Venezuela's Asymmetric Trap: Why US Intervention Could Become a Quagmire? W/James Bradley

Hello everybody and welcome to Geopolitical Trends, where truth matters. Excited to be with you as always. I'm even more excited because I have a dear friend of mine, historian and author James Bradley, which I will bring him soon here into the studio. Hope, uh, to my community, hope to those who celebrate Christmas, hope you had a, a wonderful Christmas and, and you are sort of, uh, enjoying the holidays. But I'm very, very excited about James being here, which was kind enough of him to carve out time for our community. So let me bring in James right in. Hi, James.

Hello, everybody.

Good to see you. Good to see you, James. And thank you so much for carving out time for us here. We greatly, greatly appreciate it. To those who do not know who James is, I'm going to provide you a brief bio here, but please make sure to go to the description under the video. I put a full bio about James Bradley there. So James Bradley is an American Pacific historian. He's also the author of many, many books, as a matter of fact, 5 books about American involvement in Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China, and Vietnam. He is also the New York— he is also the number one New York bestselling author of Flags of Our Fathers, is another book, by Flyboys, and The Imperial Cruise, and The China Mirage. Just FYI, for my community to know, James has spent over a decade living in Vietnam researching his latest book, Precious Freedom. And to those who are familiar with the US military history, James is the son of the Iwo Jima hero John Bradley. So, so welcome, John, and good to see you, my friend.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Uh, I want to start right off the bat, and, and this way I'm gonna do it for the community this time in reverse. We're gonna start with the end, then we'll move on. I'd like to provide us with your outlook for 2026 moving in, which only the end— the year is going to end in only a few more days here.

I'm going to do one of the most shocking statements I've ever done, and this will take about 10 to 15 minutes.

Sure.

I've got notes. And if the audience would realize that I have a broken back, so if I move funny and I need some lozenges, so I might slip some lozenges in my mouth and take a drink of water. But I have been almost sleepless over the last 3 days of what has happened., and I want to get some information out. And I think 99% of you, this will be new and you'll probably disagree, but save this YouTube and see what it is like in February. And, uh, this is happening. So a huge topic, 50% of your transactions is the dollar. Your home, the ring you bought your wife, your car, your food. 50% of your life is the US dollar. I'm going to talk about 50% of your life that is about to dramatically change. I'm not a crash guy, I'm not going to scare anybody, but I'm going to give you the details that 50% of your life is about to change. And I'm, you know, suggesting that you might want to make some adjustments. Behind me is a book about Vietnam, and the Prime Minister in Vietnam in 1966 said in an interview to the New York Times, "With the money you are spending in Vietnam, you are going to ruin your dollar. You're going to disconnect the dollar from gold, and it will be the end of the American Empire." Not in a day, But eventually, and you know what, the New York Times readers didn't know what he was talking about. And, and my experience is 99% of Americans still don't know what he was talking about. But the chickens are coming home to roost for the, in today's money, the trillions that we blew in Vietnam and then Iraq and Central America and Afghanistan and, you know, whatever. 50% of your life is about to change. In 1971, when we went off the gold standard, which Pham Van Dong had predicted and Americans didn't expect, Mao Zedong said, oh, this is the end of the American Empire. Not the next day, but whatever. What are these guys talking about? They understood a truth thermometer in the economy. Okay, the truth thermometer is real money. It's called sound money. It's silver and gold. It's been real money for thousands of years, and it's sound money because it makes a noise. And I'd like to talk about this. With money, there's no counterparty risk. In other words, I don't need anyone to perform for this to be worth $80. This is an ounce of silver. It's worth $80. If I give it to you, it's worth $80. If you have a US dollar, $80 US dollars, the US government has to perform. They have to be— if they do something funny, the, the currency can devalue. You have counterparty risk with any currency. Now Americans have been lied to about money versus currency for almost 100 years. And the truth thermometer, real money, is signaling that there's a problem in your currency, not in the money. I'm in money, and I, I just doubled my wealth in the last 12 months. And so I'm a very happy guy. But if you hold any paper currency, your life is about to change. What were Phan Van Dong and Mao talking about? In 1971, exactly why did Richard Nixon go off the gold standard? The reason was, is because the US said that the dollar was redeemable to gold. If you gave dollars to the government, the US government had to give you gold. So Charles de Gaulle, Prime Minister, was shipping huge warships packed full of bundles of dollars to New York, and the New York Fed was giving gold. And Treasury Secretary John Connally said, President Nixon, they're going to bleed us dry of gold. You got to close the gold window. Now, folks, ask yourself, why would Charles de Gaulle be the one with the dollars? Why wasn't it Japan or Indonesia or somebody in South America? Do you know why? Because we shipped, we printed a bunch of useless, not useless, but a bunch of currency in the '60s and we shipped it to Vietnam. We had 500,000 service people there and we were bribing an entire government, a Potemkin government. It's all in this book. And it costs what today would be trillions of dollars. And guess what? The banks in Vietnam were French. And all those paper dollars went to Paris, and Charles de Gaulle was swimming in dollars, and he sent them to New York. So Nixon closed the gold window. This is a default on the US dollar that's about to come due in 2026. It's taken this long to get to the really crisis area, but everyone in America is talking about affordability. It's not affordability, it's that your currency's devaluing. The can of beans on the shelf, they didn't put more beans on it so it got more expensive. They put more dollars into the system with COVID and Iraq and Iran and Vietnam. It started here, and there's more dollars chasing, uh, goods. That's called inflation. So what happened after we went off Kissinger did a bunch of shenanigans. He said the dollar is not connected to gold, we'll connect it to oil. We'll go to Saudi Arabia and make the petrodollar, and we'll fool Americans that the dollar is worth something because the Saudis will demand dollars, and then everybody needs dollars. Japan needs dollars to buy oil, and it will keep the dollar up. It was a false game. It wasn't based on sound money. And then, uh, they created paper markets to fool us about sound money, gold and silver. They created these paper markets. By the way, the CIA documents say this. If you want to see the CIA documents with Kissinger creating paper markets in New York and London that would trade paper silver and gold back and forth like this and create the value of gold and silver artificially in paper, not really. So they suppressed gold and silver and created this artificial petrodollar. At the same time, the reason that my audience doesn't know really what I'm talking about probably is they stripped out information about, uh, real money, gold and silver, sound money, out of all the, uh, MBA books, out of all the business books. If you got an MBA in 1958, you learned that gold and silver were money and that currency was paper on top of it. It was like a chit at the air— at the dry cleaners. Your currency was a chit for the gold. It wasn't money, it was currency with a chit for money, gold and silver. And then they have finagled the education system, so if you get an MBA now, you you don't learn what I just said. Also, you can look in the dictionary. The definition of inflation for thousands of years has been money printing. You print too much money. See, I have one can of beans. You print, you double the money in the system, and all of a sudden people say, oh, the price went up. The price didn't go up. They devalued your currency. Then in the 1980s, Look at the dictionaries. They changed the definition of inflation to price increase. So right now everybody in the media is saying there's inflation, there's affordability. What? No, no, no, no, no. Inflation is not price increase. It's the fact they printed too many dollars and you're not complaining about it. So listeners, viewers, stick with me. I'm going to pretend— listen to this. I'm James Bradley. I just bought CNBC. You know, what's his name bought CBS. I just bought CNBC and I'm James Bradley. And you know what? I'm going to tell you the truth. And you better record this before the government comes after me.

Okay.

This is CNBC and I own it now. Okay. I'm going to tell you the truth. Imagine the affordability is actually in fa— inflation. What is the number one investment category this century since 2000? It is gold and silver. What is the number one investment in the last year, last 5 years, last 10 years, this century? It's gold and silver. And my CNBC people who I all fired, I shot them out back. They won't tell you that because they keep talking about Nvidia and stocks and all this paper bullshit that is about to crumble. Physical silver is up. No, gold is up 65% this year and silver is up 120%. I don't have any money. I don't have any Singapore dollars. I don't have any yuan. I don't have American dollars. I'm completely in gold and silver in Singapore and Zurich, and I just— I'm mostly in silver, and I just went up 120%. So this is my credentials for talking to you. Stocks priced in real money, stocks priced in silver and gold, have lost 70% of their value. You're looking at your house that has gone up. It hasn't gone up in value. It's, it's just they printed a bunch of money, so you need more of those paper dollars to get your house. You know, to sell your house. Let me give you some facts. In the year 2000, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 10,000. Today it's about, let's say it's 50,000. That's 5x, right? It went up 5 times. And gold in 2000 was $300. It's $4,500 now. It went up 15 times. I'm not talking investments. I'm saying that your currency is going down, it's losing value. Do you want to say something, Doctor?

No, no, no, no, no. What, uh, what you mentioned about the gold, because you were right, because I read the day before gold reached about $4,500 an ounce. And only a few years ago, a lot of people were saying, oh, there is no way it's going to cross over $2,000. And here we are. The same applies to silver. So You are spot on, James, and I appreciate you sharing that with us. Please continue.

I bought my gold. I'll tell you in the story, I bought my gold at $1,200. It's $4,500. I got out of the dollars. I sold every, every dollar asset. And I'm telling people what is about to happen in 2026. This affects everyone and it's not narrowly investments. We're talking about the ability to purchase things 50% of your life. The reason for the riots in Brussels, the reason for the discontent. If people were doubling their incomes and doing well, we don't have the social fractures in prosperous times. People can't figure out why kids can't buy homes. There's all this confusion. Mandami, we elected, will probably have a socialist president in 2028. When, uh, when the dollar really, really crashes. And it is— the problem is in your pocket. It isn't in the markets and the beans and the house and housing. No, no, no. It's the value of your dollar. It's what Mao and, uh, Pham Van Dong talked about, talked about. So if you look at a Western with John Wayne and Clint Eastwood in it, when they go to the bar They don't use a paper dollar. They put some silver down. Jesus was sold for silver. Silver and gold is money. This is ancient history. Now, in 1913, we invented the Federal Reserve to really skin Americans and screw them. And in 1933, FDR stole all the gold. The Constitution says that the US dollar has to be a unit of gold and silver because they knew that otherwise you'd have inflation. It says it in the Constitution. But FDR stole all our gold and he said you can't buy gold anymore if you're a US citizen. If you're a Rothschild in Paris, I'll sell you gold, $20-some an ounce or $35, whatever he raised it to, you know. But Americans, This was unconstitutional. They should have shoved FDR out. So 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement said, look, we have most of the gold in the world. What we'll do is we'll connect the dollar to the gold and then you can trust us. We will redeem your dollars. France, every Japan, every country in the world will redeem. So there's kind of a gold standard, not really, but this Bretton Woods thing connected it, right? But then there was National Security Memo 262, which I write about in two of my last books. Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson looked at the world economy, which wasn't going well after World War II. And he said, why did we do so well in World War II? Well, it was because we were creating armaments and sending them all over the world. So what we'll do, and this was a national security thing that was secret, and this is what Eisenhower was talking about when he warned about the military-industrial complex. We created a worldwide set of allies that we could sell military equipment to, and we became a military equipment supplier. And then the Korean War and us juicing the Japanese economy raised the economy artificially. The Vietnam War, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, you gotta print trillions and trillions of dollars. But this is screwing us. But anyway, they invented the IMF, the World Bank, and this is all CIA documented. And take a look at it, how we got screwed. Oh, they created this military, uh, Keynesian, however you pronounce it.

Yeah, yeah.

So then we had Korean War. Now everybody knows Eisenhower's warning in 1961 about the military-industrial complex, but they forget that his first speech of his presidency was about a cross of iron. He said if we continue with buying military equipment and producing it, we will crucify Americans on a cross of military iron. Look at the speech. This was a 5-star general. This is not James Bradley talking, but he couldn't admit this, this secret document. It was top secret until 1975. But this is what Eisenhower was talking about, that the government planned this worldwide military stimulus. So JFK stood up and said to the military industrial complex, no Vietnam, read about it here. One month later at the Christmas party in the White House, the new president, Lyndon Johnson, who had a lot of stock in Brown Root, which later became Halliburton, and a lot of stock in Bell Helicopter, which was about to go bankrupt. He had his Cutty Sark whiskey, drank about a bottle a day, And at the Christmas party, one month after JFK was killed, it's documented in my book, he said to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "You give me my election and I'll give you your war." This was all planned, folks. They had to print the money and they wanted to go to war. You don't become a hero unless there's a war. So we sent boatloads of dollars to Vietnam. And that's why Nixon had to go off, had to shut the window. Since 1961, '71, we've just been printing paper money, and it's a confidence game because people have confidence in it. I know most of my audience just has confidence in the dollar. Uh, okay, but replay this YouTube in 2 months. There's something about to happen, and I'm getting to it. So what's the value of real money? A 1963 dime had silver in it. That was worth 10 cents. What's it worth today? It's worth $4.61. Do you see, if you had real money, it retains value. Your house would not be that much more expensive if you had real money. A quarter, you know what a quarter is? 25 cents. 1963, I'm that old that I remember silver quarters. Is a quarter— see, a dollar is only worth a dollar today, but a silver quarter is worth $12 today. You see, that's why the founders said that money has to be real, has to be sound money. But FDR and Nixon and, you know, this has been changed and Americans have been bamboozled by the Fed. So our problems, the income gap, the wars, the home costs, the inflation, the social dislocation. It's happening because of this fake money that's underneath. It's like the ocean. If the ocean went up imperceptibly, like 2 feet, there'd be, you know, danger all over the world. And there's this ocean of gold and silver that is a huge market. Who's the number one holder of gold in the world, folks? You might say Russia, China, America. It's Indian females. Gold is an ancient market. It's under beds in Turkey, India, and the UAE, and Africa, and China for thousands of years. The number one holder of gold is all those Indian women walking around with gold, gold jewelry. So it's, it's like the ocean and it's all over the world. And America is no longer going to be able to control this with paper. So there's a normalcy bias. I call people in Paris and say, how you doing? And they say, fine. And then I look on YouTube and there's riots all over the street. New York City, I call a friend in New York, how you doing? Oh, everything's great. Folks, did you know that 5,000 police officers resigned in New York when Madam got elected? There's huge undercurrent changes But the media is just, you know, everything's fine, it's happy. Look at NVIDIA, you know, um, stores are locked up. I lived in Asia, it's completely safe. Many skirted girls can walk around Ho Chi Minh, Da Nang, you know, knows Shanghai, Chongqing, anywhere. These are safe streets, safe cities. Americans have a normalcy bias and they're looking at all this danger and, well, that's okay, I can handle it. Don't go to the bad part of town and don't stay out late at night. No, no, no, no, no. There's stuff happening that we're not calling out. So we've got a Happy Days media and they're not reporting that 400 people have been jailed in Britain for free speech. They're not reporting this stuff. Folks, the world has changed. India is a poor country. And then look at Prince Charles. UK is a rich country, right? No, it changed. The Indian economy is larger than the UK. Macron went to France and lectured them about democracy. France has fallen apart. China has safe streets. We're not waking up to the rise of the East that the good doctor has been talking about. So James Bradley's talking economics. Let me tell you my story. In 2016, I had a sense. And I don't know what it was. And I stopped my life and I got in my car and I drove all over the United States to economic experts to get in their living room and ask them what was really happening. People like Peter Grandich. Of course, you know who Peter Grandich is, audience. He's the guy that called the 1987 recession. He's the guy that called the 2007-2008 session. He's the guy, Peter Grandich. You can look at him on the internet. Yesterday he's saying the things that I'm saying right now. Peter Schiff, uh, Peter Schiff's all over the internet. Tucker Carlson just interviewed him. Take— I, I went in Peter Schiff's living room and he wrote the book on the housing crash that was going to come. He wrote it 2 years before the housing crash. He said it's going to come and it came. These guys have been right. So I drove all over the country, Mark Faber, and talked to these economic experts. And this is what they told me, bottom line. The Fed is gonna print money unending. We're not gonna default on the debt in the sense that we can just print money, but the default's gonna come in your pocket. The money is going to become increasingly less valuable. But they can continue to print. They're never going to pay off the debt. They're continue to print. They told me this in 2016, and they said, you better get your assets out of the US dollar and into sound money. I flew to Singapore and Zurich, went into vaults. I vaulted my gold and silver in Singapore and Zurich, and it has gone up astronomically. I look like I'm talking about problems. Personally, personally, I'm like every day I'm getting wealthier. I'm very happy, but I'm trying to do this as a public service. What I learned in 2016, Peter Grandish told this to 2,000 of his clients. He said, sell all your bonds, sell all your stocks, and get in gold and silver. He had 2,000 clients. You know how many listened to him? One. I've told my family and friends and whatever. Everybody thinks I'm crazy. And I think that 90% of the viewership here might be saying, you know, Bradley, the dollar, this is ridiculous. But folks, let me tell you what's happening right now. I can tell you about Singapore, Zurich, I mean, June— this June, silver was $30. It's approaching $80, $80 right now. So folks, I'm experiencing deflation. I call people all over the world and, oh, everything's getting expensive. My rent is going down, do you see? Because I'm in sound money. When I go to the store, I spend less money It takes me less money to pay my rent. I'm experiencing deflation because of sound money. If you had a bunch of 1963 quarters, your cost of living would be going down. So this is what you can study on, on the internet, but people are not listening to this. So the economic thermometer is saying that the paper currencies are, uh, going to radically decrease this year within the next 2 to 3 months. I think weeks, but yeah, in the next 2 to 3 months. And, um, paper burning—

let me—

I'm almost finished, just give me a second here.

Sure.

2008, you know, the economic system said, "We're crashing the dollar, but Obama papered it over by pumping money." And then, you know, in 2019, I interviewed a financial expert on my podcast and he said, "There's gonna be a war in 2020." And I said, "Why?" He said, "Because the Fed has to print a lot of money to keep the system going, the Ponzi scheme." And I said, "There's gonna be a war in 2020?" He said, "Yeah, probably first quarter 2020." So I waited and it was the COVID war and we printed trillions of dollars. Everybody stay home and then we'll print trillions of dollars. And I asked Americans, "Aren't you afraid of this, that it'll be extremely inflationary?" "No, no, no, I got a check for $30,000, I got a check for..." And then 2 years later when the inflation came through, "Geez, the cost of beans went up." "No, no, no, no." It was that free money that they print in. Okay, so right now there's derivatives out, folks. These are paper nonsense bets, okay, in the financial system. They estimate that there's $2.5 quadrillion worth of derivatives. There's not that amount of real money in the world, but the bets are huge. The world is de-dollarizing. Folks, banks, all central banks all over the world are buying one thing, and it's not the US dollar, it is gold. So you have counterparty risk with your, uh, currency, and you don't— now, Doctor, could you show that Exeter's Pyramid by any chance?

That I, uh, didn't come through.

Oh, okay. Yeah, if you folks, if you look at the Exeter's Pyramid, it's like this. At the bottom is real money, gold. On top is paper. There's stocks and cash and whatever. And this— there's going to be a rush to gold and silver, and it's happening now. At the bottom of the pyramid is silver. Now, right now, silver on the Shanghai Exchange is $80 today. It's $75 in New York. That's impossible. The price of silver, if it varied by 2 cents, it would be shocking. It's that— it's the difference is $5, $6. Why? Because New York has paper and Shanghai has the real thing. The, uh, the makers of BYD and solar panels and Apple phones, they must have silver. What this discrepancy in price is showing, and it's all over the internet, folks, is that there's no— is that the West is unable to deliver. This is going to be a crash event, that is, with silver pulling out the, uh, background, and then it's going to go to gold and oil and coal, and all the derivative funny money structure is going to— I don't want to use the word collapse, but it's going to go like this. The value of your dollar, 50% of your life is about to change radically. And I could go on and on.

Oh, James, James, James, is it this one here?

Yes, sir.

Okay, I just found it in my spam folder. I don't know why it went there.

So anyway, well, if, if folks look at the Exeter's Pyramid, at the top is different types of paper And then down at the bottom is sound money. So the people on top, within the next few months is my prediction, next few years for sure. But because of this silver dislocation and the gold dislocation between Shanghai and New York and London, the people up on top in all this paper are going to rush down to the emergency situation and there's going to be a mania for gold and silver. It has happened, uh, for 4,000 years this way. That's why Mao came to power, because silver— and, and because of the inflation. An inflationary event leads to war. Look at the flight to safety, folks. See, stocks, stocks, real estate. At the bottom, there's a flight to safety. It's called gold. With this, with this decrease in the value of the dollar, there's going to be more social location, and our great rulers are going to toss the table over. If you're playing poker and you're losing, you toss the table over to finish the game. Tossing the table over, they're going to go to war. This is why we're seeing Venezuela. This is why we're seeing bombing in Nigeria. This is why we're saying, talking to take Greenland from Denmark. This is why Japan is talking naughty about China.

They—

this is why France is censoring and, and, and you— and they're saying we need a trillion dollars to go to war against Russia. This is all financially based, and the Western rulers know what I have just said for the last 10 minutes. And they're going to cover it up. They're not going to take responsibility. They're going to cover it up by war. This criminal woman that you're looking at, I don't even want to say her name. She knows it's going to collapse. The inevitable collapse is the headline, and they're going to go to war to cover it up. I'll shut up and the rest is up to you, doctor.

Well, first of all, I can't thank you enough to really share those insights with the community because That's the whole reason for why I have this channel here, because I want the community to really learn something that is not out there in the media. Media is not going to disclose all this. So we are so grateful to you, James, for really sharing this insight— in— for insightful information with the community here. So, and for the community, just start to think, literally start to think about what lies ahead, because nothing happens in a vacuum. And I'm— I couldn't agree more with James. Uh, James, this leads me now to pave the way, uh, to what we're going to be talking about, of course, about Venezuela. But before we do this, I would like to have your assessment about the US National Security Strategy. I read it, I had a chance to, and it's like, wow, wow, wow, where are we going with this? If you can just briefly share with our community what's your assessment of this, uh, 2025 US National Security Strategy, please.

Can I do that by answer— by asking you a question first?

Sure.

I've been in the White House many times. I've eaten in the family quarters. I've been in the Pentagon many times. I've been in the gov— you know, I have friends in the government. I never worked in the government like you. They're saying that, uh, Colby, Eldridge Colby, was the main guy behind this. What— these are like children writing this stuff.

This stuff, yeah.

I, I, I, I read it twice and it's like, do they think it's 1992 or 1955? It was, it was like, it blew my mind. So I'm asking you, what is the quality of these government people? What is your experience?

Well, there are none. There are none, James. Whomever now is in power, in charge, or whatever, the people have no insights. They have no substance. There is no, no, no substantive background in understanding the complexities of what geopolitics, for example, is all about. That's my area, what I will focus on. So when you have a Secretary of State like Marco Rubio, who has no clue about how the world operates, just because he's been pushed by the neocons, he's being pushed by the AIPAC, which is— he's serving the AIPAC. When you have a senator like Lindsey Graham, which by the way, Larry Johnson, the former CIA analyst, disclosed that within few months we're going to be hearing about how the senator Lindsey Graham's been laundering money from Ukraine. You know, to me, if it were up to me, James, the punishment for these people, I can't say it here. I can say it on this. I know that's what I will do. That's what I will do on a Sunday afternoon after church. That's what I will do. It's because this is where the lack of quality of representatives. So there's no— so when I read the statement, the National Security Assessment, it's hollow, especially when I read page 21, I believe, or 22. Talking about China's surplus and money, whatever. What China— how did China achieve that? It was based on strategy. It was based on, on, on critical thinking. So, and this is why, you know, I agree with you as far as, you know, who, what, who's, who wrote this particular assessment are like, you know, still thinking in the past.

And that's to me, you're feeling that working among these people What? And then you left. Like, what, what is going on? How can you see a, a, a guy in Hanoi? I had coffee with him and he said, James, you have the best universities in the world, right? And I said, I get people say that. And he says, and then the Washington, uh, brainiacs who run the government, they all come from Harvard and Yale and Princeton and These are the best schools in the world, right? And yeah. And then he said, how come your foreign policy is, is a disaster for 50, 60, 70 years? Yeah. So what is the— what is your answer to that question?

Well, the individuals who are making decisions about education, first of all, are not qualified to begin with. Second, as a former professor here, which I would never teach again here. I made the decision. The classrooms have become some sort of a setting where you have to worry about the feelings of students. You know, you're gonna have to worry about— instead of worrying about how they think, you're gonna now start to worry about how they feel. About, well, if you are preparing the next generation of leaders, you know, if you are not arming them with knowledge How they going to function? And second, you have the likes of Harvard and Stanford and all that, which are the back door of the US government. Think about the government departments in Harvard, who's in it and how they push in the policies of the US. Think about Stanford, think about Yale and all this. So, and this is reflected through our failed and ill-conceived foreign policy for the last 4 decades, in my opinion. When I was working in DC, I used to push against certain narratives, and of course I was, I was looked at as like, oh no, Mr. O, that ain't gonna happen, that's not gonna be. And turns out to be the case. I was, I was giving heads up, James, since early '90s about where China is going to be in 20 years, and they were like, oh no, no, I ain't gonna happen.

Yeah, I gave speeches all over the country about China because I was almost living there. I was commuting between New York, you know, I'd be in Beijing and then get on a plane and pick up my kids from school in New York and then, you know, spend time with them and go back to Beijing. And I was like living between the two worlds. I was making speeches about it and people don't want to hear about it, right? They aggressively want to attack you as anti-American if you say China is rising and we're not and we're falling behind. That's just a fact. But the Americans don't want to hear it. Isn't that your experience?

That is true. I've been labeled as anti-American. It's like you have no idea what I've done for this country. So I usually don't talk about my past work and all that. But for those, to me, it's always about Anytime you hear someone— but someone talks like that, this is when you realize they have nothing of substance to say. So what they're going to end up doing is attacking you because they know you are right. And my criticism is out of love for our country, you know. Do I want to see America succeed? Of course, you know. Do I want to see America like the rest of the world live in peace? Of course. But when I see my country pushing towards creating more conflicts, like what we are— we're going to be talking about Venezuela soon, like what we're doing in Venezuela. Why, why don't you live and let live? Why these wars? Why this conflict at the expense of an average American here?

But in 1947, '48, they embedded that secret plan, NSA 220, that said we have to be an international military supplier to get the economies going. And then Korea happened. I tell the story in my, uh, fourth book, China Mirage. But let me get back to this national security thing. So, I mean, I'm a little humble talking about it with you. You can detail for your audience better than me. But to give you the short and sweet, first of all, it's like incredibly stupid. What it basically says is, okay, China is still the enemy and we're going to be number one, don't worry, but China is the enemy. Now, we weren't looking and China got rich and China built all those factories. We are not going to take any blame for that. But that just happened. So we cannot go to war with China right now. So this is what we are going to do. We are going to have the Monroe Doctrine, and then we will just regime change anyone in South America who does not like it. And then all those ties with China that South America has, see, this is South America, and we are just going to snip them all. All those supply lines that grew up naturally over decades and decades, we are just going to snip them all and say, "We got the Monroe Doctrine. This is our end." And then we are going to relocate magically, like magic, all these factories and suppliers and all this stuff that took decades and billions of hours of Chinese sweat and labor. And we will relocate it into our hemisphere from Greenland down to Argentina. And then we will get that thing cooking. And then once we have this safe hemisphere all sealed off by American power, then we will be able to fight China. It might take 10 years, might take 20 years. And there is nothing in here about the American citizen. We don't give a damn about the American citizen. We're going to fight China because we're going to be number one. So that— I mean, who is talking here?

What?

You know, there's no realization of what naturally is happening in the world. So Trump came out and said BRICS is dead. I just killed BRICS. BRICS is anti-American. I just killed BRICS. And then what, 2, 3 countries applied for BRICS membership the next day? China is building gold vaults worldwide. So Saudi Arabia is no longer selling in dollars, they can sell in yuan. China buys in yuan. The Saudi Arabians can go to a gold vault in Riyadh and exchange yuan for gold. China has realized what sound money is. They have been dealing in it for for 4,000 years. They have gold vaults around the world. So now I can accept yuan and go to a gold vault, and you know, it's as good as gold, whereas the dollar is burning. But the U.S. military is number one, and we'll put 20,000 people down in the Caribbean on ships. That's a sign of weakness, folks. That's not a sign of strength. Why do we— we That's, that's our back door. We need to put aircraft carriers down there. And then if people remember Mayor Koch from New York, he always said, yeah, doing— how am I doing? How am I doing? So let's ask, how is Trump doing? Tariffs, how are those going? They were a complete flop. Ukraine, he was going to solve it in a day. Israel wants to bomb Iran. Netanyahu's going to ask for more bombing. I thought we cleaned out Iran in, uh, in June. Venezuela, we're gonna get that oil.

Really?

We're gonna get— we're gonna— Exxon is gonna send people in to walk into, uh, oil well in Venezuela? And you are joking. There's people up in the mountains, in the jungles who are going to get you. BRICS is dead. We are committing piracy on the high seas. This is an international crime. If China and Russia seize American ships tomorrow, they legally can do it because we created the piracy. Jefferson went to the halls of— to the shores of Tripoli to end pirates. We have become pirates. Torture. You saw that CBS cut the torture segment, right? Did you see that?

No, I did not. No, I did not.

Folks, 60 Minutes did a whole thing that was approved by their lawyers, and they documented that we sent these Venezuelans to El Salvador to be tortured. They documented the torture.

Wow.

3 hours before it was going to come out, the White House said no, and the new Israeli woman, uh, Barry Weiss, who is a head of CBS, cut it. CBS is in turmoil because of this. So we're torturing, but you can't know about it. Denmark, you better give us Greenland. UK has cut intelligence ties because of our piracy. The UK, one of the Five Eyes, said we will no longer cooperate with American intelligence because you guys are going off the rails. See, the UK didn't support America in Vietnam, and now the UK is backing away from America. That's one of the Five Eyes. That's our closest ally. Things are going bazonkers, and it's signs of weakness in dollar and in the— in, in America. So that's enough on the national security thing.

Great, great. This paved the way for us talk about Vietnam— I'm sorry, about Venezuela. I, I— by the way, just before, uh, before we move on to that topic, I want to share something with the— with you and the community. Since you talked about gold and silver, uh, James, What I have in my hand, that's my Christmas gift. And guess what it was? I got coins, but one of them is right here.

So some smart person, indeed, indeed, in my tribe.

So I got, I got a few of those. So, so you are spot on with what you mentioned as far as the gold and silver and the tangible assets for that. So, all right, let's talk about Venezuela. And since you are a historian, you are an author, you wrote about Vietnam, you lived in Vietnam, there are those who are saying, oh, oh, Dr. O, there is no comparison between Vietnam and Venezuela. My argument, James, and please correct me if I'm wrong, my argument is that Venezuela is twice the size of Iraq. Venezuela has the mountains, has the rugged terrain similar to that of Vietnam. Venezuela has armed the, the, the population that will defend its sovereignty. Wouldn't that be some sort of a comparative to what took place in Vietnam, except in a different time and a different setting? Will I be wrong?

Folks, Secretary of State Dean Rusk was a genius. Robert McNamara graduated with an MBA from Harvard. They went, they, when they bombed Vietnam for the first time, Rusk was smoking a cigarette and he said, "We will give Ho Chi Minh a little sting and then he will come and negotiate." Okay. So that is 58,000 dead Americans and 350,000 injured Americans. And Vietnam, we've got 20,000 troops down in the Caribbean. What is an aircraft carrier going to do, bombing? That's not going to change anything. 20,000 troops, are you joking? We had 500,000 troops in Vietnam and they were all hidden in their bases. They couldn't out at night. They were afraid. The Vietnamese controlled the land for 50% of the time. We didn't win one day of the Vietnam War. Take a look at it. Venezuela? Yes. Now let me go back to the money. Sending aircraft carriers and 20,000 troops, that's very expensive. That's juicy military spending. You see, the Americans got tired of all the IUD stuff in Afghanistan. Afghanistan. So they didn't like that anymore on their TV screens. So we went to Ukraine. Oh man, $300 billion to Ukraine. Ah, Americans are getting tired of Ukraine. We can't fight China right now. What we'll do is prepare to fight China, which will cost trillions of dollars of military spending. And then the Caribbean, we might go into, uh, Venezuela or not. But even the preparation is like, oh man, look at this Raytheon stock and, and, you know, all the military contract. It's juicy. Preparation for war can be, uh, more profitable than war itself. So folks, Americans, why are you spending your money on aircraft carriers and the Caribbeans, and the subways in New York are dangerous, and 5,000 police resigned, and Chicago is a hellhole with bullets flying around. You know, wake up America. Let's demand quality in America and stop this nonsense. If we're going to fight China 10, 20 years from now, why? And I know the Doctors Channel has told you, you know, a lot about— I mean, I don't have to go on and on. You— this is an educated audience who knows what we're talking about.

Indeed, indeed. So how do you see, uh, uh, James, how do you see it moving forward with what's going on in Venezuela? In your opinion, in your assessment, what can we expect specifically, uh, you know, from at least the so-called an invasion I just don't see that, but there's a lot of— this word is buzzing a lot in Washington, D.C., the upcoming invasion of Venezuela.

Okay, can I just say something? I'm not trying to sell a book, but the name of the book is called Precious Freedom.

Why?

Because Ho Chi Minh was a genius. He said a war has to have a moral underpinning. You can get Marines excited and put them out for a few days, but if they don't know what they're fighting for— in other words, if I'm fighting for my mom and dad in the front yard, I'm 20 years old, I am really gonna fight. I'm gonna fight for my home territory. I'm gonna fight for my teachers. I'm gonna fight for my priests, you know, at St. John's School. You know what I mean? But I go out to some concept and I don't know why I'm there and the whole world is against me, it deflates. And Ho Chi Minh said, we're not going to beat America in the field, we're going to beat them in their living rooms. And he told his people, there's nothing more precious than freedom. You know what you're fighting for? Precious freedom. And they went out and they beat America. So right now, like, 70% of Americans don't want this Venezuelan thing. If you put 20,000 Marines into Venezuela and 2,000 of them die, we're going to have like 5 to 6% support of this because there's no moral basis for it. So I don't think we're going to be that stupid, but I have been wrong about how stupid Washington has been. If we go into Venezuela, just, you know, those body bag makers are going to make a fortune. It's going to be a disaster on the ground in every South American country and Central American country and African country and the total Global South. So I'll end with a quote, Doctor. Everybody knows or should know who Professor John Mearsheimer is.

Mm-hmm.

Professor John Mearsheimer said yesterday about this Venezuela and the dollar and Ukraine and Israel, whatever. He said— now this is a quote from a guy who knows these people— he said, President Xi and President Putin are sitting back and watching the West commit suicide. That's Professor John Mearsheimer yesterday.

He's right, he's right, because that's all the the Russians and the Chinese need to do, just take a step back. So before I let you go, James, I have to ask your opinion about the recent provocation from Japan regarding China. I'm sure you're aware of what the Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takahashi stated regarding Taiwan and how that provoked China. What I don't want to go into the details because I did an analysis about all this. What I want to ask your opinion— yeah, what I want to ask your opinion about, James, is given Japan's imperialistic instinct, military history, and so forth, you know, why in your opinion will a country like Japan, given the atrocities it's committed in Nanjing, for example, and some other Asian nations. Why will it embark on such provocation knowing that it stands no chance against the Chinese militarily speaking?

You know, I've seen you talk about the Rape of Nanking and your visit there. I gave the eulogy for Iris Chang who wrote The Rape of Nanking, and when I went to Nanking, they shut the museum and the director came to the train station, and there was a procession of limousines, and they shut down the museum for a private visit because of my connection to Iris Chang. So before I cry, I just wanted to get that out, that everybody should read Iris Chang's Rape of Nanking and maybe study how she died also, which is very suspicious. So I went to school in Japan, university in Japan, I hit Japan in 1974. I brought the former president of the United States back to Japan and had to negotiate with the US military, the ambassador, and the prime minister of Japan, the Japanese military. And I was representing George Herbert Walker Bush. So all of a sudden I was in the upper echelons. So, you know, Japan is not an independent country. 2 weeks ago, a legislator in the Diet asked the Prime Minister, "Is Japan really a sovereign country? How can we be sovereign when we don't control our airspace? How can we be sovereign when the US military can poison our land and we can't do anything about it?" How? And then, of course, she said, "Yes, Japan is a sovereign country." I don't— when you say Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Philippines, These are puppets of America. So why would Japan do that? Because if you want to be a leader or in the Diet and you won't follow the US generals and the US military, you're not going to get up there. Something's going to happen to you. You're not going to get in a leadership position. Japan is not a sovereign country. We have, what, 50,000 troops? Every single Japanese person lives, I think, within 70 kilometers of an American soldier. That's a free country? Folks, I've been to Okinawa. I've hitchhiked all over Japan as a kid. I've been dealing with Japan. I've dealt with the top government. I can't tell you what President Bush told me about the upper reaches of the Japanese government, but let me assure you that the upper reaches of the government, they are puppets talking the American line. So that's just the Americans saying, you know, do this, do that against China, keep China off edge. Let's go in Thailand and Cambodia, you know, let's South Korea, you know, we'll put these missiles in Taiwan, you buy something from us and piss China off. You know, we can't invade China right now, but we're going to shadowbox all over the place with our puppets. And that is what's going on. Those are not sovereign countries.

Wow. Well, greatly, greatly appreciate you, James, for your insights. Before I let you go and give you the last word, uh, I, I just want you to know how grateful the community is, uh, just learning from you and sharing your knowledge and insights with us. So this is, uh, and by the way, uh, I have a super sticker from someone who mentioned you here, actually more than one, but I want to share this one here. Arch Crusader, Thank you and season greetings, Dr. O and Mr. James Bradley. So I just want you to know the community are very, very grateful to you. I have another American Citizen X, happy holidays to you and yours. Thank you very much. And Rafael Lugon, an avid supporter of the channel here. So he wrote, get, you know, he asked me to get your opinion, uh, uh, get his opinion for me please. I watch Russian TV, they are saying Russia will never go to war with US and Europe. They know they are broke and Russia refuses to have to take care of them like after World War II. What do you think, James? I mean, what— before, uh, James, just quickly here, one of the facts, historical facts, is that World War II was won by the Soviets, not the Americans. And yet we lied about it here.

My first book, Flags of Our Fathers, says 85% of the Germans who died in World War II got a Russian bullet. It wasn't Patton and Eisenhower. They came in the end. I mean, I said this like a quarter century ago. Yes, but the propaganda is America won that war. China was the one that sucked the essence out of Japan. My dad fought on Iwo Jima. Where did those Japanese soldiers come from that were on Iwo Jima? They came from grueling 10 years of fighting in China. Japan was physically and economically exhausted by the Chinese. And we came in, we did heroic stuff, but it's China and Russia who dominated World War II. And it's China and Russia who are the big boys who are going to dominate the future. And, you know, it's time to come home, America. Shut down those thousand bases. Pay attention to our own children and continue to watch The Doctors channel and you'll know what's going on.

Well, truly, truly appreciate you, James. Really, it's always a treat and a pleasure to have you here on the channel. Your words of wisdom, your knowledge, it's priceless. Let me just say it. And you know, I think you know about me, I am not the type to sugarcoat things. That's not my personality. I say things as they are. So anytime you're here, I end up learning something. So, and I'm very grateful to you, and I say thank you on behalf of the entire community. So don't leave. Yeah, wait for me. I'll talk to you privately in a second here. So, uh, to the community, uh, remember to join me tomorrow for my conversation with Carl Zah. We will be chatting about really what's going on. It will be tomorrow at, uh, 1900 hours. That's when I'm going to be doing this, and I will be preparing an analysis for you for 2026. In addition to what, uh, James talked about, especially the financial aspect, I'm going to be dealing with the geopolitical trajectory moving into 2026. So I hope you guys enjoy this. Once again, thank you all to those who, uh, got me Super Stickers. Rafael Legon, as always, thank you. Arch Crusader, much appreciate you. And American Citizens, uh, much appreciate you as well. So to all of you, I say thank you for being here. As always, remember, geopolitics impacts your daily life in more ways than one. Till next time, bye-bye.