The Looming Balloon Gap

Welcome to Shield of the Republic, a podcast sponsored by the boar, and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and dedicated to the proposition articulated by Walter Littman during World War two. That a strong and balanced foreign policy is the indispensable shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman, counselor at the Center for Strategic andbudgetary Assessment. A Bulwark contributor, and a nonresident fellow at the Miller Center. My co host is Elliot Cohen, The Robert E.

Ozgood professor of Strategy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and the Arleigh Burke Chair in strategy at the center for strategic and international studies. Welcome Elliott.

Well, Eric, it’s good to be with you. So this week, it’s just you and me, mono and mono.

It’s just the two of us. So, lots going on in the world. We should talk about Ukraine, of course, because so much is going on with Ukraine. But we should talk about China as well because we’ve had major incident. We have a looming balloon gap growing between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.

So if you would talk about what in the world Chinese PLA leaders were thinking to launch this thing? Why

don’t we start with

that? We can start with that. And then I’d like to talk about Iran too, if only because so few people are talking about Iran despite the fact that the protests continue and seems to me the administration’s Iran policy is either nonexistent or in some disarray. So let’s start with, you know, ballooning. For fun and profit.

So, you know, here are

a couple of things that struck me about it. By the way, I’d also like us to talk a bit about Turkey since that’s a country you know really well having served as ambassador there. So back to the balloon, there are a couple of things that strike me about it. One, the Pentagon just submitted that we hadn’t detected some of the previous balloon incursions, which is quite troubling, actually. I mean, these These are not, like, little balloons.

They’re really big balloons with big payloads. Secondly, you know, the I think the question one has to ask is, you know, is this just a question of bureaucracy does its thing? You know, that part of the PLA that’s in charge of balloon reconnaissance does balloon reconnaissance no matter what, and maybe even if they already have satellites and spies who can pick up the same information. Or is this, you know, wolf warrior diplomacy? We’re gonna show you because the the Chinese have sent these kinds of balloons over other countries.

We’re not the only ones. And I wonder, you know, is this a psychological game? What do you think? Well,

first, I wanna stipulate as lawyers would say that unlike a lot of people who are opining on this subject, I am not a balloon expert. I’m not a lighter than air system expert. And one of the things that has struck me about the response over the last several days to this on all sides is that a lot of people are, you know, issuing opinions and overt or dicta about this. And there’s still so much I think we don’t know. There have been reports not only that some of these balloon efforts were undetected, but also reports that several Chinese balloons traversed at least parts of the United States during the Trump administration, senior Trump administration officials deny that they were ever told about this.

So I think there’s still a lot that we don’t know. And I do think there are things that we need to find out about this we we need to determine among other things whether the Biden administration acted as it says it did on the basis of both military advice with regard to the potential collateral damage of taking the balloon down earlier than they did, but also whether the intelligence folks actually did recommend that a lot could be gleaned from allowing this thing to go forward. And whether there were in fact measures to sort of mitigate the potential intelligence gains that the PRC might glean from the track of which this balloon took? I mean, it because I spend a lot of my life worrying about nuclear weapons, it does strike me that This balloon appears to have traversed a number of our facilities where either ICBM’s or b two bombers are stationed. And so there may have been some, you know, intelligence purpose related to strategic weapons.

If that’s true, that’s a very serious question that we need to be, you know, poking into. So I say that all is a kind of very long prologamona to saying, I don’t know.

Well, I guess, I I feel duty bound to point out that there could be a balloon gap emerging here. This is I believe not the first time that balloons have had this strategic purpose. You can you’ll know the history better than I do, but I believe early in the cold war, somebody at CIA got the bright idea of having balloons Traverse Soviet airspace taking lots of pictures. Now the only problem was back then, you had no way no way of telling where the balloon had been. So they got lots of excellent pictures of nobody knows what because they they couldn’t control it.

And, of course, there’s a balloon history even further. I I have to say I give credit to the Air Force, the call signs for the pilots who shut down the balloon were Frank O’one and Luke O’one named after second lieutenant Frank Luke who received a medal of honor during World War one for shooting down fourteen German observation balloons in three weeks. Right. So there’s a there’s a history here. But, you know, on the on the more serious note, look, this blew up a visit by the Secretary of State.

Right. To China, the Chinese took this quite strident position I thought of you know, denouncing the fact that we had shot this thing down. Yep. So you, you know, you do wonder how to interpret it. I, you know, I suppose at the end of the day, I mean, I have like you, I’m completely ignorant on this one that won’t prevent me from opining.

You know, I guess my instinct is always to believe that it’s stupidity and folly and, you know, one part of their bureaucracy, not knowing what the other party is doing. And that’s

Malcolm’s razor would certainly suggest that the, you know, the most parsimonious explanation is through incontinence. Debitity. Yeah.

Okay.

But look, I mean, so the Chinese cover story is it’s a weather observation balloon that went off course. Of course, there’s another weather observation balloon that went off course over Latin America. Yeah. If it was a weather observation balloon that went off course, and was traversing the United States, perhaps the Chinese government might have wanted to let the United States know about that. Yeah.

And say, oops, we’re sorry, you know. It shouldn’t have happened, but they didn’t do that, obviously. You know? And at best I can tell, The payload of this balloon was, you know, quite large instrument. You can see the pictures, it looks, you know, as it has been described about three buses worth of apparatus attached to the bottom of this balloon that was sensing, you know, whatever it was passing over.

So, you know, I think it would be incredibly stupid Chinese to have done this as a thumb in our eye if they wanted to, in fact, have high level meetings with the US, which they’ve been signaling they want to try try and get the relationship a little bit less frothy than it’s been. They’ve got a variety of reasons for wanting to do that. So If it was in fact an intentional act, it’s incredibly stupid and they have really, I think, underestimated the impact will have domestically in the United States. If it was an accidental act, then it’s, you know, as you say, you know, the kind of mindless workings of the bureaucracy. I I think we still don’t know what that answer is.

And I before I reach a judgment, I’d like to see more evidence. I

mean, I I think the the more serious news which struck me about China is that it turns out that that there have been Chinese companies selling parts that are militarily useful to Russian defense industry. And I think that if that’s true and if it’s true on a large scale, that’s a big problem. Because one of the things that really is inhibiting Russian defense production is the shortage of chips in particular and various kinds of electronics. To manufacture the hardware that they’ve been losing on a, you know, titanic scale replenishing your screen. Yeah.

And that, you know, that if that’s true, then I think

then things are even darker than we thought. And I I tend to think they were pretty dark And it’s not even just the Chinese. Right? It’s also that the Iranians are apparently gonna export not just these Shaheed one thirty six drones or loitering munitions that they’ve been supplying the Russians with, but they’re gonna build them an entire factory for producing these things indigenously in in Russia, which is, you know, the thing that worried me the most about the opening of the channel from Iran to Russia of lethal military assistance, but he’s, you know, Shaheed one thirty six’s and mounted here drones. Has been not that the Iranians would supply those, but that they would, a, perhaps also supply even more devastating military goods including ballistic missiles, of which they have enormous numbers.

But also that they would make available to the Russians the very highly developed sanctions evasion mechanisms that they’ve developed. I mean, they have, I mean, they’re the most sanctioned country in the world, and they have developed a very, very sophisticated system of trying to evade those sanctions. And if they make that available completely to the Russians, that is gonna do a lot to undercut. Western sanctions and and as, you know, as the Chinese potential export of military components to Russia would would be, you know, very, very bad. And and raise the likelihood that we’ll be looking at a longer rather than a shorter conflict in Ukraine.

You know, I I think that’s transitioning us to a discussion of Ukraine. And I have to say, I continue to be baffled by the Biden administration, which on the one hand, more or less does the right kind of thing but late. And which does not, as they say, you know, lead the targets or saying, well, six months from now, they’re gonna need tanks. So why don’t we work on getting them there now so they can begin training up on them. And that goes out of its way to say, we’re not going to do this even if later on they they do do this.

And which is still holding back on the kind of weaponry that they really need. I mean, eventually, they’re finally getting, I guess, with these ground launched, small diameter bombs, things which will have a hundred and or whatever it is, a hundred and fifty kilometer reach or something like that. What what they really need is a tacims, which is a ballistic missile that can really, you know, do things like take out the bridge that goes to Crimea And and on top of all that, and this is the thing that I I do find maddening. And this is an extremely consequential war as you and I have and guests of ours have discussed. We have yet to have a speech with possible exception of Lloyd Austin at Halifax.

It really spells out to the American people. This is why this matters to us. You know, what’s astounding is not softening public support for Ukraine. It’s that the support has held up as long as it’s it’s held up without the president showing up in the Oval Office and telling the American people, this is why we should all care about it. And I know Biden is not a gifted speaker, but, you know, he can string sentences together when he has to.

And I just don’t understand why he doesn’t and why his people don’t think that he should.

I Look, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I think American public support, you know, I think it’s been relatively robust. It’s been less robust among self identified Republicans and that’s in part for reasons we know it’s, you know, got to do with statements by Trump or or kind of Trumpist, more isolationist oriented Republicans you know, Josh Holly and Marco Rubio and others who’ve made comments about this, JD Vance, etcetera. Either comments calling for an entity aid or insisting that, you know, there can’t be a blank check because in which nobody has advocated. But it’s no thanks to really the president and he really should be doing exactly what you say I mean, I agree with you about what you’ve called the titrating out of military assistance.

I mean, the the ground launch small diameter bomb is a very useful weapon for the Ukrainians because it’ll allow them to attack some of the interstices of Russian logistics that have moved further back you know, in the face of the m seven seventy sevens and the high Mars gimbler’s rounds that we’ve given the Ukrainians earlier. And that’s good. But as you say, ultimately, they’re gonna need attacks. But moreover, I tried to parse the Panagon’s fact sheet and statements about this, and then read the press accounts. I’m still confused.

About when these things are gonna actually show up in the Ukraine. And there may be a reason why these are not coming out of US stocks and then being replenished later. But the administration hasn’t explained why. But to say we’re gonna give them this, but it’s gonna show up in nine months. When everything seems to suggest that the Russians are looking at some major offensives, you know, in the next three weeks, just is inexplicable to me.

I mean, am I missing something? I’m sure like you. I hope against hope this is part of some vast deception

scheme that actually, you know, there are large stockpiles of these things sitting in Ukraine and, you know, the day before the Russians launched their big offensive general solution. It gives the order and they blow up all the key command and control centers and ammunition depots, but I don’t think so, unfortunately. I I also and there’s another dimension of this that’s inexplicable. So Biden says, we’re not gonna give them f sixteens. Well, first, you know, we often end up, you know, saying we won’t do it, then we do it.

But more importantly, even if we thought it was a bad idea, even if we didn’t intend to do it, why make life easier for the Russians by saying we won’t do that. I mean, I I it’s and and I mean, I am genuinely baffled by this, and it it’s it’s almost like there’s kind of a lack of seriousness or not lack of seriousness. It’s a lack of awareness. What happens when you’re in a in a war. Yeah.

But, you know, you you don’t make it easy for the other guy.

Yeah.

You don’t reassure him in any way.

So against my better instinct, let me make sort of the what would be the best case argument for the way the administrations approach this. Which is that by titrating these things out, you and I are unhappy about it and other critics who want to give Ukraine everything they need, including former ambassador, Mike McFall, who was the Obama administration’s ambassador to Russia, who has peace and foreign affairs saying give the Ukrainians everything they need now. Don’t do it incrementally. From the administration’s point of view, if you’re very concerned about the escalation dynamic, you don’t want World War three as the president and and Jake Sullivan as national security adviser have repeated kind of ad nauseam, I would say. Then there’s something to be said for doling this out bit by bit, kind of like the, you know, sort of geopolitical equivalent of immunotherapy for allergies.

If you’re worried about the neurologic Russian reaction, you you sort of do these things sort of bit by bit, you know, you say we’re not gonna do this, but then you do that and you kind of habituate the Russians to the fact that the Ukrainians are gonna get everything they want over time. But you avoid the big kind of explosive reaction from Moscow. And look to some extent, that has worked, I think. I mean, the Russians have become endured. Now, what what I think speaks against that again, I’m trying to make the best face argument.

I’m not endorsing this by any means, you know. But what stands against that, you know, I think is there’s nothing they can do about this anyway.

Right. That that’s exactly the point. What what are they gonna do? Try to blow up Ukrainian power plants. You know, they’re doing that anyway.

There’s also there are two other there are two other counter arguments I would I would make. You know, one one is there is a profound human cost to this. You know, a long war means tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers who are gonna be killed and maimed And, you know, if you plan on helping those people, but you decide to be clever and titrated, some of that blood is on your hands. You know, if you if you are deliberately slow rolling it. Secondly, you reinforced the worst instincts of the Olav Schulz’s of this world.

So, well, if the Americans don’t want to lean in, why exactly should wait? Now, you know, the good news there is that you’ve got the polls, the checks and the Fins and the Estonians and others who are leaning forward. But I think with a lot of the big countries, they can hide behind us. Now, the one thing I I wouldn’t say just about that, it’s it’s been interesting watching the French. You know, the French have actually begun amping up their military aid to Ukraine and Macron.

This may have just have been, you know, him being exercising a a certain amount of gallic needling of us. Say, well, you know, maybe fighter jets should be on the on the menu.

I would add constructive needling.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and good for him. Yeah. The the thing that I’m I’m I’m really interested in here, which I’d like to hear your view.

So Have you seen this word intermariam?

It’s

a bit between the seas. The idea that there’s a distinct region for the Baltics through Eastern Europe, obviously, down to the Black Sea. As a kind of a distinct strategic region, in Europe. And the argument and, of course, it’s it would be the polls who would make it, but that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. That this is going to be the kind of center of initiative and leadership within NATO.

Supported by the United States and Great Britain. And I increasingly tend to think there’s something to that. I mean, the, you know, the polls are really planning on some monumental purchases of weaponry. I think I saw I believe I saw that in addition to the M1 Abrams tanks they’re buying, they’ve they’ve got they’re gonna buy a couple of hundred South Korean k two tanks, which is actually quite a good tank. And then they’re gonna build a factory or factories to manufacture seven hundred more.

And that makes them quite a considerable power and actually much more considerable power, military power than German is. Before I respond to

that, Elliot, I wanna stick with what we were just talking about and advance two more arguments against the idea of immunotherapy or acclimating the Russians to progressively more and more types of armed assistants going to Ukraine. The more this looks like a long war, the more it will excite the kinds of things we saw that just came out in the Rand study, that the way to avoid a long war. Is to force the Ukrainians to negotiate with the Russians and to make a deal on what would be very unfavorable terms. That in my view would be catastrophic for the administration’s announced goal of denying the Russians you know, a strategic victory. In in other words, denying them the fruits of their, you know, unprovoked, premeditated aggression against another independent state with whom they had legally binding arrangements, not, you know, not to do this.

So that’s, you know, point one. Point two is and this is something that I I think came up with our colleague Peter Feever when we had him on the podcast some months back, but if it didn’t, it should have because, of course, it’s based on a lot of work he has done, which is that support for this kind of thing is is very dependent on prospect of victory. The last thing Americans want is another, you know, endless war. I mean, I I hate that locution as you know because I think it’s mindless and stupid, but it is a reality that if if there doesn’t seem to be a prospect for victory. Support for this will wane.

So just on the administration’s own terms, it seems to me to be very foolish to not be plunging ahead, giving, you know, the Ukrainians everything they need particularly to thwart the next series of offensives. And we can talk about the offensives and what’s likely to happen. I I I’m both worried about that, although I think there’s some very serious ops the Russians are still still facing. But on the question of the Intermariam and the, you know, I I don’t I understand what people are saying and maybe it will accentuate that way, but I don’t think it’s that way yet. And I say that because Turkey’s position is very ambivalent.

So as Bulgaria, Bulgaria, well, it’s a NATO member, there’s still very extensive Russian influence in Bulgaria. It’s a halfhearted ambivalent, you know, member at all. Romania better than Bulgaria, but also, you know, a little bit shaky even though it’s a black sea riparian state. You know, then there’s, of course, not to mention, Hungary, which is, you know, an outlier. Having said that, I do think that the addition of Finland and Sweden to NATO will create a kind of shift inside NATO to the east because Finland and Sweden are both very serious.

They’ve got serious military capability to bring to bear in the alliance. They think seriously about these problems. I mean, the Finnish and Swedish inter international institute’s institutes of international relations, I should say, have studied the Soviet military very carefully. They’re very smart about this. They bring serious defense industries to bear in a period of time when the US and Europe both are gonna have to rediscover their Vocation is the arsenal of democracy to withstand both potentially Russian and Chinese aggression.

And along with Poland, as you were describing, and the Baltic states which have per capita donated probably more than anybody to the defense of the cranions. I do think you will see them emerging as more and more leaders inside the alliance and relatively speaking very pro American — Yeah. — voices in inside the alliance.

Well, this is, you know, your old boss, Don Rumsfeld, talking about old Europe and New York. He was he was not entirely wrong about that. But speaking of all that, maybe we can use that to shift to Turkey. So I suppose knowing much infinitely less about Turkey than you do. My default expectation is or interpretation, I should say.

Is that Erdogan is you know, he’s taken the Fins and the Swedes and every other member of NATO into the Bazaar. He is a master bar diner. He’s gonna extract the absolute maximum, particularly from the Swedes. I don’t think he cares about the Fins. And at the last minute, he will exceed to their joining NATO.

What do you think?

Certainly hope so. There are already some signs emerging he has spoken about and it’s been rooted about in Finland as well that there may be a a Turkish parliamentary approval soon of Finland. I think this is driven in part by concerns about the potential f sixteen sale from the United States to Turkey, and then perhaps at some later point, probably after the May fourteenth Turkish election that and after extracting some more, you know, punitive concessions from the Swedes, that the Swedes will be allowed to come in and all of this will take place before the Villeneuve summit. So by the time of the summit, we’ll have one big, happy, you know, NATO family. That’s at least the hope.

There are a lot of things that could go wrong here. I mean, Ergonquin is, you know, quite mercurial. You know, this Quran burning incident, which, oh, by the way, has all the earmarked of a Russian

disinformation operation. Yeah. It’s

a Russian disinformation operation, and I know that at least some senior Turks know that and are not you know, under any illusions about that. But Erdogan has either chosen to play on that or or himself is, you know, somehow blind to that. Things like that can happen, and and this all can go wrong. Moreover, you know, this is be careful what you wish for because you might get it. There’s no guarantee if he loses the election that the opposition is gonna be a whole lot better.

In fact, they might be a lot weaker in sort of being able to, you know, deal with whipped up nationalist sentiment that he’s created. So, you know, there’s no guarantees in life. The the the earthquake in Turkey you know, one can hope that it will do some things to ameliorate the regional situation. So I mean, in nineteen ninety nine, the very large there was a very large earthquake in Istanbul in the Istanbul area, Istanbul in Bursa, but also in Greece. And that led to a bit of a Rapprochmaw between Turkey and Greece and ultimately actually opened the door ironically to the Fins, being able to get Turkey’s EU candidacy back on the agenda of the EU.

I happen to have been US ambassador to Finland at that time. When the Fins held the EU presidency for six months, the rotating presidency. And you know, that’s all been forgotten by the Turks, of course, now in their current phase. But, you know, the Fins were a driving force in in getting their EU candidacy back on. So it may be because of the enormous humanitarian suffering that’s gone.

This is a very serious earthquake, as best I tell and there’s a prospect. It seems like the the fault lines, there’s a lot of stress still in those faults, and there’s been some kind of crack. I’m told that could lead to even, you know, at least another there was already two earthquakes, but it’s not just another aftershock, but perhaps another quake. Destruction has already been immense. Someone could hope that, you know, that will once again lead to maybe some lessening of regional tensions, maybe less threatening by Turkey of, you know, warfare against Greece because I think the the Greeks are reaching out and offering you know, humanitarian assistance to deal with the terrible consequences of the earthquake.

And really, you read the stories and watch these pictures and given the the weather patterns and the cold and the and the temperature and the snow. I mean, I, you know, you really feel for the people who’ve been affected by this. But by the same token, you know, the day before the earthquake, the interior minister of Turkey, Rajiv Swayulu said about our ambassador, my successor, multiple times removed ambassador, Jeff Flake, get your dirty hands off of Turkey. Keep your dirty hands off of Turkey, he said. I mean, it seems like a very ill advised comment, you know, in light of what happened twenty four hours later because obviously, we’re offering as, you know, a lot of assistance as well, humanitarian assistance to deal with this this terrible human tragedy.

So you know, I don’t know how it’s gonna play domestically. I I fear a little bit that it’s gonna redown to Erdogan’s benefit because he’s gonna be kind of in charge. You know, if if he has a reasonably competent response to this, this will help him enormously incumbency will help him enormously in the May fourteenth election. I’m trying to be dispassionate about

it. I I have to say whatever my personal feelings about type her to one are, he does seem to me to be a very coming pragmatist who has played for the point of view of Turkish interests as he understands them. A very successful game with us and with the Russians and the Ukrainians and, you know, everybody else and it’s I mean, there are parts of it which are infuriating. But, you know, it’s and and and I guess the larger thing that I wonder about is Maybe this, you know, is an indication of the world that we’re heading into where you have authoritarian a lot of authoritarian rulers who have multiple motivations to be sure, but in some ways they’re pursuing national interest as they understand it, and they do it in frequently in unsavory ways. They’re gonna be extremely transactional.

And they may well be successful because the nature of the international system in which we’re operating now is that there’s just much more fluid today. There are more states that are at odds with us, at odds with the West. You’ll have marriages of convenience and so forth. And so I think this is our future. You know, I I remember very early on, Eric, when you and I talked about there’s almost there’s twenty literally twenty years ago about, you know, would the church allow the fourth infantry division to come through Turkey.

Well, you know, the idea is that the Turks, of course, are our allies. And, yes, they’ve got a domestic problem to be sure with allowing this and, you know, shouldn’t Colin Powell have gone to pay a visit. But but base the basic assumption is these are our allies. Difficult allies, but now I have to say I don’t particularly think of the Turks’ allies. I mean, I think they’re a power that we deal with and that will sometimes align with us and sometimes not.

I think that’s clearly right. I mean, Erdogan has been very successful you know, if your role model is Rod Blagoyevich. I mean, his his, you know, interpretation of Turkish national interest is extremely coincident with his own personal, political interest, which is what really drives everything. For for Erdogan. And while he’s been successful at some level, Certainly, nobody’s made money betting against him in Turkish politics over the last twenty years.

Right? He’s won every election that he’s been in, although there have been a couple of close calls. Particularly back in June of twenty fifteen, but there’s a cost here, I think. You know, I I think in particular, the Vito of Finland and Sweden, which came after he had assured leaders in both countries that he had no objection. I think has actually exacted a bit of a price inside NATO.

I think there’s real anger and fury at the Turks for the way that they’ve playing they’re playing this. Now people are not vocalizing it so much, I think, because since NATO operates on consensus and the Turk can block all this. I think, you know, they’ve they’ve been able to shield themselves a little bit from some of the anger that I I detected when talking to other you know, diplomats about this. I’m not sure that that will last forever. I mean, I think after the Hungarians, get around this month, I hope to approving this, and it’s only the Turks who are holding out.

I think there’s gonna be more of that. And if he ends up blocking even if he ends up exceeding the Finland but blocking Sweden for a long time and certainly after the Villeneuve summit, I think there’ll be quite a lot of anger. And, you know, there’s no mechanism to do what John Bolton suggested in the not bid, not long ago, kicking Turkey out of NATO. But I think you’ll hear more people talking about that. More people be starting to speculate about that.

I mean, and as you say, they’re they’re a highly situational and transactional ally. You know, they’re they’re they’re content to be an ally and a member of NATO when it suits their purpose. But to pretend that they have no obligations to the United States or any other ally when it doesn’t. And you can see that, for instance, in their you know, really kind of not very thorough application. They they they’ve refused to enforce sanctions.

Themselves. And, you know, they’ve had to be badger con you know, constantly by the Department of Treasury and particularly the Deputy Treasury secretary Walle at the ammo who’s been out there in Turkey and been on the phone constantly with his counterparts trying to get the Turks to to, you know, live up to their obligations, to sanction certain activities. And, I mean, they’ve done some things like they’ve unplugged the, you know, their payment system from the mere payment system that was being used. But there’s also, you know, there’s twenty eight billion dollars worth of quote errors and omissions on their IMF balance sheet, which in almost everybody believes is you know, Russian oligarch and other money floating into Turkey suits Erdogan’s purposes right now because it’s floating to Turkish economy. In the run up to the election, which is suffering from, you know, eighty five percent inflation, which is due to his economic mismanagement of the place.

You know, Eric, I think one of the things that I wonder about is if the Turkish case is not an isolated case, you know, I think about Hungary. If NATO, which was something very different when, you know, thirty or forty years ago from what it is now, much larger and much more diverse views. If you’re seeing a number of people who he sort of thought of as allies or partners, but are really intensely transaction. What does this mean for the style of American foreign policy going forward? And I guess I would posit two things.

One is that it would behoove us to look to create smaller, closer groupings of really like minded countries in a way. I think that’s part of what Akas is about. And Akas plus Japan, so Jocas, I think that is something that we’ll probably be seeing more of in Europe, but it’s not that we’ll try to dismantle Europe, try to dismantle NATO rather. But but, you know, the actual international action is gonna happen in smaller groupings of countries that really can think of one another as allies and as partners. And I think conversely, it means that we actually need to cultivate a somewhat harder transactional edge in dealing with the hungaries and turkeys of this world.

So I you know, I’m quite pleased that Congress is saying, you know, no admission to NATO for Sweden and Finland, no F-16s. But but I think there’s probably a lot more that we can do than that. And particularly towards the Hungarian who in some ways have been quite despicable. You know, I have no problem with really twisting their arms. And I think we’re gonna have to get used to doing that.

And it’s that’s not been the style of American Farm Policy. And it shouldn’t be the general style, you know, these three countries that really are close to us. But vis à vis these other countries, you know, I think that’s the direction we should probably move in. What do you say to

that? Two things. One, I very much agree that, and I thought for some time, that we need more kind of multilateral approaches in East Asia where we have traditionally had these bilateral hub and spoke relationships. And as you say, Acast and bringing the quad and you know, if we could ever get Japan, South Korea, and the US all aligned, we never seem to be able to be able to do that because the internal politics of South Korea and Japan are never in phase with one another. But we we need to, I think, do that in East Asia, and then we we need more, what, I guess, I would call, mini lateralism in side NATO, which is

it’s

not exactly a coalition of the willing, but working with, you know, the poles and the fins and swedes once they’re in and the bulks at others to advance sort of common interest. I think that is very much the wave of the future. And we definitely need to be more transactional with the hung gerians and the Turks and other problematic allies. And you’re right, that’s very much goes against the grain of the the career American foreign service. It’s, you know, it’s really what you and I have discussed in the past with the French call that de formats, you know, the American foreign service, you get promoted, you get a head in in the profession by smoothing the rub rough edges off, you know, relationships, not actually highlighting them.

And so that’s very counter cultural, but I think we have to do it. Look to give you some sense of how hard this is, Jake Sullivan and I back in twenty eighteen wrote a op ed together for political about how the United States needed to get more transactional with Erdogan. And with the Turks. And, you know, Jake’s now national security adviser. And I think the Biden administration’s had a lot of difficulty actually applying.

It’s it’s it’s very hard actually, particularly when you got a country like probably easier with Hungary, but with a country like Turkey where you’ve got so many interests in it, you know, it’s it’s harder to actually apply this. We are, by the way, on Turkey gonna have The redoubtable Army Barkie who has a article out in foreign affairs about the impact of the Turkish election coming on the show very soon, so we should have him on in about about two weeks time. So hold these thoughts because we we need to go we need to go into them with our re. Well,

I I would just add one last thing, though, and that, you know, you made a a point about the career of Farm and Service, but I I think it’s it goes beyond that. And maybe one way of putting it is that I think for a lot of people certainly in the foreign service. But in the foreign you know, that that part of the, you know, we need to think tank intellectual, you know, policy community. People think more about foreign relations than they do about foreign policy. And there’s a there’s a real distinction there.

Yep. You can have very good foreign policy that doesn’t necessarily mean they do have great foreign relations, at least in some areas. And And like I said, I wouldn’t apply this universally. I mean, I don’t think the United States is not going to have a metered Nikki in kind of policy where we just, you know, think of everybody else’s chess pieces to try to move around the board. But we are gonna have to have that approach to to a number of countries and not, you know, not let ourselves get trapped in saying, well, we can’t damage the relationship.

Agree totally. It runs against the American grain, actually, to do this, I think. It it’s a little bit out of our national character. It’s one reason why I think Henry always had a lot of trouble imposing, you know, a realpolitik foreign policy on the United States. It just doesn’t sit well with with Americans who, you know, wanna assume the best about people for the most part and have trouble, I think, kind of particularly when they’re dealing with countries that are nominally allies sort of, you know, exacting these kinds of Well,

and and and to be and to be I mean, I think that, you know, it’s complicated because there are those countries with which maintaining the relationship is critical. You know, I I watched you almost single handedly rebuild the relationship with France. That is a relationship even when the French are difficult and we irritate them and they really irritate us. They’re not like hungry. No, of course.

You know? They’re not they’re not like Turkey.

Yeah. I do wanna before we wrap because we’re running out of time, I do wanna get back to the question of Iran for a moment. And that is because — Yeah. — it bothers me enormously that, you know, even though we’re in, like, day hundred and forty something of the protests in Iran. And and although there have been, you know, upwards of perhaps thirty thousand people detained and maybe as many as a thousand kilo, I think the numbers might be a little below that.

You know, it’s like falling off the face of the earth for Americans. You could barely find any news about about this and it is hugely important, particularly at a time when Iran is as, you know, we were talking about earlier is becoming a main military supplier for Russia and is is, you know, violating, continuing to violate and moving kind of into higher violations of the limits that were set in the JCPOA, the nuclear agreement that was reached in twenty fifteen. And yet, you know, it it seems like the Biden administration saying, on the one hand, the JCPOA is dead, but we kinda don’t really have mean, a real alternative policy, although they seem to be struggling to find one. So we have had Juniper Oak this really huge US is really military exercise, which I think is a step in the right direction. But the administration seems to be blocking at what what Ray Teckay and I advocated in the pages of foreign affairs recently.

What what we were asked to do update of our article from twenty twenty when we advocated that the United States ought to do everything it can to support regime change in Iran. Not, by the way, imposed by US military force, but helping the Iranian people do what they clearly wanna do themselves. Yeah. Part

of the course, part of the incoherence on our side is the administration is divided against itself. You’ve got Robert Male as you know, the the chief guy on Iran policy who was clearly deeply committed to the JCPOA. He had helped negotiate it. It’s also clear the president’s quite skeptical of it. So like what gives, you know, there’s there’s that.

I I think they I I also think that there’s a certain amount of fatalism, and this is a broader issue. And I wonder if this is infected RA leads and Western elites more broadly, which is, you know, people just being resigned to the idea that modern authoritarian regimes have such good mechanisms of control and repression that they really can’t be overthrown by popular upheaval. Now that’s actually a serious argument, and maybe we should try to get their people have written about this, and maybe we should try to bring them on the podcast. But but that’s for me is one of the most concerning things. You know, they that is a brutal regime, of course, that they’ll use violence, of course.

But even violent regimes have been taken down by really large crowds in the street. And you just somehow get a sense that because people like the Chinese kind of share the the tectane of repression. In terms of skill, concepts, hardware, training, software, you know. Software, it’s facial recognition technology, all that stuff. Right.

It’s just really hard to have the kind of upheaval in the streets that has historically been one way that, you know, rotten corrupt

dictatorships are taken down, including in Iran, which has had a history of —

Yes. Of course. Yeah.

Popular rebellion against against rulers corrupt and hated rulers Look, you know, it’s an open question. And I don’t think we know the answer yet, but hopefully we can get some folks on who are smart about this and help enlighten us.

Yeah. I I agree. Well, as usual, we have very little careful to say. But I I I will pick up the challenge that I think you advanced in our interview with Phil

Taubman.

John McLaughlin and I can come on together and we can talk about magic and what it has to do with intelligence and foreign policy and strategy.

I think that would be wonderful. I think that would be magical.

Indeed, it would

Well, with that, I we didn’t really get to the question of Russian potential military operations and new offensives and in Ukraine, but we can hold that for another day because I think I think it’s coming and we can talk about the prospects for success and timing and and where this might happen on a on a subsequent podcast. But as always, you’ve left me smarter than I was at the beginning of this.

Well, same same here, my friend.