Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: The Threat of War (Nuclear) With China

Yves here. The Biden Administration has been engaging in such relentless and seemingly reflexive eye-poking with China that sure looks like the extremist cray-crays are in charge, or at least have too much influence. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson discusses this sorry situation long form with Paul Jay.

The flip side is the bluster about nukes and Taiwan is an admission that given the distance, the US could not win a conventional war, so the hawks feel compelled to pretend that that simply means we’ll up the ante. To put it another way, the most charitable interpretation is that this talk of nukes is an updated version of Kissinger choosing to depict Nixon as an uncontrollable madman so that otherwise not credible threats might be taken seriously. But Wilkerson stresses that this is just too cheery a view, that there are plenty of know cases historically of nutters far too involved in nuclear decision-making.

By Paul Jay. Originally published at theAnalysis.news

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:12 — 51.3MB)

Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Stitcher | Blubrry | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS

In 1958 some U.S. military leaders advocated a nuclear first strike against China over control of Taiwan. There are some that are planning for it today. Larry Wilkerson on theAnalysis.news with Paul Jay.

 Paul Jay

Hi, I’m Paul Jay, welcome to theAnalysis.news. Please don’t forget the donate button, the subscribe button and if you’re watching on YouTube, well, right now, you won’t even be seeing this because YouTube has banned us, for one week, from uploading any new videos. So, if you are watching, you’re probably watching on our website or one of the other video platforms, which we are going to increasingly make use of, as you may know, and I’ll be posting an editorial on Monday, hopefully, eventually, I’ll be able to get it up on YouTube explaining why YouTube has suppressed three stories of theAnalysis.news. Claiming, that we spread false information about the 2020 elections. Claiming, that the elections were the result of fraud, which, of course, we said exactly the opposite, in all of those stories but look out for the editorial I’ll be doing about this soon. At any rate, today we’re going to talk about the potential coming war, some people think, with China, as outlandish or as terrifying as that prospect may seem. So, join me in a few seconds, with Colonel [Lawrence] Larry Wilkerson.

As reported in the New York Times, Daniel Ellsberg released a classified 1966 study that exposed, quote, “American military leaders, pushed for a first-use nuclear strike on China. Accepting the risk, that the Soviet Union would retaliate, in kind, on behalf of its ally and millions of people would die. Dozens of pages from a classified 1966 study, of the confrontation, showed this.” Now, let me just make this clear, this is a study of what took place in 1958, that there were real plans, that at least were being contemplated by the American military, to strike China with nuclear weapons over the issue of Taiwan. Now, the quote from the New York Times continues, “The government censored those pages when it declassified the study for public release.” End of the quote.

Ellsberg believes, that the lunacy found in the plan for nuclear war on China and the dispute over Taiwan, still exists. Ellsberg said recently, quote, “The issues that led to the 1958 crisis between the U.S. and China have never been resolved. Both countries are now ramping up confrontational rhetoric and most importantly, the strategic rationale that led the U.S. to consider nuclear war, then, remains exactly the same today. You shouldn’t be confident that the current calculations are any less crazy.” Tensions over Taiwan have sparked a nuclear response from China. The Washington Post reports that China has begun construction of more than 100 silos for ICBM’s [Intercontinental Ballistic Missle’s], quote, “That could signal a major expansion of Beijing’s nuclear capabilities.” End quote. In recent years, Chinese officials have complained, that their country’s nuclear deterrence is losing credibility because of nuclear modernization programs underway in Russia and the United States. A massive renewed atomic arms race is advancing at full speed.

Admiral [James] Stavridis, who was the 16th supreme allied commander at NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] and is an operating executive at the Carlyle Group, one of the biggest equity investment funds with lots of investments in the military sector, writes in Time Magazine that, quote, “China and the United States today, are on a collision course. No less an authority than Henry Kissinger said, just over a year ago, that the U.S. and China are in the foothills of a Cold War. Our assessment is that both nations are rapidly ascending the slope of that metaphorical mountain and will likely find themselves in a full-blown Cold War-like status in the near future.” End quote. Stavridis writes, that by the mid-2030s, this could lead the two nations to a hot war and even a nuclear exchange. That’s a major player in the industrial-military complex, contemplating the U.S. sleepwalking, into a nuclear war, that would end most life on Earth.

Now joining us to discuss how close the world came to nuclear war in 1958 and just how close we are to it today is Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. He’s the former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell at the State Department and the Joint Chiefs. Thanks very much for joining us again, Larry.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Thanks for having me, Paul.

Paul Jay

So, what do you make of what Ellsberg says, that the strategic logic of 1958, hasn’t changed? That the lunacy is still in the strategic thinking, and generally, how dangerous was it in ’58 and how dangerous do you think it is today?

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Let me say three things. One− and I’d never want to question Daniel Ellsberg, his credentials or his veracity, but, I could tell you some things about Pentagon planners, war planners, in particular, contingency planning, operational planning, so forth, what we generally call war planning, that would scare you just like that would and yet I wouldn’t contend, that was the mainstream thought, at the time the plans were being developed because the military’s, always, worst case is planning.

Second, I could tell you also, that probably was the mainstream thought and Daniel’s right in his construction of the ’57, ’58, and ’59 atmosphere, in the military, and I would hasten to add, thank God, that Dwight Eisenhower was, of that military and was president of the United States and was there to do what George H.W. Bush did, for example, with Paul Wolfowitz plan, when he passes over to the White House, ‘send us back to the crazies in the basement at the White House’, H.W. Bush, said. So, there was no way that was going to come to fruition with Dwight Eisenhower. Douglas MacArthur, −

Paul Jay

Talk about that whole period in ’58 because it certainly− and what was happening with Taiwan and China, why was it even being contemplated?

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

It was a scary time-period because we didn’t have, anything but an idea that China was a growing and incredible ally of the Soviet Union, which, of course, was our big bugbear and at that time, we had gone through the very painful and torturous ‘who lost China’ ordeal, which, as you know, ruined a lot of people’s lives and careers. It almost ruined George Marshall’s, of all people’s career, because he was blamed vociferously by the right-wing of the grand ole’ Republican Party and others, too, for having lost China, along with a number of other people. So, it was a terrible time, really and it was a time when too− and this gets to Ellsberg’s point, the military had generals, like Curtis LeMay and others, who had always thought, since the first explosion of the atomic bomb and the explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that it was just another weapon of war. A bigger, more powerful weapon, to be sure, but it was just another weapon of war. I mean, we had Davy Crockett’s and other things all over Europe. We had atomic demolition munitions. Mines, Paul, nuclear mines that were going to plant and blow a hole in the ground so a Soviet tank column couldn’t get through. I mean, think about that for a minute. How insane that is and yet that’s what we were doing.

This was a time, that was an extremely dangerous time and again, I come back− I’m glad Dwight Eisenhower was president because there was no way he was going along with any of that. Douglas MacArthur wanted to lace the Korean Peninsula with nuclear explosions so that when the 8th army was fleeing South after, three hundred thousand Chinese volunteers, contrary to his intelligence, entered the war and pushed the Americans all the way back to the original line of contact. He wanted to lace the peninsula with nuclear weapons so that no one could come through there. It would be so radioactive; they couldn’t come through there. So, these were nuts, in my view, they were nuts, certified nuts, and Daniel’s point is correct− but let me come to the third thing, I think this Taiwan-China scenario, is probably the most dangerous scenario, which you and Daniel suggested, because of the very fact that if we go to war, neither of us will win and so it will resolve itself in which side decides, or both sides deciding, to use nuclear weapons.

I’ve told you this before, every war game I’ve ever participated in when I was on active duty, and it was quite a few− it used to be the standard war game for the joint community when we were going joint, in the education environment, in the military− ended up with the civilians playing the leaders on both sides. The Chinese side and the American side and the Chinese leaders were very versed in China’s policies, thinking, and so forth, and ended up in nuclear weapons. Inevitably, the civilian leaders, in one case, as I recall, was Bill Perry, saying, ‘we’re not going there, no, stop the war game’ and we finished right there and did a hot wash-up in an after-action review. It always goes nuclear because we cannot do anything to one another.

My Marines characterize it this way, ‘The shark and the elephant’. The elephant was China. The shark was the United States. The shark ate China’s Air Force and its navy, and the elephant ate everything else about the United States that wasn’t peripheral to that struggle. So, you had your navies and air forces devastated and you’re sitting there looking at one another, the shark can’t come ashore, and the elephant can’t go to sea, as it were and so what do you do? Well, you say, as one game ended up, let’s use some cruise missiles with nuclear warheads, at that time, tomahawk d’s, let’s shoot some Chinese cities with nuclear weapons. Stop the game. So, what you wind up doing is coming to the only inevitable end to that game is an exchange of nuclear weapons. That’s what makes this so dangerous and let me go to your point earlier that you made in the introduction. I said this before, on your show, I think at one time, the Chinese made a decision under Mao Zedong, a smart decision, that they would make no more nuclear weapons that were necessary for a detour because Mao said, they were useless weapons. All he wanted was a few to keep people from attacking him with nuclear weapons and he made that famous statement about ‘you shoot yours at me, you’ll kill a hundred million people. I’ll shoot mine at you and kill all your people virtually, and I’ll still have 600 million left.’

They’ve changed their mind now and they changed their mind for one explicit reason, there are other reasons like the influence of their military-industrial complex and so forth, but really the fundamental reason is, the loss of arms control in the world. We and the Russians have been singularly responsible for that and so the Chinese made a decision and now you’re seeing the fruition of that decision. They have to have enough missiles to ride out the first strike and then respond and so that means a lot more nuclear weapons for China. This insanity is now picking up, accelerating, deepening the crisis that humanity faces with regard to nuclear weapons.

It’s our fault and the Russian’s fault because we let arms control pass away. ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missle] Treaty first, then the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty, and almost New START [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty], until we renewed it. So, we’re in a real situation now, where we’re back to the 50s. Where we have military officers who think nuclear weapons are useful. We have, a situation where countries are facing each other, all of whom have nuclear weapons and we have this situation in Taiwan, which is ripe for problems and for catastrophe.

Paul Jay

Just to go back a bit, is Ellsberg’s take, and yours, that there were leading members of the military, not all and certainly not the majority of the civilian political leadership, starting with Eisenhower but, there were some that actually contemplated, that it’s acceptable to have hundreds of millions of casualties. I mean, they were probably wrong about whether the Soviet Union would have come to China’s defense, that’s probably what we know about the real relationship of those two, but they thought they would, and they still contemplated that it would be okay to take hundreds of millions. They also knew, by 1958− even though in truth and even American understanding, the Soviet Union didn’t have much ICBM capability to attack the United States− they could have wiped out Western Europe, and even then, these American military leaders say, okay, that’s acceptable. Is that, first of all, correct take on LeMay and others who were, in very serious positions− he ran Stratcom [Inc], then the Strategic Air Command and is that lunacy still in the military leadership, at least some of it?

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

I mean, fundamentally, this is why you have civilian control in the military and this is why every single president since we first got the atomic bomb, has decided and continued the decision, to keep nuclear weapons under civilian, not military control. There are, in a phrase, nuts in the military and some of them wear stars. Curtis LeMay was a perfect example and to answer your question directly, yes, they believe that a nuclear war could be fought and won, and they damn well knew that− we’re talking tens, if not hundreds of millions of casualties in such a war, and that was their responsibility, they thought. This is the way these people think. Their brain does not extend any further than this. That, an exchange of weapons, can be accomplished, that, at the end of the day, will leave the U.S. victorious.

Paul Jay

What’s that famous−

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Ask them to define that victory?

Paul Jay

Well, there’s that famous quote from LeMay’s second in command, [Colin] Powell, I think, he says, At the end of the nuclear war, if there’s two Americans alive and only one Russian, −

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

We won.

Paul Jay

We won. They’re really out of their goddamn minds but in ’58, they didn’t know about nuclear winter, but now we do and now even a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, was probably enough, according to some recent studies by some serious people like [Alan] Robock and others, that, that’s enough to create a nuclear winter that would essentially destroy human agriculture and thus most humans. Do they not believe this in the Pentagon or are they, nuclear winter deniers?

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Here’s what some of them would say to that remark, Paul, they would say, ‘That’s not my bailiwick. I don’t do that. All I do is war and I win the wars I do.’, which is poppycock because we hadn’t won one for 20 years but that’s the attitude and I’m not trying to denigrate or deride the military. That’s not the way most of them think but there are enough of them that think that way. Look, Doug MacArthur thought that way. Otherwise, American Caesar or William Manchester’s book− quite a good series. There are people who think that way and there are people whom that calculus comes to mean, the ultimate in control and power. The ultimate of military power. That’s the only way I can explain it.

Paul Jay

I mean, it’s not a tactical thing, that they want the Chinese and the Russians to think there are some batshit crazy people in the Pentagon?

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Well, there’s some of that, and civilian leadership, generally, will be the ones who will rail, cry and scream about this or that or call this military leader an idiot, but they’ll still be the ones who use that politically and you can go back and see how it was used. I mean, there was Harry Truman and there was Dwight Eisenhower and both of them used that fear, of nuclear conflict, as they negotiated the end of the Korean War, in the one case, and as they negotiated their way through the opening stages of the Cold War, in other cases. So, yeah, it’s exploited.

Paul Jay

Now, you were saying−

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

The idea that I’ve got a crazy guy in the house here and you don’t want him to attack you.

Paul Jay

But, certainly, LeMay wasn’t just tactically posing as crazy. He was the guy that dropped bombs on Japan and he was a crazy psychopath. Now you’re saying, that’s why civilians control nuclear weapons, but they kind of do and they kind of don’t. I know, in Ellsberg’s book, he talks about going to see Dr. Strangelove, the movie, where this local commander of a base goes nuts and tells his jets to go bomb Moscow. Ellsberg writes, that when they came out of the movie, he turned to his colleague who worked with him at Rand Corporation advising the Pentagon− they looked at each other and said, that’s a documentary because there’s been such devolution of the ability to fire. It’s not supposed to happen without a civilian order but in fact, there’s that nuclear suitcase, that’s carried around for the president. If I understand it correctly, to a large extent, that’s a bit of theater, because if they’re like, for example, if a bomb took out the president, the military does have the means to fire nuclear weapons without such a command. Is that not, right?

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Well, the person in a ballistic missile silo or the person on a ballistic missile submarine, a high-class submarine, has the ability to fire the weapons. You just have to believe in the system. You have to believe in Americans. You have to understand that these are pretty talented, intelligent people. If it was the skipper of a low-class submarine or the commander of a series of ballistic missile silos, an accident, like we’ve had a number of, in the past, some of which the American people don’t know anything about, scares me more than some miscreant person in some silo or on some submarine, but it could happen.

That’s one reason why we have so many fail-safe systems. I say fail-safe with tongue in cheek. Two keys, pals, permissive action locks on the weapons, and so forth, but it’s not completely impossible to imagine a rogue firing of something. To me, having been so close to this for so long, it’s a miracle. A small miracle, a large miracle, however, you want to look at it, in terms of, we haven’t had an accident or a miscreant, as you’ve suggested, and somewhere in this linkage, that started something.

Paul Jay

Right. The story YouTube recently deleted of ours, was an interview with Mikey Weinstein from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and it was about the growth of Christian nationalism, a real right-wing, variant of evangelicalism in the military and he was suggesting, it’s possible as much as a third of the force has now been recruited and that reaches into very high levels of leadership in the military. If that’s true, then how dangerous is that, in terms of this discussion, about the use of nuclear weapons? I mean, if you have people that actually, in theory, at least welcome, the apocalypse, what does that mean in terms of nuclear issues?

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

It’s, certainly a remote possibility, but I emphasize and underline remote. I’m more concerned about the linkages that go along with what you and Mikey have suggested, and others too. The linkages that truly disturbed me are those between the United States and Israel’s nuclear complex. That something might happen in that linkage that would cause an action, in the Middle East, that would precipitate a nuclear exchange. While I would like to hope it could be limited, were it to do so, that we could stop it before it got out of hand. That disturbed me more than anything else. It doesn’t disturb me from− this is going to be, almost a bizarre thing for me to say to most Americans, but I don’t think it’s bizarre at all, − the theocracy is not in Tehran. The theocracy is in Washington and the theocracies in Jerusalem and its growing, every hour, in Jerusalem. [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s gone, but the theocracy is still there. The ultraorthodox, the others who have really stripped Israel, of all of its democratic credentials and created an apartheid state, for all intents and purposes, is still there in Jerusalem and the theocracy is still in Washington. Whether it’s the National Prayer Breakfast or General [William] Boykin saying, ‘my God is better than your God’, or whatever. That scares me more than some miscreant or some misguided Christian dominionist in a silo somewhere because−

Paul Jay

I’m concerned about the Christian dominionist at senior levels of the military and I should add to that, when I interviewed Ambassador Joe Wilson, we talked quite a bit about the role of Opus Dei. It’s also the far-right of the Catholic Church. It’s not just evangelicals that are at very senior levels in Washington.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

The most interesting development at the Air Force Academy in the last, 96 hours or so, has been the Catholic choir director there, who’s written an article that says Catholics are put on the bottom of the totem pole at the Air Force Academy intentionally by the Air Force Academy leadership, which is Protestant dominionist proselytizing evangelical Christians. This article just blows them away out there. They’re torturing Catholics.

Paul Jay

All right, let’s go back to where we started with China. Given, how crazy and irrational, much of this military thinking is− and I don’t think it’s so crazy and irrational, in the civilian political establishment, although you have people in that political establishment who are calling for drawing a line on Taiwan saying, drop this sort of ambiguous commitment to Taiwan and make it a hard commitment, which would do what? If China then decided to save face or for some other reason, they actually do want to use military means in Taiwan. Although I have to say, it seems to me if the Americans would just shut the hell up about it, the Chinese can wait for all this to happen in a more organic kind of way.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

The Americans and certain of those in Taiwan, for example, Tsai Ing-Wen, the first female, I think, current president of Taiwan. A descendant, if you will, of Chen Shui-bian, a Hakka, the first such minority member, to be president and making noises and doing things that look like Chen Shui-bian, has come back to office, that is to say, in your face, Beijing. We’ve seen how you handle Hong Kong. That’s the local media precipitant of our action but our action is going to be, to defy you in every way we possibly can and we might even have a referendum vote on independence, et cetera. The same thing Chen Shui-bian brought to my administration with George W. Bush, SMART. In this case, George W. Bush essentially told Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney to shut their damn mouths and quit exciting Taiwan to this sort of position but right now, the problem to me, exacerbated by us, people like Richard Haass, my old boss at the State Department, saying that strategic ambiguity is gone. It should be clarity now. We should tell the Chinese that if they try to do anything, in a forceful way vis a vis Taiwan, we will defend Taiwan. That’s bull crap. We can’t defend Taiwan without exactly what I described to you happening, a war that devolves to nuclear weapons.

So, why would we be doing this? Why would we be destroying strategic ambiguity? Why would we be bearding the lion in his den? Why would we be helping her to make it look more and more like Taiwan is going to become a defiant creature in the Chinese house? This is not the way to win friends and influence enemies, not at all.

Paul Jay

So, what’s the answer to that? Why is Haass talking this way? Haass represents, − I mean, he’s a serious player in the development of foreign policy in DC. What the hell is motivating him to talk− and it’s not just him.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

He’s a serious taker of the public coin that comes from the military-industrial complex.

Paul Jay

Well, that’s where I’m heading. Yeah.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

These people, boggle my mind, that they play with these very dangerous elements of U.S. national security policy, and they play with them. VAO’s [Virtual Acquisition Office] saving their credentials in how to do it, and what they’re really after is more fame and fortune, with emphasis on the last ladder. When it comes to Taiwan, the fortune is there because you get paid about four or five times what you’re worth, by the Taiwanese structure, as you advocate for them, on either side of the coin. Whether you’re looking at the Kuomintang and you’re looking at the peaceful relationship, more or less, between China and Taiwan, or you’re looking at the defiant relationship that the party that’s currently in power represents. You can get paid well on either side of that and some of them, Paul, work both sides and get paid by both sides.

Paul Jay

Well, is that really the primary motivating factor with all this posturing, that it justifies a massive military budget and I think it’s important, your point too. There’s a Chinese military-industrial complex. It’s in their interest to have tensions, at these kinds of levels. I mean, is that really what’s driving all this because, in real strategic terms, it’s so nuts that I don’t even know how you explain it other than, it’s about money-making, which is crazy too.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Money-making is at the foot and root of so much of what happens in Washington these days and for that matter, what happens in Taipei and Beijing too, but it is about prestige and power, too, and those are the elements that are truly dangerous. You can do something about the− you can root out corruption. You can go after this or that corrupt official. You can identify people the way we’re doing right now but you can’t deal with prestige, power, and the kind of things that Xi Jinping thinks about, when he thinks about his legacy and the Chinese mandate, in order to fulfill it, you have to have Taiwan back.

It’s an extremely dangerous situation and let me add too that, you have to look at Japan in this. What would be the most, effective action the United States could take, in a strictly pragmatic sense, with regard to the current situation in Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, and particularly the South China Sea, where China has become the hegemon. We are not the hegemon anymore, in that region of the world. At best, we can test China’s giving, and we would lose, where we contest it on a strictly regional basis. We would lose.

So, what do you do? Well, if you’re going to be pragmatic and you’re in the Pentagon and you’re thinking about it, you’re going to unleash Japan. You’re going to say to Japan, we no longer guarantee you a nuclear security umbrella. In fact, we no longer feel like the security relationship with you is the way it should be. In other words, we think you should grow up. Think about what China would think about that, how that would change the power calculus in the region. Now, we’ve got an entirely different situation.

Now, China confronts a country that is capable of building a nuclear complex that could outstrip them in a matter of months and it’s no longer hemmed in, controlled, cajoled, kept right, by the United States of America. I’m going back to my conversations with Wang Yi and Cui Tiankai, and with Richard Haass, in 2001, when we did policy planning talks. Restraining Japan is looked at by Beijing, as a plus. Unleash Japan and see how the situation changes in Northeast Asia. This−

Paul Jay

But it makes it more dangerous.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Maybe, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it makes a dangerous balance of power, or it creates a balance of power that isn’t there now. The balance is being destroyed by China. China is becoming more powerful than the United States in that regional context.

Paul Jay

Well, that’s going to happen but, well, you said something earlier, which I thought was really important and to me, this is where the focus has to be. Doesn’t there need to be a serious renegotiation of nuclear arms treaties? −

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Absolutely!

Paul Jay

Without that, this goes to war. I mean, I don’t know how we avoid− like right now the United States is spending at least a trillion dollars, so are the Russians, to modernize their nuclear forces. It’s probably going to be, well more than a trillion.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Wasted money.

Paul Jay

That’s what’s spurring the Chinese to build up and it’s not even being− am I missing something? I don’t even hear the conversation, in Washington, about beginning a proper new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia, China, and the United States to begin with.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

It’s happening, to a certain extent. It’s happening sort of offline right now. There are people talking about it, the usual people, the arms control people, and so forth but they’ve been so marginalized. They’ve been so put down by all this ABM Treaty gone INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] treaty gone. Hey, we might as well just let New START expire too− Donald Trump. They’ve been so marginalized that I’m not sure their voice is being heard anymore, but it needs to be heard.

The other day I was having a conversation with someone even from that community who said, how could you multilateralists, this? It would never work. You better multilateralize it because there are lots of nuclear powers out there now and you need India, Pakistan, and Israel, in this environment, you need them talking about things. You don’t just need to pass, laws and treaties, for instance, the new nuclear treaty, that are just figments of someone’s imagination. Non-proliferation Treaty always was that, with regard to the major nuclear powers. Our promise to reduce our weapons to zero eventually was just so much smoke and mirrors. We need some real arms control. Forget the smoke and mirrors. We’re never going to eliminate nuclear weapons, but we need to manage them and manage them smartly and we need to get down to the very minimum. I go back to that study we did when Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the United States now has around 4000, we could go down to 300. It would be a much safer world, much less opportunity for accidents, and so forth− you wouldn’t eliminate it completely, but you minimize it, and others do the same thing and have a regime that checks on that all the time, as you said, who’s working on that right now? Who’s working on that? It’s one of the number one challenges in the world if we want to survive and who’s working on it?

Paul Jay

Yeah, in serious terms, nobody.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

You got it.

Paul Jay

All right, thanks for joining me, Larry.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Thanks for having me, Paul.

Paul Jay

Thanks for joining us on theAnalysis.news. Please don’t forget to donate, sign up to our email list. If you are watching this on YouTube, which after one week they’re going to let us post, but who knows how long till they might close the channel down, which is all the more reason to subscribe to our email list and you’ll know how to connect with our website. That’s at theAnalysis.news because we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing and if YouTube closes us down, well, we’re probably going to have a petition campaign. If we can figure out a way to sue Google, we will but in the meantime, keep checking out theAnalysis.news.