Latest / The Nation Podcasts / Trump’s Chaotic Foreign Policy w/ David Klion / The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

Transcript

Trump’s Chaotic Foreign Policy w/ David Klion / The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: The old world is dying, the new world struggles to reward.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now is the time of monsters.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: With those words from Gramsci, I welcome you to the time of monsters podcast.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Jean here of the Nation Magazine.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: The nation is a sponsor of this podcast.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we've talked a lot over the last year about the Middle East and these wars that have Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have started.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's a good moment to maybe
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: think about what is happening more broadly.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Currently the war is in a kind of bizarre limbo where the United States can neither defeat Iran nor is willing to admit that it has been defeated.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we're kind of stuck in the situation where there's only a stilt trickle of oil from the state of her woos and a kind of siege of Iran.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as of changing list of priorities, JD events recently said that the top priority now is to get the Prince of oil back to what it was before the war started.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the second priority is to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, which is like I think a startling admission, because the, uh, uh, and not listing as a priority, getting control of the strait of her moves.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I, and taken together a fancy statement as a startling admission, I think of both failure and incoherence.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: My guest today is David Cleon, a friend of the program, a frequent guest, and he has a piece out in the nation about all this and particularly about the sort of factual divisions within the Republican Party and the sort of incoherence that they have and how all sides in the GOP have been
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Always good to be here.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So let's just get started with your piece.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I mean, this will a lot region about the various factions in the information about the kind of restrainers and the neocons.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I should mention David's working on a history of the neoconserative movement.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he's very well steeped in this.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what you're largely taking on what's happened
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, so the basic division for anyone not familiar within, let's say, conservative foreign policy in recent years is between when I characterize as neocons and restrainer, some people would use different terms, my call restrainer's realists or something like that or neocons hox.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the basic division is, it's really the now more than 20-year fallout of the war in Iraq and George W. Bush is decision to take the country of war in Iraq.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: By now, that fallout, not only did that turn out to be a moral and financial catastrophe, and, you know,
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: regional catastrophe, but it's caused, it turned out to be a political catastrophe at home.
• 3:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Bush left office wildly unpopular for multiple reasons, but that was a big one.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was seismic in both parties.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's probably the reason why Obama beat Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, but, but so many people in both parties were invested in launching the Iraq war and the broader war on terror and those people haven't gone away.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, so even though it's unpopular, I mean, if you look at the last 20 years it's.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: it's hard to argue that the neocons or the hawks haven't had persistent influence that all time.
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Donald Trump, who's been around as a political force for the last 10 years, as the political force for the last 10 years, has really confounded this dynamic.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because, okay, so you have the people who stuck around who who who
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: have never really acknowledged the war was a mistake, or even if they have, they've wanted to continue wars of a similar nature, and they'll never accept that this is a disgrace for them.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you have this, you know, there were the old Paleocons who criticized the war all along, the kind of padby cannon types, but there's a whole new generation of people, some of whom even served in Iraq, or Afghanistan, including JDVans, who, you know, came back with a much more
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: let's say jaded view of what American power in the world can do to take him at face value.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously he lies a lot, but I do think there are a lot of people like that.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are also people, I think, in the Dr. Carl Sinner, in the younger generation, kind of Kurt Mills mode, who didn't serve, but let's say grew up on certain assumptions about imperial wars and were very quickly
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: disillusioned about that and have a real, I think, anger at the neocons and those kinds of policies.
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a liberal counterpart to all of this, I would say.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: The kind of anti-war, pro-Palestine left and the Democratic establishment that supported the Iraq war.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: and supported the Gaza genocide, all of these things kind of run together with variations.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the right is polarized, and what's interesting, I mean, to focus on the right, what's interesting is that Donald Trump has because he's such a flaky character, which I think is really the crux of my piece.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: because he's such a flaky and unreliable character and because he's a creature more of passions and impulses than a coherent ideology and because he's the most powerful person in the world has been fought over between these two factions and they both want to claim him even though he has regularly burned both of them.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the piece is a short column so I don't get into the, you know, decade long history of this or in some ways the 20 year history this because Trump himself supported the Iraq war, which he often lies about.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I would actually say it's like a even a 40 year history because a lot of these divisions really go back to the end of the Cold War.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no definitely.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this sort of divisions between the sort of paleocon right and the neocons, but yeah, certainly it's a longstanding division.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Longstanding division, but specifically about Trump.
• 6:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but Trump has taken this division and he's given an interesting kind of twist because as you say he's flaky He's incoherent.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: He tries to please different factions and what you get is a kind of mess, but
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And also he is the president and not just the president, but the unconstrained dictatorial president who does what he wants without regards to law in his second term, which has created this really fascinating dynamic where everyone is trying to influence him, everyone is trying to be the last voice he hears in order to advance their policy agenda and to a certain extent that works, because he really is that impressionable.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: The problem is,
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: policy, especially something is complicated and risky as, you know, questions of war and peace in the Middle East, you know, is not something you can do in a flaky way and, you know, like, like, oh, if I could just get the president's ear, he'll do what I want.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, he will, but then what happens next week, right?
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not like, it's not like, it's not like,
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: starting a war with Iran is something you just flip a switch and it's done in all the mission.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The mission is accomplished like it's something that requires a concept, if you're going to do it and it's a terrible idea, but if you're going to do it and this was true of Iraq too, you need consistency, you need a grand strategy, you need a plan that you stick to, even when it's hard, and the idea that you could run any of that through Donald Trump is
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: facially insane, I think, and yet I would say some of the most prominent neocon and paleocon or restrainer intellectuals have tried to do exactly that, not just intellectuals, but policy makers in the highest rungs of the administration.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think on the latter point, you could even on the assumption that Donald Trump won't run for president again because he's not allowed to in theory if laws still matter, the constitution still matters.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: and also because he's old and who knows if he's going to make it, the conventional wisdom is that the two most obvious people to be his successors are Vice President J.D.
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Vance and Secretary of State slash National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, who though they both have their shares of hypocrisies and large part from trying to negotiate the dynamic, basically map
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: as best as we can tell, where each of them is really coming from.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this could be very soon, I mean, if Trump were to die or be in capacity on any random day, which is not that unlikely for a man of his age, this could become an extremely live debate between the two young airs to the Republican Party, and I think it'll be very, very interesting to see where it goes.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I think that's right.
• 9:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I want to think of two aspects of your analysis in order, one of which is what you already emphasized, which is Trump's own flakingness.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is something like, I've written about before as well, like where I said, you know, like the sort of debate between the sort of restrainers or unilateralist and neocons is less relevant to the fact that Trump is a chaotic figure.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: and that he's most like you to produce chaos rather than any coherent policy.
• 9:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think that's worth emphasizing, but I also think the Trump has risen to the President's seat twice and is a dominary figure in American public life.
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's certainly a dominary figure in the GOP, which has become basically a personality cult around him, in part because his own incoherence reflects
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: the larger kind of incoherence on the right and that both these factions have I try to square the circle of having competing demand.
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So let's go back to the first point because I think Trump's materialist and the way that he can get manipulated is
• 10:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: a very important part of this story, and I see a number of different aspects of this.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of which is I think the sort of, you know, he likes quick victories and he likes being praised.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that the sort of more hawkish faction were very clever in getting the war in Venezuela as a kind of like quick, easy victory, which gave Trump an amazing dopamine hit.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: where he thinks like, you know, like, I am a champion.
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think Maggie Haberman, I think is the prison as the best insight on this.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm thinking of how Trump himself, you know, has always been flaky, but but the sort of his impulsiveness and his faith and his own ability to do anything has increased because if you look at what's happened to him, you know, he was president.
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: lost a close collection, which, you know, he convinced himself and those around him that it was stolen, was, you know, like, shot and supposedly nearly killed a few times, you know, when it's back the residency and has like vanquished all his foes, you know, like this is a guy who is already primed to think that he can do anything.
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this seems to me like his governing thought, like he doesn't need to listen to critics or already cautious voices.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It actually it actually occurs to me because I was just reading the Jean Smart Canadian actually Jean Smart Bush biography, which is generally considered the authoritative George W. Bush biography, and I've read about half of it, but it's huge, but the
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: In comparing Neocons and restrainers, and we're in a certain sense comparing the Bush era to the Trump era with many caveats, it's interesting to compare how Bush thought in some ways just how you were describing, you know, the not listening to critics, this kind of world historical arrogance.
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there's also an important nuance, I think, in how he thought versus how Trump thought.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm thinking about Bush during his peak, you know, the few years after 9-11,
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: when he launched the Iraq war and the kind of like Zinnat that his political power would not sort of chase and seeming bush we see these days or even at the end of his presidency I would say.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the difference is I'm getting a little metaphysical about it, but
• 12:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think Bush believed on some sincere level that he had been like divinely chosen to meet a historical moment.
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Divinely chosen, that is, I am an atheist and a skeptic of religion myself, but Bush, I do think, believed in God and believed in destiny and believed in America, believed in like the greatness of America as part of its kind of old-wasp establishment and believe that like God and America had aligned to put him in a position to respond to a great evil that had threatened America.
• 13:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that is a fair, not hyperbolic characterization of what George W. Bush actually thought about his historical role.
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Donald Trump doesn't think in those terms at all.
• 13:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: He thinks he clearly doesn't believe in God.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: He clearly thinks America is full of idiots.
• 13:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he thinks that if anything, it was great in some mythical past, but certainly not in the present.
• 13:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he thinks that it's his personal genius that has allowed him to be this extraordinary figure in world history.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I don't think Bush, I think Bush was actually kind of humble about that.
• 13:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think Bush thinks he's a genius.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think he thinks he has good instincts, which is laughable too.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I don't think he thinks he's particularly brilliant or, you know, I think he often thinks there are other smart people in the room and his job is to kind of like,
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: get all their opinions and then use his gut to decide who's right, but that is so different from how Donald Trump thinks.
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not even, you know, it's probably better on average, but whether you think it's better or worse, I just think it's an interesting characterological difference between these two guys.
• 14:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: The one who is a creature of pure id versus the one who has these kind of lofty assumptions about where he falls in history.
• 14:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's very, very striking.
• 14:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I do think that is kind of like a key difference.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, I mean, you know, I never want to praise George W. Bush, but he had the ability to be chastened when things went to right.
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think Trump has that ability to be chastened and certainly, I mean, one of the things he has reportedly said was apparently in a conversation.
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he said he said this as he, he said this in interviews a few times when I think with like Tucker Carlson and with others where he said he like we don't need to worry what are around things are going to work out like things always work out right and then it's like just like like like and cropped and then I come back from the dad like yeah it's like I think things work out for him
• 15:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I'd be like, it doesn't have sense of where it is and where things are growing.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that there's ways in which his sort of recklessness, the sort of hawkish faction have been very good at interpreting one of which is, as I mentioned, I think very cleverly using the Venezuelan appetizer to what his appetite, to give him the dopamine hit of like, you know, what a quick victory it is.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: As if like, you know,
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: working with the Venezuelan government for a coup is a service that the other government of Iran, but the second aspect is sort of like playing on various fears, I mean, it's noticeable that the Israeli government has repeatedly emphasized that Iran is trying to assassinate Donald Trump and turning this into a first-of-a-data, and it's reporting about this bizarre shift where Trump had to go on a different airplane out of Turkey rather than Air Force
• 16:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: because of Israeli claims that there's an imminent assassination, which apparently the CIA thought was like laughable, but so, so there, so one gets from these stories a sense of these factions trying to manipulate him, but I think
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the other aspect of evidence on all this is the way everybody of both factions adopt it various times, the familiar line, you know, the Zarr is a good man, but he has bad advisors, the players are bad.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, so this is most of all the restrained your size when he first did the Iran war, like someone like the former government official who resigned Joe Kent and Tucker Carlson.
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like they were never saying like, you know, like holy cow, like we were wrong, Trump is an idiot.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: He sluts his war, which is bad.
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's like, no, this war is a bad idea, but unfortunately Trump is listening to the wrong advisors.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you only listen to the right
• 17:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think, and then during the few periods where the restrainingers are more on the ascendant, what people like Mark Levine or Brent Shapiro, but they don't say it's like Holy Count Trump's idiot.
• 17:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's listening to he's not connected to the war in a good way.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's going to sell it's out to Iran.
• 17:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: What they're saying is like these evil figures like Gady Vans are whispering
• 17:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this is only, I'll give a certain amount of credit, I guess, to my mouthpiece Neocon in the piece who is commentary editor in Chief John Podhara, it's who I'll say this for J. Pot.
• 17:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even though he is a famously unpleasant and mediocre man, as anyone will tell you,
• 18:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: actually that's not true there are people who know him personally who actually say he's very sweet if he doesn't hate you but um yeah but generally an unpleasant man uh known for vicious disgusting insults in public and private yeah uh but uh but uh but one thing I will say about him is I I do believe that Jay Pod
• 18:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: John Potthardt's fundamentally believes in neoconservatism as it's spoused by commentary.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: He believes in Israel, he believes in a hawkish, pro-Israel foreign policy.
• 18:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: He believes in some of the other, you know, more domestic sentiments of neoconservatism.
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: He has beliefs.
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: He has a coherent and consistent ideology over decades now, which is obviously heavily informed by what his parents believed, Norman Puttard's and Mitch Dector, Restin Peace.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is not, in other words, a hack.
• 18:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's not a botanist or a sargon.
• 18:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's not even a berry-wise who I think is ironclad on Israel, but flexible and pretty much everything else.
• 19:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And even on Israel, she'll always be pro Israel, but her feelings about Netanyahu will go back and forth in a very cynical way, I think.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think Jay Pied is more or less consistent and as a result when Trump has done what he wants on Israel or when Trump started bombing Iran, he praised Trump.
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't suddenly say he loves everything about Trump, but he loved that he was bombing Iran.
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: When Trump decided to do a ceasefire
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: in theory replicate something like Obama's Iran deal because things were going poorly.
• 19:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Horat's led this incredible freak out with the rest of the commentary staff who were basically his minimies.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whenever I see one of those like, you know, forefaces on the commentary video, channel or whatever,
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It'll be like Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, maybe one other person and John Podharts, and I'm always struck by John Podharts is kind of good at this.
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's a great character in this format.
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the other, I mean, he, he, it is entertaining to watch him freak out.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: The others are just dull, and they have nothing to add to what he's saying.
• 20:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they're just, they're just his, his yes man, which is how he's managed countering.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But John, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, each of you all said, you know, the kingdom of the blind.
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when our man is king.
• 20:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, there he is.
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: He is the one I did.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a lot of fig bees that is a contemporary commentary magazine.
• 20:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: John Pointhurts towers above.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: But watching him freak out and be like, I don't think Trump could possibly be doing worse.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: On the one hand, it's a reminder that, you know, the guy was quite anti-Trump back in 2016 as almost all of the neocons except for his father were.
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But also, I mean, this is kind of what I'm saying in the piece.
• 20:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what did you expect, John?
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, did you know that you really do know better?
• 20:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 20:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know exactly what a ridiculous, flaky, unreliable person this guy is.
• 21:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you still got excited.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, here's where I would say, like, Robert Cagan comes off better in the comparison, right?
• 21:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because Robert Cagan, who, obviously, at various points in his career, has also wanted to start a war with Iran.
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: was from day one of this war, like count me out.
• 21:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is going to be a strategic disaster, which was good strategic analysis, first of all, but it was also just, you know, an understanding that you can't, you can't trust Donald Trump with your consequential geopolitical agenda.
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to work.
• 21:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that is a reasonable fair takeaway and in this sort of taxonomy of the right, then the people who come up best in your piece and I think this is a correct analysis are the real hardcore never Trump people
• 21:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we've always realized that, to quote Rick Wilson, as you do in the face, anything from touches dies, so that even if he agrees with you on a specific policy, it's not going to get you anywhere.
• 22:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, I mean, I think that is the sort of correct analysis that the story really foolish people, both the restreangers and some of the neocons who thought that they could,
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: uh... get this uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: tried.
• 22:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: If Trump's elected, it will actually reduce violence in the Middle East.
• 22:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, what?
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm not sure Glenn is on the left anymore, but yes, he would certainly you want to.
• 22:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know, but yeah, I mean, I think that the
• 22:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: expectation of Trump was foolish, but I think that there we can move beyond this particular personality of Trump.
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: To this larger question of this sort of, you know, restrainers and how reliable they are, and whether that's sort of neoconservative hawkishness can ever really be extricated from the GOP.
• 23:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I think that in some ways Trump, you know, as idiotic and incurred as he is, has risen in part because he embodies a larger incoherence of the right on foreign policy that the sort of, you know, George W. Bush version of
• 23:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: of hawk-ish neo-concerters and failed.
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is not as a few adherents, but you can be broadly seen as failed, but it has not really been replaced by any sort of coherent restraining position.
• 23:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think what I would emphasize is that I think that the restrainers have never been
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: fully restrainers, and in some ways they've been allowed to get away with this allusion because of their liberal critics who call them like isolationist, and their neoconserator critics who also call their isolationist with the assumption that they're also an act of Islamist.
• 24:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if an anti-Semitic isolationist that in the anti-Semitic point I would simply say, often true.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It depends what you're talking about, but I was a, I was a, I was a uniformly too, but well, for instance, the other day for my book research, I was looking through Pat Buchanan's 2004 book where the right went wrong, which is basically him claiming vindication a year into the Iraq war and blaming it all on the neocons not.
• 24:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: entirely, and reasonably, and it's fascinating, I flipping through it, it's very much a polemic, but it assembles a lot of recent facts of recent 2004, and much of what's in it is perfectly fair and perfectly correct.
• 24:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Much of what he says about why the war was a bad idea, why he said it was a bad idea, who said it was a good idea, why the arguments were stupid, who the relevant personnel are, like it's overwhelmingly true.
• 25:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, but then there's this one line that I stumbled upon that it got some attention at the time because obviously both Neocons and their TNR, Liberal Hawk counterparts were calling the book anti-Semitic at the time.
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is one line in the book.
• 25:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: There there may be others that I've missed, but but there's one line that jumps out as cartoonishly anti-Semitic.
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's it's something that only an anti-Semite could come up with.
• 25:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is so unnecessary where he describes Richard Pearl
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Richard Pearl's characterization of meeting George W. Bush for the first time and Pearl said something.
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: He said, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't
• 26:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly correct.
• 26:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he's describing a scene where Pearl says something like, you know, Bush really struck me as someone who doesn't think he knows everything and instead asked questions and and and knows what he doesn't know and is the basically saying so you can like feed him your ideology.
• 26:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not unlike Trump except that Trump would.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, it's that illustrative little comparison where Trump doesn't know anything either, but in Trump's case, he doesn't ask questions, he just says stuff, and you're like, yes, or, and here's how you would do that.
• 26:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a slightly different dynamic.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But yes, I mean, comparing Richard Pearl to Fagan, I mean, literally only, like old school anti-Semite,
• 26:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't think we would have any discussion about between us, he's an anti-Semite, but I think he's a lost sort of a whole weekend and that sort of the restrainer
• 27:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: slash isolation, it's time to rent in this right, which is that it has never actually been worse strainer.
• 27:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has been like opposed to certain projects that it sees as being geocited by liberal slash Jewish ideology and is critical often with justice.
• 27:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: on American foreign policy in the Middle East.
• 27:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it has been going then, this is true, not just of like Papri Cannon, but going back to these sort of ideological ancestors, of people like Herbert Hoover and Charles Lindberg, the old sort of like old-right.
• 27:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has been an ideology of American imperialism, but American imperialism that is sort of hemispherically oriented, like dominating the Western Hemisphere, basically saying back in the 30s and 40s, and this actually still becomes position.
• 27:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: that you know like it's foolish for white people to fight a war amongst themselves this is just will allow the other races to take over so we we should have allowed Hitler to become overlord of Europe and we get Latin America and we get Latin America yeah and then the Britain Britain Britain would have kept India
• 28:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that is the world view.
• 28:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Also, by the way, an ideology that many British conservatives outside of Churchill believe them.
• 28:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a very standard right-wing geopolitical view.
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it is not an entirely interventionist view.
• 28:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Never has been, and I think it would be challenging in particular.
• 28:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm glad you brought them up.
• 28:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's pretty consistently show.
• 28:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can show up.
• 28:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm that like he's often critical of these wars, but once they start he goes along with them.
• 28:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he had been critical of the first Iraq war in 1991 saying, you know, to speak of anti-Semitism, you know, like the people who are fighting this war have names like Brown and Yassalas,
• 28:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's very funny.
• 28:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's it's so funny that he name is like the first a racially that one of them is like Lee Roy Jones Lee Roy Roy Jones Lee Roy Roy Jones Lee Roy Jones Lee Roy Jones Lee Roy Jones Lee Roy Jones Lee Roy Jones Lee Roy Jones
• 29:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Crawfammer, this is the second, you know, making an anti-Semitic point, unfortunately, on a solid anti-war position.
• 29:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: But having said that once the, you know, the first Iraq war started, we kind of was like, well, I have to support the president, you know, like once the nation's at war, we have to support it.
• 29:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is not true of the, not true of the 2003 Iraq war that.
• 29:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, I mean, I think the difference is that the Persian Gulf war went really well.
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was kind of a success.
• 29:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I really went really quickly.
• 29:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, more broadly, I think it's the case.
• 29:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've been cannons, you know, like foreign policy has never been.
• 29:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like it has been like we should be involved in the release or in Europe.
• 29:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those are not our fights.
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And only we can ask, but that, you know, like,
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: taking back Cuba, like imposing the type of regime we want on Mexico, that is an America first foreign policy.
• 30:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that in some ways what one season Trump is an attempt to square the circle.
• 30:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: of bringing the different factions together.
• 30:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think Marco Rubio is very interesting in that regard.
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: That, like, other one end, you could say this is someone deeply shaped by Neil Conservativeism.
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if he had won the Republican primary in 2016 and become president, he would have been a kind of, like, you know, a successor to George W. Bush in having that sort of deal conservative foreign policy.
• 30:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: But in the age of Trump, I think what Rubio is trying to do is to recast hawkishness in a way that's
• 30:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And particularly emphasizing, you know, I think the Venezuelan coup, and basically training Venezuela into a vassal state of like a 19-century periodism, who were like, like, back in Ruby is like running Venezuela.
• 31:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they're currently doing a tripling embargo of Cuba.
• 31:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: They want to do the same thing there.
• 31:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't only let's return Cuba under like American control and you know, hand it back to the mafia, I guess.
• 31:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it'll be the like Russian Jewish mafia this time.
• 31:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty much.
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: successors of uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh
• 31:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: of things.
• 31:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this might be significant for your book.
• 31:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: On the one hand, the neoconseratives that have stuck with Trump, you know, they've had to make maybe some sort of compromises they use the language of America first.
• 31:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that they've also jettisoned
• 31:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: any pretense of liberal heritage or a liberal tradition, I would sort of like democracy promotion.
• 32:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: So so that when they're now talking about regime change in the Middle East, I think the idea, although I trusted and go along with this, but I mean, I think there were many factions on the sort of neoconservant right there were friendly to this.
• 32:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: The idea was like, let's bring the shot and his family back into power
• 32:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: in Iran.
• 32:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think that with the sort of Abraham Accords, a much greater willingness to accept the sort of status quo of autocracy in the Middle East.
• 32:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think that Elliot Abrams has been a really interesting case in the point here, because he actually served in the first Trump administration, even though he and everyone he knew had been an effort trumper.
• 32:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: He became Trump's special envoy to both Iran and Venezuela in his first term, and this encompassed the failed one Guyato coup and the Soleimani strikes, so he probably at least was in the room for discussion of both of those.
• 33:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: He did not join the second Trump administration, but he initially championed what Trump did in both Venezuela and Iran, but very quickly he
• 33:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not exactly backtrack, but basically said, you're not doing this the way I would do it.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: With Venezuela, I think he wanted Gaiato.
• 33:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: He wanted what he would call democracy, but basically he wanted the sort of...
• 33:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: centrist bourgeoisie, you know, American friendly leaders.
• 33:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't just want like, Maduro's deputy, but what's her name?
• 33:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't want a delcey.
• 33:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, delcey, right?
• 33:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because he didn't want someone like that in charge.
• 33:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then in Iran, I think he, he also thinks the whole thing has been totally misconceive.
• 34:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that didn't stop him from voicing his approval at the outset.
• 34:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like he,
• 34:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: he likes the idea that you would do an interventionist war or regime change war in these places.
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: But then he has his particular, Abrams has weirdly never renounced democracy even in the numerous cases when it's blown up in his face.
• 34:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe most notoriously his role in the Gaza
• 34:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: He wrote a book in 2017 beginning of the Trump era called Realism and Democracy, which is basically him saying notwithstanding that the Arab Spring has turned out to be a complete disaster just about everywhere by now democracy in the Arab world is still a good idea and we should still support it, which is kind of like kind of an amazing take to come because a lot of these guys I think don't think that anymore.
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, I mean, yeah, yeah, I think Abrams is really kind of exceptional.
• 35:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think broader Neil considered movement, such as it is, really has given up on the pretense of democracy.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Abrams is, I mean, it's actually a function of his age, partially a function of his political evolution.
• 35:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: He did actually, you know, he was never on the left, but I think he did actually attend the little red schools.
• 35:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: this progressive school in New York.
• 35:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we are where and rose in politics too.
• 35:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I believe this sponsorship of Scoop Jackson and Dan Sackwine and so he is, yeah, maybe the last of that sort of, you know, democracy for voting, neocon, but I think more broadly, if want to say give like certainly the right as having a real,
• 35:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: problem after the failure of George W. Bush, and reconfiguring and trying to change, and then Trump has the figure that brings the different factions together.
• 35:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that he has been able to do so by getting both factions to come to a sort of common ground on militarism and on displays of American force.
• 36:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, which the so-called restrainers were happy to do because it involves, you know, like assertions of American power in the Western hemisphere.
• 36:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, basically this is an incredibly evil program of like blowing up ships in the Caribbean and in the Pacific.
• 36:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think all of them are grappling, the intellectually respectable position that they're all grappling toward, that has sort of been imposed as what Trump really believes is Walter Russell needs Jacksonian theory of foreign policy, which is a, he, he differentiates it from isolationism because it's not that you don't fight wars.
• 36:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: and it's not that you don't intervene, but it's not the sort of crusading democratizing idealism of Wilson or Elliott Abrams or, you know, the Iraq War at its height, basically.
• 37:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not this idea that America has to democratize the entire world.
• 37:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is this idea that, but it's also not pure isolationism.
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's this idea that you maintain a strong military,
• 37:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: pursuing American interests in terms of commerce.
• 37:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if anyone messes with America, you strike them mercilessly.
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 37:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 37:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: What are the figures in your forthcoming book?
• 37:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dizing, always had that position.
• 37:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was Michael Zedin, who famous he said you are like, every 10 years or so, the U.S. has to find some little country, weak little country, and you know, some of them against the wall, just to prove that it can.
• 37:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, and I think there's a case, also, that this was the basic world view of a Dicture in a Donald Rumsfeld Bridge on Bolton, and that the term neoconservatism, meaning the crusading democracy thing, was kind of imposed on them in the wake of 9-11 for reasons, but like, and actually even Charles Krauthammer, I think, was a little more in this tradition, he kind of balanced it out with the cake and democracy thinking, but I find it interesting,
• 38:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: everyone who wants to, everyone on both sides of the neocon restrainer divide who wants to like have clout in Trump world, I think cast themselves in some version of this.
• 38:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they call it America first.
• 38:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's basically a version of the Jacksonian theory.
• 38:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the problem is again, like Donald Trump doesn't read Walter Russell's meat.
• 38:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Donald Trump is not thinking, like they're basically different.
• 38:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's got instincts in trying to translate them into a coherent policy.
• 38:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: But his gut instincts are confounding and maddening.
• 38:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, I don't deny that aspect of Trump, but I would actually say that that particular foreign policy is already even in the hands of like the most skilled people who are like much more skilled and knowledgeable than Donald Trump still has a fundamental incoherence.
• 39:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, because it's not really based on any rational view of the world, it's just based on pure bullying and assertions of power and that's what one saw under George W. Bush a true restrainer for policy would be someone like maybe Bush senior who did have some sense of international balance of power working through international organizations like the United Nations, but but that doesn't exist or someone who admired him a lot Barack Obama
• 39:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Barack Obama, or yeah, Brent's go scork off, James Baker.
• 39:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I don't think that there's the, but that sort of, and in the intellectual space, Stephen Walt, I would say.
• 39:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 39:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that sort of realism.
• 39:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really doesn't exist in the GOP.
• 39:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: What you have is that sort of peer jacksonian.
• 39:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love a quibble because what they I would disagree with me is like Andrew Jackson's phone calls, you actually was love that.
• 39:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: But let's call it, let's call it jacksonian.
• 40:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's sort of bullying in parallelism.
• 40:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not a clear and foreign policy, it's not a way of dealing with the world.
• 40:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a, you know, it's, Lionel's really good to say, it's not an idea.
• 40:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a, it's a, it's a set of like, yeah, impulses.
• 40:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 40:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it's a set of, it
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: the irritable mental gestures.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're irritable mental gestures.
• 40:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Which is a secret symbol, I guess.
• 40:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, exactly.
• 40:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is exactly.
• 40:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have what set of irritable mental gestures and resemble ideas.
• 40:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the reason Donald Trump has triumphed to the Republican Party is he himself is nothing but a series of irritable mental gestures.
• 40:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And therefore, he embodies
• 40:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the right time Donald Trump is is is is irritable mental gestures that other people around him seek to turn into ideas Donald Trump doesn't actually care about that part Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he doesn't even gives up the pretense of even having ideas, but in any case, ah, I think that would be like my extension of your argument, which is I Yeah, no, I think it's totally right another
• 41:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Another fun data point I would bring up in this regard is back to Abrams, but very relevant to this is in between the two Trump administrations.
• 41:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Abrams started, you know, he did what Neocons always do.
• 41:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: He started a letterhead.
• 41:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: He started a new temporary organization that's basically just a list of names, you know, as a kind of a holding thing.
• 41:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: but he called it the vandenberg group or the vandenberg coalition.
• 41:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's very, and one person is in it is Douglas Fiths on David Fiths who worked on China issues in the first Trump administration.
• 41:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the vandenberg group there, there are
• 41:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: their ideas basically to like keep alive the idea of like a strong like in globally engaged foreign policy and in you know while supporting America first or something they threatened needle something like that who was vandenberg vandenberg was a senator a republican senator um
• 42:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: who was essentially a Lindberghian isolationist until Pearl Harbor.
• 42:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then when Pearl Harbor happened, he not only supported, you know, U.S. entering to World War II, but for the rest of his career, he was like a big cold warrior.
• 42:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, supported the whole containment strategy and everything.
• 42:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know
• 42:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Abrams, who's not stupid, basically dug up a guy who's career embodies the idea that you too Donald Trump could be a neocon if you just squint a little and make a coalition after that.
• 42:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that just causes that you've had to raise also an example of a perfect puppet because Walter Lippman would write speeches for Vandenberg and then write comments praising those speeches.
• 42:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he is, in fact, in bodies, what the sort of pendant, how cash-prendits always ideally won in the politician, which is a ventriloquist dummy, so a very aptly chosen by alien Aperms.
• 43:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that I will link to David's article and also encourage readers to keep an eye on it's forthcoming book.
• 43:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's still a ways away, but if you want more in-depth knowledge of the history of neoconservitism of the sort that we've had in this podcast, that's where you'll find it.
• 43:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when you find it, you will know from the acknowledgements, but also from listening to this, that non-trivial amounts of lore came directly from GD here, who knows more about the Neo-Constan, really anyone.
• 43:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we'll be sighted for it.
• 43:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm getting there.
• 43:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm catching up.
• 43:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Look, look, look, look, look, look.
• 43:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's perhaps my curse, but it didn't happen.
• 43:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's, thank you.