Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 9/4/24 Lyle Goldstein: We Are Again Living under Cold War Conditions

Episode Date: September 7, 2024

Scott interviews Lyle Goldstein about the return of Cold War conditions between the U.S. and its nuclear-armed adversaries. They discuss the Biden administration’s nuclear strategy pivot, the danger of what’s happening with North Korea, the developments that brought us back to this dangerous nuclear situation and the way we can back away from the edge. Discussed on the show: “Biden Approved Secret Nuclear Strategy Refocusing on Chinese Threat” (New York Times) “How Bush Pushed North Korea to Nukes” (Antiwar.com) Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen “Toward a Global Realignment” (The American Interest) 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: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show okay you guys on the line i've got lia goldstein and he is at defense priorities and at the cost of war project and before that he was at the naval war college and man he's a real expert on especially America's great adversary, thermonuclear powers, Russia and China, and American policy, military, doctrine, revolving around those countries and all that kind of stuff. And so, welcome back to the show. How are you doing, Al?

Oh, I'm good, Scott. Thanks for having me back. Well, I'm happy to have you here. So the occasion, though, is bad. And that's usually the case when David Sanger writes something. And in this case, Biden, he says, has adopted an entire new nuclear weapons doctrine or strategy. I don't think they put out a new nuclear posture review reflecting this or not yet. But they say that essentially they're reorienting toward China and toward North Korea, not away from Russia, but including China and North Korea, more because both of them are building up their nuclear weapons forces rapidly. And he says in here that, I guess, CIA told him or whoever told him, that they think that the North Koreans have 60 nukes now, which is the highest number I've ever heard on that.

And so, you know, I guess, tell us everything you know and everything you think about what is really the change in American nuclear policy here. Well, yeah, it's got, it's really troubling to read this article. I mean, I think it shows, you know, if nothing else, because I, you know, I don't think there's a lot of evidence there, really. But it does show that the, you know, the wheels are turning and maybe turning even more quickly on, you know, kind of preparation for, you know, nuclear contingency involving China. I mean, and I guess that's not shocking at some level, but it, you know, that this, I guess, purports to represent some kind of change in planning guidance.

And, you know, there are some kind of new intelligence estimates that that appear in this article. You know, by the way, one wonders that I think in the first paragraph or something of this article, he talks about this is a highly classified study that he's talking about, which makes you wonder why Sanger himself doesn't get arrested for outing such information. But look, I think it's somewhat thin gruel, this part about we can get in the details here, but he's saying that part of the motivation is the concern that, that Russia and China and North Korea will collaborate and collude in, in, within a kind of nuclear contingency, that seems, you know, extremely far-fetched to me, to the point of being, you know, kind of ridiculous. And I think it's based on no evidence at all. It sounds to me like a classic, you know, we're, you've been in this game a long time. It sounds like a classic, you know, I need more money, you know, to Ching, please give me all the money I need for to double my nuclear forces or something. So, you know, I'm quite skeptical of that, but what I find really disturbing, Scott, I'll underline this twice.

And I think you and I talked probably a few months ago about this kind of new discourse in Washington among the think tanks really started by this. a series of reports by the Atlantic Council saying, gosh, you know, we could have a nuclear war with China. This really could go nuclear, you know, whereas that discussion had been basically dismissed previously. And so this to me is very troubling because it seems to suggest that actually there is a very strong echo of that Atlantic Council discussion, even within the Pentagon and White House at that level, so that there's a certain reality to this. now and um yeah so i'm i'm very disturbed by that we can we can chew over some of the details if you like but um one of them in particular caught my eye is the uh at least from sangers

rendering that that the uh that china is is uh indeed uh you know let's say loading up on its it's these nuclear weapons faster than then the last set of estimates so that's you know that that i think is worth noting and um you know that we're beginning to see these these nuclear tensions with china spiral more and more so and you know we can talk about russia ukraine as well but i mean there's i guess the uh rumor has it a strong rumor let's say that that russia is also changing its possibly changing its nuclear doctrine so that's uh you know lends more way to the idea that these uh nuclear uh calculations and nuclear strategy is now back in vogue and of course that also means we're going to be spending more and more money on this stuff unfortunately yeah if we

don't all get exploded to death uh which would also right right that's that's the the good news as the happy scenarios we just go broke preparing for this the the unhappy scenario is of course that we engage in in some kind of nuclear war which oh by the way Scott I got to underline one more thing in this article and again we can go through it line by line because there are some really stunning revelations if you will but one of them and maybe you'd already seen this because I know you track all this so closely Scott but it says at one point in the article it says that back in October 22, that the Biden administration assessed the chance of nuclear use in the Ukraine war as over 50 percent. I'd never seen that information. I knew that they had assessed

it as possible, but over 50 percent is what said in this singer article. Yeah, it's the same people who are helping Ukraine invade Russia right now. I mean, it's talking about playing with fire, huh? Yeah, yeah, we can, you know, I have a lot of thoughts on that issue, too. But I think, I mean, it is true that there is some kind of, kind of strange and, you know, unpleasant reverberation between these two scenarios, right? We've talked about that before between the Taiwan scenario and the Ukraine scenario. And then it's worth kind of talking through that.

But the fact that changes in Russia's approach and the fact that we're nearly at war, we're in a proxy war with Russia now, that that's having huge impact on China's calculations and China policy is very disturbing. In fact, the very last line of the article is a quote from, I think, the Secretary of State for Arms Control Mallory Stewart. And she says, well, you know, China's taking a page from Russia's book. And, you know, this has become a very common refrain in, in, you know, senior policy circles is, you know, it's sort of like, well, Russia's just doing what China's doing

and China's just doing what Russia is doing. And they're, you know, this is just not, not really the case. I mean, I'm publishing a book on this next year on the Russia-China quasi-alliance. Now, there is some there there. That is, these two countries do, you know, to a large extent, see the world in sort of similar way. But unfortunately, that's largely put down to our foolish policies. And And, you know, the countries, I mean, they are predisposed to cooperate, but not, there's very little evidence of, you know, serious cooperation in the nuclear domain, which is what's alleged in this, in this article. And maybe to some extent behind this readjustment in U.S. nuclear doctrine. all right so there's so much to go over here but i want to start with this quote this is sort of the bigger picture thing mr narang you'll have to remind me who he is in a moment mr narang uh said as he was

leaving the pentagon to david sang or he says it's possible that we will one day look back and see the quarter century after the cold war as nuclear intermission the new challenge is the real possibility of collaboration, and even collusion between our nuclear armed adversaries. So, I mean, that doesn't even mean anything. Oh, yeah, Russia, China, and North Korea, they're going to gang up and do a first strike against us or something. I think you already kind of made fun of that.

But back to the other thing, though, about how, yeah, that supposed peace between Cold Wars is as officially as it can be canceled. This is, for sure, a new Cold War, and no turning back from it. More submarines, more missiles all around, on all sides. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly the way I read it. And I must say, I was frankly shocked and rather confused by this statement from Professor Naurang.

I guess he's at MIT and was at the Pentagon. And, you know, to me, that's just kind of irresponsible, worst casing, you know, it's it's i mean i this is what happens i i'm afraid to defense planning at the highest levels because it's so secretive you know as um um as sanger says you know highly classified therefore you know nobody bothers to question any of the assumptions and you know uh what is i forgot the terms he used exactly nerang that is he said something like you know highly likely uh collaboration and collusion, when there's really no evidence of that, actually. I mean, I have picked through the evidence, so I'm pretty familiar with what it looks

like, but I mean... I'm really happy to hear you say that. I mean, David Sanger is a very unreliable narrator. And, you know, when I introduced the thing and I was saying, usually it's bad news, what I was really referring to there is how usually he's using hyperbolic language to describe Iran's civilian nuclear program for one major example. But he clearly is a very connected conduit of information from the highest levels of the Pentagon and the intelligence services, you know, pretty much constantly on nuclear issues. So he's, you know, their trumpet. So it's not necessarily

that what he says is right. It's that he's saying what they told him to tell us. And that's its own news story, right? Right. I mean, it would be nice if the people in New York Times bothered to fact check some of this. I mean, for example, there's the bizarre sentence where he says, you know, Russia and China, my goodness, you know, they're actually already having military exercises together. But, you know, if, again, if Mr. Sanger and his colleagues had bothered to check, you'd see, you know, they've been doing exercises together for going on 20 years, you know. I mean, there's nothing new about that. And it's, you know, he treats it as if they're, have suddenly come to this new new conclusion. I mean, look, look, I'm a realist and I'm not,

I'm somebody who takes both Russian military power and Chinese military power seriously. I don't dismiss that. And I don't, you know, I don't dismiss some level even of strategic collusion. And by that, I mean, I've always said that it is possible. I mean, right now, in fact, you know, I think we're seeing a lot of people are saying anyway that the Russians have achieved some pretty intense breakthroughs in the in the Dynetsk area well and if the Dinesk front crumbles and there's some kind of severe you know if it looks like possibly Ukraine is headed for a major military defeat I'm not ready to say that myself but if that is what is unfolding now I mean would China at that time possibly I don't know but could they be tempted to to

you know, put, either put more pressure on Taiwan or even to go, as it were, to go for it. You know, I do think there is some possibility of that. It's got to be in China's mind. They have, China has in the past, you know, if you look at the war, they fought against India in 1962. It seems that they fought that partly with the Cuban missile crisis in mind. It actually was going on at the exact same time. And as you might expect, and certainly, Mao calculated that the U.S. was completely distracted and unable to render India any help at all. So, I mean, the idea that China might act opportunistically is there, you know, I don't deny that. But the idea that, you know, suddenly they would launch into a second nuclear war or a third nuclear war, as this seems to suggest, I just think that's, you know, the stuff of,

science fiction or Hollywood or something like that, it has, you know, there's just no lot. On the other hand, well, I could see the Americans talking themselves into it. I mean, every time. Yeah, because, you know, you just, you know, if you want to add force capabilities, I mean, you know, a kind of, as it were, a third grade version of strategy is say, just add up all the capabilities on the other side and then, you know, double that and that's what you need to get, you know. I mean, that's, to me, unfortunately, that's pretty much what we have in Washington right now. And this, what Sanger's article is summarizing this, what do you call it,

the nuclear policy guidance or something like that. I think it, you know, not to get too wonky here, but there was a study by the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory that came out in spring 2023. I don't know if you ever saw it, Scott. It's worth taking it. a look at, but I call it, they themselves kind of refer to it as the second peer study. And basically it was meant as it was written by a lot of, you know, kind of nuclear gurus, many of whom, you know, Lawrence Livermore is one of the main, you know, maybe the main nuclear strategy think tank for the U.S. government. I had some interaction with them while I was at Naval War College. I mean, they, they are really focused on this stuff. And this seemed to be their

clarion call, you know, as it were, the wake up call of, hey, hey, it's not just Russia. that we face. It's now we face, you know, China and North Korea to some extent as serious nuclear powers that, that, you know, entails a huge rethinking of U.S. nuclear strategy and including, you know, building up more, taking missiles out of storage, you know, basically we need a crash program to revitalize U.S. nuclear weapons. So, you know, so I do refer people back, want to go through the details of that Lawrence Livermore study, it is actually unclassified and publicly available. So you can, I'm pretty sure that's all those kind of, or a lot of those recommendations were probably codified by this new doctrine. That's my suspicion anyway.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. So what's the truth of North Korea and China's nuclear weapons expansion? Well, I mean, you know, I'm, if I sound frustrated, I am because I do think there were opportunities, major opportunities in both cases to put the breaks on these programs. I don't think the world had to evolve in this way. Of course, they're both their own story. But, you know, as you know, just to give a quick summary, I mean, we had to, a series of nuclear crises with North Korea right after the Gulf War, you know, but after September 11th attacks, President Bush declared North Korea a card-carrying member, the axis

of evil, and that was what in 2002, I think, you know, in 2006, they explode their first weapon, and they've been sort of, you know, on a glide path toward building a real arsenal. And I think, you know, North Korea very quickly figured out that having a small arsenal is pretty dangerous, actually. And we gave them a good lesson on that in 2017, 2018. But I think that they have kind of, from their point of view, they've passed through the kind of quote, Valley of Vulnerability, which that was the title of my dissertation by the time. So I've been working in nuclear strategy a long time. But they've passed through this valley of vulnerability. They now have a pretty credible deterrent. They have thermonuclear weapons. They're

They have road mobile weapons. They have ICBMs. They seem to be perfecting hypersonic weapons, probably MRVs. They have kind of looking at exotic nuclear weapons. The North Koreans, I read in a Chinese Navy publication that North Korea has its own so-called Poseidon program. Poseidon is the unmanned vehicle that carries a thermonuclear weapon and sets off a tsunami off the enemy coast. So this is something Russia has been working on for about a decade. And now apparently

North Korea has its own Poseidon program, which if you look at a map, it could, you know, be quite troubling to Americans on the West Coast. So anyway, you know, North Korea is sort of speeding along. And we've, I think, you know, I'm somebody who thinks Trump was right to engage with North Korea. You know, after all that saber rattling, I commend the engagement. I do not commend the saber-rattling, but, you know, and I, we can talk about why that all fell apart, but I believe a lot of mistakes were made and that if Trump was advised, had proper advisors who were sincerely interested in reaching agreement, i.e. not John Bolton and Michael Pompeo. I think an agreement was there to be had. I really do. Because I think North Korea would like to trade

trade away some not all of its arsenal but some of its arsenal for some bennies yes i do think that was conceivable and i wrote a lot of analyses at that time now china is a different story we can go through the background there but but again uh yeah let's stop with north korea for a minute because there's so much there so um first of all i have to shout out my good friend gordon prether former chief scientists of the army and uh nuclear weapons tester from sandy and lawrence livermore U.S. Army veteran and an anti-war.com writer for many years, and a friend of mine and a great guy, and I think it's his last article for us,

is called How Bush Pushed North Korea to Nukes. And it's all Bolton in 2002. It starts with Bush and the axis of evil speech in the State of the Union. But then that fall, you had the false-accus that they had a secret uranium enrichment program and the false accusation that that was in violation of their safeguards agreement with the IAEA, which is not true, but then became the basis for Bush, the Americans, not the North Koreans, tearing up the agreed framework deal that Bill Clinton had worked out, and that was supposed to be progress toward a final resolution. And then they added sanctions, and then they put them in the nuclear posture of view for a potential first strike. And only then did Kim Jong-il in December of 2002, maybe late November. But after all of that, only then did he say, fine, I'm going to tear up the treaty in six months and kick the IAEA out of the country and start making nuclear bombs. And then what was their plan, Lyle?

Seriously, because they're going to Iraq in four months. so all they did was kick them out of the NPT and directly into plutonium bombs they never made uranium bombs they weren't enriching uranium that was all scam anyway but anyway that was the excuse for all of that and so one what the hell did they think that they were going to do i don't think i ever asked you that before and no you must know about what was going on in their thing because it wasn't just the white house right it's the strategists at the Pentagon and elsewhere are gaming all this stuff out to, to some degree, they've got to be right. And then at the end of that, if you could get back to how believable a potential deal with North Korea was in the Trump years after Bush and Obama absolutely refused to negotiate with the guy for 12 years. 16. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's kind of painful to go over this whole story. And, you know,

No, look, I don't, you know, I have friends in the, who follow North Korea closely, and they, they said, they just shook their head the whole time and said, hey, North Korea wants to go nuclear. It's, this has nothing to do with our approach. It's all just, they, they deeply, deeply want this, you know, and they will have it. Well, they didn't restart that reactor until America tore up the deal. Yeah, no, that I agree. I definitely agree with you in that, and the actions of evil and the whole, uh, You know, the, you know, it's absolutely clear to me that they, after the Iraq war, that Biasco, they, you know, their conclusion was they need to race for the bomb, no question in my mind. So, yeah, we definitely have some culpability. But after that, I'm saying whether, whether it could have been stopped, really, or whether they were taking us for a ride in 2016.

And so, I mean, my view on that, again, I think there were chances. And we were going to have to give a lot to get what we wanted, but I do think some of these things were on the table. I mean, look, I do, you know, to me, North Korea is this impossibly difficult not to crack. Crack. What I mean is it's a very, you know, difficult policy dilemma. And I've always said, like, you know, the biggest threat to North Korea is not, you know, the F-35 or some, you know, South Korean tanks or something. The biggest threat to North Korea is like K-pop. Honestly, it's these kind of soft power tools where South Korea kind of excels.

And, you know, South Korea very wealthy, you know, huge economic power on its borders, kind of a shining example of, you know, of a. a successful little country, so that's very difficult for the North Koreans to deal with. And the way I've come up with the conceptualized kind of mitigating the threat is, I mean, this sounds sort of counterintuitive, but oddly, I've been long advocating for a long time that we should actually want North Korea to be closer with Russia and China. Because my theory here is that the Russian and China could kind of restrain North Korea's worst impulses. And but also at the same, more importantly, they could reassure North Korea that they will not let, you know, they will not let the worst happen, you know, they will prevent that. And that, under that kind

of reassurance, I call it the paradox of bipolarity. That is an enhanced kind of bipolarity might allow North Korea to ease up a little and relax and become a, quote, normal state. And if it became a normal state, you know, at least it would not have its hand on the nuclear trigger. So it's probably the best we can hope for now. But, you know, well, we'll see what happens in the election. But if Trump does come back in office, I personally hope that he will reengage with North Korea. Again, I don't think, you know, like peace is not going to break out with Korean unification or anything like that. But we can hope for a reduction in tensions and a kind of like, you know, why shouldn't we have an embassy in Pyongyang? Like, we can do that.

Well, look, I mean. Normal things, yeah. I mean, it seems like this is probably the most unstable nuclear weapon state. Well, there's Pakistan. But, you know, it seems like the slightest bit of negotiation. Like, say, And this really is just the slightest bit, signing an official peace deal to end the Korean War of the 1950s, right? And, you know, trying to normalize. I mean, it always, Obama and Bush before him, they always said, well, you have to give up all your nuclear weapons first, and then we'll talk to you. Well, come on. But the thing is, and as you said, we probably couldn't talk them out of all of their nukes.

They've served them pretty well. kept regime change away this whole time, but how about negotiating down the danger that we would get into a nuclear war with them by just making friends out of them? You know, we don't care that France has nukes, because we're not going to fight France. And I'm not, well, France is a bad example,

but still, we could just ratchet down the tension between our nation, and for that matter, our allies over there, and the north, by a lot of, lot because right now it really is at a state of brinksmanship and threat and fear and danger of miscalculation and severe lack of communication between the various sides and all these other things that make war so much more risky right yeah yeah and i mean to my view there there's so many things we could do to lower tensions but it starts with kind of engagement and there i commend uh the trump administration for for taking some

risks there and sticking his neck out and i mean to me that was all a positive and and a good you know i saw him give a speech i was right there in the front row at the libertarian party convention and i didn't clap for him that much but i sure clap for him at that part and you know i don't know if you saw this but as long as trump is brought up it is an election season here and uh kamala harris has condemned him for cozying up to dictators like kim meaning just engaging in diplomacy whatsoever trying to ratchet down the threat of a nuclear war and this is called appeasement like neville chamberlain by camala harris and the democrats lyle is where we're at right now yeah i mean to me that's just sort of pure

just kind of uh domestic politics you know playing for the crowd uh you know we need we need an enemy and so forth but i mean uh but it just sounds like something that dick cheney would say about al gore or something not that it would be true about gore but that's something that a right wing militarists says about a penny waste liberal right but nope yeah i mean it's just so misguided i mean these people who are so attached to the uh you know munich analogy that at every you know at every stop they will at every opportunity they will kind of uh wield that culture cudgel but if they bothered to read some of what Winston Churchill himself said he said that appeasement is is quite appropriate and necessary and sometimes the absolute best way forward. This is what he said

in a speech before Parliament in 1950 when he was very worried that the Korean War was about to explode into, you know, back to Korea. But he thought this was going to be World War III and take down, you know, his beloved London and everything else because, but he knew that there are certain circumstances where you should absolutely negotiate. And, you know, I mean, the bottom line is when when you're a strong country and the United States is strong in every dimension and North Korea, North China, nor Russia present existential threats to us. So we, you know, instead of making them threatening or threatening them so much that they in turn threaten us, if we took a more relaxed approach to the world, kind of live and let live along the libertarian

ethic, we would, you know, be in a much better place. So, and those opportunities are, there, and I hope the next president will look to re-engage with North Korea. I mean, some kind of normalization, I think, is badly needed. It could be affected, but I do think it kind of, they hear the ties that, like, North Korea, I mean, you know, it's good if we reestablish North Korea relations to North Korea, sorry, reestablish, we've never had ties with North Korea. It's good if we go there, we should go there. But that's not going to give them, like, it's not going to hold a huge.

change their approach and we're so tight with south korea that they're never going to trust us so i do think this the road to peace here in on the korean peninsula really does run through Beijing primarily but but also partly moscow that is we need to pursue a kind of normal north korea a normal north korea you know would not have these sanctions right the sanctions i think should be by and large removed uh and uh that will start to run the north korean economy and that will help to make north korea into you know if you will a you know like a lot of other countries like a pakistan if you will or you know countries that yeah they may have nuclear weapons but they're not you know they're not ready to go to war and and you know i've actually in some ways i do i have called this in the past

the pakistan solution meaning you know we're we just sort of let the enmity pass and and just realize that they are a nuclear state. It doesn't have to involve like a formal recognition, something like that. And that really is a thing in diplomacy, right? It's almost like young kids in the teenagers, fist fight, and then you're riding bikes again in a minute. Like, what are you going to do? Sometimes you just got to make peace and pretend like all that bad stuff never happened, right? You know, if we called 10 Pakistan experts into the room, they probably eight of them would tell us that, you know, we're on the brink of huge disaster because Pakistan is a, you know, quote, failed state with a hugely unstable polity and plenty of hot-hit radicals,

you know, so, so yeah, if you want to get yourself worked up and do a lather about Pakistani nukes, you could do that too, but we don't, you know, somehow we just don't. We're kind of more mature than that. We realize, and the Indians likewise. I mean, so. Well, we don't position ourselves as enemies of the Pakistanis where they're going to come after us with them, you know, hopefully nobody wants to see a nuclear war there. But the problem is with North Korea is if they start light.

off nukes, it's going to be over Tokyo, but it's also going to be over San Francisco and Washington. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so, La, before we do China, and then I do have questions about some of the stuff you already brought up about Russia, too, but I wanted to ask you about this book, Nuclear War by Annie Jacobson. I'm sure you're familiar with it. It's based on, it's a fictional scenario of a nuclear war that is based on interviews with a lot of real experts, so it's not silly stuff. It's basically, look, this is how a nuclear war between really a couple of nukes lit off by North Korea over the United States could end up turning into a world-ending H-bomb exchange with the Russians and destroying all of Europe and Asia and the United States,

you know, North America at least. And so I wonder, my question is, well, I don't know if you read it or what you think of it, but I'm also interested if you have an opinion or like a sense of what effect that book might have had on people in Washington, because she's kind of a big shot. She's the type of lady who would write for the New Yorker or something like that. You know, they all respect her. She was able to do the rounds of all the big shows to talk about this. You know what I mean? She's written a bunch of important books before and stuff. And so did that get through to anybody's head they're like yeah we really could lose

everything like all die all of our major cities and military bases and everything that matters our civilization in an afternoon if these things get out of hand or is it not still it's like 1993 or whatever and everybody just forgot about nukes it doesn't matter anymore nobody cares

nobody's worried about it or or you know anyway because i kind of hope that you know living vicariously a little bit while reading that book that like geez i sure hope a lot of people in washington are reading this and taking it as a very serious cautionary tale you know yeah i mean um well let me commend uh jacobson for taking that on because it's incredibly important and that's the you know seems to be a very, you know, wise approach to kind of, you know, really rattling people's cages really necessary. I'm a little embarrassed that I have not looked closely at it. I have it here on my desk and it's on my list for, well, it was on my list for the summer. I haven't quite got to it. But,

but I mean, yeah, this has to be said. And I, you know, from what I understand, you know, it does have a lot of fidelity and just shows just how quickly this, spirals out of control. I mean, my view on a kind of escalation, I depart from some people who think that, you know, the nuclear war would be just over in a few hours and that would be the end of the planet. I don't really see it that way. I think that particularly the big powers, but even North Korea, I think, has a kind of, you know, set of branch plans. And the first is kind of a set of small exchanges to kind of wake everybody up and then it progresses from there. personally i i kind of more troubled by my scenario i mean maybe it'd be best to just get it all over

with an end the planet you know quickly for all of us but this kind of slow rolling armageddon is truly terrifying and and what really bothers me scott is i think it's pretty likely like in other words like like that estimate that was in the sayinger article again i don't know where that came from really but i mean it came i guess from the from the i see whatever if you take them seriously, their estimate of the nuclear dangers and they put it over 50%. But, but yeah, I mean, so that first, you know, that, that itch to pull the trigger and go over the threshold, I think will be pretty tempting for a leader who's, you know, on the back foot or maybe wanting to use this, you know, kind of opportunistically. I think we're very lucky as a species to have made

it this far, you know? And I think there, you know, if you know your Cold War history, I know you do, Scott. There were so many, so many close calls, so many times in historically that this could have gone so badly wrong. So, so yeah, I mean, my own estimate, if, if things, if we went at it with North Korea are, or not that it would, I don't think a North Korea scenario would destroy the plan, or at least not right away, but it would, to me, you could see, I think I remember writing at the time that, you know, it was pretty reasonable to expect, you know, five or 10 million people dead, maybe more. I mean, how the radiation clouds would move, you know, in Northeast Asia. I didn't get into that kind of level of analysis, but, you know. Let me ask you this, because the scenarios for

the total war, maximum nuclear war fighting, they call it. They say that it's use them or lose them. If we don't launch all our minute, men, they're going to launch all theirs. Go ahead. Well, I will say you talk about losses. And one thing I, and maybe we could segue at some point discussing China's approach more, but I will say, you know, I read a lot of Chinese and Chinese strategic thinking. And they are literally going through some of this, like what were the calculate how did they want to know how did soviet and american planners decide how much is enough you know so how much has to be destroyed and i have seen you know good evidence suggesting the chinese are trying to figure out just how much of america has to be destroyed you know in order to

thoroughly deter it and it's it's really awful i mean it's yeah did we have to get to this point um but but yeah i mean oh i know what it was i lost my train of thought there and it was they called it there's like different stages or whatever and then so one of the stages they characterize it as maximum war fighting meaning killing their cities

dropping H bombs on all of their cities until they're all dead and that's what they call maximum war fighting and then but so the idea in all these studies and all of the talk and I'm sorry I don't remember the name off the top of my head but like they've done all these

different war games and stuff and obviously you're the man you tell me but the way i understand it is that it always comes down to use them or lose them and if we don't nuke every nuke that they got then they're going to nuke every nuke that we got so the first thing we do is launch 600 of them or whatever it is and then it's on and then everybody takes revenge by nuking each other's cities because we're not going to let you nuke our cities without nuke in your cities buddy and then And so by dinner time, everybody's gone, you know, essentially. Well, you know, there's this bizarre aspect of U.S. nuclear strategy, which may get into kind of the religious aspects of sort of American society.

And, you know, many in uniform are very religious. And so in order to, like, feel better about themselves, you know, when this all goes down, that they like have at least kept up the appearance, but I think actually maybe also the fact that the U.S. military, U.S. nuclear doctrine remains to this day at a kind of counterforce, meaning like, as you point out, we're not targeting their cities. We're by and large targeting their, either their command and control, but really their weapons. And, you know, if that allows some people, some of these strategists and targetiers and button pushers, to sleep well at night. I guess that's, I guess that is what it is. But it's, some people have, I think,

wisely argued, I forgot that, you know, for example, Chuck Glazer, I think he and a few others argued in foreign affairs recently that if we just put that aside and said we are no longer engaged in this counter force and with respect to Russia in particular, but also China, if we just say, okay, we're good with counter value. That is, we just strike the city. cities or target the cities instead of the forces, then all of a sudden nuclear strategy gets a lot simpler, you know, and you really could have, you know, 10% of what we have or less. But then the problem is it doesn't work unless you really mean it and you have to really

mean it or the whole game theory falls apart, right? And so that means if it comes on to it, that's exactly what you do, you nuke all their cities. Well, I mean, I think this, the logic is of arms control is that, you know, none of us are, are better off in a world where we're just building, you know, tens of thousands of these, so we ought to just at least save the money and the effort and, and agree to come down to, you know, whatever it is, 500 or 100 or something like that. And if we both, our all sides are on counter value, then the idea of nuclear war should just disappear, which it kind of was disappearing for a few years anyway. Hey, guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the Institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expandesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com.

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It's the Scott Horton Show blend from Moondos Artisan Coffee. Hey, you guys coming up this October 7th through the 11th, join Miguel Thorup, host of the expat money podcast, the heroic Ron Paul, the great Tom Wood. Doug Casey, Mark Faber, Tom Luongo, myself, and many other great speakers for the online expat Money Summit, 2004. My presentation will be on the subject of my new book, Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine, which is not quite out yet. And learn how you can reclaim your freedom by moving abroad, legally reduce your tax bill, and protect your assets. More than 8,000 people attended last year. And it's free. My guy's Kyle Anzalone and Dave DeCamp from the Institute and Anti-War.com will be joining a panel discussion as well.

Just go to 24.xpatmoneysummit.com for all the info. That's 2224.xpatmoney summit.com. I see what you mean, though. So you're saying you take all the military targets off. So that means you're only keeping the biggest bombs and you're not even targeting each other's militaries anymore. So now it's really just a pure... yeah there's no military there's no military advantage in using them they're only good for deterrent then yeah and i mean presumably yes that does you know completely insane but it's logical in

its way yeah i mean you know that was the frankly you know again another segue to china i mean china's minimal deterrent was sort of based on that you know china was going to kind of lead by example now now of course china sort of seems to be leaving that behind you know no longer satisfied with that, which is interesting. We could talk about why and how that's going coming about, but it's quite unfortunate. You know, I wish, I wish instead of China becoming more like us, I wish we were becoming more like China in that respect. Sorry, I would say, you know, I like, I prefer American society in so many ways. But, but as far as nuclear strategy, I think China was onto something with that no first use and the minimal deterrent. But that seems to be going by the wayside now. Yeah. What a world. It really is something else. You got to zoom out. You know, even an expert like you, you got to realize how insane that is that that really is probably the best case scenario for permanent thermonuclear Mexican standoff is that we just target each other's cities. Because that really, with the biggest bombs, that gives everybody the least incentive to use them while still holding them as a deterrent. when like but think about what you're saying holding the civilian population hold nukes to the head of civilian populations

not even as you say as in a way that can be rationalized at a military base out somewhere in the woods where at least their combatants who signed up for this or something you know yeah well you know I feel for those guys but they should not me too but you know what I mean too long that has distorted our

our strategy and really our resource allocation, you know, to where the point where you're just building thousands and thousands of these. And we seem to be back on that glide path. It's Professor Narang up at MIT, you know, has told us his vision of the current Pentagon. You know, all signs really are, unfortunately, that whatever administration, whatever, whoever's president in 2025 will, you know, continue to approve a vast nuclear buildup. And, you know, again, to come to China, you know, the Chinese seem to more or less have given up on any kind of real agreement with us.

And, you know, too much coming to the point in their strategy, because they used to just sit on two or three hundred happily, as you say, they're targeting some cities and saying, we don't want a huge arms race here. We're just, we think this is enough to deter you. But now they're building up into at least. the thousands right yeah the latest Pentagon report said they're they're just cresting over 500 and moving quickly you know and so 500 warheads that is you know now whether they're deployed or stored or something that's an interesting

question but they seem to be changing that too but yeah according to Sanger now again we take that with a grain of salt but according to Sanger these that that estimate I just said with 500 and, you know, maybe a thousand by 2030 that China is surpassing those estimates. So they're, you know, maybe going faster than we thought. You know, now are they rising to parity? You know, what would parity look like about 1,500 warheads deployed at peace or something? By the way, I note this is very important, Scott, for those of you interested in a nuclear strategy that it says repeatedly in the Sanger article, you know, according to Narang and these other people that he talked to, presumably in the IC, that not only

is the arsenal coming along faster, but also that it's more, what was the word they used, varied in its scope, meaning that means, you know, maybe different kinds of weapons, you know, deployed in all kinds of different forms so that implies a very sophisticated arsenal and i mean there are areas where it seems pretty clear they're they're ahead of us um this kind of fractional what do they call fractional orbital bombardment fob they have conducted it um let's see i think uh this is a way of using hypersonic uh glide vehicle to see skip the warhead off the atmosphere in such a way that it's very hard to intercept, of course. That's one advantage, but another advantage is it can reach like much enhanced ranges, which

allows the warhead to approach, you know, like literally they could put a nuclear warhead on an attack angle that has it coming up through the southern flank through you know over antarctica and coming at us from the south so the you know russia bribed yeah Putin bragged about that too before yeah yeah Putin also exploring this um yeah i don't know about well apparently the russians did experiment with fob that fractional orbital bombardment but the chinese did a full-up test and i think it was 2021 and they really freaked people out at the pentagon because i don't think we Wow. We found that route.

So, but yeah, I mean, they're working everything. You know, Mervs, submarine launched. Let me ask you this, Lyle. What American provocation did you attribute the change in their strategy to? Well, I mean, there are so many that it's like, you know, it's, I think it's hard to put a finger on one kind of event. But I do, I will say, you know, this is, in my estimate, this is a huge cost. of allowing this Taiwan thing to kind of hang out there, look, you know, China's right along said that it's a core interest of China, meaning, you know, that by definition means they're

ready to go to war over it. And China has sort of acted accordingly, like acted as if this war might happen and prepared its both conventional forces, but now it's nuclear forces. Now it took them a while, and I think this probably had to do with them finding the platforms that they liked. Now, I mean, it's hard to say, was it definitely something we did? I mean, I do think clearly the possibility of war with the United States has informed this. But this kind of buildup now underway, I think, would have taken at least 10 to 12 years. So we couldn't, I think it would be wrong to say, well, they looked at the Ukraine war and

suddenly decided to build up. No, I think this was underway well before that. You know, I had this understanding before. I think you and I may have talked about this, but it would have been a while back. But I should check this with you, but I think I actually even say this in my book. And I have footnotes, but I don't know. My understanding was that China made a revolution in military affairs, I think, three major times in direct reaction to things that America had done. so the first one was

when Iraq War I and then they put all the footage of look we can fly a missile right down your chimney and in your window and they went oh boy we better get to crack it on something and then after that was the well the embassy but no in 1997 there was the the Taiwan crisis of

1996 1997 and Bill Clinton sailed the seventh fleet through the Taiwan Strait And that freaked him out. And then two years later, he bombed their embassy in Serbia. And they said, and they got our stealth fighter. And then they, so my understanding was, it was like, on those three occasions, those were direct provocations that caused them to hold a meeting and say, okay, the military gets a bigger budget now, and we better figure out what we're doing about these American problems.

So then I don't know if I have a narrative that just continues all the way through. those are all those are all key turning points i i guess i would add you know i'd add a few more things to the list but but those are good ones go ahead add things to the list that's what i do i compile lists of provocations of foreign enemies probably the 90 i mean the the the Taiwan crisis 95 96 i think above all is a kind of humiliation uh you know and a kind of demonstration that that um you know that of of china's weakness i think and and and And so I do think a lot of Chinese military planning comes down to that. Like, we're not going to do this again where you parade carriers around and we have to

and we try and have to accept that. So, yeah, that's a big one. But, you know, I also would finger, for example, pulling out of the, you know, the buildup of missile defenses and in particular pulling out of the ABM treaty. I think for, you know, China and Russia both, I mean, they would. they were both really sounding the alarm after that. And they were alarmed because that really began to put their arsenals at risk, meaning they could no longer have assured destruction potential.

And so I think after those points, yeah, I would say that we have put ourselves in this, kind of locked ourselves into this rivalry. But even then, I would say that we're kind of, I mean, possibly we could have. gotten off this train. You know, I do think like the Obama summit with Xi Jinping at Sunnylands, I think what was that, 2015, like that, you know, that was a good moment to step back and maybe pull back from this militarized rivalry. But I have to say, you know, I think Trump, you know, I said I liked how he engaged North Korea, but I, his China policy was very hawkish, you know, And ultimately, and that really, you know, maybe that's when the final decisions were taken to say, hey, you know, we're going to go not just build up, but like build up aggressively.

I wonder if 2016, 2017, that period, you know, if we have to pick a year for when did the new Cold War start, you know, I wonder if it wasn't right about that time. And they began to behave very aggressively on Taiwan, on the Taiwan issue at that point. And, you know, I've long held, you know, Scott, that like, look, we can go into all the arms control discussions. You know, we can spend all day on it and, you know, put a huge amount of effort at it and, you know, even try for all kinds of bribes to get, you know, we keep trying this on the U.S. side to try to get the Chinese to sit down with it. us, you know. We can do that all day, but until we address the Taiwan issue kind of more frontally, I don't think that this is this kind of dangerous, militarized rivalry is going away. So, I mean, I advocate for kind of a change in our strategy that is, you know, one that take seriously this idea of spheres of influence, you know, yeah, China has its sphere of influence.

We have our sphere of influence. Russia has its sphere of influence. If we kind of can use that of the kind of ground rules, then we can step back and, you know, at that point, arms control will start to work because we will not be on the verge of war. But until we accept this kind of spheres of influence thing, which is just, you know, you know, read your George Kennan or whatever, I mean, Morgan Pau, you know, any of the realists, they, you know, spheres of influence are not something you can just like dismiss, you know, or ignore, ignore at your peril, you know, will be on the brink of war and then we are on the brink of nuclear war in both the taiwan straight and in the ukraine situation because we have ignored this principle of spheres of influence

so it really we need a strategy change and that's the only way to stop this process of spiraling toward you know armageddon so all right so yeah now back to something that you said i think in your first answer about russia is changing their nuclear doctrine as well in which ways Well, I mean, it's kind of a, I think from what I can tell, they haven't been very clear on it yet, but I mean, and I don't want to over dramatize that. I mean, look, to my estimate, we have been on the brink of, you know, nuclear war with, or nuclear use. I actually think if Russia used nuclear weapons in Ukraine, I, like, yes, the world would change dramatically on that day and a lot of people would die, but I do not think that would start a, a general nuclear war i i just you know i don't think we're we're not going to put our cities at risk for for ukraine and puttina knows that so it would be more like um well we can talk about the details if you want but but um well the problem really is and you know i don't know exactly how it runs up there i don't know who's the president right now is it jake sullivan he's

not even in the chain of command but it doesn't seem like the secretary defense or secretary state are in charge really either and they're not really even in the white house so it's just the chief of staff but if you asked joe biden he would just go i'm fdr and the enemy is hitler and so the right thing to do is always fight yeah no it's exactly right but what i meant to say is that we've been on the brink you know and and joe biden said as much i think he's right about that uh but i just think like man if a nuke went off he might say that's it see he's already proven he's used nukes now we've got to stop him even more than before with nukes no i don't doubt that we have a i mean that we're let's just go back to this moment in october 22 when when biden actually said at he gave

some speech where he said we're closer to armageddon than at any time since the cuban missile crisis that i mean that it's like an extraordinary statement for a president to make and i remember, I almost, you know, dropped the newspaper when I said that because I'm like, this is kind of what I thought in the back of my mind, but I hear it is the president actually saying that it's true. That was quite a, you know, a shoe to drop or whatever, but, or bombshell. But I mean, but then now it's been confirmed, I think, by other sources in this recent Sanger article, just, you know, how close we've been. So, well, this is a long way of saying. I think Russia has been blundering toward this new doctrine and it will be spelled out. But,

But I'm pretty sure, I mean, Scott, nuclear declaratory strategy is its own little, you know, as it were, like subfield. Like there are people who all they focus on is this quote declaratory policy. Everybody knows that words are cheap. So I wouldn't take it that seriously. And I think mostly what Putin will be trying to do is he, I think he, we're starting to see maybe. I don't know for sure, of course. And, you know, I'm trying to follow too many things at once. But I think the Kremlin is trying to develop its end game for this Ukraine war.

You know, things are starting to go his way more in the battlefield. And part of the end game, you know, in grand Russian style, you know, I think he will bring all of Russia's power to bear, you know, be it diplomatic or economic. And, you know, we've seen that Russia's economy has been much more resilient than anybody thought. know, like just in the last few weeks, we've seen them unleash, you know, a whole lot of Kynjals, you know, I believe, what was it, Western strategists predicted that Russia would run out of missiles sometime in 20, mid-2020. So, I mean, you know, clearly the Russian economy has been spooling up to this. And so one has to wonder if, you know, part, what I'm trying

to say is part of the end game probably involved this declaration of a grand new nuclear strategy, which will lower the bar considerably with the hopes of intimidating Western leaders. Now, you know, look, a lot of the Western leaders are already in this mode of like we're willing to risk it. You know, we're not that worried. We don't think he'll do it. It would be suicidal, et cetera, et cetera. So they're kind of like in denial about the risks. And they're sort of locked in that position. Fortunately, it seems like U.S. leaders are not quite that blaze. I'm glad to say they are not you know they've been a little bit more cautious um but but yeah i mean i think this will substantially lower the threshold i mean you've we've already seen them uh what was it

during the spring 2024 they were announced this spate of uh tactical nuclear exercises i mean i don't think it's hard to imagine it gets much more threatening than that i'm sure they'll find a way though um so yeah this is this is very troubling and it may involve you know know, I mean, hypothetically, it could involve a new testing regimen at Nova Zemlya, you know, they'll just start a, you know, remember, what was it in the 50s when they, or was it the early 60s when they lit off the Tsar bomba, you know, the biggest, the biggest nuclear explosion ever, you know, what was it, 50 megatons or something? So I wouldn't be surprised if it was something like that, something to really try to get

everybody to uh you know i don't want to say something crude but yeah well look i mean we were talking about i repeated myself a million times i apologize to you in the audience and everyone but i keep saying because it just seems like a pretty apt analogy and i don't know a lot about this but i think that i know that russia did provide support to ochi men and north vietnam while america was fighting that war there and so it was in a sense of proxy war with the russians i don't know how much help Mao was providing. But anyway, point being that there was an entire China between Vietnam and Russia. So in other words, or the Soviet Union. So in other words, they didn't give a damn what happened in Vietnam. Not really. They just like seeing America

bogged down in the jungle, maybe, but right now we have that same kind of level of proxy war, or worse, right on their border. And then now that... That difference is very serious. Well, look, and they're like inside Russian. Now, as we're recording this, I'm sure it will fail sooner or later or something. But the Ukrainians actually invaded at the beginning of August and have taken out a chunk of Kursk. And we're within hundreds of miles, low hundreds of miles to Moscow. And so the seeming to me, the actual.

level of danger versus the level of alarm that we have over this is pretty amazing like it's yesterday's news we're not talking about ukraine anymore even though we got essentially proxy troops just what a couple hundred miles from moscow now to yeah i mean and if you look at a map of the whole uh of that that area of the world you see that kursk you know from from ukraine it it literally the road to from kursk to moscow it's very direct you know it's right on that sort of northeastern axis so i mean it's it's uh you know i and i think the the ukrainians did that by design you know they're they're also playing a kind of awful game of you know we want to threaten you in you know and deeply humiliate you i mean of course it was in my view a

a huge mistake on their part and you know this can you know the levels of escalation can go up and not but i and i hate to say it but i mean the people in kiev i you know i don't have any particular insights there but i think that they are they consider this war existential for rightly or wrongly and they're they're willing to risk you know they're obviously quite willing to risk you know uh nuclear use or something like that uh we you know and there's so many reasons why americans should should say no and say this is um just we don't have any uh you know we don't have any major stakes here and we may be very sympathetic for the ukrainians or at least some americans maybe but but it's just beyond our capacity and the risks are too great and we're really putting the future of

humanity um you know in in jeopardy uh and not you know it's not just a matter of whether we blunder into nuclear war with russia which i don't think we will but but it's also a matter of bankrupting you know our country for generations getting ready for that war you know which is our people in the in the white house and pentagon seemed to be held bent on doing and and well on the previous point there about outsourcing our security policy to our allies in this way was the previous general in charge a lunacy who ever you say uh zeluzni who said oh we're supposed to be deterred by the threat of nuclear weapons well our boys are already dying yeah i mean so like yeah okay that's fine for him i guess but that's not fine for me you know yeah exactly and i mean is that kind of

of cavalier attitude that should make us say why are we so cozy with these people they do not have our interests in mind at all they've kind of and then let's face it this is what happens in war i mean in war you know people are dying everywhere probably every ukrainian has now a member of their family who's been killed of course they're you know outraged and guess what when you become outraged and violent you you know you lose all kind of sense of proportion and rationality and you know you lose all kind of sense of proportion and rationality and and you know so i'm not surprised really by the things that ukraine is doing but uh we should be encouraging them to get into peace talks uh for all of our futures including theirs by the way so i you know this idea that we should not uh twist their arms

to make peace you know i i really strongly oppose that viewpoint we should twist their arms for their own good yeah so there'll be so there might be a ukrainian state in the future and Ukrainians alive to live there. I mean, that's where we're at. I mean, even some of the most radical Ukrainian nationalists have said, ah, hell, let them just take the Donbass. We hate those people anyway.

We don't want them anyway. It's like, yeah, well, why conquer them? Just let them go. He'd call the whole thing off right now. I think that's one reason why they wanted to fight in Kursk, You know, because in that area of Ukraine, I think that area, that northern area, that people are much more nationalist, you know, they're more deep believers in, I don't think in Donbass there are, you know, so Ukrainians fighting in Donbass, they're not motivated because they know the people just don't want them there, you know, and they they want them gone. And that's actually appeared in various, like New York Times, even reporting on various situations in, in, Donbass area fighting. So I mean, that, you know, there's a guess what? There's a reason why a lot of people stay in these towns, you know, even though they're told to evacuate and so forth. So, but yeah, and I think, you know, again, bringing it back to China just briefly that they, you know, the Chinese are watching all of this. And there's a good argument to be made that China is learning, you know, quote, all the wrong lessons from this, that, you know, that the United States is very leery. you know, that doesn't want to expend resources in these areas that's kind of half in and

half out and undecided and doesn't have a military industrial base that's very strong. You know, a lot of its weapons are overhyped and can be countered. You know, so, you know, we can go through that if you want. But, I mean, the China and above all, the nuclear risks make it so that the U.S. will ultimately stand down. And by the way, I'm glad, you know, those are actually the right lessons of the, that, the U.S. you know, overreached in Ukraine. But, but I mean, yeah, we may be teaching the Chinese, you know, exactly how to do a Taiwan scenario. So, yeah. Well, so actually, I do want you to talk

all about that, but I guess I just wanted to add that, you know, I might sound more alarmist than you on the nukes here, but I guess my thing is not that I think nuclear war is likely, but just that I recognize that the risk has increased at all. And that is intolerable when the level of danger, if the probability is low, the level of danger is out of this world. So, no, I totally agree. It's just so irresponsible for them to be acting this way. It's just crazy. I think, let me put it, as far as risks go, you know, and I'm somebody who thinks it's sometimes helpful to put numbers on things, but I would say, like, I do think the risk of general

nuclear war is pretty low, but the risk of, of, uh, limited. use that is limited nuclear war, you know, use of tactical nuclear weapons is pretty high. I mean, yeah, I don't know if I would go to 50% anymore, but I think it would, it could be as high as 20 or 30% or something of that. And the risks of nuclear rivalry that is unbridled, you know, just build up on both sides that bankrupts us all. It's, I guess that's at 90% or 100% at this point. You know, so this is terrible for all of our futures. And yeah, I mean, and if you keep that in mind and you just keep rolling the dice every three or four years on one of these uh you know the next kind of crisis du jour uh what it what did johnson say you know play coos are like

street cars so we we just it's just a matter of time till we blunder into a nuclear war so in that sense i guess you're right that the risk is highly elevated and it's it's really intolerable so um we need to step back from the brink and and you know i do have some ideas for how to um try to control nuclear rivalry. And we can get into that a bit. Go ahead. That's probably a good place to wrap it up. Well, I mean, these are mostly China focused. So I don't, you know, that's most of what I do is focus on China. So you'll forgive me here. But I mean, I mean, I do think if we were to move our nuclear doctrine away from counterforce, I think that would be a really wise idea.

Yeah, I mean, we talked about that a little bit, how we could dramatically reduce the numbers. If we did that and still without jeopardizing our security, I mean, I spoke about my idea to reorient our foreign policy towards spheres of influence. That would also be useful. But I think, you know, getting into the details a little, I think, well, there are some, like, low-hanging fruit here. Like I think both President Xi and Biden have talked about, you know, some kind of keeping a human in the loop, some sort of agreement on AI. I have some more specific ideas there too. But, but I mean, yeah, we don't want to mix AI and nuclear weapons. That's for sure.

I think the P5, you know, is a good framework for future nuclear negotiations. maybe we should add India and Pakistan and make it a P7 or something, but that, I think, for a multipolar world, that's a good framework. I think we should resist grouping. We endlessly group China and Russia together. I think that's a bad idea that kind of just encourages them to cooperate even more. I think we might also, I think it should be on the table, and even the New York Times agreed with this. They said that the no first use approach that China advocate. I think no first use would be helpful. I really do. Having thought about it a lot and looked at arguments on both sides, you know, that's maybe a conversation for next time, but

no first use, I think, would lower, lower some of these. It would kind of rule out some of the crazier ideas here. We have quite a few crazies in Washington these days who are saying, hey, all we need to do is, you know, destroy the Chinese invasion fleet on the beaches. Remember, I think we discussed this, how there's one Georgetown professor saying we need to destroy the, we need to get an agreement from Taiwan that we're allowed to nuke Taiwan as long as it kills a lot of Chinese invaders. So, so, yeah, that no first use would take that at these kind of nutty ideas off the table. But I think, yeah, I think there are opportunities here. got to get this arms control process started up again. I think it's helpful. But again,

the big thing is to have a limited strategy where you're not trampling on the core interests or trampling across the red lines of other great powers. We wouldn't tolerate, you know, China making a security pact and putting bases in Mexico or something like that. I mean, that's just how ridiculous the current aspects of our strategy are. So we shouldn't expect these other powers to do that, to countenance this kind of playing around in their backyard at all. I know. How simple is that? You know, I always make the analogy about if the Russians were messing around in Canada the way we are in Ukraine. And it just sounds completely stupid. It's hard to even say it with a straight face or like in front of people. I know that they think that I'm being

silly, but all I'm doing is just putting the shoe on the other foot. The Russians overthrow the government in Ottawa twice in 10 years because they keep voting wrong. And then they go to war against the people of British Columbia who don't like it. And then they start threatening to kick us out of our naval bases in Alaska.

Oh, we'd go to World War III. Any president would. They'd absolutely invade Canada and regime change, Ottawa. But probably they'd nuke Moscow, for starters and to even to raise the hypothetical sounds ridiculous makes me sound ridiculous for saying imagine Russia doing that because everybody knows Russia would never do that they wouldn't dare

in not a thousand years would they do that in Canada no I think there's a lot of truth to what you're saying and I think that um you know I mean we may see this play out in Venezuela unfortunately but you know where where if things continue the way they're going it wouldn't like I wouldn't be shocked if in five years that the Chinese were setting up a naval base in in Venezuela or something like that I mean that that's perfectly possible and we should stop this rivalry before it takes on these dimensions which you know would be more more threatening I mean this rivalry is costly in so many ways but

you know this potential for kind of all out all out rivalry you know in the pattern of the 1980s is is that's absolutely where we're headed right now so yeah it's unbelievable it's the most irresponsible thing that anyone has ever done thrown away the peace at the end of the cold war through all these policies and the russians have their share of the blame it's about 10% of it if you ask me but still yeah well i you know i wish people We haven't talked about this yet, and I don't want to drag this out, but the, like, to me, there's one word that could really point the way toward a future that's peaceful, and that is this word multipolarity. And, you know, I think it's viewed as sort of toxic in the mainstream media and things like that. But I think it's actually pretty intuitive to most Americans, like the idea that there should be multiple poles of power and that the U.S. can't, shouldn't be the global policeman, it shouldn't pretend to control.

After all, you know, in Roosevelt's five policemen concept that was the basis for the national security, sorry, for the U.N. Security Council, it was, you know, also this, you know, different polls, more or less, you know, kind of spheres of influence arrangement. So even Brzynski said that before he died, Lyle. Did you know that? Who's that? Zabitna Brizensky wrote a thing. And, you know, he's one of the major advocates of NATO expansion, American hegemony over all of Eurasia. then he said in 2016 he wrote this article for the american interest where he goes you know what we need to back off we need to work closer with russia and with china and deputize more of

the global law enforcing to them and back the hell off this isn't working and then he died nobody paying the attention to that wow that that's incredible i'm going to look that up for sure Scott, thank you for alerting me that year. So, you're so well read and schooled on literature. So I'll take a look at that. But, yeah, I mean, this basic idea, actually my book, which should be out next year, you know, kind of makes this point that China and Russia, you know, look, we could be in the 1950s where they're in complete lockstep and, you know, totally working together on

everything, but they're really not. And if you look at the details of their, you know, whether it's their joint exercises or, you know, the various, you know, ways that they're working. together diplomatically like yes they're they're working together but they definitely set kind of a limit to that you know a limit to the no limits partnership because they realized that um that would go against multipolarity so they're explicitly like offering not you know to not go back to the 1950 so we should take them up on that embrace this idea of multipolarity and and i think you know peace would wouldn't break out right away but that's the way to go

I think we'll have a much more stable and peaceful world. If we try to understand that concept, unpack it, and try to form up a kind of, let's say, a normal defense and foreign policy that corresponds to multipolarity. And it's not giving up our strong military or our national interest. It's actually in total conformity with our national interests and prosperity as well. So, you know, to me, that's definitely what we should embrace, I think. Yeah. All right. Well, listen, that's a great place to leave it.

I really appreciate you coming back on the show to talk with us about this stuff, man. Thanks, Scott. I always enjoy talking with you. Yeah, really good. Thank you. Everybody, that is Lyle Goldstein. He's at Defense Priorities over there with Danny Davis. and he's at the cost of war project as well and again formerly at the naval war college there

the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a psradyo dot com antiwar dot com scott horton dot org and libertarian institute dot org