Latest / The Nation Podcasts / After the American Empire w/ Trita Parsi | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

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After the American Empire w/ Trita Parsi | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: With the old world is dying, the new world struggles to reborn, now is the time of monsters.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: With those words from Gramshee, I welcome you to the time of monsters podcast on GTA of the Nation magazine, this podcast is sponsored by the Nation, and is widely available on all podcasting platforms.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we often talk about Donald Trump's foreign policy on this podcast and this week I thought it would be a good idea to talk about it not just with specific issues like Venezuela or the Middle East or Ukraine But they try to get a ton of big picture image because Trump is actually emerging as a foreign policy president
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: even more so than in his first term, he's making some very dramatic changes in American foreign policy.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this is perhaps not a surprise, I mean foreign policy is one area where presidents usually get a lot of leeway.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think Trump, even more so than most presidents, he has a Republican
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Congress that seems very willing to give him why it's gold, but a lot of the tendencies that we're seeing are very contrary, you know, there's sort of moves in Ukraine and even more surprisingly in China towards some sort of a ratcheting down of tensions.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: and possibly, also even in the Middle East.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Conversely, the foreign policy has been very aggressive in the Western Hemisphere with the illegal destruction of boats in international waters and the possible war in Venezuela.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: So to talk about all this, to try to get a big picture of what is actually happening here,
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm very happy to have on once again, a frequent guest of the program, TREEDA PARCY, who is founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, yeah, first of all, welcome to the program.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much for having me again, Keith.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, I mean, as I mentioned in my introduction, you know, like Trump is, you know, becoming a foreign policy president.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think like the latest is your time magazine, even, you know, instead of framing him in that term, if you were talking about a possible Trump doctrine in foreign policy.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I wanted to get your sense, particularly, I think because the Quincy Institute, I think has an interesting relation.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: with the sort of changes that are going on in American foreign policy.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: Some of which overlap with what Trump is doing and some go against it.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: But what are your general thoughts?
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Do we have a kind of coherent foreign policy here?
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, we absolutely do not have a coherent policy.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't even have a coherent micro policy in the sense that there's numerous examples in which within negotiations, the administration suddenly changes course doesn't stick to a line, doesn't stick to specific negotiating goals or even agreements.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think cohesion is the last word I would use to describe the administration.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: contours of a direction.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I think we can.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you take a look at it globally, I would start off by saying that you have on average or on balance, a tendency to want to do away with this large empire globally.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not done coherently, it's not done consistently.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there is a desire to take credit for things, have their name on things, but let others handle it, manage it, and ultimately down the road.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Own it as well.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would say that about some of the stuff in the Middle East for instance.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think you have the same consistency with the China, not my area of expertise, but I think we've seen flexibilities that we didn't see during the Biden era, that could lead to a negotiated modest event between China and the United States.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think the larger issue is this, that while there is a withdrawal from this idea of global, or at least there's a desire to withdraw from this global empire.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not coupled with a vision that is one of in which the United States no longer is an empire, but rather you have a withdrawal from global hegemony coupled with a tripling down on hemisphere occasionally.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what you pointed out in Latin America, it's becoming much more hawkish.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's increasingly viewing it as the real American backyard, the Monroe Doctrine, and that the United States is actually going to be in many ways much more militaristic.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this hemisphere, then it has been in the last two or three decades.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there are a lot of folks that accused the Biden Restoration, I think, rightfully of ignoring Latin America.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of those people may actually be yearning for the days when the U.S. was ignoring Latin America, rather than doing what it is doing right now.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I personally find it a major problem with this, because this is not an abandonment of empire.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a resizing of empire.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: it is going towards a much more hemispheric approach towards it while we're drawing from other areas that are deemed to be less important, but it's still empire.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not the approach that I think would be much more favorable for the United States of adopting a position of restraint in which that type of belief and domination whether global or hemispheric is not at the core
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, I mean, it's quite a bit that you said there that is perhaps worth unpacking.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: I want to first talk about the aspect of the lack of cohesion, and I think that there's something to be said about Trump's management style, which is that, you know, he might have certain broad instincts or preferences, but there seems to be a lot of leeway given to various underlings and minions who don't agree among themselves.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think that what is seeing in particular areas is sort of like capture of different factions at different times.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, I think it's probably most clear in Ukraine and Russia where they seem to be going back and ports from like giving sort of free rain to Ukraine to escalate in the war.
• 6:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: And at the times indicating that the US just wants the European Santana listen.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: and withdrawn, you know, like we have seen sort of battles within the administration of various people being fired at different times.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is a lot of fractional battles.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think like when I was thinking about the hemispheric turn, I mean, I think the influence of Marco Rubio and what I would call this sort of Florida Republican contingent.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: seems very significant.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I think Trump has gone from being a sort of New York president to being a Florida president.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if I could say something on that, um, this is a pattern we see, because you know, you have
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: and Trump to a much stronger element of restraint minded for impulsity hands.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think Trump himself, in at least some of his rhetorical positions, have developed that view a little bit stronger in his own head.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: But others in the administration have had much more developed.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what that runs into, and this is a self-criticism of the restraint movement that I'd like to consider myself a part of, is that there's a lot of areas that have not been developed in restraint yet.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what you have, for instance, with Venezuela is a scenario in which because restraint did not have a particularly well-developed view of what the US is approached towards Latin America should be.
• 7:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It creates a vacuum, and then Mark Rubio comes, he already has an agenda.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: The question is, how does he frame his agenda in a manner that is attractive to someone like Trump?
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he managed to do so by framing Maduro as the source of the fentanyl crisis.
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: in the United States, which of course there's no evidence for it is not a defense of him or a defense of whatever the Venezuelans role within a larger drug trade maybe, which clearly there is an involvement.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it was that reframing that enabled this matter to go this far, which is clearly at this point the regime change operation.
• 8:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think it still has some of these elements that are attractive to Trump, or at least the elements that are not unattracted to him.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they don't seem to be thinking of an actual war.
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is not something that can lead to in their minds to an endless war.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a ground invasion.
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's military action, not terribly different from what it did with Iran over the summer.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't like war, but he seems to be crazy about military action.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: As long as it's limited and it doesn't have that type of a slippery slope towards a larger war that doesn't have a clear exit.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we see it also incidentally when it comes to the approach of the administration towards international institutions in the U.N.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: There isn't a clear idea within the restraint movement of exactly what should the U.S. is approach towards international multilateralism, UN, et cetera, B.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you can then default to a more traditional republican skepticism of these institutions, either as the neocons viewed only as unnecessary and unwelcome constraints on American power.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: or from a more sovereignty focused position all these different institutions are trying to tell Americans how they should live their lives and are infringing an American sovereignty.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas in reality, I think that if the administration has reconciled with the idea that the world is or becoming more multipolar, then there should be a recognition as well then that the US no longer has the relative power to constrain countries like China and Russia and other future rivals compared to what it did 20 years ago.
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if it doesn't have that,
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: ability to do so through its own power, and it needs to start looking at other instruments that it can use to be able to constrain those powers.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because that interest is still there, the power may not be there, but the interest is still remaining.
• 10:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the first things that come to mind, of course, are international law, international institutions, the UN, et cetera.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I mean, as the world becomes multipolar, the United States starts to become more like a normal country,
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: agrees with that bargain.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: They agree to the manner in which international law and treaties constrain themselves in return for the constraints that it offers to impose on everyone else.
• 11:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: A bargain that may not be terribly attractive to a unipolar power that can get away with it because it has so much power, but actually starts becoming attractive once you become a multi-polar power.
• 11:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: but they have not been fully developed and as a result, the administration has approached to these different issues, seems to be coming from a position of not knowing or just reverting back to tradition and whatever has been the case in the past.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas in reality, if they truly wanna approach,
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: the world differently in a profound way compared to previous administrations, a lot of these things need to be thought through and cannot just be left unattended because particularly when you have a lot of neocons or neocon leaning elements in the administration and the Florida contingency, as you mentioned, they will take advantage of it and push for their own policies that are not at all compatible with a lot of different things that the
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: regime change in Venezuela, taking military action.
• 12:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is not supposed to be on the agenda.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And incidentally, if you take a look at a lot of people on the right are saying within Maga, they're not in favor of this.
• 12:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're very much opposed to this.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: No, the does he, the sort of Hemisphere turn, what we, I mean, it has their contradictory,
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: elements and there are ways in which this has been a part of traditional republican thinking long before Trump that you know the traditional old right position was leave Europe the Europeans and not get involved in wars in the Middle East but that the U.S. has an obligation towards Latin America but as you said that's very much intention with the other tendency which
• 13:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it does seem like there's a kind of doubling down on the hemisphere.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, Venezuela on the flip side of Venezuela is also, you know, this desire to show up in Argentina, right?
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it does seem like the US has gone from a period of like, you know, several decades of ignoring the region to to being a hemispheric power again.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I'm curious that you got to say what's the same more about.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: do you think that the sort of maga opposition can have a role like me I do think like in the Middle East at least it did have a role to play that like I think the fact that you know people like Tucker Carlson and a bargey Taylor Green were becoming more vocal and criticizing Israel was certainly like at least one factor maybe not the primary one but they played a role
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And in the sort of, do you think that this or venture Republican debate can also act as a counter to Trump's policy in Latin America?
• 13:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, I'm the Middle East first before I get to the second part of the question.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I actually think it was a crucial factor.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 14:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think what happened was that over the course of the summer, after the attack on Iran, there was, I mean, the civil war within larger GOP not necessarily mad on this issue between what some would call them to Israel firsters and others who consider themselves America first.
• 14:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it just came out in the open.
• 14:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it was not going in the direction of the Mark Levines and others.
• 14:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they were losing Big Todd to the point in which Trump even told one of his pro-Israel fundraisers or donors that my people hate you.
• 14:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is not a small thing.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then when these rallies overreach by attacking Doha,
• 14:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's what triggered this big change, but it had been bubbling up over the summer, and I think incidentally, I think it's something we have to acknowledge from realize that this was starting to become bad for him, an opportunity for him was given to change his course, and he did.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, plenty of opportunities were given to Biden.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
• 15:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Plenty of opportunities were given to Biden, in which he should have realized, and he probably did realize, his support for genocide was terrible.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: for him, for his party, and for what he framed the election to be about, which was saving American democracy from Trump.
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yet he never listened.
• 15:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: He never changed.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: He never did any of these things.
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think in the Middle East it actually was a crucial factor.
• 15:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: On Venezuela, it's going to be more difficult for it to be a crucial factor because they're Rubio have managed to frame this in a way that makes it very relevant to core American MAGA concerns, which is the fentanyl, which is all of the drugs coming in over the border or wherever it's coming from, etc.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it is presented as something that addresses that.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think this has led to a scenario in which a lot of folks that are willing to give the administration the benefit of the doubt, even though everything they're doing walks like a doc, quacks like a doc and is a regime change doc.
• 16:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there is a split, whether that split remains or whether we actually eventually gravitate towards one or the other position remains to be seen, but that means that for now at least the administration probably can go forward with some of these in my view rather on helpful ideas without getting the type of a pushback that otherwise might have gotten.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, I think both points are well taken out.
• 16:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Especially like on the Israel stuff, I mean, I will emphasize for people looking on the outside, they'd like question like, how much salience a Tucker Carlson or a Margi Taylor Greene or Candace Owen have.
• 16:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: But if you actually look at the polling, there has been a significant shift among young Republicans at the Balkans under 50.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: against Israel, and even the shifts like in places that one would not expect as a among sort of younger evangelical Christians.
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that is a very significant tournament that has all sorts of implications for American foreign policy.
• 17:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely.
• 17:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me give you one other example, J.D.
• 17:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Vaskos to Israel, and he decides not to go to the wayling wall, put on a gift instead goes to a church.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is it because he's driving this change or is it because he's reacting to this change?
• 17:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: predominantly that he's reacting to it, because there's now a political reality within Magga, in which if you on these circumstances now, go to the wailing wall instead of going to one of the churches in Jerusalem, it actually can cost you politically.
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he does the other thing, they're reacting to a reality that has now come into existence in their base.
• 17:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's not come into existence independently.
• 17:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Many of these people have driven it in that direction.
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think J.D.
• 17:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: necessarily is one of them.
• 17:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's just a new reality politically.
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think a lot of observers, particularly outside of the United States are very late to understanding these shifts.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Particularly when it comes to deep shifts in American foreign policy or society, they tend to not be particularly good at it because they didn't see Trump coming, which I think is forgivable.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't see Trump too coming, which I think is unforgivable.
• 18:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And right now, they are,
• 18:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: be faulty to the idea that this is just a temporary shift.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is just because of anger a bunch of kids watching TikTok.
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not deep.
• 18:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not sustainable.
• 18:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll see.
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: On Tuesday, there will be elections in New York.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if Mamedani wins, I think we're going to see, you know, the democratic civil war on this issue really come to the fore.
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: and a lot of the shifts that people expected perhaps would happen in the democratic party 10 years from now may actually come much much sooner.
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then by the time you have midterm elections in the US in November of next year, if Israel ends up becoming a key issue within those elections, particularly in the primaries,
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: in, you know, starting from March or April, then I think the impact on Republican politics about about this will come much sooner than people expected as well.
• 19:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't know.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's pretty fair to say that there's a very good chance that on for both political parties, Israel is going to be a big issue in the sort of, you know, next president to Iran.
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: In the case of like Venezuela, like it seems like
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: what you pointed to, the absence of, you know, like all turned their point of view, I created a vacuum for Rubio's, you know, returned to a kind of meal conservative policy.
• 19:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think that applies more broadly not just to the right, but to like American foreign policy in general, in the sense that when it's not seeing an articulate critique of what Trump is doing, which, like to me, sees like very dangerous in terms of like, you know, the United States,
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: to like, you know, bullships in international waters, you know, like, you know, like, like, if we, like, kind of generalize that, what does it mean to say, you know, where the US as you say is it's a becoming multilateral world, it's not going to be able to have had to want to power and that the US is also a setting that strong nation has a right.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: to come with this sort of violence on international waters.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, does this one know on a sea China?
• 20:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Exercise that right.
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: They in the South China Sea.
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, I think these are excellent questions that are not sufficiently thought through.
• 20:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: There seems to be a belief that denotist states can essentially tear down a lot of norms deliberately.
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: and create a scenario in which the manner in which these norms and laws constrained to you as are taken off and that that will put the United States in a relatively beneficial position.
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: because of the fact that the US is still the strongest military power.
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in that sense, there's a lot of overlap with the near conservatives.
• 21:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's this remarkable op-ed by Richard Perl on the day that the US invaded Iraq and the Guardian.
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I forgot to title, but it was something thank God for the death of the UN.
• 21:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Something along those lines, and he's essentially saying that it's not just the Donald saying that should be taken out in this regime change work, but the entire UN system as well.
• 21:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that the UN has been an object failure and that the real future for stability is a coalition of the willing headed by the United States.
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: and destroying all of the different norms and international institutions, laws, et cetera, is exactly what was at the center of the near conservative agenda, because the less constraints you have on the US the more relatively better its position will be because of its preponderance of military power.
• 21:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, I mean, that is the sort of vision and I guess what I wanted to pick out a little bit is the sort of striking absence of the sort of critique of that one needs and one would like to have not just from Republican restrainers, but also on the Democratic party side because I can't help but notice that like, you know, when Trump has, you know, they, I think one of the 20 ships now.
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: are geared towards, you know, if not a ground invasion, which is unlikely, but at least some sort of serious regime change operation in Venezuela.
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: But when it's hearing from the Democrats with a few exceptions, but for the most part, and the leadership of the Democratic Party is procedural questions, you know, like why isn't Congress being consulted?
• 22:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: Why are we not?
• 22:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: So basically what I'm hearing,
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: from the way Chuck Schumer talks about it is that what they want is to be able to rubber stamp this, to have Trump say, you know, like this is what we're going to do and then Congress can give their stamp of approval and there's not seeing a critique of the, you know, the damage that this is doing towards like any sort of international system.
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, do you want to talk a little bit about that, the absence of a... Yeah, no, I think you're putting a thing or something very important, which is obviously the current democratic leadership is completely through this.
• 23:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have utterly failed in putting forward an alternative vision.
• 23:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, they revered back to just simple stuff such as complaining about process and things of that nature or slogans.
• 23:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: But nothing to really put forward an alternative vision.
• 23:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you obviously have voices on the democratic side that have the ability and what are trying in our in some ways succeeding?
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: But they're not in the leadership and in the formal sense.
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they're the opposition within the democratic party.
• 23:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I am still worried about
• 23:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: how well developed some of these ideas are on the new left, I don't know if that's the right term or not, but let's say that the wave that may come in with Mombani, in the sense that even within the restraint, as we talked about right now, within restraint there were a lot of areas that would have not been fully thought through.
• 24:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as a result, once in a position of power, they may have very clear visions of how to deal with the Middle East, for instance.
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: But far less of an idea of exactly what needs to be done in other areas of the world, or what the guiding principles really should be.
• 24:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what I see on the Mombani left is, you know, the...
• 24:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: problemic populism, et cetera, but when it comes to foreign policies, not entirely clear to me what the foundational principles are.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm worried that it will reverse back to some previous ideas of a left foreign policy that was very much based on values.
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then adopted ideas
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: that I think are catastrophic, such a idea of dividing the world between the thought crises and democracies.
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, not only are you dividing the world in the manner that actually will make conflict more likely, but from there also came these other types of derivatives, such as, you know, international law ultimately applies differently to different states, because if you are a democracy, then you are superior.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So international law ended up becoming contingent upon your domestic political makeup.
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: You have this on some of the proesural left in which they're explaining away or sweeping away, genocide, war crimes, apartheid, because Israel is a democracy.
• 25:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: ideas of that kind, which may sound good initially on paper, I think are completely disastrous.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think Bernie played a big role in advancing that, I mean, with the best of intentions, but it wasn't thought through.
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was highly problematic.
• 25:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's important to get some of these things right.
• 25:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And even when it comes to international institutions and the UN, etc.
• 25:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think on the left there is
• 25:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: much more of a positive, constructive approach towards these institutions.
• 26:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: But we have to recognize, and I think you and I had a conversation about it before, that divide the administration.
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: put on a face of favoring multilateralism, et cetera.
• 26:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: But in reality, it was also hollowing out international law, weakening the UN system.
• 26:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was very worried that the Chinese would become too influential in the current UN system.
• 26:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as a result, it was pushing for the drool's based order term.
• 26:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, they kind of changed the meaning of it, but it was essentially going to be a coalition of the willing setting the rules for everyone else.
• 26:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: anything that we've ever expected, that is equally disastrous.
• 26:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Compared to an unfrontal assault to the internationalist and it's not entirely clear to me to what extent folks on the left also have thought this through carefully so that it actually would be a new approach rather than thinking that the response to Trump is just to go back to what we did before.
• 26:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, I mean, I think that that's exactly on point.
• 27:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, one is not, I think it is a general recognition that the Biden failed, but in some ways, because the failure in the Middle East was so spectacular, it has actually not led to a critique of failures in other areas.
• 27:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so there's a kind of danger of a revision to the stable policies.
• 27:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: And in particular, when we were talking about,
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: international law and the role it plays, I mean, I think the fact that the Biden administration had a two-faced policy which is inherently contradictory and self-defeating of wanting international law in Europe, in Ukraine, to quite properly point out the war crimes that Vladimir Putin had committed and and and and try to create a global coalition against Russia on the basis of
• 27:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so I don't know, yeah, I actually don't know if there has been any serious soul searching among the Democrats about this sort of broader failure as well as questions about the pursuit of great power competition with China and the way that that, you know, like actually strengthened the hand of the right and it also like, you know, had more importantly had very bad policy implication.
• 28:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, whatever has happened is clearly not enough.
• 28:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: because just as much of there is a need for completely new faces at the democratic leadership and completely new thinking, the same is true when it comes to the foreign policy lead.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not seeing it yet.
• 28:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps once Maldani wins and that way really takes shape, perhaps we will see something there.
• 28:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: But so far,
• 28:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: what I've seen is insufficient.
• 28:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't meet the moment.
• 28:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it doesn't deal sufficiently with breaking with the past and understanding what went wrong with the past.
• 28:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm still feeling from seeing that clip with Jean Pierre.
• 29:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So she goes out on Amin's show on MSNBC.
• 29:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's asked about if you regrets anything.
• 29:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: But first response is to say,
• 29:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: that, look, as it spokesperson, I'm speaking for the president, I'm not speaking for myself.
• 29:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Amen points out that, yeah, but now you're coming out with your book, now you're speaking for yourself, do you regret anything?
• 29:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she doesn't want to say, give a yes or no answer, she says she needs to add context.
• 29:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the context apparently is that she's black and that she's
• 29:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: as if that's on we somehow is relevant and then she goes on to say that she doesn't regret anything and that she doesn't take anything back but in her view and in that mindset your identity is a get out of a jail free card in which you can get away with even genocide as long as you have the right identity.
• 29:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So rules, laws, ethical norms are not applied objectively in the same to all.
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is applied to you based on what identity you have.
• 30:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: That type of thinking, again, is what one variation of it is to divide the world between democracies and ethocracies, and then essentially say, if you're democracy, you're just much more valuable.
• 30:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're not equal in the eye of the law.
• 30:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you create these kind of divisions that are fundamentally problematic and leads to a much worse world, stability.
• 30:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're also much worse American foreign policy that ends up in the same pattern that we have seen in the past.
• 30:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, no, actually now that you mentioned the dividing of the world, you know, between good guys and bad guys, I mean, that partially explains the lack of any sufficient response to Trump's actions in the hemisphere, and particularly with Venezuela, like it is, there's a kind of framing that is accepted, not just in the Republican party.
• 31:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: by many Democrats that you know like obviously is a matter of fact that Venezuela is an hypocrisy actually the the reason of the last election there's no reason to accept it on face value but but having said that like you know if you create the rule of the like democracies
• 31:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: are a lot to both the ships of, you know, a talker sees like, you need to dash on water, then, you know, like, what's there a world where you're at you creating?
• 31:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
• 31:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the whole point of international law is to get everyone to play along the same rules.
• 31:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 31:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you then come out and say, well, actually, for us democracies, we need to have much more lenient rules.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So things that you're not supposed to do or allow to do such as genocide, it's okay when we do it.
• 31:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you're creating the very disaster that international law was designed to get us out of.
• 31:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, Madur is a bad guy.
• 31:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: As was Kadafi, as was Bashar al-Assad, as was Saddam, it didn't change the fact that going into these countries, changing the regime, occupying them was bad for US interests and ultimately terrible for these countries as well.
• 32:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: As if that is what will determine whether this is something that is in the interest of the United States to do or not is in and of itself a problem and this is why I'm very skeptical of any attempt to build a new American foreign policy that is based on values rather than an understanding of interest first and foremost not saying that values don't have a space in it.
• 32:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have a room in it, but if it's starting off with those values, then you've very quickly get into these more realistic frames, in which an invasion actually could be made okay.
• 32:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: beforehand, because the guy is so bad or because he, I mean, look at Bill Mart, you know, his only defense is that, you know, but what he said that he was angry that Mamdan had not got a rid of his, because they're bad to gaze in Uganda.
• 33:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you start with those type of ideas for foreign policy, yes, you will invade almost every country at some point, and we will be at war almost all the time.
• 33:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: which is more or less our history for the last couple of decades, so you got to get a way out of that and just focus it on what the interest are.
• 33:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And such an approach I think would be to a very different conclusion on how we should be dealing with Venezuela today.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's poses challenges, et cetera, but none of those seem to rise to the level in which we say, yes, regime change or military action should even be on the table.
• 33:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think that's right in there.
• 33:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: It actually gets the sort of Venezuelan anomaly or the way which Trump has been able to, she have found his own preferred preferences.
• 33:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because it seems to be like a lot of reward in American politics if you start framing issues in that sort of like more realistic way and that you can get buy in from all sorts of people and use a sort of,
• 34:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: more mainstream language of human rights.
• 34:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it is interesting with Trump.
• 34:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: When we talked before about the surfections within the party, before this recent turn towards war, he had actually been the clearly opposite on Venezuela, yet Richard Grennell down there and they're trying to negotiate.
• 34:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you could kind of see an alternative scenario where Trump, you know, basically the lies well, we need their oil, which is by their oil, and we'll make an agreement with that.
• 34:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, it does seem that in this case, there's more mainstream human rights view, like actually creates problems and it stands in the way of actual making a piece.
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I agree, and that's not an argument against human rights.
• 34:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think if we get to a point in which you write once again, gets more prominent role in American foreign policy, I hope it's done in the right way.
• 34:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because right now, at least there's an honesty of them, the administration really making clear they don't care about this issue.
• 35:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: The administration had worse situation in some ways, because they really pretended as if they cared.
• 35:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: of their foreign policy, and then they funded armed and facilitator genocide, the crime of all crimes.
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And any return to, you know, humor rights has to, in my view first, make sure that we actually have a link to stand on at home on this issue before we go around preaching to other countries, anything about this issue.
• 35:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right.
• 35:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's a good note to end on.
• 35:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm very grateful for Tita once again for this conversation.
• 35:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: And particularly, like I'm trying to think about, you know, American foreign policy broader than just a little problems of Trump and his personality or management style, but these kind of like larger dilemmas.
• 35:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: So once again, thanks for being on the show.
• 35:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much, really appreciate it.
• 36:05
  [UNKNOWN]: You