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.
