Hey guys, I'm giving speeches.
I'll be at the Connecticut Libertarian Party State Convention on January the 29th and then February the 26th at the state convention in Utah and Salt Lake City there.
So I don't know, look it up.
All right, y'all welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of antiwar.com author of the book Fool's Aaron, time to end the war in Afghanistan and the brand new enough already time to end the war on terrorism.
And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003 almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scotthorton.org you can sign up for the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash Scott Horton show.
I'll write you guys introducing Richard Hanenia from defense priorities.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing really good.
Really appreciate you joining us here on the show today.
And you know, I finally got a chance to look through a couple of your studies here.
First of all, phantom empire, the illusionary nature of us military power.
And I had missed this one from last spring or early summer, I guess, the inevitable rise of China.
So, um, if it's all right, I wanted to start with the phantom empire.
What do you mean by that?
Uh, so basically the U S whenever the, it's abroad, um, and there's, you know, discussions about what it's, what's, what it's doing in any particular, uh, country.
Uh, the idea is put forth that basically the U S needs to be somewhere because it advances American interests that advances American geopolitical power.
So this is a natural way to think about things.
I mean, most of the time when countries have occupied other countries, they've usually gotten something out of it.
Um, sometimes, you know, by, you know, usually by force or threatening to use force against another country.
And, you know, the American empire really doesn't work like that.
I mean, it has troops all over the world and sometimes it's allies that, that it defends.
Sometimes the U S wants to be in those countries more than the countries want them there.
The U S is there supposedly, uh, to protect them.
Um, and also often the American presence doesn't really have much of an influence on their politics because the U S wants to be there.
Like, you know, like I just said, the U S wants to be there often more than the countries themselves want them there.
So the U S foreign policy establishment desperately wants to be in Germany.
Uh, the U S has no leverage over Germany because it has troops there, um, because they want them there.
Uh, the U S wants them there.
And so, you know, Germany is going to a large extent its own way on foreign policy on, uh, the issue of Russia and Ukraine, what they really care about right now.
Um, and so that, yeah, that's, that's the basic idea that the idea that sort of power flows from the American American military presence rather than other sources.
Uh, it's just, we just, there's just no reason to think that.
So you say in here that, um, I guess, you know, tacitly acknowledging America does overthrow governments, but you say they don't really overthrow friendly governments.
I guess there was that one time they overthrew the government in Australia, but, uh, usually they don't do that.
Right.
And so you're saying that's the joke is you got the Marines there, but nobody thinks they're going to do anything if you don't do what they say.
Yeah.
They overthrow governments, but usually it's, um, it's, it's not because of like the American military base, right.
They don't, they don't usually don't send tanks to overthrow governments.
I mean, they have done that a few times to like, you know, Eastern dictatorships, uh, the U S overthrows governments, you know, all the time from Lindsay O'Rourke's research and other places.
We, we, we all know that.
Um, but it's, uh, you know, it's pretty disconnected to where American troops are stationed abroad.
Uh, but you're saying, because say, for example, in Germany, they don't fear that if they cross the Pentagon, that the CIA is going to come and overthrow them or something like that.
They know that we won't cross that line.
Well, maybe they, maybe, maybe they do.
I mean, maybe, you know, it depends on what kind of government they have.
Maybe they, maybe they do.
Uh, but the point is the American true, like they're not going to use the American military to do it or very, very unlikely.
So nobody, nobody thinks that.
But then, so I see your point.
I don't know if there's good examples of this where, um, maybe there's countries that they really want American troops there more than the Pentagon wants them there.
Or if maybe you have to go to other empires in history where people wanted the foreign bases there, uh, more than the empire that had them.
Um, well, I mean, like for example, Syria, uh, the government of Syria right now probably, uh, wants the Russians there or did, uh, you know, they, they pulled back, uh, they pulled back.
But when, when, uh, Russia was helping Syria, Syria was being defended by, by Russia.
Um, so it mattered a lot more to Syria than it did to Russia, although it did matter to Russia.
I think the Eastern European countries, um, you know, the ones that have been added to NATO recently in like Ukraine, which wants to be a NATO, uh, they, they care more about a U S alliance more than the U S does.
Um, and so it's not that uncommon if it really American, I think if American foreign policy was, uh, basically if you took it at face value, then about what we're doing abroad, we're defending all these countries against foreign threats, that it would make sense.
You would expect those countries to want the U S there more than the U S wants to be there, right?
Like whether South Korea gets conquered, uh, matters a lot more to South Korea, uh, than it does to the United States.
Now, often like, you know, the Philippines, you know, a sort of ambivalent about a one on one and what's the U S there.
I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's a, it's a few times trying to kick the U S out or the U S has had to bribe it.
Um, so, you know, that's a situation where the U S wants to be there pretty much more than the Filipino, uh, the Filipinos want them there.
Something like Germany, it seems like the elites do want the U S there or the U S desperately wants to be there too.
So it's, you know, it looks like it's about the same.
Um, but yeah, I mean, the U S has to, if the U S is going to get anything out of these, um, out of these, uh, military presence abroad, um, you know, there's good, they're going to need, you know, they would need to basically not want to be there or see it as a cost.
And often they don't, I mean, they're, they're horrified by any suggestion that the U S pull out of, you know, any country where it has troops in or take on any, uh, fewer military commitments that it has in the past.
Uh, so this is, you know, this removes any kind of leverage you might have.
Yeah.
You point out in this study that even when Donald Trump is really just playing bad cop a little bit and saying, geez, I don't know, maybe I'll pull out of Germany or maybe I'll pull out of Korea that his own government shouts that he doesn't mean that.
So whatever leverage he might've gotten is pretty much just wasted away.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean the, the reaction to, I mean, the reaction to Trump when he would say, you know, scum skeptical things about the U S presence in Korea or Germany.
I mean, it was really over the top.
You saw that, you know, the media and the foreign policy establishment and the political elites, I mean, they really, they consider this kind of blasphemy, uh, pulling out of Afghanistan.
I mean, it was, you could see the, uh, you can see sort of the reaction to that, uh, in the media.
So yeah, there's a general bias towards interventionism or at least not, uh, pulling back from any commitments, uh, that the U S has at the moment and the rest of the world can observe our politics.
So they're not, you know, it's not a mystery to them, uh, what's going on.
Now you say that, you know, I guess a lot of the foreign affairs types will cite trade relationships and say, well, we have such a good relationship in trade with the European Union, with Japan, with Korea, and that's because of our military relationship.
Look at all this stability.
You wouldn't want to undermine that, would you?
Well, uh, you know, so yeah, I mean, there's like a basic argument that, uh, the U S has a, um, you know, that helps develop the relationship and you have more trade.
I, you know, I don't think anyone has had a good explanation of how exactly that works.
The other argument is the U S, you know, um, keeps things stable and because it, uh, supports stability, uh, in these countries and in these regions, uh, that benefits the U S through, through, you know, trade and investment and, and so on just global commerce.
Um, and you know, that that depends on whether you think the U S is a force for stability.
Often I think it's not, I mean, the U S, uh, you know, the, the, you, the, the U S, um, uh, uh, rivalry with Russia right now is based to a large extent on the fact that the U S wants to bring, um, or potentially wants to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.
And Georgia launched a, uh, a war to reclaim South Ossetia, uh, basically because they, uh, they wanted to settle that issue and they wanted to settle that issue because that that would help them get the NATO membership.
So the NATO membership was just supposed to create stability is really creating instability, uh, by, you know, making Russia feel encircled and making it making it respond, uh, to American action.
So, uh, yeah, I, I don't, uh, you know, you could have to look at every region individually, but it's not obvious that the U S is actually providing a lot of stability.
Yeah.
You know, it was ironic.
I talked with, uh, Clint Ehrlich, who you may have seen on the Tucker Carlson show, this guy who's a Russia analyst.
And he was pointing out that not just France and Germany, but that even the United States does not want to bring Ukraine into NATO.
And they haven't under Obama, uh, under Trump and under Biden, they're just stuck on this thing that, well, the Russians can't tell us what to do.
We'll be damned if we're going to let another country close the door on NATO membership for somebody we'll decide.
But the whole thing is they already have decided that they don't really want to do this.
And yet now they're going the other direction just because Putin's complaining about it.
Yeah.
I don't know if that's true.
I mean, they don't want to bring in NATO today.
Uh, but if you read Adam twos is a recent sub stack on, uh, uh, what's going on with Russia, the Ukraine, they were taking, you know, they were taking steps to do so.
I mean, they were encouraging Ukraine to sort of, you know, no way.
I mean, George W. Bush promised them in the Budapest memorandum then.
Exactly.
So I think what the foreign policy leads wants, I mean, they don't want to move on it.
You know, it's too provocative and it's too complicated to do it now, but I don't have any doubt that a foreign policy leads of the U S hope that in 10, 20 years, uh, you create, is it NATO?
Uh, they, you know, they're playing the long game here and that's why they want to keep the, uh, the door open.
And I think Russia, Russia can see what they're doing.
So I don't think it's, I don't think they've decided it's not worth it.
I wish they wish they did, but I don't think they have.
Yeah.
Well, you know, for a while there, I was counting on Angela Merkel to stand in between these guys and now she's gone.
So I don't know, but she was, she was the one who really insisted too, that they do the Minsk two deal to end the war in East Ukraine.
Yeah.
Well, uh, I mean, Germany is blocking weapons transfers to Ukraine, uh, through Estonia.
And it is basically, it's not as cooperative as America would like.
Uh, so Germany, you know, is still there sort of, uh, uh, sort of, you know, preventing a United front.
I mean, cause they, they depend on Russia.
I mean, they depend on Russia for their, uh, for their gas there, you know, they're trying to finish the, uh, Nord stream two pipeline and, you know, and, and the face of American pressure.
So yeah, I mean, if Russia was this big aggressive country, would you think that every other country in the world, every other country in the region would unite against them?
And, uh, you know, that's, that's not, that's not what we're seeing.
Right.
Yeah.
I, as Victoria Newland said, F the EU.
And what that meant was the Germans are taking too long to do the coup.
So we're going to go ahead and do it without them.
That was what she was complaining about right there in that part of that part.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, so you see, uh, yeah, I, so, um, you know, this, I, just the, the propaganda, I mean, it's just so, so crazy because it's like, Oh, Russia's interfering in the, uh, affairs of other countries.
Uh, we have a rules based international order.
Everyone could choose their alliances.
And it's like, you, if you, you, to believe this stuff, you have to be like completely ignorant of American foreign policy and what it's been doing.
I mean, you, if you had any like clue of American foreign policy, all this stuff just sounds ridiculous.
Um, but you know, they, they, you know, the propaganda apparently works.
Yeah.
In the, uh, the, uh, now famous defense one piece by, uh, Evelyn Farkas who had worked for Obama.
She talked about how since the end of the cold war, no borders have changed through violent force.
And if we let Russia change that it'll crumble the entire rules based international order.
And I thought, wow, she's never really heard of the 1999 Kosovo war, huh?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
When America just gave part of Western Sahara to Morocco in exchange for them making a trade deal with Israel.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, they, they, uh, uh, yeah, the, uh, um, you're like, yeah.
And even like, look at Crimea.
I mean, basically Russia took it over and the world didn't crumble.
Right.
Um, you know, this stuff does it, this stuff doesn't matter.
I mean, there is a good, you know, there is the fact that there's a norm against territorial conquest and it's happening less often is a good thing.
Um, and you know, I wish the U S would contribute to upholding that norm by not invading other countries and also the norm of sovereignty by not, you know, encouraging coups against other countries or overthrowing other countries.
Then it would be in a position to, uh, to, uh, point out the bad behavior of other States.
Um, but you know, we're, we're in no position morally to do that.
Yeah.
Hey, by the way, um, did you see Rand Paul's piece in the American conservative magazine?
And he was the one Republican in the Senate who voted no on Ted Cruz's thing about this.
But Rand Paul said, listen, all this fight about Nord stream two is mercantilism.
They're protecting Texas natural gas exporters who want a monopoly on selling a CH four to the Germans.
And so here, this is playing this outsized role in the fomenting of a new cold war with Russia.
Just some money.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, Rand Paul has been a consistent voice on the Republican side.
One of the, uh, fewer, you know, if any, uh, consistently opposed to this stuff.
I mean, Mike Lee too has been, uh, has been, uh, a little bit, uh, you know, has been to a certain extent against NATO expansion.
I think he voted against one of the, uh, one or two of the countries being brought in, um, in the last few years.
But yeah, you're absolutely right.
I don't know if mercantilism, I mean, I don't know if that's an insult to Republicans now because they, you know, they're, they're sort of open that they're, you know, they're protectionist.
Um, but it's, it's, uh, you know, it's, it's sort of silly, uh, to, you know, for Ted Cruz to get up there and say, you know, like put Putin's pipeline, right.
It's like another, where another country gets its, uh, gets its natural gas from, I mean, it's not really his business.
Right.
Um, and now, yeah, I mean, that's the thing about that term interests, right.
They used to sometimes say vital interests, but then they just get to interest was really could just mean the interests of one or two companies in one of the 50 States.
And then that counts.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They often don't tell you what the national, I mean the national interest is right.
Did they, you know, it's a, it can be ideological.
It could be sort of a, you know, they have these things about establishing deterrence or like protecting national honor.
And yeah, you also have, you always have to sort of think carefully about what exactly they're arguing for and what arguments they're making because it's not always clear.
Yeah.
Now you bring up, uh, some specific policies of, uh, South Korea and in, for that matter, the Philippines and Vietnam and Germany and other NATO allies where they just do whatever they want when it comes to dealing with the Chinese or dealing with the Russians, like on this Nord Stream two pipeline, where the military alliance that we have and even our stationing of forces in their countries seem to have no effect whatsoever on the decisions that they're making there.
Could you elaborate a bit about that?
Yeah, that's, that's, that's right.
I mean, because like, you know, for the re for the reasons I said before, um, the U S you know, really wants to be there.
So they have, they don't have much leverage from the, from the presence of in any particular country.
Um, so like, yeah, for example, Germany with, uh, the Nord Stream two pipeline, which the U S really, really wants, has wanted, uh, not to go forward.
Um, and then you have, um, you know, in South Korea, uh, you have, uh, basically it's, it's accepted Huawei as a, you know, uh, to come into the country and that, you know, that, that's been fine with that.
That's, that, that has, that has been a really big, uh, American priority and, uh, East Asia, you know, South Korea is generally, um, you know, is generally had tried to get along with China.
I mean, they've not, uh, you know, just denounced it for anything it's done internally.
It's not, it hasn't cared about, uh, you know, it's issues with Hong Kong or Taiwan.
Um, South Korea, you know, in recent years has been often, uh, more, uh, friendly towards, uh, opening relations with North Korea than the U S is, uh, under, under, uh, under, under moon.
Um, so it's, um, so yeah, I mean, you could go to different parts of the, uh, the world and you could see this and we could see it at the Middle East, you know, the U S, uh, uh, you know, at least, uh, as you know, has sort of commitment to defend Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia is doing all kinds of crazy things.
Everything from the Khashoggi murder, uh, to, uh, the war in Yemen, which the U S, you know, got, got behind sort of reluctantly, but doesn't really, um, doesn't, nobody can see how it helps American interests.
Uh, so, uh, yeah, you could look at every, so the, the report goes and looks at basically, you know, these different regions of the world and shows, you know, what are we doing where, you know, what is, what is the American influence here that comes from the defense relationship?
Right now, see, I always just sit here moralize about who's getting killed and all this stuff, but I appreciate the academic take to where you just go, look, we got to do some ones and zeros and some rational analysis here.
And it looks like every time we occupy a country, our rivals benefit the most, for example, Iraq and Afghanistan, where Ron and Al Qaeda in Iraq benefited and China and Pakistan, I guess more than anybody else in Afghanistan, but certainly America didn't get anything whatsoever out of either of those wars.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it's so, it's so strange because they're like, Oh, you know, we need to build a stable democracy, you know, in Afghanistan.
And that's what they've been trying to do for, they were trying to do for 20 years.
And it's like, okay, if you did do that, like, so what, like, you know, Afghanistan's biggest trading partner, you know, with the U S during the U S occupation, the biggest trading partners were Iran and China.
And so like, if it's about keeping Iran, you know, if it's like about pushing America, you know, assuming like what they say that Iran and China are American enemies, then why are we like, you know, invading Afghanistan and then like letting it build relationships with these countries and build economic ties.
You know, there's, there's no sort of connection to logic here.
And of course, you know, you know, you and your audience know about the war in Iraq, how it basically made Iran stronger more than anyone else.
I mean, Iraq is also has a pretty good relations with China too.
And so there's, yeah, there's really no connection between sort of these these foreign policy adventures and the national interest.
Even if you sort of take what they're saying at face value, it's sort of as if the war is sort of the point of the war is the war.
And then they come up with a justification later.
Yeah.
Give me just a minute here.
Listen, I don't know about you guys, but part of running the Libertarian Institute is sending out tons of books and other things to our donors and who wants to stand in line all day at the post office, but stamps.com.
Sorry, but their website is a total disaster.
I couldn't spend another minute on it, but I don't have to either, because there's easy ship.com easy ship.com is like stamps.com, but their website isn't terrible.
Go to Scott Horton.org slash easy ship.
Hey y'all Scott here.
You know the Libertarian Institute has published a few great books.
Mine, Bull's errand enough already.
And the great Ron Paul two by our executive editor, Sheldon Richman coming to Palestine and what social animals owe to each other.
And of course, no quarter the ravings of William Norman Grigg, our late great co-founder and managing editor at the Institute.
Coming very soon in the new year will be the excellent voluntarist handbook edited by Keith Knight, a new collection of my interviews about nuclear weapons.
One more collection of essays by Will Grigg and two new books about Syria by the great William Van Wagenen and Brad Hoff and his coauthors, Zachary Wingard.
That's Libertarian Institute.org slash books.
It does seem like that, doesn't it?
That either that or these geniuses really just aren't that smart or something.
I don't know.
Um, yeah.
And one of the most celebrated foreign policy wise men of at least the previous generation was the big new Brzezinski.
And, uh, I pointed out in my book about how in 1997 in the grand chess board, he said, listen, we have got to back the Chinese Pakistan Taliban access in Afghanistan to keep the Iranians, the Russians and the Indians out.
But then that's the exact opposite of the war that we fought for 20 years.
It was to back the Hazaras, the Iranians friends and the Tajiks and the Uzbeks, the Russians and the Indians friends to keep the Pakistanis friends, the Taliban out.
And then as you said, even during the war, the Chinese were the biggest investors in the place.
Um, but I wonder if there's a point where, um, you know, it's easy to imagine, I guess, either way, right?
That they're saying, excellent.
Now we've created a crisis.
Now we can solve that and then we'll switch sides again and whatever.
But it's also pretty easy to imagine that all of them are complete idiots, right?
Like the Supreme court justice last week talking about 100,000 children in the ICU or where they just don't even know what they're talking about at all these people.
So they'll back the Shiite side in Iraq while they're back in the Sunni side in Syria at the same damn time.
This kind of thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, this is a theme of my recent book public choice theory and the illusion of grad strategy.
You know, they get where the, you know, the politicians get where they are by being good at politics and being good at politics doesn't mean you have to actually know anything.
Um, you just have to, you know, look good in front of voters and convince them to vote for you.
And then, uh, the people who are like foreign policy, uh, people working at think tanks or working in government, they're either selected by the politicians.
Often they're, you know, they're supported by, uh, uh, they're supported by, uh, weapons manufacturers.
They're supported by foreign governments.
And, you know, they're often looking for, uh, people who will say the things they want them to say.
So the generals, I mean, the generals, now they all go work for defense contractors.
I mean, as soon as they're, uh, or, uh, some other kind of contract, uh, federal government contractors, um, as soon as they retire.
Um, and you know, the, the, you know, the, the, they, they say the things that are in their interest to say, and it doesn't have to make sense.
You're right.
I mean, we like, we supposedly hate Iran and then like, you know, we, we get rid of, uh, their enemies, Saddam Hussein, and then we have to stay there because we have to fight Iran.
And then like we're against Al Qaeda.
And then, uh, you know, the Islamists, the Islamists try to overthrow, you know, the government of Libya, we help them.
Um, and then we go to Syria and then we help the other Islamists, you know, over try to overthrow a different government.
And then we're, and then we're in Syria to keep, you know, and then we go to Syria to keep the Iranians out.
Um, and it's all, yeah, the people, anyone can look at this and say, this is ridiculous, but to these people who sort of have an interest, um, and having it all make sense and keep pushing for the same policies, um, you know, it's been very good for them.
Yeah.
Well, that's the thing about it too, right?
Is they always just fail upwards and I can't believe you wrote a book called that.
That sounds so fun.
Uh, really, I have a sub chapter of my book is called public choice theory about how we got into the war in Libya, but, Oh wow.
I should, I should, I should have.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Let's trade books.
Yeah, we'll get this done.
But no, I like that.
And public choice theory.
Could you just describe for people real quick in a nutshell what that means?
Uh, so public choice theory is basically you're taking the tools of economics and you're using it to, uh, uh, understand politics, right?
So there's this sort of, if you have like a, you know, standard sort of international relations analysis, I mean, it's a very nice, you could have a very naive thing where these people are, you know, don't know what they're doing and they're sitting there and they're coming up with a strategy, uh, to advance the American interest or, you know, accomplish something in, in geopolitical and geopolitically.
Um, and so, you know, that's one way of looking at the world.
The other way of looking at politics is basically, you know, they're, they're self interested actors and every, and every part of the system is self is, uh, they're, you look at the parties and you look at what their incentives are.
Uh, so the, you know, the idea is what are the incentives of, uh, politicians, the incentives of politicians is to, um, uh, to get elected.
What is the incentive of voter?
Well, the voter is just, you know, they don't have an incentive to really pay attention to the foreign policy or anything else.
I mean, they're, uh, you know, they're, they're, uh, they're doing, they're, uh, deciding things based on, based on, um, you know, what sounds good.
And then you have, um, you know, the military establishment and you have different factions.
I mean, the, what, the, the, one of the main lessons of public choice theory, I've been going back to Manker Olson, uh, is the idea, uh, that groups with a concentrated interest in a policy outcome are more likely to get their way against groups with a diffuse diffuse interest.
So if you're a weapons contractor and most of your, uh, uh, uh, most or all of your, um, um, revenue comes from the government, like say, you know, which is the case for something like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon, um, you have, you have, uh, you're, you have an interest into lobbying for, uh, for, for outcomes that are good for yourself and people who might have an, uh, interest in the more diffuse interest in the sense that they do not individually gain the tech, you know, the taxpayer, the rest of society, they don't have, they don't have an incentive, uh, to, uh, to, to push further, to push for the opposite policy outcome than the one that the concentrated interest wants.
And so I think that this is the way to understand American foreign policy.
If you're going to it and you look for coherence, right, you look for a say, Oh, we're, you know, we're enforcing, uh, uh, the rules based international order, or, you know, we are, you know, the shining city on the Hill or we're even, we're trying to establish like dominance and, you know, uh, push other people around even, even the more cynical, uh, takes on American foreign policy.
I don't think, uh, I don't think foreign policy makes sense from that perspective, but if you look at it as sort of, you know, just a bunch of people trying to continue getting paid and continue getting power and, you know, sometimes they believe it, but they believe it because they're supported by other people, um, who have a direct interest in an outcome where they believe it because it's good for their job.
Um, and then you sort of look at the policy as sort of a, you know, in a sense, a series of accidents from like the macro level, from the level of, uh, the, from the level of, uh, uh, you know, what is good for the country as a whole or what is good from the, uh, for the world as a whole.
Um, you know, that's just, that's just a better way to understand foreign policy.
You know, there was, uh, one report was by Josh Rogan and I can't remember who did the other, but there were, there are two or three reports about the conversation on the carpet in the Oval Office when they decided on Libya and you had the secretary of defense and the national security advisor and the deputy national security advisor and the deputy, uh, secretary of defense and the vice president and a few others saying, no, we should not do this.
And then on the other side, he had Hillary Clinton, Samantha power, and Susan Rice, and they wanted to do it.
And all three of them wanted to do it for their own reasons.
As a Michael Hastings reported, Samantha power was tired of doing a rinky dink, do good or stuff on the national security council, uh, where she had a deputy spot or something and wanted to move up and get a promotion, which worked.
She became the ambassador to the United Nations.
And then Rice got promoted from, uh, from ambassadors to the United Nations to national security advisor.
And then this was obviously supposed to be a feather in Hillary Clinton's cap for when she ran for president in 2016 that she'd done this great war.
As is revealed in all her emails with Jake Sullivan and Sidney Blumenthal and others that this had nothing whatsoever to do with the people of Libya.
It was about these three women and their ambitions.
And then Obama sided with them over the secretary of defense telling him, you know, we already got two wars.
And I don't know if we need another one right now since we were losing these two.
Yeah.
I mean, Obama said it was a, you know, a 51 49 decision.
I mean, you, you know, for to go to war.
I mean, you think you maybe you'd want, you know, you know, more certainty than that.
Uh, the, uh, yeah.
And these, um, you know, it's hard to say, you know, whether they just wanted a promotion or even if they're like, you know, they're ideological.
I mean, some people really believe that the U S can do good across the world.
I mean, it's, it's in the face of all evidence, um, based on our interventions, but, you know, presumably some people believe that.
And, you know, I, the point is, I mean, none of them, but the, you know, whatever you think their motivations are, the point is none of them thought much carefully about what would come after.
I mean, it's not like they, you know, they had a plan for who was going to rule Libya instead.
It was just like, let's break the government.
And then hopefully something, you know, good will work out.
Right.
Even if, even if for their own political interests, I mean, Libya became, you know, sort of a, uh, if anything, it became a hindrance to Hillary's political ambitions because, um, you know, because of Benghazi and because everyone realized that Libya was a disaster.
So it wasn't like something she could point to and say, you know, I'm so proud we did this.
It was something she really wanted to forget by 2016.
Um, but, uh, but yeah, maybe that's just her not, you know, not being good at political calculations or maybe, you know, just as, you know, uh, uh, you know, I don't know if it's more pessimistic or optimistic to believe she actually believed this and, you know, thought that foreign intervention is good for the world and good, you know, good for her politics because she thinks it's all going to work out.
But if, you know, if she, if she thinks that, you know, there's a, you know, there, there, there were certain, there's a certain delusion there.
Right.
Well, the point is where she doesn't have to bear any of the costs.
So like her, her friend, um, Ann Marie Slaughter said, well, Hillary's point of view is that if something is going on and there could be bad consequences either way, then she would rather be caught trying.
That's better than doing nothing.
Right.
And then, so it did, it probably did cost her the presidency.
In fact, though, you know what I mean?
I think Libya probably was worth a couple of percentage points here and there.
Yeah.
I mean, it's possible.
Yeah.
I mean, uh, I think because of the Benghazi thing more than actual destroying Libya because the Republicans are made built to make a big scandal, uh, out of that.
Um, but yeah, it's, it's certainly plausible.
Yeah.
You know, it's the, the, it's such a, um, you know, the world is so complex that, you know, if you're just going to have a, um, uh, a bias towards doing something, there's a lot more ways to break things than there are to make things better.
And you know, that philosophy is going to lead you to break a lot of things.
Maybe once in a while you'll, you'll sort of stumble into something good.
Most of the time you probably won't because our government doesn't have the vision and the, uh, uh, and the foresight and the knowledge to remake foreign countries.
You know, we, they, they barely can govern their own country.
You know, our, our state has not been doing so well.
So the idea that we can, we're in position to say, you know, this government is bad and should be replaced by something else.
And we can sort of midwife or facilitate that process.
Um, I don't know where they get the confidence to believe this.
Right.
Especially when it's all this foreign interventionism is at the root of what's wrong with the country falling apart the way it is right now.
If just starting with the $10 trillion, but all the societal consequences and everything else of just having the 21st century based around the idea of war in the middle East this whole time, the way it's been, didn't have to be this way at all.
They want to know why they're losing credibility to dictate to other countries.
It's the dictating to other countries that's cost them their credibility, you know, in every way.
It seems like, all right, so wait, here's the segue to our next conversation here about China, which is that you talk about Vietnam, which, you know, funny enough, despite our failed effort to keep the communists from taking over that country in the 1970s, we got a pretty good relationship with them now, but not as good as we have with the Philippines or Japan.
And you say that they are the ones who are most antagonistic towards the Chinese in the region, as opposed to South Korea or the Philippines who the Americans would like to take a more antagonistic stance.
Is that right?
Yeah.
And so that's the flip side of the coin.
The argument is, you know, the U S is very close to South Korea.
Basically South Korea depends on the U S for its defense and South Korea really doesn't do what the U S wants.
And Vietnam, the U S doesn't have a defense relationship.
They have, you know, normalized relations now.
But the U S basically doesn't, you know, guaranteed that it's going to defend Vietnam or that it's going to, or it doesn't, it doesn't station troops in Vietnam.
And yet Vietnam is increasing its military spending more than anyone else in the region.
And it seems scary, you know, it seems frightened of China for its own reasons.
And, you know, that's just sort of the flip side of the coin.
Having a strong military relationship doesn't seem correlated with, with that country doing what the United States wants towards China and not having a great relationship with the United States doesn't seem correlated with do with not doing what the U S wants, right?
They, they might end up, they might end up antagonistic to China.
So it was just the, it's just the point that the U S relationship system is not really related to American interests or, you know, American effectiveness in seeking out what it wants.
All right.
Well, maybe we have a hard time herding our cats on our side, but isn't it important that we deter Russia from invading Eastern Europe and deter China from conquering Taiwan first and Japan second?
Well, well, I mean, so the, so Russia, I mean, so, you know, you have to look at capabilities and intentions, right?
Russia does not want basically, there's no, you know, there's no indication that it's going to go invade its neighbors to the extent that there is indication that they're, they're going to do.
So there's some indication now that they, you know, they might go into Ukraine.
And, you know, by the time your listeners, your listeners hear this, it might've might've actually happened already.
But yeah, the reason, I mean, the reason as we talked about is the reason that the antagonism of the Ukraine in the first place is because the U S has basically been trying to bid that the U S has basically been trying to bring that country to NATO.
It's been trying to bring it into its own sphere of influence.
Russia considers it a historical, historically a very important part, sort of the, the mother, you know, Kiev is sort of the mother of Russian civilization.
So, you know, Ukraine doesn't matter to the U S either way.
I mean, there's, you know, there's no part of the world that matters less.
I mean, the, you know, the Balkans in Eastern Europe don't matter either.
I mean, these places the U S after world war two was happy to, you know, not happy to, but you know, it lived with giving them to the, you know putting them under Soviet influence or letting them be under Soviet influence.
Nobody considered that something worth fighting for the U S could have, you know, tried to go to war and dislodge the Soviet union from Eastern Europe.
But nobody, you know, nobody was calling for us to do that because people understand these regions just don't matter.
And then, and then, you know, in East Asia, similarly, I mean the, the U S you, you know, China sees Taiwan as part of China.
They care about that issue much more than, than we do.
You know, is, is the U S, is it worth the U S going to war to stop China?
I mean, people try to come up with reasons.
They say semiconductors, you know, you can still buy the semiconductors from China.
I mean, there's no reason you could, I think there was no reason you couldn't invest, you know, any, any investment to for the market to to adjust to new conditions will be cheaper than, than a war.
And then, you know, the idea that, you know, China would go to war with Japan.
Japan is Japan is, you know, one of the tech most technologically advanced countries in the world.
It you know, it can have nuclear weapon and you know, in months if it wanted to and you know, it can, it can defend itself.
And now while we will, you know, what, what instead of this trying to have to go after it, I mean, it would be pretty disastrous.
So yeah, I think this is our, these are, uh, uh, sort of, um, it takes a lot of imagination to sort of imagine these scenarios in which the U S needs to be there to prevent some kind of, you know, one of these countries going on a war path.
I mean, there's, there's little indication that, you know, that's going to happen.
You know, uh, Gareth Porter wrote this piece about how they had a policy called dual deterrence about how they would let China know periodically that, listen, we really don't want you reunifying with Taiwan by force.
That would be really bad.
But at the same time they would not making a direct threat, but sort of implying one.
But at the same time they would tell the Taiwanese, especially the, I don't know if you call them the right, the more nationalist independence minded ones that you guys need to pipe down with all your provocative statements about declaring full independence and sovereignty, because they see that obviously as needlessly provocative and could actually cause the war.
But of course the Taiwanese feel like the more F-16s they got and the more American Navy ships around they have, then maybe, uh, you know, the more confident that they feel or overconfident to, uh, kind of, you know, get louder and talk more about independence.
So it seems like it could really be, in other words, a self-fulfilling prophecy, where if they didn't feel like we had their back, they might actually mind their manners and be happy with the autonomy that they have and leave it at that instead of picking a fight since they figure that we're going to win it for them.
That kind of thing.
Yeah.
I mean, when you're trying to do this, yeah.
So the, you know, the US foreign policy establishment, it's not as if they just want everything to be as aggressive as possible.
Um, you know, they don't like, uh, you know, they don't like to be surprised and they don't like sudden moves that can force them to do something that's politically, uh, politically potentially difficult.
Um, and the problem when you're playing these both sides, you're telling China, you know, don't move into Taiwan and you're telling Taiwan, don't antagonize China too much.
I mean, you're trying to do too much.
You're trying to manage these complex relations and the, uh, uh, you know, the potential for miscalculation is very high.
So Georgia, um, it provoked the war with, uh, with Russia and this, uh, during the Bush administration, uh, because they thought that the U S had their back and it turns out that, that we didn't, we weren't ready to do anything, uh, about Georgia.
Right.
And so you could see the same thing with Ukraine.
Ukraine is a lot more belligerent, um, than it otherwise would be, uh, towards Russia, uh, because it, you know, it thinks you're up in the U S will potentially bail it out or that eventually, you know, that eventually, you know, they're gonna, they're gonna come into NATO and they're gonna have, you know, the U S, um, the U S, uh, just right there and with an ironclad, uh, commitment to defend them against Russia.
Uh, so yeah, I think it's better if these relationships between these countries reflect the, uh, the power realities on the ground.
Um, and American, um, intervention is often, you know, just, uh, is more often a source of instability here than it is a source of stability and peace.
All right.
Now you're convinced in this piece that especially looking forward two and three and four decades from now that China absolutely is getting rich and will be the dominant power in all of Asia.
Is that correct?
Yeah.
Yes.
Right.
I mean, look, uh, middle income, you know, the U S, China has passed the U S on a GDP depending on how you measure or it's going to pass it, you know, the next decade or so.
Um, China has 1.4 billion people.
It's a highly innovative economy, you know, for, uh, it's, it's really an outlier and how innovative it is, um, for a middle income country.
Um, and so it's gonna, you know, it's going to, it's just, you know, it's the pop, the population size, plus the innovation plus the growth and the coming decades, you know, China will be the biggest, uh, will be the biggest economy in the world.
I mean, unless something, you know, extreme happens, you can't tell the future with certainty, but that's what you have to expect to be the most likely outcome.
Um, and then given that's the case, you know, what are we going to, you know, what are we going to do with it, with that, uh, information?
Are we going to, um, artificially try to keep the same level of American influence at East Asia and the American dominance that existed back when China was a, uh, was a third world country and basically, you know, had limited power to project abroad and limited economic links with the rest of the world.
Um, I, you know, I don't think that that's a realistic policy.
Um, so I think we're going to have to, you know, really get used to, I mean, and this is, we're in the growing pains of it.
Now we're going to really have to get used to a, a bipolar world, but we really more multipolar.
I mean, and you could, you know, India is also growing and, and, uh, uh, you know, there's, there's potentially, you know, there's, uh, potentially other countries out there that can, you know, they can rise if, if they, if they get their house in order.
Um, and Russia, you know, is not a, not the economically the strongest in the country, but definitely a militarily, you know, it's, it's certainly a force in its region.
It's a bigger force than the U S and Eastern Europe as far as having ground troops.
Um, you know, the, the sort of denial of power realities, we can see this in, this is, this is never a good thing in foreign policy.
This was, this was what we saw in Afghanistan where the, you know, the Afghan government was a house of cards and the Taliban was a real, uh, fighting and potentially governing force.
And we try to sort of delay the inevitable there.
And I think we're, um, I think we're hoping for things that are really not possible at East Asia, given the power dynamics and, you know, the, the report is a, uh, uh, is an argument for not doing that and taking a more realistic approach.
Sorry.
Hang on just one second.
Hey guys, anybody who signs up to listen to this show by way of Patreon will be invited to join the Reddit group.
And I'm gonna start posting stuff over there more.
That's patreon.com slash Scott Horton show.
Thanks.
Hey y'all.
Libertasbella.com is where you get Scott Horton show and Libertarian Institute shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and stickers and things, including the great top lobsters designs as well.
See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart.
Libertasbella from the same great folks who bring you ammo.com for all your ammunition needs too.
That's Libertasbella.com.
You guys check it out.
This is so cool.
The great Mike Swanson's new book is finally out.
He's been working on this thing for years and I admit I haven't read it yet.
I'm going to get to it as soon as I can, but I know you guys are going to want to beat me to it.
It's called why the Vietnam war nuclear bombs and nation building in Southeast Asia, 1945 through 61.
And as he explains on the back here, all of our popular culture and our retellings and our history and our movies are all about the height of the American war there in say 1964 through 1974.
But how did we get there?
Why is this all Harry Truman's fault?
Find out in why the Vietnam war by the great Mike Swanson available now.
Well, so I wonder what you think about all the people on the right who are so concerned that we're not just seeing the rise of China in Asia, but that they're going to replace America as the unipolar world empire here.
And we are going to be subject to their will here in North America.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's bizarre.
I mean, the, you know, the idea that China has political influence in the U S I mean, there's no country in the world that is more immune to influence from other powers than the U S is.
I mean, the U S supports a, you know, a non-government organizations and all these countries that funds, you know, journalists and open, you know, it does, it does this, these things, you know, interferes in politics and it, it dictates the countries and it does this openly.
Right.
So China, I mean, you could, you know, they're you know, they're an economic power, they're, they're a military power.
Are they a propaganda power?
Are they, do they have, you know, a way to influence the American system?
You know, in a certain ways they do, I mean, because businesses do want to do business with them.
And there's, you know, mutual, you know, there's a potential for mutual benefit from trade.
That's not an evil thing.
I mean, that's what, you know, that's how countries behave.
And that's, you know, that can be an interest of all involved when it's based on a, what it's based on, uh, consent between the parties.
Um, but I think, you know, I think for the U S to, you know, I think for people to get really excited about a, uh, you know, a more antagonistic approach to China, I think they really have to exaggerate, um, sort of the harm of what China, uh, potentially can do to the United States or what it potentially wants to do with the U S or, you know, its power to influence, you know, American politics.
And, you know, I think these things tend to be very, very exaggerated, uh, for reasons, you know, for whatever psychological reasons or for, you know, whatever interest people have in a, uh, more kind of conflictual approach to China.
Yeah.
Um, and I guess they would have the same problem that we have.
It's a long way from here.
Yeah.
I don't know how they're supposed to dominate us, but, uh, you know, I'll tell you what, I did meet a guy who.
Yeah.
It's such a simple fact that, you know, you know, we forget this.
Yes.
They are a long way from here.
Right.
That is a, that is a good thing to keep in mind and people generally don't.
So the most credible thing I heard about that from somebody was he started off talking about Africa and I don't even really know the truth of this, but he was saying that millions now of Chinese have moved to Southern Africa and that this is, you know, ethnic replacement, man, this is real colonization going on here.
And they can pull the same thing in Mexico in another 50 or a hundred years.
And they got, there's so many Chinese that they got plenty to go around.
That's great.
Look at, look at the birth rate of Chinese and look at the birth rate of Africans and then tell me there's an ethnic replacement in Africa.
That, that is absolutely insane.
China is having a, you know, population shrinkage and they're, you know, they're, they're, uh, you know, they're, they're having enough trouble getting their own birth rate up and just maintaining their numbers.
Right.
I think that's, I think this is a, this is a, this is a fantasy.
I mean, millions of white people moved to Africa, right?
I mean, uh, you know, South Africa, there's, you know, Europeans all over the continent.
I would bet there's more Europeans still than there are China, Chinese and Africans.
I'm not sure about that at all.
Yeah, of course.
When you count the white South African population, uh, right.
Um, so yeah, this seems like a, yeah, this seems like another one of those, one of those things, you know, it's hard because you have to shoot down every one of these things individually.
Right.
They say China is controlling the U S and you say, no, that's not true.
And then they say, Oh, China's ethnically replacing the Africans and they're going to move into Mexico.
And you say, that's not true.
And then, you know, then they'll make up something else.
Right.
And that's why it's so hard to argue with these people.
And you have to understand that there's sort of a, you know, there's sort of a need to have an enemy.
Yeah.
And that really is what it is.
And it's funny in it too, how everybody understands this.
Ike Eisenhower coined the phrase, you just can't escape that, you know, regulatory capture by the arms industries or not just regulatory, but government capture by the arms industry.
Everybody knows that that's what's going on here.
Everybody knows that, you know, the first time you ever find out what's a think tank, Oh, that's the arms manufacturers pay these egghead weenie guys to sit around writing excuses for weapon sales.
You know, it's just, it's the open conspiracy right in front of all of us, you know?
Yeah.
The, uh, you're, yeah, you're absolutely, I mean, you're, you're right.
I think that people should know this, but you know, I think that, you know, shouldn't underestimate how much, you know, the propaganda think tanks and in the media and from government, I mean, they work on somebody, you know, that's why they, uh, that's why they invest so much money and effort into them.
So yeah, I think there are a lot of people who are genuine believers who, who just, you know, accept the propaganda that, you know, they have a, maybe an instinct to, you know, to, uh, you know, it's easy to convince people that foreigners are out to get them and they don't have any personal experience.
They don't know, you know, anybody from China or anybody from Russia or anything.
And I think it's very, very easy for people to buy into these things.
And I think that, you know, what you, what people like you do, and what I, what I do is point out like, look, the entire information space, um, has been shaped with people who have very, uh, kind of narrow, uh, interests or have some kind of ideological interest.
And they're not the people who necessarily, they, they, you know, they don't necessarily, um, have the, you know, the same ideas or the same, uh, interests as the rest of the country does.
And I think, you know, just pointing that out to people, that's one of the things I do in my book and, and I try to do in my writing.
Um, I think that's a, you know, that's very important.
So sort of, uh, um, to sort of discrediting, uh, uh, this class to a large extent.
Yeah.
All right.
So how's the Alliance system shaping up in the East?
Now we have Australia and South Korea and Japan.
These are already our allies, but they're trying to kind of bring everybody really together to hem in the Chinese in a way.
So what's the status of that project?
Yeah.
So there is, you know, talk that, you know, the, of like the quad, right, which is the, uh, uh, U S and, uh, Australia, India, uh, and Japan, right.
They're going to have sort of an Alliance, you know, not officially against China, but, you know, sort of really against China.
And there's more, especially from like Australia, uh, there is more of a sense of like, you know, talking, talking a big game about China.
Um, and so the, you know, but how much of that actually translates, you know, into, um, something, you know, really important.
It's, um, you know, we'll, we'll see.
Um, you know, it's easy for these countries to sort of tell the U S you know, what the U S wants to hear.
Um, you know, I think the better question to see what's going to happen in the next years is do they invest more in their, uh, uh, do they invest more in their militaries?
Uh, do they actually, uh, take steps to not trade as much with China?
There's little indication of that happening.
So until you get to that point, I mean, the talk of, you know, the, uh, sort of the discourse and the way they, their attitudes towards China, um, is, you know, is, is, is not nothing.
Um, it's something, but I think to, to gauge sort of the extent of the importance of what's going on and countries moving towards the U S I think, you know, I think you need to look for some hard metrics there.
I think what, you know, what the, what most countries in the region want and what they've wanted, um, uh, for the previous decades is they don't want to choose between the U S and China.
They just want to trade with each of them and they want to basically have sovereignty in their affairs and they don't want to be forced to choose one side or the other.
And the U S, you know, the sort of the, uh, the, uh, a raison d'etre of the, uh, of the Ford policy establishment is becoming, um, to, uh, to cover China.
And so I think they're feeling a lot of pressure from the American side.
It's some, you know, some cases now that they, I mean, they really just dislike China.
I mean, Japan has, you know, has had a tough relationship in the last decade with China and India has their own, um, conflict with China, right?
They have, they had this border dispute that's gone back many decades.
Um, but do they actually, but are these countries actually interested in a substantive substantive alliance that will cost something on their end?
Right.
And you know, it w it's, uh, it's yet to be, it's yet to be proven.
Um, if that's the case, I mean, the country like Japan, you know, has very low, uh, low birth rates has very low economic growth.
I mean, the, uh, China is, uh, you know, it's, uh, economically rising very quickly.
You know, it doesn't seem like it makes a lot of sense that they want it.
They'd want to pick a fight with China at this point, but you know, they're, they're, uh, they're hosting a lot of American troops, so maybe it doesn't matter to them either way.
Right.
Um, so yeah, we'll see what happens in the coming decades.
No.
Um, I'm not sure if you saw this piece by John Mueller at, uh, the Quincy Institute a couple of weeks ago there.
Uh, China has been a failure at hegemony, so let's just chill.
And of course, John Mueller is the author of overblown and the stupidity of war and, you know, pretty much a Cato guy when it comes to foreign policy.
And, uh, he's saying, you know, they're not very good at throwing their weight around.
Um, you know, they're as clumsy as we are when it comes to that kind of thing.
They're wolf warrior diplomacy just makes everyone resent them.
And, uh, it's, you know, and, and sort of, uh, to the point that you were bringing up there a second ago about how many neighbors they have, they have a lot of neighbors.
It seems like each one of those countries where they got a dozen international borders surrounding them one way or the other, it seems like that's just enough to keep them busy.
Just trying to keep the peace at all times, nevermind trying to be the dominant force in Bhutan and Pakistan and outer Mongolia and everywhere else too, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that Mueller is right.
I mean, I don't think they're very good at it.
I don't think they want what the U S wants, right?
The U S wants basically a veto over the internal politics of every country in the world.
And China just doesn't, doesn't care that much, um, about what, uh, what other countries do.
Um, so yeah, I mean, they're very limited.
They're not very good at the end of the propaganda game.
They're not very good at sort of a covert operations.
China just has that not, this has not been their strengths and it's not something they've prioritized or, you know, cared about as much as other places do.
I mean, they care about certain things.
Like they really care about making sure another country, you know, doesn't recognize Taiwan, but they don't care.
Like for example, whether you're a democracy or a, you know, a dictatorship or, or how you get along with your neighbors, that's just not, that's just not something that they're, uh, that they're, you know, that, that they're into.
And I think the, you know, American sort of, uh, ambitions abroad and it's sort of a sense of its role in the world is so expansive, um, that we sort of project out other countries.
Oh, of course, China is going to try to, you know, interfere in the affairs of other countries and overthrow them and, you know, do crazy things like invade, you know, invade Iraq like we did.
And just because we do these crazy things and, you know, we are sort of, uh, you know, taking a, take an expansive view of our role in the world.
It doesn't mean that's how other countries are going to behave and, you know, we should keep that in mind.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, so tell me about the future then.
You're the deputy national security advisor and you're writing our new national security strategy.
Help me see what the next 30 years look like then if, as far as how we should be dealing with China.
Uh, okay.
So how, yeah.
So, I mean, I think we should be pretty much, um, you know, looking for a way to acknowledge the fact that China is going to be, um, the dominant power in East Asia.
I think one of the reasons that we have such, um, we have such, uh, uh, antagonism towards China and Russia is because we have an, you know, we still in the back of our mind believe that these countries are illegitimate because they don't have the same kind of government that we do.
Um, that basically that, you know, the Russia should have, I think Russia is the ultimate target of the color, color revolutions.
China, you know, we, we, uh, you know, I think that it's the same thing here.
It's like, we, you know, we, we think that the system is fundamentally, uh, illegitimate.
And I think that we take regime change off the table and we basically, um, we don't, we acknowledge that, you know, it's not for us to decide how every country in the world lives.
I think a lot of, you know, I think a lot of attentions, um, go away.
So I would be more explicit on that point.
Basically I would, you know, I would, uh, uh, I would not fund these, you know, sort of what they call them civil, you know, um, uh, civil society organizations, you know, so they can, they, they're, you know, they're basically pawns of, uh, are agents of American influence abroad.
Um, I think, you know, I think that you can encourage Taiwan to, you know, take responsibility for its own defense.
Um, you know, it's, uh, it's a technologically very advanced country.
It's a rich country.
Does that mean it can hold out against China?
Probably, you know, probably, probably not.
I mean, so, you know, it's going to have to, you know, find a way to live in a sort of one country.
I think you need to get a one country, two systems, right?
I think that the Chinese, you know, the Chinese, um, haven't, you know, they're no longer a communist state.
So I think they would basically, they would basically limit Taiwan's autonomy, but they would end, they would end up basically the Taiwanese can live a very good life under, under Chinese rule or sort of under a neutral state.
Um, and so I think this is, you know, this is what we need.
I think we need to basically step back from, from East Asia.
I mean, it really doesn't, it doesn't matter much to us at all.
You know, globally, I think we need to, I think the sanctions regime is, um, you know, really a war crime.
I mean, what we've done to countries like Venezuela and Syria, um, and Cuba, they, you know, their own governments have serious problems, but we've made the, the, uh, the, the problems of these people, the people in these countries, you know, much, much worse, um, through cutting them off from the global economy.
And I would, yeah, I would not do any regime change wars.
Um, and you know, I would focus on the things that, you know, we have in common, that we, that we care about things like, uh, uh, things like nuclear proliferation, um, things like, um, you know, climate policy and energy policy and global pandemics.
I mean, there's so much, so many things that are actually important to the U S in a way that, you know, who rolls up rules over East Eastern Ukraine is not important.
Right.
And because we, you know, we have these antagonistic relationships, we ignore cooperation on the important things.
And we focus on where we disagree on these things that fundamentally aren't important to us or to the wider world.
Um, so yeah, I would have a, you know, less militaristic, less interventionist foreign policy, and one based on more on mutual respect and cooperation.
Yeah.
Now you write in here that, um, the theory, I guess this was mostly from the, uh, university of Chicago, uh, Milton Friedman types that, um, the more, uh, Chinese society becomes capitalistic, the more democratic their political system will become too.
Yeah.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't blame the university of Chicago or Milton Friedman types for that.
That economist, I think that's more of you that was in like political science than it really was the economic people.
Okay.
Well, and so you say that that proved that there couldn't be anything more wrong, but I followed the footnote and it was just a Hillary Clinton speech.
So I thought that must've been a mistake, but I wonder, uh, I mean, if you can't replay the counterfactual and all of that, but, and, and I know it does sound, I guess, slightly utopian or whatever, but I don't know.
I mean, it seemed to make sense on the face of it, but I was thinking that maybe the big variable at play is America's terror wars this whole century long so far.
And that if our government hadn't been bathing in the blood of 2 million dead, innocent people and backing Al Qaeda in Libya and Syria and Yemen, and just the madness, the chaos that they've inflicted in central Asia as well, this whole time, that then when they talked about the declaration of independence and the natural rights of man and things like that, they wouldn't just sound like ridiculous propaganda from completely morally and financially bankrupt people in a collapsing empire.
The kind of thing that maybe even Saudi society and Chinese society would have had to take seriously that, you know, the Americans talk all the time about how their bill of rights is better and geez, maybe we should have fairer trials.
And maybe we should have an independent judiciary and maybe we could have done a little bit better in pushing the best of our ideas of political freedom in the world if it wasn't for all the hypocrisy, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, so it wouldn't be unquestionably when the US, you know, does things like, you know, prosecute Julian Assange, when it invades other countries, even when we have, you know, like deep partisanship and deep, you know, problems with our system, the rest of the world does see that and it does make us look hypocritical.
It does take away much of our credibility.
You know, at the same time, you know, we should, you know, I think there's, you know, a limit to what we can do.
So even if we behave, you know, angelically, it doesn't necessarily mean every country is going to move, you know, in the direction that we'd like, we'd like to move.
And, you know, these countries, I mean, they have different, there are different historical points.
You know, you can't just say we're going to tear every, you know, people should tear everything down and, you know, build a democracy.
But, you know, we should, I think be showing people what works and, you know, the Soviet Union collapsed not because like, you know, we like supported an insurgency or anything, but because they saw that their economic system didn't work.
And they wanted to, basically they wanted to try something else.
I mean, they lost faith in their own system and, you know, like today, it seems like today, like we don't care.
Like if our, our system is not working, we just want to force it down everyone's throat.
Right.
Like, you know, our, you know, the same people who think like democracy is over in the U S and they keep talking about like, you know, Trump and Republicans are basically ruining our democracy and we're, you know, we're moving away from a democracy.
They're at the same time wanting to force, you know, what they call democracy out to the rest of the world.
And so you're right.
I think it's, it's, uh, I don't know how much like, you know, we, you know, our sort of moral rectitude can influence other countries, but I do think it's looking more and more ridiculous as time goes on.
Yeah.
Well, and you know, it's funny too that they overthrow a democracy in a heartbeat if it stands in their way, like the one in Ukraine, you know, a democratically elected leader that leans toward Russia.
Well, forget him.
We'll do a street putsch with a bunch of neo-Nazis to throw him right out of office.
Even when he agreed to new elections in a couple of months, not good enough and started a war over it.
You know what I mean?
That's what they think about democracy.
And in fact, you know, the only thing wrong with our country is that they haven't done a regime change in Moscow yet.
And if they had back in say 2011, then Putin wouldn't have been able to destroy our democracy in 2016.
Otherwise, everything else that our establishment has done to be the stewards of this nation and this world empire, the last 20 or 30 years has been perfect.
You know, yeah, I tweeted out today, there was a state department.
It was, it put out a document, the top five Russian, you know, points of Russian disinformation, most, you know, persistent disinformation myths.
And like one of them was like, Western civilization is falling apart because it's because it's moving away from traditional values and because of, you know, multiculturalism and LGBTQ rights.
And like these are things that like a lot of Americans actually believe.
So like to say this is just like a narrative, you know, that Russia invented, that's very convenient for people who don't want to think that there's just actually Americans who just disagree with them very, very strongly on some things.
And so there was this idea that, Oh my, you know, Oh my goodness, the, the American people couldn't have elected somebody like Donald Trump, right?
It was like a few Russian Facebook ads.
There wasn't like something deep in our, you know, in our culture, in American politics.
And you see the same thing on the right.
You know, sometimes they like, they blame China for like dividing us.
And they just, it's just crazy.
It's like, you know, where do you see the Chinese presence of like American political culture?
So often I, you know, people want to believe certain narratives that flatter themselves.
They, they want to absolve themselves of problems that they've caused within society.
And then they want to blame it all foreigners.
And I think if they can convince people that they will get, you know, uh, you know, they, they, they'll be able to obtain political power and sort of move the country in the direction that they want to go.
And that's just an unfortunate sort of recurring theme of our politics.
Right.
All right.
Well, listen, thank you so much for doing the show today, Richard.
It's been really great.
And I really enjoy reading you too.
It's been a pleasure, Scott.
Thank you very much.
Aren't you guys that's Richard and Anya and he is at defense priorities.
Check out this one is called phantom empire, the illusionary nature of us military power, and also the inevitable rise of China us options with less Indo-Pacific influence.
And his book is public choice theory and the illusion of grand strategy.
The Scott Horton show anti-war radio can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA APS radio.com antiwar.com scotthorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org.
