And, This is Richard Haass

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Speaker 3 This is Gavin Newsom.

Speaker 3 And this is Richard Haas.

Speaker 3 Richard, thank you so much for taking the time to come on, particularly at a remarkable time in world history, particularly in history unfolding in the Middle East. Today, President Trump

Speaker 3 seemed to have a day that he's been looking forward to for years and years and years, pushing NATO to move from 2% to 5%.

Speaker 3 What was your takeaway from this NATO summit, at least the first day?

Speaker 3 And does Trump deserve, I think, a lot of praise

Speaker 3 for an accomplishment here?

Speaker 30 I would argue President Trump. Well, first of all, Gavin, good to be with you.

Speaker 30 Thank you. Look, I would argue President Trump deserves credit for spurring the Europeans to do what they ought to have done years before.

Speaker 30 They ought to be putting forward a larger share of the effort for what's a common defense.

Speaker 30 I would just as an aside, I would say much more important to me than whether the Europeans spend 3% or 2.5% or 4.5% is how they spend it.

Speaker 30 And I'd actually say something you'd probably agree with in public policy. How you spend money is almost always more important than how much you spend.

Speaker 30 And the problem with European defense is not just that they spend too little, but each country pretty much determines how it spends its defense euros.

Speaker 30 So the whole ends up being less than the sum of its parts. So I would be pushing, if I were advising the president, I would say, yeah, push them to do more.

Speaker 30 But secondly, also push them, in a sense, to become more European rather than country by country by country, which is the way they often go about it. But I think that part is good.

Speaker 30 Less good is I think he's introduced some doubts into the reliability of the United States and what you might call the automatic quality. of Article 5, America's willingness to go to bat for Europe.

Speaker 30 And obviously, there's also some fairly significant differences about how to handle the most immediate threat, which is Russia and the war in Ukraine. So I think it's a mixed bag.

Speaker 30 But yes, it's good to see the Europeans essentially getting pushed to do more.

Speaker 3 And it's interesting just as you unpack, and I appreciate

Speaker 3 the how you spend and where you spend.

Speaker 3 It was interesting just looking at some of the details that their direct spend in support of Ukraine would be considered as part of that contribution as it relates to that breakdown of 5%.

Speaker 3 It was also, though, interesting to see the breakdown within the countries.

Speaker 3 Obviously, Germany looking to move quicker by 2029 with close to 70% increase in their domestic defense spending. And then Spain, who was called out by the president today,

Speaker 3 looking not necessarily to reach that numeric. Does that mean much to you, or is that just

Speaker 3 noise?

Speaker 30 The most interesting part of that is Germany.

Speaker 30 Less what Germany is prepared to do in defense, though doing more is welcome.

Speaker 30 But Germany has changed its laws and essentially now is able to raise serious debt, which was something that modern Germany had an allergy to because of the whole Weimar experience.

Speaker 30 And the fact that Germany now can really go into the markets and raise debt gives them far more capacity. to potentially grow their economies as well as to contribute to national security.

Speaker 30 And I'd even go so far as to say the most interesting figure in Europe right now is is the new Chancellor of Germany.

Speaker 30 And even though he had a rough start and getting confirmed and so forth by his parliament, I actually think the Chancellor Mertz is in a position to, in some ways, have Germany stake out the leadership position in Europe, something that historically since World War II, Germany's been reticent to do.

Speaker 30 So I would watch that space, particularly since the French, the British, and others are so gridlocked domestically. I think Germany now occupies the critical position.

Speaker 3 When you referenced the Article 5, sort of, you know, I think the president, when he was flying over, there was some ambiguity, once again, sort of creating some doubt and anxiety.

Speaker 3 He seemed to shift tone a little bit when he landed. But is that just that on again, off-again relationship to the Article 5?

Speaker 3 Is that what you're referring to as sort of a lack of certainty and confidence in the president?

Speaker 30 Yeah, for those who haven't read the NATO treaty recently, Article 5 is the core of the agreement, where essentially an attack on one is considered to be an attack on all.

Speaker 30 Curiously, it's only been invoked once in NATO's entire history, and that was on behalf of the United States after 9-11. But alliances depend upon predictability and reliability and dependability.

Speaker 30 And I would argue that President Trump has introduced a significant degree of uncertainty into that, which I think is counterproductive.

Speaker 30 He would argue perhaps it was necessary to get the Europeans to do more. I would have said, said, well, probably there's better ways to do that.

Speaker 30 But that's where we are. And to the extent Russia senses there's uncertainty there, Putin, who, as we've seen in Ukraine, can be risk-run,

Speaker 30 might be more likely to take risks. So I always believe that the best way to deter is through certainty.
So your friends know you'll be there for them.

Speaker 30 And just as important, your enemies know you'll be there for your friends.

Speaker 30 So I would like for President Trump, as the days and weeks and months unfold, to look for opportunities to make clear that whatever our differences are with Europe over their level of defense effort, we see it as in our interest to be there with them.

Speaker 3 You're here.

Speaker 3 In terms of the actual bombing itself, and I think by most objective standards, it was a success, whether or not these sites were quote unquote obliterated,

Speaker 3 that's a separate conversation. Is that your assessment that this was a success?

Speaker 3 That in the spirit of what you just said around some certainty that the president wasn't wasn't bluffing in terms of wanting to get a diplomatic deal done, they appeared not to want to move in that direction.

Speaker 3 So then he asserted himself militarily.

Speaker 30 I think it was the right thing to do.

Speaker 30 For years, we've been playing this game with the Iranians where they were enriching uranium far, far, far beyond levels anybody would need to generate electricity.

Speaker 30 So we all knew what this was about to put into place the prerequisites for a nuclear

Speaker 30 weapons program. I also understood we couldn't allow Iran to get on the threshold, much less have nuclear weapons.
We made that mistake, I would argue, with North Korea.

Speaker 30 We don't want to have it now in this part of the world, because if Iran ever got nuclear weapons, not only would they act more aggressively and pose potentially an existential threat to Israel, but you know and I know the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Turks, and others would follow suit.

Speaker 30 And the only thing worse than the Middle East we've known is the Middle East I've just described. So I think what Israel and then the United States did was warranted.
We'll see what the results are.

Speaker 30 Whatever happened, the Iranian program was not obliterated. Elements of their program, I expect, will have survived the attacks on the three sites.

Speaker 30 More important, I don't know, you don't know, probably the president doesn't know, what amount of uranium or number of centrifuges and so forth are under some roof of some warehouse.

Speaker 30 in some other part of Iran. I actually think going forward, Gavin, we have got to assume just the opposite, that the Iranian program was not obliterated, that elements of that program exist.

Speaker 30 And what's worrisome to me, I'll be honest with you, I would think that a lot of Iranian leaders have said, hey, this never would have happened had we had nuclear weapons.

Speaker 30 We could have deterred the Israelis and the Americans. So I worry that going forward, I think their determination to develop nuclear weapons might, if anything, be even greater.

Speaker 3 Well, you know, I want to just pick up on that point because that's an interesting observation and an important one.

Speaker 3 And we'll get to North Korea as well in a second, because your reference goes back to the opportunity the United States had under the Clinton administration to take out their program before it proliferated.

Speaker 3 But I want to talk a little bit about the non-proliferation treaty. People have brought that up since the 1970s.
I think 200 countries were signatories to that, including Iran.

Speaker 3 There were a number of countries that have developed nuclear programs that were not original signers to that.

Speaker 3 Obviously, Korea and Israel, to the extent they have a nuclear program, quote unquote, but certainly India and Pakistan. But those countries, as a consequence, would make the claim you just made that

Speaker 3 they've had that deterrent.

Speaker 3 Now, Iran assumed that they would not be bombed, I presume, under the terms of the non-proliferation treaty. Does that put at risk the entire notion of the non-proliferation treaty?

Speaker 3 what's just occurred?

Speaker 30 So let me give you a slightly convoluted answer.

Speaker 30 The non-proliferation treaty is only a small piece of the effort against non-proliferation uh i don't think it's a wildly successful piece in many ways because it really is a gentleman's agreement we declare what facilities we're doing certain types of research or engineering in and then the inspectors come look at them the inspectors can't look at places that are not known so the entire treaty in that sense is based upon a degree of faith that I tend not to have.

Speaker 30 North Korea withdrew from the treaty and there was no particular penalty or anything for them having done so. Turns out the most important non-proliferation tool out there is not the treaty.

Speaker 30 It's called America's Alliances. By giving countries the confidence that we are there for them, they then don't need to become self-sufficient.

Speaker 30 And the biggest way to accelerate proliferation will be, for example, if the South Koreans or others come to have doubts. about their relationships with us.

Speaker 30 So don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the non-proliferation treaty doesn't have some utility. And I think in particular, the inspection provisions can be useful, but we shouldn't exaggerate

Speaker 30 its impact. And Iran, I would think,

Speaker 30 was going to do and is going to do

Speaker 30 what it wants, regardless of its obligations under this treaty.

Speaker 3 So back to what you were saying. I mean, so just let's speculate what

Speaker 3 happens going forward. Obviously, this notion of regime change, people sort of pull back a little bit, or at least it appears the president's pulled back.

Speaker 3 I don't know if Bibi is pulled back on the notion notion of regime change, but what won't change is their pursuit, presumably, of a nuclear weapon.

Speaker 3 As you note, we don't know that the program was quote-unquote obliterated, even though the physical sites may have been. We don't know where this enriched uranium is and centrifuges.

Speaker 3 You imagine now

Speaker 3 your concern is now, what, that they accelerate that program with the darkness,

Speaker 3 meaning without any international inspectors?

Speaker 30 That's my concern. It might not be their immediate priority, which I think is to shore up the regime.

Speaker 30 But at some point, I do think reconstituting a program will become a priority, which means, by the way, the day may come where Israel and the United States needs to once again use military force if we discover some activity going on and the Iranians won't voluntarily give it up.

Speaker 30 It's not normal that problems get solved. When I was the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, I used to discourage the fellows from using the word solve or solution

Speaker 30 because that's just the way history works. So I don't believe whatever it is we accomplished the other day,

Speaker 30 however much we accomplished, it didn't solve the problem. It may have reduced it, it may have set back the Iranian program, but that'll pop up again.
It's by the way, you mentioned regime change.

Speaker 30 It's one of the reasons that people I think are attracted to the idea.

Speaker 30 If you can't solve the Iranian problem through military force or through diplomacy, then people say what's left well let's get a benign government and i think that's why there's so much interest in regime change.

Speaker 30 The problem is, it's easier to talk about it than bring it about.

Speaker 30 I don't see the prerequisites in place for it. And in any case, you can't base your policy on it.

Speaker 30 People don't like it when I say this, but it's a wish more than a strategy. If it were to happen, I think

Speaker 30 it brings problems, but obvious benefits with it. But we just can't count on it.
And no president can give the order to,

Speaker 30 say, Secretary of Defense or State and say, get me regime change in Iran.

Speaker 30 They wouldn't have then the tools to necessarily carry it out.

Speaker 3 When it comes to just issues of trust, and I think one of the questions that I get and I ask myself all the time, I feel like for most of my adult life, I've been hearing Baby Netanyahu say they're just months away, a year away from having weapons grade, nuclear weapons.

Speaker 3 And, you know, at a certain point, you just stop believing it.

Speaker 3 But your assessment, you know, your own objective assessment this time did appear to be different, that they were getting closer and actually appeared to be within a matter of months in a position where potentially we had a weapons-grade

Speaker 3 weapon coming out of Iran. Is that accurate?

Speaker 30 Pretty much. Look, this was a gathering threat.
It wasn't an imminent threat. It was a gathering threat.
And the question is, how close?

Speaker 30 Now, we know they had done most of the enrichment work they need to do. To get uranium enriched of plus or minus 60%,

Speaker 30 That's not just 60% of the effort. That's actually closer to 90% of the effort for reasons of physics that I couldn't explain because I don't understand them well enough.
But

Speaker 30 I think I'm right there. What you don't know is how close they were on some of the other things, the actual fabrication of explosive devices, the bomb, and so forth.

Speaker 30 And there, there was the Israelis believe, and the economists published some very interesting stuff about it, that they had made some breakthroughs, they had had some secret programs and so forth.

Speaker 30 And I think we have to be tolerant, just like after 9-11,

Speaker 30 we were less willing to run certain risks,

Speaker 30 say about what Iraq could do. And this is not a justification for the Iraq war.
I was against it, but just I understand some of the thinking.

Speaker 30 I think Israel, after October 7th, had less tolerance of running certain risks in their case.

Speaker 30 So I just think the combination of a change mentality in Israel, the evisceration of groups like Hezbollah, which couldn't really attack Israel anymore,

Speaker 30 and this new intelligence, which suggests that however far along the Iranians were, they were farther along. And I think for all those reasons,

Speaker 30 the Israelis decided to act and we came in behind.

Speaker 3 And does this keep Bibi in power for another extended period of time?

Speaker 30 Well, he's got roughly what, 16, 17 months to run before he has to, I think the elections are scheduled for October of next year. It certainly helps.

Speaker 30 I mean, Israel, as you know, is deeply divided about issues on democracy, Gaza, what have you,

Speaker 30 whether the religious can be drafted and so forth. They are not divided on Iran.

Speaker 30 Left and right, hawk and dove. There aren't a lot of doves in Israel when it comes to Iran.
So it clearly helps, Bibi.

Speaker 30 It changes the conversation a little bit. It brings Israel together.
It's seen as an accomplishment. And he has, he has changed in many ways Israel's strategic

Speaker 30 reality, given the change in Syria, Hezbollah, the weakening of Hamas, whatever you think, however critical people watching this might be of what Israel's done and how it's done it in Gaza, the reality is that Bibi Netanyahu in the last, what, 18 months has dramatically reduced the external threat to Israel.

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Speaker 3 And on that basis, are you confident that we'll have sort of, you know, Abraham Accord 2.0 with Saudi

Speaker 3 coming in?

Speaker 3 Is that the map that you see changing? Or is that still an open-ended question with everything that's going on or not going on in Gaza, West Bank, et cetera? What's your over-under on that?

Speaker 30 Look, as you know, for a while it looked like it was going to happen before October 7th.

Speaker 30 And then because of, if you will, October 8th and Israeli policy, the Saudis backed off, they got nervous or uneasy about it. Two things may have changed now, though, which is interesting.

Speaker 30 One is Bibi Netanyahu, as you were just suggesting, Gavin, politically is stronger than he was.

Speaker 30 So he might give him more leverage against those in his government who oppose any sort of change in policy on Gaza. Secondly, there's this guy named Donald Trump.

Speaker 30 It's interesting on how many occasions Trump has distanced himself from Bibi Netanyahu. He did it on the Houthis.
He did it on the prisoner.

Speaker 30 move with Hamas. He told the Israelis a few weeks ago, don't you dare attack Iram.
We're trying to see if diplomacy works. Just the other day, shall we say, in rather colorful language,

Speaker 30 he was out there.

Speaker 30 So it's possible that tomorrow he would tell the Israelis, hey, knock it off in Gaza or do this on the West Bank. There's an unsentimental quality to America-firstism.

Speaker 30 And one of the things you see, we began the conversation talking about Europe.

Speaker 30 Well, one of the things, whether we're talking about security or tariffs or now this, being an ally of the united states ain't what it used to be when it comes to donald trump friends and allies no longer get preferred treatment so it wouldn't shock me if donald trump in his hope to get the saudis to normalize with israel put real pressure on on bibi netanyahu and it would put the israelis in a real jam trump is popular in israel and also it's almost like nixon going to china nixon once said you know they didn't have nixon to worry about well you can't do an end run around donald trump so if donald trump leans on bibi netanyahu who are the Israelis going to appeal to in American domestic politics?

Speaker 30 So I actually think that's a curious possibility that something could happen there.

Speaker 3 Do you find him under the influence? And I say that loosely, I mean, because of his own financial relationships to the UAE and Qatar and the Saudis, sort of the Arab, I mean...

Speaker 3 Do you think they will play an outsized role in influencing Trump in that respect?

Speaker 30 Look,

Speaker 30 if they had, he probably wouldn't have gone ahead and done the strike.

Speaker 30 As much as they wanted Iran cut down to size, they were very nervous that they were going to be in the line of fire of retaliation.

Speaker 30 So my guess is they're an influence, but not a determinant of what he does. And I say that in no way, how would I put it?

Speaker 30 I'm not comfortable with, shall we say, this merging of the personal and the governmental when it comes to wealth creation or...

Speaker 30 and you know the fact that people don't recuse themselves from things or they carry on private sector activity uh i'm as uncomfortable as I expect you are or a lot of people watching that, but I don't think they have, I haven't seen that they have undue

Speaker 30 over.

Speaker 3 What is you've written a lot about doctrines. You talk about the Monroe Doctrine, I think 1823.
You've sort of walked us through the Truman Doctrine and aspects of

Speaker 3 not only Reagan, but even the freedom doctrine, as you refer to it under the Bush administration, dealing with terrorism, no place to hide.

Speaker 3 Do you have any sense of what the hell the Trump doctrine is? Or I mean, J.D. Vance tried to assert one in a speech yesterday.

Speaker 3 America First? What is it? What's your sense?

Speaker 30 It's a good question. I think about it a lot.

Speaker 30 One, it might be early.

Speaker 30 It's still early, particularly in the second term. And the second term is a hell of a lot more than a continuation of the first term.
You may love it, you may hate it, but it ain't...

Speaker 30 you know, Trump 2.0 is more than an extension of Trump 1.0. There is something with this America Firstism that

Speaker 30 our alliances aren't as predictable. Our enemies aren't seen as enemies.
There's a kind of perpetual maneuver in American foreign policies. I'm not quite sure if that adds to a doctrine.

Speaker 30 In some ways, doctrines lead you to predictable outcomes. In a funny sort of way, Trump America Firstism at times leads you to unpredictable outcomes.
It's not isolationist, though.

Speaker 30 I would say it's quite unilateral, as we saw

Speaker 30 the other day. I also wrote a few weeks ago that there is something of a doctrine.
It's the opposite of the freedom doctrine, where under people like George W.

Speaker 30 Bush or even Reagan or Carter, we cared an awful lot about how governments treated their own people. This is just the opposite.
This is a look the other way, foreign policy.

Speaker 30 What you do inside your borders is your business. All we care about is our business.
So there's almost amoral quality to Trumpian foreign policy. And again, doctrines have to explain and predict.

Speaker 30 So I'm not quite sure yet we have anything that quite rises to that level.

Speaker 3 It's interesting. I mean, the only thing that

Speaker 3 would contradict that modestly was J.D. Vance's speech in Munich, where he's lecturing the Europeans.

Speaker 30 100%. You're right to point out that contradiction.
It's the one area where it's almost like there's an equation of elite Ivy League universities with elite Europe.

Speaker 30 And that's the one place where the administration is willing to

Speaker 30 tackle internal situations or circumstances in foreign countries. But I think that's the exception that kind of proves the rule.

Speaker 3 Interesting. So

Speaker 3 where's Putin now? What's he seen?

Speaker 3 What do you think he's made of the last 12 days?

Speaker 3 Where is he in relationship? I mean, he's got a free pass in some respects. The eyes are off him.
He's stepping things up in Ukraine.

Speaker 3 Is it status co-ante or is he now reconsidering things?

Speaker 30 Probably a mixed bag. Well, as you say, I think you're 100% right.
He has to be happy with the fact that both at the G7 and then at NATO,

Speaker 30 Zelensky and Ukraine were not quite center stage.

Speaker 30 And that very much fits or feeds Putin's idea that time is on his side.

Speaker 30 So I think he has to feel

Speaker 30 pretty good about that. Anytime there's instability that increases energy prices, not that we've seen a real price spike, that's got to make him feel good given his economy.

Speaker 30 He's got to feel a little bit uneasy with this demonstration of American power, with the discrepancy between what the United States can do and what, say, Iran could do.

Speaker 30 That's got to make them a little bit uneasy.

Speaker 30 But I would think all things Miko, the last few days, probably made him feel okay for one other reason. I don't know if you noticed the,

Speaker 30 it won my Chutzpo Award for the month, the statement by the Russian foreign ministry, critical of Israel for not respecting the territorial

Speaker 30 integrity and sovereignty of a UN member. And I'm sitting there reading that going, really?

Speaker 30 Really?

Speaker 30 So, but the Russians have to like the idea that

Speaker 30 we would unilaterally decide that certain uses of force were somehow acceptable. And that's got to be something that Putin might actually welcome.

Speaker 3 And do you welcome sort of, I mean, look, from a tactical perspective, turn the page in terms of trying to negotiate peace in Ukraine. Obviously, stubborn.

Speaker 3 He wasn't able to get it done before he took the oath of office. He wasn't able to get it done within the 24-hour time clock that he set himself up for.

Speaker 3 But sort of the overtures to Putin, sort of negotiating Putin's talking points and putting Zelensky on the spot.

Speaker 3 Where do you think Trump is right now in relationship to, you know, he's been a little more critical, at least publicly, been willing to be slightly more critical of Putin.

Speaker 3 Where do you think the administration is vis-a-vis moving to a conclusion or a solution here?

Speaker 30 They're caught in the inconsistency of their own policy. They're right to say that we need peace there.

Speaker 30 And I think they had one improvement over the Biden policy where the Biden administration would never speak honestly with Zelensky, at least publicly, and say, look, you know and we know that you're not going to militarily liberate Crimea or all the East.

Speaker 30 Let's go for a deal that we get a ceasefire. It doesn't prejudice your long-term goals, but let's stop this war.
That's Trump's idea. And I think that's smart.
I think that's realistic.

Speaker 30 Where he's inconsistent is

Speaker 30 he's sabotaging the chance for getting it by not being supportive of Ukraine. That gives Putin, again, the confidence that time is on his side.

Speaker 30 If this president would announce this summer when the pipeline begins to run dry, we're going to re-up

Speaker 30 American aid for Ukraine, not so they can militarily liberate all their land. That's going to have to be done diplomatically, but so Russian efforts will not succeed.

Speaker 30 I think that would turn the war around. And I actually think,

Speaker 30 only with the more specific, I think that would persuade Putin over time that more war would not lead to more territory.

Speaker 30 And I think that actually would be the way to get things at the negotiating table, not for peace, but for a ceasefire. So the administration has the right goals.

Speaker 30 It's just not going, it's going about it in 100% the wrong way.

Speaker 3 Is she looking at

Speaker 3 year, whatever we're in with

Speaker 3 Ukraine, is that make him

Speaker 3 more or less likely

Speaker 3 to pursue

Speaker 3 advanced pursuits in Taiwan? Or is he seeing something different? The asymmetry of warfare now, the nature and change, the transformation of warfare?

Speaker 3 What's your sense of where she is at this moment as well in relationship, not only to Ukraine, but also perhaps more broadly as well, to what the Trump administration just initiated in Bibi in Iran?

Speaker 30 My glib glib answer to you is going to be both or yes.

Speaker 30 I think on one hand, he looks at Ukraine, he looks at the sanctions that have been introduced, he looks at how Putin overestimated the capabilities of his own military.

Speaker 30 He's seen how the West came to bat indirectly, but decisively for Ukraine. That had to have given him pause.
I mean, look, think about it.

Speaker 30 There's no general in the Chinese military who has military experience.

Speaker 30 Last time they fought a war was against Vietnam, they didn't do so hot.

Speaker 30 And for the Chinese government to go to war against Taiwan and not succeed, imagine the domestic political consequences of that, the questions of legitimacy it would raise not just for Xi as a person, but for the party.

Speaker 30 So I actually think

Speaker 30 they're somewhat cautious here. I also think they they have to find it impossible to read Donald Trump.

Speaker 30 Again, given the tariffs, given what he just did the other day. And I think that must introduce a role of caution.
I think they've got some internal issues.

Speaker 30 He's been purging a lot of military leaders. They've obviously got their economic challenges.
So he hasn't given up. Don't get me wrong, that Taiwan is his legacy.

Speaker 30 That's his way to make himself a major figure in modern Chinese history. But I don't think the moment's arrived.
I think he wants to get a better reading on Donald Trump

Speaker 30 because we still don't have a good feel for

Speaker 30 the Trump administration's relations with Japan, Taiwan, Australia, but none of it's going particularly well. I think he probably wants to see some more about the lessons of the modern battlefield.

Speaker 30 He still wants to build up, among other things, his nuclear arms. One of the lessons I think Xi Jinping learned, Gavin, was the United States did not get directly involved in helping Ukraine.

Speaker 30 And he, I think, from Xi Jinping's point of view, that was because of the mass of Russian nuclear arsenal. So China right now is the owner of the world's fastest-growing nuclear arsenal.

Speaker 30 They're adding hundreds and hundreds of nuclear weapons each year. They want to get,

Speaker 30 they kind of want to get the bronze medal in the serious nuclear arsenals, Olympics. And they're moving as quickly as they can in that direction.

Speaker 30 But my guess is they don't want to show down over Taiwan for several years until they believe they can offset or deter any American pressure because of our nuclear advantages.

Speaker 3 What do you make of the new president in Taiwan? He's rolling out, I think, this week, a unity tour. He's giving speeches.
I mean, he seems to be, you know,

Speaker 3 sort of not poking the bear, but certainly trying to sort of suggest more muscularity vis-a-vis mainland China. Is that, you know,

Speaker 3 what do you read into that?

Speaker 30 Yeah, I mean, some of that's politics. Some of it's poking the bear.
My view is what I really want to do is see Taiwan get stronger.

Speaker 30 And And Taiwan's, the level of defense effort is not in the right zip code still. They've got to do a lot more.

Speaker 30 I look at, I mean, we talked about Israel a lot. And Israel's in a, shall we say, difficult strategic situation, at least it has been for most of its existence.

Speaker 30 And you look at the level of military effort they've produced, or even us during the Cold War, we were probably spending, I don't know, on the average of maybe six, five, six, seven percent. of GDP.

Speaker 30 Taiwan's nowhere near that. And look at the disparities between the mainland and Taiwan.
So Taiwan, you know, more important than what they say is what they do.

Speaker 30 And I would say they've really got to make a much larger effort.

Speaker 30 They've got to also look very carefully at what just happened in the Middle East and what's happened in Ukraine and ask themselves whether they are incorporating the right strategic lessons.

Speaker 30 Too much of the Taiwan military historically has elements almost of ours. large number, a small number of expensive aircraft and so forth.
I actually think they need something

Speaker 30 much larger numbers of smaller, cheaper systems would probably be

Speaker 30 helpful. The other country to really watch there is Japan.
I actually think we're at a moment in history where Japan's our most important ally. Still the world's third largest economy.

Speaker 30 And militarily, it's central to any scenario involving Chinese pressure against Taiwan. And I worry about the deterioration in that relationship of late.

Speaker 30 So again, things like that might actually affect Chinese calculations as well. But all that said,

Speaker 30 even though I worry about a lot

Speaker 30 and I worry about this as a strategic, medium, long-term challenge, I don't get the sense this is a near-term challenge.

Speaker 3 Interesting. Only slight correction.
Japan is fourth to California's third.

Speaker 3 I just had to comment on that. 4.1 trillion reasons.

Speaker 30 Did I miss the declaration of that?

Speaker 3 I'm just saying, I'm waiting for my G7 invitation. That's all.

Speaker 3 Or G5. I mean, I don't know, whatever.
G4 and 3.

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Speaker 3 It's interesting you say Japan is the most important.

Speaker 3 I've heard people, others sort of, you know, suggest that Australia plays an outsized role in terms of just looking at this sort of strategic realignment. Where do you make?

Speaker 3 I mean, the president or the leadership there surprised some pundits in pulling out a pretty healthy margin and a victory.

Speaker 3 Obviously, there are overtures back and forth to China.

Speaker 3 But you made a point, which I hadn't really reflected on, Trump's sort of ambiguity with those relationships. South Korea, obviously,

Speaker 3 and Japan and

Speaker 3 the tri-lat that the Biden administration had. Now we're seeing that taking shape with Xi.

Speaker 3 And obviously, Australia seems to be sort of the plus one right now. But give me your sense of where Australia plays.

Speaker 30 Look, Australia does play an outsized role.

Speaker 30 I think that the relationship isn't as robust as it ought to be.

Speaker 30 hasn't gotten a whole lot of attention.

Speaker 30 A lot of our economic policy has alienated our friends, the tariffs in particular.

Speaker 30 Most of the line on defense is do more, do more, do more. And that gets a little bit old after a while.
So I would like to see, if you will, more consultation with them. And again,

Speaker 30 you can't have economic policy and military or strategic policy carried out in separate silos. It's very hard.

Speaker 30 to hammer an ally or friend over trade issues on Mondays, Wednesdays, and and Fridays, and expect on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays the strategic relationship is going to be just fine.

Speaker 30 It doesn't work that way. So

Speaker 30 I would say this is a, again, I'm critical of a lot of the economic policy on its own merits. I don't think it makes sense full stop.

Speaker 30 But even putting that aside, it certainly doesn't make sense because it ends up penalizing more than anyone, our friends, just those with the exception of China.

Speaker 30 It's our friends and neighbors who are, as you know, our biggest economic partners.

Speaker 3 Today, Donald Trump, in his press conference, when I was confronted on why he hasn't solved the conflict in Ukraine, immediately,

Speaker 3 well, he pivoted to his success in immediately solving the crisis in Pakistan and India.

Speaker 3 Overstated, understated? Is that early success that he deserves more credit than perhaps he's even been given?

Speaker 30 It sounds slightly ungenerous on my part, but I think it's a bit exaggerated. And it also has rub raw U.S.-Indian relations.

Speaker 3 I was going to ask that next.

Speaker 30 Yeah, there.

Speaker 30 And

Speaker 30 look, it's always been difficult dealing with Pakistan and dealing with India, but I think the great breakthrough, and it was a bipartisan one of the last several administrations, was that U.S.-Indian relations got on a firmer,

Speaker 30 more important strategic footing, made sense given India's demographics, economics, relationship with China, and so forth.

Speaker 30 We'd be in, as you know, to bring India into various various Asia-Pacific strategic groupings. I've always seen Pakistan more as a problem than as a partner.
It was a problem in Afghanistan

Speaker 30 in many ways. And

Speaker 30 the questions of democracy and human rights, the role of the military in politics. It's been a very uneasy country.

Speaker 30 If you had asked me years ago, what keeps me up most tonight, I might have said Pakistan.

Speaker 30 in part because of potential loss of command and control over nuclear materials so the even-handedness that we've reintroduced as and in the shorthand for this is that we've we've once again we've once again hyphenated the relationship so rather than having a strategic relationship with india and a lesser relationship with pakistan we now once again have an india-pakistan policy and it seems to me that is not a wise approach given what I would argue is India's greater inherent importance and potential.

Speaker 30 You know, how close they really were to,

Speaker 30 I don't think things were that close to escalating or getting out of hand. That said, look, anytime the United States can dampen down

Speaker 30 actual or potential hostilities,

Speaker 30 great.

Speaker 30 And I would

Speaker 30 say well done to the president or the secretary of state or anyone else who had a hand in it. But

Speaker 30 I wouldn't exaggerate it here. And again, it may have come at some cost as well.

Speaker 3 Yeah, well,

Speaker 3 and then there was also a price, the largest, I think one of their crypto exchanges in Pakistan now is.

Speaker 3 Well, and we'll get back into the corruption questions, or at least questions of corruption, I suppose.

Speaker 30 Look, I've heard that. And again, I don't know, but

Speaker 30 it is what it is.

Speaker 3 It is what it is. So you've been writing a lot about, talking a lot about, and obviously only highlighted with the last few weeks, but what the hell is wrong with American foreign policy?

Speaker 3 We get so damn bogged down in the Middle East. You've made the point.
There's a whole world out there. We've talked, we've sort of jumped around different countries, different regions.

Speaker 3 But the reality is we have been for decades and decades and decades bogged down in the Middle East.

Speaker 3 You have an interesting history working in Republican administrations, Bush administrations, but you made the notation earlier, and it's an important point to highlight.

Speaker 3 You were opposed to that last war in Iraq. And so you've seen some light and some wisdom through all this.

Speaker 3 But what the hell has happened to the United States over the last, I mean, my entire lifetime been consumed by countries none of us could pronounce. No one knows the difference between Iraq and Iran.

Speaker 3 I think there was a song about that.

Speaker 3 And, you know, what's going on? Richard, help us.

Speaker 30 Fair question. Just for the record, I did work for a Democratic administration.
I worked in the Carter Pentagon.

Speaker 30 And

Speaker 30 one of the big issues then was the Middle East because 1979, you had the revolution in Iran. Then you had the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan.

Speaker 30 Look, when the Cold War War ended, what, 35 years ago, I don't think anyone would have predicted, Gavin, that the Middle East would be such a focus of American foreign policy.

Speaker 30 The first real crisis of the post-Cold War era was the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

Speaker 30 President Bush 41 rallied the country and the world to Kuwait's defense. It was quite extraordinary, I think.
It was actually, to me,

Speaker 30 like I duly note that I was part of the administration. I worked on the Middle East, but

Speaker 30 credit, I think, is due to the president, Brent Skokroff, Jim Baker, and others. It was quite remarkably done.

Speaker 30 I think what we did was necessary. The 2003 Iraq war was a war of choice.
I think it was misguided.

Speaker 30 And some other, I think, what the other day, what we did,

Speaker 30 I think was warranted.

Speaker 30 But in general, if I look at the map of American foreign policy, and I think we still have 40,000 troops in the Middle East, it seems to me that that it's a disproportionate focus for us.

Speaker 30 It's one of the parts of the world where you don't have a great power presence. You don't really have much great power competition.
And that it's you have regional powers, but not great powers.

Speaker 30 I would say ultimately, 21st century history is going to be much more written about what happens in Europe and above all the Asia-Pacific.

Speaker 30 Asia-Pacific is where the people are, it's where the wealth is, it's where the militaries are going to be.

Speaker 30 U.S.-China competition will be defining.

Speaker 30 So it seems to me strategically, there is still something odd about the emphasis that the Middle East gets. And I think

Speaker 30 we've gotten too ambitious there at times. I think in particular, 43's effort to transform it, to bring about democracy was,

Speaker 30 I think, ill-advised. I'll be diplomatic here

Speaker 30 and so forth.

Speaker 30 And some other things that we've done, again, were, I would say, we should do no more than is necessary in the Middle East, because there's other parts of the world that I would argue are strategically more important.

Speaker 30 And we just find ourselves more involved. I don't have a good answer for you exactly why at times, but somehow it's captured our imagination.

Speaker 30 One of the odd things for secretaries of state, and I worked with quite a few, how getting heavily involved in Middle Eastern diplomacy was almost part of the job after Henry Kissinger.

Speaker 30 And like it or not, people found themselves doing it. And yeah, my lesson, my take on all that is no mediator can ever be more successful than the protagonists want or would allow him to be.

Speaker 30 And I think at times we've too often substituted our own efforts for what was missing on the part of the locals.

Speaker 30 So my argument is not to get out of the Middle East, but I would, where possible, dial it down.

Speaker 3 So, you know, it's interesting.

Speaker 3 We had Steve Bannon on this show, and I don't even get the merits and demerits of that conversation, but he's had a lot of more public conversations about what he perceived, or at least asserted was the wisdom of Trump focusing on things like Greenland or countries like Greenland, focusing on the Panama Canal, looking at it more from a strategic prism, sort of, you know, a hemispheric framework and sort of creating a stronger consciousness to sort of regionalize our American First.

Speaker 3 framework and to put it in, you know, in at least

Speaker 3 creating a narrative around what some of us perceived as just the absurdity of these threats uh to take over greenland make canada 51st state uh and invade or take over the panama canal

Speaker 3 is there any merit to that argument or is it just folly

Speaker 30 uh folly would be generous

Speaker 30 a terrible idea look it seems to be setting up a kind of spheres of influence approach to the world so we would have the lead role in this part of the world presumably Russia would have a lead role in the European theater, China and the Asia-Pacific.

Speaker 30 Russia and China would be very happy with that arrangement. No one in this hemisphere would be.

Speaker 30 So, in a funny sort of way, we wouldn't succeed at playing an outsized role because it would be resisted every inch of the way.

Speaker 30 Americans, including a lot of the MAGA people, wouldn't want us involved in imperial wars in this part of the world, whether it's Panama or Mexico or Greenland or Canada.

Speaker 30 So I just think it's unnecessary. We can have the access, the influence we need without an imperial coercive role.

Speaker 30 And again, the real strategic challenges of the century are not going to be met here. They're going to be met in other parts of the world, above all, Asia and the Pacific.
So I think it's really

Speaker 30 a truly misguided approach, but it makes me uneasy because

Speaker 30 I can see something of it. And this kind of people don't yet speak about spheres of influence, but it's kind of in the air or the water.
And I'm uneasy about it. But it's not a recipe for order.

Speaker 30 We would be resisted here. And history suggests that wherever

Speaker 30 there'd be a lot of opposition, and by the way, it would become a real recipe for proliferation.

Speaker 30 Watch how, if something like that were to begin to gain momentum, watch countries in Europe and Asia decide they need nuclear weapons of their own. So I think that kind of an approach to the world

Speaker 30 would be quite honestly catastrophic.

Speaker 3 You're here.

Speaker 3 Questions around the globe in terms of concerns.

Speaker 3 We so often neglect continent of Africa. It was a reference today of Congo from the president.

Speaker 3 The only time we tend to focus on Africa is in relationship to China's investment.

Speaker 3 Same with Central America or South America as well. I mean, parts of the globe that seem to be under-resourced in terms of mind share and investment, strategic investments.

Speaker 3 What's your over-under in terms of America's posture in South America, Central America? But first, let's start in Africa.

Speaker 30 Look, what makes Africa sue e-generous or makes it unique going forward is demographics. Most of the world is getting

Speaker 30 shrinking in number and getting older.

Speaker 30 South Asia is the one partial exception. Africa is an enormous exception.
Africa is going to be increasing by what, more than a billion people over the next generation or so.

Speaker 30 And the question is whether that's a burden or a bonus. And that remains to be seen.
So I just think Africa is important, not in the sense of great power strategic competition.

Speaker 30 That's a sideshow for the most part. But really, it's a human story.
It's with all these people and the question is, can economically,

Speaker 30 these people can they be employed can governments provide services can you can you have good enough governance so in places like Nigeria South Africa and other countries that you don't have civil wars and so forth so I think that's the the big question for Africa and by the way pretty true of Latin America as well without the demographic dimension but again the biggest problems in Latin America are not whether Brazil is going to invade Argentina or whether Russia or China are going to do something.

Speaker 30 The biggest issues there are internal, they're governance. Can the Mexican government meet the responsibilities and challenges of sovereignty within Mexico?

Speaker 30 Can they deal with cartels and drugs and criminals and

Speaker 30 the like?

Speaker 30 And where possible, I think our policy ought to be to help these countries meet their challenges because it's good for them, but it's also good for us.

Speaker 30 Then there'll be conditions of stability, better chance for democracy, better chance for trade and investment, better way to deal with whether it's health challenges or climate challenges or or what have you so we do it it's both again it's not either or it's it's the right thing to do it's helpful to them but i think it also very much works in our favor it's one of the reasons by the way i'm so critical of what we've done to the agency for international development the the real folly of that is not that it provides opportunities for china which it does but again we we weaken the ability of these societies and these governments to deal with their immediate challenges.

Speaker 30 That can't be good because ultimately failed states become places where terrorists set up shop, where disease breaks out and spread. Pirates do their things, criminals do their thing.
So again,

Speaker 30 even out of narrow self-interest, we ought to be doing more in these places. So I just think

Speaker 30 it's quite short-sighted.

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Speaker 3 So let me move back. And I see you got a book behind you that I want to talk about in a moment.
And it brings us back a little bit more domestically.

Speaker 3 And it brings us back sort of just to the prism of, you know,

Speaker 3 my lens has changed dramatically in the last few weeks since I have just shy of 5,000 members of the U.S. military on the streets of one of America's largest cities, Los Angeles,

Speaker 3 without council consent

Speaker 3 and the support of the state.

Speaker 3 Revere the men and women in uniform that are out there, just not their assignment. But it also sort of assigns some consideration and consciousness to

Speaker 3 this administration and what distinguishes it from the first Trump administration.

Speaker 3 I know you've got a blog, you've written a little bit about this, where you said Trump has organized a cabinet that are more of amplifiers

Speaker 3 than more traditional sort of metrics of people that would sort of, you know, create sort of a governing of our framework, a regulatory or regulate some of the thinking.

Speaker 3 Where are you today in terms of this administration, 150 or so days in, however many days it's been,

Speaker 3 Growing concern, simmering concerns. We overstate authoritarianism.
Is that a word that we should even be using? Is democracy hanging in the balance or are we fine? What's your sort of over-under?

Speaker 3 What's the temperature right now?

Speaker 30 The fact that we have to have this conversation tells you something. I'm uneasy.

Speaker 30 I'm uncomfortable with words like authoritarianism and all that. That's something to be avoided ultimately.
But there's tendencies that worry me. We haven't had

Speaker 30 just two major lines that the administration's walked right up to and played footsie with, but hasn't quite crossed in a decisive way.

Speaker 30 One was the one you were alluding to, which is the use of the American military inside our borders.

Speaker 30 And that to me has all sorts of implications for American democracy, but also it's terrible for the American military.

Speaker 30 It reduces readiness. It politicizes what has been, in some ways, the most successful modern American institution that

Speaker 30 we have.

Speaker 30 So that's one thing that makes me uneasy.

Speaker 30 We haven't quite crossed that line, but we've tiptoed up to it, as you know better than I do. The other is defiance of decisions by the judiciary.
And again,

Speaker 30 some of the

Speaker 30 quasi-defiance, not quite hearing what the courts were saying

Speaker 30 on deportations and so forth. So that leaves me uneasy.

Speaker 30 But I don't think either yet has reached the point of, shall we say, broad crisis or crisis of the first order, but I think there's grounds for being

Speaker 30 uneasy. Look,

Speaker 30 the irony of this isn't lost. Here we are.

Speaker 30 It's now, what, late June. And approximately, what, 12 months and a week, we're going to be marking the 250th anniversary of this country.

Speaker 30 And

Speaker 30 to me, the lesson is not to take democracy for granted.

Speaker 30 You've done good things, by the way, in your state with Josh Friday, I think, in terms of

Speaker 30 promoting volunteerism and public service, which I think is great, both for the values enhances, but also it brings Americans together. I've tried to make a big thing about civics education.

Speaker 30 We shouldn't assume that people don't need it or somehow get it automatically. The answer is they do need it and they don't get it in their schools for the most part.

Speaker 30 That ought to become a much bigger priority. And we ought to think a lot about what we need to do to make sure American democracy works.

Speaker 30 But I get uneasy with some of the attacks on civil society, whether it's law firms or universities or what have you. So

Speaker 30 I think there's a lot of yellow lights flashing. And so my view is

Speaker 30 we ought to be mindful of them and

Speaker 30 not again not take anything for granted or you know I remember Churchill's always quoted for

Speaker 30 And one of them is that, you know, Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing after they do everything else. It's a kind of sanguine quality.

Speaker 30 Or, yeah, we get in trouble, but we've always come out in the right place and never sell America short.

Speaker 30 Probably, but let's not take it for granted. That's my only view.
I think it's just, we ought to feel a sense of urgency.

Speaker 30 And given how enormous the stakes are, I don't think anybody kind of, how to put it, you know, democracy can't be a spectator sport. And

Speaker 30 whether you're in positions of authority like you, whether you're a quote unquote justice citizen or you're a CEO of some business or what have you,

Speaker 30 I just think there's ways for

Speaker 30 people to make a difference. And

Speaker 30 again, we just can't, it's too valuable to not, how would I put it?

Speaker 30 None of us wants to be in a position where if things do head south, we wish we had done things that we, you know, that we simply sat on the sidelines.

Speaker 3 You talk about citizenship, you've written about citizenship,

Speaker 3 and you've challenged us to reconsider what you refer to as sort of a lopsided notion of citizenship, that it's not just about rights.

Speaker 3 It's about obligations. You wrote a book, The Bill of Obligations, and you enumerate a framework about the critical importance of service and civics,

Speaker 3 the common good,

Speaker 3 the best of the Roman Republic, Greek democracy, I think the principles our founding fathers took.

Speaker 3 Talk to us a little bit about what inspired you to write the book. You wrote it a few years ago.
I imagine the inspiration today would be even more acute, but it's an important and essential read.

Speaker 3 And by the way, it's fantastic for anyone that's listening.

Speaker 3 Talk to me. Richard, a little bit and all of us about what inspired this book and what you're really trying to communicate.

Speaker 30 Well, first of all, thank you.

Speaker 30 Years before, I wrote another book called Foreign Policy Begins at Home. And, you know, I'm a foreign, as you look, as we can see from this conversation, for better or worse, I'm a foreign policy guy.

Speaker 30 That's my educational training. That's my professional experience.
But probably about a decade ago, I started to see much greater connection.

Speaker 30 between what we were doing or not doing here at home and our ability to be effective abroad. I wrote about everything from indebtedness.

Speaker 30 10 years ago, a big issue was energy dependence, which by the way shows we can work through things,

Speaker 30 quality or lack of it of our public education, strength of our democracy.

Speaker 30 And I was worried very much a decade ago about our inability to generate majorities to deal with challenges increasingly, particularly at the federal level, less so at the state level, we were gridlocked.

Speaker 30 And what I noticed in the years since that, things weren't getting better. Things were getting worse.

Speaker 30 And so I just decided,

Speaker 30 I can't quite answer your question, what inspired me, but I was just thinking a lot about it. And I take long walks when I think about a book and Central Park becomes my co-author.
And

Speaker 30 just

Speaker 30 went back and reread, or in some cases, read for the first time a lot of the great works of American political history.

Speaker 30 And I was just struck by how much explicitly a lot of our modern, or not so modern history was about the expansion of rights what Lincoln called the unfinished work and I get it and it's actually been one of the great things civil rights and so forth we we have a lot to be proud of in this country it's towards a more perfect union we're not there but we've made some real strides but it seemed to me lost in that increasingly was the other side of it that no one was anymore talking about obligations And it's interesting, the founding fathers didn't talk about it a lot explicitly.

Speaker 30 I think they assumed it, Gavin. I think it was implicit.
They didn't think they needed to remind people about it. But increasingly, it seemed to me we did.

Speaker 30 You look at the numbers of the people who are eligible to vote and don't vote, the amount of people who get their information, quote unquote, from TikTok rather than from serious sources, the polls that show young people don't value democracy,

Speaker 30 don't think it's worth saving, the lack of public service opportunities

Speaker 30 increasingly, the failure to require quality civics to be taught in classrooms, growing threats or realities of political violence and on and on.

Speaker 30 And things like COVID and so forth showed me that a lack of

Speaker 30 what you mentioned before about the common good, whether to get vaccinated or wear a mask, it's not just for me, but it's also for the other person. So it just all added up.
And I just decided that

Speaker 30 I would put my hand to it. So it's, you know, for me as an author, it was great.
But I learned more writing that book than any other book I've ever written because I knew knew less about it going in.

Speaker 3 And you've written, what, 16 books? How many books?

Speaker 30 I've written a dozen and edited a few more. So it's, yeah, it's a large, it's up to 16, but I'm not done yet.

Speaker 3 I got

Speaker 30 a few more in me.

Speaker 3 There's plenty of chapters of your life left. And

Speaker 3 look, I'm grateful for this opportunity to share a little bit of your time and

Speaker 3 your action and passion, as it were.

Speaker 3 And when we get you back, I need you back for the original conversation that we haven't had, which is what the hell is going on with my party, the Democratic Party, and how we're going to take back the House, what we need to do,

Speaker 3 and how we get back on the right side of these presidential elections.

Speaker 30 You give me 30 more seconds. I was going to raise that, which is that everyone's talking about BDA, battle damage assessment in terms of Iran.

Speaker 30 I was going to raise BDA in terms of the New York mayoral primary.

Speaker 3 Okay, is that how we're going to end this as opposed to begin this conversation?

Speaker 3 That is, for all of you listening, a preview of the next podcast with Richard Haas, my guests, on,

Speaker 3 well, part one of this two-part pod. Richard, thanks for being here.

Speaker 30 Thank you, sir. Enjoyed it.

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