Latest / The Nation Podcasts / Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Betrayal | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

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Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Betrayal | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer · The Nation Podcasts

0:01
[SPEAKER_04]: The old world is dying.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The new world struggles to be born.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Now is the time of monsters.
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[SPEAKER_04]: With those words from Gramscii, I welcome you to the time of monsters podcast.
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[SPEAKER_04]: This podcast is sponsored by the Nation magazine.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Jeet here.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I'm ready for the Nation magazine.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms and some radio shows.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Today, I want to take up the issue of Donald Trump's foreign policy, which is the subject of a
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[SPEAKER_04]: excellent essay in the New York Times by Stephen Worthheim, who is a CDer fellow at American State Cap Program in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And he's also a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And in this piece, who's been a guest on the program before, takes a very broad systematic view of Donald Trump's foreign policy and the sort of contradictions that we're all wrestling with, which is that on the one hand, Trump ran, both in twenty twenty four and twenty sixteen,
0:56
[SPEAKER_04]: as the sort of candidate of peace and of a different foreign policy where the United States would try to disengage from some of the unproductive wars that had been involved with, but that in practice Trump gets caught in the same quagmire that earlier presidents have.
1:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And this happened, certainly in his first term, and it's happening now.
1:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think Stephen's peace is very valuable for thinking through why this is happening.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So first of all, welcome to the program.
1:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Wonderful to be here back with you.
1:26
[SPEAKER_04]: So did you want to like just run down your main argument and particularly I appreciate the sort of systematic focus of the question of there's a structural problem, which all presidents have, which is that the American Empire is overstretched and has all these commitments.
1:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And so far as able to maintain them, but I mean, you gotta ask how many wars on how many continents this nation is able to fight continuously.
1:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And even now, I mean, I think with both Ukraine and the release, we're seeing some of the limits of the empire.
1:56
[SPEAKER_04]: So this is the structural problems over reach.
1:59
[SPEAKER_04]: And then there's Donald Trump, who, as I said, came ran as
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[SPEAKER_04]: on alternative to the foreign policy consensus, but is also perhaps not the most systematic thinker in the world and is more of a counter-puncher and an agent of reaction to situations, and perhaps not the best person to deal with a structural problem.
2:21
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's maybe the overview of the situation, but do you want to run down what you're thinking is?
2:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I wrote the piece out of frustration on a few levels.
2:30
[SPEAKER_03]: First of all, our political debate is far too reactive to rhetoric on foreign policy compared to results.
2:41
[SPEAKER_03]: So once again, just as in Trump's first term, there was so much talk about, wow, Trump says he wants peace.
2:50
[SPEAKER_03]: He's criticized Western interventionism as he did in the speech in Saudi Arabia.
2:56
[SPEAKER_03]: There was a lot of talk that Trump was looking to pull American power way back overseas and have a sphere of influence world and let Russia have its way in Europe and let China have its way in Asia and the United States would stay focused on the Western hemisphere.
3:16
[SPEAKER_03]: That would be an enormous change.
3:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And then what do we see?
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[SPEAKER_03]: We see actually Donald Trump has done none of that at all.
3:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And on top of that, he bombed Iran.
3:30
[SPEAKER_03]: So this gave me flashbacks to the first term of Trump, where again, the rhetoric was all about Trump as an isolationist.
3:40
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, in the mold of pre-World War II, US foreign policy, and then he bombed Syria a few months in.
3:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And people had to go, oh, that's interesting.
3:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And then they forgot about it, I guess.
3:53
[SPEAKER_03]: So first of all, we give either too much credit or too much blame to Trump, depending on where one stands for being a kind of revolutionary figure when it comes to American political military policy.
4:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And we should judge much more on results.
4:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you do that six months in, what I see is a president who hasn't delivered peace, whether in Europe or in the Middle East, and doesn't seem to be on track to do so.
4:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And as you suggested, sheet, I think the fundamental problem is that this is a thoroughly situational man facing a deeply structural problem.
4:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
4:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Doesn't seem like he likes the fact that the United States is
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[SPEAKER_03]: indefinitely globally posture with its military that it has all these defense commitments to dozens of countries around the world and yet he is not does not seem inclined to kind of grapple with the base of questions of well what countries does America need to be committed to defend what countries should it not be committed to defend
5:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And therefore, once I have the answer to that, admittedly difficult question, that gives you a lot of clarity on, well, what should we do now?
5:14
[SPEAKER_03]: That's just not his approach.
5:15
[SPEAKER_03]: His starting point is, here's the world that I find.
5:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't like it.
5:20
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna throw a lot of things up at the wall.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna try to make, I have a lot of grievances and actually America's alliances are a great platform for his grievances.
5:32
[SPEAKER_03]: But he has preferred for four years plus now six months to not to retract American military power, but to transact over it, right, to try to cut deals and make the terms of American military engagement and commitment, you know, a little more favorable for the United States.
5:56
[SPEAKER_03]: For example, by getting European allies to spend more on defense, but I look at that and I think
6:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, maybe that's an improvement on what came before, maybe.
6:06
[SPEAKER_03]: But European allies spending more of their economies on their militaries does not guarantee or even imply that the United States will, in fact, do less and spend less and risk less if there is a conflict in Europe.
6:23
[SPEAKER_03]: So where is the big change?
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[SPEAKER_03]: And in this regard, look,
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[SPEAKER_03]: People find his rhetoric sometimes refreshing if you've been concerned with American overextension, but so much of his rhetoric and the foundational concepts are not even new.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Like Joe Biden left Afghanistan and then said, the era of major military operations to remake other countries is over.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Barack Obama was also capable of saying something
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[SPEAKER_03]: similar, and peace through strength, Trump's foreign policy mantra has literally been featured in every Republican party platform since, like, the one exception of two thousand four when probably peace through strength sounded too peaceful for George Shabby of Bush and the GOP at that time.
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[SPEAKER_03]: This is not even new rhetoric.
7:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
7:19
[SPEAKER_04]: No, no, I think that's right.
7:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think, I mean, I'm glad that you emphasized that both the rhetoric is not new.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it's almost the problem is on new that the kind of overstretch of American empire, one really wants to think about it.
7:32
[SPEAKER_04]: The crisis point really came in the late sixties and early seventies with the sort of, you know, failure of American policy in Vietnam.
7:39
[SPEAKER_04]: And there have been, you know, different approaches to retrenchment.
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[SPEAKER_04]: starting with the Nixon Kissinger type to create a new balance of power by bringing in China.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And certainly they've been prominent voices, especially on the right wing side, more than the liberal side, who viewed NATO as an anchor or as a unnecessary expense.
8:00
[SPEAKER_04]: One saw that already in the nineteen
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[SPEAKER_04]: eighties under Reagan and Ross Perotic that up.
8:04
[SPEAKER_04]: So these are like longstanding issues.
8:06
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think Trump rhetorically has exploited the fact that there's a great deal of concern.
8:12
[SPEAKER_04]: But you know, like, as you said, his whole approach, this transactional, let's make a deal approach doesn't allow him to address the systematic concerns that he brought up.
8:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And maybe, I mean, like it's maybe worth thinking about like the kind of resistance that he
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[SPEAKER_04]: as reading, which I think any president would meet, but maybe he's less equipped to deal with.
8:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Like in the first term, I really thought one big problem was that he had this like rhetoric of change, but then he inherited the GOP that was top heavy with people that were very committed to the status quo, and particularly kind of like sort of Neil conservative.
8:47
[SPEAKER_04]: foreign policy thinkers and and he ended up giving a lot of positions to people who fundamentally disagreed with his world view and you know like a personal is policy like if you have people like John Bolton on your staff they're going to carry out a John Bolton foreign policy even if you're Donald Trump as president now in the second term there seems to have been like at least some attempt
9:10
[SPEAKER_04]: to address this by bringing in more anti-restrainers and then Trump seems to have like, uh, or the people around him have a greater awareness that you actually need people who are on the same page with the president on this.
9:21
[SPEAKER_04]: But even so that hasn't worked and maybe the weight of that foreign policy consensus that, you know, you know, whatever we're going to call it, the military industrial complex, the deep state, whatever term you give for it, that still seems to be like overpowering.
9:35
[SPEAKER_04]: But what's your sense?
9:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, why is the, you know, the power of inertia so strong here?
9:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Trump is out of excuses.
9:43
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a flip side of what you said.
9:44
[SPEAKER_03]: He can't blame his advisors anymore because he's able to appoint basically whoever he wants.
9:52
[SPEAKER_03]: He got Tulsi Gabbard confirmed as director of national intelligence.
9:57
[SPEAKER_03]: He's chosen to have Marco Rubio as national security adviser, secretary of state and like archivist or something.
10:06
[SPEAKER_03]: There's probably a few other titles I'm forgetting.
10:10
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, he has made different person alt choices in this administration.
10:15
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think the person alt choices reflect now the real incoherence within the mind of Donald Trump.
10:23
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think we have an administration intriguingly stacked with people who have deep, fundamental disagreements about
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[SPEAKER_03]: American power in the world more so than in any administration in the post called war era.
10:39
[SPEAKER_03]: But in a way that makes it harder to make strategic change.
10:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Because to do that, you have to get everybody on board with a new policy that's going to have a lot of moving parts and everybody has to be committed to doing it.
10:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's still going to face reluctance or some forms of resistance from other parts of the political system.
11:05
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think a very telling moment was when Republicans in Congress signed a letter calling for zero enrichment that the US position in Iran nuclear negotiations must be
11:19
[SPEAKER_03]: that Iran adopt, make a huge concession.
11:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't enrich any uranium, right?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Giving up its legal right to enrich uranium at low levels, suitable only for civilian and research purposes.
11:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's unpack that just a little bit more.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Republicans in Congress, when they wrote that letter, were able to say, we affirm the position of the Trump administration in thinking zero enrichment.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So the Trump administration had already
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[SPEAKER_03]: backed itself into the corner of adopting a goal that is completely unnecessary to achieve what really appears to be Donald Trump's personal aim of preventing Iran from getting an actual nuclear weapon.
12:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the Republicans and Congress seized, you know, somebody convinced him or made statements to get the administration gradually more committed to zero enrichment.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And then Trump ultimately
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[SPEAKER_03]: has affirmed that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And that's part of the reason why the negotiations haven't borne more fruit.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So, and now, like after the strikes on Iran, if Trump doesn't come back with genuine zero enrichment, I fear that it will not work for him politically because if he comes back with something that looks like much more of a concession, that kind of undermines the whole narrative that his military strikes knocked Iran way back, that their desperate, et cetera.
12:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's an interesting case, right, because it illustrates how Trump still faces a lot of constraints from his own party, especially members of Congress who tend not to share Trump's more restraint-oriented instincts.
13:04
[SPEAKER_03]: But at the same time, Trump himself is quite incoherent and short-term in his thinking, situational in his thinking.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So it's not like
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[SPEAKER_03]: His true vision is a vision of American military, retrenchment and restraint in the world, and he's being held back.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's really on him now to show us what his vision is, because he can
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[SPEAKER_03]: He can move his party, right?
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[SPEAKER_03]: If really wants to, that's for sure.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I think we're seeing him fail so far.
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[SPEAKER_03]: If indeed his true goal is a more peaceful world and a US security policy that actually reflects the interests of the United States.
13:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, I think your emphasis on incoherence is exactly right.
13:53
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, there's what the incoherence of the personnel of having, you know, administration with very divergent views and a president not willing to set a clear agenda, which has basically led to what we've seen, which is just fractional fights of people, you know, trying to get each other fired all the time.
14:10
[SPEAKER_04]: But then also a president who maybe doesn't understand the details of foreign policy, I mean, I think a lot of people of your health
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[SPEAKER_04]: at the Quincy Institute in elsewhere, we're saying beforehand, this is zero enrichment, this is a trap.
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[SPEAKER_04]: This will lead you into war, which is exactly what happened.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I think that the Republicans in Congress knew it was a trap and knew what they were doing.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I don't see any evidence that Trump himself understood how he was boxed in to a position that actually went against his own stated goals.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So I mean, that lack of focus on details or inability to understand the process.
14:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's part of the story, but I'd be curious to know what you think about that.
14:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
14:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you can't expect presidents to have a command of details of foreign policy in many areas.
15:01
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, they're really responsible for appointing good people.
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[SPEAKER_03]: who can help them work on those details and setting a direction and then making key decisions.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But what we see is an administration that doesn't have much of a functional inter-agency process.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's what they call it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's Donald Trump leading the charge.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Somebody tells him something.
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[SPEAKER_03]: He gets an idea and then he says it and then people kind of create a process around that and then maybe Trump changes his mind.
15:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I also think Trump has a belief that he can kind of maneuver situations like nothing is permanent.
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[SPEAKER_03]: He is not known as an ideological man, but if he does have like a personal ideology with respect to foreign policy, it's that every interaction with a state in Trump's mind is meant to lead to a deal.
15:54
[SPEAKER_03]: The teleology of the deal.
15:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I think Trump was able to convince himself, look, it's all part of the dance.
16:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I can say zero enrichment one day.
16:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And I can take it back in the next day.
16:05
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know what, maybe he can kind of take it back.
16:08
[SPEAKER_03]: But also these positions have effects in the world.
16:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
16:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And I people who saw the zero enrichment demand as a poison pill, they were correct.
16:18
[SPEAKER_03]: It was.
16:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And the fact that Trump also set a sixty day deadline.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That was utilized by the Israeli government of Netanyahu to say, OK, sixty days are up.
16:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And we want to do these strikes and reportedly Trump gave, I think very characteristically, a yellow light, not a green light.
16:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, maybe.
16:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And I personally, you know, I think my guess is that Trump convinced himself, okay, they'll be some strikes.
16:46
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll see what happens.
16:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe that actually helps me get a deal.
16:51
[SPEAKER_03]: So he still believes that a deal is possible, but I fear that the whole trajectory
16:57
[SPEAKER_03]: of the last couple months has set back the prospects for deal.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And one that he could have gotten in the first place by just sticking to his core.
17:05
[SPEAKER_03]: What I think is his core desire to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, you know, not going forward with weaponization as opposed to eliminating all enrichment of uranium.
17:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it does seem like he does think his options are always open and that there's no long-term consequences, which I think there's some realism in that in the sense that because the United States is such a big force in the world, other countries are willing to overlook
17:36
[SPEAKER_04]: it's actions.
17:37
[SPEAKER_04]: I would particularly be a radiance.
17:38
[SPEAKER_04]: I actually do think that they have shown a great deal of restraint and openness to let's put bygones in the past.
17:45
[SPEAKER_04]: But I also feel like there's only so far you could go with that.
17:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's sort of survey the world because I think that the process that you've described, we see elsewhere.
17:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And particularly in Europe, this kind of mixed messaging, setting of deadlines over promising and then shifting back and forth.
18:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, once he's with regard to Russian Ukraine,
18:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you want to like explain how that dynamic is playing out there?
18:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, a lot of parallels to the Iran case.
18:11
[SPEAKER_03]: So Trump has set now.
18:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Two three deadlines with respect to the war in Ukraine.
18:20
[SPEAKER_03]: There was like the first twenty four hours of taking office.
18:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Then it was a hundred days.
18:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, no.
18:27
[SPEAKER_04]: I should have done this deadline strategy.
18:28
[SPEAKER_04]: We also seen it with tariffs.
18:30
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's also not really working there as well.
18:33
[SPEAKER_04]: But continue.
18:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
18:36
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, I think his initial impulse was, I'm going to show up.
18:40
[SPEAKER_03]: People respect me personally.
18:42
[SPEAKER_03]: They didn't respect Biden.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm also more flexible than Biden.
18:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to show a genuine interest in bringing the parties together to negotiate peace.
18:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And watch the quickest way we can get to peace.
18:54
[SPEAKER_03]: So let's
18:55
[SPEAKER_03]: hammer out something simple, but it was always going to be a very complex negotiation.
19:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe you could get a quick ceasefire for a limited period of time, perhaps a bounded ceasefire, but to actually resolve this conflict, we know what the issues are, there are many, and they touch on issues beyond Ukraine as well.
19:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So it was going to take a determined effort, and because the party has hadn't been talking,
19:24
[SPEAKER_03]: For quite some time, you know, the expectation should have been more modest.
19:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's start the discussion.
19:32
[SPEAKER_03]: But this conflict is likely to go on for a while.
19:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And we want to keep talking in that time and make progress rather than hope for a big breakthrough and then get frustrated and start, you know, blaming one side of the other and then shifting US policy accordingly.
19:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's the pattern that we've seen with respect to Ukraine.
19:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's just kind of hard to justify.
19:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I actually think on this issue, I'm not sure.
20:01
[SPEAKER_03]: US, the US position in the Middle East is better today than it was when Trump took office.
20:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it was worse.
20:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Actually.
20:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
20:11
[SPEAKER_03]: But actually with respect to Europe at the war in Ukraine, from a certain perspective, I could say we're in a better spot.
20:19
[SPEAKER_03]: The taboo that had a risen on negotiations has broken down and Trump deserves going to for doing that.
20:25
[SPEAKER_03]: The Ukrainians and Russians are talking now.
20:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And
20:30
[SPEAKER_03]: The Ukrainian government, even that ugly spat in the Oval Office between Trump and Zelensky, which was to put it mildly not ideal, you know, served a productive purpose.
20:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, Trump was arguing against the domino theory.
20:44
[SPEAKER_03]: That Zelensky was putting forward about, you know, Russia gets us, then it's a hop skip in a jump to the United States, and Trump was like, no, that's not right.
20:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know what?
20:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Trump was right about that.
20:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And so let's get with saying, I don't want to even think about stopping this conflict until there is a major US security guarantee for me.
21:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Trump said no, no, no, no.
21:09
[SPEAKER_03]: You've got to make peace first.
21:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Then we talk about the other because he's not willing to give a security guarantee.
21:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And I happen to think I'm
21:17
[SPEAKER_03]: a very strong form of a U.S.
21:19
[SPEAKER_03]: security guarantee is a bad idea.
21:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Wouldn't be credible and isn't in the interest of the United States.
21:27
[SPEAKER_03]: So there was some real substance at stake in that dispute.
21:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And afterwards, we have seen the Ukrainian government shift and become more willing to talk peace and envision a peace with less maximalist terms than before.
21:43
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'll even give credit, you know, some limited credit to Trump.
21:47
[SPEAKER_03]: for bringing that about, but the fantasy that the war was gonna end really quickly just by showing up and wanting it to end was exactly that.
21:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And now if Trump is going to give more weapons to Ukraine and contemplate forms of escalation, we'll see, then he ought to have figured that out to begin with to put more pressure on Russia to say, look, I'm not just gonna walk away from this,
22:15
[SPEAKER_03]: So you need to factor that into your calculations about what Russia can achieve and endure if it continues to fight this war.
22:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no, I think that makes sense.
22:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to underscore this aspect of the sort of positive thing.
22:29
[SPEAKER_04]: And then which actually does explain one reason why the sun voters did turn to Trump and did turn to Trump on foreign policy, which is this willingness to talk and to negotiate, which is very different from the Biden administration.
22:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I think that for whatever reason, Biden seemed very diverse to negotiations
22:49
[SPEAKER_04]: both in Russia with Iran in the Middle East and really with China.
22:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Like Biden's vision of foreign policy seemed to be you build up alliances, you build up NATO, you build up Ocas, you build up the Abraham Accords and that's it.
23:04
[SPEAKER_04]: The second half of this is why you build up these alliances if not to negotiate with your adversary.
23:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I did not see a lot of that under Biden.
23:12
[SPEAKER_04]: And so Trump's willingness to make a deal, I think it's something that Catholic knowledge is willingness to talk even, that is a major step forward.
23:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Having said that, I'm wondering from the Russian point of view, and this also applies to Iran,
23:27
[SPEAKER_04]: given how erratic Trump has been and how he shifts from one side to the other does it make sense for them to negotiate with the United States that is erratic and like I've always thought that you know like one danger with Trump is that exact mix messaging which we saw
23:43
[SPEAKER_04]: in the first term as well, where Trump seemed open to making negotiations with Putin, but the actual Trump foreign policy carried executed by his advisors was very anti-Russian, which included sending more weapons to Ukraine.
23:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And what has to like, try to think of the world as it seemed from the outside, from the point of view of American adversaries.
24:03
[SPEAKER_04]: And as you said, you know, the rhetoric and the reality of very different.
24:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, if the rhetoric and reality of very different,
24:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Then why would Putin want to negotiate with this guy?
24:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Why not just continue on the battlefield?
24:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think if the same applies to Iran, like why try to reopen nuclear negotiations?
24:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Why not just do what they're doing, which is withdraw from inspections?
24:22
[SPEAKER_04]: And then like keep the threat of building nuclear weapons on the table.
24:28
[SPEAKER_04]: With thoughts on that, like ways in which Trump's erraticness makes deal making very hard.
24:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, he says he wants to be unpredictable.
24:37
[SPEAKER_03]: he really is and people all around the world and in this country we're scratching their heads.
24:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's try to think through what his foreign policy would be and they've been scratching their heads for ever since that then as they've seen it unfold.
24:51
[SPEAKER_03]: My sense is that the need of the Russians or the Iranians were jumping up and down after Trump was elected and that Russians doubted the ability of Trump to deliver on
25:07
[SPEAKER_03]: stated intentions, because they had seen it as first term that Russia really didn't get anything from Trump's often admiring statements about Vladimir Putin and expression of desire for a better relationship with Russia.
25:23
[SPEAKER_03]: That said, I think that of Trump's second presidency, like it was somewhat different Trump, it's in different administration with different advisors, and it did seem like
25:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Trump was more willing than before to actually make concessions to US adversaries to get things that he wanted.
25:46
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think the Iranians did despite everything Trump did to them in the first term.
25:53
[SPEAKER_03]: They saw the opportunity to get back into a nuclear agreement with the United States.
26:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And the Russians, I think, maybe
26:04
[SPEAKER_03]: even more skeptical than the Iranians, but they have had extensive discussions.
26:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think some of them at least saw that there might be an opportunity this time to improve the relationship with the United States if the war can be settled in a way that they weren't able to do under Trump one.
26:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that opportunity might
26:31
[SPEAKER_03]: still exist, but the if is a huge if work can be ended.
26:38
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, adversaries are having to try to figure out this guy, the cipher really, but how much can they really trust them?
26:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Not much.
26:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And the Iranians at particular now have literally been bombed when they were continuing to negotiate.
26:58
[SPEAKER_03]: So
26:59
[SPEAKER_03]: I agree with you that they've shown a high degree of flexibility and pragmatism despite the attack on their country.
27:10
[SPEAKER_03]: but, you know, they still have a limit and they're not backing away from their right to enrich uranium either.
27:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, I know, no.
27:19
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I think that's basically right.
27:21
[SPEAKER_04]: There might still be a deal, but certainly I think anything that Trump has done has it encouraged that.
27:27
[SPEAKER_04]: The other aspect of European policy, which one might give Trump some credit for, is getting the Europeans to sort of step up to the plate
27:35
[SPEAKER_04]: and investing more in their own defense, which I think any sort of idea of a restrained American foreign policy should have that as a component and both in Europe and the Middle East and in Asia.
27:47
[SPEAKER_04]: So we have seen Europeans and where I am in Canada, a commitment of governments to more
27:54
[SPEAKER_04]: military spending.
27:55
[SPEAKER_04]: But the flip side of that, one would think would be like American taking advantage of that to deal with the problem with over stretch and withdrawing.
28:04
[SPEAKER_04]: And one hasn't seen that.
28:06
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's the sort of point that you make in your essay.
28:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you want to talk about that?
28:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, what are you getting if you're getting both the NATO allies to spend more in the military?
28:14
[SPEAKER_04]: But the US is actually not cutting back.
28:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess I think about it more these days, because it's hard to imagine the Pentagon budget going down.
28:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
28:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Just in terms of where is the US taking on the risk that if there is a conflict between an adversary and a US ally at the US will be drawn into that to that conflict.
28:38
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is where I'm quite skeptical that the pushing allies to spend more on defense improves the situation much for the United States.
28:52
[SPEAKER_03]: terms of art used in, to discuss European security, our burden sharing versus burden shifting.
28:59
[SPEAKER_03]: So part of Trump seems interested in just getting allies to spend more.
29:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And if they do, then Trump will remain committed to their security.
29:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe as committed as before, maybe even more committed.
29:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's kind of where we are at the moment, I think.
29:20
[SPEAKER_03]: because the NATO summit, the recent NATO summit produced nothing but smiles from President Trump and it was all about NATO allies pledging to spend five percent of their economies on military-related purposes, it's really three point five percent on militaries.
29:42
[SPEAKER_03]: and other one and a half percent infrastructure, things related to being able to engage in combat.
29:49
[SPEAKER_03]: But if that's all we get at the end of the Trump administration, United States is likely to remain equally overstretched.
29:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
29:58
[SPEAKER_03]: If not more so, because adversaries are generally strengthening a bit.
30:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And for the Europeans, they're likely to spend money on things that
30:08
[SPEAKER_03]: don't render them independent of the United States, but rather are designed to keep the United States in and committed to their defense.
30:17
[SPEAKER_03]: So the alternative would be burdened shifting, where the US pulls back its military presence in Europe is trimmed.
30:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And that also shows the lower commitment, political commitment of the United States,
30:36
[SPEAKER_03]: to European defense and Europeans need to step up and plug the gap.
30:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And also, I think command, supreme command of NATO forces ought to be transferred into European hands from American hands, too.
30:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and that actually would make good on what Secretary of Defense's headset seemed to be saying in February when he announced, he went to Europe and he announced that Europeans must take ownership of conventional defense.
31:03
[SPEAKER_03]: on the continent.
31:04
[SPEAKER_03]: But so far, we just haven't seen steps in that direction.
31:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, the Pentagon is undertaking a forced posture review that should come out in the coming months.
31:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And that would be an essential step toward seeing a shift of the US military presence away from Europe.
31:28
[SPEAKER_03]: If it doesn't happen there, I become very pessimistic that
31:32
[SPEAKER_03]: It'll happen at all at any point in this administration.
31:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
31:37
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it seems to me that this sort of what one would consider the rational policy of sort of burden shifting runs into a conflict with Trump's fundamental nature that we talked about, which is that sort of transactional nature, which is that Trump is not thinking strategic terms.
31:52
[SPEAKER_04]: He's thinking really in terms of like a mafia boss.
31:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Like we once need to exist as a protection racket and that he thinks it hasn't been run as a good protection racket.
32:03
[SPEAKER_04]: where like money is coming into the US and that the Allies make concessions so that the US will protect them from like Putin or whatever flows that they have.
32:12
[SPEAKER_04]: And so it seems like as long as Trump has that, you know, transactional view that, you know, this alliance is a protection racket that like, you know, the whole, like birding shift thing doesn't seem like a possibility.
32:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Like you would actually need a more fundamental shift
32:27
[SPEAKER_04]: in the thinking of Trump and really the thinking of that cohort of people in the Republican Party that want a different foreign policy.
32:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that's right.
32:36
[SPEAKER_03]: They are too often conflated, but very different position burdened sharing and burdened shifting.
32:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And think about what it means if the president's view is that alliances are really a protection racket.
32:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So what that means is that, you know, first of all, if the president gets the concessions he wants from allies, he'll remain
32:59
[SPEAKER_03]: they're to protect those out.
33:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I say you're not getting American military restraint, but also what would happen in the event of an actual war?
33:10
[SPEAKER_03]: The Russian Vades, the Baltic States.
33:13
[SPEAKER_03]: A president that thinks of alliances as a protection racket will then turn around and go, okay, well, we got our benefits.
33:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Why should we now pay this enormous cost?
33:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Why does this work for Europeans either?
33:27
[SPEAKER_04]: No, it's very unclear who it works for.
33:30
[SPEAKER_04]: And actually, I think I want to see some very interesting contradictions on the European side as well.
33:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I do think that initially their approach was like sort of like flattery, like let's give Trump the sense that he's getting what he wants and then we can keep the US in.
33:45
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that, you know, like one real barrier to burden shifting has been like do the European elites actually want this?
33:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Or are they like really committed to the existing needle structure?
33:57
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that with everything, there's a spectrum and there's different tendencies.
34:01
[SPEAKER_04]: And I see more evidence that like people in France are thinking in terms of a post-America world, then like say in Germany where it does seem, there's still like super committed to vegan NATO, even if that means making enormous concessions to Trump who might not even like, you know, as you suggest, take those concessions seriously.
34:20
[SPEAKER_03]: I think you're right.
34:22
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the NATO's moving.
34:24
[SPEAKER_03]: even where Germany really stands today is a question.
34:28
[SPEAKER_03]: But Europe remains divided on this score.
34:31
[SPEAKER_03]: The country is right up on Russia's borders, like the Baltic States.
34:37
[SPEAKER_03]: They remain more trusting of the US security guarantee than of anything that Europe Europeans could collectively provide them with.
34:49
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's still a divided Europe.
34:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And that in turn means that
34:53
[SPEAKER_03]: even those governments elsewhere in Europe who actually don't like this where we're heading at all.
35:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And would rather just understand, okay, if the US is going to pull back, tell us where.
35:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And let's get on with it.
35:08
[SPEAKER_03]: They are reluctant to throw under the bus, their European allies.
35:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And remember, the alternative policy relies on Europe having a greater sense of unity.
35:20
[SPEAKER_03]: So starting off by having a huge rupture within Europe isn't a good way to go.
35:26
[SPEAKER_03]: So really, it's Washington that needs to act and be the mover and say, this is what we're doing.
35:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, they should consult with the European allies as a formulating plans.
35:38
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think the decisive act needs to come from Washington to say, this is what we're doing.
35:46
[SPEAKER_03]: for reasons of our own interest.
35:49
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's a reasonable plan that allows Europe to step in as we step back and then a more confident than ever before that that Europe will be able to contend with that proposition that there will even be people who who support it, even though it'll be controversial for for some period of time.
36:08
[SPEAKER_03]: But let's see it happen.
36:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but for that scenario, you would need a President committed to clarity and to, like, you know, like, let's lay out a vision.
36:18
[SPEAKER_04]: The opposite of what we currently have.
36:22
[SPEAKER_04]: We're getting near the end of the podcast, but there's one other issue that you had raised after your New York Times cease, which I think is maybe worth thinking about, which is a criticism of, you know, the general stance that you and I have been articulating of, like, a more restrained American foreign policy, a move
36:39
[SPEAKER_04]: towards a burden sharing and having allies take responsibility.
36:44
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a critique that this would lead to greater nuclear proliferation.
36:49
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just wanted to just address that point, because I think that's an important one.
36:53
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that is actually, you know, gets to the, the, the above of the issue of like, you know, like, what's a way forward out of this morass and what are the problems one would encounter along the way?
37:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Glad you mentioned that, because I think truly the greatest trade-off
37:08
[SPEAKER_03]: lies in this issue.
37:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I think in many ways, the course that I recommend would just be better for the United States.
37:18
[SPEAKER_03]: except for this part right here there is a trade off because it is true that American military dominance has kept some US allies from acquiring nuclear weapons themselves and we've in several cases stopped allies who were looking to acquire nuclear weapons
37:40
[SPEAKER_03]: from doing so.
37:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Now the price of that is at the United States extends.
37:43
[SPEAKER_03]: It's nuclear umbrella over those allies, as well as protecting them through conventional military means.
37:51
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think it's fair to say that if allies are more empowered, they have more autonomy, that some are likely to want to get nuclear weapons.
38:03
[SPEAKER_03]: It might not happen immediately, but I expect it probably will happen.
38:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think the trade-off is worth it.
38:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I think Europeans in particular ought to be planning for a world in which there is an independent European nuclear deterrent.
38:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And some form, if the United States does back away conventionally from Europe, it's not going to make a whole lot of sense for the US to be rendering itself redundant in European defense, except that we're willing to put our cities at risk.
38:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so they need to start planning for that eventuality.
38:41
[SPEAKER_03]: That said, our current policy, our current strategy of primacy, if it disincentivizes nuclear acquisition by allies, it incentivizes nuclear acquisition and proliferation by American adversaries.
39:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Just look at our record of attacking countries like Libya,
39:04
[SPEAKER_03]: precisely because they gave up nuclear weapons and that's been noticed by North Korea.
39:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Iran is now having to think about its own calculation.
39:15
[SPEAKER_03]: So if the United States pulls back that negative dynamic will also be reduced when it comes to nuclear proliferation.
39:25
[SPEAKER_03]: And the final thing I'll say is that I'm not somebody who thinks, I've got to see the end of nuclear weapons in the world in my life.
39:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm or my children's lifetime.
39:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's not really my orientation.
39:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And well, I would prefer, I don't think more nuclear weapons is better.
39:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And some do, that's a view associated with the realist scholar Ken Walsh.
39:48
[SPEAKER_03]: But I also don't think, you know, some more nuclear weapons or some more states with nuclear weapons is the worst thing in the world.
39:57
[SPEAKER_03]: for moving toward a more multi-polar world that actually makes sense that we might see that that behavior and there are better and worse ways to to bring it about in particular I mean there are people who who would argue you know we can't we would have to defend Taiwan and wage world war three against China or else then China takes over Taiwan and then maybe Japan and South Korea get nuclear weapons
40:25
[SPEAKER_03]: because they're more concerned about their security.
40:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sorry, like I first of all, I'm not sure that they would need nuclear weapons, but okay, I mean, if the alternative is an all-out war between the United States and China, World War III, and much less over place, it's quite difficult for the United States to defend.
40:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Then we ought to be open to thinking about, thinking realistically about, you know, what does the world look like if we don't have World War III and in that respect, you know, age a pan or South Korea with nuclear weapons like looks like a less bad choice to me.
41:05
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's kind of how I think about the issue, but I admit this is a, you know, this is a hard one.
41:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no, I mean, it is absolutely a hard decision, but I will end on the note by reiterating something that you just said, which is that the current policy itself is encouraging nuclear proliferation.
41:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, I actually can't see how anyone can look at what the U.S.
41:26
[SPEAKER_04]: did with Iran and think it's less logical now for the Iranians that nuclear weapons rather than it's much more logical.
41:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And that applies to many other parts of the world.
41:36
[SPEAKER_04]: So given that we are very dire status quo, I think the alternative that you're outlining makes a lot of sense.
41:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And more broadly to conclude, like I actually do think that it's very valuable to actually think in terms of trade-offs and think in terms of a foreign policy that acknowledges
41:55
[SPEAKER_04]: you know, the sort of the imperfect world and choices that have to be made because that's a rational way to look at things and it's also not the way that Washington is currently looking at things or at least like many parts of Washington.
42:07
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sure there are people in the Pentagon and the State Department that they're thinking about these issues of trade-offs but like what is not actually seen that in American foreign policy.
42:16
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to thank you again for being on the podcast and for your excellent article in the New York Times which will link to in the show notes.
42:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, my pleasure.