Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 6/17/22 Ray McGovern on the Russian Invasion: What He Missed and What It All Means

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Scott is joined by Ray McGovern to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Like many, McGovern was surprised that Putin chose to actually invade Ukraine. He explains why he had been confident Russia would not invade earlier this year and how his analysis of Russia’s goals has changed since then.  Discussed on the show: “Did Obama Know ‘Russian Hacking’ Was a Fraud?” (Antiwar.com) “Some Lemmings Wear Wooden Shoes; and Factoring in China” (Antiwar.com Blog) The Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg 2018 Interview with McGovern about Russian Next-Gen Nuclear Weapons  Putin’s 2018 speech Ray McGovern is the co-creator of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and the former chief of the CIA’s Soviet analysts division. Read all of his work at his website: raymcgovern.com. 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

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton show all right you guys introducing ray mcgovern regular contributor at antiwar dot com former cia analyst in fact former chief of the soviet division back in the days of the old ussr

And his latest for anti-war.com is, did Obama know Russian hacking was a fraud, but also he's got one here on the blog, I guess it is. Yeah, it's on the blog. Ray on Ukraine, some lemmings wear wooden shoes and factoring in China. Welcome back. How you doing, Ray? Good, Scott. How are you? I'm doing great.

It's been a little while since we talked. The last time we talked, you were helping me get it wrong, that Russia wasn't going to invade Ukraine. So what have we learned, sir? Well, I learned a lot. It's not good to be so wrong and so convinced that I'm wrong. I'm right. I learned that mirror imaging is something I know all too well about. It was operable there during the Cuban Missile Crisis when a month before, the CIA predicted that

Husshoff would never, ever try to put offensive missiles in Cuba because he would know how we would react. Wrong, wrong, okay? So why did I think that Putin would not invade Ukraine? I thought that he could achieve his objectives other ways and not endanger what would be a really bad reaction by the rest of the world what i didn't calculate was how how determined he was to come to the defense of his countrymen in the russian speaking areas of ukraine and more important and maybe i'm the only one that thinks this but with the imprimatur or the nihil afstadt meaning uh at least the uh so to voce kind of approval of his best friend

Zijing Ping, he was filling his oats and he said, you know, it's now or never. These missile sites are going into Poland. They're already in Romania. Nobody takes seriously. Biden

promised not to put such missile sites in Ukraine, but then all of a sudden he forgot about it. There was no discussion of that in negotiations. I can't trust these guys. I have China at my back. This is a good opportunity. The forces are raid against our Russian-speaking neighbors and the Dunbas are formidable. It looks like they might want to attack. Let's go. And again,

with the tacit approval, and now we have pretty much vocal approval of the head of China, he went in. Now, number one, I never thought that Xi Jinping would give that approval. I mean, after all, China's been bedrock, its principles stand on international nations is no interference in the affairs of other countries. It's, that's file you. You know, give me a break. This is our, you know, and all my Chinese advisors, my Chinese, my Chinese specialist's advisors, whom I trust and who know a lot more about China, I assured me that no, Xi Jinping would never countenance this. Now, why do I dwell on this? I dwell on this, because this is the all-important factoid. This is the tectonic shift in international relations.

We end up here, because of Ukraine, is a very clear delineation between the all-white West and the rest of the world. Mostly people of color, even Russians have been blackened so much in our propaganda that they are, in effect, people of color. Most of them are anyway. So we have the world divided. It's not a moni-polar world anymore, and it's a bipolar world only insofar as you have the white west represented by NATO on the one side. And you've got the rest of the world, basically, on the other. And that includes places like Pakistan and Brazil and Saudi Arabia, you name it. The rest of the world is not coming in on the side of the.

White West. Now, this has tremendous implications. Today's speech by Putin indicates that he's kind of given up on what Peter the Great back in 1700, for God's sake, decided on, and that was to break a window into Europe. They saw themselves as Westerners. They didn't like the idea that Genghis Khan and his compatriots had occupied Russia for. two centuries and 20 years back when we were coming we in the west were coming out of the dark ages so they wanted to join the west and this is a tectonic shift because Putin says today look we tried for 30 years it didn't work these guys are arrogant beyond belief and they don't appreciate that the correlation of forces has changed maybe I wouldn't think for people who who know Russia or no

about Pushkin, the greatest poet in Russia. He wrote a book about Peter the Great. He called it Medni Sadnik. It was the bronze horseman. And he has him looking out over the Baltic on this great big, he's sitting on a horse, right? And he says, and he says, and I'll grisly. At Sjuta grazit, we baudim Shvedu is Swedes, okay?

here It's We're going Shved, here is a city on

a smey on this man to there's there's there

Europe to open window Okay window Okay So what

Pushkin is saying and what he's putting in Peter the Great's mouth

which is pretty much what Peter the Great the way he acted was from here

we're not going to tolerate any more threats from the Swedes, okay? The Swedes had occupied western part of Russia for a long time. So did the Lithuanians and so did the Hanseatic League, okay? And this was when we were having our Renaissance, okay? So we're not going to, we're going to face down all threats from Sweden.

And here it is ordained by nature that we will be building a city to the detriment of our Western neighbors who would attack us and fate itself has decided that repropu prerobit Akno OK, at no is we know rubit is break, okay,

Prerbite is break through and we're going to break through a window to Europe. Now, that's been the primary Russian, actually Soviet too, desire to be accepted by the West. to be not threatened by the West, being not invaded by the West, for God's sake,

and especially not through Ukraine. So they're coming home to Roos now. And Putin is saying today, after Zee just yesterday made it very clear that he's still Putin's best friend, but come hell or high water, that he's given up on Western Europe, that he can't trust them,

and that the rest of the world is going to have to take note that there not only is no longer a unipolar world, That's gone, but that there's a kind of a bipolar world with NATO on one side and Russia, China and pretty much the world except the Anglophone people in Australia and that kind of stuff. It's a different world and I've not seen the likes of it since Kissinger played on differences between Russia and China and moved ahead in a very adroit way. to get all kinds of progress done on strategic arms and other key issues way back in the 70s. And I'm proud to have played a role in that. And we talk more about that later. Sorry to go on so long, but this is kind of a, it's kind of a liminal moment, I would say. It's a threshold moment. And Ukraine has catalyzed it. It's been cooking for a while. But now we have Z throwing his

slot in fully with Putin in a way that most people, including me, didn't expect. And I think that's a major figure, the major factor where I was dead wrong in thinking that Putin would never feel so strong and so supported by the biggest country in the world that he would go ahead and claim what he calls the Nazis and what he in trying to demilitarize the rest of that part. of Ukraine. All right. Now, one thing that we had discussed repeatedly in the run up to the war was the idea that,

and I think this was both of our major error here, Ray, that you missed, was we thought that Biden was trying to negotiate a way to prevent the war from breaking out. He clearly was threatening Russia. You better not do it for months. right warning that it was going to happen. That's what we were debunking was all those warnings. But the thing is, I think we both believed, if I'm paraphrasing you right,

I think it's fair to say that the idea was Biden has already given Putin what he really wants, which is maybe not a concrete one, but a real assurance that we're not really bringing Ukraine into NATO. And if you want to inspect our dual-use missile launchers in Poland, you can inspect those. And so even though he wasn't willing to put it in writing, he wasn't willing to frame it in a way that he was officially giving in to Putin.

Essentially, he was giving Putin a wink and an elbow nudge that, listen, I'm backing down on the things that are provoking you the most. I'm not going to pull all military forces back to where they were in 97, like in the deal Clinton made. But mostly I'm giving in here. and but in fact that wasn't really right that it really the red line was i want it in writing as good as that is anyway that you're not going to bring ukraine into nato and we want real you know um neutrality enshrine in the constitution for ukraine i want minsk to respected for real you know a real ceasefire and end of the fighting in the east And he wasn't at all settling for these, you know, assurances.

I mean, Biden told him on the phone. We're not bringing Ukraine in NATO. And you and I thought that was good enough, but that was not good enough. Yeah, because we didn't realize how strong Putin was feeling. You know, it's really hard. Were we also making the mistake that Biden really was willing, was really signaling the climb down that we thought he was signaling? Because it seemed like that was really the error to me, that in fact, Biden was saying that you better not do it, but he wasn't really willing to negotiate at all. Well, let me give you some really intriguing details here, which I don't get from any spies in Moscow, but I simply get from reading Russian media.

You'll recall back in December, Biden and Putin had talked about negotiations on these issues. As a matter of fact, Putin was pretty insistent. These had to take place, and they had to take place soon. How soon can you do it? And they agreed they were started on the 9th and 10th of January this year. Now, that was early December, 7th of December last year. All of a sudden, the Kremlin calls the White House and says, Mr. Putin wants to talk to Biden right away. When was this?

29th of December. Well, wait a second. We're going to meet our negotiators meeting in 10 days. No, he wants to talk to Biden right away. Now, to his credit, Biden says, oh, all right. So on the 30th of December, they talk. Now, we have the Russian redact of that conversation. I won't read the whole thing, of course, but I'll read the last sentence.

Quote, Joseph Biden emphasized that Russia and the United States share a special opportunity or special responsibility for ensuring stability in Europe and the whole world. And that, listen now, and that Washington has no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine, period. end quote i'll repeat that last phrase joseph biden emphasized that washington has no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in ukraine whoa i think you and i read that or knew about that very few others did because it wasn't in the u.s. readout and it wasn't very much in the press uh what happened was that contested was that read readout said to be false? No, no, no. These readouts are pretty reliable. So what happened? Now, you and I thought,

well, my God, you know, what Biden is offering here is not only in effect to rule out any deployment of what the Russians call offensive strike missiles in Ukraine, but there would be a negotiation process. They would agree eventually to remove the ones already in Poland. I'm saying already in Romania and going into Poland this would be INF, this would be the intermediate nuclear forces agreement

part two and you know that was a reasonable assumption here it was kind of half the loaf as I put in one of my articles and I thought that if Putin was going to

negotiate on that basis he could get he could relieve himself of the major of ORI which is these offensive strike missiles right on Russia's border. Guess what? That commitment dropped through the cracks. It was never mentioned at Geneva. It all of a sudden, well, it's, I'm sure the people telling Putin, well, you know, his advisors came to him the next day on New Year's Eve December 31st and said, forget about it, Joe, forget about it. And so, Joe, forget about it. And so,

which was, oh, okay, well, forget about it. Now, what would that mean? Here is a personal one-on-one conversation, just Putin and Biden. And Biden makes this promise, okay? He says, we have no intention. That is, Washington has no intention of deploying offensive strike missiles in Ukraine, and all of a sudden, forget about it. Now, I think that that was, this came, of course, on the 30th of December.

So in the first part of this year, what's Putin doing? Trying to find out whether that was real. He found out it wasn't real. He found out not for the first time that he can't trust the word of the U.S. president, even when he speaks one-on-one personally with him. Now, as he looked over his shoulder and saw China willing to support him and what he needed to do in Ukraine, I think those two factors weighed very heavily in Putin's decision. There was no way that you or I could predict that Biden's promise here would fall by the wayside.

But, you know, we're not Vladimir Putin. Putin saw what happened and decided, you know, these guys really aren't serious. I don't know who's running these policies, but it isn't Biden. So I'm going to go ahead and clean these people. Let me ask you this. You know, I'm not trying to give Joe Biden too much credit. He's obviously over the damn hill here. but he's got men in his 50s and 60s that work for him and people over at CIA who actually

do think about stuff so I wonder whether something that we also overlooked was the idea that that turned from Russia away from Europe and towards Asia that you're talking about that's such a big deal here and that's premised on obviously big assurances from she to Putin whether that's not what the Americans want it. That, as Putin said, look, we've been trying to get along with them for 30 years. They don't want to be friends with us. That maybe, yeah, that's exactly right. And, in fact, one of their biggest fears was that this Nord Stream 2 pipeline was going to be, you know, really opened all the way for business.

And that Germans, that German dependence on Russian hydrocarbons was going to, you know, somehow once in, for all thwart our agenda of keeping the Russians frozen out and that maybe that was why they refused to negotiate in a way that they knew as we're saying would satisfy him in other words they're not really bringing Ukraine into NATO the Germans and French wouldn't allow it anyway they're not really putting tomahawk h bomb missiles which are tomahawks aren't even configured to carry h bombs right now anyway and they're not really putting those in poland and Romania. And they weren't really going to install a bunch of hypersonic missiles in Kharkiv either. But they refused to put any of that in writing in a way that would be meaningful

to dissuade, pardon me, that would be meaningful to dissuade Putin from doing what he did. So, you know, obviously American foreign policy is a government program and it never really works. But I wonder whether maybe there was a major stated goal here, which was, I mean, as we've seen, they're just blatant this whole time. that they don't want to negotiate a ceasefire here. They want to see the war drag on. They say it over and over again. They had the whole time.

That seemed like the biggest tell, right? Once the war started, in fact, as long as I'm rambling, once the war started, I went back and did a bunch of research on all the stuff I should have been reading the last couple of months. And I found so many references to the idea that what we really want to do is bog these guys down in an Afghan style or Syria style, dirty war. and hurt Russia over the long term and that kind of thing. So I know you're saying, oh, no, from the CIA, you know, textbook point of view,

you don't want to heal the Sino-Soviet split, but maybe you do if it'll help prevent a permanent German-Russian friendship. Well, I guess I have to identify myself with Henry Kissinger here and say, that the worst possible outcome of all this would be a very tight alliance between Russia and China. And that's pretty much what has developed here. That's big, as we say, that's kind of a tectonic shift. Now, we're getting closer to Ukraine here, talking about tomahawks. Well, Scott, I've been talking to people like Ted Postal, who you might want to interview. He tells me that the holes in the ground that accommodate what they call Aegis missiles, Aegis ashore,

are exactly the same diameter as would be able to launch tomahawks, which can have a nuclear warhead, and later supersonic missiles if the U.S. finally figures out how to make them. Well, as we discussed before the war, in fact, right? It's the MK41 missile launcher. Anybody can look it right up on Wikipedia. They talk all about how it is absolutely dual. use. And you could fire anti-missile missiles from it, or you could use that as a pretext to install offensive launchers, which, by the way, was part of the Russians' argument that we broke the INF treaty first. Mm-hmm. We did. And Ted Postal actually has not only chapter and verse on that, but he wrote

an article right after we got out of that treaty and before, you know, the expiration, safe period expired. it's it's it's very very clear that we were doing this for years before we're preparing these sites after the abm treaty was canceled by the little bush and then right after the INF treaty was canceled by trump there was there was a hell of a new strategic situation and postal wrote about it and so did others in short um the The U.S. had been preparing this kind of thing for a long time. Now, the relevance here, of course, Scott, in my view, is that this is precisely what Biden promised not to do in Ukraine. And, you know, if I were Putin, I would say, holy Moses.

And indeed, the day after Ushakoff, who was Putin's main man on this kind of thing, was just ecstatic in the, a Russian press, didn't think that into the U.S. press. This is good. He said, this is great. So what I'm trying to say here is that that was a key in my view. This promise, another broken promise, like the one from James Baker, not to move NATO one inch toward the Soviet Union at the time. And Putin looked right at what am I going to do here, you know? Would it suffice to have another written treaty. Now, here's a little vignette. The end of last year, I think,

was December 21st. There's the state of the military address given by Russian defense minister Sergei Sejou. And he's got all those generals and all those admirals, a senior ones at least there, and Putin gets up and

addresses it too. And Putin says, this time, and this was late December, of last year. This time we're going to insist on a piece of paper or written a signature. This is going to be different from that promise that Baker made back in February, 2009, or 1991, yeah, or 1990. And, you know, I looked at those journals and admirals, and this may be partly my imagination, but they seem singularly unimpressed. In other words, reading their minds now, were they not thinking, oh, wait a second, there, Vladimir, wasn't the ABM treaty written down? Yeah, how about the INF treaty was also written?

Come on, Vladimir, another piece of paper? And then the next paragraph, he says, okay, we need more than a piece of paper, and he kind of repairs the damage. But I think it was then that in December, he said, you know, piece of paper is not going to do it here. oh wait a second we get a new promise from biden and when that fell apart he said well the jig is up here if we can move now is the time to move the more so since it looks like ukrainian government forces are about to move on our friends in the dunbos 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 page

Triaddon.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. See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart. Libertas Bella, from the same great folks who bring you ammo.com for all your ammunition needs, too. That's Libertasbella.com. You guys, check it out. This is so cool. The great Mike Swanson's new book is finally out. He's been working on this thing

for years. And I admit, I haven't ready 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 all right well now um i wanted to ask you ray

about um what you think about how the war is going so far i know you're not a military tactician i talked with dog mcgregor earlier today about the war but um well for a example. Right now, they've taken this major town, Harkav, or Karkov, or however you pronounce it, which is to the northwest of the Crimean Peninsula and just to hop a skip and a couple of small towns away from Odessa, which is obviously an extremely important port city there, one which would be pretty difficult to just occupy because of the catacombs beneath the city and everything. If you want to wage an insurgency, that's a pretty good city to wage one in. So, I don't know. But again, looking at the map, getting once the Russians have consolidated Odessa, if they do, it's only just another hop and a skip and a backside alley to get to the border where you have this disputed, so-called frozen conflict with the Transnister, however you pronounce it, spelled different ways, with this small strip of Russia loyal land on the Moldovan side of the Moldovan side of the Moldovan.

Ukrainian border and there's been some low level violence there, as they call it, since the war has broken out. So it's an obvious target, although that could still be months away at the current rate that the Russians are going. But I wonder if you think that that's their goal now is they're going to take the entire southern coast and incorporate that renegade strip of land there, which obviously, if they do that, that comes almost assuredly with a whole new set of problems. um in terms of like you know moving that far west and now having western ukraine encircled by you know in three directions anyway that kind of thing well this is the question you know where will they stop um the gains that have been made over the last three weeks are appreciable will they be

enough to satisfy puchin i think it all depends and that's not a cop out on my part It all depends on what the West does. If these very fancy long-range, wide caliber artillery and rockets go into the western part of Ukraine, I think that Putin would be motivated and encouraged by his military, go all the way, go all the way to Trisidia. Take us, yes. Can they take it? Yes, they can. Dessa, if memory serves, are still primarily, or.

a Russian-speaking city. And, you know, the problem, of course, is insurrection or insurgents that would come out and, you know, kind of try to bleed Russia White. But I think that they're in this for the duration. And I think as soon as they break out of these cities that they've just now conquered and go further west, that they'll be tempted to do this unless the West shows. own flexibility, unless these fellows from France, Germany, Italy, and Romania, who visited Zelensky on Wednesday, unless they came with a message that said, hey, we rhetorically

support you, but this is getting really sticky now. The sanctions are really starting to hurt us. We need to be able to depend on Russian gas and oil. So maybe we ought to see what kind of a deal we could get now before the Russians go farther west. I think that's the name of the game here. I don't think Putin had any idea of wanting to go farther west to take Odessa, but I think that he could well be provoked into doing so. And then, as you say, that's a whole different ball of wax because there would be weapons in what's left of the Ukraine that could hit Russian forces in,

in occupied Ukraine, and also in Russia. So pretty labille, pretty delicate situation. You know, I mean, from the very beginning of this thing, it just seemed completely crazy that once the Russian troops rolled in, that, well, I don't know about crazy. It's very revealing that once the Russians rolled in, Blinken did not hop on a plane straight to Geneva to figure out a way to stop the fighting before this thing spirals out of

control the idea was great now we can have a dirty war like we did in syria the one that led directly to the caliphate and then iraq war three yeah that same one that was what admiral stradvredis was saying to the new york times in january and this is the guy who would have been secretary defense under hillary clinton uh if not michelle florinoe maybe he would have been national security visor but you know very close and and she of course ranted the same thing on ms and bc uh as the way uh in fact as he put it to the new york times all right fine i admit it we don't know the first thing about how to defeat an insurgency but we sure know how to support one and that's what we want to do here oh no i mean we definitely want them to not

invade but i mean if they do invade though then we're going to redo like rambo three you ever seen that and then they all talked about too how this is our redemption that just like you know Afghanistan was redemption for vietnam look now we're backing the uh you know poor upstart vc against the evil empire instead of being the evil empire, that this is sort of their redemption for the last 20 years of war. That, yeah, we were, you know, trying to remake these people's countries in ways they didn't want. But this time, we're helping people in a country, prevent their country from being remade by a greater power. And so this is absolving us of our sins as we're pouring in all these weapons. And here we are having this conversation halfway through June. And we're fighting a

proxy war directly on Russia's border, openly bragging on the front page of the post of the Times in the journal every single day about how much money of weapons were pouring in there. And it seems like I'm and maybe a few other people, the only one's going completely crazy over this. Everyone else doesn't seem to notice that, man, shouldn't our guy be in Geneva right now? What the hell is going on here? And he's just not. There seems to be no interest whatsoever in Washington, D.C. and wrapping this thing up.

Henry Kissinger is the dove. And he said, look, we're going to have to start having some talks here in a couple of months. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So there are people profiteering on this war. You know, when we talk about like day before yesterday, another billion point two dollars going to Ukraine. Biden just decided, well, they're going to Ukraine.

They're going to Lockheedon. They're going to these weapons manufacturers that actually work statics, sent a letter to their stockholders. This is going to be a good year because of the friction, because of the tension, because of the war in Ukraine. So people have to really understand that. As I put it in the most recent thing that I wrote, these four people from France, Italy, Germany, and Romania who descended on Zelensky this week. What was their message? Were they guided by their arms manufacturers, you know, hang in there, hang in there for the duration? Or were they a little bit nervous about the long-term consequences of these sanctions and the possibility of war breaking out wider in Europe?

I like to think it was the latter, but, you know, it's anybody's guess. These guys are not free agents. They're working under the power of the manufacturers and the corporation. that support them. So that's, you know, those are the forces that want this thing to continue. And of course, there are people who believe that Putin really is the devil incarnate. And then Russians all have horns on their heads. And there are ideologues who think, you know, the sooner we can do in Russia, the better.

Now, that is a benighted view of Russians. And all the more so, when it's Russia. and China that you're up against, and that's the situation right now. I mean, the notion of taking down all signs, streets that are called Chikovsky or Putin, not Putin, version heroes that used to be, streets used to be named after them in Ukraine, taking down those things, prohibiting Chikovsky from being played in Berlin or elsewhere. Yeah, this is crazy. people have seized with this demonic view of what the Russians really stand for.

You mentioned Hillary Clinton, my God, Stavridis, you know, he writes a book, Blaseley, saying, well, you know, we'll be at war with China in 10 years. It'll be a nuclear war probably. And hello, don't these people know what they're talking about? They apparently don't. Let me add one other item that gives me the woolly. as we used to say. How much early warning does Vladimir Putin want to have

that the U.S. or British or whatever are firing nuclear weapons or bombers or so toward Russia? Well, in the old days, when we had ICBMs, there was 30 minutes or so warning. Okay. The head of state could be involved. And there were several close misses, several false alarms where U.S. presidents were involved. And those will clarify before the balloon went up, so to speak.

Now, it's not 30 seconds. Now, if you have these intermediate range ballistic missiles that were banned by the treaty from which Trump exited in, 2019, they give, well, they give Putin six to nine minutes, as was the case with the old SS20s and Persian twos that were destroyed by the IA agreement, okay? So, six to nine minutes. Now, if they're stuffed with these holes in the ground are stuffed with super or not supersonic, but hypersonic missiles, he himself has worried out loud that that gives him five to seven minutes to decide whether to destroy the rest of the world, pure and simple. Now, would you

want to be in that position? I think it's very reasonable for Americans to understand that Putin does not want to be in that position. What does that mean on the ground? That means that authority to launch retaliatory strikes have to be invested in subordinate commands, in subordinate commands, as was the case when John Kennedy was president. And all you have to do is read Dan Ellsper's book, his book on the Doomsday Machine, to read that he was shocked that when the war plans were finally given to the president of the United States, they included not only all the targets, and they were, you know, like many targets around Moscow, but all the targets in China. Why? Because there was that Chinese Soviet

block, right? It was just unilateral communism altogether. So what did that mean? Well, that meant that these people would be under would be the targets and more important for this discussion is how much time would they have? Well, with 30 minutes Eisenhower

and successive presidents still, still delegated authority to fire these missiles and wars planes even though they had 30 minutes they delegated the authority to

commanders in PACCOM and EUCOM and so forth, the subordinate commanders under them even got authority to use these things. So it's a myth to think that even Joe Biden or even Vladimir Putin have more than five to seven minutes to make some decisions like this or nine minutes as the situation exists now, and that is incredibly unstable. That has to do with these intermediate range ballistic missiles that Putin is so anxious

not be put on his western border. Now, last thing here is that with respect to intermediate, I'm sorry, with respect to ICBMs into continental missiles or submarine launch ballistic missiles, guess what? The Russians do not have the capability for early morning that we do. What do we have? We have the ability to detect any launch of a ballistic missile anywhere in the world a second after it's launched. Did the Russians have that? No, they do not.

The Russians only have enough radar capability to detect missiles fired from our ICBM sites in the northwestern part of our country. Can they immediately identify these incredible weapons shot from submarines? No, they can. And as I say, Ted Postal has written chapter and verse about this, and he shows that one time in 1996, the Norwegian shut up a rocket from Norway, and it crushed through this radar window that indicated, whoop, it's probably coming from Montana, right?

And the Soviet strategic forces generals were all in a panic. And they said, well, what do our spies say out there in the Midwest? And the spies say, oh, everything's calm. Hsu, what about the submarines? Sir, we don't know about the submarines. We have no capability to detect launch of some submarines. Oh, my God. Well, let's hope.

And they hoped, and they were right. Okay. Now, that's how La Beale it is. In other words, in short, as for long-range ballistic missiles, the Russians don't have the warning capability that we have. With respect to intermediate range, warning doesn't matter because there's between five and ten minutes. That ain't enough result. They're subordinate. They go to unit commanders.

And those people can, you know, they can sort of, well, okay, we got the signal or we got an errant signal. Well, you know, we're going to get fired if we don't fire? And so they let it go. This is what any reasonable statesman would want to preclude. But as Putin says in his speech today, we try to talk to these people, but they don't really seem to understand how delicate the situation is. Therefore, we've given up. We'll just do deterrence and these fancy weapons that we have now that they don't yet have. we hope that that will deter them and that the Chinese will also help deter them because the

Chinese, as you may know, have sent some very, very sophisticated missiles around the world via the South Pole against which the U.S. has no adequate defense. Yeah. Well, now, I'm going to change the subject with you real quick here before we go, and that is Julian Assange. Today it was announced that the, I guess the home secretary or whatever the thing, has approved his extradition to the U.S. There's still two or three more levels of appeal to go before that actually happens, but it's a pretty significant move. And I wonder, gee, what do you think of Julian Assange, Ray McGovern? Well, first of all, Home Secretary, Prudel, is pretty pathetic.

you know where are the where are the english nobles none left apparently i mean it's only 800 years since there were english nobles and and they stood up to king johns now nothing noble about it you know these guys were they had some sense of their rights and on running me they made stick, okay? That was 800 years ago. I cite that in comparison to the vassal state that the UK, that the British or English have become now. What I focus on, and this is probably, it's just a function of the substance that I focus on, is what Julian revealed and why they really hate him. Now, he developed, as the fourth estate was falling apart in being in Tim. dominated by the powers that be, he developed a fifth estate.

It was an incredible thing. It was instantaneous availability of very sensitive information that could be given to him discreetly and secretly. And that's what Chelsea Manning gave Julian. Now, she not only gave him damning evidence about what was going on in Afghanistan and Iraq, also gave him a host of diplomatic cables and this one has to do with even with has to do with ukraine so it's very very current and people need to know this um there was one cable out of moscow written by the ambassador there our ambassador and the date was the first of february 2008

I have a copy in front of me. I can verify it as a legitimate, authentic cable because if I've seen one cable at a Moscow embassy, I've seen about 3,000 in my career, okay? Title, Nietz means Nietz, Russia's NATO enlargement red lines. Whoa, okay. Here's the ambassador, our ambassador. NATO enlargement, especially Ukraine, remains an emotional and neuralism. issue for Russia, strategic policy considerations also underlie their strong opposition to NATO

membership. Now, here's the clincher, quote, in Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country into, leading to violence or civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether or not it had to intervene, period, end quote. Okay. This is Bill Burns, by coincidence. He's now head of the CIA. That's the part I was going to interrupt and bring up, but go ahead. He's being told us by a fellow named Sergei Lavrov, who was just appointed at that time to be foreign minister. As you know, Scott, he's still foreign minister. So what does this mean?

Well, this means that the U.S., if you count, okay, 2008, 2008, 2020. I've done the subtraction here, and I get 14, okay? So the U.S. has 14 years to deal with this, to take seriously what Lavrov is threatening here, namely, Russia will have to decide whether or not to intervene. Now, this was revealed about 10 years ago. So we all, the public, have had the opportunity to raise this issue and say, well, you know, if the Russians feel this strongly about it, why the hell are we going ahead and trying to get Ukraine and to NATO.

Now, the end of the story, of course, is that that was February 1st, 2008. Two months later, on April 3rd, 2008, at a Bucharest meeting of the summit, a summit meeting of NATO leaders, it was decided that, quote, Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO, end quote. Whoa. So they threw down the gauntlet then. Now the Germans and the French, they didn't really want this, but the U.S. wanted it. So they let the language go. From that point in time, April 3rd, 2008, until now, the Russians have been complaining about that. And on good grounds, going way back to James Baker's assurance that we wouldn't move. NATO one inch to the east in return for, in return for what? Well, all we wanted was a reunited Germany. Oh my God. Can you imagine if you were Garbachev or Shevardnadze in a country that lost 26 million, 26 million citizens in World War II to a reunited Germany, how that went down?

So this was a quid that was really hard to swallow. And when they asked for the quid, Well, Baker, cross my heart, hope to die. We won't move NATO one inch to the east. Now, that hurts. And, I mean, hurts. It's a violation of a promise. Now, I had a personal experience with one of Garbachev's age. His name is Kowaldin.

He teaches at a university in Moscow. This was six years, seven years ago now. And I said, why didn't you write that thing down? Why didn't you get that grin down? He says, well, the standard answer is that we didn't have a German buy-in yet and that's true and the also existed and that's true too but then he looked to me right in the eye Scott and he says but Mr. McGovern the main reason is we trusted you now trust is the coin of the realm

the last thing that Secretary Schultz whom I know quite well and respected very much The last thing he wrote, talked about trust. Trust has to be the beginning of dealings with delicate issues such as we have now with Russia. Trust is gone. It has evaporated. That's why Putin today has pretty much put a quota around Russia's approach. Forget about Peter the Great. It was okay for three years, 18, 19, 20 years.

It's okay for three centuries. Now we've got to turn east. Maybe NATO will come around Maybe the West Europeans will see some sense When they start freezing this winter But meanwhile, we've got to defend ourselves And we've got a big brother here That you won't believe

This name is Isin Ping And he's right on our side Yeah Hey, by the way, while we're talking The Amazon Man Come and Bring Me My New Book It's the preview copy, brand new It's not quite for sale yet But should be by the time people hear

this early next week. Hotter than the sun. Time to abolish nuclear weapons. Scott Horton interviews Daniel Ellsberg, Seymour Hersch, Gar Alperovitz, Hans Christensen, Joe Serencioni, and more. And more includes you. An interview that I did with you,

this is all a collection of just transcripts, but it's really good. And it includes an interview that we did in 2018, right after Putin announced his new generation of nuclear weapons. Uh-huh. That was, I forgot if he, said the exact words George W. Bush

in his speech or not, but that was clearly him revealing at that time what, 16 years later, this is the results of the project that we began back when you ripped up the ABM Treaty in 2002,

jerk. And as you referred to, missiles that go around the South Pole where we don't even have pretended defenses on our southern border, hypersonics, nuclear torpedoes and all these things that he had announced in that speech. And people can go look that up on YouTube too. I guess Connor will, if you will, please, sir, include that in the show notes. In fact, you can find,

not just the whole speech, but you can find the clip just where he's talking about nukes. Terrific, yeah. That's good news. The new multiple reentry vehicles and the rest. So, yep, you're going to love this book, man. It's so good. And I know it's a collection of interviews, right? But when I was, and it includes, of course, Ellsberg on the Doomsday Machine and these other things. And, but when I was reading, I was like, man, this is really good. I know people are going to really love this thing. Well, I'm sure they will.

And I remember Putin saying at the time, we couldn't get them to listen. And we weren't going to waste our money on ABM installations because they don't work. They only feed the corporate welfare system of Raytheon and Lockade. We don't have that kind of thing. We're going to develop very sophisticated offensive weapons that they will have to contend with because they can't defend against.

So my applause to you, Scott, for putting that thing together. I'm eager to read it myself, but there's no more propitious time than now to do so. Yeah. Well, you know, I really, I think, oh, you remember that speech that I gave two and a half years ago now about, I called it, The New Cold War with Russia is all America's fault. And I was really proud that you did. just didn't like the title because it was so abrupt, but otherwise that you vouched for

it. And Lyle Goldstein and another great Russia expert also said it was good. Well, I gave that same speech again in Utah two days after the war began. There's two hours long. Oh, I added a bunch of stuff to it, but it was the same basic speech. And I filled it out a bit

and yeah. So then I'm essentially expanding that. I'm sorry for stuttering so much. I'm supposed to be a radio host here. So then I'm expanding that into a book, which the working title is provoked. They keep saying unprovoked attack, unprovoked attack. So I think we're going to call it provoked America's role in the Russia-Ukraine war, something like that.

So this I have put on the back burner because I'm really working hard on this Russia book, and I really got to stop what I'm doing to do this instead. But then I thought, nah, I'm going to go ahead and put out my book against nuclear weapons now. just so that in case we all get nuked and killed, at least I put out my book that said we should get rid of them first instead of just putting it off and waiting too long. So that sucks for the Russia book because it has been put on hold for a few weeks here, but I'm getting right back to it real soon. But I know everyone is really going to get a kick out of this as a placeholder until the next one's done.

What are you doing your free time, Scott? You know what? I don't have very much of it. but I still ride a skateboard at almost 46, and I got a little old motorboat that I got off of Craig's list for a thousand bucks back a few years ago. That is a great little old thing, so we spend some time on that. Otherwise, that's about it. Yeah, otherwise I'm chained to this desk.

Mr. Libertarian, Mr. Liberty, chained to a desk all day long. But anyway, it's a worthy compromise for... Yeah, I think... I think it's a public service, if you will, and appreciate your having me on. Yeah, absolutely. As always, Ray. Thank you. And that's Ray McGovern, everybody.

Find them at anti-war.com on the blog and at, well, let's see, is it slash McGovern? It should be. It is. Anti-war.com slash McGovern. Take you right there. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM. LA. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scott Horton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.