Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/10/23 Ted Snider on the Polish-Belarussian Tension

Episode Date: August 13, 2023

Ted Snider joined Scott on Antiwar Radio this week to talk about some concerning developments in Eastern Europe. They start with the tensions on the Polish-Belarus border where forces have been building up since Wagner forces moved in after the Prigozhin ordeal. Snider goes over what’s happening and what it might mean. They then talk about the Neo-Nazi compound in Maine whose leader claims to be training forces to go fight in Ukraine. They finish with some of the disheartening language we’re hearing about the backchannel talks between U.S. and Russian officials. Discussed on the show: “The Poland-Belarus border is becoming a tinderbox” (Responsible Statecraft) “A neo-Nazi is building a compound in rural Maine for his ‘Blood Tribe’” (Forward) “American Neo-Nazi Training Forces in Maine to Fight for Ukraine” (Libertarian Institute) Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in U.S. foreign policy and history. He is a regular writer for Truthout, MondoWeiss and antiwar.com. 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

For Pacifica Radio, August the 10th, 2003, I'm Scott Horton. This 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

and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And you can follow me on Twitter, or whatever you call it, if you dare, at Scott Horton's show. All right, so welcoming back to the show, the great Ted Snyder, he writes for us at anti-war.com, because he writes such great stuff. Only I'm a little jealous. This one is for responsible.

statecraft. It's called the Poland-Belarus border is becoming a Tinderbox. I don't want to know that, but that's why you're here. Welcome, Ted. How are you, sir? I'm good, Scott. How are you? I'm doing good. So tell me the bad news here about Poland and Belarus. Well, the bad news is that the situation is really tense on the Poland-Bel-Russian border. And Poland's a NATO member. So So that's always really, really scary. So what's kind of happening is that one of the biggest dangers of this war, aside from horrible loss of, you know, life and everything in Ukraine, has been the escalation of the war and that, you know, it could go nuclear or it could become, you know, a NATO-Russia war or a World War III.

And Biden's been really, really clear. He's repeated a number of times that we will not fight the third world war in Ukraine. And although that's so far worked, you know, there's. this danger of this all going really wrong, not on the Russian Ukraine border, but on the Poland-Belarusian border, where you've got the Russian Wagner forces that have just been exiled from Russia into Belarus, and they're massing on the Belarusian side of the border, and there's Polish troops massing on their side of the border, and that's a very tense, dangerous situation. And no one really knows for sure whether these are, you know, threats that

could actually happen or the two countries are kind of posturing to act as a deterrent from the other one getting more involved. But when you've got two, you know, two sides pointing guns across each other at a border during the fog of war, it's a dangerous situation. And of course, the danger is if, you know, if Poland gets attacked or Poland gets drawn in, then Poland can invoke Article 5 and, you know, we could end up with a NATO-Russia war. We could end up with World War III. Yeah. I believe it was in your piece.

You said that the border guards there asked for a thousand more men and the government gave him too. Is that right? Yeah. So when I wrote the piece, the number was 1,000, you know, when I wrote the piece and the concern there was Poland was saying that they're worried that

if you've got these Wagner troops on the border, that some of them could slip across the border in disguise just as, you know, Belarusian immigrants and infiltrate into Poland where they could do sort of provocative actions. And the border guard asked Warsaw

for a thousand more troops than the New York Times reported yesterday that Warsaw's actually doubled that. And within the next couple weeks, they're going respond by sending 2,000 more troops. And there's already a massive troop buildup. So it's just not a good situation. It's anti-war radio talking with Ted Snyder here. And as you said, hey, look, probably the poll's idea is, hey, they just want to build up a defensive force in order to make sure now that all these Wagner guys are now in Belarus after their failed little mini

push there against the military leadership in Russia. Hey, we're just being safe. But of course, from the other side of the border looks like a buildup and so it's the same on both sides. You know, the Americans swore from the time of Obama through Trump and into Biden that all the weapons they were giving Ukraine were only defensive

except that's what provoked the war. So what the hell? And Scott, neither side knows whether the other is serious or not. So you've got Alexander Lukashenko going very publicly on TV saying that the Wagner forces are itchy to go into Poland. And on the other hand, you've got the worry that Poland could capitalize on an alleged

Russian aggression to attack into Belarus. So you've got, you know, both sides worry the other side is going to attack in. And the thing is got that the stakes are high for two reasons. One is that Putin's taking it seriously. And whether it's because Putin's really afraid of it or whether he's giving a warning, nobody knows. But he took the very unusual. usual step of going like onto television very publicly and making it clearly known that he would consider a Polish attack on Belarus to be an attack on the Russian Federation. And he said, and I'm quoting, we will respond to that with all the resources available to us. And he called what Poland was doing an extremely dangerous game. So so here's Putin saying that if Poland were

to go into Belarus, that would draw a response from Poland. from Russia against Poland, which could trigger a NATO war. And so that's a really dangerous thing, right? And it's not just hypothetical, Scott, because there's already been a couple of events. Poland has accused Belarus of redeploying the Wagner forces specifically to destabilize NATO's eastern flank. And they've said that their response to that's going to be to, you know, massively deploy troops to the border. And just, I guess, was a week and a half ago now, the beginning of August,

Poland actually accused Belarus of crossing their border with military helicopters, like an airspace violation. And in response, they rushed more troops to the border. And they sent combat helicopters to the border, too. Very tense. Belarus says they didn't violate the border, and they've counter-accused Poland of fabricating the incident to justify this buildup. But you've already got this one kind of claim of an incursion. And then as you said, there's the buildup on the border with fear of, you know, wagger people, you know, infiltrating coming in. Now, I should say so I've got that as scary as this is, when I speak to people who are really expert on the situation, the consensus seems to be that they find it hard to believe that

either side would have the audacity to be the one that attacks first, that the evidence that we have so far, I'm told, which is very limited, is that Wagner forces would be very unlikely to strike into Polish territory unprovoked. I think it's important to remember that as much as Biden has said he wants to avoid a NATO-Russia war, Putin's also been very careful to avoid a NATO-Russian war, and he's not going to be looking to just let somebody slip into Poland. and start a much bigger war. The second thing is that this would not be popular for NATO. NATO doesn't want to get drawn in,

and it would be very unlikely that sort of Poland would go rogue and defy the other NATO countries and just go in on their own. And the third reason is that it's highly unlikely that Poland would go behind the U.S. back and do this without U.S. permission. If something of this were going to happen, it would probably be more likely, be U.S. call. So, Scott, that raises the question that if it's not likely to happen, then what exactly is going on? And one possibility that is that we don't know that maybe one of

the sides is considering something. But the other one is that they're both just sending a really strong message, that Poland is building up the troops as a deterrent to really warn Russia and Belarus that you better not expand this war, you know, by bringing Belarus in. And on the other hand that Putin is very publicly warning NATO that they had better not escalate by moving into Belarus. So on the one end, you might have one side, you know, trying to keep Belarus in Belarus and the other side trying to keep Poland and NATO from getting more involved in the war. So either way, there's something very provocative going here or some very strong messages of deterrence because the other sides are both afraid. And so either way, it shows how serious

the fear is on both sides of escalation on the border. Right. Well, and look, I think the Occam's razor's simplest explanation there, Ted, that everybody's just trying to be extra defensive and careful is the easiest explanation for it, but the point is that it's the same difference. It works the same way, and it can be seen as being just as provocative by each side, too. And it's funny, too, about these alliances, you know, Article 5, the way the thing is written, it doesn't say, hey, by the way, you know, if a NATO country starts a war, then that doesn't count, right? Like, if you go, if Poland hits Belarus first, then Article 5 is canceled. And it's also worth pointing out because there's a whole mythology about this.

People should read the treaty. If a NATO member is attacked, then all of the member states are obliged to figure out what they think they might want to do about that. I'm roughly paraphrasing, but it does not say we must go to war. And, of course, they don't have the authority to decide that for the U.S. Congress anyway. Right. Well, I think that's being debated right now. I think you probably know more than I do, but there's some debate right now in Congress about whether Article 5 would override Congress or Congress go out of RFF.

But that's not something I know very much about. Well, in fact, let me say real quick that Rand Paul, the senator, tried to pass a resolution saying, Just because something happens here, this treaty does not override the Constitution. And everybody else shouted him down, but their argument was that, of course, it doesn't. And we don't even need a resolution to say that or remind anyone of that. That, of course, the responsibility would still be on Congress to authorize war. Now, they'd never declare war again. They authorized the president to decide.

But it's a, you know, it's a dangerous situation because whether this is just meant to be, a deterrent or not. As one very knowledgeable person I spoke to said, you know, Poland has been incredibly hawkish within NATO with regards to this war. And he was saying, you know, the other NATO members are going to be very careful not to get dragged in further because it's not clear that Poland and Ukraine don't want to drag NATO in. I mean, some scholars think that Ukraine's intention or hope all along is that they can draw. NATO in. And Poland's been one of the most assertive proponents of getting Ukraine into NATO. And they've also one of the most assertive proponents of getting NATO more involved in the war. I mean, it was Poland

that first really pushed hard for tanks and pushed really hard for fighter jets. And you know, the thing is with Poland trying to get Ukraine into NATO and that being frustrated, Ukraine's not in NATO after that last NATO summit. And with Poland trying to get NATO more involved, so that Ukraine can win the war and the chances of winning the war are getting fainter and fainter, then there's this fear that maybe Poland would try something more direct to draw, you know, Ukraine into NATO or NATO into Ukraine. And, you know, one way they could try to draw Ukraine into NATO would be, and again, this is at the level of speculation and rumor, but, you know, there's people saying that, you know,

Poland and Ukraine could make a joint force in Western Ukraine. And then when Russia attacked Ukraine, so facto be attacking Poland. And Poland could call Article 5 and draw NATO in that way. Or even, and this is something that Putin and Lukashenko have talked about, and there's a lot of kind of buzz among us amongst analysts, but nothing, nothing at all. And anywhere near the level of official is the possibility there's been talks of Poland and Western Ukraine, if Western Ukraine is all that survival.

lives the war, of, you know, forming some kind of union or association and then trying to draw Ukraine into NATO that way by saying, you know, Poland's part of NATO and now Ukraine and Poland have this association. So Ukraine's part of NATO. But, you know, again, it's very unlikely that NATO would allow Ukraine to be indirectly drawn in that way. But Poland's been very hawkish. And so this build up on the border, it's scary. And Scott, suppose it is deterrent. Even if it is deterrent, that means it's because both sides are afraid of the other. I mean, if Poland's trying to deter the Wagner forces,

that means they're afraid the Wagner forces might come in. And if Lukashenko's deploying the Wagner forces on the border, it's because he's afraid that Poland might take advantage of kind of false flag or fabrication to attack. So you get these kind of itchy troops, mastered the border during the confusion of fog of war, where mistakes can happen and miscommunications can happen. And you just don't want that border to be militarized and armed like that when, you know, behind Poland and Belarus is NATO and Russia.

And that's exactly what everybody's trying to avoid. Well, in Belarus, aside, Ted, isn't it right? I mean, there's a danger here. There's been kind of rumors of irregularies anyway, but, you know, and it's. In there a danger that Polish troops might just intervene on the side of Ukraine against Russia? So there's, of course, been talk about this. And I think you need to look at this in a couple of different ways. One is, I'm not a military analyst got.

I don't have access to this stuff. I don't even know what I'm talking about. Military analysts say, though, if you listen to the chatter and stuff over intercepts and stuff like that, you hear a lot of Polish spoken and Putin I believe I may have the number wrong Scott because this is at the top of my head but Putin at different times has claimed I think that perhaps as many as 15,000 um Polish mercenaries under the I think he said under the direction of Polish intelligence or in the war so there's there's there's been talk of a lot of Polish soldiers um you know being being in the war already and

And there's certainly been talk about Poland preparing to do what maybe now is not prepared to do. And that's to step in and fight on the Ukrainian side if it becomes clear that Ukraine is what actually about to lose. Or possibly even step in and occupy Western Ukraine if that is about to lose. What Putin seems to be fine with, by the way. I mean, Putin's kind of said, if you want Western Ukraine after the war. take it. Lukashenko has suggested that he's not okay with Netto budding up his border like that, but it's hard to know again what if this is posturing and what if this is policy. But, but yes, certainly there are already fears that Poland is over-involved in the war.

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M in L.A. All right. Now, back to my great guest. It's Ted Snyder from anti-war.com and the Institute. And Ted, I got to tell you a story here, ma'am. I was on the Twitter yesterday, as I am often want to do. And David Beard, who used to be a Washington Post reporter. I'm not sure what happened to him, but he's still on Twitter. Decent guy. And he tweeted this article out from the forward. That's the Jewish Daily Forward. And it's about this group of American neo-Nazis up in Maine. And there's been a real rise in, you know, white supremacist groups in America and somewhat in their violence. I don't know about all the statistics. I know it's definitely a major moral panic on the liberal left in this country is the rise of groups like

this. I think there is some danger there. We've seen that, although some of it's just polos and khakis and nerds with tiki torches, which is not so threatening. But, um, you know, These guys certainly are. It's this training camp up in Maine. And get this, man. I was just joshing around on Twitter. And I said, hey, are these guys going to go and fight on the eastern front with the Azov Battalion and C-14 in Ukraine? And what happened was, first of all, a friend of mine who's a reporter who really knows all about this,

he linked to an article in The Intercept about these guys where they said that that was their goal, all right? But then even better, the actual Nazi in question, his name is Polehouse, he responded to my tweet and said, yes, actually. And he used the emoji of the like warm, smiley face with the three little hearts. And so Kyle Anzalone at the Institute, our good friend, wrote up this piece. It's called American neo-Nazi training forces in Maine to fight for Ukraine. And he went and found even more evidence of this as well. And so this just, to me, ought to be the hugest of wake-up calls to the American, you know, moderates and liberal Democrats and then especially to progressives and anyone to the left of them that no matter how many times you heard that this was Russian propaganda, it's true that you have extremely large numbers of very far radical right-wing forces. white supremacist, Nazi groups in Ukraine,

many of them the direct descendants of those who served Hitler in the Second World War. And you got Americans going to join them and have been ever since 2014, but this group right now, the same group featured in the forward yesterday, wants to go fight for Joe Biden in Ukraine tomorrow. Yeah.

And even if the numbers, even if the actual numbers in Ukraine aren't so high, the power that they wield, as Zelensky found out when he tried to make peace with Russian nationals and the Donbass, the power's extreme. Wait, tell us those stories, would you? Because I think most people don't know about that. Well, you know, in the Minsk agreements

when, you know, there was a real chance for peace by allowing the Donbass to stay in Ukraine, but providing it with a high degree of autonomy that would, you know, let them be more or less, within Ukraine but self-ruling and protect the Russian nationalists. And Zelensky got elected in large part on a platform of making peace with Russia and signing the Minsk Accords, but he faced unbelievable resistance from the nationalist movement in Ukraine to the extent that there's no way he could have gone ahead with his promises

without support from especially the U.S., but also from France and Germany, who were the co-signers of the Minsk Accords. And the states didn't pressure or back him at all. They left him to hang. The nationalist, you know, threatened and overpowered him, and Zelensky had to back down. There's an argument, Scott, that this war never would have happened

if it hadn't been for the disproportionate power of the nationals in Ukraine, derailing Zelensky. And not just Zelensky, there's a famous quotation in Ukraine. And I don't have the top of the heck because I know we were talking about, but there's a famous quotation from a former, you know, Ukrainian official who says that every Ukrainian president comes to power intending, you know, to be the one to make peace with the Donbasson. Within a couple of weeks, the nationalists have turned every one of them

into a, you know, a far-right nationalist that opposes the Russians. And Scott, one of the reasons is interesting in the story we were talking about before, too, is that is that the only people that these ultra-right-wing nationalists hate more than the Russians or as much as the Russians has historically been the Poles.

And that's one of the problems with this whole sort of Polish-Ukrainian cooperation is that there's actually, there's a very public facade in the world right now that Poland is Ukrainian's very, very, very best friend. But behind that

facade, there's massive trouble. And one of the trouble is that the same nationalists who don't want to be part of Russia don't want to be part of Poland. And the other thing is that the Poles are very mad at Ukraine for glorifying this history still. When Ukraine glorifies Stephen Bandera, the polls are very quick to remind them that as a right-wing nationalist militant, And he didn't just kill Jews and Russians. He killed Poles. Yeah, that's why it's not Poland anymore. It's because he killed 50,000 of them or something and drove them out.

Well, it was twice that. I mean, in January, a Polish official reminded Ukraine that when they continue to glorify national leaders like Steppen Bandera, he said that these guys were responsible for a genocide of the Poles in World War II. And he said they killed 100,000 Polish citizens. And Scott, recently the Polish parliament actually adopted a resolution saying that reconciliation between Poland and Ukraine is conditional on Ukraine recognizing the guilt of a genocide of the Poles. And so this is actually kind of exploded recently, too, because there's been this kind of blow up between Poland and Ukraine because Ukraine's very mad at Poland for controlling how much Ukrainian can grain. can go through and they got mad. And a Polish official took to the television and screamed at Ukraine that they need to be more

grateful to Poland for the help they've given. Ukraine got mad and called the Polish ambassador in and the Polish president said that was a huge mistake. You never should have done that. So there's behind the sort of public facade, there's very deep problems between Poland and Ukraine while Poland's massing on the Belarusian border to help Ukraine. Behind the scenes, there's also very big rifts between Poland and Ukraine. Well, you know, that's how Bandera got his start was assassinating anybody who was trying to make peace.

That's kind of their way. So listen, and as you were referring to with the threats against Zelensky and Poroshenko before him, they said, look, we overthrew the last government, we'll overthrow you. And then when it came to Zelensky, it was Beletsky, the leader of the Aza Battalion said, oh, if he tries to implement Minsk, too, he'll be hanging from a lamp post on, I forgot how to pronounce it, but it's the main drag in Kiev. Yeah. Yeah. And as the New York Times said, that's a credible threat. That's not like some redneck in Alabama threatens Biden. Yeah, right. He's not getting anywhere near Biden. The New York Times said, hey, when the Nazis threaten the president of Ukraine, he's really got to take that into account, you know, because he has entire divisions of them in his military and stuff like that. Anyway, I'm sorry, very less subject here. And very quickly, we have to wrap up. But NBC and then the Moscow Times both ran stories about these. back-channel civilian talks going on to try to keep the war on the rails and from going off them. But then there's still crazy talk of regime change, even from, I guess, it must be Richard Haas, blab into the Moscow Times there. Can you tell us your most important point about what you've learned there? Yeah, it was very strange. There was this talk of these sort of back-channel talks

between former U.S. officials and people close to the Kremlin. It turns out that these talks are ongoing and frequent, maybe in terms of a couple times a month, and that it may actually with very high-ranking members of the Kremlin, and you get these American former officials saying that they're saying a lot of people find closed doors that aren't said publicly, like, we do need to respect Russia's security concerns, and maybe we were partly responsible for the bad relations, and all the things that you kind of are glad to hear, but then sort of like, very, very sort of end of it, you get this sort of scary. And again, you know, these guys are talking to the state. They're not American officials. This is not sanctioned. They do report

apparently what's happened to White House, but saying that, you know, Putin's the one that's really the roadblock and that they need to be, you know, talking to sort of other people. And if they get, you know, the right kind of response, then, you know, regime change could be a possibility. And so you get this weird behind doors talk that, that the idea of regime change is still on the border. The line they said was that they should begin reaching out to anti-war Russian elite and begin making progress with them. And if they find fertile soil, then, quote, ousting Putin would not be impossible. And this is the guy doing the negotiations. Yeah.

Now, they're not saying that to the Russian, I assume. But, but, and again. Only to the Moscow Times. I'm sure they don't read that at the Kremlin, you know. And again, this is not, don't get me wrong. This is not anything official U.S. The U.S. says they're not sponsoring these back channel talks, but these what they're called these 1.5 back channel talks where you get like unofficial Americans and official Russians talking. And a lot of what they're talking about seems really, really positive. And then the guy comes out and says that, you know, we should begin talking. And he said, ousting Putin would not be impossible. So it was just kind of shocking to me to see at the end of this thing that at this unofficial level, the idea of regime change is still something that is being talked about or explored. Again, not officially. These are. These are former officials, but very, very strange stuff.

Yeah. All right, you guys, that's the great Ted Snyder. He's at anti-war.com and over at the Institute as well. Thank you so much for your time, Ted. Thanks so much for having you, Scott. It was great. All right, you guys, that's been Anti-War Radio for today. I'm your host, Scott Horton.

Find the full interview archive at Scott Horton.org and follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. And I'm here every Thursday from 230 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. stop by kpfk.org and support too. And thank you.