Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/24/23 Michael Tracey on His Experience at the Munich Security Conference

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

Scott talks with journalist Michael Tracey about the Munich Security Conference which he attended earlier this month. Tracey gives an overview of who was at the conference, who was disinvited and what the overall tone felt like. They then dig into some of the more disturbing things Tracey observed such as calls for more regime change and PR stunts to hamper diplomatic prospects between the West and China.  Discussed on the show: “Don’t Fear Putin’s Demise” (Foreign Affairs) “Why War Pledges for Ukraine Fell Flat in Munich” (Defense One) 2022 NATO Strategic Concept  2022 Nuclear Posture Review Michael Tracey is a New York-based journalist. You can find his writing on Substack and follow him on Twitter @mtracey 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

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 michael tracy again he's at m tracy dot substack.com and of course m tracy on twitter welcome back to the show how you doing man

doing well good happy to have you back on the show listen um i don't think i've read anything by you on this subject yet but i know you went to munich to the big security conference and i know i read some really bad things about it so i'm interested in what you witnessed and what notes you took and what articles you might be working on uh to let us know because uh well some of the things that i've read coming back from there uh certainly are interesting and some of them quite concerning. So what are your highlights, man? What happened? Yeah, you know, I needed to take a little bit of time to sort of synthesize some information in the aftermath of that conference because, hmm, how to put it? Well, it was similar to my experience

of attending the NATO summit, which I think we might have talked about a bit last year in that there's really nobody that I could see anyway, who seems to be at these gatherings, who sort of has even the remotest inclination to question or even be mildly skeptical or critical of, like the underlying premises of the organization, right? Or the overriding sort of goals of the organization or the sort of ideological sort of nature of the organization itself. That sounds a little vague, but I guess what I'm trying to say is there's this overwhelming kind of just subsumation into a collective mentality that prevails at these gatherings.

that very few people who ever attend, at least that I've seen anyway, kind of stand apart from or try to detach themselves from or like even maintain a little bit of critical distance from. And so I did want to try in the after attending this thing, I did want to try to like kind of check my biases and instincts and see if I was understanding things clearly. And I think I am, for the most part. So here's one of the main takeaways. I think it really needs to be emphasized. And it's not anywhere near sufficiently appreciated. Just how ideologically radicalized the so-called security establishment has gotten over the past year, obviously catalyzed by Ukraine.

but after that catalyzing effect really kicked into full gear it's had wider ranging ramifications right and obviously this isn't a huge mystery or this is not like a secret you've seen even when the war first started a year ago right that Germany for instance moved very quickly toward essentially abolishing it's almost foundational foreign policy philosophy that it had maintained since World War II

in endorsing the provision of lethal weaponry into war zones and so forth. And obviously that culminated in January with this whole tank deal that the U.S. engineered. So much of this is in the public record, but I also think it's, less appreciated how mutually reinforcing this kind of like ideological radicalization is once you're in one of these professional milieus because there's really no or very little anyway observable sort of genuinely countervailing opinion allowed or or skeptical sort of skeptical counterweights introduced into that context right that you'll have like to say if you have dissension it'll be over a over like how quickly should quote aid be given to

ukraine or like what is the next weapon system that ought to be prioritized right i mean it won't be anything that actually challenges or even questions uh conceptually some of like the undergirding premises right um is it meaningful michael that they do this at munich every year so that everyone has to be a horrible hawk no one can possibly appease anyone at munich you know know? Yeah, so obviously the specter of Munich and the perceived historical legacy of Munich, which is obviously this cartoon version of World War II that everybody constantly imports to justify their current pro-interventionism preferences. That does loom over everything, and it's always kind of melodramatically invoked by attendees. And let me just give you

sort of a tangible example of why I mentioned this sort of cross-cutting radicalization that obviously the Ukraine war catalyzed but given the expanding contours of the Ukraine war the contours of that radicalization have also expanded so for the first time in history of the in the history of the conference the organizers disinvited any diplomatic delegation from Iran and Russia. Now, it's doubtful, I think, that Iran would have been disinvited but for the furor over its seeming support for Russia in Ukraine, right? I mean, the morality police of Iran could have, you know, locked up all the women it would have. wanted for not wearing a veil or whatever, and I doubt it would have resulted in a formal

disinvitation of the delegation to this conference. What really is the tipping point, given that it's like the nub of the radicalization is obviously the Ukraine war stuff. And then Russia also formally disinvited, even though it had maintained an invitation to this gathering for over the course of lots of different controversies of the past, including Crimea and what have you. And so why is that significant? Well, it amounts

to the de facto endorsement of regime change by the conference as a whole in both Iran and Russia, because it wasn't just that they disinvited the official delegations. In the place of

those official delegations, they invited quote unquote dissidents or opposition factions who openly campaigned and openly lobbied for regime change in Iran and Russia and obviously are holding themselves out as potential replacements for the regime and they're not subtle about it yeah I mean one of the craziest aspects of this whole thing was that on the periphery of the conference which was in it's in central Munich at this grand hotel and like you can the public can be like somewhat on the outskirts there were these organized demonstrations by these Iranian groups where they were agitating for the installation of the son of the Shah in Iran yeah meaning the Shah was

ousted in the Islamic Revolution in 1979 his son is now being promoted as the heir to take over Iran. Yeah, the monarchists and them and the M.E.K cult are, you know, America's candidates for replacing the Ayatollah. Right. And that individual, the son of the Shah, Pahlavi, I think is how you pronounce the name. He was there personally. He was in the, basically invited as the representative of Iran at the conference instead of the government diplomats. And, his mission was to go around at the conference and lobby the various delegations to support certain measures to effectuate regime change now that will they will they'll try to hedge

somewhat and deny that they want um like i think if you if i i unfortunately didn't get a chance to ask a question to the to palavi uh directly i would have liked to but um if he were when he was directly addressing this concept of regime change, they'll try to, like, hedge and sort of cater a bit to the sensibilities of whatever remains of, like, right-minded European liberalism, at least in a restraint-oriented direction, where he won't say outright, look, yeah, I want you to just bomb Tehran and put me into power. No, it's, you know, it's basically just an all-encompassing policy regimen ought to be implemented to effectuate regime changed by external forces. I mean, that's what they want.

And likewise with Russia, I mean, here's basically the ultimate manifestation of the radicalization I'm talking about. On my thesis is that there is also an emerging de facto endorsement of regime change in Russia as the ultimate aspiration or the ultimate policy endpoint that is, that is, you know, is being pursued because there's lots of what is being advocated really makes no sense without that as the ultimate ambition, right? Well, first of all, which dissident factions from Russia were there? Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.

I'll get into that. Well, the dissident faction that they invited as representing Russia, this won't support. surprise you, is led by Gary Kasparov, right, who obviously is a ubiquitous media pundit and well known in the English-speaking world already. But if you recall, Kasparov has actually sought office in Russia before. He attempted to run and then aborted under unclear circumstances for president of Russia in 2008. And his whole demand right now is that regime change ought not to be shied away from as what Western governments should actually just overtly say that they're trying to bring

about in Russia. He had a foreign affairs essay last month where he would. was advocating that somehow the Russian Federation itself be dissolved, a transitional technocratic council be installed. He doesn't say this outright, but it seems like the implication is that he would be a member of the prospective technocratic council himself. And then also essentially that any remnants of the prior government, meaning the Putin regime, so to say, be purged.

and he actually used the word liquidated, right? So that's, you know, I mean, he's, he's really into it. And then so he was on a panel that was kind of portrayed as a representative of what the Russian opposition group was that they were there trying to elevate, along with this guy, Mikhail Kordowski. I don't know if you, if that name rings a bell. Yeah, sure. The billionaire oligart gangster. Yep. Yeah.

Well, yeah. And he's there. And it's amazing because, you know, they sort of gingerly introduced him, the woman that was presiding over this panel, like, sort of, she introduced him as though he was this freedom fighter and he was trying to bring, like, liberal reforms to Russia and was stymied by Putin's oppression, which, you know, maybe there's a kernel of truth to, in some sense, because the guy was imprisoned under circumstances that I'm sure you could. quibble with the, you know, justice of. Oh, no, he was guilty as hell. I mean, the thing is, it was a battle between oligarchs and Putin said, you guys are going to do what I say or I'm to replace you with my own oligarchs. And so, yeah, there was no innocence there. This is a very bad guy. Well, the point is, you know, even if there might have been some overreach or whatever in how he was targeted, I'm not going to say one way or another with certitudes. I'm not an expert in

that arena. That's all washed away now because he's being basically anointed as a representative of like the good kind of the one of the few existing kind of Russians who are willing to actually say what needs to be said about the current regime. And his his mantra was that, you know, everybody needs to understand that there's no good czar, meaning that, you know, nobody should have, be under the illusion that, you know, we could just sit back and hope for, like, of the return to the Gorbachev or something, because as good as people might have thought Gorbachev was, he was still a czar and the czar system,

the system over which the Tsar presides needs to be overthrown. So he's calling for regime change, right? And, you know, so I talked to Kasparov myself. Oh, and, you know, also they had, you know, the daughter of Boris Nepsov, who, you know, the guy who was killed in Bred Square, I think in 2015, and this woman who was also in exile from Russia, who was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. And so, yeah, these are the people who are being, who are elevated as the true representatives of the Russian state, right? And they're overt. I mean, they're overt that regime change.

must be effectuated. Let me ask you this, Michael. Directly, yeah. Sorry to interrupt, but you go on for a while and we're running short all the time. There's always been talk for many years about regime change in Russia, and yet the people who do talk about it never mention the nuclear weapons in the same conversation at all. They never mentioned the possibility of war, that maybe Moscow would rather go to war than to be overthrown, to tolerate something like a color-coded revolution.

uh being installed in their country and it seems like they never talk about that part they just go well you know question mark question mark question mark then profit and we're not supposed to worry about how you're supposed to actually overthrow the government of russia without full-scale war breaking out they address that at all where you could hear them not really or if they did dismiss it it was kind of if they did discuss it was kind of lively dismissed as something that gets hype for purposes of propaganda. Well, say, like, if Russia actually tried to overthrow the government of the United States, the government of the United States would go to war against them.

So, you know. Yeah, I mean, they're... It seems like they strategically attempt to avoid really stressing those sorts of scenarios because that might disincentivize people from agreeing with the idea that regime change ought to be pursued in Russia. That's right. I mean, look, it makes no sense. You're not going to get paid $20,000 to write a study about how we can't fight Russia. They have nukes.

Everybody knows that. But you can get paid a lot of money to write a study about how actually maybe we could. Yeah. But here's how this ties together, because it's not like exactly new that Gary Kasparov would be of a mindset where he wants people to agree that there should be regime change in Russia, right? I mean, I think he's probably gotten a lot more explicit about that as the years. have gone by, and especially over the past year in relation to Ukraine, but that's not like the biggest takeaway necessarily. The biggest takeaway is, again, the institutional endorsement of that demand. That's only slightly concealed. And here's the key fact there that is one of the

things I'm going to put in my article that's forthcoming, but I'll give you a preview, right? I don't know if you recall this, but in September, Zelensky put out a presidential decree where he stated the, quote, impossibility of any negotiations with Russia so long as Putin remains in power, right? Which, you know, obviously leads to the inference that they're saying that Ukraine, at least on its own terms, would refuse to negotiate with Russia unless regime change is carried out. Or at least if there's a change

in the regime, meaning Putin is ousted from power. And a few weeks after that, Jake Sullivan, as the Washington Post reported, went to Kyiv and let's say encouraged Zelensky

to soften his language or to modify, at least for public consumption, the stridentcy of that stated policy, right? Because they wanted to, the idea was that Ukraine needs to retain the moral high ground in the eyes of the, quote, international community. And to do that, they have to at least give some sort of public impression that they're willing to entertain negotiations rather than rule them out, which is what he did in the decree.

Because what the decree really amounts to is a demand for regime change, right? Because like, how do you negotiate with, the Russian Federation absent Putin, if not by removing Putin. And that's what they're saying is the only way that they'll advocate in negotiations. But then, you know, Sullivan has to modify the stance, right? And they sort of carry that out to some degree with the other public statements. But the decree is never formally rescinded or anything, right?

So it's still seemingly on the books. I mean, to whatever extent you can look at what's on the books in terms of the Ukraine governance structure and say that that's actually sort of some sort of binding policy, still appeared to be binding policy, but they kind of would hedge in their PR around whether that actually is a policy. So I got confirmation directly, personally, in no ambiguous terms, from a senior ranking Ukraine official who came to me, actually, and told me this personally that there's been no change to the policy that was decreed in September. meaning regime change is still on the books as what even now Ukraine endorses.

And in a de facto sense, that's what the United States endorses, because the United States says that Ukraine gets to set the sort of strategic imperatives itself, and the United States isn't going to impose on Ukraine. And that's the sort of logical jiu-jitsu they do to sort of make it seem like... It's really important, the diffusion of responsibility there. We'll give them all these weapons and all this. intelligence and all of this stuff. But hey, it's up to them to decide how to use it. Exactly. Yeah. But it's also a deflection from the primacy of the United States as the

key broker or the key decision maker and power player in the dynamic. And in fact, listen, we're running short on time. So let me just drop this in here and you can build it into what you're already talking about, which is along the same lines too. I read a piece by Kevin Barron in defense news, the hawk and it's a, you know, industry rag. And he said, That it was horrible. Yeah. So he says, look, they all got up on the stage and they said, we will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes.

But then it was clear that actually that's not true, that they know that assuming the manpower for the sake of argument on the Ukrainian side, that if they just gave them all the weapons that they needed and all the intel that they needed, et cetera, to really defeat Russia, that could cause a war with Russia. They don't want to do that. They want instead, and I forgot exactly who he quotes here, but this was, he's quoting essentially the consensus. They would rather have the war drag on for 10 more years. They want to see, they don't want any negotiations. They want to see the war end when Russia finally just gives up

an exhaustion and withdrawals like Afghanistan, 89. And that's the plan is to keep the war going for the long term. And so I wonder, you know, if that was essentially your read on the situation there too. Yeah, yeah, because the Biden administration line, and they word this very deliberately, is as long as it takes, meaning the United States will support Ukraine, rather, for as long as it takes. They don't say, we'll give them whatever it takes, right, which is sort of an important distinction because it's like a temporal commitment that they're a valid. Sometimes, yeah, they'll say whatever it takes, but not that specific, like whatever weapons it takes, you know. As long as it takes is what they overwhelmingly say, at least as I've seen it.

And I was at a private function on the final day where this Ukrainian government official stood up and expressed pretty jarringly direct exasperation with the United States in particular for this as long as it takes refrain because she was complaining that, you know, we don't have as long as it takes. we need to get a massive infusion of armaments, ASAP. Otherwise, you know, she said, I think her exact wording was, otherwise, I don't know if Ukraine's going to exist in a year from now, meaning the assessment was more dire of Ukraine's fortunes at the moment than you might gather from the kind of prevailing media coverage. But remember, now the original plan was that the Russians would destroy the military and government

in Kiev. and then we'd be backing an insurgency for 10 years. That was the plan a year ago. So even if... Well, that was one of the contingencies. Yeah, yeah. But I think you're right in that, or I think this kind of observation is accurate because remember when Lloyd Austin went to Key for the first time after the war started last April

and said that the goal of U.S. policy. is to see Russia weakened so that it can't carry out military action like this again. And then that was sort of supposedly walked back. And they walked back to walk back. Right. Well, I mean, nothing seemed to be walked back on a substantive level in that like everything that's transpired since is consistent with Austin's statement, actually being a truthful representation of what the policy is geared toward.

And Kamala Harris actually reiterated that. in her speech at the conference where she said Russia is weakened, and that was a positive goal that the U.S. is still attempting to pursue. So, yeah, it seems like, you know, sort of just attritioning Russia and grinding it down over time is the formula to potentially effectuate this regime change. And several of things that just within the past week have been done, by the Biden administration have added pretty significantly to the existential stakes of the conflict or the perceived existential stakes, right? Because Kamala Harris had this dramatic announcement

about, you know, finding Russian leadership guilty of committing crimes against humanity and that there was accountability that was going to be imposed on them, whether they like it or not. And what does that indicate to you? Well, it seems very much like a warning to Putin that his fate is going to be something like that of Milosevic after Milosevic capitulated to the U.S. NATO after a few months of bombing in the coastal war. And what happened with Milosevic? Well, he was prosecuted under a tribunal. Now, it's unclear what form this prospective tribunal will take. There had been talk for quite some time now, actually, about the U.S. entertaining potential mechanisms to kind of construct some sort of judicial body that would prosecute even Putin himself.

But however they choose to go about it, it seems inescapable that in order to charge Putin with a crime against humanity and then prosecute him and then imprison. him, that you have to carry out regime change? Like, how do you put the guy in prison, if not by changing who is in power in the Kremlin? That seems like a necessary prerequisite. But because that's such a insanely escalatory step, or that's such a maximalist war aim, you're not going to probably get many American officials on the record espousing overt support for effectuating regime change in Russia, right? You'd more expect it to just be something that comes about by what it would appear to be like a more organic process or at least not like a predestined process. But if you dig a little deep into the weeds or, or

maybe that was a bad metaphor. If you dig a little deeper into the details of some of the necessary implications of these policies from people who are a bit more unrestrained in their rhetoric, like a Kasparov, who, by the way, went around to all different countries' delegations, not just at this Munich conference, but also there was a separate conference in Brussels where he met with other you know, ministers and such in Europe. And he's getting a rousing ovation, essentially, whoever he appears or whoever he's lobbying.

He's reporting anyway that he's getting a very positive reception in the agenda that he's promoting. And if he says, as he did, to me personally, that he views this latest development, or at least the development last weekend of the United States making what it called this formal determination of crimes against humanity being committed by Russian officials, if he views that as a significant advance toward his desired end, meaning regime change in Russia, then, you know, I kind of take him

at his word on that because he's not somebody who I would think would be beating around the bush or would give credit where it's not due in his eyes in terms of a policy that he wants to be implemented toward that goal. So, you know, it's raising of the existential stakes across the board, ideological zeal coalescing into this just implacable, implacably aggressive consensus. And basically, declarations that total victory of some kind is the only viable option as far as these people who are running the security state establishment are concerned. across these countries.

So I just see more intensification of this drive toward maximalist war aims, and I'm happy to hear out any kind of evidence to the contrary, but everything that I've picked up on seems to be trending in that very easily perceptible direction. Well, look, I mean, the lesson of the terror war was they didn't learn anything. the American people, or not enough of them, learned the lesson of Vietnam and the lesson of all these terror wars. Didn't learn a damn thing from Iraq War II

or Libya or Syria or Somalia or Afghanistan or Yemen either. He was just moving right on. And, you know, it was so easy 20 years ago to just go, oh my God, I can't believe you hate America so much and you hate freedom so much and you love terrorists so much. What is it about you, Michael Tracy?

You just love these terrorists. He just can't say anything against consensus at all. and it's just as stupid it's the same thing now that to try to think outside of the point of view of our side's military alliance for one moment is siding with the enemy and hoping he wins and all these things in other words it just makes it impermissible to even consider of you know what it is that we're doing but you know i by the way i actually heard on npr and i'm sorry i don't know who it was i should have googled this up but i heard on npr the other day i sorry if I mentioned this to you before I think I mentioned it to Choss Freeman not you where they did play a clip of somebody from this Munich conference it was an American diplomat of some

kind saying that look the truth is that NATO expansion did play a part in causing this problem and that this is Russia we're talking about here you can't just you know pretend it away and we have to take your legitimate security concerns

into account it's just crazy to think that we can't so I was surprised that that made the cut to air on National Public Radio. In fact, I guess I'm surprised that the guy even said it to them. Yeah, I'd be curious to know who that was. I didn't hear that. Let me see if I could find that while you're talking about, I mean, you're just, you're saying to me, I saw where you tweeted that there's no sleepwalking here. These were all wide-awake grown adults.

It's just they've decided to not think about why they're wrong at all, basically. well yeah i mean they've they or they've come to inhabit this like impermeable i hate to use the word echo chamber because it's a cliche but it's just true i mean they they don't inhabit really a a way of being that allows for any real critical perspective um yeah i guess on occasion you'll get somebody who says something a little bit outside the box with that guy who says, you know, NATO expansion might have a contributing factor. But especially now, especially this year of radicalization and then in the security establishment

and the kind of fervor hardening into this sort of just crusade-like mentality, there's less tolerance than there had been even in the past for, you know, using an international gathering like this as a venue to air out a multitude of perspectives. Now, I'm not going to claim it like two years ago or ten years ago. The Munich Security Conference was some sort of egalitarian, you know, glorious sort of inter-exchange of ideas or what have you. But I would say even it seems to me to be just totally obvious that even in just the short amount of time that's passed in the past year, I mean,

literally a year to be on the day. There's been a narrowing of the collective mind or like a closing of the collective mind, right? So, and that's demonstrated by them choosing to disinvite the delegations of two countries that had always been at least welcome to some degree to the conference because they've chosen to, instead of facilitating dialogue with Iran or Russia, the idea now is to essentially give this de facto institutional endorsement to impose. and regime change on Iran and Russia. So if that's the philosophical shift, then you would expect that to sort of bleed out into other areas just in terms of like the general spectrum of thought that they're allowed to populate these types of gatherings.

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It's Scott Hortonshow.substack.com, and if you do that, you'll get the interviews a day before everybody else, but not only that, they'll be free of commercials. How do you like that? Pretty good, huh? Scotthorton'show. com. Hey, y'all, Libertasbella.com is where you get Scott Horton's show and Libertarian Institute shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and stickers and things, including the great top lobstas designs as well. See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart.

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Right. I think they're really, I think they're more serious about it this time, I think it's kind of, because in the past, you wouldn't have had, like, Germany on board with that, right? I mean, or you wouldn't have had this far-reaching consensus, or at least I'm not aware of when a consensus was this widespread on, for example, overthrowing it wrong. Because we're talking about, like, a conference that's in Germany in particular, which would have been on the more reticent end of the spectrum on questions like that in the past, you know, maybe along with France or something, where it's like the U.S., maybe. UK and and so forth are leading the charge and the bellicosity. Now there's like very little remaining distinction between even the European countries that not long ago would have been, you know, the block of countries that, for example, opposed the invasion of Iraq, right? You know, Germany, France, et cetera. Those those distinctions have for all intents and purposes

seemingly disappeared. So I do think that there's a, more widespread and seemingly kind of important in terms of whether this could would actually be carried out consensus on the on the issue um but i don't know maybe there's an instance in the past that rivals this i'm not aware of it well there's been some pretty hot tension and i think that's right and i think the key reason for that is because of the connection with with with russia now and because it's like iran is considered to have you know cross the the point of no return due to its co-belligerence or perceived co-beligerence in the Ukraine

war, like that was the threshold crosser. Oh, their co-belligerence in the war, are they? That's funny. Well, yeah. Yeah, and that makes sense, though. You know, that those kind of get some hard feelings there on the part of

people who might have been slightly less worse on Iran before. All right, so talk about China, because, you know, I'm pretty sure you noticed probably if anybody did that back at the end of time, 2019 the Times had run that story about how NATO doesn't know what it's for

and it's kind of just like in the early to mid-90s. We have this crisis we figured out we have to go out of area or out of business because you know it's a government program and they said that well we don't have any enemies in Europe obviously and this is even during the proxy war

you know still the lower level war going on in the Donbass but they said they did like a big study group and they decided that well NATO's enemy is China. Since there's nobody adjacent to NATO that threatens NATO in any way. So we have to go looking for monsters to destroy. And so let's have a build up over there. And I gather that you witnessed some discussion about China at this Munich conference. I'm almost terrified to find out what you're about to say here, Michael. But go ahead. What'd they say?

Well, I mean, just to just to set the context a bit, at least in terms of my perception of how this is all developed, right? The most recent prior, like, confab of this sort that I had gone to was the, again, the NATO summit from last June, right? And at that NATO summit, you may recall, or you may not, because it really did not get anywhere near enough attention. NATO issued this strategic document. It's like, it's manifesto that every 10 years or so, it publishes that's supposed to set out the parameters of its overarching strategy, right?

And in 2022 was the one of the, the latest installation of them issuing this like, wide-ranging policy strategic decree. And for the first time in the history of NATO, it identified China as essentially an antagonist of the entire alliance. It had never even mentioned China before in one of these decrees. All of a sudden, in 2022, China is one of the chief so-called adversaries. or what have you, that the alliance is seen as arraying itself against. And it's expanding, it declared that it's expanding, meaning NATO is expanding its geographic remit into all of a sudden the, into East Asia,

which is, you know, far ways from the so-called North Atlantic. So, and in that strategic decree, it said that more or less, NATO, needs to be prepared to be a nuclear competitor, that's the euphemism they've used, competitor, with two peer or near peer adversaries. And, you know, in the, that's the Natsakh jargon. It essentially means that NATO has to be prepared to waive simultaneous nuclear war with both Russia and China. That addition, meaning the addition to the strategic decree that with the renewed

or the newfound focus on China, that was inserted more or less at the behest of the Biden administration. A couple months later, you look at the nuclear posture review that was put out in October by the Pentagon, and it also affirms that, of course, the United States reserves the right to use nuclear weapons for any reason at any time, just at the whim of the president. That's reaffirmed, naturally. but also it states that the U.S. will employ its nuclear arsenal. I mean, they use such kind of, they use like slightly oblique or oddly phrased language to make it just to kind of like massage the wording.

But it basically repeats what the NATO decree repeat said, which is that the U.S. is situating its nuclear posture such that. it can wage simultaneous nuclear war against both China and Russia and win. Because you know this whole mantra that people like to repeat of nuclear war must never be fought and cannot be won? Even Biden himself said that not too long ago. Well, in the actual policy document of the Pentagon, it actually asserts that nuclear war can be won in that the U.S., it says, can achieve its, quote, war-fighting aims, even in the event of nuclear war. So the official sort of chieftains are not of the view that nuclear war can never be won.

They think that the U.S. can win, and they can also, and not just win, but win against two nuclear powers fighting them at the same time. Kind of ominous, right? So that's the backdrop. And then it seems to be coming to a head, which was, I guess, maybe also ominously predictable. But what happened was the U.S. delegation at this Munich Security conference, you know, headed by Kamala technically, but for all intents and purposes, Blinken, the Secretary of State, who I think is one of like the real hardline audiologs. That's kind of driving a lot of this policy zeal. The U.S. goes out of its way. The U.S. delegation goes out of its way to seek a meeting with the China delegation at the Munich Security Conference.

Because remember, there have been this diplomatic impasse or diplomatic sort of pause, let's say, after the whole ridiculous spy balloon incident where Blinken canceled his long. plan trip to China the day before he was scheduled to leave after the, because of the spy balloon being shot down. I don't know. I would have thought that like if the spy balloon really was that major of an issue, wouldn't that be exactly the time you would want the top diplomat of the country to go and handle the problem and tamp down tensions or deal with whatever had to be dealt with? Rather grandstand. Yeah. Like a Gary Powers incident out of it when it's nothing.

Right, so they used their first contact since that episode to solicit the Chinese delegation to have a meeting between Blinken and Wang Yi, the foreign minister of China. And they essentially just used, meaning the U.S., essentially just used this as an opportunity to execute a PR ambush against China. because what do they do? Well, they, and they leaked this within seconds, it seemed like, right? So it seemed very orchestrated and coordinated, not like in a conspiratorial way, but this was just what they were trying to do, right?

They used the, according to Blinken, they used the meeting just as an opportunity to, quote, warn Wang Yi about this idea that China was on the cusp of sending lethal weaponry to Russia for use in Ukraine because they're all of a sudden out of nowhere there was this brand new intelligence that the u.s just coincidentally came across you know just in time for this conference and not only that the u.s delegation and i got confirmation from about this uh directly the u.s delegation went around to every other country's delegation or every other delegation that it could and you know did individualized warnings or issued individualized warnings to the individual countries about China being on the, you know,

the cusp of, you know, essentially entering the war to some degree in Ukraine on in alliance with Russia, okay? And, you know, so then, then Blinken, once the, you know, it seems like, you know, within nanosecond after the meeting, meeting happens, they leak out this allegation to, you know, CNN, NBC, etc., you know, the usual suspects, and start beating that drum and seemingly just admitting outright that they use that interaction with Wang Yi, not for any kind of reconciliation, not to diffuse whatever tensions existed, not to engage in what you would think actual diplomacy it would be but to like throw a stink bomb into the at them and then use that to grandstand with this new allegation that was not accompanied by any evidence. I mean, it was strange

because I was told that when they went around to these other countries delegations and made this claim about China furnishing Russia with arms, they provided to accompanying evidence. I mean, these people just think that like everybody's supposed to believe them. on face value, I guess because they think that they're emboldened and vindicated by what they regard to be this fantastically successful fire hose disclosure strategy that they used prior to Russia invading last February, where, you know, they supposedly, you know, they pioneered this groundbreaking new tactic to just dump lots of intel out into the public domain and then claim that they were. were, you know, right about everything because, you know, some of that intel, like, appears to suggest that they were correct about Russia invading. And I'm not denying that they were, like, in every sense wrong. I'm not fully convinced about that whole chronology from that period yet. I still think there's lots of, uh, pieces yet to be put into that puzzle.

But anyway, so that was ambush number one, right? So that was a pretty brazen move on the part the U.S. delegation to knowingly, willfully antagonize China with a very consequential allegation, right? And they're saying that China is more or less making a decisive break from its stated posture on the Ukraine war, which is like one of neutrality in service of attempting to at least claim or at least claiming to be interested in serving as a mediator. and now they're going to start, you know, supplying armaments for use in the war. I mean, that would be like a major development. That would be, you know, nuts.

I mean, you had said a year ago that that was the likelihood people would, I think, dismiss you as a nutty paranoid. Because, you know, it does give a serious omen of some sort of world war, a scenario being, you know, materializing here. And then, so I'm going to give you a little preview, and I'm going to be a little bit circumspecting how I describe this, because I haven't published yet, because it's kind of sensitive, which is why it's taking me a little while. But here's what I'll say, okay? I was at a private function, and let's say I wasn't necessarily an invited guest in that, if they looked at the guest list for who was invited to this function, my name wouldn't have been on it, and yet I ended up at it. And there were a number of dignitaries, let's say.

And it turned out that these dignitaries had invited somewhat unexpectedly one of the prominent members of the Chinese delegation. not the foreign minister but another member and they did another private ambush on this person in private around Ukraine stuff

now when I say ambush I don't mean anything physical or anything I mean it's sort of like a sort of deliberately concocted opportunity that they engineered to just lambast the person and they basically continue ramping up the antagonism that is being heaped on China,

which is just bizarre. I mean, if you thought this really was so dangerous or that this prospect of China becoming an outright co-belligerent with Russia is so existentially frightening, then wouldn't you want to like be a bit more? again, like conciliatory or try to actually do some diplomas here, but no, I mean, there were some, there was this, there were people, there was an attempt at this function, basically to, to just Hector and berate a representative of China who was already an outlier and even being there in the first place, because it's, they would have been surrounded by officials from countries who, and were surrounded of this function by officials from countries who are of, a very, you know, different mindset on global affairs at the moment, and not only that, but are, you know, pretty hyper-zealous. So, you know, they basically had a Ukrainian representative there to give a emotionally, you know, fraught appeal and then, you know, put the Chinese representative

on the hot seat and um what was communicated to me and people should subscribe to the sub-sec if they want to see the final version of this because i'm being a little bit opaque on purpose what was communicated to me is that while china likely would not have been ever disposed to furnish russia with arms in a in a vacuum or if you just had thought, been, uh, presented with that prospect in the abstract, China would likely not have done that, right? Or would have no real desire to. But given the extraordinary pressure that the United States in particular has placed on China, even which within just the past month, not exclusively within the past month, but it's really reached a new level just within the past month or

so. They're placing a political, they're sort of forcing a political incentive onto China where because there's such growing animosity among the populace toward the United States, given what really does seem to be the rapidly accelerating demonization and just outright sort of ambush type tactics that are being deployed against China, there's a lot of, there's a rapidly growing animosity in the populace of China toward the U.S. So there's now this dynamic where if China doesn't provide Russia with arms, right? That could be seen as capitulating to the U.S. or succumbing to its bullying tactics, right? And that could be actually a political problem for the Chinese leadership.

So, you know, the impression that I got is that it may well be the case. that China would end up furnishing arms to Russia. Now, I don't know that with certitude, I don't know that these leaks in particular, including one that just came out a couple hours ago, are accurate on this score. But I do say I came away with the stark impression that, you know, there's been this, you know,

perverse sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that the U.S. has been foisting upon China that may actually now come to fruition, which is really, you know, I struggle to even articulate just how crazy this whole thing is. I mean, it's hard to believe. Yeah. No, and I do believe you. And the thing is, too, I even put it to Charles Freeman like this just a minute ago, that like, okay, look, who am I to comment about this? If I sound alarmist, then you might dismiss. miss it but you're just god dang freemen and you're telling me you're worried that we might get in a war with russia china iran and north korea at the same time and he's like yep that's what i'm worried about all right so he's no kook he's uh you know he he knows of what he speaks he's he actually

went with nixon was nixon's translator when they went and made peace with moussaitong 50 years ago so this is a guy's been around the block a few times and he's going man let me tell you you these people aren't listening they're just as you're saying fact i i brought you up to him that yeah michael tracy just got back from there and he said everybody in the room agrees about everything you know he challenged i called the group thing he said yeah no it's group but there's no thinking it's just consensus with no thinking at all it sounds like yeah yeah i got to send you uh i actually was able to participate in a panel at least like as an attendee um at one point because it's so heavily controlled in terms of media access, right?

They actually have this babysitting system, an adult babysitting system that I think was introduced this year for the first time where in order to actually gain access to the main venue, which is this hotel, they, did I mention this to you before? Sorry if I'm repeating myself. No, go ahead. But they basically require you to, first of all, have a specifically declared purpose. So you can't just meander freely throughout the venue. But then you have to have a chaperone.

They had this, like, a, they had this, like, squadron of, of, of, uh, 20, you know, 20-year-old German guys who would then have to accompany you into the venue and, like, keep an eye on you the whole time. Really. I mean, it was strange. It was much, it was, uh, I actually had somebody, some journalists there tell me that they had been to one of the, uh, Communist Party of China's national congresses. So those big party conferences that happen every five years, recently there was one last fall. And the media access at that event was far less restricted than the one here.

You know, thankfully you can like, you know, sneak. If you have ways to maneuver around, you can figure stuff out and like, obviously go to stuff on the periphery and encounter people and whatever. But, you know, it was very, it was very restricted. But yeah, I got to show you one. I'll send you once it's out. I went to a panel, and Anne-Marie Slaughter was the moderator. Uh-huh. And it was a bunch of European officials who were on the panel.

But anyway, I asked a question that was probably maybe the only question of the entire conference not intended to kiss their asses, kiss the asses of the people who are on stage. Right. Or to, like, burnish my professional. credentials or like have a networking opportunity and you could tell they were all just so bewildered um and amoreseller actually said well you know as uh maybe unpleasant as that question was and i didn't like i wasn't overly aggressive or root or anything i was just asked a substantive question i'll send it to you you'll see um she says like you know well we we should appreciate that we are all here representing democracies and this is what democracy is all about like

disagreement and oh on top of that it is kind of true that at every other panel there's just complete consensus so you know not maybe not a bad idea to mix it up a little bit now and then she basically said that you know there was she affirmed that like the whole thing is just totally unanimity almost 100% at the time maybe with a slight exception here and there but um i love it when they say because i was just like so allergic to the platitudes and the self-aggrandizing kind of problem, and I had to ask a pretty, you know, antagonistic question. I love it when they say it's the most patronizing thing in the whole world. Oh, yeah.

Well, you know what? It's America where there's free speech and you're allowed to say whatever you want, which just goes exactly all translation means is they're not listening to you at all, and they don't have to listen to you. And you can stand there and say something for a minute until security drags you out if it comes down to it, but they don't care. what you think that's what that really means you know all of a sudden they're celebrating free speech like voltaire or something right yeah thanks a lot of right yeah but now so what was the

question that made them so uncomfortable then uh it was a series of questions right because so the the supposed uh premise of this particular panel was i mean it was so cliched and it was so trite it was basically just a rehash of the same panel that they could have had at any point since 2016 it's like are we in a crisis of democracy

is populism still on the rise is populism fundamentally in conflict with democracy how do we protect democracy it was basically just an opportunity for all the got people on the panel to kind of genuflect and you know

self-aggrandize I love that. No, by definition, democracy depends on total elitism and all decisions being made in Davis, Switzerland, for all us, you know, mundane's back home. Population. That is, people, themselves, the masses, participating at all are having their interests represented at all. Well, that is a threat to the people having their interests represented at all. Yeah, so one of the other panelists was this guy, David Lammy, who's the shadow foreign minister of, or is a foreign secretary, shadow foreign secretary in the UK. So he's the basic, the foreign minister in waiting if labor were to win a majority to next election. And I happen to know that he was basically the most prominent advocate in the United Kingdom for just straight up overturning the Brexit referendum, meaning just ignore it and chuck it aside because he didn't like the outcome. That was his position.

Bluntly, he expressed that position not ambiguous at all. That was what his main sort of line of advocacy was for quite some time. And obviously, I also knew about the whole history of Anne-Marie Slaughter and her being integral in hatching the kind of doctrine that underlied. the Libya war. And also being a staunch advocate in public for the launching of that war and, you know, being Hillary Clinton's or one of Hillary Clinton's top advisors and agitating through her for the war to be launched, right?

So I just then wonder, okay, so isn't all this rhetoric and pontificating about democracy a bit belied by, I don't know, the records of the people on the panel when they actually wielded state power because, and I asked Amory Slaughter, I mean, are you aware of democracy flourishing in Libya after you guys got done with it? Because I

am aware of it turning into a slave state. I'm not sure that it became an oasis of democracy. And David Lammy, you're, you know, you're kissing your own ass about how you're such a

principled defender of all that is good about our democratic societies and what have you and, you know, doing all this democracy-related pontificating. And yet you just wanted to straight up abrogate the most well-attended or the plebiscite in the United Kingdom, the national referendum in the United Kingdom had the highest turnout for any referendum ever. You'd want it to just chuck it in the garbage can. So what does that say about your reverence for democracy when the rubber hits the road, right? and yeah I mean they were kind of

there was a whole kind of scrambling thing and like other people on the panel got involved it went on for like a half hour essentially they were directing me like I had like going back and forth of them and it was kind of entertaining and I think fruitful in a way And you got the video of that?

Yeah I didn't know it was on video actually I recorded it on my phone just the audio but it turns out that there was a stream of it which I didn't know so I had a guy kind of like editing some of it and you know splice my audio wins you could hear me better and uh you know i'll have that relatively soon awesome okay well listen with that i'll let you go man it's getting late on friday afternoon here but uh thank you very much for your time hope you have a great weekend michael appreciate you all right you too

all right you guys that's michael tracy he's over at the substack and of course all day camping out on twitter too and um it's just uh michael i have it right here let me make sure i have right it's m tracy dot substack dot com and that's his handle on twitter too m tracy 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.