01/27/14 – Eric Margolis – The Scott Horton Show

Hi, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And next up is our friend Eric Margulies.
He's the author of the books War at the Top of the World and American Raj, Liberation or Domination.
And his website is ericmargulies.com, spelled like Margolis, ericmargulies.com.
And also he writes for unz.com, that's unz.com, and lourockwell.com.
You can find all his stuff, great archive at LRC there, lourockwell.com.
Welcome back to the show.
Eric, how are you doing?
Frozen solid, Scott.
Thank you.
Yeah, now you live up there in Canada there temporarily.
You're a true-blooded, red-blooded American, but just you're some kind of expat.
What's up with that?
Yeah, I don't consider myself an American.
I consider myself a New Yorker because I was born in Manhattan.
A Manhattan nationalist you are, huh?
I'm a rare, I'm an endangered species, a Manhattan-born person who is still alive and cooking.
But I come to Canada often because I write for Canadian media.
My wife is a Canadian.
And we're up here now, and this damned Arctic vortex is freezing us out now for months.
And now how cold is it there, really?
Well, it's about, with the windchill, it's about 23 or 24 below zero Fahrenheit today.
Wow.
Well, it's beautiful here in Austin, you should know.
It's always beautiful in Austin.
Mostly, yeah.
Most of the time.
Yeah, I don't know, July and August, September, it can get pretty.
True enough.
Yeah, no, we got a little bit of ice the other day, which is a special treat for me.
It counts as snow.
It counts as like two feet of snow in a veritable winter wonderland.
But we've got to grade it on a curve when you're from here, you know?
Yeah.
Anyway, I'm glad that you wrote this article about Ukraine.
It's right here at the Unz Review, unz.com.
Don't let Kiev become another Sarajevo.
And you're not talking about 1990 Sarajevo, you're talking about 19-teen Sarajevo.
That's right.
Let's not have a world war.
I buy your premise, let's not have a world war.
So now take me through your argument.
Well, as a historian, I have a Swiss degree in pre-World War I diplomatic history.
I am very sensitive to the march of events that led up to World War I, where right at this fall will be the 100th anniversary of that catastrophe.
And I see very similar elements happening here with declining empires, rising empires, and all kinds of arrogance and false assumptions.
The situation in Ukraine is very difficult.
Ukraine is splintering to western-looking Ukraine, to eastern-into-eastern-looking Ukraine, essentially westernized versus Russianized Ukraine, which was almost an unnatural country.
Our borders were unnatural to begin with because they were moved around so much by Stalin.
But it's dangerous because there's great violence in Kiev, the capital, and spreading to other Ukrainian cities.
And there are threats of civil war.
And as I wrote in my article, beyond that, there's a threat of possible intervention.
All right.
And now, so talk a little bit about the Sunni-Shia split there.
I guess it's the Orthodox and the Catholic and the Russian and the Western there.
I'm oversimplifying.
Help me out.
Well, I'm not sure that – thank goodness that religion is not playing a predominant role in this crisis.
The West tends to be Catholic.
The East is certainly Orthodox.
There's no love lost between those two.
But Ukraine's history weighs very heavily on the whole subject.
You have to go back to the 30s when Stalin murdered between 6 and 11 million Ukrainians.
It's called the Holodomor.
It's the Forgotten Holocaust.
It happened in 1933-34 while the world watched on and did nothing.
And we, Americans, were allied to the perpetrator of this monstrous crime during World War II, the Soviet Union.
So Ukraine's never recovered from that.
They were battling the Ukrainians with daggers drawn with the Poles in the West.
In the East, they were sort of marooned.
The real problem, Scott, is that while the Western Ukraine wants to join the EU, the Eastern Ukraine is the industrialized portion of Ukraine, very heavy industry, Donetsk basin with coal, steel, heavy industry, petrochemicals.
That was really part of the old Soviet economy and still today sells its products to Russia.
If Ukraine were to join intact with the EU, we've seen it over and over.
We saw it in East Germany, for example, where all the local industry, the minute East Germany joined West Germany, just collapsed.
And that would happen in Ukraine, putting all these companies out of business that are very politically influential and causing great unemployment.
So before integration with the West can boost employment, so people are frightened.
And that's really at the basis of the problem.
All right.
And so what's the big deal about this EU trade agreement?
Because they already have an EU trade agreement of some kind, right?
So is this some real big step of bringing them into NATO or the EU or something like that?
It was the first step of NATO expansion.
And it looked at dropping tariffs and sort of bringing Ukraine into the EU economy, which is no great shakes these days either.
But, you know, it's funny, the EU says, oh, no, no, no, we have no room for the Turks.
But we are sure we can take 40 billion Ukrainians or 49 billion, whatever there are.
They're white people and they're Christians.
That's OK.
But it was integration into Europe.
The Russians saw it as a disguised membership in the EU.
It was just delayed slow motion membership.
And remember that when Gorbachev refused, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Kremlin was assured by Washington and London that it would not push NATO's borders, the NATO up to Russia's borders.
Gorbachev was assured of this.
And in return, he said, OK, we will let the Soviet Union collapse.
We won't use military force to keep it.
And in fact, what happened, Gorbachev kept his word, but Washington did not.
And now NATO, read the United States, is relentlessly pushing its presence right up to Russia's borders, both in the Baltic, now in Central Europe and in the Caucasus.
And now, so, OK, now we've got the protesters in the street and they're representing, do they represent the other party that's out of power right now?
Or don't tell me they're protesting that badly for a trade deal or they're just there against, this is their opportunity to oppose Yanukovych.
I can't say it right.
Yeah, no, that's right.
It's, well, this dispute has been going on for a long time.
There were two warring camps.
Remember the Orange Revolution?
Sure, in 2004.
That we quietly financed from the United States.
Well, there are these Western-looking, a lot of them younger people, who have now turned their allegiance to the, call them the revolutionary leaders in Kiev.
They hate Yanukovych and they hate the Ukrainian old guard of big corrupt industrialists and secret police.
And they don't like the pro-Russian attitude.
So that's been going on and on and on.
But in the meantime, you have, first of all, the mainstream Ukrainian opposition.
On top of that, you've got another party and then you've got a bunch of right-wing militants who are also joining in the rioting, I think.
So there's a wide ideological diversity there.
And there are very strong right-wing underground in Ukraine that's bitterly anti-Russian.
I mean, you can see why.
Well, you know, it's like Poland, where the Poles couldn't wait to get as far away as they could from Russia.
Who could blame them?
But they happen to be stuck right next to them anyway.
They are, but they want NATO's protective mantle.
And so do the Western Ukrainians.
They're worried they want to get away from Mother Russia, whereas the Eastern Ukrainians want to cozy up even more to Russia.
I mean, they are Russians.
Well, so then, well, obviously a couple of things.
First of all, is this just the sequel?
And this is the CIA and the NED and USAID and whatever, you know, cut out groups, George Soros groups or whatever, financing another fake Orange Revolution?
Or is this something more or less than that?
And then I guess you end the essay questioning about, you know, the future of Ukraine as a state at all, never mind admission to NATO.
It's – we have been, we, the United States, Britain in particular, have been stirring the pot.
There's no doubt about it.
We're using these techniques developed during the original Orange Revolution, later used in Iran to stir up crowds through social media, spreading money around, broadcasts.
It's a very effective crowd-arousing technique.
We are doing it, but that shouldn't cover the fact that there's a genuine urgency and demand by these Ukrainians to overthrow the corrupt Yanukovych government which came to power through kind of rigged elections, fraud.
The problem is that the Ukrainian opposition has split leadership and will probably fall to fighting amongst themselves should they ever gain power, not to mention fighting against Eastern Ukraine, which is supporting the government.
Well, I mean, if there's a silver lining to this, it's that the turmoil means they can't join NATO like this, right?
Everything's got to be nice and settled before they can join the alliance.
That's right.
I'll tell you what really worries me is I was writing my column about this, and it's hard writing a column about this because it's such a complex situation.
And whenever you write about something like this, you've got hundreds of angry people emailing me, oh, dare you say X, Y, and Z, you know.
But Russia is getting very angry, and Putin warned that they better pull and get their act together or else there's always the possible danger of Russian intervention.
All right, well, now hold it right there.
I'm sorry we've got to take this break.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Eric Margulies.
More on Ukraine after this.
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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's the Scott Horton Show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Eric Margulies about Ukraine.
And on the way out to the break there, Eric, you were saying that the Russians are really serious about this, and I guess if the Ukrainians were to move too far toward the West, the Russians might just roll right in there on tank treads and put a stop to that, huh?
I think the Russians have been very restrained so far, but imagine how we in the United States would react if Mexico was considering electing a pro-Russian government.
Go crazy.
Well, Ukraine used to be part of Russia.
It's the heartland, the breadbasket.
It's the cradle of Russian civilization.
So the Russians are very sensitive about it.
Putin and his group see what's going on in Ukraine as a continuing Western effort to tear down the Russian Federation, to weaken it, to break away its different parts, and eventually to overthrow his government.
I can't say that his view is mistaken.
There are Western empire-building groups that still want to tear down Russia and get final revenge for the Cold War.
Well, you know, I wonder how much of that, how much is grand strategy or revenge, or is it really just all selling Lockheed products?
Because remember, it's just Bruce Jackson, the Lockheed executive that set up the Council for the Expansion of NATO, or Council for NATO Expansion, whatever exactly it was called, but it was the Council for coming up with excuses to expand this thing so that we can, you know, sell the Americans fighter jets, but call it selling Latvia fighter jets, you know, and it's just kicking the door open on a new market for a specific company.
Well, that's true, and there's a lot of that to justify not cutting the Pentagon's bloated budgets, plus, you know, the so-called crisis with Iran.
But there is a very serious threat in this whole Ukrainian situation, and I think the U.S. is underestimating Russia.
Russia's down, but it's not out.
It's rearming itself.
Putin's a very tough and clever leader, and he may take action of some sort.
I mean, we are provoking and pushing the Russians dangerously.
All right, so now let me ask you about Prince Bandar, because I wonder when you say we, I mean, as long as we're being loose with the English language here, does we include Prince Bandar, or is it his we that includes us?
And, you know, I wonder what you think, you know, what amount of influence he has in, for example, America's Syria policy, or for that matter, Saudi Arabia's Syria policy, and how far they're going, and maybe we could talk a little bit about those talks.
But also, a friend of the show, Phil, was bringing up the question of Bandar's, it seemed pretty obviously, a threat that I guess Putin turned around and told the media about when Bandar told Vladimir Putin, what, late last year sometime, late last summer maybe, that, you know, I could protect you from terrorist attacks at your Olympic Games coming up here if you're willing to cooperate with me on Syria was, I believe, the question.
And I just wonder, is that what it looked like?
And is that guy, you know, bulletproof?
How could he talk to Putin like that and get away with it?
And what is going on there?
Well, it sounds like something that the Saudis would have done.
They have long been financing the different independence fighters in the caucus, assume the Russians, and now the Americans, called terrorists.
So, yeah, that's a pressure point that the Saudis can apply.
Bandar is the head of Saudi intelligence.
He was a longtime ambassador to Washington.
He was always in bed with the Bush family.
And he may become the next king of Saudi Arabia.
So he's somebody to be listened to and reckoned with.
He has a lot of money.
He has a lot of influence in the States.
We've seen in recent years that the most corrupt institution in the United States is not the New Jersey state legislature or even the Brooklyn legislature, but rather the American Congress.
And you can buy congressmen and senators for a couple of toasters and flat-screen TVs.
They are the cheapest people in the world.
Buy a few thousand dollars, you've got your senator or congressman.
The Saudis spread around a huge amount of money.
So they have command great influence in Washington.
And they can fund anybody's political party.
And they're using it, in fact.
They're trying to twist American foreign policy.
Now allied between the Saudis and the Israelis.
Talk about strange bed partners.
Allied together trying to force the United States into war in Syria.
All right, now we can get back to that.
Trying to stop the Iran deal, too, if they can.
But now, what's this about Bandar becoming the king?
Give me some, you know, play some bets for us here.
You know, folly on in-trade.
The senior Saudi leadership, if you want to call it that, are made of a bunch of geriatric princes who are in their 70s and 80s, and all of whom are unwell.
The current king is, you know, can barely walk and expected not to live out, live very much longer.
There's been a lot of internal infighting in the Saudi royal family between its two main groups.
There's a lot of bitterness.
There's also a reformist element, which we don't hear much from.
They're scared to death of their own people.
They're scared to death of their own army, which isn't given any ammunition.
And they are, you know, trying to keep their power in a very changing situation.
They're petrified of the Iranians.
So they're nervous.
And Bandar, though, is Washington's man in Riyadh.
He runs the local branch of the CIA and the NSA and everything else.
So he's our boy, and right now he's the best place candidate, except for one drawback, and that is that his mother was a slave or was descended from a slave girl with African blood.
And because of that, he's looked at askance, somewhat impure, by the other Saudi royals.
But he's smart and he's rich.
What an advanced society.
All right, well, great.
Yeah, and now, so what's all this about how jihadists do whatever he says?
Well, the Saudis, you know, 17 or 16 of the 18 people who flew the airplanes into New York on 9-11 were Saudis.
That's been conveniently forgotten.
Everybody's blaming the Afghans.
Along with the 28 pages they blacked out of the congressional report.
That's right, Scott.
The Saudis have a bottomless well of money to draw from Wahhabi extreme Islamists who will finance your jihad, somebody else's jihad.
There are all kinds of different jihads.
But the Saudis use it, as you pointed out at the beginning, with the Russians to advance their political goals.
All right, and now, when it comes to the three al-Qaedas in Syria right now, you've got the Islamic Front, which the Americans, they were trying to cozy up to as the new replacement for the Free Syrian Army that just kind of disbanded and fled, kind of ran off like Daffy Duck, kind of crazy.
And so they were trying to cozy up to the Islamic State or the Islamic Front, but they wouldn't meet with them.
And then later the guy said, actually, I was associated with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda back then, and I'm still loyal to their goals.
But those were the guys that the Americans were going to try to use to, I think perhaps, ally with al-Qaeda No.
2, the al-Nusra Front, which is at least a little bit more Syrian and nationalist than the Iraqi al-Qaeda guys who apparently are the worst of the prisoner beheaders and suicide bombers over there in al-Qaeda No.
3.
But then apparently they weren't, I don't know how far they're getting the Americans or anybody else, the Saudis, Prince Bandar, getting these groups to ally the two, to ally against the third, or how well they're doing against Assad this whole time, they're fighting against each other.
What do you make of all that mess?
It's like trying to herd a bunch of hungry cats.
Nobody knows who's with all these different groups.
American intelligence is not the greatest in dealing with events on the ground.
It's like letting the post office run our Middle East policy.
They don't know what's happening.
They can't follow it fast enough.
We have fooled ourselves because every group that comes along, we brand them al-Qaeda-linked or al-Qaeda-associated or pro-al-Qaeda.
We're so mesmerized by this term al-Qaeda that we apply it to all our enemies.
It's convenient for them, too, that they get to be part of a gigantic global movement, even if they're just a few geeks who once cut a guy's head off.
That's right.
The TV cameras come and suddenly they're famous, famous, rather than nobody.
But we delude ourselves in understanding how to deal with these people because we always hear al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda.
It worked in Iraq.
There were 12 Iraqi resistance groups to the American invasion.
Yet after about a month or two, thanks to the cooperation of the tame American media, they all disappeared.
Yeah, they were all Zarqawi.
They all became Zarqawi and al-Qaeda, and that's it.
Right.
All right, well, and so now it would seem like if these guys have a lick of sense whatsoever, not that they would ever go hands off, but they might support the Ba'athist dictator that used to torture al-Qaeda for them back in the Bush years.
But it seems like at the new talks, John Kerry's sticking with the position that Assad must go, which means, in other words, stamp his feet and nothing's going to change, and they're going to keep on backing the Mujahideen, is that right?
Whoever these guys are, call them whatever they are, they do cut people's heads off and blow up suicide bombs amongst women and children.
Yeah, they're a bunch of cutthroats, no doubt about it.
The irony of the situation, Scott, is that...
I'm sorry, we're almost out of time, so real fast.
America's natural ally is the Assad regime.
Yeah, sad as that is, yeah.
These wild men with black banners.
So America's backing the wrong horse from day one.
You think they're ever going to figure that out?
I mean, Michael Hayden, who I guess used to work with Assad on torturing people to death, he seems to be recommending it.
I don't know if they'll go along with that.
That's right, and we'll discuss it next time.
All right, well, sorry we're all out of time.
Thanks very much for coming back on the show.
Cheers, Scott.
I sure appreciate it.
Bye-bye.
All right, everybody, that is the great Eric Margolis, author of War at the Top of the World and American Raj, check out his great website, ericmargolis.com, for all his great articles there.
Also, rockwell.com and unz.com, u-n-z, unz.com.
See you next week, or tomorrow, I mean.
Thanks for listening.