Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/24/23 Ted Snider on the Rapidly Changing World Order

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

Scott is joined by Ted Snider to talk about the real-time shift we are living through from a unipolar order dominated by Washington to a multipolar world where different blocs engage on more equal footing. They start with the war in Ukraine where western officials are doubling down on some of the choices that have thrown Eastern Europe into chaos in the first place. They then zoom out and examine how Washington’s recent foreign policy has driven Russia and China closer together. That leads finally to a discussion about the ramifications of this Chinese-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran.  Discussed on the show: Clip of Chris Murphy on CSPAN “Does Canada Support Regime Change in Russia?” (Antiwar.com) “The Minsk Deception and the Planned War in Donbas” (Antiwar.com) “Putin and Xi Celebrate Ties Unbroken by Russia’s War in Ukraine” (New York Times) “China Brokers Agreement Between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Sidelining United States” (Libertarian Institute) Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in U.S. foreign policy and history. He is a regular writer for Truthout, MondoWeiss and antiwar.com. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Scott Horton.4. You can sign up the podcast feed there

and the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. All right you guys, on the line, I've got Ted Snyder and not only is the regular contributor at anti-war.com, but he writes for us at the Libertarian Institute now as well.

That's libertarian institute.org. And we've got a bunch of great stuff. by Ted at both sites all the time, man. The guy can't stop writing. Welcome back to the show. How are you? I'm good, Scott. How are you?

I'm doing great. Now, don't you pull Danny Sherson on me and write 15 years' worth of articles in two years and then go away? We need you around. I'm here, and unfortunately, the world keeps tossing up a lot of stories, so there's a lot of writing happening right now, yeah.

By the way, Danny, we love you, I miss you. All right. Anyway, listen, I'm mad at you because you're interrupting me, Ted. because I just found this thing. Somebody added me on Twitter from the Greenwald Show and he had a clip of Chris Murphy on C-SPAN Washington Journal

the morning call-in show from, get this. February the 25th, 2014. Just three days after this successful coup d'etat in Ukraine. And here's what I got so far. Quote, quote, With respect to Ukraine, we did not sit on the sidelines. We have been very much involved. You know, the members of the Senate who have been there,

members of the State Department who have been on the square, the Obama administration has passed sanctions, the Senate was prepared to pass its own set of sanctions. And so, as I said, I really think that the clear position of the United States has in part been what has helped lead to this change in regime. I think if ultimately this is a piece of, transition to a new government in Ukraine, it'll be the United States on the streets of Ukraine who will be seen as a great friend in helping to make that transition happen. And then he goes on,

a caller asks, yeah, but what if this leads to war? And he says, no, that won't happen because that would be a fundamental grave mistake on behalf of the Russians. And I think they know that that would essentially lead to a dissent to madness. So I don't worry that this is going to to result in any kind of military confrontation between the U.S. and Europe and Russia, Senator Murphy said. Three days after the coup. Yeah. Couldn't make it up. It clearly doesn't worry. And Scott, thank you as always for staying on the topic that you promised me we're going to talk about. Yeah. No, actually, yeah, you can never count on that. It's not my fault that you write about every other thing in the world. I was just reading your Saudi Iran article.

we're going to get to that. But I just had to share with you this great Murphy quote because, you know, and there's a lot of them like that. But it's fun when, you know, they admit it kind of not really understanding that, man, you're not supposed to go that far. In fact, Greenwald kind of makes fun of them and says like, you know, he was sort of new here and not really practiced on euphemism and, you know, how you're supposed to couch these things. You're not supposed to just outright say we did a regime change in a regime change that we're denying and dressing up as a revolution and pretending was accomplished by people power, you know?

Yeah, and he's not, it wasn't just a little while, didn't John Bolton talk about all the regime changing I've done or something like that? Right. There's a bunch of those quotes. And they're always fun when you find them after what, you know, what people knew they were doing after. And I know, I think about that,

that Biden quotation when he was, you know, a senator saying, you know, saying that he knows that NATO expansion, East would be a, you know, red line they can't cross and shouldn't do it and you know this and talking about you know Ukraine being a line they shouldn't cross and all that stuff that that he knew very well um when later as president he did those same things and you know you pull up those quotes from years before and hold them accountable for the actions they've done later and it's always it's terrible yep yeah too

late but at least we got their number yeah all right well listen so as long as we're on uh ukraine and Russia here. Will you please talk to me about the Canadians threatening regime change in Russia? Are they going to head, you know, stage from Sarah Palin's house and then head across the Bering City there? Yeah, so that was, um, uh, Canada's foreign minister, Melanie Jolie making a, making a statement that, you know, we need to keep up sanctions on Russia and, you know, we're seeing how much pressure there is sort of on, on regime change. And she's, she's, she's said that before. Um, and she's not the first Canadian official to say that either, because the deputy prime minister, and she's now also a minister of finance or something, Christian Friedlander, also made a remark much earlier

toward the beginning of the war that was seen as supporting regime change. So, you know, there's lots of countries that have called for it, but Canada seems to be, I think Russia just called the Canadian officials in to explain that statement. But yeah, yeah, so that's the that's the third, I think the third statement out of Canada since the war started that could be interpreted as regime change. One of the splits that you see, you know, in NATO, you know, on this question, you've seen calls for regime change out of, I think, Lithuania and Ukraine and Eastern Europe. And of course, you know, Biden made that call for regime change. And, you know, you've seen a bunch of these calls for regime change. And then you get, you know,

France and Germany specifically saying, explicitly saying that, you know, Germany saying it is not NATO's position for regime change and Macaron coming down very heavily against regime change. It's one of those sort of, I'm working on a piece right now on the unity of NATO, and that's one of the splits in which countries call for regime change, which don't. You know, Biden and the White House tried to walk back, Biden's claim for regime change, but I haven't heard anything from Canada walking it back. So I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah, well, it's so funny, Because everybody knows that they have H-bombs and that we can't overthrow the regime in Russia without leading to a nuclear war. And so what the hell are they even talking about? What's that even supposed to mean? We're supposed to believe that there could be a color-coded revolution in Russia now? You know, the idea, like you said, the color-goat, the idea is that you would make it, you would have sanctions, make it so miserable Russians that they would internally do a regime change in a way. You couldn't get a bomb because it wouldn't be seen as the state's doing it.

But, you know, I've written about this before, Scott, too, just the whole idea of regime change in Russia is ludicrous for so many reasons. First of all, it's not happening. Putin's popularity is as high or higher than ever. It's not happening. But I think at a more important level, when you talk about regime change in Russia, if you're going to do regime change, it has to be because you've got a replacement that's better than the regime you're replacing.

It's got to be that you're replacing a regime that doesn't share your policies with a regime that does share your policies. But there is no Russian president that's not going to see Crimea as part of Ukraine. So there's no Russian president that isn't going to draw a red line at Ukraine that would be sufficient, at least in theory, to trigger a nuclear response if you try to take Ukraine. So that's not going to change, for one. For two, I mean, Putin has held back the real hardliners. If you get rid of Putin, you risk having a more nationalist president that's going to try to do, you know, in regions, other regions around Russia, to bring areas with Russian nationals back into Russia.

And he's also held back the radicals. There's a large radical realist camp in Russia that has been pushing Putin to go much further and much more aggressive in Ukraine than he has. And this goes back even to the Minsk days when they told them, you know, don't just take, don't trust the Germans and French and Minsk don't just take Crimea, take all the Donbass.

And even today, there's a large radical, realist camp in Russia that's very anger at Putin for not going way more aggressive into Ukraine. So Putin's holding these people back. You take Putin out and you have the chance of bringing in a president that's far more aggressive,

far more anti-West than Putin. I mean, remember Putin was pretty pro-West. He was a reluctant convert to being hostile to the West. This is the Russian president who saw Russia as part of Europe who was pro-West, who even very, very serious.

Not just, not just, you know, a quick remark on the David Frost show, but very, very seriously suggested bringing Russia into NATO. And, you know, this, if you take him out, you might get something a lot, lot worse. So the whole talk of regime changes just by people who are not studying the political situation, history, and Russia. Yeah. It's scary talk. Well, listen, I mean, I think it's such an important point. they it's just cartoon the way these people talk

oh Putin is Hitler Putin is Hitler well maybe he's Hendonberg and you're going to miss him when he's gone maybe that how much imagination does it take to think of that you know you know Scott cartoon talk unfortunately is

not something uncommon in the Biden administration I mean just just to take two very current examples of what's it's almost so funny it's embarrassing that it said you know you know the first one is when when China proposes being a broker in the Ukraine-Russian situation, and the American criticism is that how can China be a broker

because they're not neutral and they're thinking of supplying weapons, but America can be a broker like they're neutral in this and they're not supplying weapons. It's comical. Or then if you don't mind what's going on topic of what we're supposed to be talking about for a second, when you get China broker an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the American response is let's see

what happens. The Iranian regime is not really one to honor their agreements. How do you say that in a straight face when the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran and the states was there? It was the state that didn't break hold the agreement. So here you got this thing, don't trust around. They break their international agreements.

These things are so comical that these are statements made by people that either have serious amnesia. You can't remember a very short time ago. Or it's just completely irresponsible statements that are laughable. Who's going to believe the states saying don't trust Iran? They don't keep their agreements.

Or, you know, China's not in a position to be talking to Iran and Ukraine because they're not neutral. How could you be any less neutral than the states, right? It's laughable. The language that comes out of the Biden administration is comical. It's comical. Ted, let me take you back. to the point about the radical right in Russia, because, you know, the parties in their Duma, the major parties still include the communists. What's his name that starts with the G?

I forget, who's still been around the whole time. Yeah, I know he meant I can remember it. Uh, Gessiyov, or whatever the hell. And then you got Zirinovsky and the nationalists, and then you have, I think there are other factions of nationalists as well. But, you know, I was reading up on Navalny, who is a nationalist, right? He's not a liberal. He's a right-wing nationalists to the right of Putin and in fact supports the invasion of Ukraine for Russian nationalist reasons. But he's an ally with these liberals. And I was reading up on, you know, the snow revolution they called it in 2011 when the NED and the state department was supporting all the protesters in Moscow over the parliamentary elections, the sort of little mini color-coded thing they were

trying to push there. And there's quotes in there from, I guess the New York Times saying, you know, of the liberals saying, well, we're aligning with these right-wing nationalists now because we're so against Putin and we just have to hope for the best that if we get rid of Putin that will come out on top and not them. Yeah, that sounds like a really great plan, guys. And Scott, the liberals, the liberals don't oppose the Russian action in Ukraine. They may think things should be being done a little different. They don't oppose it. And Navalny, the most radical statement Navalny's made on Ukraine is that at some point we should have a referendum. He's never said Ukraine's not part of Russia or he's a referendum. And he says that knowing that in the last

10 years, over 90% of polls of Crimeans have shown that they overwhelmingly want to stay part of Russia. And the other 10% still was like close like 50% is like like when he says that, when he says that he's he's just saying legitimized keeping Ukraine but this and Crimea you mean right it's not very high in Russia but even even if he did get in you would still get Ukraine you would still get Crimea as a red line and you would still get opposition to NATO expansion to the east and and you know none of that stuff would change there's no Russian there's no Russian faction that could get elected in Russia and give back Ukraine and survive

And Crimeans see themselves primarily as Crimeans, but they're overwhelmingly, they're the only region in Russia that primarily identifies themselves as Russian. They see themselves as Russian. The Russians see them as Russian. Every political faction sees them as Russian. You're not going to change that with the regime change. You're not going to change opposition to NATO expansion to Ukraine with a regime change. You're not going to change any of those things. But what you might get, and don't forget, these parties, the liberal parties don't have huge popularity in Russia.

What you really might get is a more radical, more nationalist government in Russia. I mean, you know, it's rule number one in U.S. policy on regime changes don't take out a government unless you think there's a candidate that aligns more closely with your policy. And they've blown that so many times. But there were past thoughts of, you know, regime change in countries where, you know, the government said don't do regime change because the candidates that line up after them are worse. And that's the situation in Russia. Putin's the most pro-Western leader Russia's had. He converted because it wasn't working, but you're not going to get better right now. All right.

Now, another part of this thing with the Canadians is there's this weird legacy of right-wing Ukrainian nationalism in Canada. And it was even a scandal a few years back that the deputy prime minister's grandfather was a newspaper propagandist for, The UPA? Yeah. So I'm Canadian. I live in Canada and I know less about this because I spend my time following American stuff. But you're absolutely right. Christiana Friedlander, she denied that, but as far as I know, it's been proven to be true.

And she's been very aggressively pro-Ukraine in this war. There's been a lot of cover-up about, Radical right-wing groups in Ukraine and Canada, you know, there's been interesting cases of newspapers online that you'll read them say that, you know, the right sector and, and, and, um, Fibod and these things are, you know, are not radical right-wing or fascist organizations. And then write in the article, if you click on the links to their own previous articles, you'll see earlier articles where they were talking about proof that these groups were right-wing, you know, fascist, militias, that we have to be careful of arming and training. Because sometimes when they write their article,

they forget to delete their old links, right? So there's been a lot of cover-up that in the in the Canadian media. Yeah, look, Canada's been, Trudeau's been a very good ally to Biden on this. He's been very, very, in his rhetoric, he's been very, you know, anti-Russian and pro-Ukraine. And, you know, it's so, so, yeah, and you get the calls for regime change and you get, you know, Christiana Friedlander in her history. And yeah, yeah, and there's been, yeah, there's been. And there's, yeah, there's been a bunch of stories about that.

It's disturbing. Yeah, there's this interesting writer on Substack named Moss Robeson, I think, something very close to that, who's like a real expert on the bandarists in the West. And, you know, the Ukraine lobby in New York and in Canada and other places has some really good write-up. So if you're not reading him, I know that you'd really be interested in this stuff. It's really good. Yeah, it's interesting stuff. And these groups have, you know, these groups in Ukraine.

Crane that have not a large following. They don't have a large percentage in their popularity, but they exert power that goes well beyond their popularity. You know, this has been studied in the points of me. I mean, Nikolai Petro made the point recently that the language that these groups use today makes it very, very clear that they represent the same kind of fascist policies that they represented in World War II, that they're, that, you know, they really are. what people fear they are.

You know, Scott, if you look back at the media just a few years ago, it was very, very clear that the West was worried about these groups and worried about arms falling in hands these groups or training these groups. No question. You know, and then all of a sudden, this stuff just gets, you know,

it gets whitewashed. And in my book, I actually have an extra section. Yes, Nazis, where I just absolutely beat a dead horse because I know that the burden is on me to show it. And so, then what do I do? I go on for 50 pages, quoting the New York Times and the BBC and Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty,

which is the U.S. government's own media. You know, Christopher Miller, who now writes for Reuters, did a bunch of pieces about these Nazis, and his stringers did too. You know, I got, it's all Western sources and as mainstream as you could get. What do I need? It's the Wall Street Journal to prove my case. You just have to go back two years, right? If you look at the Western media in the year, this year, you won't find that. But if you back in the Western Union just two years, you'd find that all over the place. Absolutely. All right, so now you have this other article.

As a comedian, Zelensky, there was that, I forget that sketch. There was a sketch. There was a comedian Zelensky said something like, you know, I wanted to get a copy of mine conf, but there weren't any available in Ukraine or something like that. This is like, this is like Zelensky as a comedian talking. That's funny. Yeah, I saw a thing where he said being Jewish is only one of his flaws or something. Something like that.

Hey, you got to please the base. They threatened to hang him from a lamp post, and the New York Times said, hey, that's a credible threat. In fact, I have two different quotes of the New York Times admitting that, you know, like if a Nazi in America said they're going to kill the president, nobody cares about that. The Secret Service is going to wrap them up. They're not going to get anywhere near the president. But the New York Times says, hey, when the Nazis threaten to kill the president, whether it's Poros Shank or Zelensky, yeah, they have to really consider that. It's pretty important. Give me just a minute here.

At the Libertarian Institute, we published books, real good ones. So far we've got Will Griggs's No Quarter, Sheldon Richmond's coming to Palestine, and what social animals owe to each other, and four of mine. Fools Aaron, enough already, the great Ron Paul, and my brand new one, hotter than the sun, time to abolish nuclear weapons. And I'm happy to announce that we've just published our managing editor Keith Knight's first one, The Voluntarius Handbook, an excellent collection of essays by the world's greatest libertarian thinkers and writers, 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. Well, Scott, there's a great quotation. I forget which Ukrainian minister or foreign minister,

not foreign, sorry, former minister said it, but there's this great quotation. And I'm not quoting exactly, he came over the words, but he says something to the effect of every new Ukrainian president thinks he'll be the one to make peace with Russia, and every new Ukrainian president ends up being a banderite, because that's the pressure. And he said that that will happen to Zelensky's that early in Zelensky's term, right? It's just, I've got to find that quote. That actually rings the bell, but if you look, the piece I wrote on Minsk has been, I think I found it originally in, I think, Nikolai Petro, but it's... Oh, well, that's the tab I have open right here, so let me just scan through.

Go ahead. Yeah, so, but that's just the pressure that the right-wing militias, the same ones that turned the Medan into a violent, you know, thing. It's just, it's a small group of people, but they exert that pressure. So, you know, we've talked with us before. I really believe Zelensky was sincere when he came in about honoring men'skin trying to, you know, make peace with Russia, and he just got, you know, pressured off that path. Poroshenko got pressured off that path before him.

Yeah, no to capitulation. That was the protest movement that broke out immediately. And they threatened his life. Yeah. So, yeah. Again, New York Times says credibly threatened his life. Yeah. All right.

Now, so, listen, we talked about that before, but you've written another one here. So you've developed the story. I know I got one more quote recently from Zelensky himself along these lines, but this is a new piece, the Minsk deception and the planned war in Donpass. This is so critical. I promise I'm going to let you talk about Iran and Saudi in a minute, Ted. But would you please tell us about this important article here?

Well, it's just we've talked about this before, Scott. It's just this idea that after 2014, when Putin annexed Crimea, there was pressure for him to go beyond that and annexed the Donbass. And he didn't because he trusted the Minskic courts. trusted Germany and France that there was a peaceful settlement to the Donbass, that the Donbass could peacefully remain part of Ukraine but enjoy autonomy so that they could have protection of

Russian, you know, nationals and they could have, you know, it's their own saying who they want to the government. But Putin trusted that there was a peaceful way to do this. He got tremendous criticism in Russia for this, but he trusted there was a peaceful way to resolve this because Angela Merkel and Francois Alon and presented this way that there's a peaceful way to do it. Well, the evidence emerging lately is that that was a deception

that they tricked Putin into thinking there was a peaceful way so that they could buy time for Ukraine to build a military because they planned a military solution to the Donbath all along. All right now let me stop you right there for just a second

because when we spoke about this before we also discussed the possibility that Merkel and the others are sort of just covering there behind And now that Putin is worse than Hitler and their attempt to negotiate with him for a peaceful resolution has obviously failed. And so it's embarrassing. So now maybe they're just spinning. But you've decided he don't think so. Go ahead. Well, let me clarify that. It's two points. I don't know, Scott. I mean, I don't know how you, I don't know how I would how I know this for sure. It does, it sounds like historical revision. Although I'm reading really good scholars on Russia saying, you know, quoting this now is saying that it was a deception.

But let's suppose for a moment that Merkel and Alon are lying, that they're rewriting history, that they didn't intend it to be a trick, okay? The piece I develop, what I try to develop in this new piece is that it's very clear from statements made by Ukrainian officials that they did intend it to be a trick. And by they, I mean Ukraine, even if France and Germany didn't. Because Pyotro Poroshenko, who was the president of Ukraine at the time, and I'm sorry for my

pronunciation, I'm probably saying it totally wrong, but who was the president of the time who signed the accords, he says that he signed

them knowing that they would never be implemented. And he says that he knew that because the, the radical right wing pressure in government

and the feeling in the population would never have let it happen. So he says that. And he specifically says that the, that the merit

of the Minsk Accords was that it bought us time to build an army and to build an international coalition. So, military solution. Now you get Zelensky saying this recently. And again, Scott, I'm reluctant to totally believe this because I think Zelensky was sincere for us. But now we've got quotations from Zelensky saying, I told Macron and Olaan that as written, the Minsk courts never be implemented. Right. Then you go digging a little bit further and you start finding statements from several Ukrainian officials at the time making this statement

that not just that Minsk wasn't implemented but that we knew from the first moment of talking about it we were never going to implement it. So there's I think a growing consensus that Angela Merkel and Franco Franco and Francois Alon may have been tricking Putin

and I think there's a strong case building that whether they were or not officials in the Poroshenko administration at the time, were using Minsk as a trick to make Putin think there's a peaceful settlement, but really by time for the military settlement of the Donbass all along. Now, here's a counterpoint to that, is that Obama didn't give in and allow sales to them until the end of the year, 2014, and he never did direct transfers from the DOT,

although he did send them trucks and trainers, so. Yeah, he did send, you know, sort of non-lethal. aid and stuff like this um but but certainly the consensus in dc was that he should be doing a hundred times more and damn him for not doing it you know derrick charlott who worked for him said this is the only time that everyone had a consensus of what we should do and the president said no that he could think of and there is a there is a consensus it's hard to talk look there's really good russian scholars who who argue that at the very very least um the states did nothing to pressure Poroshenko to implement Minsk, and they did nothing to support Zelensky

in his attempts to implement Minsk. And this comes from really good scholars. Richard Sakwa says this, and Anatole Levin says this, and all kinds of people say this, that on two occasions, sometimes it gets mixed up is just one, but there's two occasions here. They didn't pressure Poroshenko to sign it, and when Zelensky wanted to sign it, he couldn't signed it without American support for the reasons we've talked about already. And he did not get that American support. But that's a sort of a different point. I mean, I think, I think this is why, this is part of the reason why the U.S. has to own this, is that, is that they sabotaged

that early solution. And, you know, if Minsk had been signed and implemented, there's a good argument that this war might not have happened. So this is, this is an American responsibility. But there's also this more sinister aspect of it that maybe it was a trick all along. I mean, there's a chorus of Ukrainian voices that say we knew from minute one when we were talking about minutes, we were never going to sign it, that it was a way to lull Russia into this sleep that while they thought there was a peaceful solution, which really just bought us time to launch a military attack to reclaim. the Donbass and of course not talked about much Scott but but prior to this war just prior

to this war you know Ukraine had masked 60,000 elite troops on the border of the Donbass equipped with drones from Turkey there was an escalation of strikes into the Donbass there was genuine

fear in Russia that Ukraine was launching a military invasion of the Donbass And, you know, what these people are saying to us now is that that's what we always intended. So that's very serious. And it's very serious, too, Scott, because it makes it more difficult to negotiate an end to this war. Because Russia doesn't trust the U.S., Germany, or France anymore to be honest brokers in this. And they don't trust Ukraine.

I'm not saying that the others should trust Russia. right but but but they don't they don't trust the west now and that makes the negotiations very difficult and and this is and i'm not trying to bring us back with the original topic we can talk about whatever you want but this is one of the interesting counterpoints to china as a negotiator because they have tried um not to pick a side between south up south um between saudi arabia and Iran. They've tried to argue that one of the ways to broker an agreement is to be friendly with both sides. And this is a really interesting thing, Scott, because if the United States wants to remain the world hegemon or hegemon or however you say that word, I always say

hegemon because I study Greek and in Greek, it's hegemonica. So if you want to be the hegemon, you want to be the one leader of a unipolar world, you have to oppose anybody. that's not on your side. You've got to force them to be on your side. So when you get a country like Iran who's not on your side, you need to build a camp of Saudi Arabia and everybody else to oppose them. You need to build a world of blocks. So to get your unipolar world, you need these Cold War-style blocks. Whereas China's arguing the opposite. We don't want a unipolar world. We don't want a multi-polar world where you work with rivals and you bring rivals together and you work together. And so they work with Iran and Saudi Arabia,

even though they're rivals and they can negotiate a peace. This is not an America's interest because America wants a camp against Iran. So they want Saudi Arabia to be hostile to Iran. So this is, you know, they're all connected, right? Russia finds it difficult to trust these countries negotiate now because they're trying to maintain these Cold War camps. And it was not doing that. It was specifically not doing that. That was one of the reasons why China could broker this agreement that is so huge, Scott, not only because it changes the sort of whole unipolar, multipolar world and shows China's as like emerging power in the U.S. completely left out of negotiations, but major ramifications for the region that are already being felt.

So these different, these different negotiating styles and who can trust who come out of a much sort of deeper picture of what kind of world do you want? And the states wants a unipolar world where they lead. And China wants a multipolar world where every country is treated equally. And those different worldviews lead to different types of negotiations. Well, and look, they're seeking their advantage possibly. But the point is, I don't think that they lie about that. Every country seeks their advantage, right? Like every country's seeking their advantage. No one, no country does stuff that's really not. But I think the difference is that China isn't trying to be the world leader. They're trying to build their economy. And to build their economy, a stable world is

beneficial. A stable Middle East is beneficial. So in pursuing their economic interests, they want a stable world where countries get along. Where the U.S. is pursuing a unipolar foreign policy as their interest, that favors dividing the world up into blocks and bringing in a new Cold War. So they're both pursuing their interests, but China's interests seem to benefit from a multipolar world where there's stability. Look, if you look at the negotiations right now between Saudi Arabia and Iran or between Russia and Ukraine, in both cases, it's China that's trying to bring two sides together, even though they're enemies. And in both cases, it's the U.S. objecting to stability. The U.S. says,

We reject China's attempts to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war. They want the war to go on. And they reject China's attempts to negotiate an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran because they want Saudi Arabia to be opposing Iran. So it comes down to these worldviews in which country is the one. The states always says to China, we want you to uphold the international order and promote stability in the world. And so when China steps up and brings stability in the world,

the states rejects it because, no, we don't want that stability. We want Saudi Arabia to be posing Iraq. And people really, you know, Ted, I'm sure you've seen it, but people really should look up on Twitter. You can find the video of Anthony Blinken's statement the other day, warning essentially Russia and China that you better not try to broker a ceasefire here. We're just not going to accept that. And the way that he did it, too, it looked like he'd been up for 72 hours

and just, it was crazy the statement just. And Scott. It was unbelievable. Like in world history, that's going to be a thing, that this is what the United States did. They said, you better not stop fighting. Yeah, and not for the first time. I mean, they've squashed a whole bunch of potential peace settlements. But the thing to me that's most stunning about that is that the U.S. always insists that nothing without Ukraine.

It's up to Ukraine, okay? And what's stunning to me about this is that that means that if Ukraine wants to continue fighting, the U.S. supports Ukraine, continuing fighting. But if China succeeded in brokering an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, that would mean that Ukraine wanted it, right? China brokered it. Ukraine agreed to it. But now the state says, no, you can't do that. So it's all up to Ukraine as long as Ukraine wants to keep fighting. But if Ukraine signs a paper saying we don't want to keep fighting, now it's not up to Ukraine.

Now you can't do that. Right. So the hypocrisy is sending. But they say, hey, if Ukraine decides that they want to strike inside Russia, if Ukraine decides, sides that they want to try to take back Crimea. Who are we to tell them what they can't do? You know, they're driving. We got nothing to do with it. All we did is give them all the weapons that they're using to do the fighting with. That's all. Right. At least publicly. Yeah, it's not totally clear to me that publicly the states isn't saying that while privately saying

to Ukraine. We're totally happy with Europe. Yeah, goading them to do worse. Yeah. Well, listen, so on the, on this very important point here about the world order and this and that. I mean, we hear constantly the rules-based world order. And it sounds like what they're saying is that the U.S. is the police force that enforces the U.N. charter.

However, which I'm not a big fan of the United Nations, but I'm just saying that's what everybody thinks that they're talking about, you know? But then the New York Times reported just the other day. The piece is called Putin and she celebrate ties unbroken by

Russia's war in Ukraine and they report as a flat fact in the news story here. It's not an opinion piece. It's a news story. They say China and Russia both oppose a global order dominated by the United States and its allies. Oh. But so that's, it's not the liberal rules-based world order of law and cooperation and pre-agreed upon agreements and stability in world order. It's a world order dominated. by the United States and its allies

that they object to. Well, that seems perfectly reasonable then, since they're not the United States or our allies, and they're the obviously largest powers outside of America's military umbrella, as they call it, then yeah, no

wonder they're reacting against us. And what's funny is, I don't think that they were trying to like, hey, here's a revelation. It's just sometimes they forget to BS and they just kind of explain what's going on, sort of like Chris Murphy, the new senator up there, just blabbing about, yeah, we overthrew the government. It was great. Yeah, I think as you say, the funny part of that the New York Times

said it so clearly, I think this has been a point that Russia and China have made from the beginning is that is that the rule-based order means the U.S. enforcing it when it benefits them and breaking it when it doesn't. And Russia and China have claimed for the longest time that that they stand for a rule-based order. What they don't stand for is the United States interpreting when that, you know, when that rule-based court counts when it doesn't. And, you know, part of the things that made Putin give up on the West, were these acts of them not enforcing the rule-based order,

going into Libya without Security Council approval, going into Iraq? No, no, no, they did. They sort of did. They had a bait and switch on Libya. They tricked the Russians, in fact, and promised it's just a no-fly zone to protect the civilians of Benghazi. And then they said, well, protect the civilians, of course, means regime change or else they'll never be safe. Yeah, and Putin was very unhappy with Medvedev for allowing that in the UN in the first place. And so you got, you know, you got cases like Libya and the Iraq and Serbia.

And return to the presidency early over it, by the way. You know, like the idea was he was going to let Medev do a couple terms and see how it goes. and that was how it went, and so he pushed him out after one term and came right back. Hey, guys, check out my new sponsor. It's Peacehawk Coffee at Peacehawk. Coffee. First of all, business. You have to drink coffee in the morning, and you want it to taste good. Well, Peace Hawk Coffee is the best from around the world.

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Jim Bovard, Connor Freeman, Will Porter, Patrick M. Farley, and Tommy Salman's on our staff, writing and podcasting. And we've also got a ton of other great writers, too, like Walter Block, Richard Booth, Boss Spleet, Kim Robinson, and William Van Wagonin. We've published eight books so far,

including my latest, Hotter Than the Sun, Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, and Keith Knight's new Voluntarius Handbook. And we've got quite a few more great ones coming soon. Check out Libertarian Institute.org slash books. It's a whole new era. We libertarians don't have the power,

but we do have enough influence to try to lead the left and the right to make things right. Join us at libertarian institute.org. Yeah, and this isn't just Putin either. I mean, and when you go back to Kosovo and Boris Yeltsin, it was the same complaint. And so, you know, the Russians and the Chinese

have always complained that it's not the rules-based order we oppose. it's it's the u.s applying it when it works for them and breaking it when it doesn't and and that the new york times said it so a matter of factly is interesting um but but this has always been this has always been their argument yeah all right so now talk about you know part of this is all wrapped up in the sanctions and the economic war and um you know america essentially deliberately kicking russia out of europe but then you know i had thought and i know i know these people are such idiots and who knows if they even talk with each other agree at all what they're doing while they do these things but i thought the idea was to you know weaken russia

before we pivot to china rather than strengthen the both of them by pushing them together into this massive not just political but even economic block that then you know is including more and more people all the time uh this american lawless enforcement of the world law as you describe it seems to be driving the whole world away. And even, I'm sorry, I didn't read in depth about this, but I saw a headline about the Saudis talking about diversifying out of the dollar and, you know, for their oil sales and this kind of thing. So, you know, that's a whole part of it, right?

Is as America's, you know, trying to clamp down and prevent the rise of this, you know, multi-polar world, they're driving it big time. I mean, it was Joe Biden's in charge. These people, Antony Blinken, they've accomplished the exact opposite of what they were going for. You know, everybody bowed down to our might and everybody's like, nah, maybe we'll just get out of your way

and we'll just go around you. Yeah, so the, as you said, Scott, the irony of the sanctions on Russia and the war in Ukraine is that, you know, the American goal in this has been to preserve their unipolar world and the irony is that is that in and it's even more than that in the way it's got too because if you look carefully at the american statements and like you know the security postures and stuff like that the

idea is that you don't want to have to take on china and russia at once and russia is the immediate threat and china's the real long-term threat so what you do is you weaken russia so that you're in a better position to take on china and the irony is that in the attempt to weaken Russia, they've made China stronger. And they've driven Russia closer to China so they're further from China. So you get China and Russia with a much closer relationship than they had, you know, years ago, a couple of years ago. And you got a multipolar world getting stronger and stronger and stronger.

You get, you get, you know, I make a point in an article I've coming out in a couple of days that there's two countries lining up to join NATO, but there's a line up out the door to join the multipolar organizations like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. So you get a much closer grouping now with Russia and China and India, and even groups, and again,

this is the very definition of multipolar, even countries that don't get along are joining together so that in BRICS you've got Indian China partnered and in the Shanghai cooperation organization you've got India and Pakistan getting partnered. So you get this multipolar world getting bigger and bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger and stronger.

And then you referred to Saudis and the dollar. Well, Scott, this is happening all over the world. So one of the points that Putin and G made in their recent meeting was that they're now about 60 to 65% of their trade with each other as in Russian and Chinese currency. They're moving away from the, and they talked about strengthening ways of escaping the U.S. dollar. You've got Saudi Arabia talking about trading oil with China outside of the U.S. dollar.

You've got the CILAC in Latin America talking about bringing in a Latin American currency. And Lula to Silver is really big on this in Brazil, bringing in a Latin American currency where they can trade with each other outside the U.S. dollar. You've got movements in all over different parts of the world moving away from the U.S. dollar. this would be a serious weakening of the American unipolar world. But there's major, major trade going on and growing, going on outside the U.S. dollars. So when you look at that and the country's lining up to join the multi-polar world, you've got Saudi Arabia saying we refuse to pick partners. We can be strategic allies of strategic partners, sorry, not allies, strategic partners of the

state's end of Russia. You got South Africa saying the same thing that we can be partners. of the states and with China and Russia. And so in this attempt to use Russia to weaken China, they've made China stronger. In an attempt to preserve the unipolar world, they're making the multipolar world stronger. These policies are all manifestly backfiring. Yeah. Hey, by the way, Ted, did we talk about this?

I'm sorry, I don't remember who I say what to or whatever. But this is so interesting and seems like the kind of thing I might have brought up to you. this trilateral commission meeting last November in Japan? Did we talk about that? No. Okay, so, you know, the trilateral commission was created by David Rockefeller from the Chase Manhattan Bank and the Council on Foreign Relations.

He was the president of the Council on Foreign Relations back in 1973. And the point was to bring Japan, you know, deeper into the Western Alliance, right, versus Russia and China. And to build American power that way. So the thing is, It's like the Council on Foreign Relations or the Chatham House, the Royal Institute for International Affairs in England, where it's the non-attribution rule. It's not exactly top secret, but everybody promises not to quote each other for the press or anything like that so everybody can feel free to say whatever's on their mind.

You can't tell what you heard, but you can't say who said it, right? Yeah, exactly. So this is, so, and we get a bit of reporting from things like that. But anyway, in this case, in November they had one in Tokyo, and they invited reporters in. For the first time, I think ever, they said, or at least in a very long time, or the first time in Japan, something. Anyway. And they had this big conference. I had some pictures. And it was, the reporters were from Niki, which is named after the stock exchange. I'm sure it's, you know, it's a very legit publication you could tell by the piece, right? There's not conspiracy theory lore here just because the subject was the trilateral commission. Apparently, I didn't even really realize they still meet. And it's still a very big deal, a very powerful people. Rahm Emanuel came, the former congressman and chief of staff to Barack Obama and gave the speech on behalf of the Americans.

China better bowed down, liberal rules-based world order and our trade agreements and et cetera, et cetera. And now I got to go. I got a plane to catch, right? Like Bill Crystal at the door. But then the reporter says that everybody in the room was just pissed. That, you know, the questions for him before he did leave were all essentially hostile. And that then when he left, they called a break and everybody went to the coffee. break and everybody was talking and the consensus from Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, and whoever else, I don't know if the ties were there, Singapore, or whoever, but, you know, the America's closest

friends there. I don't know about ties in Singapore, but certainly Japan, Korea, and Vietnam were there. And they were all saying, look, man, the Chinese are much better upholders of the United nation's charter and national sovereignty and the rule of law, then you guys, by far, you guys get away with murder all the time. These are our best friends the Japanese talk at the trilateral commission, right? This isn't, you're and my friend at the coffee shop or something. And they're saying, listen, and if you make us choose, we're going to choose them. Don't make us choose. Because obviously they're our neighbor and we're going to be living with them no matter what forever. And you guys are clearly on your way down anyway, was, you know, implied in brackets there.

Yeah. That's interesting. I mean, the master of the sentiment I'm really familiar with, the particular meeting you're talking about I didn't know anything about. To me, it's really telling, you know, hearing. And it's language you're hearing everywhere. I mean, this is, I mean, this is what, you know, Saudi Arabia is saying, too, is don't force us to choose. And India, don't, you know, they tried to force India. It's just like, don't force us to choose.

As for Thailand, Scott, I forget now whether it's bricks or the essence. CO, but Thailand's applied for membership to one of those organizations. So they're also saying, don't force us to choose. We want to align with this sort of multipolar world. But this is the thing. The states are still walking around the world, looking for these monogamous relationships with countries who no longer believe in monogamous relationships with the states. They want the right to pursue their own self-interest.

And pursuing your own self-interest often means China or Russia, partly because China will engage in projects and help countries without, like the States does, without demanding, you know, total restructuring of their foreign policy and their economics and what kind of government they have. So China's seen as a more benign and

more reliable and certainly a fast growing partner. And look, this is going to go beyond these countries, Scott. I mean, you know, right now you've got countries like Germany agreeing to sanction Russia although it's not totally clear exactly how much everyone's sanctioning Russia, but agreeing to sanction Russia.

But what's going to happen if China brokers an agreement or China sends weapons to Russia and the state starts demanding of Germany that they choose aside and sanction China? This is not going to be an easy decision for German making. They're going to get a lot of pushback of even companies like Germany saying don't make us choose. That China is a major trade. partner. Germany just sent a delegation to China, a massive delegation for trade with China. And they're not only going to be reluctant to stop trading with China, but imagine stopping trading with China when you've also been forced to stop trading with Russia. So you're going to

not just get, you know, Japan and South Africa and Saudi Arabia saying don't force us to choose. There could well be a time in the near future when you get Germany and Europe saying don't force us to choose right okay now we have nine minutes left eight so get into the specifics here about china's role in brokering this Saudi Iran peace deal because this really is huge I mean I have to tell you I've been predicting and this could still happen but sort of seemed to me like Saudi was going to try to fling suicide bombers at Baghdad from now on to eternity because they just can't get over the fact that George W. Bush gave that city over to complete Shiite control and that's why they back suicide bombers everywhere they back suicide bombers right but now it looks

like we might have a real ceasefire in the and look believe me i'm always i think you're the same way on this you know a religious war is always about power and land and resources dressed up in religious competition the sunni shea war in the middle east is the reyad tehran civil war is what it is and of course george W. Bush touched off 20 years ago, the most horrible latest phase of it. But this really changes the order in the Middle East in ways that I don't really understand yet. Ted, tell me. This is a really huge story, Scott.

And it's huge for how it changed global alignments and regional lines. And we've kind of indirectly spoken about the global alignments already. So let's sort of pursue your question and talk about how it's changed it regionally. this is huge I mean there are two there are two camps that have been behind most of the conflict and trouble in the Middle East for years right

there's as you said the Sunni camp and the Shiite camp and and Saudi Arabia is the king of the Sunni camp and Iran is the king of the Shiite camp so if you make peace between these two countries you might make peace in the region

and fascinatingly Scott in just days since it's been done. We've seen Saudi Arabia now just announce that they've come to a diplomatic agreement with Syria. This is huge, right? And Syria said straight up that this is the result of the Iran, you know, Saudi Arabia deal because, you know, Syria and Iran are very, very close allies. And, you know, so this is an immediately fallout. There's a, there's a, there's a, There's an article in, I can't remember who wrote it, there was an article in, I think it was a Reuters article that quoted officials of saying that this is a direct consequence of the Saudi Arabia Iran deal. Then you get Yemen days after the deal between Saudi Arabia Iran doing an 800 prisoner exchange and talking about, you know, that since that agreement, there's been much more movement towards, you know, peace talks for Yemen.

This is huge. The Saudi Arabian king just invited the president of Iran to come to Saudi Arabia. He referred to Iran as our brother country. These are countries that were ripping each other's throats out a month ago. Now he's called him our brother, and they're talking about holding a meeting between their top diplomats. So in only days, there's been consequences in Syria, which would be wide-ranging. There's been consequences in Yemen. This is massive.

So the two countries hold talks in China from March 6 to March 10th, and they thank the countries that helped them do this before because it wasn't just China. They thanked, you know, they thanked, you know, Amman and other countries that had helped them, but they say Iraq and Oman were countries that they thanked for helping them, but they specifically say, you know, this was China. And so they signed this deal. And Scott, I know we just have a couple of minutes, but there's sort of three really important points of the deal. One is these two rival countries signing this piece, which has major ramifications in the region. The second is the possibility of escaping the sanctions regime on Iran if Saudi Arabia is going to trade with Iran. And the third is this promise to stop interfering within each other's country. So I'm agreeing with absolutely massive ramifications that shapes the region, and it was changed.

China shaping the region and the U.S. got sidelined. They had no voice in the shaping of a region that they used to consider the region that they had the sole power to shape. Hey, good riddance, man. You can have them, Russia and China. You can have Israel, too. Who needs them? Great. Listen, I'm sorry, we're all out of time.

But thank you so much for your time again, Ted. Thank you for writing for me at the Institute and for us at antiwar.com. for us at the Institute and at anti-war.com. It's really great stuff. Everybody read everything that Ted writes. It's all in the archive at anti-war.com either way. And appreciate you, man. Thank you so much, Scott.

The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on K-PFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.