The Dispatch Podcast - China's "Discourse Power"

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

Sarah and Steve are joined by Thomas Joscelyn, who writes the Vital Interests newsletter for The Dispatch, to discuss the diplomatic battle between the U.S. and China, Afghanistan exit deal, and how a Biden administration might change our foreign policy. Show Notes: -Tom's newsletter Vital Interests -Explaining the Intense Diplomatic Battle Between the U.S. and China Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our special second dispatch podcast of the week. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined by Steve Hayes and our own Tom Jocelyn, who writes our vital interest newsletter about foreign policy. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit the dispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts, and make sure to subscribe to this podcast. So you never miss an episode. Today we'll talk China and Tom will break down what they mean by discourse power. The Afghanistan peace deal. might mean in our foreign policy. And we have a special appearance by my cat at some point and some discussion about James Bond versus Jack Ryan. Let's dive right in. Today we have along with Steve Hayes, of course,

special guest Tom Jocelyn, who writes the vital interest newsletter for the dispatch. Tom, we're pumped to have you with us today because I don't feel like you get enough attention from all of us. You're writing this incredible newsletter. It's long and detailed. I learn stuff from it every single time I read it. It's like, you know, I have to like crunch through it. Like I have to concentrate and it's good.

It like makes my brain scratches it in new places. places. How did you get here? Where did you come from? Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate the praise for the newsletter. I tried to work on these complex issues and hopefully don't make you scratch your brain too hard, but I definitely am trying to challenge people to sort of understand what's going on. And I'm spending a lot of time reading through source material to try and distill that for people to figure out, you know, sort of how these complex issues maybe affect them. Actually, I've known Steve since 2003. I was a nerd running these very large research projects for an economic consulting firm.

To be clear, Tom remains a nerd. I am still a nerd. I'm proudly a nerd. That's true. And I started emailing Steve about some of his writings and some of the stuff he was working on and sending him these detailed research memos out of the blue. And he was wondering basically what the heck was going on and why this random person in New York was sending him stuff. And so we started talking and then he got me writing for the weekly standard. And I sort of took off from there. there. Basically, I started off in doing counterterrorism research. I became obsessed with al-Qaeda

and jihadism after 9-11 and basically put my research brain, which I was using on economics and related projects onto this and have been obsessed with it ever since and sort of built my own independent career as sort of an entrepreneurial endeavor doing this and have a long sort of history now and doing it. I was at one point, I hope nobody will hold this against me, but at one point I was the chief counterterrorism advisor for Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 presidential campaign. I've got a lot of stories in that campaign, which were, it was quite bizarre. But in any event, the world has only gotten crazier politically, but basically as everything else is nuts in the world is crazy, I try and keep focused on America's enemies, and that's

the point of vital interests. I've sort of used it to branch out from the prolific terrorism research and writing analysis I've done in the consulting I've done for the U.S. government and advisory work and try and get in other areas, including on China and Russia and various other issues. So let me expand on that story a little bit because I think I love the story of how Tom and I met. So I was working, I was doing a ton of reporting in the lead up to the Iraq war and then went over for three different times to cover the war over there. And as I was doing, I was particularly focused on Saddam Hussein and his long support of terrorism, any and all terrorism, including al-Qaeda and other jihadists. And I would write these pieces based on talking to intel officials and others.

And then I would get an email from Tom, basically a memo that would say, hey, that's really interesting. I liked what you wrote there. You should look at this. And then I would go look at this. And invariably, it was more interesting than what I'd just written. And then I'd go and write about that. And then I'd get another email. And he'd say, you should now look at this.

And I went and researched that and asked my intel sources about that. And Tom just knew all of this. So at one point, I just finally said, really, you should, you know, look, I love sounding smarter than I am because I'm using your material. But I really would prefer it if you would write this stuff for the weekly standard. So he started writing for us. And we collaborated on a number of projects and articles longer. I was doing that, by the way, as I was still working in the economic consulting world. And that was a little bit awkward when I'd have high-priced lawyers email me and say, hey, is this you?

I mean, the same name, same spelling that's not exactly a common name. So they would say, you know, what are you doing writing for the weekly standard while you're running my, you know, $200 million research project, you know. Well, my favorite moment of, I think, of all of our collaborations came when we, I forget what the actual story we were working on was. It was some retrospective on the Iraq War and something that we were learning about Saddam. and we were waiting, I'd tried desperately to get an advanced copy of a Bob Woodward book. I think it was, it might have been Bush at War. It was the one in the middle of the Bush administration. I think it was George Tenet's memoir, right?

It was actually George Tenet's memoir, right? Tom would, if that's what Tom says, just trust Tom on this. So it was coming out as books do on a Tuesday. Yeah, I took my lunch break and walked down and got it at Barnes & Noble. Yeah. Tom grabbed it. I can probably tell you what he had for lunch. he grabbed it and i called him after lunch and we were looking for you know three or four

specific things what did tenants say about this particular memo or what you know how was this described and i asked him a random question this god's honest truth just you know series of random questions and in response to one of the questions he said something like oh that's at the bottom of page 253 i'm like what do you how would you even know that like the book hasn't The book literally hasn't been on sale for more than two hours at this point, and he'd read the entire book, and he knew, like, his buying just can catalog stuff like that, which is, as you can imagine, is tremendously useful when you do the kind of things that Tom does. So we would have these elaborate conversations about, you know, meetings that took place between jihadists

in different times, and Tom would remember the meeting, the date, the time if it was available, who else was there, how they got there. And he just, this is all. this all lives in his brain, which is pretty remarkable. Well, I'm glad he's writing for us. I mean, this sounds like someone you don't want, you know, on any other side. Last, yes, last point I will make just to, and Tom, I hope you're not blushing. But last point, I had a conversation not long ago with somebody I'll just describe as a very, very senior U.S. government official who deals in these matters and has a really cool

office. And this person said the best, the single best analyst anywhere on issues of, you know, on the 9-11 wars, on jihad, on these kind of national security issues is Tom Jocelyn. And that included everybody in that particular building. So that was really saying something. Well, Tom, let's dive in. Let's test some of this. I have to have this grandiose introduction here. Yeah, so no pressure or anything. We expect you to footnote the whole pod. Let's start really high level.

You talked, you know, when you talked about how you think about your newsletter about the safety and security of this country. Are we safer than we were on January 20th, 2017? Probably not. I mean, the world is, you know, the problem is looking at the world now. I mean, it's sort of a cliche thing to say, and you hear these security officials say it, but it is much more complex in terms of the threat streams that the intelligence bureaucracy, the politicians and others have to think about and manage. Well, really, bureaucrats are thinking about.

Politicians aren't really doing much thinking about this stuff these days as far as I can tell. But, you know, it is a much more complex world than it is. I mean, if you take back, go back to 9-11, just let's go from there to now. you know on 9-11 of course the world was you americans were shaken by those events we sort of had this idea that we were secure at home here in the u.s there hadn't been an attack on american soil like that really i guess since you know obviously pearl harbor but even before that the war of 1812 and sort of the the whole you know world came crashing down on us in that day and we realized that this is a much more complex you know web of threats out there we have to worry about since that time

it's that was sort of the jihadist threat of the al-Qaeda threat since that time not only has the the threat of jihadism changed and morphed and evolved. But now you have these other underlying threats from China and Russia and other actors you have to deal with. On top of that, you have the cyber threats. You have, you know, just a whole range of issues now you have to deal with that really weren't present on 9-11. So now you have to look at the world in a very different way and think about and try

and manage and figure out how you're going to go about protecting Americans from all these different bad actors. Well, in your newsletter this week, which I thought was particularly, particularly perfect, maybe, I don't know, I think it was my favorite. It's not filled up too much here. It's something, I've learned. I'm terrible at sales or any kind of things like that, right? But there's something like setting a lower bar and then sort of clearing the lower bar, right?

Let's not set the bar too higher. But yeah, I thought the news that it was really average this week time. There we go. That's good. There we go. That's not actually what I said in my email to you, but. That's good. No, we go to average.

Average is good. You know, it's like the George Cassanza line. It's C-Mine. It's not falling. behind, not getting ahead, you know, just sort of three one aim, you know. I think it might have been your best. Okay. Anyway, you're talking about China in it. And you're talking about a term discourse power. And I think this explains so much about foreign policy today. And even looking back, foreign policy pre us really engaging with China, it's a, it's what, the

translation of a Chinese term. I'm wondering if you can. tell us more about the term how it applies today and sort of how we sit in this war over discourse power in some ways with China. Yeah, you know, it's an interesting thing that I learned from treating the testimony and the work of true experts on China, including there was this commission. They brought up during this commission hearing. I forget to actually name. Now I'm bled myself down here. I'm forgetting the actual exact name of the commission. But there was a hearing in April where several experts testified about this issue, power. And of course, I was well aware of it before that. And basically it goes back to this idea

the Chinese essentially think that the rules of the world were established before they had power, before their rise to power. The Chinese Communist Party was sort of, you know, second tier, or third tier power when when the rules of the game were set. And now that they've come into their own sort of preeminence, now that they've gained material power and they've gained economic power, military power, and otherwise, they think that they should also have what's known its discourse power. And basically the idea is that they not only get to help set the rules of the game, sort of international law, how the rules and regulations everybody abides by, but also be able to control the narrative and basically set the narrative. What they say is that the U.S. and its

allies in the West have been able to set the narrative for too long. Basically, what Americans say, that becomes how people view things or how they frame things. We want to be able to do that. We want to be able to tell people how to think about the world and the issues that involve us and others. And so this discourse power goes beyond, it's sort of a blunt sort of power politics. They think that just by virtue of the fact they have this material power now, they should be able to also have discourse power. But it goes beyond the idea of facts, right? They're not saying that, okay, let's let facts or logic lead the way. As Steve likes to talk about facts and logic, I'm sure you've heard his spiel on that a number of times, you know, in reporting and analysis.

It's not about facts and logic for them. It's about purely the fact that they are who they are. They're now, they're not the small kid on the block anymore. They're a bigger. kid, they should be able to sort of push people around and tell them how to think about the world. And that's sort of how their diplomats are behaving. They call them wolf warriors, which is after this pair of action movies that came out of China. There's sort of like the crude version of the 80s action flicks in America, you know, it's sort of they have their version of Rambo, their version of, you know, one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's characters who hunts down all these villains who inevitably they're answering to an American known as Big Daddy. And right now for them,

big daddy is Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State. That's sort of how the Wolf War years the diplomats for the Chinese Communist Party view it. And they're gunning for him and they're gunning for President Trump and they're gunning for Americans in this back and forth. And so the point of my newsletter was, well, you know, that's fine. America has to stand up for itself in this diplomatic fight. But the facts are going to matter or they should matter. And so whatever our diplomats are saying should be grounded in sort of real, the reality and the real facts, it can't just come down to this idea of discourse power. What, yeah, what are the big things that we've been discussing in this context, particularly with respect to China, is this great power competition, the role of

international institutions. And obviously, there's been a lot of focus on the WHO, which I think by any objective measure has played a bad role at the beginning of this outbreak, at the beginning of the pandemic. And there have been, I think, serious questions raised about Dr. Tedros, its leader, the role he's played, why he bends the need to China in the way that he does. And you had the president, of course, suggest that we were going to suspend our funding and maybe withdraw from the WHO. My question to you is a simple one. Are we better fighting inside these international institutions to push against China and to try to help control those institutions and use them to advance our interests? or is the president right?

Should we, whether it's the WHO or even the UN, are we better off just saying these institutions are so broken, we should bail? Well, it's a complex question. I mean, two things. One, China's relationship with the WHO and its leadership early on is a good example, actually, of discourse power because the idea was that China would say something in WHO and they'd repeat it, right, instead of actually just thinking about it and figuring

out whether or not it's true or not. You know, so that sort of speaks to the nature of the problem. The second thing is, you know, what I did a previous newsletter sort of critiquing the Trump administration saying, look, you've got a point, the president has a point, Secretary Pompeo has a point, that these international institutions are problematic. They need to be reformed or abandoned by the U.S. But you have to replace them with something. You have to do something in their stead. You can't just say, hey, you know, the WHO stinks. I'm taking my ball and going home. You know, the U.S. with the World Health Organization has been the number one donor to the World Health Organization for years and had an empty seat on the board of the World Health Organization. organization from 2018 onward. And so, you know, it doesn't make any sense. It seems to me that the American government's behavior when it came to WHO was sort of the worst of all worlds. We sort of don't trust it or critical of it. But by the same time, we're the number one donor to it.

And we're not going to actually exercise the influence that those donor dollars should grant us within the WHO. So we don't even fill there. I think there were like 33 or 34 board seats at WHO. America was the only seat that was empty. Right. Our was empty. Yeah. Every other every other seat was filled, including by obscure countries I never even heard of in Africa and elsewhere, right? They had their seats filled and we didn't. The U.S. didn't, right? So this doesn't make any sense. I mean, if you're going to criticize WHO and you're going to say, look, this isn't the way we need to organize ourselves internationally. Fine, I agree. We need reform. But you need to do something to replace that. You need to actually exercise the influence

you have or do something new, right? You have to then actually create something new. And the point is that it's very easy, it's very easy for me. It's very easy for any of us to criticize these organizations and say, you know, wag our finger at them. The difficult question is, well, what do you do instead? And the point is, is that I don't think there's really a serious conversation about that. And it's not just with the WHO. It's also with the Human Rights Council and Commission at the UN, which became the sort of cesspool. It's with other sort of places on the international stage where, look, China is looking to carve out these organizations from within. That's part of the discourse powers. They want to be able to sort of marry and at these organizations with their new growing confidence. But the U.S. has to answer that either by figuring out a way, to counter Chinese influence effectively in these organizations or build something new. And I don't think there's a real robust conversation on any of that. So looking ahead, you know, we, the president has been pretty 12, actually, I guess he's been a little all over the place on China in the last few weeks. I call it scrambled eggs.

I call it scrambled eggs. It's the scrambled eggs view of foreign policy. Yeah, you know, it's criticizing on the one hand and on the other hand, you know, sort of repeating W.H.O sort of level of praise for Xi and others in the Chinese party. But there's no question. It's become a focus point. And where we go from here is a focus point. So today, for instance, the chief Chinese envoy, Lightheiser, the Treasury Secretary Manuchin, promised to, quote, create a favorable atmosphere and conditions for implementing phase one of the trade agreement, signed in January. At the same time,

The president is talking about putting pressure on some of these pension funds, the Thrift Savings Plan, which has $50 billion in an international fund to exclude Chinese-based stocks and companies to exert more economic pressure in the midst of everything that's going on. as you look ahead to America's options of putting pressure on China or even, I think some would say, punishing China for what we're all experiencing now because of the coronavirus, where are the reasonable options? What are the unreasonable options? If you were advising the president, what would you tell him today? Well, I mean, look, I don't know what you could tell the president today on these issues. He has his own sort of peculiar sort of understanding these things. Look, I think President Trump has been more critical or skeptical the Chinese at times than some of his predecessors have been. I think that's warranted, quite frankly. How he articulates that and views it, however, often leaves much to be desired. And I'd like to take a step back for one second because beyond what you're seeing here,

I mean, something, this all sort of started percolating across the U.S. government before President Trump was even elected. There was this idea that great power competition was returning to the fold and was sort of going to be the central focal point for the U.S. government. And that sort of concept bubbled up at both the Defense Department, state, and elsewhere, throughout the U.S. government, that basically the U.S. had not been paying enough attention to China or others, Russia and others, and that basically we need to reorient our foreign policy toward that. And you can even see that in what President Obama was saying when he talked years ago about

a pivot to Asia, right? That was the sort of playing up the same idea. Now, in the newsletter, I've explained how that idea also, there's a lot of truth to it. There's also this notion, that we were over-invested in the 9-11 wars and we can take our eye off the fight against jihadism now because we have to worry about China and Russia. And what I would say is that's self-serving for the Defense Department that doesn't want to really be in these wars and for others, that basically they, the pivot away from the 9-11 wars has already happened. Most people don't even realize that about 20,000 troops are fighting in Iraq, Syria,

and Afghanistan. Indo-Pacific Command, which is responsible for the Asian Theater, it's a combatant command, has more than four times the personnel of any other combatant command, including all, including Sencom, which is overseeing the fight against the jihadists. So these are the tectonic plates that are shifting here on this whole thing, this whole idea that we need to shift to great power competition. There's a lot of truth to it. There's also some, I think, some misguided or misunderstanding involvement.

Now, on top of that, you get to the economic issues you're talking about because that's an integral part of great power competition. And the point here is that there's really no consensus at all about what America's policy should be in terms of economics going forward. And even within your question, Sarah, you had a – are actually several different issues even baked in there. One of them is the trade deal, right, which I wrote about the vital interest newsletter. The trade deal was basically, again, was the Trump administration's, President Trump and his advisors attempt to sort of recalibrate

the trade relationship between China and the U.S. And a couple of things about that. One, I don't know if she'd be happy with me saying this, but my sister is about to move across country. And she started the contract for a new house that she wants to build with her husband. And they got delayed in selling their house now on the East Coast. And so they basically couldn't buy this new house to start construction right away. And the developer said to her when she came back several months later, about a year later, several months anyway, said, well, the cost of construction now $60,000 higher. This is what he said to my sister. And my sister said, well, why? And you said, well, Trump's tariffs because the price for the sort of the raw

materials we need are now skyrocketed because of the tariffs. And even if you want to put aside that anecdote, that's the truth of the matter is that these tariffs were used as a one instrument to basically force China, the negotiating table, and to recalibrate the relationship on trade. However, the tariffs don't work the way President Trump and advisors say they work. A lot of times the costs are born by Americans, including if my sister goes forward with that house by my sister and her husband, right? But also on washers and dryers and other things, you can see the real material costs of these things have gone up over time. So the question is, you know, should we recalibrate the relationship, the economic relationship with China?

I say yes. We need to have that conversation. It's an enormously complicated issue. And the point is, is that the crude sort of tactics have been used so far by President Trump's advisors. They've gotten this trade deal with China after, you know, a lot of a trade war broke out. A lot of that costs of that are actually being born by Americans, not by others. And the question is, when you go forward here, you're talking about how do we recalibrate that relationship. The trade deal, as I wrote, of vile interest, is, I think, good in terms China admits bad behavior, essentially, in terms intellectual property rights, stealing, you know, on these nefarious joint venture schemes they have, other sort of issues.

However, it's very short on enforcement and verification mechanisms. And as a former economist who used to read a lot of contracts, when I don't see, when I don't see the language that says, if you don't do this, then the penalty is this. When I don't see that language, and by the way, Steve, that language is not in the Taliban deal with the U.S. either. We'll get to that. You anticipated by coming transition. Yeah, right. But the point, the point is that this is a very,

long-winded way of answering your questions here, but the idea is that essentially if you don't get down to the specifics, you don't get let the nerds like me into the room to figure out what this actually is going to mean, right, then what are you exactly doing? And I think it's very, I don't really have the answer right now. I don't know where this is all going to go from here. I mean, there's obviously a lot of pressure to decouple, sort of change our, you know, the supply chain management of the American companies need to get away from, you know, Chinese source products. I think a lot of that's true. I think a lot of that that's accurate. but how do you actually go about doing that without causing massive economic damage in the U.S.?

Nobody solved that. Nobody is. I mean, I think, and I've talked about this before, but I think there's the point you're making there is really an important one, and it has a lot to do with the very unique way that the Trump administration runs. If you go back and you think about how policy decisions have been made going back, you know, decades, it's these things are policy workshopped in the agency. by the policy analysts, by the specialists, they sort of build their way up to the interagency, they get included in speeches, and then their policy, and the president makes a decision.

This was, I mean, the important role of the speech writers in particular was laid out, I thought very well in Peggy Noon's book, what I saw at The Revolution, where she talked about how they were essentially the arbiters of what became policy, because if they could get the president to say it, it became policy. So they were, you know, in some ways, the key deciders or played a key role in that. With the Trump administration, that process has almost been flipped on its head because the president goes out. People have sort of general senses directionally of where he wants to be on some of these issues. I mean, Tom, you alluded to that.

We know that he wants to be tough on China. We don't know exactly what that's going to look like, but we know that he wants to be tough on China. So the president goes out and says something, often in his ad hoc fashion, and immediately there's this scramble to determine what the policy implications are from what the president has said. And then you have all of these policy folks putting together something that resembles a policy to try to make sense of this. And I think that's the difficult position that Lighthizer and others are in.

I mean, I certainly don't agree with them on their broad trade outlook. I'm much more of a free trader than I think anybody over there is. But that's a challenge for them if they are doing it retrofitting policy to the president's public rhetoric. Steve, can I actually jump in to ask you a quick question on what Tom just said about supply chain issues? We're at a unique point where Americans, I think, are more aware of supply chain issues than ever before. do you think that the American public is ready in exchange for having less dependence on Chinese-based supply chain operations to take some of that domestically, even if there's some cost.

Such a good question. Yeah, like cost meaning literal, economic cost, but also... Yeah, like out of your checking account, yeah. Or it may be less convenient or who knows. Yeah, so it's a very good question. I don't know that we know the answer to that, but it's certainly the case that that there's more attention focused on the rather unsexy but absolutely crucial issues of the supply chain now than any time in recent history, at least in terms of the public's attention

on that. And yeah, if you look, there's polling on this that suggests Americans are willing to make those kind of sacrifices. The obvious question now, as I think we head into what probably will be remembered as a depression, is whether we even have that choice. Like, we don't have that choice. I mean, I think we, for national security reasons, it makes a lot of sense to, to do the kinds of things that we can to make ourselves less dependent on China in particular sectors. I would say in the medical sector for sure, to some extent, in parts for crucial national security interests and infrastructure programs. But I'm not sure we're going to have the freedom really to opt to pay more.

If we don't have, you know, if you've got 33 million Americans who are out of work, people having trouble eating a disrupted food supply chain here in the United States. I think there's a lot of talk about doing this in the abstract. I think it will be hard actually to put it in practice while we're under such great economic pressure here in home. Tom? I mean, basically the way I put it is given, you know, I've spent before I started writing vital interest, the newsletter, I spent several years reading up on China and the Chinese Communist Party, as Steve knows, part of the reason why I felt confident to start writing this. And I'm willing to pay more personally. you know, based on everything I know now. I'm willing to basically try and decouple,

certainly in key areas as much as possible. But I think Steve's exactly right. I mean, I don't know how that's going to translate to the broader economy and with the broader population and the double-edged sword that that is, you know, where you have working families, working class families who then have to pay more, you know, at the grocery store or at Walmart for sort of, you know, day-to-day essentials. And I think that, you know, it's easy for somebody like me to slough off that increase in cost, but I don't think it's easy for somebody who's a blue collar family who's working to get by and scrounge to get food on the table. It's not so easy for them. So I don't have the answers for that. But I know based on my own understanding of the Chinese

Communist Party, I think that a lot of America's policymaking was sort of naive about what was happening there and thought that I wrote this in one of the first issues of the newsletter, thought that basically economic liberalization was both necessary and sufficient to bring about political liberalization within China. And the truth of the matter is it may be necessary, but it's certainly not sufficient, right? And that's what we've seen now over the past 40 years. So we can't operate under those rules anymore. We have to have a clear-eyed view of what the Chinese Communist Party is doing, from their wolf warriors to on down, you know, the whole gambit of challenges they pose. And that's a whole complex set of issues in terms of how America should

respond to it without making the situation worse, but also not sort of being willfully blind to what they're doing. Steve, do you want to take us to Iran or Afghanistan? Let's do that. I'm very torn. Yeah, no, this is great. I mean, I think let's let's take advantage of the transition that Tom teed up about contracts and language and actually how you compel nations to act in certain ways and go to Afghanistan and talk about the, um, the peace deal or the exit, exit deal as we yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, Tom, obviously very few people in the country have covered Afghanistan as closely as you and Bill Rogio have at Long War Journal. Um, and also for, for us. And you, I would, let me just ask you, is there anything that we're seeing in the two months,

it's been a little over two months since the deal was signed? Is there anything that we're seeing out of the deal in those two months that surprises you? No. You know, we said from the beginning that this wasn't going to be a peace deal, this was going to be a withdrawal deal, that the whole process, the whole notion behind these talks, was based on Taliban apologia. This is an apologetic sort of understanding of the Taliban that presents it almost as if it's an innocent bystander to the original 9-11 war.

Even worse, if I can jump in. In some cases, even worse because there was an argument made by senior Trump administration officials, including, I think, people who ought to know better, that the Taliban was going to be fighting alongside Americans against al-Qaeda. Well, that's the new. Well, that's the new thing. When this all started, it started in Taliban Apology that they were almost an innocent vice center. And I was going to get to that now the whole fantasy has grown to there are counterterrorism ally. And that came from Secretary Pompeo and others who really got out on a limb, I think, historically speaking, for what they were saying, to talk. on a degree to do. The agreement, I encourage people to read the agreement. I've linked to it

at vital interest newsletter. I try and link to the source documents as much as I can, whether it be in the jihadi world or dealing with China or dealing with any different issues. Because I think if you have time, reading the actual text of something is very important as compared to how it's reported. And this was four pages. Yeah, not even, three and a half. The way I put it is if you've leased a car before or purchased kitchen appliances, you sign much more comprehensive paperwork than this deal, right? And this is supposedly an agreement to, quote, unquote, end the Afghan war. Well, read the agreement, and you'll realize how shallow it is and how vacuous it is.

And there are no, basically the bottom line is the U.S. put on paper that it was going to withdraw. And let me back up for a second. First of all, folks, you know, I'm certainly critical of the way the Afghan war has been prosecuted. I get a lot of the criticism and I agree with some of it, right? What I would say is that even if all you want the world is to withdraw American troops, even if that's all you know is that soundbite, right?

This deal was not necessary for any of that. You did not have to sign a deal with the Taliban to draw American troops at all. It was not necessary. So the whole idea is if you're going to do a deal with the Taliban, you better get something out of it. It better be some use to it, some utility for doing a deal as opposed to just withdrawing American troops. And there's nothing. There's no utility out of this deal. It took place, negotiations took place entirely on the Taliban's terms. They locked out our Afghan government allies from the talks. They said, the Taliban sat down from the beginning and said, we're not going to talk to you and the Afghan government. We're only going to talk to you because they see the U.S. as the puppeteer and the Afghan government as the puppets. And they knew that they could

extract concessions from the U.S. without the Afghan government in the room and undermine the Afghan government's legitimacy. And that's exactly what the Taliban did while building up their own political legitimacy. And a good example of political legitimacy is that you have Secretary of State Pompeo became the first cabinet level official to ever go fly over to Doha or anywhere and meet personally with the Taliban, right, and shake hands with them and say, yeah, you're basically in a legitimate negotiating partner. And Pompeo, in the Greek, that he and Zalmaiklizad, special representative for these talks, signed, to show you how the legitimacy works, the Taliban, this all began on the Obama administration's effort for these talks. And it was the America has always chased them. We don't have time to get into the whole torturous history here. But America has always chased the Taliban for a deal, not the other way around. It should tell you something. But on the Obama administration, the Obama administration said, look, we'll talk to you, but you can't refer to yourself as Islamic emmer of Afghanistan. Why is that? Well, Islamic emmer in Afghanistan is the totalitarian regime the Taliban had in Afghanistan. Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 that the U.S. overthrew. And if they're referring to themselves

as Islamic Emirate Afghanistan, it means they have no desire for a peace because it means they just want to reinstall their nasty regime, their authoritarian regime in Afghanistan. And so the Obama administration broke away from talks in part because the Taliban insisted on calling itself the Islamic Emirate Afghanistan. When the Obama administration allowed the Taliban to open a political office in Doha, the first thing they did was unfurled banner saying Islamic Emirate Afghanistan and Doha. And basically the Obama administration policymakers at the Times said, you know, use some cuss words to express their disappointment because they realize they've just been played, right? Well, let's flash forward now the Trump administration's deal. And you can go to the text of the agreement. And what is all over this deal? Islamic emerald Afghanistan, the Taliban refers to itself, Islamic Emir of Afghanistan all throughout the deal. And the state department very clumsily, because the state department was so desperate to have any kind of agreement with the Taliban, clumsily inserted this language and says that Islamic em or Afghanistan, which the U.S. doesn't recognize. Well, Yeah, and so all throughout the agreement, I don't know how many times this, a few dozen times, this language is inserted in there. What does that mean? Well, the Taliban didn't give up its dream

of resurrecting Islam again and Afghanistan. The U.S. gave up its demand that the Taliban, give it up, you know, and this is one of many concessions that went into this deal, which is a bad deal, which undermine the Afghan government, empower the Taliban, and the U.S. really got nothing out of it. So can I ask a quick pointed follow-up on that? You covered the Obama administration's negotiations with the Taliban in great detail. um is the deal at the time of course republicans and conservatives were seeing the terms of the deal as they were reported in the press and saying this would be tantamount to a cave to the Taliban right and president Obama didn't take that deal and president Obama didn't take that right is the deal

that the Trump administration made worse than the deal that the Obama administration contemplated um I would say it's tough to say because we didn't have the actual text of the agreement that Obama turned down. But I would say that for all the reasons that that deal was deemed weak and deemed unacceptable, this deal is the same thing. It's just as weak, if not more so, basically. It's at least as weak as what President Obama wanted to do. And it basically comes down to the U.S. Again, I think people should read the text of the agreement. It's very strange the U.S. would get boxed into this sort of way of thinking about Afghanistan. But not only did the U.S. agree to a 14-month timetable for withdrawal, which again wasn't necessary from

Afghanistan. The U.S. also agreed, if you look at Section 1 Part F, language that nobody's talked about, nobody's reported on, right? The language says the U.S. will refrain from ever threatening Afghanistan militarily again after the withdrawal. Wow. So we're now going to pretend that there are no counterterrorism threats coming from Afghanistan that we need to worry about or neutralize to protect Americans. It's all now going to be on the Taliban to protect us. Well, that's basically one of the 10 reasons long where our journal exists is, and this is the website I run with my colleague, Bill Rojo, is the document why that thinking is flawed. The Taliban remains deeply in bed with al-Qaeda to this day. Nothing in this deal, despite what

Secretary of State Pompeo and Special Representative Zalmei Kalalazade have said, despite everything they've said on this and the way they've sold it to the American public, nothing in this deal changed that relationship. There's no break in the relationship. The Taliban hasn't done anything to al-Qaeda. I doubt very highly they will. And the idea that you're trusting al-Qaeda's longest ally to now be America's de facto counterterrorism. as a partner seems to me to be a pretty disgraceful way to extricate American forces from Afghanistan. Sarah, can I jump in with one more question before we, just because I'm obsessing about this the way that Tom is. There's another section of the agreement that hasn't gotten nearly

the amount of attention that it ought to have near the end. I don't remember the section and the letter you probably do, Tom. But it leaves open the possibility that the United States will be providing resources to a Taliban-led government in the future. Which if you stop and think about that is absolutely extraordinary. You think about the days, the years, really, after the 9-11 attacks, when, you know, you had the Taliban actively supporting al-Qaeda working alongside al-Qaeda. The leadership of the two groups were intermingled. This has been true ever since those attacks. It was true before those attacks. Still right this moment as we're speaking. Still true today. Right. And, you know, the Bush administration mantra at the

time was we will not negotiate with terrorists. And now here we are less than 20 years later, not only negotiating-caving with terrorists, but strengthening the Taliban through those negotiations and leaving open the possibility that we will be funding a government run by those terrorists. I just think people haven't quite gotten their mind around the dramatic change. in U.S. policy with respect to the Taliban that this deal sort of locks in. Yeah, no, the section you're talking about is at the end of what the section of America says what it's going to do. And it says it's willing to basically provide economic support for a new Islamic government

in Afghanistan. Well, what's a new Islamic government? And this is where you have to understand the perverse nature of all this, right? The Taliban has never intimated or indicated that they're willing to do anything other than resurrect the Islamic Emirate Afghanistan, their own totalitarian regime. They've never said that they're willing to share power with the current Afghan government or form a new government with the current Afghan government. That's all been a fantasy by the peace processors who've been involved in this. The Taliban actually rejects that out of hand.

It says we're not going to share power with puppets. So what does a new Islamic government in Afghanistan look like? Well, the only new Islamic government that the Taliban is going to accept is their government. People don't know this or remember this. But you remember with the rise of ISIS, Sabu Baker al-Baghdadi was known as the Emir of the faithful, right? this is the title that the caliph, this would-be caliph of all Muslims takes for himself and that his supporters gave him. Well, what is the title that the Taliban's a mirror leader has for himself and that all of his followers, and al-Qaeda, by the way, refers to

him as it's the emir of the faithful. Abutu al-Qaeda, the emir of the talban is the emir of the faithful. Well, guess what? That's not a title that he's going to share power as some sort of delegate or a bureaucrat and Afghan government or share power. That is the title of someone who actually thinks that he could one day be the emir of all the faithful, right? And this is how all the jihadis in his orbit referred to him. So this is the idea that they're going to politically compromise on that, which is sort of a Taliban apology that's baked into the whole process, is always been a fiction from the American side.

And it's a nice little cat behind you there, Sarah, you know, as we're recording this on something I've never used before called squadcast or something. And there's the video footage where Sarah has a cat. This is now the third appearance of this cat, I think, during the time. Yes. So, uh, he, he really likes the podcast time, by the way. The rest of the time he's napping, but if I'm taping a pod, he's right there. Yeah. He's, he's, he's loving on you. He's definitely enjoying himself during a podcast. This is sort of a new, new thing for him, I guess, you know,

to be able to look. You're a cat owner, so you know this, but like if you try to get them to go away, it will make them meow more. So like the best thing you can do is just sort of let them do their cat. Yeah, I got a cat for my, my wife and daughters wanted a cat. So I, we got a cat for him and I'm not a cat person to be honest and I spend more time feeding the cat and attending to the cat than anybody so and the cat also comes then I'll be sleep at at 4.45 in the morning or 5 o'clock in the morning and all of a sudden I'll hear a meowing as the cat is right next to my head waking me up for his morning morning feeding so I'm a very he knows who his buddy is. I'm a very happy cat owner as you can tell well I didn't mean to interrupt uh zoo did mean to interrupt

Listen, the cat's much more enjoyable than Habitat and the Earth's faithful. That's for sure. By the way, here's something for you. The jihadis are obsessed with cats. It all goes back to some sort of mythology about the Prophet Muhammad loving cats. And so I have all these pictures on my hard drive of jihadis holding cats and posing with pictures of cats. In fact, there was this American who went from Florida to go blow himself up at Syria. And his goodbye photo set, which went to his parents, had all these photos of him holding cats because it was all part of the stage thing. Even more reason not to like cats. Yeah, as far as I'm concerned. Hey, hey. How do you predict a Biden administration would be behaving differently?

If Biden were to win in the fall, what changes? You know, it's a good question. I don't know. I think there's a legitimate concern that there'll be some backsliding on China. I don't think the Trump administration has the answers, but I think that Biden has been over his career, over his career a lot softer on China. And there's some concern that maybe won't have. the realistic outlook of the Chinese Communist Party that we need to get to in terms of where

they are. I think when it comes to various other issues in the jihadi world, I mean, Biden wanted to have sort of a counterterrorism posture in Afghanistan. He didn't want to do counterinsurgency when that debate was raging on the Obama years. Now, basically, even a counterterrorism posture is going to be out the window if this current so-called withdrawal deal is adhered to. I don't know that he's going to reverse course on that. I don't know that he's going to say, oh, no, we really do need to stay in Afghanistan longer than this deal called for. I don't know that he would do that at this point. And, you know, I think, you know, basically, I think my general view of the foreign policy world is it's not just that President Trump has a scrambled eggs approach a lot of times to his

understanding and stuff. I think the whole, the whole field has been, the whole field's been upset on, over time. There's not really a common, Americans don't have a common shared understanding of the world that we live in or the threats that we face or whether or not we should, let alone how we should face them. You know, I mean, you can still see there's still quite a bit of debate about China. And believe me, you know, when it comes to China, for example, you know, I can't think of a quicker way to get a lot of Americans killed than to have some sort of land war in Asia, you know, so this is not something that I'm pining for, okay?

This is, that's the worst case scenario down the road, and we should want to avoid that at all costs. But all costs doesn't mean capitulating the Chinese influence on the world stage or undermining American influence, the Chinese Communist Party undermine American influence. that only will precipitate nastier conflicts down the road if America doesn't hold itself strong. And I think that's basically the big question for me is, you know, what happens here? The bureaucracy in Washington has shifted this idea of great power competition. It's not well defined, and nor does it understood exactly what that's going to mean in a long run.

There are definitely things you can see the Marines doing, definitely things you can see the counterintelligence that ODI and I is doing, see things the State Department's doing. But whether or not we can maintain that and build on it and improve it. most importantly, improve it, really remains to be seen. And I don't know that Biden has it in them now to do that, to improve any of that. I think he basically, I think he comes from a school of international relations that is often pretty weak. I mean, I didn't see him piping up about the Taliban talks too often when, you know, basically America started to capitulate in that regard. So I don't, I don't really see him as somehow going to make America stronger in the

long run. And do you think he'll go back to the Obama era? Iran relationship? Well, they want to get into something like the JCPOA or some version of it, you know, with Iran again, certainly. And again, that deal was, you know, a good example of the deal where if America just makes a bunch of concessions, we expect the Iranians to be well-behaved. That's sort of the, that's sort of the version of diplomacy that these, the Obamites and people I would think would be working for Biden come from, you know, and what they'll say

about somebody like me, for example, is, oh, you don't believe in diplomacy. I said, no, I strongly believe in diplomacy. we need diplomacy, but we can't have feckless, mindless diplomacy that starts with me walking in the room giving you concessions. That's not the way diplomacy is supposed to work, you know, and that's the way, it's funny. We were just talking about the Taliban withdrawal deal. By the way, some of the same people who were laid down the tracks for that withdrawal deal, laid down the tracks to JCPOA, which is the Iran nuclear deal that Trump got out of. And so it's one of the bizarre contradictions in all this, one of the bizarre, you know, things you can witness or nerd like me

witnesses anyway, is that the Trump administration on the one hand is backing out of of the Obama administration's deal with Iran, when the same type of thinking and the same type of worldview and even some of the same personnel also laid down the tracks for the Taliban deal that the Trump administration goes full steam ahead on. So it's a really just that it's not, it's less about the threats and more about just withdrawing. Right. I mean, that sort of gives the game away. And a scrambled eggs view of the world where you don't really have, you can't really put together a consistent picture of what's going on or even what's in the eggs. You know, you don't even really know, you know, it's sort of like, it's sort of like the bad hotel version

scrambled eggs. You know, you're like, I'm hungry. I need a breakfast, but I'm not really sure what's in these eggs. That's sort of how I look at how people are looking at the foreign policy world right now, you know. This metaphor is making me hungry. I'm ready to go make some eggs, break some eggs and make some eggs. So I won't, we're running out of time. I don't want to keep you too long, but I did want to get to, well, I've got about 50 questions I'd like to ask you about Iran. We'll save those, shelved them, and ask you back at some point soon. We haven't talked it all about Russia. Where does Russia fit into this broad threat picture? It feels to me, in part because of the polarized debate that we've seen about Russia domestically here

over the past few years, that we're having, to the extent we're having a debate about Russia and the threat that Russia is, it's a phony debate because you now have, Republican, and this is reflected in lots of public polling, Republicans have shifted their, views on Vladimir Putin and Russia dramatically over the past five, six years, where, you know, have more Republicans with a favorable view of Vladimir Putin than a lot of, I would say. Yeah, they've come close to the Dana Roerbocker view, which is really bizarre to watch, you know, I mean, Danny Warbocker is a congressman of California now retired. It was very apologetic for Putin, suspiciously so for years. I testified for him one of the 20 times I testified

for Congress. I testified for one of his subcommittees. He had a bunch of quite, even though the hearing wasn't about Russia, there was a lot of Russia, Russia, Russia. Russia, you know, very strange, very strange role view, you know. And yeah, no, they're not in the Dana-Rourapak camp, per se, but they've come closer to his view of things, for sure, you know. And what, so, so how should we look? How should we look at Russia in, in the broader threat picture? Look, I don't think Vladimir Putin's changed at all, you know, if I could change this, computer, you could see I got a whole tranche of books on Putin in Russia now because I'm reading up on that for the newsletter as well, trying to distill.

that down to things that make sense. A couple of things on that. One, I'm not certain that Russia's a great power. So we've talked a little bit about great power competition the way Washington looks at it. And great power competition usually means America versus Russia and China or China and Russia. I think Russia is a power. I don't think it's a great power. It doesn't have the economic might that China does.

It doesn't have the sort of ability to influence things and play the soft power game that China does. So I think it's a little bit different. But that doesn't mean I'm downplaying Putin or what Russia is all about. one in particular, because if you can see in the newsletter, I've sort of started to tease this. I'm going to do more on this. You can see that Putin has come to she's aid throughout the whole coronavirus pandemic. And you can see this relationship between Russia and China is pretty strong at the moment. And there's a lot to be worried about that the combination of the two then does make a real great power. Beyond that, Russia is often a spoiler. They have a zero-sum game of the

view of the world and American power. And basically anything that's bad for America, they view is good for them oftentimes, you know, which is a bad deal, of course, for Americans. Vladimir Putin is not going to back off that. That's who he is. That's who he's been for decades now. And that's how he views the world. I do think he thinks the fall of the Soviet Union was one of the great historical calamities. He's said as much. And I think that's definitely how he views things. And because that means that the Kremlin and Russia lost its influence and its power on the world stage, and he would like to reclaim as much of that as possible. I don't think he will be able to. I think you'll only be able to claim some of it. But you're going to see all

sorts of problems arise with Russia going forward. We already see them now in Ukraine. You saw them previously in Georgia. You're going to see going forward, Russia is going to continue to press its case and trying to enlarge the Kremlin sphere of influence throughout any ways they can. And enlarging their sphere of influence means decreasing or depleting America's sphere of influence. And I think that's an important point that I think some Republicans are now missing. Well, I want to move to a more serious topic, which is as a foreign policy guy, Would you say you're more excited about James Bond as a character or Jack Ryan? Got to be honest with you.

Pretty much neither, right? I'm not, I don't know. Like, I have a sentimental sort of affection for the James Bond series, you know. You know, there was that rumor was floated at different times, Idris Elba could be the next James Bond. I mean, that would be fantastic. I mean, I don't, I don't know. Yeah, I'm very excited about that. I don't know what's holding that up, you know,

but the only reason I watched the series Luther on Netflix with my wife was because of, you know, Hiderselva was in it. Otherwise, I wouldn't care less about it, you know, but he'd be great. Although I like Daniel Craig. I like to do it. The Jack Ryan series sort of, I haven't watched that at all on Netflix. I think it's a show right on Netflix. I thought.

I watched the first series. Don't. Yeah. Not great. They flip, they flip Venezuela, right? I read something where they flip the socialist regime of Venezuela to being the good guy in storyline. This is, this is, if you want to.

know what motivates me in vital interest in my writing generally. It's that sort of moral inversion. I can't stand. I just cannot stand it. It's like it's the same thing. It bothers me when I see somebody say, oh, the Taliban's our partner now against terrorism. All right. No, no. You know, I can't, this I can't abide. You know, I understand the world's. But original. Yeah. Original Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan. I mean, that's a different thing. That's the Harrison for Jack Ryan, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of appealing. It's a lot of appeal to that one. I'm still sort of a sucker for Jason Bourne. I got to be, I mean, I'm not. I'm not. Action movies are not my thing at all, really, but in that genre.

Go look at the Wolf Warrior's action footage. I've seen that. Actually, there's a good. And you can see that will bring you around. You'll love action movies. We're like bringing this full circle like professionals would actually, because we're going back to China and we're talking about Hollywood and we're marrying all this together.

There is a very good documentary that the PBS News Hour has put together. I think basically what they did was they strung together. together a number of individual pieces about China and the U.S.-China relationship that they've broadcast over the years and made it about an hour and 45-minute documentary. It's very good, I think. And they talk about the Wolf Warrior. They've got some of the footage in it. And the Americans, the bad guy and the World War is the hero. Yeah, yeah. So. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Tom. We appreciate your newsletter. It's called Vital Interest. Really encourage people to subscribe.

and I'm sure we will be talking to you again because I don't think any of these topics are going away ever. Steve, last thoughts. Yeah, thanks, Tom. We're happy to have you aboard. We consider vital interests, vital reading, and look forward to more.

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Talk to you guys soon. Thanks for listening.