The Dispatch Podcast - From Afghanistan with Love

Episode Date: July 17, 2020

What is happening on the ground in Afghanistan and why are we still there? The Trump administration has closed five bases, reduced the number of American troops to 9,ooo, and signed a peace deal with the Taliban. But as Thomas Joscelyn points out in today’s podcast, the peace deal is really nothing more than a “pretext for justifying withdrawal.” While the United States reckons with its military presence in the Middle East, other foreign threats are lurking behind the scenes. From the Russian bounties intelligence leak to recent cyberattacks on coronavirus vaccine-related targets on American soil, Russia is engaging in shadow wars against the United States. And as Thomas reminds us, China’s deep-seated anti-Americanism is also cause for concern. On this week’s foreign policy episode, Sarah, Steve, and Thomas dive into these issues and address Israel’s sabotage efforts in Iran, Trump’s reflexive isolationism and business-minded foreign affairs strategy, and the implications of a Biden presidency for American interests abroad. Show Notes: -This week’s Vital Interests newsletter on the world’s most dangerous alliance, and Thomas Joscelyn’s podcast Generation Jihad. -Trump’s West Point commencement speech,and the latest reporting on Israel and Iran. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our special Friday Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined by Steve Hayes. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit the dispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts and subscribe to this podcast, so you never miss an episode. We'll hear a little later from our sponsor today, the Bradley Foundation. We're joined again today by Tom Jocelyn, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and host of his own podcast, Generation Jihad. You can subscribe to his newsletter, Vital Interest, at the Dispatch.com. Come. Let's dive right in. Tom. We're so excited to have you back to talk about this. Last week, we spoke with Jake Tapper about his book and his movie, which told the story of

U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2009 at Kop Keating. I guess I want to pick up fast forwarding to where we are now in Afghanistan, and we're seeing the stories about the bounty on U.S. soldiers there. What is happening on the ground in Afghanistan with our forces who are still there? Well, the U.S. military has closed about five bases in Afghanistan in the name of this agreement with the Taliban that was signed on February 29th. I don't think, I think the agreement really is a cover for what's going on. The U.S. is, withdrawing and sort of they want just this pretext for justifying the withdrawal, basically saying that the Taliban is now our de facto counterterrorism partner. And Steve and I will probably get into

that again. But the bottom line is the U.S. is getting out. Five bases have been closed. They're withdrawing forces. The mini sort of deployment that President Trump authorized in 2017 has been rolled back. The total number of American soldiers is now less than 9,000 in Afghanistan. And all indications are that the plan is to go to zero. Steve, this is a pet passion of yours of how the U.S. government is handling its withdrawal and its continued presence in Afghanistan. So I want to make sure that you have plenty of time on this pod. Yeah.

It's a, I mean, this is a, I think what we're seeing and what we've seen, how we've seen the administration handle the reporting of the, um, reporting of the, Russia bounty story is sort of of a piece with the broader approach to Afghanistan, frankly. President Trump early in his presidency signaled that the U.S. was going to stay there. We all know that he did this over his own objections against his own instincts. He was persuaded by a number of top advisors to do it because the prospect of Afghanistan turning into an even greater safe haven for terrorists were. read President Trump. And he has steadily sort of crept back to his initial instincts on this.

His instincts are just to get out. And so what we've seen the administration do is, in effect, create a peace process that's not a peace process. It's an exit process. And reach a peace deal that's not a peace deal, it's an exit deal. And so we shouldn't be surprised that when there were these reports of Russia offering and perhaps paying bounties for the killing of U.S. soldiers at the administration's natural reaction was to downplay the story, dismiss it, and try to come up with about 30 different ways to explain it away. The problem is the story was true. The intelligence is good.

And you have President Trump who tweeted that the story was a hoax. in effect, seeming to sort of wave away the entire series of claims, it's not a hoax. It's true. The CIA has very good intelligence about the bounty program. You had had previous top military leaders in Afghanistan make reference to Russia's, you know, rather open support for the Taliban. You had the administration cite a disagreement among intelligence agencies to justify its lack of action in response to the Russian bounty program. And it's true that the Pentagon has said that it couldn't corroborate the individual stream of intelligence that came to the CIA.

I think that's right. They didn't have any independent separate battlefield intelligence. On this, at least according to Mark Esper, that doesn't mean that the CIA's reporting stream wasn't accurate. I think it was. The NSA had, I think, separate intelligence suggesting, backing up the central part of the story, which is that the Russians were, in fact, offering these bounties and potentially paying them, but didn't have separate confirmation. That does not mean that the intelligence was bad, which is the way that you had senior Trump administration officials address this. You talk to people who are familiar with the intelligence, and they will say the intelligence is good. The intelligence is very good. And initial claims that the

Trump administration made about this not being in the president's PDB, the president not being made aware of this, people not surfacing this, were quickly debunked. It was, in fact, in the president's PDB, perhaps more than once. And they sort of quickly turned to a different public relations response to that after initially saying yeah the president didn't really know about this we didn't brief them because the intelligence wasn't that good they said wow the national security council took this very seriously and followed the you know these steps in order to take it seriously and address the intelligence that we were getting well those two things are at the very least in intention if not outright contradictory so this has been a mess and what i guess to summarize

what what still shocks me at this point it's hard to be surprised by much of anything these days is that we haven't had, and Tom, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I've been looking, we haven't had the kind of straightforward, unequivocal, unambiguous denunciation of this kind of a program, of the Russian program from anyone, certainly not from President Trump, and from anybody senior in the administration has not said, this program is awful. The Russians shouldn't be doing this. Let me back up, though, and ask a more basic question to you, Tom. And again, this goes back to our conversation, perhaps with Jake Tapper, and the

juxtaposition of what that book shows, which is great sacrifice and heroism from our forces that are there against the futility of it, the why are we there. And I get asked that pretty frequently, what is our national interest in our continued presence in Afghanistan? Well, look, I mean, if you go back through my reporting analysis of the years, you're not going to find anybody who had a more skeptical or critical take of the war effort than we have in terms of facts. But from a perspective, it's not anti-American, I would say, that we're not reflexively

opposed to the U.S. military, U.S. military force. But my own view of it, and I know my colleague Bill Rojo at the Long War Journal, shares us, is that we have witnessed a massive failure of American leadership here, both in the political class and in the military leadership. And that we don't, we're not, we don't gain any popularity points for saying that. There's a lot of people who, who have come after us because of that. But I think that's true. I think that basically the question that you're being asked, Sarah, is, should be asked of the U.S.

military and political leadership. And they can't offer a clear response. They offered a sort of a mealy mouth response, I would say. So then why shouldn't we be pulling our troops out of Afghanistan? You haven't heard me advocate for a continued presence in some time, you know, because I can't justify some, some kid from Texas or Nebraska or New York or wherever, some young guy, 18, 19, 1920, whatever, you know, being deployed over there and putting his life on the line for a mission that Americans don't understand. But now, let me, let me, I'll give you the other side

of the point. And that the political leadership doesn't believe in. Right. No, they're, they don't, they don't believe in it. They're actually actively opposed to it now under President Trump. Well, it's two consecutive presidencies. Okay. President Obama, you know, wanted to withdraw all forces and he got down to less than thousand Americans, people forget that by by 2014 to 2016. You know, America's had all, not just one foot out the door, but has had nine out of ten toes out the door of Afghanistan for a long time. That's what people don't realize. But let me just give you the, to finish my answer here. So there's the other side of the coin, though, which is what does this mean to the jihadists?

What does this mean to the original 9-11 war, which kicked this all off? And it means a great deal to them quite, quite a bit. And the fact of the matter is people say, well, you know, what are we doing there? Well, yeah, look, there's been a lot. lot of wasted resources, a lot of wasted American taxpayer funds. There's been a lot of wasted effort. There's been a completely erratic war fighting strategy, if we can even call it a strategy. But this is one of the main theaters for jihadism and terrorism on the planet. It absolutely played a central role in the events leading up to 9-11 and 9-11. And it's played a central role in events after that. People don't even realize. You know, we can point, you know, we've

documented through the years a string of senior al-Qaeda and now ISIS terrorists who have been killed in Afghanistan, even right up until, including days before the 2016 presidential election, which went unremarked, including a senior al-Qaeda terrorist was plotting against us, right up until recent months, even as the U.S. is leaving. Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is the other sort of looming threat here, this is an area of the world's teeming with anti-American terrorists. And the idea that you can pretend that that's not a threat to us or not a threat to American interest, which is what I'm seeing some people doing now, which is what I think the pretext of

this Taliban deal is. in Doha on February 29th. I think that's a total fiction. You know, you can say, listen, we need to get out. We need to get out now. Okay, I can understand that argument. I can't understand the argument that you're going to say that Taliban is now our counterterrorism partner. That's where I draw the lines. That's nonsense. And what we're seeing right now in Afghanistan is the Taliban and al-Qaeda are working to overthrow the Afghan government. When the U.S. leaves, they're going to rebuild part of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which was toppled in 2001 as part of the response to 9-11. And that Islamic Emirate, it's going to be the cornerstone.

for a new al-Qaeda caliphate, which is what they've been saying, which is what they wanted to be. And the idea that that's not going to have ramifications for global security, I think, is foolish. So if we, here's what I'm hearing, which is, yes, it does make sense to get Americans out of Afghanistan at this point

because there's no strategy and there's no particular national interest that anyone can articulate to the American public, at least. And two, that the peace deal, though, is trying to make a PR win when in fact it is perhaps a zero out or at least potentially harmful. So is the alternative then

that you would have proposed pre the February deal just to leave? Well, yeah, I mean, I would just gotten out instead of doing the deal because the deal, we can get in this in a second. What this does is that basically what people I don't think understand is that this whole diplomatic route

with the Taliban was rooted in Taliban revisionism and apologia, which I extraneously object to. I say to all Americans, go revisit the 9-11 Commission Report. You can download a PDF of it, just keyword search on Taliban, and you'll see with the truth of what the Taliban is to, as an American foe, as an American enemy that was deeply in bed with al-Qaeda prior to 9-11 and remained so to this day. But take the first part of what you said there, Sarah, that there's no national security

interest. That I totally disagree with that. There absolutely is a national security interest I just laid out. I mean, so here's the thing. The idea that there's no national security interest actually is contradictory to what the White House under President Trump itself has said. So go back to September of last year where President Trump issues a statement, trumpeting the death of Hamza bin Laden. Well, Hamza was the ideological and biological error of his father Osama, of course. He's somebody that al-Qaeda was grooming

to be a worldwide sort of terrorist phenomenon and leader. And the White House was very proud of itself for getting him at some point in time and killing him in the Afghanistan, Pakistan region, and trumpeted his death. Now, here's the thing. He's not going to be, you're not, the U.S. isn't going to get him without U.S. forces in Afghanistan. There's no way to reach into northern Pakistan to get terrorists. There's no way to get terrorists in Afghanistan with any regularity. I mean, you can launch missiles from abroad and from different sites, but it's very erratic and you're not going to have a type of sort of targeted capability that you have with the U.S. military force there. And here's the thing. It's not just Hamza bin Laden. The U.S.

also got Assimumar. That's a name Americans don't know. Well, I know who he is. Asimamar was a top al-Qaeda figure who was openly threatening America from inside Afghanistan. and they got him in September of last year. And where was he killed? He was killed in the Taliban stronghold of Musa Kala Helman. So I can go on like this for hours. You know, I'm a nerd. This is what I do, right?

You can go on and name all these names that people haven't heard. So there are national security interests here. And there's a big national security interest in Pakistan. And that's a big issue for us going forward is we're worried that this Frankenstein monster that Pakistan has helped build is eventually going to turn on the Pakistani state itself in a bigger way and can cause even more problems for national security. And Steve, Russia isn't. the only one to be concerned about in this, the China, Russia pact. How does that affect Afghanistan

or U.S. interests abroad, I guess, at writ large? Yeah, even before we get to China and Russia, I mean, I think, and Tom had a good newsletter about this last week. You know, it's definitely the case that Pakistan and Iran have both played a larger role in supporting the Taliban than Russia has. And, you know, I don't think that excuses what Russia did or minimum. minimizes its importance. To me, the significance of Russia's hand in the bounty plan was the mere offer, whether it actually led to something, I think, matters from a strategic military perspective, but matters less for an understanding of the nature of the Russia's approach to the United States and the nature of the enemy that Russia seems determined to be, despite President Trump's many over-true. and invitations to join the G7. It's definitely the case that both Iran and Pakistan and Pakistan most significantly have been supporting the Taliban and are crucial to the Taliban's continued strength.

That's, I think, another reason to Tom's point that this remains in the national security interests of the United States. And I do think there are two separate questions here. and I think Thomas sort of separated them or sussed them out pretty well. One is, do you have an administration that's willing to make a national security case to stay in Afghanistan and has leaders who are committed to pursuing those national security interests? And again, I would argue that both under President Obama and also now under President Trump, the United States hasn't had that.

And I think in the absence of that, I mean, President Obama, I think, gave two speeches, two major speeches about Afghanistan in his eight years in office. And they were contradictory. They, well, and the first one was contradictory inside of the same speech. But yeah, they contradicted each other. And Trump, and Trump, by the way, repeated that process. If you look at what he said in 2017, the speech you mentioned August 21, 2017, he gave a speech. He didn't mean a word of it, as you and I know.

And then you see what he said just recently at the commencement at West Point, graduation ceremony at West Point. He didn't even, you know, he gave quite the opposite. to take. So he laid out a case in 2017 for why America needed to stay. He didn't believe a word of it. And ever since then, he's sort of returned back to his rhetoric, which is all about why we just need to get out. Right. And you can't, you can't point to the intervening years as having achieved our strategic objectives as he laid them out in his first speech. So we know, I mean, sort of the gays up for anybody who's who believe that this was some

kind of a strategic win that we're now headed for the exits. The president tacitly admitted that it is, in fact, not. So let me take a question. Let me say one thing about that real quick. So not only is it, not only did America not achieve those objectives in the 2017 speech, you can see that America has capitulated on some of those objectives in the 2017 speech. So in particular, when it comes to Pakistan. So there was a get tough approach under the Trump administration when it came to Pakistan

with holding military aid and assistance. You know, we're going to put pressure. We're going to identify Pakistani safe havens. We're going to hold the Pakistani government's feet to the fire. in terms of housing these anti-American terrorists who are killing Americans and Afghans on a daily basis or attacking Americans and Afghans on a daily basis. And now you have a complete capitulation of Pakistanis where the State Department and the U.S. military is portraying Pakistan as a partner for peace and when it's not at all. And so this is all disgraceful, right?

This is a disgraceful end to this original 9-11 war. And I've got one more point on the Russian bounty stuff. You know, I had a little bit more of a skeptical take on this because, yeah, they haven't completed the chain of evidence showing this had an impact now. Afghanistan. But I do agree, in other words, they couldn't point to a single attack that they know for sure that the Russian bounties led to. And there are all sorts of mitigating factors there. But I would agree with you, Steve, on the broader point, that when you're not calling out the Russians on this behavior, that matters. And why is it matter? Well, this may be a good segue. When you look at what Russia and China are doing and what they're doing together now in concert

and independently, they want to wage asymmetric warfare on us in different ways. They want to come at us with different ways of waging shadow wars on American-American interests because they don't want necessarily at this point an open military confrontation because as weak as America has become relative to its previous past, recent past, I would say, still they have big risks in trying to take us head on against our military hardware. And the thing is that at all points in time, what America should be doing is calling out all the asymmetric ways that Russia or China and their allies are coming after us. Exactly. And, well, let's get into that a little bit. I think it's worth doing. And it was a development yesterday, not entirely related, but I can tell you that it was no doubt noted in Moscow. The Daily Beast had a report that Jenna Ellis, the Trump campaign, one of the Trump campaign's top lawyers, who is a frequent surrogate for the president on television, Fox News, and elsewhere, appeared on RT, formerly Russia today, which,

the Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. intelligence community more broadly has repeatedly pointed to as a propaganda arm for the Russian government. And she went on... She clearly is. There's no dispute. No question about it. Nobody saying doubts that. All you have to do is watch. That's exactly what it is. And the point, you know, the DNI's assessment was that they seek to undermine U.S. democracy. So, sure. Full stop right there. What in the hell is a top surrogate for a United States president seeking re-election doing on a Russian propaganda network? And two, her appearance was given over largely to beating up the U.S. news media as information purveyors, including, and I would say in some respects, especially Fox News. So you can see that the Trump administration or the Trump campaign anyway, and the person of Jen Ellis is not happy.

enough with Fox News is, I would say, generous coverage of the president and his campaign. They had to go to RT, a Russian propaganda network to make their case. What do you make of that development? Should we think anything of it? I mean, I let me start with, let me load the question a little bit. There's no doubt that Vladimir Putin paid attention to that. How significant it is, I don't know, but whether we intended it as a signal or not, they took it as a signal. yeah i mean i'll just preface this by saying look i've been invited on russia today a couple times and you can do your sense of google searches and you'll find that i've not been on a single

time uh because i won't go on something that's an obvious propaganda outlet for an american adversary um but i think this speaks to the broader point and one of the things i'm worried about in the foreign affairs section i'm still trying to figure how to write about this by the way because i don't know how to express all my thoughts on this but um it's the extent of foreign influence in our information marketplace it's it's quite troubling you know You have in the world that I've been dealing in, the world jihadism and counterterrorism for many years now, I can point to people who I know are compromised by foreign actors and are given their sort of, they're given a vision of the world that's tainted by foreign money that is anti, but it really is sort of opposed to American interests and certainly American interests and values even. And that's a very difficult thing to call out because it's so prevalent and so pervasive that people don't don't even see it as a problem. That's what's ridiculous to me.

One of my quips, one of my jokes is that when it comes to Washington, I don't live in Washington. But when it comes to Washington, the issues I deal with, it seems like every other country on the planet has representation or an embassy as opposed to the American people. You know, that basically all these other interests are represented on a regular basis, and American interests are regularly not interested. And that leads to the central contradiction of the point you're pointing out. out here, Steve, which is that, you know, for President Trump's most adamant followers and admirers, the thing is, and I've heard this from even family members of my own, that, you know, he's a patriot. He believes in America first. He's going to protect America and American interests. And here you have one of his surrogates going on a media outlet that's openly opposed to America

in American interests. So that's not really consistent with the idea that this guy in his administration are all about protecting America and America's image and at all points in time. Now, I do think there, you know, there is some, some merit to that case. I do think that Trump overall sort of wants to sort of protect American interests in his own way. I think there are many problems with the way he views that. And I don't think he has, he's very well informed on any of that. But there, but this does point to a sort of essential problem here going forward, which is, what is America? Domestically, we're now having a big argument over that. And that directly feeds into foreign affairs and how you conduct yourself. And I would say is there are plenty of foreign

actors that are willing to take advantage of those divisions and are willing to play it up. And my response to that is, look, we should have a fierce debate inside America. Let's make it between Americans. We don't need, you know, Russia or China or Qatar or Saudi Arabia or any of these countries interjecting their own nonsense into our arguments. Well, here's just as it relates to the election and Sarah, I'd be interested in your view on this since you've got, you know, high-level experience working in U.S. presidential elections. What I think makes this particularly notable right now is we can predict with 100% certainty

that there are going to be information operations designed to influence the U.S. elections in November. It's happening now. There's not any contradiction. I mean, there's not any question about that. I guess my concern is that you usually have the U.S. intelligence community and with full support of the administration launching huge counter operations to stop this kind of thing. And, you know, setting aside the questions about Russia collusion in 2016 and sort of the extremes

of either argument, the kind of MSNBC, you know, Trump was holding hands with Putin argument and the, you know, the Trump defender argument that the entire thing was just made up, I think the truth is actually somewhere in between. But we know for a fact that the Trump administration and Trump senior Trump surrogates and advisors welcomed this Russian influence. And whether you're talking about Roger Stone,

whether you're talking about Donald Trump Jr. taking the meeting at Trump Tower, whatever you, whatever you're talking about, they were open to this help from outside. If Donald Trump's email was, if the information is what you say it is, I love it. Should we be worried that that attitude persists and that the Trump campaign would be willing to accept outside help again, Sarah? I think you look at the outside influence and information campaigns from foreign countries, and what you find is an American intelligence system that is actually very ill-equipped to combat it.

You know, I obviously worked at the Department of Justice, so understand my own bias. But, you know, there were indictments brought against GRU members. There was a lot of information in those indictments about what, the American intelligence agencies were able to discern they had done. But that's a very backward-looking focus. In the run-up to 2016, there has been, I think, some understandable criticism of the Obama administration that they knew this was going on and did not do enough

in real time to combat it. And part of the answer, I think you'd hear from them is, what did you want us to do? You know, it's incredibly hard to sit there in real time on Facebook or Twitter and point to which ones are real accounts or fake accounts without a partnership from Facebook or Twitter.

Now, I think going into 2020, you have social media companies understanding just how dangerous this is and what they can do to combat it. And I think they are doing a far better job this time around. You see, you know, headlines of X number of accounts got taken down this week that were seen as born influence.

I think that just the American public has been informed a lot more in four years. So I'll be interested to see how campaigns deal with this. But looking back at 2016, you know, it was a naive time, I think, in a lot of respects. Someone tells you they have opposition research and you're like, oh, great. And, you know, the Clinton campaign did this as well. Opposition research is nothing new to these campaigns. And when someone says they've got it, you're like, yeah, I'll look at it. I think now there's a lot more questions being asked. And as far as the Trump campaign, that was a lot of pain that they went through. So I would imagine that just from a pain avoidance perspective, they would be asking more questions this time around.

You know, a surrogate going on RT, to your point about whether that's important, I tend to think not. But I understand why, again, given the last four years and the pain that that caused the Trump now administration, and certainly the campaign, you'd think they'd want to avoid even that appearance with their surrogates. And that seems not to be the case, but I think you won't fully know that

until there's a repeat, if you will. Surrogates can book themselves on things all the time without letting the campaign know. If it becomes a pattern, that's where I think your point would be more well taken, Steve. Tom, how much should we,

your newsletter this week explores Russia's relationship with China. And you close by suggesting that this might be the most dangerous alliance in the world today. Why do you think it's that dangerous? And what should the United States be doing, if anything, to neutralize the threat? Well, let me start my answer by saying, you know, one of the things I'm sort of obsessed with is following what the Chinese and Russian foreign ministries produce on a daily basis. And I think it's very interesting. You just read what they're saying, oftentimes in English, and you can get translations to it when they're

not in English. Just read what they're actually saying. I think it gives away a lot of the game. I mean, you can, if you just know how to read it critically and understand what they're saying, you can see what they're doing. And one of the things throughout the coronavirus pandemic that sort of stood out was how many times the Chinese were willing to trumpet the fact that she was on the phone with Putin. And basically the two were patting each other on the back and talking up how great they both are and how they're both doing a great job of handling their domestic affairs, internal affairs, and how they're going to work together through the international system to basically oppose what they call sort of hegemonic threats. And when you get into this,

what you realize is that, first of all, their narrative is deeply anti-American. And it's deeply sort of adversarial to American values and interests. There's no doubt about that. And I think when you can't portray it as anything but that when they talk about going using the international system or trying to ward off hegemonic threats, they have a view of the world in which America and its allies are really the only thing standing in their way of achieving their goals. And so they frame their worldview that way. That's how their narrative. And, you know, one of the one of the interesting things I got an upcoming newsletter, hopefully sometime in the coming weeks I'll do on this, you know, one of the ways you can show that they're doing this is how they're revising history. So she, for example, loves the trumpet China's supposed alliance with the Soviet unions during World War II and there was some cooperation there, of course there was.

But of course China was much more closely allied with America during World War II throughout that whole time. But she doesn't want to say a word about that. All he wants to do is trumpet the Soviet interests even though there were problems immediately after World War II between the two. And that's what's going on between both these autocrats.

What they're doing is they're redefining or reshaping history to tell a story in which they've been together all along, even that's not true, against America and its allies. And they're very open about it. And so this is a big problem because if you look at, you know, for example, the UN where you have five permanent members on the Security Council, two of them are Russia and China, you know, and they can veto any resolution that comes up. And as I point out on the piece, when resolutions come up that are intended to advance American interests that they disagree with, they just veto them.

And they push their own agenda at the UN. They push their own agendas at all these international institutions. And right now you have an American administration that's, very skeptical of these international institutions. I agree with a lot of skepticism, but I don't think that the Trump administration has a plan for what it wants to do to actually wholeheartedly combat what China and Russia are doing on the international stage. Now, I would say this. I've been very critical of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the deal with the Taliban. I don't get it. As I've said, we're not going to go down that road again here. But you can see that he's at least trying to combat Chinese influence on the international stage, the world stage, at the UN and elsewhere.

And he's leading an effort to do that. I'm not sure he has enough support in the U.S. government to really push his agenda or that agenda forward. He's trying to. But this is a dire, dire concern as far as I think any American should be concerned. I mean, this is going forward. Both these actors are looking, they're exploring different ways to combat American interests and roll back and attack America in different ways, asymmetrically, chiefly through asymmetric means.

But what they're also doing in terms of that plan is they're willing to prop up or support all these rogues gallery of actors, whether it be the Iranian regime, whether it be Maduro and Venezuela, whereas Bashar al-Assad, you know, you look at a who's-who of sort of bad actors around the globe, and you can find them marching through Moscow or Beijing on a regular basis. That should be disturbing to all of us. And, you know, the Russian bounty story with the Taliban, you know, think about the, think about the amazing twist in history here. The Taliban grew out of the effort backed by the U.S. and its allies to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Taliban was not formed for the 1990s, but it grew out of that effort, and some of the key components

of the Taliban were actually allied with America against the Soviets, including the Haqqani's. Now you have the Taliban, you know, openly embracing Russia, and Russia openly embracing the Taliban through diplomacy this many years later. I mean, this goes to show that what explains that other than an animosity for America? You can't define that as purely, you know, pursuing some sort of real politic interests in the region. There is a deep-seated anti-Americanism here, And I think that defines what they're doing. Tom, question about this in the backdrop of the pandemic. Obviously, Russia has been incredibly successful in various hacking endeavors.

And I mentioned the indictments that DOJ brought a couple years ago. And then China, of course, has been very good at stealing intellectual property. DOJ has also brought plenty of backward-facing indictments on that. How does the pandemic bring these countries? together, but also there have been headlines about them trying to hack into and take various vaccine efforts around the world. And how will that alliance, what will that alliance mean for the vaccine efforts? So the way I look at it is since they're so brazenly and openly in each other's camp when it comes to the current, during the coronavirus era, and you can see Putin is

constantly praising Chinese leadership throughout this. I mean, even as the Russians have been combating the pandemic across their own country. I mean, Russia has been hit hard. It's obviously very tough to get reliable statistics out of Moscow about the extent of this. But there's no doubt that Russia's been hit hard by this as having multiple other countries, most other countries around the world. And yet Putin doesn't have anything critical to say about Xi or the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party throughout all this. Now, and you can see simultaneously, she is praising Putin's handling of this and saying the two are getting their alliances. They said recently in this phone call this month, which I highlighted in my newsletter, their alliance is stronger than ever. The relationship

is stronger than ever they're claiming openly. What does that mean? To me, I think to your point about the hacking and to these sort of asymmetric means that they're using, I think you should, when you see that sort of public rhetoric is so in your face and so obvious, you should suspect they're doing all sorts of things behind the scenes together. And that should be your operating assumption. And I don't like to make assumptions when it comes to anything. But in this case, I think it's a pretty safe assumption that they probably are working together on some of the stuff, at least some of this stuff. And that should be, in terms of American investigations, that's the way they should be starting from, is understanding that these two together can accomplish a lot more than they

could individually, even as problematic as they are individually. Now, stealing, you know, coronavirus research and all these things, you know, have you seen Putin object to anything the Chinese have been fingered in this regard? No. Have you seen the Chinese object to anything? The Russians have been held accountable for doing this regard. No. And so again, I think that's a tell. So in that context, in the past, the United States would be able to look to at strong alliances, in particular across the West, but also in Asia, as something of a bulwark against the rise of China, a more aggressive Russia, certainly an alliance between the two. as you survey our relationships with NATO, the NATO alliance generally, the European Union, South Korea, Japan, and others, what do you see? And is that, is our common interests with those countries still able to serve as that bulwark?

Jesus. I mean, that's a very complicated question. You know, I think there's just a lot embedded there. Those are the only kind I asked. Yeah, I mean, look, I think overall, the way I look at this stuff, and I don't want to oversimplify, but I think America has to be in the alliance building business, and America has to be reconfiguring international alliances and even international institutions to sort of combat this.

You can't let the Chinese and Russians have their way at the U.S. security. council over and over again. It's got to stop. You know, America, you can do certain things for the UN, sure, but overall, there's just too many, there's a lot of problems. And basically, America has to be bolstering its alliances in the Pacific, has to be bolstering its alliances from NATO and elsewhere to do this. But the problem is, you know, look, I don't think Trump is entirely wrong about some of his criticisms here, right? I think that our partner countries in NATO or allies in NATO have not ponied up as much as they should have in the past. They've definitely helped America and come to America's defense when it comes to the war in Afghanistan, other things, and we have to

recognize that sacrifice. But I do think they should be contributing more financially to NATO and the bottom line. They should be taking care of their own defense in some ways. Or at least doing what they've promised to do, right? They're not going to be in. Yeah, I think that's right. And, you know, and there's sort of a, you know, Trump is, you know, I think, I think Ambassador Bolton recently wrote something along the lines of that he thought that, you know, Trump would get out of NATO even if he could, you know, and basically was agitating to do so. And that sort of contradicts Trump's other claims where he pats himself on back for getting NATO allies to contribute more to NATO and provide more financial resources to NATO.

Well, wait a minute. Either you want to get out and you don't value it at all or you want to basically preserve it and just get other people to do more, right? Those are not the same thing, you know? And there is a tension between those two arguments. And that's sort of, that's why I think this is a complicated question. Unless the push on money is a pretext to get out. Right.

I think that's, I suspect as well, I think that's very much the case as well. And that's how he views all this stuff. It's all sort of a business transaction. But it's rooted in sort of his reflexive isolationism, which he does kind of come back to, even though he doesn't, he can't, the world doesn't allow any isolations to be truly isolated, right? The world doesn't allow that. But that's sort of the reflexive baseline he kind of wants to come back to. And that's how he views things. Like, why are we doing any of this, you know? Now, listen, NATO needs a lot of reformation. I think there's a lot of problems with NATO. We've been tracking NATO's efforts in Afghanistan, for example, for years. That ain't pretty. I'm sorry. Yeah, we very much,

very much appreciate the sacrifice of NATO soldiers and allied countries who have fought there alongside America and Afghanistan, but the leadership there has not been strong. And there are other areas where you can point to similar problems. So the question going forward to my mind is, I think, you know, what is the alternative going forward here where you have, on the one hand, the administration recognizes that China and Russia are using international institutions, institutions to advance their own interests against us. And on the other hand, you have a president who reflexively just doesn't want to have anything to do with international institutions, you know, whether it be the UN, WHO, or others.

Now, it doesn't mean all of his criticisms are wrong, but you've got to have an answer, right? You got to start coming up with a program or a strategy for combating what they're doing and advancing our own goals. Let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsor today, the Bradley Foundation. Making sense of current events during this extraordinary time can be trying. Conceived in Liberty, the Bradley speaker series is a new video series that offers meaningful perspectives through engaging 15-minute interviews. Their guests focus on the big picture and distill what the latest developments mean to our deeply held commitment to restore, strengthen, and

protect the principles and institutions of American exceptionalism. Visit BradleyFDN.org to watch their most recent episode featuring Wall Street Journal colonist Kimberly Strassel. That's Bradley with an L-E-Y at the end, FDN.org slash Liberty to watch the video. New episodes will debut weekly, so come back often and subscribe to their YouTube channel to be notified whenever a new episode is posted. I was curious what both of your thoughts were on the difference moving forward between a Biden administration and a Trump second term when it comes to these foreign actors, particularly Russia and China, but also perhaps our role in Afghanistan,

if you want to touch on that as well. Well, let's start with connected to recent reporting. Obviously, you have The Washington Post, New York Times and others reporting now on these sabotage efforts inside Iran. And the theory is, and we don't know this for certain, but the theory and some reporting suggests that this is Israel has stepped up its sabotage campaign inside Iran against the Natanz, nuclear facility, missile facilities. They're basically using their own, this longstanding asymmetric.

war, shadow war between Israel and Iran seems to have sort of increased its pace and the level of activity in recent months. The theory is, the political theory is Israel's doing that because they think that they have a more friendly response or backing from the U.S. now under Trump administration than they would under a Biden administration. That if Trump loses in November, that they're sort of going to be hamstrung in what they can do, and that they want to basically press their case now while they see Iran as weakened, that they want to basically, you know, basically advance their own agenda right now as long as they can. I think that points to, I think there's some merit to that sort of understanding of the case. I think Biden, you know, would probably want to get back into

some sort of nuclear accord with Iran, similar to the JCPOA, which President Trump got America out of. He probably would sort of go back to sort of this system of viewing Iran as something that needs to be sort of mitigated through the international system and that the U.S. can do that and that that takes care of our problems. So I think there'd be a big difference there when it comes to Iran. Now, Iran, of course, is tied into Russia and China. As I said, my point out my recent newsletter, actually the three countries just recently held joint naval exercise, which was deliberately intended to sort of be a show of force against America's Navy and show that Iran has, you know, basically allies and that Iran is going to take steps to try and combat

sort of any naval efforts by the U.S. You have China is in minimal. of negotiating an aggressive sort of economic and military aid package or alliance with the Iranians. This is something that's been on the table that predates Trump, by the way, going back to 2016, she originally proposed this. And she now is pushing this case with the Iranians now in recent weeks, trying to move this forward. So the thing is, is that when it comes to Iran and all these other rogue actors, these rogue states that there's going to be a divergence of opinion between Biden and Trump on, of course, and how to handle that, you know, it's directly tied into what Washington calls a great power competition.

And so you have to view it holistically. And now that leads to what Biden's going to do on Russia and China. Politically, Russia is an easier sell for him, I think, on Russia, although there seems to be now a consensus across Democrats and Republicans that China is a threat and needs to be handled. I'm not all convinced that Biden will, if that starts to fade, if that sort of political pressure, that sort of common sense approach to the Chinese threat starts to fade, I'm not all convinced he's going to have the incentives

to keep the pressure on them. Steve, thoughts, differences? Yeah, I mean, I think the, you know, in a different world, I would hope for an approach that's neither the Biden approach nor the Trump approach and would be something closer to a neo-Reganite approach to these challenges and both are strengthening our alliances and taking on our adversaries. That is obviously not going to be. One of the most interesting things about John Bolton's book in my view, and it's something that just has not been remarked upon at all, is the extent to which Bolton's, the big takeaway from his 400 and whatever it was, 62 pages, or one of the big takeaways was just how fundamentally weak Donald Trump has been on China, despite the overheated rhetoric, despite the launching of the trade war, despite some of the talk about. intellectual property and what have you. On a fundamental level, what the U.S. has done is not terribly significant. What the president himself has done in sometimes contradicting the strong rhetoric of others in his administration has been really to kowtow to she in many important respects.

And I think the Bolton indictment on Trump and China is a pretty strong one. As it relates to the rest of our primary challenges, it's hard to know. I mean, you think back to, you look at the Biden, a potential Biden administration. And of course, I think back to the ways in which President Obama and Joe Biden not only downplayed the growing threat from Russia, it wasn't just during the 2012 campaign, although they famously did it during the 2012 campaign and President Obama's mocking. of Mitt Romney in the debate when Romney had said that Russia was our greatest strategic foe, that did not inspire confidence in the way that Joe Biden would approach Russia. Now, I think because so much of our politics is oppositional right now, it's likely, I mean, we've certainly seen Democrats toughen up their rhetoric as it relates to Russia

as they've tried to make this broad indictment of the Trump. administration, I think, you know, we could probably expect Biden to continue that and take a stronger hand with Russia. I don't have confidence that he would be, that he would take a strong hand on Iran. You know, the Iran deal, the JCPOA was, I think, a giveaway and a foolish undertaking. It strengthened one of our primary allies. And if, you know, you want to talk about the Russian bounties on the heads of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, look at what Iran had been doing to support and directly back the killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq for years. And Iranians also offer bounties to the Taliban as well.

There was a lot reporting. They did the same thing, the bounty game. And, you know, the Obama administration didn't, not only was the Obama administration. not tough on Iran, I think, made unrealistic approaches to Iran. So I guess that's a long, rambling, not terribly coherent way of responding. But I don't expect that we will see there'll be differences between a Trump presidency and a Biden presidency, to be sure. But if one of the main arguments for Trump on foreign policy was that after he won, he would take office and once again see the world and see our threats as they were,

not pretend that, you know, enemies were allies in waiting as the, I think, accurate criticism of the Obama administration was. And instead, what we've seen is just the opposite. You've seen President Trump do, you know, kowtow to Xi in China. You've seen him do this bizarre years-long dance with Kim Jong-un in North Korea. You've seen him challenge alliances, NATO alliances, alliances with our bilateral alliances with our European allies in a way that suggests that he's not seeing the world as it is. He's seeing it as he imagines it to be. And it's not a realist foreign policy in that kind of old school way. No, let me just, One quick thing. One quick thing.

You know, when it comes to the continuity between diplomacy under Obama and Trump, of course, the Iran deal is the big point of departure between the two. But you think about, you know, under the Obama administration, the idea with Secretary Clinton, Hillary Clinton, was there was going to be this Russia reset, and she had this button with the reset button that she proposed. And what was the underlying premise there was that it was the Bush administration in America and their policies that didn't, that sort of stood in the way of resetting relations with the Russians to be more more fruitful and productive for the cross of two countries. That was proven wrong, right? I mean, that's not the case. It was the Kremlin's behavior that is the problem, not America's policies. But yet you've seen that same sort of overture from Trump and from what he wants to do that basically, you know, we should be able to get along. We should be able to, you know, Putin should be on our side in

various ways. And, you know, General Flynn, of course, even thought that Moscow was going to be our counterterrorism partner, which is President Trump's original national security advisor. And, of course, there are many problems with that. But then, you know, when you see, you see that sort of, what I think is that that form of diplomacy, which is I, what I object to, is rooted in the idea that America needs to make concessions and America needs to basically enter sort of these sort of talks from the perspective that has to own its own failures and its own problems. And with actors like Putin and others on the world stage, when you do that, you're giving away

so much right from the get-go. You're negotiating position is inherently weak. And I got to say, you know, when you laid out that case when it comes to North Korea, you know, the Trump administration tried to offer a whole bag of goodies to the Kim regime there and to say, just give up your nuclear program and, you know, you're going to have Trump building condos on the shore for you, you know, basically. And, you know, that got nowhere, right? I mean, you can see, and you can see now here's another point of continuity is the Taliban deal. This is the great, one of the great ironies in all this is that the Taliban deal is rooted in the sort of saying what I've blasted. as a very servile notion of American diplomacy. The Taliban deal was rooted in that that came from the Obama administration. It came from Secretary Clinton and her approach basically paved

the way for these talks that culminated this deal. And then you have Secretary Pompeo, who's a big critic of Clinton, ends up consummating it, you know, even though it's rooted in the same sort of servile, credulous sort of approach to diplomacy. And so I think there's a big bipartisan problem here. I think we need strong American diplomacy going forward. We absolutely do. you can't the military can't be called upon to solve these these problems just can't it has to be a last resort in many cases is military action but i'm not convinced at all that america has at this point now back to my original theme of the american failure of leadership i think there's been a diplomatic failure of leadership here too i don't think we even have a working idea of what diplomacy

should be at this point well tom before we let you go in this era where uh we're not getting to travel and certainly not internationally right now. What is the one place that you miss traveling to this summer? If you could go anywhere, cost is no barrier, where would you be right now in July? Yankee Stadium is where I'd be watching the Yankees play, you know, since I was a kid, you know, I'm a New Yorker. I like my New York sports teams, you know, I enjoy the camaraderie and the atmosphere in New York. You know, for all the problems that America has, I still, and all the problems New York has, which has a lot, I still see New York. as one of the great experiments for humanity.

And it breaks my heart to see the violence right now that's peaking in New York and the problems that are there. But you go to Yankee Stadium and all those differences sort of melt away. You're standing next to people from all different places who are all just Yankee fans rooting. And that's the vision of America that I sort of hope for. I sort of see that symbolically at Yankee Stadium. Now, there are a lot of Yankee haters out there.

And believe me, I get it. You should hate the Yankees if you're not from New York. York, which absolutely should. We do. You should. You should absolutely hate the Yankees. In fact, I'm suspicious of any Yankee fan who's from, like, Texas or something. Just as I'm suspicious, by the way, of any Dallas Cowboy fans in the New York, New Jersey area. If you are a Dallas Cowboy fan in New Jersey area, I'm a Giants fan. Don't follow me. I don't have anything to do with you. But, yeah, so it's basically the same deal. But, you know, to me, you know, that's where I'd be. I'd be enjoying my sports. I miss sports because that's a great outlet, especially for somebody

like myself who deals with all these dark issues. I love sports and the entertainment of it. Steve, I think I already know the answer to yours. You'd be in Spain, drinking red wine. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty safe bet. I've got a pretty big birthday coming up the night before the election. Wow, you're turning 75. That's incredible. Well played. It's the night before the election. And the plan was to, you know, to push past the election, spend a couple weeks digesting it, figuring it out, doing some. special events that we're going to be doing for the dispatch. And then I was going to do a mountain biking trip through Spain, up into northern Spain, probably ending in San Sebastian for some really good food. That's not happening. I would very much love to put that back on my agenda. We're going to bump it off. Who knows how long a year maybe? Well, I am with Tom here. I love. I love

traveling the United States. I hit my 50th state last year. You've done all 50. I'm jealous. That's my two bucket list. I haven't done that. I've done almost all of them twice. But Hawaii was my last one. I had saved it. I was very, I had a lot of morning sickness, but I was in Hawaii trying my best to enjoy it and just the only thing I could eat at that point was pineapple. So that worked out really well. That's the best pineapple on planet earth. It's incredible. My wife and I had our honeymoon there many years ago. And I probably ate about 400 pounds of pineapple because it was just incredible.

Yeah. Where'd you go in Hawaii? Where'd you go in Hawaii? Now I'm blinking on it. Isn't that embarrassing? The place with the awesome beaches and some palm trees? Yeah. Maybe some mountains of all.

So I'll leave on a rather negative or pessimistic podcast, I'll give you this upbeat note. One of the things I've been doing there in the pandemic is we always watch these shows on HGTV, which are like beach life or Hawaii life, whatever. You have these house hunters where they're looking around. Anytime there's an episode from Hawaii,

I just find myself just completely incapacitated watching this daydreaming about moving there. And I think as much as I love New York or have love New York, I figure, what in the hell am I doing living in New York when there's this, this is actually one of the 50 states in the country, you know? Especially when we can all work from home.

We now get to rethink our homes. Well, thank you so much for joining us. And thank you listeners, as always for joining us. Tune in next week, subscribe to this podcast, And maybe most importantly, subscribe to Tom's newsletter, vital interest. It is fabulous. And Tom, as I mentioned earlier, has his own podcast, Generation Jihad, which is just fantastic if you want to dive into more of these issues.

And we will look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you. I'm going to be able to be.