Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/23/23 Connor Freeman on Ukraine, Nord Stream and China

Episode Date: February 25, 2023

Connor Freeman, from the Libertarian Institute, was the first guest this week on Antiwar Radio. First, Scott talks about the Rage Against the War Machine rally in DC last Sunday. Then, Scott and Freeman jump into the developments hinting at a possible rift forming in Washington over the War in Ukraine. They also touch on the possible UN probe into the Nordstream bombing and our government’s march toward war with China.  Discussed on the show: RageAgainstWar.com “Why War Pledges for Ukraine Fell Flat in Munich” (Defense One) “Washington Post Lets Hersh’s Dangerous Cat Out of the Bag” (Antiwar.com) “Russia, blaming U.S. sabotage, calls for U.N. probe of Nord Stream” (Washington Post) “Blinken Accuses Beijing of “Considering” Arming Moscow Without Evidence” (Libertarian Institute) Connor Freeman is the Assistant Editor of the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest. His writing has been featured in media outlets such as Antiwar.com and Counterpunch, as well as the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. You can follow him on Twitter @FreemansMind96 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

For Pacifica Radio, February 23, 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. I'm editorial director of Anti-War.com, an editor of the new book, hotter than the sun.

Time to abolish nuclear weapons. You can find my full interview archive. One of the 5,800 of them now going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And you follow me on Twitter, if you dare, at Scott Horton's show. All right, now, before we get into the show, I want to tell you what a great success,

the rage against the war machine protest in D.C. was last Sunday. And thank you to you. I know there were quite a few people from Southern California who showed up. I'm not sure if they were all listeners to this show or not, but I think so, maybe some of them. Anyway, thank you guys for showing up. We had about 3,000 something people there and really great speakers. We got to reunite Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul up there saying great anti-war stuff and Max Blumenthal just absolutely killed and, you know, Chris Hedges and David Swanson and all the favorites of the Pacifica radio audience were there and just did such a great job. I don't know what you might have heard on Twitter, but the event itself was absolutely

awesome and I got to hang out with Joe Lauria and, you know, the great editor of consortium news.com and all kinds of stuff. We got to shake a lot of great hands and have a really great time. If people go to rage against war.com, you can see all the speeches there. They have them all on YouTube. And I don't think there was one cringe moment in a single speech that anybody gave the whole day long. It was just great. So check it out. Rage Againstwar.com. And you'll see my speech there too. All right. So now our first guest on the show today is Connor Freeman. He is assistant editor over at the Institute and writes pretty regularly also for antiwar.com. Welcome back to the show. Connor. How you doing? I'm doing great, Scott. Thanks for having me on.

I really appreciate you joining us here. So tomorrow's the anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine. And I guess I'll get you ranting here with this thing that I just read in Defense One from Kevin Barron, which is a very, you know, sponsored by Northrop Grumman type publication. And he was remarking on the Munich Security Conference. And he was talking about how everyone up there, all the leaders were saying, we're going to do whatever it takes, whatever. it takes, but they were also making clear that, no, they won't, that they are not going to give Ukraine what they need, assuming they had the manpower for the sake of argument, to win the war against Russia. And that clearly the consensus is they just want to give the Ukrainians enough to keep the war going, even if it takes 10 years, like the Afghan War of the 1980s. And the war, they don't want to ceasefire, they don't want negotiations. The war will only end. The consensus goes, according to Kevin Barron, when like Afghanistan in the 80s, the Russians are simply exhausted and give up and leave in total defeat.

And that's the policy if it takes 10 years. And never mind the fact that we're talking about a war 300 miles from Moscow, as opposed to the 1980s war in Afghanistan. and that we're talking about a second world army fighting armed by the NATO military alliance as opposed to the Mujahideen with AK-47s and a few stingers. So differences aside, that's the policy. We're a year out and they're clearly glad that this war is happening. Lindsay Graham clearly, Connor, speaks for Washington, D.C.

This is the perfect paradigm. We give the money and guns, but they got to do all the dying and they're willing to fight to the last man over there in Ukraine. So why the hell not? How do you like that? Yeah, you know, Graham, when he made that comment, he said, I'm very happy with the, you know, the structural setup of the way we have this proxy war set up.

I mean, he didn't use the word proxy war. But yeah, he's very glad that the way it works is we throw in all these weapons, makes a ton of money for the military industrial complex, you know, ideally weakens Russia from his perspective. And it doesn't matter how many Ukrainians die because, I believe previously, when he made a trip to Kiev with another senator, they made a comment about how they look forward to even seeing the combat come down to just hand-to-hand, man-to-man between the Ukrainians and the Russians.

And, I mean, we know that, I mean, they are still promoting this idea that they want to send in the Army tactical missile systems, which have a range of nearly 200 miles, and their launch from the High Mars artillery systems, and as well as the F-16s. And I mean, they have not committed to doing that yet, although the British are saying that they're ready, they're going to start training Ukrainian pilots on Western warplanes. And, of course, we're working on helping them modify their airfields in Ukraine to make them conducive to, you know, for Western aircraft to be operating there. And we just had Michael McCall, the Ultra Hawk chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee, go to Kiev, a day after Biden's visit where he pledged another half a billion dollar weapons package, which didn't include any of these other advanced weapons that Ukraine is looking for, but more javelins and High Mars rounds and some Bradley Infantry vehicles, et cetera.

But McCall says that he senses that there is momentum coming in Washington, that they are getting ready. There is a shift that they want to start sending in these longer range missiles and as well as the F-16s. And he said, we're going to start training the Ukrainians now so that they're ready to go. And he was criticizing Biden as usual. I mean, this is what the Republican leadership does. Their criticism of Biden is that he's not arming Ukraine enough, that he's not arming Taiwan enough, that, you know, he's saying he needs, we don't need photo ops

in your trip to Kiev. We want you to send in the army tactical missile system so that they can start attacking Crimea. And even though Anthony Blinken, you know, who's been a horrible hawk this entire time, maybe the worst diplomat in American history, he is even saying recently it was reported in Politico on a video chat with some. some experts talking about the war. He said, look, Crimea, Ukraine attempting to take Crimea, that's a red line that could provoke a major response from Russia. So we are not encouraging Ukraine

to do it one way or the other, but it's their decision if they'd like to go and try and retake the Crimean Peninsula. And so, but on the other hand, you have people like Victoria Newland, number three at the State Department, the architect of the coup in Ukraine in 2014, Robert Kagan's wife, who told the Carnegie Endowment last week that, oh, yeah, we support a policy of demilitarization of the Crimean Peninsula and the Ukrainians are hit the all those military installations on Crimea those are legitimate targets Kiev is hitting them and we support and encourage that so there there is some sort of a split I mean reportedly uh reportedly she works for him but anyway go ahead yeah exactly exactly and you know I mean supposedly there's a shift

or excuse me there's a rift in the administration where you have uh Lloyd Austin and Anthony Blankin their more intent to keep going with the proxy war against Russia because they violated the rules-based international order. But then you have figures like William Burns, the CIA director, and Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, who are more interested in winding it down and getting Ukraine to make some more reasonable demands at the negotiating table in the coming months and giving up maybe on this pledge to retake Crimea before the war is over so that they can go ahead and then focus on China, which is the next

major conflict that's coming down the pipe. Yeah. Give me just a minute here. At the Libertarian Institute, we published books. Real good ones. So far, we've got Will Griggs Snow Quarter. Sheldon Richmond's coming to Palestine and what social animals owe to each other.

And four of mine. Fool's 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, including 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 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 Scott Horton.org. So keep that in mind. And don't worry about the mess. Your wife will clean it up.

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Afghanistan. I'm starting to think the apocalypse is my fault. All right, it's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton. I'm talking with Connor Freeman from anti-war.com. And so what of Russia's supposed big offensive in the East, Connor? Well, I've heard, I think Colonel McCrugher said that it's supposed to start this week. I mean, they've obviously, they've reinforced their positions. You know, there's really no, most of the, I know that the Americans are encouraging Ukraine to give up the fight in Bakhmut, where they're losing, Ukraine is losing hundreds of troops. According to the Germans, they're losing hundreds and hundreds of troops every single day, just in the battle for that one Donneska city. And so now what they're going to try and do is get ready for this

counteroffensive or I guess they want to attack Crimea. That's the idea. It was reported in the Times last year that they're going to try and get Ukraine to, they're going to support an attack on Crimea to make the Russians feel vulnerable in the peninsula so that it puts Ukraine in a stronger position at the negotiating table. But that seems really fanciful. I think if anything, they should negotiate right now, obviously, because the Russians are getting ready for this offensive.

And if the Biden administration thinks that they have a few more months here left in this $45 billion that was pledged in the omnibus package at the end of last year before the aid really starts to dry up at the potential of securing another major supplemental like they did last spring. I think Russia is going to take a lot more territory here. They're not giving up the Dombas. They're not giving up Crimea, obviously, and I don't think the Ukrainians are going to get any more territory in Kerasan and Zafarisia. And at the same time, you know, the Biden administration is pledging, you know, Abrams, Abrams battle tanks. The ground launched small diameter bombs, which have a range of nearly 100 miles.

And every time they do this, the Russian, I mean, Putin just made in his speech when he announced he was suspending participation in New Start, the last remaining arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia. And they've said this many times. Lavrov said it months and months ago that the longer range systems you send to Kiev, the more territory we will take to protect Russian territory. because it's just, I mean, the idea, I mean, they want to send in missiles that can hit deep inside Russia. And if that's the policy, then all it's going to do is cost Ukraine that much more territory. Yeah, seems like it. I need to get you to comment on the United Nations Security Council meeting on the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. Did that go anywhere? Not that I know of yet. I mean, the Russians are demanding an investigation led by U.N.

General Antonio Gutierrez, and the Chinese have supported that. Of course, anti-war.com contributor and former head of the CIA Soviet foreign policy division, Ray McGovern, testified as well as Jeffrey Sachs, the economist and professor. And they made the argument that, you know, this needs to be investigated. Sy Hirsch is one of the most reputable journalists in our country's history. And this, of course, even the Washington Post covered this. They did actually, The Washington Post has now acknowledged the Hirsch report. They covered the UN Security Council meeting yesterday, and they actually linked to Hersh's substack piece in the article.

Did they? Okay. And then what did they say? Well, they just, I mean, I read, I read it's existence. They didn't really go either way. Yeah, exactly. I read Ray's piece on it. I haven't read the actual post piece yet, but basically it sounds like they, I gleaned from it

that they did a fair shake and quoted Sacks and. McGovern explaining what their presentation consisted of. All right. Now, listen, we only have a couple of minutes, but you have a couple of very important pieces here about China and which pertained directly to the war in Ukraine. So what's going on there? Okay. So after the balloon incident, when we were attacked and our sovereignty was threatened

and they violate the Chinese violate international law with their spy balloon, which was just a weather balloon, if not, you know, turning out to be one of these hobby balloons from the Northern Illinois bottle cap balloon brigade. You know, so there was this, Blinken canceled his trip to China where he was going to meet with his counterpart, King Gang, who was formerly the ambassador to the U.S., and he was even supposed to meet with potentially President Xi. But instead, Blinken took the opportunity to just cancel the meeting. And then when the Munich Security Conference came around, there were reports in Axios and

elsewhere quoting U.S. officials who said that they were going to, that Blinken would use this opportunity to, you know, reach some sort of quasi-de-ton. And, uh, of course, knowing Blankin, the, we had every reason to doubt that. And of course, all he did was he confronted, uh, he confronted Wang Yi, uh, and, uh, who's the, uh, he's a member of the Politburo. He's, he's, I mean, he's essentially Blankin's counterpart as they're both the top diplomats. But he's basically Blankin said, you know, he confronted him, you violated our national security. You violated international law and our sovereignty, and it's unacceptable. It can never happen again. And then he goes, I didn't get any apology for that. And then he accused the Chinese. He goes, I have intelligence

that shows that you're preparing. You're really considering providing lethal aid to Russia for its war in Ukraine. And of course, there's no evidence of that yet. So, I mean, it's totally unverified. And the Chinese have totally rejected the accusation. Now, of course, China and Russia have increased military ties and economic ties, especially since the war began. And they're facing similar pressure from the West and NATO, actually, because we have more and more NATO members sailing warships throughout the South China Sea and getting in on this pivot to Asia. And that's been especially ticking up during the Biden administration. But Blinken is trying to set up a scenario.

And it's being treated as fact in the mainstream media for all intents and purposes, even though he said it's not confirmed yet. He goes, if they cross the line, it'll start a new Cold War. Right. As if his administration, he served, you know, the Obama administration didn't declare a new cold war on China more than a decade ago. Right. All right. Well, listen, I'm sorry we're out of time. We've got another important interview coming up next, but that is Connor Freeman, assistant editor at the institute and regular at antiwar.com. Thank you, Connor. Thank you, Scott. And that's it for anti-war radio for today. I'm your host, Scott Horton, editorial director of anti-war.com, an editor of the new book, hotter than the sun. Time to abolish nuclear weapons. Find my full interview archive, more than 5,800 of them now going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org. and follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show.

I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.