Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/13/22 Dave DeCamp on Congress, Ukraine and the Risk of Nuclear War

Episode Date: May 15, 2022

Dave DeCamp is back on Antiwar Radio this week to provide another update on the war in Ukraine. They begin by talking about the new bill set to transfer $40 billion to Ukraine. Rand Paul requested an inspector general to oversee the funds, similar to how money was tracked during the war in Afghanistan. Paul’s request will not be included in the bill, but his attempt did push the passage of the bill back about a week. Scott and DeCamp point out how every single Democrat in national office has fallen in line to support this war. They then dig into the risk of nuclear war breaking out. Both agree that we are clearly on a bad trajectory with the express goals of western governments being to weaken or total overthrow the Russian regime — the top scenario nuclear war experts say will lead to a purposeful first strike. DeCamp points out that the only interest in negotiation seems to come from inside the military. Political leaders are outright discouraging talks. Scott and DeCamp end with a discussion of Finland and Sweden’s plans to join NATO and the Lithuanian Foreign Minister’s call for regime change in Moscow.    Discussed on the show: Mearsheimer’s short debate on PBS “For the U.S., a Tenuous Balance in Confronting Russia” (New York Times) “NATO says Ukraine to decide on peace deal with Russia — within limits” (Washington Post) Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com. Follow him on Twitter @decampdave. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, May the 15th, 2022, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all, welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com, and I'm the author of the book, Enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. You can find my full interview archive. More than 5,700 of them now, going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. And listen, guys, it's KPFK's Spring Fund Drive. The phone number is 818985 5735 to pledge. Anyone who pledges $75 or more will get a copy of my book enough already. that's 818-985-5735 or just go to kpfk.org.

Now, introducing anti-war.com's news editor, Dave DeKamp. Welcome to the show, Dave. How are you doing, sir? I'm good, Scott. Thanks for having me back. Really appreciate you joining us on the show here. Now, the big news is the U.S. Congress is giving $40 billion to the Ukrainian military for the war. They're fighting against the Russian invasion. and yet Rand Paul, at least at the time we've recorded this,

is holding up the $40 billion in, I don't know if any of that money was even going to bounce off of the roof of Kiev before being slam dunked back into the Chase Manhattan accounts of Raytheon and Lockheed. But that money was four weapons, and it's being at least temporarily held up. What can he tell us about that, first of all, here, sir? Yeah, so it's a pretty incredible amount of money that they want to give Ukraine Biden asked Congress for $33 billion for the aid package and the Congress, they raised it to about

$40 billion, $39.8 billion. And about $23.8, if my math is right, is $23.8 billion is for military aid. That's four weapons. The rest is, you know, what they call economic assistance and humanitarian aid. And, you know, some of it is just to direct aid that they just give to the Ukrainian in government to spend how they will. So a lot of that will probably end up going towards weapons or who knows what. Ski trips in Switzerland is the first thing I'm picturing, right?

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's a massive amount of money. And this is on top of $13.6 billion that they signed off on in March. It was part of the spending bill Biden signed. And so if you add those two totals together, it's over $53 billion in one year for you Ukraine. And to put it in perspective, Russia's entire military budget for 2021 was about $66 billion. So it's just a little shy of what Russia spends on its military each year. Yeah, so Rand Paul, the House passed it on Tuesday night and 57 Republicans voted against it, which was more than I expected.

Of course, it's not enough, but it's still a pretty significant amount. Because other bills, you know, for sanctions and the Len Lease Act that Biden just signed into law reviving the World War II era Len Lease Act, which allows the U.S. to send weapons to Ukraine while technically requiring payment at a later date. But who knows if we'll ever get the payment, you know, only a few handful of Republicans vote against that. So I was happy to see the 57 voted against it. I guess it's just such an absurd amount of money to send to Ukraine in the middle of what's an economic crisis here in the U.S. with inflation over 8% and everything else. So, yeah, and then last night, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, they wanted to hold a quick vote on it, but Rand Paul blocked it.

He said that he wants to change the text to create like an inspector general like they had for Afghanistan for oversight for all this money that we're sending. So what he did, I think, at least pushed it back at least a week from what I understand. so now they can't vote on it until next week. I don't think he, you know, he's not going to get what he wanted, his inspector general. Originally, they were going to vote on it as a separate amendment, so they still might do that, but who knows. I mean, even if, you know, we had one for Afghanistan and all that did was, at least it showed us how much, how they were wasting all this money.

It didn't fix anything or change anything. You know, they never listened to him. Right. Didn't make some great footnotes if you were writing a book about Afghanistan, though. Yeah, exactly. So I think it would be good to have. But yeah, it's really just amazing to think that there is no, there's zero oversight right now. With all this money we're sending to this, you know, notoriously corrupt government,

even the U.S. officials say it's corrupt. That's their excuse for not admitting them into NATO, but of course they still dangled it in front of them. But so, yeah, I mean, it's really something. And, you know, unfortunately, it is going to pass through the Senate. What Rand Paul did, just delayed it, and Biden's going to sign it. But so, yeah, at least they pushed it back a little bit. What a legacy for the Democratic Party. Even all the Democrats who climbed on Cindy Sheehan's back so they could retake the Congress in 2006,

pretending to oppose George Bush's war in Iraq, which they turned around immediately started funding. Did they not even remember that at all? Not one Democrat in the House of Representatives voted against this. You know, during Iraq War II, there were five Republicans that voted against it. But Nancy Pelosi, the current speaker still, that was a generation ago, Nancy Pelosi led the Democratic majority in opposing Iraq War II in the House. Now, they knew it was going to pass anyway. but still and now 20 years later they're unanimous in I'm sorry I keep bringing this up in this context but it seems very important that this is almost like a Vietnam level proxy war with the Soviet Union type thing I said Vietnam is 3,000 miles away on the other side of China from the USSR this is right in Ukraine right on their border just a few hundred miles from Moscow and they're acting like this is just nothing at all yeah it's really and and you know all the progressives like i remember ilhan omar when when things kind of first started she tweeted that it was reckless to send all these weapons into ukraine without any oversight and accountability

but i guess that doesn't really matter anymore or it's just political suicide to be a democrat and to vote against this stuff um and a few of them you know what they i think omar and i forget who else but a couple other democrats they voted against the russian oil ban but that was really the only level of Democrat opposition we've seen to these policies. Yeah, it seems completely unanimous. I can't picture any Democrats in the Senate voting against it. Some Republicans, Senate Republicans are complaining that it's not enough money that I want to send another billion, I think, that they wanted to add a little more. But I'm sure Rand Paul will probably vote against it but uh yeah it's just it's really uh a shame uh that how uh in line everybody is

uh with this with what we're doing over there yeah and the way that the partisan politics work where we all know that the leaders of the republican party are absolute hawks they're all george w bush john mccane hawks and even among the america firsters they're all still a bunch of right wing tough guys so about half of them or more are hawkish on this and so and then as we're talking about you have no dissent in the democratic party at all on the national level none so the only dissent is a small faction of republicans in a party that's still dominated by the w bush types and so where does that leave the american people with you know we have essentially no voice in this it's just amazing to see and the democrats as ever because they are such cowards are terrified

of being called weak and so they act all tough by just stealing money from regular working people and sending it over to make to you know fight to the last ukrainian as they say uh and then that gets to you know i guess that does help them politically they get to be tough enough to be protected from those accusations of weakness by the republicans but then not really as you say, the Republicans still just say double it, triple it. Yeah. The one Republican I saw

kind of questioning policy. I mean, I would say the best person on this has been Thomas Massey in the House from Kentucky. He's voted against every single bill related to any of these recent escalations, any sanctions, even

symbolic resolutions and stuff. He's been really, really good on it. But during a Senate hearing the other day, Averyl Haynes, the director of national intelligence, did a hearing. And Senator Tommy Tuberville, who I don't really know much about, he's from Alabama. And he was asking her, he was kind of saying, he didn't really word his questions that great, but he was asking her, and it was also the head of the Pentagon's defense intelligence agency was there. And he was asking basically, like, do you think Russia thinks they're at war with us? He was just warning

that we were doing too much. He said, I think we're poking the bear here. You know, there could be an escalation. And the reaction to his questioning that I just saw from Democrats and even April Haynes, like the look on her face, she looked like disgusted that he would even ask that question. It's really, you know, and everybody, of course, that questions it, they're just labeled the Putin. They're repeating Russian talking points or they're a Putin apologist. So the atmosphere for any kind of dissent. And he even, you know, he's voted in favor of everything. He might vote for this aid bill, I'm sure. But even just that kind of. basic questioning of it just get they just look at that with disdain and it's it's really a

dangerous uh environment and you know i don't know if you saw this um dave but john j meersheimer was on the news hour on pbs arguing there's sort of a debate with him and evelyn farcass from the obama government meersheimer of course the realist from the university of chicago and they all agree the news lady frames it this way and then they both agree that yeah premise one Russia would never use nukes unless they thought the existence of their state was threatened. And then two, yes, losing a war in Ukraine, that could count as feeling like their state is threatened from Russia's point of view, from Putin's point of view. And then three, yes, we're dumping in all these weapons because we're trying to make them lose. And then so Mirschimer says, we should not be doing this.

This is incredibly foolish. during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we negotiated. We can just ratchet up and ratchet up. This is madness. And then Evelyn Farcas says, nah, look, don't worry about it. Because I'm sure, you know, they could use nukes, I guess, but they would surely signal first.

But then as you write up here, Russian official, my parenthesis, says for the 100th time that we're risking direct conflict with Russia and the United States. And then, which obviously means an extreme potential, not just of nuclear war, but of the apocalypse. Yeah. And, you know, also the narrative that Putin is kind of this irrational madman that could use a nuke at any time. I mean, well, if that's the case, then we shouldn't be funding a proxy war against him because who knows what he's going to do. And this just doesn't seem to be, to me, at least, factored into the Biden administration's policy at all, the danger, the risk of nuclear.

war. That was Dimitri Medvedev that warned that again. He's been saying things like this, but I think it's important to highlight, you know, he said what they're doing by pumping weapons and the intelligence sharing, all this stuff, is risking a direct war with between NATO and Russia, which could easily turn into, as he put it, a full-fledged nuclear war. And, you know, everybody knows that this was a widely accepted thing for, you know, decades and decades that the U.S. and Russia cannot go to war. But we're funding. this war right on their border and it keeps escalating and there's it doesn't seem like there's any off ramps and you know you have these intelligence leaks bragging about helping kill

Russian generals and sink Russian ships we don't know how exactly how accurate that information is but it's the fact that they're leaking this stuff to the press I mean that's it just major provocations we think about how the whole U.S. establishment reacted to that nonsense Russian bounty story that was in the New York Times that said Russia was paying bounties to the Taliban that turned out to be based on nonsense, but just remember that reaction. And now what we're doing openly and bragging about it, you know, I don't think Putin at the level it is right now is going to, you know, strike anything inside NATO territory. But, you know, there's also been reports that there's British SAS soldiers in Kiev training Ukrainian troops. And like,

that might be his message to strike somewhere where he knows that there's some Western special forces or officials or something. I mean, I doubt he would, he would, you know, bomb Kiev when there was like a politician visiting or something. But, you know, we just don't know what at what point is he going to say, right, this is enough. And then what will our response be to that? Like, these are just such dangerous things.

And, you know, this, we're seeing, you know, this. slow escalation from, you know, when the war first started, the U.S. didn't want to publicly confirm that they sent Stinger missiles, the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine. The Pentagon was wary of confirming that. And now we've gone to every time Biden announces a new package, they release a detailed list of every weapon that they're sending, including howitzers. You know, we've gone up to heavy artillery now, openly helping Poland and the Czech Republic sending tanks. Now you got Biden touring the javelin missile factory in Alabama and putting it on the

front page. Exactly. Yeah. And you had the intelligence sharing. They were very hesitant to share details of it. And then you had all these reports in the media bragging about what we're doing. So the next escalation, what I've seen a lot of hawks say in Washington, I've seen a lot of think tankers say this is that they think the next step is that since we're sending them so many weapons that the Pentagon's going to send contractors in to maintain all these weapons and all this equipment. So yeah, I mean, at this rate, it does seem like there is going to be another step, another escalation, and nobody is factoring in this enormous risk that we're taking. Sorry, hang on just one second. Hey, guys, anybody who signs up to listen to this show by way of

Patreon will be invited to join the Reddit group. And I'm going to start posting stuff over there more. That's patreon.com slash Scott Horton's show. Thanks. 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.

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The great Mike Swanson his new book is finally out. He's been working on this thing for years. And I admit, I haven't read it yet. I'm going to get to it as soon as I can. But I know you guys are going to want to beat me to it. It's called Why the Vietnam War? Nuclear bombs and nation building in Southeast Asia,

1945 through 61. And as he explains on the back here, all of our popular culture and our retellings and our history and our movies are all about the height of the American war there. in, say, 1964 through 1974. But how do we get there? Why is this all Harry Truman's fault? Find out in why the Vietnam War by the great Mike Swanson available now.

And it's a good guess that there are deniable special operations forces and CIA paramilitary types and whoever else in their Special Activities Division and whoever else who, as you say, could get killed and could serve as a real trip wire for war here as well. Speaking of which, it's KPFK, it's fun drive, and sorry to interrupt the show, but I'll be real brief here. I've been good on everything on this network for 10, 11 years now, 11 years, and so you rely on it. It's anti-war radio on KPFK on Sunday mornings, and if you want to make sure there's still a KPFK for anti-war radio to be on, maybe pitch in 8189-85-5735 to pledge. Anybody who donate $75 and more gets a cop.

of my book, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. And also you can donate at KPFK.org. Thanks. All right, back to the show here talking with Dave DeCamp, news editor at anti-war.com about essentially the politics of the war in Russia here in America and developments in the arms sales and escalation over there. So to get back to a major point you were making there about this co-belligerency, you know, David Sanger reported in the New York Times as a flat fact, Dave, that all this support makes America a co-belligerent in the war. He didn't even say, according to some lawyer's opinion or anything like that, it's just true. Under international law, America is at war with Russia now. It's just that Congress hasn't declared it, and it's still

a proxy war that made you Putin's puppet, if he called it a proxy war two weeks ago. Now they openly call it a proxy war and they openly say our secretary defense and our secretary of state openly say the purpose here is to prolong the war to weaken Russia on april the fifth they said in the washington post should be famously they would rather see this is the quote from the post they'd rather see ukrainians continue fighting and dying than to see the war end too early Washington Post, April the 5th, as cynical as they could be, openly invoking Afghanistan and Syria, saying we don't know how to beat an insurgency, but we know how to support one. All the while, you have Russian officials like Dmitri and Vedev, the former president, and Vladimir Putin's right-hand man and his other right-hand man, Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister, warning us over and over again. don't you see that this could lead to a nuclear war?

You know, these are the same men who said for the last 10 years, don't you see that this could lead to a war in Ukraine? And now they're saying, hey, we might nuke your capital city and our government, well, they just persist because that's the resistance thing to do, Dave, I guess. I don't know. But the Russian and American war plans are for once nuke

start going off, they all go off. general nuclear war there's not five different plans and let's go with the minimal nuclear war plan no there's not a minimal one once the nukes start going off we're hitting all their cities and all their military bases and

hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and maybe thousands of nukes and but anyway sorry I'm just rambling at you I ought to figure out a question to ask you what the hell is anyone doing about this I know that Anthony Blinken hasn't spoken to Sergei Lavrov since February the 15th

But there was news this morning, right, that our defense minister, our secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, at least got on the phone with their defense minister. Do we know anything about what they talked about? Or if possible progress was made? Very little information there. So, Austin, according to the Pentagon readout, it was very short. Lloyd Austin called for a ceasefire. And then according to the Russian side, it was also very short.

It said their defense minister, Sergei Shogu, you know, discussed Ukraine with the Pentagon Chief, Lloyd Austin. That was really it. And so according to John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, Austin's been trying to get a hold of Shogu for a while now since the end of March. And Millie, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, he's been trying to get a hold of his Russian counterpart. And Russia has, you know, they set up a deconfliction line at a lower level. Apparently Russia said that's the way the military is going to communicate. But, you know, we've seen this. where you see the Pentagon seems more interested in diplomacy than the State Department. And,

you know, there's no indication that Blinken has tried to talk with Lavrov. And Lavrov and his deputies have said that they're open to talks with the U.S. And Biden has no plans to speak with Putin. So there's no will on the side of the Biden administration. I don't think to really talk to the Russians. Austin reaching out, you know, is good, I guess, but it doesn't seem like much came out of it, and I don't think to Russia, you know, it's not up to the heads of each country's militaries to, you know, negotiate. That's more for Anthony Blinken, and he's completely failed us. You know, and talking more about, you know, you mentioned that Washington Post story about how NATO, for some in NATO, because there are some NATO leaders, including

Macron in France, who want to see a negotiated solution. He just said it the other day that you know, we should be talking. This is going to be solved at the negotiating table. We shouldn't try to humiliate Russia. But then you have Boris Johnson, who is openly saying that he urged Ukraine not to negotiate with Russia. There is a report in Ukrainian Pravda, which is different than Russia's Pravda. But anyway, it said when Johnson visited Kiev on April 9th, I believe, he told Zelensky not to negotiate with Russia. And according to this report, he said, even if you're ready to sign a deal with Russia, we're not speaking. And it said he was speaking for the collective West, mostly probably speaking for the UK and the U.S. more so than the collective Europe, I would say. But anyway,

you know, report isn't confirmed. But then John. Johnson spoke with Macron on the phone, and according to the readout from his office, it said that during his, he updated on his visit to Kiev, and he said that he urged Ukraine not to negotiate with Russia. So that's, you know, kind of where we're at, that the country's giving, sending the most weapons to Ukraine and backing them the most are, are discouraged, seem to be actively discouraging negotiations. Well, we know Johnson is, and we have pretty strong evidence that the U.S. is discouraging these negotiations, too. Well, and there's no way that he would have done that without consulting with the Americans first. So absolutely they at least agreed to it if they weren't the ones who sent him on that mission. I mean, that much is just indisputable without having a fly on the wall. But there's just no way he would do that. And then you have this story here where he's now passing out, that's Boris Johnson, the prime minister of the UK, is passing out war guarantees to Sweden and Finland.

and telling them that if they get into a war with Russia, that don't worry, because Britain has your back. But, of course, then that means America will have to come along with Britain if they get into a war with Russia. And I seem to remember all hell breaking loose before over things like this. And so can you tell us a little bit about what progress do we have from their point of view about, it seems they keep announcing it like it's just a fait accompli, right, that they are going to bring Sweden and Finland into NATO as soon as possible.

Oh, and then please, at the same time, could you reference here about the, I think it's the Swedish leaders, are saying that relations with Putin can never be normalized at the same time they're trying to join NATO, at the same time that Lithuania's government, their foreign minister is explicitly calling for regime change in Russia as well. yeah so crazy dude yeah yeah things that's like living right in laredo and then just constantly taunting the ms 13 like you guys what are you going to do about it you know i don't know i wouldn't do that no yeah i mean so yesterday uh we got the clearest indication that finland's gonna apply to join nato the prime minister and president said in a joint statement that um they're they pretty much announced that they're going to apply for membership. I think there's still a few more steps with their parliament. I'm not sure exactly the details, but, you know, they basically said that they decided to do it. Sweden, there's been reports in Swedish media. They're expected to make an

announcement soon, and they're probably going to go for it. And then, so in the interim, they're in an application period. They want security guarantees, you know, out of fear that Russia would attack them before they become a NATO member. So Boris Johnson, you know, signed a deal with them saying, that the UK would protect them. And the Swedish prime minister said that she got security assurances from the U.S., you know, not guarantees. She said it wasn't like a NATO, you know, Article 5, but she said, you know, that they would respond if Russia did something.

So, yeah, and I mean, Finland has an over 800-mile border with Russia, and that more than doubles Russia's, you know, frontier with NATO territory. And they, of course, they're going to reinforce that border. They hinted at nuclear deployments in the Baltic in the Gulf of Finland there and possibly Kaliningrad, their enclave in the Baltics. And so, yeah, and then Johnson, Boris Johnson, again, when he met with the Swedish leader to sign this deal for security guarantees, they said, they put out a joint statement that said relations with Vladimir Putin can never be normalized. And you have Lithuanian foreign minister, you know, you had Biden say Putin cannot remain in power, which is an incredible thing for the U.S. President to say. But of course, you had the White House clarify that regime changes into policy now. I don't really believe that. But, you know, here the Lithuania foreign minister really laid it out and said it's the only way for us to be safe as if Putin, the entire regime is taken, is gone. So this is just telling me that, you know, we're not turning pack from this, that no matter what happens in Ukraine, even if Zelensky decides to sign a deal, even though it would be hard for him to do without, you know, backing from the U.S. and NATO,

that, you know, these sanctions on Russia are going to stay. Europe's going to get off Russian gas and Russian oil. And, you know, we're in this new era of a closed off Russia. Yeah, that's if we're lucky and we don't just all burn up. All right. Well, listen, thank you very much for your time. Dave, really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Sorry, I never have any good news, but at least the Yemen ceasefire is still holding up after five weeks. Yeah, well, let's catch up next week on that. Yeah, sounds good. All right, you guys, that's Dave DeCamp, news editor at anti-war.com, and again, it's fundraising time at KPFK, so stop by kpfk.org or call 818985-5735.

That's 818985-5735. Anyone who pledges $75 or more gets a copy of enough already. ready, time to end the war on terrorism by me. And this has been anti-war radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. Check out the interview archive at scothorton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. Follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. And I'm here every Sunday morning, usually from 8.30 to 9, but during fun drive from 9 to 9.30 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A.

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