Latest / UK Column Radio / Is the US Pivoting to WAR in Latin America? | Ben Norton

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Is the US Pivoting to WAR in Latin America? | Ben Norton · UK Column Radio

0:01
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Silk and Steel
0:04
podcast. I'm your host Carl Zah.
0:07
Today I have a very special guest, Ben Norton, who has been
0:12
a friend of mine for a long time.
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We we met in China and who is also a very active geopolitics
0:20
commentator. Now for people who've for
0:23
whatever reason that still don't know you been, you know, then
0:25
maybe hiding under a rock or something.
0:28
Could you just do a brief intro to what you do and who you are?
0:34
Yeah, I I'm a journalist, but in recent years I've been moving
0:39
more and more toward kind of political economy.
0:42
And I am the editor of the website
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geopoliticaleconomyreportits@geopoliticaleconomy.com. And I report on and analyze a
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lot of issues related to, you know, political economy and, and
0:56
geopolitics, especially. I've been focusing a lot on
0:59
China and the new Cold War that the US is waging on China.
1:03
But also I, I do focus a lot on Latin America because I lived in
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Latin America for many years. And every summer I go back to
1:09
Latin America. So I know today you wanted to
1:11
talk about kind of all these related issues.
1:14
And these are kind of the main things I focus on.
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And thanks for having me, Carl. I mean, it's, it's great to see
1:19
you. I, I this is the first time your
1:21
first time up here is on on silk and steel podcast.
1:24
So I, I'm, I'm quite honored to have you.
1:27
So yes, I let's just go straight to the topic, right?
1:30
Recently there seems to be at least on surface that there's a
1:36
possible day Tong forming between United States and Russia
1:42
over Ukraine and with China over the the, the the the the
1:48
geopolitical competition over East Asia.
1:52
And there's even a a rant report about deprioritize.
1:57
There was a Pentagon leak about deprioritizing competition with
2:01
China and and focus on what they call quote UN quote homeland and
2:05
what by which they really mean W hemisphere, which include Latin
2:10
America. But but but there's more recent
2:13
development because apparently the Rand report has been
2:16
retracted. People find out it was gone.
2:19
So what do you think all this means Like first of all, do you
2:24
think there's a Dayton pending Dayton happening And but but and
2:30
the second floor we can pivot to talk about Latin America.
2:33
Why that Trump administration is choosing at this particular
2:38
juncture to crank up the aggression toward Venezuela up
2:41
to 11 so. Yeah, well, those questions are
2:45
directly related, so it makes sense.
2:47
To answer your question briefly, I do not think there's a
2:50
detente. I would say there's a change in
2:53
strategy. And of course, every U.S.
2:56
President is a war criminal, is an imperialist, but they
2:59
sometimes have different strategies.
3:01
And if you look in Trump's first term, he continued the new Cold
3:07
War against China that really started under Obama.
3:10
A lot of people claim it started under Trump In his first term.
3:12
It was Obama and the so-called pivot to Asia.
3:15
When Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State and
3:18
originally the US tried to have what they called a Russia reset,
3:23
Hillary Clinton met with Russia's foreign minister Sergey
3:26
Lavrov. She brought a red button with
3:28
the mistranslated Russian phrase and they said they wanted a
3:32
reset because they wanted to prioritize containment of China.
3:35
They can see that China was growing extremely fast with
3:39
double digit GDP growth, moving up the value chain, becoming a
3:42
technological power, and they wanted to prevent China from
3:46
overtaking the US. And that failed for a variety of
3:50
reasons, especially because the situation with Russia only got
3:56
worse with the US backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, and then the
4:01
annexation of Crimea, which historically had been part of
4:04
Russia. And then the war in Ukraine that
4:07
the US set off in the eastern part of Ukraine, escalating
4:11
sanctions on Russia. All of that only made it more
4:15
difficult for the US to try to bring about this Kissingerian
4:20
triangulation strategy of breaking apart Russia and China.
4:24
It pushed Russia and China closer together.
4:26
And then with the new phase of the Ukraine war in 2022, we now
4:30
see that there's no way within our lifetimes, for decades,
4:33
there's no way that the US is going to be able to ally with
4:36
Russia against China. Russia and China now are very
4:39
close partners. So that strategy under starting
4:41
under Obama and continuing and the first Trump administration
4:45
going into Biden, that clearly failed.
4:48
But what's interesting is when Trump came in, in his first
4:50
term, he obviously did try to improve relations with Russia,
4:54
which explains this nonsense Russiagate, you know, operation,
4:58
which, you know, you and I were always very skeptical about, it
5:01
was obviously always nonsense. But ironically, this Russiagate
5:05
paranoia also prevented the US from improving relations with
5:09
Russia, which ended up being good for for China.
5:12
And then when when Biden came in, some people, some very naive
5:17
people thought that Biden would be softer on China because Trump
5:23
had started the trade war in China in his first term.
5:26
And again, he kind of accelerated the new Cold War in
5:29
China that started under Obama. But actually when Biden came in,
5:33
he was also very hawkish against China in a slightly different
5:37
way. So for instance, Trump applied
5:39
more blanket tariffs on China, whereas Biden's trade war on
5:45
China was much more targeted. It was more of a tech war
5:48
targeting the high tech sectors in China.
5:50
The what they called the three new things, the seen Sanyang,
5:55
the three most important industries that are now, you
5:58
know, at the, the China is the world leader in which are solar
6:01
panels, electric vehicles and batteries, especially lithium
6:05
ion batteries and other batteries.
6:07
Those were the sectors targeted by the Biden White House with
6:10
tariffs of 50 to 100%. So today it's almost impossible
6:14
to get a, a Chinese EV in the US, even though they make the
6:18
best EVs in the world. And there are more than 100
6:21
Chinese companies making EVs, including some state owned
6:25
companies like Chang'an. But of course, BYD has become
6:29
the juggernaut. It's now the world's number one
6:31
producer and exporter of EVs and they're much, they're much
6:35
cheaper, as in much more, much lower cost than Tesla's and
6:39
they're better quality. I've been in many Chinese EVs
6:42
here because you know, any time you take a DD like a taxi,
6:45
they're almost all EVs at this point, especially in the tier
6:48
one cities like like Beijing and Shanghai.
6:52
So Chinese EVs are amazing and they're being exported to
6:55
countries around the world, not the US. the US does have Tesla,
6:58
by the way, slightly over half a slight majority of all Teslas
7:03
are made in China, especially in the Shanghai mega factory.
7:06
But anyway, and Whitney, we now see European companies are
7:11
saying that they want to make their EVs in China because it's
7:14
the only way to make them competitive.
7:16
But anyway, getting back to this kind of to answer your question
7:19
about this narrative of the new Cold War in China and how it's
7:22
evolved. So Biden continued this war, but
7:26
in a, in a different way. It was more targeted at the high
7:29
end sector in China. And, and Biden's commerce
7:35
secretary, Gina Raimondo said that the US strategy was to
7:39
prevent China from innovating, to prevent China from catching
7:43
up technologically, which, you know, also JD Vance made a
7:47
similar comment recently. JD Vance is, of course, the US
7:50
vice president under Trump and a second term.
7:53
Vance gave a speech at this venture capital conference in
7:56
Washington, DC, backed by Andreessen Horowitz.
7:59
He's our billionaire venture capitalist in in Silicon Valley
8:02
who are very pro Trump. And he complained that when the
8:07
US allowed China into the US dominated international
8:11
financial system and allowed China to join the World Trade
8:14
Organization, the WTO, in 2001, it was under the impression that
8:19
China would always be subservient, that China would
8:22
provide cheap labor to to manufacture goods that were
8:25
designed by US corporations. He mentioned, for instance, the
8:29
iPhone. He said very clearly something
8:32
that, you know, critics like I, critics of neoliberal
8:35
globalization, have been saying for a long time, and not just
8:37
me, other people, that the point of neoliberal globalization was
8:41
trapping China into this international division of Labor.
8:46
So US corporations would provide the most high value added
8:51
services that are the most profitable, like designing the
8:54
iPhone, designing chips and things like that.
8:57
And they would be physically manufactured by Chinese workers.
9:01
They didn't want Chinese companies to also design chips
9:04
and also design computers and electric vehicles and all these
9:07
things. So it would keep Chinese people
9:09
trapped permanently much lower in the totem pole, you know,
9:13
subservient to the US. And of course, China did not
9:16
want that. The Chinese government
9:17
prioritized its industrial policy, moving up the value
9:20
chain, creating its own technological giants, which are
9:23
all now being sanctioned in tariffs by the tariffs by the
9:27
US. So this brings us to Trump, too.
9:30
In fact, I was just reading this morning, Reuters reported that
9:34
the Pentagon is now, but it's pushing to add several other
9:39
major Chinese tech giants to the entity list, which would be a
9:43
form of sanctions on Chinese companies.
9:45
They already did this to Huawei to try to destroy Huawei.
9:49
They kidnapped, they forced Canada to kidnapped Mung
9:53
Guangzhou, the CFO and of Huawei and the daughter of the founder
9:58
of Huawei, which was, you know, a major act of aggression
10:01
against China targeting its most important tech company.
10:04
And people in the West may know, you know, Huawei makes phones
10:07
and computers, but they make everything.
10:09
I mean, Huawei is this massive company that is in every major
10:13
high end tech tech industry, including electric vehicles by
10:17
the way they've been trying to do, but also semiconductors.
10:21
Huawei is challenging NVIDIA trying to make very design, very
10:25
high value added chips and to break that monopoly that NVIDIA
10:29
has anyway. Now after going after Huawei,
10:33
the Pentagon under Trump, you know, Pete Hegseth that now that
10:36
that more accurately named Department of War is pushing to
10:40
put Alibaba and BYD and Baidu on the list of the entity list.
10:48
I mean, these are like the biggest Chinese tech companies.
10:51
So this all fits into this argument that I do not think
10:54
we're seeing a data. I think we're seeing a shift in
10:56
strategy and we're still going to see more sanctions, more
11:01
tariffs. I think in the very short term,
11:04
maybe for a year, the US has decided that it can't continue
11:08
with more tariffs in China because China was able to defend
11:11
itself unlike any other country. You know, Trump in, in April on
11:16
his so-called liberation day, he announced these sky high tariffs
11:20
in countries around the world and basically no country was
11:22
able to defend itself. China was the only country that
11:25
had the capacity to do so. the US hit China with tariffs.
11:29
China hit back with proportional tariffs and at a few points the
11:34
tariffs on China, the US tariffs were over 140% which is absurd.
11:38
That's just a trade embargo. And then China in response to
11:42
the US levying more export restrictions on China,
11:46
especially of high end ships. China responded with the
11:50
restriction of the export of rare earth metals and magnets,
11:53
which are extremely important for the industrial supply chain,
11:57
for high tech products in the US and especially for the military
12:01
industrial complex. So rare earths are needed in
12:05
cars and computers and things like that, but they're also
12:09
needed in weapon systems and missiles.
12:12
So the US military industrial complex, which is making all
12:15
these weapons to prepare for a potential future war with China,
12:18
needs rare earths produced by China.
12:21
China restricted the export of those rare earths and China
12:24
dominates the global supply chain.
12:26
So these factors forced the US to take a step back.
12:30
And essentially Trump with this agreement that he made with
12:33
President Xi Jinping in in South Korea in October, they took a
12:39
step back to where the situation was when Trump came into office.
12:42
The tariff level on China is still pretty high, but it's
12:46
where it was when Trump entered. So overall, I mean, I think the
12:51
strategy that the US government has recognized that they cannot
12:55
actually escalate in the short term because it will cause too
13:00
much damage to the US, especially economically in the
13:04
short term. So they need to prepare for the
13:06
medium to the long term to have a strategy of decoupling.
13:10
This is this term that in Washington they constantly use,
13:12
they're obsessed with. And I, and I think that is what
13:15
they're trying to do genuinely, is to decouple economically from
13:19
China. If you look at China's exports
13:21
to the US, you know, 20 years ago they were extremely high.
13:26
And in general, China's exports as a share of GDP was higher
13:30
than the global average 20 years ago.
13:32
Today, it's actually lower than the global average, which if you
13:35
read the Western financial press, you might be surprised to
13:37
hear that China does still depend on exporting a lot of
13:41
technological goods. But you look at pretty much
13:43
every other industry and the vast majority of Chinese
13:46
products are purchased and consumed domestically because it
13:49
is a big market, a massive market of 1.4 billion people.
13:53
But China does still rely on exporting some tech products.
13:58
And the US market has become less and less important.
14:01
Five years ago, it was nearly 15% of China's exports.
14:06
Now it's probably around 11% as as of this year and dropping
14:11
more and more. China's largest trading partner
14:13
now is actually not the US or even Europe, it's actually
14:16
ASEAN, the Southeast Asian countries.
14:19
So what we're seeing is gradually China and the US move
14:23
toward this decoupling. You can never have full
14:26
decoupling, but instead it'll be it'll be their trade and their
14:29
supply chains will be rerouted through other countries.
14:32
So the US is trying to friend shore and near shore at the
14:35
supply chain. So instead of making iPhones in
14:39
China, they're trying to make iPhones unsuccessfully in India
14:43
and move a lot of that production into Vietnam, where
14:45
they're having much more success because Vietnam, you know,
14:47
basically has the same system as China.
14:49
They're very similar. China's system is a socialist
14:52
market economy, as it's called. Vietnam system is called, a
14:55
socialist oriented market economy.
14:57
They're both run by Communist Party, very similar system.
15:00
And Vietnam has kind of borrowed from a lot of China's experience
15:04
in the reform and opening up to use industrial policy state LED
15:08
in, in planning and and investment to move up the global
15:11
supply chain and make more manufacturing at the higher end
15:14
of the supply chain. So I mean, we're going to see
15:17
this stuff happen over time. But what really happened is that
15:21
the US economically realized that it's actually more
15:24
dependent on China than vice versa.
15:27
So the more the US escalates, it actually causes more damage to
15:31
the US. So in this kind of game theory
15:33
scenario, the US has to take a step back and be a little more
15:38
cautious and move a little bit more toward short term de
15:41
escalation in order to prepare for medium term escalation
15:44
again. And then the military element of
15:47
is part of this as well. You know, if you look at any
15:50
Pentagon war games exercise and they've done many with China,
15:55
they found that they lose in almost every scenario or even in
15:59
the so-called best case scenario as reported by Politico.
16:03
Both sides loose, China and the US are devastated in any kind of
16:07
war. So I mean these people in the
16:11
Pentagon, these war planners, they see the situation and they
16:14
say well, it's not realistic for us.
16:17
First of all, both sides have nuclear weapons.
16:19
Even if they could have some kind of direct conflict, which
16:22
seems less and less likely given that situation with nuclear
16:25
weapons, it seems more likely there would be some kind of
16:28
proxy war where the US uses the Philippines and Japan to try to
16:34
wage a proxy war against China, maybe in the South China Sea or
16:37
who knows. Even that is looking more and
16:41
more untenable, more difficult. So I think what the in the
16:44
Pentagon they've come to accept is that they have to go back to
16:48
a kind of Cold War strategy where it's not Detente, but
16:52
instead of escalating too much that could risk a conventional
16:56
war that would bring about extreme destruction and
16:58
potentially nuclear war. They have to find a way to to
17:03
use third parties to escalate. And it's going to look, I mean,
17:07
it's looking more and more like the first Cold War.
17:09
I'm not saying it's exactly the same as the first Cold War, but
17:12
in the first Cold War, starting roughly around 1945 until 1991,
17:17
you know, Detente wasn't until the 1980s.
17:20
And then by that time the Soviet Union was on the verge of
17:22
collapsing, right? China is nowhere, nowhere
17:25
looking. It's not not in any situation
17:27
even remotely close. In fact, the US is much more
17:29
unstable than the Chinese government right now.
17:32
So I wouldn't compare it to Detente.
17:34
I would say it's kind of the early stages of the Cold War
17:37
where they're trying. They've recognized that a hot
17:41
war is not feasible, so they want to figure out how to
17:45
continue to put pressure on China, but to do so without
17:49
increasing the backlash against the US.
17:53
Now before we move to the next topic on, on US pivot to Latin
17:59
America, I kind of want to dig in this topic a little more.
18:04
What is a logic of decoupling? Why would US push for decoupling
18:10
from China when, you know, for a while it looks like US
18:15
multinationals were also profiting from trading with
18:19
China. I mean, that's, that's why they
18:20
move a lot of the production to China in the 1st place.
18:23
So why? Why now to try to reverse that
18:27
process and try to decouple from the Chinese supply chain?
18:31
Yeah, well, it depends which multinational corporations,
18:34
right? Because there were some that
18:36
relied especially on Chinese labor that were manufacturing
18:40
intensive. But now a lot of these companies
18:43
want protectionism. They don't want to compete with
18:45
China because they can't compete with China, especially the tech
18:48
companies, right? This is why they're trying to
18:51
ban TikTok. It's why they're trying to ban
18:52
BYD. In fact, Elon Musk, if you look
18:56
at most of the big billionaires in the US, Elon Musk is one of
18:59
the very few who's actually involved in manufacturing.
19:03
The vast majority of these, these tech billionaires, they
19:05
don't actually make products. They make software or they make
19:09
AI models or whatever. There are a few that make the
19:13
actual technological goods. They're terrified of competition
19:17
from China. So Elon Musk, for instance, when
19:20
even when Biden was president, he went on an earnings call with
19:23
Tesla shareholders and he said very clearly that if there are
19:27
no tariffs and protectionist measures levied against BYDBYD
19:32
will destroy Tesla. And like two months after he
19:34
said that Biden, the Biden White House put 100% tariffs on
19:38
Chinese EVs. So I mean, this is obvious.
19:42
I mentioned this speech that JD Vance gave where he complaints
19:45
about, you know, iPhones. I mean, look at how is Apple
19:49
going to first of all, move its production out of China.
19:53
It's very difficult. It's trying to move it to India.
19:55
It's very difficult to do. But even if it can succeed in
19:59
doing that, I mean the only way that the the Apple will continue
20:03
to be able to be able to continue competing with Huawei
20:07
and Honor and Xiaomi and. Dozens, there are literally
20:11
dozens of Chinese phone companies that make very good,
20:16
much cheaper phones. And you know, you're in
20:18
Southeast Asia. I'm sure everyone there is using
20:21
honor Xiaomi like it's all Chinese phones.
20:25
Yeah, but like even, yeah, even average people like Redmi is
20:30
like the Xiaomi cheaper version and stuff like there's no way
20:33
that like there will be a few like hipsters who are insist on
20:38
buying an iPhone even though it's three times more expensive.
20:40
But like the only way these US and European companies will be
20:44
able to compete is through protectionist measures is
20:46
through very heavy tariffs. And which ironically is what the
20:50
US always accused, China accused China of.
20:54
China did have high tariffs in the in the 70s and 80s, in the
20:57
early 90s as it was, you know, in the beginning they were
21:00
forming, opening up, but it had to remove most of those tariffs
21:03
by the time it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
21:07
But anyway, the point is, is that those companies are deathly
21:11
afraid of Chinese competition. But there were certainly other
21:14
companies that when China didn't have competitors, they loved
21:19
investing in China because they could simply exploit lower paid
21:23
Chinese workers who were very skilled, very well educated, you
21:27
know, thanks to all of the, you know, the, the policies.
21:31
I mean, people love to talk about their form and opening up,
21:33
which of course was very important in China's
21:35
development. But even going back to the Mao
21:37
era, people like to erase all of that.
21:39
But that's why the Chinese population was very well
21:42
educated, was well clothed and fed and had basic
21:46
infrastructure. And then the reform and opening
21:48
up built upon that. You know, India never had that
21:51
kind of revolutionary experience.
21:52
There's still hundreds of millions of people in India who
21:55
are illiterate, who don't have enough food, who don't have
21:57
access to water and electricity. All of that basic infrastructure
22:01
and capital, human capital development was already that.
22:05
That base was set in the Mao era.
22:08
So when Deng Xiaoping initiated the reform and opening up in 78,
22:12
they had all of the necessary infrastructure and education
22:17
levels and all of that in order to have this very skilled,
22:20
educated workforce. And at first, yes, they were
22:23
working for these foreign companies, but China knew they
22:26
didn't want to just stay at this lower level in the supply chain.
22:29
They wanted to make their own tech companies and their own
22:32
firms that could actually challenge the these Western
22:36
monopolies. So I think, you know, there's
22:39
this idea that from 20 years ago that all these US multinationals
22:43
loved investing in China. Well, I think the situation
22:46
today is quite different. I haven't even talked about, you
22:48
know, the financial sector in the US, which also, you know,
22:52
they're very these days. I mean, there is, there have
22:57
been like ebbs and flows, but these days they're very bearish
23:00
on the Chinese financial sector. They are very skeptical about
23:04
the Chinese financial sector because China's financial sector
23:06
is state owned. It has capital controls.
23:09
So now getting back to this idea of decoupling that you asked
23:13
about decoupling, I think what why does the US want to do this?
23:17
Well, obviously, because if you're preparing for more and
23:20
more conflict, even if it's not a direct conventional war, if
23:24
you're going to have more conflict, the US is going to
23:27
impose only more and more sanctions in the future.
23:30
I mean, come on. Like this idea that there will
23:32
be fewer sanctions is absurd. And in order to prepare for that
23:37
situation and to, and to minimize the backlash, the
23:41
blowback on the US economically, they have to decouple more and
23:46
more. This is the issue with the whole
23:48
rare earth issue, right? Because the US now recognizes
23:52
that it can't escalate as much as it would like to, because it
23:54
would actually cause more damage to the US than it would cause to
23:57
China, right? So if the US can decouple and
24:02
This is why the US, the US Congress, the House Committee on
24:05
China, this crazy anti China committee that Marco Rubio was a
24:09
key part of, they published a report detailing the US plan to
24:15
develop a new supply chain for critical minerals to try to
24:18
remove China from that supply chain and many other sectors.
24:22
I mean, I mentioned, you know, iPhones and all of these
24:25
technological products that are still made in China are trying
24:28
to move them to other countries so that 510 years from now when
24:33
they hit China with more sanctions and eventually they're
24:36
going to do to China what they've done to Russia.
24:38
I mean, it's inevitable they're going to do that.
24:40
They're going to try to disconnect Chinese banks from
24:42
the SWIFT system. This is why China is quietly but
24:47
gradually developing its alternative to SWIFT, which is
24:50
called CIPS. CIPS.
24:53
And you know, China, one major difference between China and
24:56
Russia is Russia loves to like boast about all of the ways it's
24:59
resisting the West and, and standing up to the US and it
25:03
kind of beat their chest, which is cool.
25:04
I mean, I respect that. Like, we need that.
25:07
China's the opposite. China always is.
25:09
It's very humble. And it's the, it's the Deng
25:11
Xiaoping strategy of maintain a low profile, bide your time,
25:16
right? Lie low and bide your time.
25:19
So China is doing a lot of this stuff, but it doesn't talk about
25:22
it publicly. It it's very quiet.
25:25
But China is developing these financial alternatives.
25:29
It's de dollarizing, it's foreign exchange reserves, it's
25:32
massively buying lots and lots of gold.
25:36
A lot of this is not officially reported in the, the reports
25:40
from the People's Bank of China, the Chinese central bank.
25:42
But we've seen reports in like the Financial Times in Bloomberg
25:45
that China's just stockpiling all of this gold and reducing
25:48
its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities, preparing
25:51
for more sanctions. I mean, the, the decoupling is
25:56
necessary for the further escalation.
25:59
This is why, again, I don't see any evidence of detente.
26:02
I see evidence of a of a de escalation in the short term to
26:05
prepare for more medium to long term escalation to minimize the
26:09
blowback on the US. And you mentioned tech companies
26:13
and, and Jason, and that actually reminds me a lot of the
26:17
very hardcore China Hawks in US are the Silicon Valley tech Bros
26:23
like Palantir. You know, Palantir C Co founder
26:26
Alice Carve is one of the hardcore China Hawks.
26:30
But really a lot of the rhetorics strike me as they're,
26:36
they're just trying to expand their grip because their, their
26:38
whole line is you have to give us $500 billion of investment
26:44
because we cannot let China win. That's why, you know, you, you
26:47
must give $500 billion to the Stargate project or you have to
26:51
give us a trillion dollars to build data centers because China
26:56
cannot win. I mean, that's like literally
26:58
their their, their only selling point is you, you have to blow
27:02
up this the eye bubble because we cannot have China developed
27:06
Terminator and Skynet first. We got to be the first to do
27:09
that. So yeah, I think there's
27:12
definitely that at play now. What?
27:16
One quick note, Carl, so Open AI, you know, this is the most
27:21
influential USAI company. It's largely it's a private
27:25
company, but it's largely owned by Microsoft.
27:28
Microsoft has a very big stake in it and Open a Eyes CEO.
27:33
Of course, Open Eye makes ChatGPT open a Eyes CEO.
27:36
Sam Altman, this, you know, billionaire tech bro from
27:40
Silicon Valley, he has been lobbying hard to ban DeepSeek
27:45
and now Kimi and all of the other Chinese AI models.
27:49
First of all, they're open source, which is terrifying
27:52
these USAI companies because their whole business model is
27:56
operating at a loss for several years and then establishing a
27:59
monopoly and then charging very high monopoly rents, massively
28:03
increasing the prices. This is the Uber business model,
28:05
right? Uber was losing money for most
28:07
of its history. It destroyed most of its
28:10
competitors, got over 70% market share and then massively
28:14
increased prices of taxis. This is what open AI wanted to
28:18
do and obviously China's open source models prevent so-called
28:23
open AI from having that. It should be called closed AI.
28:27
And then furthermore, I don't know if you saw that Open AI
28:31
published a letter recently an open letter to AUS government
28:36
institution in Washington that overseas like technology policy
28:39
and investment and they begged the US government for more
28:43
investment from the Pentagon in particular.
28:45
And the entire letter is framed about we have to stop China.
28:49
And This is why the government, one, should back open a is loans
28:54
in case they can't pay their loans, the government should pay
28:56
them. And two, they should invest in
28:59
the energy grid and data centers on behalf of open AI.
29:03
Because China and they talk about the so-called electron gap
29:07
with China, which you know, is reminiscent in the first Cold
29:09
War of the missile gap with the Soviet Union.
29:12
Then also we have an electron gap with China because China's
29:15
electricity capacity is now almost double that of the US and
29:18
massively growing. So all of these, not all of
29:22
them, but many of these tech companies are framing the, you
29:27
know, this, the the reason that they, they're, they, they're
29:30
using the new Cold War as an opportunity to ask the US
29:32
government to protect them and to ban their Chinese
29:35
competitors. They're literally open AI
29:37
literally called for banning Chinese AI models, claiming that
29:40
they're government backed and they're going to be used to spy
29:43
on people like the TikTok rhetoric, right?
29:48
Yeah, there's a lot of projection when in the US
29:51
discourse up about China now. Now I want to move out to our
29:56
next topic is which is why, you know, while US have come to
30:02
realize that limits the resource limitation on its pursuit of
30:07
global hegemony, particularly in a a more kinetic situation
30:13
versus Russia or China. Why then they decide to pivot so
30:19
to so-called to, you know, more aggression toward Venezuela?
30:24
Because US, we know US had always had a hey boner for
30:27
Venezuela because you know, ever since Hugo Chavez came, came to
30:33
power and trying to serve in Israel and sovereignty, US
30:38
always have that hey boner against the government in
30:40
Venezuela. But why did they decide to crank
30:43
up that aggression up to 11 at this particular juncture?
30:48
Yeah. Well, look back at the first
30:50
Cold War, Cold War One, and the US recognized that it could not
30:53
wage a direct war at the Soviet Union.
30:56
So it went around trying to destabilize any potential allies
30:59
of the Soviet Union, to try to encircle the Soviet Union and
31:03
weaken it. The same strategy now, right?
31:06
So the US is going after China's allies and partners, trying to
31:10
weaken and destabilize them in order to try to isolate China.
31:14
We see this in certainly in the Asia Pacific region, like with
31:18
the Philippines being a classic example.
31:20
The previous Philippine president Duterte was much more
31:23
pro China. He's now being, you know, going
31:26
through this kangaroo court, which is completely absurd.
31:28
You know, the current extremely corrupt oligarch leader of the
31:32
Philippines, Bengwan Marcos, the son, he's, you know, Ferdan
31:36
Marcos Junior, the son of Ferdan Marcos senior, the US backed
31:40
dictator who was a brutal dictator.
31:43
He ruled with an iron fist, killed thousands of people in
31:46
the Philippines. He was a key at US ally in the
31:48
first Cold War. His son now is the, you know,
31:52
another US proxy and he's allowing the US to make
31:55
established new military bases in the northern part of the
31:58
Philippines with offensive missile systems aimed at the
32:02
Chinese mainland that can hit most major cities in the Chinese
32:06
mainland as far as Chongqing. And, and that's where you're
32:08
from. I mean, it's crazy.
32:10
Over 2000 kilometers in these missile systems called the
32:12
Typhoon missile systems. So I mean the US is using trying
32:18
to in every country surrounding China, you know, India, it's not
32:23
very successful there in Southeast Asia, certainly with
32:27
Japan and South Korea, it's trying to encircle China and
32:31
then it's going to other regions and trying to destabilize China
32:34
friendly governments. Obviously probably the closest
32:37
ally of China or partner of China in Latin America is
32:41
Venezuela. And of course Venezuela has very
32:43
large oil reserves. I mean, I always point out what
32:46
that when we're doing geopolitical analysis, it's
32:49
never just one reason, right? Like for instance, the war in
32:52
Iraq was not just about oil, but saying that, but ignoring the
32:56
oil factor is of course also very naive.
32:59
Like these are, there are, there's a multitude of factors
33:03
here. In the case of Venezuela, well,
33:05
let me start with Latin America in general, then I'll get to
33:08
Venezuela. So the US strategy, again, I've,
33:10
I've talked about how the US recognizes that in the short
33:14
term, it can't continue to escalate too much against China
33:17
without causing more backlash, more blowback on the US.
33:23
So they need to find ways to decouple and, and ways to
33:28
provide opportunities for more escalation in the medium term
33:31
against China. So right now the strategy is
33:34
solidifying US hegemony across the entire Western Hemisphere.
33:38
You know, this is the neo colonial or the old school
33:40
colonial Monroe Doctrine, which is a 202 year old colonial
33:45
doctrine that essentially says that all of Latin America and
33:49
all of the Western Hemisphere is part of the US imperial sphere
33:53
of influence and the US empire should control everything that
33:56
happens in this region. And specifically the Monroe
34:01
Doctrine was very insidious because you know, the US has
34:04
always been a clever empire, unlike the the traditional
34:08
European empires, which were proud of the fact they were an
34:10
empire. They boasted of it.
34:12
The British Empire boasted that it was so big that there was
34:16
always a part of the empire where the sun was rising.
34:19
The sun never sat on the British Empire, whereas the US has
34:23
always been an empire that claims not to be an empire.
34:25
Right? So the Monroe Doctrine
34:27
originally was the US Empire as it was beginning to establish
34:32
itself and expanding territorially, not only to the
34:35
West by stealing the land of indigenous Americans, Native
34:39
Americans, but also moving to the South.
34:42
So the Monroe Doctrine was issued in 1823.
34:45
In 1846, the US invaded Mexico in an illegal war of aggression
34:51
and they colonized the northern half of Mexico, which by the way
34:55
are today some of the areas with the largest oil reserves and
34:59
natural resource reserves, including two of the biggest
35:03
States and the US economy, California and Texas, which were
35:06
part of Mexico, stolen from Mexico.
35:08
So as the US declared the so-called Monroe Doctrine, it
35:12
was territorially expanding its empire.
35:15
And it was a clever colonial strategy because the US said
35:19
we're going to protect these independent republics in Latin
35:23
America who just earned their independence from Spanish and
35:27
Portuguese colonialism. We're going to protect them.
35:30
Of course, that's absurd. the US was not protecting them.
35:33
It was replacing the Spanish and the Portuguese colonialists as
35:37
the new colonialists. And today, actually, the Monroe
35:40
Doctrine is kind of cited in a very similar way. the US says
35:44
we're protecting the region from China and Russia and Iran and
35:48
their nefarious meddling. And the US says China and Russia
35:52
cannot meddle in Latin America, only we can meddle in Latin
35:55
America, right? So this is the strategy.
35:58
And then of course, resources are part of this, but it's, it's
36:02
also kind of just more solidifying this entire
36:04
geographic region and also preventing any of these
36:07
countries from being potential Chinese allies if there is a
36:11
future war with China, right? So like, for instance, if
36:14
there's a war with China, Venezuela would probably allow
36:18
Chinese or Russian forces to be to use Venezuelan territory,
36:22
right? So the US is trying to, it's
36:26
solidify imperial control over the entire region.
36:29
Now in terms of Greenland, you know, which is the Panama Canal
36:33
is obvious. Trump wants to colonize that.
36:35
And this is for trade. Clearly he says China controls
36:38
it. It's not true.
36:39
China does not control the Panama Canal.
36:41
There were some Chinese companies that were invested in
36:44
in ports on different sides of the canal, but they were not run
36:47
by China. They were not run by the Chinese
36:49
government, certainly. And Trump is trying to force
36:54
these this, it's actually a Hong Kong company, but you know, it's
36:57
still Chinese China. Trump was trying to force this
37:00
Hong Kong company to divest from its investments in Panama.
37:04
And instead BlackRock was going to buy them up.
37:07
And when Trump announced this in Congress, he conveniently didn't
37:11
mention which company it was. BlackRock.
37:12
He said AUS company bought it anyway.
37:15
So, you know, Panama is very important in terms of
37:19
international trade, and he wants to block that off to
37:22
China, but also Greenland. Greenland is important, one,
37:26
because it has a lot of critical minerals that that the US wants
37:29
to replace its dependence on China for critical minerals in
37:33
the supply chain. And as climate change leads to,
37:37
you know, rising global temperatures, it's going to
37:42
start to melt some of the ice in the Arctic and it's going to
37:45
make it easier for ships to go through the Arctic and and near
37:50
Greenland. So the US already has a military
37:52
base in Greenland that when I colonize it, militarize it
37:55
further and exploit its critical minerals.
37:57
So these issues are all related to kind of preparation,
38:01
strengthening the US empire, strengthening its control over
38:05
key commodities, natural resources, critical minerals to
38:09
make its own kind of supply chain within Latin America.
38:12
And another part of this, by the way, is exploiting cheap labor
38:17
in Latin America because the US wants to reindustrialize.
38:21
Trump says that, but they're not going to do that realistically
38:24
in the US It's not going to happen.
38:25
We're actually seeing the number of manufacturing jobs in the US
38:28
falling under Trump. And So what they're going to
38:31
have to do realistically is friend, sure, a lot of that's
38:35
going to Mexico, but they want to send it also to other parts
38:38
of Latin America. They want to send it to like
38:41
Argentina, Chile, maybe Ecuador, although Ecuador is becoming a
38:45
failed state under these US puppet leaders where they can
38:48
pay people, you know, 1/5 of what US workers would be paid
38:52
even less. And yet these would be U.S.
38:55
companies. I mean, doing to what?
38:56
China doing what they did to China.
38:58
But the difference is they're going to make sure that there
39:01
are these puppet governments that are these complete
39:02
neoliberal libertarians like Javier Mile and Argentina who
39:06
are going to end Allstate support and all industrial
39:09
policy. Argentina's deindustrializing
39:11
very rapidly as we speak. So they'll invest and make try
39:15
to make Teslas in Argentina or something.
39:19
And then Tesla Argentina. The Argentine government's never
39:21
going to actually have planning an industrial policy to develop
39:26
competitors to Tesla like China did.
39:28
So they'll just keep these countries trapped, trapped in
39:31
like the lower part of the supply chain.
39:33
So they they want to like, they just want to recreate this
39:35
entire region and use it as a base of operations as they
39:38
prepare and try to strengthen the US for more confrontation
39:42
with China. Now, where does Venezuela fit in
39:44
this? Obviously Venezuela has the
39:47
largest oil reserves. I mean, the US, by the way, is
39:50
the world's largest producer and exporter of oil.
39:53
This is a huge change in the past 10 years, one of the
39:56
biggest geopolitical shifts. the US produces more oil in Saudi
40:00
Arabia and Russia, and that that figure has only increased.
40:04
It massively increased under Obama.
40:06
He boasted about this. It increased under Trump in his
40:09
first term. It increased under Biden.
40:11
And the US is now the biggest producer of natural gas and a
40:16
major exporter of LNG, liquefied natural gas, which is now going
40:19
to Europe because they're not buying cheap.
40:21
Pipeline gas from Russia. So it's not like the US needs
40:25
Venezuela's oil. But of course the US
40:27
corporations would love to exploit Venezuela's oil.
40:30
They've been trying for many decades after it was
40:32
nationalized. And then if they can control the
40:37
oil reserves in Venezuela, they would definitely go after
40:40
Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago.
40:42
They already basically at this point are controlling like, I
40:46
mean, the US threats in the Caribbean, it's not only against
40:49
Venezuela, they're threatening Caribbean countries.
40:51
So and then Brazil is kind of the last domino to fall in this
40:57
US imperial strategy. Brazil is a major oil producer.
41:00
It's a major ally of China. It's a founding member of BRICS.
41:04
So I mean, the the Americas from North to to South America all
41:08
the way down, all of the resources in this region are off
41:12
the charts. Some of the biggest oil
41:15
producers in the world, the US, Canada, Colombia, Trinidad and
41:19
Tobago as also gas producer, Venezuela, Brazil, natural gas
41:24
producers, it's crazy gold. So that's the US strategy.
41:28
And then also to starve China of those resources.
41:32
Venezuela is a major ally of China and it of course, the vast
41:36
majority of Venezuela's oil exports go to China.
41:40
Now, China can probably do without Venezuela.
41:43
Venezuela only produces around 1,000,000 barrels of oil per
41:46
day. But you know, the idea is for
41:50
the entire Americas to try to prevent the Americas from to
41:54
reduce all of its trade with China.
41:56
China still actually has a lot of trade with Brazil.
42:01
Brazil's largest trading partner by far is China.
42:03
And China imports a lot of iron ore from Brazil and oil and also
42:09
soybeans and beef. And this is true for South
42:13
America in general. The largest trading partner of
42:15
South America is China, and the largest trading partner of all
42:19
of Latin America, excluding Mexico, is China.
42:22
And that, that, that relationship is increasing over
42:24
time. Many Latin American countries
42:26
are joining the belts and Rd. initiative.
42:28
And the largest port in China, sorry, largest port in Latin
42:32
America just opened, which is the port of Chiang Kai in, in
42:36
Peru, which is a, it was invested heavily by China.
42:40
It's a joint Peruvian Chinese port, but the major Chinese,
42:46
well, it was built by Chinese state owned construction
42:49
companies. And one of the main operators is
42:53
Costco, not to be confused with Costco, like the US company,
42:56
Costco is the Chinese state owned shipping giant.
43:01
So Latin America is becoming more important for China's
43:05
trade. And Latin America in the past
43:08
few decades has become more and more independent of the US
43:11
empire. So the US strategy is to try to
43:15
solidify more control. And this would also be a threat
43:18
to other countries in the global South, especially Africa, saying
43:22
you cannot have close relations with China.
43:25
We're in a new Cold War and we're not going to allow you to
43:28
be non aligned. the US is going to try to force countries to say
43:31
you have to pick a side. You're either with us or against
43:34
us, as George Bush said. And Venezuela is this country
43:37
that, first of all, again, given all the resources, would be very
43:40
strategic, but also symbolically, it would be a
43:43
massive blow to, first of all, the entire Latin American left.
43:48
If Venezuela falls, almost certainly Cuba will fall.
43:52
And then the US would probably also try to overthrow the Sun
43:54
Anista government and Nicaragua. And then any other left wing
43:58
government in Latin America would be immediately threatened.
44:02
You know, Brazil is the real prize, but that's much more
44:04
difficult. They tried to do that by
44:06
imprisoning Lula on fake charges in 2018 and in putting Bolsonaro
44:11
in power. But, you know, Brazil has been
44:13
able to, Lula has been very clever, and they were able to
44:16
like, you know, take action against Bolsonaro because of the
44:19
coup attempt and all of this. But I mean, the strategy is to
44:23
go to these different regions to weaken all of the independent
44:26
countries that are Chinese allies, to destabilize them, to
44:29
impose hegemonic control, and then to send a message to other
44:33
countries that they'll be next to try to isolate China.
44:36
Well, thank you. Thank you for connecting all the
44:39
dots. I can.
44:40
I can just sit here and listen to you for hours.
44:44
I'm just asking you to speculate now.
44:46
Given the current U.S. military buildup in the region,
44:50
particularly in the Caribbeans, do you think there is a
44:53
realistic chance for U.S. military action against
44:57
Venezuela or is this just act of bluffing?
45:02
It's like it's it's Trump just trying to intimidate some kind
45:06
of regime change to take place in Venezuela by flexing U.S.
45:12
military muscles. Yeah, it's a, it's a very good
45:15
question. It's, you know, the, the billion
45:17
dollar question. No one knows exactly what the
45:19
strategy is. You know, Trump loves to do this
45:22
kind of Mad Men strategy like Richard Nixon.
45:25
But I honestly think that it's likely that, yes, there will be
45:29
further U.S. military action and escalation.
45:32
I mean, the first thing I'll say to your question is there
45:35
already is U.S. military action. the US has already killed dozens
45:37
of Venezuelans and some Colombians and Trinidadians in
45:41
these strikes in the Caribbean. And of course, this is
45:45
completely bogus, this idea that it's because of drug
45:47
trafficking, totally false. This is the new WM DS narrative.
45:52
The weapons of mass destruction lie the US used to justify the
45:56
illegal invasion of Iraq. We know that was false.
46:00
Now what they're saying falsely is that Venezuela's President
46:04
Nicolas Maduro is the head of a so-called drug cartel that they
46:09
call the Carte de Los Solas the Sun's cartel because the
46:13
Venezuelan military has like a sun patch on their uniform.
46:17
Totally absurd. First of all, even mainstream
46:21
analysts in western think tanks funded by Western governments
46:24
have admitted that this so-called sons cartel does not
46:27
exist. It was made-up.
46:30
It's, it's being pushed by the Trump administration and the far
46:33
right Venezuelan opposition, which is backed by the US-led,
46:36
by these people like Maria Corina Machado, this far right
46:39
extremist who is very pro war. And yet she won the so-called
46:43
Nobel Peace Prize along with, you know, war criminals like
46:45
Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama and the CIA acid, the Dalai Lama
46:49
and other U.S. government funded operatives.
46:51
So she is working with with Marco Rubio very closely to try
46:55
to justify more and more military attacks in Venezuela.
46:59
Now during Trump's first term, let's not forget Trump launched
47:03
another coup attempt in Venezuela.
47:05
And this was using this puppet Juan Guaido.
47:07
And in fact, I remember, Carl, that I've been in Venezuela
47:11
several times. I remember one time I
47:13
interviewed you in Venezuela, we were talking about China and
47:16
Venezuela relations in 2019 during that coup attempt.
47:20
So that, you know, that was a lot of people were scared
47:23
obviously, that it failed, but a lot of people in Venezuela were
47:25
very scared that there would be AUS invasion and Marco Rubio was
47:31
pushing for AUS invasion at that time.
47:34
Also, I should point out, I have an article about this on my
47:36
website, geopoliticaleconomy.com, that
47:39
Trump's Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, a former VP of Raytheon
47:44
turned Defense Secretary. Now he would be known as
47:46
secretary of war. More, more, more appropriately,
47:50
Mark Esper, after he left the first Trump administration, he
47:53
wrote a memoir and in it he admitted that they talked about
47:58
military attacks on Venezuela. They they discussed potential
48:01
options, including of an invasion, including missile
48:05
strikes or air strikes. They didn't do the air strikes.
48:08
But let's not forget there was an attempted invasion of
48:11
Venezuela backed by the Trump administration that people
48:15
jokingly called Bay of Piglets. This was in May 2020.
48:19
It was called Operation Gideon and it was led by U.S. special
48:25
Operations forces, Green Berets from the US Army, allegedly
48:29
former Green Berets. But I mean, come on.
48:31
And they trained these forces, these mercenaries, Colombian and
48:36
Venezuelan mercenaries in northern Colombia.
48:40
And then they they they took a boat into Venezuela and tried to
48:44
invade, but they were actually caught by a a union of left wing
48:49
Venezuelan fisherman who supported the government and
48:52
they informed the authorities and they are the authorities
48:55
found these mercenaries and arrested them.
48:57
And this was overseen by this US mercenary company based in
49:01
Florida called Silver Core, which was owned by another U.S.
49:05
Special Operations Forces official named Jordan Grudreau,
49:10
who was then screwed over by the Trump administration.
49:12
You know, what happens is when you work for the CIA like this
49:15
and your operation fails, they abandon you.
49:18
I mean, we've seen this so many times throughout history, right?
49:20
They throw you under the bus. And the CIA said, oh, we don't
49:23
know who this guy is. We have nothing to do with him.
49:25
And like, he faced all these legal issues and then he tried
49:28
to sue the Trump administration because he was like, we, he
49:32
admitted like, we were going to Florida and meeting with Trump
49:34
administration officials. We were working with the CIA and
49:37
then it all failed and they just abandoned us and pretend like
49:40
they had no idea who we were. This is the idea of, you know,
49:42
plausible deniability. So the reason I mentioned all
49:45
that history is that like we've seen this story before, right?
49:49
They're now what they're doing is they recognize that the first
49:51
time it failed. So they just need to go straight
49:54
to the military option, which is why I do think we're going to
49:57
see further escalation of the military attacks, especially now
50:01
that, you know, Marco Rubio is not officially in the first
50:04
Trump administration. He had Trump's ear as an
50:06
advisor. But now Marco Rubio is the
50:09
second most powerful person in the US government after Donald
50:12
Trump himself. Rubio is the second person in
50:15
U.S. history to simultaneously serve as both the Secretary of
50:19
State, the head of foreign policy, that is, and the head of
50:24
the National Security Council, the National Security advisor.
50:27
The only other person in U.S. history who simultaneously held
50:30
both positions was Henry Kissinger.
50:33
And look how powerful Kissinger was in the Nixon administration.
50:36
So Marco Rubio is obsessed with this.
50:40
This is his lifelong mission. This is like his entire career
50:45
has been dedicated to overthrowing the Cuban
50:47
government and then the Venezuelan government and then
50:49
after that the Nicaraguan government.
50:51
Like he's from Miami, FL. This is like if he can, if he
50:55
can pull this off, he will be the next U.S.
50:57
President. Because like Florida will, just
51:00
like they will worship Marco Rubio in Florida, in Miami, like
51:04
there will be everything will be named after him.
51:06
They will have statues on every corner of Marco Rubio.
51:09
If he can pull this off, I don't think he'll, I don't think he'll
51:11
pull it off, but he thinks he can.
51:15
Like he's not going to lose this opportunity.
51:17
So the question is, what will they do?
51:19
I don't think that Trump will agree to send troops, at least
51:23
large numbers of troops. I think he would agree to send
51:27
special operations forces. He's already admitted to
51:29
authorizing CIA covert operations.
51:32
Now come on. The idea that the CIA was not
51:34
already active in Venezuela is absurd.
51:37
The Venezuelan government has released a lot of evidence in
51:41
recent years of they've, you know, arrested these like random
51:45
CIA operatives. At least the the Venezuelan
51:48
government said they were CIA operatives.
51:49
And they've released some pretty strong evidence, like, for
51:53
instance, targeting Venezuelan infrastructure, trying to blow
51:56
up Venezuelan power plants and oil fields.
51:59
This has happened many times in recent years.
52:01
So the CIA has obviously been active in Venezuela, but as part
52:05
of this psychological war on Venezuela, Trump publicly
52:08
confirmed that he authorized the CIA to carry out lethal
52:12
operations, hinting of course they want they're going to try
52:15
to assassinate President Maduro. So that's part of the
52:18
psychological war. But I don't think that's going
52:20
to work over like the Venezuelan government has already faced so
52:25
many obstacles, so many attacks, so many threats, the
52:29
psychological war elements not going to work.
52:31
But if the US launches air strikes or, and, or missile
52:35
strikes and bombs, military targets bombs, oil fields like
52:41
that could actually cause serious chaos in Venezuela.
52:44
And potentially the US would like to push Venezuela into a
52:47
civil war. So I am very concerned.
52:51
I mean, as someone like, you know, I've been to Venezuela
52:53
many times. I have a lot of friends there.
52:55
Like I love it's a beautiful country, a beautiful culture.
52:58
Like I'm very concerned. They've already suffered so much
53:01
under these illegal U.S. sanctions and a blockade. the US
53:04
just wants to destabilize it and cause chaos and to lead to
53:08
overthrow of the government. I mean, if you go back to 1960,
53:12
the US State Department published an internal cable,
53:15
which has now been declassified, about the US strategy in Cuba.
53:19
And it admitted this was a year after the Cuban Revolution in
53:22
1959. And a top USA Department
53:24
official admitted that the Cuban revolutionary government led by
53:28
Fidel Castro with, you know, Ernesto Che Guevara was
53:31
extremely popular. The majority of people supported
53:34
it. They admitted this is the State
53:35
Department admitted this. Therefore, they concluded that
53:39
the only way to destabilize it would be to cause extreme
53:43
economic suffering. You know, as Nixon and Kissinger
53:46
famously said, when Chile elected a socialist president,
53:50
democratically elected President Salvador Allende, they said we
53:53
must make the economy scream. Well, a decade before 1960, the
53:58
US State Department said the strategy should be to collapse
54:02
the economy. And this is the exact quote they
54:05
said, quote, bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of
54:10
government. End Quote.
54:11
That's from the State Department.
54:12
That's the strategy for Cuba to destroy the Cuban economy, bring
54:16
about hunger, desperation and overthrow government.
54:19
It's the same thing in Venezuela.
54:20
And that strategy has been going on for over a decade.
54:23
It's failed. So now they're at the last
54:25
resort, which is the military option.
54:28
I mentioned that I don't think like a full on invasion with
54:31
thousands of troops is likely, but I actually do think air
54:35
strikes or missile strikes in Venezuelan territory are likely.
54:39
And the New York Times has reported interviewing people in
54:42
the Trump administration that that is being very strongly
54:45
considered. They say that they say that
54:47
there are three scenarios, once in, according to the New York
54:51
Times, interviewing Trump administration officials. 1 is
54:55
that the the strategy is using special operations forces
55:01
sending in teams to try to go in and kidnap and or kill Maduro.
55:05
The other strategy is to send in troops to seize Venezuelan
55:11
strategic infrastructure, including oil fields.
55:14
They admitted that so the US troops would be literally
55:18
occupying Venezuela's oil fields like they did in Syria.
55:22
And then the other option would be not as direct, but launch
55:27
attacks and then try to target the Venezuelan military, to
55:33
force the Venezuelan military said to say it will no longer
55:36
protect President Maduro, to force Maduro to flee to another
55:39
country. But I mean, I think that's a pie
55:43
in the sky idea. So I'm very concerned about what
55:46
will happen in Venezuela. Last thing I'll say is that, you
55:49
know, I did an interview with the Chinese media outlet about
55:52
this and they asked me. They said if you were forced to
55:55
put a number to it, like what percentage likelihood do you
55:59
think is of these outcomes? I said, well, if I were at
56:02
gunpoint forced to pick a number, I would say, you know, a
56:05
66% likelihood that there are like missile strikes or, or some
56:10
kind of strikes directly in Venezuelan territory, not just
56:14
in waters surrounding Venezuela. I mean, that's pretty likely.
56:17
But you know, there's still a 1/3 possibility it doesn't
56:20
happen and that it's all bluffing.
56:22
But then I said there's, if I were forced to say like maybe
56:25
25% likelihood of an actual invasion with U.S. troops, I do
56:30
not think that's likely. But there's so much like Marco
56:34
Rubio think he's, he wants to be president.
56:37
Like, let's be real, JD Vance wants to be president.
56:39
I think actually Rubio is more likely to be president than
56:42
Vance. And Vance, I mean, and Rubio, as
56:46
evil as he is and Machiavellian, he's actually scarier to me than
56:50
even Trump. Rubio is much smarter and he's
56:54
cunning and he's a lifelong neoconservative war hawk, crazy
56:57
hawk. He supported every war.
57:00
And yet he's kind of rebranded himself as like a populist
57:04
Republican, right? And he's actually popular among
57:08
many Democrats, which is crazy. When, when Marco Rubio had his
57:12
Senate confirmation hearing, it was 99 people voted in support
57:17
of Marco Rubio, 99 voted. So like so many Democrats are OK
57:23
with Marco Rubio because he seemed as like this supposedly
57:27
more moderate Republican because he's an old school neo con and
57:30
like he wants to be president and, and like if he can pull
57:34
this off, he, he will be the next U.S.
57:35
President. So I, there's no way that he's
57:38
going to pass up this opportunity.
57:39
He's going to do everything he can to accelerate the war in
57:44
Venezuela. That is a very, very concerning
57:47
development. Thank you for making your time
57:50
to talk to us. This is a evolving story, so I'm
57:53
sure I'm going to have you back on the show to further explore
57:58
this topic. the US China competition is not going away,
58:02
and it's just manifesting differently.
58:05
Ben, if people want to follow your work, where would they go?
58:09
Yeah, just geopolitical economy.com and I want to thank
58:13
you for having me, Carl. It's always a pleasure.
58:16
Thanks for letting me rant about this stuff.
58:18
I'll add one other quick note here.
58:20
You use the term US China competition.
58:22
And I'm not criticizing you in any way.
58:24
That's the term most people use. But you know, we're we're in a
58:27
new Cold War, Cold War 2. It's really sad.
58:30
I wish that weren't true. But I will say that, you know,
58:33
even some people here in, in, in, in, in Beijing, they, they
58:37
have acknowledged this. I mean, like, I, I talked to a
58:40
lot of Chinese academics here who are influential.
58:43
You know, in China, universities are more influential than in the
58:47
US where the government just ignores academics.
58:49
But in here, the Chinese government, they, they actually
58:51
take the advice of experts very seriously.
58:55
And I, I, I've talked to some high profile Chinese
58:59
intellectuals, academics at top universities, and several of
59:03
them have said, yeah, we're in, in a new Cold War.
59:05
Although I remember one said to me, I won't name him, but he
59:09
said, I, I, I prefer the term Cold War 2 because this Cold War
59:15
is very different from Cold War one.
59:18
So calling it a new Cold War makes it kind of seem like it's
59:20
similar to the old Cold War. He says.
59:22
It seems very different, but there's a sense of kind of
59:25
pessimism about US, China relations.
59:28
And most people have recognized that the best they can do is
59:33
minimize the harm and try to and try to reduce the speed of
59:38
escalation of tensions. But in the long term, things
59:42
will only get worse, which means that unfortunately, I think, you
59:45
know, for the the several decades that come in our
59:49
lifetime, you know, the next 40-50 years, I think it's going
59:53
to be a time of a lot of geopolitical conflict.
59:56
And more and more unfortunately, I think we'll be see even more
59:59
and more kind of violent conflicts like during the first
1:00:02
Cold War. So unfortunately, you know what
1:00:05
we're talking about with Venezuela, and all of this is,
1:00:08
in my view, probably the beginning of a very dangerous
1:00:11
moment in history. Thank you for that very
1:00:13
important clarification. Because you know, sometimes,
1:00:16
sometimes when people say US China competition, it's almost
1:00:20
seems China is like a equal participant in in precipitating
1:00:25
this confrontation. But actually it's AUS LED US
1:00:29
impose Cold War 2 dot O this is a this is a confrontation that
1:00:34
China does not want. You know, like President Xi
1:00:37
Jinping said many times, the world is big enough for both US
1:00:41
and China to coexist. But that's not the mentality of
1:00:44
the elite in Washington because they only believe in the 0 sum
1:00:47
competition. That means, you know, for US to
1:00:51
be on the top or continue to rise, that other people must be
1:00:54
pushed on. And, and This is why they're
1:00:57
taking the tonier heart approach of competition, you know, try to
1:01:01
kneecap everybody. But yeah, this is it is what it
1:01:05
is. And again, I, I have to say
1:01:08
thank you for making your time. You know, I can geek out on this
1:01:11
for hours. I'll just, you know, be quiet,
1:01:14
turn off my mic and listen to to you.
1:01:17
It's very elucidating on many of the topic, especially how you
1:01:21
connect all the dots. So thank you again, Ben for
1:01:24
making the time to speak to my audience and for the people
1:01:28
watching. Thank you.
1:01:31
And until next time, bye bye.