Everything is Going to Hell

Welcome to Shield of the Republic, a podcast sponsored by the Bulwark and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and dedicated to the drop position, articulated by Walter Litman during World War two that a strong and balanced foreign policy is the shield of our Democratic Republic. Eric Edelman, counselor at the Center for Strategic and budgetary assessments and a Bulwark contributor and a non resident fellow at the Miller Center. I’m joined by my partner Elliott Cohen, the Roberty Ozgood professor of strategy at Johns Hopkins school of international studies in Washington, D. C. And the Harley Burke Chair strategy at the center for strategic and international studies.

Elliott Chanatova, happy New Year.

Well, happy New Year to you. Usually, you ask how I’m doing. And, you know, The answer today would be, personally, I’m doing just fine. But I really think that the world is going to hell And, maybe we should talk about that in a sort of general way, but with reference to particular places and things. Would you agree?

I do agree. I think we’ve got, you know, increasing kind of range of disorder around the world. And I think it’s worth talking about it first of all because, we have for good and sufficient reasons on this podcast, I think, devoted a lot of attention, of course, to the war in Ukraine, some attention to our great power competition with China? Or could we just, discussed your recent visit to Taipei for instance? But those subjects have tended to suck almost all the oxygen out of the room, for everything else that’s going on in the world.

And so I I think it would be useful to to touch on those things. I think it’s also useful to try and See how much those things are connected back to either those big things we’ve been talking about, because I think in in many cases they are, but also to the underlying political political dysfunction that we face, you know, in the US. I mean, we’re about, as we speak, we’re about ten days away from a a government shutdown it’s possible that some of the more extreme members of the Freedom caucus may put forward a motion to vacate the chair, which might drive Kevin McCarthy out of his speakership, but it’s just, you know, a lot of, dysfunction in in American politics. A poll just out Pew charitable trust poll that shows Americans are, thoroughly disgusted and exhausted by American politics. And I have to say that pretty much captures the way I feel.

So so let’s dig into it. So, we apparently have dodged a bullet at a potential, genocide. Of course, there’s a genocide going on in Xinjiang Province in in China where the Chinese are are kind of waging a kind of continuing campaign against the Uighur population, but we almost had another genocidal, ethnic cleansing going on in Nagorno Karabakh. And it appears at least as we’re speaking, you know, today that there’s a ceasefire that’s been put in place in an agreement that Armenian militias in that province, which is a an exclave of, Azerbaijan in Armenia, malicious are gonna demobilize, but we had a memo circulated by the former to judge in the international criminal court former Colombian Ambassador to the United States Lewis Moreno Ocampo, basically saying there’s a genocide going on potentially in the Gorna Carabakh. It’s about to happen and nobody in the international community is paying any attention.

Should they have been and, you know, what should should they have done?

Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s, you know, there’s a there’s a terrible tendency, I think, to returned to Chamberlain’s, you know, truly horrible formulation. They far off people of, whom we know little, which of course, he famously said about about the checks about the checks. You know, I think in the case of Nagorno Karabakh, this was if I recall, one in which there was, a fair amount of injustice on, on both sides originally. Originally, the Armenian’s know, going back to the original fighting in the wake of the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Armenians had the upper hand, and then gradually the Azeri’s came back and part with Israeli and and Turkish help.

If, you know, if you look at the, I think it’s an Armenian Unclave and

exclave.

And, exclave rather than in us or by John? Yes.

I’m sorry. Did I misstate that if I do, I apologize. Yeah. I had a

good way around. You know, the sad thing is I think way these things usually have been solved in the past is is population transfer. What is striking to me about it is that you you begin to see real great power rivalries emerge in this part of the world where the Armenians used to be able to count on the Russians for support as you say everything is connected to everything else. The Russians basically are not there for them, and the Armenians hate that.

Because their peacekeepers have been withdrawn, to to go serve in Ukraine.

But but you know, the it’s not clear that the Iranians are happy about the Azaris being on the March. Right. And as I said, the Israelis and the Turks are both involved in the side of Azerbaijan. And so I think you know, you’re what you’re gonna begin seeing, and I think you’re already seeing to some extent in the Caucasus and in central Asia is you know, return to a very tough form of great power politics where you have client states that are trying to use the big powers to play off against Caesar. It’s interesting.

We’ve we’ve actually engaged in the region in a minor way, and the Europeans have engaged whether that’ll be a happy outcome or not. I don’t know. It it is one of those cases where a byproduct of the, Russia Ukraine war has been the destabilization of a different area. And I think, you know, not that I wanna say any good thing about Russian so called peacekeepers, but I suspect that that probably kept had kept things more or less frozen, which is probably what the Russians wanted to begin with. Well, now looks like that’s not happening.

So Who knows how how much further this will go? This is also, I suspect, this is a case where there is an opportunity for American statesmanship. To, perhaps get some advantage to insert our influence in an area that otherwise had been pretty much, in the thrall, either the Russians or the Iranians maybe, maybe the Turks, whether we will have the energy to do that, though, or would know how to do that the right way is, is another matter. And instead, we seem to be expending diplomatic energy in other areas, which I I certainly don’t think are going to be particularly, fruitful. That that I think, by the way, is part of the larger critique of where American foreign policy is right now that we’re you know, there there are there are some things we should be focused on and other things we probably be focused on as much as as we are.

I agree with that. So, I mean, your first of all, you’re right to highlight the fact that this flare up of the earlier conflict. I mean, there was a a war in the nineties. We then had a a effort, which ended up pretty much in a fairly sweeping, Armenian victory. And a lot of ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Park of its Azeri population.

There was then this twenty twenty war that took place while we were in the throes of COVID that nobody noticed which, with a lot of support from from Turkey and some from Israeli as Ares were able to, you know, recoup a lot of what they had lost, pretty much everything they had lost to the Armenians.

And drones play a very large role in that, by the way. And that that was really, in some ways, a precursor to what we’ve seen in, Ukraine.

Absolutely. And as you say, there’s a, you know, Armenian or Iranian connection here too because of their concerns about Azeri separatism and and north east of, north I’m sorry, northwest of Iran. So you’re right, I think, to highlight the fact that we could see more of this, not just in the caucuses, but in central Asia, where a Russian influence is now kind of draining away, and you you see little signs of it coming up in central Asia, but I guess I would say stay tuned, you know, more we could see much more in this area. But I you mentioned Iran’s which is I think a a, you know, a good opportunity to segue into a couple of dimensions of of Iran. One is of course the agreement to unfreeze six billion dollars in Iranian assets held by the South Koreans in order to get a number of Americans use, actually dual nationals who’ve been held unjustly by by Iran.

You know, the administration has been at great pains to, say this is not a ransom, and that we’re committed to getting, you know, Americans unjustly detained home, and that’s certainly a a you know, a desirable thing, obviously, for for those individuals and their families in in particular, but in general, but there is no way I think you can you know, look at this as anything other than a a ransom. Of course. You know, and I, I mean, full disclosure, I testified against the precursor deal, that was reached in twenty sixteen, where I believe if I’m not mistaken, we were talking about something like one point two billion dollars, but the aunties clearly being upped. You know, because this was now six billion that was back to the iranians. And of course, money’s fungible.

So you can say, well, they’re only gonna spend it on you mentoring things, but that’s six billion dollars. They would have had to spend on you mentoring things. Otherwise, if they’re gonna clearly spend on bad things, So I mean, what’s your take on all of that?

Well, you know, the thing that that from first, I I had exact reaction that, that’s six billion dollars that just went into the pockets of the Iranian government. They’re not gonna use for good purposes, it got a zero goodwill. I think the, you know, the next day, the Iranians were back to bashing us.

And kicking out IEA inspector.

Right. And I think there are two dimensions. First, just on the American dimension, we seems to me there are a number of areas. And, Taiwan, as we discussed last week is one, but this is another. We’re we just lie to ourselves.

And may you know, I I’ve never been able to figure out your your government experience is faster than mine. Do people when they say those things actually believe them? Because it, you know, on the surface of it, it’s preposterous. I mean, you you really there has to be a kind of willing disbelief to convince yourself of that. And so I, you know, yes, I think it was a big mistake.

But I think the other thing is the the evolution of the Iranian problem is just it’s one more in a whole set of promise that the United States is going to have to grapple with because On on the one hand, it’s clear the Iranians are they are benefiting from the fact that the Russians need them for drones and, probably other military technologies. The that Ukraine war, again, the knock on effects is kind of reinforced, a de facto alliance between the Russians and the Ukrainians, which will have consequences. The the Iranians continued to be, you know, very proficient at this sort of hybrid warfare stuff. On the other hand, they’ve got a weak economy, and they’re gonna have a succession crisis that nobody seems to have anticipated. I mean, they

And the public largely despises the Right. Theocracy.

So, you know, who who knows? Are we are we, have we been carefully anticipating What might happen when the supreme leader goes? I I tend to doubt it. I think we’ll kind of react in the moment. But and who knows whether, you know, will there be an opening to Iran depending on what kind of leadership you get?

Are you gonna get leadership that is in some ways even worse. It’s this it may be an opportunity or Alast, it may be even worse. I mean, you may get an Iranian government that says, oh, hey, now is the time to go for broke on, on on nuclear weapons. So, you know, it’s another it’s another tremendous source of instability I guess the last thing I would say is, you know, it struck me it struck me now for some time that we after the miserable experience of Iraq, For reasons I fully understand, the the dominant impulse in the United States government was to get the hell out of the Middle East. And I think we’re just learning, you know, you can’t.

I mean, you’re you just can’t disregard what’s happening in that part of the world because Again, everything’s connected to everything else.

Yeah. Well, I mean, of course, you know, the Iranians and Russians are now, kind of, exchanging, military technology and equipment. It’s, you know, Iranian drones, which the Russians are now trying to replicate build inside Russia that they’re using against Ukraine. You know, the president yesterday at the United Nations General Assembly in his speech, once again said, as all of his predecessors have back to, Bill Clinton, you know, the Iranians can not be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. But You know, the administration, came into office saying we wanna get back to the joint comprehensive plan of act which was negotiated in the Obama administration, which was, American participation was, you know, ended by Donald Trump, They wanted to get back in, but they wanted it to be a longer and stronger agreement because a number of the timelines in the original agreement were rapidly approaching, you know, including, an end to UN embargo on military transfers to you, to Iran.

So the administration engaged in a lot of diplomacy, it basically said there is no military option. That was something that Rob Malley, the negotiator said in testimony to the Congress multiplines. We don’t believe there’s a military option.

Seriously disappeared, by the way.

He’s under investigation for, hand is handling of classified information. We don’t know the details of that, but the FBI is involved. So it sounds like it’s fairly serious. There’s a it’s details about the investigation are mysteriously showing up on the website of the English which Tehran Times, which is a, media outlet associated with the regime. I it’s all very peculiar.

But the point I was gonna make is the administration said there’s only diplomacy. There is no military solution But they’ve now said we’re not really negotiating about the JCPOA anymore and the Brett McGurk that was attributed to him and the New York Times the other day. Which makes you wonder what what they’re actually doing. It’s sort of from a policy point of view suggests that they’ve reached the null set. There’s no you know, there’s there’s no military solution, but there’s not really a diplomatic solution.

It does sound like what they’re looking for is a kind of informal unwritten agreement that would somehow limit the Iranians, keep them below sixty percent enrichment and that that pre you know, that prevents the for the Biden administration having to present anything to Congress because the law says they must present any agreement to the Congress. But it also, I think means that you’re a de facto accepting Iran as a threshold nuclear power. Am I wrong about that?

No. I think I think that’s right. I mean, it’s all that stuff is the triumph of hope over experience. I think that you can, it it’s something we’ve discussed before that that belief that hits a lot of people in government that there’s some complicated subtle thing that skirts the law and is as lots of moving parts which can make a problem go away. And that I I don’t think either of us think that’s the nature of international affairs.

I have one question though just to go back to the Russia Iran angle. Because it’s gone tie into the Russian North Korean angle, which we’ll talk about in a in a little bit. How much do you think? I mean, it it’s clear the Russians are desperate for certain kinds of arms. And they also probably want some of their own allies given that they’re becoming a dependency of China in certain respects.

What do you think they’d be willing to give the Iranians? And in particular, do you think they would might be giving willing to give the Iranians’s, nuclear technology or nuclear delivery technology.

It’s a tricky question, particularly when you say delivery technology. So do I think the Russians would actually help the Iranians with sort of weaponization, creation of a warhead, etcetera? No, I don’t. And in part, I think they don’t need to because, you know, as you know, from our government service, there’s plenty of evidence that that IAA has put forward that the Iranians had made great strides, you know, on that in that regard already in form of their so called past military dimensions of their program. But will they help them with their ballistic missile and, space capabilities, and those are very hard to distinguish from one another.

Right? Because if you solve the problem of staging a missile to put it into Earth orbit, for, you know, space purposes. It also happens to solve the staging problem if you wanna have a multistage ballistic missile including one capable of reaching not only large parts of Europe, but potentially all the way to, you know, continental United States. So, yes, I think they would help them with delivery from that point of view, but not, you know, weaponization of a warhead or mic, you know, miniaturization, those kinds of things. At least that’s my my, you know, suspicion, but who knows?

But I I I hope so. The I think the fear The fear is that the knock on, again, these knock on effects from Ukraine, could be pretty pernicious. I now I also think that, the wrong problem may explain some of the peculiar sense of urgency that the administration has in going for a Israeli Saudi deal. And I’ll I’ll let me just open the conversation on that one. I this again seems to be one of those really complicated endeavors, which is just not gonna succeed because you know, first, you’re dealing with two very difficult leaders, both the Saudi Crown Prince and Bibi netanyahu, both of whom have a variety of of issues, in case of BB also very insecure domestic base, but MBS has to worry about his domestic base too.

Neither of whom, I think, are completely straightforward and, trustworthy. And what I for the life of me, I don’t understand why we’re in investing so much effort in this because, look, they they’ve had under the table connect connections and conversations for a long time now. They can negotiate without us. You know, there are other countries like the UAE or Jordan that, you know, can offer their their good offices. And I I I have always believed in the form of policy physics, which is that at any given time, there’s only a fixed amount of policy energy in the system.

And if you’re working on one thing, that means you’re spending less time on other things, in this case, Ukraine and and China. Because at the end of the day, you know, the the actual decision making and the diplomatic heavy lifting is done by a pretty small group of people and includes a secretary of state, maybe an undersecretary here and there. A national security adviser and the president themselves. Well, those people need to get, you know, they need an eight hours of sleep at night. They need to work out.

They need an occasional day off. They just don’t have the their time and energy is not infinitely elastic. And so I don’t understand why they’re sluicing all that effort into this one. And my only I have only two explanations for it, then I’ll stop and ask what you think. One is that they somehow think this is a way of dealing with the Iran thing.

But the other is that they’re, they’re simply succumbing to that age old sirens, which is the idea that I’m gonna bring you know, Arab Israeli peace. When when, in fact, the real initiatives beginning with Sedat’s visit to Israel comes from within the region, and it comes from the actors themselves. I mean, I think that was true by the way of the Abraham accords.

Absolutely.

That it was the, you know, the UAE and the Israelis. And, yes, we helped a bit at the end, but that’s all we did. So I don’t know. What do you think?

So first, let me stipulate a few things. Right? Well, number one, I think it would be an extremely good thing for there to be a follow on to the a brain records in the form of, Saudi Israeli normalization I think that would be good for everybody. I’ve been a signatory to a report that recommended it, at the beginning of the administration. And I also need to stipulate that I was critical at the outset of the administration about they’re coming in full board to, you know, re engage with the Iranians while holding our golf allies sort of at, you know, at at at one remove, you know.

And that was in the form, first of all, of Biden’s statements that he was gonna turn MBS into a pariah the the delisting of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization, which was meant to be an opening towards peace in Yemen, instead it became an opening to the Houthis, drone droning and and rocketing, Abu Dhabi and and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

About which we did their little

at which we did nothing, you know, and then, of course, the administration discovered that they actually needed the Saudis to keep the price of oil down, after the war in Ukraine started and they wondered why, you know, the Saudis weren’t all that, you know, receptive. So I have all those views. Now having said that, I share your skepticism about this particular initiative. And I I share it because to me, you know, the degree of difficulty if this were Olympic diving, you know, the degree of difficulty is really incredible here because here are the things that they have to do to make this all work. One.

They will have to get a treaty with a security guarantee. For the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and presumably a parallel treaty for Israel, through the United States Senate. I think you could probably get sixty seven votes for a treaty, with Israel in the senate. Maybe. Not sure.

It’s I I wouldn’t say it’s a sure thing, but I think you could do it. Kingdom and Saudi Arabia, this is a Congress you know, the previous Congress with the composition wasn’t that different. You know, a couple of swings Ron DeSantis seats and house seats, voted against giving aid to Saudi Arabia for the war in Yemen, but now they’re gonna vote for a treaty that in perpetuity commits the United States to defend the kingdom of Saudi Arabia presumably with our nuclear umbrella and perhaps with boots on the ground. I I’m not sure I see that in the cards. I mean, and in my view, nothing could be worse than for the administration to go down this path and then have it fail in the United States Senate.

Think back to Woodrow Wilson and the failure of the treaty Versailles. A treaty failure like this would be catastrophic in my view for our other alliance. Other alliance relationships. As would, by the way, some of which you hear privately from the administration that, well, article five is not really a commitment. You know, it’s a commitment to it’s a commitment to consult.

It’s not a because as federal doesn’t immediately, you know, commit us to war. Having that kind of debate, by the way, we’ll destabilize all our existing alliances in NATO with our, East Asian allies etcetera. So that’s point one. Point two, the Saudis are also asking for essentially access to the fuel full nuclear fuel cycle as part of nuclear energy program in a a a so called section one two three agreement with the United States to provide that assistance, and they’re doing that, of course, because we conceded that to the Iranians in the JCPOA, other countries like the UAE signed a one two three agreement that, you know, for swore access to the entire fuel cycle. But there’s a kind of, I think, huge potential non proliferation moral hazard issue here.

Which is, you know, we gave a security guarantee to Japan and and Germany, you know, after World War two, but part of that you know, deal was what our colleague at at Cice. Frank Gavin is called a strategy of inhibition. Right? Which was we we gave them a guarantee precisely so they wouldn’t develop nuclear weapons. Here, we may be giving a security guarantee that King of Saudi Arabia only to find out that they are developing a nuclear weapon.

And so there is that. The third kind of moving part of this that I find a little suspect is the notion that somehow this agreement will, be part of our strategic competition with China because the Saudis will be signing up for our side, not the other side in this competition. How you memorialize and enforce that? I have no idea. And I can easily imagine the people in the administration who are talking about this, talking themselves into this only to find themselves being thoroughly snookered by MBS on this problem.

Fourth problem that I see is there is an element here inside the administration. I think that is got sugar plum fairies dancing in their head about what I would call regime change in Israel that somehow they are, you know, going to use this prospect of normalization with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to get bibi netanyahu to make some concessions to the Palestinians, which is one of the asking prices from MBS. That will cause his coalition to fail and create a new government in Israel, either with or without BB. Again, I think BB will run rings around these people. And I and I I just don’t see it happening.

And then finally, you know, One of the reasons, which never gets discussed about why we went to war in Iraq in two thousand three, was that the large scale presence of US forces in the kingdom Saudi Arabia since the end of the Gulf War was driving radicalization and recruitment for al Qaeda And that was one of his main it was Bin Laden’s main complaint in his thought was was the desecration of the land of the two holy mosque by the presence of infidels, including women on the territory of the kingdom. So The administration is gonna have to figure out, you know, what happens the day after the United States Senate if it ever did ratifies an article five with The kingdom of Saudi Arabia, what’s general Carrilla, the commander of centcom, gonna come in and say, I need to have the following things if I need to be prepared to fight tonight. To defend the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Right? And that is gonna drive them off their, you know, effort to reorient and and, I’m not gonna say pacing threat because I know how you feel about that, but but the to reorient our forces to deal with the serious challenge we face in the end of Pacific when they’re gonna have to, you know, deploy more forces, you know, into the theater and maybe into the kingdom, which will then create a lot of this, you know, radicalization dynamic again.

So to me, Solving all these problems, oh, by the way, in a presidential election year? I don’t see it.

Well, that that may be one of the reasons to wanna do it too, that you know, you’re if you’re feeling domestically pressured, the, you know, foreign policy people, I think, usually feel pretty useless during a campaign season.

And And for good reason because they are.

They are. But, you know, so this may seem like a attractive thing. I I find it all baffling. I think, you know, I I mean, I your reasons is laid it that much better than I could. I I will just say that No, partly because we’re in a period right now where a lot of structures seem to be under pressure.

There is attemptation to resort to guarantees. And to try to kind of re you know, restabilize the system by saying, well, we’ll give someone’s own article five and someone’s own article five. Now in some cases, I think we probably need to do that. I think Ukraine really is one. But to do it to a place which

Agree.

I you cannot count on the stability of Saudi Arabia. You cannot count on its discretion, on its level headedness when you need it to be level headed. And I just it seems to me to be cuckoo.

Before we leave it, Elliot, let let me say, if they could solve to my satisfaction, the five issues I laid out, and explain to me how they’re gonna do it. I’m open to it. I I just I don’t hold your breath. I just think it’s a very high bar. To get it.

It it is a very high bar, and I I’ll stand by my point, which is these guys have other things that they should be doing with their time.

Yeah. I agree.

They they really do. So let me, let’s maybe, bring this, closer to our own hemisphere, which You know, it it’s I think it’s fair to say that by and large, foreign policy people, like us, have on the whole tended to ignore our own and that’s partly because we didn’t have to worry about it that much, but also sheer ignorance and partly, you know, Eurocentrism and other other things of that kind. So there there are two things. One, just an immediate story up north, And then I think we should talk about south of the border, which we’ve really not talked about on the podcast. So the Canadians and Indians are getting into a a real Tiff because the Canadians are basically accusing the Indians of having killed a sikh, separatists on Canadian soil.

And I, you know, maybe this is a passing issue, but I think this is actually pretty significant, for a couple of reasons. One is, look, the Indians are being more assertive in a variety of ways. India is, I think quite deliberately trying to position itself on the world stage, but it’s not clear to me that it’s And I think it’s gonna position itself in a pretty assertive way. Some of the ways we won’t like are Natural instinct seems to be to appease them on the ground that we need them on-site for China, but I don’t quite get that since they’re the ones who are have a chunk of their national territory under Chinese occupation and are, you know, threatened with being surrounded by the ch by the Chinese So that that seems to be to be a mistake. But on the other hand, you also have you have had in Europe, and I think you may have had in Canada, You know, really people being willing to give sanctuary to to terrorists, which is sort of what it sounds like this guy might have been.

And in any case, United States is finding itself in this awful position where we have to choose between one of our closest allies, neighbors, NATO member, you know, fellow, more or less functioning democracy, and a rising India. And, it’s there’s a similar dilemma that they face with Saudi Arabia. You know, do you just sort of forget Khashoggi and and all that. And so the larger issue of, values in American foreign policy as opposed to our interests, I think it is being surfaced by all this. So I think for that reason, this story is actually a rather important one.

You know, I I don’t know I mean, I’ve I’ve, you know, read the press accounts. I’ve, you know, seen what Justin Trudeau has said. I I wonder whether I I don’t know, you know, how much a Canadian government did behind the scenes before Trudeau’s book out. It might have been worthwhile maybe engaging the Indians privately. Before you went public on this, I just don’t know enough I guess, I mean, I’m not willing to, you know, say that anything is, you know, inconceivable.

But I would say that we have seen an uptick around the world of efforts by a variety of different governments to kill or render regime opponent’s home in ways that we have not seen, you know, on on this scale in the past. And I do think it’s a, a symptom of the broader kind of glow growing global disorder that we’ve been talking about. But, I mean, you you I mean, I know you’ve seen the stories of these so called, you know, stations you know, security stations that the PRC supposedly has created in, like, New York City and elsewhere to keep track of overseas Chinese people or to deal with, quote, the enemies of China. I mean, there’s a pretty clear case in New Zealand, which I think you’re I I know you’re aware of with Anne Marie Brady, a scholar who pretty clearly had her office tossed by agents of the Ministry of State Security in China. Because she’s written extensively about Chinese hybrid hybrid warfare and so called, you know, you know, magical tools.

I can’t remember the exact term she uses, but, that the Chinese have put a lot of emphasis on. You know, government of Turkey, the Iranians, there are a lot of governments that are doing this, you know, authoritarian governments that are going after their opponents. And of course under Modi, you know, India has taken a more authoritarian turn. Although it remains you know, a functioning democracy of sorts, at least, at least electorally. So I don’t know.

I I just don’t know enough about this particular case. To, you know, render a judgment, but it it does seem to me to be part of a larger trend that’s alarming. And I’m not quite sure how we put that back in the box.

I think it’s true. And I think part of the problem is that we we have never I’m not sure we’ve ever really responded. Particularly aggressively, things other things have happened. You know, they’ve been Russian dissidents of died mysteriously, in the US, even here in Washington, see. And, you know, where’s the bridgehead?

Self administered blunt force trauma.

Yeah. Right. And I I think, you know, the This is part of a larger challenge for American statecraft, which is we’re going to have to be tougher and more transactional with certain states. And not just ignore these things, which is what if our tendency has been to do, but really exact serious costs from them. And I don’t mean sanctions.

I mean, things which are more more painful than that. But it’s it’s worrying. What what’s Just as worrying, probably even more worrying is what’s happening south of the border. You know, we’ve had a, Ecuadoran presidential candidate get shot. The after a time where it looked like the Venezuelan, dictatorship would collapse.

It’s not. Mexico really has a as far as I can build pretty terrible, left wing government. And, you know, what’s worse is you just have a sense of you know, pretty broad breakdowns in law and order. There’s something ser similar happening in, Columbia, again, under a left wing president who may have been a former terrorist. And that’s all that.

You have Lula back in Brazil, and he’s I don’t know if Brazil’s falling apart, but I do know that he’s going out of his way to be oppositional to the United States. Right. You just kinda worry about that continent. And there’s probably not a whole lot we can do to change it. But I suppose it is the case.

We should probably stop neglecting it.

I I agree. And, I mean, I think when you add you know, not just Mexico, but Central America into the mix. You know, you’ve got a combination of factors that are driving to very important domestic kind of, concerns. You know, one is drugs and fentanyl. We just had a horrendous case in New York City.

You know, a lot of this fentanyl is coming in, you know, through the Mexican border. And then, of course, immigration. And, you know, those two issues are are driving a lot of concern in the United States about our politics. And about, you know, what government is doing about it. And and, you know, I fear that the Biden administration is kind of whistling past the graveyard here.

I mean, they’re acting as if there’s no problem at the border, you know, and and look, border entries go up and they go down and sort of when they go go down, the administration says, oh, look, you know, our border policies are working. And then if they, you know, go up, they look the other way. And it’s really driving, you know, political concern in states like Texas and and, the other border states. It’s now becoming an issue because Texas and Florida and others are sending some of these migrants. I mean, I I decry the use of these people as pawns, but the the fact that they’re, you know, now showing up in New York is creating a problem in New York.

I mean, Joe Biden met with a lot of people when he went up to the UN General Assembly session, but one of them was not Eric Adams, the mayor of New York. Because even though he’s a Democrat, they’re not on very good terms in part because of this issue. So I, you know, I’m not sure again, like you. I’m not sure what the answer is, but certainly neglect can’t be the right answer.

No. The immigration front I mean, there are two separate militias. One is the sort of chaotic governance in, central and parts of, Latin America, and that’s one set of issues. Immigration is another one. I think they Actually, on on both sides, some of us have probably been remiss in failing to talk about immigration, honestly, the I mean, you and I are both descendants of immigrants.

I mean, everybody here is the descendant of immigrants, so the Native Americans. And even they probably came across the bering strait. But, you know, the fact is once you get to a some percentage of the population being recent immigrants, and any history would tell you that you get trouble, that you have, you know, previous populations feeling displaced, and and, and so on. And in this case, it’s I think it’s worse than really by a sense of lawlessness. That this, you know, this is really not going through in a legal, legal and orderly way.

And I think it’s turned out to be very difficult for both parties to deal with that. And you, you know, you wanna square you wanna square the American dream because there’s no absolutely no question of the enormously positive role that, immigration plays in terms of, you know, our vitality or dynamism our demography, on the one hand. On the other hand, you know, to think that unrestrained immigration is okay, that’s not that’s not true either. And unfortunately, you know, I I can’t really think of a single politician who’s addressing it head on. But maybe that’s just part of the larger problem with American politics.

Oh, the late John McCain, I think, you know, tried to on a couple of occasions. President Bush forty three tried to on a couple of occasions, both of them ultimately failed. Look, I mean, we need immigration. Right? Mean, the American a lot of American industries are facing enormous labor shortages.

Our own birth rate is dropping. We, you know, we do need to have immigration, but I’ll as as you say, we need you know, a orderly, reasonable process that allows the immigration to take place And I think everybody agrees that that’s not what we have now. And that that I think is a it is a is a huge problem. And the fact that our political system seems totally incapable of dealing with it. I mean, the last time we had a I mean, I could be wrong about this because I’m not a an expert on immigration.

I know our colleague, Linda Chavez, is a at, Bulwark would, you know, have a better idea with this, but the last major piece of legislation, I believe, was the immigration act of eighteen six of nineteen sixty five. Yeah. We’re still operating under essentially a sixty year old, immigration law when the conditions around the world have changed obviously dramatic.

Well, I so let’s try to kind of, not conclude this, but bring it near to the end with, Question about the the the heart of this, I think, is American politics and and how American politics affects our ability to act in the world. No. I I Will Saletan certain extent, you know, despite the enormous dysfunction, we’ve been able to as act reasonably effectively where it mattered most, I think in Europe and in the end of Pacific up to a point. But that said, there are there are plenty of things that are really problematic and troubling. Do you think that that’s this is just a passing phase?

And I’ll be even more appointed. Do do you think that, look, Once Trump and Biden are both out of the picture, you’ll have a new generation of leaders and the country will revert to what more of what you and I would think of as normal.

I don’t know. You know, I I because I could argue it round or flat. You know, I I could argue that, but first of all, it’s clear that the public is about to get a rematch that it fervently does not want.

It’s astounding, isn’t it?

It it’s just, you know, it’s clear every poll shows that, you know, a large majority of Americans, including Democrats, do not want to see a replay of twenty twenty that that they would and and speaking myself as a septuagenarian I think it’s time for the septic generians to get off the stage and let younger people take their, you know, proper roles in in governing our our country. But having said that, I am not at all confident. I mean, I think the country is deeply divided. I’m not at all confident. That either party can create a stable governing majority right now.

You know, Sarah Longwell, our our bulwark colleague and the publisher, the Bulwark has said, and I agree with her. You know, the problem is we have one party that’s becoming an authoritarian threat to democracy and another party that’s just not very good at politics. And and that is a huge huge problem. And for a democracy that’s been a two party system, you know, for, the entirety of of the republic’s existence. Oh, that’s a little bit of an overstatement.

There were not two parties at the outset and there’ve been brief periods where there was only one real party and then there was reconstruction, etcetera. So that’s a bit of an overstatement, but this is fundamentally a two has been a two party system, yeah, in this country. And I I don’t know that either party right now is capable of you know, creating a a what I would call a governing majority. I mean, we’ve had divided government in the Congress for a long time. We’ve had multiple elections where the winner of the popular vote either didn’t, you know, win the electoral college or it was a real close run thing.

I mean, I think the only time that the Republicans have actually had a popular vote majority was in two thousand four.

Yeah. Oh, I agree. I guess it’s it’s, you know, I’d like to end this on a more hopeful note. I guess I I continue to be convinced most Americans are actually reasonably moderate that there are, you know, minorities out there at both ends of the spectrum particularly on the right these days, but not just on the right, who are really old extreme beliefs, but I don’t think that’s where most of the country is. I mean, and I think there’s a reason why most of people are most people are kind of turned off from politics.

It’s Not what any of us like. What I wish I had a better sense of is how we break through this. And you know, maybe it’s only when the current generation goes and you get a new generation of, I don’t know, governors from both parties or something else, but I I I guess I find it difficult to believe that this can go on forever. I really do.

Yeah. I mean, I think what worries me is it seems to me that we have the electoral coalitions of both parties kind of disaggregating. Right? So Democrats are losing working class non college educated voters to the Republicans. And now whether that’s just a trump phenomenon or whether that’s a more broad based I I don’t know.

I just don’t know. We’ll have to see. Meanwhile, extremism on the Republican side, including on things like abortion rights and and other issues. Is, you know, driving college educated voters out of the Republican Party and and, you know, voting for Democrats. We’ve seen that in the twenty, you know, eighteen, twenty, and twenty two cycles.

But but I don’t know that that gives you, you know, I’m not sure sort of what the net net is and, you know, what the net assessment is of who who ends up with a governing coalition who can control the Congress and the executive and actually, you know, govern the country without these perpetual crises over, you know, the debt limit or funding the government or all the other things that, you know, we have this incredibly performative politics that has nothing to do with governing. Know, and we’ve now got this, you know, sort of impeachment inquiry going against Biden, and there’s a very large, not a large but there is a majority according to recent polling that supports it. Even though there doesn’t seem to be any evidence whatsoever that Biden’s done anything wrong, Although his son is obviously a very sleazy guy, but, there you have it. Like, I’m sorry. It’s just hard for me to, you know, be upbeat.

Or optimistic. Well,

all I can, think of is the end of, one of the stories by the great yiddish writer, Shullam, the last Re says, but enough of me talking about my troubles. Let’s talk about happier things. Tell me about the outbreak of Colorado, Odessa.

Alright.

Well, guard listeners. We’ll try to cheer you up next time. Somehow.

We’ll try and figure that out between now and and then, but for the moment that will be all for this episode of shield of the Republic. Thanks for allowing Elliot and me to depress you with this discussion of global chaos.