Scott sits down with Australian military analyst and Afghan war veteran Matt Williams for a long interview. They cover the potential for a war over Taiwan, Australia’s military strengths and vulnerabilities, the future of nuclear proliferation, the West’s war crime hypocrisy, the state of the war in Ukraine and much more.

Matt is an Australian Army veteran, independent journalist, and content creator. He served in the Australian Infantry with the 7th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment from 2014-2021 and was awarded a Queen’s Order of Australia Medal. Since 2022 he has worked as an independent war correspondent and analyst. Subscribe to his YouTube Channel.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated; Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott.

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2/5/21 Lyle J. Goldstein on the Nuclear Tensions Between the US and Russia

Scott talks to Lyle Goldstein about the U.S.-Russia relationship and the future of global nuclear arms negotiations. Goldstein says that after the Cold War, the world’s nuclear weapon situation was mostly under control—as a result, people today have forgotten how dangerous these weapons are, as evidenced by the American government’s willingness to let old treaties lapse. Today, explains Goldstein, there’s almost nothing preventing another buildup and proliferation of nuclear weapons. Given the risks to our very existence on this planet, Goldstein stresses that getting along peaceably with Russia is among the most important issues in the world. At a certain point, we have to be okay with them handling their own business in eastern Europe without threatening to go to war over issues that are none of our business.

Discussed on the show:

“A deteriorating U.S.-Russia relationship is dangerous. Biden should rein in tensions” (Washington Times)
“Nyet means Nyet” (WikiLeaks)
“Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call” (BBC News)

Lyle J. Goldstein is Research Professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the United States Naval War College in Newport, RI. He is the author of Meeting China Halfway: How to Defuse the Emerging US-China Rivalry. Follow his work at The National Interest.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Photo IQ; Green Mill Supercritical; Zippix Toothpicks; and Listen and Think Audio.

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2/5/21 Bette Dam: How Flawed Intelligence Leads to War Crimes in Afghanistan

Scott interviews Bette Dam about her reporting on the war in Afghanistan. Dam explains how faulty intelligence about enemy “combatants” has led to many unjustified killings, notably the war crimes by Australian special forces in Oruzgan Province in recent years. In such cases, the “Taliban” label can be used to justify the killing of any fighting-age male, even when many of these are innocent civilians. But of course even calling them Taliban is begging the question of who our enemy is. It was al Qaeda, as Scott points out, who attacked the U.S. on 9/11, and America basically wiped them all out at the very beginning of the war—since then, we have been fighting a pointless and unjustified war with no path to anything resembling victory. America should simply make whatever peace it can with the Taliban and come home.

Discussed on the show:

“How flawed information created a ‘Taliban’ threat” (The Australian)
No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes
“Tracking Mullah Omar: How the US failed to catch the former Taliban leader” (Perspective)
An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict, 1978-2012

Bette Dam is a journalist and the author of A Man and A Motorcycle: How Hamid Karzai Came to Power and Searching For An Enemy: The Secret Life Of Mullah Omar. Find her on Twitter @BetteDam.

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2/5/21 Matthew Hoh on Biden’s Afghanistan Reversal

Matthew Hoh discusses the Biden administration’s Afghanistan policy. Trump, Hoh reminds us, had appointed Zalmay Khalilzad to negotiate a U.S. withdrawal with the Taliban; now it appears that Biden’s team is reversing that plan. Hoh says that this was to be expected: Biden represents the same entrenched interests that have kept America at war in the Middle East for more than 30 years, and so far his administration is issuing many of the same talking points as previous presidents have about keeping stability in the region, ensuring the flow of Middle Eastern oil and “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.” None of these, of course, are legitimate justifications for what Hoh describes as an incredibly dishonest and pointless endeavor.

Discussed on the show:

The Best and the Brightest
“U.S. Should Slow Withdrawal From Afghanistan, Bipartisan Panel Urges” (The New York Times)
Rage
Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam

Matthew Hoh is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and formerly worked for the U.S. State Department. Hoh received the Ridenhour Prize Recipient for Truth Telling in 2010. Hoh is a member of the Board of Directors for Council for a Livable World and is an Advisory Board Member for Expose Facts. He writes on issues of war, peace and post-traumatic stress disorder recovery at matthewhoh.com.

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2/4/21 Jim Bovard on the Official Whitewash of the Killing of Duncan Lemp

Jim Bovard is back to discuss the tragic killing of Duncan Lemp, a Maryland man who was shot by police during a no-knock SWAT raid last year. Bovard has been covering the details of Lemp’s story ever since, including the ways that the police department’s story keeps changing and the fact that there’s no body cam footage to verify what happened. Bovard stresses that no-knock raids are complete overkill in almost all cases, and they only lead to senseless killings like this one. He and Scott also discuss many similar cases in recent American history, all of which highlight the need for a reform of the way policing is done in this country.

Discussed on the show:

“The Official Whitewash of the Killing of Duncan Lemp” (The American Conservative)
“Police killing of Maryland man shows dangers of SWAT, no-knock raids” (USA Today)
“Waco: The Rules of Engagement (1997)” (IMDb)

Jim Bovard is a columnist for USA Today and the author of Public Policy Hooligan: Rollicking and Wrangling from Helltown to Washington. Find all of his books and read his work on his website and follow him on Twitter @JimBovard.

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1/28/21 Gareth Porter: Biden’s Coercive Iran Policy Threatens New Regional Crisis

Gareth Porter discusses U.S. relations with Iran, especially the ways the policies of the Biden administration might differ from those of the Trump administration. Even though the JCPOA was one of the signature accomplishments of the Obama presidency, and even though Trump came under sharp criticism from Obama supporters for pulling out of the agreement, Porter does not consider it at all a sure thing that Biden will simply rejoin the deal as it stands. The narrative that many Obama officials put forward at the time was that Iran was forced to come to the table because of America’s superior negotiating position; in reality, explains Porter, it was Iran’s advancing military technology that forced the U.S. to negotiate with them. He thinks it’s likely that rather than simply repudiate Trump by rejoining the deal, Biden’s team will now seek some new negotiating advantage, likely based on the destructive and unjust sanctions put into place by the Trump administration.

Discussed on the show:

“Biden admin’s coercive Iran policy threatens serious new regional crisis” (The Grayzone)

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on the national security state. He is the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare and, with John Kiriakou, The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis. Follow him on Twitter @GarethPorter and listen to Gareth’s previous appearances on the Scott Horton Show.

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1/28/21 Shuja Paul on the Forgotten Bombs of America’s Secret War on Laos

Scott interviews Shuja Paul about his forthcoming documentary, Waiting to Explode: Forgotten Bombs of a Secret War Continue to Kill. Paul’s film tells the little-known story of the thousands of undetonated cluster bombs dropped by the U.S. during the Vietnam War, which continue to plague the people of Laos to this day. Although Laos didn’t receive the brunt of the bombing during the war, Paul says that that country has suffered more than anyone in the decades since, largely because it has remained an impoverished country of subsistence farmers, who lack the technological, medical and financial resources that some of their neighbors have. Laos has also received far less attention in the intervening years, leaving their people to suffer in obscurity. Paul hopes that by telling a few of the tragic stories from the more than 20,000 Laotians who have been killed by these bombs, he can help to bring international attention to this deadly humanitarian crisis.

Discussed on the show:

“Fred Branfman, Who Exposed Bombing of Laos, Dies at 72” (The New York Times)
“Vietnam: American Holocaust” (IMDb)

Shuja Paul is an actor, writer and director, currently working on the documentary Waiting to Explode: Forgotten Bombs of a Secret War Continue to Kill.

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1/22/21 Steve Ellner on the Attempted US Destruction of Venezuela

Steve Ellner discusses the economic and political situation in Venezuela, and the U.S. role in pushing the country to where it is today. Ellner dispels a common misconception, which is that foreign influence has had little to do with Venezuela’s recent problems compared to mismanagement by the socialist governments of Chavez and Maduro. This has certainly played some role, Ellner concedes, as have falling oil prices, but he insists that by far the greater factor has been U.S. meddling during the Obama and Trump administrations. Under the Trump administration in particular, says Ellner, multiple coup attempts and the constant threat of military force have scared international companies out of Venezuela, on top of official sanctions on things like Venezuelan gold and the cryptocurrency they tried to develop when the bolivar collapsed. Ellner argues that the Trump administration was uniquely bad on Venezuela policy, and hopes that Biden’s presidency will bring a change for the better—but with Biden appearing to still endorse the radically unpopular opposition government of Juan Guaidó, he’s off to a less than promising start.

Steve Ellner is Associate Managing Editor of Latin American Perspectives and the editor of Latin America’s Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings.

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1/22/21 Gareth Porter on the Latest Chapter in the Manufactured Iran Crisis

Scott interviews Gareth Porter about the competing attitudes toward Iran in American foreign policy. During his presidency, Trump was sometimes the voice of restraint against those who favored a more aggressive stance toward Iran and in some cases even advocated outright war. In particular, says Porter, CENTCOM chief General Kenneth McKenzie was constantly moving to keep troops on the ground in Iraq and American ships in surrounding waters, all to demonstrate U.S. power and increase tensions with Iran. Trump was able to curb some of this, but was ultimately ineffective when it came to defying the intelligence state and the military. It remains to be seen whether President Biden will be able to do so.

Discussed on the show: