09/04/14 – Eric Margolis – The Scott Horton Show

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Hey, welcome back to the show, guys.
I'm Scott.
This is my show.
I got Eric Margulies on the line.
His website is ericmargulies.com.ericmargulies.com is the website.
The books are war at the top of the world.
That's all about the battle for Kashmir and Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all the different goings on there.
And then, of course, American Raj, liberation or domination.
And if you go to ericmargulies.com, you can find all his essays there as well as unz.com, unz, unz.com, and lourockwell.com as well.
Welcome back.
How are you doing, Eric?
I'm just fine.
I'm almost swamped by news from everywhere.
I know.
It's crazy.
It's all over the place.
I was watching CNN this morning, and it was only pop culture, Pablo.
Nothing at all.
And then, I'll give them credit, even on MSNBC, at least they're talking about things.
But then I go to antiwar.com, and it's almost unreal what all is going on.
So I guess I want to talk with you at least mostly about Ukraine today and what's going on.
I guess there's kind of good news, right?
They're saying that the President Poroshenko and President Putin have announced that they've got an agreed framework toward a ceasefire, something along those lines, is that right?
They have.
One has to be somewhat skeptical about that it'll hold up.
But there are a lot of people who would want to sabotage it.
But keeping our fingers crossed, they've come to what is a sensible and intelligent direction.
And then, so, I mean, they're calling it a ceasefire deal, but when does the stopping of the fighting actually start, do you know?
Yeah.
There are many units running around in eastern Ukraine who are not under anybody's control, apparently.
There are sort of these militia units or gangs, or the Russians call them Nazis, running around in, they're not real Nazis, running around in eastern Ukraine.
There are volunteers from Russia and local Russian-speaking volunteers who have, they're self-appointed leaders, and so the, neither Kiev nor Moscow is completely in control of the situation.
Yeah.
I don't know, I'm reading the Kiev Post, which is very pro-government there, and they've got this profile of the Azov Battalion, and they sure seem like Nazis to me.
They call themselves social nationalists instead of national socialists now, because, I don't know, some PR firm told them that would be good enough or something.
Apparently it is.
But you've got the right sector and the Svoboda guys who have become basically the leaders, right, of the National Guard there.
That's no big deal?
That's right.
Well, it is a big deal in terms for Ukraine, not on an international scale.
Oh, I see what you mean, yeah.
Well, that, yeah, the demonizing of them as Nazis, we've got to find them, that'll come later.
Right now we're for them, so.
They're extreme right-wingers, but they're no more right-wing than, say, the Likud Party or some people we find in the U.S. Congress.
Right, which is pretty damn bad.
Okay.
We understand each other, boy.
All right.
So, yes, the social nationalists over there.
And yeah, no, you raise a very good point.
You're saying that if whatever rebels who listen to Putin and whatever military units and militias listen to Poroshenko cease fire, that's hardly comprehensive, and this thing could continue raging on.
Well, I think, Scott, I think it may not rage, but it may sort of be skirmishes and occasional shelling and fighting.
But what seems to have happened in the last couple of weeks is that the Ukrainian army was quite severely beaten in eastern Ukraine by somebody, either by the pro-Russian groups there or by some people infiltrated in from Russia, we're not quite sure yet.
But they were beaten, and this, by having them beaten, allowed Putin now to make a peace settlement on favorable terms with Poroshenko, who suddenly is not only are his troops running like rabbits, but he has run out of money.
And I guess it's really that bad for Poroshenko that he can't try again.
That was it.
Well, he might.
You know, he can retreat.
More troops can be put together.
The U.S. and some of its European allies are pouring money into Ukraine.
They're American-provided weapons and uniforms and combat gear going to the Ukrainian army.
So it's conceivable it could be shored up again.
But this rebuilding a decent army will take some time.
And now, it's interesting, you know, you talk about whether some people came across from Russia to help fight, and it seems probable, right, that they would have sent their version of their special forces to come and lead and help the rebels, that kind of thing.
And yet, it doesn't seem they've proven it very much.
They found nine guys who, for intensive purposes, seem like they might just have strayed across the border anyway.
And then they cried, invasion, invasion, ten times over, including when trucks full of food came across the border for a little while.
And yet, they've never produced more than some black-and-white pictures that we're to believe were taken when they say and where they say that show a few artillery pieces that could have come from God knows where.
So what the hell is all that about?
There's really not any evidence that Russia has invaded Ukraine.
It's all a bunch of baloney.
The Ukrainian government in Kiev has become a leading speaker of untruths, to put it politely.
And Putin, as he did over the Syrian crisis, is the one who's talking sensibly.
You know, from the beginning, Putin said, when he was holding, last year I wrote a column on this, the Russians suggested to look, let's hold a referendum, let's develop a system of federalism in Ukraine that will protect the rights of the Russian-speaking minority in eastern Ukraine and will prevent the economy of that region from being destroyed if Ukraine integrates economically with the European Union.
No, no, no, they wouldn't listen to him.
But now we're heading back in that direction.
Right.
Well, and, you know, it seems worth note that when they held their referendum in the east over independence, they didn't really declare independence like real statehood.
I mean, they would have needed Russian backing for that or for joining Russia in the first place.
And Putin surely didn't seem to want that.
But it didn't seem like that was even really what they were pushing.
They were pushing for statehood in the Colorado, Texas, New Mexico sense, not the Canada sense.
It's a good point, Scott.
They were, their demands to me were pretty moderate.
And, you know, they have an argument.
You would never know it listening to the American media.
But people in that region do.
They are Russians.
They were part of the Russian state, that is the Soviet Union, until 1991.
That's not so long ago.
And they want to rejoin Russia.
They want to reintegrate their economy with Russia, which is the major problem in that.
It's a big rust belt area of mines, steel mills and heavy industry that if it's cut off from Russia is going to cause huge unemployment.
And then so, well, geez, we're almost at the break.
So I guess I can't ask you yet.
When we get back from this break, I'm going to ask Eric Margulies a couple of more things.
And one of them is going to be about the motivation behind American foreign policy when it comes to Ukraine and what the hell they think they're doing.
And then other NATO countries and the NATO bureaucracy itself, their plans for further provocations.
They've announced exercises in Ukraine.
And then I also want to ask you a little bit about my well, this is part of the motivation thing.
I ask you a bit about my conversation with John Mearsheimer and some of the things he said about how we got into this mess that I'll be interested to hear your response about Eric.
So everybody stay tuned when we get back.
Well, the music is going to play in about two seconds.
Trust me.
When we get back, it'll be Eric Margulies, author of American Raj, Liberation or Domination.
And his website, again, is ericmargulies.com.
Spell it like Margolis.
And you can also find him at unz.com and at lourockwell.com.
And so now hang tight and hear this.
Hey, all.
Scott Horton here.
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Hey, I'm Scott.
Welcome back to the God dang thing here, man.
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I'm talking with Eric Margulies, ericmargulies.com.
And again, American Raj, Liberation or Domination is his latest book.
And so we're talking about, well, the Raj, our border conflict over there on the eastern border of the American empire where it butts up against Russia.
And so I guess, well, I want to ask you about the NATO summit and this rapid reaction force and all this crap in a minute.
But first I wanted to ask you a little bit about John Mearsheimer, his piece and his interview on this show.
Did you read his piece in Foreign Affairs, Eric?
I did.
Yes.
Okay.
Why the Ukraine crisis is the West's fault, he says.
The liberal delusions that provoked Putin.
So this is the part I wanted to ask you about.
Because when he was on the show, he was saying, yeah, no, really.
I mean, basically these people believe in, you know, not in any real libertarian sense, but in like a Bill Clintonian sense, free markets and democracy just kind of, you know, watered down Americanism, neoliberalism, that it's just, hey, the end of history.
We just got to spread it to the world.
And part of spreading free markets and democracy and modern American democratic style liberalism is expanding the EU and expanding NATO.
And of course, you know, why should we be so bigoted against the wonderful Ukrainians and deny them the opportunity to be part of our wonderful project that we have going on here?
And then lo and behold, Russia still believes in great power politics and they have interests and they mean to keep them.
And so it's almost these kind of naive Americans with their good intentions.
And I asked Mearsheimer about that.
But wait a minute.
Isn't it that they hate Russia and they're expanding NATO because eventually they want to tear Russia into little pieces and dominate it because they're still not over the Cold War and they're still not over the fact that Russia is independent from the American empire, which is intolerable.
And I honestly think that he had no idea what I was talking about and made me wonder whether I had any idea what I was talking about.
Maybe they really just believe in this Francis Fukuyama kind of academic arguments for the way things should be.
So they continue to carry on.
What do you think?
Somebody should tell the ISIS in Iraq that history ended, what, ten years ago or whenever he wrote that silly essay, at the end of history.
Scott, you do know, you are right.
There has very long been a coterie of officials in Washington, the Pentagon, State Department, CIA, who are intent on tearing down the Russian Federation and breaking it up into its constituent parts.
In other words, gelding Russia, making sure that Russia becomes a weak and insignificant nation that can no longer challenge American authority anywhere.
I have no doubt whatsoever that that's a policy.
So it's not the policy of all, but it is a covert policy of a group of dedicated, particularly of the neoconservatives, because Russia is considered, you know, a challenge to American military power around the globe.
It's an enemy of Israel, or at least it's not chummy with Israel, it supports some of the Arab states.
So they want to see Russia brought down.
Yeah, JDA in the chat room says they're still not over Stalin killing Trotsky.
It's a good point.
Well, history is very important, actually, in this whole issue.
And coming back to Ukraine, because a lot of it, we were talking about these so-called Nazi groups earlier, all dates from the 1940s and a very bloody, horrible period when all these different groups were running around and they were pro-German, they were anti-Soviet, they were pro-Soviet.
Very confusing era.
Yeah, hard times.
I mean, in America, I think we talked about this before.
In America, liberals call conservatives fascists and they have a point and vice versa to that kind of thing.
But it seems like in Ukraine, no, really, those are your choices.
The communists or the fascists.
And they're really not conservatives or liberals at all.
They're communists and fascists.
Politely, it's called polarized opinion.
Yeah, exactly.
Quite polarized.
All right.
Well, so now what kind of crack are they smoking when they're doing things like saying, let's create a new rapid reaction force and let's have training exercises in Ukraine when they were even saying today on CNN that, no, I mean, come on, we're not going to bring Ukraine into NATO, which that's huge that they're, you know, being that honest finally and saying it that way.
You know, that's really important.
They should really be emphasizing that, that they they no longer think that they want to try to bring Ukraine into NATO.
They're backing down on that.
But then at the same time, they won't have military exercises there when we don't even know if this ceasefire is even really coming together or not.
Well, it's this is political theater done for public opinion.
You know, I'm just writing my next column about we've got to do something, you know, which we is going to do it.
Please, Senator McCain, so everybody's howling about the Russian threat, poor little Ukraine and now the Baltics.
Oh, my God.
Presidents in Latvia, I couldn't find on a map a week ago, making all will defend Latvia to the death.
But NATO doesn't really want to do anything.
It's been pushed by the United States, which provides 70 percent of the funding for NATO into taking a militant stance.
So the the manifestation of it is this ludicrous opera booth, rapid reaction force, maybe 4000 men, of whom probably less than probably only about a third of them are actual combat troops based somewhere in Romania or someplace like that.
And as I as I've said, 4000 men is big enough to start a war, but it's too small to make any military good whatsoever.
So it's it's just theater to show the politicians show that they're doing anything without doing anything.
Yeah.
But then, like you're saying, the problem is the theater can be really dangerous.
Ultimately, you know, The Washington Post here says that Moscow is now reviewing its military strategy in the face of the NATO plan for a new rapid reaction force.
So, wow, imagine that, that they're not automatons over there, which is, I guess, the problem with them in the first place.
And so, you know, there's two sides to this.
And now, really, what that means is their alert is now even more hair trigger than before.
Right.
Scott speaking, yes, they well, what's very worrisome is that in the last 20 years, the Russians have reduced sharply reduced their conventional armed forces and proclaimed that they're going to have to rely much more on nuclear weapons for fighting wars around the periphery of the of Russia.
This is scary.
The dirty secret in all of this is that neither NATO now nor Russia really have the means to fight a serious war.
They've cut their spending so much that they've got only feeble amounts of soldiers.
And I laughed every time I heard of Russian invasion of Ukraine.
My God, the last time there were Russian army was invading Ukraine was the first, second and third Ukrainian front armies in World War Two, consisting of millions of men and tens of thousands of tanks.
How they talk about eight or nine guys who stumble across the border.
NATO is in a similarly pathetic shape, doesn't have the military forces to go and send France.
It's reduced its army to next to nothing.
France, which had, I don't know, almost eight or nine million men under arms in World War One, is now a paper or papier tiger.
Yeah.
Well, but like you're saying, so that just means, OK, more reliance on nukes then.
You know, I was reading a thing by Stephen Cohen where he was saying that, hey, listen, you got to understand that from the point of view of the Russians, if they ever really thought the Americans are putting troops there or are really bringing Ukraine into the NATO alliance, they would use nukes to stop that.
They absolutely will not allow Ukraine to become the next American military base that close.
And and that, you know, historically within their purview or whatever.
And yeah, they would use atom bombs in order to prevent that.
I don't agree with that.
I don't think the Russians would be that reckless as to use nuclear weapons.
They much sooner use undercover units, Spetsnaz commandos and their own supporters to to, you know, to undermine Ukraine, putting a NATO base in Ukraine, bringing Ukraine into NATO is one of the stupidest ideas that we've come up recently.
Imagine if Quebec had gone independent 20 years ago and as it almost did get very, very close.
And then the Russians suddenly said, OK, Quebec, you're going to join the Warsaw Pact.
Imagine the Americans would have gone hysterical.
Yeah.
Well, so do you think it's right then that they're finally understanding that?
That's what they were saying today is, well, that's a bridge too far, I guess.
Well, some common sense seems to be percolating up in Washington, after all, is these morbid drum beating by these these foolish, I think it's the politest word I can come up with, foolish, know nothing Republicans calling for war, which they can't afford to fight.
You're hearing the voice of reason, finally, and, you know, a lot of this has to do with impending elections makes all it acts as a crack on politicians.
Although, you know, the narrative and mostly because nobody knows anything about this anymore, you know, there used to be at least more people could commentate with other points of view and that kind of thing.
But there's so few now.
And so the narrative just seems so solid.
I mean, you watch on, I guess, again, CNN or MSNBC, whichever, this morning, and the banner at the bottom is simply Russian aggression.
What is to be done in response to this horrible crisis that the Russians have started?
And so then, you know, I start to wonder where and this is kind of always the case with all of these wars.
I wonder how cognizant these people are of what liars they are and all the information that they're choosing to exclude from the narrative they're pushing on us.
And especially when it goes from here on out, right, when it's a year from now and they're all going to remember this as, you know, Russia started it kind of thing.
And that informs their perspective for all the decisions they make in the future, even when it's really a matter of double think.
And they know they're the ones who pushed this coup d'etat in February that supported, you know, these kooks that seized the government buildings and drove Poroshenko out of power and all that.
But they just pretend otherwise and then base their policy on the pretension, it seems like.
That's what I'm trying to get at.
Well, there's no doubt that the neocon narrative dominates, totally dominates the American media right now.
And it's interesting because as I watch news reports, listen to them, the media has adopted completely the vocabulary, as you just pointed out, of the neocons that's being presented, of the pro-war party, war faction.
So we saw the same thing with Iraq.
We saw the same thing with Iran.
We see the same thing with with Palestine, where the word Hamas never appears without the word terrorist, either before it or after it.
So, yes, the neocons have won the media war.
Now let's see what they can do against the Russian army.
Yeah, well, but it won't be them, just like always, sitting back safe at the Weekly Standard, writing their little essays.
All right.
Hey, thanks.
I already kept you over time.
I sure appreciate it, Eric.
Cheers.
All right, so that's the great Eric Margulies.
We'll be right back.
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Why doesn't the president force an end to the occupation of Palestine, a leading cause of terrorist attacks against the United States?
AIPAC and the Israel lobby.
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