Welcome to Keith knight. Don't tread on anyone, any libertarian institute. Today I am joined by Joe Salas Mullins. He is an independent researcher and journalist who's worked can be found at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the Libertarian Institute, the Eurasian Review, Journal of American Revolution, antiwar.com and the Journal of Libertarian Studies. Mr Mullen, thank you so much for your time. Thanks so much for having me, Keith. It's a pleasure to be here one
of the big military. Buildups in the world and one of the huge provocations going on is a potential dispute between China and Taiwan. I wanted to get you on to talk about this because you wrote such an excellent article conveying the importance of this issue. I want to start with when was the last time China invaded a sovereign nation? Well, that that depends on who you ask, the Indians would say quite recently. For example so I I don't think it's it's a strictly black and
white question. They have fought they invaded Vietnam for example back in 78 as part of kind of an inter party struggle there is kind of complicated but anyway so so they have they have fought wars within living memory but. Apart from the aggressive moves, certainly from the Indian perspective, I'll make clear what I'm talking about here. In case people aren't familiar, there have been some border clashes over the last couple of years between Indian and Chinese
service people. And a couple of years ago it actually turned into a bloody melee. Like hundreds of guys got killed getting beaten to death with like sticks with nails and rocks and stuff. I mean, it's just horrifying stuff. And it really marked a kind of a worsening of relations there
between between the two. Countries but yeah so I don't know it's complicated the they are they are aggressive they they certainly assert their prerogatives within their their what they see as their their sphere so you know they obviously you know from the Philippines perspective violated their territorial waters seized you know the Scarborough Shoals you know back about 10 years ago. So it depends on who you ask and and what counts so.
If China invades Taiwan, America has an obligation to protect the victim from the aggressor. How do you respond to that logic? I I don't know what to what to say to an assertion like that. I I don't know why there's an assumption of moral responsibility on on us to do that if you're referring to sort of the. The legal commitments that we've taken on, I would say that it doesn't obligate us to militarily intervene.
What was agreed upon on paper back in 78 was that the United States would be able to supply Taiwan with the means of its own self-defense. Umm. So, so I I would, I would not engage on on those terms that we apriori have an obligation to do that. Yes or no. I would say there are certain legal obligations that we've undertaken and which I think should be put under a closer microscope given how how as you said there's been an intense military build up there.
I think we need to ask the question again now this is not 1997, this is not 1957. If Beijing were to try to blockade Taiwan. Resupplying them would necessitate sending. Ships. To penetrate the blockade in like a reverse Cuban missile crisis type situation, is this something that we would like to do? I think that needs to be an actual national debate instead of simply being thrown together
in a package. You know, like the the New Taiwan Relations Act, the Taiwan Defense Act, which is basically just giving whoever's in the White House a blank check. I mean, this is World War One type stuff here. Just writing a blank check and and pushing the chips forward. When really the status quo can endure. The status quo can endure if both, if all three sides are willing to. Issue escalatory actions, which so far no one's really been willing to do so.
So Taiwan is one of the major producers in the world of microchips, which the world economy relies on. We must protect the world by protecting Taiwan. Therefore, we should go in and defend whether we previously have made obligations. We now need to commit to defending them to disincentivize China from invading and destroying the world's economy. Well, first I would say if. If. China tried to invade Taiwan.
If that were to happen, I would say the world economy would already be. Pretty pretty irreparably damaged in in the near to medium term, microchips notwithstanding. It would be that that disruptive, this would not be Russia. Russia is a big, you know, raw materials provider. That's true. But there are a lot of alternative sources of raw materials, the, the, the value, the the supply chains, the production lines that China is involved into to see a serious rupture in that.
That would mean like a stop of of global trade. I mean it's, it's, it would be the two largest economies by far, not on speaking terms, it's just so. Yeah. The microchips, sure. Yes, Taiwan is a big source for those. There are other countries that also make those, including the United States. OK. So microchips alone, I I think that can be a consideration if you want it to be a consideration.
But I also think when you realistically look at the numbers that we're talking about here like there are choices, South Korea. The UK, the United States, the Dutch, like they they all have high grade semiconductor manufacturing capabilities and they're they're spending many billions of dollars to build more. Why are we spending this money to build more if if the real?
Really if we if we really need to defend Taiwan, like why are we building all these alternative sources of of microchip which which already publications that are very mainstream like The Economist and Wall Street Journal are speculating is going to lead to a a semiconductor glut similar to like the the fiber the fiber optic cable glut that bankrupted firms back in the late 90s early 2000s because you have the government distorting the market so much with all of its dollars.
So but we'll see that's speculative. China is the fastest growing economy in the world. They must face resistance or they will take over. They have been the fastest growing economy. Over the last 20 years. That's true. Going back 30 years, even again true, a lot of that was catchup growth. This was early industrialization growth. We were talking about going from like peasant agriculture to like large, the biggest scale industrialization you've ever seen that the world has ever
seen. So there was always going to be huge productivity gains from that. Also you had one off productivity gains like the No child policy, which basically gave you, you know, a half a million or 500 million people who had like basically no kids to look after and to just. Worked their butts off.
So you had all sorts of favorable things working in their advantage during those, I would say 25 years starting around 2012. When you actually look at the statistics, you find that since that time, which is actually since she took power, total photo, total factor productivity has actually declined and so has GDP growth each year to the point that just before COVID hit. It was growing at 6%. 6% is like, yeah, that's very good. You know, in the United States we're like, wow, 3% would be
great. But seriously for a developed for a developing economy, 6% is nothing to. To like, whoa, Oh my gosh, like Saudi Arabia is gonna be 10% this year, you know? So I think keeping it in perspective like China's economy is naturally slowing. I mean, there's a lot. I mean there's a lot of good literature that suggests it's already peaked. They're like we are barring some incredible new unforeseen breakthrough that China alone makes and that transforms its
productivity power. Yeah, the community, I think there's a very strong chance that they'll get stuck in the middle income trap and then you have their population collapse coming. So no, I I don't think any reason to worry. Actually the Wall Street Journal, which has been super alarmist about China for years,
actually did a front page story. Uh, two weeks ago now, where they cited this new study saying that actually the more numbers we get, we actually don't think China's economy is ever going to surpass the United States, not even for a brief interval. Things have changed that much over the last 30 years, you know, so. I I don't worry about that.
I really don't. You're asking me essentially, do I wanna bet on an essentially free market system or do I wanna bet on a centralized state controlled system? I'm always going to bet on the former. We've seen this experiment run several Times Now. There's really, in my mind, no reason to doubt at this point.
And the major examples would be north or South Korea E 1st West Germany. What are some other empirical examples that tell us that if we embrace free markets, we will be the wealthiest country on the planet? Oh, I would. I would absolutely point to the Cold War, the Cold War block system too.
Just looking at how much richer the Western bloc was than the Eastern bloc, that's one of the things that really freaked out early China Hawks was it looked like China was actually going to be able to compete long term over the 21st century with the United States and maybe even surpass it, which is something that the Soviet Union was never even close to doing.
They were always hopelessly overmatched economically by the by the late 1960s, when it became clear that there was too much bad investment building up, there wasn't enough creativity, there weren't enough incentives to work. I don't think it's a coincidence, frankly, that you've seen China's numbers reversed since 2012 because she
was much more concerned with. Cementing his own control on power, then risking further liberalizing reforms which had led to the private sector, which contributed the overwhelming amount of growth year on year to the Chinese GDP.
So he's cracked down on them. He's been going in, purging people, you know, I mean that's, that's what he's concerned about, his own power, not about the, you know, the Chinese economy, you know, liberalizing to be the true colossus that it really could be. I mean, at least in the short term. At least one. Sure. Ronald Coates wrote a book called How China became capitalist.
His general thesis is that after Mao there was a large increase in the private property ethic that was respected in China. So if we have from one to zero, they moved drastically in the direction of more private property and more free trade. This is what gave them a significant increase in wealth. Do you agree with that thesis in general? Oh, in general, absolutely. They made tremendous, tremendous reforms. Yeah, and there were some.
There were some fraught moments for the CCP, but they managed to weather them. And uh, yeah, they transform. They transform the society. And in many ways, yeah. One of the great scams is talking about things and only their potential upsides, where they basically have no downsides at all. We should defend Ukraine this way. Russia won't be in Ukraine anymore. We should defend Taiwan. This way there will be peace they never mention. Well, let's look at the potential other side of this
equation. So with that in mind, what are the potential downsides, costs, or unintended consequences to defending places like Taiwan? Well, I I think, I think first we just need to bring these things out into the open and to rehash how we got here in in a in a in a way that I don't think public discourse today can handle quite honestly. It would really be something, though, to hear a couple of presidential candidates have a back and forth about whether or
not this Cold War obligation. You know needs to be reexamined and to look at how our actions since our apparent our supposed reorientation of relations in 1978 when we recognize Beijing's government as legitimate. What were the commitments that we made? Have we been keeping those commitments, having an honest talk with ourselves as a country because it is a serious thing. The Taiwanese really don't seem to want to be unified with the mainland and.
I can respect their wishes not to be looking at Hong Kong especially. At the same time, the deal was that everyone was going to work towards peaceful reunification. Now, so far, Beijing hasn't actually done anything. I mean, yes, they've done some some provocative things, but they've not actually tried to even see some of the near the the the islands that Taiwan claims as its own that are right off China shore. Which realistically, it could do
with with no difficulty at all. I mean, these are, you know, a few miles from China. They're just rocks. So I really think we we need to do that because of course we want people to be able to as libertarians, we want people to be able to choose their own way, to embrace their own lives, their own you know, cultural identity and and things like that, and to as far as possible make their own decisions. But I don't think we can do that blind to the wider context.
It's true that Taiwan has never officially been part of this instantiation of China. It was a part of the late Chinese imperial possessions, but it was lost to Japan. I guess we don't need to go into the whole history, but suffice to say Taiwan kind of feels like. As time has gone on, they don't really like the agreement as it was made and they've changed. We have to keep in mind at the time they were a dictatorship. They hadn't democratized yet.
And so it's just, it's a different place now. And I do, I do foresee trouble. I do foresee trouble because. I feel like increasingly Washington is writing them a blank check. I feel like Joe Biden's, you know, quote UN quote, slip of the tongue. It's not a slip of the tongue. You don't say something four times and have it be a flip phone first.
The very first time I was willing to say, guys, it's Joe Biden. Everybody's and China played along too, which like, because you have to keep in mind they're under pressure too. And this is what I mean by like not doing escalatory things like Nancy Pelosi's visit and the several visits that followed right after that is like.
This is a complicated situation and when we look at the World War One literature, we find that the German imperial government was very motivated by public opinion, feeling that like they needed to go to war. In in the aftermath, the the Chinese social media, they were whacking down the rabbits. A lot of them that they were canceling were people who were not pleased that she had not like tried to shoot down her plane or something like that, that his response was not tough
enough. So like you have to keep in mind that like she especially has built up this like very powerful revanchist nationalism like it is is a pretty powerful motivating force and he's he's he's. He's painted very prosperous, impressive prospects of their
future. And when I look at the situation, I don't see really any of them coming true, even if the United States really isn't involved in trying to contain China. I just think China's geostrategic and economic and demographic situation is just so bad that, like, this is as good as it's ever going to get. And so this might be our moment of maximum danger, and so we need to behave accordingly. In a long run race, there's no
question who's going to win. If it's a question of systems competing, there's no question who's gonna win. And we don't even need to be belligerent about it. We just need to compete. China has so many internal problems. It's, you know, it's going to collapse eventually, in my opinion. Independent of anything that we do. As far as potential downsides go, could there be a nuclear exchange or is that just completely unrealistic? Ohh no. Of course there could be a
nuclear exchange 100%. I mean we are talking about playing a game of chicken when game theoretically you know. It's use them, it's use them first, right? And we're talking about a situation where we are now. It's, it's it's a little bit ambiguous. The the status is a little ambiguous, but like this is recognized as part of China. So like technically the United
States would be trespassing. Like according to the UN this, according to the UN and according to official US positions, we would be the ones intervening there. So I mean I don't know that we would be able to count on the rest of the world being on the United States side. I would certainly not rule out a nuclear exchange. You know, China has said that their nuclear weapons, the reason that they're not willing to engage in nuclear weapons.
Talks jointly with the United States and Russia is because China has so few. And that's because China, their official policy is it's only for use if we are directly attacked. Like the US and Russia are not kidding anyone like that they're trying to gain first strike capability because they're just both crazy and nuts. You know, China, it really from
what their capabilities suggest. I know they're starting to build up now because they feel like maybe they need to because the US and the Russians have failed so badly in their own arms control talks that now we have a new arms race between the Russians and the Americans. Now, you know, we talk about the
military build up there. You know, the Chinese are feeling dragged into that and that's going to carry over into potential conflict over Taiwan. I think one thing we have to talk about is are we willing to lose, you know, a super carrier battle group over this? And attempted intervention because they have the missile capability now to potentially do that, to make the waters surrounding Taiwan completely unapproachable for hundreds of miles.
So are we willing to put 10s of thousands of American lives immediately on the line? That's a question. The nuclear question, that's also one, I don't think right away it would lead to like everyone breaking out nuclear weapons. I really don't. But I do think if 10,000 Americans got blown up, I think that there would be a. A clamor for for some kind of response because that is just the way of the crowd and it's not stop and reflect. Let's think about what might
happen. It's just knee jerk reaction. I I got crushed because I think a couple of years ago I said I thought the American people actually have learned a lot over the last 20 years about the government and how they lie, try to lie you into wars. And I've been forced to eat my words a couple of times since then. So I'm just not going to trust the public to be a restraining impulse on their politicians. Who think the safest thing naturally is to seem strong on any national security issue?
So that's that's the public, that's public policy dynamic that we as advocates and as voters can can work to get changed, you know, to not punish people for not being willing to say something stupid and hawkish. Pat Buchanan said that if the United States ever went to war with Russia or China, there would absolutely have to be a reenlistment of military conscription.
Do you agree with that? Not over, not over Taiwan, no. I mean, they, they have this air sea battle all mapped out that they're going to try, so. No, I I don't think so. I mean, I get, I I don't think the US would engage in a land war in Asia. I don't, I don't know how that would work public. I don't think you could sell the public on it. I don't know how how that would even work strategically. Why you would even engage like
that. I again, I don't know why you would ever want to any of these countries fighting each other. I certainly will do everything I can to keep them from trying to fight each other. If it happened, I I just don't think. I don't know. We have, we we definitely have a recruitment problem right now that's been pretty public knowledge. But you also have like kind of a broader sort of antipathy towards something like that. Something like forced service.
Our our society today is just not the same one as our depression era grandparents or great grandparents or parents. Whoever's listening to this I I know from spending a lot of time with with my grandparents who were actually depressing your kids and my grandpa and all his brothers who got enlisted in
multiple. Conflicts called up, you know, they had a different idea of of what they were doing and how it all fit into the world and what you what you owed to society is not it's not the same society today. And the consequences for the types of things that we're talking about are much bigger. You know, tactical nuclear weapons used, for example. You know, we just have to keep in mind these are these are different times and they're different militaries too. Our military is very high tech.
It's not even clear that like a mass, you know, a mass drawing effort would would really be beneficial. Considering how our armed forces have been designed to fight so. What do you say to the mindset that if the United States does not call the shots in the world, make sure governments of of smaller countries are adhering to U.S. policy, well then places like China will fill that void. Therefore, we have to be somewhat belligerent towards China so we don't become a
victims of their aggression. Well, China would never be directly belligerent to us. Let's be clear. Maybe we have a distant client state that they might try and bully. But in terms of like actually trying to bully the United States, they've never tried to do that and they wouldn't try to do that. They want nothing more than for the United States to just sit
back contentedly. The the Chinese say all the time, you know, there's no risk of any accidental collision in the Gulf of Mexico because we know that that's your space and we steer well clear. And it's like, you know, that's a sensible, that's a sensible policy to have. They're not. Looking for antagonism. When you look at the map, it's pretty clear who objectively seems to be antagonizing whom. Just from just from an out, I consider myself an outside perspective.
I am pro peace, so pro engagement, so. Would China call the shots over where in Burkina Faso can you point to Burkina Faso on a map? I'm pretty educated guy and I can tell you right now I can't. I really can't. I know China's up to their elbows there. And you know what? I'm sure they have the reasons for doing that. And I'm also sure that it really doesn't affect the welfare of the of the American people or of
our national security. We have our own friends and I think, frankly, we should do a better job if we're that concerned about what goes on where, we should do a better job building relationships in our own hemisphere because Americans are pretty loathed. Generally, you look at who's taking power in South America. They're not running on a pro America. We love America, you know. No, not that. Not even close.
We've messed up our relationships horribly in Central and South America. And you know they they've been looking at engaging with with China and and with Russia to varying degrees but they're they're finding that there's a lot of investment challenges down there.
China's investment in Brazil for example is probably already peaked the last time they came down there they they weren't really offering any doubt any any investment and it's because the return on investment is is actually pretty low. There are a lot of challenges the climate actually this is an interesting fact the roads will will melt if you make them out of like ordinary asphalt. You know, they'll bend, they'll
slide right away. I mean there's just, there's all sorts of of topographical challenges to doing things down
there. And so in our court system, you know, we don't, we take that for granted, but like our legal system is relatively transparent and clean when it comes to like property rights and that's not the case in a lot of places in South America. So I think we could do a lot to build relationships there and to make us all a lot richer, a lot richer because countries like Brazil and Argentina, gosh,
Argentina could really. I don't wanna say I don't want to sound patronizing because obviously our own economy is not in great shape either, but like, you know. Argentina looks like they could really use a hand. You know, they're in like their 25th year of crisis now, you know, kind of like leftist governments, like maybe some outreach there to help the Argentinian people out, build some goodwill there. That's an important country.
In our hemisphere, we should be worried less about what's going on in places like, you know, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, you know, Yemen like these are. I mean, the whole conflict in Yemen is just outrageous and our partner is, is just criminal.
But you know, when I look at East Asia, I see a lot of very powerful, very nationalistic, very industrialized countries all around China. And China is going to have its hands full dealing with countries like South Korea, Japan, Vietnam. I told people a couple of years ago Vietnam is totally gonna fly under the radar, but they're just booming. Vietnam is gobbling up so much of that low end manufacturing that used to go to China and their economy is just crushing it.
Pick something up today. You find Vietnam on a lot more stuff. Yeah, it's interesting. So China's Indonesia. Indonesia, man, that's, that's a sleeping one right there. If they can, if they can get their act together, the Philippines. So in India, of course, India is sitting right there. India is going to have more people than China next year.
1520 years ago, if you look at projections, they said it wasn't gonna happen until 2030. So that's how bad China's population system problems are, is India is already going to be more populous than that by next year. So is this the man's search for meaning that Americans can have? When they look at, you know, the world they say, oh gosh, we got to go out and spread democracy by going into the country and
installing the government. Maybe the meaning with the effect that we could have on the world is in the Declaration of Independence. Of promoting objective truth, having things like free trade, the state, not monopolizing weaponry, and making sure that volunteerism is the principle instead of violence. I I still see that we can still impact and affect the world around us without, you know, Karl Rove and Anthony Blanken calling the shots everywhere.
That's absolutely right, because they have a very specific idea of the US role and it's not different. You and I know that and it's, and it's actually a divide that goes all the way back to people like Lodge and Wilson.
People like Clinton and Bush. It was between people who saw the US role as one of going out into the world and spreading democracy through multilateral institutions, as the Democratic Party believed, and those who believed that those were actually constraints on US freedom of action. And there's a straight line there as well. Now there has always been a strong anti imperialist streak
as well. Going back Mark Twain was very famous anti imperialist, but that's still alive today in the old right and in the Libertarian Party. Now they believe that the United States needs to set an example. Of what a restrained constitutional government that promotes and places as its paramount, you know, stone individual liberty? We don't do that. We don't do that. And it's obvious. And people's admiration for the American system of government has only gone down in the last 20 years.
And that's according to like, very establishment surveys. You can read whole books on the crisis of democracy, blah, blah, blah. A big part of it is that the world's leading democracy, the United States, has performed like garbage and done. Speaking of spreading democracy, those campaigns have seriously hurt our image. Afghanistan, Iraq wars 1/2. Well, maybe not one but
definitely two and three. You know our our involvement in Africa, our involvement in Yemen, our involvement in Latin America, I mean, our involvement in in Eastern Europe, I mean. It's, it's, it's been very bad for our brand. Even Iraq War One. Those sanctions against Iraq that were in effect ten years after were heavily looked upon negatively by the Islamic world and used as an al Qaeda recruitment method. So even like the best of the best still has terrible downsides.
Absolutely. I I give Iraq War 1A pass only because the rest of the interventions of the unipolar moment were so utterly disastrous. But the sanctions? We're we're a step way too far. That killed hundreds of thousands of people and and it did it damaged our brand you know and leaving the air bases there that was another one so you know there's there's a whole bunch of things that that came from that.
But no I don't think we should be militarily intervening in other countries trying to set up governments because we have a we have a track record now that shows we suck at it. We were living on the fumes of having made out of Germany and Japan. Whole and powerful and prosperous and it was like look at that we can nation build. OK, show me a successful case of nation building since then.
One even then, wait. One that didn't result in the majority immediately taking power and kicking us out of the country and aligning with a regional opponent of ours, Visa V Iraq and Iran today. Yeah, and, and even the German and Japanese conflicts, they came at the cost of killing millions of civilians there, and it gave half of Europe to Stalin and allowed for the expansion of the of Chinese communism in areas that it might be less influential.
I'm not saying that Hirohito or the National Socialists were good or anything. Just stop lying about there's no downsides. We're just going and helping and making things good again. So let's say that I I just love America so much, which I do, of course, and I want them to be the shining city on the hill. I want America to be the place that people look towards for cultural ideas, for
philosophical ideas. What are examples of some past empires allocating too many resources, or spending too much on war and losing their power and influence? Meaning that if you really want America to be strong, you might not want to be so belligerent. And foreign policy keep that's that's fabulous point. And there's actually a book that was one of the first books that I read when I got into this study about 10-12 years ago. It's called the rise and fall of the great powers. Yep.
And it's everyone. It's every single one of the modern period, from the Spanish to the Dutch to the French to the English and now to the American. I mean, it's overextension, it's overextension, it's overcommitment. It's not rebalancing your portfolio of commitments as your relative power diminishes. You know what I mean. Like, yes, there's a certain way a country can act when it has X amount of power versus its
rivals. Now as it enjoys that position of relative preponderance, it needs to question, it needs to think about later. When the balance of power is not this way, how are my past actions going to have impacted my relationship today? For example, Visa V Russia? I think we're at that same moment now with China. I think we need to take a huge step back. And just we, we need to set up permanent avenues for dialogue. We need to commit to not doing escalatory things.
I think we need to clarify, you know, both to ourselves and among each other. What exactly is the status of Taiwan right now? Are we all OK with it? And my my preference would just be for everyone to just say, you know what, the status quo has worked this far. Let's just keep letting it be. Taiwan is incredibly prosperous. China is becoming incredibly prosperous. the US benefits from trading with both of them. A war would be unimaginably
destructive for everyone. So it seems to me all of our interests are aligned and there being no war. So. And when we look at past great powers, a lot of them ended in cataclysmic wars. We know about things like the Thucydides and dynamic. Now there's a new one going around called Peking Power syndrome, which basically they're trying to say, like, you know, China is 1, Imperial Germany was one, you know.
But yes, these moments where a great power is trying to assert itself militarily, it often is a military overreach, you know? Look at look at what's happening in Ukraine right now. I mean this is this is just a disaster all the way around.
Well how about if Russia didn't have its army fighting the First World War they might have been able to resist the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 a a little easier that the Japanese empire was very aggressive and that didn't just make them purely you know loved by everyone and they were able to influence the world that they got blowback from that as well. It's it's. All these great powers get, can you give me the name of that book one more time please?
The rise and fall of the Great powers is that by Paul Kennedy. It is by Paul Kennedy. And it's a really excellent, excellent book. And it's it's withstood the test of time so well and he really goes into fine examples. And I look at things like for example, one of the things that crushed the Spanish Empire was its diminishing tax base.
The United States tax base has dwindled significantly and there is a reason that when you look at the Federal Reserve balance sheet there's so many treasuries on there. So like the the whole inflation situation is is one that more and more people are paying attention to. But I think it's telling that the debate often centers not on the Fed but on whatever spending package Congress just signed, which is so besides the point. Yeah, well.
It's what in Randall warned about it, she said, well, when you discourage productive people from producing and you encourage parasites like, you know, the the rioters and the looters that are always being hailed politicians, the biggest looters of them all are constantly, you know, have we have to salute them. But business is totally evil and there's no benefits from from anything like that.
And yeah, devaluing the currency, you'd think if the people who want to preserve the empire so much. Wanna make sure we have a strong currency? They couldn't couldn't be less interested. Well, the thing the thing about the currency is. Given the currency regime in place right now with everyone using Fiat currencies, the dollar is actually strengthening
tremendously. So it's actually been one of the the interesting divergences that people, I don't know if they were expecting it or not, but as long as all the governments continue to behave the same way, you know, by comparison the dollar is actually strengthening quite a lot, which is also damaging the emerging markets and so you know more blowback from from the war in Ukraine and from them. Handling the the the inflation battle. That's why I think the Fed really needs to be the focus of
these discussions. the Fed, of course, also enables us to play empire because we can always just turn on the printing press. We don't have hard money. So I'm not saying like yes, you absolutely must have hard money, like you can you can do without it, but like you have to show restraint, which they show no ability to do because they're in an incentive environment where they get money for their campaigns by saying belligerent things, taking money from the people who make these.
Happens, you know, taking jobs on their boards, taking very profitable jobs, lobbying for them. So I think that we need to have something. I mean, given the amount of unfunded liabilities the United States has outstanding, which is something like $108 trillion, I think we really need to have a discussion about the fact that we're running trillion dollar deficits, essentially putting the empire on the credit card. That's almost exactly what we
spend on our military. So three more questions for you. Thank you so much for your time. One way we could falsify the thesis. Of well, if America just sits back, then China is going to run rampant across the world. Well, one thing we could do is look at past examples of America not intervening in foreign conflicts. So anytime there's been a major conflict since 1776 and America has not intervened and the results haven't been detrimental, would work against this thesis.
Are there any times America didn't intervene in great power issues and things turned out? Relatively. OK. Ohh yeah. Staying out of the Napoleonic Wars was was essential. Those were human meat grinders. Those were devastating. And the US was able to relatively benefit from them by selling to both sides and staying out of the war. They grew relatively more powerful by comparison. Again, I think the US is in a different position now in the
world. Like it's it's realistic that other countries look to see what the United States thoughts on these things are, and I just don't think that we should de facto. Assume the worst out of China. Like, yes, China is investing in like, you know, the Congo in places like that. Like, these are horribly, you know, savaged countries by war and desperation and stuff. Like if China wants to get involved there and like maybe do
something good. I don't see Americans like American businesses and stuff lining up to do business there. Like, why? Why should we assume the worst? You know, we don't assume the worst when the French go out and do something, even though they're always looking out for their own national interests as well. The Chinese are doing the same thing. We need to be adult about it. I think we've forgotten how to do diplomacy you mentioned earlier.
We made a deal with Stalin. We shook hands with Mao. Now we talk like. Now we we can't talk to Putin. It's like. We've forgotten what it's like to be among relative equals, let's put it that way. The unipolar moment, I think, really warped our sense of diplomacy. The Cold War really kept us in check in that way. And even during the Cold War there were times that the so I I read one story about the Soviets killing an American congressman in 1983 in the Kal 007 flight.
Guys name was Larry McDonald I think. And the US managed to not wage war on the Soviets in response or like the Hungarian uprising in 1956 Eisen, even though the Soviets went in, killed innocent people, shut it all down Eisenhower. Uh, invited Kruschev to to Camp David. Even after that, you mentioned an incident in 1968 in Czechoslovakia. Could you quickly summarize that? Well, again, that was an example of a popular uprising that was
brutally suppressed. And again, the United States did nothing because it was perceived to be within the Soviet sphere of influence. It was simply a recognition that while certain things are morally repugnant to us, there is a context in which they occur where we are not going to do anything about it. Now that's not every context and I think we really need to think about the amount of security commitments that we still are carrying over from the Cold War.
When our relative power differential and really look at, look at our situation now, we're not in the same situation we were then, we were oil importers then now we're net oil exporters. It's much less important to the American economy what happens in the rest of the world, especially in places like the Middle East.
It was once admittedly pretty doggone important, now it's less so. It's certainly not anywhere to the extent that we need to be getting involved actively there, you know, I think actually us stepping away will encourage them to actually have to get along. Because no one's gonna be able to call in, you know, the giant with the big stick to just start smashing everything up. So they're going to have to get along.
One of the main contradictions that the Hawks in society push is they say things like war is really good for the economy, it gets people spending money, it brings resources into work, and this is how economies grow. And then they also say, thank God those idiots. Soviets got duped into Afghanistan in the late 70s. That's what brought down their economy. Well, certainly you would think that that would have stimulated it, just like you guys always said. So Joe Mullins is war.
Good or bad for the economy, it's actually a net loss and so is military spending in terms of what it contributes to civilian and commercial uses. That was not the case all the way up through 19, gosh, I want to say 1992. But at that point the return started to become negative. So, and this is all according to like high high grade academic stuff here. It's just not money well spent and you know all the money that you can spend blowing stuff up,
you could use it much. Better and much more productively building stuff up, to say nothing of the human cost. So the idea that war is good for the economy, or that World War Two got us out of the depression? All false. What is the biggest lesson you learned from hotter than the sun by Scott Horton? Gosh, just how close we've come. To a nuclear explosion happening just by sheer accident.
It it was just so unbelievable to read all of these, you know, first hand accounts of like, yeah, then this happened and it was like, ohh, we dropped that. And it was like, are you kidding me? Is this the kind of stuff we're talking about? They accidentally dropped one, you know, like in North Carolina. Yeah, it is. Just like, what? Because my fear is what if it had detonated? Like how many questions are gonna get asked before? Like our bombers are in the air and like.
Is that are we gonna know, are they gonna know quick enough that central command gonna know that that was one of ours? And not, you know, the first strike of an attack. Like, I don't know, I, I I'm really opposed to nuclear weapons. I understand that they're here at this point, probably now that certain regimes have them that the United States is like allergic to, like North Korea. We're probably always going to have some. But gosh darn, I just, I don't want them to be anywhere near
anyone's finger. I mean, not unless, you know, the United States is going to be overwhelmed by an alien army because that's literally the only conceivable situation I can imagine us. Were being under threat. No, we are literally invulnerable. Check out the links in the description to find the work of Joe Salas Mullins. I will also link to that book, the rise and fall of great powers by Paul Kennedy. Thanks to everyone for watching the Libertarian Institute.
And Keith Knight, don't tread on anyone. Mr Mullin, thanks so much for your time. Thank you, Keith. It was a pleasure.