Scott interviews Eric Margolis about the recent border skirmishes between Chinese and Indian troops, which have resulted in deaths on both sides. The border between these two countries has been in dispute practically since its creation, and neither Scott nor Margolis sees a simple resolution anytime soon. Luckily the latest clash seems to have been limited to spontaneous hand-to-hand brawling, rather than representing a coordinated strategic attack, and Margolis thinks it’s unlikely to escalate any further for the moment. Still, if the border dispute were to escalate, the entire world could be in danger, since both countries have nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, President Trump doesn’t appear to be helping the situation, as he tries to strengthen America’s relationship with India as an ally in the growing hostilities against China.

Eric Margolis is a foreign affairs correspondent and author of War at the Top of the World and American Raj. Follow him on Twitter @EricMargolis and visit his website, ericmargolis.com.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.

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The following is an automatically generated transcript.

[showhide more_text=”Show Transcript” less_text=”Hide Transcript”]
Scott Horton 0:10
All right, y’all welcome it’s Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. All right, you guys on the line. I’ve got the great Eric Margolis, Eric margulies.com, split like Margolis. Eric Margulies calm and of course, he wrote the great books war at the top of the world and American Raj, liberation or domination and He well, more the top of the world. He really did spend a lot of time in previous years over there at the one of the major crossroads of the world at the highest elevations there between India, China, and the Afghan Pakistan, you know, region. They’re all around their Kashmir and all of that stuff. Great book, man. And I’m telling you, you know, if you’ve been reading Eric Margulies articles for years, and you know how great he is, you’ll still be blown away by how great the book or at the top of the world is an American rush to and they’re both so great. Anyway. So the reason I have you on Eric is because you’re a guy No. And you know about this extremely important issue that there are so very few experts on and that is the relationship between China and India, which has come very much to head in the last week as soldiers sides have been killed in skirmishes up there at the top of the world. So first of all, welcome back, my friend, how are you and glad to talk to you again.

Eric Margolis 2:10
I’m living under house arrest, but I’m okay with it. I need a little break from the rest of the world and fighting awful evil viruses and still fighting with the crazy people in the media.

Scott Horton 2:25
That’s right. So you got your priorities straight, making the best of a bad situation. Good to know. I’m glad to know that you’re doing well. And listen, so man, is it really right these guys I read a thing. They had clubs wrapped in barbed wire. The Chinese did and beat the Indians to death. They’re in some Borderlands skirmish over where the line really is.

Eric Margolis 2:52
They can be real nasty. Those guys the Chinese are brutal and Indians are no better. So In the past, most of the fighting was hand to hand or fisticuffs because they were denied like these weapons but in this latest clash that happened last week the apparently both sides used small arms and close the number of casualties

Scott Horton 3:19
Yeah, I read a thing these guys come out swinging a board with nails through the end of it I thought of Moses like from the Simpsons, you know, these guys, which at least are not machine gunning each other to death. But what a bra that must have been if these guys were actually beaten to death with boards with nail sticking out the end, my God, there must be a YouTuber that’s somewhere right?

Eric Margolis 3:43
Well, there have been –

Scott Horton 3:44
an Instagram

Eric Margolis 3:45
brawls over the last decades to the Indian and Chinese troops. And being up there at high altitude we’re talking 14,000 feet makes you weird and crazy. People are really bored. And we’ll do anything to change that.

Scott Horton 4:05
Yeah. Well, so, I mean, this gets right to the heart of it, right? Are we talking about, you know, quote unquote, like rogue kind of very low level authority troop groups going around, you know, stumbling around walking this side of the ridge instead of that one and crossing the line? Are we talking about a real change in policy between the Chinese and or Indian governments towards each other that has resulted in this?

Eric Margolis 4:31
Well, that’s the right question, Scott. I’ve been, there have been small time clashes over the years, and the troops were under orders to keep them calm, not not expand into heavy warfare. The last time the two sides really fought it out was in 1962. When the when Jawaharlal Nehru in India got too big for his britches or Donkey or whatever, and started pushing the Chinese in the Himalayas. And the Chinese struck back as Mao put it to teach him a lesson. And the lesson was taught the Indians got their behinds whipped by the Chinese and the Chinese were really could have swept down like to Calcutta until now calling everything all of it said, well, I’ve got the Indian. So lesson and the Indians did learn the lesson. They avoided conflict for decades.

Scott Horton 5:34
Yeah, so now, I guess I read a thing that said that this was an I mean, they’re both very new states, right, you know, created after World War Two. So it’s always kind of questionable about where this line was supposed to be. But I read a thing that said What the I guess the common international conception is that the Chinese actually move the line into Indian Territory if anybody’s in the wrong, it’s them. Is that right?

Eric Margolis 6:04
Well, both sides make those kind of claims. Absolutely. In fact, nobody knows where the hell the line is the

Scott Horton 6:12
line right? It’s on paper Anyway,

Eric Margolis 6:15
when the British Empire ruled India, famous Indian Raj, but which might be a book American Raj is about for the British. No, that used to be Tibet, and a huge ill defined place that nobody care about because it was too high and cold and hairless cetera. But that change. The British drew the lines with fitness pens, and these pens covered overall valleys and mountain ranges and things. The British feel lousy job of demarcation and as with many border disputes came to alive. You’re later after the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1951, I think and they came right up next to the Indians. And the Indians suddenly got scared because they had not taken any action. They did not ignore the area totally. And all of a sudden they found the red Chinese army next door and they panicked, and hence, clashes began that led to the 62. Wars.

Scott Horton 7:33
And now, so but good old, mutually assured destruction is kind of keep the overall peace here, right?

Eric Margolis 7:40
Well, maybe maybe these are both the countries with with lots of nuclear weapons, very powerful military forces. And I don’t think that there will be a large war there though. I predicted one in my book, one day India and China will fight to control the Himalayas and the Capricorns. The most important region is this area, obscure as it is has headwaters of all the major rivers in India, Pakistan and Burma. So it is the water source for Southeast Asia. And it’s a great importance to all concerned. Yeah,

Scott Horton 8:28
well, then, I mean, the question and answer are raised obviously and immediately right, that instead of warring over that, that they should create an international consortium that can negotiate and share those resources like

Eric Margolis 8:45
they like Scott, and look at the look at the gyptians and the Ethiopians, right, our threatening war with each other over the Nile waters. So and this is an dispute that goes back to the 1920s. I think. So. It’s it’s very contentious, and they’re also in conflict of Burma next door Burma, which is very strategic. And, you know, their powers each wants to be the big, big dog on the block.

Scott Horton 9:22
[ADS]

so now what about the Chinese role in Kashmir? Because they actually share one of those borders too, right?

Eric Margolis 10:27
Yeah, there’s, there’s a chunk of territory, right next to LA doc called Xi chin. And so I can as a population of 14,000 Yak herders something and nothing else but it’s way way up in the mountains is freezing cold. There’s no oxygen. It’s half the oxygen. It’s sea level. But it is very important as his love Doc, because that is the route that links to China with with Tibet and it is the greatest strategic importance. And it also is the center point for moving troops around in the area. So it’s very sensitive.

Scott Horton 11:19
And then this is an interest that they share in common with Pakistan. They kind of have a de facto alliance against India there even though India really controls Kashmir, right?

Eric Margolis 11:28
That’s right. Well, coming back to xi chin was part of Pakistan, Pakistan or cat Pakistani cage near Pakistan then gave Xi chin to China because to help it strategic situation in Tibet, and Indians went crazy. And the knees have never accepted it. And now the Kashmir issue is come back alive again. It’s been in disputes. It’s 92 48 is the oldest dispute in front of the UN. But the Indians the new nationalist extreme right wing governments in India, of the Bharatiya Janata Party, under Prime Minister Modi is become senator waiting Hindu nationalists, they want to cleanse India of all non Hindus. They want to bring in what they call hindutva, which is a Hindu this as a national theory they want to deny the religions, other religions in India, which are many. So, they’ve heated up the situation and they just clamped down divided casian into two parts formally, autonomous now and they are really pressing down on the heart and the Muslims of Kashmir and denying them what few rights they had.

Scott Horton 13:00
Man, you know, it sounds like the potential for catastrophe there is almost limitless. Right? You know, I don’t remember my footnote, so maybe I’m wrong, but also it makes sense when I think about it, too, so I’ll go ahead and say it out loud that I read a thing that said that the second largest Muslim population in the world is in India, majority Hindu India, but hey, it’s a big country. And the first is Indonesia. And then the second most the second largest group of Muslims in any nation in the world is in India and so if you’re going to cleanse India of Muslims, you’re talking about trailer tears of absolutely catastrophic proportions.

Eric Margolis 13:49
Absolutely. Scott, a memory of serious me it’s, it’s it’s 140 million Muslims. Don’t like Donald Trump Hear that? 140 million Muslims. Live in India and coexist very uneasily with the Hindu majority which discriminates against them the old problems and purchase and also constitutes the lowest income portion in India. So it’s a major social and political problem.

Scott Horton 14:23
And even if I think there must be, you know, and I’ve read a little bit about this, that there is somewhat geographical separation already, you know, obviously, there’s going to be a lot of mixing and overlap and everything, but we’re not talking about, you know, Modi in them saying, Okay, these provinces could go ahead and succeed because we’re better off without you anything like that. They want to keep all the land, just kick the 10s of billions of people off of it.

Eric Margolis 14:49
That’s right. And I know they’ve never expressed clearly how they’re going to do it. They want to do something similar in Kashmir. Live started because they divided too, and they made one state for Hindus and pundits as they call their and one for the Muslims, Kashmiri Muslims.

Scott Horton 15:13
And now, so that Jeez, I wish I knew enough to ask better questions about all this. I mean, I guess the I read a thing that said that the Chinese were being very conciliatory about this and we’re playing it down and saying, Hey, you know, I don’t know their exact language, but diplomatically speaking, let’s not fight let’s not escalate this. Nobody wants to fight about this right now. Anyway, so

Eric Margolis 15:38
I don’t think the Chinese want or I have to do with the COVID virus situation, but they they are, they want to send a message, as usual and the message is as follows. Go easy on Kashmir. Stop trying to crush the chasm, Kashmiri Muslims. Because they’re best friends with our buddies in Pakistan. great importance to China. Even more important, is the fact that the Trump administration has been playing footsie with India

Scott Horton 16:16
now, man, that was gonna be my next question.

Eric Margolis 16:19
I’m sorry. I take it back.

Scott Horton 16:21
Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. You already ruined it.

Eric Margolis 16:28
The problem but who hates Muslims, and has been trying to build up India as an anti China force in the event of a war and the war is going to happen? We’re headed towards a war and we’re just planning for it. And they’re trying to mobilize and arm India. And the Chinese really don’t like this because they know perfectly well what’s going on. And this is the probably the major reason to the restaurant now.

Scott Horton 17:02
Yeah, wondering about that I saw that the Chinese were certainly blaming the Americans for intervening there. And now, what does America have to gain there other than just harassing the Chinese?

Eric Margolis 17:14
Well, in the event of a war, India would attack or they hope India would attack, China’s Western Region sinking. And Tibet, very, very sensitive to the Chinese who have militarize the Tibet Plaza like crazy. And it would tie up millions of Chinese troops. So plus the Indian Navy and Air Force have played a key role. India is a major military power, not a bunch of guys running around turbans, it’s a powerful, bigger force, lots of tanks and artillery. So this would be a big asset to the US us can’t fight China alone needs an Asian land ally.

Scott Horton 18:04
Yeah. But of course, you know, that just means that they are outsourcing the decision to go to war to somebody else. So, in other words, if we wanted to pick a fight with China, we want to count on India to help us. But that also means that if India gets in a fight with China, we obviously don’t have any official treaty with them or anything. But in the event of a crisis, it’s pretty easy to imagine, isn’t it that the American president would start leveling ultimatums against China that they better not do this or that or else? And then at that point, Daya cast

Eric Margolis 18:38
to my shock and dismay, I think was last week or two weeks ago, Trump announced he was ready to negotiate the whole Kashmir problem. God help us. And you know, since 1948, they haven’t been able to solve it.

Scott Horton 18:56
I don’t see that he had said that. I mean, you know what’s funny is Without all this ridiculous world Empire stuff, if America was a limited constitutional republic with a neutral foreign policy, that to me would be our highest priority would be to host a completely neutral summit to try to solve Kashmir. And you know what, they can fly back and forth between New York and Geneva and whatever other neutral countries and talk the thing to death until they figure out you know, some kind of arrangement where we can put an end to the violence there.

Eric Margolis 19:32
We are. So right is in my book I’ve said and I’ve been saying ever since that. This is the world’s most dangerous border, the Kashmir border and millions of troops on both sides nuclear weapons. The Indians have been screaming to invade Pakistan teach it a lesson and the backs of all their nuclear weapons to stop the Indians from doing that email the number of bugs on the day We need American diplomacy to defuse that issue, but we have we have no neutrality. The situation as you rightly pointed out, were too much bad within the hour too. It was a look at Trump just just reportedly according to Bolton is not a trustworthy source either claimed that it was okay told the Chinese leader Xi Jinping that the concentration camps that China is set up for sink young Muslims are okay with him. So this is not an honest market. honest broker.

Scott Horton 20:40
Yeah, I’m not sure if I believe that. I mean, I would believe it about Trump, but I don’t believe a word that john bolton says. You know,

Eric Margolis 20:47
he’s unreliable sources, a horrible little man, but who knows?

Scott Horton 20:52
Yeah, but I could see Trump saying I don’t care about that. I’ve never heard of shinjang Province anyway. So whatever. You know, what does he care? Same thing with the wheat. If you please buy wheat that’ll help me get reelected. I could see Trump doing that. But again, I’m not willing to take Bolton’s word for it. It sounds not true. Coming from Bolton, even though do I think Trump’s the kind of guy where he just would not recognize any line between his presidential campaign and Official US policy? You know, he’s the kind of guy to do that. Sure. But this isn’t evidence of it. This is just the thing a guy said.

Eric Margolis 21:35
It sounds believable to me. Yeah. I remember, of course, that the republicans and my beloved President Eisenhower will have great respect. They used to go through the secretary of agricultural Ezra Taft Benson. I don’t know if you remember that name from long ago, and they used to hand out millions and millions of dollars. subsidies and farm relief to these same republican farmers, then who bring that region into the Republicans.

Scott Horton 22:10
Yep, just like in Joseph Heller and catch 22, about his father got paid by the government to not grow alfalfa. And that was his career. But if the government paid anybody else anything to do anything why that was creeping socialism.

Eric Margolis 22:27
That’s exactly right. Yeah. Isn’t

Scott Horton 22:30
that what a great job not growing alpha? Anyways, we’re a little bit off topic, but I’m having fun. Yeah, no, just just a couple of tangents away from the real question, which, in fact, I don’t know if he saw this. Actually. I didn’t see it either. But Eric garris told me so it must be right. That Trump said yesterday we might just cut off all commercial and economic relationships and interdependence with China because we’re so sick and tired of them. Which, I mean, I guess there is a lot he could do to affect that change if he really implements that as a policy. But I’m not sure what that would look like, especially in the middle of a great depression. I mean, maybe it’s the best time to do something like that if you’re gonna do it, but it seems like it would make the problem a lot worse.

Eric Margolis 23:23
Well, given the Trump campaigns, beating the war drums over China, and making it the central theme of the Trump campaign, we’ve got to stop those red Chinese bastards. It’s possible. It’s reckless beyond belief. But God help us I don’t know how the US is gonna come through this big mess. Then you had COVID and Trump together, and I shudder

Scott Horton 23:53
You know, there’s all these academic type models about receding powers and rising power. and stuff. That wasn’t really the case with the Soviet Union, right? They were an established power, they weren’t really rising or expanding, certainly not into America’s core sphere of influence and all that, you know, containment and all that is pretty overblown, when so much of the world was not aligned and that kind of thing.

Eric Margolis 24:16
That’s really not a minor challenge to the US.

Scott Horton 24:20
But the problem with the rise of China is and, and I think they’d be nuts. And they might be, but they’d be nuts and stupid and they might be but I don’t bet on I don’t think that they are. They would be crazy to expand their empire and to follow the American model of mass murder suicide here that our government has embarked on over just the last 30 years nevermind during the Cold War days, but just since the Cold War, but the Americans clearly as they blown their whole war in the Middle East and discredited all of their own power in so many ways and the Empire and in the other country. We’re dependent on it and all those satellite relationships, client state relationships are all more tenuous now. And all these things, they want to blame Trump for that, but it’s because of the failures of the policies over the last 30 years, not just his that they are kind of projecting onto China, that these guys gonna make all the money. And they’re going to, and because of their very efficient and wonderful police state, they’ll be able to, you know, keep prices very low and end up they’ll they’ll end up affording to dominate all of Eurasia, which is supposed to be our job, and we can’t let them get away with it. And yet at the same time, they’re obviously pretty certain that there’s nothing that they can really do to stop it. And yet, both sides, of course, as goes without saying, are armed to the teeth with h bombs. And so it’s a different dynamic than any that we faced, right this is we’ve ever since we’ve had atomic weapons In America has been the world Empire. Now they’re sort of being forced to cede to this rising power. Again, I think they’re exaggerating it, but still, but they can’t stand it. And there, they won’t stand for it. So, you know, I don’t know, I could see why that would immediately, you know, calculate into a pivot to Asia under Obama, and even, you know, helping encourage the Indians to pick a fight. They’re in South Asia right now and anything that they can do to try to frustrate the Chinese, but not to coin a phrase but seems like a fool’s errand and possibly an extremely dangerous one.

Eric Margolis 26:42
Scott as a as a observer of military affairs, and commentator on the subject, I am amazed by how much we’re set on a course of military confrontation with China. All the new weapons that are coming out tactics doctrine has is called, are all designed to fight a war and offshore war off the coast of China and attack China everywhere that we can. So, you know, it’s ironic I mentioned even in my book The, the so called the training camps that the that were found in Afghanistan that were were Qaeda training camps. And these were actually for training Uighur Muslims from China, right by the CIA to attack China if the if the aluminum lineup. And this is becoming institutionalized. The whole American military is now repositioning its thinking, for war with China. So you think about it long enough. That may happen yeah.

Scott Horton 28:00
Well, I guess it’s just it’s a failure of imagination to see like, hey, for the next 10,000 years, the world’s got to be big enough for us and them forever.

Eric Margolis 28:11
I think what you know, well in in war at the top of the world, my book I wrote at the end of the book, the most important American foreign policy objective is going to be disengaging peacefully from Asia, from get off shore and go back into the Pacific, and to just leave politely without a conflict with China. This is not happening yet.

Scott Horton 28:41
Yeah. Sounds like wisdom to me. Although, you know, Andrew Bacevich. I put that to him and he thinks we ought to absolutely get out of Europe and Quit messing with the Russians. I’m pretty sure certainly that we should get out of the Middle East entirely. alone, but he says no, we got to stay in Korea in Japan because my If we let the Chinese and the Japanese and the Korean settle things among themselves, without, you know, standing in in between them all, then there’s gonna be trouble. And the current situation of American dominance there is less worse than the alternative. What do you think of that?

Eric Margolis 29:17
Well, that’s an argument that has some validity. I agree with it as a Korea watcher. I know that America’s footprint there is important maintaining the status quo. But that doesn’t mean that when the balloon goes up there that that will print prevent a bigger war. And there’s no doubt that America is losing is losing the ability to finance having 100,000 troops spread between Korea and Japan. It’s got to do some economies just the way Trump is talking about reducing troops in Europe, which is an excellent idea, right? I wish speed.

Scott Horton 29:55
Yeah, it’s too bad. We couldn’t figure out a great campaign to support that. When that came out that like Ray, you know, mysteriously, thousands of balloons went up in major cities across America in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protest. It was the anti war movement celebrating the removal of troops from Germany. But

Eric Margolis 30:15
yeah, exactly. Well, we we’ve overstretched our empire that happens to all empires. And we can’t afford to, we got to start trimming at the edges.

Scott Horton 30:30
I say call off the whole thing, and it’ll probably work itself out.

Unknown Speaker 30:35
Well, I think the Koreans and the Chinese are as good at managing the region and the Japanese as we are. Perhaps he did.

Scott Horton 30:44
And again, you know, what, whether without atomic weapons, everybody’s got so much to lose. And I know that that’s not a guarantee. There’s World War One in a lot of examples, but still, there’s a lot of incentive for these countries to get along. And who says That American dominance brings peace depends on who you ask. You know, speaking of the Japanese and the Koreans, you know,

Eric Margolis 31:07
brings a Pax Americana. What happens if Kim Jong Un dies? We’re worried about his health and crisis in Korea, any of these things blow up into a really dangerous situation and the Japanese are in a really awful situation because they completely naked to the Chinese power. And they will, I believe, eventually have to get nuclear weapons. I know. I was in the ministry of defense in Tokyo, and I saw a a design for nuclear weapon. So I know the Japanese are thinking about nuclear weapons.

Scott Horton 31:53
Yeah, well, and you know, as long as we’re on the subject here, we could point out that Trump really did you No break through, kick the door in on the chance to make peace with North Korea that his predecessors have. Well, Bill Clinton actually had a pretty good interim step there with the Agreed Framework of 94. But Bush and Obama, but just absolutely horrible on Korea. And Trump made major breakthroughs in terms of establishing a relationship with the dictator there, and beginning negotiations. And they had the path forward, that everyone could see that we have to start dropping sanctions and giving war guarantees and opening up the relationship as much as we can. And hopefully, we’ll get to nuclear weapons, but the most important thing is establishing a peaceful relationship. So that at the very least those nuclear weapons are less of a danger. And then instead and and they gave a speech, it was a Stephen vegan from the State Department gave a speech where he said, yeah, we recognize that we’re going to do the right thing. And then Nope, the policy was yet to give up all your nukes first and then we’ll think about beginning to treat you fairly after that. Yeah, right, which in other words, the George W. Bush Barack Obama policy of self inflicted destruction of the negotiations. And then now they say all those crazy old North Koreans, you just can’t negotiate with them when they have every opportunity in the world. And, you know, Trump appointed the swamp to run his foreign policy department and so even though he really wanted to do this, he let them sabotage it and sabotage it. They did. Oh, wait, I lost your audio there. Go ahead. Start again.

Eric Margolis 33:39
Oh, john bolton was a prime sag sabotager chords with Korea and he really was spear point of screwing them up and would try again. I think the greens and Not gonna get rid of the nuclear weapons, I’d be crazy to do that. So, but they’ll also be even more crazy to watch them in the United States. So they’re only useful as they’re as long as they’re sitting on the ground with electricity going through them, right?

Scott Horton 34:19
Yeah, that’s thing. We don’t sit around cowering about British or French, or even Chinese nuclear weapons because, yeah, we get along with them. They’re not threatening us with them,

Eric Margolis 34:28
or Indian or Israeli nuclear. Quite right. And in fact, you know, as I pointed out, periodically, we in the United States are in violation of the strategic nuclear arms weapons treaty was it 1952

Scott Horton 34:50
the non proliferation treaty or something else,

Eric Margolis 34:52
and then did the not exactly we were violation because the treaty records called for all nuclear powers to start getting rid of dismantling their nuclear arsenals? Yeah, we know that. We’re demanding that the Koreans do it.

Scott Horton 35:09
Yep. And meanwhile, we’re also pledged to respect the rights of other countries to pursue nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. And yet we don’t pretend the Iranians are building weapons when we are government pretends the Iranians are building weapons when they know good and well that they’re not and that they’re absolutely within the letter and the spirit of the law, and they go after him anyway.

Eric Margolis 35:32
That’s really well that’s a whole separate issue. But I think the Korean nuclear weapons technology missile and warhead technology oh boy come from China. And the Chinese are right in there. So if we plan to do some anything violent about North Korea, we better take into account dealing with the red Chinese and right next door how many Americans know that right next door to North Korea is Russia.

Scott Horton 36:00
Right, they do shorter. Huh?

Eric Margolis 36:03
Well, so that’s right, then the other is with the Russians.

Scott Horton 36:07
And listen, when you say that, you know, it would be crazy for them to give up their nuclear weapons, you know, implying because what America might do to them if they didn’t have them. That. I mean, because that might sound incredible to people are incredibly cynical to people who don’t know. But when you mention how john bolton had been such a detriment to the policy negotiation here, what he did was he said, we want to pursue the Libyan model. In fact, Trump has been trashing them on Twitter recently saying he blew up the whole negotiation with that, which is true. And what that meant was that bush W. Bush had brought Gaddafi in from the cold in 2003. After, as you say, qaddafi gave up all the junk that he bought from the Pakistanis just so he could give it up. Not that he had an actual nuclear program of any kind. But anyway, He gave all that up for a PR stunt for bush for Bush to let him back in from the cold. And just a mere eight years later, Barack Obama murdered him to death and overthrew and destroyed his country. And if that’s the Libyan model, then obviously the message to the North Koreans that john bolton was clearly deliberately trying to send was, you’d be a fool to trust us and negotiate away your nuclear capability, because he would prefer a confrontation. So it was a credible threat. In other words, he didn’t just say, yeah, we might screw you over. He cited a country that we did this to just a couple of years before.

Eric Margolis 37:45
It was a hell of a good warning.

Scott Horton 37:47
Yep. And they sure took it seriously.

Eric Margolis 37:50
Right. It made a lot of sense. Yep.

Scott Horton 37:54
All right. Well, anyway, so I’m glad to hear that it sounds like you think that this current set of conflicts in the Himalayas are going to probably peter out, scale back down, right?

Eric Margolis 38:10
Right. Don’t start restocking your bomb shelter yet. But it’s something that we should keep an eye on it. It’s a fascinating conflict. And it’s an area in the world that nobody knows anything about. So worth watching.

Scott Horton 38:25
Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time again on the show, Eric, great to talk to

Eric Margolis 38:30
you. Always enlightening. Talking to Scott. Cheers.

Scott Horton 38:35
Bye bye. All right, you guys. That is the great Eric Margulies. The books are war at the top of the world and American Raj liberation or domination and check out all his great articles at Eric margulies.com split like Margolis. Eric Margulies calm. The Scott Horton show anti war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com antiwar.com ScottHorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org

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