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WBUR Podcasts. Boston.
Frankly, the Chinese, I think, see the war serving a lot of their diplomatic interests,
not the least of which is that China is just as happy to see the United States alienated
from as many of its traditional allies as possible.
With the US waging war against Iran, Chinese leaders might be taking advice from Napoleon,
never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake.
It's Wednesday, March 18th, and this is here and now any time from NPR and WBUR.
I'm Chris Bentley.
Today on the show, a retired army general says the US is on the edge of a strategic disaster,
as it tries to force Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Also, can the mail survive losing its biggest customer?
Amazon reportedly plans to cut packages sent by the US Postal Service by at least two-thirds
later this year. Before we get to that story, though, the decision by the US and Israel
to start bombing Iran more than two weeks ago has had ripple effects far beyond the Middle East.
Though it's hard to overstate just how much havoc it's wreaked in the region,
with Israel simultaneously invading and bombarding Lebanon, and Iran retaliating with
missile and drone strikes in at least nine countries. American presidents have been promising to
pivot to the Pacific, or otherwise avoid getting mired in the Middle East for decades,
and yet here they go again.
While war has not come to China directly, President Trump did ask to postpone
his summit in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping that had been scheduled for
later this month. So we wanted to talk with someone who would know about what this war means for
US-China relations, and that person is David Lampton, former director of China's studies
at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. David Lampton told Scott Tong that China
is watching this war closely.
Yes, I think it's got the Chinese thinking about the coherence of a American foreign policy
first and foremost. China has important interests with Iran, which it wants to safeguard.
Certainly the first thing is that Iran is China's number two source of imported oil,
Saudi Arabia, incidentally, number one, and then less thought of often is the fact that China is
a major builder of infrastructure. There's a lot of rebuilding of infrastructure going on in
Iran already, and there'll be a lot of infrastructure to be replaced, and China wants to be one of the
builders of that infrastructure. Also, frankly, the Chinese, I think, see the war serving a lot of
their diplomatic interests, not the least of which is that China is just as happy to see the
United States alienated from as many of its traditional allies as possible. Also, they see
fissures in the United States in its own domestic political system. So China has a lot of interests,
economic, but strategic and diplomatic as well.
Yeah. Well, on the table right now is President Trump's request, perhaps demand that China and
other countries step in to help the U.S. open the state of Hormuz, which Iran has closed to
most anchor ships. Beijing has not said yes, instead it's been urging de-escalation.
How big a standoff is this between these two superpowers?
Actually, I don't think it's that much of a standoff in the sense that I don't think there's
the slightest chance, basically, that China is going to transform itself from its hopeful role of
being a mediator, which may not be too realistic, but it certainly wants to avoid becoming a combatant
or caught in sort of the crossfire in the straight of Hormuz. So this may not be the right moment
for the two leaders to get together. Certainly, President Trump's putting a lot of emphasis on
cooperation, as he calls it, for various countries to help secure the Hormuz straight. And I think
were they to meet in the President's current frame of mind, emphasizing what he calls cooperation
with the Chinese not being, I would guess, willing to become any more involved. This may not be
the best time to get together. Maybe the better part of wisdom is not to force things. I'd also say
as even before the current call it flare up in the Persian Gulf, the Chinese were a little worried
that the United States seemed preoccupied and unable to kind of fix on an agenda for the meeting.
Frankly, the Chinese are probably gobsmacked that the US is asking them to play a role in the
straight, particularly just for one of the things that would occur to the Chinese. The US is
making their life difficult in terms of using the Panama Canal and pork facilities there.
And the United States is impeding their role in the Panama Canal at the same time we're asking
for their help. So I think that would create some dissonance in China.
Yeah. Well, as far as this scheduled trip by President Trump to Beijing, the US pushing to
delay it, it would be the first visit by an American President to China in almost a decade.
Whenever it does happen, how important is this meeting to China to the US?
Well, in fact, my statement that I think I had this moment with recommend them postponement is
precisely because I think it's so important that this be successful. You mentioned the first meeting
in many years. That's important. But the fact of the matter is the United States and China are
involved in an arms race, a technological race, and we've got to work whether we like it or not,
and that the Wii is both of us to develop some common rules of the road.
Proliferation in Asia is going to become an increasing problem. China is increasing. It's
nuclear warheads and it's delivery vehicles. And as China does that, Japan is going to respond.
And as Japan responds, then Korea will respond. And then, of course, there's India and China.
Then there's India, China, and Pakistan. So we have such a rich and important agenda
on arms control and trying to get a handle on arms limitation that we really need to focus on that
and not be distracted by a lot of other things. Also, the whole tariff mess needs to be straightened
out. And stepping back just for a moment, you've been observing these two countries for a long
time, writing about them, analyzing them. How do you think about where the US-China relationship
is right now? Well, I think a good example, if you look back about two plus decades,
we had 9-11. You may remember George W. Bush said, you are either with us or against us.
Practically, the first major power call President Bush, God, after 9-11 was from Johnson
the then president of China. And he basically said to Bush, our answer is we are with you.
We have gone from this, we are with you, to we are each other's biggest strategic competitor.
We had a policy of reassuring each other. China that it would be respectful of our security
interests and to some extent economic interests. And we tried to reassure China that we wouldn't
move too far away from one China policy and tried to reassure China we stood for the development
and prosperity of China. And now, we are in a policy of deterrence. That is to say, we see each
each other as the biggest threat. You could hardly define a more different situation that's involved
over the last two decades. David Lampton is Professor Emeritus
former head of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Professor, thanks so much. Good to be with you.
Coming up next, Scott gets another point of view on the war from a retired army general.
Stick around.
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Today, the Trump administration faces more questions on why it attacked Iran and the
intelligence behind it. Senators today are questioning Tulsi Gabbard, the director of
National Intelligence. Just one day after a top official undergabbard resigned, that official
Joe Kent said Iran posed, quote, no imminent threat to the United States.
Retired General Barry McCaffrey joins us now. General, welcome back.
Good to be with you. Let me ask about Joe Kent. He ran the National Counterterrorism Center
until he resigned. That's inside the intelligence community. The White House spokesperson
sites strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States. Yet Kent
in his resignation letter said Iran posed no imminent threat to the US. What does this tell you about
the intelligence justification for this war? It's non-existent. It's parcel. It's obvious
that the Iranians would have been mad to attack the United States from a position of tremendous
weakness following the 12-day war 10 months ago. They were involved in negotiations. They thought
they were possibly going to get through this without an attack. So it's made up after the fact.
By the way, there is an argument for using military power to degrade or eliminate
Iran's nuclear capability. But the only way you actually get at that is to return arms control
inspectors to the ground, not through air warfare. Well, this point in the war, Iran has responded
by blocking the street of Hormuz, critical waterway, of course, recruit oil and natural gas. Let
me play a clip from today's hearing. This is Democratic Senator Mark Warner questioning
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence. The president continues to say as well
that he had no idea. It was shocked that the Iranians would move to take over the straight
of Hormuz. Did you provide any intelligence that would say that it would be that it was not likely
that the Iranians would try to move on the street? I'm not aware of those remarks and I think those
of us here at the table can point to the fact that historically the Iranians have always threatened
to leverage their control of the president saying he was amazed. I'm not aware of those remarks.
What about the, what are Barry McAfee? What are you hearing there?
The thing again, there is no national security process. We need to understand that. The
National Security Council, under all preceding presidents, essentially takes 30, 60, 90 days
debate argument policy options. What we're dealing with in Trump is policy by WIM,
actions by decree. The whole notion of attacking Iran without coalition allies in the Gulf
or in Europe never mind Japan and South Korea and Australia who are influenced by this action
and without taking into account the likely option that they would close the streets is simply astonishing.
And it's going to be a strategic advantage to Iranians who have suffered a tactical disaster
through these Israeli and US air strikes. Well, in general, we read all the time that the US
military, the career professionals, they do these war games, they do these tabletop exercises
to play out scenarios. Is it conceivable the Trump administration did not anticipate this?
I think they didn't anticipate anything. They had a series of apparently determined JCS who I
remind our listeners does have no command authority, no due to the uniform service chiefs. It's in
the hands of the Secretary of Defense, EGSF and the President of the United States, but they
proceed on these things with basically without any analysis on how they're going to do it.
You could, you know, try and control the streets are removed by putting a sure one, two,
three US Army divisions get a sanitary zone of 100 kilometers deep and stay there for the rest
of your life. None of which sounds like a very good military option. So he just ignored this
as a problem. But by the way, I think both sides now are in desperation of both Trump and the
Iranians. It's possible we'll see serious talks. Iranians are a basket case on the economy
despised by their own people. They may have murdered 30,000 plus during the uprisings
and Trump's in a strategic disaster.
Yeah. Well, this is finally, you know, you have said Iran has other tools that it's supposed
including terrorism and cyber warfare. What do you worry about?
Well, I think the cyber warfare can't bring down the industrial might of America,
but it's going to be a huge problem. It'll be continuing. They've used it in the past quite
successfully. They're very clever, capable people. I think the terrorism is less likely to be
sleeper cells being activated in a major US city than at some point. If they're in such
trouble now, they'll start lashing out at US presence in embassies, military bases, globally,
who's already seen some domestic self-radicalized attacks. But it's concerned. And it's concerned
even more so because federal law enforcement has been bullied in the submission. They fired some
of their most experienced people. And many of the rest of them have been chasing immigrants rather than
protecting the United States from terror attacks. All right, retired general.
Barry McCaffer, you thank you once again. Good ability.
One more story for you on today's show. Coming up, we give the war a rest for a few minutes
to find out why the postal service might run out of money later this year.
Indira Lakshmanan has that in just a minute.
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than 12 months. So in about a year from now, the postal service would be unable to deliver the mail.
Business reporter Robin Farzad hosts the podcast full disclosure. Robin, welcome.
Thank you. So the postal service has been on poor financial footing for 20 years as email has
replaced many letters. Why haven't they been able to turn things around in two decades?
Indira, relatedly and I promise I'm going somewhere with this. The hit dance track,
Bizarre Love Triangle goes back 40 years this year. It turns 40 years old and this is what's the
problem here. There is a Bizarre Love Triangle at play. Okay, I'm waiting for it.
Yeah, with the USPS FedEx, Amazon and UPS. It used to be a pure, pure, pure quasi-private monopoly
of the USPS and now they're all fighting over who should take the pain, who should take the enormous
losses of the last mile. And if you're an enormously profitable firm like Amazon and variously
profitable firms like FedEx and UPS, you want that pain to be borne by UPS, which has a mandate to
deliver regardless. And here you have the UPS testifying on Capitol Hill, USPS saying that we
can't afford to do this anymore unless you guys throw us more money. Well, the postal service
had expanded its parcel delivery capacity in recent years, investing in bigger facilities,
new machines to process boxes. And that was a big outlay that they made because Amazon was their
biggest customer. Now, why has that relationship fallen apart? Amazon is its biggest customer by way
of cash flow. It needs that cash flow to make all of the pension obligations, retirement and
healthcare obligations and to keep the lights on and to keep the trucks gasped up. The problem is,
it's still posting more than a nine billion dollar loss and it has significantly negative cash flow.
And again, I mean, the loss is huge part of because it's mandate to deliver more than 170 million
addresses six days a week. And 71% of these delivery routes are just underwater financially. And so
they obviously would love to take the stamp price up to a dollar to keep kicking this can,
this reckoning down the road. They want to slough off pension and retirement obligations. And at the
same time, they want Amazon to have to pay more and more dearly for that last route. And Amazon is
saying, we have the leverage in this. You're the ones that are going to have to go to Capitol Hill
and bail out. Wow. Okay. All right. Well, in the short time we have left, as you say, the post office
is mandated by Congress to deliver to every address in the United States six days a week,
but they're not given the funding to do it. The Postmaster General said yesterday they'd been thrown
over bored by Congress without a life jacket. So where do you see this going next, especially if
they run out of money a month before the midterms when people have to put on. You know, it's a
amtrak, which seemingly is always there on Capitol Hill saying with like a gun to its head. Give us
the money or else. And if you were to man, you know, in an efficient way, run amtrak, maybe you'd have
a couple of corridors, the Northeast corridors, but every Congress person wants every address
delivered to. And this is a purgatory that they just cannot overthrow. Well, Robin, I'm sure we'll
have you back to talk about what happens if the post office stops being able to deliver mail.
That's Robin Farzad, host of Full Disclosure. Thanks so much, Robin. My pleasure.
That's it for the show today. Here and now any time comes from NPR and WVR Boston. Today's
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