The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1178: Ukraine Without the Regime Narrative w/ Scott Horton

Episode Date: February 23, 2025

48 MinutesSFWScott Horton is the host of The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, and the director of The Libertarian Institute.Scott joins Pete to give an ABCs of the current Russia-Ukraine conflict.Libertarian Institute Donate PageScottHorton.orgPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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with vouchers from Trump Dunebag. Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Doonbiog, Kush Faragea. If you want to support this show and get the episodes early and ad-free, head on over to freeman Beyond the Wall.com forward slash support. I want to explain something right now if you support me through Substack or Patreon. You have access to an RSS feed that you can plug into any podcatcher. including Apple, and you'll be able to listen to the episodes through there.

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So thank you for the support. Head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support and do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanino show. For the first time on the Piquino show, it's Scott Horton. How you know, Scott? I'm doing good, Pete. Good to be with you, man.

How are you? Doing well. Doing well. Like I said in take one, I know you have a hard out, so we're going to jump right into it. And we can do the reacquaintances later on sometime. It looks like this thing finally has a chance of coming to an end. But it didn't start in February of 2022. And you wrote a book called Provoked. And it explains how all of this happened. What's the fastest you've ever given the timeline? Well, let's try it right now. We start in the book with H.W. Bush in the end of the last Cold War. And the bottom line to understand about H.W. Bush is, yes, they did promise not to expand

NATO East. People say that's debunked. Well, I've re-bunked it thoroughly in the book and demonstrate the truth of that. And it's important to understand as well that what they did was, And part of the way they sort of psyched him out, the Soviets and then the Russians into the Clinton years as well was by saying, listen, even if we do expand NATO, NATO now isn't what it used to be. We're turning NATO into a new political organization. So you should understand it to be something like the EU plus the United States. But we're going to replace the alliance. We don't need an alliance because we don't have any enemies. We're going to now have a partnership.

And under H.W. Bush, they said it'd be under the P.F. sorry me, the CSCE, the conference for security and cooperation in Europe, which is now the organization, OSCE, but which had existed since 75, and Russia and Ukraine and all the Eastern European countries were already members of it. And so the Americans were saying, essentially, everybody's neutrality is baked in here. We're all going to be partners in one big thing together. And it was based on those assurances that the Soviets allowed Eastern Europe to go free and then essentially weaken the Soviet Union to the point, you know, it was when the commies failed in their coup of August 91. That was the final straw. And then the leaders of the Russian Federation at that point

overthrew the last of the Soviet Union and got rid of it. That was all based on the absolute assurances, handshake, dead serious assurances, and on top of that, the spirit of the entire thing, which was our guys promising their guys, we are not going to take advantage. If you guys do the right thing that we promise to be cool with you going forward. And they never meant that, Pete. That's the point is they were shining them on, telling them what they needed to hear for the time being. Then Clinton comes in. There's, of course, the shock therapy, which we could talk about more if you want to ask about it later or something. But that's how the Americans help the Russians transition from communism to capitalism and they completely botched it and destroyed the

economy and completely gangsterized it. And then there's the Balkan Wars of the 1990. which were at the expense of the Serbs, who were the Russians friends, but it was also to the benefit of NATO. And it was one of the main purposes of it, not the breakup of Yugoslavia, but the American reaction to it. And putting NATO in the forefront, they wanted to preclude the idea that the French and the Germans would create their own European army and would be the dominant security force in Europe. They wanted to make sure to preclude that by essentially taking the opportunity to ensconce American forces. power there to perpetuate what had been Lord, I think it's Ismay, the British Lord had said, the purpose of NATO is to keep the Americans in, the Germans down, and the Soviets out. So now replace the Soviets with the Russians, but same thing. And so, and this was even what the

Americans had told the Soviets was, hey, man, obviously we're going to reunify Germany here. That's basically unstoppable and you're not going to stop that. But now once we've already agreed on that now, come on, you don't want an independent Germany potentially armed with nuclear weapons, do you? Wouldn't you prefer that NATO stay in Germany and that Germany stay essentially subordinate to the United States in our military organization? And the Soviets thought about it and thought, well, for all our problems we've had with the Americans, had worse problems with the Germans. So let's go ahead and stick with that. So that was essentially the posture of the Americans at the end of the 20th century was making sure that America stays there and then even expands.

And Clinton started with expansion in 1999. Then W. Bush comes in and Putin was new. He came in at the end of 99, beginning of 2000. Bush comes in at the beginning of 2001 a year later. So they have an opportunity to try to reset. And Putin tries very hard to. He has to join NATO in the summer. And then he extends full olive branches after September 11th.

that we can use former Soviet bases in the stands to help invade Afghanistan, the northern route. He opened it again for Obama in 2012. And overflight rights and all the rest. And he had to shout down right-wing forces in his own government and military at the time. So we're going to take this opportunity and try to suck up to the Americans and make a real partnership here. And W. Bush just shined them on because basically the deal was we don't need them. They're a third-rate country. The Soviet Union was worth considering.

but Russia's not. And so, you know, Bush and his government was still using the bin Ladenites against the Russians in Chechnya, even in the, at least in Bush's first term, a policy he had inherited from Bill Clinton. And so Bush tore up the anti-ballistic missile treaty, which was, first of all, it was an important treaty that limited the anti-ballistic missile system locations to two locations. It was a Nixon's treaty. And the purpose wasn't to leave America helpless. The purpose was that defensive missile systems are just part of more brinksmanship and the arms race. And so the more defensive missile systems you build, the more offensive missile systems they build. And on and on. At that point, we were in the high tens of thousands.

America had like 40 and, or sorry, America had like 30 and the Russians had like 40,000 H bombs each at that point. So it's like, why are we continuing to do this? Let's put a ceiling on this. and that was why they limited them. So Bush tears up that treaty that also kills Start 2, which would have banned multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles. So it may have been the worst decision anybody ever made, quite frankly, to destroy that Start 2 treaty the way W. Bush did.

But then he did that so he could install these anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe. And to make a long story short, the threat of them is they're dual-use launchers. It's the Aegis-onsshore system. So Aegis on our Navy, the cruisers can fire Tomahawk missiles, right? So they could fire Sparrow, defensive missiles, anti-ballistic missile missiles, or they can fire a Tomahawk cruise missile.

That can be tipped with an H-bomb. And now that we've torn up, Donald Trump tore up the INF Treaty, that actually would be legal. They were already clearly in violation of Bill Clinton's promises in 1997 that we wouldn't put substantial military forces in the new expanded NATO countries. And then secondly, he's violating the spirit of the intermediate nuclear forces treaty. Great Treaty from 87 that banned short and medium range nuclear missiles from Europe. And so that was a major step. Another policy Bush inherited from Clinton and continued was the so-called color-coded

revolutions. And he started in the Balkans. And then, you know, most notably with Serbia in the year 2000 with the bulldozer revolution. And then W. Bush picked that up with the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan. in 2005, the failed denim revolution in 2005 in Belarus, and then the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, which didn't quite overthrow the government, but it helped to pressure the Syrians to leave southern Lebanon at the time. People might remember in the Obama years a little bit later on,

they had the Green Revolution in Iran. And the Arab Spring is more complicated, but it was somewhat the same type politics behind some of the Arab Spring movements in the Middle East in 2011. But, so these are essentially what they call smart power or soft power, right, while W. Bush is marching the entire

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You know, these sort of like USAID and NED, they call them NGOs, but they're, you know, chartered by the US government. They're not exactly like even a Soros organization is more independent. But they'll work together and pour in. Essentially, the model, it's not always exactly the same. But the model is to dispute an election that your side lost in a sort of soft, somewhat democracy, you know, budding democracy where you wish your guys had won. And then you just claim exit polls prove that your guy really won and the other guy stole it. And you have all your guys protest out in the street and push it and push it

until they get a new round of voting or get the guy to step down and some kind of transition of power. And so they've done this over and over again. And then, of course, Iraq was a big thing. It destabilized the entire Middle East and set major precedents about American, just like Bill Clinton with the Kosovo War in 99, American willingness to violate the UN charter and launch an aggressive war whenever we want, with or without the UN Security Council, which is, you know, international laws. I mean, this is true really with all law, but especially with international law, it's really an anarchic system. Treaties are only treaties as long as you're willing to abide by them. And so when you shake the foundations of the post-World War II structure, I mean, one, there are a lot of contradictions in the UN Charter,

but it does say it supposedly is sworn to protect the independence and sovereignty of each of the nation states. So America is bound to respect the sovereignty of other nations. In other words, not attack them when we haven't been attacked or at least if we are going to start a war, we got to convene the Security Council and have permission from all of essentially the allies who won World War II, including Russia and China to agree to launch a war. And Bill Clinton and W. Bush and later Obama proved that they're willing to scrap that and do whatever they want, which is another major rupture in our relations, even though it wasn't directly at their expense at that time. But then Bush declares in the end of 2008 for his own personal stupid reasons,

legacy building reasons of his own, against the advice of his ambassador and the entire embassy in Moscow, against the advice we find out later of Connoisseur Rice and Robert Gates, the CIA and the National Security Council, Fiona Hill, she says that you believe Russian propaganda. If you repeat her exact same story that she told in the New York Times at least twice, that she tried to talk W. Bush out of it. And he wouldn't listen. And instead he went ahead.

And by the way, the French and the Germans also tried to stop him. And instead he went ahead, not with a full membership action plan because the Germans wouldn't let him. But essentially a promise to NATO, that NATO would bring Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance at some point. So instead of a half as like a membership action plan is not an Article 5 protection guarantee. It's sort of a half-assed one already. It says like you're on the official path of integration to the alliance.

Well, what Bush gave him was like a quarter asked one then, right? It was an invite that at some point we're going to bring you in, but we're not saying when, but we will continue to integrate your military into our, you know, standards so that you would be useful in the case of a war with Russia. Your military would be an auxiliary with ours, but we don't promise to protect you if you get into a fight. So is what a lot of the academics and experts all over the place, state department officials and CFR, Wonks and whoever said, this is the worst of both worlds to do this.

And which I think I would agree with. Many of them would say, well, yeah, we should have gone ahead and given them the war guarantee. And that would have protected him. I say that would have just started the war right then before the ink was dry on the page because Putin would have had to test that right away. And so I think that's a circular argument on their part. But I agree that it's the worst of both worlds. But I'm saying he should have listened to the advice of his own government and not gone ahead with the promise. And now listen, the whole government and the establishment and the Germans and the French and everybody, why were they against it?

It's the same reason going back to the 90s when the experts warned against NATO expansion then. It's an unnecessary provocation against the Russians. There are no other arguments against it, really, other than, you know, if you asked our friends, you know, Doug Bandau and Ted Carpenter at Cato, who've been saying this all along, Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul, we can't afford it. We don't have any business with this kind of alliance. but that's not who they weren't part of the argument, right? The argument from the establishment was not about saving money or, you know, protecting the republic from the empire or whatever. They were simply worried about unnecessarily picking a fight with the Russians, full stop.

And there's a whole story, the whole time. And by the way, during this whole time, Pete, even the expanders, especially the opponents, but even the expanders said, of course, we have to make a special exception for Ukraine. even if we're going to bring the Baltic states into NATO. You know, the whole time the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic states, America never recognized Soviet sovereignty over them, always recognize them as independent. Not that they were willing to do anything about it,

but they always recognize them as independent. These are not part of Russia. They are independent states and they should be, et cetera, et cetera, was always the American position. But Ukraine, come on. They've been a part of Russia for 300 years. And the major population centers of the of the country had been part of Russia. It's called the Don Bassar, Novorasi. These regions have

been part of the Russian Empire for 300 years, even when the rest of the country was not, even when the far west was dominated by Poland and the middle was dominated by Lithuania and whoever, the Russians controlled the far east of the country and that southern Azov coast to Crimea. So everybody recognized that. Kissinger and Brzezinski recognized that. In 2018, at the height of Rushagate hysteria, so it was just washed away. It was like, you know, spit in the ocean of hype at that time. So no one was listening. But there's a guy named Ken Pollock. You might remember he was kind of Podnas with Michael O'Hanlon. And they were the leading liberal hawks who vouchs who vouchs who vouchs, who had to attack Iraq. And they were sort of like, you know,

Bert and Ernie of the Democratic hawks at that time kind of leading on on TV saying, yes, these Republicans are right. We definitely have to do this, say these very serious, wonky Democrats. That's who they are. So Pollack wrote this thing saying, yeah, we ought to do this whole thing. He wrote a book about it. It was a monograph proposing this whole situation where we would give Ukraine a permanent Austrian status, meaning that's a reference to Austria and Finland during the Cold War, the last Cold War, that they had permanent neutrality. They were not part of Warsaw PAC, not part of NATO, did not have troops occupying their country and promise not to take sides in any conflict and they just stayed out of it. And due to, you know, geographical concerns and political

ones, both sides agreed to that. And that lasted for 50 years of the Cold War, 45. It was fine. And there's no reason the world to have not done that with Ukraine, except that American Hawks were determined to just ignore their own best advice. And as they even put it numerous times, to rest Ukraine away from NATO. And then they always break into this collectivist language. We're like, the will of the soul of the people of Ukraine want this. Well, yeah, no, that's not true. I mean, there are certainly people, especially in the west of the country and the further west you go, the more this is true, who absolutely hate Russia and want nothing to do with Russia

and would be perfectly happy to join the EU or NATO or anything that they could to get out from under Russian dominance. That's not true for the whole country, and particularly in the very far east of the country where they're not just Russian speakers, because the commies kind of made everybody speak Russian, but in the far east of the country, they are ethnic Russians and historically Russians and have mixed marriages on both sides of the borders and all these kinds of things are much closer to the Russians. And so even the likes of Zabigna Brazinski said that look, the will among the people of Ukraine to join NATO to move this far west, that hard west is not there. And in the

WikiLeaks cables, the state department people say, yeah, lamentably, the people of Ukraine don't want this. So we'd better launch this massive propaganda campaign to try to convince them. Not that that ever really worked. But ready for huge savings? Well, mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs. When the doors open, the deals go fast.

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and want to move west, they claim, aha, see, that's the people of Ukraine want this. But, you know, I've seen some really big left-wing protests in Austin, Texas, Pete, and I've got to tell you, they don't represent even the people of Austin, Texas, much less the people of Texas. Texas, right? It's just a total fallacy to say a big protest equals the public will. I mean, give me a break. If they didn't, if they didn't believe that, if they didn't want to believe that,

that wasn't their narrative, they would never push that. Okay, so what? There's a big protest. How can you be, you know, how could you take that if you didn't want to? If the American side was, if there was the protesters on the other side, they'd just dismiss them, right? they're just protesters. They don't represent what everybody wants, etc. So anyway, then so Obama comes in and Obama does the Libya war. Putin had stepped down and made himself prime minister and he was, of course, still the power behind the throne. And Medvedev, who replaced him was his guy. But then he was opening up, I mean, he's not exactly a czar and a king, right? He did sort of respect the law at that time and let his sidekick sit in the position. But then America

immediately humiliated guy, took advantage of him, tricked him into supporting the UN resolution on Libya, which said we're trying to protect the poor civilians of Benghazi from being all exterminated by Gadda. And then they just went, turned right around. Once they got that permission slit, they turned right around, turned it into a nine-month-long NATO-Al-Qaeda regime change war against Gaddafi and then spread the chaos onto Syria and all that and made an absolute chump out of you had bet it. And then, of course, the worst thing Obama did was support the a so-called revolution of dignity, the Maidan Revolution of 2014, which was essentially the Americans and the Europeans pushing the sitting president to essentially fire his entire government

and hire their handpicked guys to serve in his government. They supported the protest movement long enough that by the end of the thing, the Nazis went ahead and said, we don't respect any deal that doesn't include the president leaving town. If he doesn't leave town by 10 a.m. in the morning, the one guy, Peresioch announced from the stage, I'll kill him myself. And he had been, as we know, it's reported from at least three or four major sources who interviewed him, that he was the guy who led the snipers in the music conservatory starting on the morning before that heightened the crisis and led to the putch. And so at that point, the president fled and immediately America recognized the new government.

And at that point, Putin seized the Crimean Peninsula. And then we know that John Brennan, Obama sent John Brennan the head of the CIA to insist that the new regime attacked the people of the East. When they, you know, people always say that this was the Russians who did this. There were a couple of Russian characters involved. But as I demonstrated in the book, they showed up late. It was essentially the people of the East mimicking the people of the West. If you guys can seize all these government buildings and overthrow the government and create a new regime,

well, we can seize government buildings and refuse to recognize your authority. And then the Americans has assisted attack them. And they did. Air strikes and tanks and artillery. And then a huge part of the military defected. to the other side. And it turned into this horrific civil war that killed like 9,000 people in the first 10 months. And then they had these peace deals that led to reduced level, you know, they call lower level fighting, where still another 4,000 something people were killed over the next seven years.

And so then, as you know, when Trump comes in, and I'm skipping a lot, there's the skip rolls and all these so-called poisonings and all these other things, but they're all in there. Believe me, every time they try to overthrow Belarus, it's all in there. But when Trump comes in, as you know, this was paraphrased in the New York Times, one of his guys, I believe it was one of Trump's guys. His own guy said that, you know, when it comes to Russia policy, Trump is like the captain of a ship. He's holding the wheel, but it's not attached to anything. And so the fourth branch of government, the national security state, the Pentagon and all the spy agencies or whatever, they do whatever they want. They have their own policy.

If you look at his impeachment on Ukraine, in a testimony of Alexander Vindman, and then later in his essay that he wrote, for the Atlantic. It might have been the new republic, but I think it was the Atlantic, where he just says, like, who the hell does this guy, Donald Trump, the elected president, think he is to try to change our Russia policy. We have a Russia policy, the United States of America, as represented by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the Ukrainian national sitting on the NSC and somehow an officer in our military. He says, look, we have decided the interagency met.

which means like the deputies committee of the National Security Council, where the different bureaucrats get together and decide that this is our policy. And so who in the hell this Donald Trump think he is to try to change it? We could not allow that to happen. And so we all marshaled together and worked together to stop him. And that was the origin of Ukraine gate right there as sort of the son of Russia gate. And it was John Brennan who put him on the national security council in the first place. He was obviously there as a plan to try to find something on Trump to stop him in the first place.

By the way, the FBI already had the laptop that showed in these emails that what Trump was saying about Hunter Biden's corruption with Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company, was true. And you think about 10,000 leaks from the FBI during that time, not one leak saying that what Trump was asking in that phone call, asking Zelensky to look into was true. And Hunter Biden was guilty as hell. And here's the CEO of Burisma saying, where? is my help. You were supposed to intervene on my behalf and get this done. And there's Hunter Biden saying, thanks for the money. I'm trying as hard as I can, et cetera. And so all that was there. All that was buried. We didn't find that out for months that the FBI had already had a laptop. And then when the laptop came out, what they do? They lied and said that the Russians had

planted it there and that the whole thing was fake, which was really them putting the again, the secret police, just like with Russiagate, the first election, putting their thumb on the scale and rigging the election against Trump in 2020. And but so, and he was hawkish. I mean, whatever he did on Ukraine, he gave him more weapons. And I think he was in on that decision. They didn't just do that without him, but they convinced him that, yeah, this is how we play hardball with the Russians.

And it was a big mistake for him to do that. But it's clear that the kind of reproachment that we see between him and Russia now, we could have had eight years ago if they had not falsely accused him of treason with Russia in the first place. and he had just had the basic respect the president gets from the rest of the establishment in the media when he takes office. I mean, remember when the Supreme Court said,

stop the count, W. Bush is the president-elect. Now, every TV news lady, you could hear their heels click. President-elect W. Bush said today, blah, blah, blah. Okay, that's it, right? Well, they did not do that for him. If they had given him the slightest bit of deference like that, this whole thing would have been solved then. So they prevented him from doing that,

but he felt that pressure and didn't fix it if he could have. Then Biden comes in and I'm convinced that the real tipping point for Vladimir Putin in Biden's first year came in March when President Zelensky seized the media properties of a guy named Victor Medved Chuck, who was a good friend of Putin and Putin is his daughter's godfather. And so when he did that, I think that was the final straw and Putin started building up his forces on the borders and so forth making his threats. Biden meets with him in July, and I don't know exactly what happened. I think he gave him kind of base assurances that like, we're not going to bring Ukraine into

NATO anyway. Don't worry about it. But I don't know exactly what they talked about. We didn't get too much reporting about whether Putin had demanded, you know, a treaty in writing at that point or what. But then he botches the Afghan withdrawal, which a lot of experts, I have no reason really to doubt this. I've read numerous places and including, you can't really trust Bob Woodward, but Bob Woodward

claims that Biden administration officials, Biden himself and Averall Haynes, the National Intelligence Director and others said that, yeah, this was part of what made the Russians decide that it would be easy to do this, was watching the absolute disarray with which Biden ran the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But then in September and in November, the State Department and the Defense Department put out new documents, reaffirming that, yes, we're bringing Ukraine into NATO, and yes, we are increasing their interoperability between their military and ours, making them essentially a de facto member of our military alliance. And that was when they really started their buildup was in October. And after the introduction of new Turkish drones and

violation of Minsk to the peace deal that was never fully implemented. And at that point, Putin said, essentially started building up his forces and then proposed new, treaties. And they were not the kind of trees where you just sign on the bottom line and agree to every single demand. However, they were essentially reasonable. You and I would not find too much to object to in there. Bill Clinton promised not to move substantial military forces into the new European NATO countries. So what? They acted like 1997 was 1897, but these promises should have still been absolutely fresh. And they were in writing in the founding act of 97, even if it wasn't a Senate ratified treaty. And so they could have negotiated. But the Biden position was, one, you better not. And if you do,

we'll arm them up against you. And including everybody thought that Ukraine would lose quickly and it would become an insurgency. And we'd be backing an insurgency on the Afghan model. But then that was it. They weren't willing to negotiate in good faith. They were willing to threaten and say you better not. And if you do, we'll help them fight you. And, to try to give them that disincentive. And I do think they were trying to stop them from doing it. But their just barely second choice was, we're going to bog them down and bleed them to bankruptcy like Rambo 3 did to the Soviet Union back in the 1980s.

And they brought up the Afghan war, the original Afghan war, over and over and over again in the lead up to the war. And this is, Pete, only three months after America's absolutely crushing, humiliating defeat and withdrawal at the hands of the Taliban. after 20 years of failing to supposedly clean up the problems created by the last intervention in that country. And here they are saying, yeah, let's do that again. That was beautiful. That was perfect. Let's do that. And then they also invoked Syria, where, as we all know, in very recent memory here,

American support for the Mujahideen in Syria led to the rise of the ISIS caliphate. And then Iraq War III to blow it up again. I mean, are they crazy? Yeah. I mean, they're they don't listen to themselves talk, I guess. And so then that was it. And I do blame Russia. The book is called, and I should be clear about this, this isn't like a disclaimer. I saved it to the end about I just want people to understand.

Right. The book is called provoked. Remember, our government and media said 10,000 times, unprovoked attack, unprovoked attack. I like to joke it's sort of like they did Randy Weaver, white separatist Randy Weaver. You're not allowed to ever just call the guy Randy or Mr. Weaver, or something. The guy's name is white separatist, Randy Weaver. Um, you know, they had these from

time to time like Saddam Hussein's spider hole. He was hiding in a spider hole. Like maybe that's an army term for a certain kind of hole. I don't know, but I'm not in the army. And neither are the 350 something million Americans who were all commanded that we had to refer to Saddam Hussein's hiding place as a spider hole. And then people go along with that. Oh, the spider hole, spider hole, spider hole. And that's kind of how they do this. Unprovoked attack. Unprovoked attack. Unprovoked You can't even refer to Russia's invasion without like doing your little virtue clue signal thing to people that I call it the same thing we all call it unprovoked. That way you know that I'm on your same team as I talk about these things or whatever. And I say, well, that's not true.

And yeah, Kiev provoked it, but especially Washington, D.C. provoked it with all their intervention in this poor weak country in a geographically difficult spot. Right. We can only pull them west figuratively, not literally. They're still stuck there next to Russia and forced to deal with Russia. And so we put them in this absolutely terrible position. And then as you could see from the beginning of the wars, they said numerous times that we want to lengthen the war. We want it to last as long as it can to weaken Russia. Our gamble is every ruble they spend is destruction of the Russian country, government, society and that's what we want to see is they said over and over gleefully russians in body bags russian coffins dead russians over and over and it's true that well first of all that the americans failed in their economic war to just destroy them through sanctions and all this they're a very resource rich country and they have a lot of asian countries that they can open up trade relations with and they have but it's also true as we know that the russians are

are measuring their GDP by aggregate demand, meaning the government confiscating wealth from people and turning it into weapons of war. That's not real goods and services. That's military Keynesianism and it's bad for Russia just the same as it's bad for the United States. But of course, over the long term, in the short term, everybody gets a big boost and they get to carry on the war. So Biden's economic war against them did not work the way he wanted it to.

But ultimately, it's true that, yes, the Russians have had hundreds of thousands of casualties here and have spent at least high tens of billions of dollars. I'm not sure exactly how many billions they spent, probably the hundreds of billions of dollars now. So that'll ultimately be at the detriment of the Russian people. And the Americans just thought, I mean, and you know what, Pete, I, you know, always people get mad at me like I'm making an excuse, but sort of like I used to say W. Bush is so stupid. It doesn't mean he's not nefarious, right? Like you could be an idiot with a premeditated murder plot. You know what I mean? This is the same kind of thing here. You know, Biden mostly doesn't mean well and is obviously an absolute

conceited jerk in the very worst kind of no nothing, know it all sort of a way. He always has been. But, you know, especially in his old old age, in his dotage, he ended up really just having to fall back, right, on these historical analogies. Putin's Hitler and I'm Churchill. And when somebody's a bully, you got to punch him in the nose and everybody knows that. He must have repeated himself saying that over and over again 10 times, right? And then all of his people repeat that too. And by the way, they're all a bunch of dorks, right? They're never the guy who punched the bully in the nose.

They're always the guy that the cool guy came and protected them from the bully. And that's their life experience, these think tank dweaves, you know, most of the time. They all say the same thing. Hitler versus Churchill and bully versus me on the playground, you know, and then based on those, They say, well, and that's why this is what we have to do. And they're never willing to recognize that America's the bully. And Putin is, I'm not saying he's the cool guy, but he's the one punching us in the nose. And you know what, whatever.

Maybe it's both sides. You know, the Americans always invoke Munich and say you can never appease the enemy, no matter who they are, no matter how much more powerful you are, even Saddam Hussein. You can never appease him. You can never appease anyone because that's just like what Neville Chamberlain tried to do with Hitler. And it only emboldened him. and he went on to Poland after Czechoslovakia and the rest. Well, Putin says the same thing about us, Pete.

Putin invokes the Ribbentrov-Malatav-Malathe pact or Molotov-Ribbentrop pact where the Hitler-Stalin pact and says, Stalin tried to appease the aggressor. And it didn't work. And eventually we ended up having to fight him anyway and at the expense of tens of millions of our guys. And he says, we have no right to make that same mistake again. You don't appease the dictator.

This has gone too far. And now we're going to finally stand up for ourselves. So I'm not saying that he's right to do that, but I'm saying that's clearly what he believes. And that's clearly the position that the Americans put him in. As I like to say, the analogy to me is something akin to America put his back up to the wall. And he decided not to let it get all the way in a corner and went ahead and threw a sucker punch. And I don't recommend it. And I think it was at best, it'll be a Pyrrhic victory for Russia for numerous reasons in fighting this thing.

but it's at the very least it's like 6040 America's fault Washington DC's fault for creating the circumstances here I got you for another 10 minutes I'll give you a heads up when there's two when you're two minutes do me a favor give me your quickest 10 minutes on Russia in the 90s and the failed the the rise of the oligarchs and the insanity that happened there sure well so it's interesting, and I really should read more of this guy and talk to him. I wish I'd known about him before. His name was Peter Betke, and he's an Austrian school economist. And he wrote back then in real time all about what was happening and why. And essentially just sum it up, instead of sending Austrian school economists over there or even Chicago school economists, they sent Harvard boys, right?

So it was like the neoliberals. And a lot of what they did was, you know, like what Bill Clinton would call free markets and democracy. Well, it ain't quite Hayek, right? And so, um, so a real libertarian regime for Russia would have been hard money and strict new laws enforcing contracts and property rights. What you need is regime certainty. The courts will protect your contract. They will protect your property rights. Now we can have a free market economy based on that. Well, they just didn't have that. They never got around. They thought dealing with the parliament to pass these new laws and whatever, that's too much of a hassle. There's too many commies and right wingers and goofballs and whoever in the parliament. We don't want to deal with them. They don't speak English,

but we got our few friends in Yeltsin's office who speak English and suck up to us and do what we want. We'll just hook them up. They'll know what to do. And essentially it was just cronyism from the top down. And I'm the first to say, Pete, fine, that like every Russian involved in this corruption, of course, is a full-grown ass man who made his own decisions and is fully responsible for his decisions. But there's no reason to whitewash America's role in this because they bragged about it and lamented it at the time. They said, yeah, this is what we're doing. We're doing this voucher system. We're doing these auctions. We're doing this loans for shares program. USAID is paying the money to the experts to give the advice to write the edicts that the Yeltsin regime is signing and passing.

this is what happened. And then they said, boy, we really screwed that up. This may have been the biggest thievery in the history of humanity. That was what E. Wayne Mary said from the U.S. Embassy said, what have we done speaking for the Clinton government? And what they did in effect, and again, the Russians involved were involved, but the Americans were involved too. And what they succeeded in doing was turning, first of all, just destroying hundreds of billions of dollars worth the wealth. And there's a major transition from full communism to free markets here. It was going to hurt like hell no matter what. Inefficient businesses were going to be liquidated. But here, perfectly good businesses that should have been fine. Major nickel concerns and whatever,

all of these crazy important things were shut down. Workers laid off, you know, in massive numbers by the millions and millions and then hyperinflation on top of it all. And you can't blame the Harvard boys for this. There was a commie running the center. central bank and they couldn't get rid of them. And, you know, um, uh, Sacks, um, uh, Jeffrey Sacks, who doing the rounds now is great. So, so great on all this stuff. He complained in real time, man, we are just so hamstrung by the fact that we've got a commie at the central bank. We can't get rid of this guy and he won't stop for any money and see then all the former Soviet republics, 15 of them. They all had their own central bank and the IMF insisted that they all not

make new currencies. They stay on the ruble. So what did they do? do. They all printed their own rubles. Hey, how are we going to pay all these rising prices, Pete, if we don't print more money? Right. And so it was just the worst kind of self-inflicted wound there that that ruined it all. And so then the myth is that it was too much free market too fast when what it really was was not free enough market to fast enough. And so it ended up turning into this corrupt crony thing that then Putin rose out of. Putin was part of Yelts and family and rose to power helping protect them from corruption charges. He protected the mayor of St. Petersburg and then he protected, he actually, when he became prime minister, he went after the

prosecutor general who was going after some of Yeltsin's men. I forgot who it was he was going after and Putin exposed like a video of him and some sex capades or something and busted the prosecutor general and protected the Yeltsin family. That's how he got promoted. And that was why Yeltsin trusted him and made him present, resigned early and made him present three months before the election of 2000 in order to secure his place. And then once he was in there, he did help and protect the Yeltsin family, help them squirrel all their money out of the country. And then he claimed Alpha Dog as head of state. And he put all the oligarchs on notice. The ones who want to stay loyal to him and stay the hell out of politics can stay. Everybody else better run for Tel Aviv or

London or New York, which is what they did. And so he, you know, Roman Abramovich is one of his right hand man to this day. But a lot of the other guys he turned on and they fled. He made himself top oligarch. And that's why they hate him so much, man, is because he declared independence from the United States, circa 2000, 2001. I know that we don't have enough time to get into this, but maybe you can just give your opinion and we can maybe do this at a later date. I see Ukraine and what's happening in Israel.

right now is one war well it's the american empire you know incredibly involved i i don't really see much of a connection between what israel's government wants and what's going on in ukraine i mean noctali bennett i think was probably uh one of the better of the interlocutors trying to stop the war because he had trust in moscow and in washington and he apparently tried to play his role pretty neutral and and pass on original assurances. I think that as close as we got to peace was, was Bennett trying to broker one. And then later he backed off from that,

which by the way, he's the guy that bombed the UN shelter in Kana in 1996 that motivated Mohammed Atta and Ramsey bin al-Shib to join Al-Qaeda, which I just didn't know that. I like that anecdote. I knew about that for a long time. I didn't realize Bennett was the one who called in the strike, but there you go.

All right. Three minutes. What is what is what we give? What's Putin going to get to stop this? He's going to get essentially all the land he's occupying right now. I don't know if he's going to get more than that. If he wants to take Kharkiv and Odessa, he's going to have another couple of years of war on his hands. And he might just keep going. I don't know. He's in the position of strength. all Trump doesn't really have any sticks here. He can add more sanctions and pour him more weapons, but we tried that. He's not going to put the American Navy and army at Ukraine service.

That is already way, way, way off the table. So he really doesn't have anything to offer other than carrots. We'll drop sanctions and be friends, and we'll just forget all this ever happen and turn over a new leaf and just try to bring Russia back into Western civilization as much as we can. and sorry about that idiot Biden is his fault not mine and let's just you know go on and that's about all america has to offer in the situation i sure hope russia takes it and and you know i don't know like you know overall i think the people of harkeev and odessa do not want to be part of russia

i don't know the exact poll numbers but um they certainly have not been fighting an insurgency against their you know kev's forces in order to help russia take that territory they got already virtually all of La Honsk and almost all of Donetsk, about two-thirds of Zabrosia and half a Kersaun that guaranteed freshwater supplies to Crimea through their control of the south of Kersan. And so that ought to be good enough for them, man. Putin's a damn fool if he doesn't take good enough right here. One more, Scott. Do you think the city of London is serious about keeping this going?

no no no and they already had a big meeting in paris where they sat around and said oh geez what were we going to do without america and they all agreed nothing of course what the hell can they do without us nothing they don't have the power to do it so it's all just talk people are just talking francis talking and yeah yeah yeah i mean because the thing is like let's say that the germs the brits and the french agree no we're taking our entire infantry and we're putting them in the east and we're going to try to turn this table here we're going to at least raise the stakes for russia at big tone. What if it escalates? What's the next step after that? They have no answer for that. So forget it. Right. And even if the USA wanted to take them to war against Russia, they probably

would back down men. That would mean nuclear war. Maybe we just let the H bombs fly overhead and stay out. I think that's the most likely scenario for an American war with Russia would be the Europeans on their knees begging the Russians not to hit them. Don't, don't nuke us. Just nuke D.C. We'll stay out of it is what Paris in Berlin and and in London would say I think. All right. Do your plugs and I'll get you out of here on time. Okay. Thank you, man. And I'm sorry I was late and I'm happy to come back and try to finish up with you. So the book, the book is provoked. It's on Amazon at Scott Horton.org. I got 6,000 interviews. If you want to sign up for the show, I'm just starting to put out

the audio book on substack at Scott Horton Show.com. I just put out chapter two, section one, the first half or so or first third of Bill Clinton today. All of H.W. Bush is already out there, the audiobook. And then I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, me and 25 of my best guys over there writing and doing podcasts and publishing books. We've got a brand new book out by Joe Solis Mullins, The National Debt, and you. A great little monograph here. That's our 16th book, and we got more coming soon. So that's at the Institute. It's actually our fun drive right now. So if there's any gigantic millionaires and billionaires listening, we'd be happy to deprive you of a few tens of thousands of dollars that you might have laying around that you probably don't need very badly. And I'll pay my guys with them.

That's basically the deal. And with that, I'll leave you with a thanks, Pete. Good to talk to you. Thanks, Scott. Take care of yourself.