03/14/14 – Sheldon Richman – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, Scott here.
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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, Scott Horton Show.
And guess what?
I got Sheldon Richman on the line.
Hey, Sheldon, how the hell are you doing?
I'm doing fine.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Appreciate you joining us again on the show.
My pleasure.
All right, so.
As always.
You wrote some things, as per usual.
And I want to talk about the one before last first, if that's all right.
How Americans can help Ukrainians.
I know you're one of these lousy peaceniks who thinks that the, you know, U.S. Federal Uncle Sam should not go and make everything perfect in the world, whatever your problem is.
But so what can Americans do if not wage war against Russia in order to guarantee the sovereign sanctity of the borders of the Crimean Peninsula?
Three words.
Open the borders.
And then open the bookstore.
That's out of business.
Let any Ukrainian who wants to get out of there come here.
Now, I'm not saying they'll all move, but it's an unpleasant neighborhood to live in.
I wouldn't want to live in the shadow of Russia.
And I think we should make it possible for any individual who wants to leave, either temporarily or intending it to be permanent, to do so.
It's inhumane for us to basically lock people in unpleasant and miserable circumstances.
Yeah, it's like Bob Higgs says.
Don't just stand there.
Undo something.
So we don't have to ask our government to do anything.
Just stop excluding Ukrainians from immigrating here if they want.
I agree.
That's a position.
I think it's an important thing that should be done.
I don't think just for Ukrainians, as I say in the article.
But instead of talking about loan guarantees or possible military confrontation, which would hurt lots of innocent people, that's one thing that we're at least...
That's a micro solution, a micro approach.
Let individuals decide if they want to get out of there.
And what better place to come than here?
Yeah.
By the way, what else do you think about this Ukrainian crisis?
Well, it's not a threat to the United States, the American people.
Russia is a big regional power, and it always will be.
I mean, anybody who knows anything about Russian history knows and can understand what's going on there.
That doesn't mean I'm a fan of Putin.
I'm not.
I wouldn't want to live under Putin.
I don't approve of his mobilizing his military and sending...getting troops ready or putting them in Crimea, because I don't like militaries.
I don't like governments.
But I don't like when governments resort to the militaries to solve problems.
On the other hand, I think we can understand the context.
This is not a first move for world conquest.
It's not Czechoslovakia and Hitler.
The West, and particularly the U.S., has done a heck of a lot to put him and the other Russian leaders on edge by moving NATO up to the boundary, up to their borders.
This is stuff you've already discussed on your show with other people, but it's quite true.
A promise was broken to Gorbachev by Jim Baker on behalf of George H.W. Bush that if the Russians were going to leave Eastern Germany and let Germany reunite and perhaps even join NATO, if the Russians would allow that to happen, then NATO would not move any further east, and that promise was quickly broken.
Just about all the former Soviet allies are in NATO now, and they talk about adding Ukraine and Georgia.
And they're virtual members of NATO already, because NATO has this thing called Partnership for Peace, and those two countries are in it.
That's like a halfway house to NATO, as far as I can see.
And so they've done everything to make the Russians nervous, and then they wonder why the Russians act like they're nervous.
No big mystery.
I wonder if maybe the problem is that the smartest foreign policy guy we got in D.C. is Zbigniew Brzezinski, and he's a madman.
He's one of these guys who's, compared to the neoconservatives, he's good on Iraq and Iran or something like that, or on Palestine, too.
But when it comes to his pathological hatred of Russia, he's no better than Dick Cheney.
I'm sure you saw in Robert Gates' new memoir I haven't read it, but it's reported that in that memoir he recounts how Dick Cheney, back at the fall of the Soviet Union, wanted to go ahead and, I don't know what he thought his plan was, but he wanted to go ahead and push for the complete disillusion of the nation-state of Russia, break it into as many pieces as they possibly could.
Well, you know, I'm a little disoriented, because two guys who have actually written op-eds that were fairly sensible, certainly relatively speaking, were Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger.
So, my head's spinning.
Well, you know, I think you must be referring to what Brzezinski wrote in the Financial Times, because the thing that he wrote in the Washington Post, I think it was, was absolutely and completely out of control, saying we have to send military equipment to the Ukrainians, we have to double down, we have to make absolute threats about red lines that must not be crossed when it comes to any further encroachment.
And he changed his mind, because in the Financial Times, he was talking about how it's possible that Ukraine and Russia could reach an agreement like Finland did with Russia, which isn't a bad agreement.
It's not a bad agreement.
I mean, Finland has freedom of action.
All they did was promise not to be a staging ground for a military invasion or, you know, a launching of an attack against Russia, and they've been pretty much left alone.
Yeah, I saw where Kissinger was pretty reasonable.
I was amazed, and I had to double-check my own premises.
Wait, I agree with Kissinger, he agrees with me, maybe something's wrong here, but no, it seemed pretty good.
And I've seen reference to the Finland piece by Brzezinski in the Financial Times, but the only one I read by him, he was, maybe he wrote this right as the Russians were moving into Crimea further.
They already had bases there, of course, but he was just, you know, blood dripping from his fangs.
He is mad as hell.
He must have been talking to his son, Ian, because I see Ian Brzezinski, that's Mika's brother, on Morning Joe, and he's a real hawk.
So, unfortunately, maybe Ian missed his big.
That's too bad.
Well, and, you know, this goes back to his whole thing, and we're going to be running a piece about this on antiwar.com this weekend, too, in fact, is about the Grand Chessboard, which is his book, his strategy for the expansion of the American Empire through Central Asia after the end of the Cold War, where he talks about just how important Ukraine is.
He considers, and maybe he's quoting Russians to this effect, that Ukraine is their bridge to Europe and therefore is really the key piece of whether they can be a global power or not, whether they can be an empire or not.
If they don't have Ukraine and Crimea and that warm water port there, then that's everything to them, which is why it should be everything to us to make sure to keep it out of their hands.
He sounds like Bill Kristol, frankly, completely out of his mind.
These people have learned nothing from history, because if they really want to put an end to Russian activity and therefore so we never have to worry about it again, they're going to have to nuke them.
I mean, what the hell are they talking about?
Russia is Russia.
It's not going to change any time soon, and so do we want perpetual war or a final showdown, or do we want to learn to live with it?
I mean, come on.
Grow up, people.
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
I mean, that's my thing, too, is wait, but H-bombs, right?
So that's it.
That's the end of the argument.
You can only push them so far.
What else is there to do?
And in fact, I mean, even if they, you know, okay, so what if they expand NATO?
I actually learned from that Peter Beinart piece in The New Republic just how much cooperation they already have between NATO and all of the stands, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, that all of them have kind of NATO partnerships and are working hard on standardizing their military to fit into NATO doctrine and all that kind of thing.
There's a point where we might do that so much where, you know, what if somebody to the right of Putin seizes power and decides that, you know, he needs a preemptive strike now before they're never going to be able to get off a shot and, you know what I mean?
They could really push this thing too far.
It almost seems to me like they're sleepwalking.
I mean, you have the obsessions of the Brzezinskis, but you also just have the special interest-type rent-seeking of Lockheed and all their push to expand NATO that they've waged this whole time.
And it seems like mostly it's a thoughtless policy, right?
It's like Victoria Nuland's running the whole game and they don't even realize what kind of trouble they're risking getting us all into here.
Well, that seems hard to believe.
I mean, there's no subtlety about any of this.
And, you know, I'm not the conspiratorial type, and maybe this doesn't mean this wouldn't require a conspiracy, but it's hard to believe they didn't know they would get this kind of response.
I think people certainly need to also pay attention to Stephen Cohen at NYU in Princeton, who's a Soviet, you know, psychologist.
He's been one for many, many years, and he's written some very interesting things about this.
And it's hard to believe they didn't know that they were going to get this, but maybe there's something in it for them.
You know, the military is talking about cutting back on the U.S., so this would be a good way to stop that.
It's just hard to believe they don't know that, that they don't have Russian specialists who would say, wait a second, this is not a good idea, and who would hold sway.
So I don't know that they're stupid.
I mean, a lot of times the only conclusion is that they're stupid.
If you look at what they did in Iraq, I can't explain that except by sheer stupidity.
But this I think you can explain in another way, and I have a feeling maybe they wanted the fruits of this crisis.
You make an interesting point there.
Ted Snyder talked about how it looked to him like they really wanted Yanukovych to have to say no.
They offered him a deal that he could not possibly accept.
That way then they would have the excuse to do the push.
They would rather not have the deal with the president they don't like and wait until they can get their guy in there.
That was very interesting.
If it's that cynical, it could be as bad as you're saying too.
They wanted to see the Russians come and take back Crimea just so they can sell more planes for the Latvians or who knows what.
Give us a sec.
We'll be right back with Sheldon Richman in a moment, y'all.
Hey y'all, Scott here.
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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show.
And by the way, that Brzezinski piece I was talking about, where he's completely flipping out, is in the Washington Post.
It's called What Is To Be Done?
Putin's Aggression in Ukraine Needs a Response.
And here he says, Much depends on how clearly the West conveys to the dictator and the Kremlin a partially comical imitation of Mussolini and a more menacing reminder of Hitler that NATO cannot be passive if war erupts in Europe.
Pounding on the damn desk as he wrote this thing.
As he dictated it to his secretary.
His kids, Mika and Ian, got to him.
It sounds like it.
Sorry to say.
You got to stand up to your kids sometimes, Mr. Zvig.
And this is the guy who went before the Senate back in 07 and said, you want to have a war with Iran?
Let me tell you.
You're going to be occupying all the land from Israel to India.
Stupid.
You can't.
Knock this off right now.
And the Senators were like, oh.
Oh, I guess we hadn't really thought of that.
They really reacted.
Like, oh, I was instructed that I'm supposed to listen to things that you say, Mr. Zvi.
And you really don't think so, huh?
Okay.
Anyway.
Terrible.
All right.
So now everybody on Earth is laughing their ass off at John Kerry talking about the sanctity of sovereign borders and how in the 21st century, even the 20th, you don't just go trumping up excuses to invade other people's countries, Sheldon.
No, you don't.
You don't.
Has he looked in a mirror lately?
As I understand it, wasn't he for the invasion of Iraq?
Absolutely.
You know what's funny about that, too, is he's one of the ones who was opposed to the first Gulf War and never lived it down.
It was one of the most embarrassing things of his whole life is that he didn't support that wanton slaughter and hurt him politically.
And so when it came to 2003, there was just no question of which side he was going to err on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, many people have pointed out, as I say in the article I think you're about to ask me about, many level-headed commentators have said that the European government is in no position to lecture Russia about respecting other nations' borders.
And it's just ridiculous.
They think Americans have no historical memory whatsoever.
Now, that may be true.
Most Americans don't have historical memory, so they can get away with that.
But some of us do, and we've been writing about it, and so maybe fewer Americans lack that memory than used to be the case.
Right.
Well, what happens is we learn in government school that anything our government ever did was justified, and the proof of that is that they were elected.
So therefore, through the magic of democracy, it's what the people wanted.
Everything they did is what the people wanted.
And, of course, the people wouldn't have wanted it if it wasn't the right thing.
And so all of American history is exactly how it had to be.
It couldn't have been any other way.
It was all food banks like Pengloss.
That's the Quigg theory of history, right?
It's always onward and upward.
Anything that's left behind deserves to be left behind.
Well, so give us some revisionism, then.
Tell us it ain't so.
Well, it ain't so.
And a lot of Americans do understand that the U.S. has not always been on its best behavior.
For example, they may know about Grenada.
They may know about Panama, although those have probably been forgotten.
But Iraq, maybe they might remember Iraq.
It was only way back in 2003.
And some of them may actually know that in 1898, the U.S. attacked Spain in order to grab its colonial possessions, like Cuba and the Philippines.
And they may think, well, that...
And even in school, you're kind of taught that was an act of empire.
So that's not totally foreign.
If people remember their school years, they may realize...
Yeah, Michael Chapman will be the age of empire from 1892 through 1902.
Then it ended.
But I go back even further in this piece, which you can find at fff.org.
It's also on Counterpunch.
And it's called Empire on Their Minds.
And what I point out is that the imperial state of mind goes much further back in American history.
Not 1898, not 1896, when they started messing around in Hawaii, but 1776.
In other words, the founders of the country had empire on the mind from the very start.
And I think even some of this you learn in school.
They saw, you know, they wanted to expand, not only through the whole North American continent, and that, by the way, included Canada and Mexico.
They didn't manage to pull that off.
But South America as well.
Jefferson talks about someday we'll rule South America and that there will only be one language.
The Western Hemisphere will have one language, one set of laws, one form of government.
Of course, they wiped out the Indians.
They pushed the Indians, killed the Indians, stole their land, engaged in ethnic cleansing and extermination.
That was an act of imperialism.
Those were nations, the Indian nations.
They were known as nations.
And they were on land we wanted.
I say we, you know what I mean.
On land they wanted.
And so it was clear.
It had to be clear.
The way Anthony tells this part of American, Anthony Gregory, of course, tells this part of American history where the Federalists, the Whigs, the Republicans, same thing, they were always the fascist party, basically, of big business on welfare and internal improvement programs and whatever they call themselves all the time, where the Democrats were really the more Republican party of decentralized, limited power.
They were also the slave owners and the very worst of the warmongers from the party of Jefferson and Jackson.
They were actually known as the Republicans back then.
I know it's sometimes called Democratic-Republicans, but the short end was Republicans, not Democrats.
Right.
But I meant Republican in the small R sense of just having actually a Republican form of government rather than a very centralized one.
And yet they were the worst of the warmongers.
When it really came down to it, they were more centralist than the Whigs because they were all about the war power, whereas the Whigs even, like the North, threatened to secede during the War of 1812, right?
The Northern Federals were not in favor of the War of 1812, but earlier, the Federalists, don't forget, in the 1790s, pushed the Indian Wars.
That was their doing.
And in the 1780s, before the Constitution, there were Indian Wars going on.
General Anthony Wayne became famous by wiping out Indians.
And so clearing what we now know as the continental United States was an act of empire building.
They also had their eyes on Canada and made various attempts.
That was one of the objectives of the War of 1812, which Jefferson backed.
That was Madison's war.
Madison has this eloquent statement about war is terrible, right?
It's the seed of all bad things.
But I don't know if he said that before, during, or after the War of 1812.
There was also, you know, there was war in Mexico because they wanted to grab as much as Mexico.
They expected Mexico to eventually to fall in their hands, either by outright invasion or just by a natural process.
They acquired, of course, thanks to Andrew Jackson, again applauded by John Quincy Adams, who was Secretary of State at the time, Florida, the territory of Florida, which was larger than what we think of as Florida today.
It includes parts of Georgia, Alabama.
It was held by the Spanish.
They wanted Cuba.
You know, they wanted the Western Hemisphere.
And then the Monroe Doctrine was issued.
It was written by Quincy Adams under Monroe, which said to Europe, we'll stay out of Europe, but you stay out of the Western Hemisphere because we will regard any further attempts for you to colonize, colonizing it as a threat to our security, our safety, and democracy.
They often invoke security.
In other words, the national security state did not begin in 1947.
It began in the early days of the Republic.
Because, as William Appelman Williams points out in his book Empire as a Way of Life, when you think you're the chosen people, as the Americans did, right, American exceptionalism, they thought they were exceptional, and in some ways they were.
In overthrowing the British, the people were really established, not the rulers, but the people themselves were establishing a non-hierarchical, non-aristocratic society.
That was a change.
That was radical.
But in thinking you're exceptional, that can very easily turn to a dark side, right?
You have to bring enlightenment out to the world.
We're exceptional.
We must bring the new way, the new way of thinking to the world.
And if the world doesn't welcome you, like the Indians didn't, if the Indians don't want to take on your way of life, well then they're going to have to be moved out of the way or killed.
And so that's the bad side of exceptionalism.
One thing to think, yeah, we have some ideas that are good for a free society, and people should copy us.
It's another thing to think, we're going to have to impose it on you, whether you like it or not, because this is the way we need to make ourselves safe.
That was the view.
They could only make themselves safe if they turned everyone to this way of thinking, at the point of a gun or a bayonet if necessary.
Yeah, well, we talked about this before, Sheldon, about how hard it can be for people when they, especially maybe they're new at libertarianism, and then they start applying their libertarian principles going back through history and looking at all these wars.
And it really is asking a lot of them, isn't it, and a lot of libertarians come from the right, too.
It's asking a lot of them to say, you know, actually, no, this whole project has been a corrupt project from the beginning.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, they were the guys who ruined the American Revolution, not who, you know, made it permanent through their Constitution.
We're all grown-ups.
We don't need to tell fairy tales.
We don't need to shield people from the truth.
The leaders of the country, the new country, the budding country, saw the Revolution in large part as a battle between a mature empire and a nascent empire.
George Washington referred to himself as a resident of an infant empire.
That's what they saw in the future.
They thought it was inevitable.
They thought it was manifest destiny.
They thought it was divinely ordained.
But even the secular ones believed that, too.
And even the ones who were nervous about the methods of empire, and some of them were.
Quincy Adams is a possible example.
So even the ones nervous about empire knew that it would rest uncomfortably with liberty, still wanted ends that could only be achieved through imperial means.
That was the fatal flaw.
Even the ones that didn't like empire wanted things that could only be achieved by empire.
And so logic pushed them in the arms of the outright imperialists.
Right.
And now back to the beginning again, where our frontiers are on Russia's western border over there in Ukraine right now.
As Fitzy G puts it in the chat room, quoting Garrett Gurette, there is no security at the top of the world.
We've now taken this empire thing so far that we're destroying ourselves with it, setting ourselves up even for the possibility of a real war with a real power that's strong enough to really fight back and win.
Yeah.
And I like the line by Adam Gopnik who says the worst pretense of empire is that every rattle on the edges is a death knell to the center.
Right.
Yeah, that was a great quote.
And it's in Sheldon Richman's new piece, Empire on Their Minds, brand new out today at FFF.org.
Thanks, Sheldon.
Thank you, Scott.
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