Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/3/23 Lyle Goldstein on True Costs of a Naval War with China

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

Lyle Goldstein is back to talk with Scott about a recent U.S. wargame simulating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. While Goldstein has some problems with the game’s design, he thinks it was far superior to most in its realism. And that, above all, the report authors were honest about the sheer scale of losses both sides face if diplomatic solutions dry up or go ignored. Discussed on the show: The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Accompanying video 2034: A Novel of the Next World War by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis  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: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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All right, you guys introducing once again Lyle Goldstein from Defense Priorities, and he's also a visiting professor at Brown University now. and formerly was at the Naval War College. Welcome back to the show. How you doing, Al? Thanks, Scott. Glad to be here again. Very happy to have you on the show. Okay, so the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is a big, important, militarist-type think tank, I guess they count as like a click to the right of the Council on Foreign Relations

or something like that, maybe. But essentially as credentials or whatever, the same sort of. status as the CFR or some of the bigger think tanks, right? And they have this thing is called the first battle of the next war, war gaming, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. And you've said that of all the different war games and scenarios and simulations that have been held, you thought this was the most serious and I guess the most well done and yet still revealed glaring flaws in the game itself, but also predict.

predicted the almost worst case outcome for everyone involved, huh? That's right, Scott. I mean, look, I think we should, all of us who care about U.S.-China relations and who want to prevent, you know, a repeat or even something much, much worse, even than Ukraine in the Taiwan context, need to, I think, take a very close look at this game. Yeah, in terms of the fidelity, the effort. the methodologies employed, this is a, I call it the most serious look at what a Taiwan scenario, how it could unfold. And, you know, I should say at the outset, I do give the authors of this

effort and CSIS quite a bit of credit here for really pushing the boundaries and taking our understanding a lot further. But like I said, I'm quite critical because although they have expose some critical realities such as, you know, let me underline this two or three times, that they show that if this war is fought, that the costs to the United States are likely enormous. You know, hundreds of aircraft, dozens of ships, tens of thousands of servicemen killed potentially. So, you know, they have revealed, I think, what Americans have not wanted to think about, which is that this could be, you know, look a lot more like World War II or World War I, you know, in the scale of destruction. So, but I hope we can get more into the details here,

because actually, you know, that's what they evaluate as sort of likely. But when you look at the fine print, you see that actually even their estimates of what could happen, that is the worst case and and after all we should keep the worst case in mind when we take these kind of risks you know now that is that that is really breathtaking and horrifying honestly yeah well you know as we've talked about over the years when most of these and i don't know the specifics of this one i'm writing a book about russia right now so i did not read the whole report but um i have read many of these types of things over the years, and it's obvious that it doesn't make any sense for a report writer to say, well, what would happen is they'd nuke us on the second day, and we'd all

die in the Armageddon end of the world scenario, and then everybody left in the global south would starve a nuclear winter, and Jesus may or may not come back, but it would be the apocalypse. You can't sell a study like that. So instead, you sell a study that says, well, we'll fight China for. four weeks. And then it'll be basically a stalemate and no one will nuke each other's major cities because we say so. And you can get $30,000 or maybe $300,000 for one of those. And so they talk, and you hear this all the time, especially, you know, like say right wing AM radio culture or, you know,

the more popular Republican-leaning type media. They're like, come on, man, let's take on China over Taiwan. as though that doesn't mean losing Denver and losing Houston and losing New York City, maybe. Yeah, that's exactly right, Scott. And I think you laid it out just right is that, you know, again, when you look at the fine print of this study and the authors are, you know, again, I give them some credit. They're pretty honest about, you know, clear that they're sort of putting aside all the nuclear issues. and I hope we you know let's talk in more detail about that because it is crucial and then another note again here at the outset when we're talking about the sort of big sort of problems if you will with the game is that note that the title of this game is

first battle and you know I think again we want to underline that two or three times so when we're talking about losses that amount to whether it's you know two 200 aircraft in the best case or, you know, maybe 800 U.S. aircraft, think about that. That's the big chunk of our Air Force. If we lose 800 aircraft in the worst case, that is only in the first few weeks in the first battle. Okay. So this is not a model of the war. And really, there is not really a theory even presented in this game of how the war actually ends. And by the way, a very skilled China expert, ex-CIA, Lonnie Henley, stood up at the rollout of this game and asked this question, you know, by the way, you fought this battle, but you haven't ended the war. So when we consider these horrifying losses, this is just in the first few weeks, okay?

And as you said, the nuclear question is there. And, you know, they do kind of occasionally bring up the idea that, wow, you know, even though we took nuclear issues off the table in the game. players still seem very concerned about escalation. Gosh, I wonder why. If we look at the Ukraine crisis, we see the Biden administration has been pretty skittish about escalation, as they should be. I believe they should be much more skittish, more cautious. So I believe we'd see similar behavior here. China is building up its nuclear forces. I'm happy to talk more about nuclear escalation dangers. But generally here, the authors of this report at the very end, they say, well, nobody really knows what would happen.

This has never happened before. We've never had a major war breakout between two nuclear powers, so we have no idea how it would unfold. And that's all they say about it, I mean, more or less in the last few pages of the report. So, you know, that should be incredibly troubling, right? And Scott, going back to what you said originally, you can't sell a report that says we're going to blow up the world with this war. So nobody's going to write a report like that.

So in a way, they had to do it this way. And it's not the truth, right? Yeah. The whole thing, I mean, to think about, and I'm sorry, because it's the politics of it, and I just leave it aside, but it's got to be mentioned that. We're talking about a semi-autonomous renegade province of some foreign nation on literally the other side of the planet, like when they say dig a hole all the way to China, because that's how far away it is from here.

and yeah i'm glad you raised that point too because it's really the first thing you should think about when you try to understand the taiwan issue and i really welcome readers to get educated as they can on this um on on the history of taiwan for example but yeah start with a map and and you know they say this in the war game and they put it uh pretty starkly they say you know Gosh, Taiwan is 160 kilometers from mainland China, and it's 11,000 kilometers from San Diego, you know, a really large U.S. base, a Navy base. Yes, we have a base closer 8,000 kilometers in Hawaii, but really, folks, you know, once you just grapple with that logic and look over the geography a little better, you realize just how stunningly the cards are up against us. You know, so, you know, I believe, in effect, we're asking our service people are men and women in uniform to do the impossible, you know, to fight a war on the on the doorstep of another superpower. And that is really ill-advised. Even if maybe, you know, at some level, there is a best-case scenario where somehow we escape, you know, both nuclear destruction and our forces are not completely destroyed. But, you know, to me, that seems like the kind of best-caseing. that we should avoid in our, in serious national security planning.

Yeah. Well, look, and it's already incredibly risky. I think you and I probably would agree that we're completely against it. But in Ukraine, they won't dare go beyond having deniable forces there. We know they have some special operations forces and some CIA Special Activity Center type guys running around. But they swear they're not, you know, leading missions. And nothing like engaging in full-scale war as though Ukraine is a member. of the NATO alliance or any other alliance with the United States, but here we're willing

to treat Taiwan in a way that we're, thank goodness, not willing to treat Ukraine for some reason. Yeah, and the similarities are really very, I think, appropriate to discuss. I mean, you know, let's face it, these are both, well, countries, entities, whatever you are wayward provinces, however you want to look at it, but there are, you know, right on the doorstep of these other major powers. And therefore, the risks are huge. In both cases, there are very deep kind of identity issues. You're well acquainted with just how close Ukrainian and Russian culture and history, how closely they're intertwined. Of course, it's exactly really, it's very similar, very parallel with Taiwan and China. But there are also some huge differences here, you know, not least Taiwan is an island. Taiwan is much, much smaller than Ukraine.

Taiwan is, you know, arguably Taiwan is just the Russians underestimated Ukraine. you know, and they try to take over a country the size of France with a rather small army. So, sure, the Russians went in with, you know, poor planning, poor assumptions, underestimated their opponent. China will not make that mistake. Moreover, China is much, much more powerful, as we know. Then Russia, in kind of comprehensive power, unquestionably, in everything except nuclear forces. You know, China is, what do you want to say, four to five times the strength. certainly, you know, from a military power point of view. So, so we're talking about a smaller area

and China's much larger military. And moreover, you know, I think if you if you were to do a survey of Russian officer corps, you know, in the last 10 years or something and asked them, how likely is a war between Russia and Ukraine? They would have laughed at you and said very unlikely, you know. In other words, they weren't, although, you know, you had this small kind of border conflict in Donvass. I don't think the Russian army was really preparing in earnest for this day. I think this was a surprise to everybody. And as has been revealed, the Russian soldiers outside Kiev, you know, really had to scratch their head like, what are we doing here exactly? That's my assessment. They were almost as surprised as people in the West. But that is not the

case here with Taiwan. You know, Chinese officers are inculcated. with a sense that that unification between Taiwan and mainland is is really the main focus, the main purpose of the PLA is to achieve unification from day one of the time they joined the PLA. So there's a very fundamental difference. And I think that, unfortunately, that's why this is fraught with risks primarily for Taiwan, but also very much for the United States, you know, for China as well. I don't, I'm not sugar-coding this from the Chinese point of view. their losses would probably also be huge and the risks are are very severe for China.

But, you know, what I want to underline here is that this report, as helpful as it is, and again, I really strongly urge people to take a quick look at it, its conclusions, but what I fear is that we haven't really understood the full implications of this report. Let me just give you one example here. Like I said, in the best case, this report finds that the U.S. in this war loses about 200 aircraft, this is best case, 200 aircraft and about a dozen warships. However, there is a worst case here, and in the worst case, the numbers are something like at one point they say the U.S. might, they say we might lose. let's see, I think four aircraft carriers, 29 destroyers and cruisers,

and 15 nuclear submarines. You know, as somebody who worked for the Navy for 20 years, I can say, you know, that would be nearly half of our Navy. And I can't imagine, you know, the loss of life would be, you know, well over 100,000. That is just appalling. And I have to say, I think there, I don't think that is the worst case, actually. I think it could be significantly worse even than that.

So I think they underestimate in some ways the possible losses to U.S. forces. I can go through the details there. But it's, you know, a situation where we could lose, you know, a third to a half of our Air Force and Navy, I think we had better think twice, three times, four times. And hopefully, in my view, effectively close the door on this and choose to use other methods. You know, if we want to put sanctions on China, you know, sure. We have other alternatives to dealing with this. You know, some have suggested, well, we might sort of blockade China. I don't know about that. But look, the most rational solution is basically what we've done in Ukraine, which is offer to support Taiwan in ways we can

without military force and then we can also reinforce our allies. We have allies there. It's reasonable to defend our treaty allies, Philippines, and Japan. So I would expect in the wake of a war over Taiwan that we would, you know, adjust our posture and send more forces to Japan and Philippines. I don't think China has any plans to invade either Japan or Philippines, but we could do that to reassure our allies in the case of a Taiwan scenario. But fighting over Taiwan is, you know, really a bridge too far. And, you know, I would hope we have learned lessons from Ukraine. That is, you know, you don't want to stir up this hornet's nest in the backyard of an angry great power. And again, Russia may be a great power. China is a bona fide superpower. And there's a difference.

Well, listen, here's an option we could negotiate and help peacefully reunify China and Taiwan like in the deal. And then nobody has to fight at all. Well, okay, Scott. I think you seem to know a lot about Taiwan situation because, right, if you study the history, you know that there are political diplomatic solutions to this effort. In fact, you know, I, my hat's off to Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger for breaking through this Gordian knot that really did. They really did change the entire world. They changed the trajectory of U.S.-China relations. And guess what Joe and Lai and Henry Kissinger talked about in their initial conversations in Beijing?

You know, what was that in 1971 before the Nixon visit? They, 90% of what they talked about was Taiwan. you know, Kissinger kept saying, well, let's talk about Vietnam, too. And Joe and I kind of, you know, laughed at him and said, no, for us, all we care about is Taiwan. You have to say, you have to agree to these terms. And then we will, you know, open diplomatic and have normal relations with you and demilitarize a relationship. And they did, you know. Yeah, I even saw a piece of paper where they had listed the pros and cons, Kissinger and Nixon, or the things that we care about and the things that they care about. And the things that they care about. And the things that they. care about. Taiwan was on the list right at the top, and it was either at the bottom or not even on the Americans list at the time. It's like, what do they really

care about for most anyway? Now, I read this big thing. I know you must know everything in the world about this, but I read a pretty in-depth thing, and was it the New York Times magazine about the war over the microchips, and how, boy, these are some sophisticated-cated chips, all right, and chip factories, and it seems like

if that's really such a big strategic problem, then they shouldn't have developed, because it's American corporations at the heart of it all anyway. They shouldn't have developed all that tech to be based in Taiwan in the first place. It's like they're just trying to make a strategic liability out of the place. And then secondly, they ought to get to work moving that crap to Austin. And then how about that?

Then we don't have to worry about even if China invades. Who cares? We don't even have microchips at stake anymore at that point. But they don't talk about that at all. They're like, no, we need to have more and more. reason to be obligated to Taiwan, not less. Yeah, I, I, I 100% agree. I think, you know, there's, I mean, honestly, I think the people who advocate for

for the U.S. defending Taiwan, and there are a lot. I mean, let's face it, that's the conventional wisdom in Washington and, you know, even among experts, U.S. experts on China and East Asian security, you know, I would say the majority, Well, most of them sort of, let's say, are unclear on what they really would advise, you know, if the missiles started flying. But many of them support this. And I find that they're really reaching for – they can't alight on a persuasive argument why U.S. national security is threatened by, you know, a Chinese attack on Taiwan. So they, you know, reaching for any argument, they say, well, you know, the global economy would be, you know, devastated most primarily because of these chip factories would be under threat and they would, you know, possibly come under Chinese control. But I don't buy any of that.

I mean, it's, you know, first of all, okay, so, you know, automobile prices might spike for a couple of months because they had trouble getting, you know, more of these chips that they need to make the parts. But, I mean, really, are we going to risk World War III and the lives of 100,000 or more American servicemen because we were worried about car prices increasing for a time? You know, I just, I don't buy it. I also think, you know, it's interesting. It's kind of we're trying to leverage high tech against China for sure. No doubt that's becoming a key part of our strategy. It may ultimately delay, if you will, China's economic ascendance. But my sense is that the, you know, this whatever, the train has left the station a long time ago.

In other words, if we had done this 20 years ago, it might have been possibly had a major effect. But I don't really see a major effect. I think China is way too far along. You know, they've anticipated this for years. the Chinese companies are well, you know, well on their way to building, you know, first class chips. I mean, if anything, this could have the effect as it has in the domain of space. For example, space, we really tried about a decade ago. We basically tried to cut off all relationship with Chinese space.

We've cut them out of the International Space Station and all the rest. And so our idea was they would not become a major space power because we would, we could prevent that by isolating them and not cooperating with them. at all. But it's quite the opposite, trying to surge ahead in space. They are on the cutting edge. You know, they have their moon project. And part of it is because, you know, not only are we less aware of what they're doing because we're not collaborating with them, but we also see that they, you know, when a country goes its own way, meaning they have to make everything themselves, that it actually, you know, sometimes it helps their effort. They're less dependent. And they develop these, you know, very robust institutions and mechanisms.

And, you know, I think by any measure, China is a first-class space-faring power. At the Libertarian Institute, we published books, real good ones. So far, we've got Will Griggs-Snow quarter. Sheldon Richmond's coming to Palestine and what social animals owe to each other. and four of mine, fools Aaron, enough already, the great Ron Paul, and my brand new one, hotter than the sun. Time to abolish nuclear weapons. And I'm happy to announce that we've just published our managing editor Keith Knight's first one, The Voluntarius Handbook, an excellent collection of essays by the world's greatest libertarian thinkers and writers, including me. Check them

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by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at scothorton.org. So keep that in mind. and don't worry about the mess your wife will clean it up oh man so there's so much to go back over here and we're not even uh you know a quarter of the way through what we got to eventually recap but let's recap a couple of things first of all Taiwan being an island as opposed to say Ukraine where there's roads where you can just roll right in and if the ground is dry enough just drive right in you know with or without roadways um and now you know we both made a big deal about how far away this is from the United States and how close it is to China and all that.

But it's still like 90 miles of water. They still have to, you know, wage an amphibious and airborne invasion of the island, which seems like would be, you know, much more difficult than just rolling right into the Donbass, for example, something like that. But then again, of course, it makes it much more difficult for the United States to intervene as well. But so I wonder if you think that that's much of a deterrent to China that they would have to know that they're going to lose X many tens or more thousands of guys trying to do this.

Yeah. And I mean, let's stay to the outset. I mean, this probably would look something like Normandy. I think, you know, that doesn't phase China. I think that, you know, I mean, what Eisenhower and company could put together over the course of a couple of years. in London while the U.S. was busy fighting on all these fronts and things. And, you know, it's true. China doesn't have a lot of experience in these things, particularly not in a modern sense and little

combat experience. Nevertheless, I think this is quite, you know, quite something they could realize. Now, in the report, the CSIS report, they make some interesting comments here about the fact that, you know the difference is because this is an island versus say the ukraine scenario but but one critical absolutely critical takeaway and here i agree with the writers of the report they said this is not ukraine this is not a situation where gosh uh you can continue you know you can basically take a hands off and continue to send supplies that's you know seems absolutely not the case they They say, you know, more or less no, no aircraft or U.S. aircraft or ships are going to reach this island in the case of a Taiwan scenario. It will be totally, you know, subsumed under China's sort of, you know, missile, if you will, umbrella to the point that, you know, they described, for example, just again, one scenario that they look into, they said that in a couple of iterations, U.S. players in the game tried.

to send in a few battalions of U.S. troops, Marines and soldiers. And they said these troops are destroyed in the air. They don't even get to the, you know, they don't even land on Taiwan. They said a couple of thousand U.S. troops killed when their transport aircraft are shot down. And that's the situation. So what the gamers say here is like, look, this is fundamentally different than Ukraine. Everything Taiwan needs in that first month or first few months has to be on the island already. And that, you know, may imply to you some kind of level of unreality because, you know, I was just in Taiwan. And I can tell you, you know, it's very far from, you know, seriously preparing. You don't get really a sense of urgency there at all. Is it not a nation

in arms at all? Well, you're not just a tourist having breakfast and whatever. You're paling around with their defense establishment while you're there, I presume, right? Uh, not too much, honestly. I just wanted to, you know, I wanted to walk the beaches. I wanted to, I drove around the entirety of the island. Okay. You weren't meeting with them. I covered about 800 miles driving around Taiwan. I saw three people in uniform. I mean, that should give you a sense. I looked at some, uh, beach area, likely landing areas in the northeast, for example. Uh, I saw almost zero, uh, Taiwan, military activity at all i remember i visited one one little fishing port which i think would be a very likely target uh and it had it had one little police boat but that police boat was on stilts in the harbor you know being worked on so uh so anyway i guess what i'm this is a long way of saying um you know you the kind that unlike ukraine which can be kind of pumped up and then continuously topped off, if you will, with Moyer Haimars, missiles, more stingers, more javelins.

And that effort has been somewhat successful, right? I mean, they did stop the, you know, they stopped the Russians from taking over the entire country. Fair enough. But in Taiwan, I think that is very, very unlikely. So there I agree with these gamers, but where they're really wrong about the, you know, the amphibious invasion. And here, this is a very critical point, if you don't mind, I'd like to explain a little bit, which is they make some convenient numerical assumptions. They basically state that, you know, that China has about, has less than 100 total amphibious vessels, amphibious attack vessels. And I think the number is something like, I'd have to check back, but the number is something like, you know, 80 or something like.

that and basically they say the key to the whole scenario is for the united states to destroy you know most of these 80 vessels and that would cause uh sorry about that and that that would cause um the invasion to fail i think this is a very fundamental mistake that they've made in the analysis uh why because you know china is not uh for a variety of reasons has not is not going about this the way we would go about it you know with beautifully decked out ships that are you know look exactly like the ones that landed in Normandy or something like that. No, the way China would undertake this invasion is by employing its civilian fleet, okay, which amounts to tens of thousands of vessels. I mean, literally hundreds of thousands of vessels, if you include fishing boats,

which I do think would be part of this. You know, China has the biggest merchant marine, the biggest fishing fleet, the biggest coast guard. They would all be thrown into the mix. What you would probably see is an armada out there of, like I said, of tens of thousands of ships of various kinds. And they would mostly use, you know, low-tech kind of solutions here, like small boats without board motors. And anyway, this completely goes against the logic in the report here, which is that, oh, you're going to have 85, you know, specialized amphibious attack ships, and we just have to sink those. That's just not how this would look. And I'm shocked that the gamers seem to have overlooked the very real possibility of trying to employ.

its maritime civilian power. And after all, if they had read the DOD report carefully from 2022, this is the annual DOD report, a major theme of the DOD report was this civil military fusion, right? We know for a fact that China's merchant fleet is training for this day. Not only that, the ships have been built to spec. That is, they've built their merchant fleet in a way that it is ready for war, that it has the kind of specs that they can bring tanks aboard, they can bring troops aboard. they can bring these small boats that they'll deploy.

So, you know, to my mind, this really undermines this idea that, wow, it's, you know, gosh, they have 90 miles of ocean to cross. Can China do it? I think they absolutely can for sure. And moreover, I will say, having walked the ground on a lot of these beaches, you know, I was not impressed at all with Taiwan's defensive works. and, you know, the idea that a lot of these beaches are impassable, I think, is also quite wrong. I mean, there's this kind of idea that, you know, it's all Taiwan's coast is all cliffs. It's not what I saw. And moreover, the cliffs such as they do exist are mostly on the eastern side, which is somewhat relevant, but not, you know, to me, I'm absolutely sure that,

China will have exquisite intelligence. This is the kind of intelligence that would blow Eisenhower's mind, right? He was the, you know, planning D-Day and looking for intelligence on the beaches and so forth. And, you know, you know, what if Eisenhower could use drones and could use Google Earth, constantly updated with photos from beaches, you know, day-to-day on what Taiwan beaches look like? That's the kind of intelligence that China has, you know. By the way, they have 24-hour, real-time, you know, satellite surveillance. So, you know, they know exactly what they're doing and where they're going and how much force to put at it.

And they have the requisite capabilities. That's, I think, what's not widely realized. And you said it on the show before, too, I think, Lollett, you know, they can just lay siege to the place and say, look, don't make us kill you, dude. But we're just taking our sovereignty back here now and you're going to have a new mayor. How do you like that? And they could maybe get, I'm elaborating a little bit on what you said. You said they could just lay siege without attacking and force the issue politically from there. That'd be, I guess, the lightest touch scenario, huh?

Yeah, you know, well, there are actually lighter touch scenarios even, you know, where they, and they've already kind of experimented with this, right? I mean, in August 2022, during the Pelosi visit, we had the movement of a lot of Chinese forces, you know, missiles arced over the island, I think, something like 250 different Chinese combat aircraft crossed the median line during that month. So, you know, that was a fairly severe. But, but yeah, that's a lot lighter than, say, a blockade. Now, I should mention about blockade because this game does not cover blockade. But you're right. I mean, that's a whole different conversation that probably should be had. And that is a very real possibility. In fact,

I would say the balance, most U.S. specialists on this matter, believe. that a blockade is much more likely than a all-out invasion. I'm kind of on the fence, right? Because blockade, the problem with blockade, of course, is that it is very uncertain and it could take a lot of time. And, you know, who knows, maybe the Taiwanese could hold out for months or even years. And, you know, it could sort of be just twisting in the wind. Agree that that would be, you know, substantially lower risk. And I do think, you know, China has, you know, absolutely has the requisite capabilities to accomplish a blockade. And moreover, you know, Taiwan, I don't, you know, again, you don't see a lot of evidence of them storing fuel, food. You know, by the way,

the island is not self-sufficient food-wise or, and certainly quite vulnerable from an energy point of view. And it, you know, that scenario would put the impetus on the United States to try to break the blockade, right? Sort of like Berlin. airlift styles. I mean, that's a very live scenario. And then, you know, both sides would be facing these enormous risks. I imagine Chinese planners have gamed that all out, you know, and are ready for that sort of set of escalatory maneuvers. But from the Chinese point of view, the invasion in some ways looks much more attractive. Why? Because while it is more risky, it you know they there you get the shock value right they may think they can deter the united

states they are building up their nuclear forces for example you know i wouldn't surprise me if on if on day one of this scenario however it unfolds that you see a grand parade down the you know streets of Beijing with a new you know a much more robust nuclear missile force than than we had even conceived. I think it is possible that China's nuclear forces are bigger than we know. And, you know, in general, the blockade, I think, you know, it is, I think, so the advantage of amphibious invasion then would be that they can close the deal. And indeed, you know, one of the conclusions I quite agree with in the CSIS report. They say, if nobody comes to Taiwan's aid, you know, they think China could probably conquer Taiwan in about two months. And that's, you know,

I concur with that evaluation. If it's, if they do a blockade, Scott, then they have to, it's a negotiated solution, right? It means, okay, let's drop some terms. Let's see, you know, what Taiwan agrees with. That's a risk. approach, right? You know, and China is likely not to get all at once in that situation. Right. So it's a highly risky set of maneuvers there. So I would, if I had to guess, I think the invasion scenario is somewhat more attractive to not necessarily the China's top leaders. They're the decision makers. But to the PLA, you know, I think they all want to be involved in this. They want, you know, their new generation of martyrs.

And they want to crush, you know, what they see is, you know, a bunch of separatists to achieve, you know, full unification. They don't want to negotiate, you know, they want to deliver the terms. Well, just how hell bent do you think they are. One more thing here, though, is it, you know, I just from looking at this from Taiwan's point of view, and I imagine some of your listeners probably are on Taiwan or whatever. But, I mean, this should all look really terrible and suggest the idea that if they want a negotiated solution to this, then now is the time. And, by the way, there are real political diplomatic solutions to this, all these quandaries. Anyway, go ahead, Scott.

Well, so I wonder about what you think and how you assess the Chinese government's determination to take Taiwan back and sooner, not later. I think you told me on the show before that you were just counting ships. And you were saying, look, they're building a capability to retake Taiwan, you know. So, therefore, that's what they're doing and that, you know, you fight like you train and all that, right? So, but what else do you have to go on there that says that this is a real worry that they would do this sooner than later? Because there are others who say that it just, there's so many counter incentives to them doing this when, after all, they're getting along fine anyway. There's billions of dollars worth of trade and travel back and forth. And they're, you know, de facto pals, if not good buddies, politically, you know, they're getting

a long fine as it is and, you know, et cetera like that. Yeah, there are a lot of counter incentives, as you say, a lot. And to my estimate, we ought to be, you know, somewhat in the business of increasing those. And one of them is, you know, by the way, this whole, you know, American debate about decoupling, you know, trying to get the Chinese out of our economy and cut all these links with China on the commercial side, I think that has the perverse effect of, you know, telling the Chinese that, gosh, you know, I mean, in other words, we're losing economic leverage, right? If we go to war with each other, all those ties will be broken, right?

Yeah. Hey, I don't know if you know this one law, but Frederick Boston. the great French economist of the 19th century, said, if goods do not cross borders, armies will. Yeah, and that's exactly the right. And so in a way, we should be doing the opposite. We should be pulling the Chinese clothes. We should be integrating with their companies and so forth. And if we do that, I mean, obviously, carefully, judiciously, you know, I get it.

You have to do your due diligence here. I do think there are a lot of commercial areas we should, we can and should and have, you know, cooperated in. You know, by the way, Boeing has gotten incredibly rich selling aircraft to China and setting up all their airports and all the rest of it. But the point is, if you're well integrated with them, again, you disincentivize this war. You make it clear that we are cooperating with China. We want to build a more prosperous future together. But here, by decoupling like crazy and derisking, you know, that's the new way of putting it, what you're basically doing is telling the Chinese, go ahead with your war. because we're you know the links are already cut right we've already lost all our leverage there but

i mean there's so much more that can be down by the way Taiwan i think should have the same approach that is they should say to the chinese and by the way there was some you know just a few months ago one of the former presidents of Taiwan went to the mainland it was a very this is mying joe he was president of Taiwan and by the way when he was president uh the cross straight tensions went way down because he more or less agreed to cooperate with China and pursue a lot of joint initiatives with China. And that was very successful. He met with Xi Jinping. He had a good meeting with him. This was in December 2015. But if the Taiwanese make an effort to try to get along, you know, as it were, feel Beijing's pain and, you know, try to check a few of their box, not all, but a few,

I think that would go a long way toward, you know, again, creating these disincentives. By the way, Taiwanese have been extremely active on the mainland in fueling the, you know, this Chinese economic colossus. A lot of China's best companies and most successful have, you know, if you look at their roots, they have some relationship to Taiwan. It's that, why did that happen? It's actually not that mysterious, right? I mean, Taiwan, you know, maintain their sort of capitalistic, globalist market-wise posture

and Chinese benefit enormously. They want to continue to benefit from that, right? They don't want to close off from the world. So if the Taiwanese are clever, they'll continue to integrate. And so will we and really lower the chances of war in that way. It's a wise part. Yeah. Totally agree.

And, you know, I understand there's so much, you know, And well-deserved backlash against globalization because so much of it is the globalization of government and the globalization of regulation and corruption and war and all of this sick stuff. You know, you wouldn't want Bill Clinton and W. Bush and Barack Obama to be in charge of your government, you know, during – but at the same time, that's really an entirely separate issue from the globalization of business and capital and trade and production and labor and wealth and prosperity. And that's what we want to encourage. And those two things shouldn't have to go together that, oh, well, no, you have to kill four million Arabs and Afghans if you want to have free trade with China because those things all go in a package together somehow. That's only because that's what the Republicans and Democrats say, not because it has to be that way. Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, Scott, so much of this is the sort of, you know, the war machine, the military industrial complex that Eisenhower spoke of. I mean, this is just, you know, boy, do they love China. I mean, they like Russia a lot these days, too, but they love China because you can never have enough, right? If you're going to try to defend Taiwan, you know, you could spend, you could double or triple our defense budget, and you probably still wouldn't get there. By the way, a couple more points from this report, though, that I think are, that if you don't mind. Oh, man, I got some too, but do go on. Okay, okay. Yeah, there's two areas here, which I think, you know, on the military. in aspects of military strategy that I think are worth discussing.

One is that, you know, I commend the authors of the report because they basically did do some due diligence and investigated the submarine side of this a bit more. And I've been for years saying that we are not really understanding the full dimensions of how U.S. submarines would fight. And, you know, I think people have erroneously suggested that submarines basically solve this whole problem, that all we need are, you know, 30 nuclear attack submarines out there. They can go right into the straight. They can destroy any amphibious invasion, and that's the end of it. I have strongly disagreed with that for several reasons.

But in this report, they're substantially more realistic than previous reports, and they realize that we would lose a lot of submarines if this war came about. Again, they worst case did that we might lose 15 submarines. That's, you know, about a third of our nuclear submarine force. That would be devastating. I think it could actually be worse, unfortunately. But the main reason, and they do underline this in the report, and I commend them on this, they say that submarines, the problem with submarines is the weapons load out. The number of torpedoes and missiles they carry is fairly small.

And then they have to go all the way back to port, and these locations, are generally known to load out new munitions. So they basically say you cannot win this war with submarines. They are quite correct, and I've been saying that for many years. And by the way, I'm completely ignorant about this, but the question came up in my mind. They cannot be resupplied on the high seas by surface ships. It has to be at port back at Guam or Honolulu or something. Excellent question.

And, yeah, I mean, there are some fine details here that really, you know, can be probed. And believe me, many U.S. Navy strategists have been mulling this over. How can we get those submarine supply? By the way, the German submarine force in World War II had this huge problem. They were having a field day, you know, shooting up U.S. ships all over the East Coast, including near where I live in Rhode Island. But actually, you know, so they were extremely effective against our ships generally, but they kept running out of torpedoes.

And so the Germans came up with this very elaborate method to actually send what they called milk cows, these giant supply submarines over, and then they would try to somehow move torpedoes from one submarine to another, which proved to be very difficult. So in a way, we have a similar problem. It could even be worse. But yes, we've thought about it. Yes, we do have submarine tenders. But, you know, the truth is the Chinese will, you know, the Chinese are onto this. They know that we have this problem. And surely they will put the largest. possible effort to try to destroy these, any facilities that we create for this purpose and the ships that carry these munitions, highly prized munitions, torpedoes.

And by the way, the report, I think rightly again, points out the fact that torpedoes sometimes don't work and that torpedoes are extremely expensive and that China will target our depots that have torpedoes. By the way, the report also, they recommend that we prepare to load out torpedoes from like, you know, various civilian ports. By the way, where are those civilian ports? You know, on these little Pacific islands or obscure places off of Japan, for example. Okay. But like, you realize, you know, when you're starting to load torpedoes in fishing village X,

that fishing village X has now a big target on it. So, you know, in effect, they're putting civilians in danger by advising them to do this kind of thing. But I would just also emphasize, you know, China's come a long way in the way that they fight against submarines. They really have put a huge effort now into hunting submarines. It's not that they're on par with us, but they are, they are, they have, you know, the technologies and the requisite capabilities to, you know, move in that direction. like for instance, with a very successful light frigate, you know, Corvette program. Again, they have the largest Coast Guard in this world. I can document with evidence that this Coast Guard is ready to join the fight.

And traditionally, Coast Guard elements are critical. But here's the biggest thing, actually, probably China would close the straits with sea mines. And that would be almost impenetrable for submarines. So we couldn't even get our submarines into the straits to try to sink this invasion fleet. And by the way, the water extremely shallow in the Taiwan Strait, very shallow water, not good for nuclear submarine operations, that they become much more vulnerable. So the waters around Taiwan really do not, you know, support the idea that submarines could be a major factor. That's interesting. I never heard that discuss before, and I guess I always just pictured deep ocean there. So how shallow are we talking?

It's about 100 meters, which is just not, not, yeah, that is not really deep enough. When you said close it with mines, I'm thinking, well, geez, you could just go under them or something. But you're saying, no, they could really mine the place from the seabed to the surface. Now, the east side is much deeper. And there, you know, it's true, submarines probably could play a bigger role on the east side. But you know the Chinese have thought a lot about this. But yes, I believe they would absolutely close the straits. And that's one reason I think our submarine losses could be even worse than what

they project in this report. But again, they wisely show that submarines actually are not the key to this, even though many have portrayed it in a kind of, you know, whatever, hunt for Red October kind of a surge of enthusiasm. You know, look, nuclear submarines is part of our military that I do fully support. They are, you know, the most, you know, lethal and cost-effective force for our Navy, but they are not decisive here. Now, what is decisive? They claim, the author of this claim, that bombers are actually what we need to invest in very heavily. And here, again, I disagree strongly. I think this is a big mistake in this report. We can talk about that more, but, you know, I don't want to. Yeah, let's put that off for a second because I'm taking a note because I do want to talk about that.

In fact, I was supposed to take this note earlier, and I forgot. So I'm glad you're reminded. me. But first, I want to talk about these ships because, and this goes back to the question of nuclear war here, because I'm picturing Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or, for that matter, Robert F. Kennedy, or Marco Rubio or anybody else sitting in that chair

having to decide what to do after we lose two or three or four or more aircraft carriers to the bottom of the Pacific full of thousands of sailors. I think, what, minimum seven, as many as 14,000 sailors on one of those things?

I think it's more like 5,000, but in the whole carrier group, you're right. How did I get that high in number? Sorry about that. Go ahead. It is that larger. And by the way, I just want to say, in the way, they projected, again, I think it could be worse than this. They projected worst case, we lose four carriers. But they said in a typical scenario, usually within the first week, we lose one to two aircraft carriers. They said, so that is the average, you know, if you will, the base. And if people go look at it, by the way, again, sorry to interrupt, but it's, it's, called the First Battle of the Next War, War Gaming, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It's at CSIS.org. And there's a video at the top where the guy gives an overview.

And he says in that short YouTube that, yeah, in their scenario, I guess they ran it 24 times over and over again. But I guess it's sort of standard that they lose one or two carriers, huh? Yeah. And I mean, I think, you know, it's, again, having, I worked for two decades for the U.S. Navy. you know, this, you know, this physically hurts me to imagine. And by the way, I've thought a few times that if a carrier is damaged and, you know, these are very hard to sink. So it might well be damaged and be just sitting there. You know, you can't operate. It loses its combat effectiveness. But it's sitting there floating, you know, imagine those guys out there. And of course, you know how our military is. We're going to rescue them, right? So we probably send out half the

U.S. Navy to rescue this carrier. Well, that, of course, becomes a huge target. And believe me, the Chinese are ready to use that against us. I actually did read a thing about how they tried to sink one of their old carriers, and it just took a week or two hitting the damn thing. They couldn't sink it. And they finally had to just put bombs on board to get rid of it. Right. These carriers, they're hard to sink, very hard to sink. But they're easy to put out of action. You may need a minor hit to take, you know, to put a hole in the deck, and that makes them inoperable.

So let me ask you about this because... For a long time, been a very poor investment for the U.S. Navy, I've advocated. But you also raised the point of what would our decision makers do, and I do want to come back. Oh, yeah, no, put that off for a second, because I want to get to how these ships would get sunk too for a minute here. And then, yeah, we'll get to Mark, President Rubio in a minute. But you guys know that I consider the Defend the Guard movement, led by the combat vets

at Bring Our Troops Home.U.S. and defend the guard.us to be the most important thing happening in American politics today. Simply put, this law would nullify the empire by preventing the state governors from handing their national guard troops over to the president for foreign combat without an official declaration of war from the Congress. We've made great progress getting it out of committee and even past the state senate in Arizona. Help support bring our troops home and defend the guard at bring our troops home.us and defend the guard.us. and their director of field operations, Diego Rivera, teaches a political leadership class

that is the most effective training like it anywhere. He's still a soldier, only now his mission is peace. So heads up all you anti-war vets, we've got a mission for you. Find out all about their upcoming training sessions and help support at bring our troops home.us and defend the guard.us. Hey, all, Scott Horton here for the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org. I'm the director. Then we've got Sheldon Richmond, Kyle Anzalone, Keith Knight, Lori Calhoun, Jim Bovard, Connor, Connor Freeman, Will Porter, Patrick Meafarlane, and Tommy Salman's on our staff, writing and podcasting.

And we've also got a ton of other great writers, too, like Walter Block, Richard Booth, Boss Spleet, Kim Robinson, and William Ben Wagonin. We've published eight books so far, including my latest, Hotter Than the Sun, Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, and Keith Knight's Newfound. Voluntarius Handbook. And we've got quite a few more great ones coming soon. Check out Libertarian Institute.org slash books. It's a whole new era. We libertarians don't have the power, but we do have enough influence to try to lead the left and the right to make things right. Join us at libertarian institute.org. So I read this thing years back, so I forget all the details, but there was something like the Starburst or the sunkissed or some kind of candy or drink-named missile that the Israelis had given American blueprints to the Chinese, or sold them at a

premium, to the Chinese. And it was said that these supersonic sea skimming missiles had a long enough range that they could just take out our carriers at a range, you know, further than the range of our F-18s. So, in other words, rendering them obsolete, whether you take them out or not, they can't get close enough to launch their planes to even matter in the fight. essentially. And then, wait, there's a second part of that question, which is I read about how, well, of course, ballistic missiles used to be a lot more difficult to steer at a small target like a aircraft

carrier even at sea, but nowadays, not so much. And so they could, and there's essentially no defense, there's some machine gun defense and so forth against lateral incoming missiles, but not against ballistic missiles falling on your And so that essentially, I think it was the warner, John Dolan, was saying that just renders the fleet obsolete. They can't defend against ballistic missiles. They can't get within range of supersonic sea skimming missiles in the hands of the Chinese. And so that's it. There goes your battle right there.

Yeah. And I mean, look, you know, again, I worked for the Navy for 20 years. I wish I could say you're wrong here. But I think you're mostly right. And by the way, here's what's really devastating. Even the people at CSIS, the authors of this report First Battle, if you look at the details, they admit, and they say this several times, that the surface fleet in particular, is extremely vulnerable. And at one point in the report, they conclude that in their scenario that more or less every major U.S. surface vessel in the Western Pacific might be destroyed in this war. and it's likely, as you said, through a combination of ballistic missiles targeting,

which, and now this has gone even a step further than last time most people checked in on it. Now, you know, China seems to be ramping up its hypersonic glide vehicle weapon, the DF-17, which I think is, you know, it's confirmed as also targets ships. You know, this is even harder to shoot down because it skips off the atmosphere. but then throw in a combination of very lethal anti-ship cruise missiles, by the way, superior to our anti-ship cruise missiles. This is the YJ-12 and YJ-18, which, as you pointed out, have very long range coming from a variety of different vectors, you know, and that's just these are shot, you know, it can be launched

by their, by, you know, their bombers or, you know, fighter attack aircraft, by their submarines, you know, by so many different elements and then throw in mines and torpedoes too. And you just have a situation where basically no U.S. surface vessels can get anywhere near to the island. And, you know, the CSIS report more or less says this. You know, they admit this. And that's why, you know, they retreat to this kind of, honestly, somewhat bizarre position where they're like, look, we don't want any forces forward. You know, they actually say at one point, more air forces we flood into the bases like Guam, and they all get destroyed. So he's actually like says, we don't want to put forces forward.

I, you know, I more or less agree with that, you know, nor do we want to put surface forces forward. So they'd say, well, we've got to put it all in on bombers, you know, which I believe is rather bizarre. I mean, it's almost like a Dr. Strangelove moment, you know, if you remember those lumbering B-52s, is that really, you really think that, you know, I read a thing, Lyle, where- It's surreal. Michelle Flournoy, who was the big champion of the Afghan surge and was the Deputy Secretary of Defense for policy there and could have been the Secretary of Defense under Obama, but she turned it down because she wanted to be the Secretary of Defense under Hillary Clinton. But anyway, she said, okay, yes, they can sink our entire Navy. But that's why we should build a whole bunch of B-1 bombers. And I don't think she said B-20 ones, the new ones. I think she just said we need a bunch of B-1s. And we ought to be able, the goal should be, we can sink their entire Navy in 72 hours.

And then we don't even need to engage with them with our Navy. We can keep our Navy safe for just laundering money purposes and not ever use it. Yeah, I mean, you know, if we go to the bomber issue just quickly, I, you know, I really think it's rather a hairbrained argument. And by the way, just to show you how hairbrained this is, the CSIS authors, they agree that we don't have nearly enough bombers to do this, nor do we have enough of the munitions that the bombers would launch. And therefore, there is a project underway where they literally launch missiles from out the back of a cargo plane. In other words, you'd like take a C-17 transport, you throw a couple missiles in the back, and then you launch it with a parachute out

the back, and that is supposed to, you know, save the day or somehow, you know, if that sounds really ridiculous to you. It is ridiculous. Well, so, okay, so we were talking about this. But I could take, let me take the bomber argument a bit further. Oh, go ahead. Well, wait. Yeah, no, stick to, stick with the dragon thing for a second there. So we were talking about this with Kyle Anzalone on the show

last week. And then the idea was that by doing this, it meant that they could essentially turn every C-130 into a bomber, multiplying their fleet by huge numbers of times and so forth. So tell us specifically why that's

so hairbrained to do well i mean it's uh you know i mean look every for every uh well let's begin at the beginning here these missiles right um they're coming down were very predictable trajectory a vector if you will you know the chinese know where they're coming from uh they know where they're intended to hit okay so you know for one they're going to have you know good point defenses right i mean they can shoot these missiles down. These missiles, from everything I can tell, they are subsonic. Most of the Chinese missiles these days, or many of them are supersonic. You know, those are hard to shoot down. These subsonic missiles, I'm thinking, again, coming down a predictable trajectory and traveling, you know, over a very long distance, I think they're going to be relatively easy to shoot down. Even, you know,

a Chinese aircraft could shoot them down, but they should have, I think, not too much difficulty. So the idea that you're going to show up in this, you know, somewhere around, you know, just west of Guam and start launching, you know, giant volleys of missiles. And by the way, how do you target a missile from that far away? And especially if the Chinese fleet, like I said, amounts to, you know, 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 ships out there, you think that this missile can discriminate? I think they'll be lucky if they hit any ship, much less the ship that they intended to ship a hit. And moreover, even if they did all hit, they probably wouldn't be successful. And this is discussed quite a bit in the report that, you know, the only missile they think has even a close to a chance is something called the L. Rasm,

long range attack ship or something, munition, L. Rasm. And they say if in the best case scenario in 2026 we might have 500 of these missiles so you know the idea that we're going to have you know 5,000 of these sitting around ready to go and that they're all going to hit i mean it's just completely fanciful and then i haven't even discussed the idea that gosh the chinese might want to destroy all these aircraft right um and yes they can increasingly reach out i mean they have the fighter attack aircraft that has actually much longer range than ours do they can fly out a thousand miles into the Pacific and go after these bombers. I'm not saying, you know, they would take losses trying to do it. And, you know, we would try to contest. But you think our bombers are invulnerable?

No, they're not. And moreover, this is a kind of one of these wrinkles at the end of the study where they're like, well, right now China doesn't really have the ability to attack our bomber bases in Hawaii and Alaska, places like that. They agree that China can pretty much flatten Guam. That they agree on and you know i i'm glad that they're candid about that um but okay so now we have bombers flying out of alaska and and hawaii Diego garcia or you know the australia you know these very distant locations by the way those bombers require uh aerial refueling and yes the chinese are absolutely going to go after the aerial refuelers because they know that that's a you know soft rib if you will but um uh do you think that they might

want to strike those bases in alaska hawaii and australia yes you know so this is going to be a huge priority for chinese military development going forward and they already have you know the submarine launched cruise missiles which you know i would think you would get dozens of uh cruise missile volleys being shot into both alaska and hawaii potentially in the first few days of this conflict and put those air bases out of action you think those bombers are sheltered in any way now they're all just sitting out there on the tarmac. Well, and law, I mean, I don't know how easy it is. This may not.

Sorry, one last point. Like, you know, and so the CSIS gamers say, well, you know, now we have to start hardening Alaska and Hawaii. And, you know, I mean, this game just goes on and on and on. But it becomes, you know, even more and more insane. The costs go spiraling up and up and up. So, look, we should look. we should have robust defenses in the Pacific absolutely we should defend Alaska and Hawaii no question about it but we should defend them against attack not so that we can uh try this

hairbrain scheme with Taiwan which it really is hairbrained I was just going to say I don't know how easy it is to swap out the warheads but if they have three stage missiles that can reach out and touch me in Austin Texas then that means that they could hit Alaska if they you know have to put a nuke on it they could put a I don't know how many hundred pound bomb on one of those right yeah and by the way for my friends in texas they are you know thinking hard about how to put hurt onto texas you know look that we can put hurt onto sechuan and hunan then they want the same capability and actually i was tweeting about this the other day and i am tweeting every day at leo goldstein you you know what i was saying was china really

badly wants i think to have a more or less permanent submarine presence in the atlantic why well because they want to be able to range Texas, Florida, Norfolk with these, you know, sea-launched cruise missiles and, you know, have a kind of parallel escalation. So if we're going to strike into targets in China, then we are going to, they're going to hit targets in Texas, Louisiana, and all the rest. And that, you know, is a new reality that should be dawning on people. But that, you know, that's where we're headed. If we're going to have a cold war with China, you know, we mean, may not like where this is going. By the way, a major conclusion of the CSIS study, and here I think they're quite correct, is that they say, look, and we should come back to this point of what does

this mean for decision makers, but they say, look, you've got to realize the days when we could just fire cruise missiles or whatever into China en masse, they say are, and, you know, even fly aircraft over China are over. He said, we should plan to fight this war with Taiwan. That's what they advise without striking the mainland. I mean, think about that. So that's a major change. They're saying we might try to defend Taiwan, but we should do this without striking the mainland generally, or if we have to, just the mainland ports. Now, look, there's a kernel of wisdom there. I mean, I don't think this war should be fought at all. But if it is fought, yes, it has to be fought extremely carefully, right? We don't want escalations. So, you know, there are parts to this

report that are that are important to well and and look at me they start off going yeah we'd lose hundreds of planes and dozens of scores of ships and including carriers and things and i don't know if they would you know break a carrier and half and sink it but um anything like uh you know sinking scores of american ships what would any american president do they would think about themselves, right? That's a public choice theory. There is no national interest. It's just the interest of the idiot individuals making the decisions. And any president would have to beat his chest and start dropping nukes if we lost half our Navy like you're talking about here or anything like that. There is this very dark scenario, which I don't see any American strategist

talking. They're all talking about would China resort to nukes? Would they? Well, it's a good question. And if they were really losing, they probably would. I think the Americans are more dangerous, That's right. If the Americans are really losing, I'll tell you, if we lose four carriers and half our Navy, absolutely, nukes will be on the table big time. In fact, that's the, that's how the war ends in this book by Admiral Stavridis, this 2034. People ought to read that. I don't agree with a lot of what's in the book, but that is right. It could end with a nuclear use. But one thing I want to highlight here, and here, you know, here I'm quite critical of this study, because in a way, you know, I think they've kind of packaged this up really nicely and try to sell it to the American public here as like, hey, you know, we probably could do this, you know, so we should just get ready for it. And if you do, if you do X, Y, and Z, as we advise, we will, you know, we can do this without bankrupting ourselves and without, you know, causing, you know, horrible war. And they say, well, we have no opinion on whether Taiwan should be defended or not. We don't render an opinion

on that. We're just saying what it would take. So, you know, that's an interesting way. to put it. But, you know, again, if you read the fine print, you realize they actually are setting us up for this war. But because one of the things they say is, and this, by the way, pertains to Japan too, but they say if the U.S. president hesitates at all, then we lose. They say, so they're kind of setting it up so that in the first, you know, hours of this operation, the president has to go all in. That's more or less what they advise in the report. Any delay will allow China to win. So unfortunately, I'm very worried that, you know, if this goes off, and as we've discussed, it could go off in any number of forms, you know, all-out invasion is just one possibility, you know, that the president, I'm afraid, would not be acquainted with all the real costs here, would not be able to think this out, and would be told he basically had an hour to decide the fate of the world. And, you know, emotion might take over. And, you know, we might be on a glide path there to, you know, all-out, war, all out, you know, nuclear war as possible. I think, I don't think that's that likely,

but we may, you know, again, have this horrible moment where we discover what a bad position this is. You know, I've said this again and again, this is the wrong place to draw the red line. It's such unfavorable situation for U.S. forces. We're asking them to do the impossible here. So I don't think a U.S. President should be in that position. He should have weeks and even months to figure this out. And like I said, there are many ways to approach this, which do not involve you know, World War III, a calm, cooler reaction would realize that Taiwan is not crucial to U.S. national security. And even if we could agree that Japan and Philippines are, if not crucial, but important, these areas can be defended and defended quite easily and defended without

bankrupting ourselves. And moreover, China has no intention of invading either Philippines or Japan. So whereas they clearly do, and they're very open about it, they clearly have an intent to, you know, to, you know, defeat and, and if you will, conquer or control Taiwan because they view it at province. So it's a very stark difference. And people on the other side, you know, Bridge Colby and people like that who argue for the maximalist, you know, defense of Taiwan, they always say, well, this is just a stepping stone toward taking over the Pacific and the whole world. You know, I don't agree with that at all. I think that's very, very far off. Yeah. Now, the lesson of World War II is that everyone is Hitler. You might have thought that

Hitler was an exception in some ways, but no, everyone is Hitler and everyone must be dealt with in the same way that Hitler should have been dealt with preemptive war. Right. And here, you know, the, looking at Ukraine is important too because, you know, again, you know this very well, Scott, is, you know, people are saying, well, you know, if we don't stop Putin in Ukraine, he'll roll all the way, you know, to the English channel. Really? You really think that? I mean, you know, I don't even think he would, you know, he's humbled, humiliated. At this point, I don't even think he would dare attack the Baltics, but there, you know, the argument that Italy, Germany,

and France are somehow under threat is completely ridiculous. And that is the same circumstance in the Pacific where Taiwan, yes, Taiwan is under threat. They have some hard decisions to make. They should opt for compromise. But no, Japan is not under threat. Philippines is not under threat. Korea is not under threat. And we have to recognize that and look at this objectively. Yeah. All right. I'm going to let you go after one more here, which is about the U-Sinukes. there's this thing they call it the nuclear taboo sure harry truman nuked a couple of cities one time but uh other than that though no one would ever use nukes again in fact i read an article in the atlantic today about how people have putin all wrong there's this weird analogy about a

story from his childhood with the cornered rat going after him and now he's the cornered rat and you better not corner him but really he's the frightened boy he'll run away and so we should not worry says the atlantic that he might use nukes nukes if we push him too far. Because, geez, come on, Lyle, nuclear war, it's unthinkable, man. And yet, so you were at the Navy War College there, and you dealt with these guys constantly, I guess, advising them, right? And it's their job to use these things if it comes down to it, right?

So I wonder if you can kind of give us insight into that. I've heard it said that to a general or an admiral, it's just the next biggest bomb on the shelf. And if the last one didn't work, you resort to this one. And to them, I mean, think about a taboo. What is a taboo? You can break one of those, no problem. And they will, and they would.

And so to people who think it's unthinkable, they're wrong. But then other people say, no way, it's just unthinkable because everybody knows. Once you start using them, cities start going up. And nobody wants to do that. Not the worst leader of the worst country would ever do such a thing ever again. And so they can't all be right. So what do you think? Yeah. I think that analysis you described from the Atlantic is ridiculous. I mean, it's childish. It's extremely naive. You know, and I think this, whoever wrote this, like, you know, somehow is not acquainted with all the incredible risk taking that took place and just how close we were in so many circumstances, including on the U.S. side, by the way, you know, it's

many circumstances where use of nuclear weapons, you know, even the NBN Fu, you know, of all places, you know, in the Korean War again and again, they thought very carefully and, you know, they were more or less set to use them. So, uh, yeah, this is extremely reckless. I don't know, you know, I don't know what they're thinking. I was at Naval War College. We gamed out a Ukraine war. This is an unclassified war game seminar discussion about Russian nuclear use, and we actually gamed out, you know, war over Ukraine, and, you know, more or less universally agreed that if Putin was losing in Ukraine, that yes, he would resort to nuclear use, you know, not strategic weapons, but tactical weapons. And, you know, I stand by that analysis, and then it wasn't

just me. It's in the report, actually. It's, I think it's. even published online. So I think we were right then. And, you know, I'll just pass this on, too. I was on a recently on a track two call with some leading experts from China who are experts on Russia. I mean, this fellow who made the comment, I won't name any names, but he follows Russia as closely or more closely than I do. And he probably has more insider interactions than I do. And this Chinese said, if you think that Putin and the Russian military leaders fear using nuclear weapons, you are dead wrong. They are ready to use them. And I think here he meant tactical nukes.

And I've heard this many times from Chinese, too, that they fear that Russia has been already very close to using nuclear weapons. And then turn this back onto Taiwan. And, you know, I've seen more and more signs, including, you know, writing openly in PLA Daily, you know, Jeffon Jumbao, they say, I have an article from 2019 that says, oh, looks like the U.S. is reactivating their, their tactical nuclear weapons program that they are, you know, putting these aboard submarines. These are aimed at us most probably. And yes, that will, quote, cause other countries to consider deploying tactical nuclear weapons. And, and although, you know, we don't. don't have firm evidence that China is deploying these. I think the logic is most likely they are. And when I was in China back in April, I sat around with some of their foremost nuclear strategists. And when I said, are you thinking hard

about what limited nuclear war with the United States? And I said, yes, we are thinking about that, which really stressed me out because, you know, in previous, all the previous years I had such conversations, they'd say, oh, no, no, no, China would never do anything like that. And it could never possibly, you know, there could never be a war between the U.S. and China. You know, they would be very, how to put it, you know, they would say such thinking is ridiculous. But no, in this case, they were like, yes, absolutely, we are thinking about that, you know, with a straight face. And I had another, you know, I asked about China's nuclear buildup to another senior strategist in

Shanghai and very influential. thinker, and he looks at me and says, without missing a beat, he says, we are preparing for the worst case on Taiwan. All right. Now, so let me ask you about this, and this goes back a couple of years to Trump tearing up the INF treaty, and it was said, I forget if I ever knew your take on this, it was said that the Russians were violating the treaty because they had made a missile with too long of a range. And they're supposed to not make any medium-range nuclear missiles other than, I guess, sea launch, but no land-launched medium-range missiles.

And instead of saying, hey, we demand more and better inspections and whatever regime you're supposed to do to enforce treaties, they said, aha, we're tearing up the treaty. And they tore it up, and this was Reagan's great achievement from 87 that kept medium-range nuclear missiles, I guess all nuclear missiles, out of Europe, other than at sea offshore. uh, you know, ever since that time. And I forget now where I first learned this, but I've learned it a few different places since then anyway. I'd like to give proper credit if I can, but anyway, um, the idea was that we don't want these for Europe at all. And neither do the Russians. The Americans and the Russians both want them for China. And the Russians and the Chinese are getting along pretty well, but still they got a big Siberia to defend there. And that this is for their frontier and that then the Americans want to put them in the Philippines.

So you're talking about the Chinese and to you, literally personally, recently, yep, we're thinking about having a nuclear war with you. My question is, do you think that might be because they tore up the INF Treaty and they're openly talking about putting medium-range nuclear missiles in the Philippines for pointing to China with? Yes, yes. These are, you know, I monitored what the Chinese were saying during this period when we were scrapping all these treaties. And, and, yeah, they, you know, it's often said, well, China has no interest in arms control, but that's not true.

They take in a big interest in arms control, including, like, they signed the comprehensive test ban treaty, and there really are a lot of people in China strategists who are strongly feel that arms control is crucial. And, you know, if for any reason they're leery about it, it's because they realize that our nuclear arsenal is, you know, whatever, you know, whatever seven or eight times what or more larger than the Chinese arsenal, fair enough. But they, look, they absolutely were very upset. I know that China was the kind of main impetus for why we left this treaty regime. As you said, we kind of used a technical excuse with getting out of the INF with the Russians, but everybody knows that that was what we were trying to say. By the way, I'm sorry. Can you help me with my footnotes for that? What's that for?

Yeah, like how you know that for sure so well. Sorry, what? The reason they tore up the treaty was because they wanted them for China, not for each other in Europe. All right. Well, if you go back to that period, I guess that was a lot of 2018, 2019, there were many statements coming out of the administration. I think John Bolton was saying this every few days. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but he was saying very frequent. I think he even flew to Moscow to explain this at one point, that, oh, you know, China, really the Russians should

be worried about China and that they also should not, you know, like this treaty anymore. We all need to get out of it. So, yeah, there were plenty of informal signals that China and, you know, strategists across the spectrum in, uh, who look at the Pacific, we're saying, oh, gosh, you know, we have to have this buildup of intermediate range, uh, missiles to counter China since China has, uh, you know, has quite a few of these, uh, shorter range missiles. So I think this was, uh, this is opening up Pandora's box. And was I right, by the way, Lyle, about why Russia wanted them to was for? line in their frontier yeah i think russia wanted to stay in the treaty um you know and then they

were reasonably pleased with the fact that they could wield you know a fair amount of nuclear striking power from from the oceans or from you know and the various fleets like you said they weren't constrained by this treaty so i i'm sure that russia wanted to stay in to the treaty and that they would have stayed in if we had given them an opportunity like you said we kind of just gave them short notice and said, we're out of here and that was it. And by the way, I would just say that that applied to many of these treaties, you know, over time, you know, going all the way back to ABM, you know, trashing the ABM treaty under Bush. But I mean, you know, open skies, all these other ones, you know, it's really terrible. These treaties, you know,

I don't think arms control solves everything, but it is very important. It's a lot of it is through the process. But I mean, it's, you know, building trust. preventing you know these incredibly costly arms races so i would argue we need much more arms control not less we should get back into these regimes like open skies uh by the way i i've encountered in china uh some specialists saying hey why can't we have a conventional forces uh treaty the way you you had that in europe after the cold war you know so many tanks here so many artillery here and why can't we have that between the u.s and china for the asia pacific so that we prevent this, you know, kind of huge arms race that's starting to unfold, you know,

that's going in all these dangerous directions like artificial intelligence and all that. I mean, so we need a lot more arms control, not less, and more, and that we need more engagement too, across the board. Yep. All right. Well, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time again on the show. I'll always learn so much, and it terrifies the hell out of me. Well, I always like talking with you, Scott, so hope we'll connect again soon.

Okay. Really appreciate it. Thanks again. All right, you guys, that is Lyle Goldstein, and he is at defense priorities. And we are talking about this one at CSIS, which he's critiquing here. He wasn't part of it. The first battle of the next war. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A.

APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, ScottHorton.org, and Libertarian Institute. org.