Welcome to Keith's night. Don't try it on anyone in the
libertarian Institute today. I am joined by.
Abigail are Hall. She is an associate professor in
economics at the University of Tampa, she has her PhD in
economics from George Mason University.
Check out manufacturing militarism US.
Government propaganda in the war on terror as well as tyranny
comes home. The domestic fate of US.
Military is MM, dr. Hall, thank you so much for your
time. Time.
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be back.
What was your dissertation on and was it under Walter
Williams? No, so I actually wrote my
dissertation under Chris coin, Walter Williams.
And I agreed on very many things.
However, I think we diverged pretty starkly on matters of
foreign policy. My doctoral research was on the
political economy of unmanned aerial vehicles or what are
colloquially known as drones. So looking at it.
Yeah. So looking at how uavs were used
within the war on terror? Kind of the the development of
the political entanglement so thinking about your big defense
contractors how do those relationships between say the
likes of Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.
How do those become entrenched or entangled with say members of
Congress or other political outfits and then understanding
how it is that those Technologies may continue to be
used. Despite the fact that contrary
to the popular narrative, they may not actually be as effective
as proponents would have them be.
It's amazing. We have a World War Two General
and President Dwight Eisenhower. Tell us, watch out for the
military-industrial complex and we're still called crazy
conspiracy theorist for thinking that, you know, there's a profit
incentive to what to be made in war.
It's, there's incredible research there, but if people
want to find your dissertation is that available online.
Yes. So it's, um, it's publicly
available. I'm sure that it's through
George Mason. One of the easiest ways to find
pretty much. All of my work is ssrn.com, so
you can download. But I think pretty much most of
the papers that I've ever written for, for free.
The other way that people can find at least links to some
things and was also on my website.
Abigail are hall.com? Both of those links will be in
the description below. What I wanted to ask you about
was one of the great propaganda methods.
It's is to sell things under the guise of there, only being
benefits. Should we bring democracy to the
Middle East? Should we defend Ukraine?
As if there's no downside, when it comes to the domestic costs
of War, before we get into the foreign calls, what are some of
the downsides or costs that the American population has to Bear
because of an aggressive foreign policy?
So there are lots of things that people talk about in terms of
cost and consequences of. Conflict.
And so you pointed out that oftentimes the people are
talking about the cost of foreign policy, there's a
tendency to focus on either the monetary cost but then also
people will talk about the the human cost.
So things like the number of US military personnel who are
killed or who are injured while engaged in foreign intervention
abroad and those things are certainly important.
But if you're only looking at metrics that you can easily
count, then you're downplaying. A lot of other elements that are
are Critically important for understanding the actual
consequences of foreign policy and so what my co-author.
And I so Chris coin in one of our books tyranny, comes home,
talk specifically about the other types of consequences or
some of the other consequences of foreign intervention
particularly within the domestic sphere.
So, often times when we talk about foreign policy, there's
this tendency to think that it is completely divorced.
Forced from what's going on within the domestic space.
So foreign policy is over there, wherever there happens to be
domestic. Policy is here and those two
spheres are completely separate. But what we're attempting to
point out in that work and elsewhere is that you can't
cleanly separate those two Arenas.
And in fact, the tools and tactics of foreign intervention
can and do come to be used domestically, so we can look at
some specific consequences of that.
So we look at That's more specifically, things like police
militarization, the use of surveillance Technologies like
uavs and so on. But the more broader or the
broader point that we make within that book is highlighting
that one of the consequences of foreign intervention, is the
erosion of constraints that are placed upon government and
potential for expansion. Not just in the scale of
government. So again, think about the
monetary cost, how much? Are how big government is but
also the scope of government. So the portfolio of activities
or the types of activities that government is involved in and
that is an important consequence for thinking about foreign
policy, even if you are someone who is just 100% focused on the
United States and you don't have any any inclination towards
thinking about foreign cost at all.
When it comes to saying things like well this allows the
government to grow drastically. There are some people who will
just say, you know what, there are Nordic countries that have
bigger, government's things are fine there.
I'm not really worried about big government is big government.
Just this Boogeyman that stupid right-wingers are throwing
around. Or is it actually something that
the average person who Envy say the Nordic model should actually
have second thoughts about. So there's something interesting
there about people talking about, Governments being
threatening versus benign, let's say and you can Envision a
scenario in which you have a very large government.
That actually doesn't do very much or one that is not
particularly threatening. So we people talking about the
Nordic States, you're talking about economically free
countries with a very large social safety net that's
profoundly different from the kind of expansions that were
primarily focused on which again.
Are those expansions in scope? So again, you can imagine a
really large government that is not doing very much but you
could also Imagine a very small government that is doing a whole
lot of really nefarious things and so I think that when we
focus on maybe the size it's not an irrelevant thing for us to
think about because a lot of times we assume that the scale
of government and the scope of government are correlated.
So if the scale is going growing the scope is also growing but
that's Not necessarily the case. And so one of the things that I
often times suggest to people is to think about those things as
potentially two separate entities and to consider each of
them individually and not just consider them as One Singular
unit. So the logic that Paul Krugman
uses in arguing with zombies is that my spending is your income
and your spending is my income. Therefore when we have something
like a war Or we really get this whole engine heavily stimulated
and that leads to more spending higher incomes and therefore
economic growth. What if anything is a wrong with
that mindset, that type of like is prime the pump type of
Economics, just causes me physical pain when whenever I
hear about it because that's assuming that everything is the
same. So, a dollar spent is a dollar
spent, but doesn't tell you anything.
About whether or not those dollars are being spent in a way
that actually satisfy the wants and desires of other human
beings. And so, one of the classic
examples that we use is this, if I am given an instruction as a
Soviet nail Factory to produce one ton of nails, I can make one
ton of really small nails that can actually be useful or I can
make one as in a singular ton nail.
Both of those satisfy the, the output Target but doesn't tell
me, but don't tell me anything about whether or not what I've
done is actually useful. The other thing that is
complicated, when we're talking about war spending, because one
of my gifts, talk about zombies and it's close to Halloween.
It's an economic fallacy that just refuses to die is when
people talk about how World War 2 got us out of the Great
Depression. No, it didn't you.
Have actual monetary prices in this war economy.
There's a wonderful paper by an economist named, Robert Higgs.
That really explains that particular fallacy in pretty
elegant detail, so I would definitely Point people to his
work on that issue. Specifically.
But in thinking about, not only this idea that we are just again
pumping, pumping money. It goes back to the the all
Keynesian idea where if we're lagging in one area.
So if they consumption is falling, you just pump up G and
it doesn't matter what G or government spending is being
spent on. So whether it's war or whether
it's, you know, ditch-digging that it's going to increase
Prosperity. The other thing that people seem
to forget about foreign conflict and war is that it actively
destroys human beings and resources, which is the
antithesis of actually growing wealth because you are actively
engaged in destruction. So, And if you want to make the
argument well but if you destroy things then there are people who
are going to be making money. Building it back.
Sure. But you're now having to expend
resources to replace things which already existed as opposed
to spending those resources on something else that could have
been value-added. Yeah.
It's like the broken window fallacy.
People can appreciate that. Well yeah if you pay someone to
repair the window that you're spending money but now you're
just back to where you were previously with less money.
Oh, so you're worse off but when it comes to lots of Windows and
buildings and people getting blown up, well that of course,
is economic growth. All of us the way that I explain
it is this and so I live in Florida, we recently experienced
a hurricane and Victor Clark is at Florida Gulf Coast University
and I wrote a small piece basically taking aim at the
broken window fallacy because we kept hearing these things at
like, oh like actually like these places could could build
back better and like this could actually be good for the
economy. And the way that we conclude
that piece in the way that I've discussed this elsewhere, is
that if destruction is really great for economic growth, then
my city of Tampa should actually be really sad that we missed the
hurricane because think about all that economic growth that we
were missing out on if war is so wonderful.
Now again, we're kind of switching from talking about the
domestic side from talking about to tell you about the foreign
side, but if war is so wonderful and by getting destroyed, you
know, we can get all of this, you know, infrastructure built
back up or we could build back better.
Then would we not be disappointed when we don't see
like widespread destruction? Because again, think about all
that economic growth that we could be missing out on.
So part one of the fallacy is assuming a dollar spent arming
job at Al nusra is just as good as taking your family to
Disneyland, it's their equating money.
When they shouldn't be the voluntary sector with the
coercive and then the second part.
This is saying that saving is basically bad.
That that is the implication. Almost always that to save is to
really not allow the economy to reach its full potential.
What are the benefits of saving or postponing consumption?
So, I mean, one of the things that I will always tell people
is that, like many economists, I am by no means a personal
finance expert and so please don't ask me for personal
finance advice. But in terms of the Thing that
people often point to is again a Keynesian idea of the, the
Paradox of saving. So this idea that if people are
saving too much than people aren't spending, and then as a
result of that, there's a decline in economic activity,
but that misses a a couple of different things.
So one of the things that we can potentially talk about that
relates to a number of different things that are happening right
now, is that well, you You make different decisions and
different choices when you have some savings versus when you
don't. And if you want to talk about
things like future wealth creation, and you want to talk
about investment and things like that, then savings are a
necessary precondition for those types of activities.
And so it's neglecting quite quite a lot.
A macroeconomist would probably be able to give you a much more
nuanced. Take down of all of, you know,
Keynesian, 's para, keynes's paradox, Has but I'd start with
that when you look at but once you convince people that the
military sectors way too big, they'll finally conceded and say
you know what, all right, it's too big.
In fact it's so big that we can't stop and we can't do
anything about it because then all these people would lose
their jobs and the economy would go into total recession.
So once they agree with us, they say, you know what, we actually
can't do anything when it comes to the mindset of, there's all
these people employed. And for us to drastically cut
back, would lead to mass unemployment and then a drop in
consumption and then a massive recession.
What if anything is wrong with that?
So, in terms of again, like we can make all kinds of
predictions about what would happen, the kind of the the
knock-on effects, I think, I mean honestly like if you were
to drastically decrease the size of the US military or the
Department of Defense, you would be disappointing.
A lot of people and so that's not.
I think an invalid thing That people point out the, the
relevant question I think is this one is what were those
people potentially be doing instead?
And would those types of activities be more productive
than the current activities in which they're engaged.
So again, not to downplay the fact that when you have
significant changes or reductions in one particular
sector, that that is not painful for individuals who are working
within that sector but it ignores The other types of
things that people could be, could be doing and other things
that people people would do. And it's not mean, certainly
wouldn't think if someone is working as a military or a
defense contractor, who has skills in a particular area, you
know, a purchasing or something like that, but they're not going
to be able to transfer those skills into an alternative, an
alternative form of employment. And so it ignores the fact that
you have growth then in Other sectors.
Where as opposed to now channeling all of these
resources into defense, you're channeling these resources into
something else. How can we falsify?
I'm thinking of how we can actually measure it.
So, one of the things that would come to mind is, are there any
Industries in America, which previously employed a large
percentage of the population, which now employs a small
percentage of the population? Are there any Industries?
We can look at to say used to have a lot of people here.
Now we don't and it's not like they all had to be buried in
Siberia. They're just working somewhere
else. What is what's an example of one
of those Industries? I mean the classic example that
we often times due to their principal students is
agriculture and so you used to have like the vast majority of
the population that had to work in order to be able to feed the
small percentage of the population that was not working
in agriculture. Now of course you do not have
the vast majority of people working in agriculture.
It's actually a relatively small segment of individuals who are
working within that sector other examples that you could look at
two things. Like again using some classic
examples can needle stick makers people within the horse and
buggy industry. And again, it's not saying that
when these types of changes occur that it's not painful for
the individuals who are losing their job.
So if you're someone who you've worked your entire life as a
Candlestick maker and then all of a sudden Here Comes
electricity and light bulbs, that you might not have some
real difficulties in transitioning to an economy
where that is no longer. Something that is as desirable
but we can talk About other policies that could potentially
assist with those types of transitions.
That doesn't mean that you continue to throw good money
after bad into something that is ineffective no longer valuable
or is, you know, the product of military of the product of
bureaucratic bloating That is a great response because you can
say well there's there's all these jobs and if they lose
their job they don't know what they're going to do.
Even though there's a great number of jobs that are
available today more so than usual.
But if you if your responses, well we can actually do a number
of other things to increase the likelihood that people will have
more job opportunities. Well, that's at least softening
the blow when it comes. To how countries or how anyone
can increase the number of job opportunities within a country?
What are some steps? They should take.
So one of the things that I always suggest and again there's
one of the things that it's very true and comes through a lot in
my work, is that a lot of what I do is what I would refer to and
others as diagnostic. So pointing out the problems of
a particular issue, not nearly as much of it being prescriptive
in terms. Like, and here is what you
should do. Because ultimately, I don't have
like a nice list or a silver bullet kind of an answer for how
we fix a lot of these problems. But if you want to talk about
things, like job creation, or want to talk about things that
just make people better off, we've returned to a lot of the
basics that we think about things like trade, like allowing
people, the ability to freely contract with each other giving
people I think this the the permission to engage in economic
activities. So some of the things that would
be like low-hanging domestic fruit.
Reducing things like occupational licensing for a
variety of different types of careers or different types of
activities, allowing people more easily to to move.
So we can talk about that within the context of international
borders, specifically. But there are lots of things
like that that we can do, right? Reducing trade barriers is
another good example. And these are all things that
can increase productivity and not just domestically but also
have some really important Global implications, as well for
individuals who claim to be really concerned about global
poverty. There are some really internal
policies that are inward focused that would likely be a lot more
effective than a lot of our current policies which are very
externally focused and Attempting to quote, unquote,
fix whatever country it is. That were attempting to
intervene in Have you seen any cases of countries that had very
large military budgets and then drastically decrease, their
military budget and did not experience significant economic
hardship. So I think there are a few
different things that we would have to think about within that
particular question. So obviously people think about
countries like Germany and Japan who went from being very large
military Powers who suddenly not only are you not a military
power but you can't have him. Terry anymore.
And so certainly there was pain in, you know, the post World War
Two period in both of those places.
But now you see both Japan and Germany is being very successful
countries from from an economic and other perspectives, I'd have
to think a bit more in terms of outside of kind of a post-war
scenario. If you had large countries that
word take their, their militaries, get them very large
and then shrink them back down. I mean, Historically, if you
look at us data, you would see huge run-ups in the military in
Wartime, and then significant draw Downs on military power
after conflict. But have to think more about
peacetime examples. Yeah, well, there were the
Roaring 20s after the Paris 1919 there.
There's a great paper called the Great Depression of 1946 which
is a play on the fact that there was no Great Depression.
After the second World War, Or took took place.
What was the most important thing you learned from your
research on manufacturing? Militarism US.
Government propaganda in the war on terror, call me on the most
important thing. That's him a couple of the most
important, okay? I'll doing research for that
bookie. One of the things that really
stood out to me in researching, that book is the Contemporary
relevance of propaganda Within attic societies.
So I know a lot of people when thinking about propaganda, they
tend to associate with autocracies and I think
rightfully so or if you mention Democratic propaganda, they'll
think about, you know, posters from World War 1 or World War
two things like that. But there's not really a lot of
discussion of contemporary propaganda.
And so one of the big takeaways from working on that book was
that propaganda is still very, very much a contemporary and
relevant topic within modern day.
Is so that would be the first thing.
And then the second, I guess, most important thing would be
the implications of the use continued and historical of
propaganda, both short-term consequences and long-term
consequences. Short-term consequences, being
that propaganda can have a significant impact on the types
of policies that people do and do not support.
And then in the long run, more profoundly than that, is that
propaganda. Ava, can effectively work to
undermine the types of Institutions that we purport to
really want to uphold and protect.
How can I determine whether or not?
I'm watching propaganda, or very accurate information.
That's one thing that comes out in this research, is that often
times? It's incredibly difficult to
know what it is that you're seeing.
And well there are a few reasons for that but there are two that
are I'll offer. So one is that there is as your
question actually highlights. There is a really serious
asymmetric information problem, so when it comes to releasing
information about defense or national security policy and
Manufacturing militarism talks exclusively about policies
related to the National Security and defense space.
So you have these asymmetric information problems where the
individuals who have Of the information know much more than
the individuals who are receiving that information.
And it's difficult for the layperson to really kind of make
heads or tails of a lot of it. But then the other thing that
you have to is that you also, in addition to these asymmetric
information problems is you have pure Monopoly on the
information, from the perspective of the individuals
who are the repositories of that information.
So the department of It's decides what it's going to
release and when the TSA decides, what it's going to
release and when and people say, oh well, you know, Freedom of
Information Act request, and it's like, well and we highlight
actually one of these with respect to the TSA.
Sure I can I can issue a foia request or I can submit one but
it might be eight years before I actually get the data that I've
requested. And so in that case is it, is it
really helpful and so it's difficult just from those
particular things. But the other thing I think
that's difficult. Called about it is that we
actually encounter it quite a lot.
So if you've ever watched a professional sport either in
person or on television, in the last 20 years, you've likely
been subjected to what the dod calls paid patriotism, which is
propaganda by another name. If you've gone to a movie
theater in the last 20 years and you've seen a movie or if you've
turned on television and you've ever watched a, a Gordon Ramsay
cooking show where they are. Are cooking for some branch of
the military. Congratulations you've watched
propaganda because all of those things are receiving assistance,
in some way from the Department of Defense and yet people who
are consuming these pieces of entertainment, they don't know.
Like there's not some disclaimer like hey this, you know,
Fillmore this TV show was vetted carefully by the Department of
Defense prior prior to are Yeah, really, you can look at articles
like this is one of my favorites.
Here's why economists don't expect trillions of dollars in
economic stimulus to create inflation, published by CNBC
July 23rd 2020. It's one of those things I saw
as a screenshot on Twitter. And I go, that's got to be a
fake article. I got to look that up and here
it is. All right there.
No shame. No retraction.
No apologies, no Mass firings. @Cn be EC.
No, thank you so much. Austrian School and George Mason
University. We've been wrong for decades.
What else do we have to learn? It's it's incredible.
It's it's all around us. Any tips for people who want to
do their best to not get manipulated by Propaganda.
So at the end of the book, we offer a few different potential
solutions for combating propaganda and the the piece
that I think is probably most relevant for.
Kind of every everyday individuals is to be skeptical
of the information that you were receiving to not take the
information that you're receiving necessarily at face
value. So, we refer to it as kind of a,
like, a citizen inoculation. If you will the the the
difficulty with that though, in one of the things that we
highlight is that often times even if people want the relevant
information, It's often times difficult or even impossible for
people to acquire that information even if they really
want to get it. So that example that I mentioned
a few minutes ago, related to the TSA is a relevant example.
You can't get that data and it's not just lay citizens who don't
have access to that kind of data those types of information
asymmetries that. I also referenced a few minutes
ago that applies at multiple levels of government.
And so, if you're a member of Congress and there are certain
information that you want you may not be able to access that
either the paid patriotism piece that I mentioned is a relevant
example there, so paid patriotism.
If people aren't particularly familiar, the Department of
Defense has spent for again, a couple of decades, Money Paid
outfits, like various teams of the NFL, the national Hockey
League Major League Baseball Major League Soccer NASCAR to
engage in patriotic displays. And so, a lot of times, like, if
you've ever seen the National Guard and singing the National
Anthem or a full field flag display, or a surprise family
homecoming. Oftentimes, those are not
genuine patriotic displays but instead were things that were
bought and paid for by the Department of Defense.
So how does this relate to Congressional oversight and
Congress, not having all the information.
The best information that we have on paid patriotism in the
post 9/11 period comes from the late Senator, John McCain and
Jeff Flake Sophos out. In Arizona, there is one report
that came out in 2012. It's called tackling patriotism.
And that is a valuable report because it actually gives us us
data, but it acknowledges upfront that it is woefully
incomplete. Like it's missing years of data
that we just simply don't have and so they're not able to
access that data either. Now, whether or not that data is
actually been kept or not that's not clear to me.
So we have we don't necessarily always have this ability to
figure out what what we have and what we don't and it's not
always easy for us to get but encouraging people.
To be skeptical in the information that they receive
from, from really just the the channels that they get.
So that doesn't mean that you have to be like wearing a
tinfoil hat and, you know, thinking like everything that
you are seeing is a lie and everything that you are seeing
as propaganda. But not taking everything that
you're receiving, maybe at face value is a healthy helpful
thing, for people who want to be informed and educated
participant participate. Participate.
Try it again. Participatory citizens, one of
my favorite examples was how Adam kinzinger is so uppity
about how there's misinformation out there that we have to
tackle. So Russia goes in in February
and you know what everyone's talking about.
We need to support Ukraine. And this guy, Sam hide like this
comedian. Puts a picture of his face on a
video game and says the ghost of Kiev Is flying and killing all
these Russians and have kinzinger retweets and says,
look how cool this is, Viva Ukraine, and all this stuff.
He fell for the biggest one. The only reason I mention that
is we're always told well there's the information
asymmetry in the marketplace and that's why government needs to
step in. And and regulate it, as though,
there isn't a difference in the amount of information,
politicians and citizens have, it's like, people are so dumb
that they can't have the right to make their own decisions.
Also, they should have the right to vote on decisions that are
imposed on everyone else. It all comes full circle and
that's why I think you and dr. Coin harnessing or rather
harmonizing the importance of foreign policy and domestic
policy is so important. Finally.
Any of the major role lessons from tyranny comes home, the
domestic fate of US military ISM that people should be aware of.
So, one of the things that we highlight in that book, In the
domestic consequences of foreign intervention and how it is that
even governments that are? Well, constrained domestically
can have those constraints eroded as a result of foreign
intervention. And so a lot of the Contemporary
types of policy hot buttons that we that we look at are all
relevant and related to those foreign policy interventions.
So to give to just very contemporary Everyone's current
discussions about surveillance all have links to foreign
intervention. So people who are concerned
about, you know, the use of various surveillance
Technologies, domestically, those have their roots in
various foreign interventions, people who are concerned about
police militarization and just policing in general.
So use of SWAT teams or the use of other military tactics that
is well has very very clear links.
To foreign interventions. And so these types of very real
very intense policy debates that we are having right now are very
much connected to that foreign policy space and so recognizing
those consequences is helpful and then is something that we
should really think about the next time that we hear or
someone is suggesting additional foreign interventions because
one of the things that we highlight throughout the book Is
that a lot of times these consequences they're not
immediate, they're still very much tied to that initial
foreign intervention but the the fruit of that so to speak might
not be seen for you know 5 10. Even 20 years down the road
after you've had kind of the time for the groundwork to be
laid and then these various things coalesce When it comes
to, if you ask people, should we be thankful for Farmers?
They'll say, of course Farmers make food and without food, we
die. But we don't have this
round-the-clock propaganda campaign about how farmers can
do no wrong. And when a farmer tells you to
do something, you blindly obey them.
Because without them we'd starve, yet, when it comes to
the police and military, it's literally like to question them
is to hate your country. Yet blindly supporting bores in
place. Like Afghanistan where the
Taliban took over after 11 days and a 20-year War, it turns out,
the Patriots should have been negotiating with the Taliban for
bin Laden in like 2001. So when it comes to, how can
people say over. All right, look Abigail Hall.
And Chris coin are right about this, but I am so terrified of
being seen as a guy who hates the troops seen as a coward and
a traitor. What advice do you have for that
person? It's really difficult.
So, when I told people I was like if It's really socially
awkward to be the person who sits down during the standing
salute to the military during the hockey game.
And I say that from personal experience, being the person who
is sitting down during these things, it's socially very
awkward and there's actually some other there's a journalist
who in the aftermath of 9/11 when the think this was right
after the u.s. invaded Afghanistan and it was the
national anthem and he was with his adult son in his adult son
was wanting to sit. And he basically was like, I
don't want to get beaten up today, like, let's just go along
to get along. And so that is one of the in the
book, we talk about the functions of propaganda, is 10
to create these shared expectations of what it is that
people should do and shouldn't do.
I think one of the things that and it's one of the things that
I try to explain to people who sometimes are make they listen
to what I have to say and they say, well, you hate As of the
military or they'll say, you hate police and my Ace in the
Hole is always. Well, my husband is a marine
veteran. So like, clearly I don't hate
them all because I marry, I married a guy who has his
military experience, but beyond that to be a bit more a bit more
serious about it is that there is a profound difference between
loving your country and loving your government.
So, Like and have a very strong passion for the ideals of
liberalism in the classical sense of people, being able to
have autonomy to freely, engage with other human beings.
I have very strong skepticism. And I have very strong feelings
about the actions of my government and those two things
I think we can talk about is not necessarily being the same
entity. You can talk about people who
are operating within spaces, so you can talk about, you know,
and we can talk about individual police officers and not assume
that every person who is a police officer is terrible, but
recognize that there are some problematic institutional
structures with the within within the realm in which they
are operating. You can do the same same kind of
thing, but also, I genuinely think that healthy skepticism
about All layers and levels of say like the military is
important. I don't, I said I don't have
anything profound in terms of like this will get you out of
any argument where people might be really upset with you, but
those are the things that I typically tend to think about
and the things that I typically will offer to people when having
this kind of conversation, Well, yeah, just recognizing that.
The state is not the society. It's a parasite within the
society. I think that's that, that's a
fine. Did you come across any civilian
numbers when you were doing research with drones?
Because I remember hearing that 90% of people killed by the
drones are not the targets and even the targets have like this
ridiculous six degrees from Bin Laden, kind of justification,
but did you come across any civilian numbers in your
research? So there's some I'm so in my
original work, there's the, the best data that I could find
related to civilian casualty numbers.
Those numbers are really difficult for us to find for a
couple of reasons. So one that data is likely not
actually kept for maybe some obvious reasons and maybe some
not. So obvious ones.
On the one hand, if you have those types of numbers, then you
might see erratically at some point, have to make them
available. The other thing too is that it's
actually Like if you're conducting say, a drone strike
in rural Pakistan or in Yemen, you're not exactly going to go
out immediately after and then try to like, take a complete
accounting. So we have a data Gathering
issue. Now, you do have things.
Like, if I want to read like The Many newspaper, I'm going to get
one number. If I get numbers from the United
States, I'm going to see something completely different.
The truth is probably somewhere within the middle of those.
The other problem that we have with Computing or with getting
an understanding of Civilian casualty data is the way that
the military has historically defined a military Target.
So if you are a military aged mail within a strike zone, so
military-age male read like 15 to 65 and you happen to be
within the strike zone, then you're considered oftentimes a
military Target and so when you define a way civilians because
you happen to be making, All and in the vast majority of age
range, or the massive vast majority of Ages for your life,
then your by definition, a combatant and so we have we have
a few different difficulties there.
But the information that we do have suggest exactly what you
pointed out that often times. The the Target that is
ultimately neutralized, is the language that is often used is
not the intended target and that often times we do have a
substantial number of Civilian casualties which Cuts against
this idea that uavs are you know like this kind of surgical like
tool in which case you can operate them with just this
incredible Precision people. Often forget that the there even
if that's the case, they're only as good as the intelligence that
they're operating on. And there's a whole bunch of
other issues related to the type of intelligence that often times
is being acted upon Within These various scenarios in the Middle
East specifically. We have about five minutes left.
Thank you for being so generous with your time.
What can people learn from previous foreign interventions?
Let's just talk about America because the audience is mostly
American, and the American regime is provoking war with
both Russia and China at this time.
So let's just focus on this for now, what can we learn
historically and apply it to the present when it comes?
As to the donbas and Taiwan. So when we think about the
United States track record with foreign intervention, it's
ultimately genuinely terrible. Now I have sat on panels, I have
sat on debates with people who will immediately, they'll hear
that and their first instinct will be to bring up well, but
World War Two, and my response to that is always, if you have
to go back to 1945, To have an example of a foreign
intervention that was worthwhile given the Cornucopia of foreign
interventions undertaken by the United States.
That is an awful argument from a statistical point.
So, I would say that the, the general take away from looking
at all US, foreign interventions is that they do not work.
You cannot export democracy at gunpoint, you cannot impose
top-down regime. Um, change in a way that is
going to stick. So to speak.
The way, the way that you want it too.
Now, that's not to say that occasionally, you might not see
something where you have intervention, that could be
successful. So again people will point to
like Germany and Japan Chris coin, my co-author and his book
after Ward is a really nice discussion of why examples like
Germany and Japan are not really relevant examples in the Types
of intervention that people are typically talking about because
the institutional structures in those places are are different.
They had kind of the pre-existing institutions
already. So I would say that the takeaway
is that foreign intervention by and large is not effective at
achieving its goals and I would also say that the consequences
of those interventions are not just the dollars that are spent,
it's not just the lives that are lost and those lives are
remarkably important and I don't want to downplay those at all
the other consequences though are very serious and they're
very numerous and we can't know often times what those
consequences are prior to their prior to them manifesting.
So again like police militarization being one, such
example. Yeah.
And that's a perfect example. The second world war of only
mentioning the benefits on the back and they go.
Okay, there were tens of millions of deaths and there
were a lot in Germany and Japan alone and we gave half of Europe
to Stalin and the Communists took over in China.
So can we stop bragging about this thing and using it as an
example, the good War killed, tens of millions of people
that's the one that they brag about and This is supposed to be
patriotic to just blindly obey this tyranny, when it comes to
the full list of interventions. Do you know, anywhere where we
could find, like, an actual oil, a full list of interventions.
Actually some current research I'm working on, has me trying to
come up with a comprehensive list of u.s. interventions into
Latin America. And that task I have determined
is almost impossible and let me explain why.
Because you have to have some definition of an intervention.
So if you're talking about boots on the ground military type of
intervention, I'm sure that their list where you can easily
pull that information assuming that we know that military
troops have actually been deployed there.
So taking taking that as the caveat but then there are other
things too. So if you're talking about
cohort covert operations. So if the CIA back, Saku does
that count as an intervention? Or if you are engaged in more
what we would call like soft interventions.
So if you're attempting to influence elections or you're
attempting to, you know, use foreign aid as like a diplomatic
means, does that count as a foreign intervention?
And so a lot of those things it's going to depend kind of on
what exactly that people are looking for.
I don't know of any comprehensive list that includes
all of those things, but if someone out there, Who is
listening does please tell me? Because I would desperately
desperately want to see it even if it's in very rough form.
The website is Abigail our Hall.com, you will also have a
link to the website which collects all her papers.
What is it? Ssrn is that somewhere in.com?
And I will just, I will tell people to that.
Like you can find a lot of people's research on that
website and it's not going to be gated like you would get at a
journal. A lot of its earlier drafts than
maybe the final one, but as someone who's written, quite a
few papers often times, there's not a huge difference between
what Still on ssrn and what ultimately winds up in the
journal so it'll it'll give you get you what you want to know.
Thanks to everyone for watching Keith and I don't try don't
anyone in the libertarian Institute dr.
Hall thanks so much for your time.
Thank you Keith. The United States age, Ukraine,
and her people. So that we can fight Russia over
there and we don't have to fight Russia here.
This is your moment not all they all cried.
Your fight is our fight. Once I go to the 2017 will be
the year of offense. All of us will go back to
Washington and we will push the case against Russia with super
good. So I don't think we should go
into the government. I don't think it's necessary.
I don't think it's a good idea. Yeah, I mean I guess you think
in terms of him not going into the government, just let him
sort of stay out and do his political homework and stuff.
To you, praying for my third visit in five weeks last
Tuesday, in support of these very goals.
This time, conducting parallel coordinated, high-level
diplomacy, with EU High representative, Cathy Ashton
since Ukraine's Independence in 1991.
The United States has supported ukrainians.
As they build Democratic skills and institutions, as they
promote civic participation and good governance, all of which
are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European
aspirations. We've invested over five billion
dollars to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will
ensure a secure and prosperous and Democratic Ukraine, going to
go back and tell our colleagues what rushes up to and the
baltics, what they're doing to Ukraine, get briefed about
Georgia. We hope to make 2017 a year of
offense. We believe that Putin has hacked
into our elections in America, that is trying to undermine
democracy all over the world. And it's time for new sanctions
to hit him hard as an individual is energy sector.
His banking sector it is, time to push back against Putin, but
be a better friend to our allies over here.
Including Georgia, I visit the very important trip.
We just left Ukraine, where we've seen firsthand, what
happens when In Russia, crosses over into a country's
Independence and we saw it in our own election with the
attempt to influence our election.
We will be working for much tougher sanctions against
Russia. They attacked the United States
of America. The hacking was an attack and we
should be treated as such and we think their financial
institutions and other aspects of the Russian economy should be
addressed. And we we will strongly urge our
colleagues to enact more meaningful and stronger
sanctions against Russia because of their attack on the United
States of America.