Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 4/25/24 Ted Snider on the Big Lie Behind the War in Ukraine

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Ted Snider returns to the show to talk about a pair of articles he wrote recently about Ukraine. The first examines the lie we keep hearing from Western officials that Vladamir Putin intends to move beyond Ukraine and conquer parts of Europe. The second article takes a close look at the peace talks that could have ended this war in April of 2022. Snider and Scott discuss what we know about what the sides had agreed to and why the agreement was never realized. Discussed on the show: “Is Putin Bent on Conquering Europe?” (The American Conservative) “What Killed the Peace Talks in Ukraine?” (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. To support Ted’s work, you can make a PayPal contribution at [e-mail]. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; 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 the 5,500 interviews since 2000. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for 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 introducing ted schneider he of course is a fellow at the institute and also writes for antiwar dot com the american conservative and responsible statecraft because he's got so much to say he's got a right for all these different places uh well Welcome back to the show. How are you doing, Ted? I'm doing all right, Scott. Thanks for having me back.

Very good to have you here. This one is, um, is Putin bent on conquering Europe at the American conservative, which is such a stupid lie that I'm so glad you debunk here. But I have to say, before we start, that I want you to know that I did not plagiarize this article. In fact, what happened was I read it and I thought, man, this is just like what I have in my book. And when it finally comes out, poor Ted is going to think that I just plagiarize him. The truth is that you and I are just as great as each other as debunking this crap. That's all it is.

And you bring up all the same points and all the same quotes and everything to debunk the lies that, oh, boo-hoo, oh, Vladimir Putin is Joseph Stalin reincarnate. And he's not going to stop until he gets to Berlin. Yeah. So, yeah, it's like, and Scott, this is not a trivial thing as we found out last week. Because when the House of Representatives was considering continuing war funding for Ukraine, when Senator Mike Johnson changed his mind and decided to steer the package through the House, what he gave as his reason for changing his mind was that during his intelligence briefings, I'm quoting, he came to believe the intel that without lethal aid,

Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if you were allowed. I think he might go to the Baltics next. I think you might have a showdown with Poland or one of our NATO allies. So the really important thing here, Scott, in context, is that the claim that Putin is not going to stop with Ukraine, but go on through Europe and start a forward with NATO, is the core thing for justifying continued funding for the war. So if you expose this sort of core lie, you take away the justification and you give a reason to end the stupid war. So this is a crucial question about, you know, whether Putin's bent on conquering NATO or not. It's not just a, you know, it's a crucial, crucial question. Well, and the thing is, is it such a dumb lie?

It's such a lazy alibi for this whole project. So it's a dumb lie. It's a lazy alibi, but it's being expressed by people in authority with certainty. So you look at President Biden, who. told Congress, and listen to the language, Scott. If Putin takes Ukraine, he won't stop there. He's going to keep going. He's made that pretty clear. Okay? So Putin's made that clear. The NATO Secretary General said if Putin wins in Ukraine, there's a real risk. His aggression will not stop there. And Zelensky said just the other day, if Ukraine loses the war, other countries will be

attacked. This is a fact. So Zelensky calls it a fact. Biden says that Putin has made it clear. In fact, Scott, as you know, Putin has never made anything of a sort clear. He's consistently said the opposite. Putin has consistently said that this is not a war about territory at all. It's a war about security concerns. It's a war about Ukraine, not joining NATO. And, you know, I was reading the other day an article in the mainstream media. I forget if it was one of the big papers, it was the Times or which. And the writer just sort of smart aliki says when Putin says it's not about, you know, war is not going to say. That's what he said about Ukraine, too. But again, that's just really lazy because the idea that this is about, not about territory, but about NATO, this has been confirmed by officials in Ukraine and NATO.

David Arkami, I'm probably saying his name wrong, who was the leader of the Ukrainian negotiating team in Istanbul. He has said that Putin said he was prepared to end the war if we agreed to neutrality. He called Ukraine not joining now the key point. NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg has said that Putin had a precondition of not going to war, Ukraine, not joining NATO. And the head of NATO actually said, I'm quoting, Putin went to war to prevent NATO close to his borders, Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO. So it isn't just Putin saying that this is about security concerns. This has been confirmed by NATO and by Ukraine. So there's nothing on the historical record, whereas Biden says Putin's made this clear,

there's nothing on the historical record to suggest that Putin's made this clear. The historical record, if it's to be trusted, is completely clear that Putin intends to achieve certain security concerns by keeping NATO out of Ukraine. So it's a very lame lie, and it's expressed in terms of certainty that aren't backed out, aren't backed up by the historical record. They're also not backed up, Scott, by the historical record of Putin's own behavior since he became president of Russia in 2000, because the historical record shows that Putin has not kept going when he mobilizes forces.

So Russia hasn't mobilized forces that often compared to what the United States has done, right? And when he does, it's always been for very limited specific objective. And Putin has always stopped when he's achieved those objectives. He hasn't kept going. And I'm thinking, for example, of Georgia in 2008, when it would have been militarily really simple for Russia to continue to march on the capital of Georgia and take Georgia over. He didn't. He stopped his forces and went back to Russia.

And in Ukraine in 2014, when Russia took Crimea, Putin had parliamentary authority to go on take all of Ukraine. In fact, that's what a lot of the hardliners wanted. But we achieved his goal of bringing Crimea back to Russia. He stopped. So there's nothing on the historical record that suggests that when Putin starts, he keeps on going. The historical record is pretty clear that Putin sets very limited objectives and that when he attains them, he stops. Yeah. Now, you know, I don't know. It's so, I'm just hung up on how ridiculous the thing is, when everybody knows the truth and can see right through it. But it really is, you know, we've been through a generation of this where, you know, look, Ted, Iraq is going to attack us if we don't preemptively attack them first.

And, you know, what we're really doing in the Hellman province is we're protecting the women and children from their own men, you know, who the Taliban, well, they're invaders from outer space. They're not from the Hellman province. They're not the local people that we're at war with. They're the enemy invaders. And we are the locals protecting the local civilians from these terrible combatants who they and us are up against together. What? And, hey, they kept a war going for 20 years in Afghanistan based on that theory. So half the time we admit that we provoked it with the NATO expansion.

But officially, nope, it's because Putin's headed toward Portugal if we don't stand in this way. Yeah, so we're not allowed to say publicly that it's provoked. I mean, the two lines you always have to say in any article about Russia is that the war was a unprovoked and B, that it was a full-scale invasion. So it was an unprovoked. Of course, neither of those are true. The war wasn't unprovoked and it wasn't a full-scale invasion. He invaded with 120 to 190,000 men, which he knew full well wasn't enough to take all of Ukraine because his goal probably wasn't to take all of Ukraine, let alone all of NATO. And if you want to look at how court sort of lame the line is, the reason that the immediate reason for my writing this article was a line given by the U.S. ambassador to NATO at a recent preface, where she said that NATO countries, and again, I'm quoting Scott because I don't want to get it wrong.

NATO countries must, quote, help Ukraine push Russia out of its territory and end this unprovoked aggression, because if they do not succeed, of course, there's a certain language again, of course, the concerns that Russia will feel compelled to keep going, right? So this is the U.S. ambassador to NATO saying that Russia will keep going after Ukraine. The problem with that is not only that there's no evidence for it, but the U.S. Ambassador NATO knew it, because right after Smith said that Russia will keep going, going, she said, and again, I'm quoting, we do not have indicators or warnings right now that a Russian war is imminent on NATO territory, and I really want to be clear about that.

So she says we have to fund the war in Ukraine, or Russia will keep going and go through Europe and fight NATO. And then, you know, in her next sentence, she says, I want to be absolutely clear that there's no intelligence or evidence supporting that. So it's just a lie. You add that to what we were talking about before, about Putin's history of not doing that. And then Scott, the third point that I find really interesting. Now, I also find this interesting because I don't think enough people talk about it

is that the historical record suggests that Putin went to war in Ukraine, not as a stepping stone to fighting NATO, but to preventing a war with NATO. So if you look at the reasons that people often give, if you're allowed to give them at all, for Putin's motivation. He said that he wants to keep Ukraine out of NATO,

and he said he wants to protect ethnic Russians in the Donbass and Crimea. But the important points God is not those two points separately. On the days leading up to the war, when Putin was trying to explain what he was asking for, he often put those two things together. And what he actually said is that what would happen, What would happen if Ukraine were to join NATO and then, as they say they're going to, try to take back Crimea or attack the Donbass?

Now we have a war with NATO. So his concern wasn't those two things separately. His concern with those two things together, okay? The concern is that if Ukraine joined NATO and then got into war with Russia, Russia would be in war with NATO. So the whole point of the Ukraine invasion was to prevent a war with NATO. So it's really ridiculous to say that Putin's intent in invading Ukraine is to start a war with NATO. Because his whole intent in starting war with Ukraine was to prevent a war with NATO.

So it's a completely historically stupid argument. Look, I think you're right about that. In fact, he said that on multiple occasions. Yep. that you see what's going on here and in fact later and i thought the way he said it he seemed like he must have been on muscle relaxers or something that day but i know they walked this back a little bit but he said look i don't care finland joins nato because you know that might be regretful like in theory but we don't have any border disputes with them we don't have any problems

that are going to come up that could embroil us in a fight with nato because everything's cool between us in Finland. In Ukraine, things are really complicated. You know, it's a different situation. And it could lead right to war there. So. Yeah. And this is what, and he said this. And again, this really doesn't get attention because I think it's not, it's not politically correct to quote this because it shows how sort of provoked war was. And I'll give you an example just, I mean, there's a few of them. But here's one example because Putin's language is interesting. He starts us by saying, he says, listen attentively to what I'm saying, right? He's making a clear point. Listen intentively to what I'm saying. It is written into Ukraine's

doctrines that it wants to take Crimea back by force if necessary. That's true. It's part of official Ukrainian policy, the Crimea platforms, they'll get Crimea back. Then he says, suppose Ukraine is a NATO member. Suppose it starts operations in Crimea, not to mention Donbaths. This is sovereign Russian territory. Imagine that Ukraine is a NATO country and starts these military operations. What are we supposed to do, he asked, fight against the NATO bloc? And then he says, has anyone given at least some thought to this? Apparently not. And he said this sort of thing repeatedly in the days before the war, that, that have you thought about for a moment what happens if Ukraine, a country whose official policy is that they're going to take back Crimea, which Russia considers Russian

territory? So now you've got a country joining NATO, about to attack Russia, you've got a NATO-Russia a war. So how can you say now that Putin's intent in Ukraine is to fight NATO when his entire intent in Ukraine seems to have been to prevent a fight with NATO? It's so historically irresponsible. And then that lie becomes the main justification for going on funding the war in Ukraine and gets this $90 billion, well, that's not all Ukraine, a $61 billion package put through Congress because if we don't, Putin's going to be fighting NATO tomorrow. So when we only know that's not true, but the U.S. ambassador to NATO specifically said we've absolutely no evidence or intelligence to support this. Hey, Barack Obama admitted in 2014, or maybe in 2015, in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, that, look, Putin has no designs on Eastern Europe or any of that.

What he did in Crimea was a reaction to the transition of power that we help see through, or something very close. of that. So he's taking credit for the coup and saying, yeah, and then look, hey, what are he going to do? That provoked Putin into doing what he did. And then he says, look, you can't, I want to see anyone argue that eastern Ukraine is worth America going to war for when you got to understand, you know, this is the guy who did the coup and started the whole damn fight, saying, he says it's the highest importance to Russia, and it's not to us. So at the end of the day, Russia is going to be dominant in Ukraine. So big deal, Jeffrey Goldberg. It is what it is. You know? Yeah. And he was the one who had brought it to that point, but then he was like, what do you expect me to do? Yeah. And there was

no answer to that. There's nothing to suggest that Putin has ever had designs on Eastern Europe or reconstituting the empire. He's always been most misquoted in this. People love to quote, you know, Putin saying that, you know, anyone who regrets the collapse of the Soviet Union has no heart. But the only way to do that is to cut off the second half of the sentence with them. Those that do regret to have no brain. There's a second quotation.

People love to quote where Putin said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster. And people like to say that that's him mourning the loss of the Soviet Union. But the next sentence is explaining why it was a disaster is because it brought poverty into Russia and let the oligarchs exploit people. I mean, you deliberately take these quotations out of context and twist them to make it sound like Putin has this history of wanting to reconstitute empire. They're all false. And as I said earlier, when he has mobilized the military, it's always been very, very limited objectives. these are very sort of creative and useful and transparent lies.

And, you know, you were talking about, you know, the Donbass and Russia cares more than, you know, America cares. But, you know, you also have to ask the people the Donbass. And, you know, prior to many of them leaving, you know, the polls consistently showed that the people in the Donbass wanted at least autonomy, if not to be a part of Russia. And, you know, the people in the Dombas, they asked Russia to annex it the way Crimea had been annexed years ago. And Putin didn't want to do it. In fact, he didn't do it. He resisted. And he didn't do it until, you know, the eve of this war.

So there's a historical context that just, you know, it just reveals it was absolutely no support for this lie. And again, I want to stress that this is the core lie. This is the lie that's being used that Putin wants to use. Ukraine is a stepping tone. This is the line that's being used to continue justifying the war, and it's a lie. Yep. And again, it's such a blatant one, but

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your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca. All right, so I want to switch the subject a little bit to just, you know, early in the war and this second piece that you have at the Institute here, What Killed the Peace Talks? And this is, I think, you wrote this on occasion of this new piece in foreign affairs by Samuel Cherup, who seems to be the most reasonable guy that the Rand Corporation, which is probably not saying a lot, but I don't know. He writes some interesting things. And he didn't have his name on that worst thing from 2019 saying, here's how we can get him. So there's that at least. But anyway, him and some other dude, they wrote this thing in foreign affairs about the talks that could have ended the war in Ukraine, they call it.

And so why don't you tell us what we learned from that? I didn't know that was up on the institute yet. So it's a very interesting article. It's an extremely well-researched and extremely well-argued article about the talks that went on in the first weeks, March and April of the war. And it's a hotly contested question. People like to claim that there was no draft agreement that, you know, the evidence is becoming remarkably clear, Scott, that. It's not, let me take that back. It's not miraculously proven, okay?

The Wall Street Journal has seen the documents. Samuel Chara actually saw the documents, wrote the article. In April of 2022, Ukraine and Russia had gone so far as to come to a draft agreement that became the Istanbul communique, that was a draft agreement for a ceasefire to end the war. It was not complete. there were issues outstanding there was the main issue outstanding was how large an army

Ukraine would be able to have they hadn't you know hashed out talking about territory but they weren't massively worried about that it seems to make it clear that Zelensky felt that Ian Putin at the time could sit down and sort of hash that stuff out together

but there was this there was this draft agreement that could have stopped the war okay people are going to tell you that's not true but it's but it's It's true. So many Ukrainian officials who were at the negotiations have testified. There's three or four Ukrainian officials.

In fact, let me restate that. Every member of the Ukrainian negotiating team says that that draft agreement existed. Putin says that draft agreement existed. Lavrov says that draft agreement existed. The Wall Street Journal has seen the draft and written an article about it in the mainstream media. And Samuel Chirap saw it, saw two drafts of it when he wrote the article. So there was this draft that could have stopped the war. So the really important question becomes what killed it, okay? Because if, if, if Russia bears the largest part of responsibility

for starting the war, then whoever prevented stopping it bears at least the next appliance share of it for allowing the, you know, the suffering to go on. And what happens is that people like to say that the West didn't block it. And the thing about Sharup's article, which I think is excellent, is that he commits, I hate to call this an error. He knows so much more than I do, but he does the same thing. He says that there were three or four reasons why the draft treaty died, and I think he's right about that. But then he says that the claim that the West blocked it is baseless. And my contention with that is that no one who says that ever gives any evidence. They just say it's baseless. But Sharup then goes on to give a whole

bunch of reasons why the West blocked it. He says the West didn't prioritize diplomacy. He says at a time that Zelensky was growing more confident because Russia withdrew the troops from Kiev. have the states encourage that commas by promising all the military aid needed, that they, you know, they discourage the diplomatic track and encourage the military track. And the other thing, Scott, that I think is just so important is that it's not only that there's no evidence for this claim that the West didn't block it, they also ignore all the evidence that the West did block it. And when I say that there's evidence that the West blocked it, I mean that the people who

party to negotiations saw that and tell us the west blocked it so neftali bennett the then prime minister of israel who played an important intermediary role at the request of ukraine so he's not a hostile witness you know zelensky asked him to mediate and bennett says that the u.s blocked it okay um gerhard schrener the the um the former um chancellor of of germany also an important media of the talks again at the request of ukraine so not a hospital eyewitness says that the reason that it didn't happen is because Ukraine has to ask Washington and everything, and Washington said no. The talks happened in Istanbul, and the Turkish officials who were present with talk, two of them are on record as saying that NATO blocked the talks.

One of the Ukrainian officials who was there says that NATO blocked the talks. We also know for a fact that Boris Johnson went to Kiev and told Zelenskyy personally, that you may be ready to negotiate, but we're not. So go on fighting. And the Ukrainian head of the delegation of the talks has confirmed that, no, it wasn't, I was forget the two, Orestovich, I think, said that we were sure that it was going to be signed. We were celebrating, and then, you know, Johnson came to Kiev and told us no. So there's this, there's this, I think in the article I call it a quorum, but it's closer to a unanim.

than a quorum of a firsthand testimony that the U.S. blocked the talks. Now, does that mean Ukraine had no agency in this? No. Okay? You can't force Ukraine to go to war, but you can tell them that not only won't we enter any sort of negotiations, but we won't give you any aid if you do go to war. You know, Washington made it clear that if you choose the military path and sort of the diplomatic path will give you all the weapons that you need for as long as you need it. And there are also reports that they told them that if you don't take the military path, we won't give you the finite to keep your government afloat. So is that forcing them? It's coercing them. It's coercing them. It's pushing them. I think it's true that at a certain

point with that pressure that Zelensky wanted to no longer talk and wanted to take the military path. There's clearly Ukrainian agency. But it's also very, very clear. that there was a draft treaty that could have ended the war and had the U.S. supported the diplomatic track. Had they said, sure, there's still problems in that treaty, but look, it's obviously possible negotiate. You're almost, you're 90% there. One of Ukrainian officials that were 90% there.

The U.S. could have encouraged that diplomatic path had they wanted to in the first days of the war. Instead, they pushed Selensky off the diplomatic path. They strongly encouraged the military path with the promise they do. took to help them and the u.s. blocked the diplomatic path push the war on and and bears therefore tremendous share of the responsibility for the suffering that's happened since the time the war could have stopped that was a really really long answer but i hope it was clear yeah that's a good one too and look it's not just so that you can say shame shame we know your name at the end it's because it

changes the whole context of the war too just like the previous point about whether the war is simply one of, you know, Saddam Hussein slash Adolf Hitlerian motivation to conquer the entire region, which, of course, they put that on Saddam Hussein. Well, he went for Kuwait. Obviously, Riyadh is next. And then the next thing, you know, Berlin. Same kind of thing here. And also, wow, and then short circuiting, the peace talks, doing everything they could to disrupt them. And it's not like America is just France, which is an extremely powerful European state. America is the 800 trillion-ton imperial gorilla here that dominates all Europe. It's the world empire. And so then leaning just a little bit on a country like Ukraine, hey, we'd really like to see this thing keep going.

And don't worry, we're going to get you those rockets we promised and whatever. That goes a hell of a long way, especially when, you know, you're not talking about the people of Ukraine. you're talking about a couple of politicians. I think it's really, you know, to me, the historical record is pretty clear that they were close enough at the talks that U.S. support could have kept those talks going and instead the U.S. told Ukraine not to talk but to fight.

And if you go back very early to the war, I think it was Ned Price, the State Department spokesman. I was just going to say that. Yeah, and they're, you know, and they ask him, do you, they say straight up, do you support the negotiations? And his answer was, these are not real negotiations, that there are certain core principles the U.S. believes in at stake here. And then my favorite quote in the whole war, you know, where Price says this war is in many ways bigger than Ukraine, it's bigger than Russia.

He makes it really clear that this isn't about stopping that war. It's about something bigger. And that even though Ukraine had satisfied their goals of negotiating table, there were certain core principles the U.S. hadn't. And so Johnson sent to Kiev to tell them, we're not doing this deal. Go on fighting. And the U.S. never prioritizes diplomacy, but pressures Ukraine not only not to, you know, negotiate, but promises them. You know, don't enter into a defense treaty with Russia. Go on fighting and we'll give you all the weapons we need. And this was the American, you know, intent from the beginning. Ned Price made that really, really clear. And, you know, if you look at the war, Ukraine and realize that this is a very complicated war, it's not a single. single war, right? There's the civil war in Ukraine that started in 2014. And, you know, who's to blame for that? Well, the U.S. sponsored coup and then the Ukrainian government's repression of, you know, ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. Then you've got the, you know, Russia-Ukraine war. Whose fault is that? Well, you know, ultimately Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine.

That's Putin's fault. But then you get the larger war, the U.S. NATO-Russia. war you know whose fault is that and and here's where you see um the states trying to stop the diplomacy in the in the in the russia ukraine war so that they can go on with their core objectives of of of harming russia so yeah i'm sorry man i got to stop you i'm late i can hear your phone ringing and i got to go to my next interview it's my fault i lost track of time here but you can cut that last part out if you want no no no it's fine it's good and and everybody caught your drift there so listen everybody it's ted snider he's at the American Conservative. Is Putin bent on conquering Europe? No. And then brand new at the

Libertarian Institute, what killed the peace talks in Ukraine? A definitive take here. Thank you very much, Ted. Appreciate you. Thanks a lot, Scott. Thank you. The Scott Horton show, anti-war radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, antiwar.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.