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 feed.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
Okay, guys, on the line, I've got Lyle J. Goldstein.
He is a research professor at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and he was the founder of the China Maritime Studies Institute, and is also an affiliate of the college's Russia Maritime Studies Institute.
But he's also an individual human man with his own opinions that do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.
Needless to say, I think, once you hear the man start talking.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Lyle?
I'm great, Scott.
Thanks for having me on again.
It's great to be here.
Good, good.
Happy to talk to you again, and it's great to see a critical take on the current fad of the new Cold War and great power competition with Russia and China.
It just goes without saying that this is what we've got to do in apparently all quarters in the halls of power up there in D.C. and in the military and the national security state, and yet you seem to come with clear eyes and not so vested an interest in your analysis of the situation, and frankly, it's worth ten times as much, too, when you're writing it in the Washington Times, where it matters the most, you attack the right from the right.
That's the Horton Rule.
A deteriorating U.S.-Russia relationship is dangerous.
Biden should rein in tensions.
So can we start with the good news and the New START Treaty?
What's the New START Treaty?
Yes.
Well, this is a strategic arms limitation agreement.
So we're talking about, if you will, the big boys.
This is the most dangerous weapons known to mankind.
These are the intercontinental ballistic missiles, ICBMs, and also similar missiles shot off submarines.
These are the kind of weapons that would end life on Earth as we know it.
And so it's critically important that we have a framework that controls these weapons and that both sides kind of try to, at least a little bit, to trust each other on how these things are deployed.
We haven't been doing a good job at all on this front.
In my view, we've been totally failing.
And there's about five or six other arms control treaties we could talk about.
But by golly, let's at least stick with this one.
And it's not just about the dangers of nuclear war, which I guess some people kind of shrug off these days, but I don't, because I see a lot of the pathways.
But it's also about money, Scott.
As an American, you and me, we're looking at like a trillion dollar outlay for upgrading and maintaining these horrible weapons over the next 20, 30 years at least.
So I'm saying we need to, these kind of agreements are important to saving us money so we can spend it on things like having a healthcare system and things like that.
Yeah.
Well, so on the New START treaty, is it right that that is the last treaty, was the last treaty standing and now is again, the last treaty standing that limits the thermonukes, the strategic nuclear weapons?
Well, there are a few others that are in some form still existing.
Chemical weapons, biological weapons, there is a test ban treaty.
But this really, yeah, I believe this was the last one.
And I honestly talk about the right, I mean, the right has done huge damage to arms control regime.
We can talk about Mr. Bolton, he, in fact, I believe he just penned an editorial criticizing this New START agreement, but Bolton has, since going back to the Bush administration had really taken a knife to all the arms control treaties.
I think he started with the Ballistic Missile Defense Treaty, the so-called ABM Treaty, but you may recall really ABM was the beginning of arms control back in the 70s.
So that was important to say that we're not going to put weapons in space, we're not going to build giant defense shields that cost another trillion dollars that probably wouldn't work anyway.
So, to me, that treaty was critically important, but all these treaties are important.
In fact, one that never gets talked about, which I think is so important, is the, it's called the Conventional Forces Europe Treaty.
And that was the one that said, you know, okay, Russia can only have a certain amount of tanks in this area, a certain amount of helicopters in this area, a certain, you know, it really got down to the, you know, details of what military force will wear.
And that really helped to secure European security and that's gone away.
And now we have these huge exercises where, as we prepare, both sides prepare for war.
Man.
You know, so here's the thing.
You talk about how people just kind of dismiss the possibility of nuclear war.
It sounds like something out of science fiction and that kind of thing.
And plus, there's no communist evil empire to fight.
You say preparing to fight for war.
You said earlier, you can see a lot of the pathways to nuclear war.
I think people might've noticed this.
It was certainly a big deal at antiwar.com that Vice Admiral Charles Richard wrote in the February edition of the U.S. Naval Institute's monthly magazine that, oh yeah, things right now, regional crisis with Russia and China could escalate very quickly to nuclear war.
But what the hell are you crazy people talking about?
What do we have to fight about with Russia?
Are they trying to invade West Germany?
Well, you're exactly right, Scott.
There is nothing, nothing on the agenda, frankly, of our relations with either Russia or China that would possibly merit, you know, even threatening to launch a nuclear weapon.
However, we are finding ourselves more and more tied up in these kind of what I call almost like tribal conflicts, frankly.
That's how I view them, that are right up on the borders of both China and also Russia.
I'm talking about the Baltics, for example, and other places like that where, you know, it's not, you know, you can see, but there's been, by the way, a lot of tension just over the last week in the Black Sea.
If you watch Russian television, as I do, you'll see that they're showing a lot of video, a very kind of dodgy interaction between Russian and U.S. forces.
So, you know, one can imagine an accident, but probably not so much an accident, but, you know, a little flare up where, you know, some kind of hothead gets it in his head that he wants some more medals and is going to start shooting, and then it just blows up from there.
I could easily see that happening in the Black Sea area, but the Baltic is also tense.
And then, you know, literally every area around Russia has become a hotspot of tension.
And I mean, the sad thing is the nature of modern weaponry, it pays to go first in a lot of these things.
So, you know, because the targets are already zeroed in and you're likely to lose your weapon if you don't shoot.
There is a, you know, the commanders at kind of the mid-level will, when they read, you know, when they get this flash message saying they're shooting started, will hope they keep their cool.
But there will be a certain pressure on leaders to say you better, you know, you have to make a decision within five minutes and you have to do this or else we'll lose the, you know, we'll lose the targets and they have us zeroed in.
So, I mean, it's, you know, this is the logic of war.
And unfortunately, we thought we kind of put the nuclear genie back in the bottle.
And so people stopped thinking about it.
But the sad truth is that all these situations still exist and the weaponry is getting more lethal and spreading out in all kinds of very unpleasant directions.
I mean, I could go through a lot of them, but, you know, you probably know that Russia has built, you know, what we might call the ultimate doomsday weapon, which for those of us who live on the East Coast is especially disturbing.
It envisions a kind of thermonuclear explosion along the eastern seaboard that creates a tsunami and kills, you know, potentially 100 million people in one blow.
I mean, that is truly apocalyptic.
And they are working on this weapon.
So there's but there's actually several of these and these are not covered in the treaty, by the way.
So that's another problem.
But I mean, it gets to the point, which is that we don't just need to sign a treaty with Russia.
We need to correct our relationship with Russia.
And that will involve a kind of whole reset of how we think about great power competition and and our relationships, our relationship with Moscow in particular, but also with China.
Right.
Okay.
Now, here's my problem.
I don't understand.
I'm an anti-government extremist and I'm just against all of this intervention in every way whatsoever.
But so maybe I'm biased and I don't quite understand.
Right.
So but it sounds like what you're saying is that all the potential for conflict is because America is sailing its ships and flying its nuclear bombers in the Black Sea and in the Baltic Sea, neither of which are Great Lakes of ours, but in fact are over there.
And that's it.
I didn't hear anything else on the list.
I think you said some tribal conflict, as though, you know, maybe we'll have a little bit of ethnic tension against Russians in Estonia or something.
But there's nothing there's no crisis like that cooking right now for anybody to fight about.
Nobody thinks the Russians are about to invade the Baltic states at your naval war institutes or anything there, do they?
I see Joe Biden saying that, yeah, he wants to push ahead and bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO.
He could see that causing a nuclear war.
But explain to me the part where the Russians need to be defended from Russian aggression must be kept in check.
And America is here to serve that purpose.
Am I missing something?
Yeah, I mean, I think this has a lot of your points are all all well taken, Scott, and I think you got it right there.
There really is the let's put aside the fact that Russia has become this political football where one party beats up the other party with, you know, and calls one side the traitor and so forth.
This kind of language, I think, was was never there was never accurate and was really, frankly, quite inappropriate.
And and anyway, we just put that aside for now.
But I mean, there are real reasons why these issues are are so complex.
I mean, one of them that we had better keep in mind is that when the Cold War ended, it ended so suddenly and so dramatically that I mean, there was a certain triumphalism that overcame the United States, you know, wow, you know, aren't we amazing?
You know, we can fix all the world's problems, this kind of sentiment.
But also the power went to our head and thought, well, you know, since the Soviet Union collapsed, we might as well rule over, you know, the all the kind of the rubble that sort of lay in between.
And, you know, I shouldn't I don't want to insult anybody from any of these countries.
In fact, I've just been spending some time in one of them and enjoying myself.
But I'm saying there's this kind of contested zone where there, if you will, was a power vacuum and NATO, you know, partly for bureaucratic reasons, meaning this organization needed a mission.
Well, this is we'll take care of this, you know, we'll stand up.
And I don't you know, I don't want to be completely dismissive.
I think they have done some good things in some of these countries, and certainly in Poland and Czech Republic and places like that and Hungary, they're they're probably very thankful that they have NATO more for sort of psychological reasons and to be part of a community and part of an organization.
But generally, I mean, look, Russia's power has ebbed and flowed over this region for, you know, going on five centuries.
So of course, it's a complicated picture.
And I don't think it's it's our place really to try to settle the where, you know, where does that power end?
You know, Belarus, for example, it's a very dangerous situation, really dicey, it could go bad.
And, you know, one could imagine, if things really heated up, that that could lead to a NATO Russia conflict very quickly.
And I think we better think really hard about avoiding that, because the United States has no interest, zero national interest in Belarus, you know, sure, we'd like things to come out, you know, and hope that that the major violence isn't, you know, doesn't occur, but there's no reason at all to consider how the US would use force in a kind of Belarus scenario.
Frankly, the same is true with Ukraine.
Now, the Baltics are a little different, because we are tied to them by treaty and, and treaties do matter.
But as you said, there's no, there really is no credible threat at this point to the Baltics.
And we shouldn't behave like there is when there is a reason to believe the Baltics are quite different than any other former Soviet state.
Why?
Because the way the Soviet Union blew apart in the end, it was partly because of the Baltics, the Baltics were pushing so hard, they wanted out of the Soviet, fine.
And the Russians internalize that they realize the Baltics are really hot in the collar about this, and they feel so strongly, they're going to take all kinds of risks, they're going to put their lives at risk, okay, Gorbachev wisely decided not to, you know, kill a lot of people over this, and let them go.
Okay.
And now I think Russia more or less does accept that they want their the Russian minorities in the Baltics to be treated well, but they're not, you know, I don't see any evidence to suggest that Russia is planning, you know, for war, to, you know, war of conquest in the Baltics.
And they know that that would not, you know, be in Russia's interest.
I mean, even in eastern Ukraine, you know, if Russia wanted to lop off the whole eastern half of Ukraine, they could do that.
It's with well within their power.
But they decided not to do that.
And there were many Ukrainians who wanted them to, like, yeah, they even voted for it, right?
They decided not to do that.
Why?
But I mean, we can talk about this for another hour.
But the point is, you, Russia has, you know, always characterized as highly aggressive, but in fact, they've kind of, as it were chosen to kind of middle path where they are willing to use force and they're willing to show they're willing to use force, but they're not they do not intend to swallow whole countries or large, you know, things.
Crimea is a bit of an outlier.
We can discuss that.
But to me, it's probably one we're going to have to let go and move forward.
Hold on just one second.
Be right back.
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Well, on this show, we've covered the history of the coup of 2014 and the seizure of the Crimean Peninsula and all that pretty well.
So we can talk about that if you want, but in fact, I'd rather focus on our new name.
I guess he hasn't been confirmed yet, but certainly will be by all accounts, the new director of Central Intelligence.
Oh, well, I guess not anymore.
He'll just be the director of the Central Intelligence Agency is William Burns.
And it was funny when I first heard that I was like, oh no, not Nicholas Burns.
But oh no, no, this is a different guy.
This is the guy who's in the WikiLeaks.
Thank you so much to Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, the heroes for this.
The title is Nyet Means Nyet, Russia's NATO enlargement red lines.
And it's from February the 1st, 2008.
And I'm sorry, because I should have reread this this morning.
It's been a little while since I looked at it.
But from what I remember in it is it's William Burns reporting back about his meeting with Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, who told him, hey, man, don't bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.
Really, I mean it.
And I think, you know, we could be in Kiev in two weeks.
So please tell the bosses that I didn't stutter.
I was real clear.
This is what we mean.
And we really mean it.
Don't try to add Ukraine to your military alliance.
And Burns read him loud and clear and reported home such.
And thank goodness for that.
But then Biden said yesterday that, yeah, this is what we want to do.
And as we know from the leaked phone call of Robert Kagan's wife, Victoria Nuland, Vice President Biden was very much in on the plot to overthrow the government in Ukraine in February of 2014 and has, never mind his son, has his own interests in American foreign policy in that country.
Yeah, I'm I'm very worried about this.
I mean, I do think, you know, a lot of there's a lot of bitterness.
Well, I say that as you know, everybody knows that Russia has a lot of issues in Ukraine.
Unquestionably, I mean, I was just watching Russian news last night and a lot of it was about this shutdown of the Russian speaking news channel.
And this is seen as kind of a wave of oppression against the large group of Ukrainians who speak Russian.
I mean, by the way, even the president Zelensky is, you know, his first language.
I think it's widely known as Russian.
So and I think he had to brush up on his Ukrainian.
So, I mean, unquestionably, they have a major stake in this.
Nobody disagrees with that.
But now, why does why do people in the Biden administration care?
Well, it's a good question.
I personally, I don't think the US has major interest in Ukraine.
They see it differently, for sure.
And unfortunately, I think, you know, the impeachment of Trump and all these things have really kind of steeled the determination of, let's say, the kind of hawkish elements in the US government to, you know, that they need to do something, whatever it is, to solidify, as it were, Ukraine's position in the West.
You know, if this is a zero sum contest, you know, Ukraine is either with us or against us.
So they have to be with us.
And they're going to, I do think they're going to make a major push.
And probably appointing Nuland to such a high position in the State Department is was meant to signify that this approach.
So I'm very worried about this.
I mean, Scott, you mentioned, you know, what are the pathways to nuclear war?
And, you know, without I don't want to hype the dangers per se, but Ukraine, if you look at that scenario closely, it is not at all hard to imagine how this could quickly move to use of nuclear weapons.
You know, I mean, imagine, you know, just very quickly, if if Ukraine were to make a major push, a military type push, maybe using special operations, we know that NATO's special operators have been in that area.
If that were to occur and there is some evidence some of that has been occurring.
What's to stop Russia from making, you know, launching major airstrikes against all across Ukraine?
And it could go from there with the U.S. responding in major use of force to counter those airstrikes.
And then, you know, onward from there, the forces are in place for for a major war over Ukraine.
To me, that would be.
That would be totally contrary to U.S. national interests, would put the entire world at risk, frankly, but and and there's no reason to to even look, look down that, you know, that that pipe, if you will.
And it's a that would be a catastrophic mistake for American strategy.
You know, Pat Buchanan once said, I like the way he put this.
I don't think I've ever heard anyone else putting it this way.
We used to draw the line at the Elbe River halfway across Germany.
And boy, you better not come any further than that, though.
And we really mean it.
And when the Russians crushed the Hungarian revolt and the Czech revolt and the Polish revolt that the presidents said, man, that's really bad.
I guess they had provoked the problem.
And in in I was hungry or Czech.
Oh, I'm bad on old Cold War stuff off the top of my head.
Anyway, point being that that was too bad.
That's Eastern Europe.
And then Pat said, you know, Ukraine and this is east of what we ever called Eastern Europe.
I mean, this isn't even Eastern Europe.
This is Russia's front door, not their back door.
You know, this is their sphere of influence.
And to think that we would be pushing so hard that we have a border dispute with Russia on Russia's western border is would be crazy if you put that in, you know, as a question to the people who waged the old Cold War that, you know, in 20, 30 years, we're going to have just moved the line all the way right up to their border and dare them to ever resist.
What do you think of that?
Well, that is absolutely right.
And you put it really correctly.
I think it's outrageous.
It's strategically myopic.
You know, you know, Kenan, George Kenan put it right when he said that we would we would rue the day when after NATO expansion going so far into the Russian zone of influence.
And this is incredibly dangerous.
And here's where you get this very dangerous blending of, you know, kind of strategic and domestic political imperatives to write is if you, you know, if you're, let's say, US and Europe are very engaged, let's say, in Ukraine and Belarus, well, suddenly those those situations so close to Russia that they have distinct echoes within Russian politics.
And, you know, these the Navalny protests and whatnot.
I don't know if you want to discuss that, but I mean, they have there's clearly an echo between that and what's going on in Belarus.
Now, me as an American, I say, well, that's for them, for the people in Belarus and the people in Russia to figure out.
They have to figure that out.
We shouldn't get involved.
But the perception in Russia is that this is all part of one, you know, regime change operation.
And that's a very dangerous place to be.
Right.
I mean, if they if they perceive it's not only dangerous for Navalny and all and company who, you know, who are bravely putting their lives on the line, but they it's also, you know, will fuel the Cold War and make actual armed conflict, you know, war.
And and even a big war, much more likely because they they view it as a kind of existential threat to to what they've built over the last few decades.
So so we have a what I called in the article, I well, actually, I think the editors put in there, but it's a well, actually, I said it first is it's a sort of a perfect storm when you add all these things together.
And so I'm very, very concerned.
I think, you know, I don't think look, Biden and company, I think they may.
I think they may talk tough, but I don't think anybody in their right mind can can be seeking kind of military conflict between Russia and the US.
So, you know, I think we just need to have the rhetoric and some of these measures be of, you know, decreased in intensity to comport with, you know, rational interaction.
And, you know, I think I mean, you put it right that we in effect, the Cold War, we may want to return to the Cold War and look how American leaders behaved.
And they always treated the Soviet leaders with respect and didn't start calling them names and playing the game of insults and things like that.
They always accorded them respect because they knew that that was essential to U.S. national security, ultimately, that to preserving the peace, which they wanted to do, they needed to.
It doesn't mean, you know, we have to endorse them or be best friends with them, but we have to accord them a certain minimal level of respect, which meant letting them solve their own problems and not getting deep into their affairs.
So that's, of course, I think we need to pursue.
Yeah, well, I think you're right, too, that nobody wants conflict, you know, actual war.
But the problem is, is they think that they can get away with it and they keep failing, but they keep not learning the lesson.
I mean, I always pick on her for being Robert Kagan's wife.
I hope that doesn't sound like too sexist to the audience, like I'm reducing her role or whatever, but I'm just saying this is the mirror image other half of Robert Kagan, Mr. Benevolent Global Hegemony, Mr.
We've got to invade Iraq and I promise it's going to work out great.
And then here's his wife says, oh, yeah, we got to overthrow the government in Kiev.
It's going to work out great.
And as she says in the late phone call, I'm roughly paraphrasing, but, you know, we got to sail this thing before Putin can shoot it down.
We got to hurry up.
We'll get it done and we'll seal the deal and we'll get it mid wifed before he has time to react and then we'll have gotten away with it.
And then Gideon Rose, the editor of Foreign Affairs, went on the same spiel to Stephen Colbert on the old Funny Colbert show back when he was funny.
And I don't even know whose idea this was.
I know we'll put Gideon Rose to explain all this on the Colbert show.
And he gets out there, he goes, yeah, we're stealing Russia's girlfriend away.
You see, Ukraine is Robin to Russia's Batman.
And we're here to break up their relationship.
And the whole thing is, is we got to do it fast enough while Putin's distracted with the Olympics that he can't do anything about it.
Well, but what do you mean he can't do anything about it?
You know, next thing you know, they take Crimea without firing a shot.
And then when Kiev reacts against the people in the east to occupy the government buildings, playing, you know, two can play at that game with occupying government buildings and all.
Then the Russians send in their special operations forces to help defend the east from them.
And, you know, I guess most of the people who were killed were on the eastern side, but it was still horrible for the whole country, obviously.
And.
Of course, Robert Kagan's wife thinks it's going to be easy, but and probably still thinks it's going to be easy.
That's the real worry, right?
They don't want a war.
But somehow, remember, Carl Gershman wrote in The Washington Post just a couple of months before the coup in Ukraine that, you know, if Vladimir Putin doesn't like it, he might find himself on the receiving end of one of these here real soon.
The head of the National Endowment for Democracy like these and Hillary Clinton, of course, in 2011, sorry I'm rambling, but 2011 actually did to some degree.
I don't know how many millions intervened in the parliamentary elections there.
And boy, did she make some enemies with that and not any real progress.
And it seems like the way they support Navalny, like they really think, oh, great, here's our Russian Ahmed Chalabi and we'll just do a regime change and put him in power.
And they're acting like Putin's not sitting on a handful of 4000 nukes ready to go at a moment's notice that.
I mean, I don't know.
God help us if if the Kagan's still get to decide how far they think we can push without getting a negative reaction, you know.
Yeah, I think you're right that I mean, you know, I've been very disturbed by this and I see you have, too.
But I mean, there's this kind of unification of these people who who have this kind of missionary zeal to create the world again in our image.
And this has brought together the neoconservatives and I think what we can call the neoliberals.
And they're practically in lockstep these days.
So this is this is very, very disturbing development.
And it's hard to believe that after 30 years of such, I have to say, I think poorly practiced foreign and defense policy that that has really created a lot of problems for our country that were unnecessary and probably just the result of this kind of what you call it exuberance after the Cold War.
But to me, you know, we're in dire straits now, rather because we are over militarized and committed to all kinds of, as I said, sort of tribal conflicts.
And when you look at the Navalny situation to me, there's actually, you know, there's a lot of silver lining actually to this whole set of episodes.
And I believe there's a lot of this kind of information warfare going on both sides.
So it's hard to know what exactly to believe.
But I mean, look, as a Russia specialist, I can tell you, you know, this is not Stalin's Russia.
OK, you know, like these all the people would have been mowed down and, you know, sent to the gulag for their lives, you know, for within 24 hours.
Right.
I mean, that was the old Russia.
So today's Russia is very different, you know, and you can get away with a lot.
The police, yes, now and then they'll pull a club on you.
But I'm just saying it's quite different.
The tolerance for protests and for alternative voices, you know, something that hasn't been said much is there is a I don't call it a free press, but there is a definitely an opposition set of journalists and papers that that clearly are very sympathetic to Navalny.
I study China, so I can tell you Russia.
Again, I don't call it a democracy, but it is it's definitely not China's kind of lockdown quasi totalitarian kind of government.
It is a place where, you know, ideas contest.
And if we let the Russians sort this out themselves, I think there's a good chance the country will come out better and even human rights will be improved.
So, you know, Putin has had to reckon with this with this so-called Berlin patient, this guy, Navalny, who had the guts to stand up to him.
That's probably a good thing for Russia, actually.
But I want to let the Russians settle this.
And Putin probably did over far overreach with this, you know, his constitutional amendments and so forth.
And I think that's that's what we're seeing play out.
This reaction of like, no, we don't want you to rule forever.
We need to have a new.
And so I think I imagine he's thinking this over and saying, well, gosh, I probably did overreach.
OK, that's, again, good for the country.
But this is for Russians to figure out.
And I don't pretend that they're going to look like a Jeffersonian democracy anytime soon.
But then we I don't think we can quite wag our finger on this front too much ourselves either.
So to me, we have to let them figure this out and not the more we get involved, the more the worse that is for Navalny and company.
Yeah, I mean, assuming he's worth supporting at all, which is a huge assumption and I guess a topic for another show.
But if he really was a better alternative, well, what worse thing can we do for him than turn him into our Juan Guaido and pretend like, oh, yeah, no, this guy's already the president or sure should be when the people of Russia don't think that.
I read a great article where a lady expert was really frank about this.
And he's got somewhat of a following.
But there are two major parties.
I guess it was the Communist Party and then Zirinovsky's Nationalist Party that have much larger followings than him.
And so he's sure like you could say, I guess the Russians could say, oh, look, Steve Bannon is leading a big protest movement.
He's the opposition leader or something.
That doesn't mean he's a credible heir to the power in any way.
Yeah, look, I mean, well, again, this is worth another whole discussion.
And I'd love to talk with you more.
But I think Russia is they have a couple of strange things going on now.
Well, number one is the whole pandemic crisis when the economy was starting to show some signs of life.
I think the pandemic and the lockdowns and things like that have really put the country in a crisis, put all of the countries in a crisis.
And by the way, there are protests going on literally all over the world, mostly related to the lockdowns and how people are losing their jobs.
So this is a global crisis.
But in Russia, they're feeling it very acutely, unquestionably.
But you also have this other problem, and I think this really is a problem for Russia today, which is Russia has had a strange situation of going from a total vacuum of leadership and the basket case of a leader that Yeltsin was.
He did a couple of good things.
But generally, he was an alcoholic, and he was not the right man at the right time, I don't think.
Well, Putin was, and Putin did, I think, solve a lot of problems for Russia.
He brought order.
He put the country together.
He's done quite a decent job at putting the country back on its feet.
I think most people would agree with that.
But the problem is now he is so charismatic.
He is an efficient bureaucrat that I think we've reached the point, at least among Russia specialists, where we have to say, how do you replace that?
And I think a lot of Russians are thinking that in their mind, too.
Where do we come up with a person who's like this, who's a competent manager, who works really hard, who does their homework, as it were, and works in all directions?
So that's a problem.
In other words, it is possible to have too charismatic a leader or somebody who is, as it were, too competent because you don't know where to go next.
And that person, it's hard to walk them off the stage.
So I think Russia has been struggling with that.
But I have a feeling, as I know Russia, they will find their way through it.
And we need to let them do that and not put immense pressure on them from the outside or fuel.
I mean, let's face it, there are a lot of Russians who have a lot of opinions about where the country is going.
So it's a bit of a hothouse now.
And I don't think Russia will benefit at all from a kind of Maidan type exercise or any kind of revolution.
So but there has to be, I think they can find a kind of middle path and will do so.
But they need to do that.
They need peace and some degree of prosperity.
And so I think that's how I ended the article that I just published, where I said, you know, look, a Russian peace and prosperity are good for the United States and good for the planet.
And this is something we should support and welcome and not, you know, this is not a zero sum world where we try to wish very hard for the country to be swept up in violence and revolution and civil war.
You can certainly see kind of the Weimar analogy that, you know, this is the Versailles analogy, right, where we're kicking them while they're down instead of being a good sport after beating them in the Cold War.
And so this is Hindenburg.
They pretend he's Hitler, but this is Hindenburg.
And there certainly could be worse people to take power.
Well, I like to focus on with Putin.
They say he's such a throat slitting sociopath and all of this stuff.
And I just see it like, well, he seems to always be cool, calm and collected and never emotional and never reacts, even when we're really our side is rubbing his nose in it.
He just says, you know, our American partners, sometimes we have differences of opinion with them and stuff.
And I think, you know what, we could do a lot worse than a guy like that.
Our side just hates him because he's independent from them, but not because he's particularly bad.
I would just add to that, that, you know, I watch him every night, you know, I'm watching all the Russian news and reading the papers and so forth.
And what Americans I don't think understand is, you know, they see a guy who spends all his time, you know, crafting plots and conspiracies all over the world, you know, to undermine U.S. interests.
I don't get that impression at all.
The guy is focused very deeply on Russia's problems, which are immense.
I mean, you know, this is a country which, you know, you can't exaggerate.
There's really, I mean, I hate to say it, but there's honestly usually a tragedy every day in Russia of some kind, like a gas explosion or a plane crash or something.
It's terrible, but it's a hard place to run for various reasons, but also because of the legacy of communism and so forth.
So this is what he's dealing with day to day.
And, you know, he's as I see it, that's about how I would I guess he spends probably 80 to 90 percent of his time on just working the domestic problems.
So, you know, to me, I wish American leaders would spend about 80 to 90 percent on domestic problems.
That's that's the right balance.
We need to focus on our own issues like other countries figure out their own affairs.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming back on the show, Lyle.
It's been great.
Yeah, I really enjoyed talking with you, Scott.
Let's do it again sometime soon.
All right, you guys, that is Lyle J. Goldstein, research professor at the U.S. Naval War College.
He's speaking for himself here, obviously.
Don't get him in trouble.
And here's a piece in The Washington Times, too.
A deteriorating U.S.-Russia relationship is dangerous.
Biden should rein in tensions.
The Scott Horton Show, anti-war radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A., APS Radio dot com, Antiwar dot com, Scott Horton dot org, and Libertarian Institute dot org.
