All right, y'all, welcome to the 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 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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Okay, you guys, introducing Lyle J. Goldstein.
He is a research professor at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and was the founder of the China Maritime Studies Institute there.
And it goes on like that, and the things that he says reflect only his own point of view and not those of his employer, the U.S. Navy.
Welcome back to the show, Lyle.
How are you doing?
Oh, thanks, Scott.
Yeah, I'm really glad to be back.
I'm doing great.
I appreciate it.
So Beijing has a plethora of military options against Taiwan after 2022.
Thank you.
Good use of plethora.
I use that term myself a lot.
And there's more.
You have also this really important piece here at the Lawfare blog.
The Indo-Pacific Strategy is a Recipe for Disaster, which is really something else here.
So I guess, first of all, can we talk about what exactly do you think is the threat that mainland China will attack and conquer Taiwan in the relatively near or medium term, I guess, here?
Well, it's a big question.
You know, as I point out in the article I just published, it's worth asking, you know, why?
Why would they do this?
You know, part of this is sort of a, you know, their philosophy all along that, you know, China has been held down, has been divided and so forth.
I mean, don't forget when Henry Kissinger went to Beijing in 1971 on that secret trip and sat down with Zhou Enlai and said, well, gee, how do we get down to the business of normalizing U.S.-China relations?
And Zhou Enlai said, well, let's talk about Taiwan.
And they spent almost the entire time talking about Taiwan, the end of which more or less Kissinger agreed to pull U.S. forces out of Taiwan as the major condition.
So don't, you know, this was always at the center of U.S.-China relations.
It's not new.
But what has changed fundamentally are two things, Scott.
One, the military balance has shifted irrevocably in China's favor.
And it's a very dramatic shift.
That's number one.
That's a big change that, you know, 15, 20 years ago, this was not the case.
Another change, though, is the policy that China was pursuing toward basically toward Hong Kong, China, and by the way, toward Macau.
Nobody talks about Macau ever.
We might take a minute and wonder what's going on in Macau.
But in Macau, I mean, in all these places, China had one policy, which was put together by Deng Xiaoping, yi guo liang zhi, meaning one country, two systems, meaning we can all have the same flag, but we have a different way of living.
Well, that has all collapsed now under all this turmoil and the riots in Hong Kong.
So the result is that has become a reason for China to say, forget that whole idea.
We're now going to govern these areas as we see fit.
So it's a long way of saying, I think the use of force against Taiwan is, it's not likely that is, I would rate it at something around 20 or 30%, which is frankly, is too high when we're talking about the future of the planet, or a massive great power war, or even a nuclear war.
That's too high.
I think we need, you know, people, thoughtful people need to think about how to prevent this.
But look, I will say, Chinese are cautious.
China's been pretty wise in how they run their country.
So I think that many people in Beijing will be saying, hey, let's not push it.
We don't need to rush.
Let's build up China's power, continue on the way we've been.
And so I would say that the balance of probability is there will be no attack.
But I think there is a chance.
And it's much more substantial than I would like.
It used to be the chance of probability of conflict, I would say, was somewhere around 1% or less.
Today, it's somewhere around 20 or 30%.
That's way too high.
And then, so does it go without saying that the US would immediately intervene and try to prevent a successful attack?
Well, good question.
You know, we had a defense treaty with Taiwan.
This I think, was put in place about 1955, I think, by the Eisenhower administration who said, you know, we're, we're ultimately going to take responsibility for defense of Taiwan.
However, that treaty was abrogated in 1979.
It was actually a Supreme Court case on it.
But the US government said, no, we no longer have a defense treaty with Taiwan.
That was a condition for normalizing relations with China.
So now, there is a Taiwan Relations Act, which says we're going to, that, you know, how this is, what happens in the strait is of grave interest to the United States.
And, you know, it will not look favorably upon any attempted use of force.
That's not the exact language.
But it is implied there, that there might be a use of force.
It's ambiguous, honestly.
Now, so, you know, we can evaluate, you know, how things look in Washington.
What would actually happen?
I don't know.
I don't think anybody knows.
I don't know that the, I don't think the president himself knows.
Of course, you know, the classic Washington response, it depends, you know.
But my view is, and again, this is my opinion, this is not at all reflect the official assessments.
But my own opinion is that this would be a very grave mistake, frankly, if we, if we intervene militarily.
This is, this is, in my view, this is the worst place to fight China.
This is right on their home turf.
And for historical, political, military reasons, this is the, like I said, the worst place.
And we're likely to lose the war if we get involved.
So I think we have to be extremely cautious.
I'm advocating for preventive diplomacy that is, you know, don't wait for the crisis.
Let's work now to try to walk both parties back from the brink.
Because like I said in the article, I don't think China will do anything radical before the Olympics.
They don't want to spoil their own party.
That's logical enough.
Although some people have pushed some, I've been, I've had people say, why would they care about that?
Well, I do think they would.
But after that, I'm very concerned that this might eat up very quickly in 2022 or 2023.
All right.
Now, so in this other piece here, you talk about the Trump administration's U.S. strategic framework for the Indo-Pacific that they declassified right before leaving office, and you compare it to the infamous defense planning guidance written by Libyan Wolfowitz and the guys for Dick Cheney in the first Bush administration that declared the doctrine of permanent primacy or predominance or hegemony over the planet and that we would never allow the rise of a near-peer competitor and this kind of thing.
And you're saying that here we are and it's 30 years later and they're saying the same thing.
Is that as though nothing has changed?
Yeah, that's that's exactly what I'm saying, Scott.
I think, you know, these people have a certain mindset, you know, they think the U.S. should run the world and every aspect of it.
I think they should manage every detail of China's foreign relations, which is I think crazy.
And you know, they're really putting us in grave jeopardy because, you know, look, I'm a military strategist, so I'll tell you, if we had to fight China over in the mid-Pacific, you know, the Solomons, we fought in the Solomons before.
It wasn't easy, but we did it.
Hawaii, wake, midway, you may remember the names of these battles.
We can do that and we can do it really well.
But this is different.
OK, this is right up against the Chinese coast.
And the areas we're talking about fighting in are are really are not advantageous in any way.
And, you know, my foremost concern here is I don't want our to put our men and women in grave danger.
But that's, I think, what these policies do.
So we need to have a strategic readjustment, Scott, where we think more reasonably about what needs to be defended out there.
And it doesn't involve rocks and reefs.
You know, now, look, we've got to draw a line somewhere.
I do think it would be helpful to U.S. strategy if we were to say, OK, let's take a reasonable look at our posture in the Pacific.
What needs to be defended?
That more reasonable look, look, let's say we're going to Japan and the Philippines are closest allies in the region.
We're going to stick stick by them, OK?
But we're going to have quite a conservative commitment.
What does that mean?
That means we will defend the home islands of Japan, the main islands of the Philippines, Luzon, Palawan, and so forth.
But not a bunch of rocks and reefs out there.
No, we're not going to start World War three over rocks and reefs.
That's, you know, the definition of insanity.
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All right.
Now, I think we've talked about this before and it just, I see this everywhere and I talked to real experts like yourself, you know, on the same kind of level who agree that this is a real problem that it just goes routinely discussed about how we could have a war with China where nukes just are not imagined as being involved.
We would fight a conventional war and then the question is, can our B1 bombers outflank their ship killing missiles and these kinds of questions, but nobody's ever going to use a nuke.
We don't have to worry about that.
In fact, it might actually be a lot of fun to have a big naval battle like World War II, like you're talking about and how great that was back in the American century, you know, get some of that going on.
And then it seems like nobody ever pipes up and says, well, yeah, but they have H-bombs.
So the doctrine of mutually assured destruction means we can never fight them over anything.
Okay, fine.
Short of defending our friends in Tokyo.
But I think that even the Japanese could defend themselves if they had to without us.
So it just seems like everybody knows they have nukes.
So it goes unsaid or it goes without saying they have nukes, but then it goes unsaid that they have nukes.
And so they just talk about this like, well, here's how we could defeat them in a conventional war.
And that kind of discussion seems to dominate the entire discussion.
Yeah.
I, Scott, you're touching on a really important issue, and I wish other strategists would would focus on this.
I mean, we've never fought a nuclear war ever.
We've never there's never been a case of a war between two nuclear powers.
I mean, sure, India and Pakistan mix it up occasionally.
You know, Russia and China even fought a skirmish, but there's never been a major war between two nuclear powers.
And nobody knows how it would play out.
And I think you're absolutely 100 percent correct that there are no guarantees that there won't be escalation.
Now, look, a lot of strategists will say, hey, you know, we are nuclear forces outnumber theirs by five to one and are probably more sophisticated.
Well, I think there may be some problems with that calculation.
But even if you agree with that, you know, it does not necessarily mean that there will be no move to escalate.
I mean, I was on a call with some students yesterday and they said, well, isn't it logical that whichever side is losing in the war will will escalate to nuclear weapons?
And yeah, there is a certain logic to that.
Absolutely.
But I also I want to caution people, too, that even look, I'm concerned about escalation.
I'm I'm absolutely saying we should be extremely cautious and, you know, try really everything to avoid getting into a war with a nuclear armed power, even North Korea.
But also especially China, which certainly has the capability to vaporize American cities.
I can tell you that with 100 percent confidence.
But let's not sugarcoat the conventional situation either.
Even if there is no use of nuclear weapons, there is a substantial chance that we would lose this war.
OK.
And I think unfortunately, Americans really don't seem to have grappled with that one.
But if you look at the details of China's military planning in all respects, you can see the outlines of what is a pretty successful strategy.
And what do I mean?
I'll just give you an example or two, you know, for one.
And these are well, you know, among strategists, you know, this is not that controversial, but China seems to have superiority in anti ship cruise missiles.
Think about that.
The YJ-12, YJ-18.
And they're working on even more advanced kinds of anti ship cruise missiles.
The anti ship cruise missile is the coin of the realm for naval warfare, essentially.
Right.
Remember the Falklands War, where the Argentines only had eight exocets and I think five of them hit ships?
I mean, now China will have thousands of these.
But what I'm getting at here is compare those weapons to harpoons, say that's our frontline anti ship cruise missile.
At the moment, China's arsenal is vastly superior, not a little bit superior, vastly superior.
This should be a huge concern.
And my expectation is that the U.S. Navy would be very badly mauled in a conflict.
Now, smart people will say, hold on, Goldstein, what about the submarine side?
And that, of course, is important.
And we do have an advantage in submarines, it's true.
But there are problems with deploying submarines in those sea areas.
It's very shallow.
Submarines also have a very small loadout of torpedoes and they simply don't have enough torpedoes, not even close to do significant damage to the Chinese fleet.
So what I'm saying is, even if there's no use of nuclear weapons, the conventional war looks very bad and we should be extremely cautious about considering fighting China right off their shores, where they can bring all of that power, all of those missiles, all of the aircraft.
And yes, they have a substantial submarine force and Navy, too, which is making great strides.
So, you know, I'm just saying Americans have for a long time taken it as given that their Navy is the best in the world and can clean anybody's clock.
But the truth is, the world is changing very quickly and we need to be a bit more cautious and modest.
Well, and there are war games that keep making the news about that, too, right?
Although I wonder how much of that is public relations, because the Navy wants more weapons and more money.
Sure.
And there is that aspect of it.
You know, in some ways, China is the Navy's, you know, again, these are my own opinions, but in some ways, the Navy loves China.
Right.
We can't have enough ships.
I mean, this, you know, the point is, both Republicans and Democrats argue the argument is only who thinks we need more and more ships, but everybody agrees we need more ships.
You know, are the ships manned ships or robotic ships, more ships of any kind?
Look, I don't agree with that.
Our Navy is plenty large.
We should restructure it.
We should make it more defensive.
We should focus on submarines.
We don't need nearly as many big decks.
We don't need as many small decks either.
Those are great for beating up on little countries like North Korea or something.
But we, we really don't need that many.
If we readjust our strategy and make it more defensive and focus on the undersea, we have plenty of ships.
We just need to change the structure a bit.
And we really don't need to spend more money on that.
Yeah.
All right.
So now to zoom back out to the entire not just military, but political strategy of permanent dominance on the planet, especially coming out of the mouth of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, because they're just kind of so old and, and, uh, you know, not very careful and they're talking points.
They're just kind of are very blatant about, well, you know, China's a rising power and we just can't have that.
So we're just going to do everything we can to contain them.
That means becoming best allies with Vietnam, fine, whatever it is, we have to do it.
And there's nothing that we have no choice in the matter.
It's this is autopilot for the American empire, even though the high watermark of the whole project was 2003 and everybody knows that.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
I mean, it's, um, you know, there, I, I will invite your listeners if they haven't already seen it to look up on, uh, war on the rocks published a piece yesterday for April fools called the longest telegram.
And uh, I don't know if you saw it, Scott, but it was, I have the link open.
Honestly, I haven't gotten to it yet.
It's it.
Oh, you haven't read it.
It is a genius critique of everything you're saying that is, you know, American strategists seem to be willing to throw everything at China, the kitchen sink, you know, um, dealing with countries that are kind of human rights nightmares like, uh, you know, like, uh, Vietnam, for example, uh, you know, just for the purpose of, um, dealing with China and, you know, the, the, they're, they're vastly inflating the threat posed by China.
Um, and if we deal calmly with China, if we, uh, meet China halfway, as I advocated in my book in 2015, you know, we can discuss that sometime, but, uh, I've long advocated for, you know, compromise measures.
Um, and if we take that kind of calm and reasoned approach, we realize that it's not, you know, everybody's beating themselves up silly.
Cause I think the U S is in decline.
I don't think that the U S is not in decline.
It's just that, uh, as Fareed Zakaria wrote cleverly, um, about 15 years ago, he explained it's the rise of the rest, meaning other countries have, um, stopped their foolish, uh, policies and they've started to develop kind of normally, right.
And that has made them more powerful and that sort of equalized power within the world.
And as we head toward this kind of multipolar world, we have to be a little more humble and stop dictating orders, but that world can be peaceful.
Um, but we need to learn to cooperate and it's not easy.
We're, we're used to, uh, telling people how it's going to be.
But isn't there some textbook that you read at Georgetown university or something that says that, no, when there's a rising power, then the old power has to fight them and bully them and try to prevent them from rising, which is what they're doing in the first place.
Yeah.
I mean, this is a, I think the philosophy you're talking about is like this, uh, facilities trap.
See, I just don't know how to pronounce it.
So I, okay.
Right.
I was trying to lead you right to that thing.
It's actually a very interesting philosophy.
It basically, this is the writings of, uh, Thucydides when he was describing, uh, the, you know, the Peloponnesian wars between Athens and Sparta and the Athenians were, um, rising quickly in a Spartans, uh, said, apparently they said, look, um, uh, Athens is rising so quickly.
We have to do something about it.
And so it, it, um, it wasn't just that Athens was rising quickly.
It was also that Sparta went kind of crazy watching this and, and really this kind of describes what we're seeing in the U S today is, is a kind of, uh, almost a kind of insanity where we, um, you know, we beat ourselves up, silly saying, are we in decline?
What's wrong with our country?
Why can't we reach some kind of consensus?
And we can't, it drives us completely crazy that, that, uh, China seems to be on a, anyway, a reasonably smooth path and, uh, you know, its economy is doing pretty well and so forth.
And, you know, this kind of, I mean, you do know, the word's got a schadenfreude speaking of big words.
That's a word, an interesting German word.
It means literally gaining pleasure from the problems of your, uh, opponent or whatever.
So, so we seem to be looking for some schadenfreude to, um, look at with China, but I mean, this is the wrong approach.
It's immature, juvenile, totally inappropriate in the nuclear era.
And we have better things to spend our resources on than, uh, all these great power games and putting more trillions of dollars, um, at, uh, you know, various conflicts in the third world nuclear rivalry and so forth, you know, uh, Well, now they say that they have more ships than us now.
So as soon as we're out of the way, they plan on building a world empire to replace ours, right?
No, no, absolutely not.
I mean, um, you know, I've studied Chinese history, uh, pretty closely.
In fact, I, we're just teaching at the Naval War College or teaching some, uh, just gone through, you know, periods of the 13th century and through the, uh, periods of the 15th century.
These were actually periods when China, you know, was in some sense could be said to have been kind of expansionist if you will.
Um, but even those circumstances, you know, I think the pattern is clear, uh, you know, the Chinese are really have a kind of different ethos and, um, to me, uh, look, uh, sure you can come up with some reasons to, to fear.
If I lived in Mongolia or Vietnam, you know, I might be a little worried, but we don't, we don't live in Vietnam or Mongolia or Myanmar or something like that.
And by the way, even those countries, I don't think they have anything to fear.
By the way, that's a good, you know, maybe Mongolia is the canary in the coal mine.
That's a weak little country on China's border.
If you look at a map, it looks like a bite taken out of China.
Well, it was sort of, uh, so you can ask yourself the day Mongolia gets invaded, maybe we should start worrying.
But you know, what I'm saying is China's intentions, um, you know, this is a country that hasn't used force on a major scale in what, since 1979, that's, you know, going on 40 years, China has not used, uh, resorted to major use of force.
That's pretty good for a great power.
I mean, look at Russia and, and, uh, the U S are using force, you know, with, uh, quite some regularity.
So China has exercised some restraint.
The question is how to really keep them on that path.
It's not, you know, and I, I think we have to, uh, given that record, we can give them the benefit of the doubt.
Look at their defense spending too, um, pretty low, you know, in fact, it makes you wonder if we do get in a rivalry with them, like an intensive militarized rivalry with China.
What if they double their defense spending, which they clearly could do?
Well, think about that.
Okay.
So, I mean, you know, we want to be cautious in these circumstances.
We want to help keep China on the straight and narrow, right?
I mean, look, what's going on in Myanmar.
This is not good for Chinese investments.
If China wanted to, they could take over Myanmar tomorrow.
They don't want to, they have no interest in that.
Same with Afghanistan, by the way, Afghanistan, you know, you've heard of that place.
I know you wrote a book about it, Scott, let's give it to the Chinese, let them run the place.
They don't want it.
They have no interest in, in running the world.
They don't want to be the United States.
No.
They'd be crazy if they're looking at the USA in the last 30 years, since the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and say, yeah, that's what we want to do is replicate that.
Uh, they, they couldn't possibly be so happy.
In fact, in China, definitely the, the, uh, the dominant opinion in foreign policy circles is, yes, we're going to be a global power.
We are not going to be the United States in any way, shape, or form.
And that may be the best thing about the Bush, Obama, Trump legacy is just setting the example for other would be world powers of how not to do things.
Yeah.
I'll give you a concrete example of this Scott, fascinating.
I looked at as a year or two ago, I looked at some Chinese articles that, you know, they had the discussion point, question mark, should China patrol the Strait of Hormuz?
Should China deploy its Navy and more or less try to stabilize, you know, the flow of oil in and out.
And it was, this was all prompted by a tweet by president Trump because president Trump had said, Hey, why should we protect the Strait of Hormuz?
It's oil that's going to China.
Why?
It's not our problem.
And the Chinese said, well, actually that's kind of logical.
So maybe we should do this.
So they, they had a debate and I looked through this debate, but at the end of it, they came to the conclusion that they, you know, no, they don't want to get involved in this.
I mean, it's not, you know, they said they're, they have to have their Navy ready, you know, in case something terrible happens, but you know, they, they know that if they were to exercise, you know, to put major forces into the, into the Persian Gulf, that they would certainly alienate different countries and get caught up in some nasty military conflicts that they don't want.
So, so no, they're going to play it cautiously and keep their head down.
And like I said, they're not trying to be the United States.
And just real quick here, then this massive buildup in their Naval fleet, is that all under the doctrine of area denial and defending their shores and maybe hitting Taiwan, but otherwise keeping us out is basically the position there.
Is that right?
Well, right.
I mean, unfortunately, the Washington times is going to say, Lyle, that's a lot of ships.
It is a lot of ships.
And I'll give you that.
And look, China, they, you know, I'm not sugarcoating this.
They are interested in being one of the top navies in the world.
At this point, they may want to be the top Navy in the world.
They may see an opening and say, Hey, we can do this.
Why?
Why are they doing this?
Well, you know, look back over the last 10 years, you know, have we been confrontational with them?
You know, have we made it clear that we might fight over Taiwan?
We might fight over the South China Sea.
We might fight over the East China Sea.
You know, so so we're in a rivalry and they are taking steps to, you know, their their Navy, I think, has alighted on this and said, hey, you know, if we want to go head to head with the US Navy, we need X, Y and Z.
And the leaders are like, well, OK, here's X, Y and Z.
So, you know, they are going forward.
And I, you know, I certainly think, you know, we need to maintain a robust deterrent.
I'm on record.
I've actually advocated that we may need as many as 100 submarines.
Right now, we have probably like 50 attack submarines or so.
I think it's probably insufficient if we if we were to go into war.
But what I'm saying is, look, there when we think about national security, we've got to think about capabilities and intentions.
OK, China is a big country.
They're going to have a big Navy.
If you look back historically, like I said, go back to the 15th century, China had by far the largest Navy in the world and most capable.
So it's not that weird.
But you know, like I said, that's capabilities.
What about intentions?
If you look on the intention side, I don't think China has any intention of invading Japan, invading the Philippines, invading, you know, Thailand or Sri Lanka.
No.
So what they want, they are obsessed with Taiwan.
It's exceedingly dangerous.
It is the most likely point of conflict.
Are they preparing for a war over Taiwan?
Yes.
Emphatically.
We have to rethink that one.
And honestly, the best thing we can do for the Taiwan situation is if we make it clear that we're not going to fight a war over Taiwan, which is the right thing to do, I believe that the matter will quickly be settled by negotiation because the Taiwanese will realize they have to cut a deal and the Chinese will give them a generous deal because they don't want to fight the war either.
And the Taiwanese should know that anyway.
The American people don't want to trade Los Angeles for Taipei.
Absolutely.
And that's why, I mean, even the thought of it is kind of makes you laugh almost because most, you know, I would say more than 95 percent of Americans could never find Taiwan on a map.
So how can we possibly, you know, contemplate World War Three over this?
It's I mean, it really is completely ridiculous knowing that we should be realistic and say, you know, we don't want this.
We don't want force to be used.
We can imagine, you know, economic sanctions and all kinds of things to punish China for doing this.
But we are also drawing a line saying, no, there there are things that we are just not going to go to war over.
And by the way, if you look at the last some statements by Xi Jinping over the last five years, he said repeatedly, he said we should have a policy with the US where we don't go into a rivalry and we don't go into a conflict.
I think about that's a pretty good deal.
I mean, we don't go into rivalry, we don't go into conflict.
That should be the policy of the United States and China.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And now, now, look, being realistic, Scott, I do think we're going to come to a point and it's almost just for our own psychology to say, hold on, if we're not going to fight over Taiwan, hold on.
We're giving up Hawaii.
We're giving up Alaska.
What's what else?
No, we should have red lines.
I do think we need red lines.
I said where we draw the red line on the home islands of Japan and Philippines.
Everything else, we're not really worried about.
You can have fishing conflicts all day in the South China Sea, we don't really care.
But if force is used in a major way against Palawan or Luzon or Hokkaido or Honshu, Kyushu, that's a war.
I don't think it's an issue because I don't think China would ever do that.
But I mean, isn't that completely crazy?
Because they have enough nukes to kill every major city in America and destroy our civilization forever.
So who cares if we win?
Because we're all dead.
Well, right.
And I say, you know, I say we should draw these red lines knowing full well that China would never act against these red lines.
But I'm saying it's not it's really more in our own heads to make it clear.
Look, there are things that we want to use all this weaponry to deter.
Right.
I mean, deterrence is it has major problems, but it's not, you know, I understand what you're saying.
Defending Tokyo makes a lot more sense than defending Hanoi, you know, comes down to.
Yeah, right.
And there are things we're kind of, for various reasons, historically, more or less bound to do.
We're not going to give up our entire, you know, you call it our empire.
I guess I would call it our established defense structure, which I think there's a lot of things that are wrong with it.
But, you know, more or less, we have a very strong country and Americans should understand that we've overbuilt our military and the nuclear weapons complex and so forth.
And yet, you know, it is, I think, good for something.
And that is to defend our basic, you know, territory and allies territory.
Beyond that, I don't think we need to use it and I don't think we should act like we're going to use it.
We have to stop acting like we're going to go to war in East Asia at any minute.
You know, lately, it's been fashionable in the military to use this phrase, you know, we're ready to fight tonight.
You know, what a crazy thing.
We might fight tonight, you know.
Of course, you're trying to motivate the troops to be ready, right?
And to be motivated to be ready.
And you have to have a well-drilled military force, no question.
But my point is, we don't need to be in this situation where we think we might have a war tonight.
That's psychologically, at least, among thinking people that that is a very wrong-headed notion.
It's the same problem we have with our deputy sheriffs, too.
And it goes to coast.
And wait, listen, I'm so sorry.
We are out of time here, but it's great to talk to you again, Lyle.
Really appreciate it.
Yeah.
I really enjoyed talking with you, Scott.
Thanks for a great question.
All right, you guys.
That is Lyle J. Goldstein.
He is research professor at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, speaking only for himself here, obviously.
Read him here at The Hill.
Beijing has a plethora of military options against Taiwan.
And then also this important one at Lawfareblog.com, the Indo-Pacific strategy.
It's a recipe for disaster.
