Scott Horton

My book's about the second one, and I'm not as good on the first.

But since the end of the first Cold War...

We have let the neoconservative policy of the defense plan and guidance of 92 and rebuilding America's defenses and the rest of this American dominance-centered policy control our entire direction in the world.

It's led to the war on terrorism in the Middle East, seven countries we've attacked.

It's led to the disaster in Eastern Europe and it's leading toward disaster in Eastern Asia when there's just no reason in the world that it has to be this way with the commies dead and gone.

And again, to stipulate here, the Chinese flag is still red.

It's still a one party dictatorship, but they have abandoned Marxism.

I mean, people were starving to death by the tens of millions there.

It's a huge, it's probably the greatest improvement in the condition of mankind anywhere ever in the shortest amount of time.

when Deng Xiaoping and the right wing of the Communist Party took over in that country.

Well...

I would like for America to have an extremely minimal nuclear deterrent and work toward a world free of nuclear weapons.

And I know that that sounds utopian.

However, I would remind your audience that Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev came within a hair of achieving a deal just like that at Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986.

And they were, both of them, dead serious about it.

Complete and total nuclear disarmament.

And then Reagan was essentially bullied by Richard Perle and others on his staff, saying, you promised the American people that you would build them a defensive anti-missile system, the Star Wars system, which was total pie-in-the-sky technological fantasy of the 1980s.

And if you're getting rid of all the ICBMs, then why the hell do you need a missile shield anyway?

It was the world's probably greatest tragedy that ever took place, that Ronald Reagan walked away from those negotiations.

They literally were within a hair.