The Dispatch Podcast - Speak Loudly and Carry No Stick?

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

Danielle Pletka, senior fellow and foreign policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, joins Sarah and Steve to discuss all things foreign policy. The conversation starts with the fiasco that was the first bilateral meeting between the Biden administration and China, and then focuses on Pletka’s expertise related to foreign policy in the Middle East. The three also discuss Danielle’s recent piece for The Dispatch, a conversation she had with a Ph.D. candidate who was imprisoned in Iran for four years. Show Notes: -Danielle’s AEI page -“What the Hell is Going On?” podcast -Biden Administration/China bilateral fiasco -Biden/Putin spat -‘They Wasted Away Four Years of My Life’ -“How Mean Tweets—And Bad Predictions—Threaten to Derail Another Biden Nominee” -Profile of Xiyue Wang by Graeme Wood -“Internal Biden memo said to back 2-state solution along 1967 lines” - Times of Israel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to a Friday dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined by Steve Hayes. And this week, we are talking to Danielle Pletka. She's a senior fellow in foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. She focuses on U.S. foreign policy generally and the Middle East specifically. You've seen her work on the dispatch and in a whole lot of other places. Plus, if you aren't listening to her podcast with AEI's Mark Tisen, it's called What's the hell is going on making sense of the world. And that's probably where we should start. Let's dive in. Danielle, the U.S. had its first bilateral meeting with China in Alaska this week. and it appears that it was contentious.

Can you give us sort of a 30,000 foot of what is going on? What the hell is going on? Exactly. Now you know why we picked that name. It basically covers every situation. Look, this is even worse than what you described. This is the first meeting between our new national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, and our new Secretary of State Tony Blinken with their Chinese counterparts.

And what you're talking about, which is that it became contentious, is that it fell apart during the photo op, right? It was staggering. They had a four-minute scheduled photo opportunity. The United States came out with a pretty tough condemning statement about China. And the Chinese retorted with a 17-minute litany of everything the United States has done wrong from Beijing's perspective. They then went back and forth. This entire ridiculous exercise that would be three-inch headlines if Donald Trump were president took place over an hour and degenerated into a back and forth that, frankly, we would have sort of been comfortable seeing in the 11th grade, you know, recess parking lot. Okay, well, I didn't get to have recess in 11th grade, and I'm sad about that now. whose fault was this? I think it was probably everybody's fault. You know, it wouldn't be great to say, you know, that it was all the Chinese.

But the U.S. came out really strong. And frankly, it's great to talk tough. I think we need to be tough on the communist Chinese. They're bad, bad, bad, bad people. On the other hand, you need to have a policy behind that. we don't even have an assistant secretary for East Asia and the Pacific nominated, let alone confirmed. So I really feel like they were out over their skis and underestimated what the Chinese reaction was going to be. It was a bit like that weird President Biden interview

with George Stephanopoulos, where he went after the Russians. And now they've recalled their ambassador. Steve? Well, I will once again play my role. role as the optimist about U.S. foreign policy and national security. Isn't it, if you are fairly hawkish or believe that the United States should do what it can to project its power into shape outcomes rather than just react to them? And you had concerns about the Biden administration going in in this regard. Shouldn't we be heartened by the fact that he's actually willing to at least talk tough, even if we haven't seen the full reveal of the policies there. I mean, I was, I read the, you know, I don't want the president to be needlessly

antagonistic. On the other hand, I don't think there's anything wrong with calling Vladimir Putin a killer because Vladimir Putin is a killer. That's what he is. It's what he's been doing. I don't have any problem with the Biden administration sitting down across from the Chinese, even with the press there, and making very clear that at least what they, at least the United States is objecting in a serious way to what the Chinese are doing, objecting rhetorically in a serious way. I mean, Donald Trump, whatever you want to say about Donald Trump on those two scores, he didn't do that, didn't do much of that rhetorically, right?

He didn't go after Vladimir Putin. He was tougher, certainly in policies, Vladimir Putin than his. friendly rhetoric, but with the Chinese, you know, he was praising Xi, even as the coronavirus was raging. So you're really laying out two sides of the same coin, right? It's speak softly and carry a big stick or speak loudly and carry no thick. And I guess that's my problem. I love talking tough to the Chinese. They deserve it. Right? They're running concentration camps. Do we really need to say any more than that? They lied to the world about a disease that's killed half a million Americans alone. Yeah, of course. They deserve it. Russia? Yeah, Putin is a killer, right? You know,

he just tried to just tried to kill Alexei Navalny. And then when Alexei Navalny recovered, came back to Russia. He arrested him. And stuck him into something that looks like a gulag. So, of course, they're terrible. I like the fact that the administration recognizes that. That's all terrific. Here's the problem. Anything that they do to follow up that isn't as tough, and I'll bet you money here, Stephen Hayes, anything they do to follow up that isn't as tough as that rhetoric is going to be taken as a capitulation by the Russians and the Chinese.

You've got to back your blah, blah, up with the muscle. And sure, Donald Trump sucked when it came to strong men. Am I allowed to say sucked on your podcast? For sure. Thank you. Good. Yeah. So we have an explicit rating on our podcast because of the word hell.

So we use it as licensed to swear all the time. And, you know, I've just become that person. But sure, you know, they do. They suck. But if you don't have a policy that backs that up immediately, you are going to look weak. that's what they're always looking for. They're always probing us for weakness. They're always trying to tell if we talk tougher than we act. And that's my big concern. What would be the, if we were looking for indications that such tougher policies are to come, what would we be

looking for specifically in your view with respect to both Russia and China? So soup to nuts. Let's start with something easy. Nord Stream 2. I don't know whether people, people don't follow, European energy policy and pipelines and all of that stuff. But over the last few years, the Russians have been building a pipeline to Europe, to Germany in particular, that bypasses Ukraine, bypasses Eastern Europe. And what does that mean? It means that they will be able to cut off Eastern Europe and their neighbors and cut off energy supplies without cutting them off to Europe. Before when they wanted to threaten Ukraine and cut

off energy supplies, they ended up having to cut off Germany as well. So they're doing this. The Trump administration, you know, probably for the wrong reason, probably because Donald hated Angela Merkel, but still really, really got them to stop construction. They stopped construction at the end of 2019. You know what they did when Biden came to power? Literally within the week of as inauguration. They restarted it, and the Biden administration doesn't have a policy. So let's pick something as easy as that. They're not doing anything on it. But there's there's lots more as well. We could we could be doing a lot more on China and the Uyghurs. We could be doing a lot more to actually go after them. We could start, we could be pressing the

international criminal court on why they're not going after the Chinese for their concentration camps, but instead going after the Jews in Israel. There are a lot of things we could do from small things to big things. And so far what the Biden administration has signaled is they're really not sure they want to do those things. So speaking of 11th grade taunting, Biden called Putin a killer. and Putin responded, takes one to no one, which I really felt that was a moment we needed women in leadership positions. Women tend not to, you know, there's psychological warfare, but this stupid like dad level bullying seemed particularly manish. China and Russia, though, are having their first bilateral gathering next week of the Biden administration. What do you see?

see happening in the Biden administration as China and Russia become even closer. And Biden decides that those are the two countries to talk tough about while I think, you know, and Steve, you and I talked about this on Wednesday, while not talking tough on North Korea or Iran or some of the other threats that we have, the two countries that he most is targeting are getting very cozy, Little footsies under the table no more. They're straight holding hands, you know, in class to continue our high school metaphor. No, I wish my high school had been as much fun as this conversation. And I also didn't have recess in 11th grade, but there was a quad where a lot of smoking went on.

So, we can use that as our analogy. You know, I actually think I have good news on that China, Russia, Access of Evil thing. Can we call it that? that's going on with our i i'm not a china person i'm not a russia person um the middle east is my area but the guys who i work with at ae i both on the russia side and on the china side agree that the chinese russian partnership is basically just talk it's not real and not only is it not real but they have a lot of opposing interests um and so that's sort of, you know, fascinating, that they, they still think that it's effective to position

themselves as allies. And, you know, they'll back each other up, like in the Security Council. You know, Russia will back up China when we say, hey, we want to do something about North Korea. And the Chinese are like, hell to the no. And the Russians say, yeah, probably not. So, you know, you see that. But when it comes to sort of big economic partnerships, those really aren't real. They're not sharing oil and gas in the way that in the way that there was suggested even a few years ago. They actually have opposing interests in the Middle East. And so I don't worry that much about, you know, all of the ex commies and the current commies coming together to stymia. Sure, they do bad things separately that are anathema to our national

security interests. But in terms of their butsy, I would say it's, you know, it's just, just whatsy. It's not going to advance any further than that. They're the other cheerleaders on the cheerleading squad, but we're like the head cheerleader they want to take down. But then they would still have to fight amongst themselves over, you know, who gets the hot guy, etc. Exactly. Steve, we're, Danielle and I are going to take this high school analogy as far. I'm just, I'm happy to just keep, I'll sit here. You guys keep going. You guys keep going. I feel We feel like we have a lot of high school stuff to work out, Danielle and I. Yeah, I think that's probably true, like the rest of the universe.

Yeah. Well, let's jump to the Middle East. You had a terrific piece for the dispatch website the other day on Iran. And my direct, simple question to you is, how worried should we be about the Biden administration's eagerness to get back into the Iran? Ron deal. So thank you. First of all, I really enjoyed doing that piece. And I was able to allude to another piece that the dispatch had that Charlotte Lawson had actually done on a similar topic about one of the people who, about whom I wrote. So here's, you know, there's a theme coming out here, which is, you know, rhetoric and action in the Biden administration. And the same

was true in my piece. Basically, the Biden administration has gone to great pains to underscore to everybody that they're not in any hurry to raise back to the Iran deal, that they're not going to be giving anything away to the Iranians in order to get them to the table, that they don't want just the same old deal. They want an Iran deal plus that deals with missiles and terrorism and human rights. And that's been a pretty consistent message from president, Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, you know, don't worry, guys, we are not the third term of the Obama administration when it comes to Iran. The problem really is, and I should say as well, that we've had an opportunity to hear this rehearsed very carefully because two really senior

officials who are, one, Wendy Sherman, who has been nominated to be Deputy Secretary of State, and Colin Kahl, number two, has been nominated to be Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, which is sort of the number three job in the Pentagon. Both of them had hearings last week, and both of them, again, towed the same line. You know, we're really reasonable, we're really great. Yeah. What did Wendy say? She said something on the lines of.

I recognize the world is a different place and that our actions need to change commensurate with those changes. You're super reassuring. Don't worry, guys, you know, we're not crazy. The problem is that if you line up what they said in their hearings with what they've said, not just over the last four years of the Trump administration, but even during the Obama administration, it ends up looking like complete BS. So, for example, my favorite is this Iran deal plus. So one of the things that's become clear over the last few years, and sorry, this is a long, just shut me up if I'm going on too long.

No, no, please. But one of the things that's become clear to everybody, including the people who, you know, inked the deal and we're really proud of it, is that the sunset provisions in it are really bad news. What are sunset provisions? The parts of the deal that expire at a date certain. So last October, the ban on conventional weapons sales to Iran, which was part of the Iran deal, expired, meaning now is a free for all. And the Russians went ahead and just did a whole ton of arms deals with the Iranians. And I suspect that there'll be even more to come. And other things are about to expire as well. We've got the expiration of missile restrictions coming up in a year. Then we've got the expiration of, uranium enrichment restrictions coming up a couple years after that. All of these bang, bang, bang, like next year, and the year after and the year after.

So the Iran deal really is kind of a weak need thing at this point, six years after Obama signed it. And all of these guys have said, we need an Iran deal plus, we need a better deal. The problem is that each of them said, not just at the time, but in the last couple of years, we can't have a better Iran deal. There's no such thing as Iran deal plus. There's no way that the Iranians are going to sign up to anything else. So the question that we're all left with is what was real, what you said that or what you're saying now? My vote is that what they were saying then was real.

I actually want to talk more about the piece that you wrote. So you were interviewing a scholar who spent 40 months in an Iranian prison until he was released in a prisoner exchange in 2019. I mean, we could just talk about like line by line this piece, but I hope you'll summarize parts of it for us. But this was a guy who was a PhD candidate trying to do dissertation research. And by the way, I have heard that, you know, PhD dissertations really break people as humans and emotionally destroy them. He said he was just having a really hard time finding the stuff that he needed.

So he kept going further and further until, Well, he got arrested for quote unquote spying and sentenced to 10 years of prison, of which he served 40 months, you know, take us through some of this. First of all, perhaps me as a layperson who does not do foreign policy, why do people keep going to Iran and getting arrested? This seems like a place I would not go for fear of getting arrested. And yet, this guy is just doing academic work and thinks that's worth it. Yeah. So, I mean, that's a great question. So the piece was about this scholar named Wang Jouet, Princeton guy doing his PhD. Right. And his PhD was not on, you know, the Iranian nuclear program or anything that's difficult or even, you know, Iranian human rights. It was about, it was about the Hajas and the intra-border area between Iran and Afghanistan at the turn of the 20th century. So, you know, more than, you know, more than. than 100 years ago. And, and I think the world, I think the world of this man, he, he's actually a Jane Kirkpatrick-Patrick scholar at AEI for the next two years. And, and what happened to him was

what happens to lots of people, right? He, he, he got a visa to go to Iran in order to pursue his studies and his historical research. He believed, because this is what everybody in academia says, that the U.S. was on the road to rapprochement. He went during the Obama administration after the signing of the JCPOA that we just talked about, that we're on the road to rapprochement, that the best thing that could happen would be that President Obama then would go

and meet with the president of Iran or even Ayatollah Khomeh, that Iran was mostly reacting to U.S. pressure rather than having a negative agenda of its own, that all of the bad things that we are hearing about Iran are really our fault and that go back to our original sin when we tried to, you know, the CIA took out the democratically elected leader of Iran in the 1950s. Right. That's the line. That is the line of... That sounds deeply naive, but you're saying that's just accepted knowledge in academic circles, or was? But that's, that's, first of all, that is accepted wisdom in academic circles,

but that is also the position of lots and lots of people on the other side of the fight in American politics. I mean, you can go and look at the tweets of people like Congressman Rohana and others who all espoused this idea that Iran is sort of this innocent country being oppressed by America that's been forced into the position that it's in because, you know, you pick it. We hate Muslims. We hate Shiites. We hate powerful brown foreigners. Who the hell knows? Ignoring all of the history. You say naive. I agree with you. But, you know, here went Wang Jioui to off to Tehran, believing all these things. He was there for a few months doing research, but he had a hard time, a hard time getting into the archives. And so one of his, one of the people he knew offered to do it for. him. And that ended up being part of the problem. The intelligence ministry and security officials came to visit him. They interviewed him. They told him not to leave the country. This part's really troubling. He went to the Swiss embassy. We don't have an embassy in Iran. He went to the Swiss embassy and said, there are protecting power and said, hey, this is going on. I'm a little nervous. They took my passport. Can I stay here with you and get your diplomatic protection? And the Swiss

said, no, go home. Thanks very much. And of course, he was arrested. He was interrogated. He was in isolation. He was put in Evan prison. And, you know, the thing is, you'd like to think, okay, he changed his mind because he's just angry at them for how he was mistreated. No, he said that during his interrogations one of the things he said to his interrogators was I really wish Obama could come here and meet with you and that we can have a better relationship and they used that to prosecute him

to suggest that he was trying to undermine the security and leadership of the Iranian state for me that's just so telling They took his naivete and used it to prosecute him. And so now he's a different guy. Yeah. Okay, I have to ask, sorry, Steve. Has he gotten his Ph.D. yet?

No, no. He's not. He's doing a ton of work on Iran. He's actually looking at China and Iran. You asked about China and what they're doing. He speaks fluent Chinese, and his parents are originally from China. So he's not finished just a PhD, but he's, is really, really out there talking to people, trying to, not just to understand, you know, where the other side is coming from, but trying to educate people through the prison of his

experience. Evan Prison is the most, I think, notorious prison in Iran. Stories about what's going on there for decades are enough to send shivers down your spine. What did he tell you about his experience there? So in the beginning he was in one part of the prison. He was in a small cement room with no bed and nothing in it, no, no, no sink, no nothing. And he was there for a pretty long stretch of weeks while he was being interrogated. He would be taken out to be interrogated and have and be blindfolded.

Which, you know, I mean, just thinking about this is terrifying. He had no communications, not with no consular support. He obviously had no opportunity to talk to family. Later on, the circumstances changed a little bit. And you guys used the headline for this piece that I really, really love. They wasted away four years of my life. So that's a quote from Wang Jouet. And it was in response to a question that I asked him.

I said, so, you know, I'm reading about it. They took you out of solitary. You were talking to other prisoners. You were learning, you know, you were improving your Farsi. You were actually studying French with one of the other prisoners. You know, you got a phone call every week or so. I mean, you know, that doesn't sound that terrible. This isn't, you know, this isn't a glug.

And he responds, he's a very temperate guy. And he responded, you know, no, what? You know, they stole four years of my life. This was terrible. And it's a great, it's a great interview with him. I loved it. I really commend it to everybody. And Graham Wood, this terrific journalist who works through the Atlantic,

did another profile of him that just came out as well, which is also awesome. Oh, good. Well, we'll put both of those in the show notes. Graham Wood does really terrific work. What are the next steps? What do you see coming going back to Iran and the broader Middle East? Everything feels very jumbled to me right now in the Middle East. And I suppose it's not the first time that it's felt that way in the region.

What's next? I mean, Iran was reasonably well isolated. Our European friends were upset that Donald Trump had exerted maximum pressure. on the Iranians, but they weren't looking to cuddle up to the Iranians while Trump was in office. Do you have a sense of where the Europeans are now as they look at the Biden administration in office and how they think about Iran and opportunities or challenges there? So I've actually seen a bunch of European ambassadors in the last week or so. And so I got to hear it from the horse's mouth.

You know, they're super happy. Trump has gone for, you know, obvious reasons. And they're pretty eager to get back to the table with the Iranians. They, you know, they didn't think the Obama deal was great, but they thought it was better than no deal at all. And that's the position they've held to. So what do they want? They want to get back to the deal. but they also want Iran to return to compliance, you know, and that is, that's a lot to do for, for Iran, because they are very far out of compliance.

They've started enriching again. They've fired up one of their reactors that they had to close down, and that's just what we know. Then there's all that stuff we don't know. They were denying access to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was part of the pledge to the, to the, in the JCPOA. And so the Europeans want the Iranians to come back into compliance, and they want them to do it fast because Iran has elections in June. So they've got elections. So the beloved Rouhani, the wonderful, wonderful president of Iran that we've all learned to love is going to be out. And God knows who's going to be in.

So they feel that pressure. But I think they're also worried about the Biden administration. I think they're worried about the people who we talked about, that we're in that article, not just. Wendy Sherman, who was one of the negotiators of the deal, or Colin Kahl, who is, you know, a pretty far left anti-Israel lover of the deal, but also Rob Malley, who's the new special envoy for rent. They're nervous about those guys, not because they think that they'll do the wrong thing, but because they think they'll be too eager to get back in the deal, and that they'll cut a bad deal, that they will release money to Iran, that Iran will news to do bad things. And so, you know, it's sort of a, you know, it's, the usual trepidation the Europeans have. They'd prefer to have the Democrats, but they're worried the Democrats are too squishy. How do you do a good sense of, um, what kind of visibility we have into what the Iranians are up to? I mean, we don't have, there are no inspectors on the ground. As you say, they've, they've been, they've been deceiving the IEEA for years.

They were deceiving the IAEA long before the Iran deal. But they continued to deceive the IAEA. The IEEA has busted them on a number of occasions, not much as, happened as a result of that. We obviously during the Trump administration, we had very good relations with Israel. Israel was a pipeline for very good intelligence on what the Iranians were up to. Joe Biden, when he came into office, took his sweet time calling Benjamin Netanyahu, reaching out to the Israelis. Is there any concern that we won't have the kind of window on the activities of the regime, not just in the nuclear sphere, but beyond that, because the relationship between Biden and Netanyahu is not strong. I don't know if we'd say it's

strained, probably could say it's strained, or doesn't that matter? The interests of the states are so far bigger than these little personal tensions will be getting good intelligence, sharing good intelligence, and understanding at least what the Israelis understand. Right. So even during the Obama years, our intel relationship with Israel was really good. And I think he hated Benjamin and Nathaniel with a sort of personal animus. You know, I don't think Joe Biden has personal animus towards, towards Bebe Nathaniel, who may not be the prime minister because we are having the 98th election in Israel of the last, you know, three months. next Tuesday. So it probably will still be BB, but maybe not. But I really, I don't worry about

the intel cooperation with Israel. I think that is entrenched. I think it is professionalized. I think it is good. What I worry about is what we do with the intel. So we've gotten in the habit of having these super political people at the head of the agency, the head of the CIA. And the CIA has basically since the end of the Iraq war, since the beginning of the Iraq war, because a highly political agency. So I'm less worried about what we know and more worried about what we do with that information and how widely we allow that information to be disseminated, whether it's the IA or the UN Security Council or a Congress. The problem for us is not knowing what the Iranians are doing, although we don't have perfect visibility into what they do, for sure. We've never,

ever not been surprised by the advances of their nuclear program. But my bigger concern is that we just failed to share that information with people who might suggest that we need to be more aggressive, more activist, more vigilant. Can I sneak in one quick follow-up, Sarah? Sorry. Of course. On the CIA, Bill Burns, longtime diplomat, was just confirmed by a voice vote yesterday, I believe, and is now running the CIA.

What are your thoughts on? him and is there any chance that he will depoliticize the agency? Nah, I liked Bill a lot. I've known him for, you know, God, 30 years. And he's a good guy. He's a serious guy. He's not, you know, he's no, he's not a hack. Um, you know, and, and in so far as, in so far as his politics, I tend to think of him as kind of an old school Democrat, you know, internationalists and someone who believes in America's role in the world, which I really like and appreciate. But he's also a Foreign Service officer. And I think it's really important for people to understand who don't think about this all the time, how subordinated our

intelligence is to our politics and to our policy world. Again, it's not something that the average Joe sees on a daily basis, but even the National Security Agency is, is subordinate to the State Department in terms of policy, in terms of what it reveals. And I don't think Bill is going to make that better, not because he's dishonest, but because he thinks that, let me not put words in his mouth, I can't say he thinks, but because the point of view that I think is represented by a lot of people who head up the agency is that intelligence should be subordinate to policy. And that means that when you get inconvenient information, you suppress it or you go and look for mitigating information before you're willing to share it.

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Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's eth-h-o-s dot com slash dispatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. I want to move on to Israel. The Times of Israel is reporting on a memo that shows that the Biden wants to pursue a two-state solution, and in doing so, and incentivizing that wants to roll back certain Trump administration changes, for instance, the recognition, legitimization of the settlements. But the Trump administration also moved the embassy to Jerusalem. What changes will the Biden administration bring to their policy toward Israel? And what of those are good? What of them are bad? Is there actually hope for a

two-state solution and a Biden administration? Or are they just going to hope to kick the can down the road, as many others have? Yeah, that can has been kicked so many times. I hate to think what it looks like. So we've got a bunch of stuff going on between the Israelis and the Palestinians, not between them exactly, but in their story. So we've got the Israeli elections that we talked about. And polls right now show the United States Party pretty substantially ahead, but maybe not with enough seats to forge a majority. Then we've got, for the first time since

2005, we've got elections in the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been in office, despite his term expiring more than a decade ago. And that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about Palestinian politics, right? You've got this really old guy who is hanging on to power and who has tried to either suppress, keep out, exclude any competitors for the position,

including among younger Palestinians. Then, of course, you've got Hamas in Gaza, right? And they're also up for election. They are trying to run together with Fatah, what is the PLO, basically, because they recognize that both of them are now so unpopular that their fortunes may be better together. So nobody's house is in order politically, not the Palestinian House and not the Israeli House. And I think that the Biden administration is, you know, is probably game to change Trump's policy, which was nakedly pro-Israel, but not really game to put this at the, you know, I'm going to win a Nobel priest prize, John Kerry in charge kind of school of foreign policy. And so they might change some things. They're probably going to restart aid to the Palestinians. But that's problematic

because there's a lot of law that they have to comply with. Like the Palestinians can't give money to martyr families under the terms of the Taylor Force Act. I don't think they're going to move the embassy from Jerusalem because they've said they're not going to move the embassy from Jerusalem. them. They're going to be tougher on settlements because all Democratic administrations are tougher on settlements. But my bet is unless something dramatically changes among the Palestinians, they're not going to put a ton of eggs in the whole peace process basket. It has been the bane of pretty much every administration that has, you know, decided that the path forward on peace is going to be at the centerpiece of their accomplishments in the Middle East. And of course, they get screwed

by the Israelis. They get screwed by the Palestinians. And it doesn't work. So yeah, some change, but I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't keep my eyes glued to that particular file in any way looking for dramatic stuff. Is the Israeli election affected at all by the change in administration of the U.S. so often Israeli prime ministers are tied pretty closely to a U.S. president. But as you said, this is, what, the fourth election in two years that they've had? So if you keep having elections that quickly, eventually you're going to end up with what's happening now, which is a Israeli election during a transition of American politics where the prime minister can't really tout a specific relationship with the new American president. Right. So, I mean, that kind of got upended by Donald Trump and Beebe's really gross and obvious love affair that just was inappropriate and you just don't want to even picture. it in your mind because you. But I mean, seriously, in one of the previous elections, they put out

pictures of Trump and BB together. It's like an election ploy. So everybody was outraged by that. But, you know, as you feel grossed out and outraged, remember that Barack Obama sent his own campaign guys over, right, during his administration in order to defeat Phoebe. So, The U.S. has a history of interfering in Israeli elections. And, yeah, of course, the Dems prefer the leftist parties. And the Republicans don't actually prefer the rightest parties because, you know, until Trump, they didn't take a strong opposition on Israeli politics. But we've always stuck our nose in it.

And, yeah, Biden, as Steve said, Biden took forever to call BB and, you know, called, you know, I think the prime minister of Sweden before he called the prime minister of Israel. So, you know, yeah, there will be, there will be a more pronounced coolness. But the bottom line is, this is a really different Middle East than even when Biden was vice president. And the Israelis don't rely as much on the love and good will. of Washington as they did. They've got new great relationships with the United Arab Emirates, with Bahrain,

and I think Israel is in some ways thinking of its future in the Middle Eastern context more than in the 51st state context. You have spent a long time watching Republican politics and Republican approaches to foreign policy. Where is the Republican Party on foreign policy right now? I look across at that landscape and it's a mass. You know, you have sort of a hangover from the Bush administration, from the Bush presidency.

You have a Trump presidency that felt very much like sort of ad hoc foreign policy, whatever he felt like doing on any given day was what he did or what he said, without a lot of planning and a lot of strategy, but made progress in some important ways. I would point to Israel in the Middle East as one of those. There was thought to be a coming libertarian moment, sort of neo-isolationism or non-interventionism on the rise. It feels like the coming libertarian moment in foreign policy

is always coming and never quite arrives. where are we take any of that rambling mess of a question and answer it however you like it wasn't a rambling mess it reflected pretty well what the what the problem is but i mean you guys know this you know better than i do the problem in american politics is that foreign policy only matters and foreign policy matters right so i mean it matters to me it matters 9-11 it matters when it becomes an election tactic like the Iraq war. You know, it matters if you're in the middle of Vietnam or, you know, it's Pearl Harbor. But otherwise, Americans are pretty consistent.

They don't, you know, they don't really, they don't, they like being all powerful. They like being big man on campus, but they don't actually want to do what it takes to remain big man on campus. And the general instinct of, I think, most Americans is sort of, you know, reserved, right? Um, you know, I don't, I hate the overuse of this expression about going abroad in search of monsters because I, people who understand American history tell me it doesn't mean what people say it means. But, you know, I think that is actually the general mindset. And I think the Republican Party is reflective of that. You know, we, we sort of super fondly remember Ronald Reagan. But of course, Ronald Reagan was the one who skedaddled like a, you know, chicken with its head cut off after the Root Embassy bombings and the Marine Barracks attack in 1983. So, you know, even his record was sort of like, you know, I don't want to get entangled in this crap.

I think the Republican Party reflects the body politic in a lot of ways. You've got, you know, Rand Paul and Mike Lee, who are, you know, libertarian, isolationist tending, and you've got, you know, Lindsay Graham and the John McCain School of, you know, good neocon leadership in the world, you know, pro-NATO, pro-Iraq war, stay in Afghanistan, stay in Syria. And I think the Republican Party kind of feels like it doesn't have to decide, which is one of the luxuries of being out of power. I don't know.

You know, it was really interesting that Donald Trump, for I suspect, completely insane, personal reasons didn't want a platform for the party last year. But one of the things that meant was that, you know, platforms, you know, they have nothing to do with how someone governs, right? They have nothing to do with any reality. But they are sort of a signal of what the lowest common denominator policy is. So like people in the Democratic side fought to take Jerusalem as a capital of Israel out of the Democratic Party platform. And Republicans like to keep it in there. It's just all it is is like

a bellwether. And there wasn't one. So it was really hard for us to know. I think sort of bottom, so I'm giving you as rambling an answer, you gave me a question. But I do think the bottom line is if you look at the Trump administration

you know, for all of its unbelievably screwed up awfulness, on national security, they often ended up tumbling into doing the right thing. And when they did the right thing, they actually didn't get in a lot of trouble for it. So they ended up keeping more troops in Afghanistan, keeping more troops in Syria, having a tough on Putin policy, really going after the Iranians, doing

pretty revolutionary stuff in the Middle East. And you didn't really see any voters come out and say, I'm not voting for Donald Trump because of that. I feel pretty. I feel pretty. optimistic about where the center of gravity is on national security and the Republican Party Rand Paul notwithstanding. Who are the Republican elected officials who people should listen to or take seriously when they speak? If we're going to sit up and pay attention when certain Republicans in Congress talk about these issues, who should we pay more careful attention to? I suspect we'd probably come up with the same list. I'm a huge fan of Mike Gallagher's. I'm a huge fan. It's a representative from Wisconsin. I'm a huge fan

of Adam Kinsinger, Representative Mike Waltz, another one. A lot of these guys, in fact, every single one of these guys that I just mentioned served in the military. Not all veterans are supportive of U.S. leadership on the global stage, but I think these guys are great. And what I really like about them is they're smart. Elise DeFonic from New York, also terrific. You know, Lindsey Graham, nobody can quite figure out what Lindsay's all about, but on foreign policy, he's somebody who I trust, I like his instincts. Ironically, you know, Mitch McConnell, the man everybody loves to hate, and who doesn't

do a ton on national security, is really, you know, is really solid on U.S. international engagement, and he has his pet issues. So he's really, really up in arms about Burma, for example. But, you know, I think these guys are good. Marco Rubio has continued to be really engaged on national security issues, which I'm super happy about because there really is a shrinking number of people who are interested in these issues. Even on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, you can just recount on one hand the number of members that actually care about this stuff. are all people. And there are a ton more. That's not an exclusive list. But those are people who I really like and I respect, not always on everything, but on foreign policy for sure.

So on September 14th, 2020, you wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post. The headline was, I never considered voting for Trump in 2016. I may be forced to vote for him this year. in that you said you weren't particularly concerned about his more dictatorial tendencies, but you were deeply concerned about some foreign policy issues on the left and some domestic policy issues on the left. I'm wondering whether you'll tell us who you voted for and whether the events of January 6th change your opinion on what you wrote in the op-ed. Yes. That op-ed is a gift. It's a good question.

It keeps on giving. And it is a good question. So here was the thing. Why would I write an op-that like that? Why would I feel the need to, you know, stick my neck out and believe me, I did. You didn't feel like you were getting enough hate tweets on Twitter. You just wanted to churn that pot a little. And you thought, how can I do it best?

And this was a really good way to do it. Well, yes. If, you know, I often said about Donald Trump that he's a man who loves attention so much he would light his hair on fire if it just meant that more eyeballs were on him. And apparently I also attended that school of personal attention. So, yeah, 23,000 comments later in the Washington Post, six, fully six op-eds in the pages of the Washington Post written against me because, you know, I'm so all-powerful. Look, here's here's what, Here's what the thinking was that went into it. Donald Trump sucks. And I'll talk about January 6th and a second, but Donald Trump sucks. You know, he's not a, he's not, he's neither a good person nor was he a good leader. But I, I really believe in our gargrails.

I really believe in our institutions. I really believe in our systems. I think they work. And everybody who said that Donald Trump was a threat to democracy, I really thought that there was ample proof in the fact that he lost every court case, that he's not still sitting in the White House, that he was pushed aside when he asked to set aside our checks and balances, not just by the courts, but by his own vice president, who was. unusually subservient to the president's sort of bad behavior, unusually silent on that question. But you know what? When push came to shove, Mike then said, I ain't going to do it. So all of those things gave me a lot of reassurance that our systems really do protect us. And on the other side, what the Democrats were proposing to do and are now still proposing to do

is abolish some of those guardrails, right? So the filibuster. And we can argue about the filibuster if you want, but the filibuster. Expand the size of the Supreme Court. Expand the size of the House of Representatives in order to expand the size of the electoral college.

Bring in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico into the Senate. Now, why do they want to do those things? Except in the case of the District of Columbia, where I actually think there is an ideological commitment to make D.C. estate, in all of those cases, they're not about the size of the Supreme Court. They're not about the size of the Eleanor College. They're about outcomes. In other words, we need to have a bigger Supreme Court so we can have a permanent

liberal majority. We need to bring D.C. and Puerto Rico into the Senate because then we will have four guaranteed Democratic seats. We need to increase the size of the House of Representatives so we can change the mix in the electoral college so that we can ensure that we have a permanent majority, even when people move around inside the United States. Those things are a direct outcome-oriented, unprincipled assault on the very things that I think give us protections. Protect us against people like Donald Trump. Protect us against people like AOC. And that was the argument that I made that I think those changes are so dangerous. And once you open that Pandora's box, it doesn't stop, right? Because then we're going to have a bigger, we're going to, you know,

we're going to have a bigger Senate. And then all of a sudden the Republicans next time they're in charge if they were ever going to get it, would say we need to break up California, okay? Because in fact, all of California doesn't represent Californians. It only represents leftist Californians. What about Northern California? They're conservative. They should be allowed to have, you know, they should be allowed to have an electoral college number that represents them too, because that's undemocratic. Illinois also, very unrepresenting. So you can see where this crap goes and you can actually see the unraveling of our system. So that was the argument that I made at the time. On January 6th, I was embarrassed because I felt ashamed of what Donald Trump did

and because I thought that there was, I never believed he would do such a thing. I never believed that he would assault our country and our systems and our people and our Congress. physically in the way that he did and I'm glad he lost. Sorry, that was a really long answer, but you asked me a really great question. No, I think that's a good answer. Okay. Last question. In high school, what group did you run with? In the breakfast club style, you know, back in the day where people belong to, you know, little clicks. What was your click? Oh my God. I'm so glad high school's over. I'm assuming Steve was a jock, but we'll find out here to sec. He looks like one. I know. And I want to know about

you too, Sarah. I finished high school when I was 16 because I started school in England, so I was super young. And so I was sort of super young. And no, I wasn't cool. I wasn't part of the breakfast club. I don't think I had a, I don't think I had a, like I had a group of friends who I, I was super lucky to have. You know, I went to Brookline High School, same place as Mike Dukakis and in the People's Republic of Brookline, Massachusetts. And so, yeah, I had a, I had a nerdy, smart, but really fun group.

but they, I wouldn't say we were sporty. I wouldn't say we were cool. We were not cool. Steve, I think you were cool. I was, I ran with the, the jocks, to be sure. We were, I was, I played soccer in high school. And we had a really great group of friends. We were, you know, we played soccer.

We had a really good time in high school. We were very interested in girls. um what i i you know my my my grades my grades were were decent you know they were good enough to to get me into some some good schools but i probably could have studied harder i was more interested in oh you were studying late nights talking on the phone and um yeah and playing we played a ton of volleyball a ton of beach volleyball which was great okay sarah sort of a jock i think this will come as a shock to everyone and every listener who is tuned in, especially to advisory opinions, my other podcast on legal nerdery with David French. I was the president of the orchestra

and was very into musical theater, which is cool at some people's high schools, I suppose, but it was not cool at mine. So we had, there were two main areas to sit at lunch inside which was awesome because you got a table and a chair and stuff like that. And then there was outside where there was a deck. So that was cool for like the like sort of stoner kids, you know, like hip, hipster, hippie, pre-hypster. We didn't have hipsters. And then there was the hallway outside the band room. I mostly ate lunch in the hallway outside the band room.

Sometimes we sat on the deck. We did. So, yeah, high school. was, you know, everyone finds their friends. My very, I had two wonderful best friends, both of whom I stay in touch with, and they are the coolest, nerdiest chicks I know. So, you know, all as well that ends well.

Well, let me, let me get your back a little bit, Sarah, because I too was in the orchestra. I was, I played violin all the way through my senior year in high school. But see, like, this is the epitome of the difference between us. You played violin, which was the cool, like lead jock instrument to play. Really? I played viola, which was the joke.

I played the flute. So I was in the BAM too. I'm not sure that violin was as cool as you perceived it. Maybe in the world of orchestra geeks. Who is the coolest string instrument? I mean, maybe the bass guys. Cello. Bass, yeah, bass guys, because they could translate that to, you know,

being in a band and playing electric bass. And there was some of that. Don't forget drums. Yeah, percussion. Our bass players were mostly stoned. So, yeah. My, my, we had a really terrific orchestra. We played, I mean, it was crazy advanced.

It was like 100 pieces. We took trips around the Midwest. We actually came out to Washington, D.C. for an orchestra trip. The, my, the distinction was that my orchestra teacher told my parents that I was the only violinist. ever seen who could really play laying down. So I would just lie back in, you know, like cool kids tried to do in high school on a chair, you know, basically horizontal and play the violin in that way. I didn't take it quite as seriously as as other people did. But I was also on the forensics team too. So I had, I did have a bit of, you know, nerd in me too. I love the

forensic team. That was a blast. I think your inner nerd is really showing here, Steve, thank you. I was just trying to get you there. I still think Danielle and I have you beat, though. I can just, I can feel her nerd spirit with me. Yeah, I'm afraid, I'm afraid there was no, there was, there was just, just no cool. Looking back at my pictures, just a little fingy. So, I don't know, do you guys remember, Dave Barry had possibly one of the funniest pieces he ever wrote about what happens to

cool kids from high school? No. It just never ends well. Basically, there's an inverse relationship between coolness in high school and your success in life. I'm happy to report. I have this theory that women in particular

who were not attractive to boys in junior high had to develop better personalities in order to attract male attention. They had to be funnier, they had to be something, right? Whittier, you had to have something else going for you. And so all of the cool chicks now, you can bet, were relatively unattractive in sixth and seventh grade. There you go. You're a good theories of high school.

This is why people listen to the podcast. That's right. That's right. This is what gets people coming back. Everyone went to high school. That's right. Fair. That's true.

It's a great unifier. Thank you so much for joining us for helping put foreign policy in high school terms for someone like me. I appreciate it. And we hope to continue seeing you in the pages of the dispatch. Thanks for having me, guys. I love being on the pages of the dispatch. So anytime. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and vary by race.

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