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We know Al Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as a fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like say our name, been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys introducing Franz Stephan Gotti.
He is senior editor with the Diplomat and has reported from all kinds of conflict zones, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and has written for many prominent newspapers, New York Times, BBC, Christian Science Monitor, and even Foreign Affairs, it says here.
And he's got this incredible article here at the Diplomat, how the deep state stopped a U.S. president from withdrawing U.S. troops from Korea.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing Franz?
I'm good.
Thank you for having me.
Really appreciate you joining us on the show here.
Very important article, really kind of mind blowing.
So, but let's start with the current day's news and events on this.
We have the beginnings of a possible very big deal to denuclearize North Korea in exchange for security guarantees here.
That's more or less, and lifting the sanctions, I guess, this is more or less the deal that the Trump administration is attempting to work toward.
And as I'm sure you're aware, a big part of the pushback against this by major media and this kind of centrist foreign policy establishment, they sort of seem to be so rushed and panicked that they're kind of just blatantly admitting that they keep the cart before the horse.
And that the crisis in Korea is the excuse we need so that we can keep troops in Korea.
And that Trump's possible piece here threatens the status of our troops.
Oh no.
And I guess they're not embarrassed that that's how they feel about it.
And usually they don't talk about it in those terms.
The troops are a means to an end to keep the peace and blah, blah, blah is the way they would usually sell this.
And yet it seems like there are severe established interests who want to keep, who would prefer to keep the status quo, which includes even nuclear brinksmanship.
Is that your read on the situation as well?
Well, I think there are a couple of ways to look at that.
First of all, I think that neither the United States nor North Korea really have agreed what they mean when they're talking about denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
North Korea thinks that it means in a more broader term that they're working towards a general denuclearization of the Korean peninsula where the United States and North Korea are reducing their nuclear footprint in Asia, or specifically for North Korea is giving up some of its nuclear capabilities, whereas the United States specifically thinks that North Korea has committed to giving up its partial or its entire nuclear arsenal.
So I think, first of all, they have to come to an agreement what they really mean by denuclearization.
Second of all, I think that the troops in Korea, the general argument usually goes that they're there for conventional deterrence purposes.
They're so-called tripwire troops that is in the event of a North Korean invasion.
They would be the first ones in the front line and they would try to prevent North Korea from advancing across the demilitarized zone.
But at the same time, those troops are there to ensure that the United States will live up to its treaty commitments.
So I don't think that pulling out the troops at this juncture is a wise decision, just because the situation has not fundamentally changed.
Despite all the rhetoric, North Korea is still fundamentally hostile, has a very aggressive policy in that part of the world.
And you also must understand the trickle down effects of withdrawing U.S. combat troops from the Korean peninsula.
Then all of a sudden, Japan would be a new frontline state and there are tens of thousands of troops stationed in Japan as well.
So if Japan becomes a frontline state, this of course would trigger a new confrontation with China in a way because it would mean that Japan would have to invest more in its national security capabilities.
There are lots of historical tensions between China and Japan.
So there are a number of different long-term effects if the United States would decide to withdraw troops.
And I think that's also something that President Carter in the 1970s had to face.
And of course, I provocatively called it the deep state, but in reality, it was just an intelligence assessment that sort of influenced the so-called foreign policy establishment's decision to push against President Carter's withdrawal.
He wanted to withdraw a part of the 40,000 troops stationed in South Korea in the 1970s because of human rights abuses and also because he just wanted to reduce the military footprint of the United States in the world.
Let me just stop here.
I'm going on.
Just feel free to interrupt whenever you want.
Sure.
I mean, first of all, as far as pulling the troops out now, and we'll get back to the Carter thing in a second, but no one is talking about pulling the troops out anytime very soon.
I mean, the idea, the very best spin on this would be that after a couple of more years of negotiation, they would be able to work out a final end to the Korean War and a denuclearization plan that both sides can agree on.
And only then would anyone even consider pulling troops out, which probably wouldn't happen anyway.
But so I don't think anybody was saying, go ahead and pull them out now and just turn the peninsula over to Kim or anything like that, which of course, we all know that the South Korean government, just as was true back in the 70s, that their military could defend South Korea without the Americans' help at all anyway.
Right, I think, Bob, but yeah, but I think, yes, that you're absolutely correct.
The South Korean military is very capable and they would be more than capable of defeating the North Koreans or any type of North Korean invasion.
I just think generally the United States troops there, in my opinion, at least are a stabilizing factor because it's a fairly volatile environment.
And as I said, you have to keep in mind the larger picture.
And I'm really mostly talking about Japan here.
What will happen if Japan becomes a frontline state?
Well, and there are a lot of quotes about that.
I mean, that's kind of what I was referring to at the beginning that, you know, this crisis in Korea that includes even nuclear brinksmanship and the threat of, you know, intercontinental ballistic missiles with, you know, soon at least possible miniaturization and the ability to nuke Washington DC on the part of the North Koreans and all this and fire and fury and all these threats back and forth, that that price is worth it so that we have an excuse to keep troops in theater to help a positive spin on it to help deter China from picking a fight with Japan, I guess.
But if that's really the case, couldn't we just pull those troops and put them in Japan instead of keep them?
I mean, if that's really all that matters here, like all other things being equal, it seems pretty reckless to have, you know, such a policy is so dependent on a crisis in Korea to justify intimidating China.
Oh, well, no, I mean, I wouldn't I wouldn't say I wouldn't look at it that way.
I don't think, you know, we're dependent on a crisis on a perpetual crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
You're just saying keep troops there anyway, even if they resolve the crisis and in the war, still keep the troops.
No, no, no, no, no, no, don't don't don't get me wrong.
I'm just you know, I'm just for really carefully looking at this issue.
But I don't think right now is is the time at some point if you know, South Korea and North Korea are working things out, then of course, we won't be needing 28,500 troops on the Korean Peninsula.
But I mean, we haven't reached that stage yet.
And yeah, so that's that's my point.
Yeah.
I mean, I think generally, it's always useful to re-examine US policies across the world, why we have troops stationed in certain parts of the country.
And I don't think you know, it should be like, you know, it should not be a big taboo to talk about withdrawing some of the troops.
And listen, this has happened consistently in other parts of the world.
I mean, the Obama administration withdrew a substantial amount of combat troops from Europe in 2010.
And also in South Korea, the United States government withdraw troops over the last decades.
I mean, in the 1970s, there were still 40,000 troops there.
So I mean, I think this is all we can debate all of that.
But I mean, the nuclear dimension still is, I think, is a very important one to consider here.
And I forgot who said it, but I some scholar, was it like a policymaker said, yeah, you need a certain madness when you think about nuclear policy in general.
I mean, the whole concept of nuclear deterrence is just insane in many ways.
I mean, it's not rational in order to deter an aggressor from attacking you, you're essentially threatened to annihilate an entire city or even an entire country or, you know, like a state of your opponent.
This just goes beyond political objectives in some ways, right?
I mean, what's the point if your country's wiped out and you can still retaliate to even consider, you know, a nuclear exchange?
But I mean, that's probably a different debate.
Yeah, well, I'm certainly with you on that.
But yeah, as far as how debatable it is, even Donald Rumsfeld wanted to pull troops out, or at least said he did at certain times.
So it should be within the index card of allowable opinion, as they put it, for absolutely, for sure.
Absolutely.
And I think, I think, you know, I think you what's really, I mean, I think you're touching upon an interesting point.
And that is, it seems to be a consensus opinion among, you know, the so called foreign policy establishment to keep the troops there.
But I think it would not hurt to really re-examine the issue and really, you know, get a lot of, you know, smart people together and re-examine the concept of conventional deterrence that is, you know, do we really need that amount of people on the Korean peninsula currently if the South Korean military is strong enough?
But of course, as I said, I consider those troops to be mostly there for political purposes, just to stabilize the situation, or at least, you know, perpetuate the stalemate.
Because I think the political, the military repercussions might not be so bad from pulling out, let's say, 10,000 troops.
Now, the political repercussions for the South Korean government, and also as I said, for regional allies might be much more severe, because that would also start to raise abandonment fears by US allies.
You know, right now today, I'm all for abandonment, but I won't debate that part of it with you.
Right.
Listen, we can debate everything.
And, like, I'm really open to, you know, good discussion on these subjects.
But right now, we're also having, right here in Europe, where I am currently, we have Trump in Brussels, and he's, you know, attacking Germany for not pulling its weight or not spending enough on its, you know, own defenses.
So, I think, you know, it is important you have these debates, for sure.
And, yeah.
And that's so important, too, because it's, you know, the posture is, oh, he's so anti-NATO and so rude to our allies and all that.
But he's not attacking the organization.
He's not attacking the expansion of membership of the treaty.
He's just saying he wants the allies to buy more American equipment, basically.
So, what a bunch of hoopla over the same old policy, only with, you know, a more crass man at the leadership role.
But anyway, so, wait, let's talk about Jimmy Carter here, because, you know, you're sort of tongue-in-cheek a little bit called the deep state, which is kind of the current jargon.
But, I mean, what we're really talking about can just be called the fourth branch of government, right?
It's the executive branch.
And sometimes, they disagree with their commander-in-chief and chief executive, and they do what they want.
And so, I mean, when you mentioned it earlier that Jimmy Carter had this policy, and I had no idea of this, as you say, as soon as he was sworn in, he started attempting to implement this plan to pull American troops out of Korea.
And it was the military and the CIA who came up with reasons that, it turns out, I think you report to us here, were completely false of why this could not be done.
And you kind of say, I think you sort of said, oh, well, gee, this is just an intelligence assessment.
But it sure reads in your article like they had an agenda to prevent the president from implementing this policy.
And then you even quote him as calling himself helpless, before, you know, he says he couldn't disprove their claims.
And so, what was he supposed to do, right?
Well, yes, I think this generally points to a problem that we still have with North Korea.
We just don't have very good intelligence on what is going on within the country, and particularly its military forces.
So, in a sense, they couldn't really, or Jimmy Carter couldn't really disprove this idea that, for example, you know, previous intelligence estimates had underestimated the North Korean tank force by around 80 percent.
It's just very tricky.
And frankly, I don't have access to that classified information right now.
So, I can't really do my own assessment on, you know, whether this particular intelligence analyst who pulled together this analysis was correct or incorrect.
Again, I think we have to look at the larger picture here, though.
It was, you know, right after Vietnam, the United States pulled out of Vietnam in 1974.
The war officially ended in 1975.
More than 60,000 Korean troops died fighting on the American side during the Vietnam War.
There was a general sense of malaise in American society in the 1970s, a general idea of a decline of U.S. status in the world.
And I think a lot of people, a lot of policymakers in D.C. were really concerned about U.S. credibility, because they, for them, U.S. credibility was always tied to nuclear deterrence, in a sense, which was the holy grail of the Cold War, which most policymakers and most military officials and officers thought, you know, was actually maintaining the peace, the cold peace during the Cold War.
This idea that if we abandon an ally, if we withdraw our troops from somewhere in the world, the Soviets will see this as a sign of weakness.
The Soviets will see this as a sign that the United States will not ultimately live up to its treaty commitments.
And as a consequence, the United States will not be willing to defend other parts of the world with nuclear weapons.
In the international relations theory field, we call that decoupling, like, you know, the policymakers who opposed Carter's withdrawal plans were concerned about decoupling, that is decoupling the U.S. alliance, the U.S. Republic of Korea alliance.
So, again, I think we need to take a step back and look at it from a bird's eye perspective.
And so, of course, they, in a sense, weaponized this intelligence assessment and said, OK, listen, I think it's a bad idea that we pull out these troops.
I think President Carter is acting recklessly.
And they saw this assessment and said, OK, well, we can use this.
We can go with this to Congress.
We can go with this to other departments within the federal government and just, you know, basically present our case and tell them that ultimately the president's plans will not be in the long-term national interest of the United States.
So, I don't think it's, you know, I mean, I tried to be very nuanced in my article about it.
And I said that he did succeed to withdrawing a couple of thousand of troops and more importantly, I think, 450 out of 700 tactical nuclear weapons that were stationed there, which is just a mind-blowing number considering what a single one of these weapons can do in terms of destructive power.
All right.
Hang on just one second.
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And now, when they say that America denuclearized at the end of the Cold War and George Bush Sr.
I'm sort of skipping out of the story here of the Carter years, but when Bush Sr. denuclearized, did they actually have land-based nukes in South Korea at that time?
Or it was really just the Navy was hosting nuclear weapons in port and offshore, and that was what he was pulling out?
I'm not sure, to be honest.
I thought that they had land-based tactical nuclear weapons, but don't quote me on that.
No, I think that sounds right.
Because what remains, of course, is the Navy is still armed with nukes anyway.
So when he did, quote unquote, denuclearize there, that was almost mostly just symbolic, right?
That, well, we're going to take our tactical nukes off the peninsula, but they still, of course, rule the seven seas.
Well, also in the Navy, they took off nuclear weapons, I believe, in the 1990s from surface warships.
So the only Navy ships that would have had nuclear weapons at that time, I believe, again, you have to check this, would have been a ballistic missile submarines, which had a completely different mission set.
They did not carry usually tactical nuclear weapons.
They carried intercontinental ballistic missiles for strikes deep inside the Soviet Union or Russia, rather, or China.
So those weapons on those nuclear ballistic missile submarines would not have been used on the Korean peninsula.
I see.
You can still fly stealth bombers from Missouri or Okinawa or whatever, but still.
Oh, no, I mean, of course.
I see what you're saying, though.
No, that is an important point, though, about the subs are not set for the North Koreans.
The subs are there for Russia.
Well, or China.
Or China, yeah.
Yes, but yeah, I forgot what I wanted to say right now.
I'm sorry, man.
No, no, no.
So back to Carter here real quick.
Did I read you right here that it was Richard Holbrooke played an important role in helping scotch Carter's plans to pull the troops out?
Well, he was part of this informal group of members of, well, the D.C. bureaucracy called the East Asia Informal Group that got together, and Holbrooke was a member of it, and he was in frequent contact with other members of the group where they sort of concluded that the president's troop withdrawal plans were really bereft of any strategic purpose and therefore need to be opposed.
And I'm not sure how often they met.
I'm not sure how influential they really were, but they definitely got together and agreed that something needs to be done to at least delay Carter's plans to withdraw troops from the Korean Peninsula.
And of course, it would have been a different story if Carter got reelected in 1980, but he didn't.
So we just don't know whether he actually would have succeeded in the long run pulling out the troops.
But again, I want to say that we have to understand that this happened in the context of the Cold War and a lot of other silly decisions.
I'm not saying that this troop withdrawal was a silly policy.
We were made during the Cold War years in lieu of a general assessment of what the United States role in the world should really be.
Back then, it was really just containment, containment, and then containment.
Everything was second to the Soviet-U.S. competition.
Right.
So can you tell us a little bit more about, I think you say it was first the military and then the CIA assessments that came out here, and then I guess they were leaked to Congress, and so Congress, they were the ones who really forced Carter's hand on it.
Is that right?
Yes.
Well, so ultimately it was Congress, but Congress was obviously influenced by, I believe, an army intelligence assessment.
And then the CIA also re-examined its conclusions based on that army intelligence assessment.
And yeah, it was, I think, pretty straightforward.
But it was, I'm not sure I have to go back to the article actually, but I believe that there was also a special, it's called a special national intelligence estimate, which sort of pulls together all the information available on a particular classified information that is available within the U.S. government on a particular subject.
And that assessment also concluded that North Korean conventional military strength was much, much higher, much, much stronger than initially anticipated.
So with that in hand, and then, sorry, and then also the Congress itself also conducted its own assessment, and they all came to the single conclusion that North Korean military capabilities are much stronger than initially thought, and therefore it would be a big mistake to pull out the troops right now at that stage in 1978, I believe.
And then, so I think you say in here that, well, they ordered another review or something, but then he was gone, Reagan came in, and that went nowhere.
And here they are still to this day.
Yes.
Well, I mean, now you have, you know, I believe now you have 28,500 in comparison to 40,000.
So the troop level did go down.
There are no longer any tactical weapons or any sorts of nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula, nor are there any in Japan at the moment.
So I mean, the situation, you know, I mean, troops reductions did occur.
And also, as I said, Carter succeeded in withdrawing about 3,000 troops and also pulled about half of the nuclear weapons out.
Well, and you know, it's interesting that Jimmy Carter was the one who, I guess, wasn't all him, but he broke the ice in the 1990s and helped William Perry and these others to hammer out the agreed framework that was, you know, the deal that kept the North Koreans inside the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the IAEA Inspection Safeguards Agreement and out of the nuclear weapons business until, in fact, our current National Security Advisor, John Bolton, then working in the State Department for George Bush Jr., came in and destroyed it quite deliberately.
Yes, that is, that is correct.
They weren't even, well, anyway, we've been over that.
But it's just, it's interesting, the role that Carter played.
Anyway, so let me ask you this, Franz, what's your reaction to the current reaction against Trump's attempt to deal here?
And which really, you know, we might even specify in the question here, is really Moon's attempt to deal, that Trump is refusing to obstruct, which is what he's supposed to do, apparently.
Well, as I said, I think this whole thing was rushed in many, many ways.
I don't think that Trump really understood what he got himself into when he went to meet Kim Jong-un at Singapore a couple of weeks back.
This was already a major concession by a U.S. president that ended up not producing that much.
And Secretary of State Pompeo just returned a few days ago, or was it yesterday, I can't remember, from North Korea with essentially an empty hand.
I mean, we don't really know what exactly they were talking about, but from what the media reported, at least, you know, he returned with an empty hand.
And I just can't see under what circumstances in the near or medium term, North Korea would be willing to give up its nuclear weapons.
I know that some South Korean government officials and people in the South Korean Assembly think otherwise, more left-leaning politicians.
They think that Kim Jong-un is generally committed to some form of denuclearization.
But again, I go back to my initial point.
What do we mean by denuclearizing?
The United States is generally interested in a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, although Kim Jong-un will never do that because for him, he sees the examples of Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, both of which did not have nuclear weapons, and both of which were ousted by Western forces as a result.
At least, that's the conclusion that he draws from it.
So I think nuclear weapons are the ultimate safeguard for him.
And if the United States is really pushing to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, I think sooner or later they will just hit a brick wall.
At the same time, I think what has happened because of President Trump's talks with Kim Jong-un without any results at the moment is that it has narrowed the options.
It has really narrowed the options for policymakers, because what happens if those talks break down?
I think then we would have the much more hawkish wing of the Republican Party, you mentioned Bolton, for example, taking over and then really aggressively perhaps pushing for a military option to get rid of Kim Jong-un's weapons.
And this is something that really, really scares me, to be honest.
Yeah.
Well, and we've seen that Bolton's MO, certainly in the case of North Korea then, in the Bush Jr. years, and Iran as well, is that he likes for talks to be sabotaged so that he can say, look, the talks failed.
And that's part of his MO for creating crises.
And he's also the one who deliberately and explicitly brought up the Muammar Gaddafi model, saying, oh yeah, that's what you ought to do, just like Gaddafi did, which even Trump himself specifically said, well, I wouldn't have used that language and kind of dressed him down for that, because that would seem to dissuade.
So, I've got a couple of things for you here real quick.
And you can say whatever you want, too.
So, I'm a bit disappointed to hear your reaction to the overall thing, because it seemed to me like what you call a concession there, Trump going to meet with Kim and giving him a handshake, that what does he have to lose, right?
We don't have any real right to make any demands on Korea at all in the first place.
We have everything to give and nothing really to lose by being magnanimous and trying to make a deal.
So, if Trump gives Kim a back rub or something to make him feel good so that we can get along better, then I only see that as to the good.
What is such a concession about that, really, right?
It's not like he's any more the dictator of North Korea now than he was before, because Trump shook his hand.
But see, that's where I would say that he is, because it sort of legitimized him in front of his own people, but also- But his rule was in question anyway, right?
He's not running for re-election.
No, he's not running for re-election, but I think dictatorships are generally inherently unstable in many, many ways.
Yeah, but at the same time, we've been hearing that North Korea was going to fall because of how unstable it was for 25 years, and in time we go ahead and accept it's not that unstable, and go ahead and give him a handshake.
Seriously, what does that cost us to give him?
Just how much legitimacy could Donald Trump bestow on the unquestioned, hereditary dictator of North Korea anyway?
Come on.
Well, see, and you have to read the statements very carefully that came out of the summit that North Korea issued.
What concerns me more is that Donald Trump vicariously endorsed the idea that North Korea is a nuclear power.
And I think that might not seem like very much, but again, I'm always trying to think about the long-term consequences of it, and it seems to me that one of the long-term consequences for other dictators to emulate is, okay, well, if I want the US president to show up and meet with me, I should require or acquire nuclear weapons.
And I think this, again, to me, just contributes to a much more unstable world.
Well, I see what you mean.
As we just agreed, it was the US government that bullied them quite deliberately out of the agreed framework, which they were perfectly happy to abide by, even though the Americans weren't living up to their side of the agreement at all in terms of the money, the fuel oil, or the light water reactors.
They still were in the deal until America put them in their nuclear posture review and added all these sanctions and outright abrogated the agreed framework.
On this side, it took Bush basically slapping them in the face as hard as he could six times to get them to finally decide to make nukes in the first place.
So maybe they don't really want them that bad.
Well, I haven't really read up on that, so frankly, I have to admit that I don't know exactly what went on during that time.
I do know that North Korea does have a history of double crossing and not living up to its commitments.
But again, I have to look up on it.
If what you said is true, then of course this would not incentivize North Korea to really trust the United States.
But again, as I said, I'm really just concerned that whatever is happening right now on the Korean peninsula is making the world more unstable and increases the chances that we'll have some sort of nuclear confrontation in the near future.
All right, so here's the thing.
So on one hand, I'll add one thing to the Bolton thing from back then.
There was a report that said that North Korea, this was Aluminum Tubes, the sequel, the North Koreans had bought some aluminum tubes from AQ Khan that could have been used for centrifuges to enrich uranium.
And Bolton, in his memoir, I think it was, said, this was the hammer I had been looking for to shatter the agreed framework.
And so, this was the excuse that he used to destroy the deal in his own words, when that could have been negotiated.
The agreed framework didn't address uranium enrichment anyway.
Under the NPT, they have the right to enrich uranium, just not to make bombs out of it.
And so, that should have been another negotiable point.
And it was John Bolton, who we all know symbolizes the far right of American foreign policy thinking on these things, who, working for Cheney and for Bush, I guess, pushed this agenda through to break the deal.
So, that's why I still think a grand bargain of real ironclad security guarantees and an end to the Korean War in exchange for real denuclearization of their nuclear weapons is at least within the realm of possibility.
If Bolton wasn't involved, probably it would be better.
So, here's the other thing that I was really trying to get to, though, is that, hey, what about settling for less?
As Doug Bandow wrote in a recent piece, how about we have an end to the Korean War?
We have some pretty damn good security guarantees, if not the highest level of ironclad possible.
We reduce tensions way down, and we maybe try to get them to give up some of their nukes and go back under the NPT or something like that, or maybe just keep a status, as he compares, to Pakistan, where we all know Pakistan has nukes, and they're not a nuclear weapons state under the NPT.
They're not in the NPT.
But we tolerate it.
We hope that the Tariki Taliban never get their hands on them.
But otherwise, we're not too worried about Pakistan, most of the time, holding these nukes.
And maybe that would be acceptable.
And since it was America's fault for pushing them into nukes in the first place, maybe we really have no right to complain, if they have some, but we can reduce tensions and end the brinksmanship, you know?
Well, I think that's ultimately what a well-thought-out foreign policy should be doing.
And I would agree with what the colleague you mentioned outlined.
Yeah, I would agree.
I mean, because they'll say that was a major failure.
They promised us complete denuclearization, but that would actually be great, wouldn't it, to reduce it down?
I mean, it would definitely improve the situation from what it is right now, for sure.
Yeah.
Again, I think the false premise of denuclearization is that the officials within the Trump administration think that, and President Trump himself, it seems, that North Korea will be giving up these nuclear weapons, or all of them.
And I don't think that's ever really feasible.
So I think maybe what you just said, comparing the situation to Pakistan, makes sense to me, for sure.
I mean, the real thing is, we still have the old Cold War is still on, on the Korean Peninsula.
We already have a new Cold War against Russia.
It's been so long.
And we're still fighting the old Cold War against North Korea here, after our, you know, very uncovered, but very brutal war against them in the 1950s.
And it just seems crazy that we're still at this level of tension when, sort of like with Cuba, too, where America is the superpower.
America is the 8 million ton gorilla.
Surely we can figure out a way to make peace with these pipsqueak adversaries of ours.
Come on.
Right?
Yeah, I mean, well, so that's what they thought about Vietnam as well, you know, like that they were, you know, as a, you know, that's, that was the initial idea, right?
That the United States is the big superpower could really impose its will and negotiate with North Vietnam.
And it turned out they couldn't really, right?
I mean, they were- Well, I mean, we could afford to be magnanimous.
I agree.
I think the big error, I think the big error of Vietnam was the idea, we're so strong, we can have whatever we want.
I don't mean that.
I mean, we're so strong, we ought to be able to give the other side whatever they want and not care.
Right?
Just like, just like the agreed framework.
You know what?
I mean, I'm a libertarian.
I'm against all taxation and all welfare for anyone ever.
But you know what?
If Bill Clinton wants to give Kim Jong-il a little bit of welfare and fuel oil and some light water reactors to keep him from having weapons-grade plutonium, then fine, right?
Like that's all I'm saying.
Kim Jong-un.
No, I'm talking about Bill Clinton in the 90s and the agreed framework.
They're like, yeah, if we're giving them, if we have to give them some light water reactors for free on the U.S. taxpayers' back, I'm okay with that.
We can afford to do whatever it takes to be friendly in negotiations.
This is what I'm trying to say.
I would agree with that.
I would agree with that.
Again, you know, the reason why the people, to go back to the Carter thing, were opposed to it was because they thought that in the long run, it would fundamentally undermine U.S. credibility.
And I think a lot of people that push back now also are saying that a lot of these moves will undermine U.S. credibility and they tie U.S. credibility to general stability in most parts of the world.
The United States living up to treaty commitments and so forth.
Just wanted to reiterate that one more time, yeah.
Sure.
Yeah.
Well, I'm against all that, but all things being equal is what we're talking about here.
I'm not trying to get into like the ideological division.
So listen, no, look, it's great journalism.
It's great talking to you.
I'm sorry I'm actually really late for my next interview.
I lost track of time.
This has been so interesting.
No, no worries.
It's been great talking to you, Scott.
And yeah, have a good day.
Great.
You too.
Appreciate it.
Okay.
Bye.
All right, you guys, that is Franz Stefangotti.
He is senior editor with The Diplomat.
And check out this important piece we ran on antiwar.com a couple weeks ago.
It's how the deep state stopped a U.S. president from withdrawing U.S. troops from Korea.
All right, you guys, and that's the show.
You know me, scotthorton.org, youtube.com slash scotthortonshow, libertarianinstitute.org.
And buy my book, and it's now available in audiobook as well, Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
Hey, it's endorsed by Ron Paul and Daniel Ellsberg and Stephen Walt and Peter Van Buren and Matthew Ho and Daniel Davis and Anand Gopal and Patrick Coburn and Eric Margulies.
You'll like it.
Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
And follow me on Twitter, scotthortonshow.
Thanks, guys.
