Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 11/9/23 Joseph Solis-Mullen Debunks the Fake China Threat

Episode Date: November 12, 2023

Joseph Solis-Mullen joins the show to discuss his new book about China. He and Scott work through some of the most common talking points meant to make the American people fear a noninterventionist approach with China. They also cite a number of popular books about China and explain what they get wrong.  Discussed on the show: The Fake China Threat and Its Very Real Danger by Joseph Solis-Mullen Red Dragon Rising by Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II  “What the Heck is a ‘Scarborough Shoal’…?” (Libertarian Institute) Chip War by Chris Miller  The Avoidable War by Kevin Rudd “China: From Death Camp to Civilization” (LewRockwell.com) This Time Is Different by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff 1984 Red Dawn (IMDb) 2012 Red Dawn (IMDb) Joseph Solis-Mullen is a political scientist and author of The Fake China Threat and Its Very Real Danger. Follow all his work at his website.  This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY 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 anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's 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 the 5,500 interviews since 2000. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show hey guys on the line i've got joseph solace mullen and he is a regular writer at the institute and we just published his brand new book the fake china threat and it's very real danger welcome the show

doing, Joe? I'm great, Scott. Thanks for having me. Man, what a good looking book this is, huh? Yeah, they did a great job, the Institute. Well, they meaning me and my guy. No, I'm just kidding. But no, your art guy, too. Who did the cover for you? You can find him on Twitter at Meez's Pieces. And I have to say, if you are looking to get any kind of cover art or graphic design done, he's a great guy, very professional, great to work with. Yeah, I know just the guy that you mean. And he would do some graphic favors for me in recent history before I got Kennedy fired from Fonks. Anyway, so let's talk about this wonderful book, The Fake China Threat and It's Very Real Danger. Oh, yeah, well, what do you know about China, Round Eye?

Well, I think it's always telling when people ask you. So what makes you think you think that you should tell me, you know, what to think. And I was just think, well, you know, it's just the same thing with anyone who you see on the television. They have an interest in doing it. My interest happened to be, I think, as public-spirited as it's possible for someone to be. I am not, you know, paid to gin up the fake China threat, and nor do I think it's in my interest to have it around to write about. I know you've seen that. People jokingly say that to you, like, Scott, if the neocons were gone, what would you write about? Obviously, I would trade all of that for any number of books to have the fake China threat go away because it's exceedingly dangerous. About four or five

years ago, when I was still doing my, I think I was doing my first masters, I just started reading a lot about China. China was starting to appear in more and more corporate press. And the tone, the tone of the coverage was really changing as well. It had gone from China as, you know, sort of a partner to China being really dangerous, a real threat to America. This was an interesting. change because, of course, China had, you know, rubbed up against the United States over things in the Spratleys, the island building and stuff. But this was a real, a real change. And it caught my attention. And so I really started diving deep into it, devoting real time and energy into it, reading countless books and articles and following it in the popular press. So I've been doing that

about four or five years now. I've been writing about it for, I think about three years. I started over at the Meese Institute. And yeah, so that's it. Joe, the first China hawk book I read was Year of the Rat, and I liked it because it was all about Bill Clinton selling us out and licensing the transfer of technology to China. I wasn't exactly sure how threatened by China I was supposed to feel by it all, but they did certainly improve their rockets and their satellite technology since then, and I guess I've even gone to the moon and things like that, so Bill can, you know, tip his hat for that. But then, you know, they had this sequel, Red Dragon Rising, about the danger of China. This is 20 years ago, you know. Yeah, I've read the book. And so, and I remember being not as convinced by that.

At the same time, I don't like big red commie flags at all. And unlike the Islam-Fascist caliphate, at least China exists. I mean, it's true that Obama did eventually build the caliphate for a couple of years there. But otherwise, that was totally a mythology. But at least there is China. pretty big on my map, and it must threaten its neighbors, our friends, and it's a one-party dictatorship run by really ruthless characters with no sense of humor whatsoever. And so, like, maybe I should be afraid of them, Joe. Talk me down, man. Well, Scott, I mean,

obviously, yes, you look at China. It exists. It's on the map. It's big. The economy is large. It is realistically, much as, you know, the BRICS countries generally have started to be able to assert more of their prerogatives on the world stage. Relative power differentials are changing. Long gone are the days when the United States could simply dictate everything that happens in East Asia. In fact, they were never really fully able to. There's a lot of mythology around that. Nobody likes to talk about Korea. Everyone knows about Vietnam.

So, yeah, I would say yes. In its immediate environs, China is growing increasingly stronger. There is a real ceiling on that. Their population has already peaked. Their economic growth, its halcy in days of economic growth are gone. It's going to, you know, its economy is maturing. It's going to start growing slower. It has actually a lot of problems with its economy that, you know, like most economies

are always things to be working on. But, you know, from the status point of view, and of course, China does have a very interventionist state model. You can look at problems in their real estate and financial sector. If you read the book, I delve quite deeply into that. I don't want to get two in the weeds there right now. It's neighbors. China is thoroughly outnumbered by all of its neighbors.

And, you know, people have very little appreciation of the logistical challenges of moving large numbers of men and material across difficult terrain, which is kind of shocking because we've just seen how difficult these challenges can be in Eastern Europe. And China and its neighbors, I mean, we're talking about Eastern Europe is a cakewalk compared to that. It's all flat plains. I mean, we're talking about mountains, deserts, jungles, large expanses of water. China is no danger to invade any of its neighbors and conquer them, nor do they have

any desire to. The one exception would be Taiwan, if Taiwan were to declare independence. Otherwise, I mean, there is a real sense. And if you read like Chinese policy papers and, you know, they have their own hawks and their hawks are all about the story of American declineism. They believe that America is going bankrupt, that it's only a matter of time before they're forced to withdraw from the region anyway. So China, while its leaders have created a nationalist fervor that they must satisfy, right? They can't be seen to not react to Washington's provocations, which sending people like Nancy Pelosi over there, large new weapons packages, putting U.S. troops on the island.

These are all fairly provocative behaviors when you consider that the normalization of relations between Washington and Beijing was premised on the idea that there is but one China and Taiwan is a part of it, that the United States would cease high-level diplomatic. and military contact with Taiwan, that it would scale down the size of the weapons sales that it made to Taiwan over time, and that it wouldn't sell it new, upgraded equipment, et cetera, et cetera. All of those things are being violated. And so from the perspective of any leader who wants to remain the leader, which she does want to remain the leader, you simply have to react to stuff like that.

And I thought it was interesting because Business Insider, just this last week, they've run several intelligent things in the last several months. I've been surprised, but they wrote this article, and I can send to you if you like, saying, I can't remember the exact title, but it was, is arming Taiwan going to provoke an invasion by China? And it was just, it was the most self-aware, most obvious thing, but it was the corporate press. So I about, you know, drop my phone trying to zoom in. Like, is this correct? No, it is.

And of course, this is the strategy because it would be a very high risk move. So, no, China wants to have good relations with its neighbors, but it also wants to see its way rule the highway. Look how America runs its part of the hemisphere, which you can say rightly or wrongly, but like those are just the realities of large powerful states with large economies and large militaries. Like they just tend to be able. I mean, if I was in charge and I brought the empire home, then what would that look like now that China is by far the dominant power in the region? there would continue to be little skirmishes over the contested claims in the south and east China seas those are really more about dominating those maritime routes for the purposes of exploiting the natural resources that are there it isn't that whoever gets them won't want to sell them

and use them and create more economic gains for all of us it's not as though if China you know had it, that they wouldn't want to sell it or engage in economic transactions. The same thing goes for Taiwan. China wants to continue to trade with Taiwan. You know, they're not going to eat the semiconductors. They'll want to sell them to the rest of the world. Yeah, I mean, China will just continue to do economic activities with its neighbors. its population will continue to get older, its economy will continue to slow down.

It's hard to say much of what would happen after that. It's not going to conquer India or any of its neighbors. While it does have the military capabilities, according to legitimate experts, which like you've had Lyle Goldstein on, who say, you know, yeah, if China was really, really determined, they could definitely take over Taiwan. But it would be at a huge cost, it would be a huge risk for Xi politically as well, lost wars have a tendency to destabilize, you know, a ruler's grip on power, not only popularly in the street, but also within the corridors of power where, you know, an internal coup could

very easily be realized. And of course, you know, there are significant risks to, you know, an amphibious assault of that nature. So, no, none of this affects the United States at all. And in fact, even when China was far, far weaker than it is now, back in the 1950s, Murray Rothbard wrote a series of articles cast against. the idea that the United States needed to defend Taiwan even way back then and called out the whole idea of like island hopping and conquering its neighbors. It's always been a red herring that's meant to justify, you know, Washington's preferred policies of attempted global hegemony. Yeah. Well, I got to tell you, man, when I first started reading antivore.com

and Lou Rockwell.com, the Mises Institute about 20 years ago, 21 or 2, I guess, no, about 20 years ago. No, yeah, 21. One of the things that really impressed me about Lou Rockwell was here's a guy who's clearly not a commie, who's saying, come on, don't give me this right-wing stuff about China.

And I was like basically, you know, I read books and mainstream newspapers and the John Birch magazine. My good friend William Norman Grigg was the editor of the New American magazine. And that was basically the extent of my kind of real alternative media.

that I was reading at the time, other than books, you know. But then they always had this right wing bent on China. And Lou Rockwell had this attitude that like, yeah, yeah, yeah, don't give me that. Let me tell you about China, right? And, you know, he even has this great article, from death camp to civilization. If you know the first thing about Mao, then you've got to celebrate all the people in charge since then, basically. And it ain't perfect, but it's progress. And sort of just like you're talking about with these neighboring states, same with us.

us that Frederick Bosteat said that keep trading so you don't fight. War is the worst thing of all. And so the more interdependent all these countries are on each other for resources and finished products and whatever the hell going back and around and around, then the less likely they are to fight about it. And so that's what we should be accentuating. I wonder if you talked to us a little bit about really, you know, I'd like to really understand the degree of the decoupling of America's economy from China since, say, Trump, maybe even before that, if you want to start before that, but I know Trump really put these tariffs up and really wanted to try to separate our economy more and more, which is so dangerous.

He wanted to, but it mostly failed. It mostly failed. And there are very obvious reasons for it. And you can just look at the total volume of trade. The economist last year ran, you know, just the most predictable article that like, oh my gosh, it looks like even the sanctions, the sanction products aren't, you know, getting, getting blocked because what distributors do is they just break them up into smaller, smaller loads. And basically there's a certain tonnage under which the customs inspectors don't even look to see what it is. And so the volume of trade now is as great as it's ever been. It may, in fact, have surpassed it now that, now that COVID has come and gone. So no, decoupling has not been very.

successful. U.S. allies, key U.S. allies, or even getting like waivers, like a little permission slips from Washington to like basically just keep doing business as usual. And then let's see, I was just trying to think the farmers. Oh, yeah. And I mean, we wound up paying for that trade war because we wound up having to subsidize our own farmers. Our own farmers are the ones who got hurt the most by that because the Chinese, of course, enacted their own counterteriffs on American agricultural products. Of course, China's very, very dependent on imports. And that's maybe something, too, to emphasize, like, China is far more globalization dependent than the United States. China doesn't want anything to tip over the board. It does want to have its way in its

immediate environs, similar to the United States or any number of powers that you could speak to. Even if you look at the European Union, underneath the veil of niceties, is Franco-German domination of the continent. They rule the rules. They make the decisions. And everyone else, you know, gain some benefits, takes some losses. I really don't want to dive into that issue. But so it's no different, really. And I do just caution people, like this stuff does matter. Even things like those little land disputes in the South and East China Sea, I want to emphasize, those could spark the war that we all don't want. Well, I shouldn't say not all of us, maybe. some people do. Robert Kagan believes now is the time to do it. But just to give you an example,

when Trump was in charge, he wanted to give the Philippines clarification on its mutual defense treaty with the United States and said, hey, we'll back you, you know, even in these disputes with China over like the Scarborough and Second Thomas Scholes. Now, thankfully, Duterte said no thanks, but the new ruler of the Philippines is Ferdinand Marcos Jr. And I just wrote an article about this at the Institute. He and Biden have agreed that actually any, you know, violation of Philippine sovereignty, even over these little spits of sand, that no American could point to on a map and which aren't important at all. Joe Biden just last week or the week before threatened to, you know, war with China over these, these spits of sand. So it's, it's

incredible. So, you know, Americans are really laser focused on Taiwan, those Americans who who know anything about it and who are paying attention. But, you know, there's active little incidents all the time over there. It's very jam-packed. It's very dangerous. And it's really up to the American people to reign in their government because these policies just perpetuate themselves, as you've documented on this show before. So it's really up to the American public to get educated. That's why I wrote this book. That's why I kept it so short. I understand people are busy and they don't want to read. This book is very, very short. It's like eight. 84 pages start to finish.

You pick up this book, you read it, you give it to your dad, your uncle, your mom, whoever's crazy or scared about China. Look, I'm not going to kid you. China, you know, is nothing to mess with, and it's certainly important enough to our own well-being and our own economic health and the economic health of the world that we should not crave confrontation with China, especially not over something like, for example, certainly not the Scarborough Shoals or something like that. But even Taiwan, like the whole agreement, this was all laid to bed.

40 years ago, and now Washington has decided that it wants to go back on the deal. The strategic reasons for opening to Beijing in the first place no longer exist. And almost immediately the United States kind of regretted that once the Soviet Union was gone. And there was no Soviet Union to balance against China's utility changed. And the only reason the policies remained geared toward engagement, which there was always a subtle undercurrent of more hawkish people, like you talked about those generals who wrote those couple of books back in the 90s. There was always a current who said, no, we should fight the Chinese. The overwhelming view, though, was, look, we'll make them rich by helping them develop their own markets,

integrating into the world, getting more trade, getting more industrialization. This will create a middle class, who will demand political rights, who will transform China from within, and democracies don't fight one another, and that will make another client. security partner for us, just like what we have in Europe. This didn't happen, though. And now that, you know, the bill is coming due in China, as you said, they do have great rocket technology and stuff. And there's no doubt that they could absolutely obliterate any U.S. ships that came even a thousand miles close to Taiwan in a potential conflict. So this is all very dangerous. And it is a fake China threat. China does not threaten the United States. This is not some kind of sinocentric red

on type scenario. It is completely contrived and it's meant to sell more ships, more missiles, more planes, period. Yeah. Hang on just one second for me. You guys know that I consider the defend the guard movement led by the combat vets at bring our troops home.us and defend the guard.us to be the most important thing happening in American politics today. Simply put, this law would nullify the empire by preventing the state governors from handing their national guard troops over to the president for foreign combat without an official declaration of war from the congress we've made great progress getting it out of committee and even past the state senate in arizona help support bring our troops home and defend the guard at bring our troops home dot us and defend the guard dot us and their

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Ancestors name in the UK and Ireland Nursing Register. Don't miss out. Free access ends August 24th. Visit Ancestry.ca for more details. Terms apply. All right now, Joe, let me ask you a little bit about the consensus in the United States about China now.

I mean, the left doesn't really have that much to say the liberal, I don't know, neoliberal economist types maybe are kind of somewhat more realist. I know the Republican right is so hawkish on China, now and I get it it's a big red flag and they're a big dumb bull but is there really

more to it than that or what do we need to know there as far as domestic US politics yeah or just I mean is there any other I guess I could phrase that better is there any kind of debate on the right or it's just all you know I know you read all these Hawks books they're all just the cookie cutter Cold War tripe or what well it really there are general themes and I try and outline the case against those in the book and then some of them are obviously highly specific one that you see popping up on a lot of reading lists over the last year has been Chris Miller's chip war which is a book that's specific to the microchip question so there are highly topical texts like that so different different constituencies have

different concerns you know and produce different books as such but no But, I mean, would you classify them all as just kind of blow hard right-wing material or they have some substance, but you would disagree? Yeah, I mean, it's not to say that there are no thoughtful, popular books about China, but certainly the kinds that I have a list of them in the book. I have a chapter called Who Writes About the Fake China Threaten Why. And I actually go through and list all the bad books out there so you can go check it out if you want. and I give kudos to the couple of good books that have that have come out you know good relatively speaking I mean again if you look at the the list of authors you know these are people who are you know have have the common Washington Beltway think tank background and if you look where the money is coming from it's like oh yeah okay that makes sense so yeah in that sense a lot of the popular books are just stupid and hawkish and there there have been a few thoughtful books mostly about to like finance, like you said, sort of more centrist Republicans who are more concerned about, you know, we built up all these corporate ties and there are all these advantages to trading with China.

You know, maybe we don't want to be too crazy belligerent Magnus and Fock. They're both their books were kind of along those lines. You know, and then you had out and out liberals like Kevin Rudd, who's actually an Australian, but, you know, who just warned that look, even if China does get super powerful and dangerous, even if the worst case is true, which he has a very, a pretty reasonable assessment, I think, maybe a little strong, but, you know, he says, look, if they really are that strong, then it would be stupid to, you know, provoke them unnecessarily. And his book's called The Avoidable War.

Actually, the economist just ran a piece about that a couple of days ago, or maybe that was today. I don't remember now. But, yeah, it's definitely scary because, and I think. that's one of the things that's been so disheartening, too, about the current, uh, the current round of, of Middle East turmoil is to just see Republicans who, really, it was just a few of them who were not bad on the Ukraine question. And that was really it. Um, they're bad on China. They're bad on Israel. You know, it's just, it's why there needs to be an alternative. I feel like there

was a, you know, 18 month window or so where people were really, you know, within the Liberty movement, who are seriously anti-war, were just a little bit, a little bit delusional. about what the Republicans are, you know, even the best of them. So, yeah, it really is too bad. I mean, in a sense, I don't know about the politicians, but I know among some right-wingers I follow on Twitter that you got to give them credit. They actually have stayed pretty consistent even during this.

You know, the Israel-Palestine stuff coming on. I don't know if we can get them to improve on China, but where their knee might have jerked, they're like, I don't know. I've been saying America first for a few years. now. I thought I meant it. You know what I mean? They're genuine guys, you know, a lot of them. And so there's hope there for sure. And this book ought to really help. And you know what? I think you kind of alluded to it there. But could you elaborate a little bit about the vested interests

and the think tanks here? Because Republican politics is one thing, but money and the Pentagon budget is a whole other thing. Yeah, sure. So, you know, I just run through the list of authors, and then I illustrate that, oh, look, you know, they spent time at the Atlantic Council and the American Enterprise Institute, and, you know, look who funds these. Because I feel like I didn't write this book specifically for the libertarian already anti-war people, because I think the case makes itself for them. It doesn't need any real explaining. And so I was targeting the book more at those who, you know, are maybe hawkish. liberals or hawkish Republicans who, you know, maybe are open to the idea that maybe we

don't need to do this and just have never heard the other case laid out. Because I mean, I'm not, I'm not unaware of human psychology and the nature of trying to persuade people of your point of view. Many people are just not going to be persuaded. But many of them have never even heard the case before. And that is why I think the book is important, is because if you're getting bombarded with nothing but they're 10 feet tall monsters who are going to eat us all um you know you're going to believe that after a while it's just it's a fact of social psychology especially if you believe that the only people who disagree with that are a bunch of people who are nothing like you that's what i meant earlier when i brought up lou rockwell where here's a guy

who couldn't be more anti-communist he's a living you know uh like what's the not antithesis but He's the living thesis of individualism here, you know? Yeah, and he's the founder of the Mises Institute, one of the best institutes out there, one of the only good ones. Of course. So, yeah, to have him say, oh, come on, don't you try to scare me with this China stuff. It goes to show, like, here's a guy who, one, is obviously on the right, economically speaking, the ultimate capitalist. And also, too, is no dummy. He is a extremely well-informed and brilliant guy and writer and publisher and all these other things.

So coming from him, it means a lot. It's like coming from a guy like Ron Paul or his guy, Dan McAdams, these people, and coming from yourself. That's right. Lou has actually written some great stuff on China. People should check that out. Yeah, absolutely. No question about that. So, yeah, in fact, I remember the one was from death camp to civilization, and it was when they got in some trouble because they had some lead-based paint and maybe some bad toothpaste or something. And he was saying, okay, okay, you know what, it's cool, we'll take care of that.

However, let's get you off of your narrative here. And he's just reminding us that Chinese communism is the worst thing that ever happened, like from one government within its own country anyway. I don't know about World War II, but, you know, what you would call it. like an auto genocide. There's nothing that compares to the reign of Mao Cetung and the gang of four and all of that madness. And so when that ended, and they went from, you know,

communist taking their country all the way down to caveman level, and then Deng Xiaoping and the right wing of the Communist Party, essentially getting them to where they're at now, that you've got to give them a lot of credit for that. You can't just sit there and pretend that this is Mao still, you know, it's really not. And the thing that irks me is, you just put it perfectly. Like Mao was a pretty monstrous fellow.

And yet the American government didn't not deal with him when it was to the advantage of the United States to do that to further things like arms control, for example. And so the idea, that's where I feel like this generation of foreign policy thinkers who grew up in the 1990s during the unipolar moment just kind of had their diplomatic skills just completely stunted, I guess. They don't know how to do foreign policy except by threats and by, you know, kinetic conflict or sanctions. You know what I mean? There's just this total unwillingness to make deals. I mean, we had presidents sit down with Mao, you know, with Stalin, and the idea that we can't deal with, like, you know, a couple of right-wing nationalists, like a guy like Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, that's just unthinkable capitulation. Yeah. Unthinkable capitulation to who?

All this has done and all this is doing is impoverishing the country. Like, we are well on our way to bankruptcy. And everyone acts like, oh, that's not going to happen. It's like, yeah, that's exactly what everyone has said ever. And it's never been any different. There's a whole book about it. It's called This Time is Different. Yeah, they're going to legitimize them.

Like, oh, they get their legitimacy from our guys, right? Our State Department tells the government of Beijing, whether it's the government of the country or not. not sure they need that for most look here's something that's very important and very controversial but also very far away and mysterious and there's a lot of room for bluffing and that is the genocide of millions of Uyghurs the ethnic Turks in far western China aka East Turkestan

and so I don't know how dare you be an apologist for that or something well again i would say first of all even if you assumed all of that was true in my opinion it still does not make a case for behaving totally belligerently toward such a strategically important partner like just look at the human rights record of egypt of Israel of a whole host of countries the United States does business with and has done business with. I'm actually just in the final process right now of putting together this huge quantitative study showing that there is absolutely zero statistical relationship between a country's human rights record and the amount of aid it receives from the United States.

So the idea that even if China was doing that, that is, you know, the reason for belligerence with China, it's like when Mike Pompeo and John Bolton came out and, you know, started saying all that stuff. You know, Mike Pompeo did it right as they were leaving the White House. And I just couldn't believe that people would actually believe that Mike Pompeo, someone who cheered for countless wars and the deaths of millions of Muslims and Millies, actually cares about Muslims suddenly. It's like, it's because it's in China. It is just strategically useful to do so. Yeah. This is what the quote-unquote rules-based order is for is to, you know, smack your opponents around. That being said, it turns out that that's actually not what's happening.

The main statistical research that was done on that has since been retracted, Adrian Zenz, the German anthropologist. It was his data that was wrong. And second of all, I would say, look, there are, I'm not acting like there's nothing wrong going on there. But you have to understand the context. Like, yes, they rounded some people up. Yes, they started surveilling people. What had happened was Beijing was responding to a decade's worth of pretty horrible terrorist attacks. So the East Turkestan Islamic movement, which is representing the Uyghur's interest there,

or kind of in the same way Hamas does terrorist activities on behalf of the Palestinians or in their name, yet the same thing happened. If you Google terrorist attacks in China, starting in like 2004 all the way to, I think it was 2010 or 11 right in there. There was just a spate of really awful terrorist attacks, and they all came from the same place. And so Beijing freaked out and cracked down. Is that a good thing? You know, not in my opinion. you know, I'm someone who believes in civil liberties and civil rights and political rights and

representation. I wouldn't want to live there. At the same time, to act like, you know, this happened out of nowhere. I mean, the United States got hit with a terrorist attack and blew up the entire Middle East for 20 years. So, I mean, again, you just got to, these are states. Of course, you know, bad things are going on here. Yeah. Well, look, I mean, we're talking about, especially in China, it is a single-party dictatorship, and nobody's really freed them. although they're, you know, obviously more economic freedoms and that kind of thing. And there are some sort of internal checks within the party of some sort of or whatever. Essentially, everyone is homogenized to be sort of a modern, urban Han Chinese, whether they are or not.

And the Uyghurs are caught up in that just like everybody else, basically, right? Yeah, and there is this interesting disparity in terms of, you know, if you do Google Earth and you look at like, lighting, like from outer space, you know, the coastal areas of China are now really super developed, but the interior of China still needs a lot of developing. China could, you know, theoretically, if it has the population to do so or, you know, some sort of new technology that will allow for higher productivity gains with less labor, you know, there's still a lot of development that could be done in the country. But yeah, it's true, you know, the making of the state is important and minorities can sometimes get in the way of that.

And so obviously those things can happen. You know, our own state has some familiarity with absorbing, you know, rest of native populations and eventually having to wipe out or marginalize them. And that's exactly what happened, of course. Yeah. Well, look, whatever is going on in Xinjiang, what's important is they're not rounding people up and machine gunning them to death by the hundreds of thousands or millions, like in the propaganda or forcibly sterilizing

the entire female population like in the propaganda and none of that was true. That's all nonsense. Yeah. I mean, and this is, and look, again, not to apologize

for a single thing that's true that's going on there at all, but just you can see the use of this kind of Belgian babies on bayonets. It's all about getting you to let them do something, probably in this case, buy and sell more B-1 bombers.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's absolutely correct. And again, as you said, this is not to apologize for any of it or to apologize for anything anyone's doing anywhere. But it's just a fact that Washington takes issue with Beijing over its human rights concerns because Beijing is not doing what Washington wants it to in other areas. Right. Like what's the joke? Like when India does something that irks Washington, you can expect an article about India's terrible human rights record in the New York Times. in a couple days, right? That's pretty much how the game goes. That's pretty much how it goes.

So if China were being compliant and doing exactly what Washington wanted it to in other areas, no one would ever even have heard of these. Yeah. All right. Well, look, I don't know. I guess they say it's the Thudicity's trap when one, you know, kind of waning imperial power is leaving the scene and then there's a new rising power to replace it. But, you know, as you kind of write in here, they got so many of their own problems.

I mean, without us there at all, I guess they could fill some vacuum, and obviously they could still build ships. But they got really a lot working against them as an overextended empire themselves already. As we talked about, depending on your point of view, maybe Western China is occupied East Turkestan and, you know, far beyond what would be a reasonable piece of Eurasia. for them to, you know, bite off and try to chew, which they've done for, what, two, three generations now since the end of the war, I believe, was when they absorbed it. And so, you know, I don't know, what do you call it when there's two waning empires at the same time, and there's nobody to rise up and replace them? The Japanese are all growing old in between the two of us, too.

Yeah, the world could naturally evolve into a very stable multipolar order. There are other very strong states in East Asia and on the Asian continent. It's not as though Russia and China don't have historical antagonisms and rival interests in the area. What's pushed them together to start working together is the United States' actions. Washington pushed them together. You can question the wisdom of having done that, but that was certainly the outcome of their very obvious policies. So, no, I just see the United States' antagonism and attempted, you know, coordinated containment of China as actually a great legitimating device for the single-party dictatorship of China. Like, look, you all remember what happened the last time China had weak leadership.

We got taken advantage of by those Western powers and by Japan. And that's exactly what will happen again. Just look what the United States is doing. you know when the united states started waging economic war on china under trump i just thought you know then if something happens it's not the fault of they'll be they'll be able to just point to Washington and say like oh man they just couldn't stand that we were doing so great and look they're out to get us right it would look all too believable right um i'll tell you there are there are through city and dynamics here and it's it's scary but we could just stop we

could just stop nothing bad would happen to the united states or to americans i'd tell you know just a remandah used to warn that you know things are basically okay right now as that if you think that chinese nationalism is not a potential problem then you're very wrong and so that doesn't mean we're supposed to kowtow to anybody of course but it also means that there's no reason to go unnecessarily provoking the dragon when you could just as easy buy and sell plastic crap and be fine you know right and it is Isn't as though China hasn't shown a willingness to just get along with neighbors that historically it had dominated or absorbed. Mongolia is a great example. Mongolia was once part of China.

Now it's not. And you don't see China threatening to invade them. Why? Because, you know, it's a landlock state. They're pretty dependent on China. They're no threat to China. That's how all of its neighbors would be. Like individually, I mean, none of them are a threat for China. But the idea that China could turn around and just start conquering all of them is ludicrous. Yeah. But China is not in a very intense threat environment right now. It is, it is surrounded, but it is strong enough to stand up for itself. So it's not in a position where it feels threatened and it's going to, like, lash out or something like that.

Yeah. And look, there's, isn't it the case, Joe, that, you know, there are a lot of well-meaning people who just don't understand that America is the world empire. And so we're talking about it possibly retreating some as what's at issue and China possibly gaining more power and influence in its own region where if you don't really kind of already understand that and you're talking about the rise of China and you think America's a sleeping giant over here, then maybe it's easier to make you believe that they're coming here. There's a danger to the United States from this power. because otherwise what's the controversy about when the controversy is really about our ships and their seas and not the other way right that's that's a good point about framing it and maybe in the in the expanded paperback version that comes out in six months i've i've written extended chapters on everything i feel like you know have a short little edition for it for people but if if you want

more uh you know i cut so much from that book and have reworked a bunch of stuff and have a bunch of lectures that i've been giving at universities and whatnot that i'm going to include but that's so great um yeah are there videos of those that we can see yep they're coming okay great great no so i just i think it would be good to maybe in the introduction kind of maybe emphasize that and use some examples like recently um it was in the paper that uh oh my god the chinese this chinese fighter jet almost hit one of our bombers intercepting it isn't that crazy how rude and provocative how unprofessional that must have been right off the coast of san diego huh and you have to, like, remember and think, you know, at the very, you know, they put it at a different spot

in the argument, but, like, they're, there are thousands of miles away from the United States. Like, this is happening, you know, in China, what China claims is it's territorial waters. You know what I mean? And I just, I really want Americans to think about, to think about those kinds of, you know, contradictions, right? You know, the United States would never tolerate something like that. I do have a chapter on the spy balloon hysteria, the fake, the fake spy balloon hysteria. But no, maybe I should include

something like that. Just, because as you said, my intended audience, really, of course, I love all the support I've gotten from our libertarian and anti-war crowd. But really, I would love to like get the book into the hands of more hawkish people. Yeah. Or at least persuade, or even persuadable

people who don't have an opinion on it yet. Just to see if we can move the needle a little bit. Because what's needed is, is a course correction. It's not that China is, you know, taking over the world, but it's also not the case that China is crazy weak either. And I'm really worried, too, that I'm seeing in a lot of journal articles now, there was one in foreign affairs just recently about how, well, look at this,

China actually isn't as strong as we thought. Why look at its population? Why look at it's this and that? We could talk. And it's, but instead of saying, so we don't need to do anything, they basically say, like, so it'd be okay. to fight them now. Does that make sense? Just getting the facts right, but drawing the wrong conclusions. Yep. So I don't want people to get that impression either. Right. Because it would be

extremely dangerous to poke China in its own backyard. I mean, one of our carriers, if it went down, I shuddered a thing, but it would stand no chance against China's missiles. And they have tons of them. Yeah. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, the audiobook of my book, enough already. time to end the war on terrorism is finally done. Yes, of course, read by me. It's available at Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, and soon on Google Play and whatever other options there are out there. It's my history of America's War on Terrorism from 1979 through today. Give it a listen and see if you agree. It's time to just come home. Enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. The audiobook. Hey, guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the year.

But the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expandesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out.

and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom instead. Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level. And it's all very reasonably priced. Just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin at Scott Horton.org. Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom. Real history, real economics, real education. Well, I mean, and that's the real rubber-meats-the-road type equation here.

And that was the way Dave DeKamp emphasized this on the Tim Poole show was, as Lyle Goldstein had explained, we lose thousands of sailors and aviators and airmen trying to do this. It's not going to work. And Marines, it's not going to work. We're going to lose ships. We're going to lose planes. You know, launch special operations forces toward Taiwan. And they're not going to make it to Taiwan.

They're going to get blown right out of the sky. And just don't do it. If there was a time when the war game said that we should pick a fight with China now because we definitely whoop them or something, that was a long time ago. That ship has sailed, so to speak. So now what. And what's funny is we could be, the United States could move our chips out of there and then do like in the deal already that we already signed,

which was that we're in favor of the peaceful reunification of the two. And if we're basically friends with China and we got our stupid microchip factories out there, then what difference does it make? That's exactly right. And that's in the process of happening. It's probably the only time I've ever supported a corporate subsidy ever. But one thing that I think is interesting, and it speaks to the idea that, like, look, China's not just going to invade it for no reason.

Like, it does care about its international image. It does care about disrupting the highly profitable economy that Taiwan has. Just look at how it handled Hong Kong. Hong Kong was being occupied by the British for years after it became no question at all that if the communists wanted it, they could just roll right in and take Hong Kong. And they didn't. They waited. They negotiated its transfer. Yeah, exactly right. And you're right. And look, it could be too that, hey, they're just buying their time until one day master plan. But then again, they're all growing old and dying too. So they can only be so long term. and these plans for global domination.

You know, I don't know if you got time for entertaining me on this, Joe, but one thing that always bothered me a little bit was, well, there's a couple things about the remake of Red Dawn. The first thing is it's not funny or brilliant at all, like the first one, which is absolutely hilarious and brilliant and wonderful in 10,000 different ways. But then not only did they not get the whole, like, Paul Verhoeven style art of it all, but They also, because of pressure from China, changed the plot from China takes over America after Bush's financial crash to, well, Clinton and Bush's, and Greenspans, to now it's North Korea. And so somehow, in the opening montage of the movie, for like five minutes, they try to give you this news montage and make you believe that North Korea ended up conquering China, which is where they got the wear with all to then take over every other thing, including.

now North America. And at this point, like, it'd be better if it was a cartoon because it's just, God, dang. But my point that I'm trying to get to is that if they had made it about China taking over, it would have been a thousand times more realistic than North Korea. Well, at the same time, also being completely unrealistic. Just like the old Red Dawn about the Soviets coming and taken over Colorado. It was completely crazy, right? Oh, the Reds, they just marched.

right up through Texas and nobody stopped them, huh? Yeah. Anyway, same thing here. That if they had made the movie about China, it would have been only a tenth of a percent less campy and less ridiculous and might have helped, you know, maybe inoculate the

American people, you know, about how silly it was, rather than making them more afraid. Maybe China's PR people blew that opportunity when they clamp down on that one. Yeah, I mean, just the idea of anyone being able to project those kind of numbers that far away. I mean, they just obviously have no sense of

logistics or history. Like, when has that never, when has that not sparked a partisan guerrilla movement that ultimately eats that thing from the inside out, right? I mean, look at Spain, look at Yugoslavia during the war. I mean, the Nazis just could not do anything. They could control the cities. You know, look at our experience in Afghanistan. I mean, come on, guys. Don't be ridiculous. Well, and especially when you're talking about the middle part of North America, which is as remote as you can get, it's easier

to get to Afghanistan than it is to get here. And then not only that, but we got half the population, maybe two-thirds, absolutely armed to the teeth. Man, we're like, you wouldn't even have to call out the guard, because

just the criminals in town would be able to fend off the bad guys if they came, you know? Yeah, I mean, I really, I kind of deplore Hollywood movies just because, you know, I think you ran an article about, you know, just the Defense Department's involvement in making a lot of them. Oh, uh-huh. Tom Secker is one of the great, he's the name that comes to mind. I think there are a couple others, but Tom Secker, if people want to look him up, he's the real expert on Pentagon and CIA influence in Hollywood. Yeah, it's terrible.

it's terrible you know because people just gobble this stuff up and you know like I got I got young kids I got five kids and my my two oldest or almost one of them is a teenager now you know and I just hate that you know they try and make movie like they made the movie they remade the movie Midway to make it seem like you know oh cool you know no dude not cool the battle of Midway wasn't cool at all and you don't want to have another one you don't want to be drafted and get involved in that stuff. stuff. So, yeah. You don't want to get eaten by sharks? What's your problem, Joe? You don't want to get exploded to death? You know, by the way, as long as we're talking about the Navy and getting exploded. I'm about to interview James Bamford here in a little while again, although I don't know if I've ever interviewed him about the Liberty before, but I know these guys that survived the Liberty, a few of them. I'm talked with them and gone to dinner with them and stuff. and I mean they are just wrecked now is 56 years ago and these guys a lot of them like it's ruined their entire lives

it's ruined their relationships it's ruined they got the PTSD shell shock to the nth degree to this day bad dreams every night not all of them I don't know I'm not trying to speak for them but they have had such a hard time and I single them out just because I know them personally and because they were the subject of an air assault in a way the other veterans that I know were not. I know guys who've been through Hellen back in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's not quite the same as being strafed and bombed and napalm from the air,

like what the Israelis did to these guys. And these were fighting age males, and they'd been through boot camp, and they were as tough as human men can be in their prime, made for as much as possible capable, not made for, but as much as possible capable of dealing with that kind of violence. then they're not capable of dealing with it at all and this kind of thing

our politicians just act like this is all fun and games they just do this all the time you can't stop it let's do nothing but start a war end of war flip a war switch sides anything they don't even care just keep bombing people and they just have they do not

grok the reality of what they are doing to these people and any like their imagination just is not visual enough or their willingness to behold the pictures of the aftermath of what they do It's just, it's not there. They pretend like this is all somehow simple.

But imagine what a real war with China, even without nukes, what that would mean for just absolutely thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds bombing campaign, massive bombing campaigns and ships and planes and civilians killed all over the place and all of this. There's, you know, our government's only mandate should be preventing that from happening in a genuine way. not just saying, oh, well, we're just going to play brinksmanship and nobody better ever mess with us because then we'll have to follow through. It can't be our only policy, you know?

I'm sorry. It's pretty inexcusable because at least with World War I, which I see the dynamics of a World War I type conflict for sure in the makings between the U.S. and China. But it's like when you look at the British, which this was a foolish thing to do, it basically destroyed the British Empire. But at least. East Great Britain and Germany were right across the channel from each other. You know what I mean?

Like, okay, you know, you feel threatened because Germany would have this huge Navy, like, a few hundred miles from you that could show up on your front lawn, you know, with little warning. Okay, I got that. We're on the other side of the world. We're thousands and thousands and thousands miles away. We are in no danger at all. You know, we're in their face.

And, you know, you argue with people about it. and they say like it won't go nuclear number one they say it like it's a fact like they can see the future and that there's no way it would ever climb the new climb the escalation ladder in a direct conflict which they don't actually know and number two they act like well assuming it doesn't go nuclear i mean it's just fine like what do you worry about it's not going to go nuclear it's like number one you don't know that number two what do you mean like again battle of the midway type numbers here like many many thousands of people getting killed that you know they don't care about the veterans because you look how the VA is staffed and how it's managed and the outcomes that it turns out if they

actually cared at all they wouldn't fight or even think of fighting another war until they had that mess straightened out because i mean they've failed countless people look at the suicide rate yeah of course terrible when i was a boy um i think i'm just a year or two older than you when i was a kid the homeless guys all had vietnam green flag jackets on all of them or their army jackets that's who they were and you see it today too you know that's you know probably in almost a primordial way that may be the real kernel of my anti-war sentiment growing up before i even ever heard an army man tell me how much the army hated him and betrayed him which i heard plenty of when i was young from that generation of guys uh luckily but i think just seen them like who's homeless

and begging for help. It's a guy who's like 40 and seems strong enough and is like, has white privilege, whatever. Seems like he's probably from a class where he would have been taught how to read and write. And why is he begging on the street corner? It's because he's an absolute wreck because of what they made him do. That's the only answer. What else can you say? And then they left them on the side of the road.

Yeah. Yeah. It's quite incredible, too. What's really a gross indictment, I think, of all of this, too, is the idea of democracy is that you have accountability. And yet, it's the same people for 25 years, spend the same people making the same mistakes, failing every single time. And yet here they are against the same group of people, same experts. It's just, it's wild. It's great, it's quite incredible.

Elections come and go, but the policy just stays the same. You always get John McCain, you know, it's quite incredible. Yep. And people wonder why someone, you know, like Donald Trump, was able to barge in there so easily. It's because he was speaking the way most Americans think about foreign policy. Like outside the beltway, almost no one thinks, you know, the way these people who write these completely ridiculous China threat books think. Right. Yeah, seriously.

Well, you know what it is? It's a huge influence op. And I can see why it's effective. And I know, like, I can empathize enough with the. left and the right just from at least they're discussed with the other side whatever and you know i can totally understand why if somebody just comes to you essentially cold and says look here's something like a map check out the gigantic chunk of it that china takes up and they got a big red commie flag and i'm telling you they're dangerous i don't know that sounds right so far i'm

listening at least. You know what I mean? How could they not be? It's a one party red flag dictatorship, not to be too repetitive from the beginning of the interview, but it's the presumption that there's real danger here is basically baked in for the right half of the population. They need the opportunity to hear a different point of view. And again, not that you're saying that there's no danger at all. You say it's a very real danger that we would play, our side would play on this fake China threat until it becomes very real. that we would fake it until they make it, which, you know what? Like, hey, you got to have a get an enemy somewhere, Joe,

and our government is pretty good at making them. So, I don't know. You need an enemy to justify what's going on in terms of the, I mean, like a trillion dollars. Well, you're just mad because you're not a submarine salesman, dude. That's your problem. Yeah, that's exactly it. You have to look at the individual incentive structures and how everything's set up to just realize that this is not going to stop unless people make it stop. there are just too many pieces moving in different directions, all of them just pursuing their

own role, you know, within the superstructure, you know, one of the things my, one of my colleagues was a congressional aid for a while. And he said, like, they don't know really anything about foreign policy, a lot of them or, you know, the economy or whatever. They have, you know, consultants, advisors, and lobbyists coming and telling them and, you know, basically just, you know, buying their votes for campaign contributions, you know, you would call it bribery, but, you know, it's it's really just lobbying and how politics works um yeah same difference yeah they i wouldn't say they're like hardcore ideologically uh but but that's committed to that view but like it makes intuitive sense and the people who pay the money uh you know that's that's just the narrative and

that's what it is and there are cost to pushing back against that just look at what happened to thomas massy over the last couple weeks for refusing to you know tow the line on on the israel votes I mean a smear campaign was started immediately and like you know that could be a real threat to your political career that's true I mean and and for I mean people I don't know if this is every single congressperson but I believe it is that they're essentially all confronted by APAC immediately with you will sign this pledge that says that you support having

the embassy in Jerusalem the undivided unified capital of Israel now and forever and all our gaza belongs to us and whatever else, and you have to sign it. On that issue, on that issue, speaking of public censure and stuff, people crushing Rashida Talib for her statements on behalf of the Palestinians. Like, have you been to Dearborn, Michigan?

Like, that's her district. If she doesn't say that, she's going to lose her job. Yeah, and of course, they have to do the Kathy Newman gig and go, oh, what you really? really mean by what you said is X, and that's what we're mad at you for, which is so cheap and stupid. It's ridiculous. And I honestly don't know very much about her at all, except she's some kind of leftist and that I'm sure her voting record is terrible. So I got no reason to like side with her particularly, to think a congressperson would be censored from saying that

the Palestinians should be free someday. And then people go, oh yeah, what you're really saying is that the Palestinians should kill all the Jews someday when that's not at all what she said. I think that's completely crazy. And all in the interest of a foreign country, it's completely bananas, man. Right. And gosh, talk about money well spent, too. Because you look at it from the other side, too, and you say, isn't it smart of the Israelis and the Taiwanese and the Ukrainians to spend, you know, 10, 50 million dollars a year lobbying in the United States? Because look what they get in return.

That's right. Absolutely right. And for, you know, especially when you're talking about sovereign governments and, you know, or well-financed governments. in exile and these arms firms, you're talking about nickels, right? You're talking about fractions of fractions of the revenue that they have available to buy up the PR firms and the think tanks and the media companies and buy the ads they need and whatever it is, buy up the congressman. You can buy, once you're up there anyway, you can buy a congressman for a couple thousand dollars, you know? Right. They'll be like, oh man, Lockheed donated

a ton of money this guy, $200,000 over his career. It's like, wow. Oh, no, one of They own his soul. Over a 40-year career. Yeah. Over a 40-year career. So, like, they're really just horring it out on the cheap. Yeah, for real, man. That's the Congress.

It's really embarrassing. Absolutely. Hey, listen, I'm sorry I got to cut it here, but this book is so great. I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to publish this thing through the institute. You make my institute look so good, Joe, with this fantastic book that you wrote, the fake China threat, and it's very real danger. And as Joe said, there's going to be an. updated paperback version coming out, but not for like six months or something. So you're going to have to run out and get this thing right now.

The fate, China threat, and it's very real danger. It's at, of course, Libertarian Institute.org and at Amazon.com. And that's Joseph Solis Mullin. Thank you very much for your time on the show. Sir, any final words here? No, Scott. This is what it's all about. It's about going out there and trying to change the discussion because that's what we have to do.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for your work and thank you for your time today. Absolutely. You too, man. The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.