June 9, 2026 • 27 mins
Why do so many foreign policy predictions seem wrong? Steve Yates examines the biggest mistakes analysts, media commentators, and Washington insiders make when interpreting today’s world, from confusing rhetoric with results to misunderstanding alliances, deterrence, and America’s changing role abroad. He offers a framework for cutting through headlines and evaluating global events more clearly.
Nation States with Yates helps you understand global events through the lens of America’s interests. Join Steve Yates, your personal national security advisor, for clear, practical analysis on the issues shaping America’s future.
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Nation States. With Yates, the world comes at
you fast, whether you're in the White House or at
your house. We try to help you get past the headlines,
past the talking points, to serve as your personal national
security advisor, to make a little sense of what's happening
in the wild and crazy world, but also to get
a little bit better knowledge of why some of these
(00:24):
things are happening and what we can do about it
as a country, but also in your community and the
conversations that you have in your world. Today, we're going
to take up an interesting challenge. I was trying to
think through what some of the biggest mistakes are that
conventional analysts have been making when trying to assess what's
(00:46):
happening in the world. What I mean by that when
they're looking at how does President Trump negotiate in conflict
resolution situations? How does President Trump negotiate on trade agreements?
How does President Trump negotiate with big powers? He's trying
to change the course with how does President Trump deal
with challenges in our own hemisphere? And in many cases,
(01:09):
I think that the hot flash analysis syndrome that you'll
get in your talk shows and instant analysis panels misses
the boat where you're hearing them say one thing on
one day and they're already wrong later that same day. Well,
there's a few things that are happening here at the
same time. I'm going to try to pull out three
(01:30):
or four of those that I think are the big
ones that maybe once you see the world through these lenses,
all of a sudden, those pundits can just be background
noise and you'll see more clearly what's really happening in
the president's engagement with the world, in the world's engagement
with him, and you won't need a filter. You'll have
your own national security advisor here to help you. At
(01:52):
Nation States with Yates. So after a brief break, we'll
come back and get into it on the big mistakes
the big experts have been making about under standing the
world in Trump two point zero. Welcome back to Nation
States with Yates. Well, today, hopefully we're going to give
you some food for thought to filter the signal from
the noise in everything that's coming at you in the
(02:14):
news and the things that you read about conflicts in
different parts of the world. If you kind of went
by what people are talking about all the time, you
might be guilty of some doomerism what they call it
these days, where people just believe the worst possible outcomes
and it seems like everything's getting broken in every part
of the world and there's nothing we can do about it,
(02:36):
and it's lose, lose, lose all the way around. Well,
the President's been telling us that we've been winning in
some of these areas, and maybe we are, maybe we aren't.
You be the judge of how America is doing. I
would say that we're doing a lot better than those
headlines might lead you to believe. And there's some mistakes
that I run into in my conversations with people who
(02:57):
are leaders of other countries trying to understand what's happening
with America. There are mistakes that are being made by
leaders in the media that are presenting the story to
the world and to America about what's happening. And let's
run down what a few of these are. See whether
you agree with me, maybe you can think of others
that should trump some of these, so to speak. But
(03:18):
one of the first mistakes that I have repeatedly seen
and tried to caution people against in the world of
Trump two point zero is watching too closely, even obsessing
over words, but missing what's happening with actions. And so
I traveled to Taiwan last week, and I was meeting
(03:40):
with people there, and many of them had concerns about
what may or may not be happening with decisions to
provide defensive arms to Taiwan. What may or may not
be happening was would the President of the United States
call and talk directly to the president of Taiwan. When
the president's talking about the economic relationship with Taiwan, sometimes
(04:01):
he speaks in less than friendly terms about the semiconductor industry,
which he says Taiwan stole from the United States. There's
a different story told from the Taiwan point of view.
From my own point of view, it's really all about
the future. And I hope that we have Taiwan investing
in America being the enduring semiconductor superpower of the world.
(04:21):
Maybe some other allies participate too. But this is just
one of the microcosms where this actions versus words can
get you lost. When you look at the conflict with Iran,
there are words the President has used, holding out deals,
saying we have a deal, talking about major military accomplishments,
(04:41):
the Iranian navies at the bottom of the ocean. Their
ability to project power has been completely degraded, their nuclear
capability completely destroyed. But then the conflict endures, and we
are working on how do we get the Strait of
Hormuz open reliably under reasonable terms? What do we do
in terms of the dust or radiated material that's been
(05:05):
left behind in Iran that that needs to be secured,
probably removed. All these things are sort of the noise
that's in the conversations, But a lot of the coverage
is focusing on the words, even the words that come
from our enemies. So the remnants of the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard saying that they're winning and that they're going they
(05:28):
can endure anything, and that they're rejuvenating and they're going
to teach America a lesson. Sometimes that goes out unfiltered
and people start to think, well, are we losing? And
I would argue, no, we're not. It isn't a walk
in the park. There's a lot of outstanding tasks that
have to be dealt with. But we have better options
(05:50):
now than we did before the conflict broke out, and
we have more capable allies who have proven to be
more capable now than we did before the conflict broke out,
and so there are more balanced ways of dealing with this.
But really, in order to get to that vision about
whether dealing with Venezuela, after having brought Maduro to justice
(06:16):
by way of some special operations that were genuinely special,
it's a better set of circumstances in this hemisphere, hitting
major cartels in this hemisphere, especially taking out the top
leadership of one of the major cartels that was definitely
related to the fentinyl crisis coming across our border, but
(06:37):
also a lot of crime beyond the fentinal travesty. That
we're better off, we have better options after having taken
that decisive action. It isn't because the United States or
this president want conflict or a quagmire or a nation building.
We're avoiding all of those things. But that doesn't mean
(06:58):
that America is not going to use the power that
it has to make the world a better, safer, more stable,
and hopefully even ultimately more prosperous place for ourselves, for
our next generation and on into our future. That's the
big vision. So the President talks about that, but somehow
our coverage doesn't focus on those words. We tend to
(07:20):
get focused on the words of his critics, the instant
analysis in the media, and sometimes our enemies. But if
you put the filter of what are words versus actions
and try to push through that and assess where the
actions are, you might be more heartened that we're doing
better in our dealings with Europe than we were at
(07:40):
the beginning of sort of the hot verbal contest back
and forth. We're doing better in the broader Middle East
with this getting re ordered with better, more capable allies
than we were at the beginning of this. And we're
doing better in East Asia than the sort of nattering
nabobs of negativism might lead you to believe, with revitalized
(08:04):
allies who are willing to act on their own, but
also still remain loyal, effective, contributing partners with the United States.
So words versus actions. The next one that I think
is a big mistake often made by the experts in
air quotes is drawing long term conclusions from short term developments.
(08:26):
Happens almost every day, sometimes multiple times a day. So
we have an announced ceasefire, people draw long term conclusions, Oh, well,
we're no better off today than we were before, and
if the ceasefire is where we end up, that this
is worse than what the Obama Biden policies were towards Iran,
(08:48):
or if we are talking to Vladimir Putin trying to
work towards some kind of a ceasefire with Ukraine, that somehow,
if that's where everything ends, that this is the end
of the world. This is terrible. We have engaged in
appeasement with an aggressor and we have undermined our allies.
Or if we sort of hit pause on European complaints
(09:13):
about the way that American leaders talk to them about
needing to save their civilization from the perils of unmitigated,
unfettered immigration, that changes the nature of their cultures, changes
their ability to defend their own homelands, but definitely has
weakened their ability to project power. Well, that has consequences.
(09:35):
But if we think that that's the end of the story,
that the short term development is where it all stops,
that just leads you to that doomerism. But if you
just go down issue after issue, there's the hot take
the news cycle. But if there's anything that we've learned
from Donald Trump in this second administration, is he's going
at a speed greater than he did in his first term,
(09:56):
and it's on purpose because if he slows down to
go through things in the conventional way, that gives time
for his opponents foreign and domestic to organize against him.
And his first term he really got bogged down by
those domestic opponents, whether it was the perpetual impeachments based
on hoaxes or whether it was the Chinese slow rolling
(10:20):
on a Phase one trade agreement. And there are some
other areas as well, so we're going at a different speed.
There's also multiple news cycles per day because the president
directly engages with the press multiple times a day and
shifts the narrative multiple times. And so if you're stuck,
(10:40):
if you find yourself trying to say what does this
all mean, and you're drawing some grand conclusion of America
as winning or America is losing, or this war is lost,
or this negotiation has failed, just understand these are just
acts in a longer play, and the president has multiple
rounds of action, influence, and negotiation still to be playing out.
(11:05):
And it don't have to take my word for it.
You can see it with your own eyes, whether it's
trade negotiations, fixing the border, and dealing with the cartels,
dealing with broader negotiations the Middle East. On balance, we've
made a lot of first downs, maybe even a few touchdowns,
but we're still in the game, working toward a better
(11:25):
ultimate outcome. That's the way I would see it, to
use maybe a strained sports analogy, but we have words
versus actions. We have drawing long term conclusions from short
term headlines. As another major mistake, Another frame that I
think has been incorrect is that a lot of people's
conversations in news and even in government around the world
(11:48):
begins with talking about President Trump being the disruptor. And
in some senses, it's true, he is disruptive for a purpose.
But what it misses by taking I think this mistaken
frame and just sort of suggesting that President Trump is
going around and breaking things just for the sake of
breaking them, is that global systems were breaking or broke
(12:14):
in already, and that what President Trump is doing is
engaging in a policy of disrupting the old policies that
led to those outcomes and trying to build new policies,
new forms of cooperation to replace those failed or broken ways.
What do I mean by that, Well, a lot of
(12:36):
you have heard of the United Nations. When the First
Golf War came around in the early nineteen nineties, the
United States government felt compelled to go to the United
Nations Security Council to get a resolution that sort of
authorized the use of force to enforce UN resolutions that
were aimed at the country of Iraq. When the Second
Golf War came around, the Bush administration, especially driven even
(13:00):
by our United Kingdom, ally felt compelled to go to
the United Nations Security Council and get some kind of
legitimization for taking military force against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Well,
it wasn't America going this route that broke the United Nations. Arguably,
it's been somewhat of a fragile and corrupted institution along
(13:24):
the way anyway. But it's China that has broken a
lot of these globalist institutions. It was China's conduct under
COVID that broke the World Health Organization. It's China's conduct
in proliferation that in many ways enabled the breakout of
nuclear capabilities to Pakistan, to North Korea, and through an
(13:45):
illicit network that we had to combat after nine to
eleven in a significant way. China really was at the
nexus of this. And China has played a role breaking
the counter proliferation institutions by helping a country like Iran,
the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, get past sanctions
(14:06):
that were posed by the United States and others to
try to compel better outcomes there. And China was on
the wrong side of doing that. And so if you
look at trade and China breaking the World Trade Organization
and you go down the list. In many ways, what's
missing from the narrative is that globalization was being broken,
and not by the United States, but and these allies
(14:29):
like NATO, for instance, we're kind of sleep walking underfunding,
very poorly defined sense of when and how they would
use power and what power they were bringing to the table,
or were they just fine in dandy becoming increasingly economic
dependent on the very powers they wanted us to spend
(14:50):
much more than them to defend them against if it
came to a military threat. And that's clearly not fair,
but it's also not sensible. And so President Trump may
have disrupted that apple cart, but it was in order
to get that institution to wake up, reform and revitalize
(15:11):
to meet the needs of today and going forward. You
can't go on the alleged ConL accomplishments of the past forever.
You have to be in fit form to deal with
things now and into the future. And so that's the
other frame that I think has been missed. Trump isn't
the disruptor of the order. He's the disruptor of the
(15:32):
failed old ways, and in many ways his disruption now
is the fixer of a lot of these systems, but
it takes time to see them come into place and
have it be more clearly in line of sight. So
that's another frame that I think was a mistake a
lot of mainstream analysts were making trying to assess the
world in Trump two point zero. Another frame that I
(15:56):
think has been a mistake is just this assertion that somehow,
well maybe because of tough rhetoric or provocative rhetoric or
playful rhetoric in some senses, that the United States has
been harming alliances, has been walking away from alliances or
degrading alliances. Sometimes it's alleged, but if you go around
(16:18):
the world, almost every alliance in twenty twenty six is
a little bit more capable than it was in twenty
twenty five, and twenty twenty five is the year that
President Trump was reinaugurated for a second term. There's been
net movement forward in a lot of these areas if
you just look at actions versus words. Back to that
other mistake. But there's underneath all of this is that
(16:43):
a sense that allies, because they feel alone or forsaken
by the United States, they are forced to do things
independently or do take things on for themselves. Well, what
I think a lot of these air quotes experts miss
is that stronger into dependently capable allies is actually good
for alliances and good for the United States. And so
(17:07):
this is a necessary growing pain that we need to
go through from time to time as facts in the
world change. China's capabilities economically, technologically, and militarily are fundamentally
different than they were five or ten, much less ten
years ago, and our way of organizing and dealing with
it has to adjust to those new realities. And our
(17:32):
allies themselves have been mugged by reality and dealing with
China economically, a lot of them have been pushed to
turn over a technology, some of them have faced very
aggressive moves inside China to take over some of their brands,
and so many ways our alliances are looking to have
(17:56):
more independent capabilities, maybe even taking a more independent approach
to their own region. But the key question for you,
in common sense America is is that good? Is that
better for us? Is that even better for that ally?
And I think that it's a much firmer foundation on
which to have an alliance that goes into the future
(18:19):
in a durable and resilient way. Ultimately, that's what the
President's stated objective is, is to have alliances that are
fair and balanced, so to speak, where we are helping
those who help themselves to try to draw from notions
of the Good Book and also the Golden Rule. And
(18:42):
these are fundamentally positive things, but you just wouldn't know
it if you are a mainstream, main street media and
diplomatic analyst, where you just say, well, that was a
disruptive meeting, or that's just not the way things have
been done, and that's just not very respectful to what
we have done from me many years. And to an extent,
(19:03):
you do have to break some cock crockery in order
to make things refreshed, reformed and built for the future.
So that's another I think common mistake that experts have
been making in the world of Trump two point zero
is not seeing that allies doing more on their own
(19:23):
isn't leaving America behind, it's actually putting America's interests in
a better place. The next and final one for today's conversation,
and surely there are more, and I'd really be interested
in what other people think about other mistakes that are
commonly made that get what's happening in the world incorrectly
because of these blind spots that President Trump came onto
(19:47):
the scene, and I would argue, if it wasn't President Trump,
it was going to be any other president in this
era is going to be pressed not to repeat the
perceived mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan or Vietnam, if you
want to go back further, that Americans are not hungry
for occupations that go on for years at a time,
(20:08):
costing trillions of dollars and in some cases tens of
thousands of fatalities, much less those that are injured in
a multitude of ways from that conflict. But America is
still going to exercise power and influence. There's still going
to be conflicts that we're going to engage in and
(20:28):
we still want and need to have the most lethal,
most feared, most effective, and most powerful military ever known
to mankind, not because we're ruling the world as some
imperial force, but because we're the only experiment in human
history that's actually used that power that could be used
(20:52):
for empire, but actually for the liberation and prosperity of
a multitude of other countries. Arguably, even our enemies are
better off with a strong and powerful America using its
capability to preserve freedom of navigation on the high seas,
to end conflicts that require intervention to change course because
(21:13):
of a growing threat that would hurt far more civilians
in far more places on the planet if we don't
take action early or in a process. But this notion
that we are avoiding the appeasement of the past and
just engaging in an endless dialogue or worth paying off
(21:36):
threats the way the old Iran deal of ten years
ago really kind of fits the definition of and we're
avoiding the nation building exercise of Iraq and Afghanistan. That
we're moving through this middle that's actually far more common
sense and reasonable risk management than those other conflicts were,
(22:00):
and despite the president's critics hating his guts and thinking
everything he does and touches is bad, He's actually leading
in a way that I think future presidents are going
to need to and leaders of other countries are going
to need to, because it seems like in this new age,
we're not looking at these protracted land conflicts going on
(22:21):
forever with outside intervention. We're hoping, even with Russia's invasion
of Ukraine, that the energy is coming out of that
engine at some point, and maybe Ukraine is coming up
with better technology to extend its self defense capabilities, and
who knows, maybe they will just maybe come out better
(22:42):
in the end of this getting the better of Russia
in it, who knows. But with regard to other parts
of the world, this effort at building up this capacity
that is splitting the difference between invasion and occupation and
appeasing like agreements, the use of these powerful tools can
(23:02):
help shape events that keep the bad actors of the
world more at bay, their malign influences more contained. That
our ability to do that is increasing at lower risk,
and that that risk is shared in a fair way
with our allies and partners around the world, so that
it's not all coming to America at great expense, and
(23:24):
that we're the only country that's the world's nine to
one one. So I think that these that the fact
that a lot of our mainstream experts can't bring themselves
to see that President Trump has delivered a more meaningful
middle way for the use of overwhelming power than most
of his predecessors have is one of the mistakes that
(23:46):
gets made in conventional analysis. So there's your core mistakes
from nation states with yates for those that are out
there hitting your news feeds, making some errors in assessment
and judgment, overemphasizing words over actions that actually change the world,
drawing long term conclusions from short term headlines, sort of
(24:08):
missing the forest for the trees. Seeing President Trump is
the cause for disruption and making of problems, when really
the problems were made, things were broken. He's the fixer,
but we have to sort of disrupt some of the
old ways of doing things in order to get the
fix to take place. Another big mistake. Independently capable allies
(24:30):
are good for America, good for the alliances, and good
for the world. And this middle way of avoiding appeasement
and avoiding nation building is actually better for America and
better for the world. So there you have it. Those
are my top of the list. Wonder what you think
about those kinds of things. We're going to take a
(24:51):
brief break and when we come back, we'll have some
parting thoughts right after this with Nation States with Yates.
Welcome back to Nation States with Yates. I hope you've enjoyed.
Today's conversation took a little bit of a different track,
and previous episodes we were looking at sort of key countries,
kind of key challenges. Today taking a different approach, looking
(25:13):
at what are some of the big mistakes that the
experts that you see on TV, here, on radio, read
in prints, and your social media feed are making in
misinforming you about some of the things that are happening
in the world. And maybe through these corrective lenses that
we have in our conversations, you can sort of judge
for yourself a bit better. Maybe the America is doing
(25:35):
better than you thought, certainly better than you were told
through these other conventional ways. And hopefully in seeing that
more clearly, you can empower the leaders in your community,
through your congressional representatives and in all of your contacts
a greater sense of confidence about the role that America
is playing in this Trump two point zero era, not
(25:58):
necessarily for present Trump, which is good perhaps in its
own way, but because the world needed adjustment, and I
think that our way of thinking about America's role in
the world also needed to adjudge adjustment, and how we
filter through and judge net progress or key problems also
(26:20):
needed to change. And that's where today's discourse about some
of these mistakes might come in handy as you have
your personal national security advisor in your pocket here at
Nation States with Yates and trying to make sense of
what's happening beyond the headlines. Now. I look forward to
joining you again soon in our next episode, we'll try
(26:41):
to take a look at where things stand with the
Iran situation and maybe take an unconventional look at what
can be done in our next steps, hopefully for bringing
things back to a sensible landing place in time for
our mid term elections. So welcome. You have to come
(27:01):
back to Nation States with Yates on our next episode.
Until then, I'm your host, Steve Yates.
Welcome to Nation States. With Yates, the world comes at
you fast, whether you're in the White House or at
your house. We try to help you get past the headlines,
past the talking points, to serve as your personal national
security advisor, to make a little sense of what's happening
in the wild and crazy world, but also to get
a little bit better knowledge of why some of these
(00:24):
things are happening and what we can do about it
as a country, but also in your community and the
conversations that you have in your world. Today, we're going
to take up an interesting challenge. I was trying to
think through what some of the biggest mistakes are that
conventional analysts have been making when trying to assess what's
(00:46):
happening in the world. What I mean by that when
they're looking at how does President Trump negotiate in conflict
resolution situations? How does President Trump negotiate on trade agreements?
How does President Trump negotiate with big powers? He's trying
to change the course with how does President Trump deal
with challenges in our own hemisphere? And in many cases,
(01:09):
I think that the hot flash analysis syndrome that you'll
get in your talk shows and instant analysis panels misses
the boat where you're hearing them say one thing on
one day and they're already wrong later that same day. Well,
there's a few things that are happening here at the
same time. I'm going to try to pull out three
(01:30):
or four of those that I think are the big
ones that maybe once you see the world through these lenses,
all of a sudden, those pundits can just be background
noise and you'll see more clearly what's really happening in
the president's engagement with the world, in the world's engagement
with him, and you won't need a filter. You'll have
your own national security advisor here to help you. At
(01:52):
Nation States with Yates. So after a brief break, we'll
come back and get into it on the big mistakes
the big experts have been making about under standing the
world in Trump two point zero. Welcome back to Nation
States with Yates. Well, today, hopefully we're going to give
you some food for thought to filter the signal from
the noise in everything that's coming at you in the
(02:14):
news and the things that you read about conflicts in
different parts of the world. If you kind of went
by what people are talking about all the time, you
might be guilty of some doomerism what they call it
these days, where people just believe the worst possible outcomes
and it seems like everything's getting broken in every part
of the world and there's nothing we can do about it,
(02:36):
and it's lose, lose, lose all the way around. Well,
the President's been telling us that we've been winning in
some of these areas, and maybe we are, maybe we aren't.
You be the judge of how America is doing. I
would say that we're doing a lot better than those
headlines might lead you to believe. And there's some mistakes
that I run into in my conversations with people who
(02:57):
are leaders of other countries trying to understand what's happening
with America. There are mistakes that are being made by
leaders in the media that are presenting the story to
the world and to America about what's happening. And let's
run down what a few of these are. See whether
you agree with me, maybe you can think of others
that should trump some of these, so to speak. But
(03:18):
one of the first mistakes that I have repeatedly seen
and tried to caution people against in the world of
Trump two point zero is watching too closely, even obsessing
over words, but missing what's happening with actions. And so
I traveled to Taiwan last week, and I was meeting
(03:40):
with people there, and many of them had concerns about
what may or may not be happening with decisions to
provide defensive arms to Taiwan. What may or may not
be happening was would the President of the United States
call and talk directly to the president of Taiwan. When
the president's talking about the economic relationship with Taiwan, sometimes
(04:01):
he speaks in less than friendly terms about the semiconductor industry,
which he says Taiwan stole from the United States. There's
a different story told from the Taiwan point of view.
From my own point of view, it's really all about
the future. And I hope that we have Taiwan investing
in America being the enduring semiconductor superpower of the world.
(04:21):
Maybe some other allies participate too. But this is just
one of the microcosms where this actions versus words can
get you lost. When you look at the conflict with Iran,
there are words the President has used, holding out deals,
saying we have a deal, talking about major military accomplishments,
(04:41):
the Iranian navies at the bottom of the ocean. Their
ability to project power has been completely degraded, their nuclear
capability completely destroyed. But then the conflict endures, and we
are working on how do we get the Strait of
Hormuz open reliably under reasonable terms? What do we do
in terms of the dust or radiated material that's been
(05:05):
left behind in Iran that that needs to be secured,
probably removed. All these things are sort of the noise
that's in the conversations, But a lot of the coverage
is focusing on the words, even the words that come
from our enemies. So the remnants of the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard saying that they're winning and that they're going they
(05:28):
can endure anything, and that they're rejuvenating and they're going
to teach America a lesson. Sometimes that goes out unfiltered
and people start to think, well, are we losing? And
I would argue, no, we're not. It isn't a walk
in the park. There's a lot of outstanding tasks that
have to be dealt with. But we have better options
(05:50):
now than we did before the conflict broke out, and
we have more capable allies who have proven to be
more capable now than we did before the conflict broke out,
and so there are more balanced ways of dealing with this.
But really, in order to get to that vision about
whether dealing with Venezuela, after having brought Maduro to justice
(06:16):
by way of some special operations that were genuinely special,
it's a better set of circumstances in this hemisphere, hitting
major cartels in this hemisphere, especially taking out the top
leadership of one of the major cartels that was definitely
related to the fentinyl crisis coming across our border, but
(06:37):
also a lot of crime beyond the fentinal travesty. That
we're better off, we have better options after having taken
that decisive action. It isn't because the United States or
this president want conflict or a quagmire or a nation building.
We're avoiding all of those things. But that doesn't mean
(06:58):
that America is not going to use the power that
it has to make the world a better, safer, more stable,
and hopefully even ultimately more prosperous place for ourselves, for
our next generation and on into our future. That's the
big vision. So the President talks about that, but somehow
our coverage doesn't focus on those words. We tend to
(07:20):
get focused on the words of his critics, the instant
analysis in the media, and sometimes our enemies. But if
you put the filter of what are words versus actions
and try to push through that and assess where the
actions are, you might be more heartened that we're doing
better in our dealings with Europe than we were at
(07:40):
the beginning of sort of the hot verbal contest back
and forth. We're doing better in the broader Middle East
with this getting re ordered with better, more capable allies
than we were at the beginning of this. And we're
doing better in East Asia than the sort of nattering
nabobs of negativism might lead you to believe, with revitalized
(08:04):
allies who are willing to act on their own, but
also still remain loyal, effective, contributing partners with the United States.
So words versus actions. The next one that I think
is a big mistake often made by the experts in
air quotes is drawing long term conclusions from short term developments.
(08:26):
Happens almost every day, sometimes multiple times a day. So
we have an announced ceasefire, people draw long term conclusions, Oh, well,
we're no better off today than we were before, and
if the ceasefire is where we end up, that this
is worse than what the Obama Biden policies were towards Iran,
(08:48):
or if we are talking to Vladimir Putin trying to
work towards some kind of a ceasefire with Ukraine, that somehow,
if that's where everything ends, that this is the end
of the world. This is terrible. We have engaged in
appeasement with an aggressor and we have undermined our allies.
Or if we sort of hit pause on European complaints
(09:13):
about the way that American leaders talk to them about
needing to save their civilization from the perils of unmitigated,
unfettered immigration, that changes the nature of their cultures, changes
their ability to defend their own homelands, but definitely has
weakened their ability to project power. Well, that has consequences.
(09:35):
But if we think that that's the end of the story,
that the short term development is where it all stops,
that just leads you to that doomerism. But if you
just go down issue after issue, there's the hot take
the news cycle. But if there's anything that we've learned
from Donald Trump in this second administration, is he's going
at a speed greater than he did in his first term,
(09:56):
and it's on purpose because if he slows down to
go through things in the conventional way, that gives time
for his opponents foreign and domestic to organize against him.
And his first term he really got bogged down by
those domestic opponents, whether it was the perpetual impeachments based
on hoaxes or whether it was the Chinese slow rolling
(10:20):
on a Phase one trade agreement. And there are some
other areas as well, so we're going at a different speed.
There's also multiple news cycles per day because the president
directly engages with the press multiple times a day and
shifts the narrative multiple times. And so if you're stuck,
(10:40):
if you find yourself trying to say what does this
all mean, and you're drawing some grand conclusion of America
as winning or America is losing, or this war is lost,
or this negotiation has failed, just understand these are just
acts in a longer play, and the president has multiple
rounds of action, influence, and negotiation still to be playing out.
(11:05):
And it don't have to take my word for it.
You can see it with your own eyes, whether it's
trade negotiations, fixing the border, and dealing with the cartels,
dealing with broader negotiations the Middle East. On balance, we've
made a lot of first downs, maybe even a few touchdowns,
but we're still in the game, working toward a better
(11:25):
ultimate outcome. That's the way I would see it, to
use maybe a strained sports analogy, but we have words
versus actions. We have drawing long term conclusions from short
term headlines. As another major mistake, Another frame that I
think has been incorrect is that a lot of people's
conversations in news and even in government around the world
(11:48):
begins with talking about President Trump being the disruptor. And
in some senses, it's true, he is disruptive for a purpose.
But what it misses by taking I think this mistaken
frame and just sort of suggesting that President Trump is
going around and breaking things just for the sake of
breaking them, is that global systems were breaking or broke
(12:14):
in already, and that what President Trump is doing is
engaging in a policy of disrupting the old policies that
led to those outcomes and trying to build new policies,
new forms of cooperation to replace those failed or broken ways.
What do I mean by that, Well, a lot of
(12:36):
you have heard of the United Nations. When the First
Golf War came around in the early nineteen nineties, the
United States government felt compelled to go to the United
Nations Security Council to get a resolution that sort of
authorized the use of force to enforce UN resolutions that
were aimed at the country of Iraq. When the Second
Golf War came around, the Bush administration, especially driven even
(13:00):
by our United Kingdom, ally felt compelled to go to
the United Nations Security Council and get some kind of
legitimization for taking military force against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Well,
it wasn't America going this route that broke the United Nations. Arguably,
it's been somewhat of a fragile and corrupted institution along
(13:24):
the way anyway. But it's China that has broken a
lot of these globalist institutions. It was China's conduct under
COVID that broke the World Health Organization. It's China's conduct
in proliferation that in many ways enabled the breakout of
nuclear capabilities to Pakistan, to North Korea, and through an
(13:45):
illicit network that we had to combat after nine to
eleven in a significant way. China really was at the
nexus of this. And China has played a role breaking
the counter proliferation institutions by helping a country like Iran,
the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, get past sanctions
(14:06):
that were posed by the United States and others to
try to compel better outcomes there. And China was on
the wrong side of doing that. And so if you
look at trade and China breaking the World Trade Organization
and you go down the list. In many ways, what's
missing from the narrative is that globalization was being broken,
and not by the United States, but and these allies
(14:29):
like NATO, for instance, we're kind of sleep walking underfunding,
very poorly defined sense of when and how they would
use power and what power they were bringing to the table,
or were they just fine in dandy becoming increasingly economic
dependent on the very powers they wanted us to spend
(14:50):
much more than them to defend them against if it
came to a military threat. And that's clearly not fair,
but it's also not sensible. And so President Trump may
have disrupted that apple cart, but it was in order
to get that institution to wake up, reform and revitalize
(15:11):
to meet the needs of today and going forward. You
can't go on the alleged ConL accomplishments of the past forever.
You have to be in fit form to deal with
things now and into the future. And so that's the
other frame that I think has been missed. Trump isn't
the disruptor of the order. He's the disruptor of the
(15:32):
failed old ways, and in many ways his disruption now
is the fixer of a lot of these systems, but
it takes time to see them come into place and
have it be more clearly in line of sight. So
that's another frame that I think was a mistake a
lot of mainstream analysts were making trying to assess the
world in Trump two point zero. Another frame that I
(15:56):
think has been a mistake is just this assertion that somehow,
well maybe because of tough rhetoric or provocative rhetoric or
playful rhetoric in some senses, that the United States has
been harming alliances, has been walking away from alliances or
degrading alliances. Sometimes it's alleged, but if you go around
(16:18):
the world, almost every alliance in twenty twenty six is
a little bit more capable than it was in twenty
twenty five, and twenty twenty five is the year that
President Trump was reinaugurated for a second term. There's been
net movement forward in a lot of these areas if
you just look at actions versus words. Back to that
other mistake. But there's underneath all of this is that
(16:43):
a sense that allies, because they feel alone or forsaken
by the United States, they are forced to do things
independently or do take things on for themselves. Well, what
I think a lot of these air quotes experts miss
is that stronger into dependently capable allies is actually good
for alliances and good for the United States. And so
(17:07):
this is a necessary growing pain that we need to
go through from time to time as facts in the
world change. China's capabilities economically, technologically, and militarily are fundamentally
different than they were five or ten, much less ten
years ago, and our way of organizing and dealing with
it has to adjust to those new realities. And our
(17:32):
allies themselves have been mugged by reality and dealing with
China economically, a lot of them have been pushed to
turn over a technology, some of them have faced very
aggressive moves inside China to take over some of their brands,
and so many ways our alliances are looking to have
(17:56):
more independent capabilities, maybe even taking a more independent approach
to their own region. But the key question for you,
in common sense America is is that good? Is that
better for us? Is that even better for that ally?
And I think that it's a much firmer foundation on
which to have an alliance that goes into the future
(18:19):
in a durable and resilient way. Ultimately, that's what the
President's stated objective is, is to have alliances that are
fair and balanced, so to speak, where we are helping
those who help themselves to try to draw from notions
of the Good Book and also the Golden Rule. And
(18:42):
these are fundamentally positive things, but you just wouldn't know
it if you are a mainstream, main street media and
diplomatic analyst, where you just say, well, that was a
disruptive meeting, or that's just not the way things have
been done, and that's just not very respectful to what
we have done from me many years. And to an extent,
(19:03):
you do have to break some cock crockery in order
to make things refreshed, reformed and built for the future.
So that's another I think common mistake that experts have
been making in the world of Trump two point zero
is not seeing that allies doing more on their own
(19:23):
isn't leaving America behind, it's actually putting America's interests in
a better place. The next and final one for today's conversation,
and surely there are more, and I'd really be interested
in what other people think about other mistakes that are
commonly made that get what's happening in the world incorrectly
because of these blind spots that President Trump came onto
(19:47):
the scene, and I would argue, if it wasn't President Trump,
it was going to be any other president in this
era is going to be pressed not to repeat the
perceived mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan or Vietnam, if you
want to go back further, that Americans are not hungry
for occupations that go on for years at a time,
(20:08):
costing trillions of dollars and in some cases tens of
thousands of fatalities, much less those that are injured in
a multitude of ways from that conflict. But America is
still going to exercise power and influence. There's still going
to be conflicts that we're going to engage in and
(20:28):
we still want and need to have the most lethal,
most feared, most effective, and most powerful military ever known
to mankind, not because we're ruling the world as some
imperial force, but because we're the only experiment in human
history that's actually used that power that could be used
(20:52):
for empire, but actually for the liberation and prosperity of
a multitude of other countries. Arguably, even our enemies are
better off with a strong and powerful America using its
capability to preserve freedom of navigation on the high seas,
to end conflicts that require intervention to change course because
(21:13):
of a growing threat that would hurt far more civilians
in far more places on the planet if we don't
take action early or in a process. But this notion
that we are avoiding the appeasement of the past and
just engaging in an endless dialogue or worth paying off
(21:36):
threats the way the old Iran deal of ten years
ago really kind of fits the definition of and we're
avoiding the nation building exercise of Iraq and Afghanistan. That
we're moving through this middle that's actually far more common
sense and reasonable risk management than those other conflicts were,
(22:00):
and despite the president's critics hating his guts and thinking
everything he does and touches is bad, He's actually leading
in a way that I think future presidents are going
to need to and leaders of other countries are going
to need to, because it seems like in this new age,
we're not looking at these protracted land conflicts going on
(22:21):
forever with outside intervention. We're hoping, even with Russia's invasion
of Ukraine, that the energy is coming out of that
engine at some point, and maybe Ukraine is coming up
with better technology to extend its self defense capabilities, and
who knows, maybe they will just maybe come out better
(22:42):
in the end of this getting the better of Russia
in it, who knows. But with regard to other parts
of the world, this effort at building up this capacity
that is splitting the difference between invasion and occupation and
appeasing like agreements, the use of these powerful tools can
(23:02):
help shape events that keep the bad actors of the
world more at bay, their malign influences more contained. That
our ability to do that is increasing at lower risk,
and that that risk is shared in a fair way
with our allies and partners around the world, so that
it's not all coming to America at great expense, and
(23:24):
that we're the only country that's the world's nine to
one one. So I think that these that the fact
that a lot of our mainstream experts can't bring themselves
to see that President Trump has delivered a more meaningful
middle way for the use of overwhelming power than most
of his predecessors have is one of the mistakes that
(23:46):
gets made in conventional analysis. So there's your core mistakes
from nation states with yates for those that are out
there hitting your news feeds, making some errors in assessment
and judgment, overemphasizing words over actions that actually change the world,
drawing long term conclusions from short term headlines, sort of
(24:08):
missing the forest for the trees. Seeing President Trump is
the cause for disruption and making of problems, when really
the problems were made, things were broken. He's the fixer,
but we have to sort of disrupt some of the
old ways of doing things in order to get the
fix to take place. Another big mistake. Independently capable allies
(24:30):
are good for America, good for the alliances, and good
for the world. And this middle way of avoiding appeasement
and avoiding nation building is actually better for America and
better for the world. So there you have it. Those
are my top of the list. Wonder what you think
about those kinds of things. We're going to take a
(24:51):
brief break and when we come back, we'll have some
parting thoughts right after this with Nation States with Yates.
Welcome back to Nation States with Yates. I hope you've enjoyed.
Today's conversation took a little bit of a different track,
and previous episodes we were looking at sort of key countries,
kind of key challenges. Today taking a different approach, looking
(25:13):
at what are some of the big mistakes that the
experts that you see on TV, here, on radio, read
in prints, and your social media feed are making in
misinforming you about some of the things that are happening
in the world. And maybe through these corrective lenses that
we have in our conversations, you can sort of judge
for yourself a bit better. Maybe the America is doing
(25:35):
better than you thought, certainly better than you were told
through these other conventional ways. And hopefully in seeing that
more clearly, you can empower the leaders in your community,
through your congressional representatives and in all of your contacts
a greater sense of confidence about the role that America
is playing in this Trump two point zero era, not
(25:58):
necessarily for present Trump, which is good perhaps in its
own way, but because the world needed adjustment, and I
think that our way of thinking about America's role in
the world also needed to adjudge adjustment, and how we
filter through and judge net progress or key problems also
(26:20):
needed to change. And that's where today's discourse about some
of these mistakes might come in handy as you have
your personal national security advisor in your pocket here at
Nation States with Yates and trying to make sense of
what's happening beyond the headlines. Now. I look forward to
joining you again soon in our next episode, we'll try
(26:41):
to take a look at where things stand with the
Iran situation and maybe take an unconventional look at what
can be done in our next steps, hopefully for bringing
things back to a sensible landing place in time for
our mid term elections. So welcome. You have to come
(27:01):
back to Nation States with Yates on our next episode.
Until then, I'm your host, Steve Yates.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show News
Hosts And Creators
Clay Travis
Buck Sexton
Show Links
WebsiteNewsletterPopular Podcasts
Hey Jonas!
Hey Jonas! The official Jonas Brothers podcast. Hosted by Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas. It’s the Jonas Brothers you know... musicians, actors, and well, yes, brothers. Now, they’re sharing another side of themselves in the playful, intimate, and irreverent way only they can. Spend time with the Jonas Brothers here and stay a little bit longer for deep conversations like never before.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com