On with Kara Swisher - How Much Damage Did Trump Do to America’s Standing In the World?

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

A year after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and weeks after the presence of a Chinese spy balloon led U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to put off his Beijing visit, Kara and Nayeema talk about where the U.S. stands in the world and whether President Biden has the global coalition and momentum he claims. These are great questions for our guest today, Richard Haass. The foreign policy expert helms the Council on Foreign Relations and has had a long career in the Carter, Reagan and both Bush administrations as well as beyond working on intractable challenges from Northern Ireland to Iraq. Kara asks him why America’s global standing is on the decline, how Biden should deal with Xi and why his most recent book looks not to the rest of the world, but to our domestic problems.  Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is Vladimir Putin's address to the Russian Federal Assembly with 100 percent less historical revisionism and bloodthirsty revanchism. Oh, that's a good word. That's an SAT word. Just kidding. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naima Raza. And I cannot believe that one, you still have no voice. Yeah. Oh, well. And two, we have arrived at the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine.

Yeah. It feels like it was just months ago when we had Jon Stewart on and then Clint Watts on and Putin was trying to block off the Internet and the media. Remember that? Yeah, that was an interesting time. I mean, I think it's a good time to think about what's happening now and what it means. And it's important to think about foreign policy. It's not something everybody loves to talk about.

It's, you know, people that they don't rate as much as if we sit around and talk about ketamine or osempic or whatever, you know, or celebrity. But it's critically important. This world is really rocking in a way that's not good. Well, last week was the Munich Security Conference. Vice President Kamala Harris was there. Secretary of State Blinken, obviously. Macron, Schultz. A lot of Western leadership.

And China's top diplomat, Wang Yi, was there after he went on to a probably, you know, more important trip for him, maybe, which was Moscow. Yeah. Ukraine was a big part of that agenda, obviously. Biden talked about a global coalition. I was just reading a Washington Post piece about how countries like India, South Africa aren't falling in line. You know, you've lived outside the U.S. a lot. We always think of only the European coalition, but there's a coalition worldwide. Yeah, India isn't falling in line, South Africa, Brazil. These are important countries. You know, India's trade with Russia,

I think, has quadrupled since the start of the Ukraine war. South Africa has been doing these military drills. They're mostly humanitarian with Russia and China. And I think the question is, like, what's the incentive for them to not do that? China. And I think the question is like, what's the incentive for them to not do that? You know, India, South Africa, Brazil, these are big states, one of which has nuclear weapons and a civil partnership with the U.S., two of which had nuclear aspirations in the past. And by the way, did anyone expect Modi to be a defender of human rights? I obviously am American, but also Pakistani. And that is famously a U.S. alliance, which went south, you know, after Pakistan played a critical role in the Cold War. And sometimes when it comes to alliances, you know, we all have friends like this who show up when you're hot or show up when you need something, when they need something from you. And then they're nowhere to be found otherwise. And I think that China has developed a network of alliances where it shows up when there was nothing there. It earns loyalty points by building. I think we think, of course, they love us. I think American exceptionalism has been a real problem for

our country. And I think we think they just will fall in line with us, and they won't. They won't. They have interests of their own. They have economic interests. They've got personal interests. They've got cultural interests. They have different attitudes. And I don't think we realize that enough. You know, we're only comfortable with the people who look like us. And we're shocked when people disagree with us as a country. Sometimes there's a forgetfulness that we no longer live in this hegemonic world order of the 1990s. So yeah, there isn't just a Washington consensus. There's this alternative system of banks, internet, economy that you can participate in. And so it's great that President Biden in December said we're all in on Africa,

that Jill Biden is there right now, that the president will go there soon. But it's like when Secretary Clinton led our pivot to Asia in 2010. It's late. We show up late. Yeah. Well, a big turning point for me, and I think for the rest of the world, is when the U.S. went to Iraq. I was a college student at the time, and the country started seeing its credibility really drop in the world for going to war under conditions that were incorrect, that were false. Lots of things have happened, including January 6th. It's a dicey time for this world and this country in the world. Which is why it's a great time for our guest today,

who is Richard Haass. He's been the president of the Council on Foreign Relations for almost 20 years, though he is stepping down this year. And before that, he had a long career in public service. He worked for Carter, Reagan, both Bushes, and roles across defense, state, White House, NSC. He was once called Powell's top advisor. Yeah. I know Richard a bit from CFR because I'm a member there. And you know him a little bit too, right? I do from DC parties mostly.

And that's the last time I saw him, but I've been aware of him for a very long time. He remains very influential. And he also has a book out now, The Bill of Obligations. It's a play, I guess, on the Bill of Rights. And it's about how to be a good citizen. So it's looking inward a bit, more domestically than outward. And 2020, he switched to no party, saying that he hadn't left the Republican Party. The Republican Party left me. Yeah, that's the line, right? That's the

line. What's your big question for him? They're all big questions. Every question is a big question. Do you have any concerns? I'm interested because I think the U.S. has lost a lot of soft power from when I was growing up in Asia and Africa. I felt like the U.S. had a lot of cultural soft power post-Cold War era. I'm curious how Richard thinks that has changed in the Trump era and how much damage Trump did in four years. There's been damage going on for a long, long time, though. Let's not forget. Oh, there has been, for sure. I spent time protesting the Iraq war, which we should ask him about because he was Colin Powell's advisor.

That's right. That's right. But certainly under Trump, there has been no hiding from it. No. All right. Have a good interview. We'll take a quick break and we'll be back with Richard Haass. creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter. These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists, and they're making bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than

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Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca. Welcome, Richard. How you doing? I'm a lucky guy. I'm doing fine. Thank you. Good, good, good. Last time I saw you was at Christmas time, and we chatted at a party, and you talked to me about this book you have out and all kinds of foreign policy stuff. And so it was really nice to talk to you because there's a lot going on internationally since then. And we'll start with, obviously, Russia and Ukraine. We're seeing just the one- year anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine. Allies, including the U.S., seem to be pitching in more military aid. There's problems of corruption within Ukraine that's been

written about. Some allies around the world are not as supportive. India's sort of hugging various people that we never thought they'd hug. So play out Ukraine for me. How does this conflict end? The first thing I'd say is, look, a year ago, if we had had this conversation, Cara, and you had laid out where we are now, I would have said, wow, that's not bad at all. That's really optimistic. The idea that none of Putin's assumptions would ultimately have been proven right. But we are where we are.

I'm afraid a year from now, I think it's going to look pretty similar. If I were a betting man, I would bet against either a military breakthrough or a diplomatic breakthrough. Why is that? Explain why. Well, militarily, Russians are very dug in. So to dislodge them, which is what Ukraine wants, Russia still sits on roughly 20% of Ukraine's post-independence territory, is extraordinarily different, just given the equations of war, you know, offenses versus defenses against dug-in positions, very, very hard to dislodge. Second of all, my concern increasingly is that Russia will find external support to

compensate for their own shortages, not just Iran, but I think China. I believe that at the end of the day, Xi Jinping will not allow Vladimir Putin to lose. He has too much invested in that relationship, too much invested in Russia, probably doesn't mind a war that drains American readiness. And Ukraine, even though it is going to get more weapons finally from the West, not finally, but continue to ramp up, again, I just don't see it as being enough. But it's more than enough, I think, to keep Russia at bay. So my own sense is neither side is going to be in a position to prevail militarily. Each side has a set of political ambitions, which are fairly large.

Ukraine obviously wants to recapture all of its territory, wants to hold people accountable for war crimes, wants to have economic reparations come forward. I don't think from Vladimir Putin's point of view, he believes that he now has enough to justify what he's done. He believes he needs more to justify this costly war of choice on his part. Also, I'm not persuaded he thinks that time works against him. He continues to view the West through a rather jaundiced prism, doesn't think we have a lot in the way of staying power. So from his point of view, let's just see how it plays out. Why negotiate? Why negotiate? And from the Ukrainian point of view, why negotiate? They're on our lawn, right? In other

words. Exactly. For their point of view, to ask them to negotiate, they take as not just wrong for them, but wrong for the world. And indeed, if we pressure them to negotiate, not only will they resist, but the Russians would say, see, we told you, time works on our side. Yeah. And I don't see parties that are willing to cut a deal. Right. So another thing, access to Starlink has been essential to the Ukrainian military. But Elon has been all over the place. He gave Ukraine access in March of last year, big deal. They do praise him for that. Then he turned it all off before turning

it back on and saying he couldn't afford to do so forever. He's geofenced things. If you look at these individual private actors who are playing among the nation states, how do you assess that? Like the fact that he has largely, though not entirely, played a constructive role in terms of making Starlink available is admirable. What is, I believe, simply misguided on our part is to allow any unaccountable private individual or corporation to play such an outsized role with such consequences for American national security. So I'm not singling him out. I would say the same thing about anybody else. We need to have multiple entities.

Has this happened historically where industrialists have decided things? I am hard-pressed to think of a case where so many eggs are in a single basket. I mean, we wouldn't allow one bank to play such an outsized role, say, in managing U.S. debt. And I just think we have got to ask ourselves as a country, if something is so essential, why in the world would we let anybody, forget Elon Musk, anybody have that kind of power? I just think it is a truly unacceptable situation. Absolutely. One of the things I always say is, like, Lockheed couldn't suddenly decide where we put the missiles. The military does. Absolutely not. In this case, he kind of is. He kind of is.

No, more than kind of is. He is. It's, again, we just, we wouldn't do it in most other realms of life. Why in the world would we allow it to happen in the most sensitive realm of national security? Because he's a very good tweeter, Richard. Thank you, Cara. No, he's not. He's a terrible troll. How important is Putin's recent announcement that Russia would suspend its participation in the new START nuclear arms control agreement, which is different than pulling out of the agreement? Is it mainly symbolic or does this move have real consequences? It's mainly symbolic. The agreement has roughly four years to go. Russia is not going to break out of the numerical caps that have been established on launchers and warheads. They've already not been cooperating on inspections. So in some ways, this just underscores what they've already stopped doing.

I think the real question comes in four years. But right now, I don't see this as a big deal. So what would be the new agreement? Well, ideally, it would establish caps, not just for the United States and Russia going forward beyond four years from now, but it would include China. Because China, one of the lessons China's taken from this war, it's very interesting. China said, hey, the United States is not getting involved directly on the ground in Ukraine. China is saying why? Their answer is because they're worried about Russian nuclear weapons. So China's saying to itself, wow, if we had a thousand more nuclear weapons, maybe the United States wouldn't get involved directly on behalf of Taiwan. But if China does ramp up its nuclear weapons, and it seems they're doing so, Cara, they have got to be a part of future great power arms control or it doesn't make sense.

Right. So let's move on to China. As you mentioned, Russia's, of course, enjoying this no-limits friendship with China, a country that seems to be testing America's patience with spy balloons and more. Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State, canceled his visit to China but met with the country's top diplomat, Wang Yi, last weekend. Where is the U.S.-China relationship right now? It's in terrible shape. It's a relationship in some ways in search of a rationale. After the Cold War ended three decades ago, we built up this extensive economic relationship. We've now showered on the economic relationship. Plus, Xi's been in power for a decade now, is far more repressive at home, far more statist economically, far more assertive in

its foreign policy in ways that are clearly unhelpful. So the question is, you know, what rationale does it have? I would say right now, not much of one. I can't see really an upside. China, for example, refuses to cooperate with us on reining in North Korea. So I actually think that the challenge right now is to avoid major downsides. Can we, for example, persuade China not to become a major source of help to Russia? Can we somehow put some guardrails on our differences over Taiwan? You know, sometimes in foreign policy, it's what you want to achieve. I think in the case of China now, we've reached a point where the relationship is about what we want to avoid. Avoid, wow. I mean, and also there's all this domestic, on both sides, bipartisan committees in Congress, Biden going off quite a bit.

He's been going off quite a bit on a lot of things. But is it the worst it's ever been? And what do we need to avoid? Well, it's the worst it's been since the modern relationship was established over 40 years ago. So I take that seriously. And, yeah, there's a kind of almost unhealthy competition between Republicans and Democrats who can be harder asked towards China. And I'm hard pressed to say there's any real difference between the Trump and Biden administration policies on China. on Taiwan to ultimately take Taiwan. I don't think they're poised to do it tomorrow for lots of reasons, but that's their ambition. The goal of our foreign policy ought to be to deter them. But look, this is the relationship of this era of history. It is. And it will go a long ways

towards defining it. And if we do have a major crisis, much less conflict, I think it's catastrophic for the world economy. And I can't exaggerate how significant it could be for order in the world. Yeah. I mean, many years ago, I was talking about their surveillance economy. And obviously, a lot of escalation is covert. And we saw this with the spy balloon, which cost some enormous amount of money to shoot down. The bad exchange ratio. Yeah, exactly. For like the air balloon, the media reaction, they loved it, of course. I just feel like we must be spying on them. They must be spying on us.

Of course we're spying on them. We all spy on each other. I mean, that's why God invented satellites. We do espionage on them. They do espionage on us. If you remember years ago, they got all the personnel records out of the Office of Personnel Management. But one thing they do to us, which I don't think we do to them, is economic espionage. That's been a big part of Chinese development strategy, has been to steal secrets from our

firms to accelerate their economic advance. So, you know, the spy balloon was sort of something slightly different. My guess is, I can't prove it, the Chinese had done it many times before. It hadn't triggered a reaction. I do not think, indeed, I'm 99% certain. I do not think they were trying to cause an accident or an incident. I don't think they wanted to scuttle the Blinken trip. China had been on something of a charm offensive since Biden and Xi had met in Bali on the margins of the G20. So to me, they just didn't expect this to be seen and to cause the

reaction it did. I actually think the Secretary of State made a mistake in canceling his trip. I would have said, go. You have diplomacy because you have problems. Also, think about it. Imagine we had shot down the balloon and Tony Blinken was on a plane the next day. How perfect is that? How perfect is it? Then it would have put China in the awkward position of saying, what, you're not welcome because you shot down a balloon that was spying on you? That's kind of an awkward position. And I think the reason we did this is, again, the administration feels itself that it's locked in a kind of competition with the Republicans. It didn't want to get criticized for doing diplomacy while China is spying on us. Well, look, we do diplomacy all the time with

countries that spy on one another. One of the things I was, we were saying on my other show, Pivot, was that there's one spy balloon hanging over Montana, it was, and there's millions of balloons hanging over all of our teenagers with TikTok. It's become a big deal. China's been very recalcitrant to do anything. CFIUS is moving slowly, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. There's a lot of concern in Congress. They love having, I think TikTok should be banned. Even the senator from Colorado, Michael Bennett, who's very circumspect, are all doing this, ban TikTok. It ain't going to happen. There's a lot of U.S. interests there in terms of money. Many of the big investors are U.S. investors. But some people

think, one, it's a Trojan horse that will allow the Chinese government to get access to Americans' data. I'm not as concerned about that as the possibility of propaganda. How do you look at this? Because this is not the weather balloon. No, because this is one we're inviting in. I'm closer to you. I worry about the content more than the data access. But the fact that it is from there, and there are such differences between their domestic version and their international version, why should we allow it? I think it's inevitable it will get either banned or rolled back significantly. I think anything in the technology space between the United States and China is going to get severely cramped or rolled back.

And that means pulling U.S. manufacturing out of China. Apple is very exposed. Many companies. Now, they don't let any of our social media companies in while we let theirs in. But Apple's very exposed there. Yeah, I think Apple's made a strategic error in allowing itself to become so dependent. Because again, I mean, imagine tomorrow there is a major crisis with China, like on the version of what we've seen with Russia. The apples of the world are screwed if that happens, because it's going to be impossible to move anything. There's going to be vast sanctions.

And the fact that they've got a technology component, there could be all sorts of constraints even before then. So I just think they've made a major strategic error in putting so many eggs in the China basket. So what to do? What to do? Diversify. I would just think for anyone who's got supply chains, which is virtually everybody, why would you want to concentrate? It's sort of, you know, we've moved from a world of just-in-time to just-in-case. But China, this is, you know, there's zero doubt the world is going to become much more limited or much more regulated when it comes to technology. And the possibility of a broader crisis leading to broader sanctions is way too

possible not to take that into account. Now, one of the things you said, though, is I would bet the biggest international issue of 2023 is Iran. Surprising. Why does Iran rank highest for you? And what does it take to get back to the negotiating table? It seems like we've been negotiating with them for 103 years now. You've got two big issues, maybe three. You've got these protests, which haven't gone away. And then you've got the nuclear issue. Iran now has become what's known in the trade as a threshold nuclear weapons power. They're not quite there, but they've kind of parked their program just short. And what they've done is dramatically reduced the time they need if they wanted to have several nuclear weapons. So the question is, is that tolerable? They're already

at a point that years ago we said we would never tolerate. And that probably applies to Israel. I think the interesting question is whether Iran has reached a point where there's not all that much we can do about it. And by we, I mean Israel, the United States or anybody else. They've got too many secret sites, too far underground. We've lost the kind of coverage we needed through the various weapons inspectors. So I actually think not a lot of people are going to say it, but I think we've

probably gotten very close to a point where Iran is, again, it hasn't crossed the threshold of nuclear weapon status, but it's close. And it may be too late to do much about it. Plus, you've also got a succession, a leadership transition possibly in Iran, and we don't know what will happen there. So you got a lot of moving parts there. But if I had to rethink it now, you've got China and Russia and Ukraine. Those issues are probably bigger. Unless the only thing that would change would be in Iran would be if protests reached a

point where you saw the security forces beginning to refuse to kill innocent Iranians. We haven't seen that yet. The other issue that maybe add to the list besides those might be Pakistan. Pakistan's got a large number of nuclear weapons, and it's well on the way to becoming a failed country. The economy's in a shambles politically. It's dysfunctional. And that worries me. It's ironic. Pakistan used to be the sanctuary to radicalize Afghanistan. Now Afghanistan's become something of a base to radicalize Pakistan. Yeah. So outside of these big states, the U.S. seems to be losing the hearts and

minds in the global South and elsewhere to countries like China, Russia, and even Iran. How do you think the U.S. standing is in the world today versus, say, 10 years ago? There's some positive things. People still line up around the world at consulates, American consulates, to get visas. They still want to go to America's universities. We consulates, American consulates, to get visas. They still want to go to America's universities. We're still, in some ways, the envy of the world. And the world, you know so much about venture capital and technology and all that. But clearly, our dysfunctionality politically, January 6th, was a shock for a lot of the world. I think we've also just alienated a lot of people.

Like, you have the crisis in Ukraine, and the president goes, the world's divided between Democrats and authoritarians. Well, a lot of the world doesn't particularly see things that way. We've alienated them by trying to say you're either with us or against us, and they don't want to do that. We weren't there for them on COVID. The lack of availability of vaccines was, I think, a major error. In a lot of places, they don't see us as much as they see Russia and China. So it's not a great moment, if you will, for Americans standing in a lot of the world. What does it take to bring it back?

Well, one thing would be to make American democracy and the economy the envy of the world again. That would sure help. On things like that with climate and energy, I believe we should make a concerted effort to make the most advanced technology available to a lot of the world so they don't have to turn to China and other places. They could turn to us. It'd be nice if we had a trade policy. Call me madcap, but the United States used to believe in an open world trading system. We don't anymore. And it just, I think it's, again, a major, a major mistake. We'll be back in a minute, though my voice may not. Support for this show comes from Grammarly. 88% of the work week is spent communicating, typing, talking, and going back and forth on topics until everyone is on the same page.

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Indeed. All right, so that gets us to fixing here. People know you as a foreign policy guy. You've had a long career in the Carter, Reagan, Bush administrations, and of course your envoy work and your post at CFR. But your latest book is called The Bill of Obligations, a kind of counterpoint to the U.S. Bill of Rights. Why turn inward like this? Is it a response to the Trump ears? Partially, but I think it goes deeper. I think Trump was as much a reflection or a result of what had already been in the works, the deterioration of our politics. The fact that a Trump could get elected, in many ways, I thought was a symptom of what was going wrong. And then even after things like January 6th, I don't see in many cases anything like a sufficient corrective. I don't know about you, but I used to get up in the morning

and I'd worry about a lot of things. I'm a worrier. I didn't worry about American democracy. Now I do. I don't take it for granted. And I was the U.S. envoy, among other things, to Northern Ireland. I don't think it's far-fetched to think that we could have an American version of the Troubles, where we have decentralized political violence here, not infrequently. I take that seriously. Yeah. Is that post-Trump or because he still is existing as a political force? Either way. Either way. Yeah. I think it's, you know, it's now part of the, it's been absorbed into the body politic. We've got these militias and other things. I think Trump is an accelerant or an intensifier of some of these things. But I don't believe if he were

tomorrow to leave the political scene, I don't believe these manifestations of that kind of an approach would disappear with him. Or they were there, always. Some of them were there if they'd come out of the woodwork, and I don't think that's clear to me they'd go back into the woodwork. Yeah, I always yell whiskey rebellion every now and then, just look it up. Look it up. January 6th seemed to explain some of your obligations, but let me read some so folks will get a sense.

And I want you to talk about which ones you think are the most important. Stay open to compromise, remain civil, reject violence, respect government service. I would say none of those are doing very well. Unfortunately, I can't disagree with you. If I were going to say what's most important, I'd probably begin with the first one, be informed. I really do think it's the basis of citizenship. We just had these midterms in November, arguably among the more consequential midterm elections in American history. The fact that more than half of the eligible voters didn't bother to vote, again, is to me head shaking. If I could choose one thing out of all them, I'd probably say the thing about supporting civics, the teaching of civics in schools. Democracy, you're not born with your democratic gene.

It's not transmitted in your DNA. And I think civics becomes an incredibly important conveyor belt. We either don't teach it, or if we teach it, we don't require it. And I actually think a lot of our ills can be traced back to that. And it's something we could do. Stanford is going to require that every freshman take a module in civics. Yeah. That's a fantastic thing. I'd love to see more schools do that. New Jersey, the other day, signed into its first state to sign a law which requires that students in New Jersey schools take courses in information literacy. So they become critical consumers of information so they can tell a fact from something that's a misstatement. I think that's a really

good thing. Let's get to that. What happens when Americans don't agree on facts in a world of social media? The moderation is being run by the equivalent of, you know, bratty 12-year-olds, essentially. How do you teach civics or facts in that case? There are certain things you can teach, and there's going to be areas of interpretation where not only is it inevitable you'll have disagreement, you should have disagreement when it comes to interpretation. But we can't disagree that this was the Declaration of Independence and it was signed in this year or the Civil War happened when it happened. You can disagree. Can't you? Could you? You can disagree on interpretations of why it happened and its results, but it's kind of hard to disagree that it happened and what the results were and things like, you know, who won and who didn't. But look,

I'm not going to sit here and be naive. Education's gotten politicized, even weaponized, and it's going to be tough, but the alternative, just, so what's the alternative? You don't do anything? That seems to me crazy. And look, you're an expert more than I am on things to do with technology. Supreme Court just had two days of oral arguments on the Communications Decency Act, Section 230. I'd be surprised if the court intervened in any decisive way. They'll kick it to Congress. I'd be surprised if Congress acted in any decisive way. So, you know, we're going to still end up in a country where we're going to need more discerning, more informed consumers. That's where we're going to be.

Let me ask you, what is when the government misinformed, when authorities misinformed, you were around for the Iraq war pretense. What does that do? When Edward Snowden happened, a lot of the tech companies, the people there called me and they said, Kara, can you believe this? And I said, yeah, sure. You have all the information. Why wouldn't they spy on you? Of course they're stealing it from you.

And at the same time, they're trying to be deceptive. Because I had studied propaganda at Georgetown at the Foreign Service School. So if they're actually doing the conspiracy and then people make up conspiracies, what do you do? Let's break it down a bit. In the case of the Iraq weapons of mass destruction, I was in the government then. The government got it wrong. It wasn't a conspiracy. It wasn't lying.

People just got it wrong. Governments make mistakes. Individuals make mistakes. Doctors don't always diagnose things right. So this was a perfect example of what I would call confirmation bias. But people misinterpreted the data. We recently made a mistake on managing inflation. 15 years ago, we made a mistake on the mortgage crisis. Governments make mistakes. OK. And all the more reason for citizens to be informed so they can challenge government policy when they think it's

going off the rails. When government goes beyond its writ, well, that's where we need accountability. That's why you need checks and balances, you need Congress, you need the courts, you need a free press. You need legal recourse, where government oversteps its bounds, where it abuses its powers and so forth. I'm a great believer in accountability. One of the obligations you outline is put country first, which is surprising for you, someone who is a globalist and who critiqued Trump's America first policy, as well as Biden's Afghan withdrawal for being too America first and Trumpian. Explain what you mean by put country first. There's nothing to do with America first at all.

It's about putting country before person, your personal ambitions, your personal interests, or before party interests. It's a little bit of the JFK ask not, a little bit in that spirit. I think Liz Cheney was a good example of putting country before party and even her person. She paid a price in terms of her political ambitions. Some of these secretaries of state around the country who are election monitors, people who got elected from one party who still were prepared to certify the legitimacy of the election and electors, even though it helped the other party. That, to me, was extraordinary. Brad Raffensperger in Georgia. Exactly.

I would even say the governor of Georgia several different times. So, but no, it's sad that you have to say it. Well, it's because there's a lot of put me first. Me first seems to be the... There's a lot of that in this whole right space. What does the government owe me? What does the country owe me? Rather than do I have any responsibilities or obligations to you as another citizen or

to the country? Somehow our notion of citizenship has become so narrow, so self-interested, we've lost the thread. All right. So let's finish up by talking about some personalities ahead of the next elections. A quick lightning round, perhaps. Biden seems to be running again. He seems very muscular running around the world.

Is that a good idea? And should he keep Blinken on as Secretary of State? Again, this is very much Joe Biden's foreign policy. Tony Blinken's a really good man. He's a friend. But this is Joe Biden's foreign policy. Tony Blinken's a really good man. He's a friend. But this is Joe Biden's foreign policy. He's at home working with allies. We've gone from America first to alliance first.

And you saw it recently in Biden's trip to Europe. He believes in an allies-based foreign policy, both in Europe and in Asia. I think that's healthy. I disagreed with him on Afghanistan. I disagree with him in a lot of the talk about democracy. I wish we had a trade policy. But the biggest test of his foreign policy has been Ukraine. And I think he's gotten that essentially right. And do you think he should be running? That's a different issue. I mean, the health issue, the age issue, I think is legitimate.

Yep. He's got a, I think he's got a record to run on. I mean, he's been an impressive, in that sense, he's gotten a lot done as on. I mean, he's been an impressive, in that sense, he's gotten a lot done as a president abroad and at home. Some I agree with, some I don't, but I think he's got a record. I think he has to ask himself, can he really sustain this for six more years? Because that's the bargain he's making with the American people. I can't answer that, but I think he shouldn't do this unless he's confident he can. He's operating at a level that would allow him to do this job right. He should not run unless he can answer that question in the affirmative. All right. Nikki Haley just announced her candidacy for office for the Republican Party.

She has an interesting background, including serving a new ambassador. Would she be a good candidate? Look, I think she's an effective candidate. There's a big difference, though, between Nikki Haley governor and Nikki Haley candidate. In a sense, she seems unwilling at times to stand up to not just Donald Trump, the person, but to Trumpism. So to me, the real question is, who now is Nikki Haley? And I think that's a question for all the Republicans. I'll take a step back.

I was a Republican for over 40 years. I became a Republican because I believed in strong national security, limit the government role in the economy, great believer in privacy and all that. What happened to that Republican Party? That's no longer what it's become. It's become a radical populist party. Yeah. Things change, Richard. Things change. Yeah, but as Ronald Reagan said, I didn't leave the party, the party left me.

Yeah, he was talking about Democrats. Yeah, but I'm not comfortable with this Republican Party. I'm not comfortable with that. So, you know, we'll see what Nikki Haley or Tim Scott or the others say. I mean, just the other day, Ron DeSantis was saying some things about Ukraine that I found rather disturbing. It seemed to be quite minimalist in terms of his willingness. And he specifically talked about, you know, we don't have an interest in helping Ukraine get Crimea. What about Pompeo? Look, I know my secretary Pompeo to be formal. I knew him in

Congress, knew him at the CIA. I knew him as secretary of state. What's disappointing to me about Mike Pompeo is I think he knows better. Yeah, well, they all do. I think Mike Mapeo is really smart. And I think, again, he at times says things that he knows better than. Because of Trumpism. Because of Trumpism and simply curring political favor. And it's widespread in the Republican Party. There's not a lot of profiles and courage in the Republican Party. And do you have a candidate on the Republican side that would bring you back to your, into the Well, look, I worked for Reagan. I worked for Bush the father. I worked for Bush the son. I was closest to Bush the father. That kind of Republicanism probably doesn't exist anymore, which I think is too bad. But I'm intrigued by certain people, by Governor

Sununu, Larry Hogan, former governor of Maryland. I'm also just curious to see how some of these people define themselves. What's Tim Scott going to, how is he going to define himself? And I'm curious about some of those, even Nikki Haley, I'm curious to see how she ultimately defines herself. But I'm not wildly confident, let me put it that way, that I'll find a comfort level. But I'd love to be wrong. Should foreign policy chops matter more in this election than the previous one, given the stakes with China? Not just China, given the war in Europe, China, Iran, North Korea, climate change.

Yes. And, you know, this is, you know, forget about what's going on here internally, but this is as unsettled a world as we've had. And, you know, we've learned the hard day that what goes on out there doesn't stay there. It affects us. So absolutely. What's interesting, though, is that the voters don't seem to care much. And if you look at the midterms, I don't know, did anybody vote on the basis of foreign policies? You got to disconnect. What about Trump? What about him? Is he coming back? Do you see that? Yeah, I think he's got a good shot. If you ask me today, still the most likely scenario is probably Biden versus Trump. If you had all things being equal, you'd say that. And I think the more Republicans that jump into the race probably increases the

odds that Trump could do okay simply because you'll have a split the vote phenomenon. Yeah. Oh, great. What does that mean for the country? Well, my enthusiasm for that result would be limited. I worry what a Donald Trump would do if he were given another chance in the Oval Office. What he comes back to what we've been talking about, not just foreign policy. I think he was deeply, deeply wrong in many things, not everything.

I actually think some of his China policy was pretty good. The Abraham Accords were fine. A lot of, though, he did more to undermine alliance relationships than anything else. But I worry even more about Donald Trump domestically, how he would use the powers of government for his own purposes. And that really leaves me uneasy. Yeah. So last question. You're stepping

down from the Council on Foreign Relations. Who should succeed you? And more broadly, what is the next generation of foreign policy leadership think and look like? Look, this is, you know, the Council on Foreign Relations is a legacy institution. We've been around for a century. So what you want is someone who's going to protect that at the same time, still innovate. What we did over the last 20 years, the biggest change is we got beyond the foreign policy establishment. What I want is I want more people to go into this. I don't know about you, but when I came of age, the big issues were foreign policy, things

like Vietnam, things like detente. The best and brightest in many cases, you know, we weren't going to Goldman Sachs. We were really excited about going into foreign policy or public policy. I don't see that happening as much anymore. So I would love for the best and brightest to basically say, I want to work in government. It could also be on domestic issues. I don't care. Or foreign policy.

And the idea, it sounds corny, but you can make a difference and it matters. But I would love to see the most talented young people not content themselves with private equity. Yep. Money is nice for a lot of people. Money is nice. I get it. It's not either or in the course of your career. If the average person now is going to have a 50-year career, yeah, you can go out and make some money at some times.

But why not spend a stint in government? Yeah. All right. My very last question. In those 20 years of running that, I'm going to put you on the spot. What do you think the most significant foreign policy event has been? I will start. Berlin Wall. Well, that's more than 20. That was 89. Oh, yeah, right. I'm old. Okay. 20 years. 20 years.

Introduction of the iPhone. That would be mine. That's interesting. That would not even have occurred to me, but that's why you do what you do. Changed everything. But you got everything from the Iraq war decision to go into Iraq in 2003. More recently, the Russian decision to invade Ukraine. But if I were going to summarize it, I would probably say the reemergence of geopolitics. We thought, you know, all the stuff about the end of history. Well, now we've had the return of history. So you've got, you know, that geopolitics,

you have climate and pandemics showing the power of global things. And then January 6th, you know, there's probably a case to be made that given how central the United States has been and is to the world, that January 6th might actually be the most important international issue. Because what it does, it gets at the fabric of American democracy and our ability to function successfully in the world. Well, nice bringing it together, Richard. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. By the way, I vote on foreign policy. Do you? Nobody else does. And social welfare. Those are

the two most important things for peace. Okay, but that's not what people vote for. That's true. I appreciate his call to public service. Felt like an episode of Madam Secretary, which I've been binge watching. I feel like you've watched the show 17 times. We need to get you a new show. There's 100 episodes. I'm on episode like 40. I've watched them all. It's so good. I'm so smart about foreign policy now. You know, a lot of stuff- From Tia Leone. I love Tia Leone and I love her outfits. I know you do. It's a great show. So Richard Haass, very measured. I like when he said, my enthusiasm for that result would be limited. And I think it comes through in his opinions and more. Let's talk about what stuck out first from

the foreign policy conversation. I thought his framing of what China has moved from a relationship where we're trying to aim for what we want to achieve and migrating it to what we want to avoid. That was pretty. Yeah. I think he's just terrified. I was like, China, oh, fuck. That's the cliff snow. That's my take of that. Well, and his statement is really a statement of the lack of U.S. power when it comes to China. Like, it's when you move from what you want to achieve, from when you move from being an instrumentalist to being avoidant, that's kind of saying the other guy has a lot of power. They do. And I appreciated his advice to Blinken.

He should have gone. I agree. I also felt that way. Blinken should have gotten on that flight and showed up in Beijing after the spy balloon. I mean, all those Montana people yelling at him, whatever. Yeah, but so what, Garrett? Like, there's big stakes involved here. I know the Montana people would be yelling, and yet. Yeah. I mean, the Republicans would, you know, it would be framed as him being weak and conciliatory, but I hardly think showing up is always appeasement. I think people see that wrong with the kind of social media world. It will look weak. I don't know. I think he,

what Richard didn't link, but he mentioned both things, and I think there's a big link is you have to have diplomacy, he said, when you need to talk. And the downstream consequences of not doing that are what we've seen in Iran, where there is an entire generation of foreign service officials who didn't speak Farsi, who didn't have intelligence. Yeah, I think that's the most important thing, is people aren't, just like they aren't going into lots of things they used to go into. This is one of the most important things, is the best and brightest. Don't flock to government, only the freaks and the look-at-me people.

I feel like there's some middle ground. I agree, but I think it's not the job that people want to do over other jobs, largely because of money. Yeah, largely because of money, and there's ways to address that, but it would be hard. I think what we need in the country

is like a public service, you know, one year or your... I think that's a great question. Should we do that? Should we go set that up? No, I think we should have one year of military service. Just call it that, and then you could do public service, whatever. I think you need conscription of some sort.

I think one year of military service would bring us all together. One year of public service conscription. That's what I would like. There is AmeriCorps, you know, and stuff like that. Yeah, but I don't think there should be something, I think, much bigger. Someone like Pete Buttigieg, I think, has spoken a little bit about this, too. I do think there's an opportunity. We'll see.

I'm going to leave this podcast and go do that, Kara. You want to just read us out while I go do that? I shall. Today's show was produced by Naeem Araza, Blake Neshek, Christian Castro-Rossell, Rafaela Seward. Special thanks to Haley Milliken. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics.

If you're already following the show, you get to watch Madam Secretary with Kara Swisher. If not, you have to sit at Putin's giant table next to him. Go wherever you listen to podcasts. Search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday for more. Support for this show is brought to you by Nissan Kicks. It's never too

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