The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 398. Dr. Jordan Peterson Speaks to a U.S. Hostage Negotiator | Ambassador Robert O'Brien

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

Dr. Jordan B Peterson sits down with attorney, ambassador, and 27th U.S. Security Advisor, Robert O’Brien. They discuss the inner workings of international hostage negotiations, the ongoing success and legacy of the Abraham Accords, the Russia/Ukraine war, and the current perception of American strength, leaving much room for improvement. Robert O’Brien is an American attorney, ambassador, and was the 27th United States Security Advisor (4th to be hired under Donald Trump). O’Brien was a founding partner of the LA based boutique law firm Larson O’Brien LLP, and has worked in various legal and campaign roles for politicians such as Mitt Romney, Scott Walker, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. He has also served as an Ambassador to various countries like Israel and Taiwan during incredibly uneasy moments in recent history, including work on the Abraham Accords. In this field, he has also negotiated successfully to free Americans held captive abroad.  - Links - For Ambassador Robert O’Brien On X https://twitter.com/robertcobrien?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor American Global Strategies (Website) https://americanglobalstrategies.com/ 

Hello everyone watching and listening. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Ambassador Robert O'Brien. We discuss the inner workings of international hostage negotiations, the ongoing success and legacy of the Abraham Accords negotiated under President Trump, the Russia Ukraine war and its complexities, and the current perception of diminished American strength, a situation which leaves much room for improvement. So Ambassador Brian, you were the fourth US security advisor under Donald Trump. So why were you the fourth? And what was it like taking on the job knowing you were the fourth? And what was it like working with Trump? And he's a mystery to many people.

Maybe he's a mystery to himself, who knows? But you stepped into a role that had obviously been contentious and so there must have been some apprehension in that regard. Why did you do it and what was that like? Well, thanks Jordan and great to be with you. I was the fourth. We had General Flynn was there for a brief period of time and then General McMaster and John Bolton. It's not a job I expected to receive, but I was serving as the president's hostage

on voy at the time. I'm trying to bring American's home from detention or wrongful detention or being held hostage by terrorist organizations. And I didn't really know the president. I'd been with another candidate in 2016, Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin. And, but I supported the president in the general election, of course, and he asked me to be the hostage on-boy, and I got to know him through that job,

and I think one of the things the president Trump appreciated about the work I did is we got a lot of American's home, and President Trump gets a credit for that. Some people give me credit for it, and it's flattering, it's flattering, but when things go well for a president, the president should get the credit and he deserves the credit for bringing these many American's home. So we developed a relationship.

I was actually in Israel working on a hostage case trying to help some of the Israelis bring the remains of a fallen soldier home and John Bolton and Resinder was fired depending on whose story you believe. And I got the call to come in for an interview and interviewed with the president, went well and he asked me to do the job. So I was humbled and honored to have that position. I didn't know.

I was keenly aware that I was a fourth person but I also felt that I had a good relationship with the president. And I felt my job every day, and the prayer I said as I left the apartment every morning was that we'd keep America safe that day. And I think the president appreciated my commitment to keeping the country safe. And I appreciated his commitment to doing the same.

And we had a good relationship. And it worked out well. We had a lot of accomplishments that took place that last year and a half in office. So let's talk about the hostage cases to begin with. So how did you get involved in doing that? And then do you want to walk us through some of the stories and what it is exactly that you were doing before you became US security advisor? How that set you up for the job? Sure. So I recently called in late 2017 from the White House asking if I wanted to fill this role of being the US hostage envoy, the title is Speedha, which sounds like a doctor, suicide character, but it's an acronym for Special Presidential Envoy

for Hostages Affairs. I just started a law firm with a partner, Stephen Larson, a former federal judge, and Los Angeles, we left a big national firm, and so I wasn't planning on going into government. But I always wondered, well, over my career, I've spent time traveling abroad, all over the world, in international arbitration cases, and law cases. I always kind of wondered if our plan was hijacked, if we got taken hostage, would someone

come look for us? And when the job was offered, I went and talked to my wife and we prayed about it. We looked at some of the cases of people who were held abroad and I thought, you know, I'm going to give this a shot. And it's a sacrifice for the family and a sacrifice for my law partners. But I'm going to go see if I can get some people home. And we did the job.

And we got a lot of people home. We're very successful at it. Again, credit for that goes to the present for his tough stand on bringing American saw him. I think he felt that Americans being held abroad just because they were Americans, just because they had a blue passport was kind of the essence of poking your finger in the eye of the United States.

And his America first view of the world was, if you do that, I don't care who the person is, why they were taken, if they were a missionary, if they were a tourist, if they were a business person, a diplomat, a soldier. If you've taken somebody to leverage them, their leverage their life to try and get the US to change our policy or try and get a concession from us or money from us, we're not going to stand for it and we're going to get that person home. And so that was the job I undertook and it didn't expect the lead to be coming to the national security advisor but

again we had some success and I can talk to you about some of the cases and And again, at the end of the day, the president gets the credit for making it a high priority. And you know, you're up against bureaucracy. Other people in government have different priorities and getting a single American home. But for me, my job was solely focused on in that position with solely focused on bringing these Americans home So what had set you up in your previous career? To be able to conduct those negotiations and why do you think that you were apart from Trump's support? Which we can go into what why do you what do you think it was that made you Successful at doing this and what was it like to actually negotiate? Who are you negotiating with and what was that like? How did you think it was that made you successful at doing this? And what was it like to actually negotiate?

Who are you negotiating with and what was that like? How did you do it? Yeah, so there's a great question. The, I think my past experience as a diplomat, I'd been a diplomat in the Bush administration and had even carried over and working on an Afghanistan program for the Condi rice setup, but went into the Obama Clinton years when Secretary Clinton was Secretary of State. That certainly helped. I'd been an army officer earlier in my career and it worked at the UN. So I had kind of a diplomatic experience, but I think the day-to-day experience of being a lawyer in Los Angeles, I was a litigator, and we've got the toughest lawyers in the country, I think, in LA, and spent a lot of time

in mediation, hundreds of mediation over my career. Both serving as a council for parties, but also as then later serving as an arbitrator or a mediator and a neutral. I think that was the experience to give me the best background for the job as hostage on boy. And then to your question about it, who do we negotiate with? It was, you know, it's tough because, you know, we couldn't negotiate directly with some of these countries.

For example, the Iranians, you know, I had to work through the Swiss. So we, our intellectual actors were the Swiss diplomats who were great diplomats. And we worked with them. We worked with other third party governments to get to governments that we could negotiate with. Negotiate with the Russians directly, we've no shit negotiated with the Taliban directly. And you've got bad guys on the other side, you've got thugs on the other side to some extent and you've got to be tough.

And that has to be backed up by American hard power. The diplomacy is important, the negotiating skills are important, but at the end of the day, they're looking at you to see what's America gonna do if we don't comply. What tools does this guy have in his toolkit? What kind of support is he gonna get from the bureaucracy?

That goes back to the classic Ronald Reagan formulation of peace or strength. So working for a president who believed in peace or strength, who didn't, you know, what wasn't trying to appease or not provoke the adversaries, but who believed in, as a strong America, and as strong America was good for peace in the world, that helped me in my negotiations. So, you know, that was, you can say that in the thumbnail, the other thing I did, Jordan, which I think was created a stir at the time, when I became the hostage on why there was

a memo about the office that had been prepared in the prior administration and the Obama administration that described what we did as the office of the Spihah. And I said, our first resort is diplomacy, And the very last resort we'll take to rescue Americans is military force. And I looked at that and I said, this is exactly wrong. And I changed the memo. I said, our first resort will be to use our military, our special operators.

And our special operations community was really the modern special operations community was formed after the failed attempt to rescue American diplomats held in Iran in 1980. And that's how we ended up with Delta Force and SEAL Team 6. formed after the failed attempt to rescue American diplomats held in Iran in 1980. And that's how we ended up with Delta Force and SEAL Team 6. And it's very top tier group of operators. They originally set up to be hostage rescue guys based on a large part on the SAS and

the UK, the SAS regimen. And so I said, look, our first resort, if we can if we can affect rescue, is we're going to use these highly trained national assets, these great men and women, you know, special forces to go get our hostages back or our wrongful detainees back. And then we'll look at diplomatic options. And I want to send a message to our adversaries that, you know, we're going to, this is a different approach. And we're going to use American hard power.

And so, you know, if you've got a chance to negotiate with us or negotiate with a third party country that's coming to your on our behalf, take it because, you know, the other option we've got and our primary option is to go rescue our people. And we had a number of rescues that either using foreign partner forces that engage as special operators, the foreign governments or our own special operators,

they were really exquisite where we brought American to home, and I think that sent a message to folks and backed up our diplomacy. So that was one thing that we did to kind of change the policy, and at least send a message or foreign adversaries, either terrorist organizations or rogue governments that, if you take an American, there's a penalty of good pay, we're going to get them back.

Okay, so if I get this straight, so the people that were taking hostages came to know that they might have an opportunity to negotiate through the intermediation of third parties, but that the military option was likely to be brought forward very rapidly. Is that the right sequence of events? Correct. And look, if we had a military option, an operation that could be launched immediately, it becomes more difficult to launch these operations if a hostage is aged, if they've been taken and been held for a while because they're moved and some of the terrorist organizations

have pretty good operational security. It's always tougher when a government is holding your hostage because of the government of downtown jail and somewhere in Kharakas or Tehran or Moscow. So those circumstances make the military option more difficult. But if we could find a hostage organization, we did this at the end of the administration in late October in 2020, a group of kidnapped and American named Walden and in his air. We launched an operation within 48 hours, rescue them.

They dealt with the terrorist rescue dam, brought him home safely, and the whole thing happened in a very short period of time. I think that from start to finish, it was a 72 hour operation from us finding and fixing where he was, where the terrorist had him, the kidnappers and bringing him back to Washington, D.C. So sometimes negotiations weren't always an option, but it was for the bad guys, but if they'd secured the hostage somewhere,

they'd a government had them in a jail. Yeah, that was certainly, you know, that was one course for them to take. Right, right. So were there any downsides to moving the military option up the list of priorities? Did that add risk? Well, then any situations, or do you think overall,

and in the specifics, it decreased risk? Well, I think overall it decreased the risk, right? Because you let people know that if you've taken American hostage, the US military is coming for you. We've got long reach. We can go from Fort Bregg, North Carolina to wherever you are in a very short period of time. But, and so we think it was a deterrent and prevented further hostage shaking.

But any time you put the men and women of our armed forces into an operation, those risks to them, there's obviously risks to the hostage in a rescue situation where bullets are flying. So, and there's also a risk of an escalation so that a hostage rescue turns into more of a conflict. But our feeling was that the the deterrent effect of letting folks know we're going to rescue our people and the the high degree of skill and capability our special operators had to rescue hostage if they were taken outweighed that the risk of either escalation or death to one of our service members of the hostage. But those are tough calls to make.

Well, there's going to be risks no matter what approach you take. Has the approach that you put in place stayed intact as a consequence of the transition to the Biden administration or what's happened? What's happened now? Well, we have a really terrific hostage on for the guy who took over for me is a guy named Roger Carson and Ambassador. And he's a former military special operations guy. I got a lot of confidence in him.

But again, he's working in an environment that is more of a, what do I call it, don't do not provoke a piece mentality of the Obama folks who came in and have now staffed the Biden administration. And I think there's a lot less emphasis on hard power and a lot more emphasis on just pure diplomacy and soft power. And look, that can work in some cases.

You have different tools in some cases, you know, you have different tools in your toolkit. But I think there's a perception of American weakness now. And I think that makes the job of the hostage on Void tougher. But I think Roger has done a great job. And to his credit, I think the current national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, who took my position, my final position, has been good on these hostage issues. But again, you're only so good as the environment that surrounds you. And if your adversaries know that the military forces off the table and the likelihood of appeasement or ransom or concession is on the table, they're going to look

for those results instead of just turning over the hostage and hoping that they don't get punished for having engaged in malign activity. And do you think that that's reflected in the broader geopolitical landscape, especially in relationship to say what's happened in Ukraine with the Russians? Look, sadly, sadly, that's case-driven. I mean, we saw a direct line from this catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the way that it was handled, the Vladimir Putin sensing that America was weak. And American weakness is provocative. American strength keeps peace in the world.

But when our adversaries believe us to be weak, they take chances and they look for opportunities to exploit that weakness. And I don't think America is fundamentally weaker than we were four years ago. We're a very strong country. We've got geography on our side. We've got demography on our side. We've got innovation. We've got a tremendous military. But the perception from our adversaries develop over time, watching things like Afghanistan,

watching the failure to deter Putin in Ukraine. I mean, you recall Jordan, all the talk with the abundance and the administration folks before Putin's invasion was, we don't want to provoke him. We don't want to give the Ukrainians extra weapons. We don't want to do things that would disway the Russians because I could provoke Putin into an invasion. And dictators look at the world very different than we do. It's not a rational, it's very rational from their perspective,

but it's not how what we believe is rational. I mean, I remember commentator San would be crazy for Putin to invade Ukraine. Well, Putin didn't view that way. Putin saw us with Zoroffman Afghanistan. He sensed weakness. He thought he had an opportunity to gain geography, to get a territory.

He's got a demographic problem. Russia could gain 40 million more Russians. He could get access to agricultural land and increase his rush to the ability to trade. Ukraine has some natural resources, some oil and gas. So he looked at that as an opportunity to take the whole thing. Whereas we would think that's your irrational for a big country just to invade its neighbor because it could, because might make it right. But for Putin, it was perfect irrational. And so when he sensed our weakness,

he moved. And we didn't do a good job to turn him. And that was a failure of policy. Now, we've done a pretty good job supplying the Ukrainian sense then, since the invasion. But we lost a real opportunity to prevent the whole war from happening. And that was a shame for the Ukrainian people. And frankly, for the Russian people. Well, it was very interesting to me. I mean, Trump's a very complicated character in the US is a very complicated country in a complicated world. It was very interesting to me, though,

especially having contemplated Trump's legacy in the intervening years that when he first emerged on the scene, some of the fears associated with him were that in his sort of bullying and provocative manner that he'd be a real bull in the China shop on the foreign policy side of things. But he seemed capable of simultaneously charming people like Putin and the leader of North Korea, while simultaneously keeping them on their heels, I would say, maybe as a consequence of his perceived unpredictability, but also his clear willingness, perhaps, to use force. And the consequence of that, and there's two consequences of that that I find quite fascinating,

it's sort of reminiscent to me of what happened with Reagan when he bombed Qadafi. You know, I was pretty young when that occurred. And when Reagan bombed Qadafi, I thought, oh my God, all hell's going to break loose. There's going to be terrorism everywhere. Because I mean, I think Reagan, if I remember correctly, killed a couple of members of Kadafi's immediate family in that bombing raid. And I thought all hell was going to break loose. But what happened instead was that Kadafi was actually chasened and the degree of terrorist activity emanating from Libya declined to pretty much zero. And then when Trump took power, I think one of his remarkable achievements, and I really

think that he has got far less credit for this than he deserved was that there was a period of four years without with no wars, like no wars. And that's pretty damn rare. And there's always some chronic irritating conflict going on. I mean, Afghanistan was continuing, but Trump didn't start that. And also he initiated the Abraham Accords, even though the Obama administration had had an opportunity to do so, it was Trump who moved on it. It took a while, but he did it successfully. That could have obviously been expanded. The Abraham Accords, they could have been expanded under Biden. The Saudis, as far as I can tell, would have signed those

Accords if Biden would have taken the opportunity that was right bloody well in front of them to take. So we have this strange spectacle of someone who's pretty blustery and noisy and who might easily be regarded as provocative actually setting up a circumstance where by your testimony the negotiation for hostages was much more likely to be successful, but also whether there were no incursions of the sort say that Russia undertook in Ukraine during that four-year period that would precipitate a war. And we also saw the initiation of a really large scale and major peace process because that's certainly what the Abraham Accords represent.

So what do you make of all that? Well, so, Jordan, you had a very perceptive comment at the outset of that question. And that was, how could President Trump be cordial with some of these bad guys, and yet still obtain the results that we wanted as America? That we're not in a national interest and to deter these thugs and dictators and tyrants from engaging in malign activity? And there's an old saying that diplomacy is saying the nastyest possible things in the nicest possible way. And President Trump was

really a genius at that. He was always very cordial and his conversations with allies, but also with Putin or Kim Jenner or Xi Jinping. I was on many of those phone calls. He was very cordial, got along well with them. But at the same time, we were sanction-ping those are i was on the other phone calls he was very cordial got along well with them but at the same time we were sanctioned we put more sanctions on the russians than anybody since wrong ragan and we we put the russians in a box and yet the president's very cordial with them uh... and so they understood

here's a guy is being cordial uh... wanting to reduce the risk of a nuclear war in the case with russia wanting to make sure that we got our message across. But at the same time, this is a tough guy who's not gonna take any nonsense from us. And there was a level of unpredictability and the president talked about this, that the odds of us sending troops to Ukraine were small

if Russia invaded, but there was a risk there, and Putin had to take that risk into account. It complicated the lives of those planners. His military planners had to say, what if Trump does engage, then we lose. And that could be a disaster. So we better factor that into the risk and not invade Ukraine. So the same thing happened with North Korea. And the president had very cordial relations with Kim Jong-un.

But it didn't start out that way. I was a hostage on Voy at the time, and when we were talking about Little Rocket Man and Fire and Fury and my button's bigger than your button, but it wasn't just the rhetoric. This is what American politicians often times miss. It's backing up the rhetoric with hard power. The President moved two aircraft carriers into the L. O. C. into the near North Korea and said, look, you want to keep playing this game? I've got, you know, 80 aircraft for a carrier and, you know, good chunk of the US Navy sitting off your coast. How do you want

to do this? Would you rather have a summit and try and work things out and do you nuclearize? And we obviously didn't get there, but we went down that path and we came to uncommitted denuclearization. We didn't get there, but at least we committed to it. Or do you want to keep testing your nuclear weapons and see how it works out for you? It was that combination of cordiality and frankness and good cheer with our adversaries and with our partners as well, but backing it up with American hard power and letting them know that, you know, if you cross a line and what I can be like Obama, we're not going to set red lines that we don't intend to enforce,

but if we set a red line, no, it's going to be enforced. So you understand what you're getting into. That's your call. That's all on us. And that, that reason is a very important point that you made. President Trump was the first president since Jimmy Carter. Technically, I'll probably argue Reagan as well that didn't start a new war. We didn't send, you know, we eliminated some of the great terrorist threats to the country. We got back daddy. We took other measures to protect the country, but we didn't start a new war. And the reason we didn't start a new war is the same reason Ronald Reagan didn't start a new war is because our adversaries understood if we cross American

red lines, if we if we damaged American national interests, there's going to be a heavy price to pay. And we better factor that into our planning and our consideration. And so they didn't engage in the activity that would have led us to having to engage militarily. And so the last president that really truly did that was Ronald Reagan. Now he had the invasion of Bernada, but I'd argue that was more of a big hostage rescue of the medical students in Grenada that turned into a, you know, taken over the country. But other than Reagan, in recent presidencies, Republican and Democrat, no one has been able to stop our adversaries

without engaging in military action on a large scale until President Trump. And I think that's one of the great accomplishing of his administration. I wonder if that proclivity that Trump has to strike terror and disarray into the hearts of his political opponents within the US, who seem to regard him as, you know, the next best thing to Satan himself in terms of the danger he presents

to the integrity of the state. I wonder if that is the same unpredictability and menace, cordial menace that intimidates his potential opponents or the potential opponents of the US on the foreign policy side. You think that's the same manifestation? You know, I'm not sure if it's intimidation. I mean, whether it was our allies, we had pretty competent and confident leaders like my cronin in France or Boris Johnson in the UK, Angela Merkel, and a very different personality, it was a very strong character.

And then our adversaries, who put into tough guy and Xi Jinping is a tough guy and Kim Jong Un is unpredictable himself. So I'm not sure if it was an intimidation of the leaders, but I think what it was, it was the resolve that he showed. And they understood that this guy represents America. And sometimes we look at our adversaries and think they're 10 feet tall and sometimes our adversaries get ahead of us and we got to catch up with them.

China's gotten ahead of us on a couple of things where we got to catch up with them. But the reality is America's a fundamentally very strong country. And if you've got a president that's willing to use all the tools of American national power, economic, diplomatic, military, and it is resolved to protect our national interest. And the other guys know that. They can do an assessment of the balance of forces and decide are they going to win or lose

if they press the issue? And I think with President Trump at the end of the day, this guy had a lot of backbone and wasn't going to fold. And so they better not cross the red line. So I'm not sure if it's intimidation or more a confidence that President shows when he enters into a room. And it works with adversaries, but it also works with our partners. So one of the great accomplishments of the Trump administration that's in order to the benefit of Ukraine today, and Europe today, back in 2019, I had been national security advisor

very long maybe a couple of months, and we had a real problem with NATO. The president was very unhappy that our NATO partners weren't paying 2% of their GDP with the exception of not, unhappy that our NATO partners weren't paying 2% of their GDP with the exception. I think of the time was four or five countries. UK was one of them Greece, the Baltics, Turkey. But the rest of the countries were getting a free ride on American defense. We're spending three and a half to four percent of our economy of our GDP to defend not only America, but the free world. And the president said, hey, that's not right. Everyone committed to at least 2% that's still half of what we're paying, but you got to pay the 2%.

And the Europeans kind of chuckled and said, well, every president, I went back and looked at this, I actually wrote an article about it. Every president running for president since 1972, the theme has been one of the campaign planks has been on both the Republican and the Democrat side is, Europe will pay its fair share. You know, Europe will step up for some defense, and no one got it, even my hero Ronald Reagan couldn't get the Europeans to pay.

Their fair share bear their fair portion of the burden. And President Trump made some pretty tough comments about NATO, and I thought, wow, I'm a big NATO supporter, and it's a great alliance. It's kept the peace in Europe for many years, 75 years. And so I thought, how is this going to play out? But it gave me the opportunity to go as the negotiator with Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary of General of NATO, who's a terrific statesman. And Jens and I were able to go to Allied partners and say, look, the

days of Germany getting cheap minerals from Russia selling expensive finished goods to China and letting America pay for its defense while it runs up a budget surplus, that's just not fair. That's got to end. It's not fair to the American taxpayer. It's not fair to your other partner nations. It wasn't just Germany. Canada was all the countries.

And so the fact that President Trump was being tough and talking about this article five apply, if you're not paying your dues, so to speak, they weren't dues, but that's where the President phrased it. That kind of struck some fear into the hearts of our allies. So we walked away from that summit, going from four or five countries, paying 2% to 11 countries, paying 2% of their GDP, committing to it. had summit with going from four or five countries paying to 11 countries paying to percent of their GDP, committing to it. But we also had an overall increase, and we didn't get Germany as high as we wanted,

but we got a small increase from Germany. But because the German economy was so big, it was a lot of money. We got $400 billion in commitments for news and NATO spending outside of the US over the course of 10 years that December summit. And of course, the hand ringers, the diplomatic correspondence and the folks that cover the state department and cover NATO, they rang their hands and said, this is terrible and it's awful diplomacy. And the standing of America has gone down in the world. Well, yeah, I'm sure European allies weren't happy in some cases that they had to spend the money. But guess what?

They're happy now. I was at a conference in Prague recently, a defense conference, and I had Germans coming up to me saying, you guys were right. Thank you for making us spend more money. And that additional spending, even in the initial three years from 19 to 2022, allowed some of those European countries to get new platforms, new weapons systems. So the one Russian invaded Ukraine, a lot of those countries were able to send their old Soviet equipment, especially in Eastern Europe, their old equipment that was no longer

modernized and they went to a stockpile and sent that equipment to Ukraine. And so a lot of the initial equipment that Ukraine got was the direct result of the additional increase in defense spending that came out of that 2019 summit, the President Trump was pilloried for for being arrogant and rude and putting America first and that sort of thing. And in fact, what we do is we put our allies in a position where they can defend themselves and help Ukraine. And so again, it's counterintuitive, someone taking that sort of an approach.

And it's not something that may be grading to people and diplomats might not like it, but when you look at the results, they're incredibly successful. What do you think is in Trump's character that makes him, it possible for him to do those things? Because that is, it's quite a track record, really, of success, right?

Because you've laid out four different instances. You said he was very effective in relationship to hostage negotiation. He was good at keeping potential enemies at Bay and established peace for four years. But he also, he successfully negotiated the Abraham Accords, which we'll turn to. But as you pointed out, and this is, this is quite orthogonal to those other enterprises, he was instrumental and successful in getting the NATO allies to pay their fair share, which was something I was watching that from outside from the Canadian perspective. And I know certainly, full well that we haven't pulled our weight at all and continue to not do so. But it was quite striking to me that he was able to manage that. The justice of the cause seems self evident. I mean,

it's completely absurd that America has to shoulder this burden by itself and also take all the moral slings and arrows that go along with being the prime defender of the West, right? It's just too much to be asked to pay the financial price and then to bear the moral, you know, appropriate at the same time. There's no excuse for that. But Trump was very effective at negotiating for that to be rectified. And so what do you think it is about his character, the way he conducts himself, that makes him capable of doing those things? You talked about his willingness to rely on military force, say in relationship to potential foreign enemies,

but of course that's not going to be an issue when he's talking to NATO allies. So what's he doing right? Well, look, I think I didn't know President Trump before becoming his hostage on voy and I got to know him a little bit during that period of time and then came to know him fairly well as a national security advisor. But I think it's your background. We all bring whatever our background is to the new job, right?

You know, you're, you've got a background as a clinical psychologist. Now you're doing political analysis, which is, you know, par excellence. And I think Trump, what Trump did is he brought in the background as a real estate developer, where you're in New York, and the thick of it, whether you had a track record, some people liked it, track record, some people didn't like it, track record. But he built big things, he built big buildings, he built a hotel empire.

And in those real estate negotiations, I used to see this as a lawyer with clients. You've got to keep two things in mind at the same time, and it's hard for a lot of people to understand that. You're trying to do a deal with someone and you're trying to beat the heck out of them and get the best price you can. And at the same time, they're a partner because you want them to consummate the deal, right? So you want to get, if you're buying land from somebody or buying a building, you want to get the very best price, but at the same time, you want to keep them at the table and I have

not go to the other guy and sell the building to someone else because you want that asset. And or if you're selling the same thing just on the other side of the table, I think President Trump learned that through years of negotiations in real estate 50 year career. And even younger than that watching his dad, Fred Trump, you know, do deals. You got to be tough and you got to get the best deal you can, but at the same time you got to prevent your partner from walking away from the deal, walking away from the table. And striking that balance I think is pretty tough. And look, a lot of people don't have experience with it. A lot of people come into government from think tanks or from academia or from the military where folks are used to falling orders or even as lawyers, but maybe without the litigation or the deal experience. So they come to government and people

expect them to be great negotiators, but they've never really had that experience. Whereas President Trump came to office, probably with more experience negotiating, certainly anyone in his cabinet, anyone in his immediate circle, but also any other politician in the world that he was dealing with. So for good or for better or for worse, I mean, there are all kinds of different ways to prepare to be president. I'm not saying being a real estate developer is the best way to prepare to be president. But for president Trump, it worked when it came to these negotiations that we've been

talking about and trying to come to a deal where you get both parties to say yes, but you get a good deal for America. And so I think that's probably the the best preparation he had for some of the things we've been talking about Jordan. Well, you've worked as a diplomat and a litigator and national security advisor and and all of that's involved negotiation and you know, one of the things I've noted in my private life, watching people, and in my clinical practice, and I suppose in my role as a, as a professor, as well, is that generally speaking, people are very bad at negotiating. They don't say what they want. They don't admit what they want. They don't listen to the other side. They don't understand how to strike that playful balance between competition and keeping

their partner in the game. They're not trained to negotiate. We do a very bad job of that in our society. People can't negotiate with themselves. They can't negotiate with their spouses. They're not good at negotiating with their kids. They can't strike a deal with their business partners Like it's a big problem, right? Because negotiation there's no difference between

Bringing a successful negotiation to a conclusion and establishing peace. Those are the same things now You've done a lot of negotiating and as a diplomat which is more diplomatic obviously as a litigator, which is more on the offense side, let's say, and then under stressful conditions when you're negotiating for hostage release, what is it that you've seen that makes a successful negotiator? What skills do you have to master and what pitfalls do you have to avoid? And how have you mastered that or have you, you know, do you feel that you've mastered it? Well, I certainly haven't mastered it, but I have had a fair amount of experience and sometimes successfully negotiated deals or releases or diplomatic accords and sometimes

unsuccessfully. So it's certainly not a 100% track record. It's a big question, and there's a lot that goes into that mix, and you talk about all the different scenarios in which we're involved in negotiation, whether it's in our home life, our business life, our professional life, putting it totally aside politics and international affairs, we're all negotiating all the time. I think there are a couple of things that have been low-stars for me in negotiating. One is understanding that the other party has to get something out of negotiation. That doesn't mean money, necessarily.

It doesn't mean, but it usually means respect. So I think being respectful and being cordial with your adversary, even if I've sat across the table from some pretty unsavory characters, but if you're respectful and you're cordial, that's one thing that you can give that costs you nothing other than some goodwill and some humility. That's number one. Number two, you have to listen to the other side and try and figure out what is it they

really want? Because they may be saying they want one thing but they really want something else. And figuring out what they, what they're, you know, bottom line is what's the least amount they take to give you what you want requires you to listen to them. Number three, I think you have to be honest. I mean, I've never done a negotiation

in my private life, or as a lawyer, as a litigator, as a diplomat, where I've lied to people. I just don't think, I mean, I disclose everything, all the information I've got are that I know, but I don't lie to people, because once you get caught out in a negotiation, telling something's false or lying, you've lost your credibility and your ability

to get a deal done goes away. And I think the last point I'd make a response to that question and again, I would probably 100 if we sat and thought about it and talked longer. You've got to be willing to say no. There has to be a point at which you'll walk away from the table. Because if there's not some level that you'll say no and walk away, you're, you're opponent will understand that and they'll push and push and push until they've taken everything from you.

You've got to have a red line and sometimes it's hard because you know, saying no is going to mean somebody staying in prison longer or somebody being in a dungeon longer or not getting the deal you really wanted for your client if you're a litigator, not getting the peace deal that would make the headlines and help solve a war. But if you're not willing to say no and your adversary doesn't understand, you're not willing to say no, there's no limit to what they'll take from you.

And so you have to have your own, and that doesn't mean you have to disclose those red lines and tell them what you're gonna say no. And that's kind of the interplay with the honesty issue. But you gotta be able to say, oftentimes you're ambiguous about it where you tell the other side, there's got to be able to say, you know, oftentimes, you're ambiguous about it, where you tell the other side, there's a point that I'm not going to go beyond and you're getting close to it. And if you get to that point, I'm going to get

up from the table, I'm going to walk away. And then you're going to lose negotiation as well, because the point that the look, they're there because they want something from you as well. It's not you come in as a supplicant usually. You know, they're, they're not supplicating to you, you're not supplicating them, but there's a deal to be had. How that deal works out, you have to see. But if they know that you're not willing to get up and leave, you're never going to get a negotiation done. I had this happen, and I'm not going to mention the country, but we're involved in pretty

high stakes and negotiations when I was a national security advisor. We thought we had a deal with the leader of the country, and we came back to finalize it and the foreign minister and some of the other leaders kind of tried to put new conditions on, tried to renegotiate the deal. And I did something at the time, it was a little tired, it had been long nights and a couple days straight. I just packed my briefcase, so I had a whole team of State Department folks with me, and I don't think they'd ever seen that before,

and I packed my briefcase and said, okay, thank you, we tried, we gave it our best shot, but we're done, and God, if it started to walk away, and I think the other side was shocked by it. It's certainly the guys from the career officials at the State Department were looking at me like it was a nut, and I said, come on guys, let's go, we're outta here. And the other side said, wait, wait, wait, wait. We're out of here. And the other side said,

wait, wait, wait, wait, we'll, you know, we got back to the deal we had the night before with the leader. And, but they, they, you know, our state of heart, guys, had never seen someone pack up a briefcase and leave a lot. I'd seen people pack up their briefcases and leave 100 times. It's a lawyer in Los Angeles, you know, I was, you know, and, and usually if a good plaintiff's lawyer didn't pack up his bags and leave three or four times during the day during a negotiation, then you were doing a good job. So, you've got to be willing to walk away from the table if the other side is not serious. And that doesn't mean you don't come back.

You laid out three principles there that I think are worth delving into because this is very important. I think for people's proactive lives as well. So, I learned something very profound from Karl Rogers. A lot of Rogers clinician, a lot of Rogers work has been instrumental in establishing mediation processes over the last few decades. And Rogers delineated out what's come to be known as active listening, which is kind of a cliched version of what he was attempting to put forward. And I've used this a lot in my private life and also in my clinical practice, because

it actually works. It's one of the few psychological techniques, so to speak. It's not manipulative that I, that actually is credible, and not just cliched. Rodgers suggested to the people he was attempting to inform the clinicians, he was trying to train that when they listened to a client, that they listened without interruption and then provided back to the client a summary of what they had just said and asked the client whether or not that summary accurately represented the intent of the communication. And that was useful in three ways, say, the first element of utility is that it indicated that at least that the listener was interested in and attentive enough

to fully and brave enough to fully understand what was being communicated. So that's very useful because that's a sign of respect, right? Attentive respect. The next part of it that was useful was to indicate to the person that what had been said was actually understood, right? Because if you're going to put the gist forward, you have to have understood it. And that also often helped the person who was communicating, clarify what it is that they were actually trying to communicate because it's not always the case that the person you're talking to knows exactly what they want. And so you're offering them a gift if you can summarize it. And then you also have some insight into potential conditions of satisfaction that the other person is attempting to establish.

Like, if I'm talking to my wife, one of the things about something where there's some contention, and we've negotiated this as a meta-negotiations strategy, is that it's incumbent on both of us to say, to define the conditions under which peace could theoretically prevail. You know, because you can ask someone, well, what would I have to give you hypothetically, so that this went away and you were happy? Now, it isn't necessarily the case that I can or will deliver that, but at least I'd like to know, right? Okay, so that's an active listening.

And then you said also, and conditions of satisfaction, you also said, this is something I always told my clients too, is that if you can't say no, you can't negotiate. And then no means, this is what no means. No means, if you continue doing what you're doing, something you do not like will happen to you with 100 percent certainty. Now that might just be that I'll leave and that they're going to go to the ocean ends, but it could be other things as well. But if you don't have that in your back pocket, in the back of your mind, if there's no line that you've put forward that can't be crossed, of course, you can't negotiate because the whole negotiations lie because really what you're doing is walking

into the situation saying, I'm fully yours for the taking, but I'm going to pretend that's not the case. And if the person on the other side is the least bit canny or the least bit pushy, like a good litigator would be, they're going to figure that out by every nonverbal cue you put forward. And by everything you say and don't say, so you need to listen. So you know what the person wants. You have to find out their conditions of satisfaction to see if they can possibly be met. And then you have to determine, as you pointed it out, that you can and will say no, and that no actually means,

well, it means that something that isn't pleasant isn't going to transpire. Otherwise, you have no strength as far as I can tell. Well, that's a great summary. And again, I didn't have the formal training for Rogers. It was more of the school of hard knocks of litigating a lot of cases and working as a diplomat and learning those experiences, but I think it's a great summary.

So 100 percent. And again, I think that being willing to say no is just critical. Folks have to know that there is a point and you know, you point out there's a point of no return where the unpleasant thing may just be that the negotiation is end, but it may be that there's going to be military strike. It may be that there's going to be an economic sanction. I had this happen with a relatively well-known case. I had, I was sent to Sweden to bring home an American rapper named ASAP Rocky.

And I was somewhat controversial because it was being held by an ally. It was a result of a street scuffle, but we determined that he was being held unfairly. And the Swedes didn't like the fact that I was showing up as a hostage envoy. In fact, I remember one reporter was joking and as I was walking in the courthouse, are you sending a carrier?

Are you gonna send the seals? And but we headed to negotiate with our Swedish partners and they're going to a new NATO? And, uh, but we headed to negotiate with our Swedish partners and, you know, they're going to a new NATO ally and they were close partners in, but they had no intention of negotiating with us. I mean, they were in their view is this is an article system. Stay out of it. He'll get dealt with it as we see fit.

But the problem is the president of the United States put our credibility online. The president said he's wrongfully detained. We're going to bring him home. He thought he had to deal with the Swedish Prime Minister. The Swedish Prime Minister saw it a different way, which that happens or miscommunications and no blame on the Swedes. But I had to sit down and Mike Pompeo wrote about this

in his books, I'll mention it because Secretary Pompeo mentioned it. When Mike sent me, I was a hostage on the way at the time. Seven of the Swedes and he said, listen, you got your card blanche, you can use whatever economic tool you want, you know, and tell them everything, it's all another Volvo in America.

And so at that point, even though the suede weren't prepared to negotiate, when we kind of said, we understand that, and that's, in fact, I actually told the deputy four minister, that's quite admirable that you're willing to stand up to the US, you're not going to go shate, but you know, this is important to us now because I've got hostages all over the world.

I got hostages in Lebanon and Syria and Iran and Venezuela and North Korea. If we caved to Sweden because and don't get the result of the president said we're going to get our credibility shot around the world for, you know, dealing with other regimes are going to say if the Swedes can push you around, we'll, we're far nasty and the Swedes are, we'll do the same. I said, so I understand your point of view and it's, it's admirable.

But you're never going to sell another Volvo in America. And so that's so you know, you know, they're going to be factories in America that you built and factories in Sweden that you built and that won't have, you know, you're going to have to fight thousands of Swedish workers. And if, you know, you've got to decide what's more important to you at this point, you know, keeping this rapper who you've, who is attacked by some, some Afghan migrants, and they've kept that out of the press, you know, and, uh, and fought back and, you know, have less than learned for those guys, don't attack a rapper in his posse, and not a good idea in a street fight.

But if it's so important, you put him in jail for a year or two, and a dubious situation they're arguing was that he defended himself, but then the longer the fight went on, it exceeded his self-defense rights. But I said on a relatively dubious thing, that would never even be charged in a place like Los Angeles,

and we wouldn't even get to the DA's office, the police would have dealt with it. And it's so important that you're gonna put clothes down some of your factories to maintain that principle. And God bless you. And we saw a newspaper article come out a day or two later that said the US is bullying Sweden.

We knew it was leaked by the Swedes because we didn't disclose it. And so I knew at that point that they'd probably made the decision that they'll blame the US for bullying them. And that was fine. I wanted them to be able to say face and Swedes are a great country. They were helping us in North Korea. We remember meeting with the foreign, become national security adviser a couple weeks later. I met with a foreign minister become national security advisor a couple of weeks later,

met with a foreign minister who was a really impressive woman and we had a great meeting on North Korea. We would have let bygones be got bygones with the ASAP Rocky case. But again, you have to, it's easy for a party to come to the table and say, I'm not negotiating with you. I get everything I want. And if you've really, if that's what you're gonna do,

then just pack up your bags and go home, or don't even show up at the negotiation. But if you're gonna try and get the result you want and your credibility's on the line, then you've gotta be willing to let people know that there is a consequence that comes with a no. Like you can say no, but there's a consequence that comes with it.

And in that case, we were able to get the whole thing resolved, the Sweden convicted them them and then let them go for time served. So they say face their justice system was able to run its course. I stayed for the trial. After the trial, I said I was able to get home and come back to America. And it all worked out very well. We maintained cultural relations. But it's an example of a negotiation where both sides were pretty well dug in.

And it didn't look like there was a way to get it done, but we got it done. But it's an example of a negotiation where both sides were pretty well dug in. And it didn't look like there was a way to get it done, but we got it done. So with regard to when you should say no, and this is tied up very tightly with the issue of honesty, I think it's incumbent on you to say and indicate no when you're convinced of the fact that the alternative position, what you're going to accept instead, is actually an untenable solution in the long run. If you exceed to a negotiation, but you walk away bitter and resentful, and you believe that the conditions that you now have to abide by are not only

unjust, but unlikely to be maintained, then you should have said no more harshly during the negotiation. And that does take a certain amount of forthrightness and willingness to confront. And also the kind of honesty that has a long-term view, right? I mean, a successful negotiation should also appear to be, should be and appear to be just to both sides, because otherwise it's gonna be undermined in all sorts of secretive ways as soon as the negotiation concludes.

Well, the old saying and then LA litigation circles was, you know, it wasn't a good deal unless both sides walked away unhappy. You know, so I think another way of restating what you just said were both sides felt like they had some sort of win. And I'm not talking about the Chinese, the Chinese talk about win-win negotiations and it's always the Chinese win and you lose, but a real win-win negotiation, not a propaganda

one. You both sides need to come away with something, but when it gets to your issue of no and you're just a really good point, Jordan. You can say no in a negotiation. That doesn't mean we're done with negotiating. You can say no, that's not a good deal. I don't want that, but let's keep going. But when you get to that ultimate, no,

that needs to be your bedrock. Because you don't want to say no and walk away and think, you know, I could have actually given a little bit more and gotten to where I would need it to be. You need to be honest with yourself about, where is it too painful for me to continue? But where, you know, I may say no because I don't like to deal and try and get a better deal. But where is the no-come that where you pack up your briefcase and you literally walk away and you're not coming back? And

that, you have to prepare for that before the negotiation. And know what internally, that doesn't mean you share it with the other side, but you have to know internally, what are my red lines? And what's that point where I can't jump off the cliff and commit suicide, but how close can I get to the cliff and still get a deal I can be happy with? And that's something you have to think about that before you start the negotiation.

Right, right. Well, when I was working with people who were involved in salary negotiations, for example, they were often people who had worked quite diligently. That weren't very good at reporting what they had done to their superiors. That were laboring under some degree of bitterness and resentment because they didn't feel

that their contributions had been recognized and perhaps rightly so we would always ensure that before they went and had a conversation with their boss that their CV was in order and they'd already checked out the alternative job market and they had at least a lateral move in mind and maybe a better move and then we'd practice the conversation so that they knew exactly what they were saying. But the reason for them to get their CV in order and so forth was because they needed to walk in there knowing that they could tell their boss to that they would leave. Now they didn't want to, you know, that was an outcome. But if they didn't have that in their back pocket, they were weak. And if they did have it in their back pocket, they're much more effective negotiators. They knew what they wanted and they knew where their line was and that stiffened

their spine in the, you have to have all that straight in your head before you go into the negotiation. This is a great point. What I used to tell people and still to tell colleagues who are thinking about leaving their job or aren't happy or think there's a better opportunity. I just tell them, keep one arm on the monkey bar when you're swinging for the other one, but don't drop it in the air and hope you're gonna catch the other monkey bar. Make sure you've got a plan B.

You've got another job where you can keep your current job and don't drop the monkey bar and hoping you have enough momentum to get the next wrong, it may work, but you could also end up in the sand pit down on your butt. Right, well, it helps as well. So, you know, it helps very much as well to walk into a negotiation, having plotted out what you'll do if it goes as badly as it could, right? Because there's going to be fears that be set you. What if this is a catastrophe? And the

answer to that can't be, oh, it won't be a catastrophe. The answer has to be, if this is a catastrophe, here's the steps that I will take to ensure victory on a different front. And that also stops you from being pushed around. Yeah. 100%.

How do I mitigate the downside? And look, it helps have a counselor. You know, and I'm not just talking about no, I'm not a security advisor to help have someone like you or a lawyer or a psychologist or a friend or your wife that you can sit down before the negotiation and talk these things through because sometimes it's hard to do it on your own. So if you've got people you can rely on whether it's colleagues or professionals that you can bring in to help in the negotiation

and you walk through these things, you can become more focused and figure out, here's my real red line, and if I have to walk away with that red line, here's the downsides to me, how do I mitigate them? And here's how I can give the other side downs, here's how I can prepare downsides to the opponent,

so that they've got to keep that in mind when they're negotiating. Yeah, well, it's also very helpful to prenegotiate with people who are quite pushy so that they can push your limits and test you out. And that's actually part of the purpose of critical thinking, right? Is you can have all the weaknesses in your position analyzed by, you know, without any real threat, except maybe to yourself, a steam and your ego, you know, in with your inability to formulate your arguments

clearly. But it's a hell of a lot better to have them pre-tested than to have them fail on the actual battlefield. 100%. Absolutely. So you characterized earlier, and this will be a lead into some questions about Russia, you characterized the withdrawal from Afghanistan as catastrophic. And so that's all faded away in principle, although we may be suffering from the aftermath of that in the form of this, you know, never ending conflict or a conflict that looks like it's going to never be ending in in Russia and Ukraine. Why would you characterize the withdrawal in Afghanistan as catastrophic? I mean, the US did extract itself. It was a messy long-term conflict. So in that way, it's come to an end, and you could imagine that there might be some benefits from that, but that obviously that isn't the way that you look at it overall.

And so what is it about the withdrawal that you object to and why do you characterize it as catastrophic? So let me walk you through that, but let me first make a point when you do and you said it faded away. And you're right because we've got a short attention span in the West. It's not just America, it's Canada, it's Western Europe, Japan, Australia. Well, what I kind of call it, not the geographical West, but the ideological West. Hopefully India is becoming part of that group in other countries. But we've got a short attention span. We go quarter to quarter of our stocks.

We go election to election two-year cycles for the House representatives here, four years from President. We've got a short, kind of short-term view. And I think that's true with Afghanistan. And some people have already forgotten, this just happened, and two years ago. But guess who doesn't have a short-term view? The Chinese Communist Party.

So when I was in Taiwan and March of this year, I let a delegation there to, for a GTI Global Taiwan Institute to work on it. How do we improve US Taiwan relations and how can we strengthen Taiwan and make it more resilient to deter China? One of the things that they have, the videos that they showed on TikTok and on Instagram

to undermine the confidence of the people in Taiwan in the relationship with the US, but also in their own ability to defend themselves is a picture of that C-17 that was running along the Afghan, the runway at Hamid Karzai airport in downtown Kabul, and had the Afghans running along sighted and people climbing on the wing and people trying to get in the wheel well. They said, this is what America will do to you. This is how America leaves. You'll be in essence.

You'll be these core Afghans running along trying to hop on the American airplane as they take off. You better cut a good deal with us now because this is your future. And so that Afghanistan for all that we might want to forget. And you know, forget the 12 or 13 gold star families who lost their loved ones at Hamakai's at Karzai Airport and the suicide bombing.

And we want that all that to go away. Our adversaries aren't forgetting it. And so it was, you know, seeing those videos in Bolden Putin to go into Ukraine, but it's also the Chinese are very skillfully using it to undermine the confidence for our allies in Asia About our ability to stand with them in the event of a Chinese invasion So in other words cut the good deal with us now because America won't be there

But go into your broader question. Why was the catastrophe? You know, we wanted to get out of Afghanistan That was a forever war Secretary Pompeo and Ambassador Kallilizad spent a lot of time for President Trump negotiating a deal with the Taliban, which we signed in February of 2020. And that deal was stop killing Americans because the President had gotten sick of going to Dover and was sick from going to Dover. And I was with them on three occasions. I represented them on another three occasions for the dignified transfer of the remains for fallen heroes

And you'd have to go and comfort those families and watch these young men come home and they're not women at the time and in my experience But these young men coming home and a flag draped casket and it was a beautiful dignified transfer But that's not the way their parents or their loved ones or their wives wanted them to come home and that's that's not the way America wanted them to come home and And that's not the way America wanted them to come home. And those are heart-wrenching experiences. And we decided, look, we've got to end this Afghanistan war. It's taking, number one, it's taking too many of our lives for our young women who are volunteer to go serve our country and defend ourselves, defend America.

But it wasn't just America. It was Canada that was there in France and many of our partner nations. But it was also costing us billions of dollars every month. And while we were plunging billions of dollars in Afghanistan with very little return, Afghanistan was not on the, we mentioned Sweden earlier. Afghanistan was not on the way to becoming a new Sweden. The Chinese were taking the same billions of dollars

and launching a new frigate or a new destroyer every month. So they were engaged in great power competition, building the biggest Navy in the world, which they now have bigger than the US Navy. And we were pumping this money into Afghanistan, much of what was getting put on pallets and cash and being shipped to Dubai because of the corruption there. It had to come to an end.

But it had to come to an end in a way that met American national interests. And so what President Trump ultimately decided and it took a lot of time to get there is that we'd leave 2500 troops there as a counter terrorist force to deal with ISIS-K, to deal with Al-Qaeda. We had 5,000 NATO troops. So for the first time when we left office in January, January, 2021, we had 5,000 NATO troops. So for the first time when we left office in January, January 2020, 2021, we had 5,000 NATO troops and only 2,500 American troops. So we had two to one NATO contribution to America. NATO was bearing the burden. We were supporting NATO with exquisite capabilities, but NATO was bearing the burden. We kept Bogram Air Base

because Bogram had big fields of fire. It couldn't be overrun by the Taliban. It would have been the perfect place if we ever had to engage in somewhat expedited withdrawal. Bogram was a place to do it. So we put everything in place. And then we insisted to the Taliban that you have to negotiate with the Afghan government. This can't be, we're not turning the government,

we're not turning Afghanistan over to the Taliban. You've got to negotiate with your friends, You know, this can't be, we're not turning the government, we're not turning Afghanistan over to the Taliban. You've got to negotiate with your friends, you know, front of me, you're your fellow Afghans, and you've got to have a government in national unity. And we're staying here until that happens. And even after that happens, we're likely going to stay because you're going to need our help,

which the Taliban is now even admitting with ISIS K. I mean, I ISIS K that with the opportunity to off-sheet, which is just a brutal terrorist organization, is alive and well in Afghanistan. And you know, it's bad when the Taliban are calling them extremists. You know, it's pretty bad when the Taliban are saying, hey, those guys are Islamic extremists. You know, it's just gotta be pretty bad. That's, they're not taking hold in Afghanistan. So had we gone with our plan, kept the counterterrorism force there, had the Afghan government and Taliban

come together as a government of national unity, used American prestige, but hard power to make sure that happened. That would have been a very different result than what we saw of Afghans falling out of wheel wells and plunging into their death at Hamid Karzai airport, the leaving behind thousands of Afghan collaborators who work with our interpreters

or Afghan Special Forces, Afghan pilots, leaving behind hundreds of Americans. I mean, there are still Americans trapped in Afghanistan. And that gives the Taliban leverage over the administration, you know, in every negotiation they have to free up funds or that sort of thing, because they've got these Americans there And they've got our allies who are still there that they could you know do do harm to

So you know, it was very different scenario that we had a mind than what what played out and what played out Led to what we talked about at the top of the show is this perception of American weakness that we're so weak They were running out with our tail between our legs, with the Chinook helicopters going to the top of the embassy and extract their diplomats and raising them to safety, while our Afghan allies suffered the results of a Taliban takeover.

And again, maybe the Biden administration didn't expect that to happen, maybe they didn't expect that the government of Afghanistan to fall as quickly as it did, but you can see in hindsight, which is always perfect, you can see how just one step after another with drying our troops down to 600 troops, giving up Bogram Air Base in the middle of the night without telling our allies, you know, peeing the Taliban, you know, begging them not to take this city until a certain number of days, you know, that's the sort of thing that led to this catastrophic catastrophe.

And as Churchill talked about with the Munich Accords, this is something that was going to carry on with us long, long down the road. It was a defeat without a battle. And we're seeing that now with Xi Jinping and Taiwan. We're seeing it with with the IOTOS in the Middle East. And we were certainly the most concrete example is we're watching Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine and with limited success, but also with causing great and terrible humanitarian damage in Ukraine and basically to his own people as well as his own soldiers who have lost thousands of

young Russian lives have been lost in that meek grinder. All of these things you can tie back to what happened in Afghanistan. In hindsight, it was a really poor decision by the Biden administration to handle the evacuation and the withdrawal the way they did. Any in the war, good idea, doing it in that fashion, bad idea. Given that that plan was in place to keep 2,500 troops there and that there were 5,000 NATO personnel there as well, and that that would have been a credible peacekeeping and deterrent force, why do you think the Biden administration acted contrary to that

plan and so precipitously? Yeah, I think there was just bad analysis. I think they thought the Afghan government could stand power longer than it did, that they could get out quicker. I think they didn't quite understand the structure that we'd left behind, although we'd briefed them on it many, many times. And so you heard things like, well, this is Trump's fault and Trump signed the deal. Trump didn't have a plan. Look, I think part of it goes back to what we talked about earlier. It was Trump's fall and Trump signed the deal. Trump didn't have a plan. Look, I think part of it goes back to

what we talked about earlier was, was Trump's resolve. I mean, the Taliban knew not to push Donald Trump very far. They knew the results of what, you know, that he'd take. They saw the Baghdaddy rate. They saw, you know, how tough we could be around the world. I think they took it at a very different measure of Joe Biden. And so I think all these things played into it. And look, I think they took it at a very different measure of Joe Biden. And so I think all these things played into it. And look, I think another part is Biden always wanted to get a Afghanistan. And as we, he wanted to get a Afghanistan back in the Obama administration. And we're going to shut down. Yeah, well, I think they also wanted to see a quick accomplishment on the foreign policy side.

And that back. Let me talk to you now about the situation in Russia. We talked a little bit about what led up to it, although there's a lot more to unpack with regard to that. I mean, I see our relationship, I guess we could talk about that a bit, I see our relationship with Russia since the 1990s as an unbroken string of missed opportunities, virtually unbroken string of missed opportunities by the West. And I also don't understand what we're looking for, what our conditions of satisfaction

would be in relation to the current war. So this is how it appears to me. In the 90s, after the wall collapsed, there were all sorts of attempts to modernize the Russian economy, often conducted by economists who route of their depth because modernizing an entire nation's economy, bringing it into the capitalist realm is complicated beyond anyone's understanding. You need a bedrock of trust between people before that can even happen. And it's not easy at all to understand how to instantiate that trust, right? I mean, in the West, we assume

that the default economic transaction will be honest. And that's an absolute miracle. I have no idea how we ever accomplished that because it's so unlikely that distant people on eBay, for example, can conduct transactions without attempting to rip each other off. The fact that that's the case is an absolute bloody miracle. In any case, it looked to me like we had an opportunity to bring the Russians fully into the western fold. And I think that by applying a Cold War mentality to that situation, either by commission or by omission, consistently for 30 years, we squandered that opportunity. Now I know that people view Putin as having expansionist proclivities, and that may well be the case if you look at what happened in Crimea and the Donbass, but I also think

that Russians regarded Ukraine as an extension of Russia, and we're very concerned about NATO incursion into Ukraine. And it isn't obvious to me, and I'm perfectly willing to be corrected in relationship to this. It isn't obvious to me that it isn't obvious to me why we didn't try to bring NATO into or to bring Russia into NATO too, especially given that the fundamental concern that we're going to be dealing with in the long run is clearly China. And now Russia and China are much closer than they might have been. And that's further complicated by the fact that we're settling down into a very long war here. We're going to spend the sort of money that we spent in Afghanistan that could have been put

towards strengthening the Navy, for example. We're going to spend the billions of dollars in Ukraine that we were spending in Afghanistan there. And I don't see what we have as a plan for either peace or victory. So that's a lot of things to throw at you, but it's quite a mess. So that is, there is a lot of things to be thrown there. So anything you have to say that would bring some clarity that would be more than welcome. Well, there's a lot of time packed there and a lot of good thoughts. I think starting in the beginning, how we dealt with Russia after the fall of the wall. And we missed opportunities, but I think the Russians missed a lot of opportunities too. I think a lot of times in the West

were very critical of ourselves. If we would have only done this, then they would have responded reasonably. Russian was a very corrupt society. It just came off over, you know, the revolution was in 18, so basically 80 years of Soviet tyranny of the most brutal kind, purges and famines and millions, I mean tens of millions of people being killed So there's no Surprised that the fabric of the society across the former Soviet Union was was frayed and there wasn't the trust that you talked about And by the way, I agree with you on it's still a miracle that you can do a deal and on eBay and and most of the time are craigs Let's just something most of the time it works out. It's shocking. Yeah, it's like 99% of the time, or Craigslist, or something, most of the time it works out, it's shocking. Yeah, it's like 99% of the time.

Yeah, it's a testament to our system works, and when we have faith in our system, it will work for the benefit and prosperity of all. But Russia didn't have that. And I think the other issue is, you know, Russia was an empire. And it was, Britain acquired an empire and then gave it up. Russia has always been an empire. There was the Russian empire. There was no differentiation between Russia itself and its colonies and its constituent republics. So, you know, they were assembled in the Soviet Union, but it was basically the Russian empire. And I think the Russians really struggled with the idea that, you know what? Ukraine is just not that into us. I mean, if you go to Ukraine,

yeah, it was, it was subjugated by Russia, and there were Russians speaking people in Ukraine. But most Ukrainians were, were Western. They were, they, they, they, they, but at one point, the Austrian, Hungary and empire, the Polish empire, Polish, uh, kingdom were, you know, they, they were Roman Catholics to a large extent, not orthodox. And so they didn't want to be part of Russia. And I think that was very, very hard for the Russians to understand, just like a guy who's just, you know, pining after a girl, and she's like, she's just not that into you. The Ukrainians just aren't into the Russians, the bolts, the Lithuanians, the Latvians, the Estonians, not that into Russia. Didn't want to be

part of the empire. They'd been subjugated. But it was very hard for the Russians to understand that some of these countries that they subjugated and dominated didn't want to be part of them. I think that was a failure on the Russians part. We may have, there's a lot of talk about NATO expansion. We tried to bring Russian to NATO. We had a part, a NATO Russian partnership.

The Russians had military officers and NATO headquarters, which you think now is quite shocking, you know, in 2023, but, you know, in 2002, that seemed like a great idea. And unfortunately, the Russians didn't take advantage of that. And I think the Russians are being very short-sighted. And this is something I pointed out to Patrachev when I negotiated with him in Geneva. A big part of Russia, then Russia's wealth is in the east, which is underpopulated in Siberia and in eastern Russia.

It's where their diamond mines are, their platinum mines, their oil, their gas, their timber, wildlife, I mean, they're massive lands. A lot of that territory was taken or agreed to be transferred to Russia in 1860 under something called the Convention of Peaking or the Treaty of Peaking about the time of our civil war here in America. China gave up thousands and thousands of miles of and millions of acres of land to the Russians, including the city of Vlatovastok, right in all along Siberia, resource rich lands, that the Russians forced the Chinese because

they had the Zhar was far more powerful than the Chinese emperor at the time. They forced the Chinese to recognize that as all Russian land. Now, Xi Jinping has said many times that the century humiliation will be overcome by the Chinese people, and that they'll take every square inch of property back that they believe was theirs, that they believe was historically Chinese. That's why you had Macau and Hong Kong and Xinjiang with the Uighurs in Western China. That's why you see them fighting the Indians today engaged in bloody battles along the line of actual control in the Himalayas.

You see it with Tibet. Why, you see it with Tibet, the threat against Taiwan, of course. This idea that China is going to assemble all this land, that it lost to Western powers or it lost when it was humiliated because it was weak. Do you think they're not coming for the Russian lands? Do you think they're not coming for Siberia with its treasure trove of resources that the Chinese are desperate for? Because the Chinese are relatively, for as big a country as China is, it's bereft of natural resources the way

that Russia or America has these great stores of natural resources and wealth. They're coming for that and I told that to the Russians and Tom Klancy wrote a book about it, you know, years ago, it called the Bear in the Dragon or the Dragon coming over the mountain or something along those lines. The Chinese are coming for that land and they're doing it very cleverly. Right now there's I think 9 million people in eastern Russia, 3 million of our illegal Chinese immigrants. The Chinese are flooding into Russia.

They throw a bottle of vodka at the border guard and get let in. And they're going to take that land back. And that goes to this national interest. Russia's national interest is not with China. China looks, Russia is being weak as being a country that can be colonized or can be reabsorbed into China in large part, and they can be dominated by Xi Jinping.

The Russians are proud people. And they're no longer communists, they're authoritarian, they're imperialists, and they're no longer communist. They're authoritarian. They're imperialists, but they're not communist. They've got no ideological affiliation with Beijing. Vladimir Putin or whoever comes after him, the one thing we know about Russians throughout history, whether it's a Tsar or the general secretary of the Communist Party, they don't like to get a backseat to anybody as a Russian, very proud people. I don't

think they're going to want to be a colony of China. And so, you know, unfortunately, what's happened is we, you know, I don't want to say we've pushed the Russians to China. The Russians would tell you the West has pushed the Russians to China. But we needed to come up with a way, and we still need to come up with a way to deal with Russia that doesn't allow them to invade their neighbors, doesn't allow them to invade their neighbors. Doesn't allow them to invade Poland or Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland or Ukraine, but that pulls them back away from the unholy alliance that they've got with Beijing. And how do you see that?

How do you see that? And it's in the Russians' interests. So how do you see that laying itself out given that this war is devolving into? Well, it's very difficult to get accurate representation of the situation, but my understanding is that it's turned into something like a grinding stalemate with the advantage possibly shifting to the superior Russian forces. Now, like I said, I'm not confident in the information that I have, but what do you see happening currently?

And how would you outline something approximating a productive pathway forward? Well, look, I think you're right in describing a situation. And that's what I said. The Ukrainians are very tough and very savvy at the outset of the invasion. And they really dealt the

Russians a bloody, bloody nose. One of the reasons they did that was because we got them in the Trump administration, we got them 600 javelin missiles, anti-tank missiles. There were a highly effective at blunting those three armored accesses that came into Ukraine and up until that time, when I was a national scared adviser, we were having a heck of a time getting the Pentagon to even deliver them to those javelins to Ukraine, because there were people in the Secretary of Defense's office that didn't want to provoke Putin. It goes back to this whole theory

that if we help the Ukrainians, we'll provoke Putin. So after Russia invaded Ukraine the first time in 2014 and took Crimea and took parts of the Donbass, you know, remember the Obama administration said, we're going to aid Ukraine. We said I'm Gatorade and MREs and blankets and you know, a few night vision goggles and what they needed, you know, was it's like, so those lents, we said this time when they offered to send me a helicopter, he said, I don't need a helicopter, I don't need a ride, I need ammunition.

And we got them the ammunition to blunt the initial invasion. They got more from the Biden administration. I credit the Biden administration for doing that when it came time. But the Russians suffered. But what I've told people is the Russians aren't stupid. These are very smart people. These are technical people. They've got engineers and scientists and doctors and musicians.

I mean, this is a culture that's, they got sputtin' into space before we did. So don't count the Russians out because they're not dumb. And if you look at Russia's wars, whether it was Sweden or France with Napoleon or Germany with Hitler, the Russians always do poorly at the outset. And then because they're willing to throw

men in material into the meat grinder in a way that we can't do in the West because the political constraints aren't on them. They can go through 100,000 dead young men without losing the presidency. That wouldn't work here in the West. It wouldn't work in Canada or America. But it works in Russia, and they used it to their advantage, Stalin did it, Putin's doing it now. And they're between their smarts and their cruelty to their own people, they're

going to turn things around. I think they've started to do that. So it's a very difficult situation for the Ukrainians. So now the big question, and I don't have the answer on this story, but we need to figure it out. How's how do we, how do we resolve this situation? So the Ukrainians have a safe and secure country, get most of their territory back, if not all of it, in the war, give them security guarantees, and the Ukrainians are gonna be skeptical of those guarantees because they had the security guarantees

from the US and Britain and Russia and France and the Budapest Accords, didn't didn't help them out. That was a precondition for them giving up their nuclear weapons. Right. Right. Which by the way now is this whole thing is another you know argue for any country that's thinking about getting a nuke is get a nuke because you know that's the only that's the only real way you can defend yourself against a great power. So it makes non-proliferation tougher and counter-proliferation tougher.

So the question is, how do we get the Ukrainians what they need and the security they need, and how do we get the Russians to back off and pull them away from the Chinese and more integrated more with the EU and the West and try and make about responsible stakeholder player? Well, especially because we need much of what they have to offer. I mean, the world can't do as far as I can tell without Russia, slash Ukraine, natural resources, particularly with regard to fossil fuels, but also with regard to, well, the ammonia that those fossil fuels produce, that's a crucial issue, but also the

amount of edible grain that both of those states produce. And of course, that's not the their only contribution to the world's economy. I mean, it's hard to defeat a trading partner upon whose resources you're actually dependent. And I mean, it's terribly to defeat a trading partner upon whose resources you're actually dependent. And I mean, it's terribly complex. As you said, I mean, Ukraine has to be supported because they did give up their nuclear weapons. And that's obviously a bad thing. If they, they give up their weapons and strip themselves naked and now they have no defense, that's not a good precedent for operating in the rest of the world.

I mean, it doesn't look, I'm speaking out of turn here, but I'm going to anyways because you have to start somewhere. I can't imagine the Russians ever giving up Crimea. I think they'd, I think they'd go back to the wall to keep Crimea. With regard to the newer territories, they took over their argument, of course, is that those territories were primarily occupied by Russian speakers who have a primary allegiance to Russia. And it seems to me that that could be, in principle, settled by something approximating a referendum in those districts, if that was something that could be established under international supervision. And then to provide

the Ukrainians with territorial integrity guarantees and to invite the Russians back into the Western game, looks to me that something like that looks like a pathway forward. And maybe I've been accused in my attitudes of being a Russia appeaser, and I'm certainly not trying to do that. I think I'm fairly cognizant of the dangers of the Russian enterprise overall. I think that makes me more appreciative in some ways of Putin than other people might be because my sense is that by historical standards, Putin is by no means the worst and most reprehensible leader that the Russians have ever managed to produce. And so,

you know, it might be lovely to consider what the country would be like in his absence, but you know, it might be lovely to consider what the country would be like in his absence, but it's a low bar for them. It did that. That's for sure. It's as low a bar as has ever been established anywhere with the possible exception of the Chinese. So so anyways, I mean, those are thoughts about what a potential move towards solution might approximate.

And what do you think of those thoughts? And what do you think there is as an alternative? I mean, the Ukrainian Koreans, I think, are going to become increasingly desperate. And that also brings up the terrible danger of having the West dragged in, which is the most likely outcome dragged in by their sleeve into this terrible monstrous machine. Well, look, I think a lot of good points. And let me start about the first thing you mentioned about the trading partner. Look, if Russia could get integrated, like it was on its way to into the West selling oil

and gas and agricultural goods, and the agricultural goods, they may not be that expensive. They may not be considered cash crops or the same as diamonds or platinum oil and gas, but that agricultural output of Ukraine and Russia and southern Russia, that's a bread basket for Africa, for Southeast Asia, for Asia. I mean, without that, we're going to face famine. And it's critical that we get this grain out of Ukraine and a lot of the Russians keep trading the grain. Because there's so many people that will just literally die in places like, you know, the Congo and

Egypt and other Lebanon that will have real trouble if they can't get access to it. The other issue in Canada has something to come with Ukraine and Russia here is Potash, which you need for fertilizer and to grow crops on a industrial scale, Canada, Russia, and Ukraine, and the only folks that make potastic commercially viable levels, they can allow for modern agriculture, which has kept the world from going to the famine. So there are a lot of important things that the world and getting this conflict resolved. As far as your, the pieces are parts to a compromise or a settlement or a cord that you laid out. Look, I think those are things that people are

talking about around the world. The Ukrainians are smart. They're thinking about those issues. The Russians are thinking about them. But I think what's happened is there hasn't been you can't get into negotiation if you can't get the two people to the two parties to the table. And right now, Ukraine's, the two parties to the table. And right now, Ukraine's not ready to come to the table and Russia's not ready to come to the table. And I think that the other part of that is we can't do the negotiations for them. The West is particularly bad at negotiating for other countries. And we're willing to, we saw this happen with Vietnam, we saw it happen with certainly with Czechoslovakia and Munich when Chairman when Chamberlain talking about these are the far away places in which we know

a little about. So, we'll just give up the Sudayland for the Czechs and they'll be happy with it and we'll end a war. And again, remember that was incredibly popular in Britain when Chamberlain came home and said we had peace in our time, that's now ridiculed, that's mocked. That wasn't at the time of the time when he was met by huge crowds of the airport. He came into Commons, the House of Commons, and had a standing ovation, bar five people at Churchill and four of his colleagues, were the only one sitting in bipartisan labor and the tri-partisan at the time, the liberal

labor and conservative standing ovation, for example. So, a piecement can be very popular. And we've got to avoid the temptation as America or the Europeans to come in and tell the Ukrainians what they have to do or negotiate a separate deal with the Russians and impose it on Ukraine. We've got to have the two parties. If we want this to be a long-lasting and we want to be stable, Russia, Ukraine, have to negotiate. We can counsel the Ukrainians, counsel the Russians, support the Ukrainians as we have been. That's all important, and those are rightful roles for the EU and for America and Canada

and our NATO allies. But we need to make sure that we're not trying to negotiate for someone else, because that won't work, and it'll end up with another conflict down the road. Now, what leverage do you think the US has given its provision of arms to Ukraine to entice or compel, which is more dangerous, obviously, them to the negotiating table sooner rather than later? With Ukraine, I mean, certainly it's the diplomatic, the diplomatic, the economic, the military support that they're getting.

That's huge leverage from the West on Ukraine, but you don't want to use that unrighteously or unjustly. I mean, you, even my Ukraine's been invaded. The war crimes have been committed in Ukraine. The entire city has been wiped out. And maybe the most pernicious thing that's happened in Ukraine, and I know you did a show on OUR recently and the Sound of Freedom movie. A hundred thousand Ukrainian kids

have been taken out of Ukraine and sent back to Russia. Now, I don't know if this was for sex trafficking or if my guess is the Russians were trying to improve their demographic situation because the demography of Russia is so bad that they get these kids and they incorporate them into Russian families and then it was a hundred thousand more Russian kids

and families and fathers and that sort of thing down the road. So Putin knows he's got a problem, but think about the parents of these kids who are kidnapped and put with other families. This is really dastardly stuff that's happening in Ukraine. So we've got to support them and we don't want to be unrighteous in the pressure that we put on them. But if there comes a point where we believe the Russians are willing to come to the table in a good faith manner,

and we think we could resolve the Ukraine crisis, could help pull Russia away from China, and we could get a long-lasting solution. And then we do go to the Ukrainians, I think, and say, look, we've been with you from the start. We've given you hundreds of billions of dollars in aid. We think we evaluate this as being a real opportunity to negotiate. We'll be the brokers.

We're not going to let the Chinese be the brokers. That's another thing we've mistakenly made. It was led in the Chinese take the lead in peace negotiations. That should be the US and the West job. We'll sit down with you. We'll be the honest brokers and we'll help try and get a deal done. And look, I don't know if this administration has the ability to do it for a whole number of reasons, but I think a new administration,

whether it's President Trump or potentially a DeSantis or whoever it is, could come in with a clean slate and maybe lay the ground where for that sort of a negotiation. But it's a heck of a challenge, not just the Ukrainians who are wearing the brunt of it, and have paid the biggest price. I mean, we spent a lot of money, but they've paid the biggest price in human sacrifice for the sailors, sailors to the Marines have been killed by the Russians, and there's civilians who've been killed, and their children have been lost.

But it's been a sacrifice for everybody involved in the conflict, including the third-party beneficiaries of grain from Russian and Ukraine who aren't getting the grain they needed to stay healthy in Africa and the Middle East and Asia. So we need to figure out how to get this thing to a resolution. But you've talked about some of the outlines of what could be a potential solution, but right now I just don't see anything that's going to bring the parties to the table. Maybe if the Ukraine offensive stalls, if, you know, there's a change in government here in the US, if there's a change in government in Russia, which I don't see happen right away, you know, there are variables that could, could speed up the process, you know, that we don't see now.

But right now, things look pretty bleak. Right, right. Okay, well let's close this. I also wanted to talk to you about the Abraham Accords. They're current status, how you evaluate them overall, and how they might be extended. Maybe you could just start by reminding people who are watching and listening what the Abraham Accords were

and what they signified and how it was that they were successfully negotiated, which was somewhat of a miracle. And then what you see them having produced and may still be capable of yet producing. Well, look, I think it was one of the great accomplishments of the Trump administration, but I think it's an American accomplishment. I don't think it's just a Trump accomplishment or a Jared Kushner or Mike Pompeo or Steve Mnuchin or Robert Abrane accomplishment. I think it was an accomplishment for our country that we were able to use America's influence

to bring peace. It goes back to what we talked about earlier in the show about peace and strength. A strong America is good not just for America, but it's good for the world because it allows for peace to break out. The Abraham Accords originally started out as a deal between the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel, to bring peace to those two countries, both strong partners of the United States, both small countries, but the small countries a punch way above their weight in international affairs and certainly in the region. And every effort to get peace in the Middle East up until this time had been stymied because the idea was if Israel couldn't do a deal with the Palestinians, they couldn't do a deal with any other Arab country. So we started out with Palestinians and we gave my proposal a great deal as a kind of neutral mediator in the deal. We proposed a great deal with the Palestinians. We had to a great deal with the Palestinians.

We had to put a lot of pressure on the Israelis to accept it. The Palestinians, one diplomat once said, never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, miss that opportunity. We were able to, then have the Israelis go to the UAE and say, look, we gave this awesome deal to the Palestinians, they turned it down.

Why are we gonna allow them to keep us from having a deal, keep us from having peace between our two countries? And it took a lot of negotiations with the Saudis and because none of this would happen without Saudi approval, the Saudis didn't ultimately sign the deal, but had the Saudis been totally opposed to it, it wouldn't have happened. We did a lot of negotiations with the UAE, Bahrain.

And I think the parties made a courageous decision because it wasn't just a political decision to make peace. It was really a physical security situation because we look at what's happened to pass leaders in the Middle East that have made peace to Dott or Rabin or, you could end up dead very quickly. And so I think it took a lot of courage from the Crown Prince Mohamed Benzayed from Bebe Netanyahu to the king of Bahrain to King Mohamed in Morocco who will all enter into this peace deal. And

you know, it was improbable. It was improbable from the American side. We had to pull together our whole team and you know, the power that the National Security Advisory has isn't so much as a line, you don't have a line authority. You can't order people to do things. You can't order ambassadors to do things. That's the State Department, the Secretary of State. You can't order generals to do things. That's the Department of Defense and the Secretary of Defense. But you can convene people. We brought together a great team of Mike Pompeo and Secretary of State and Steve Mnuchin and Jared Kushner and our team at the NSC and others. We got that whole team all running in the same direction and the same boat, which doesn't

always happen in the US government, unfortunately. We got the president behind it and we know it was a long shot. We've been counseled by very senior former officials that said, don't waste your time with Middle East peace. It's a mirage that every administration goes for and no one gets it and you waste all your time, energy, pursue other priorities. But we thought we could get it done. And the parties took big risks to make peace.

The Israelis gave up, you know, settlements, annexing settlements in the West Bank. The Arab countries risked their street rising up or being upset with them. They risked potential terrorism for Iran or from the Palestinians. But we got them together. And what does it mean? And number one, militarily, intelligence-wise, it's a great alliance to these countries, or not quite a military, intelligence alliance, but a partnership against Iran.

Iran wants to change how the world operates. They want to place themselves with their Shia ideology, their end times ideology at the top of the region in the Middle East, dominate the entire Middle East, and ultimately have great influence all over the world and change the way we live our lives. And this Abraham Accords took a very strong UAE, a strong Israel, and other countries and put them together and helped them stand up to the Iranians. So number one militarily it was a and intelligence wise, it was a great deal. Number two economically, we've got the most dynamic country in the world outside of America, outside of Silicon Valley is Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and Israel. The tech sector there, both on the hard tech side, the computers and ships, the soft side with software, but then the egg tech and figuring out how to make the desert blossom and grow the food that we need and manage the water, which is going to be as important as oil in the future.

That's all coming out of this little tiny country of Israel is just blossoming, but they need investment. The UAE has almost an unlimited amount of capital to invest. They've got a very wealthy country. They've got very well established capital markets. They're the crossroads of trade and not just for the Middle East but for Africa and Asia. So to put the UAE in their capital and their trading expertise together with the Israelis

and their tech was just a going to create an economic dynamism that is talking to one plus one equals two, it's going to be one plus one equals like five. The benefit it had for us as Americans is as we've pushed the Chinese out of our tech sector using the syphius process and other tools, the Chinese were starting to invest heavily in Israel because they were going to, the Chinese are good at mimicking and copying, but they're not great at innovating. And so they were going to go where the innovation was happening. Well, now what's happened is this Arab money, this UAE money capital, is being invested

in Israeli startups and is pushing the Chinese out of Israel, which is another great benefit to the United States. So you've got this military, you've got this intelligence, you've got this economic benefit. But the intangible is peace for peace sakes. We always kind of look at things in my world, national security and foreign policy is, how do we advance American interests? How do we protect ourselves? How do we keep ourselves safe?

It's kind of a hard analysis. But for human beings, every time I see a friend, send me an Instagram photo of somebody having their bad myths or their bar mitzvon Dubai and say, isn't this great? It's pretty amazing when you think about it that this just happened, you know, three years ago. I mean, September of 2020. And you've got all these Israeli kids wanting to go to their bad myths or their bar mitzvah and Dubai.

I mean, that's good for the human spirit. It's good for the soul. When you see, when you see Emirates up on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, going to the Al-Aksamasque or Blue Mosque, and making the pilgrimage to what they believed was the third most holy site in Islam. And they can now go fly directly from Abu Dhabi to Jerusalem, to Bengaring, to our part and Tel Aviv, and drive up Jerusalem up to the mountains, and go have their pilgrimage. These are things that were just that were unheard of. I mean, no one would have even believed that they'd happen,

you know, even when I was a hostage on a voyant and doing work in the region. And you would have told me that the piece would be breaking out. You know, it was something that you wouldn't have thought possible. And yet it is. And so there's a human element and it's as an example to other places in the world that no matter how intractable the problems are,

and maybe even Russia, Ukraine, you know, that you can come up with an accord. And I'm proud of the United States that we were the ones with the brokerate. There was nothing we gained directly from it. We gained indirectly, obviously, from the security and the economics and just the good will for brotherhood of mankind. But this was us putting all of our political capital on the line that President taking big risk and putting his political capital on the line.

Department of State agencies don't always get along well together, playing together to make this push. And then again, I wanna give credit to the Netanyahu and Muhammad Bin Saed and King Muhammad and the others that actually signed the deal and put their own lives on the line. It was really quite an accomplishment. And I hope there's now some talk that Saudi that the Biden administration is pushing for the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords. I mean, putting all politics aside,

it would be great if Saudi joined the Abraham Accords. That would be a really good thing. Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and President Biden, I wish him luck. Because if we put it inside the politics of how it now, of course, President Biden will get the Nobel Prize for it, which President Trump did. He should have gone. But it clearly. But it's it's it. Look, it'd be good for good for the region, good for the world and good for America if Saudi joins the Abraham Arts and if Saudi does then you're gonna have you know a good chance to quit no more on in other countries Certainly some of them Islamic countries in Africa will join and I think you got a real You know kind of gold rush for peace here and and change the way that and then hopefully the Palestinians come along

Right and get on board and have their own state. And they're creative people, they're smart people, they're doctors and you know, businessmen and well-educated folks, literate folks, but they've been kept down by these leaders, these corrupt leaders in the Palestinian Authority or the Islamic extremists in Gaza. And I think you get rid of the corruption

and the extremism, the Palestinians would And I think he read the corruption and the extremism. The Palestinians would have a chance for a tremendous future in the Middle East in a free and prosperous Middle East. So there's a lot of good that can, that's, you know, we did a lot of good, but there's a lot more good that can happen. And I wish the Biden folks, you know, luck as they pursue this, the next piece, which is clearly Saudi Arabia. Look, that's a really, well, it's very nice to be able to end on high note. And I do think there's tremendous promise

in the extension of those accords. I mean, and that would be a miracle of peace and a miracle of economic expansion. And man, we could definitely use, we could definitely use more of that. Some union among the people of the Abrahamic faith. I know they're pushing that hard in the UAE. And so that's a hell of a thing to watch for. And it's something extraordinarily hopeful.

So yeah, good luck to the Biden administration and pursuing that. If they can manage it, that would be real. That would be very forward looking of them. And to, and also, you know, it would require them giving the devil his due. And that would be Trump in that situation. But man, the payoff would be so great that, you know, you'd hope people could lift their eyes above the internet scene conflict and look to the long run. Thank you very much for talking to me today. Thanks for having me, Jordan. My honor. Yeah, it was a pleasure.

It was a pleasure hearing from you and getting further educated with regard to the issues that you've been so involved in and mastered to such a degree. There's lots of other things we could have talked about. And having said that, I'm going to continue talking to Ambassador O'Brien for another half an hour on the daily wire plus side of things. If those of you who are watching and listening are interested in that, please join us there, we'll delve a little bit into the more autobiographical side of Ambassador of Bryant's life. And so you can join us there if you'd like to. Otherwise, thank you very much for your time and attention here on YouTube. And thanks once again for agreeing to talk to me

today. It's a pleasure. Great to be with you. Thank you, Jordan. It's a pleasure. Great to be with you. Thank you, Jordan.