Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 A substitute hosting for the Atlas societies, CEO, Jennifer Grossman. I'm glad to be back with TAs senior scholar, Rob discussing the road from extra sketches, Stan. And, uh, after Rob's take, we'll open it up to questions on the subject. So if any of you would like to participate, I encourage you to raise your hands through the app and we'll bring you up to be part of the discussion. Uh, the session is being recorded for educational purposes. Rob, thank you for being here today. Uh, you know, we've done these a couple of times now and I, I noticed that you kind of have a twist on some of your titles. So beyond the obvious, what is that? Just sketches Dan? I noticed that it's the road from, so I'm, I'm wondering if that means that we're in that just get you Stan.
Speaker 1 00:00:53 Right? Right. So, so thanks guys. Um, yeah, this, this title is sort of a play both on the old, uh, uh, was it Bing, Crosby, Bob hope road movies, you know, the road to such and such. Uh, uh, and, and that an old joke from the onion, the onion, you know, is a satirical newspaper. They do these sort of one line headline gigs, and one of their gags once was something like earth, Cate, earthquake wipes out at your sketches down, you know, it's, it's pretty, there's no article to it. It's just a headline. Right? And, um, you know, the idea that you, you take an Etch-a-Sketch and you shake it upside down and everything disappears. Well, I use that as a pick that up seven years ago as an analogy for what I saw happening about eight to 10 years ago. And that is that after sort of the passing away of after, after the war in Iraq, after, as we got into the Obama administration, there were a number of these cases.
Speaker 1 00:01:44 Like there was a time when Ababa wanted to congressional authorization to do something in Syria. And you had this weird experience where the Democrats were using all the pro war arguments that the Republicans had been using three years earlier. And the Republicans were using all the anti-war arguments that the Democrats were using three years earlier. And it's one of these things that happens every so often in politics where everybody just totally switches sides and adopts the exact opposite arguments just to make things interesting. Um, and so, uh, I called that period extra sketches down because the way I view it is it's like somebody had taken the foreign policy debates of the previous decades and taken it all and turned it upside down and shaking it. And we're all starting from new, a new, uh, a new slate, a blank slate on our edge of sketch.
Speaker 1 00:02:33 And so, uh, it led me to sort of say, well, we need to rethink these things through and decide, um, you know, what should we be doing? Because you know, for many decades during the cold war, and then it sort of got transferred over onto the war on terror, there've been sort of established predictable schools of, of foreign policy, uh, that were generally associated with the two different parties. You had your realists, you had your internationalists, you had your sort of, uh, um, uh, you had your blame America first leftists who were always, you know, we were always the bad guys in the cold war. Uh, we were always to blame for everything. And you had your cold war Hawks and you had this sort of, you know, set of expected positions that people would take Lucia, as I said, were sort of transferred over, you know, after the holiday for history of the 1990s that were sort of transferred over onto the war on terrorism, but by the about eight to 10 years ago, that was all getting kicked up a loss.
Speaker 1 00:03:32 And I think the result is not just the, we had no predictable schools of, of strategy, but that we had sort of no schools of strategy. There was no, there was no nothing. They became unpredictable. I think that's accelerated even more so, uh, in, in the, um, uh, after the rise of Donald Trump who was not, you know, carrying on any of the existing, you know, neo-conservative for, uh, international store hawkish, uh, all he wasn't carry on any of the existing schools of foreign policy. It became much more that there is no accepted schools of foreign policy, no accepted views on grand strategy. And I want to just take a second to explain what I mean by grand strategy, because it's a term that's used sort of in the foreign policy world, but not really understood outside of that. And grand strategy means basically your highest level strategy this year, the strategy that you have for your, uh, uh, for your country's approach to the entire world, in terms of what objectives you want to achieve, and then integrating all the different tools that you have as a country, you know, the economic tools, the cultural, the military, uh, uh, sanctions and international institutions, all of the tools and tools you have.
Speaker 1 00:04:47 You're trying to integrate all of those together to show how they're all going to work together to achieve a set of goals that you have for the country. And I think we just simply don't have a grand strategy as a nation. I don't think we even have a, a couple of leading, uh, um, contenders, you know, competitors for what would be a grand strategy. I think we have no brand strategy at all. We're sort of acting very reactively in our foreign policy right now that when there's a crisis, we'll sort of, you know, reluctantly pay some attention to it. Uh, and people will sort of fall out on that depending on where the politics of the moment takes them. But nobody has a real overarching view of here's America's place in the world. Here's what here's here are our objectives. Here's how we're going to achieve them.
Speaker 1 00:05:36 And I think that's true because I always had to both sides. I think both in practice, both the sides have become for lack of a better word isolationist. And I say for lack of a better word, because of course, you know, there's a whole history, Iran thought the term isolationists was a smear used against, uh, some of the people from the thirties and forties. Um, and, uh, although I, I, what I've observed is it sometimes almost as if people looked at the term isolationists and there's a tendency people have in politics to, to live down to the worst caricature that the other side comes up with for them. Right? So, uh, you know, if the other side calls you a bad thing, enough times you say fine, I'm going to be that bad thing. And to some extent, I think both sides have become somewhat quote unquote isolationists in the sense that they are dope to put it in more accurate terms, they've become reflexively anti interventionists.
Speaker 1 00:06:27 And what I've noticed is that sometimes in practice, there's not a lot of difference between a lot of, a lot of difference between America first and blame America first, right? So the left has its view of America should stay within its borders and not do anything. And that's the sort of view that while America is a force for evil in the world, every time we intervene, we just cause trouble. We're imperialists, we're aggressors. Therefore we should stay within our own borders and let things sort themselves out in the rest of the world without getting a volt now on the right and have the sort of America first idea, which is that, uh, it generally tends to come with a heavy dose of pessimism about our current state of the United States and say, oh, we have so many problems here. We're economically in decline. We're culturally in decline.
Speaker 1 00:07:12 Well, we should therefore focus on our domestic problems entirely and not try to, uh, waste, uh, efforts on all of these. Why should we waste our military effort on our, our blood and treasure on these foreigners out there who don't deserve our help? Uh, and it tends to also come, I think, well, we'll get later on. It tends to come from religious conservatives who see allies in some of the authoritarian, uh, enemies that we have. Um, but I think the common thread really beyond all of that, the common thread is there seems to be a general desire not to think about foreign policy. And this is a commonality and, and, you know, America is a large, wealthy, powerful nation surrounded by oceans, uh, with no immediate danger from our immediate, from our, from our actual NAPE, from our immediate neighbors. And so there's a tendency to see you sort of view the rest of the world as being out there somewhere and not very close to us.
Speaker 1 00:08:09 The default American view of foreign policy is that we don't want to have to think about it, the average for the average person. And I think we sort of relapsed into that in a sort of a sullen and determined way. And, uh, so we either don't think about what's going on in foreign policy, or we sort of filter it through our domestic politics, right? So if that was what I noticed about this thing with Syria, you know, if, if, if Barack Obama was to do anything in Syria, uh, something in Syria, I guess the Assad regime, then we're against it. And it doesn't really matter what it is he wants to do because, because he wants to do, uh, we're now against it, or because my guy wants, you know, or because the Republicans are for something, then we're against it. That's the Democrats are against it.
Speaker 1 00:08:49 So we've had to filter it through our domestic politics without really thinking about, uh, foreign policy. So my goal that's what the road from Etch-a-Sketch stand really refers to. It means that we need to, you know, we flew, shaken the extra sketch. There's no real established schools of foreign policy. So that gives us an opportunity at a time to, to start over from basic principles and work back towards asking the question of, well, what should the foreign policy of a free society be? What should the America, what should the foreign policy, or should American foreign policy be? And to try to sort of build that up in, in the absence of anybody, having a really distinct, uh, school on that. And of course, as recent events in the news, this whole thing, Ukraine shows that, you know, we're not going to be given the option of not having a view on this.
Speaker 1 00:09:38 You know, this be the PR the crises are going to come and press it upon us. We need to know what we're doing in response to that. So the two things just to wrap up my time, the two things I want to suggest as places to start from is, first of all, I want to take one thing that I think the America first types tend to rely on, which is yes, we should act in our national self-interest in the America's national self-interest, but we have to define what that self-interest is. And, um, I think that this sort of the America first type of, especially the, the Trump administration, I think tended to have a very mercantilist view of America's national interests that are America's national interests, was that the other guys are getting the better of us on trade. And so we should try to manage trade and, and have the president be a dealmaker in chief who restricts trade there and makes deals over here.
Speaker 1 00:10:32 And, and, uh, uh, is this truly sort of transactional and economic idea that, you know, if ever, if anybody else in the world is winning economically, that we must be losing. So therefore, you know, it's sort of a return to this old mercantilist viewpoint that trade has to be managed by the governments in a way that, uh, benefits us and, and is not good for anybody else. And, uh, it's, it's a very narrow and, uh, um, economically wrong, uh, approach to it. Uh, and I also would've played that in America. First in that version also often tends in this sort of anti interventionist version often has actually mean America less because the more you say, America's not going to, uh, outside of managing trade, America is not going to intervene in the world. What you really mean is everybody else gets the initiative, the Chinese get to take the initiative, the Russians, get to take the initiative and try to redraw the map of Europe.
Speaker 1 00:11:27 Um, and you know, and we're going to be, if we're not intervening, if we're not actively involved in those things, then what it means is that America is the last country to weigh in on what's going on in the world. So I think this, my vision of, of national self-interest sort of to tie it back to the discussion we had here on clubhouse a couple of weeks ago, it would be, it ties it to the idea of enlightened self-interest so enlightened national self-interest. And that is the idea that America's interest. Isn't just something narrow. Like we should win and trade deals, uh, or something narrow like, oh, we're, we're, we're paying too much for NATO in that. And we should make the, uh, the, the Europeans pay more. They should pay more by the way. But, uh, that's, you know, th th that, that, that should be the center of our foreign policy is very often, uh, instead it should be, America is pursuing itself interest in its self-interest lies in strengthening other free nations around the world, uh, and keeping authoritarian, regimes, and dictatorships, keeping them sort of at bay and contained and, and weak and on the defensive.
Speaker 1 00:12:35 So it should mean, so the enlightened self-interest, uh, white and American self-interest should be that we have an interest in various alliances and in cooperation with various different countries and in, especially in, in, um, expanding trade with other free nations. But that, that that's a larger expanded concept of our self-interest, because the idea is the stronger, all the other free nations are the more the people who share our values and our political system, the stronger and more numerous they are, then the safer, uh, we're going to be in the more hospitable, the better place a world is going to be for our trade and growth and influence. Now, the second part about that is when you get to this issue of, you know, I said that you have the blame America first, and you have the America first people. And I think the answer to that is what we should want is not America as the world servant or the world's policemen necessarily.
Speaker 1 00:13:32 Um, so American, not as the world's servant, but also America, not as ignoring the world, but I would say America as the world's leader. So we should go back to the idea of America as being the leader of the free world. And that that's the role we should look for in the world is that we are the leader of, uh, of other like-minded nations. So the idea is we're not their servant, we're the ones sort of setting the agenda and making an, and taking a leading role to make sure things go in ways that that suit our interests, but that we do have to invest in the, the time and effort and, and some of the economic costs and, and the military power that is required to have America be a leader rather than a follower, or rather than I was at Obama's idea of, of leading from behind, which is just another way of saying we're willing to be a follower.
Speaker 1 00:14:25 Um, and the reason why the main and wrap up the main reason why I argue for this, and this comes from really ties into the recent events, uh, what's going on in Ukraine is the fact that again, the issue is if America is not a leader in the world, then you create a vacuum that will be filled by somebody else. And right now there's a lot of sort of strident and expansive authoritarian systems that are trying to fill that Gulf, that gap. And if we don't lead, they will. And you see that, I think with what's going on in Ukraine now, hopefully I just saw some, you know, the news today says that, uh, uh, that, that Putin has withdrawn some troops from the Ukrainian border. So it looks like this giant buildup around Ukraine was, was a bluff rather than an actual invasion, but it's also clear that, you know, why was he building up troops around Ukraine?
Speaker 1 00:15:19 There was no threat to Russia from Ukraine. Ukraine does not have the wherewithal or ability to evade Russia. Uh, there, you know, very little of Russia's border is with NATO or NATO allied countries. The threat of invasion or attack on Russia is totally imagined, you know, from these paranoid acts in the Kremlin, but really what it comes from is that he has the need to control more and more things around Russia. And I think specifically he saw you saw it and still sees Ukraine as a threat because Ukraine is full of a bunch of people who speak Russian. And I just talked with an objectivist who's from Belarus, uh, you know, who grew up on the under Soviet rule in Belarus, uh, and fled Belarus recently for Ukraine. And the thing is it's very easy for a lot of these distance from Russia and Ukraine are from Russia and Belarus and places like that to end up in Ukraine where they can, you know, speak Russian, they can, um, uh, have an influence and an impact in Russia.
Speaker 1 00:16:20 So, you know, the dictatorships are driven to want to expand outside their borders because they see anything outside of their borders as a place where descent and alternative models of government can be displayed, that is a threat to their rule. So I think that's why, you know, the dictatorships will always want to fill in all the gaps in and expand and assert their control wherever we don't. And that's why we have to take that position of global leadership. Uh, so that's how I want to in, in very, very broadest terms, that's what I want to say. And then we can take the discussion from there and talk about what would that mean in specifics.
Speaker 0 00:16:58 Great. Well, uh, I want to encourage people that want to be part of the discussion to raise your hand, uh, and through the app. And we'll bring you up on stage. Um, Rob, I have a question, you know, some of this is just about basic unity and, you know, whether it's, I mean, getting Democrats and Republicans on the same page in foreign policy, not to mention even with something like Ukraine where, you know, the Germans, they, they wouldn't even send, uh, any kind of military equipment to Ukraine. So, I mean, we have to all be on the same page before we can even talk about what it is we're pushing for.
Speaker 1 00:17:37 Well, yeah, I think that's why American leadership though, is so important because you know, the Germans on their own. So that's the background for this as the Germans. Um, this is really one of the things we have, uh, what seems like a domestic issue, but one with strong turns out to have very strong foreign policy implications is the Germans adopted this policy. And I can't pronounce the German word for it, but there's this policy of basically going for massive investments in old quote, unquote alternative energy. But that also includes cause supposedly cause of global warming, but it also included shutting down all their nuclear power plants, right? So who were concerned about global warming, you want to build more nuclear power plants, but they have this sort of insane green agenda where it's like everything, all power plants have to be shut down and we're going to have wind and solar and it practice what the meds is.
Speaker 1 00:18:27 They shut down their nuclear plants to shut down their coal plants. And because solar, you know, solar and wind power, isn't actually reliable. They become extremely dependent on natural gas. Now we've done that in the U S too. We've become vastly increased. Uh, the share of our energy journey generated by natural gas, but we have fracking and we have this vast supply of natural gas that relative much less expensive prices than, than the Germans could get them for the Germans. That meant if you are Tonomy is entirely dependent on natural gas. That means you're dependent on Russia. You're dependent on these Russian pipelines pumping natural gas, and that basically has Finland dies Germany. It has made them unable to, to oppose Russia because they're terrified that Russia is going to cut off their guest supplies. So that's something that, that a domestic issue that, that they're, they sort of shot themselves in the foot, but here's where American leadership comes in.
Speaker 1 00:19:21 You have to have America basically being the power that comes to Germans to say, look, this is what you have to do argues with them, brow beats them and offers them like, you know, Hey, we've got plenty of natural gas. Let's set up, you know, giant terminals for, uh, let's go into this giant effort. You know, if you want to have is one, one area of mercantile, somebody I would agree with, which is, you know, put a massive effort into making, uh, Germany, Germany dependent on American natural gas. We've got huge supplies of it, but of course, again, domestically Biden would have to be come out in favor of fracking. Uh, might help him get reelected in Pennsylvania, but, you know, uh, it, it's something that he'd have to oppose the greens and he's not likely to do that, but again, it's the idea of America is a leader in the world.
Speaker 1 00:20:08 It can start to sort of say to other nations, this is the direction we need to go. Uh, I'm sorry. I kind of remember. So, um, David French recently stole, well, I say he stole a headline for me. I used it first. It's been hanging out there for awhile, um, in the 2012 elections, uh, did they have these debates with, uh, uh, Obama versus Romney? And Romney said, this is the way back in 2012, you know, that, uh, Russia is, uh, one of our top foreign adversaries and, you know, by, uh, Obama scoffed at that idea and said, well, the 1980s called they want their foreign policy, right? And so I wrote an article very shortly that saying, the 1980s are calling, do we go, what do we want their foreign policy back saying that, you know, against Russia and against China, we need to adopt certain things that Reagan did in the eighties.
Speaker 1 00:20:56 And, uh, David French wrote something about that recently. I think there's a lot to that. And one of the things in the eighties is that, uh, uh, there was this Alliance that were Reagan and Thatcher worked together to sort of keep the Europeans or the Western Europeans on board, keep them on target and sort of brow beat them and control them and, and do this very intensive, um, diplomacy with the Europeans to try to keep them all on a single strategy as the Russians, because on their own, they'll just sort of scattered, you know, they're sort of scattered, scattered willy-nilly and, um, you know, go wherever. So that's the sort of leadership that you need that, but it requires the president who's engaged and who cares about it and who has a very clear idea of what he wants to accomplish. Uh, Reagan had that. Um, but, uh, you know, we haven't had anybody, I think who had George W. Bush had a very clear concept of what, of, what to do. You could argue about whether he had the right one. He did have a very clear concept since then. Nobody's had a clear concept of what they want to accomplish.
Speaker 0 00:22:01 All right. That's uh, that's good. Uh, Lawrence, do you want to add to the conversation?
Speaker 2 00:22:08 Sure. Am I coming through pretty clear? Yes. Great. So, uh, Rob, I'm a little skeptical of this notion. I hope he can try and clarify a little bit for me because this statement it, I wasn't around of course, but it kind of gives me the feeling sort of like, you know, 1947, you know, we need to make the world safe for democracy with the Truman doctrine, sort of countering communism, wherever it sprouts its head. And while we don't want more communists in the world, I guess the reasonable explanation of the time the result were, these did get in the United States, mired in these very complicated entanglements and ultimately in things that cost, you know, American lives and might not necessarily have been proved fruitful. It's kind of hard to see what would have happened if you weren't there or what were the consequences with places like Vietnam, helping prop up a government and trying to show them the right way. But it ultimately resulted in, you know, dealing with less than probably ideal partners, hoping to counter the greater evil, so to speak. They're not actually emulating, but you're more treating them like children hoping that they'll follow along in this right example, but they don't do it. And that's what I see a little bit in Europe. And they made these policies for themselves elected to do these things with their plants. And now it's made them dependent on Russia, which is bad, but making it, the dependent on us is,
Speaker 2 00:23:45 I guess also kind of iffy in my mind, it's sort of like a mixture of sort of like American imperialism. And I don't want to use that word because of the connotations around it, but it makes me a little bit skeptical if this is the right way forward. I'm curious to hear your,
Speaker 1 00:24:01 Okay. So I do want to say though, you know, for all the scorn we heap on the Germans, I think the Germans are not our number one problem with, with regard to Russia, the center of gravity of that is going to be a little farther east, which is one of the great luxuries we have because of the cold war is that, you know, uh, the line, uh, uh, uh, between, uh, Russia and Russian influence and Western Europe is not, you know, going through the middle of Germany. It's now, you know, hundreds of miles east of that. Uh, so, uh, you know, it's going to be what we do with Poland and what we do with, you know, pull to the Czech Republic and Ukraine and, and those, those, and the Baltic states, those are going to be the key areas. And those people have their heads on a little straighter with regard to the Russian threat, because there are a lot closer to it and they have a whole history, uh, of Russian occupation.
Speaker 1 00:24:51 Um, but you know, the, I do remember these complaints from back in the cold war. I remember complaints about the Europeans, the Western Europeans, uh, uh, look up, there's an old song by, um, oh, who's the guy. He did music for a toy story. And, uh, I, yes, Randy Newman did a song called political science and it starts, the whole world hates us. Heaven knows why, uh, you know, uh, and since, you know, we, we give the money, but are they grateful? No they're spiteful and they're hateful. And he ends up by advocated that, do you know, it's a spiritual song advocating. We, we dropped, we knew we used nuclear weapons gets the entire rest of the world. Uh, but, um, it was just the sense, but he, he was th the lyrics come from the sense that, you know, here we are helping all these other people and all they ever do is bad mouth us.
Speaker 1 00:25:41 And that was definitely true of the Western Europeans. But on the one hand, to some extent you have to ask, you know, you asked, that's why I think the importance of having idea of a grand strategy is that you set what your goals are in the world. And that kind of supersedes the question of, well, is this person, is this particular ally that I have to achieve those goals? Does he have bad things about him? You know, so in the cold war, there were two things you had the ungrateful, you know, the two things that were calling were the first of all, the ungrateful allies, you know, the French and the, uh, and the Germans and, and, and that sort of thing. So you had the ungrateful allies and then you had the, um, the quote unquote friendly dictators is that oftentimes we would, we would, uh, support a, uh, a regime that was itself a dictatorship, uh, in order to prevent what we saw as a worst dictatorship from arising.
Speaker 1 00:26:34 You know, so for example, in Vietnam, you know, the, the alternative wasn't, we support a somewhat corrupt and oppressive regime in Vietnam, versus we leave them and they, they find their own way. It was, we support them or else they become another province of the Soviet empire. So, you know, it wasn't that the alternative to us li you know, and that's something, I think, a big lesson from the post-World war II era, uh, when the, um, uh, when the British gave up their empire, right? So the idea is, okay, we're no longer going to have the British empire controlling all these places. And a lot of cases what happened as well, another dictator came in and in some of those cases, it was, they became part of the Soviet empire. So you were just treating one, you weren't, it wasn't imperialism versus non imperialism is one Imperial what empire versus another.
Speaker 1 00:27:21 So I, now I do think that sometimes the, the necessity of supporting friendly dictators was exaggerated. Uh, one of the things we did in the eighties that people don't realize, and don't appreciate is that after initially sort of backing the friendly dictator strategy, uh, and when he first came into office, the Reagan administration actually turned against that eventually. And they all, they did, they did a lot of work in places like the Philippines and, um, uh, El Salvador in trying to basically push for reform of what had been authoritarian regimes that were our allies to push, push them towards having a freer society and, uh, having elections and free elections and that sort of thing. And so you saw, you know, the north South Korea began as a, as a military dictatorship became a, uh, uh, became a democracy, uh, D again, for lack of a better word democracy, uh, same thing with, um, uh, some of our other allies.
Speaker 1 00:28:24 I'm trying to think of a what's the other example I had, um, oh, yeah. Say Taiwan is another great example where, you know, it was Shanghai check-in as nationalists, you know, settled in Taiwan when they lost the mainland. And they had what was an authoritarian system, which again, by the 1980s became a, a free society. So there, the, the, the idea was to say, take, take it to the idea was to ally ourselves sometimes with less than free societies, but then push them to become freer. Uh, an example, it'd be more relevant to, to, to Latin America would be chilling, right? So you, you support Pinochet, but then you push for and welcome him. Then eventually leaving, you know, giving up power and having elections and becoming a free society. So, you know, there's a lot of arguments we made about what the terms are.
Speaker 1 00:29:17 Those are, but I think the main thing that I want to push is you decide what your big foreign policy objectives are. And then sometimes if you have to work with an unsavory ally, because the alternative is worse, you do it, but then you should always working for how can I improve, find a better means to do this without having to make that compromise, or if you sometimes have to work with an ungrateful ally, but that's, you know, it's better to have the French saying bad things about us then to have the French B uh, under, under the control of Bosco, right? So, uh, sometimes you can't let the, as much as you might be annoyed by your allies, you can't, we can't let that annoyance overcome the fact that this so better to work with them than it is to let the other guy have his way. And that's the power of having a grand strategy. Having an idea of this is what we want to accomplish in the world is it keeps you from getting sidetracked. It helps you make the priorities of when is, you know, what's the lesser, what's the greater consideration and what's the lesser consideration. And of course, we're always going to argue over what those are.
Speaker 0 00:30:24 Good. Well, um, Alan, thank you again for joining us.
Speaker 3 00:30:28 Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. And Rob, I'd point out, the French are going to say bad things about the United States, no matter what. So that's just a general principle. Um, yeah. I wanted to talk, ask you about the middle east. Uh, I mean, I agree with your prince, uh, your, your idea that America needs or principled America needs to be a leader in the world. And I'm just wondering, because when I look at our policy in the middle east, starting from 2016, it just seems to me that we've, the United States have, has just simply given it up. And, and, and for the life of me, I really can't justify it in my mind, especially when you consider something like that. I mean, we have something like 40 or 50,000 soldiers in South Korea for the last 50 years. And in Afghanistan, we had 3000, I think that was being used to maintain it. So in terms of military costs to maintain that country and to keep it where, and to keep it as an ally and called spreading democracy or freedom, it just, the idea of giving it up just seemed that there was no rhyme or reason to it, unless you want to say, you know, well, there were other forces, which I think there are, but I'm just curious, I'm curious about your,
Speaker 1 00:32:12 Yeah. I didn't hear the last word, but I think I know what,
Speaker 3 00:32:17 Uh, yeah. I'm curious to your thoughts about in general, our policy in the middle east and w w w you know, w whether we did the right thing or no, or
Speaker 1 00:32:27 Yeah, the middle east is a great example. I think it's one of the leading examples today of one of those areas where there aren't a lot of really integrate enthusiastic options. Um, I mean, the Latin America was a little bit like that, you know, 50 years ago, where, uh, you basically had you, or, or, or, or Southeast Asia where you basically generally had authority, uh, I think good Jeane, Kirkpatrick, Jeane, Kirkpatrick, who was, um, one of the officials of the Reagan administration early on, was famous for making this distinction between authoritarians and totalitarians. And basically that was your option in a lot of these places, you all, you, you could support the authoritarians to keep out the totalitarians does house parents being communists. And the middle east is a great example where, you know, there's only one real free country in the, in the middle east and that's Israel.
Speaker 1 00:33:13 Uh, and, uh, that's why we remain one of those. One of the reasons we remain one of those touches, we should be one of their staunchest allies. Um, but other than that, you know, outside of Israel, you are dealing with which Monarch or which, uh, strong mandate do you want to ally with against which, you know, which other, uh, dictate of against which other competing dictatorship, and that presents us with some really unsavory options. But I also think the last summer's withdrawal from Afghanistan gives us an indication of why it is you don't just say, throw up your hands and say, oh, well, forget about it. Let's, you know, let's just, let's let this all fall apart as SU is too far away. It's, it's not related to us enough. Let's not care about it because for one thing, I think, you know, uh, the, what pure Putin was doing in, in, um, with Ukraine recently, what, um, uh, what the, some of the rhetoric that's coming out of China about Taiwan, about how they're going to reinvigorate Taiwan.
Speaker 1 00:34:13 A lot of that is testing the waters to say, look, if America isn't going to, you know, support its allies. If it's not going to even attempt to shape the world the way it wants to the, to be the way it wants to be, then, um, uh, then maybe we can get away with a lot. Maybe, maybe they, maybe we can take Taiwan and they won't lift a finger. Maybe we can take Ukraine and they won't lift a finger. And I, I, I think there was this, uh, yeah, I saw a lot of warning signs about that. So for example, you know, uh, the Biden administration, uh, tried to boast about how we'll actually, you know, the real story in Afghanistan is this historic airlift that we did to get all these people out, uh, out of Afghanistan. And it's like, they went to boast about how the triumph of their foreign policy would be a series of retreats in which they evacuate American citizens from various one place of the world after another.
Speaker 1 00:35:04 And I thought echoes of that when they started making plans for, oh, we have troops on standby to help evacuate Americans from Ukraine. So it was like, you can't have a foreign policy that consists of, we will keep our military in a standby to evacuate our people whenever a dictatorship evades somewhere, or whenever a group of fanatics takes over. Um, now I think the problem that of Ganesan, I think again, a Stan actually is a great example though, of this fact that, that we ended up with no foreign policy at all. So, uh, we ended up is what I saw in Afghanistan. I'm looking at the people who look at the military strategy and tactics and all that is that we never really used a proper counter-insurgency strategy there, but we also never it's like we wouldn't withdraw and we wouldn't do what was necessary to win.
Speaker 1 00:35:50 And I think it happened under both Obama and, um, and, and Trump was that neither one really wanted to commit to doing what was necessary to win in Afghanistan, uh, or, you know, to have a successful outcome motor began to Stan, but at the same time, either on wanting to withdraw, because it would be politically unpopular. And so what they ended up doing was just sort of, you know, can you keep a couple of thousand troops in there who are sort of, kind of doing something, but never really, you know, we don't really have a strategy that we're following through and, and, and putting, giving our full effort to, and you just limp along for decades and Obama, uh, Biden defended being the guy who was foolish enough to think that it, you know, to, to, to go ahead and think that it wouldn't be a political disaster for him to, to finally withdraw our troops.
Speaker 1 00:36:39 Um, so I think, you know, that comes from this sort of drift that we're in, where you, you know, I think th there was basically what happened is we rejected the, the, the George W. Bush a strategy that said, no, we have to adopt a proper counter-insurgency strategy. And we have to put in the resources necessary to win the war on terror. We rejected that, but we never put anything new as a grand strategy in place as to, there was no concept of what are we doing here. As you know, we were just, we were lingering around in Afghanistan to avoid making, you know, keeping 3000 troops or 10,000 troops there, basically to avoid making a decision, uh, uh, to avoid the president, having to make a decision. And so that was, that's a symptom of this kind of drift that we've had and our foreign policy for the last, you know, 10 or 10 years or so.
Speaker 0 00:37:30 I think I remembered Trump at some point saying the generals told him that he could win, but he'd have to kill a million people. And he didn't want to do that.
Speaker 1 00:37:39 I don't believe the General's actually told them that, but yeah, that's sort of symptomatic of the whole thing, you know, I could win, but, and then the bus come in and then, you know, uh, but he didn't want it, but at the same time, he didn't want to withdraw because that would have been politically unpopular. So, you know, we ended up just lingering, right.
Speaker 3 00:37:58 It just reminds me of Monty Python and the holy grail. You're talking about brave, sir, Robin DNO, bravely runs away. That's the U S foreign policy. Yes.
Speaker 1 00:38:11 Reared its ugly head. He bravely turned his tail and foot. That's sort of our policy right now. We're briefly turn our tail on.
Speaker 0 00:38:21 Well, um, Roger, I want to bring you in here for this. Thank you for joining us. Well, Roger May actually be unavailable at the moment. So while he's getting ready, we'll go to bill.
Speaker 4 00:38:42 All right. Um, my thought on listening to all of this is what makes anyone think we have a nation that is capable of following the advice that is being offered here or anywhere else? Um, my observation has been that, uh, none of our recent presidents have been capable of forming a coherent plan for much of anything. Um, and I'm not even going to include a Bush in that he seemed to have a quote plan unquote, which basically amount is the throat, throw your weight around and see what breaks and what a lot of things broke. But, uh, I do not think we actually accomplished any of our end goals. Um, so what is the, you know, what's the point of arguing? What should America do when we do not have leaders? We do not have a policy, uh, that is capable of actually coming to any sort of division while we're divided up into red team, blue train, uh, tribal politics. We are not going anywhere.
Speaker 1 00:39:49 All right. So my answer to that, I think it's a good question, but my aunts, because oftentimes I will see, you know, so one of the bi-pap teases, oftentimes you'll, you'll come up with. And, uh, there's some, uh, some, some Objectivists occasionally that I argued with us when they come up with these, you know, amazingly Uber, hawkish, things of all, we should drop nuclear weapons. We should do this, have these, these incredibly hawkish plans for how their wins totally reshaped the middle east. And we're going to, you know, invade Iran, et cetera. And I was sort of thinking of you as much as I would like to topple the Iranian regime you on that. On the one hand, a country that was capable, if America was actually capable of taking the extraordinary dramatic actions that you're proposing, we would never have been in this situation in the first place.
Speaker 1 00:40:35 You know, the whole world would be, would have been if we, if we were in the position to do that, we would have done things 20 years ago that would have made the world vastly different than it is now. So you're, you're, you're asking for too much. So I think that's a legitimate criticism, but I would also say though that some of the things you just said, I could have said exactly the same thing while I would fit in 10 years old, but I could have said exactly the same things in 1979, you could have come along in 1979 with Jimmy, Jimmy Carter in Britain, in the office. And before that was forward. And before that was, uh, was Nixon, who was, you know, the big champion of detente with the Soviet union. Um, and you know, we, we had basically had before that was, was, you know, the, the blunderings of Johnson.
Speaker 1 00:41:17 And you could go back to, you know, you had at least since Eisenhower and there's come criticisms that you can make advising power, but at least since Eisenhower, since 1960 to 1979, there was like 20 years of, of directionless foreign policy. And then, but, you know, you could still get a Ronald Reagan. Um, now even Reagan though, I mean, you know, we sort of looked back, you know, I think, especially if you're, there was a period there where there was sort of the, uh, I called him the Saint Ronald Reagan, there was this sort of gauzy hate geography that was done of Ronald Reagan as being the great leader, especially if you were on the right. And, um, you know, re Reagan is remembered as being better than he was, but Reagan was an example of how, you know, we did like maybe a third of what we really should have done to oppose the Soviets and they collapsed.
Speaker 1 00:42:09 And that's the thing we, I think we have to, we can't lose sight of we're in a very pessimistic moment right now, where everybody is sort of looking, you know, on the right and the left. We both view America as being in decline and in a funk and being weak and being divided, et cetera. And I, that's what really sort of reminds me of the 1970s. I think we're going through a mini rehearsal of the 1970s deal complete with crime and inflation and, and, um, you know, all we need is disco now and it'll all be complete. Um, and, uh, uh, we have that same sort of inward looking funk of thinking, oh, we're so weak. We can't do anything. And then, you know, in the eighties, what happened is we came when we did, uh, we did actually astonishingly little compared to what we could have done and achieved this enormous breakthrough in terms of making the world a much, much better place in many different, uh, in many different ways, uh, with, with, you know, the rollback of, of, of communism.
Speaker 1 00:43:04 So I, that's what I see today. Cause you know, I was talking to somebody from Ukraine in Ukraine recently, and he's talking about how the idea that Russia is some great power. You know, they want to project themselves as a great power, but they've got an economy that's like the size of Denmark. You know, they've got, uh, it's a tiny hollow little shell of a country reduced. They have a lower population. They used to have, they've got a very weak little economy, the idea that there are a great power and they're going to be a great European empire is this incredibly toxic and destructive fantasy that the Russians are entertaining right now. Uh, so you know, the idea that we should be, we, that, that there'd be a contest between Russia and the United States is ridiculous. And if we just put forth one 10th of our strength that we we'd put the Russians in their place, but, and that's why I'm sort of arguing against you on the deepest level, arguing against, we have to get out of this funk of thinking that there's nothing we can do when that we shouldn't, you know, that we should, that we can't be a leader in the world.
Speaker 4 00:44:05 I got two points to make about that first. I don't think the eighties are comparable today because of the divisiveness and the decrease in rationality over the last, however many decades. Uh, I was there. So I kinda know those, those are a real change, but the second point I wanna make is that you're correct. The Soviet union and today's Russia are incredibly weak given
Speaker 1 00:44:31 In Russia and Russia is weaker than the Soviet sever worked. Cause there there's.
Speaker 4 00:44:36 So my point is that what Reagan basically did when you strip away everything, all the noise and all the nonsense, but Ray you're getting basically did, was he let the Soviet union do what it inevitably had to do, which was fall apart. Okay. And I think that that more than anything else is the proper strategy for the, for today. It's not confront them militarily. It's let them take what they want and let them choke on it because that's what they'll do.
Speaker 1 00:45:05 Well, I don't think we let them take what they want because you are. Uh, one of the things that, uh, what I think he did is he, if you want to talk about where he get it did in the eighties, there were a couple of key things. One is he actually did a massive military buildup. It was begun by the Republican Congress or by actually by a bipartisan Congress, the slightly before him. But he did a massive military buildup and specifically a military buildup in high technology. Well, not just that, but we had, uh, I remember reading, uh, there's a great book you should read sometime called big pilot. And it was a book written by a guy Blanco, I think is his name, who was, he was a big pilot who defected to the west and took his, took his MIG with him, took his shiny new, big 25 or whatever.
Speaker 1 00:45:49 The latest model of big, he took it with him, landed in Japan. We got, you know, we eventually were suppose we were forced to retreat. We had to return it to the Russians, but we returned it in crates after I get it and analyzing it. Um, uh, but you know, but he wrote about how, what it was like for a Russian fighter pilot. When I think it was the, uh, uh, well, I think it was the F 14 came out and there were, you know, that, and the Russian analysts were describing to the big pilots, the capabilities of the F 14. And they're looking at each other, you know, aghast, the fact they're gonna have to fight this plate and they ask them, well, what, how do we defend against us? And he says, there was no known defense practical or theoretical, and that's the answer they get.
Speaker 1 00:46:31 So we were at this point, even in the late seventies where our technology was leapfrogging the Russians so much that they couldn't possibly keep up with it. And that was part of what, and I also remember, uh, in 1991 during the Gulf war, the Gulf war was basically a demo. You know, it was one of these proxy wars where you have our military and our, our allies, militaries who are trained and equipped by us go up against a military. That's trained and equipped by the Russians and we see how they do. And I remember there being a story about the report carried back to Moscow from the Russian military observers in Iraq, who were basically saying we were utterly helpless, there was nothing we could do that the American military just rolled over, you know, all the tanks, all the airplanes we had, they just rolled over us.
Speaker 1 00:47:21 And that had a huge impact back to Moscow and was, I think largely, you know, had it had a measurable effect on later collapse of the Soviet union. Uh, you know, it happened within a year of that is that they realize, you know, there's, we, we are in, we have no, we have no defense against the Americans in any kind of conventional conflict. And so it helps, you know, helps that process of demoralizing the Russians. So I think that, you know, that there are a lot of very substantial things we do in terms of military buildup in terms of support for dissonance in Poland, uh, in terms of the rhetoric, uh, you know, so I want to, you know, we focus a lot on the military stuff because, you know, that's, that's, it's, it's foreign policy. It's about war, but it's not just about war.
Speaker 1 00:48:05 It's about, it's about the, it's about the military. It's about the, you said military, not actually fighting, but in deterring the enemy, but it's also about trade and it's about, um, ideology and it's about culture and it's about all the different, you know, there's a whole vast suite of different, uh, techniques and tools that you have at your disposal, uh, to, uh, and it's about diplomacy with, you know, getting your allies all on board and, and you find a United front, there's a huge range of tech tools you have at your disposal. Most of which do not involve war or the military that you can use to put pressure on and to, to prevent the enemy from making advances. And that's what we need to, and when you get back on to doing a lot of that, um, and right now, but to do that, you have to have a direction, you have to know what you want to do and, and why you want to do it. And you can't have be in this sort of directionless funk that we are currently in.
Speaker 3 00:49:05 Yeah. And if I could just jump in bill, I mean, I was there too in the eighties, and while we, while there wasn't a social media, there is today. I remember it being pretty contentious too, in terms of the division. I mean the, every time Reagan said something, that was, that what that we now remember is him being, say assertive or strong that the media would jump all over that too. So, so I think it was, we had that division was there even then I would argue,
Speaker 1 00:49:43 But let me throw in something that I have an acquaintance, um, somebody just a few years older than me, who I happen to know through basically through my kid's school. Uh, he, he's a fairly prominent, uh, uh, person in, in foreign policy, uh, sort of academic foreign policy stuff and talked about. I had a conversation where we talked about the reason he went into that field was that in the early eighties, he thought Reagan was going to cause a nuclear war and destroy the entire world. And that's why he wanted to go into foreign policy to prevent Ronald Reagan from, from causing, you know, from this belligerent madman, Ronald Reagan from destroying the world. And I, I didn't have the heart to ask him. So when did you realize that the entire basis for your career was a mistake, but that shows how that shows what people fought at the time and how they regarded this. And yet a lot of that, you know, a lot of the polarization and the anger, it, it just tastes different channels. Then it took different channels then than it does now, but there's really, I think people exaggerate the extent to which today is somehow worse than it was, uh, 30 years, 40 years ago.
Speaker 5 00:50:51 Great. Uh, Roger, if you're back and want to give you a chance to ask a question. Yeah. I don't know. You have a question, um, so much, I just really appreciate hearing Rob's take on this. Um, when I look at what's happening on the border of Ukraine and Russia, I just, I look at the map that we could see from like before 1990, uh, or back from 1990 and looking at it today from, uh, what, what we see as NATO countries now versus, um, what, what say was the Warsaw pack, uh, back in those days and, you know, with the balkanization we see countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, um, joining with Western powers. And I think there's two lessons to be learned here is that once we let somebody into NATO, the Russians play a little differently with them. Uh, and then the other, the other thing is that, uh, when we allow the Russians to, uh, encroach on the borders and create border disputes, then we, then they're not allowed to be, uh, you know, uh, even considered to, to join NATO.
Speaker 5 00:52:08 And so we, we have, uh, we have a lot to think about here. I do think though that it's reasonable to consider, uh, the, the Russian position of wanting to have barriers between the west. Um, but I think with the, with the rest of the world should be looking at specifically, uh, you know, other NATO countries specifically in Western Europe is why, why did, why did the rest of these countries want to join NATO in the first place? What is it that's so bad about the Russians, uh, and, and dealing with them. And, and, uh, and then Russia needs to understand that, you know, w w we are not, the west is not a threat to them, should they not want to expand their borders? And so the real question is, is, is, um, you know, does, does Putin, could Putin find ways to, uh, look like a strong man, because that's really the way that he stays in power without expansion.
Speaker 5 00:53:13 And I don't know if the answer to that is yes, cause there's pointed out earlier, their economy is tiny. Uh, you mentioned, you know, uh, you know, being just not much bigger than Denmark, I think it's, it's, it's somewhere between Denmark and Italy in terms of, uh, size of economies. And that's the thing that we have to, w we have to consider is that you have a country that was once great in terms of their, uh, the way that they thought of themselves. And they've diminished in that power. And in order to, to be able to stay relevant, they have to kind of stir things up from time to time. And I think that ultimately what we have to be careful about is seeding any real ground here. Uh, you, you, we don't have what it takes right now to stop them from doing anything in Ukraine, but rather than negotiating a way, our strength, what I hope we don't do is say, Hey, let's avoid a crisis in Ukraine.
Speaker 5 00:54:11 And in return, what we'll do is we'll take NATO troops out of, uh, NATO countries. If I were, if I were NATO, I would be bolstering our forces everywhere, Poland, uh, Latvia, Lithuania, and, and making sure that, that, uh, that the red line is that, Hey, if you are an ally, uh, with us, and you've joined a strategic Alliance with a, you can count on us and maybe that will, uh, that, that will, that will encourage, uh, you know, the Russians to think twice moving forward. But I have a feeling what what's going to happen is we'll, we'll avoid a major crisis there, but we'll create a bigger one by pulling back. And, and I don't think that kind of weakness is gonna, is going to be the right way to handle this.
Speaker 1 00:54:56 Yeah. So I just recorded two podcasts. Um, one was posted yesterday at symposium, which is one of my publications, a symposium does sub-sect dot com got to put in the plug, but it was published yesterday with, uh, an objectivist who's in, he's the one who's from Belarus, who now in Ukraine. And he was actually very upset with the Americans for sort of pumping up the fear of a war, because he says, he thought that basically that the Ukrainian perspective on this is the Americans are pumping up the possibility of a Russian invasion in order to get the Ukrainians, to give up some concessions to the Russians. And, uh, so that's, you know, and it's not just that concessions about who will allow it to NATO and NATO expansion and all that sort of thing, but it was about, you know, getting the Ukrainians to make concessions as well.
Speaker 1 00:55:42 And if we get out of this and it looks like we are going to get out of this without making any concessions to Putin, I think that's going to be a really good outcome. Uh, saw some indications today. That might be the way the direction is going. That he's, he's realized that he, you know, we've called his bluff and he's now, uh, deescalating. Uh, but the other thing, the other podcast is with shaky Matiri who's, uh, he came from Iran during the green revolution there, and he's now, you know, uh, writing writer or a writer about foreign policy here in America. And, and he talks about how, um, you know, in addition to all the other reasons that want to cause dictatorships to be aggressive, like for example, one, one of the most active nations in leadership against the Russians has been Britain. And the reason is because the Russians just pulled off this whole series of assassinations of people they see as enemies of Russia, assassinations in the UK, you know, saturation is carried out with nerve gas and polonium on British soil.
Speaker 1 00:56:38 And so the British are really kind of, you know, they're ticked off about this. They're much more focused on the Russian threat than we are because of that. And that shows how, you know, their dictatorship in Russia tends to spill out. They want to exercise control over everybody outside of Russia, too. Um, but in addition to that, he was shaped pointed out from his Iranian perspective. He says there are three countries on the earth that, uh, are extra belligerent because they think of themselves as part of their national self image to think of themselves as being empires. He says that China, uh, Russia and Iran, and that's, you know, you can think about Irani, Iranian behavior is it's like the, they have all the elements of religious fanaticism and dictatorship that caused them to want to export trouble. But on top of that, they have this national sense going back thousands of years, that they should be the center of a great empire.
Speaker 1 00:57:31 And so that's what feeds a lot of this. And it's the reason why, you know, when you have these sort of evil empires that are growing up, that you, it makes them extra dangerous, I think is what makes them extra dangerous is the, their, their sense is their own consciousness of the gap between these sort of insanely ambitious dreams of empire and their actual capability. And they try to fill in that gap by militarizing their society or, or by finding other ways that they can cause chaos. So chaos and discord and, you know, fun in, in case of Iran, funding, terrorists are getting nuclear weapons. They've looked for ways to fill in the gaps between their actual capability and their, these insane grandiose dreams of empire that they have. And that's what creates this extra danger. And I think it's, we have, I think that, that this whole, would you think that Ukraine would be positive if it's a wake up call to us and also a wake up call to write NATO allies that, Hey, you know, Sweden, you're five tanks, aren't enough. You need to, you need to have more, uh, I'll wake up to our allies to take this seriously and, and to, to, you know, come up with a plan. And like I said, just simply to focus on it and have objectives and a plan for how we're going to reach those objectives, as opposed to the drift that we're in the, the Etch-a-Sketch stand, uh, sense of drift that we're in right now.
Speaker 0 00:58:51 That's great. Well, uh, thank you for sharing this with us, Rob, we'll see if, uh, this is, uh, uh, a story to, to come up again. Um, and I just wanted to mention briefly tomorrow at 5:00 PM Eastern, uh, Atlas society, founder, David Kelly, and a senior scholar, Richard Salzman, we'll have a discussion on current events. Uh, that'll be across all the channels. And then Thursday at 4:00 PM Eastern, I'll be back here on clubhouse hosting Richard Salzman with a pretty controversial topic is objectivism or religion. Those, uh, could have been construed as fighting words in the early days of the movement. So I look forward to that, but, uh, again, Rob, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts today. Um, on behalf of the Atlas society, thanks to everyone for participating, and we hope to see you next time. Thanks Scott. And thanks everyone else.
