The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The World: A Brief Introduction by Dr. Richard Haass Interview

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

The World: A Brief Introduction by Dr. Richard Haass Interview CFR.org An invaluable primer from Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, that will help anyone, expert and non-expert alike, navigate a time in which many of our biggest challenges come from the world beyond our borders. Like it or not, we live in a global era, in which what happens thousands of miles away has the ability to affect our lives. This time, it is a Coronavirus known as Covid-19, which originated in a Chinese city many had never heard of but has spread to the corners of the earth. Next time it could well be another infectious disease from somewhere else. Twenty years ago it was a group of terrorists trained in Afghanistan and armed with box-cutters who commandeered four airplanes and flew them into buildings (and in one case a field) and claimed nearly three thousand lives. Next time it could be terrorists who use a truck bomb or gain access to a weapon of mass destruction. In 2016 hackers in a nondescript office building in Russia traveled virtually in cyberspace to manipulate America's elections. Now they have burrowed into our political life. In recent years, severe hurricanes and large fires linked to climate change have ravaged parts of the earth; in the future we can anticipate even more serious natural disasters. In 2008, it was a global financial crisis caused by mortgage-backed securities in America, but one day it could well be a financial contagion originating in Europe, Asia, or Africa. This is the new normal of the 21st century. The World is designed to provide readers of any age and experience with the essential background and building blocks they need to make sense of this complicated and interconnected world. It will empower them to manage the flood of daily news. Readers will become more informed, discerning citizens, better able to arrive at sound, independent judgments. While it is impossible to predict what the next crisis will be or where it will originate, those who read The World will have what they need to understand its basics and the principal choices for how to respond. In short, this book will make readers more globally literate and put them in a position to make sense of this era. Global literacy--knowing how the world works--is a must, as what goes on outside a country matters enormously to what happens inside. Although the United States is bordered by two oceans, those oceans are not moats. And the so-called Vegas rule--what happens there stays there--does not apply in today's world to anyone anywhere. U.S. foreign policy is uniquely American, but the world Americans seek to shape is not. Globalization can be both good and bad, but it is not something that individuals or countries can opt out of. Even if we want to ignore the world, it will not ignore us. The choice we face is how to respond. We are connected to this world in all sorts of ways. We need to better understand it, both its promise and its threats, in order to make informed choices, be it as students, citizens, voters, parents, employees, or investors. To help readers do just that, The World focuses on essential history, what makes each region of the world tick, the many challenges globalization presents, and the most influential countries, events, and ideas. Explaining complex ideas with wisdom and clarity, Richard Haass's The World is an evergreen book that will remain relevant and useful as history continues to unfold. Dr. Richard Haass is a veteran diplomat, a prominent voice on American foreign policy, and an established leader of nonprofit institutions. He is in his eighteenth year as president of the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, publisher, and educational institution dedicated to being a resource to help people better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast oh my god another one another podcast of. What do we do with their time? So today we've got a most excellent guest on.

He is a brilliant diplomat and writer as well. He's authored 14 books, so we're going to have him talking about his latest book today. To see the video version of this, you want to go to YouTube.com and type in the words Chris Voss. You may have heard of that guy. And by doing so, you'll be able to hit the bell notification button and get all the notifications of all the cool things that are happening. And you get to feel like you're really a part of something, like a family, like a journey, if you will. So make sure you do that as well. Refer the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives, thecvpn.com or go to chrisvosspodcastnetwork.com.

You can subscribe and see all nine podcasts over there you can also follow me on goodreads.com forward slash chris voss for all the books we're reading great authors we've interviewed you can also follow us on facebook groups there's the facebook group uh facebook.com forward slash the chris voss show dot or the chris voss. Check that out. Today, Richard Haas is on the show, Dr. Richard Haas, I should say. He is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. You may have seen him on all of the TV shows talking about foreign policy, etc., etc. He's an experienced diplomat and policymaker. He served as the senior Middle East advisor to President George H.W. Bush and as a director of the policy planning staff under the Secretary of State, Colin Powell.

He's a recipient of the Presidential Citizens Medal, the State Department's Distinguished Honor Award, and the Tipperary International Peace Award. He is also the author, as I mentioned, of 14 books on foreign policy and international relations, as well as an editor, including the book A World in Disarray. His latest book, the one we're going to be talking about today, The World, a brief introduction. Welcome to the show. How are you, Richard? I'm great, Chris.

Great to be with you. Awesome, Sauce. It's good to have you on the show. Do you want to give us your plugs, your dot coms, where you want people to look you up on the websites and order your book as well? Well, a book can be found, Penguin on their site, Amazon, CFR.org. Let's go with CFR.org. The reason is you can find me and my book, but also our website really is a great resource about the world. And we're not politically biased. We don't have an agenda. We also don't accept money from any government.

So you'll actually get straight analysis. So I would hope that if people are interested in what's going on in the world, they didn't get overloaded by the debates, which barely mentioned the world, they can go to CFR.org. And you guys are a nonpartisan organization, to my understanding, correct? Yeah, we're a nonpartisan. And just for the record, I've worked for four presidents. I've worked for a Democratic president. I've worked for three Republican presidents. And for most of my career, at least, maybe this makes me a dinosaur, Chris,

I never thought of foreign policy as a particularly partisan undertaking. I would have been, you could have impressed me really hard on the show. And I would have been hard pressed to say, what exactly is a Democratic foreign policy as opposed to Republican? It was actually considerable overlap and continuity. So I come out of that world. All right. So let's get you on the record then. Which president of the four was the best?

No, I'm just kidding. I don't want to put you on the spot. I'll say that. I will say I actually think 41 41 41 george herbert worker bush uh i think was one of the great uh foreign policy presidents certainly of the modern era i think the greatest was truman uh after world war ii and he what he did and he had great people around them set the foundation for the cold war and you know the last 70 75 years for all of our mistakes mistakes, whether Iraq or Vietnam, what have you. It's been an amazing run, if you think about it. We haven't had a great power war. The United States

has flourished economically. Democracy has been on the rise around the world. The average person, I know right now we're suffering with COVID, but the average person in this country lives a decade longer. It's been an amazing run of history. And I think American foreign policy deserves more than a little credit. Truman, I think, is the greatest president of this period in foreign policy. But I would put 41, President Bush, the father, as number two. All right. So who is the worst out of the four?

No, I'm just kidding. You don't have to answer that either. I'm just kidding. We won't have to answer that either. I'm just going to go there. Okay. There we go. So what motivated you want to write this book and put it out? Well, it gets back to what we were just talking about.

What's so interesting to me is the world matters as never before. We see it with COVID, what began in Wuhan, China didn't stay there. You got these fires out West linked to climate change. We just marked the 19th anniversary of 9-11. A bunch of terrorists trained in Afghanistan killed 3,000 people in this country in a day. So the world matters in all sorts of ways. Yet most Americans don't see the connection between the world and their lives. They don't see the connection

between what the U.S. does and what it means out there. And the reasons are you don't study it in elementary school or high school for the most part. You can go to virtually any two or four year college in this country. And while it's in the curriculum, virtually none of them require that you take a course about international relations in order to get your diploma. So most Americans leave campus, if they go to a campus, essentially illiterate about international affairs. The morning shows, the nightly news shows barely cover it. There are tons of stuff on the internet. The problem is there's tons of stuff on the internet. And no one's been generous enough to provide those yellow post-it notes saying, read this, ignore that. So for any number of reasons, and look, look where we are now. Here

we are. We're about to elect a president. We're a few days away. We've had two presidential debates, a vice presidential debate, any number of town halls. If 10 or 5% of the time was devoted to international relations to foreign policy, it's a lot. And that's why I wrote this book, I basically wanted to try to fill this space to give Americans what I think they need, in order to be more informed citizens, there's that. And then I also I wanted to help people as they go about their lives, whether it's career, should I should I do something in this area in government or elsewhere, investing, business, what have you. I wanted to basically help get people up to speed. But more than anything, it was Jefferson who said that democracy depends upon

there being an informed citizenry. My real concern is that in America, too many of us are just not informed enough to make wise choices when we vote. And to hold the people who hold power, I want to hold them to account. We can only hold them to account if we're knowledgeable. Exactly, for informed citizenry, as you mentioned. So give us a kind of sky view, overview of the book as it is. Okay, what the book tries to do is, one, give people the basic history. How did we get to where we are? Big emphasis on, really, the 20th century, the two world wars,

the Cold War, and what's happened since the end of the Cold War three decades ago. And then try to introduce people to the major regions of the world, Europe, East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, give you a kind of a feeling for each one of those parts of the world. Then to talk about the big global issues, I mentioned climate change, terrorism, proliferation, infectious disease, trade. What makes this period of history so interesting is you don't just have the typical stuff of a rising China or a cranky Russia or a messy Middle East. But you have these global issues that can really affect our lives as never before. And then at the end, I try to put it all together

and give people a sense of how to understand the world and again, how it works, why it matters. And look, in 300 pages, you can't tell everybody everything. And that's not the goal. If the book has a subtitle, a brief introduction, I had to leave out a whole lot. So the idea, again, was to give people a foundation. And what I really hope also is this won't be the only book or the last book they will read on the subject. Well, I'm hoping you'll keep writing books on the world because if we go full, like, Planet of the Apes, that could be bad.

So we want this series to continue. You know, I totally agree with you. You know, my mother was a teacher for years. She complained about how they were taking away curriculums like history, civics. You know, they took away, I think, band and art. And, you know, and she says she would say for decades, she's like, we're raising a really dumber generation that doesn't know what's going on. And then you see. Your mother was 100% right.

Think about it. The only thing virtually every American has to do is go to school through the age of 16. After that, you can kind of chart your own course. So that's our one chance to get at people. And the idea, and you're right, we've had things like, I'm not against kids learning about computers or STEM, the basic math and science, that's important. And how do I get it?

But I really worry. And I think we're paying a real price for it as a society. We don't teach civics. You're 100% right. People don't really know about American democracy, how why it's special, why it needs to be protected, what it takes to protect it. And then they don't know about the world. And think about it. A kid is graduating from high school now or college. He or she will be what their late teens or 20. Their life will pretty much parallel the 21st century. They were born right at the beginning of the century.

They've got to know about this world if they're going to succeed in it. And I just worry that we're not teaching it. And then the media is not really covering it or covering it in a serious way. And I just worry about the implications of that. Again, I come back to why do we think it's all going to work out? History suggests things don't just work out. And I also think of Americans don't know about the world. I'm curious to see what you think about this. I think the default reaction is then isolationism. If you don't know about the world,

then you're going to say, well, it doesn't matter, or I don't have time, I'm too busy. And the danger then is we pull back from the world and we may get tired of the world. But the last I checked, the world's got a lot of energy and it doesn't show any signs about getting tired with us. And the thing you detail in the book, and you go through an incredible history and you lay out the foundation of it. One of the things I really liked about the book is, you know, I grew up as a child. I grew up reading a lot about the generals and military. I was really into the military and building aircraft carriers. I just loved the whole. And I love the strategy reading about Eisenhower and all the different generals that were in World War II and McCarthy, I think it was, and others.

And then I remember reading 1,000 Days about JFK's thing and just really seeing the connection of the dots and how America does this. And then this, this stuff either happens good or bad, sometimes bad when we're putting our fingers on scales. And, but I never really got into it. But then, like you say, I went into this sort of, I'm going to do my business and make some money and chase the girls around town. And then 9-11 woke me up and I went, wow, I better start understanding what's going on in the world because if not, some people outside of my little American exceptionalism hate me and they want to blow us up and I better find out why. And that's when I started re-exploring what was going on in the world.

And I think that's what's so great about your book. Well, thank you. And again, 9-11 ought to have been a wake-up call. For some it was, but for many it was not uh maybe covet 19 will be that will realize that uh when a disease breaks out in some remote part of the world it has potential consequences obviously if you're living in california now you don't need a lot of lectures about climate change uh you're seeing it out your your front door. So, but those are painful lessons.

Those are expensive lessons. And what I'm hoping is people get a bit of an understanding and history out of this. And they realize that one, not one, the world matters, but two, we still have more influence over it than anybody else. And it's in our own self-interest to do certain things that people shouldn't think of foreign policy as an act of philanthropy. Foreign policy is something out of our own self-interest to do certain things that people shouldn't think of foreign policy as an act of philanthropy. Foreign policy is something out of our own self-interest.

And I want people to feel that connection. And it's really is a concise book. I mean, you really get into it. You go through the details of each of the countries, how we got here. What's interesting to me, too, is like one of my favorite parts was the Woodrow Wilson part where you talk talking about the League of Nations and how, you know, the isolationism, kind of what we're going through lately, the past few years maybe, where we don't feel the world is important and we've got the isolation. And you see some of the fallout that kind of the impact of a stroke. You go through all of that and how some of these things really led uh one other uh important thing that i've always looked at was how obama treated syria and how letting that slide created just a an

incredible uh a blow-up of populism uh in the world and and these migrants and everything that created some of this racial division and it's always been interesting to me, especially reading your book, you can see that the decisions that are made and how they turn into, you know, these huge roads that we end up going down that impact lives, kill millions sometimes, et cetera, et cetera. Absolutely. And you raise a couple of really good points. Some of this history really resonates now. If you look at the run-up to World War I, you look at the aftermath of World War I and the run-up to World War II, you look at what we did

at the beginning of the Cold War. There's real lessons. There's do's and don'ts that we ignore at our peril. Obama's thing with the chemical weapons in Syria after Assad crossed the red line and after all the threats, we didn't do anything. To me, that's really interesting because it shows what you don't do can be every bit as consequential at what it is you do do. So we made mistakes. What Bush did in Iraq was a big mistake. Totally. But also what Obama didn't do in Syria was a serious mistake. You know, there's lots of lines about history. You know, my favorite one, you know,

history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. And I think that's true. There's, there's lessons to learn. And I think we ought to, we ought to be kind of pitch our ear a little bit to the rhyming about what sort of situations in the past have some parallels to our own.

And are there some guides to either what we ought to do or what we ought to avoid? My favorite quote is myself which is uh the one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history so there is that is that a chris loss can i that's a christmas quote do i have to attribute it uh yes please if you would uh no money is needed, but just some idiot on the web told me this. But I really like the book because you really get into it. It's very concise. It's a very quick read. It's a very interesting read.

And I meet a lot of people in the world. After 9-11, I really got into it. Okay, let's find out what the world's about, what's going on in the world, and how important it is. And I'm a strategic brain because I come from, I don't know, for some reason I just have a strategic brain. And so I like to look at these things. I like to look at the cause and effect, you know,

where things bloom out from one bad decision. And also, you know, one of the things that kind of, I don't know if you intended it to be a theme in the book, but talking about globalization and isolation and the cause and effects throughout the book of when America went, no, we don't want to deal with that, and then the fallout from that. That was kind of interesting. That's a big motive for the book. Look, to me, globalization is a reality. How we deal with it, that's a choice.

But to deny it seems to me to be folly. And, yeah, I have two biases in the book. One is I am against isolationism. I think the world matters just because we ignore it doesn't mean it's going to ignore us. And the second is unilateralism. I've yet to find something we can do in the world better by ourselves than doing it with others. And the great advantage this country has is we get up in the morning, we have dozens of countries in Europe and Asia in particular, who are disposed to work with us, their allies, their partners, whether it's dealing with China or dealing with terrorism or what have you, that's a great advantage. So it seems to me it's a major mistake to toss that away and to try

to go about our business by ourselves. So yeah, those are the, this is mainly a book to educate. But if I have two lessons or two themes, I'd like the reader to take is one, you know, we can't afford to ignore the world. And two, we really should do things with others where at all possible. The world and you're very right, the world, you know, kind of when we went through kind of of maybe you call it the age of American exceptionalism, the asshole American, if you will, in the 50s, 60s, and you you cover a lot of this in your book um but we you know i i the for a long time there before donald trump there was what i call the kardashianism of like the news like you and i probably remember the age of of where when cnn was first up you could go on cnn in fact state department people in my

understanding and the president people would watch it because they would actually be covering wars there are people being the gulf war 30 years ago i remember being in the white house because i was the middle east advisor to president bush the father working with brent scotcroft i remember uh you know what was the cnn guy bernie i forget his last name who was under his desk in baghdad when we were bombing him. It was Wolf Blitzer and Bernard Shaw, I think. Bernard Shaw. Exactly. Good memory. And often we would be watching CNN to get a sense of how things were playing out there.

I mean, and suddenly you felt, you know, in the old days, you used to have news cycles. Well, in part because of CNN, we just then had one cycle. We would say something, it would be immediately heard in Baghdad. It might be heard, and you couldn't narrowcast. If you said something, it would be heard in Baghdad, it would be heard in Tel Aviv, it would be heard in London, it would be heard in Beijing or Moscow. And it really changed the way we did business. It sped it up. And we learned again that you didn't have the luxury of uh of time

again you didn't also have the luxury of narrowcasting everything was a broadcast yeah and and and then it became really dissolved to entertainment tv like i say the kardashian ism of cnn if you will um where uh before trump it just it just seemed to really hit a bottom and of course a lot of people weren't subscribing to news. It seemed to lose its value. I think there's a book in that, Chris. I think you've got it, From Kissinger to Kardashian. And I think you've got it bookended there.

I think it's big. I think it's got big potential. I'll see if I can get Kissinger in it. I've always tried to do a Kissinger impression, but I never can. But, no, you know, I meet a lot of people, and I'm sure you do too. I don't know why that's a fact. But I meet a lot of people that are Americans that go, oh, why do we spend money in these countries?

Why do we care? We waste all these money, you know, supporting these people and F them. And, you know, and you're like, do you understand now? And you lay out in the book, the foundations of why we try to spread democracy, why we dealt with the Cold War. And it's really important that, like you say, that people understand why we do this, why we spend that money, and how that keeps safety to our shores. Well, thank you. There's that. Also, the amount of money we spend and the numbers sound large and they are large. We spend, what, 750 billion a year on defense. But as a percentage of our economy, it's actually much lower than we averaged during the Cold War.

So, yes, we should make sure every penny we spend is smart, but it's not bankrupting us. We proved during for decades that we could spend much higher levels of our economy on defense and still do well here at home. And also, we have, look, God knows we have any number of domestic problems. But in many cases, it's not because of not spending enough. Take health care. We spend far more than the other developed countries per capita on health care. We spend twice as much as the average of the other advanced economies. Last I checked, we're not twice as healthy. We don't live twice as long. So to me, the lesson is, in many cases, it's not how much you spend, it's how you spend it. But I try to, yeah, another message, fair enough, in the book is I want to discourage people from thinking every dollar we

spend on the world is a dollar taken out of our pocket at home. We need to do both. In the 21st century, national security has an international dimension and a domestic dimension, and they each affect one another. So if we don't fix things here at home with COVID, with the economy, we're not going to be much good for the world. But also, if we ignore the world, it's going to make it much harder to deal with our challenges here at home. We've got to do both. One of the other things I wanted to ask you or talk about is I liked how the book got into the demographics of age.

You really – and that's part of the strategy, the mix of – you know, you can't just look at China and go, well, China monolith. You've got to like the aging populations and how that's going to have effect on them in the future and of course us as well yeah no you're right uh yeah it's one of the things i learned most in writing the book i've been working in this business for 40 years and i learned a hell of a lot writing it you know china's now what 1.3 1.4 billion people got one out of every five or six in the world but it's going to shrink it six in the world, but it's going to shrink. It's going to get older and it's going to shrink in numbers. India is soon going to overtake it.

And then it's gradually going to taper off. Africa is the part of the world where the numbers are coming from. Africa is going to grow by over a billion people over the next 30, 40 years. So whereas in Europe and in Asia, there's a problem where you have not enough working age people for all the elderly, in Africa, it's more the opposite. You're going to have so many young people in their prime. And the question is, can you find jobs for all these young people? We've actually got an interesting thing in this country. We're one of the more balanced demographies and large part interestingly enough again because of immigration but we uh so we have people at almost all age we've got young

people we've got middle-aged people we've got elderly but we're not out of whack it's one of our advantages unless we screw it up yeah and a lot of people don't realize we're actually one of the best i think in the world to my understanding or what I've read, at integrating immigrants. Like a lot of countries like France and stuff, they really have a hard time getting them to mix in. There's a reason for that. Think about our history. This is a country that more than anything else was based on an idea. We weren't based on a religion.

We weren't based on power. We were based on an idea. Now, we. We weren't based on a religion. We weren't based on power. We were based on an idea. An idea. Now, we didn't always live up to our ideals. I understand that. But we were a beacon for immigrants. And people would come here and we would integrate. We basically said we don't care what color you are,

what your religion is, and the rest. And again, over time, we've gotten better at this, though we've still got a ways to go, to say the least. But the whole idea was you come here, you work hard, you will you have a chance to succeed. That was the dream. And people from the most talented people from all over the world came here. And that to me is it's one of the reasons we've been so successful. We have been a magnet for talent and talent that often didn't have the chance to fulfill itself in their home country. And you look at the Fortune couple

of hundred top companies, a shocking percentage of them are run by immigrants or the kids of immigrants. And that tells me, so people think of immigration, some people think of immigration as a liability. I see it as one of the great comparative advantages of the United States. Japan doesn't have that. China doesn't have that. We have that if we're smart about it. You know, one of the things you talk about is we don't see international news, really. I mean, I actually have to go to different websites or different apps to see international news like BBC World, et cetera, et cetera. And we don't talk about on the evening news. Do you think COVID is going to push us towards more isolationist sort of thinking amongst our public?

It's a really good question. And it's one I've been asking myself. I can argue it round or flat. There is the argument that it shows we're vulnerable to what happens in the world. So it's one of the reasons I think this president was wrong to take us out of the World Health Organization. Yes, it's flawed, but that's the reason you stay in there, to make it less flawed. But I think there's a chance that COVID will help or lead us to turn inward a bit. It'll add to the sense that we've got to sort ourselves out. COVID, the economic consequences of it, the other problems we have, God knows. So I think whoever wins this election is going to face a country that's going to feel the need to focus inward. And also our last few international experiences, things like Iraq and Afghanistan, haven't been exactly good.

So I think the first instinct of the country is going to be to focus inward. The problem is the world's not going to go to us and say, okay, you Americans, we understand. Go take five years, sort yourselves out. We'll just kind of, we'll cool our heels and wait for you. And when you're ready, you're welcome. It doesn't work that way. And that's the problem, that history's not going to wait for us while we sort ourselves out. So again, at again at the risk it sounds too cliche but we're going to have to sort ourselves out at home at the same time we stay involved in the world the good news is we can do that to me the question is whether we will the and it will be very interesting we we are i don't know if uh in studies of history you may probably know i know you know your history better than I do, but there may have been no more consequential wide divide of two different roads this America is going to be choosing in this election to go down to.

I mean, one is definitely going to be probably more open to the world and back to the way we used to have things with former relations. The other may be even more deepening, protectionism and isolationism and nationalism. Do you want to talk about any of those roads that we might go down or what you see? First of all, your analysis is right. I remember when Goldwater ran against Johnson, which people thought was such a big choice. In retrospect, for all their differences, their similarities were far greater. This really is a choice. And you may think it's great.

You may think it awful. But Donald Trump is an outlier. liar. If you look at every modern American president, beginning with Harry Truman, who was president in 45, and you take through Barack Obama, for all their differences, they were essentially playing the game between the 40-yard lines. This is true of Ronald Reagan and both Bushes, Eisenhower, the Republicans, true of all the Democrats, all within the 40-yard line. Trump's the first president who's playing the game from an end zone. That's fundamentally different. And you see it domestically, but you also see it in foreign policy, his opposition to alliances and allies. I dubbed it the withdrawals doctrine that we've pulled out of all these agreements and all these institutions, the way he at times fawns over dictators, doesn't place Democrats ahead of

authoritarians. Now, I'm not saying he hasn't gotten a few things right. I think he was good to call out China. He's made some progress recently in the Middle East. We got a trade deal with Canada and Mexico. So I think there are some things that have worked out. But overall, I think he has departed. It's actually a parallel with health care. I think he's basically disrupting or dismantling much of American foreign policy from the last three quarters of a century, but he hasn't put anything in its place. And Biden, by contrast, believes in American foreign policy over the last 70 or 75 years. I think he would have an allies first foreign policy. He would

get back into a lot of these arrangements and institutions. The challenge for him will be what we just talked about domestically. This is a country that doesn't have much appetite for the world right now. And second of all, a lot of those arrangements he would get back into are flawed. To get back into the World Health Organization, that ain't going to solve things. To get back into the Paris Agreement on climate, that won't solve things. Or the World Health Organization. That ain't going to solve things. To get back into the Paris Agreement on climate, that won't solve things. Or the Iran nuclear deal. So the challenge for a Biden administration, I think,

will be how to persuade the American people to stay involved in the world, and then how to really be creative. How do we modernize the machinery out there? Because what we've got is getting pretty long in the tooth 75 years on and it's simply not up to the task if trump were to win i mean are we we would probably see the incredible rise of china um as a superpower in the world even more so than they already have become you think well i think to some extent china's rise will depend on china and they've

got you know a lot of internal challenges i think the difference is we won't be able, Trump's inclination would not be to work with our allies to shape China's rise. using all your tools, diplomacy, military force, economics, sanctions, what have you. And I think that's not his instinct. His instincts will be to cut this or that deal and to try to do it unilaterally rather than working with our allies and basically shaping the full range of Chinese choices. And I think that's just really short-sighted. What the Chinese will do is they'll give us some deals. They might say, here, have this trade deal. But in the meantime, they're going to do a lot of things that are going to leave us in the world worse off. The, you've probably read John Bolton's book, and I have too. And one of the things that you

talk about in the book is how a lot of these deals, these trade deals and different peace deals, you know, cemented sort of security in the world. He pulled us out of a lot of stuff. And I guess my question for you is, if John Bolton shaves that nasty mustache he has, will he get more dates on Tinder? That is one of the great questions of our time. I slew sleep every night, my friend. I'm going to try not to focus on your question, but you did throw me off my game. I'm going to try not to focus on your question, but you did throw me off my game. I'm sorry. No, but John, again, I'm not against pulling out of things.

I'm not breaking in and getting out of it. But it's a big if. If you've got something better to put in its place. And what to me is so damaging about a lot of what Bolton advocates and a lot of what Trump has done is that it was like health care, repeal without replace. So if you've got something better, then sell it to the American people. Get out like allies aren't stupid. If you have a better alternative to some arrangement, they'll sign up. But what I saw was the United States that didn't have anything better. And I'm not claiming that all the agreements we were part of were perfect. Of course they weren't. But unless you've got something better again, why would you dismantle

them? And also in the process, you create tremendous uncertainty about American reliability and predictability. And this is a world that's come to depend on us. Our enemies have to know, well, we mean what we say. We're prepared to act. Our friends have to know that we've got their back and we're there for them. If you create a world where the United States can't be counted on, no one knows what we're going to stay committed to. You're going to have countries developing nuclear weapons all over the place. You have other countries appeasing China. You'll have China and Russia and others testing us on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays to see what they can get away with.

And that'll be a nasty, nasty world, which, by the way, will really be bad for us. And, you know, I've met with this president. He actually during the campaign when he was running for president four or five years ago, I spent time with him. He asked to see me. We talked through things. And what's very he seems the one big thing I felt he would never take on board is the idea that the benefits of these arrangements was far greater than the cost. It was almost like he was a businessman that only examined the cost side of the ledger. He never got around to the revenues. And I just think he's missing many ways in which the United States is better off with what we've developed and would be worse off if we scuttle it. So let me ask you this.

So I'm going to take that as he should save the mustache. So what keeps Richard Haas up at night? What countries or foreign policy is keeping you up at night and making you pop the stomach settlers, the Rolaids, you know, going, oh, boy, what do you think? See, I don't know if I have the capacity to surprise you because you've just demonstrated the capacity to surprise me. My answer may. It's us. Damn it. We're screwed. I mean, China poses a challenge. Russia poses a threat. We've got climate and terrorists.

And I get it. It's a pretty big agenda. It's a pretty big array of challenges out there. But the last 70, 75 years persuades me that if we act in the world, if we work together with our partners and allies, if we're consistent, if we're serious, we can do OK. The American people will support it and we will we will manage. We won't solve all the problems, but we'll manage many. And on balance, the benefits will far outweigh the cost. The problem is, I'm not sure we've got the appetite to do that anymore. Gets back to our earlier conversation. A lot of Americans don't see the rationale for doing it. And you've got a leader now who clearly doesn't see the rationale to do it. He's inclined not to do it. So what worries me is that we're going to come up with some crazy mixture of

isolationism and unilateralism. We're going to become more and more unpredictable, more protectionist on trade and so forth, that we're going to basically stop doing the things that are by and large work for us. And it's going to create opportunities for bad guys to be even worse. And a lot of the people out there who have been our friends are going to essentially say, we can no longer rely on the United States. That's a very different world. So right now, I think more than anything, it depends on us. And I'm not confident we're going to make the right choices. Wow, I did not expect you to say us. That got me. Wow. I'm scared now. I do really feel like we look like a wounded animal to the world, not only from our politics, but COVID. I

mean, we're number one in COVID. It's a form of American exceptionalism we could have done without. But and it's really affected. It's a good it's a good reminder. Sorry to interrupt you. I apologize. But it's a good example of, you know, we don't think of certain things as foreign policy. But when we were inept, we're incompetent on dealing with a domestic challenge like covid. It sends a really powerful message to the world that there's something wrong with the United States. When we had, we can't deal with race issues peacefully, or our politics are dysfunctional. We lose a lot of standing and influence in the world. And I think that's what's going on. And you're completely right. I mean, it is torn. COVID has just torn everything that's wrong with us, like open, like every scab we had that we were kind of

like yeah we can give through that we'll be fine we'll just kind of go racism our health care issues our economy uh the you know whether you want to call it taxation or the distribution of wealth in this country i mean it's it's just open it up and even people like russia with putin who goes this gives me some toys to play with. It definitely just makes us feel, I feel like we're a wounded animal almost, really. Look, I'm worried about it for us. I'm worried about that enemies will be opportunistic and take advantage of it. I mean, I can't prove it, but it's possible that China did some of what it did in Hong Kong because they knew we were distracted and not not paying attention.

I don't know what they might do down the road in the South China Sea or with Taiwan, what Putin might be tempted to do in Europe. My hunch right now is what might be holding them back is they're concerned that if Biden were to win, they don't want to start off on the wrong foot with the Biden administration. But I think but if there were a second Trump term, it's quite possible we would be tested because our willingness to act in ways that would have been considered automatic back when our people look at what we did to the Kurds. They look now what looks to be a race to the exits in Afghanistan. So they may think that this is a United States that's no longer prepared to play the sort of leading role we play.

And if that's the case, they will test us. It's going to be really interesting to see which road we choose on November 3rd or whenever we get the election results are in or whenever the Supreme Court decides what the laws are about. Oh, my God. You know, everyone's like, it's going to be over on November 3rd, Chris. I'm like, no, it's not. But that or Nancy pelosi they'll just have to put it on the 20th uh so uh with china there's some interesting things that whoever the next president is going to deal with and certainly and i think we know trump's position on the uyghurs but also what china's been doing a lot of people talk about is they've been taking resources and making a huge amount of resource uh uh i don't know what you call it colonization or scoring or or control of the

african continent and they've really got their thumb and edge on what's going on there and we just seem to be flying blind and ignoring what's going there on there down there yeah china's uh it's so-called belt and road initiative They're building a lot of infrastructure projects, everything from ports to roads, but also IT kind of infrastructure. They're doing some in Asia, places like Pakistan. You mentioned Africa, some Latin America. We've got to compete. To me, that China is doing it to their prerogative. They're signing some deals that are really unfortunate, really kind of like loan sharks in some of these cases, the terms.

But we ought to be out there. We have foreign aid, the last I checked. We could do things with trade in both investment, with bringing students to the United States and so on. So there's ways we can and should compete with

China, but too often now we're not. And look, China is not banking tremendous goodwill. People saw how they screwed up with COVID. People see how they're what they're doing to the Uyghurs. They see Hong Kong. China is very heavy handed. Again, these loan terms are often really draconian. So I don't think there's a lot of illusions about china but you can't beat something with nothing we've got uh we got to get back on the field and i you know i hope i i hope we do and i think we'll be welcomed we'll be welcomed if we do i i think so if we if we elect biden will be people will be like you're back we missed you uh you know, and like you mentioned, the terms are draconian.

I think China, like, sees someone's harbor on a foreclosure of a debt or something along those lines. And I was like, what? And you're just like, wow, okay. And also the opportunities to do that sort of thing are going to grow. So many, you know, I've argued that COVID and the pandemic are not a turning point, but what it is going to do is going to weaken a lot of countries economically. So countries are going to be in need. People are racking up enormous debt.

They've got enormous needs. Unlike us, they can't print dollars. So there's going to be opportunities for China. And again, I think we should be out there offering countries an alternative. Yeah. You know, now we're seeing the rise of several different issues, too. What really surprised me was the Armenian Azerbaijan sort of issue that's going on right now. A lot of people don't even know that's going on because it's not making the news at all.

Yeah. I mean, people couldn't find Nagorno-Karabakh on a map. I understand that. And it's a complicated issue with a largely Armenian province within a larger territory. You've got Russia, you've got Turkey. This is not a place where we have a deep, long historical involvement. What to me, though, it's interesting,

that's a little bit of a canary in a coal mine. It shows what happens if people feel they can pretty much safely ignore us, that we're not going to get heavily involved. This is yet another sign of what I would call a post-American world. We see it in Syria. We see it in Yemen, to some extent in Libya. We're seeing it in Nagorno-Karabakh. We're beginning to see a world where a lot of locals, or in some cases not locals like Russia and Syria, are getting involved because they basically say, well, we don't really have to reckon with the United States much anymore. And what we're going to see is this is a lot messier, a more dangerous world, which, by the way, we won't be immune from ultimately. Do you think that can escalate and spread? Like that could be a whole new World War III sort of thing?

Well, at the moment, I don't see it. I mean, I don't know how the daisy chains connect, but I think we, you know, anytime you have major powers working in proximity to one other,

you got to be frightened about an incident. Incidents can always escalate. But no, I don't see that. I think the most worrisome scenario out there, probably two. One would be if Russia probes in a NATO country the way it's been doing in Ukraine, in eastern Ukraine. The other would be something with China and the United States, say, over Taiwan. Those are the kinds of scenarios that I think have the you know potential to to

escalate in significant ways and i can't i can't dismiss it uh either do you think if we negotiated to turn over the kardashian family to whichever power wants them that would settle that whole dispute no i'm just kidding it's not uh i was gonna ask you too too, about Venezuela. I've been reading that we might be escalating some stuff in Venezuela and getting prepared for something. Do you see that at all? No, at the moment, I don't see a lot of options. I think the government, as ugly as it is, is pretty entrenched. You've got tens of thousands, maybe 20,000 or so Cubans there. You've got Russian help.

You've got a lot of Chinese money. You've got a lot of gangs and former military, probably some current military with guns. I think they're pretty entrenched. The opposition is divided. It's a humanitarian nightmare for Venezuela. It's trapped in the country, a humanitarian nightmare for those who have become refugees.

But at the moment, I just don't see the mechanism for how we change things fundamentally. Sorry to be so pessimistic. No. But at the moment, I don't see how we – and I think at some point, the question might be, if we can't bring about the kind of change we want there, does it force you, as awful as it is, to think about a scenario where you have to say, what would it take, you know, in this administration, try to, you know,

are we at all open with them or the Syrians, another awful government, to start talking to them in terms of making an awful situation less bad? Because you can't overthrow them. And if you can't overthrow them and put something better in their place, is there a way you can make an awful situation less bad? And it's a really uncomfortable way of phrasing it. But at the moment, I don't see how we go from where we are to what existed in Venezuela not that many decades ago. This was the most successful country in that part of the world.

Had the energy, the oil, an incredibly educated, talented, sophisticated, educated elite, a thriving democracy and the rest. And look at it now. It is just it's a country that is talking about self-destruction. That is what that is what I'm at the moment. I don't quite see how we get it back. I'm not smart enough to see the path. I was reading today Pompeo's been treading about the outer cities and some implications of military buildups. That would be interesting. The Trump administration has been doing this thing.

It used to run influence on Middle Eastern policy. They've been doing this thing where they've been making, so you can fly from Saudi Arabia and Israel, and they just announced some recent, more agreements where they're trying to normalize the Arabs with the Israelis and stuff. Do you see that working as good steps towards maybe resolving Middle East peace? I don't think we can use the phrase Middle East peace anymore because there's too many fault lines. And then you've got Yemen, Libya, Syria. You've got Iran's problems. I think what we're seeing is the normalization and its welcome between some of the Arab countries and Israel. You had Egypt and Jordan decades ago.

And now we've got the UAE, Bahrain, and most recently, Sudan. So that's great. Different reasons why. Some countries are worried more about Iran than Israel. Some countries want to get advanced military hardware. Some want to get off the state supporters of terrorism less. So there's incentives, shall we say. But it's a good thing. What it's not going to do is solve the Palestinian problem. And that's a separate issue. And the reason that's still, I think, so important is that Israel, since it was created 70 odd years ago, has been a. Either it has to give up its Jewishness if it gives the Palestinians full rights, or it gives up its democraticness if it denies them citizenship. I don't want Israel to have to make that choice. So I still think we need a Palestinian state. I think it's an Israeli self-interest as much as Palestinian. At the moment, though, we're not

walking in that direction. The only way these normalizations between Arab governments might help would be if it reinforces the message to the Palestinians that peace is not going to be delivered to them on a platter. They are going to have to negotiate peace themselves with the Israelis. That won't be easy. Palestinians are divided, Israelis are divided. But I think that's ultimately the only route to get there. But I can't sit here and say I'm optimistic, to be perfectly honest. I'm not. One of the things I did love about your book is you really explain how that whole situation comes together, the issues with it, and what keep it complex.

Is there anything else we didn't mention in your book or cover in your book that you want to put out? Well, again, I would hope that anybody, you know, listening to this or watching it on YouTube, rather than focusing on Mr. Bolton's mustache or the Kardashians, what I'd hope is they would spend more time with it. Reading my book is obviously something I'd love them to do, but I'd also, we publish a magazine, Foreign Affairs. I'd love them to try that, to go on our website, CFR.org,

to basically just get a little bit more up to speed. If you're a parent and you're shelling out all this money for your kid to go to college, maybe you ought to think about encouraging them to take a course in this. If you're a university, you might want to think about requiring it of your students. For those who are past that age, maybe spending a little bit of time, some free time, either on the Internet. But again, I just worry that, I guess the way I put it is I'm worried because I've learned that good policy doesn't just happen.

We talked before about civics. I think we've got to do a better job of transmitting the DNA of our democracy from one generation to another. And I think we've got to do better at teaching Americans about the world, to use my word, to make them globally literate. And the book is sort of one way I've tried to do. But that's what I would hope that more people in this country would would make something of a commitment to do that. One, it's interesting, it can help with careers, all sorts of possibilities can help you with your investment. But also, as we've learned the hard way, what goes again, what happens out in the world's not Las Vegas. And what happens there doesn't stay there. It comes here. And we just need to be smarter about it. We need to be prepared for it. There you go. And I got to tell you, you converted me on your Council on Foreign Relations

website, cfr.org, the global conflict tracker. I'm loving this thing, man. I can sit and look and see what's going on, the conflicts, and I can educate myself so I can talk wisely about it and understand what's going on. I love this thing. This thing's awesome. Cool. Good. There you go.

So, Richard, it was wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you for being on the show and spending some time with us and sharing all of your wonderful knowledge. Well, not all of it, but, you know, a good portion of it, an hour's worth of it. I shared 110% of it. I told you more than I know. Oh, great.

So check out the book, guys. You definitely want to check this book out and read it. It's definitely education. It'll make you smarter as you're standing around the water cooler, talking to your friends, you're typing online, talking about your social stuff. Understanding about the world is really important to understand why we're here and what we're in.

Check it out. The book is The World, a brief introduction from Dr. Richard Haas. He is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he wrote 14 other books, so check them out as well, right? Thanks, Manish, for tuning in. Be sure to see the video version of this if you've been listening to the audio version on the podcast, youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss.

Hit that bell notification button. Go to thecvpn.com. Refer to your friends, neighbors, relatives, and all that good stuff. Follow me on Goodreads forward slash Chris Voss. And also go to our Facebook groups. There's a whole bunch of them, the Chris Voss Show on Facebook. You can just search for them and find them. Be safe.

Wear your mask. Register to vote. Vote. I don't know if you know how to register anymore. But vote like your life depends on it because it probably does. Stay safe, my friends, and we'll see you guys next time. Thanks for tuning in. That should take us out, Richard.

We'll put the music and all that stuff on and edit. That was great. I had a great time. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was fun, and you were very generous. Thank you. Thank you very much.

You were too, my friend. I'll send you guys the link fun, and you were very generous. Thank you. Thank you very much. You were too, my friend. I'll send you guys the link when it's up in 48 hours. Stay safe. You too.