Trump Bumbling Into Unnecessary War With North Korea
The war hawks surrounding President Trump - and the president himself - are determined to start a war with North Korea that will take millions of lives. It is an entirely trumped up war based on the usual war propaganda. Trump threatens a trade blockade with China. Guess what that would do to the US economy? Will he take the United States down just to satisfy the neocons surrounding him?
The war hawks surrounding President Trump - and the president himself - are determined to start a war with North Korea that will take millions of lives. It is an entirely trumped up war based on the usual war propaganda. Trump threatens a trade blockade with China. Guess what that would do to the US economy? Will he take the United States down just to satisfy the neocons surrounding him?
Sorry, we have no video today, but we are still contending with a hurricane in Texas, but we wanted to visit with you today by phone.
Daniel, the co-host, is with us today by phone, and he's in Dallas, Texas.
So I want to welcome Daniel to our program today.
Hello, Dr. Paul.
I wish we were there in the studio, but we're going to do our best.
Very good.
And we have a subject today that's been in the news.
It's very, very important.
It has affected, you know, a lot of discussion on foreign policy, and it also has, I believe, affected the markets right now.
And that has to do with all this talk about Korea.
When is the war going to start, practically, is what they're talking about.
And, you know, just in this last month, the conversation and the discussion on Korea has accelerated.
The accusations are getting stronger.
But just in this last month, we saw gold prices go up by $75 an ounce.
Now, a lot of people will say, well, that's not too big a deal.
And that may or may not be the excuse.
But the traders think it does have a reason for participating in gold as a haven.
And that also in this last month, matter of fact, the last six months or so, the dollar's been down, you know, about 10%.
So the markets have been affected, and I think more so, you know, in this last several weeks.
But we want to talk about Korea itself and what's going on.
And there was a headline today that really caught my attention.
And that was from our ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley.
She said that Un is begging for war.
And he makes a lot of noise.
But for some reason, I would not think that that is his strategy.
And I believe he has probably more strategy than a lot of people recognize or give him credit for.
He's a dangerous person.
It's a dangerous situation.
But quite frankly, the verbiage that's coming out of our government and our leaders and this kind of thing that Haley is pumping up, that it doesn't help things.
So I imagine, Daniel, you've been checking up on this stuff a little bit, and I can't see where we can ever expect Nikki Haley to come to our side of this argument.
No, and Nikki Haley is before the UN Security Council today, and this is where she's really trying to gin up the machine for war.
As you said, they're begging for war.
That makes you wonder what we're doing.
But she also said the time for half-majors is over.
That's scary.
But she also called out Kim Jong-un for his, quote, abusive use of missiles.
So yes, he is testing missiles.
He's testing ballistic missiles.
But it seems to me, Dr. Paul, that the U.S. is also testing missiles.
How come when they test it, it's abusive, but it's okay when we do it.
Yeah, that's for sure.
You know, it wasn't too long ago, McMasters made a statement that the U.S. has to be prepared for, quote, preventive war.
And I often found that rather ugly terminology for because I believe preventive war is just an excuse to use aggression.
And this is what they're preparing for.
And they in their hearts, I'm sure, believe that they're going to prevent a war that's going to hurt us.
But, you know, they say in one word that we're for peace, we want to do peace.
As long as the Koreans do what we tell them to do, then we're for peace.
But that's been a tradition of the militant dictators.
It was certainly part of the Soviet system.
They weren't, you know, they weren't purposely wanting a lot of war.
But there would always be peace on their terms.
And I think in many ways, unfortunately, we have sort of followed in those footsteps.
But yes, we are for peace.
And a lot of people are very serious and sincere about it.
But the people who threaten the potential enemies aren't really looking for peace.
They would like conflict.
They would like the antagonism and they would like the fear that goes along with it because sometimes, you know, it's good for business.
Sometimes this helps sell weapons and airplanes and all these kind of things.
So there's a lot of that going on.
Who's going to benefit from this?
I see some disadvantages in some of the people who are going to have lose their advantages.
Not everybody's going to have the advantage, but there are a few people who will gain from this.
And that, of course, is a very difficult problem to deal with.
Well, you know, they're trying to paint Kim Jong-un as a crazed madman that you can't do business with.
But as we've said on the show a few times, Dr. Paul, he's actually behaving quite rationally.
He is learning the lessons of history that I don't even think U.S. strategists learn.
He's seen what happens when you give up your nuclear weapons, your nuclear programs.
He saw what happened to Libya.
He saw what happened to Saddam Hussein.
And he also sees what's happening to Iran, which in good faith went into a nuclear deal.
They'd been viewed as abiding by this deal.
And some says, well, I don't care.
I'm going to threaten you and attack you anyway.
So he's actually drawing very rational conclusions from U.S. foreign policy behavior.
But they talk about the threats that Kim Jong-un makes against the U.S.
But why does nobody talk about the threats that we make toward North Korea on a daily basis?
We practice airstrikes to take out the leadership.
Didn't we just bomb close to North Korea the other day, Dr. Paul?
Yeah, right on the DMZ and demonstrating, you know, we are serious about this.
And it is very intimidating.
And unfortunately, we're ratcheting it up.
They're, you know, the people who talk about, you know, approaching this, whether they're, I just can't figure out whether they're insecure, because people can be insecure and they're bullied and they yell and they shout and they don't know and they want to make sure everybody knows how tough they are.
And others, maybe it's on purpose.
Maybe it's very deliberate, all this talk, war-mongering talk, with the belief that, no, we're not going to have World War III and we just be able to contain this.
And we think if we need to, we're going to bomb some bombing sites in North Korea and China is going to go away.
I remember so clearly in the early 50s when we went into Korea and at the initial stages, it was miraculous.
You know, MacArthur was in there and he was cleaning it up and they took back the land in South Korea.
Then all of a sudden moved up to North Korea and everybody was going to be home by Christmas.
And then there was an unintended consequence.
I remember that so clearly because I knew people that were sent over there, including one of my teachers that didn't come back.
So they said, okay, yes, they'll all be home for Christmas.
But then what happened?
You know, it changed the course of an election.
It changed a whole lot because that's when their killing really started.
And my guess is that there's going to be a lot of unintended consequences, even if we don't change our strategy a lot.
Because I think the current strategy of just fighting a war of words is still very, very dangerous, especially when they start talking about sanctions.
And sanctions, of course, they've been on it.
How much good have they done?
Now they're talking about more sanctions.
Nobody trades with North Korea essentially except for China.
I mean India has a little bit of trade, but China sells them 83% of their goods and it buys 85% of the things they produce.
So essentially when we talk about more sanctions, you're talking about putting pressure on China, huh?
And China is simply not going to go along with it because it's against its national interest.
You know, the neocons and interventionists in Washington believe that everyone in the rest of the world must follow what's perceived as U.S. national interests.
But China has national interests that are different than ours.
And it would be irrational for China to go against its national interest.
So to cut off North Korea like this and put a crisis in North Korea is certainly against its national interest.
The idea that the Chinese are going to go along with it is just a delusion.
You know, there was one suggestion that is very sickening from my point of view.
And that is, yes, we've got to do these sanctions, and we have to keep out all these materials that they can use in doing their weaponry and this sort of thing.
And if necessary, maybe we ought to keep the food out.
And all I can think of is what we did in the 90s with Iraq, how many, you know, the 500,000 children that people now admit died from not only our sanctions denying food and medicines and the bombing of their infrastructures and their hospitals, and now they're actually talking about that as if killing kids in North Korea is a way to win friends and influence people.
I mean, it makes no sense whatsoever.
And yet we've embarked on this, and it just seems, you know, how are we going to get out of this?
Here, Trump makes this noise.
He has administration, a bunch of generals there.
They make these accusations.
And then if they back away, I mean, from their viewpoint, we can't back away because that'll make us look weak.
The only reason we're doing this is make us look strong.
So they've put our country in a trap.
For them personally, that's their problem because they'll lose credibility.
And Trump, of course, has shifted positions.
And he's been able to shift and change them.
You know, when you look at his position with Russia, and he tends to survive that, especially if he switches from a non-aggressive principle to a neocon position.
It seems like he can tolerate those kind of changes a lot better than doing something sensibly.
That is true.
And, you know, when the U.S. threatens North Korea, which it does on a daily basis, it's something that's very real for North Koreans because it wasn't that long ago, as you pointed out, that there was a Korean war.
The Koreans never attacked us, but we did attack them.
And the U.S. killed about 20% of the entire population of North Korea in the Korean War.
That memory is still fresh in their minds.
Think about if that were us.
That would be over 60 million people that have been killed by a foreign country.
You better believe that we would believe that and harbor that fear and look for ways to deter another U.S. attack.
And I think that's exactly what the leadership of North Korea is doing.
That doesn't mean that we agree with them or admire them, but it certainly is rational when you think about history.
You know, under these circumstances, the odds of them, you know, maybe opening up the door and allowing South Korea to have a little bit more say in their foreign policy, I think it seems very slim.
But Wouldn't that be helpful if we allowed the South Koreans to maybe get involved in a serious manner on their relationship with North Korea?
Well, you know, Trump tweeted something yesterday.
I think he's clearly aware that the South Korean leadership has a different perspective.
And he tweeted something yesterday after this announcement that they supposedly have a hydrogen bomb.
And he said something on the lines of, see there, South Korea, now you should understand that we cannot talk to these people.
So Trump definitely knows what he's doing, and he knows what he's facing in South Korea, and he's trying to intimidate them into going along with this war footing.
Now, that doesn't look good.
And the unintended consequences, which are potential, I think that the trade war can expand if we really do mess around and pretend that we're going to punish Chinese companies if they keep selling stuff or buying coal from North Korea, that all of a sudden we're going to crack down on them.
I mean, it's just a lot of bullying that answers nothing.
If two years ago, or even since the election, if they would have just allowed this crazy guy to talk instead of stirring this image that he was about to bomb us, I would think North Korea would be a non-issue.
A lot of the hawks would not believe that.
That would say, you've sold out.
You're un-American.
You don't care about American interests.
You don't care about national defense.
You can't do this.
He said he was going to do this.
He'd have probably bombed South Korea by now.
And that's the way they think.
I think about 98% of this, if we just ignored this guy, what is he going to do?
You know, and he shoots his missile off.
In some reasons, there are people questioning whether really, I see the propaganda is that he has a small nuclear warhead that would go on a missile.
But I don't know whether we have absolute proof for that.
I've learned to be skeptical because that's what they told the congressmen, you know, leading up to the Iraq war.
And it turned out it wasn't true.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, I was going to ask you, Dr. Paul, about some of its economic implications because, you know, Trump tweeted, I think, yesterday, the U.S. will view every country trading with North Korea.
No, this is what Haley said, as aiding their nuclear ambitions.
But here's what Trump said.
The U.S. is considering stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea.
And as you know, the U.S. trade, U.S. U.S.-China trade is about three-quarters of a trillion dollars, or three-quarters of a trillion dollars last year.
So if Trump closes the door to three-quarters, two-thirds of a trillion dollars in trade, what would that do to the U.S. economy?
Well, it's going to crash it.
I think you're going to see the markets go down sharply and gold continue to go up.
But the question is, even if he tried, what is he going to do?
Let's say China says, get out of our way.
We're going to continue the trucks.
We're going to send stuff in.
And we're going to buy coal and things like that.
What is he going to do?
Are we going to enforce our sanctions with an army?
He can't do that.
So that's what I was mentioning.
I think that they're between a rock and a hard place because if they keep saying this, the more problems we have, the tougher the talk is.
Trump As a Manipulable Puppet00:02:46
Eventually, Trump loses all credibility.
And I think unfortunately for him and for the country, is that the credibility being lost is both sides.
If he switches position, like we thought we were lost and misled with the position on Russia, but he really doesn't gain respect from the neocons.
If he moves toward the neocons, we get more upset with him.
But the neocons, can you foresee the neocons ever accepting Trump and saying, oh, it looks like he's one of us now?
I mean, I thought it was how sad it was that President George W. Bush was so easily manipulated by the neocons.
He came in as a blank slate.
They adopted him as one of their own, and they really manipulated him.
I think Trump is turning out to be even more of a dupe than George W. Bush, more of a manipulable person, so easily molded. by the neocons that it's just incredible.
Yeah, and I think in closing, Daniel, I think this represents the power and the control of the invisible neocons on the deep stage.
They are very influential.
They're not monolithic, and it's hard to totally understand it.
But go ahead and give us a little closing statement for our program.
Well, I put up a good piece on the Institute website the other day by Neil Clark, and it said essentially something like the U.S. is no longer a democratic republic, it is a regime.
And I think that really is a sense.
No matter who comes into power, the policy stays the same.
And this is getting into dangerous territory where Trump is going to have the death of millions of people on his shoulders, on his conscience, on the history books if he's not careful.
I'm afraid you're right about that.
I keep thinking, and I've said that from my experience in Washington, that the politicians that really get to the top of the ladder have sociopathic tendencies, that they don't feel guilt and they don't feel shame.
And once they convince themselves they're doing what the right thing is, they don't suffer personally, politically maybe, and who knows what.
But, you know, how much the people that orchestrated the war that killed all those kids in Iraq and the turbulence and turmoil that's over there now, I don't think many of them, and either the politicians or the neocons behind the scenes, are feeling badly about that.
There's no conscience.
Anyway, I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
And hopefully we'll be back soon and have our video operation in order.