09/26/16 – Eric Margolis – The Scott Horton Show

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All right.
Introducing our good friend, Eric Margulies.
He's the author of the great books, War at the Top of the World and American Raj, Liberation or Domination.
And he writes for unz.com, that's U-N-Z, unz.com, and lourockwell.com, as well as his own great website, ericmargulies.com, spell it like Margolis, ericmargulies.com.
And this one is at unz and at ericmargulies.com.
And it's so important.
You got to read this, Beware the Kashmir Volcano.
And before that, one about North Korea, which we'll get to.
But first of all, welcome back to the show.
How are you?
Thank you, Scott.
I'm trying to follow all these crises.
They're coming fast and furious.
I know it is.
It's completely out of control over here.
I can't keep up.
But so I got a great cheat sheet.
You, Kashmir.
All right.
So assume that nobody in the audience knows much about the conflict, even if they've heard of it.
So give us the light, the shallow background before we get to the crisis here.
Kashmir historically was an independent mountain state in the in the Himalayas.
In 1947, when the British divided India into Muslim and Hindu portions, Kashmir was left out on the side.
It opted, its ruler was a Hindu.
Its Maharaja opted to join India against the wishes of his people who were mainly Muslims, predominantly Muslims.
Fighting erupted as India and Pakistan tried to get hold of this new, of this independent state.
By 1947, when the fighting ended, 47-48, the Indians held two thirds of Kashmir and the Pakistanis one third.
And so it has remained until today.
But this this this beautiful country in the mountains is about the size of England.
And it has 11 million people.
But it is it's divided up between India, Pakistan and in the north, China, complicating things.
So it's been the cause of three wars or 2.5 wars between India and Pakistan.
And it's it is just a vicious, unsolvable dispute.
And the problem is, it's now made much, much worse, very dangerous for the fact that both India and Pakistan have lots of nuclear weapons and means to deliver them.
All right.
Now, so in other words, if I understand you're right, what you're saying is it's not just that, OK, India controls Kashmir and the Pakistanis want it.
It's that the people there are, I guess, in super majorities even are Muslims.
But then that raises the question of whether they're Punjabis, just like the Indians.
The ethnicity is the same.
It's just the religious difference.
No, the Kashmiris are a different ethnic group.
They're fair skins, many blue eyed, some are blue eyed.
They are a very distinct group.
They have their own languages and they there is a movement for a independent Kashmir muddying the waters.
Yeah, that makes it even more complicated than I see.
But then, yeah, I guess especially just on on the basis of super majority Muslim identity there, but ruled by the Hindu government in India is that's what makes it so unsolvable.
It's not just that they're fighting over the land.
It's that the conflict was already won a long time ago in a way that doesn't seem very sustainable for the long run.
That's right.
What's really causing the problem there is that there are 120, 140 million Muslims inside of India already, which is still a very small minority in India, which is 1.1 billion people.
But India's rule in Kashmir has been marked by extreme corruption, brutality, torture, extrajudicial killings is just a very, very bad, rotten administration.
And the Kashmiris have been revolting against India for at least three decades.
And and that's really the the torture, murder, nightmare you described.
That's all along or more in the past or absolutely up until the present day?
It's up to the present day.
In fact, there's been there are occasional upsurges in fighting as Kashmiri rebel groups, many of whom are based in Pakistan or helped by Pakistan, cross the border, which is known as the line of control, and go and attack Indian positions that happened last week at the border.
We're at a place called Uri, where 17 Indian soldiers were killed by the Kashmiri Mujahideen, as they're known.
I've been with them.
I've crossed the very dangerous border.
I've been in fight between the Indian Army and the Muslim Mujahideen.
It's a very violent war.
And when they say the Kashmiri Mujahideen, does that mean the L.E.T. and then second to that, does that just mean the I.S.I.?
Pakistani intelligence?
For sure, the Pakistani intelligence has been helping the Kashmiri Mujahideen and arming them.
And what's very interesting, Scott, is that when we, the United States, invaded Afghanistan, there were howls to the skies about, oh, terrorist training camps are everywhere.
Well, these terrorist training camps were actually I.S.I. camps where Kashmiri Mujahideen were being trained for action against India, not Osama bin Laden's boys being trained to attack the United States.
It was very embarrassing, because Pakistan was an American ally, and this myth has persisted ever since.
Yeah.
Well, and now we've got this situation where, as you say, 17 Indian soldiers were killed.
And then in your article, you say 10,000 more Indian soldiers were rushed to back them up, bringing the total to over half a million Indian soldiers there in Kashmir now.
And then you mentioned, of course, nukes there as well.
Are we at DEFCON 4, 3, 2?
How bad of an emergency is this, really?
Well, I put it DEFCON 3.
The problem is that both sides have nuclear weapons pointing at one another.
The Indians don't need them, because they outnumber the Pakistanis by almost three to one in all categories, warplanes, tanks.
It's just a totally unbalanced confrontation.
As a result, the Pakistanis have developed nuclear weapons and shield Pakistan behind these nuclear weapons.
They fear that India is going to invade Pakistan and wipe it out and reabsorb it into India.
So the Pakistani nuclear force guarantees Pakistan's independence.
The problem, the bigger problem, is that every time there's a border clash or a major incursion, which is often done by the Pakistanis, the Indian army generals start screaming, they want to send our boys into Pakistan and teach those bloody Pakistanis a lesson.
And this means invading northern Pakistan, cutting it in half, swamping it with Indian armored forces, et cetera.
The Pakistanis have tactical nuclear weapons ready to stop such an Indian attack.
And this could lead to a general nuclear exchange, one that could kill 10 million people.
Well, two million people immediately, 10 million people within a week.
These are grand US military estimates.
The worst part is they could pollute all of Asia's groundwater, much of which comes from the high Himalayas.
And it could spread clouds of radioactive dust around the earth and pollute all of us.
So the nuclear winter would be an unimaginable catastrophe.
Yeah.
Well, and you know, we always seem to make the error, not you and me, but everybody with power seems to make the error of thinking that the unthinkable should not be thought of or considered very carefully.
And it seems to me, I don't know, my daydreaming kind of fantasy alternative universe where reasonable adults are in charge or something like that.
We don't have the empire and the terror war and all of this madness.
Instead, we're right now hosting a peace conference, trying to work this out and see if we can't even get these two sides to agree to disarm their nuclear weapons.
Because as you say, this is absolutely, you know, the most dangerous flashpoint other than maybe eastern Ukraine, depending on what Hillary does next year.
But the most likely place, people seem to agree, the most likely place for a nuclear war to break out would be right here.
That's correct.
And we have to remember that India will not get rid of its nuclear weapons because it is also facing China.
And in my book, War at the Top of the World, I suggest that eventually there's going to be an Indian-Chinese war up in the Himalayas and in Burma.
And so the Indians have built up a very powerful nuclear force.
They're developing ICBM, long-range missiles, submarine-launched missiles.
This is by a country where 60% of the people do not have indoor plumbing and people die of malnutrition and hunger.
So it's a shocking contrast.
But India is armed to the teeth.
It's now the world's third biggest army.
It's now the world's, I think, world's largest or second-largest importer of arms.
And it's worrying about China.
The Chinese are in Tibet just staring down on northern India.
So it's very hard to make some kind of nuclear agreement because it has to be three ways, Pakistan, China, and India.
And the Chinese don't show any sign of wanting to get rid of their nuclear weapons.
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Yeah, boy, that does absolutely make it more complicated there.
Well, and I've been reading lately about how, and you kind of talk about this where you mentioned earlier in the interview too, about how the Indians have such a conventional advantage that that means the Pakistanis need these tactical battlefield nukes to be able to stop Indian armor.
But then I've been reading, well, you're mentioning missiles, but what I was reading a few weeks ago was about how the Indians are working on hydrogen bombs, or already have some and are working on a whole new inventory of hydrogen bombs.
And it's pretty easy to see how if, you know, just kind of in a one, two, back and forth kind of a thing, where if the Indians send in conventional, you know, a conventional invasion with tanks, and the Pakistanis started using low yield, miniaturized nukes in the battlefield to try to stop the armor, that doesn't matter.
Once the N word, nuclear, is at play, and the threshold is crossed, and the taboo and the more has been overridden and all these things, then that means the Indian response is going to have to be nuclear, you know, back at the Pakistanis, if they do hit them with even a small one.
And yet, the Indians' inventory is starting to get up into the megatons here, and, you know, that's the kind of future that the Pakistanis maybe would be looking at then, would just be the erasure of their cities completely off of the face of the earth.
And I'm reminded, because I still remember, in 1998, Eric, when they first tested their nuclear weapons, both sides, America wasn't paying attention because it was the Seinfeld finale that year, that month, or whatever.
But I remember seeing a Pakistani general on CNN saying, you tell those Indians, we're not afraid of them, we're not afraid of their atom bombs, and I'm just thinking, you know, atom bombs don't care if you're afraid of them or not, man, they'll turn you to vapor, you know?
But this is the kind of bravado, like, I'm perfectly willing to fist fight that guy is basically his tone of voice when he's really talking about millions of lives at stake.
That's quite right.
And there's another problem, too, Scott, and that is the early warning.
Both sides have not-so-great early warning systems, radars and things, and they have three minutes warning of an enemy attack.
In other words, Indian radar in Kashmir or a little south on the border picks up what looks like a wave of incoming Indian missiles, sorry, Pakistani missiles.
They have three minutes, they call New Delhi, if they can get the prime minister, who may be off having tea or something, and say, what do we do, whether we're going to use them or lose them.
It's absolutely frightening.
And in that part of the world, electronics don't work very well.
Communications are often faulty.
So you have the chance for an accidental launch, very high.
Look what happened to the U.S. and Russia.
Look at that awful Abel Archer thing in 1983 when we came within minutes.
Unfortunately, some Russian colonel, a lieutenant colonel, I think, refused to launch on warning and start World War III.
But this could happen any day between India and Pakistan.
It's a very grave threat.
Yeah.
You know, I think actually someone just tweeted me yesterday that it was the anniversary of that.
And he was saying, why is global warming not the greatest issue in the world?
Because of this.
And it was happy, the guy's last name day, you know, whatever it was.
The one man who said, you know what, I'm going to hold off and saved the world.
Because it came down to just him, you know, that's crazy.
And we know now from, oh, what's his name, Eric Schlosser's book, that there are more of these false alarms and near misses and accidental fail safes and whatever that than we ever knew about before, too.
So it's it's actually at this point, it's almost enough to start believing in religion that, you know, when eight of the nine fail safes on a H-bomb fail, but one of them holds like, hey, thanks, Jesus, for holding on to that thing for us.
You know, otherwise that would have been a chunk out of Alabama or North Carolina or something, you know, which probably would have been blamed on the Russians at the time because what are they going to do?
Admit a mistake like Flight 800.
No, they're just going to point fingers.
Start time and start investing in the bomb shelter business again.
Yeah, exactly.
Man, I'm calling all entrepreneurs.
Yeah, Hillary 2016.
Well, I don't know who's more of a nuclear threat, actually, this time.
And so, wait, let me ask you about this, too, because remember the Mumbai attack that was in what, 2009?
I don't remember the year, but I remember the attack.
Yeah.
So well, and it went on for like a whole day or something.
And I don't know how many people were killed, scores or something were killed.
Great, great argument for the Second Amendment in India there.
But the way I remember kind of loosely was that the Americans begged the Indians to basically not react or react only with police activity and covert activity and not go to war over it.
But that boy, if if that happened again, we wouldn't be able to.
That's like somebody talking America out of going to war after September 11th.
Good luck.
Right.
I mean, that was a huge thing.
Right.
The Mumbai attack, the shock to the Indian conscience was the same as 9-11 when it happened to us.
There was some years previously that I think was 1999 around there somewhere.
Pakistani forces, irregular forces invaded Indian Ladakh, which is next to Kashmir at the area called Kargil.
And the two sides came very close to a major shooting war.
And once again, the U.S. begged India, please stay calm.
And the Indians have been and then the Indian Parliament was attacked by Mujahideen.
So the Indians have been very forbearing.
They've shown great patience under extreme provocation.
But they're scared of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
They know the Pakistanis are crazy angry at the Indians and they might just risk getting hit with a nuclear strike.
Man, oh, man.
All right.
Listen, speaking of nukes, let's talk for six minutes about the DPRK and their recent test.
Have you heard, by the way, of whether anyone said it was a real success or not?
There's been very little talk about that, which suggests to me that it was a success because normally it's poo-pooed.
Yeah, at least the first couple were declared to be fizzles.
We have to be careful what we hear about North Korea because first of all, the North Koreans always talk a lot of baloney.
But more important, the South Koreans, through whom we get a lot of information on Korea because nobody speaks Korean otherwise, they are constantly putting out lies and untruths about North Korea and the situation about people being eaten by wild dogs and shot by anti-aircraft weapons and things.
So this is another Indian-Pakistani crazy hate type thing.
But it seems from what I've read that the test was a success.
And the most important thing was not only that it went off, but that it has now been the nukes have been miniaturized enough to be carried on top of North Korea's Rodong series of medium range missiles.
Yeah, well, mostly those things blow up on takeoff, right?
Crossing my fingers.
Ours used to do that, too.
You remember back in the 60s and 50s.
But they're getting better, developing more and more capability.
And really all they have to do and their target is going to be Japan.
So South Korea is too close for the North Koreans to use nuclear weapons.
They don't need to.
They've got a huge conventional army, 1.1 million men again.
And all they have to do is roll about 50 kilometers south of the DMZ and take Seoul.
All right, Eric.
Well, now that George W.
Bush completely screwed us and the world on the North Korean nuclear program and pushed them to make nuclear weapons like this, is there anything the next president could do to negotiate them away and end this crisis?
Yes, it's going to be a crisis.
It's not going to be a ho-hum Cold War.
It's going to be a real crisis as long as they got nukes.
We can end this dangerous confrontation with North Korea quite simply.
The North Koreans want diplomatic recognition.
They want trade and they want to be left alone.
We have been needling them, trying to overthrow the North Korean government, which I agree is a nasty bunch of people.
But we've kept trade sanctions on Korea.
We cut everything off, including red wine.
And we run these military exercises.
We just had this where we practice the invasion of North Korea every September with about 75,000 men in the Navy and the Air Force.
And we have a very provocative stance towards North Korea.
And if we stop doing this and if we recognize the North Korean government, my God, we recognize tons of other nasty governments.
Look at Uzbekistan and Egypt.
We could recognize the governments and develop normal diplomatic and trade relations with them.
And this and in terms of getting rid of their nukes, they only have nuclear weapons in North Korea because they fear American attack.
Everybody there says, look what happened to Saddam Hussein.
So there is a path forward.
We just don't want to take it.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, Mr.
Hope and change, Barack Obama's flying B-1s, although at this point, who knows if the Air Force even consulted him?
Chump president, you know, sitting in a chair.
I don't know what else he does up there.
But they're flying B-1 bombers at the border, which is, you know, language for we will drop hydrogen bombs on you and kill almost all of you again, like last time, which is pretty harsh, you know, when they could have just sent an email or something.
It is very harsh.
It's unnecessary.
You're right to raise the point, Scott, if the president has even been consulted on this.
We saw the attack.
What was a week ago in Syria where the U.S. bombed a Syrian army base?
I don't think that was an accident.
I think it was designed to scupper any kind of ceasefire there and having to cooperate with the Russians, you know, go back to that wonderful movie, Dr.
Strangelove, where the Pentagon brass are going crazy and having to sit next to the Russians.
Well, the same thing.
It's it's pathetic.
We have our government is not in control.
Yeah.
You know, I was pretty skeptical about that because, of course, you know, we are talking about government work here.
But yeah, you're not the only one.
Gareth Porter has an article like that.
Phil Giraldi is pretty skeptical that it was an accident.
And quite a few other people who are not prone to, you know, too much hyperbole are saying, hey, you just can't ignore that on the surface anyway.
It sure looks like Ashton Carter, the secretary of defense, is simply insubordinate here.
He's refusing to go along with what the president and the secretary of state have worked out here.
Well, maybe the Joint Chiefs of Staff who are ignoring Carter, too, is not much of a strong personality.
Whatever it is, the we have the CIA fighting the State Department in Syria.
How ridiculous is that?
So American policy is fraying dangerously.
It's not under a firm hand.
Things will change after the next election.
But the government is lost.
It's blundering around.
And I think the real strategic leader is this awful U.N. representative we have, Susan Powers, who is some kind of semi-crazy liberal imperialist who wants war against bad people and men.
It's a terrible situation.
Yeah, well, on one hand, thank God this administration is almost over, but I just shudder to think, I mean, I don't know if if Donald Rumsfeld had, I mean, nice slip there.
If if Donald Rumsfeld's chosen candidate, Donald Trump, had just another couple of IQ points, I could see him actually saying, hey, you know, make peace in Korea, something that Hillary Clinton would never even want to do.
Someone might call her weak, but a Republican could be seen as courageous for going so far as to make a good deal with the North Koreans and try to normalize relations there and end that little Cold War.
But with this guy, just couldn't count on it.
Well, Trump is very show, like most American businessmen, he knows nothing.
He has no real education, but he occasionally comes up with some good ideas.
And he suggested in Asia that we let the Japanese develop nuclear weapons and we make some kind of deal in the Middle East.
Oh, my God, the Israelis and their supporters are in high hysteria over this.
So that's why people are so scared of Trump.
One of the reasons.
Yep.
All right.
Well, listen, I'm sorry I got to stop here because I'm actually running late for my next interview.
But always great to talk with you.
Really appreciate your great work, Eric.
Cheers to you, Scott.
All right.
So that is the heroic Eric Margulies.
He's at Eric Margolis dot com.
That's how you spell it.
You know, when you sound it out using phonics, Eric Margulies dot com.
Lou Rockwell dot com and UNZ dot com.
There's Kim's latest Big Bang.
Great one on the DPRK and this one to pass around all your Facebook friends.
Beware the Kashmir volcano at UNZ dot com.
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