Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 9/7/23 Ted Galen Carpenter on Ukraine and the Call for War on Mexico

Episode Date: September 9, 2023

Scott was joined by Ted Galen Carpenter on Antiwar Radio this week. They first discuss the status of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. There has been a lot of coverage of some Ukrainian gains in the southeast. Less covered have been the Russian gains in the northeast. They discuss these developments and reflect on the reaction in Washington. At the end, they touch on the absurd GOP proposal to launch a conventional war against the Mexican drug cartels. Discussed on the show: “Is the United States Pursuing a Permanent Cold War with Russia? (Libertarian Institute) “Russia as the New, All-Purpose US Pretext for Military Intervention” (Antiwar.com) “Pakistan Events Confirm that Washington Prefers Compliant Autocrats Over Feisty Democrats” (Antiwar.com) “The GOP Declares War on Mexico” (Antiwar.com) Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Libertarian Institute. Carpenter has written 10 books including America’s Coming War with China: A Collision Course over Taiwan and most recently Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative Magazine and the National Interest. 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, September 7th, 2023, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, Shell, welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com, and I'm the author of the book, enough already time to end the war on terrorism you can find my full interview archive almost 6,000 of them now going back to 2003 at scothorton.org and at youtube.com slash scott horton show and you can follow me on twitter if you dare at scott horton show

all right introducing our guest today it's ted galen carpenter he's senior fellow at the institute and at antiwar dot com where he writes so much great stuff it's almost impossible to keep up with. But welcome to the show, Ted. How are you doing, sir? Oh, that's very kind of you, Scott. It's great to be with you. Great to have you on the show. Let's start with Ukraine. First of all, the situation, not too detailed on the battlefield, but just overall, the situation in terms of where the lines are now and who's making what progress at whose expense. And then, you know, maybe we can get into the politics of it all. But what is your understanding of the progress, for example, in the summer offensive going on in East Ukraine now?

Well, even U.S. officials are admitting that the summer offensive has been disappointing from the standpoint of achieving Ukrainian objectives. And that's putting it mildly. The advances territorially have been minimal, and they have come at tremendous cost, both in the destruction of war material and much more important, the destruction of Ukrainian lives and Russian lives in this battle. In the northeast, the Russians are slowly advancing, and that hasn't received a lot of attention with the media here in the United States. But that has the potential of being truly a second front in the war, and that would make the Ukrainian position even more precarious militarily.

So this, let's just say this proxy war is not going as planned any more than Putin's original war in Ukraine has gone as planned. Well, I don't know who it is, but Seymour Hirsch was talking to some intelligence. official who told him that Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, who may be the de facto president, at least of foreign policy right now, I emphasize May, because I don't know if anybody knows who's driving, but that Sullivan expected for the big, you know, peace conference that they had there in the UAE, that that was supposed to be dancing on the Russian's grave. He was so sure that the summer offensive was going to be such a success. Maybe they'd be very

vacationing in Crimea right now, which just goes to show this really crazy disconnect. You would think all the lies and propaganda on TV that they know that they're lying. And sometimes it's really a disappointment to realize they believe their own nonsense and based their policies based on their propaganda, it seems like. Yeah. In some cases, that's absolutely true. They've internalized their own propaganda. I think there are certainly members of the Biden foreign policy.

who do understand what is really happening and realize that a miscalculation has been made by the United States. So you're getting now leaks to the friendly media about Ukraine pursuing inappropriate tactics in this war, that Ukrainian officials are too casualty averse. That's a term that has become very common over the last three or four weeks. In other words, the Ukrainian leadership no longer seems willing to just have its soldiers charge machine gun nests as in World War I and that kind of slaughter. And I guess the U.S. is disappointed that its puppet seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to at least that aspect of the war. Yeah, it's really amazing the cynicism with which the American foreign policy establishment

openly talks about the Ukrainian cannon fodder in this war. They go, well, this is just costing us nothing. This costs us just a few hundred billion dollars. And we're killing all these Russians. and then a lot of times they won't even mention the Ukrainian casualties at all or David Ignatius I think somewhat infamously which is good

this got around at least in some circles that in the Washington Post he had put literally in parentheses oh except for the Ukrainians but everybody else is doing great from this war and by except for the Ukrainians he means they're getting their legs blown off

and then bleeding to death out in the field yeah this is the most ugly cynical policy that Washington has pursued in a long time. And, I mean, we're talking about a high threshold here to get to be that cynical and that brutal. The United States political leadership has used the Ukrainian military as cannon fodder. Experimenting with techniques and strategies. I mean, this is the ultimate proxy war with utter indifference about the fate of the proxy.

And that is one of the more shameful episodes in a whole litany of shameful episodes by the U.S. defense established. Yeah, you know, it's sort of reminiscent of the drone war where they just go, oh, I know what we'll do. We just fly these robots around and kill people. that way and then the American people won't be upset that their sons are dying. That's easier without any reflection on how it looks to be the kind of evil empire that just flies remote control planes around killing people with no literally no risk whatsoever to the people involved. And it's not quite the same here. People flying drones here like out in a ditch on the battlefield flying one in a lot of cases, you know, they're still at risk. But you know, in America's drone

where you got guys sitting in trailers in New York State, flying drones, killing people in Yemen and Pakistan and Somalia, and obviously driving terrorism recruitment against us by doing so. I'm not sure they care anymore. I used to believe that they simply didn't understand how the rest of the world perceive U.S. actions. And that may be part of it, but I think there is an element within the national security establishment that is so arrogant that they no longer care what the rest of the world thinks. They don't care what the American people think.

They're going to run their policies the way they want to. And all this democracy nonsense, they just ignore. And that is a sad day for the United States because it has not only made the transition from Republic to Empire, but as you suggested, it has made the transition from Republic to evil empire with a capital E. All right, it's Ted Galen Carpenter, senior fellow at anti-war.com and at the Institute. And he's got all these great articles. Russia as a new all-purpose U.S. pretext for military intervention is one at anti-war.com here. And, boy, don't get me started on the Nikki Haley one here.

is the United States pursuing a permanent Cold War with Russia at the Institute? Now, Ted, I want to talk a little bit about what you just said there about the disconnect between the American government and the American foreign policy establishments' rhetoric as far as their commitment to democracy, and in fact, that being their primary motive for everything that they do in the world and their actual actions. We saw you give a speech about this a few years back about, you know, all of America's autocratic friends in the world and how quickly they'll move against a freely elected government if it doesn't comply with their interests.

But I just wonder if you can think of any examples off of the top of your head from recently. Recently, fry Pakistan, where you had an elected prime minister, probably the least corrupt prime minister in Pakistan's history. Now, granted, that is a fairly low bar to clear, but still someone who seemed to have at least a modicum of integrity. But that leader, Imran Kahn, defied the United States on two key issues. He would not support economic sanctions against Russia. That was, I think, in the mind. of U.S. policymakers, unforgivable. In addition, he had the temerity to congratulate the Taliban on its victory in Afghanistan and portray it as a victory of forces against Western colonialism,

Western imperialism. What that meant was it doesn't matter whether he was elected, whether he was the most popular politician in Pakistan, and he is by fair margin, the fact that he defied Washington's policy agenda on two important issues doomed him, and the United States worked with the Pakistani military and with political-friendly political elements in Islamabad to get rid of him, which they managed to do. They managed to convict him and disqualify him from holding public office for a number of years. That gets an inconvenient critic, an inconvenient foreign leader out of the way. And those who've studied U.S. history in these matters are not surprised about this at all.

Whenever given a choice between unpredictable or independence-minded foreign Democrats and compliant foreign autocrats, Washington has opted for the cooperative foreign autocrats virtually every time. That's been true since World War II. Indeed, in some cases, before World War II. Yeah. Anti-war radio talking with Ted Galen Carpenter from anti-war.com here. And you mentioned, speaking of democratically elected governments overthrown and replaced with compliant dictatorships, well, semi-dictatorships, the war in Ukraine again here, you mentioned that there's an offensive of Russian, while the Ukrainians are failing in the south, the Russians are moving forward in the northeast, which is, I guess, can you specify we're talking about in Lujansk or even how close are we talking. talking about them getting to Kharkiv there, which is a city that they had taken and that then

the Ukrainian government had retaken. Yeah, they never really took Kharkiv. They had it surrounded and neutralized. And then the Ukrainians mounted the counterattack and pushed them back. A year ago. This time, I think their objective is to actually take over Kharkiv in an indisputable way. so that even the Western news media cannot portray that as Ukraine's still hanging on that territory. I don't know how successful they're going to be, again, getting media accounts of that face of the Ukraine war becomes very, very difficult. Our journalists, if one can call them that, seem highly incurious about that front in the Ukraine war. Yeah. And I don't see that changing not any time soon.

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That's Rick Casale.com slash Ron Paul. Casali is C-A-S-A-L-Rick-Cosally.com slash Ron Paul. And there's free shipping, too. Well, you know, it was just a year ago. They had their greatest offensive success there in Harkiv and LaHansk and in Kerson as well. It was, I guess, basically, the weekend of September 11th last year where they had the greatest success. And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Millie, said, hey, you guys ought to deal right now. This is as good a position of strength as you're going to be in, as in you're in a position of weakness, but you're only getting weaker.

This is as good as you could do. Come to the table. And he was overridden by the weenies. You know, Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan said, don't listen to those army guys. What do they know about fighting with artillery? You know, we got this. And so now here we are a year later.

And they've just, what, wasted, I'm not sure how many tens of thousands of lives and are in the position now where, you know, Daniel Davis, who is also a former army officer, had said on the show that as we're just talking about they could really lose our keve or again and or you know permanently and then also and i wonder this is my question for you ted is what do you think is the risk that they could lose odessa maybe how determined do you think Putin is to eventually seize odessa or do you think that maybe he doesn't intend to

or what do you think's the risk of that i worry that odessa eventually is Moscow's main objective, and that that would be the decisive blow of the equivalent of capturing your opponent's queen in a chess match. And I think he's reluctant to take that step for two reasons. One, this would create the risk of direct NATO intervention. As much as Biden, in his more lucid moments, says that the U.S. has no intention of having its troops or NATO forces involved directly. The pressure from the usual suspects in the hawkish community would be enormous for the U.S. to intervene because that's the end of Ukraine as an effective entity. If they have no outlet onto the sea, that they are now a completely

landlocked country, they're at a prohibited disadvantage at that point. Unfortunately, the U.S. keeps proclaiming the death of the Russian offensive, the Russian objectives in Ukraine. Well, we have you know, filled that grave and put up the headstone probably a dozen times since the war began. And the Russian military is still very much alive. The Russian offensive is grinding forward. And at some point, I hope that America's leadership elite begins to recognize reality. unfortunately they have blinders on that again worse than if they were just cynically using propaganda that they understood was false i truly believe at least some of them have believed the rhetoric that they spouted yeah you know ted i just saw a thing it was funny a hawk tweeted it out

but i took it the other way it was obama september of 14 so the war is been raging now the consequence of his coup there. And Obama has a dinner where he invites a bunch of Russia experts, including Strobe Talbot, whose fault this all is, to come and sit down as well, I should say. It's come and sit down and talk. And Obama says, look, come on, what's Ukraine to America anyway? That's just, you know, half a year into the crisis that he caused, or at least allowed Biden and Newland to cause on his watch under his authority. And Talbot, says, well, but we just all take it as an article of faith that America must defend the borders of any former Soviet state. And then, you know, the hawks are saying how unreasonable Obama is

for not going along with that obviously brilliant conventional wisdom. But I'm going, article of faith, well, then what's the purpose of NATO membership? What's the difference between NATO membership and not having it if America is obligated to defend the borders of any country in Europe. Is that because of the UN charter just says countries aren't supposed to invade each other? So that's why we're obligated to defend every border on earth, even including Russia's Western border? And what is the difference then? And also, how can Obama let all this happen when out of his own stupid mouth he knows better, but he lets these people run wild anyway? politically it was easier to do that and you actually touch on a very interesting point because

i've written a couple of articles about whether ukraine has a de facto article five guarantee under the uh under the nato alliance because it seems to article five only provides that if an act of aggression, as defined by NATO, takes place that all NATO members are obligated to assist the attacked member. It doesn't say send troops. It doesn't say bomb the offender. It says assist the victim to defend itself. Well, the U.S. and other NATO countries have cored weaponry by the tens and tens of billions of dollars into Ukraine, U.S. and NATO personnel have trained Ukrainian military personnel. The United States, at least, and I believe the U.K. as well, has shared intelligence with the Ukrainian military to shoot down Russian planes and otherwise assist the war efforts.

So how is that different from Ukraine actually being a formal member of NATO? the U.S. erased that distinction between a member of NATO and a non-member. Effectively so. Well, Ted. And you're paying the bridesful.

Anti-war radio, Scott Horton talking with Ted Carpenter here. Ted, what if Russia decides we want to annex northern Kazakhstan? Do we got to go to war there, too? I don't think we want to bring up any hypothetical possibilities given the people who are running our foreign policy. Buchanan once said, Well, look, what if China rolls into Outer Mongolia? Are we going to admit that, you know what, I'm sorry.

We really feel bad for the Mongolians being killed, but some things are just out of our jurisdiction, pal. We can't reach there from here. That's too much realism. I mean, I found it interesting. You mentioned Strobe Talbot. Because he was one of the architects, along with Madeline Albright, of expanding NATO Eastwood.

Those two individuals have probably done more to jeopardize world peace than any other two people in the world. That was a faithful and fatal decision to expand the most powerful military alliance in the world right up to the border of another major power. I don't know how any sensible person thought the U.S. and its allies. could get away with that you have to wonder either they were naive beyond words or they were deliberately trying to provoke a crisis with russia over the long term yeah i'm not sure which well you know i've been it had to be one of those things i've been collecting these quotes i've got quite a few now where they just say what are they going to do about it we're the superpower and they're not anymore so we can do what we want and they can't do anything and that's just the attitude you

Yeah. Again, that's part of that arrogance that is so polluted American politics, American decision making. Yeah. All right, anti-war radio talking with Ted Carpenter. And you know, you wrote about this. It's a huge thing. Sorry, changed the subject from Eastern Europe here. But this has gone from some idiot's gimmick to now, I think, a real policy of the Republican Party. That if they win the presidency, we're going to war in Mexico. with or without the permission of the government, which I guess they'd strongarm the government. And then the plan is to send in the special operations command. And I guess the drone forces, Ted. Is this real? Unfortunately, it is real. And it has widespread support, not just among Republican presidential candidates, but among other influential figures in the Republican Party.

This has been part of their argument, even among people who are saying, we really shouldn't be so heavily involved in Ukraine. Ah, but dealing with this problem much closer to home, that's different. And so you got to kill somebody, Ted. Come on, man. Get with the program. That's the whole point of being a government. Well, apparently, because the indifference to the effect on the. U.S. reputation upon the U.S. relationship with Mexico, they just seem utterly indifferent to

that. And it is, we're going to do this whether the Mexicans want us to do it or not. Now, they can go along and be good puppets. And we will pretend that they are full partners in this effort. But if they don't go along with it, we'll do it ourselves. And it's clear, that sentiment is very, very strong. And I don't think it disappears even if a Republican candidate wins the presidency in 2024. There will be a tremendous pressure to actually implement that policy. And good Lord, I mean, we haven't had troops in Mexico since Blackjack Pershing in 1916, 1917. Woodrow Wilson.

We may have a U.S. military presence in Mexico in a combat capacity if one of these hawks wins the White House. Well, and look, I mean, just in the last generation, never mind the 20th century or any kind of crazy archaic thing like that. Just since W. Bush, they created 37 million refugees. throughout Eurasia, you know, West Asia and Central Asia there from the wars, the most since World War II. And these are the same people want to stop all immigration from Mexico, want to bomb it. And where do they think all those people are going to flee to?

I don't think they care. Or that they think. Many of them have not even thought about it. But the effect, I mean, this is an extremely widespread effect. I've written on that about how a lot of the social. and political tensions in Europe are the result of the massive refugee flows caused by the U.S. generated wars. No question.

And that's not something that has received a lot of attention, more so in Europe than here. Right. That much is true, but not even as much in Europe as you might think would be the case. Yeah. Well, and especially, you know, in the middle of the last decade. It's like, oh, my God, we have all of these refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and a bunch of countries south of Libya. I wonder what's going on here. Nobody can figure it out.

Yeah, the officials act as though the source of this phenomenon is unknown. You know, we just don't understand why you have these massive refugee flows that all, virtually all, come from countries that the U.S. has devastated military. Yeah. All right. Well, oh, one more thing about the drug war there in Mexico. Isn't it the case? I bet that you wrote about this back when. That wasn't it George W. Bush forced the Mexican government to militarize their war on drugs is what?

caused the Sinaloa and Zeta and whatever cartels to grow into these monsters that they became? That's certainly a big part of it. And the U.S. bullying tactics with respect to the war on drugs even precedes that. You had Richard Nixon's administration effectively threatened to close the border with Mexico unless the Mexican government went along with U.S. policy objectives in the brand new war on drugs. So this has a long and disreputable history. Yeah. All right, you guys.

Well, that's Ted Galen Carpenter. You can find him regularly at anti-war.com and at the Institute as well. Check out, is the United States pursuing permanent Cold War with Russia? And Russia as the new all-purpose U.S. pretext for military intervention. Thanks very much for your time, Ted. I appreciate it. My thanks. All right, you guys, and that's anti-war radio for today.

I'm your host, Scott Horton. Check out my full archive at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.