All right, you guys, I'm Scott Horton, and here's how to support the show.
You can go to paypal.com, of course, just my email address, scott at scotthorton.org, and look up all the kickbacks and everything you can get.
If you donate, you can see it all at scotthorton.org slash support.
You can also support the Libertarian Institute at libertarianinstitute.org slash support.
And of course, you can shop amazon.com through my link, patronize all my sponsors, sign up for patreon.com, give two bits or a dollar or whatever it is per interview if you wanna incentivize me to do more interviews.
And yeah, definitely check out scotthorton.org slash sponsors as well.
All right, y'all, Scott Horton's show.
I'm him doing some Asia studies on the show today.
Just now, I was talking with Robert Logan about the Philippines, and now I got the great Doug Bandow from the Cato Institute and from Forbes Magazine.
And man, he writes like 10 articles a week.
We can't run them all on antiwar.com because we just can't have Doug every single day.
And he's right about everything, and he knows firsthand a lot of what he's writing to you too.
It's just, he's the best foreign policy guy we got in the libertarian community by far.
Thank you so much for joining us again on the show, Doug.
Happy to do so.
All right, so I'm looking at you in the national interest, and it turns out you've been to North Korea lately.
So tell me everything.
Oh, I was there for four days about two weeks ago.
Yeah, I mean, it's a crazy place.
Not a place any normal person in the West would wanna live, but it's also pretty hard to make it out to be this devastating threat to the United States.
And I think the current policy is not very helpful, shall we say.
Yeah, well, that's pretty obvious.
Tell me all about the place.
Well, look, the overriding sense of this place, which makes it so very strange, frankly, is, I mean, there's kind of one person there, the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un.
And almost everything revolves around that.
So anyhow, you talk to somebody at some science fair or whatever it is, and what they'll say is, oh, you know, this was built by the Supreme Leader.
This is done under the wise leadership of the Supreme Leader.
I mean, it's this very unique system.
You know, and then there are pictures of his father, the dear leader, and his grandfather, the great leader, everywhere.
So this is kind of the political basis of the system.
It's a much poorer country than the US, though Pyongyang, the capital, has developed.
I was there 25 years ago.
Pyongyang looks a lot different.
Countryside, not so much.
But I mean, the capital are now private automobiles.
People have cell phones.
You know, they actually need stoplights.
There are cabs.
Women dress very nice now.
I mean, 25 years ago, everybody was very plain.
Yeah, so there are changes, and it appears that the Supreme Leader, as he is called, really wants economic development.
But at the same time, they're very clear they're gonna build nukes, and they're not interested in negotiating them away.
And that's the reality that we have to confront, is that they don't, you know, there's no interest there in giving up nukes.
And the argument they make, you know, it's kind of, you know, there is a practical one, which is, well, the US threatens us.
You know, why on earth should we give these things up?
And I asked them, you know, if the US changed its policy, would they be willing to negotiate them away then?
And their comment was, well, you know, if every other nuclear power gives up theirs, then maybe we would.
You know, which I think is a pretty effective no.
So we have to deal with that.
And, you know, the idea of military action, I think, is crazy.
You know, President Trump talks about all options being on the table.
They talk about that all the time.
But, you know, talk to a South Korean and ask if they want to have war on the peninsula.
Do they want Seoul destroyed?
I mean, that's what military strikes probably would lead to.
You know, it's a scary prospect.
So if we don't do that, then we have to come up with something else.
And that frankly requires some form of engagement.
You know, it requires, you know, a very different course than what we've taken so far.
Well, there's so many things I want to follow up on just from there.
First of all, are the 35,000 American soldiers there as a way for the generals to prevent the politicians from starting a war?
That that's, they're really there as hostages to prevent a war from breaking out?
Well, I mean, there was certainly a time where the U.S. viewed part of its role in the alliance as to prevent the South Koreans from starting a war.
I mean, the current president would have no interest in doing that.
You know, I mean, they also view it as a tripwire against the North.
You know, the question, of course, is why after, what, 64 years from the end of the war, you know, why don't the South Koreans provide that kind of a tripwire?
Much larger economy, larger population, et cetera.
You know, I mean, current policy is kind of brain dead.
It's whatever has been must always be.
You know, trying to get American policymakers to imagine a world in which we don't defend everybody is not an easy one, and that's unfortunately where we're stuck today in Korea.
I guess, I just wonder which kooks those troops are really deterring.
The ones in Pyongyang or in Washington, D.C., you know?
Well, look, I think the folks in Washington, D.C., if they want a war, they're gonna have to put a lot more troops in.
That tripwire is not gonna help very much.
Yeah, well, hopefully, they just don't want anything like those numbers of coffins coming home.
They just would be too afraid to, right?
I mean, Americans would fight to the last Korean.
That's not a problem.
We don't care about that.
That's right.
Well, in fact, Senator Lindsey Graham very helpfully made that point.
I mean, a month or two back, you know, he commented that, well, we might have to take military action.
You know, it would be awful, but at least the war wouldn't be here.
You know, and you're just thinking, wow, let me tell my South Korean friends about that one.
They're gonna appreciate that sentiment.
Yeah, and of course, and that is the big part of it, and this is starting to go without saying now, I think, which is good because it means people are really starting to understand, but it's also bad because people need to also learn it if they haven't yet, and that is that Seoul, South Korea is right there near the border, and we're not just talking about the 35,000, but we're talking about virtually, I think you told me before, the northern half of the capital city, home to millions of people, is within artillery range of maybe millions of artillery tubes, or at least hundreds of thousands of artillery shells that could be launched within a very short amount of time.
That's right.
I mean, basically, the Seoul, now, I mean, it keeps expanding, so the question is what part are we talking about, but Seoul is basically 30 miles away from the DMZ, and if you take the Seoul Incheon Metropolis, you take the province that contains Seoul, you're talking about roughly half the population.
It's the industrial heart of the country.
It's the political heart.
You know, if you start dropping artillery shells there, you can imagine the chaos.
I mean, Seoul, even in the best of times, is an awful traffic problem.
You know, you think about millions of people trying to flee.
I mean, it'd be utterly destructive, and the north, you know, while its weapons tend to be rather antiquated, you know, if you pour thousands of tanks and everything else south, they'd probably get to Seoul.
I mean, they'd lose a lot.
I mean, we have, you know, through the air, you know, the allies would control, but I mean, the hardship, the extraordinary destruction, the casualties, I mean, no one wants to imagine that, and the U.S. would be right there.
The U.S. would have to be putting troops in.
I mean, this would not be Iraq.
This would not be a cakewalk.
This would be an extraordinarily awful, awful conflict.
All right, hang on.
We'll be right back after this.
Hey, y'all, I'm Scott.
All right, I'm here to tell you about my sponsors.
First of all is the great book, The War State by Mike Swanson.
It's all about the rise of the military-industrial complex in the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy eras.
I know that you'll love it, and the same guy, Mike Swanson, does wallstreetwindow.com, where he does investment advice and economic analysis for you there.
Sign up for his great newsletter at wallstreetwindow.com, and then, yeah, he'll probably be recommending you buy some medals for storing value for later.
Protect yourself against inflation, and you do that by going to robertsandrobertsbrokerage at rrbi.co, and put a Liberty sticker on your bumper on your way there, and that's how you help support the show.
All right, now, so I wanna ask you about a couple of more things here, but first of all, I think this is you, and a few other people talk like this.
Donald Trump has talked like this.
Well, look, maybe we'll get out of Korea, and you know what?
Eh, maybe it's not the best thing in the world, but go ahead and let the South Koreans get their own nukes to deter the North, but I wonder, I never hear anybody serious, and I include you, say, you know what?
The South Koreans might be able to deter the North Koreans even without nukes, that maybe they could just carpet bomb the hell out of Pyongyang without going ahead with a nuclear weapons program at all, and that, you know what I mean?
I don't think America needs any nukes at all.
I think America could still deter all of Europe and Russia and China, and anybody who ever dreamed of messing with us, simply with conventional explosives.
We've got really big conventional explosives, and you know, I don't know why the South Koreans or the Japanese also couldn't go ahead and without being under the American nuclear umbrella, still refrain from obtaining nukes of their own.
Well, I mean, certainly possibly, on the other hand, it would require, I mean, kind of really a large expansion.
I mean, one of the problems is the South has configured its force right now, you know, without, you know, I mean, with the U.S. in mind, so they don't have a lot of that kind of capability.
You know, and it would be a real risk.
I mean, the point is, even heavy conventional weapons don't have that same capability, especially when you're talking about missiles.
I mean, so trying to hit with the, you know, how many missiles or high explosives, maybe they could do it.
My guess is they'd be very, very nervous about it.
So to my mind, one has to put out that possibility.
The point is, whether or not they should build nukes strikes me as being their decision, not America's decision, but we certainly shouldn't stand in the way if they thought that was necessary.
But as human beings, though, we can all be, you know, always regretful of any nuclear proliferation, any new members of the nuclear weapons club.
I mean, from my point of view, it seems like that ought to be Donald Trump's only mission in life is to corral the nuclear weapons states, force them all, including the USA, to abide by their signatures to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and get rid of their nukes and thermonukes.
This is crazy.
We can't go on like this forever.
What if humanity wants to continue to exist for thousands and thousands of years?
We're just going to take for granted that nobody's ever going to use these H-bombs?
And they're going to be used if we don't get rid of them now.
Well, you know, I mean, it's a message that I love in theory.
I think it's real hard to pull off in practice.
You know, no country wants to be the first.
The problem is once, even when you get rid of the weapons, the knowledge of it is there.
There are going to be people who think they can get an advantage.
So it's very, very tough.
I mean, you know, I'd love to see that happen.
I just think it's going to be- You were there in the 80s, though, when Ronald Reagan really did almost do it, right?
He was one hair away from putting his name on a piece of paper that would have been an ironclad deal with the Soviet Union that we would get rid of all of our nukes.
And then, of course, the pressure would have been on everybody else that you have to give up yours too if we're being led by the two superpowers here, right?
That almost happened.
Like I said, I mean, that's something I'd love to see happen.
I guess I tend to have a darker view of humanity, and I just think the ability to pull that off is extraordinarily tough.
Well, so wait, if Reagan and Gorbachev had signed it, would they have been able to pull it off then?
Or is this, we're never going to get that close again?
I'm not convinced that it would have been ratified by the U.S. Senate, and I'm not convinced that, say, China or others would have joined in.
I mean, I just think that this is a really tough step.
And I'm glad there are people out there campaigning for that.
And I'd certainly love to see them disappear.
I think the challenge is it's real hard where a number of countries have them, to get everybody to agree to that.
Yeah, I hear you.
Especially weaker powers.
I mean, today, Russia will look and say the U.S. has overwhelming dominance in conventional weapons.
They would fear that nukes help equalize.
Same thing to some degree, I think, Pakistan versus India.
There's just a lot of stuff that goes in this that's real hard to get away from.
Right.
Well, I'm not a utopian, but it just seems like this is the one thing that sort of is more important than any other thing, ultimately.
I mean, especially these H-bombs.
You know, I mean, the H-bombs are such that they can really only be used to kill cities.
Or, you know, maybe if you set them off in space, you could stop some incoming ICBMs or something.
But otherwise, they're only tools of genocide.
You know, Dan Ellsberg was a nuclear weapons planner, and he's published some of the, like the line graph of the first few weeks and the hundreds of millions of people who would be expected to die in the first few weeks of a nuclear war.
It'd be horrific.
No, I mean, it's, you know, I mean, extraordinarily awful, no doubt.
All right, so one more thing here.
As a basketball fan, I'm really a skateboarder, and I don't know or care anything about it, but I really like Dennis Rodman now, who, I never paid him any attention in the 90s, really, at all, but, it was the 90s, right?
But I think he's great, man.
What the hell is wrong with going to North Korea?
And you know what?
And man, they accused him, like this is the worst thing that he could say, was, you don't see the good side of them.
And it's like, god dang, please, somebody listen to this guy, that they are human beings.
Yeah, they have a crazy, wacky society in a million ways.
So do we.
And, you know, he was on, the last time he went, the reporter on the Today Show said, he has 200,000 people in prison camps.
And Dennis Rodman says, we got two million people in prison camps.
But we're supposed to just, like, it's the two minutes, hey, like, these guys, this is David Koresh and his people, and he's bad to his own people, and let's just get them.
Let's just deny them all their humanity, they're such kooks over there.
And you got this basketball player, says, hey, hey, hey, let's all get along, and he's the bad guy.
Explain that to me.
Well, you know, the reason Rodman is over there is because Kim Jong-un, while in prep school in Switzerland, it turns out was a big Chicago Bulls fan.
So that's kind of the backstory, which is all very interesting.
I mean, Rodman was over there, when I was there, I actually tried to make contact, I have a friend who's helped him in the past, but he didn't want to talk to any non, you know, North Koreans at the time.
Look, I mean, part of it is that Rodman himself is an odd character, so frankly, anything that he does is going to get people kind of looking askance and whatnot, and so I think that's part of it that it's kind of hard for him to get a hearing on things.
You know, the other is, look, you know, he's not a traditional diplomat, he doesn't talk in kind of normal diplomatic ways, that, yeah, so it's just, it's hard for him to get over that hump, but I think you're right.
I mean, the people there, these are real people.
You know, so when one starts thinking about, and I think there's an important difference between kind of the very top of the regime and how they behave versus kind of average folks there, you know, people who marry, they have kids, they want a life, you know, they want the kind of the same stuff that we do.
That certainly should put a premium on finding peaceful ways to get through this.
The cavalier way in which people talk about war, I do find extraordinary.
You know, while we might just have to take military action, that is, we will convulse the Korean Peninsula in a conflict, you know, kill hundreds of thousands, potentially even more South and North Koreans, and cause, you know, potential chaos and a lot of other stuff for, say, Japan and China, kill a lot of Americans as well, but what's the big deal?
You know, to me, one needs to step back from that and say, well, of course it's a big deal.
I mean, these are human lives, and that you don't do that, you know, unless there really is a very, very good reason there's no alternative, and we're obviously not there.
I mean, it's a very cavalier way of looking and to go to North Korea, and that's why I think despite the tragedy that happened with Warmbier, it would be a mistake to say, no, you know, no Americans can go to North Korea.
One needs to see it.
I mean, among other things, it's a good learning tool to recognize kind of the ultimate outcome of a kind of statist or collectivist system.
It's not good, but it's also to recognize these are real people and to kind of see the place and have a feel for it and have a better understanding of what we're dealing with.
All right, so what's the next step then?
What can, if not Dennis Rodman, if not private citizens, say what could be done to get the Trump administration to take a more reasonable line here?
Doug, something.
Well, it certainly looks like Donald Trump, I mean, he has this contradiction within him.
He's talked about a willingness to actually, you know, sit down and negotiate with Kim Jong-un.
He's talked about a willingness to engage.
I think part of the problem with him is that he's kind of turned this policy over to Tillerson and Mattis, who are, as far as I can tell, basically just captives of the status quo.
You know, that they simply, they do what they've always done and they're not gonna make any change in that and that's kind of where we're at.
It would be nice to see him kind of reassert himself and recognize that the current policy is at a dead end.
It threatens to get a lot of people killed.
So he needs to step out and show that he really is unconventional, you know, and not stick with the stuff that everybody else is just pushing on him.
All right, well, I know you gotta go, so I'll let you go, but I really appreciate you coming back to talk about this and I hope we can catch up again soon.
That'd be fine, I wish you well, have a good fourth.
You too.
Take care now.
All right, guys, that's the great Doug Bandow.
He's at the Cato Institute at the National Interest and at Forbes.
This one is at the National Interest.
I was in Pyongyang when Otto Warmbier was released and it's a really good one there.
You can find it in the viewpoint section at antiwar.com as well.
And that's Scott Horton Show.
Thanks, you guys.
Scotthorton.org for the archives and the podcast feed, et cetera.
Follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show, thanks.
