03/07/08 – Doug Bandow – The Scott Horton Show

Alright, so welcome back to Antiwar Radio on KOS 95.9 in Austin, Texas.
I'm Scott Horton and our guest today is Doug Bandow.
He is a policy writer based in Washington, D.C., policy analyst, and Robert A. Taft Fellow with the American Conservative Defense Alliance.
He writes foreign follies for Antiwar.com.
That's Antiwar.com slash Bandow.
And his new article up on the website today, Turning China into the Next Big Enemy.
Welcome back to the show.
Happy to be on.
Good to have you here.
And you know, this is a topic that's come up on the show a few times recently, how difficult it's been for the war party to find credible enemies in the post-Cold War world.
They tried for a little while to get away with waging war against the planet Earth in the name of cocaine trafficking there for a little while in the early 1990s.
That didn't really work out too well for the long term.
Now they've been real lucky to have this amorphous, stateless terrorist enemy that they think that they can maintain for a while, apparently.
But looking into the future, China's next.
Isn't that right?
Yeah, China's the obvious threat in quotation marks.
Terrorism just isn't.
It's kind of hard to use terrorism to justify carrier groups and air wings and more nuclear missiles.
But China's kind of a specter you can hold up and say, see, we have to have a really big military buildup to stop these people.
Yeah.
Red China.
Communist China.
Right.
Exactly.
Well, is that really the case that China is red?
I mean, it's a very strange kind of communism.
I mean, this is now a communist party that has businessmen join.
So it's pretty hard to say this is a communist party in any sense that we normally understand.
Now, this, I would say, is far more, you know, a bunch of cynics who are holding on to power who use the communist ideology, but really don't look very communist in any traditional sense.
Do you think it's the case that the more capitalist the country becomes, the more independent centers of wealth rise up, that the power of the Politburo will eventually have to be replaced by something more representative?
Oh, I think we hope that.
I don't think anything's guaranteed.
But in general, I mean, the good news there is half the economy is outside of government control.
You have private businesses, you have people growing wealthy outside of the government.
I mean, you have a lot of that stuff happening, which is extraordinarily important and I think is a good sign.
I mean, there's the more personal autonomy there is, the more people earn a living without having to suck up to the party.
I mean, I think at some point people naturally start saying, well, wait a minute, why do we pay attention to you people?
You know, why can't we make decisions?
So I'm hopeful for the future.
You know, I don't, this is a place you hesitate to predict anything, but it's certainly, well, we have a much better shot of having a democratic China arise, you know, with it and kind of involved in the market system than if we tried to isolate it.
You know, you're right about, it's hard to justify carrier battle groups by pointing at Osama bin Laden, at least for the long term.
I guess they got away with it so far, but over the long term, that's really not going to work out.
But you point out in your article that America is actually allies with every power on earth other than Russia and China.
And even then, the idea of a real new Cold War with Russia is pretty much out of the question.
But there's really no reason at all, is there, for America to spend more than half of the world's military budget to have this kind of hyper-militaristic stance overseas?
No, I mean, the point is, if you just look at potential serious military threats to America, it's hard to find them.
I mean, Russia still has nuclear weapons, you know, China's growing, but the U.S. dominates the globe.
I mean, I point out in the article, we have 12 carrier groups, the Chinese have none.
So the notion that somehow, you know, we're threatened by these people or that in the short term they'll become a threat to the United States, you know, nobody in Beijing is sitting around saying, you know, I have a great idea, let's conquer Hawaii.
I mean, this is not on their radar screen.
Well, so when the news media hypes up that the Chinese are ratcheting up their quote-unquote defense spending, that's what we call it too, are you saying that you think, no, that really is just defense spending, not offense spending?
Yeah, I think what's clearly happening with China, I mean, we don't have to like it, but what the Chinese do, the Chinese look around the world and see the U.S. is quite happy to throw its weight around.
I mean, the U.S. is quite happy to bomb and invade other countries.
And the U.S. has a lot of interest in East Asia.
We've been dominant power there for 50 years.
We want to protect South Korea.
We want to protect Taiwan.
I think what China is doing very clearly is trying to create a military which will prevent the U.S. from meddling in what it views as its sphere of interest.
You know, like it or not, China believes it has more interest in East Asia than the United States does.
Really?
I know, it's extraordinary, isn't it?
I guess so.
You know, China actually thinks that Taiwan should be part of China.
I mean, I don't endorse that view at all.
I happen to think the Taiwanese are entitled to a separate existence, but that's not really the point here.
The point is that the Chinese look at this kind of like the U.S. looked at the Civil War.
You know, this is our territory by God, and if we have to fight over it, we will.
So China's engaged in what the Chinese would argue very much was defense spending.
They are going to try to prevent the U.S. from going after them.
They don't have any particular interest, certainly in kind of a time horizon we can imagine of going overseas and doing anything.
So you would think that anything like that, actual military expansionism, would be decades and decades in the future, if at all?
Well, yeah, I mean, if you look at the Pentagon just put out a report on China, on the Chinese military, and I cite that, you know, they're a little nervous about it.
But still, if you read it, you know, they talk about how, you know, we're talking about a decade before they think China could have the force to defeat kind of a medium power.
They think it's well into the next decade, you know, that's like the 2020s, before China could, you know, support a force, kind of a substantial expeditionary force.
I mean, you know, you figure if China would build one nuclear carrier group a year, I mean, that'd be a lot.
China remains a very poor country.
It's per capita GDP is something like $2,100.
But if China had built one carrier group a year, it'd be the year 2020 before they could match us.
I mean, we have 12 right now.
So my point is not that we shut our eyes and don't pay attention to what they're doing, but that we recognize what they are doing and why they are doing it, and we have to recalculate our own interest.
I mean, I'm most interested in defending America.
I'm not nearly as interested in trying to maintain a military that can try to impose its will on China half a world away.
Well, I don't think American interest requires that, you know, part of trying to put ourselves in their shoes and that kind of thing.
You could sort of see how right wing hawks within the Chinese military establishment within the Apollo Bureau, how they need the people who are the hawks in China, need the American hawks in order to bounce off of just the way the Washington Times likes to cite the craziest thing a Chinese general ever said.
He likes to cite our generals back, doesn't he?
Well, absolutely.
Look, if you're sitting in Beijing and you want to increase the Chinese military budget, there's nothing better for you than to pick up a story of some American who's saying the Chinese are out to, you know, take over the world.
We need a bigger military.
We have to try to contain them.
I mean, if you're a Chinese general, you look at American military spending.
I mean, President Bush has proposed five hundred and fifteen billion dollars in spending next year.
That's more adjusted for inflation at any time since World War Two.
And it's more almost ten times what the Chinese are spending.
Well, the Chinese know that the official number is about fifty nine billion.
That's almost everybody agrees that's low, but it's still we're talking probably at least five times.
We're spending five times as much as the Chinese.
We're spending far more.
And it's extraordinary.
I mean, if I was in China, I'd look at the number and say, well, why do you have to spend as much as the rest of the world combined?
What are you going to do with that power?
I mean, Americans want to think of themselves as being kind of, you know, disinterested, you know, wonderful people that everybody on Earth recognizes are wonderful.
Well, frankly, the rest of the world doesn't look at us that way.
I mean, if you're a country that's been invaded by the U.S., you have a rather different perspective on American behavior.
Now, when it comes to fighter planes and such, I don't think I've ever heard of a fancy Chinese fighter jet.
Are they buying MIGs from the Russians or what are they doing there?
Well, they have.
They have bought a lot from the Russians and they're also kind of starting to expand their own forces.
I mean, they are investing in R&D.
They're expanding their missile forces.
They kind of started the makings of a blue water Navy.
I mean, they're you know, they are they will in time have a serious military, but they're still dramatically behind the U.S.
I mean, you know, I mean, air power is one of those areas where it takes a long time, you know, to actually develop state of the art, the finest fighters that are out there.
The U.S. has those.
So, you know, China is kind of getting the kind of fighters that, you know, may very well be useful and if it will go to war with Taiwan, it's not yet at a place where it could take on the United States.
And now when it comes to nuclear weapons, I think my understanding is that they have what, a couple of dozen?
Yeah, I mean, the question is range.
I mean, they have some intercontinental, they have mostly stuff that's more regional.
You know, what they're doing there is that they're and they don't have to match the U.S.
All they have to do is develop a sufficient force where the U.S. would not dare use its nuclear weapons.
That is, you know, the knowledge that to go to war with China would mean the U.S. could lose, you know, a dozen larger cities.
That should, you know, one would hope at least with a rational president, you know, to prevent, you know, the U.S. from going to war in that case.
So that's really what they're all about.
I mean, you know, I could imagine in a very long term that they could try to match the U.S., but we really are talking about a very long term.
This is, this is a lot, you know, it's taken the U.S. a lot of investment to become the premier military on earth.
You know, China is not in a position to snap its fingers and match the United States.
I mean, China is well behind.
It's replacing a lot of, you know, poor quantity stuff with some better quality.
But this is an expensive business.
You know, Lew Rockwell pointed out on the show a couple of weeks back about how they never show us footage of China, how, you know, Shanghai looks like Houston now, but they just never let us see ground level footage of the average Chinese guy walking down the sidewalk or whatever on TV in America, that that would be bad for warmongering if we can see the Chinese people like us.
And I wonder what you think the average American thinks of in terms of China, whether the American people buy into the idea that this is a threat on the horizon, or are they, you know, hopeful about China becoming a capitalist and freer country like it is?
Well, I think, I mean, the tragedy here is that I don't think Americans know a lot about China.
I mean, Americans tend to be, you know, not too knowledgeable about a number of different countries.
And you can understand why.
I mean, they don't have a lot of lives to run, you know, they don't see other countries having a major impact on them.
You know, it's kind of hard to, you know, understand all these crazy foreign issues.
But I think you're right.
One of the most important things that can happen, and that's one reason why I think trade is a good thing, is to put a human face on somebody in another country really transforms it.
I mean, I have friends in South Korea, I know people in Japan, I mean, I've been back to China most every year the last three, four, five years.
I mean, I meet people, I meet people a second or third time at a conference.
Now, you do have a different way of dealing with them.
I mean, you know, the important thing to recognize is people are people.
I mean, systems, you know, can have an impact, but if you suddenly find you're dealing with people who are fun, who are interesting, who are nice, who are families, it does, I think, cause you to look at the world rather differently.
You know, this isn't a country that's rapidly changing.
I mean, this is a country where 20 years ago it was kind of Maoist madness.
You know, it finally started to give way to a more rational, you know, willingness to engage the world.
And you know, this is a very impressive place.
And as you mentioned, Shanghai, Beijing, you know, some of the major cities look like any American city.
You know, the countryside is much more backward, but these are people who are enjoying kind of opportunities for economic growth, they're enjoying the opportunities to kind of, you know, their families and have better, you know, chance of living.
All of this is going on that's changing that country.
So it's not what it once was.
So if one looks at it through a Cold War prism, you're making a very big mistake.
And I worry a bit about the propaganda that Americans may hear the propaganda and not be aware of kind of the reality of China behind that.
Yeah.
I mean, that's the problem with ignorance is it's really easy to just imagine something to be afraid of in the place of knowledge.
And you talk about a society with a quite different culture than America's culture, a society where the language, you know, the alphabet doesn't even slightly resemble ours, that kind of thing.
And it's far away.
It's a billion people.
And if there's basically nothing but ignorance about the billion people over there, then pretty easy for The Washington Times or anybody else to fill that gap with fear mongering.
Well, that's right.
And there is a history there.
I mean, if you look at the history of Maoist China, I mean, these were really awful people.
You know, so if you kind of what you have in the back of your mind is kind of the video you saw of, you know, that period of time and don't recognize how much China has changed.
You know, you can see why people might, you know, be susceptible to this stuff.
But China is radically different.
I mean, the people in power now are kind of thugs, but I think they're kind of garden variety thugs.
These are not crazed ideologues who are prepared to sacrifice millions of people for some bizarre ideological end.
I think for the most part, these are kind of apparatchiks who've done very well, who want to enjoy the positions they hold.
You know, that's a very different incentive structure and frankly, a far less dangerous place.
How worse off would America be if, well, say we had some crazy trader president who just handed the entire co-prosperity sphere over to the Chinese and said, you run it instead of us?
Well, I think the issue here is not, you know, kind of handing off the point is, the U.S. has allies and friends over there, and there's no particular reason to believe the Japanese want to be co-opted by China.
The South Koreans want to be co-opted.
The Australians want to be co-opted.
But I think what's critical is the U.S. has to encourage these countries to work amongst themselves.
You know, the problem is nobody should look at this as being either the U.S. will run it or China will run it.
The real issue is, you know, can the U.S. dictate or will China have a major say?
And it strikes me that the days of American attempts to dictate are coming to a close.
China inevitably will have something significant to say.
And the hope is that you create kind of an infrastructure there where you have a fairly powerful Japan with its own deterrent capabilities.
You ultimately have a reunited South Korea, which is itself a rather potent force.
You know, what you do is you have countries there that China will engage, but China is not likely to be able to boss around.
And I think that's very possible.
We'll get there.
The U.S. won't be able to dictate, but I can imagine an Asia in which China isn't able to dictate either.
I mean, India can play a very important role.
India is already involved in Southeast Asia.
India's had kind of maneuvers, naval maneuvers with Vietnam.
There's a lot of forces there that are likely to constrain China in the long term.
And I think that's what we need to look towards.
Instead of the U.S. having responsibility for running things, there should be much more of a collective responsibility led by the East Asians themselves.
Forgive me, but what kind of decisions are we even talking about that need to be dictated or worked out multilaterally or what have you?
I mean, we're talking about, you know, which markets, minerals end up in or what?
The most important issues probably these days are some territorial disputes, particularly over islands, the Paracel Islands, the Spratly Islands.
You know, China has made some fairly significant claims.
Other countries are resisting them.
Now, to the extent that China can assert those claims, it has greater kind of naval access and control.
It has greater control over resources.
I think these are issues where, frankly, you know, trying to sort out who owns the Spratly Islands is not an easy one.
It's not one which I think the U.S. has an awful lot to say about.
And there are also questions that what you would like to do is you'd be good if there was a friendlier relationship between Japan and South Korea.
Both of these are democratic states.
Both of them have an incentive to preserve kind of an open trading system, you know, an open economic system.
It'd be good if they cooperated more.
Question of how Australia fits into the equation, Australia has, you know, a certain amount of military heft.
So it's not so much that there are big decisions that have to be made, but it's trying to create an environment in which other countries there recognize that ultimately they need to work together, the ASEAN countries and Southeast Asian countries.
Until now, the U.S. has been the dominant power, so it's harder to try to get other people to cooperate in the absence of the U.S.
That's the world we should be looking forward to.
Right now, is the United States using the North Koreans as an excuse to put missile defense systems in Japan and so forth?
I sort of have trouble believing that North Korea is really the threat that's being considered.
Well, I think that, you know, I happen to think that North Koreans are not suicidal, so they're not likely to start shooting off weapons.
Look, the Japanese are as nervous about the North Koreans as the Americans are for a lot of reasons.
So I think to some degree, the U.S. is happy to push on an open door.
I mean, the North Koreans are there, you know, if there's one country on Earth that one looks at as somewhat unpredictable, they would fit the bill.
So I'm not convinced that there's much chance they're going to start shooting off missiles, but there is nervousness in the region.
So I think this is, from a standpoint of U.S. proponents of missile defense, it's kind of a happy confluence.
But it's not really targeted at China and Russia?
Well, I think the U.S. to some degree wants a missile defense for itself that would potentially deal with them.
But I think as a practical matter, missile defense will never be leak-proof, so you could never imagine confronting the Soviet or Russia and being able to stop all their missiles.
So you're much more likely talking about it in the case of Russia, you know, and ultimately China, probably the question of mistaken launch as opposed to a big launch.
The likelihood of actually being able to stop everything is just very, very small.
It's easy to overwhelm these systems.
I'm sure that the Pentagon has mixed motives, you know.
Let's face it, if you give them a chance to create something like this, they can come up with a lot of reasons for it.
And then North Korea is a good one as a rogue regime, but they certainly, in the short term at least, with China having more limited missile capabilities, I'm sure they're happy to have it actually address that.
Now you said that you think trade is very important for Americans and Chinese people to get to know each other better as a way to hopefully restrain their governments from coming into conflict with each other, but of course trade with China is a hot topic here.
There are a lot of people who feel like the American corporations are basically taking all of what they see as their jobs away and giving them to people in China who have no labor protections and so forth, that basically they're just exploiting all this cheap labor at the cost of the American economy and that kind of thing.
How do you address that?
Well, actually, I mean, American job growth has been increasing, and the jobs created have tended to be better jobs as opposed to the ones that the U.S. has lost.
I mean, the U.S. has had steady job creation over the years, and trade I think is a very important engine for that.
The problem is trade doesn't mean everybody is at once better off, so I have no doubt that there are people who can point to trade and say, because of trade I lost my job.
The problem is if you try to shut off trade, there's going to be a lot of other lost jobs.
I mean, China's becoming a fairly significant buyer.
I mean, a buyer is a Boeing aircraft, for example.
As it grows wealthier, it has a lot of money to spend.
So the problem with trade is it tends to be the costs are very visible, that is, people see their job lost.
The benefits are much less visible.
I mean, benefits in terms of a more efficient economy, benefits in terms of cheaper products, benefits in terms of jobs created in a whole host of export industries.
A lot of these things are happening, which we very often don't see, so the political calculus tends to focus on the losses, not the benefits.
You know, America is the biggest trading nation on Earth.
The U.S. has benefited enormously from being involved in the international trading environment, and I guess I feel uncomfortable for people who seem to believe that the U.S. is not kind of competent enough or efficient enough to take care of itself in the international marketplace.
Our workers are the most efficient and productive on Earth.
That means they can be paid more.
Now, you go to China, you know, your workers are not well-trained, you're dealing with an environment which remains very political, you are taking some risk.
There's more corruption, etc.
So you go there with some risk.
In America, you can still invest with a fair amount of certainty you're going to get your money out.
So tell me this, do you think that there's enough trade between the United States and China now that, for example, the billionaires that populate Wall Street have enough of an investment over there that they can restrain our politicians and their worst tendencies?
Well, the one thing, and frankly a lot of critics of China talk about this, the critics of China get very frustrated because the American business community tends to be opposed to sanctions and threats against China.
So the business community is going to work pretty hard on that because they recognize this is a critically important market for the future, you know, and triggering a trade war between the U.S. and China would benefit nobody, it would create a huge amount of losses in both countries.
So they're certainly going to work hard on that.
I think, you know, a lot of these issues, it depends if something happens, like the downing of the American spy plane, issues come up that you don't expect, sometimes inflamed sentiments.
But I'm hopeful that the relationship can be preserved and over the longer term China will become more democratic and will be a country then that will have less complaint about on human rights and other grounds.
All right, well, everybody, that's Doug Bandow.
He can be found at antiwar.com slash Bandow and he is a Robert A. Taft Fellow with the American Conservative Defense Alliance.
Thanks very much for your time today, Doug.