Clickable Index:
Link to: The Interview on Youtube
Intro:
The Interview
war with Iran
First World War
Lusitania
intentionally plotting to create a world war
It was the first war where entire countries were fully mobilized.
“We’re preparing for war against Russia.”
Fletcher Prouty and his great book The Secret Team
supposed to provide checks and balances
You effectively get rule by the CIA.
But then we come to Venezuela.
No more concern about the niceties
Who else is a major oil and energy supplier to China?
You had one global hegemon:
Prussia became the first modern high-growth economy.
as a result, around one million Germans are estimated to have starved to death
“This cannot be allowed.”
And created the world’s first concentration camps.
Germany was still a rival.
the global hegemon became the United States.
China does not want to remain dependent
It is the Belt and Road Initiative
helps China reduce dependence
if you hold US Treasuries, what do you actually possess
Take the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98.
And what did the IMF demand?
the “Heartland Theory”
preventing Germany and Russia from aligning.
He asked the Japanese directly for help.
Ultimately the strategic focus is China.
You build up the future adversary first.
The possibility of policy-induced mass death.
Deng Xiaoping introduced the high-growth model
Deng Xiaoping also imposed the one-child policy.
What exactly is the Club of Rome?
Population growth is dangerous.
Because simulations are not reality.
Credit expansion into productive sectors creates growth.
But if housing prices rise faster than incomes, ordinary people are not becoming wealthier in practical terms.
And therefore propaganda becomes essential.
And if people do not understand those patterns, they become vulnerable to them repeatedly.
Every Major War Begins Under False Pretenses & the Central Banks Are Behind It
Intro:
This is an edited transcript of the interview presented as an attempt to make the thing more readily approachable, accessible. Even understandable.
The text adheres as closely to the speech as I could get it but I make no claims for 100% fidelity. Though I hope for it.
At the end of it there will be a short Synopsis setting out the main features of the interview.
It seems to me the interview is a valuable contribution towards our understanding of what goes on in the world and why. So I am trying to help out a little in getting it out there. Not that Carlson needs much help from me: he has about a million followers. Yet despite that I could find nothing like this and something like this is what I look for with such presentations so perhaps so too do some others.
It seems to me that this interview, the opinions of Werner and the facts he informs us of are all very important and very interesting. Well worth me going to the trouble of putting this up.
The Interview
Tucker Carlson:
Richard, thanks for doing this.
Richard Werner:
It’s a great pleasure and honor to be here.
I think of the claim that we went to war with Iran because of its nuclear program as a kind of IQ test. Anyone who repeats that claim has failed the test.
As you’ve pointed out many times, all wars are engineered.
And we were just having a discussion at breakfast that I think is worth recounting for others.
First World War — one of the most momentous events in world history — ended Christian Europe, killed more than 20 million people, wounded another 20 million, reordered the globe, and then led to the Second World War.
The United States joined that war in 1917 toward the end. It had already been going for three years.
One of the main reasons the US got into that war was the sinking of a passenger ship called the Lusitania off the coast of Ireland two years earlier, in 1915, in which 120-odd Americans were killed. It was sunk by a German U-boat.
Even at the time there were people who said, “I don’t think this is quite on the level.”
But now, 112 years later, we know a lot more about the sinking of the Lusitania.
And I wonder if you wouldn’t mind recounting what you said to me this morning at breakfast, because it gives us perspective on the effect of propaganda in wartime.
Richard Werner:
Right.
Yes, the sinking was clearly a key factor in creating anti-German sentiment in America through the media.
So the question is: what really happened?
The way it’s presented is that there was a passenger ship with American passengers — civilians traveling across the Atlantic — sunk by a German submarine.
“Well, that’s an act of war against America.”
“We’ve got to do something about this.”
“We’re going to declare war on Germany.”
But that’s not a representation of the facts.
What really happened was there was a British plan to get America into the war on the British side against Germany, which was very difficult because ethnically a majority of Americans at the time were of German origin.
German was still widely used as a language in America.
So to get America into war against Germany was quite a feat.
How did this happen?
And that is a good example of the extent to which the plotters who want war will go.
It’s good for people to think about that because ordinary people don’t want war in any country.
Most ordinary people are good people.
And that creates this problem: they just can’t imagine that we’re dealing today with such dark and evil forces intentionally plotting to create a world war or get countries to declare war.
Tucker Carlson:
That is true.
People cannot even permit themselves to believe that could be true.
Richard Werner:
Yeah.
And that’s where studying history is important, because we need to know the facts of what happened in the past to understand the present and prepare for what could happen in the future.
The past teaches us that there are some evil elements out there.
They’re not representative of ordinary people.
The majority of people wouldn’t intentionally harm others.
But we do have such people out there, often in very important and powerful positions.
So what happened was this:
Britain officially listed the Lusitania as an auxiliary naval military ship.
And of course, the German Imperial Army and Navy went by the book. That’s one thing Germans are famous for.
The British knew this.
So the moment they officially listed it as a military ship, the Germans would target it.
Now, when the Germans saw this, they thought:
“Well, hang on — isn’t this a passenger ship?”
Of course, passenger ships can be reused for warfare, so perhaps that’s what Britain was doing.
But then they realized Britain was still taking passengers aboard in America.
So they partly realized this could be part of a bigger plot.
They didn’t want to sink passengers.
On the other hand, it was officially listed as a military auxiliary ship.
So in many ways they had no choice.
What they then did was this:
The German military command — through German embassies in America — placed advertisements in American newspapers warning people not to board the Lusitania.
The ads stated:
“Do not board the Lusitania.”
“It is listed as a military auxiliary ship.”
“It is on our target list.”
Tucker Carlson:
So the German government put ads in American newspapers telling Americans not to board the Lusitania because they might sink it?
Richard Werner:
Exactly. Indeed.
And it turns out that in some cities the big newspapers refused to carry these ads because they were clearly controlled by people sympathetic to the British side in the war and who wanted America to join the war.
So the ads were not always successfully published everywhere, but quite a few were published.
So that was the situation.
Despite that, there were passengers on board.
No doubt some efforts were made to ensure there would be certain groups of people aboard. Maybe people were even paid to board. We don’t know those details.
But we know the facts:
There were American passengers on board.
And the Germans had warned:
“We’re going to sink this ship.”
And it’s not entirely clear whether there was military equipment aboard, but there are indications there was.
You can imagine that if the goal was really to make sure the Germans would sink it, then the best way would be to actually have military equipment aboard and make some of it visible while the ship was in dock and being loaded.
We do have some indications that this happened.
Of course later this was denied.
But there are also various people who examined the wreck afterward, and there is a good chance there was military ammunition and other equipment aboard.
Now, that’s one thing.
The other question is: how would the captain handle this crossing?
As he crossed the Atlantic with passengers and potentially military cargo, he must have known the Lusitania had been listed as an auxiliary military ship.
Now, at that time the British had broken the German military encryption system and could read messages between the U-boats and German headquarters.
So Britain knew where the submarines were.
Which means this could not really have been such a great surprise to Britain.
And something like that must have been the reason the captain of the Lusitania was willing to proceed.
Because of course he trusted the Admiralty and his country’s leadership.
They told him:
“No, you’ll be fine.”
“We know where the U-boats are.”
“We’ll guide you safely.”
So they guided him — as it turned out — straight toward a German submarine.
The captain did not know this.
He was told it was the safe route.
Now, where I’m sure he started becoming suspicious was when the order suddenly came, near the vicinity of the submarine zone, to slow down the engines.
Because that never makes sense.
And there is a good BBC documentary on this where they do not hide these facts.
The key figure involved was the First Lord of the Admiralty.
Who was that?
None other than Winston Churchill.
And they show him giving the order.
“Now instruct the captain to slow down the engines.”
Even his own subordinates questioned this.
“Sir, slowing down increases the danger.”
“Should we really do that?”
Churchill insisted:
“This is my order.”
“Give the order.”
And that’s what they did.
They slowed down the Lusitania.
And then of course the encounter became unavoidable.
The U-boat saw the ship.
It was on the target list.
The Germans followed orders and sank it.
And the next day the newspapers carried headlines about “the Huns,” “the butchers,” and all the standard British wartime propaganda descriptions of Germans.
And it became an important factor in getting America into the war.
So basically it was a false flag.
And that has repeatedly been a key mechanism used to start wars or get countries to join wars.
That’s what we need to be aware of today, because unfortunately we are again on the brink of a Third World War.
Most people think:
“Surely nobody wants a world war.”
Well, ordinary people don’t.
I don’t want it.
You don’t want it.
But there are people out there who are doing everything to get there.
And a false flag is likely to be the beginning of it.
As we talk about peace negotiations, just one vicious and successful false flag — magnified through false information by the media — could still be enough.
Tucker Carlson:
I mean, 9/11 — the details of which are still classified for reasons no one will explain, and no one is attempting to declassify, which tells you everything — led to 20 years of war and the deaths of millions.
Richard Werner:
Yeah.
Actually, on this topic, there is another important parallel.
We’ve been seeing this war on Iran by the US and Israel.
And of course it has major economic consequences — dire consequences.
This is something we can talk about.
But it’s also another reason we should look back at the era of the First World War and how we got into it.
Because it was the first great war.
In Britain it’s still called “The Great War.”
It was the first war where entire countries were fully mobilized.
Previously you would never mobilize an entire country.
Tucker Carlson:
Of course not.
Richard Werner:
Even civilians — even housewives — were mobilized into factory work, hospital work, support work.
All sorts of things.
So it was really the beginning of this modern era where totalitarian control is unleashed under cover of a great war.
And that’s a scenario we have to be very aware of today.
Because as we speak there are preparations for mobilization in Germany.
Military service rules are being tightened and revised.
The plan clearly is to draft more people into the military.
It’s official EU policy to carry out a huge rearmament drive in preparation for war.
And they openly discuss dates.
That tells you something.
They’re planning for war.
That’s not a secret.
They’re saying:
“We’re preparing for war against Russia.”
They don’t always mention China, but of course China is aligned with Russia in practical terms.
So this is official EU policy:
2028, 2029, 2030 — these are dates being openly discussed.
“We must be ready by then.”
Ready for a war against Russia, which would become a world war.
Richard Werner:
So what is going on here?
I think what we’ve seen this year has been quite dramatic.
First Venezuela.
Dramatic events there.
On the larger scale perhaps quickly contained, but still remarkable.
Because for decades US intervention in Latin America took the form of covert operations operating under the principle of plausible deniability.
A very British principle.
“Well, we didn’t do that.”
“Oh, this president was assassinated? Nothing to do with us.”
And that’s how things operated for decades in Latin America.
Country after country experienced regime-change operations by the CIA.
Often in brutal ways.
Governments were installed that were effectively puppet regimes.
Presidents and prime ministers were assassinated.
And yet it was always denied.
Although we do have whistleblowers like Fletcher Prouty and his great book The Secret Team, which explains how the CIA became so powerful and moved far beyond its legal authority.
He describes how this happened very simply.
The institution that was supposed to oversee the CIA formally existed.
The Congressional committees.
Tucker Carlson:
The House Intelligence Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee.
Richard Werner:
Exactly.
Those were supposed to provide checks and balances on the intelligence services, including the CIA.
But as Fletcher Prouty explains, once the law was passed making it a criminal offense to reveal whether somebody worked for the CIA, it became secret who belonged to the CIA.
And then another principle was accepted:
When you became a member of one of those oversight committees, you didn’t have to disclose whether you yourself had links to the CIA.
So the very people supposed to oversee the CIA could themselves be CIA-connected.
And then the checks and balances disappear.
You effectively get rule by the CIA.
And that seems to be what happened.
Now, Fletcher Prouty’s book was unavailable for decades.
He wrote it in the 1970s.
Who was he?
He had worked for the CIA.
Toward the end of his career he became head of covert operations liaison at the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He was sent to Antarctica when JFK was assassinated because, deep down, he was considered too honorable to be involved in something like that.
His colleagues knew that.
So they sent him as far away as possible.
And when he returned he quickly concluded it was the CIA.
He became a whistleblower.
His book then effectively disappeared for decades.
But with the rise of the internet in the late 1990s it became available again.
So that gives you a sense of how these things operate.
Now, that’s the background.
But then we come to Venezuela.
Tucker Carlson:
What was the point of Venezuela?
Richard Werner:
Well, there are several points.
But methodologically the big difference was that there was no plausible deniability anymore.
It was official.
“We’re going to move in and arrange regime change in a sovereign country.”
So America had reached the stage where it no longer even felt a need to deny these actions.
No need anymore for color revolutions.
No need to pretend there was a spontaneous popular uprising.
Just openly saying:
“We want this leader.”
“We don’t want that leader.”
“We’re intervening.”
Richard Werner:
Exactly.
No more concern about the niceties of international law or ethical behavior.
Apparently not necessary anymore.
So that was an important turning point.
But then we move to the larger implications.
And that’s where we connect Venezuela to Iran and beyond.
Why Venezuela?
Because Venezuela possesses the world’s largest oil reserves.
Now, Venezuelan oil is a very heavy crude, requiring special refining infrastructure.
It’s not the easiest oil economically.
But in sheer volume it’s enormous.
And who has built major refining capacity for Venezuelan oil?
China.
That’s an important clue regarding where all this is heading.
So Venezuela was step one.
Step two:
Who else is a major oil and energy supplier to China?
Iran.
And now Iran comes under attack.
War is made on Iran.
And of course there are enormous economic consequences.
Trade through the Strait of Hormuz becomes restricted.
Not completely blocked, but severely limited.
And the effects go beyond oil.
Fertilizer shipments are affected.
Many Middle Eastern countries are among the world’s largest fertilizer producers.
Supplies to Europe, the United States, and elsewhere are disrupted.
That won’t necessarily show up immediately.
But it will affect future growing seasons.
There are stockpiles now, yes.
But later the consequences appear.
Tucker Carlson:
Do you see Venezuela and Iran as connected in the sense that both conflicts are ultimately aimed at China?
Richard Werner:
Indeed.
That’s exactly it.
And this is why it’s useful to return again to the run-up to the First World War.
What was the situation then?
You had one global hegemon:
Britain.
Britain ran the world.
Half the world formally belonged to the British Empire.
Of course none of this was acquired through free elections.
It was acquired through military force, colonial domination, and often brutal suppression.
India, for example, was effectively governed by a for-profit corporation: the East India Company.
So you had colonialism run by a corporation.
Not a good arrangement for the people subjected to it.
The estimates vary, but many millions of Indians died under that system.
And many among the ruling elite openly believed there were “too many Indians.”
This is actually where much modern overpopulation ideology originated.
Thomas Malthus — famous for overpopulation theory — literally worked for the East India Company.
Tucker Carlson:
He did.
Richard Werner:
And we have many quotations from East India Company figures saying essentially:
“There are too many people.”
“We don’t need so many Indians.”
We’ll come back to that later.
So Britain dominated the world.
Now at the same time another power emerged in Europe:
Prussia.
Prussia became the first modern high-growth economy.
And it was astonishingly successful.
High growth combined with prosperity for the majority of people.
Capitalism — but a form designed to remain socially sustainable.
Not a K-shaped economy where elites prosper while the majority stagnate.
They understood that such a system eventually creates instability.
So Prussia introduced some of the first modern social-security systems.
Public schools.
Universities.
Kindergartens.
Infrastructure investment.
It was a remarkably modern state.
Merit-based.
People could rise socially through effort and competence.
And economically it was built around decentralization:
Thousands of local banks lending to small firms.
Richard Werner:
Prussia then evolved into Germany in 1871.
Tucker Carlson:
Yes.
Richard Werner:
Although it was only a partial unification because many German-speaking regions, such as Austria, were excluded for geopolitical reasons.
But the Prussian principles were carried over into Imperial Germany under essentially Prussian leadership.
And again Germany became highly successful.
Very high economic growth in the early twentieth century.
A thriving middle class.
Massive public investment.
Beautiful cities.
Railways.
Schools.
Universities.
Science.
This was the era when scientific publication became overwhelmingly German.
In the first half of the twentieth century, the majority of important scientific work was published in German.
Other countries studied the German model.
Now, the power that disliked this development was Britain.
Britain increasingly saw Germany as a dangerous rival.
Britain had pioneered industrialization.
It had dominated global manufacturing.
But Germany was catching up rapidly.
America was rising too, of course.
But America was geographically distant and culturally closer to Britain.
Germany, however, was nearby and increasingly powerful.
So the British leadership concluded:
“We have to do something about this.”
But the real turning point came with a specific strategic development.
British power depended on control of the seas.
It was a maritime empire.
From Britain to Australia, India, Africa — shipping routes were everything.
Naval supremacy was the foundation of British global dominance.
No one could rival the Royal Navy.
But Germany, as a continental power, looked for another strategy.
Germany lacked many raw materials.
It needed secure access to resources and markets.
And if those routes depended entirely on sea transport, then Germany remained vulnerable to British blockade and pressure.
Which, by the way, was exactly demonstrated after the First World War.
The war effectively ended in 1918 with the armistice.
Germany disbanded much of its military.
But Britain did not end the blockade.
Shipping remained cut off.
And as a result, around one million Germans are estimated to have starved to death during the famine of 1919.
Tucker Carlson:
A million Germans starved to death?
Richard Werner:
Yes.
Because Britain continued the naval blockade after the war itself had effectively ended.
This illustrates what it means to be dependent on a sea power controlling your supply lines.
Germany understood that danger before the war and tried to create alternatives.
And the key alternative was this:
A continental transport system independent of British naval control.
That plan became the Berlin–Baghdad railway.
It was developed by German industrial and financial interests, including Siemens and Deutsche Bank.
The route would run from Berlin through the Ottoman Empire down toward Baghdad and Basra.
This would provide Germany with direct overland access to Middle Eastern resources — especially oil — without dependence on British-controlled sea routes.
And that was when British imperial planners concluded:
“This cannot be allowed.”
If completed, the railway would make British naval dominance strategically far less important.
Germany could move goods and resources through its own continental network.
It could bypass British sea control entirely.
So British planners concluded the project had to be stopped — by any means necessary, including war.
And this became one of the key drivers behind the First World War.
Now of course there were additional tensions.
Germany increasingly criticized British imperial warfare around the world.
For example in South Africa.
Britain fought wars against the Boer farmers.
Tucker Carlson:
And created the world’s first concentration camps.
Richard Werner:
Exactly.
That was a British invention.
There were three Boer Wars.
The world’s greatest military power making war against farmers in order to dominate territory strategically important for gold and diamonds.
And although Britain eventually won, the Boers initially resisted very effectively.
So Britain resorted to increasingly brutal methods — including concentration camps where women and children died in large numbers.
And the Kaiser and German leadership openly criticized British actions.
So anti-German sentiment inside Britain intensified further.
But the railway project remained central.
Once plans for the Berlin–Baghdad railway became serious, anti-German propaganda intensified dramatically.
And of course the First World War succeeded in stopping the project.
Now the war itself devastated Germany and much of Europe.
Millions died.
An immense tragedy.
Then came the Versailles settlement.
Germany lost roughly a quarter of its territory.
Millions of Germans suddenly found themselves living in newly created states such as Czechoslovakia.
But despite all this, Germany remained scientifically and industrially powerful.
The educational and engineering foundations remained intact.
And from the British strategic viewpoint, Germany was still a rival.
So in effect a second round became necessary.
Another world war.
And during the 1920s substantial investment flowed into Germany — much of it from the United States.
American firms like ITT, General Motors, and Ford invested heavily.
Financial interests such as Brown Brothers Harriman were involved.
Prescott Bush, from the Bush family, was connected with some of these networks.
Now we move forward to today.
After the Second World War the global hegemon became the United States.
America inherited many of Britain’s methods and strategic assumptions.
And now the modern equivalent of Germany — the rising rival power — is China.
Richard Werner:
China, over the last fifteen years especially, has worked systematically to secure access to raw materials and trade routes.
In many ways the situation resembles Germany before the First World War.
China does not want to remain dependent on sea lanes controlled by another power.
The Strait of Hormuz is one choke point.
The Strait of Malacca is another major choke point for Chinese trade.
So China has worked to create alternative routes.
And what is the modern equivalent of the Berlin–Baghdad railway?
It is the Belt and Road Initiative.
President Xi Jinping’s major foreign-policy project begun about eleven years ago.
On one level it offers participating countries an alternative to the IMF–World Bank system.
And that matters because the IMF–World Bank system has largely been designed to prevent genuine development.
To keep countries poor but useful as exporters of raw materials — essentially a modern continuation of the colonial model.
Many countries, especially in Africa and Asia, joined Belt and Road because it offered another option.
Tucker Carlson:
Can you explain Belt and Road for people who don’t know what it is?
Richard Werner:
Yes.
It has had several names.
At one point “One Belt, One Road.”
Sometimes “the modern Silk Road.”
Essentially it is a network of logistics and infrastructure projects connecting China with the rest of Eurasia and beyond.
Railways.
Roads.
Ports.
Bridges.
Transport corridors.
Some routes are overland.
Others are maritime.
And at the same time it helps China reduce dependence on the dollar system.
This is linked historically to what happened after the Nixon shock and the rise of the petrodollar system under Henry Kissinger.
Oil was sold in dollars.
Countries accumulated dollar reserves.
And those reserves were largely recycled into US Treasury bonds.
China followed that system for many years.
But eventually Chinese leaders concluded they needed an alternative.
Because if you hold US Treasuries, what do you actually possess?
A promise.
And even those Treasury bonds are generally held in custody through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
So ultimately the system remains under American control.
Now some people say:
“Well, that’s only a technical issue.”
But history shows it matters enormously.
Take the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98.
I was sent officially to Thailand in 1998 to analyze the crisis and advise the Thai government from the perspective of the Asian Development Bank.
After studying the situation, I concluded it had effectively been engineered by the Thai central bank together with the IMF.
Thailand had been a successful high-growth economy.
But policies were introduced that created a boom-bust cycle.
The country was then pushed toward bankruptcy.
And afterward Thai assets were sold cheaply to foreign buyers.
That was the practical outcome.
The mechanism worked like this:
The Thai central bank maintained a fixed exchange rate against the dollar while simultaneously keeping domestic interest rates above US interest rates.
And Thai companies were encouraged to borrow in dollars.
Now if you tell companies:
“The exchange rate is fixed and safe,”
while dollar borrowing costs are lower than domestic borrowing costs, then naturally companies borrow in dollars.
But that creates a vulnerability.
Once foreign debt grows large enough, all you need is a slowdown or loss of confidence.
Speculators then attack the currency.
The central bank defends the exchange rate by spending foreign reserves.
Eventually reserves run out.
And then the currency collapses.
Which is exactly what happened.
At the same time, the central bank imposed lending restrictions and distorted credit allocation.
Then, once the crisis erupted, the IMF arrived.
And what did the IMF demand?
Tightening.
Credit restriction.
Fiscal austerity.
Everything that deepens recession.
Industrial output collapsed.
The currency collapsed.
Thailand suddenly became extremely cheap.
And then came the IMF “solution”:
Sell national assets to foreign strategic investors.
I advised them:
“Leave the IMF program.”
It took a couple of years, but eventually they did.
Because the IMF program was clearly destroying the country.
Tucker Carlson:
It’s a control mechanism.
Richard Werner:
Exactly.
A predatory system.
And Belt and Road offered countries an alternative.
China financed infrastructure projects directly.
Roads.
Railways.
Ports.
Bridges.
Industrial infrastructure.
And recipient countries often became very proud of these projects because they visibly improved development prospects.
So many countries joined.
Although counter-pressure quickly followed.
When Italy considered participation there was enormous pressure from the EU and the United States.
Hungary also faced pressure.
But overall Belt and Road has still been very successful.
And Iran became a key strategic partner within that framework.
A major energy supplier to China.
And notably, during attacks on Iran, Belt and Road infrastructure itself was also targeted:
Rail links.
Bridges.
Transport infrastructure.
So why would the United States target such projects?
Because strategically this is about obstructing the modern Berlin–Baghdad railway.
The modern Silk Road.
Tucker Carlson:
Which runs through Central Asia.
Richard Werner:
Exactly.
And this relates to older geopolitical theories as well.
British strategists like Halford Mackinder developed the “Heartland Theory” — the idea that whoever controls Eurasia controls the world.
So Britain worked to prevent Germany from integrating economically with Russia and the East.
Likewise America has pursued similar goals.
There is even a famous statement from George Friedman of Stratfor saying that the key strategic goal of the twentieth century was preventing Germany and Russia from aligning.
And America has largely succeeded in that.
Even though such cooperation would clearly benefit both countries economically.
And in Asia we see the equivalent:
Preventing Japan and China from aligning closely.
Because if China and Japan truly cooperated strategically, American dominance in the Pacific would become much harder to maintain.
So America constantly tells Japan:
“Don’t trust China.”
And tells China:
“Don’t trust Japan.”
Tucker Carlson:
Though the Chinese probably distrust Japan for reasons beyond American influence.
Richard Werner:
Of course there is historical memory.
But I think the two societies actually get along better than people realize.
Taiwanese people often speak very favorably about Japan.
Young Chinese people often admire Japan as modern and exciting.
And Deng Xiaoping’s generation understood very clearly what Japan had done for China.
Because when Deng Xiaoping wanted to understand how to create rapid economic growth, he turned to Japan.
He asked the Japanese directly for help.
And the Japanese actually sent senior planners to China.
Including Saburo Okita and other officials associated with Japan’s high-growth planning system.
They helped design the Chinese growth model.
So China would not be where it is today without Japanese assistance.
People in both countries know this.
Even if politically it is not fashionable to say so publicly.
Richard Werner:
So this is really the broader context in which we should understand the war on Iran.
Ultimately the strategic focus is China.
Not ordinary Americans, of course.
But influential policy-makers and strategic planners in America have increasingly defined China as the principal long-term rival.
Even more important than Russia in some strategic documents.
And this parallels the earlier British view toward Germany.
Germany became the designated rival power before the First World War.
Measures were then taken against it — ultimately including world war.
And now China occupies a similar role in strategic thinking.
Economically, however, there is no reason this should necessarily produce conflict.
Competition can be healthy.
With sensible policies America could cooperate profitably with China.
And for many years it partly did.
But then we must ask another question:
Why was it considered acceptable to transfer so much manufacturing and industrial capability from America to China in the first place?
That was not inevitable.
This reminds me again of the American investment in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s.
Massive Western investment flowed into China.
Technology transfer occurred on a huge scale.
Factories moved.
Industrial knowledge moved.
Now in many sectors China no longer depends on foreign technology at all.
It is ahead.
So why was this process encouraged so strongly?
Officially the answer was short-term efficiency and profit.
Cheaper labor.
Higher margins.
But the long-term consequences for America were obvious.
Loss of jobs.
Decline of the middle class.
Industrial hollowing-out.
So why continue?
It suggests that some people believed it was desirable to build China up as a major rival power.
And if one thinks historically, that resembles what happened before previous large conflicts.
You build up the future adversary first.
Tucker Carlson:
Do you really think that?
Richard Werner:
I hesitate to draw such conclusions.
But when you look at the scale of the transfer, it becomes difficult not to ask the question.
It was not necessary.
It was a choice.
And so perhaps we come back to something we mentioned earlier:
A small group of highly influential people can pursue goals ordinary people would never imagine.
China also provides another example of this.
If we go back to Mao’s era, we see policies that caused immense suffering.
Mao was effectively installed with foreign backing — Soviet backing.
And the Bolshevik lineage behind that movement is important to understand.
The Bolshevik movement itself had already inflicted immense suffering inside Russia.
Now under Mao we saw several disastrous campaigns.
The Cultural Revolution.
The Great Leap Forward.
And then the famine.
The famine is especially important because it illustrates something disturbing:
The possibility of policy-induced mass death.
For years estimates of the famine deaths kept increasing.
Two million.
Ten million.
Fifteen million.
Now many estimates are around eighty million deaths.
An unimaginable tragedy.
And when you examine what happened, the key point is this:
The famine began during a bumper harvest year.
So if famine emerges during abundance, then something extraordinary has happened.
A very specific combination of policies becomes necessary.
And historians agree the famine was policy-induced.
The debate is only whether the outcome was intentional or accidental.
Now consider some of the policies.
First:
Workers were forcibly moved away from agricultural regions during harvest periods.
That alone severely disrupted food collection.
Second:
Mao launched the campaign against sparrows.
The ordinary Asian tree sparrow was declared an enemy because it supposedly consumed grain.
Millions of sparrows were exterminated.
But sparrows also controlled locust populations.
And once the sparrows disappeared, locust swarms exploded and devastated crops.
That is an extraordinarily specific intervention into a natural ecological system.
Third:
The government seized grain stocks.
Farmers storing grain for future planting were denounced as hoarders and enemies of the people.
Food reserves were confiscated.
Some grain was even exported while people starved.
Put all these policies together and you get catastrophic famine.
So again we confront a disturbing possibility:
Leaders can knowingly impose policies that kill enormous numbers of ordinary people.
And that is something many people psychologically resist believing.
But history forces us to confront it.
Now after Mao, Deng Xiaoping introduced the high-growth model we discussed earlier.
And this model worked brilliantly.
Decentralized banking.
Thousands of local banks lending to productive firms.
The same general high-growth model Japan had used, itself heavily influenced by earlier German systems.
Forty years of rapid growth followed.
Hundreds of millions lifted out of poverty.
One of the greatest economic transformations in human history.
But then comes a puzzle.
Deng Xiaoping also imposed the one-child policy.
And that never fit naturally with the logic of a high-growth system.
High-growth systems usually benefit from population growth, education, productivity, and innovation.
Ideas come from people.
So why impose strict population suppression?
That led me to investigate further.
And I found that one of the key Japanese advisers connected to Deng Xiaoping was Saburo Okita.
A highly capable Japanese economic planner.
But by that time Okita had also become involved with the Club of Rome.
Tucker Carlson:
What exactly is the Club of Rome?
Richard Werner:
That’s a very important question.
The Club of Rome emerged prominently around 1971 — the same year as the Nixon shock.
It became famous through the report The Limits to Growth.
And the central message was:
Economic growth is dangerous.
Population growth is dangerous.
Humanity has reached the “limits to growth.”
This ideology has dominated much elite discussion ever since.
Degrowth.
Resource scarcity.
Overpopulation.
The Club of Rome was closely associated with Rockefeller networks.
Early meetings took place at Rockefeller properties in Italy.
And one of the striking things is that they recruited someone like Okita — a man associated with high-growth policy — into their executive circles.
Now perhaps he joined innocently.
Many people at the time considered these organizations prestigious and internationalist.
But the effect was interesting:
The world’s most successful high-growth systems became connected to organizations arguing for low growth and population reduction.
Richard Werner:
Now, when I looked into how Deng Xiaoping came to adopt the one-child policy, I found something interesting.
The policy was strongly influenced by projections produced by a Chinese statistician and mathematician connected to military research.
He specialized in complex ballistic calculations and systems modeling.
He was asked to model future population growth trajectories.
And he concluded that China faced unsustainable population expansion and therefore needed strict population controls.
But the crucial question is:
What model was he using?
He was using the Club of Rome model.
That is the key point.
So we have a Chinese planner using a Western ideological growth-limits model to justify radical population-control policy inside China.
And this reveals what I call “the great deception.”
Because simulations are not reality.
A simulation can produce almost any result depending on the assumptions embedded within it.
And yet simulations are constantly presented as though they are objective truth.
This happens in economics.
It happens in climate policy.
It happens in pandemic forecasting.
It happens in population-growth projections.
You construct assumptions, run simulations, and then present the output as scientific inevitability.
But the assumptions determine the conclusions.
Now, perhaps Deng Xiaoping sincerely believed these projections.
Perhaps there were other pressures involved.
We cannot know fully.
But the result was that China adopted a policy profoundly hostile to long-term demographic stability.
And we can now see the consequences.
China faces severe aging and demographic decline.
Now stepping back further, this entire approach has deep roots in modern economics itself.
Modern economics, as it developed in Britain, increasingly relied on abstract mathematical models detached from empirical reality.
A central figure here is David Ricardo.
Ricardo is famous for the theory of comparative advantage and free trade.
The standard story says Ricardo proved free trade always benefits everyone.
And therefore all earlier economic thinking — especially the mercantilists — was supposedly wrong.
But that is not really what happened.
The mercantilists were not anti-trade.
Quite the opposite.
They believed trade created prosperity.
What concerned them was distribution.
Who receives the benefits from trade?
That was their central concern.
Ricardo effectively removed that question.
He used elegant mathematics to demonstrate logically consistent scenarios favoring free trade.
And because the mathematics was sophisticated, people treated the conclusions as scientific truth.
But mathematics only proves logical consistency.
It does not prove reality.
A model may be internally consistent and still completely detached from the real world.
And that is the key deception.
The assumptions inside Ricardo’s models predetermined the outcome.
In fact historians of economics refer to this as “Ricardo’s vice”:
Constructing assumptions designed to generate desired conclusions.
And those conclusions then became ideological tools.
The IMF and World Bank still operate largely within this framework.
Developing countries are told:
Liberalize.
Privatize.
Open your markets.
Export raw materials.
Allow foreign capital free access.
And in practice this locks them into low-value commodity production while preventing industrial development.
Empirically this has repeatedly failed.
Economists like Prebisch and Singer demonstrated long ago that countries exporting raw materials tend to suffer deteriorating terms of trade over time.
Meaning:
They receive less and less value for their exports while paying more and more for imports.
So they become relatively poorer over time.
But Ricardo ignored the terms-of-trade issue almost entirely.
And therefore the mathematical elegance concealed a fundamentally misleading framework.
Trade itself can absolutely create prosperity.
The mercantilists already understood that.
The real question is:
Who captures the gains?
And modern institutions often structure trade so that the gains flow upward toward dominant financial and industrial powers.
Now the Club of Rome essentially applied similar methods.
Simulations.
Forecast scenarios.
Catastrophic assumptions.
Claims about inevitable collapse.
But many of those predictions have already failed empirically.
The world did not follow the trajectory they forecast.
Likewise many pandemic models proved wildly inaccurate.
Climate models increasingly rely on extreme scenarios now acknowledged even within parts of the scientific community as implausible.
But once the public hears “science,” “modeling,” and “experts,” the assumptions disappear from view.
And people mistake simulations for truth.
That, I think, has become one of the defining techniques of modern governance.
Richard Werner:
And once you understand that mechanism, you begin to see how modern governance increasingly operates through manufactured expert consensus built on assumptions hidden inside technical systems ordinary people are not expected to examine.
People hear:
“Computer models show…”
“Experts predict…”
“The science says…”
But very few people are allowed to inspect the assumptions underneath.
And that creates enormous opportunities for manipulation.
Now, if we return to economics, we see another important point.
The successful high-growth economies historically did not follow laissez-faire free-market orthodoxy.
Prussia did not.
Germany did not.
Japan did not.
South Korea did not.
Taiwan did not.
China did not.
What they all used was directed credit creation through decentralized banking systems focused on productive investment.
That is the secret.
Not central-bank manipulation for speculation.
Not asset bubbles.
But bank credit directed toward productive enterprise.
Small firms.
Manufacturing.
Technology.
Infrastructure.
Real production.
When banks create money for productive investment, you get sustainable growth.
When banks create money mainly for asset speculation — especially real estate speculation — you get bubbles, inequality, and eventual crisis.
And this distinction has been largely hidden from mainstream economics.
Most economists don’t even properly distinguish between productive and unproductive credit creation.
But empirically the distinction is fundamental.
Now, if you look at Japan after the war, Japan implemented this system extremely successfully.
The Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Japan guided credit toward industry and exports.
The result was extraordinary growth.
But then something changed in the 1980s.
The Bank of Japan increasingly directed credit into real-estate speculation.
And that created the enormous Japanese asset bubble.
I documented this in my book Princes of the Yen.
The bubble then collapsed.
And Japan entered decades of stagnation.
This was not an accident.
The same mechanisms appear repeatedly.
Credit expansion into productive sectors creates growth.
Credit expansion into speculative sectors creates bubbles and collapse.
Now today, Western economies increasingly channel credit into asset inflation rather than productive investment.
Property speculation.
Financial engineering.
Stock buybacks.
Meanwhile productive industry declines.
And ordinary people experience falling real living standards despite nominal increases in wealth.
This is why so many younger people today feel poorer despite living in supposedly wealthy economies.
Asset inflation is mistaken for real prosperity.
But if housing prices rise faster than incomes, ordinary people are not becoming wealthier in practical terms.
They’re becoming locked out.
Now returning to geopolitics:
When powerful systems enter decline, they often become more aggressive externally.
Britain became more aggressive as rivals emerged.
And similarly today, strategic anxiety about China’s rise increasingly shapes global policy.
That does not mean China is perfect.
Far from it.
China has many internal problems.
But the broader pattern resembles historical hegemonic behavior.
A dominant power seeks to prevent the emergence of rivals capable of creating alternative systems.
And infrastructure becomes central to that struggle.
Railways mattered before the First World War.
Today logistics corridors, ports, supply chains, digital systems, and energy routes matter in similar ways.
Which is why Belt and Road became strategically threatening.
Not because roads and railways are evil.
But because they reduce dependency on existing power structures.
And once alternative systems become possible, hegemonic systems react.
Now, one more point regarding ordinary people.
Throughout all these historical episodes, ordinary populations generally do not want conflict.
Most people want stability.
Family life.
Prosperity.
Peace.
War is almost always driven from above.
And therefore propaganda becomes essential.
You must manufacture consent.
You must create fear.
You must create moral panic.
You must convince populations that extreme measures are necessary.
And historically false flags, information control, censorship, and emotional manipulation have often played central roles in that process.
That is why historical understanding matters so much.
Not because history repeats mechanically.
But because similar structures and methods reappear again and again.
And if people do not understand those patterns, they become vulnerable to them repeatedly.
Tucker Carlson:
That’s one of the most interesting conversations I’ve heard in a long time.
Thank you very much for doing it.
Richard Werner:
Thank you very much.
Synopsis
Werner’s core thesis is
dominant imperial systems repeatedly manipulate finance, infrastructure, information, and conflict in order to preserve geopolitical control against rising rivals.
Here is a synopsis of the thing presented by AI which seems to me to be pretty right.
The historical spine of the discussion is:
1. Britain vs Germany before WWI
Werner argues that:
- Britain’s maritime empire depended on sea control,
- Germany threatened this system through industrial growth and the Berlin–Baghdad railway,
- and Britain therefore moved toward confrontation.
The Lusitania story is presented as an example of engineered consent:
- not necessarily random tragedy,
- but a manipulated event used to generate anti-German sentiment.
This becomes Werner’s template for understanding modern geopolitical events.
2. America vs China today
China is presented as:
- the modern Germany,
- a rising industrial power,
- building alternative infrastructure systems,
- especially through Belt and Road.
Werner repeatedly frames:
- Iran,
- Venezuela,
- maritime choke points,
- sanctions,
- and infrastructure attacks
as parts of a larger containment strategy aimed ultimately at China.
This is one of the strongest through-lines in the interview.
3. The IMF / World Bank system
This section is actually more concrete and empirically grounded than some of the geopolitical material.
Werner argues that:
- the IMF system forces countries into dependency,
- pushes commodity-export economies,
- restricts industrial development,
- and uses crises to facilitate foreign acquisition of assets.
His Thailand example is important because here he speaks from direct professional involvement.
This is arguably one of the most substantive parts of the interview.
4. High-growth economics
Another major theme is Werner’s alternative economic model.
He argues that successful economies historically relied upon:
- decentralized banking,
- productive credit creation,
- local banks funding real industry,
- rather than speculative finance.
He traces this:
- from Prussia,
- to Germany,
- to Japan,
- to China.
This is really one of Werner’s signature intellectual contributions.
5. The “limits to growth” critique
The final section shifts into a broader civilizational critique.
Werner argues that:
- modern elite institutions increasingly promote anti-growth and anti-population ideologies,
- especially through systems modeling and simulations,
- which he sees as politically manipulative rather than scientifically objective.
Here he connects:
- the Club of Rome,
- one-child policy thinking,
- climate modeling,
- pandemic simulations,
- and technocratic governance.
This section becomes more speculative and ideologically charged than the earlier economics discussion.