The Bulwark Podcast - Robert Kagan: We’re Transitioning to a Post-American World

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

The pro-Iran war hawks keep crowing about how U.S. military prowess is supposedly striking fear in Beijing and Moscow. But what’s really happening is that Trump is doing exactly what China and Russia hoped he’d do. Beijing has wanted the U.S. out of the Western Pacific and Putin, of course, wants NATO wrecked. Our major allies are scrambling to form new economic and military relationships, and America is likely to be very lonely in the world with only a few stooges to count as friends. This is what ending our role as a global superpower would look like. Plus, the U.S. is unable to win the war at a cost that is acceptable to Americans, Trump is taking a cue from Putin by bombing civilian infrastructure, and blaming NATO for not being willing to fight for the Strait of Hormuz is absurd when the world’s most powerful navy doesn't seem to want to do it either.Bob Kagan joins Tim Miller for the holiday weekend pod.show notes Bob's recent piece in The Atlantic Tim's bimbofied livestream "Foreign Policy" piece on South Korea that Bob referenced Follow "Bulwark Takes" for breaking news over the weekend Tim's playlist

and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show. Contributing writer at the Atlantic and senior fellow at Brookings. His most recent book is Rebellion, how America apart again. It is Bob Kagan. How you doing, Bob? I'm great. Tim. How are you? I'm doing well. It sounds like Bob missed my live stream last night on YouTube where I bimbofied myself. And so if you guys also missed that, it might be something to take a look at. I thought I looked pretty good. I understand where Brian's coming from now, what the appeal is. And so we'll just kind of leave that there. I want to start a little behind the scenes. I don't think this should embarrass you because it's kind of glazing you. But last June, when we engaged in the 12 day war. We started bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities. You know, some of my neocon muscles

were flaring a little bit on the podcast. And I was going, okay, you know, I don't really trust Trump. I don't like Trump. But it's just a little, you know, just a little kind of mind sweep over the nuclear facilities in Iran. Don't hate that. And, you know, I was kind of vacillating back and forth on it. And some others in our circle were even more supportive of it than that. We'll just leave it there. And Bob calls me. I'm standing right outside there in my back porch. And he's like, don't let these old neocons trick you into thinking this is a good idea. Okay.

This is a disaster. We can't predict how bad it is. You can't trust Trump. And I don't know. In that 12 days, I'm not sure you are quite vindicated. Ten months later, you're looking quite prescient on your view of wanting to oppose Trump and his adventurism in the Middle East at all costs. So why don't you just get to. give us a little bit on what your instinct was on this.

Setting aside, my concern, which is not really worth setting aside, about the domestic consequences of Trump being at war, which I think we have still yet to fully discover. You know, if we're going to be at war for several months, the opportunities for declaring national security issues on one thing or another, arresting protesters because they're domestic terrorists, et cetera, you know, we haven't fully gone down this road. But, you know, from a more from a strategic point of view, I did not believe that bombing alone was going to solve our problem with Iran. And this is, we somehow forgot, you know, we learned this lesson in the 1990s. There was this great idea, especially after the decimation of the Iraqi army in Kuwait in the, you know, in the first Gulf War, where our missiles, our airplanes,

you know, just completely decimated their force, really. And then it was just a matter of mopping up at the end. And this gave, I think, Americans and American strategists even a great perception. We could really accomplish our goals pretty much through air power alone. And you may remember, I don't know how much you were paying attention, but people like Don Rumsfeld and a guy who used to be a big she's named Richard Pearl had this idea that you could pretty much cut the armed forces of the United States by a third and just do everything, you know, with missiles and bombs. And so, and the Klan administration tried to accomplish a lot through air power. You know, they bombed Saddam Hussein for four days in 1998, 99, and that didn't really do anything. Then there was the

long bombing campaign against Slobodan Milosevic in 99, which was supposed to be over in three days and then went on for three months. And it really wasn't until we threatened to send in troops that he capitulated. Anyway, long, long way of saying, we have learned before that bombing alone wasn't going to do it. And now we've had the most abject demonstration possible because it has been a free fly, pretty much, although we just lost an F-15, apparently. But it, for the most part, has been open skies. We've been able to bomb Iran at will, hit everything that we want to hit with remarkable, you know, accuracy and the brilliance of our forces and their equipment. et cetera. And yet here we are, and I think we're, you know, we are still more losing this war than

winning it because we can't finish it off with what is going to be required if we want to, which is a full-scale ground invasion of Iran, you know, because there's no way, you know, we can get into this, but, you know, how to open the straight is not something that's going to be accomplished by air and sea power alone, as, which is witnessed by the fact, we're sending ground troops to the region. So I was always skeptical that you could get where you wanted to get to by air alone. And now that has just become fully demonstrated to all. In addition to that, kind of vividly remembering our conversation,

you're also just skeptical that you could trust Donald Trump and Pete Hankseth to do anything competently, even if they came up with a strategy, or that you could trust that they could do something not corruptly or that there wouldn't be other, you know, ancillary negative effects, whether it be, as you mentioned, domestic attempts to seize, you know, more authoritarian power or just, you know, kind of unpredictable incompetence. And we've seen a little bit of both. Right. And in addition to which, you know, for those like myself who would like, and you, I'm sure, who would like to see the Iranian people freed from the brutal tyranny that they've been suffering under the mullahs,

Donald Trump is not the person to deliver them from that. And now he is talking about sending not just the Mullahs, but the Iranian people back to the Stone Age where they belong, as he so felicitously put it. So his concern for the Iranian people is something less than zero. And so, you know, I don't know what outcome anybody ever expected him to accomplish in this situation. I'm sorry, I don't think that's right, Bob. I have to challenge you because Rich Lowry at the National Review said that he's just a sincere and passionate Iran hawk. Yeah. And that's what we've learned. So I'm not sure. I think that maybe you're just not seeing Trump's sincerity and passion when it comes to liberating Iran. I'm certainly seeing passion.

He seems to be very passionate about killing as many people as he can possibly kill, blowing things up. He loves to watch pictures of blowing things up. Maybe that makes him very passion. He does like to watch pictures. Okay, I want to run through some news items and get to your Atlantic article to talk about the geopolitical implications of all this. As you mentioned, Iranian media was reporting overnight, but now we have confirmation in American media that an F-15 was downed over Iran.

There's a search and rescue operation underway as we speak for the crew. The Iranian media, I couldn't tell if this was a cheeky troll of Trump or just how they actually talk, but, you know, was saying to the Iranians, if you're in the region, you capture this person, and you'll get a prize. You'll get a nice prize or reward, which is a very Trumpian kind of thing. I should mention just while we're doing news updates, just a little correction.

The other day I was talking about how Trump was talking about how there were missiles going at our ship, and I suggested that it was referencing the Gerald Ford, but that clip was taken out of context, and he was talking about a Venezuela ship. And so I do think the other news item this morning is that the Gerald Ford is going through repairs. That's the big ship might be going back,

the region. The other news item is since we talked yesterday is, you know, we are now kind of beginning that going back to the Stone Age style bombing campaign. The first attack on a major civilian infrastructure target intentionally was yesterday, which was an attack on the B1 bridge near Tehran. And that, I think, is signaling a widening of the U.S. military targets and a first step towards attacks on the energy, water, and transportation infrastructure. Trump posted a picture of the down bridge and bragged about it. Which are civilian targets. Yeah.

So anyway, on the F-15 and now the kind of missing airmen and the bridge, any thoughts on either of those items? You know, when you carry out a military operation, you're going to have bad events take place. I mean, the Gerald Ford had to go back because there was a fire in the laundry, which military people who know much more than I do say is not completely. inconsistent with a deployment, which has gone on for well over a year. I think that many of these sailors have not had any leave. And so that can lead to all kinds of things. The longer you keep people deployed, the more likely there is for error. So that's one part of it. But I really do think people are saying that Trump has announced intention to commit war crimes. And so I think I really do think it's important to note they can claim that the bridge has both military and civilian uses.

But when you start going after the energy grid, that's an attack on a civilian target. This is what Putin is doing in Ukraine. He is destroying the energy grid in Ukraine to make the Ukrainian people, people suffer so much that the government can continue the war. And so now the strategy in this attempt to liberate the Iranian people from this brutal regime, will now be to make them suffer as much as possible and bring about what the Israelis, I think, are looking for, which is not regime change, but state failure, by which is meant really the inability of any state to function in Iran. If Trump gets what he wants, we will go sailing off into the sunset, having turned Iran into a smoking ruin where people are dying of starvation and disease and lack of access to water, etc. The regime has colloquy.

the country is in total chaos, and we are on our way back to wherever we were before we started this. And I don't know what the outcome of that is for the region and not to mention for the Iranian people. Yeah. And Washington Post assessment this morning, you know, is we're not there yet because actually the hardliners are still in charge. You know, there has been an unprecedented kind of churn of the Tehran political and military establishment. And I think that, a lot of us from the outside, it's kind of hard to tell, like, what, you know, who that has left in charge. We know that obviously the son of the Atoa, we haven't heard much from him, don't exactly know their status. The president is the same, despite the fact that Donald Trump posted that the new president is much more reasonable.

It's the same as the old president. You know, the post story says that who has been left in place is a hardline government. And right now, there's little hope of diplomatic breakthrough with those in charge, according to regional and Western officials. And it seems to me that at this point, what has resulted from our efforts is a hardening of the existing regime. Again, our strategy, insofar as we seem to have a strategy now, is sort of beyond regime change, or it's regime change accomplished only through the utter destruction of Iran. Yeah, you know, only through state failure. whether he can accomplish state failure in two or three weeks of intensive bombing, I don't know.

So I don't rule out that, but, but right now what you're saying is certainly true. It seems like they've gotten to a deal on this DHS shut down. There's some Republicans in the House who are mad about it. So it isn't 100% finalized where they'll separate out ICE and CBP funding from the rest of Department of Homeland Security. And then they'll move forward with this reconciliation bill, which allows them to get around the filibuster. that will have funding for ICE and Border Patrol, but also the war funding. And the budget number that they just put on that is one and a half trillion, which seems like a whole lot to me.

You know, putting aside kind of the congressional wrangling on this, I'm just curious what you think about the scale of what they're talking about. As a longstanding, you know, defense hawk, I'm in favor of increased spending. You have to ask what exactly it's for now, given the new strategy. of the United States, because we've basically ended the alliance with our NATO allies, and therefore we will not be engaged, I presume, in the defense of Europe anymore. We are going to hand over the Persian Gulf to a consortium of powers, including China and Iran and others, and we will be exiting, apparently, after we finished blowing the place up.

our Asian allies are now basically deciding that they also have to go it alone. The relationship with South Korea is in a total disaster, and I don't think we're far away from them basically sort of saying they're going to go nuclear and be on their own. So at the end of the day, we are going to be, as a result of this, a very, very lonely country without allies. So that doesn't seem to me to be a great triumph. I mean, part of that spending is rebuilding, you know, a lot of stuff that has been lost in this, in this war that doesn't really have a clear strategic objective. Let's now go deeper on, unlike the global, you know, implications of this. And I think this is a lot of what you were talking about, your latest Atlantic piece, which is titled America's now a rogue superpower.

Subhead to that was Trump's conduct of the Iran war is accelerating global chaos and deepening America's dangerous isolation. I want to kind of go at a deeper level through all of those, you know, sort of regions and countries that you just, went through. But I'm just curious what you think like the top level implication is of our new status. Well, we're at the beginning of a period in which things that we used to get basically for free, not in the sense that we didn't have to fight for it, like open access to the oceans around the world, basing in many, many, many, many countries around the world. The countries allow us to use their territory for bases, not only to protect them, but to project power in various different ways. Our substantial control of the international financial system is going to be

severely undermined. And we've given Putin the greatest prize that he could possibly have, which is the destruction of NATO. That is what he's been seeking for 20 years. The Chinese are improving their position globally at our expense. They want us out of the Western Pacific and East Asia, and we are heading in that direction. But I think I really do want to focus a little on the Gulf itself, because at the end of the day, there's going to be some basic objective reality that is going to be inescapable.

And that is that the United States, at the end of this conflict, unless some kind of extraordinary event happens and Iran just collapses and becomes a friendly country, you know, within the next three weeks, where we're going to be left is we will have been, substantially pushed out of the Middle East and Persian Gulf. That is the net consequence of this.

Because if when we quit, as Trump claims, leaving the Strait of Hormuz closed, that means the rest of the world is now going to have to negotiate with Iran on exactly how the Strait of Hormuz will be operated going forward. And Iran will no longer have to fear further American attack because we will have have sent it ourselves. Therefore, the balance of power will have shifted in Iran's favor. But more than that, it will have shifted, particularly in China's favor, because standing behind Iran in these negotiations over how the strait will be run will be China. And Iran is already talking about asking other countries to pay for transit through the strait in yuan, in Chinese yuan, which will basically,

you know, strengthen the Chinese yuan against the American dollar and undermine, and undermine the petroddollar system, et cetera. JVL has a great piece on this, which is 100% right, except for one thing, which we can get to. But that is the situation that we're going to be left with. We will have gone from being the dominant player in this region, which is the region that controls the world oil supply to a large extent, and certainly the world oil price. We will go from having been the dominant player to one of several players, maybe, or we will basically have lost our influence in the region. is going to be the net result of this conflict.

Yeah, I want to come back to JVL being wrong because I do like that. Before we get to the one, the whole you on, though, and the kind of that, the impact of what it's going to happen there, there was one thing that was interesting to me about your piece, just talking about the region broadly. And it was kind of looking back on like, why, like, why were we there in the first place? Like, why, like, what benefit did the U.S. have to being there? what was the rationale for, you know, Iraq both times and just in general for us having bases there. And you make a pretty provocative, but I think compelling point, which is that like we weren't really there ever for our security.

And if anything, it was encounter to our national security because, you know, the terrorism was partially spurned by the fact that spurred rather, by the fact that we are there. right and the reason that we are there was preserving this global world order that you're kind of talking about like the fact that the u.s that we benefited from being you know what people would have called us pejoratively what the folks the other side would have called majority of the world's policeman like we benefited from this because of all of these ancillary economic and security benefits that like that was the purpose of you're kind of being involved there at all so the point you make in the piece is if we aren't going to do that anymore. If Trump is reorganizing the whole world order and we're just going to have spheres of influence and we don't care about any of that, then there's no point in us doing this. That this is actually, you know, that our involvement right now is harming us, even based on the framework that they're putting forth about what our role should be. Am I enunciating that correctly? No, we are enunciating it brilliantly. And it is a central contradiction at the heart of this whole operation. Because, you know, if you go back to the original America first approach to the world,

which was conducted pretty much in the 1920s and 30s after World War I and the disillusionment World War I, and I said it didn't want to be involved anymore, we had no involvement in the Middle East, none whatsoever. And our involvement in the Middle East was entirely a consequence of the decision, which we partly forced into and partly undertook ourselves to engage in World War II, which then during World War II, the Middle East was a vital region for those we were trying to defend against those we were trying to fight. You know, control of North Africa was a big deal. That was, you know, the fact that Germany was threatening to control that, control the Suez Canal, et cetera. So we fought in World War II in the Middle East to secure it for those whom we were trying to

save from Nazi tyranny. Then during the Cold War, it was a critical region in the struggle against the Soviet Union. We'll get to Israel in a second. But it was not because we needed the oil. You know, at that particular time, and I think in the immediate wake of World War II, the United States produced something like 50% of all the oil in the world. I mean, we were not dependent on Middle East oil. It was our allies who were dependent on it. So basically, it was a project of defending the world order. And particularly, and I'm not in an abstract sense, but in a really concrete sense that the allies we were defending in Europe and in Asia depended on access to those to that energy resource. The region was also strategically important. It was a constant

sort of crossroads of great empires, etc. So, but it was secondary to our interests. And no one in the region, including Iraq in 2003 or Iran today, ever posed a direct threat to the security of the American homeland. And of course, in Trump's national security strategy, which was released, I don't know, it must have been all of like four months ago. They deliberately downgraded, as was logical given their focus on hemispheric dominance and homeland security. They deliberately downgraded the Middle East as a region of American concern. They just said it wasn't that important to us anymore.

And Donald Trump has spent the entire war saying it's not our oil. We don't need the oils, et cetera, et cetera. So what are we doing it for? Now, a lot of it is about defense of Israel. There's no question. Iran posed a direct existential threat to Israel not to us, and we have committed to defending Israel. But again, not because it's in our national security interest to do so, as I point out in the essay, and as everybody knows, most of the leading American officials at the time thought it was not in our interest to support the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. George Marshall, no less, a figure Dean Hadrick. thought it was a bad idea because it was going to make enemies of an entire Arab world who have what basically 25 countries mad at us in order to make one country happy, et cetera. But we did it for moral reasons. And it was part of our America accepting sort of a global responsibility to sort of protect liberalism and the rights of human beings. God forbid.

So that is why we were there. And now if we're not interested in Europe and here's Trump literally pulling us out of NATO. And if we're not interested in our Asian allies, what are we doing it for? And it turns out we're not interested in the Iranian people either. Is this just through Israel's protection? Was this entire war for Israel's protection? Is this a crusade? You know, you've got Pete Tegsef, you know, saying, God, give us the power to smite our enemy, which is this like a Christian fight against Muslims? I, you know, I'd love to know, really. On the Israel question, JBL asked about this when we were on the post-Trump speech live stream. I'm interested in your thoughts on this, which is even through the Israel prism, it's a little bit confusing because Trump is so transactional.

Like, we know what he's getting out of UAE and Qatar and Saudi, like his family is getting enriched by those countries. It's not quite as clear that that's happening. I'm sure that Jared is doing some deals, but it's not quite as clear or at least direct when it comes to Israel. And you mentioned your piece that there have been certain times where, like, Israel has been focused on their own interest over ours, which is their right, right? And you use one example of, you know, when there were global sanctions against Russian oil after the invasion of Ukraine, like Israel did not participate into that. And so that does kind of lead one to wonder, like, what Trump, you know, what exactly it is, he feels like he's getting out of this. Like to me, the answer is as like just base, like Trump is a megalomaniac and he has been puffed up by BB and others and, you know, told that he's going to like do peace in the Middle

East and he'll be a great man as a result of this. And maybe it's as simple as that. But I don't know. I'm wondering what you make about the state of the relationship. Well, you know, I do think it's worth just going through as what we all know, but it's worth repeating, what is the origin of American involvement here? Because, you know, clearly Trump was hoping to sort of bluster his way into getting the Iranians to accept some kind of deal in which they would give up their nuclear weapons. But, you know, that that was ongoing. But what happened was our intelligence showed that the Mullahs and their whole leadership was going to have a meeting in the daytime. And we passed that information onto the Israelis and the Israelis and BB basic said, look, I have an

opportunity to take out the whole leadership. Should we, you know, should we just go ahead and do it? And I think Trump thought he saw a freebie here. The interesting thing about this, we're all like beating our chests about how great the American military is and it is great. And I'm not saying it isn't, but it wasn't the American military that took the initial step of taking out Iran's air defenses, which is the most dangerous element of the operation and which the United States would not have done because it was too risky. for the stakes. Israel, because of October 7th, completely changed its risk calculus and was basically, we have to do whatever we need to do. And so they did undertake the risk in the first instance of

taking out the air defenses, which allowed us to then come in and prove our, how tough we were. And then when they said, we could take out the whole leadership, Trump just said, oh, boy, do it. And it's the Israelis who took it out, not us. You know, they were the ones who launched a daytime raid, which is also very risky. So I think Trump just thought I can come swooping in and I'll be the guy who took out the mullahs and it'll be over and then. I'm riding shotgun.

These guys are really talented. I'm going to get the credit. This is a classic Trump story. Like other people are going to do the work. I'm going to get the credit. Exactly. Exactly. And despite his reputation for playing five-dimensional chess,

I don't think plays one-dimensional checkers. He didn't really go through the what the possible downsides of, of this action where he thought he saw an easy operation. You know, this whole grand strategy, what is Trump doing? Trump's doing what he always did. He saw a shiny object and he thought he could grab it. And so he grabbed it.

And he does love blowing stuff up. So he got another chance to blow stuff up. It was an interesting point you mentioned about the air defenses about how this plays to Asia. And this kind of takes us back to that question about the yuan and whether China is being strengthened by this action right now. And you're making the case, yes. you write this. As for China, combined Israeli and American forces have demonstrated impressive capabilities, but their success is not necessarily replicable in the Pacific, taking out an adversary's

sophisticated air defenses is dangerous operation, as you said, one that Israel shouldered in Iran. The U.S. had the capacity to take that first step, but would not likely have assumed the risk. In the event of a Chinese aggression against Taiwan, will the Israelis take out Chinese air defense systems for the United States too? It's a rhetorical question. I think we know the answer to that. But talk about just that and like how China is looking at our actions right now in Iran, both in that specific instance, but also broadly. Yeah, well, I mean, in the early days of the war, and I mean, even today, there's been a lot of sort of like crowing about how our impressive military feat is now going to strike terror into Beijing and Moscow because they watched us blow all this stuff up. And I'm actually quite astonished at how many people are like, Israel's are a real ally, they are our invaluable ally, they're the ones we can really count on. Look how we're fighting

together here, et cetera, et cetera. So I just sort of thought, what the Chinese saw was that the Israelis took all the risks. The Americans took no risks. I mean, not no risk, but took very few risks. So did we take out the air defenses? No. Are we sending our ships through the straight to deal, you know, what we're asking the Europeans to do, even though they have much less capability, but we're also unwilling to do it. So what do the Chinese see? The Chinese see that when the Americans have a free target against a deeply decimated country like Iran, we will blow them up for as long as we possibly can. Does that tell the Chinese anything about what we would do in the event of a crisis in the Taiwan straight other than not wanting to send our ships into harm's way? You know, we all,

enjoyed Hegesov noting that the reason we weren't sending our ships in to the strait was because the Iranians would shoot at it. Yes, that is how that works. And that's also how it will work in a China scenario. Look, the big picture after we finished patting ourselves on the back for blowing everything up is we started this war and we are unable to win it. And we are unable to win it at a cost that is acceptable to us and to many of our allies. You know, we allegedly did this to some extent for the Gulf states. The Gulf states are furious at us now because we have kicked the hornets nest and are threatening to walk away and leave them with the mad hornets.

What did we demonstrate in this war? That we could start it, but we couldn't finish it, that we could hit Iran, but we couldn't protect our allies in the region. You know, the UAE is arresting people for taking pictures of the damage that's being done by Iranian weapons. And you think these rich influencers that don't have a job that have been moving to Dubai and moving to Abu Dhabi and bringing wealth and bringing money to the region and doing good PR for them?

You think, where are they going after this? Mekinos. They're going back to Mekinos. Right. So they are not so far net beneficiaries of this. And they certainly aren't looking at the United States as the solution to their problem, since clearly we are not the solution problem. So the biggest takeaway from this is I'm not at all sure we have increased our credibility.

I think we may have decreased our credibility in dealing with Russia and China, and not to mention the boon that this war has been for Russia specifically in its war against Ukraine. I want to go back to NATO, but let's just finish in Asia really quick. So starting back, the article you referenced from JVL was talking about one of the war developments that should truly scare us, and one of them was about the de-dollarization that could be sped up if, you know, more, you know, if the petro dollar becomes a petro yuan, et cetera. And then on top of that, as you referenced earlier, like we have South Korea, India, Japan, who are about to be an economic crisis where the value of their currency is tanking and they're going to have energy shortages.

And we didn't consult any of them over this. I do think Trump called Modi and asked him if he was going to nominate him for the Nobel Prize before we got in. And then he said, no, he's like, okay, I don't care. So talk just broadly about like kind of what's happening there, both with the risk of de-dollarization, but also our relationships in Asia. We're very, a very nice, a good article in Foreign Policy Magazine right now, which is a, which is basically recounting this distinguished former American ambassador to South Korea who was, you know, has spent his whole life of South Korea, basically an American telling the South Koreans that they really need to start striking out on their own now, because the United States has become completely unreliable. And, you know, we are

focused on how the breakdown of our relationship with Europe, but the Asia relationships are also breaking down for all the reasons you say it's already the case that South Korea is starting to ration gas and other things with government vehicles and they may put limits on on people using it, but it also it ripples through all of their industries, not just the oil and gas, etc. So they're suffering. And their choice is, and this is what this former ambassador recommended to them. And it is the case, which is go nuclear, take full control of the South Korean military, which is currently jointly run by the United States and South Korea, and move closer to China. If the United States is not going to be there for allies, people are going to have to make their accommodations.

Now, in the case of Japan, I don't think they can move closer to China. I think the bitterness between them is too great, and I don't think Japan wants to be part of the Chinese sphere of influence. So Japan will also undoubtedly at some point go nuclear and independent. And that raises all other kinds of questions about what direction Japan may go in. And we can get into that at another day. They have bombed us once before. But we, you know, we've, we've had some experience with all of this historically. So, and, you know, by the way, that is the, that is the biggest picture of all, which is, it's not just that we are losing our, all of our alliances around the world. And let me just say, we're not, we are really losing them because now it is becoming popular in other countries

to attack the United States. For good reason. And imagine waking up, in South Korea and just being like a middle class South Korean and going about your day, and now you have to ration gas. And you're like, why? Because the insane American president invaded Iran for no clear reason that I can understand. And now my life is worse. Like, of course, that would be a successful political tool to talk about how we're terrible. And after we broke and trade agreement with them, we had a U.S. North Korea trade agreement, which Trump broke. South Korea. I'm pretty sure. They did love letters of them. South Korea, but I don't think we did a trade agreement.

Just the love letters. Thank you. Just keeping that clear. Thank you very much, Tim. But we had a Korean-American trade agreement, which Trump violated to slap the tariffs on Korea. So now they are suffering under 25 percent tariffs. And a factory, which was basically a South Korean, I think was a Hyundai factory in Georgia, was raided by ICE.

And hundreds of South Korean employees were shackled. And the Korean people were horrified by this. They could not believe that the United States would do this to them. They've been such a good ally. And so, as you just said, there's going to be money to be made in all these countries running against the United States, which is going to turn everybody against us. You know, back in the day, we used to make fun of China. They have a certain, like two or three allies around the world. And it was kind of like a Star Wars bar.

You know, they had North Korea. They have Pakistan. Right. And maybe some other. Like little countries, Iran, those were their allies. A couple African countries. And we were like, well, we have 54 partners and allies around the world. Well, now we're going to be the ones where, let's see, our allies are the Darcy government

in Venezuela. So far. El Salvador. Victor Orban, but he may lose the election. So then Hungary will be gone. So I don't know who else is left after. Well, we're in business with UAE. For the moment.

For the moment. For the moment. Saudi. The UAE has good relations with China. This is now in back to Syria, okay? Going back to the Gulf states and Israel, they have other options in the region. They already have played, you know, I don't want to say footsie, but certainly maintaining their good ties with China. And I think the result of our actions, they're going to make have even better ties.

So we're going to be pretty much, you know, on our own with a few stooges here and there. It's going to be. Love that. I want to go to Orr. But just really quick, you never told me what JVL was wrong about, about the de-dollarization. I think it is important to get that. J-B-L was not really wrong about anything, except the one thing he said, which I just think it's worth keeping in mind.

He said, the United States cannot open the straight. That's not true. The United States can open the straight, but not at any risk we are willing to pay for it, you know? Well, and this goes to the potential troops question, which I think you're still, I think there's been a kind of a consensus developing that troops aren't going to go in. I'm skeptical about it. It seems like you're a little skeptical about that, too.

Well, go in how is the problem? because if, you know, this is why the Bush administration sent troops into Iraq in 2003, because they knew they could not accomplish their objective through the air, and they knew they could not do anything for Iraq afterwards if they were not on the ground. If it really is an existential out thing to open the Strait of Hormuz, we would have to do a full-scale invasion of Iran, because as every military person, I don't know where the General Hurtling has gotten in,

I'm sure he has, the difficulty of just seizing the territory on the coast of Iran is going to be enormous in a drone world, that it's going to be very hard to protect the troops that we might land in Card Island and on the coast of Iran because they'll just be in an enclave.

We won't have stopped Iran from ability to fight. So we are willing to do certain things to try to have our way. but not really to take any great risk to have our way in the region. And that's how we wind up where we are right now. So back to Europe. So we have the Hungary elections coming up soon. So that could be a rare silver lining of our discussion today.

Like your thoughts on that. And just in general about NATO. Well, let's just do Hungary first. Then we'll talk about NATO. I guess the polls show that the opponent Magyar has a double-digit, lead in the polls. But, you know, the Trump administration is going to save the day. J.D. Vance is going to save the day for Orban. Well, so I'm saying the Trump administration is manfully trying to turn around that election and sending Marco Rubio to make sure that the dictator of Hungary remains in power.

So J.D. Vance and Markerubio are now actively lobbying. By the way, this is the America first group that says we shouldn't be pursuing ideological crusades around the world and we shouldn't be meddling in the affairs of other governments. Remember all that stuff? We shouldn't be promoting democracy. That's terrible. Promoting dictatorship, on the other hand, that apparently we can engage in that. We can do that. Okay. The NATO discussion, I think, is really important. And I think it's particularly important at this moment because now I am seeing that, you know, what we might have called the Reagan wing of the Republican foreign policy establishment has pretty much gone away. because I would say that a core principle of Reagan foreign policy both before and after the Cold War was that the European and Asian alliances are at the core of American grand strategy. And now because of this war, even people who were part of what I would have thought of as the Reagan wing of the party

are now coming out against NATO. The degree to which Republican foreign policy types are coming out against NATO now is pretty extraordinary. And it couldn't be more absurd. I don't know what would you wanted to get into, so maybe I should let you ask a question. No, just no, Ruff. You know, when they say, why aren't they helping us open the straight? Now, any operation to open the straight with full buy-in by the allies would have been 90% America anyway. They don't have the capacity.

You know why they don't have the capacity? Because we have the world's largest and most capable Navy in the first instance and air power. and the way we arranged things in the world was everybody wouldn't have a world-class navy. How many world-class navies do you want to have? Do we're going to have France have a world-class navy that was capable of opening straight by itself? Was Germany going to have a world-class navy? No, we had a distribution where we were the ones with the world-class navy. And now we're asking them, why aren't you just take care of this?

I can't. Trump is unbelievable. He says, it's easy. Why don't you just do it? You know, we, here we are with all the firepower that we have and we don't want to send our ship in because as Hegg says, they're going to shoot at us. So, but the Europeans should do that. So the notion of saying that we can't do something because the allies are not letting us or that even if they're not letting us use their air bases in Spain, you know, that had no effect on really what we were, what we were able to do here. Yeah. So that's the first thing. The second thing, of course, is we didn't even go to NATO for this operation. Do you know, I believe. believe that if Trump had done what we do with our allies, because, you know, we have this whole thing about an alliance and we have like consultations and we have a NATO ambassador who like organizes things, you go to them and you say, look, we need to do this Iran operation. We want your support. Here's what we need from you. Let's talk about it. Let's work our way through with it. Let me tell you something. The Europeans are so eager to please Trump, I think they could have

been persuaded to go along. He didn't even think about talking to them. He didn't even consult them. He didn't even consult his best buddy in the world, Georgia Maloney in Italy, to the point where she's now denouncing him, you know. And so now we turn around. He's gotten us into this total mess. And now we're going to blame NATO for not helping us out in this situation. It's just, it's shocking to watch people that I've known for decades on foreign policy. And I really felt like I knew what their core beliefs were.

just abandoning them in a heartbeat just to keep on the right side of Donald Trump. Yeah, you saw this. We talked about this a little bit of Susan yesterday. There's so many examples with this. I can't hate to pick on Peter Meyer, who is the former, well, actually I don't. I like to pick on him. Former Congressman from Michigan. But who's in this wing, you know, right, of more traditional foreign policy?

But he was just posting this week. It behoove our NATO allies to appreciate that this sentiment is very widely shared, including among former boosters of the transatlantic alliance, the sentiment being that people are like, these guys are motherfuckers for not participating with us. It is insane to me that anybody could look at this situation and look at the position that Trump has put our European allies in, not to mention given what he did in Greenland,

and be like, you know who I'm mad at? I'm mad at McCrone for not going along with this. Like, it's crazy. Trump is putting them in an impossible position, And he's fucking them, by the way, with their own citizens, with their own electorate, with the energy crisis. And he doesn't, he hasn't given one wit about them. And he's been talking and he's been threatening to pull out of the alliance for years now. And like, they're supposed to to go along with this cockamamie war that has no point.

It's crazy. It's insane. And by the way, it's not as if they're sitting around playing Parchese. They are engaged right now in trying to prevent the. conquest of a European country, a free and independent European country, Ukraine, by a Russian aggressor, who clearly has ambitions beyond Ukraine and includes the Baltic state. So when a foreign policy intellectual says, let's pull out a NATO, because they're not helping us in the Gulf, they're saying, let's let Putin invade Estonia, and it's not our problem. And I'm just like,

these are people who regarded the Russian, threat to Europe as a central issue. You know, Mike Johnson, you remember Mike Johnson back in 24 saying Putin's got objectives, he's not going to stop in Ukraine. This wasn't like some, you know, weird liberal internationalist problem. This was something that used to be a core concern of Republicans. And now overnight, they're willing to just sell all that down the river, again, just to sort of, so that they're hanging in with Donald Trump. I mean, we've talked, a lot of people, you've talked a lot of people about the failure of our elite. in this whole crisis of Donald Trump.

This is the perfect example of it. Yeah, and we had a big fight in 2012. It was the liberals who disagreed with us, that Russia was our biggest geopolitical foe. Everybody was in lockstep with Mitt Romney about this. This was like one of the big flashpoints of the 2012 election. And here we are. Russia is being enriched by this war and empowered.

And these are people, by the way, who favored every aspect of NATO enlargement. They wanted NATO to get bigger and bigger and keep moving eastward. toward Russia, which a lot of people argue wrongly, in my opinion, is why Putin launched the war on Ukraine. But in any case, at least it's in the bullpuck. And they were all for that. And now they're ready to abandon it because Trump made a mistake in Iran. And so... An obvious one. Yeah. An obvious one. Right. I was going to say this, but we're just going to do it

now. There's this man that I'm sure you don't know. Even though you listened to Def Yipod with me and Kamkowski, so maybe you are familiar at this character. Are you familiar with the character Sneco. Do you know the name Sneko? No, I have. Okay. So Sneco is somebody who, it's pretty handsome, I should say, he dabbled in gay porn for a little while, and then he took

a hard right turn and became a far right reactionary. And I can say that in good standing because I posted the video I'm about to play for you and said the far right reactionary brocaster has now outflanked a lot of the Democrats in Congress when it comes to the question of how to deal with Donald Trump,

and he retweeted that. So he endorses this description of it. He is a far right reactionary, trad, you know, men should be men type guy. We don't need to get into the psychology of why maybe he would be so. Maybe he'd be trying to overcompensating for something with that. But anyway, he has a very malign influence on the youth in a lot of areas. But he's seen the light as a result of this war. He probably has an IQ of about 22.

And so if somebody at the IQ of 22 can give this lucid, of an analysis of Donald Trump's fuck up in Iran, then surely the people at AEI and Heritage and in the Republican Senate could also share it, but they have not. Let's listen to sneak up. And Trump should be impeach. I agree.

Trump needs to be kicked out of office right now. It's been a complete disaster. He's shown that he's not equipped for this war. He doesn't know what's going on. Correct. He's senile. He's lying. Correct.

You know, he's just, he's glazing the media, then changing his mind. He doesn't know if it's a war, if it's a conflict, begging for more money, wanting troops on the ground. If he's not impeached, then we are a failure as a country. And I said this from the beginning, and I'm more vindicated every day. From day once, Nico knew that Donald Trump was going to be a failure and then he had dementia and should be impeached. And yet some of the great foreign policy, right-wing foreign policy minds of our time are talking about, you know, how Donald Trump is actually doing 4D chess here.

I don't really know what my question is, but I just wanted to demonstrate to you that, you know, even the smooth brains understand what it's happening here. I got to say, it's a real strain on, again, what we can call the Reaganite wing of the Republican Party, which still exists, you know, which I thought still existed, you know, because, you know, I love the Wall Street Journal, but the Wall Street Journal watches the speech that Trump gave the other night and says that it was really a home run in terms of experience.

What? You know, I thought they sort of fancied themselves independent, you know, kind of independent. You know, we're going to call it the way we see it, you know. Or highbrow, if not independent, at least highbrow. It was, it was incomprehensible. So I don't know what happens now. I'm actually more worried today than I had been before.

You know, people talk about, well, wait, boy, I can't wait until we get over. Trump. Once we get past Trump, then it's all Dean Atchston and Harry Truman thereon out, you know. And my problem with that is twofold. One is the Democratic Party is not the party of Harry Truman and Dean Atchison, if we remember a couple of years back. But now the Republican Party is not the Republican Party anymore. And I thought, you know, there were always signs that maybe there was some kind of on Ukraine and other things. There's going to lingering, you know, Reaganite people. they're going to stand up, you know, for that at least. But that seems to be the way.

So one of these people who said we should pull out of NATO said we should still be supporting Ukraine, though. Why? First of all, how, if we have given up on NATO? But second of all, why exactly? Are we going to, you know, only help countries that we think we like, it has nothing to do with strategic issues anymore? It's sort of very strange. To that point on the NATO, and then I'll close with some catastrophizing instead of with laughs, which is, I don't know what I tried to do on the Friday podcast, but I chose to have Bob Kagan on. So I think that that's alarmism is probably the appropriate way to close. I was talking to Bill about this and about having you on and he was like, you know, Bob is so negative on NATO and like it basically it's over. And this is kind of a lot

of folks out there like saying now that like this question, it doesn't matter whether Donald Trump takes us out of NATO. NATO is done. Like NATO is, you know, is the weekend at Bernie's carcass. It's getting pushed around, pretending like it's alive, that it isn't. The pushback to that is, okay, I hear you on the Democratic Party is not the Democratic Party of Dean Atchison, but I don't know. Like, who knows how things turn out in three years? You know, I certainly think that the Democratic nominee will probably be somebody that has a very strong view in opposition to Middle East war meddling as a result of this disaster in Iran. But it could be somebody that is like that wants to maybe refashioned. our relationship with Israel somewhat, but strengthen our relationship with Europe and other allies.

Like, that's an imaginable Democratic nominee. So in that instance, do you think that, you know, those alliances could be rebuilt? Or do you think that just like the trust is so broken that that it's unrepairable? I just don't see how we can go back to the way things were, put it, put it that way, because I'm not even sure I would advise the Europeans to accept the level of dependence on the United States that they did accept for, you know, so many decades, because we just are unreliable. Because even if you do get a sort of transatlantically oriented Democrat, assuming that we have a free and fair election at 2028, but assuming that you do, where will the Republican Party be? It's not inconceivable. The Republican Party will be at that point,

even more sort of thoroughly America first and isolationist than it is right now. now, which means that any alteration of power goes from, we're going to flip back and forth with each election between, oh, yeah, we're your allies, where your allies, oh, now you can all go to hell, you know. So if I were making long-range policy plans as a Japanese prime minister or a German or more importantly, Polish government, I would not say, oh, thank God the Democrats are back. I can throw myself totally back into the American alliance. So that's point one. Point two is, do we see the damage that Trump has done? He's been in office a little over a year. Three more years, three more years of this kind of behavior. What can be done in the next three years,

what has already been done is going to be much worse. And I think what we're going to start seeing that, we're already seeing it, is it's going to be a very rapid transition to a post-American world. You know, everybody right now is scrambling. Sprinting to form new relationships to become less dependent on the United States economically, politically and militarily. Look, if your goal was to make sure that the United States would no longer be a global power and would be fundamentally policing the Western Hemisphere and basically bringing us back to where we were a circa like 1840, that goal is well on its way to accomplishment. Take this to our final topic.

I needed to regain my status, my E-LR rain cloud status. The last time I had you on in early February, you were talking about your fears about the midterms. It's the one area where I'm a little bit more optimistic than some others in the pro-democracy coalition. People can go listen to that conversation if you want to hear our back and forth on that. Here's an area where I think I might be on the outer edge of bleakness.

All of this conversation about preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon has just, nuclear weapons rattling around my brain a little bit more. I was thinking earlier this week, I was like, you know, if you'd asked me in the year 2020, like who is the most likely country to be the next country to use a nuke, to go rogue and use a nuke? I would have said North Korea, probably first, maybe Pakistan second. I don't even know who would have been third, right? If you ask me right now, April 3rd, I would say probably Donald Trump is the most likely to use

a nuke and maybe BB is second in the world and then maybe back. Pakistan or North Korea. I'm not saying it's a 50% chance, but it sure seems a lot higher than it was for all the rest of my life up until this point. And I'm beginning to catastrophize on that topic. And I just wanted to throw that out there for your reaction and leave people on the Easter weekend with a little meditation on the possibility of nuclear annihilation. Yeah, I mean, sure. you know, the only, I just, I've outflanked you. That's what I was wanting to do. I've outflanked you. You turn the tables, Tim. You have pretty, pretty successfully turned the tables. But, but I will, I will give, can I give a partially serious maybe answer? I was hoping for a partially serious answer. So here's the thing. I mean, Trump is setting us up now for, uh, greater challenges coming from Russia and China, in my opinion. They were already going to be a challenge, but now I think they're going to be a much greater. challenge. And I think that we have increased the likelihood that China will at some point either

absorb Taiwan peacefully or absorb or take it through a blockade or some other measure. I think we are essentially encouraging the next war in Europe if Putin decides to do something. And then the question comes, at what point does this sort of retreat get to the point where it's too far for Americans? They actually don't want to retreat anymore. And this, of course, is sort of what happened before World War II, which was, well, they, in Italy invaded Ethiopia, and then it was the Spanish Civil War, and the Nazis and the fascists involved in that. And then there was the Anschluss with Austria. And then we were all like, we don't care, we don't care. It doesn't matter to us, et cetera. Then France falls and it's like,

well, I don't know. And so ultimately, we're in World War II. And so, you know, at what point do we reach where where everybody says, Trump, you've allowed now Russia to invade Estonia, we have to do something about it. But then, then the doing something about it does bring us up to the nuclear threshold, because then we will be having to contemplate going to war with Russia. A lot of what we've been doing for decades has been avoiding that, in part by guaranteeing other's security and letting Russia know that we will stop them and we will get involved if they attack Estonia. So that is the scenario that does lead to where you're going. Whether it happens on Donald Trump's watch or somebody else's watch, I don't know, but we are teeing ourselves up

for a much bigger crisis down the road. My scenario is more like a dementia-riddled old man decides that he gets like the idea starts rattling around as his brain. It's like, nobody's done this since Truman. They'll be talking about me. They'll be on the news. I'll be on the news. I was like more of that was really where my brain was going. Then there'd be like some sort of geopolitical, you know, escalation. You know, we go up the escalation ladder.

But either possible. Okay, we'll leave people with that. Thank you for doing this. It's, I wish to everybody, this Easter weekend was Passover. And so I appreciate that you're doing, you know, coming on on Passover. Producer Katie was suspect. I don't know what this says about. I don't actually know what the norms are for Jewish.

What it says is I'm a bad Jew. That's what it is. Besides you're a bad Jew. Okay, well, I'm a bad Catholic. So a bad Jew and a bad Catholic wish you a great Passover and Easter. I appreciate you, Bob Kagan. Everybody else will be back with Bill Crystal on Monday. And we'll see you all then.

Peace. This is a crisis I knew how to come. Destroying the balance I get. Doubting, unsettling and turning around, wondering what this is the role. The Borg podcast is brought to you. Thanks to the work of Lead, producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Anzley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.