American Thought Leaders - Trump’s Transactional Diplomacy: Is It Really a Bad Thing? | Col. Grant Newsham

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

President Donald Trump has been widely criticized for his “transactional” approach to diplomacy. But is that really such a bad thing?In this episode, I sit down with China expert and retired U.S. Marine Col. Grant Newsham, a senior research fellow with the Center for Security Policy, to discuss Trump’s approach to diplomacy and negotiations and how America can leverage what he describes as the “kryptonite” of the Chinese regime.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

You are listening to American Thought Leaders. If you enjoy our content, please leave us a five-star rating on this platform. You hear all the time, Mr. Trump is Putin's stooge. Well, let's think about it. All the presidents that were involved in Ukraine, it was Mr. Trump who gave lethal weapons to the Ukrainians, particularly javelin missiles. And in the war since then, the Russians have suffered well over half a million casualties, many of those dead. In this episode, I sit down with China expert and retired US Marine Colonel Grant Newsom, research fellow at the Center for Security Policy. America was pushing businesses into China at the same time the Chinese were telling their army be able to defeat a country with aircraft carriers. They meant the Americans. Take a week and read the Chinese media, the English language versions of it, and the venom directed at the United States.

That'll give you a pretty good sense of what our prospects are for really establishing a decent relationship with the Chinese communists. I just don't think it's possible. Today, Nushim describes the unique strategy he sees in Trump's actions vis-a-vis China, and how America can leverage what he describes as the regime's kryptonite. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Grant Nuschen, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. I'm glad to be here. Grant, so tell me about Trump's diplomacy.

Well, he's accused of a lot of things. He's accused of one being a stooge of Vladimir Putin. He's accused of being in it for himself. But the real sort of insult that's thrown at him is he's transactional. And if you think about it, well, I would hope he's transactional. I want every president to get the most he can for the United States, for us, when he's dealing with foreign countries. And presumably all presidents do this.

It's just with Mr. Trump that it's considered an insult. We like to see ourselves as altruists, but we aren't. And even when we are acting like we think altruistically, we're getting something of value. It could even be the psychic satisfaction of appearing as altruists. And we want people to appreciate what we do. So we are getting something. And I think Mr. Trump has correctly observed that most of his predecessors have not been very good at cutting deals.

And America is left giving a lot, but not getting much out of it. So what I wrote in the article is pretty much stating, well, of course he's transactional. Every president is. It's just he may be a little better than most of his predecessors. And as you point out, it's what he's transactional about

that's the issue, I think. This is really the nature of the accusations, isn't it? One of the main things we're talking about in terms of transactionalism is the idea is that America will hand over the lives of its young men and women. And in exchange, what do we get? When you're talking about the lives of our citizens, the lives of our young people who join the military in particular, well, we ought to get something back for that. It better be worth it.

Not because America's a great nation and we've always done this since World War II, but rather, you know, it needs to be clearly in America's interest and we need to get something from it. Otherwise, you're just using our young people as really a dispensable bargaining chip. Too often it seems like the elites on both coasts are quite willing to do this. But Mr. Trump is rightfully saying, look, if you want our support, well, you're going to have to do everything you possibly can to defend yourself before you expect us to sacrifice our own people for that.

And that's a pretty basic sort of dynamic or equation. And the fact that Mr. Trump raises this, he gets all sorts of attacks and he's accused of what have you, but he's just properly look at doing a cost benefit analysis as any businessman would, and really as any leader of the United States would. What is America getting out of these things that we do? And take another example, Afghanistan. We're there 20 years.

Blew at least a trillion dollars, maybe two trillion. And what was that for? What exactly did America give? And what did we get in return? And I would say we gave an awful lot more than we got. And he's pointed this out, and he's been attacked for it. But what I'm getting at is being called transactional shouldn't be an insult, in fact.

It actually should be a pretty good thing. When it's young people, when it's America paying the bill, you want to get something useful in return. One of the accusations that I keep hearing, frankly, is this idea of being too friendly with dictators. How do you view that? Being friendly with dictators, that's another insult throw in Mr. Trump's way. But when you think about it, and let's take Putin, for example, of Russia. You hear all the time, Mr. Trump is Putin's stooge. He's a recruited asset of the Russians.

Well, let's think about it. All the presidents that were involved in Ukraine, you had Bush, Obama, Biden. Only one of them gave the Ukrainians the ability to actually kill Russians. It was Mr. Trump who gave lethal weapons to the Ukrainians, particularly Javelin missiles. And as a result, Putin's initial assault on Ukraine in 2022 was blunted with the help of these weapons, and in the war since then, the Russians have suffered well over half a million casualties, many of those dead. So that's not what you would call an asset

behaving in a particular way. So that's a funny sort of, Putin isn't getting his value for money, I would say, if this is what Mr. Trump has done to him. But also there's just the nature of negotiations, particularly state-to-state relations, and from leader to leader. Mr. Trump is just recognizing the reality of negotiations.

And the other presidents have done the exact same thing. Obama was very friendly, superficially at least, towards Mr. Putin. George Bush said that he looked into Putin's eyes and he could see his soul, that it was somebody you could deal with. So this is, as I said, it's nothing unusual. If you want to get a deal done, you have to sort of make some concessions in how you refer to people, and that's all. So whenever he's called that, you really have to question the people raising those allegations. I was at an event yesterday with the leadership of the House Select Committee on the CCP, Chairman Mullenar and ranking member Krishnamurti. And Krishnamurti said something interesting, which caught my attention.

He started talking about the concept of comprehensive national power, which I don't hear a lot of politicians talking about often. And I often reference this as an explanation as to why the Chinese regime never goes for win-win. It's part of their ideological view, how they view themselves versus others. I want to comment on that. Is it possible to actually make a good faith deal with the Chinese regime? No. There's really no empirical evidence to suggest you can. I say go back to the founding of that regime, or take more modern times, and it's just not possible.

It's not the nature of the Chinese Communist Party. There's a Chinese expression that translates as, you die, I live. And in some respects it is peasant thinking. But it does reflect very much the Chinese Communist Party's view of things, is that it sees this very much as a zero-sum game, as a word some might use. And whatever China can get, it will take. And it will not make concessions, because it does very much view this as a fight to the finish.

And Xi has said this, if you actually read the translations of his speeches, both spoken and written, he's clearly saying that the Chinese system cannot survive if the American system survives. One of them's got to go. And he has referred to the United States, the U.S. system, particularly these ideas of freedom and human rights and the things we hold dear. He refers to these as the enemy, as something that must be destroyed. As I said, where's the evidence that you can cut a deal with the Chinese that works? They always use the word win-win, but it does mean that the Chinese win twice. I say there's just no evidence that this can happen, but there's still plenty of people

on our side who think there is some sort of accommodation we can reach, sort of a live and let live. These days it's referred to again as detente, like was said with the Russians. The idea being, well, we don't like each other, but we just have to reach an agreement where we can get along. And it's not ideal, but it's the best we can do. But it helps if the other side is willing to do that and the Chinese are not willing to do that.

Everything they do is designed to take down the United States, to destroy the free countries and to weaken them. And you just cannot deal with a regime like that. And this is a unique regime that doesn't exist anywhere else on Earth. And we have to recognize this at some point, that chasing a deal is a fool's errand at best. And while we're chasing it, they're attacking us, weakening us, and putting themselves in a position where we may find ourselves unable to respond when the

time comes. Very briefly, can you just explain this concept of comprehensive national power and how the Chinese regime uses it? Well, it's almost a way of amassing, accumulating every possible chip, everything of value on earth, so that you control it. And the way the Chinese would look at it is if they have something, the other side has less. And so their comprehensive national power is strengthening. It could be buying lithium mines in Africa.

Well, if you get control of these, you've deprived the other side of it. You've hurt him. It could be fentanyl. You know, if you've killed 70,000 Americans in one year and you've made a ton of money from this, well, your comprehensive national power has gone up because he has 70,000 fewer people, many of those of military age, and you've suffered no punishment at all. So this, from a Chinese perspective, is definitely a win-win for China.

And it really applies in every area. It's not just for military things. It could be the number of PhDs that China produces, the number of STEM graduates they have, and seeing the dumbing down of the United States. If you see the U.S., they're in chaos, like we saw during the riots in 2020. The Chinese don't just look at this with disinterested spectators, but they see, hmm, very good. They're weaker, we're stronger.

And it very much is the idea is to drive down your opponent. It's not a competition But rather it is to build yourself up by driving the other side down It's not to have a fair competition and like two rental cars come competing against each other Another example take the Pacific Island cut nations You know the Chinese have insinuated themselves into the Pacific Islands have immense influence now and that means that America has less America has been beaten down Latin America you look at these graphics that are easy to find

Compared to 20 years ago. You have see it's all blue because this is where America was the Say the main trading partner now. It's almost all red. Once again, the Chinese look at this not as a fair fight, but rather as setting the other guy up for failure. And the same thing applies to Africa and many other parts of the world. So this is how the Chinese perceive things. It is to build themselves up by weakening the other guy, by taking everything you possibly can. There's no idea of reciprocity at all, or even any sort of moderation. It's no idea of reciprocity at all or even any sort of moderation. It's a bit like a fat man at the buffet, who he's already fooled, but he sees this new tray of eclairs coming and he's got to have them all for himself

and he grabs them. And that's really the nature of the Chinese communist regimes. Yet President Trump certainly views himself as the consummate dealmaker and has shown himself to be an effective dealmaker in the past. And I can't help but think back to the tariff negotiations that happened back under Trump 45 in his first presidency. What it was notable to me was that it seemed like the first time that I was aware of where

the Chinese regime was actually leveraged into a position it didn't want to be in. Is that a kind of negotiation? I mean, how do you view that? Maybe there is a deal to be had, it just needs to be done that way. That is the only way. It's not sort of a normal negotiation where both sides compromise. Neither side leaves quite happy. But rather, it has to be one where

you have an overwhelming advantage, and you take it. And there's nothing to be gained from being sort of concessionary by saying, well, yeah, I've got four aces, but I don't want to hurt the other guy. I don't want to embarrass him. Believe me, they won't do it to us. But you have to do that when dealing with a regime like the PRC. And then as importantly, you have to be very careful about making sure the deal is enforced. And if it isn't enforced, well, you pretty much just wasted your time and if you

allow the other side to wriggle off the hook, well why did you even bother? But it has to be done ruthlessly if you're going to have any success at all. And Mr. Trump was dealing with the Chinese, I think it may have taken him a little while to get his feet on this. And that's not unusual. You know, suddenly you become president and then, you know, what do you do? That's not an easy job to have. But his was the first administration to actually look at the Chinese as the enemy which they

declare they are. And they actually did use economic pressure against the PRC instead of every other administration which said, well, we've just got to accommodate them and they'll gradually liberalize as they get more prosperous. But Mr. Trump realized that wasn't the case, and his trade representative Robert Lighthizer was very good on this. And they did do a lot of good things to try and use our economic advantage to get the Chinese to behave a certain way. It may have been a lost cause no matter what they

did, but they did at least try. And you can see from the Chinese response, the Chinese communist response, that they didn't like it at all. You can always tell by how much they scream how good whatever it is you're doing is. by how much they scream, how good, good, whatever it is you're doing is. And the more they scream, the more you should do of it. But they didn't like it. But ultimately as COVID came along and they were able to kind of get away from it. So a couple other examples would be the number of the cases of Chinese electronic and telecom companies, ZTE and of Chinese electronic and telecom companies, ZTE and Huawei, that the US had a very good position to play. In wrestling terms, they had them on the mat,

just about pinned, and yet for some reason, they let them off. And I don't know what the thinking was. It could have been a lot of pressure from US lobbyists, from the donor class, or it could just have been a mistaken belief that China would appreciate the favor. They never do. Those were negotiations which could have been done better, but

those were hopefully lessons learned. And back to this Mr. Trump's ability as a dealmaker. In my lifetime, I think the most impressive deal that I've seen cut at a state-to-state level is the Abraham Accords between Israel and UAE and also Bahrain, for starters. And nobody saw that coming. Nobody in all the experts, the chattering classes, would have said this is impossible. And he pulled that off. So I'm always willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this and just see what he can come up with.

There's this no limits partnership that was announced between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin and very shortly afterwards Russia invaded Ukraine. How valuable would it be to America in your view for the US to work hard at breaking that particular alliance? I think it'd be very useful if we could pull it off. It won't be easy. If you look at what Russia has done to Ukraine, this is just horrific. And I think it has really ruined Russia's reputation for the next generation. How do you get over this? Such things can be done, but it does take time. But if you could split the Russians from the Chinese, that would be a good thing, as it is now. Despite there being no great love between just the Slavs and the Chinese, between the

Russians and the Chinese, their strategic interests align, particularly at the leader-to-leader level. And that has allowed Putin to prosecute this war in Ukraine as he has without Chinese support and also China allowing North Korea to provide support, without China providing or giving the go ahead and supporting Iran, it would have been very hard for Putin to have managed to do as well in Ukraine as he has. So if you could split that, then it would make it harder for the Russians without the support from China. But also it wouldn't help the Chinese to have the Russians distance themselves.

Because once again, there's sort of a strength or a benefit in numbers. Even if you don't really like each other all that much at a fundamental level. When you've got these two really big nations that are cooperating and you see the results of it on the battlefield in Ukraine, for example, that there's a benefit to trying to split that. If we could do that, you never know. I say one really never knows, so if they can pull that off, it would be akin to the Abraham Accords and then some. Now that's how hard it would be. And you hear it a lot, this idea that, well, there's nothing to worry about

because the Russians and the Chinese don't like each other. Well, they like each other enough to be able to cause an awful lot of trouble like they have. And China has been very happy to cooperate with the Russians to distract the Americans, the Europeans, make them focus on Ukraine rather than on China itself and how it is building up to throw its weight and throw its weight around more in the region. But also it's got global, if not outer space, objectives.

And this is probably one of the most difficult diplomatic foreign policy challenges I think that anyone has ever faced in modern times. There's this other part of the equation, which is the nuclear dimension. And I've been hearing that there's interest in stopping the nuclear proliferation, especially with China increasing its numbers of missiles at such a rapid pace at the moment. But you're telling me it's almost impossible to negotiate, but that almost seems like this is a negotiation that has to be had.

The Russians actually appear more normal than the Chinese when it comes to this kind of deal. You could possibly at least cut a deal with the Russians and they have done it in the past and they haven't cheated too much, too quickly at least, eventually they do. But it's more or less a regular deal. But with the Chinese, they will only follow an agreement as long, at least superficially, until they've been able to build up their position and weaken yours and put you in a position where you're not able to do anything about it. and we can yours, and put you in a position where you're not able to do anything about it.

It's a fait accompli. And so yes, we had this deal, but who cares? And they reach a point at which they can just tell you, what are you gonna do about it? And that is what will happen if you try to reach an agreement limiting nuclear weapons. When it comes to the PRC, your only hope is to deal with them from a position

of overwhelming strength. That has to be military strength. But also, there's this economic, financial component to it, and a psychological component to it, where you actually understand the danger that they pose, and you brace yourself, brace your population for a fight that is coming, or certainly having to deal with, say, a country that calls us the main enemy and has for decades,

and marshal all your resources for this. And there is no substitute for that, unfortunately. This is pretty much its problem the ancient Greeks would have known about very well. It's really human nature on display. And it's nothing new. It's just we're the ones living through it. Just very briefly, the receipts on China viewing America

as the main enemy. Can you just very briefly summarize how we know that so clearly. They use that language. The people who follow those Chinese statements and as I said if you go back and read some of Xi Jinping's speeches say starting in 2012-13 and there's one I think called document 9 which is a good one to start with and you find it on the internet. You read this and say, how on earth could anybody have ever thought there was a deal we could cut with the CCP?

They're very clear about what they think, what they intend to do, but we just choose not to believe it. And I would note that another example is right after Tiananmen Square in 1989, when the Chinese massacred some thousands of their own people who really were protesting in favor of honest government mostly, the orders went out to the People's Liberation Army to be able to defeat a country that has aircraft carriers. Well, that's us.

And this is at the same time that America is, you know, right after Tiananmen Square, the Bush administration just encouraged U.S. companies to go all in, into China. My company, Motorola, was one of those, was the anchor tenant, in fact, for that push into China. And basically they just committed suicide in China. But America was pushing businesses into China at the same time the Chinese were telling their army, their military, be able to defeat a country

with aircraft carriers. And they met the Americans. And they've been more explicit about that. I always recommend that people take a week and read the English language, the Chinese media, the English language versions of it and the venom that comes out of that directed at the United States, that'll give you a pretty good sense of what our prospects are for really establishing a decent relationship with the

Chinese communist. I just don't think it's possible. And after 40 years of empirical evidence that one might be hard pressed to reach any other conclusion, unless you're on somebody's payroll. Basically, we're talking about there has to be palpable strategic deterrence. That's the only way. That's kind of what you're telling me. Is that right? Yes. I don't know any other way to do it. And this is Yes, I don't know any other way to do it. And this is a, the Chinese regime is unique now on earth, but we've dealt with, other people have dealt with these kind of very powerful, aggressive, assertive national totalitarian and genocidal regimes. They've been around before and there's no other way to deal with them unless you're willing to submit.

Try as we have, as ill-advised as those efforts were. It's hard to imagine why anyone would think that we would be able to work out something with the PRC. But it does have to be from a position of strength if you're going to have any success. And that means bring your allies in it as well. It's not just the United States, but the other free nations, you know,

they have got to carry their weight. And Mr. Trump has been right about this. And other presidents have actually said it, but they haven't said it as loudly, nor have they applied real pressure. So you find that, particularly the Europeans have essentially told us to get lost in the past and then felt like Mr. Trump comes along and says, you shouldn't have said that.

And they squeal. But he's right in this case. But us, the free nations combined, we can handle it. We can take care of ourselves. But you do have to have this combination. The Chinese regime, you could argue, is expert at what's called unrestricted warfare or asymmetrical hybrid warfare. Sometimes it's described as that. In the U.S., you argue that we have a tool of this nature that is the kryptonite for the Chinese regime. So tell me about this. What it is, it's a weapon that the Chinese leadership has created by itself. And basically

it's the wealth which Xi Jinping and the top dogs in the Chinese Communist Party have amassed both in China, but particularly overseas. You know, the overseas real estate, the bank accounts, the businesses, which they and their relatives own, their relatives with green cards who live in the countries they call their main enemy and establish setting up bolt holes for themselves. But this is immense wealth. And the Chinese give some hints now and then about how much wealth has been moved out of the country, and it is in the many trillions of dollars. But as I said, it's the top people in the Chinese Communist Party who have really done well for themselves. And keep in mind that

in China, by their own admission, there's about 600 million people who live on $5 a day, and there's a lot of people who live on a lot less of that. So how are they going to feel if the evidence of this massive theft by the top leadership is exposed? If, for example, America and, say, the Japanese and the free nations puts economic sanctions on China, and they make things life difficult, well, in communist regimes, and like the Chinese Communist Party, they're

glad to have the regular citizens absorb that punishment. Well, they do very well themselves and they'll always have enough food and a nice place to live. So they're glad to sort of diffuse the pressure and the pain. But when the pressure is in fact exposing their wealth, that makes it very personal to them. And that could be a matter of life and death, either lose their position or worse because of popular unrest, popular anger over this, but even within that regime there's all sorts of factionalism and infighting. Well, if you can use somebody's corruption, somebody's wealth and relatives overseas

to expose it and bring them down, that is the one thing, they say, that really scares them. And we've seen some evidence in the past of just how much it does frighten them. Well, and we're actually supposed to be doing it, like cataloging this. I mean, the US government actually supposed to be doing it, like cataloging this. The U.S. government is supposed to be developing a detailed report on this. Well, they're supposed to, but apparently in the United States, when Congress passes

a law, compliance is voluntary, it seems. And what I'm talking about is a law which Congress passed in late 2022, requiring the intelligence community and the Secretary of State to produce an unclassified report on the wealth of the Chinese Communist Party's leadership. They had to do it within a year, so now they're well over, it's late, it hasn't come out, they're well over a year late.

So the requirement is there, and one asks, it's late, it hasn't come out, they're well over a year late. So the requirement is there and one asks, well, where is it? It hasn't come. Now, one of the ironies is that the senator who pushed this piece of legislation, the most was Senator Marco Rubio, who's now the Secretary of State. So one hopes that we will see this report.

And then of course course there is the question of actually doing something with it. That's the important thing is not to just produce it and hope somebody notices it somewhere. But when you have the information, then you have to put it in front of the right people for consideration. And I would suggest the right people are the 1.4 billion Chinese, the vast majority of whom don't have overseas bank accounts, real estate, and the like. And that will be the real test. And I would point to around 2013 or so, Bloomberg actually produced an excellent report on some

of this wealth and included the wealth of some of Xi Jinping's relatives. And I have never seen the Chinese Communist Party leaders respond the way they did. They were furious and for good reason. And Bloomberg basically rolled over. But the point was made. And it showed the vulnerability that is there to be really to be exposed and to be used as a tool. Grant, I can't help but remember right around that time, there was another series of reports that was done by the New York Times. This was as the Hu Jintao regime was making way for the Xi Jinping regime, but Xi had already amassed his power. This is thinking way back a good number of years, but they won a Pulitzer for this. They exposed the wealth of Wen

Jabao, and who curiously was, frankly, probably the only reformer of the bunch. And I didn't hear a lot as many protests about that particular exposure. That's very interesting. Well, I think one conclusion to draw from that, our inference, is that the Chinese leadership didn't mind having that exposed so much because it allowed them to get rid of a troublesome person. But it shows how within those circles that there is this backstabbing and sort of, what you call it, fighting that makes the exposure of wealth extremely dangerous for them. Yes, they might have been able to direct it in one direction in that case, but that can

get out of control very quickly. And as I recall, I don't believe that they were delighted to have this exposed, but they were very sensitive that they could make the case that, well, he's the only guy. So this report needs to be equal opportunity. Oh, it needs to be equal opportunity. Oh, it has to be. And there's just so much to work with on it. It is shooting fish in a barrel.

Getting the information is not that hard. Any competent financial researcher could do it. You know, we spend $100 billion on intelligence each year. You think they should have some ability. U.S. Treasury is good at it when they put their minds to it. It's not hard to get the information. But then getting it out is always the, that's trickier, but it's not at all hard.

One idea that I've proposed is that to make it sort of a weekly show. You can put it out on Voice of America or Radio Free Asia or some platform that's accessible. And so you put it out every Friday afternoon. And today it's going to be this guy. Here's pictures of his overseas homes. Here's his bank accounts. He's got this much money, et cetera, et cetera.

And you could get all sorts of people interested, particularly in China, in dialing in to see who's it going to be this week. That would make a lot of people pretty darn nervous. This is just one example of how you could put the information out in a fun way. Something I've been discussing recently with a number of others is that it's actually not that difficult to poke quite sizable holes in this censorship firewall that the Chinese regime has erected around the internet in China. It's just a function of money, basically. There's very, very good tools that we use, in fact, to get information to

the Chinese people. And there's a great interest too. It's just that when you're kind of behind it, you don't know what's out on the other side if you're not overly sophisticated. Probably most people, and I say almost everyone on Earth, North Korea might be a slight exception. but they want to be treated fairly and they want to make up their own minds. They want to have information and the one thing they really hate is corruption by

the people who are supposed to be ruling them and that is human nature on display. And getting it out to them is not, I don't think it's that hard of a technical challenge. Now even in the days of the Soviet Union when it was tricky, that you could get information all over the place. And the Russian people, they had a sense of what was going on. So I don't think this is that hard to do. You just have to want to do it. I'm sure the U.S.-China Business Council would warn against it because it might cut off some of their cash flow. But it's really an opportunity that exists and just has to

be taken advantage of. It's not all that complicated. So as we finish up, very briefly, there's been a lot of discussion about Voice of America and associated agencies. Carrie Lake has been on the show talking about it. She advocates for the kind of celebration of America, but warts and all, also sharing the realities, using it as a vehicle for broadcasting that into the world. Folks like Elon Musk have suggested it should

just be shut down. There's a need for such a thing. Where do you land on this? I'm a big supporter of Voice of America and the radios. When done right, that's the key thing, when done right. And I say I'm a huge supporter of that. I don't at all recommend shutting them down. I think they've lost their way in recent years,

but I think you's right that it's a wonderful way to get our message out. And I think you do have to sell it, you know, what we have to offer. So, and I grew up in one of these sort of old enough that I grew up with, Voice of America. We had a neighbor up the street who was a VOA reporter. And, you know, so I've been a big believer in it. And, you know, if you've been around the world, been to the farther reaches of it, you realize just how much people appreciate America,

but also the ability to even just turn tune in a shortwave radio or whatever it is these days. And they welcome, you know welcome hearing from the United States. So I think it should be kept, but I think it needs to be, as I say, fixed and done right. Well, what does that mean very briefly, done right? What is the right way and what are the principles? Well, they have to remember their main message and

mission is to present the United States and all that is good about the United States. But as you said, it doesn't ignore the problems, but people want to turn into a place that they can get good, accurate information and be pretty sure that it's not manipulated. And they don't want to hear Americans complaining about themselves and you know, saying how awful they are when, goodness, nine-tenths of the world would be glad to have a green card in the United States. But like it used to be, it was a source of honest information that informed about the United States. And the people who work there have to realize that that is their mission.

It's not to, how do you call it, sort of be cynical critics of the United States as if somebody will appreciate that. But you are selling the United States and presenting it. And I remember, that's just one last anecdote, that in Afghanistan back in the Charlie Wilson era there was one Afghan who was from the Shia population, and he was a very good commander, and he was a special guy. And he was very pro-American, and he would take on these pro-Iranian people in his group and say, look, I know these people. And they're not what you say they are.

The reason why he did that, and what felt that way, is because as a young man in Kabul, he would go to the US information agency office or building, and they were nice to him. They would like show him how to look things up and how to read about America. And he remembered that. That made a big difference. And it's USIA, which is not Voice of America, but it's the same sort of, what do you call it, public... The precursor.

It's like, well, it's propaganda, but the good sense of the word, which is really, originally propaganda was a good word, and it means to explain yourself. And he was the best friend America had in that environment that, where we didn't have, where we had some real enemies. He was, he later was shot and died on the way out to Pakistan. But he was a good example of what we can do with these tools like Voice of America, USIA, etc. But you do have to make an effort to get out there where people can either see you or hear you. Grant, it's been such a pleasure speaking with you again. A final thought as we finish? Well, it's interesting how in the last month or so,

there's almost been a mental change in the United States. Of course, in some places, hair has gone alight. But I think there's a sense of mental freedom, the freedom to think how we want, for good or bad. However, and this is almost a relief, I think, that a lot of people feel, which once again, I think it opens up the opportunities for what the U.S. can do, for what it can be,

instead of a sense that we're an awful country, and the best we can do is manage our decline. But rather it's a nice sort of change, I must say, that I've noticed. And we do have opportunities to defend and freedom, defend ourselves and our friends, and also to promote these ideas that have made America what it is and the reason why we have an illegal immigration problem and our opponents do not. So we've got some

opportunities ahead and we'll see how it plays out. And just very briefly for the lawmakers that might be watching this show, this legislation that we discussed? Sure. It's the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023, Section 6501. It's right there. It's simply written, but elegantly written. You do that and there will be a lot of sleepless nights in Xiongnanhai where the CCP's top dogs hang out. Well, Grant Nushum, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.

Well, thank you. I always appreciate the opportunity. Thank you all for joining Colonel Grant Nushum and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.