Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton » China

John Feffer

Scott Horton — Sun, 20 May 2012 12:29:14 +0000

John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, discusses the China-Phillipines fight over natural resources in the South China Sea; how China weakened its international legal position by signing the UN Law of the Sea treaty, ceding historical territorial claims to a new “exclusive economic zone” standard; US interest in protecting shipping lanes, especially for oil tankers; how collective security agreements seem like a good idea – until a world war breaks out over a minor squabble; and planning Pentagon and defense contractor make-work projects (before big budget cuts come due) in a new “Pacific Pivot” policy.

MP3 here. (18:55)

John Feffer is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of Crusade 2.0: The West’s Resurgent War on Islam. His webpage is JohnFeffer.com.

John has been a Writing Fellow at Provisions Library in Washington, DC and a PanTech fellow in Korean Studies at Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of World Policy Journal. He has worked as an international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia for the American Friends Service Committee. He has studied in England and Russia, lived in Poland and Japan, and traveled widely throughout Europe and Asia. He has taught a graduate level course on international conflict at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul in July 2001 and delivered lectures at a variety of academic institutions including New York University, Hofstra, Union College, Cornell University, and Sofia University (Tokyo).

John has been widely interviewed in print and on radio. He serves on the advisory committees of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea. He is a recipient of the Herbert W. Scoville fellowship and has been a writer in residence at Blue Mountain Center and the Wurlitzer Foundation. He currently lives with his partner Karin Lee in Hyattsville, Maryland.

Pepe Escobar

Scott Horton — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 04:26:57 +0000

Globetrotting journalist Pepe Escobar discusses his recent articles at the Asia Times; why the whole world is a mess except for South America; the Iran to Pakistan (and possibly China) pipeline, abhorred by the US, that could be operational in 2014; how Iran sanctions allow Russia’s Gazprom to continue dominating the European energy market; US strategists coming up short in the global “great game;” Syria’s strategic importance to Russia’s navy and NATO’s plans for Mediterranean supremacy; AFRICOM’s reconquest of Africa; and a possible Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon pipeline.

MP3 here. (41:54)

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving Into Liquid War and Obama Does Globalistan.

An extreme traveler, Pepe’s nose for news has taken him to all parts of the globe. He was in Afghanistan and interviewed the military leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Masoud, a couple of weeks before his assassination. Two weeks before September 11, 2001, while Pepe was in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Asia Times Online published his prophetic piece, “Get Osama! Now! Or else …” Pepe was one of the first journalists to reach Kabul after the Taliban’s retreat, and more recently he has explored and reported from Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, US and China.

Michael Klare

Scott Horton — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 05:32:00 +0000

Michael Klare, professor and author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, discusses his article “Playing With Fire: Obama’s Risky Oil Threat to China;” why the geopolitical struggle for oil resources is more about leveraging power and influence than economic exploitation; changing the US foreign policy focus from the Middle East to Asia and the Pacific; China’s increasing dependence on Middle East and African energy resources; and how a US naval incursion in China’s coastal waters is akin to a Chinese fleet dropping anchor in the Gulf of Mexico.

MP3 here. (19:58)

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, a TomDispatch regular, and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. A documentary movie version of his previous book, Blood and Oil, is available from the Media Education Foundation.

Pepe Escobar

Scott Horton — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:21:05 +0000

Globetrotting journalist Pepe Escobar discusses his article “China and the US: The roadmaps;” how the ever-expanding “arc of instability” could get the US into a trade war (or hot war) with China; how South American economies are gathering steam while Goldman Sachs takes over a chaotic and bankrupt Europe; possible covert US support for Muslim Chinese Uighurs; and how the US empire is being crushed by the burden of “full spectrum dominance.”

MP3 here. (27:08)

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving Into Liquid War and Obama Does Globalistan.

John Glaser

Scott Horton — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:53:46 +0000

John Glaser, Assistant Editor at Antiwar.com, discusses why the talking heads on MSNBC are perfectly willing to make fools of themselves in an effort to prove the IAEA’s case against Iran; why crimes like cyberterrorism (Stuxnet) don’t count when committed by the US/Israel against Iranian targets; the Reuters report on what Iraqis think about the “democracy” given to them at the end of an American gun barrel; and the contingent of troops headed to Australia to remind China that the “peer competitor” policy remains in effect.

MP3 here. (23:50)

John Glaser is Assistant Editor at Antiwar.com. He is a former intern at The American Conservative magazine and CATO Institute.

Mark Sheffield

Scott Horton — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 05:01:03 +0000

Mark Sheffield of the Policy on Point blog discusses his article “I Drink Your Milkshake! Checking the Chinese in Central Africa;” learning geography by tracking US military interventions the world over; deploying troops to central Africa to fight a has-been Christan millenarian cult – though curiously Uganda has lots of oil resources and no cultists; how US access to DRC (Congo) rare earth minerals could counter the current Chinese stranglehold on the market; the not-too-surprising increase in African deployments since AFRICOM‘s founding; and how Obama’s Libyan intervention seems to have emboldened him to begin new conflicts without even asking Congress.

MP3 here. (19:54)

Mark Sheffield runs the Policy on Point blog.

Stephen Glain

Scott Horton — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 06:03:28 +0000

Freelance writer Stephen Glain discusses his article “The Pentagon’s new China war plan” at Salon.com; the dangerous standoff between US full-spectrum dominance and a policy denying any near-peer competitors, with China’s 3000 year history of regional authority; his book, State vs. Defense: The Battle to Define America’s Empire, about how the US has used the military to solve diplomatic problems since President Truman; why we shouldn’t expect a surge of State Department assertiveness with the liberal interventionist Hillary Clinton at the helm; how foreign policy has been removed as a topic of public discussion since the advent of an all-volunteer military; why China’s nuclear arsenal doesn’t deter the Pentagon from planning “limited” confrontations; and why it’s time for the US military to step aside and allow allied countries to field their own defense forces.

MP3 here. (19:58)

Stephen Glain is a freelance writer with extensive experience as a foreign correspondent in Asia and the Middle East. He has written for the New Republic, the Atlantic Monthly, the Nation, the Wall Street Journal and many other publications. His latest book, State vs. Defense: The Battle to Define America’s Empire, is just out from Crown. You can follow him on Twitter @sglain.

John V. Walsh

Scott Horton — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 06:50:21 +0000

John V. Walsh, frequent contributor to Counterpunch.org, discusses his article “Impeach Obama: A Challenge to Tea Partiers and Antiwar Liberals;” the two-party partisan trap that causes incessant infighting and diverts attention from the real problems; how Obama’s decision to militarily intervene in yet another Sunni Muslim country virtually guarantees more blowback; looking at the UN Libya vote in terms of the represented populations for and against intervention, which turns the 10-5 vote on its head; and how China’s foreign policy indicates the 21st century will be more about economics than warfare.

MP3 here. (23:42)

John V. Walsh is a scientist who lives in Cambridge, Mass. He is a frequent contributor to CounterPunch.org and Antiwar.com.

Eric Margolis

Scott Horton — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 07:14:42 +0000

Eric Margolis, foreign correspondent and author of War at the Top of the World and American Raj, discusses how the secession of South Sudan could jeopardize the entire African continent’s colonial-drawn borders; considerable US influence in South Sudan that almost guarantees the new nation will be yet another American protectorate flush with oil; why controlling the world’s oil supplies has been a US foreign policy goal since WWII, when Axis countries were irreparably damaged by fuel supply shortages; the increasing US/China rivalry in resource-rich Africa; fundamentalist Christian missionary groups competing with Islamic groups for conversions in Africa; the incremental US stealth-occupation of Pakistan that threatens to become the boggiest of military quagmires; and why the US stands to lose substantial influence in Western Europe should NATO fail in Afghanistan.

MP3 here. (24:52)

Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles appear in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times and Dawn. He is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post. He appears as an expert on foreign affairs on CNN, BBC, France 2, France 24, Fox News, CTV and CBC.

As a war correspondent Margolis has covered conflicts in Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Mozambique, Sinai, Afghanistan, Kashmir, India, Pakistan, El Salvador and Nicaragua. He was among the first journalists to ever interview Libya’s Muammar Khadaffi and was among the first to be allowed access to KGB headquarters in Moscow. A veteran of many conflicts in the Middle East, Margolis recently was featured in a special appearance on Britain’s Sky News TV as “the man who got it right” in his predictions about the dangerous risks and entanglements the US would face in Iraq.

Margolis is the author of War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet and American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World.

Jeremy Kirk and Luke Hansen

Scott Horton — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:18:33 +0000

Jeremy Kirk and Luke Hansen, both members of Witness Against Torture, discuss their trip to Burmuda to visit the 4 Uighurs recently released from the Guantanamo Bay prison, how they came to be sold to Americans in Pakistan and brought to Cuba, their inability to leave the tiny island or see their families, the Christian doctrines which motivate their help for modern victims of imperial crucifixion and a little bit about the organization Witness Against Torture.

MP3 here. (20:19)

Jeremy Kirk is a student at Union Theological Seminary and Luke Hansen is a teacher at Red Cloud High on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. They are both members of Witness Against Torture.