02/12/15 – Scott McConnell – The Scott Horton Show

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All right.
Welcome back, guys.
I'm Scott.
It's my show, Scott Horton Show.
All right.
Our spotlight today on antiwar.com is a great read.
I really like this.
That's why I chose it for the spotlight.
The Ambitions Driving the Ukraine Consensus by our friend Scott McConnell at the American Conservative Magazine.
Welcome back to the show.
Scott, how are you doing?
I'm doing well, thanks.
I'm happy to be back.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you here.
And I really like this article, kind of one of those facepalm, shake of my head sort of things here, as I am afraid I agree with you about so much of this.
But I guess we need to start off with the news here, which is that they have reached a ceasefire agreement, another one in Minsk.
The Germans, the French, the Russians, the Ukrainians, I believe, quadrilateral.
Is that what they call them, talks there?
Yeah.
And it's set to kick in on Sunday.
And then the other news opposite of that is the U.S. is sending Army trainers to help get the Ukrainian military prepared for battle.
What do you think?
I missed the trainers news.
I had seen that there was a ceasefire, and I thought that was pretty good news because it would slow down the kind of march in Washington to get involved in something that has really no good outcomes for America and only bad ones.
And I thought, my sense is that Obama is probably the only person of any power inside the Beltway who doesn't really want to, who realizes it's a bad idea to get involved in Ukraine against Russia.
But everybody in the Congress and the foreign affairs bureaucracy, or to say 80 or 90 percent of them, think, yeah, boy, we've got to go show this bad guy Putin.
And the Europeans are trying to kind of slow this down.
I mean, it's more in their neighborhood.
And I don't know how well a ceasefire would work, but it would at least lead to the beginning of a diplomatic solution which would hopefully cool down Ukraine as a big hot spot.
But if we're sending trainers, that's not good.
Well, trainers aside for the moment, do you think if Obama either personally or by way of an actual trusted proxy counseled the Kiev government that, hey, we want you to actually abide by the ceasefire this time and really make a deal here and not just have an on-again, off-again battle for war in the east for another year, does he even have that much influence over them at this point?
Well, I think if they got a very clear message from America that – I mean, it would have to be a brutal message, but the message would have to be, look, America doesn't care that much about you, and America is not going to risk its broad relationship, which is correct and cordial, with Russia over Ukraine.
And that's – I mean, because I honestly don't know who was responsible for the breakdown of the final ceasefires, and Ukraine is in – I mean, big parts of the population are full of mutual hatred and a civil war thing.
But if the most anti-Russian Ukrainians believe that they have America on their side, they're not going to compromise or they're going to be less – they're going to be more resistant to compromising.
And so they really need the message that it would be hard to say – I mean, it would be hard to put it – it would be a diplomatic way to put it that, no, you're just not that important to us.
Yeah.
Well, now, so what's interesting there is what you said about – I mean, you sound actually quite amazed, and I know you've been paying attention to politics in the nation's capital for a long, long time here with a very smart view of how these things go.
But you kind of sound a little beside yourself at the consensus here about what must be done in the face of all reason.
Yeah, no, it's true.
I am a little bit surprised because I had rather thought that after the experience of the George W. Bush presidency that Democrats and some Republicans would be a little bit chastened about the utility of military force and American intervention.
And also, I often think that a lot of what drives American hawkishness and interventionism in the Middle East is Israel and people who care a lot about Israel and take political cues from what the Israeli government wants in one way or another.
But that doesn't seem to be the case in this instance.
I mean, as far as I can tell, Israel has pretty good relations with Russia.
It didn't even vote for the various UN condemnations of Russia.
I think it abstained.
And the Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who's a Russian, was pretty well received in Moscow recently.
So it's not that, and I'm trying to figure out what it is, why is it that you can get an almost unanimous consensus, I would say 90% of the House and Senate, I'm not sure what votes there have been, in favor of getting involved militarily in starting an escalation in which there's really no obvious exit ramps and there's no obvious American interest at stake, in which if you play it out down the road and try to figure out what's going to happen, only bad things can happen from it.
And it's a mystery to me.
So I tried to figure it out.
Yeah.
I mean, to me, obviously the consequences are, well, I don't know exactly how you compare, but considering the H-bombs, you've got to figure the consequences could be so much more severe.
But it seems about the same level of stupidity as getting into the Iraq War, only I would say with much tighter consensus.
They had to really beat everybody over the head with Iraq for a year and a half to get us into that thing.
Yeah.
It seems like there's a very tight consensus here.
I mean, James Carden had a piece where he pointed to the few very notable exceptions on the level that anybody listens to, like Mearsheimer or Walt or Kissinger Associates coming out with a few small dissents.
One dissent at Brookings.
But as you say in your article on the Sunday morning news shows, on all of them, every guest, everybody knows that there's just no question Russia started this.
We've got to finish it somehow.
Yeah.
No, I mean, and the patronizing way in which John Kerry, I mean, I tend to have a sort of hopeful view about John Kerry.
I think he's a smart man and everything.
But he insists on talking about Putin as if Putin is like a child who just doesn't see the enlightened ways of the West.
But we're going to give him an off ramp.
And if he would just take that off ramp, I mean, and it's so it's on the part of America, it's patronizing and ignorant.
I'm a little bit hopeful that there could be a breakthrough in the Beltway.
I mean, there's some I talked to a friend last night who's a friend, friend of a friend of a congressman, Dana Rohrbacher, who's a pretty right wing veteran Republican congressman from California.
And he is he thinks his policy is disastrous.
He has a very nuanced and mixed view of Russia.
And I, you know, I have the feeling that if he starts speaking out, there'll be kind of novelty interest to a right wing Republican who is, you know, not Pat Buchanan, who's anti-war, and he'll get some attention and then it'll maybe start the thing from moving a little bit.
Place your bets, everybody.
Dana Rohrbacher to the rescue.
No, but you're right, though.
I mean, he has a real thing about, you know, he's basically afraid of China and wants to ally outright with Russia against them.
So whatever, as long as he wants to tell the truth about this in a loud way, as you're as you're referring to, that's good enough for me for now.
I don't know the whole thing of his worldview and probably things I distrust about it.
But I mean, the policy we're pursuing, I mean, can only force Putin or his possible successors to think that they have to ally themselves and get closer to China.
Which, I mean, I you know, I don't think that's particularly an American interest, I think, at all.
And I don't know what they're thinking.
Well, that's that's a good place to pick this conversation up.
On the other side of this break, it's Scott McConnell from the American Conservative magazine.
This article is the spotlight today on anti-war dot com.
The ambitions driving the Ukraine consensus.
We'll be right back.
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All right, guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
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Talking with Scott McConnell from the American Conservative magazine.
The piece is the ambitions driving the Ukraine consensus.
As wrongheaded as it is now, Scott, where we were interrupted by the break there.
The question was about pushing Russia into a closer alliance or whatever you call it, a closer relationship with China healing that old Sino Soviet split.
And I wonder now that the Cold War is over, what difference does that make necessarily?
American relations with China are still quite correct.
But there's all there's almost no international theory by which there isn't going to be greater competition in the next one or two or three decades and and probably military competition.
And our actions may be fueling that.
And I'm sure the Chinese don't have no desire to have American bases or influence anywhere near them.
So it seems to me that it's more likely that that competition can be managed peacefully if it's not if it's a kind of triangular relationship.
And China has a Russia on its borders that it has to think about rather than a joint Russian Chinese anti-American alliance.
So it's I don't think that's the main, main reason to worry about the collapse of decent relations with Russia.
I think that there's a lot of benefits to having good relations among them are nuclear proliferation.
There is a lot of nuclear materials.
I don't know.
You actually lose nuclear weapons and stuff, but in the former Soviet sphere.
And if you if Russians become convinced, including like Russian generals and administrators, the United States is determined to destroy them and break up Russia.
And I don't want to underestimate the possibilities of Russian paranoia.
And I think that some some of that paranoia may be somewhat justified.
You know, you could you could find you could they could find ways to make life much uglier for the West.
You know, so anyway, I think our stakes in having relatively even keel relations with Russia far outweigh those of provoking them, which we're doing.
Now, Robert Perry at Consortium News has this theory that I wonder if you think that maybe this is a little bit of an answer to your question of what's driving.
Other than obviously the personal ambition and all that, which we can talk about all that stuff in a minute, because that's important to Perry's theory, is that what really set the neocons off was Russian cooperation with Obama on solving the Syria crisis before we went to war with Assad in the summer of 2013.
And that they said anything that can be done to drive a wedge between Obama and Putin must be done now.
And here's a button we can push, hire the Nazis in Ukraine to cause a crisis.
What do you think of that?
I think there's something to it, and I don't know how much.
I mean, I don't want to.
Yes.
Well, it's a speculative kind of question.
I'm sorry.
The neocons do think strategically, and they don't have obvious other relations to get involved with.
And there are a lot of, I think, natural neocons, or there's a lot of Jewish history caught up in disliking Ukraine and disliking Ukraine more than Russia.
And so the theory that Perry and you just stated would have to override that to some degree, and it has overrided it.
So, I mean, I don't know.
I mean, but I would say that there's probably something to that.
And I would be reluctant to say how much, because I would need a much more close reading of the sources.
Well, what if I broaden the same question but sort of a broader base for it with overall NATO expansion over the last decade and a half or so.
John Mearsheimer's piece in Foreign Affairs, which I interviewed him about, and he explained it.
He really – and it sounds kind of credible in a way.
He says, well, you know, basically these wrongheaded people thought that this is just how you spread peace and prosperity in the world, and really not much worse than that.
And maybe some Lockheed interests here helped with the propaganda or whatever.
But that basically NATO expansion is an academic exercise in practice, and it hasn't really worked out that well.
I wonder how that meshes with what you say about some long-term vendettas against Russia and wanting a regime change there, et cetera.
Yeah, no, I think that for a lot driving this is just natural institutional desire to grow.
I think that's probably true about NATO.
I don't – in my universe, NATO bureaucrats are not necessarily evil, aggressive, war-minded people.
I mean they think about war, but they're not.
And I think there was probably a lot of – they believed in democratic capitalism.
They saw that – they saw new opportunities in Eastern Europe of people who wanted freedom and democracy and all that supposedly, and in some sense genuinely.
And they saw bigger budgets, and they saw a reason for NATO to continue, I mean a way to – because otherwise NATO could – without expanding, NATO might be seen as irrelevant and die.
And nobody who's invested their career in that would want that.
All right, now on the current peace talks, I mean I'm sorry to ask you to predict the future or whatever, but are you placing bets on the success of Merkel and Holland here?
I mean it seems like they really mean it, right?
Yeah, well they – what I haven't seen is how much they're willing to broaden the discussion.
I mean there's a lot of talk about the boundary lines and how far you're going to withdraw artillery pieces, but it's – they're military disengagement talks, exchange of prisoners.
I'm sure that there's discussion about what is going to be the broader position of Ukraine between Russia and the West.
I mean that's the underlying subject of the talks.
But that aspect is really not written about, and I don't have sources.
And so far as I know nobody does, but there has to be an example which I think Mearsheimer pointed out, and other people have too.
There was a neutralization of Austria in 1955, a treaty which did much to calm down the Cold War, and Austria led a fine life as a neutral country until the Soviet bloc terminated essentially.
But it was not part of NATO, and I'm sure Austrians would have been happy to join West Germany and NATO, but they weren't allowed to.
And there has to be some kind of talk about that, the broader status of Ukraine between East and West.
And I don't know to the extent that's happening, and to the extent in which Ukrainian leadership has to be told that this is going to be best for you, and you're not going to be able to join NATO, and you're not going to be able to join the European Union without restrictions.
And I don't know if that message is being conveyed.
Well, on the other hand though, you really kind of make the parameters of a real peace pretty apparent there.
It all seems like it could be very easy if everybody was really trying, that we'll have at least the outside powers will all agree that they want this kind of neutrality and to end the conflict, and then to work with their sides, so-called inside Ukraine, to put a rest to the – and it's mostly what they're fighting for is which side the regime is going to tilt toward, the Russian side or the EU-American one.
I mean, it's difficult for the United States to step down, because we've had this Assistant Secretary of State for all of Obama's administration, Victoria Nuland, who has been telling the Ukrainians, your destiny is to join the West and to get to have the European future you deserve.
I mean, that's the quote she used, and she means an anti-Russian future, and she means part of NATO.
And the United States has spent, as she pointed out, billions of dollars funding various groups in Ukraine to bring about that happen.
And then she chose the current Ukrainian foreign minister, and I don't know – I mean, Obama has to put a stop to that, and I don't really know if he's politically strong too, or cares enough, or if Kerry does.
I mean, it's ridiculous that a person like this is essentially leading American foreign policy in this area, but she is.
Yeah, they got rid of Hagel, but kept Nuland.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, I kept you over time, but thanks very much for your time, Scott.
Good talking to you.
Thanks very much, Scott.
All right, so that's the great Scott McConnell.
He's at the American Conservative magazine.
It's the spotlight today on Antiwar.com, the ambitions driving the Ukraine consensus.
We'll be right back.
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