RK - What do you tell them? Yes.
WW - I say, "Look nuclear weapons have an exaggerated reputation. They didn't force Japan to surrender at the end of World War II. The Japanese said that the Bomb forced them because it was great excuse for losing the war. That way the Army didn't have to lose face for having lost. And they're clumsy weapons. The whole trend in warfare is away from big blundering weapons and towards small precise intelligent weapons. So why would you want to build a weapon of the past? Why wouldn't you want to put your money into peace or at least, the very least, spend money on weapons smart and discriminative?"
RK - I would also argue that what we learned in Iraq it's not weapons at all. It's making alliances and connecting with the people.
WW - Yeah. Well so -
RK - Bottom up. Bottom up approaches to dealing with the people.
WW - So I was having - I was having a conversation with a former Ambassador from Iran to Germany. He was also on their national security council and he pointed something out to me that I didn't know. I haven't had time to check the facts but this is what he said, he said, "During the ten years while the US was in Iraq and we were spending billions of dollars and treasure and killing people and breaking things with our armed forces--"
RK - Trillions of dollars.
WW - "--trillions of dollars. When the US started the war Iran - Iraq traded like 75 percent of its international trade with the West. But by the time those ten years of American occupation and breaking things and shooting people was over, Iraq had a majority, more than 50 percent of its trade, with China." So while we're going around the world shooting things and blowing things up and starting wars and using drones to hunt quote unquote terrorists or whomever. Maybe they are terrorists. While we're going around focusing on killing people, China's going around the world concentrating on doing trade deals and development deals and loans. The people in South Africa are worried about Chinese foreign policy. They don't want to contradict it too much because more than 50 percent of South Africa's trade is with China now. Used to be South Africa was a reliable ally of the United States. Well they probably are to some extent but still. As this--as China's influence grows because of their expanding trade around world in Latin America, in Africa while we're focusing on shooting people, they're focusing on making friends and buying influence. It occurs to me that we could very well - we have the most advanced military in the world and that's quite impressive, but it could be that having that capability has caused us not to see the problem properly. That worries me. But, you know, it's exactly what you talk about with bottom up. It's instead of shooting people with rockets out of the sky which is clearly as top down as you can get.
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