Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 1/21/22 Richard Hanania on American Power, Public Choice Theory and the Rise of China

Episode Date: January 23, 2022

Scott interviews Richard Hanania of Defense Priorities. They discuss the reality of how the American military’s presence impacts global events. Hanania argues that, if it were true that the U.S. was out there defending its allies, you’d expect those countries to want U.S. troops present more than the U.S. wants to have troops stationed there. But in reality, we often find the opposite. Hanania also gives the reasons he thinks China is all but certain to become the dominant power in East Asia but that right-wing fears over a global Chinese takeover are overblown.  Discussed on the show: “Phantom Empire” (Defense Priorities) “The Inevitable Rise Of China” (Defense Priorities) “Nord Stream II Sanctions Are Not About Security” (The American Conservative) Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy by Richard Hanania “China has been a failure at hegemony, so let’s just chill” (Responsible Statecraft) Richard Hanania is a research fellow at Defense Priorities and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. His work focuses on political psychology, the causes of civil war, and the effects of interest groups on U.S. foreign policy. Follow him on Twitter @RichardHanania 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; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt 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

Hey guys, I'm giving speeches. I'll be at the Connecticut Libertarian Party State Convention on January the 29th and then February the 26th at the state convention in Utah in Salt Lake City there. So, I don't know, look it up. 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 than 5,500 interviews since 2003, 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. All right, you guys, introducing Richard Henenya from Defense Priorities. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? I'm doing great, Scott. How are you? I'm doing really good. Really appreciate you joining us here on the show today. And, you know, I finally got a chance to look through a couple of your studies here. First of all, Phantom Empire, the illusionary nature of U.S. military power. And I had missed this one from last spring or early summer, I guess.

the inevitable rise of China. So if it's all right, I wanted to start with the Phantom Empire. What do you mean by that? So basically the U.S., whenever it's abroad, and there's discussions about what it's doing in any particular country, the idea is put forth that basically the U.S. needs to be somewhere because it advances American interests, it advances American geopolitical power. So this is a natural way to think about things. I mean, most of the time when countries have occupied other countries, they've usually gotten something out of it. Sometimes, you know, by, you know, usually by force or threatening to use force against another country. And, you know, the American Empire really doesn't work like that. I mean, it has troops all over the world. And sometimes it's allies that

it defends. Sometimes the U.S. wants to be in those countries more than the countries want them there. The U.S. is there supposedly to protect them. And also often the American presence doesn't really have much of an influence on their politics because the U.S. wants to be there. Like, you know, like I just said, the U.S. wants to be there often more than the countries themselves want them there. So the U.S. foreign policy establishment desperately wants to be in Germany. The U.S. has no leverage over Germany because it has troops there because they want them there. The U.S. wants them there. And so, you know, Germany is going to a large extent its own way on foreign policy on the issue of Russia and Ukraine, what they really care about right now.

And so, yeah, that's, that's the basic idea, that the idea that sort of power flows from the American military presence rather than other sources. It's just, we just, there's just no reason to think that. So you say in here that, I guess, you know, tacitly acknowledging America does overthrow governments, but you say they don't really overthrow friendly governments. I guess there was that one time they overthrew the government in Australia. But usually they don't do that, right? And so you're saying that's the joke is you got the Marines there, but nobody thinks they're going to do anything if you don't do what they say. Yeah, they overthrow governments, but usually it's not because of like the American military base, right? They don't, they don't usually don't send tanks to overthrow governments.

I mean, they have done it a few times to like, you know, Eastern dictatorships. The U.S. overthrows governments, you know, all the time from Lindsay O'Rourke's research at other places. We all know that. But it's, you know, it's pretty disconnected to where American troops. troops are stationed abroad. But you're saying because, say, for example, in Germany, they don't fear that if they cross the Pentagon, that the CIA is going to come and overthrow them or something like that. They know that we won't cross that line.

Well, maybe they, maybe they, maybe they do. I mean, maybe, you know, it depends on what kind of government they have. Maybe they, maybe they do. But the point is the American truth, like they're not going to use the American military to do it or very, very unlikely to do so nobody, nobody thinks that. But then, so I see your point. I don't know if there's good examples of this where maybe there's countries that

they really want American troops there more than the Pentagon wants them there or maybe you have to go to other empires in history where people wanted the foreign bases there more than the empire that had them. Well, I mean, like, for example, Syria, the government of Syria right now, probably wants the Russians there,

or did, you know, they pulled back they pulled back. But when Russia was helping Syria, Syria was being defended by Russia. So it mattered a lot more to Syria than it did to Russia, although it did matter to Russia. I think the Eastern European countries, you know, the ones that have been added to NATO recently in, like, Ukraine, which wants to be in NATO, they care more about a U.S. alliance more than the U.S. does. And so it's not that uncommon. If really American, I think if American foreign policy was basically if you took it at face value,

about what we're doing abroad, we're defending all these countries against foreign threats, that it would make sense you would expect those countries to want the U.S. there more than the U.S. wants to be there, right? Like whether South Korea gets conquered matters a lot more to South Korea than it does to the United States. Now often, like, you know, the Philippines, you know, is sort of ambivalent about when and wants the U.S. there. I mean, it's, you know, it's a few times trying to kick the U.S. out or the U.S. has had to bribe it. So, you know, that's in a situation where the U.S. wants to be there pretty much more than the Filipinos want them there. Something like Germany, it seems like the elites do want the U.S. there.

The U.S. desperately wants to be there, too. So it's, you know, it looks like it's about the same. But, yeah, I mean, the U.S. has to, if the U.S. is going to get anything out of these military presence abroad, you know, they're going to need, you know, they would need to basically not want to be there or see it as a cost. And often they don't. I mean, they're horrified by any suggestion that the U.S. pull out of, you know, any country where it has troops in or take on any fewer military commitments that it has in the past. So this is, you know, this removes any kind of leverage you might have. Yeah, you point out in this study that even when Donald Trump is really just playing bad cop a little bit and saying, geez, I don't know, maybe I'll pull out of Germany or maybe I'll pull out of Korea, that his own government shouts that he doesn't mean that. So whatever leverage he might have gotten is pretty much just wasted away.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, the reaction to, I mean, the reaction to Trump, when he would say, you know, scum-sceptical things about the U.S. presence in Korea or Germany, I mean, it was really over the top. You saw that, you know, the media and the foreign policy establishment and the political elites. I mean, they really, they consider this kind of blasphemy. Pulling out of Afghanistan, I mean, you could see the, you can see sort of the reaction to that. in the media. So, yeah, there's a general bias towards interventionism, or at least not pulling back from any commitments that the U.S. has at the moment, and the rest of the world

can observe our politics. So they're not, you know, it's not a mystery to them, what's going on. Now, you say that, you know, I guess a lot of the foreign affairs types will cite trade relationships and say, well, we have such a good relationship in trade with the European Union, with Japan, with Korea. And that's because of our military. relationship. Look at all this stability. You wouldn't want to undermine that, would you? Well, you know, so yeah, I mean, there's like a basic argument that the U.S. has a, you know, that helps develop the relationship and you have more trade. I, you know, I don't think anyone has had a good explanation of how exactly that works. The other argument is the U.S., you know,

keeps things stable and because it supports stability in these countries and in these regions. that benefits the U.S. through, you know, trade and investment and so on, just global commerce. And, you know, that that depends on whether you think the U.S. is a force for stability. Often, I think it's not. I mean, the U.S., you know, the U.S. rivalry with Russia right now is based to a large extent on the fact that the U.S. potentially wants to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. And Georgia launched a war to reclaim Sato Setsia, basically because they wanted to settle that issue and they wanted to settle that issue because that would help them get the NATO membership. So the NATO membership, which is supposed to create stability, is really creating instability by, you know, making Russia feel encircled and making it respond to American action.

So, yeah, I don't, you know, you could have to look at every region individually, but it's not obvious that the U.S. is actually providing a lot of stability. Yeah. You know, as ironic, I talked with Clint Ehrlich, who you may have seen on the Tucker Carlson show, this guy who's a Russia analyst. And he was pointing out that not just France and Germany, but that even the United States does not want to bring Ukraine into NATO. And they haven't under Obama, under Trump, and under Biden. They're just stuck on this thing that, well, the Russians can't tell us what to do. We'll be damned if we're going to let another country close the door. on NATO membership for somebody will decide, but the whole thing is they already have decided that they don't really want to do this. And yet now they're going the other direction just because Putin's complaining about it. Yeah, I don't know if that's true.

I mean, they don't want to bring in NATO today, but if you read Adam Tews' recent substack on what's going on with Russia, the Ukraine, they were taking, you know, they were taking steps to do so. I mean, they were encouraging Ukraine to sort of get on. Yeah, no, wait. I mean, George W. Bush promised them in the Budapest memorandum,

Exactly. So I think what the foreign policy elites wants, I mean, they don't want to move on it. You know, it's too provocative and it's too complicated to do it now. But I don't have any doubt that foreign policy leads in the U.S. hope that in 10, 20 years, Ukraine is in NATO. They're playing the long game here. And that's why they want to keep the door open. And I think Russia can see what they're doing. So I don't think it's, I don't think they've decided it's not worth it. I wish they did. But I don't think they have. Yeah. Well, you know, for a while there, I was counting on Angela Merkel to stand in between these guys, and now she's gone. So I don't know. But she was the one who really insisted, too, that they do the Minsk two deal to end the war in East Ukraine. Yeah, well, I mean, Germany is blocking weapons transfers to Ukraine through Estonia. And it is basically, it's not as cooperative as America would like. So Germany, you know, is still there sort of, sort of, you know, preventing a United States. I mean, because they depend on Russia. I mean, they depend on Russia for their gas. They're, you know, they're trying to finish the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and, you know, and the face of American pressure. So, yeah, I mean, if Russia was this big aggressive country, I mean, you'd think that every other country in the world,

every other country of the region would unite against them. And, you know, that's not, that's not what we're seeing. Right. Yeah, as Victoria Newland said, F, the EU. And what that meant was the Germans are taking too long to do the coup. So we're going to go ahead and do it without them. That was what she was complaining about right there. that part of that part of the phone yeah yeah exactly i mean so you see uh yeah so um you know

just the the propaganda i mean it's just so so crazy because it's like oh russia's interfering in the uh affairs of other countries uh we have a rules-based international order everyone could choose their alliances and it's like you if you you to believe this stuff you have to be like completely ignorant of american foreign policy and what it's been doing i mean you if you have any like clue of american foreign policy all this stuff just sounds ridiculous but you know they they you know the propaganda apparently works yeah in the uh the now famous defense one piece by uh evelyn farcas who had worked for obama she talked about how since the end of the cold war no borders have changed through violent force and if we let russia change that it'll

crumble the entire rules based international order and i thought wow she's never really heard of the 1999 kosovo war huh yeah exactly yeah exactly when america july just gave part of Western Sahara to Morocco in exchange for them making a trade deal with Israel. Yeah, exactly. You know, they, yeah, the, like, yeah, and even like, look at Crimea, I mean, basically Russia took it over. The world didn't crumble, right? Right. You know, this stuff doesn't matter.

I mean, there is a good, you know, there is the fact that there's a norm against territorial conquest and it's happening less often is a good thing. And, you know, I wish the U.S. would contribute to upholding that norm by not invading other countries and also the norm of sovereignty by not, you know, encouraging coups against other countries or overthrowing other countries, then it would be in a position to point out the bad behavior of other states. But, you know, we're in no position morally to do that. Yeah. Hey, by the way, did you see Rand Paul's piece in the American conservative magazine? And he was the one Republican in the Senate who voted no on Ted Cruz's thing about this. But Rand Paul said, listen, all this fight about Nord Stream 2 is mercantilism. They're protecting Texas natural gas exporters who want a monopoly on selling CH4 to the Germans. And so here this is playing this outsized role in the fomenting of a new Cold War with Russia. Just some money. Yeah, yeah.

You know, Rand Paul has been a consistent voice on the Republican side. one of the fewer, you know, if any, uh, consistently opposed to this stuff. I mean, Mike Lee, too, has been, uh, has been a little bit, uh, you know, has been to a certain extent against NATO expansion. I think he voted against one of the, uh, one or two of the countries, uh, being brought in, um, in the last few years. But yeah, you're absolutely right. I don't know if mercantilism, I mean, I don't know if that's an insult to Republicans now because they, you know, they're, they're sort of open that they're, you know, they're protectionist. Um, but it's, it's, uh, you know, it's, it's sort of silly, uh, to, you know, for Ted Cruz to get up.

there and say, oh, like, Putin's pipeline, right? It's like where another country gets its natural gas from. I mean, it's not really his business. Right. And now, yeah, I mean, that's the thing about that term interests, right? They used to sometimes say vital interests, but then they just get to interest, which really could just mean the interests of one or two companies in one of the 50 states. And then that counts.

Yeah. Yeah, they often don't tell you what that. I mean, the national interest is, right? You know, it's, it can be ideological. It could be sort of a, you know, they have these things about establishing deterrence or like protecting national honor. And yeah, you also have, you all always have to sort of think carefully about what exactly they're arguing for and what arguments they're making because it's not always clear.

Yeah. Now, you bring up, uh, some specific policies of South Korea and in, for that matter, the Philippines in Vietnam and Germany and other. NATO allies where they just do whatever they want when it comes to dealing with the Chinese or dealing with the Russians like on this Nord Stream 2 pipeline, where the military alliance that we have and even are stationing of forces in their countries seem to have no effect whatsoever on the decisions that they're making there. Could you elaborate a bit about that? Yeah, that's that's right. I mean, because like, you know, for the reasons I said before,

the U.S., you know, really wants to be there. So they have, they don't have much leverage from the, from the presence in any particular country. So like, yeah, for example, Germany with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which the U.S. really, really wants, has wanted not to go forward. And then you have, you know, in South Korea, you have basically, it's accepted Huawei as a, you know, to come into the country. And, you know, that's been fine with that.

that has been a really big American priority in East Asia. You know, South Korea is generally, you know, is generally had tried to get along with China. I mean, they've not, you know, denounced it for anything. It's done internally. It's not, it hasn't cared about, you know, its issues with Hong Kong or Taiwan. South Korea, you know, in recent years, has been often more friendly towards opening relations with North Korea than the U.S. is under, under, under moon. So it's, so yeah, I mean, you could go to different.

parts of the world, and you could see this, and you can see it in the Middle East, you know, the U.S., you know, at least, you know, has a commitment to defend Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia is doing all kinds of crazy things, everything from the Khashoggi murder, to the war in Yemen, which the U.S., you know, got behind sort of reluctantly, but doesn't really, doesn't, nobody can see how it helps American interests. So, yeah, you could look at everything, so the report goes and looks at basically, you know, these different regions of the world and shows, you know, what are we doing what is what is the american influence here that comes from the defense relationship right now see i always just sit here moralized about who's getting killed and all this stuff but i appreciate the

academic take too where you just look we got to do some ones and zeros and some rational analysis here and it looks like every time we occupy a country our rivals benefit the most for example iraq and Afghanistan, where Iran and al-Qaeda in Iraq benefited and China and Pakistan, I guess, more than anybody else in Afghanistan. But certainly America didn't get anything whatsoever out of either of those wars. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's so strange because they're like, oh, you know, we need to build a stable democracy, you know, in Afghanistan. And that's what they've been trying to do for, they were trying to do for 20 years. And it's like, okay, if you did do that, like, so what? Like, you know, Afghanistan's basically a trading partner, you know, with the U.S.

during the U.S. occupation, the biggest trading partners were Iran and China. And so, like, if it's about keeping Iraq, you know, if it's like about pushing America, you know, assuming like what they say that Iran and China are American enemies, then why are we like, you know, invading Afghanistan and then like letting it build relationships with these countries and build economic ties? You know, there's no sort of connection to logic here. And of course, you know, you and your audience know about the war in Iraq, how it basically We made Iran stronger more than anyone else. I mean, Iraq is also, has pretty good relations with China, too.

And so there's really no connection between sort of these foreign policy adventures and the national interest, even if you sort of take what they're saying at face value, it's sort of as if the war is sort of the point of the war is the war. And then they come up with a justification later. Yeah. Give me just a minute here. Listen, I don't know about you guys, but part of running the Libertarian Institute is sending out tons of books and other things to our donors,

and who wants to stand in line all day at the post office? But stamps.com? Sorry, but their website is a total disaster. I couldn't spend another minute on it. But I don't have to either, because there's easyship.com. Easyship.com is like stamps.com, but their website isn't terrible. Go to Scotthorton.org slash Easy Ship. Hey, y'all Scott here.

You know, the Libertarian Institute has published a few great books, mine fools errand enough already and the great rom paul to by our executive editor sheldon richmond coming to Palestine and what social animals owe to each other and of course no quarter the ravings of william norman grigg our late great co-founder and managing editor at the institute coming very soon in the new year will be the excellent voluntarious handbook edited by keith knight a new collection of my interviews about nuclear weapons one more collection of essays by Will Grigg and two new books about Syria by the great William Van Wagonen and Brad Hoff and his co-author Zachary Wingard. That's Libertarian Institute.org slash books.

It does seem like that, doesn't it? That either that or these geniuses really just aren't that smart or something? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, one of the most celebrated foreign policy wise men of at least the previous generation was the Big New Brasinski. And I pointed out in my book, about how in 1997 in the Grand Chess Board, he said, listen, we have got to back the Chinese-Pakistan Taliban Axis in Afghanistan to keep the Iranians, the Russians, and the Indians out. But then that's the exact opposite of the war that we fought for 20 years. It was to back the Hazaras, the Iranians, friends,

and the Tajiks and the Uzbeks, the Russians, and the Indians friends to keep the Pakistani friends, the Taliban, out. And then, as you said, even during the war, the Chinese were the biggest investors in the place. But I wonder if there's a point where, you know, it's easy to imagine, I guess, either way, right? That they're saying, excellent. Now we've created a crisis. Now we can solve that, and then we'll switch sides again and whatever. But it's also pretty easy to imagine that all of them are complete idiots, right? Like the Supreme Court justice last week talking, about 100,000 children in the ICU

or whatever, they just don't even know what they're talking about at all these people. So they'll back the Shiite side in Iraq while they're back on the Sunni side in Syria at the same damn time, this kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a theme of my recent book, Public Choice Theory, and the illusion of grad strategy.

You know, they get where the politicians get where they are by being good at politics and being good at politics doesn't mean you have to actually know anything. You just have to look good in front of voters and convince them to vote for you. And then the people who are like foreign policy people working at think tanks or working in government, they're either selected by the politicians. Often they're, you know, they're supported by,

they're supported by weapons manufacturers, they're supported by foreign governments. And, you know, they're often looking for people who will say the things they want them to say. So the generals, I mean, the generals now, they all go work for defense contractors. I mean, as soon as they're, or some other kind of federal government contractors, as soon as they retire. And, you know, the, you know, they say the things that are in their interest to say, and it doesn't have to make sense. You're right. I mean, we, like, we're supposedly hate Iran and then, like, you know, we get rid of their enemy, Saddam Hussein. And then we have to stay there because we have to fight Iran. And then, like, we're against al-Qaeda. And then, you know, the Islamists, they, Islamists try to overthrow, you know, the government of Libya. We help them. And then we go to Syria and then we help the other Islamists, you know, try to overthrow a different government. And that we're, you know, And then we're in Syria to keep, you know, then we go to Syria to keep the Iranians out. And it's all, yeah, the people,

anyone can look at this and say this is ridiculous, but to these people who sort of have an interest in having it all makes sense and keep pushing for the same policies, you know, it's been very good for them. Yeah. Well, that's the thing about it too, right? Is they always just fail upwards.

And I can't believe you wrote a book called that. That sounds so fun, really. I have a subchapter of my book is called Public. choice theory about how we got into the war in Libya but oh wow i should i should i should have i'm sorry i haven't read books we'll get this done but no i like that and public choice theory could you just describe for people real quick in a nutshell what that means uh so public choice theory is basically you're taking the tools of economics and you're using it to uh uh uh understand politics right

so there's this sort of if you have like uh you know standard sort of international relations analysis. I mean, it's a very night, you could have a very naive thing where these people are, you know, know what they're doing and they're sitting there and they're coming up with a strategy to advance the American interest or, you know, accomplish something in geopolitically. And so, you know, that's one way of looking at the world.

The other way of looking at politics is basically, you know, their self-interested actors and every part of the system is self-interest is, you look at the parties and you look at what their incentives are. So the, you know, the ideas, what are the incentives of politicians, politicians is to get elected. What is the incentive of voter? Well, the voter is just, you know, they don't have an incentive to really pay attention to the foreign policy or anything else. I mean,

they're, you know, they're, they're doing things, they're deciding things based on, based on, you know, what sounds good. And then you have, you know, the military establishment and you have different factions. I mean, the one of the main lessons of public choice theory, I mean, going back to Mancur Olson, is the idea that groups with that concentrated interest in a policy outcome are more likely to get their way against groups with a diffuse interest. So if you're a weapons contractor and most of your, most or all of your revenue comes from the government, like say, you know, which is the case for something like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon, you have, you have an interest into lobbying for outcomes that are, you know, good for yourself

and people who might have an interest in more diffuse interest in the sense that they do not individually gain the taxpayer or the rest of society, they don't have, they don't have an incentive to push for the opposite policy outcome than the one that the concentrated interest wants. And so I think that this is the way to understand American foreign policy. If you're going to it and you look for coherence, right, you look for say, oh, we're, you know, we're enforcing the rules-based international order, or, you know, we are, you know, the shining city on the hill, or even we're trying to establish, like, dominance and, you know, push other people around. Even the more cynical takes on American foreign policy.

I don't think foreign policy makes sense from that perspective. But if you look at it as sort of, you know, just a bunch of people trying to continue getting paid and continue getting power. And, you know, sometimes they believe it, but they believe it because they're supported by other people who have a direct interest in an outcome or they believe it because it's good for their job. And then you sort of look at the policy as sort of a, you know, in a sense, a series of. accidents from like the macro level, from the level of, you know, what is good for the country as a whole or what is good for the world as a whole. You know, that's just, that's just a better way to understand foreign policy. You know, there was one report was by Josh Rogan, and I can't remember who did the other, but there were, there were two or three reports about the conversation

on the carpet in the Oval Office when they decided on Libya. And you had the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Advisor and the Deputy National Security Advisor and the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Vice President and a few others saying, no, we should not do this. And then on the other side,

he had Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice. And they wanted to do it and all three of them wanted to do it for their own reasons. As Michael Hastings reported, Samantha Power was tired of doing

Rinky Dink, do good stuff on the National Security Council where she had a deputy spot or something and wanted to move up and get a promotion, which worked. She became the ambassador to the United Nations. And then Rice got promoted from from Ambassador to the United Nations to National Security Advisor.

And then this was obviously supposed to be a feather in Hillary Clinton's cap for when she ran for president in 2016, that she'd done this great war, as is revealed in all her emails with Jake Sullivan and Cindy Blumenthal and others. that this had nothing whatsoever to do with the people of libya it was about these three women and their ambitions and then obama sided with them over the secretary of defense telling him you know we already got two wars and i don't know if we need another one right now since we're losing these two

yeah i mean obama said it was a you know 51 49 decision i mean you know for to go to war i mean you think you maybe you'd want you know you know more uh certainty than that uh the uh yeah and the You know, it's hard to say, you know, whether they just wanted a promotion or even if they're like, you know, they're ideological. I mean, some people really believe that the U.S. can do good across the world. I mean, it's in the face of all evidence, based on our interventions, but, you know, presumably some people believe that. And, you know, the point is, I mean, none of them, but, you know, whatever you think their motivations are, the point is, none of them thought much carefully about what would come after. I mean, it's not like they, you know, they had a plan for who was going to rule Libya instead. it was just like let's break the government and then hopefully something you know good will work out right

even if even for their own political interest i mean libya's became you know sort of a uh if anything it became a hindrance to Hillary's political ambitions because um you know because of benghazi and because everyone realized that Libya was a disaster so it wasn't like something she could point to and say you know i'm so proud we did this it was something she really wanted to forget by 2016 um but but yeah maybe that's just her not you know not being good at political calculations or maybe you know just as, you know, I don't know if it's more pessimistic or optimistic to believe she actually believed this and, you know, thought that forward intervention is good for the world and good, you know, good for her politics because she thinks it's all going to work out. But if, you know,

if she, if she thinks that, you know, there's a, you know, there, there was a certain, a certain delusion there. Right. Well, the point is where she doesn't have to bear any of the costs. Of course not. Yeah. Her friend, Amory Slaughter said, well, Hillary's point of view is that if something is going on and there could be bad consequences either way, than she would rather be caught trying. That's better than doing nothing, right? And then so it probably did cost her the presidency, in fact, though. You know what I mean?

I think Libya probably was worth a couple percentage points here and there. Yeah, I mean, it's possible. Yeah, I mean, I think because of the Benghazi thing, more than actual destroying Libya, because the Republicans were able to make a big scandal out of that. but yeah it's certainly plausible yeah you know it's the it's such a you know the world is so complex that you know if you're just going to have a a bias towards doing something there's a lot more ways to break things than there are to make things better and you know that philosophy is going to lead you to

break a lot of things maybe once in a while you'll you'll sort of stumble into something good most of the time you probably won't because our government doesn't have the vision and the and the foresight and the knowledge to remake foreign countries you know they they barely can govern their own country, you know, our state has not been doing so well. So the idea that we can, we're in position to say, you know, this government is bad and should we replace by something else and we can sort of midwife or facilitate that process, I don't know where they get the confidence to believe this. Right. Especially when it's all this foreign interventionism is at the root of what's wrong with the country falling apart the way it is right now. If just starting

with the $10 trillion, but all the societal consequences and everything else of just having the 21st century based around the idea of war in the Middle East this whole time the way it's been didn't have to be this way at all they want to know why they're losing credibility to dictate to other countries it's the dictating to other countries that's cost them their credibility you know in every way it seems like all right so wait here's a segue to our next conversation here about china which is that you talk about Vietnam which you know funny enough despite our failed effort to keep the communists from taking over that country in the 1970s, we've got a pretty good relationship with them now, but not as good as we have with the Philippines or Japan.

And you say that they're the ones who are most antagonistic towards the Chinese in the region, as opposed to South Korea or the Philippines, who the Americans would like to take a more antagonistic stance. Is that right? Yeah, and so that's the flip side of the coin. The argument is, you know, the U.S. is very close to South Korea. Basically, South Korea depends on the U.S. for its defense. And South Korea really doesn't do what the U.S. wants. And Vietnam, the U.S. doesn't have a defense relationship. They have, you know, normalized relations now. But the U.S. basically doesn't, you know, guaranteed that it's going to defend Vietnam or that it's going to, or doesn't station troops

in Vietnam. And yet Vietnam is increasing its military spending more than anyone else in the region and seems scary, you know, seems frightened of China for its own reasons. And, you know, that's just sort of the flip side of the coin, having a strong military relationship doesn't seem correlated with that country doing what the United States wants for China and not having a great relationship with the United States doesn't seem correlated with not doing what the U.S. wants, right? They might end up antagonistic to China. So it's just the point that the U.S. relationship system is not really related to American

interests or, you know, American effectiveness in seeking out what it wants. All right. Well, maybe we have a hard time hurting our cats on our side, but isn't it important that we deter Russia from invading Eastern Europe and deter China from conquering Taiwan first and Japan second? Well, I mean, so Russia, I mean, so, you know, you have to look at capabilities and intentions, right? Russia does not want. basically, there's no, you know, there's no indication that it's going to go invade its neighbors to the extent that there is indication that they're going to do. So that there's some indication now that, you know, they might go into Ukraine and, you know, by the time your listeners, you listeners hear this, it might have actually happened already. But, yeah, the reason, I mean, the reason, as we talked about is the reason that the antagonism of

Ukraine in the first place is because the U.S. has basically been trying, the U.S. has basically been trying to bring that country into NATO. It's been trying to bring it into its own sphere of influence. Russia considers it historically a very important part, sort of the mother, you know, Kiev is sort of the mother of Russian civilization. So, you know, Ukraine doesn't matter to the U.S. either way. I mean, there's, you know, there's no part of the world that matters less. I mean, you know, the Balkans in Eastern Europe don't matter either. I mean, these places, the U.S. after World War II was happy to, you know, not happy to, but, you know, it lived with giving them to the, you know, putting them under Soviet influence or letting them be under Soviet influence.

Nobody consider that something worth fighting for. The U.S. could have tried to go to war and dislodge the Soviet Union from Eastern Europe. But nobody was calling for us to do that because people understand these regions just don't matter. And then, you know, in East Asia, similarly, I mean, the U.S., you know, China sees Taiwan as part of China. They care about that issue much more than we do. you, you know, is it worth the U.S. going to war to stop China? I mean, people try to come up with reasons. They say semiconductors.

You know, you can still buy the semiconductors from China. I mean, there's no reason you could. There's no reason you could invest, you know, any investment for the market to adjust to new conditions will be cheaper than a war. And then, you know, the idea that, you know, China would go to war with Japan. Japan is, you know, one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. it can have nuclear weapon in months if it wanted to

and you know it can defend itself and what instead of this trying to have to go after it I mean it would be pretty disastrous so yeah I think this is these are sort of takes a lot of imagination to sort of imagine these scenarios in which the US needs to be there to prevent some kind of you know one of these countries

going on a war path I mean there's little indication that you know that's going to happen you know Gareth Porter wrote this piece about how they had a policy called dual deterrence about how they would let China know periodically that listen we really don't want you reunifying with Taiwan by force that would be really bad but at the same time they would not making a direct threat but sort of implying one but at the same time they would tell the Taiwanese especially the I don't know if you call them the right the more nationalist independence minded ones that you guys need to pipe down with all your provocative

statements about declaring full independence and sovereignty, because they see that obviously as needlessly provocative and could actually cause the war. But of course, the Taiwanese feel like the more F-16s they got and the more American Navy ships around they have, then maybe, you know, the more confident that they feel are overconfident to kind of, you know, get louder and talk more about independence. So it seems like it could really be, in other words, a self-fulfill. prophecy, where if they didn't feel like we had their back, they might actually mind their manners and be happy with the autonomy that they have and leave it at that instead of picking a fight since they figure that we're going to win it for them, that kind of thing.

Yeah, I mean, when you're trying to do this, yeah, so the, you know, the U.S. foreign policy establishment, it's not as if they just want everything to be as aggressive as possible. You know, they don't like, you know, they don't like to be surprised and they don't like, you know, sudden moves that can force them to do something that's politically, politically, potentially difficult. And the problem when you're playing these both sides, you're telling China, you know, don't move into Taiwan, and you're telling Taiwan don't antagonize China too much.

I mean, you're trying to do too much. You're trying to manage these complex relations. And the, you know, the potential for miscalculation is very high. So Georgia had provoked the war with Russia during the Bush administration because they thought that the U.S. had their back. And it turns out that we didn't. We weren't ready to do anything about. Georgia, right? And so you can see the same thing with Ukraine. Ukraine is a lot more belligerent

than it otherwise would be towards Russia because, you know, it thinks Europe and the U.S. will potentially bail it out or that eventually, you know, that eventually, you know, they're going to come into NATO and they're going to have, you know, the U.S. just right there and with an ironclad commitment to defend them against Russia. So, yeah, I think it's better if these relationships between these countries reflect the power realities on the ground. And American intervention is often, you know, just is more often a source of instability here than it is a source of stability in peace. All right. Now, you're convinced in this piece that, especially looking forward two and three and four decades from now, that China absolutely is getting rich and will be the dominant power in all of Asia.

Is that correct? Yeah. Yes, right. I mean, look, middle income, you know, China has passed the U.S. on GDP, depending on how you measure, or it's going to pass it, you know, the next decade or so. China has 1.4 billion people. It's a highly innovative economy, you know, for it's, it's really an outlier and how innovative it is for a middle income country.

And so it's going to, you know, it's just, you know, the population size plus the innovation plus the growth in the coming decades, you know, China will be the biggest, will be the biggest economy in the world. I mean, unless something, you know, extreme happens, you can't tell the future we're certainty, but that's what you have to expect. to be the most likely outcome. And then given that's the case, you know, what are we going to do with that information? Are we going to artificially try to keep the same level of American influence at East Asia

and the American dominance that existed back when China was a third world country and basically, you know, had limited power to project abroad and limited economic links with the rest of the world? I, you know, I don't think that that's a realistic policy. So I think we're going to have to, you know, really get used to. I mean, we're in the growing pains of it now. We're going to really have to get used to a bipolar world, really more multipolar. I mean, you could see, you know, India's also growing. And, you know, there's potentially, you know, there's potentially other countries out there that can, you know, they can rise if they get their house in order.

And Russia, you know, is not economically the strongest in the country, but definitely militarily. you know, it's certainly a force in its region. It's a bigger force than the U.S. and Eastern Europe as far as having ground troops. You know, the sort of denial of power realities, we can see this and this is never a good thing in foreign policy. This was what we saw in Afghanistan, where the Afghan government was a house of cards and the Taliban was a real fighting and potentially governing force. And we try to sort of delay the inevitable there. And I think we're, I think we're hoping for things that are really not possible at East Asia, given the power of dynamics. And, you know, the report is a, uh, uh, is an argument for not doing that and taking a more

realistic approach. Sorry, hang on just one second. Hey, guys, anybody who signs up to listen to this show by way of Patreon will be invited to join the Reddit group. And I'm going to start posting stuff over there more. That's patreon.com slash Scott Horton's show. Thanks. Hey, y'all, libertosbella.com is where you get Scott Horton's show and Libertarian Institute

shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and stickers and things, including the great top lobstas designs as well. See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart? Libertas Bella, from the same great folks who bring you ammo.com for all your ammunition needs, too.

That's 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. 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. Well, so I wonder what you think about all the people on the right who are so concerned

that we're not just seeing the rise of China in Asia, but that they're going to replace America as the unipolar world empire here, and we are going to be subject to their will here in North America. Yeah, I mean, it's bizarre. I mean, the idea that China has political influence in U.S. I mean, there's no country in the world that is more immune to influence from other powers than the U.S. is. I mean, the U.S. supports, you know, a non-government organization and all these countries that funds, you know, journalists and open, you know, does this, these things, it interferes in politics, and it dictates the countries, and it does this openly, right? So China, I mean, you could, you know, they're, you know, they're an economic power, they're a military power.

Are they a propaganda power? Are they, do they have, you know, a way to influence the American system, you know, in a certain ways they do, I mean, because businesses do want to do business with them. And there's, you know, mutual, you know, there's a potential for mutual benefit from trade. That's not an evil thing. I mean, that's what, you know, that's how countries behave and that's, you know, that can be in the interest of all involved when it's based on what it's based on consent between the parties. But I think, you know, I think for the U.S. to, you know, I think for people to get really excited about a, you know, a more antagonistic approach to China, I think they really have to exaggerate sort of the harm of what China potentially can do to the United

States or what it potentially wants to do in the U.S. or, you know, it's power to influence, you know, American politics. And, you know, I think these things tend to be very, very exaggerated for reasons, you know, for whatever psychological reasons or for, you know, whatever interest people have in a more conflictual approach to China. Yeah. And I guess they would have the same problem that we have. It's a long way from here. Yeah. I don't know how they're supposed to dominate us, but, you know, I'll tell you what, I did meet a guy who... Yeah, it's such a simple fact that, you know, we forget this. Yes, they are a long way from here, right? That is a good thing to keep in mind and people

generally don't. So the most credible thing I heard about that from somebody was he started off talking about Africa, and I don't even really know the truth of this, but he was saying that millions now of Chinese have moved to southern. Africa and that this is you know ethnic replacement man this is real colonization going on here and they can pull the same thing in Mexico in another 50 or 100 years and they got there's so many Chinese that they got plenty to go around that's great look at look at the birth rate of Chinese and look at the birth rate of Africans and then then tell me there's an ethnic replacement in Africa that that is absolutely insane China is having a you know population shrinkage and they you know

they're you know they're having enough trouble getting their own birth rate out and just maintaining their numbers, right? I think that's, I think this is a, this is a fantasy. I mean, millions of white people move to Africa, right? I mean, you know, in South Africa, there's, you know, Europeans all over the continent. I would bet there's more Europeans still than there are China, Chinese and Africans. I'm not sure about that. Oh, yeah, of course, when you count the white South African population, right? So, yeah, this seems like a, yeah, this seems like another one of those, one of those things. You know, it's hard because you have to shoot down every one of these things individually, right? They say China is controlling

the U.S., and you say, no, that's not true. And then they say, oh, China is ethnically replacing the Africans and they're going to move into Mexico. You say, that's not true. And then they'll make up something else, right? And that's why it's so hard to argue with these people and you have to understand that there's sort of a need to have an enemy.

Yeah. And that really is what it is. And it's funny in it, too, how everybody understands this. Ike Eisenhower coined the phrase. You just can't escape that. You know, regulatory capture by the arms industries, or not just regulatory, but

government capture by the arms industry. Everybody knows that that's what's going on here. Everybody knows that, you know, the first time you ever find out, what's a think tank? Oh, that's the arms manufacturers pay these egghead we need guys to sit around writing

excuses for weapon sales. You know, it's just, it's the open conspiracy right in front of all of us, you know? Yeah. Yeah, you're absolutely, I mean, you're right. I think that people should know this, but, you know, I think that, you know, shouldn't underestimate how, you know, the propaganda think tanks and in the media and from government.

I mean, they work on somebody, you know, that's why they invest so much money and effort into them. So, yeah, I think there are a lot of people who are genuine believers who just, you know, accept the propaganda. You know, they have maybe an instinct to, you know, to, you know, it's easy to convince people that foreigners are out to get them. And they don't have any personal experience. they don't know, you know, anybody from China or anybody from Russia or anything. And I think it's very, very easy for people to buy into these things. And I think that, you know, what people like you do and what I do is point out like, look, the entire information space has been shaped with people who have very kind of narrow

interests or have some kind of ideological interests. And they're not the people who, you know, they don't necessarily have the, you know, the same ideas or the same interests as the rest of the country does. And I think, you know, just pointing that out to people, that's one of the things I do in my book and, and I try to do in my writing, I think that's a, you know, that's very important to sort of, to sort of discrediting this class to a large extent. Yeah. All right. So how's the alliance system shaping up in the East now? We have Australia and South Korea and Japan.

These are already our allies. But they're trying to kind of bring everybody really together to hem in the Chinese in a way. So what's the status of that project? Yeah, so there is, you know, talk that, you know, of like the quad, right, which is the U.S. and Australia, India, in Japan, right? They're going to have sort of an alliance, you know, not officially against China, but, you know, sort of really against China. And there's more, especially from, like, Australia, there is more of a sense of, like, you know, talking a big game about China. And so, you know, but how much that actually translates, you know, into something, you know, really important? It's, you know, we'll see, you know, it's easy for these countries to sort of tell the U.S., you know, what the U.S. wants to hear.

You know, I think the better question to see what's going to happen in the next year is do they invest more in their, do they invest more in their militaries, do they actually take steps to not trade as much with China? there's little indication of that happening. So until you get to that point, I mean, the talk of, you know, the sort of the discourse and the way their attitudes towards China is, you know, is not nothing. It's something. But I think to gauge sort of the extent of the importance of what's going on and countries moving towards the U.S., I think, you know, I think you need to look for some hard metrics there. I think what, you know, what most countries in the region want and what they've wanted for the pretty, you know, for the, you know, previous decades is they don't want to choose between the U.S. and China. They just want to trade with each of them and they want to basically have sovereignty in their affairs and

they don't want to be forced to choose one side or the other. And the U.S., you know, the sort of the raisindetre of the forward policy establishment is becoming to counter China. And so I think they're feeling a lot of pressure from the American side. And some cases, no, they, I mean, they really just dislike China. I mean, Japan has had a tough relationship in the last decade with China. And India has their own conflict with China, right? They have they had this border dispute that's gone back many decades. But do they actually, but are these countries actually interested in a substantive alliance that will cost something on their end, right? And, you know, it's yet to be, it's yet to be proven if that's the case. I mean, the country like Japan, you know,

has very low birth rates, has very low economic growth. I mean, China is, you know, is economically rising very quickly. You know, it doesn't seem like it makes a lot of sense that they want to, they'd want to pick a fight with China at this point. But, you know, they're hosting a lot of American troops. So maybe it doesn't matter to them either way, right? So, yeah, we'll see what happens in the coming decades. No, I'm not sure if you saw this piece by John Mueller at the Quincy Institute a couple weeks ago there. China's been a failure at hegemony, so let's just chill and of course john muller's the author of overblown and the stupidity of war and you know pretty much a cato guy when it comes to foreign policy and uh he's saying you know they're not very good

of throwing their weight around uh you know they're as clumsy as we are when it comes to that kind thing they're wolf warrior diplomacy just makes everyone resent them and uh it's you know and and sort of uh to the point that you're bringing up there second ago about how many neighbors they have They have a lot of neighbors. It seems like each one of those countries, where they got a dozen international borders surrounding them one way or the other. Seems like that's just enough to keep them busy,

just trying to keep the peace at all times. Never mind trying to be the dominant force in Bhutan and Pakistan and outer Mongolia and everywhere else too, you know? Yeah, I think that Mueller is right. I mean, I don't think they're very good at it. I don't think they want what the U.S. wants, right? The U.S. wants, basically, a veto over the internal politics of every country in the world. And China just doesn't care that much about what other countries do.

So, yeah, I mean, they're very limited. They're not very good at the propaganda game. They're not very good at sort of covert operations. China just has not, this has not been their strengths. And it's not something they've prioritized or, you know, cared about as much as other places do. I mean, they care about certain things. Like, they really care about making sure another country, you know, doesn't recognize Taiwan. But they don't care, like, for example, whether you're a democracy or, you know, a dictatorship or how you get along with your neighbors.

That's just not something that they're, you know, that they're into. And I think the, you know, American sort of ambitions abroad and it's sort of a sense of its role in the world is so expansive that we sort of project out of other countries. Oh, of course, China's going to try to, you know, interfere in the affairs of other countries and overthrow them and, you know, do crazy things like invading Iraq like we did. and just because we do these crazy things and, you know, we are sort of, you know, taking an expensive view of our role in the world. It doesn't mean that's how other countries are going to behave and, you know, we should keep that in mind.

Yeah. All right. Well, so tell me about the future then. You're the deputy national security advisor and you're writing our new national security strategy. Help me see what the next 30 years look like then as far as how we should be dealing with China. Okay, so how we're, yeah.

So, I mean, I think we should be pretty, much, you know, looking for a way to acknowledge the fact that China is going to be the dominant power in East Asia. I think one of the reasons that we have such, we have such antagonism towards China and Russia is because we have, you know, we still in the back of our mind believe that these countries are illegitimate because they don't have the same kind of government that we do, that basically that, you know, Russia should have, I think Russia is the ultimate target of the color, color revolutions. China, you know, we, you know, I think that the, you know, I think that it's the same thing here. It's like we, you know, we, we think that the system is

fundamentally illegitimate. And I think that we take regime change off the table and we basically, we don't, we acknowledge that, you know, it's not for us to decide how every country in the world lives. I think a lot of, you know, I think a lot of attentions go away. So I would be more explicit on that point. Basically, I would, you know, I would, you know, I would not fund these, you know, sort of, they call them civil, you know, civil society organizations, you know, so they can, they're basically pawns of our agents of American influence abroad. I think, you know, I think that you can encourage Taiwan to, you know, take responsibility for its own defense.

You know, it's a technologically very advanced country. It's a rich country. Does that mean it can hold out against China? Probably, you know, probably, probably not. I mean, so, you know, it's going to have to, you know, find a way to live in a sort of one country. I think you'd get a one country, two systems, right? I think that the Chinese, you know, the Chinese haven't, you know, they're no longer a communist state.

So I think they would basically, they would basically limit Taiwan's autonomy, but they would end, they would end up basically the Taiwanese can live a very good life under, under Chinese rule or sort of under a neutral state. And so I think this is, you know, this is what we need. I think we need to basically step back from, from East Asia. I mean, it really doesn't, it doesn't matter much to us at all. You know, globally, I think we need to, I think the sanctions regime is, you know, really. a war crime. I mean, what we've done to countries like Venezuela and Syria and Cuba, their own governments have serious problems, but we've made the problems of the people in these countries, you know, much, much worse through cutting them off from the global economy. And I would, yeah, I would not do any regime-change wars. And, you know, I would focus on the

things that, you know, we have in common, that we care about things like nuclear proliferation, things like, you know, climate policy and energy policy and global pandemics. I mean, there's so many things that are actually important to the U.S. in a way that, you know, who rules over eastern Ukraine is not important, right? And because we, you know, we have these antagonistic relationships, we ignore cooperation on the important things, and we focus on where we disagree on these things that fundamentally aren't important to us or to the wider world. So, yeah, I would have a, you know, less militaristic, less interventionist form. policy and one based on more on mutual respect and cooperation yeah now you write in here that

the theory i guess this was mostly from the uh university of chicago uh milton friedmanite types that um the more uh chinese society becomes capitalistic the more uh democratic their political system will become too yeah i would i wouldn't blame the university of chicago or milton friedman types for that, the economist. I think that's more of you that was in like political science than it really was the economic people. Okay. Well, and so you say that that proved that there couldn't be anything more wrong, but I followed the footnote and it was just a Hillary Clinton speech, so I thought that must have been a mistake. But I wonder, I mean, if you can't replay the counterfactual and all of that, but I, and I know it does sound, I guess, slightly utopian or whatever, but I don't

know. I mean, it seemed to make sense on the face of it. But I was thinking that, maybe the big variable at play is America's terror wars this whole century long so far, and that if our government hadn't been bathing in the blood of two million dead, innocent people, and backing al-Qaeda in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, and just the madness, the chaos that they've inflicted in Central Asia as well this whole time, that then when they talked about the Declaration of Independence and the Natural Rights of Man and things like that, it wouldn't just sound like ridiculous propaganda. from completely morally and financially bankrupt people

in a collapsing empire that's the kind of thing that maybe even Saudi society and Chinese society would have had to take seriously that, you know, the Americans talk all the time about how their Bill of Rights is better and geez, maybe we should have fairer trials and maybe we should have an independent judiciary

and maybe we could have done a little bit better in pushing the best of our ideas of political freedom in the world if it wasn't. all, the hypocrisy, you know? Yeah, I mean, so it wouldn't be, unquestionably, when the U.S. does things like, you know, prosecute Julian Assange, what it invades other countries, even when we have, you know, like deep partisanship and deep, you know, problems with our

system, the rest of the world does see that and it does make us look hypocritical. It does take away much of our credibility. You know, at the same time, you know, we should, you know, I think there's, you know, a limit to what we can do. So even if we behave, you know, angelically, it doesn't necessarily mean every country is going move you know in the direction um that we'd like we'd like to move and you know these countries i mean they have different there are different historical you know uh points you know you can't just say we're going to tear every you know people should tear everything and out down and you know build a democracy

but you know we should i think be um showing people what works and you know the soviet union collapsed um not because like you know we like uh supported an insurgency or anything but because they saw that their economic system didn't work um and they wanted to basically they wanted to try something else. I mean, they lost faith in their own system. And, you know, like, it seems like today, like, we don't care, like, if our system is not working. We just want to force it down everyone's throat, right? Like, you know, these same people who think, like, democracy is over in the U.S., and they keep talking about, like, you know, Trump and Republicans are basically ruining our democracy and we're, you know, we're moving away from a democracy. They're at the same time

wanting to force, you know, what they call democracy onto the rest of the world. And so you're right. I think it's, I don't know how much, like, you know, our sort of moral rectitude can influence other countries, but I do think it's looking more and more ridiculous as time goes on. Yeah. Well, and, you know, it's funny, too, that they overthrow a democracy in a heartbeat if it stands in their way, like the one in Ukraine. Yeah.

You know, a democratically elected leader that leans toward Russia, well, forget him. We'll do a street push with a bunch of neo-Nazis to throw him right out of office, even when he agreed to new election. in a couple of months, not good enough, and started a war over it. You know what I mean? That's what they think about democracy. And in fact, you know, the only thing wrong with our country is that they haven't done a regime change in Moscow yet.

And if they had back in, say, 2011, then Putin wouldn't have been able to destroy our democracy in 2016. Otherwise, everything else that our establishment has done to be the stewards of this nation and this world empire, the last 20 or 30 years, has been perfect. You know, yeah, I tweeted out today there was a State Department. It was, it put out a document, the top five Russian, you know, points of Russian disinformation, most, you know, persistent disinformation myths. And like, one of them was like Western civilization is falling apart because it's, because it's moving away from traditional values and because of, you know, multiculturalism and LGBT rights. And like, these are things that, like, a lot of Americans actually believe.

So, like, to say this is just like a narrative, you know, that Russia. invented, that's very convenient for people who don't want to think that there's just actually Americans who just disagree with them very, very strongly on some things. And so there was this idea that, oh, my, you know, oh, my goodness, the American people couldn't have elected somebody like Donald Trump, right? It was like a few Russian Facebook ads. It wasn't like something deep in our, you know, in our culture or an American politics. And you see the same thing on the right, you know, sometimes they, like, they blame China for, like, dividing us. And they just, it's just crazy. It's like, you know, where do you see the Chinese presence in like American

political culture. So often, you know, people want to believe certain narratives that flatter themselves. They want to absolve themselves of problems that they've caused within society. And then they want to blame it all foreigners and they think if they can convince people that they will get, you know, they'll be able to obtain political power and sort of move the country in the direction that they want to go. And that's just an unfortunate sort of a recurring theme of our politics.

Right. All right. Well, listen, thank you so much for doing the show today, Richard. It's been really great, and I really enjoy reading you, too. It's been a pleasure, Scott. Thank you very much. Aren't you guys? That's Richard Hananya, and he is at Defense Priorities. Check out this one is called Phantom Empire, the illusionary nature of U.S. military power, and also the inevitable rise of China, U.S. options with less Indo-Pacific influence. And his book is Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy. The Scott Horton Show, an anti-Bron War Radio can be heard on K-P-F-K 90.7 FM in L.A.

APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scott Horton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.