Sleepwalking Through a Decisive Decade - with Bret Stephens
President Biden recently warned that the U.S. faces a 'decisive decade' in its rivalry with China. Are we sleepwalking through this decisive decade? That's what Bret Stephens of The New York Times argues in the Times. (Not only with regard to China but also a range of geopolitical challenges across the globe.) In this conversation, Bret looks at China, Russia/Ukraine, and U.S. defense readiness. He also raises important questions about where the revolution in Iran is going.
Bret is a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The Times. He came to The Times after a long career with The Wall Street Journal, where he was most recently deputy editorial page editor and, for 11 years, a foreign affairs columnist. Before that, he was editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post, where he was based in Israel. Bret was raised in Mexico City, earned his BA at the University of Chicago and his Masters at the London School of Economics.
Bret is also the editor in chief of the journal, Sapir - sapirjournal.org
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] What we now have is the worst of both worlds, which is that we have all of these commitments, some of them formal commitments, others a little less formal, but, uh, implicit. And we don't have the, the, the means, the adequate means to make good on all of those commitments. There's a gap there and, uh, an adversary that can, uh, expose that gap, that can, uh, take advantage of that gap and exploit it.
Uh, is one that is going to dethrone the United States as the guarantor of, you know, the guarantor of last resort when it comes to global order.
President Biden recently warned that the United States faces a decisive decade in its rivalry with China. But are we sleepwalking through this decisive decade? [00:01:00] That's the question that Brett Stevens asked in a recent column in the New York Times. So we thought we'd bring Brett on to have a conversation about All these geopolitical events that are happening around us and whether the United States and the West are sleepwalking through them.
Brett is a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times. He came to the Times after a long career with the Wall Street Journal where he was most recently Deputy Editorial Page Editor and for 11 years a Foreign Affairs Columnist. Before that he was Editor in Chief of the Jerusalem Post.
Where he was based in Israel. Brett has reported from around the world and interviewed scores of world leaders. He was raised in Mexico City, earned his B. A. at the University of Chicago and his Master's at the London School of Economics. Brett is also the editor in chief of Sapir, a journal exploring the future of the American Jewish community.
Brett Stevens on sleepwalking through a decisive decade. This is Call Me Back.[00:02:00]
I'm pleased to welcome back to the podcast, a friend of the Call Me Back podcast, longtime friend of mine, Brett Stevens from the New York Times, editor in chief of Sapir, the Sapir Journal, which I highly recommend, the link to which we are putting in the show notes, and, and, most notably, in the spring of this year, uh, our guest today, Brett, was permanently banned by the Russian government of ever visiting Russia.
Did I get that third credential right? You did. It's, it's, it's my most illustrious one. And how, how exactly was this, uh, uh, granting of this credential communicated to you? It was weird. An editor of mine wrote me, uh, the, the, a Kremlin affiliated, uh, radio station wrote to the Times to say, how do you, how, how does the Times feel about its columnists being banned?
Uh, by Russia. I wasn't personally notified. [00:03:00] So I had to ask, uh, Gary Kasparov of all people, uh, if he could, um, ask around, uh, obviously being a Russian speaker to see if, see if it was true. And Gary got back to me and said that indeed, Uh, it was the case. I, along with 963 Americans, but the New York Times very sweetly when it announced the news said that, uh, President Biden, Morgan Freeman, and Brett Stevens are among the Americans banned.
So I thought, okay, I'm in some fairly illustrious company. And why, and not to digress, but why did Morgan Freeman get banned? That is a question that many people are asking. I mean, I get, I get why you were banned. I get why Putin doesn't want you around. But what's his beef with Morgan Freeman? I don't know.
Maybe it's because Morgan Freeman is a friend of Dave Chappelle's. You know, that's, uh, that may be it. Alright, well anyway, congratulations. Mazel Tov. Thank you. [00:04:00] Um, all right. So, Brett, I want to, um, talk to you about a column that, uh, you wrote the other day that, um, caught my eye, uh, in the Times, titled, Are We Sleepwalking Through a Decisive Decade?
And the, I'll just kind of jump into the column, but, but you, you say in the column, and I'm quoting you here, you say, during the Cold War, this is you writing, during the Cold War, defense problems. We're major political issues. So people paid attention. Now they are treated as technical bureaucratic issues.
So people mostly don't meaning that during the cold war. Political issues, you remember the Bear in the Woods ad, Reagan's famous, uh, 1988, you know, there was the national security and geopolitical issues were front and center ballot issues. And now they're not only not ballot issues, but they actually, even with so many dramatic geopolitical events happening around the world, we can go weeks and sometimes, you know, months of news cycles [00:05:00] where most people just aren't paying attention to these events.
And yet at the same time, as you point out in your column, Just recently, there were reports that China's nuclear warhead stockpile had doubled since 2020. Doubled. And you wrote that it could reach 1, 500 By the mid 2030s, which is close to parity with the U. S. and Russia. And then you go on and you list all these different scenarios.
You point out that, you know, there's the real possibility that countries like Saudi Arabia and Japan could acquire nuclear weapons. Again, these are countries that are friends of the United States one way or the other. So, so maybe we aren't concerned that these countries have nuclear weapons. But should we be concerned?
And obviously, if you have like an arms race in the Middle East, that's That raises a whole other level, a whole cascade of, of, um, geopolitical issues that we've got to think through. And so the gist of it, not to mention this, this, you know, hot war between Russia and Ukraine that the U. S. and Europe are very involved with indirectly, not to mention what's [00:06:00] going on in the streets of Iran, and we can go on and on about what's going on with China and Taiwan.
We had Matt Pottinger on, uh, last week where we had a whole conversation. Sort of, uh, little unnerving conversation on, on, um, China. And so, there's like a lot happening right now in the world. And your question, and some of it's going well, as you and I were talking about offline. But, it's going well at least from the U.
S. and the West, West's perspective. But, you're concerned that generally speaking, as you say, because it's not a, like a front and center political issue, we're just kind of sleeping through these dramatic events, sleepwalking through these dramatic events. I don't think the American public is really paying attention in the way that Our generation did back in the 1970s and 1980s.
You referred to that bear the woods 1984, uh, Reagan ad, which really got people's attention. Ordinary people fought hard about. [00:07:00] Questions like, uh, um, would we arm our submarines with missiles that had, uh, uh, genuine second strike capabilities that these sorts of questions that now rarely get asked, um, uh, even, even, uh, uh, uh, at the political level, pretty much anywhere outside of maybe the Senate, uh, armed services, uh, committee.
And so. Despite the war in Ukraine, despite the obvious threats to Taiwan, despite the continued upheaval in the Middle East, the American, I think the American public has fallen out of the habit, fallen out of shape when it comes to thinking deeply about serious strategic issues. I mean, I was very struck that last, or the week before last, uh, The United States rolled out its first new strategic bomber, uh, the B [00:08:00] 21, uh, in, first time we've, we've produced a new bomber in 34 years, it's going to be a 200 billion, uh, uh, item, uh, in, in, in the federal budget and.
It barely received a news story. Um, uh, maybe Time magazine had was, I think the one publication that paid attention to it to the extent that people pay attention to, uh, uh, to time. Um, but really very little, uh, very little coverage. Compare that to the wall to wall coverage over. Uh, Elon Musk and Twitter's content moderation policy.
So we, as a country, are not thinking about the sorts of things that I think, uh, ought to be, uh, or ought to matter to us most in this new era of strategic competition against, uh, two, as they say, near peer competitors. Uh, can you describe what you mean by that? The, [00:09:00] the, because then I want to get into some of the specifics, but what, what is this new era of, of great power competition?
Why, why is it different than what we've experienced in the past? Because I can understand why people, you know, after Soviet Union fell, it was sort of understandable that we went through this, this, um, This decade of, of disengagement from foreign policy. I was disappointed by it, but I, during the Clinton years, it's, it wasn't shocking, but then you would think after nine 11, when geopolitical issues became front and center again, that would have just, that we would have been on a continuum for the next couple of decades where we would be paying attention and to your point, we're not paying attention, but even what we're dealing with now is different from what we're dealing with.
Right after and right around 9 11. So I think that the post Cold War period has had three distinct phases, each of them lasting about a decade. Between 1991 when the Soviet Union finally collapsed and [00:10:00] 2001, 9 11, we were in the sort of the end of history era where we thought that the only job for foreign policy was to make sure that every country from Mongolia to, uh, uh, Angola to, um, Uh, Venezuela or whatever had, uh, market economies and was moving in the direction of, uh, of, uh, uh, an open society.
Then 9 11, uh, very abruptly ended that era. We suddenly realized we did have competitors, but the competitor we had was a very primitive one, at least technologically primitive in the form of, uh, Islamist extremism. And we spent a decade, uh, In an effort to to suppress that extremism, then President Obama came to office and said that it was time to, um, turn, turn the page on a on a decade of war and, uh, both, uh, Obama and then later Trump, obviously, [00:11:00] with some exceptions and departures.
Pursued a very inward looking foreign policy. Um, Obama talked about nation building at home and, and Trump talked about, uh, talked about America first. Um, but we weren't really thinking of ourselves as a country that had serious strategic competitors. You'll remember, well, you of all people, Dan will remember this very well, how, uh, Uh, Obama brushed aside Mitt Romney's comment in one of the 2012 debates that Russia was our greatest geopolitical, uh, geopolitical foe.
You know, the 1980s called and wants its foreign policy back. I remember like, I remember like it was yesterday. Guess what? The 1980s has called and, and we do want that foreign policy back and we want to be thinking Uh, particularly with the challenge of two dictatorial, adversarial, uh, and aggressive enemies, uh, how we [00:12:00] build, uh, and sustain capabilities, particularly military capabilities that can, uh, deter and if necessary defend.
And we're not thinking about that. And what my column points out. Is that, uh, we have a, we have a military today. That's in really bad shape. It's in really bad shape, despite a small Trump arms buildup, uh, it's facing a whole host of challenges that require some, some really sustained attention, the. There was some good news in the Congress appropriated more money for the Pentagon than the Biden administration had asked for, but we're still spending about 3 percent of gross domestic product on on defense.
The the average post 1972 average is above 4%. So we're well below where where we historically have been despite despite Uh, it becoming clear [00:13:00] that we are going to need to defend, um, uh, allies, uh, uh, in far flung corners of the world, and we might have to defend them at the same time. So you point out in your piece that there's this common talking point, so, so you make the argument, yes, we're, we're only spending about 3 percent of GDP, well below, as you just said.
Uh, the historic numbers, also the, the high of the Reagan years, certainly the very high of the post World War II years and the World War II years. But then you, but then there's this talking point, that there's almost this canard out there. People say, oh, what are you talking about? The U. S. spends more than anyone on defense.
In fact, the U. S. spends more on defense than the next nine It's one of the most, um, uh, either ignorant or fraudulent talking points out there. And I just offered one example. So, uh, an average, uh, Marine private [00:14:00] with a year or two service gets, uh, as much in salary and benefits as a Chinese general. We, we, we spend not billions, but hundreds of billions of the defense budget on health benefits.
Veteran pen. Uh, uh, pensions, uh, everything that goes into making a professional army, uh, an attractive career for lots of Americans. And we should, of course, do that. That's part of the part of the, the bargain. It's part of what we owe our, uh, our service members, but the Chinese and the Russians are not encumbered.
by these kinds of costs. The other aspect is that both China and Russia devote a tremendous amount of money to their defense establishments that isn't counted in official records of how much they're spending on defense. Obviously, because it's, it's a black box, we don't know exactly what's, what's there.
But this is, this is, this is well, uh, well [00:15:00] recorded that are, uh, well established that there is a black budget. Uh, for for their defense establishments. That's much, much that that adds to the size of what they're of what they're spending. So that that statement, well, we spend so much more than than the rest of them than our adversaries do.
Just isn't true. And the final point, and this is important, China basically fronts just one ocean, the Pacific. It now has more, more naval ships, at least in terms of hull numbers, if not tonnage, than the entire United States Navy. But the entire Chinese Navy is dedicated to one front and one, really one task, which is if necessary to take Uh to to take uh, taiwan and hold its other possessions On its shore the united states navy is in the atlantic.
It's in the mediterranean. It's in the persian gulf. It's in the indian ocean it's in the uh, it's in the uh, [00:16:00] eastern pacific and uh, and uh, and the western pacific It's on south american shores. We are spread around the world because that's the nature of our defense commitment So when we're looking at Uh, the difference between us and our adversaries, it's that they can concentrate force on a small set of objectives.
Our forces are spread thin, uh, on a very broad set. And it's the same. So you're, you make the point about China and Taiwan, the same is true for Russia. The same is true for, for Iran. They have much more narrow regional focus. It's not, it's not just China that has that advantage. That's absolutely true. And by the way, I'm saying this very cognizant, and this is a point I make in the column, that the performance of the Russian military so far in Ukraine is a hopeful sign from our perspective that if we did have to confront them militarily, that we would be We have the the competence and the power and the [00:17:00] technology to uh to defeat them Uh, uh, so, you know fingers crossed that's the case.
We don't know if that's also true Um against uh against china, but we can't base our military policy on hoping That we're going to get lucky in terms of our choice of adversaries And uh, you also go you go through a bunch of this data too on air force readiness. The air force is short by The U. S. Air Force is short by 1, 650 pilots.
The Army is short by roughly 30, 000 recruits. More than half of America's bombers were built during the Kennedy administration. The last B 52s rolled off the assembly line in 1962, well before either of us was born. And when you talk to policymakers, and including those in the Obama administration, and when you talk to policymakers, especially those in the Biden administration, I mean, these are not Many of them are not, [00:18:00] um, hard isolationist leftists.
These are, these are a number of these folks have supported, you know, over the years when they were working in Congress as staffers or members of Congress themselves, they supported a robust, uh, defense budget, including during the Reagan years and the, and the, uh, Bush years. So what's, what's your sense of their understanding of this, of this, um.
This decade that we're, we're sleep, you know, as you put it, we're sleepwalking through. Well, it depends on who you speak to it in, in the Biden administration. I actually think some of the people in senior positions understand the challenge. The term decisive decade is one that, uh, I think, uh, is attributed to president Biden, at least in, uh, the Pentagon's, uh, uh, document on its defense, uh, defense, uh, strategies.
or strategy. So they get it. But I don't think I mean, for an administration that's very happy to spend trillions of dollars, they're not spending it on one area of [00:19:00] the budget that that, you know, really sorely sorely needs it. And again, you know, people talk in raw figures. They say, Gosh, we're gonna spend, I don't know, 850 860 Billion dollars on the defense department.
Isn't that more than enough? Um, well, no, it's not more than enough because it has to be adequate to our uh to our commitments or at least our goals now, it's entirely possible and this is a this is an important point It's entirely possible that if we really take a hard look at those commitments We might say, you know, we why should we defend taiwan?
Why should we defend ukraine, you know, quite frankly uh as Trump used to ask, you know, why are we still a part of NATO? Isn't this an obsolete organization? And those are valid questions. I mean, I know where I stand on those questions, but those are absolutely valid questions. But what we now have is the worst of both worlds, which is that we have all of these commitments.
Some of them formal commitments, others, a little [00:20:00] less formal, but, uh, implicit. Um. Uh, and we don't have the the means the adequate means to make good on all of those commitments. There's a gap there and an adversary that can, uh, expose that gap that can, uh, take advantage of that gap and exploit it. Uh, is one that is going to dethrone the United States as the guarantor of, you know, the guarantor of last resort when it comes to global order.
If, if that happens, we're going to live in a much darker place where, uh, the, uh, the, the, the dictatorships of the world. will, uh, do what they do, do whatever they think they can get away with. And our former allies and partners and client states are going to have to make very careful calculations about, uh, just what it is, uh, they, they, they want to do.
Well, will Japan become a nuclear [00:21:00] state or Saudi Arabia? That's a, that's a scenario that I, uh, I raised. Well, some of these countries that are now allied with the United States think, you know, It's better to be allied with China. Uh, this, the whole, the whole, uh, geopolitical deck would be swiftly reshuffled in that event in a way that I don't think would be, uh, uh, uh, would, would, uh, be, uh, uh, would, uh, work for the long term security and, uh, the, The interest of the United States.
So, now let's, I want to pick your brain about a couple of hot spots. Uh, you recently returned from Israel. Yeah. You were covering a lot there and writing about a range of issues, not the least of which you're at least have written in the past extensively about what is happening with Iran. It does feel like a lot of big things are happening in Iran, not just the pressure on the regime from [00:22:00] the This protest movement, um, but at the same time, the protest movement, I mean, it is a real grassroots protest movement, but at the same time, it is getting real traction internationally, like things we've never seen before, like Macron in France is meeting with some of the, you know, key activists, uh, that are supporting the, this, this protest movement, you have, you know, uh, Iran sending drones to Russia, which is obviously shaking up the Biden administration's, uh, once, once probably now evaporated confidence that they could figure out some kind of Iran deal, uh, some return to the JCPOA because the, the biggest, the highest foreign policy priority for them, Russia is now, you know, Iran has basically, you know, planted a flag on the other side of that conflict on the other side of the U S I can go on and on.
I was shocked to see the U. N. Human Rights Council is actually taking on, taking up the Iran protest movement and the human rights violations taking place. I was shocked to see that. Never did I imagine the U. N. [00:23:00] Human Rights Council doing something right. And so it does feel like there's a and obviously Well, let's not get carried away.
I know, I know, I'm not getting carried away. I'm saying that there does seem to be some kind of convergence where Things are shifting on Iran, not just on the streets of Iran, but, uh, you know, potentially within the EU, obviously within the Biden administration, obviously with between Israel and the Gulf States.
So what's what's your reaction? Well, uh, We should begin by recognizing that what is happening in Iran is not a protest movement. It is a revolutionary movement. We should recognize that, uh, our interests are, what's the difference? Can you, can you explain the distinction? Well, a protest movement would have limited aims, like, let's get rid of the morality police, which Iran may or may not have agreed to do.
It's not entirely clear. Um, and once thou, those protests, once those demands are satisfied. [00:24:00] Then the protesters, the protests recede and the regime continues, even if it's made a concession or two to the protesters, a revolutionary movement wants to get rid of the regime itself. And I think it's increasingly clear that what we're seeing in Iran.
Is a revolutionary movement. Their goal is not the end of, uh, the laws regarding his job. Their goal is the end of the regime that that has been enforcing those laws. And so that's that's an important difference. And, you know, the The The persistence, the duration of, of, of, uh, of this resistance, uh, a word that finally applies, this resistance, bold, courageous, extraordinary resistance on the part of Iranian women joined by their, their brothers and sons and fathers.
Um, uh, is, is, is something we ought to recognize for what it is. It's in our profound interest, the [00:25:00] world's interest, that they succeed and that they succeed hopefully as, uh, with, with as, uh, small a loss of life, uh, as possible. Because it's entirely possible that Iran could either Descend into an orgy of repression, uh, or into a full scale, uh, civil wars, uh, resembling what has happened in, uh, resembling what has happened in Syria with devastating loss of life, refugee crises.
Uh, and, uh, and so on. So that if, if it is a revolutionary movement and we want it to succeed, what should we be doing in order to help it succeed? I think one thing that the European Union could do if Macron were really serious and his partners in the EU were serious, they'd simply withdraw all of Europe's ambassadors from, uh, uh, from, from Iran.
Just, just deny it, the legitimacy that they so We could be, uh, supporting Iranians, uh, especially oil [00:26:00] workers who want to go on strike. Can we help them create a strike fund? So if they stop working they can still feed themselves and their families we can be Helping iran get sophisticated communications, uh devices into Helping the iranian people get sophisticated communications devices So that they can talk to one another they can get the message out they can show the world What is happening?
There's a whole range of things that, uh, that we can do that are, uh, non kinetic, uh, but really impactful and we should be doing them soon. And the last thing is we need much more. More vocal, moral leadership, not just a statement or two, but vocal, moral leadership on the part of the Biden administration and other, uh, other leaders of civilized countries.
I mean, this is the ultimate feminist revolution. We hit the world has as far as I can. Remember, the world has never seen anything [00:27:00] quite like this. So let's ask ourselves, and especially let's ask those of us who, who, uh, consider ourselves, uh, those, you know, those, those who consider themselves feminists, uh, uh, what are you going to do about it?
What are you going to do to help these amazing women? Uh, the whole world should be galvanized on their behalf. And when you say the ultimate feminist revolution, can you expand on that a little bit? Well, this is a revolution that would have been inconceivable without The leadership of women without the courage of women and its whole purpose is to end a regime whose defining characteristic is misogyny.
Uh, it's not an accident that, uh, hijab is so important to what, uh, Iran is, uh, or what the Iranian regime is, which is the denial of rights to half of its population. Uh, for reasons that are at least ostensibly, uh, religious, but as I said, [00:28:00] profoundly misogynistic, so, uh, that women have taken the lead, that women have been the figures who have been the most courageous of being prepared to not just Take off their hijab, but, but cut their hair to endure the possibility of horrific reprisals in that police state in order to, to, to have their demands met.
I mean, it's just extraordinary. It just, it takes your breath away. And, uh, I don't understand why President Biden or, or, or, uh, his wife, Dr. Biden. Um, having given long set piece speeches and, you know, in, in, uh, prominent places, kind of on the order of Obama's Cairo speech, saying, we stand with you, uh, women of Iran.
You are. You are, uh, not just the hope of a country, but, uh, the hope of women everywhere. What do you think the Biden administration wants? I mean, they're monitoring this [00:29:00] situation closely. President Obama recently, in the last couple months, gave an interview where he said it was a mistake for him in 2009.
During the protest movement or revolution, whatever you want to call it, back in 2009. He, he said it was a mistake for the, for his administration to have been so quiet. That he should have made a statement of solidarity. Now obviously there was a reason why he, he didn't make a, uh, issue a statement of solidarity.
It's because he wanted to work with the Iranian government on some kind of JCPOA. So it was pure realpolitik. It wasn't like, it's not like, there was a rationale to it. I disagreed with it, but there was a rationale to it. So what's their, what's this administration's rationale? Like what are they trying to do at this point?
That's a great question. I don't think the administration has, they had a plan A and I don't think they had a plan B. Uh, plan A was, uh, The JCPOA, getting a new JCPOA on what they thought would be similar terms. Those negotiations went, uh, went [00:30:00] nowhere as we, uh, we know, despite having the most, uh, uh, pliable negotiator, the person of Robert Malley, uh, um, uh, as our, as our point man on that, uh, on that, uh, uh, issue.
Um, and, uh, now they're, I don't think they're really, I, I haven't seen articulated a real policy, uh, they're just kind of waiting to see, uh, what happens and that's, that's a shame, that's, uh, I understand someone like Jake Sullivan's focus is probably, you know, not 24, but 26 hours a day on, on Ukraine and the outcome of that, of that conflict, but, um, Uh, maybe someone ought to start thinking about what we want to do, um, vis a vis, uh, Iran and, uh, and this revolution.
And, and I, I just, I haven't, I haven't seen anyone come up and say, well, here's, here are our goals. Um, you know, [00:31:00] the other factor, which we can't ignore And what are we going to do, like, what happens, you know, through, through no real fault of their own, intelligence communities historically miss these things, right?
They miss the fall of the Soviet Union. They missed the, they missed the Arab Spring. They, I mean, we can go on and on and on. They've missed a lot of big moments. They could be missing this and we wake up one day and the whole thing just starts to crumble. What's our plan for the day after that? Again, we do not seem to have a plan.
The number one aim is we should say that our goal is an Iranian nation and government or an Iranian government That respects the will of its people and an Iranian nation that lives in peace with all of its neighbors. That that should be the formula. That is what we want. We want, you know, we want the end of the revolutionary [00:32:00] regime of Iran and the return of the nation state of Iran, which is what it was in the days of the shot.
That's the national interest. We can live with Iran's, uh, legitimate national interest vis a vis Afghanistan or other of its neighbors. So long as The regime isn't bent on, uh, exporting a radical revolutionary agenda. To Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, you know, uh, uh, uh, Saudi Arabia, uh, you name it. Um, and so that's, that's what we, we, we ought to want.
So we start, we should start also talking to Iranians, uh, outside Iranian actors outside of the regime. From someone like Masi Ali Nejad, who leads the, you know, who, who, who, who led the movement to have women take off their hijabs to other, uh, [00:33:00] dissident groups, to members of the old Pahlavi, uh, family to start thinking seriously about a post, uh, a post revolutionary, uh, uh, Iranian, uh, uh, Iranian government.
And again, I just don't see any movement on that. So in 79, 1979, when the, during the last revolution in Iran, real revolution, Pahlavi regime, the Shah, the Shah gets, uh, pushed out. It was, it was mostly a secular, uh, protest movement, revolution, that was ultimately overtaken by, you know, clerics, theocrats, and they, they basically hijacked the whole thing.
You mentioned to me recently that What may be concerning about this revolution is that there are no religious elements in it. So it's like the corollary is, you know, that actually in order for it to be effective, it just can't be this young, Western oriented, quasi secular, kind of [00:34:00] modernist movement. It needs religious elements in its coalition to be effective.
Do you still have that concern? Well, uh, just going back to an earlier point you made, uh, you know, in 1979 when, uh, Khomeini returned to, uh, to Iran, you know, you remember that famous picture of him coming down the steps of the Air France jet, uh, Andrew Young, who is then our President Carter's ambassador to, uh, the United Nations, described Khomeini as a, uh, as a saint, him, He actually used the word saint, uh, which just goes to show how wrong that administration, uh, got it.
This is just, uh, nine months or so before, uh, before, uh, uh, the hostages were, were taken at. [00:35:00] Uh at our embassy and I fear that once again We're stepping into the same mistake of just not having any idea as to what's going on Now with respect to your question, there was an interesting piece of the new york, excuse me, the wall street journal, I think Uh about the fact that iran is becoming a much more secular society Uh, one of the signs of it is the popularity of dog ownership, which the regime vehemently, uh, uh tried to suppress, uh, for, for largely religious reasons.
Now it's a popular thing to own dogs in, in, in Tehran. More and more women are being seen on the streets, simply ignoring, uh, any, any restraints, uh, with respect to, to hijab, uh, even if they're not part of the protest movement. But still about a third of Iranian society is deeply religious. And I don't think you crack the regime until you give religious Iranians [00:36:00] comfort that they are.
their ideas and their rights will be respected in any kind of future regime. The key is to move away from Khomeini's vision of Islam and this idea of the guardianship of the clerical establishment to something like the Ayatollah Sistani's idea of Shi'ism as something that stays apart from the political sphere.
You know, Khomeini said when he came back to Iran in 1979 was this, you know, this iconic Shiite cleric, uh, in southern Iraq, who Right. Yeah, okay, sorry, go ahead. Based in Iraq, who had a very different view of the relationship between, uh, mosque and state, uh, and believed that the mosque should Uh, refrain from engaging or interfering in matters of [00:37:00] state.
So we want an Iranian religious establishment that retreats to a place like Qom, uh, uh, and, and takes care of, uh, clerical work, takes care of. Raising clerics and, and, and, uh, uh, uh, uh, leading, uh, prayers and mosques and, and all the stuff that religions normally do, but not running the country. And so that, uh, it remains to be seen whether.
There are sufficiently vocal elements in Iran and particularly the religious establishment there used to be not any, not, not as many now as there were 15 or so years ago, who can say, you know, we can envision an Iran that respects the dominant religion or the dominant modes of religion, but is not Before we move off geopolitics, Russia, [00:38:00] where, where, where are you on the dial of, you know, uh, zero, it's, uh, it's not going well at all, and ten, it's going better than we could have ever possibly imagined.
Where are you on that? Dial right now. Uh, hard to say. It's kind of best of times. Worst of times in the sense that at the military level, it's going so much better than I think anyone envisioned prior to the invasion. The problem is that. Putin is resorting to the same tactics that ultimately won the day for his client Bashar Assad in Syria, which is just, uh, mass terrorism, uh, taking out, uh, civilian infrastructure in the hopes of freezing, uh, the Ukrainian people, uh, into, uh, into submission.
And I don't want to say those tactics are doomed to fail [00:39:00] because the Ukrainian people have already suffered a lot and, uh, You never quite know what people's breaking point is until you reach it. Although all the evidence is that the Ukrainians really have a, a will to a will to win, I think. There's also Western engagement in this crisis, in this conflict, in a way that there wasn't in Syria, ultimately.
Yes, and, and, and that has made all the difference. Um, you know, what we need to do in terms of our support for Ukraine is to provide them with the kind of support that can inflict a decisive military defeat. On the Russians that they haven't quite yet experienced. The Russians were wise to remove their 25, 000 or so troops from Harrison, uh, so it's not to see them being, you know, marched into POW, uh, POW camps, but Ukraine needs yet [00:40:00] another major victory because at this point, uh, The war is as much a psychological battle as it is a tactical conflict and some at you're already hearing voices of real disquiet.
In in Moscow real doubts about Putin's not just his leadership, but his grip on power. Um, uh, having that having the having the Russians lose another major city, um, or, uh, having large numbers of Russian troops being taken prisoner in a way that's visible to the Russian elite could. Uh, could really change the terms of battle.
Uh, and we should be helping the Ukrainians not just to hold on and survive, uh, but to win. I mean, the purpose of this is, is, is to win, to allow Ukraine to dictate the terms of the end of the war, whatever terms Ukraine wishes to dictate, whether that means retaking Crimea or just returning to the status quo [00:41:00] on February 24.
All right, Brett, we will, uh, leave it there. We are, uh, gonna have a separate conversation in a special episode on, uh, a new issue of Sapir that I was, uh, that grabbed me, and, uh, also the, connected to it, the rising, uh, anti Semitism, but we will save that for a separate conversation. So, thank you, as always, for this one, and I will see you soon.
Always a pleasure, Dan.
That's our show for today. To keep up with Brett's regular column, you can follow him at the New York Times and also his journal, superiorjournal. org. Call Me Back is produced by Alain Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.