Scott Horton 0:10
All right, shall welcome and Scott Horton show. I am the director of the libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com dot com, author of the book fool’s errand, time to end the war in Afghanistan. And I recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org dot org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed full archive is also available@youtube.com slash Scott Horton show. All right, you guys introducing Matthew whoa, I’m sure you remember that back in 2009. He was a State Department official in Afghanistan, who publicly resigned and went to the media and told Barack Obama not to launch this search because it could not work. And of course he was vindicated after being ignored and We have a lot of important Afghanistan stuff to discuss. So welcome back to the show, Matt. How are you, sir? Good, Scott, how are you? I’m doing real good. appreciate you joining us on the show again here. And you know what, I’m happy to share a press release with you this morning. The Institute for Public accuracy is advertising interviews with you or me about the subject we’re about to discuss here, but I figured I’d better go ahead and interview you about it first and see if I got it right. I meant to mention you’re from the Center for International Policy there. Oh, and I also want to mention that you were in the Marine Corps Captain correct in the Marine Corps in Iraq War, too, before you were in Afghanistan, right? Yeah, that’s correct. Right. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Anyway, so what it’s all about is it’s about the New York Times and The New York Times has a piece from two days ago, three days ago by Charlie savage Eric Schmidt and Michael Schwartz. Guess from the 26th. It’s called Russia secretly offered Afghan militants bounties to kill troops, US intelligence says and then they actually had a follow up a couple of days ago. Yesterday I guess early yesterday they had a follow up spies and commandos warned months ago of Russian bounties on US troops. And then also I should mention there is the Wall Street Journal version, which includes the byline of a warren p Strobel, sadly, Russian spy unit paid Taliban to attack Americans, US intelligence says and then the Washington Post, Russian operation targeted coalition troops in Afghanistan intelligence binds. And so what a big deal of course the democrats are seizing on this, the Trump’s refusal to do anything about it is proof of his allegiance to Russia again, and all of these kinds of things. And so I would like to know everything that you think about all of this, sir.

Matthew Hoh 3:21
Well, you know, first off if we, if any of those news outlets and it goes beyond them, I mean, it’s basically all major American media seemingly talking about it NPR, you know, CNN, etc. If they in their headlines put, you know, unverified Colin, Russia, paid for bounty on American troops or whatever, then like, we wouldn’t really need to be having this conversation. Because the the issue right off the top of this right is this idea of The media putting forth unsubstantiated evidence free reports from anonymous officials that have not been verified in any way. But the way the media puts it forward, his they put it in. They headline it and then at least the first several paragraphs of their stories use affirmative language, you know, Russian intelligence paid, right. They don’t say it’s been it’s suggested that Russian intelligence paid or it has been spoken about that maybe they paid, you know, so just off the bat, it’s just a journalistic malpractice. And this is clickbait. This is this is nothing new. You know, most of the folks listening will surely understand that this is this goes back past the The modern era This is the whole remember the main in the Spanish American War, the, you know the, the lies that led to the Mexican American War all the lies that existed for centuries that allowed for the genocide of Native Americans. You know, this is this is the way American warfare is prefaced it’s the way it comes about and it’s what sustains American warfare or these lies and of course, everyone is familiar with with lies for Iraq War Two, not so much familiar maybe so with the lies from the first Iraq war, you know, with the lies about babies being ripped out of incinerators or not ripped out of incubators, I’m sorry, by Saddam’s troops in Kuwait, you know, those kinds of lies. But then of course the lies about Libya the lies about Syria, the lies about Yemen, the lies that have allowed the wars to escalate All throughout Africa, you know, and you know, most egregious or absurd about all this is the fact that six months ago The Washington Post, and all these other outlets reported on it as well wrote this story about what’s called the Afghan papers where, you know, 400 or so American officials in writing, basically, you know, summarize it, those 400 officials in what’s called after action reports or lessons learned reports, basically admitted to, you know, a systematic lying by the US government for the last 20 years or so about Afghanistan. So, you know, here we are, with all this historical record of journalistic malpractice, all this evidence about US government lying about war. And then you know, we can get into it as well about how a report like this reaches washington dc about, you know, the Russians are paying for, you know, bounties on American soldiers. But you know, it’s just, it’s upsetting and it’s infuriating that here we are talking about this again, but it certainly is something that’s always can be the case because this is how it’s always been these lies have always been used to start wars, they’ve always been used to keep wars going. They’ve always been used to keep tensions going. They’ve always been used to make sure that, you know, budgets are kept high. Right, you know, so and you know, the next part about this as well. Is that all those who are commenting in, you know, on CNN, or who are NPR talking about it, or who are you know, cited in the Wall Street Journal report, etc. They’re either retired generals who are on the the board Defense companies, you know, some making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for being on these boards as well as having the interest of those defense companies to promote, or they are Think Tank experts from think tanks that are funded by the US government, whether it be the State Department or the Pentagon or the CIA, or they’re those think tanks are funded by the defense industry. So the whole the whole absurdity of it that this is taken as a factual story is just belied by you know, any basic understanding of past history in Afghanistan, American history when it comes to war or journalist, the journalistic lack of integrity when it comes to speaking about American military involvement overseas by you know, the major American corporate media.

Scott Horton 8:58
Yeah, it is funny how After everything, we’re just supposed to pretend that whatever they say goes without saying you have to believe it. That’s the narrative of the day. And we all agree, and just okay. And it’s not it, you know, there’s varying degrees of dissension on any given day, but it seems like essentially the narrative of the day wins, however they pronounce it. Certainly when it comes to demonizing Russia, my goodness. But you know, I had to point out too, and you mentioned this at the beginning. But these three articles, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, are uniquely weak articles. They’re not just based on anonymous sources. They have no description whatsoever of what the intelligence is, just somebody told us that they won’t name the agency where their anonymous sources work. It’s just intelligence officials and or just people familiar people familiar, which means that’s Yeah, pretty broad. And yeah, they they admit that, you know, they don’t pretend to say we think that these boys killed in these green berets out in Nangarhar province fighting Islamic State guys so called Islamic corizon Province guys then yeah, we think it was that or it was these Marines got sniped down in the helmet or anything like that they don’t even pretend to have a causal anything here. But they all just went with it anyway and then as Caitlyn Johnstone pointed out on her website that they all the the reporters here two of whom I somewhat respect because you know it’s slim pickins and you do what you got to do, but Warren Strobel and Charlie savage both have done really important work in the past. Yeah, these other guys I could do without but

Matthew Hoh 10:59
yeah Man, yeah, get him man. Yeah. But

Scott Horton 11:03
to have these are all citing each other. Yeah, they’re all citing each other on Twitter saying My story is confirmed by the other guy. Now my story is confirmed by him. We’re all confirming each other’s story, but what are they confirming? All they’re confirming is that somebody said something. They’re not confirming that it’s true. They’re confirming that this is what an intelligence report says. They’re not going to cramming anything in the intelligence report at all they’re not pretending to. And they apparently can’t seem to even differentiate between that, you know, geez, I know, me and another reporter both got told by Douglas fight that Saddam Hussein was going to shoot me in my jammies in the middle of the night. It’s confirmed.

Matthew Hoh 11:44
That’s right. Yeah. And it’s just not those three. I mean, I saw NBC News, which was, you know, a capital letters confirmed. You know, we confirm this story, you know, and same thing to there’s confirming that anonymous officials said this. I had a conversation earlier today with john Kiriakou. And if folks aren’t familiar with john Kiriakou, please, you know, when you’re done, listen to Scott and I go through Scott’s archives and listen to some of Scott’s conversations with john. And john, of course, was CIA officer, the only person to have gone to jail for us torture program. Of course, john went to jail because of the torture program because he spoke about it and confirmed it, as opposed to actually taking part in it. But john, you know, john was, you know, saying how much he was struck by once again, the language that is used, you know, words like suggest, you know, in the US intelligence community, there’s very specific language to denote degrees of certainty. So, you know, and there is almost in there is basically a glossary that you follow. When you are writing an intelligence report or that you learn when you’re an intelligence school or whatever, to make sure that you are using the correct terminology, to let your audience know the people who are consuming that intelligence to let them know the degree to which they can trust the intelligence Look, do we have, you know, there are certain words if you’ve got somebody on camera on video, you know, that then there are certain words to say yes, if all you have is like so you heard some someone overheard something in a restaurant, you know, then there are other words describe how, you know, it’s probably not credible. And so john was, you know, we were talking about this, but the language of it, but one of the things I wanted to, you know, speak speak about was just letting people understand how a report like this and give it given the benefit of doubt that they are poor actually exists. And I do believe that there was probably some report made that suggested this note no confirmation of it. Whether not credible or not. But what happens is that all throughout both the military and the intelligence community, there’s what’s called commanders critical information requirements. And it could be from your direct boss all the way up to senior levels in Washington, DC and everyone in between, of what basically their critical information requirements are, right. So this is what your boss or your boss’s boss or your boss’s boss’s boss wants information about deems is the most important and adversaries Russia or Iran, China, etc, particularly when you get to the political sides of this stuff are very heavily weighted in these information requirements. So now getting back to Afghanistan, because supposedly these the time story said that this came about because of interrogation. Well, the Afghan security forces universally torture, and we all know that torture produces either two things it produces your basically produces the intelligence that you want from the torture victim, whether or not that person actually believes what he’s saying that he’ll say whatever he you want him to to stop the torture, that’s the reality of torture. And so what you get is you probably had somebody who was detained some prisoner of war or maybe even a criminal as it’s been suggested in the news stories. And this person mentions Russia, the word Russia goes into the report, and because that is a critical information requirement, and plus the political aspect of it with everything, being you know, Russia, Russia, Russia for the last good, gosh, six or seven years and the American military and intelligence communities You know, this, this Russia, hysteria came into the American military and intelligence Communities well before Trump took office, you know, so that this unsubstantiated unverified report probably brought about by torture makes its way up because Russia is important. And there are people, you know, a good guy to have on to talk about this besides john. Scott would be like Ray McGovern, you know, to talk about how politicized you know, intelligence is how people are looking to please the boss. So they’re going to push forward things, whether or not they’re substantiated or not, because that’s going to please the boss. And so that’s how you can understand how something like this could reach Washington DC. Now, whether or not it also could be totally fabricated, for all I know, you know, but just giving an idea to people of where this all comes from how stuff like this gets, I mean, as well then to the manipulation of your reports or myth manipulation of things sent for I could give you a story, you know, It’s long story, but I’ll give you the very brief brief as bit I can about a report I wrote about this program in Afghanistan, we had to set up these radio towers, right. And they all throughout rural Afghanistan. And then the radio towers were in this was like a, I don’t know, 15,000,020 million dollar program that some company in the United States got to do sweetheart deal, typical corrupt reconstruction project kind of thing. And they’re supposed to go around and put these radio towers all throughout rural Afghanistan. And my report on it after they’re done was that was a colossal failure. I mean, there wasn’t diesel fuel to run the radio antennas. We didn’t have program to put on the radio antennas. Rural Afghans don’t own radios, you like all kinds of stuff. The thing was a failure. And what was the final thing, my report that actually got sent to Washington DC, the only thing that got sent out of it was at the radio tower program. installation was successful. All the other parts about it about how it As a failure, right all the way up and down, we’re left out. But the fact that the radio antenna has actually gotten stalled, that made it to DC. So as far as people in DC know, oh, hey, this. And that’s just one story out of millions of stories that are out there about how reporting works in the American military, in the intelligence community in a diplomatic community about how good news is shared or politicized. News is shared. So it really is, you know, it this is not as surprised as something like this is coming out. You know, I mean, a few years ago, as many people recall, there was these reports about Russia providing weapons to the Taliban. Now, first of all, the only confirmed weapons transfer between Russia and Afghanistan was in 2016, when Russia gave 10,000 weapons to the Afghan military,

Scott Horton 18:58
right, right. And when America got the Indians to buy Russian helicopters for the Kabul government because America has sanctions on Russia and can’t buy him directly.

Matthew Hoh 19:07
Yeah, right. I mean all kinds of stuff about but but you know, CNN and others take this story about Russian, they show a clip of like a Taliban fighter holding an ak 47. Nevermind that about 15 or 20 countries at least manufacturer AK ak 40 sevens in the world, you know, the United States military and CIA, purchase those weapons and give them to insurgent groups and government groups all around the world. Nevermind all that we’re going to show. One Taliban fighter holding a Russian, a Russian style Kalashnikov style rifle. And that’s gonna be proof that the Russians, I mean, like that’s Meanwhile, you know, top us defense officials, intelligence officials, the Secretary General of NATO, the Afghan government itself all said you know, these we don’t have any information to corroborate. We have no evidence about Russia giving us weapons. It’s just rumors, but you know, that’s stuff, even with all that, you go back to this wall street journal story from the other day about and Strobel and I forget who the other person on the the the the byline was. But you know, at the end, they bring up how Russia gave weapons to the Taliban, you know, and it’s not true. They didn’t give weapons but there’s no evidence of that. And we have, you know, you have a list of American NATO and Afghan officials as long as my arm saying we have no evidence of this, but the journal still goes in other places still go and repeat this false story from 2017. You know, I mean, so they’re there, you know, not only do they continue to put forward new rumors, new speculation, new anonymous reports, you know, with no substantiation behind them, they keep recycling older ones. Yeah, you know, and again, and you know, I mean, one of the things I just found Curious today as I was going through some of the stuff I review, you know, daily or weekly in terms of military related stuff was, you know, you look at the investments the US military is making in, you know, hypersonic missiles and all that nonsense all that stuff will never work right. You know if and if people don’t haven’t heard Scott’s interview with Andrew Coburn about hypersonic missiles, go and listen to that one after you listen to the ones about john Kiriakou and everything. But you know, I mean, you know, so it is there is this this he there are multiple constituencies that benefit benefit from increasing tensions with Russia. One, of course, its clickbait for the media, to the media is, you know, any

Scott Horton 21:46
source the Afghan government has quite an interest in figuring out a way to get America to stay.

Matthew Hoh 21:53
That’s exactly right. As well as to you know, the defense industry wants to sell next gen aeration tanks in next generation helicopters and next generation missile systems and next generation, hey, our next generation of aircraft carriers are going to be $15 billion apiece, right? I mean, we know I, right. You know, I think our next generation submarines are $10 billion apiece or something like that. Right. So I mean, you don’t use those, you know, you use those again.

Scott Horton 22:22
What about Russia? What about Russia’s interest? Is there any credible reason at all that you could think of why the Russians would want to hire hotties or whatever descripton description? Jesus Christ, I can’t talk any reason that you could think of why the Russians would want to pay whoever to kill Americans in Afghanistan as we’re seemingly on our way out which by the way, Trump is ordered another withdrawal of 4000 men bringing us down to 4000 which is 4000 lower than when he took office after he escalates Up to 15,000, of course, but that he has signed a deal with the Taliban, to have us out of there one year from now, by the end of May. It’s the end of June now by the end of May next year. And so maybe the Russians are just kicking us in the ass on the way out for fun little bit of revenge, something anything. Nancy Pelosi said, you know, they’re still not over our humiliation of them and Afghanistan back in the 80s.

Matthew Hoh 23:30
You know, it makes you could understand how there might be some old timers within the Russian military intelligence community that will want to get revenge. But there’s no way that type of thinking would percolate up to the level where decision like this will be made. And it’s interesting and one of the news stories it said how Vladimir The decision was made without Vladimir Putin Putin being in involved, I forget which story that was, which I found really, really discredits the whole story. Because there’s I can’t imagine any intelligence or military organization in the world will conduct such an operation as this putting the bounties of on you know, the the the putting the bet putting bounties on your app Azeris heads like this, you know, how could anyone make a decision like that without the top man, you know, saying do this,

Scott Horton 24:26
– it also goes to show that –

Matthew Hoh 24:28
I don’t know how, you know, a clan dishonor Atlanta Stein operation authority works in Russia, but I can’t imagine that Putin would allow things like this to occur without his and so what benefit is it for the Russians? I don’t, I don’t see that benefit one. Why? It just makes no sense to me. They are not the Russians are not as there’s no benefit to the Russians aligning themselves with the You know, extremists a lot, as long as Taliban, right because of Russia’s issues with Islamic extremism and Islamic terrorism and the problems they’ve had, in, you know, whether being former Soviet republics or in Russia itself over the last 2030 years, you know, that there’s just, it just doesn’t, you know, you can say, well, the Taliban are the enemy of my enemy. So therefore, my friend, but still nothing, none of this really makes sense. When you really stop and think about it, and kind of play out all the second and third order effects of it, you know, and then Russia has so many problems itself, its economy has been doing, you know, various issues within Russia. Don’t lead me to believe that the Russian government, Vladimir Putin wants to escalate tensions to a level where these type of action would lead Now certainly you could you could claim the Russians are doing other things they’re flying their jets to close to our jets like etc etc yeah that that that’s you know step but putting bounties on another forces a soldiers brings it if it was exposed would bring it to attention to such a level that you can understand the risks would completely mitigate doing such an operation. Now there’s people out there who will say well hey you know the United States Air Force the United States Navy killed a lot of Russian mercenaries in Syria This is their way of getting getting back you know, I just don’t again, the risks for the Russians to do something like this far outweigh far outweigh any benefits that I believe could come from from it. And then all the other evidence about well, you know, American commandos found money in Afghanistan is so awash with money, most of it coming from Our CIA or our military, but also to from all that, you know, 120 billion dollars we’ve spent on reconstruction work over there, which didn’t build anything, you know, as well as to most of the funding for the Taliban comes from the Saudis and the other Gulf monarchies and force from the Pakistanis. And from he US.

Scott Horton 27:20
Yeah, I mean, we sell them protection money, you know,

Matthew Hoh 27:22
still, this is the whole it’s, it’s just that Russia is Russia is the enemy in the best interests of the American military industrial complex. And it comes simply to that, you know, I mean, and that’s how this should be viewed in terms of understanding the genesis of it, why and why American media hops onto it, you know, and it’s another thing we could we could talk about some other day, but basically understanding that the same banks that own the majority shares and all the American media companies, right, Scott, you know, this and most of your most delicious listenership knows this. right that the same banks and money management firms that own all the all these shares that are majority shareholders in the in the the six corporations that own 90% of American media, they’re also the majority shareholders in the defense industry. Right? I mean, like so it all comes back to who owns these corporations and and it should not be a surprise then that the establishment media is is in favor of the establishment wars. And then we see as you said Nancy Pelosi but also Liz Cheney and Lindsey Graham on the other side, jumping on this and demanding action, we have to take action. Yes, so you can understand who benefits from a report like this and there are more in the United States who benefit from these tensions, then I believe benefit in Russia from these tensions. It just doesn’t make sense to me why the Russians would do something like this because the risk for our world To great for the benefits of what killing a handful of good. We’ve had four guys killed 20 2020 guys killed in 2019 and Afghanistan, and that was the most in six or seven years. Right? I mean, so you know they’re gonna do the Russians are going to do an operation like this to kill 1234 American soldiers. It just makes no sense to me. In what meanwhile though, as we said, the beneficiaries of this in the United States are legion, so to speak.

Scott Horton 29:30
It seems like if it was a fact that they were doing it, then obvious, to me the most obvious or simplest explanation would be they’re trying to give us an excuse to stay it trying to undermine Trump’s because they know Trump is all alone and trying to get us out of there. And the status quo otherwise would reign there. And so if that’s true, then what does that say about our war there that the Russians would like to see it continue one because I had they’ve supported our war therefore the Tajik side all along anyway, because we’re the ones who Switch side in the war, not them. Right. But then also see the the same. You know, William Casey been last night plan to bleed Russia to bankruptcy is the same kind of thing that they must be enjoying. You mentioned how the Americans have been, you know, the the conflicts in Syria where Russians have been killed, where the Americans have stated openly, James Jeffries just said some pointed out to me that just in April, he talked about Yeah, we’re giving the Russians a quagmire in Syria. And they’re that blatant about it. So it just seems to me like, even if it’s true, then it just proves that we should go and what do these people think of the logic of this? say there’s some flying Russian sniper going around killing our guys. That’s why we have to keep sending guys to get sniped by this guy. We already lost the war 10 years ago, this whole thing is crazy. We’re leaving anyway. How do you ask the man to be the last one to die for that?

Matthew Hoh 31:11
That, as john kerry famously said, right, no. Yeah, again, that’s accept

Scott Horton 31:17
ng the hypothetical of the argument, you know.

Yeah. The the narrative behind this a story behid this is that this is meant to make the United States leave. But the reality is, is that if you believe it, I you know, Donald Trump canceled the whole summit with the Taliban and the Afghan government Camp David last September, because an American troops, American soldier was killed by the Taliban that pushed back the signing of the peace deal between the US and the Taliban by six or seven months. So if that is the case, that they did this, the Russians did this to to Get the Americans to leave? Well, you know, the evidence is that Americans are going to stay. But then the other side of it, are they doing it to keep the Americans in, you know, to bleed them? We’re not spending that much money on Afghanistan relative to other things. Right. I mean, in a sense of that, the the trillion dollrs 10s of billions a year still, at least, yo

know, it’s still 10s of billions.

Matthew Hoh 32:24
Exactly. Probably, you know, you know, yeah, exactly. 20 to $30 billion a year, probably maybe $40 billion a year probably. But when you put that debt next to the 1.2 or $1.3 trillion spent overall on the American War Machine every year, that’s relatively chump change. It’s much better to get the Americans to invest in these hypersonic missiles that won’t work. It’s been, you know, the new generation of Star Wars or whatever they want to spend.

Scott Horton 32:55
The next attack will be a false flag. They try to make it look like China was behind So we Well, you know, battleships

Matthew Hoh 33:01
interesting is say that about China because I remember a friend of mine about 10 years ago. So in about 2010 or so, said to me, I just had a conversation in China with a Chinese diplomat or Chinese official. And he said something about, like, what is the what, you know, off the record, you know, what is kind of like, China’s ultimate plan for US foreign policy, you know, and China said, do everything we can to keep the Americans stuck in places like Afghanistan, you know, because they, you know, they saw the folly of it, right. I mean, that do you’re spending at that point in 2010. US Congress is appropriating like 120 billion dollars a year for Afghanistan, we were losing, you know, several hundred young men and women every year, let alone casualties, let alone just the drain on attention and resources and everything else. Yeah, as well as the pure folly of it. You know, you want to see your adversary stuck in quicksand. You know, that that’s something that If you’re the Russia or China or whoever, just look at the US and all these wars,

Scott Horton 34:04
all right, well, that means that if you and I are ever successful at getting people to listen to us about why to get out of the Middle East, then we’ll be helping to free up resources to pivot to Asia. don’t mean to say the Taliban are a worthy sacrifice. But man, if if this war has kept us out of that one all this time, I don’t know.

Matthew Hoh 34:28
Well, I mean, if I was if I was a consultant working for the Pentagon and CIA or the defense industry or whatever, yeah, I think this is a brilliant thing to do. Like, okay, let’s do this, this story about Russia putting bounties on our soldiers head in Afghanistan, because if I’m part of like the big Pentagon, if I’m part of like the the Pentagon that buys tanks and ships and fighter planes, I don’t want anything to do with Afghanistan. There’s very few elements within the US military intelligence apparatus. That really want to be in Afghanistan you’ve got the Special Operations guys. You know you’ve got the CIA paramilitary guys you’ve got some leftover counterinsurgency types but for the most part like they want to be fighting the you know they want to be fighting the Russians and the fulda gap right where they want to be fighting the Chinese in fighter plane tools over the South China Sea. So yeah, let’s put together this story about the Russians paying for bounties on our soldiers heads in Afghanistan that makes the Russian seem worse, which means we need to buy more tanks, you know, next generation tanks we need to buy more aircraft carriers we need to buy more f 30 fives you know we need to buy that next generation bomber plane which is going to cost $2 billion a plane or whatever, you know, I mean, you know, something I read the day that the zone will class destroyer which there are supposed to been like 40 produced, of which were only Gotta make three, you know, but we’re bound to make three, they’re still gonna make three. That thing has like this advanced gun on it right? Each of the shells for that gun cost a half a million dollars for each shell, right? I mean like, so that’s what you want to do you want to sell that stuff. And so let’s get out of Afghanistan. If you’re if you’re logical, you’re reasoned and say this story is true, right? It’s got to say this is true. Say the Russians did put boundaries I get anyone who’s logical OR reasonable just be like, well, hell, this is another reason to get out of Afghanistan. Right? I mean, like, really, like there’s any more. You need another suggestion. Here’s one more another nation is putting bounties on our troops head, let’s get out of that place. It’s not doing anything for any of us, you know, so but then that makes Russia look like a villain which of course gives you all the reason right to spend all this money on all the next generation weapons that are you know, each of those programs are 10s and 10s of billions of dollars each and that’s really the gravy train that you know the defense industry wants and you know they these are the neck new tanks and the new the new planes, new ships that you know, Navy captains and Army and Air Force colonels want, yeah, that kind of stuff. So, but now this whole thing is very insidious. It’s it’s, you know, it makes me sick to my stomach. I’m sure it does you. I’m sure it makes everyone else who’s listening sick to their stomachs as well. But it’s the reality. It’s part of the playbook that we’re up against. And so we have to keep speaking agaist it.

Scott Horton 37:35
Absolutely. All right. Well, thanks for coming on todo so.

Matthew Hoh 37:38
Appreciate that. All right. Thanks, man. And you’d be well and stay healthy and safe and sane. With everyone else there. Please stay healthy and safe ev

Scott Horton 37:45
ryone. Right on. Hey, thanks very much again, Matt. Appreciate it. Okay, you bet. Thanks, you guys. That is the great Matthew. Whoa. He tried to stop the Afghan search. All he had to do was listen to him is everything you needed right there to say, Yeah, no, don’t. The Scott Horton show him Our radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com antiwar.com. ScottHorton, org and libertarianinstitute.org

Scott Horton 0:00
For Pacifica radio June 28 2020. I’m Scott Horton. This is anti war radio.

All right, y’all welcome it’s 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 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. All right, you guys introducing Hans Kristensen from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. And he is also at the Federation of American Scientists as well and SIPRI that’s sipri.org. have just put out their latest study the sipper yearbook 2020. And part of that, of course, focuses on nuclear weapons, and they have a story here at sipri.org nuclear weapon modernization continues, but the outlook for arms control is bleak. Welcome to show Hans. How are you, sir?

Hans Kristensen 1:25
Thanks for having me.

Scott Horton 1:26
Very happy to have you here. So I’m sorry, I didn’t get a chance to read the whole PDF file and everything here. It’s been a very busy time. But I did read the introductory article here. And there’s so many important points brought up here. But I guess if we could just start with reminding the audience which all countries are armed with nuclear weapons, and approximately how many of them etc, like that, if you could?

Hans Kristensen 1:51
Yeah, so they’re about they’re now nine countries today that have nuclear weapons. And that’s the United States and Russia, France, Britain, China. India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. And all together, they possess something in the order of 13,400 nuclear warheads. Most of those are in what you can sort of call military stockpiles that are ready to use on relatively short notice. But there’s also a chunk of them some something in the order of 1800 to 2000 that are on high alert, they’re ready to fire within just minutes.

Scott Horton 2:28
And then, and those are mostly America and Russia’s,

Hans Kristensen 2:32
the alert weapons are American, Russian, French and British. Yes.

Scott Horton 2:38
And then, is there a ratio handy about how many of these are vision bombs versus thermonuclear h bombs.

Hans Kristensen 2:46
Almost all of them are thermal nuclear weapons to stage, thermonuclear weapons. Those are the more advanced weapons that countries like the United States, and Russia and France and Britain and China have have developed over the years, newer countries that have only conducted relatively few nuclear tests don’t yet have that capability India, Pakistan and Israel and also North Korea, although North Korea has demonstrated in their last test that they can produce something thermonuclear something that it that can produce a very high yield, but it’s a little unclear with it that is to stage device or, you know, some other technology.

Scott Horton 3:29
And are most of those still measured in the kilotons are there up into the megaton range?

Hans Kristensen 3:34
No mega ton weapons, so sort of becoming more and more rare. Those were things that people built early on. Now it’s it’s in the hundreds of kilotons or or even 10s of kilotons. So if you look at it depends on the mission of course also, if countries have more hits that are intended for blowing up deeply buried underground facilities, or knocking out hardened ICBMs or commands structures and that type of stuff, then they tend to be higher yield, because they have to, you know, do more damage. But if you’re looking at weapons that are needed for sort of more warfighting scenarios, you know, against shallower targets or troop formations or basis or something like that, then you can do the job with, you know, just, you know, 10 a few 10s of kiloton.

Scott Horton 4:21
And then now, did I hear you right, that you said India does not have h bombs?

Hans Kristensen 4:26
That’s correct, although there have been claims in India that they did that they do. And also one of the devices that was tested back in 1998, apparently, was an attempt to make a thermonuclear design, but it fizzled. And so we do not, we don’t anticipate that they have a two stage thermonuclear device to deploy it in their arsenal.

Scott Horton 4:47
Okay, because I had read and actually talked to an expert to I think, I guess about that one of the real problems with the nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan was that Pakistan really only had these much smaller yield tactical battlefield type nuclear weapons that they would use against the armored column or something like that. But that the Indians had focused on building higher yield strategic nuclear weapons for killing cities with and this kind of thing. And that because their armor was so desperately matched as well, that if the Indians launched a conventional attack, the Pakistanis might have to use low yield nukes to defend themselves. And then the Indians would have no choice but to retaliate with genocidal weapons of destruction, because that’s essentially all they have something like that. But so I wonder about how you conceive of that whole scenario there.

Hans Kristensen 5:41
Well, the scenario bar is a little about different aspects of the reality. It’s too simplistic though. The point is that both countries have developed a medium range ballistic missiles with you know, more hits in several 10s of kilotons that can hit each other of cities. But what’s unique about Pakistan is that in addition to that, they have also developed a weapons that are more tactical, and appear to be intended for use against like you mentioned, Indian conventional forces massing inside Pakistan territory. So that’s a unique feature of the Pakistani arsenal. And that, of course leads to a lot of concern about, you know, how they’re going to do that, or are they going to delegate launch authority to the to the local units, so they could use them early if necessary? How is that gonna play out so there are differences between the Arsenal’s but there also are a lot of similarities.

Scott Horton 6:42
So um, I guess the numbers of Chinese nukes are happily surprisingly low here in the triple digits.

Hans Kristensen 6:52
There compared to the US and Russia, of course, they’re very low. That’s enough

Scott Horton 6:55
to kill us all. I mean, but yeah,

Hans Kristensen 6:57
ya know, the Chinese have had a different approach to their deterrence posture for many decades. They basically didn’t buy into the using of nuclear weapons in sort of warfighting scenarios. They thought if they had, you know, a few, a few hundred 100 200, whatever in, in, you know, in in the posture where they were, when they could retaliate, they could not be knocked out, so they would always be available to retaliate. That should be enough, they thought for nuclear deterrence. What we’re seeing now, of course, is that China is increasing its arsenal. We have bumped up the number this year to 320 warheads that we estimates are in this that we estimate are in their stockpile. And it’s increasing, but it has been increasing for for a long time, just sort of slowly. Now, we’ll have to see if they’re going to, you know, increase faster. But whatever they’re doing, they’re not sprinting to parody. It’s not like whatever you hear about the Chinese nuclear arsenal, it’s not like they’re trying to catch Up to the Russians and the Americans, they still have a fundamentally different perspective on the role of their nuclar weapons.

Scott Horton 8:06
Yeah. Hey, it’s important to note that historically speaking at the height of the Cold War, there were 10s of thousands with 40,000, approximately on the American and Soviet Union side each. And so we’ve made a lot of progress since then, right?

Hans Kristensen 8:22
That’s correct. Yep. At the peak in the mid 1970s, and mid 1980s, I was 70,000 nuclear weapons. And on both the Russian and American side, 10,000 of those were on high alert, ready to go in, you know, within a few minutes, and just totally crazy circumstances. And so of course, when the Cold War ended, they started slicing a lot of the that excess capacity out, and so we saw a huge drop there in the early 1990s. And also a little later on, but what we’re now beginning to see is that the two sides are starting No slowing down significantly and even even to some extent reversing that trend, and looking to maintain significant Arsenal’s for the indefinite future. And so, you know, all sides are sort of increasing the value they say that they attribute to nuclear weapons. They’re increasing the role of the nuclear weapons and the way they talk about what functions they should serve. So this is a very troublesome development.

Scott Horton 9:26
And I’m sorry, what did you say the number was at the height? I thought it was much higher

Hans Kristensen 9:31
70,000

Scott Horton 9:32
Oh, 70. I’m sorry. I thought you said 17. And I thought, well, I was way off. Yeah, no, that’s more like what I thought it was 70,000 nukes.

Hans Kristensen 9:41
Yeah, it was crazy. I mean, you can imagine. You can just imagine spending a couple of hours on on Google Earth and trying to put 70,000 x’s on the map, right? What are we gonna do with all that stuff

Scott Horton 9:54
So there’s an anecdote about dick cheney back in 1989 when he was first Secretary of Defense being shown, I guess on a computer screen is simulation of what it would look like when where they just nuke Moscow hundreds of times over and Dick Cheney finally says that’s enough turn this off and and wanted it redone because it was just completely insane. And of course, he’s notoriously the greatest American

Hans Kristensen 10:24
Hawk alive. Right. Yeah. This is ironic that you can find some of those realizations in what what some characters like cheney did. And he said one of his officials, Frank Miller out to two Strategic Air Command as it was called or stratcom. As of now it’s known and they went through the entire targeting list, there is a very, very important anecdote or reading of that episode in in the memoirs of one of the first of the first stratcom commander. So that was just they discovered not surprisingly that There was an enormous overkill because the nuclear planners had been allowed to essentially do this by themselves with very little oversight. And so things have changed since then is also in the oversight. But even that, even though we were we’ve moved beyond some of that stuff. The nuclear planning today is still, you know, surprisingly similar to what it was during the Cold War.

Scott Horton 11:43
Yeah, Daniel Ellsberg has talked about how, you know, a lot of it is just bureaucratic politics where it’s not fair that the Air Force gets to blow up this city where the Navy wants a crack at it, too. Okay. Okay, Navy, you guys can also hit it with missiles. And so it’s just kind of like an episode of some sitcom some bureaucratic politics.

Hans Kristensen 11:46
You know, there’s an element of sort of institutional competition and turf wars and all this stuff. That’s part of it that dynamic. And mind you early on, the army also had a dream that they wanted exactly, one Hundred Thousand nuclear weapons just the army. I mean, it was those are crazy days.

Scott Horton 12:06
Hey guys just real quick if you listen to the interviews only feed at the institute or at Scott Horton. org I just want to make sure you know that I do a q&a show from time to time at Scott Horton. 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 various amounts at Scott Horton. org slash donate. We’ve got some great kickbacks for you there. Shop amazon.com by way of my link at Scott horton.org. Leave a good review for the show and iTunes and Stitcher. Tell a friend. 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 audio books. They’re living And think.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 Rhys, Eric, and a lot of other great books, mostly by libertarians there. Reese might be one exception, but essentially they’re all libertarian audio books. And here’s how you can get a lifetime subscription to listen and think audiobooks. just donate $100 to the Scott Horton show at Scott Horton. org slash donate. Alright, so now the Israelis I actually had the opportunity to discuss this briefly with Mordecai Vanunu on Twitter, where he confirmed to me that he stood by his original leak to the Sunday Times of London, that Israelis have 200 nukes. And I don’t think he would clarify if that included h bombs or not, but we know from grant Smith’s foil lawsuits and stuff that that does include h bombs as of 1987 But anyway, so you guys here count what I think 90 something like that. But of course, we all know that Israel doesn’t have nukes, they’re completely deniable and not official and so forth. So I wonder where you come up with that number in that kind of.

Hans Kristensen 14:15
Yeah, so that’s that’s a long history. They think about how you come up with a number for the Israelis, because there’s so little factual information about it. The way it happened back in the 80s, when Vanunu and others came out with the estimates of the Chinese Arsenal was that people looked at how their reactor had operated and calculated for from that how many units if you will, of plutonium they could have produced over the years and then they translated that into the number of potential weapons they might have. That’s how you got to those high numbers. the intelligence community, the US intelligence community, looked at it a little differently. They said that yes, even though that production might have happened, they haven’t turned all of that plutonium into warheads, and so their number has been much lower. Over the years, and so we’ve we’ve gone with that ladder number and said, you know, those are the weapons that we think they have actually assembled, although they keep them partially unassembled on the normal circumstances, and but that they have other, you know, they have more plutonium in stock that they could produce if they needed to. So that’s how these differences emerge about the numbers.

Scott Horton 15:24
And that includes second strike missiles deployed on submarines. And do you know how many?

Hans Kristensen 15:31
That’s that’s a big uncertainty right now, there was a consistent piston rumor that Israel has put some cruise missiles or develop more hits for some cruise missiles on it. So conventional attack submarines. So we we’re cautiously including that in our estimate this year. And I’m just saying this because because there’s so little information about exactly what the Israeli Arsenal includes. There’s also a lot of room for speculation and rumors and And even hype. And so one has to be a little careful not to get sort of swept up in that in that kind of excitement and get to all sorts of capabilities. And and you mentioned people saying that there was thermonuclear capability? Well, some people believe that we tend not to think that the Israelis have developed a functioning to state thermal nuclear capability, we do believe they have a boosted a single stage design. But doing that requires the development of more technology, it’s more complex to do and you have to look at what is what is Israel’s intention with its arsenal? What function does it have to serve? The reason people develop thermonuclear weapons was because their targeting strategies required them to blow up things with great explosive power? At first that had to do with accuracy, you just couldn’t hit precisely enough. So you develop large scale thermonuclear weapons, so you could compensate for that. In accuracy, but Israel is not in that situation. They have relatively accurate missiles. And so their calculation, it seems to me at least would have to be a little different. They probably don’t need these super high yeld boards.

Scott Horton 17:14
I don’t agree with it. I don’t think anybody does. But I understand what you mean. So now let’s talk about North Korea a little bit here. As you said, they tested a nuke that was possibly boosted, but nobody really knows exactly for sure. Right.

Hans Kristensen 17:48
Yeah, the US intelligence community seem to say that the the last test that was about what was it 150 Some say 200 kiloton. There’s uncertainty about the specific range because different agencies that monitored have put out different estimates, but it was big, it was significant it was in a yield that you would have to either have a very large very significantly boosted single stage weapon or some form of thermal nuclear design. We’ve heard that characterization from US officials saying that there was some thermal nuclear event involved in this. But whether that means this is a two stage thermal nuclear warhead of the kind of warheads that that do United States and Russia developed over the years, that’s a little more uncertain. But it was set as a different nuclear yield that was produced by that weapon.

Scott Horton 18:44
Right. So supposedly, their missiles can reach DC now, I guess they reached a high enough orbit that they say could have reached DC, if that’s how it had been targeted. One of those tests, maybe two of those tests, but then they also say that even if they do have h bombs, they haven’t been able to successfully miniaturize them to the point they’d be able to marry them to one of these rockets and deliver one to DC. So we have a little bit of breathing room there. But everybody, all kinds of politicians from both parties say that that’s the red line. We can never allow them to have h bombs or I guess atom bombs and the means to deliver them specially not to our capital city. Hey, the West Coast man, maybe but not DC. But then. So I wonder if you think like on the timeline of their development, we know when they started making nukes right after they withdrew from the treaty in oh three and all of that. And and so on the timeline of their progress. Are you worried that they might be able to miniaturize their nukes and marry them to their missiles sometime within the next few years? Or what do you think about that?

Hans Kristensen 20:40
Yeah, our s our, you know, our sense of the where they are, is that they’ve developed ballistic missiles that can reach the US, but it’s a little mirror a little less clear. Whether they have a war functioning warhead for those missiles that can reach the United States. And this is a distinction that’s normally lost in the public discussion about the threat from North Korea. it’s more likely that they have warheads that they’ve developed. Left initially for their shorter range ballistic missile and the medium range systems that they have. So basis in the region, US allies in the region was most certainly be be be at risk. But like you mentioned, they made a lot of progress very quickly. And they seem to unsent intent on continuing that we’ve just heard some very strong statement from the North Koreans about continuing refining and improving their nuclear arsenal. And, and that’s one thing we’ve learned from the North Korean, you can you can pretty much stretch target what they say on this issue. If they say they’ll do it, that that means something real, so they’re not done and we’re likely to see more things coming in the future.

Scott Horton 21:00
Okay, so now let’s talk about this modernization. And part of this, I think, is just a welfare program for the nuclear arms industry. From it was part of the negotiations in the Senate to get the start. The new start passed under Obama was okay, you Get a trillion dollars, it’s now almost two, it’ll probably be four by the time they’re done. And so I don’t know how much of this is just make work. I know that they came out they’ve already deployed the new lower yield cruise missiles. But you know, what else do we need to know about the so called modernization here other than just the special interest aspect, but what about the actual change in the nuclear forces?

Hans Kristensen 21:27
Yeah, so um, the the, the bulk of the US Modernization Program is a complete replacement of the entire arsenal. So everything that was built in this were developed and built from the 80s and 90s, is now coming up for renewal. And the commitment that has been made is that all elements of what’s known as the triad, the sea based the land base, ballistic missiles, and the long range bombers, all of that will be replaced and also the shorter range fighter jets. will also be upgraded and replaced. And so, in addition to this comes nuclear production facilities, expanded plutonium pit production facilities that are being planned. We see a modernization of the nuclear command and control system that’s supposed to support and manage these nuclear forces. So it’s a very, very broad and comprehensive modernization plan. And like you said, it’s going to cost a lot of money. Now, the question is, does it change anything fundamentally compared to what we had before. And so that’s the way you have to look under the hood and sort of see what kind of capabilities are being built into these new systems. Because of course, when they built a new ICBM, it’s not just a copycat cat of the the old one, they put advanced capabilities on it and would like to improve its effectiveness. Likewise, when they upgrade the nuclear gravity bond, for example, the B 61. That is used both by speakers gt bombers, but also by Tactical Fighter wings get the United States and also in Europe, when they upgrade that they don’t just, you know, repaint and dusted off the one that’s there. No, they improve it. So they add a guy to tailgate so he can hit its target more accurately. So even though the numbers may not go up, and even though you don’t may not have fundamentally new nuclear weapons, you you take the chance to, and the opportunity to improve the capabilities of the weapons they can have inthe future.

Scott Horton 23:32
All right, so what do you make of all the new hypersonics ours and the other guys?

Hans Kristensen 23:38
Well, so that’s the next chapter in the arms race, of course, everybody is on that bandwagon. They were trying to get on it. And so at first here, the focus of that is conventional, but they’re also nuclear elements of it. The Russians have rushed into deployment a few missiles that have a hypersonic glide vehicle with a nuclear war. ahead, we’re seeing them working on other types of hypersonic weapons that have nuclear capability. But they tend to be dual capable, if nuclear is involved at all, we’re seeing the Chinese working on similar systems. They’ve even deployed already a, what appears to be a glide vehicle of some sort, for its rocket force. There’s some uncertainty about whether it’s nuclear, but hey, they’re certainly working on that. And the United States is, you know, obviously pointing to them saying, well, they’re doing it, so we need to do it. So there’s sort of a real crash program on the way to try to develop these capabilities. So we’re probably going to see some kind of hyper glide, or hypersonic capability for long range bombers, as well as for submarines and some surface ships. So this is really happening. Now. How much does that change? Does it make the world more dangerous? It certainly does in I think the regional scenario or where you were the timelines and the reaction time To these weapon systems will be much shorter. And so that will put all sides on their toes and be nervous, more nervous about what’s going on etc, etc. At the strategic level, I think it has less impact compared to the type of forces that are out there already now. So I think it’s more in the region you see this dynamic?

Scott Horton 25:18
Yeah, seems like the reaction time thing is everything right? If we have half an hour to decide if we’re really being nuked to death, then that’s already not very much time. If we have five minutes, then essentially, they’re almost guaranteed to choose believing the threat and reacting to it, to err on the safe side kill us.

Hans Kristensen 26:05
All right, exactly. It’s the worst of scenarios because you know, all sides inevitably get into this corner themselves, they paint themselves into this corner of worst case scenario, always have to assume and plan for the worst etc, etc. So, you know, stability becomes much more brittle. In that scenario, and it bothers me, it’s really, I’m really confused why? Why military powers want to go down that route? And because it decreases their security and that other LS. Yeah.

Scott Horton 26:16
Well, you know, I’m a bit of an extremist on this topic. But I wonder how far you go with me on the idea that Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, as much as they did to negotiate away our nuclear weapons stocks back then, that bill clinton right then could have picked up where they left off and negotiated an end to the entire global nuclear arms race and complete disarmament at that point, with the threat of the Soviet Union and world communism over that they could have just called the whole thing off. They didn’t have to be this way at all. We could have, I don’t know 10 nukes each, just to make sure nobody fights and then that’s it. But instead, it was just sort of like we’re talking about with this new start deal. that hey, we get to build a whole new Nuclear Weapons factory that’d be expensive. And the whole thing becomes a self licking ice cream cone. Even though we’re not talking about m 16. We’re talking about h bomb, you know?

Hans Kristensen 27:19
Yeah, I mean, you know, this business has a lot of sort of self serving dynamic in it an element of that. Absolutely. There were huge opportunity missed after the Cold War ended. We’re like you say, we could have fundamentally changed the role of nuclear weapons play and reduced Arsenal’s around the world didn’t happen for a variety of reasons and mistakes were made on all sides about this. And here we are. Now we’re seeing an invigoration of the role of nuclear weapons and an increase of them people countries are rattling the nucleus sort of each other again in a very old overt way. So things are definitely going back, but I can’t help them. I can’t help sort of remarkable so that one, one curious fact about the way that nuclear reductions happened. I looked at this closely. And it’s really interesting to see that the periods where most cuts or the biggest cuts happened, all were during the republican presidents. And it’s big. And there’s a dynamic between the White House and the Congress about why that is.

Scott Horton 28:27
So only Nixon can go to China, that kind of thing.

Hans Kristensen 28:30
Right? Right. Right. And democrats can have to be tough and all that kind of stuff and can’t be seen to be weak and so forth. But I just want to mention one other thing. I think on the on the issue here of nuclear weapons, I think it’s important to think about the problem of the issue of nuclear weapons not just as nuclear weapons in isolation because the role they play, and the reasons for why countries have them also have a lot to do with how they perceive the threat from conventional capabilities. So countries We’ll use nuclear weapons to some extent to compensate against what they think are inferior conventional forces. So there is a much more complex dynamic going on in terms of what shapes the direction that nuclear forces take, and what countries think they can do to reduce their role. So one of the things we’re seeing right now, that is in the context of a non proliferation in the context of the nuclear non proliferation treaty, the nuclear powers in that the P fives as they call, that’s the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China. They they’ve sort of found that, you know, a common theme where they’re trying to say to the other non nuclear weapon states, which is the predominant numbers of countries in that treaty, that Wait a minute, guys, it’s not just about us. It’s not just about nuclear, you also have to work to create the security conditions in the world so that it is possible to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons. So they’re trying to, you know, pass Quite a pass some of the responsibility on to other countries as well.

Scott Horton 30:04
Yeah. All right. I’m sorry, I could do this all day, but I gotta go. But thank you so much for your time, Hans. It’s really been great.

Hans Kristensen 30:10
Great. Thanks for having me.

Scott Horton 30:10
Alright you guys that is Hans M. Christensen. He is Associate Senior Fellow with Zypries nuclear disarmament arms control and non proliferation program and director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists, and check out Tsipras new 2020 year book on global arms and especially on nukes. here@slippery.org Alright, y’all, and that has been anti war radio for this morning. Again, I’m your host, Scott Horton from anti war.com and author of the book fool’s errand time to end the war in Afghanistan. Check out my full interview archive more than 5000 of them now going back to 2003 at Scott Horton, org, and youtube.com slash Scott Horton show on here every Sunday morning from 830 to nine kpfk 90.7 FM in that way, see you.