Chomsky and Ellsberg on the Present Danger [in Russia/Ukraine/Europe/Taiwan/China]
theAnalysis-news
Mar 13, 2023 #russiaukrainewar #nuclearweapons #taiwan
Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg discuss American objectives in the Ukraine war and the preparations for war with China.
Transcript
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Paul Jay Hi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news. It is a special interview session today with Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky. Be back in just a few
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seconds. Please don't forget the donate button. We can't do this without you and be right back.
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Once again, joining me are Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky. Thank you, gentlemen,
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for joining us. Daniel Ellsberg Good to be here. Thank you. Paul Jay I've asked Noam and Dan if they would actually kind of interview each other,
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and I'll jump in if I need to. But at any rate, Noam is going to go first and ask Dan a question.
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So go ahead, Noam. Noam Chomsky Actually, I can ask quite a lot of questions. There are lots of things I'd like to hear your
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take on, which I have a limited grasp of. One of them is kind of in the forefront now,
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I think, or should be. There's a good deal of increasingly open talk in Washington-- British
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analysts and others-- about the fact that the United States is getting kind of a bargain
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out of the Ukraine war. Quite a part from the military industry, the fossil fuel industry,
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and Europe falling into Washington's pocket. The United States, as a number of military figures and
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others have pointed out, is able to significantly degrade the military capacity of its main
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military enemy at a very small cost to itself and can therefore husband its resources for the
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major war that it's planning with China. I'm just wondering what your take is on all of this.
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Daniel Ellsberg Noam, with my knowledge from the inside, it is very profitable to prepare for war, to plan for war, and above all produce
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for war. For instance, arms manufacturers would like very much to break through the limits on
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war material that we provide to Taiwan. That has been in place since about '79 when [Jimmy] Carter
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actually recognized Beijing as the capital and there being 'One China'. Congress forced on that
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agreement a separate agreement that Congress would continue to budget for, and we would
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continue to sell military arms to Taiwan-- you're talking about China now-- despite the fact that
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Carter had just recognized Taiwan as a province of China, as virtually all Chinese regarded. Until
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this century, nearly all Taiwanese regarded it as a province of China. Now, there is an independence
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movement that has grown since the end of the last century, the end of the year, and since then.
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Generally, they are regarded as part of China. So we have this kind of paradox of sending weapons
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to a province of China. We don't send them to any other province of China, Zhejiang, for example,
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and we don't do that. But this move towards seeing Taiwan as a separate part, which of course, is by
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about 100 miles. But actually, it contradicts the idea of 'One China'. However, Congress
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insisted we're able to send, but with a limit, defensive arms, and not excessive amounts.
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I can't help but believe that there are a lot of people who would like to break through that. They
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have been increasing the amount over the years and even more in the last year. Of course, we've
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been taking a lot of moves like Nancy Pelosi and even progressives like Ro Khanna to make visits
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to Taiwan of a kind that didn't occur before and which are in the line of recognizing Taiwan as a
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separate, independent and sovereign country. Now, why? What's the pressure for that? I
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certainly am not an expert in that area. I think one contributor, just one, but not
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an insignificant one, is the desire to enormously increase the sales of arms that we make to Taiwan.
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No ceiling on that. If it is recognized as an independent country, which we're moving toward
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with these open statements of commitment to defend them from China, of course, an independent country
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can make alliances; that's sovereignty. In fact, all of Latin America is a sphere of influence in
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which countries have limited sovereignty. They cannot make alliances with, quote, "foreign
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powers." We're not a foreign power, of course, in the Western Hemisphere. They can't have bases,
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for example. If they were totally sovereign, they could. We were preparing to invade Cuba even
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before Russia in response to those plans. After the Bay of Pigs in '61 and '62,
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they were providing arms, but not yet nuclear arms. There were great calls, pressing calls,
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for [John F.] Kennedy to announce an invasion of Cuba going right up to the moment when they
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turned up with nuclear weapons from Russia. Now, I'll come back. Since they have no legal
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status, as they don't, clearly, the position we take is, "no, no. Sovereign countries,
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independence, have [inaudible 00:06:04]." What Kennedy was preparing for and accelerated when
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the build-up appeared-- totally aggression was illegal. We regard it as criminal and
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illegal for China to claim that it has a right to determine the nature of the government and
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to claim Taiwan as its own. But we come back to the question, which I don't fully answer-- no,
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I'll come back to Noam. Aside from the desire to have, I think, Taiwan not only as a purchaser of
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our weapons and a great profit to our arms sales but as a base again, as it used to be before '79--
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they used to have nuclear weapons, U.S. nuclear weapons in Taiwan. I visited bases with nuclear
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weapons in Taiwan in 1960 and thereafter. I don't think the Navy has ever fully reconciled itself to
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losing Taiwan as a base. With all this talk about containing China with a circle of friendly powers,
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a NATO-like encirclement of China, as we did with Russia, I think Taiwan would be a marvelous part
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of that circle of containment. It would be just wonderful to contain China from these various
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things, including parts of China that they read as Chinese. I'll turn the question back to you.
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Noam Chomsky I'm wondering what this conception that's now spreading in high circles is that we can degrade Russia on the cheap by losing Ukrainian lives to
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degrade the Russian forces. We can kind of control it enough so that it doesn't lead to a strong
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Russian response. We'll just keep it under control while at the same time preparing for a massive
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assault on China. I'm just wondering, for example, recently, there were reports about the Marines
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shifting their tactics from heavy armaments to island hopping, go back to Iwo Jima,
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and so on. I mean, can they really seriously be thinking that we can be preparing for a war with
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China where the Marines will be attacking islands as in the Second World War, and it's not going to
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blow up into total catastrophe? Daniel Ellsberg I don't believe they're preparing to invade Taiwan. I think it would have to be with the
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request, or politicians who indeed may have been induced in various ways to make that request,
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bribed, or impelled in some ways. I cannot believe they have in mind an
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amphibious invasion of Taiwan. They do intend [crosstalk 00:09:14]-- like the puppets.
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Do you really believe that? I think the idea would be that like our puppet government in Saigon [Ho Chi Minh City] asking us-- they asked us sometime after the Marines had arrived. Phan
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Huy Qu t, I know very well the Prime Minister. I know very well a fact that Phan Huy Qu t,
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whom I did meet but didn't know well, was not informed that Marines were about to
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land at Da Nang in 1964. But of course, he endorsed it once it happened. The rest of
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the involvement there did have the appearance of asking a request of a government that we
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described as sovereign. Although we had created South Vietnam, the U.S. created South Korea, South
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Vietnam had not existed before we drew [inaudible 00:10:11]. Taiwan, as I say, went back and forth
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and so forth, but for many years we treated it as an American base, and we didn't do that by
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invading it. We had people there who relied on it and profited from it, in fact, wanted us to
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support Chiang Kai-shek's pretensions that his claim to being the ruler of all of China
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was based on his firm intention to reinvade China. We supported operations against China
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from Taiwan and from the offshore islands, some of them a mile and a half from China. When China
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was opposing those, they were opposing bases that we were using for covert operations. How to keep them in the U.S.; that is Chiang Kai-shek's hands? The answer was there's only one
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way to do that. They're a mile and a half, some of them, a few more within sight of mainland China.
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Only nuclear weapons can keep them away. [Dwight D.] Eisenhower was prepared to initiate nuclear
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war to maintain islands that are just within sight of the mainland as part of the defense of Taiwan,
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which we regarded, in effect, as a subordinate. So 65 years ago, it was still top secret that Eisenhower had been ready, if necessary,
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to hold those islands to initiate nuclear war, with the understanding in his eyes that
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although China didn't have nuclear weapons, read Ukraine, its allies and a supplier of Russia did
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have nuclear weapons. Eisenhower expected a response from the U.S. against Taiwan,
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Shanghai, and possibly bases in Japan and Guam that were supporting this effort. In other words,
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to which our response would be an all-out war, which, as I found in '61, the Joint
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Chiefs expected to kill 600 million people. They didn't know then in 1958 or '61, and they
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didn't know until 1983 when nuclear winter became conceptualized and predicted by many scientists
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and confirmed today that it wouldn't be just 600 million that would be killed.
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We expected to attack. We planned to attack. We targeted every city in Russia, over 100,000,
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and 80% of the cities over 25,000, and the same in China. That's where you get up to 600 million and
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fall out from those attacks. What we didn't figure out then was that the smoke from the burning
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cities would be lofted by nuclear attacks. Hard to do this with non-nuclear attacks, but possible.
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We did it in Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo, creating firestorms that lofted the smoke into
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the stratosphere where it wouldn't burn out. But that was only three cities. With 100 to 200 cities
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with that smoke in the atmosphere, and you get that firestorm every time with nuclear weapons,
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it blocks 70% of the sunlight for up to a decade. It kills all of us, and it starves nearly everyone
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to death. Not everyone-- Argentina. Allen Rose is having dinner with us tonight,
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leading environmental scientists-- 90% to 98% starve to death in a year. He has a
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big peer-reviewed study that says it will be over 5 billion. He was telling me it'll be a
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lot more than that. I'm bringing this up to today. That's what we're facing now with the prospect of
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continuing this war, including moving toward the invasion of Crimea and the full expulsion of all
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Russians from Donbas, where Russian troops have been for eight years now. They've all got to go.
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Putin has said he is prepared to use nuclear weapons to prevent that. That Crimea,
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for example, is a trigger if he's really facing expulsion, which he wouldn't be, in my opinion,
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from Ukrainians alone. But if some people, including many major factors in Ukraine, including
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Zelenskyy, and so on, want and get direct U.S. involvement on this and not just a matter of arms
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sales and provisions, but troops and pilots, not just F-16s, then Putin would be seeing a
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real challenge and may as well, in Donbas. I don't think he is bluffing. He could be. People
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have bluffed in the past and have not bluffed in the past. I don't think he's bluffing now.
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I am getting away from your point that there are people who don't want to press it to that
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point because they want war with China, which is a nuclear power, of course. Actually, China doesn't
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have the number of weapons that Russians do. China doesn't need a first-use threat like Putin in its
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own region. Twenty years since [Bill] Clinton sent carriers to the Taiwan Straits as a challenge to
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them when they were sending test missiles in the area of Taiwan, we sent two carriers; the
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Chinese have been building up their conventional capabilities, including anti-aircraft carrier
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cruise missiles, and a lot of airfields among other things. The U.S. can't do that again.
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They will control it. It's pretty well recognized that they have at least conventional parity there,
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if not superiority. That's the difference from Europe. That used to be the way it was in Europe.
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We thought there was an overwhelming conventional superiority of Russians, Soviet troops against West Europe. Now, that was always a hyped-up hoax. There was a basis for
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that supposedly rationalized, the idea that we would initiate more the basis of NATO planning.
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We don't have to do that anymore in Europe. Why is Putin doing it? Because he's in the
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position we used to be. He's imitating our old policy. He has a conventional inferiority in
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Europe. So he's doing what we did for 70 years, threatening initiation of nuclear war and blowing
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the world up. It has no more justification than we had for 70 years, and we're still making it.
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Here's the point I was leading up with regard to your question. President Biden could easily, actually, said in 2016, when he was just leaving office as vice
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president, he couldn't think of any circumstances in which it would be to the benefit to initiate
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nuclear war or to threaten it. That was Vice President Biden in 2016. He ran on that in 2020
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no first use. We will not initiate nuclear war, which seems, you know, sort of a bedrock
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of sanity, except for the fact that we have been saying the opposite for 70 years. But
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here we had a presidential candidate who was, at last, recognizing that it will be immoral and
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insane to initiate nuclear war in any way. Well, he's been in office for two years. He hasn't
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said that. He's not going to say it. He could very well afford to say that. He could say cold threats
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are now tarn-justified, totally immoral, as they are, and with no longer saying, and we're saying
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the same. Hard for us to say that now because that is NATO policy right now, what he's threatening.
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He won't say that, I think, because many Americans feel he will need that threat in Taiwan. To hold
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on to Taiwan as an independent state, in effect, which we haven't openly recognized, but saying that we will defend them goes pretty far. We can't assure a conventional defense. We
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could actually defend it with non-nuclear weapons. If Biden says, "no nuclear weapons or first
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use threat for Taiwan," he will be accused by political factors and authoritative people saying,
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"you are now inviting a Chinese invasion into Taiwan." And that goes along with our ideology
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and our commitments of the last 50 years, you know, very openly till '79. After '79,
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as we move toward treating Taiwan as an independent to which we are, in effect, abide,
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we're back to threatening it. So, in short, we need Putin's threat for Taiwan,
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even not in Europe. And that is what makes me a little pessimistic that without pressure,
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Biden will not do what he would be, I think, quite willing to do in Europe.
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Noam Chomsky Well, based on your incomparable experience with
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these guys, is it conceivable, in your view, that they are now thinking the gang around Biden, that
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they can calibrate the war in Ukraine carefully enough so as to keep degrading Russia, sacrificing
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Ukrainians, not lead to Putin's escalation of the war, and at the same time prepare the Marines,
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your old friends, to start island hopping in a planned war against China, which they will
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somehow be able to calibrate as well to keep it short of Chinese nuclear weapons and gain
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the goal of degrading China as well? Can it be that they're really thinking of that?
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Daniel Ellsberg The Marines, as I understand it, moved to training
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in recent years for amphibious operations, which were the essence of my three years in
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the Marines as a platoon leader and then incumbent in commander, but as a battalion planning officer,
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assistant battalion planning officer. It's all for amphibious operations. But now, you know,
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gradually, much more helicopters instead of landing crafts. I probably went down the nets from
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the ship. A rather challenging project, actually, when you have a big pack on your back and
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weapons-- more than 100 times. I practiced it all the time. Of course, based on the island hopping
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of World War II, yes, they've been rehearsing now for helicopters for a long time, but they do, as
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you say, seem to be moving back. I don't know the details of this, but they are moving back toward
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more operations like that in their training. Now, something that occurs to me, which my memory
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isn't too precise on, but hasn't China been very much warming their relationships with the Solomon
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Islands? Guadalcanal? My first brother-in-law died in 1942 during the Battle of the Guadalcanal.
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Well, before they can go back to that, we have the islands that the Chinese have built up in the
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South China Sea to some extent for airstrips and so forth. Yeah, you could take over those.
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Coming back to the first part of your question, initially and now the attitudes on Europe,
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what do they plan there? It's true. They are-- especially Republicans. They seem to be sounding
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almost sane direction on Ukraine in the sense of not an indefinite amount of escalation here. Not
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forever. You even have-- what to say. How shall I describe Marjorie Taylor Greene? A maniac
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saying it would be insane to invade Crimea. Well, that's true. You have Democrats who are
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denying that and going along with Zelenskyy and pronouncing that we're going to invade Crimea.
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Taylor Green thinks-- I have used it, but I'm afraid it is not good even for a joke,
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but I have used it. I said I do have a principle you can't count on. You might think you could use,
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as a compass point, somebody who is always wrong. Lindsey Graham offers himself for that,
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for instance. One would think Marjorie Taylor Green. I've often said you can't count on anyone
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to be wrong on everything all the time. As I mentioned that somebody said to me, "even Lindsey
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Graham had a good resolution on immigration the other day." Maybe I've been misjudging
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him. That means you just can't set your compass court opposite to these people or reliably,
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pretty reliably, though. So in Europe, I think that the democratic
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leaders like [Antony] Blinken, [Lloyd] Austin, [Jake] Sullivan, and Biden have
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shown a willingness and even a desire for the war in Ukraine to continue indefinitely at this level
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and somewhat higher. I don't think they want-- I'm pretty sure they don't want nuclear war,
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but it's like Condoleezza Rice said, "we don't want the smoking gun to be a
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mushroom cloud." Well, how do you know if you've gone enough in pressing the Russians or too much?
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You know it when this comes up [inaudible 00:25:32] and Crimea offers itself as an
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abyss. I don't think they want a two-sided nuclear war or even a one-sided one in Europe. They are
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threatening a one-sided war in Taiwan, and I think they'll continue to do that. Putin is threatening
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what he hopes, I believe, is a one-sided war to hold on to Crimea, where virtually all Russians,
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I understand, do regard that as part of Russia. It would be an existential threat to lose it, and so forth. He has a lot of support for that. Donbas is a more complicated issue. Will he really
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blow up the world to keep all of his troops in Donbas as opposed to going back to pre-2023
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and pre-2022, February 24? We don't know. Noam, as you keep pointing out in other channels,
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it's outrageous that there is no negotiation going on on this point and there to be no communication.
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The fact that Blinken and [Sergey] Lavrov's Foreign Minister's first discussion since
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the war began was ten minutes a day at a conference which Blinken used to say,
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"get all your troops and withdraw, in effect, withdraw from Crimea,"
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that's not going to happen. A nuclear war, I think he knows that. We can just say no
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communication. Well, that's outrageous in terms of the interests of the world,
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but I think to keep it going, there's nothing but a benefit for the ruling circles in this
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country. The profit to the military-industrial complex, the share profits of Lockheed, Raytheon,
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General Dynamics, and Boeing have gone up, as have the profits of the oil companies.
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I would say they're not going down. But even more important, as you said, for the arms sales aspects, is the fact that NATO is back having appeared to have no
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purpose, no rationale since about 1992, with the end of the USSR,
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the end of the Warsaw Pact, the Warsaw Pact moving and not existing as a Russian set of satellites,
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it seemed to have no purpose of NATO. Now Putin is back as an enemy is a [inaudible 00:28:21] factor
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for NATO with the U.S. as its head. I have to say we've taken on, and with a lot of
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consensus, the role of a military protector in Europe. A protectorate, first in West Europe,
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now in East Europe. Now it's hard to get the benefits of being a protector, a protection racket
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unless you're protecting them against somebody. I think that [George F.] Kennan's and [Mikhail]
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Gorbachev's desire for a peaceful, democratic Russia to be part of a peaceful, democratic Europe
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community, from Lisbon to Vladivostok, but anyway, from Lisbon, a very wide European community,
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that was not desired. Kennan said, "you won't get this if you go into Ukraine." [Jack] Matlock,
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[William] Burns, and many others said, "you can't have a peaceful, democratic Russia if
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you talk about going into Ukraine. If you get Ukraine into NATO, you will have very
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bad relations with Russia." I think that was heard by other people. Aha, that gives us our roadmap.
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We'll do everything we can to get Putin, in a sense, to look like an enemy and to do things that
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make him appear; that's a trap he fell into. We have Putin back-- that's full. We have all the
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benefits now of being a protector of Europe, and it is indeed committing aggression, massacring
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people, and in every way encouraging people [to purchase] F-35s. He's the greatest salesman for
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this dog of a plane, F-35S, which is in the shop all the time and cannot fly near a thunderstorm
30:24
because it doesn't have good lightning protection. All of the other competitors for fighter bombers
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and Saab Gripen, and Dassault Rafalel, they're all out. It's F-35s all over. Well, that's okay with
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Lockheed. They've been lobbying for that since the '90s. Anyway, it's a perfect little war,
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as they used to say-- the Spanish-American War. In this case, it can't go on too long
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without the constant risk of inciting Putin to carry out threats of a kind we have often made
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but haven't yet been carried out. Noam Chomsky Well, actually, Lindsey Graham, who you mentioned, is one of those who's been celebrating
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the fact that the U.S. is degrading the Russian military with very little expense to ourselves,
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a great deal of expense to Ukraine and the rest of the world. But notice what's happening. NATO
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is now at its last summit, an Indo-Pacific power. We have now been able to enlist Europe in our
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planned confrontation with China, which is pretty much a bipartisan agreement in the main conflict.
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We'll sort of somehow calibrate things so that it doesn't get out of hand, and Europe will fight
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to the last Ukrainian, as some are putting it. Meanwhile, we'll prepare for China. The U.S. has
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now sent-- it's not only the shift in the Marine strategy, which I mentioned, the U.S. now has
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for the first time established permanent bases for B-52s in Darwin, Australia, in Guam, maybe pretty
32:28
soon in the Philippines. They're now building up the military connections with the Philippines
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that had declined. It looks as though they seriously think that they can somehow continue to
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provoke China. Also, the commercial war, which is trying to prevent China from any technological
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and economic development, maybe bring them to their knees. Can they really? I mean, judging
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by what you've seen on the inside, can anybody be crazy enough to really be thinking this?
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Daniel Ellsberg I haven't been on the inside since about the time I got to know you, read your books, and be influenced by you. So I'm not on the inside.
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In fact, I want to ask you what your opinion is here. By the way, your book was about American
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power and the Mandarins. I'm just looking at it. I'll tell you why in a minute. But of course, that looked at the Pacific war in World War II in a way that totally changed my understanding of it
33:44
as somebody who had grown up slightly from 10 to 14 during World War II; it certainly changed my
33:52
attitude. So why do they seem to be acting that way? Not all of them, but not every politician,
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but most of them, actually, and more Democrats than Republicans. It's certainly in Europe,
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only Europe, but also on the Pacific. Why? I don't know. I'll tell you right away,
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as an outsider, I don't know why they are acting as if they want war with China. You tell me.