00:01:02.460They seem to be quite adaptable with regard to this very frenetic and indeterminate presidency and empire.
00:01:11.240But it's forced on them because they didn't think that this was going to happen in the way that it's happened, I think.0.50
00:01:17.740That is, say, this being the war of choice with Iran.
00:01:21.680And some things are happening in the war that are probably disturbing to them.
00:01:26.720For example, the latest completed railroad in their five base road initiative railroads was probably the most strategic one in many ways.
00:01:37.720It brings China's Pacific ports all the way around on land, and then intended was up the Persian Gulf along the old route that we used to resupply the Soviet Union during World War II, and eventually into the Caucasus and beyond.
00:01:57.840And now we're bombing it, Israel, and we are bombing that railroad.
00:02:02.400Now, of course, railroads don't get bombed very well. You could drop all the ordnance in the world on them, and they will get a bunch of people out there and repair them pretty quickly. But nonetheless, it shows that there's something more to this war of choice than perhaps even Trump knows about. I'm sure there are people in the Pentagon who know about it that are happening, and the world is basically ignorant of it.
00:02:36.560Well, one of them is bombing that railroad.
00:02:38.560It just started recently with both Israel and the United States making it a principal target.
00:02:44.860And one of the things they're trying to do, of course, and this is a hugely geostrategic issue that most people don't.
00:02:53.340I'm not sure I understand it completely.
00:02:55.540But if you go back in time to earlier empires when the real power, cultural, technological, economic, military, and otherwise was in the East, you see one of the ways that those empires roughly defeated other empires by shifting maritime commerce to the land because maritime commerce was simply becoming too expensive for them.
00:03:20.680They put the Portuguese empire out of business, for example.
00:03:23.980And what they did was they shifted along one of their routes, primary routes, was this route China is now using to eventually go up the Persian Gulf and into Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, the Caucasus, and all northward.
00:03:36.720Marrying up with the other three base road initiative railroads, which incidentally have been adumbrated seriously by the war in Ukraine.
00:03:44.220Does that ring a bell with anybody, Geo, strategically?
00:03:47.380They're not emptying into Europe as they were intended to do.
00:03:54.800Well, basically, those railroads mean that instead of two and a half to three days
00:04:00.000and very expensive maritime shipping for China's Pacific port produce,
00:04:05.920it's 16 hours into the heart of Europe.
00:04:08.480That's a huge change, one that will drive a lot of commerce off the seas0.54
00:04:13.360and will, to a certain extent, negate the Babel-Mandeb, the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal,
00:04:19.480maybe even the Panama Canal, although China's built that very, very luxurious state-of-the-art
00:04:26.160port on the west coast of Peru. But that's looking toward the Pacific and looking toward
00:04:32.540that aspect of commerce. So don't expect a lot of that to be going through the canal even.
00:04:37.880These railroads are a game changer in terms of commerce, and think about this for a moment, in terms of one of the United States' supposedly great strengths, it's maritime power, because we won't need to police the seas anymore.
00:04:55.240I think a lot of Americans are at a great disadvantage in understanding this because they lack a sense of the mechanics of commerce.
00:05:04.740Products just appear. It's not clear how.
00:05:07.200And they lack a sense of geography, the idea that, you know, Iran, you could reach China from Iran overland.
00:05:13.980People, I think, lack the perspective of how exactly that would happen.
00:05:19.100But clearly the Pentagon understands these questions, right?
00:05:22.920So they're bombing that railroad for a reason, which would be what, do you think?
00:05:29.020Well, to set it back and to tell China we know what they're doing and we don't like it.
00:05:35.020That route is such a serious threat in and of itself because of what you look at in terms of commerce during the period immediately prior to World War II,0.86
00:05:50.160when Britain and the United States sneaked into Iran.
00:06:27.780How many Americans even knew that at the time?0.65
00:06:31.220So it's a real game changer in terms of the United States, if it has to do anything about China viscerally, if it has to go to war with China, if it has to fight them, it's essential that we control these lines of communication, and we're not.
00:06:49.380So what's the Chinese perspective on this?0.53
00:06:53.860As it has been ever since Deng Xiaoping started capitalism with Chinese characteristics.
00:07:48.600And that means the renminbi being substituted for the dollar and everything from oil sales to you name it, it will become the transactional and reserve currency already is to a great extent for about 40% of the world.
00:08:02.240They're going to shoot for 60 to 70% of the world.
00:08:05.020They're going to drive the Bretton Woods system back where it came from.
00:08:15.040And that's an altruistic purpose for them.
00:08:17.940They think eliminating our ability to put sanctions on other countries in the world, through which since the turn of this century, we have killed 38 million people, mostly men, women, and children, 38 million people.
00:08:32.620That rivals Stalin's purges, Mao Zedong's cultural revolution.
00:08:37.320It almost rivals Hitler in terms of the people that he killed directly in World War II.0.57
00:08:44.000Not the whole war with 100 million casualties, but certainly the people he killed directly.
00:08:48.920So we're looking at the United States, and China looks at us this way,
00:08:53.360as having done that damage in the world with our financial system,
00:08:57.740which allowed us to put primary and secondary sanctions on 30% of the world.
00:09:03.820Go to OFAC and see how many countries we have under sanction.
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00:12:18.640It's also a moral stand in the United States.
00:12:20.620And just jumping ahead, it strikes me that once the U.S. government, OFAC,
00:12:25.220loses the ability to sanction other countries,
00:12:28.000it will have only the power to sanction American citizens
00:12:30.540for disobedience with programmable digital currency,
00:12:32.840and it will do something very similar to us.
00:13:31.540He meant that we were in strategic economic competition with China, and he didn't mind that because he thought we were better than they were at capitalism, and we should certainly hold our head up in the world in that regard.
00:13:45.460So he gave Colin Powell his head, and Powell was constantly, constantly thwarting the vice president in those terms because Donald Roosevelt and Dick Cheney wanted a hot war or a cold war.
00:14:01.300They preferred the latter with China, and Bush didn't want it.
00:14:05.840So he turned cold and loose on Taiwan in particular and wound up at the end of his first term having to repudiate Chen Shui-bian publicly and tell him to shut up about his independence referendum and get off that kick because he knew that was a red line with Beijing.
00:14:23.020So that's the last president I think we had who understood fundamentally this economic relationship and thought that we could wage it with them and at least tie them, if not win.
00:14:35.840So the impulse to go to war with China, like an exchange of ballistic missiles, at least, where does that come from? Why would you want that? Why would Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld and so many others be advocating for that?
00:14:49.600I don't think they really wanted a hot war, but the thing that scared me and scared Colin Powell, too, was that they seemed to be willing to accept it if they couldn't get the Cold War.
00:14:59.400But what they really wanted was a replacement for the Cold War that would put the same pressures on us that the Cold War did, and that would be good in their sense.
00:15:10.320Cheney occasionally would reveal things like a statement, we don't want people to love us, we want people to fear us.
00:15:19.000And, you know, that was okay, but it didn't go over that big with, I think, a genuine Christian.
00:15:26.740I mean, genuine Christian, a Sermon on the Mount type Christian that George W. Bush was.
00:15:32.740And so, in that sense, that pushed him over into Powell's camp.
00:15:38.340But they wanted that Cold War for sure because they thought, judging from their experience for their whole lives virtually,
00:15:46.380that was the only way to keep the empire in power and in check domestically and internationally
00:15:54.040is to have that huge pressure on them all the time.
00:15:57.220And it was also the only way for Halliburton and Lockheed Martin and a host of others
00:16:01.320whom Dick loved and Don loved to make a lot of money.
00:16:06.220But what do you mean when you say a Cold War would be the only way to keep the empire together internally?
00:16:15.680If you've ever read, maybe you're too young, but there was an argument over whether it was a fanciful parody from somebody at the New Yorker or was it a serious study.
00:16:29.740It was called the Report from Iron Mountain.
00:17:53.580You could have that, but they thought that was passe, that that kind of threat wouldn't do the sort of thing that an actual state threat would do.0.96
00:18:02.480And so their conclusion was Kennedy was nuts.
00:18:05.360You needed that kind of external threat to keep a country as variegated, as diverse, and as ultimately powerful as America was in check.0.83
00:18:23.540To keep them toeing the line and to keep them paying their taxes and everything that you do in a state that once was a republic and now is an empire.
00:18:32.980this is not at all related to i i asked you to have this conversation but i can't resist
00:18:39.640who do you think did kill kennedy i'm fairly certain after a lot of study i'm a hunter i
00:18:46.740know weapons fairly well i know that weapon that lee rv oswald wielded no way it shot john kennedy
00:18:53.800and killed him i don't even think he could hit him from there you know the fbi guy the expert
00:18:58.340Robert tried with that very weapon three times to simulate the Zapruder film intervals and get that many rounds off, even get them off, not just accurately, and he couldn't do it.
00:19:12.680I think it was a combination of CIA, mafia, and probably Pentagon.
00:19:19.140And I don't mean organizationally, but I mean dissenters in all three of those groups.
00:19:27.260But they thought, especially with what he had done with regard to Cuba in October of 62, and then the speech in June 10th, I think, of 1963 at American University, that he was serious.
00:19:43.580He was serious, and his brother was serious with regard to the mafia and policing it up.
00:19:49.520But Kennedy himself, the president, was serious about seeking first rapprochement with the Soviet Union.
00:20:10.400Well, Berlin was strategic for the Russians.0.76
00:20:13.840If the GDR disappeared, and it was disappearing at about 10,000 citizens a week,0.85
00:20:19.060think of that for a minute, we helped them build the wall.
00:20:22.340We actually helped them build that wall.
00:20:24.320When I say helped, I mean our tanks, our machine guns oversaw the parties building the wall to prevent anyone from interfering with them.0.87
00:20:32.800We let them build the wall because that was the only way to stanch that flow out of the GDR, East Germany.0.95
00:20:40.540And that was strategic for the Russians.0.88
00:20:42.660So that was a much more serious crisis.
00:23:58.960It's, yeah. I mean, I think it's pretty clear that the investigation into that has not been as full as Charlie's family and the rest of us deserve. I mean, there's no question about that. So, and I'm sorry to get you sidetracked, but you're obviously really knowledgeable. And I hope you'll come back, by the way, at some point.
00:24:16.240But back to China. So the United States is, and with Israel, blowing up Chinese built infrastructure. So that seems like a big step. And it seems like in so doing, you could risk Chinese further participation in this conflict. Are we risking that?0.51
00:24:34.820I think we are. We're not at the cusp yet, I don't think. I'm waiting to see just exactly how we deal with all the Chinese shipping. That would be, I think, a deal breaker and perhaps get China more infuriated and maybe even doing more than she's already doing.
00:24:53.460But I know, too, I've been in the Central Party school, one of the few Americans who had.0.80
00:24:58.660I've been in China since 1984 and almost every other year or so.
00:25:05.100And I've done simulations in Beijing with the Chinese.
00:25:09.900In fact, I did one in 2009 that was called, are you ready for this, the oil disruption exercise.0.87
00:26:40.480It was so dicey on the game floor, Tucker.
00:26:43.440I've never seen this before, and I've done hundreds of simulations.0.61
00:26:47.840The Chinese actually, when the move to shift oil reserves around the world to take care of this problem so there wouldn't be a real global depression developed, had to go back to their Ministry of Foreign Affairs and consult before they could come back to the game floor and make a decision.0.68
00:33:50.220We built it there because it's a haven for Mossad, MI6, and CIA, and because we plan on, in that center piece in the eastern Mediterranean, mounting our guns against China and Russia, too, if we have to.0.94
00:34:06.140But we don't have any respect for Lebanon.0.93
00:34:08.620Lebanon could disappear tomorrow morning.0.89
00:34:10.460Our embassy would still be there, fortified to the hill, of course.
00:36:50.920And Israel became, on our dollar to a certain extent, a very capitalistic, predatory capitalistic and successful in that regard economy.0.73
00:37:02.260and wanted to stay that way and even wanted to grow and grow0.92
00:37:05.740and bring in other people to that economy under the Jewish writ, of course,0.75
00:37:10.840but nonetheless come in, Abraham Accords being one latest example.0.96
00:37:17.960And so they had to take Lebanon down a peg every time.0.93
00:37:21.080If you go back and examine those bombing campaigns,0.75
00:37:23.400even the 82 invasion when they were really after PLO and Arafat,0.83
00:37:28.360they bombed the bejesus out of the economic structure of Lebanon.
00:37:31.960And at the time, we military officers were saying, why are they doing that?0.99
00:37:56.900So what do you think, I mean, President Trump didn't explain really why he began this war other than to say Iran can't have a nuke, which is not an adequate explanation.
00:38:10.620What do you think the real motive was in starting a war with Iran?
00:38:16.020I think that New York Times piece, as much as I hate to praise the great lady these days, was probably fairly accurate.
00:38:24.440I think most of his advisors, the principal ones anyway, were saying no or arguing negatively, and Netanyahu persuaded him to do it.
00:38:36.000Now, why did he listen to Netanyahu when everyone else, Vance, probably everyone but Hegseth, was at least somewhat opposed, if not strongly opposed,
00:38:48.840which I'm told with some reliable information that Cain was, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and others in the military.
00:38:57.660it was persuasive because Netanyahu said it
00:39:27.300does america's relationship with israel change after this is over i don't see how it can remain
00:39:37.140the same um with a new president who's got to pick up on what's happening with the american people
00:39:44.120um not least of which caused by charlie kirk what's happening with american people even
00:39:51.560And in the core of MAGA, under 40 in particular, and under 20 on college campuses and things like that, generally, is don't like Israel, period.
00:40:04.420Even I could use a stronger word than don't like.
00:40:09.240Why do you connect that to Charlie Kirk?
00:40:12.240Because I think he was changing his mind, and it was obvious he was changing his mind about being so attached to Israel, both in terms of U.S. security and in terms of just the American people.
00:40:26.200I think he was beginning to realize that it was poisonous, and that was dangerous.0.74
00:40:32.100I don't, for a minute, think that we might not find out down the road something about his assassination that resembles Kennedy's and Martin Luther King's and others who've been shot in our country.
00:40:44.880Which is, you know, for people overseas sometimes whom I talk to infrequently now, but used to talk to a lot, like in France and England and Germany, they don't understand why we kill people at the rate we kill people, you know.
00:41:00.840And as an American, I say, wait a minute, wait a minute.
00:41:03.260And they'll tick them off, you know, all the way back to Roosevelt becoming president, you know, because they thought they got rid of him as vice president and all of a sudden McKinley's killed.
00:41:12.980So they'll tick those things off all the way back to Lincoln, and they'll say, you're a pretty violent country.
00:41:18.520You assassinate people quite frequently.
00:41:21.240So I've had a very similar experience in every country I've ever been to other than this one.
00:41:44.680More often than not, I think it's not an accident.
00:41:47.600I just, if you go back and you look at any of the empires of old, but particularly the Eastern and Western Roman Empire, the Eastern figured it out by the time it came to the Byzantine Empire.
00:42:01.420And Constantinople turned around on the then ruling entity's adaptation of Christianity and mellowed out a little bit.
00:42:14.540That famous period there probably extended their life by years, if not decades and generations.
00:42:21.900If you look at those people at the head of those groups, whether it's like Mary Beard's new book, The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius' Twelve Caesars, between Julius crossing the Rubicon and walking decidedly into assassination, even though he was warned multiple times, should have known, walks in the Senate, he's assassinated.
00:42:45.320and then Octavian and the Civil War start
00:44:35.800And I can even, particularly with Jefferson, I can even, Powell used to quote him to me all the time because he loved Jefferson's inaugural addresses.
00:44:44.440He would pick out pieces and like pieces like, I know I shall leave this office much more chagrined than I entered it.
00:45:00.160Which is one reason why Powell decided in 1995 not to run for president.
00:45:05.400He essentially said, I understand what Jefferson meant, and I'm not willing to suffer it.
00:45:11.200But anyway, it's been, you know, I'm 81 now.
00:45:14.760And I got to say, in the years since I entered in 1993, arguably, or even 89 when I was with him when he was chairman, the highest realms of American power and was exposed to that power.
00:45:28.600I have really become a cynic about our ability even to survive much longer in a way that is anything like our past.
00:45:49.780I don't know if you saw that piece the other day by that gentleman, I forget his name now, from Cambridge, I believe, who sold some of his AI development.
00:45:57.220He's sort of the Oppenheimer of the AI movement to Google.
00:46:01.420And he said he was on his bench outside his lab or something, and all of a sudden his cell phone rang, and it was his AI.
00:46:08.960It was checking up on him, and he had an epiphany right there on the bench.
00:46:20.040Do you have a clear picture of what some of the effects might be?
00:46:23.140Well, I'm seeing the effects already on young people whom I stay in contact with at GW and GW and William & Mary.
00:46:34.940I probably had roughly 600 students over the 16 years I taught, and a lot of them stay in contact with me.
00:46:42.720One of them was the EA to Mark Carney, and when Mark ran and was elected in Canada, he got shifted to another guy by Mark, and I said, well, who are you working for now?
00:46:57.840So I have students all over the place, and they stay in touch with me, and they reflect the same angst I have, but in a much more visceral way because it's their future.
00:49:28.380Nuclear weapons, the newest technology in the world, no empire in all of 5,000 years of empires has ever possessed the technological means to destroy itself and others around it.
00:49:44.900And to think that human nature will allow us to get through a demise of empire without ultimately trying that method to save it, I think is wishful thinking.
00:49:58.380and we're we're at that point right now because we're looking at the end of the american empire
00:50:05.760looking at an actual threat to israel i mean i mean you just described it there's an actual
00:50:11.580threat for the first time in a long time the greatest threat right and that's a nuclear
00:50:16.300armed power so and we're we're at that point as you as you well know without a single treaty
00:50:22.500they're all gone now every single one from the abm treaty all the way to new start gone
00:50:28.320no treaties. So do you think that this administration can navigate a moment this
00:50:36.440fraught without either using or allowing its partner in this to use nuclear weapons?
00:50:44.180I'm not given confidence by a man who argues with the Pope and dresses up as Jesus Christ for
00:50:51.440an ad. I mean, I know he probably didn't do that intentionally, but he allowed it to happen.
00:50:56.140And this argument with Leo is just absurd.
00:51:16.340And done at a moment when Leo, the first Augustinian, is headed for Africa to go to Augustus' place and sort of celebrate.
00:51:26.140I mean, it just didn't make, it was bad timing and it was bad juju all around to do that.
00:51:33.320And I know from my own experience, and it's, as I said, seven decades of sentient experience anyway, that we've had an effort in this country for a long, long time, very sotovoki, if you will, under the table, to create an American Catholic church and have our own pope.
00:51:54.160And I remember when Leo's rise was first announced, when his selection was announced,
00:52:01.020I said, ooh, that'll put a stop to that because an American is now the Pope in Rome.0.73
00:53:07.640I think people who have come out of great awakenings,
00:53:11.360and I, by the way, think this is our fourth one.
00:53:14.120And most historians won't go with me yet, but I bet you in 10 or 20 years, they will look back on this period and they will call it a great awakening.
00:53:22.220Just like they did the one that produced prohibition and an amendment to the Constitution to prohibit alcohol and then an amendment to rescind it.
00:53:31.160Very damaging periods in our history, whether it was burning witches or prohibition.
00:53:36.700That prohibition really generated the momentum for organized crime.
00:53:42.220crime al capone was the first you know organized criminal if you will um so they're dangerous
00:53:49.200periods and if we get out of this one without any more danger i mean hexeth is holding i got it
00:53:56.760yesterday i couldn't believe it i just couldn't believe that this this had developed osw protocol
00:54:03.640prayer services have been going on every week for 13 months um and always with the same line
00:54:11.660General officers and admirals will have reserve seats in the front rows.
00:54:36.920And he's also preacher packing, we used to say in South Carolina, putting the rotten strawberries on the bottom and the fresh strawberries on the top, the ranks.
00:54:48.480He's making sure very carefully that he's eliminating flag and admiral officers who are or might be opposed to the military becoming a defender of Christianity as the national religion.
00:55:02.620And he's doing the lower ranks, too, and he's doing them by doing such things as exceeding Congress's limits on mental Category 4 recruits.
00:55:13.800They think McNamara's 100,000, if you will.
00:55:16.840They can't even read their name on a guard roster.
00:55:19.500They usually come from the mountains of West Virginia or from the interior of Oklahoma or my state of South Carolina or Alabama.
00:55:26.320I hate to blame those states, but nonetheless, they produce these people at an alarming rate.
00:57:17.680Absolutely. And talk about corruption. Franklin Graham in the center courtyard of the Pentagon, where I've been a number of times for ceremonies with old secretaries of defense, once escorted McNamara in there.
00:57:31.920Had a good talk with him about Vietnam as I escorted him. And he was very contrite. He was actually contrite as we walked in. I was a lieutenant colonel at the time.
00:57:41.600And Billy Graham, or Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, of course, and Billy Graham must be rolling in his grave because I knew him.
00:57:50.700Franklin Graham gave a sermon for Hegseth on those grounds that would make Ted Cruz happy.
00:57:58.760He resurrected all the stuff Cruz was talking about in an interview with you, I believe, from Genesis, and talked about how you had to sometimes kill everything in sight, men, women, children, and so forth, in the center courtyard of the Pentagon.
00:58:19.000Well, that's like blasphemy, it seems to me.