All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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All right, you guys, introducing Lyle J. Goldstein.
He is a research professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
In addition to Chinese, he also speaks Russian, and he is also an affiliate of the New Russia Maritime Studies Initiative at the Naval War College, and is a regular writer for The National Interest.
And I'm pretty sure you would have me say he speaks for himself and not for the US government, which employs him.
Welcome back to the show, Lyle.
How are you?
Oh, thanks, Scott.
Great to be with you.
I'm doing great.
It's a little bit cold here, but we're enjoying it.
In fact, I'm planning to go ice skating after our discussion.
Cool.
All right.
Well, have fun.
The one bit of advice I have about that is don't be drunk while you ice skate, because it'll break your leg.
Yes.
I might even wear a helmet.
I knew a girl who, she came to school with a broken femur, and we all said, what happened?
And she said, I was ice skating drunk.
Oh, no, I wouldn't try that.
Not this time of day, anyway.
Not downhill, anyway.
All right.
Hey, man, so you wrote this really interesting piece.
I like the fact that you know so much about the subject matter here and have such strong opinions on American policy in far Eastern Europe, east of what we used to call Eastern Europe in Ukraine.
And this one is called The War in Ukraine Must End.
And I have a question right there.
Didn't they just sign a new peace deal, the Ukrainian President Zelensky and the Russian President Vladimir Putin two weeks ago?
Well, there was a meeting in Paris, and it went reasonably well.
But I think definitely lots of sparks were also flying.
And my read is there's a fair amount of pessimism coming out of that meeting.
Now, I've understood in the last 24 hours, I think there may have been a success at reaching a gas deal, which is huge for both countries.
And we don't want to minimize that.
But still, you know, the war grinds on, people are being killed.
And I think, you know, really major steps are needed on both sides and really all around Europe to bring this Ukraine conflict, which has been so debilitating, to an end.
So I'm working hard on that.
I'm actually going to publish a reasonably detailed proposal in the next couple of weeks.
So not that I have the grand solution, but I am trying.
I think our policy community and, you know, academics too, should be pulling out all the stops to debate certain peace proposals.
I don't see any of that, unfortunately.
Well, you know, there's a headline today that says the Democrats in Congress are demanding that Trump re-up the START II treaty.
So I thought, hey, that's pretty good.
These same people accuse him of high treason with the Russians all day.
And they're saying, hey, business is business, arms control comes first.
And please don't break this treaty with the Russians that Putin is saying he wants to stay in.
So there sure are a lot of things for the Americans and the Russians to find to cooperate on if they're looking for things, huh?
Absolutely.
I mean, it's a real paradox in that kind of mode of thinking.
But I, you know, I think I'm pretty consistent.
I try to advocate for arms control, absolutely, as well as, but a key bedrock of arms control, of course, is mitigating conflict.
So, I mean, you know, why are both countries building new kinds of nuclear weapons and doing these kind of new aggressive deployments?
Well, gosh, it's because you have this framework where you view the other side as a likely adversary.
And that kind of climate is very dangerous.
And so the best way to solve this is to tackle the hardest questions, like Ukraine.
So, I mean, really, Ukraine, diplomacy and arms control should go hand in hand.
I don't know why that seems to befuddle our beloved congressman.
Mm-hmm.
Well, so let's break down the conflict in the Donbass there in far eastern Ukraine.
It's predominantly Russian region.
They've been at war at varying degrees since they were attacked by the Kiev government in the spring of 2014, following the coup and their refusal to recognize the new coup government there.
But then the Minsk 2 deal was signed.
I guess Minsk 1 never really worked.
But the Minsk 2 deal that was signed by the Germans and the French, along with the Russians and the Ukrainian government back in, I'm going to say, 2016.
I guess it's been reported that that thing was mostly holding the violences at a much lower level, I guess, than it was in 2014 and 15.
But I know more than 10,000 people have been killed there, and I really don't know what's the latest from, say, the last half a year or so, at least.
Well, I mean, people continue to die.
I know at least 100, probably more, have been killed along the front lines just over the last few months.
So it's, you know, it's sort of a bloody stalemate.
But I mean, you know, for one, we don't want to minimize people wounded in conflict.
So even if the death rates have not been so terrible, but I mean, the misery that this kind of trench warfare brings along with it, and I'm talking about the misery of civilians living in and around these areas, and the numbers are very substantial, and, you know, this is terrible.
And we have to, you know, it should bring some urgency.
It's true that the situation since these Minsk agreements has generally stabilized.
So from a military perspective, I think it has not been, you know, you have more or less a stalemate.
However, like I said, a lot of people are suffering even under this, you know, this quote, stabilized situation.
And there is a threat of renewed major warfare.
You know, I wouldn't call that a very high probability, but I'll, you know, I was just reading a headline yesterday in the Russian press, which said, you know, nothing was achieved at this Paris agreement, and we should prepare for an all out, more or less, American-Ukrainian invasion of the Donbass.
So, I mean, you know, I think, how to put it, there's a lot of anxiety on both sides, and we have to think how to resolve these difficult issues.
I would like to see, I think it's right that the Europeans lead this effort, and I commend Macron and Merkel both as doing a reasonably good job.
I hope they'll, you know, to me, I'm a little bit concerned that they are, might give up on the process, just because they couldn't get their breakthrough.
But I think diplomacy always takes time and a lot of effort, and they should invest in this, because Europe's future really is at stake.
Well, so I think probably a lot of Americans really don't even know where the Crimean Peninsula is.
I mean, when you're talking about the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and this is the kind of stuff out of fairy tales or something, this might as well be three or four planets away from here.
So, what's the big deal, anyway, about this Crimean Peninsula and the Black Sea here?
Well, honestly, I think that's a reasonably good perspective, that it is, this is very far away, and really doesn't, it's not a major concern for American interests.
And I've been, you know, perturbed to see various American strategists, you know, arguing as if this is the most important question in the world.
I mean, it's far from it, from an American point of view.
You know, I don't even think this would rank on the top 10 or anywhere near it.
But certainly, tensions between Russia and the U.S., or Russia and European partners are a problem.
But Crimea has a kind of extraordinary history.
Actually, Russia came to own Crimea as part of the Russian Empire even before the American Revolution.
So, I mean, you know, Russian sovereignty in this part of the world is really nothing new at all.
You know, I dare say that the Russian claim to Crimea is probably significantly stronger than the American claim on Hawaii or any, and I don't think Americans are going to brook any questioning of our ownership of Hawaii or any other place, California, what have you.
But what I'm saying is the Russian claim here is quite, rather strong.
And if you, it's very interesting to go back in the history books, because you'll see during the Crimean War, which took place in the 1850s, that the, as it turns out, America was very sympathetic to Russia at that time and sent substantial help over to the Russians, including a group of doctors, some Americans were even killed volunteering for the Russian army.
So why were Americans sympathetic to Russia at the time?
Actually, because they were opposed to kind of British imperialism, the British were throwing their weight around, and Americans didn't like that at the time.
So and actually, the Russians helped us out a little bit in the Civil War also, because we were concerned about what the British were up to.
So I mean, I'm just saying, as we consider Russia's claim in Crimea, and let's not forget the famous Russian author Tolstoy actually first became famous for his scribblings about the how awful the Crimean War was.
He was down there in Sevastopol in the midst of the fighting as a Russian soldier, a military journalist, effectively.
And one of the reasons I think he eventually became a pacifist was because he witnessed the horrors of that war.
Russia lost about a quarter million soldiers fighting for Crimea at that time.
Let's not forget that, you know, a century later, Russia again lost about a quarter million soldiers fighting the Nazis for possession of Crimea.
And a lot of Americans don't understand, that campaign came right before Stalingrad, okay?
So if the Russian soldiers had not held out in Sevastopol at that time against the Nazis, there's good reason to think that the Nazis would have conquered Russia.
So the Wehrmacht was gravely weakened by the campaign in Crimea.
So when they finally reached Stalingrad, they were in a weakened condition, and then they were shattered by the Russian forces.
That changed the whole tide of World War II.
So Americans actually, ironically, have something to be thankful for in the Russian unwillingness to part with their territory in Crimea.
So, you know, to me, we're making a huge mistake to make this the crucible of kind of European and global security.
Now- I just want to throw in there that, I mean, if you don't think of it, then you just don't think of it.
But if you do think of it, it's undeniable when you talk about those kind of numbers.
150,000 died defending that peninsula from the Nazis.
Think about how do you compare that to, say, America's emotion over West Point, or how Texans feel about the Alamo or something.
Right, right.
Come on, a few dozen died at the Alamo.
Who cares?
That's nothing compared to the calamity of World War II and the sacrifice made to hold onto that peninsula.
I mean, you might as well be talking, you know, religious levels of importance to the people of Russia.
I imagine, just because I am a Texan, and I know what the Alamo means to Texans, and I can also compare in distance and time, and in number of casualties, transplant that same situation over there.
I think I understand their point of view.
Right.
It's an emotive issue.
I think we're just commemorating our victory in the Battle of the Bulge, in which American soldiers played an absolutely crucial role here, and we should commemorate that.
But we've got to understand that at that time, the German army had essentially been defeated already by the Red Army in Eastern Europe.
Now, Americans played an absolutely crucial role in World War II.
Let's not forget our heroes for a minute, and Russians will say the same thing.
But it was a partnership that delivered the world from Nazi tyranny, so we shouldn't forget that.
In fact, many are gathering on the Elbe, actually, in a few months this spring to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the meeting of the Russian and American armies on the Elbe in Germany.
So, yeah, I mean, it really is just a thorough kind of violation of any kind of objective understanding of history to fail to realize that we're going to have to accommodate Moscow on this point.
Now, look, I do think we can argue about how Russia went about this.
We should ask for certain assurances and maybe even some compensation to Ukraine for this.
I think that's totally reasonable, and one of the compromises that I'm advocating is that maybe Ukraine could allow Crimea to recognize Russia's ownership of Crimea, but what would Ukraine get in return for Russia?
I think that perhaps Russia in return could allow Ukraine to have NATO membership without any kind of countermeasures, and that this might be a way of kind of getting to a win-win.
Wow.
That's a pretty big trade-off.
I mean, that would include, I don't know, I can't imagine the Russians going along with that, but ...
Well, I think, you know, look, they want to get out from under sanctions.
They want Crimea to be secure, and they're not looking for a new Cold War.
They want Ukrainians to come to Crimea and vacation, right?
I mean, they want the area to be prosperous, so a kind of, you know, we can think that we could see how NATO membership would help Ukraine to, let's say, to look for a positive in this situation and to feel more secure.
So I do think we can't ignore some Ukrainian concerns about the future of the area.
And, you know, I do think NATO could have a role, although I don't generally see it as a ...
I do think in the future, European security needs to move to its own kind of more, a much more European-centric defense ...
Well, there's a compromise, right?
Abolish NATO, the Americans all go home, and then if the Germans and the French want to integrate Ukraine into their new European army or whatever it is, then that's fine.
But I don't have to pay for it, and I don't have to give up Austin, Texas, in a war with Russia over it.
Yeah, well, you know, I think that there is an argument there, and I think NATO has ...
I think we can say has outlived its usefulness generally.
But I ... you know, and so I do think that France and Germany do need to lead the future of European security and defense.
I actually think Brexit could be a plus for that kind of future, because I think the British were always dragging their heels on this kind of project.
However, you know, as interesting and important that future might be for Europe, and I think it's quite promising.
I was just in Germany recently and, you know, came away reasonably confident that they have the wisdom to achieve this in a few decades.
But how do you transition to that future?
And I think it's difficult.
We've got to be realistic, Scott, and I don't think ... you know, I think NATO has to be part of the equation for the ...
I mean, I'll give you an example of the kind of objection the Germans were raising or saying, look, you know, we don't have any kind of nuclear deterrent, and Russia is bristling with nuclear weapons, so if you dissolve NATO, you're giving up that ... any kind of nuclear umbrella for us, and we just cannot accept that.
So, you know, to me, it is something ... it's a problem to be managed.
Look, Russia is not about to launch a nuclear strike on Germany, of course.
So I mean, these are kind of esoteric, hypothetical discussions, but ...
Well, the French have a few 100-inch bombs, don't they?
I don't think that many.
And I did bring that up, actually.
That was my immediate response, that the French have a kind of deterrent, but they ... you know, the Germans are concerned that the French don't have a kind of pan-European sensibility about the deterrent and stuff.
So I mean, I think ... but it's worth thinking about, Scott.
You raise the right point, which is that maybe Europe has to have a European kind of nuclear deterrent, and it should be kind of limited in size and reasonable, but adequate so that Americans ... you're right, it's quite illogical for Americans to consider, on a regular basis, you know, risking New York for Vilnius or something.
Well, and Doug Bondow is always pointing out that the Germans apparently aren't afraid of the Russians at all, or they would be militarizing, and they're not, because they know that this is all a hoax.
Go ahead.
It's the Americans who are waging this whole Cold War against the Russians who are just sitting there taking it, essentially.
And the Germans apparently see it that way, or they would be acting as though they need some new tank divisions, but they're not acting that way.
Well, I definitely agree with part of that.
I mean, Germany ... and I'm a big fan of Doug Bondow.
I hope he's been on your show.
He's a genius.
Oh, yeah.
He's definitely the best guy.
Yes.
I'm reading everything he writes.
And Germans generally are, you know, more relaxed.
They want to work with Russia, generally.
And I think those are all good instincts.
I mean, just thinking about the devastation of the Second World War, if Germany and Russia are willing to cooperate and get along, this is a huge win for the future of European security.
So I'm definitely with you there.
But Germany has other reasons, of course, not to over-militarize, because they know that that's unnerving to the French and other people, too.
So they're a bit reserved.
I think we ... look, Russia ... my view on Russia is that they have behaved in a kind of aggressive way in certain situations, but in my view, that's kind of part of the Russian DNA.
It goes back to, you know, goes back really mostly to World War II, this sense of vulnerability, and their huge losses they took as a society.
So I mean, in effect, Russia is often exercising kind of irrational impulses.
But when it sees NATO coming within, you know, 100 miles of St. Petersburg, as we are now, you know, American troops are exercising in these very sensitive zones, like in the Baltics and so forth.
So yes, Russia is deeply concerned about NATO.
And you're right, that Germany, I think, can be a leader.
They have the right philosophy, they want to lean on diplomacy, they're not looking to build up.
I'm actually encouraged that Germany maintains the lower defense budget.
You know, we've been screaming that they need to come up to 2 percent, and they are dragging their heels.
They're saying, no, we don't want to do that.
And I applaud them on that.
I think they have a more mature view of Russia and the future of Eastern Europe that's peaceful and not based on, you know, just building up weapons and building up and building up and building up.
Because, you know, not only does that cost billions, hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars that are essentially wasted, but it also sets us up for like a succession of, you know, crises on par with the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And it really just takes one misstep and, you know, and we are in a kind of World War Three situation.
And it could happen very quickly.
And I've been arguing on Ukraine, even one, it's not hard to imagine scenarios where it exploded into a major conflict and even a nuclear conflict.
Hold on just one second, be right back.
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Well I don't know if the military has an expression for this, you know, I know they talk about a self-licking ice cream cone for any project that they get started that then becomes its own justification, but they need a term like that, maybe they have one, for the rationalization of whatever it is that they're already doing, you know, self-licking thinking here.
Where I think, you know, everyone else in Washington DC, in the military, in the national security state, to the nth degree, you know, 95 plus percent of them, they believe that Russia started the fight in Ukraine in 2014, even though they know that the Americans overthrew the government in Kiev twice in 10 years, and they know that they're the ones who started it.
It's, the level of dissonance there, it's pretty amazing to see.
It's still all their fault.
Everything is Russia's fault.
America backed al-Qaeda in Syria to the point where it grew up into the size of the Islamic State and was on the verge of sacking Damascus before Russia intervened to protect their client from being replaced by Bin Ladenites.
Oh, Russian aggression.
How dare they bomb CIA-backed suicide bomber terrorists in Syria?
And you have the consensus is that, you know, all of this is Russia's fault, none of it is America's fault, all of it is their aggression.
The Wall Street Journal, in their coverage of Trump's impeachment, just state as flat fact in the news story that Ukraine desperately needs these weapons to protect from Russian aggression.
And yeah, it sounds like these are the kinds of people who actually could get us into a nuclear war if they really believe their own lies to such an incredible degree.
Oh, I left out when they pretended that Russia started the war in Georgia in 2008, which for everyone who knows anything about it knows that that wasn't true.
But they decided, nope, we're just going to pretend that Russia started that war.
Russian aggression, Russian aggression.
And so, you know, I don't know, I was still young in the Cold War in the 1980s.
But it didn't seem like the Reagan government was just completely lying to themselves about the nature of the Soviet Union, where it was and what it was doing to such a degree.
You know what I mean?
They were hawks, but they were grounded in the same reality that you and I are living in.
And I see now it's like, no, where everybody lives in Victoria Nuland's imagination about what's going on over there.
Yeah, yeah.
I think, you know, these caricatures of Russia are really tortured and, you know, going over there occasionally as I do, I can see that they are just, you know, more or less utterly depart from reality.
I mean, just give you an example, I and Putin in the last, I think, 24 hours did a long news interview.
And, you know, he took a lot of kind of difficult and hostile questions, even.
And, you know, so I mean, it's just different than the imagination of Russia, viewed as this grand adversary seeking to impose, you know, an authoritarian system.
I mean, it's just a, it's just a cartoon, really.
Look, you know, I think I take a little bit different position from you.
I mean, I think Russia has some responsibility for a lot of the problems that have occurred.
But I mean, the natural inclination of all great powers is to compete and compete mercilessly.
And you know, they are doing that.
And they view themselves as having their back against the wall and facing, you know, literally from a Russian point of view, they are facing an existential crisis in Ukraine.
And you know, they feel that, you know, it is not outlandish or wasn't outlandish to consider Russia being even destroyed entirely by these various, you know, colored revolutions and things like that.
So, you know, they're very, and add to that this kind of paranoia, which I think is, we can understand is part of their kind of psyche.
It's hard for Americans to understand, you know, we've never been faced like that.
So, you know, we just have to realize that the, if you will, cleaning up the mess of the of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And you know, I was, like I said, I was just in Berlin.
And sure, a lot of people are very significantly better off, more free, more prosperous.
Absolutely.
You know, we could all be very glad that that all happened.
But there was a lot of troubles, also, and instability that flowed from that.
We continue to deal with it today.
And we just have to deal with it in a mature, flexible way that that seeks out a kind of, you know, a compromise and, you know, accommodating everybody's interests.
And we, you know, I feel confident we can do this through clever diplomacy.
That is, we can help Ukrainians live better and Russians live better, it's not a zero sum game.
You know, I just happen to be in this little country of Moldova, which is right next to Ukraine.
And I'll tell you, I was so impressed with this little country, which, after all, faces almost identical kind of identity issues that Ukraine, that is, it's a very divided kind of population between, you know, kind of Russia sympathetic group and a more Romanian sympathetic group.
You know, they could start fighting, you know, next week.
There's all the kind of groundwork for it.
But yet they have a more mature sensibility that that would not serve anybody's interest, that that would be, you know, to go down this cauldron of into some kind of hell.
And they're there.
I think they're very confident they want to avoid that for the future.
And, you know, let's face it, throughout Europe and throughout the world, people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, languages, religions, they learn to live together.
And that can be done in the in the space of the former Soviet Union and also in Ukraine.
And in Syria, by the way, too.
And the US should be facilitating that not not kind of driving people apart and looking for enemies all over.
Well, I guess with my whole long rambling thing, what I was sort of trying to get to there was, if the basic premises of American policy in Eastern Europe are based on ridiculous lies that these people tell each other, then how could they ever negotiate any proper solutions?
For example, if Russia has invaded Eastern Ukraine, aggression, aggression, aggression, aggression, then that's an entirely different situation than they sent across a few deniable special operations guys to help the people of Eastern Ukraine defend themselves when they were attacked by the government that America had installed in power there in an illegal coup d'etat.
Now that we can negotiate.
You know what?
We'll have our Ukrainian government stop attacking the east.
And then you guys can stop defending the east from their attack.
That's an entirely different negotiation than Putin.
You better stop invading Ukraine or else, which is what apparently everyone in D.C. thinks is what's going on here, even though so many of them have to know better.
So that's kind of the worry I have.
In the Reagan administration, there was so much more at stake, and yet they weren't just completely deluding themselves as to what was happening in the world, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, they understood we have to work with a real situation.
I mean, let's face it, like the Soviets did horrible things in Prague and in Budapest and Poland over the years.
And while the U.S. was definitely showing our opposition to those things, we also knew that we weren't going to fight a war over that.
And we didn't.
And that was very wise of all of our presidents successively through.
And that helped to build, on that piece that they built, we're able to build a more, you know, the peace generally that prevails in Europe today.
By the way, I want to note that my reading of the Maidan and all that tragic set of events, although I do think U.S. diplomats are very culpable in that tragedy, but I also, Newland and so forth, but I do think that European diplomats also played a deleterious role.
I think they were kind of somehow deluded into thinking that Ukraine could be pulled fully into European orbit and away from Russia.
And they actually have this kind of Swedish theory where I find that the Swedish diplomats were very active in this area.
But you have to realize that Sweden has a certain history in Ukraine.
Going back hundreds of years to the battle, this crucial battle that took place between Russia and Sweden, where Peter the Great defeated the Swedish king at Poltava.
And so I don't think most Americans realize, but when this, you know, and by the way, the colors in the Ukrainian flag are similar to the Swedish flag.
So, I mean, with Swedish diplomats active in the kind of Maidan set of events, it's like waving a red flag in front of a bull.
I mean, nothing could make the Russians go crazier in that very delicate set of circumstances.
And no wonder they went for Crimea.
No wonder they were not in a compromising mood when things started to go bad in Donbass.
And many Ukrainians died as a result of that failure among the European leaders to kind of, and U.S. leaders.
But really, Europeans should know better.
I think the Americans are just deer in the headlights.
They have no idea what's going on in Ukraine.
But I feel like the Europeans should have known better that they were poking the bear in the eye.
And a lot of people have died as a result.
So I think European diplomacy needs to be more mature.
They need to lead the way.
Americans can support a little bit.
But yeah, you're completely right, Scott, about your, this kind of white and black, you know, painting of Russia as the villain in every situation.
It doesn't lead to any kind of constructive end.
I mean, the idea that we're going to shut Russia out of Eastern Europe is, you know, borderline lunatic.
I mean, it's just, it's not going to happen.
And your East Europeans don't want that.
And no wonder we have a lot of pushback in Hungary, even Poland, but in the Czech Republic and elsewhere throughout Eastern Europe.
They know they have to get along with Russia.
And they want to.
You know, like I said, I was just in Moldova, and Moldova, they're suffering because they used to sell hundreds of millions of dollars of wine into Russia, and now they can't because of all these difficulties with Russia.
So, you know, they need to get along and build up these relationships.
And even Ukrainians know that, most of them.
So we just need to encourage them.
All right.
All right.
Well, listen, I really appreciate your time again on the show and all your great writings here.
I read pretty much everything you write here at The National Interest, Lyle.
So thank you again.
Thank you so much, Scott.
I appreciate it.
You keep up the good work, too.
And happy holidays.
You too.
All right, you guys.
That is Lyle J. Goldstein.
He is a regular writer at The National Interest.
And this one is called The War in Ukraine Must End.
And as I said at the beginning there, he is a scholar with the — well, let me page down and make sure I get it right — the U.S. Naval War College, and is speaking only for himself, obviously, and not the rest of the government here.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh yeah, and read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan, at foolserrand.us.
