Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/10/23 Bonnie Kristian: What does a Ron DeSantis Foreign Policy Look Like?

Episode Date: March 14, 2023

Bonnie Kristian returns to the show to discuss a piece she wrote examining the foreign policy beliefs of the Florida Governor and likely Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. Kristian shares what she found and the two discuss how the struggle amongst the different factions of the GOP could either bolster the party’s recent noninterventionism or lead it right back to the warmongering and imperialism of the Washington establishment.  Discussed on the show: “Ron DeSantis Could Decide Republicans’ Foreign Policy” (New York Times) The Podcast Interview about DeSantis at Guantanamo Bay Bonnie Kristian is a fellow at Defense Priorities, and a regular contributor at The American Conservative. Her writing has appeared at TIME, CNN, Politico, The American Conservative, and many others. Follow her at her website or on Twitter @bonniekristian. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys on the line i've got bonnie christian and she has an article in the new york times if you can believe that um but first of all she is the author of untrustworthy

the knowledge crisis, breaking our brains, polluting our politics, and corrupting Christian community. And she's a fellow at Defense Priorities and a columnist at Christianity Today. Welcome to the show. Bonnie, how are you doing? Good. Well, I'm a little under the weather. So if I sound a little bit stuffy or anything like that, that's why. But otherwise, it's pretty good. And I'm glad to be here. Okay, good. Well, happy to have you. Wow, so you wrote this really important article. Ron DeSantis could decide Republicans' foreign policy.

which is a very interesting way to phrase the topic off the bat there, not just, hey, who's this guy and what does he believe, but already and what is that going to mean for the Republican Party going forward? To sum up, is he America first, or is he George W. Bush, Bonnie? I think the interesting thing about DeSantis, well, one interesting thing is how few people seem to be aware of his time spent in Congress and that he did in fact build with something of foreign policy record there. Everyone knows him as a governor, of course.

But I think the other interesting thing is that it seems like he's to some extent trying to straddle that line, doing a little bit of both in a way that, you know, as he's a presumptive but not yet declared presidential candidate, presumably he is hoping will appeal to a large swath of the Republican base, both the Trump faction and lingering elements who are still more comfortable with something from the Bush era. All right, well, if I can sum up my impression of your impression here, it sort of seems like the take is this guy really is a hawk,

but now he's figured out that he's got to sound a little bit nuancedy or something and give the America Firsters, you know, a little something to believe in there. But otherwise, he's got a pretty consistent record as a Mitt Romney type on foreign policy, don't he? I mean, I think one of the biggest differences that I would point to, and somewhere it does seem to me that he is significantly different from that older model is in his, and more resonant with the new is with his handling of China. He does focus on it a lot. And he does so in the sort of very ideological culture worry terms that you tend to see from the new crowd. People like Josh Hawley are going to be talking about China in a similar

way in a way that we just didn't really have back in the Bush years. So I think that part is quite different. And then I think the other big point of difference from sort of the Bush era folks is that DeSantis has actually been quite vague on his views of the main post-9-11 wars, Iraq, Afghanistan. You know, there are some breadcrumbs and you can sort of make an educated guess, particularly given the fact that he deployed to Iraq as a JAG officer and he was also worked for a bit in the same capacity at Guantanamo Bay. But he does not have either, you know, sort of the Trump style, these were stupid record or the, you know, old school church to be Bush. We've got to go nation build and police the world attitude on his record in any super

clear way. Well, it's interesting, though, right? Even his reluctance because only Donald Trump talks like Donald Trump anyway, right? Nothing DeSantis says is going to come off as total a take, as hyperbolic a take is something that Trump might say. So it would, in other words, it should be pretty easy for him to say, yeah, on second thought, we probably shouldn't have done that. But he won't even do that, right? Well, he said, and particularly about Afghanistan, he said that he did think that we needed to leave. I've not been able to find from him any sort of, and he's also had a, he had a comment back in 2014 in the congressional record talking about Syria primarily, but you can see how it would apply more broadly, where he talked about Americans not being

war-weary, but being tired, basically, of wars that were not winning. And so, So, and he did have, you know, some stuff about like the strategy and wanting a clear cut victory, which would suggest also wanting an exit plan in that comment. But yeah, he just hasn't, to my knowledge, and I've looked into this a lot, certainly it's possible I've missed something. But so my knowledge, he hasn't really weighed in on these wars in sort of that bigger strategic picture of should we have gone in in the first place. And so it's very different, you know, to be saying in 2021 or 2020, yeah, I think it's time to wind this down as opposed to offering that wholesale reassessment. Yeah. Well, and mumbling something about, we need to wind this down is not saying we need to get out of Afghanistan at all, right? That's like not even, that's like walking next to the bandwagon, maybe.

Yeah, I mean, that doesn't preclude, you know, even sort of some like long term. small-scale presence like we have in Iraq. Yeah. Any hawk could have said that. No, we should wind this thing down and only leave 30,000 forces there to kill everyone forever. But nothing beyond that, though. We heard that for 20 years from people, so. Yeah. And I think there's a similar flexibility in some of his recent comments on Ukraine, where the line he's gone with lately has been like no blank check. and that you know sure that that I agree no blank check but what does the check say if it's not blank it could potentially even be higher than what we're sending right now or it could be a lot lower

or it could be nothing no blank check doesn't really tell you anything other than that he's critiquing what the Biden administration is currently doing so there's a lot of unanswered questions as much as, you know, he does have more of a foreign policy record, as I said, than I think many people realize there are a lot of unanswered questions about pretty big, pretty big, pretty big. When Russia invaded Ukraine, there was a pretty, he was pretty critical, you know, he spoke about it as a strategic misstep. Like, he, you know, didn't, at the, at the, around that time, Trump had made some kind of complimentary comments about Putin for the invasion. DeSantis was very much not in the same space.

He's called Putin an authoritarian gas station attendant. And he, as recently the last year, has accused Russia of trying to engage in espionage or influence operations in Florida. So he has, you know, a pretty decent record. And going back to his time in Congress, about a decade ago, he has a pretty decent record of, you know, some hostility toward Russia. assumption that, you know, there's a disalignment between Russian and U.S. interests, more of an old-school, like sort of, you know, memories of the Cold War model, something that we would find fitting comfortably with that older vein of neo-conservative-leaning Republicans.

Yeah. Lately, the argument has been that he's softening his stance on Ukraine and therefore Russia a bit. I think it's, granted, I could have. been tracking this more closely, but from what I've seen, I think it's a little bit early to say on that, because it's sort of what I've read has been sort of in this conveniently, I don't know, vague's the right word, but he's leaving himself some room, I think, particularly so early in the 2024 race and sort of looking for a middle way, again, that would appeal to Republicans sort of across this foreign policy spectrum, such as it is.

But so, yeah, his record has been to be, you know, more anti-Russia than certainly, again, like Trump, who's, of course, the comparison that is always made, whether he'll, whether that will evolve, you know, with the wins of the 24 election. I certainly think that's possible. Yeah. Well, Trump has declared that he's the peace candidate and everybody else is a globalist warmonger in his hyperbolic way. So the battle lines are drawn. I guess DeSantis's argument has to either be. You damn right, I am, or I am not either, and stop saying that. And he's going to have to, you know, figure out, you know, which way to flip that light switch and stop trying to have it both ways. You know, slogans like no blank check, isn't it just too easy to imagine like a sitcom scene where they're sitting around in the office, him and his staffers? And they decide, well, let's just copy these other idiot Republicans who came up with this no blank check slogan, which doesn't mean anything. and everybody knows we support endless, you know, arms transfers and supply to this thing. But we'll just throw them that like their dogs and we're giving them a bone.

I mean, to me, it's not going to hold up through debate and certainly not in an argument with Trump who is, you know, saying, I'll make a deal and end this war in a day and this kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, I would certainly, you know, hope that the races it proceeds would. would require DeSantis to get more specific about this stuff and that he would have to really commit to spelling out a clearer foreign policy vision, a clearer stance on the post-911 war, a clearer stance on what he actually wants to do in Ukraine, as opposed to just for right now aiming fire at the Biden administration. Whether that will actually happen, you know, I don't have to tell you how foreign policy is so routinely ignored.

in presidential debates. And I think there's some question of whether the GOP will even do primary debates this time. So, you know, absent that sort of situation where you have candidates in the same room with one another being required to answer specific questions insofar as that even works when it happens. Yeah, I don't know. I mentioned in the New York Times to say, like, let's take a serious look at someone's foreign policy. record, if they want to be president, and particularly with Trump in the race, you know, having the effect that he does and making everything about, you know, one-liners and personality, I don't know if we'll see DeSantis forced to get more specific or not.

Yeah. Would you find out about his role in a Rock War II? The service as a JAG officer. Yeah, I think I had read just a brief bit. about him being attached to some Navy SEALs fighting in the Anbar province, which certainly raises a lot of questions, you know? There's not a whole lot of information out there about it. I mean, it's certainly established that he did it. That was in 2007.

And then the year prior to that, 2006, was when he was at Gitmo. And just this week, I believe it had been published previously in print, but just this past week, the week of today's March 10th, I think it was published for the first time online. Was it, I think it was Harper's or The New Yorker? I'm blanking on one of those two. Miami Herald, I think, right? No, they had a report, but either Harpers and the New Yorker had an interview transcript with a former Guantanamo inmate who'd been released and would publish a book.

That's from the Mike Prysner show. He's the one who got that interview. Yeah, okay. talking about uh-huh and you know it was quite serious allegations that desantis had been in the room in the room and then laughing at um forced feedings during a hunger strike from what i understand you know it's been verified that desantis was there during an inmate hunger strike and he was there in a capacity that potentially would have involved him with that i don't know if you know there's been any other corroboration of that account right well so the miami

Harold's account essentially says just what you say that they confirmed that it's a possibility right they did not preclude it but they did not establish it either there's the only single source on this and they they do quote some people saying well I don't think that that would have been in his job description but I think they quote someone else saying no it could have been that he would yeah it's unclear and I don't think he's weighed in on it at all right yeah I don't think anybody's asked him and I don't know you know that it would be in his interest to do so to comment. So I don't know if we'll find out the truth about that.

There could be confirming sources out there still. There could be, yeah, maybe something will emerge. But for now it's a little bit murky exactly what he did while he was over there. I mean, certainly I think it's fair to say by 2007, you know, we're four years, 2006-2007, we're three to four years into the war. We've at that point, you know, long since passed this sort of initial, uh fun or cheerleading for it the the sort of initial um belief of the wmd's story so at the very least he at that point in time had decided this was something he he thought it was acceptable and perhaps

even worthwhile artistic and the courts had begun to rule too that no this is not totally lawless territory where you guys can just make it up as you go along and do what you want and the constitution doesn't fly somehow sort of yeah the timeline is not he got swept up in the initial enthusiasm about war and then later regretted it. Like there was that at this point, 2006-2007, that's a, that's a, he's had a chance, a chance to weigh that decision. Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them.

World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them. But now you can get the e-book, All the War Lies by me for free. Just sign up for the email. list at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. Hey y'all, Scott here. Let me tell you about Roberts and Roberts Brokerage, Inc. Who knew? Artificial bank credit expansion leads to price inflation

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you'll be glad you did for people who don't understand that first of all the people are hunger striking and trying to kill themselves or you know get to the edge of death in order to protest their lawless conditions being held there i didn't mean to imply that the constitution applied very much just that the supreme court had asserted some jurisdiction anyway but um they were being held without trial they have been you know all this time so many of them still and so but then the military then just would tie them down and shove a rubber hose up their nose and down their throat and pump them full of insure, which is what you give, like, senior citizens when they can't eat and need some nutrients and this kind of thing. And then, and I covered this on the show at the time with all the experts and the lawyers and different people all through this as it was happening, that it got really gruesome. And it was not, we're not talking about torture as enhanced interrogation by CIA or military, which did happen at Guantanamo by CIA and military. But we, so it was nothing like that. They're not questioning them. But it was torture and there are all different human rights groups and UN commissions and whoever all

had said so too because of the way that they would you know the hose would get bigger and bigger and now no lubricant and now it's the same hose they just ripped out of this other guy's face covered with snot and blood and then they jam it up the next guy's nose and you know and so then you see why it would make sense at least that a JAG officer would have to stand there some of the time or check in sometimes and say this is still within the rules or no it's not because they were skating up against the rules as they're absolutely brutalizing these men so many of whom we know were innocent right there's a handful of guys who actually ever did anything to us in there ever at all not that they deserve this sort of lawless treatment either but um so whether it was

really desantis or not i hope we'll find out for sure but it would make sense that a jag would be standing there observing this at least from time to time, you know? Yeah, and yeah, like you say, I mean, it's, we know that this sort of thing happened. We know that he was there. We don't know for sure if this account is true, but it would be very interesting to find out. And I think, you know, in the, in the ideal world in which we do not live, that would lead to some serious rediscussion of, you know, like the torture practices from that era, particularly even Trump's record on torture.

There's a lot to discuss there. But, yeah, yeah, too soon to say. Well, and so talk about how bad he is on Israel and Iran, not to be too redundant there. Well, on Israel, I think he's sort of pretty typical of, you know, where Republicans tend to fall on this. And that is something that hasn't really evolved, I think, over the past 20 years.

I mean, certainly Trump's, thing with moving the embassy to Jerusalem was a novel development, but the substance of the, you know, just reflexively pro-state of Israel's stances is fairly consistent, and DeSantis falls squarely in that space. The Iran thing is interesting. That was a really favorite topic of his when he was in Congress. If I recall correctly, going over, like, his statements that he had entered into the congressional record, those sort of like formally preserved comment. My recollection is that Iran was the topic he discussed most, which is an interesting decision, you know, circa 2013, 2014, 2015. He was very opposed to the Iran deal.

He was actually out ahead of Trump on this when to the extent that their times in office overlapped. He was pushing for Trump to withdraw from the deal before Trump had even done so. And so I think, you know, this is, it's not necessarily outside the bounds of where Republicans have been on Iran for the past 20 years. You know, there's some variation on that. And I would say in a lot of ways, he's pretty typical. What makes it perhaps it's a little bit more obsessed, but pretty typical. What makes it more troubling, though, is when you combine it with this lack of assessment of, of Iraq and Afghanistan, right?

Because for a long time now, it's most Americans, and that includes a lot of Republicans, have said, you know, those wars weren't worth fighting. It's good that we're gone. And if he did not sort of learn that lesson, and we just don't know because he hasn't said, that to me really raises the risk of him being willing to to attempt some sort of military intervention against her and sort of repeat the mistakes with

Iraq and Afghanistan, except, of course, we're now dealing with a wealthier country, a country where potentially all of the bad things that we can think about from those countries in terms of like our lack of success and failure to achieve any of our stated goals would be worse. Yeah. Well, the mosaic sure is coming together here. So tell me about what he's said about North Korea over the years? You know, he's, I don't recall seeing as much from him on North Korea as everything else. My recollection is that it's pretty typical stuff, much like with China, he talks about it in terms of, you know, ideology. They're, you know, a communist country. And of course, they are.

It's a terrible, repressive regime. But I think in foreign policy, that can lead to, you know, maybe refusals to take opportunities to productively negotiate or to deal in like the economic realm in ways that can improve in people's quality of life and liberalize. And so if you're so busy framing them as an ideological enemy, that can be an impediment to improving relations. He has adopted some Trumpian language in North Korea. He's used the rocket man term. And he's also linked them to Iran and so sort of making that category of nuclear threats to the United States, to global security, to stability. And so I would say, again, a lighter record here certainly compared to what he said on Iran,

but I would anticipate that we would see from President Stantis somewhat similar handling of the two, you know, that disinterest in diplomacy where there's real compromises. on the table, which is to say diplomacy that has a chance of working, that is interested in like incremental progress, sort of an all or nothing mindset. Now, whether he would be, whether there's the same risk of military intervention, given that North Korea already has nukes, I think that's probably less just because they have nukes. And that's always the big difference in the dynamic between those two. But yeah, I think that similar maximum pressure approach with both is a safe expectation. Right. In other words, there's just no break here at all from the Republican

consensus. So you're saying like, you know, he's not the worst hawk in the world. He's not, you know, out front of the war party or anything like that. But I mean, he's not John Bolton. Right. But, you know, right now the challenge is whether the America firsters, you know, running on basically the disgrace of the terror wars and how we should not have done that and we should not be doing this and how we're going to move forward with a different policy from what John McCain would have us do or whether we're just going to muddle along as Stanley McChrystal says and so to that extent it seems clear this guy might as well just be a CIA plot to kill America first well I mean I guess what I would say is that

So it's the America first rejection of the post-9-11 wars. I think that that was, I mean, in Trump's case in particular, it was pretty impotent. He didn't actually end any wars, but he was at least saying that stuff. And that was valuable while those wars continued. And of course, we haven't fully wound down what we're doing in the Middle East, but it is markedly scaled down from three, four years ago. And so when I think about DeSantis coming into office potentially in early, 2025, unless something changes, and certainly it could, but as far as what we know right now,

the Middle East not being a major focus of American foreign policy at that point, you know, there's not going to be 100,000 American boots on the ground in the Middle East at that point, most likely. Insofar as now there's this new focus on great hour conflict and on China in particular, also Russia, but particularly from Republicans of all varieties of China. At that point, I don't really know it feels sort of like a frying pan fire situation for me between the America First crowd, which is so deeply antagonistic to China and someone like DeSantis who has a pretty much identical position. So if we're looking at a few years ago, it seems like, you know, maybe that America First

rhetoric is going to be, put us in a better shape when the Middle East was the focus. But a few years looking forward, if China is the focus, there's not much difference. Yeah. No, of course, you know, the populist right have so far been essentially made to be hawks. But, you know, there are a lot of leaders on the populist right who don't believe in it. A lot of magat types who see through the hype about China and, you know, are not willing to just go along with that. So there is some hope there. But I think, and I'm with you, you won't catch me dead giving Trump too much credit. I mean, there's enough in my book to put him in prison. No question about that. But what really is at stake is not whether it's Trump or DeSantis making the calls, because at least if history's the

judge, Trump would do pretty much what DeSantis would do probably. But there is a huge difference in the terms of the Republican right being told by their most important leaders, this is who we are and this is what we care about versus that's who we are and that's what we care about. And it's pretty easy to see how DeSantis could satisfy enough of the things that they care about

that they don't give a damn what a horrible hockey is because they're not that anti-war anyway and, you know, it's sort of like with W. Bush you know, kind of came in, and all the things that right-wingers hated about the government in the 90s didn't really matter anymore. The IRS, the ATF, and, you know, FBI files and this and that and killing the branch of idiots. Never mind all that. Let's go to Iraq. We got a great new leader. We can believe in now. And so even people who were like against the sanctions said, yeah, well, that's why we have to invade so we could lift the sanctions.

I mean, you know what I mean? I can see DeSantis doing that. I think as much as the Republicans' foreign policy is like somewhat unsettled and somewhat in flux right now and who wins this next nomination could, you know, as the article said, really shape where the party goes on this front. I don't, we're certainly not dealing with an unlimited range of options for where that shaping will go. And also, I feel very confident saying, you know, if there were another 9-11 style attack on American soil and it was comparably traded. to a group, you know, with some sort of national home base like Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001. I feel pretty confident saying our Republican president would happily re-invade and do that all over again and with full support of the Republican base. And start some extra wars too.

Yeah. And so I think things have changed to a real extent. Like, I don't want to underplay that. I do think this presidential nomination will be consequential for what Republicans do in foreign policy going forward. But a lot of stuff hasn't changed, and that's, you know, that hypothetical is a really big case in point. Yeah. Well, we just saw an example the other day where some America Firsters in the House tried to get us out of Syria, as Trump did try to do three times, which he's the same guy who also rolled over, even though he was the commander and could have made it. So the Pentagon overruled him and he let them overruled him three times. But there were plenty of George W. Bush Republicans up there giving speeches about, don't you know we got to fight him over there so we don't have to. to fight them over here and all this crap straight out of 2004 and 5 and that'd be a good enough excuse to keep troops anywhere where there's Sunnis or Shiites with rifles you know if you want yeah and I think on these these kinds of of issues you know it's it's obviously not impossible

that the the GOP will will shift more significantly um but it's it's there's a there's a greater diversity of opinion than in 2003 for sure. But it's not, it's far from clear that this is not an anti-war party to say the least. Nope, not yet. Maybe not ever. But,

and you know what, there are a few in there. You know, Thomas Massey's a good one. Gates is good on a lot of things on foreign policy. I don't know what his entire record is, but and I don't know a whole lot about Margaret Taylor Green, but it seems like she's very skeptical of

a lot of this stuff at least. I'll give her credit for that. And she certainly, you know, is moving the so-called window there and making it acceptable for right-wingers to say, we shouldn't be doing this. This is reckless. This is stupid. This is expensive. And things like that, which is what their take all should be, if you ask me. So, you know, it's not over yet. Is it ever? Nope, not quite. Well, listen, thank you so much. It's great to talk. to you again, Bonnie, and great work and really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for

having me. All right, you guys, that is Bonnie Christian. She is at defense priorities, and here she is. They let her write one in the New York Times. Rhonda Santis could decide Republicans' foreign policy. The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on K-PFK, 90.7

FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scott Horton.org, and Libertarian Institute. Thank you.