Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 6/6/24 Branko Marcetic on the Unnecessary, Futile and Dangerous Prolongation of the War in Ukraine

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Scott interviews Branko Marcetic about what’s happening with the war in Ukraine. They discuss the recent Russian proposals to move the conflict from the battlefield to the negotiation table and the West’s ongoing refusal. They also take a step back and review all the missed opportunities to bring the war to an end that would have left Ukraine better off with more leverage than surely will have in any future peace process. Discussed on the show: “Putin may be at the door. Why is Biden ignoring the bell?” (Responsible Statecraft) Debate - Should the U.S. Fund Ukraine War Again? Branko Marcetic is a writer for Jacobin Magazine, a fellow at In These Times, and host of the 1/200 podcast. He is the author of Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden. Follow him on Twitter @BMarchetich. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show okay guys on the line once again i've got bronco marchteach and he writes regularly for jacobin mostly but this one is at responsible statecraft Putin may be at the door. Why is Biden ignoring the bell?

Oh, and I meant to say, but I forgot. He wrote a book called Yesterday's Man, all about Joe Biden. The case against Joe Biden, actually. Welcome back to the show. How you doing, ma'am? Hey, good. How are you? I'm doing good.

Very happy to have you here. Aside from the horrible topic we're about to talk about. Yeah, the horrible topic. Although, I mean, it's kind of good news, at least to start with, is that Putin is once again. on his terms of course raising the prospect of negotiations and um you start out talking about this report in reuters it seemed like it was kind of one of those things like when the white house puts a story in the times here was the kremlin put this story in the reuters tell the people we want to

negotiate right yeah it's exactly right um and i mean this is not the first time uh he's done it or the Kremlin has done it. There was a similar story in Reuters sometime back this year. Putin also said similar things to Tucker Carlson when he did his interview with him also a few months ago. So, and actually the New York Times published a piece not too long ago saying that basically the Kremlin had made outreach to the Biden administration

and the Biden administration had rejected those efforts of outreach to have peace. talks and end this thing. So clearly they're trying to send a signal to both the U.S. public and to U.S. officials that are kind of being met with stonewalling, unfortunately. I mean, that's, I think one of the reasons that people don't want to talk about this stuff, that they don't want to highlight this is because people have kind of taken this attitude that someone's willingness to negotiate or lack of willingness to negotiate is some kind of measure of their moral standing. And it really has nothing

to do with that. Whether you want to negotiate or not does not mean you're a good person. It just might mean that you see it as in your interest, your personal interest to, you know, to have peace talks or to end the war. And I think clearly for Putin, you know, despite what some people may say, I think this war has not really been in Russia's interest, even though they've kind of been able to scrape through it not as terribly as it seemed at first. I think they're probably keen to end the war. As much as, you know, probably a lot of people in Europe are keen to end the war because this war has been also disastrous for them in terms of the blowback for sanctions. So, you know, the big question is, is there going to be any pressure brought to bear on the Biden administration

to actually make good on service outreach? So far, I am not seeing much of it, but I remain optimistic yeah well i agree with you that best case scenario for russia is still a pieric victory here they've you know got all kinds of things working against them as the result of this war regardless of how much of ukraine they're able to bite off which right now you know they don't control all of donetsk kurson or zaproja they control what about half of each of those provinces although they do control all of luhansk uh and now they're making these inroads in harkki in the north there this new buffer zone they say that they're creating Putin denies he wants to take the city but seems like he would if he could um he's bombing it which is pretty good

for removing the population when they can you know have somewhere to flee to which they do and so that would make it easier to take the city later if he wanted but um it is notable right that you know you could take it really negatively like oh just he's demanding surrender he's not really willing to negotiate he's willing to accept ukraine's acceptance of his terms is all he's really saying here but on the other hand he's not demanding unconditional surrender and the right to put a puppet in power in kiev or anything like that or even everything east of the niper River, or at this point, not even the city of Harkiv or Odessa. So, I don't know, it's sort of like if Obama could have made it do with the Taliban

where they just get to keep Kandahar in Helmand province back in 2011, he probably should have just taken that, you know? Yeah, I mean, you know, I would not say that this is surrender because ultimately Ukraine in the deal that is being put on a table at the moment, Ukraine retains its independence, It retains its sovereignty. It does lose territory, and that is not good, but that's not a surrender. That's just a bad deal. And unfortunately, there was a far bitter deal, far bitter terms on the table two years ago.

And within, you know, a month or two of the war actually starting, that could have been taken. Hey, you know what? I'll tell you what. It's been a little while since we've covered that. And I bet a lot of people aren't familiar with that story. And we happen to have a minute, Bronco. Could you please enlighten us a little bit about what had happened there? Sure.

I mean, negotiations to end the war started almost immediately. I mean, some would say it dated to, you know, Putin not being able to take over Kiev. But really, negotiations were going on throughout the early part of the war. And basically the deal that was on a table that we have subsequently learned from a number of different sources. So this is pretty credible, is that effectively Ukraine would become a neutral state, it would promise them to join NATO, and in Russia would withdraw to the pre-February 2020-2 lines. And there's other specifics in there. But that is the crux of it. Ukraine becomes neutral, and Russia withdrawers and ends the invasion.

That was rebuffed because certain Western leaders, NATO leaders, convinced Ukraine and Zelensky, who was actually open to that kind of deal, but they convinced them that it's better to push for total military victory and not just get Russia to withdraw from the territory had taken upon invading, but actually withdraw from Crimea as well. and that basically Ukraine can do this by winning on the battlefield. And a similar deal or a similar possibility for that kind of deal was rejected again in September 22. When Ukraine had that counteroffensive and they had a big success and Russian troops withdrew, that would have been a great position to start negotiating from again, maybe even gotten more than what they had initially been presented with earlier that year.

But instead, once again, we were kind of bedazzled by this push for military victory, total military victory. And then what happened since then? I mean, it's been a complete catastrophe for Ukraine. They've lost almost certainly hundreds of thousands of people. They have one of the largest percentages of amputees. I mean, it's gone beyond the scale of World War. One, countries like Germany and Great Britain that they experienced in that war, the economy is completely shot.

The amount of foreign debt is just piling up. And of course, Russia also began bombing Ukraine's infrastructure, which they continue to do with even greater ferocity. So the rejection of a pretty decent deal back then in favor of this kind of utopian dream military victory was led the country to ruin effectively. And I don't think the terms are going to get bitter from here. In other words, if you don't like these particular terms, Putin is throwing out right now, it does not seem like they're going to improve.

It seems like it will only get worse and worse if these kinds of ceasefire agreements keep being rejected. Yeah, well, you know, it's certainly the case that they lost two entire provinces or, well, as I was saying, half of two entire provinces since then, with, you know, the official annexation of Ziproja and Kurson as well as, you know, on top of the Dombas there when they could have had that deal. oh and back to what you were saying about the morality of negotiating and oh you know all of the hype kind of around that you know as dick cheney used to say you don't talk to evil because that dignifies and legitimizes it right like the only reason the kims are in power in north korea is because someone in america talked to them before or something and that somehow you know is what was responsible for solidifying their power there um and at the time that you're talking about was at the time right around when the Russians were withdrawing from Bucca, I don't know how to say it, and they found a few scores of bodies, maybe 100 or two or something, and they built that. There was this entire sciop, you know, this is like pre-Musk, so it was the liberal Twitter swarm, had this huge sci-op about genocide in

Buca and that means you can't negotiate with people who are committing a genocide when I mean step one would have been ceasefire and stop the killing but they just put that out of there and say no you know when faced with this kind of evil only total victory is acceptable we cannot stop now and then so you know better than a hundred thousand maybe a couple hundred thousand people have been killed since then many hundreds of thousands wounded and and all they've done is lost since then there are no position whatsoever to drive the russians out like they said at the time was their goal yeah absolutely i mean a couple points to make about that um number one uh number one teach me how to say it right a butcher i believe i mean i'm okay thank you for me i believe that's a i mean butcher was cited

as the reason why peace talks failed and suddenly that made peace talks way more Obviously, if your opponent is found to have committed a terrible massacre in the middle of you guys talking, that's going to make it very difficult to sell to the rest of society that there needs to be peace. However, Zelensky continued, and not just as he was surveying the carnage and butcher, but also for months afterwards, he continued to say that there needed to be a peace still. This could only be solved by talking and coming to some kind of agreement. There was a poll not that long ago after the massacre. It was conducted by the Democratic arm basically of the NED. And so, you know, this is an institution that is, if anything, favorable toward war. And they found that actually a majority of Ukrainians at that point after the discovery of all these bodies still were most favorable to a peace deal to end the war.

So this could have been done. It was not that there was some massive turn in Ukrainian society and among Ukrainian leadership against negotiation after it. I think that's been a bit of a smokescreen. Number two, I mean, I want to just highlight the complete contradictory nature of our response in this war in Ukraine to what we are seeing in Gaza. I mean, everyone with even a shred of conscience and human decency and common sense looks it was happening in Gaza, which, by the way, is not to minimize the Russian crimes in

Ukraine, but, I mean, what's happening in Gaza is, is magnitudes worse on a human carnage level than what we saw in Butcher. And no one's saying, let's keep this war going so that the Palestinians are able to punish the Israelis or that they're able to win. No, So the obvious course of action is to stop the war, to end the war so that the killing can end. And for some reason we do not have that opinion, that viewpoint when it comes to watching the same kinds of things or very similar things happening in Ukraine. And I mean, I've had conversations with people in person and online where they give me a litany

of all these terrible things that Russians have done in the course of the war. in Ukraine, you know, statistics about the carnage that has been meted out to the Ukrainian people and about the trauma inflicted on children and parents and so on and so forth, all these terrible things. And they cite these things to me as a reason that the war, that we should be against a ceasefire, that we should be against negotiations, that the war should continue to go on. And it makes absolutely no sense. I say to them, so you want the conditions they've created all these terrible things that you're telling me. You want them to go on longer. But this is the kind of topsy-turvy thinking that I think has infected just basic discourse.

Well, and the thing is, look, man, there are times where there are things that are worth fighting about, but I don't know if this is from St. Thomas Aquinas or what. I'm sure it's in there that the fight has to be winnable. You don't just send people out there to die when the enemy has you overmatched to such a degree and when there's an easier out. You know, it's not like the choice is, you know, total Soviet slavery for the people of Ukraine forevermore

if they give up the damn Donbass. You know, that's not what's at stake. So it's obviously worth negotiating over. yeah i mean you know despite what people say um the prudin is not hitler he's a bad guy but that's different from hitler not every bad leader in the world uh or even you know horrible leader in the world is is is is it's a very unique circumstance that you know god willing we will hopefully not have a repeat of um but i don't you know this this idea that ukraine is just the next step before Russia rolls over all of Europe is completely untrue.

But it's a useful one for people to point out, or rather to use, because as you say, there are certain things that are worth finding for. There are certain things that people will gladly and rightly risk life and limb and all sorts of things to battle against. You know, I think Hitler's march across Europe was one of those things. I don't think this is the same circumstance. But, of course, if we just kind of continually cite that example, you don't really even need to make an argument. That's such a highly emotional example that people kind of turn their brains off and go, oh, well, yes, of course.

I mean, if it's Hitler, then yes, anything goes. We have to take all measures to put a stop to them. And, hell, I mean, even the Taliban, they said, well, look, these guys won't let little girls go to school. that was enough. That was Hitler enough to keep that war going for a generation. Right. And, you know, someone went back and found in the transcripts where the first time I told Gareth Porter on the show

that I'll bet you, as soon as America leaves, whenever we finally do leave, Taliban, or maybe this is why we will leave, at some point Taliban are just going to walk right into Kabul like the fall of Saigon. You know, we already lost this war. It's so obvious to see. I said

that to him in 2012, nine years before they finally left. And, you know, it was that obvious then, and then how many, what, 100,000 people died in the meantime, two? Yeah, I mean, it really just boggles the mind. And I think the thing that people have a hard time understanding or maybe even acknowledging is that however well-meaning, at least, you know, among the public, that the U.S. and, you know, European NATO intervention in this conflict may have been. However, pure the motives people believe were driving what U.S. policy has done. The reality is that I think actually at this point, what has happened has been far more disastrous to Ukraine

than possibly even if Russia had taken Kiev, which it's not even clear that they could have. And which also was not even the only option, you know, the other option was, of course, this peace deal that could have been reached in the early months. So we could have avoided both of these terrible outcomes. But, I mean, the reality is right now because the war has been prolonged for so long, I mean, to use John Meersheimer's words, it has been wrecked. It, I mean, its infrastructure has been completely demolished as it now prepares to go into another winter, you know. And it's, it, it's, it, This is not going to be just a year or two. I mean, it's facing a demographic crisis because so many of its people have left the country. So many people have been killed and maimed and traumatized. I mean, this is a country that is now facing a severe disability crisis. On top of which, because Ukraine is so deep in debt to Europe and the U.S., this is now going to be used to basically push a –

a host of policies that will be harmful for the country that will, you know, reverberate for years, if not decades. So, you know, this has just been so much worse than taking any, you know, deal however flawed earlier in the war. And I wish that people recognize that, but I feel like people are still in this mindset of, oh, this is, you know, this is a great cause and, you know, what's happening is really great and we just need to support it and you know how brave everyone is i think we're still in this kind of jingoistic mindset yeah and what hollow excuses those are and it's not to deny the bravery of

people out there risk in their neck but as the excuse to keep going you know that's what we heard in a rock war two we can't leave now after we just got this guy's legs blown off you're going to tell me that's for no reason we got to make a reason out of it we got to see this thing through you know yeah i mean of course that's a good example because uh the the entire justification uh for the war was that that taliban rule would be so detrimental and so terrible that that the u.s had to continue its um it's prisons in the country it's you know continued bombing of the country and i mean obviously the taliban taking power has been terrible for for you know basic uh rights of women and young girls um and you know a host of

of personal freedoms and without you know uh needless to say i i that would not be the kind of society that i would want to live in of course but the thing that people ignored throughout the entire debate or of constant you know what's in the best interests of women and girls and so on and so forth is yes that's bad but what was happening under the u.s was somehow even worse than that which is that you know women and girls were being blown up or having their children or their siblings or their parents or other family members blown up by U.S. planes or they were being raided in the middle of the night by, you know, a coalition soldiers who were murdering members of their family. And I mean, it's a highly manipulative discourse. It was in Afghanistan, and it remains

so, I think, in Ukraine, where the entire focus is on, you know, the bad things that are happening under the bad guys, in this case the Russians. But there's no thought to the kind of carnage that our approach to this war is actually causing. Yeah. Hey, did you see that debate where it was John Mearsheimer and Daniel L. Davis on one side and it was two ladies from the Marshall Fund

and the Council on Foreign Relations on the other? I actually did not. Oh, well, it's a lot of fun because it starts with Davis saying, listen, I'm an armor infantry guy. So let me tell you the facts of life, okay? And then he tells them, everybody knows what Danny says about this. The Ukrainians just don't have the men. They're up against not just a red brick wall,

but one that's coming crashing down on them. And that's just how it is. Call it off now while you're only this far behind and not further behind. Period. And then the ladies say, you just got to believe harder. These, you just need faith. and these people need trust and weapons. And the one lady says repeatedly,

she like somehow gets stuck on this note. Somehow the Ukrainians out there in the field, they're going to jerry-rig some sort of new technology that's going to turn the tide and change everything out there. You just, we can't give up now, Danny. And that's it. It's like, I don't know. It's like they're just running a company and they've got this,

you know product or advertising campaign and they just think oh we could just stick it out another six months we know it'll catch on but it's you're talking about people keep it blown a bits out there for this thing that they're just so caught up in you know when like really they should have said after after daniel's first introductory remarks they should have said all right tushay man you know what like you're right what the hell it looks sounds like we already lost and we're going have to face up to those facts no chance but what's been true of this one and becomes increasingly true the longer it goes on is that the most glassy-eyed zealous you know cheerleaders for the war believers in and just having it go on and on and on uh forever uh not ukrainians themselves

but but people like those those people you just mentioned people in the west these these kind liberal war cheerleaders who I don't know view themselves as being part of some kind of civil like new civilizational struggle the Ukrainians themselves you know I mean number one it has been very difficult for most of the war to actually know what the exact opinion of Ukrainians themselves are because they are living in number one not only a country that was understandably but nevertheless infected with jingoism you know being that was being attacked and invaded that made a whole host of opinions, particularly anti-war and process for our opinions are basically unmentionable in public life. But they're also living in an authoritarian system

where people are regularly arrested and charged with crimes for saying all sorts of things that are loosely interpreted as being pro-Russian or helping the enemy. And that's just as simple as calling for a ceasefire. And now, now we can see very plainly that actually the Ukrainian people do not have the same kind of enthusiasm for the war that people like those two panelists who mentioned seem to have far away from the battlefield. In fact, Ukrainians are very, very ardently against this expansion of conscription that Zelensky has put in place. They are fighting. all around the country, when people try, when military recruiters basically try and snatch people

from the streets to send them to the front line, because they understand that if they get sent to the front line to fight the Russians forever and ever, as these people in our part of the world desire, that they're going to die. At best, they're going to lose a part of their body and become disfigured and disabled for the rest of their lives. But very likely they will be killed. And so they don't want to do that. And I mean, even in Leviv, which is in Western Ukraine, that is one of the most anti-Russian parts of Ukraine is the kind of center point of Ukrainian nationalism. Even there, the amount of Ukrainians who have reported to recruitment officers as a result of the military summonses that they received is in the single digits in terms

a percentage. So even in the most anti-Russian nationalist part of the country, people do not actually want to go and fight because they understand it is a suicide mission. So, you know, I mean, the thing I always say is if people in the West are so ardently for keeping this war going and they want Ukrainians to fight for as long as possible to reclaim this territory that they themselves have no personal stake. Well, go and fight. Go and volunteer. Ukraine is not picky, believe me. They are getting anyone they can. They are giving them a week's training and then seeing them out. They just need bodies. So much more important to the war causes of people like those panelists that were debating Mir Schiamen Davis, went out, went to Ukraine and

reported to a recruitment office and went to the front line. I mean, you know, if they really believe what they're really saying. Yeah. Hang on just one second for me here. You guys, I'm so proud to announce the publication of the Libertarian Institute's 14th book. It's Israel, winner of the 2003 Iraq Oil War, Undue Influence, Deceptions, and the Neocon Energy Agenda by Gary Vogler, former senior oil consultant and deputy senior oil advisor for U.S. forces during Iraq War II.

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of west you know like they say nerd prom or whatever kind of thing when these people get together They're at their fancy gala's and thing. They're like the kind of second-tier famous people in the country after the entertainers. You know what I mean? Yeah. But it's the same kind of game to them. And no, neither of those women would have considered for a moment insisting that their son go and enlist in this thing. As you say, and they must know, there's a foreign legion over there.

They'll take you. But that has nothing to do with their agenda whatsoever. You know it and I know it and they know it and everybody knows it. They wouldn't even consider it for a moment. No, no, I mean, none of these people do. I mean, no, there's been a very few, very small number of people who have actually put their money where the mouths are and gone to fight. So, I mean, the whole thing is quite perverse. But as numerous U.S. officials have said throughout the war,

This is a great bargain. This is such a good deal. It's so good. It's other random people. There's a bunch of poor Eastern Europeans who are getting slaughtered. And then meanwhile, we get to kill a bunch of Russians and degrade the Russian military. I mean, Biden just told Time magazine in that interview, a big foreign policy interview he did, you know, the reason that the Ukraine war has been a success is because the U.S. has been able to degrade the Russian military and weaken it. I don't actually think that that's true.

In fact, there's numerous reports that actually the Russian military has reconstitute itself after its losses. Well, including from the Director of National Intelligence in February. Right. Yeah, exactly. And, I mean, you know, it's unarguable that they have now actually pumped more money into their military than they had before. They're really militarized to a much larger extent. So it's had the opposite effect. In the same way that Russia's invasion kind of had the opposite intent of effect of what Putin did by hastening the expansion of NATO to Sweden and Finland.

And of course, also kind of turbocharging NATO militarization, it's had the same exact effect in Russia. So it hasn't – what is this all for at the end of the day? I mean, I think, if you ask my honest opinion, this is basically – just about prestige and avoiding humiliation. It's about Joe Biden's personal standing. He cannot be seen to be humiliated by the Russians or appear to be, have been defeated. He or NATO, especially not in election year. And so Ukrainians are just going to have to keep dying and being maimed for this man's own, you know, personal standing. And, you know, in the case of Vietnam, in the case of Iraq, and here, that is such an unsatisfying answer, right? That it just comes down to what libertarians call the public choice theory, right, where there kind of is no national interest. There's just whoever's in charge and what they think is good for them, and that's it. And so you have every crazy incentive, I think it was a year ago that they said, well, no matter what, we definitely have to keep this thing.

going for another year and a half through the election. Like, that was their priority. They set it to Politico and didn't even know to be ashamed or embarrassed to say that. Well, obviously, that's the most important thing to us. And so that's what takes precedent. And just like if you think back at the Cold War, there's always an election coming up. And nobody wants to be called soft on the commies. And nobody wants to be called soft on terrorism, even though it was W.

Bush that brought al-Qaeda to Iraq where they did not exist before and everybody knew it too you still couldn't oppose the war otherwise oh you love them Muslim Arabs who were trying to blow us up all the time and so people out of that just fear of some stupid ass narrative like that would give in and support anything and here we are again it's the same thing again and again same arguments same smears. It's, I mean, it's incredibly lazy, but what's more depressing is that people just seem to forget about it and then just kind of accept a new version of it. One other thing I'd mention, you know, because often the other thing that gets cited as the reason why this war has been in the U.S. national interest is because, well, look, NATO is expanded, it's got two new

members. It's just taken as a given in U.S. discourse that NATO being bigger and having more members is a good thing, that this is an achievement. There's no real reason to believe that that's true. In fact, if anything, it's the opposite is true. And a massive bloated alliance that just adds new members, an alliance that, by the way, the U.S. basically is just carrying on its back anyway. The U.S. has been complaining for years that Europe doesn't actually pull its way in terms of how much money it's spending and how, you know, its actual commitment to the alliance.

So this is really just the U.S. that is just shouldering this massive. I mean, how many members are there? There's probably close to two dozen at this point. And what that does is it just means that there are now more tripwires for the United States to potentially get into a direct conflict with Russia. You know, I mean, Finland and Sweden being joined. Previously, I mean, you know, obviously Russia doing anything in Finland would be terrible and not good. But if it had happened, it would not involve the United States. The United States

might react. They might respond with sanctions or some other kind of way to push back against any sort of aggression against Finland. Now, if there's any sort of Russian aggression against Finland, it's not just that they would respond and then move on and focus on dealing with the myriad crisis that are happening in the United States domestically. But they would actually be now legally obligated to fight Russia. Finland's behalf. Do people in the United States, there's a majority of the public, does even a plurality of the US public want to fight a war with Russia that could go potentially nuclear and kill themselves and all their family and friends on behalf of Finland? I suspect that if you

ask most people, they would say no. But this is the position now that the United States puts itself in because of this. So I don't think this idea of expanding NATO is just inherently a good thing for the US. I don't think that's true at all. There's a bunch of reasons why it's bad. And the craziest thing is it's not just NATO that's expanding. Now Biden also wants to create a mutual defense pact and alliance with Saudi Arabia that would do the same thing in the Middle East. But that's a whole other topic. Yeah. Well, of course, the whole bet is that it's such a big bluff that no one would dare call it, right? That once you're in our security umbrella, you're safe from conflict from now on because nobody's going to mess with this bad

on break but then if anybody ever does call that bluff then what do we do we either tell eastern europe we didn't really mean it you guys are on your own do we're not going to field an army in finland or in latvia you guys good luck to you it's at least they're not the reds anymore but you know tough luck or we're going to kill everyone on earth in order to enforce our red line that you can't do that and and there's a third option too which It sounds stupid and hyperbolic. Okay, go ahead. There's another one?

It's ridiculous. Well, the other one is that the country itself, now being under the protective umbrella of the United States, goes, hey, you know what? I can now use this to act a lot more aggressively and not closely because I have the backing of the U.S. So whatever, you know, parochial grudge or dispute that I have with, whether it's Russia or whatever. other country that I wanted to sort out in my favor for years and have been unable to because I've not been strong enough. I can now do that. And the other country just has to make the calculation of whether they want to get into a war with the United States or not. We already saw that happen actually at the start of the war when there's that railway

through that corridor through Lithuania that runs from Belarus to Kalinne. And Lithuania closed it off in the name of EU sanctions. And they told the New York Times, or at least the New York Times, had the quote of a high-level official there saying, oh, we wouldn't dream of doing this if we weren't a member of NATO. But as long as America has our back, then we feel braver. Like, you just said it outright like that. In the New York Times, they reported that. And then quickly, the Americans put pressure on them that, hey,

Ixnay on the fighting over the corridor. That's how World War II started. We're not doing that right now. Go ahead and forget the sanctions when it comes to Kaliningrad, okay, if that's going to lead to a real crisis, which it could have. But the guy outright said exactly what you're saying by creating this moral hazard, what you say about that, you know, like encouraging a bank to do bad business, because don't worry, we'll bail you out.

We encourage Lithuania to be tough. And the guy was outright quoting you, paraphrasing him. You know what I mean? He just said it perfectly. Like you'd written the line for him. That's why I'm talking tough today. I mean, yeah, it's upset. You know, there's not much else you can say about it. But this is the situation we're on. Yeah. All right. So one more very important topic that you cover in the article is as Ukraine becomes more desperate, they are now escalating into hitting targets into Russia, including civilian targets. But also, I guess, presumably they want to start hitting military targets inside Russia, not just in Crimea, but I guess inside the rest of Russia there and formations on the other side of the line that seem to be preparing to attack them and so forth. But it seems like everybody agrees to be only symbolic anyway.

It's not going to turn the tide, but it's a symbol of a massive escalation of the war. And I like to point out that one can hardly begrudge the Ukrainians for wanting to invade Russia back if that's what they think they can do. But the problem is we're all caught up in it. And so that means that no, they can't. And yet they are doing that. And the Americans and the British are telling them go ahead. And now the French are saying that they want to send, I guess, infantry or special operations forces there to train Ukrainian soldiers in Ukraine. instead of in Poland, which, what difference does that make anyway to do other than as a provocation?

But so how much more dangerous do you think the situation is now that Ukraine is losing and escalating at the same time? Oh, it's incredibly dangerous. And in an election year, remember. So there's all the incentives for the United States to support that escalation. Let us Biden be attacked for being weakened Russia or, you know, even losing. Ukraine to Russia. Number one, this is going to harm Ukraine. As you say, there's actually no strategic benefit to Ukraine from doing this stuff. But what has been shown throughout the war

is that when Ukraine strikes Russian territory, the Russians respond much more aggressively and ferociously on Ukraine. You know, Russia only began bombing Ukrainian infrastructure after Kiev destroyed the Kerch Bridge in Crimea, which everyone celebrated and and everyone thought, this was such a great victory. What a great operation. It did nothing to slow down the Russian war effort, really. But it did lead to, yeah, the energy grid being bombed very brutally soon after. And this has gone on throughout the war. Every time that the Ukraine manages to strike within Russia in some way, Russia responds tenfold, doing much more damage to the ordinary people of Ukraine than would otherwise be happening. But beyond what it

means for Ukraine, what it means for the world is incredibly scary. I mean, we are probably at, you know, now one of the scarier moments of the war where because NATO is seen to be potentially on the verge of a defeat in Ukraine, various NATO states are calling for things that were completely out of line just a couple of years ago. most prominently with Macron, the French president saying that he would send French trainers into Ukraine, directly into Ukraine, so not in Poland to train Ukraine troops, but in the actual country. And also in the U.S. and NATO now explicitly telling Ukraine, yeah, go ahead. Here's our weapons. And you can go ahead and strike within Russia.

We didn't let you do that before, but we're now okay with it. And Russia has responded by saying, well, if you do that, then you are directly in the war and we will treat it as such. And, you know, NATO's response to this, I mean, the NATO Secretary General said, well, look, Russia always says that they'll do something big and bad and scary whenever we escalate and they never do. So we can just keep doing this. And that is a staggeringly foolish statement from someone of his standing. Because what that basically means is that they have now created an incentive structure for Russia to act on its threats. Because what has happened, it's true, Russia has made numerous threats. Putin has made numerous threats throughout this war.

So whenever NATO states have kind of crossed the line they earlier drew as unacceptable and the one they wouldn't cross, whenever they've done that, Putin has said, well, we will, you know, we consider this potentially direct war, we will act on it, and they don't do anything. And then what has happened is just NATO keeps crossing more and more lines, getting more directly involved with Russia not really doing anything in return. So they now have an incentive to prove in the same way that Putin eventually invaded Ukraine because he kept saying there's a red line for us, don't push it. And he was ignored, not just him, but many Russian officials were ignored.

And then eventually he made good on that threat. It's the same thing here. We are creating a situation where he may well do something drastic to prove that his threats are real. And it doesn't matter whether he intends to do something that will end up creating a larger conflict, a direct conflict with NATO or not. I'm sure, I mean, I don't think Putin wants to do that. It's very clear that no one wants to do that. But it doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, it's not really about intent.

It's about what your actions do and what kind of reaction they elicit. And so he could easily do something that's a total miscalculation and that ends up kind of escalating things even further in a way that draws NATO in. So, I mean, you know, I'm, to put it in a brief statement, I am extremely concerned at the fact that we're basically watching this massive of planetary stakes game of chicken being played by the Kremlin and neither i know it's completely insane i can't believe that anyone else has any other priority i mean even as horrible as israel and palestine is i don't think israel's going to start nuke in everybody certainly not russia and china you know what i mean so but this russia stuff could

end humanity or at least you know set us back thousands of years and leave only however many hundreds of millions of people left instead of the billions we got now or some kind of horrible type scenario along those lines general nuclear war which is you know the more i learn about seems like there aren't that many different options for how to fight a nuclear war it basically comes down to use them or lose them and so that means use them and everybody just launches everything they have and as you're saying yeah for them to be playing this kind of brinksmanship like it's 1983 before the day after came out before able archer and when the there's not even a Soviet Union

to mess with. We're talking about who controls deeper Natskravik or whatever the crap over there. It's I don't know. It's incredible. It's hard to believe. It's actually fun in a sense of like the psychological

observation of the people in power convincing themselves that it's okay to do this. That mutually assured destruction doesn't mean everybody has to chill out. It means you could do whatever they want because what are they going to do about it? and then just take it that way and they just adjust their view

to normalize it and make this just seem right. Blinking wakes up in the morning and it's like, boy, I'm a hero. Look at me doing the right thing. Standing up against the bad guys. But endangering everybody, like literally everybody. It's incredible. It really is.

I don't know. And then who do we have in power to fight about it? Trump? who essentially, you know, regardless of his view, maintained Barack Obama and Joe Biden's Russia policy for four years and just handed it right back to Biden right where he left off again. I mean, the idea that he's going to somehow roll all this back,

what does he know about how to roll it back? You know what I mean? He's just going to cut Ukraine loose and say, go ahead and take the east. He's not going to do that. His national security state are going to let him do that. And he's not running on that. Yeah, I mean, look how quickly Trump folded on the, on the, on the military aid bill, the, you know, nearly. Yeah, he was the one who got it through.

He's the one who said, I know, let's call it alone. And they went, oh, brilliant idea, boss. That's what we'll do. And he's not even in power. So, yeah, I have very little faith that Trump would actually do anything different, sadly, which does, which means that there's no real. option. I mean, you know, I think what really is studying and what may be more worrying is just that there's so little outcry or pushback on this, you know, for Biden to do anything different. Not just Biden, but like, I mean, any European state, it's just, it's bizarre and surreal

to watch this thing just kind of playing out in the background. you know, probably the scariest moment since the Cuban missile crisis and we're just kind of, it's just sort of happening and we're just kind of passively observing it and not doing anything about it. Yeah, two and a half years of this. It's like having the Vietnam War, but right 200 miles from St. Petersburg or 300 miles from Moscow or whatever, I need to pull up a Google map, but it's something like that, man. God. All right, well, listen, I'm glad we could scare the crap out of each other this morning. It's great to talk to you again, Bronco.

Thanks. Let's join me all. All right, you guys. That's Bronco March Teach. He wrote yesterday's man about our horrible president, and he wrote this great article at Responsible Steakraft. Putin may be at the door. Why is Biden ignoring the bell?

The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com. war.com, Scott Horton.org, and libertarian institute.org.