Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 6/19/26 Kit Klarenberg on the Unraveling of West’s Global Hegemony

Episode Date: June 21, 2026

Scott interviews Kit Klarenberg about some reporting he’s done on the looming political shakeup in Bosnia. That leads to a broader discussion about how the foreign policy of the post-Cold War American empire set the conditions for it’s own decline. Discussed on the show: “Western Hegemony Unravels In Bosnia” (Global Delinquents) “The Day America’s Empire Died” (The Exiled) “Ukraine's Secret Al Qaeda Invasion Of Africa” (Global Delinquents) Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg   Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app: https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! For more on Scott's work: Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott's other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott's books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/43D82oY (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/4eMQblu Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/4a5fKvx Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tax Attorney Matt Sercely https://agoristtaxadvice.com; Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com; Expat Money https://expatmoney.com/; and Crowdhealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/ (use promocode Horton) Sign up for the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom at scotthortonacademy.com You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest. Reporting to the American people, what's going on in this country? Because the babies are making this. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show. Libertarian foreign policy, mostly. When the president visit, that means that it is not illegal. We're going to take out seven countries in five years.

They don't know what the fuck they're doing. Negotiate now. End this war. And now, here's your host, Scott Porton. All right, you guys, introducing Kit Clarenberg. He is, of course, at the Gray Zone with Max Blumenthal on them, and he also has his own substack called Global Delinquents,

which is really great and which is at issue today on the show. Welcome, Kit. How are you doing? Hey, how's it going? Scott. Very well, thanks. Good, good. Happy to have you here. As everyone who's red provoked over my shoulder knows, you're in it a lot because you do such great journalism and I rely on it, including, check this one out, everybody.

Western hegemony unravels in Bosnia. Now, I was in high school when all this was happening and I was very interested in politics and especially international politics, but boy, Bosnia, that was so complicated. And everybody's name has so many consonants in it and stuff. just seems so hard to understand and they never really explained on TV in any kind of simple way. And so I can, I only bring that up just to say that I sympathize or empathize with people who might feel like, oh, geez, I don't know if I'm ready to learn about Bosnia here, but I think I can boil it down just to get us teed off here that when Yugoslavia broke up,

of course, America intervened and recognized the independence of Bosnia, which touched off this war. And it was a horrible war in it last a long time. And Bill Clinton, of course, made it worse. And then when it finally ended in 95, you had in this relatively small former administrative unit of Yugoslavia, Bosnia, it was essentially divided in half with the Croatian Muslim alliance on one side and the Republica Serbska, the sort of pseudo-mini state of the Bosnian Serbs on the other. And then this has been held together essentially under NATO slash EU, um, see UN sort of overlordship ever since 1995. And in your article, you say that it looks like that may be coming to an end,

which raises all kinds of questions about what might be coming next. So what is the problem such as it is here, Kit? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, I think this is really fascinating and very important stuff that is completely flown under the radar for a lot of people, for a variety of reasons that are kind of understandable. But, yeah, like, there is an argument to be made to say that, like, US global hegemony, you know, unipolarity was forged in Bosnia.

So as you mentioned, Bill Clinton made the Bosnian conflict in a cornerstone of his 1992 election campaign. And there was expectations high the US was going to intervene against the Bosnian Serbs, like when Clinton got into office. When he gets into office, he doesn't actually do anything apart from, yes, made the situation a lot worse for a number of years. And then finally, this is brought to an end with the NATO bombing in late 1995. And since then, Bosnia has effectively been a protector of the US,

but also that US kind of local security umbrella has provided a platform for regional expansion and by the British, by the French, by the Germans, by the Turks, by Iran's with much more than the degree. I think it's largely limited to the to Bosnia itself. But it's basically been completely unworkable. And also it's deliberately that the population is deliberately immiscerated and impoverished by by the country being run as a traditional global South colony. All governance is in the hands of US and EU funded NGOs.

is there are over 20,000 of these things in a very small country with a population of just over 3 million people. You know, I mean, it's ridiculous, quite frankly, and they're involved in everything from building or rebuilding homes to running rape crisis centers, distributing food, etc. And that already, that structure took a significant dent with the closure of US aid when, you know, Trump after Trump entered office. There are a lot of local NGOs and, in effect, businesses in different sectors that were

severely harmed by that. But anyway, so to say the least, this state of affairs is effectively unsustainable. It's particularly unsustainable, given that Republic of Serbska has been talking for a very long time about seceding from Bosnia. The Bosniaks and the Croats and with many Serbs, it must be said, want the country to remain you know, as one, but that has never been the plan from the US's perspective. So what I on earth, they've never been reported on, of course, by the mainstream media. There's some very interesting documents that show that US officials in lead up to the bombing

of the Bosnian Serbs in 1995. After the bombing was over, they were effectively going to assist the Serbs, you know, but to a large extent, the Bosniaks would receive military training in your other financial assistance, et cetera, as part of U.S. occupation. But the U.S. was not planning to stay there for a very long time at all. And these documents make numerous references to encouraging the Bosnian Serbs to secede in two to three years after a peace agreement was signed, which it was in November 1995. Now, people including the insanely hawkish Madeline Albright, who's a hate figure across the Balkans because of her involvement, the central involvement in the wars of the 1990s in former Yugoslavia.

She, despite her reputation as being very hawkish, she was against the Serbs. She was explicitly stating behind the scenes that we absolutely, you know, we should support the Bosnian Serbs doing this. only subsequently that NATO, when they wanted to, when NATO wanted to repeat, that the intervention of 95 elsewhere, whether that was in Yugoslavia or Libya, that the necessity of, you know, the kind of humanitarian narratives emerged about why the US did this and why the US had to stay. They're kind of similar to the state building project in Afghanistan. But, I mean, and this is where I drew, drew up in comparison with Afghanistan in my investigation. The US doesn't care about Bosnia at all anymore, and not only that, they are encouraging

moves again towards Republican Serbs' independence. That's a major problem that the EU and Britain and Turkey, if not other kind of regional or international powers, are going to have to reckon with because US occupation is what undergirds that states exist. There are tens of thousands of NATO. soldiers there. I've seen them myself in, you know, in Bosnian cities just out marching. People don't want them there. But, you know, there is a reason they are there, which is that the state created in Bosnia, the unified Bosnia, can only exist as long as the US is there, and they will

leave. There is a office of the Inspector General special report into Afghan reconstruction, which covers the collapse in a few hours of the entire government, police, intelligence, military structure that the US spent 20 years building in occupied Afghanistan. I mean, on the day that the Taliban entered Kabul, all of this vast infrastructure constructed as it cost of trillion, collapsed overnight. And the US's allies, including the puppet government in Kabul, had no idea that the US pullout was going to be totally.

They had not planned for it at all. There were several countries that hadn't arranged evacuation for their soldiers who were there. And, you know, they spent these poor soldiers from Georgia and other, you know, smaller NATO countries that had sent soldiers to boost this occupation for two decades. They weren't in the loop at all. And they were stuck there for wheat. I don't think that the collapse of Bosnia might be, you know, as instantaneous as that when the US leaves, which it will. But by the same token, the US is actively encouraging Republican Serbsky

secession, which potentially could lead to a major conflict. And that's not something that is being remotely considered because, again, these people are not in the loop and they're not preparing for the US not being around. But I mean, if you look at Central Asia, that the entire region is littered with the fans into U.S. military bases because the war on terror ended. And the war on terror was itself undergirded by U.S. military bases in places like Bosnia and Kosovo. The U.S. will leave. What next? Yeah. All right, well, a few things there. I mean, first of all, Madeline Albright's mentioned that, like, well, maybe we will support Bosnian and Serb secession after all,

which they didn't end up doing. But I heard even mentioning that, it was pretty ironic because that was really the whole purpose of the war, was supporting the Muslim's ability to crush the Serb, you know, wish to stay part of Yugoslavia, right? They weren't really trying to secede from Bosnia as much as they were trying to stay in Yugoslavia, which they were being taken against their will out of. But then, so it's ironic that, and I read that document,

I was surprised to see that where she says, yeah, maybe we will go ahead and just let them secede after all, although they didn't pursue that, but it goes to show her mindset that time. But then, so some of them, I don't really understand, I guess. Like, I would assume, well, like, this whole thing was as far as the overall policy of holding Bosnia together under Dayton, there's essential continuity all the way through even Trump One and Biden.

And then I get the idea that something has changed here in the second Trump administration, that I'm not sure if you hinted at, Do you understand or think that you know why it is that Trump has changed this policy, that we don't give a damn whether the – and I think the way you say it in your article read is that the current overlord is resigning and America's not making any real effort to replace him. And so now the whole thing's going to fall apart and the Bosnian Serbs are going to secede, or very well could. But for what purpose do you think?

I mean, leaving is one thing, but deliberately egging on what could be a very bad conflict on the way out the door is something else. So do you have a clue as to what they're thinking there? Well, yeah. I mean, I don't think necessarily they particularly factored in or care about the fact it will necessitate a conflict. I mean, the U.S. does leave places, whether it chooses, whether it electively flees or get booted out. you know, I mean, how much do we hear about human rights abuses in Hong Kong now that NED's been shut down there, you know, not at all. So, I mean, yeah, I mean, I don't think that, I don't think the US particularly cares or has it,

has it structured in their planning for what comes next. But Europe doesn't either. And the US is trying to pull forces out of Europe now that Europe's been fully brought to heel and completely cut off from Russia and is almost entirely cut off from China, electively, they can, the Europe can be granted, you know, a degree of autonomy and serve the purpose that it was always meant to serve per George Soros, avoiding, you know, the return of body bags to Washington, you know, from fighting other people's wars. The Europeans can just act as, act as proxies as required by, by the US and can be, yeah, can be

trusted to not do anything radical. But yeah, I mean, just more more broadly, I just think that the whole, like, not only, as I mentioned, you know, that the U.S. unipolar pegemony was forged in, you know, Bosnia to a large extent, but then also the Yugoslavia four years later. And, you know, that unipolar world is gone. We don't necessarily live in a multipolar world because the US still controls the global financial system. But I mean, that hour as we see, we've just seen from Trump's capitulation to the Iranians. We'll see how long that last, of course.

But, you know, I mean, the US is stepping back from that. I mean, it's very expensive. It's very expensive, costly and draining thing in every way to run very, very large empires. It's what got the British, you know. And it's like, ultimately, why? Why does the US need to be in Bosnia? Well, I mean, for a long time, because of Clinton and Albright's retrospective reframing of what happened in the bombing and the war and why, the U.S. is there to support democracy.

It's to deter tyranny and it's to defend multicultural values, et cetera. The U.S. doesn't care about this at all. And it's another point to make here as well, which is that for a very long time, I think that successive US presidents have been actually quite resistant to NATO expansion, if only because the British lead expansion, and they are absolutely gung-ho on getting all countries in Europe into NATO by Hupa by Crook. That is literally an official policy of the British government, and that involves all sorts of infiltration and coups and a cloak and dagger conniving in the former Yugoslavia to try and get countries that don't.

don't want to be part of NATO into NATO. It happened in Montenegro. It happened in Macedonia. Countries were forced into NATO against the will of the population through skull duttery. In Bosnia, you have a problem that half, well, 49% or however much of the population Bosnian serves represented, sorry, the 49% of the country,

which represents Serbian territory, although they're about, I think they're under a third of the population, are 98% of them are opposed joining NATO, and it's a very sensitive subject for them. So, yes, getting Bosnia to NATO would be extremely difficult and potentially politically fraud.

I have reported on extensive British meddling in Bosnia in the years leading up to this, and all sorts of British efforts to stoke the fears of Russian aggression locally when its British shoulder. that are in the region not Russians.

And, yeah, the dream of getting Bosnia into NATO, it's not feasible politically or practically, and the US is not keen on that. So, you know, again, why does the US need to be in Bosnia? It can just be left to its own devices, having been, yeah, turned into this affected global South colony under US occupation. The US isn't so concerned, but it doesn't have masses of investments to protect there anymore.

It doesn't have particular political or geopolitical in interest there. So why wouldn't they just leave, you know? Now look, you guys know I'm an anti-war guy. You know who it's okay to murder? Flies. I hate them. You know what I do? I shoot them to death with my salt shotgun, the bug assault.

And what you do if you want one of those is you go to my website. Scott Horton.org here, and you click that Amazon link at the top of the page there, and that'll take you right to the bug assault, and yeah, it'll leave a mess everywhere, but don't worry, your wife will clean it up. It's fine. Oh, also, whenever you go shopping and Amazon.com, make sure and click through that link first. And I'll get a little bit of kickback from Amazon's end of the sale. Pretty good deal. Hey, you guys, I know you love my interview show, but don't forget every Thursday night,

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Show. Yeah, in fact, you know, back in the Bush senior years, I think part of the problem was the Germans were racing ahead of us there in recognizing the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. And so then America wanted to rush ahead and recognize the independence of Bosnia

so that to prove that America is still the dominant power in Europe and we're not turning that role back over to Germany. But as you're saying, it makes sense that now they don't care. Why not turn it back over to Germany? Because Germany is, you know, by, then it was in question, right, in the very early 90s. But now it's not in question whether they are permanently under America's sway here and they're not going to do anything to really challenge our interests

in Europe anyway. We're all in Trump's talk about withdrawing from Germany. He's not doing that. And as you say too, this has been, you know, since the days of Margaret Thatcher, the major goal of the British is to keep America dominant in Europe because they can't be. And they don't want it to be the Germans or the French or the Russians or the Pole. Not that it could be the Poles, I guess, but they don't want it to be anybody else, so it better be the Yanks. And so that's their overriding goal is keeping America in.

But then, I don't know, is it so important to keep the Germans down these days? I don't know. I guess that's what you're saying. They're not too worried about that anymore. Yeah, well, I mean, I think that the German role in the breakup of Yugoslavia was absolutely outrageous because, I mean, you mentioned that the specific phrase,

you know, that Germany got ahead of the U.S. A lot of people forget this. You know, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in the wake of German reunification, hostile takeover, Germany immediately began flexing its muscles locally. It recognized the independence of Slovenia and Croatia when the official position to Yugoslav, what remained of the Yugoslav federal government, was that this was completely legal. And not only that, the German official said, anyone who wants to join, anyone else who wants to join will recognize.

So there you have the foundations of numerous, you know, fratricidal, you know, horrific wars lane. And, yeah, the Bush administration was initially very unhappy with it. Then decided to take the leader of recognizing Bosnia and encouraging leaders to go to war, you know, actively. Before then, while the, when the conflict was raging, saying, oh, the peace deal that we torpedoed was actually pretty decent. You know, yeah, be careful. Be careful who you choose, you know, as friends and allies. You know, as Kaysenger said, it's always more dangerous to be, you know, America's ally than enemy. But, yeah, Germany, I mean, Germany is, I get flexing its muscles again now.

It is pushing to recognize Ukraine as an EU country, which has all sorts of. implications. They are absolutely committed to keeping the Ukraine proxy war grinding on, you know, completely unsustainable and obscene human and material cost. The government of Victor Orban recently just fell in what I've written about with looks very much the EU-sponsored coup of sorts. And now, you're the only serious barrier towards creating a federalized super state with Berlin at the center and Brussels, as it's, you know, a public-headed state, it has been shattered. You know, I mean, and the Germany is again talking about rearmament and conscription

and having Europe's biggest military within a decade, which is, you know, this is all quite frightening. I mean, they are going to try and do this. Already there are German, already there are German, major industrial firms, which are shifting from consumer production to war production. which people aren't really talking about. So we'll see how realistic that is. But the crucial thing is,

Germany can be allowed to do this because, according to the German government's official foreign policy and defense documents, Russia is Germany's gravest threat in every regard. So Germany is successfully been turned against Russia. This is one of the reasons that the British and the Americans supported the rise of Hitler because he opposed unification

or close, warm, harmonious relations between Germany and Russia, which was to be avoided at all costs. You know, I mean, in the process of harming Germany's relationship with Russia, China has been pushed into the arms of Russia. And you have all of the world's resources in one massive country and, you know, Chinese ingenuity, innovation and investment. it's a recipe for quite extraordinary things. Yeah.

Well, yeah, back to the absolute lack of foresight that you were referring to earlier. They're obsessed with preventing Germany and Russia from getting along. When you say they successfully turned Germany against Russia, you just mean over the last four years because before that, it was Miracle's Eurasian home policy of building Germany up. by align with Russia, at least economically, and trying to forge a deeper trading relationship there and everything else. I think that was a big part of the reason why the Americans were so happy to see the war in Ukraine break out. It was their opportunity to essentially insist that Germany break off that entire new relationship.

And then as you say, all they did, you know, if that stupid propaganda movie 300, where he gets the guy in, this is Sparta, and he kicks the guy in the chest. But yeah, you kick Putin in the chest, but you kick him right into Chairman Xi's arms, where, as you said, Russia's got all the resources, China's got all the manufacturing, it's a match made in heaven. And even though Russia would prefer to be a European power,

we refuse to have them. So they might as well be a Eurasian one instead, since, you know, Russia is the entire north of Asia. If you remember last time you looked at a map, it's kind of relevant. So, yeah, boy, strategic defeat. I mean, it sure seems like a Western one rather than one inflicted on Russia, although I don't think they'll probably gain too much from their war in Ukraine.

They probably wish they hadn't had done that too. But it sure cost the West a hell of a lot more than it's cost the Russians as the war grinds on. And now, so speaking of which, here's another one. Declassified UK got these documents. This is, again, everybody at global delinquents. Kittsubstack, Kitt Clarenberg.com is the substack. E-classified. UK new NATO expansion, quote, would provoke, end quote, Russia war.

And so this is the classified UK is this great journalistic endeavor that publish this stuff. And then you've got a great analysis here of these days. documents. So what are these documents? What's the context? Who's talking to who? And what are they? Well, yeah. No, I think it's, I mean, it's classified UK as an independent publication in the UK, as the name might imply. They do really exceptional work in a very day, in an increasingly dangerous environment for journalists and independent truth tellers, information sources, etc. I would be worried all the time if I was there and still living on that God's sake and island.

But yeah, there are some extraordinary passages in these documents from the mid-90s onwards. And it keeps on cropping up that it is well understood by British officials that NATO expansion was going to provoke war with Russia. Sometimes it's not said in so many words. In other contexts, it's openly stated, quote unquote, this will provoke Russia. And, you know, it's quite an extraordinary insight into the mindset of the British at the time. Because, I mean, number one, as I just mentioned, the British were at the forefront of NATO expansion. It was NATO a military, it was British military and intelligence operatives who were out at the forefront of doing this across the Warsaw Pact and former Soviet Union.

And it was, I mean, you know, in the late 90s, the UK was, ministry defense was war-gaming a Russian military response to the Baltics joining NATO. I mean, that was considered an absolutely astonishing provocation, and it was openly stated many years prior by senior Russian officials. That is a blatant provocation in private meetings with British officials. The repeated verbal pledges were made by successive British prime ministers to high-ranking Russian officials that NATO will not expand up to your borders. But on top of the fact that these promises were made, what's really interesting is that, I mean, yes, it was lip service. But the British knew that they were playing with absolute fire. It's very, very, very clear that over and over again, the British spell out what Russians are, what Russian concerns are about NATO expansion and how these fears are very, very, very real. You know, it was seen as a major threat, not only militarily, but in other ways as well.

And the British accepted that Russia had a legitimate right to be angry about this stuff. Now, I build on the absolutely extraordinary findings of classified with some analysis and file digging of my own. So we've just been talking about Bosnia, this ties in quite nicely. that what there is a absolutely extraordinary document in the CIA vaults from the mid-90s sorry no sorry from 1993 which specifically talks about the problems associated with US or US-led military action being taken against the Bosnian Serbs and it specifically refers to the Russian problem namely an enormous number of Russians and many within the Russian government apparatus itself, saw the Serbs as a fraternal nation, number one, so they weren't

happy about the US taking a belligerent line on the Serbs, or at least on the Serbs only, while leaving their own, turning a blind eye to their proxies, own crimes and abuses in the wars of breaking up Yugoslavia. But it's also acknowledged that Russia has, and Russia and Russia and Russia, and Russia, have enduring concerns about their sphere of influence in the region. And this is absolutely extraordinary sentence, which I think kind of summarizes over three decades of terrible idiotic Western policy as George Kennan warned in 1997 about the issues of NATO expansion.

And it is stated that, yeah, that we're going to, we're going to, we're going to to alienate the Russians because we are intervening in their traditional sphere of influence. However, it is stated in the CIA document, the West should not take this argument very seriously in today's world. So, in other words, it was considered, the CIA and the US military and the US government was well aware, likewise, as with the British, that NATO, military action in Russia's traditional sphere of infants and military occupation and all of the all of the joys that come with with U.S. intervention around the world, that this was treading on

Russia's toes in their historical heartlands, but we shouldn't care about that. We shouldn't care. It doesn't matter. And we shouldn't take it seriously because we can do whatever we want. We're living in this unipolar world. Russia is a collapsing basket case and it doesn't have, it doesn't have a sphere of influence at all. You know, I mean, with Yugoslavia, the ties between Russia and Yugoslav, the former Yugoslavia are very, very clear. You know, the Balkans for centuries, Russia has had many, many centuries. Russia had had had strong cultural, economic, historic, military, you know, political ties

to the region. So to suggest that Russia suddenly, because of the end of the Soviet Union, is basically irrelevant to your considerations when acting in this region. It's quite extraordinary. And it was not any failure to comprehend, but you're outright contempt for the Russian perspective on the world that just got worse and worse and worse over time. And it became war in trench. Yeltsin was warning US and British officials privately.

Don't you dare expand into the Baltics. But at most, he just complained about it public. he didn't do anything. And there is a very, very, very, very, very perceptive essay written by the excellent veteran journalist Mark Ames called the day America's empire died. And it's about the aftermath of the Russo-Georgian War in 2008, which was sparked by a US proxy puppet in Stacch, Billy.

And it's very, very perceptive. And it specifically notes that Russia has had enough of the US messing around, you know, on its borders. Now the, and is willing to take military action to assert, you know, to defend its interest and assert itself, in its near, quote, quote, quote, near abroad, Georgia being, you know, an obvious example where they just crushed the U.S. The U.S. created Georgian cover and trained puppet army in, you know, a few days. that that conflict was waged by Russia by invoking the Kosovo precedent. Now, some of the most interesting findings

from the British, my own findings from the British file trail were there are all manner of Ministry of Defense and Foreign Office documents in the British National Archives that refer to the period after the bombing of Yugoslav in 1999. Hey, y'all Scott here for crowdhealth at join crowdhealth.com. And it's just like it sounds. It's crowdsourcing for your health care costs.

It's not health insurance who can afford health insurance. What a rig game that is. But now who needs it? The deal is simple. You help chip in and pay for other people's bills. They help chip in and pay for yours. And the more people join, the lower the costs for everyone. And it works very well.

I was skeptical at first, but I had a good talk about it with my good friend Tom Woods and then some of the leadership there at Join CrowdHealth as well. And they explained it all to me. And it does work just like a charm. And I encourage you to check it out at JoinCrowdealth.com. Use promo code Horton and your monthly fee will only be $99 for the first three months. Join CrowdHealth.com, promo code Horton. Hey, y'all, Scott here for Moondos Artisan coffees.

You know, they told me if I kept drinking so much coffee, I would turn in to some and then I finally did and there it is it's Scott Horton's show morning breakfast blend there from Moondos artisan coffees get it they hate Starbucks because Starbucks supports the war party so they're moon do's artisan coffees and they got Scott Horton flavored coffee there it's Ethiopian and Sumatra mix and it's so good and it's free to me as long as you keep buying it just go to Scott Horton.org slash coffee now there in mind that at Gany Primakov, who was the Russian Prime Minister at the time, he was literally mid-air when that bombing campaign began in, I believe it was, was it late February 1999?

Yeah, and so like, and he was mid-air on a meeting to the US with, you know, kind of top-level White House meeting. He, his plane turned around in mid-air because he was so disgusted by what happened. And it was deeply hated, not only in Russia, but also, I mean. in many parts of the wider region, the Ukrainians were absolutely disgusted by the bombing of Yugoslavia. In 2011, a NATO poll found that 80% of the Ukrainians saw NATO as a threat as a result of the bombing.

You know, this campaign, it was waged without UN security, the council clearance, which is to say, Russia and China signing off on this. And it was in 78 straight days of bombing a country. and which the Russians and Chinese were terrified of. And there are so many passages in these documents which are quite extraordinary. There is a cable from the then British ambassador to Russia, which was kind of sent to high-level MI6 and foreign office stations around the world, where he explicitly talks about how, yeah, the Russian military is making a lot

noise about how they see NATO as a major threat that needs to be counted. And that there is a, and that Moscow-based foreign policy analysts are talking about how Russia needs to just forget about trying to have a, you know, cordial, harmonious relationship with the West and should look to China and India instead. Very, very, very, interestingly. And I mentioned in this absolutely extraordinary excerpt in which it is stated in this high-level cable that verbal promises to the Chinese, sorry, have been made to the Chinese, that the bombing of Yugoslavia will not be used as a precedent for future military action

carried out unilaterally and advocating the Russians be told the same in order to relay their fears that NATO was just going to go around the world destroying whichever countries they wanted, you know, without consulting the Chinese and the Russians. And, you know, subsequent to this almost immediately, what happened in Yugoslavia was used as a precedent for further unilateral military action, whether carried out by Western powers independently or, you know, by NATO, though, there were references to the supposed. the success of the 99 bombing abounded throughout the decade and a half long Syrian crisis.

You know, Libya, the Chospo president was in vote. In many other countries, it was talked about a lot in lead up to Iraq, it was talked about a lot and lead up to the invasion of Afghanistan. And the purpose was to just go around the world, just getting rid of governments that the US and Britain didn't, or other Western powers didn't like. And to say to least, the Russians and the Chinese were angry and terrified of this. But the fact of the matter is, whatever you think about the governments of Russia or China, if you promise you're not going to do something,

and then you do it, and you keep doing it over many, many, many years, knowing the fears of countries that have a self-defense of history and can defend themselves, I mean, what sort of response do you think that would elicit in anyone, irrespect of who they were? It said the worst person in the world or the best person in the world. If you basically lie to them and disrespect them and don't stick to your word, well, you know, you might be seen negatively. You might not be trusted.

It might create a climate in which you, in which major powers that can assert themselves like Russia and China might lash back at this. you know and I think it's important to note that there's another it's kind of contemporary wrinkle with the bombing of Yugoslavia was that Iran despite the fact that it supported the Bosniaks in 1995 in the 1992-95 war and they were opposed to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia because they understood themselves that this was going to be used as a press and that they might end up in firing light now the Iranians since then have prioritize self-defense to a very high standard. And that's not just investing in their own military tech

and endlessly studying what the US is doing in order to create counters and draft response strategies in advance and prepare for the day that US bombing comes, which it will. We see the results of this today. I mean, you know, in military terms alone, irrespective whether this ceasefire holder, whether the memorandum of understanding is just to sigh off or just misdirection, you know, I think that the Iranians have defeated the U.S. repeatedly in this.

I have reported to my website that Israeli media has revealed that the entire plan for the conflict was pitched directly to Trump, directly to the CIA, directly to the Pentagon. by Zionist military intelligence and political assets, including Netanyahu. And it was meant to last a few days only, just like the bombing in 1999 meant to last a few days only. Well, the Iranians were prepared for it, and they have shattered the US's military footprint in West Asia. So it's another consequence of, you know, it wasn't only the Russians and the Chinese, it wasn't

only the Russians and the Chinese being provoked by this stuff, it was also other countries like Iran. Yeah. Well, you bring up an important point that's really a correction that I should remember to make on the Pierce Morgan show, because this is something that I did get wrong there. I was arguing with some right-wing blowhard, whose name I can't remember, but like very, and I like some right-winger's, but this guy was a warhawk. And he defied me to deny. that Iran ever backed al-Qaeda because I'm saying, no, America backs al-Qaeda against Iran, dude. And he's going, no, Iran backs al-Qaeda.

Do you deny that Iran ever backed al-Qaeda? And the correct answer was, okay, one time, but only as a favorite of Bill Clinton in Bosnia. That was the last time Iran was directly supplying the bin Ladenites that I know of. But anyway, also, on the press, precedent set in terms of, you know, America throwing out its UN charter that the Americans basically wrote and for their own purposes in order to get away with just going above and beyond

and starting whatever wars they want. I think it's crucial to note that in Vladimir Putin's declarations of war in 2022, that he, you know, not too subtly mimicked and was essentially mocking Bill Clinton's pretensions that he had the right to break off a piece of Yugoslavia, W. Bush's pretensions that he was preempting a threat of weapons of mass destruction, and Barack Obama's pretension that he had a responsibility to protect when innocent people are being killed. And Putin invoked all three of those precedents for invading without a UN resolution in the name of protecting the people of the Donbass from the government in Kiev,

armed and backed by the United States over that long-term civil war that he claimed to then be ending. And so not only did they resent it, they invoked it. And, you know, if there was one good thing about the UN, it was supposed to be that, look, wars are technology as such

that wars are too devastating to be fought anymore. And if we're going to adjust borders, we're just going to have to do it through conference table agreements and figure these things out because we just can't, you know, expect to survive if we're only going to have war in an age of atomic weapons, right?

If, you know, we have to find a way out of this. And then as you say, when it was the unipolar moment and the Russians and the Chinese and nobody else could do anything about it, the USA took the worst kind of advantage and broke like the only legit part of that, that rules-based world order that they claim to be upholding, which was the outlawing of war.

Sorry, I should come. Yeah, I mean, it's just, no, I think that there are some very interesting boomerangs in a history within this. I mentioned that Russia started, you started using the Kosovo president. And, I mean, there was a hilarious, a hilarious essay on a, I think an EU-funded international law NGO website, which it has a whole essay about the Kosovo president. precedent and how Putin has consistently pointed to Western hypocrisy when they condemn military action by other countries, but you know, cling to the, cling to the Kosovo president, which Russia also uses.

And yeah, and he basically just admits that, you know, by setting this precedent of illegal but legitimate, have we encouraged other countries to do the same? And the answer is yes. Or, you know, has this, you know, has this made. the world safer. No, it hasn't. It was a completely insane thing to do. And the British were very, very, very central to this. Blair spent most of the bombing of Yugoslavia screaming, at Clinton pleading with him to send hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers to invade the country. And he didn't get anywhere with that. And, you know, the experience, A, taught him that he needed to be slightly more tactful with U.S. presidents to get. a president to get them to do his biddy. But it also, another upshot of the conflict was because Blair had been, from the very start,

saying this could last as long as World War II and had been making speeches throughout the conflict saying that we should be going around the world, getting rid of evil dictators like Saddam Hussein, urging Americans not to fall into the trap of isolationism, you know, very, very presumptuous stuff. You know, that kind of, it helped me in the narrative that Blair, with all of this belligerence and determination to, you know, crush Yugoslavia by military means, have been proven to be right, whereas Bill Clinton's supposed hesitation had been proven wrong. Now, you know, on September 11th, in the way immediate aftermath of September 11th,

Blair is one of the first foreign leaders, if not the first, I think, to speak to join. George Bush gives him, you know, a very hawkish pet talk, sends a bust of Winston Churchill from the White House, evoking Churchill's speech to Congress in late 19401, which heralded the US's entrance to World War II. And in numerous letters exchanged with Bush, he urges him to lock in maximum international sympathy, quote unquote, to wage a wave of muscular military interventions across West Asia. And where is the US, you know, invading and bombing? Oh, Afghanistan and Iraq, which I think both British colonies in the past.

And you know, Afghanistan was effectively created by the British. And so it's just the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the evil precedent, which was heavily influenced by Britain's insane, enduring delusions of being a major international power and believing, I mean, you've, you've, you've, you've, I succinctly put it that Britain wants America to remain the dominant power in Europe, and it wants to piggyback off American military might or military footprint around the intelligence capabilities around the world. In 1947, you have five-eyes global spying network created, which placed Britain and the US

on a par in terms of intelligence collection and sharing, when Britain was the, you know, much reduced global power. Britain wants to maintain that delusion. Five Eyes is one of the ways that Britain does so today. NATO is another. Trump appears genuinely quite interested in pulling back NATO,

at least ending NATO expansion, which as I say is led by the British and comes at the cost of a lot of blood spilled and many other ills besides. So, yeah, that that, I think that while, as I say, we're not living in this multipolar world, that is envisaged by, you know, the most kind of, you know, romantic and utopian, you know, pro-Russia, pro-China people, or pro-Brips people, whatever that means, you know, that the unipolar moment, which I think even Marco Rubio referred to, yeah, is very much over.

I mean, it could only occur in a world where countries can't fight back, and an increasing number of countries can fight back. So, you know, waging, you know, completely illegal bombing campaigns might be a thing in the past. There will be other risks and hazards to deal with. But, I mean, Trump certainly for the time being, seems to have his tough tail between his legs and be intensely relaxed about throwing the Israelis under the bus for the disaster. that unfolded in Tehran and other major, you know, Iranian cities may the martyrs rest in peace. Man, inshallah, about the throwing them under the bus park.

By all means, if somebody's got to be scapegoated, let it be the prime minister of Israel and his crappy little state over there. Hey, guys. Scott here for Matt Sersely at agoristtaxadvice.com. And he's a great tax lawyer. And he hates the government as much as you. you do and he wants to help you keep your money. And his service is for small businesses and for high salary professional types who are looking for ways to protect their earnings from the national government and its depredations. So check them out.

Matt Sersely at aggristaxadvice.com. Hey, y'all. Me here for expatmoney.com, the great Mikkel Thorough. And of course they do their big conference every year in October. but all year round they've got great advice for you, such as this Plan B, Residencies and Instant Citizenship, and Americans are fleeing, price inflation, and the police state and all kinds of things, blowback terrorism, and they're getting a hell out of the country. And if you decide that's what's right for you, then we can learn from McEl Thorpe about

what other countries are available to you and where you might go to protect your assets, to buy property, to even get citizenship in other countries. Learn everything that you need to know at expatmoney.com. All right. Now, one more hugely important and hugely uncovered story here is about Molly. And again, I'm going to try to just set this up real quickly and then let you rip. What happened was Hillary Clinton convinced Barack Obama to attack Libya in 2011. And he did.

And what happened was the Tuaregs who had been serving as his mercenaries took all their weapons and went home to Northern Mali to reinvigorate their war of secession from the sort of, I guess it's really a separate nation down in the south. But then the jihadis who won the Libya war, right? The Tuaregs were on Gaddafi side. And then the jihadis who won that war with Barack Obama and NATO's help, another aggressive NATO war, they went and followed the Tuaregs back down into Mali and sort of hijacked their revolution and started a war and then ended up going down to the south and attacking positions in the south, which led to a military coup and the end of their short-lived sort of pseudo-democracy that they had been working on at the time. this is all in 2012 and 13. And then Hillary Clinton, you know, tried to get the Algerians to intervene.

And eventually Obama did send special operations forces there to a degree in the French, I think finally intervened, what, in the end of 2013? The French finally sent some forces there. Then in the meantime, the Russians have come in the form of the Wagner group, mercenary force, backing various different governments, I gather in the south of Mali, in their fight against this now Tuareg jihadi joint force in the

north. And Ukraine's involved? What the hell? Yeah, well, I mean, the whole thing is very, very, very, yeah, it's very, very, very murky. I mean, I might add that, yeah, so Mali since, I believe, yeah, August 2020, this has had, a revolutionary military government which has forged an alliance of Saar-El states with neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali. And if you look at polls, the government has an almost universal support across the population, who also are very keen on their leaders booting out the Americans, as they've done in Niger and Burkina Faso, and welcoming, you know, Russian private military companies and soldiers to defend their kind of fledgling revolutionary states.

Now, you know, this is a state in affairs that France has always been very angry about, and there are some quite extraordinary quotes by senior French officials. In recent years, when they talk about how, you know, ultimately Africa is our future and it's our job to, you know, civilize these people and the help Africa needs is not going to be delivered by Russia or China. So, I mean, France still sees Africa as it at the backyard and all that implies. The French forces, as I mentioned, were booted out in 2022 after almost a decade. And then now you have attempts to foment a civil war with ethnic Tuareg rebels. which were backed by murderous extremist groups,

many who fight under the banner of al-Qaeda. So since late April, there have been numerous combined defensives and attacks carried out on state buildings, assassinations of ministers, including the country's pro-Russia defense minister via car bomb. And, yeah, I mean, it's this massive quagmire and really horrific, and the people behind this upsurged violence

are French and Ukrainians, of course. I mean, it's rather forgotten that the Ukrainians, because they are fighting an ongoing war and they have innovated for 21st century warfare, are now trying to halt their capabilities around the world, their guns for hire, wherever there's a sphere of great power competition, they can offer, you know, France or Britain or the US or, you know, other Western powers,

you know, expertise in assisting rebel, assisting counter-revolutionary forces and ensuring that the quote-unquote right kind of government operate in Africa. I mean, you know, and what is the current French role there? What? What is the current French role

between the jihadis in the north and the Russian back government in the south? Yeah, so basically, the French have been openly supporting al-Qaeda, but doing it through cutouts. You know, the Tuareg rebels are supported by a local Al-Qaeda affiliate, and the French are providing weapons, et cetera. The more direct forms of assistance are provided using Ukraine as a middleman.

And this is particularly in the sphere of drones. And now, I mean, when we're getting into the realm of Western powers collaborating with Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra now forms the government of Syria and M-I-C... has a dedicated office in the Syrian presidential palace. How did HCS seize power? Well, in late 2024, they carried out an offensive on government forces. And because they were equipped with first-person viewed drones, the Syrian, what remained of the Syrian Arab army,

the eBay deserted and fled, basically, because there was no way that they could fight. They just don't have those capabilities. And this is why Syria was seized, such short order by by hTS which um yeah it is just another uh name for al nisra i have written extensively about how m i 6 supporting al nisera for years and doing so very knowingly um you know in in in in in in areas that were controlled by by al peter was building here too because i think people who who maybe don't know you or me or us or the backstory here might think that this just sounds crazy where

you're just like kind of grabbing names out of a hat or something here. But in fact, showing my book, there's solid journalism about this, including by the New York Times, about how after the jihadis mostly lost the civil war in Syria years ago, many of them went off to go and join the civil war in Ukraine and fight on Kiev's side because they're killing Russians. And of course, many of the ISIS guys who had gone and fought in the Syrian dirty war

had been Chechens. And so they had this, you know, anti-Assad. And then, of course, the Russians came to help Assad and was bombing the crap out of them. So when they lost, they went to Ukraine to join the fight. And there's a multiple part piece by a journalist named Mammon. I forgot his first name, Marston, I think, Mammon in The Intercept. And then the New York Times, too, has reported about ISIS jihadis fighting on Kiev's side against the Russians in Ukraine. So when you say that Ukrainians are back in jihadis in Mali,

as long as they're fighting against pro-Russian forces in the South, that does not sound like a stretch to me, even though it sounds like it should sound like a stretch. Nope, that's the way the world's working these days. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's, I mean, and, you know, we, again, we have the CIA and MI6 to think about that, just to throw some more, you know, alphabet, it's to add to the alphabet soup. Because, as has been openly reported by the Washington Post,

After the Medan coup in 2014, the CIA and MI6 heavily infiltrated the SPU and GEDYR, which is the Ukraine's main espying agencies, to the extent of building the new offices, granting the new capabilities, et cetera. And they have become such a monster in their own right that anonymous intelligence officials expressed grave concern about the potential blowback from me. this and that Ukraine could turn into another Israel in terms of using its CIA supply capabilities to re-caver the world over. And that's an act independently. And that's what we're seeing in Mali now. And I mentioned this in my investigation. The Ukrainians are doing this

totally openly. And there are essays published on prominent Ukraine military thinker sites. that openly talk about how, well, once we've taken out Mali, we'll take out the other alliance, Sartel State countries, and we will vanquish Russian influence from Africa. You know, that's a compelling sales pitch to the West, which, as I say, maintains fantasies dominating Africa now, but can't win hearts might, apart from by a brute force and al-Qaeda. Yeah.

Yeah, more of them all the time. All right. Well, listen, man, thank you so much for coming on the show. You guys, if you're not familiar, this is just a small taste of Kit's great work at the gray zone and at Kit Clarenberg.com. And, you know, so much of what you do that we didn't, well, we did touch on this today a bit. But so much of what you do is based on classified documents that I don't know how you get your hands on them, including, you know, some really important stories you broke about the Ukrainian attack on the Kerch Bridge. and all kinds of things.

So if you guys want, you know, in-depth, investigative reporting and badass breaking news and smuggled documents published and heads rolling, you subscribe to Cape Clarenberg there at the Grey Zone and at Kate Flairberg.com. So thank you again for coming on the show, me. Real appreciate it.

God bless you, Scott. Take care. Thank you, my friend. The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts and Roberts, Brokerage, Inc., Moondos Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods Liberty Classroom, and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books,

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