Joe Rogan Experience #2500 - Scott Horton

TL;DR

Scott Horton explains how neoconservative doctrine, broken NATO promises, and US-backed coups provoked Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Key Points

• 1.Scott Horton is an anti-war journalist and author who has conducted over 6,200 interviews since 2003. He ran a radio show on KPFK Los Angeles for 14–15 years unpaid, abandoned it last year as podcasting rendered radio irrelevant.
• 2.Horton abandoned 'New World Order' conspiracy theories after realizing the Iraq War disproved them. The real agenda wasn't building UN world government but cementing Washington DC as the unchallenged global hegemon.
• 3.The Wolfowitz Doctrine (1992) explicitly aimed for permanent US dominance on every continent. Written by Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, and Zalmay Khalilzad, it stated the US would tolerate no rival power or alliance anywhere in the world.
• 4.Wesley Clark's 'seven countries in five years' memo came from the Office of the Secretary of Defense under Rumsfeld. Dave Smith noted that every country on that list except Iran was subsequently targeted, which Horton finds compelling evidence of intent.
• 5.The neoconservative network permeated the entire Bush administration. Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Scooter Libby, Elliot Abrams, and Zalmay Khalilzad were all interconnected ideologues who had built consensus through the 1990s via the Project for a New American Century.
• 6.The 1996 'Clean Break' document, written for Netanyahu, is the ideological root of Middle East wars. Authored by David Wurmser and Richard Perle, it urged Israel to abandon Oslo, dominate neighbors through strength, and eliminate Hezbollah's Iran-Syria supply arc.
• 7.The neocon plan to install a compliant Shiite Iraq backfired catastrophically by empowering Iran. They believed Iraqi Shiites would follow the Hashemite King of Jordan's orders and even build an oil pipeline to Haifa, Israel — a plan Horton calls completely stupid.
• 8.Horton estimates the total cost of the post-9/11 terror wars at roughly $10 trillion. He argues defense contractors and their lobbyists had strong financial incentives to initiate conflict regardless of strategic logic.
• 9.The US overthrew Ukraine's government twice in ten years — in the 2004 Orange Revolution and in 2014. Victoria Nuland, Robert Kagan's wife and a key neocon operative, testified that US personnel were embedded at every level of the Ukrainian government.
• 10.George Kennan warned in a 1998 New York Times interview that NATO expansion would provoke exactly the Russian reaction it produced. The architect of Cold War containment said those who denied the risk would later use Russia's response to justify the expansion that caused it.
• 11.The US and Western powers made repeated explicit promises not to expand NATO eastward, starting at Malta in December 1989. HW Bush, Thatcher, Major, Kohl, Mitterrand, and their foreign ministers all affirmed this to Soviet and then Russian leadership — and then ignored it.
• 12.A 2019 RAND Corporation study titled 'Extending Russia' outlined a strategy of deliberate provocations to overextend Moscow. It specifically flagged increased Ukrainian military support as a risk that could trigger a full-scale Russian invasion — which Biden pursued anyway.
• 13.Horton lost an Oxford Union debate on the motion 'This house would rather go to war with Russia than lose Ukraine.' He was shocked that liberal British students supported the proposition despite Russia possessing 7,000 nuclear warheads, and blamed himself for underestimating their conviction.
• 14.Russia seized Crimea as a direct reaction to the February 2014 US-backed coup, not as an unprovoked act. Western media consistently starts the timeline at Crimea, omitting that the coup preceded it, which Horton argues is deliberate narrative management.
• 15.Corporate interests like Chevron, Cargill, and Monsanto — not American citizens — benefit from Ukraine's oil, gas, and agricultural resources. Horton argues these 'special interests' as Ross Perot called them are the real economic engine behind US Ukraine policy, not national strategic need.