The Ricochet Podcast - They're Called "World Wars" for a Reason

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

That war in the Middle East had been predicted did little to allay the shock of all who’ve followed the news from Israel since October 7th. Today's first guest Niall Ferguson was among those who made such a prediction. He joins to discuss the Second Cold War, why it's warming up, and the difficulties the US will face if the temperature continues to rise. And Eli Lake joins to expound upon a shift in Israel's national security policy as the country concludes that existence in a world that contains Hamas is impossible.

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Lahr and James Lylex. Today we talk about the events of the week with Neil Ferguson and Eli Lake. So let's have ourselves a podcast. We didn't want this war. It was forced upon us in the most brutal and savage Lake. So let's have ourselves a podcast. We didn't want this war. It was forced upon us in the most brutal and savage way. But though Israel didn't start this war, Israel will finish it. Once the Jewish people were stateless, once the Jewish people were defenseless, no longer.

Hamas will understand that by attacking us, they've made a mistake of historic proportion. Welcome, everybody. It is the Ricochet Podcast, number 662. I'm James Lilacs in a very dank, lashing, clammy Minnesota, joined by Rob Long in New York, which I hope is more autumnal and beautiful, and Peter Robinson in California. And we're all here, and it's been a lousy week. And what is there to say, actually, other than it's illustrative to find the scales clanging off some people's eyes like manhole covers. It is revealing to see what some people are saying on Twitter when the evidence is put before them. But none of this seems to be any surprise, the way everything has gone. The only question is, is how it's going to shake out.

Everybody thinks it's going to shake out in a way that will change things forever. We know the way this usually goes, and that's usually not what happens. But maybe it might. Gentlemen, after this week, what are your thoughts? I don't, I think I'm out of thoughts. thoughts um i i um the the specifics of the gaza threat to me um are surprising uh because i believe if you asked me yesterday i would have said extremely extreme i would have been absolutely confident that um the israelis have it sorted out i mean i was in israel in january and the people that i talked to there that ones who you know make this their job they they were incredibly confident i mean now we know that confidence was

um maybe a little arrogant right their confidence in their technology their confidence their surveillance their confidence in their chain of command their confidence in their impregnability of their order um none of that would turn out to be true. But, I mean, personally, the scales fell from my eyes, not because I believe that Hamas was somehow subdued. Hamas is Hamas all the time. But because I, and I'm really being honest here, when my Jewish friends in America would talk about anti-Semitism that they saw in places here in the United States

and in the Boycott, Divest, the boycott divest movement, boycott divest sanction movement. And even in the, even in the, even in the protests or the, or the demonstrations for sort of generalized Palestinian cause. Right. I kind of,

I'd be honest. I kind of like, yeah, I get it. But I didn't really believe them i just thought maybe they're kind of overreacting a little bit understandably so but i just yeah i don't i'm not sure and i remember talking to people that are very very pro-israel and saying listen you know i'm i think the way they treat the palestinians in the west bank is a mistake it's problematic and um

and they would you know we'd have these discussions but they'd always refer to some kind of like kind of dark shadow of anti-semitism but i just didn't see boy do i see it now it's really shocking to me and i I guess I was naive or I was foolish or I believe what I wanted to believe or I'm just insensitive to the signs, which is all possibly true. But I'm shocked. I really am.

And I know I shouldn't be, but it's just shocking to me that in the places in the United States where at the most they should be bleeding hearts, naive bleeding hearts in the universities. They are the most bloodthirsty and the most... Anyway. Do they also cast their minds backwards and say perhaps this media narrative

that the most profound and dangerous anti-semitism is coming from these miserable incel grapers and khaki pants with tiki torches walking around in charlotte's you know eight to seven years ago do they think maybe perhaps that they've been sold a bit of a narrative on that one i don't know i mean i look i i don't see any reflect any self-reflection on the part of any of those groups except um except a slight awareness they've made a very very i hope tragic i hope fatal pr error um that seems to be the only the only uh awareness of it stanford's in the news peter in the news this morning i have i confess i just i've got a rotten cold and i only

just rolled out of bed. So I haven't looked at news today. Darrell Bock A Stanford professor who divided his students into single out, you know, tell me in this room who's a Jew, raise your hand, and you go stand there in the corner. That's... Peter Robinson Right, right. I did see that. There were various anti-Israel demonstrations. There were a lot of chalk slogans that appeared various places, but I have to say I'm quite proud of my boss at the Hoover Institution

these last couple of days, Condi Rice went to White Plaza, which is the central place for these sorts of protests and gatherings, and gave remarks in front of students that were, we stand with Israel, that what has happened, the attack on Israel was barbaric. This is morally unambiguous. All the fault lies on one side. And Condi Rice changed the temper, the mood at the entire university with that one speech. There is this incident of a professor or a lecturer. Name hasn't been released, still going into it, but apparently there's going to be some sort of pretty severe disciplinary action. I don't quite know where that story stands, but the university isn't going to put up with what took place, what seems to have taken place,

what is reported to have taken place in a classroom where Jewish students were made to go stand in a corner and some young lecturer or assistant professor, a sister, TA, it may have been merely a 22-year-old TA said, now you're feeling what the Palestinians feel. Well, you do not do that. You just don't do that. And this university is going to be taking action. I have to say, for me, I agree with everything Rob has said. I agree everything you've said. My own mind turns to the military situation and what the world may be in for. The Israelis have standing forces of about 100,000 as I understand it. They've called up 360,000.

That means that they now have an armed force on the ground of 460,000. The United States Army is 440,000. million people there is now a force an armed ground force that has assembled that is larger than the active duty United States Army that's an enormous mobilization Gaza is a densely populated two million people strip Gaza City densely populated cheap concrete structures that go down easily, as we have seen. Hezbollah up in the north controls southern Lebanon, and I mean really controls it. When I was in Israel, what would it be? 18 months ago, 18 months ago or two years ago, you go up to the Golan Heights,

and the flag you see is not the Lebanese flag, but the Hezbollah flag. I was told, I'm in no position to evaluate this, but I was told that they're very well equipped and very well trained, Hezbollah is, and that they have more than 100,000 rockets that they can release at any moment. We, the United States, are sending two carriers into the Med, into the eastern Mediterranean, apparently to secure, in effect, Israel's northern flank, to let Hezbollah know that American air power is hovering just off the shore. And all of this leads to Tehran. Bibi Netanyahu, everybody knows, anybody who reads a newspaper knows, and Bibi Netanyahu

certainly knows, and our defense apparatus certainly knows, that this is funded, trained, encouraged, and possibly directed in some detail from Tehran. So, if the Israelis are serious about rooting out the source of this, this is a large, large operation that they are envisioning. Brace yourselves. I guess that's my feeling. This is extremely serious. And we haven't fired any shots, but we put two carriers in the eastern Mediterranean. We're already involved.

As we should be, as we should be, by the way, but it is, it's serious. You mentioned the, you know, the, the teachers and it's, I know it sounds absurd to go from some, from such grand deployments as this. And 400,000 doesn't mean 400,000 guys with, and gals with rifles. I mean, there's lots of support and all the rest of it of it but yeah it's a big army and we got two carrier groups and so it seems absurd a little bit to talk about a teaching assistant at stanford but it's not because it reflects the whole nature of the politics in the united states that have that have shaped the culture underneath us and everybody's winked at it and waved it off and

say oh that's just college and the rest of it but no we've had rallies here in minneapolis we've had a party the dsa who has city council members who has had uh candidates endorsed by the supposed middle of the road democratic party that we have here the dfl which we don't it's not middle of the road anymore at all when you say that that you can't you shouldn't do that, you ought not to do that, to put the six Jews in the corner. No, that's exactly what they demand that needs to be done, because the identity is at the base of this. And an American student who happens to be a Jew in America is indistinguishable from

somebody, from a Jew who's living in Israel. So when they talk about decolonization and all these other fancy, airy, arty-farty words that they've been, this is what they mean they mean actually and this is how it plays out and this rot has been working at the timbers of american culture for decades and now we're seeing the manifestation of it all around so that's why i asked rob before whether or not his friends go back and look at this and say perhaps perhaps we have been guided for an awful long time, that the fundamental precepts, a lot of these ideas that we have about immigration and culture and the rest of it, and every culture is equal and everything, is a result of them

having absolutely no real beliefs in themselves other than these luxury beliefs of the decadence of the West and the evils unique to Western civilization in America, and they're just happily chomping down the microwave seed corn, believing themselves to be somehow the residents of this utopian transnational world out there that'll descend any second now once we get rid of Donald Trump and the rest of the MAGA hats. It's whether or not those people really wake up as a result of this and what's to come and make some sort of political alignment is the thing that will determine american politics in the next 10 years or so says me anyway i'm done done am i wrong i don't think you're wrong i i look i

think that there there are um there used to be a we used to have a polarized, very simply polarized foreign policy, right? Which was engage with the world in toughness, right? Which is sort of the Reagan idea. Engage with the world, right? And engage in the world in sort of appeasement and softness, right? Which is sort of the Carter view. I mean, I'm being incredibly crude, right? But those are the two big arguments and then there was a kind of a stay-at-home-ism you know stick to your knitting-ism uh the world is a very dangerous

and awful place and people are going to kill each other constantly with sticks and stones um so let's just stay home we don't have any interests in that. Right now it feels like the far left and the far right are either agreeing or they are more aligned than they've ever been. So there are isolationists on the right who think that, okay, which is something we should discuss, what are the American interests in that region? What are the American interests in Ukraine? What are the American interests in Israeli security? Those are legitimate questions to ask. When they bleed into what we have now, which is that because I'm not sure about American –

I don't want boots on the ground in Ukraine, and I don't want American boots on the ground in Israel. I'm therefore going to argue that the people who believe this is an American role, I know I'm being inarticulate, I'm trying to figure out, American role in both, and the Americans have to have a stake in the world, because if we don't, it's not as if the world will just go busily on its own, it's will just go busily on its own it's going to go busily on its own under the uh hegemonic control of two other nations or three other nations including iran right um it that argument i don't think i don't i don't i don't

hear it i hear it being drowned out um when you argue for American support for things going on in the for the Ukrainian counteroffensive, what you get is like, oh, so you want endless war. And I say that as somebody who did not support their war in Iraq. And I often find myself arguing with my fellow conservatives who did support the war in Iraq. And they're the ones saying that I want endless war. I mean, I think part of this is this hangover from Iraq, which was a disaster, a debacle, and a mistake. But that doesn't mean that we're entering a new Iraq. You can't fight the last war or correct the last mistakes facing today's threats. And I suspect that this noisy, delayed, complicated sorting out process is not going to be easy, and it will not be peaceful, either here or abroad.

Just seems to me my pessimistic viewpoint here on Friday the 13th. We pause here and interrupt because this is, you know, a digital world where we can just splice stuff up and put stuff in. It's very easy, this digital world, but it's full of hurdles. However, with Persist SEO, you have a seasoned guide in this digital world. Yeah, are you feeling overshadowed online? You want to shine brighter with the digital marketing expertise that Persist SEO offers? Well, yes. Are you competing with the big players?

Let Persist SEO be your secret weapon. If leads are, you know, kind of trickling in or even non-existent, their optimization strategies will open the floodgates. Say yes to digital marketing. Let your website do the heavy lifting. Lost in the vastness of search engines, is that how it feels? Well, Persist SEO will put you on the map. Navigating Google feels like a chore sometimes, doesn't it? Yes. Well, hand over the reins to Persist SEO. And if costs are

spiraling, their Google Ads management is the remedy you need. Your digital success story is just around the corner. Reach out at 770-580-3736. 770-580-3736. Or drop by I Need SEO to get help for a complimentary website, audit, and consultation. With Persist SEO, every challenge meets its match. And we thank Persist SEO for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Neurohacker. Sounds like something out of a Johnny Mnemonic type of movie. Cyber dystopian fiction, right?

Well, no. We're talking about quali-senolytic. Well, have you heard about senolytics yet? It's a class of ingredients discovered less than 10 years ago. And they're being called the biggest discovery of our time for promoting healthy aging and enhancing your physical prime. Pump you up. Your life goals and your career and beyond require productivity, right? But let's be honest, the aging process is not our friend. And when it comes to endless energy and productivity, well, that's why we use quela-senolytic. Just call them senolytics. As we age, everyone accumulates senescent cells in their body, shall we say.

Senescent cells cause symptoms of aging, such as aches and pains and slow workout recoveries and sluggish mental and physical energy associated with that, you know, middle-age feeling. They're also known as zombie cells. They're old. They're worn out. They're not serving a useful function for our health anymore. But they're taking up space and nutrients from your healthy cells. Well, senolytics removes those worn out senescent cells to allow for the rest of them to thrive

in the body. What do you get out of this? Well, they sent me a batch of them. And it's not something you take every day. You take a batch of them and then take another batch of them and then you don't for a while. And you get higher energy levels, more productive and enthusiasm in life, and less aches and pains. And believe me, if somebody here at the gym starting a year ago

who knows his way around aches and pains, I'm happy to be finding a way to obviate that problem. Resist aging at the cellular level. Try Qualia Senolytic. Go to neurohacker.com slash ricochet for up to $100 off, and use the code ricochet at checkout for an additional 15% off. That's neurohacker.com slash ricochet for an extra 15% off your purchase. Get rid of those senescent cells.

Who needs senescent cells? You don't. And we thank Neurohacker for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Whatever you say, stick to your knitting. I think of Madame Lafarge watching the people from the previous regime, you know, go to the guillotine. Let us get to Niel Ferguson. Speaking of guillotines, yeah. uh we have uh catastrophe we have politics uh whether or not we have doom well there's doom there's enough doom to go around i say uh welcome y'all i got a question for you about you know we were just talking about the universities and what that betrays about american society and whether

or not it's fixable any thoughts well what's wrong with american universities is that over a period of decades, they have shifted further to the left. It's not like they were always liberal. I sometimes hear that. That's not true. They're significantly more skewed to the left than they were in the 1980s or 1990s, or even since I moved to the US and began teaching 20 years ago, this is a problem that is, I think, in large measure, a problem of governance. And the way I would explain it is as follows. Every university, regardless of whether you're talking about Harvard or Stanford or Dartmouth, it has an executive branch, president, the provost, and the bureaucracy. And it has a legislative branch, which is the upper house, the trustees, lower house, the tenured faculty.

And that's it. And there's no judicial branch to say, excuse me, you president or you professor or you student just violated the constitution. You just violated, for example, the Chicago principles. That doesn't exist. And so even when there are documents that commit a university to, say, free speech or protect individual professors, these documents are largely honoured in the breach. And I think this is a general problem. It means, for example, that political discrimination, I mean, I leave aside the issue of affirmative action, political discrimination goes on quite openly at universities. And I could tell you some hair-raising stories about the way that works.

But nobody stops it, even though it's obviously completely improper. And that's why I think universities have got into this mess. I'll add one final point. It is not the business of a university president to make political pronouncements. It's like everybody has forgotten what Max Weber said about science as a vocation. It is not your job, if you are president of Harvard, to opine on everything from Black Lives Matter to the atrocities in Gaza. Your job is to make sure that the university maintains academic standards and academic freedom, not to editorialize. The historical point. How did this happen? It wasn't that long ago, just beyond

our living memory, but not all that long ago still, that the major universities considered themselves part of the national enterprise. Columbia selected Dwight David Eisenhower, General of the Armies, to serve as president. It's inconceivable that a former military man would be chosen president of a major university today. Inconceivable. When I was an undergraduate, the notion was, well, we're getting the assistant professors or the Vietnam generation. The 60s, Vietnam, a failed enterprise. The Vietnam generation are all retired now, for goodness sake, or professors barely in the classroom anymore. And it's farther to the left without, I don't, I could almost understand the Vietnam argument, the youth movement, that 60s generation has to wash its way through the

universities. We're past it. And the drift to the left has continued. Why? I think that the Vietnam generation were liberals, essentially, and they believed in free speech. In fact, they were more committed to free speech than many on the right in the late 1960s. But they hired a generation of people who, in various ways, were much less liberal. Some were overt democratic socialists, and we know that true socialists are totally illiberal. And some were what might be called cultural Marxists, though I don't think that quite captures it. In the period after 1989, when, remember, the left suffered absolutely crushing defeat, which I think to people like you and me, Peter, seemed a kind of irreversible, irrevocable defeat. Peter Robinson Yes, it seemed definitive.

The left reinvented themselves ingeniously. They abandoned economics, where they'd clearly lost, and they embraced a cultural turn. And they realized, brilliantly, I think, that they could exploit the divisions within American, indeed, Anglosphere society, because this goes on throughout the English-speaking world, by advancing a series of ever more radical propositions to the effect that there must be a permanent revolution of emancipation. There were an almost infinite number of minorities that had to be emancipated from white supremacy. And this gave rise to the ever more perplexing phenomenon of intersectionality, a kind of hierarchy of victimhood, at the bottom of which

sat dead white males like us. And that, I think, has been crucial. That has been crucial to the whole development. And I'll add one final point. Conservative academics, of whom there were a reasonable number when my undergraduate days dawned, were poorly organised and allowed themselves to be run out of dodge without much of a fight, utterly failed to have a succession plan, didn't appoint people, didn't succeed in getting people appointed who were conservative in their orientation. And I think that's part of the story. Neil, a few years ago, a bunch of years ago now, I read this pretty great book called The Pity of War. I don't know if you've heard of it. I should let our listeners know.

That rings a faint bell. You wrote it. I'm kind of getting a little bit of the shivers now, I think. But I'm looking at a, I mean, it's big. We're talking about a much bigger globe in the sense that it's, the distances are bigger. But great powers like China have an interest in what's happening in the Middle East. Great powers like the United States, for some reason, have an interest in what's going on in the Middle East.

China's got a Belt and Road Initiative that it wants to protect. And there's an India-through-Israel trade route that we want to protect. And there's oil reserves in Saudi Arabia that are cheap for us to get, even though it's not such great oil, but it's cheap. And then there's a strange territorial war that seems to be a proxy war between two former Cold War foes in Russia and the United States going on Ukraine that it seems unconnected. I mean, do we really care? There's no geostrategic interests for europe or united states or even china and what happens in that eastern sliver of ukraine right but it all seems to be connected how bad is this gonna get well i'm glad you you mentioned the pity of war i've spent my career trying to understand the great conflicts and i don't think our world is so different from

the world of 1914 that is my fear i was hoping you were going to say oh no i've got work i'm reworking it it has no relevance because well the middle east was a major bone of contention in 1914 as were the black sea straits they called it a world war for a reason. And the question that we must ask ourselves is how close to World War III are we right now? The difference between now and 1914 is nuclear weapons and the relatively few powers that possess them, certainly at scale. And that's why up until today, really, I've been saying it's more Cold War II than World War III. And it's Cold War II now, I think it has been for five years, because the United States and China are the only two superpowers. I'm not talking any more about nuclear weapons, though they're important still, but they're the only AI superpowers. They're the only real economic titans which also have a military to go with it. So it's

really a bipolar world. We're not returning to 1914, a world of multiple empires. It's a two superpower world. And in Cold War II, as in Cold War I, the two superpowers are ideologically opposed to one another, but they're also economically opposed, and they're geopolitically opposed, and they're engaged in an arms race in multiple domains. And the questions are always the same about Cold Wars. What is the probability it becomes a hot war? That was always a latent possibility in Cold War I, and I think it is in Cold War II as well. I'll just add a couple of thoughts to see if we get to a workable applied history analogy.

For me, the war in Ukraine is like the Korean War, which was the first hot war of Cold War I, and the moment of revelation for many Americans who'd been in denial about the fact that there was a Cold War. They realized when Stalin backed the North Korean invasion of South Korea and when the Chinese joined in the war that there was something pretty serious going on and the World War II alliance was firmly dead. I think the next sequence, the next event in our Cold War is this new war in the Middle East. There is a connection because not only Iran, but I think Russia is also a player in this Middle Eastern crisis. The key issue that hasn't yet dropped, but I think may, is the third conflict that I anticipate over Taiwan, which could, I think, happen as early as next year. And that is, I think, the nightmare scenario that the United States confronts simultaneously a conflict in Eastern Europe, or if you like, in the North Atlantic, a conflict in the Middle East, or if you like, in the Persian Gulf, and then a conflict in the Far East around the Taiwan Strait. That's what I call the three bodies of water problem that the United States could not cope with. That combination of conflicts simultaneously, I'm not even sure we can cope with two, which is the real risk that has surfaced in the last week.

The strategy used to be called win-hold-win, which a friend of mine who was a military analyst was called win-hold-lose. And that was back in the 90s. So the idea then that China would be, shall we say, surprise, opportunistic in deciding that everything had coincided nicely for them to dethrone America as the primary geopolitical force projector, and that everybody's on board with it because everybody's happy with an America diminished. And they're not wrong, are they? I mean, I don't mean to say the Donald Trump thing and say they're smart, which means some people, I guess, take that as an endorsement. But wouldn't it be the smart thing for China to just say, now's the time? Well, it wasn't hard to predict that there would be a conflict in

the Middle East this year. And I talked about it back in January. And not just in terms of the narrow issues of Israel and Gaza and the West Bank and Lebanon, but because there was an opportunity for Iran that the Biden administration created by easing the sanctions and inexplicably to me trying to resuscitate the obviously dead nuclear deal and this gave Iran some real breathing space it had been getting thoroughly choked under the Trump administration and Iran has I think seized the, not just of Israeli division, but of American distraction and the fundamental equivocation that characterizes the Biden administration. We're all supposed to believe what a terrific chap Joe Biden is because he stood by Ukraine

and will stand by Ukraine for as long as it takes. But actually, they expected Ukraine to lose, belatedly started arming it when it didn't lose, and have not given Ukraine enough to win. Enough not to lose so far, but not enough to win. And I think the Iranians understood, because they were in close contact with the Russians, indeed they're helping the Russians, they understood that this was a terrific opportunity. I don't think Joe Biden or his national security team are very eager to get involved in a war in the Middle East. They may have to if the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, cannot cope simultaneously with conflict in Gaza, the West Bank,

and an assault from Hezbollah from Lebanon. But they don't really want to. And that's why they go around saying, we have no evidence that Iran was directly involved, which is a lie. It's obvious that Iran was directly involved. Iran sponsors, is the sole sponsor of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It is a major funder of Hamas. The idea that the Iranians were somehow surprised, as the New York Times reported the other day, is bunkum and absurd. Nobody should believe it. They say it because they're desperate to avoid having to intervene in this conflict too. And I fear that that is precisely what the Iranians and the Russians understand about the administration and about the United States generally, because I think the administration's kind of reflecting a general reluctance on the part of Americans to get involved in wars just about anywhere

if they can avoid it. Hey, Neil, to return to the military question, China and the military question, as you said a moment ago, you're not sure we can handle two fronts, let alone three. And it is explicit American military doctrine that our forces are disposed or meant to be disposed to be able to carry on major operations in two theaters at once. And as you rightly point out, Pacific is one, North Atlantic is another, and the Med makes three. We're already in a certain sense overstretched. Okay. Question is as follows. We have been

hearing, I believe you subscribe to this argument yourself, but we've been hearing that the defense of Taiwan runs through Ukraine, that we have to help the Ukrainians because the Chinese are watching. How does that argument apply to the Middle East? I'll close with just, correct me if I'm, you'll know more about this than I do. It used to be, we have 11 carriers. It used to be the rule of thumb that one-third is always in port undergoing repairs. One-third is someplace that it's going to take a lot of time to get them from steaming to station. You only have about one-third, three or four carriers at a time that are where they're meant to be. We already have one carrier group in the Eastern Med. Another is steaming to the Eastern Med. So, the argument is, does the defense

of Taiwan go through the Mediterranean? Must we secure the Israeli northern flank, so to speak, tie down Hezbollah with carriers and planes in the air? Or are the Chinese looking at this and saying, my, my, my, put them in the Med and they're not in the Pacific? It's not just aircraft carrier groups one needs to talk about with respect to Taiwan, because those aircraft carriers were very vulnerable in the event of a conflict with China. Unlike in the 1990s, the Chinese actually could sink aircraft carriers with their land-based missiles. So a lot would hinge actually on our ability to get attack submarines into the theater. I, to go back to my Cold War analogy, worry a lot that we seem drawn to reenacting the Cuban Missile Crisis over Taiwan, call it the Taiwan Semiconductor Crisis, but we get to be the Soviets. I.e., in this scenario, it's the communist power that blockades the island. We called it a quarantine around Cuba in 1962, but it was a blockade. And it's our turn to send the naval expeditionary force a very long

way to run the blockade, risking World War III, which of course was what Khrushchev did. And he ultimately backed down. There was a deal done, if you recall, involving missiles in Turkey, but that was secret. Publicly, he appeared to back down, and it did a huge amount of damage to his credibility, and it made the Soviets feel that they'd been humiliated, and thereafter, they really ramped up their spending on their nuclear arsenal. So why would we want to rerun the Cuban Missile Crisis over Taiwan when it was the closest we came to World War III in the first Cold War? I don't know. Seems like a terrible idea, but we have been consistently now for several years arguing in ways that imply we don't believe in strategic ambiguity anymore. We want to make an unambiguous commitment to Taiwan. The President

has done this on at least three, if not four occasions. It's been walked back later. But you know what the Chinese are thinking. When the president of the United States sounds like he's dipped strategic ambiguity, that's what you take note of. So I think we've put ourselves in a very overstretched position. And it was avoidable. There was no particular need to say, we don't really believe in strategic ambiguity anymore there was no need for nancy pelosi to grandstand in taiwan and act as far as the mainland chinese could see as if it's an independent country de facto all of this i think could have been avoided but it's created a situation which is very very different from the situation 22 years ago because after 9-11, David Frum sort of made up an axis of evil, and it didn't exist. It was a great speech line, and you're a speech writer, Peter, you'll know why it was a great

speech line, but it was a fiction. There is an axis now. There is a proper concerted relationship between Russia, Iran, and China. I don't know what the Chinese are thinking about this Middle Eastern crisis. They are in some ways the biggest member of the Axis and also the least influential, because I don't think they really call the shots about what happens in Ukraine or the Middle East. But are they involved? Of course they are. The Russian war effort would have ended long ago without Chinese economic support. And China views, needless to say, views the Middle East with the keen interest of a major oil importer. So for all these reasons, I think we are far closer to

World War III than I would have said if you'd asked me just a week ago. But I think this is what is troubling about our situation. Neil, you appear not to have been briefed before coming on. Were you not told that it was your job to cheer us up on this Friday morning as we were coming into the weekend? I'm about to tell some jokes, relax. One quick follow-up, and then I'm going to turn you over to Rob. But this is a question about what you make of the talent, so to speak. We've never talked about this,

but my impression of Bibi Netanyahu is that for all his many and manifest faults, he is a highly intelligent and very serious man. Furthermore, that he and the command that there's a kind of tightness of leadership with the IDF, with the Israeli Defense Forces. You know who's in charge, and you know that the people in charge are extremely serious, and now that this has happened, there were questions about looseness in the chain of command when we were getting protests among the IDF even a few weeks ago,

but now it seems to me any looseness in the chain of command is gone. How does that contrast with the talent, if I may put it that way, in this country? How do you judge, what do you make of the people in this country who are going to be making the serious decisions over the next weeks and months? Well, first, Peter, I share your respect for Benjamin Netanyahu. I think he's made a terrible mistake, though, because he was warned. They did know. I don't think the Egyptians are lying about that. I think he underestimated the scale of what Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad up their sleeves. So this was a mistake. I think the reason he ignored the warnings was, if I might be so bold as to speculate, because it looked like it might get him out of a very deep domestic political hole,

which you might say it has. But he can never have imagined that the scale of the terrorist attack would be so great. And that scenes out of Babi Yar, scenes out of the Holocaust would replay themselves on Israeli soil. This cannot ever have entered his mind. So this was a grave mistake. When I look at the Biden national security team, I see a good deal of talent. I don't think Antony Blinken is a bad Secretary of State. I think Jake Sullivan is an intellectually impressive national security advisor. I have the greatest respect for Bill Burns, Director of Central Intelligence. But

they work under the considerable handicap of a president who's much too old for the job and who even in his young day had poor judgment about foreign policy. And this leads this quite well-qualified national security team into, I think, a succession of disastrous failures, the scale of which we understate because of the general politeness of the American media towards this administration, unlike its predecessor, which did much better at foreign policy. Failure one, the debacle in Afghanistan, horrifically mismanaged. True, this was something on Trump's agenda, but I do not believe that a re-elected Trump administration would have made such a

terrific hash of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Then the failure to deter Putin. This was a disaster that somehow they're not blamed for. But they, and I warned about this in 2021, they sent every signal to Putin that he didn't really have to worry too much. If he did more with respect to Ukraine, sanctions was all he'd have to face. They even reduced arms shipments to Ukraine. I think their Ukrainian policy was a total failure, and it continues ultimately to fail because President Biden has this nightmare that Putin will use a nuclear weapon and it'll be on him. So we've lost our basic understanding of deterrence. If a Russian leader says, hey, I've

got nuclear weapons, the correct response is, so do we, make my day. That's the correct response. Not, oh dear, we'd better not give them any jet planes. So finally, we have the Middle East. And I think what worries me most about Team Biden right now is that they're really too obviously desperate to avoid intervening. And the more they make that clear, the more Iran and, of course, Hezbollah and its various other proxies are emboldened to think, you know what, I think we've really got Israel this time. I think we really, really have them. So I'm loathe to criticize anybody in one of these jobs. They are far harder jobs than any I have ever had to do in my academic armchair. But I have to say that the results of policy matter, not the good intentions or even the integrity of the people doing the policy. And the results of

the Biden administration's foreign policy are looking pretty bad right now to me. Hey, Neil, can I ask a sort of a cynical question comes in two parts the first part is um our uh entanglement in the middle east has a great deal to do with oil seems like if we drilled our own and increased our deal of our own resources we'd have a little bit more leverage they'd have a lot less leverage. What happens in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, stability of the royal family there

facing an internal Wahhabi threat would be sort of a passing interest, almost academic interest to us because we wouldn't care. What happens if Israel clears out Gaza of Hamas wouldn't really matter to us too much, because it doesn't matter whether the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia goes forward with its peace talks with Israel, because we don't need them.

They're just a counterparty that we're a disinterested audience of. Second thing, if Americans brought home semiconductor fabrication brought fabs back to this country or to a protected part protected country that doesn't have the same kind of environmental standards that we do making semiconductors is kind of dirty work um you know we'd be interested in the freedom loving peoples of taiwan but we wouldn't consider it wouldn't be in our interest necessarily, our strategic, cold interests to sort of like spend American treasure and blood. Part of the reason I think that the Ukrainian aid went so far and has gone so far is because,

you know, the first question we asked ourselves is, well, we don't want this more than they do. So they seem to want in they seem to want their country pretty badly so we can put some give them some gas in the tank to fight we and i agree with you you've given them just enough gas in the tank to make sure that everyone's dead in 10 years but not enough to actually win i think that's that's absolutely right but what do you say to the argument that well maybe but before we start sending aircraft carriers off the coast of Israel, before we start hardening the fortifications around Taiwan, maybe we ought to, like oil wells drilling, and maybe you ought to get some fabs being made somewhere in Nevada where no one really cares about the runoffs. Wouldn't that be the best way to enter World War III, unentangled economically? Let me take them one by one.

It's obviously hard to explain what the US interest in an independent Ukraine really is. And that's precisely why so many people on the right have begun to express skepticism about this enterprise, even although at this point, the Europeans are paying more than the US. The US is no longer the lead supporter of the Ukrainian war effort. And so that would seem to suggest that the US is capable of taking action, if only in the form of military assistance, even where it has no economic interests, because it has some broader economic interest in upholding the rule of law and discouraging arbitrary annexation. And I think that's true. The oil question is I think a legitimate one. I think future historians will say hey why when the US was kind of really close to energy independence and in fact to

becoming a major exporter of hydrocarbons why did it stop? And the answer would be because the Democrats prioritized environmental policies over energy independence. And, you know, you could say, but we had to save the planet, sir. But my response would be, if you think saving the planet is going to happen by buying Chinese solar cells and Chinese electric vehicles that they manufacture in China by burning coal, I've got terrible news to break to you. So I think on the energy point, I would wholeheartedly agree. And I think it put the Biden administration in the absurd position of having to grovel to Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince,

having dissed him over the Khashoggi murder. And that's just not how you play the Arab world. So that was an avoidable blunder. If you're going to abandon the Energy Independence Project, then you better be nice to Mohammed bin Salman, whatever he does. The third point is harder. It is really difficult to create TSMC anyplace else in a reasonable timeframe. 15 years would probably be a reasonable estimate for how long it would take to completely replicate TSMC's operations in the US. And the

cost would be just mind-bogglingly high to the point that it would make the chips in Science Act look like chump change. I think that's much harder. And everybody who really knows about semiconductors, here I can recommend my former student and colleague Chris Miller's excellent book, Chip War. Anybody who really knows about semiconductors knows that we can't just kind of bring it all back, reflate Texas Instruments and Intel, and dispense with TSMC, not in the timeframe frame that Xi Jinping is thinking about. Remember, Xi is in this additional term in office to bring Taiwan

back into the fold or into the fold since it was really never part of the People's Republic of China. And if you ask Bill Burns, he says that Xi's goal is to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. That is not long. It's certainly too little time for us to make TSMC redundant. And let me take a step further. I actually think the more plausible scenario is that they blockade Taiwan next year at the time of the Taiwanese election. So we just don't have time to make Taiwan unimportant. It's going to be important when this showdown comes. You know, last question. We look back at World War II,

and we think that the West, the United States, took a pasting, got a bloody nose, shook it off, and rose to the challenge. Of course, the West was fractious back then and dispirited in many ways. There would be debates in Oxford as to whether or not they would die for king and country and the rest of it now seems, however, to be demonstrably worse. And you look at the way societies like Canada have changed seemingly in ways that we never expected Canada would go to. But then again, they're Canada. Does the West still have it in it? I guess that's my question, is that when it comes to some sort of existential civilizational question, do we still have enough innate reserves of civilizational

confidence to be able to defend ourselves? Because that's what's required. You can have all the guns in the world, but if the center of it is a hollow feeling about your own society and its lack of worth, it's hard to rally the people to defend it. Well, the Ukrainians have it. I've seen it. I've been to Kiev. I was there again just a few weeks ago. They definitely are willing to lay down their lives for independence and democracy. And it's pretty impressive when you encounter that these days, because it's in short supply, that kind of spirit in the English-speaking world and perhaps more broadly in the West.

I don't think we should idealize the spirit of the Western world in the 1930s. It was pretty bleak. It was pretty polarized. A lot of intellectuals were attracted to communism. The king and country debate, which is so often cited, was just part of a general sense that it was game over for king and empire. I wrote about that in my book Empire. But when the crunch came in 1940, I think that was the critical year, Britain stood alone and under Churchill's leadership, kept the flame burning long enough, not only for the United

States to enter the war, but also, let's not forget, for the Soviet Union to change sides involuntarily, thanks to Adolf Hitler. And so when we tell ourselves stories about World War II, we should always remember that it had to be one with one of the totalitarian states on our side. And that, of course, meant that victory was tainted and Cold War was a kind of inevitable consequence of victory. I think, though, I know what you mean. I worry a lot about our inner turpitude, which seems at some level more shocking, more repulsive than the spirit of the Oxford Union in 1933. When students at Harvard University pronounce that terrorist atrocities are the fault of Israel, when students at Stanford University wave Hamas flags, and when the leaders of the American universities produce word salads in marked contrast to their clarion calls of support for Black Lives Matter following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, you just have to ask yourself, how will this all stand up? How will it respond? How will the commanding heights

of intellectual life, let's put it that way, respond if Cold War II does turn to World War III? And I think it was Bob Kagan who wrote an essay a few months ago in the Wall Street Journal saying, just you watch out, non-Western world, because when you poke the great American eagle up, it flies and watch out, it's got talons and a beak of steel, etc. You know, I don't think anybody really believes that the America of today is the America of Pearl Harbor. I just don't think that's plausible. I don't think the Chinese believe it. I don't think the Iranians believe it. And I know the Russians don't believe it. And we shouldn't tell ourselves fairy stories about our ability to repeat that feat, not least because we're no longer the arsenal of democracy. We have been overtaken as a manufacturing power and an

armaments-producing power by China China comprehensively so that China's manufacturing value added is now more than double that of the United States. And their ability to build naval vessels and, of course, a merchant marine, which will matter a lot in a major war, greatly exceeds ours. So please, let's not pretend that it's somehow going to be 1941 all over again if things get really tough. We're not that America, just as Britain is not that Britain. And where's the cheering note? Well, the cheering note is, I'll keep it really short because I know we're nearly out of time. If we can keep the Cold War cold, the same basic dynamics will play out because the Chinese system has all

the pathologies of a one-party state, and they're manifesting themselves in the demographics, in the growth dynamics, in the debt dynamics. You just can't have a successful, prosperous, innovative society if you have a communist monopoly and power that isn't accountable and is above the law. You just can't. Over some period of time, I wish I knew how long it would be. Is it 40 years as it was in the first Cold War? I don't know. But over time, Western freedom, so far as we still have that, ought to win. So the good news is, if we keep the Cold War cold, we should be fine. But we should not be doing things that increase the probability of World War III, because for that, we're much less ready.

Hope to have you back in a year in which you say, I'm cheerfully, happily saying that I was wrong about the Chinese and the Taiwanese situation. I'd love to be wrong. I know, but it's clear-headed stuff, analysis, and the reasons that we have you on. Neil Ferguson, the book is Doom, and I am going to rush out and get it this afternoon. By the way, I would recommend to you, I don't know if you've read it,

Michael Palin, Sir Michael Palin, your countryman, has a book out about a relative of his, an obscure relative who died in World War I, and it's a fascinating tale about a relative of his, an obscure relative who died in World War I. And it's a fascinating tale about the end of empire that in so many ways has echoes to today. It's called Great Uncle Harry. Anyway, that's my recommendation. Thank you for coming on the podcast today. And we hope to, again, as I say, talk to you down the road.

Thanks very much indeed, gentlemen. Thanks, Neil. Thank you, Neil. Let's talk cold turkey, shall we? I'm not talking about the stuff you're going to be having after Thanksgiving. No, cold turkey as a way to break your habits. There has to be a better way. It doesn't work.

It's not fun. That's where our sponsor, Fume, comes in. They look at the problem of cold turkey in a different way. Maybe you are finding yourself taking intermittent breaks from work to, shall we say, step outside. You know, it's bad for your health. It's a waste of time. It leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth and an unpleasant odor on your collar and your clothes and your coat. Well, how about this?

Instead of electronics, you know, the zapping stuff, fume is completely natural. Instead of vapor, fume uses flavored air. And instead of harmful chemicals, big point here, fume uses all natural delicious flavors. You're wondering what this is. Okay, just imagine a small little device. It's nicely weighted. It's a great little, it feels nice in your hand, feels nice in your pocket. That's great styling.

And when you inhale through it, you get this bouquet of flavors that is unlike anything really you've had before. And it scratches that itch. Let's put it that way and uh you know even if you don't use it for that you can put it in your room and the aroma that will come from it is beautiful it's it's just it's really a remarkable little device they've served over a hundred thousand customers switching to fume who find it enjoyable they even fun it's got thousands of success stories. There's no reason that more of them can't be you. So join Fume in accelerating humanity's breakup from destructive habits

by picking up the Journey Pack. It's called Today. Head to tryfume.com and use the code RICOSHET to save 10% off when you get the Journey Pack today. That's tryfume.com and use the code RICCHET to save an additional 10% off your order today. And we thank Fume for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Shopify, they've already taken the cash register online. You know that, right? They help millions sell billions around the world. But did you know that Shopify can do the same at your retail store. Give your point-of-sale system a serious upgrade with Shopify.

Shopify POS is your command center for your retail store. From accepting payments to managing inventory, Shopify is everything you need to sell in person. You get a powerhouse selling partner that effortlessly unites your in-person and online sales into one source of truth. You can track every sale across your business in one place and know exactly what's in stock. Connect with customers in line and online. Shopify helps you drive store traffic with plug-and-play tools built for marketing campaigns from TikTok to

Instagram and beyond. Get hardware that fits your business. Take payments by smartphone, transform your tablet into a point-of-sale system, or use Shopify's POS Go mobile device for a battle-tested solution. Plus, their award-winning 24-7 help is there to support your success every step of the way. So do retail right with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash ricochet. That's all lowercase, shopify.com slash ricochet. That's all lowercase. Shopify.com slash ricochet. Go to Shopify.com slash ricochet to take your retail business to the next level today. Shopify.com slash ricochet. And we thank Shopify for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we move to Eli Lake. Back again. Eli is a contributing editor for Commentary Magazine, fellow for the clemens center for national security host of the re-education podcast eli welcome it's bad uh adjusting for population uh be like you know

42 000 americans dead i remember when the world trade centers went down people were estimating what the population was and said that the death toll could be between 25 and 30 000 people and it was horrifying turned out to be less by a factor of 10. But imagine if it had been 42,000. How in America would have responded to that? Oh, and to say 5,000 or so kidnapped. Proportionally given that Israel is about the size of New Jersey.

Which really does concentrate the mind as to what they're up against. So we know how after 9-11 the American character all of a sudden sort of went into a different mode. Irony was dead. We were very serious. We were also extremely paranoid and really pissed off.

What is the, but what we didn't have, I guess, is sort of a big flame session. We had to get on with business. You know, how this happened, we'll get to that later. But we didn't, how was the national character of Israel shifted? They were already in this mode. They already seemed to be saying, yeah, we're going to talk about this down the road, how this happened. But right now, it's almost completely focused on the job. Is that so? And if so, what is the job? Well, I would say the big shift is that the strategy for nearly 20 years, which was to manage the conflict with Hamas and Gaza by having these kind of border skirmishes or rocket wars, which did not cause a lot of casualties on the Israeli side, you know, that was a consensus position. That was Netanyahu's approach. But it was also Ehud Olmert's approach. It was Ariel Sharon's approach. And the Israeli view was like, hey, listen, we're going to wash our hands of occupying Gaza.

They remove Jewish settlements by force in 2005. And Hamas doesn't have much they can do to us because we've got this under control. And that's no longer the case because they pulled off this diabolical and kind of fiendishly genius operation. But I would also say that it's not just the raw numbers. It's what these savages did and how they did it and how it is reminiscent of Bobby R. and the atrocities of the Holocaust and its similarities. And it's also different because you didn't see mass rallies in Western capitals celebrating ISIS beheaders or Al-Qaeda. There were always people who were going to give you the both sides nonsense, but you didn't see what we saw in New York, San Francisco, Chicago over the weekend, 24 hours after the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust.

So these things kind of make it qualitatively different, not just for Israel, but for Jews all over the Holocaust. So these things are kind of make it qualitatively different, not just for Israel, but for Jews all over the world. But the main difference in terms of Israel is that they now no longer believe that they can just simply manage a problem. They cannot live in a world with Hamas in it. That is what the Israeli mission is at this point. And it's at least for now, I'm pleasantly surprised to see that president biden has standard you know standing four score against uh you know behind israel which is a good thing and some of the actions they've recently taken but i mean as i wrote earlier this week for the free press the policy of the biden administration the assumptions of the foreign policy establishment, that you can, with enough patience, sit across the table and negotiate with barbarians, and eventually they'll join the civilized world, which is the logic of the isolationism and America first realism of the 1930s.

And after Pearl Harbor, by the way, even Charles Lindbergh volunteered, you know, to join the fight. America first closed its offices literally like after Pearl Harbor. We were in a different moment. I would like, I'd love to see that resolve in the West. I'm not holding my breath, but certainly in Israel, this notion that you can just sort of ignore Gaza, that they can't. And they cannot allow for Hamas to sort of be a weakened sovereign of this territory. Because, you know, you have to eradicate it.

Or to borrow the language of the left, Israel has to deal with the root cause of the problem, Hamas. Wait, is the root cause of the problem Hamas, or is the root cause of the problem in Tehran? Well, Tehran. Well, Tehran and Hamas, but Hamas has a very specific ideology. If you look at its charter, it for the killing of jews wherever they are um but yeah tehran as well but israel can't take out it israel can't take out iran i mean i think israel can do a lot of damage as it's been doing covertly for some time against its nuclear program but iran will take a coalition of america and its allies not i mean i'm not calling for a ground war i'm just saying it's you have to sort of deal with the the the wolf closest to this to the sled i agree with

you about we have to do that iran is on the list too yeah i have a 50 000 foot question and then a 10 foot question 50 000 foot question, because we talked about Iran. It's been pretty clear to me that the Israeli strategy for the past 10 or 15 years, or the past 10 years at least, has been kind of smart or peaceful, right? You build an Iron Dome, you protect yourself from the rockets, you don't let provocations go unanswered, but you know you've got the Iron Dome. So as a consequence, I think in Israel, I was there in January, so not recently,

but there did seem to be a certain arrogance about the Iron Dome as a metaphor. We're protecting ourselves. We have an Iron Dome over the country, but we have little mini technological iron domes all around the gaza border and all around the west bank and you know you're aware when you're walking through jerusalem that every single inch is being surveilled so we we learned a lesson that good people and bad people learn throughout history like the stasi in east germany that you can know everything about everything except what you need to know which is that the berlin Wall is going to come down. So part of the strategy has been, and I know I'm talking this long-winded, the idea of making peace,

Israel's making peace with as many of its surrounding neighbors and its interested border, you know, adjacents and interested countries, which as a result has driven Hamas to Iran. And that was a very smart strategy right because it forces places like the the saudis etc to start to make hard choices like if you have to choose which friend you want to have if you're the you know the king of saudi arabia do you want to have it to be benjamin nahoo or the ayatollah in Tehran, you're going to pick Netanyahu, which is kind of what they've been doing, which is one of the reasons why Hamas, I believe,

has gone to such enormous, bloodthirsty lengths to make this provocation absolutely unrefusable. They keep saying that the Netanyahu, the Israelis, are going to take the bait and destroy gaza but it's i don't see they have any other choice they don't so they don't so was this a bad strategy was it worth trying is it salvageable um i don't know have you set the cause back or or is it just a brand new cause now well i would say this it bought what 2007 until 2020 we bought 17 years of relative stability but you had the rocket wars uh you you kind of created more of a PR problem, because when Israel would respond, they would respond with their strikes. But most importantly, you immiserated a generation of Palestinians that were stuck with Hamas, which is terrible to live under. And that's one of the reasons why the, like, solidarity with Palestine crowd on the left are false friends of the palestinians because if you just if you just think about forget the emotional thing forget the anti-semitism forget like you

should be revulsed as a human being if you were just thinking about it strategically and you you were watching these images you know you don't have to be a political scientist to understand that you've set back the cause of Palestinian statehood for a generation. And you have made the argument to the entire world as to why Israel had to treat Gaza, as they say, as an open air prison. It's not, but OK. So it's amazing to me that you still see and it's not a i'm not nut picking here we saw it all over the world you still see these huge crowds of people coming out and they're they're not somber they're not saying uh we want every you know we we worry we mourn for all the palestinian children this is a really serious time or something like that they're excited they're delighted they're dancing in the streets that is uh 21st century nazism and i've said this on other

podcasts but if i could share it with you guys the democratic socialist of america from now on shall be known as the national socialist of america because there is no difference at this point if you're going to lend your name to a rally and participate in this alleged solidarity when really all you're doing is basically just celebrating the murder or the mass murder of Jews. So to me, that's a serious question that kind of gets here. But back to what you were saying about the new strategy and can you go back to a situation where you're kind of have it, you're relying on your great missile and rocket defense and everything like that? Well, I think you're going to have to probably do both. But, you know, the Israeli military options are not limited to just Gaza. There has to be something done about the Hamas senior leaders, which, by the way, are living in Qatar and Turkey.

Right. But that's kind of amazing, which is that this is an organization that teaches its children to glorify suicide bombing and yet they're not even living with skin in the game they don't have to live in the intercontinental hotel in doha right i mean yeah i mean just to go back to it's like if the the difference between democratic socialists of america the national social america used to be just whether you wanted to kill jews national socialists were in favor of big government and killing jews so as long as that's your case you really are national socialists of america used to be just whether you wanted to kill jews national socialists were in favor of big government and killing jews so as long as that's your case you really are national socialists but can i can i just go back one just before we um it does seem to me that i mean i and

it is definitely i would say the past 16 years you mentioned have been a pr disaster for the israelis in a lot of ways because when people think of israel they think of this incredibly powerful country they're not used to adjusting their scales from what the the past the weekend the events of the past weekend so they're not used to all they remember are armed israeli military shooting kids throwing rocks that's the that is the image of the early 21st century that's sort of part of everyone's understanding as as wrong as it is. How do you convince people of what is – I mean, this is not a PR question. I have one more question after that, and then I'm sorry. But how do you convince people – what it seems to me, and I hope you agree, is that if you really look at it, the only country, the only people truly interested in the Palestinians' health and welfare are the Israelis.

They're actually the only ones who really give a hoot what happens in Gaza. As you mentioned, the Hamas leadership isn't even there. The Saudi Arabia, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the people in Lebanon, they don't really care about the Palestinians. They have enough power and resources to solve the problem yesterday. If they cared, Gaza could be the next Dubai if they wanted to. That's just an application of money and

an application of the rules to spend it rather than buying bombs. I'm not so sure about that. Really? Well, you know, listen. I'm the first one who will say, don't conflate Islamic supremacists in Hamas with the people that have to live under their corrupt and sadistic rule. And we have seen protests from time to time, even in Gaza, at great personal risk. So I want to point that out, that you will always find people who resist tyranny. But that said, if you go back and look at the history of modern Palestinian

nationalism, whether it's the Arab revolt of the 1930s, the Munich massacre in 1972, or this latest pogrom, you kind of find almost like a very deeply ingrained sense that it is better to be a doomed martyr than it is to be a compromising statesman. It is better to at least make a valiant effort than to do something constructive for the actual goal of statehood. And as we learned in the Oslo process in the 1990s, Yasser Arafat could not bring himself to accept the best possible deal probably the Israelis could offer could offer him right so my i i say this as somebody who wants to believe as a neocon that there are you know hidden democrats and and normal leaders that you can find them and all you can do is live in gaza they say but it's also we have to deal with the fact

that palestinian political culture is dysfunctionally toxic and that is not a statement about all palestinians i want to make it very clear i am talking about the kind of history and if you think as many palestinians do because officials did not condemn this pogrom they did not say a word about it in fact they insisted that civilians were an attack buying into this ridiculous notion that you know all israeli citizens all israelis are settlers or something so this if if when you see that you have to sort of say to yourself like this is a group of this is an organization is a national movement that believes it will achieve its statehood with acts of horrific atrocities whether it's blowing up the sparo pizzeria or again this

latest pogrom and it has been a real, and that's not the same as when Israel does bad things like the Christian militias that it allied with in Sabra and Shatila. Or there are, of course, civilian casualties in these bombings. And, you know, one can have a fair criticism of Israeli military tactics and also recognize that this is a categorical difference. And so, I think that I hope it causes a schism on the left among the Palestinian solidarity crowd, and that you have to, you know, I can't stand with you guys, you're rationalizing and cheering barbarism. I can't do it. Eli?

Yeah? Could I just read you some of the headlines on the New York Times online right now? Sure. Gazans try to flee after Israel orders 1.1 million to leave north. UN asks for demand to be rescinded. The UN warned that the forced relocation from northern Gaza would have, quote, devastating humanitarian consequences, close quote. Many frightened Palestinians packed belongings and left their

homes. And on and on it goes. There's a repeating loop, video loop of terrified people in Gaza. You know where I'm going. Here we are less than a week after the attack. And these are the kinds of headlines in the New York Times. How can Israel sustain what looks to me, you said yourself, they have no choice but to go after Hamas. Gaza is 2 million people. The city is densely populated. The structure, let's put it this way, the structures would not pass code in Manhattan or Palo Alto, California. The turn in Western opinion is already taking place, isn't it? How do you grapple with this? How do you think about it how can the israeli

sustain a difficult i mean i don't mean to be operation i don't mean to be flip and this is really hard but all of us who are writers know that you can write a piece and a hundred people can tell you it's brilliant and then the one comment that says it sucks is the one that you obsess on of course and i would just never had that feeling but i would my advice you know to to my brothers and sisters in israel is to not read the comments at this point you just have to just say we would like you to support us but if you don't this is an existential crisis for us and we have no choice but to do what we're doing and just to sort of try as best you can to tune it out, although it would be very difficult. Dajin. There are lots of other people who are facing, you know, who are in the blast area of Islamic fanaticism who consider Israel to be a hero. I learned this when I, many years ago,

on a reporting trip to India, where I interviewed the Mumbai chief of police who had, you know, recently had to deal with like a horrific Al-Qaeda attack. You know, if you remember that, I think it was 2013 or 2012 or so. And he found out, I think, or, you know, he asked me if I was Jewish and he just, he was rhapsodizing about how wonderful Israel is. That is, I think, an important lesson, which is that you'll notice the Abraham Accords begin after all of these Arab states that were the historic foes of Israel saw the brutality of ISIS. And, of course, you know, the predations of Iran as well, which is sort of more of the sort of strategic reason. But my point here is only that, you know, for every, you know, friend that Israel loses because of the doom loop on the New York Times and CNN and MSNBC, they should understand that they're probably making more friends of people who have some experience of loss and anger about

jihadism in general. Yep, we can imagine that story in a couple of years, now that Gaza completely cleared of Hamas, elects a government that responds to the people, actually puts in water pipes into the ground instead of ripping them out for rocket tubes, spiffs off its desalinization, opens up a resort, and then there will be questions about the uh you know uh is it unfair that gaza

resort prices are are undercutting those of other mediterranean well i said i was in gaza 10 years ago so i haven't been there in the last 10 years but when i was last there and i've been a few times there are very nice parts of gaza city there there was a beautiful resort not resort but a nice hotel where i stayed which was near the beach there is an elite in Gaza. They are all connected to Hamas. And we just mentioned their leaders live in the Brits Carlton and Doha. And like, you know, they live in Istanbul. Um, it's, it's, it's to say that there, there are, there are resources that go into Gaza. There's a lot of international aid that goes in, but Hamas, you know, they pocket 30% of it. And it's not just for corruption,

so they can live well while, you know, lots of people in refugee camps, I should say, live in squalor, but it's also because they are creating a war machine, which will then bring further misery to the people of Gaza. Last question, yes or no. A week ago, a week ago, do you think that they'd taken a whole big, completely honest and fair vote in Gaza? Would Hamas have won? It's hard for me to

say. The only thing I will say is this, is that despite the indoctrination and the brainwashing in the curriculum and their media and everything else, there have been pockets of demonstrations against the corruption and just general incompetence of the local rulers there. That doesn't mean they like Israel. They don't. But what it does mean is that there is, I mean, like, I can tell you, like, when I was on the ground reporting from Gaza, there were Gazans when they feel, you know, that you're not quoting them and it's safe to do so, will say, yeah, it's terrible when they get us into these wars. And especially if it's true, by the way, I should add, that if it's true that Iran helped plan this and maybe even, you know, authorized it, where we're still waiting for some of that to come in,

there's been a little bit of contradiction, well, then it's even worse. It's like, you know, the Iranians are using the population of Gaza, you know, it's like a gigantic human shield, because anybody would know what the response would be to something that's horrific. That's the thing. Yeah, that was a yes or no question. Do I look like a guy who's looking for nuance? All right. That's enough, Eli. That's enough. Thank you for joining us. We'll talk to you again soon. Thank you. Love the show. Good luck. As always. Thanks, Eli. Thanks. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Last thing before we go, because we are having a long, long, long podcast. You guys probably feel the same way about this that I do.

I am concerned that this will be taken to Iran. I am concerned that this will not be. Yeah. This has been the case since 1979. Right. This has been the case for decades and decades. It's the heart of the issue. And, you know, we used to have them kind of surrounded.

We were up there in Afghanistan and Iraq and the rest of it, and we don't anymore. And that without a change in government in Iran and nothing, this will continue on and on and on again. But at the same time, perhaps you guys feel differently, but I sort of regard the population of Iran as generally living under a yoke whose weight is greater than that which to bear and that the you know that the enthusiasms of the revolution have largely dissipated and been replaced by a bunch of sclerotic old guys who are a combination of corrupt and religious and the rest of it and you know everything I would love to see Iran liberated but of course that's just the sort of thing that a globalist neocon would say, wouldn't he?

Where am I wrong? I don't think you're wrong. I think there's enough evidence that there, I mean, over time, that there's been a huge amount of protests in Iran from Iranians against their own, you know, unelected government. But again, I think sort of my basic principle is

that they have to want it more than we do so there's nothing we can really do to help them yeah except to sort of generally um continue to treat the government of iran as a pariah that that's also part of the part of what i think is it should be instructive about a case like what's going on in israel the israelis have uh territorial control they have territorial sovereignty over the land of israel and in their military and that's what their interests are right their interests are going to be in actual land the american interest seems to be or the american benefit is that you can go one step up you can go to sort of 15 000 or 20 000 feet and start talking

about the countries that support the conditions for which the gazans are now you know being annihilated right those countries are iran those countries are qatar those countries are in many cases are you know nato member turkey right that that is where the american leadership can be um so and i think that's gonna that's gonna be our big issue with taiwan it's obviously it's an island nation it's very small it's going to be incredibly swallowed up by the you know the revolutionary army of the glorious people's republic of china um but they can still put up a fight and it's going to have to be their fight to fight not ours so it seems like the actual regime change that we should be agitating for um is here at home uh what we have

is so we've had a you know a bunch of feckless kind of sleepwalking for a lot of reasons war weary administrations for a lot of reasons um i don't share Neil Ferguson's idea that somehow if the Trump administration pulled out of Afghanistan when it wanted to, which, by the way, was April 2020 or May of 2020, that it would have been better or less of a debacle. I just think that we haven't gotten serious and as a country we have to decide whether we have it we have a a moral interest uh in the world and how it how it is shaping itself up under sort of these you know three big hegemons or we have an economic interest or we have both uh and i think that we are confused by that um as a country um regime change until we but it's not just a regime change i mean it really is kind of an attitude change i think at home we have to decide that it's something that we believe in i mean the democrats from 1960 through the 70s or the 80s

were wrong about how to pursue the cold war but they understood they didn't think that there wasn't a cold war um and it was it was ronald reagan who decided that there not only was there but we must win it and i suspect we need some kind of clarity some kind of leadership which of course we're not getting from anyone now no they wanted to manage our decline because they believed that we were in retreat that we deserved to be and so they wanted to manage that to a soft landing where there was a rapprochement between us and them, and we just sort of... I remember that ridiculous notion that, well, you know, we're moving more towards like them,

and they're moving more towards like us, and we'll meet in the center. Well, that center didn't hold. I just find it funny that regime change is the phrase he used, since that is what they threw at Bush back in the day, as we've now come full circle. Rob Long repeating leftist slogans. There you there you go well that's not for the first time no we gotta go we've had enough and it's been great unless peter's got something else to pop yeah i think peter was

about to say something no yes i'm not going to disagree with what rob said but iran right now is pretty simple for us and the israelis there's only one question how do we prevent them going nuclear that's all that matters for the next weeks and months that is the only question and uh as best i can tell that question is complicated enough yep that's what the history books will say well first we tried with uh inkjet printers that were infected with a virus that destroyed their entire program, but they built it back, so we had to nuke them. In 20, 30 years, who knows what the books will say. But we do know that at the end of 90 Minutes of This that Neurohacker, Fume, Persist SEO, and Shopify have brought you this fine podcast. Support them for supporting us, please. And if you wouldn't mind, you can go to ricochet.com slash join, and you can become part of the community that has been waiting for you.

Really, we're all just sitting there waiting for the door to open and you to walk through. It's a great place. Yes, you can read the front page for free. But it's the member page, the member site where the community really forms. And we talk about everything, including this podcast, and sports, and politics, and music, and everything else. So go there, join, and your life will be better before it. Thanks, Rob. Thanks, Rob. Thanks, Peter.

We'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week. Next week. Next week. Ricochet. Join the conversation.