Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/10/23 Patrick MacFarlane on the Balloon Panic

Episode Date: February 12, 2023

Scott is joined by Patrick MacFarlane to talk about the alleged Chinese balloon that captured the American news cycle a week ago. MacFarlane wrote a piece for the Libertarian Institute digging into the details and arguing against the fearmongering that has predictably resulted. Scott and MacFarlane talk about this story as well as the broader Cold War with China.  Discussed on the show: “An Overblown Balloon Headline Inflates False Narrative on China” (Libertarian Institute) “Who Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipelines? "Russia, Russia, Russia!" (Racket [formerly TK News]) “Rep. McCaul Plans Taiwan Visit This Spring, McCarthy Later” (Antiwar.com) Wilson’s War by Jim Powell Patrick MacFarlane is the Justin Raimondo Fellow at the Libertarian Institute where he advocates a noninterventionist foreign policy. He is a Wisconsin attorney in private practice. His work has appeared on antiwar.com and Zerohedge. Follow him on Twitter @patmacfarlane_ 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 than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys introducing patrick mcparlayne the justin romando fellow at the libertarian institute how do you like that an overblown balloon headline inflates false narrative on china

great piece from the other day welcome the show how you doing man doing good scott thanks uh good happy to have you here so uh how afraid of the balloon were you and are you now well not very i hate to uh to break it to people that would be fun to be afraid of a balloon though i can see like oh no a balloon let's be afraid of it together new gingrich said it might be practiced for an EMP attack. Yeah, I did see that. I saw other people saying there might be chemical or biological agents. I linked to that in my article.

I can't remember what representative that was, but I believe it was a sitting member of Congress who said that. Sweet. You know, they could have dropped fentanyl from the thing. Yes, yeah. And apparently, if you just touch that stuff, it'll care if you're a cop. All right. Well, listen, there's obviously wide and varied reports, and there's been even more reports from the official papers and so forth

since the shootdown and since you've written this article. So can you tell us everything that you think you know about the balloon and also admit what you don't and what the different stories are and what it is? Because it seems kind of confusing to me, but I'd like to hear you out. Yeah, well, first off, I guess I'd like to start just by noting that it is a little sad, just that the balloon story is dominating the headlines, especially when we have the Seymour Hirsch piece coming out. But I don't know, you can only speculate as to the timing that these things come out, right, Scott? I mean, hey, caveat, I tried to get Cy on the show. He didn't answer.

But I interviewed Dave about it yesterday, so I'm in the clear. Go ahead. Yeah, no, no, I didn't want to admonish you or anything like that, but it's, you know, it's just a general observation about kind of the state of politics that we live in right now. But so what's happened is that the balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina. And it looks like the FBI is leading the effort to recover some of the pieces, according to a Yahoo news piece that came out yesterday. And what is, what is funny about it, because after the balloon was shot down, we get all. of these additional claims, more definitive claims by the State Department and the powers that be. But there was another great piece, surprisingly, to me, from Zero Hedge that was really analyzing

these new claims because the claims come out that, you know, there's a gigantic weather balloon program that's spying over 40 countries across the globe and China's collecting all this information. But none of these claims are really based on new evidence. if you look at the Yahoo news piece, it's pretty clear that the FBI is saying, quote, it's very early for us in this process and the evidence that has been recovered and brought to the FBI is extremely limited. So the zero hedge piece is really just kind of saying, hey, there's no new definitive proof here of anything, really, just more additional claims. They haven't, they, the FBI admits that

they haven't picked up any of the electronics and they're still floating or sitting in the ocean or are on the bottom of the ocean off the coast of South Carolina. So we really don't know much of anything. And in fact, the balloon, the balloon manufacturers, they actually have details and schematics of what the balloons are made out of and it's public access sitting on their website. So now, I mean, I sure couldn't see it from here, but they must have had, I know that they had U-2s up there looking at it, and I know they have, you know, phone cameras with. with telephoto lenses on them. And so they can see the thing.

I mean, they say it had this huge solar array that made it. And the size of the thing, the solar array and the balloon itself made it not a weather balloon, they said. But then they must have been able to see. I mean, I saw one thing yesterday that said, well, it had a lot of antennas on it. Well, okay. But so I could imagine, like, maybe they're looking for Chinese dissidents to escape to America that they want to kidnap back again. like the Saudis do, something like that, that would be bad. Or maybe they just like listening to Americans chit-chat or order washers or, you know,

whatever they're doing with their day. I don't know exactly what the point of that would be. But as far as, you know, flying a balloon over Montana, I mean, everybody who's interested can tell you where every last minute man silo is. up there, you know? So, um, and they have, I read 260 satellites in space. So they probably have one in geosynchronous orbit, just sitting over Montana all day, every day anyway, right? I mean, I don't know. So, um, anyway, um, I don't know what else you'd expect to see on. They said antenna, is that instead of cameras? Did you read? Did they, did anyone say, oh, no, it

That's a really, you know, apparently a real sophisticated group of cameras on that thing or something like that. No. Did anybody publish good, you know, Zoom photos of the thing at all? I haven't seen anything like that. What I did see basically is when you look at some of the footage, there's actually footage available from some of these balloons that has that is just published online. And there was a good YouTube channel that actually dissected some of that, some of that footage that they had found from other Chinese weather balloons. And the camera is focused very high up to observe atmospheric conditions. And there's another camera that's focused at the balloon itself.

And so I haven't seen any really high detailed pictures of this balloon to suggest that it was any different than any other Chinese weather balloon. And so then the idea is, and I guess you're saying this is from that zero hedge thing, is they've had this. program for a long time they have these balloons all over the world and they really are for weather because we know that or at least that's the cover story and it has been for a long time that their weather balloons is that right sure yeah yeah and well at least that's what the chinese government is the chinese communist party is saying and but i mean has been saying for how many years going back yeah at least i think at least four okay and and so i i mean the united states too i mean and it could be both i mean there ain't no point and

like being naive here? Well, one of the more credible things that I heard from the State Department as a reason as to why they would have a weather balloon that would give them any more details more than a spy satellite or something like that would be to observe atmospheric conditions above missile launch sites was the specific thing that I read. But then again, I'm not a scientist or anything like that. I would think that that atmospheric condition readings would be publicly available through a U.S. meteorological service or something like that. So it really doesn't, I mean, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And of course, with the United States making the affirmative claims here, I would think the burden of proof would be on them to prove it.

And they should be able to do it, but what I suspect will happen is that, you know, this story will dissipate. The effect has already taken place, the desired effect, as that, you know, everyone got mad everyone got afraid we rushed to action uh joe biden looked weak uh china is malevolent and they're spying on us and now republicans got to beat their chest yeah well and blinkin got to cancel his visit to to china his two-day diplomatic visit that was pre-planned what a sorry excuse for a gary powers incident man yeah that was when the cia got their own guy shot down to ruin the end of the Cold War when Ike Eisenhower was going to go negotiate with cruise shift people ought to look that up

it's a lot of fun what about the the Hainan incident I believe that was 2001 when a U.S. Navy spy plane was surveilling the coast of China and it collided with the Chinese fighter jet yeah that was I think Colin Powell's first and last stand in the W Bush administration we're not hawking this up we're going to negotiate and be nice and figure it out and they were like okay but that's all the political capital you got pal and that was like what in would you just say march yeah so i i don't know what you um i was going to fin it about um antony blinkin's visit it seemed like you know i was reading in um in moon of alabama kind of bernard was i think a little bit speculating as to what the purpose of blinkin's visit was but it makes sense is that the

purpose of the visit was to try and pry China and Russia further apart, which is funny because you know, U.S. policy has just driven them closer together in the last few years. But, you know, apparently it was discovered that that would be a non-starter. And so here's a convenient excuse. We could just, you know, these Chinese weather balloons are flying over the U.S. all the time. You know, we just see that there's one now in the U.S. and we can pluck that off the tree and use it as an excuse to cancel these talks. Yeah. And it is. It's just like with the, you know, that great medley that Matt Orff made of all the different news clips, sort of like the, you know, the walls are closing in. They had all the clips of obviously Russia blew up Nord Stream. Everybody knows that. And he just did this collage, you know, this video collage of, I don't know, like two or 300 different clips of these cooks, all just parroting the same. same thing that they're supposed to say.

And, you know, this is part of what made me so political in the first place was not just Waco, but Oklahoma City. They blamed it all on this one guy after they had already admitted that he had a friend. John Doe, too. But then they said, hey, listen, there is no John Doe, too.

And then the entire media went with that. Every newspaper editor in America. Like, where is the Freemason Handshake? What is the Black Mass? spell that makes people just lock in line. Oh, the balloon, the scary balloon, the scary Chinese balloon, the scary Chinese spy balloon that could be a practice for an EMP nuclear first strike on America before they destroy and kill it. And then what are we all? How does this happen? How do you get everybody, especially after this keeps happening over and over and over again? We're like, you know they're

jerking your chain. They're always jerking your chain. Why would this be the time they're not jerking your chain? The benefit of the doubt goes to the American national security state? I don't know. It's amazing to me how anyone, you know, cannot be inoculated against this kind of thing by now, you know? Yeah, it really is. I mean, if you think about it, there's no other country that the united that just the american public has been more brought up to hate and fear than china i mean maybe you could say in in the terror wars it was americans you know hated and feared muslims or arabs or something like that soviet union before that yeah yeah um but in the present time of course it's china i mean i can think growing up you know you're just conditioned especially

if you live in a blue collar area just to hate china because they make cheap stuff uh that's just crap. They're taking our jobs, that kind of stuff. And so it's just, you have this ready narrative. And of course, everyone remembers Tiananmen Square, too. And how, you know, the great evils, you know, Chinese tanks running over protesters and grinding their flesh up into little bits and then hosing them down the sewer drains was, you know, some of the propaganda that came from that incident. So, um, yeah. Well, and look, it is unlike the Islam-o-Fash, caliphate of the terror war era China does exist

and they do have a Navy and an Air Force and a million man army, right? I mean, it's not like they're nothing. So there is something actually that I mean, that's a real concession to the war party here. Unlike their last enemy,

they're actually, this enemy does, you know, happen in time and space, you know, is a thing, actually. So you've got to give them that and it's, um, And they are corrupt. I mean, and it's true that they've had, you know, malign financial influence inside the Democratic Party.

I mean, legendarily, Bill Clinton put essentially the right-hand man of a Chinese intelligence agent in the Commerce Department and then transferred the authority for licensing missile technology transfers from state and defense to that guy's desk at the Commerce Department. and then they said, hey everybody, look at these innocent Chinese people, because they all look alike to you. So it was John Wong and James Riyadi. Riyadi was the boss. Wong was the right-hand man there. And then they said, no, look at Charlie Tree, the fundraiser, and look at Wenho Lee, the entirely innocent Taiwanese scientists that Louis Free just framed like Hatfield, you know. But anyway, so if people remember that, they, I mean, there's a lot of people. lot of truth in that. And it was the Americans who taught the Chinese, you know, MIRF technology.

So they better not get us into a war with them. That's going to really make me mad, getting nuked by one of my own Mervs. It really is a weird juxtaposition like the U.S. relationship with China. I mean, once you have the opening up of China, you have the booming of Western investment headed into the country, but also Western capitalism and some of those values too. And then it creates this huge leviathan, this gigantic power in the east. And you have, you know, U.S. politicians, I say this a lot, U.S. politicians hating and fearing China, but at the same time being like, well, wouldn't it be nice if we could just do what they do, right? Yeah. So speaking of politicians, though, I just wanted to touch on kind of our friends

and the populist right who are you know we have nat gates introducing that that resolution uh the ukraine fatigue resolution uh which i think is uh commendable uh really but the the populace had some of the most extreme rhetoric when it came to this balloon and they're of course raking biden over the coals for it and grandstanding about that and beating their chest and one of the one of the big takeaways i wanted in this piece was just to say look you have bob manette and Mendez and Lindsay Graham, two of the architects of not only the Ukraine situation, but also I've covered in previous pieces I think we talked about in my last interview, how Bob Menendez and Lindsay Graham are behind this fortress Taiwan policy meeting President Sae, and they weren't

as hawkish as the populist right. So we have this weird situation where Bob Menendez doesn't say much of anything about the balloon, and Lindsey Graham thanks the military. for shooting the balloon down, but then says, well, maybe we should wait and see and confirm our suspicions, let the FBI or whoever do their investigation, get the proof that it really was a spy balloon, and then we'll see where we're at then. And for Lindsay Graham, Ultra Hawk, to be more reasonable than some of our friends on the populist right, just it hits kind of weird. Hey, I propose a new treaty over flights, civilian unarmed. No,

EMPs allowed, just unarmed balloon and or high-flying airplane over flights, a new open skies treaty. We can get back in our broken treaty with Russia that America tore up for no good reason, and we can propose a new one for China. Actually, you guys can send your balloons over our country whenever you want, dude, we're not afraid of you guys. One, and two, you shouldn't be afraid of us. so go ahead and fly your little balloon over all of our military bases so that you can see that yeah we're mobilizing to make a lot of money getting Ukrainians killed but we're clearly not mobilizing for war in the Pacific and then you can feel better about your week

and which is the same reason that Ike Eisenhower thought it was a good idea that we should have an open skies treaty with the Soviet Union and which which is why George H.W. Bush was the one who pushed that treaty through back at the end of the Cold War. And it was only Donald Trump just two years ago, three years ago, tore it up in 2020, or maybe it was the end of 2019, along with the INF Treaty. So, and it's funny, right, because to the establishment, everyone in media and whatever, this guy, Trump was a traitor, an agent, a spy, you might as well have been from the

far side of Mars, a total interloper. crazy man psychopath white supremacist whatever you would think that they would just it would be easy for them to repudiate anything he had done while he was an imposter sitting on their rightful throne and instead they go oh yeah no we're we're keeping the open skies treaty dead and yeah no we're not getting back in the INF treaty either and you know luckily they saved new start which i think he was going to kill new start but i'd save that at least but um you know why not that's the thing, you know, Pedro Gonzalez, I was pointing out on Twitter, like, what's the big deal about that? And he was like, yeah, you know, why not have open skies treaties with everybody? Anybody who's

worried about it? What if all of a sudden the nationalists in India said, oh my God, we got some intelligence that says the Americans are out to get us? We should be like, dude, you guys should send planes over our bases right now, you know, not with bombs on them. And then, and look at our bases, and you can tell, we're not mobilizing for war with you. See? It's all good. Wouldn't that? Why, why not? We're America.

We're the superpower. What do we have to fear from any state on the planet? Or because we're the superpower, that's why we have to fear every state on the planet. I see how this works. Yeah, well, as Ray McGovern says, trust but verify, right? Right. I mean, that comes from Ronald Reagan. That was the INF Treaty.

How can you sign the INF Treaty? And he goes, well, trust but verify. Now, what he meant really was don't trust, verify. He was being polite. See how that is? It works. You know? Yeah, and meanwhile, you know, we have U.S.-China relations in diplomatic ties going, sinking lower and lower.

The Pentagon made a big deal on Thursday that China rejected a request from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to speak with his Chinese counterpart. And I just don't understand why these communications didn't have. happen, you know, before the balloon even crossed into U.S. airspace, because they saw it off the coast of Alaska on the 28th. 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.

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Yeah, they weren't saying anything about it. I mean, at least I read this, that it was civilians on an airliner saw it out the window and brought it up. And they thought, okay, well, we better bring it out with our spin now. Before it's just on TikTok. So, can you take us back over the last few months here, of the expansion of the bases, they've announced some new positions in the Philippines, I believe, and there's new arms packages for Taiwan. I saw, who was it that was it?

I think it was a Republican senator saying that he was going to go and visit Taiwan and China can't stop them, something like that. You know what the hell I'm talking about? Because I'm not sure I do. Yeah, I do. And I'd have to pull it up to get the, the exact name, but I saw the headline at anti-war.com about, you know, the, yeah, Kevin McCarthy announcing another Speaker of the House visit. Oh, it's the Speaker of the House, yeah. Well, he announced that he was going later in the spring, and then there's another Republican representative, I believe a representative who said that he's going to go first. I see. So, but, but yeah, I mean, the context of- It's just a provocation, right? There's no

reason to do that other than as a provocation, other than to make tensions worse. Well, and that's specifically the thing that makes China ramp up their military exercises and military activity around Taiwan is recognitions of Taiwanese sovereignty and support for separatism, even more than arm sails to the island. It's that recognition of sovereignty is what does it. Now, if you go back, of course, there's no nuanced discussion in the media about the reverse side, right, of the U.S. the pivot to Asia and the U.S. military build up in the, they like to call it the Indo-Pacific now, but around the South China scene in that area there. And in just the last few months, of course, we have, you know, the announcing of more military aid to Taiwan. We also have a U.S. Marine Corps base opening in Guam, the U.S. opening in Embassy in the Solomon Islands. Further, you know,

Japan has announced that they're going to be doubling their military budget. it, you know, which is militarization is something that is kind of, it's outlawed in a sense in their constitution, but I've been told by some people that that was always just kind of a farce anyways, but nonetheless, they recently announced that they're doubling their military spending. Now there's new U.S. military installations being planned in the Philippines and Palau, and then now there's this Micronesia, a deal to secure the U.S. military access to Micronesia, meaning that they could repel any other navy that floated into that area, and that Micronesia, it's kind of a bunch of these Pacific islands

that are part of a political unit, and their combined sea area is as large as the continental United States. And so that's a huge chunk of the Pacific Ocean that is now under exclusive U.S. military dominion. Hey, I did this radio show in Chicago. The guy, quick, call me after this. I didn't think I was that rude to him, but he was really good on some, he liked

all my Middle East stuff, but on China, he goes, man, the Chinese are constantly violating Taiwanese airspace, and I think they have, you know, on a couple occasions here, but what he was talking about was the air defense identification zone, which is, in fact,

an entirely different thing, but it makes for some great scary headlines and especially top-of-the-hour radio news briefs, stuff like that. Chinese jets again invade Taiwan's air defense identification zone. And people go, oh, no, not that. But, well, can you explain the discrepancy between actually being in their airspace and this other thing? Yeah, so the air defense identification zones, I believe were created by the United States themselves. I would double check that.

But if you actually look at the ADIZ zones, they're arbitrary lines. And so technically, Taiwan's ADIZ goes over the Chinese mainland itself. And so, you know, you could have Chinese aircraft flying over mainland China, and they would be violating Taiwan's ADIZ. But what is concerning, Scott, is the fact that since Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan at the beginning of August, you have Chinese jets that are towing the median line between Taiwan. Taiwan and mainland China. Now, the median line between the Strait of Taiwan, in the Strait of Taiwan, was created by the United States, but it splits the middle between mainland China and Taiwan, and you have Chinese jets that are towing that line almost on a daily basis, and that is a new

escalation, directly the result of Nancy Pelosi's unnecessary visit. Yep. Well, it's good for some business. yeah it is for you know for the weapons manufacturers yeah definitely hey you know i guess i'd make this request of you man as long as uh you're specializing in the subject of the cold war with china so much the thing that i'm most curious about is whether or not and there's got to be some but whether or not there is any and what it looks like the conflict inside american big business because you look at Walmart

that's the biggest American business of all I guess other than Apple but they have a huge interest and not just them I mean huge parts of American business have interest in keeping tariffs low and trade open

and friendly relations and then you have of course the shipbuilders and the long range bomber manufacturers who want nothing to do with that of course the labor unions and other people, you know, worried about supply, oftentimes are economic nationalists and support tariffs for those reasons. But I wonder if, you know, the people who are just importing

washers and dryers, or, you know, whatever, there's a million of them, whether they ever have, you know, the stature or the position inside the lobbying community and inside, you know, whatever circles of power to step on the other guy's foot for a second and be like, hey, man, I know you guys got to sell some ships and everything, but you know, we're trying to make some money here.

So, like, you know what I mean? There's got to be some kind of push and pull there. Or is it that the weapons manufacturers just got everybody scared and so they just stay out of it? Or, you know what I mean? Because there's a lot of money at stake here, man. More than one could imagine, maybe.

Yeah, you would think, there would be some kind of internal conflict. I don't hear about it. I only imagine it. I don't either. But I haven't looked either recently. I know that Dave DeCamp was talking about there was a really good piece either in the Financial Times or Foreign Affairs. I can't remember which one talking about the trade war against China. But I also, you know, as from a more libertarian standpoint you would expect that trade you know there's that adage i believe um god who who is it um well there's the adage that if if goods don't cross borders soldiers will yeah bostia

yeah it's bostiaa of course um but it's been interesting because you know if you look through history i you know i was reading this piece talking about how you would think that would be the case but foreign or foreign trade and and things like that didn't prevent world war one or at least it didn't, and maybe that's... Oh, and contrary. Listen, there's that great book, Wilson's War. Yeah. How Woodrow Wilson's great blunder created Hitler, Stalin, and World War II,

and he could have mentioned the American Empire and Israel and the Middle East terror wars and all the rest of the terrible thing, because Woodrow Wilson is the worst. But listen, the whole introduction to that is how, well, there were these two big economic zones, and those two big economic zones were in competition with each other. and they became the military alliances that went to war in World War I. So they did have these supernational trade structures. It's just they weren't super enough. And if they had been able to break down the barriers between the two major blocks,

that might have prevented the war. But instead, it was, you know, instead of having nation versus nation, it was block versus block. So the trade blocks, you know, did create peace and economic prosperity inside the different zones, right, but then led to the catastrophe when they went to war against each other. And now they were wealthy enough and mechanized enough that they could really tear each other apart in ways that they had never been able to do before. Thank goodness. Well, now you've got to know that that's where, you know, that's where the ideological battle

is going to be. You know, people who have, you know, even some realists who we would agree with mostly on China-Taiwan policy some of them point to that fact and I've seen some of them point to that fact this idea that well you know having good trade between the United States and China isn't actually going to prevent war or you know because it hasn't in the past or something like that yeah well look it's for Christ's sake we've had peace with them for 50 years right what is that What is it about Nixon's deal that we want to cancel now? We want to guarantee Taiwan's independence just so China will attack them just so we can have a war with them? And the status quo is working.

And I guess it's true that the Chinese, you know, Lyle Goldstein says they're building up their forces to invasion strength. You know, that may be true, but that's all in reaction to American and Taiwanese provocation. and when the Americans ceased telling the Taiwanese to keep their lip-buttoned, you know, because the deal there was, you guys don't attack them, but you guys pipe down. We're not promising we'll support you, so don't go get in a fight, you know? That was how they kept the peace. That's how they've kept the peace for 50 years. You want to screw that up?

And, you know, look, I'm not saying you can take whatever some Ayatollah says in face value, but the other day, in response to the state of the union speech, Chairman Z said, look, we reject this whole thing about we're in competition with you. We're not even trying to do that. You know, they're building up what our military calls anti-access area denial force. In other words, a defensive force.

You know, as I try to bring this one up as much as I can, people can check me. He set it himself directly to Bob Wood. Woodward, presumably on tape, Rex Tillerson, the first secretary state under Donald Trump, who had been the CEO of Exxon, the most powerful corporation of the world, they're right, you know, tied with it. He said, listen, the Chinese are threatening our domination of the Pacific, and we're just not going to have that. So that's what's at stake. What's at stake is not China coming for us or do anything to us. They're threatening our domination of the 10 zillion

square mile ocean between here and Asia and the question is whether they control their own coast or whether we control their coast a little bit of perspective for you in the conflict you know well I always enjoy your interviews with Lyle Goldstein and one thing I cited in one of my pieces was his take on this idea of Thucydides trap because in popular culture you know you have people like Tim Poole but but other commentators as well even you know as high up as you go talking about this Thucydides trap, which is one of the, they call it one of the most basic lessons of statecraft, you know, going all the way back to, you know, ancient times where you have Sparta and Athens that are rivals. You know, you have two great powers. And

the, it basically it states that a rising power and a waning power will always, or nine times out of ten will devolve into war because you have, you know, you have that conflict. But one thing that Lyle Goldstein said and what I cited is that it's two parts. It's the rise of one of a coming great power, but it's also more importantly, it's the fear that that rise causes in the waning power that leads to war. And I think that it's this, that's why we have to fight this propaganda and to bring it back to the balloon story. I mean, what a better PR campaign. If your goal is to create tension between the American public and to manufacture consent for at least Cold War, what a better story

than to run with that, than this. Yep. And, you know, that was what I told Tim Poole was, look, the nudity's trap, which I can never say right. I think I just said it close enough for a Texan. That's only true if the waning power is a world empire and we're not supposed to be a world empire in the first place. So we could just abandon the world empire because we hate world empires and then we don't have to give a damn whether China rises in Asia, which is not in North America. So there's that. And you know, I'm always saying, come on, even worst case scenario, they attack Taiwan. It's not like they're coming to Tokyo. Then I read it. thing the other day, where the Chinese started threatening the Japanese because the Japanese

are letting the Americans militarize their country for the first time, really. I mean, they've done a little bit here and there. There's been stages, but another major stage of militarization of Japan after World War II, when the deal with them always was. And look, I'm not saying I support this deal, but they don't need to militarize either. But the deal was, you guys don't militarize, we'll have a foreign policy for you and you pipe down after what you did. You know, that was the deal. So, but now we're militarizing them and we're just making them a target of the Chinese. So now it's like, well, if they attack Taiwan, they might start striking targets in Japan

because we put Japan in between us here. Never mind, you know, our forces on Okinawa, but in building up, you know, domestic or, you know, indigenous Japanese naval forces against them. say that right well and you have to i mean you have to know that that's a huge source spot for the for the chinese people themselves i mean with the imperial history of japan um i mean it it really in a weird way it just i don't know it mirrors these leopard tanks being sent to ukraine right i mean picture german tanks rolling eastwards across eastern europe with the iron cross on it now i don't know if these leopard tanks are still going to have iron crosses on it but

they might have Azov, you know, emblems or some kind of, you know, armed forces of Ukraine imagery, who knows? But, I mean, certainly the specter of those two things, how can they be good optically? I mean, for anyone that has any understanding of history. Yeah. I don't know. Well, that's the key.

You've got to not understand history, man. Right. Of course. Then it's easy. Yeah. Oh, man. All right. Well, listen, it's a great piece.

I hope people read it. And, in fact, I hope they'll follow all these links because you got it linked up in true Romando fashion here, as you should. Yeah, I appreciate that, Scott. That's stuff for people to read here. Yeah. Well, I always enjoy coming on, and I truly appreciate it. All right. Good times.

Everybody, that's Patrick McFarlane. He's over at the Libertarian Institute. That's Libertarian Institute. dot org and check out his great podcast vital dissent which we published there as well thanks good man thanks the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a psradyo dot com antiwar dot com scott horton dot org and libertarian institute dot org