The o' chile effect is sponsored by Wallstreet, Window dot com and listeners like
you Now and Yeah Serrated and our media Tack February twenty one, of twenty
twenty four. Allegedly, according to that thing we call a calendar, this
the O'Kelly effect you listening to it, It is Wednesday, wodnes Day,
as I speak, live middle of a week, humpday, some people say.
But anyway, here we are. Larry Hancock is with me as he
is every other Wednesday as of late, and glad to have him along.
Why because he gives us the grand context, the context of most subjects.
Now often we do discuss the jfk assassination, but that will not be the
case tonight at least you know who knows. Maybe it'll get an honorable mention,
but not the focus of tonight's show. Anyway, you know who Larry
Hancock is if you're a regular listener, But if not, we go to
larrydash Handcock dot com. That's Larry Hyphenhancock dot com and check out his work.
His blog over there, which is interesting, will keep you up to
date on his many works and potential books. Apparently we found out last time
we talked to Larry that the work on Oswald in Three Dimensions or whatever that
finyl title is going to be. And if you've been listening to my show,
you might say that Larry should ask his wife about that, because she's
come up with some good titles in the past. Just saying, and you
might have learned that when we did the Larry Hancock collection. Anyway, Yeah,
he's working on this thing on Lee Harvey Oswald, taking another look at
him. And we discussed it last time and we'll be discussing it more in
the future, especially if it comes out in book form. But Larry takes
up a whole lot of spaces on my bookshelf. Surprise Attack, Shadow Warfare,
The Awful Grace of God, some things he co authored, a lot
of things he co authored, some with Stu Wexler, also an excellent guest,
somebody I'd love to speak with more often, and hopefully with starting this
year sometime if I can get in touch with stew anyway, all that aside,
Yeah, like I said, Larry takes up the largest amount of books
on my shelf for one singular author. And someone would have talked, well,
Gee, creating Chaos, unidentified you know what, I'm wasting a lot
of time here already, and I don't want to list all of Larry's books
and describe him because the hour will be gone just like that. Larry,
how are you doing tonight, sir? I'm good Jack. We're kind of
having an early spring here and I'm really enjoying the warmer weather. Right last
time we spoke, I think it was kind of cold in your neck of
the woods, wasn't it. We had ten inches of snow last week.
We're out of power for about thirty hours all told. So yeah, totally
different last week. Oh man, I'm sure you were prepared and all that
good stuff. You have wind up radios and flashlights, right, because I
have a couple of those around, just because I don't want to be stuck
and oops, the bees are dead. You have a couple of those around,
right? Oh yeah. We go even a little further than that.
We're pretty much prepared to go for at least a week without power without too
much difficulty. Excellent. Well, good to know Larry. That way,
I don't have to worry when I see a storm in your neck of the
woods. But anyhow, look, unfortunately, I have this upbeat sound in
my voice. But we're going to talk about something that is pretty dark and
dirty and is current not necessarily the historical topic, but you got to look
back at history to figure out what's going further. And I'll set it up
this way. Quite often I have said that I feel like and I may
not be right because I try to look at the standardized definitions regarding this topic.
But the truth is, I often feel like we are either quite close
to the precipice of going over the cliff when it comes to not the end
of the world or the disaster. I'm not the sky a swelling guy,
but entering that time when we might have to declare that we are in the
stage of history that is going to be referred to as the Third World War.
There are others out there who have said we're already there. They're just
lying to us about it and for some reason trying to keep us calm here
in America regarding it because from a technical position, we haven't taken any heavy
losses yet in this constantly erupting conflict. Others say that we're overreacting because there
is always you know, it's man's nature after all, Just like in KRMEI
Sabastano's book Right Violence in Our Nature, The Human time Bomb book. I'm
referring to. You know, all of that is relevant in this discussion.
Right Are we at that point? Are we not? Is there something to
compare it to? Well, sure there is. We've had two things that
were called world wars. Would I say that we're at the height of it
or in an intense portion of it? Absolutely not. But at the same
time, I do recognize that we have lots of conflicts everywhere, and maybe
I'll pull up that definition that I found regarding when it is you can or
should declare that it's a world war. But Larry, where do we begin
with this topic? Do we look back in history and start to draw the
parallels or should we look at what's happening now? Where would you begin trying
to dress down this situation and give us the proper context on whether or not
we are indeed either at the precipice or already in progress when it comes to
World War three, I think check the right context is to look back and
in terms of conceptualizing World War thinking about the fact that from the period nineteen
thirty eight through nineteen forty nineteen forty one, but certainly thirty eight thirty nine
there was a world war in existence. We just weren't participating directly in terms
of mobile in troops, sending troops in large scale into the battlefield, or
in you know, attacks on our domestic continentally the United States, But as
far as the rest of the world was concerned, there was flighting all over,
okay, And I think that's what we have to It has to be
our benchmark. It doesn't if there can be a world war without us being
directly involved. And one of the difficulties and that is that that gives us
kind of a prejudice view in terms of, oh, well, it's not
bad, nothing's really happening, because we're not directly under attack. Right.
Well, the world is a bigger place than just us, no matter how
small it is cotting recently, right, right, right, And look,
it's gotten smaller because our communication is more instantaneous, which almost makes it seem
like we would automatically assume that the awareness of such a thing would be quicker
and more of a happening, so to speak. And truthfully, we should
look back at World War War One, which I'm pretty certain was kind of
declared a World War again before the US entered it. And I'm not even
saying again as in just like World War Two. In fact, there are
two different perspectives in play here that we should keep in mind, right,
and the one is indeed, whether the US is involved or not doesn't necessarily
qualify or disqualify what is happening regarding declaring something technically speaking a world war.
If we look at Wikipedia, for instance, okay, it's pretty simple,
and I hate Wikipedia, but sometimes concise is concise, so I gotta go
with it. A world war is an international conflict that involves most or all
of the world's major powers. That's the first sentence. Conventionally, the term
is reserved for two major international conflicts that occurred during the first half of the
twentieth century, World War One from nineteen fourteen to nineteen eighteen and World War
Two from nineteen thirty nine to nineteen forty five, although some historians have also
characterized other global conflicts as world wars, such as the Nine Years War,
the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years War, French Revolution and
Napoleonic Wars, and Cold War and the War on Terror. And I kept
saying and because I was missing the thing there that said that's a bad read
on my part. But the point is that there are other things that have
been sort of classified as world wars, but the declared generalized state of world
war is only your conflicts from nineteen fourteen to nineteen eighteen and nineteen thirty nine
to nineteen forty five, And often on this show we study a lot more
World War Two because it sort of shaped what would happen for the rest of
the twentieth century, and quite frankly, I think it severely influences or extremely
influences the circumstance we find ourselves in today still, even though it is,
g let's look at it coming up on what eighty years ago now, I
guess right, yeah, eighty years nearly ago when it ended. Okay,
so nineteen thirty nine to nineteen forty five. We don't need to belabor people
with what events occurred there necessarily, But the US wasn't involved at first,
That wasn't what it was. Were people calling it a world war before the
US entered it? And did it qualify under the remember the original definition?
The general definition again from Wikipedia. Sorry, A world war is an international
conflict that involves most or all of the world's major powers. So I guess
the first thing to determine is what are the world's major powers and how did
they become involved? And I think that's the first step when we look at
today. But maybe we should begin with nineteen thirty nine to nineteen forty five.
Larry, what do you say, Well, I think we should begin
with nineteen thirty eight thirty nine, because there's one piece of differentiation going on
here. You can have a world war if all the major powers are involved,
or most all of the are involved. They don't necessarily all have to
be fighting each other at the same time, even if it ends up that
way. I mean, for example, at the beginning of World War two,
Italy was very much involved in warfare and in attempted territorial expansion in Ethiopia.
Okay, Germany was involved in the same thing in Poland, and certainly
in Europe you could have considered a Poland a major power. China was involved
in a major long term war in Japan and Korea. I'm sorry vice versa
Japan in China and Korea. You know, So this is warfare going on
around the globe with several major powers, and for that matter, were we
involved, certainly with Lyndley's with British support, we were playing the same role
with Britain at that point in time that we were playing with Ukraine now or
should be playing with Ukraine now. Sorry, little prejudice there. So again,
wars around the world constitute global war. It just becomes a question of
when everybody unilaterally decides it's time to declare it and let's choose sides, which
to some extent is beginning to happen now. I mean, for example,
we have North Korea, who just in this past week has changed its old
stance towards South Korea. They used to have a strategic position of mutual agreement
incorporating the two nations commonalty. Now North Korea has decided that they don't want
to play that way anymore, and as a matter of fact, they may
just decide to go ahead and take over the South. That's us last week,
Okay, a big sea change really there from the last several decades that
just kind of blew away a whole relationship that had developed in an afternoon.
And that's one of the frightening things, because we've reached a position where several
of the players in this are very much like they were in nineteen thirty nine.
They are states that are nation states that are really essentially dictatorships where one
clique, one power, one individual has the position where in an afternoon they
can issue an edict and that's the way it is. I mean essentially,
now Putin has fully militarized Russia and taken Russia into some none of us thought
could happen, a fully mobilized, twenty four hour day industrial complex at war,
and we're we're not really facing that. So in North Korea, in
Iran, in Russia, we have major power players where a single individual or
their clique can make those decisions regardless of what kind of opposition there might be.
We thought there'd be on opposition in Russia. Didn't happen. But that's
that takes us back to a position where it's almost like you're on the precipice
because you can have all of these global conflicts going on and then almost instantly
everybody can vote on an alliance. Not everybody, but those individuals like North
Korea and Russia, where now the majority of the ammunition being used on the
Ukrainian front is from North Korea. Amazing. Well, but that's where we
are now. But it's not unlike nineteen thirty eight. Yes, global wars
just on the cusp of choosing sides. But a serious contrast here is that
the Russian Federation of today is not the Soviet Union of that time period,
right. You know, the Soviet Union had a lot more satellites than it
does now, you know, than Russia does now. Russian Federation there was
more territory, was more expansive, there was more involved there. Now.
I always thought of it, and this was something that I didn't realize was
incorrect until maybe, you know, a few years ago, let's call it,
but several years ago really, But it's not like it was childish.
I always thought that it was more about how much of the world was involved.
Like once you have you know, border wars between different nations, Okay,
that's one thing that's like always happening, it never ends. But on
the other hand, to have all of Europe sort of become involved directly,
then that means that whole major region, that whole continent is involved, right,
you know, the Japanese being involved in certain things regarding territory in their
general area. That's one thing but to have it spread throughout Asia is yet
another. And then Asia is involved, and thus you know that entire swath
of territory which is huge. That's more toward what would be a declaration of
a world war in my mind. But it, or at least it used
to be. But that's not really the case here. It's not about you
know, okay, how many continents are really fully engaged here? Is all
of Africa engaged or is it just the northern part which usually seems to be
the case, like it was with Italy and its territorial issues and Ethiopia and
all that French colonization was going on, always had been, and its colonial
interests. I mean again, they were in Vietnam, you know, and
all of that before we went there. They had various interests in Asia,
they're different colonies and losing control of their colonial interests during this time period even
I think right in here in that time of World War two. But is
France a major power in and of itself? Not necessarily is that concerned something
that you know, turns us to a condition of world war And you almost
made it sound arbitrary, where well, it just seems as though people declare
it, and there's an arbitrary there's not really a standard for this, and
I can't find a perfect checklist, right, but one would say that at
a certain point, when you have enough fighting going on in enough places and
a significant thing you said, where there seems to be two sides or two
general sides, is it only a two sided thing? And then those that
want to stay out of it, you know, the people that want to
be neutral at the time that this is going on, and then everybody else
forming alliances on two sides of one line. Is that more influential in figuring
out whether we're in a conditional world war or is it something else? What
are your thoughts there? Well, I think it's two elements. One,
as you just said, it's how many places is fighting occurring. One can
make a very strong historical argument that during the you know, the American Revolution,
where we thought all the fighting was going on here, the rest of
the world was seeing a global warfare between France and England, you know,
throughout Asia, throughout you know, they were fighting around the globe. We
just thought it was all about us, but you know, they they thought
we were kind of, oh, there's this revolution over there, and you
know that's a problem, but you know, the French and you know the
Indian Ocean are more of a problem for us, you know, because they're
destabilizing our convoys to envy it. You know. So the first it's how
many places is fighting going on? And right now we have fighting going on
at a lot of places. The second is alliances. And I might have
said one afternoon, everybody says, Okay, we're all in an alliance,
but that's not really how it works, correct, I mean, right now,
for example, you have an alliance that's formed between North Korea and Russia,
Russia and Iran, Russia and the Palestinian world because Putin has just invited
all of the Palestinian leaders to Moscow and essentially told them, you know,
they're going to be part of his new alliance. Well, that's not a
formal declaration of the Triple en Taunt, you know, or whatever. But
the bottom line is, if you get back to tracing the people and the
ammunition and the money that's sustaining the fighting, that's an alliance in terms of
World War uh In something you just said, for example, like France and
Britain, I mean, right now, as of this weekend, there are
there is a new European task force sailing to the Gulf to combat healthy read
healthy slash Iranian attacks on shipping right now. Yeah, that is so we
have an American group there, we have an European group there. I mean,
what would you call this generally, except you have warfare going on or
certainly in the northern hemisphere. Okay. And that's the thing that connects to
the US getting itself involved in Yemen, the Huti thing, because that was
our justification for bombing in uh yeah, in a Yemeny area, which is
connected to this overall conflict as well. So it's not just as simple as
who's shooting at who? In other words, Yeah, now, in terms
of a in terms of what I would call a I mean, you have
global warfare, let's just call it that, whatever version it is, that
isn't going on now, and there's no sign that it would there's nothing in
the cards that says it would slow down. Okay. But the other element
that you have is again it's actually this is where it's a bit different than
nineteen thirty eight originally. But now you have among that group that I was
just talking about, you do have political instability We know there was political instability
inside Russia, and Putin has managed to totally crush that. We know that
there's political instability inside Iran, and Iran has managed to pretty well crush that.
There is also increasing political instability inside China. I don't know how many
of your listeners have been forming following the news that the new trend inside China
is the formation of local militias. And we're talking about militias that are formed,
not like our National Guard, but these these are even corporations or Chinese
corporations are forming their own militias now truly nominally under control of the People's Liberation
Army, but because there is a lot of China's having a lot of economic
problems and there's no signs that's going to get better any time soon. There
are a lot of demonstrations, a lot of political unrest over land, real
estate, and these militias are being formed to deal with domestic problems. Well,
just prior to October two, you know the event that sparked the live
fire events that are going on in Gaza. Quite honestly, there was a
lot of unrest in Israel. There were people protesting with the government and there
were problems with you know, the with net and Yahoo and him being up
on corruption. People protesting against maybe the compulsory military service or how that was
being run. They were not happy with the legal system. It wasn't like
all was completely peaceful in Israel prior to this, you know, there was
a bit of something going on. And even in Germany there's been some issues
and things over the government and exactly what type of mistakes are being made and
things like that. So some of these people that got involved, there's some
of these nation states that got involved were not necessarily in a just on one
quiet day shooting broke out situation. There may have been issues that built up
tension in a nation state, in a region, etc. Now China is
a weird example because again you wouldn't think that any of that would spill out
of China, but now you have well armed groups that have been organized whatever
the reason is, maybe it's an internal security issue or whatever. But there's
also you know, there's also a lot of different things. See China's hard
for me to follow because I never quite trust the information I always get from
there. Politically, it's very controlled, you know, as far as the
UH, you know, the the the the the the centralized government in general.
But at the same time, I don't know how much financial trouble they
were actually having realistically. Is it being made to look bad so that people
don't get too afraid of the big bad wolf as it's growing up, et
cetera. You know, to me, it's always a propaganda issue, and
you got a temperate when you're looking at China, and the whole thing with
Russia is that I don't know if that was a matter of propaganda where people
were saying that Putin was in a problematic position before this, or now he's
in a position of, you know, the people don't feel really good about
his leadership or whatever, and people even tried to propagate the idea that he
was ill, I mean, and so on and so on. Sometimes it's
difficult to know whether we're looking at propaganda or real world conditions in real time.
But I think we have a couple of benchmarks in terms of China.
We do have economics, We do have their stock market, what their central
bank is doing, you know, so there's no propaganda there if their central
bank takes certain measures, or if their stock market essentially crashes, or if
they put certain limits. I mean, that's that's basic economy. Either they
do or they don't. You can interpret it as you will, But I
don't think there's anybody that's looking at there, even the numbers their government is
publishing, and thinking that the Chinese economy is underperforming expectations. I guess you
would say, because they've they have created some extreme expectations for themselves over the
last two or three decades. I mean, the Chinese public has expectations.
They made huge investments in real estate that now in any event, so we
do have that benchmark. In Russia. I mean, I think it's fairly
reasonable to say that. I mean, it seems like ages ago, but
it wasn't really ages ago. When you had a convoy marching on Moscow being
well received by most of the cities that was passing through, and you know,
with two major military leaders essentially about ready to go over to it,
you know that's that was real. There's no hiding that. Now, Putin
put that to bed, and Putin has a very direct way of putting those
things to bed by killing people. You know, that's it works for a
time at least, So I think in both of those cases, But I
think what I'd like to focus on, Chuck, is the difference here is
let's say that we're we have global war, So okay, is it going
to get better? Is it going to get worse? The real question is
there's a lot of fighting going on. Can we hope to see a downturn
in it, you know, by by whatever. And the problem is that
we now have at least three governments North Korea, Russia and Iran who's who
have are operating on a military footing in some cases with Iran, and some
of it not even necessarily being under their direct control. But the point is
the regimes in power are stable to the extent that they are committed to military
action, that they have built their economies around military action, their power based
is around military action. There's the putin you know, none of them can
suddenly this afternoon say, oh, we made a mistake. We really should
be buddies with everybody, and you know, trust me, I just it
was, you know, we're going to back off this. China is the
only exception. They haven't committed themselves yet, although they haven't really made any
friends recently with Indonesia or Vietnam. But I think the concern is for those
that want to be optimistic about this, there are several of these parties where
the regimes in power are being sustained by military action and confrontation, combat whatever.
So there's there's really no there's no really reason that they would abandon that.
That that's that's that's what they're that's where their power base is, and
that's what's sustaining them. So why would they give it. It's like,
do you think that if Putin suddenly said, oh, Western Europe is not
coming to get us. You know, NATO is not about to invade,
all of that was non sense. And all the guys that are speaking for
me that told no, no, we need to back off, forget this
huge military buildup that we're doing. Now I changed my mind. That's not
going to happen. So yeah, I think that's a big issue that we
have now that we didn't even necessarily have in thirty eight or thirty eight nine.
We have regimes that are sustained strictly by their position towards conflict. Right,
but you know, as China and the Russian Federation are interconnected, they
are not reliant on one another. You know. In other words, the
Chinese system could stand without Russia. It doesn't need Russia to exist, and
the Russian Federation doesn't need China to exist. They're not, you know,
really super dependent upon one another for their existence as some of those alliances were
in the nineteen thirty eight time period. There were certain countries that were sort
of dependent upon the bigger powers for their existence. There were certain regions that
were dependent upon some powers for their existence. I think this is a little
different in that, Yes, Europe in and of itself, the European Union
is clearly interdependent because of their arrangements, not just militarily but business wise,
they sort of have an interdependent relationship. China and the Russian Federation do not.
And I would say that Putin's not unreasonable for thinking that he's being encroached
upon by NATO, given that there were, you know, there's disputable issues
about what's on. That's where you and I would disagree, Okay, But
even if he felt he was being encroached on, he just launched an invasion,
you know, brutal invasion. But I take your point. China is
at this point in time, there is no doubt that Russia, North Korea,
and Iran are tightly bound yes, economically, I mean, Russia would
not be doing what it's doing in combat right now without Iranian ballistic missiles in
North Korean artilleryshells. I mean, Putin is tied to them, and they
are both emboldened by that type. Try I agree with you. China is
totally a wild card. All we can hope for is sanity on China's part.
But if China were to do something insane in regard to Taiwan or quite
frankly, even Indonesia, where there is there is open conflict, I mean
there are military incidents that are occurring with Indonesia. I mean, so right
now China is kind of a hope for sanity, but not in the other
not with the other three players, I don't think. And and interestingly enough,
India is India is another major power, if you will, in terms
of population, if technological capability, and at the moment, India to a
large extent is sustaining Russia with covert oil purchases. And I'm not saying it's
not a complex situation. Really, the simple part at the moment is Russia,
North Korea and Iran. That doesn't make it good because that those are
you know, all three states are now very heavily focused on a military strategy
spheres of influence towards world and I think I think certainly if you were to
ask Israel, they would would say that that Iran is a very large part
of their problem. And yet fascinating where you know, Putin kind of like
you said, has indicated that he's more on the Palestinian side. Seems like
they're and you know, the United States clearly is on the Israeli side when
it comes to that part of the conflict. It's interesting to me that the
only thing that I think separates us from getting to that declaration here where a
whole lot more people would be saying, I think it's time to call this
the Third World War, would be the direct military involvement of China, which
hasn't happened to a significant degree yet. Yeah, And that would be the
thing that I think would make it indisputable. And yet it doesn't feel as
though the world is mostly engaged in this now. That could be due to
the way it's presented in Western media, or that could be due to the
fact that, as per usual, North America is not directly involved in the
conflict, even when our military becomes directly involved. It doesn't come here exactly,
does it. Yeah, I think you're right if you ask our military,
and I thought they're very well aware they're at war, you know.
I I the fact that they're being constantly rotated, there's spending more time overseas.
There are combat groups Army, Navy, and Air Force that are in
constant combat. If you if you look at their logistics with the amount of
so, they would certainly tell you that from their view, yeah, that's
our day is now combat. You know, any of them are exposed to
it at any time. Army, Navy, Air Force. I think your
other point about North America, yeah, we're we have we are so have
become more and more isolationists, more and more domestically focused. I think if
you were in Europe, the Middle East, maybe not Latin America okay,
and maybe not Africa, agreed, but northern Hemisphere most most anybody else would
would you know? The war has reached out and touched a great many people.
Uh, we have a compartmentalized it to a certain extent with our volunteer
military and the and the fact it's kind of like Linley's you know the fact
that right now we're actually paying our defense companies, you know, to produce
materials to go overseas, not free use by our forces by the Ukrainians.
Uh, and not just the Ukrainians, because we're literally replenishing not just in
Europe, we're replenishing uh, military stocks around the world, from Australia to
uh, the Philippines to you. It's it's just you don't have the sense
from what the headlines are in our newspapers, well, like the amount of
stuff that's being sent to Ukraine. When people talk about, well this money
is being spent, well not directly, because what's happening is that already created
assets, elements, you know, different tools are being sent there and then
they need to be replenished, as you said, wherever it is they came
from. So that keeps the industrial part of the military industrial complex busy because
they have to produce new stuff to replace the stuff that is now being siphoned
or funneled into the Ukrainian conflict. I mean not just there, but a
major portion of those assets are being funneled into there. So there's the business
end of war as opposed to the troops. Because look, we don't have
a lot of troops coming home from anywhere. So it's not the boots on
the ground issue. We don't have you know, bodies coming home again.
Another thing that begins to shake and move the public's imagination. And believe me,
I'm not looking forward to that. I'm just saying that at this time.
It also lends itself too well. There can't be a major conflict.
We don't have people dying from our perspective now. And as you say,
I mean, there are look at it that way, but we are.
We're not only there are now factories. There are new factories being built.
There are factories that are running three shifts a day, four shifts a day,
as they said, not just to produce stuff for Ukraine, but just
produce stuff for quite frankly, for Israel, for all of the other companies
countries where we are we're backfilling and we're sending uh, you know, Greece.
You know, you could just call out any number of countries if you
look at the at the sales and the trade agreements where we are. The
Yeah, the military complex at the moment is is doing quite well, which
is quite reasonably one of the reasons our economy is doing quite well, I
mean, this is an upside economically for us. It's and the other thing
is really kind of strange is it's our oil and gas exports are booming,
and if anything, it's easier to get stuff from us than it is to
get through the Red Sea at the moment or around the Horn of Africa.
So we are not feeling the pain here. Well, that was in part
that. Yeah, the article I covered last night, in part it's responsible
for the headline that's basically states, you know, why are we doing so
well producing oil and gas under Joe Biden. Part of the reason is that,
quite frankly, they Sorry, something is starting to play in my background
here. I'm gonna cut my mic for a second to fix that. But
part of the problem is that we're having to create oil and gas to fuel
different operations. And that's part of what's floating our production right now is resource
allocation. It's not necessarily that the American public is utilizing this stuff that we're
creating here, but we're exporting it to the global market. Even if we're
not directly selling it into a military conflict, we're selling it to people who
end up having to move it into a military conflict. So our production is
quite high under Biden right now, as a matter of fact, way higher
than anybody thought it would be, and higher than it's been in a while
due to exactly what you're saying here. Yes, oh absolutely, And and
and the economy in general, I mean, the economy in general is strong
and it you know, that's one of the things that strengthened it is strengthen
it's here because I haven't looked at our balance of trade yet late in the
last couple of weeks, but this there is there is no doubt that this
level of global combat fighting, et cetera, is benefiting our exports, is
benefiting our economy. And frankly, one of the strangest things about it to
me is the fact that you know, we have we have incidences where oil
and gas are really to the point where they should be real natural resources.
I mean, we are going to be running out of them. But what
we're seeing in Russia and Ukraine is they're taking each other's oil reserves out.
It's kind of like, oh, this is great. Now we've turned this
into an energy war. That's the last thing we needed. The same thing
with the Hate's and Yemen now we've turned it into an energy war now a
global commerce war. So again I very much doubt that the international shipping firms
or even the international air transport firms would would dodge the question of where they're
you know, that they're seeing a different world in terms of things that they
have to take either take advantage over or concerned about, you know, routing
flights, routing chips, re routing personnel, insurance. Yeah, that's back
to there is, if not a global war, global warfare. Fair enough,
So let's get to some specific comparisons. Then, if we are indeed
rolling up to about to enter that time period where it is declared like it
was in World War two nineteen thirty nine, you know, what are the
differences. Well, we've already discussed that there were territorial conflicts that were occurring
in a lot more places, I think in nineteen thirty nine than they are
here. But those aren't the things that really end up qualifying it as a
world war. What are the comparisons we could make here twenty twenty four to
I don't know, let's even say nineteen thirty four, if we were to
give it another five years before we get into World War three, officially,
where would we be standing at as the time period just before now. I
know that there's a difference in the pace of it. There's a difference in
the reality because communication is faster, allocation of resources and issues can can become
evident much quicker problems. Direct reports from the battlefield are clarified a lot faster,
or at least the information has transmitted a lot faster than it was in
the nineteen thirties. I mean, you couldn't dispute that. So things should
happen at a quicker pace. Maybe we do have to look at nineteen thirty
four to figure out how we would get, you know, in the next
five years to nineteen thirty nine, but maybe it would be the next year
in our current modern state because things are just simply going to move faster.
What are your thoughts on that and what comparisons could we make directly, I
mean specifically, I think one of the comparisons you make, like thirty eight,
thirty nine, forty is that basically to some extent combat had stabilized.
You know, you had the falls far on the front in France. You
know, it stabilized to some extent even in China. The Chinese were pushing
back against the Japanese to some extent, but at that point in time,
stability, stability in a military sense, began appear to various parties as an
opportunity. The Japanese saw the American support for China, the American involvement and
resource control. They saw it as a threat and an imminent opportunity that they
had to deal with right now, So they they pushed. That's what pushed
them over the edge. The Germans, to a large extent, although they
didn't start it, saw an opportunity, as did the Russians quite frankly in
Eastern Europe to take territory. And I think the big, the big difference,
and what the citing point is going to be is where they or not
the players in this see where we are right now as an opportunity. If
they've gone, they've gone so far, you know, and they haven't gotten
a reaction that would really stop them from doing anything there. You know,
combat really is limited to a thousand mile front in Ukraine? Okay, So
do does somebody see it as an opportunity? Okay? Europe can't come up
with enough ammunition to even sustain Ukraine. Why don't we just go ahead and
take Poland? Because I mean, I'm sure you. Tyler chucked Putin,
and several of his most outspoken supporter have said it's time for them to secure
their own security by rebuilt, by moving west. I mean, so is
there some point that they're tempted to do that, just as you know,
Hitler was tempted to move east. You know, Well, they decide it's
now, okay, now is the time, it's I think, and I'm
not happy with any of this. But what happened, what we saw in
nineteen thirty eight thirty nine is essentially the parties that had initiated most of the
warfare, Germany, Italy, Japan felt that they had an opportunity to do
more, more expansion, more expansion, because nobody had really stood up,
you know, not that there wasn't some fighting back, but they viewed it
as an opportunity. Well, and there were different occurrent there were different circuscumstances
here too, where whereas let's just point out, most significantly Ukraine was part
of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union in and of itself was not exactly
adversarial to Germany immediately, you know, and they weren't just neutral either.
They were kind of friendly, but it wasn't clearly that they were their enemy
or you know, they weren't clearly for or against them. In my mind
the way I read history at that time. Of course, that's the Soviet
Union under Stalin as opposed to you know, the Russian Federation. There is
a big difference. One two. You take a look back. You just
said, and people might have thought they misheard you. The US is support
of China while the Japanese were the aggressor. That is a circumstance that it
seems like a fairy tale compared to what we're looking at right now, because
that almost makes no sense given the current spears of influence in the world today.
It's amazing, and of course most people don't understand that. Right before
the attack, in the six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the
United States was working with Japan to create a strategic bombing force. Sorry,
working with China. Yes, it's the top of the way it should be.
Check you're right, working with China to create a strategic bombing force to
bomb Japan. Yeah. And it was in the newspapers and it was like
we're sending our best bombers to the Philippines and then they will be going on
and we're supporting creating a bombing group in China, and there were maps showing
how Japan would be at risk. So we've lost a lot of that history.
But I think it wasn't insane. It really was not insane. In
the movie Red Dawn, where you know, the the Communists basically invade America
in the fictional story, you know Patrick Swayzee in the original and Jennifer Gray,
and they remade it not too many years ago, and it was a
very confusing plot. But one of the weird things that happens is there is
an American fighter pilot who was shot down and he says, oh, you
know, our only allies right now is you know, is what's England Australia?
And of course, you know, half a billion scream and Chinaman or
something like that. And the guys around the fire go half a billion,
But why only half a billion? There's like a billion of them, and
he goes, yeah, there was. The funny thing is that it wasn't
insane in the nineteen eighties to think that the Chinese would be our ally if
a World War occurred if there was a major conflict. And by the way,
in Red Dawn, it might be that they just decided to take out
America. That doesn't necessarily make it a world war. So both of those
things which seem really weird. And I think Rutger Howard plays the fighter pilot
if I remember right, but it's almost weird to hear that and people go,
wow, that's like a crazy Hollywood creation. No, it's based on
the real world. That would have made sense for quite quite a long time
that the Chinese would have been willing to cooperate with us, especially if based
with an adversary like Japan, who you know, went through its fascions.
Again, looked at JP. Sattilli's work on this and his coverage of the
the rise to fascism in Japan, which made it a completely unrecognizable nation,
you know, compared to what it is today for us in modern times.
But either way, that that was the true map of the way it was
drawn back then, so you have a different circumstance. And again Ukraine was
part of the Soviet Union, so you know, their actions during World War
two way different than what they would be today, et cetera. So I
mean, you have a different landscape. You know, Poland's independent at that
time. Hitler invaded it, taking it over as if it was a territorial
right along with Austria. And that was another thing. The majority of the
power in Europe that were at the time kind of sitting there going, look,
if you're not going to go any further, we're going to let this
alone. That's appeasement. That's Neville Chamberlain, right, That's that whole thing
that that Joe Kennedy Senior, you know, was was involved in and dismissed
from the Roosevelt administration as the ambassador to England because of his idea about appeasing
Hitler, so on and so forth. I mean, well, yeah,
that's where I was really trying to go, because I think the problem is
if the people who initiated the combat see an ongoing opportunity, there is no
it will be there if you appease it. If you don't respond to it,
it still makes it an opportunity. That's why Chamberlain, we you know,
you can't you can't say Okay, we're good where we are, and
they're going to say, well, no, we're bitter where we're going to
be you know, you've just given them the initiative. But one other thing
I'd like the point out that is different. It's sort of different. Maybe
not during the Cold War, we always we assumed that nuclear weapons would,
you know, be the endgame. We could not have a world war because
nobody's insane enough to go nuclear, which I hope is still true. But
one of the things that we're seeing now that we have become so much more
of a global community in terms of electronics, if you will, interconnectivity.
Forget that we're just we're not what we were during the thirties in terms of
interconnectivity. It's it's far more important down to the level of agriculture, manufacturing,
whatever. And it's interesting that during World War Two we saw all parties
pass up on the use of their major unconventional weapon, which was chemical warfare,
you know, and they nobody used it, Okay, so they remained
that same and then just fought it out bloodily with conventional weapons. What we
have seen emerge now, especially with with drones and unmanned systems and what i'd
call infrastructure warfare, is that we face the possibility that a country can essentially
neuter another country with conventional warfare simply by using not non nuclear to to take
out infrastructure. And that's that's something that didn't exist at the time. So
the rules of escalation have changed, and indeed World War II's rules of escalation
changed because of the trench warfare that occurred in World War One. There was
a lot of chemical weapons used there. Yes, a lot of it was
you know, simplified things like mustard, gas, et cetera. But still
it's almost like, look, we already know how ugly and bad and long
lasting these problems can be regarding post conflict cleanup, right, maybe we don't
want to do that again. Is there a lesson in hand here? And
are we too far away from the time that big Man and little Boy or
whatever they were called, fat Boy, fat Man, little Boy. I
forget the names there for the two bombs that were dropped on Japan, which
indeed were frightening spectacles for the world, but much less savage than the fire
bombings that occurred in Japan and later in Germany that the US Air Force carried
out. Indeed, though those spectacles are not so burned into our memories now
that they would be a great warning for somebody, maybe is that a possibility
or do you think because of the technological advances there's just more options here?
And indeed you can neuter and utilize, you know, that country's resources without
making them all toxic, you radiated, chemically poisoned, as you would have
with these other higher level non conventional warfare elements of the past. There's something
to be said for both sides of that equation, I think. And as
we come around to just almost an hour of this discussion where I'd like to
sort of wrap it up soon and tie a bow on this whole thing,
how is it that you would compare that? Do you think that any of
what I'm saying here has any influence over the trajectory, the limitations how far
somebody will push things. Obviously, we've seen that all of these things are
useful as threats. Right. The idea of biochemical warfare and what could be
loosed and what is being done has been introduced into the conflict Rhetorically. We've
heard the possibility and we haven't heard it lately, but you know, because
we're deep into the conflict now in Ukraine. But the beginning, there was
an immediate fear that nuclear weapons could be deployed right away, even if they
were just you know, quote battlefield end quote nukes or whatever, the tactical
weapons, they were possibilities, maybe smaller ones. And people were also worried
that if Russia felt as though it was really getting its head handed to it,
that out of desperation for the fact that, well, if the Russian
Federation is not going to survive this, perhaps we don't care what happens to
the rest of the world. We could see a quick escalation. So the
technological and the literal assets, the literal elements of warfare, the tools of
warfare, and when they are properly deployed is another question here as we move
forward, So you know, tie something around that for me, give me
an idea what your thoughts are there regarding the escalation or lack thereof, regarding
the different technologies and types of warfare, because can is what we do see
in Ukraine right now, on top of the rhetorical, on top of the
propaganda, on top of the information and psychological warfare, but it is the
main player there in Ukraine. Is there a possibility that we could see major
escalations and reactions if somebody steps into the biochemical theater if somebody steps into the
use of tactical nukes. If that happens, things would change immediately, I
think. And are we too far away from World War two to remember or
are we too far away from World War one to remember the consequence of that?
Or have we now regained our arrogance to believe that we can control the
consequences of that? And I do mean generally, not just one nation state,
but all of them. Have they fallen into a stupor that is based
on either ignorance or complacency? And do they lack proper context about the consequences
of that sort of escalation or do you think they're aware of it and that's
why we haven't seen it so far? What are your thoughts? I think
I think nuclear is not the real concern, and if anything, the people
that are think still thinking they're safe because of nuclear and retaliation are probably being
a bit naive. What we haven't seen anybody. We've seen Russia do it
so far. They actually did it even before Ukraine pull the trigger on what
I would call nuanced warfare, combining cyber warfare with conventional warfare and essentially overwhelming
warfare. I think the model for what happens next is Georgia and what Russia
did in Georgia and the ability that Russia, Russia now has to say,
take cyber warfare and large gale drone attacks, live bomb attacks, whatever to
wipe out the infrastructure of a small country during winter and give the population no
choice but freeze to death or change your government. I think what's being overlooked
is the ability to do that, not nukes, because you know, again
the equation is, if you read the news articles, if if Russia just
did get five thousand intermediate range ballistic missiles, which are known now they're nothing
more than longer range artillery shells. You know, the barrage warfare, unfortunately,
is what we're seeing. And when you combine that may not be a
threat to the United States. Okay, I'm not talking about that, but
I'm talking about Taiwan, Japan, Eastern Europe. You know, to a
small all or geography, that could be overwhelming. And again the problem being
is if there are no consequences, if the consequences aren't obvious, the temptation
will be there. I have no doubt one of the reasons Putin decided to
go all out in Ukraine is because he had been so successful in Georgia.
It's step by step, it's you know. So to wrap it up from
that perspective, Chuck, I think, you know, I don't think it's
escalating weapons. I think it's deciding where that next opportunity is going to lie.
And as long as as this continues, and you know, Iran obviously
saw opportunities in the Middle East to increase its leverage in Syria for that matter,
even Lebanon. As long as they see that they're opportunities, there's nothing
really Their regime needs opportunities as diversions. So I think moving to a different
level a weapon is not my concern. My concern is the extent to which
these regimes see opportunities. Okay, So with that in mind, though,
I think it's not necessary to have the Russian Federation involved. Let's just say
theoretically, if fighting came to a stop in Ukraine, peace were declared,
a deal was struck, and that was the end of it, and all
forward momentum militarily was stopped, I think that would not necessarily stop the momentum
regarding the rest of the world inviedfuly not. It didn't in twenty fourteen.
That's exactly what happened in twenty fourteen. That's what the Ukrainians are scared of.
Yeah, twenty fourteen, you had a peace treaty that said, okay,
we'll never attack you again. Okay, good, But when that lasted
what four years? Yeah, But putting that aside, even Larry putting that
aside, let's just say that really there was a cessation here and it stopped
right there. Regarding that part of what is happening on the global game board,
the truth is, Okay, what's happening in the Middle East is enough
if it continues to spread as it you know, like, look, we
look at both World War One and World War Two as truly having its seeds
in the former Yugoslavia. You know, that thing sort of metastasized and became
and you could see the Middle East, as has been stated many times throughout
my entire lifetime by every analyst known to man, the Middle East in and
of itself could be the metastasizing tumor that becomes the global conflict all by itself
as well. Right, absolutely agree, that would just be if if anything,
the situation you describe would I think would be thought of as proof of
concept. Look out, well that worked here, Now where can we take
it next? So no, that would not that would not resolve the situation
in terms of the global threat, uh, anymore than I think. Uh.
You know, immediately before, you know, before World War two,
before global warfare, there were there were agreements and sensations and attacks stopped in
certain places. You know, that didn't change. That didn't change the whole
picture. It just stabilized situation. You know. It's like, okay,
the other shoe is yet to drop. So no, I agree, if
you had if you had peace in Ukraine tomorrow afternoon, I don't think it
would change this the whole global context of what we've been talking about in terms
of Russia, Iran, North Korea, hopefully not China. But you know
we just now, as you said earlier, China is China is an unknown
right still the wild card? Yeah, still the wild wild card. Yeah.
And here's the thing about it, to again tie a complete bow on
this. Ultimately, we started with a question, you know, which is
are we in a state of world war and therefore world War three already in
progress, or are we on the precipice. What would be your simple answer.
There is it an overreaction on the part of people like myself who overanalyze
things. Is it is it a point of really banter for the sake of
banter, or are we looking at something that's academic? What are your thoughts
there? Like, how would you answer that? Is it already in progress?
Do we have a circumstance where it's about to emerge or is it just
an unrealistic and I don't know, some people showing their fear and others seeming
to believe something ahead of the evidence being presented one way or the other.
What are your thoughts there? Are we in that state yet not? Or
is it coming? What are your thoughts? And we're in that state simply
because there are regimes that see that see warfare as their only real opportunity where
the sphere whatever you want to call it, elevate it up and talk about.
They see spheres of influence as vital to their existence. They see,
you know, warfare and a militarized nation state is vital to their regimes survival,
et cetera. As long as you've got major power players that are in
that mode, you're you're you don't go back downhill you're at a point of
risk of expanding global combat. I don't even know if you want to call
it, you know, world war three, whatever it's. We are in
a state of global combat and there's no reason to think that there's any any
immediate way that you can make it go away because of the of the geopolitics
of the people who see it as an opportunity. It's kind of the reverse
of the military industrial complex, right that are our thought earlier was all wars
are created by the business people. Don't think that's what we're really seeing right
now. Uh, In this case, global combat is being being fed by
regimes that see it to their advantage, not a business matter, to their
to their advantage from a power standpoint, a control standpoint, different story,
right, But there's no reason to let a good conflict go to waste.
And and as per usual wars, you know, we talked about that.
So no, that that's and unfortunately we're kind of we're at the moment we're
the ones that are probably profiting more than anybody else. Right, And look,
a war is a business, and guess what business is warfare? These
things do stand and I know it sounds like a FERENGI you know, what
do you call that rule of acquisition? But it is the truth. It's
always going to be a business, and business is almost always good because it
is already in progress. And global conflict is what global business. So even
though it may not be the primary driver, it's certainly an element at play
at all times. So I advise you guys to go over to larrydash Hancock
dot com. I recommend all of Larryhancock's writings. If you see Larry as
an author or co author, my best bet is to tell you that you
have encountered one of the best things that could be written on various historical topics
and things that are relevant to today. And I would say, just in
closing that although just like you know, business is not the main driver for
warfare, I would say this idea that you know, the Russian Federation is
not necessarily the main driver for what will get us to the undeniable state of
World War three. The Russian state definitely is an element that can be involved.
They're significant enough, but they're not the only thing. They're not the
only possibility. And even if all of the conflicts surrounding that circumstance were to
disappear tomorrow. I don't think it would take us anywhere away from that precipice
or from that nearly declared situation. And apparently I think your analysis says about
the same thing, although you and I might differ as to exactly how significant
the sphere of influence is of the Russian Federation on that final declaration, so
to speak. So again, Larrydashancock dot com and Larry, I'd like to
thank you for doing this with me tonight. I really appreciate it and as
always love having you on. And we'll see you again in two weeks,
right you bet we'll be back. Absolutely so, guys, I hope no
matter who you are, where you are, when you are, that not
only are you doing well, but I want you to remember that I am
merely o'helly all of you are indeed the effect. Go to Larrydashandcock dot com.
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if you want to be informed anyway, We'll see you revelation through conversation.
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