Pod Save the World - NATO, mistakes we made in Libya, and lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan

Episode Date: June 7, 2017

Tommy talks with former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder about Trump’s disastrous trip to NATO before transitioning to a broader conversation about when the global community should use military force. Ivo offers an unvarnished take on the mistakes the US and NATO made in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. This is Tommy. Thank you guys for tuning in. My guest today is Evo Dahlder, who is the U.S. permanent representative at NATO during the Obama administration, served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration as a Europe expert. The conversation started with the basics about NATO's trip, but it evolved into a broader conversation about Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the role of the U.S. military and NATO in the world. And it was very self-critical about things that we worked on that actually in hindsight didn't go that well. It was a fascinating conversation for me. It was not the one I was expecting to have, but I think it was actually a lot better and more valuable to hear that perspective and to hear his honesty. So check it out. I think you'll enjoy it. And thanks again. Evo, thank you so much for being here all the way live from the great city of Chicago, a place I miss very, very much. Yeah, no, I'm glad to be here. My first question for you is the basics. What is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, aka NATO, and why is it so important in your opinion?

So it's an organization that was founded back in 1949 at the end of World War II as part of a treaty, 12 nations, two North American Canada and the United States, 10 European countries came together to sign a treaty that said that, at the basic level, said that an attack against one would be considered an attack against all, providing the kind of collective defense provision for really the Europeans who were threatened by the then-Soviet Union by the United States. Basically, the U.S. said, we will have your back when it comes to security. At a time when Europe had been devastated by war was politically and economically trying to find a way back into the world and was being threatened not only by the Soviet Union directly and militarily, but also indirectly. by its support for communist movements throughout Western Europe.

So it was a treaty and then created an organization that was essentially created to give Europe more of its self-confidence back, to allow it to recover from the war politically and economically, and at the same time to deter the Soviet Union. It also, very importantly, meant that the United States would be permanently involved in European affairs. Remember that after World War I, the United States withdrew from Europe. It came in in 1917 in order to help the Europeans end that really extraordinarily bloody war, but then went back home. And 20 years later, of course, World War II broke out, and the United States had to come back to rescue Europe.

And American leaders decided that it was a better idea to prevent a war from occurring then having to ship over millions of men and troops and fight another war, perhaps even more devastating than the ones in World War I and World War II. So that was what it was about. As the first NATO Secretary General once said, it really was to keep the Americans in, the Germans down. Remember, the Germans were the cause of two world wars and the Russians out. Right. That was what NATO was about during the Cold War. You mentioned the collective defense provisions.

I was reading a piece you wrote on CNN.com in advance of President Trump's visit to NATO, where you said the two things he needed to do while in Brussels was recommit to Article 5, the collective defense provision you mentioned, and then criticize Russia. And you noted that every president since Truman has verbally committed to Article 5. Well, Trump made his trip and he did neither. Why did you think it was important for him to restate those commitments? And why isn't it enough that his national security advisor and his on again, off again press secretary, Sean Spicer, reiterated the commitments, but not Trump himself? Well, it's important for two reasons. One is because everybody else has done it. And it's important not to set a different trend.

The fact is every president when coming to Europe has reaffirmed Article 5. It's what President Obama did and President Bush, President Reagan, President Bush before him. And every president has done so. So not doing something that every president has done will send a signal that perhaps Article 5 is not as important. But it was even more important for Donald Trump to do this because he was also the first president since NATO's founding back in 1949 to have run a campaign denigrating the alliance. He called it obsolete. He thought that the original threat had disappeared, that it should deal with issues like counterterrorism that he asserted it hadn't dealt with. And in order to reassure to Europeans that he still supported the alliance, it was important for him to come to NATO headquarters, where he was unveiling a memorial to the 9-11 attacks.

By the way, those attacks led NATO to invoke Article 5 for the first time and only time in its history. When Europe said, this may have been an alliance that was set up for the U.S. to protect us, but in fact, in this case, Europe is prepared to protect you. and NATO sent over airborne early warning planes to police the skies over the United States after 9-11 attacks and then deploy troops to Afghanistan, where they are still today, as part of an effort to deal with the terrorist threat. Right. But it was important for the president to do this because the president had denigrated NATO. He called it obsolete, and that's why it was important for him to do it. McMaster's, the National Security Advisor or Spicer, didn't run a campaign against NATO. Donald Trump did, and that's why it was important for him to make clear that Article 5 was real.

Russia is the second piece. There may have been times in NATO's history in the past quarter decade, then quarter century, where NATO countries said Russia is not a threat, it should be a strategic partner. But after 2014, after Russia invaded Ukraine and next Crimea, Russia once again became a military threat, security concern to Europe. And it was important for the president to indicate that he shared that Fed. Again, he didn't do that. And that was problematic. Can you talk about the Russia piece of this for a minute and help people understand why Russia and President Putin hate NATO so much and why efforts to expand NATO membership are so controversial and Russia pushes back so hard on those

efforts? Well, I mean, from Russia's perspective, NATO was an organization that was born out of the Cold War. It was the deterioration of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union between the West and the Soviet Union back in the 40s when there was a decision to split Germany with a Western sector in the West, which became the Federal Republic of Germany and then East Germany in the East. And that NATO was a consequence of that fundamental split between East and West. The Iron Curtain came down and NATO was a response to that. When the Cold War ended, When the Soviet Union decided to withdraw its troops from Central and Eastern Europe, when it disbanded the Warsaw Pact, which had been a counter to NATO, when Germany became unified as a member of NATO, and then ultimately when the Soviet Union collapsed into 15 republics, the largest of which was Russia, there was an expectation on the part of some that NATO would disappear, that NATO had fulfilled. its purpose of deterring the Soviet Union, preventing it from undermining the stability and

prosperity of Western Europe, and now it had lost a Cold War. And instead of disappearing, NATO remained. It decided that actually it had utility. Most importantly, in providing the kind of security blanket and guarantees to Central and Eastern Europe that it had long provided to Western Europe, a blanket under which these countries, which had been under Soviet dominion for so long, could become liberated politically and economically and emerges independent, free, and open and democratic states, all of which happened in Poland and Hungary, the Czech and Slovak republics, even in the Baltic states. And NATO membership became a prerequisite in many cases for membership in the European Union and the Western Club of Nations. So while this was happening in Central and Eastern Europe,

in a very positive way in these countries. Russia said, listen, this military alliance that existed to defeat the Soviet Union is still there. And actually now it's becoming moving eastward, coming closer to our borders. And why is a military alliance coming closer to us except to threaten us? And there was this disparity in perspective about the two reasons for what was happening. Right. Is adding new members the biggest irritant, or is it more sort of specific military assets, like, missile defense systems in Poland or radar and Turkey, things that encroach upon their

sphere of influence? So it's both. It's both. It's fundamentally about the extent, the expansion of membership, particularly when it comes to countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union. So Georgia and Ukraine, to some extent the Baltic states, although the U.S. never recognized the Baltic states as being part of the Soviet Union. But Ukraine clearly and Georgia clearly were part of the Soviet Union.

Union, then the idea of offering those country memberships when Russia, in some sense, still thinks that they have a special relationship with these countries because of history, because of their incorporation to the Soviet Union, is one of the friction points. And it's one of the reasons why Putin really since around 2006 or seven has been indicating a deep distrust of NATO. But it's also true that as NATO enlarged, as it became, moved closer to, to Russian borders, military capabilities were deployed. You mentioned two of them, missile defense systems in Poland, in Romania, radar as part of that missile defense system in Turkey,

that seemed to encroach on Russia's own sphere of influence in his own territory. Now we are also deploying troops into the Baltic states, into Poland. The U.S. is rotating a brigade of armored combat brigade into Eastern Europe. All the foreign. which the Russians are claiming are a threat to them, while, of course, the Russians are behaving in ways that NATO feels threatening. And now we're back into this dynamic where both sides are ratcheting up their military pressure and military capabilities and justifying it by the actions of the other. Right. My last, hopefully, Trump-related question is his other big criticism of NATO member states is that they failed to spend enough money on defense. The target is 2% or more of GDP. How did

NATO member states arrive at that target? And I know, I mean, a lot of people, observers of, you know, NATO or military affairs will note that Bob Gates used to make the same criticism. It's not an unfair criticism. I think it's the tone and the haranguing of NATO member states. But what isn't getting done because member states aren't spending 2% of GDP? Is there a deficiency in NATO capabilities? Or is this a real concern that you're seeing on the ground in places? Yeah, it is. And I think he is. He is, justified in raising this issue. Again, I don't think in the way he's doing it. Certainly not in this notion that our commitment to NATO is somehow conditional on European spending war on in defense, let alone this idea that Europeans owed the United States money. I mean, we're not a

protection racket. We're not, we're an alliance, we're not a place where we do things for pay. We do it because it's important to our security. But that said, in the year 2000, the non-US NATO share of defense spending of the overall GDP was 2%. Not everybody was spending 2%, some were doing more, some less, but overall they were spending about 2% of GDP on defense. That went down to 1.5% by 2007 and 1.25% by 2011. So a very sharp reduction in defense spending. At the same time, NATO countries deployed troops, large numbers, in Afghanistan,

in the Balkans, ships into the Gulf of Aden as part of a counter-piracy operation. And we're spending a lot of money in operations. And when you reduce defense spending and spent more on operations, what you're not doing is investing in research and development and the buying of new equipment. So you combine the sharp reduction in defense spending with increases over that same time in spending on operations. and you find that there is a growing gap in capabilities

in having the kinds of airplanes and tanks and armored personnel carriers and Navy ships and missiles and bombs and everything you need in order to fight and win wars. And it's the capacity to fight and win wars that deters them in the first place. Right. So NATO is today just a weaker military player than it was in 2000. The U.S. also cut back over that same period of time.

its investment in Europe as we shifted in tension, our attention to the Middle East. So as an alliance, it's still more capable than Russia. But Russia has, at the same time that Europe was cutting its defenses, Russia was modernizing and increasing it. And so turning this around, getting the Europeans to do more on defense to buy more tanks and ships and bullets and missiles and bombs is important in the long haul in order to have a strong and capable military. military. You're geeking out with me on POTSA of the World. More on the Way. One of the places where NATO brought its capabilities to bear recently was in Libya. You wrote a piece in 2012 about that intervention in Libya where you called it the right way to run an intervention. I was at the White House at the time on the NSC, and I remember the days leading up to that war. Gaddafi was moving

forces from Tripoli in the west towards Benghazi in the east, which is a city of about 750,000 people before it was, you know, a Republican attack ad. And Qaddafi had threatened to go house to house and exterminate the people of Benghazi like rats. Obama decided to lead a coalition that stopped his army, took out all their air defenses, and then handed command and control of the operation over to NATO. With that backdrop, I mean, can you talk about why you thought that was such a successful intervention and maybe help people understand the complexity of managing a coalition like that, the command and control structures, and how you bring together armies,

from, you know, 28 member states to conduct the same operation. So we can get back to how successful I think that operation was now. Okay. Not at the same place where I was in late 2011. That's my next question. Given what's happened in Libya. But sort of a macro and a micro way to think about this. So the macro way was when President Obama decided that we needed to do something to stop the Gaddafi forces from getting to Benghazi,

he made this decision to say, we need to intervene from. the air and the United States has unique assets. It has a unique command and control structure and it has unique capabilities to take out the air defenses and the capabilities Gaddafi had. And we will use those unique assets. And once we have accomplished that, then, you know, the Europeans who seem to care a lot more about what's happening and have a closer interest in what's happening in Libya, it's close. After all, only a few hundred miles away from their border across the Mediterranean Sea, they need to take over and take command and control of this operation. And the question then for the Europeans was, well, so who? The French? Well, the French could do

what the French could do, but they couldn't actually manage an operation that would have Swedes and Dutch and Brits and Americans and others involved. And that was true for every European country. The only alternative to the United States was NATO. And why NATO? Because NATO has an integrated military command structure. So it has led by a U.S. military officer, in this case, Jim Stravrides, who was a U.S. Admiral, four-star, who was a dual hat at both as NATO's commander and as the U.S. commander of U.S. forces in Europe. And then there were British and German and French and Italian and Dutch and Turkish and Polish military officers based in as part of the European command structure.

and they work together on a day-to-day basis. They are deployed there for rotations of a year or two years or three years, and they really have an integrated military command structure. And that command structure can manage operations. It did so in Afghanistan. We're at the height of our operation there. There were 150,000 troops from 50 countries that were deployed under one NATO command structure. Again, and same in Libya, there were 14.

countries that provided air bases or aircraft, both bombing aircraft and reconnaissance aircraft. We provided refueling capabilities. There were nations that had ships that were involved in monitoring the arms embargo at the sea, and they were all commanded by this integrated military command structure that NATO deployed. And that command structure is run by the political body, what's called the North Atlantic Council that actually decides when and how force can be used and when and how operations get together. And I was there as the U.S. representative to the North Atlantic Council.

And it's 28 nations that sit around the table that decide everything by consensus. Nothing can be decided unless there is consensus. And so you spend a lot of time in NATO headquarters trying to corral people who may not be inclined or countries that are not inclined to cooperate or move in one direction or another to get them to come to a singular decision. We did that. And when it came to the issue of NATO taking over the U.S.-led operation in late March of 2011, it was difficult to get NATO to agree to do this because there were differences of opinion

between Turks and the French and others. It was also very difficult to turn this thing off. Once you get an operation going, it's very hard to say, well, maybe if you're a comment, what we set out to do. And in some ways, my view is we continued this operation for too long. We have really had accomplished the essential objective, which was to make sure that Qaddafi's military was no longer a threat to his population by the time Tripoli fell, which was in early August of 2011. But we continued the fight, and in fact, as a result, we, NATO, participated in military activities that ultimately led to the demise of Qaddafi.

and then created a need to, you know, who was going to own Libya after Gaddafi? And that became a big issue for NATO, for the United States, for the European Union, and of course for the Libyans. And we're still working that one out because, frankly, no one today owns Libya. It still is a place in which there are large-scale differences among the Libyans, and there's no foreign intervention other than from ISIS and other places. So it's a pretty dark place. Right. I mean, it's interesting to me to hear you say you think it went on too long because Operation Unified Protector had three separate goals, right? There's policing the arms embargo, check, patrolling the no-fly zone, well executed, and then protecting civilians. It ultimately lasted. I think you wrote 222 days.

Yeah, thousands. Exactly. Yeah, thousands of lives were saved in Benghazi and other places. You're right. It's a fair criticism that it turned into a regime change mission on Gaddafi was ultimately taken out. But, But to your other point, I mean, Libya is a mess, in part because the reconstruction efforts didn't get the focus they needed. And I would estimate thousands of civilians have been killed in the wake of NATO's departure. So if the mission was protecting civilians, couldn't you argue that it ended too early? Does NATO need to have a reconstruction component, or is that the UN's job? Like, how do you view this? I think this is the big issue. And I think this is the big issue we confront and we confronted in Syria, we confront in Iraq.

we still confronted in Afghanistan, which is, well, who is responsible for what part of any sort of long-term military operation? The article that you cited that Jim Stravides and I wrote in Foreign Affairs on the lessons we can learn from Libya said, what NATO did was to place the decision about the future of Libya in the hands of the Libyan people. We enabled them to make a choice about their future because the regime was defeated, ultimately, and its military objective, but then it was politically defeated as well, and the responsibility for figuring out what the future was was in the hands of the Libyan people. Of course, the Libyan people weren't prepared for that. They had been suffering for 41 years or more under a dictatorship, and they weren't prepared

yet to figure out how to manage their own affairs. And the question is, first, when you start a military operation like we did in terms of Operation Unified Protector, this NATO bombing mission, What's the goal? Well, the immediate goal was to protect the civilians against the Gaddafi's military. That was achieved very early on in some ways. It became a goal of regime change. Not a formal NATO goal ever, but in effect, that's what the political leaders, including President Obama, had been arguing for. Frankly, my view, that was a mistake. Because at that point, we actually took responsibility for the country what happens afterwards. Right. The same way that we took responsibility in Afghanistan and in Iraq and had we gone into Syria in Syria. And then the responsibility of what does it mean for a country or a coalition of countries to take responsibility for the future of another country? Who is responsible?

How many troops do you deploy? What is the role of the United Nations or the international organizations? And importantly, at what point can you shift responsibility from the international community? whether that's the UN or NATO or individual countries to the people on the ground. And I'll tell you, we haven't been very good at this. We've been added for 25 years. We are still in Kosovo. NATO war, very successful air campaign launched in 1999.

We're still, or at least a European Union is, in Bosnia. And war did end at 21 years ago. And so how long and how much responsibility is the international community supposed to take And at one point is the local community and the local people going to have to take control of their own future, even if we don't like the way that happens. I don't think we've figured that one out in the United States or indeed international community. And that's the big issue. Yeah. And look, and that's true for NATO and that's true for unilateral interventions, right?

Because, I mean, not since, well, I guess World War II or maybe Gulf War I won, but there hasn't really been a clean ending. I mean, the Iraq war was a full invasion and the result was chaos. Libya was a middle ground with, you know, significant but time-limited U.S. and NATO effort, and the result is sort of chaos. Afghanistan were at year 16 of a full-throated international effort. Syria, there was no U.S. or NATO invasion per se. There was limited support of arming the rebels and hitting targets on the ground several years into it. I mean, what do we take away from that? What do we need to fix to make sure that interventions like Libya aren't just successful

in the short term, but that we get the longer term reconstruction effort managed correctly or dealt with. I mean, does there need to be a broader role for the UN? Or what's, whose responsibility is this? So the lesson that I'm learning on, I have learned from this, and I've changed my views on this over the course of the last 20 years, is that actually I don't think the international community has the resources, the stamina and the political will. that it takes for the kind of long-term engagement that you need. The most successful ways in which we have done this was World War II, but we utterly defeated Germany and Japan.

And then we stayed for four years to run the country and then worked with the local authorities to ultimately hand over control and responsibility to them. And by the way, we still have troops in Germany and we still have troops in Japan. 72 years after the end of World War II. And we made huge commitments in terms of the economic and political reconstruction of both countries and the kind of effort that came out of World War II. I don't think we're prepared to do that for countries in the Balkans, countries in the Middle

East, and I don't see the international community writ large to take over that kind of commitment. And by the way, in Japan and Germany, there were homogeneous political cultures. There was a tradition, at least in Germany of democracy, and both countries of market-based economics. In many of the places we've intervened since the end of the Cold War, none of that exists. There's no governance, structure, the economic situation is there are kleptocracies in one form or another. and our ability to really manage the internal politics and societal transformation of these countries through outside intervention is very limited. And so I think, and my sense is that's what President Obama concluded himself when it came to the issue of Syria. If we go in, as Colin Powell said with regard to the Iraq war to President Bush, when you break it, you own it.

And we, I think, have learned that owning these conflicts is not something that we want or can do. You're listening to Pod Save the World. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. I think you're right about where President Obama evolved to. Because when I think back to 2009 and the very long, thoughtful, deliberate review of Afghan policy or our forced posture in Afghanistan and the decision to send tens of thousands of more troops. And then here we are in 2017, and I'm listening to the Trump administration debate the exact same types of things, like thousands more trainers to build up the Afghan forces with absolutely no progress made on the political or economic front. It just feels like Groundhog Day. And I wonder what you think when you read these stories about, you know, possibly sending additional troops to Afghanistan.

And if you feel like there's there's a roadmap that we should be following that we're not. Well, yeah, it's totally Groundhog Day, but it's even worse. I mean, the same people in many ways within the U.S. military that were pushing for a surge back in 2009, which at that point was 40,000 troops. Yeah. On top of already some 75,000 that were in country are now arguing that we, you know, a little bit more effort, like 5,000 troops on top of the 12 or 13,000 that are there, that's going to be magic. That's going to change this thing around. And, you know, the reality is our search didn't change things around. It provided the conditions, which is what we tried to do, provide the conditions for the local population,

the local governing elites to take over. Well, they did and they screwed it up. And the idea that somehow sending 5,000 more soldiers into Afghanistan is going to be the turning point and move us away from what is a sharply deterioring situation in Afghanistan. We had a huge bomb this week that went off in. Kabul killing over 100 people, probably ISIS or Al-Qaeda or whoever. Or the Hakani's who are based in Pakistan. Or the Hakhanis who are based in Pakistan.

An issue, by the way, we never really tackled a full-on. Not even close. So I think it's a fool's errand to suggest that a little bit more troops will get us to a better place. I mean, we actually fought another war, not in the post-Cold War period, but during the Cold War, called Vietnam. where we make the same argument that a little bit more troops, a little bit more bombing, a little bit more this, is going to fundamentally change the equation. Well, it turns out it just hardens the other side. It makes them more willing to sacrifice because they're fighting for their country

and we're just fighting for an idea that we're not willing to invest in to the degree to which we were in what were one and what were two in particular and the aftermath thereafter. So starting these interventions without a clear sense of what is the goal that you're trying to achieve and how would you be able to continue afterwards is, I think, the big issue. And I think we've now had three presidents in a row, in some ways, four presidents in a row elected by running to say we can't be involved and be the world policeman. Remember, that's what George Bush ran on. Oh, yeah. No nation building. No nation building.

Bill Clinton ran on its economy, stupid. And of course, Barack Obama ran against the Iraq war, dumb wars. And Trump ran against any intervention in Syria. He ran against the Iraq war still in Afghanistan. So there is a sense among the American public that these kinds of undertakings, however worthwhile they may be in helping particular people, just aren't worth the costs that they take. I agree with every argument you just made against sending more troops to Afghanistan. in, but the hard thing to deal with intellectually is you can make the counterargument, or people argue that the failure to leave a residual force in Iraq of 5, 10, 15,000 U.S.

troops is somehow the reason that that country, you know, devolved into violence and chaos and ISIS gained a foothold. And I don't know how to sort all this out. I mean, I think Iraq, you had a, there were a number of broader challenges. I don't believe the Iraqi political process would have allowed us to force residual force to stay. I also think they have broader sectarian and political challenges of creating a more representative government that probably are as big a challenge as anything they'll deal with militarily. But I don't know. I mean, how would you respond to someone who said, Obama screwed up by not leaving

10,000 troops in Iraq? And now we have an ISIS foothold in that country. So I don't think that 10,000 troops would have changed the dynamic. Remember the surge in 2006. So, you know, we invaded Iraq. We unleashed in 2003, four, five, a set of sectarian conflicts that had been suppressed very effectively by Saddam for many, many years. And it exploded literally in our face in 2005 and 06. And President Bush responded to that to say, no, what we need to do is we need to create a security situation that allows for a political settlement. And that's why we need to search. So in 06 and 07, we searched troops and did reduce the violence.

What we didn't do, what we weren't able to do, was to get that political agreement among the sectarian groups. They were still fighting for power. And the majority, which had been suppressed by the Sunni minority, wasn't going to take a political outcome in which they didn't have control. And the Sunnis weren't going to accept a political outcome in which they were subordinate to the Shias. Right. And the Kurds weren't going to accept a political outcome in which they weren't, you know, de facto independent. And that political reality, which we never solved, surge or no surge, is what undermined the system. And having five or 10,000 troops wasn't going to change that.

And as a result, it was that very sectarianism that produced al-Qaeda in Iraq in the first place, that produced ISIS. Together what was happening in Syria, of course, where many of these guys went. and it was going to happen. And I think the lesson to learn is, you know, you probably don't want to go to war and break up highly fragile countries without actually understanding what will happen. So the original sin is 2003, the decision to go into Iraq. And ever since we've been trying to figure out how to deal with the consequences of that particular decision. And I think the tendency, as Obama used to talk about,

and Ben Rhodes, the blob, right? The Washington consensus is that if you just show you're a little stronger, a little bit more capable, a little bit more willing to use a little bit more force, it'll be all right. I think the last 25 years demonstrates that the just isn't true and that we need to be a little less certain about our capacity to influence the internal dynamics of foreign societies, many of which we don't understand very well, and have a little bit more humility. about what it is that we can achieve through military means or even economic and political means. And I think that's the lesson, frankly, that Barack Obama learned as president.

In some ways, I think Donald Trump is learning today. Humility has not always been our strong suit. So I asked you about some intractical old problems. A new emerging problem is Turkey. Turkey's a NATO member. It's essentially becoming a dictatorship. I'm not surprising this is creating friction among NATO members. some NATO countries are trying to block Turkey from hosting the 2018 NATO summit. How do you think

NATO should deal with Turkey? Obviously, we don't want to drive them out of the alliance, make things worse, but part of the NATO charter is a political alliance that's supposed to promote democratic values, which are obviously being curtailed in Turkey itself as they lock up lawyers, opposition leaders, and journalists. How do you think NATO should manage this challenge? I think this is one of the most difficult challenges that confronts an alliance like NATO, which during the Cold War, we were able to close her eyes to when the Greek colonels took over, when the Turks in a variety of times had military dictatorships taking over. And indeed, in Portugal, an original member of NATO, was run by a military dictatorship until 1974.

And we could justify that in our own minds by the threat of the Soviet Union, the threat of Soviet communism, was so much larger that having strong allies, even if they weren't as democratic or respectful for human rights and everything else as we would want, we could make that case. After the end of the Cold War, when that threat sort of disappears, at least is not as strong, and even today it's not as strong as it was the Soviet Union, was making the case that NATO is really not only a military alliance, but a political alliance that it promotes freedom and has a set of common shared values that are important. having a member, not just one actually.

Hungary is also moving in the wrong direction. Poland, to certain extent, is moving in the wrong direction. But Turkey is strategically, of course, even more important. And what is happening in Turkey is deeply troubling. There's no mechanism for throwing a member out of the alliance. The only way to get rid of Turkey as a member will be for everybody else to withdraw and then sign a new agreement because there is no provision for kicking members out. out. You can only withdraw. You can't kick somebody out. So the challenge here is to have,

to continue to have a dialogue, to try to influence the direction of policy of the government, and yes, to use carrots and sticks. And one of those sticks is if you want the idea of hosting a summit in 2018 in Istanbul, when the government is acting in the way it has, is probably not a great sign. Yeah. And the idea of moving it to a different place is a good thing. The other issue, as the Turks are very good at reminding allies of their obligation under both Article 5, which we talked about, this collective defense provision, but also Article 4, which is a provision that allows one country to have consultative arrangements if they feel threatened. And they have invoked Article 4 in the past few years because of the Syria conflict a number of times. And the Allies have responded.

There was a threat of ballistic missiles that might be Turkey. And back in 2011 and 2012, we worked on deploying Patriot missile batteries. Oh, yeah, right. The U.S. did that. The Germans did it. The Dutch did it. By the way, they paid for it. And the willingness of allies to say, next time around, we're going to come your way when it is going to be reduced.

So there is an impact indirectly in the willingness of allies to uphold the principles of the alliance under those circumstances. So it's a very hard problem because Turkey is a strategically very important country. And by the way, we all want Turkey to be part of this Western community where democracy, human rights and the rule of law are upheld. And kicking them out of NATO, even if you could, is not likely to promote that. Keeping them in and finding ways to exert subtle pressure on them is more likely to do that. Yeah. Ivo, thank you so much for not just explaining the basics of NATO and talking us through Trump's trip,

but for your willingness to be self-critical and introspective about some of the stuff we worked on and things that might not have turned out so well a couple years later. It's fascinating conversation. I really appreciate it. And I think more honest conversations like this would probably benefit the blob in Washington and anybody listening today. Absolutely. Well, I really appreciate the time. Enjoyed the conversation, Tom.

Anytime. Me too. Thank you. All right. Take care. Bye-bye.