08/02/12 – Doug Bandow – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
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Our first guest today is Doug Bandow from the Cato Institute.
And in fact, I bet if I look, I'll have a whole bio written out here.
The wife does such a good job preparing all this stuff for me in the morning.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan.
He's the author of several books, including Foreign Follies, America's New Global Empire.
Of course, he also writes regularly for Forbes.com.
Welcome back to the show.
Doug, how are you doing?
Doing okay.
Well, good.
I'm very happy to have you here.
So I assume that you read this piece in the Washington Post.
It's getting a lot of attention.
It was published yesterday.
It's by Greg Jaffe, U.S. model for a future war fans tensions with China and inside the Pentagon.
So now I guess let me just say, first of all, the Pentagon has a war for a plan for sorry, slip of the tongue.
The Pentagon has a plan for a war with everybody all the time, including France or whoever.
Right.
And so what's the big deal here?
Well, I mean, to some degree, that's true.
That is, if you're at the Pentagon, you're supposed to plan for worst case and, you know, assume kind of anything bad can happen.
On the other hand, they're spending a fair amount of money on this.
And you have to ask you, are they making enemies where there's no conceivable reason to have one?
And are they making enemies where there's no conceivable reason to have one?
Well, that's certainly what this looks like.
They're paying this kind of think tank several million dollars a year to do studies on how to fight China.
And of course, the question is, why would we want to fight China?
That the other I mean, they've come up with a whole analysis kind of predicated on a Chinese attack on the United States.
And it's pretty hard to imagine why that would happen.
Quite frankly, all of the scenarios that one can imagine are America attacking China.
And I don't see any reason for us to want to do that.
Well, I mean, the obvious one would be they go ahead and move on Taiwan, right?
No, that's right.
But the point is, none of these scenarios have anything to do with defending America.
All of the scenarios have to do with defending allies, or, you know, kind of asserting us influence.
I mean, it kind of shows where we're at in the world today.
The Defense Department no longer does defense.
The Defense Department does, you know, kind of aggressive war against other countries if they do things we don't like.
It's a very different thing.
Collective security.
That's right.
I mean, it's it is the idea that we have to defend basically everybody else on the planet.
And somehow that's related to defending ourselves, even when in so many cases, it simply has nothing to do with it.
Well, now, as far as that goes, am I right that Taiwan might as well be Texas?
They're not gonna there be war if anybody attacked if China tried to invade and conquer Taiwan, the US would go to war with China over that, wouldn't they?
Well, I think so.
But that could change.
I mean, the critical thing is that as China gains a deterrent capability and the ability to sink American carriers, you know, that that may change the calculus.
Well, they can drop a hydrogen bomb on my hometown right now.
Yeah, the thing is, China, it's a question of kind of escalation where China doesn't want to threaten nuclear war.
If it decides it wants to take over Taiwan, what it wants to do is be able to deter the US conventionally, but have nuclear forces so the US can't threaten them with nuclear force.
So when I think we're moving to that, that time where they have submarines and missiles that could sink American carriers, that forces a US president to make a very different decision.
So we might be coming to a point where the US simply can't assume it can defend Taiwan.
And then that brings in the kind of analysis The Washington Post is talking about, you know, this air, sea, land battle and kind of all this complicated, you know, how the US would strike deep into China kind of all this craziness, which is what the Pentagon's paying a lot of money for.
Yeah, see, this is the whole Dr. Strangelove fightable, a winnable war, a fightable war against China instead of MacArthur, you're fired, because we just absolutely cannot ever have a war with China period.
You know, that was the that was the old doctrine.
Now it's you know, how we could fight and win a war with China, and probably it won't come to nuclear blows.
What?
Well, yeah, it's also I mean, even I mean, the Truman folks would have gone to war with China and say to defend Japan.
But they recognize that it made no sense to have a war on the Asian mainland.
I mean, you know, I mean, over Korea, and that they recognize far better to have a stalemate on the Korean Peninsula and have another world war.
So I mean, even a very hawkish administration in the middle of the Cold War recognized that war with China was a very bad deal.
And you didn't jump into this kind of your frivolously, which is what MacArthur, you know, let's unleash everything and attack them and kind of hope for the best.
Well, if it had been a nuclear war with China, then the Russians would have been involved immediately as well, right?
Yeah, I mean, Russia had a defense treaty with China.
You know, Stalin wouldn't have wanted nuclear war with America.
On the other hand, he wouldn't have wanted the US to take out the Chinese communists.
So it would have been a very dicey situation, he might very well have moved on Europe, that would have been a way to put pressure on the US.
So I think, you know, from everyone's standpoint, that, you know, clearly, the Truman administration made the right decision.
You know, sorry, you know, Douglas, this is just not this is a crazy idea, you go home.
Right?
Now, well, the one thing that Truman did that I agreed with, although in context of a war, I would have never had him fight in the first place.
But so anyway, but to bring this back up to our current standards, I guess, what you're saying, well, Japan is an example, right?
They will go to war over Japan, if China and Japan got into a fight.
But you're saying with Taiwan, maybe it's not so clear.
That's right.
I think Taiwan is simply more complicated.
You look at it geographically, it's a lot closer.
You know, it's much harder to defend.
It's a smaller country, it's less critical, it doesn't have the long, clear kind of alliance relationship in quite the same way that Japan has, it has not had the presence of US troops.
I mean, and you know, the reality is most of the countries in the world don't recognize Taiwan as being independent.
All of that kind of puts Taiwan in a different position.
I think today, if China attacked Taiwan, the US would probably intervene.
But I think, you know, we may very well be moving to a world where 10 or 20 years from now that that could easily change, simply because the realities in the region where the US won't be able to guarantee that it could overcome Chinese, you know, deterrent capabilities.
Well, and now, I saw this thing, oh, I think it was probably the war nerd over there at the exiled was talking about how aircraft carriers are nothing but targets for ballistic missiles, which just simply means missiles falling from out of the sky on top of them, rather than a sea skimming missile, they can shoot their radar and their Gatling guns at it and try to take it out.
But a ballistic missile, it's just a target, he said.
That's right.
And that's what the Chinese are really building up.
What the Chinese understand is they don't have to have 11 carrier groups like America, all they need is the ability to sink carriers.
And then that forces the president to decide, does he want to put at risk a ship with 6000 people on it and explain to the American people how he managed to lose one of these, you know, massive, you know, creations.
No president wants to be in that position.
So the Chinese, you know, they're wonderful for projecting power.
Now you send them off to the coast of some third world country, you can bomb it into oblivion.
But, you know, it turns out if you're up against a sophisticated opponent, then suddenly the world changes and it becomes a big target.
Right?
Yeah.
And I think it was Jeff Huber, the late great Jeff Huber, who wrote about how they don't even make them out of steel anymore.
You know, they're, they're a few inches thick, the armor on these boats, they're not even really made for fighting with, you know, compared to the kind of ships that the Navy had in World War Two, which were made to take a pounding and not sink.
Well, part of it is, of course, missiles are, you know, the firepower is increased exponentially.
Sure.
So it's pretty hard to put enough armor in to stop that missile.
So to some degree, I think they emphasize speed at this point, as opposed to, you know, throwing on extra armor that probably wouldn't help very much anyway.
Oh, yeah, that makes sense.
All right, well, we're coming up on a break here, we're talking with Doug Bandow from the Cato Institute.
And we're talking about this piece in the Washington Post, US model for a future war fans tensions with China, and inside the Pentagon about all these studies for how to fight a winnable war against China.
It seemed to be, you know, possibly one of those self fulfilling prophecies trying to gin up a crisis where there's not one sort of thing.
Anyway, we'll be right back to talk about more Asia issues.
All right, y'all welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Doug Bandow from the Cato Institute.
And we're going over this piece in the Washington Post, US model for a future war fans tensions with China and inside the Pentagon.
And basically, it's about these war games and basically tabletop exercises and whatever at this thing called the Center for strategic and budgetary assessments, a defense think tank.
And they've collected quite a little welfare check here, running these war games.
And, but the thing is, I'm not exactly sure what supposedly were the consequences in China, but some guys in the People's Liberation Army apparently got really livid over this dog.
Does that matter?
Is this a big deal?
Well, not really.
I mean, the People's Liberation Army have a lot of reasons to be irritated with the United States.
I wouldn't worry about that.
What I worry is that it's part of a larger pattern.
We know the Obama administration is putting some troops into Australia, not enough to actually have any meaningful military impact, but enough to irritate the Chinese.
You know, we tell the Chinese this, we tell them that we put troops here, we have these relationships.
The danger is you create a hostile relationship with them.
You start treating them like the enemy, they're more likely to behave like the enemy.
So I view this simply one piece of it.
You know, back when the Bush one administration, there was a story about an American plan, a war fighting plan against India.
You know, it was just one of these kind of silly things that they had as an option there in case something happened and the Indians were mad about it.
But as a practical matter, nothing much came of it.
What's more important today is everything else besides this.
You put it all together, then you have to worry about poisoning the relationship.
Man, I read this great piece by Chris Floyd one time about a plan between the world wars to invade Canada and Mexico at the same time.
Well, yeah, I mean, the problem is if you sit at the Pentagon, your job is to think about things, the unthinkable, be ready for any contingency, that kind of thing.
So, I mean, they come up with some really wacky stuff, which it's just hard to imagine would ever have any relevance to anything.
But then, you know, strange things have happened.
So they feel the need to do so.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, I'm glad you brought up the Marines in Australia because I was going to.
What is the purpose?
How many are there?
Just a few thousand, right?
It's like twenty five hundred or something.
Right, right.
So what is the point of that except to because it's not like, you know, a little Marine base costs that much.
So it's not the welfare for Halliburton to build the base, right?
It's got to be something more important than that.
Oh, I think it's symbolism.
I mean, I think the problem here is they seem to think the symbolic message is the Chinese will be impressed and say, oh, my, you know, America is serious.
The Chinese are much more likely to say, oh, you know, these irritating people, they're trying to, you know, kind of bother us again, you know, that we think that they should be impressed at the fact that twenty five hundred Marines there.
My guess is they are more likely to be irritated because they'll look at that and say, there's no military value in it.
You know, it's simply a symbolic gesture from their standpoint that says up yours.
Yeah.
Well, and it's, you know, if they want to be impressive, put twenty thousand do something enough to, I don't know, seize the center of somebody's town somewhere.
I don't know.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
The whole thing is ridiculous.
All right.
Well, and so that goes to the real question here.
What's all this about?
Because when it comes to plutocrats and Wall Street and all them, they like China, right?
Cheap labor.
And they have the Navy, the U.S. Navy, to socialize the cost of all their security for the distribution.
And what a great deal.
Since the 1970s, we've had a really great deal between billionaires in America and I guess millionaires and billionaires in China, too, and their communist state there.
So why in the world would the powers that be be interested in any of this other than maybe just Lockheed?
But then Lockheed have to kind of go along with the rest of corporate culture a little bit on big questions like this or how about the only people who like China is corporate America and basically everybody else hates it.
And that's the problem is you have human rights activists, you have religious activists, you have labor unions on the trade issue, you have hawks.
I mean, there's a whole bunch of people out there who kind of come together in an odd coalition.
And so China has a lot of enemies out there.
And for a long time, corporate America kind of dominated the agenda, but less so today.
A lot of these other issues, security, trade and whatnot, have come up and they aren't really positive for supporters of China.
Well, you know, I look at this in this post piece, it says with Joe Lieberman and John Cornyn, they inserted language into the defense authorization bill, requiring the Pentagon to issue a report this year detailing their plans for implementing the concept.
They want to see which weapons would you use and are you training for and they want to just go ahead and spend as much money as they can on this thing.
That's right.
Of course, at least Lieberman is one of the great war hawks in the Senate.
So he's the kind of guy who wants to have as big a military as possible and be as kind of obnoxious as arrogant and interventionist as possible.
So he almost certainly views this as the US should be over there kind of, you know, shoving the Chinese around showing them that we're boss.
Well, I don't know if Cornyn has ever made himself a leader on these things.
He's, you know, uniformly bad on them.
That's right.
I don't, I'm not sure why he's involved in this in particular, but he is not a particular friend of liberty.
So, you know, at least on international issues, he's the kind of guy who's much more hawkish.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I don't know.
There are a lot of problems with China, but it's very strange to me how people would see taking a confrontational stance as the solution to that when, hey, even Nixon or only Nixon or whatever is the cliche you prefer, like Nixon, that devil said, you know what, we ought to have peace with this billion people in the world.
What do we need trouble with them for?
Let's all, you know, we'll trade, we'll begin the healing and maybe it takes a while and maybe things aren't perfect there or here either for that matter.
You know, when it comes to internet security violations and privacy violations, America and China are the only two that really compare with each other in the world right now.
So, and when it comes to prison populations and executions too.
So, you know, maybe we're becoming more like them as they're becoming more like us.
But geez, the last thing we want to do is get in a fight with them.
You know, maybe if we work together a little bit better, we could both do better.
Well, that's right.
No, I mean, you know, having these two countries and more importantly, the people of these two countries cooperate, you can imagine having a lot of positive things happen.
So it's in both countries interest not to have any conflict.
And now really is unimaginable that they would do anything so stupid as to really get us into a fight, right?
It's, it's all posturing and whatever, but there's got to be a limit somewhere.
Well, I think that, I think there is, it is at the moment, primarily posturing.
I think the danger is everyone assumes that it couldn't happen.
And that's the dangerous moment because, well, maybe it can't, but if the, you know, you look at World War I prior to the war, I mean, you know, you had, you know, in certain ways rising tide of liberalism and there was more trade and countries, you know, seem to be working together on different things.
And suddenly on a couple of months, they all found themselves at war.
So one has to be very careful and it's dangerous to assume it could never happen because it has in the past.
Right?
Well, and of course, when we're making things that aren't our business, our business, like, well, maybe that's not the right way to say it.
It is our business, right?
Exxon over there in the South China sea has a deal with the Philippines and the Chinese and the Philippines are in a dispute.
And because it's Exxon, that makes it Uncle Sam's business.
Well, we tend to think everything is our business.
So this is merely part and parcel of that.
I mean, that ought to sound crazy to people that we have a dispute that far away.
It's like having a border dispute with Russia and the Caucasus.
Like, hey, that's pretty far from North America here, guys.
That's right.
But of course, there were people who suggested we get involved in the Russian war against Georgia.
So it just shows how for some people, there are no limits.
Right.
Well, yeah, I mean, that was one report, I guess, by Ron Susskind, right, was that Dick Cheney insisted that they shoot missiles at the tunnels beneath the mountains and at the Russian troops coming.
Yeah.
Supposedly, it went up to a cabinet meeting.
And I don't know how serious it was discussed.
But the mere fact anyone would have even discussed it shows how what a dangerous situation we were in.
See, I like to imagine that they all said, OK, well, forget that.
But, you know, it might have got further than that.
Yeah, that's right.
It was we were it all came down to Stephen Hadley and George Bush and those two and their calm, patient wisdom and experience that kept that crisis from escalating further.
That's right.
No, I mean, it could have been a disastrous situation.
Thankfully, you know, we did humanity hanging by a thread by Stephen Hadley.
I know the guy that funneled the forged Niger uranium documents into the president's speech.
All right.
Well, pretty amazing.
At least we didn't die that time.
Yep.
All right.
Hey, listen, I always like talking with you, Doug.
I learn a lot.
Appreciate it.
Sure thing.
Take care now.
That's a great Doug Bandow, everybody from the Cato Institute.
Also, he's writing for Forbes magazine at Forbes blogs dot Forbes.com/Doug Bandow.
We'll be right back.
Scott Warren dot org.