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The Failures of the Foreign Policy Elite | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: The old world is dying, the new world struggles to be born, now is the time of monsters.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: With those words from Gramsci, I welcome you to the time of monsters podcast, which is sponsored by the Nation magazine.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Pete here, I'm a National Affairs correspondent for the Nation.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: This week, we're going to return to foreign policy and our frequent guest and friend of the show, Matt does, who has a piece in the nation, the fall book issue, which I'm very happy to share space with him in, where he writes about Bob Woodward's book, War, which is about Biden's foreign policy.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Matt has a very interesting thing to say about both Bob Woodward as the sort of, I don't know,
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: the year of the bad emperors and the actual substance of Biden's foreign policy listeners show will be very probably worth Matt's voice and I'm always happy to have it work so I look about thanks Jordan always glad to be on your show and very glad to share the issue with you yeah for sure yeah yeah I should bet you the listeners if you can pick up the latest addition it is actually the fall book is used very handsome it has a lot of
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: But in particular, like let's talk about your review, not Bob Woodward, very full refrigerator, you know, like famous for the Watergate investigation and all the president's meant, but, you know, has written numerous books over like the last 40 years, chronicling the times.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that these books, you do a very good job.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: in the review are not a bit like the famous watergate reporting which was at sort of challenging the status quo or the consensus but have a very different approach and I think it's worth thinking about Bob Woodward as a historian or as a chronicler of modern times and the sort of issues that I think you and a lot of other people have with these books.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you again.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, a couple of things.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: One is it's, you know, this is it's an interesting time for the for the piece to come out because the book is now almost a year old.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It came out last fall, you know, and I was asked to to write the piece probably in the spring, but I'm really glad to do it because
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the book is about your Biden's foreign policy, but specifically it's about the two wars, you crane in Gaza.
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it is called war, there are other elements of Biden's foreign policy that I think would have made for interesting writing, you know, they're kind of, you know, the China policy, they're kind of attempt to tee up a post neoliberal economic agenda, which has some very interesting, you know, which laid the groundwork, I think, for a very interesting debate we're having right now.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, but Woodward chose to focus on, again, just those two wars, and he is extremely complementary.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, of.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: of the way that Biden and his team executed, you know, policy here, but let's just let's pause for a minute on Woodward.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: As you said, you know, he became famous along with his partner Bernstein for reporting the Watergate scandal.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's gone on to to write a number of other books, occasional pieces.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's kind of like this eminence in American journalism.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what he has become is essentially a transcriber, and I was able to find this Joan Didian essay from 1996, which I think it was really impressive because like it's 1996, and she already has Bob Woodward's number.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean,
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I quote her at length at the beginning of the piece and what she says is, you know, basically, what he does is just wait for someone to call him and then serve as a kind of vessel for that person's interpretation of events, he really makes no and this is true for his subsequent books and especially for this book, what we're really just kind of, you know, copies down what people are willing to tell him without any real attempt to interpret or challenge or interrogate.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: what they are telling him, why they might be trying to tell these things.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: He seems quite happy to just serve his role as the one who helps kind of burnish different sources versions of events into the historical record and it falls to others to challenge that.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of what I was trying to do with my pieces, you know, just challenged the method first of all before I get to the substance of what the sources were using him for.
• 4:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I think this is like a longstanding problem with anyone who said read those books will have dealt with.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I, I particularly remember the books that he did at the time of the second Bush administration, where it was like very clear, like who is first as well, because they were the ones who always were presented in a very favorable light.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think Colin Powell, I don't think it's any secret that he was killed.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: a source for several of those books.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then also like his point of view tended to change depending on just the circumventional wisdom of Washington.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So like if you look at his books on the bush junior era like you know when the initial 911 attack happened and
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of patriotic forever.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot about like the sort of, you know, strength and steel-eyed wisdom of George W. Bush.
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then later on, with things started to go like a bit worse, then suddenly these sort of critics and internal critics of the policy are a lot to sort of launder their reputation.
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what you want to call it, I mean that is perhaps a form of access to journalism, but like it doesn't, to my mind, serve the public interest very well except in the sense of, you know, while you can now learn what certain powerful people want history to remember them for and you can get their version of events.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, yeah, and I think your review does a very good job of showing why that is.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then I think we have brings us, as you mentioned, what work came
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think like already at the time people in the Biden administration wanted to British their reputation and I think it's almost like kind of like forgotten now, but like Joe Biden himself I think he was very convinced that
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: his great strength as president was as a foreign policy leader and this is actually what he wanted to run on and they were actually like beatings between him and congressional Democrats where he was like you know saying like why don't you talk about my great foreign policy and people were saying like this is the like all our political issues that like this is the issue where Trump is strongest on and we don't want to be talking about something that you're you're very
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we should, I mean, I think the one key aspect that comes out of this book and on your review is that the people in the fight in the administration up to an including the president are we're extremely proud of their foreign policy and they think that this is like their great legacy of this is what they should be get the the highest prices far right and not normally that but you know, um,
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Woodward does this really remarkable bit of editorializing at the end of the book, where there's like this little post script, where he shares his own personal view.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, having spent the previous 300s on pages doing next to zero editorializing or interrogation or really any thinking.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: He offers this kind of benediction at the end of the book saying, I believe that Biden and his team will be seen by history as, you know, having, you know, carried out a very competent and, you know, courageous or whatever term he wants to use, he's just extremely complimentary.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it really just stands and start contrast to what we've just been shown, especially in the second half of the book, because I write, you know, you and I know we have some disagreements about the Ukraine policy, my own view is like all things considered, I think they handed it a pretty well, I think there's
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: different choices they could have made, they could have leaned into diplomacy and the possibility of negotiations.
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think at various times though I still am very skeptical that Putin was or is interested in ending the war in a way that would be remotely sufficient for for Ukraine's continued independence and sovereignty.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that aside, I think we both agree that the Gaza policy wasn't an absolute catastrophic failure.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we were saying this in real time, they were hearing from people in real time and for, you know, even especially now as we're almost two years into what.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: there is a growing consensus is a genocide to read that post-cript to say that this was a competent and responsible use of American power and influence which was to help perpetrate this genocide.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, to say I reject that is too weak.
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's preposterous.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know, as you say, like the book is dealing with Ukraine and Gaza, and I think it's good to separate out those two, and you know, there were there have been like sort of like earlier books, the internationalists, which basically presented a narrative that you know, Ukraine was a kind of the redemption of the book.
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Biden administration as you had the failure.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: The sort of, you know, was a correct policy in Afghanistan, but was kind of like we all we can all now see it was a botched withdrawal.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, like afterwards, the administration showed a great deal of competence in Ukraine in terms of.
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think we want to be fair and I think it is worth discussing some of the strengths of Biden's form policy, because as you lay out, there were many things that the Biden administration did right in a very difficult situation, not just in terms of the war, but I think particularly in the run up to the war, do you want to talk about that?
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: sure and and again I mean there are things if we're talking about their broader foreign policy I mentioned you know the the economic the effort to kind of redefine America's economic approach I can run down a number of other things diminishing the number of drone strikes you know they did attempt to bring you know to kind of want in addition to the Afghanistan withdrawal which again the right decision a brave decision even though I think it was clearly carried out you know irresponsibly
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And nothing I also want to mention here while we're on it is, you know, they're work with Brazil.
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the Biden team very, very likely helped avert a coup in Brazil.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that's really important.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I see that.
• 10:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I've often brought this up.
• 10:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: As an example of how I think American influence should be used.
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I do think it's worth noting, but those are outside the scope of the book, which again focuses just on these two wars, so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there was a sort of rebuilding of the state department and an engagement with many countries around the world, including like India, which is like very different than the travel approach.
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like the sort of like, you know, the complete like a badness of diplomacy of the sort of, you know, so I do actually want to say that like, like any sort of, we're trying to imagine a sort of positive role for the United States in the world.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: We do actually want an administration that like takes the work of diplomacy series.
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that Biden deserves credit for that.
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: He does, and again, not to disagree with myself, yes, certainly Trump is taking things in a much worse direction, a much more dangerous and much more destabilizing direction.
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think part of what the tragedy of the Biden administration is that a lot of this diplomacy, I mean, it goes back to the statement from Biden at the beginning of his administration.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: America is back.
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it was based on this kind of nostalgic kind of cold war and post cold war view of American power, American primacy and the idea that we can we can kind of shore up and salvage this vision of America's influence in a world where that time has passed.
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like we are very much in a multi-polar era.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are other rising powers.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's not to say the United States is just a power in totally eclipse.
• 11:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are still enormously powerful.
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: We have a very formidable network of partnerships and alliances that can do a lot of good for us and for the world.
• 12:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we should look for ways to help do that.
• 12:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: But again,
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the good things that Biden was able to do were all seem to be rooted in this kind of nostalgic old vision of how American power should work and thus it is very easy for Trump to simply walk in and kind of smash that down because it was based on on on on sand.
• 12:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was based on the ocean.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, I think that is fair.
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, before we get into the Gaza stuff, like I do want to talk a little bit about Ukraine.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whereas you said we have some disagreements, I think it's worth flushing out what American diplomacy was able to achieve.
• 12:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in particular, I do actually think Ukraine stands out because there was actually a lot of engagement with the European powers and more so than elsewhere in the world.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you want to say something about that?
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, let's go back.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: to, you know, the beginning, the first year of Biden's administration, you know, we knew that their focus, their focus, I would say their obsessive focus was going to be China.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was China.
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: China is for the Biden administration and for Washington, generally, now the lens through which everyone sees American foreign policy, rising China, pacing threat for American power, and influence all the things that they say here in Washington.
• 13:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And for that reason,
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Biden and his team really, they wanted to try and park the Russia relationship out of the way.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, there was an understanding, listen, we're not going to be great friends with Putin, but we need to at least try to bring some stability and predictability to the relationships such that we're not constantly provoking each other.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: We should try to have some clarity at least.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what there was a summit about, and the bill was June 2021.
• 13:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: we're Biden and Putin met.
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It seemed to go okay and yet for Putin clearly he was not satisfied.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: He did not get what he wanted out of that.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now there are some who have said that
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the United States should have offered more should have said clearly on a quickly and publicly to Putin at that time that Ukraine will not be in NATO, which by the way Ukraine will never be in NATO.
• 14:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think we just need to say that explicitly.
• 14:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, this is where I think it's fair to criticize the Biden administration and I write about this too.
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: This idea that, well, we kind of know that Ukraine's never going to be in NATO and we've been
• 14:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: But because we are so committed to this policy of the open door for NATO, it would be wrong to say that Ukraine won't be in NATO because that would be essentially giving Russia a veto over who gets to be in NATO.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like this obsessive commitment to this one particular norm.
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, I am not convinced that even had they said that publicly that that would have been enough for Putin.
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: from what he has said and written and done, his kind of goals and grievances and vision for, you know, Russia's natural historic rights.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: it's near abroad and it's role on the global stage as a great power standing alongside great powers like United States and China.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that just withdrawing the NATO possibility from Ukraine would have been enough.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, I think in retrospect, it would have been worth a try if only to call his bluff.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's worth doing now, which Trump is essentially
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: making clear, and we all see it's not really getting Putin to a place where he's ready to end the war, but still, if it was possible to try and overt this catastrophic war that began in 2022, I think it would have been worth it to try.
• 15:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: But after that summit, you know, you saw, you know, Russia begin to mass its forces on the borders of Ukraine and Belarus and Russia,
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then you had a pretty intensive, you know, flurry of trips from US officials, Bill Burns, who was the head of the CIA, but who I joke was the actual secretary of state like when you want someone to actually try and negotiate you send Bill Burns when you want someone to give a speech you sent Tony Blinken, you know, you also had, you know, German Chancellor Schultz, you had, um, uh,
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: a manual Macron, a France all going to meet with Putin to sit around that long table if you remember those pictures, like still post-COVID Putin, you know, who that ridiculous huge long table with them, and then they would come out of those meetings and give press conferences to say like we are trying to address Putin or Russia's very legitimate security concerns.
• 16:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, and for me, and I think for most people who kind of understand Diplos speak, that was pretty clear code for, you know, we understand Putin is, you know, concerned about, you claim being in NATO, and that's not going to happen as I write in the piece, and you know, we're in the review of the Woodward book, you know, Boris Johnson, the then Prime Minister of the UK,
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: writes, you know, it says privately, okay, we've kind of trapped ourselves, you know, because of this thing where we know Ukraine's not going to be in NATO, but we can't say it publicly, and it's like, well, who trapped you?
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've decided that you are trapped there for these weird, you know, reasons.
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, no, I mean, the whole record feels like the same that you create will not be a NATO seems like I don't actually like understand it because I mean, if that's your actual policy that I think that there's like real value, whether it turns foot and or not, like for actually like laying that out so everybody understands that and it's actually as you said, like it's actually cruel like 10 like
• 17:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: offer the Ukrainians is kind of like home and you will never deliver and like obviously you know like Russian crimes, I guess Ukraine are like horrific and terrible but like the role of the West and like putting Ukraine in this position to my mind like never like seem to make either a strategic sense and was certainly like also seem like morally like like really offensive.
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, both Georgia and Ukraine, you know, I'm not surprised because of George Bush's, you know, decision to announce this in the in the in the book rest conference, I think it was 2008.
• 18:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And immediately, ever, and Bill Burns himself who was in the State Department at that time has written his really excellent book about, you know, what a bad decision that was.
• 18:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: We essentially have strong both of these countries along.
• 18:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And obviously, George has suffered the consequences much much earlier with Russia's war on on Georgia, but, you know, a camera on for Ukraine as well.
• 18:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, having said that, you know, you had these efforts to divert the war.
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was insufficient.
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: You had the decision to, you know, strategically declassify intelligence by the Biden administration, which I do think was a pretty interesting and effective policy here, just to make sure that Russia would not be able to kind of create a false pretext, you know, to say that we've been attacked or something happened and therefore we need to move our treatment.
• 18:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it made very, very clear to the world.
• 18:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: that this was an aggressive act of war by Russia.
• 19:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that helped, I'm certainly a maintain unity among US and Europe.
• 19:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And at least make clear to the rest of the world, even if there was very little success at bringing the rest of the global majority along to support the US European effort to defend Ukraine or to assist in Ukraine's own defense.
• 19:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Precisely because they knew that, okay, all of a sudden you're committed to the rules-based order and all these norms which, you know, we've been, we've watched you break these norms and applied double standards in our countries and all around us for these past decades.
• 19:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then, of course, you saw that double standard demonstrated as explicitly as one,
• 19:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: right, we're all of like literally the same methods of attacks on civilians, cutting off food, water electricity to civilian populations that were condemned correctly condemned as unacceptable acts, you know, and war crimes.
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: When Russia did it to Ukraine, our all of a sudden just fine and just part of this horrible war when Israel does it to Gaza.
• 20:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, no, I mean, it does seem like if you take the two wires and put them together, there's a very least a sort of contradiction in the policies.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, at the time, I remember thinking that basically, if you want to find any coherence in the policy, it is a sort of a fortress Europe view of the world, that, you know, like you want to preserve the sort of civilization of Europe,
• 20:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like the rest of the world is a jungle of which like no laws apply.
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like I mean I did a certainly a view that at least some European leaders have articulated.
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I actually think like I know why people in the United States would what is support that view of the world that I certainly don't know why.
• 20:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like you would imagine that like you know the vast majority of the planet that lives outside of you know like the NATO countries would think that this is like a foreign policy that one would align with.
• 21:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 21:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they, you know, they, they seem to think that these kind of bold speeches and statements in rhetoric would be enough to rally the world.
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it turns out that it wasn't.
• 21:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, I don't want to, you know, the every every country deals and double standards, every country deals and hypocrisy.
• 21:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the unfortunate reality I think of of the world.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there are ways to diminish that chasm between rhetoric and action.
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there seem to be just very little acknowledgment that that chasm even existed on the part of the Biden administration.
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that was part of the huge disconnect, especially as I know, like there are things that they say about Putin and his lying and his historical perspective and how Americans can't understand these kinds of things because we don't lie and we don't think in terms of thousands of years and I've like
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: If Woodward was like a smarter writer, I mean, he would understand that he is teeing up gags for the second half of the book, because of course, the Biden administration goes on to lie consistently.
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: in part based on, you know, Biden's own thousand-year kind of version of Christian Zionism and Americans, many Americans, not just Jewish Americans, but, you know, evangelical Americans who form the largest part of the pro-Israel lobby who very much do see these things in thousand-year terms.
• 22:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know.
• 22:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I mean, absolutely right.
• 22:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like, I mean, it's part of the emphasize this sort of emotional basis for this form policy, which, you know, like to my mind is very difficult to find a rationale like a long strategic reasons.
• 22:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, so as you mentioned, like Joe Biden and his larger view of the world was in the nostalgic one and kind of like, you know, America's back.
• 22:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like this is, you know, like a very old man who was like really formed a sort of cold war who is himself older than
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was like, you know, like, remember the time when they don't do not exist.
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so for whom, like, all that sort of human, act to send, present at the creation, you know, like America as those sort of, you know, global heads-in-one, re-making the world, like that is very strong and present.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And who, in the case of the Middle East, seems to have formed a particular emotional attachment.
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the early 1970s, when he was a first ascendedor, which talks often about, you know, meeting goals
• 23:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and yeah, I mean, you say Christian Zionism and I think for many listeners people, you know, there's obviously a form that is coming from the right which people are very familiar with Which actually I almost think is like almost like under talked about now considering that Puckovie is the ambassador there and is like, you know, like doing
• 23:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And is he like invited people to bring over like red calves?
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're out there looking forward.
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're trying to bring it up for this.
• 23:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is like the view that the final apocalypse and the return of Jesus Christ.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: will come with the revealing of the temple in Jerusalem and red calves as in the book of Revelation, which will be like kind of a sea of adherence.
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: They said that this is what the American ambassador Israel believes on is very interested in promoting.
• 24:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, but I mean, since Trump is president, I think that sort of Christian Zionism is should be talked about more, but I think it's also very important to understand that there's a former Christian Zionism that exists among liberals, and you know, once he's us, and you know, Chuck Schumer, the leading Democrat in the Senate, who talks about, well, you know, like it's Israel's land because the Torah says so, or you know,
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: in the lead of the election and said that describe the land as Judea and Samaria like you are using the biblical terminology and he says he was given to King David so like to the extent to which this sort of ethno nationalist reading of history and that I would sort of turn underscores something.
• 25:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: because obviously it's a religious point of view, but it's also like a really modern religious point of view.
• 25:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like in Dithered Judaism, North and Christianity, do you see people before the 19th century talking like in terms of the Bible as a word for an ethonational state?
• 25:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like that is, I mean, yes, I mean a couple of points in there.
• 25:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: One is, I mean, first I mean, Chuck Schumer is just, he's not a Christian Zionist obviously.
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It just joined us now.
• 25:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Class fine, but he has a religious understanding of Zion.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, right, I think that's right.
• 25:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that's what I also want to say.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, you're right that the modern Zionism as we know it, I mean, there has been a kind of desire to return to Israel that's been part of Judaism since the exile.
• 25:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Zionism as a modern political ideology came up when nationalism came up.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is a modern construct because nationalism is a modern.
• 26:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: construct.
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think I would I think you're right to bring up Bill Clinton along with Joe Biden because I they would not necessarily you know I think define themselves as as Christian's highness in the way that of course John Hagey and the kind of very very right wing you know the my cuckabee and the you know pre pre millennial dispensationalists all that kind of stuff like the hardcore chapter and verse but
• 26:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, as a Catholic and Biden's case, a Southern Baptist and in Clinton's case, they are, and I'll speak for myself as well as someone who grew up in the evangelical church.
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there is just an understanding of the history of Israel and the Jewish people, you know, from our shared religious upbringing, the Old Testament is part of the Christian Bible.
• 26:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so there is an affinity or at least an understanding of one of these people's narratives, the Jewish narrative, that we just simply do not have or many Americans, Christian Americans,
• 26:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: simply don't share or not exposed to when it comes to Palestinians.
• 26:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So even people who are not acting out of any kind of bad will, they're just starting from a place of, well, I'm familiar with this one story.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know nothing about this other story and I think that partially helps explain U.S.
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: policy, but also we see from Clinton and Biden, just the way they talk about it, clearly this informs a very particular understanding, you know, it's a kind of
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, understanding of the inspiring story of the creation of Israel, where the Palestinians and the Arabs are basically just villains or people who are somehow in the way and it's just a complete identification or romanticization of this one side of the story with very little barely even any lip service to the other side.
• 27:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, no, I think that comes out very well in your review of the Woodward record, where was it like one quote from Biden about the Palestinians?
• 27:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, like, like, yeah, so what is the, never crucified yourself over something smaller?
• 27:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, right, never, never crucified yourself on a small cross.
• 28:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is something, yeah, Peter Biner got this.
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, no, this was taken.
• 28:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I believe from Michael Oran's memoir.
• 28:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Michael Oran is really historian who then went on to be the Israeli ambassador to the United States, who wrote one good book about I believe the nice seven war and then written a bunch of really really horrible books.
• 28:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: But he quotes Biden in having said that, and the point of it is, Biden just doesn't see the Palestinian issue as worth the time and trouble.
• 28:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 28:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, that quote is horrible just in itself.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I've often wondered, how small that cross looks to Biden now, you know, given that his presidency was nailed to it.
• 28:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, that is the case though that like Biden was willing to, you know, sacrifice his presidency in order to support between Netanyahu and, like, from the book, Woodward book, and then you're serving analysis of it, like, like,
• 29:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It just seemed like they had a bunch of different rationalizations.
• 29:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, we've established that they're coming, Biden in particular is coming from this sort of very, 1960s, Leon Yuros, sort of liberal Zionism, which is unwilling to rethink or change in the light of subsequent facts.
• 29:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, like they're also aware that like what Israel was doing in Gaza was not good, but they actually had some rationale for their policy thinking that like it was actually going to have some sort of a factor or change Benjamin Netanyahu's behavior.
• 29:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: So so what were the ways in which they they conceptualized what they were doing?
• 29:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 29:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I wrote a piece in foreign policy a couple months ago.
• 29:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: basically confronting all those arguments, which I think are nonsense, but I'll just take through them.
• 29:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: One is we can't block arms, we can't withhold arms to Israel, because that would be an incentive for Hezbollah and Iran to kind of escalate their attacks, which I think
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: It should be abundantly clear, and it was certainly abundantly clear to how mass, to how mass is great disappointment, that has Vola and Iran were not interested in getting into this war.
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the idea that all of a sudden they would be like, surprise, we're now interested if the United States, you know, used withholding a weapons to pressure Netanyahu to win the war down.
• 30:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, I think frankly, they would have been relieved.
• 30:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know there was you know a number of other arguments they make the one of the most preposterous is that a well yes we don't like what they're doing but we need to maintain influence with them and we will lose that influence if we if we stop to supply of weapons.
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now that's again one of the reasons that's so absurd and I noticed in my pieces this is literally the argument that the Obama administration made for why they had to keep
• 31:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then after the Obama administration, when Trump escalated his support for the Saudi war, there was a letter written signed by a bunch of former Obama administration officials, almost all of whom went on to serve in the Biden administration.
• 31:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Basically saying, we thought that supplying weapons would enable us a level of influence to guide the
• 31:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's exactly the strategy they pursued and continue now to defend when they did it with Israel, but the larger point I also make is none of that really matters because none of that even if that like from a policy and strategic approach made sense, that would not then justify lying about the war lying about Israel's conduct, which they constantly did.
• 32:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: They constantly refuse to acknowledge what everyone else could plainly see.
• 32:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: They constantly kind of clouded the issue, pretended all where we haven't received an assessment yet.
• 32:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And let's understand, it took them one month to assess that Russia was committing war crimes in Ukraine.
• 32:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: The United States has just almost total visibility.
• 32:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: on what Israel has been doing in Gaza.
• 32:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our relationships between our two militaries, our two governments, our two intelligence services are so tight.
• 32:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the idea that it took you a month to assess this about Russia, but still, you know, to the end of the administration, they were never able to offer an assessment.
• 32:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just, I'm sorry, it's beyond belief.
• 32:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So of course, they were committed to just, you know, protecting diplomatically, politically, Israel and the conduct of this war.
• 32:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I really, it's, it's really to call it unforgivable is to commit, I think, felony understatement.
• 32:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know, absolutely like I mean it was a complete portrayal of like their sort of stated principles and also like, you know, like actually very bad for them back to the United States, both internationally and bad for them themselves politically like it was just it remains to remind mind baffling.
• 33:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: This seems like almost like a kind of weird disconnect.
• 33:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to single him out as like the only perpetrator, but it is To be like Matthew Miller It was a spokesperson Really illustrates this because you know like he had been you know on that stage like addressing reporters repeatedly saying like while we're waiting for more information or we're investigating like these allegations of work crimes
• 33:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: expressing a great deal of uncertainty, and since he left that post, he's been pretty frank about saying, you know, Israel was committing war crimes.
• 33:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that, like, for someone like that, like it seems like there's a kind of maybe disassociation between what he himself said, like maybe like thinking that I'm in a professional capacity, and like what I personally believe doesn't matter.
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: But like, I actually don't understand
• 34:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: even how that works.
• 34:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because if you're hired to be a spokesperson, you're actually hired to give your staff from approval to what you're saying.
• 34:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're supposed to believe what you're saying.
• 34:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're not supposed to like lie.
• 34:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like that, you know, applies to like all sorts of professions where you're like being a lawyer or be a representative public relations.
• 34:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like you're actually supposed to have professional obligation to like to tell the truth.
• 34:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: know that you there should be an ethical code now their view and he said this and again he gets a lot of attention but let's note he gets a lot of attention because he is thus far the only one who's been willing to cop to it.
• 34:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah let's say I don't want to see him out of that and it's that way he's been more honest than others but I but it does he like you'd like uh his case does sort of indicate like some sort of weird disconnect would be like
• 35:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, and but again, this goes I think to just this is part of Washington's corruption is the idea that now listen, if if Matt, Matt, Matt,
• 35:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: He could have resigned, he chose not to resign.
• 35:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: He made a decision, well, I will go up there and I will lie.
• 35:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: He now admits that he has lied.
• 35:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is who he is now, he is a confessed liar.
• 35:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: But he understands that because there is no such thing as any kind of real accountability in Washington, he will be just fine.
• 35:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's why, again, this confession is essentially part of the problem.
• 35:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: He knows that he's he'll be fine, professionally.
• 35:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, and actually that goes into like I think the last three of the year book that went really long, which is that there has been no accountability and like all these figures that were, you know, like we could now say were accessories accomplices in war crimes in genocide, I'm willing to say.
• 36:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: None of them have suffered any professional punishment.
• 36:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I Jake Sullivan is, I believe, but the Harvard School that the Lincoln is at the Center for American Progress.
• 36:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: There doesn't seem to be like any sense that what was wrong or that any of these people feel they owe an accounting to the American people for what was done when they were in power.
• 36:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, and again, this is itself.
• 36:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is part of Washington's corruption.
• 36:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: is that there's zero accountability.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then this is what we really have to confront.
• 36:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I, you know, referencing back to my foreign policy piece.
• 36:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know this is a nation podcast.
• 36:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry, thank you, thank you, thank you.
• 36:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: But like, you know, there are people who say like, well, the real problem is Trump, we need to focus on Trump.
• 36:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's where the real danger is.
• 36:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I agree, Trump represents a danger, our democracy.
• 36:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: But accountability for Gaza and fighting against what Trump represents, in my view, this is part of the same fight.
• 37:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: because the problem we face here is elite impunity.
• 37:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is part of what is corroding our democracy, the idea that they're rich and powerful and influential, get to operate by a different set of rules from you and I. And no matter how bad they screw things up, no matter how many like what atrocities they help perpetrate, however, whether they destroy the US economy and the global economy with their ridiculous gambling, they will get golden parachutes, they will get bailed out, they will get new gigs at Harvard,
• 37:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no.
• 37:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's right.
• 37:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And actually, I mean, like, there's another way in which Trump is very connected with this, which is, I mean, as we mentioned before, like, when Biden was in power, Trump consistently got better scores for foreign policy than Biden did.
• 37:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it might have, uh, his, uh, Trump's foreign policy approval has gone down.
• 37:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I actually, I think it's still, like, one of the areas where he's more robust.
• 38:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I actually think, like, if you actually look,
• 38:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: at what Trump doesn't form policy, there's many similarities with Biden, particularly in with Israel, of allowing a green light to Israel, except that Trump does not have the hypocrisy.
• 38:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: He never says, you know, we're upholding the liberal international order, you know, they change the supposedly change the labor of the Department of Defense, the Department of War.
• 38:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like what, when sees Trump in foreign policy is a very ugly nasty form of neo-imperial
• 38:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, like, happily asserted as such.
• 38:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, we're the great power.
• 38:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we get to blow up whichever shifts that we want to.
• 38:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 38:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like, it does seem like the part of the public.
• 38:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, if they give it a choice between a sort of hypocritical policy that talks about human rights was a part of genocide.
• 38:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And someone who's like, you know, like, just openly forth right, but be a global bully, like they'll think like, well, like, let's just have the honest policy.
• 38:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 38:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 38:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or at the very least, like, there was the alternative was less attractive, less inspiring.
• 39:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was not speaking to people's actual, you know, what they saw as their personal needs.
• 39:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was not delivering for them.
• 39:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 39:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was a, and again, like I said this at the start, but Joe Biden weren't to run on his phone, falls asleep.
• 39:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, this was like his idea.
• 39:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wanted the Democrats to run.
• 39:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's like,
• 39:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: every evidence like like you know like however horrible Trump is like Joe Biden's particular for policy was hugely unappealing it was a huge factor in dragging him and the Democrats down and what would think that like you know like a political party that is interested in winning elections would have a accountability just for the sake of its own self-interest.
• 39:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but that note is a very dire, but we have to call it as we see it.
• 39:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to get thank that desk for being on the program.
• 39:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I will link to his excellent review of the Bob Woodward book.
• 40:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's it.
• 40:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, link to the foreign policy review as well.
• 40:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would encourage everyone to read that's writing.
• 40:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I want to thank him for being on the program.
• 40:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, G.