06/30/14 – Daniel McAdams – The Scott Horton Show

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Hey, it's my show, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, this is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Our next guest is Dan McAdams.
He used to be Ron Paul's foreign policy guy in his congressional office, and now he's Ron Paul's foreign policy guy as director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
And now he's a Texan.
Welcome to Texas, and welcome to the show, Dan.
Dan, how the hell are you?
Oh, did I say it?
It's Daniel McAdams, everybody.
Welcome to the show.
Oh, I hit the wrong button.
Now welcome to the show.
Thanks very much, Scott.
It's great to be with you again, and it's great to be in the same state as you as well.
Yeah, yeah, come up to Austin, we'll get some barbecue.
Will do.
Can't wait.
All right.
And, yeah, I should ask you to help me get Ron on the show sometime soon.
It's been a little while since we've spoken, and I've got a couple of things I'd like to ask his opinion about.
Okay, well, we're almost neighbors now, so...
Holler at him out the screen door there.
All right, good times.
So what the hell is going on in Ukraine?
Catch us up on the news.
No, in fact, put off the news for a minute.
Let's talk about the history a little bit, because I know part of the news is the EU trade deal thing, and you can't really tell us that without having to backtrack anyway.
So why don't you start with the backtrack and explain about the trade deal and what role that had in the whole regime change operation and how we got to June 2014 in the Ukraine crisis.
And then we can catch up on the current violence, the talks, the role of the Russians and everything else.
Okay, sure.
Well, as you know, late last year, when the then President Yanukovych was pondering whether he should sign this deal with the EU, which would have given them associate membership in the EU or an association agreement with the EU, it had exclusivity on it, and it would have, according to, you know, his analysis, would have prohibited or at least interfered with trouble with trade with Russia, which, you know, certainly eastern Ukraine has a lot of trade with Russia.
And, you know, and it's it's a very important trading partner next door.
Also, the Russians, you know, kind of upped the ante and said, hey, look, we'll give you 15 billion.
If you if you stick with us and don't sign this exclusive agreement with the EU.
So he balked at the last minute.
And I think there was a lot of there was a lot of big players on the West side, the US being the biggest.
But but also the EU, also minor EU players like Poland felt themselves to be very important.
And they made numerous, numerous trips to Kiev and ginned up this whole protest in the street, which, as we know, became very violent.
A last minute deal was brokered on I think it was the night of the 21st of February, whereby they would have early elections in exchange for, you know, calming the whole thing down.
But in somehow in somewhere in the middle of the night, the coup took place, probably because the deal was was crafted by the EU and Ukraine.
It was probably the US and our good friend, Victoria Nuland, who came in and and wanted to put her her guy Yats in power.
So there was a coup that night.
Overnight, Yanukovych fled the country.
An interim president named himself.
And there were elections wherein a good part of the country could not vote here.
A few weeks ago, I think March, May 20th, elected a new president, Poroshenko, the chocolate king, one of the oligarchs, which is kind of funny because the whole thing, the protesters said this was a protest against corruption in government, corruption of politics.
Get rid of the oligarchs.
And here you have one of the biggest oligarchs who is now in charge of the country.
The East did not go along with the regime change in Kiev.
They've been historically closer to Russia.
And in fact, up until not that awfully long ago, were actually part of Russia.
So they did not they were not too keen on what happened in Kiev and in the West.
So they decided to try to break away.
And Kiev, with U.S. support and EU support, has been particularly brutal in in in putting down this attempt to dissociate themselves with the regime in Kiev.
All right.
And now on the night of the coup, I wanted to point out this article.
And I guess I could have Googled it or something real quick.
I should have.
I believe it was in Der Spiegel in Germany that talked about the billionaires and the oligarchs and their role in the coup.
And it was quite simply that the Americans and the Europeans had told them, you better forsake this guy or we're just going to steal every last dime that you have outside of the country.
And so those were the guys in the party of regions, the party of the president.
And so that was when they withdrew the last of their support was so.
So at the same time, I mean, I'm not I'm just adding what you're saying, emphasizing the point here that the same time that they were making a deal for to call for new elections, which, you know, were to take place in December, et cetera, like that.
The rest of the compromise, while they were making that deal, they were actually telling his party members, we are going to destroy all of you.
We're going to take everything from you if you don't get rid of this guy right now.
And that was what caused him to finally.
Well, that and the Nazis occupying the palace and whatever, mansions and government buildings giving him basically nowhere to rest his head for the night.
He went ahead and took off for the east.
Right.
Yeah.
And also, you know, some of the party of regions members who were not oligarchs were simply prevented from voting against the so-called impeachment of Yanukovych.
So there was.
Yeah, there was a lot.
They didn't even get their numbers on the impeachment anyway.
Right.
They just claimed it anyway.
No, no, they didn't.
They didn't.
But that was OK because the right guy won.
But you're right.
I mean, there's corruption and there's these guys.
I'm sure I have no doubt that, you know, they were that they were ready to make a deal with whoever, you know, they wanted to keep all of their ill-gotten riches on both sides, on all sides, which is really the tragedy of post-USSR Ukraine.
It's a it's a country potentially very wealthy that has been absolutely destroyed by corruption, by oligarchs, by ill-meaning people and by, frankly, people in the West who see it as a potential area to enrich themselves as well.
Look, you know, this whole controversy over the vice president's son ending up on the board of one of the biggest oil companies there.
You know, I mean, this is this is how it works.
This is the transnational elite carving up countries, you know.
And so this is a potentially as it was a Brzezinski who said Ukraine is the prize.
And so there you have it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, J.P.
So Tilly, the news vandal had a great write up all about.
Well, I'll go ahead and name names, but I might be wrong.
I'm pretty sure it was Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto and some of the other just household agribusiness firms who have major interests there as well.
Now, and what all role with the oil companies they played in sponsoring some of the same groups and all that kind of thing, all that cronyism.
But now.
So let me ask you this about the IMF loans.
And we're going to get to the recent stuff, but we got a whole other segment, too.
But when it comes to the IMF thing, the standard economic hitman thing is you get them in so much debt.
You just break them.
You liquidate all their assets.
You give it to the connected cronies, get to keep it and put it in their Swiss bank account and whatever.
And then, you know, let the people starve or who cares what happens to them.
You just move on to the next one, you know, like vampires sucking the blood out of nations.
Only it seems like if they want to really kind of colonize, they mean in the West, America and the European satellites.
They want to really colonize this place and integrate it into NATO and into the EU and all this kind of thing.
And their economy is already a zillion dollars in debt and completely broken and and hardly works at all.
Whatever wealth they do produce gets sucked right out of the country by aforementioned oil companies and agribusiness firms.
Right.
And so what's the point of taking on something?
I think this is part of got to be part of what's keeping Putin now.
I mean, Odessa is a pearl, but Putin doesn't want because the whole damn country is a complete wreck and basket case.
It's nothing but a pile of liabilities.
So so help me understand.
I mean, assuming that they have any idea what they're doing, what the hell these people think they're doing in trying to take over the country, but at the same time trying to put it under one of these IMF regimes.
That's just going to take it from broken all the way to hell.
And now the damn you there's a music.
See, I need to figure out how to ask a question on the radio without going on for a minute and a half.
But after 15 years, 14, 15 years, I haven't figured it out yet.
So place your bets on me continuing to ask questions all the way up until the break and installing as the music plays and let you know.
We'll be right back with Dan McAdams from the Ron Paul Institute for peace and prosperity.
Right after this.
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All right, you guys.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show.
Oh, all the news I didn't get to today.
Well, that's what tomorrow's for.
Right now.
We're talking with Dan McAdams about the situation in Ukraine.
The American coup d'etat there in February and the aftermath and I was asking some kind of question there about why the hell would they want to?
First of all, take on basket case Ukraine and then at the same time, they're saddling it with IMF internal economic destruction at the same damn time.
Dan, can you make sense of that for me?
Well, I think, you know, if you're going to go conspiratorial, it makes sense to to demoralize the population with IMF austerity.
I think you've already seen the beginning of significant ethnic cleansing of eastern Ukraine, you know, and this is where the industrial sector is built up the most.
So I think, you know, there was a UN report that came out this past week saying that over a hundred thousand refugees from eastern Ukraine have poured into Russia.
It's interesting that the U.S. has not said a single word about it.
You know, this is not RT or Putin or anything else.
This is the UN saying over a hundred thousand people have streamed into Russia getting away from the fighting, getting away from the shelling that the Ukrainian army is doing on civilian populations.
And the U.S. is completely silent.
So on one hand, if you if you have the populations terrorized by Kiev, then all of a sudden you see their gas electricity bills going up 50 to 70 percent and their pensions cut in half.
These people are going to leave.
They're going to leave the east with all its riches to be exploited.
So maybe it's a conspiracy theory.
But if you look at what's happening, it seems to be happening exactly that way.
Yeah, no, I mean, I wouldn't call that a conspiracy theory.
I asked you to speculate.
So conspiracy theory is when you abandon the rules of argument and go with your faith instead, to me, which is quite a bit different.
Anyway.
Yeah.
So, no, I mean, I think that that's, you know, really, like I say, just a plausible hypothesis, basically, to explain, you know, the policy of breaking the place.
I mean, you know, they talk about having talks.
It makes sense that if they want to hold the place together, they would, you know, I mean, and I know how politicians are, Dan.
I'm not trying to be naive here, but in this specific situation, it seems like, you know, when Chocolate King comes to power in Kiev, his first order of business obviously should be not a big show of strength and bomb the hell out of people and scare them all across the border.
It should be, hey, we're all Ukrainians.
We're all brothers.
Let's sit at the table and work this out.
Yeah, we got away with bloody murder overthrowing your president.
But now let's try to work something out.
And instead.
And there's some talk of that.
Right.
I'll let you elaborate on that.
But, you know, I'm just trying to agree with you that it seems like the policy is more like let's all scare them the hell across the border, like you're saying.
And I don't know if the whole IMF and austerity would go along those same lines, but why not?
Go ahead and wreck the place even more.
Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, what's interesting is and this goes to what you said earlier, that maybe there are some cooler heads out there.
I don't know.
I mean, I I don't have a very high opinion of any politicians, particularly not the the EU politicians, most of whom were not elected into their offices.
But there was a four way talks that took place within the last couple of days.
As you know, there's been a ceasefire for the past several days, which is kind of a joke because the you know, the rebels keep fighting to secede.
And the Kiev forces keep shelling civilian apartment buildings and killing Russian journalists.
So both sides are still shooting.
But anyway, there was a four way talk between the Ukrainian president, Russian president, French and German leaders.
And it's pretty interesting if you think about it.
These talks are excluding the United States.
So I would say probably it gives it probably a better chance of being successful because the U.S. from the very beginning seems to be the party that's been ginning this whole thing up.
And I think the Europeans, as as as ridiculous as they as they are and as as lapdog ish as they are toward the U.S., they do recognize particularly Germany's business sector.
They recognize they've got a lot to lose here if things go south.
So perhaps if they can keep the keep the U.S.'s nose out of it, they might find some sort of a way to extend the ceasefire and to look for some sort of political solution to this problem.
Yeah, it seems like the Russians, you know, again, I'm just speculating here, but it seems like the Russians must have told the Kiev junta that, hey, look, you know, the Americans are going to focus on backing you up and all of this mess for more than a little while.
They're already off chasing kidnapped girls in Nigeria and bogged down again in Iraq and whatever.
You don't take them seriously like they're going to support you over the long term.
Let's just come to the table and and this thing now before it gets worse.
I mean, why wouldn't they say that?
And why wouldn't that be the perfect advice?
I mean, it seems like I don't know exactly what they said.
That's certainly what I would have said.
And that certainly would ring true to anybody in Kiev, too.
You know what I mean?
They'll take the support where they can get it when they can get it.
But count on Uncle Sam.
Come on.
Do you remember, Scott, it was just a couple of weeks ago when all of the usual voices were screaming that Russia was poised to invade the Balkans, the Baltics, poised to invade Poland.
You had the lunatics, the secretary general of NATO, Rasmussen, who was going on about, you know, Russia is ready to invade and Putin is ready to invade.
And now what's interesting is almost the opposite has happened.
Putin has almost lost credibility with those who wanted a more aggressive protection of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians across the border by asking to have the authorization for force rescinded, by explicitly disassociating himself with the with the groups that are fighting.
And you see that, you know, the groups in eastern Ukraine now who really don't have a sponsor, who don't have anyone backing them.
And I think you're seeing a lot of frustration.
So it's ironic that the opposite of what the usual voices here were claiming has seemed to have taken place.
Yeah.
And, you know, as far as him undermining his credibility with the people in the east, you can see how it makes perfect international politics that, you know, you might even, the anti-Putinist might even want to speculate that he deliberately set these Western idiots up to make a bunch of, you know, crazy predictions about what he was going to do.
You know what I mean?
Just so he could not do it and make them all look like fools, like he's done.
As those of us were saying all along, even though we were accused of all sorts of stupid things, Putin is a politician.
You know, he's not he's not Hitler.
He's not a savior.
He's a politician.
And he isn't the one who started this either.
No, it was Victoria Nuland and it was President Obama.
It was President Bush before him who who bankrolled the first Orange Revolution.
And now you have the second one that seems to have been successful for now.
Probably doesn't have a long shelf life either, actually.
Yeah.
Well, and they lost Crimea, which was the only point in the first place was they wanted it.
Right.
So what's the point of taking Ukraine if you don't get to keep the Crimea?
I know it's the best beach, isn't it?
Well, I guess the port of Odessa is something, too.
But so now what about military equipment?
The Americans are sending still what kind of aid and in what kind of quantities, do you know?
Well, they are sending.
What's interesting, and I saw someone else.
This is not an original thought of mine, but someone else pointed this out.
You know, in in in Iraq, the so-called advisers that are being sent in from Maliki are special forces.
So, you know, what kind of advisers they are.
So this person, I think it was Twitter or somewhere, wondered, what about these so-called American advisers in Ukraine?
What kinds of people are these?
It's probably safe to speculate.
They're also special forces.
And they're also trying to get this pretty wrecked Ukrainian military into shape to fight a guerrilla warfare against the people in the east.
And yet when you have a couple of crappy T-64 tanks rolling down the road, the usual suspects here were screaming about a Russian invasion yet again.
Right.
Well, and, you know, yeah, it was when Brennan came to town was when they announced their first big anti-terrorism operation in the east there.
So I think it was even in The New York Times.
They kind of noted that, huh, I wonder if these things have anything to do with each other.
Oh, and speaking of The New York Times, that was the other thing I was going to say.
I thought you'd get a laugh out of this if you hadn't already seen it.
It was Robert Perry's piece about The New York Times.
Oh, well, you know, the reason that Putin has renounced his authority to use force is because he's backing down before the all-powerful might of America and our threat of future sanctions.
Exactly.
I mean, you just can't win.
You just can't win with these people.
You know, they just keep pushing it and keep pushing it.
They'll send Hitler to Chamberlain in one minute.
Exactly.
He's appeasing us now.
Yeah, well, look at the same people who were talking about Iraq for so long.
Yeah, the very same ones.
In fact, yeah, for people who aren't familiar with the gossip, it's fun.
Newland is the wife of Robert Kagan, the co-author of Tord and Neal, Reaganite foreign policy, Bill Kristol's alter ego, the architect of destruction.
Yes, and her brother-in-law is the architect of the surge.
All right, we're out of time.
Thank you so much.
Dan McAdams, everybody.
He's at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Thanks, Scott.
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