Latest / In These Times with Rabbi Ammi Hirsch / Walter Russell Mead

Transcript

Walter Russell Mead · In These Times with Rabbi Ammi Hirsch

0:01
I'm Rabbi Ami Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York, and
0:05
you're listening to In These Times.
0:10
Our world is changing rapidly.
0:13
Sometimes you get the sense that no one really understands or is
0:16
able to manage the pace of change.
0:19
And thus, these are unusually unstable times.
0:23
You cannot think that what we are moving into is a world either of domestic
0:29
stability, or of international stability.
0:33
Walter Russell Mead is a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute, a
0:38
Global View columnist at the Wall Street Journal, and the Alexander
0:42
Hamilton Professor of Strategy and Statecraft at the University of Florida.
0:47
He is also the author of five books, his latest, The Ark of a Covenant.
0:51
The United States, Israel, and the fate of the Jewish people is, according to
0:55
the New York Times, less a history of U. S. Israel policy than a sweeping
1:00
and masterfully told history of U. S. foreign policy in general.
1:12
Professor Walter Russell Mead, welcome to In These Times.
1:16
It's great to be here.
1:17
Thank you for having me.
1:19
I'd like to talk to you about Israel, the history of Israel, and the American Israel
1:24
relationship, as well as contemporary events, and also how it affects our
1:29
relationship with the rest of the world.
1:31
First, I want to talk to you about the Ark of a Covenant, the United States,
1:35
Israel, and the fate of the Jewish people, which you wrote a couple of years ago.
1:39
It's a monumental.
1:41
Epic, historic, uh, analysis of, uh, the American Israel, uh, relationship
1:47
and why Israel seems to be so important in the consciousness of, uh, Americans.
1:55
Can you tell us, uh, what is unique about America that it has this kind of
2:02
special relationship with the Jewish people and ultimately the Jewish people's
2:06
state, the state of Israel that differs, say, from other Western countries?
2:12
Well, I think the first thing to say is that It's as much a difference
2:16
of degree as a difference in kind.
2:19
That is, anti Semitism, as we've seen in the last couple of years particularly,
2:24
but going back through American history, there's never been a time when anti
2:28
Semitism was absent in American history.
2:32
Um, any more than in the history of the West generally.
2:35
But anti Semitism in general, the peaks have been lower and
2:40
the valleys deeper, so to speak.
2:42
And that's a pretty constant thing going back, you know, 300
2:46
years basically to Puritan Boston.
2:49
Um, and the early South where Charleston, South Carolina was known as one of the
2:54
most hospitable cities to Jews in the world in the 18th and 19th centuries.
3:01
And if you want to try to think about that, I think the root of it is probably,
3:08
religious and then from the religious sphere on into the cultural sphere.
3:13
That is that the American colonies were very much products of the English
3:19
Reformation, except for Maryland, which was settled in part by Catholics.
3:25
Uh, the, um, this, the groups who came to the, to the American colonies from
3:30
England tended to be on the, quote, left wing of the British Reformation.
3:35
And so there's this very strong sort of Calvinist reformed theological bent.
3:42
And it had a number of different ways of thinking about the Jews that marked it off
3:47
from a lot of Western Christian tradition.
3:51
What specifically, uh, would you draw our attention to?
3:55
Characteristically, first, the existence of Jews was seen by Western
4:01
Christians and Eastern Christians, too, to some degree, as a threat.
4:05
I mean, in one sense, a threat because, hey, if, uh, If these scholars of
4:11
the Old Testament don't believe our interpretation of it, you know, they
4:15
reject it, does that mean we're wrong?
4:17
So there's sort of that element.
4:20
But more, here's this group of people who don't live by the laws
4:25
and don't recognize the morality.
4:27
that the rest of us recognize.
4:29
I mean, it's not completely different what they believe, but, you know, divine
4:34
right of kings or feudal oaths swearing on a Bible, all of these things that held
4:38
society together, a very fragile society.
4:42
The Jews don't believe the things that we believe.
4:46
The Jews stand at the place where our understanding of the economy, which
4:52
would say, don't borrow and lend money, finance in general is evil.
4:57
Well, the thing is, you got to have finance.
5:00
If you're a king and you want to go to war, you need the revenue
5:03
from many years to be available in one year to fight your war.
5:08
Well, that implies banking, that implies interest, and that implies
5:11
somehow that your ideas about how your society works are incomplete.
5:15
There's the Jew.
5:17
So you see, in all of these different ways, uh, there are ways in which
5:22
simply the existence of Jews, regardless of what a particular Jew
5:27
might do at a particular time, was felt by lots of people as a threat.
5:35
But in this English Reformation Christianity, that changed.
5:40
Number one, instead of seeing the existence of Jews as a sign that,
5:46
Christianity was wrong, possibly.
5:49
These Christians saw the existence of Jews as proof that Christianity is right.
5:54
That is to say, you know, our God said that he would preserve this
5:58
people and look, here they are.
6:01
And in the same way, beginning in the 17th century, there's a tradition of Anglo
6:07
American writers saying the Bible says that in the future, the Jews will return.
6:13
to their ancient land.
6:16
And so any sign of Zionism would be naturally and spontaneously
6:22
seen by these Christians as a sign.
6:25
Yes, I'm right.
6:26
The Bible is true.
6:28
I can believe it.
6:30
So Jews, instead of a source of fear and uncertainty,
6:34
become a source of reassurance.
6:37
I think that actually plays a large role.
6:42
But still the other.
6:44
Is that right?
6:45
Even if, if it changed from a negative perspective to a positive
6:49
perspective, still there's something other about the Jewish people.
6:53
Oh yeah, well, nobody's, nobody's going to say they're not Jewish, you know.
6:58
Right.
6:58
And they don't marry other people as often as, as, you
7:02
know, they stick to themselves.
7:04
They have their own food.
7:05
So there are different people want to be a different people.
7:09
Right.
7:09
But also, um, again, in America, You can be an Irish American, you
7:17
can want Ireland to win in the World Cup, you can want Ireland to drive
7:23
the English out of Ireland, you can get very drunk on St. Patrick's
7:28
Day or whatever it might be, right?
7:31
But that doesn't make you less an American.
7:33
So, in America, we have this idea that You can be a people, you know, a member of a
7:40
people which is not American and yet also be a full member of the American people.
7:46
You can say that we've, we don't, not just separate church from state in
7:51
America, but we separate state from tribe.
7:54
And so the Jewish tribe can sit there right next to the Scottish
7:58
tribe, the Greek tribe, the Polish tribe, the WASP tribe, you name it.
8:04
And, in that sense, be no more or less American than anybody else here.
8:11
And the other thing would be attitudes toward capitalism, I think.
8:15
You'll often find anti Semitism around the world is associated with suspicion,
8:21
fear, and opposition to capitalism.
8:24
Uh, you know, it's soulless.
8:26
It concentrates wealth in the hands of bad people.
8:30
Many of the kinds of stereotypes about what Jews do, uh, you know, get rich, be
8:38
selfish, whatever, whatever, whatever.
8:40
Those things absolutely are attributable to capitalists.
8:45
And you will often find, therefore, that populist political movements have a lot
8:51
of sort of an anti Semitic tang to it.
8:54
I say in Ark of the Covenant.
8:56
That William Jennings Bryan's famous cry at the 1896 convention, Thou shalt not
9:03
crucify mankind upon a cross of gold, is, that's an anti Semitic dog whistle.
9:12
Mm hmm.
9:13
So, There was a time early in Israel's formative years in the 40s and the
9:19
50s where Israel was kind of the darling of both the right and the
9:22
left and the socialists in Europe were strongly supportive of Israel.
9:27
Do you think that there was a connection to their suspicion or their distance
9:31
to capitalism that played a role in that, that they saw the Israelis as
9:36
kind of building a new socialist haven?
9:39
Yeah.
9:40
Well, this is, again, a lot of, um, you might say, European
9:46
philo Semitism has generally speaking been rooted in the left.
9:51
If you think about 19th and early 20th century Europe, the right tended
9:56
to be clerical, Catholic, you know, we want the king, we want the pope.
10:02
And the left, which is anti clerical, doesn't want religious tests for office,
10:08
doesn't believe in the kind of sacralized power structure of a traditional empire
10:14
and feudal system and all of this.
10:16
embraces the emancipation of the Jews, which comes from the French revolution and
10:22
Napoleon as part of a modernizing agenda.
10:27
And so there's always been this sense in Europe that somebody's attitudes
10:32
toward Jews, not always, but, but can often be an ideological marker.
10:37
Then it's intensified in the fascist and Nazi period where the Jews get
10:42
singled out by the fascist right as the greatest enemy of all.
10:47
And so then to be in the 1940s and 50s, to be on the left was to, you know, be
10:57
anti fascist and therefore pro Jewish.
11:01
Also, I have to say that the fact that while the Bolsheviks, generally speaking,
11:06
were anti Zionist, there was a period in the late 40s, which is actually critical
11:12
for the emergence of Israel, when Stalin saw Zionism as a tool that would help him
11:16
wreck the British empire and frustrate American and British strategic planning.
11:22
And so Stalin actually did much more for the independence of Israel.
11:26
than Harry Truman ever did.
11:29
And so again, that, that kind of gives the left, uh, uh, you know,
11:33
gives Israel a, um, a left wing thing.
11:36
During World War II, Irgun was incredibly popular on the left in the U. S. Which
11:44
was, uh, Irgun was a right wing, uh.
11:47
That's right.
11:48
It's very, you know.
11:49
Paramilitary outfit.
11:50
And so you would have actually your gun spokesman appear at communist and
11:55
left wing rallies in the United States.
11:58
And then in the fifties, where Eisenhower wanted to center
12:03
American policy on friendship with Nasser and the Gulf states.
12:08
You had an Arab centric American foreign policy, and as you, I'm sure, remember,
12:13
actually helped force Israel to retreat from the Sinai after the Suez War of 1956.
12:21
It was seen as my, you know, what we need is a human rights
12:24
policy in the Middle East.
12:26
We don't want to stand with a bunch of feudal monarchs and, and
12:29
tyrannical generals, but for, you know, because of oil and because of
12:34
strategic concerns, plucky Israel.
12:38
Holy.
12:38
Only democracy, a nation of refugees.
12:43
So, this was a stick with which the left hit Eisenhower's foreign policy
12:48
with over and over and over again.
12:51
And the fact that icons like Eleanor Roosevelt were very pro Zionist and later
12:58
Martin Luther King sort of helped cement that perception for a very long time.
13:03
So what happened, uh, up until the Six Day War, the, the French were Israel's primary
13:09
arms supplier in the Six Day War itself.
13:12
And something happened after, I guess, after the Six Day War that
13:16
really marked the, the shift.
13:18
What happened since?
13:19
Well, it, I mean, for the French, they had two reasons for being pro Israel.
13:24
One was, they were mad at the British who forced them out of Syria.
13:27
And so, they were happy to help the Jews force the British out of the Middle East.
13:32
Ah, ah, ah.
13:33
You know, nothing more Gallic than that.
13:36
But also, um, the French were really, because they were
13:39
fighting the war in Algeria.
13:41
They were very opposed to Arab nationalism.
13:44
Nasser was supporting, you know, et cetera.
13:46
So, the French had their own realpolitik reasons.
13:49
Plus, the French need to sell arms.
13:52
French arms industry today still needs to sell arms.
13:55
The French domestic market isn't large enough to support the kind of, um,
14:01
multidimensional arms industry that Gaullist ideology says France should have.
14:07
So, it's a nation constantly seeking arms exports, and
14:10
Israel was a very good market.
14:13
So, all of those reasons, but after 1967, France isn't in Algeria anymore.
14:19
You know, Arab nationalism is a fact, the French are trying to accommodate
14:22
with it, and so they move, they move to a different direction.
14:26
But there must be some root ideological driving force that over the years
14:36
created such animosity on the left.
14:39
In particular, the European left, I'd also like you to comment on the American
14:43
left, but especially in the European left that really looks at, uh, Israel with,
14:49
with tremendous animus from this period of admiration, uh, just a few decades ago.
14:56
What was it?
14:57
What do you think it is?
14:58
I think it's a generational shift.
15:01
The post World War II European generation of the left was very pro Israel, but it
15:08
was also in general, the left supported the efforts of the European governments
15:14
of the time to hold onto their colonies.
15:16
And so with what was in Europe, the 68 generation, you know, the
15:21
equivalent of the American boomers, the hippies, the new left radicals.
15:27
saw their parents support for Israel as part of their general parents support for
15:33
white colonialism in the developing world.
15:37
And so it became a touchstone on the left in Europe.
15:41
Are you a real lefty or are you compromising social imperial 1950s?
15:47
lefty.
15:49
And then with, as immigration began somewhat later to enter European politics,
15:55
and as America becomes more identified with being pro Israel, before 1973,
16:00
America, in terms of foreign policy, was not a particularly pro Israel country.
16:06
But after that, And starting under Nixon and Kissinger, oh, names of enormous
16:12
evil on the Democratic left, and then going on through like Ronald Reagan,
16:17
the horror and George W. Bush, right?
16:20
Just to be anti Israel on the left would be to signal you don't
16:26
like Bush and the Republicans.
16:28
You don't like American capitalism.
16:30
You don't like imperialism and that you personally have liberated yourself from
16:35
the hideous burden of Western imperialism.
16:39
And then again, when you start having a lot of immigrants from North Africa,
16:44
in France, from Turkey, in Germany, from Pakistan and in the UK, That
16:50
changes if you're normally speaking, it's the democratic parties on the
16:55
left that hope to do well from the votes of new immigrants who tend
16:59
to be poorer, want social programs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
17:03
And so electoral logic combines with kind of cultural and political
17:08
logic to create This force.
17:13
And do you think that many of those, uh, developments also
17:17
characterize the American left?
17:19
And is there still a broad consensus of pro Israel support?
17:24
Well, the American left, you know, on every issue, not just Israel, tends to
17:29
be less radical than the European left and slower to develop so that, you know,
17:37
the tendencies that happened relatively quickly on the left side, um, in Europe.
17:43
I mean, actually, I went in, in the early 80s, Michael Harrington, who
17:48
was then president of the Democratic Socialists of America, invited me to come
17:52
with him to a conference that Francois Mitterrand was holding for the Third
17:57
International or whatever it is in Paris.
18:00
And, um, Mike was, uh, dying of cancer at the time.
18:05
And all the time we were there, we were sitting in, um, Café
18:09
Flore, you know, in Paris.
18:11
These great leaders of the social democratic left, including Israeli
18:16
leaders, were coming by, bonding, talking about the good old days that they had all
18:21
fought together, their current struggles.
18:24
And, of course, the first generation of Israeli leaders.
18:28
leftist politicians, which is a large majority, were exiles often from Europe
18:33
or, you know, had, had, had either gotten out before or after the war and had still
18:39
connections forged in the old country with the generation that had grown up in
18:45
Germany and Sweden and France and so on.
18:48
So I saw this community of what was then the Israeli political establishment.
18:54
Absolutely being embraced as late as the early 1980s, but obviously you
19:00
would not see anything like that today.
19:03
And you wouldn't see the democratic socialists of America singling out
19:07
Israel as proof that socialism can work in a democratic country, which
19:12
they used to do in the fifties.
19:14
It's exactly the opposite now.
19:15
Right.
19:16
They used to say in the fifties.
19:18
You say socialism, it means an end to free speech, look at Israel.
19:22
You say socialism means weak national defense, look at Israel.
19:26
Israel was the poster child of the democratic left.
19:30
You can go back and listen to Peter, Paul and Mary, that communist Pete
19:34
Seeger singing like Zionist, you know, summer camp songs to American
19:41
audiences at folk hootenannies.
19:43
I mean, this is, this is what it was.
19:46
And it's.
19:47
You know, people under, under 50 can hardly imagine it, but that's,
19:51
that's the world I grew up in.
19:53
And so what, what happened?
19:55
Is there something really fundamental at its core that shifted this, or you,
20:00
you talked about a number of different factors, economic factors and political
20:04
factors and geopolitical factors that go way beyond Israel and a world Jewry.
20:09
Is there something that you can point to that's fundamental?
20:12
It says, okay, here was the ideological shift that shifted the entire left
20:18
political spectrum away from Israel.
20:21
Well, as I say, I, I do think generally big historical events are
20:26
multi causal rather than unicausal.
20:29
You know, that it takes a lot of little streams to form a mighty river.
20:34
And this river is as mighty as it has become because so many
20:38
different streams pour into it.
20:41
But I think a big thing that has come, particularly since the end of the Cold
20:45
War, is that, remember that the decision to partition Israel in 1947 was the first
20:54
big decision the United Nations ever took.
20:58
And for a whole generation of liberal internationalists, you know.
21:03
They'd grown up with 100 years of conflicts between different ethnic groups,
21:11
each claiming the same piece of territory.
21:13
And you know, these were wars of ethnic cleansing, wars of genocide,
21:17
the Balkans, Poland, Germany, Germany, France, you know, all of these ethnic
21:22
wars that, that went on and on and on.
21:26
And the UN was an instrument that would solve these things.
21:29
And you obviously had to solve them by compromise.
21:31
Nobody was going to get everything.
21:33
If both the Serbs and the Albanians claim Kosovo, nobody's
21:37
going to get the whole thing.
21:39
But there has to be a referee that draws a line and then people accept the line.
21:45
And even if the line is maybe a little bit unfair, we have to have a referee
21:51
or we can't play the game, so to speak, especially in an age of nuclear weapons.
21:56
And so the Arabs were the ones.
21:59
Who rejected the foundation of liberal internationalism when they
22:03
rejected the decision to partition.
22:06
This was seen not simply as.
22:09
An element in the Middle Eastern war, but it was an attack on the foundations of
22:15
world peace and international law, which in the immediate aftermath of World War II
22:19
obviously meant to people, human survival, because if we can't stop these wars and
22:25
if a decision from the UN doesn't stop it, a totally legitimate decision of the UN
22:30
doesn't stop it, then there is, and the Arabs rejected the authority of the UN.
22:36
When they rejected the partition, they had their reasons.
22:39
I'm not, I'm not being Solomon here, you know, but there it is.
22:43
So, but after 1990, it began to seem to a lot of liberal
22:49
internationalists that Israel was the dirty dog that was preventing
22:53
the establishment of universal peace.
22:56
You know, that Israel is a stronger party.
22:59
We're never going to have peace in the Middle East and therefore never going
23:02
to have world peace unless Israel.
23:07
will make more concessions to the Palestinians.
23:11
And sure, you know, um, maybe we're asking a little too much,
23:15
but Israel is the stronger party.
23:17
The weaker party has no concessions to give.
23:19
It's got the Israel must be generous, must be generous.
23:24
And also, if we're going to end wars, we have to stop nationalism.
23:30
And Zionism is an unconstrained 19th century nationalism in full
23:38
glory, like the French nationalism that wanted Alsace and Lorraine
23:43
back, the Israeli nationalism, some of them want the West Bank.
23:47
It has claims based on ethnicity and history.
23:50
It's willing to go to war to defend itself and advance what it sees as its interest.
23:56
Well, if Germany did that, if France did that, if Italy did
23:58
that, Europe would fall into war.
24:01
The whole world would be chaos.
24:03
So, our efforts to build a moral order of universal peace on which the salvation
24:11
or future of the world depends, all right, Israel is the stone in the shoe.
24:16
Israel is the danger.
24:19
All right.
24:19
In some ways, now we're back to the Middle Ages, where the Christian
24:24
religion was seen as the only strong force holding these feudal societies.
24:29
around.
24:30
In weak state, the loyalty of nobles to the king is only as
24:34
strong as their faith in the oath that they've given to the king.
24:39
You see, and there's no police, so the only authority against
24:43
crime is the conscience.
24:46
of people.
24:47
And the Jews are denying this foundation stone on which everything is built.
24:53
You know, that's really fascinating.
24:54
And one of the profound insights that you wrote about in the Ark of a Covenant
24:59
is when you reviewed, uh, Herschel's motivation, the founder of Zionism.
25:04
It was fundamentally based on a pessimistic view.
25:09
of the Enlightenment, they were prepared to accept the offer given by the
25:16
Enlightenment of becoming loyal citizens.
25:18
It's what George Washington originally proposed to the Jews of America in
25:22
exchange for protection of the Jews.
25:25
And Herschel's profound insight was European enlightenment would, despite
25:32
its good intentions, perhaps, would never be able to protect the Jews.
25:36
So the Zionist movement itself, and then the state of Israel, were
25:41
created because of the pessimism.
25:46
Of the Zionists that the international community can live
25:50
up to its word in the first place.
25:52
That's right.
25:53
And so this explains the constant ongoing tension because Westerners have faith in
25:58
Western liberalism and enlightenment to impose or at least protect world order.
26:04
Whereas Israelis, it's very creation was in opposition to that assertion.
26:11
Yeah.
26:11
They're exactly right.
26:13
You know, these liberals, which said, basically, Herzl, are lovely people.
26:17
I wish them all the good in the world.
26:21
And my heart resonates with their values.
26:25
But if the Jews believe in liberalism, the Jews will be exterminated.
26:31
I mean, that was literally what he said, that the good people, when
26:35
the You know, when the Gestapo comes for you, all of these wonderful
26:39
people signing petitions and forming civil action groups about universal
26:44
human rights, they won't be there.
26:47
They will drag you off to the camps and nobody will be there to help you.
26:52
And this, I think, explains a lot of what goes on between American
26:56
Jews and Israeli Jews today.
26:59
American Jews, by and large, are people for whom Herzl, so far, was wrong.
27:05
And Israeli Jews are people for whom, by and large, Herzl was right.
27:16
That is so profound and which brings us basically to October 7th.
27:22
I felt, on October 7th, by the afternoon, when I began to hear the
27:27
reports that the Middle East was going to change, it wasn't surprising me.
27:31
I think the response, the military response of the Israeli government would
27:35
have been the response of any government.
27:38
What is considered right or left.
27:40
And it reflected the strong will of the Israeli people.
27:44
But this, this tension that you really profoundly point to that the, the
27:50
fundamental is really skepticism of international ability to protect the
27:56
state of Israel and enforce agreements.
27:58
And we're seeing it every day in terms of the ceasefire
28:00
agreements in Lebanon and Gaza.
28:03
That is the source of the tension with the American government.
28:06
And with American Jews, whose basic assumption is we embrace the power
28:13
of Western liberalism to protect us.
28:16
And for American Jews in particular, who have been seeing now an attack by the
28:22
anti liberal left on American Jews, a kind of, you know, hate spewing eruption
28:29
of anti Jewish feeling against American Jews because of things happening in the
28:34
Middle East, you know, feel the need to cling more desperately than ever to the
28:39
idea that liberalism and the strength of liberal values in America is what
28:44
will keep me safe and my children safe.
28:47
I want liberalism to reign at Harvard, and I want these illiberal
28:52
protesters dealt with so that Harvard is a safe space for me.
28:57
And so the American Jews, many of them have tended to become more invested in
29:04
liberalism as the only path forward for solving their own personal problems.
29:10
situation in the United States as Israel move, has moved further away
29:16
from what maybe a liberal idealist would prescribe as the right policy.
29:22
And this is a profoundly difficult moment.
29:26
For the American Jewish community, I can, of course, tell you that firsthand.
29:31
It's, in some respects, it's unprecedentedly
29:34
difficult for American Jews.
29:38
Most American Jews alive today have really not lived through this
29:42
kind of anxiety in our relationship with the broader community.
29:49
Let me ask you, um, where, so where do we go from here?
29:53
In your book, you express I think, I think it's fair to characterize this as quite
29:59
critical or even scathing perspective on the Obama policies in the Middle East,
30:06
as at least you describe how the players in the Middle East were skeptical of
30:13
the naivete of the Obama administration.
30:16
bringing democracy to the Middle East and, uh, eventually, uh, putting pressure
30:20
on Israel to relent to a two state solution as Obama wanted to implement it.
30:27
Could you just relate to that, expand on that, and give us your own sense,
30:32
where do we go from here now that the Middle East has changed so dramatically?
30:36
Right.
30:37
Well, I do think that Barack Obama is not an anti Semite, and I certainly see
30:43
all kinds of overreactions there, but He did not understand power politics.
30:50
He did not understand, he does not understand the Middle East.
30:54
You know, forget Israel, he sort of allowed Russia into Syria.
30:58
The French were horrified by how weak the American negotiating position was
31:03
vis a vis Iran in the nuclear deal.
31:06
So you know, for the Israelis, and actually for everybody in the Middle
31:10
East, lives on a knife edge because what has happened to Lebanon or Syria could
31:16
happen to any country in the Middle East.
31:19
And every ruler there Knows that the prime minister of Iraq under the last
31:24
king, his head was kicked through the streets like a soccer ball.
31:28
They do not live, they have never for one nanosecond lived in a post
31:34
historical universe of liberal peace and the United Nations Charter, uh,
31:40
regulating affairs between nations.
31:42
They live in the world of Realpolitik.
31:45
And that makes them think differently, act differently.
31:49
doesn't mean they're always right.
31:50
People make misjudgements.
31:52
This is a very difficult thing to do well.
31:55
Being a realpolitiker doesn't mean you always make smart realpolitik decisions,
31:59
but when you have a sort of a John Kerry coming in nattering about win
32:03
win solutions and Things like that.
32:07
You just sort of sigh and, and you'll listen to the Americans, not because
32:13
you think they are right about anything, but because their actions
32:19
will have an impact, a real impact.
32:22
And so you're trying to anticipate their actions.
32:25
You're trying to play the American.
32:27
And this would be as true of the Palestinians, as of the Israelis,
32:30
as of the Egyptians, as of the Saudis, as of the Emiratis.
32:34
You're trying to play these people, you know, they're stupid, but
32:38
they're strong and you need to figure out where they'll blunder next.
32:44
And if you can try to steer them away from the things that would be worse for you.
32:49
And if you can't.
32:51
Well, prepare yourself, you know, for what they're going to do.
32:55
And Americans have pretty much consistently believed going back to
33:00
the 40s that the same kind of peace that we introduced into Europe, Western
33:06
Europe after World War II with the Marshall Plan and our support for the
33:10
beginnings of the EU and so on, you know, we could do that in the Middle East.
33:15
And to some degree, that would be the next step in the transformation of the world.
33:20
to the liberal utopia that we all would very much rather live in
33:24
than in the place that we are now.
33:27
But the fundamental thing for the Obama people, I think, was
33:31
their failure to realize that you can't do that on the cheap.
33:37
If you wanted to transform the Middle East, you would have to project
33:42
American power more, not less.
33:45
The more America withdraws from the Middle East, the less anybody in the
33:51
Middle East cares what America thinks.
33:54
And Obama never really grasped the transactional nature because he's
34:00
a liberal and the way that you get ahead in America, you know, to rise
34:05
in our elite and so on, as you find win win solutions, you learn how
34:10
to bridge gaps with other people.
34:12
You realize that someone who looks very different from you under the
34:16
skin, actually they're an American too.
34:18
And there are all kinds of ways that, you know, you can build
34:22
coalitions and common goals.
34:24
Principles can really help you move forward.
34:28
The Middle East is not that kind of a place, sadly.
34:33
So okay, we had Obama, four years of Trump, Biden, and now Trump again.
34:40
Is American policy more or less consistent, or are there going to be, uh,
34:46
changes in your estimation in the coming years, and where do we go from here?
34:52
Why?
34:52
Well, I can tell you American policy in the Middle East will be
34:55
as predictable as Donald Trump.
35:00
Uh, Trump has much more the instincts of a Middle Easterner than Obama did, which
35:08
may or may not make him a better person or a greater leader or any of those things.
35:13
But he does, I think, instinctively get.
35:16
The transactional nature of foreign policy in the Middle East.
35:20
And so I think Middle Eastern leaders feel it is easier to talk to him.
35:27
You know, they have to like when they're, when they're sort of with
35:29
a Blinken or a Biden or an Obama or a Kerry, they sort of have to dance
35:34
this bizarre dance of liberal pieties.
35:37
And, you know, remember which flower you have to hold forward at the right
35:40
moment to, to keep the Americans happy.
35:44
It's such a bore, but you have to do it.
35:47
Uh, and with Trump, you know, you can just cut right to the chase and
35:51
talk about, okay, this is what I want and this is what I'll give you.
35:55
And they like that.
35:57
On the other hand, Trump's policies are not always so endearing.
36:01
For example, pumping all the oil and gas that we can is not going to help.
36:08
The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia generate the massive wealth that he needs for the
36:14
economic transformation of Saudi Arabia that he sees as vital to his future.
36:20
Do you think over the next four years there'll be this
36:23
expansion of the Abraham Accords?
36:25
Uh, four years right now is a very long time.
36:29
And here again, this is how the Middle East will surprise you.
36:32
The thing that drove the Abraham Accords, in my view, was the increased fear of Iran
36:37
by everybody else in the region and their decreased confidence in the Americans.
36:43
And the more they felt that the Americans were unreliable
36:47
and that Iran was a danger.
36:49
The more reason the Arabs and the Israelis had to work together.
36:53
And there's a secondary reason and another reason related to economic development.
36:58
But but that security argument, the fact that Israel has has so weakened
37:03
Iran has actually Weakened, in some ways, the need, say, for the Saudis
37:10
for a military alliance with Israel.
37:13
Okay?
37:14
And you might say, well, shouldn't they be grateful because Israel
37:17
has helped them and respond but with gratitude by a kind gesture?
37:21
Now you have not been paying attention to the politics of the Middle East.
37:26
Israel has removed a big danger from the Saudis.
37:30
Now the, you know, possibly the rise of Turkey and Erdogan, which
37:35
is potentially a real threat for the Saudis as well, could bring it back.
37:41
I mean, the What the Israelis and the Arabs have in common is that both of
37:46
them think that they cannot dominate the Middle East on their own, but that
37:52
for their independence to be preserved, no other power should be able to
37:57
dominate it except possibly the U. S. with whom they've both learned to deal.
38:02
So they don't want the Turks.
38:05
They don't want the Iranians.
38:06
They don't want anybody to, to rule the roost.
38:10
But we should never mistake the Abraham Accords for some kind of, you know, Franco
38:16
German reconciliation after World War II.
38:20
They are a move on the chessboard.
38:23
And you take those moves based on Your calculations about your national
38:29
interest, and may I say your personal survival and the survival of your family.
38:35
Professor Mead, before we run out of time, I'd like to ask you about the
38:39
American foreign policy, in particular as it relates to Europe and Ukraine.
38:45
What is the resolution going to be in Ukraine?
38:49
It was interesting, I was just in Davos last week and, you know, was on
38:53
a couple of panels in the Ukraine house and talked to a lot of folks there.
38:58
I think we should all understand that Western policy toward Ukraine, we call
39:04
it maybe the Schultz Biden consensus on Ukraine, was a pretty cynical thing.
39:10
And that the idea was that we can't win because Putin has the power of nuclear
39:17
escalation, or in general, Putin has what people call escalation dominance.
39:21
But we don't want Ukraine to sort of totally be subjugated.
39:27
So what do we do?
39:28
We give Ukraine weapons and aid, enough to stop collapse, but not enough
39:33
to let them actually win the war.
39:36
And the idea is that sooner or later, the Ukrainians will get tired of
39:40
fighting a war that they can't win.
39:42
And the Ukrainians, will go to Putin, you know, the Ukrainians
39:46
will bring up the idea of peace.
39:48
And so then I, having actually failed to defend Ukraine from Russia
39:53
effectively, can look in the mirror and say, I've stood up for Ukraine,
39:57
but now that Ukraine wants to give Hitler the Sudetenland, I'm not Neville
40:03
Chamberlain, I'm Winston Churchill.
40:05
You know, this is this idea of the sort of puffed up vanity of our political
40:10
class that it, It doesn't want to admit what it's doing because it
40:16
might make it feel bad about itself.
40:19
So we've had a very cynical policy, which is now coming to the inevitable
40:25
conclusion that Ukraine is going to need to give up territory for Russia.
40:30
The question is, what security guarantees can Ukraine hope to get from that?
40:35
Sadly, I think NATO membership is out of the question, uh, but
40:40
from the Ukrainian point of view.
40:42
It's out of the question because that's a red line for the Russians.
40:45
It is a red line for the Russians, but it's also probably
40:48
a red line for the Hungarians.
40:49
You need unanimous consent.
40:52
in NATO.
40:53
I think it's a red line in Germany, frankly.
40:56
You know, so Ukraine will be given a new certificate of liberal
41:01
internationalist defense commitment with a few more ribbons and stamps on
41:06
it than the Budapest Memorandum had, but possibly of about the same worth.
41:11
That is, you know, maybe something better will happen.
41:15
And I think it's interesting that Trump has been tougher on
41:20
Russia than people expected.
41:23
I don't think Trump wants a humiliating peace.
41:27
Trump may not be a liberal internationalist.
41:30
But he sees himself as a rival to people like Jinping.
41:34
And you don't, like, you may be a bunch of mafia dons sitting in a room.
41:38
That may be your view of how the world works, but that doesn't mean
41:42
you want Putin to take over the drug trade in the South Bronx.
41:46
So it'll be kind of those sorts of calculations.
41:50
It's all, I think, part of just a tremendous historical tragedy
41:54
that's working out in front of us and the consequences, I
41:59
don't think, are going to be.
42:01
particularly good, but you know, I'm, I don't make policy.
42:05
I just try to figure out what's going on.
42:10
I have one final question for you, Professor Mead.
42:13
It's a big question, but maybe you can address it in just a few minutes.
42:17
Uh, what do you think the state of the country is?
42:20
I think we're in a period very much, you know, The, the information
42:24
revolution, and we all talk about it like a cliche, you know, information
42:27
revolution tech is changing everything.
42:30
But the times we say that we somehow think that it doesn't mean very much.
42:35
So this is really at most about like, you know, whether I'll lose my job.
42:39
But if you think about what the industrial revolution changed,
42:43
I mean, it changed everything.
42:44
The nature of the family, nature of the community, nature of work.
42:49
Nature of the firm, nature of government, of the state, everything changes and it's
42:55
a period of upheaval, war, revolution, migration, you know, everything goes up
43:03
in explosions and you know, byproducts of the industrial revolution include fascism,
43:10
communism and modern liberal democracy all proceed out of this era of turmoil.
43:19
The information revolution is happening faster, it goes deeper, and it is
43:26
extending geographically much faster than the industrial revolution ever did.
43:32
You cannot think that what we are moving into is a world
43:38
either of domestic stability, or or of international stability.
43:43
We have to be thinking that political systems, political establishments
43:48
everywhere are going to be constantly facing challenges that they
43:53
really don't know how to resolve.
43:55
That our institutions over and over again are going to be facing, uh, tests that
44:01
they were not built to match and maybe don't have the capabilities to match.
44:06
You and I grew up in a world in which people sort of, let's say, upper
44:11
middle class educated people thought of themselves fundamentally as the
44:15
administrators of a working system.
44:19
That our parents had handed to us a set of, you know, health institutions
44:25
of governmental institutions of journalistic institutions, religious
44:30
institutions that basically worked okay.
44:33
And, and that our job was, yes, obviously to keep, keep up with the times and,
44:38
you know, do some innovations here and there, but fundamentally to run
44:43
things that were already working.
44:47
But that is not the task that we actually have, and certainly not the
44:52
task the next generations will have.
44:54
It will be to improvise in a world of broken institutions, rapid changes, public
45:02
anger, confusion, dissatisfaction, fear.
45:07
Because from climate change to nuclear war, all of these fears are going
45:11
to get worse as both the weapons of mass destruction proliferate and the
45:18
inability of the world political system to kind of keep the peace begins to
45:24
look, you know, just more probable that we can't solve our problems.
45:27
So are you neutral or pessimistic or optimistic
45:32
about, say, the next generation?
45:35
I would say that The Lord of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who
45:40
created heaven and earth, is in charge of what's going on, you know?
45:48
We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.
45:51
And holding out both the hope of trust in him, but also the fear of him.
46:00
As Aslan says in the Narnia stories, I am not a tame lion.
46:05
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but also trust in the
46:10
Lord is the grounds of all hope.
46:13
And that is, I think, where we stand today.
46:16
And so you're in a very good profession, Rabbi, a very necessary one.
46:21
Well, with that, uh, Professor Walter Russell Mead, thank
46:25
you for this fascinating hour.
46:26
Keep writing these amazing analyses and, uh, books that shed light on,
46:32
uh, very, very complicated times.
46:36
And thank you for being on the podcast today.
46:38
Thank you.
46:44
Walter Russell Mead is one of America's most prolific and
46:47
insightful scholars of politics.
46:50
Government and foreign policy.
46:52
Among the many fascinating topics we discussed, I want to focus on his key
46:57
insight regarding the Zionist movement.
46:59
Theodor Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionist movement, was a
47:03
product of European Enlightenment.
47:05
He was an assimilated Jew.
47:07
At first glance, he was not the kind of person to advocate
47:10
that Jews abandoned Europe.
47:11
To the contrary, he wanted to be accepted by European Enlightenment.
47:16
Along with many of the Jews of his era, Herzl agreed with Western thinkers
47:21
that anti Semitism is unreasonable, and that the age of reason, along with
47:26
its rigorous standards of scientific proof and evidence, would wash out the
47:30
irrationality of Jew hatred from society.
47:34
In other words, if anti Semitism was unreasonable, the way to defeat it would
47:39
be to usher in a society based on reason.
47:42
Eventually, rationality would overcome the irrationality of Jew hatred.
47:49
This is what the Enlightenment Jews wanted.
47:52
And it is what they strived for, until they didn't, until they concluded that
47:57
despite the high minded and perhaps sincere intentions of Enlightenment
48:03
thinkers, the Enlightenment would fail in its promises to even
48:06
protect, let alone accept, the Jews.
48:11
Herzl, a newspaper correspondent in Paris during the Dreyfus trial in 1894, observed
48:17
firsthand the explosion of raw, naked hatred of Jews in France, of all places.
48:24
The beating heart of European Enlightenment.
48:27
And he concluded that there was something about Europe that would
48:31
decimate Jewish communities.
48:34
No one could predict the dimensions of the catastrophe that would
48:37
become known as the Holocaust.
48:39
But the early Zionists intuited That the tools of the Enlightenment,
48:44
mass communication, science, high technology, and reason itself
48:49
could be turned against the Jews as easily as these could protect Jews.
48:54
And therefore, contrary to practically all of his highly educated Western European
48:59
compatriots, Herzl concluded that the only way to protect the Jews is to get
49:06
out of the way of this devouring machine.
49:09
He wrote in his 1896 pamphlet entitled The Jewish State.
49:14
The Jewish question still exists.
49:16
It would be foolish to deny it.
49:18
It is a misplaced piece of medievalism which civilized nations
49:21
do not seem able to shake off.
49:24
The Jewish question persists wherever Jews live in appreciable numbers.
49:28
We have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the national communities
49:32
in which we live, seeking only to preserve the faith of our fathers.
49:37
It has not permitted us.
49:39
In vain are we loyal patriots, sometimes super loyal.
49:43
I think we shall not be left in peace.
49:46
Universal brotherhood is not even a beautiful dream.
49:50
In other words, Herzl agreed that anti Semitism is unreasonable.
49:55
But the answer to the Jewish question could not be more reason to persuade
50:00
these unreasonable people in societies.
50:02
It would do no good.
50:04
Because as Jonathan Swift wrote, you cannot reason a person out of
50:07
something they haven't reasoned themselves into in the first place.
50:11
The Zionists response to the age old question of how to solve
50:14
the Jewish problem was to leave Europe before it is too late.
50:19
And to create a state of our own.
50:22
We are one people, Herzl wrote.
50:25
Our enemies have made us one, whether we will it or not.
50:28
Affliction binds us together, and thus United, we suddenly discover our strength.
50:35
Yes, we are strong enough to form a state, and indeed, a model state.
50:41
The Jews who will it shall achieve their state.
50:44
We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and in
50:48
our own homes, peacefully die.
50:52
The response to Herzl's pamphlet was swift and brutal.
50:55
Practically all Jews rejected the thesis.
50:58
The American Reform Movement responded to Herzl with this motto, America is
51:03
our Zion and Charleston our Jerusalem.
51:07
Rabbi Isaac Mayer Weiss, the then leader of American Reform Judaism, proclaimed,
51:12
We are perfectly satisfied with our political and social position in America.
51:16
We want freedom, equality, justice, and equity to reign and to govern
51:20
the community in which we live.
51:22
This, we possess in such a fullness that no state whatever could improve on it.
51:30
That new messianic movement over the ocean does not concern us at all.
51:34
The Zionists are dupes of a thoughtless utopia, a momentary inebriation of
51:40
morbid minds and a prostitution of Israel's cause to a madman's dance.
51:47
Herzl's Jewish opponents, both liberals and conservatives, Reform
51:50
and Orthodox, were convinced that this new Zionist movement was just
51:54
a passing fad, a footnote in Jewish history that would quickly fade away.
52:01
Zionism won the day.
52:02
It is one of the most remarkable political movements of modern times,
52:06
and arguably the most successful.
52:09
Since we now know how history unfolded, we can conclude that the
52:13
Zionists were more right than their opponents, who cast their trust in
52:18
the Enlightenment to protect the Jews.
52:21
In viewing all of the contemporary issues affecting Israel and in
52:25
understanding the different perspectives between Israel and the West, and
52:28
Israeli Jews and Western Jews.
52:31
It is critical to remember that Zionism was born out of a skepticism of the
52:35
West's desire or capacity to protect Jews.
52:40
Israel emerged out of the wreckage of the Holocaust, the most devastating
52:44
abandonment of Jews in history, propagated by Germany, which until World War II was
52:50
considered by many to be the pinnacle of Western philosophy and morality, the
52:54
home of the West's greatest thinkers, scientists, authors, musicians.
53:01
On practically every issue, this tension runs like a thread in international
53:06
relations and intra Jewish relations.
53:09
Israelis are more skeptical of the peaceful intentions of their neighbors
53:12
than the West and Western Jews.
53:15
Israelis are more skeptical of the intentions and capacities of the
53:18
international community, the United Nations, International Courts of
53:23
Justice, the Red Cross, to protect Jews than the West and Western Jews.
53:29
These are all variations of the original question.
53:33
What is the solution to the Jewish problem?
53:36
Western values, or Jewish self determination?
53:41
Reliance on others to protect Jewish communities, or self reliance?
53:47
What do you think?
53:52
Until next time, this is In These Times.