Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 7/25/22 Dave DeCamp on Ukraine, Taiwan, Iran and his New Podcast

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

Scott interviewed Antiwar.com News Editor Dave DeCamp earlier this week. First, they discussed DeCamp’s new podcast — Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp. The show runs every weekday and highlights the most important foreign policy headlines of the day. It’s an indispensable resource for anyone looking to stay up to date on the news without the dishonest spin of the mainstream corporate media. Scott and DeCamp then dig into how the war in Ukraine is progressing. They also touch on the escalating tension between the U.S. and China as Speaker Pelosi plans a visit to Taiwan. Lastly, they look to the Middle East, where the cold war between Israel and Iran continues to heat up. Discussed on the show: Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp on Apple, Spotify, Odysee, Stitcher, RSS and Youtube Mark Levin Calls Anthony Sabatini's Foreign Policy 'Most Radical' He's Every Heard “Strategic Ambiguity Works” (The American Conservative) Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com and the host of Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp. Follow him on Twitter @decampdave This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys on the line i've got antirewar dot com's news editor dave de camp and uh he's also the host of a brand new podcast welcome the show how's going

Dave. Good, Scott. Thanks for having me on. You got a brand new podcast of your own now, is that right? That's true. And what's the name of it? Yeah, it's called anti-war news with me, Dave DeCamp. And the idea of it, it's an idea I've been kicking around for a while because I write, you know, a few news articles each day. I usually average around six, sometimes more, sometimes less, but it's, you know, it's a lot of stuff. It's a lot of content. And I wanted to kind to put it out in a podcast form, you know, for people that prefer to kind of digest their news that way. So we have a YouTube channel, an Odyssey channel on video, but if people want to listen audio, it's on all the podcast platforms, however people get their podcasts. So I put it out five

days a week. I just started last week. And it goes out, I put it out at midnight each night. I start Sunday night at midnight, so it's out for Monday morning. And then we put it out five days a week. And it's, you know, I try to keep it short about 20 to 25 minutes on average to just run down the top foreign policy news stories of the day and kind of present it, you know, from our anti-war non-interventionist, anti-imperialist perspective and give you the proper context that you don't find in the mainstream media and kind of leave out, you know, the spin that they give, which is usually pro-war or, you know, as against whatever government the U.S. doesn't like at the time as possible um so yeah i think it's a pretty good resource for people if they want to

you know stay up on the foreign policy news and they don't want to read uh read the news on their phone every day or on the computer yeah there you go i love it i've been listening to it and um i guess did you have one from last night for today yeah i did oh okay i'm sorry i'm behind on one then i did hear from uh left over from uh you know friday's episode there but yeah it's great stuff man I'm really glad that you're doing it and so yeah now why don't you tell us about what you're covering on the show because I'm looking at the front page of antiwar dot com and my hair what's left of it is turning white yeah I mean it's usually not good news that I'm covering unfortunately it's been pretty scary lately especially because it's on one side

of the world you know there's stoking tensions with Russia the other side of the world it's all about, you know, provoking China, getting in China's face. So just stoking tensions with two nuclear powers is kind of what is just happening every day here. The top story for today, Monday, July 25th, is that a congressional delegation went to Kiev over the weekend. They visited the Ukrainian capital and met with Zelensky. And there was comments to Fox News from two of these House representatives that went to Ukraine. Michael Waltz, he's a Republican from Florida and Mikey Sherrill.

She's a Democrat from New Jersey, and they said that they want the U.S. to send military advisors to Ukraine, which would be a pretty serious escalation in the U.S. role in the war. So we know from a New York Times report last month that there's CIA personnel on the ground, and that report also said that there's military special operations forces from other NATO countries, but not the U.S. I think it was Britain, Canada, France, and maybe Lithuania. They have commandos on the ground to kind of oversee the transfer of weapons supplies into Ukraine. So this is what these people in Congress are advocating for now. Now, I'm not sure Waltz and Cheryl, I'm not too familiar with them. I'm not sure how influential they are, but if this idea picks up steam, it could be kind of the next big escalation in the U.S. role. Besides the next escalation in military aid, which looks like it could be providing fighter jets to Ukraine.

But, yeah, we just keep going down this path of escalation after escalation, and it doesn't seem like it's slowing down. Yeah, military advisors. You could fit a Vietnam war through a loophole like that, said some smart gun on Twitter that I'm plagiarizing right now. Which is completely correct. I mean, that was what they said for years in Vietnam when we had combat forces on the ground out there fighting. And of course, you know, it's the camel's nose inside the tent kind of a thing. Once it started, it's hard to roll them back. I just got off the phone with John Vaughn, who was stationed in Poland when this war kicked off. And obviously the question is raised, how are we ever going to pull these troops out of Eastern Europe now without quote-unquote backing down to Putin and this kind of thing?

Yeah, well, that's the question is how is this ever going to be reversed? I've been also covering there's this push to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terror, which it wouldn't really affect Moscow that much right now because the idea of that designation is to expand sanctions in the U.S. and Europe, they've already hit Russia with all these sanctions. It would kind of be more symbolic, but what it would symbolize to me is that U.S. Russia relations aren't going to get back on track within the next few years or possibly decades. Because if you look at the countries that are on that list already, it's, you know, it's, Iran. It's North Korea, Syria, and it's these countries that just relations are just, you know, totally in the toilet and they're under basically economic embargoes imposed by the U.S. through

all these sanctions. And any president that comes in and tries to reverse it, it's going to be politically, it's going to be impossible to do now, for a while at least. So it's just another example of how this is, this is where we're at. This is what Russia is the enemy. now to the U.S. and there's a pretty strong bipartisan feeling that that's the way, just the way it is now, except for a small minority

of Republicans that we see vote against this stuff. But overall, it's just all this bipartisan support for this policy. Yeah. I mean, it would take not Donald Trump, but somebody else to become president and really make a clean break

with all this, but I just don't see that anyone is viable whatsoever who's thoughtful on this issue at all. So who knows? Assuming we all live to see the next election and we don't have a war, I mean, it looks like, for example,

you know, you're talking about these new artillery pieces that are being fielded there. Well, the Russians then said, oh, yeah, well, we're expanding our goals then. And coinciding with that and probably coordinated with that. Local officials in Transnistria said,

yeah, we want to go ahead and officially join the Russian Federation now. Well, there's just a problem that there's Odessa and four or five other towns between Kurson, which the Russians have already taken, northwest of the Crimean Peninsula there, and Transnistria there on the Moldovan border. And, of course, that if the Russians really do go all that far, take the entire Southern Coast. host of Ukraine and all of Transnistria there.

And that's a whole new host of problems. And sure, borders now with Poland and Romania and Moldova. And, you know, with, everybody look at the map and see where these borders are. Imagine this little strip on the border between Moldova and Ukraine that belongs to Russia and this little kind of J shape as they take the whole southern coast. As of now, it looks like that's where they're going. And yet, at the same time, I can hear now American politicians pronouncing that this will not stand that Ukraine is losing their entire southern coast, even though it's all their fault. And they could have negotiated an end of this thing months ago instead of escalating it.

But so, yeah, and nobody's talking about, we got to end this war. have Henry Kissinger said that got shouted down and ignored. So apparently, am I right? Really, everything you're reading, the consensus is we've got to keep this thing going until this time next year, at least, right? Something fun? Yeah, well, that's what we're seeing from the U.S., from Biden. He says that they're ready to support Ukraine for as long as it takes for Russia to lose

the war. I mean, that's what they're saying is that Russia has to lose in Ukraine, which would take a massive military offensive to push them out of the area that they've already that they've taken since the invasion on February 24th, and Ukrainian officials keep saying they're also going to drive them out of Crimea. But one thing that I wrote about over the weekend was that Victor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister, he called for peace talks. He said the only way to end the wars is through peace talks with the U.S. and Russia,

because only the U.S. can give Russia the security guarantees that it wants. But what was interesting is that Hungary is part of the EU, and he said the EU has to take a different approach. They shouldn't pick a side. They should try to broker peace. And that should be their role. Sanctions have failed. It's time to try a different approach. Now, Orban is not, you know, he does not fall in line with the rest of the EU.

They don't really like him. They're trying to deny Hungary EU funding, basically because he won the recent election in Hungary. So he's not popular. His view is not the mainstream view of the EU by any means, but I think it's still significant to see him say this because we might see more fractures within the EU as they're facing all these gas cuts. Now, they're saying that they need to reduce their gas consumption by 20% to make it through the winter. So Europe is really feeling it, and we're seeing a lot of European governments collapse. As Orban put it, he said they're falling like dominoes. so I think kind of the popular support for the war is really they're really losing that as you know Europeans are going to start dealing with not being able to heat their homes in the winter and they're going to be wondering is this worth it to support Ukraine to win this war that's another thing Orban said is that they'll never be able to win to achieve the goals that they that they want so really I mean Europe is in trouble and I think

that's the thing that could kind of shift the narrative, not shift the narrative, but shift the Western approach is really how these European governments can handle the unrest. I mean, I heard Olaf Schultz, the German chancellor, say that, you know, they expect if they cut off Russian gas that they're not going to be able to keep supporting Ukraine because there's going to be so much unrest. So, you know, they're aware of it and winter's coming. So things aren't looking good for the EU right now. Yeah, I mean, at the beginning of the war, Douglas McGregor said, well, hopefully they'll

wrap it up soon because the Germans who are right there are going to insist and they have enough sway to insist that we can't just keep this thing going indefinitely. This is an Afghanistan on the far side of Kazakhstan from here. you know this is right here in Europe right on the borders of NATO allied countries here we can't do this we have to end the fighting and that really hasn't happened and I actually said to him I said well maybe if Angela Merkel was still here she would at least have like the courage and the stature to try to make an end to it but the new guy doesn't have the courage and he scoffed at that he was like well she was nothing but a push over for all this stuff all

along anyway. So is there any German chancellor strong enough to tell the Americans that, hey, man, this is just getting completely out of control here. You know, I read a story's just a side story thing that someone passed around on Twitter, but it's these kind of

long-term effects. You know, this stuff really matters. They're talking about, you know, pedophiles and other criminals from around Europe are traveling to go to the refugee camps. to exploit helpless people, you know, helpless Ukrainian refugees fleeing the violence of war.

And as I think the person who I saw tweet this out wrote, this always happens in war, you know, that helpless people get exploited by ruthless people and, you know, people, you know, civilians and camps and this kind of thing. Well, who's making them civilians and camps? It's true as the Russians, but it's also true that the Americans could have negotiated to prevent this war. war and didn't, and that they've gleefully, you know, proposed this policy ever since and have

acted on pouring all these weapons in and continuing the war, as they say, to the last Ukrainian, America will fight in this thing. And so all these kind of second order consequences that we've seen from all of our wars are going to keep coming out. You know, that's just one small example. But think about all the weapons on the loose in the black market now that are, you know, who knows what like how lucky were we that the muja dean never were able to shoot down a civilian airliner with a stinger but they could have you know what i mean that's a real risk that was taken from you know previous support for moderate rebels you know in the last century yeah and yeah for europe i mean it is really close to home and uh you know i think germany pushed from

what i understand they pushed lithuania to lift the restrictions on clinical Ingrid, Lithuania decided to enforce EU sanctions on the Russian enclave that's on the Baltic Sea. It's in between Lithuania and Poland. Lithuania decided to start enforcing EU sanctions, and it looked like they kind of did that on their own because then the EU, you know, told them that they have to let these goods come through because it's Russian territory. And Lithuania did it, they lifted the restrictions, but they didn't sound happy about it. So that shows also this split where you have the Baltic states, Poland, other countries in Eastern Europe that are way more hawkish against Russia and Ukraine when you have Germany and France. And Italy, too. I mean, Draghi, the prime minister, he's resigned. I mean, I guess he's still in power there as the caretaker prime minister until their next election. But he was interesting to see because he started off beginning of the war, can't negotiate with Putin, send him weapons, you know, all pro-Ukraine, supporting Ukraine.

And then he kind of changed his story and then started talking to Putin and calling for negotiations. And now we've seen, I'm not sure exactly why he had to resign in Italy. I'm not too familiar with the domestic politics. But I do know polling in Italy showed that supporting Ukraine, sending weapons to Ukraine was not popular. Most people were against it. Is that part of the fall of old Boris in the UK as well? I'm not sure because I know there was a few scandals I know a big thing was the COVID one but right now the front runners to be prime minister Liz Truss the foreign secretary and I forget

the other guy's name but I was just reading how he's very hawkish on Russia and Truss is I mean a huge hawk she has said some of the most reckless things since this war has started so judging by that it doesn't seem like it really was a big factor for Johnson who was probably one of the most hawkish NATO leaders during this whole thing. Yeah, she's the fool, right, that Lavrov tricked her into saying that she would never recognize, the UK would never recognize Russian sovereignty over to Russian provinces, that she, he just led her to believe we're in Ukraine somewhere, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Well, yeah, that's no good. But in a way, at least it's good. good he's being punished. So the solution of this then is really, are you telling me seriously? I talked about this with Kyle, too, that they're really going to give F-15s and F-16s

to Ukraine to fight with over there? Well, we don't know yet. I mean, they're talking about it. And the Air Force Chief of Staff said they're talking about it, and he sounded favorable of it. But, yeah, I mean, that would be such like a big long-term kind of commitment to Ukraine and a big escalation.

They would need to train Ukrainian pilots and they would have to send contractors, I would think, to Ukraine to maintain their air force fleet. So right now we don't know if they've decided to do it for sure, but they're talking about it. And Ukraine really wants it. And there's been a pretty, they sent Ukrainian pilots to Washington to lobby to send these planes. There's actually a good article in Vox about it that we ran about Ukraine's lobbying campaign. So the pressure's on and, you know, just how we've seen, everything continued to escalate. I wouldn't be surprised if they decide to do this.

But we still, only time will really tell it to see if this happens. Yeah, I don't know what kind of training it takes to fly an F-16. Again, it looks like a lot of fun. That's probably more fun than the F-18 or F-15, I think. The single engine sort of, I don't know. Anyway, but yeah, man, I know they could whoop an F-35 in a dog fight. But, yeah, the idea that you're just going to hand those over to these guys during this thing, that sounds like big talk. Let's, you know, let's you keep a close eye on that and let us know, Dave, of the progress with that.

But I don't like the sound of that. But also, I don't really believe that either, man. That just sounds so crazy. But I don't know. Now, so talk about Odessa getting a hit here. They had a deal. I interviewed Kyle about it on Friday. Hey, the Turks brokered a deal.

to get the grain out of there. And then the Russians bombed the place is the deal still on. What's the extent of the bombing? I know the New York Times, the first half of the article was tough, but the second half started raising, you know, points and nuances. What do you think? Well, so, yeah, I mean, it didn't look good that we saw Russia bomb Odessa the day after they signed this grain deal.

And then you had Zelensky, you know, he called it barbaric. He said it shows that they can't ever have talks with Russia. But Ukrainian military officials actually kind of downplayed it and said it didn't cause much damage. And it didn't hit any grain storage areas. And for Russia, for their side, they claim that it destroyed a stockpile of, they said it only hit military targets, which is what they always seem to say. But they said it only hit military targets, including a stockpile of U.S. provided harpoon anti-ship missiles that the U.S. that the U.S. and I believe the U.K. have been sending to Ukraine. And so their side of it, only military targets.

And then you see Ukraine kind of downplay it and say not much damage happen. And Ukraine's... Were people killed in the thing? Do you know? There wasn't any, no, any reports of casualties from either side. That's good. Yeah. So is there progress on the grain shipments at all then? So they're saying, Ukraine's saying that they're hoping to get the shipments.

moving this week. They said that today, a Monday. So it looks like the deal they're still going to try to go through with the deal. So hopefully, you know, it gets the grain moving. And there's also the other side of it of the deal that Russia signed with the UN was to facilitate the export of Russian grain that has been disrupted by U.S. and other Western sanctions. So, but all sides still seem, you know, even after that bombing, they seem ready to implement. implement it. And they set up this coordination center in Istanbul and in Turkey, where there's going to be Ukrainian, Russian, and UN officials overseeing the export of grain out of Ukraine's ports. So it looks like they're going to start getting those ships moving soon.

Yeah, I sure hope that's right. You know, I love the headline on the spotlight today at anti-war.com calling Putin Hitler to smear diplomacy as appeasement. when clearly it's Putin who's been appeasing the Americans all this time and finally quit it. Seems like we could afford to climb down a little bit. But as we record this here at the end of July, almost, it's April Glasby Day, July 25th. Yeah, it was this day in 1990 when April Glasby told Saddam Hussein, yeah, I don't know. If you invaded Kuwait and took the northern oil fields, we probably wouldn't do anything about it, you know.

So anyway, at the end of July here, that means that the war has been going on since February the 15th. And I know from time to time you call the State Department to make sure it's still right that our foreign minister, Anthony Blinken, has not spoken to the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, since then, since the 15th of February, about almost 10 days before the war began. Yep. Yeah, that's still the case. and what's really incredible about it is that I was looking back again and I forgot that so Russia invaded on the 24th and it was it was either the 22nd or the 23rd a day or two before when Putin recognized the independence of the Donbass republics which was the pretext for invading and Blinken had a meeting set with Lavrov that week and after Putin

recognized those republics Blinken canceled it with Lavrov instead of thinking oh I should probably try to do, see if there's anything I could possibly do to get them to not invade Ukraine and said he canceled it. So I think it really shows that that's, you know, diplomacy to the Biden administration. It's just non-existent. And he hasn't spoken with them. And they were at the G7, not G7, G20 summit in Indonesia recently and Blinken purposely avoided Lavrov. Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary. She did the same thing. She was at another G20 summit of finance ministers, and she also avoided the Russian side. So it's, you know, and this is why you have Turkey as the broker of these deals.

You know, the U.S., you know, has nothing to do with that deal that's going to get this grain moving again, hopefully, because they're just sitting, you know, they're just behind Ukraine. They're behind one side and just fueling the war instead of trying any sort of diplomacy. So you see these statements from Blinking. I mean, he said that Russia's strike on Odessa violated the grain deal. Well, you didn't have anything to do with that deal. He said that he's going to hold Russia accountable to make sure that they fulfill it. But it just doesn't really have any room really there to criticize when the U.S. has sat out of the diplomacy throughout this whole war.

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Imagine finding your great-grandfather's R-CMP records or discovering your ancestors' name in the UK and Ireland Nursing Register. Don't miss out. Free access ends August 24th. Visit Ancestry.ca for more details. Terms apply. Man, it's such a tough situation. I wonder, would you consider maybe call CIA, just the spokesman's office from the website, I guess, and just get a comment? Like, is there a national intelligence estimate that says that you guys assess with great confidence that if we just continue this war for another little while that some great result will happen or something like that?

I mean, they don't really think the government of Russia is going to go out of business. They don't really think that the Russian military, you know, some portion of which is at war right now. but they don't think that the rest of it is just going to disappear off the face of the earth or that they're going to, what, set Dagestan free or what the hell they think is going to happen here? Other than the Russians will have spent more on their defense budget this year than last. And everybody knows that's how Ronald Reagan licked them back in the day. So we're just going to, you know what I mean? Like, is it that's it?

Like, we just have a cliche here. We're just going to go with that. Is there a plan at all? Because the whole thing just seems crazy to me, man. I mean, obviously, I disapprove of our foreign policy all the way around, but the level of risk that they're taking here, when I just don't see even what they must think is the end that they're going for. As you mentioned previously, they say now that, oh, yeah, no, they're going to take Crimea back. Well, get the F out of here with this. What are we talking about here?

What are we even doing here? That's not going to happen. And they're just essentially, you know, essentially making the wide. file this claims in order I mean I'd like to say what to have something to climb down from but that doesn't sound like it it just sounds like to make sure that there is no reasonable negotiation as all

you know yes it's tough to know what their end game here is or even if there is one I mean it does just seem like they're trying to keep Russia in this quagmire I guess is is the goal I mean it

it must be something like that because they can't realistically think that Ukraine's actually going to, you know, push Russia out of Crimea, unless, you know, they're really planning. And we've seen Pentagon officials say this. I believe it was Kathleen Hicks, the deputy secretary of defense. She was quoted by Defense 1 saying that, you know, we're going to support Ukraine for years, decades to come. We're going to support their military after this war is over. So they are, I guess, envisioning that Ukraine is going to, there's going to be some kind of victory, or the conflict's going to be frozen in some way and that they're going to help Ukraine build

this huge military with U.S. and NATO equipment. That's what we've seen Stoltenberg say, the head of NATO. He's said that eventually we have to get them using our equipment so we can maintain it. So in their minds, I guess, they think that somehow this will lead to, you know, Ukraine just having this huge, military that can stop Russia, maybe, or just keep fighting Russia and keep killing Russians and just keeping Russia bogged down there. Maybe that's what they think is going to happen here, but it's really tough to say. Yeah. Well, I mean, it is. It's nuts. It's, you know, literally and figuratively. It's a bunch of weenies acting like tough guys when they're just in

no position to do it. Look at our economy right now. We need a great depression to save us from our great inflation, and they want to talk about remaking all of Eastern Europe, and at the expense of getting in a conflict with the H-bomb armed Russians, on what every American, if they're honest and admit, would say that, yes, it's true that one year ago they thought Ukraine was part of Russia anyway. Isn't it the Ukraine? Isn't that a region of Russia? Would have said everybody who ever heard of it at all in North America. Now you're telling me you're willing to get us all killed over where the border is. Get the hell out of here.

You know, I don't know. I can't believe that they think that they can just keep pushing this. And you know, I don't know if you saw this, but there's a right-wing America First guy. Sabatini, something like that. I know nothing else about him other than he was interviewed by Mark Levin,

the Radio Hawk from the Bush years, a washed up old fool. And he said, so what do you want to do about Russia? He said, nothing. We have problems here. We should leave that alone. We should just stay out of that. It was very kind of total.

He wasn't trying to say, let me explain to you some nuances of the situation. He was saying, man, we should butt out of that thing. And Levin says, oh, that's the most radical foreign policy I've ever heard in my whole life. Went and just, you know, retreating immediately back to the post-World War II consensus. Like nothing has changed since Levin helped lie us into the war in the Middle East and get two million people killed and discredit the empire that he thinks is beyond reproach or question ever. you know, and should be used at a moment's notice, even against Russia. But this guy was, you know, I guess in America first and decided this was his position.

He was sticking to it. I hope that really is a symbol of, you know, things to come here. Because on the face of it, this is completely crazy. This is not like fighting the Taliban. The Russians can fight back against us, you know? And people go, oh, no, because, well, we'd fight back against them too, so you just don't have to worry about it at all. But I think we do. And I think I prefer detente to brinksmanship.

And anyone but the damnedest fool would agree with that, you know? Yeah. And, you know, you talk about the America First guys, which is great to see them so good on Russia and Ukraine. And we are seeing that influence in the Republican Party. Hopefully, you know, leadership is still obviously very pro-supporting Ukraine, despite the risk of nuclear war. That doesn't seem to matter to them. But unfortunately, with a lot of the America firsters, they're all pretty bad on China. And right now we're seeing the U.S. really step up its kind of provocations against China

by sailing warships in the South China Sea through the Taiwan Strait. And now we have this report that Nancy Pelosi is planning to visit Taiwan next month, which would be a pretty major deal because she's the Speaker of the House. And that signals when you have such a high-level U.S. government official, visit Taiwan. The signal to China is that the U.S. doesn't respect or doesn't want to keep following the one China policy, which is the U.S. just recognizes Beijing as China and Taiwan, the U.S. doesn't have any formal relations with. China claims it as its own territory. And now, so we see this report that Pelosi is going to go. And now we see Biden and the Biden

administration, this is according to a Washington Post report from over the weekend. And they're apparently afraid that if Pelosi makes this trip, it could spark a major crisis across the Taiwan Strait. And it quoted all these administration officials saying, oh, we're trying to warn her not to go. We think China will view it as nothing but a purposeful provocation. And it's strange because they're acting like they couldn't stop the trip that Biden couldn't pressure Pelosi not to do this, which I find really hard to believe. so I wonder like if this is just an effort to get ahead of it if she does go and something happens that they're going to just try to blame it on Pelosi I guess I don't know but it's very strange yeah you're right that they can obviously just pick up a telephone and tell her they wanted to do

it or not and what the hell is with her she knows that no house speaker has been there since whenever and that that's for a reason you know and that it matters that it's a huge escalation if she goes and shows up over there of tension for no reason And then she goes, oh, yeah, no, they told me they're afraid that I'll get shot down. Come on. Nobody's saying that. You know, I don't know. Damn Democrats make me mad like I'll make sense in over here.

But yeah, I mean, there's really nothing, no purpose of this trip other than to, you know, stick it in China's face. That's what seems to be the MO now with U.S. policy towards China. and the last House Speaker to visit was Newt Gingrich in 25 years ago in 97. And, you know, it was a little different because he was a Republican and Clinton was in office. Now, you know, Pelosi represents the political party that's in power in the United States. And this idea that they have no control over her going, I think is pretty ridiculous. And this report, it said that they, oh, we don't think China will understand that Biden can't, just order her not to go.

Like, yeah, but he could definitely pressure her not to go. But we've seen more congressional delegations visiting Taiwan lately, and it's really angering China. And I think they're not sure exactly what they'll do if she goes, but they're going to do something. They're going to probably do some military drills very close to Taiwan, maybe launch some missile tests or something like that, because they're just not going to really take this anymore, it seems like. They're really stepping up their warnings. So we'll see what happens. But hopefully all this media attention on it will get the trip canceled.

And then you're going to see a lot of the Republicans in China Hawks, you know, accused Pelosi and the Biden administration of placating Beijing. I'm sure we'll see a lot of that because this is just supporting, doing all this in Taiwan is just as reckless as, you know, army Ukraine was for the past few years. So we're just going down a very similar path with Taiwan. Yeah. Well, we ran over the weekend, the great Peter Van Burence piece. And, you know, as a foreign service officer, that was his speciality, was Asia. And his piece was called Strategic Ambiguity Works. Could have been called Has Been Working. So everybody's shut up, you know, but basically, you know, the story is, and people don't know this. And it's not their

Well, you know what, TV ain't going to tell them. But America switched from recognizing Taiwan as the legitimate government of China, which had been, you know, de facto not true since 1949, finally recognized that in 1974. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger did that. And then in 1979, Carter kind of made it all official. And then Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act. And basically, it's a whole complicated thing.

A lot of people don't know anything about it. If you want to read, it's at the American Conservative magazine, Peter Van Buren there, the American Conservative.com. Or if you just click in the left-hand margin in anti-war.com, you'll see the last seven days there. So just click Saturday or Sunday, and it'll show up for you there in the viewpoint section. Anyway, you know, a big part of what he's saying is the Chinese have strategic patience on this issue. They could have invaded Hong Kong, but they didn't. They just waited till someday came, and then they got it back the easier way.

And how that's been their policy toward Taiwan is, yes, of course, we'll be reunified. But that there's a long time, as he puts it, there's a long time between, and, oh, he says, and they're not going to wait forever. But they also recognize there's a long time between now and forever. But then the problem is, especially if the Taiwanese are told, and this is his point, let's not give them strategic clarity. Let's not promise and give them a NATO-style war guarantee because then we'll have the same problem we have in Lithuania

where they start talking tough louder than we wish that they would. And in fact, by the way, I have to mention this. It's in the New York Times. You can find it for all you capitalist economists out there. You know this has a moral hazard on Wall Street. Well, it's the same thing here when the Lithuania, are being told no matter what fight you get in with Russia, we've got your back. And so you can find the exact words if it said deputy defense minister, good enough,

deputy defense minister in Lithuania saying, yeah, we would, the way he says is Russia wouldn't dare bomb us over what we're doing on closing this railway because we're members of NATO. And he says, but if we weren't members of NATO, yeah, they might. So in other words. Yeah, we promised to bail you out. Go ahead and make some bad loans. Same thing, right? So let's not promise Taiwan that no matter what fight you get in, we've got your back. Strategic ambiguity means, hey, China, we probably would fight you. You better not do it. But hey, Taiwan, we're not promising that we would fight for you. So you better not get us into a fight that we don't want. Right. And then, so I prefer just non-interventionism. But anyway, the point here being that if the

Taiwanese would keep their cool, and the Americans would not escalate on their side. Van Buren believes that the Chinese have every reason to let things maintain essentially the status quo for the medium term or indefinite future. Let's just not change the balance there the way that we're doing. And then what are we talking about? Dumb-ass money-making house speaker, no-nothing idiot, you know, placeholder speaker, been there for a generation, but not known as the champion. champion of any particular policy that's wise or good or a knowledgeable speaker about any issue or any kind of thing, right? Nancy Pelosi, she's just a bum. You read this story last week about her husband cashed in on subsidies to invidia and all of this stuff. That's all she's ever been,

you know, as a cheat. What the hell does she know about Taiwan policy other than that she should just stay out of it, you know? But anyway, I'm just ranting. But that's the kind of danger these guys are playing with. They got enough nukes to destroy every major city in America. Only two or 300 nukes. That's enough. You say we get Beijing and Wuhan too. Well, that's some consolation if we're all dead. Yeah. And like I mentioned before, that there's been a lot of congressional delegations going to Taiwan. And one of the senators that recently visited earlier in July, Rick Scott, he is a, he's a Republican from Florida, but he introduced a piece of legislation last year. So it's not in this current session of the Congress, but he introduced

a bill called the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act. And this bill would give the president war powers to intervene if China attacked Taiwan. And it's not, it didn't get much traction. It didn't get much support. Right now, it's still a pretty fringe idea to give war powers to Biden, to go to war with China. But we're seeing this kind of build momentum. So he visited there and met with the Taiwanese president who thanked him for introducing that bill. So, like, how does that look to China? China responded to his visit by flying a few planes across the median line that separates the two sides of the Taiwan straight. So that's kind of the type of responses that we've been seeing from them lately.

But I think with Pelosi, they'll probably step it up. But we've also seen a Democrat, Elaine Luria, is her name. She's a house rep from Virginia. She represents the Norfolk area where there's all these shipyards and naval, the biggest Navy base. And she is in favor of giving Biden these war powers to attack Taiwan. She's written to fight China if they attack Taiwan. She's written in the Washington Post, you know, pushing for this idea. So this is growing.

We've seen other Republicans introduce bills to give Taiwan. They want to start giving Taiwan, you know, billions in military 80. each year. So this is just the direction that we're going with Taiwan. And again, it's just more provocation towards a nuclear power really for no good reason other than to try to counter them. And they think that this could just affect China in a way, I guess, that would reduce their influence in the area maybe. I'm not sure exactly what their thought is on this. But to me, it just seems like a useless provocation. All right.

Tell me about that scary old Ayatollah. How stands the negotiations over the JCPOA and all that? Oh, well. And how many scientists has Israel assassinated lately? Well, it's tough to say. What it seems like, it's a lot. I mean, the talks have been stalled for a while now. They held talks in Doha recently, but that didn't really go anywhere.

and Iran has dropped their demand to lift the designation of their Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, the Trump administration designated them as a foreign terror organization. And Iran wanted that lifted as part of this revival of the Iran nuclear deal, but they dropped that demand, but the U.S. is still not willing to lift the sanctions that Iran wants to revive the deal. That's really what's happening here. The Biden administration's excuses that, oh, we don't want to live sanctions that aren't nuclear-related or don't give Iran the benefits that the JCPOA was supposed to give. But you had Trump, after he pulled out of the deal in 2018, just imposed all these crazy sanctions on Iran,

just sanction after sanction. And in the last few weeks of the Trump administration, after Biden was elected, Elliot Abrams, the neocon, who was his pointman on Iran towards the end there, and he was also running his Venezuela policy. He said, oh, it was in November right after Biden won. Abrams said, oh, we're just going to start just throwing all these sanctions on so it prevents the next administration from rejoining the deal, which is what seemed to happen is Abram's strategy seemed to work. And like you said, there's been a lot of Israeli attacks inside Iran lately. It's tough to know, there's been a lot of mysterious deaths. It's tough to know exactly how many Israel was responsible for, but there was

an IRGC colonel who was gunned down in Tehran that the U.S. officials were actually, it was an unknown official leak to the New York Times that Israel told the U.S. said it was responsible for that one. Iran suspects that Israel was also behind the poisoning of two scientists who were poisoned and died in early June. And there's been others. a young Iranian engineer was killed in a drone attack on a facility outside of Tehran. And we've seen Israel launch similar attacks inside Iran. So that's why they're suspected of that. But again, we don't know for sure.

And there's been other deaths. I mean, six, seven, eight people have died that were IRGC or affiliated with the IRGC in some, some of them just in a vague way, like they worked in an industry in like Iran's military industrial industries and they've been dying. So Israel is the prime suspect because they have a history of doing these attacks. And they have a history of doing them as a way to sabotage diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran. So it seems like they might have stepped this up to kind of kill the talks for good, to kill the JCPOA talks for good. Yeah. Man, they should have had this done by now. It's just ridiculous. Can you tell me, are there any real sticking points to the

deal of any substance or it's i mean there must be some you know detail they want a sunset here or a higher number of frozen centrifuges there or what the hell is it no i haven't heard anything like that it seems like it's all uh the u s saying that iran is asking for more sanctions relief and then and that's it it's too much sanctions really and also it could be that they want a guarantee iran wants a guarantee that the u.s won't pull out of the deal right And then they already concede that that they already know that that's BS anyway. They only want to promise that Biden won't pull out of the deal for the rest of his thing, I thought Kyle said, right?

Yeah, yeah. I just saw an Iranian official say that again today, so I don't know what they mean exactly. But, yeah, it's, and Biden, and during the first round in negotiations when they first started last year, Trita Parsi reported for Responsible Statecraft that all Biden had to do was say, I won't pull out of the deal during my term. office and he wouldn't do it. So it shows that to me that I think they've just been stalling this whole time and that they don't have any intention of reviving this deal. Yeah. Yeah, what a disaster, man. And then they complain. They go, oh, look, Putin goes to Iran and make friends

with the Ayatollah. Well, you know what? They have a lot of interests apart. You know, they're not historical allies. And yet they have something in common. What could it be, Dave? I don't know. Same thing with China and Russia. All right, well, it's a hell of a thing, but I'm sure I'm glad you're writing about it. And it is, I remember you right here, you said 7,000-something articles now for anti-war.com already, huh? No, over 3,000.

Sorry. Seven was Justin. But that took him 20 years, kids, so it's okay. Yeah, yeah, he was writing. And he was only doing three a week, but, you know. Yeah. That's different. But no, you're doing a great job, man,

and we sure are happy to have you. go ahead what are you going to say i was just going to say yeah if people like you know uh your show like it when i come on then they'll definitely like the new podcast just kind of daily updates for me on the news and they could subscribe to the youtube channel odyssey and download it you know on it iTunes Spotify wherever you listen to podcasts hell yeah man uh congratulations and you're doing a great job and so keep it up thanks scott thanks for having me back too oh yeah and all you guys subscribe to anti-war news it's on your phone the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a psradyo dot com antiwar dot com scothorton dot org and libertarian institute dot org