Nuclear Iran, NATO’s Future, and America First Isolationism
Episode Notes
Transcript
Eliot grills Eric on three recent articles identifying some big problems in U.S. foreign policy. What will happen once Iran is nuclear armed? Will the Ayatollahs undergo “nuclear learning” as some political scientists suggest or will they become more emboldened (not to seek a suicidal nuclear armageddon but to unleash their proxies — Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, the Houthis, etc)? Should the U.S. be ready to launch a pre-emptive or prevent strike? Should it accelerate covert efforts at regime change? What about NATO decision-making? Now that the alliance is made up of 32 rather than 12 members should the decision-making move away from the consensus rules that have governed it since 1949? What should be done to avoid Hungary, Turkey or Slovakia from blocking consensus and acting as a Trojan horse inside the alliance? How tough should the U.S. be willing to be with putative allies, particularly in a wartime scenario? Finally, has the Trumpist turn to “America First” isolationism in the GOP rendered it unfit as a political instrument for conservatives who remain committed to internationalism and the US role in upholding the global order? Is it time for a new conservative internationalist political party?
https://thedispatch.com/article/when-iran-goes-nuclear/
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/iran-protesters-want-regime-change
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/natos-decision-process-has-an-achilles-heel/
https://sapirjournal.org/friends-and-foes/2024/03/republican-isolationists/
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
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Welcome to Shield of the Republic. Secret Podcast sponsored by the Bulwark and the
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Miller Center of Public Affairs, and dedicated to the proposition articulated by Walter Littman during World War two that a strong and balanced foreign policy as the shield of our Democratic Republic. Eric Edelman, counselor at the Center for Strategic and budgetary assessments, a non resident fellow at the Miller Center and a contributor to the Bulwark. And I’m joined by my colleague, Elliot Cohen, the Robert e Ozgood Professor of Strategy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in the Arleigh Burke chair strategy at the center for strategic and international studies. Elliott, great to be with you as always.
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Well, same here, Eric, and I am particularly looking forward to this episode of shield of the Republic because I get to play the role of one of my favorite Dustoievsky and characters, the grand inquisitor. And, so that I can explain to our listeners what this entails as Eric ruefully shakes his head. Eric’s been extraordinarily prolific last few weeks. He’s written articles about isolationism in the Republican Party, about Iranian nuclear learning and about what do you do with recalcitrant NATO members and the nominal belief that there has to be unanimity. And what what I thought we might do for this session is I’d, give Eric the floor Bulwark through with him, how do you deal with these problems?
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And, you know, I will I will pay my friend and colleague a compliment, you know, he has a great ability to to conceptualize and certainly put things in, deep historical context. But, as, as you were saying in the, green room, you know, it’s one thing to admire the problem. It’s another thing to actually figure out what to do about it. So we’ll see how good you are at figuring out how to do things about real world problems. I think in each case, Eric, if it’s okay with you, what I’d like to ask you to do is summarize your argument.
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So maybe let’s start, actually, let’s start with the Iranian question. Maybe leave the, the future of the GOP for for last. This is an article that you wrote with Ray Takay, and, rule correct. Could you just, spell out what, what is it, what is the argument of the, of the article?
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Well, Elliot, I know you’ve been, you know, soft soaping me here because now you’re, you know, really gonna put the thumbscrews to me to come up with answers to all these problems. It was just set
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up, Eric.
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I know. Believe me. I know. So this is a subject that, Ray Takay, who’s been a guest on on shield of the republic, and I have talked about some for some time with Ruel Gerek, our our co author. And, it it was prompted by a couple of things one of which is that, while, of course, people’s attention has been riveted on the war in Gaza and the role that Iranian proxies are playing throughout the region, not only Hamas, but Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, the militias in Iraq, but at the same time, it it is clear that the Iranians are, you know, moving forward, towards a nuclear capability.
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Now they they have stepped back a little bit recently down blending some of their, in uranium that had been enriched up to sixty percent, which is very close to know, weapons grade doesn’t take much to go beyond that. And so we we Wanted to refocus people’s attention on the fact that Iran is continuing to make progress towards a nuclear weapon, and we wanted to talk about what happens afterwards in part because there is kind of a very self soothing story that people can tell themselves that is rooted in social science. It’s rooted in the notion, that nuclear weapon states you know, no matter what they may have behaved like and acted like before they got nuclear weapons, tend to be, domesticated to some degree by the reality of actually having nuclear weapons. This this goes under the rubric I think it was, Joe Nye, of, the Kennedy School at Harvard who first, articulated this notion and it was in the context of the US Soviet relationship that that the US and the Soviet Union, through a period of crisis, learn certain rules of the road about how to, think about nuclear weapons and how to bound the competition over nuclear weapons.
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And so there is a story that one can tell oneself that, well, you know, Iran, which is sponsored all these proxies as, you know, engaged in hostage taking all sorts of risky behaviors, their propensity for risk will recede once They have nuclear weapons. And the the argument that, we make in the article is that you know, the the m molars are not necessarily suicidal. So it doesn’t mean that once they have nuclear weapons, they’re gonna immediately want to use them. But that it is very likely that they will find that, the nuclear learning that goes on is going to be on the part of Iran’s adversaries that, for instance, Israel, which is already, very, very leery of, getting into it with Iran because that of the fact that its proxy has bolus. It’s right on its border with a arsenal of a hundred and fifty thousand rockets and missiles of increasing precision, conventionally armed.
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But that’s already instilled a a certain amount of caution in Israel. And the same is likely to be true in Washington that, you know, the degrees of freedom that, an American president will have in dealing with crises in the Middle East with Iran will be reduced because of the concern of of potential nuclear escalation. We’ve seen in the Ukraine context, what that looks like in terms of the self deterrence that we’ve seen in the you know, in the in the Ukraine context with the Biden administration, and you and I’ll get to talk, soon, I think I hope with Jim Shudo who’s written about that in a new book, as has David Sanger in the New York Times, but that’s, you know, for another day. But in the Iran context, both the US and, Israel are likely to be, somewhat constrained by a Iranian nuclear capability, and and Russia and China for their part will see Iran as an even more powerful you know, ally and partner in their efforts to subvert and overturn the national order that the US has led since nineteen forty five. So that’s the the gravamen of the article.
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Yeah. I mean, I’ve never quite understood the argument for why, you know, you would, if you gave a mugger a automatic weapon that that would turn them into a more responsible citizen. You know, maybe they wouldn’t immediately try to get into a shootout with the police, but And what are the chances that they would use it to conduct more acts of robbery and mayhem? I think pretty high. So let’s Let’s walk this back.
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I mean, I’ve I clearly, I I agree with that diagnosis. I think, you know, we have set these pretty terrible precedence with the Russians. But the the first for our listeners. Okay. What what is the current scope of the Iranian nuclear program.
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That is at, obviously, at a completely unclassified level. What is it that we can say that they have capabilities that they have, unhindered or hindered only at the level that they’re hindered now. What would you reasonably expect them to have in five or ten years?
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Well, you’ll recall that the yardstick that then secretary of state John Carey used when negotiating the joint comprehensive plan of action in twenty fifteen was that we wanted to have a one year timeline between, the time that Iran made a decision to actually weaponize highly enriched uranium at weapons grade into a weapon so that you’d have twelve months essentially of of lead time. We’re now with the amount even even that though the Iranians have now limited themselves, a little bit. Yeah. Frankly, I think it’s eye wash. It’s just basically to keep the heat off of them and to keep, make it harder for the United States to go to the IAA and get a resolution condemning Iran, and then pret potentially to the security council.
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And I’m not sure what the Russians would do in the security council in any event. But, Rafael Grossy, the head of the IEA, which monitors was meant to be monitoring all this. Has said, first of all, they’re they’re not able to monitor everything because there’s continuing interference by the Iranians, continuing unwillingness of the Iranians to explain certain anomalies that have cropped up that the IEA has found in its and reports and it to the security council in written form. And that they’re basically we’re now talking about, you know, them being, you know, an if they made a decision, a matter of weeks away. From being able to weaponize, and having a few weapons.
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With from having a few weapons, would they be able to deliver them? I mean, can they put the would they do think that they would be able to I mean, it’s one thing to have a nuclear device, which is a thing that goes bang in the desert, like the Trinity test, for example, It’s another thing to do all the stuff you gotta do to put it on a ballistic missile and, you know, it can survive the g forces, and it goes off when you want it to go off. How far off are we from, from them having that capability? Do you think?
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I mean, look, I think they’re pretty far along. I mean, we we had evidence of their efforts to work on on weaponization and design warheads, that went back to the time that you and I were in government. That was an effort led by, a gentleman named, who met an untimely end, when an automated machine gun cut cut him down and killed him. It was his archive essentially that, the Mosad spirited out of, you know, out of Iran, a couple of years ago, back around twenty eighteen, I think. And you look, I think all the evidence suggested suggested then Ron DeSantis now that it won’t be it won’t take much for them to be able to, you know, pretty quickly have deliverable warheads.
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Now my own guess is that they’re not going to quote breakout with only one or two weapons. I think they’re gonna wanna accumulate a lot more, highly enriched uranium and be able to have, not just three or four, but you know, ten, fifteen weapons. So, you know, we’re probably more than three or four weeks away. But but but I think, you know, it’s we we shouldn’t kid ourselves. These timelines are, you know, notional.
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Do do you think we would be able to detect that time to do something, even something very dramatic?
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It’s a good question. I don’t have a lot of confidence that we would have a lot of indicators or warning a lot of, you know, as you’ll recall, there was a lot of debate, about this, at the time of the joint conference plane of action, which is now almost ten years ago, and it’s hard to, you know, believe. But, it was negotiated in twenty fifteen. At that time, a lot of advocates in the Obama administration said, oh, we’ll have plenty of indications in mourning, you know, etcetera. Look, one can argue that the intelligence community in the United States had, you know, twenty five years of you know, indications and warning about India’s weapon.
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I mean, India tested a peaceful nuclear device as you, you know, sort of noted in nineteen seventy four, and only tested a nuclear weapon for the first time in nineteen ninety nine. And, you know, they caught the American intelligence committee completely flat. Foot.
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Okay. So, Eric, let’s assume that the Iranians have a handful of nuclear weapons. Let’s assume that we are not sure, but there’s a good chance that they have nuclear delivery means. If you were sitting In the situation room, following an event, which we’re pretty sure the Iranians had masterminded, an attack on American military personnel or have been directly, supporting and coaching and equipping the Houthis to launch a missile attack that actually hit an American ship. Under those circumstances, would you be willing to authorize the use of force to, you know, say, kill members of an IRGC cell that had been doing that in Yemen?
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In that circumstance, I would be willing to do that, you know, putting aside the nuclear issue. I mean, actually,
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Well, no. No. I mean, I I think, look, you you and I have both been pretty robust on that. The question is what what exactly Do you think an American government would or should be deterred from doing to a country like Iran, which has nuclear weapons? And it’s threatening to use them, possibly say they maybe they say, you Americans throw a punch against us.
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We nuke the Israelis.
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Well, you know, that’s the that’s the conundrum. I mean, you know, once they actually have nuclear weapons, I mean, you know, my my my preference, of course, is to work backwards and to say we ought to be getting the Europeans right now. To snap back. I’m not giving you that option. No.
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I know. I know you’re not. I’m just saying, you know, there are things we should be doing now to stop this eventuality from happening. I look, I I would not have a problem defending, freedom of the seas, you know, in the red sea, and not worrying about what you have to worry about at that point is ever hitting anything in Iran as opposed to hitting the proxies. I mean, look, we we went through the entire cold war having, you know, full on wars with, you know, Soviet proxies.
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And, you know, didn’t ever have a nuclear exchange. So I don’t worry about that so much. But you do worry that if you get into a situation where the what you have to hit or hold at risk is the Iranian leadership itself or, you know, targets in Iran Then with a nuclear armed Iran, that becomes a lot dicier. And, of course, you know, you get another government involved because in the first instance, we won’t be the target. It’ll be the Israelis.
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Would you be, I’m gonna ask you about the Israelis in just a moment, but would you be willing to make the case not for a preemptive nuclear attack on Iranian nuclear facilities? Preemptive. In other words, we think they’re about to do something. So we preempt them by attacking it, but a preventive attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, including, you know, the full range of the, sort of the weapons, the launch systems, the people who design them and operate them, would you be willing to do that?
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You know, depends on how far advanced the program is. Right? You know, so, you know, the odds of success are always dealing with these problems earlier rather than later. You know, once you start talking about an arsenal that’s fifteen, twenty weapons, you know, then a preventive strike, you know, starts looking more sporty. Right?
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Because as, you know, as, the late president, Rafsanjani, Iran once famously said Israel is a one bomb country. So, you know, the problem for, you know, problem looks different from a for us than it does for Israel, which I think Also, is one reason why the Israelis are gonna be pre pretty, you know, pretty much deterred as well. Once, you know, the Iranians get to a point where that’s the size of their you know, their arsenal.
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So if you’re an Israeli decision maker, let’s say you’re no longer in the u in the US government, but you’re freelance who’s, advising the Israeli government under what circumstances would you Be willing to suggest to them a preventive attack on the nuclear Iranian nuclear program.
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Now, I’d be thinking about it now. And and, and I would be thinking about it now in the, sense that, you know, you and I have both you know, talked with, Amos Yodlin, who, was one of the pilots who was former head of, Israel military intelligence, former defense attach here in Washington. One of the pilots who flew in the Oseric mission in nineteen eighty one against the Iraqi nuclear reactor. And I’m sure you’ve heard him say the same thing I have, which is that a, when they were briefed, and asked, you know, what if they were successful they would accomplish. The the answer was, we’ll set the program back by six months.
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Now in the event, it it set the Iraqi nuclear program back by a decade, you know, and you don’t really know what you’ll accomplish, and you don’t know you know, what you’ll achieve. There’s an argument to be made that you’ll just drive their program underground. You’ll redouble their commitment to it, etcetera. Or it may actually disable them for quite a period of time, but I I would say the earlier you act, the, you know, the better are your chances of success and that your chances of setting them back are greater.
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So let let’s just question on this. Let’s assume that, for whatever reason, either we nor the Israelis’s launch a preventive attack in the next year or two. And we’re in a world where the we now think that the Iranians have fifteen or twenty nuclear weapons. What what what does that mean we need to do? I mean, I’ll let me pause it this too.
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Does that that mean that we accommodate them, or does that mean on the contrary that we try to find more aggressive, but more covert or semi covert ways of bringing down the regime.
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I I would say the latter. And because the nature of the regime makes a huge difference. And, you know, look, I I don’t lose any sleep over French nuclear weapons. I don’t lose any sleep over, you know, British nuclear weapons. I don’t lose that much sleep frankly over Indian nuclear weapons.
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I lose a lot of sleep over, you know, Pakistani nuclear weapons, you know, Russian nuclear weapons, North Korean nuclear weapons, and obviously, you know, Iranian nuclear weapons in the hands of this this particular regime. So, yeah, I mean, I would I I would say, again, now is the time to do it. Is to redouble the efforts to bring the regime down.
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You know, just just to wrap up this this part of it, it does seem to me that you’re right and that But if we do end up in a world where you have more states like this with nuclear weapons, the direction that we’ll probably go is, you know, much more intensified forms of political warfare and all the rest. And, you know, I’m thinking back a little bit to our previous session with Peter PomerantzF. Okay. Let’s move to another hard problem. The problem of recalcitrant members of Nato.
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I’m looking at you, Hungary. For the moment, I’m looking at you Slovakia, although that can that can well change. Now the common understanding of the problem, and you will correct me, if I’m wrong, is Great. We have thirty two members of, NATO now, but we need unanimity to do anything. And that means that a member particularly a member that may, in some ways, be in the hip pocket of the Russians can block just about anything.
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So what the hell do we do about that?
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So this was the subject of a piece that, my a frequent co author, Frank Miller, a former, colleague in government, long time defense official, and and I wrote with sir David Manning, the former UK Ambassador to the US, but also former UK ambassador to NATO and former, national security adviser to, to Tony Blair. And, you know, we were We were prompted to do this. I mean, Frank and I began, thinking about this and kicking it around because of what we saw both Turkey and Hungary doing with the accession of Finland and Sweden, essentially holding that up in exchange for, you know, sort of political considerations to be determined. And, kinda, we started looking into it, and we we started to think, like, you know, are the, the decision making procedures of NATO, which originally were conceived at a time when the alliance was formed and had twelve members still applicable when you now have an alliance of thirty two. And, you know, there’s a lot of goodness in having you know, thirty two members of NATO, particularly with the addition of Finland, Sweden, which bring a lot of capability and defense industry to the alliance.
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But it does open you up to the potential, for for problems. And now as it turns out, you know, little do you know when you turn over these rocks, what you’re gonna find? So we started from the proposition that the only thing that NATO that obligates NATO to operate by unanimity, legally is the treaty requirement that new members be approved unanimously. And so we’ve seen that play out. The the other operating rule of consensus in the North Atlantic Council, is really a norm that developed, you know, over time to, to enable the alliance to maximize its its, you know, political element But we’re now talking about potentially very short timelines, you know, to respond to a crisis, say, with one of the Baltic states you know, or Poland in the Milwaukee gap, between, Lithuania and and Poland and Belarus and Coliningrad area.
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Now what’s interesting is after we published this article, after the Atlantic Council published our article, we got different readings from different, former assistant secretary generals of NATO. Some of whom told us, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Once you know, once there’s an attack, all the member states can contribute, you know, under article five. And others who said, no, there’s potentially a real problem here because there’s a whole issue issue of NATO common assets, logistics, headquarters, communications, and whether a member state could, could could block. Now that we in the article consciously did not suggest any specific remedies for this.
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We just admired the problem. But we did that by intent. Because what we wanted to do was to foster a debate in the run up to the NATO Summit in Washington and July because we do think state, and member states need to think about this a little bit. Particularly in light of, you know, the recent visit of Victor Orban, where he came here you know, met with, with former president Trump at Mar a Lago, went to the Heritage Foundation, met with a bunch of conservative activists and donors and political figures, apparently, some members of Congress, but not anybody in the US administration. And we also we specifically said in the article, just to finish, we specifically said in the article we’re not talking about what happens if the United States refuses to play ball, which obviously, if Donald Trump is elected in November, could could be a even bigger problem.
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Right. Well, that that’s a separate problem, but you know, I’ve always thought that one of the things that I I always felt was unrealistic about NATO. The way people talk about NATO is that there was always this kind of tacit assumption that on the day the balloon goes up, all of the members of NATO will simultaneously cheerfully do exactly everything they promised to do in March off to war, arm in arm. But, as Churchill would say, bradiseau, Bradiseau, is, I think he said to the French. But, know, the truth is the history of coalition warfare is a history of allies ratting each other out, of big allies, chorusing smaller, allies or dragging them into a war that they really don’t want.
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If we’re gonna be realistic, give given that the, you know, for now, for the first time in a very long time, the prospect of a NATO, of of a Russian attack on a NATO member is real. Mean, just look at some of the things that the Russians have said about the politics. How, a, How much should the United States let’s assume the United States has an Atlanticist president. How much should the United States respect those norms or say, hey, Article five is self executing. We’re gonna use NATO assets, to defend the Bulwark, and you can argue about that later.
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That’s the first question. But the second question is, how far should we be willing to go to coerce a government, which is, as the Soviets might have said, objectively pro rush So those two questions for you.
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Yeah. So, I mean, during the cold war, there was a lot of obfuscation for instance, about how nuclear release authority would Bulwark. Right? Because the Supreme allied commander was always an American who had pre delegated authority, to use nuclear weapons in the event of, you know, a Soviet attack I don’t think there was gonna be a lot of time for a meeting of the North Atlantic Council. There there was a lot of confusion.
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It it and I think it was intentional about exactly how all this would work because nobody really wanted to get into it in too much, you know, a gory detail for exactly the reasons you, you know, have articulated. And we’re kind of not quite back in that world yet, but we’re kind of there. And I think the real issue is gonna be how do we, I don’t I don’t think we’re gonna face an immediate, you know, nuclear release issue, but I I think what we are gonna face is the potential that we’re gonna have to work around potentially some recalcitrant allies, notably including the hungarians, maybe the Turks, maybe the SlovVox, and we have some experience of that because when France left the integrated military structure, but remained in the alliance. It was very obstreperous, but we managed to figure out ways to, you know, work around France and isolate it and I think we would have to do something like that in these circumstances as well. In essence, it would become a coalition of the willing within NATO and we would figure out some way to how we would beg borrow or steal NATO resources.
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So so the the difference though it seems to me, France is a lot bigger than Hungary. But but even, you know, in the worst time, there was no question about whose side Degal was on. You know, was he with the West or was he with the Russians? You know, he demonstrated
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that
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during the Cuban missile crisis. Whereas with Hungary, I’m not sure they’re on our side. I think they may be on the other guy’s side or at least their leadership is. I’m not gonna speak about the Hungarian people. If that’s the case, how coercive should we be willing to be?
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You know, it’s a good question. And one of the things that you know, I’ve been thinking about is that the EU has faced this, right, because they operate by consensus as well. And on the question, for instance, of beginning beginning accession talks with Ukraine and also coming up with this package of, I think, fifty billion euro of assistance to Ukraine. They’ve had to work around, hungary, and they’ve had to sort of get hungry to sort of leave the room literally so that decisions could be made without hungry sitting there. And I think we’ll have to figure out, you know, ways to do that.
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I would be using coercion against Hungary right now. If I were the Biden administration. In other words, I would be making it quite clear. And they the US Ambassador Ambassador Pressman has sort of done that in a speech that he made, but I would do more than speeches. I would make it clear if you’re gonna play like that.
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Great. You know, you know, let’s see what you get from us and in other areas.
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Yeah. You know, in general, just to wrap this one up, it seems to me we’ve developed a very benign view of alliances as things which are just kind of self operating. They’re just wonderful. And the and the truth is the American Alliance system is an extraordinary thing. It’s an extraordinary achievement.
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It brings us many good things. But in war, I mean, real war, people are shooting at you. And all of a sudden, you know, statesmen of different kinds are facing all kinds of decisions that they never really dreamed of, the coalition leader often has to play a lot rougher. Than, than one might think. I mean, just think about, say, the Brits and the Norwegians in nineteen forty or the Brits and the French for that matter.
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In nineteen forty when the, you know, the Brits turn on the French fleet. And I think there’s there may be a bit of a a lesson for us there. I mean, if you You know, you read the diplomatic history of world war two, which you know very well. There’s a lot of really serious arm twisting that goes on, and it’s they people are by and large not very familiar with this, you know, included us, you know, threatening the French and the Spanish with withholding food, imports that they desperately needed. It included threatening the Portuguese so we could get access to the Azores.
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I mean, we’re we didn’t play nice, and you couldn’t afford in a war, you couldn’t afford to play nice. The the last, thing I wanna raise is, the issue about, GOP isolationism. And I think we can stipulate that. I mean, that’s there’s some internationalists that Tom Cotton is basically an internationalist, although he’s, you know, there’s a fair amount of Trumpian rhetoric, surprise surprise. Most Republicans are falling in line.
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And kissing the ring. Obviously, we’ve got one kind of catastrophe if Trump is elected. Even if Trump is defeated. Do you really believe that the GOP will kind of return. There’ll be some sort of reversion to the mean, some, you know, a GOP, which maybe will be more populist, more nationalist, a little bit more isolationist than it used to be.
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But basically, the kind of party that you and I remember and whose presidents you and I both served, Or do you think that GOP is just gone?
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Well, let me just say, one thing about, sort of GOP isolationism in America first and then I’ll try to answer your question. So part of the reason I wrote the essay, which is for Zapier, which is a a journal of Jewish thought as you know, was to talk about the intrinsic connection between America first and anti Semitism because I think a lot of people underplay that. The America First Movement was totally wrapped up with anti Semitism. Not everybody who was in America first was an anti semite. But pretty much all anti semites were in America first.
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And, a lot of this had to do with father, Charles Coglin, radio priest who was, a a kind of rank anti semite. But even Charles Lindberg, who was the main public face of America first. Used a sort of anti, semantic tropes to explain why Americans supposedly were, plumping for war or aid to the allies, actually, at that point, in order to, stave off Hitler in, in Europe. And allegedly, it was because of concerns about you know, of the American Jewish community for their compatriots suffering in in, Germany and then more broadly in Europe after the war broke out. And you can see that in today’s America first movement.
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Right? I mean, President Trump has had Nick Fuentes who runs in America first pack, and is an acknowledged anti semite. You see it in Tucker Carlson. You see it in in any number of other, elements. And there’s a, there’s a, as with everything Trump, there’s a group that tries to excuse all this and say, well, Trump’s really not an anti semite.
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How could he be? His daughter converted to Judaism to marry her husband and look what he did with the Abraham accords, and the the point I make in the article is, you know, ultimately the America first approach is that your allies are are are, you know, there to be protected as part of a, what is it? S essence say kind of criminal protection racket, and it’s not really about, ideals and democracy and and that The US Israel relationship has always been both about interest and ideals, and a America first approach inevitably is gonna be incredibly corrosive of of that relationship. I hear you can begin to see that already now. Now the question is, if Trump is defeated.
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By the way, my first recommendation in the article is that, to defeat this, you know, you gotta defeat Trump at the ballot box. Of course, too late now in the Republican Party. He’s gonna be the nominee. So, I think he has to be defeated at the polls in November. And then we have to see whether, you know, whether there’s a reversion to the norm or whether the rot is too deep.
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I mean, look, I can imagine a world in which Trump has defeated the polls and immediately announces he’s gonna be a candidate after a lot of you know, violence and uproar, maybe a bloodbath or two. You know, that, he will then announce he’s gonna run again in in you know, twenty twenty eight and that it’ll look completely immobilize the party. Even if he doesn’t, it’s very likely that you’ll get some other Trump as candidates like JD Vance or Josh Ali, running on an explicitly America first, you know, platform Now I I don’t think necessarily that any of them would would immediately have the kind of sway that Trump does, but but that we don’t know. We’d have to see. I mean, obviously, the experience of Ron DeSantis running as, you know, Trump without the baggage didn’t turn out too well.
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But we’ll have to, you know, we’ll have to really see. I I think the odds are that the party has now become so corrupted by this. That it’s impossible, you know, for it to be rehabilitated, I think. But, but it’s a little too early to tell. And as Liz Cheney said when we had her on when you asked her a similar question, I think right now, the the overwhelming thing is to defeat Trump.
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Then after that, we’ll have to see whether the GOP is is, you know, can be rehabilitated or whether we need a new conservative party of some kind, or a realignment of the Democratic party.
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I I have to say when we, had that, great discussion with Liz Cheney. I was somewhat surprised that at the end, when I I put similar question to her. She I think it seemed to me that she was leaving the door open to the idea that we’ll need another party. And I have to say that’s that’s sort of where my heart is. Well, Eric, I did my best to pin you down.
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I don’t know if, if I succeeded entirely. But if you keep on writing, I’m gonna keep on trying. So how’s that?
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Yeah. I well, you know, I was trying to wriggle out of having to provide any real answer cause admiring the problem is so much easier.
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It it did not escape my notice, but I I did my best to take another pin and, you know, get you down there. But thank you. I mean, those you know, the these are incredibly hard, problems. And I do think you know, when you’ve when you really try to force yourself to think about, okay, concretely, what what I do, it gets me very hard. I mean, somebody who we both admire a lot, Remodirone, think in his memoirs, describes how, you know, early on, he was criticizing some French government of something, and the minister of I think it was the minister of Foreign Affairs, calls him in and says, okay, monsieur Arong.
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That’s a brilliant article. What would you have me do? And Aron just kinda looked at him, and he said from then on, he decided he wasn’t gonna criticize the government unless he thought he had a, better idea. Now I’m not sure he adhered to that. I’m not sure I have.
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I’m not sure you have, but it’s it’s not a bad principle to keep in, the back of your mind, I think. Don’t you?
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I agree. And the other thing one has to keep in mind is, you know, you know, to paraphrase one of my former bosses, you know, you go to war with the government and the alliance you have, not the one you want. And, One, when you were asking would I recommend a, you know, preemptive strike on, you know, on the Iranian nuclear program or preventive strike? You know, I pause because, you know, for instance, although I’m going to, you know, vote for Joe Biden, because I, you know, think it’s imperative that we stop Donald Trump. I will do it, you know, without you know, a lot of joy in my heart.
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Because I’ve been very critical as you have of a lot of the, you know, way they’ve handled the war in Ukraine, you know, how they’ve responded to the Houthis, etcetera, you have to put yourself in the mind that These are the people who are gonna be executing the preventive strike. And, you know, will they do it in a way that will actually accomplish the objective, or is there more of a chance that it will be done in a in a kind of half assed fashion that’ll create more problems than it solves.
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Yeah. I have to say that. I mean, that has been one of my principles that there there’s no platonic ideal of a policy. There’s only policy that can be executed by the current group of people who are in government. And that, you know, people, I guess, who are on the outside who are criticizing need to bear that mind that it and and not just criticizing, but also advising.
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You know, it it’s a mistake to recommend a course, a policy course, which, you know, you fundamentally don’t think people for whatever reason, are gonna be able to follow through on. It may not be because they’re talented of them. It may just be they’re too tired. I mean, I You know, I did have an experience like that at the end of the Bush administration where somebody came in with a brilliant plan for how to rearrange the politics of Iraq and and all that. And I, you know, the, the Andy said, so you’re gonna take that to the secretary.
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I said, no. And he said, why? And he he said, do you think it’s a bad idea? I said, no, I don’t think it’s a bad idea. It’s just these people are all completely exhausted, and they wanna be able to just get through their term, hand things off in as good shape as possible to their successors, but there’s there’s not enough energy in the system to be able to carry through a policy, which at a different time might very well have been the right policy.
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And I think that’s that’s often that’s often the case. So Alright. That’s what passes for the milk of humankind is non chill to the Republic.
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Well, thank you Elliot, both for the kind words, but also for putting me through my paces because, of course, it’s always a good exercise to okay, you’ve identified the problem and what what’s your solution?
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Yeah. I’m only afraid you’ll do it to me, but, until next time, thanks. Eric.
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Alright.
