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Oddly, we're live February twenty sixth of twenty twenty six allegedly according to that thing we call a calendar. Now, it's been quite a whirlwind of a couple of weeks, really, and I didn't speak to Larry Hancock last week because rather suddenly, right before we were supposed to air, I was not well enough to do. So it's my fault.
But thankfully Larry decided to join us this week, and actually it probably times out better because we're going to talk about some current events and we're going to talk about Hey, how about foreign policy. I know that's on everybody's mind right now. There's sarcasm in that, you know, everybody wants to talk about the Epstein files. Everybody's talking about, you know, the economy because it's strangling us all but
not according to the State of the Union address. But also not according to the State of the Union address. Oddly absent in my mind is foreign policy. Really. I know there were some mentions, but not a lot there. Meanwhile, moves are being made so it's sort of strange to see this administration not signaling moves, or maybe they're signaling moves in a different way that I don't understand, and maybe even moving without comment on certain things because assets
are being moved around. We certainly have this issue now with what's going on with Cuba in the boats, because we had the Venezuela thing, but according to Trump's State of the Union, Venezuela is now a great partner of ours ever since they took Maduro out of there. So, you know, no looking at the boats and whatever's going on on the high seas in r. S's And meanwhile, what's happening with the circling of Iran and the speculation there. I don't know. I didn't hear much of that in
the State of the Union. But let's hear from somebody who's a little more sober and intelligent on these things than I am usually, and that's Larry Hancock, who's the author of very many books. Of course, there'll be a hyperlinks you can go follow Larry's blog, you know, and he talks about history and history as it's being made sometimes, and gee, the Oversight Committee's awfully busy, but he may have more commentary on that in the near future as well.
Who knows. Larry. First off, how you doing tonight.
I'm doing fine, Chuck, looking forward to an early spring. It's been warm here this week. It's very nice the.
Past couple of days. I got warmer here, but it was freezing for Georgia for a while while, I mean really really cold. I know people in the Northeast are probably saying to themselves shut up because they were buried under you know, three and a half feet of snow. But believe me, it was cold for us in Georgia. For being in Georgia, it would have been like, you know, a typical week in I don't know, March in Jersey. But hey, it is what it is anyway, Larry. But
this is a strange time. I mean, look, you heard what I had to say at the beginning, and I do feel that way. And I'm not offering much of an opinion on when I don't feel as though I'm being offered much data. So you know, maybe you're seeing things I'm not. So what is actually happening regarding US foreign policy? I mean, are we about to strike Iran? In your estimation? I mean all those questions that I'd really love to ask somebody I don't know, like at
the Pentagon right now, But where's that guy been? Right? Anyway? I know our head of the FBI was making sure to celebrate with the hockey team in Italy and all, but you know, we are busy with other things. Maybe I missed the memo, what what do you see happening here? And what can we see beyond the surface? Do you think?
Well?
One thing that talking about who's saying? What about? Just an immediate comment is one One high ranking admiral pointed out to the President about three weeks ago that that we have been deploying forces at a rate that is quite unusual for US without having an active you know, being at war or having a you know, a congressionally approved military action play. And the admiral was essentially saying, you know, I've got a carrier group that's been deployed
already for a year and a half. The guys in that carrier group would like to come home, they'd like to be rotated. We really need to maintain ships. We've got some real sustainment issues with this force. So I just need to advise you of that. So please don't send them to the gol again. And the answer was to ignore him or move him out of his position, which is happening a lot these days, and sure enough to carry a group to the golf. So one of the things that's happening that is I think why you're
not hearing much from anybody, Chucks. It's become very clear that if you actually even state your opinion from a professional standpoint, if it's not the right opinion.
You need to look for work immediately.
And so I think that is and the Secretary of Defense is strictly in that court. If you have advice, they don't really want advice. What they want is compliance. And so I think that's why the level of communication has really dropped down. Okay, similar to what we might have explained over the last few decades.
Right, So let me just ask you about a couple of specific things. Then, because you have the the Gerald Ford, there's reports that those guys kind you know, gave that sentiment that you just mentioned about Hey, listen, we've been out here long enough and maybe it's time to rotate us or you know, give us some shot leave or something.
I saw that report. In addition, I saw that you know, they're supposed to be deploying hospital ships right to Greenland, and these things seem awfully incongruous to the awfully ignored elements that have been deployed that seem to be strategic but are not actually involved in an active operation. Does this seem contradictory or does it seem like we're just not getting a full report on what's actually happening regarding this, or what do you make of that?
I always think it's all disconnected because it's quite frankly, all situational.
That's a comment I would make.
Traditionally, you would have a stated foreign policy, okay, and then you can looking for things that would be consistent with that foreign policy. We're in a very situational mode at the moment. Whatever strikes the president at any point in time, any given a week becomes the foreign policy priority.
And whatever it was last week.
You know, it may recycle, but it's not part of a coherent, consistent, orderly process.
It's like rotation. You know. Well, we talk about Venezuela.
Yeah, if somebody asked a question about it, and if they ask the right question, that makes us think about it, we may do something different.
Same way with the hospital ships.
You know, you hear that the hospital ships are on their way in a social media post, but we know that's not true, and we know that can't even happen. One of them is under maintenance. They would require icebreakers that we don't have. The port's not big enough to die. It's just they're inconsistencies all over the place. So at this point in time, we don't really have a foreign policy being supported by an integrated series of actions.
We have at best, it's tactical.
You know, what are you going to do this week to support what the priority was this week? And next week you'll turn around and go, well, wait a minute, but I already deployed everybody for that.
Now you want me to pull them back.
It's like the carrier that you talked about, rather than being rotated as it should have been in the first place, was deployed to support the Venezuela operation tentatively, and then it was no, it's not going to have to go there. Is it going to go home? No, No, it's turns out it's going to go. So what you are seeing is a lot of disconnections. I think it would be hard for anybody to objectively not think that was going on. It's very difficult for commanders, It's very difficult granders. It's
difficult for the person. Well, I would say, the only person who's pleased by this. And if I were really in charge of China and really wanted to invade one, I'd wait about a week under the assumption that we might well have engaged with Iran and that we might have supplied the bulk of our anti ballistic missiles there are available to us to Israel, and then in a short period of time we'll use them.
All well, wow, well this leads us to a logistically.
Our forces will be tired, out of ammunition and not involved in this kind of situational activity.
Right, So it leaves you with logistical questions. But are we certain that we're just simply not being shown? Like, is this a new kind of stealth behavior?
Right?
Where there is two tracks let's say of behavior here. It's not all singular. Let's just say there's the surface level stuff and the stuff that's being shared, and then there's maybe a quiet contingent that is simply you know, actually enacting more long term strategies. Is that a possibility? I mean, are we really looking at a four D kind of chest.
Now, No, I don't think no, I think that's true.
I think what you did say is obviously there are two levels of things going on. The military stuff is quite transparent, and these days it can't not be. You can't really sneak forces around that if you can turn this, turnoff transponders, you know. But you know when we're assembly enforcing. Quite frankly, the president never fails to announceward forced. So that that part is pretty straightforward. What we don't see,
and we talked about this a little bit earlier. Uh, the president is always running a series of deals in the background, and if the deals were that's going to condition the military response, it may restrain it. I mean, we saw that in Venezuela clearly. In Venezuela you had it was very confusing because you had something going that had to do with drugs, which like.
It disappeared, and then it had to do with oil.
And what it turned out was that he had clearly been the ghost shading with the vice present the country to actually gain access to its oil supplies, not to do a revolution, for do a new democratic government, not to control drugs, but literally essentially to do a deal to gaintain access to its oil. So wise, so there is a there's a deal making going on. Certainly, there's deal making going on in regard to Palestine, in regard.
To Iran, and REGARDSS.
So what's in the background that you're not seeing is what particular deal he's trying to cut at any point in time, because that deal may be different than the one that he's talking about. So, yeah, certainly, is that for fortys I'm not sure.
Maybe that's what.
It is, but it's there's a level of complexity situationally.
And what deal he thinks can be cut.
And the fascinating thing to me was in Venezuela, the deal that's been cut and the outcome that's been that we're arriving at is totally different than what the deal being discussed in the beginning was. So that kind of leaves you at odds about you know, I wonder where we may end up.
Well, let's see if we can make a pattern out of this, because it seems to me like that is a consistent pattern, you know, when it comes to intervention regarding Israel and that circumstance, right, it was to be in support of them because they had been under attack, and that was a couple of years ago, now I know, And you know, before we go any further, I got to mention there's still shooting going on in Ukraine. Everybody forgets,
but there it is. And the only address to that in the State of the Union was, well, that wouldn't happened if I was president, Okay, but it's still happening. And what happened to that negotiation not a top priority at the moment according to this administration, right, So the top priority of Venezuela, well, that was about drugs, and we were bombing the boats and then we had to take out the dictator. And meanwhile, I didn't think Venezuela was a big drug hub anyway, but at least not
from the history. I understand it's really not. But that's okay. They're going to clamp down on that. They're blowing up boats, and the next thing you know is we're snatching the dictator, bringing them here under drug charges and cutting an oil deal. So I mean, it's either chaos or there is a pattern being hidden here where it's like, look it's a ropodope, you know, Look we're going in one direction. We're going in run direction. Keep your eye on my left and
here's my right. I don't know, it's an odd sort of thing to witness here, because I've never seen this before in foreign policy, even studying historically foreign policy. I mean, is there a time period we could look back to that would reveal to us this type of foreign policy behavior from the United States? Do you think?
Well?
I think one can say that we have always we've always had two stated foreign policy seeze right, the overt foreign policy the State Department would be communicating, we be communicating diplomatically, and then whatever an individual president chose to make his priority. So the fact that we would have two priorities in play and some conflict there and some you know, dysfunction is not odd.
It's not odd at all.
I mean, we go back to, you know, the invasion of Cuba, and you have the guy who's at the.
UN going, oh, we would never do something like that.
At the bottom line is we just didn't tell him we were about to do that, you know. So I think it would be unfair to say that we haven't been in these situations before.
We seem to be in more.
Of them at any one time than before, and I think I think that makes it. It makes it a lot more challenging and probably a lot more risking. But because you can, you know, you can get away with one mistake if you make it.
Can you get away with life in the same timeframe? Not sure. But the real answer to your.
Question, I think is what is totally escaping us at the moment is committing to these actions without an understanding.
Of the long term impact.
Because, as you just said, in all of these cases, we come out with a statement in the beginning of why we're doing it, and then we change it in midstream, and then the question is going to be, well, we changed in midstream.
How does you know?
First of all, did we accomplish what we said we were going to do? You know, let's look at Venezuela. Have I seen anyse Yeah, we've suck some boats. Have I seen any Have I seen any statistics in the State of the Union message about drug usage in the United States being down, drug availability in the United States being down?
Is there any metric to show me that that worked? Okay, now what about the metrics on the on the oil? We know we've we've taken a lot of oil. We haven't. We're not. We're taking it easy way, We're taking it out of tankers, right, you know, and we're selling that, And and where's the metrics on that?
Where's the oversight committee that says, has it made their life better already?
Maybe it has, don't know, haven't seen it.
What we have definitely not seen was the claim that was made in the beginning is that we're actually going to take Matiro because we want to put a democratic government in place, and democratic governments are good for the hemisphere. We'll all be better if we get rid of all
these dictators. Well, we know that there's a disconnect there because immediately after that was said, then we actually saw a couple of detators that had been charged and in prison released, and we had established good relationships with other dictators that we've been really taking to task for drug running. So there's the inconsistency, you know. So to get back to your question, it's hard to answer a question of whether this is working or not when all of these
feats they're not what was supposed to work. And when it's the metric, how do I evaluate it?
Right? So, I mean, the essential message here is that when you see a public message from the United States about the motivation and operation. If I were just random any foreign entity, I would not take it seriously as the ultimate, you know, root of the operation. I would think, Okay, they say they're coming to do this, it doesn't mean
that's what they're really after. Number one. Number two, I don't know if I buy it, because it seems as though every beginning entry into action from the US as of late appears to change mid stream, like you said, and then ultimately ends up in a completely different sort of orientation. You know, like, let's just take Venezuela for a moment. They wanted to remove the dictator, okay, but they left the vice president there because an oil deal could be cut. Well, I guess the drug problem left
when Madruro did. It's a very weird circumstance there. It's almost like, don't believe the first thing the US says would be how I would interpret it if I didn't have some good intelligence to let me know what was coming next? Would that be an unfair sort of outsider perspective, you.
Think, I don't see how anybody who's looking at what's going on could feel differently, honestly, And I, you know, I don't see what.
I'm well, someone can tend this is a perfectly good strategy anyway, you know, just to just to enact the confusion before the infusion of the actual agenda.
Right anyway, Uh, I think the fighting is still in Gaza. Fighting is still going on in Gaza, right, is not anything? The Israeli army has not agreed anything. The Israeli settlers, are you thinking? The Israeli government, their democratic government hasn't
agreed anything. You know, we're sort of acting like, okay, we're done, there's peace, going to something else, and none of these things are ever done that there's kind of there were points in time like with we're good at declaring victory, right, and I think we're back to that motive.
We're quickly declaring victories.
So we can go on to something else and not looking behind us at all. We're not we're not learning every experience. We're not we're almost not interested in the experience.
So not that we have not been there before in Guatemala, you.
Know, I talked about regime change and Guatemaldel for ages where we did literally manage.
To kick out a government.
You know, we didn't do a deal with it that right, but the net result over there, we left it in a contentious state. Over the following ten years there was something like twenty thousand deaths and murders inside the country, just you know, because we didn't. We declared victory and we're done. You know what we got what we wanted. Whatever happens to the people is wherever, you know, it's their problem.
Uh, it's we're satisfied with and one left and right.
It's kind of a very a very hit and run thing. I'm having trouble.
Again with Iran a run.
There was a period of time where we might have jumped in and taken some strong military action when there was a revolution in the streets.
We didn't.
And you can't delay those things. And we've learned that over time. That's a historical lesson. There's there's it's a very small if you if you want the military action, you do it now.
And then Cuba to us and.
Well we went and so we did not yet we had bombed their atomic facilities before and now we're about ready.
To bomb them again.
And it just there doesn't see any seem to be any continuity. Everything is what what are we going to do today?
Well, right, and with the hospital ships today, is it?
Yeah? With Iran, I'm confused because I could have swore we were told that they absolutely obliterated all of the nuclear program when they took out this one particular area before with the Israeli assist Right, and now we're going to reobliterate their nuclear program. I am confused.
Yeah, And I think even the President said we'll just bomb the desert again.
Well, I just doesn't seem productive to me.
But and one of the reasons, quite frankly, while most of the nations in the Gulf region are trying to discourage this, is that they and know what follows regime change in Iran will be totally unpredictable and probably much more violent and much more vicious. And this is kind of generally the state of regime change when you don't when there's no you know, when you force regime change, no parties obviously in control. I guess that's not the
only good thing you say say about Venezuela. We really left the party of dictor schadership in control and they are still in control. But if we break Iran, all those people over there know that it's just going to be bloody conditional warfare among half a dozen parties for ages, and they don't want that to happen because at this point in time, two things could happen. The Iranians could say, we accept your conditions and lie to us and go ahead, just so we pull those forces back back, okay, and
that could very well happen. Or they could say we're going to fight, because they're kind of the same position Putin's in. You know, either let us stay or you come to eliminat us. And if you come to eliminat us, we're gonna fight, and it'll be a bloody battle if it happens. And I think more than even being a bloody battle, I keep in my own mind, I don't quite understand why a run having a handful of nuclear weapons is more a danger to this country than North Korea, for example.
Yeah, or Russia.
That's because I don't think it is.
Why did we suddenly.
See there's the key. I don't think it is. I think it's more of a danger to Israel than it is to us, you know. But there you go, right, And now now this turns into the foreign policy question. Nobody likes to really discuss unless you're angry and hateful
one way or another. Right, it seems like, you know, people are anxious to talk about this, but this is the hornet's nest that nobody wanted to kick, right, I mean, isn't that what Iran has been since, you know, basically the hostage crisis my recorded memory, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but it hasn't that been the case where it's like, look, nobody wants to really go in and do anything regarding Iran. They're contained, so to speak. I mean,
that was the idea. Now Israel has a different point of view on it, and we have been you know, blamed for and said to be, you know, at the behest of Israel doing many things. And I'm not saying that that is valid or invalid incomplete, because there's a
lot of nuance there. But as far as our concerns America first concerns, no, I don't think Iran having a weapon or a handful of weapons or whatever it is that they could possibly manufacture is actually many more dangerous than anything else on the planet right now, you know. And by the way, I don't see anybody discussing China in foreign policy discussions at all, maybe I'm you know, missing something, but it's like China disappeared off of the map.
As far as these discussions go, am I imagining that?
No, no, you're not, and it is confusing. I just got my mut's issue of my Air and Space magazine.
I subscribe to you since I former Air Force heading.
So the theater commanders or you can sell, they're having to be political, but they're being nonplussed about what they're being what they're being asked to do with their resources. You know, they're talking about, well, there was a policy, a foreign policy shift under Obama towards China.
Okay, well we got that and we started reorienting.
Taining all our resourcesologies are we're fighting whatever towards China.
But this Venezuela, whether it's Iran.
And they're the ones to have the real problem. They've got a small number of assets relatively speaking, and they've been told that there was this shift towards China, but that's not where they're being.
Asked to send differences.
That's not where they're asked to be spend their assets in terms of maintenance and personnel and weaponry.
And they're what they're doing is they're very you know, these are graduate of war colleges.
They're very politely saying, we are perplexed. Also, we're trying to do the best we can.
Don't pick on us, right, So you know, it's it's a very weird state. It's like to me, that would be the sleeping dog. I'd be worrying about getting up to bite us. You know. All these other concerns. Yeah, they're situational. They may have you know, different and flashpoints, et cetera. But I would think that in general, the long term issue has got to be to deal with the Chinese and what it is that they plan to do in the region, because you know, there you go,
that's what I thought the deal was. But all of that as again, like I said, sort of evaporated from the discussion, and it's about all of these other brush fires as opposed to the major thing building there. I mean, in my opinion, but there you go. That's my opinion. Sorry, I didn't mean to put mine into it this time.
But it is the other thing that goes along then.
And you know, it seems like we're spending all of our time talking military, but quite frankly, these days, most of it does seem to be foreign military. You know, what are we doing overseas with the military. And one of one of our advantage at the moment is that we have smallphens and you can go to Venezuela and do very precise, highly targeted, cleanly targeted aggression, you know, so lots of people don't get killed. And that's about
what we're going to do in Iran again. You know, that's one of the great areas of expertise right now that we have and we're the only ones demonstrating.
Do the Chinese have it?
Sure they have it, they're just not fighting anybody. And actually they're not consuming any of their resources. We keep asking why they can afford this. You know, see, I'm going to keep spending and growing the way they employ those assets again, highly expensive. You can't replenish those types of ammunitions, can't. You can't replenish the ballistic missile interceptors that we spent on Israel right and in mass more
than we're ever used for anything before. It takes years to manufacture and reply those things.
But in these.
Years using your stockpiles that are that Yeah, that's our American advantage and and that's great, and it helped protect our people. But if you start spending it, and spending it heavily for these types of actions, then you you're talking about a year or two years to reset, which is why there's so much spending in this year's military budget for replenishment and resupply and growing the munition space.
Because we've somehow, and I quite know how it happened, we've somehow become in an almost constant state of warfare using these sophisticated weapons with almost.
Note seene it right now, there's this thing nobody planned on it. That's why we're suddenly.
Well and there's the entriest thing.
Sorry we have money or to buy forget that, forget giving right.
Sorry you broke up a bit there. But the important point in my mind is that while we are spending these assets and resources, uh, the Chinese are quietly not doing that. So what type of build up are we looking at, you know, for something potentially in the near future. That is what would be concerning me if I was involved in this business directly exactly, is that, Look, they're not spending all these resources, They're just building things and
stockpiling them. And isn't that what we used to worry about also, right, was the stockpile of who's got the most in the stockpile? That used to be a direct concern, it seems like, and that's no longer you know, again discussed or even hinted at in these in these back and forths that I see. I don't know, like I say to me, this is what's concerning. Is anybody keeping
an eye on that? And how out? You know, Look, we got to keep manufacturing things because we're using them, we're lending them, we're giving them.
I see it in Yeah, I use all of it, you know. I think Congress actually began to see it a little bit this year because the budget which is passed.
Hun.
But the second thing is we've become so relied on that advanced technology, and it's the offensive that we have in versual numbers. I mean, the size of our force is nothing loss even much less twenty or fifty.
It's men stool compared to that.
And for all aspects of our forces that you know, use really advanced, really expensive assets.
Uh.
I was just reading today and while this has happening, you talked about China. Twenty years ago, China had perhaps ten low worth orbit surveillance satellites monitoring our assets and resources around the globe. Now they have one hundred, they'll probably have five hundred within two years. They can deal
with this on a level they've never had before. And now, you know, it's just they're they're changing the they're changing the plane field from our standpoint where we're still stuck in the same plane field and it gets more and more expensive to cope. So, no, you didn't see a lot of discussion about that last night. You saw during the speech talk about claims for the space Force.
Okay, that's all well and good, but.
You know, I sort of missed people actually, you know, dealing with the reality of the situation, and sometimes you sometimes it's not all good. Sometimes you have to admit things aren't the way you want them to be.
Well, and there you go, Space for which should be frankly becoming much much more significant in our strategic planning. I haven't heard anything about it. It's almost like, yeah, we established it, but we really haven't done anything with it yet. It seems like now that could be because we're you know, keeping our cards close to our best so to speak. That could be, or it's not a priority at the moment, I don't know, you know, it's
hard to say. I mean, have you noted any you know, interesting things about Space Force expansion, what it is they're planning on doing. Have they added to you know, the the actual elements that are going to make up the infrastructure of this newly created military branch. I mean, has any of that come through? I don't think so.
Well, I had they're planning on it, and they were planning on if they got funded. But one of the problems is in these days, the way we've been recycling the budget, and not just the budget, but the spending. You know, that's that's a problem we have that the Chinese don't have, or the Russians say, you know, somebody, you know, they just spend, you know, they don't They don't stop and.
Start where we do.
Our contracting stops and starts, payments turn on and off, and they don't have that problem. But no, the Space Force has those plans. But I think I think really what we're talking about, if we admitted it, have admitted it, is for whatever reason, we have moved into just bragging about how good we are and how effective we are, and we're really talking about how good we are, which is was fine.
I mean, for example, our performance.
In Venezuela or in Iran from a military standpoint was awesome and it was fantantastic.
But it's constrained.
So if all you'd ever do is brag about it, then you don't get to discuss. You know, we can't do that every week. You know, we don't have the people, the assets or resources.
But we've.
We've just everything is, it's gone. We've gotten into a bragging mode, which can be dangerous. I need a little a little hubris needs to be entered into the dialogue.
Right, Yeah, that's the difficulty is now we have a lot of you know, hyperbolic statements about everything's great, it's in a golden age. But we're ignoring some things here I think, or it does seem as though action is not being taken where it should be, and smarter planning is not being done. And I mean again, maybe that's just the perspective we're being presented so that, you know, surprise, we actually have all this other stuff. I don't know.
I'm not saying that I know for certain, but one does wonder, you know, how this is all going to pan out, not necessarily tomorrow, but in a few years from now we'll see the effects of this sort of change in posture. I guess we could call it, Would that be a fair way to put it? Or how many years do you think it'll be before we actually see the results here?
I think there are two levels of results. The first is the results of what we've done. I mean, the results in Latin America of what we've done. I mean we we've You and I talked about this another show. We have instituted, reinstituted dunboat diplomacy in Latin America.
Call it what you will.
We've made it very clear to everybody that either you play with us or we'll take you out right. You know, So is that going to produce what we wanted? Is that going to produce revenues for us? Revenues for them we want?
Up?
We know we just started that. We won't know what's going to happen. Same thing in some of these other venues. Uh, same thing about you know, Gaza or Palestine. What is it really going to produce? We won't know for some time because we've already done all that, right, we haven't done the other stuff that you and I are talking about, you know, are we prepared for the other stuff?
Is the real question?
Are at the time, at the time we're doing these have we really prepared for the big questions we have we made the investments that we need to compete with the Chinese economically? Have we made the investments that we need to compete in the Arctic?
Have we made them? You know?
That's that is the problem. Those are two different things. One is, you know, what are the repercussions of what we've done within the last eight months to a year, and then what are the longer term effects of what we're not doing now? And I would say here the strange thing, in my mind is the most obvious one is the Chinese very well, very greatly wanted influence in the Middle East and in Latin America in terms of resources and very much on their way to getting them,
and we're very successful. Was this really a strategy that's going to stop that and suddenly we have access to all those resources?
Maybe, and if so, that will be a good call.
But I will have to tell you, speaking speaking locally for a change, what we're seeing the agriculture folks are seen in terms of lost markets for virtually all of our products in Latin America and other places around the world because of the tariffs. You know, that seems to be speaking against the fact that we've made advances. You know, maybe we got the Chinese out of some business deals, did we really?
Uh?
Maybe people people like us less without a doubt than the Chinese because Chinese didn't do anything to them. And the third point is we're not gaining new markets, we're losing them.
Right. And then simultaneously, the unanswered question, which I find remarkable nobody's asked so far, is look, they're talking about Okay, the Supreme Court ruled that that the initial tariffs were not legal whatever, And well, how about this. Now we're going to have to refund it. Who you going to refund it to? Right, You're going to refund it to the people that paid it, which is the importers, Okay. And the fact that that cost was passed along to consumers,
they're not going to get a refund on this. So you have an imbalance right there. Plus the introduction of new tariffs and all of this is part of our foreign policy as well, and is affecting foreign policy if nothing else, you know, and Trump said it in the state of the Union. Let's take him at his word. Listen, either you're gonna make deals with us or we're gonna make it difficult on you. So I'm gonna bring fifteen percent tariffs instead of ten percent tariffs. And that's the
way that's gonna go. And Okay, how is that gonna fall out? You know, if it sticks, which is a question from many different angles, will it stick? So I think that's a reasonable question to ask about all of these foreign policy decisions. Where again, if I'm a foreign nation, whether adversary, neutral, or ally, I would ask myself, is
any of this gonna stick from the United States? No matter what they declare out of the gate, and no matter what deals I allegedly cut with them, because they'll walk away from deals, they'll decide that we have new deals to be made. Whether it's financial, militarily, anything else doesn't matter. And I would say that if we become too unpredictable, then it's going to like, you know, judge for yourself kind of diplomacy is going to happen on the other end, I mean, or am I overreacting?
No?
Now, I think that if we rapped all of this back up to the higher level of just talking about foreign policy. Okay, forget to see one judgment calling foreign policy has always been has any national been predictable.
And trustworthy?
Can I do business with them without expecting them to stab me in the back or attack me?
You know?
That's really kind of the core of foreign policy. Foreign policy is to have a policy that people can understand, that it's consistent, they can trust, and it allows for business to go on.
A long term basements.
In some terms, I'd say, but that's one of the reasons why empires work pretty well for a time because they were very consistent over a long period of time, and what their policies were, you knew it, you could deal with it, you might not even like it, but it didn't change. And predictability has been very key in diplomacy and foreign policy forever, and we've taken that away.
So I think at the highest possible level, the question is about our foreign policy, is that we've become so tactical and so situational that most of the other nations have to reconsider the terms that they're going to be doing business with us, whether that is military business, whether it is.
Trade.
We've already seen in Europe that lots of military deals that we're going to the US are now going to European man manufacturers because they're more trustworthy. We're we're not going to turn things on when you start using your assets as bargaining tools. You know, other people are not stupid. It's sort of like, well, you did that to me once, you did that to me twice, maybe I think you
might do it again. So none of this speaks well to general foreign policy over you know, we're talking about over different administrations or you know, a decade or something like that, which is we're real foreign policy. Let's face it, since World War Two, people were able to view Americans in relatively consistent fashion. They might have thought we were assholes at point in time culturally or behaviorally, but they knew we did business. You know, they knew how we
did business right, were predictable. We were a good source for them, We were a good market for them.
And so that's great. We had a reputation for that.
And that's what I'm concerned about at the moment, is is more what's happening to our reputation?
Mmm? No, I mean one time a guy in Germany explained it to me like this that as so long as you let the Americans think they're you know, basically ripping you off a little bit, Uh, you can keep everything happy.
Yeah, exactly.
It doesn't mean that you are, and it doesn't mean that Americans in general will do that. But that was the way to maintain the balance. Is as long as an American thought they were getting over in some way in doing business with a foreign country, they were. They were thrilled. So there's change in attitude in general where nope,
they're all ripping us off. Uh. It was a real It was a real serious change and and something that uh, for probably one hundred years, right, most of the planet did not think this way, know that we were like this. It was like, just just entertain them even and give them the idea that they're doing well in the transaction, and you'll be fine. That consistent paradigm just is no longer valid because of what's going on.
That was always the definition, always the definition of is a good business deal was most both parties thought they did a little bit better than the other guy.
Oh that was a good bid.
If one of them gets beat to death and both sides know it, that's not a good business deal, and that's pretty much the where we've moved. I think somebody's going to feel that they really got had, and it's going to be and I don't just feel like it will be announced that you got had.
You know, it's we're first, and we made sure we were first, and you know, there's no doubt about it. So there.
It sounds much like the warnings in childhood of don't gloat even if you did win by a lot, because it doesn't help, you know. It's just anyway. I don't know what kind of bow you want to tie on this, but I think we kind of already did, quite frankly, and I think it's look an examination in real time of what's going on with the foreign policy, which again was not the main focus of the State of the Union.
Sometimes it has been, especially when we're getting ready and preparing to do some major action, but quite frankly, I think it's a little bit difficult to predict, you know, what the major action is, even from the political talking heads out there that are left that still have jobs, from all the independents out there that are just parroting each other, I think that they have no idea what's going to happen next and they're just going with their guts,
and their guts are definitely not involved in most of the transactions. So you know, it's always good to talk to you about it because we get another lens and one that is a bit more objective. And I appreciate that. But I guess in closing, I would say, you know, do you have any idea how the history is going to record this period regarding foreign policy? In your mind? What do you think?
I think it's it's I think it's going to record it as the point in time where we gave up the advantages that we garnered during the Second World War, basically in terms of foreign policy and in terms of building a reputation, trading partnerships, million military partnerships. That the news is that over several decades they begin to take taken for granted.
You know, sometimes that's not a bad thing.
You know, our markets were in place, they stayed in place.
Nobody questioned it.
Oh, we've been buying from these people, We've been doing deals with these people. As you said, you know, you might be take at times, they get advantage of you, but it's a comfortable place to be, right and we were that way with Europe, we were that we of Latin America, maybe not as much in Southeast Asia, but even in the Gulf States we were that way.
It was a it was.
A comfortable position that we took advantage of by remaining consistent and leaving things alone. And I think anybody's who's been in marketing, there's a famous saying is you spend a whole lot of money to gain market share, and you can lose it over by making a mistake.
And so it's a lot you know.
Once you get it, do not give it up because it's going to be really expensive to get it back. And I think that would be my overview at this point in time, in the long term, and that's that's why I'm sorry that foreign policy is not being talked about in those terms. It's not being talked about. Certainly, we gave up any talk of talking about it in terms of morality or democracy or you know.
Good intentions. Forget that. We tried that for a while.
That's gone, but we've given We've given up talking about follow foreign policies as a long term investment. Foreign policy is a long term investment in relations of all kinds, and I think we're in the process of sacrificing that it is. There going to be a reset, but we're going to have to earn it back.
We earned it during World War Two with a lot of blood. We earned it during the.
Cold War with a lot of blood and a lot of expense. And the nation should be proud of that. It sacrificed itself, spent lots of money on the Cold War and won the Cold War. We may just have lost it.
Well, you know what, It reminds me of Larry And you might disagree, but this is the way I see it. You know, Coca Cola is the act example. I don't know if people remember this, and some of you might not have even been alive, but there was a point at which, you know, Coca Cola had a good, solid piece of the market and they didn't need to mess with it at all. They could add products whatever, and some genius decided to change the formula of Coca Cola and they came up with this crap called new Coke.
And the second they did it, they suffered such losses that I'm telling you it took them about a decade to rebuild themselves with what they wound up calling Coca Cola classic for a long time because they had to reverse themselves and go back to the original formula. So take or leave my metaphor any which way you choose. I mean the listener, not you, Larry. But I do see it this way, I can take it.
I can take it painfully, Chuck.
Because a I was living in Atlanta then they was a stockholder. I'm still a Coke stockholder. So it wasn't just a boy. You guys made a mistake. You guys made a mistake with my money. Okay, But yeah, I think that's a good and you can come back. And I think it actually took them about no more than a months to realize that they've made a terrible mistake. Yeah, but coming back from that mistake took them a lot longer.
And I think that is a good metaphor. You can you can make a mistake and it sounds good, it sounds attractive, and then it's going to take you a long longer time to come back. And that's why not to sound preachy about it, but it bothers me that we have not taken our our foreign policy and the perception of America as a partner.
The way we should have.
We've not taken it as a major national investment over decades and decades, and we should have taken it seriously and we didn't.
Well, I definitely didn't mean to hit you personally, but you're well aware of the fact that for a long time they had to sell both products on the shelf. As they slowly walked it back. You had New Coke and Classic Coke both on the shelves. And believe me, the people did speak within about a month of like, hey, what did you do to a staple name brand? You know that the world knows what happened. Yeah, and it is inexplicable that it was such a se It's like
a legendary self inflicted wound done by a corporation. I mean, I'm sorry to laugh at it, because it probably cost you quite a bit because all of a sudden, market share was down and it was like, whoa, what did we do to our business? Is what Coke Corporate was saying, and with good reason. Now will we see it within a month. No, But you know, at the speed of politics, I got to tell you that it usually seems to me, like any administration, the effects of what they do is
seen in the following year. First, then a couple of years later you're still dealing with the fallout from whatever decisions they made, good, bad or otherwise. It does seem to be the speed of things, but then again, the world is constantly changing, so who knows it. We'll see it, and it we'll see a correction, or if a corrections necessary, maybe new cocal work this time.
Larry, you know what concerns me is with the speed of events. I'm not sure that we even have the time tort before. Let's just talk about tariffs and investments and chip monks, and you and I talked about.
This on an earlier show.
If I can't figure out how much I'm actually paying in regard to tariffs, and if I can't figure out my economic picture, I can't invest money correctly right, and that's going to scare me off.
And what we've seen over.
The last eight months is I don't see how I can and and I've got to respond, I'm not as not as American, but as a foreigner doing business with US. I can't keep waiting to see if this is going to stabilize. I you know, we're we're making shipping orders and purchasing orders and manufacturing orders in real time.
The good news is we've gotten really.
Faster at this, But the bad news is you're going to make your decisions a lot faster too. You just can't wait to say, Oh, is this going to get back to normal? Is this going to stabilize? You're going to have to be making some unfortunately short term decisions. So it could it could change fit quicker than it might have twenty thirty years ago.
Oh absolutely, especially with the you know, the hyper realization of supply chains on local level as well as on the you know, mass warehouse level and everything else. I mean, we are in a different world than we would have been prior to the turn of the century, for sure, So you know, you got to consider that across the board. Anyway, Larry Hancock, like I said, there will be links to some of Larry's books, which I highly recommend all of them. I don't know what book I would put on this
one this discussion. I usually have a recommended book from you, but I recommend them all, And who knows, maybe we'll be discussing other topics which are a little more narrow in focus in the coming weeks. But who knows the news might produce things that are irresistible for us to discuss. And hopefully I'll have you with me in about two more weeks, right, Larry, sounds good, excellent Till then, guys, I'm merely o'celly. All of you are the effect.
This is James Corbin at coorporreport dot com and you're listening to the Ocelly affected o'celly.
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