Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / America in the World: A Live-Streamed Dialog with Michael Moynihan

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America in the World: A Live-Streamed Dialog with Michael Moynihan · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Get a humans welcome in a safe space with dangerous ideas and I thoroughly enjoyed speaking
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with the one and only Michael Moynihan of the fifth column and the free press in a live
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video substack event, a substack calls it the election dialogues where prominent substackers
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come together on the app and stream live video to thousands of people who can all comment
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at the same time and like and all hate whatever we're saying.
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This is a brilliant functionality that I'll be spending a lot more time experimenting
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with in 2025 in order to observe that, be part of that, do get the substack app which
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is the only place where you can hear this conversation in its entirety.
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If you're listening to this on a regular podcast app, you'll hear the first portion of
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the conversation and just for this week and next during the US election, you will not
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have to pay anything to substack to consume the extra bonus content that we're releasing
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every day this week, I'll be releasing some election related material that will stimulate
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you and keep you sane, hopefully, and keep you sort of empowered and in live and entertained
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and informed in the lead up to this perhaps trying political time in the United States.
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We had a great chat, this was all about the kind of rift in the Republican Party between
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isolationists and interventionists and where that leaves the Democrats.
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We went all over the place to Gaza, immigration, the Australia versus Europe versus other
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different countries that had a deal with multiculturalism and illegal migration in China and Taiwan.
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I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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I hope you do too.
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As I've said, if you're not listening on substack, just quickly download the substack app
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and you'll be able to listen to it right there in its entirety.
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Enjoy it.
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The only.
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Michael Moynihan.
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Who's going to win?
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Yeah.
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Well, I can't tell you that.
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I mean, I would say that the assumptions right now that Donald Trump has taken a significant
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lead or it's trending in his direction, I, you know, there's a part of me that presumes
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that once four people say this, everybody in the meter repeats it.
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But once I have somebody like Steve Kornaki as somebody who I trust, saying, well, you
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know, it looks like all the polls are trending in that direction that I'm going to, you
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know, operate on the assumption that we're going to get a delayed second Trump term.
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I'm not super happy about that.
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I'm not super happy about any eventuality.
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But I, right now that's the feeling and that's why you have, I was talking about this
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when you were trying to reboot your phone or whatever about this mania that's happening
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in America about fascism that's about to be loosed on the American public.
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I, because we have such a little time left, there's no time to debate actual issues.
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So let's scare the shit out of people.
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And that doesn't work, by the way, because we're, I mean, also, remember, I said this,
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I was doing this thing for the free press, which will be up today.
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And I think I said it on the podcast that we did on substack for the, for the fifth column,
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is that people tend to forget that Hillary Clinton in her memoir said, yeah, I probably
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shouldn't have said the deplorables thing, bit of a mistake.
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She said half of the mega supporters are deplorables.
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And a number of people who were election watchers said, you know, that probably cost
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her a lot.
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I don't know what people think now if you say that everybody that's stuffing themselves
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into the MSG or, you know, going to a Trump rally in Pennsylvania are supporting a fascist.
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Because you're effectively calling this 75 million people that voted for him when he
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lost last time, fascist sympathizers, I mean, it's just a very risky strategy.
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You know, that's worse than deplorables.
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If you gave me the choice of being deplorable or a fascist, I'd take deplorable any day
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in a week.
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There can be something cute being deplorable.
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I might be just playing video games in my mom's basement and be deplorable, but fascist
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is beyond power.
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I mean, my perspective from, you know, a few days out from the election, from a nation,
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you know, a friendly nation like Australia and I tied, I fully acknowledge that both
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me as an individual and the country, which I represent, are at best cutesy.
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I don't know, you know, and so my opinions can be taken with some sort of a grain of
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salt.
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I know authority on these mad wall affairs, but there are, I think there are two worries
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about America, from America's allies.
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One is, will the world order, the victors of World War II establish, be able to continue
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and, or will we return to the sort of historical, norm, pre-United Nations, pre-World War II
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of big countries just basically doing what they can and whatever they can get away with.
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And the big country happens to sit next to a smaller country whose territory at once,
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it takes it.
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And that's what Russia and Ukraine represents, that's what China and Taiwan represents.
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And so are we seeing an end of kind of an American, I guess, national security consensus, because
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is that perceived as a bit 20th century and a bit kind of like, why are we wasting all
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our treasure abroad?
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And then the second question is like a question of American democracy internally and the
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impact that that has on our ability to propagate democratic ideals in smaller, fledgling
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countries.
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Like Australia is in this weird position where, because it's surrounded by a very large
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geographical area of small poor dysfunctional countries across the Pacific Ocean and Southeast
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Asia, it is sort of a regional hegemon.
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So in some strange ways, like Australia is the rich democratic United States global cop
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of the Asia Pacific.
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And it's like very important to Australians that are a number of these kinds of countries
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like a Solomon Islands and, you know, Tonga, the Philippines, the New Guinea, are as
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attracted as possible towards the Western liberal ideals and away from the Chinese ones.
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And of course the Chinese Communist Party is pouring massive amounts of money into, like
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I've got a mate, Michael who lives in the Solomon Islands, he just moved there from Australia
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and Australian bloke.
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And he says every single bridge, every single piece of infrastructure there has a massive
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Chinese flag on it.
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And you know, made in China, your friends in China is emblazoned on it.
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But actually Australia massively outspends China in the Solomon Islands in development aid.
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It's much closer to Australia.
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And because of our reticence, our post-colonial reticence to look like we're going in and
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bossing around the native, we don't mark any of it.
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You never see an Australian flag.
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You never hear the word Australia.
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So ours is all like, let's give it to the local communities, let nobody knows better
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how to spend money than the Chieftons of the local villages.
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So you just give it to the Chieftons of the local villages.
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Their cousin ends up with a nice yacht and like vast bucket loads of Australian cash
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going in.
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And there's no sort of soft power payoff.
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So that's, I get a long-winded way of saying like the second concern, quite apart from
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America's overt interventionist versus isolationist question, is like, is American democracy
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internally sufficiently captivating to the rest of the world that smaller countries
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can plausibly follow it?
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I mean, that's true.
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In a broad sense.
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Yeah, I mean, how do you want to start that conversation?
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I mean, let's start with global interventionism and robustness against Russia and China.
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Yeah.
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Look, I mean, the thing that one has to look back on and say, you know, one of the things
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that we didn't anticipate from the Iraq war was how long of a tale this would have when
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it came to American foreign policy decisions.
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I mean, I think it's, I think that everything springs from the failures in Iraq.
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I mean, at that point too, I mean, there was not a huge lust for interventionism in general
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until 9-11.
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After 9-11, obviously that changed quite a bit.
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And there's a lot of revisionism that happens with people about who was pro-warred, who wasn't.
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I mean, you know, I mean, it's like Glenn Greenwald, I think, has acknowledged that he was
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pretty pro-orac.
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But yeah, I think that the moment that we're in right now, the Russia stuff has been very,
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very strange.
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Because you cannot get a Republican, and I've talked to a number of them, you know, in the
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past, say, two years.
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I mean, I went up on the hill after I went to Ukraine.
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I went to Ukraine in the first three weeks after the war started.
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And there was an initial hunger from people, say, like, we have to support Ukrainians.
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I mean, obviously this is a democratic fight, had this kind of redulent of the Cold War kind
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of thing.
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In the second, Joe Biden, you know, made this an issue that he was going to at first,
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you know, throw a lot of money at.
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It really instantly became a partisan issue.
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And Republicans backed away.
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And when they backed away, the vacuum that was filled was filled by people that were
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of the kind of, you know, sort of, I wouldn't say Trumpian, because I don't think Trump
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is an isolationist.
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But in that kind of isolationist mold, if you, I mean, we just had a Congressman Dan
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Crenshaw on the show.
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And you know, he was funny talking about, he talked about, I want to show an off the show,
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the number of things that Republicans say in the house, say on Fox News versus what they
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say privately is just like there's an ocean that separates them.
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But it's very difficult to tell what people actually think about foreign policy stuff.
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Maybe isolationism is a misleading way of framing it because isolationism versus like
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interventionism because yes, you don't go blundering into really complicated other cultures
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Iraq and expect that you can just fix them by blowing the head off the leader and then
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everything's going to be okay, even if you don't have a plan for peace.
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There's a difference between that and what strikes me now in the debate around Ukraine
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is that people are framing it as if should we be giving lots and lots of money to Ukraine
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or not?
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Like even people that I think are reasonable seem to be sort of framing it as like it's
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our moral, even in other words, even people who support supporting Ukraine, the narrative
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seems to be like, you know, it's our moral duty to like support the brave men and women
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of Ukraine.
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I'm sorry.
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It's actually not.
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We have tons of moral duties around the world and that is not necessarily the one that
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is so important that it should occupy that amount of resources versus saving people who
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are starving in Bangladesh.
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The reason why I'm a super hawk on Ukraine is not for moral reasons.
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It's just strategic reasons because I want to live in a world in which the moment someone
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like Putin made a decision to drive tanks into a neighboring country, it becomes the
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rest of his life is completely deranged and his country goes bankrupt and it's an endless
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hemorrhaging of young people and men and the military and like people who think this
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is going to end in a negotiated settlement.
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So we might as well just end it now.
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This is the sort of Elon Musk kind of like Trumpy idea.
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Why?
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Well, we all know that Ukraine isn't going to get back its eastern provinces.
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So if it's going to end in a negotiated settlement, let's just negotiate now.
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The thing that that misses is it is indispensable to the principle of deterrence against tyrants
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that you make them suffer maximally during the war.
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It doesn't matter that the end point is the same and that we all know that Ukraine is
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going to end up not having its eastern provinces.
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The point is that the decision that Putin made to take this on has to be as costly as possible
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and as long as the Ukrainians are willing to fight, we should continue giving them as
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much as they need to continue fighting to raise the cost to would be tyrants all over
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the world.
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That is the only way you entrench a world order which ends up being a lot cheaper in
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the long run.
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I mean, you've all know Harari has recently been banging around making the point that if
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you think it's costly sending arms to Ukraine, you look at how costly it is to live in a
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world in which every country has to beef up its military because there is no stable order
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under which it can trust its neighbors.
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Even everyone is spending a fortune on the military and everyone's expenditures and
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healthy neighbors expenditures and you end up in a global arms race because nobody has
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any faith that the rules of the world will be enforced.
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So I think when we hawks, you know, and I use that even though I sort of pose the Iran war
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and I think of myself as like a hawk hawk and a bivalent and a squishy lefty on a number
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of kind of military issues, I think there's a clear benefit to living in a world that
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has consistent rules that say, yes, the borders of the world don't make a lot of sense.
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There's no particular reason why the Middle East is drawn the way it is.
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There's no particular reason necessarily why the border of Ukraine and Russia are the
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way that they are.
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But now that they are that way, what are there's no more fighting, there's no more fighting
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unless there's a really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really good reason
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and everyone agrees that we have to fight and then we don't keep each other's territory.
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That's the new world order and it has never existed before and it's existed for less
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than a century and we can't give up on it now.
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Yeah, I mean, I don't know where to even begin with that.
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I think it's obviously very true that doing nothing and there's nothing you can do in
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some of these situations, right?
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But I mean, look at Georgia, you know, the fact that the South Ossetia and Abkhazia were
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taken very easily, very quickly and Sarkashvili did actually try to put up a fight and you
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can go back and Chechnya is the same way, the first Chechen war, the second Chechen war,
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Moldova is Moldova next.
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I mean, that's the closest I think.
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I mean, I don't see anything happening with the Baltics.
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It's just, I mean, obviously beyond NATO states that it's just too difficult.
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I don't think that they actually have the stomach for it.
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We're talking about, you might be talking about a timeframe of years, but I might be talking
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about a timeframe of decades or centuries.
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It could be, but right now, I mean, this is one of the things that, that when people
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talk and I see people in the chat talking about, you know, who's going to win this war?
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I mean, the Russians have already lost this war.
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It doesn't matter what they gain, they've gained very little, they're not going to take
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care of.
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I mean, Liviv and these things, places in the West will stay Ukrainian.
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There's no way that the Russians are going much further than they already have.
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But if we take the casualty figures seriously, the American ones, the British ones, and let's
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pretend, I pointed this out a number of times.
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If we just pretend that even the low numbers there are true, you know, 50,000 dead, 60,000
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dead, something like this.
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And as I've pointed a million times, at the very beginning of this war, this happened.
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There was like 10,000, 20,000 compacted in the first couple months of the war in Ukraine
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versus, you know, what, what was it, 17,000, 18,000 that died in the entire Afghan war, the
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invasion of Afghanistan.
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I mean, in the 1970s, the invasion of Afghanistan precipitated the end of the Soviet
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empire, primarily because mothers were upset, they were protests.
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And you know, what is the equivalent here?
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The amazing thing is that there's people that do really, really good work trying to determine
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how many Russians have died, like by going to cemeteries, by talking to people.
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And you see the mess that it has made on the domestic front, of course, when they lose
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the war like this the way they've lost it.
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And I'm sorry, they have lost it because when you expand that amount of blood and treasure
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for what?
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I mean, what's the, I mean, it's kind of a humiliation in a lot of ways.
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It depends who, who's in, who's, like, death by whose definition have they lost it.
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What you need is for it to be clear to even the most awkish pro-Ukrain war, who's
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in an acolytes that it was lost, right?
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I mean, and they have to be humiliated.
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And I'm sorry, I can see people in the comments saying, oh, you know, Josh is a war
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war because he wants, as many Russian dead bodies as possible.
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Let me make it clear, I do want as many Russian dead bodies as possible because when you start
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a war, you don't get to decide when to finish the war.
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If you start a war, then it will be as painful as possible.
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And in the long run, I mean, from a utilitarian consequentialist point of view, you'll have
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a lot fewer dead bodies in the world.
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If you make sure the belligerents are thoroughly humiliated, unfortunately, that entails some
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death.
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To the person who just commented that they're Ukrainian and what are you talking about?
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Do you not know that Ukrainians have died?
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Yes, but the Ukrainians didn't invade Russia.
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I mean, it's important to point out that the people who made this an offensive war and
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decided to try to cannibalize a neighboring country and a sovereign country has lost an
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enormous number of people.
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You would expect that of a country being invaded if you just look at what happened to
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Mary.
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You were just in the first six months.
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Yes, you would expect that sort of thing.
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But what we all thought, and by the way, this is not just me, some non-expert in military
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affairs, but people I've talked to and I've talked to a lot of them who were preparing
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for this stuff and studying this stuff.
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They were even shocked by the extent of Russian losses in how the Ukrainians have actually
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hung in there.
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So, I mean, where does it end?
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I mean, there's a number of people who say things like, well, you have to stop the blood
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letting and you have to come to a conclusion.
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It's like, yes, but what are you negotiating away?
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What do you think that the Russians and Lavrov are going to sit at a table and say, what
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now?
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What exactly?
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Any agreement that they give is not worth the paper it's written on.
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I mean, you know, when the Soviet Union collapsed, ever since then, everything that they've
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ever agreed about their relationship with Ukraine has gone back on.
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There's no reason to believe.
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The only reason why Putin and his successors will not go back for another bite of Ukraine
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is because it was so painful the last time that they can't possibly bear it, not because
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they agreed on a piece of paper at the end of the war, not to.
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And let me also be clear about the Ukrainian casualties.
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I'm not suggesting that we could jol Ukraine into giving up more than it wants to or prolonging
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the war for longer than it should.
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Well, you know, that more Ukrainians should die than want to put themselves in harm's
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way.
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I'm saying, as long as we Ukrainians want to, we should allow them to with all the support
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that they can have.
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When the Ukrainians pull liquids, when the Ukrainians say it's time, then it's time.
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But, you know, I think this sometimes wrongly gets framed as like, oh, the West is using
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Ukraine as a as a puppet and the poor Ukrainians are suffering the cost.
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No, the Ukrainians are fighting for their lives very bravely because they don't want to
18:42
be just an annexed part of Russia.
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And as long as they want to, it's their call, not ours, how much blood and treasure they
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spill.
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Yeah, I mean, that's the argument when you hear people who, you know, oppose American
18:56
aid or just make it use for the Russians.
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It is essentially that we have prevented the Ukrainians from making a peace deal, which
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if you actually look at the arguments are pretty laughable on their face.
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But if the Ukrainians wanted to make a peace deal and the people of Ukraine wanted me look
19:11
at the opinion polls over the time.
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And I haven't seen any recently, I'm wondering if the desire for immediate peace has increased.
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It was pretty low before it was like, we don't want to to concede any of our territory.
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And the Ukrainians, obviously, a very nationalistic people and they have a long history with Russia.
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When I was there, the first person I met was a Polish guy.
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He was coming from Poland with arms to fight and was bringing, if you had a gun shop in Poland,
19:41
by the way, and he was bringing arms over to the Ukrainians.
19:45
And I said, oh, you know, you're providing, he said, no, no, I'm going to fight because my grandfather
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was brutally oppressed by the Soviets when Poland was occupied.
19:57
And the number of people in the region that had, and there were these kind of divisions
20:00
of people, people think of the kind of Spanish civil war Abraham Lincoln Brigade model of
20:04
a bunch of Americans that have watched Call of Duty coming over and trying, but the really
20:07
interesting thing with a number of people that were regional that had long-term beef with
20:12
the Russians who said, aha, now is the time that we can exercise these beef.
20:17
And there was a lot of them.
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I was actually shooting a piece on this premise, but, you know, the company I worked for kind
20:22
of went tits up.
20:23
So there you go.
20:24
But yeah, that kind of thing I was, but it's really, it's really interesting to watch
20:28
that regionally.
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I mean, going back to the history of Ukraine, I mean, look at Ukraine in 1920.
20:34
Look at the icons that are all over churches in Ukraine, and unfortunately, some unsavory
20:38
characters, who happens to sidle up next to Nazis when they were invaded in the Operation
20:45
Barbarossa.
20:46
But yeah, no, it's a tricky thing.
20:48
I don't want to dictate what the Ukrainians should do, and I don't think any Americans
20:52
should.
20:53
To expand the conversation out from, you know, if Ukraine are sort of a principle here,
20:58
like they, for me, are kind of a line in the sand.
21:01
Like if we, if we can't even, if we can't even manage to get, you know, to stay the
21:07
course on something as inconsequential fundamentally as Ukraine, where there's no real skin off
21:12
those apart from giving them lots of money, then what hope do we have of staying the course
21:18
of Western liberal order when it comes to something where there is real downsides, each
21:25
country, China, and Taiwan, like if China goes in, you know, China tries to take Taiwan,
21:33
what the hell happens, Michael, because there are so many, I mean, Russia was not an
21:38
important trading partner to the United States and Australia.
21:42
It was pretty significant in terms of European gas, and that had, you know, that took the
21:46
year or two for Europe to figure out.
21:49
But in terms of like, if China was able to have some kind of pincers in the South China
21:55
sea and like in the, in the oceans north of Australia, and just to disrupt shipping, shipping
22:00
between places like Singapore and Australia and Hong Kong and the United States, the entire
22:07
low would be plunged into the most massive depression.
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I mean, it would make the COVID supply chain crisis look like a picnic.
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I mean, we just wouldn't be able to get half of the ship that we expect to get.
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So what happens, like, what do you think we should do, like, how important I would ask
22:24
a question back to you in a way, I mean, and by the way, the trade thing is interesting.
22:28
And in the United States was the last country to recognize diplomatically the Soviet Union.
22:33
And it was a big fight, actually, in the late 20s and, you know, FDR supported it, Henry
22:38
Wallace, these people supported it.
22:40
And the idea like Henry Wallace, who was FDR's vice presidents from 1940 to 44, and also
22:45
a Soviet sympathizer.
22:46
And he made the argument that it was about trade.
22:48
It was like, he was a farmer, and it's like, we need to get our product out there.
22:51
We have to recognize the Soviets.
22:53
Whatever they're doing, who cares, because it's a big trading partner that turned out not
22:57
to be the case.
22:58
And that was the last time you ever heard that argument, views of the Russia, in the
23:02
Cold War.
23:03
But the question I would ask you is, what do you think the likelihood of that is because
23:08
if you are going to go an offensive war and try to take over Taiwan, which by the way,
23:15
the lesson in Ukraine should be like think twice, because you're not just fighting the Taiwanese,
23:22
you're fighting a lot of other people who are willing to supply that, but it's a different
23:25
thing, of course, because it's an island, obviously, all these things make a huge difference.
23:31
But my question to you is like, what do you think when it comes to a sort of economic
23:35
perspective, like, would the Chinese be so stupid at this point when they are so reliant
23:41
on the rest of the world themselves as we're reliant on them?
23:45
They're more self-sufficient than a lot of the countries that rely on them, certainly
23:48
regionally.
23:49
And for sure, but not entirely, I mean, aren't we bad for their economy?
23:54
Yeah, we'd be bad for their economy.
23:56
It would be a lot worse for her South Korea's economy and the Philippines economy and Australia's
24:03
economy, frankly, and Singapore, to the ninja, and possibly, I don't know about, I don't
24:09
know what the deficit is between China and the United States.