03/06/17 – Doug Bandow gives advice to Trump on North Korea and Russia policy – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, Scott Horton Show.
ScottHorton.org, LibertarianInstitute.org, and Twitter.com slash ScottHortonShow.
Introducing Doug Bandow.
He's at Cato, Cato.org, and he also writes at The National Interest and Forbes most often, and we run virtually all of it at AntiWar.com, which is actually trouble because he writes so much that there's not enough days in the week to only run one Bandow a day or every other day.
Which North Korea article are we going to run?
It's always really great stuff.
Hope you guys read Doug.
He's about the best we got in terms of libertarian foreign policy analysis.
All right, so, Doug, tell me something.
If I was Donald Trump, and you were the advisor to the president for national security affairs, and I says to you something like, God, jeez, you know, this North Korea thing, it's a terrible, fantastic, tremendous crisis.
It's very, very sad.
I don't know what to do.
Should I threaten to nuke Beijing if they don't make the North Koreans fall in line?
Should I add them to a terrorist list?
Tell me what to do, Doug.
I'd say that that's probably not a very good idea.
North Korea is not a nice place, but we've dealt with places in the past that haven't been very nice.
But the starting point actually would be to talk to them, that isolation hasn't worked.
So at least have a dialogue and figure out what they want, as opposed to assume that more military action or sanctions will get our way.
All right, but you already know what they want.
What do they want, Doug?
Well, that's a good question.
It might help to ask them.
I think they primarily want security.
They're concerned about the U.S. wanting regime change.
We do that fairly often.
They're actually, despite being seen as friendly to the Chinese, they actually want to be independent of the Chinese, too.
So they'd like to have a relationship with countries out of the region.
You know, it's a nasty regime, but the regime's survival is probably their highest end.
There's no evidence they're suicidal.
They know they'd lose a war.
What they want to do is prevent the U.S. from starting a war with them.
Well, what about if America started a war with them?
Like, for example, if Donald Trump decided that, well, these guys, supposedly this guy poisons his own half-brother with sarin or was it VX or something in an airport, what a nut he is.
He's Daffy Duck, and he's sitting on A-bombs, and I just can't have that.
So what we're going to do is we're going to go in there and hit him really hard, destroy all his nuclear capability and his missile capability, and we're going to put an end to this problem right now that way.
I mean, this is the United States of America.
We've got the heavy bombers, don't we, Doug?
Well, you know, the problem is that if you really think he's Daffy Duck, then you can't expect him not to start a war if you do that.
If you go in and hit, you have to assume that he's going to fight back.
In fact, one of the challenges of having promoted regime change around the world is that the North Koreans almost certainly would view military strikes by the U.S. as the start of regime change, in which case you use everything you have, which probably means Seoul disappears with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dead South Koreans.
I mean, there's no evidence that the guy's nuts.
I mean, this is a nasty regime, but we've dealt with those kind of people before.
We dealt with Joseph Stalin, we dealt with Mao Zedong, and we didn't have wars because everybody understands that it's in nobody's interest.
You work out an accommodation, we talk to them.
So it makes sense to talk to these guys.
You know, war is the last resort.
The South Koreans would go freaky.
They don't want to see their country enveloped in a war.
It's easy for the U.S. to send in the bombers, but the South Koreans are right across the border.
They're the ones who would bear the brunt.
So this would be a foolish policy.
We hope that Donald Trump realizes that.
He criticized Hillary Clinton for being too pro-war.
Well, this certainly would be about the worst thing he could do.
All right, now, so let's presume, I don't know, for the sake of argument, wishful thinking, that they'd really actually have trouble delivering their A-bombs to targets in South Korea or anywhere else.
But it's rumored, reported, assumed that they have enough artillery and embedded in hard enough concrete bunkers that they could level Seoul simply with their artillery before America could take it all out with bunker-buster bombs.
Is that right, do you think?
Yeah, they have a lot of dug-in artillery.
They also have Scud missiles.
The estimates are they could pour several hundred thousand shells into Seoul in an hour.
I mean, we could try to take out whatever we could, and we might get most of it.
Seoul, basically, the Seoul Incheon kind of metropolis has about half the population.
It's the political and industrial heart of the country.
If you want to imagine panic, imagine 10, 15 million people trying to flee a city under bombardment.
No one would want to go through that.
They have a lot of armor.
I mean, a lot of the stuff's old, but this would be a real war.
This would not be some cakewalk where we just kind of show up, do our thing, and everybody's happy.
And especially, again, the South Koreans look at that and say, Are you crazy?
You're willing to risk all of our lives for what?
We managed to avoid another Korean War for the last 65 years.
Wouldn't it be really stupid to trigger it now when there's no need to do so?
All right, but you know me.
I'm Ron Paul over here.
So I think what I would do if I was in the presidency, I wouldn't be Donald Trump, I'd be Ron, and what I would do is I would say, We already have the peace treaty filled out and our side of it signed.
We're dropping all sanctions right now, and we'll open up our borders to whatever you want to sell us, and whatever you want, man.
Peace yesterday, and I don't want to fight you anymore.
I got no problem with you anymore.
What would be the North Korean reaction to that?
Because they need an enemy as bad as we do over there, don't they?
Well, they might actually like that.
I mean, the problem here is we don't know until we ask.
Lots of presumptions are made about North Korean behavior.
I think the one thing that we know is that Kim Jong-un and company want to survive.
So if they could get a situation where they thought their survival was more guaranteed, they might like that.
It would also actually get greater Chinese support.
They blame the U.S. for having created this situation where the North wants all these weapons.
If we offered a really good deal to the North, China would be more likely to help us out.
As it stands, they figure we're to blame, so why should the Chinese help us?
It's certainly a good starting point to say, you guys claim you want a peace treaty and want to end this.
We're ready to negotiate that.
We're ready to talk.
We're ready for diplomatic relations.
So let's sit down and do it.
All right, now, but so I think you're so rational that everybody in Washington, D.C. would probably agree with you if they didn't have some other reason, other than just their feelings, for why not to go along, and not necessarily personal corrupt ulterior motives, but in terms of policy, like, yeah, but, you know, if we got along too well with the North Koreans, then that would change the dynamic of our relationship with South Korea in ways that maybe some of which couldn't be anticipated and might be negative in terms of their reliance on us and the way that we like that.
And the same goes for Japan, and the same goes for our relationship with China and everything else.
And so maybe, as Freed Zacharias said about Saddam Hussein back in the 1990s, if he didn't exist, we'd have to invent him because he's the linchpin of our policy in the region.
Same kind of thing here, no?
A lot of folks who believe the U.S. should dominate, you know, that if we don't wreck the region, all sorts of terrible wars will happen, so the idea of us kind of leaving or the idea of ending all this just strikes them as being utterly inconceivable.
You know, certainly the South Koreans, you know, are very nervous about what might happen.
You get people who are saying, well, you can't trust the North, that they would just kind of take any benefits and leave and run.
I mean, the point is, my point is simply, look, until you try it, you have no idea, that maybe they'll turn it down.
Well, you know, if they turn it down, then, of course, that's pretty good evidence to the Chinese that we have a shared problem.
Right now, China looks at this and says, you guys want us to hand over our one ally to you while you're trying to contain us.
Why on earth should we do that?
Policymakers in Washington don't have a good answer to that.
I mean, I think that it's a failure of imagination.
This policy has been the way it's been for 60-odd years.
They can't imagine doing anything differently.
My reaction is it's failed in the sense of giving us a piece.
Well, let's try something different.
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Eh.
Sounds good to me.
And especially when it's kind of absurd, isn't it?
Sort of the laughingstock, I mean, in a fearful kind of a way.
It's the laughingstock of the world.
We have a ceasefire but no peace treaty with this country when the last time we had a real shooting war with them was in 1952.
That's right.
I mean, it makes no sense.
I mean, nobody gains.
What's always strange about this is we act as if we're the third world country, that we're afraid of the terrible North Koreans.
I mean, we have a vast edge over them militarily.
I mean, the notion that they threaten us is really quite silly.
The point is they make all these threats because we are over there.
Otherwise, they couldn't care less.
I mean, the idea that Kim Jong-un would care about America if we were far away is ridiculous.
They focus on us because we are there, and they worry about us.
Yeah.
All right, now let me ask you real quick about this extremely important article.
It's hard to distinguish between all your articles, but this is a really big one.
It's for Forbes, and it's called What Russia Threat?
And you're just pouring cold water on all this stuff about why we should all be so afraid.
And, you know, the best argument I've gotten into, or the best argument I've heard against my yeah, right position on all this Russia stuff lately is but Scott Horton, everybody seems to think so except you, dude, all over the world.
The Swedes are reinstituting the draft.
My God, it's an emergency.
But, oh, no, Scott Horton knows better, blah, blah, all by yourself out there.
So I'm the kook, and I'm up against, you know, everybody knows something's got to be done about Saddam.
I mean, Vladimir.
Well, you know, look, if I was in Sweden, maybe I'd be worried, but we're not.
I mean, the notion that America should be running scared, you know, is ludicrous.
I mean, as I point out, we spend something like, you know, ten times as much on the military.
You know, the proposed military spending increase of President Trump is almost as much the Russians spend every year.
You know, they have nukes, but, again, Vladimir's not suicidal.
You know, so where else do they threaten us?
They clearly don't threaten us militarily.
I mean, there's going to be no land invasion.
You know, they're not going to be sending the fleet to attack America.
They have one decrepit aircraft carrier.
We have ten, you know, carrier groups.
I mean, then it gets down to, okay, might they attack Europe?
Well, you know, Germany alone has like three times the GDP of Russia.
I mean, the Europeans, despite being kind of wimps on military spending, collectively spend something like four times as much as the Russians.
And so the idea that the Russian military is going to be conquering Europe is a fantasy, and the evidence that it's a fantasy is the Europeans aren't doing more.
I mean, look, if you really believe that if France thought Russia was about to show up with an army, that they wouldn't be doing much, that Germany would be spending 1.19% of GDP.
I mean, obviously they don't feel threatened.
So the best evidence to me is that the Europeans don't worry about it.
The Baltic states are worried, and I feel for them.
But do we really want America to go to war, nuclear war over them?
And I actually don't think the Russians have any interest in them anyway.
So we're kind of left with Ukraine and Georgia.
And what's important here is that Russia hasn't swallowed them.
Russia is just causing trouble.
Russia doesn't want them as being part of NATO.
Well, let's negotiate on that.
They don't have to be part of NATO.
You know, the point is, end the crisis, promise the Russians you don't expand NATO any further.
My guess is you probably get an agreement.
Well, it's interesting to me that in the war in Ukraine for the last three years, that they could have absorbed eastern Ukraine, which was all begging to become part of Russia, like Crimea got to have a little plebiscite there and rejoin Russia.
And the people of the Donbass said, hey, Vladimir, we want back in Russia.
Or, you know, we want you to redraw this line, wherever it is.
I don't know if I'm using the word back in the correct context there.
But however you slice it.
And he said no.
He said, well, look, I'll give you some special forces guys to help keep Kiev out.
But no, you can't be part of Russia.
And it seemed, I mean, he could have just rolled his tanks right in.
We're only talking about, what, scores of miles here, not even hundreds of miles of territory, right?
Oh, that's right.
I mean, I had people who were telling me two or three years ago that Russia was going to invade all of Ukraine.
It was going to take Kiev.
I mean, I thought all of those, you know, that was crazy.
Among other things, Ukrainians have proved they'll fight.
You know, you don't want to try to absorb millions of people who don't want to be part of your country.
You know, so I always thought that that was a crazy claim.
And, of course, years later, nothing's happened.
You know, Vladimir's not a nice guy.
I wouldn't claim that.
But there's no evidence the guy's a nutcase.
I mean, he has fairly limited aims.
You know, he wants to have his borders respected.
He wants to have security.
He doesn't like the U.S. kind of trampling all over what he sees as Russia's interests.
But, you know, beyond that, this is not a guy bent on world conquest.
I mean, we've made him into something he clearly is not.
All right, now, but so tell me about the Baltics, because as you said here, he does see himself as the president of Russian speakers, sort of, whether they're on his side of the border or not.
And there are a lot of Russian speakers really left over from the days of the Soviet Union, right, where Stalin moved populations around.
And you have, you know, Russians dominating the other Soviet states and republics and satellites.
And so some of them got left behind.
And at least we hear tell that, hey, the Russian speaking minorities in those Baltic states, for example, that they are discriminated against.
And so maybe if things escalate, they're just a step or two.
Vladimir will have his excuse and will roll on in and reabsorb the Baltic states in order to protect or at least some parts of them in order to protect those Russia speakers.
That's at least floated as a real possibility that we absolutely must defend against.
There's not much evidence of separatism among the Russian speakers.
I mean, it's one of the interesting things.
You know, quite honestly, they have a higher standard of living where they are.
And a lot of them may prefer a more democratic process, even if they're kind of discriminated against, versus what they see across the border in Russia.
So it's not as if the, you know, basically the Baltic Russian speakers are calling for Russian intervention.
So you don't have that.
And I think, you know, he looks at this, look, if you attack them, what do you get?
You know, the countries are devastated.
People flee.
There's very little economic benefit for Russia.
You know, even if the Europeans don't want to go to war, I mean, you're going to have permanent sanctions.
The relationship is going to be a cold, new cold war.
And they are part of NATO.
So, in fact, if the Europeans in America decide to go to war, I mean, that would be really – what do you get out of it?
Basically nothing.
I think he likes causing trouble.
I think he likes keeping the Europeans kind of on edge, because from his standpoint, the U.S. has been threatening him.
He sees no reason to make it easy for the West to kind of make it clear to the West that things are a little bit uncertain and they better leave him alone.
But, again, if you look at force deployment, his forces are not near the Baltics.
I mean, he doesn't have all the heavy armor and everything there to kind of roll on in.
There's simply no evidence that he has that planned.
All right.
So, when I talk to Mark Perry, the Pentagon reporter – you probably know him – he says, oh, yeah, no, but everybody in D.C. believes this.
It's not like they're lying.
As I told him, I think I would be comforted.
Like, I think Obama knew he was lying, right?
He knew that he had kind of picked these fights, and he actually didn't go as far as a lot of people in his government wanted him to go.
Now, I always trusted Obama that he knew he was lying and didn't believe his own BS when he did all the horrible things he did.
I think a lot of times, like in Syria, too, he could have done a lot worse, and he only was half bad instead of completely horrible.
But so what Perry was saying, though, is that, yeah, no, in D.C. they really all believe this.
And no one ever says, well, you know, we did overthrow the government in Kiev twice in 10 years, and they did start threatening Russian status at the Sevastopol Naval Base.
And they gave Russia real reason to do the things that they did.
And everything that Russia did was in reaction.
Not that that makes it okay, but still, it is what it is.
And he says that, no, it isn't what it is.
Nobody talks like that.
Everybody knows that history began when Russia seized Crimea, or history began when...
The problem with this is that's the way everybody talks, but it doesn't mean it makes any sense.
I mean, look, there is a conventional wisdom in Washington, which America is never wrong.
So to acknowledge the fact the U.S. might have done something along the way just runs completely against not only neoconservatives, but kind of liberal interventionists as well.
It's simply you have to step back and ask the question, do they provide evidence backing up their claims?
And if the answer is no, and so far the answer has been no, and I just go back, look at the predictions.
They've been talking this way for several years.
Where is the war?
Where has it happened?
It hasn't happened yet.
Well, that should tell us something.
Yeah.
All right, well, listen, whenever you're at these functions with all these wonky wonks, don't forget to mention that coup d'etat the head of Stratfor, Friedman, said it was the most obvious coup in world history.
And I think I would agree.
So it might be worth citing there.
I don't know.
And get him a little riled up for me, Doug.
I'll do my best.
Hey, you do great journalism, man.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks.
Thank you.
You too.
All right, Joe, that's Doug Bando.
He's at Cato.
I would say his name wrong.
It's Bando.
And I would say Bando for years and years.
It's Bando.
That's Doug Bando.
No, that's not it either.
I got to listen to his voicemail again.
He says it.
I got to practice it.
It's a little bit of a it's sort of halfway between those.
Anyway, that's the great Doug Bando.
Cato dot org, Forbes dot com and the national interest regularly at all of those.
And that's the Scott Horton show.
Check out all my stuff at Scott Horton dot org.
The Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute dot org.
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Oh, yeah.
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