Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/13/22 Kyle Anzalone on the Week’s Biggest Foreign Policy News Stories

Episode Date: August 17, 2022

Kyle Anzalone of the Libertarian Institute and Antiwar.com was back on Antiwar Radio on Sunday to run through all the biggest news stories taking place this week. He and Scott talk about Kosovo, Crimea, NATO expansion, Kaliningrad, Ukrainian grain, New START and Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.  Discussed on the show: Antiwar.com News Libertarian Institute News  Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter. Follow him on Twitter @KyleAnzalone_ 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; and Thc Hemp Spot. 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

For Pacifica Radio, August the 14th, 2022, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com and editor of the new book. hotter than the sun time to abolish nuclear weapons you can find my full interview archive more than 5,700 of them now going back to 2003 sign up for the podcast speed and all that at scott horton.org or at youtube.com slash scott horton show and you can follow me on twitter at scott horton's show all right today's guest is antiwar dot com's opinion editor kyle an zloan

Welcome back to the show, Kyle. How are you doing? Very good. Scott. Thanks for me back on. I really appreciate you joining us on the show today. And people can find your podcast, conflicts of interest on the blog at anti-war.com slash blog as well, which is very important and great stuff all the time. Conflicts of interest. And we have a lot to discuss. Let's start with the Russia-Ukraine war. Can we start with the blowback in Serbia and? Kosovo, Kyle? What's going on there? So there are some tensions increasing in Kosovo. And the Kosovo government is warning that those could boil over and lead to a new war with Serbia. It doesn't seem like

things have gotten that extreme at this point. But, you know, that we're getting these warnings from the government of Kosovo is concerning. And I thought worth noting I had that in my news round up this week. So, yeah, but as far as I don't have too many details on what's going on there. And I don't think there's any particular escalations on the ground that's causing any conflict or death. It's just more rhetoric going on and potential policies being passed that the Kosovo government's concerned about.

And can you talk a little bit about that, what the Serbs are doing to provoke this or vice versa the other way around? The only thing that the Kosovo government mentioned in this statement was there's some increasing tensions over them attempting to force Serbs living in northern Kosovo to use license plates issued by the Kosovo government. And the leader said that, you know, we're not worried about war in the coming days or weeds or anything like that. But, you know, sometime in the near future, the rising tensions could create a conflict. but it doesn't seem like there's any major escalations here. He's just warning that the tensions are increasing. Well, all right.

It's good to know they haven't boiled over yet there. Well, and just for the record, the Serbs are a client state of the Russians and the Kosovars. Right. Client state of America since 1999. So that's why it's so important here in regards to the war in Ukraine. But now, so can you talk about the explosion in Crimea? It seems like they're conflicting reports out of there about exactly. what has happened, but also what it all means.

Yeah, so this has been a big story this week. There was a pretty large explosion at a Russian base in Crimea. Crimea is the peninsula that hangs off the bottom of Ukraine and was annexed by Russia in 2014. And Russia has invested billions in infrastructure in the Crimea Peninsula. And a lot of analysts, not just, you know, anti-war or realists, but even a lot of foreign policy experts, kind of right. recognize that, you know, at this point, Crimea is a part of Russia in a de facto sense.

But throughout the war, the Ukrainian president Zelensky has continued to insist that, you know, Ukraine will take this bat, that this is a part of Ukrainian territory. And the U.S. in the past, Swedes has kind of signaled that, you know, it recognizes Crimea as Ukrainian territory. And the only limits on using American weapons is, you know, not to use. it on Russian territory. And so it would seem to signal that they were saying that attacks on Crimea were within play. And so then you had this large explosion. There's actually some videos you could see of some beachgoers recording it. I believe it was before that this attack

happened actually. You top Ukrainian official warned Russians, you know, Russian people, not from Crimea, but from the rest of Russia, dome vacation. Crimea this summer. And so, you know, maybe that signal that they knew that this attack was happening or something like that. Now, from the Russian side, the Kremlin has downplayed it and suggested it was an accident. There's reports that only one person died, which from the size of the explosion seems to be a small casualty. Now, the Ukrainian government denied it. However, there were unnamed officials who did claim Ukrainian government officials who did claim that Ukraine was behind this attack. And interesting, this really seemed to upset Vladimir Zelensky because later in the day he was given his nightly address.

And he claimed that it was frankly irresponsible for Ukrainian officials to be discussing defense plans. And he said, war is definitely not the time for vanity and loud statements. And so, you know, I think this is maybe the first time. I've really heard this coming from the Ukrainian government. There's been a lot of leads about discussions. One official tweeted that Ukraine was working with the U.S. to develop a plan to use harpoon missiles to sink the Russian Black Sea Fleet. fleet, C. Blat C fleet. And so there's, you know, a lot that the Ukrainian government has put out so far already, but now Zelensky says it's gone too far. And it happening the day after

the day, yeah, the day after this attack in Crimea, makes me think that this is probably what he was referring to. What do you make of the Ukrainian government claiming that there were goals include the, quote, liberation of all of Crimea? I mean, everybody in the world knows that that is not going to happen. That ship sailed so long ago. I mean, after the regime falls in Moscow, maybe. But, yeah, in other words, it's not going to happen. Yeah, I mean, it seems to me that at least Zelensky, rhetorically, has just adopted that, you know, he has,

Ukraine is going to retake everything. And he's just unwilling to walk back from that. I'm not sure if that was a mistake or if, if, you know, maybe it's a very calculated PR decision within, like, the Ukrainian government that they're going to, you know, take this very, you know, far-reaching position to, like, rally forces or something like that. I don't know. But I believe it was in March that the Russian foreign minister Labrov said that Ukraine had offered a workable proposal. And certainly, Ukraine didn't offer a proposal that said that Russian.

has to get back Crimea and then Lavrov later referred to it as workable. So, you know, I think that this is probably the rhetorical position of Zelensky, but I'm not sure if it's actually the, if you Ukraine really thinks they're going to take back Crimea. Yeah. I mean, they couldn't possibly really think that. The question is, you know, why they want to draw the line so broadly, you know, how about just focus on keeping everything? west of the Donbass. Can they, you know, focus on that maybe, you know?

Right. And it's interesting coming from Zelensky, who again said, war is definitely not the time for bandy and loud statements as, you know, he's on the cover of Vogue magazine and, you know, saying we're going to tape back all of Crimea that seems to be, you know, vain and loud statements. But this is the detail that, you know, the kind of leadership that we've seen from Zelensky, I think.

he's far more an actor. And if you see a movie, Scott, the, you know, when he's rallying the troops, he doesn't say, well, we're going to take back half the country. You know, the leader says we're going to completely banquish the enemy. And so, you know, maybe that's kind of why Zelensky makes these kind of statements. Yeah. All right. Now, talking with Kyle Anzalone from anti-war.com, Kyle, can you tell us about these high mars, these improved weapons that the Americans have been sending. I know that almost daily there's announcements of more weapons and more money going there. Who could keep up with that? But do you know of any real difference that these supposedly better long-range artillery pieces are making on the battlefield there?

Well, you know, it's hard to tell because you'll hear or get the reports from the analysts. The Ukrainian government will say something like, oh, they're making a difference on the battlefield. I think the U.S. claims they've shipped 16 so far, and about a month ago, when the U.S. had 8 or 12 in Ukraine, they were claiming that Russia hadn't destroyed a single one of them. Russia's claimed to have destroyed four or five sits maybe now, but it's exactly unclear if any of them have actually been destroyed. They have a range of 50 miles, so it is, I guess, possible that those were used in the attack on Crimea, although I believe the official who said Ukraine was behind that attack actually

said that they were, that it was a sabotage. It wasn't like a Heimera situation. Now, I believe that they say that they're being used to disrupt Russian supply lines, particularly in the areas north of the Crimean Peninsula in southern Ukraine. You know, it's very hard to actually tell what's going on on the ground, Scott, what's actually making the difference. But it doesn't seem that Ukraine's taking any territory bad, so how much of a difference could it be making, I think, is a fair question to ask. There's been a couple reports that seem to be true of Russian ammo dumps and things like that being

destroyed. And it's possible that, you know, either those are the, I think the British are sending the M270 rocket launchers with, again, a range of 50 miles. Now, the U.S. earlier this week announced a $1 billion weapons transfer to Ukraine that included more of those 50-mile range rockets for the Heimros. All right. Now, it's anti-war radio here on KPFK, 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, and it's fun raising time again here at KPFK. And as you guys know, you can't have the biggest FM transmitter west of the Mississippi River

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back to the great Kyle Anzalone opinion editor at anti-war.com helping us keep up with all the bad news out of the war in Ukraine. And for that matter, we're going to talk about China and things like that in a minute. But tell us a little bit, Kyle, if you could, about the progress, as they would call it, of bringing Sweden and Finland into NATO and what difference it makes. So Ram Paul wrote an op-ed for the American conservative last month saying that he was going to vote president on the resolution in the Senate to ratify Sweden and Finland joining NATO. So that was a real, a real disappointed. Can you imagine going to the U.S. Senate and voting president on anything?

My God. Josh Hawley voted against it, but Ron Paul's son did not. Yes. And then the House also passed, the House obviously doesn't have to constitutionally, but did pass a resolution approving it as well. Joe Biden signed it just this week. And so I guess as it's got, we're still waiting on Turkey. And the hang up there seems to be simply that Turkey. He is waiting on Finland and Sweden, but I think mostly Sweden, to extradite a bunch of Kurds. Now, one person got extradited this week, although that person isn't alleged to be involved with the PKK.

I believe they say that he was a credit card fraud, what was the crime he was carrying out. He fled to Sweden and the Swedish Supreme Court upheld his extradition. He did claim that he was the victim. of religious persecution being of Kurdish ethnicity and then converting to Christianity. And so because of that, my guess is he's not going to be treated very well in any kind of Turkish justice system. But I don't know if this had tradition was actually political. The guy might have actually committed the crimes he's accused of as far as the credit card fraud. That seemed to be the conclusion of the Swedish court. But there are quite a few other people that Turkey won.

estradiated. And some of those people, I think, would be essentially political prisoners or people for being somewhat involved in the PKK, not necessarily violent actors or anything like that, Thel. And so I don't know if Sweden will go through with this. And if Sweden doesn't, it's unclear if Turkey will vote to ratify Sweden and Finland joining NATO. And then what that means as far as those two states being NATO members, by the rules of NATO, it would mean that, you know, they don't become protected under Article 5, but we will see what the alliance does in that situation when we get there. Yeah.

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Nuclear bombs and nation building in Southeast Asia, 1945 through 61. And as he explains on the back here, all of our popular culture and our retellings and our history and our movies are all about the height of the American war there in, say, 1964 through 1974. But how do we get there? Why is this all Harry Truman's fault? Find out in why the Vietnam War by the great Mike Swanson, available now. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size?

Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA does. It sure seems like they're playing with fire there and also goes to show that war is a really bad idea, not just when Americans start one, but when the Russians do too. This is certainly not what they were trying to achieve here that they would end up sharing an even longer border with NATO states than they had previously. And speaking of which, you know, when they brought the Baltics in, they left this little strip of land. called Kaliningrad right there in the Baltic Sea behind NATO lines essentially from the Russian

point of view. It's Russian territory right there between Latvia and Poland and on the far side of Belarus from Russia. And there's been some controversy there about the sort of corridor through there, the railway through there, and whether the Russians are allowed to ship everything they want or not to Kalinengrad. And so I wonder if you can give us an update on that. I know the Germans did try to intervene to cool that tension down, right? Yeah, and it does seem that tensions have cooled on that issue, at least some, although Moscow is still saying that there are still issues hampering the transit of sanction goods to Kaliningrad, but the rhetoric from Moscow is really turned down on this issue. So my guess is

this must be pretty minor in the eyes of the Kremlin at this point. So I'm hoping that this could get resolved pretty easily, but it's not completely resolved yet, Scott. And for a while, you know, Russia was threatening to take action to make sure that its goods are getting to Clinton and Grodd. And, you know, we were potentially talking about war on the Baltic's over this. And any new threats in the past few weeks from Moscow haven't been nearly that severe. And so it seems that most of these issues probably have been worked out. And there's just some minor ones that need to be finished up. And then so what's the progress of the exporting of all of that wheat from the port in Odessa out to the global south there?

Yeah, good news. Ships are leaving. They're able to get out and through. I don't think we're at quite 10 ships yet. I stopped counting after they got to three or four earlier this week, but ships are leaving. Now, there's tons and tons of wheat that needs to be moves. So obviously, a lot of ships have to be coming through to be able to transport all that out. But it seems at this point that the corridor is beginning to work. And from analysis I've read, if it starts to work, then it's going to work better. We had the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., as well as a bunch of other officials, making tours of Africa this week. But Linda Thomas Greenfield said that she only wants African countries buying Russian for. fertilizer and food and not to take any other imports from Russia. And so maybe some good news there with the U.S. trying to, you know, really emphasizing that

we're not going to sanction you for taking in this week coming through that corridor. But at the same time, that's a pretty hefty threat to make, as a lot of these African countries have long ties with, you know, formerly the Soviet Union, but now Russia. And though they have other key imports from Moscow. And so this actually could be a signal that the U.S. is going to crack down on some imports like Mali is getting closer and closer with Russia and actually apparently imported a bunch of Russian military equipment this past week. Yeah. Well, don't get me started on the reason that the Mali government has a problem with jihadists in the north is all because of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and John McCain's war in Libya in 2011. And I wrote a book about it. But anyway, one more issue on Russia here. And that is the most important single thing. in the world. It's called the new start treaty. It's the last standing treaty limiting

overall numbers of strategic nuclear weapons in the hands of the United States and Russia. And seems like they're saying they don't think it's going to last pass the next sunset. And there's even worse news that just came out this week, quibbling over inspections and this kind of thing. Can you fill us in there? Yeah. So big picture, recently the U.S. Biden said that oh, well, we're willing to negotiate with Russia on the New Star Treaty, but not if there's a war going on in Ukraine. And seeing how, you know, the U.S. and NATO are talking about fighting a long war in Ukraine, it could mean that we have years before these New Star Treaty talks would begin. And, you know, we only have five years now. I guess the good news is Biden likely won't be president the next time this treaty needs to be renegotiated.

although, you know, when Biden took office, one of the first things he did is sign this five-year extension, and the Trump administration really didn't seem like they were going to do it. And so maybe Biden will come around because he does seem to understand the importance of this treaty and go ahead and, you know, even negotiate if Russia is occupying Ukraine or something like that. But that's not the signal that the U.S. is sending at this point. And then the U.S., according to Russia, made a request to inspect Russia's nuclear weapons under the New START Treaty. And Russia then announced that they were suspending American inspectors. The next day, the Kremlin deputy foreign minister Rabkoff came out and explained that Moscow's decision and why they decided to end or suspend the inspection of American inspectors was because Russian

inspectors were unable to go to the U.S. because of American sanctions. It's not clear, and I haven't seen a response from the American side yet, Scott, if Russia tried to send inspectors to the U.S. and the U.S. either sanctioned those people or those people were under sanctions and the U.S. refused to give them some kind of exemption, or if Russia is just, you know, lashing out here. And because their inspectors are technically sanctioned and because Russian government officials can't travel to the U.S., these travel bans are in place, then they're trying to get some kind of concession from the U.S. here. Not sure what the Moscow's play is, but they're saying that that's the reason that they've cut off the inspections. And so I guess this could mean the

death of the New START Treaty. If you don't have inspections and you have no tots going on, and it doesn't seem that the U.S. is really interested in talking to Russia. There were some minor tots around Brittany Grenier and the corridor to export wheat, but that's about it. And I don't see much hope that there's going to be a diplomat solution here unless somebody in the Biden White House or Joe Biden himself really takes note of this and says, hey, we have to figure out a way to keep these inspections going on. And so we, we are going to allow exemptions for Russian inspectors to come look at U.S. weapons. All right.

Now, in the short amount of time left here, we've got to talk about China. It's Kyle Anselone from anti-war.com. Pelosi went, the Biden government, correct me if I go off the store here, the Biden government did not want her to go. This was arranged essentially by lobbyists. It was not American foreign policy. It was Pelosi's foreign policy to go over there and essentially spurred on by the Taiwanese themselves, not by the Americans, but just the Taiwanese and the people that they

had paid for. But then, so what are the consequences? Ben Freeman pointed out to me that a lot of think tankers on the Taiwanese payroll were saying things like, oh, yeah, so they're doing some military exercises in response to Pelosi's trip, but it's not that big of a deal. They do that kind of thing all the time, which I thought was interesting. I thought that they would maybe trumpet it and say see what monsters they all are, but I guess it was just too obvious that what they were doing was in direct response to Pelosi's provocation. So, you know, I don't know. What all did the Chinese do in response to her trip there? And what's continuing and what's developing in that story? Yeah. So Pelosi said she was going and then Biden said that the military didn't want her to go

and she decided to go anyways. But they ended up giving her military escort there, parking a bunch of warships off the coast while she was there. And that was just a show of force. It's not like the Chinese were going to shoot down the speaker. The house is playing for going to Taiwan and flying over Philippines airspace and things like that. And so, you know, while the White House says they didn't want her to go,

it does seem like they greenlit the trip in a big way. Anyway, so China carried out pretty major war games. They positioned different military assets and six regions around Taiwan. A Chinese official who worked at some Chinese Defense Institute said that, you know, this is a drill now, but this is a blockade that we could turn on at any point, trying to, you know, really emphasize that we now, you know, have the ability to blockade Taiwan. They're not, I guess, saying that they're going to invade it, but, you know, cut off American goods from going there, cut off American warships and things like that. They also fired missiles into Taiwanese airspace and over Taiwan.

This was a pretty significant escalation. And, you know, something that China hasn't done before. They've also started flying planes over the median line in the Taiwan Strait. And so, you know, these are seen as major steps by China. The Chinese government then issued a white paper on their Taiwan policy for the first time in a few decades. Dave DeKamp, our colleague at anti-war.com, has a fantastic write-up on this. But, you know, in summary, they say, you know, we still really want peaceful resolution, unification with Taiwan, but there's too much American interference, that there's too much movement towards independence in Taiwan.

then we will have to take another route. And with the U.S. support and increase for the Taiwanese government and their defense, who knows when we're actually going to cross that red line? And it really seems like Biden lights crossing red lines. And so I guess the last thing worth mentioning here, Scott, is the U.S. is saying that they're going to continue to carry out the faux knobs, the freedom of navigation operations, in the South China seas waters that are claimed by China, but also Taiwan straight transits. And, you know, I think this is going to be seen as extremely provocative by China.

And I think we're going to see another big response from Beijing. I'm not sure what that is going to be. But it may not be like a military action against Taiwan, although Ted Galen Carpenter has been warning and Dub Bondow as well have warned this week that, hey, There's a few islands that are controlled by Taiwan that are very close to the coast of China, mainland China, and could be very easily taken and essentially impossible to defend. Right. And so this could be a way for China to really flets its muscles and military might to show, you know, what it could do to Taiwan on a bigger scale by taking these smaller islands.

And I think that the U.S. actions may push that that policy in the coming months. You know, 20 years ago, Joe Biden helped George W. Bush lie us into war with Iraq, and this to me is, and his Russia policy, too, is the most reckless policy since then. And 10 times worse. You know, I saw Kyle where they asked Americans to locate Taiwan on a map. They all marked Australia. They all marked China itself and Indonesia and Japan. They don't know the first thing about it. They have no interest in who rules Taiwan whatsoever. And yet our government is threatening to get us all killed in hydrogen bomb fire over it. Well, not only Americans, Scott, but how many of our elected officials and members of government can actually articulate what the one China policy is? Because that's essentially the rhetoric we get from most elected officials is America has a commitment to Taiwan. All right, Kyle. Well, thank you so much for your time on the show. Really appreciate it, as always, sir. Thank you, Scott.

All right, you guys, and that is the great Kyle Anzalone opinion editor at anti-war.com. And remember, it's fundraising time here at KPFK. Go to KPFK. Or call 818985-5735. Tell me you want to support anti-war radio on KPFK. And that has been anti-war radio for this morning. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm here every Sunday morning from 9 to 9.30 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A.

See you next week. I'm going to be able to be a bit.