Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The Eurasian Century with Hal Brands

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

This week, Anthony talks with Hal Brands, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, about his book 'The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World.' They discuss the historical significance of Eurasia, the dynamics of US-Russia-China relations, and the challenges facing global leaders today. Hal emphasizes the strategic importance of Eurasia in global affairs and the need for the US to engage effectively in this region to maintain stability and counteract the influence of autocratic powers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk to some of the brightest minds about everything surrounding the written word. That's everything. That's from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Before we dive in,

make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to leave a review. Good or bad, I want to hear from you. I want to hear whether you're enjoying it or where we can improve. And I can take the hits. So let me know. If you don't like something, say it straight. Now let's get into it.

Today I am joined by historian Hal Brands to talk about why Eurasia remains the center of global power. We'll dive into how U.S. policies have pushed Russia and China closer together, why McKinder's theories still matter, and what challenges leaders like Putin and Xi are facing? With democracy under pressure and the world growing more unstable, what should America do next? Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today on Open Book is Hal Brands. He's a professor at John Hopkins University. He's an expert on global affairs, and to be perfectly exact, he's the Henry Kissinger,

distinguished professor at John Hopkins University. We'll talk a little about Dr. Kissinger in a second, but the title of the book is the Eurasian century, Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World. It's an incredible book. You should go out and read it if you really want to understand what's going on in the world today. I appreciate you writing the book, but before we get into the book, tell us a little bit about your background. You say you're in the family business. So what do you mean by that, Professor Brands? You're in the family business. Well, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. I sort of inherited the historical

profession from my dad, who's a history professor in his own right and a pretty prolific author. And so when I was growing up, there were a lot of books about U.S. political, military, diplomatic history on the bookshelf. And I guess that's where I got the bug. I'm a historian by trade as well. And so I've spent the predominant part of my career in academia, but have always tried to keep a foot in policy debates in D.C. and elsewhere. So I've worked or consulted for government a couple of times and generally try to figure out what history can tell us about the problems that the U.S. and its friends are confronting today. Okay. So the book the Eurasian century, it's an interesting title because, as you point out in the book, there's been more than one Eurasian century. I guess you could argue that most of world history has happened on that landmass, which we say is two continents, but it's really just one big landmass. And so tell us what we need to know about Eurasia.

So you can think of Eurasia as the strategic center of the world. It's where most of the world's people live. It's where most of the world's economic resources are found. It's where most of the world's military potential is located. And so, really throughout history, the fact has been that a country or a group of countries that managed to take over Eurasia or big chunks of it would probably have unbeatable power in a global sense. And the reason the period since around 1900 is what I call the Eurasian century is that's when you had technological revolutions, particularly the proliferation of railroads across Asia, in particular, that made it possible to move armies more rapidly in a greater scale across that vast expanse than had ever been the case before. And that was sort of the starters pistol for a series of epic clashes over Eurasia in its key regions, World War I, World War II,

the Cold War, and then we're really in round four of that today. So there was a professor, I think he was an Oxford professor, his name is McKinder. I know you know who he, is you've referenced him uh Steve Bannon as somebody I used to work with uh I think Steve Bannon is crazy by the way I mean it's my podcast I can say whatever the hell I want you don't have to answer you can be the diplomat that you are but he did say something about McKinder to me when we were working together the Trump administration about his theories related to your Asia so what are what are his theories related to your Asia and how do they coincide or not coincide with your theories but kinder is in some ways the main character and

in the book. I mean, he's Mr. Eurasia. And so he became prominent in the early 20th century. He gave a lecture that was later published as an article called the Geographical Pivot of History, where he basically laid out a version of the argument that I just made, that Eurasia has long been where the action is, and it was going to become more strategically volatile in the 20th century for two reasons. One was with the completion of the trans-Siberian railway across Russia, you go from one side of your Asia to the other much more rapidly by land. But two, up until the end of the 19th century, the great powers could sort of expand into Africa, Asia, the Middle East, with minimal resistance. This is sort of the high period of colonialism, which provided a sort of

safety valve, right? If you were Britain and France, You didn't necessarily have to fight each other across the English channel because you could both pursue your greatness out in the late developing world. But basically, the world had been colonized by 1900s. And so at the same time that Eurasia was getting more integrated technologically, it was becoming sort of a more crowded space geopolitically because the great powers were being focused inward on each other. And that was really the core of McKender's thesis. He would update it a couple of times over the next 40 years. He lived until the early Cold War. But that was how he made his name.

Yeah. I mean, you know, Kissinger, you know, he was a big student of Bikinder. Nixon was. A lot of the Cold War strategists were worried about a hegemonic power controlling the whole continent. And they'd like pitting the Russians against the Chinese. Of course, you and I both know that there's been a border dispute between the Chinese and the Russians over Siberia for the last 300 or so years, maybe 350 years. Yet the Americans, I feel like the Americans have pushed the Chinese and the Russians closer to each other. Do I, am I missing that?

Or have the Americans accidentally made them closer? Well, there are definitely aspects of U.S. policy that the Russians and the Chinese don't like. And that has had the effect of unifying them. I think the, you know, both of those countries are autocratic great powers that want to carve out spheres of influence in their own region and maybe beyond. both of them really don't like living in a world that is led by a democratic superpower. And so that creates a degree of glue in that relationship, which appears to be complimented by the fact that Putin and she get along and have long conversations deep into the night with each other.

Now, the question I think is, like, could or should the United States do something differently to prevent these countries from becoming closer? Because they're definitely cooperating more in the military realm, the economic realm, the technological realm. I'm not sure there's a whole lot the U.S. can do in the near term to prevent that. I mean, what it would take to sort of flip one country against the other is basically, you know, letting that country have what it wants geopolitically. So a Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, for instance, and even then I'm not sure if it would work. And the reality is that I think just sort of the structural driver of these relationships are pretty profound.

So I'm afraid that we're going to have to deal with this relationship as a geopolitical fact for, you know, the next decade or beyond. Even though I think you're absolutely right that there are these long running historical tensions between them. And over the very long term, you know, if China comes anywhere near to achieving its global ambitions, it's going to pose a much bigger threat to Russia than the United States ever will. Okay. So be my strategic advisor. I have a declining population in Russia, high alcohol. 25% unemployment, yet I'm launching wars outside of Russia to galvanize the nationalism inside of Russia to keep myself in power. I've got a Chinese Communist Party. Now we're going to talk about Xi for a second, maybe 90 to 100 million people controlling 1.4 billion people. There are seven Balkanized provinces that I'm trying to glue together to maintain what the West knows is China, but what you know,

and I know is seven Balkanized provinces that are culturally different from each other. You've got Tibet sitting there as well, which is another big issue for the communists. And then outside of China, or in their minds, inside of China is Taiwan. And so be the advisor to the president of Russia for a moment and tell me what you would do if you're him and be the advisor to the Chinese president and tell me what you'd do if you're him. And I caught the grin, by the way. I did catch the grin. If I were advising Putin, I would tell him that this is the time to cut as advantageous a deal as he can in Ukraine, because he can probably get a deal that will allow him, at the very least, to keep what Russian forces have conquered since 2014. And if he plays his cards right, because it looks like the Trump administration is pretty eager to put the Ukraine issue to the side and do sort of a larger strategic reset with, Russia, I would tell him to push for sanctions relief. I would tell him to, you know, offer

U.S. energy firms the chance to invest in energy exploration projects in the Arctic and basically do whatever I could to minimize the Ukraine issue and then maximize the degree to which you create frictions in the West by trying to pull the United States away from its European partners. And I think that's kind of what Putin is doing at the moment. If I were advising Xi Jinping. Before you go to Xi, though, I've got a domestic problem. You know it and I know it. My demography is upside down.

The West thinks my country's white, but it's really not that white anymore. There's a lot of demographic changes that are taking place inside of Russia. I can't get the economy started. You guys crippled me with these sanctions. And so, yeah, to quote, McCain, I'm a gas station with a kleptocracy. But tell me, tell me what I, how am I going to fix this? That's part of the reason why you've got to bring the war in Ukraine to an end, or at least hit pause on it. Because if you have to do another military mobilization, the last time Putin did that, that was when we saw, you know, Russian men between the ages of 20 and 50 hopping the first flight to Delhi or driving across the border to get out of the way.

So that's just exacerbating the demographic problem, even before you start talking about the battlefield losses, which are. severe and it's exacerbating all of the economic problems. And so the Russians have transitioned to a war economy, I think with greater ability than many in the West imagined. But that's not a long-term basis for the Russian economy. And I think there are real questions about how long Putin can hold this thing together. He can probably do it for another year or two, but I don't know that he can do it for another five to ten years. So he's got to find a way of sort of normalizing the economy if he wants to hold the larger sort of Russian political experiment together. And so that's why I think it's a package there.

All right. Let's go to she. Yeah. So she's big problem is twofold. The first is that the economy is in terrible shape. And there really is not a good prospect for turning it around. And unfortunately, the advice that I would give Xi Jinping for turning the economy around is advice that he will never take. And so the advice I would give is you've got to stop squeezing the economy by exerting ever greater political control on it, right?

You've got to allow some degree of spontaneity. That was what allowed the explosive Chinese growth from the late 70s to the late 2000s. And it is the reimposition of almost neotototalitarian political control that is strangling the economy in addition to all the other demographic problems and things like that right now. But she's not going to do that. And he's not going to do that because he's made very clear that he thinks China is headed into a very dangerous era. And so his priorities are ideological indoctrination, national security, and very tight political control of everything in China. And so I don't think he's going to be successful in turning the economy around. The other thing I would tell him to do, though, is that he may have an opportunity in the years ahead to try to drive wedges between the U.S. and some of its allies and partners.

We're, you know, look, we're only six weeks less than that into the Trump administration. So it's hard to predict where all this is going to go. But if what we've seen in the last month between the U.S. and Europe is any indication, there are going to be big fractures that open up in what we might have once called the free world. And at the very least, that's going to make it easier for China to discourage, say, the European Union from enacting, tighter technological controls, tighter trade controls on its relations with China. And so I do think there's a little bit of diplomatic opportunity there for Beijing. Okay.

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Learn more at tellus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Conditions apply. Donald Trump. Is he pro-American? What is Donald Trump? He's for America. He's for the West. He's for democracies. Or is he, or he's he what his critics say, trying to create a tripolar world where he really wants a sphere of influence and some level of heightened

executive power in the United States? I think the answer is yes. I mean, I think that Trump, Trump genuinely thinks that he is making America great again. But the version of American greatness he is pursuing is one that is at odds with a lot of the practice. that have actually made America great over the last 80 years. And so what the United States has done since World War II is to pursue a pretty broad, high-minded notion of national security where we're going to do well by helping like-minded countries do well. I think Trump rejects that. I think he sees the world in zero some terms.

The U.S. has stayed a superpower in part because we have so many allies and partners around the world and we treat them differently than we do our rivals. Again, I don't think Trump sees the world that way. I think he sees, you know, every relationship is transactional. And so he's not inclined to give allies the benefit of the doubt any more than he is to give Putin or she the benefit of the doubt. And then finally, I think, while this is easily taken too far, it does benefit the United States to live in a world where democracy is widespread. Human rights are widely observed. That's just a more ideologically congenial world to the United States. And Trump, I don't think places a lot of emphasis on those sorts of sort of classically liberal values, because his view is like the world is a snake pit. And so you just got to do what you got to do to survive and to cut the best deals that you can. And it really doesn't matter whether you're doing it with North Korea or with a Democratic ally. And so there is a logic to all of the things that Trump is pursuing. But my concern about Trump has always been that he threatens to sort of tear down

some of the best traditions of American statecraft. Did Russia invade Ukraine? A couple of times, in fact. Okay, but like the most recent times starting three years ago, they invaded Ukraine? Yeah. What do you think? I mean, this is like first grade literature, Professor Brands. You know, in the first grade, my teacher taught me about a book called The Emperor Has No Clothes.

And obviously, the ending of the book is the young kids that the guy's naked. You have the Secretary of Defense won't say that. You have the National Security Advisor. You have a friend of mine, I mean, a friend of mine that I really respect, his name is Steve Feinberg. He's the deputy defense secretary of the United States. He's before the Congress, and Tammy Duckworth, who's a U.S. veteran, lost her legs in war, is asking him a straight up question, a yes or no question. Did the Russians invade the Ukraine? And he's not answering it.

And so, does this worry you as a student of history? Is this worry you as an American citizen? I mean, I've read your book, and your book is about values-based diplomacy. Your book is about balancing interests, but also the perilous time that we're living in. You've got 5.7 billion people living under some level of totalitarianism, most of them in Eurasia. And you've got the guardians of this light that Elon Musk has benefited from and these other people, this liberty. and this aspirational story of Western liberalism. So are you worried at all or you tell me?

Maybe I'm nuts, or maybe I'm nuts. No, I'm definitely perplexed by this. I mean, I think there are a bunch of things going on. And as, you know, you noted all the examples of high-ranking U.S. officials who dodge questions about who invaded whom, you know, we had, we're recording this toward the end of a week in which the U.S. voted with. Russia against a UN resolution labeling Russia the aggressor and the war. And so it's a pretty remarkable period. So I think, yeah, we went, we voted with North Korea. We voted with China. Yeah, but we have some friends. So, you know, the, I think there is, there's sort of a diplomatic logic to this. I think there was a view among people in the Trump administration that, look, labeling Russia, the

aggressor, condemning its behavior, fine. None of that helps Ukraine on the battlefield. And so if we're trying to move toward a peace deal, let's try to strip the moral outrage out of this and just see what we can accomplish at the negotiating table. I think that's the charitable view of what's happening. The uncharitable view, which I think is also true, is the one that you've talked about, which is that, you know, once Trump says something, everyone in his administration has to be a very one in his administration has to say, well, of course, that's true. Of course that's the way the world works. You know, of course the world is flat, even when it's a patently ridiculous statement to the effect that Ukraine started the war. There is, you know, there is a line of critique among some in the MAGA movement that even if Ukraine didn't start the war in the sense of like sending its tanks across the border, it was asking for it because it was drawing closer to the West.

and that was always going to annoy Russia. Yes, Russia was annoyed by Ukraine's ties of the West, but let's not forget that the reason that Ukraine pivoted so hard to the West after 2014 was that it had been invaded by Russia. And so I think there's a real danger in taking that line, I've already been too far. Okay. Let's pretend that Donald Trump doesn't exist for a second,

and they're going to give you this broad hypothetical. And you have somebody that is a steward of the last American century, somebody that is a student of George Kennan and Dean Atkinson and George Marshall and Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower is read John Gattis's literature about the Cold War and is steeped in knowledge of presidential history and steeped in knowledge of the vision of what America is. There's a conversation that's happened from Washington to Lincoln to Roosevelt to Eisenhower to Reagan. And now you're sitting here in this very complex, different world, and you're offering advice to a American president, he or she, that would like to maintain our alliances,

and would like to grow liberty around the world and doesn't see it as transactional as Donald Trump. What would your briefing be? What would your recommendations be? I'll probably start by acknowledging the things that Trump gets right, even though he doesn't exist in this counterfactual. I think, you know, Trump is right that levels of military spending throughout the democratic world have long been too low. He's right that European countries, I think Germany is the worst offender, have been free-riding on the United States while refusing to invest in their own ability to support a collective defense. And so one of the things that has to be done to preserve this international system that's benefited us and people around the world

tremendously is just to bolster the defenses of the democratic world. And that requires higher levels of military spending, yes, in the United States, but also among democratic allies in Europe and East Asia. That's thing one. You know, thing two is I would just say, do not underestimate how ugly the world can get and how fast it can get ugly when the U.S. is not engaged, when it's not providing stability in these key regions of Eurasia. But the reason the U.S. has the alliance commitments that it has right now is that the World War II and the post-World War II generation had seen the world totally fall apart twice before in the space of 30 years in the first half of the 20th century. Because without the United States involved, there was no combination of European or Asian powers that could prevent the bad guys from getting up ahead of steam. and running rough shot over Western Europe as Hitler did in 1940.

And we sort of think that sort of thing is impossible today. It's not impossible. It just hasn't happened because the United States and its friends have worked so hard to prevent it from happening since 1945. And so our understanding of sort of how nasty the world can get has been affected and has been distorted by the success of the American border. And I think that's a prerequisite, understanding that's a prerequisite for good strategy today. Okay. I mean, it's incredibly well said. Okay, I called from your book five words, actually. My producer did it, but she does all the work, Hal, and I take all the credit. And I'm going to ask you to respond to these words. I'm going to say them. You can give me a sentence, whatever comes to your mind. Okay, ready? I say the word China. You say what?

Peeking and incredibly dangerous revisionist power. And dangerous because they likely will start a war or have a military aggression which helps nationalize their interests, right? Yeah, they have a combination of growing military capabilities and a declining, in relative terms, economic trajectory. And that has historically been an explosive mix. I always thought when George Orwell was writing when I was a kid, I thought that these were warnings, these were allegories, animal farm in 19, I didn't realize they were playbooks for authoritarian. Two manuals. Yes, I didn't realize that.

Okay, about Russia, say the word Russia. The most violent of the revisionist powers and one that will continue to challenge European security even after the war in Ukraine ends. Right. Would the Russians invade Poland? I don't know if they're going to invade Poland as long as NATO remains intact, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility that NATO will not be intact. And they will certainly do more of the just below the threshold, sabotage subversion.

And also, yeah, political manipulation. They would love to have an election in the Ukraine where they hijack it. Okay, two more, three more words, ready. Iran or Iran. You say Iran, I say Iran. It is the revisionist power that has been weakened the most over the past 18 months, basically since I started writing the book because of the good work that Israel has done against Hamas and Hezbollah and against Iran itself. But it's also closer to the nuclear threshold

than it's ever been before. And that's the big coming crisis of spring and summer 2025. Okay. America. Still indispensable to the global balance of power, still more, far more powerful and capable than any other country on earth, tied in knots politically. And that is creating a lot of uncertainty about our future course. But if I were the UK prime minister or the French president, I picked up the phone and I called Professor Hal Brands and I said, hey, is this a waning thing, the Trump stuff? Or is the next Democratic president going to act like Trump? You would say what?

The next Democratic president isn't going to act like Trump. I mean, Trump is symptomatic of deeper trends in American politics. But I think Trump is sort of one of a kind in the degree of deliberate antagonism he uses towards U.S. allies, although J.D. Vance is doing a pretty good imitation of that right now. And I also think once nobody is going to unremember the Trump era among our allies, but once Trump departs the scene, I actually think there will be more of an open fight for leadership of the Republican Party. Okay. Last one. Eurasia. It's where the action happens in international affairs. It is where U.S. engagement is most necessary. And it's also, unfortunately, where we see growing ties between and among all of the bad guys today, not just in Russia, in China's case, what we've talked about, but between Russia and North Korea, Russia and Iran, China and Iran as well. And so it's increasingly become a place where autocratic power.

create these networks of relations that aren't quite an alliance, but are something pretty close to it. Well, you're a gentleman and a scholar for coming on. The title of the book is The Eurasian Century, Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World. And it's a brilliant book. And I appreciate you writing it. I learned a lot from this book and even more so talking to you. So thank you for joining us on Open Book Today. I enjoyed it. Thanks for having me. So as Hal said, Eurasia is the strategic center of the world. And of course, Professor McKinders' theories remain relevant today, perhaps just as much as 150 years ago, if not more so.

The United States, knowing this, has always tried to see if there was some type of semblance, a balance of power in Eurasia. It seemed like the new post-World War II order was working for the last 80 years. I'm not saying that it doesn't need to be reset. There's probably elements of it that actually do need to be. be reset, like everything in life. Most agreements, most organizations are living and breathing documents that need to be adjusted. But I think Hal Brands, Professor Brands, does a really good job of explaining what the stakes are. And it's a terrific book about past, present, and future,

and where things are going in our society. So please pick it up. I think you'll really enjoy it. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you so much for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on X or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week. When a country's productivity cycle is broken, people feel it in their paychecks, their communities, their futures. What does this mean? for individuals, communities, and businesses across the country?

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