02/08/14 – Daniel McAdams – The Scott Horton Show

For Pacifica Radio, February 9th, 2014, I'm Scott Horton, this is Anti-War Radio.
Alright y'all, welcome to the show, it is Anti-War Radio, I'm your host Scott Horton.
Here every Sunday morning from 8.30 to 9 on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA.
My website is scotthorton.org, you can find all my interview archives there, more than 3,000 of them now, going back to 2003.
And also you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube at slash scotthortonshow.
Today's guest is Daniel McAdams, he is Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity at ronpaulinstitute.org.
And before that was Ron Paul's Foreign Policy Advisor in his Congressional Office for many years.
Welcome to the show Daniel, how are you doing?
Thanks a lot Scott, good to be with you again.
Very happy to have you on the show here.
And the big news out of Ukraine is this clip of Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, on the phone with Greg Pyatt, or Jeff Pyatt, sorry, Ambassador to Ukraine.
And what made the headline of course was the use of the F word.
But so, well I guess I'll let you give a very brief description of the context, but then I have a few clips to play for the people here so that they can understand what we're talking about.
Yeah, and as your listeners probably know Scott, you know, she is Mrs. Robert Kagan, her husband's of course the well-known neoconservative.
And just to show you that our foreign policy is bipartisan, she's a former foreign affairs advisor to Dick Cheney, our favorite neocon.
So they get around.
But what happened, and probably a lot of people have heard about it now, but there was a phone call made between Assistant Secretary Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine, during which they discussed in incredible detail the future makeup of a post-coup Ukrainian government.
And what's interesting is they threw the names of the opposition leaders around in a very casual way, as if they knew them very intimately through a long period of acquaintanceship.
You know, Klitschko was Klitsch, and this sort of thing.
But it was, and there's nobody who can listen to this clip and not see that this is not just the U.S. meddling in Ukrainian affairs, you know, fiddling around with this or that.
This is a deep attempt by the U.S. to have control over the future Ukrainian government after the overthrow of the current regime.
Oh, they're certainly talking about the place like they own it.
Not even the 51st state, but maybe just a county in a state that they own somewhere.
Let's listen to a couple of these clips here real quick.
I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience.
He's the guy, you know, what he needs is Klitsch and Tony Book on the outside.
He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know.
I just think Klitsch going in, he's going to be at that level working for Yatsynuk.
It's just not going to work.
Yeah, no, I think that's right.
Okay.
Good.
Well, do you want us to try to set up a call with him as the next step?
So again, that's just sort of the context, the tone of voice here.
Yeah, well, and they're talking about two different guys from their side, right, the opposition, who the current president of Ukraine has tried to compromise and invite them into the government.
And so they're talking about, you know, in which order they ought to join the government and in which rank these two different, you know, basically front men of theirs, correct?
Yeah, in a way, but they go beyond that even.
They're talking about putting together a deal and talking about pulling in Ban Ki-moon or someone from the U.N. to, quote, glue the deal.
Here's that clip right here.
Okay.
I can't remember if I told you this or if I only told Washington this, but when I talked to Jeff Feltman this morning, he had a new name for the U.N. guy, Robert Serry.
Did I write you that this morning?
Yeah, I saw that.
We have now gotten both Serry and Ban Ki-moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday.
Okay.
So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and have the U.N. help glue it and, you know, the EU.
No, exactly, and I think we've got to do something to make it stick together because you can be pretty sure that if it does start to gain altitude, the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it.
Okay, very politely censored by your gracious host here.
Well done.
Victoria Nuland, again, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.
She's on the phone with the American ambassador to Ukraine, and she's saying, F the EU.
I talked with Ban Ki-moon, and he's going to send over, I don't know who this guy is, if you know who he is, and he's going to go over there, and he's going to work our magic in Ukraine because we're tired of waiting around for the EU to get the regime change done is basically what they're saying there, correct?
Yeah, exactly, and this Feltman that she talks about is at the U.N. now, but not long ago he was in the State Department.
So this just goes to show how the U.S. really does run the United Nations.
You know, look how Ban Ki-moon, when the U.S. said jump on the Iran invitation to Geneva II, they said how high, you know, i.e. they rescinded the invitation in the same day that they had extended it.
So here you have a senior State Department official sliding over to the U.N. and helping to, quote, glue this deal that they're putting together in Ukraine.
I got one more clip here, and then I really want to give you free reign to explain the context of this as much as you want.
We can get into the whole Cold War with Russia and everything, but just so that people understand the context here, I think the end of the conversation is sort of the cherry on top for, you know, this isn't just a couple of State Department flunkies talking.
These are two of the very most powerful people in the State Department, or certainly she is, and she's talking to the Ukrainian ambassador, the guy in charge running that part of the operation anyway, and they're saying, oh, don't worry, we'll get the vice president to come in, and they'll do what he says, we'll make sure.
So on that piece, Jeff, when I wrote the note, Sullivan's come back to me, VFR, saying you need Biden, and I said probably tomorrow for an attaboy and to get the deets to stick.
So Biden's willing.
Okay, great.
Thanks.
So Biden's willing.
And again, what exactly is it that they want Biden to give attaboy to who for doing what now again, Dan?
Well, the entire context is not clear, but it sounds to me like, you know, this organization of opposition leaders and how they see them working together some sort of a deal.
You know, there are, among some of the opposition parties, there is some tension.
Some are, all seem to me at least to be quite extreme, certainly by our standards, but some are more extreme than others, and you have personalities.
The Europeans, especially the Germans, are a lot more favorable toward Vitaly Klitschko.
And the U.S., at least from listening to this and from other things that I've read, seems somewhat reticent about him as sort of the top guy.
So, you know, it's sort of ironing out the details.
The assumption is that they're going to get the overthrow and we'll have this in place to take power afterward.
All right, now, so let's rewind a little bit to last November and how the current controversy broke out.
I guess as far as I know, there's still people out in the streets protesting and rioting and who knows what.
But what exactly, you know, back up a little bit, a broader context here.
Sure, well, you know, back in November there was a surprise decision by President Yanukovych to stop, to postpone signing the association agreement with the EU.
And that would have been, that would have brought Ukraine into sort of a free trade bloc with the EU.
What hasn't been much reported is that the, what Ukraine wanted was to have a sort of the best of both worlds in a way they wanted to have some sort of a free trade deal with Russia as well as with the EU.
And, you know, it sounds good to a lot of people, you know, because Ukraine is in a very, you know, interesting and strategic position.
But the EU said no dice, you've got to, you've got to, you know, it's our way or the highway.
So he hesitated and right at this hesitation.
And, you know, it's not for me to say whether it was a good deal or a bad deal.
The EU offered, you know, maybe a couple hundred million dollars.
Russia offered $15 billion.
But the other component, and this is Professor Stephen Cohen, you probably know who he is up in New York.
He did an interview with Democracy Now!
last week, which was very interesting.
He pointed out, and I haven't seen anyone else do this, he pointed out that the agreement with the EU also contained language that would have brought the Ukrainian military in line with NATO military.
So they didn't really want that to get out as much.
But that brings a whole new wrinkle to this idea that it was just a little trade deal.
This is bringing NATO troops, you know, basically to Russia's border.
And that might explain why the Russians were willing to pay so much to have them break the deal.
That could be part of it.
You know, that could be part of it.
It was, you know, Ukraine is obviously in need of a pretty serious bailout.
Its prime trading partner is Russia.
And, you know, there was the deal to buy Ukrainian bonds and this sort of thing, prop up the currency.
But whatever the case, last minute decided, I'm going to hesitate on this.
And as if by magic, these mobs appeared in the streets.
Everyone says they were peaceful at first, but there are photographs of them using heavy chains to beat up on the police.
The police admittedly did respond with force, as they do everywhere.
I mean, try beating up on some Capitol Hill cops up here in D.C. with chains and see what happens.
Not to excuse police brutality, but there certainly was violence on both sides from the very beginning.
And, you know, this got out of hand.
It settled down over Christmas.
And then come late January, the so-called anti-protest laws were passed.
And that seemed to give new impetus for a far more violent reaction against the police.
Here's one thing I don't understand, even so far in the narrative.
If it's a disputed election, like the so-called Orange Revolution of 2004, where Bush vs.
Gore and the guy that you were for lost, I can understand people riding over that or forming massive protests over that.
But the failure of the signing of a trade deal, that sounds like a lot to get people really out there.
Is it their opposition, you know, this part of the population's opposition to moving back toward Russia?
Is that the problem for them?
Well, it also makes you wonder if whether or not this was set up from the beginning, you know.
Yeah, the whole thing's just an Iranian-Renamob-like-1953 kind of thing, huh?
Yeah, yeah, it does seem to, because as you say, it doesn't seem to rise to this existential level of, you know, being willing.
You know, these tensions have been in Ukraine for quite some time.
You know, it goes back to 1939, when Hitler and Stalin decided how to carve up Ukraine.
And so you do have these fault lines, and you have a very differing view of people.
But the question is, you know, Victoria Nuland herself said in a speech not long ago, she admitted that the U.S. had spent, quote, $5 billion to democratize Ukraine since the 90s.
So it's a pretty strong admission that we are trying to manipulate things to the U.S.'s perceived advantage.
Well, and when you talk about the part of the trade deal that says they've got to start standardizing their military to fit with NATO, that's the key to this whole thing.
Here, the secretary, the assistant secretary's opinion is F the EU, and yet what she's so upset about is that she wants Ukraine so badly to join this pact with the EU.
Clearly, this is, the real question is lurking in the background, NATO expansion.
Which, I had thought, Dan, that they had backed down from that goal, as it's, you know, completely insane and makes no sense whatsoever.
They've already got Poland, they're already up to Russia's border in a few places, and they know that the Russians have a real thing about Ukraine there.
Why push it, really?
Sure, well, I mean, we saw this in 2008 with Georgia, too, though.
The U.S., thank God Georgia wasn't in NATO at the time.
But, you know, there have been people, John McCain being chief among them, but certainly a lot of the neocons want Georgia in NATO.
So, it really is a defiance of agreements, of so-called gentleman's agreements made with Gorbachev in the 80s, that if you let these countries go, we promise we won't expand NATO.
Well, that hasn't been the case at all.
And it's actually, as one of our academic advisors, Professor Mark Allman, said, I think last week on RT, this is effectively moving the Berlin Wall right up to Moscow, which is an extraordinarily provocative act.
Well, you know, here's the thing of it, too.
Correct me if you think I'm wrong here, but it seems to me like this is a big fake alliance anyway.
Would America go to war for England, France, Spain, you know, Italy, probably Germany, yeah.
But to save Eastern Europe, to save Poland from, you know, say, you know, Putin Jr., or whatever, who comes and decides he's going to reinvade Eastern Europe.
We're really going to get into a nuclear war?
The line used to be West Germany.
And that was the point where, you know, you figure Ronald Reagan really would have gotten into war with him if they had tried to move into West Germany, something like that.
But they sat back and did nothing when the Soviets cracked down in Hungary, and they said, sorry, Hungary, we're not giving up Washington, D.C., and New York City, and Denver, and Dallas for Hungary.
Europe, you know, it's a sorry fact of geography for you, pal.
So really this whole NATO alliance is, or I don't know, do you think that's really changed?
Do you think they would, you know, get into a war for any of these, you know, Baltic states, Eastern European nations?
Sure.
On the other hand, nobody thought Austria, Hungary, and Germany would go to war for Sarajevo.
Nobody thought, you know, the U.K. and France would go to war over Poland in 1939.
So these things can happen, and also miscalculations can cause wars as well.
And they have almost caused many wars, and they may well cause this one.
So it's, you know, I think there's certainly a very good possibility that this could happen.
And look at the U.S. arrogance, and you can hear arrogance in every word of this tape, but you can see arrogance in the U.S. foreign policy from Libya to Syria.
You know, look at the Libya U.N. Security Council resolution.
We told the Russians, oh, don't worry, this doesn't include force.
You know, don't worry, and then, you know, the ink wasn't dry when we were bombing already.
So combining the two, you know, I think something could be said for that.
All right, it's Daniel McAdams.
He's the executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Liberty at ronpaulinstitute.org.
And speaking of Syria, I was wondering if you could give us your take on the recent talks in Geneva.
I had thought, you know, there were some tea leaves to be read or something that I had thought indicated that they had sort of kind of at least come to their senses and figured that, you know, the best that, and I mean the American, you know, foreign policy departments up there, the best that they could hope for would be sort of a long-term, low-level civil war, but certainly not an outright victory by those attempting to depose Assad, who are, you know, ultimately, they're basically the Sunni-based insurgency from Iraq, and the worst of them, the prisoner beheaders and the suicide bombers of marketplaces and that kind of thing.
And then they go to Geneva and John Kerry says Assad must go from the very get-go when he knows that's the deal killer.
I guess I was just wrong in the first place, huh?
Well, I think the, you know, the U.S. was always under the delusions that somehow, you know, the Assad government would go there and agree to some sort of a deal.
Who knows what they may have done to try to bribe some of these guys who were there, you never know.
But it was clear to, I mean, I'm sure it was clear to you, but it was, you know, it seemed awfully clear that this was an absurd deal, you know, as you say, that what they should have been able to hope for were a few of the minor things that they were discussing, you know, some relief to some of these besieged cities and some, you know, some gestures.
But, you know, these sides are nowhere near being close together, you know.
So I just don't see the point of it.
I never saw the point of it.
And besides, the opposition was represented by a tiny microscopic faction that had absolutely no say on the ground, as far as what happens, they didn't control the troops.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, this is, I think, you know, the best I can tell, like, for example, talking with David Enders from McClatchy Newspapers, where in the Iraq war, you really had the Sunni tribes of the Anbar province doing the fighting.
And what was called Al-Qaeda in Iraq was really, you know, two or three percent of them, and mostly the foreigners from Saudi Arabia and Syria and Libya who had come there to help fight.
But when it came time to accept the deal to take the money and the guns and marginalize from the Americans and marginalize Al-Qaeda in the ceasefire of 07, then they marginalized Al-Qaeda.
Look, they split.
It was up to them.
They were the super majority.
But in Syria, the well, and, you know, it depends on how loosely you use the term Al-Qaeda.
But basically, I mean, the the berserkers, the suicide bomber prisoner reheader crazies.
This is their war in Syria.
It always has been.
It's not just the Sunni tribes.
Apparently, you know, at least a substantial minority, if not a majority of the Sunni Arabs of Syria, if they're not outright backing Assad, they're not on the side of these guys doing the fighting.
And so there really is no one to go to Geneva to represent the insurgents.
How are you going to bring a bunch of suicide bombers to Geneva?
You know, Prince Bandar can put his shock troops in Syria, but he can't take them back out again.
Who can?
Ayman al-Zawahiri can't even tell him what to do.
Dan?
Yeah, no, that's absolutely true.
I mean, you can only wash these guys up so much and put them in a suit.
You know, if people saw the real face of them, they'd be shocked.
So it's, you know, they're left.
I mean, once again, they're sort of prisoners of their own delusions.
I mean, the U.S., they think, and they know very well that when they send these weapons over to the so-called moderates, they're immediately stolen by the radicals and extremists.
And this has happened over and over again.
And yet, as you say, right as they were holding these Geneva talks, the U.S. was actively shipping more weapons over there.
And you probably seen, like I have, some recent photos out of Syria that show these guys with some pretty sophisticated handheld missiles and things as well.
So they're definitely finding their supplies from somewhere, let's put it that way.
Well, it's just amazing, too, to troll through the headlines on Antiwar.com, for example, where they talk about how U.S. is doubling down their support for Maliki and the Shiite Arab government of Iraq in alliance with Iran to fight against al-Qaeda.
At the very same time, they're shipping weapons and money to the al-Qaeda fighters in Syria, and they're admonishing Maliki for allowing Iran to use Iraqi airspace to ship weapons to Assad for the very same fight.
It's just absolutely incredible to see this going on all on the same day.
You know what else is funny?
One of my favorite sites is Moon of Alabama, and they had a couple of quotes from Kerry and Zawahiri from just a couple of months apart, and both of them were urging the rebels in Syria to do the exact same thing.
You know, we're encouraging you to stick together and find common ground and mend your differences.
If you read the quotes, you'd get a huge laugh out of it.
Here's the Secretary of State and the head of al-Qaeda pushing the same policy in Syria.
Right.
One of Zawahiri's recent messages from just, I think, last week was, Yeah, come together to fight against the evil Ba'athist regime of Syria, which is backed by the Russians and the Chinese, and notably absent from his list, the Americans, who you might have thought were al-Qaeda's number one enemies.
But in this case, and you know, it's funny, too.
Did you see the Josh Rogin piece in the Daily Beast, where I think it was McCain and Graham or Mick Graham, whatever, talking Josh Rogin, and they said, well, they had an off-the-record meeting with John Kerry, which his spokesman pretty much confirmed the details of, I think.
Yeah.
Which, where Kerry said, listen, the al-Qaeda fighters in Syria are becoming a real threat, and our policy thus far has failed, so we're going to have to really double down on support for the moderates.
Yeah, exactly.
Not that I'm an imperialist, and I'm saying they should switch sides back to Assad and the Ba'athists, who used to work for George Bush as loyal employees, torturing and killing al-Qaeda guys.
But, you know, of course, I recommend non-intervention.
But if you're John Kerry, and you have to intervene somewhere in Syria, it would seem like the natural thing to do would be to back the secular fascists against the suicide bomber bin Ladenites.
I mean, it's like me saying, you know, these four shots of vodka seem to be getting me drunk, so I'd better double down and take some more so I hopefully won't get drunk.
You know, it's just insane to double up on the things that you're doing that are causing the problems.
But you know what else Kerry is doing is he's blaming Assad for the rise of al-Qaeda in Syria.
It's somehow Assad's fault.
And even going so far as to saying that he's letting the al-Qaeda have victories so that he can point to the fact that al-Qaeda is strong in his country.
And, you know, I mean, that seems pretty delusional to me.
Yeah, of course.
Well, and this is John Kerry who, back when they were trying to get us into the war last summer, testified to John McCain, and the whole, you know, studio audience there on Capitol Hill broke out into guffaws when he said, oh no, the vast majority of the rebellion there are moderate secularists, and it's just this tiny percentage that are the jihadists.
You know, even when John McCain went over there and met with those guys, he was meeting with the Northern Storm Brigade, who, they told Time Magazine, yeah, we're veterans of the Iraq War, where we fought the Americans there.
Yeah, I mean, the thing is, also to go back to where we started, Scott, is that there are incredible parallels with Ukraine.
You know, McCain was over there recently having dinner with Tiananbak, who is, you know, there's a picture of him doing a Hitler salute, you know.
It's no secret this guy is an extremist, a neo-Nazi, and the U.S. is supporting extremist, extreme anti-Semitic groups in Ukraine to overthrow the government, like they are assisting extreme jihadist groups in Syria to overthrow that government.
Amazing.
And those are the people that Victoria Nuland is calling the liberal Democrats there in Ukraine, right?
And, you know, the stormtroopers, the so-called privy sector, these far-right groups that even make Sloboda look like liberals, they're the ones doing the stormtrooping in the streets.
And it's all with U.S. support, as we see now.
And everyone said we were nuts for saying that Ukraine was being set up by the U.S., and now the evidence is out there.
The funny thing, finally, Scott, is that the press, instead of talking about the substance of this recording, they're obsessed with this foul word, and they're obsessed with, did the Russians do it?
You know, no one's talking about this elephant in the room.
Right.
Oh, my God, the Russians tapped our phone, the nerve of them.
Yeah.
It's just incredible.
No one's talking about what they're actually saying.
Right.
Well, now, so let me ask you this, Dan.
Do you think, again, everybody, this is Daniel McAdams from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
And so do you think that, I wonder if you think that the war, America's proxy war in Syria has as much or more to do with the Cold War against Russia, like our activities in Ukraine, as it does having to do with weakening Iran and Hezbollah for Israel's interests there in the Middle East?
Well, I think always with foreign policy actions like this, it's sort of a confluence of interests and interested groups and parties.
And, you know, there is the oil considerations in the Middle East.
There's the U.S. alliance with Israel.
There are strategic considerations with Russia.
And I think you almost get a perfect storm in some of these situations.
And I think the front lines now are Ukraine and Syria.
But the other thing, Scott, is that Ukraine could get extremely dangerous.
I think the U.S. is underestimating how dedicated Russia is to avoiding the fall of Ukraine or the overthrow of the Ukrainian government.
And I think the U.S. is in danger of stepping on a serious, serious landmine.
Well, you know, the Russians should take sound counsel and just sit around and wait, because, you know, they got away with their coup in 2004, and that lasted them, what, a year and a half or two?
The Russians, I mean, come on, it is their backyard and not ours.
And so ultimately they should be patient rather than having war.
But you're right that, you know, with these state, I mean, again, to listen to the tone of voice of these State Department flunkies talking about all this stuff, everything in the world is just their way or the highway, and it doesn't ever occur to them that somebody might object and or do something about it, really, you know?
Could you imagine what would happen in the U.S. if foreign diplomats on the soil in the U.S. were recorded discussing how they can overthrow Obama's government, you know?
It's, you know, no one ever stops to think what if the shoe were on the other foot.
Yeah, or overthrow Canada's government in order to undermine the U.S.
It wouldn't be tolerated.
I often wonder why Ukraine lets these people into their country.
You know, tell Victoria that her visa is expired, you know?
Stay home, keep your cookies with you.
All right, now we're almost out of time, so just real quick, place your bets, make your odds.
What chances are you given a final deal on Iran's nuclear program?
Oh, that's a tricky one.
That's coming out of left field.
Less than 50-50?
I shouldn't be so pessimistic.
But you know what?
It doesn't matter because the sanctioned regime is breaking down.
The Swiss, the French, the British, everyone wants to do business with Iran right now.
So in some ways it's irrelevant.
Very good point.
Good place to end it.
Thank you very much for your time on the show today, Dan.
I appreciate it.
Thanks, Scott.
Everybody, that is Daniel McAdams.
He is the executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity at RonPaulInstitute.org.
And that's Anti-War Radio for this morning.
Thanks, everybody, very much for listening.
I'm here every Sunday morning from 8.30 to 9 on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
My full interview archives can be found at scotthorton.org.
And you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube at slashscotthortonshow.
See you next week.