The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Robert D. Kaplan: the challenge of urban warfare in Gaza

Starting point is 00:00:01 When you're a journalist and people don't trust you, it's always your fault. These people need to be represented. They are Canadian. They deserve to have a voice and a seat at the table. It is time to go back to the office, and the time is now. Russia had reasons to be concerned. They had reasons to be fearful. We're at an absolute turning point in reproduction. This is the problem with realism. They just treat all countries the same. They don't distinguish between dictatorships and democracies. Hello, among listeners, Roger Griffiths here, you're a lot of people.

Starting point is 00:00:31 host and moderator, welcome to this, our continuing conversations called the monk dialogues. These are in-depth questions and answers with some of the world's sharpest minds and brightest thinkers. We go deep on each monk dialogue into the big issues and ideas that are transforming our world and shaping our future. Well, Israel is facing a wartime challenge like anything we have seen in recent modern history. The Israeli Defense Force is planning to invade Gaza in order in the words of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to crush and destroy Hamas after the devastating terrorist attacks on Israel last week. This type of dense urban warfare where the targets are insurgents hiding behind and within civilian populations and residential buildings has posed

Starting point is 00:01:23 an exceptional challenge for invading armies. One need look no further than the first Battle of Fallujah in Iraq. in 2004 to see what Israel could be up against. Today we're joined by a celebrated writer who embedded up close and personal with the U.S. Marines as they stormed Fallujah in 2004, facing intense close-quarter combat against thousands of insurgents, all inside a large Middle Eastern city. His name is Robert D. Kaplan, and he'll share with us his personal experience of the siege of Fallujah and his thoughts on the lessons it holds for Israel's military as it prepares for a ground assault on Gaza. Robert will also draw on his deep knowledge of geopolitics to give us an

Starting point is 00:02:13 assessment of the risk of the current war escalating regionwide. Robert Kaplan is the internationally renowned author of over a dozen books on international affairs and history, including such classic texts as Balkan ghosts and the coming anarchy. His latest work of nonfiction is the loom of time between empire and anarchy from the Mediterranean to China. Robert Kaplan, welcome to the monk dialogues. It's a pleasure to be here. So much to talk with you about. I've always enjoyed having the opportunity to host you as a speaker here in Canada to read your big books. And we're going to get into some of these over the course of our conversation today. But I want to start, Robert, with something quite remarkable that you did

Starting point is 00:03:02 as a reporter for the Atlantic magazine. In 2004, you embedded yourself with the first Marine division as it conducted its assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah, a major set piece of the U.S. story in Iraq and important for us today to try to understand Robert what may be in store for the IDF and the Israeli military as they contemplate a ground invasion of Gaza and the defenestration of Hamas in the densely populated environment of Gaza City. So let's start there. Give us give us some background first on your experience in Iraq, why you admitted yourself with the First Marine Division. Let's open that up for our audience. Yes, this was April 2004, and I was embedded with the 3rd Battalion of the Fifth Marines of the First Marine Division.

Starting point is 00:04:12 It's called 3-5. And 3-5 was doing what was then called Stability Operations, and I'll Lonbar province. Then a number of U.S. contractors were gruesomely murdered in the small city of Fallujah, and the decision was taken. It was a terrible decision in hindsight, by the way, to invest the city, to take over the city through an armed attack. It would have been much better off had they just encircled and closed the city off, but that all came later in books and everything. And since I was the only reporter embedded with one, five, the first battalion of the fifth Marines, and a battalion, by the way, a U.S. Marine battalion is about 800, 900, 900 men, of which about 600 or 500 are combat troops. The rest are support in one sense or another. Another thing, Fallujah, this was the first battle of Falusia. This was the first battle of Falusia. There would be a second battle the following November. So this is first Fallujah, as it's been called.

Starting point is 00:05:27 And keep in mind that Fallujah at the time was far less densely populated than Gaza is now. It had no underground tunnels or anything like that. You didn't get the feeling you were in a really intense urban environment. It was more like a suburban environment. environment with ratty buildings and a lot of dust. But nothing like apartment houses right next to each other, which you have in Gaza City and places like that. And as I said, no tunnels or anything like that. And the Marines were fighting, you know, Iraqi insurgents at the time. And even though on paper, first Fallujah was far less daunting than what

Starting point is 00:06:18 the Israelis face now. I can tell you as a journalist, it was absolute hell. I've never been so terrified in all my life. Anyone who tells you they like covering wars or they get to rush out of it is lying. Everyone is terrified. They're just doing their job, you know, writing in their reporter's notebook to bury their fear. In other words, maybe, you know, photographers are the real brave people. right in your face, kind of. And there aren't that many war photographers. There are a lot of news photographers, but very few authentic combat war photographers. And this was absolute hell for a number of reasons. The Marines were very super disciplined, holding their fire, waiting for a good shot, and yet fire was coming at them from three directions, sometimes from four. And it was unclear who was

Starting point is 00:07:18 firing because the adversary, you know, knew the town much better than the Marines did. So there was no getting away from occasionally hitting a civilian, even though they were targeting only young men with guns. I was there for four days. Four days of combat, which seemed like a year. You know, You eat when you can, you sleep when you can on a hard floor, a hard concrete for without changing your clothes. You eat cold, you know, rations. You're always thirsty. You're always terrified. There's no let up.

Starting point is 00:08:04 It doesn't stop. It goes 24 hours, so to speak. So to extrapolate from that experience. and consider what the Israelis will be facing, if in fact they go through with what they have stated that they intend to attack the northern half of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City. I don't see how it could be done, even with the vast exodus of civilians. I don't see how it can be done without killing non-combatants. and also, because not everyone will leave, keep in mind.

Starting point is 00:08:47 And I don't see how they can find, how they'll be able to find hostages in the tunnel network, etc. And, you know, the Marines had some air cover, not as much as the Israelis will have. The Israelis will have a lot more air cover, and they'll be very targeted. You know, also technology has developed, dramatically since 2004. You know, we're 19 years away, 19 and a half years removed. And in that

Starting point is 00:09:19 time, war technology, more precise, targeted, precision-guided technology has advanced a many-fold. So that you can't, you know, in that sense, Fallujah was ancient, as strange as it may seem now. But I see this as just absolute hell magnified by many times based on what I experienced in Fallujah. Because you're dealing with hardened, as we know, well-trained and disciplined adversaries. This can't be anything but a mess unless, of course, the Israelis have something else in store, which they might have, where it's not going to be an all-out just, you know, Russia. style invasions, invasion. Yeah. Robert, give us some vignettes because, again, you were with these troops in

Starting point is 00:10:13 Fallujah for four days. It was powerful reporting. We'll include links in the show notes to your original articles in the Atlantic, where there are a couple of particular moments of just, you know, peril, heroism. I want to try to help our audience because it's just so unimaginable to try to make this, reality of dense urban warfare come alive to try to help us understand at a personal individual level, what is this like? Yeah, there were constant, it's not a matter of heroism. It's a matter of men, in this case, it was all men, doing their jobs, just doing their jobs. And, you know,

Starting point is 00:11:01 when casualties started to mount among the Marines, these were, not just numbers and names, but people, the Marines knew intimately. Because remember, a battalion is not like a division. You know, it's not impersonal. A battalion's just big enough without getting too big so that everybody knew each other well, kind of. And I had gotten to know them quite a bit, because I had been with them a month before Fallujah. You know, keep, this was my fifth week of embedding with them. And when people said, oh, so-and-so was just killed, so-and-so just took a hit, you know, so-and-so, the Marine said the first thing the commander would say, fill that spot, you know, there was no like emotional register. All that would come later, of course,

Starting point is 00:11:54 and double time, come back double time later. But in the moment, it was all professionalism. You know, it was all professionalism. We need to find someone else at that roadblock because someone has taken a hit. You know, the extraordinary thing about it was the cool, detached professionalism in the face of the fact that, you know, even those alive were not all going to come back alive.

Starting point is 00:12:24 You know, I remember the last shower before they went in, they knew they were going to go in and everyone took a shower. You know, and, you know, and they said, well, this is the last shower a lot of us will ever have, you know, kind of. It's, it was done very coldly, very professionally. It's something civilians cannot imagine. They can only experience. Or, you know, veterans can imagine it.

Starting point is 00:12:52 You know, veterans of wars. And, Robert, when there were casualties and you say it, an ethos of professionalism propelled here. Was that always the case? Was there at times just raw anger? Does professionalism risk giving away to moments of retribution and vengeance in the face of, again, just an inconceivably challenging situation, to put it mildly? Well, obviously that happened, but I did not experience it.

Starting point is 00:13:30 I never saw or heard anything like that. I heard calls for vengeance, but not by Marines in Iraq, in war zones, by special forces based in South America, wishing they were in Iraq rather than posted to South America. But actually, in the war zone, as I experienced it for only four days, mind you, of intense urban combat or suburban combat. It was all professionalism. I never saw anyone lose it. Okay, let's turn to the situation that Israel faces right now. You've intimated to us that you think, in a sense, there is an aspect of this. This could quite simply be mission impossible, that the stated objectives, at least as articulated to date by Benjamin Netanyahu, of the complete destruction of Hamas, the removal of its capabilities, its threat.

Starting point is 00:14:30 for a generation or more, to paraphrase the Israeli prime minister. It sounds like what you're saying, Robert, is that those are, at this moment, lofty words, and that the application of that to the battle space is something else entirely. So if you were advising the Israeli government right now, and you understand, as few people do, the challenge that Israel faces, the restoration of credible deterrent, in the face of arguably the greatest loss of its of national security since the founding of the state of Israel. How do you square the circle?

Starting point is 00:15:10 What's your advice to them? Well, the idea is to find the sweet spot between deterrent, between the restoration of deterrence and all out, um, Stalingrad style warfare. I don't use the word Stalingrad and Russia with, you know, but, you know, lightly. because, you know, as we've seen in Ukraine, the Russian style of war is without any subtlety. You know what I mean? Without any subtlety, it's just going and kill as many as you can. And including your own men, if they turn back, you know, is what happened in Stalingrad. There has to be a sweet spot between that and between the restoration of deterrence.

Starting point is 00:15:56 And there very well might be. It may be called an all-out invasion, but that doesn't mean it will be prosecuted that way. It may mean, you know, quite a number of units going out, you know, for specific objectives rather than just taking a whole city, you know, having a center point that they can secure and going out on targeted strikes for a certain amount of time. with air cover. Now, that will still, despite the exodus, the civilian exodus, lead to civilian casualties and other extreme messiness, but it is different from that, you know, than what I described earlier, where you just go in and just shoot and take a whole city, so to speak. They are looking, I wouldn't say for a certain number of people, but for class of individuals. you know, in the Hamas upper echelons, you know, what, you know, they're fighters. And we, we, and for instance,

Starting point is 00:17:06 up until this attack a week ago, Saturday, Israeli intelligence was extremely formidable. I think what probably happened with the attack was it wasn't that intelligence was bad. It was that the assumptions were lazy and smug, which is a different, which is a different thing. thing. Right. Let's pull back from the immediate context of what might happen on the ground in Gaza City in the days of weeks come to the regional context. We're starting to see what looks like the pieces falling together for potentially a larger regional conflict to be triggered by a ground invasion or a substantial escalation of civilian casualties in Gaza. How do you read this, Robert, you've looked at so many conflicts over the years. Are you seeing dynamics and

Starting point is 00:18:04 patterns here that were you? Well, on the one hand, the very intimate bestiality of the attacks on the Kibbutzim and other places could change Israeli calculus regarding Iran. You know, even if the Iranians were not involved in that attack, for years and decades, they have been providing Hamas with logistics, you know, training, money, etc., trying to bring Hamas a Sunni organization up to the level of Hezbollah, a Shia organization in Lebanon, where the Iranians have had relations and, in fact, formed going back into the 1980s, whereas Hamas didn't take power in Gaza until 2007, I think. And so even if the Iranians were not specifically involved in this, I think the calculus might change for the long run, that who knows, maybe if the Iranians did have a nuclear bomb,

Starting point is 00:19:10 maybe they would actually use it against us. All assumptions are off. But that's not for today. That's not for an expansion of the war today. That's for some months down the road, because the fact is the Israelis have all they can handle with Gaza now, and in fact are going to use the two U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups in the eastern Mediterranean, one on station, one arriving in a few days. They're going to use that as deterrence, I think, for Hezbollah. Because the Israelis, you know, the Israelis struck two Syrian airfields the other day. I think all that is a statement to Syria, Hezbollah.

Starting point is 00:19:52 saying, you know, we're on your game. Don't get smart or anything. We can take you down. I think the Israelis will seek to limit this to Gaza for the time being. And though they may have long-range changed assumptions for both southern Lebanon and Iran proper, those assumptions won't be acted out soon, I don't think. I don't see the Iranians trying to instigate a major conflict now because they don't want the Israelis to get from the Americans bunker-busting bombs, you know, Casey, air-to-air refueling, all that would be necessary for an easier Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. there's been a lot in the paper about the spread of, you know, this into a major regional war. I'm not seeing it just yet.

Starting point is 00:20:55 Talk to us a bit more about Hezbollah. So there has been some rocketing into Israel. It looks like maybe attempts to kind of fix some Israeli positions in place. Do you, is there a concern here that Hezbollah could feel compelled by an Israeli ground incursion into Gaza to open up a second front to kind of relieve their their allies, Hamas, from the full effects of the IDF, land, sea, and error. And can that strategy, Robert, be calibrated? Can Hezbollah kind of get what it wants without triggering the war that possibly, as you say,

Starting point is 00:21:45 Iran doesn't want. Yeah, yes, I think it can. I think what Hezbollah wants to do is tie down the Israeli troops in northern Israel to keep them there, you know, not to see any redeployments from northern Israel to Gaza. And to keep them there, they have to keep shooting, you know, in a desultory but regular, a regular manner. You know, there's a big difference between reading about exchanges of fire on Israel's northern border every day and a full-scale opening of a second front in the north. But as you indicate earlier, if this becomes an all-out urban assault on Gaza, you know, like first Fallujah on multiple steroids, so to speak, Hezbollah might feel compelled to open up a second front.

Starting point is 00:22:39 But I don't believe they would do that without Iranian approval. Because Hezbollah's ties with Iran, remember, are much more organic than Hamas's ties with Iran. Remember, it's also geographical. You know, between Hamas and Iran are countries, you know, Israel, Jordan, etc. But between Hezbollah and Iran are failed states, you know, Syria and Iran, are failed states. Syria and Iraq, where Iran has been able to operate relatively, you know, with relative ease. So the ties, the links between Hezbollah and Iran are far more intimate, you know, than between Hamas and Iran. And that's why, whereas Hamas could conceivably make these strikes without specific Iranian approval,

Starting point is 00:23:39 I don't think Hezbollah can open up a second front without that. What do you see the Gulf states doing? Up to this point, there was this remarkable rapprochement with Israel that looked on the verge of culminating with some kind of normalization of relations between Riyadh and Jerusalem. That now all off the table, lots of conjecture, in fact, that this terrorist attack, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was, in fact, perpetrated to derail the Saudi-Israeli-Ropreschement. Is any of this salvageable? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:24:20 You know, it's harder and harder to be a dictator these days. I don't mean that as a joke because dictators have to deal with social media, you know, a street and Islamic street. You can be the most brutal dictator, but you don't want to. anger, a lot, you know, a lot of young men, you know, a lot of young, young men in the street in any country. So I think my sense is that the Saudi Israeli movement towards relations and the Abraham Accords will go into cold storage for the moment, but are not by any means dead. because Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Zaid in the United Arab Emirates,

Starting point is 00:25:07 their idea for a peace with Israel is not based on emotion. It's not based on any short-term strategy of let's be friendly and live in peace with the Jews. No, none of that. It was based on cold Machiavellian, middle and long-term logic. that in the face of an Iran, they need Israel's high-tech advice. They need, you know, Israel's strategic benefit, all of that. And so this, they've got to put this on the side for now, because even though they're dictators, they have to worry about their street, so to speak. So they'll be difficult. They'll be truculent. They'll put this in a deep freeze. You know, they'll actually be thinking. how could Netanyahu betray us by letting his guard down like this? These are, you know, the Gulf, the Gulf rulers are, they're real Machiavellians.

Starting point is 00:26:12 They don't know, they probably don't know who to be more angry with first, Netanyahu or Hamas, you know, because they have no use for the Palestinian leadership, you know, and they would much rather have, you know, a more moderate, leftist Israeli leader than Netanyahu. But they have to deal with what they have to deal with. So I think they're going to put the, you know, the movement towards diplomatic relations with Israel in storage for the time being. But who knows what three, four, six months down the road this will look like. Rudyard Griffiths here, the executive director of the monk debates. Well, this November 3rd, we will be convening in downtown Toronto at Roy Thompson Hall for our 2023 Autumn Monk

Starting point is 00:27:03 debate. The topic before the House, the crisis of liberalism for exceptional debaters coming from the United Kingdom and the U.S. to debate this all-important topic. Visit our website www.w.w.munkdebates.com for information on how you can get tickets and information on live streaming the debate on November 3rd. We've got you covered all that information right now at Triple W Monk Debates with an S.com. Robert, the Biden administration, let's see what your view is, either fairly or not, has come under criticism for its foreign policy vis-a-vis Iran and in the region. There are calls to return Iran to the more kind of strict sanction regime that was enforced under the Trump administration. Iran has been allowed over the last year or so to significantly increase its oil exports.

Starting point is 00:28:06 There was this hostage for money deal, now frozen in Qatar, $6 billion for the release of American citizens in Iranian prisons. How do you rate the Biden administration's kind of performance? To what extent does their policy vis-a-vis the Middle East require a reset? Yeah, well, first of all, I don't like to criticize too much hostage exchanges because you're dealing with real individuals, real families, and once you get them back, they're off the table is an issue. And that actually frees you up to take more aggressive action towards that state. So while there's nothing to cheer about with the hostage exchange in Iran, I don't want to come down heavy on the Biden administration for that in particular. I think, you know, their policy had been to

Starting point is 00:29:07 try to get Iran back into compliance to the nuclear deal, which was a reasonable policy. The problem is we're beyond that now. And also, the Biden administration is now in re-election mode. And so, and elections are all about emotions, you know, you know, you know, see, that's the thing with democracies, both in Israel and in the U.S. It's driven by emotions, not cold analysis, because that's one of the things that come along with democracy, essentially. So I think the Biden's, administration is going to take a much more harder approach to Iran, which is going to go along, you know, which may mean sending Israel bunker buster bombs, air-to-air refueling planes, which would, as I said earlier, help enable a presumed Israeli strike on Iran.

Starting point is 00:30:08 Because most of the hostages have been gotten back, I mean the hostages that were in Iran, and not the Israelis in Gaza. So that I see a much more hard align towards Iran from the Biden administration. I also see a more conciliatory attitude towards Middle East dictators, namely Mohammed bin Salman, Mohammed bin Zaid, and Abdul al-Fata-L-C-C in Egypt, because suddenly they need these people, you know? Suddenly, you know, because they don't know what's coming down the road. They need Al-Ci to let civilians in from Gaza. They need Mohammed bin Salman not to

Starting point is 00:30:52 completely disrail this Biden initiative of Israeli, Saudi, American peace, security arrangement. Suddenly, it's not just a matter of why don't these people ever hold elections. It's a matter of real hardcore national interest in a crisis situation. How do you think Russia and China? are looking at the events of the last week and a half. To what extent does Russia now have a much freer hand in Ukraine? And how do you think China's possible calculus about Taiwan and the unification, the reunification of Taiwan with the Chinese mainland may have changed over the preceding days? Well, this is the Hamas attack and the presumed Israeli-resolution.

Starting point is 00:31:44 is good news for Vladimir Putin. And the reason is it's something so basic. Nobody actually mentions it. It's that it's taken Ukraine off the news. You know, there are less eyeballs for Ukraine. And when there are less eyeballs, when it's suddenly a page two story, rather than a page one story, there's less sympathy, there's less pressure to supply them with weapons. It's across the board. supply, sympathy, diplomatic aid, all flow from media attention. You know, that's the world we live in. And what this is done is it's taking media attention away from Ukraine. And so this is good news for Putin, you know, just that alone is a big boost. Look, China has relations with Israel. I believe you could check it even, it even administers one or two

Starting point is 00:32:44 of the ports in Israel, in Haifa and Ashkelon. This is something the Chinese do all over the world. They administer ports. So China has no particular animus towards Israel at all. But nevertheless, this attack, the presumed war in Gaza will also, it's good for China because it takes the U.S. attention away from East Asia and Taiwan. Now, that doesn't mean China is going to use this moment to attack Taiwan, it just means that America is distracted once more in the Middle East, which is, which as a turn from the younger Bush administration is good news for China. I want to wrap our interview with you for spending a little bit of time reflecting back on your big bestseller from 1994, the coming anarchy.

Starting point is 00:33:39 You know, your thesis there, needless to say, seems rather prophetic when we look at the events of the last few years, even if we look back through the decades proceeding the war on terror and the terrorist attacks of 9-11. In other words, a thesis that you posited that, you know, struggles would no longer be neatly ideological and categorized in the ways that we understand. in the Cold War, but increasingly cultural and historical and that disorder and civil strife would become kind of bywords for international relations and global conflict. Robert, people have really, you know, struggled with your thesis. There have been various kind of, you know, counterarguments and attacks on it. It seems like, and I say this, and I'm sure you feel this way, too, with no sense of pride of authorship,

Starting point is 00:34:43 he kind of got it right. What did you see then and how have you seen it play out now? The thesis of the coming anarchy. All right. Just a little background. The coming anarchy appeared, as you said, in 1994, when elites at Davos and all over the world were proclaiming globalization, final peace,

Starting point is 00:35:02 you know, perpetual Kantian peace, all of that. Yes, there was a war in the Balkans and we had a genocide in Rwanda. But the bigger picture was the spread of democracy, the spread of middle classes, America's unipolar moment, victory in the Cold War. And I was having none of it because of what I saw in places that were not in the headlines,

Starting point is 00:35:27 but I felt were part of the human family, meaning West Africa and Turkey, where I visited slums in both countries and compared the two and saw that, you know, resource scarcity, shortages of water, you know, shortages of, you know, shortages of, you know, you know, increasing loss of soil fertility, you know, all the, you know, population, not overpopulation, but just the intensive increase in the numbers of young unemployed men. in various places, we're going to chain react with already existing political differences. They didn't cause them.

Starting point is 00:36:17 They were a background noise to them. And that's really what the coming anarchy was about. It was this reaction to post-Cold War euphoria and to the connection between what I called resource scarcity and environmental changes, which are now all get bundled under the name of climate change. You know, and seeing how climate change and already existent ethnic and sectarian and regional divides would kind of, would kind of, you know, instigate each other, would aggravate each other.

Starting point is 00:36:56 So in that sense, the piece was right. Keep in mind that nothing written can tell you what's going to happen next week or next month. You know, that has to do with the Shakespearean dynamics of individuals. And nothing written can tell you what's going to happen in 50 years because that sheer speculation, it doesn't take into account technology, et cetera. But it can say something interesting about the next 15 or 20 years. You know, or something, that's about the best you can do, something relevant for the next 15 or 20 years. And that's why I just had a big piece in the new statesman, you know, talking about the Kuin Niger a little while back, and talking about how Sahelian Africa is central to the human race because of all these issues.

Starting point is 00:37:50 We're all part of one human family. One of the key poe quotes of the coming Antiree was the insight, this again, 1994, that Islam is a religion ideally suited for urbanizing for the urbanizing poor who were willing to fight. In some ways, it seems like you understood what Gaza could or might become before Gaza existed. You could look at it this way, but, you know, what I was, you know, my point was that culture, religion, these things cannot be washed away by Western rationality, you know, or by a cold analysis, you know, you know, You know, the ultimate realization of realism is the fact that people are not always motivated by rational concerns. You know, people are people.

Starting point is 00:38:45 They're emotional, kind of speak. And therefore, all this religion, urbanization, all has to be taken into account. One final comment from an article that you published in the National Interest, where you revisited the book in 2018. 18, you wrote my vision then and now of vast geopolitical disruption is not ultimately pessimistic, but merely historical. So if that, Robert, is the moment we live in, a moment of vast geopolitical disruption, what is the strategy that we should pursue to try to blunt its most pernicious, and deleterious effects.

Starting point is 00:39:37 And I think of things like, you know, the discussion which has been re-awakened around the last week's horrible events in the Middle East, you know, restarting a two-state solution, restarting a conversation toward some kind of reconciliation of Palestinians and Jews. But then I listen to you, Robert, and, you know, it seems like we are in a moment of emotion, not reason, not rationality. So how do all these constructs that we've created, this whole kind of post-World War II architecture, is any of this of value or use? Do we need a new architecture? You know, I can't forget who is the philosopher who said, you know, he's always

Starting point is 00:40:26 impressed with mankind's ability to just muddle through, you know, which I think, kind of gets, in other words, at times of high emotion, policy should not be driven by emotion. It should be driven by analysis, you know. And what I worry about is that the America and the Israelis are being driven by emotion now. Because something deeply emotional has occurred does not mean when you have the responsibility, the bureaucratic responsibility of a head of state, or near the head of state does not mean that you should act emotional as well. You know, there's a lot to be said for cold middle of the road thinking through things and not getting carried away.

Starting point is 00:41:23 And just briefly on that point of a two-state solution, would you see that as that kind of, again, conventional but possible? possibly important plotting kind of dialogue around a solution, which today, frankly, seems more distant than in any time that that conversation has occurred? Well, there are two things operative in the two-state solution. One for it, one against it. The one for it is this could be, this is going to be incredibly. tiring and taxing and bloody for the Israelis. And the end result, because there will be elections

Starting point is 00:42:10 down the road, is that they may say, you know, to heck with it. We can't manage this anymore. We have to give them their own state. That's the positive outcome, you see? But the other outcome, the other electoral outcome, because this all comes back to Israeli politics, mind you. The other outcome is, look, the Gaza Strip was veritably independent for almost two decades. It wasn't like we were denying them independence. They ruled themselves. We uprooted Kabut-Kibbutzim. We left lockstock and barrel with not one Israeli in Gaza.

Starting point is 00:42:50 They were an independent country. And what did they do with it? You know? So, and that logic applied to the West Bank would say, if we give it away within two or three years, an Islamic radical group will take power there after the, you know, because Fata seems empty,

Starting point is 00:43:09 it seems corrupt, you know, non-dynamic, non-efficient. So there's both a positive and a negative regarding the two-state solution. And we'll have to see which one plays out, you know,

Starting point is 00:43:23 going ahead. And that in turn will depend upon what happens on the ground in Gaza. Final question, Robert, what will you be looking for in the days and weeks to come as flags, as signals about where this conflict is going, and particularly whether it's at risk of escalating beyond Gaza to ensnare the region in a broader war? I'll be looking for how methodical the Israelis operate. You know, whether it's, you know, whether it's targeted, disciplined, not all out, or whether it is all out, you know, because they can, you know, to say that you're going to destroy Hamas and you're massing troops does not necessarily mean the government is going for an all-out, as I said earlier, a Russian-style invasion. You know, the government may be playing with some disinformation, too, you know, deliberately. Right. So what, yeah, what will it be?

Starting point is 00:44:26 We will see. And Robert Kaplan, thank you so much for coming on the program to date. Your analysis, your insights are always greatly appreciated. And we'll have lists to your latest book, to the coming anarchy, to so many contributions that you've made intellectually to our understanding of world affairs, to geopolitics, to how and why countries do what they do. Thank you again for speaking with us today. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be with you. Well, that wraps up today's dialogue. I want to thank our guest, Robert Kaplan. He certainly give us a lot to think about. If you have reflections or feedback on what you've just heard,

Starting point is 00:45:11 please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. That's MUNK DebateswithanS.com. Also, a friendly reminder that our monk debate on liberalism is fast approaching. Join us November 3rd at Toronto's Roy Thompson Hall as British MP. Jacob Rees-Mogg and American Conservative commentator George F. Will take on British journalist and left-wing activist Ash Sarkar and American Social Conservative, Sarab Amari, to debate whether liberalism gets the big questions right. Tickets are on sale now, Triple W. W. Moncdebates.com. Thank you for lending your time and attention to our efforts to bring back the art of public debate and civil dialogue. one conversation at a time. I'm your hosted moderator, Rudyard Griffiths.

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The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Robert D. Kaplan: the challenge of urban warfare in Gaza

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