Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 7/20/23 Kyle Anzalone on Article 5, Ukraine and Syria

Episode Date: July 22, 2023

Kyle Anzalone was on Antiwar Radio this week to discuss some of the week’s news. They touch on Rand Paul’s failed attempt to get Congress to do its job and formally declare war if NATO triggers Article 5. They then take a look at the state of Ukraine’s counteroffensive before discussing the recent tension between the U.S. and Russia over Syria.  Discussed on the show: “Senate Rejects Congressional War Powers Over NATO’s Article 5” (Antiwar.com) “US Pressuring Ukraine to Push Harder in Counteroffensive” (Antiwar.com) Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter and Connor Freeman. Follow him on Twitter @KyleAnzalone_ This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; 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

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It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com, and I'm the author of the book, Enough Already. Time to end the war on terrorism. You can find my full interview archive, almost 6,000 of them now,

going back 20 years at Scott Horton.org, at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show and all the other video sites and stuff. When you can follow me on Twitter, if you dare, at Scott Horton Show. In introducing today's guest, it's the Institute's News Editor and Anti-Warton.

Com's opinion editor, great Kyle Anzalone. And I want to start with this top news story on anti-war.com today about Senator Rand Paul and his resolution regarding NATO. What's the big deal there? Yeah. So Rand Paul has been pushing this for a couple weeks now. And what he's hoping to do is change the way that people look at Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance there. And typically it's assumed that if any country in the alliance is a tat, that means that the United States is going to go to war.

And Ram Paul's amendment to the NDAA for 2024 said that the Congress would still have to vote to go to war. And that Article 5 of NATO doesn't supersede the Constitution, but this was shot down on a vote of 16 to 83. So this would have been big, but of course, like all good stuff, that gets proposed in the Congress, it gets rejected. Yeah. It was just amazing to think that they would vote down a resolution. It's incredible to think. It's one of those moments. You know, I know it's just a debate in the Senate. It's not an actual explosion or, you know, kind of thing. But it seems to me like such a scratch the needle off the record. Everybody stop and look. Everyone pay attention for a second. Look what happened. The U.S. Senate was asked to pass a resolution that said, This treaty does not override the U.S. Constitution, which, of course, it does not and cannot. And people cite the part of the Constitution that says treaties are the law. But it doesn't say and can override the Constitution that our government, as long as they enter into an agreement with other governments, can change any part of our Constitution, that's not right at all.

And in fact, Article 5 of the treaty does not say that we automatically have to go to war. What it does say is that an armed attack on any member state will be considered an armed attack against them all. And then it says if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, the nation states, the members, will assist the party or parties so attacking by taking such actions as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force. So, in other words, every member state of the North Atlantic Treaty still gets to choose how they're going to respond in defense of their ally if their ally is attacked.

And that's, of course, the Americans, probably more than anyone else at the time, made sure to include that language to show, that ultimately, no, it's still up to the U.S. Congress and the American people to decide if we go to war. And so it says right there that it's up to the individual member states to deem what they think is necessary to include there. So, but that doesn't matter the Senate. They're like, no, NATO gets to tell us what to do. As long as I don't have to decide and I don't have to take responsibility, says the United States Senate. when they are the holders of the war power, them in the house.

Yeah, absolutely, Scott. And Ram Paul's legislation was rooted in Article 11 of the NATO Treaty, which states that each country should only add in accordance with each country's respective constitutional processes. And so Ram Paul was really hanging a lot of his legislative, you know, prowess on that, saying that this is the reason we had to do that. And it's interesting, Scott, because at the same time, this was voted on, I covered for the Institute a different amendment to the NDAA, which said the president shall not terminate denounce or withdraw the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty except by and when, with the advice of the consent of the Senate provided that two-thirds of senators percent consent. So, you know, they don't want to have any say over NATO going to war and going to, you know, getting involved in the NATO war. But they do want to have, say, over the president exiting the NATO alliance. It's a very interesting, you know, thing to look at. And that resolution actually passed 65 to 28.

Now, look, for the last 25, 30 years, you could argue that this is just academic. People would think that it is. What is NATO anyway, except a cocktail party circuit for a bunch of fancy pants people that we don't know, but they'd go and do their little society thing and have their media. What does that have to do with anything? It's not like there's a threat. And yet, oh, here we are fighting a massive proxy war with Russia right on their border, where remember when a Ukrainian self-defense, you know, a defensive missile went off target

and hit a Polish farmhouse and killed two people, that the government of Ukraine immediately blamed it on Russia. And so did an American intelligence official tell the Associated Press that it was a Russian missile strike on Poland and you had immediately inside the American National Security State people jumping up to say article 5 article 5 we must respond are they completely crazy they really don't think they're like that comedian owen benjamin doesn't think there's such a thing as nuclear weapons don't worry we can fight a war with russia what are they going to do vaporize all of our major cities kill millions and millions tens hundreds of millions of us come on

Well, Scott, our elected leaders certainly ad-flight nuclear weapons don't exist in that, you know, they've given Ukraine so much support. I believe, I think they believe that Russia won't use nuclear weapons or they would have used them already and so they could basically get away with anything they want. And just on this not being academic, we've also had different bills and legislations introduced in the Senate, often led by Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, that have. advocated for the United States to take a position that if something would say to happen to the Zafaricia nuclear power plan or any kind of nuclear installation in Ukraine, if any of that fallout breaches any territory skies of a NATO member state, then that would be interpreted and invoke Article 5 of the NATO treaty in the eyes of the U.S. So, you know, they're really pushing for some kind of accident, some kind of spillover for Ukraine to involve the whole alliance

in a war. And I also saw that there was a resolution or a bill, I guess, in anticipation of a possible return of Trump, as though this would ever happen under him. But it was a law to make it where no president can get us out of NATO ever. Yeah, this was the Tim Kane and Marco Rubio amendment. Uh-huh. Yeah, no surprise. That did pass, by the way. Yeah. And, of course, as the Democratic Party gets worse and worse and worse on war, and some part of the Republican Party gets better on it, finally. The leadership of the Republican Party still can only attack Biden for never doing enough or at least support him when he does all of his worst, most hair-brained things.

And so the American people are stuck in the middle of that, a debate between two wings of the war party there. And anti-interventionist forces in both parties are reduced to minorities. status. And so the whole thing continues to roll on. And so, yeah, let's talk about that. I mean, here's a new headline, $1.3 billion weapons package for Ukraine. It doesn't matter. And we covered this last week with Daniel Davis. I won't take up too much time of yours on this. But the offensive, the summer offensive, it was supposed to be the winter and then the spring, and now it's the summer offensive. It's already failed. And their best armored divisions were already completely

destroyed and according to the new york times made it five miles toward their 60 mile away target and then that's it everybody dismounted and they're on foot now walking through minefields and getting nowhere and and of course this is the headline on antiwar dot com yesterday the americans especially they told the new york times but there's some of this in the journal too the americans are angry with the ukrainians that oh well you're just worried about casualties huh And so you're slowing down, and the Americans were mad because they had, you know, a deal. They thought they had a deal with the Ukrainians that they were going to continue to pour their armored divisions into this slaughter for no reason. And then so on top of that, so now, so that's already, like, in other words, it's shown now that the high watermark of Ukraine's effort was last September when they took back Curzon City and Harkiv.

and so what's the American answer to that, Kyle? More weapons, Scott. That's the only answer America has for this war is just to get more and more weapons to Kiev. Now, this latest package, Scott, is $1.3 billion. All the systems that they are providing to Ukraine in this package, they have already provided. The notable thing, I think, is it's going to be provided through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which is a pool of money that the Pentagon, the White House has, to, contract with defense makers to make weapons specifically for Ukraine. And so rather than the presidential

drawdown authority, these are the weapons that we're typically sending. They come right from American stockpiles and could be put on boats, planes, whatever, and ship directly to Ukraine, where these weapons often need to be manufactured first. And so it could take months or years for them to reach the battlefield. And so this $1.3 billion commitment is a commitment to, you know, war years down the road in Ukraine. Now, I think it's worth mentioning that they are running low. I think they have about $18 billion in this fund, and they burn through, I think about $18 billion in total between last year and this year. So they are running low on the ways they could send Ukraine weapons through the USAI, which means they'll probably be going to Congress soon and asking for

more money. Yeah. Now, listen, Carl, I think it must be true that one of the reasons that I'm like this is because when I was a little kid, and I don't remember who it was anymore, but it was Army veteran told me that, oh, Vietnam, we were just emptying the inventories of bombs. That's what it was all about, buying more bombs and then wasting them and then buying more. That's why I was there in Southeast Asia.

And I was just raised on that. And I was reminded of that this morning when I read your piece at the Institute, U.S. Allies running out of weapons to send to Ukraine. And this is their excuse. They say why they have to send the cluster bombs is because they ran out of just 155 millimeter artillery shells, right? Right. And there have been kind of two different sources for this.

Over the weekend, General James Hecker was at a conference in London. And he said that the U.S. was running dangerously low on some weapons. But then we got some clarity on what that meant from CNN on Tuesday. And CNN reported that there are threshold levels that the U.S. is says they have to keep in their stoppiles. So we don't know what those levels are, but you know, it's million of 105 millimeter artillery rounds. The Pentagon isn't willing to part with. And they say they are reaching those levels. And we had Joe Biden say that the reason that they were sending the cluster munitions to Ukraine was because they were out of the more conventional, 155 millimeter

shells. So basically, Scott, they don't have more weapons to send to Ukraine. And we had really interesting a mission from the UK defense minister on why this happened. And he said that Ukraine was posed early on for a one night, one day offensive. No one really asked themselves the question, well, what if one day, one night becomes wheat two, week three, week four, how much of our exquisite capabilities have we actually gotten stock? And I think that has been the broader question. And then Hecker said that, you know, it's not going to be a short-term solution to be able to increase our ability to produce weapons enough to give Ukraine that this is a long-term problem. And so at one time, we're completely running out of weapons, Scott,

to send Ukraine. And at the same time, we're telling the Ukrainians that they have to push this counteroffensive. And the Ukrainians are saying that we don't have the weapons to do it. And so this is just a terrible situation for the Ukrainian soldiers in particular. Well, I'm kicking myself now that I didn't save this footnote. I know I retweeted it a few days ago. I'll have to go back and try to look and see if I can find it. But there was a thing where I believe it was Pentagon officials explaining to Congress that when we tell these military industrial complex companies to ramp up production, they need promises from us that we're going to keep that production up. And we got to, we're there just, you know what I mean, the, were they just

outright say, well, Congressman, we've got our cart before the horse here, and we have to keep our weapon suppliers satisfied. So, you know, otherwise, geez, think how unfair it is for us to ask them to produce X number of new shells, but not X plus, you know, to the 10th power. That's unfair to them and their profit margins. And that's clearly, they admit, they say blatantly, one of their highest priorities here, you know, if not the highest. Yeah, so this was, I'm not sure if this is where you got that footnote, but CNN mentioned this in their article, too, that one of the problems that the defense officials say that they have is insufficient incentives for the defense industry, which is completely ridiculous.

You know, responsible statecraft has tracked very well that there are record high orders for the defense makers because the war in Ukraine. We had a former Defense Department contract negotiator warning that weapons makers were exploiting the increased demand created by the war in Ukraine to price gouge the Pentagon. And yet the Pentagon seems upset that Congress doesn't want them to allow to do more multi-year contracting with the defense makers. And so agreed to purchase tens of millions or millions of rounds from a defense contractor for five, ten years in the future rather than just buying 155 military millimeter shells per year

and that's what the Pentagon is once to do and that's why they're making these criticisms that there's not enough incentive for the defense industry. Yeah. Hang on just one second. Hey y'all, the audiobook of my book enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism is finally done. Yes, of course read by me. It's available at

Audible, Amazon, Apple Books and soon on Google Play and whatever other options there are out there. It's my history of America's War on Terrorism from 1979 through today. Give it a listen and see if you agree. It's time to just come home. Enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. The audiobook. Hey guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the Institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expanddesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you.

Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom instead. Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level and it's all very reasonably priced. Just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin

at Scott Horton.org. Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom, real history, real economics, real education. Well, you know, the whole time during the terror war, this whole new Cold War with Russia was brewing in the background and I was working with Justin Romando

at anti-war.com. We were second to none on this issue over the last generation. watching this unfold. And so in both of my books about the terror wars, fools errand about Afghanistan, and especially in enough already about the war on terrorism, I tried to explicitly say that like, hey, just because I'm saying get out of the Middle East, I am not saying pivot to Europe or Asia here and do this other stuff instead. We have to bring this empire home. And I always knew that there's irony here that like if I ever get the world, to listen to me, not that I'm the one that they listen to, but if they ever do what I want

and really get out of the Middle East, we could have a much worse problem when they find something much worse to do instead, like pivot to Ukraine, which was, of course, you know, already in play from, really from 2004, but especially from 14 when Obama did the coup there. And so here we are. They got out of Afghanistan, and clearly all the defense industry lobbyists said, well, what have you done for me lately, national government? We need something to do. We got inventories we need to empty and refill, you know? Right. Well, you know, you mentioned at the start of the show that there are some Republicans that are game better, particularly on the war in Ukraine.

But so many of them just want to change, you know, change the direction of the Defense Department from Russia to China or Mexico. You know, we have a lot of serious Republican candidates for president saying that the U.S. needs to go to war with Mexico and that they plan to send special forces and armed drones to Mexico to make that happen. You know, it's funny because it sounded like just kind of some outlandish thing that one or two of them said as a talking point for being on TV or whatever. But now it's like a contest where they all have to say that they all believe in it and agree with that too. maybe some focus group told them that people want to hear that they think what they're going to get an agreement from the government of Mexico to send in the Delta Force and the drone warriors yeah that'll solve your immigration problem just set Mexico on fire you know like the drug war hasn't done enough to cause this problem in the first place but they think of

you know destroy black market pill distribution networks with missiles and bombs. It's completely crazy. And I can see, you know, them talking themselves into actually doing it at some point, doing some kind of missions. You figure it out, you know, maybe God knows how bad it could be. Hopefully somebody at the Pentagon is telling them, no, no, no. You know, fighting the Sierra Madre, really?

Come on, man. These people are bananas. Hey, they tried Afghanistan for 20 years. I don't know. I mean, I could imagine this polling well, Scott, fentanyl is a huge problem in America. I mean, so everybody knows somebody who's dying of this terrible, terrible thing. And nobody has any solution for it. And the Republicans are saying, well, we'll blow people up.

And people like that. That's going to resonate. That's going to be a popular message, especially if nobody has any other possible solution to the fentanyl crisis. And the Republicans could say, look, we'll take the billions of dollars from Ukraine and put them into drug treatment or, you know, just take less of your money, create some more wealthier at home, make sure people have jobs so they don't want to just tape fentany all day and kill themselves, but that's never going to be the Republican position. Yeah, man.

All right. Well, so what about the big grain deal? I guess it's all falling apart, the Kerch Bridge and the Odessa strikes and all of that. And then I saw something about Russian warnings against civilian grain shipments. that really right. Yeah, so Russia did issue this warning. And I was, when I first saw the headlines, I thought maybe it was a little bit spin by the Western media. But the Russian defense ministry said, given the Blat Sea initiative has come under the end of and the Marine Time humanitarian corridor has been terminated. All ships across the Blat Sea to Ukrainian ports will be considered

potential carriers and military purpose cargoes. And so that does sound like, you know, they're saying that they could target those ships. Now, how serious. they are about that threat remains to be seen, but it could be pretty serious, Scott. Now, Russia has been complaining about the Green Deal for a long time, and their main complaint was that the sanctions on Russia prevent Russia from getting the benefits of this deal that they should, and it's really only been working for the Ukrainian side. And I'm not sure if the Kerch Bridge attack was maybe the final straw, but it was the same day that Russia announced they were leaving the deal.

Yeah. And then so there was this other attack on the Kerch Bridge the other day. And then the Russians responded by bombing the hell out of Odessa, right? And I guess what I had read very briefly, not in depth, was the claim, I guess, I could repeat. It was a claim that they were hitting silos and civilian shipping infrastructure there in Odessa. Right. And I think Russia said that they were hitting military targets, fuel infrastructure, and decision-making centers. So it's not clear if maybe there's some overlap that they had some weapons, or some grain silos, and that's what happened where Russia really just went on all-out bombing

campaign of the port and took out some grain silos because this is war, and that's what people do at war. Yeah. All right, so let's see what time we got. We got a little bit of time. I'm Scott Horton. This is anti-war radio. I'm talking with the great Kyle Anzalone from anti-war.com and the Institute as well.

And I wanted to ask you about a couple of pieces here. I think this is a little bit of Cold War bleeding back over into the Middle East. U.S. will boost military presence in the Middle East, and then also American-Russian military aircraft increasingly in dangerous situations over Syria. Please elaborate, sir. Yes, Scott, so the U.S. and Russia have been sharing the skies above Syria for years now. they have had a de-conflitching line and de-confliction procedures that have essentially prevented any real confrontation between the two sides and the skies of bus area. There's been issues here and there, but over the past couple of months, there has been

repeated issues between the U.S. and Russia. The U.S. has accused Russia of harassing American drones, and they did release a video showing a Russian plane activating its afterburners right in front of a drone. and then Russia has been complaining that American aircraft are turning on their targeting locators and aiming at Russian warplanes. I guess they haven't fired on anyone, but that's what they're doing. Russia is also complaining that the U.S. is carrying out a lot of military activity in the skies around the Al-Tomf garrison.

This is a U.S. military base on the Iraq-S.-S.-Ira border, and the U.S. has carved out a little zone around that base that doesn't allow Syria in. But Russia says that the American flights are now flying in places where civilian planes will occasionally fly, and this is creating a threat for those civilian aircraft. And the U.S. has been using more air defense systems in the Al-Tanav area. And Russia says, of course, this also presents a threat to civilian aircraft. So the U.S. has responded by sending F-16s, F-35s, and F-22s into the region. the F-Sitz-teens and the F-35s are primarily directed at Iran because the U.S. is concerned about Iranian Navy seizing cargo ships and the Strait of Hormuz or the Persian Gulf, while the F-22s were sent to the region specifically to confront Russia. But when the U.S. made the announcement of the F-35s and F-S. teams, they also mentioned the Russian military activity in Syria as a cause for the deployment.

Well, sending F-35s over Iranian ship seizures, that doesn't sound right. The F-35s and F-16 sound like they're probably on the same mission as the F-22s. I mean, it is, you know, the Al-Ulid airbase there in Qatar is the massive headquarters for Central Command and a massive airbase there. So who knows what comes in and out of there all the time. Right. And all these planes are equipped with radars and sand. And the U.S. says the F-S. teams will aid A-10s and carrying out patrols. And so who knows, maybe as they're, you know, flying over the Gulf a little bit on their way to Syria,

they turn on their radars and sensors and counted as patrolling for Iranian ships as well. Yeah. All right. Now, I know it's a complicated mess, but can you try to untie for the audience here? Why it is that American Russia are coming into conflict over Syria when I thought I'm pretending to be the signer for the sick argument here, that American Russia essentially are on the same side in Syria. Their only enemy is ISIS on the ground who they both continue to bomb, right? Kyle, what don't I understand? Well, ISIS has been gone for a few years now, and this is the real problem.

You know, from 2015 until 2019, I think the U.S. and Russia had an easier time in Syria because there was a real common enemy. But now that common enemy is gone, and the U.S. is backing our proxies in Syria, the Syrian Kurds. And they have issues not only with the government in Damascus, but also with America's NATO allies and Turkey to the north. And so the U.S. is in a real problem-ad situation in Syria where we occupy a third of the country about. And to some extent, it's the most productive third of the country in terms of wheat, in terms of oil. And so the U.S. is taking a lot of Syrian wheat and oil. And now, I haven't been able to determine, Scott, where exactly these confrontations are occurring in Syria

other than around the Al-Tanop garrison. And so it may be that this is occurring over the U.S. occupied areas of Syria or it's occurring over the areas of Syria that are held by the Damascus government and their allies in Russia and Iran. So it's kind of hard to figure out exactly why all this confrontation is happening. But I do imagine it has something to do with the war in Ukraine and the lack of communication between the two sides, because I think that really was key for years and years and years

for the U.S. and Russia to operate like the, you know, both militaries operating in Syria, carrying out, blah, you know, different missions and things like that, and rarely, if ever, coming into contact. I think there's maybe that one instance where the U.S. killed a few hundred Russian mercenaries, but that's, you know, mostly as stand the U.S. Russian conflict in Syria over the years. Yeah. Yeah, that was under Trump, right, in what, 18 or 19? Yeah.

Yeah. I'm reminded as we're discussing this that I, uh, really need to get Brad Hoff or another great Syria expert on to rehash this history and explain how and why and under what bogus excuse have they even bothered offering lately for the reason why America is still in Syria, how we got there in the first place and the rest. It's a crazy story. And it's in my book. I think the words they use are the enduring defeat of ISIS.

Yeah, exactly, which is just on the face of it right there. Well, if they just got out of the way and let Syria, the Syrian government into Madison, recreate their monopoly on forests within their borders, well, that would take care of ISIS just fine. They really, as we all know from Obama years, they've been standing between ISIS and Damascus, finally solving that problem once and for all, just the same as America and Turkey protect al-Qaeda

in the Idlib province to this day. So, anyway, it is a complicated mess for the end of a show, but certainly we know that the Obama, government invaded Syria with no authority whatsoever from the Congress or for the UN or anyone else. And then Trump kept him there. And Trump famously tried to get them out three times and was just simply overruled by the Pentagon all three times and rolled over for them, of course, instead of stomping his foot and making a public statement. So we're still there with our planes, you know, coming into contact with Russian planes, fighter jets over Syria.

another potential flashpoint for an absolutely unnecessary major power war that would amount to the apocalypse where it to break out as long as Lockheed's able to cash their chats the wars keep going on yep that sure seems to be the name of our dilemma here all right you guys well listen we're all out of time but that's the great kyle anzalone he is news editor at the institute and opinion editor at anti-war dot com and check out his great podcast conflicts of interest as well. Thank you so much for your time again, Kyle. Thank you, Scott. All right, you guys, and that's it for anti-war radio for today.

I'm your host, Scott Horton. Find my full interview archive, almost 6,000 of them now, going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org, and follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show, and I am here every Thursday from 230 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.

Thank you.