Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and get the finger that FDR We know al-qaeda Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria are we supporting al-qaeda in Syria It's a proud day for America and by God we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all thank you very very You've been took These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else except as a fact He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them We be on CNN like say our name, bitch, say it, say it three times The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world, then there's going to be an invasion All Right guys time to welcome Gilbert Doctorow back to the show he lives in Brussels and his latest book is does Russia have a future and is a regular analyst on Cold War two issues etc.
And we're reprinting this one at anti-war.com It's called reordering power in Europe the Putin Merkel meeting.
That's what we called it.
Welcome back to the show Gilbert How are you doing?
Very happy to have you here and to hear your point of view, so In fact this comes up in the article.
One of the things that I always like about talking with you is your summaries of the political talk shows in Russia and and the take you know going on domestically their Their reactions to these same questions that we're constantly discussing It always makes your articles very interesting to read too, but so in this case the news is that Vladimir Putin Went to Berlin to meet with Merkel about the Nord Stream pipeline and on the way he stopped in Austria To attend a wedding and so that may or may not be huge.
I don't know tell us what's going on here Well, the point of my article which was a rather lengthy review of information about these events on Saturday the 18th of August and the visits that Putin made as you said to a wedding in Austria and To a state visit or working visit with Merkel in Berlin These the elements of that were covered by European press by the US press and I did an overview To cut to the Discovery here, it's that because there was no press conference at the end of either event The journalists and their editors were forced to deal with the facts and without being having any guidance As to where the facts were going to go What they have done at best is to give a dry Reiteration of the statements made by Merkel and Putin at the start of their meetings That is the shopping list of what they had to discuss Or they talked about some particulars of perhaps human interest Material.
This was the case of the Frankfurt Allgemeine, which showed that mainstream mainstream publications can very easily Turn into entertainment without information.
That was the case when they gave the particulars of the Austrian foreign minister whose wedding Putin attended This Karin Streisand They spoke about how she swims a kilometer every day and how she has two boxer dogs and lives in a farmstead And is chauffeured every day with her dogs to the court office This is very amusing and interesting but totally irrelevant to the issues of state in front of us At the same time, turning to the Russian talk shows, as I discovered the one show had on it the Deputy chairman of the Association of Russian Diplomats, who was very factual, also spoke about the lady in question But had information that is vital to know if you want to make any sense of Putin's Accepting her invitation to a wedding, coming there As he did, so to say, on the road to Berlin Those facts were that she's an extraordinary lady.
She's a lady who happens to know a great deal about a region That is of particular interest to Russia right now.
That is the Middle East and could be influential and useful in attracting investments from Europe to Syria to rebuild and to bring refugees home She's an expert on the Middle East because she grew up in Amman, Jordan Which is not something that you find easy to discover in the American, German, French or UK press You wouldn't know that She speaks fluent Arabic She has been a major professional in Kyrgyzstan And came to a position in the Austrian government as a non-party person Simply because of her professional credentials being so impressive and her being useful to the state Well there I'm giving you in a nutshell What it is that we find when we read We read the news and to be honest about it.
I don't want to be to just beat on the mainstream media The alternative media often are not any better One of the major points that I make and it's a very end when I'm so called reading the tea leaves that my point is that the The events that we saw this rapprochement of Berlin and Moscow are a consequence of Donald Trump's policies You wouldn't know that reading any of the or most of the American alternative news You wouldn't know that because Donald Trump is assumed not to have a foreign policy It's assumed that he's an idiot and that what he does in the world is Depends on which side of the bed he woke up on That is a very nice cartoon, but it is not a helpful way to understand the world that we're living in today and my point at the end of the article is to draw some conclusions about the the Objective results of what Donald Trump is doing in the foreign policy area Even if the subjective side of it what he thinks he's doing Doesn't quite correspond to match with those objective results we live with the objective results not with his subjective intentions and the The objective results are that the man is destroying the US ally system alliance system His critics in the establishment are completely right those few critics who take the time and get their minds around What?
Donald Trump is doing and who have said in this or that place that Donald Trump if you are trying to Understand what what the result of his action is you would say he's destroying destroying the US alliances Well, yes, and my intent and not just because he's a bull in a China shop it's because he has a different vision of how the world should be run and That is a vision that a good many of us Have held close to our hearts In fact, it's not something new it was Coming out of World War two.
It was it was one of the two major Trends in US foreign policy or international relations one was idealism And the other was realism.
This is the realist school and it's a school which is based on nation states with sovereign rights That don't have fixed alliances that a rally together as Realities change as there is the risk of any one country becoming dominant or hegemonic and to avoid hegemony the others Gathered together.
And so you have changing changing Alliances, but that maybe is too strong a word you have changing friendships in the world and this is a Approach an understanding of the world.
That was very respectable coming into the 1940s 1950s and and yet today from the 1990s on it became very Disreputable.
It was considered to be in the words of Joe Biden Something old had old-fashioned some as if ideas ever age and become Become worn away or useless because they're old that is a Line of reasoning that I very much like to pursue in a debate.
I hold that ideas aren't old Ideas are right and wrong The Scott Horton show is brought to you by books Particularly Kesslin runs a new dystopian novel about the very near future by the great Charles Featherstone Kesslin runs also no dev no ops No IT by Hussain Badak Chani and the war state by Mike Swanson about the rise of the military Industrial complex in America after World War two.
He also gives great investment advice at Wall Street window calm when you follow his advice You want to get some precious metals gold and silver and etc from Roberts and Roberts brokerage Inc That's at our RBI dot CEO our RBI dot CEO also check out Zen cash at Zen cash comm or Zen system dot I o it's a great Digital currency, but it's also a messaging app and a document transfer app and all kinds of great stuff to learn all about it at Zen Cash Calm and then there's Tom Woods Liberty classroom If you sign up from the link on my page at Scott Horton org I'll get a little bit of a kickback there and check this out speaking of Scott Horton org If you'd like expand designs calm to build you a new 2018 model website go to expand designs calm Scott and you'll save 500 bucks Also, don't forget the bumper sticker calm stickers for your band or your business at very reasonable prices High quality stuff there used to be my company back when the bumper sticker calm All right, well so You know there's certainly been a lot of fear on the part of the establishment that Donald Trump means to wreck the Alliance system And for my part, I sure would like to see it wrecked You can't have world order without a world empire to enforce it, and I'd rather not thanks a lot you know for the cost of my own Liberty and plus all the guilt and blood on the hands of You know the American population that have supported this Quite willingly much of it So I would like to think that you're right about all that and yet it seems to me like well What he's done is he's basically mocked the Germans and said you're under the control of the Russians if you would You know go along with this Nord Stream plan instead of buying the gas from us and by the way I demand that you all buy more weapons and especially from American firms of course and You know he's increased all the terror wars he did back down on regime change in Syria, so that's certainly good, but he's armed the Ukrainians, and he sent more and more troops to the Baltics into Poland and you know doesn't seem to have I Guess he hasn't picked back up the ballistic missile defense system in Poland yet.
That's good, but He's been pretty hawkish as the Atlantic Council actually admitted quote-unquote in a thing against interests of cheese You know for a Manchurian candidate.
He really has actually taken as many or even more hawkish moves than his predecessors in terms of the new Cold War so Now you're saying in effect.
What has he done so does that?
Mean just the backlash to his ham-handedness on these issues, or what am I missing well?
To say that is that he's enacting in a ham-handed way this is suggest that it's clumsiness that it's lack of skills that his personality defects All of the things that his opponents like to attribute to him and it's agreed with that notion I think that Trump is doing is being not hawkish.
He's being obnoxious and he's being obnoxious because he wants to get under the skin of the people he's talking to and To push them away from the United States Now if he were to go directly and try to accomplish what I say is his ultimate aim He would have been taken out some time ago If he were to do to to make a declaration that he wants to close out NATO He wouldn't be here.
He wouldn't be in the Oval Office right now So what he's doing is very very shrewd.
He is using the tools of his enemies Against them.
That's to say things like sanctions.
He didn't invent them.
They were going strong before he came into office They're going strong independently of him by by initiatives of the US Congress these initiatives by Congress are totally insane and But Donald Trump is doing is taking them one step through to the point of absurd now I refuse to To consider that he doesn't see that that these are absurd and they serve his purpose his purpose perfectly No one can say anything about Donald Trump Applying sanctions to our allies as he's doing to our rivals Nobody can touch that just the the president of the United States has the powers to impose Tariffs as he will and he's using that to destroy the Alliance.
I think that There's a problem with We were getting your arms around Donald Trump is that people who are very smart and very sympathetic to his tempted rapprochement with with Putin with Russia some of my colleagues They are all focused on one fraction one part of the apple pie Their own knowledge and interests are Russia, so it's Trump and Russia Recently in the press we've seen Trump and Erdogan what people are not doing is looking at Trump and the world and to understand or appreciate the relations with Perspective relations between the United States and Russia if Trump stays in power and he wins a second term You have to look at what Trump's wants to do with the world not what Trump wants to do with Russia and Of course, the whole thing is blown out of all out of all proportion by the Democrats and they're Anti-trump Republicans who are focused on the Russia issue for their own very special reasons Russia is a very small part of Donald's interests His interests are to change the way the United States operates in the world environment He believes that the United States Should build up its own its military forces at home So that it can defend itself from home That's pretty clear And that is why he's so resentful at the drain on u.s.
Assets That these alliances represent and none of them more so than NATO We're three quarters or more of the budgetary allocations for NATO are coming from the United States now When you look at Donald Trump as this disruptive force in the existing international order Then he takes on a wholly different and very positive Nature as you were indicating a couple of minutes ago In your own feelings about about NATO and about the United States playing the world's policemen everywhere.
I Would not want to be distracted by how yes how Trump reacts in Syria how Trump reacts because we're getting into a Well, yeah, but I guess the part I'm missing is what what difference has he made along these lines he talks what to me is a good game about half the time in terms of we got to end all these disastrous wars and The Germans and the Poles need to pay their own way and this kind of thing The only real thing he's done along those lines is open up relations with North Korea And he's opened up relations with Russia and he's opened up relations with Russia The only real thing he's done along those lines is open up relations with North Korea But he's absolutely horrible on Iran horrible on Palestine Afghanistan Yemen Iraq war three and a half still raging and still has Marines in Syria let's go and as I was saying has armed up Ukraine and has Really escalated the NATO Russia conflict as well So I can see what you mean that he's disruptive in that he goes to these NATO meetings and he's rude to Angela Merkel and whoever but what difference has it really made is the question I'm asking He's antagonizing everyone to the point where they're all looking for the exit.
Now.
Do you have considering?
The way these folks have been tied in to the United States and the whole careers have been made by being yes men and Going with the flow for them to be looking for the exit now took enormous enormous Impact.
Well, I mean, what are you saying that Germany and France are looking to get out of NATO?
Because of how rude he's been No, not what do you mean looking for the door?
Because he has rude is Putting it the level of personalities.
He has been disruptive by by not respecting the The whole ideology of our values He is openly contemptuous of the common values of democracy spread of rule of law of This good governance, he doesn't give a hoot and he shows it and now this He is a walking fart in in the church and So it's more than his personal lip to Merkel and saying Pushing the chocolate across to her and don't said I never gave you anything Angela and you know, there's much more than that It's he's showing up the European leaders for what they are, which is flunkies They are outright flunkies and he's put them in with their own domestic populations He's put them in an untenable position because their Servitude their slavery United States is before is open to everybody to see by the way He treats them by the way, he flicks So, you know the words you're saying that when when Germany is doing the Nord Stream deal with Russia that that's because of Donald Trump playing chess and making them hate us and Putting them in the position where they have to do this or else lose face for being America's puppets instead of Russia's as he claimed To look for other possibilities That is amazing.
It's utterly amazing.
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Well, so back to this the Nord stream thing You're saying that this is the result of Trump, you know, basically deliberately putting the Germans in the position of having to choose Russia over us or else lose face When he criticizes them for being in Russia's pocket or whatever as he did a few weeks ago Exactly, and it also falls in line with another country.
You mentioned in passing, but I disagree with you You mentioned like six or eight countries.
I One of them is vastly more important than the rest and that is Iran By pulling out of the Iran nuclear pact, he was spitting in the face of European allies He's and but this was more than again a person ever.
Maybe he was just sucking with Sheldon Adelson.
I Know this is the way it's usually seen in the in In the alternative media and I understand why but I'd ask you to draw back for a minute again The problem with dealing in dealing with Trump is that so many of us have our own shafts, you know our own Areas of expertise and areas that we like to develop and that's very fine But you have to look outside the shaft to other things going on when I spoke about my colleagues in Russian studies who are Who were very hopeful that Trump would bring a new golden age in US-Russian relations they don't look beyond the Putin Trump thing to the other issues like Iran.
Is there a war with Iran today?
There isn't Is there going to be a war with Iran?
I don't believe so.
I think that That mr.
Netanyahu Does not control Trump.
What we have is Trump Hitting the you hit the US allies where it hurts by threatening secondary sanctions against Europe for trading with Iran That is repelling the US allies Yeah, well, I'd like to agree with you that he knows what he's doing with this and I agree with you that I Appreciate the effects of America's, you know loss of power and influence here I do agree with you that he is not, you know a believer in the grand theory of American dominance of everywhere forever, but I think it's a lot less coherent Than just a feeling really for him, but I'm sorry I'm late and I gotta go here Gilbert, but um, I hope we can talk again soon about this great article Thanks for having me on really really appreciate your time.
All right, and you guys the article is at anti-war.com reordering power in Europe the Putin Merkel meeting and and Donald Trump to That's a Gilbert doctoral All right y'all thanks find me at Libertarian Institute org at Scott Horton org anti-war.com and reddit.com Slash Scott Horton show.
Oh, yeah, and read my book fools errand timed and the war in Afghanistan at fools errand dot US
