Even though Congress has given the Defense Department more money than either the Pentagon or the President asked for, Defense Secretary Mattis warned that our very survival was in jeopardy because we are not spending enough on the military. But spending is not the issue...it's the policy!
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Budgets And Excuses
00:03:58
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| Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report. | |
| Daniel McAdams with us today as the co-host school. | |
| Good to see you, Daniel. | |
| Good morning, Dr. Paul. | |
| How are you? | |
| I'm doing fine. | |
| I wish the country was doing as well when it comes to budgets and things like that. | |
| Of course, on the surface, some people think it's doing very, very well if they're on the receiving end. | |
| There's a few people out there that aren't on the receiving end, and their standard of living is dwindling. | |
| But that's not the subject we're going to talk about today, but indirectly it does. | |
| It is about that subject. | |
| Well, what we want to talk about today is the DOD budget and the Secretary of Defense talked about it. | |
| And he's sending out the alarm bell. | |
| You know, I think the Senate just passed a $700 billion military budget bill. | |
| It was more than he asked for, and more than the president asked. | |
| And guess what the conclusion is? | |
| He's worried now whether or not America has the ability to survive with these terrible, terrible budgets. | |
| And you just wonder where they're coming from. | |
| You know, traditionally, and we've talked about this over the years, that when the DOD budget comes up, there's usually some emergency going on, and it looks like there's a lot of emergencies right now. | |
| And that makes the excuse, well, we can't cut back. | |
| We can't cut back. | |
| We need to be strong. | |
| They're coming here to kill us. | |
| There's a war here. | |
| And that's ongoing. | |
| And that was used to get $700 billion. | |
| Actually, the real military budget is higher than that when you look at all the other budgets. | |
| But do you think that he is angling for even more money this year? | |
| Sometimes I think they don't even want to have the annoyance of the sequester, even though that hasn't been all that successful. | |
| But they really work hard to protect themselves. | |
| And it isn't philosophic as much as it's self-serving. | |
| I mean, they represent special interests. | |
| You can't be in these positions and not be concerned about our industrial complex that makes weapons. | |
| And just, you know, as a way of referencing it, just the increase. | |
| Remember, Trump came in and said, we've got to build up the military. | |
| I think he asked for $58 billion more dollars. | |
| Just the increase in budget that he asked for is equal to the entire Russian military budget. | |
| Just that increase. | |
| But, you know, I wonder if the sequester, I mean, if it hadn't been invented, they would have invented it because they were able to blame everything on the sequester, even though, as you point out, it's never reduced the military budget. | |
| It slowed the rate of increase, but it was never some kind of a cap. | |
| And they've gone around it all the time anyway. | |
| But they can trot that out whenever they need to. | |
| $700 billion. | |
| What they never mention is the fact that we have an empire that we're maintaining, and that costs a lot of money, and sometimes makes us less safe and less financially secure, and that's what's going on. | |
| But we spend not only more than Russia, but more than what, about the top 10 countries combined on what we spend. | |
| So it's not a lack of money. | |
| I think it has a lot to do with how they spend money and what we're building. | |
| If we build naval vessels or airplanes we don't need, that's really not helping national defense. | |
| And it is enormously expensive to maintain a world empire, to have hundreds of bases, thousands of bases spread out over the rest of the world to dole out money, to hand out money to people that we like and steal it from the ones that we don't like. | |
| You know, it's very expensive. | |
| And then every once in a while they'll go back and they want to audit it. | |
| But the Pentagon never gets audited. | |
| Do you think all those truckloads, plane loads of cash that went into Iraq, that never gets accounted for? | |
| It's to me pretty amazing that that never really gets discounted in the financial market. | |
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Realists Revisit Cold War
00:13:05
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| They just go on it. | |
| Positive psychology can overcome some facts for a while, but eventually, the more you delay the reality of what's going on, the worse the problems become. | |
| Yeah, and they're able to continue doing it because of fear, because as you point out, they terrify the rest of the country. | |
| Now we're seeing a majority of people think we need to attack North Korea because the media is hammering on it 24-7. | |
| They're about to get us. | |
| And so it really, the media and the military-industrial complex are really hand-in-hand when it comes to this. | |
| Well, you know, the whole thing here about Mattis wanting more money in the budget, the military budget is always a big issue in building weapons. | |
| But there's also another factor about a debate of sorts that goes on about policy, not kind of debate that we want to have, but the debate among the varieties of people who call them realists. | |
| They're realistic. | |
| And some realists, as far as I'm concerned, sound like neocons, and others sound a little bit reasonable. | |
| But there was an article by Basovich, Andrew Baseovich, in commentary that went over this a little bit and challenging some of these radical realists who are saying, you know, anybody who talks about a little less intervention, they have to be some sort of hate America people, you know. | |
| But this argument goes on, and at times it seems to be irrelevant, but the policy is an important issue. | |
| But within the group of realists, there is a disagreement, but the people who seem to have a position in government, they might call themselves realists, but do you ever find that sometimes it's hard to tell, you know, a radical realist from a neocon? | |
| It seems like they blend in. | |
| And actually, the Bezovich piece was in the American Conservative, and he was writing about an article in commentary by two academic realists, they call themselves, who were decrying the fact that what they consider the top realists today are really just a shadow of the former realists who ruled the roost during the Cold War. | |
| And that's essentially the argument. | |
| And Bezovich is kind of breaking it apart and breaking down the argument. | |
| And they thrived with the Cold War that justified all this. | |
| And for them to brag about it, isn't this absurd? | |
| They brag about it, well, we need to go back to the old days when we really had a Cold War and we had so many victories. | |
| But Basevich, I think, makes fun of all that. | |
| Yeah, where are the victories in Vietnam or the Middle East? | |
| I mean, what kind of victories are there? | |
| And it hasn't been fully discounted about how this will eventually come down hard on us. | |
| How many enemies have we made? | |
| How much debt do we have? | |
| How much lower standard of living do we have in this country already? | |
| And what will it be like? | |
| What will it be like when our dollar suffers? | |
| What will it be like when we will have to retrench? | |
| And what will it be like when they gang up on us if they see an opening? | |
| But I think there's a lot of resentment out there from us throwing our weight around and insisting that they obey us. | |
| And of course, this is the case. | |
| We use sanctions and threats and literally bombs at times. | |
| Yeah, when you first mentioned this article this morning as a possibility for the program, I thought it seemed a little esoteric for us to talk because this is sort of a spat between two groups of realists, none of which are household names really necessarily. | |
| Mearsheimer and Walt, who were criticized in the commentary piece, are known by some people, but these aren't the top people you think about. | |
| But when I read it and thought about it, to me it really underscored the intellectual vapidness, the intellectual lack of depth, because the only thing those people arguing for a more robust realism can do is harken back to the Cold War. | |
| And even the Cold War they harken back to is largely one of their own imagination, I think. | |
| They decry the absence of, quote, great statesmen who could rule the world. | |
| The Cold War realists exhibited robust American internationalism they talked about. | |
| So I think it really is testimony to the fact that they don't have any idea of what America's place in the world should be, that they have to go reach back to an imaginary Cold War. | |
| Yeah, I don't think they're upfront on what their real goals are. | |
| You know, it may be just flat-eyed military spending to benefit some special interest. | |
| It may be that they have a worldview completely different than ours. | |
| They may have a worldview that, and some, I imagine they're very sincere, that we are the ones in charge and we have a moral responsibility and we are exceptional, so we can't renegue on it, mainly because we are great, and who's going to fill the role? | |
| There would be a vacuum, and then you would turn it over to Russia, and Russia would run the world. | |
| And so it goes on. | |
| There's so many special interests. | |
| What about our involvement in almost every skirmish, every war that goes on, and I'm thinking now, particularly in the Middle East, we're always picking sides. | |
| And that just seems to be so detrimental, not in our best interest, and so unrealistic. | |
| I mean, the definition of realism is a tricky word because now what we're sort of talking about is two varieties of what they want to be realistic, because everybody wants to be realistic. | |
| That means, you know, we're moderates and we know what to do. | |
| But I think there's a different, there's another definition of realism as well, too, and that is admitting the truth about what the long-term consequences are of our foreign policy. | |
| Yeah, absolutely. | |
| And I think, you know, to a degree, this is a straw man argument. | |
| They trot this out every now and again. | |
| This time they didn't talk about the danger of creeping isolationism as if, unfortunately, that has been a problem in the past. | |
| But so they're decrying the lack of robustness in today's so-called realists. | |
| They write about how today's realists, Mirzheimer, Walt, Christopher Lane, and a few others are souring on, quote, sustained American commitment to preserve international stability. | |
| You know, this idea that the U.S. can literally rule the world. | |
| And I think the counter argument to that, the really realist argument that you would say, is that the world cannot be run. | |
| It wasn't really run during the Cold War by the U.S., but now it most certainly cannot. | |
| And as we started talking about this massive military budget, if it can't be run with $700 billion, then what? | |
| Yes, and then what they don't realize also, if we want to have an influence to move people in a direction of peace and prosperity, it's an intellectual movement. | |
| It's an ideological movement. | |
| And it's not a military movement. | |
| Even if we have this power, we can't change it. | |
| This whole idea that we're going to invade the Middle East, and a big example is Iraq, and turn it into a westernized democracy. | |
| You know, it's just complete nonsense. | |
| But if there's things in this country that we do, and we do have that in a subtle way, there's a lot of people now in the age of the internet and travel. | |
| There are people in Iran and Afghanistan and Iraq that I'm sure that would look at and say, you know, there is something special about America, but it isn't the fact that we're on their doorstep getting in the middle of fights that are unnecessary and fomenting fights. | |
| You know, it's so much different. | |
| But I do, you hate to use the word, you know, the exceptional nation, exceptional aspect of America, but it's ideological and influence. | |
| You want to influence people and show them what a free society is all about. | |
| Completely different because you can't change it by force. | |
| And the other thing that's on our side, of course, is we can pursue this method because, you know, ideas can't be stopped. | |
| You know, armies don't stop ideas, but they can mess things up and kill a lot of people. | |
| But an idea of liberty can still be pursued, so we shouldn't, you know, get despondent and give up because, you know, the neocons are in charge, the realists who aren't realistic, they're in charge. | |
| Nobody believes in watching the spending. | |
| See, people who are arguing for more spending, they don't believe debt is bad. | |
| You know, we've been getting away with it. | |
| You know, we double the national debt every couple years, and nobody seems to care. | |
| But if we did care, we would be realistic about understanding some basic economic issues. | |
| And I think what Bacevich points out in the commentary piece that he criticizes is that they don't necessarily just want to go back to the Cold War. | |
| They want to go back to the very early parts, the late 40s and early 50s. | |
| And as we've discussed, and we've talked to Stephen Kinzer about it, this is the era of the Dulles Brothers. | |
| So essentially, I think that's what he's talking about. | |
| The idea of great statesmen. | |
| But when you scratch below the surface and have a look at what they're really talking about, they're talking about what the Dulles brothers did, going around the world, fomenting coups, thousands of people being killed, totalitarian governments being built, but they're our guys. | |
| This is what they're really talking. | |
| They'd rather couch it in terms like statesmen and this, but this is really the meat and potatoes of what they want. | |
| And, you know, it's a way of keeping it away from the American people. | |
| It's not like it's debated on the floor of the Senate or the House. | |
| They don't debate it. | |
| They don't finance it. | |
| It's done silently, and they feel like they're doing the Lord's work. | |
| But even though they may be able to fool the American people, when you go in and participate in a coup, I don't think it goes unnoticed in those countries, and therefore they undo all those good things that they pretend that they're doing. | |
| You know, the benefits economically speaking. | |
| You know, they get rather aggravated with our policies. | |
| Indeed. | |
| And the other thing about these great statesmen that they want to reflect back on, well, what's the hallmark of a great statesman? | |
| It sounds to me like what they would like is when it's Deus Volt. | |
| When we say it, the rest of the world snaps too. | |
| But the hallmark of the so-called great statesmen of the time, people like Kissinger, who give some credit in some ways, was their ability to compromise, was their ability to go to North Korea, for example, in today's terms, and find some kind of a solution. | |
| The only solution that these types of realists would have was tell them what to do, and if they don't do it, they get bombed. | |
| Yes, in a situation like we have today, almost any problem we have, medical care or whatever, we can't snap our fingers and think it's going to happen. | |
| It may happen when the whole thing collapses. | |
| You might be able to reorganize. | |
| But in the meantime, moving in a certain direction. | |
| So if we could only get, from my viewpoint, I think if we could only get and allow and permit and encourage, you know, the South Koreans to talk with the North Koreans. | |
| What is so unrealistic about that? | |
| But I don't know if even the more modest realists would go on. | |
| They might accept that idea, but it's so unpopular now because the media controls it. | |
| If you say, well, I think it's a good idea, South Korea talks to the North Koreans. | |
| And I think, you know, the president of the South Koreans, you know, his tone at the UN, it was quite a bit different than the tone of Trump. | |
| And Trump's not sitting 30 miles away from all these missiles that can annihilate Seoul. | |
| And maybe the motivations are different. | |
| But they have to deal with Japan as well and their concerns. | |
| But there's been overtures, but then behind the scenes, some people who would call themselves realists or neocons, they would undo any opening. | |
| Just look at what's going on with Iran. | |
| We saw what Obama did as being reasonable. | |
| It was moving away from the confrontation. | |
| And now, you know, and you listen to Madison and Tillerson and Trump. | |
| I mean, it's like they're going to start a war. | |
| And how many wars have they been in in the last 80 years or so? | |
| Well, of course, the one war they were in was the one that we helped start, and that was the Iraq-Iranian war. | |
| But no, they have a different attitude, but they get zero credit for it. | |
| And the determination is to undo that opening with Iran. | |
| Let's hope that they can survive because that's moving in the directions of allowing people to cooperate and travel and trade with other countries. | |
| When you talk about compromise, even North Korea, they can't be seen to back down at all. | |
| Even this whole idea of the double freeze, which to me, I think to us both sounds pretty reasonable. | |
| We stopped having exercises, military exercises on their border, and they stopped firing missiles, even just for a temporary period. | |
| But they laughed it off the table, not even worth considering. | |
| Okay, how would you like to summarize this little episode here on both realism and unrealistic people? | |
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Non-Interventionism: Realistic Realism
00:01:02
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| Well, I think non-interventionism is the real realism. | |
| We are the realists, and we have the track record. | |
| That is absolutely right. | |
| I think we should claim the word realistic. | |
| The only thing, as Daniel said, that is realistic is working for peace and prosperity by non-intervention, minding our own business. | |
| And it applies to us here at home. | |
| Our government should be non-interventionist with our lives and our money, and we should be non-interventionist overseas. | |
| And I don't know why that is so hard to understand. | |
| And that these authoritarians who think they know what's best for us personally and how to spend the money that we have and how to run the economy and then tell other people how to live. | |
| It makes no sense. | |
| So let's vote for our form of realism. | |
| And if we became more realistic, I think we would contribute to the movement toward more peace and prosperity, which should be our goal. | |
| I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report. | |
| Please come back soon. | |