Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/8/24 Lyle Goldstein on Why He Thinks War Over Taiwan is Alarmingly Likely

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Lyle Goldstein returns to the show to talk about some concerning developments in the Pacific. Goldstein explains why he thinks violence breaking out over the island of Taiwan is a very real possibility in the next couple of years. He and Scott discuss the recent deployment of U.S. special forces to Taiwanese-controlled Islands right on China’s coast, the growing willingness among American foreign policy intellectuals to consider the deliberate use of nuclear weapons if it appears a Chinese invasion is underway and much more. Discussed on the show: “Taiwan’s defense boost: US advisers stationed for training” (TVBS) “US Military Advisors Deployed to Taiwan-Controlled Islands on China’s Coast” (Antiwar.com) “Deliberate nuclear use in a war over Taiwan: Scenarios and considerations for the United States” (Atlantic Council) Lyle J. Goldstein is the Director of Asia Engagement at Defense Priorities. He is the author of Meeting China Halfway: How to Defuse the Emerging US-China Rivalry. Follow his work at The National Interest and on Twitter @lylegoldstein This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; 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 on the line i've got lyell goldstein he was at the naval war college and now he is at defense priorities and specializes in as well as eastern european affairs but we have a whole hell of a lot of China, Taiwan to talk about today. Welcome back to the show.

Lyle, how are you doing? Oh, I'm glad to be here. I'm coming here from Brown University, so I'm a senior fellow here at Brown, too, so it's nice to wear both hats. In fact, I just started teaching here, so I've got my head in the classroom here, but it's a new course on war and strategy, but it's, as you can imagine, it is oversubscribed. Cool. That's great to hear.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, listen, so there's so many worries going on in the world right now, so many conflicts and such irresponsible leadership that it's hard to notice which crisis or potential crisis to focus on on any given day and time. But obviously, America and China and the potential of a real conflict over Taiwan is a big one. I don't know about the probability, but I know. It's, as you might say, a high-impact type of event, even if it's a low probability. If it does go off, it'll be a hell of a thing. And so, you know, I had my buddy Tim Shoreock on the show, and, oh, I'm not even thinking of Tim. I'm thinking of Peter Lee. I had Peter Lee on the show. And I told him about your take on this, as you explained it to me before, is you think that China is preparing to and or will.

move on Taiwan at some point, probably in the medium term, I think, if I'm paraphrasing you right here, just because they're building up the naval force to do it, what the hell else are they building up the naval force to do it for, then if it's not that. And, you know, the way that they see it, it's one China, it's their island, it's 90 miles off of their coast, and they're planning on taking it back. And then, if I understand it right, that's pretty much your premise one. This part is inevitable. The question is whether the American government is going to be so irresponsible as to drive mankind

to, you know, some kind of global suicide over trying to prevent it or not. And there was this important piece in the Atlantic Council. It's always really creepy to kind of eavesdrop on the war party and what they write to each other here about how, well,

they might use nukes in this event, but we might go ahead and use them in this or in that case and threaten them with this or that. And pretty important to think of some different scenarios where we could have a limited use of nuclear weapons to achieve our goals and to deny the Chinese the ability to achieve theirs. And this kind of talk, which I think we talked before about how crazy it is that a lot of times

they don't even mention nukes at all. We just have a big fun naval battle. Then when they talk about nukes, it's not very reassuring. So I was just wondering about kind of where you are on all of that now as far as, you know, your prediction of conflict here and just how crazy do you think the American? Pentagon and the American White House are when it comes to their approach to these issues. Yeah, well, Scott, thanks for having me back on. And, you know, I'm glad that people are thinking hard about Taiwan and what this conflict could mean for, well, for the island,

but for the United States, for the world. You know, I must say, you know, I'm quite appalled by, I just spent the day in various Ukraine war deliberations. And, you know, I find it amazing how many people now argue for defending Ukraine on the premise that we need to teach China a few lessons. You know, I wonder what Ukrainian soldiers in the trenches would say if they were told they're doing this for Taiwan. But look, I hate to say it. And I know I maybe sound like, you know, the person. and saying the sky is falling, but to me, we're, unfortunately, I think we are on the brink of conflict. I think it could happen really any time. I hate to say it, but I see some indicators

that could suggest even that this is more like near term rather than medium term, you know, meaning in the next two years rather than the next five or something. But we can talk about those. but look i i think there is a um a quite a high probability of this unfortunately um and and so yeah i'm trying to steer uh u.s decision makers to to let's say take a pass you know we don't need to fight this war um it could be extremely bloody and uh as you suggest and people are now speculating It could very well involve nuclear war, which is, again, you know, that was almost laughable a decade ago, you know, we said, well, the Chinese wouldn't dare, you know, to threaten nuclear weapons. But now China is in the middle of a kind of rather robust nuclear buildup, which is, you know, seems to be clearly tied. You know, there was just a front page article by Chris Buckley in the New York Times.

explaining that it's pretty clear that, and he has quite unique evidence here, some sort of inside meeting notes suggesting that, in fact, China's nuclear buildup is directly tied to a Taiwan scenario, you know, and it's not so strange. They're following Putin's playbook in the sense of, you know, that they know that the U.S. has tried hard to stay out of the Ukraine war partly because they know it would be a nuclear war if we went to war with Russia. And China won't wants to, you know, play a similar game. So look, I don't think Beijing is, is eager to use force. I think there are some players in the Beijing, you know, I think the PLA, probably some elements, there are hawkish elements in China that literally want this war. But I think they're in the

minority. And so I've been arguing, let's give them some reasons. Let's give the doves in China a reason, you know, something to stand on, you know, to say that they can, you know, peacefully unify or at least have some kind of negotiated settlement to avoid this but but no as things stand i would say you know again i hate to throw you know pretend that i have you know some crystal ball but you know i would say the probability of a cross-strait conflict in the next five years is i would say as high as 30 to 40 percent now whether that would be an all-out invasion or some kind of of limited attack. I've been studying both scenarios. We can talk through each of them, but I think some kind of use of force is as high as 30, 30, maybe even 40%. The chance of an all-out invasion

is probably less than 10%, but I'm not even sure of that because there are some definite reasons why if China does resort to force, it would just want to, you know, it would want to go all out. But yeah, so I'm extremely concerned. We can talk through some of the nuclear dimensions. By all means, the U.S. deployment of special forces reported in Newsweek article to Jinman Island, just, you know, three or four miles off the mainland coast, shocked me and disturbed me. And I think that just shows how far off the rails that our government is with respect to the Taiwan issue. Yeah. Well, I don't know. It'd be nice to think. that everybody's just an egghead concentrating on this real hard, but it's easy to see all the bluster

and sort of pseudo-macho, tough guy talk and that kind of thing here. Well, if they think that they're going to stand up to us, we just got to be tougher. So if they think they're going to flex, well, we'll just flex back. And so, I mean, there's so much to go over and just what you already have discussed here and hope we can get to most of it. elaborate if you could there on what you're talking about this recent news and we did discuss this with peter lee about the stationing of green berets so army special forces here on this island this isn't taiwan 90 miles off the coast this jimman island is essentially looks like it's in their bay right it's like alcatraz in san francisco bay or something like that uh i mean bigger

it's not a perfect analogy but sort of something like that so first of all can you tell us explain again the status of this island how many forces what all forces has america had on that island up till now because i think i read that they had some marine guard or some kind of thing previously no yeah the story of these little tiny islands is is really remarkable actually and so i think we could spend the entire episode just discussing the why they exist and their their status And actually, they have seen quite a bit of fighting over the last, you know, during the Cold War. China was actually shelling those islands on a regular basis all the way up, if you can believe it, all the way up until 1979. And they only stopped, that was sort of their, one of their, you know, how to put it, sort of good, you know, wanted to convey good feeling of starting U.S. China relations.

But this also, you know, this was on the assumption that the United States had broken off its, abrogated its defense treaty with Taiwan. So, but, yeah, I mean, as far as U.S. troops on the island, look, there were a lot of U.S. forces in Taiwan. Most of them were removed over the course of the 1970s. We even stationed nuclear weapons on Taiwan. We had giant bomber bases there. I believe we were flying bomber missions into Vietnam from Taiwan. And that's one reason why Taiwan, is decorated with lots of golf courses because, you know, U.S. Air Force people love to play golf. So, you know, the U.S. presence on the island, military presence was huge for a long time, but we got rid of all that. In my view, rightly, we decided to get out of the Chinese Civil War

and therefore we removed U.S. forces. But as far as these islands go, there was also a rather a large battle there in 19 I think was um 19 mid-1949 just before the PRC was established and Mao suffered a grave defeat of his uh you know he tried to land forces on jimmon island and was rebuffed by robust Taiwan resistance and in the end Mao decided I think through the Cold War to leave those islands in the hands of the nationalists for the precise reason he called it kind of the new strategy that is he wanted to make sure that Taiwan would not be independent that it would be still tied to the mainland so he likes the fact that or you know the communists kind of like the fact that these little islands scattered right off the Chinese coast are in the hands

of officially of the Republic of China of Taiwan so it's you're saying you're saying because it bolsters their argument that see it is all one China from here to Taiwan and exactly exactly yeah that's the logic of it it says no, you know, this is not, you know, you can pretend that Taiwan's independent has its own history, its own culture, all that. But, you know, say, look, the reality is they administer islands that are three or four miles right off our coast, right in the middle of, as you said, the bay there in Shaman. In fact, I've been there. I've circled the Jimmen on a boat, a little tour boat, and the whole area is more or less demilitarized. So it's beyond bizarre that we decided to put

some special forces there on a regular basis. And here's the interesting thing, Scott. They've done polling of the people on Jimmen. And people on Jimmen don't want any part of this. In fact, they advocated, I think, recently for a few years ago, to build a bridge to the mainland because it's good for their economy. You know, they want the mainland tourists and they want to integrate and they want to be able to make a living. And they want, you know, they don't want all these concrete bunkers and, you know, militarized existence. They want to, they just want peace with the mainland. So, you know, it's interesting that the local people on the island don't want anything to do with this. But yeah, the news of U.S. forces there on a sort of semi-permanent

basis doing training, you know, I got to say, I think it's beyond ridiculous. And honestly, it might, that itself might ignite a war because China had made very explicit at a certain point, they called it the three ifs. And they said, you know, one of the ifs was if, well, one One of the obvious ifs was if Taiwan declares independence, and we can talk about that because, by the way, the new, you know, we just had elections in Taiwan, and right on the front page of the New York Times, the article interviewed one of the chief honchos in the new Lai government and he said, well, we don't, we don't need to declare dependence because we're already independent. So I mean, you know, you want to split those hairs.

Okay, anyway, that was one if, but another if was if a foreign power stations troops in Taiwan. That is a Cassius Belli for Beijing. So think about that, Scott. You know, we seem to have walked right up to this Cassius Belli and stepped right over it. And, you know, now, now Defense Department didn't make any official announcement here. So you could say, well, this is this has sort of been done for years and it's something, you know, we're very quiet about and occasionally something's leaked to the press and, you know, it's just a tripwire, et cetera. So, I mean, they'll make all kinds of excuses for it. But if Xi Jinping wants an exception, excuse to attack he had it well just a tripwire some excuse i mean we just saw what happened

when they left these guys in iraq it's sort of this joint base at the iraq syrian jordanian border there essentially call it all al-tomph if you want they're meant to block the so-called land bridge from tehran to beirut that america built for them of course in iraq war two especially and then what happened was they say, I guess, believably, that some Shiite militias reached out and killed three of our guys there and then completely increased the scale of the conflict in the region. In, you know, strikes back and forth between America and these Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq and then threatening to really make it one big scenario, including the Houthis

and Hezbollah too, and possibly. even Iran. And what was the purpose of those troops even being there? What could they possibly do other than serve as bait on the line to force the American people into supporting a conflict that we otherwise wouldn't because some of our guys got killed? And now here, you're talking about stationing them in the bay, in a Chinese bay, and saying, we dare you to kill our guys there? Is that what Joe Biden is doing?

with those men yeah i think so and i mean look at some level i guess you know people like to on the other side will say well you know this is sort of like berlin you know we didn't really have any prospect of defending berlin in the cold war but we did it anyway just to sort of ram it down the soviet's throat and dare them to to attack um but you know i'm afraid to say that you know berlin is a little different um i don't you know the soviets never claimed berlin as their own territory, right? And they had a lot of, you know, everybody knew that people, you know, that the Soviets were not popular there. But that's just not the case at all with Taiwan. Taiwan, you know, Taiwan has been claimed by the PRC since it existed. And, you know, it is very

deeply entrenched in their identity. They've been planning this war for half a century or more. You know, and, you know, I can tell you, because I watch the military side, they have checked basically every box that they need to check here. And, yeah, if anybody thinks those special forces on Jin men are going to be anything but a speed bump, you know, I think that would be charitable. It's horrible, though. You know, one thinks of their fate, of course, you know, as a tripwire. But I fear that, you know, and I get the sense people on Taiwan are also scratching their head being like, really, is this, is this the best thing for Taiwan? Is Taiwan going to end up a sort of wrecked island just like Ukraine is wrecked? You know, and I think, you know, hard questions need to be asked about our Taiwan policy, including, you know, how does this serve our own national security interests?

And there, I'm very skeptical. I don't think Taiwan is at all essential to U.S. national security. You know, some people, I think, foolishly call it a core interest for us. I, you know, where does that come from? Like, what's the logic there? I don't get it. You know, some people say, you know, the canary in the coal mine. It's the, it's the cork in the Chinese bottle. You know, they come up with all kinds of reasons here. I don't find any of them persuasive. You know what it is? It's a promise that we made, which is not really true. But anyway, if we don't keep it, then that calls into question. America's security posture all across the entire planet. No other country will ever trust us to protect them again, and the whole world will unravel.

Yeah, this argument has always trotted out. You know, that in the Munich type argument, I mean, it's crazy. I mean, you know, whether you're in Vietnam or Afghanistan, wherever your, you know, our troops are, where somehow, you know, the whole future, the planet is on the line, and it's ridiculous. And, you know, it defies common sense. And the fact is it actually decreases our credibility. And, you know, by associating ourselves with such a overextended defense and foreign policy, discredits the whole thing, which is a really bad idea.

So, I mean, I would much prefer, you know, limited objectives. and having the means to fulfill our strategy and objectives, you know, rather than these kind of pie-in-the-sky objectives, which, you know, we're just, we're literally putting our armed forces in the worst possible jam. They, you know, in my view, the probability of the United States prevailing in a Taiwan conflict is not high to be charitable. And, you know, I don't want to put our armed forces in that situation. Look, look, our armed forces are, are.

outstanding they they perform well you know when given a a feasible objective a feasible objective would be uh defending japan we can do that defending the philippines you know i'm talking about the main islands not some rock out in the middle of nowhere but um we can do that you know um we under almost any circumstances but but no this is uh this is um you know incredible hubris and and more or less what i think we're doing scott if i had to interpret this move with the special forces and Biden's various, you know, what is it now, four statements that are totally contravene our stated policy of the one China policy and, you know, strategic ambiguity.

Yeah, I guess you could argue this is, he's just being ambiguous, you know, adding ambiguity or something. But, you know, what he's playing is poker. He's bluffing. And, you know, we're kind of asking for China to call our bluff. And, you know, again, if this was mid-Pacific, if this was, you know, somewhere, you know, further from China, I think we could reasonably be expected to stand up and defend, you know, whatever, whether it's Philippines or Japan or something. But this is right in China's backyard. They have the Cassius Belli.

And, you know, Taiwan is 90 miles from China. They have the firepower to do this. I mean, I've said, you know, I don't think they even need to bring in the Chinese Navy. Pretty much the Chinese Coast Guard can, well, that's a bit of exaggeration. But, I mean, I'm just saying, like, you know, it's the same with, you know, think about the United States. if the United States needed to invade Cuba, you know, we wouldn't even need all four services. The Navy alone could handle it. And that is also true. You know, look, China's also a superpower. We shouldn't doubt that. And, you know, look, Chinese are not good at everything. And they occasionally

fall in their face, like during the COVID situation. And they're, you know, unlike innovation, for example, we regularly school them. And it's, you know, there's absolutely, no, you know, libertarians understand why, right? But there are some things that Chinese are really good at, and one of them is planning, uh, and doing detailed planning. And, um, so I, I, I really think we should, we should not be bluffing in these circumstances. Yeah. Hey, y'all, I got a new coffee sponsor, Moondos artisan coffee at moondosartisan coffee.com. When I wake up in the morning, I feel like my brain is all dried out. I need to pour a hot mug of rich taste. coffee all over it to get it back working again, like 10w30 for the noggin.

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Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them. But now you can get the e-book All the War Lies by me for free. Just sign up the email list at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe.

Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. Book club on Monday. Jim on Tuesday. Date night. on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday. Quiet night in on Friday.

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when they don't have the power to try it. We're literally America, 7,000 miles away, can repel any Chinese attack on Taiwan. And so posturing, not as the bully, but as the nice, tough guy, telling the Chinese bully to back down, okay, whatever, that's the argument. But now at this point,

they don't have the ability to make it stick anymore. So now what are they doing? There's, sorry to use the same word twice in a different context, they're sticking all of our necks out over a fight that we can't win. Honestly, Scott, I think that, you know, our, you know, what is our defense budget now, what, $850 billion? And then when you add the intelligence budget, nuclear weapons, and all the other things. That's a trillion. Yeah, I mean, we're well over a trillion. So, you know, is that enough?

No. I mean, honestly, if you really want to defend Taiwan, I'd say. you probably want to go to two or three trillion, at least, and definitely want to recapitalize those nuclear weapons too. You know, this is a fool's errand. You can't get there from here, and China will, you know, China dominates the straight and has, I think, a comfortable lead in this military-wise, in this scenario, you know, and here I'm talking about, you know, Their surface combatants, I think, are pretty much superior across the board, as far as I can tell, at least on par. Yeah.

But, you know, we don't even have a lot. Is that why you say near term instead of medium term is you think, well, they're just building up the capability? Or you're also parsing all the statements from the central regime there or what? No, I mean, there's a couple of things that make me think this could be sooner rather than later. And, you know, I'm sorry if I'm giving some people nightmares, but, you know, you can share my nightmare here. A couple of things, Scott. I mean, number one, I think the Chinese are watching all those stingers, harpoons, and javelins going into Taiwan. And a big shipment of stingers just arrived, I think.

And they're, you know, they're counting them up and they're making their calculations. And they're saying to themselves, look, you know, Taiwan today is hardly, you know, it's not a fortress Taiwan, not even close. It's, you know, they've been for decades, they spent like 1% of GDP. Now I think they're up to 2, 2.2%. So, you know, they're starting to kind of do what they would have to do. So I think they're looking out and they're saying, well, in five years or seven years or 10 years, that looks like a tougher rock to take. And so that, you know, I think voices on the Chinese side are like, we got to go now. And unfortunately, I think that mirrors actually Putin's thinking on Ukraine. Yeah, exactly. We're calibrating the weapons that were pouring into Ukraine slash China.

Taiwan in order to deter attack when, in fact, what they're doing is incentivizing one. And in the case of Ukraine, I mean, I got them red-handed before the war admitting that they know that that's what they're doing. Oops. Yeah, I mean, I remember watch, you know, I watched a decent amount of Russian television, and I was watching in late 2021, just like footage of the javelins landing in Kiev airport. And this is all over Russian TV. And you could see probably Putin just sitting there going, all right, we go now. You know, I don't want any more javelins. here, then, you know, let's, let's, we got to go now. And, you know, I think the same calculation

might be there in Taiwan. Of course, the major difference between the two scenarios, well, you know, true amphibious invasion much harder, but, but also, you know, China, I think it's been, like I said, planning for this for much longer and also, in my view, willing to take much higher casualties than, you know, I think Putin thought he could win on the cheap. I don't think, you know, China's in that mindset but let me tell you one more thing that really gives me the creeps and again you know i'm look i'm a national security professional so i'm i'm paranoid so i probably hopefully i'm just too um in the weeds on this but i'll share with you scott i i read the chinese military press you know every night uh and watch their military tv and stuff like that something weird is

happening and that is you know for for years and you know please welcome your listeners to my Twitter feed where I put this out on a daily basis, but like for years, they would regularly show off their amphibious capabilities, amphibious attack capabilities, you know, kind of brandishing these, you know, on the cover of PLA daily, like almost every day or, you know, every other day, at least once a week, you would see like amphibious exercise. For some reason, in the last, I would say, four months haven't seen a single one. And, you know, I'm just, I'm concerned that some, There's a couple other signs I'll tell you too, but like I'm quite concerned that some, you know, security bureaucrats said, okay, hold on, no more, you know, let's stop these hints. No more hints. You know, we're, you know what I'm saying. And that to me, you know, so in a way, you know, you have all these China watchers who are looking for, you know, signs of threat and stuff like that. But actually, in a way, it's the opposite. It's that when China stops its threats, get worried, folks. So I'm, you know, I know that sounds paradoxical. But, you know, that's how you pull off surprise.

And China has pulled off surprise again and again and again in its various wars, you know, whether the Sino-Indian war or Korean wars, I mean, it's, you know. Well, I remember from reading about the war in Panama in 89 that it's a mantra in the military that you fight like you train. And so they train and train and train for war in Panama. And then guess what? They implement the training. They just overthrow the government there and kill a few thousand people. call it a day tell congress about it after the fact whatever so yeah exactly that i mean you know

i think it does become harder and harder for shijing and and the chinese leadership to explain to the military and all the hawks in china that you know it's not you know they're not ready it's too risky etc etc so now look i i i think there are a lot of dubs in china i do think you know a lot of Chinese intellectuals are kind of like, hey, why do we want to do this? You know, why, you know, look at what happened to Russia. You know, look, there are, there is a kind of doveish faction for sure. And I'm saying, let's let's give them something to stand on. Let's try to create a future here where the doves have their day, you know, meaning like they can claim that things are improving across the straight that the two sides are kind of integrating a little bit at least

and maybe at least negotiating towards some kind of um yeah well you know viable and that exists anyway let's not neglect the nuclear issue but but yeah go ahead Scott well I mean look be a hard headed realist about this for a minute for me here I mean what does America really have to lose if I take over and I say well we're just going to live up to the previous deal and in fact we're going to raise you one and we're going to help negotiate Taiwan's peaceful reuniting with the mainland under the Reds, just like the Brits selling out Hong Kong. We're selling you out. Goodbye.

We don't want this problem. I don't give a damn about Taiwan. But now, so you argue with me that like, well, geez, Scott, we do have a lot at stake. What do we have at stake? Well, Scott, I mean, you're entirely correct. I mean, we should follow the British example, and the British have been often smarter than us on these things, or they used to be anyway. They, you know, they actually recognized the PRC decades before we did, knowing that they just, you know, had to have a more realistic policy and that it would be destabilizing not to recognize reality, which is the communist control, the mainland. But, you know, look, I actually think the Hong Kong model, if you will, which, you know, a lot of, you know, liberal ideologists will, this will make them very upset.

But you know, you know, honestly, there is a place called Macau, okay? This was the Portuguese colony. And this was, you know, kind of like almost similar to Hong Kong, but frankly, actually older. And it's a very beautiful place, actually. It's known for gambling, but, you know, real people live there and they like their autonomy and they, you know, celebrate Portuguese culture and things like that. Anyway, they, they, it's right across the bay from Hong Kong. Guess what? Today, they're still enjoying their substantial autonomy, you know, and Hong Kong could have had that. So there are, you know, kind of negotiated way forward and we

should be kind of realistic enough to realize that. Now, look, the U.S. has preferred, you know, I guess, I could understand why the U.S. doesn't want to walk, walk that agenda forward, right? You don't make very many friends by, or you're not very popular. You don't win an election, certainly, by kind of sort of helping the Chinese out with their cross-strave problem. But, yeah, I mean, look, that would be powerfully in the U.S. national security interest, very powerfully. That would immediately ease the strain on our entire defense budget and generally our government approach.

if we were able to, you know, not worry about Taiwan and focus on defense of our treaty allies, which, again, is not, that's not a heavy lift. We can do that. It's a feasible defense strategy. It's one I advocate for, but Taiwan is a bridge too far. Look, between 2008 and 2016, when Maying Joe was president, the cross-strait relationship improved dramatically. And you can ask, you know, officials that were at CIA and defense and so that was boy we were able to take you know we were able to relax you know we're able to focus on a lot of different things during that period because the cross-trade tensions were much reduced and mying joe you know look he wasn't ready to sell out the island to the communist but he was ready to talk with them and try to make some agreements and um that you know i again i try not to give you know

Taiwan advice, but, you know, it's their problem. It's their future. They've got to figure it out, but, but, you know, Mai and Joe came up with a very viable approach. And, you know, they should listen hard to him. They don't not have to be a wrecked island. There's a different future, viable. I mean, if you go back to years and listen to what these people were saying about Ukraine, you have our undying devotion and america will always and forever do whatever it takes to expel the russians from every inch of ukrainian territory and we're talking 2013 lines here pal out of crimeia too and we will never give in and we'll never surrender as long as you'll keep fighting we'll keep arming you and all this and there's really it was very reminiscent of what they had told the afghans no matter what you tajeks and uzbeks and has all We're going to help you maintain your rule over these posh tunes no matter what. I mean, if you go back and look at the quotes of Condoleezza Rice and Susan Rice and the others throughout the years talking about Afghanistan, they turned right around, rightly so, and abandon that phony regime. I still remember thinking hearing them talk about Ukraine, like, geez, they're so bold in these statements.

It's maybe they really mean it this time, but it's like, nah, come on. The Taiwanese got to be looking at this and saying, like, what are we, sacrificial animals or something? We don't want to do this. Yeah, and I give you a great credit for bringing the proper focus to the Afghanistan issue. And, you know, like I said, I spent the day in Ukraine deliberations here. And I felt like raising my hand, I'm going like, guys, because, you know, all these people were hawks. And I said, I wanted to say, like, look, you know, so. So you want to save Ukraine.

You know, while we're at it, maybe we could also just save Afghanistan too, right? I mean, why not? Of course, look, what's in common, the common thread in all these situations is we seem to keep getting sucked into other people's civil wars, right? I mean, Afghanistan was a civil war, Iraq was a civil war, you know, Syria is a civil war, Libya, and let's not forget, Vietnam, right? we were going to save south vietnam we have to save you know the south um somehow right and that was obviously a civil war but guess what uh ukraine i would you know and it's not entirely a civil war but it's mostly a civil war and that by the way we got final proof of that when the commander now of ukrainian forces born and raised in moscow folks and educated in moscow too so i mean

if you don't think if that doesn't raise your civil war alert you know i don't know what will but guess what? You know, Taiwan and China, even more clearly a civil war than the Ukraine case, absolutely a civil war. If your listeners don't know it, the official constitutional title of the island of Taiwan is not Republic of Taiwan. No, that's not it. It's called Republic of China. And if you go there to the capital, Taipei and visit the National Palace Museum, the claim there is they have, you know, hundreds of thousands of the finest Chinese relics, not Taiwanese, relics. There are hardly any Taiwanese relics there. Chinese relics. Okay. And yes, it's well known among China watchers that the best Chinese food in the world is in Taiwan. So anyway, the point is

it's a civil war. We keep wandering into other people's civil wars and we keep scratching our heads saying, why can't we win these wars? Well, because there's civil wars and in civil wars, those people care a hell of a lot more than we do and they don't like foreign external powers far away coming and intervening in their civil wars. So gosh, no wonder we keep losing these civil wars. You've just got to let these be, let these other people figure out their family quarrels, which is what they are, and get over it. All right. Now, talk to me about the big, bad U.S. Navy. And nobody can mess with us. We rule the seven seas and all the oceans, too, and everybody knows it. And in fact,

we might even rule your lakes inside your country if we feel like it. And so nobody can stop us and we can do whatever we want. And everybody knows that. So what do you know about that? Right. I mean, well, I mean, the Navy, I've, you know, I worked for the Navy for 20 years and I love the Navy dearly. I've got a lot of friends and, you know, spend a decent amount of time on, you know, almost every kind of ship in the Navy. And it's, I mean, it is a wondrous organization in some ways. But I must say, you know, never really not seriously battle tested since 1945. There are a lot of very serious problems in the Navy. You know, I'd say it. But, like, you know, in some ways, wars do improve military organization in the sense of, you know, it tends to bring capable leaders. So the Army, the Marines, even the Air Force, have been, you know, in combat some. And that has brought reform and some good leaders forward. But in the Navy, we just haven't had that test.

And I fear that that test is coming. I'm quite worried about it. And anyway, I, you know, I have been explaining to people that our Navy is not, you know, it's, it's not ideal for fighting china you know not by any stretch uh and the taiwan straight scenario is very very dangerous and you know a lot of people have been saying that that submarines are are kind of silver bullet the ace in the hole you know we more or less just need to put some submarines in the straight and that'll be the end of the Taiwanese invasion it's just not true i mean if you look at the geography by the way the bathymetry meaning like how shallow the straight is we

really can't put nuclear submarines in the strait more or less in my view is the straits will be blocked by uh chinese mines and they know that mines are a great weapon to use against submarines they've been working a lot on there any submarine warfare so sure our submarines can take a terrible toll on the chinese navy i don't doubt that we can sink half the chinese navy in a taiwan scenario but to what end you know will that rescue taiwan no china has plenty of shipping uh they'll get their troops there, you know, one way or another, you know, by air as well, parachutes and so forth. So, you know, if you think that a few submarines or even a dozen can turn the tide, I'm dubious, I don't think that's true. And, you know, a lot of Americans could get killed.

I mean, I will say, you know, the submarines are likely to be first in the fight. I don't doubt that the first major set of decisions that any U.S. President would face would be, you know, sir, the Chinese invasion is going forward. You know, they've landed in all these places on the island, you know, with helicopters and parachutes and the invasion force is getting ready to cross. And, sir, we have a submarine that has a Chinese carrier in the crosshairs ready to destroy it right now, you know, do you want to take this step? And that's a very difficult question for the president. You know, I mean, I personally think the answer is easy. You know, no, you don't want to go there because it's a very slippery slope that could end in a nuclear exchange. But, you know,

I think the president will be tempted to do so because, you know, that'll make a nice, you know, they can celebrate the loss of, you know, major Chinese ships. But I don't think it will stop the invasion not by any stretch well and you can hear him later saying oh it's the stab in the back and like linden johnson making political decisions about uh military matters in the vietnam war and that whole mythology they all invoked that h w bush and clinton and w bush and donald trump even invoked that they're like oh you won't see me tying the hands or the guys and so but that's what we're talking about is two thermonuclear powers going to a limited but not very limited naval war, right?

You're talking about a catastrophe of a war, a major clash between naval and air powers and missileiers over there for a while, for the first little bit, at least. But then that's supposed to stay in its box and not escalate to, like you're just saying, the president and their president will have to just say, well, come on, we're not going to go as far as carry. we're not going to go as far as atom bombs we're not going to go as far as this or that but how do you coordinate that you know yeah and i mean it's not like just beating up the posh tunes you can frankly murder poshtuns for 20 years and there's not a damn thing they can do about it other than you know eventually drive us out of there but they certainly you know can't kill us back not like the chinese can right and i mean you know we've seen very adept at at that at taking on, you know, powers that don't have any real power, you know, who don't have

an Air Force or a Navy, but I mean, this is a totally different situation, you know, and I think we – I think our last discussion, we focused on that CSIS report that tried to look at the game, and I would just remind people that, you know, they said in almost every iteration the U.S. lost two carriers within the first, you know, whatever was a couple of days, stood to lose, you know, every major surface ship of the U.S. Navy in the Western Pacific, every one, they said. And then in the darkest scenarios, we were losing, you know, more than a third of our Navy. So, I mean, we can't rule that out at all. Well, and now imagine President Biden in his demented fevered dream living through this

and calling the shots in that level of crisis. Yeah. And I mean, of course, losses like that are going to bring up the nuclear questions. And now, here's what's interesting, Scott, and I don't want to steal your thunder here, but I mean, they, I mean, I've never seen this before in the Washington set of debates on China, which I've been monitoring for decades. But I've never won, you know, honestly, like China has something called a no first use policy. Now, you know, it's just words. So, I mean, they could, they could change that on a dime. But, I mean, I take the Chinese at their word.

I don't think they want to start a nuclear war. I mean, it doesn't really serve their interests. It doesn't really necessarily end well for China. But so I honestly, I don't think they have any plans to use their nuclear weapons first. I honestly think they serve as a deterrent. But, you know, I've never once seen any American specialists advocating for American first use of nuclear weapons. But now we have two reports put out by the Atlantic Council in. September and then November. I think the one author was Weaver, who was very senior in the Joint

Chiefs of Staff on Nuclear Policy, and then a professor, Kronig, who's at Georgetown. And they are openly advocating for that the U.S. seriously consider first use of nuclear weapons, you know, tactical nuclear weapons as a way to destroy the Chinese invasion fleet. And they're pretty candid. They say, look, this is the only way we can save Taiwan. So we'll have to resort to nuclear weapons, and we should be prepared to do so. That's what they say. I mean, so I fell out of my chair when I read this. I mean, it's completely ridiculous, you know, as if China would just step aside and let us nuke their, you know, invasion force and wouldn't, you know, certainly, I'm absolutely sure they would vaporize Guam, probably Honolulu and maybe a lot of other things,

you know, including, you know, they may decide to take out a few U.S. cities, you know, Seattle and Chicago. Why not? I mean, Boston got for a bit, that's near where I live. San Diego. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's all on the table. And China has the nuclear forces to do that with with good confidence. I mean, they have MERV'd ICBMs. The latest DOD report on China's nuclear capabilities says they're making very steady advances, including with their submarine fleet. So I don't doubt that China is full spectrum ready to retaliate with say full spectrum. I mean anything from sort of local, you know, taking out a carrier group to hitting Guam or Okinawa, you know, other U.S. bases to striking the continental United States. Well, law, when did the cases, they're fully ready to do that.

And I just cannot believe that American specialists would, would honestly say that this is a solution to the problem. And, you know, they not only argue that we should consider this as the best way forward, but that we should prepare this, they say we need to start preparing for limited nuclear war with China, which is, you know, I mean, talk about Dr. Strangelove. I mean, this is just, and it's sickening because you can see where this goes, you know, to more missiles, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars of your taxpayer dollars going toward preparing for limited nuclear war, right? Because once you accept that limited nuclear war is a real possibility, like even likely in this scenario,

Well, then you're going to have to build nuclear-capable bunkers, you know, all across the Pacific and everywhere else. So it just never ends. And we've got to shut this down as soon as possible. Hey, y'all, Scott here. Let me tell you about Roberts & Roberts Brokerage, Inc. Who knew? Artificial bank credit expansion leads to price inflation and terribly distorted markets. If you've got any savings left at all, you need to protect them.

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did. Hey, y'all, you should sign up for my substack. It's Scott Horton's show.substack.com, and if you do that, you'll get the interviews a day before everybody else, but not only that, they'll be free of commercials. How do you like that? Pretty good, huh? Scotthortonshow.substack.com. Hey, y'all, libertosbella.com is where you get Scott Horton 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 libretasbella.com. Well, you mentioned earlier China's military, especially their nuclear buildup. And wouldn't it the case that they always had, what, two or three hundred nukes, but now, what, they're doubling up to six or more? Or you tell us, what's the latest on that? Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, five years ago you would have seen in the reports they would say, but maybe 200, 250 nuclear weapons. Now they're up to 500. They're building, building out these silo fields. And, you know, there are a lot of hints that they are leaning hard into, well, I should say they're hints, really. We haven't seen any solid evidence of them putting

nuclear weapons on sort of battle, deploying battlefield nuclear weapons, although, you know, the df 26 is a kind of is an intermediate range weapon i mean it can you know it's some people called the guam killer so anyway that can carry conventional or nuclear and they are kind of mixing these forces i think to increase their deterrent um value but but i mean i've seen a lot of hints over the years that china is ready to go uh and deploy um you know a whole range of of uh you know low yield weapons that are purposely designed to strike, you know, for precision strikes on nuclear facilities. So that's, that's really scary. And, you know, do you think China has a technology to do that? Absolutely. You know, they had that technology 10 and 20 years ago, you know, just to give

an example of how ridiculous this can get. I mean, China has a, you know, pretty large submarine force and we usually concerned with what we call boomers. That is, you know, the sort of, they have about six or seven of these boomers that go out patrol, you know, and they can launch. So generally talk about those. But there's no reason that you can't put a nuclear armed cruise missile, a so-called slickum, we call it, submarine launch cruise missile. Any submarine can get out of it, not just the nuclear. So you have their entire submarine force of about, you know, 60 subs or 70 subs. Any of them can carry nuclear weapons. So, you know, and, you know, they can patrol all over the place. And, you know, We wouldn't be surprised to catch one, you know, somewhere in the South Atlantic or, you know,

something ready to shoot one into Florida or wherever. I mean, that, you know, that's, that's, you know, they can put a tactical nuclear weapon, a cruise missile onto Norfolk, you know, I mean, why not? And believe me, that is increasingly in the target set. So, I mean, Americans need to, you know, when we talk about China scenarios, it tend to worry about Guam a lot because, and rightly so. But I mean, And believe me, China's target set goes well beyond Guam. Yeah. Well, you know, Scott, this is all a good reason not to go to war with China, not to get involved in their family quarrel and their civil war.

We should have learned a lesson in Vietnam, but we've continued this crazy policy. So anyway, I'm seeking, you know, ways forward where we can extricate ourselves from these situations and, you know, reach negotiated solutions. We've got a lot of business to accomplish with China. You don't got to like them, but you've got to deal with them. Yeah. All right. So, you know, again, this piece by Matthew Croning, Craning, the Atlantic Council,

it's deliberate nuclear use in a war over Taiwan from last September. And, I mean, they do talk about, like, yeah, I mean, they can absolutely, even after China starts using nukes, they cannot be allowed to prevail in achieving their goals. And so we will have to definitely use nukes too. And as you say, they even talk about using nukes in a first strike. They reassure us that, look, just because people are breaking out nukes, even in an extended campaign, doesn't necessarily mean the end of the world, Lyle. And it is really something to be hold here.

It's a chance that you might survive this war. But by the way, I want to say, Atlantic Council clearly has decided to make this a major part of their programming I mean, because that wasn't just a one-off. There was another piece in November by this fellow Weaver, very similar line of argumentation. And if I can just point out one of the most ridiculous points here made by Kronig, I just, you know, he says, he says, you know, look, he says, one of the things we got to do is talk seriously with Taiwan about this.

Why talk to Taiwan? Because actually, the place that gets nuked in Kronig scenario is actually Taiwan, because he claims that the best thing for us to do is. is nuke the beaches where the Chinese are offloading all their their troops and equipment. It would be us nuke in Taiwan, not even offshore. Actually, yeah, so the best thing is to nuke Taiwan. We're really good friends of you guys. Listen up to our great plan.

So he says, now he says, well, that's a delicate discussion, but one that needs to be had. So we need to talk this through and get an agreement with Taiwan that they agree that we should be able to nuke them. I think it's so surreal. But then he says, by the way, you know, he says, we. did this actually with Germany. So it's all cool. You know, there is precedent for this. And we're ready, apparently in the Cold War to nuke Germany, it came to that. So I mean, you know, it's just, you know, these people, I guess they love, they must have watched Dr. Strange

love a lot. They really want to go back to the 1950s where we were really on the precipice of destroying, you know, the entire planet. That's where these people want to go. And now, look, well, forgive me, man, because I know I ask you. long complicated questions and sometimes there'll be three different thoughts that are sort of non sequiturs in them but i tried to ask you before and maybe you tried to address this but maybe there's just nothing to say but what really is america's interest in taiwan that makes any of this worth the risk to anyone other than this magic word of credibility and that we promised supposedly even though we kind of didn't it's supposed to be ambiguous that's the whole thing it's not like a nato it's not a

nation state with a alliance, you know, a treaty of alliance with us or anything. But anyway, they say, well, we said so. And so our credibility is a state. Is there any other thing, I guess the damn microchips or whatever, but does it really matter to anyone in America who the hell rules Taiwan? Scott, it doesn't matter at all. It really has no bearing. I mean, yeah, people try to make this argument about chips.

it's it's really tortured i mean they have to be like well you know if they controlled all these chips then um you know car prices might go up a lot and i you know my my answer is you know okay um well well um is that worth risking nuclear war to prevent you know car inflation in the in car prices i mean in other words like it's just uh totally nonsensical um well look it's a one party communist party dictatorship right and so obviously that's repellent to everyone it's not exactly mouse china anymore but still the idea of like selling some people out to commies and this day and age does seem pretty objectionable in the face of it but it's just a matter of calculating the cost is all like you're saying well yeah i mean that's

the argument that really sells and and you know it's well known that beating up on china it gets you votes. So I mean, that's, you know, it's become really commonplace. So you got a lot, you know, a lot of China Hawks, you know, running for president. But it's, it's, yeah, it's ridiculous. I mean, the, the island's future has absolutely no bearing on the United States. I mean, it's not like, like people, you know, this seemed to claim, well, you know, you know, Elbridge Colby, he's a nice guy, but he, I think he makes some pretty severe analytical mistakes. But his claim is this is the Canary in the coal mine, we got to stop them here. You know, if they take Taiwan, they will have the wind at their backs. They'll have, you know, the appetite increases with eating. So, you know, sure, they don't

sort of threaten Philippines in Japan now, but once they, you know, have swallowed Taiwan, they will, they will, sure enough, want to invade Japan. And there's just no evidence of that at all, Scott. I mean, this is, like I said, this is a civil war. China has never claimed, you know, other than some island with goats on it, that Dao-Yau-Yo-island dispute, but it's Senkaku, that's the Japanese name. So, but, you know, there's no credible threat at all to our allies there of Philippines and Japan at all, and nor to anywhere else, really. So, I mean, you know, and then when you tell them that, they're like, well, we're not so worried about Chinese invasion. We're worried about Chinese influence. It gets very squishy very quickly. But the point is, yeah. Well, look, in Vietnam, they had their domino theory. So we got to stop them in Vietnam.

But then, of course, the history is it was the Americans that kicked over the domino in Cambodia and led to the rise of Pol Pot. And then Carter and Reagan ended up siding with Pol Pot just because they hated Vietnam so much just because they resented them for winning the war when Pol Pot was 10 times worse than Ho Chi men. Yeah, and China lives in a very complicated neighborhood, and there are plenty of people who, you know, just for various reasons, don't like China. And they all want to pull us in to defend them. But frankly, you know, look, the Vietnamese are very capable, and they put some hurt

on China back in 1979. You know, the Australians have no great love for China, nor the Japanese, nor the South Korean. So, I mean, all these people are kind of like... resistant to any kind of like Chinese hegemony. So if we sort of, let's say, forget about the Chinese civil war, draw a red line over Japan and Philippines, South Korea, and don't worry about Taiwan. And somehow if Taiwan does get swallowed, well, in that scenario, my prediction is that you will see Japan defense spending go from 2% to 4%. And, you know, Philippines as well probably,

okay, you know, I can live with that. I mean, in other words, like, they'll take their defense more seriously and we can do some offshore balancing and, you know, help them out. And like I said, that's a totally feasible approach. If you're really worried about China invading Philippines, I'm personally not very worried about that. I don't think China has ever really posed any major threat to the Philippines. You know, again, not talking about some reef somewhere like the turtles. I'm talking about the actual, you know, Luzon, Palawan, you know, the real Philippines. Same with Japan, you know. So I just think we've got to be reasonable about this, except the fact that, you know, whatever happens across the strait happens, you know,

it's, you know, I hope peace prevails. I hope they look for. And honestly, I think if we took ourselves out of this civil war, right, because when we're in this civil war, the Chinese see Uncle Sam behind every corner in Taipei, right? They think the U.S. is pulling the strings. I think often that's not true. But, but if we got to, ourselves out of it, I actually think that they would quickly come to some pretty amicable agreements on on a way forward. So, because Chinese are practical people. They're not, you know, they're not looking to invade. They're not looking to control, you know, every street sign and every textbook in Taiwan. I really don't think they are. Well, look, I mean, in economics, we call it a

moral hazard, right? Don't worry, bank. We'll bail you out. Go ahead and make all the bad loans you want, same kind of thing here. And in fact, they just had an election where the more independence-minded guy won. And the question is about American influence there. And if America hadn't been involved and promising, yeah, go ahead, we'll back you up. Then just how brave would they be right now? Well, exactly. I mean, and I think you have that going on across the region. And, you know, these countries generally spending less than 2% on defense and ready to say, well, Uncle Sam will handle it. But, I mean, that has a problem because, again, they keep sort of, you know, welcoming the U.S. into these disputes. That's all fine and good.

But it's also like waving a red flag in front of a bull because, you know, China doesn't want the U.S. constantly in its face all the time. And so it makes all these disputes that much harder to deal with. I mean, just imagine for a minute if China decided in all its beneficence to get involved in, you know, the U.S. Mexican border issue or some kind of questions revolving, you know, around, you know, what goes on in the Caribbean with fishing or, you know, whatever it is that happens to be going on. You know, think of Venezuela. We sure don't like China seriously involved in Venezuela. I mean, you know, immediately that would raise red flags, that would raise the temperature on any conflict that makes it that much harder to solve. So, you know, we really just have to remember that things going on in China's backyard are, you know, look, it ain't going to come out perfectly. But, you know, we have to accept that Uncle Sam cannot dictate solutions for the entire planet, nor for, you know, reefs and rocks here or there.

and just kind of get used to the idea that this is going to be an uncomfortable negotiation. I mean, so, you know, I'm often bringing up the issue of Mexico. You know, Mexico, surely, if you look at the history of U.S. Mexican relations, I don't think the Mexicans would choose to live next to Uncle Sam, right? I mean, it was some border dispute that ended up losing about half of Mexico at a certain point. But, I mean, you know, I don't think China's ready to do that. But living next to a great power is hard, you know, let's face it. So these countries just have to sort of accommodate to that reality.

And, you know, some of them like South Korea, you know, South Korea is a very strong military. I don't think they're not going to get pushed around, probably Japan as well. So, I mean, I don't think we have much to worry about. We can play this role of kind of offshore balancer in extremists, meaning like, you know, if things go really haywire we'll step in but otherwise the they got to figure out their own problems that moral hazard issue is really is really a problem because it causes these countries and people in taiwan for example to take risks that they really should not take all right now let me ask you this uh to wrap up here when you're at the naval war college there

or is everybody just like oh well you know how lyle is he's just contrary about every kind of thing or there actually are a lot of guys who agree with you about this stuff obviously you know those guys wouldn't be the ones really running the show it wouldn't seem like but you know not to get too personal about it but just on a professional basis i just wonder how well you fit in over there at the naval war college you said you were in the navy or you know worked with them as a civilian i don't know exactly your career there can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, sure. I mean, I worked at Naval War College for 20 years. I really love the place. Great people. Great institution. A lot of smart people. I mean, you know, I wouldn't

want to characterize their views. And, you know, as part of the military, they try to be totally apolitical. So, you know, if you ask them what their opinion is, they'll say, we don't have an opinion, which, you know, I can respect that. And I'm more. Well, and I'm certainly not asking for, like, a partisan political opinion. But I just mean, like, hey, guys. How tough do we really think we are when it comes to matters in the South Pacific, you know? Yeah. I mean, you had a kind of mix of hawks and doves there, but I mean, let's put it this way. I think my arguments were often welcome and well heard.

And, yeah, there was a fair amount of sympathy, meaning, like, you know, people realized that these scenarios were really ugly. They understood that China was building up its military in a really robust way and that, you know, the geography is such that, you know, we don't want to put our forces in harm's way and ask them to fight a war that's that they won't necessarily win. So, you know, so, you know, again, I don't want to try to characterize their viewpoint. They continue to do some really good research on these things, but it's, you know, as a military institution, their, let's say, you know, their views are tracking pretty closely with whatever is coming out of the National Security Council and so forth. So they can't depart too much. And that's one reason I left was because I felt like I had to be more candid, more vocal. And I was concerned that the government had really kind of swallowed this great power competition model, which is really

leading us into incredibly dangerous situations, you know, spending, you know, trillions of dollars. that we shouldn't be spending, you know, we, to me, we don't need to have, I think defense budget is excessive, way excessive, and Americans can live a lot better. We should have different priorities. And, you know, the truth is we, you know, I think great power competition is vastly oversold. I mean, these great powers are getting much stronger, but we are perfectly strong enough to defend our major national interests, which, if thought about it in a kind of objective way, are pretty narrow. Our nation is not under grave threat, you know, that some people claim. And, you know, now I'm writing a book on Russia-China relations. And in the very, very worst-case

scenario, if Russia-China really team up, you know, well, they could present a major threat. But, I mean, they don't want to team up in that way. They're quite reluctant, and we don't want to push them in that direction. So that's why we should, you know, be very careful, be judicious about our interests, not, you know, go willy-nilly into some huge naval or nuclear arms race and try to, you know, reach, you know, some basic accommodation with these other great powers. And, you know, I don't think that should be too hard. you guys that's lyle goldstein he is at defense priorities and teaching at brown university and you can follow him on substack lyell goldstein dot substack dot com thanks very much for your time also uh scott uh yeah people can check out on twitter i'm at at lyell goldstein i'm tweeting

almost every day on uh different aspects of the uh russian and chinese military development and our uh you know dangerous uh relationships with both these great powers so So welcome to my Twitter too. But, yeah, Scott, thanks so much for having me. Absolutely. Great to talk to you again. The Scott Horton show, an anti-war radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.