. You know,

so they create the problem, then they blame what they're doing on the problem. You know, I mean, it's very typical. But Doug, as Hillary Clinton, and says, when you find yourself in a hole, you've got to grab a shovel and keep digging. Oh, well, we've certainly done that. The Saudis certainly have. Yeah, they certainly have.

But so, okay, but now, worst case scenario, and I'm some guy from the Atlantic Council or some horrible thing like that, and I say to you that, hey, but you're right, okay, you're right about everything. However, if we leave now, the Houthis are better friends with Iran than ever before. And if the Houthis just rules Sana'a uncontested, and especially if they're able to conquer Aden and the rest and reunite Yemen under their rule, then they'll control the gates of the Red Sea, and they'll be the Ayatollah's sock puppet then. And so we can't let that happen, even though you're right, this is all Barack Obama and Donald Trump and Joe Biden's fault so far for making it this way. What if I said that to you, what do you think? Well, there's no proof of that. I mean, the Yemenis have always been independent.

They've shown an extraordinary ability to fight. Nothing suggests that the Houthis want to be run from Tehran. I mean, you know, if you talk to area specialists, I mean, they all agree that in the past, the Houthis never have been puppets of the Iranians, you know, so there's no reason to think they're going to want to become so now. And again, this is where, you know, and we, certainly the U.S. has done this on occasion, where you realize that if you have certain interests, what you do is you talk about protecting those interests

as opposed to going to war and then wondering how you protect your interests. You know, that is if the Saudis had said to the Houthis, you know, hey guys, now, I mean, we're a little bit nervous about you all. We can live with you, but you've got to realize if you start doing X, whatever X is. Now, X could be shooting missiles, you know, at Saudi Arabia. Of course, the Houthis didn't do that until the Saudis had spent years bombing. civilians in Yemen.

But you could imagine the Saudi saying, look, we want to make sure that Gulf traffic is open. I mean, any number of things like that. There's no reason to think that the Houthis had any interest in having the world come down

upon them. They understand the power of the United States and Saudi Arabia and stuff. Why would they do that? What do they gain by trying to shoot up ships going by? Their focus always has been internal. It's winning the internal struggle.

And again, you look at Yemeni history, been violent and crazy for decades. You've never seen Yemenis say, now is our chance. Let's conquer the Middle East. I mean, that's never been on the agenda. This is the poorest country in the Middle East. Today, one of the poorest in the world, the idea that it's going to manage to, you know, kind of hold the region hostage, you know, is laughable. And the Saudis and the Emirates and the U.S. All could have said, you know, we're not going to get involved, but if you guys do X, again, whatever X might be, this is what happens, you know, but instead the Saudis and the Emirates wanted the puppet in power. You know, and what they got then was a disaster where the

Houthis are winning, you know, control most of the population, you know, and are in a position where they could actually cause trouble in Gulf traffic. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, the audiobook of my book, enough already. Time to End the War on Terrorism is finally done. Yes, of course, read by me. It's available at Audubble. Amazon, Apple Books, and soon on Google Play and whatever other options there are out there. It's my history of America's War on Terrorism from 1979 through today. Give it a listen and see if you agree. It's time to just come home. Enough already. Time to end the War on Terrorism, the audiobook.

Hey guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the Institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expanddesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Hey guys, Scott Horton here for Listen and Think Libertarian audiobooks. As you may know, the audio book of my new book, enough already. ready. Time to end the war on terrorism is finally out. It's co-produced by our long-time

friends at Listen and Think Libertarian audiobooks. For many years now, Derek Sheriff over there at Listen and Think has offered lifetime subscriptions to anyone who donates $100 or more to the Scott Horton Show at Scotthorton.org slash donate or to the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org slash donate. And they've got a bunch of great titles, including Inside Syria by the late great Reese Erlich. It's listen and think.com. So I was interviewing Shereen Al-Ademi, and she pointed this out to me, this article by a guy named Jamal Ben Amar.

He was the former UN Special Envoy for Yemen. And I already knew about this, but just not this much. And this guy wrote this whole thing about it in Newsweek, where I knew that there was some kind of compromise going on, but this guy really describes it and how he was overseeing it. The U.N. guy was kind of overseeing it and helping the Houthis after they seize power in alliance with the former dictator that we'd back for 30 years, Abdullah Sala, who Hillary had overthrown but just a few years before, and we had this long-term relationship before that. Here he is allied with his old enemies, the Houthis, and they sit down, and they're willing to negotiate with everybody and form a coalition and a new thing, and they want to create a new lower house of representatives for women and young people and what are all these proposals. Well, I learned that somewhere else not here. But anyway, they were really making progress on it, is what this guy's talking about.

It wasn't just, oh, the Houthis have seized power in the capital city. Remember, the warden break out until March, right? So they were there for two, three months. And they knew that they can't just enslave the whole country under their rule, that they have to immediately start negotiating with all these different dominant factions in the different regions of the country and all this stuff. and they were playing ball with everybody. In other words, even from the Saudis point of view,

they didn't need to do this stupid thing, you know? That they had whatever influence they needed to retain in Yemen, they would have had enough of it to satisfy them, if only they'd held their horses kind of thing, you know? No, the Saudis had had a perfectly acceptable relationship with Sala, and he was involved in this. And you're right, at that point, I mean, the Houthis were not in a position, to conquer Yemen. I mean, the extraordinary thing is how they've gained support from a lot of

other forces. Otherwise, they wouldn't be winning. I mean, the way you unify, you know, a country is have outsiders show up. I mean, haughty called in airstrikes on his own people. He's not very popular today. You know, so he's the formally recognized president, but who on earth would vote for this guy? I mean, didn't he live in a hotel in Riyadh? Exactly. I mean, he lives in luxury. Nobody pays attention to him. I mean, he doesn't have, you know, who's loyal to him? I mean, down south, the Emirates have worked with separatists.

And the Emirates have done their best to split the country. They've been grabbing islands and territory, you know, for themselves. So, no, I mean, what they set in motion, I mean, you're absolutely right, is the Houthis, you know, again, historically, I mean, you've got faction after faction. I mean,

so Sala had, you know, I mean, this is a guy who'd survive for decades in, you know, a snake pit of politics, you know, in a region where, you know, who can get through that kind of tribal and religious and ethnic, you know, fighting. And he did it. And, you know, like, he switched sides. And then they decided to switch sides again. He wanted to make a deal with the Saudis and ended up dead. That, you know, this is a political situation where early on, the Houthis had, you know, no choice, really, but to deal with locals and come up with some kind of a reigning coalition.

Again, we might not like it, but this was not going to be some group that wanted to challenge the Saudis or the Gulf or America. They wanted to rule locally. That's all they were into. And we've seen after seven years, now they are more powerful. And that's the scary thing. And it shows the unattended consequences. You start a war, you're going to win in a few weeks. It turns out no.

You know, seven years later, you're still stuck and the other guys are advancing. Yeah. Well, and it also goes to show right while. I, as we record this, neither side wants to give at all. Because the Houthis, as you say, are ascendant. I mean, they've had a few setbacks recently, but certainly they're not in any danger of losing the capital city or anything like that. And the Saudis mostly have been losing,

but in somebody else's country with, you know, slave soldiers, you know, child soldiers brought in from Sudan and, you know, other mercenary fighters. and whatever it's not like little princelings are dying in the war you know so the Saudis um have essentially only face to lose uh from their point of view if they end the war they could just keep it going and put off the face losing and so and the americans and the british are making a bunch of money and so they don't give a damn and so who's got the incentive built up to stop this thing, except a few American, you many expats,

crying, please quit genociding my country to deaf ears. No, it truly is shocking. I mean, the Trump administration viewed, you know, selling weapons to the Saudis as a jobs program. And the New York Times had a story of Peter Navarro played a very important role in that in convincing Trump that this is a great way. You know, we get a lot of money out of the Saudis

and isn't this fabulous economically without any discussion about what was used by those people? planes, what they were used for and where the bombs went and who they were dropped on. That's absolutely atrocious. And what we see is that, you know, the Iran-Iran card then is used to kind of wave at every, and you hear it from everyone. I mean, it's always out there, you know, people, and from people who know better. You know, they tell, oh, Iranian proxies, this, that.

And you know, they don't know. Everyone knows that's not true. That's simply ridiculous. They understand where this has come from. And, of course, what I find extraordinary, I mean, is that the Houthis are now shooting back. Now, they're wrong to shoot at civilians. I mean, so I don't endorse, you know,

trying to blow up airports and stuff, you know, and hit cities, which they've been doing. The problem is they lack anything precision guided in the same way that the supposedly, you know, Saudis and Emirates are doing. You know, and to have the Saudis and Emirates come forward and saying, oh, this is terrible. They're terrorists.

Look at this. They're bombing us after spending seven years killing Yemeni civilians. bombing cities, bombing school buses, bombing weddings, bombing funerals, bombing commercial buildings, apartments. I mean, it's extraordinary. And that gets repeated, though, the Biden administration has repeatedly criticized the Houthis for shooting.

And it has never criticized the Saudis or the Emirates when they bomb civilians. You know, that tells them you that they think the lives of the royals are more important. Or it's simply, you know, these are our buddies and we make a lot of money off of them. So I guess we shouldn't, you know, kind of rock the boat. Yeah, man. All right. So we'll leave it there because it's on autopilot anyway, the damn thing. Let's talk about Ukraine and Russia.

I'm dying to know everything on your mind about America's relationship with Russia and Ukraine in between us right now here, Doug. Well, look, I mean, this is, I mean, no one knows how this is going to turn out. I mean, I've listened separately this morning to a couple of different webinars, one of which everyone, was absolutely certain that war was going to happen. It could happen this weekend. Really, really, really this time, all the troops are lined up, you know, most of the Russian army, et cetera. And then the next one came on.

And all of these are, all of these are right-wing hawks who, you know, would be happy to start bombing Russia if they could. The second group said, oh, no, no, Putin knows that would really be a bad deal for him. Nah, I mean, he might do something, you know, small, he might do this. And you're thinking the same set of facts. No one knows what's going to happen. Now, Putin's not a nice guy, but it's clear to me that he doesn't want war. War is not in his interest.

But the problem in all of this is we've shown what happens when you don't pay attention to the interests of great powers. You know, we pushed Russia around when we could. You know, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it didn't matter what they wanted. And so we expanded NATO and we, you know, took Serbia apart and we promoted color revolutions. And it's fine if you want to argue. for all those things, but you can't argue for them without realizing there might be consequences. And we're paying the consequence now. And people who argue, oh, this is only about Putin being afraid of democracy in Iran.

Like in 2007, he spoke to the Munich Security Conference. And I mean, this is a serious speech. And at that time, he talked about these issues. I mean, he had a great paragraph in there about America that's constantly going to war, you know, which came after, you know, Iraq and after Afghanistan. That, you know, so it strikes me that our problem was we ignored him until now. And in many ways, that's, you know, he's voiced these, you know, complaints at different occasions. We just blew it off because we thought, so what, you know, he can't do anything.

And what he's done is he's proved that he can do something. And to my mind, the stupidity here is the refusal to be willing to say, look, I mean, no one really thinks that Ukraine's going to come into NATO. No one wants to defend Ukraine. Let's get real here. Instead, we're going to have this principle, which no one actually wants to act on, and we're willing to have a war because we don't want to, you know, go back on that principle. And I think that shows the problem with this.

We want to dominate. The U.S. wants, essentially, the U.S. wants an expanded Monroe doctrine for the world. That is, the U.S. gets to dominate every country up to its border. you know, that that's kind of a principle of international law. And that's what the feeling you get here is that the U.S. believes that if it wanted, it should be able to have troops on Russia's border, you know, even in Ukraine. You know, so, you know, no, of course we're not going to, you know, prevent this. And that's a great tragedy because I think that, you know, there's a lot that goes into this.

And again, I, in no way should we justify Russia going to war with Ukraine. You know, but what were, the U.S. and the allies have played a role in the buildup to this that they cannot escape. It doesn't excuse Russian action, but it explains it. We've got to understand it. Well, and the thing is, the Americans have no face to lose here when they're just acting like

little babies and saying, well, you can't close the door on Ukrainian membership to NATO. When, whatever, man, you close it then. We all know we're not bringing them into NATO anyway. And that's the big, you know,

a sticking point here. that we have to maybe have a real fight about, or, I mean, I think everybody knows it, even if Russia did invade Ukraine, that America's not going to intervene and get in a war over it anyway. So this is something that the Ukrainians should all have to die for in greater numbers than they already are in the fighting that continues in the east. By the way, I saw where Russia is saying, this is how close they are to invading. They're saying, you know, we also really want to get back to trying to implement Minsk, too. And we have some talks about that because, of course, what they're implying there, or I guess saying outright, is that Kiev has not implemented Minsk, too, where they said that they would reintegrate the Donbass, but under this, you know, greatly expanded new autonomy that the, you know, Donbass region groups, sponsored by the Russians, had agreed to and that they had agreed to as well. And that was back seven years ago now, 2015 when they signed that thing. no that's right that i mean the problem is the internal dynamics in ukraine you know i mean the nationalists are very strong that uh you know and they don't want to implement that and you know so they've refused to you know the west likes to blame russia for failing to i can you know fully enforce a ceasefire or this that and the other but of course you have this major breach you know of giving autonomy to the donbass which the ukrainians never have done

So it's pretty hard for them to complain about Russia being out of compliance when they haven't bothered complying themselves. And that's why I think the Russians are right to have a discussion about that, it would be quite useful. And I think that's where one could, to my mind, you know, you make it clear to Putin on the essential point of NATO membership that, yeah, we can deal on this. I mean, everybody says, well, countries should be able to choose their alliances. Well, that's not how NATO works. Go read Article 10. It says that NATO members, the unanimous vote, will invite countries to join. Well, I mean, you know, you can't go to NATO and say, I have my right, you know, kind of invite me.

You know, NATO invites you if they want to invite you. They don't invite you if they don't want to invite you. You know, and the point is, you know, it's quite fair for members of an alliance to say, you know, bringing you in actually is dangerous. So, no thanks. You know, good luck. I mean, you know, we're very sorry. but you know don't call us we'll call you kind of thing yeah and look if you're in it right that if you were just like the average brazilian looking at this where you don't really have a dog in this hunt or

something you would say well geez they ought to all treat ukraine like a neutral country instead of fighting over it or something like that is that outlandish and radical no and i mean you know the point is yeah again you can understand the ukrainian saying we don't want to act that way. And then the response, I think, is, folks, you're in a bad neighborhood. That's unfortunate. But it's not America's job to get you out of the bad neighborhood. We can't. You're there. And that's where you look at, you know, the models are, you know, not just Finland, which a lot of people point to, but Austria. I mean, the Soviets occupied Austria after, you know, I mean, the World War II ended. And there was a negotiation. Treaty

was signed. All the troops left. Austria agreed not to join either military bloc. You know, and the point is eventually the Soviet Union disappeared now Austria can do what it wants so this is the question of what you do now 50 years from now the world may look dramatically different it may not matter Russia will evolve everything else will change who knows

but Ukraine has to look at this and say is it worth fighting again over a principle which if they're smart they realize the West is not going to honor they are not going to be in NATO that's simply not going to happen it should be obvious to them I mean the Germans and the French certainly don't want that.

Who imagines the Portuguese and the Spanish and the Italians want to fight over and they don't want to fight over anybody. They're not going to fight over Ukraine. So from Ukraine's standpoint, it should be offering up essentially a deal saying, look, military neutrality, but you leave us alone if we decide

we want to join the European Union. You know, we can trade with whoever we want. But militarily, there are going to be no foreign troops, et cetera, et cetera. You know, that's fine. My guess is that Putin would be with that. I mean, that's essentially where, you know, he would have been, you know, back in 2014, you know, they got into the, and I don't think he would have invaded had, you know, Yanukovych

signed the EU treaty, even though Putin would have been, would not have been happy about that. But for Putin, it's when the guy gets overthrown. And then you start wondering what's going to happen to your naval base. And then you wonder what the government's going to look like, et cetera. Right. And today, the problem is everyone says, well, Putin should realize that not getting into NATO. Well, but if he listens to Stoltenberg, you know, the general secretary, if he listens to the U.S. Secretary of Defense, if he listens to a lot of other countries, they're constantly reassuring Ukraine.

Oh, yes, we hope you will, you know, kind of meet the criteria. You know, so why would he believe us? I mean, he hears that and it tells him that, yeah, well, we actually want to bring Ukraine in that we're lying. You know, we're in a position where we're trying to tell Putin, trust us. We're lying to Ukrainians, not to you. Right. You know, so don't worry about it.

Well, that's not entirely convincing. Yeah. I'm so sorry, Doug, this conversation is not over, but I got to go. I'm supposed to be getting interviewed by some other guy right now. But thank you so much for doing my show. I always learn so much from you. It's the only reason I know anything to tell these other people when they ask me. So I really appreciate you, as always, my friend.

I always get to talk to you. Have a good one now. Take care. Okay, you too. The great Doug Band out of there, y'all. Doug Bondo, Cato, and Antiwar.com. 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.