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The Weakness of Strongmen

October 21, 2022
Notes
Transcript
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!
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:07

    Welcome to Bags to differ. The Bulwark weekly round table discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right. I’m Mona Charron, syndicated columnist and policy edit earthable work, and I’m joined by our regulars, Bill Galston of The Bookings Institution and The Wall Street Journal. Linda Chavez of the Niscannon Center and Damon Linker who writes the Substack newsletter eyes on the right.
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:35

    Our special guest this week is Cory Shockey, Director of Foreign and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. Welcome, one and all, lots to discuss this week, and however much bad luck you may feel that you had, please reflect that you probably did not have as bad a week as the prime minister of Great Britain. But let’s turn to a different part of the world for our first topic because I would like to discuss Putin and Ukraine and marshall law. He has declared marshall law in the provinces that he illegally annexed just a few weeks ago, Cory, since the last time you joined us on Bags to differ. You have actually visited Ukraine and met with Volodymyr Zelensky.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:27

    So we would love to get the benefit of your views. I’d like you to explain to us if you could. What this means about Putin declaring Marsh law in these provinces. Why is he doing that? What’s the purpose?
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:41

    What does it signify? I
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:43

    actually think it’s a pretty worrisome sign. Because he’s not in control of most of the territory of the four regions of Ukraine that Russia reportedly annexed. And if people are being governed, you don’t have to declare martial law. Right? Mhmm.
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:07

    So put in theory of the war that Ukraine isn’t a separate nation and that it’s part of Russia and therefore Russia needs to control it. The fact that they had to declare martial law is by definition a failure of Putin’s theory of the war. And it also speaks to the likelihood of an insurgency being fomented against Russian control from Ukrainians living in that area. The reason I say it’s worrisome is because it’s one more demonstration as the declarations of annexation of the four regions were that Putin’s actions are increasingly divorced from reality. You know, Russia’s losing this war.
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:59

    And I think at least by March of next year, but probably by the end of this calendar year, Russia will have lost this war and that Putin is refusing to acknowledge the losses and is instead making political declarations, you know, writing checks that is military can’t cash. Suggest that he may be either
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:24

    losing his grip on what’s happening or will fully misrepresenting it. Damon Linker, I’m gonna bring you in here one of, I guess, Putin’s only hopes to turn the tide is if the leadership in the United States changes. And this week, we had word from Kevin McCarthy if the Republicans take control in November, he would be the new speaker of the house. And he has said that if they do indeed assume the majority that the Republicans are no longer going to, as he put it, write a blank check to Ukraine, which is of course not what we’ve been doing. But in any event, we also have Scott Perry of the hilariously named Freedom caucus who has announced that, again, if Republicans take control, that he’s gonna conduct investigations into the Biden Zelensky relationship?
  • Speaker 3
    0:04:27

    Well well, certainly, the the the investigations are gonna proliferate. That’s for sure. No doubt about that. It’s gonna become a a total circus in Washington for the next two years if Republicans take control, it’ll be Biden investigations morning, noon, and night. As for supporting aid to Ukraine.
  • Speaker 3
    0:04:49

    I I frankly think McCarthy’s bluffing. This is sort of I mean, maybe I’m being overly optimistic here, but it sort of strikes me as the equivalent of someone in charge of the Democratic caucus leading into a midterm election back when the Democrats were very divided say about the first Gulf War, the Iraq War, and, you know, promising to do what the kind of anti war faction on the left wants in order to make sure that people show up to vote in three weeks. The fact is that that former situation that I just described where the demo crats were kind of divided between those who were in favor of some of our more hawkish foreign policies, and then there was a faction on the left I ever since the Vietnam War that was kind of skeptical of the use of American power as a kind of reflexive response. That now has flipped over to the Republicans, and it’s the Republican Party that is very deeply divided over these issues. And so this is a a way of throwing a soap to, I think, the Trumpist faction of the party to make sure that they show up to vote for the midterms on November eighth.
  • Speaker 3
    0:06:01

    When push comes to shove, I believe and I very much hope that they’ll have to make us think about it. They’ll maybe cut an appropriation by a few tens of billions of dollars. To demonstrate that they’re not giving Biden everything he asks for. But again, the party is divided and there are still lot of people in the Republican Party, especially the office holders. But even in polls, it’s it’s pretty divided.
  • Speaker 3
    0:06:28

    There’s a lot of Republicans who still believe in a strong American defense and are in favor of our general policy toward Ukraine even if they don’t wanna give Biden personal credit for it. So I I don’t envision an actual kind of, like, rejection of aid for Ukraine. We’re gonna let them hang out there now and not fulfill our promises and continue to give them the funding they need to fight Russia. So, again, maybe, you know, maybe someone else on the podcast wants to say I’m being foolish and should be more concerned. But, you know, frankly, there’s nothing I can do about it anyway.
  • Speaker 3
    0:07:03

    The Republicans are gonna do what they’re gonna do. But I think that they’re speaking a position of deep division on this, not unified opposition.
  • Speaker 1
    0:07:11

    Bill, I think the problem with Damon’s analysis is that the entertainment wing of the Republican Party, the Fox News types, since the federalists, and so forth, they’re really beating the drums for Putin and against the war in Ukraine. And they tend to be the trendsetters in the way that the geo he moves because they move the viewers and then the viewers move the politicians. So it is incredibly incredibly worrisome, and I’d ask you to reflect on something else. The reversal that Damon described is almost perfect in the sense that, you know, I mean, I wrote a whole book about the left’s too benign view of communism back in the seventies and eighties. Not only did they think that American power should not be exercised, except in extreme circumstances, but they also had lots of very nice things to say about leftist and even communist regimes, full of praise for Cuba, saw them even praised the Kamere Rouge.
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:16

    And you’re finding this kind of mirror image now you see on the right, not only a reluctance to use American power, but a cheerleading for autocrats like Orban and like Putin, frankly. What’s your sense of it?
  • Speaker 4
    0:08:34

    Oh, well, first of all, Mona, I think that’s a wonderful pricey of your next book, because You have all of the reflexes and muscle memory. We needed to do a great job. Look, I think the worry you’ve put on the table is a reasonable worry. But as it happens, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs just came out with its big annual survey of American attitudes on foreign policy And the news for Ukraine is good. You have about two thirds of registered Republicans in favor of sustaining both economic and military assistance to Ukraine.
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:26

    And
  • Speaker 4
    0:09:27

    if there has been an anti Ukraine drumbeat at the grassroots level that is led by leadership, or what you call the entertainment wing of the Republican Party over the past three months, it hasn’t yet had a measurable impact. That doesn’t mean that it can’t or that it won’t. But it does mean that as of right now, the support for Ukraine is rock solid. I actually am more worried about the erosion of public opinion in Europe. Which is facing some very dire consequences of the war the embargo, the decoupling of Russian energy supplies from both household and industrial needs as especially in Germany, but really throughout Western and Central Europe.
  • Speaker 4
    0:10:22

    I am not saying that time is on Putin’s side. Don’t misunderstand me. But I am saying that it’s going to require statesmanship on the part of European leaders. And for Barron’s, on the part of European populations in order to get through this winter and sustain the United front against Putin. I think that we’ll probably get through this, but the colder the winter, the worse it’s going to be.
  • Speaker 4
    0:10:51

    You know, that’s not just true for freezing households, but it’s also true for economies that are very, very dependent and have been for some time on cheap energy inputs from Russia.
  • Speaker 1
    0:11:04

    Linda, Russians have become pariahs for a lot of the world. Certainly, for Europe and for us. There are some nations, however, we’ll get to China in our next segment that have been siding to some degree or other with Russia. Two in particular I’d like you to talk about because a couple weeks ago Saudi Arabia announced that it was going to continue to limit oil drilling, therefore keeping the price high, which is beneficial to Moscow and highly harmful to the United States, in particular, to the Democratic Party facing the midterms. And also, you’ve had Iran sending these drones to Russia.
  • Speaker 1
    0:11:48

    I don’t know that anybody would have thought that it would come to this, that the great Russian militaries or so we thought would need to turn to Iran for spare parts, but that is what has indeed happened. I’d like to get your sense of how this should affect or does affect our relations with Saudi Arabia. And also, you know, there was talk about a revival of the nuclear deal with Iran when the Biden presence he began, do you think this is the death knell for that? I
  • Speaker 5
    0:12:17

    certainly hope so, Mona, if there is any silver lining in this horrible cloud that has been cast over Ukraine in terms of the use of Iranian drones. It is that it should at least awaken the Europeans to the notion that they were very much behind with the United States and the Obama administration forging some sort of deal with Iran to try to stem Iran’s nuclear ambition, you know, I think you and I would agree that the deal that was cast was not a good one and would not likely have stopped Iran for moving to develop nuclear weapons. I do think that this strange bedfellows combination of Saudi Arabia and Iran are doing things that help Russia. Is worrisome, and it shows that Mohammed bin Salman’s peak at president Biden seems to know no limits. I mean, this is clearly a kind of personal upfront to the Biden administration and to president Biden himself.
  • Speaker 5
    0:13:30

    And it seems to be very short sighted in Saudi Arabia’s own calculus. And, you know, Iran is still a huge threat to Saudi Arabia. And, oh, by the way, if the United States started pulls back, decides we’re not gonna sell them weapons anymore, yeah, they could go to Russia to buy weapons, but we’re seeing that those weapons don’t perform very well. And Saudi Arabia might want to think twice about that. And the fact is that the regime in Saudi Arabia has always been precarious, no less today than in the past.
  • Speaker 5
    0:14:04

    And so doing things that strengthen Iran, you know, just to get back at president Biden, it seems to me really foolhardy. On the part of the Saudi regime. And I hope that MBS comes to his senses in terms of, you know, geostrategic issues and does not continue to do things to bolster Russia in the price of oil for Russia. You know, at a time when it really is not even in the Saudi’s own interest.
  • Speaker 1
    0:14:40

    Can
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:41

    I express a slightly different view on that one? Of course. I agree with all of the description of how awful Saudi Arabia is, but I disagree on two slight points. The first is that I think the Biden administration actually misplayed this badly. Because this isn’t the first time Saudi Arabia has refused a United States in treaty to raise oil output.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:10

    They did it in the George W. Bush administration. They do it routinely because their entire economy depends on the price of oil. And so keeping oil market price at their minimum necessary levels really is standard Saudi policy. But I agree with Linda that there’s so much animosity in the Biden administration and Saudi relationship right now.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:40

    That the White House took it as a personal affront and the Saudis are gleefully you know, feeding that narrative. But in fact, this is routine savvy behavior. It’s for economic reasons, And I think if the Biden administration had said that, instead of saying we need to review our policy and we may come down in a different place and, you know, you can either reduce reliance on Saudi energy production or you can indulge in this kind of spat with the Saudis. But I don’t think you should do both simultaneously. And the widening administration’s making the moves that would reduce American reliance on Saudi oil.
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:30

    So I think it’s a little puzzling to me that they’re feeding this fire. Oh,
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:35

    that’s a really good point. Also, Corey, I’d like you to comment if you would on these stories that have been running in the Washington Post about five hundred retired US military personnel, including generals and admirals, who after their stints are over, are now selling their services to other countries. It’s being presented as a kind of scandalous thing. And I can under stand that it is a problem if you do what Michael Flynn did, for example, and go to work for Russia. But tell me what I’m missing.
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:10

    Why is it a problem, for example, a lot of them seem to have done work for the United Arab Emirates. The UAE has recently joined the Abraham Accord. It seems like it’s not a terrible international player. Is there something else here that we should all understand about this?
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:26

    Well, I think there are three categories of retired military people working for foreign governments. And the most dangerous one is NSA employees using their technical skills to assist foreign governments in repression or in human rights violations. That’s outrageous. And ought to be executable. A second category is high ranking military people going to work for Governments that are friendly to the United States, but not American allies.
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:06

    You know, all of the revelations in this seven part Washington Post series that are amazing and they should not have had to spend four years in litigation with the United States government to get that information. If people are going to work for foreign governments, they ought to have to have that be public knowledge and and be accountable for that. And the third category is a category like military people going to work for the Australian government purposely and as a direct impact of American government policy to transfer the technology to Australians that they will need for nuclear power submarines, for example. That’s explicitly US government policy. These are treaty allies.
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:01

    Again, I believe that information should be public, but I also think it should be encouraged rather than discouraged. The other piece of the news is they had thirty British fighter pilots who went to work for the government of China to teach air to air combat tactics. That is how to kill American pilots. And the British government stumped on that very quickly. So I put that in the NSA employees helping the UAE category.
  • Speaker 3
    0:19:34

    Okay,
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:35

    absolutely. Thank you for that. Yeah, I would just clarify you said helping the Australians with nuclear powered submarines. I don’t want anybody to get the wrong idea. These are not nuclear missile submarines.
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:47

    That we would not do and is forbidden. Correct?
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:52

    Well, there’s a fair amount of nuclear technology transfer to the British. And given the status of Australia as a treaty ally, I could see the administration and congress agreeing to that explicit tech transfer. But no, that’s not where we are now. Really
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:11

    to submarines that would fire nuclear missiles. I
  • Speaker 2
    0:20:15

    could see if China continues to be such a threat to Australia, I could see nuclear sharing arrangements with us Australia of the kind of the United States as with Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, So I could see that eventually, but now that’s not where we are. Alright. Let us
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:36

    now turn to China. This week was the twentieth National Party Congress in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing Cision Ping gave a two hour long address in which I think he referred to their democracy something like twenty three different times. But of course, they have the very opposite of a democracy. And they have engaged under Cision Ping in ever more repressive and aggressive of behavior repressive domestically and aggressive internationally and including crushing Hong Kong’s liberty, though they had promised by treaty that there would be one nation to systems. That’s that’s a dead letter.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:24

    I would like to start here this time with Damon. The Chinese have stated, and this comes up constantly. They claim the Communist Party is the author of all good things in the life of the Chinese. But one thing that strikes me is a little odd is that they keep talking about how they’re going to fight corruption. First of all, they acknowledge corruption is a problem.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:49

    But second, how can you possibly fight corruption? There is no political competition in the country and no free press.
  • Speaker 3
    0:21:58

    Yeah. That’s a good puzzle.
  • Speaker 2
    0:22:01

    I mean,
  • Speaker 3
    0:22:02

    it is a a kind of testament to the fact that democracy, the rule of law, the need to fight corruption. These kind of ideals that United States has at least until very recently kind of upheld as standards that we believe are very important and try to spread around the world that rights down still to today, you know, an outright dictatorship like China still feels like it has to try to justify itself in exactly those term. So it’s not that they say, no, we hate democracy and, you know, rule of law is just for suckers. And, you know, what’s corruption? It’s okay if as long as it’s in the name of the people.
  • Speaker 3
    0:22:45

    Mhmm. They actually claim that they aren’t corrupt and they’re fighting corruption and they believe in the rule of law and they are democracy. So that’s the the weird kind of looking last world that we find ourselves and everyone claims to be these things. It’s just that we have to try to determine which ones are lying. But, I mean, when it comes to China, I’m I’m very glad Corey is here today to to talk through some of this.
  • Speaker 3
    0:23:11

    I mean, I am seriously worried by far more than I have been. Really in my adult life, I mean, I grew up. I was a teenager in the in the nineteen eighties and So I remember, I’m old enough to actually remember living through that last decade of the Cold War. And
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:28

    I worried
  • Speaker 1
    0:23:29

    like
  • Speaker 3
    0:23:29

    a lot of people about nuclear war. I saw the day after, and it was in the air very much. In the eighties, I think mostly because of people who were agitated about Reagan’s more aggressive stance toward the Soviet Union after some years where it seemed like things were thawing out, what they taught, and so forth. But since then, yeah, you know, nine eleven, very scary. The threat of, you know, Islamic terrorists, wielding weapons mask destruction was certainly very risky, dangerous, scary scenario, blowing up you know, an unmarked van with a small nuke in it in the middle of Midtown Manhattan for a few years seemed like a possible scenario that we needed to be scared about.
  • Speaker 3
    0:24:14

    But really, it I mean, I think I sort of thought at the time and that led to some of my skepticism about some of how the war on terror was waged. But it didn’t rise to the level of a of a threat that you have from a major nation state, especially one that controls intercontinental ballistic missiles. And I am truly alarmed by the combination of Russia’s war in Ukraine and our relationship with China at this point. I mean, if I’m Xi Jinping, And I’ve told myself, we’re gonna take Taiwan on my watch. This is gonna happen.
  • Speaker 3
    0:24:57

    But he’s not in too much of a hurry, but now he sees that we’re embroiled in Eastern Europe and giving Ukraine a lot of our stockpile of weapons. Does he conclude within the next, you know, year at some point while this is still going on. You know, if I’m gonna do this, I should do it now because they’re distracted. They don’t have the the weaponry, the material. To provide as formidable of a defense of Taiwan as they would have, say, four years ago and they might four years from now.
  • Speaker 3
    0:25:32

    And that I think makes the present moment extremely risky. And actually, if I might pose to Corey the same question I posed in a similar conversation with Eric Adelman when he was on, I I guess, about six weeks ago. And that is this question of our our weapons. I mean, I don’t know anything about this directly. It’s not my area of expertise at all.
  • Speaker 3
    0:25:53

    But, I mean, do you, Corey, are you concerned if if China made a move against Taiwan. I realized that the kinds of weapons we’re sending to Ukraine are quite different than the kind of things we’d have to use to try to help Taiwan to protect itself against an amphibious assault across the Strait. But how depleted are we and how much should we be worried about this and how long is it gonna take to build things back? Those
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:19

    are great questions all. The problem is severe. You’re right to be worried. You shouldn’t be worried because of the weapons we’re sending to Ukraine. You should be worried that both the Congress and the Defense Department have, for fifteen years, tolerated a planning construct in which we assumed we would only fight short, short wars.
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:46

    And, you know, wherewith China is unlikely to be an eight day war, and we’d be out of ammunition. And so the weapons transfers to Ukraine are illustrative of a bigger problem And the bigger problem is the Game of Chicken that’s been going on between the defense department and Congress where what is needed is robust long term contracts in place by the defense department to buy weapons and ammunition and fill up the storehouse. And DOD has not requested that and Congress to their credit will make add ons year after year, but the game of chicken of who’s gonna pay for this. We don’t want it to count against our budget. You know, if you’re a business, you can’t hire people and keep production lines open on that basis.
  • Speaker 2
    0:27:49

    So the predictability of longer term contracts is the solution to this. If you haven’t yet read John Ferrari’s peace. I think it’s in the hill. He talks about this at some life. It’s a serious problem.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:02

    It’s not a problem because of the weapons to Ukraine. It’s eminently fixable. And on the timeline on Taiwan, the Director of National Intelligence Everem Haines and the Director of the CIA, Bill Burns, have both said that the window of maximum vulnerability for a Chinese attack on Taiwan is between now and twenty twenty seven, which makes the Biden defense departments budget, all the more mysterious because they are cutting people and platforms until twenty thirty five. And spending money on research and development for weapons that they won’t start buying until twenty thirty five. And that’s well outside the window that the intelligence community is saying we ought to be worried about.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:55

    So I don’t mean to add to your worry, Damon, but that’s the piece of it that’s keeping me up at night. Well,
  • Speaker 3
    0:29:01

    that’s alright. I’m used to filling this one. Aren’t we
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:05

    all? Linda, so there was a period, say, ten years ago, when everybody was convinced that China really was the way that the future, that, you know, there were even some common in American columnist who, you know, fantasized about, you know, fixing our climate policies and other things by being China for a day, meaning, you know, well, we don’t have that pesky congress to deal with, and we can just get things done the way they do over there. Now, we see a lot of the tremendous weaknesses. And many of those are attributable to well, they’re attributable to the rotten and corrupt system. But seizure pain in particular has been more autocratic even than his immediate predecessors.
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:54

    And he’s done some things that really have made China weaker, like, you know, refusing to buy western vaccines against COVID and then, you know, leaving huge numbers of the elderly vulnerable and these awful, you know, complete zero COVID policies that involve terrible lockdowns, the vast surveillance system and the social credits, the increasing control of the economy. So one of the things that’s obviously, you know, brought all of these millions of Chinese out of poverty, is that they’ve loosened up on the government control of the economy. But now Xi Jinping wants to bring it back He wants to practically distribute little red books called the season being thought. And I’m not kidding. They’re really doing that in the schools.
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:37

    They may not be little red books, but pretty close. So respond if you will to all of that. Isn’t he actually weakening? Right? But while strengthening himself in his personal powers and he weakening the country.
  • Speaker 5
    0:30:50

    Well, he clearly is weakening the country and the country’s economy. I mean, they’re, you know, the congress that is meeting now puts out is all communist countries do. Their various plans for economic growth, and China is gonna fall short. In that area. A lot of it does have to do with COVID in their particular response to COVID, which was draconian and her career economy.
  • Speaker 5
    0:31:15

    But, you know, even in the military area, I was actually quite heartened by an article that I read in The Wall Street Journal. Gets out, I guess, today by Alastair Gail. It’s called China’s military is catching up to the US. Is it ready to fight? And I hadn’t ever really thought about this, but the point that Gail makes in this article is that China has not actually had much of an actual war experience.
  • Speaker 5
    0:31:43

    The last time was in nineteen seventy nine with a brief conflict with Vietnam. And you compare that to the United States, and we have been pretty much in constant wars. Certainly since the Vietnam era. And the whole article is about the military. They’ve got obviously, you know, they’ve produce this hypersonic missile, which we don’t apparently yet have.
  • Speaker 5
    0:32:08

    They like what was being described by Horry on on the United States and the Biden administration sort of focusing on missile systems and looking far out into the future. But sort of missing what’s right in front of their face. And in front of China’s face is that they have a very big military. But apparently, it’s a military that may not be nearly as agile or have as much experience in war fighting. Certainly, than the United States does.
  • Speaker 5
    0:32:36

    So I, you know, I found that somewhat heartening. I found the article somewhat heartening in what it was describing. Corey can correct any mistakes that I may have made in describing this or in Gail’s description. Of the Chinese military. I actually think that we do need to be worried about what China and certainly Xi Jinping’s ambitions are with Taiwan.
  • Speaker 5
    0:33:03

    But we also have to remember that, you know, like Ukraine, Taiwan being able to defend itself and having its own territory threatened You know, it’s not nearly as easy to invade and take over countries as some autocrats seem to believe. And and certainly, that is one of the lessons that we’re learning in Ukraine. The Russians are learning in Ukraine. Yeah. Bill
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:27

    Galston, how about that? I mean, doesn’t the Ukraine experience shouldn’t it serve as a cautionary tale for Beijing? Look, you know, as Linda points out, you know, that first of all, their army hasn’t really fought in an incredibly long time, certainly within the lifetimes of almost everybody in the military. And of course, the example of of Ukraine shows just how tough it can be when your opponent fights back. Also, Taiwan is already I mean, I’m sure it’s true what Corey has said and Damon has reminded us of that, you know, we need more arms, but I think Taiwan is pretty highly armed already.
  • Speaker 1
    0:34:08

    They describe it as their porcupine. Strategy. I don’t know. Am I being too optimistic to think that actually the experience of Ukraine makes Taiwan a little safer rather than the opposite. I do think you’re being too
  • Speaker 4
    0:34:22

    optimistic. Okay. In Ukraine, we’re seeing the fruits among other things of eight years of intense military cooperation. Right? And training.
  • Speaker 4
    0:34:36

    Ukraine’s adoption of bottom up rather than top down command structures their adaptation of tactics on the battlefield corresponding to that, that didn’t happen by accident, and it didn’t happen fast.
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:52

    I’m not going
  • Speaker 4
    0:34:52

    to masquerade as an expert on Taiwan’s military, but having tracked this issue a little bit, there is a robust debate as to whether a, Taiwan has the kind of weapons that it really needs to turn itself into the now proverbial porcupine. And secondly, whether they have a structure of military mobilization and training that’s going to provide them, with the kind of fighting force that they’re going to need to repel a Chinese invasion across the streets. My understanding is that we haven’t yet quite made the sale. We haven’t quite convinced the Taiwanese government that they need to make a big pivot on both the manpower and personnel front and on the equipment and weaponry front. I heard a very good speech delivered a few days ago by representative Mike Gallagher to the Heritage Foundation.
  • Speaker 4
    0:36:02

    I don’t spend a lot of my time listening to speech is addressing heritage foundation audiences, but this one was worth listening to. And Gallagher made two points. First of all, we do not at this point as a country. The United States have the navy that we really need in order to do what the American people expect our Navy to do in the case of the Chinese blockade, namely helped the Taiwanese break the blockade. He added on that point that the lead time for additions to our naval forces.
  • Speaker 4
    0:36:38

    This is so long that it’s way outside what’s become known as the Davidson window that five year period of maximum gold mobility that starts now and extends through twenty twenty seven. So he said, and this made a lot of sense to me We can’t rely on a navy. So what we need to rely on and build up is an anti navy. The ability of Taiwan to strike against opposing naval forces and create prohibitive costs for either a full naval blockade, which would be an act of war recording to international law or across straits invasion. That we probably could do in a couple of years if we started right now and went flat out.
  • Speaker 4
    0:37:30

    And I think that’s Taiwan’s best hope because I do not believe that Xi Jinping is going to allow his third term to terminate without having become the great reunifier of the Chinese nation and its great rejuvenator. One of
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:49

    the worrisome things is that he has adopted this term, the great helmsman, which was used by mal. Right. Yeah. Corey, let’s let’s close with this. I can imagine maybe not that many listeners to beg to differ, but some might be listening to all this and hearing, kitching, kitching, these people they wanna spend so much money, you know, sending arms to Ukraine, and sending arms to Taiwan, Why is this important to the American national interest?
  • Speaker 1
    0:38:17

    What would you say to
  • Speaker 4
    0:38:19

    them? It’s
  • Speaker 2
    0:38:20

    important to American national interest because if we allow the international order to become one where strong states can be predatory, that they can invade their neighbors with impunity. We will have to actually spend more money and fight more wars to restore an international order where we and others are safe on progress. It’s a small price we are paying to arm Ukrainians, to do the fighting that will reduce the Russian military and restore the principle that state boundaries should only change by negotiation not by the use of force. And if we had to do the fighting to restore this or if we had to live in an international environment in which this was routinely happening. Taiwan would be at risk, South Korea would be at risk, Poland would be at risk, the Baltic states would be at risk.
  • Speaker 2
    0:39:32

    And so preserving a beneficial order is actually a lot more cost effective than having to restore it. I’d like to turn to
  • Speaker 1
    0:39:42

    our quick third segment. We had such fun a few weeks ago with a segment where we talked about something about ourselves. This time, I want to go around the horn and ask people, what was the best book that you’ve read this year? Damon Linker. Well,
  • Speaker 3
    0:39:59

    it’s actually a book. I’m about two thirds through now. So, you know, maybe it’ll take a bad turn and I’ll take it back. But at the moment, it’s quite good. This is a a book.
  • Speaker 3
    0:40:08

    It’s not new. It’s from about six years ago by an author named Daniel Oppenheimer titled exit right, the people who left the left and reshaped the American century. So when it says exit right, it means exiting the left for the right, not leaving the right. And the six people the author looks at are Whitaker Chambers, James Burnham, Ronald Reagan, Norman Padorets, David Horowitz and Christopher Hitchens. An interesting group of people, as Only one of whom is completely crazy.
  • Speaker 3
    0:40:41

    I know. I know. But but he he focuses on Horowitz at his moment of least craziness kind of in a brief period when he broke from the left and hadn’t yet gone full right way. Okay.
  • Speaker 1
    0:40:55

    A
  • Speaker 3
    0:40:55

    lot of psychological depth to the book. Very good. Also, just portraits of the six of them and the details of what they were writing and doing when they were on the left. And in each case, what it was that led them to lose their faith. In their commitments.
  • Speaker 3
    0:41:12

    So as someone myself has wandered about a bit across the spectrum in my career and adult life, I I like books like this and this is particularly well done one, so I recommend it. Thank you, Corey. I think
  • Speaker 1
    0:41:24

    my favorite I’ve
  • Speaker 2
    0:41:25

    read this year is by the veteran Elliott Ackerman, and it was a book a memoir called The Fifth Act and it interspersedes three stories. One, his policy criticism of the nine eleven post nine eleven wars. Second, a family vacation he is on interrupted by him and so many other veterans of the Afghan and Iraq Wars scrambling when the Biden administration abandons Afghanistan in August of twenty twenty one. To try and get Africans who had helped the American military out of the country. And the third story it interweaves are his recollections of combat and how those connect the other two pieces of the story.
  • Speaker 2
    0:42:23

    It’s so powerful. It’s so poignant. We are living through a renaissance of veteran writers in the United States. And Elliot Ackerman’s one of the best. Excellent.
  • Speaker 1
    0:42:35

    Linda, well,
  • Speaker 5
    0:42:36

    I’m gonna take an entirely different turn as the listeners of the podcast that you referred to earlier know about me, I spend more time reading literature than I do public policy. And my favorite book that I’ve read recently was a book that was totally unknown to me by an author that was fairly known to me and that was the brothers Oshkenazi by IJ Singer. Isaiah Joshua Singer is the less well known older brother of Isaac Toshiba Singer who won the Nobel Prize in nineteen seventy eight. It has a lot of themes including themes of faith and commerce and revolution. It is about two brothers who are sort of the biblical references, I think, would be Jacob and Eza or maybe Cain and Abel.
  • Speaker 5
    0:43:25

    There’s a sibling rivalry between the two. And it takes place in the city of Woosh, Poland, which was at the late nineteenth century, early twentieth century, at textile, a mecca place where textiles were produced in Poland. It deals with capitalism There are scenes of the Bolsheviks in Russia, lots of inter family kinds of rivalry going on and a lot about the Jewish faith and the move away from traditional Jewish faith, to secularism, and in the background of all of it, is one of the most compelling stories of theagram’s that took place in that era and in that region that I have ever read. So I just found it a fascinating novel, a novel that is underappreciated It was published in nineteen thirty seven, was at New York Times, the bestseller at the time, and it has been favorably compared to tells stories war in peace.
  • Speaker 1
    0:44:32

    Wow. Okay. Bill
  • Speaker 4
    0:44:34

    Galston. In my former life, I was a college professor. And in that capacity, I compiled reading lists. So I’m going to ask and answer the following question. Suppose you wanted to learn everything that a very well informed citizen needed to know about the current state of the Republican Party and how it got to be that way.
  • Speaker 4
    0:44:58

    You
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:59

    would read
  • Speaker 4
    0:45:00

    three superb books. Number one, Matt Continente’s hundred year history of conservatism and the right in this country. Number two, Tim Albertas superbly reported big book called American carnage on the frontlines of the Republican civil war and the rise of president Trump, which really focuses on the past ten or fifteen years. And finally, you would read a book by Nicole Hammer that focuses on the nineteen nineties and really tells a revelatory story about how many of the themes that now dominate the Republican Party were being developed and road tested by defectors, Republican defectors from Reagan Orthodoxy in the 1990s. Course Pat Buchanan is a major figure in that discussion, but he’s far from the only one.
  • Speaker 4
    0:46:06

    What’s happening now Nicole instructs us is no accident. It is the logical extension of trends that should have been more visible in the night teen nineties to journalists and scholars than they were. Okay.
  • Speaker 1
    0:46:19

    Thank you. I will cite two books also, not new books One, I was first introduced to when I was in high school, believe it or not, but it it is a it’s a classic. It’s called the worldly philosophers. By Robert Kyle Brunner, and I recently reread it, alright, brace yourselves. It’s a history of economic thought.
  • Speaker 1
    0:46:42

    I know how dull that makes it sound and it could not be
  • Speaker 2
    0:46:45

    it it really
  • Speaker 1
    0:46:46

    is fascinating. It’s a series of portraits of individuals with all their quirks and their funny personality traits and their interactions with one another, and also their their thoughts. It’s one of those books that has stood the test of time. There have been a number of different editions that have come out over the years. And if you want to understand a little bit about economics and how economic insights have changed and also get some great personal stories like Thorsten Beblin returning a ladies pantyhose or stockings in the middle of the night.
  • Speaker 1
    0:47:19

    I mean, all kinds of fun little details. So highly recommend the worldly philosophers and then a little darker note, but I went through a period in my adolescence where I read everything I could on the Holocaust. And for some reason, I skipped over the rise and fall of the third reich by William Mailshower. Which I did read this year. And it is such a fantastic work of history.
  • Speaker 1
    0:47:47

    I really can’t say enough about it. I mean, it is it’s riveting. It’s incredibly well reported. He was there. He was fluent in Germany.
  • Speaker 1
    0:47:56

    He was a correspondent in in Germany. Met Hitler several times and his on the ground report of how it all happened. Including things like, you know, how did this relative nobody rise the way he did? And, you know, he couldn’t have done it without support from wealthy industrialists and others who had their reasons. You know, they were worried about the communists, which, you know, it’s not crazy to be worried about communists, but you don’t embrace fascist.
  • Speaker 1
    0:48:25

    In any event, it’s a brilliant brilliant work of history. I highly recommend it. Alright. We’re running long, so we’re gonna have to rush
  • Speaker 5
    0:48:32

    through our highlights or lowlights of the week, and I will start with Linda Chavez. I’m gonna go to something that I’ve been doing recently, which is a highlight and a low light all wrapped up into one, and it is an article that appeared on the NBC News webpage in their think opinion analysis and essays. It’s an article by Dennis AfterGut. And it’s all about the collapse of the Durham investigation as listeners probably know. John Durham, who was the former federal prosecutor who was made a special counsel to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation into the campaign in two thousand and sixteen.
  • Speaker 5
    0:49:17

    This week, mister Durham was handed a second defeat in court when a jury acquitted, the second person charged Igor Denchenko. And I thought the article was a very interesting one and it makes the point that the Durham investigation really was never about getting to the bottom of what happened in two thousand and sixteen, it became a kind of political vendetta, and that doesn’t make for good prosecutions. Okay? Thank you, Bill Galston. This one is a
  • Speaker 4
    0:49:50

    no brainer and it sort of closes the loop with Mona’s opening. About a week ago, a British publication. I can’t remember whether it was a tabloid or a television station, displayed two pictures. One was of then Prime Minister, Liz Truss, and the other was of a head of lettuce, And the question was posed, which one of these will last
  • Speaker 3
    0:50:16

    longer? And we know the answer. The letters won. Yes. Well, Okay.
  • Speaker 3
    0:50:22

    Mhmm. Damon
  • Speaker 2
    0:50:24

    Linker? Well,
  • Speaker 3
    0:50:25

    at the risk of a change of tone, Those who subscribed to my sub stack are aware that my father died about three weeks ago, and I I took that’s why I was missing from the podcast a couple of episodes ago. And in light of that, I want to highlight a podcast that was brought to my attention by a friend who knew that I was going through grieving. And it’s truly remarkable by Anderson Cooper, the CNN talking head journalist titled All There Is, and you can find it on CNN probably on many their platforms. It’s a reflection on grief and death and coping with these things. Anderson Cooper’s mother, Gloria Fender, Bill, died about three years ago.
  • Speaker 3
    0:51:15

    He has other much more traumatic deaths in his past. All the episodes are excellent, but the second episode where Stephen Colbert as a guest is fifty minutes of the most some of the most profound thinking and talking on this subject that I have ever heard. And I’m someone who went to graduate school for philosophy, political philosophy and have read a lot of books about things related to death. Colbert is a remarkably deep and thoughtful man and the openness and vulnerability that the two of them display on this podcast episode is something I’ve never heard before. So I I urge it in the strongest terms to any and all people because all of us have to grieve at some point in our lives and We need to think and talk more about it in honest ways.
  • Speaker 3
    0:52:06

    And so praise be to Anderson Cooper and Cold Bear for doing such a great job then on this podcast. Thank you
  • Speaker 1
    0:52:12

    so much for that. Of course, condolences, which we’ve expressed privately already, but also I want to commend the piece that you wrote, the eulogy for your dad, which was very beautiful. Thank you very much. Okay. Corey, low light of
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:27

    the week is Iran sending Quds Force troops to Crimea. To operate drones, suicide drones as they’re being called in the media against Ukraine. What this demonstrates is that Russia doesn’t have the ability to operate the drone, so one more deficiency of the Russian military. And it doesn’t have drones of their own. They’re having to rely on Iranians.
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:54

    Second, this is a very dangerous move by Iran to be a fighting force on Russia’s side in Ukraine and is likely to not only kill whatever meager prospects there were for a return to the nuclear agreement, but we’ll make Iran who is already in violation of a UN Security Council resolution for providing the drums, a direct participant in the war, and that’s gonna have a whole lot of questions. Thank you for that. Okay, I would
  • Speaker 1
    0:53:27

    like to draw attention to a story from Texas. Apparently, in the wake of the Yuvali massacre, the Texas legislature unable to do anything about the availability of firearms, decided to pass legislation that sends to every parent of a school child in Texas a kit so that the parents can take the children’s DNA and have it available in the event that their beloved children are murdered at school.
  • Speaker 2
    0:54:02

    So now
  • Speaker 1
    0:54:03

    in Texas, every year, I guess, in September, you know, you get the kids ready for school by getting them a new backpack and maybe some sneakers and, you know, their books and you take a DNA swabs in case their brains are blown out. In the classroom. I think this is just such an example of defining DV and C down, of accepting the unacceptable and saying, well, we’re gonna have to live with it. I just cannot get my mind around how distorted your thinking has to be for that to be how you’re coping with the problem of gun violence. With that, I would like to very much thank our distinguished guest Court Shockey, who I will repeat, is the nicest big shot in Washington DC.
  • Speaker 1
    0:54:49

    Thank you. That nice compliment. And I want to thank all of our regulars. I want to thank our sound engineer, Jason Brown, our do sir, Katie Cooper, all of our listeners, of course, and we will return next week as your freaky.
  • Speaker 2
    0:55:15

    You’re
  • Speaker 5
    0:55:15

    worried about the economy. Inflation is high. Your paycheck doesn’t cover as much as it used to, and we live under the threat of a looming recession. And sure you’re doing okay, but you could be doing better. The afford anything podcast explains
  • Speaker 4
    0:55:26

    the economy and the market detailing how to make wise choices on the way you spend and invest. Avoid
  • Speaker 5
    0:55:32

    anything talks about how to avoid common pitfalls, how to refine your mental models, and how to think about how to think. Make smarter choices and build a better life. Afford anything wherever you
  • Speaker 1
    0:55:44

    listen.
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