Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and give the finger to 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 much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, 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, you guys, introducing Daniel Lazar.
I ruined your last name last time, Daniel.
Sorry about that, but then I remembered that you corrected me before.
It's Daniel Lazar, our good friend and great writer, very important writer.
This one is at, and this is not a rerun.
Yes, we just talked with him last week.
This is the one that we spoke about at the end of that interview.
The new one coming out, it's now out, is Saudi Arabia the Middle East's next failed state?
All right, so welcome back.
How are you, sir?
I'm fine.
How are you?
I'm doing good.
Sorry about the last name thing there.
Don't worry, don't worry.
You know, you should really just drop the E at the end and then we'll know not to pronounce the A that way.
People will think it's Lazer then.
Oh yeah, that's true.
That would be worse.
All right, so hey, listen, this is really important and interesting, this piece that you wrote here.
Well, go ahead.
First of all, tell us about Ibn Khaldun.
Is that how you say his name?
That is correct.
How do you like that, everybody?
I got that on the first try.
Very good, very good.
I mean, Ibn Khaldun is a really interesting guy.
He lived in the 14th century in Morocco.
He wrote a very famous book that was rediscovered in the 19th century, translated into European languages.
And it was quite startling because it was a strange combination of faith, fatalism and modern science.
Very advanced for its day.
And he explored various sociological topics.
And among those were the conflict between nomads and city dwellers.
And the other was the dynamics of the rise and fall of Islamic regimes.
And he posited this three generation theory that Islamic regimes typically begin as a kind of a desert fundamentalist movement.
Bedouin tribesmen who are pious, poor, envious of rich city dwellers, but also contemptuous of them for their lack of faith.
They sweep into the city, they purge, they impose religious rigor.
And then eventually they succumb to the wiles of city living luxury and they grow fat and corrupt and ineffectual.
And then three generations later, the next band of tribal fundamentalists take shape and sweeps into town and installs a new dynasty.
And historians have pointed out this pattern has been really remarkably consistent over the centuries.
There have been a few exceptions.
The Ottomans are the most notable.
But still the pattern reasserts itself.
Now, repeatedly.
Now, let's turn to Saudi Arabia, which is now with Mohammed bin Salman is now on its third generation.
And the first of the first Saudi conquerors, Ibn Saud, was a desert warrior who led a fundamentalist movement in partnership with the Wahhabist religious hierarchy.
He imposed a very super austere form of Islam on Saudi Arabia and then died in the mid 50s.
And when he died, his place was taken by a succession of sons who each of whom proved to be sort of, you know, richer, softer, more ineffectual and more corrupt.
And that brings us back to the to the present day, where in 2015, Mohammed bin Salman, the third generation was pointed out, was appointed all but king.
And he is crazy.
He is erratic.
He is a monstrous egotist.
He is incompetent.
He has started a major war in Yemen that he can't possibly win.
And and the regime is in big trouble in the end.
The Jamal Khashoggi killing.
This is a sign not of a strong regime, but really of a weak regime, which is so desperate, so so reckless that it it conducts a murder in practically broad daylight, provoking, you know, a huge diplomatic crisis.
So so that regime is in trouble.
And meanwhile, as Ibn Khaldun pointed out, we do have a fundamentalist movement out in the desert.
That is al-Qaeda and ISIS.
So the question is whether Ibn Khaldun's forecast will hold hold true, whether you know whether the the Saudi regime will crumble and whether these desert fundamentalists are gathering in the wings waiting to take over.
I mean, ISIS seems to be seems to be no down for the moment.
But could it be that ISIS is now poised for its greatest victory ever, where it sweeps into Saudi Arabia, you know, you know, takes, you know, sets up its caliphate in Riyadh, takes control of 20 percent of the world's proven oil reserves and at hundreds of billions of dollars worth of a worth of advanced weaponry?
This is the this is the ultimate nightmare from the point of view of the Cold War strategists in Washington.
Yet it may be coming true.
Mm hmm.
All right.
Well, so already lots to go over there.
First of all, even in the smaller scale and anywhere in the world, this is always the way it is, right?
Virtually always the grandson wastes the grandfather's fortune and is a drunk and blows it.
Right.
They're very rare exceptions.
The Rockefeller family has stayed successful through the generations, but they prove the exception to the rule.
Right.
Yes, that that pattern is is is fairly common.
So it's not necessarily just the rulers, you know, sultans and so forth, but even in business and in anything.
Right.
Well, yeah, but in the in the West, they develop various mechanisms, mechanisms to to to counteract this.
I mean, in the in the US we have we don't have individual capitalists.
We have corporations.
So the grandson may be a drunk, but the grandson, by that point, is out of the corporation.
You know, he's been pushed out and the corporation still, you know, still carries on.
The family fortune is wasted, but the business still thrives.
Yeah, precisely right.
But in the in the in in Saudi Arabia, you have this ultra personalized dictatorship where the family is all.
So when the family goes, everything goes.
Right.
All right.
And now.
So I have to challenge your characterization of MBS is crazy.
I mean, he seems to me much more of a dumbass.
OK.
Dumbass, crazy.
I mean, I mean, I mean, crazy, really.
I mean, these things have different definitions.
He clearly is making very bad decisions, very reckless, as you say.
But OK.
Yeah.
Crazy.
I don't know.
I don't mean it.
I don't mean it like in nitpicking.
I'm more just I was trying to crack a joke about.
He really see it really does seem more like he's got these whims and he thinks the world is just going to do what he says, just like his nannies and butlers have always done.
And he's just living in a different world now.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, crazy, dumbass.
I mean, I mean, both words are are not quite right.
I mean, this this guy, this guy grew up in incredible wealth.
You know, sometimes some Saudis study abroad.
He did not.
He went to King Fahd University in Riyadh.
He is he's been surrounded by immense wealth by yes men since his infancy.
Every every word out of his mouth is his law.
So therefore, he grew up thinking he could do no wrong.
Now, I mean, you and I, you know, and all other adults, normal adults, you know, we go through life.
We get bruised and battered.
We make mistakes.
We know people tell us we're we're full of it.
We succeed.
We fail, et cetera, et cetera.
And that's and so therefore we learn about how to make our way in the world.
But when you live, you grew up in these highly artificial circumstances that that that MBS did.
You don't learn.
You sort of remain an infant because everyone tells you that everything you you have ever said from your, you know, from age three on is right.
And so therefore you can't do anything wrong.
So therefore he comes in and he is reckless.
He he doesn't know what he's doing.
He's clearly incompetent.
And and he has he's wrecking the country.
And that's already on its way to being wrecked.
But he is finishing the job.
Yeah.
Well, so now let's talk a little bit about some of that as far as his making of enemies inside the country.
And, you know, we've got to talk about Yemen and these things, too.
But so there's been this so-called anti-corruption purge, which really seemed to impress a lot of media people and officials here in the US.
But obviously, it's just, you know, cleansing of his competition.
And I forget the names of the different families in there, but I know it was basically his uncles and cousins that he was marginalizing to clear his own path as he went from deputy crown prince to crown prince to, you know, king someday, he hopes.
But then, you know, a big part of his PR push was also that he was going to challenge the religious right.
Now, that was the American public relations.
I don't know whether.
Well, did that have any real reality in in Saudi Arabia that he was calling a halt to the global spreading of Wahhabism and and, you know, even demanding real reforms inside the kingdom there?
Yes, to a degree.
Yes, to a degree.
I mean, I mean, I mean, Saudi Arabia rests as you know, it's a it rests on two feet.
One is the is the Wahhabi, the Wahhabist establishment, and the other is the Al Saud, the royal family.
So this is the partnership which has existed since since the mid 18th century and which in 1932 led to the establishment of the of the modern Saudi monarchy.
He did curtail the Wahhabi in in significant ways.
There's no doubt about it.
But he but now that he himself is stumbling and falling, the question is whether the Wahhabi will get their revenge.
And remember, the Wahhabi are, you know, the the they fade very, you know, they sort of fade, you know, fade off very gradually into ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
They're sort of two wings of the same movement.
So if the Wahhabi get an opportunity to take their revenge against the Al Saud, we know that that'll open the door to these other forces, Al-Qaeda and ISIS and similar forces to sweep in and to to join in that movement.
Well, then I guess that purge against the Nayefs and whoever else's all of his competition, that's really, you know, also at the same time as he's making all these new enemies on the religious right, he's undermining the rest of the very secular elite establishment there that, you know, could all rally around together to protect the state.
He's really pulled a lot of its support away from the inside.
Oh, yeah.
And the foreign investment has plummeted.
Wealth is escaping the country because, you know, that that roundup of the Ritz Carlton last November, that was a giant shakedown.
You know, he really wanted to get his hands on that money.
And he did get he did grab billions of dollars.
But meanwhile, capital is now flying.
Foreign investment has plummeted.
The state looks very shaky.
Or the only thing holding up at the moment is that oil prices are relatively strong for the moment, although that could that could change.
If that does change, then things can get very hairy, very fast.
So.
Is there a point where you could really identify, you think, where he hit his peak in terms of influence?
His old trip tour, you know, to America, hanging around with Tom Friedman and all that.
It's been downhill since then or since the kidnapping of the president of Lebanon or.
Yeah, I hear he's sleeping on his yacht out in the Gulf or in the Red Sea, maybe.
Yeah, a guy named Bruce Rydell, who's a who was at Brookings, an ex CIA agent, CIA agent or analyst, has has has reported that he's taking this taking this spending nights on his 500 billion dollar yacht, which is anchored in the Red Sea port of Jeddah, which is a pretty amazing thing.
I think that MBS hit his peak back in May of 2017 when Donald they invited Donald Trump to Riyadh and they they they fettered him and they they, you know, they they flattered him and and made, you know, entered into a huge talk of huge arms deals.
And that was the peak of his power.
Yeah.
And also everyone commented, you know, that that that, you know, there was the the Jared, you know, bin Salman alliance.
We had two royal princes, one running one of the White House and the other in in Riyadh.
I mean, right there, that's like hitting a brick wall.
He wanted to privatize a piece of Aramco and then his dad overruled him and shut him down on that.
It never would have happened in any case because Aramco could never meet the transparency requirements that that that an IPO would require on, you know, in New York or London or anywhere like that.
And he's just swinging and missing anyway.
But I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Yeah, he's swinging and he's missing and missing.
And he's missing a lot lately.
The war in Yemen is a horror.
He had, you know, Assad is still in power in Syria, even though Saudi Arabia had spent the last five years trying to knock him off.
Iran is is is its power is growing and the Saudis are very nervous.
So he's doing he's not doing well.
Yeah, he's he's shaking on his his grip on power is weakening.
OK, so while we cover Yemen a lot, but one thing that we don't cover about Yemen very much on this show is what Yemen means in Saudi politics now when Operation Decisive Storm is three and a half years old and going nowhere.
It's going nowhere.
I mean, first of all, I mean, are they pissed?
I saw where one, you know, rich Saudi sheik or whoever he was, was in the UK safely, I suppose, and and really criticized the Yemen war and said that it was all MBS's fault.
Nobody else's.
And they ought to stop it right now.
And this kind of thing.
That was pretty brave.
Yeah, well, it was MBS's fault.
I mean, he was he was he was two months after taking over the becoming defense minister in 2015.
He he he launched this war and then disappeared on a vacation to the Maldives where he was like out of reach for Dave's days.
It's really pretty amazing.
And the war is a horror.
The Saudis aren't getting anywhere.
They can't get anywhere.
They're using mercenary troops from the Sudan and elsewhere.
They're not doing well.
They're militarily incompetent, utterly incompetent.
Al-Qaeda has grown in Yemen and the Houthis are regularly flying, you know, shooting off missiles into Saudi Arabia, which the Saudis can't stop.
The war is going really badly.
And when wars go badly, regimes, you know, regimes get, you know, get shaky.
And and so this is a case of a war turning out to be really bad.
There's no end in sight.
This war can go on for for another five years without anything happening.
And the country will be utterly destroyed.
There'll be, you know, thousands of people will die.
But, you know, but but militarily, it'll be a total stalemate.
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Well, you know what?
For years, ever since I first heard of the clean break and coping with crumbling states, I would ask Eric Margulies, probably dating back to 2004, yeah, but if they take out Assad, then what?
I mean, there's no other, you know, there's a 70% Sunni supermajority in Syria, but they don't have any organized political force outside of the state that they participate in now, other than the Muslim Brotherhood.
That would be the best you could do.
And it might be much worse than that.
It might be people like al-Qaeda in Iraq, because there's just nobody else to fill that space if you make it.
And so then, of course, that's exactly what happened starting in 2011 and led to the rise of the Islamic State and all that kind of thing.
And it sounds like that's what you're saying here is there's nobody else.
If this thing really crumbles, then you have Baghdadi or the next Baghdadi or somebody, you know, Ayman al-Zawahiri hitchhike over there or something to come in and take over the place.
I guess it'd probably be a homegrown Baghdadi to do it, right?
But still, we have no, I have no idea.
You have no idea.
No one has any idea of what exactly will happen.
But the al-Saud themselves are collapsing.
And if they collapse, there's no one to take their place.
Luckily, Trump incredibly bragged at a political rally that he told the Saudis that if it wasn't for America, they'd disappear in two weeks.
And he's right.
He's absolutely correct.
So that regime is really, really weak.
And we don't know what it will take to tip it over, a plunge in oil prices, you know, who knows, some kind of military revolt.
Is it really right that it would just collapse in a couple of weeks without America?
I mean, they have enough weapons and they have all their own money from selling oil to whoever in the world, not just us, right?
Hardly us at all.
Let's say, for example, if MBS was gone, and one of his more competent cousins became the new crown prince, and things settled down a bit.
I mean, is it really that unstable already?
It is, because that won't happen.
I mean, first of all, the line of succession is really unclear.
There's something called the Suderi clan.
This is like one set of brothers.
And the present king is the last of that clan, the Suderi clan.
That's King Salman, MBS's father.
And after Salman, then the succession is really unclear.
Salman has named his son MBS as crown prince, meaning he's next in line.
But if MBS were to go, it's not clear who would take his place.
And therefore, there could very easily be a scramble for power, a kind of factional civil war.
We just don't know.
But it's extremely unstable.
The regime is very weak.
And it's not at all clear that it will somehow right itself.
In fact, it's really more reasonable to assume that it won't right itself, that we'll see growing disorganization and anarchy.
And what about, and this is, I don't know how you could possibly know, but it's the big question mark is, well, what about the security forces, their national guard who were there to keep the people down and to protect the royal state?
That's certainly what all the princes are telling each other, right, is thank goodness for the security forces.
Yeah, but who controls them?
We don't know.
I mean, if the line of succession is unclear, and if MBS is hiding out in this yacht to escape from assassins, then if he goes, then it's unclear who would take his place.
Yeah, and I guess I meant to set that up.
I set that up wrong.
I sort of meant if there was some kind of popular revolt, everything else being equal.
Yeah, but the Saudi military is notorious for its incompetence.
I mean, they have no infantry.
They've got a lot of princes who like to fly F-15s, but they have no boots on the ground because who the hell, what GI is going to put his life online for these kleptomaniacs?
I mean, MBS, he plunked down $500 million for a yacht, $350 million for a French chateau, $500 million for a painting by Leonardo da Vinci.
That's a lot of money, at least it is to me.
So what grunt would put his life on the line for a guy like that?
Yeah, good question.
So the Saudis are good at flying F-15s, which the US then refuel in midair so they can drop bombs on funerals in Yemen, but when it comes to fighting a real war, they're nothing.
Yeah, man, you know what?
So back to al-Qaeda for a minute here.
I'm kind of rewinding and thinking back to… And by the way, Scott, al-Qaeda and ISIS, they are good at fighting wars.
They're a very tough bunch, there's no doubt about it.
Yeah, I mean, look at Iraq War II and in Syria.
Yeah, they're quite formidable.
So they are a formidable military force.
They are on the outs at the moment.
But one ISIS fighter is worth 20 National Guardsmen.
Well, you got to figure, MBS's public relations push in the US makes sense for impressing Tom Friedman and all that kind of thing.
But it seems like, well, again, just incompetent and ham-handed as far as how to carry out some obviously very badly needed reforms in Saudi Arabia, like stop financing the most extremist mosques all over the world in Bosnia and Indonesia and wherever they possibly can.
Maybe they could curtail a bit of that and letting women drive and this kind of thing.
But it seems like if you're going to do that inside the kingdom, you got to figure out a way to negotiate very carefully those waters and figure out how to do it in a way to be conciliatory, even as you're restricting these guys and figure out a way to not provoke the kind of backlash that you quote in here were.
And I don't know what Zawahiri said, but you quote Baghdadi saying, look at this satanics, whatever it is, trying to destroy Islam in such a way.
And then meanwhile, what is he doing?
All he does is pal around with Israelis and Americans and say, yeah, I'm taking on the religious establishment in Saudi and I'm doing it because that's what Netanyahu and that's what Donald Trump want.
And so how do you like that, everybody, in the most just almost a parody of a way to pour kerosene on the al-Qaeda fire that's already raging there or I don't know in Saudi, but around the region.
I mean, you know what I mean?
It's just like George Bush.
Could Zawahiri have written this guy's script for him any better if he was the one secretly behind it all?
Well, I mean, when an autocratic regime tries to reform, that's the most dangerous moment because it's difficult to reform.
And once you reach out there and you try to change things, you try to compromise and you upset the existing balance of power, well, then things go out of whack and suddenly dangerous forces are unleashed.
We've seen this pattern a thousand times.
And so reform, so when MBS set out to make certain reforms, he was really sort of stepping into dangerous territory.
And so it's kind of backfired.
And that's what the Jamal Khashoggi killing shows.
Okay.
So tell us more about that because maybe a lot of people haven't even heard of what you're talking about there.
Well, Jamal Khashoggi, he comes from a very wealthy family in Saudi Arabia.
His cousin is Adnan Khashoggi, who was a famous arms dealer.
I was wondering about that.
And if you cast your memory back.
Richard Perle's friend.
Yes.
He was a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, way, way back.
Yeah, Ladeen's friend too, I should have said, I guess.
Yeah, precisely.
Jamal occupies a very lofty position in Saudi society.
He was an advisor to Ben Turki, the longtime head of Saudi intelligence, whose hands are really dirty.
Jamal himself is kind of a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Saudi regime doesn't really like because they see them as sort of challenging their own legitimacy.
But he had sort of carried on as a journalist and sort of, you know, courtier in Saudi Arabia.
He edited a newspaper called Al-Watan for a while, but got canned because he just sort of strayed too far from the official line.
And in 2017, he went into exile and started writing a column for the Washington Post where he expressed extremely mildly dissenting views.
This guy is not a radical.
He still supports the monarchy.
He is, you know, he is an Islamist, but he just sort of, you know, mildly dissented from the Saudi line.
And so what happened is that he apparently really pissed off MBS, probably because it was criticisms of the Yemen war.
And I think it was last Tuesday he went to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul because he needed to pick up some legal papers.
And he was then taken prisoner when he went inside.
He left his fiancee outside holding his cell phone and saying, you know, call the police if I don't emerge in an hour or two.
And he was apparently tortured, murdered, murdered, dismembered and then flown out of the country.
And a video of this of this killing was made to show the bosses back home in Riyadh that the deed had been done.
Now, apparently the the Turkish authorities reportedly have actually obtained this video.
OK, yes.
So apparently there means that's what the Turks told the Post, right?
Yes, yes, yes.
The other thing, by the way, today's today's Washington Post also says that the CIA had advanced word that this kidnapping would occur.
And and and it's not at all clear.
It's unclear whether they tried to warn Khashoggi and they may not have.
So therefore, that's a really interesting question to explore.
Yeah.
Well, a couple of things there.
I mean, I just can't believe anything these guys say about anything.
So I don't know, man.
I kind of want to withhold my judgment a bit.
But I guess the real point is that, you know, every all of official D.C. certainly believes this story anyway.
And and it's provoke quite a reaction to either treading on the Washington Post.
You can't do that.
They're your most loyal ally in the American media.
Saudi, what are you doing?
Right.
So now they've got a real problem.
Well, I get your many babies all day long.
But this is an outrage.
That's that's absolutely true.
That's totally correct.
But I, I, I, I believe the I believe this account.
I think this is probably correct.
I mean, I mean, I don't know any specific reason to doubt it.
Yeah, I mean, I agree.
Your skepticism is entirely warranted.
But I think in this case, the story seems to be true.
But, you know, so this is a this is a huge diplomatic crisis.
And, you know, I mean, if and the U.S. is not clear, it's not clear what the U.S. will do.
But can I just say one thing?
I mean, what we have to keep in mind is the degree to which this is all a U.S. creation.
I mean, I mean, FDR met with with with Ibn Saud in 1945, February 45.
It went straight from Yalta to the to the Great Salt Lake and the Suez Canal to meet with Ibn Saud.
And essentially what the U.S. did was they said in exchange for Saudi oil, they would guarantee the royal family's security in perpetuity.
And what that meant is that gave the the the sort of the Al Saud a license to do whatever it wanted to do.
So the U.S. has essentially nurtured this this monster.
And now it has no idea what to do in response.
This this this beast is out of control and the U.S. is paralyzed.
Really, it can't they can't take the Al Saud down.
It can't cut relations.
It can't do anything.
You know, it's a it's a classic case of the tail wagging, wagging the dog.
Yeah, that's funny.
My mic was off.
Thankfully, if I had interrupted you, I would have said FDR.
But then you said FDR just right on time.
Absolutely right.
So, yeah.
Now it seems like, as you're saying, you know, his MBS is his who's like the pseudo king already.
His old man's got senility and whatever they say.
He is in such a precarious position and now he's really crossed this line with the Americans.
Well, with, you know, obviously much of the American establishment.
But do you think it's going to make much different in terms of the relationship between their government and ours?
Yes, I think it will, because I think things are so explosive at this moment that that that the that something's got something is going to change.
What that is, I don't know.
But I think that things are very rocky.
The U.S. will try to sort of ride this out, handle things.
I don't know if it can.
You know, America is not all powerful.
People sometimes think it is, but it really isn't.
There are limits to U.S. power.
And if the regime really is in crisis in Riyadh, as it certainly appears to be, it's not at all clear that Washington will be able to control things.
It may not be able to at all.
Well, I mean, they absolutely have the reverse Midas touch for everything that they do makes everything worse.
So that is certainly true.
Yeah.
I mean, and from their own perspective, not just mine, but in terms of.
Well, like you're saying this whole thing, I mean, never mind FDR, but just this whole century of America destabilizing the whole region that they're trying to dominate.
And all they've done is, you know, watch it all slip through their fingers.
Yeah.
But if that regime goes, this is an epic event in the history of the U.S. empire.
Because the U.S.-Saudi alliance is one of the key, you know, pivots on which this empire rests.
Trump would just put the army in those oil fields, right?
No, it's not so easy.
I mean, firstly, American people are not going to stand for it.
They don't want another war in the Middle East.
My God.
And it's not clear.
And, you know, it's not clear what the U.S. would do.
The U.S., by my back of the envelope calculations, has essentially invested something on the order of $16 trillion in military investment in the Persian Gulf since 1975 or thereabouts.
And, you know, this is a major focus of U.S. political, military and economic, you know, activities.
Have you written on that specific point?
Because I need that footnote.
I have, yes.
OK, cool.
We'll have to talk about that.
So, you know, this is – if this regime goes, this is a huge catastrophe for the U.S. empire.
It'll be a blow like none other since the fall of Saigon in 1975.
And it's unclear what will happen.
If the Middle East is destabilized now, this will make it, you know, far worse.
It's really – I mean, my crystal ball is growing cloudy.
I mean, I'll tell you, though, when Syria policy blew up into the Islamic State conquering all of western Iraq, well, they had the good old Bata Brigade, an Iraqi army that the Bush regime had built there to turn to, to, you know, provide the air cover for, to root them back out again, the Peshmerga II, the Kurds forces there.
But if Baghdadi or somebody like Baghdadi or Zawahiri were to take over Saudi Arabia, I'm not sure there are really any proxy forces available to use.
There aren't.
Other than just the Air Force.
But then if it – but if it came to controlling the ground, I mean, there's really nobody available to do it except the U.S. Army.
I'm not so sure they're available either.
Well, I mean, this is – I mean, we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves.
But if they follow the scenario through, if that were to happen, if Saudi Arabia were to be the next Somalia, it's unclear what the U.S. could do.
I mean, but essentially $16 trillion of military investment would go up in smoke.
I mean, could the U.S. send in troops to control the oil fields?
Perhaps.
I remember reading about Henry Kissinger having a plan to do that back in the Nixon years.
To seize the oil fields.
That is in fact true, but – It isn't?
It is true.
But also at the same time, it's like Kissinger and Nixon were smart enough to say like, hey, this is not going anywhere.
We just can't do this.
We have to – Well, it was much less of a provocation then.
It wasn't this – it wasn't what we're talking about where the regime falls to suicide bomber dudes.
Right.
And so – I mean, so it's conceivable, but the American people don't want war.
That's what I'm saying.
Right?
I mean, the American people don't have any appetite for this.
And what will be the objectives of this war?
A U.S. protectorate around some of the key oil fields?
Is this a realistic strategy?
Right.
Or would it be to put the Al Saud back on the throne so Americans will die for the Al Saud so they can go off and buy more $500 billion yachts?
I mean, are the people going to stand for that?
I don't think so.
I really don't think so.
I think what's happened is that U.S. strategy is just crashing.
They don't know what to do.
They have created this monster.
The experts in Washington, the idiots in Washington have painted themselves into a corner, and there really is no way out.
So if this regime really crumbles and really falls, then wow, this is going to be big stuff.
Right.
Except we should emphasize too, though, that it'd be fine.
What we're talking about here, again, specifically, is the interests of the American empire in dominating the Middle East, which is an entirely separate question from the interests of the American people.
As David Stockman says, I like talking with you because you're a leftist, but you understand economics.
And the solution to high oil prices is high oil prices.
I mean, that's all you need.
And people will diversify supply.
And there's a more diverse supply of oil and gas resources on Earth now than compared to 10 years ago or 20 years ago.
It's completely off the charts.
So the world is not nearly as dependent on Middle Eastern oil as they used to be.
And the worst case that would happen over there would be a temporary disruption of supply.
But then, after all, it's literally a liquid, a fungible resource.
So if they won't sell to the West or Japan as revenge against America, well, they'll have to sell to somebody.
And then we'll have more supply.
We'll be freed up in other places, and the market will adapt.
And so it would be perfectly fine for the USA to cut the rest of the world loose.
Oil would still be for sale, and everything would be fine.
In fact, I quote in my book, even bin Laden told Abdel Bari Atwan, presuming like he was the king of Saudi Arabia, that what are we going to do, drink it?
It's all still going to be for sale.
Yes and no.
I mean, first of all, I'm not a libertarian.
I'm a socialist.
And so therefore I would like to – what I would like to see is a concerted effort to wean the U.S. economy.
Well, but that's a different question, right?
That's a different question.
It's a different question about whether we have to – whether America must dominate this region in order for the oil to be for sale, which is a big part of what people at least perceive as underlying the legitimacy of the policy over there.
That, well, what are we going to do?
Just go without the oil or something like that?
And our answer should be, yeah, don't worry about that as far as that goes.
Yes, you're right.
You're absolutely correct.
The real reason the U.S. is there is not because the world needs that oil but the U.S. needs the control, the political imperial control that control of the Persian Gulf gives them.
The Straits of Hormuz are the key global choke point in the early 21st century.
The U.S. controls that.
OK?
And that is a key source of U.S. imperial power.
And if the U.S. were to lose control of those straits or lose control of the Persian Gulf in general, then the U.S. empire will be severely weakened.
And if that happens, then the whole world is destabilized and big things ensue.
So yes, you're right.
We don't need that oil.
But if the U.S. empire is weakened, waves of turbulence will be set off around the globe.
Political and military tsunamis will crash around the world.
Well, that's interesting.
So I guess my perspective is so American-centric that I just think that the worst threat really is that the people in D.C. are just going to have these absolute fits, these panic attacks about their loss of influence.
And then like falling empires do, they're going to lash out in ways—well, I guess they already are.
They're going to continue to lash out in ways that create totally unnecessary crises.
But I guess I'm interested in what you think because after all, it's not all things being equal.
If the American empire is gone, like you say, the balance of power everywhere in the world changes because that's how dominant America is.
So what are some of the unforeseen circumstances?
I mean I don't think you would argue for the empire.
You're just saying that the day it ends, there's some hell to pay still here.
Yes.
I mean I guess I'm not—I'm an anti-imperialist.
I don't like the American empire.
The American empire is already weakening and as it does, its behavior is growing more and more erratic, setting off waves of turbulence around the world.
I think that Obama presided over a major disaster, a political disaster in Libya and Syria, sending waves of millions of refugees crashing into Europe and destabilizing European politics.
And what we're seeing now is a rise of radical xenophobic populist movements from across the continent.
And if Saudi Arabia were to turn into a failed state, I think that process would accelerate, which would not be a good thing.
I think that as bad as the U.S. empire is, if the U.S. empire were to weaken and collapse in part, I think you'll see a huge scramble for power.
And that's—when that happens, wars result and wars are not pretty.
I mean, World War I was essentially a huge imperial clash, a struggle for dominance between a half dozen loyal families, and it led to an immense bloodletting.
And we don't know what an American imperial collapse will mean, but it'll no doubt lead to an international free-for-all.
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Well, I mean, one thing is, though, the world ain't that big.
So there are only a few different options for major struggles over power and that being Europe and in East Asia.
And that, I mean, and Russia doesn't make sense.
Yeah.
But I mean, it doesn't make sense, does it?
That, say, if NATO was abolished, that Russia would say, aha, now let's march west or that Germany would pick a fight with France or I mean, right.
It's not like things are that out of balance due to American influence in Europe.
America's got this huge layer of everything on top of it all, but it doesn't seem like there'd be too much of a power struggle to play out there.
Am I totally naive?
The Pax Americana has lasted for about 80 years.
Yeah, but I mean, is that really what's keeping the peace in Europe?
It's just kind of like Homer Simpson saying, see, I'm keeping all the bears away with my bear repellent, you know, kind of thing.
No, I think the Pax Americana has been a key element in the pacification of Europe.
Yes, I think it's been a major element.
And if that weakens, I think that all kinds of forces could be unleashed and they won't necessarily be very pretty.
But yeah, in fact, Europe is where the Pax Americana has worked best.
But, you know, but I agree it's falling apart.
Trump is, you know, Trump is withdrawing from that role.
The situation, the clash with Russia is very serious.
And I don't know what will happen, but I would expect that there'll be further destabilization.
I know our realist friends, people like Stephen Walt and Andrew Bacevich, for example, they say, oh, yeah, get the hell out of the Middle East.
But, oh, China and Japan and Korea, we must stay there to prevent chaos from breaking out there.
They're really afraid of what might happen there.
What do you think?
Well, I mean, I mean, I don't I don't I'm afraid for different reasons.
The question is not, you know, it's not the U.S. should should try to constrain China.
But, you know, but but if the U.S. weakens, China will definitely make its, you know, make its weight felt.
And that'll that could lead to conflicts with Korea and Japan.
I mean, if the if the if the U.S. if the Pax Americana is really collapsing, then then history in a sense will start rushing backwards.
80, 90, 100 years.
And we'll see some of the some of the old power conflicts reasserting themselves.
And it's it's hard to say what will happen.
But certainly the old the old power conflicts will be back on the agenda.
Well, I can see the point that the the, you know, a few generations ago that the globalists had that to to use American power to create this interdependent global economy and interdependent global system to prevent wars, to keep everybody, you know, needing each other too much to want to fight all the time.
There was some real good motive behind that and all that.
It's that the very same people were the ones who blew it and have killed a Holocaust worth of people since that time in the name of maintaining this wonderful system.
And so it ain't so wonderful after all, is it?
Well, as I know, as this guy, this guy, a historian named Paul Kennedy, wrote this this blockbuster book back in 1987 called The Rise and Fall of Great Powers.
And and the book caused a huge, huge stir, but really had a very, very simple thesis.
And that simple thesis is that, you know, empires are like trees.
They they start small, they grow bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger until they grow too big and they then fall over on their side.
So, you know, so so emperor, you know, empires have their have their life cycles as well.
And the U.S. is clearly overextended.
You know, and maybe we can draw a comparison here between the three generation theory.
Yeah, exactly.
And and and and and sort and Riyadh.
I was going to say USA as MBS.
Precisely.
So, you know, so the so the so the the the U.S. empire is grossly overextended.
It's it's doing poorly.
You have a very bright guy like Barack Obama wound up getting in deep, deep trouble, even though he's clearly a very smart person because events overtook him.
So things I think the empire itself is weakening.
And I think that the that the Saudi regime, which is a very important component of that of that empire, if that regime regime goes, the the empire will be itself being in serious crisis.
Yeah.
Well, and it really with that whole I don't know exactly the third generation thing with with Trump specifically, I guess he's second generation.
But still, it's it goes back to that great irony of the fact that if anyone could stop the Bush's and the Clinton's and the centrist imperial consensus, it was this freaking guy.
And and he actually did it.
And he's actually in the chair and he actually doesn't care for all of this, you know, keep Asian and European security secure forever on America's dime thing.
He doesn't buy it at all.
The the consensus view of this ridiculous liberal hegemony.
And yet he doesn't have the wherewithal.
He doesn't have the intelligence.
He doesn't have the spirit or the conviction or the knowledge to do it right at all.
To use James Mattis, especially in the perfect way to say, listen, tough guy, you know, hardcore right wing marine general, you're going to stand on my right side and say that, yes, it's all right for us to bring our troops home, that we're done with this thing.
That's the job.
That should have been the job offer.
And if Mattis didn't want to do that, he should have found somebody else.
That should have been the whole thing is, you know, only only Nixon can go to China.
Only a Republican could say we're going to stop policing the world now and mind our own business.
That's the only way it could happen is a liberal is just like you say with Obama.
What could he do?
It's whatever they said.
And and and yet.
Ha ha.
Jokes on us.
It's Donald freaking Trump, the guy from the Robin Lynch show.
You know, it's amazing.
But but but but but there are but there really are no good solutions.
I mean, the the the you know, you know, the imperialists are caught in a trap of their own making.
So there really is no easy way out.
But what's what's remarkable?
I mean, Barack Obama and Donald Trump are, you know, are as opposite as two people can can be.
No one is thoughtful and intelligent.
The other one is like, no, just just a blundering jackass.
But, you know, but in the end, they really had less impact than one would think.
Because the this this empire, this imperial machine really is running under its own steam.
And both of them are just hanging on for dear life.
They're riding.
They're riding the tiger.
So, you know, so.
So Obama wound up body slammed and Trump.
There's actually been more continuity under Trump than you would have thought two years ago.
You know, the U.S. policy is essentially the same in Syria.
It's it's more bellicose towards towards Iran.
But remember, with regard to Saudi Arabia, Trump spent his campaign taunting the Saudis.
But then as soon as he got into office, he he embraced them.
And that alliance is now stronger than ever.
So so this this imperial ship of state just seems to steam on under its, you know, under its under its own guidance.
Yeah, it's fascinating to me.
You know, I don't know the truth of the anecdote, but it's still kind of revealing.
And interesting is in The Washington Post, where they said that Donald Trump complained to Mattis that, come on, why do we even have to have troops in Somalia at all?
And this is when Mattis is telling him we're sending infantry, not just special operations forces.
We're putting infantry on the ground there now in Somalia, in Somalia.
And and they're there now.
And Trump says, yeah, but when I don't want to.
I mean, why should we even have troops in Somalia anyway?
What the hell's a Somalia?
I don't know.
You know.
And Mattis says to him, you have no choice.
And then he says, presumably, right.
OK, whatever.
And signs.
And then they send in the infantry.
So he's escalated Afghanistan.
He's escalated on both sides of the war in Yemen.
He's escalated in Somalia.
He's done at least some strikes in Libya.
God knows what they're doing in Libya.
There's even troops in, you know, fighting battles in Tunisia now.
And, you know, God, even, you know, antiwar.com himself can't keep track of this stuff at this point.
It's and so, as you said, you know, a series worse on Iran by far, although I don't think he really wants to attack Iran.
He's put all the worst Iran hawks in place to have their way.
And just anyway.
Yeah, I mean, and he knows better, just like Obama.
He knows better.
And then he just he he gives in anyway.
I mean, Obama didn't have to do the Afghan surge.
He could have said, you know what?
I accept y'all's resignation.
Beat it.
And he he wasn't man enough.
And same thing here.
You know, well, well, well, well, well, hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
I mean, no, I disagree.
Afghanistan is a sticky wicket for the Americans.
They can't get out.
They can't get up.
And no one knows what what will happen there.
And still Obama sent virtually 100,000, you know, 60,000, 70,000 more men to it when he didn't have to do that.
He had to because he has to.
He had to hold the empire together.
And depending on what the meaning of had is.
Well, but he had to hold the empire together because the empire goes, you know, Obama would be a freak.
We'd love to say that on the radio.
So, so, you know, so these things are not so easy.
And liberals and libertarians and isolationists have a lot of glib answers.
Yeah, but you know what?
I mean, the thing is, it is glib maybe, Dan, but at the same time, the Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich administration would have done it.
And they would have said hell or high water.
They would have stood by principle and they would have told those admirals, we're the boss of you.
If you don't like it, you're fired.
Somebody else.
Your job is to sail home.
It's over.
That's an interesting point.
I have my doubts.
Frankly.
Yeah, I don't know.
I thought.
I'm very skeptical.
I thought those two should have ran together.
That would have been the thing.
I'm very skeptical of what Rand Paul would have done.
Oh, not Rand.
No, no, no.
Ron.
The old man back when he ran.
Yeah, before.
Yeah, Ron and Dennis Kucinich, they often work together in the house against war.
You know, they were friends and good anti-war guys and both guys who ran in 2008 on real principle against war.
You know, like you could say Mike Gravel was a little kooky, but Kucinich isn't kooky.
Kucinich, I disagree with a lot of his politics, but he's a perfectly reasonable and principled guy, you know.
I mean, do you really want to go there?
I mean, I think Ron Paul is a guy who's tied up with really dangerous forces.
I think he's a he's got a he's surrounded by a lot of fascists, frankly.
And I think I think Ron Paul would have asked Lou Rockwell.
Lou Rockwell is not a fascist.
I disagree with Lou about some things, but I think, yeah, you should like read more.
I have been following Lou for many years.
He's a neo-Confederate.
He has some spooky characters around, you know, around him.
There's a disturbing edge of anti-Semitism.
It's it's it's not good stuff.
Look, I'm I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum.
I believe the only thing that will that will defeat U.S. imperialism is the international proletariat.
I think that that the that the what America needs and what is what it is ultimately heading for is socialism, where the working people rise up and take this economy in hand and and democratically take it over and run it for the benefit of the toilers, the working masses.
That is the only solution to the problem.
Ron, how do you keep Donald Trump's from running systems like that, where the government has more and more and more power over all trade like that?
I mean, how do you keep not not Trump's?
How do you keep bad Democrats from being the ones in charge of a system where the government has that much more control over the economy?
The Democrats are only are the neocons are only in charge because democracy is broken down.
America is no longer a democratic country.
We should just be friends.
There's way too much to to to hash out here between your socialist position and my libertarian one.
But you know what?
We we do agree on what I think are by far all of the most important things.
And that is, you know, revolving particularly around what our government must stop doing to people.
And that is, you know, anti-imperialism first, of course.
Yes.
Well, anyway, the I think that probably I think that probably there are a lot of we have a lot of differences.
But we certainly agree that this imperial machine is a is out of control.
Yeah.
And and it's breaking down.
It's breaking down.
That's a really important thing.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, there you have it, folks.
Daniel Lazar at Consortium News Dotcom is Saudi Arabia at the Middle East's next failed state.
Thanks, Dan.
Appreciate it.
Thank you, Scott.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at Libertarian Institute dot org at Scott Horton dot org.
Antiwar dot com and Reddit dot com slash Scott Horton show.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand.
Timed and the war in Afghanistan at Fool's Errand dot US.
