Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/8/24 Peter Lee on America’s Provocative Troop Deployment on China’s Coast

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

Scott talks with Peter Lee about the deployment of U.S. special forces to the island of Kinmen. Although it’s controlled by Taiwan, the island is right on China’s coast. Lee recounts the history of the military presence on the island and explains Taiwan’s reasons for stationing troops there. He and Scott also talk about the likelihood of a Chinese invasion of all of Taiwan in the near future. Discussed on the show: Peter Lee on Twitter @chinahand “US Military Advisors Deployed to Taiwan-Controlled Islands on China’s Coast” (Antiwar.com) Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US global policy. Follow his work on Patreon and on Twitter @chinahand. 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 Scott Horton.4. You can sign up the podcast feed there

and the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. Hey guys, on the line, I've got Peter Lee, China hand, Mr. Spaghettio Hero Franco American on

Twitter. A hilarious follow and an expert on China issues, and he keeps Chinamatters.blogspot.com. Is that a thing? Blogspot.com is still a thing? Not really, no.

Mainly Mr. Patreon now. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Yeah, this is... Oh, this goes back to 2019. Yeah, that's because this is still the link in your bio on Twitter. You've got to update that. But no, you got to... Yeah, you're on Patreon is where you do your great essays

and spoken word things that people can subscribe to. that right that is correct yeah very good okay well i'm behind on all that but man what happened was i saw where you were conversating with some other guy on the twitter yesterday about how they're putting a bunch of special forces in on kinman island which sure looks like it's part of china on my map but then if i read your conversating right you were saying to this guy yeah it used to be only this small amount of people and now they're increasing it or this is kind of something along those lines so that raised the idea to me that wow we've had forces there maybe for some time and maybe going all the way back i don't know but i bet there's a long and complicated and weird history

but we're not talking about taiwan 90 miles away we're talking about i mean not even catalina island we're talking about it looks like an island in the bay there so please fill us all the way in on what in the hell is going on over there? And is Joe Pyein about to let a war with China ruin the regional war against the Shiites and Iran and our nuclear war with Russia that we've got scheduled here, Peter, or what? Well, we've always said we can fight multiple wars at once. Maybe we'll get the chance. North Korea's got nukes. We could take them on too, maybe.

Four. Why not? So, Jinman, as people like to call the island in Mandarin or Golden Gate, is he actually just a little island in the bay. off of the coast of Fujian in China, and it was held by the KMT as a frontline bastion when they withdrew to Taiwan and was supported by the United States. And at one time they had like 90,000 troops stationed on Jinman and Mazu when they still had the idea that they would invade the mainland, and the KMT, the rulers of Taiwan, would reclaim the mainland.

Now, that's no longer the case. They still keep those islands. And I was kind of interested that... And how many islands is it? It's, you know, there's just one there and there's one at Mazu. And they're talking about putting special forces also on a group of islands called Hunghu or the Pescadores, which are actually closer to Taiwan. But the interesting thing was that this stuff's been going on for a while, as you pointed out. In fact, in 2020, it was announced that the Green Berets were training the same unit of the Taiwan Special Forces, an outfit called the Sea Dragons.

And at that time, the news was released by the Pentagon, sort of obliquely. They put out a video, and you could tell that the video was, you know, of Republic of China soldiers, Republican China helicopters, that sort of thing. But this time the news came out of Taiwan. It came out in a bunch of local media outlets out there. And that's what I think the story is because there's a new president in town and he only won with 40% of the vote for the DPP, which is the pro-US anti-China gang over there. And it's time for him to show that he's Mr. Tough Guy and also Uncle Sam has its back. has his back. And I think that's why this whole thing came out at this particular time. I don't think it's

anything particularly dramatic. Sorry to downplay it. It's been going on for a while, but the new president needed a shot of public relations juice. And that's why the news was put out through the Taiwanese media. But how much of a provocation is this seen as from the mainland Chinese point of you there. You know, I don't think the mainland really gives a darn. They're going to complain about it, but like I said, it's been going on for a while. It's been announced in previous years. And you're saying the Reds have never controlled this since the Civil War.

It's always been under the control of America and its allies. That's right. It was shelled continuously for months during the first Kinman-Mazu crisis. which was when the Chinese were seriously thinking about, you know, trying to invade Taiwan, but that went to hell. But the interesting, there's a funny sideline to this, you know, Okinawa is not particularly enthusiastic about serving as a frontline anti-China outpost. And apparently the same thing is true on Kinmen, Jinman, it's a major tourist destination for mainland Chinese. The mainland China pumps water through a pipeline for the people on Jinmen. And there were some politicians on Jinmen who were talking about building a literal bridge to the mainland and declaring the island as a peace zone.

Well, you know, by putting this out and stating that, you know, the intention of the Taiwan government is to further militarize these islands, you can sort of see that as suppressing that particular kind of peaconic idea that's verbal. on uh on the chinman okay so the american empire is just so busted and it's run by an insane senile old kook who is like frankly the perfect personification of the empire itself it seems to me right now and so all the china hawks think that china is going to move on taiwan maybe very soon now maybe they always think that but maybe they're right this time What do you think? Well, in my opinion, if the mad red emperor, she really wanted to invade Taiwan, now it'd be the time. I mean, the U.S. is overstretched and distracted by its ops in Ukraine in the Middle East.

And, you know, the leadership cadre in Washington is really not in that great shape. So, you know, now it would be go time if they really had a serious intention of starting a Taiwan war. But I've never felt that they want to do that under the current circumstances. You know, it would be the largest amphibious invasion in history, you know. And, you know, Indo-Pacom is sort of licking its chops at the idea of sending submarines and planes out there to sink the invasion fleet. So that's not going to happen. And I don't think the blockade that really what the United States really worries about, that's a blockade of China. I don't think that's going to happen right now either.

So, you know, the Taiwan is the Taiwan invasion thing, I think, is mainly hyped in order to justify the immense buildup of military forces, not just in the, of Indo-Pacom, which is Indo-Pacific Command, which runs that part of the world for the U.S. military, but also in Japan and in the Philippines and Taiwan itself. yeah now um on the other hand um lial goldstein who is not a hawk and says man we need to understand that we cannot fight this war and just forget it he's saying he thinks they're going to attack and i've talked to him before and i'm going to talk to him next week and i don't know he puts a real timetable on it but he you know he weighs the political you know uh you know different uh incentives back and forth who's having which elections and which parties doing what provocations and what's going on over that however you pronounce it island and whatever but more simply he's just looking at the size of the chinese navy and he's saying they are building up an

invasion force that's what this is and the last time i talked to him he said they already have a plan they have their standards for their merchant marine, make those boats, all of them virtually capable of being converted into troop transport vessels in no time flat, and that they could just overwhelm Taiwan with, from their point of view, acceptable losses, and that Taiwan is not prepared to fight them off, and nor is America prepared to be able to get in there within firing range without getting their own asses shot off. So his point of view is, it's a done deal. Forget about it.

They might as well have already done it. There's nothing we can do to stop it. But he's very concerned that it's going to happen soon. So, you know, I don't know what you think about all that. Yeah, we can agree to disagree. However, I want to just toss a couple flies in that ointment. The first is that, you know, getting to Taiwan and, you know, you know, waxing the local defenses is one thing, occupying Taiwan and dealing with the international

fallout as something else. The standard rule of thumb is that, you know, in a hostile territory, you want a ratio of one soldier to 20 locals, and that for Taiwan would translate into a million Chinese troops, which would have to be supported across the strait, you know, in the face of U.S. hostility. and attack, you'd also have a certain amount of local resistance, and you'd also have the whole international sanctions thing that the U.S. would cook up. I would also say that if the Chinese invade Taiwan, I do not see the U.S. Navy waving through those tankers that China is using to import hundreds of millions of barrels of Middle East oil and ear to keep their economy going. So, you know, invading Taiwan, it could be done, I agree.

But keeping Taiwan and handling the immense strategic and economic fallout of a war with the United States fought indirectly, mainly through economic reasons and through proxies, is a totally different matter. So I think my mantra has always been that Taiwan is merely the anvil upon which the Chinese. Chinese intend to break U.S. power. And once they do that in Asia, then Taiwan naturally will fall completely within the PRC orbit. So when – Well, but how do they do that? Just by – I mean, how do they – because when they have to do that, don't they have to prove that America can't come and help them? Yeah, they get stronger.

America gets weaker. You know, the Chinese are continually trying to break down the Philippines and – Japanese pro-U.S. forces. And, you know, also, you know, doing a massive military build-up there is, I think, you know, meant to convince the United States that, you know, maybe it should just, you know, withdraw. But that means the end of U.S. power globally. You know, China is the big one. And I think we'd rather fight a war and crater the entire world than we would to just pick up our toys and withdraw to Hawaii. Yeah, man, you know, it was so clear that the high watermark of American power and influence in the world was in 2003 when W. Bush blew our entire water, in the sands of Iraq for nothing.

Right? It's all been downhill since then. What's even the point of any of this? And, you know, I don't know. What do you know about Taiwan? How much time have you spent there? How badly do these people want to be free? and not subjects of the commies. And should we care about that or not, Peter? Oh, well, there's an interesting question. Actually, I lived in Taiwan for a year, but that was back in the day. And I haven't been back since 1976 when the, when Zhang Jinghua, John Kaishak's son, was still running the show there.

But, you know, I would say that I agree with the polling, which is basically everybody wants a status quo now. I'm, you know, mainland trade with mainland China accounts for 35% of Taiwan's imports and exports. It's, you know, de facto, it's pretty tightly integrated with the mainland. Everybody just wants to keep this thing rolling along. They don't want to be occupied by China. They don't want to fight a war with China. So that's why the new presidente, you know, who's basically one of my new favorite

terms in Amboy, American friend, Lai Ching De, he only got 40% of the vote. 60% of the vote went to KMT and some other guy who, in his wisdom, decided he was going to split the anti-DP vote. So, no, I'd say that, you know, there is no urge to withdraw, return to the bosom of the motherland, but there's certainly a desire to suck at the teat of the motherland in terms of their economic benefits and a nice peaceful existence. So now this guy, what's his name again, the new guy? Lai Chingda.

And he's from the more right-wing independence-minded party. Is there a danger he's going to declare independence, which would be, I guess, the most obvious tripwire to start a war? No, they'll never do that. He's already said, I don't need to because Taiwan is already an independent sovereign country. But, you know, he's considered to be a, you know, a pro-independence firebrand. And so, you know, his thing will be to, you know, behave as an independent state as much as possible. Okay, but I don't know if the transcript will read my sarcasm later, but I'm really, really afraid that China's going to take over some microchip factories.

Peter, save me from that. Oh, please. Please. Okay, yeah, all you have to do is fart in one of those clean rooms, and it's useless. But I can't really understand how people put out that canard. The main threat would simply be that, you know, the Chinese would missile those factories and turn Taiwan into a strategic afterthought for everybody except the United States because they couldn't make the fancy chips anymore.

But, you know, the chip factor is no longer important. You know, it used to be that, you know, they called the TSM with Taiwan Semiconductor factories the silicon shield of Taiwan because nobody would dare allow them to be invaded. But now TSM's building factories in Japan. They're building them in the United States. are talking about building another one in somewhere in Europe, and at the same time, the Chinese are getting pretty good with their domestic chip production.

So that's becoming a non-factor. Yeah. Advanced micro devices, they're still in Austin, right? Isn't that their entire existence is making microchips? Yeah. Well, it's really funny because, you know, the TSMC specializes in the low nanometer chips and Intel try to make them

and apparently completely screwed up their play. So there is, in the Westlands, there is a reliance. If you want those teeny tiny chips, you pretty much have to go to TSMC. But, you know, it's a shrinking, it's a shrinking issue, I think. And like I said, with the building factories overseas, you know, that was actually, I think, done at the insistence of the Pentagon, you know, to preserve our, to secure our precious supply chains. Hey, you guys. Did you know that I don't just write books? I publish them. Well, the Institute does, and I'm the director, so yeah. 13 of them now, including my four. We published five more in 2003. Lori Calhoun and Tom Woods books about the COVID regime, Joe Solis Mullin on the fake China threat,

Jim Bovard's latest last rights, and our managing editor, Keith Knight's, domestic imperialism. And we've got more great titles coming in 2024. Check them out at Libertarian Institute.org books and help support our anti-government efforts at libertarian institute.org slash donate and thank you. Hey y'all, Scott here. Let me tell you about Roberts and 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. You need to put some at least into precious metals. Well, Roberts and Roberts can set you up with the best deals on silver, gold, Platinum and Palladium, and they've been doing this since 1977. Hey, if you just need some sound advice about sound money, they're there for you, too. Call Tim Fry and the guys at 800-874-97760. That's 800-874-9760, or check them out at r-rbi.co. That's r-rbi.com.

You'll be glad you did. Book Club on Monday. Jim on Tuesday Date night on Wednesday Out on the town on Thursday Quiet night in on Friday It's good to have a routine And it's good for your eyes too

Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers You'll know just how healthy they are Visit Spexavers.cavers.caiator to book your next eye exam I exams provided by independent optometrists when they used to call it a shield I mean it sounds like that was why they put them there in the first place or it's just the Taiwanese are so damn good at developing these chips is how they got there

the first place. Well they got lucky actually the you know contract chips was not a big thing when they started but you know because everybody built their chips in house you know but then you know they rode the way they got a lot of support basically a bunch of RCA guys

moved over to China and they got you know there was no export restrictions on shipping the stuff to Taiwan, and then they have a massive first user advantage. I mean, I can't remember exactly what their budget is, but they're putting like $40 billion a year just into R&D over there. So that's how they keep that first mover advantage going. I see.

But like you're saying, the point is moot now anyway because they're replicating these factories for this very reason. So, okay, forget tripwire, microchip factories. back to the special forces you know we got special forces uh or i don't know exactly who all um but we got i believe i believe as fair say special operations forces in iraq and syria right now and we just saw some national guard soldiers killed and we saw them serve as a tripwire for further conflict is exactly what happened so these soldiers on this island right here in this bay It's so funny to look at the map and be like, oh, yeah, no, this is obviously, you know, where American soldiers belong.

Is that really their purpose there? I mean, I guess you said that this is just PR for the new president of Taiwan. I guess it's PR for Joe Biden, too. But, I mean, is that, like, if you zoom out a little bit from the very present circumstances, is that really been their strategic so-called purpose there this whole time? is that China won't dare move on Taiwan because they'd have to kill our guys first and they wouldn't want to pick that fight

like I could see that if you're like a student of Wollstetter game theory or whatever you go well they don't want to fight us so we just stick our nose right in it and they'll back down but at the same time that means that if they decide to go for it we are in it because they just killed our guys right well let me tell you I was thinking about this

in our new Tower 22 world. You know, right frankly, the message of Tower 22 is, you know, somebody Zatz's American guys. We do a limited hangout type of retaliation. It's sort of like that golden line with the Houthis. You hear that with the Pentagon guy says, we're bombing the Houthis, but we're not at war with the Houthis. So, you know, let's say, for instance,

they slapped the mainland really decided that they wanted to kick those guys out. And they went in there and they took over Jinnman, which would be pretty darn easy. You know, I think that the United States would, you know, come up with some sort of direct or open or, you know, covert retaliation. But that's about it. The reason that the green berets are on there is on Jinnman is because the Sea Dragon Special Forces are there. And I don't, it used to be back in the day, way back in the day. way back in the day

when Taiwan military was stationed on Jinmen it was a thing where you where the as an adventure the guys would swim to the mainland and buy a movie ticket and bring the movie ticket back

as a souvenir so you know the whole idea of the sea dragons is they're supposed to be operating down there you know threatened to sabotage you know Chinese ships and you know go ashore

and assassinate and do that sort of stuff but that's basically pinprick stuff You know, the main thing is that the United States is now moving into training the Taiwan military in a big way. Not only supply arms, there's $108 million for training in Taiwan, and also the Taiwan military is sending two battalions of troops to be trained in the United States. So that's really the context is that the Taiwan military is notorious for being a box of strawberries, strawberries being in. guys who don't want to fight who get easily bruised. And the whole idea behind this is we're going to toughen

them up. And that, as opposed to running special ops out of Jinman, I think, is the purpose of this whole exercise. Gotcha. Yeah, they'd be crazy to start running missions out of there with as easy as they'd get swatted down if it came down to it.

Exactly. Yeah. Okay, so it's Jinman, but spelled with a K, so everybody go and look at that on your Google map. and zoom in and look at this island in this bay and imagine american special forces station there green berets station there like our previous guest jo kent who fought iraq war two and iraq war three you know second tier special operations forces but you know second tier is not that low compared to first tier you know what i mean they're capable folks and certainly just like

with any of this stuff if you put the shoe on the other foot boy would that be a problem better not do that yeah well the real action with special forces will be you know training guys to do gladio type of stuff and hanging around in the mountains after after the PRC invades the uh the main taiwan island and you know going down and uh doing all sorts of stuff like that i got you that makes a lot sense okay so listen in our last few minutes can you take kim's temperature for us here man what's up with that guy everything going to be okay Don't worry about Kim Jong-in. Geez, you know, he's just out there.

You know, he's just mourning the fact that he couldn't get a peace deal with Trump, you know. Are we talking Kim Jong-un, right? Yeah, sure. That old guy. Yeah, you know, it's, you know, they're doing what they're doing. The main thing is that the United States has thrown as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of having a brain-dead nut as president of the, Republic of Korea, that's South Korea, that Guy Yun. And, you know, he's extremely unpopular now, and he's just, you know, charging ahead to, you know,

his legacy is going to be trying to put together an alliance with Japan and the United States, which is not very popular in Korea. And, you know, I think that he's going to be voted out in a couple years if they don't get him out earlier. and then the temperature is going to drop there. Well, I guess a lot's going to depend. I'm not going to be a war out there too much. Everybody's just posturing and cashing in. Yeah.

Well, I'm sure you saw that alarmist piece by Carlin and Hecker. And I got reason to respect Hecker as the great expert on their nuclear program. Our friend Tim Shoreock explained that Carlin is a former intelligence guy. Well, for sure. They both have a pretty. you know, hawkish or maybe paranoid take on it, but they're seeing recent moves

by Kim as really dangerous and I don't know why. Okay. I'll pass on that one. I will yield to Tim Shorick on that one. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think you'd agree with how he's summed it up on the show probably, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and so a lot depends on whether the secret police are going to be able to prevent Trump from being elected again. Yeah. Well, I don't think much is going to change over there. You know, the Pentagon is run by China Hawks. Indopacom is basically an independent satrapy run out of Hawaii, and they're going to continue this no matter what. How much time do I have left here? Yeah, a couple minutes. Go ahead. Okay, I just wanted to say one thing. That is to say the real fear of the United States is not that there'll be a blockade or that there'll be an

invasion. It is that China will close the Taiwan straight to foreign warships legally. which it can do under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea. I will quote here, in the case of a mainland continental state with an island next to it, all ships and aircraft enjoy the right of transit passage, which shall not be impeded, except that if the strait is formed by an island of a state

bordering the strait and its mainland, and transit passage shall not apply if there exists seaward of the island a route through the high seas, or through an exclusive economic zone of similar convenience with respect to navigational and hydrographical characteristics. Which is to say that if you accept that Taiwan is part of China, which actually most countries in the world do outside of the G7, Then Taiwan, then Beijing could simply announce, you know, we are exercising our prerogatives under the UNCLOS, the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, and we are closing the Taiwan straight to foreign warships. Okay. What difference would that really make, though? Because there is a wide open sea there between them and the Philippines anyway.

And also, actually, and also the west, the east coast of Taiwan. That's the whole point. You know, the whole point is saying, you know, you want to get from point A to point B, don't go through our territorial C. So, you know, the United States, that's why we always talk about trying to maintain the status quo instead of telling China, don't do illegal stuff in the Taiwan Strait. But I'm saying what difference does it make to the Americans if they have to go around Taiwan? Well, because that means that's just a humiliation. We're running ships through the Taiwan Strait every month to show that we're deterring China. and not letting him operate in the Taiwan Strait on the other side of the median line.

So in other words, just state slash macho BS, right, not any real strategic thing other than being humiliated and no longer being the boss of the straight. That's the whole point. To no real previous end, though, other than keeping them from being the boss of the straight. Yeah, and also, you know, certainly with inconvenience, submarines are supposed to surface as they transit the strait under those. under that theory. So, you know, that means that the U.S. deterrent would be pushed off by another, you know, a couple hundred miles. Yeah.

You know what? I'm going to push it a little bit and go over because I wanted to ask you another thing that I forgot earlier. But it's along the same lines of what we're talking about here, right? It sounds to me like the worst that could happen would be that China would retake. Taiwan, contrary to a lot of the paranoid stuff on the right about how they're going to be the next world empire and conquer everything after America falls and all of that. And I'm actually going to have an economist who knows a lot about China on the show a little bit later. And I'm

going to ask him about kind of what's going on with their economy now. But on broader than just the economy, but just the state of China itself, do you think that they really are on the rise and gaining power and influence throughout Asia. They threaten all our island friends like Japan and the Philippines and on from there. Or, you know, you already mentioned how dependent they are on foreign trade. It seems like they have a lot of problems. So I just wonder, I mean, I look at them like they're already an overextended empire that's collapsing just like ours is. Maybe that's not right.

I don't know. What do you think? Yeah, I think that the Chinese economy is going through a rough patch right now, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that they decided to deflate their real estate bubble, and also, you know, they're suffering through the United States trying to cut off their access to export their high-end goods. But I see this as a retrenchment period for China. And once they get their stuff sorted out, I think that, yeah, they will be looking to expand their influence. All right. So, in other words, as a real threat to Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, that kind of thing? No, you know, they're still committed to, you know, expanding their influence through their economic ties.

You know, basically low-end Chinese manufacturing is moving to Vietnam. in Mexico. And so, you know, they're pretty much, they're much, pretty much committed to that thing. They got a lot of, there's still a developing country domestically, you know, they don't, fighting a war simply means a drain on their economy and less things they can do internally. And so I would say that their, their position is, they want to expand their political and economic influence, a strong military as part of that. But I don't think that their economic model sees trying to fight wars and occupy states as a benefit as the road they want to go down. Yeah, can you imagine them all just sitting around at the Politburo there going, you know, W. Bush and Barack Obama and McCain and Biden, these guys are really smart.

Look at what a great job they've done for America. We should really try to emulate that. Yeah. Well, the best Chinese selling point is saying, look what the United States did. screwing up Europe. Look what they're doing, screwing up the Middle East. Do you really think that they're going to get it right out here in Asia? And that is a big selling point for any country in Asia whose politicians aren't under the thumb of a pro-U.S. military. Yeah. All right, man. Well, I better go. But thank you so much for coming back on the show.

Great to talk to you again. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Scott. All right, you guys. That is Peter Lee. He's the China Hand. He's the Spaghetti-O. You'll recognize in there, our good friend on Twitter and also find him on patreon.com as well. The Scott Horton show, Antivore War Radio, can be heard on K-P-FK 90.7 FM

in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.