Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 11/4/21 Peter Zeihan on American Power and China’s Coming Collapse

Episode Date: November 6, 2021

Scott interviews author and geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan. Zeihan does not believe China will be a nation state ten years from now. One reason, he argues, is that China’s economy is completely dependent on the disappearing American presence keeping the peace on the world's oceans. This, of course, leads to a back and forth between him and Scott over just how much America’s presence overseas has been disappearing these last few decades. Zeihan also points to the policies the CCP used to regulate the birthrate, which he explains has led to an insufficient number of childbearing aged people to maintain the Chinese population. On top of that, the economy is built on a pile of debt that puts the country’s economy in jeopardy. Zeihan predicts the CCP will take an ultranationalist turn in response to all of these mounting problems. Something that may make war more likely.   Discussed on the show: Zeihan’s Presentation on Youtube  Peter Zeihan is an American geopolitical analyst, author, and speaker. He analyzes data from geography, demographics, and global politics to understand economic trends and make predictions. His books and newsletter can be found here at his website. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Dröm; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt; Lorenzotti Coffee and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of antivore.com, author of the book, Pools Aaron, time to end the war in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already, time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2000. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton show okay guys introducing peter zion and um he is a geopolitical analyst and the author of a bunch of books here the absent superpower and the accidental superpower boy i don't see it that way uh This, United Nations, the scramble for power in an ungoverned world. These all seem very interesting, but what I know is that someone sent me a YouTube video

where you debunk a lot of scaremongering about China. And you say, here's what is true about China and here's what's not true about China. And, of course, in the larger context that we have a new Cold War brewing and a naval buildup and a narrative that China is. trying very hard to become the regional hedgeman, and that could lead even to war because of the thudicity's trap and all of these things. And so you're trying to splash a little realism on the narrative. So have at it, please. Let us know what's the deal. Well, let's start with the bottom line. China's not going to exist as a unified nation state 10 years from now. The question is

10 years from now? Wow. Okay. Yeah. No, it's that soon. The question is whether or not it falls into chaos and dismemberment or whether or not it just kind of implodes into a new Maoist tyranny. And honestly, I can't tell you which one is more likely right now. Both of them are very solid options. There's two big things going on and a lot of little things. But let's just focus on the two big things for now. First, China is the country on the planet whose way of life and whose economy is most dependent upon the United States cooperating. The United States is the country that makes globalization possible. We changed the way the world worked after World War II and allowed countries to go anywhere and interact with anyone else and participate in

any supply chain and buy any commodity and sell to any market. If the United States goes home, which is what the last four presidents have been working towards, then the Chinese system loses the ability to import oil and raw materials and the ability to export finished goods. That means it falls into a pre-industrial state because China utterly lacks the military capacity to displace the United States on the global oceans. There are not enough resources and markets within reach of China. It is utterly dependent upon the Americans maintaining the world in the shape that it is in right now. And if we get real hostility between Beijing and Washington, it's over. And it's over in less than a year.

Okay. So in other words, in other words, the global order of. America protecting all the sea lanes and all of the free trade under the World Trade Organization and all of these kinds of things, that America can just cut that off and China won't be able to engage in all of the trade that they're engaged in now with the rest of the world. Is that really really? I'd actually argue that the U.S. already has cut it off. The troops have come home.

Most of the naval deployments to places like the Persian Gulf have stopped. So all it takes is one match being lit by one player anywhere in the world. And since China is the most exposed power, China is the country that will fall first and hardest. Okay, so, okay, before we get to just how exposed they are, can we go back to what you said about the last four presidents have been trying to disengage? Because it seems like the last four or five presidents have been trying to create a unipolar American world empire and keep anyone who dare challenge them now. Now, it may be an overstatement to say that they've all had the same goal, but they've certainly had the same attitude that the international world is something they really don't want to deal with. So Bill Clinton only met with foreign leaders, you know, for summits, and he only started looking

into foreign policy like 24 hours before the summit. And his interpersonal skills were great. The summits went well, but then there was never any follow-up. W. fought the wars in the Middle East, and so it was one policy all the time and to hell with everything else. Obama didn't like to meet with anyone, and so we really didn't have foreign policy for eight years. And then we had Trump, who was antithetical to all things international. And now we have Biden, who basically is the Trump's policy with a smile, different stationary, and a better grammar check. Well, but what about the pivot to Asia and Hillary Clinton

and Barack Obama's big plan to build up? Yeah, I remember that. With the UK and the U.K. how many forces were actually redeployed? I didn't keep track of the ships, but I mean, we're already dominant in the Pacific anyway, right? So I don't know what it was negative. We actually withdrew forces from Asia during the pivot. All right. And then, but so what about now? I mean, all the hype at least is that we're, our Navy is extremely worried that China's

going to invade Taiwan and we have to have a big naval build up. And in fact, if they're sea skimming missiles can sink our ships, well, We'll just need a new fleet of B-1 bombers and everything else, they say. Well, the U.S. military is going through a, oh, it's the best way to phrase this, a bit of a crisis of identity. They haven't gotten reasonable updated guidance from the president since George Herbert Walker Bush. And so they're working with an old playbook, but the world's changed in the last 30 years. So they've been told that they need to be able to fight a major, negligible conflict with in sight of the Asian mainland.

Well, that's not feasible today. And so if they're going to meet their current battle plans, yes, they need five times as many ships as they have right now. That's silly. They need a new battle plan, which means they need new guidance from the top. And I have a hard time believing that if we actually got into a shooting war with the Chinese, that we'd sail an aircraft carrier right up into the envelope of every weapon systems that the Chinese have. We'd stand back. We'd be behind the first island chain where we're out of range of all of their weapons systems.

And then we basically spend a few days sinking every Chinese vessel that was outside of the first island chain. And then we'd start doing some dynamite fishing within it. But, you know, honestly, if it comes to a war with China, you send two or three destroyers to the Indian Ocean and you cut the energy import flow. And China collapses on its own in less than two months. You know, this is not a hard conflict. Well, and I think, well, what do you think of this? There's at least some evidence that this was part of the thinking for the dominance of the, the Middle East is just to be able to cut off Chinese oil supplies in the event of a major

disaster, which seems like overkill because, as you say, all you need is a boat or two and you can close the sea lane. You don't have to dominate the Gulf, but they talked about it that way, Cheney and his men. Remember that the original goal post-World War two throughout the Cold War was we create a globalized system. And in exchange, we get to write your security policy. So that's how the Cold War worked. It was guns for butter. In other words, you get to, we lower tariffs for your exports if you let us have military bases. It was far more involved with that. We kept the world safe for all commercial transport.

And part of what made the global system work from 1945 on is Middle Eastern oil could reach global markets. So while there is definitely a terrorism and a security aspect, you know, dominating aspect to our interventions there, 2001, a big piece of it was making sure that the oil could still flow. But between the shale revolution and a general shift in the American political spectrum, left, right and center towards being anti-global, those days are over. So we could theoretically have a small base in the Persian Gulf somewhere so we could shut it off whenever we want to. But it's more effective, honestly, to, if this is your goal, I'm not saying I'm recommending this, but if this is your goal. It's more effective to just have a few ships in the Indian Ocean Bay, so you can check

out the tankers and see where they're going. That way, you have fewer boots on the ground, less exposure, and you can hit what part of the supply chain system really matters. All right. Now, when you say China's going to fall apart within 10 years, is that based on the first premise that America is going to withdraw its security forces from the Western Pacific Ocean? That is going to already has. We actually are at a smallest, we're at our smallest, we're at our smallest deployment level right now than at any time since reconstruction. But who threatens the sea lanes that we need to protect from anyway? Oh, pick a country. There are hundreds of individual conflicts that have not been able to boil up and catch fire because the United

States has basically thrown a wet blanket on everything. So it could be Russia versus the Baltics. It could Sweden versus Russia. It could be Denmark versus Germany. It could be Iran versus Saudi Arabia, India versus Pakistan, Vietnam versus China, China versus Taiwan, China versus Japan, if any one of these goes up, you kind of break that glass wall between the world we have now and the world we had before, the idea that there aren't going to be more or that the initial one isn't going to, how should I say this, expand rapidly, I think is a little bit silly. I mean, you have to assume that we have moved into a kumbaya world where everyone gets along, without any sort of superpower maintaining the peace to believe that globalization is going to continue.

Well, the problem is, and I think, as you alluded to before, the reason that Americans are against this now is because keeping the peace is not peaceful at all. Kill millions of people, waste trillions of dollars, destroy a generation of young men, and everyone regrets all of this. Well, I could pick apart each of those specific concerns and show how they're not false, but that's, not the point. Most people believe what you believe. We're done. Now, we did globalization and we did global security in order to prevent a thermonuclear conflict, and it was successful. But Americans do not perceive a threat on that magnitude, so they do not see the prices worth paying. And people who believe the way I believe have now lost the last nine presidential elections. And this last round, we didn't even have someone in the race. This is not an aberration. This is a pattern. This is a

pattern. This is America. So, in other words, well, on one hand, I guess I'm glad it sounds like you're saying I've already won, even though it sure has taken a while to bring all the troops home and close all the global bases, of which there are hundreds across the planet. No, we're down to about five. But then you're pretty sure that without the unipolar American World Army, that all of Eurasia is going to break out into open warfare, fighting over borders and resources and everything, just like the bad old days, huh?

Yeah, about 80% of the world's food supply comes from imported inputs. About 75% of the world's energy supply comes from imported inputs. 95% of manufacturing crosses multiple borders, in some cases thousands of borders. There's no way any of this works without somebody holding it together. Okay, but I guess I still don't see why, I'm not sure why that's true, right? It sounds like you're saying all of these, every nation on the planet has an interest in maintaining the peace, for one thing, maintaining open sea lanes so that they can trade with each other. And they all have a tremendous amount to lose at this point. They do, but if everyone played fair, again, we'd be in a kumbaya world.

But look at how countries act when the United States doesn't force them. them to do otherwise. Think of how neo-imperial the Chinese are being. You really think that with the Americans gone, no one else is going to do something? Think of how the French carry out foreign policy, where it's always been France first. Think about what the Germans do with manufacturing supply chains, imposing details of policy on all of their local trading partners in order to do things their way. Every country has their own belief in how things should run. in order to make their system better than others. But they can only do that if everyone else does things their way.

With the advantage of the American-led system is we forced a certain code of contact and a certain sort of rules that removed a series of tools of state power from the table altogether, primarily military action. With the United States gone, you have to assume that every single country will continue to abide by that rule, except for myself. So the Chinese are being more belligerent military, but they're betting that no one else will. That's a bad bet.

It still doesn't make sense, though, that Japan or China or India or France is going to be the one to say, ha-ha, now we rule the sea lanes, and we forbid you and you from trading with each other anymore, starting now. Absolutely, no one can. But think about what's going to happen

the next time the Indians have an end. energy crisis and they see all these slow-moving supertankles full of crude going to the Chinese. It wouldn't be hard for them to take any, and it's not like the Chinese can do anything about it. And you can have some version of that story in almost every part of the global ocean, particularly at the choke points. The next time that the Iranians and the Saudis get it over, get into it over Hormuz and the U.S. isn't there. What do you think is going to happen? Well, I mean, it sounds like I should have debated you instead of Bill Crystal a month ago in New York. where i hung america's middle east policy around his neck and he drowned and so um but he was making

your same case that america keeps the peace no matter how many dead koreans or vietnamese or indonesians or iraqis or syrians or yemenis that we have to show for it they don't count what matters is germany hasn't fought russia and japan hasn't fought china and no h bombs have gone off and that's all thanks to the u.s and that's your same thing And Crystal was completely right, but now the page is turned. And he was completely right about who cares about the Koreans and the Vietnamese and the Iraqis and the Yemenis too, right? Well, I'm a little less harsh on that. I'm actually a very, very avid internationalist.

I'm just willing to admit that my side lost in American politics. Yeah. Well, but that's not really a question. I mean, were you a big supporter of Iraq War II and overthrowing Hussein and putting Iran's best friends in power in Baghdad? I was a big fan of how it started, certainly not how it progressed, and certainly not how it ended up. Yeah. Well, but, you know, saying that if I was in charge, it would have been a little bit better is kind of a hollow argument. Yeah. Well, see, I mean, the thing of it is, right, is once they invaded and called it democracy, they had to put the super majority in power. And the super majority didn't need us and told us to thanks a lot and not get the hell out, right?

I want to take the really cold historical view. This is actually working out really well, because when the Shia majority has been in charge of Iraq, they have always screwed it up. They have always led to the collapse of the state. And so if you're willing to take a very cold anti-humanitarian view, this is perfect. Well, when have the Shiites been dominant in Baghdad in the last thousand years? They have on several occasions, but never for more than a decade. They screw it up. They rule like they can and they can't.

Anyway, we're getting away from the core topic here. You want me to get into the second issue of why the Chinese are going to vanish? Sure. Yeah. So, and when I say vanish, that's the word. They are literally vanishing as a people. Everyone's familiar with the one child policy. It worked very well. If anything, it worked incredibly too well.

And after having it in place for 35 years, we have a population bomb. And as of January of this year, according to official Chinese state statistics, China was the fastest aging society in human history with the largest sex imbalance in human history. They had aged past the point that they could even theoretically maintain their population at its current size into the future. They had run out of people of childbearing age. By 2100, there will be half as many Chinese as there are today. And then in April, they started to release details from their 10-year census. And they realized that they had been overcounting their population for some time. And that 2100 date for half as many people was moved forward to 2070.

And as of last month, early October, some of this data has been broken down by some Chinese academics and demographers. And they're like, we fear, we need more data. But we fear that that half date is now moved up to 2050. And for that to be true, the Chinese would have overcounted their population by 100 million. And all of that 100 million would be people who would be theoretically born since one child. So age 35 and under. In which case, China peaked in terms of its population, not two years ago, like they were originally thinking. 15 years ago, and we've already seen a 12-fold increase in Chinese labor costs since 1999.

So it tracks with the economic data. So China is getting old, is not getting rich, it's getting old. They are no longer the low-cost producer, and they haven't advanced enough to become a high-quality producer. So from a purely economic point of view, even if the U.S. keeps holding up the ceiling, China is facing utter demographic collapse in less than a decade. Well, you're certainly not a very good propagandist for American globalism. We need an enemy. And you're undermining that argument.

We'll always have Canada. That's true. Look here, you and I both know that what you need is some Libertarian Institute things, like shirts and sweatshirts and mugs and stickers to put on the back of your truck. And it give to your friends, too, that say Libertarian Institute. on them, so that everyone will know the origins of your oppositional defiant disorder and where they can listen to all the best podcasts. So here's what you do.

Go to Libertasbella.com and look at all the great Libertarian Institute stuff they've got going there. Find the ad in the right-hand margin at Libertarian Institute.org. Libertasbella.com. You guys check it out. This is so cool. The great Mike Swanson's new book is finally out. He's been working on this thing for years. And I admit I haven't read it yet.

I'm going to get to it as soon as I can, but I know you guys are going to want to beat me to it. It's called Why the Vietnam War, nuclear bombs and nation building in Southeast Asia, 1945 through 61. And as he explains on the back here, all of our popular culture and our retellings and our history and our movies are all about the height of the American war there in, say, 1964 through 1974. for. But how do we get there? Why is this all Harry Truman's fault? Find out in why the Vietnam War by the great Mike Swanson available now. Um, and then, okay, so now there's also the question of the Han Chinese as the dominant ethnic faction with restive populations in Xinjiang and Tibet. And there's, you know, somewhat ethnic differences there. But then there's also Hong Kong, which is restive in some ways, for different reasons.

Is the Hong Kong situation, is that undermine Beijing's position? Or is that actually the strongest card they have to play there to rely on the wealth? That's actually, it's one of those yes and no situations. What's going on in China right now is Chairman Xi has instituted a cult of personality. And he's imprisoned, killed, exiled, or intimidated in silence everyone in the country who's capable of independent thought. And he probably has the best understanding of this. just how bad the demographic situation is.

And so he knows, for reasons, demographic, financial, geopolitical trade, he knows that the country's current economic model has failed. And he knows he can't guarantee economic growth. And he knows he can't keep the lights on. And he knows he can't win a war with the Americans. So how do you maintain CCP supremacy if the things that you, you have guaranteed for 50 years so longer can't no longer can be guaranteed and the answer is naked blatant ultra-nationalism ethnocentric ultra-nationalism of the nazi style and so

Tibet Zhang Hong Kong Taiwan warrior wolf diplomacy these are all aspects of the same policy convince the average Chinese that it's no longer about the economics convince them that being a pan-alter nationalist is enough. And that is where the CCP gets authority now. So they don't care at the top about supply chains or economic performance or even employment. Hell, they don't care about keeping the electricity on. A third of the country is facing power rationing. They're already warning people to stockpile food. These are not the sorts of things you do if you think you're going to achieve economic breakout or even economic continuity. These are the sorts of things that you do, if you know that the bottom's falling out and there's nothing you can do

about it. And you have to shift the conversation to remain in power. So then that'll mean a strengthening of the national government in their crackdowns and suppression of restive populations in Xinjiang and Tibet, for example, for the short term, but you're saying that ultimately these are also kind of fatal wounds in the Chinese system as well. Well, whether or not, we can have a conversation about authoritarian systems and what allows them to persist. I'm saying that they're facing something far more dramatic. They know economic structures that they have relied upon since Deng are collapsed, and they know that they can't repair them. So they have to have a fundamentally different sort of China for the CCP to have a chance of maintaining control.

The question is, of course, whether or not that will work. And I think it's far too early in the process to have a prognosis for that. All right. Now, what about their debt to GDP ratio and inflationary money and bad central planning, ghost cities and all this kind of stuff? Well, the Chinese system is not based on money as an economic good like it is here in the United States. In China, money is a political good. So it exists to serve the services or the needs of the CCP.

So they expand their money supply in extreme volumes in order to make sure that there's enough credit in the system so that any employer can employ any number of people. The goal is not efficiency. The goal is not even economic expansion. The goal is employment because if people have jobs, they don't get together in large groups and go on long walks together. That's how the current Politburo got their jobs. They are not going to give them up. Because of that, you can make the argument. argument that all of the economic growth that we have seen in China since 2006 is because

of debt. They've expanded corporate debt to something, I believe, like 350% of GDP now. I don't have those numbers right in front of me, but I think that's the number, making China the most indebted country in human history, both absolute and relative terms. So imagine if Enron ran every sector of the American economy. That's the scale of what we're looking here. And any country that's come within an order of magnitude, of this. I'm sorry, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Any country that has come within half of this has ultimately collapsed under the debt load.

So the question in my mind is not, you know, will it, but when will it? And that's one of the things that is driving this policy of ethno-nationalism that G is doing because he realizes that this system has run out of juice. As they issued more and more debt in the last 15 years, it's generated progressively less economic activity. All right. now, so do you think that there's a real threat to Taiwan? If you would ask me three years ago, I would have said no. The reason is that if the Chinese were to take over Taiwan tomorrow, they couldn't operate the semiconductor industry. If they were capable of operating it,

they would have built their own. The Chinese are not very high value added. They can only make the really low-end computer chips, and they can only do that with equipment that was built elsewhere, are installed by foreigners and maintained by foreigners. So the idea that they could just walk into TMSC headquarters and just take over and make it run as silly, besides, all the designs for those chips come from the United States. And if they did this, someone, Vietnam, Japan, India, the United States, someone would send those three destroyers off to the Indian Ocean Basin and destroy China as a modern industrialized power. It would be very, very easy, and the Chinese know that. So there was never to this point been a serious risk to Taiwan, in my opinion.

But things are changing because if Xi no longer believes that economic stability and growth is possible, well, then they're moving towards an economic collapse in a deindustrialization scenario anyway. And if that is now the guiding thought of Xi Jinping, then all of a sudden economic fallout from a conflict is something they're going to experience whether they do the war or not. So there is something to be said for choosing the time and the place of the conflict and being the one who pulls the trigger. And so being the one who can write the narrative about why the conflict is happening.

So I would say that the risks to Taiwan today is higher than it's ever been. It doesn't mean that I think a war is eminent or even inevitable, but I'd give it a one-and-three chance now, which is the highest I've ever considered it. Yeah. Now, since, you know, ever since, what, almost 50 years ago or so, the policy has been that, well, it is one shine and they've got to be reunited one way or the other. What about if America took the lead in trying to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the thing instead of keeping strategic ambiguity permanently on this? basis the way that they have, but say, well, let's come up with a strong federalism program that's acceptable to both sides or something, you know? Well, I mean, that's in a very American solution.

I don't think it would fly in China. The Chinese, it is now part of the national mythos as created by Xi Jinping. And it's a very, very effective way of beating the drum from time to time. So I can't imagine Beijing going for anything, any sort of compromise. Honestly, the strategic ambiguity, as it existed a year ago, served both sides because a lot of the Chinese to do their little chess beating every once in a while, allowed Taiwan to have its de facto independence. And the United States didn't have to do anything. Things are changing, though. We've already discussed the calculus in Beijing.

The calculus is shifting in Washington. The Biden administration in bits and pieces is redefining strategic ambiguity. and it is not clear to me what the end game is here. This is a very in-play issue. Biden on multiple occasions has said things that are far beyond the pale for what has passed for strategic ambiguity in recent decades, talking about having a direct defense agreement with the Taiwanese, which doesn't exist, saying that, you know, an attack on Taiwan's attack on the United States, which doesn't exist in law, and basically starting to treat Taiwan by all the matters,

that matter as a real independent country, which of course it is. So it's kind of hard to argue on this from a logical point of view. But it does seem that the Biden administration is not so much edging towards, but striding boldly towards formal recognition. Well, I mean, the thing is, his press secretaries keep walking that back and saying, no, actually, there has been no change. And he's kind of an old fuddy-duddy and didn't mean to say that. And in fact, if I remember correctly, Donald Trump and George W. Bush made the same mistake too in going too far and having their people tug on their sleeve and say, actually, it's complicated, sir. You know? Yeah, but Biden says that in interviews, not as an off-the-cuff comment. He's been very direct. He's been done it multiple

times. Yeah. So there is, remember, I don't have access to his morning briefing. It's entirely possible that the president's in our circle has come to the conclusion that everything that China says about Taiwan is a bluff. That's reasonable. And if that is the case, you want to talk about a massive foreign policy win. That'd be it. Right. So then they should leave well enough alone and stop ratcheting up declarations of alliance there where they don't really exist. I'm a big believer in the long-term durability of American power. So I personally don't see the point in picking at the Taiwan issue or picking at the Crimea issue because I'm pretty convinced that countries like China and Russia aren't going to last a whole lot longer. We can just wait them out. But, you know, like I said,

people who believe my way have lost nine times in a row. Yeah. Well, I know there is a bit of talk about that. Now, on the Taiwan issue, my friend Gareth Porter, the great journalist, had a piece about how and he had talked to some administration sources and this and that from the last one and the new one, I think. about how they had this stance that they called dual deterrence, where they told the Chinese, hey, listen, we're going to resolve this peacefully someday, and we mean that. But at the same time, they would tell the Taiwanese, you guys pipe down and stop being so provocative

with all of your nationalist and secessionist sentiments because you're digging yourself or getting yourself into a fight you can't win. And that they were abandoning that policy. And they were, I guess, keeping the first part, but abandoning the second part. And where now the Taiwanese nationalists are getting braver and saying things that almost, you know, necessarily caused Beijing then to have to recalibrate their take on everything and making matters that much worse. Well, the Taiwanese position internally is pretty clear. This is not the first secessionist president we've had in Taiwan. It's the third.

It's like this is the majority opinion here. But dual deterrence was very successful. I'm just saying that the mindset on both sides of the Pacific is changing. For the Chinese, this has now become not an existential threat issue, but an opportunity to maintain CCP power. And on the American side of the equation, if we don't care about global stability anymore, the risks of stirring the pot are a lot lower for us. Well, yeah, I don't know.

the risks of stirring this pot are you know couldn't be greater when both sides are armed with h bombs you know and in fact speaking of biden and his statements and i don't know how deliberate this was either i guess it must be he said america would go to war on japan's side to protect the senkaku islands probably said that wrong and these are these uninhabited shoals right they're not even islands there are rocks in the ocean and he's saying that well our war guarantee to japan extends that far. We do have a strict bilateral defense agreement with the Japanese. And when we drew those lines, the Sikikus were included. So honestly, that's not a surprise to me. Well, has that been the stated position? Because it seemed like it was a big deal when Biden said that.

This was never an issue until the Chinese started to poke around in the islands and started claiming them as their own. Yeah, but that was even during Obama. these islands goes back to 1950. Yeah, yeah, but I just mean there's been, you know, Obama, Trump, and Biden have been present during that time frame. Were Trump and Obama so specific? And Biden was the vice president at the time under Obama. Were they so specific that we protect the Senkakakus?

Remember, everything with Obama is irrelevant because he didn't have conversation with anyone. We didn't have a foreign policy on anything. So, I mean, that was eight just lost years from a foreign policy point of view. Boy, tell that to the Libyans and the Syrians and the Yemenis and the Afghans. I mean, the ones who can still hear you because they're not dead. And then asked to Trump, I think we can all agree that he didn't always think things through before he said something. And then he never followed up with him an hour later. Foreign policy by Twitter is not foreign policy.

So, you know, you can disagree with Biden. Lord knows there's a lot of things I disagree with him on. But for the first time in 13 years, we actually have somebody in the Oval Office who is actually assimilated. information and making decisions. We don't have to like those decisions. But we actually do have a president for the first time in a while. Yeah, I mean, I'm not so sure that if you had said that, to paraphrase you, if you had said that to me a few years ago, I would have said, well, yes, Biden can read, you know, better than W. Bush or Trump anyway. And, you know, I don't know. I don't carry any water for Obama. But, you know, I don't know that he's really more experienced. I don't know if he's any smarter than Obama, but I would actually say he has less experience in most

presidents. I mean, he was a senator his whole life. He's never had to go to be in charge of anything. I'm kind of of the, he's on the foreign relations committee that whole time. So he knows a thing or two just where things are. I agree. But I'm kind of in the Bob Gates camp in that Joe Biden has been on the wrong side and the right side of every foreign policy decision the U.S. has made in the last 45 years because he doesn't have any, doesn't have any, doesn't have core beliefs he taxed with the wind uh and as a result he's always been on the wrong or the right side both uh and in my mind uh that means he's not going to be very good at this but unlike the last two he's actually trying and i give him points for that yeah fair enough all right well listen um

i've kept you too long and i know you got to go but i appreciate your time on the show it's been very interesting peter no problem take care scott all right you guys that is peter zion it's z e i h-a-n and that's the website as well zion dot com and uh check them out on amazon dot com he's got a whole mess of books here i'd like to get my hands on a couple of these i think the absent superpower the accidental superpower and disunited nations the scramble for power in an ungoverned world sounds okay to me the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a psrador dot com, anti-war.com, scothorton.org, and libertarian institute.org.