Brad Thayer and Jim Fennell are two of the most influential communist China strategists and scholars in the world. They are the authors of the new book, "The New Maga Deal" and the co-hosts of the podcast "The War Room" with Stephen K. Bannon and Peter K. Navarro.
00:00:28.000I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
00:00:33.000Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
00:00:37.000If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
00:00:44.000War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
00:00:47.000Peter K. Navarro in for Stephen K. Bannon today.
00:00:55.000And in this hour, we're going to be talking with two of the most important communist China strategists and scholars in the world, Brad Thayer and Jim Fennell.
00:01:09.000I was blessed to have them do a chapter in the new book, New Maga Deal at newmagadeal.com.
00:01:17.000And I've known these guys for a very long time.
00:01:59.000And all these issues across the years always seem to push out what's the greatest existential threat to this country, which is communist China.
00:02:11.000And we have a situation now where communist China is putting tremendous pressure on the Philippines, trying to seize territory in what it regards to be a China lake.
00:02:24.000There's these these land formations that pop out of the sea there.
00:03:48.000It's against their own people, whether it's the genocide against the Uyghurs or the crushing of the Tibetan people, religious freedom and human rights.
00:03:57.000It's the show of force against Taiwan, where they consistently do salami tactics of preparing for an invasion against salami tactics being what?
00:04:08.000A small steps, half steps, but consistently so that just like cutting up a salami.
00:04:14.000They're not taking the bite whole, but they're going to just do it gradually.
00:04:19.000But they're changing the status quo, as they are in the Philippines, where they're putting enormous pressure on our treaty ally, Manila.
00:04:26.000Is this about Scarborough Shoal or is it about another another land feature?
00:04:34.000Well, sadly, Peter, there are several points of flashpoints.
00:04:38.000But the second Thomas Shoal, where the Philippines has the Sierra Madre, a former U.S. Navy LST, which is beached there permanently in the Filipino effort to sustain their sovereignty.
00:04:51.960And the Chinese are doing everything that they can to evict the Filipinos from that.
00:06:00.340OK, so I guess the reason we care is that the South China Sea is the place where about, if I'm not wrong, 70 percent of world commercial traffic goes through.
00:06:54.640Mahan was it was a famous figure in in American Navy strategy.
00:07:03.660And he basically said, whoever controls the sea lines of communication controls the world.
00:07:09.700And that was the basis for us becoming a naval power and projecting.
00:07:14.960And China, communist China kind of signed on to the Mahanian view decades ago.
00:07:21.420That's why they're building all their navy and this thing like that.
00:07:24.060And it's a very real concern that if we can't push our exports, for example, through the South China Sea and move it around the world to other countries, then they will be able to choke us off.
00:07:37.680So the reason why these little tiny atolls are important is they put like 15,000 foot runways on them that can basically entertain the largest types of aircraft in the world.
00:07:54.900They put up sensitive listening posts and they put up all sorts of rockets that they can shoot at whoever they want to shoot at.
00:08:06.240So when the Philippines is engaged with communist China trying to hang on to one of these atolls, the subtext there is that, never mind also the fishing rights, which China is trying to claim around there.
00:08:48.300It's also the bomber exercises that they sent.
00:08:51.240The Russians and the Chinese conducted a joint exercise in the Alaskan Aadzid, for example, very recently.
00:09:00.120So they're pushing hard against us, against our allies, against partners like Taiwan and India, but also the United States itself immediately and directly.
00:09:13.720And they're not going to stop until they're met with strength, until the U.S., working with its key allies, tell them, no, we're not going to do this and start rolling them back in the South China Sea.
00:09:39.120Yes, they are helping the Philippines.
00:09:41.340And they're helping Taiwan to the extent that they can.
00:09:44.680But they're looking for U.S. leadership.
00:09:46.880The Japanese are great allies and can do a lot in many different ways, as can the Indians, as can the Australians, and so many other partners as well.
00:09:57.020We went through a period with the Philippines where one of their leaders kind of sucked up to Communist China, and there were some issues about us using any of their facilities for our naval fleets.
00:10:13.680Can you give us a little history on that and how that changed and who the players were?
00:12:27.460They're going to go neutral or they're going to find – they're going to start jumping over to the CCP side.
00:12:33.400So this is what – these are the steps that need to be taken right now with respect to standing with allies, Tokyo, in the Philippines, absolutely.
00:12:44.580And the allies have been asking us to do more, and the Biden administration simply has failed them.
00:12:51.220And that's a continuation of the Obama policy, where Kurt Campbell at Scarborough Shoal, for example, in 2012, sold out the Filipinos, right?
00:13:02.220He was Hillary Clinton's major advisor, right?
00:14:09.100He's not going to get – the free ride is over for Xi Jinping.
00:14:12.660And his aggression is going to be met with strength and ideally even rollback from what he's – the aggression that he's successfully conducted.
00:14:21.920When we come back from the break, we're going to bring Jim Fennell in all the way from Switzerland through the miracle of Skype.
00:14:33.140And that's going to be really interesting.
00:18:57.020Well, regarding the questions you asked, we're watching a lot of pressure from the PRC across the region.
00:19:06.280And, you know, right now there's a big event going on down in the South China Sea as China continues to essentially beat up our treaty ally, the Philippines,
00:19:16.240as they try to resupply, as Brad mentioned, the grounded ship, the Sierra Madre, that's been there for 25 years.
00:19:22.200And the Chinese are now putting out in the press this week that they have an agreement with the Philippines that allows the Philippines to request their permission to be able to resupply their, you know,
00:19:33.600their 10 sailors that are on board that old rusted out ship, which is an expression of the Philippines' sovereignty over territory that's inside their exclusive economic zone.
00:19:45.540The Chinese are pressing the Japanese and the Senkakus.
00:19:48.260The Chinese have sent bombers with the Russians up into the air defense identification zone of Alaska.
00:19:56.620They've had warships just in the last month up in the Gulf of Alaska as well operating, which is ironic because the Chinese say that you cannot operate in the South China Sea inside what they claim is their EEZ and their territorial waters without their permission.
00:20:12.040Yet they were sending their warships into ours.
00:20:14.220It's legal under international law, but it just shows the duplicity of how the Chinese operate.
00:20:19.540They've had a major exercise going on in Belarus and on the border of Poland, a satellite nation of Russia.
00:20:27.120They've got, right now, essentially an expeditionary strike group operating on the east coast of Africa and Tanzania.
00:20:37.140And then they've got ships that have been operating in the Gulf of Guinea.
00:20:40.540And they're sending up, not probably, they're sending up a ship to the Russian Navy Fleet Review that will happen here this month up in St. Petersburg.
00:20:50.160So the Chinese military and the Chinese Navy are global.
00:20:54.680And we've had, as our book says, and that you briefly discussed, we've had a national security community for up until you and the Trump team were in office that basically said, oh, don't pay attention.
00:21:39.840It's not some kind of, you know, competition today, cooperation tomorrow.
00:21:43.940No, we are in an existential threat with a regime, the Chinese Communist Party, that's devoted themselves to the destruction of the United States of America.
00:22:17.520And that's why this election is so important, because what we saw during the eight years of the Obama administration and the four years of the Biden administration is essentially a salami slicing deconstruction of the U.S. Department of Defense, whether it's the size of the U.S. Navy.
00:22:32.640As I've told audiences around the world that, you know, when I joined the Navy in 1986 at the height of the Reagan buildup, we had 600 ships in our Navy, just about 600.
00:22:42.700And when I retired in 2015, we had less than 300.
00:22:48.120So the size of the U.S. Navy was cut in half in a 30-year period, while the Chinese Navy went from being a know-nothing Navy, a knee-water Navy, coastal water, brown water, to now being one of the largest—is the largest Navy in the world.
00:23:01.740And so that's—you know, those lines cross like that.
00:23:05.560We're not prepared, and we need to get prepared, and we need an administration that's going to reverse the demise of the U.S. military and is also going to get rid of these destructive policies like DEI.
00:23:17.220I don't know if you've seen some of the videos coming out of Navy recruiting and other service recruiting centers, but we have a problem with our force today.
00:23:27.420We're incorporating people in there not—would have never been accepted into the service before because we've lowered our standards, and because we've rejected and we've told people that normally would have been patriotic Americans, they've been told, you shouldn't serve.
00:23:43.440So we've got a lot of problems, and we need to get somebody in like President Trump and Vice President Vance.
00:23:50.060We're going to reverse this trend and get us back on the right track.
00:23:53.660Jim, you flagged all sorts of flashpoints around the globe.
00:24:00.580What's the U.S. Navy and military doing as China is engaged in its aggression?
00:24:09.100Well, we have the Seventh Fleet in terms of the naval force.
00:24:15.780We have a joint force that's out there in the Western Pacific, and they're essentially the same force levels that when I was in 10 years ago and that were out throughout my career.
00:24:25.660So we have basically maintained the status quo in terms of force presence, while China's force presence and posture have grown.
00:24:38.000So, for example, when Clinton was in office and the Chinese made a run at Taiwan, Clinton sent aircraft carriers through the Straits and backed them off.
00:24:51.260Right now we've got the Philippines under siege.
00:24:55.440Are American ships like purposely staying away?
00:24:58.920Are they coming into the area to show solidarity?
00:25:09.900Back in 1996, we were able to send in carriers and demonstrate power and resolve and China back down.
00:25:15.680Now we're in a much different situation just in the second Thomas Shoal issue, and we have sent carrier strike groups into the South China Sea, but they don't get near this area.
00:25:25.480Our ships are not sailing side by side at second Thomas Shoal with the Filipinos and helping them conduct the resupply operations.
00:25:34.180We're not even offering to help them build up a platform around that grounded warship so that they don't have to worry about it rusting out and falling apart.
00:25:45.080I don't think it's the people that are—
00:25:46.320Could you parachute—Jim, could you parachute supplies onto that atoll?
00:25:52.140Yeah, it's called vertical replenishment.
00:25:54.500So our destroyers, our warships, an amphibious warship, a helicopter warship, or an aircraft carrier could go sit down there.
00:26:02.960We could take supplies and pallets of food, water, building materials, and we could vert-rep that onto that grounded ship and supply those Filipino sailors.
00:26:40.960If President Marcos comes out and says, I want the U.S. 7th fleet to resupply my ship, the U.S. administration would call him onto the carpet and say, don't you say that.
00:26:54.200Just like our other allies in Asia won't say anything.
00:26:57.360I watched—now it's like nine years ago—I watched somebody ask the Japanese chief of the Navy, hey, would you mind if the Chinese were invited to rent back?
00:27:07.580And he knew full well when he asked that question to the Japanese admiral that the Japanese admiral would demur and not say anything because that's the way they—you know, they're very polite.
00:27:17.680And they're not going to make an issue because they're the junior partner in this relationship.
00:27:21.880So we know that we have it over our allies to form and shape them into not asking for things that don't provoke China.
00:28:04.560Thanks for contributing to the newmagadeal.com as well.
00:28:08.460Peter Navarro will be right back for the—
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00:29:19.800Watch Jim's warning video now, before it's censored like I've been in the past.
00:45:13.960What I love about PublixSquare.com is it gets us back our commerce and our sovereignty in the marketplace.
00:45:24.420We give too much power when we shop out there, the Starbucks of this world, where we're giving them our money and then they're dumping all over us with their woke crap.
00:45:55.020I want to talk a little bit about J.D. Vance and how I think he helps the tickets.
00:46:02.220And how I would gently suggest that he conducts his campaign.
00:46:12.700The thing about J.D., I've never met him, but I feel like we're two sides of the same coin where back in the early 2000s,
00:46:24.080after China, communist China joined the World Trade Organization, I started noticing as a macroeconomist how there were fissures in the U.S. economy.
00:46:36.380It was beginning to falter as we were losing jobs or manufacturing jobs.
00:46:42.040And over time, as that cascaded, you saw much of the Rust Belt suffer just was this incredible wave of destruction where factories would leave.
00:46:54.860My first book, Coming China Wars in 06 and then Death by China in 2011, documented all of that,
00:47:03.360and particularly how the people in those communities, black, brown and blue collar workers, were so devastated.
00:47:11.360But I was up at 30,000 feet as an economist.
00:47:15.080I'm looking down at Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, across the Rust Belt, and all I could see was specks.