All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio, anti-pretty much everything radio, anti-pretty much everything except Pepe Escobar.
I love Pepe Escobar, man.
He writes for the Asia Times online.
That's atimes.com, and we're featuring one on antiwar.com in the Viewpoints today, the shadow war in Syria.
Welcome back to the show.
Wonderful to be with you, Scott, once again.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here, and I've been asking you about this for weeks and weeks and weeks.
I want to know everything in the world that I can about the revolution in Syria.
The United Nations is calling it a civil war now, and I want to know especially about Western/Israeli intervention in Syria.
So tell me everything that you know about Syria.
Wow.
You know, the most important thing, Scott, is what we don't know, because, of course, this is a shadow war.
For instance, for me, the huge question for the past few days, and I've asked a lot of people, a lot of people have been asking me, and nobody has the answer.
What's going on with Turkey?
Until literally yesterday, they had an alliance, was the famous Ankara-Tehran-Damascus alliance.
This was until a few months ago.
They solidified this alliance last year in terms of trade, in terms of commerce, in terms of geopolitical support, you know.
And now, this whole thing, which is based on Turkey's official foreign policy, the Erdogan foreign policy, which was devised by his prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu.
It's a very honest guy, a professor of political science.
This man would not betray his own principles.
It's unimaginable.
But now, that's exactly what he's doing, because he's practically endorsing a Turkish invasion of northern Syria.
Two days ago, when they slapped sanctions on Syria, just like the Arab League, in fact, the Turkish sanctions are a carbon copy of the Arab League sanctions.
This is practically a declaration of war, you know.
So what is Erdogan's and Davutoğlu's game?
So we can analyze some possibilities.
Number one, which nobody has been able to establish, and it's going to be very hard to establish, the Obama administration went to Ankara in secret, and they cut a deal.
So in terms of this deal, okay, if you help us with Syria, then we're going to help you to establish your model as the political model for the Arab Spring, all of them.
And it's going to be fabulous for you in terms of geopolitical influence, and also in terms of commerce as well.
Saudi Arabia, they love this deal, if it happens, of course, because Saudi Arabia is part of the destabilization of the Assad regime as well.
Israel would like it, because after all, they are on the same boat as the U.S., Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, so they are more or less protected.
If anything goes wrong with the next Syrian government, let's put it this way, they have three powerful allies to make things happen, or to have the desired solution, right?
But we still don't know if this is what's really happening.
What we do know is that in terms of a strategic gamble, what Turkey is doing is extremely risky.
Can you imagine if the Assad regime stayed, which is still a strong possibility?
Why?
Because there have been no major defections in the intelligence apparatus within the military, the police, you name it.
And even the bourgeoisie, let's put it this way, the upper-middle class, the commercial classes, Sunni, not even Alawite, in Damascus and Aleppo, they're still wobbling, but they're still more or less expecting that the regime is going to fight this whole thing out in the beginning, or in the end.
So it's very, very complicated, because then you start to see the situation on the ground.
The unstable areas, let's put it this way, they are near the border, and near two crucial borders.
North, the border with Turkey, with Hatay province in Turkey, and they trade all the time.
You know, the people who live on both sides of the world, they are basically traders.
There are a lot of Kurds over there as well, there are a lot of Christians, a lot of Druze, and a lot of Sunnis, much more than Alawites.
And the southern border with Jordan, and with Lebanon as well.
So what we learned this week, and in fact, different sources learned the same thing, you know, French sources, Turkish sources, and our sources we learned from Brussels directly, from dissident diplomats, you know, these people who work in Brussels, but they're there to defend their salaries, basically, they don't agree what NATO and the European Union is doing.
They said, look, it's true, they have already established this coalition of the women.
They established a command and control center in Hatay province, in Iskenderun.
Iskenderun is a small town, but it's very close to the border.
From Iskenderun to Aleppo, it's like, I would say, like, three and a half hours, you know, by taxi, if you like.
It's very, very close.
And their program, basically, is more or less trying to destabilize the whole northern Syrian front.
That includes, you know, smaller towns like Hama, like Homs, but especially Aleppo, which is a huge, it's the biggest city in Syria, 2.5 million people, with lots of suburbs that more or less are, let's say, protecting the fighters or the protesters.
But the people who rule Aleppo, they are still more or less siding with the regime.
So this, the shadow war in northern Syria, now based across the border in Hatay province in Turkey, will be essential, let's say, within the next few weeks and maybe two months during the winter, to see if they can make some...
Did I lose you there, Pepe?
Check, check.
The light's still green?
Aw, man.
Come on, covert operations people, I was trying to hear Pepe say stuff.
God dang it.
Hold on right there, I'm going to call him back, I ain't done yet here.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, I'm talking with Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times, atimes.com.
And we're featuring his piece, The Shadow War in Syria, in our viewpoint section today at antiwar.com.
And now, Pepe, you told me in the past that Aleppo is everything.
I think you just said the biggest city in Syria, a very middle class kind of city, and even though they're Sunnis, they've been pretty tight with the regime this whole time.
And where goes Aleppo, so goes the rest of the country when it comes to this war, more or less.
And now you're saying that the foreigners, and I'll let you be more specific, but the foreign powers intervening here, NATO, GCC, as you call it in your article, they're setting up in Turkey, just on the other side of the border from Aleppo.
Absolutely.
And this is the key base for the civil war, which will go on basically in northern Syria.
So there is already a civil war atmosphere, let's put it this way, in smaller towns like Homs or Hama.
But the big prize is Aleppo.
There have been some protests in the outskirts of Aleppo so far, but not like a big Tahrir Square-style protest in the center of Aleppo.
The city is controlled basically by merchants.
The souk in Aleppo is a fantastic place, and personally, I find the most fascinating and the best souk in the whole of the Middle East.
And it's been there for 2,500 years.
In fact, Aleppo is one of the oldest cities in the world.
They say it's their city, the Marcos say, no, it's us.
But to give you an idea, most people are Sunni in Aleppo.
There are very few Alawites.
There are Christians as well, and they live side by side with no problem.
But there are a lot of people who live outside the area or near the border with Turkey, and they are involved in commerce with Turkey as well.
And some of these people are dissatisfied with the regime.
Even though the relationship commercially between Turkey and Syria is very, very strong.
And we cannot even say that there is a border between Syria and Hatay province in Turkey.
Everybody knows each other.
They've been trading for 2,000 years on both sides.
But there are problems, because the Turks think, in the minds of the Turks, parts of northern Syria belongs to them.
And for Syrians, that's part of Hatay province, where the city of Antakya is, the old Antioch of biblical times, belongs to Syria.
So there are geopolitical friction in the area as well.
And Iskenderun, where this is the base for the NATO GCC people, especially French, Brits, and Arabs from Qatar and from the Emirates, they are very, very close to Antakya, which is a major commercial center, trades a lot with Aleppo.
So they are very well-based to launch, you know, border raids, to train people to do anything they want, with Turkey providing all the essential logistics for them.
So the civil war that Hillary Clinton has been alluding to for the past few weeks, in fact, is going to take place in northern Syria.
All right, so now tell us about the structure of this NATO GCC, as you call it here.
Look, basically, I mean, because what it comes down to, Pepe, if I understand the way the world works at all, if Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Qatar are backing the rebels in Syria, then that's because Washington, D.C. says so, and organized the whole thing.
Right now, look, not necessarily, Scott.
This is one of the components of the whole chess game, in fact.
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, like we've been saying before, we still don't know their real motive to try to bring down the Assad government.
One of the key motives is that they want to sell their brand of humanitarian intervention, which has worked in Libya.
They were part of the coalition in Libya, and in fact, they are taking the forefront in this coalition of the willing in Syria.
It's to sell their political model to the Sunni Arab world, especially.
Saudi Arabia, of course, because they hate any secular republic, just like they do.
Well, and in the short term, too, if they can bring down Assad, then they really weaken Iran.
Exactly.
And obviously, for Saudi Arabia, it's the famous connection.
Real men go to Tehran, but first they need to stop in Damascus.
Right.
This is where the Saudi kingdom is eye to eye with the Likud party in Tel Aviv.
Exactly.
So they all agree on this, the Americans, Israelis, Turks, and all the Persian Gulf monarchies, in fact, not only Saudi Arabia.
Jordan.
You know, most of the Sunni Arab world, in fact, they're controlling the Arab League nowadays.
The Arab League nowadays, it's basically the GCC, the Gulf Cooperation Council.
You know, these people that I call Gulf Counter-Revolution Club, because this is what they are.
They smashed the counter-revolution, the Persian Gulf, and now they're trying to smash the Arab Springs virtually everywhere.
They couldn't do it in Tunisia, even though they invested heavily in the elections over there.
But, you know, the party who won in Al-Nadda, the party who won in Tunisia, is a variant of the AKP in Turkey, which for the Saudis is okay.
And the Muslim Brotherhood won, and it's winning the initial stages of the election in Egypt.
And, you know, for the House of Saud, it's absolutely perfect.
The House of Saud would love a government in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood, which they are having more or less 40% of the votes.
The Salafists, who got between 20% and 25% of the votes, can you imagine 65% of the votes?
Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists will control the next Egyptian parliament.
For Saudi Arabia, this is perfect.
And what do they want in Syria?
The same thing.
They want the Muslim Brotherhood to be the top power in a new Syria.
And it will be, because especially in the countryside, and especially in these poorer areas near the borders, like, you know, in northern Syria, near the Turkish border, or near the border with Lebanon, which is a very poor region as well, and near the border with Jordan, which is extremely poor.
There's a place called Dera, which is very important in terms of the protest movement.
But it's an extremely, you know, it's almost sub-Saharan African in its poverty over there.
So obviously, they look at Damascus, they say, oh, those people over there, they're doing right, and we are here, left to the dogs.
So for Saudi Arabia, it's Muslim Brotherhood in power in Syria.
This is what they want, basically.
We still go back to the same point.
What are the Americans doing that we don't know?
They are taking the backseat.
Part of this supposed deal that they probably clinched with Ankara is, okay, you take the forefront in this campaign in Syria, and we won't do anything.
We'll provide you some help if you need it later on, but NATO will coordinate all this.
So from the point of view of NATO in Western Europe, it's France.
From the point of view of NATO in the bridge between Europe and Asia, it's Turkey.
And the GCC is the Arab ally, which is now solidified.
It's NATO-GCC, it's true.
GCC is now part of NATO for all practical purposes.
Right.
So the Americans are outsourcing to the French the control over the Saudi policy in Turkey against Syria?
Or is that Israel outsourced it to America, who outsourced it to the French, who outsourced it to the Saudis?
Yes.
That's a very good way of putting it, because the interests, they converge.
In terms of a counter-revolution after the Arab Spring, and in terms of controlling how these different springs go from now on, they are all on the same boat.
And it's also inbuilt in this ideological convergence is the Sunni-Shiite divide.
They are playing the Sunni-Shiite divide to kingdom come.
They're going after Shiite government.
So it's going to be, even though the Alawites in Syria, which are in power, they are not 12 Iman Shiites, just like in Iran.
It's very different.
It's a kind of folk Shiism.
It doesn't matter.
We just fought an eight-year war to install the Shiites in power in Baghdad, Pepe.
Exactly.
Because that's, okay, very good.
Because this is also part of the failure of what happened in Iraq.
Because, you know, after the greater Middle East, the Bush administration version, what did we get in Iraq?
We got a Shiite-majority government, which is very close to Iran.
Doesn't mean that they are subordinated to Iran.
No way.
They are very independent.
They consider themselves Arab first, and then Shiite.
So they have a religious connection with the majority Shiites in Iran.
Well, and Maliki has come out and taken the side of Bashar al-Assad a couple of times just in the last few months.
Now hold it right there.
Let me keep you one more segment after this break, can I?
Okay.
All right, everybody, it's Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times, atimes.com, the shadow war in Syria.
It's in the viewpoints at antiwar.com right now.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and I'm talking with Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times online, atimes.com, and we've got an article in his latest article in the viewpoint section today at antiwar.com.
It's called the shadow war in Syria.
And let me just say for my part, I'm pretty sure Pepe Escobar agrees with this.
This show is not about supporting dictators.
It's about opposing American intervention in the affairs of other nations.
So I'm perfectly happy to see anyone overthrow their government, any government.
But I just don't want it to be America's problem, really, is all.
Yeah, and Scott, something very important.
Progressives all over the world, in the US, in Latin America, in Europe, in Asia, of course, you can be against a police state like Syria, and you can also be against this bunch of dodgy opportunists, that it's the Syrian National Council, which is the same as the Libyan National Council.
We saw what happened in Libya, and we saw what's going to happen in Libya with these people in power in Tripoli.
So in Damascus, it's going to be the same thing if they take power as well.
You can be against both.
Well, and, you know, looking at the situation in Libya, I think it was you that broke the story first, that this guy, Belhaj, who is a veteran of the Iraq war, where he fought against the Americans, is the military commander there.
And then you're writing in this article how the, I guess, the politicians on the National Transition Council in Libya are in a big hurry to export as many of these lunatic fighters as they can to go fight in Syria, just so they're not hanging around in North Africa.
Absolutely.
They had a meeting, the TNC in Libya, and absolutely appalling Syrian National Council.
By the way, I recommend everybody, there's an interview with the leader of the Syrian National Council at the Wall Street Journal today.
And it's very interesting to read this interview, because he's all the right noises to appease Washington, Tel Aviv, the Western Journal, Paris, London, and all that.
We're going to cut military ties between Syria and Iran, we're going to oppose Hamas and Hezbollah.
Perfect.
You know.
It's like if you were giving a press conference in Tel Aviv, in fact.
So these people, and the list of opportunists is huge.
There are two Syrian vice presidents.
One of them is exiled in Paris.
The other one is exiled in Spain.
They think that they're going to be the next Ahmed Chalabi in Syria, you know, if there is regime change.
And like we were discussing before, the only people who are going to win in Syria if there is a regime change is the Muslim Brotherhood.
This is why, you know, despite the fact that, well, as you're saying here, NATO is supporting this effort inside Turkey right now, no doubt about that, but I've kind of been surprised that the Americans or the Israelis, the Americans and the Israelis, would be for this.
It seems like a foregone conclusion that the Muslim Brotherhood would take over in Syria.
And I know the CIA has ties with the Muslim Brotherhood going way back, but that isn't really what the West wants to see, is it?
The Muslim Brothers ruling in Egypt and in Syria?
Or is it?
Exactly.
They will be ruling in Egypt.
If we look at the results of the election, and we already discussed a little bit of this, if there is regime change in Syria, it's inevitable.
And supposing there are protests, we don't read about them, but there are protests in Jordan virtually every week.
This thing is not advertised in the Western press.
And the little king of PlayStation, Abdullah, over there, whose dream is to live in New York City or in Washington, not rule his own people.
He could fall easily.
Most of the population in Jordan, they're Palestinians.
They don't like the monarchy, the Hashemite monarchy.
And the Muslim Brotherhood is very popular in Jordan as well.
Can you imagine if they have their axis from Egypt to Jordan and Syria very soon?
Well, one thing is certain, this is a very good advertisement for the Pentagon's long war.
Well, and for the theory of blowback, too, and just, you know, you see how one intervention causes the next, causes the next.
This whole Arab Spring is the result of all the dollar inflation to pay for the war in Iraq and plus the radicalizing of the Muslim world, just as Michael Shoyer predicted before the thing started.
He said, we're going to complete the radicalization of the Muslim world that bin Laden was trying and failing after all these years to achieve.
And that's exactly what we've done is we've made everybody hate their local American backed dictator more than ever.
And at the same time, we've made it so much harder for them to afford to feed their family.
They all went out in the streets to protest.
So then they take the blowback from the last 10 years of intervention, and then they use that as the excuse to go ahead and intervene even more and carry out more of the clean break agenda and overthrow Libya and Syria and expand further into Africa and, you know, into sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of it, too.
So it doesn't matter whether they deliberately create the crisis or not, no matter what they do, it's always such a bad screw up that it creates the excuse for their next intervention.
And on we go.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's how long before we're occupying Algeria?
Yeah.
It's pursuing the the targets of the long war through other means.
But it's still the logic.
It's still the same.
We need antagonists in the Middle East.
So if they are not there anymore, let's fabricate them.
Which is, you know, I'm struck by the parallels, or the non-parallels, as well, between Iran and all these Arab springs, you know.
I was having a conversation with the Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf a few weeks ago.
He was showing a documentary that his daughter shot during the Green Revolution in 2009 in Tehran, especially.
It's a fantastic documentary.
I hope it's shown in the U.S. soon.
Well, he was saying, look, the original Arab Spring was us in 2009 in Tehran, when we noticed that the regime had stolen the elections in favor of Ahmadinejad, basically.
And the West, nobody helped us.
Nobody helped us.
In fact, this could be our shot to try to go against the regime.
We were brutally repressed, and nobody condemned it, nobody said anything about it, you see?
So we missed the chance to do something about the Green Movement in 2009.
Well, then again, everything we do to help the dissidents in Iran only strengthens the Ayatollah and the presidency there.
Completely.
So I don't know how we could help them other than, you know, sending the 3rd Infantry Division into Tehran and overthrowing and killing the Ayatollah.
You know, the problem is that the IRGC, these people know how to fight a war, Scott.
They fought an eight-year war against Iraq, most of them.
In fact, all of the commanders, they know how to fight a protracted war.
A land invasion, of course, everybody knows, especially Pentagon generals, they know it will never work.
The only solution would be a thousand bunker busters all over the country to cripple their infrastructure.
Which, again, would still only play into the hands of the government there, unless you got a few lucky shots and you actually took out the highest leaders.
You're totally right.
Like, if you know a little bit of the Persian mentality, they can squabble among themselves, that's what they've been doing for 2,500 years.
But once they're attacked by a foreign power, they unite behind the powers-that-be at the moment.
Of course, just like Americans, just like any human.
Just like Americans, exactly.
I mean, George Bush had an approval rating of above 90% after 9-11 happened on his watch.
But it was because the people of the country were agreed on one thing.
They wanted to show the whole world that we were united as Americans behind the new policy.
Yeah, true.
So it's very complicated.
What I'm very curious for the next few weeks, in fact, is that mid-January, we're going to have the encounter in the eastern Mediterranean, offshore Syria, of the George Walker Bush atomic aircraft carrier and parts of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
I'm very curious to see what's going to happen in a few weeks.
Well, in all seriousness, okay, let's say that Obama did the worst thing and ordered, you know, a full-scale bombing campaign, call it a no-fly zone of regime change, Libya-style over Syria.
The Russians wouldn't really do anything to stop him, would they?
They would, because now their interests, their geopolitical and geostrategic interests in the eastern Mediterranean are directly threatened.
Yeah, but come on, war between Russia and America means cities vaporized in both countries and both sides lose, and everybody knows that.
Yeah, okay, I know.
I'm not going that far yet.
What I'm just saying is that they're going to be very forceful to say to the Americans directly, look, we have a naval base in Tartus in Syria, the Iranians have docking rights at this base as well.
We send some of our destroyers or aircraft carriers over there once a year or so, just like they're doing now, December, January.
We're not a threat to anybody.
Syria's our ally.
But if you go for regime change in Syria and you want to get rid of our naval base, then it's a completely different story.
We're going to renegotiate everything.
There's no more reset.
Missile defense, we're going to put our missiles in Kaliningrad directly against European cities, and they will know, and they won't go for it, again, because it's going to be Cold War all over again.
We're going to fuck up with your Northern distribution network in Afghanistan, so this means you won't be able to do what you're having to do now, because the Pakistanis, they closed the roads from Karachi to Shaman and to the Khyber Pass, right?
This could go on indefinitely.
In fact, the Pakistanis are mulling, okay, do they close them for good, or just we want to scare the Americans for the moment?
So if the Russians close the NDN network, which goes through Central Asia, through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and into Northern Afghanistan, what is going to happen to the U.S.
-NATO troops in Afghanistan?
Well, and they already...
The Russians released a trial balloon like that yesterday, that they might go ahead and...
Of course!
So I would advise NATO especially not to push the Russians into a corner, especially now that we're going to have the Terminator Putin back as President in three months, in less than three months.
And he...
Of course, he's already...
It's in his chessboard.
Like, you know, it's fantastic, because the West has a tendency to, you know, dismiss Putin as, you know, a blunt, stupid...
No way!
He's already looking at the chessboard in at least five years ahead, you know.
Yeah, blunt, yes, stupid, I don't think anybody ever called him stupid.
Yes, okay, but I would say some people in Washington do.
Yeah, well, they might be dumb enough to think that.
That was never my impression of him, ruthless, yeah, and determined to maintain Russian independence from the American empire, yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely.
So remember when he launched this Eurasian Union idea, like, it was a month ago, more or less.
And there was no discussion about this in the U.S. press, at least mainstream media.
And it's very, very important, because what he said, he said, no, this is not the new Soviet Union.
It's an economic and geopolitical alliance spreading all across Central Asia.
And it's crazy, because this goes exactly against the American plan, which they called in Washington, New Silk Road.
It's fantastic.
You know that the U.S. was, you know, doing commerce in the Silk Road in the 6th or 7th century.
Nobody told us about this, right?
So now they want the New Silk Road, organized by the U.S., straight from Washington.
Obviously, nobody in Central Asia is buying it, Russia's not buying it, and, you know, Iran and Pakistan, which were part of the Silk Road as well, they're not buying it.
Yeah, well, and now's definitely not the time to start buying it as the entire empire unravels.
I mean, all of this regime change in Syria and the rest is all just lashing out on the way, you know, falling down the cliffside here.
Yeah, you know, the way the Russians, when I talk to my Russian friends, they always say, look, Syria for us is important, but it's a detail.
What matters for the Putin system, let's put it this way, is Eurasian integration, a very good integration with China, within the SCO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a very good security and economic integration with Central Asia, and they want Iran, Pakistan, and India to be part of it as well.
So now we see, now, you know, 2012 is going to be a direct clash between NATO on one side and these efforts in Central Asia, in Eurasia as a whole, for more integration, pipelines, you know, security arrangements, war against drugs fought their way, not the American way.
So you know, I think the new chess board, what our friend Dr. Big Brzezinski was talking about since the mid-90s, now the chess board is being reorganized, and it is a direct clash between the Atlanticist West and all these Eurasian powers and regional powers as well.
And these things start to be playing now, and it's true.
In this big picture, Syria is just a detail.
Sure.
Well, you know, the long warriors, they call Afghanistan, Injun country.
You know, like it's just, Eurasia is America's Old West, and it's our manifest destiny.
It might take a couple of hundred years, but I guess eventually we're going to kill every last man, woman, and child and take it all for our own, put the Russians on reservations and all that.
Give them casinos.
You know, the Russians fear the Chinese more than NATO, in fact.
Because the Russians think that China is going to take over Eastern Siberia.
They're going to send, one of these days, we're going to have 300 million Chinese taking over Eastern Siberia.
That's what I think too.
That's what they are really afraid of, you know.
Yeah, no, that's what I think too, and especially from the point of view of the Russians.
You know, what's going on with the Americans and their arc of crisis and all this is only a temporary blip.
I mean, assuming it doesn't lead to a full-scale war between us and the other major powers there.
America's coming home.
Eurasia is not Injun country.
It's not America's Old West.
The supply lines are just too long and too dependent on neighbors who don't really want to cooperate with us.
It just can't work.
So, you know, it isn't going to be because the people elect Ron Paul and he brings them all home.
It'll be because the dollar just breaks and the empire falls apart like the Soviet empire fell apart 20 years ago.
No, it's true.
And in terms of oil and gas, the US could solve its problem by dealing with India, America.
They don't need Saudi Arabia.
You know, they could do more deals with Venezuela, with Canada and in a few years with Brazil as well.
Well, but, you know, as we've talked about, it's not really about the price of a gallon of gas.
It's about in the event of a major conflict with, say, China, can we cut off their fuel supplies?
It's a Pentagon plan, not a Houston one, really.
Exactly.
Which is which is all the rationale between behind Obama and Hillary's Pacific century.
Now, remember that enormous piece that Hillary published in Foreign Policy magazine last month?
You know, that's it.
You know, we're going after you, Chinese Navy and the Indian Ocean and South China Sea is going to be an American lake as well.
And the Chinese are saying, really?
Well, you know, it's funny because there's this great book, Island of Shame, about the Chagossians from Diego Garcia and how they got all their land stolen from them and all that.
And one of the things he talks about in there is about the Pentagon plan for, you know, looking forward to 2020 and that kind of thing is they recognize that they're getting kicked out of Eurasia, that they can't just keep a thousand bases all over the Middle East and Central Asia the way they have them.
They can't afford it.
The American people, eventually the political will here to support it will end up deteriorating.
And so then their plan, of course, is just to resort to the threat of ultimate air power.
And the quote was the I guess it was the Navy plans to be able to run the world from Guam and Diego Garcia by 2015, which is actually just over the horizon from now.
And and that they're basically willing to go ahead and get kicked out of everywhere because as long as they have their stealth bombers and now they're three stage intercontinental ballistic missiles with conventional warheads on the end of them, they'll be able to kill anybody in half an hour anyway.
So who needs to occupy Eurasia?
I say, you know, I guess I prefer the Navy's view to the Army's at this point.
In fact, it's a more sensible strategy when you think about it.
Although, could there be anything crazier, Pepe, than putting conventional explosives on the tips of three stage ICBMs?
I mean, that seems like the script for how the war that killed all of humanity accidentally got started right there.
There's no question because the Russian will do the same.
The Chinese will do the same.
The Iranians are going to buy.
In fact, they're going to be the Russians and you are going to sell this technology to Iran as well.
So the Pakistanis, of course, they have it.
The North Koreans already have it.
Yes.
It's the recipe.
It's the madman recipe.
In fact, we won't be here to see it, I think, hopefully.
But my son will, you know, I don't like this idea at all.
Yeah, I mean, it just seems like the kind of thing where if you're blasting off three stage ICBMs as weapons that somebody in Beijing or in Moscow or in D.C. is going to make a mistake, get the wrong idea and hit the wrong button.
We've already had almost, I think, 20 accidental nuclear wars, you know, close calls, near misses.
Close calls, yeah.
In 93, after the Cold War ended, I think Norway launched a satellite into space and the word didn't get through the chain of command in Russia that, you know, don't worry about this.
It's just a satellite.
They warned us in advance and all their warning systems said this is an incoming ICBM to take out Moscow.
And it was just one, I think, lieutenant colonel or something who refused to relay the information on in the chain of command because he had a gut feeling that this was a false alarm.
But if he had not had that gut feeling, if he had just been, you know, not had that much wisdom and gone ahead and passed on the order to the next guy in the chain, you might have seen billions and billions and billions of humans killed back in 93 over a mistake.
And that's the kind of danger they're playing with when they're talking about putting conventional bombs on ICBMs.
That means using them a lot, you know?
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, an official spokesman of King John Will, he writes for us at Asia Times.
Every month or so he sends us an apocalyptic story, which is absolutely outstanding.
He lives in Japan and he writes in English as well.
It's fantastic.
He already wrote about this.
So if the Americans do it, we have our responses ready to incinerate California.
Right.
Well, and it'll just be it'll be just like your article that came out in the late summer of 2001.
Get Osama now or else.
And we'll all be able to say, yeah, we tried to tell you, but we'll all be dead anyway.
So it won't matter.
Assuming they don't get us nuked, I hope that we can keep doing this on a regular basis, Pepe.
I always learn so much from you.
Is there anything, by the way, before I let you go, was there anything I should have asked you about the CIA in Turkey and Syria that I just left out or something?
Anything else left there to address real quick?
No, because I'm trying to I'm trying to learn more with some of my my my Turkish sources in Istanbul.
But they still don't know.
The Americans, the Americans are not there physically, as far as we know at the moment.
It's French, Turks, Brits and GCC.
Yeah.
And U.S. grant on the 50 dollar bill from the Obama administration.
Look, we have nothing to do with it.
Hillary Clinton say, OK, bring down Assad.
But it's not our problem, actually.
Yeah.
Right.
Well, we'll see how it goes.
All right.
I'll probably talk to you about a week from now or so.
We'll catch up.
Excellent, Scott.
All right.
Thanks so much, Pepe.
I really appreciate your time.
As always.
Thank you.
Everybody.
That's the great Pepe Escobar from The Asia Times.
That's a times dot com.
We're featuring his piece, the shadow war in Syria right now in the viewpoint section at anti war dot com.
Right after this, we'll be talking with the other Scott Horton about the laws of war as though there's such a thing.
