Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Iran Disaster Is Reshaping the World (w/ Robert Kagan) | Bulwark on Sunday

Episode Date: September 20, 2026

Bill Kristol talks with Robert Kagan about how Trump’s Iran war is accelerating America’s retreat from the world, leaving allies to fend for themselves while China and Russia gain room to maneuver. They also discuss Trump’s unfinished ambitions in Greenland, Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington, and Kagan’s warning that the breakdown of the postwar order could move much faster than Washington is prepared for.

Hi, Bill Crystal here. Welcome to Bullwork on Sunday and welcome to Bob Kagan. Thank you for joining us again, Bob. My pleasure, thanks. Bob is, of course, a foreign policy scholar, also of America. Excellent, first two volumes of a multi-volume work on the history of U.S. foreign policy, but an excellent recent book on anti-liberalism in America, which has really been pressure. That was before this Trump's second term, right? Yeah, no, it was, it was, came out in 24. for spring, basically. Right, right. Very, yes, that anti-liberism is, that was, that agenda is picked up in Trump's second term, I think one could say, right?

Yeah, I think people are starting to realize it. I mean, there's always been this arguing about whether what's mostly going on is economic, and I have no doubt that economic issues are part of it, but I really do think that at the core, the Trump movement is white supremacy, and every day we see new indications of that, including in the behavior of Republican politicians

all across the country now, you know, the Beau French in Texas and others are just very honest and frank about their, the fundamental racist bigotry of their position. No, it has been extraordinary. And the acceleration of it, including what it doesn't seem to be working very well politically and they're dropping in the polls is pretty astonishing. Let's come back to that at the end because you've written many pieces for the Atlantic and elsewhere in the last six months on the, well, focusing on the war on Iran, but more broadly on something

you've been focusing on for a couple of years, which is the general collapse of the U.S.-led world order under Trump's prompting, to say at least, or more than prompting, just his intention, I suppose, and certainly the result of his actions. But the war in Iran, I think you've argued right from the beginning, was not going to end up well and was going to accelerate this process underway. So you were ahead of the curve, I think, in seeing what might happen and also Iran's unwillingness to just accept the kind of, you know, easy out at the end. Anyway, I don't want to put words in your about. So where do we stand on Iran? What are what its implications for the Middle East? What are its water applications.

Well, I still think we're in the sort of slow motion American retreat. There's a lot of attempts to dress things up in such a way that are, oh, Iran's really in trouble. I mean, there are think tanks out there in Washington who just spend their whole lives talking about how the Iranians are just about to crack. But it's pretty evident that, you know, Trump, first of all, does not want to return to military action. I'm not sure that means he might not at some point, but he certainly is desperate not

to now. And most prominently, recently, when the Saudis asked for some assistance against the attacks of the very serious attacks that they're facing from the Houthis, Trump said no. And I think the signal to the region, which they'd already, I think, gotten over the course of the war was that not only is America not there to protect them, but the United States is perfectly willing to see them blown up by all kinds of different forces and is just, desperate to stay out. And I just think that's the, you know, yet another sign of how much we are diminished and withdrawing from the region. How important, I mean, the war has been an important sign, but also accelerator of what was already happening, do you think? It's had more of an effect that I expected, I guess. Well, I mean, since Trump has been on a mission to undo the American order since he began, and that has mostly included, you know, turning away from allies, making a

to Europeans that he won't defend them, treating allies like essentially vassals who owe him payment, et cetera. So he was already driving the world, and particularly our allies, into making new arrangements for their own security and their economic well-being. And we see signs of that all over the place. But there's something about the Iran war, which not only demonstrates America's uninterest in maintaining any kind of world order, as we did for 80 years, but maybe even in capacity. And when you get to that level, that begins to raise questions for everybody. It's not just that the Gulf states now have to, I think, ultimately make a deal with Iran because what choice do they have? There's no other big player to protect them other than the United

States. But, you know, we're also going to see, you know, if you're an Asian country like Japan and Korea, who are totally dependent on access to the Gulf in order to get your energy supplies and the United States is now no longer able to guarantee that for you. That means you have to make you South Korea and Japan also have to make choices about not only whether the United States is a reliable ally, but how are you going to guarantee, you know, your national well-being, your access to energy, your security, et cetera. And I think that what we're going to see is every country increasingly being, you know, looking for some degree of self-sufficiency. It's sort of every man for himself in this in this world.

And what does that world look like? I think the closest thing is you should go back to before 1945 and look at the world for 150 years before that. It's a genuine multipolar world in which there's no particular order. There are no particular institutions that everybody works together in. Everybody is fundamentally dependent on themselves for security, which means everybody's armed to the teeth, ready to go to war at a moment's notice. I mean, that is the norm in history. and it certainly was the norm evolving until the United States developed the world order after World War II. So I think what you're going to see is the rise of not just Russia and China, but multiple great powers.

Germany, Japan will sort of return to their past status as great powers. And with all the consequent difficulties that that raises in their own regions, we're already seeing Europeans getting nervous about the German military buildup, especially with the AFD as the second largest and heading toward maybe the largest party in Germany. You're going to see Japan moving in that direction, which is going to ennerve its regional partners. Japan-Korean relations have always been complicated, and they're not the only ones. And so it's just a general breakdown. And I think the likelihood is toward increasing probability of great power conflict, as we did have in the 19th and early 20th century.

And I suppose medium power conflict, which can then drag in the greater powers. I mean, you talk a lot about Iran's new dominance really in the Middle East. Right. I mean, you know, we not people don't talk about Iran when they talk about medium powers, but there is this whole now notion of sort of medium power solidarity where, you know, the medium powers like the Europeans and Canadians and East Asians get together and they're all sort of like trying to deal with the United States and China and Russia. But who says that they can deal with each other? You know, that's not the history of Europe.

The history of Europe is one of constant division. The United States basically solved the problem of Europe by entering and staying after World War II. Without the United States in Europe, it was in a constant state of, you know, disorganization and conflict and what have you. And I don't see a lot of sign that Europe is really, I hate to say this because I find, you know, if you care about liberalism, Europe right now is probably the last. best hope, but I don't find Europe really rising to the occasion nearly as much as they need to. There's as much division in Europe as there is unity and capability is lagging and the will to create new capability is lagging. And the Europeans are basically in the business of appeasing the new predatory power of the United States. And it's just, I just think they're very,

They're just a very weak, unfortunately, in a position when we need them to be strong, actually. But it's hard, to be fair to them, right? They're not just used to the old order, but also we're strong and we're a bully that's also feckless. And at times, I mean, it's one thing to be a bully. It's the other thing to be a weak bully, right? I feel like it's the worst of all worlds. If you're a strong bully, you do distasteful things, but people are a little bit wary of you

and you can maintain a kind of order for a while, right? just out of kind of, don't want to mess with those guys. But I feel like that's where Iran seems to have had a huge effect, that we look like both overreaching and uncaring, obviously, and bully contemptuous above all of our allies or ex-allies, and not actually good at accomplishing anything either. I mean, it just does seem like a recipe for disaster. Right.

I mean, the grand bargain, basically, from 1945 on, was that the United States would be the most powerful country in the world. You could rely on it to protect your, security if you were an ally. And you could also rely on it not to exploit its superior power over you as an ally to, you know, take your money or whatever. And now both ends of that bargain are exploded. The United States now does not look like a reliable security guarantor, both by design and also by accident, as the case of Iran. And also all these countries can account on the United States attempting to exploit them at the first opportunity. And that's the thing

about being an ally of the United States, because as you suggest, the system was set up in such a way that we would, the United States would be stronger than its allies. We didn't, you know, otherwise it wouldn't have been that kind of system. But what that means is that whereas the United States cannot impose its will on even a country like Iran, much less China or Russia, it can impose its will on its poor allies who put themselves in a position of utter dependency like this. But I also think I do sympathize with the Europeans, but I also think they have been conducting themselves on the basis of a false assumption about how to deal with Donald Trump. That's really, and I know we were going to get into this. Go right into that. Go right into that. Because talk

about that. The agreement is a pretty good example of that. You know, they, the Europeans, led by Mark Routos, and NATO Secretary General just believed that if they can cajole Trump along and flatter his ego and try to give him what he claims he wants, that they can buy time or they can push him off and maybe not suffer the worst consequences. But they don't realize who they're dealing with. This is not your normal American president. What you're dealing with is a predator.

And you know the rules are different with predators. And just on this Greenland thing, you know, now they have a deal. Okay, I don't know what kind of the deal it is. We'll find out. This deal was engineered at the point of a gun. You know, this negotiation began with Trump making it clear that he was willing to use force to take Greenland. So here now, Denmark has gotten a deal. It didn't give Trump everything you wanted.

But it's not over. That's the point that I think people never understand with Trump, you know, just because you have whatever this deal is doesn't mean that his ambition to take over Greenland has in any way diminished. include and also the people who stand to benefit financially from taking over Greenland. I mean, Ann Applebaum in the Atlantic and others have pointed out the degree to which some of these big, rich guys like Ken Griffin and others have got investments that they're hoping will bear fruit in Greenland, you know, for minerals and the rare earth and who knows what else may be in Greenland. And that is also driving at. I mean, this is the caricature of American imperialism. And if you know anything about American imperialism, you know that some of these acquisitions did occur by stages. You know, America didn't take Hawaii right away.

First, there was a revolution, and then there was an annexation. And, you know, and I would say this agreement is more likely to be setting the predicate for further encroachment by the United States than it is the end of American encroachment. And Trump talked about how he's going to massively increase the American. American military presence. We already know that he's ordered a CIA, you know, operation in Greenland. And as we say, there's all this money, all these guys who want to make money in Greenland. I just think that it's foolish to think that this is over. Yeah, I mean, I guess the conventional argument is, you know, they kind of bottom off with a kind of token. I mean, meaningless. It already was a NATO partner. There's no resistance to us having

more military bases there if we want them, et cetera. And so he was kind of, it's a nothing, it really doesn't mean much, and maybe it just pacifies Trump. I guess that does get to the question of whether he can be pacified or whether it just feeds the appetite, and a lot of that, I guess we'll have to see. Well, if you were dealing with Vladimir Putin, and Vladimir Putin threatened to invade a country, and instead of invading the country, he got a deal with the country that would sort of acknowledge his greater right to have even more military presence.

And I don't think we would regard that as a great step of progress. Again, it's about who are you dealing with here? If you were dealing with your average American president, a deal would be a deal. In the case of Trump, a deal is meaningless. And look at the way he's behaving in Venezuela. This is just straight expropriation of another nation's wealth for the benefit of the United States.

And without any pretense of we're helping the Venezuelan people, maybe it's going to be good for them. There's not a discussion about that at all. And so we know that this administration is all about making money, stealing money from others, imposing tariffs that grab money from others, and seizing their oil in that case. But in Greenland, we're going to be well behaved. I just don't, I don't find that to be plausible. No, that's true. I guess they tried to buy time. Might be their argument that, you know, for two years and trouble will be gone. So they just

need to kind of run out the clock here as much as they can. Right. And I don't think, and what they should know is that two years are in eternity and that a Trump in a, in a, in a second half of his second term. And we know, we're not talking about whether the Senate goes, whether the Senate House goes democratic. But even if they did, the one recourse of a president who has lost domestic power is to conduct foreign policy, because it's very little that in a minute that Congress can do, as we've seen, to stop him. And so it might unleash him to be even more aggressive in foreign policy, which is the one area we'll have pretty much unchecked power, even if the Democrats win.

No, that's such an important point, I think. And you've seen that, I think, to have it even the war itself, I'd say, in Iran, and then certainly his conduct of it and the rhetoric surrounding it is an example of this. As he's gone down on the polls, he hasn't done what a normal, if you will, president might do. He's said, ooh, I'd better pull back a bit, you know, quite the opposite. And this Venezuela operation and deal and expropriation of Venezuelan oil, there's not been a single conversation in public about what the policy is.

There's no consultation with Congress. Nobody's involved. We don't even know who, as Ann Appleton points out, that we don't even know where the money's going. We don't know who has the money. And so there's nothing to stop a president, certainly a president like Trump, from just doing whatever he wants in foreign policy

and it'll be very hard to keep up with him, even if the Democrats control Congress. Yeah, and Applebaum had a good conversation with Tim Miller. I think it was Thursday or Friday in which people should also watch for a nice bookend or supplement to this or conversation or vice versa, I guess Tim and Ann would say, but either way, they go together. Talk about China. I mean, you mentioned Asia quickly, but Xi Jinping is coming here on Tuesday, I think.

Well, maybe it was already here on New York. But anyway, he's coming to Washington on Tuesday. And big visits, state visits, Trump's going to Andrews to meet him, much hoo-ha. What do you make of all that? Well, I mean, we're used to the idea that Trump is going out of his way to roll out the red carpet for Xi and that he's going to want to make deals with Xi and everything. And what I'm sort of astonished by is how little there pressure there is on Trump, on Trump to actually be tough with China.

And this is particularly striking, given that their whole Republican Party is almost to the level of hysteria about the China threat, I would say, and certainly thought nothing of accusing Joe Biden of being Chinese communist simp. I think that Marco Rubio referred to Biden as Beijing, Biden, or something. like that at one point. And now here is she coming to Washington. We now know that the Chinese were engaged in the targeting of American soldiers, but providing targeting to the Iranians, which allowed the Iranians to fire on certain American installations and possibly killing Americans in the process. Will Trump raise that with the Chinese? Probably not.

the Chinese are clearly involved in helping Iran in many other ways. They're also moving into the region in the Middle East increasingly, meeting with foreign ministers and others in the region. But again, Trump will be rolling out the red carpet. I mean, if we actually had a Republican national security community worth its salt, you'd think that some of them might be continuing their drumbeat about the threat of China as Trump gets ready to meet with Xi, but you don't see that. So I expect, you know, Trump is going to try to have a good meeting.

And it's really up to Xi whether he wants to have a good meeting or not. I think he could go either way, quite honestly. He doesn't lose by having a good meeting. Everybody can see, I mean, this is the bottom line. Everybody can see what the power relationships are now. It's clear that China, for all its difficulties, and it has enormous difficulties, clearly in the ascendant in the world right now, because of the United States destroying its allies and also losing this war against Iran.

So China comes in as sort of sitting in the catbird seat right now. Yeah, I do think we, I mean, there's so much to cover here. Obviously, people lose track of things. But the degree to which we have Whitcomb and Kushner going to Russia and sucking up to Putin in a kind of unbelievable way, literally at the same time that we're here reading reports, not challenge of Russia helping Iran in all kinds of ways, including very precise as targeting, very similar to China. And then China, the same thing.

And was Trump who could have raised that with Xi? I doubt it. He'll get some, maybe, as you say, maybe she will decide the right thing to do it for his point of view now is give Trump some minor league deal on trade or on soybeans or something and, you know, give Trump a little victory to help Trump out a little because probably in G's interest to have Trump do a little better than he looks now in the elections in 26 weeks.

I don't know. But it could go the other way, right? But anyway, the degree to which, just that the rest of the world looks at this and thinks, are you kidding? I mean, the American president is not, it's not like Kissinger or something. Well, okay, we're nice in public, but tough in private or something. You know, there's none of that. I mean, we just won't stand up to Russia and China when they're pretty obviously,

well, they're certainly helping Iran. They don't even make any bones about that. And pretty obviously helping it not just in a sort of generic way, but in a pretty precise way in terms of the war they're fighting against the U.S. It's pretty astonishing. Yeah. I mean, you know, this gets to sort of, there's sort of mass confusion in Trump's foreign policy. But I think at the root of it, I do think people need to understand.

And something I think people don't understand is that Trump and his people do not regard Russia as an enemy. They do not regard Russia as an adversary of the United States. I'm not sure that Trump regards China as an adversary of the United States because you have to have a whole mental makeup, a whole worldview that leads you to that, including that you're a liberal and you don't like autocracies. There's no evidence that Trump has any negative views about autocracies, in fact, quite the contrary. And so everybody keeps being shocked. I read an article recently where doesn't Trump understand that if he betrays the Europeans,

it's going to lead to Russia going further in Europe and maybe attacking other countries, that assumes that Trump or Elbridge Colby or any of these people actually care about any of that. I think that we need to understand they don't care about Europe anymore. The Europeans need to understand that. So I just think we're not facing up to who this person really is. We're so locked in our traditional understanding of how American presidents behave in foreign policy.

I don't think we've really understood that this guy does not have any ideological predisposition against Russia and China. His number one concern is his own ego and his number two concern, maybe the same is making money. And that's why, as he now approaches the Russia-Ukraine issue, even though Congress just voted him all these extraordinary powers to sanction countries that are doing business with Russia, Kushner and Wittkoff, their first game gambit is clearly to offer business deals to Russia up front

before the Russians have even made any concessions on Ukraine. And that isn't about Ukraine. That's about the business deals, What they want are the business deals. So they don't care whether Russia makes a concession or not, it seems to me. It is depressing. And two more years, what about the Congress? I mean, how much can this be checked?

Does it, what's Trump's, what are Trump's incentives one way or the other? I mean, I'm struck what we say about Greenland, that we all do tend to assume, I find myself even occasionally doing this. Okay, maybe he sort of takes the wind, as it were. But he hasn't shown much in clarity to do that. I mean, he'll boast about a win, but, but yeah, but the bullying continues, right? Yeah, I just think, you know, again, you don't, he, the amazing thing about Trump is we always, there's all this taco and all this other kind of stuff about how he's constantly, you know,

going back and forth. The truth is he never fundamentally changes his mind about anything as far as I can tell, you know. I mean, he should have backed off of the tariffs a long time ago. The tariffs had been a disaster for him. He should have backed out of the Iran war months ago. and yet he didn't. And so there's just other things going on here having to do with his megalomania. I'm not going to be able to say it. His power-hungry ego, which seems to dominate everything.

And doesn't get better, as your point saying, even as he is losing as a consequence of pursuing that policy, he seems to have no capacity to adjust to moderate his position. And again, that's another thing the world needs to understand. understand that he doesn't play ball the way people normally play ball in these situations. So what about the next two years? I mean, what would you expect in, I don't know, with Russia, with China, Middle East? I mean, where do you think we are if we have this conversation a year from now, let's say? Well, it's hard to say, obviously, but, you know, I do think that what Russia, I'm surprised Putin waited this long to try to do what he's doing now, which is to

cut off European supplies to Ukraine. That has always been, it's always been remarkable to me that he permitted this much aid to be running across, you know, land borders, after all. They're not like they're invulnerable. I think that was partly because he wasn't sure what the American reaction would be, but as it becomes increasingly clear that the American reaction may be nothing, you know, when the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk recently warned about the fact that the Russians would start using drone attacks on Poland and other neighbors, Trump went off on a whole speech about how much he loves the Polish president because the Polish president is pro-Trump, and he got the Polish president elected, and so he's great.

And on the security question, Trump's answer was, don't worry, he's got it under control. So the Saudis have it under control. I don't need to do anything about helping them against the hoodies. The polls have everything under control. I don't need to do anything to help them against Russia. And so, you know, that's his position. And the world is going to respond to that. Yeah, what you respond to that.

Yeah, what that we've discussed a little bit, I mean, maybe not in the air, though, is once you get into these situations, too, it was an unfair question. I asked you in a way, why do you think the world look like at a year? You don't know what the one knows what things look like, right? Because you don't get, people respond, but they also respond in somewhat unpredictably. And the people respond to the responses unpredictably. And this is more like a 1911, 1914, metaphor, you know, model, if you want to call it that instead of maybe the 30. Well, 30s, too, I suppose. But I mean, you know, you just, one doesn't know, right, who's going to take, I mean, if you had said even three months ago, the hoodies are going to basically take a whole coast of Yemen, seem to have some ability now to control the Gulf on the other side. I mean, that was not, I don't think maybe people who knew a lot more than I did expected that, but I don't recall reading a lot about that ahead of time. Things start to just go in unpredictable ways, but most of them aren't going to be good. I guess that's the one thing one could say, right? Yeah, I mean, the way, the metaphor I think of is, you know, the, the,

The U.S. order put a lot of rocks on a lot of things over, you know, and now we're going to start lifting up those rocks and see what comes out from underneath them. Basically, the United States is so dominant for so long in the Middle East that if something like the hoodies start doing what they're doing, the United States comes in and quickly puts it down, as we did previously. But now we're in a situation of the United States is overextended militarily. It's been a disaster for our sort of capability.

the Iran war with its effect on our munitions, stocks, et cetera. And so now we don't want to get into a little fight with the Houthis. And so all these little fights, all these little things that have been sort of suppressed by the general assumption of American hegemony will now be, will now be arising to the surface. And that's going to be true in Europe too. I don't think in a healthy NATO environment, you're likely to get an AFD government in Germany. But if you have the United States clearly pulling out and countries having to fend for themselves, which means an increase in nationalism. And then who stands for nationalism in these countries?

And I think one of the great challenges of the liberal, whether they're center right or center left, liberal governments of Europe is to seize hold of nationalism themselves. And that is another way where I feel like the Mark Ruta approach is exactly a disaster from their point of view because it shows liberal Europe to be weak in the face of a bully like the United States. And it's very important, I think, that liberals in Europe look strong and seize the nationalist card for themselves because then it'll be a more civilized national. than we're likely to get out of the AFD.

But, you know, years of European Union, you know, ideology, transnational, and we don't believe in nationalism, which is good. That's what we wanted in Europe was to turn away from nationalism. But that those horses are out of the barn now, and that's why I think we need liberal Europe, whether it's the Mertes or the Macron's or whoever it is, really to start playing, we need to defend ourselves against all the foreign threats,

the United States. But it is interesting is something you've thought written about a lot. I mean, the extent which the liberal international order and the liberal domestic orders can strengthen each other

and depend on each other some degree, but also can undermine, one can undermine the other, right? And what's happening in foreign policy isn't unrelated to what's happening here at home and vice versa. Right, right. No, look, I mean,

there's a challenge to liberalism writ large, which, by the way, was the challenge in the 1930s also. I mean, liberalism was pretty much discredited in the 1930s by the economic crash and by the rise of the successful, apparently successful fascism.

Now, I suppose the good news is, I don't think anybody can claim that the fascism in America is being successful. And so, you know, there's hope, I suppose, that Americans will turn against this course that they've taken, but certainly the fact that they've taken this course has had enormous geopolitical ramifications because geopolitics is, of course,

about belief as well as about power. And so if the country that was the sort of bastion and power source of liberalism has itself turned away from liberalism, it's very liberalism is gonna be challenged anyway. It was already being challenged. I think periodically must face challenges like this, but for the number one liberal power in the world

to turn against liberalism, that's pretty devastating. Yeah, I suppose, we can close in a minute, but I suppose, yeah, and we thought, about it that way. In the 30s, the bad news in the 30s was that communism, what forgets this also seemed to be was ascendant. And the Soviet Union, people were telling themselves was a success. And there was all this accommodation to the Soviet future and then a combination to the fascist future on the other side. And sometimes the Horseshoe met, obviously the Nazi Soviet fact remains somehow a very emblematic thing and a very important thing at the end of the 30s.

So that's, we don't really have that, I guess one could say, right? We have a lot of fascistic regimes, but that seem mostly not very attractive, I think it's fair to say, and not very successful in some obvious way. China might be the half an exception there, I suppose. But the good news in the 30s was, well, I mean, it wasn't great. We stayed out of everything, and Britain had its own internal issues, obviously, until international. But still, there was a sense, I think he was, still we have a liberal country here in the U.S. I mean, this is sort of like having, I'm exaggerating with the 30s with, I don't know, you know, Father Kofflin as president or something insane. Right. It could have even have been Herbert Hoover or Robert Taft. They would have also pursued a different foreign policy. And I think the one thing that I think people don't really realize is that among other things, World War II was within America a victory of the liberal worldview over the conservative worldview. Because conservative worldview was opposed to entry into World War II for the most part, for all kinds of reasons, having their complicated attitude towards fascism and communism, et cetera.

And so the world that we created was the consequence of a liberal victory in the United States translating into a global liberal victory. And, you know, the other difference between now in the 1930s is that the 1930s, there was no really effective liberal world order in existence. And I think one of the reasons that you might be, feel like it's not a complete catastrophe now is that what we're seeing is the dissolution of. of an existing liberal world order. So there's still pieces of, it's still intact in a certain sense,

but it's now fraying and falling apart. And so that's why you can still, you know, we still have allies and we still, the allies still try to behave like allies, even though we're not behaving like an ally. And it's gonna be, as I think someone said, a lot of ruin in this system, just because for everybody who is alive to the United States,

there are alternatives to align with the United States are terrible, you know. And I think they are increasingly realizing that. But just because the alternative is terrible doesn't mean you can stick with the United States. And again, I know you mentioned this two years and everybody talks about two years. What's happened in the past two years? The world is fundamentally turned upside down in the last two years. Imagine two more years of it.

Things happen faster than we think. Once you've moved from a relatively stable order within which there is gradual change, and you might see gradual decline or gradual somehow cracking up in a certain way. But now we've moved to a period of radical change. And I think radical change will move much faster and lead to some things that are predictable and some things that are not predictable. And I would say maybe it's just finally, I do not think our political elites, from our policy elites either are ready for this. Is that my right about that?

I mean, I don't think so. I don't think so. I find in dealing with, when I talk to most people, there's a real, an understandable, it's a human desire to sort of the world should look roughly the way you understand it to look. And when it doesn't, that's very disconcerting. But I think there's a lot of clinging to old thoughts, including, by the way, what you increasingly see now is, sure, yeah, the United States order will probably be over, but it'll be, it'll be okay. We'll have a new multipolar world. Everything will be sort of, people can work things out, the middle powers, et cetera, et cetera. And I just think, I mean, if you read any history, you've heard that story many

times. You heard it before World War I. You heard it before World War I. I think much more likely is that we're heading much deeper into disaster going forward than that things are going to settle down. Hate to end on that notes. No, but it's important. And I mean, it is, I think the centrality of, well, maybe I will ask one, foreign policy to our domestic prospects. I mean, I suppose the question is, if things keep getting worse and worse, you could argue, well, people will realize, my God, we can't afford to keep going down this path, and we need to kind of go back to an understanding of the U.S. as the, you know, lynchpin of the liberal world order.

But, A, it's not easy to go back once you've spent four or in some ways eight or 12 years, kind of, you know, destroying that order, easier to destroy than to build up. And secondly, saying that you're going to do it is different from doing it. I don't know. I mean, you know, I guess that's a question, right? I mean, if, you know, you just don't know, I would say right now, the consensus for sort of restoring America's place in the world is, is very low, actually. I mean, people, as you say, they'll talk about how we wish we could get back to that. But if you think about what is required to do that, one thing that's going to be required is, I'm sorry, is a substantial increase in our military spending because we've already can see that even with what we're doing now, we have inadequate capability. Now, who's going to be in favor of that? Is the new Democratic Party that takes power in 20209 going to be going to be calling for an increase in the defense budget?

I don't think so. And I think the effect of this Iran war, it only compounds the lingering effect of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and is going to create a very strong push for isolationism. So that even if the Democrats were to get back in power in 2029, you're not going, this is not going to be Harry Truman's, Democratic Party, you know, this is going to be some combination of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and AOC's Democratic Party. And so I think the only thing you can say is, if you look back on history, there's no question. Americans in 1938 were a thousand percent sure that they would never go to war in Europe. And they were opposed to it, and it didn't even matter what was

happening. This was after Munich, et cetera. And yet, within a very short period of time, they reverse their attitudes. And so it's possible that things could get so bad in the world that Americans would finally say, hey, wait a second, we have to do something. They certainly have a record of that response. But the question is, A, how bad does it have to get? They had to get really bad in Europe. It was after the fall of France, actually, ultimately. How bad does it have to get? And actually, do we have the same capacity to turn things around as we did then. I mean, in the late 1930s, despite the Depression and everything, the United States was still far in a way the richest, most potentially powerful country in the world just based

on our production of steel and manufacturing and everything else. And so we were able within a very short period of time to build a military capability that allowed us to turn the tide in the war. I think that we're probably more capable of that than people realize now, but I think it's harder this time possibly for us to make that kind of recovery. I suppose it's also worth saying that if you had asked people in 1946, you know, much worse than I do. I mean, people were, yeah, we're getting out of Europe. Thank God that's all over when coming home.

And of course, we were busy reducing troops, but also the defense budget and so forth. And then Stalin, people realize the Cold War is on. and we reverse again. I mean, it's pretty impressive, actually. I mean, it's both depressing that Americans kind of had to be shocked into doing what they were shocked into doing in both, obviously, especially in 38, 39, 40s. That started such a calamity, but also in the late 40s and into the Korean War. But they were shocked into doing it and then did it. But those one, two shocks, and we paid a huge price for it, and those were huge shocks.

And it took a lot of leadership to get done, right? It didn't sort of happen automatically. It was like everyone was on board with all. okay, it's a new world order and we have to build it, right? Right, right. Now, in fairness, even as Americans wanted to see the defense budget cut down and some of the troops come home, we were still committed to rebuilding Japan and Germany, which by itself was an unprecedented global commitment on our part.

So you can overstate the degree which we were demanding to come home. And now, you know, I suppose, again, the good news is we still have those relationships, even if they've been severely damaged. I don't think we can go back to the, I'm not even sure we should go back to the period of complete American hegemony, simply because we're not reliable. And therefore we have to come up with a new way. Now, let's say America became a good country, a good liberal country again.

I think there are ways in which we could sort of start recreating, not the same kind of hegemony, but a more equal relationship with other countries that we shared values with. I think those things are all possible. But right, but it's hard to think about that right now because I do think that before we see any positive development, we're going to see some very serious crises and negative developments. The crisis in the Middle East is not finished unfolding. As, you know, as you say, who thought that the Houthis would be firing ballistic missiles at Riyadh at this point?

And that's not the only problem that exists in the Middle East. So we could be in for much deeper, deeper difficulties there as well as more broadly in the world. No, that's really important to keep in mind, keep at the front of our mind. Bob, thanks for joining me today. Thanks for everything you're doing to get people focused on this issue. And then at some point, yeah, rebuilding a liberal world order. Not rebuilding. I don't even like using words beginning with re anymore, building a new order that strengthens the defense liberalism and strengthens global values.

That'll be a huge task. but yeah so we can do that after we get through the next two years you can begin doing it you can begin doing it in think tanks and in your writing though you know very helpful think tank products you can't at some point that could be helpful thanks to joining me bob and thank you all for joining us on bulwark on