The Summer of Geopolitical Heat - with Walter Russell Mead
Throughout modern history, there were major wars that were triggered by fits of inattention or inadvertence. In retrospect, these moments can seem obvious – sometimes even linear. Walter Russuell Mead is observing some of these fits of inattention right now. Walter believes there is some kind of collective denial about these trends. He calls it “geopolitical climate denialism.” That’s what we discuss with him in this episode. He’s also just back from another trip to India, where he’s been spending a lot of time. His insights on the growing importance of India to America and the changing relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are also topics we discuss. Walter is at the Hudson Institute, he is the Global View Columnist at The Wall Street Journal and a professor at Bard College. He was previously the Henry Kissinger fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of “The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People”.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] It's a lot of Americans still think we live in Barbie's world, but in fact, these days we're on planet Oppenheimer and while the Biden administration is, I think, beginning to respond to some of these crises, it is doing so by sort of making a lot of pledges and commitments that I'm not sure that the American people as a whole understand Or are ready to, to back up.
Throughout modern history, there have been countless major wars that were triggered by fits of inattention or inadvertence. In retrospect, these moments can seem obvious, sometimes even linear. But in the moment, as these events are occurring, are there signs, are there signs that war is about to follow?
Walter Russell [00:01:00] Mead, who's been on this podcast a couple times before, The global view columnist for the wall street journal has been observing some of what he sees as these very fits of inattention right now. This summer, Walter thinks there's some kind of collective denial about these flare ups and what they could mean for the United States and how he believes they could possibly land the U S military in the middle of a major power conflict.
He's coined the term geopolitical climate denialism, meaning the environment around us is chock full of flashpoints or potential flashpoints. That could lead to war and we are not paying attention. That's why we asked him to join us today. Walter's also just back from another trip to India. He's been spending a lot of time in India and has a lot of insights on the growing importance of India to America, which are fresh.
As is his analysis of the changing relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, or at least the changing relationship between the beginning of the Biden administration and where the Biden [00:02:00] administration is now potentially at some stage of trying to orchestrate a normalization arrangement between the state of Israel and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
So we cover a lot of territory with Walter today. And as listeners of his previous episodes, no Walters at the Hudson Institute, a premier. Think Tank in Washington, DC. He's the Global View columnist, as I said, at the Wall Street Journal. He's a professor at Bard College. He was previously the Henry Kissinger Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
He's the author of several books, including most recently, The Ark of a Covenant, which is about the history of the U. S. Israel relationship, which is what we had him on to talk about last time he was on. Walter Russell Mead. On India, Saudi Arabia, and the summer of geopolitical heat. This is Call Me Back.
And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast my longtime friend, Walter Russell [00:03:00] Mead, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, from Bard College and from the Hudson Institute, and the author of a book that he was, when he was last on we talked about, uh, about the history of the U. S. Israel relationship, which we will put a link to in the show notes again.
Uh. Walter, thanks for being here. It's great to be back, Dan. And back you are because you are just recently back from India. Uh, where you did a lot of writing from, which is your fourth trip to India since, when, in just the last couple years? Yeah, since the pandemic, really, and things opened up again. So I want to talk about your trip to India, because I've been, I've been quite interested following what you're, what you're thinking about.
It's like the story you feel that everyone's missing, which is just fine by you, I guess, um, if you're, if you're owning that story. But I want to quote First, from a piece you just wrote for the Wall Street Journal, um, where you talk about, um, climate denialism, but not the [00:04:00] climate denialism that we come to think of when we hear that phrase, but about geopolitical climate denialism, which is you're basically saying it's fine if people want to spend a lot of time talking about the climate debate, which is important, but there's a, there's a geopolitical kind of broader environmental situation or set of trends that we're living through, um, that people aren't paying attention to, and the U.
S. administration maybe is paying attention to some of it, not all of it, or coming to grips with some of it, but not all of it, and And you're sort of screaming from the hilltops, um, that we need, we need to wake up to what we're dealing with here. And I'm, I'm just going to quote with what you're seeing to make your point and then we'll kind of talk about how we got here.
But you write, this summer we've seen the geopolitical equivalent of a record heat wave. This is quoting from your. column. The war in Ukraine escalated as Russia stepped up its missile attacks and withdrew from the grain shipping deal that limited the cost of the war to poor countries in the Middle East and beyond.
Iran's threats to Gulf oil shipping are so serious that the [00:05:00] administration, the Biden administration, has been forced to plan for Marines to be deployed to protect deepening its economic ties with North Korea. and engaging in joint naval maneuvers with China around both Japan and Alaska. And you go on and on with a few of these other examples of what's all been going down this summer.
So, the summer is hot. I mean, really hot. Like you're, you're, I mean, obviously from a climate standpoint it's hot too, but from a geopolitical standpoint, you're, you sound alarmed in this piece that things are, are worse than, than we realize are worse than, than, um, than the attention that it's getting should be.
Yeah, I mean, as I, as I write in the piece, a lot of Americans still think we live in Barbie's world, but in fact these days we're on planet Oppenheimer. And what I, what I worry about, in a sense, is while the Biden administration is, I think, beginning to respond to some of these, uh, [00:06:00] crises, it is doing so by sort of making a lot of pledges and commitments that I'm not sure that the American people as a whole understand or are ready to, to back up.
And that's, um, so you could, you could easily find, let's say we put. Marines on one of these oil tankers that is being threatened by Iran, and something happens, and the ship is fired on, and the Marines fire back, and we're suddenly, and you know, then, then things could begin to escalate. Is President Biden, is the Democratic Party, is the United States of America ready to do some fighting in the Middle East again?
Uh, or, um, you know, the, the situation with Russia and Ukraine is continuing to escalate. Uh, the United States is going to have to, I think, do more for Ukraine to, to keep, uh, Ukraine [00:07:00] from losing the war and, and enabling it to, to get a decent peace out of it. F 16s, other things, uh, we see the Ukrainians are starting to bomb Moscow.
The Russians have definitely intensified their campaigns. The Poles have 10, 000 troops or are planning to put 10, 000 troops on the border with Belarus. So, you know, and then meanwhile, you have the Chinese are, are sort of every day testing the limits around Taiwan, uh, perhaps preparing for a blockade at some point.
With Russia, China, and Iran all looking to break the American world system that in one way or another has been around since World War II, um, they seem to be thinking right now that if they just keep turning up the heat, they can sort of create a bunch of more threats than we're really willing or able [00:08:00] to respond to.
And how, sorry, and how coordinated, because one way you can look at all these events is that they're just, it's all sort of happening organically. Um, and it just so happens that they're all happening at once, or you could think it's tightly coordinated, or somewhere in between. I'd go for somewhere in between, but honestly I'm not, you know, sitting there, sitting on Putin's knee listening to what he whispers into the phone to Xi Jinping.
But it does seem to me that, that there is a kind of a, a, a joint agreement that it is better in general to escalate than to retreat. So Russia is buying drones from Iran and Iran is providing the drones to Russia. Uh, Russia and China have their, uh, you know, sent a very large naval fleet to Alaska. this summer, which is sort of off the beaten track for them.
[00:09:00] So I don't think this, you can explain all of this as pure coincidence. And do you think the Biden administration is looking at these events the way you are, but, and are taking measures, some measures to address them, uh, but it's not. Just talking about them publicly because we're heading into an election year, and they don't want to be You know causing High levels of anxiety in the US polity, so there's no point in talking about it because they should just work on it or Or what?
Like, what, what, what do you think is going on with the terms of how the administration sees, sees what's going on? Because based on what you're writing, it, it seems like they don't see what you see. But if you look at some of the steps they're taking, they must be seeing some of it. Yeah, I think that's, I think what happened is they really did come into office in January 2021 with a vision and a [00:10:00] plan.
And the plan was, as they would put it at the time, park Russia. Uh, you know, sort of reach some kind of understanding with Putin. Not a love affair or anything like that, but, but kind of freeze him in place. And then with Iran, you essentially park Iran by getting them back into the JCPOA. So you have that quiet.
With those two quieted down, you can then turn all your attention to China. You, um, You know, you, you set some limits with China, but you also signal your willingness to engage on a broad range of issues, obviously including climate change, but others too. And so that was a plan for a kind of a, you know, bringing peace and quiet back to the world.
And the trouble was that I think already those three countries saw themselves as jointly trying to, uh, break American hegemony. And [00:11:00] didn't, didn't see a reason why they should cooperate in the Biden strategy. So, Vladimir Putin does not like to be, he did not roll peacefully into the parking garage. The Iranians rejected, really, the pleas from the Biden administration to get back into the JCPOA.
And the Chinese obviously have not responded with the kind of statesman like restraint and balance that the Biden administration hoped it would get. So what it has now is a much more kinetic and threatening situation with Russia than expected. Um, it is not able to continue what it hoped of steadily reducing the American presence in the Middle East while reaching a kind of an arrangement with Iran that would stabilize the situation in some way.
And then, you know, doubling down on China, but in a calm way where America [00:12:00] kept control of the pacing and timing of what happened. So in that sense, it's really, you know, it's in terra incognita. It's in. A place it didn't expect to be. And you, you look at the politics of this, uh, it's not a good place. It's not a good place for any president to be, but for the, I think in the democratic party these days.
You do not have a lot of appetite for war in the Middle East. Um, you, while you have an appetite for supporting Ukraine, you don't, you, you're, you don't want a return to sort of cold war psychology and ditto with China. So that the, and, and he's already, I think they're having to pay a significant price because.
The Biden administration came in thinking that it could really make human rights a kind of a, um, you know, the, uh, [00:13:00] human rights and climate change were really going to be two of the big issues that they focused on. Now what they find themselves doing is instead of lecturing MBS and making him a pariah, as they said at one point, they're offering the most generous terms of Of political support and technology transfer that the United States has ever in the history of the world offered Saudi Arabia.
And at the same time they are, I think they've. They've been more tolerant of things going on in Israel than a lot of the, a lot of them would have preferred to be and they've, you know, they embraced Prime Minister Modi on his visit to Washington, something that that got a fair amount of criticism from people in the human rights zone.
So they've, they've, this is Biden, Biden the realist. Yeah, it's, well, I would say it's more reality, you know, you know, [00:14:00] okay. And, and they've, they have to respond to what comes in on the inbox, but I would say at this point, while I think they're trying to, to think systematically about it and there are, they are doing, let's, let's not make a mistake.
They're doing a good, some good things, their work on trying to get the Japanese and the South Koreans to move closer together, very positive, the deepening relationship with the Philippines. Bases in Papua, New Guinea, uh, the moves with Modi, all of these are the, in my view, the, you know, correct moves. But it's, but I'm afraid that, that they're on thin ice politically.
Okay, so let's, let's take each of, a couple of those countries. I want to talk about India. As I said, you spent a lot of time in India. You've written quite a bit about it recently. Um, India is, As you've said, slated to be the world's third largest economy [00:15:00] after, after Germany and Japan. Uh, its population is growing, while another country who's, has an approximate same size, uh, population, China's, is shrinking.
Uh, you're, you're basically saying, wake up. India's gonna be the most important, one of the most geo, important geopolitical forces in the world. That they want to work with us to some degree is an extraordinary accomplishment. It wasn't always that way. Certainly during the peak of the Cold War, it wasn't that way.
Uh, and, and because of political sensitivities in the U. S., um, among some leaders, among some U. S. leaders in response to, uh, Indian Prime Minister Modi, um, you're, you're basically arguing how we manage the U. S. India relationship is extremely important. Why? Well. You know, you think about it, um, America's biggest problems [00:16:00] in the Indo Pacific region historically come from uneven development in the sense that Japan industrialized rapidly before any of its neighbors and saw the possibility of becoming the dominant power in the, in the, in the region.
and launched into its disastrous policies of the 30s and 40s. Disastrous, but a disaster for us, as well as for them. After that, you have the Soviet Union, with this kind of preponderance of force and power, seeking to dominate the region, originally in alliance with China. And now you have China, which, since the 1990s, has grown to become an economic superpower, and You know, and, and it is aspiring to this kind of regional dominance.
In 1980, India's GDP was 65 percent of China's. Today, it's about [00:17:00] 17 percent of China's. If Indian GDP today were still 65 percent of China's, you would see a very, very different geopolitical picture in the Indo Pacific. You would actually see a situation where anybody even half rational in China would understand this Asia is too big even for China to eat.
Uh, the, the, you know, it's, we, we have to find a way of living with neighbors because there is no real alternative. So, when we ask, how do we solve, what is, when we think, okay, what kind of an Asia does America want? What is the end state that we're looking for in terms of our relationship with China? Um, if China were to continue to just pull away from India and the rest of the region, every year it becomes harder and harder to balance against a larger, richer, [00:18:00] stronger China.
But if India is actually catching up, beginning to catch up, then actually every year things Become easier and ultimately Indian growth, the flourishing of India offers an opportunity to have a stable, balanced Indo Pacific region without a U. S. China war. That strikes me as really, really good and something that we should be, we should be focused on, on trying to achieve.
But you're saying this and you've pointed out that You know, for instance, when I, when I was, when my kids were younger, and I'm much younger, my, you know, and they would talk about parents, about, you know, children learning a second language, everyone was Chinese, Chinese, Mandarin, they should learn Mandarin, kids should learn Mandarin, the future is China, all our kids should learn Mandarin, and all these, you know, people I knew who had kids who were older than my kids were spending a year studying in China, going to do their [00:19:00] master's degree, studying in China, hundreds of thousands of I I Americans going to China, Chinese citizens coming here, it was all about getting everybody comfortable with, you know, navigating, operating, living in a world of China.
And, and you're basically saying, that's yesterday, and it is, it is a huge deficit, almost a tragedy, an unforced error, that we're not thinking the same way about India. That we're not having our young people learn Indian languages, study in India. work in India, do more. I mean there, there's a huge Indian presence here in the United States, but that, that this, that, that mindset about China just simply doesn't exist about India, and we need to make the transition pretty quick.
That's exactly right, Dan. Um, we, you know, I'll, for example, the current government in India is, is a BJP. government. That's where it's Hindu nationalists [00:20:00] and there's a movement called the RSS, which is kind of a, uh, a national thing that has both a national leadership and has grassroots presences all over India, which has president labor unions, president Hindu religious organizations present in all every sort of dimension of life.
There is a kind of an RSS presence. It, um, it's tremendously influential in the BJP. It has a worldview and it has a history. There are very few people in the United States who know anything about it. Uh, and, you know, what does this movement think? How does it see the world? How does it see the United States?
How does it see the future of the Indian economy? What, from our point of view, are the strengths of the movement? What are the problems that it might cause in the relationship or in India? We don't have We, as [00:21:00] American society And even to a significant degree, the American government just don't know anything about this.
Okay, so I'm totally with you, um, on the importance of deepening ties with India, getting people here to understand both culturally, politically. You know, academically to, you know, better understand India. It's not without its problems, though. I mean, and I could pick a number of, um, or not without its sticking points, if you will.
And I could pick a number of those sticking points, not the least of which is how India has, has, um, operated, uh, as, as it relates to Russia's war with Ukraine, and effectively Russia's war with the West. So, India's effectively neutral? I think India is, well, first of all, I think the war in Ukraine is actually a blip on the screen in terms of where history is going.
I mean, I, you know, uh, I think. In the Indo [00:22:00] Pacific is more important. Well, I'm reminded of something that, uh, Henry Kissinger, uh, said in the nineties, he said this, he said, the unification of Germany is more important than the, um, strengthening of the, of the European union. The fall of the Soviet union is more important than the unification of.
Germany and the rise of India and China is more important than the fall of the Soviet Union. And, you know, that's right. It was right then and it's right now. But if you look, how is the news coverage in this country? You know, how many, even if you look at a place like the FBI. T or the economist or any of our major newspapers here, you know, how much Europe coverage, you know, every government crisis in the farmers in the Netherlands are unhappy.
We have a story. Um, there are whole swaths of India and Indian life, or for that matter, Indonesian or [00:23:00] Asian life. Generally, we simply are not equipped to understand or cover. So, you know, to to sort of say, well, gosh, India isn't doing what we want right now on Ukraine. Therefore, why should we pay attention to it is, I think, a pretty meh.
You know, it is not the best way to think about world politics for one thing, trying to understand, okay, why does India, is India doing what it's doing about Ukraine? What does it mean to India that just as China is growing closer to Pakistan, Russia is growing closer to China and how do we, how can we process that and use that as a basis for our outreach to India?
I'm saying. Regardless of whether we likes or dislikes something that India is doing at any given moment, we need to try to understand why they do what they do, what are the [00:24:00] arguments we could possibly make that would have an impact on their thinking, as opposed to arguments that we like because they make an impact on our thinking.
What, what makes the BJP, the RSS or India generally think an event internationally is good or bad, favorable or unfavorable? And then if we understand their mental map of the world, where do we find the points of alignment that we can build on and where are the points of Non alignment or even opposition that we, that we need to think about managing.
I would say we're not in a place where we, as a society, can do that very well. So my friend, um, Jared Cohn, who's at, who runs the global affairs at Goldman Sachs, he used to be at Google, he wrote this, um, paper for, for, uh, that he issued from Goldman Sachs, which is quite good, which he, he comes up with this category, which he calls geopolitical swing states, that there are swing states, we think of the swing states in the United States as [00:25:00] states, that could politically, in an election year, go either way, right?
Wisconsin can go either way, Pennsylvania can go either way, Michigan can go either way, Arizona, Nevada, we talk about these states, we focus on these states, and he says there's a handful of swing states globally that really matter to American grand strategy, America's geopolitics, and he says India is one of the key Geopolitical swing states for the U.
S. Is, so, it sounds like that's what you're saying. You agree with that, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. A, and B, if he's, if Jared is right, and if that's what you're saying, then, in essence, India can kind of become, given the size of its population, the size of its economy, the geopolitical importance of where it is geographically, can become a real kingmaker.
In terms of These other conflicts, U. S. China, for instance. Yeah. If India decides that it wants to work with us [00:26:00] to respond to the rise of China, we have one kind of future in the Indo Pacific. And if it decides that it doesn't, we have a very different kind of future. It really, I think there's, I would say, and, and this is actually something that, uh, Kurt Campbell has said, uh, who's the point person at the NSC on, on Indo Pacific policy, that in the 21st century, the U.
S. India relationship will be the most important single bilateral relationship. in the world. And I, I actually think that's a pretty realistic assessment. And then I look at an American society that has very little understanding of India, of Indian history, Indian culture. Many of us of course have developed an appreciation of Indian food and that's a good thing.
Uh, it's well worth appreciating. Um, okay. So now let's spend a minute on a moment on Saudi Arabia because in many respects [00:27:00] Saudi Arabia has. I mean, I don't want to oversimplify, but it has some of the same dynamics. A, a, you know, somewhat Controversial reputation among certain political constituencies and in Washington particularly on the left and there was a real sense as you said that you know, Saudi was going to be kept as a you know, I turned into a pariah state and yet we you know, and there was the whole drama when when And President Biden went to Saudi Arabia, was he gonna shake MBS's hand?
Was he gonna fist bump him? Was he, I mean it was all this, and now it's like all that, all the pretense is gone. Like effectively the US is one way or the other, however you want to explain what being all in looks like, the US has decided it's all in with Saudi Arabia. Well, first of all, I'd say, you know, part of this just illustrates, um, what happens when you, you don't base your [00:28:00] policy on a cold, realistic calculation of forces, because I think at the beginning of the administration, the Biden administration thinking Russia's going to be packed, Iran's going to be quiet.
And anyway, who's going to need oil? Because you're All of our fantastic green policies are going to be, you know, marginalizing the role of the oil producers in the future. I actually thought it could get away with sort of, you know, a completely anti Saudi policy. Um, you know, in terms both in terms of the atmospherics and in terms of the substance of policy, and they discovered much to their chagrin, they gradually discovered they had totally misread the balance of forces and the actual importance of Saudi Arabia into the foreign policy.
Of the United States. And so now to try to make that up in a sense there, they're probably having to end up doing more for the Saudis or offering more [00:29:00] to the Saudis than they would have done if they had had a sensible balanced policy from the beginning. This just kind of illustrates how getting these swing States wrong can be incredibly expensive.
And again, for the Biden administration, let's not forget for the Democrats, for most Democrats, Saudi Arabia has been a hate object from the 1950s forward. In the 50s, it was, uh, a tyrannical Arab state in league with evil American oil companies that hated Israel, that the Eisenhower administration was, you know, Sort of buttering up instead of standing with Israel and democracy in the 1970s.
It was a petro state monopolist that was holding us up at gunpoint in the 2001. That's who George W. Bush was sheltering. And it was a friend of the Bush family, then 911 and all [00:30:00] of this. And now for the greens, it's the source of all of this. You know, fossil fuel. It's the, it's, so it has these layers of.
Of conflict with democratic constituencies. And the fact that president Biden has, but it's more than fossil fuels, right? It's how they conducted themselves in Yemen in the sense of violations. Okay. The human rights people don't like them. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not defending that position, but I, but I think there's a, nobody on the democratic side likes them.
They're bad. You know, you named the issue and then obviously the, and then the, exactly, exactly all of this stuff. And. It, and, and now Biden is having to go the extra mile for them, civil nuclear program, iron bound security guarantee, right? It's okay. That is a huge cost to Biden politically. It's, it's, it's not something he just can do, [00:31:00] you know, without having a lot of people be angry at him.
And that, to me, is an indication of the administration's realization that the world that it's operating in is very, very different from the world it thought it was operating in back in 2021. On that note, I'm just struck by that. Um, you know, what they thought they were going to be operating in when they came into office in January of 21.
Because, I mean, I felt this with my, you know, time I spent with, People who became senior officials in the Biden administration. There was this sense that what's our foreign policy is going to be? It's going to be don't be Trump. That's what it's going to be. We're not going to be Trump. And Trump was a wrecking ball.
And our message to these capitals throughout the world, particularly in Europe, but not just Europe, is, you know, America's back, or America as we think of as America's leadership in the world is back. And we're not going to be [00:32:00] Trump. And um, And that will require some maintenance, but that was the beginning and the end of it.
And, and now they're embracing Riyadh in this particular case. Not, not as visually, not as optically as, um, uh, hug and embrace as, as the Trump administration had with Saudi. But you're saying, from a policy standpoint, it's, it's at least at what the Trump administration was doing, if not more. Exactly. And it's, um You know, I think the Biden administration coming in, they knew the world was in a mess.
That was not hard to see. But their diagnosis was that it was all fine back when Obama left, and then this just evil monkey Trump came in and, and gratuitously wrecked everything. And if we can just get back to where we were, things will be fine. Um, and they've had to kind of think, come to grips with, no, actually Obama was a terrible foreign policy president, and the, [00:33:00] you know, the United States was less secure, less respected, less powerful in 2016 than it was in 2008, just as by the way, the US was less powerful, respected, and secure and united in 2008 than it had been in 2001.
When George W. Bush took office. So we've had sort of a string of failed presidencies from a foreign policy point of view in the 21st century. And I think the Biden people are beginning to realize. You know that, that the mess is a lot deeper than just Trump was mean to people. He was mean to Anglo Americal, and that's why we're having a problem.
Uh, okay, before we move on to an entirely different topic, Recent news that the U. S. and Iran have agreed to a quote unquote prisoner exchange that involved sending a lot of money, uh, to Iran, and I know the details are still [00:34:00] coming out. Uh, so we don't know all the details, but at a high level, where does this development fit into your sense of things more broadly in the U.
S. Iran, either escalation of tensions or potential rapprochement? You know, that's a, that's an interesting question. Um, we, we, we still, I remember Winston Churchill, I think once said that when you have a political fight in Russia, it's Soviet Union, it's like watching two dogs fight under a rug. You don't know who's winning until the bones come out of the loser.
And, uh, you know, that's, uh, there's something to be said in terms of, uh, U. S. Iranian diplomacy. But I do think that what the U. S., what the Biden administration is probably trying to do is what it really wants in the Middle East is peace and quiet. That's what it wants. Um, [00:35:00] it doesn't want things in the Middle East to drive the price of oil to high levels, and it doesn't want wars in the Middle East that drag the U S N.
It is figured out that reaching out to Iran As it was doing and as Obama did without really reassuring the Gulf Arabs and the Israelis actually makes the Middle East less stable because as, as these countries all see what you're doing, they start taking countermeasures and sort of the intentions, you know, ratchet up.
So I think what they're now trying to do is a kind of a A policy of being, you know, being nice to everybody, trying to give everybody as much of what they want as you can in the hopes that they'll be quiet. And that, yeah, and that explains like why they're unlikely to probably take, escalate in any serious way militarily against Iran, but it also explains why to your earlier point, they are probably a little quieter [00:36:00] about expressing their views of what's going on in Israel than they otherwise may feel.
Um, it's just keep everything quiet. Um, before we move on to the Middle East, there's been a debate brewing here in the U. S. by some on the left, a little bit on the right, about whether or not it's time to rethink, uh, U. S. foreign aid to Israel, which is effectively military aid. It's not really, it's not economic aid, but it's about three billion dollars a year in foreign aid, and this has been a, a, a, an increasingly hot debate.
What's your What's your thinking on, on the merits of the, this is, this is the moment, now is the moment. By the way, I'm not saying never should be the moment, or the moment should be never, but what is your view on this moment? Well, you know, I, I have more a sense of how do you think about this, um, rather than anything else.
And, you know, the, the real question in, in U. S. aid to Israel [00:37:00] as to every other country is like, is it, is it worth it for American interests? Is the, is the return we're getting from the money we're giving worth it? I actually think in this case it probably is. In that, um, you know, it basically, that money has to be spent in the United States by Israel.
It's not stuff really that Israel can just like go buy stuff from Russia with American. And it means that what it's done is it's created this incredibly tight and deep connection between Israeli tax actors in defense and the U. S. And I think we benefit tremendously. We should remember that if the United States woke up tomorrow and said, you know what?
We've just had it with Israel. We've done this for so long, you know, you know, it's just not worth all the trouble. It's not like Israel would then be friendless and, you know, [00:38:00] Russia, China, India, there are a lot of countries that, that value the Israel's tech capacity and defense capacity. We have, we have a privileged partnership with a global defense tech specialist that everybody in the world envies, you know, that, that partnership.
And do we want Israeli tech going to China? No, we don't. Do we want Israeli tech going to Russia? No, we don't. Do we want to strengthen our own defense system using it? Yes, we do. And frankly, the money, again, which is spent on American, you know, spent in the United States for American companies, is, I think, kind of chump change, given all of that.
It's well worth it. From Israel's perspective, though. If you, if we were just saying that all the, all that India is gaining is from being a, a geopolitical swing state could, some are making the [00:39:00] argument that Israel would, uh, it would be in Israel's interest if it too were perceived as a geopolitical swing state, if everyone were vying for, for.
Uh, deepening ties with Israel, which right now they don't as much because of this deep relationship with the U. S. Well, I would just say that, you know, if that's how they feel, don't let me be the one to stop them. You know, Israel is a sovereign country, it makes its own decisions, and if the Israelis, uh, think that You know, this relationship with the United States ties their hands.
Go off and live your best life. I, myself, don't really think it would be wise, and I suspect that the overwhelming majority of Israeli defense analysts and thinkers would agree with me on this point. Um, but, uh, that is a question for the Israelis to decide. I do think there are some people in Israel who've, um, I don't know, have [00:40:00] over interpreted how recent developments have helped Israel, strengthened Israel's hand and has perhaps made some people in Israel less conscious of the value of an American alliance than perhaps in the past some of them have been.
And, you know, the idea, the, the sort of total political ineptitude of the Palestinians, the, um, the, our, the Abraham Accords and the clear impatience of the Arab leaders with the Israeli, with, uh, the Palestinians. Um, all of this is kind of, you know, and maybe Russia's activity and Israel's, you know, there are some fairly deep ties between Israeli society and Russia.
All of this is kind of giving people some ideas, but I think it would be, I think it, I think to over interpret that is too much. Um, I, I don't think, [00:41:00] I think the Middle East remains a place of realpolitik. Uh, it remains a place where Israel, Israel is as secure as it is strong and, uh, it, we're not talking about love matches.
We're not talking about a new Middle East. And I think Israel could, could land itself in hotter water than some in Israel are thinking if it broke with the United States and sort of pursued more radical policy, say on the West Bank and some of the other things that I think go through people's minds.
Yeah, and it also, it's not only foreign aid that gives the U. S. leverage over Israel. So, obviously, the, the, playing a role in the enforcement of the Abraham Accords, and the Camp David Accords, and the Israel Jordanian peace agreement, and, you know, how Israel's treated the U. N. Security Council. I mean, you think about all these ways that the U.
S. is intimately, so, it's not like, if suddenly Israel's not the recipient of U. S. foreign aid. [00:42:00] You know, Israel has kind of total freedom, not that it doesn't have freedom now, but it has total freedom as, you know, from, from, from dealing with the U. S. when it doesn't want to. The U. S., if it's unhappy with U. S.
policy, has many ways to deal with Israel. Uh, it's, it's actually, I, I would probably argue the foreign aid is the least of it. I, I, I agree. And so I think from an Israeli perspective, the only argument in favor of, of terminating USAID, the strongest argument would be, well, maybe it would reduce political pressure in the U.
S. against the alliance if you took this issue off the table, which a lot of people interpret wrongly in my judgment as a U. S. gift to an undeserving Israel, as a concession to Israel rather than as Something that, you know, we, we pay a fair price and get a fair return. Um, but, you know, again, that's, that's what politics is about, is [00:43:00] debating these very difficult issues.
Yeah, um, okay, before, before we go, I just want to pivot into an entirely different issue. Um, there's a big debate. Right now, in the West, in the world, about the role of artificial intelligence, the role of technology, the role that technology is having in changing our lives, changing the way we work, changing the way we live.
I've had two, you know, I had two back to back episodes, one with Tyler Cowen, who's a real tech guy. I'm a techno optimist on these issues, and then I had Dr. Christine Rosen, who I think you know from AEI, and Commentary, who's, I wouldn't call her a tech pessimist, but she's, she's, she's definitely skeptical of kind of the Tyler Cowen, Marc Andreessen view of the world.
You were writing years ago. Long before it was cool, you were writing about how, and it was in the context of your whole thesis about the blue state model and that the blue state model was gonna kind of come undone, um, and also ahead of your time there too, but you were talking about our relationship with work [00:44:00] and career, um, was, was in the process of being transformed and we didn't realize it, and, and I think this debate we're seeing now zeroes in on what you were seeing a while ago.
Yeah. It's like everyone, it's the conventional wisdom now, accepts many of these things you were predicting. So, can you, can you tell me what you saw back then and, and how you see it now? Let's just take one example out of the whole strain, and that's this whole business. You know, when the pandemic came, um, We discovered that something fundamental had changed, which was that half the country could stay home from work, and the work would still get done.
You know, when back in the, you know, old days, if you, you know, the, the 1920 Spanish flu pandemic or something, if people didn't go down to the The offices of the big banks of J. P. Morgan in Manhattan. J. P. [00:45:00] Morgan would not function as a bank. All the things that it did do wouldn't happen. But with the Internet, thanks to the Internet, we can zoom, we can do our work remotely, we can collaborate remotely.
And that's extraordinary. And we're, you know, and now we're looking at, wait a minute, On the one hand, this is fantastic because so many of us, even if we're only working from home a couple of days a week, it's more time with families, the commute time, that's just time kind of lost, it's now recaptured, it's cheaper, uh, you can often work more efficiently than when some jerk in the next office sticks their head in and wants to talk for 30 minutes about nothing, and for office politics reasons, you can't shoo them away.
You know, all kinds of things. And, uh, and at the same time, but at the same time, you've got this problem. Oh, and for the environment, it's fantastic. We, you know, emissions [00:46:00] go down when people stay home from work, but on the other hand, look what it's doing to the city revenues in mass transit are down. Uh, we're, we're looking at an amazing decline in the value of commercial real estate.
Just the other day, there's an, there was an editor in the Washington Post basically saying people have to go back to work not because it makes the work better, not because there's any objective necessity, but our city won't work if people don't come back. Fundamentally, this, the urban form that we live in, this mass You know, metropolis where at, you know, at nine o'clock the salmon swim in by the millions and at five o'clock they swim home in this migration actually is no longer necessary.
It's a revolution. What does that do for the pensions of city workers? [00:47:00] What does it do for taxes? You know, there's just a whole range of things. It's a revolution. Is it good or bad? Well, there's a lot of both in it. And a lot will depend on how do we manage it. And you don't believe that we are gonna go back to what life was like pre pandemic.
I mean, you don't even think it'll be like 80 or 90 percent. You think the pandemic took us so far from the way we've been living for like basically 30 years to half a century that, that it's just, it's, it will, our lives going forward will be unrecognizable. Because I do see this effort to get back to normal.
It's not totally normal. I mean, I work in Midtown Manhattan and Um, it's not the same as it was pre pandemic, but it's still Gotten pretty good. It's still pretty bustling. So right. No, I know now in fairness. It's yeah. Yes I mean, yeah, it's not gonna go, you know, it's not gonna be like one Incident [00:48:00] changes everything a hundred percent right, but if I am thinking about how much corporate headquarters do I need and I look at what it costs and To do it in the city.
I think Going forward, people are going to be making investment decisions differently. Um, it's just not rational. Or, or if you live in a world where employees expect to only be in the office three days a week or four days a week rather than five days a week, it just changes the, the plate of space, you know, the floor plan of space that you need.
And what it means is you need less. That's right. And it also, by the way, it seems to be increasingly this, the most talented and successful employees most want the freedom and flexibility of working from home. Um, you know, it's that, you know, and, and as the economy is changing, it's those employees that are more critical to the success of more enterprises.
But you, when you [00:49:00] were writing about this, Fifteen years ago, you were, fourteen years ago, you weren't, you weren't anticipating a pandemic to be the catalyst. You just thought these were the trends of technology that were gonna enable, you were like seeing a Zoom future, if you will. Yeah. Before there was even Zoom.
Yeah. Well, I remember, uh, I was writing a lot about this in connection with, uh, Jerry Brown's plan for high speed rail in California. And basically I'm saying Look, you know, the assumption that in 2040, you were going to have that everybody in, you know, you're going to have as many people needing to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles for business, you know, that that that's just going to continue to grow in some predictable trajectory is crazy.
It's far more likely that in 2040 people in San Francisco, rather than spending even a day on a very nice fast train to L. A., would rather just dial in on zoom from home. Uh, so, you know, so this whole [00:50:00] idea that, um, you have a, you, you, but you didn't know about Zoom back then when you were writing about it, right?
But, but you, but you knew That's right. But it was clear teleconferencing was coming. You look at Moore's Law and stuff, it's moving this way. And you can also see visibly that every generation and every cohort within a generation is more comfortable with interacting on social media, you know, electronically than the one before.
Mm-Hmm. . So that. Um, you know, people are going to be, you know, people, younger people are much better at reading a room in a teleconference. Then some of us old folks and so some of the benefits that people say, Oh, well, you can only get that face to face. I think, yeah, I think there are some things that can only happen face to face, but I think that actually that's not a fixed set permanent amount, but that over time people are going to be more and more comfortable doing more things over the distance and, you know, business in a capitalist [00:51:00] system.
Business likes to cut costs. And people like to cut the cost, you know, that they pay for working and so on. So there's just a lot of pressures, I think, pushing this way. The pandemic was a kind of a catalyst. Yeah, I mean there are costs both ways though because when you don't have people in person working together There's that has its own, you know, right right business and productivity, right?
Nothing is perfect But again, I think we're not going to go back to the idea that everybody every professional in America dresses up in formal business wear And goes down in a car or mass transit to the same place down to does that essentially five days a week for 40 years of their working life unless they're sick, you know, no, that is not how things are going to go.
Yeah, uh, I noticed [00:52:00] I, our, our listeners don't get a video feed with this, Dan, but as I look at your background, I don't think I'm seeing a Midtown office and you can look at mine and that's certainly not what you're looking at. Right, right, right. I know. I, uh, It's funny. I've got a, I've got a book coming out in a few months and I, uh, I was speaking to the publisher and I explained, unlike when the last time my book came out, I can't, I'm not going to be able to travel this time, um, to promote it, uh, so I'm really going to be, uh, you know, and the publisher says, oh, don't worry, no, authors.
Barely travel now. It's all, it's all virtual. You can, you can like, you know, come home at night and just flip on your computer and, and bang out a couple podcasts and like there, there, there's your book tour. You can do that over it. We should, no, that's a perfectly good example of this. Like what publisher is going to spend all that money for?
Flying an author around all these places and no author wants to go to like 17 cities. It's not a good use of the author's time. I [00:53:00] mean, no, it's, it's, it's not good. And in any case, now that books are sold so much on Amazon and other, these, and Barnes and Noble. com. Right, right. All of these retailers and independent booksellers, wonderful independent booksellers.
The whole book tour just doesn't exist. And we could say, Oh, but you know, the face to face contact between the author and the audience is so wonderful. We could come up with all of these sort of rationalizations of nostalgia and stuff is lost when change happens, you know, that it just is, but change still happens.
All right, Walter. Uh, I, uh, we'll leave it there. Thank you for doing this, uh, as always. Uh, and, um, we will, we will, the link to your. Uh, columns that we discussed in the show notes, we'll put the link to the Ark of the Covenant, your fantastic book about the United States and Israel in the show notes, and, uh, hope to, uh, to have you back on.
You're always, uh, it's [00:54:00] always like a master class when you come on, and this, this time is no different. We covered a lot of topics. Um, so, um, So, thank you. Great. Well, thank you.
That's our show for today. To keep up with Walter, you can track him down at the Hudson Institute. That's Hudson. org. You can also order his book, which I highly recommend, The Ark of a Covenant, The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People. You can order that at Barnesandnoble. com or your favorite independent bookseller or at that e commerce retailer.
I think they're calling it Amazon. And of course, be sure to read Walter's column regularly, his weekly column in the Wall Street Journal, The Global View, which is probably one of the best pieces of analysis on foreign policy and global affairs that you'll find anywhere. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar.
Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.[00:55:00]