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.
You can also sign up for the podcast fee.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right, you guys, on the line, I've got the great Ted Galen Carpenter from the Cato Institute and here writing at thenationalinterest.org, NATO's dirty little secret is out.
You know, when I saw the big picture at the top of the page of the F-35, I thought the article was gonna be about how the big secret was that their planes are junk, but nope, different secret.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing, Ted?
Thanks very much, Scott.
You look at this thing.
It's got two tiny little missiles and it can't even fly fast.
Anyway.
Other than that, it's a great weapon.
Yeah.
Can't climb, can't turn, isn't really stealth, doesn't carry any weapons, can't communicate with the ship it has to land on or the other planes in its fleet.
Hell, it'll break your neck if you eject.
Anyway, so it says here that you've got something to say about the recent NATO meeting and not the silly gossip part about Trump and the French president talking bad about each other and all this garbage, but the real substance of what matters about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and America's role in it and those other countries' role in it, too.
So what say you?
Well, the dirty little secret that I was talking about in the National Interest article goes back decades, and that is that the U.S. security guarantee to NATO allies, large and small, includes a willingness on the part of the United States to wage a nuclear war, if necessary, to defend those allies.
Pro-NATO types have managed to keep that very, very quiet for seven decades.
I've read hundreds of op-eds and other short articles from NATO admirers, dozens of journal articles, dozens of statements and other documents from NATO, and an explicit admission that the U.S. security guarantee has possible nuclear implications occurs in maybe a dozen or so of all of those articles, statements, speeches, and so on.
They don't want the American people to know about the extent of the risk that they are putting the lives of their loved ones on the line to defend even the most trivial, irrelevant NATO allies, even those vulnerable allies right on the border of Russia.
So, you know, imagine asking Americans if you had an honest public opinion poll question, would you be willing to sacrifice your life and the lives of your loved ones to defend Estonia or Latvia or Lithuania or Slovakia or other strategically irrelevant NATO allies?
I don't think you would get the kind of support for NATO that most public opinion polls show.
The only reason that a majority of Americans express enthusiasm for NATO, and even that percentage is declining, is they don't understand the nature of the real risk.
That is such an important point.
And, you know, it's funny about that, too.
I was always, I've been making the same point maybe to you on the show, too, about the nukes themselves when it comes to this, because, of course, everybody knows that there's nukes.
It goes without saying that both sides hold nukes.
But because it goes without saying, that means it literally goes unsaid.
And so then you have maybe years on end of discussion about possible conflict with Russia where no one mentions that both sides have H-bombs and that there's no such thing as a conventional tank war in Eastern Europe with Russia that would not obviously and immediately and automatically escalate to the use of at least atom bombs and then probably the death of us all from there.
And that's an excellent point.
I mean, the underlying assumption with the NATO alliance and America's other alliances is if the United States takes a strong, explicit stance, that commitment will never be challenged.
Deterrence is infallible.
And to me, that is an utterly reckless assumption.
Right.
But that's the basis.
That's the foundation for America's global strategic policy, and especially the commitment to NATO.
Right.
And as you say, it goes out saying, I mean, for everybody who is really interested in this and know about this, that, yeah, we know that NATO isn't just a social club, that NATO is a military alliance, that they have this Article 5 obligation to defend and all of this.
And yet it goes without saying.
And so when it's spoken about, really, that part of it, the risk involved is left out always.
And then also, as you say, the masses of people out in the country are deprived of the argument at all.
Nobody ever says at all that, no, we're really talking about trading Houston for talent.
Are you ready for that?
That's the question.
And then as you say, the poll answer would be a lot different if you put it that way.
Yeah, on the few occasions where that disclosure is made, the enthusiasm for the NATO commitment to any particular country declines dramatically, as you would predict, if people really understood the risk that they're undertaking by having the United States with all of these security commitments to other NATO members.
Now, is it true that Article 5 has some wiggle room in it, and that we're obligated to do something, but not necessarily to go to war to defend these countries?
That is absolutely correct.
However, it is generally offset by the deployment of tripwire forces in allied countries, so that if a war does break out, there are immediate American casualties.
And the thinking being then that the U.S. really has no choice but to respond to such an attack.
You can't just excuse the killing of American military personnel.
Politically, that would be suicide for any president who did that.
That's the logic, if you can call it that, that since any adversary, namely Russia, knows that there would be immediate American casualties, and that an American president would have no choice but to respond militarily to that situation.
Therefore, Russia or any other potential aggressor never will take the initial step of launching an attack.
To me, that's an incredible gamble.
We are playing thermonuclear Russian roulette, quite literally.
And to me, that is dangerously irresponsible on the part of America's political elite.
Hey guys, just real quick.
If you listen to the interviews only feed at the Institute or at scotthorton.org, I just want to make sure you know that I do a Q&A show from time to time at scottthorton.org slash show, the old whole show feed.
And so if you like that kind of thing, check that out there.
Hey guys, here's how to support this show.
You can donate in various amounts at scottthorton.org slash donate.
We've got some great kickbacks for you there.
Shop amazon.com by way of my link at scottthorton.org.
Leave a good review for the show at iTunes and Stitcher.
Tell a friend.
I don't know.
Oh yeah.
And buy my books, Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Great Ron Paul, The Scott Horton Show Interviews, 2004 through 2019.
And thanks.
Hey guys, check out Listen and Think audiobooks.
They're at listenandthink.com and of course on audible.com and they feature my book, Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, as well as brand new Out Inside Syria by our friend Reese Ehrlich and a lot of other great books, mostly by libertarians there.
Reese might be one exception, but essentially they're all libertarian audiobooks.
And here's how you can get a lifetime subscription to Listen and Think audiobooks.
Just donate a hundred dollars to the Scott Horton Show at scotthorton.org slash donate.
Could you talk to us a little bit, Ted, about this whole thing about escalate to deescalate?
And maybe if we set off one atom bomb, then they'll back down or our side thinks that that's their policy.
And so then what's our side's reaction to that supposed to be in this kind of thing?
Well, that's one of the problems, the linkage between conventional warfare and possible nuclear warfare.
I note in the National Interest article, the Rand Corporation study in 2016 that concluded if there was a Russian attack on any of the Baltic republics.
That defense forces would be able to hold out only for about three days before the Russian forces reached the Baltic Sea.
And Rand concluded, unless there was a very substantial upgrade of NATO military capabilities in that region, that would remain the case.
At which point the United States would then face the rather ugly choice of either backing down and with the attitude of the foreign policy establishment being unacceptably humiliated or escalating to the nuclear level.
Now, by escalating to the nuclear level, they don't mean that we would immediately launch a massive nuclear strike on Moscow and St. Petersburg.
No, it would be the use of tactical nuclear weapons, a few of them in the immediate military theater.
Now, I would venture to say the Estonians or other Baltic populations might not be too happy about having their countries turn into nuclear battlegrounds, but they wouldn't have much to say about it.
That would be a U.S. decision.
And the, again, optimistic assumption would be if we launched a few nukes, the Russians would just back down.
They would realize, wow, this has gotten out of control.
We cannot continue on this path.
We dare not escalate because then the United States might indeed strike the Russian homeland.
So therefore, the war would then calm down.
There would be some kind of ceasefire and a peace agreement reached.
To me, that is optimistic bordering on Pollyannish.
This could easily get out of control and lead to a horrific nuclear war that nobody really wants, but could have NATO and its adversaries stumble into.
You know, it's funny because this is exactly what I learned about the situation in Europe during the Cold War when I was a kid.
Only the line is now a thousand miles or more to the east of where it used to be.
But the whole idea of nuclear forces in Europe was that America did not have, I don't think this is really true, but I bet you know for sure.
But the idea was that America did not have the conventional capability to repel the Soviets' tank divisions if they had decided to pour in to Western Germany.
And so that was at that point, we would have to use atom bombs to keep them out.
And then everybody assumed it would escalate to general nuclear war from there.
Only now we're talking about our allies are not, there is no more Eastern European cushion between the Western forces and the Russians anymore.
Now, not every single state, but still all the way between Germany and Russia, there are NATO allies all through there.
What, 17 new ones, right?
Yeah, and it's that loss of a buffer is one of the things that makes the new Cold War with Russia so very dangerous, frankly, more dangerous than the old Cold War with the Soviet Union.
US and NATO forces are now very, very close to the Russian homeland.
And given the attempts on the part of hawkish elements within the American foreign policy establishment to bring Ukraine into NATO, that is an especially provocative move.
This is in Russia's core security zone.
This isn't just a part of Russia's sphere of influence.
Ukraine has a 1500 mile long border with Russia.
If the United States or its NATO allies establish a military presence in Ukraine, which is clearly what hawks in the United States want to do, that is monumentally threatening to Russia and not just to someone like Vladimir Putin.
Any Russian leader would regard that kind of move by the United States as extremely unfriendly, very provocative and directly threatening to Russia's core security interests.
Well, you know, it's funny about that, because I think they already know that in the WikiLeaks, Ray McGovern has highlighted this multiple times.
There is a State Department cable from the American, I'm not sure if it's the ambassador himself, but from the diplomatic staff in Russia back home.
And it's talking about a meeting, I guess it was by the ambassador himself, I think, and talking about a meeting with Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister.
And the title of the cable is Nyet Means Nyet.
And he talks about meeting with Lavrov and Lavrov said to him, listen, I think you know that if we wanted to, we could be in Kiev in two weeks.
And what we're telling you here is that you will not bring Ukraine into NATO one way or the other.
We will not let you.
And so don't.
And that was an outright threat of war.
And the Americans should have known that, OK, you know what, there is such a thing as a bridge too far.
When it comes to containing and rolling back Russian influence in the world.
And so maybe we need to quit it.
But that was before the coup in 2014.
And the war that America helped to train and finance, if not arm until more recently there.
So they really are playing with fire, aren't they?
I believe that even the move into the Baltics, adding the three Baltic republics to NATO and especially deploying military forces to the Baltic states, was tremendously provocative.
And by the way, was that in the initial round or was that George W.
Bush that did that?
That was George W.
Bush.
That was in a subsequent round.
The first round simply brought in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
That annoyed Moscow, but it didn't really severely provoke Russia.
The Baltic additions did provoke Russia, but the country was too weak to do much of anything about it.
However, the Baltic provocation.
Expanding NATO membership there and stationing military forces there was a mild provocation compared to an effort to bring Ukraine into NATO.
And all of a sudden we would have instead of the main Russian naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, there would have been a probably a US naval and air base.
At Sevastopol, the Russians would react to that the same way the Americans would react if a major hostile power added Canada to its alliance and tried to station air and naval assets.
On the St. Lawrence, right on the US border.
My God, that would be provocative to any American.
Deeply threatening.
And yet we seem to assume that Russian leaders and the Russian people should react differently to a comparable Western provocation in their immediate neighborhood.
Hmm.
Well, yeah, that's certainly true.
And they never for a minute allow the other side's point of view to even be, you know, considered in any real way here.
And, you know, especially like, oh, geez, all we wanted to do was give democracy to the Crimean Peninsula or just whatever self-serving narrative.
And then the mean old Russian aggression kicked in and prevented that.
But, you know, there's a clip of Putin and, you know, I think he probably is an ice cold psychopath and all that.
But here's, I think, an example of where that plays in our favor, where he doesn't really get hurt feelings or anything like that.
He's a pretty pragmatic guy.
And so he just joked around and said, you know, we thought about how nice it would be to visit our NATO friends for the holidays down there at the Sevastopol naval base.
But then we decided, you know what?
We'll keep the base and you guys can come and visit us.
And that'd be nice.
And we'll be friends.
And you're our you're our partners.
You're our security partners.
The West is like, boy, this guy sure does react well to this kind of bullying.
If all he does is seize the Crimean Peninsula nonviolently and then cracks jokes and invite the Americans to his Christmas party and all this stuff.
The irony is, Putin gave a lot of broad hints and even direct warnings to the West.
Well, before the Ukraine issue, his speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007.
Was.
A litany of Russian grievances about Western actions that have been taken since the early and mid 1990s, and he was warning the Western leaders, you are pushing us too far.
You are engaging in a variety of unfriendly, provocative, threatening acts against Russia, and we've had it.
We're no longer going to back down.
The US and its allies just, for the most part, blithely ignored that.
The one exception.
Was that France and Germany, I think, did get the message about bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, that that would really be a bridge too far.
And fortunately, Paris and Berlin have blocked the United States and other countries that would like to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.
And I don't see that resistance decreasing at all going forward.
I think leaders in Paris and Berlin get it, that that would be so provocative to Russia, that would likely trigger a significant war between Russia and the West.
And they also kind of elbowed Obama's side and went and did the Minsk one and two agreements to mostly stop the war in eastern Ukraine as well, right?
And they're also continuing to take that initiative to try to resolve that conflict.
And the US, with the Trump administration, at least has not directly tried to thwart that, although the new arms sales to Ukraine obviously don't help matters.
And Trump, of course, announcing that he wanted a new arms sale to Kiev, a bigger one, $230 million, is automatically undermining the peace initiatives that the French and Germans are taking.
It reduces, not increases, the likelihood of a settlement of the civil war in eastern Ukraine.
All right, now on the big picture stuff, your new book is NATO, the Dangerous Dinosaur.
And your view is just to withdraw from NATO altogether, leave it to the Europeans if they want to keep it and bring our troops home from everywhere kind of thing?
It would be phasing out the the US commitment to NATO over the next few years so that NATO would no longer exist on its 75th anniversary.
Which would be about four and a half years from now.
In addition, even before that action would take place, I would want all US military forces withdrawn from the European theater.
I did propose what amounts to a consultation council with the European Union to discuss security issues of mutual concern, but there would be no obligation on the part of the United States to have a military presence in Europe to protect the European countries or any other strategic obligation.
So this would be a very different transatlantic security relationship.
The European Union could do whatever it wants.
If it wants to have a collective defense policy and a military buildup, that would be decisions taken by the members of the European Union.
And the United States should respect that decision.
However, it comes down.
But the United States would no longer be Europe's security shield or security blanket.
That would be a requirement for the Europeans to grow up, to take responsibility for the security of their own region and adopt security policies that they believe are appropriate.
And I think that would result in a much more stable environment, and especially it would reduce America's risk level dramatically.
Mm hmm.
All right now, though, but I know you're familiar with this, the Hawks and not just the Hawks, but probably a lot of the Doves, too, would say, well, geez, I don't know, having American forces were such a benevolent empire and proxy wars against our competitors in the global South don't count for whatever reason.
But because of our overarching but very benevolent and friendly hegemony, as Kagan and Crystal put it, in Europe and in Asia, we have kept the peace and prevented major power war this whole time by being so powerful that no one would dream of messing with us.
And then what you're saying is that you would turn the world to anarchy, and then England and Germany and Russia and Poland all might go back to war again or something, Ted, and maybe they're right.
What do you say about that?
Well, what would happen in most cases would be the creation of a multipolar security environment.
The notion that the choices between continued U.S. global hegemony and anarchy chaos is utter nonsense.
The world existed with very different security arrangements for a very long time before the U.S. adopted a dominant position following World War II, and there are lots of options between U.S. hegemony and total anarchy.
So that's just a scare tactic used by the people who want to maintain the status quo.
And let's remember, this isn't just an academic discussion.
Dwight Eisenhower was on to something with his warning in 1961 about the military-industrial complex, and that was just a half-grown puppy at the time that he described it.
It is a very large, vicious dog now.
There are hundreds of billions of dollars at stake in maintaining U.S. strategic dominance in Europe and, for that matter, in East Asia and the Middle East.
There are vested interests numbering in the hundreds of thousands that benefit financially and career-wise from maintaining that policy.
They are going to resist any meaningful change because they have a lot at stake in the status quo.
The one group that does not benefit from keeping the current policy would be the vast majority of Americans who don't have direct ties to the military-industrial complex.
But I think it's time we have a foreign policy that benefits the American people as a whole, not just a nest of corrupt vested interests.
Sounds right to me.
That is the great Ted Galen Carpenter, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute.
And his latest book is NATO, The Dangerous Dinosaur.
And this great article at The National Interest is called NATO's Dirty Little Secret is Out.
Thanks again, Ted.
My pleasure.
Thanks, Scott.
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.
