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This is Gavin Newsom,

And this is Richard Haas.

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 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%.

What was your takeaway from this NATO summit, at least the first day uh and and does trump deserve i think a lot of praise and uh for an accomplishment here

i would argue president trump well first of all gavin good to be with you uh thank you uh look i would argue president trump deserves credit for spurring the europeans to do what they ought to have done years before they ought to be putting forward a larger share of the effort for what's a common defense.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No 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.

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.

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

And it's interesting just as you unpack, and I appreciate the how you spend and where you spend, 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%.

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

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,

looking not necessarily to reach that numeric.

Does that mean much to you, or is that just

noise?

The most interesting part of that is Germany.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

Is that what you're referring to, is sort of a lack of certainty and confidence in the president?

Yeah, for those who haven't read the NATO treaty recently, Article 5 is the core of the agreement.

We're essentially an attack on one is considered to be an attack on all.

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.

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

He would argue perhaps it was necessary to get the Europeans to do more.

I would have said, well, probably there's better ways to do that.

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-prone, 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.

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

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.

You're here.

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,

that's a separate conversation.

Is that your assessment that this was a success, that

in the spirit of what you just said around some certainty that the president wasn't bluffing in terms of wanting to get diplomatic deal done.

They appeared not to want to move in that direction.

So then he asserted himself militarily.

I think it was the right thing to do.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Whatever happened, the Iranian program was not obliterated.

Elements of their program, I expect, will have survived the attacks on the three sites.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

they've had that deterrent.

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, what's just occurred?

So let me give you a slightly convoluted answer.

The non-proliferation treaty is only a small piece of the effort against non-proliferation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

its impact.

And Iran, I would think,

was going to do and is going to do

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

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

happens going forward.

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

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

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.

You imagine now

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

meaning without any international inspectors?

That's my concern.

It might not be their immediate priority, which I think is to shore up the regime.

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, 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.

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

because that's just the way history works.

So I don't believe whatever it is we accomplished the other day,

and 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.

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

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 the problem is it's easier to talk about it than bring it about uh i don't see the prerequisites in place for it and in any case you can't base your policy on it uh 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 it's it's bring it brings problems but obvious benefits with it but we just can't count on it and no president can give the order to

say secretary of defense or state and say get me regime change in iran uh they wouldn't have then the tools to necessarily carry it out.

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.

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

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 weapon coming out of Iran.

Is that accurate?

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?

Now, we know they had done most of the enrichment work they needed to do.

To get uranium enriched, a plus or minus 60%,

that's not just 60% of the effort that's actually closer to 90 percent of the effort for reasons of physics that i couldn't explain because i don't understand them well enough but uh uh

i think i'm right there uh what you don't know is what how close they were on some of the other things the actual fabrication of explosive devices the bomb and so forth and there there was the israelis believe the economists published some very interesting stuff about it that they had made some breakthroughs, they had had some secret programs and so forth.

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

we were less willing to run certain risks,

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.

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

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,

and this new intelligence, which suggests that however far along the Iranians were, they were farther along.

And I think for all those reasons, the Israelis decided to act and we came in behind.

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

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 him.

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

whether the religious can be drafted and so forth.

They are not divided on Iran.

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.

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

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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And on that basis, are you confident that we'll have sort of an Abraham Accord 2.0 with Saudi?

coming in?

Is that the map that you see changing?

Or is that still an open-ended with everything that's going on or not going on in Gaza, West Bank, et cetera?

What's your over-under on that?

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

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.

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

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.

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 move with Hamas.

He told the Israelis a few weeks ago, don't you dare attack Iran.

We're trying to see if diplomacy works.

Just the other day, shall we say, in rather colorful language,

he was out there.

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 a unsentimental quality to America firstism.

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

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 Bibi Netanyahu and 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?

So

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

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,

do you think they will play an outsized role in influencing Trump in that respect?

Look,

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

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.

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?

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

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 uh I haven't seen that they have undue

over.

What is it?

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

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

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.

America First?

What is it?

What's your sense?

It's a good question.

I think about it a lot.

One, it might be early.

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, you know, Trump 2.0 is more than an extension of Trump 1.0.

There is something with this America Firstism that

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.

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.

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

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 bush or even reagter we cared an awful lot about how governments treated their own people uh this is just the opposite this is a look the other way foreign policy what you do inside your borders is your business all we care about is our business so there's a almost a more amoral quality to uh trumpian foreign policy and again doctrines have to explain and predict.

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

It's interesting.

I mean, the only thing that would that would contradict that modestly was J.D.

Vance's speech in Munich, where he was lecturing the Europeans.

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.

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

tackle internal situations or circumstances in foreign countries.

But I think that's the exception that kind of proves the rule.

Interesting.

So

where's Putin now?

What's he seen?

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

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.

Is it status quo ante or is he now reconsidering things?

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,

Zelensky and Ukraine were not quite center stage.

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

So I think he has to feel

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.

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.

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

But I would think all things meet with the last few days probably made him feel okay.

For one other reason, I don't know if you noticed the,

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

integrity and sovereignty of a UN member.

And I'm sitting there reading that going, really?

Really?

So, but the Russians have to like the idea that

we would unilaterally decide that certain uses of force were somehow acceptable.

And that's got to be something that Putin might actually welcome.

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.

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.

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

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.

Where do you think the administration is vis-a-vis moving to

a conclusion or a solution here?

They're caught in the inconsistency of their own policy.

They're right to say that we need peace there.

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.

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.

Where he's inconsistent is 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.

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

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.

I think that would turn the war around and I actually think,

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

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.

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

Is Xi looking at, you know, year, whatever we're in with Ukraine, is that make him

more or less likely

to pursue

and make advanced pursuits in Taiwan?

Or is he seeing something different?

The asymmetry of warfare now, the nature and change, the transformation of warfare?

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?

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

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.

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.

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

The last time they fought a war was against Vietnam, they didn't do so hot.

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.

So I actually think

they're somewhat cautious here.

I also think they have to find it impossible to read Donald Trump.

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.

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.

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.

We still don't have a good feel for

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.

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.

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.

They're adding hundreds and hundreds of nuclear weapons each year.

They want to get,

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.

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.

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,

sort of not poking the bear, but certainly trying to sort of suggest more muscularity vis-a-vis mainland China.

Is that, you know,

what do you read into that?

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.

And Taiwan's, the level of defense effort is not in the right zip code still.

they've got to do a lot more you know i look at i mean we talked about israel a lot and you know israel's in a shall we say difficult strategic situation at least it has been for most of its existence 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 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.

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

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.

Too much of the Taiwan military historically has elements almost of ours,

a small number of expensive aircraft and so forth.

I actually think they need something

much larger numbers of smaller, cheaper systems would probably be

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.

And militarily, it's central to any scenario involving Chinese pressure against Taiwan.

And I worry about the deterioration in that relationship of late.

So, again, things like that might actually affect Chinese calculations as well.

But all that said,

even though I worry about a lot,

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

Interesting.

Only slight correction.

Japan is fourth to California's third.

I just had to comment on that.

4.1 trillion reasons.

Did I miss the declaration of that?

I'm just saying, I'm waiting for my G7 invitation.

That's all.

Or G5.

I mean, I don't know, whatever.

G4 and 3.

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Hi, I'm Morgan Sung, host of Close All Tabs from KQED, where every week we reveal how the online world collides with everyday life.

There was the six-foot cartoon otter who came out from behind a curtain.

It actually really matters that driverless cars are going to mess up in ways that humans wouldn't.

Should I be telling this thing all about my love life?

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

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

Where do you make?

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

Obviously, there are overtures back and forth to China.

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

South Korea, obviously, and Japan and

the tri-lat that the Biden administration had.

Now we're seeing that taking shape with Xi.

And obviously, Australia seems to be sort of the plus one right now.

But give me your sense of where Australia plays.

Look, Australia does play an outsized role.

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

It hasn't gotten a whole lot of attention.

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

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,

you can't have economic policy and military or strategic policy carried out in separate silos.

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

It doesn't work that way.

So

I would say this is a million, again, I'm critical of a lot of the economic policy on its own merits.

I don't think it makes sense full stop.

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 it's our friends and neighbors who are as you know our biggest economic partners

with today uh donald trump in his press conference when i was confronted on why he hasn't solved the conflict in ukraine immediately uh well he pivoted to his success in immediately solving the crisis in Pakistan and India.

Overstated, understated?

Is that an early success that he deserves more credit than perhaps he's even been given?

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.

I was going to ask that next.

Yeah, there.

And

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,

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

We began, as you know, to bring India into various Asia-Pacific strategic groupings.

I've always seen Pakistan more as a problem than as a partner.

It was a problem in Afghanistan in many ways.

questions of democracy and human rights, the role of the military in politics.

It's been a very uneasy country.

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

in part because of potential loss of command and control over nuclear materials.

So, the even-handedness that we've reintroduced, and the shorthand for this is that

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.

You know, how close they really were to, you know,

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

actual or potential hostilities, you know, great.

And I would, you know, say well done to the president or the secretary of state or anyone else who had a hand in it but yeah I wouldn't exaggerate it here and again it may have come at some cost as well yeah well

and then there was also a price the largest I think one of their crypto exchanges and in Pakistan now is yeah well and we'll get back into the corruption questions or at least questions of corruption I suppose that's look I've heard that and again I don't know but yeah it is what it is 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?

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.

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

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

You were opposed to that last war in Iraq.

And so you've seen some light and some wisdom through all this.

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.

I think there was a song about that.

And, you know, what's going on?

Richard, help us.

Fair question.

Just for the record, I did work for a Democratic administration.

I worked in the Carter Pentagon.

And

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.

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

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

President Bush 41 rallied the country and the world to Kuwait's defense.

It was quite extraordinary, I think.

It was actually, to me,

like I duly note that I was part of the administration.

I worked on the Middle East, but

credit, I think, is due to the president, Brent Scowcroft, Jim Baker, and others.

It was quite remarkably done.

I think what we did was necessary.

The 2003 Iraq war was a war of choice.

I think it was misguided.

And some other, I think what the other day, what we did was, I think, was warranted.

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

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.

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

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

U.S.-China competition will be defining.

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

And I think

we've gotten too ambitious there at times.

I think, in particular, 43's effort to transform it, to bring about democracy, was,

I think, ill-advised i'll be i'll be diplomatic here uh uh and and so forth and some other things that we've done again where 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 uh and we just find ourselves more involved i i don't have a good answer for you exactly why at times but somehow it's captured our imagination one of the odd things for secretaries of state and i worked for quite a few how getting heavily heavily involved in Middle Eastern diplomacy was almost part of the job after Henry Kissinger.

And like it or not, people found themselves doing it.

And yeah,

my take on all that is no mediator can ever be more successful than the protagonists want or would allow him to be.

And I think at times we've too often substituted our own efforts.

for what was missing on the part of the uh locals.

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

So, you know, it's interesting.

We had Steve Bannon on this show, and I don't want to 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 a hemispheric framework and sort of creating a stronger consciousness to sort of regionalize our American first framework

and to put it in, you know,

in at least

creating a narrative around what some of us perceived as just the absurdity of these threats to take over Greenland, make Canada a 51st state, and invade or take over the Panama Canal.

Is there any merit to that argument, or is it just folly?

Folly would be generous.

The 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.

Russia and China would be very happy with that arrangement.

No one in this hemisphere would be.

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.

Americans, including including a lot of the MA 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.

So I just think it's unnecessary.

We can have the access, the influence we need without an imperial coercive role.

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

a truly misguided approach, but it makes me uneasy because

I can see something of it.

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.

We would be resisted here.

And history suggests that wherever the

there'd be a lot of opposition.

And by the way, it would become a real recipe for proliferation.

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

would be quite honestly catastrophic.

You're here.

Questions around the globe in terms of concerns.

We so often neglect continent of Africa.

It was a reference today of Congo from the president.

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

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.

What's your over-under in terms of America's posture in South America, Central America?

But first, let's start in Africa.

What makes Africa sui generis, what makes it unique going forward, is demographics.

Most of the world is getting,

shrinking in number and getting older.

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.

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.

That's a sideshow uh for the most part but really it's a human story it's uh with you know all these people and the question is can economically

the 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 uh you don't have civil wars uh 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.

The biggest issues there are internal, their governance.

Can the Mexican government meet the responsibilities and challenges of sovereignty within Mexico?

Can they deal with cartels and drugs and criminals

and the like?

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.

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 what have you.

So we do it.

It's both, again, it's not either or.

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 real folly of that is not that it provides opportunities for China, which it does, but again, we weaken the ability of these societies and these governments to deal with their immediate challenges.

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,

Even out of narrow self-interest, we ought to be doing more in these places.

So I just think

it's quite short-sighted.

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Be honest, how many tabs do you have open right now?

Too many?

Sounds like you need Close All Tabs from KQED, where I, Morgan Sung, doom scroll so you don't have to.

Every week, we scour the internet to bring you deep dives that explain how the digital world connects and divides us all.

Everyone's cooped up in their house.

I will talk to this robot.

If you're a truly engaged activist, the government already has data on you.

Driverless cars are going to mess up in ways that humans wouldn't.

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And let us know how you feel the difference.

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.

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

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,

without council consent

and the support of the state,

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

What's the temperature right now?

The fact that we have to have this conversation tells you something.

I'm uneasy.

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

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.

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

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

It reduces readiness.

It politicizes what has been, in some ways, the most successful modern American institution that

we have.

So that's one thing that makes me uneasy.

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,

some of the

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

on deportations and so forth.

So that leaves me uneasy.

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

uneasy.

Look,

the irony of this isn't lost.

Here we are.

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.

And

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

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

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.

That ought to become much bigger priority.

And we ought to think a lot about what we need to do to make sure American democracy works.

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

So I think there's a lot of yellow lights flashing.

And so my view is

we ought to be mindful of them.

not again, not take anything for granted or you know,

Churchill's always quoted for everything.

and one of them is that you know Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing after they do everything else there's a kind of sanguine quality or yeah we get in trouble but we've always come out in the right place and never sell America short

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 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

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,

I just think there's ways for

people to make a difference.

And

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

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.

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

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.

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,

the common good,

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

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.

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

Talk to me.

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

communicate.

Well, first of all, thank you.

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.

That's my educational training.

That's my professional experience.

But probably about a decade ago, I started to see much greater connection.

between what we were doing or not doing here at home and our ability to be effective abroad.

I wrote about everything from indebtedness.

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

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

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.

And what I noticed in the years since that, things weren't getting better.

Things were getting worse.

And so I just decided,

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

just

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

And I was just struck by how much explicitly a lot of our modern, our 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 uh proud of in this country it's uh 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.

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.

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,

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

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

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

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

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 less less about it going in

and you've written what 16 books how many books i've written a dozen and edited a few more so it's uh yeah that's a large it's up to 16 but i'm not done yet

i got a few more a few more in me there's uh there's plenty of chapters uh of your life uh left and uh and and look i'm i'm grateful for this opportunity to share a little bit of uh of your time and your your your action and passion as it were uh 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,

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

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.

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

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

That is, for all of you listening, a preview of the next podcast with Richard Haas, my guests, on, well, part one of this two-part pod.

Richard, thanks for being here.

Thank you, sir.

Enjoyed it.

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