https://www.patreon.com/posts/carnage-and-in-75940716

Transcript

00:00:07 Andrew Heaton

Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for plucky misfits and problem solvers.

00:00:14 Andrew Heaton

I’m your host, Andrew Heath.

00:00:16 Andrew Heaton

A couple of weeks back I invited on Bill Kristol of the Bulwark and various Republican administrations.

00:00:23 Andrew Heaton

A standard bearer of the neocons and a huge proponent of what some would call robust American leadership abroad and what others would call. Unfettered warmongering. We talked about foreign policy and his view that America creates stability and peace by being involved abroad in terms of multilateral coalitions and in terms of pushing out unwanted actors.

00:00:47 Andrew Heaton

It was an interesting episode. I think it was. Certainly the most controversial episode we did this year, if not ever, based on comments, but I think a good EPI. And in response, a number of people wrote in and said, hey Heaton, you just interviewed a guy who thinks America should be a global policeman. One of the architects of the war in Iraq to balance things out, shouldn’t you? Start and only fans account. Now listen, I’m flattered by the myriad demands from listeners that I start an only fans account and then provide fee based nude videos on the Internet. And I might do that next year if I can ever develop a Peck, but it got me thinking. You know, I really ought to balance out Bill Kristol by bringing on somebody with diametrically opposed views to Bill Crystal. Someone who believes American foreign policy interventions are incompetent at best, and malicious at worst. Bring on an isolationist a non interventionist. A dove?

So I have invited on Scott Horton who many people have requested. He is not only a knowledgeable and forceful proponent of America’s standing down as global policeman and enjoying a role as a neutral arbiter of peace, he is also sparring partner with none other than Bill Kristol, who was just on.

Bill Kristol and Scott Horton debated foreign policy earlier this year at the Soho Forum, which will be referenced in today’s episode, and which I will link to in the episode. Option if Bill Kristol is a true believer in the moral superiority of the American mission. And therefore proponent of robust American involvement across the world. We’re now going to hear from an extreme skeptic. Scott Horton is skeptical that America’s interventions abroad make the United States, let alone the world, safer and more peaceful. He thinks American regime meddling in military incursions are far more apt to invite blowback against the United States domestically. And unleash chaos and bloodshed. Scott thinks if you tally up all of the dead Iraqis, Vietnamese Koreans, and American soldiers, the number of casualties arising from America’s foreign conflicts darkly outweighs the instances of successful peacekeeping. And he questions the notion that the American government can be trusted to act as a virtuous proponent of liberty and democracy. Abroad, he thinks a lot of the time, perhaps most of the time our foreign policy is driven by money, power, politics and defense contracts.

00:03:28 Andrew Heaton

One quick housekeeping note. Horton lives in Austin, as do I. So I invited him over to my house for an interview. But last week I developed something of a cold and I didn’t want to get him sick, so I insisted that we record it in my backyard. So brace yourself for occasional ambient neighborhood noises, trucks backing up seagulls. Occasional gunfire.

All that let’s go my guest today is Mr. Scott Horton. He is the director of the Libertarian Institute, the editorial director of antiwar.com, host of Anti War Radio and author of multiple books which tend to have the theme of being opposed to war. Scott, do you want to? Plug any of them.

00:04:14 Scott Horton

Yeah, I wrote fools, errand time in the war in Afghanistan.

00:04:17 Andrew Heaton

Which got it?

00:04:18 Scott Horton

Right, and I wrote enough already turned in the war on terrorism, which Ron Paul and Dan Ellsberg like, and the latest is hotter than the Sun.

00:04:27 Scott Horton

Oh, and I actually did a a book of transcripts of Ron Paul interview. It’s called the great Ron Paul, the Scott Horton show interviews 2004 through 2019, which is 30 interviews I did and then plus a speech I gave.

00:04:37 Scott Horton

About how much I love the guy.

00:04:39 Andrew Heaton

I am I’m an intervention skeptic by which I mean.

00:04:43 Andrew Heaton

I think the default should be non intervention, but you can convince me if there’s a sufficiently good argument for genocide or whatever it is.

00:04:50 Andrew Heaton

My default position is.

00:04:51 Andrew Heaton

We probably shouldn’t mess with it, but you may be able to bring me along on it.

00:04:53 Andrew Heaton

I do see valued in NATO when when the Cold War concluded and George George HW Bush was presiding over that one of the things he thought was useful was to keep.

00:05:03 Andrew Heaton

Europe and America together is a civilization.

00:05:05 Andrew Heaton

Block despite not having a common enemy and so we wanted to keep NATO in place to make sure that God forbid Europe should become a competing military power, and it seems to have been successful in that regard.

00:05:16 Andrew Heaton

Europe has not been invaded by Russia and we’re still allies and friends with all of the NATO countries.

00:05:21 Andrew Heaton

So tell me why I should.

00:05:23 Andrew Heaton

I should now be in favor of abolishing it.

00:05:25 Scott Horton

Well, I mean that’s the whole thing, right?

00:05:27 Scott Horton

Is it?

00:05:28 Scott Horton

It’s like Homer Simpson and his bear repellent going.

00:05:31 Scott Horton

Look, I don’t see Germany taking back over Europe and launching another World War, so it must be working when we don’t really know that the Germans wanted to try that for a third time.

00:05:43 Scott Horton

And in fact, like if.

00:05:44 Scott Horton

You think back at the end of the cold?

00:05:45 Scott Horton

War there was that hype that oh, no, maybe we’re.

00:05:47 Scott Horton

Going to have to deal with the Germans and the Japanese again.

00:05:50 Scott Horton

But just think how absurd that is and I just don’t think that there’s any reason to.

00:05:53 Scott Horton

I think it’s essentially a question begging to say, like, oh, that’s because NATO kept them down, or because the CIA kept very liberal compliant regimes in power over there?

00:06:02 Scott Horton

Or this or that kind of thing.

00:06:04 Scott Horton

You know, in fact, you know the.

00:06:07 Scott Horton

They have this democratic peace theory, but the much more plausible one is the capitalist peace theory and the international trade theory, where as you know you get these countries economies as interlocked as and interdependent as possible.

00:06:22 Scott Horton

Then you give them that much incentive to keep the peace and try to prevent wars from breaking out.

00:06:27 Scott Horton

And the.

00:06:28

He is.

00:06:29 Scott Horton

And I’m not exactly sure what Bill Kristol said.

00:06:31 Scott Horton

I don’t know if you published that interview yet or what.

00:06:33 Scott Horton

OK, I haven’t seen it, but I I debated him and I know that you know.

00:06:37 Scott Horton

Essentially, his argument is that wherever we go and spread our security umbrella that we’re just keeping the peace.

00:06:43 Scott Horton

And there’s a argument that on its face, it’s plausible.

00:06:45 Scott Horton

I guess I concede that like well.

00:06:47 Scott Horton

Slovakia and Slovenia are not.

00:06:49 Scott Horton

Arguing about where the line should be.

00:06:52 Scott Horton

And maybe that’s because they’re both in NATO and.

00:06:55 Scott Horton

As part of the same military alliance together they’re just not going to get in a quarrel over something that is ultimately that trivial or whatever.

00:07:02 Scott Horton

But then again, you could have done the same thing just through the European Union or what HW Bush promised the Russians was the partnership for peace and building up the organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

00:07:16 Scott Horton

And you guys can be part of it too, which is funny because in the 90s I was a new world.

00:07:20 Scott Horton

Order cook and this is.

00:07:21 Scott Horton

What I thought was the one.

00:07:22 Scott Horton

World government would see that bringing Russia in.

00:07:24 Scott Horton

And NATO thesis, antithesis, synthesis. And now we got the one World White Army of the north, and we’re going to go to war against China or Islamic South Asia or whoever’s next on the chopping block there.

00:07:35 Scott Horton

And there were Americans and Russians in the Clinton government, and in the Yeltsin government who were talking like that in the 1990s. About, you know, not only are we going to join forces.

00:07:44 Scott Horton

But then we’re going to find things to do.

00:07:45 Scott Horton

So this is what I thought was the ultimate evil, but what was actually really going on at the time?

00:07:50 Scott Horton

Little did I understand was that not even Bill Clinton, but beginning with HW Bush they were lying to the Russians and they were telling each other.

00:07:58 Scott Horton

Listen, go out there and tell them that we’re going to make NATO a political organization, and we’re going to build up the partnership for peace to replace it, and that Ukraine and Russia and the stands and everybody can join.

00:08:11 Scott Horton

We’re going to have.

00:08:12 Scott Horton

This one joint security architecture for Europe, the common European.

00:08:16 Scott Horton

Home and all this and the Americans promised them that.

00:08:19 Scott Horton

That is why.

00:08:20 Scott Horton

You know the famous Budapest Declaration where everybody promised to respect Ukraine sovereignty and they give up their nukes and all that.

00:08:26 Scott Horton

Well, at that ceremony there was a huge blow up where Boris Yeltsin starts screaming at Bill Clinton that I see what you’re doing.

00:08:33 Scott Horton

You’re ****** me right now. You made all these promises, and now it’s revealed that what you’re really doing is expanding NATO at Russia’s expense.

00:08:40 Scott Horton

And then you remember they gave him a ***.

00:08:42 Scott Horton

Oh, we’ll give you this Russian NATO council where we consult with you and tell you.

00:08:46 Scott Horton

What we’ve decided.

00:08:47 Scott Horton

But we you have no voice whatsoever in any NATO decisions whatsoever.

00:08:51 Scott Horton

And then the argument was that one well come on.

00:08:56 Scott Horton

It’s not like we’re.

00:08:56 Scott Horton

Going to invade.

00:08:57 Scott Horton

Russia so.

00:09:00 Andrew Heaton

That’s it.

00:09:01 Scott Horton

Since we’re not.

00:09:03 Scott Horton

And you and I agree that’s stupid. Nobody’s gonna invade Russia. The Americans are leading.

00:09:06 Scott Horton

An invasion of Russia.

00:09:07 Scott Horton

Well, since we’re not.

00:09:08 Andrew Heaton

We’re certainly not going to do when they got new.

00:09:08 Scott Horton

Well then that’s.

00:09:08 Scott Horton

It nukes.

00:09:09 Scott Horton

That means that means.

00:09:10 Scott Horton

They have no concerns whatsoever and they have no right to be concerned whatsoever.

00:09:15 Scott Horton

And this is a purely defensive alliance, and any problem that they claim to have with it is either 1 schizoid paranoia.

00:09:21 Scott Horton

On their part or two, just completely damned irrelevant and irrational concerns that we do not have to respect.

00:09:29 Scott Horton

And three, what are they going to do about it anyway?

00:09:32 Scott Horton

As Madeleine Albright said, hey, if this doesn’t work out and we get a bad reaction, hey, we still got NATO.

00:09:40 Scott Horton

And so here we are. And this is look go back to 1998 when George Cannon and all of the realists, the grayest of grey beards in foreign policy, said we should not be expanding NATO at Russia’s expense. And George Cannon told Thomas Friedman in the New York Times.

00:09:54 Scott Horton

He says if we do this.

00:09:57 Scott Horton

We are going to get a really bad reaction out of the Russians.

00:10:00 Scott Horton

And then all the people who are telling us now that it’s.

00:10:04 Scott Horton

Going to be fine.

00:10:06 Scott Horton

Are gonna say see that’s just how the Russians are and that’s why we have to defend Europe and contain them, he says.

00:10:13 Scott Horton

But that’s just not right, and that was the single most highly respected Russia expert in the entire American foreign policy establishment in the last 100 years.

00:10:22 Scott Horton

Said this is exactly what’s going to.

00:10:23 Scott Horton

Happen so strobe.

00:10:24 Scott Horton

Talbott, who originally

00:10:26 Scott Horton

Wanted to do this partnership for peace. Bill Clinton’s guy ended up being talked into doing the NATO expansion at their expense instead and then.

00:10:35 Scott Horton

Despite his own best conception of the thing.

00:10:40 Scott Horton

It blew up in his face.

00:10:41 Scott Horton

Just like he knew.

00:10:42 Scott Horton

It would, and in fact in 2018 when this was less controversial to talk about the New York Times went and interviewed Talbot in a piece called the Russia Hands.

00:10:54 Scott Horton

And essentially, the New York Times Magazine reporter is saying, geez, you really screwed everything up there, didn’t you? Strobe look at us now because remember, this war broke out in 2014, not 2022.

00:11:05 Scott Horton

And it’s been going on ever since then, so now we’re four years into it.

00:11:08 Scott Horton

We’ve got thousands dead.

00:11:10 Scott Horton

We’ve got an unimplemented peace deal, and.

00:11:14 Scott Horton

A road to hell laying in front of us.

00:11:16 Scott Horton

Like so the guy says to Strobe Talbott Bill Clinton’s Oxford roommate, his foreign policy. You know. Especially his NATO expansion guru.

00:11:24 Scott Horton

And he says, well, strobe.

00:11:25 Scott Horton

What do you have to say for yourself after all this?

00:11:27 Scott Horton

And he says, well, you know.

00:11:30 Scott Horton

You know, if you are in a position like this, there’s one rule and that is that you have to do what is in your nation’s best interests, or else you won’t keep your job very long. And then he says, but.

00:11:43 Scott Horton

Should we have had a higher?

00:11:46 Scott Horton

Wiser conception of our best interest.

00:11:50 Scott Horton

Hmm yeah maybe interesting.

00:11:52 Scott Horton

So people can like so. In other words, he’s saying should we have had a lower time preference like mature, responsible adults and said actually into the 21st century?

00:12:01 Scott Horton

We wanna have a very positive and friendly relationship with Russia for our great great grandkids and we better not screw this up.

00:12:07 Scott Horton

Or should we have a high time preference?

00:12:10 Scott Horton

We need Polish votes in November.

00:12:13 Scott Horton

We need Lockheed money.

00:12:16 Scott Horton

We need to, you know, essentially build up our.

00:12:20 Scott Horton

Own political selfish.

00:12:21 Scott Horton

Interests at the expense of our great.

00:12:24 Scott Horton

Great grandchildren and they chose the latter.

00:12:26 Scott Horton

There they chose the high time preference decision and expanded NATO at Russia’s expense. And then they tried to deny it and say.

00:12:33 Scott Horton

That ohh but.

00:12:34 Scott Horton

The Russians are just saying that.

00:12:35 Scott Horton

And that’s their excuse.

00:12:36 Scott Horton

But then how do you account for 35 years of warnings on both sides? Saying that this is exactly what was going to happen and not just from our heroes like Ted Galen Carpenter at Cato who predicted all of this in 1994. Four but.

00:12:53 Scott Horton

Again, cannon and even Bob McNamara and Paul Nitsa, and the.

00:12:59 Scott Horton

Most hawkish Hawks of the Cold War era?

00:13:02 Scott Horton

Said all right we beat the commies.

00:13:04 Scott Horton

Now let’s make friends with these guys.

00:13:07 Andrew Heaton

One of the.

00:13:07 Andrew Heaton

Things I I I I we.

00:13:09 Andrew Heaton

Could also bring up Mearsheimer, who I think is is a big proponent of the idea that.

00:13:13 Andrew Heaton

NATO expansion has provoked Russian responses.

00:13:18 Andrew Heaton

I I that is probably my default position I like I. It seems to me realism’s probably the best filter with which to assess.

00:13:24 Scott Horton

Oh, you know what I should have said in there so we could get Romania and.

00:13:28 Scott Horton

Slovenia and Slovakia all killed, right?

00:13:30 Scott Horton

Like that’s the point we’re spreading this umbrella of peace, but we’re actually provoking the most dangerous conflict of all potentially, and so there’s a huge paradox in this whole.

00:13:40 Scott Horton

We’re just spreading stability thing when it comes at the expense and we haven’t talked about the middle.

00:13:42 Andrew Heaton

You you.

00:13:44 Andrew Heaton

East of course, but and you are, you are making me think too, because like when when I talked to bill the other day.

00:13:48 Andrew Heaton

One of the things I brought up was if if Russians were doing.

00:13:52 Andrew Heaton

Joint naval exercises in Lake Superior with Canada we would freak out about that.

00:13:56 Andrew Heaton

That would definitely bother us.

00:13:58 Andrew Heaton

We would.

00:13:58 Andrew Heaton

We would not like that we would probably respond if if there were Chinese Air Force bases in Baja California.

00:14:04 Andrew Heaton

That would be a thing to us, right?

00:14:05 Andrew Heaton

So I think there’s a point there using your logic then NATO in general would be an exacerbated by force like I.

00:14:12 Andrew Heaton

Like kind of my default position is NATO as defense, but you’re you’re saying NATO?

00:14:15 Andrew Heaton

Just the persistence?

00:14:16 Scott Horton

Of it, I mean, just look at it from the east side of the line defense.

00:14:19 Scott Horton

From what?

00:14:21 Scott Horton

Right like you come to my neighborhood, you start arming up all of my neighbors.

00:14:25 Scott Horton

And you start. You know hosting big barbecues where everybody’s invited but me. You start moving your you know equipment, training everybody up and moving your stuff right into my front yard and then calling me paranoid for thinking that you’re the one picking the fight, right?

00:14:40 Scott Horton

And and I mean, the analogy is.

00:14:42 Scott Horton

Clear and look everybody already.

00:14:43 Scott Horton

Knows this that people have such cognitive dissonance.

00:14:45 Scott Horton

Not this that even Bill Kristol would say in another circumstance.

00:14:49 Scott Horton

We are the superpower.

00:14:51 Scott Horton

We are #1.

00:14:53 Scott Horton

America, the middle part of North America, is the dominant force in Eastern Europe.

00:14:59 Scott Horton

Now, if you want you can say yeah, but that’s only.

00:15:02 Scott Horton

Because we’re trying to keep the.

00:15:03 Scott Horton

Peace between Slovakia and Slovenia all day long.

00:15:06 Scott Horton

But you gotta understand how that looks from the other side.

00:15:09 Scott Horton

It looks like you’re arming up, in fact so.

00:15:12 Andrew Heaton

This, by the way, this is something that I think really ought to be pointed out when discussing foreign policy.

00:15:16 Andrew Heaton

There’s a difference between.

00:15:18 Andrew Heaton

Virtue and moral culpability versus prudence it it might like I I would say the American regime is better than the Russian regime.

00:15:25 Andrew Heaton

I don’t have any any problem saying that right?

00:15:27 Andrew Heaton

So I prefer our government over Vladimir Putin.

00:15:30 Andrew Heaton

That said, just because I don’t like Vladimir Putin doesn’t mean that there can be situations where without relinquishing moral culpability for something.

00:15:38 Andrew Heaton

It might just be imprudent to go poke him.

00:15:40 Andrew Heaton

It might be a dumb.

00:15:41 Andrew Heaton

Thing to do?

00:15:43

I mean.

00:15:43 Scott Horton

The entire base is.

00:15:44 Scott Horton

I’m sorry because there’s too many tangents here.

00:15:46 Scott Horton

But the entire basis.

00:15:47 Scott Horton

Of this society supposedly or or I shouldn’t say.

00:15:49 Scott Horton

That of the.

00:15:50 Scott Horton

The legal Charter that creates this government to be our security force here.

00:15:55 Scott Horton

The Constitution it does not describe a world empire, right?

00:15:58 Scott Horton

They delegate in that charter to the national government the ability, and they’re pretty vague about how it’s to be enforced.

00:16:05 Scott Horton

The ability to guarantee to every state in the Union a republican form of government, meaning you better have regular elections and probably a bicameral legislature legislature, but at least a good regular single one and an independent judiciary.

00:16:19 Scott Horton

And these kinds of things.

00:16:21 Scott Horton

But just so, imagine what it does not say about every other state on the planet.

00:16:26 Scott Horton

I mean, that’s essentially in a way.

00:16:28 Scott Horton

That’s what NATO is, right is essentially expanding the American Union and giving the same war guarantee the the same the as as they would put it.

00:16:37 Scott Horton

The reason that the 50 states don’t fight is because the national government is here.

00:16:41 Scott Horton

To provide security instead and prevent that from happening and they’re just trying to to spread all of that.

00:16:46 Scott Horton

But look at the way it fundamentally changes the nature of our Republic here and on what is essentially like an impossible mission.

00:16:54 Scott Horton

There they try to spread stability in Europe, but here we are talking about we’re in the middle of a proxy war going on in Ukraine right now.

00:17:02 Scott Horton

After we just finished 20 years of killing something like 3 million people in Afghanistan.

00:17:07 Scott Horton

Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen and all across North Africa from the Philippines to Nigeria and we still got special operations forces all over the place and Syria and Iraq and and North Africa and all of it to no good end whatsoever.

00:17:22 Scott Horton

So you know, just trillions and trillions of dollars spent and.

00:17:27 Scott Horton

And then at home we have essentially an entirely changed society and culture.

00:17:31 Scott Horton

Based on I mean and just in the growth of the national government and its authority over the states, the all the fusion centers and all of the Homeland Security and all the integration of the federal police with the local police.

00:17:44 Scott Horton

And of course, all the FBI, CIA, and.

00:17:45 Andrew Heaton

These contractors are pretty, they’re doing.

00:17:46 Scott Horton

NSA spying absolutely?

00:17:47 Andrew Heaton

Pretty well, they’ve got a lot of clout.

00:17:48 Scott Horton

Yeah, I mean.

00:17:49 Scott Horton

In fact, even the Washington Post remember William Arkin and Dana Priest.

00:17:52 Scott Horton

Did that study ten years ago or so?

00:17:54 Scott Horton

Or maybe more?

00:17:56 Scott Horton

On the Homeland Security state and how the military industrial complex from the Cold War has and a total well, first of all, it’s been now doubled from the terror war.

00:18:04 Scott Horton

And then it also has this entire mirror image in the Homeland Security state and all the domestic intelligence.

00:18:09 Scott Horton

All those contractors just so much money.

00:18:12 Scott Horton

And it’s just it’s you know, James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, has that great.

00:18:16 Scott Horton

Quote where he says war carries the germ of every other tyranny.

00:18:20 Scott Horton

It’s the worst.

00:18:21 Scott Horton

Thing that your state can do, because with it comes more debts, more taxes, more offices and more awards and more promises and more corruption and just the build up of the state wars.

00:18:31 Scott Horton

The health of the state.

00:18:32 Andrew Heaton

So to follow up on a couple of things, had we closed shop on NATO when the Soviet Union collapsed, had the United States and our allies gone?

00:18:39 Andrew Heaton

Hey everybody, we won.

00:18:40 Andrew Heaton

Good job.

00:18:42 Andrew Heaton

You believe that between the the built in Liberal Democratic regimes in in Western Europe and the market economy, everybody was plowing into that would have had the same effect anyway that.

00:18:52 Andrew Heaton

NATO was.

00:18:53 Andrew Heaton

Unless and exacerbated by.

00:18:55 Scott Horton

Well look, I mean, the fact of the.

00:18:57 Scott Horton

Matter is that.

00:18:59 Scott Horton

You know Europe is divided and and the whole world is like this.

00:19:03 Scott Horton

The whole old world is like this to the crazy degrees right where every nation state is supposedly based on some ethnicity or another and all the lines are in all the wrong places and partially because of the legacy of the European empires.

00:19:15 Scott Horton

But also just because that’s where the mountain range is.

00:19:17 Scott Horton

Or that’s where the river.

00:19:18 Scott Horton

These are the that’s where the war ended or whatever it is, and so you know it I I would like to see in America that’s a limited Republic that stays out of all of this stuff.

00:19:29 Scott Horton

But that also is perfectly happy to host peace conferences all day where we don’t have a conflict of interest.

00:19:35 Scott Horton

We don’t have a dog in the fight, and with Slovakia and Slovenia need to figure out.

00:19:40 Scott Horton

How to resurvey that line like?

00:19:41 Andrew Heaton

Let’s we’re just like an honest broker instead of an armed high.

00:19:42

OK.

00:19:44 Scott Horton

School principal exactly right and just go in there and and help figure these things out.

00:19:49 Scott Horton

And it’s in the interest of all of mankind to figure out a final status negotiation for Kashmir. We can’t have a nuclear war over Kashmir. For God’s sake you get the people who live there. You got the Pakistanis, the Indians and the Chinese.

00:20:00 Scott Horton

And all of them have some kind of claim on it.

00:20:01 Scott Horton

Well, sounds like you guys need to sit down and.

00:20:04 Scott Horton

Hammer this out.

00:20:04 Scott Horton

Sooner not later, and so we could be doing.

00:20:07 Andrew Heaton

And you know they call it the liberal.

00:20:08 Andrew Heaton

We would be in a more empowered position as neutral arbiters, as as opposed to enforcers of the regimes.

00:20:11 Scott Horton

Absolutely well.

00:20:13 Scott Horton

Well, it depends.

00:20:14 Scott Horton

Look America has a lot of weight to throw around and so yes, we can make people comply.

00:20:18 Scott Horton

And I’m not saying a libertarian like light approach always works, but I’m just saying.

00:20:23 Scott Horton

The opposite, doesn’t.

00:20:25 Scott Horton

You know the heavy hand doesn’t work.

00:20:27 Scott Horton

It’s not like it’s you know, a guarantee of a lot of of success, but.

00:20:32 Andrew Heaton

Are are are are you?

00:20:32 Scott Horton

Look at the consequences of what they’ve.

00:20:34

Done so so.

00:20:35 Andrew Heaton

Walking through your your non interventionist position are you opposed to intervention, military adventures, military deployment in all forms?

00:20:43 Andrew Heaton

Or are you just really, really, really scrupulous about it?

00:20:46 Andrew Heaton

For example, if there is genocide going on in the Balkans or Rwanda or something.

00:20:51 Andrew Heaton

Would you potentially be OK with a limited deployment of American troops to quell that?

00:20:56 Scott Horton

I mean, in all those cases.

00:20:59 Scott Horton

Those are all, you know, American.

00:21:01 Scott Horton

Instigated problems in the 1st place and I just finished.

00:21:05 Scott Horton

I was too young when the Bosnia stuff was going on. I was good on Kosovo in 99, but I just read this really great ride up by and I know he’s a commie. But still, it’s Edward S Herman.

00:21:16 Scott Horton

He’s the guy that is the the principal author, really a manufacturing consent with Noam Chomsky, you know?

00:21:21 Scott Horton

Who I’m talking.

00:21:21 Scott Horton

About and he had written this thing for, I think ZZ Mag, or something like that, where it’s just this really great chronological breakdown about the breakup of Yugoslavia and.

00:21:29 Scott Horton

Now it was the Americans with their stupid heavy hand breaking the peace deals encouraging people to not live.

00:21:36 Scott Horton

Up to the.

00:21:37 Scott Horton

Status of the deal or the terms of the deals that they had signed on to.

00:21:40 Scott Horton

And all of these things in order to deliberately break the country up.

00:21:44 Scott Horton

And you know which should be no surprise.

00:21:47 Scott Horton

And I’m much less of an expert.

00:21:50 Scott Horton

On the situation in Rwanda, but I do know it was the Western Europeans and including the United States involved in that country in the preceding years.

00:21:58 Scott Horton

Backing the different dictators in their wars in Rwanda and Uganda and so forth that caused all that to happen. And there’s a really great article about this at antiwar.com.

00:22:09 Scott Horton

By Tommy Raskin, who was the son of the congressman, but he was a great libertarian. He wrote for me at the Libertarian Institute, and he wrote for antiwar.com, too.

00:22:18 Scott Horton

And he wrote this really great article all about the prelude to the Rwanda genocide was all the Americans and their friends screwing around over there, backing different dictators and their militias.

00:22:30 Scott Horton

And coup d’etat.

00:22:31 Scott Horton

And all these things.

00:22:32 Scott Horton

So again, that’s not to say that if America withdrew from the world.

00:22:36 Scott Horton

Then none of this would ever happen again or anything like that, but it’s just.

00:22:39 Scott Horton

To say like.

00:22:40 Scott Horton

Who the hell?

00:22:41 Scott Horton

You can’t hire Lex Luthor to do Superman’s job here.

00:22:44 Scott Horton

And you know the Americans can’t get over the idea as they talk about Russia, or we can’t just a peace Putin a peace Putin.

00:22:51 Scott Horton

Well, can’t you see just cause you live.

00:22:53 Scott Horton

Here you can’t tell.

00:22:54 Scott Horton

Putin is the one who’s been appeasing us this whole time, and now he finally stopped.

00:22:59 Scott Horton

Now he finally started taking the advice of the Americans that you can only appease the Americans like Munich.

00:23:05 Scott Horton

So often before eventually, they’re going to be right up at your doorstep and you have to finally draw a line in the sand.

00:23:12 Scott Horton

But no, they’re always the hero, no matter who they kill. I swear to God they pulled out of Afghanistan in September of 2021.

00:23:20 Scott Horton

By December they were saying Afghanistan is a great model for what we want to do to the Russians and Ukraine.

00:23:26 Scott Horton

We want to get them to come in and conquer the Ukrainian Government or they assumed that the Ukrainian Government would be conquered and then we’re gonna arm and fund an insurgency, you know, led by the Azov Battalion and right sector and C-14 and the Aidar battalion with their Hitler salutes, and their swastika tattoos. And and we’re going to arm them up to play the role you know of Bin Laden.

00:23:47 Scott Horton

And the mujahedeen and this is just literally three months, literally three months after they have pulled out.

00:23:55 Scott Horton

Supposedly cleaning up the consequences from the last time they did this in Afghanistan, and then they say, oh, you know, we did a great job in Syria too.

00:24:03 Scott Horton

That’s what they told the New York Times, Admiral Strrev Ritis, who was going to be Hillary Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, told the New York Times.

00:24:09 Scott Horton

He says you.

00:24:10 Scott Horton

Know we don’t know the first thing.

00:24:12 Scott Horton

About defeating an insurgency, but.

00:24:14 Scott Horton

We sure know how to back one.

00:24:16 Scott Horton

Like we did in Afghanistan, and like we did.

00:24:18 Scott Horton

In Syria so.

00:24:19 Scott Horton

Here we just finished.

00:24:20 Scott Horton

Losing Afghanistan the day before yesterday.

00:24:22 Scott Horton

And in Syria, you might remember, because even if Afghanistan is, if not, you know, Rambo.

00:24:27 Scott Horton

3 is ancient history.

00:24:28 Scott Horton

For you, we all remember the Obama years when Obama’s dirty War for al Qaeda and Syria grew into the Islamic State caliphate that conquered all of western Iraq, necessitating Obama to have to launch Iraq war three in 2014 to destroy the Islamic State caliphate that he had built more than half a million.

00:24:49 Scott Horton

Civilians killed again.

00:24:52 Scott Horton

And these guys go, yeah, that’s what we’re going to do like we did in.

00:24:55 Scott Horton

Afghanistan and Syria.

00:24:56 Scott Horton

By the way, we’re Christopher Reeve Superman, the Virgin Boy Scout, saving the kitten from the tree.

00:25:01 Scott Horton

And we have.

00:25:02 Scott Horton

To stop appeasing all the bad guys in the world by beginning to take an activist role.

00:25:07 Scott Horton

And then and.

00:25:08 Scott Horton

Then Ben Rhodes, a homeless, all the Osama Obama’s guy, Ben Rhodes, told the New York Times. That’s right, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has really redeemed us.

00:25:18 Scott Horton

This really lets us know that we are the good guys again.

00:25:21 Scott Horton

All that terror war era of Bush and Obama.

00:25:25 Scott Horton

That’s over now now is.

00:25:27 Scott Horton

The era of.

00:25:28 Scott Horton

Defending the the upstart underdog Ukrainians against the evil Russians.

00:25:34 Andrew Heaton

There’s so much to unpack there, let me let me check a couple of things.

00:25:37 Andrew Heaton

First, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was probably the biggest foreign policy story of the last five years outside of Ukraine, which is the the really big looming 1.

00:25:45 Andrew Heaton

The Afghanistan withdrawal gave me cognitive dissonance, so I’ve been calling to get out of Afghanistan for years.

00:25:52 Andrew Heaton

I was making funny videos on reason about intervention and the failures there and saying, you know, how long are we gonna be here?

00:25:59 Andrew Heaton

Are we gonna be here? 200 years? Is the British Empire et cetera, et cetera.

00:26:02 Andrew Heaton

And then what we?

00:26:02 Andrew Heaton

Actually withdrew was a **** show it just.

00:26:04 Andrew Heaton

I mean it collapsed.

00:26:05 Andrew Heaton

All this blood and death ensued.

00:26:07 Andrew Heaton

I understand why the people in in Afghanistan were angry at us for for leaving that had allied.

00:26:11 Andrew Heaton

With us so.

00:26:12 Andrew Heaton

So did that give you any cognitive dissonance, or is there a different way I should?

00:26:17 Scott Horton

Look at that, yes to the second part, no.

00:26:21 Scott Horton

On the 1st part, because this is exactly what I said was gonna happen five years before. And frankly, one guy on Twitter told me he found where I had told Gareth Porter in 2012 that you know they’re just going to walk right into cobble. It’s going to be like the fall of Saigon.

00:26:33 Scott Horton

Only, maybe not even with the fighting. And that was so regardless yeah. So I predicted that you know, ten years ago now, but so the way I explained it in the book was and look well, let me make a parallel with Iraq, maybe Vietnam’s too.

00:26:35 Andrew Heaton

So just would have.

00:26:49 Scott Horton

In in Iraq, America in Iraq or two.

00:26:52 Scott Horton

I mean Bush is.

00:26:53 Scott Horton

W Bush is Iraq.

00:26:55 Scott Horton

He fought a war for the Shiite super majority, against the minority Arab Sunni Arabs.

00:27:02 Scott Horton

OK, the Shiite Arabs versus the minority Sunni Arabs and then the Shiites in alliance with the Kurds.

00:27:07 Scott Horton

OK, so it’s like.

00:27:08 Scott Horton

602020 and it was 60 and 20. The Shiites and the Kurds versus the Sunni minority America took the side of the majority.

00:27:16 Scott Horton

The Super majority there and kicked Saddam and the Sunnis out into Anbar province and into the arms of al Qaeda.

00:27:21 Scott Horton

You remember that.

00:27:21 Scott Horton

Terrible war, but the point is at the end of that thing they did win the war.

00:27:26 Scott Horton

Power forward the guys that they were trying to put in power, who of course you might remember told Bush thanks.

00:27:31 Scott Horton

Now get the hell out because they didn’t need us anymore because they were the Super majority and they were allied with Iran next door.

00:27:37 Scott Horton

That’s right, Bush fought Iraq worked too for Iran’s best friends. And then they said, now you can leave OK, but at least you see how that’s sustainable and that in fact, you know way sustainable.

00:27:47 Scott Horton

The same, more or less the same regime America installed in power in Iraq, where two is still there in Baghdad, right?

00:27:52 Scott Horton

Not that it’s a very functional parliamentary democracy.

00:27:55 Scott Horton

But they they won the war for factions who could in fact hold on to that power because they had the supermajority right in Afghanistan.

00:28:05 Scott Horton

It’s just no such thing. In Afghanistan they were fighting for a coalition of 20% minorities, three of them, the Tajiks, the Hazaras and the Uzbeks.

00:28:15 Scott Horton

In a coalition against the 40% plurality Pashtun.

00:28:20

OK.

00:28:21 Scott Horton

So in other words, that’s never going.

00:28:22 Andrew Heaton

To work OK, right? So there was an uphill battle to begin with that was never going to be pacified and we just rip the Band-Aid.

00:28:24 Scott Horton

It can’t.

00:28:27 Scott Horton

That’s right.

00:28:28 Andrew Heaton

Off kind of situation of.

00:28:29 Scott Horton

That’s totally the deal now, so we can talk about though cause it is.

00:28:32 Scott Horton

Important to talk?

00:28:32 Scott Horton

About the batch withdrawal.

00:28:33 Scott Horton

Because and I understand especially for people who’ve been in the military, they’re really proud of that flag and this kind of thing.

00:28:38 Scott Horton

They just hate to see a situation.

00:28:40 Scott Horton

Just unravel in such a disgrace in that way and as you say, there’s distance there.

00:28:44 Scott Horton

Maybe we shouldn’t left at all if that’s what leaving looks like, right?

00:28:48 Scott Horton

That’s the wrong conclusion.

00:28:49 Scott Horton

Come to OK cause this I swear to God.

00:28:52 Scott Horton

Well, whatever swearing to nothing. I mean I did the work I showed it in fool’s errand. If we put it off and we’re drawn 10 years later or 20 years later, but.

00:28:59 Scott Horton

Had the same result, right?

00:29:01 Scott Horton

The only way to pacify that posh tube population is with hydrogen bombs.

00:29:05 Scott Horton

You wanna kill them all and do a genocide and and call desolation peace.

00:29:09 Scott Horton

Then you can do that.

00:29:10 Scott Horton

Otherwise you gotta call it quits.

00:29:12 Scott Horton

You’re lost, you’re lost, that’s the truth, right?

00:29:16 Scott Horton

OK but

00:29:18 Scott Horton

At the same time, we are talking about the USA, so by lost I mean the Taliban had the run of the whole country at night and about 60% of it in the daytime.

00:29:26 Scott Horton

They still couldn’t form like take over provincial capitals because that will get them carpet bombed and he still.

00:29:31 Scott Horton

The Americans still had the Bogger air base and no amount of, you know, ground forces.

00:29:37 Scott Horton

1 foot with AK-40 sevens are going to chase us out of that bogrim air base.

00:29:41 Scott Horton

No way right?

00:29:42 Scott Horton

So in a sense, it’s a.

00:29:43 Scott Horton

Stalemate and this is what the Hawks.

00:29:44 Scott Horton

Always want it was like hey as.

00:29:46 Scott Horton

Long as we stay.

00:29:47 Scott Horton

We haven’t lost yet, right?

00:29:49 Scott Horton

At that, as long as.

00:29:50 Scott Horton

We have this one base left, this kind of thing.

00:29:53 Andrew Heaton

So kind of like a rump state titular regime in place, but the actual country had already been lost effectively.

00:29:58 Scott Horton

Right, right and see we had had a ceasefire for two years since the beginning of the negotiations.

00:30:03 Scott Horton

So if they had broken off and and broken the deal, the Taliban would have gone right back to war.

00:30:08 Scott Horton

We hadn’t been fighting the Taliban in a couple of years by that point.

00:30:12 Scott Horton

But so.

00:30:13 Scott Horton

Here’s the thing.

00:30:14 Scott Horton

Of it, in Trump’s last days.

00:30:17 Scott Horton

In fact, he almost got us out in the summer, but you might remember Charlie Savage the disgrace from the New York Times published that giant CIA hoax that the Russians were paying the Taliban bounties to murder Americans in Afghanistan, which is an absolute total lie.

00:30:30 Scott Horton

And even the New York Times themselves walk completely back to Charlie Savage’s.

00:30:33 Andrew Heaton

They they retracted it and disowned it.

00:30:35 Scott Horton

No, but they ran four more.

00:30:37 Scott Horton

Stories that clarified that no parts of it.

00:30:39 Scott Horton

Are true at.

00:30:40 Scott Horton

All so yes, and and he’ll never live down that disgrace for the rest of his sorry.

00:30:46 Scott Horton

Life anyway, so Trump could have gotten us out in the summer, but the Charlie savages CIA New York Times hoax ruined that the the Russia bounties hoax ruined that.

00:30:56 Scott Horton

But then remember after the election, Trump appointed Douglas MacGregor, the Conservative anti interventionist, from the American Conservative magazine, to be special adviser to the new Secretary of Defense.

00:31:09 Scott Horton

And McGregor wrote up a memo that said memorandum whatever the particular language of it.

00:31:17 Scott Horton

To get out of Afghanistan out of Somalia and out of Syria.

00:31:21 Scott Horton

And Trump signed it.

00:31:23 Scott Horton

But then the next day he took it back just like he did every time that he tried to get out of Syria three different times.

00:31:28 Scott Horton

The military just rolled him and made him.

00:31:31 Scott Horton

Take it back.

00:31:31 Andrew Heaton

So, so you have an incredible command over all of the players here and and all.

00:31:37 Andrew Heaton

Of the very granular.

00:31:37 Scott Horton

Oh wait, but this matters cause it’s December right where it matters cause it’s winter time and the Taliban are hibernating, right?

00:31:43 Scott Horton

But the point is.

00:31:45 Scott Horton

The deal said we leave in May of 2021, right? So that’s like the first day of fighting season picture.

00:31:53 Scott Horton

Elmer Fudd and like a duck season rabbit season and all this right.

00:31:56 Scott Horton

The fighting season begins on Mayday, more or less right, so the deal.

00:32:01 Scott Horton

Was we’d be gone by then.

00:32:03 Scott Horton

But then, what if Biden do?

00:32:05 Scott Horton

Trump loses and is gone.

00:32:05 Andrew Heaton

He pushed it back, yeah?

00:32:07 Scott Horton

He comes and he kicks the can down the road to September.

00:32:08 Andrew Heaton

Is he wants be on 11th?

00:32:10 Scott Horton

That’s right, yeah.

00:32:11 Scott Horton

Which is the.

00:32:11 Scott Horton

Craziest, I don’t know who came up with that.

00:32:13 Scott Horton

For PR it was and they they like walked that back.

00:32:17 Scott Horton

That and then they just said.

00:32:18 Scott Horton

OK, September 4th or something but then.

00:32:20 Scott Horton

What did they?

00:32:21 Scott Horton

Accomplish with that, see the Taliban did not delay their timescale for leaving.

00:32:25 Scott Horton

Or for taking over the country?

00:32:26 Scott Horton

I mean to say so the Americans essentially instead of being gone and leaving that so-called decent interval.

00:32:31 Scott Horton

Remember that from Vietnam.

00:32:34 Scott Horton

And and leaving that decent interval so Americans can avert their eyes before the Taliban walked back into Kabul. Instead, he kept the Americans there as the whole country is falling overtly directly into the Taliban’s hands as they’re taking all our military equipment and eventually sacking the capital city to the point where to sum up.

00:32:53 Scott Horton

For people who forgot.

00:32:54 Scott Horton

Biden’s government and his military had to rely on the Taliban for security in Kabul to evacuate our guys to the airport.

00:33:00 Scott Horton

They had even given up the Bagram air base to the Afghan National Army, who immediately turned it right over to the Taliban so they couldn’t and you had two major airstrips there.

00:33:10 Scott Horton

You could have done a real evacuation from there instead.

00:33:12 Scott Horton

We had this absolutely.

00:33:14 Scott Horton

That hawk evacuation from the Kabul airport, which included a suicide attack that killed 13 Marines and the army guy and a bunch of civilians and then led to a retaliatory drone attack that killed a family of 10, was a who was a relief aid worker that got a guy who fed soybeans and water to starving people for his whole life.

00:33:34 Scott Horton

Was the guy that they killed him and his little children.

00:33:36 Scott Horton

And all of that just total.

00:33:38 Scott Horton

Foobar cluster, what you?

00:33:40 Scott Horton

Call it you.

00:33:40 Scott Horton

Know that that you’re referring to that just people who objected to so badly.

00:33:44 Scott Horton

But so I gotta, you know I.

00:33:46 Scott Horton

I should just say like so people understand.

00:33:48 Scott Horton

This is Biden.

00:33:49 Scott Horton

‘s fault because what he should have done?

00:33:50 Scott Horton

Is he should have just stuck with the may deadline and it would have been ugly, and cobble still would have been would have fallen and all that, but it wouldn’t have happened the way it happened with Americans there and getting killed on the way out.

00:33:59 Scott Horton

And all that kind of thing.

00:34:00 Scott Horton

Like that, but it would.

00:34:01 Andrew Heaton

Have been a slightly more graceful exit because we’ve been going on the established timeline.

00:34:03 Scott Horton

Right?

00:34:05 Scott Horton

Because see there’s, there’s another if or.

00:34:08 Scott Horton

Which is he could have told the truth.

00:34:10 Scott Horton

And the truth was, we built a Potemkin village W Bush and Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s wars in Afghanistan have completely failed to build a credible state in the capital.

00:34:22 Scott Horton

And on top of that its army is a joke.

00:34:25 Scott Horton

Too it’s 3.

00:34:25 Scott Horton

100,000 ghost soldiers and these guys are not going to fight.

00:34:29 Scott Horton

Essentially, again, you’re like you’re talking about training up Uzbeks to come S to helm and to dominate pashtoons, where if they, if you’re not paying them, they’re going home, right?

00:34:40 Scott Horton

This is not their patriotic duty.

00:34:42 Scott Horton

That’s ridiculous, right?

00:34:45 Scott Horton

So Biden would have had to tell the truth that listen up America, we’re calling this whole thing off and now we calling this whole thing off, we’re destroying and or pulling out every last bit of the equipment that we were going to give to the Afghan National Army.

00:34:57 Scott Horton

We’re not leaving it for them because we know the Taliban will get it.

00:35:00 Scott Horton

And not only that, we’re pulling out all of our diplomats and civilians out of the capital.

00:35:05 Scott Horton

City, and we’re getting them out while the getting is good so that they’re not.

00:35:08 Scott Horton

Their lives aren’t.

00:35:09 Scott Horton

In danger now.

00:35:10 Andrew Heaton

And and potentially do something like green light people that have worked with us try to get refugees out.

00:35:16 Andrew Heaton

Get out people worried about getting their heads cut off by.

00:35:18 Andrew Heaton

The incoming Taliban

00:35:19 Scott Horton

But now think about what would have happened, though right is.

00:35:21 Scott Horton

He would have been blamed and they would have said no.

00:35:25 Scott Horton

You know Bush and Obama and Trump I guess did a great job building a government over there and.

00:35:30 Scott Horton

Winning the war.

00:35:31 Scott Horton

And it only all fell apart because Biden took all their equipment away because he took all their guns and ammo and tanks and trucks and because he pulled out all his diplomatic support and signaled this complete lack of faith in the government.

00:35:44 Scott Horton

That that’s what caused it to happen.

00:35:46 Scott Horton

Right, so he made the political decision, what did he say?

00:35:49 Scott Horton

He came out and he goes.

00:35:50 Scott Horton

The reason we’re leaving Andrew is because we won the war.

00:35:53 Scott Horton

We did a great job and the Kabul government is awesome and the 300,000 man army is awesome and it can stand for years is what they’re telling me, and so that’s why we can leave is because we’ve done.

00:36:05 Scott Horton

Such a great job, so they.

00:36:06 Scott Horton

Build their evacuation on that premise.

00:36:09 Scott Horton

It was until in.

00:36:10 Andrew Heaton

Fact they were the.

00:36:11 Andrew Heaton

So the Potemkin village and let let’s hope it just sticks long enough for us to worry about something else.

00:36:15 Scott Horton

Right and then so they they.

00:36:16 Scott Horton

They were pulling the troops out, but they were going to.

00:36:18 Scott Horton

Leave some civilians in Kabul.

00:36:19 Scott Horton

And then it was like oh, no the Taliban.

00:36:21 Scott Horton

Are walking right into Kabul?

00:36:22 Scott Horton

With Scott Horn predicted and so.

00:36:24 Scott Horton

What are we going to do now?

00:36:25 Scott Horton

So now we got to evacuate everybody to the airport, but at that point it’s completely ad hoc and turned into the disaster that.

00:36:30 Scott Horton

You’re thinking, but the reality is that.

00:36:33 Scott Horton

You know the the result of what you see there was the absolute inevitable culmination.

00:36:39 Scott Horton

And frankly, like how could you expect any better for a war that was nothing but an unending catastrophe that never that did nothing but.

00:36:46 Scott Horton

Kill hundreds of thousands.

00:36:48 Scott Horton

Of people and achieve absolutely nothing.

00:36:50 Scott Horton

A war to.

00:36:50 Scott Horton

Install a bunch of heroin dealers and child rapists and warlords and criminals and murderers.

00:36:55 Scott Horton

To be the mayors and police chiefs and governors of these poor people and just the whole thing was absolutely as horrible as Vietnam.

00:37:02 Scott Horton

A lower body count, but the premise of the whole thing was just as absolutely wrong, and to put all these people through this, like somehow we should have been able to skate out the door.

00:37:12 Scott Horton

I mean, how could?

00:37:13 Scott Horton

How could anyone expect less than this kind of catastrophe, complete with a suicide attack and a drone attack on a family as the last punctuation marks on the damn thing as they leave?

00:37:23 Scott Horton

You know so.

00:37:24 Andrew Heaton

Let’s say hypothetically.

00:37:27 Andrew Heaton

Justin Amash or Dave Smith or some high profile libertarian becomes president and you Scott Horton, our secretary.

00:37:33 Andrew Heaton

State as the Secretary of State for America what?

00:37:37 Andrew Heaton

What does the Horton doctrine look like?

00:37:39 Andrew Heaton

What what do you do and where do you push American foreign policy?

00:37:42 Scott Horton

Well, the first thing I do is I just absolutely repudiate the Cold War with Russia and China, and we just fire all the Russian hands and hire new ones and send people over there to negotiate.

00:37:53 Scott Horton

Figure out a way to.

00:37:53 Scott Horton

The eye to eye on the whatever outstanding issues and I know.

00:37:57 Scott Horton

That the Russians have played their role.

00:37:59 Scott Horton

I’m not saying they’re nice guys.

00:38:01 Scott Horton

Same thing for the, you know, Chairman XI and the CCP over there.

00:38:06 Scott Horton

You know, I I saw one of these think tank.

00:38:08 Scott Horton

Hawks say that.

00:38:11 Scott Horton

You know, look the Chinese.

00:38:12 Scott Horton

They’re building up their.

00:38:13 Scott Horton

Naval force there in the South China.

00:38:14 Scott Horton

Sea, they’re trying to force us out of the Pacific and our next generation of children will have to live under Chinese domination.

00:38:23 Scott Horton

Well wait, but you know how.

00:38:26 Scott Horton

Big the Pacific Ocean.

00:38:27 Scott Horton

Is big like.

00:38:28 Scott Horton

They didn’t say anything about kicking us out of the entire Pacific Ocean.

00:38:31 Scott Horton

They’re talking about kicking us off of their coast, essentially right area denial for the South.

00:38:36 Scott Horton

What sea the South China Sea, right so?

00:38:39 Scott Horton

Doesn’t mean that everything that they’re doing there is perfectly within the laws of the sea treaties and this and that and whatever details.

00:38:45 Andrew Heaton

Do you?

00:38:46 Scott Horton

But it means that you know, as Rex Tillerson said, Trump secretary of of State who was the CEO of Exxon.

00:38:51 Scott Horton

He said, you know, the Chinese are challenging our domination.

00:38:55 Scott Horton

Of the Pacific, right so?

00:38:57 Scott Horton

As long as we’re being honest.

00:38:58 Scott Horton

Here what we’re talking about.

00:38:59 Scott Horton

They’re not talking about enslaving mankind.

00:39:01 Scott Horton

Talking about preventing us from being the dominant force anywhere.

00:39:05 Scott Horton

So I would just get out of that and all of this stuff is unnecessary.

00:39:09 Scott Horton

The same thing for the Cold War with Iran is send, you know, I, I guess up from the Secretary of State to go right over there, shake hands with the Ayatollah and figure something out.

00:39:16 Scott Horton

We don’t have to balance Saudi Arabia and Iran and all of these things we don’t have to be the dominant force.

00:39:23 Scott Horton

Anywhere on the.

00:39:24 Andrew Heaton

Do you, do you think that we would need to worry about market capitalism?

00:39:25

And so.

00:39:28 Andrew Heaton

Being able to operate if it didn’t have no guarded backing?

00:39:32 Andrew Heaton

In the Pacific.

00:39:32 Scott Horton

Man, I mean isn’t it funny?

00:39:33 Scott Horton

Right cause yeah, people talk about that.

00:39:35 Scott Horton

Like you’re gonna have pirates with heavy firepower, right?

00:39:38 Scott Horton

But there’s no band of private actors anywhere in the world that could stand up against a single states Navy on.

00:39:44 Scott Horton

The planet right?

00:39:45 Scott Horton

Send the Navy of Singapore out there to get some pirates.

00:39:48 Scott Horton

You don’t need the world Navy to protect that and and like.

00:39:52 Scott Horton

You know, for the.

00:39:53 Scott Horton

For big business in America who want to like, you know, export all their raw materials and and get them manufactured over there and bring them back.

00:40:00 Scott Horton

Whether they should have to pay for their own security anyway, why should the American people be subsidizing having?

00:40:05 Scott Horton

Their jobs outsourced.

00:40:07 Scott Horton

Which I’m for.

00:40:07 Scott Horton

Globalization of capitalism and markets.

00:40:09 Scott Horton

But I’m not.

00:40:10 Scott Horton

For subsidizing it, and that screws up the whole.

00:40:12 Scott Horton

Balance of just how much can you offshore before your customers don’t have enough money to buy the crap that you’re importing?

00:40:15 Andrew Heaton

Oh God never thought about, yeah.

00:40:19 Scott Horton

Right?

00:40:19

Yeah, so this.

00:40:20 Scott Horton

Is a huge.

00:40:21 Scott Horton

Subsidy and and a socialist one at at the American people’s expense on behalf of of big business. So we shouldn’t be doing that. And then.

00:40:29 Scott Horton

Look, you know.

00:40:30 Scott Horton

What so there?

00:40:32 Scott Horton

It’s hard right?

00:40:33 Scott Horton

Cause like I’m an anarchist I got no use for any of this, but at the same time there are.

00:40:36 Scott Horton

All these different.

00:40:36 Scott Horton

Levels of all other things being equal here, right?

00:40:39 Scott Horton

So in other words, like.

00:40:40 Scott Horton

One way to look at this is just at the end of the Cold War.

00:40:43 Scott Horton

Charles Krauthammer called it our unipolar moment.

00:40:48 Scott Horton

Right, and the idea was that we’re going to take the next generation to make the world the way we want it and.

00:40:54 Scott Horton

Hope it holds.

00:40:55 Andrew Heaton

Yeah, like an I can bury American superstructure that everybody else plugs into and we we become the predominant power forever.

00:41:00

Right?

00:41:03 Scott Horton

End, but not only that, recognizing too though that Brazil and India and China and Russia again will grow up will get wealthier.

00:41:11 Scott Horton

And will you know at some point it will look like a more multipolar world.

00:41:17 Scott Horton

We had gone from this bipolar thing from Washington and Moscow to now just Washington, but that eventually this power is going to spread.

00:41:24 Scott Horton

Back out again.

00:41:25 Scott Horton

And The thing is like if.

00:41:26 Scott Horton

Charles Krauthammer, who was the ultimate Neo con with Crystal and the rest of them, if he defined the thing as a moment in.

00:41:33 Scott Horton

The first place.

00:41:34 Scott Horton

Then it ought to be OK for the rest.

00:41:36 Scott Horton

Of the American establishment to accept.

00:41:38 Scott Horton

That now is the end of that moment.

00:41:40 Scott Horton

It’s OK for other powers to have more of a say in how things.

00:41:43 Scott Horton

Operate in the.

00:41:44 Scott Horton

World, it doesn’t mean as people say.

00:41:46 Scott Horton

This all the time.

00:41:46 Scott Horton

Or if it wasn’t us, it would be Russia or it would be China, or it would be I.

00:41:51 Scott Horton

I debated her Sir Ali and she said it would be Saudi Arabia could take over the world if it wasn’t the Americans preventing them from doing so, right?

00:41:58 Scott Horton

But this is all just stupid, right?

00:42:00 Scott Horton

There’s no.

00:42:00 Scott Horton

Reason in the world to think that that Russia has a GDP.

00:42:04 Scott Horton

Of Manhattan island.

00:42:06 Scott Horton

Yeah, right is.

00:42:06 Scott Horton

Take over.

00:42:07 Andrew Heaton

Smaller than the Italian economy and apparently.

00:42:09 Andrew Heaton

Not very good at conquering countries.

00:42:10 Scott Horton

Yeah, exactly right.

00:42:11 Scott Horton

If they tried to retake Eastern Europe.

00:42:13 Scott Horton

Obviously we call some far more than they could you know ever gain by that and so it’s not a matter of ohh China is gonna replace us as the unipolar power.

00:42:21 Scott Horton

It’s just we’re gonna have to tolerate that the Chinese have a say in the way things run.

00:42:25 Scott Horton

To a degree.

00:42:26 Scott Horton

And and So what do we do?

00:42:28 Scott Horton

We go no.

00:42:28 Scott Horton

We got to create a new Pacific alliance with Australia and Vietnam because, you know, the domino, the worst thing in the world that would happen, would be for the Chinese Communists to have influence in Communist Vietnam.

00:42:39 Scott Horton

So now we have an alliance with Communist Vietnam.

00:42:42 Scott Horton

We’re trying to build up, not that they want that, but we’re trying to force them into it, and we’re building up.

00:42:47 Scott Horton

Rather than.

00:42:48 Scott Horton

Having a no dog in this fight, no conflict of interest.

00:42:52 Scott Horton

Peace negotiation between India and China over where the line should be in the Himalayas.

00:42:56 Scott Horton

We’re over there goading on the Indians to take a harsh stance to help us hem in the Chinese and doing all this cynical stuff.

00:43:03 Scott Horton

So I think we just.

00:43:04 Scott Horton

Don’t need to.

00:43:04 Scott Horton

Do this in other words, so you don’t need like full libertarian Ron Pollyannaism.

00:43:08 Scott Horton

Like you could even say.

00:43:10 Scott Horton

And not with like a liberal internationalism, but just like a base realism that you could have like, essentially the.

00:43:16 Andrew Heaton

Which which realism realism tends to lend itself towards multipolar power structures, realism seems there’s going to be a homeostasis and that you need to Orient yourself towards that.

00:43:20 Scott Horton

Yeah, and an acceptance of like yeah.

00:43:24 Scott Horton

I I got a funny anecdote I mentioned I was a conspiracy cook in the 90s.

00:43:28 Scott Horton

Well, I just read this thing the other day about they had a trilateral Commission meeting in Japan.

00:43:33 Scott Horton

I didn’t even know they still had that.

00:43:35 Scott Horton

I figured it just.

00:43:35 Scott Horton

Went away by.

00:43:36 Scott Horton

Now or whatever so.

00:43:37

This is Rockefellers group.

00:43:38 Scott Horton

And for people weren’t familiar, it was you.

00:43:40 Scott Horton

Know the Bilderberg.

00:43:40 Scott Horton

Group was essentially this.

00:43:41 Scott Horton

Informal meeting of elites in America.

00:43:44 Scott Horton

And and Western Europe yeah, and and it still is to keep everybody on the same page and the Atlantic Alliance and all that stuff, right?

00:43:45 Andrew Heaton

Still is.

00:43:46 Andrew Heaton

They need, yeah, John McCain everybody.

00:43:50 Scott Horton

Well, so the trilateral Commission was the attempt to bring the Japanese in too.

00:43:54 Scott Horton

So you guys are part of essentially the American dominated order over.

00:43:57 Scott Horton

On the other.

00:43:57 Scott Horton

Side of the planet here.

00:43:58 Scott Horton

Well, so they’re keeping this thing going on, and apparently this is.

00:44:01 Scott Horton

The first time that they ever invited the press.

00:44:04 Scott Horton

In to view the whole thing.

00:44:06 Scott Horton

This never happens always.

00:44:07 Scott Horton

A private thing off the record.

00:44:08 Scott Horton

Meeting, and so it wasn’t just Japanese, it was Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese.

00:44:14 Scott Horton

There S Koreans and Vietnamese there.

00:44:16 Scott Horton

And Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama’s chief of staff and former congressman and.

00:44:22 Scott Horton

I’m sorry, what was the?

00:44:22 Andrew Heaton

Mayor of Chicago

00:44:23

Yeah yeah, yeah.

00:44:24 Scott Horton

And you know, obviously a very influential figure he gave the Americans speech.

00:44:30 Scott Horton

What we’re doing.

00:44:30 Scott Horton

The liberal rules based world order and all this and.

00:44:34 Scott Horton

The whole place went.

00:44:34 Scott Horton

Up in a riot and they hated it.

00:44:38 Scott Horton

So all the questions and answers against were like very harsh against him and then he screwed it out of.

00:44:42 Scott Horton

There and then.

00:44:42 Andrew Heaton

You can watch this is.

00:44:43 Scott Horton

They had.

00:44:43 Andrew Heaton

This available OK.

00:44:44 Scott Horton

No, I don’t think so.

00:44:45 Scott Horton

But you could read it in like you know like that’s the name of their stock market over in Japan.

00:44:48 Scott Horton

That’s the name of the newspaper that ran it, so if you Google like Nikkei and trilateral Commission.

00:44:49 Andrew Heaton

OK, OK.

00:44:52 Scott Horton

You’ll find this.

00:44:53 Scott Horton

It’s a real news piece.

00:44:53 Scott Horton

And then yeah, you know cookie stuff.

00:44:55 Scott Horton

It’s a real news story about it and.

00:44:58 Scott Horton

So they all asked him a bunch of questions and then when they he ducked out of there.

00:45:01 Scott Horton

And then they.

00:45:02 Scott Horton

Had a coffee break and then during then everyone was talking right?

00:45:06 Scott Horton

And so the reporter says that they’re just in an uproar.

00:45:09 Scott Horton

They hate our friends, the Japanese, the South, Koreans, the Vietnamese.

00:45:13 Scott Horton

They hate the liberal, rules based world order because that’s just a euphemism for American unilateral.

00:45:20 Scott Horton

Imperialism and they actually say this in there and.

00:45:23 Scott Horton

People thought this should.

00:45:24 Scott Horton

Like hurt people’s feelings a little bit or.

00:45:26 Scott Horton

Something somehow they say China.

00:45:29 Scott Horton

Is a better uphold.

00:45:31 Scott Horton

Of the UN Charter and the Post 1945 real liberal rules based world order than you and you guys go around breaking it all the time in the name of upholding it all.

00:45:43 Scott Horton

And if you’re going to try to really force.

00:45:45 Scott Horton

Us to choose between.

00:45:47 Scott Horton

You and China.

00:45:47 Scott Horton

We’re going to choose China, not you.

00:45:50 Scott Horton

Like who the hell do you think you are and like?

00:45:54 Scott Horton

This is one of those things where it’s like they must be right about that or they wouldn’t be talking that way, right?

00:46:00 Scott Horton

Like there’s there’s, it’s important.

00:46:02 Scott Horton

That that’s the way that they see.

00:46:03 Scott Horton

Things that when people.

00:46:05 Scott Horton

And and seriously.

00:46:07 Scott Horton

I mean, I know people got to come up with euphemisms for their empire, but the liberal rules based world order, like man, I can see right through you like a cop with blood on his hands.

00:46:16

You know?

00:46:17 Scott Horton

What I mean like come on give.

00:46:18 Andrew Heaton

Me a break.

00:46:19 Andrew Heaton

I want to go back a a little a moment ago you you said you’re an anarchist my my anarchist friends I find tend to be very deontological in their outlook where they’re thinking in terms of priorities and values.

00:46:30 Andrew Heaton

1st, and they’re thinking of utility on the back end.

00:46:33 Andrew Heaton

I tend to be a lot more utility focused.

00:46:35 Andrew Heaton

There are things that I’m very value focused.

00:46:37 Scott Horton

On, but I’m very divided like.

00:46:39 Andrew Heaton

That, Oh well, that was my next question is, is your foreign policy?

00:46:42 Andrew Heaton

Coming out of your anarchism of just you were opposed to course of force domestically.

00:46:47 Andrew Heaton

Therefore you were opposed to course of force within nation states.

00:46:50 Andrew Heaton

Or are you doing it through a sense of utility, a LA blowback, imperial overreach, blood and treasure, et cetera, et cetera?

00:46:58 Scott Horton

I mean lucky lucky for me.

00:47:01 Scott Horton

Luckily for me, I’m not really smart enough to think about all of that stuff in it’s proper terms, right?

00:47:06 Scott Horton

Like it’s a bit of both.

00:47:08 Scott Horton

It’s possible I’m only a natural rights guy, just.

00:47:12 Scott Horton

I think for utility reasons it would be better if everybody.

00:47:14 Scott Horton

Was you know I?

00:47:15 Scott Horton

Don’t know all those in philosophy class.

00:47:18 Scott Horton

All those syllogisms have a big flaw in them, right?

00:47:21 Scott Horton

Like that’s the joke.

00:47:21 Scott Horton

That’s what you learn at the end is that none of these arguments make any real sense.

00:47:25 Scott Horton

At the end of day so, but for me.

00:47:28 Scott Horton

I just hate the government.

00:47:29 Scott Horton

I’m anti government I I don’t want anything that empowers them, certainly unnecessarily to be able to continue on.

00:47:36 Scott Horton

And I but I, you know, in the margin, I guess the way I think about it is, you know, I want to oppose the worst things first and like, even in like which arguments that I’m using.

00:47:46 Scott Horton

But the solution to police abuse is just to abolish the police and let.

00:47:50 Scott Horton

The market figure it out right?

00:47:52 Scott Horton

But like what is the most available but also effective enough argument that maybe I could settle for in a world where all things being equal.

00:48:05 Scott Horton

The Travis County Sheriff’s Department still going to exist on the day.

00:48:07 Andrew Heaton

So that would that would be more like America but not going out like having those submarines patrol the coasts, but.

00:48:08 Scott Horton

It’s not really Ron Paul.

00:48:13

Yeah, sure.

00:48:14 Scott Horton

Yeah, just like So what I’m saying like with the cops is instead of arguing, just abolish police all.

00:48:18 Scott Horton

Time I would rather argue that the law should apply to them and all their different immunity, their their civil and their criminal immunities that they’ve been granted by courts that have essentially made this stuff up.

00:48:29 Scott Horton

All that’s gotta be repealed.

00:48:30 Scott Horton

If a cop kills somebody, he’s got the same standard as anybody else.

00:48:33 Scott Horton

You had to do it, or else not right?

00:48:37 Scott Horton

And, and there’s a double.

00:48:38 Scott Horton

Standard there that has got to be changed, so I guess.

00:48:41 Scott Horton

In the same thing in foreign policy and the same thing really in like, even with education or healthcare I used to always just say oh abolish government schools.

00:48:50 Scott Horton

But then like no, you know you got these guys who are pushing for every innovative different kind of way to break up the government school monopoly that they can come up with and.

00:48:58 Scott Horton

For that you know what I mean.

00:49:00 Scott Horton

Cory dangelis.

00:49:00 Scott Horton

And these guys.

00:49:01 Scott Horton

Like whatever they can do to force some competition in there to give parents more freedom of choice before their kids time is up and they got stuck in the thing and we’re holding out for one day.

00:49:11 Scott Horton

I argued one day.

00:49:12 Scott Horton

From we did a libertarian party thing here in town, and a gay activist came to talk about gay marriage and trying to fight in the courts to get gay marriage legalized.

00:49:19 Scott Horton

And this would have been 03 and I said yeah, but you should just be arguing to get government out of marriage and then never just have a civil contract.

00:49:26 Scott Horton

And this and that.

00:49:27 Scott Horton

And you don’t want government.

00:49:28 Scott Horton

Licensing this that the other thing.

00:49:29 Scott Horton

Whatever, and he goes and you know, that’s a fine argument, Mr.

00:49:33 Scott Horton

But let me tell you something.

00:49:34 Scott Horton

That ain’t never going to happen.

00:49:36 Scott Horton

So we’re just going to argue that instead we.

00:49:38 Scott Horton

Want to be included too?

00:49:39 Scott Horton

And that worked, and my idea would have never.

00:49:42 Scott Horton

Worked right.

00:49:42 Andrew Heaton

So, so your idea in this sense is a.

00:49:43 Scott Horton

I I’m I’m for that I’m for people like on the margin doing that.

00:49:47 Scott Horton

I mean, assuming they’re not coercing anybody else, you know we’re legalizing gay marriage.

00:49:51 Scott Horton

Isn’t coercing anyone else?

00:49:52 Scott Horton

Yeah, right?

00:49:53 Andrew Heaton

So but but like with your sheriff analogy, then you would want whatever the the rules of the rule.

00:49:59 Andrew Heaton

Based liberal order.

00:50:01 Andrew Heaton

We have to abide them so if if if one of the rules is you don’t get to go in and fight proxy wars or you don’t get to do regime changes without multilateral input or whatever, we should be abiding.

00:50:11 Andrew Heaton

By that, absolutely.

00:50:12 Scott Horton

And I mean look this.

00:50:13 Scott Horton

Is the flaw of the entire United Nations World Order, which I do not favour?

00:50:16 Scott Horton

Ultimately, is that?

00:50:18 Scott Horton

It is essentially a world government right that the UN Security Council.

00:50:22 Scott Horton

It makes an edict and then it takes the US Army to enforce it. We are the world government to enforce whatever the UN says and that was what the so-called the what.

00:50:31 Scott Horton

The real New World order meant when George HW Bush used that phrase back in 1991, said what we say.

00:50:37 Scott Horton

It goes and in the name of enforcing the world law we can break any law we want.

00:50:42 Scott Horton

Just like W Bush, right?

00:50:43 Scott Horton

The the unitary executive theory and under the Commander in Chief Clause says that he can override any law, any treaty, and any even even any.

00:50:55 Scott Horton

Other part of the Constitution?

00:50:57 Scott Horton

Under that authority as Commander in Chief.

00:51:00 Scott Horton

Just because he made that up and it’s just the same as a cop here in Austin, who can blow a guy away without warning like what happened right around the block here the other day.

00:51:08 Scott Horton

And when we know he’ll get away with it cause the law doesn’t apply to him.

00:51:11 Scott Horton

And and you know the Americans, and I think you can tell right?

00:51:14 Scott Horton

With these, especially these Liberal Democrats from their think tanks.

00:51:18 Scott Horton

The Neo Cons I think are more cynical.

00:51:20 Scott Horton

But these Liberal Democrats really believe, you know, they’re breathing their own smoke, that they’re blowing about of the world, sure, yeah, about.

00:51:25 Andrew Heaton

These are the Anthony Blinken.

00:51:30 Scott Horton

You know, just their their own self righteousness and their own.

00:51:34 Scott Horton

You know like if they if the the UN Charter isn’t good enough, they’ll just have to do a coalition of the willing and whatever it is to to make the thing happen like Clinton did in Kosovo.

00:51:43 Scott Horton

Or, you know, like they’re all they’re doing with NATO now that they can’t get a UN resolution to intervene in Ukraine because Russia would veto it, right?

00:51:49 Scott Horton

So just go ahead and do it anyway.

00:51:51 Scott Horton

And they say, well, Russia is violating the law by invading, but America is violating the law by supporting a violent St push to overthrow the democratically elected government.

00:52:00 Scott Horton

There too, we’re bound by the UN Charter not to overthrow other countries.

00:52:03 Scott Horton

Governments, we do it all the time and everybody knows it and I.

00:52:06 Scott Horton

Thing and and not only that, but everybody knows everybody knows that, and the conspiracy theory is Ike Eisenhower, the five star general turned two term Republican governor of president, said it’s the money the guys that make the weapons fund the think tanks buy commercial time on the news to make sure the narrative stays the same.

00:52:25 Scott Horton

We have to do this we.

00:52:26 Scott Horton

Have to do it more.

00:52:28 Scott Horton

So they can sell to their captive market the Pentagon.

00:52:30 Scott Horton

Everybody knows that Blinken and Michele Flournoy and them set up a thing called W Exec Advisors where they just make a bunch of money lobbying for the arms industry.

00:52:40 Scott Horton

That’s how they spent the Trump.

00:52:41 Scott Horton

Years between working for Obama and working for Trump is just making all this money and they somehow think that.

00:52:49 Scott Horton

They’re invisible and that.

00:52:49 Andrew Heaton

Was was breaking.

00:52:51 Andrew Heaton

Effectively, a defense contract lobbyist.

00:52:53 Andrew Heaton

Yes, that’s ohh.

00:52:54 Andrew Heaton

Wow, I didn’t realize that.

00:52:55 Scott Horton

Yeah, so so so.

00:52:57 Scott Horton

This is all just.

00:52:58 Scott Horton

You know, and people can read Ben Freeman at.

00:53:01 Scott Horton

At the Quincy.

00:53:02 Scott Horton

Institute is absolutely the best on this on all the the lobbying and the on foreign policy that gets done and so.

00:53:10 Scott Horton

You know you don’t have to be a leftist or whatever to see the interests of oil like look at our policy in Azerbaijan and all of this over the last 30 years.

00:53:18 Scott Horton

That’s about billions and billions of dollars, and it’s also, you know, global politics.

00:53:23 Scott Horton

Cutting the Russians and cutting the Iranians out of our pipelines.

00:53:26 Scott Horton

And all these kinds of things so everybody can see how cynical Antony Blinken is, except for Anton.

00:53:31 Scott Horton

Saint Lincoln, who says no, this is the liberal rules based world order and I’m an Angel on a cloud and I just came here to be the dispassionate observer and try to make sure everybody obeys the law and just never you mind how big my house is, right?

00:53:44 Scott Horton

And we all somehow are not supposed to notice, but we do the same as we notice the lawlessness of the local police.

00:53:49 Scott Horton

And so yeah.

00:53:51 Scott Horton

We first of all, we shouldn’t be the global police in the 1st place, but secondly.

00:53:56 Scott Horton

We should be bound then by the Geneva Conventions.

00:53:58 Scott Horton

We should be bound, then by the UN Charter that.

00:54:00 Scott Horton

Says it’s against the law.

00:54:01 Scott Horton

To start a war, you know when when.

00:54:04 Scott Horton

Putin launched this war in February.

00:54:06 Scott Horton

Very, he explicitly invoked Bill Clinton’s excuse for attacking Serbia to break off Kosovo. He explicitly invoked W Bush’s pretensions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and he explicitly invoked Barack Obama’s pretensions about the responsibility to protect in Libya.

00:54:27 Scott Horton

And he goes, yeah, so see what?

00:54:28 Scott Horton

I mean I.

00:54:29 Scott Horton

Gotta break off this independent thing to protect from weapons of mass destruction and civilians.

00:54:35 Scott Horton

Who are being killed?

00:54:37

And he.

00:54:39 Scott Horton

You know at least fulfilling the American loopholes in the law to launch an aggressive war.

00:54:44 Andrew Heaton

To go back.

00:54:44 Scott Horton

It’s pretty hard to condemn that from.

00:54:46 Andrew Heaton

Here to to go back a little bit.

00:54:48 Andrew Heaton

China, wanting to be the dominant power in the South or the in the South China Sea.

00:54:54 Andrew Heaton

We are allies with Taiwan.

00:54:56 Andrew Heaton

If we pulled out of Taiwan.

00:54:58 Andrew Heaton

I assume that they would be invaded by China within.

00:55:00 Scott Horton

Minutes, but we’re not allies with Taiwan.

00:55:02 Scott Horton

For 50 years we’ve had a policy that says, yeah, I mean, what happened was we were allies with Taiwan from the time that from 1949, when the nationalists lost the Civil War and retreated to Taiwan and the commies took over the mainland and it wasn’t until the 70s, beginning with Nixon in 74.

00:55:22 Scott Horton

Or 73.

00:55:22 Scott Horton

74 and then, culminating with Carter in 70.

00:55:25 Scott Horton

Nine that they officially recognized.

00:55:27 Scott Horton

Is that the companies in Beijing?

00:55:29 Scott Horton

Are the government of China and they really pretended to believe that not, never mind, that that doesn’t count.

00:55:35 Andrew Heaton

Nixon the the Chinese government, met the Taiwanese government in exile, and it was an illegitimate usurper government.

00:55:41 Scott Horton

Right, which was absurd, right?

00:55:41 Andrew Heaton

Sitting the iron front of the mainland.

00:55:43 Scott Horton

Which was absurd.

00:55:44 Scott Horton

And so Nixon and Kissinger said, look.

00:55:47 Scott Horton

They did a.

00:55:48 Scott Horton

A like a pros and cons list.

00:55:50 Scott Horton

But it was like things that are important to us and things that are important to them and things that are important to them.

00:55:54 Scott Horton

Taiwan was on their list.

00:55:56 Scott Horton

Taiwan was not on our list. Taiwan’s not important to the United States. What difference does it make?

00:56:00 Andrew Heaton

You know they, I mean like like they’ve major major computer chip manufacturing things out of Taiwan.

00:56:04 Scott Horton

Yeah he can do.

00:56:05 Scott Horton

All that look this is this is for.

00:56:05 Andrew Heaton

We we don’t.

00:56:06 Andrew Heaton

We don’t have that supply chain or that that that ability.

00:56:08 Scott Horton

Here domestically man, my buddy used to make those exact chips on one 8310 miles from here at Advanced Micro Devices 15 years ago.

00:56:18 Scott Horton

This is Austin.

00:56:18 Scott Horton

Texas, where you’re telling me we?

00:56:20 Scott Horton

Can’t make microchips wrong, it’s.

00:56:22 Scott Horton

Just you know, whatever they gave their their secrets away to these Taiwanese companies where they better put their engineers to work and catch up.

00:56:28 Scott Horton

Then tough, but but this.

00:56:31 Scott Horton

Is look it’s.

00:56:31 Scott Horton

Really important that people understand. Taiwan has been a part of China since the 1600s.

00:56:37 Scott Horton

And it still is and.

00:56:38 Scott Horton

It’s been American policy for 50 years that it.

00:56:41 Scott Horton

Is now the America.

00:56:42 Scott Horton

Things at a time when China was just coming up from starvation from real Marxist.

00:56:48 Scott Horton

You know, insane economics under mousey tongue and the gang of four.

00:56:51 Scott Horton

And all of that where people starved to death by the 10s of 1,000,000.

00:56:54 Scott Horton

Finally, Mao died, and Deng Xiaoping took over.

00:56:57 Scott Horton

People should understand that the system is the right wing of the Communist Party took over China in the later 70s there.

00:57:03 Scott Horton

And he said to get rich is glorious.

00:57:04 Scott Horton

And now it’s.

00:57:05 Scott Horton

OK to own.

00:57:05 Scott Horton

Property and trade.

00:57:06 Scott Horton

But of course it took throughout.

00:57:07 Scott Horton

The entire 80s for them to.

00:57:09 Scott Horton

Even get on their feet at all.

00:57:10 Scott Horton

And then the.

00:57:11 Scott Horton

Real beginning of growth started in the 1990s there with a lot of American help and trade status and all that, but.

00:57:19 Scott Horton

So but anyway, my point was.

00:57:21 Scott Horton

At the time.

00:57:22 Scott Horton

That Jimmy Carter and Nixon and Carter are giving their ambiguity policy. America is 1000 times more powerful than China, right? It’s a desperately poor country. And we’re the superpower.

00:57:35 Scott Horton

So we say to them, listen.

00:57:38 Scott Horton

We recognize that Taiwan is part of China and that it always will be and that it will be again officially here someday.

00:57:44 Scott Horton

But we strongly prefer that you do not.

00:57:48 Scott Horton

Reunite by force.

00:57:50 Scott Horton

We’re not saying what we will do about that, but we really want you to take the hint and then at the same time they would tell the Taiwanese and you pipe down about independence and we’re not giving you a war guarantee, because if we do give them a war guarantee, you’d have just like you have the the Foreign Minister of Latvia this.

00:58:07 Scott Horton

Week saying we need to strike.

00:58:08 Scott Horton

Inside Russia, right?

00:58:10 Scott Horton

No, you don’t want to.

00:58:10 Andrew Heaton

Taiwan did try to drag us into a war with China twice because Chiang Kai Shek wanted to be reinstalled.

00:58:15

Right?

00:58:15 Andrew Heaton

He’s actually buried above ground because he must be properly buried in China.

00:58:18 Scott Horton

And I don’t.

00:58:18 Scott Horton

I don’t know exactly those stories, but I guarantee you some Admiral made him a promise about you can drag us into this thing.

00:58:24 Scott Horton

Right and then I in fact this is.

00:58:25 Scott Horton

There’s a a great thing by Peter.

00:58:27 Scott Horton

Lee about this is.

00:58:28 Scott Horton

The real real story about why Truman fired MacArthur.

00:58:31 Scott Horton

It wasn’t just about how he wanted to nuke China in North Korea, it was that he was deliberately doing provocations off the Chinese coast and trying to force them to sink one of our ships or attack one of our ships in response in order to provoke a war with China, which Truman rightly feared would have led to a nuclear war.

00:58:47 Scott Horton

With Russia at the time, and that was the real reason that the like very secret.

00:58:51 Scott Horton

Only recently uncovered real real reason that Truman fired MacArthur for trying to start a war like that, but so anyway.

00:58:57 Scott Horton

But but right now so.

00:59:00 Scott Horton

The point being that people really need to understand is worst case scenario.

00:59:03 Scott Horton

China attacks and and or lays siege to and and takes back Taiwan.

00:59:08 Scott Horton

First of all, you should know that we can’t win that war without losing a bunch of ships and maybe.

00:59:12 Scott Horton

Worse, and maybe nuclear war.

00:59:13 Scott Horton

So screw them.

00:59:14 Scott Horton

It just ain’t worth.

00:59:15 Scott Horton

It, but secondly, again, Taiwan is part of China, so there’s just no reason.

00:59:19 Scott Horton

To just go off on a domino theory and say next, they’re going to go to Vietnam and Bhutan and Pakistan and Outer Mongolia and then South Korea and Japan are next.

00:59:27 Scott Horton

And the next thing you know they’re gonna be.

00:59:28 Scott Horton

Sailing into Long Beach.

00:59:30 Scott Horton

There’s just this is not true and I know right wingers love fantasizing about all the Chinese troop ships headed to California someday. But that is just not gonna happen in the next 200 years.

00:59:32

For what?

00:59:39 Andrew Heaton

When I when I talked to my right wing Neo con friends, they don’t really talk in terms of you gotta.

00:59:47 Andrew Heaton

Take off soon.

00:59:48 Andrew Heaton

Cool, they don’t.

00:59:49 Andrew Heaton

They don’t talk in terms of.

00:59:52 Andrew Heaton

Domino theory they talk in terms of obligations, so the the United States is an obligation to continue to support Taiwan because it’s a fellow Liberal Democratic capitalist regime that would be trounced by China, where we depart entirely.

01:00:04 Andrew Heaton

Do you think we can have obligations to other regimes or to other states?

01:00:08 Andrew Heaton

And how should we adjudicate when to honor or get out of them?

01:00:12 Scott Horton

I I might concede, you know again on which level of all things being equal, we’re talking about here.

01:00:18 Scott Horton

Like I don’t always insist on just getting out of the UN today, even though I would like to.

01:00:23 Scott Horton

But it’s kind of not the priority, but you know you mentioned.

01:00:26 Scott Horton

Would America tolerate Russia making a military alliance with Canada or China making a military alliance with Mexico?

01:00:32 Scott Horton

I think that America, the US, could probably certainly would not tolerate that, but we could make it agreements with with Canada or Mexico to help them keep any foreign aggressor out of their.

01:00:45 Scott Horton

Countries, possibly England and France, are oldest allies, but you know the fact of the matter is just as.

01:00:52 Scott Horton

Doug band out.

01:00:53 Scott Horton

You know, Doug band down Ted Carpenter.

01:00:56 Scott Horton

They’re the very reasonable version of me over there at Cato right, and and both of those guys have been saying for 30 years that we don’t have to do it this way at all.

01:01:04 Scott Horton

Man, right?

01:01:05 Scott Horton

They’re not radicals.

01:01:06 Scott Horton

I’m not overturning the whole world order, they’re.

01:01:08 Andrew Heaton

Saying that.

01:01:09 Scott Horton

A lot of this stuff is just superfluous.

01:01:11 Scott Horton

Intervention where we just don’t have to.

01:01:12 Scott Horton

Be we could.

01:01:14 Scott Horton

There’s no reason to think again that if we got out of NATO and and brought our troops.

01:01:19 Scott Horton

Home or even.

01:01:19 Scott Horton

Just kept NATO as a treaty rather than this huge military organization in Europe, and we brought our troops home and all that.

01:01:25 Scott Horton

There’s no reason to think that Europe is just going to fall apart and everybody’s going to start killing each other.

01:01:30 Scott Horton

All of these crazy things.

01:01:31 Scott Horton

You can Bill Kristol, for example, presumes that.

01:01:34 Scott Horton

But I just think that’s not in evidence, so.

01:01:38 Scott Horton

You know I forgot where I was.

01:01:39 Scott Horton

Going with that.

01:01:39 Andrew Heaton

Sorry, that’s actually a pretty good way to end it.

01:01:42 Andrew Heaton

Like it, I think.

01:01:43 Andrew Heaton

I think Bill Kristol sees the the the Post War peace that that took place after World War Two.

01:01:51 Andrew Heaton

The the relative level of prosperity and global stability as a direct result of active American participation abroad, and so he thinks.

01:01:59 Andrew Heaton

That if we were to withdraw from everywhere, it would just be Afghanistan over and over and over again and it would be ISIS filling up the gaps or whatever the the.

01:02:07 Andrew Heaton

Power structure be.

01:02:07 Scott Horton

I think that’s what he would say.

01:02:08 Scott Horton

Look at the reason that I whipped him solidly in that debate was because I pointed out that he never points out that the USA killed something like.

01:02:16 Scott Horton

2,000,000 Koreans 3,000,000.

01:02:19 Scott Horton

25 million Vietnamese.

01:02:21 Scott Horton

East Cambodians and lay oceans.

01:02:24 Scott Horton

In that war nobody really knows, because they killed so many people who were the only people who knew that those other people existed, that there was no one there to count their bodies or their, you know, existence having even been snuffed out, they killed through their, you know, in in the Middle East wars they’ve gotten at least three million people killed, just in the last 20 years.

01:02:42 Scott Horton

You want to go back to, you know, the Iran, Iraq war and all the proxy wars and think of all the civil wars after you know the bloody coup d’etat in Guatemala in 1954 that led to the Civil War that killed half a million people or more, you look at.

01:02:59 Scott Horton

You’ve seen Christopher Hitchens documentary about Henry Kissinger about how Gerald Ford oh you should have.

01:03:05

I’m what.

01:03:05 Scott Horton

It’s great.

01:03:06 Scott Horton

It’s the least evil thing Christopher Hitchens ever did.

01:03:09 Scott Horton

And and he talks about how Gerald Ford sent Henry Kissinger to give the green light to sue Harto, the new dictator of the coup d’etat dictator of Indonesia, to master all the leftists and the East Timorese.

01:03:21 Scott Horton

And all this.

01:03:21 Scott Horton

This is all on American since.

01:03:22 Scott Horton

It was the Soviets.

01:03:24 Scott Horton

Proxies doing these things, we would blame Moscow.

01:03:27 Scott Horton

Same thing and you count this up.

01:03:29 Scott Horton

You’re talking about a Holocaust worth of dead civilians for real.

01:03:32 Scott Horton

And I said that in that debate.

01:03:33 Scott Horton

And Bill Chris said, well.

01:03:34 Scott Horton

How can you talk about?

01:03:35 Scott Horton

The Holocaust well, how can you not?

01:03:37 Scott Horton

You know, because Ashkenazi Jews are kind of white in the by World War.

01:03:42 Scott Horton

Two standards, their lives matter more than Koreans and Vietnamese, and Indonesians, and Guatemalans and the rest.

01:03:49 Scott Horton

The American World Empire is a bloody mess.

01:03:51 Scott Horton

Look at what we did to Iraq.

01:03:53 Andrew Heaton

Yeah yeah, two 200,300 thousand dead.

01:03:57 Scott Horton

Oh much more than that, a million a million not directly killed by Americans but gotten killed in Iraq War Two.

01:04:04 Scott Horton

And you want to go back to go do the Iran Iraq war and then Iraq War One. Iraq War 1 1/2 and the sanctions regime under Bill Clinton. And then Iraq War Two and then Iraq war three when they went back to destroy the caliph.

01:04:18 Scott Horton

8 and talking somewhere like 2,000,000 just Iraqis. OK, Bill, crystal, don’t ever talk about that cause one, it’s all his fault, literally.

01:04:28 Scott Horton

Other than Dick Cheney.

01:04:29 Scott Horton

And Paul Wolfowitz and George W.

01:04:31 Scott Horton

Bush themselves, he was the man single most responsible for getting us into that war, not that he’d ever take responsibility for that.

01:04:38 Scott Horton

Whatsoever, but.

01:04:40 Scott Horton

He won’t even acknowledge.

01:04:42 Scott Horton

A single civilian died in Iraq war 2IN, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Guatemala et cetera, et cetera. Et cetera at infinitum because.

01:04:52 Scott Horton

That just screws up his narrative, so he completely ignores it any any death caused by America South of the equator don’t mean nothing.

01:04:54 Andrew Heaton

Can play and.

01:04:59 Andrew Heaton

This is this is a cold way to look at it, but I’m inferring from you that there there might be some instances where something bad would happen had it not been for US presence, but on net, the sheer amount of destabilization and civilian deaths that’s been unleashed very much over very much blocks out and over compensates for whatever good has happened in interventions.

01:05:21 Scott Horton

I mean, yeah, sure.

01:05:22 Scott Horton

If you want to characterize it that way, it certainly ain’t right to sit here and say, like.

01:05:26 Scott Horton

And you know what?

01:05:28 Scott Horton

Poland and Germany haven’t fought, so I’m right and leave out the rest of this, which is what Bill Kristol says, which is what I knew he was going to say.

01:05:35 Scott Horton

In that because.

01:05:35 Scott Horton

That’s what he always says.

01:05:36 Scott Horton

We kept the.

01:05:37 Scott Horton

Peace for 75 years.

01:05:38 Scott Horton

As long as you don’t count any of the wars.

01:05:43 Andrew Heaton

Well on that note Scott talking to you was always like taking a sip out of a fire hose.

01:05:47 Andrew Heaton

I’ve learned a lot from you.

01:05:48 Andrew Heaton

This has been great.

01:05:49 Andrew Heaton

I know you’re very busy.

01:05:50 Andrew Heaton

I know you’re about to go do national television you.

01:05:52 Andrew Heaton

Were very kind to come on and hang out with me.

01:05:53 Andrew Heaton

Thank you so much.

01:05:54 Andrew Heaton

Thank you.

01:05:58 Andrew Heaton

Hey patrons, Scott and I actually spoke a bit more before the show on a topic near and dear to my heart, nuclear disarmament.

01:06:08 Andrew Heaton

My favorite episode of the political orphanage this year was the one about nuclear war.

01:06:13 Andrew Heaton

What happens in nuclear war?

01:06:14 Andrew Heaton

And so I was very excited to talk to Scott.

01:06:16 Andrew Heaton

About the prospects of nuclear disarmament and how we came so very close to achieving that goal.

01:06:23 Andrew Heaton

So close.

01:06:24 Andrew Heaton

As in the United States and the USSR agreed almost agreed to shimmy down to a manageable 50 nukes each.

01:06:32 Andrew Heaton

That’s going to be this week’s bonus episode, just for you, patrons for everybody else, if you want to listen in on that, as well as two years of weekly bonus episodes preceding him, head to patreon.com Slash.

01:06:46 Andrew Heaton

Andrew Heaton and help support the show. That’s patreon.com slash.

01:06:50 Andrew Heaton

Drew Heaton, thanks, that’s the show. Thank you Scott Horton for coming on to discuss foreign policy. Thank you, Eric. Stipe who edited this week’s program until next time I’ve been Andrew Heaton and so have you.