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This is an iHeart podcast, wishing the.
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Holidays could come early. If you own or manage your business, they can, with help from iHeartradio. People are already shopping for their loved ones and hunting for deals wherever they can find them, including right here. They're listening to the radio, they're listening to podcasts. They could be listening to you. Don't wait for everyone else to kick off the holidays. Get your best season of the year up and running today. Call 844-844-IHeart or visit iheartadvert advertising.com.
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Welcome to securing America with me, Frank Afney. The program that's a kind of owner's manual for protecting the country we love against all enemies, foreign and domestic, to the glory of God and his kingdom. Well, we are grateful to God that the Jewish holidays are at an end. This has been a long, long haul. And I'm sure that our guest, who hails from Israel, is mindful that there's been a lot going on over this holiday period in Israel, and I'm not entirely convinced that's an accident. A lot of it is portentous for the Jewish state and I think for our interests as well, and some is promising. We hope for the best of the fact that the hostages who were still alive, about 20 of them, were released finally with this ceasefire engineered by President Trump. But there's a lot of other things, a lot of other moving parts, or perhaps not moving at the moment, parts that we need to be focused on as well. And I'm very grateful that we have Major Elliot Chodoff of the Israel Defense Forces Reserves with us. He is a combat veteran with great, distinguished service. He is these days a strategic analyst and commentator, notably with a podcast called Conflict Uncovered. And he's been a very, very faithful contributor to our reporting on much of what has been happening in the Holy Land of late. And we're glad to have him back online and a little the worse for wear, evidently. But, Eliot, thank you so much for joining us. It's great to have you with us once again.
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Always great to be with you, Frank.
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Well, let me begin by asking you just sort of to give a situation report, if you will, on the state of the ceasefire. We'll talk about the larger ambitions of this Middle east peace deal, as it's called, but just the first phase and what is supposed to be happening in it and what you think is, as well as what's likely to come next.
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Well, first of all, the critical phase from Israel's point of view was getting back the 20 live hostages this was a point, and there's a lot of nonsense out there. Well, this is a deal that could have been closed a year ago or a year and a half ago. It's simply not true. It's not true for a number of reasons, but I think they're important to get out there. First of all, the overall situation of Israel's enemies is much worse today than it was a year or a year and a half ago. In other words, the same deal today, even if the terms of the deal, which they're not the same, but even if they were the same, it's not the same deal because the world is a different world. And there are things that Israel could agree to today that it shouldn't have agreed to a year ago. And even just going out on the limb of saying, okay, we're going to cut Hamas the slack and give them a little bit room to get back to 20 hostages is critically important. Let's also keep in mind that the hostages, in and of themselves, were a multifaceted issue. They're a moral issue. And I don't think there's any question, things that I've spoken about over the past couple of years, Israel, Jewish ethics, Western ethics, getting people out of hostage situations is a value in and of itself enhanced or exacerbated maybe by the fact that they were taken hostage on our watch. In other words, we failed, let's, you know, to be very, very straightforward about it, we failed. We were defeated in the first hours of October 7th, and now we're paying part of the price for that. And I think that it's not a nice thing to say, but it's a reasonable thing to say. So getting them out and closing that chapter was very important, beyond the ethical and the value. It was an open political issue in Israel. It was an open social issue. And I say this all legitimately, even if I don't agree with everything or many things that the demonstrators were saying, I can't say I disagree with everything they were saying, but this essentially ends that chapter.
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The.
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Quid pro quo of an Israeli withdrawal has a cost, but I think much less than what's made out to be. Actually, let me go back one step. The release of Palestinian prisoners, terrorists, murderers, and the like. Also a cost. And again, both of these are parts of the cost of not succeeding as we should have. But I would say that given the overall situation that we're dealing with Hamas and other terrorist organizations, the quantitative and even qualitative advantage given to them by releasing these terrorists is well within the Value, worth it to get the hostages back. And I want to add to that, parenthetically, that people who say, well, yeh, ye, Sinwar was released in the Gilad Shalit deal, and therefore that is why October 7th happened. That's simply not true. October 7th happened because the IDF failed in its mission. And Sinwar was a conduit, not the maker, if you will. I mean, he was personally, but there were others, his brother, Mohammedeff. There's no shortage of terrorists coming back. The Israeli withdrawal as well. The IDF has withdrawn from areas that it was in. It's given Hamas breathing space in the cities, in Gaza City and other places, and that comes with a cost. But here we also need to keep in mind that an IDF withdrawal, even from all of Gaza, and I'm not advocating, and I'm trying to put a perspective on it, is not the same thing as an American withdrawal from Afghanistan. We're not pulling out halfway around the world, requiring a massive logistical effort to go back. We're pulling back 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 kilometers, which is sort of tactical jumping space for armored and mechanized units. It's a day of movement. So all of that, once again, within what I consider to be a reasonable price to pay to close the chapter on the hostages and bring them home. Not surprisingly, and I was certainly not surprised, Hamas already on the first day, began to violate the terms of the agreement, in particular having to do with the bodies of hostages that had promised to return and the initial agreement they were going to return all 28. Then at the next phase, they said, well, we don't know where seven of them are. We don't know where nine of them are. And ultimately they returned four. And then another four, of which one was not an Israeli hostage, a Gazan dressed in an IDF uniform and so on and so forth. And here they are still holding the vast majority of the bodies of the hostages who were either taken dead or murdered along the way. This is their game playing. And by the way, Israel cut them a lot of slack on this. And I think that part of it has to do with wanting to maintain the agreement going forward to get those bodies back. Part of it, I think, is also about not wanting to cross President Trump at this point. But in saying that we believe, and this was the official statement, that the body that they returned that was not Israeli was a mistake. I don't think it was a mistake. I don't believe it was a mistake. So this is who we're dealing with. Part of the deal was for them to disarm they've stated openly they're not disarming. Part of the deal was that they would not be part of the next administration in Gaza. They're already moving in and murdering their opposition. And these are all very, very important and concerning issues and the murdering of the opposition in particular, and the US Tacitly accepting it is particularly problematic if we look into the future.
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I need you to hold that thought, Elliot. This is a critically important point and it sort of suggests the larger question of are some of these other breaches going to be accommodated or otherwise countenanced by the United States government? And what are the implications if they are? Stay tuned, folks. We'll be right back with Elliot Chodoff.
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We'Re back. So is Major Elliot Chodoff, Israel Defense Force reservist, man of great experience, both in uniform and as a strategic analyst. We are always appreciative of his expertise and time, not least that that he provides on his wonderful podcast Conflict Uncovered, but also what he uncovers here. And Elliot, I had to interrupt you. You were making a critical point about how things have gone to date on this ceasefire and some very troubling aspects of what Hamas is now doing. And you were alluding to the fact that at least with respect to the murderous attacks it's engaged in now against so called gangs in Gaza is actually very problematic for what comes next. Complete that thought, if you can, please.
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Yes. Okay. Well, President Trump yesterday or the day before said something along the lines of, well, you know, they're going after some really bad people and he's right here. Let's not kid ourselves. The Dagmush family are a bunch of jihadi radicals. This is not good guy, bad guy. So let's say in a vacuum, I wouldn't shed many tears. However, it's not a vacuum. And I'm reminded of an American experience. In 1991, during the Gulf War, America encouraged the Shiite uprising in Iraq and then left them hanging out to dry. And so Saddam massacred them. When The American, the US army went into Iraq in 2003, in particular the 101st Airborne Division going into Najaf and then into Karbala, trying to organize the locals who were Shiites against Saddam and against his Fedayeen. They didn't want to have anything to do with the US army at that point. They have memories, which I think is perfectly correct. You didn't support us back then and why should we trust you? This isn't about you didn't support us, why should we support you? You didn't support us and you let us get killed. Why should we trust you today? And I see the potential of a parallel of that in Gaza. If there's an interest in raising some sort of power, opposition, ground level, grassroots level, to Hamas, letting them massacre their opposition is not a good way to start. And that's really my concern.
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Let me ask you to broaden the lens, if you would, on what is reputedly in prospect here, which is not simply an enduring resolution of the conflict in Gaza involving, among other things, Turks and Egyptians, with Qatari money being put into Gaza to, I guess maintain security and train a police force and so on, which I consider to be a very problematic idea. Honestly, I'd like to get your thoughts about that and then maybe reserve a minute or two to talk a little bit about whether the end of the 3,000 year war, as is being described, is also now in prospect region wide.
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So first of all, to your first question, the Turks and the Egyptians, let's see, Turkey is a country ruled by a man, Erdogan, who has happily threatened to bomb Tel Aviv. So having his troops not far from Tel Aviv doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy. The Egyptians have also referred to us as the enemy, despite a peace treaty that we signed in 1979. I'm talking about the current Assisi administration. They have violated that peace treaty, the military parts of it in Sinai, but not in sweeping numbers. Putting 10,000 Egyptian troops in Gaza puts us back to pre1967 when the Egyptian army was there, also on the road to Tel Aviv. So I'm not feeling really good about any of that. In addition, what I am even more concerned with is that this so called peacekeeping stabilizing force, and we could throw the Palestinian Authority in on that as well, is going to end up doing pretty much what the United nations forces in Lebanon unifil did vis a vis Israel and Hezbollah, and that is that they Protect. They'll protect the terrorists from Israel and not the other way around. And while we're sitting on our side watching Hamas rebuild and whether it's doing it above ground or below ground, and I mean that both literally and figuratively when we see it. And we say to the Turks, hey, look, they're building a rocket factory. And they say, no, they're not, or they'll find one out of every. Find, quote, unquote, one out of every ten arms warehouse and they'll blow it up and say, look, we're doing the job. Meanwhile, these guys I'm talking about Hamas are organizing and training and arming, and if Israel does something, it's an attack against Egypt and Turkey. I'm not really happy with that kind of an arrangement. So I think the dangers are an understatement.
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Elliot, let me just put it to a fine point.
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Well, you know, I'm basically British.
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Does this create. Does this create basically a situation on the ground that could be perilous to Israel, not just something that we're unhappy about?
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Absolutely perilous, yes, and I was certainly sarcastically understated. It's absolutely perilous. It brought us the Hezbollah situation that we defused this past year, which was potentially catastrophic, and it can bring us the same there. Now in Lebanon, we've taken a zero tolerance. We're going to take it out no matter what policy since the ceasefire up there. If we don't have that right, if we don't have that legitimacy, we're going to be facing this again in, I don't want to estimate, three years, five years, whatever it is, we'll be right back where we started from with a stronger Hamas, a better organized one, a more experienced leadership than the last time around, because they learn from their mistakes as well.
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And the difference will be that in Lebanon, you don't have Turks and Egyptians precisely protecting the terrorists, as you say, you, you would in, in much closer proximity to the heartland of, of modern.
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Yes.
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Israel. Elliot, this is, this is very bracing stuff because I think it's information that is not generally being brought to the fore in the, you know, general ebullience that somehow we've, you know, lanced the boil here. It does seem to me that based on what you've said, this is very fraught indeed. And that's if it goes according to plan.
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Exactly.
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And it. And it may not. Let me just ask you. We're hearing reports that Iran is, is busily rearming at the moment. We have been told that that war is over as well, what do you think are the likely prospects now that Israel is going to have to act against the mullahs as well? It may have to act against Hamas as well. Despite these, the war isn't over.
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Just as the war didn't begin on October 7th, the war began for Iran when Khomeini came to power and dedicated Iran to the destruction of Israel. Hamas and Hezbollah exist to destroy Israel. And here I think an important point. These are terrorist organizations. That's a label. These are violent organizations. In other words, their raison d' etre is violence. Just read their stuff. It doesn't take a great deal of effort.
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Could I qualify that? It seems to me they're jihadist organizations.
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Yes, absolutely.
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I'm talking about the truth of Sharia worldwide, is it not?
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Absolutely, absolutely frank, 100% correct. The point that I'm trying to make is that this is an inversion of. I'm trying to be more generic here, but I agree with you 100%. This is an inversion.
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I think I'm going to leave it at that, Elliot, because we're out of time to qualify any disagreements we might have. But come back. We're going to explore this at greater length in the near future. But I so appreciate your contribution to this program as well as to the briefing that we will be doing as we speak shortly. 1:00pm Eastern Time on the Victory Coalition site, victoryco.org God bless you, my friend. Keep up the great work and come back to us with updates on all of this. We'll be right back, folks. Stay tuned. Welcome back. We're going to turn next to Communist China, the object of, I think it's fair to say, growing concern and not a little apprehension in official Washington at the moment. We're going to talk with one of our countries, indeed the free world's preeminent experts on the subject in just a moment. Before we do, I want to give you a little context from me. With Communist China's announcement of its intention to impose sweeping new controls on the export and use of its rare earth and other critical materials, Beijing is manifestly waging economic war not just on us, but the whole world. In a somber press conference with Treasury Secretary Scott Besant in Washington yesterday, Trade Representative Jameson Greer declared, china's announcement is nothing more than a global supply chain power grab. It's an exercise in economic coercion on every country in the world. In response, President Trump has threatened to impose a further 100% tariff on Chinese imports if the CCP proceeds. Secretary Bessant hopes to buy time Suggesting we just de risk our trade ties with China rather than decouple them. Depending on our greatest enemy ever for anything important is insane. We must stop underwriting the CCP and start fully decoupling now. We're going to test this proposition with one of our preeminent duty experts. As I've said, also a distinguished and very, very important contributor member of our committee on the present Danger China. His name is Captain James Fennell, United States Navy, retired. He is, among other things, the author of a best selling book along with Dr. Bradley Thayer entitled Embracing Communist China, America's Greatest Strategic Failure. He's a senior fellow with the Geneva center for Security Policy and just an indispensable ally in the fight against the Chinese Communist Party. Captain, it's great to have you aboard. Welcome once again, sir.
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Thanks, Frank. Good to be with you.
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I wanted to start with this proposition, Jim, and we're going to ask you to make a contribution, not only today's program, but to an important webinar our committee on the presentation Danger China is doing tomorrow at 1pm Eastern time. That would be Friday. We are going to be exploring this question of whether we are in fact in an economic war with China, among others, unrestricted warfare, people's war, biological warfare, chemical warfare, incipient shooting war. All of those are seemingly on the table at the moment. But focusing in on this idea that we can somehow perpetuate, at least for a time, this dependency that we have on Communist China for a whole host of things, rare earth minerals being just one of them. I know you've got some strong thoughts on the subject, especially from the point of view of the national security of the imperatives here. Share them with us if you would, please, sir.
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Well, Frank, there's no question that we are in a war with the People's Republic of China and specifically the Chinese Communist Party. We have talked a lot about it's a new type of a Cold War. But it is now, as you just described, it's gone to the next level to where we can clearly see it's an economic war that Beijing is waging against the United States. And they're very adept at explaining that it's not targeted against any one country. And they make all these kind of statements. But the fact of the matter is what they announced by saying that you can't sell rare earth elements or even, you know, sell them through a third party. Those are not allowed to be. They've restricted that. And that is clearly aimed at the United States Department of Defense to make it impossible for us to be able to produce the kind of weapons systems that we need now. For the viewers out there, yes, it's incredible that we're dependent upon the People's Republic of China to be able to produce our own defense materials and weapons of war in this new War Department. So clearly that is an area that we need to correct. But for those who question whether or not we're in a war, we just have to listen to the PRC's ambassador to the United States, who last night, in what they call this annual gala dinner that is hosted by the National Committee on US China Relations in New York City, Ambassador Xi Feng said China does not want to fight such a war, but neither will we sit idly by when our rights and interests are harmed and the international economic and trade rules as well as multinational multilateral trading system are undermined. So they're couching what they did as some kind of defender of a new global order, but that they're also being attacked by the United States. So they've openly declared that they're in a war with us and they're using these measures to essentially disarm America. And so this is really a dangerous period that we're in. Heretofore we have been supplying the Chinese in what would be a one sided economic war where we buy things from China and that money goes into their war coffers so that they can build this new aircraft carrier that launched a fifth generation stealth fighter with electromagnetic aircraft launch system before the United States of America or the strategic Rocket Force that has all kinds of missiles, supersonic, hypersonic, long range, medium range, short range, and a host of other military applications that we have been funding China on. And now they're essentially doubling down and saying we're going to continue to take that money from you because you're going to continue to buy goods from China and we're not going to allow you to have access to the critical materials that you need to build your own military. So they're going to continue to go up and, and we're going to continue to go down at a faster rate and the ability to defend ourselves. Fortunately, the administration is aware of that and the Department Secretary of War and the Department of War is aware of that. And we understand that we have to get and decouple in this, in this area. I believe we need to decouple across all economic arrangements. I don't even care if it's, we're talking about retail items like clothes or whatever we need to get out of supplying the People's Republic of China one thin dime with just need to stop it altogether because everything that we, we give to them turns around and is used against us. And right now China believes by this action this should be a major signal to everyone in Washington and to Americans is that China feels confident enough that they can beat America and drive our economy into the ground, destabilize it and also to destabilize the dollar to make the dollar not to be used. We just saw also along with this announcement about rare earth elements, China told one of our treaty allies in the Pacific, Australia, hey, we'll buy your iron ore Australia, which you supply much, much to China and to the world. We'll buy it, but we're only going to buy it in our currency, rmb, the yuan. So China is basically saying we're going to make a major play in the de dollarization effort, that we have our strategy to destabilize the American dollar and take it down. And people have said for, you know, the last 30 years, oh, that could never happen, that could never happen, that could never happen. They've actually been saying it mostly in the last five to 10 years. But these are the same kind of arguments that were made that said, oh, the Chinese will never have the military. Oh, the Chinese will never have aircraft carriers. Oh, the Chinese will never send ships out to the Gulf of Aden. And if they do, they'll never be able to operate in a sustained pattern as they have for now 16 plus years. Oh, they won't be able to fly helicopters off the ships. Oh, when they did. Oh, well, they won't be able to fly at night. Oh, they won't fire flares or ordnance. They've done all of that. Everything our expert has told us about the plaque couldn't do something over the last 25 years the Chinese have demonstrated that they can do it. And it's I'm afraid, the same in the economic arena. All the economists of the world have told us, the China expert economists have told us, oh, the dollar sound we don't have to worry about the Chinese taking the dollar down. Well, 10, 15 years ago, the dollar was used by 80% of the world. It's the as the world's trading currency now it's down to 60%. Where will it be in five years? Where will it be in 10 years after these kinds of concerted attacks like we're seeing forcing Australia to sell their or to China using R and B. And I know there's conditions to it, it's not on every contract and it's future contracts. There's specifics there. But the strategic trend line is very clear that China is moving to make the dollar useless. The gold, as everyone knows, has gone through the roof. So they're going to shift over to a gold based currency system. And China's been buying gold for the last 25 years like crazy. And so China will move into an area and say our currency is now reliable and stable. We have the largest military, we have the strongest economy. We have the global governance initiative that the United nations has bought into. We support multilateralism. It's the United States that's the outlier. It's the United States that's a unilateral actor of an old era, of a post World War II era that no longer exists. They're the ones that are painting this picture. And Americans need to understand that we are still an economic powerhouse. And part of that is we need to stop buying stuff from China. Both consumers, people that are watching this yourselves, the people that are literally watching this video, stop buying things from China and go and ask your stock broker, where is your money going that you invest in your stocks? And if it's going to China, tell your stockbroker to get it out. United States government under President Trump has just done that with this de minimis issue. He said, hey, no more flooding our market with cheap crap made from China via TEMU and all these online systems. We have to press back against this, otherwise China could win this.
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This is a tremendously important lay down and we're going to tease out some of the component parts of it on the other side of a very short break. I hope you'll stay tuned for more with Captain James Fennell, United States Navy, retired, the co author of Embracing Communist China, America's Greatest Strategic Failure. Talk about in particular the idea of underwriting all of this with our money right after this very important message. Stay tuned. Sam.
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We'Re back.
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And so is Captain James Finnell, United States Navy retired distinguished naval intelligence officer. Throughout his long and well storied career in uniform, he has continued to do vitally important work raising the alarm about what the Chinese Communist Party is up to, what in particular we are helping it do militarily to pose an ever greater threat to our country, to our vital interests and to our allies, not just in the western Pacific, but increasingly worldwide and oh, by the way, to us right here in the United States as well, as we discussed in a very important committee on the present Danger China webinar, to which Captain Fennell contributed last week. You can find it at presentdangerchina.org it's about the enemy within, the threat we face from China right here inside our wire. Jim, I did want to just hone in on one thing that you touched on at the very end of the last block, and it seems to me vitally important. Unbeknownst to the vast majority of American investors under Joe Biden's mentoring, the United states government in 2013 gave communist China uniquely access to our capital markets without having to be complying with our securities laws or regulations. No American company has that latitude. No company from any other country, for that matter does. Only companies associated with our mortal enemy, the Chinese Communist Party. This is so absurd and indeed obscene that it defies imagination that that could have been done, you know, 12 years ago, let alone that it is still allowed to operate. As a result, we have companies in our stock markets both, you know, listed there and traded their A shares, among other things. We have no idea whether they, you know, have actual financial, you know, credibility and reliability, whether they're a fraud, whether they're a decent investment or a true liability. And I just wonder, again, from the perspective of a military man, knowing, as you say, what. What we've been doing, not only by buying their stuff, but by giving them this kind of financing of kind, by some estimates, you know, maybe two or even five or six trillion dollars worth over this period. And you've pointed out that money like that is fungible, and a lot of it seems to be winding up in building the threat with which they intend to destroy this country. I just would ask you to emote, I guess, on the insanity of this particular practice and the need to end it forthwith.
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E
Yeah, Frank. This kind of, you know, decision making in Wall street, you know, you can imagine you can be sitting in a boardroom and somebody's making the argument, oh, this is going to make us a lot of money. And I can. I can understand that to a degree, but somebody in the room needs to be saying, okay, so we're going to give this money to who? How are they going to get it? Why don't they have to follow the same fiduciary responsibility and rules and regulations that every other American company has to follow, and we're just going to allow the Chinese Communist Party to do this? What will be the end result of that? And I don't think anybody in Washington ever or in Wall street ever wants to ask that question. The people that I talk to in Wall street don't seem to want to ask the question. And the answer is when they get that capital, they're able to leapfrog technologies because they've stolen our intellectual property, that we've given away a lot just through unclassified sloppiness and loose lips and publishing so much in our government reports and our annual DoD budget and things of that nature that they gleaned and learned. And they have spies over here in our university system. So they're able to take a lot of information, leapfrog from it, and then they get this huge injection of cash, US dollars, not their own cash, which is much more powerful. And they're able to essentially ramp up and build the largest Navy and Air force in the world right now, the largest strategic rocket force. They're able to do things that no other nation can do. We, the United States of America, are in a fight inside the Pentagon over the future of our Navy. And we have serious people saying, well, we got to get rid of aircraft carriers because they, they cost too much, they don't know what we're going to get. They say, well, we'll get something like drones and unmanned systems, but our carriers are too strong, are too expensive, so let's get rid of those and we'll do something else. So we're penny pinching on our national security while China is awash in money like we used to be in the 80s when President Reagan rebuilt our military and the 600 ship Navy. The Chinese are in that same position. They're just pumping out as they have the saying that, you know, making ships is like, make like a cook and China makes dumplings. They just make them by the hundreds. And so China's been doing that and it's high quality stuff. As I mentioned earlier, they're flying now Stealth fighters, fifth generation off this third carrier that they have. We've now seen the imagery of a fourth carrier is now clearly identified. So they already have four carriers, you know, in various stages in about a 13 year period. They're going gangbusters like we did at the start or at World War II. And so we need to wake up that we, by doing these things that people like Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink and all their grand global money digitization and all that they want to do, tokenization of currency and all of this. It all sounds great, it all sounds great to the shareholders, but in the end it's death because China will use that money to, to destroy us.
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C
This is hugely important, Colonel. This is hugely important, Captain. And I so appreciate your clarity on it. Let me pick up on one other thing that you mentioned, because it's, it's operating and I think we have very.
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Little.
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Sort of focus on it and at the moment, and we need to amp it up considerably. This is the idea of global governance. It is often dressed up as, you know, working with the United nations and helping advance its agenda. You've circulated today a commentary out of one of the Chinese propaganda outlets, you know, committing to, you know, sort of revisiting the founding premises of the UN so as to advance this agenda. Talk to us about what the Chinese have in mind here. We're actually going to do this on the other side of a short break. We'll be right back with Captain Finnell. Stay tuned. SA we're back. And so is Captain James Fennell. Praise the Lord. We are visiting with him about the main thing, as he calls it, the focus of his latest book with Bradley Thayer, embracing Communist America's Greatest Strategic Failure. It is the subject of running commentary that he does, among other places, at American greatness and on this program, of course, and others. And we're so grateful to him for his time. Captain, I was just asking about global governance as an agenda of the Chinese Communist Party and how it fits into this larger, larger agenda the CCP has had of, well, global domination.
- [44:26]
E
Yes. Frank Xi Jinping, when he came to power, he's unleashed these four global initiatives. The first was the Global Development Initiative to develop the world's economies with them leading it. Then the Global Security Initiative, which is about their own security and running a global security system that they control and regulate. And then they had the Global Civilization Initiative, which is essentially this promotion of Chinese Han civilization and through the Communist Party. And then now just in the last couple of months here, he's announced this global governance initiative in today's People's Daily, the official official paper of the Chinese Communist Party, came out with an article entitled Revisiting the United Nations Founding Aspirations. Working Together for Better, Better Global Governance. And then it goes on to explain why what the United nations was founded upon was essentially the same thing as what the Chinese Communist Party is founded on. And they're just, they're in a, you know, alignment is what they're telling us, because they all want to have global governance, except the Chinese are very clear that their global governance is based on socialism, what they call socialism and communist ideology. And so that's the real threat, is that China's aspirations for global governance are an aspiration to impose a social credit system like we see today in China. What we saw during COVID a global health kind of mandate and control it will go into every facet of your life and digital identification and all of that. And so this is where China's headed. And they're now got their talents firmly implanted in the United nations, and they're promoting the, what the Chinese Communist Party writes and talks about on a daily business basis. And what their leadership says is, is repeated in the, in the United nations forums. And so what we're facing is a kind of years of neglect where both of our parties were so enamored with engagement with the Chinese Communist Party that we failed to recognize that we were inviting the fox into the hen house. And now we are in a bad position in some ways. Fortunately, President Trump is combating these and starting to point out that these are not overtures for the goodness for everybody, but these are overtures to have complete control and dictate your freedom and liberty. And that's really what this is about. It's a contest of ideology, where it's either American freedom for every individual or you're under the rule of a totalitarian state that treats you as a part of a group. Whatever your group is, they will group you and put you together and say, okay, this group is no longer valid in society for whatever reason, and we're going to put them in a prison or whatever they will do. They will do that to nations as well. And we've seen them do that. They're doing it right now to the Republic of the Philippines. Just this week, on Sunday, almost a week ago on Sunday, Chinese coast guard ships openly rammed and attacked Filipino Bureau of Fisheries and Agriculture ships in the, in the South China Sea, unprovoked. The Filipino ship was at anchor. Chinese ship just went right at it, right out of the blue, said, we don't, we, we've told you we don't want you here. You're not obeying our rules. These are international rules that we, we say that that's how they're interpreted, and we're going to take you out. And they do it with every other nation. We've seen it from Norway to the South Koreans to the Japanese, certainly to Taiwan to Australia. They will do it India, and they're doing it to us in the economic arena, as we've talked about earlier. So we are in a, we are in a war with China, and there's no more of this trying to, you know, play it, you know, down the middle anymore. We can't negotiate our way out of this. Now, the president may be doing that to buy us time so that we can decouple from Some of these critical areas like rare earth elements or medicine or other things, but we have some real tools in our toolkit. China needs food. They import their food and energy. So if they get too out of line, the President of the United States has the ability to bring China to its knees and to say, guess what? You get no more food. Deal with that for a while. Xi and I would expect that this president, if he gets pushed too far, will not be adverse to using that when the time comes. That's my hope.
- [49:08]
C
You know, this is. Well, it requires a mindset that, you know, is. Is, well, indeed hardball and aimed at actually protecting our country. I think at the end of the day, Jim, and I'd be interested in your take on this too. Given the agenda of the Chinese Communist Party, which is world domination, it's extreme express purpose is the destruction of this country. Do we really have any alternative, if not in the most immediate future, certainly in the not too distant one of trying to help bring about the end of the Chinese Communist Party, the liberation of the people of China, with whom we have no, I think, serious, you know, dispute. They have at least as much of an interest as we do in ending this regime that has brutally repressed them and that is indeed threatening us. Your thoughts are.
- [50:12]
E
Well, frank. I mean, you know, the talk of regime change and all that gets people's, you know, it's kind of have a bad taste in our mouth over the last 30, 40 years or longer. So I'm reluctant to talk about regime change. I will just say we should be doing everything in our power to defeat the Chinese Communist Party because they're a party that is, that has said, we want to destroy you. So to the extent that we're doing things that are going to destabilize the Chinese Communist Party, I'm all for it. How it gets done and the fashion that gets done. Maybe the president doesn't say it for a lot of different reasons, but the fact of the matter is we need a defend of the American people, people and our allies and friends, and that's what we should be doing. And that means standing up against these bullies in Beijing.
- [51:05]
C
Amen. Well said, sir. And I know it's a creed by which you've lived and argued vociferously for decades. I know you'll keep it up. We look forward to having you back to do that with us next week. We look forward to talking to the rest of you next week. Time. Until then, go forth and multiply.
- [51:48]
A
This is an I Heart podcast.