All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 5, 2019 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
15:17
China Crisis: New US Missiles To Asia

One day after the Trump Administration announced it was getting out of the Reagan-era INF treaty, the new Pentagon chief said US would be sending missiles once banned by that treaty to Asia. Targeting China. Will an Asian arms race be stabilizing or destabilizing? Get your tickets to the Ron Paul Institute conference: RonPaulInstitute.org/conference

|

Time Text
China's Missile Build-Up 00:14:20
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host, Daniel.
Good to see you.
How are you this morning, Dr. Paul?
I'm doing quite well.
Good.
I want to talk about China.
I saw this morning a headline that says that China has named the United States their number one enemy.
It's nothing to laugh at and it's not a joke because lots of tensions are building up.
There are trade tensions and I think the papers are mainly covering the trade tensions, you know, and the currency devaluations and the trade war, which I would have to say that if you're looking for who started that war, I'm afraid that the United States would have to assume a bit of responsibility for that.
There's no doubt.
But anyway, things aren't going well between the two countries and stock markets reeling right now.
And it's something that isn't going to go away quickly.
But I wanted to talk today about the cancellation by the United States of the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty.
Treaty that Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev put into effect in 1987.
And it was to reduce the number of nuclear missiles around the world, and especially the intermediate ones.
But we have been agitating, and I imagine the neocons in the administration have been wanting this for a long time, but we've announced that we would get out, but it became official this week that we would get out.
And this did not make the Chinese very happy, but we more or less have directed our attention.
We announced last week about very, very huge tariffs on China goods, and they're not going to sit back and do nothing.
So this has a great deal of significance.
And I think that the trade war is aggravated.
It's going to get much worse.
At the same time, this has foreign policy implications too, because it means that one of the goals that we have had and presented by the NEOCON is we need to produce more missiles, you know, intermediate missiles.
And we have the agreement with Russia not to do this.
China's not a part of that agreement.
So even though there's been accusations going on, of course, we never get out of treaties unless we blame the other side.
So we said Russia has violated the terms of the treaty.
And Russia says, no, they haven't.
So that argument goes back and forth.
And yet, we have gotten out now.
Of course, Russia says that means there's going to be a race for more weaponry.
And that would not be good.
But it is something that is going to further extend the conflict.
It looks more militarily because our goal, our government's goal has been to build more of this type of a weapon and send them near China.
We've sent enough already to violate the intent that we had with Russia, but we surround Russia with these missiles.
But we say they're offensive.
They're defensive, but the Russians say they're offensive too.
So we're getting ready to send more weapons.
And I guess we should mention at least who our new Defense Secretary is.
And it just happens that he worked for Raytheon.
And it looks like Raytheon may well be building some of these missiles.
So the military-industrial complex is involved.
The trade war is going on, and right now I think it's a very, very dangerous situation with China.
And as you say, Pompeo, who is maybe not the brightest tool in the box, but he said, quote, Russia is solely responsible for the treaty's demise.
It's all Russia's fault the U.S. is getting out of the INF treaty.
They accuse the Russians of cheating.
The Russians, of course, accused the U.S. of cheating.
The U.S. has been developing a thousand-mile range persistent strike missile for a while.
And the reality is, with all for all the blaming of Russia, Esper, the new Mark Esper, the new Defense Secretary, was on Australian territory the day after we got out and said, we are going to start deploying missiles in Asia.
That's what we have to do.
So it's very obvious that the whole thing is about.
China, China wasn't a part of the treaty between the U.S. and the USSR back in 87 under the Reagan administration when the INF was ratified.
Excuse me, 80% of China's missiles are within that range of 310 to roughly 3,400 mile range.
Most of China's missiles are in that range.
I think the U.S. sees a great opportunity to build a bunch more missiles.
Esper is going to keep his buddies happy in his previous employer.
They're going to build a bunch of missiles.
The arms race is on.
The Russians have announced that if you start deploying these missiles in Asia, we also have to consider our situation.
We're going to have to deploy more as well.
Right.
It has been suggested that with our president, who likes to appear strong, he would never appear weak.
And this is part of this grand strategy.
I think that may be true about Trump looking tough more than him anxious to go and start another war.
Our problem is that doing these things, trade wars and hot wars and missiles, can lead to the bad war.
And that may be what will happen.
And, you know, I think the old adage, and people use it more now than they used to, is, what if they did it to us?
What we do to them?
And I keep saying, you know, what if the Russians or the Chinese decided that we are enemy number one and they put missiles in Mexico?
Well, guess what?
You know, the Soviets did it in Cuba and we didn't say, oh, what the heck, we're not going to bother you.
Yeah.
And they drafted me over all that.
In Canada, it's the same thing.
Yet we have surrounded, essentially, we surrounded Iran, we have surrounded Russia, and now we're annoyed because we have agreed with Russia not to build these missiles that we want because we have to really contain and hold control Chinese expansionism.
So this could get out of hand just like trade wars always get out of hand and it looks like the trade war is getting out of hand because one of the reasons the markets are very rocky right now is the Chinese are retaliation.
Oh, big surprise.
And they're turning it into a currency war.
They're devalued and think that that's going to solve the problem.
And that only makes things worse.
The tariff war and the currency wars never work.
The one thing is, in the old days, if you're truly falling in the gold standard, you didn't have currency wars because all currencies were backed by the same definition of gold.
But that isn't the case.
And I think this situation is not very good and sort of follows in pattern the fact that we found an excuse to get out of the JCPOA not too long ago.
Yeah, that certainly is another thing.
And every time we get out of one of these treaties, there's an arms race or there's a huge expensive deployment.
When we got out of the JCP away with Iran, what do we do?
We sent a bunch of ships over there.
We said we're going to have thousands of more troops.
We've got the Saudis to buy a bunch more stuff.
So that is always the case.
And this is another excuse for an expansion of our military, the military industrial complex.
But ESPRA, as we said earlier, was on Australian territory when he said, we're going to put some missiles in Asia right after we get out of the treaty.
It put the Australian foreign minister in a real bind because everyone's looking at him, are you going to host these?
He says, no, we don't want them.
But what it will do, even if the Australians don't take these, and who knows, they usually do what we tell them.
But this is going to put gasoline on the fire.
And we've talked about this so often on the show, of the South China Sea.
They're interlocking disputed territories.
The U.S. is in there telling the Chinese what they can do.
China has problems with the Philippines, with Vietnam, with others about this disputed region.
It's already a mess.
And for the U.S. to say we're going to go in there and put a bunch of missiles, that is just going to add huge fuel to the fire.
The Chinese have already warned the countries in the region: if you host these missiles, you're going to be a target too.
We're going to aim our missiles toward you.
So it really is stirring the cauldron of already very dangerous waters.
That's right.
I saw something in the news the other day, and many people have commented on it, and that is there's a shortage of soldiers with boots on the ground that they can send out to fight old-fashioned wars.
So their proposal was because we're not getting enough volunteers that they would like to be able to accept 16-year-olds.
Well, I fear that.
I don't think 16-year-olds ought to be encouraged to do this.
Besides, everybody is vulnerable to the draft.
And I keep thinking, could these be connected?
All these hotspots that we contribute to or initiate and cause, and they decide, well, we have to worry about troops on the ground.
Of course, in this modern day age, and I argued this case even during the Cold War, that technology can defend you.
You know, if somebody attacks us, we have tremendous technology without tanks and planes and old-fashioned World War II equipment.
You could be strong enough.
And I think it all depends on policy.
And it's the foreign policy that makes or break relationships with other countries.
So a lot of people will laugh it off and say, yeah, that's right.
China thinks we're number one enemy and therefore we have to retaliate.
So I think that kind of situation is very bad, going in the wrong direction, and could you get out of hand?
And that's a good point you make too, because the INF only covered land-based missiles.
Sea and air-based missiles aren't covered.
So the idea, and you said this before too, I mean, we have a few submarines out there, we've got a few ships out there, we've got a few airplanes.
If there was a problem, the U.S. would be able to deal with it with all these things.
This is just about, hey, the Army wants some weapons too.
It's not fair.
The Navy and the Air Force get all the weapons.
We want some of ours.
And as you referred to earlier, Raytheon's going to be building some of these missiles too.
So this is really about an excuse to build a bunch more missiles and get us further in the economic grave.
Yes, and I think that right now I look to the markets to find out how serious the foreign policy activity is.
And even though some might argue that anybody's even paying attention to what we're talking about here, I think some people do because you talk about oil and these taking of the ships as a consequence of our relationships with Iran.
So this is something that continues to build, and yet we don't do any, we don't change anything.
We continue to aggravate and antagonize people.
And the solution is not that difficult.
Why don't we just mind our own business?
Why?
Yes, some problems over there in the China Sea.
But if we had a problem in the Gulf of Mexico, who should deal with it?
Who do we have problems with?
Because even though it might be international waters, I would say the United States say they own the Gulf of Mexico.
Nobody comes around there.
But we go every place and just threaten people.
And of course, somebody's going to make a buck off it.
And it's very annoying and very dangerous.
Indeed, it is.
And, you know, the whole idea, a lot of these retreads from the Reagan era are now talking to the president.
You know, certainly people inspired by it.
They believe the myth that we outspent the Soviets and that's how the Cold War was won.
Well, there was a factor in our spending.
In fact, our children and grandchildren were paying for that spending for a long time.
But that was only part of the picture.
I think they're arguing to the president: we can do this again, we can outspend China and Russia.
In reality, what they're doing is outspending us and outspending our futures, and we all will be suffering.
This is a huge scam that they're doing.
It's a scam on the American people.
It doesn't make you any safer or more free.
These are the kinds of things, again, that we will be talking about in Washington later this month.
It's important for us to have a good showing.
It's important for us to let it be known that there is a significant movement that is in favor of a non-interventionist foreign policy.
We don't want to have intervention like we do here, we don't do there.
No, this is about a real pro-America foreign policy.
And that's why it's important for you to be there to raise the flag of non-interventionism.
Dr. Paul, we've got David Stockman, who's going to be speaking.
David Stockman was from the Reagan administration, who's now one of the strongest voices to end the American empire.
He was recently on MSNBC and he freaked Mika out by saying, why don't we get out of NATO?
And in fact, you put that video up on your Facebook page earlier today.
So come join us for this conference, ronpaulinstitute.org/slash conference.
More information, tickets.
This is a chance for us to get together and to show America that there is a real pro-America foreign policy.
It just happens to be a pro-peace foreign policy.
Hope to see you there.
Very good, Daniel, and I think we're going to have a good meeting.
But I want to follow up on something you said, Daniel, about outspending the Soviets, and that's the reason that we won the Cold War.
And I've never bought into that.
The money's important, the weapons are important, but not like people think that you have to have a contest and how many weapons you have, because I don't think that is the answer.
We won the Cold War mainly because the system that the Soviets had was doomed to fail.
It was radical socialism, welfarism, authoritarianism, and it wasn't going to last and it failed.
Now, we aren't exactly the epitome of free markets and sound money, but it was much better than that and much more competitive and still is more competitive than the hardcore socialist societies.
Belief In DOD Waste 00:00:44
But it has nothing to do with just spending more money.
Matter of fact, spending more money and endorsing that idea has brought us nearly to our knees because of the debt.
The deficit spending and the printing of money and then getting into trade war is a result of spending unnecessarily.
And believe me, there's a lot of unnecessary spending in the DOD.
It has nothing to do with defense.
It has only to do with offensive weapons and making money.
So that is more of a problem than a solution.
So the sooner we learn that, the better.
Then we can concentrate on presenting our case for what we need to promote the cause of peace and prosperity.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
Export Selection