Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, So a couple of weeks back, I went
to the Steamboat Institute's annual Freedom Conference, which a few
years ago during COVID moved to Beaver Creek, even though
it's the Steamboat Institute, and they never moved back to
Steamboat for this event because Beaver Creek seems like such
a nice place to have an event, and it was fabulous,
and I met a really interesting guy there, George Bognan.
(00:22):
He's a Blankly Fellow at the Steamboat Institute, also an
Olin Fellow at Columbia University Law School, and you know,
in a way George is on a career path is
kind of similar to what I thought when I was younger.
A way, I thought I might go with foreign policy,
(00:43):
maybe even law, and I went a completely different direction.
But as George and I were standing there in Beaver Creek,
we started talking about foreign policy, and in particular, what
might a Kamala Harris administration foreign policy look like if
she were to win. And of course, you know, we're
(01:04):
sort of making this up as we as we go
along in a way, but George's I mean, he just
hosted an event with Mike Pompeio and he just knows
all the players, he knows everybody important in foreign policy.
So if anybody's going to make an educated guess about
what a Harris foreign policy would look like, it's George Bogden,
because my guests would be an uneducated guest and there's
(01:26):
no point in that. So George, welcome to Kaway, and
thanks for making time for us.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Ross, thank you so much. It's a real pleasure to
be here.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
I have to say, you know, I hope I can
live up to that introduction, but you know, really it's
just a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Of fun to chat with folks like you who are
so engaged.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Well, yeah, I've loved this I've loved this world since
I was in college. I think I told you when
we met. I majored in foreign policy at Columbia. I
had a class with the big new Brazhinski, not my
favorite national security advisor. But I've loved this stuff for
a long long time. So why don't we just jump
into the question at hand. So I guess before we
(02:09):
get into the specifics of what do you think a
Harais foreign policy would look like, the overarching question is
on what would you base your guess as to what
a hera foreign policy would look.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Like well, I think that first of all, you know,
when you're dealing with something as vast and complicated as
a foreign policy agenda, you have to recognize that people
come in with big designs and strategies in mind, but
oftentimes it's events that drive things, right, And so one
(02:41):
of the best ways to kind of interpret, you know,
what might happen under a President Kamala Harris administration would
be to think about what do we see, you know,
coming up on the horizon. And you know, in the
last year and a half we've seen just absolutely crazy stuff,
you know, I mean, the world's you know, following more
and more out of balance with everything from you know,
October seventh to all sorts of piccups and ups.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
And downs in the war in Ukraine and so on.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
So I think that you know, recognizing that most likely
the war is going to continue past January twentieth, that's
the war in Ukraine, and that there will not be
a comprehensive resolution to what's going on in the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
You're going to have an.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Administration, specifically under Kamala Harris if she's elected, that's dealing
with crises right and not just day to day, but
week to week, months, month, and so one thing to
think about is, you know, really, how is she going
to manage what we know is going to be on
the agenda? Which are those two big, really colossal difficult things.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
So as I think about potential administration's foreign policy, I
think of two broad categories, and I want to talk
to you about both of them. One is what are
the ideas or principles that might underlie a foreign policy?
Speaker 4 (03:56):
And the other is who are the people who will.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Either advise her with ideas and principles or execute on
whatever the policy is.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
So let's let's start with the first one.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
You know, it's unclear to me, and I'm not saying
this is some kind of partisan jabb although to be clear,
I don't like Kamala Harris, but it's unclear to me
that she believes in anything. It's unclear to me that
she knows very much and that she believes in anything
at all. And so for me, if I were trying
to answer the question I've asked you, I'd have a
really hard time with it because I have no idea
(04:28):
what she believes.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
All Right, I think, you know, let's put aside all
of the kind of legacy of flip flops, which I
think you know, astute observers like you see every day
in her positions. But let's take her at her word
that you know, in a sense, she's articulated a doctrine
by you know, being on the sidelines of so many
important decisions that President Biden has made.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
You know, really we're stuck.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
With kind of the same problem that we have with
the Biden administration, which is that their foreign policy is
defined around what they won't do, and so they won't
give this weapon systems Ukraine, and they won't allow the
Ukrainians to use a particular weapon system that way, and
they won't you know, back Israel entirely, but they won't
say what you know, a final peace plan will be,
(05:11):
because that should.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Be for the stakeholders.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
And so you know, when you talk about principles, there's
a kind of vacuum I think in terms of you know,
what she said would be her guiding approach. You know,
let's take one topic like China, right, I mean, China
is going to continue to be a very serious, you know,
potential adversary for the United States. We're going to have
you know, a confrontational position these I eat China. But
(05:36):
but what does it mean that Kamala Harris is going
to continue President Biden's foreign policy towards China. Doesn't mean
that they're going to have kind of these intermit in
big summits and kind of push a few issues, you
know along the.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Way, you know, sort of kicking the can down the road.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Are they going to expand you know, the kind of
economic warfare that the United States is adopting towards China.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Those are all open questions. But what we don't have a.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Major foreign policy address from now Vice President Kamala Harris
about what her presidency would look like. And so I
think it's that kind of vacuum that has a lot
of is concerned.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So at the Democratic National Convention, Kamala Harris gave a
much more full throated defense of Israel's right to defend
itself and what she perceives as America's commitment to make
sure that Israel can defend itself than I have heard
from Biden. And even though she mentioned more than mentioned,
(06:34):
she commented a bit on the Palestinians and she said
she wants them to have self determination at least at
the DNC she didn't say anything about a two state solution,
which is a pie in the sky nonsensical goal for
any time in the in any timeframe that matters right now.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
I also wonder, you know she's married to a Jewish guy.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Do you think it's reasonable to believe Kamala Harris that
she is a pretty strong supporter of Israel?
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Well, I think that, as you point out, she made
a political calculation in articulating a particular stance in that speech, right,
And really, I think you have to have kind of
a model for decision making to when you have a
blank slate, like like Kamala Harris, what is it that
she would do?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Right? I want to just.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Offer your listeners, you know, kind of a little bit
of a frame of reference for that conflict, which is
particularly complicated and really small decisions can have huge consequences.
And let me just give you one example. When Ambassador
Orrin who was speaking at the Freedom Conference, first met
with President Obama, he urged President Obama. He said, please
(07:51):
don't allow, you know, concrete to be brought into Gaza.
We agree with you that there's a humanitarian need for supplies,
but don't go there because it's going to allow the
reduction of tunnels, right, and of course President Obama famously
allowed concrete to be moved into Gaza. And of course,
you know the ambassador was prophetic in his observation this
(08:12):
had become a huge problem and we've now seen the
proliferation of this just intractively difficult issue to deal with,
which is, you know, thousands of kilometers of tunnels that
allow the most nefarious actors there to do really bad things.
And so what I want to put to your readers
is what are or to your listeners is you know
what what is now Vice President's Kamala Harris's instinct on
(08:36):
really small pragmatic decisions like that.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
And I have to say, I'm not left with a
lot of hope.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
You know, she's been given quite significant portfolio items. She
was supposed to be in charge of the border, she
had responsibilities on space, and what did we see in
her decision making on small issues? There not not many
great choices. So you know, we can we can try
to divine what her emotional reallyationship to Israel. Right.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
You know we know that President and.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Biden was told by Goldenmeyer, you know there's a we
have a secret weapon we have nowhere else to go,
and that that, you know, kind of really changed, you know,
the way that now President Biden thinks about the region.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
But what is it that connects Kama Harris? I don't
you know.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
I don't know, and I think it'd be really tough
to figure out in that kind of ad mixture of
experiences and personal connections what she would what would be
to her decision making.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
We're talking with George Bogden, who is a Blankly Fellow
at the Steamboat Institute and an Olan Fellow at Columbia
University Law School. So let's move to the people side
for a moment. When when you and I were talking
kind of off to the side of the meeting room there,
you mentioned a name that escapes me now of somebody
you said would likely be a primary or maybe the
(09:51):
primary foreign policy advisor to Kamala Harris.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
And if memory serves you.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Didn't hold whoever that person was in particularly high Now
I could be remembering this wrong, but why don't you
just refresh my memory? Sure?
Speaker 3 (10:08):
I mean, I think that the gentleman that you're referring
to is named Philip Gordon, and he is currently the
Vice President's chief Foreign policy advisor, and on the one hand,
to those of us who are fascinated by these topics,
he's given us a lot to think about by his writings.
He's certainly interested in France as a as a foreign
policy actor, but also his most recent book called Losing
(10:30):
the Long Game as a kind of manifesto on why
regime change is such a bad idea now here again,
we have this problem of a bit of a vacuum.
It's easy to say that when the United States comes
in and tries to change a government, you know, it's
done a great choice usually and at leads to bad things.
But what is the kind of counterbounds? What do you
(10:52):
do instead of kind of dramatic interventions in a region
like the Middle East? And you know, I think one
thing I found black in the book is a is
a kind of discussion of what happens when you just
stand behind clients, you know, and and really ugly dictators
who are doing really nasty things. You can't always you know,
be Gene Kirkpatrick and convert them into kind of amplifiers
(11:15):
of your foreign policy. Sometimes they're very destructive. And so
that's that's one kind of aspect of the question is
if mister Gordon, doctor Gordon, is the main leading light
in her world on foreign policy, what is it precisely
that he sees as a kind of three big issues
that he's.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Going to push forward regardless of what role he might play.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
And having looked very closely at his written work, I
don't know that I have an answer at the top
of my head.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Okay, let's just do two minutes now on on Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
So, Donald Trump, as with all populists, I think, has
one kind of overarching philosophy, which is whatever he thinks
is better for America at a at the time, It's
not necessarily really a deeply principled based thing. I don't
know what kind of grade you would give Trump's foreign
policy when he was in I would say it's correct
(12:12):
that Vladimir Putin became adventurous before Trump and after Trump,
but not during Trump. And I think a lot of
people noticed that when Barack Obama did not enforce his
own red line against Basha Asad and Bashar Asad gassed
his own people, then Trump came in and said you
better not do that again, and Asad did it, and
Trump launched a bunch of cruise missiles at him. So
(12:35):
I think at least Trump put out this aura of
not being spineless, and maybe that's all, not all you need,
but maybe that goes a long way. And we certainly
haven't seen that from Biden nor Harris so far. What
would you expect from a Trump foreign policy and again,
(12:55):
do you think there really is one?
Speaker 3 (13:00):
I think that President Trump actually has quite a clear
foreign policy view, and I think that it's rooted in
his perception of what's going on in the world, right,
And I think you have to kind of grade someone,
if you will, against the realities that surround them, right.
And so President Trump, I think is now you know,
when people like Jamie Diamond are saying that he got
China right, you know, you have to kind of accept
(13:22):
that he had a bit of a real kind of
predictive quality. You know, he understood that we were moving
more towards a position of deep and trenched tension with
the CCP. Right, And so, just to speak more broadly here,
he sees the world as becoming one in which, you know,
(13:44):
great powers are struggling jealously guarding their prerogatives and trying
to establish and maintain dominance, right, And so in everything
from you know, how he approaches confronting China when it
is engaging in really provocative behavior when it probes all
those you know, red lines that you mentioned, but also
(14:07):
in how he deals with our major European allies like Germany.
You know, President Trump was was really the skunk at
the wedding in trans Atlantic talk because he, you know,
was very sort of stringent with the Germans. He said, look,
you know, you're putting Europe in a really bad position
by having this dependent relationship with Russia. And I have
(14:27):
to say, I think that he was quite right on
that subject. Now, whether if you judge someone on their
foreign policy by whether everybody likes them, and you know,
he's celebrated in diplomatic fora you're going to come out
with a different answer, right, But but I do think that,
you know, his collection of instincts are really, you know,
quite coherent, and they're unpopular for a reason. They're unpopular
(14:50):
because they look at you know, actors in the international
regent arena as as you know, serving their own interests
in the same way that he urges.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Us to think of American interests.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Right. And so that's my kind of general take on
President Trump. I think this administration is going to be
stopped much differently. There's a wonderful phrase in Washington personnelities policy,
and when you don't think you're going to win the presidency,
when everybody says you're not going to win the presidency,
as in twenty sixteen, and that you do, you have
to really find people quickly, and that's tough, whereas now
(15:23):
there's a whole infrastructure and instead of people really interested
in trying to move his agenda forward.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Excellent, that's a great answer, and I will just re
emphasize also what you mentioned from Jamie Diamond. Donald Trump
really was the main guy to wake Americans broadly, not
the foreign policy establishment, but Americans broadly up to the
challenge slash threat of China, and he deserves a lot
(15:50):
of credit for that.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
George, we got to leave it there.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
George Bogden is a Lanthly Fellow at the Steamboat Institute,
an Olin Fellow at the Columbia University Law School, and
a true expert on foreign policy.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Thanks so much for your time. We'll definitely do it again, George.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Ross is a real pleasure. You take care and the
thanks again.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
All right, Glad too, Glad too. All right, that was
so cool. I love I could talk about that stuff
all day.
All right, So a couple of weeks back, I went
to the Steamboat Institute's annual Freedom Conference, which a few
years ago during COVID moved to Beaver Creek, even though
it's the Steamboat Institute, and they never moved back to
Steamboat for this event because Beaver Creek seems like such
a nice place to have an event, and it was fabulous,
and I met a really interesting guy there, George Bognan.
(00:22):
He's a Blankly Fellow at the Steamboat Institute, also an
Olin Fellow at Columbia University Law School, and you know,
in a way George is on a career path is
kind of similar to what I thought when I was younger.
A way, I thought I might go with foreign policy,
(00:43):
maybe even law, and I went a completely different direction.
But as George and I were standing there in Beaver Creek,
we started talking about foreign policy, and in particular, what
might a Kamala Harris administration foreign policy look like if
she were to win. And of course, you know, we're
(01:04):
sort of making this up as we as we go
along in a way, but George's I mean, he just
hosted an event with Mike Pompeio and he just knows
all the players, he knows everybody important in foreign policy.
So if anybody's going to make an educated guess about
what a Harris foreign policy would look like, it's George Bogden,
because my guests would be an uneducated guest and there's
(01:26):
no point in that. So George, welcome to Kaway, and
thanks for making time for us.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Ross, thank you so much. It's a real pleasure to
be here.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
I have to say, you know, I hope I can
live up to that introduction, but you know, really it's
just a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Of fun to chat with folks like you who are
so engaged.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Well, yeah, I've loved this I've loved this world since
I was in college. I think I told you when
we met. I majored in foreign policy at Columbia. I
had a class with the big new Brazhinski, not my
favorite national security advisor. But I've loved this stuff for
a long long time. So why don't we just jump
into the question at hand. So I guess before we
(02:09):
get into the specifics of what do you think a
Harais foreign policy would look like, the overarching question is
on what would you base your guess as to what
a hera foreign policy would look.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Like well, I think that first of all, you know,
when you're dealing with something as vast and complicated as
a foreign policy agenda, you have to recognize that people
come in with big designs and strategies in mind, but
oftentimes it's events that drive things, right, And so one
(02:41):
of the best ways to kind of interpret, you know,
what might happen under a President Kamala Harris administration would
be to think about what do we see, you know,
coming up on the horizon. And you know, in the
last year and a half we've seen just absolutely crazy stuff,
you know, I mean, the world's you know, following more
and more out of balance with everything from you know,
October seventh to all sorts of piccups and ups.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
And downs in the war in Ukraine and so on.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
So I think that you know, recognizing that most likely
the war is going to continue past January twentieth, that's
the war in Ukraine, and that there will not be
a comprehensive resolution to what's going on in the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
You're going to have an.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Administration, specifically under Kamala Harris if she's elected, that's dealing
with crises right and not just day to day, but
week to week, months, month, and so one thing to
think about is, you know, really, how is she going
to manage what we know is going to be on
the agenda? Which are those two big, really colossal difficult things.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
So as I think about potential administration's foreign policy, I
think of two broad categories, and I want to talk
to you about both of them. One is what are
the ideas or principles that might underlie a foreign policy?
Speaker 4 (03:56):
And the other is who are the people who will.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Either advise her with ideas and principles or execute on
whatever the policy is.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
So let's let's start with the first one.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
You know, it's unclear to me, and I'm not saying
this is some kind of partisan jabb although to be clear,
I don't like Kamala Harris, but it's unclear to me
that she believes in anything. It's unclear to me that
she knows very much and that she believes in anything
at all. And so for me, if I were trying
to answer the question I've asked you, I'd have a
really hard time with it because I have no idea
(04:28):
what she believes.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
All Right, I think, you know, let's put aside all
of the kind of legacy of flip flops, which I
think you know, astute observers like you see every day
in her positions. But let's take her at her word
that you know, in a sense, she's articulated a doctrine
by you know, being on the sidelines of so many
important decisions that President Biden has made.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
You know, really we're stuck.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
With kind of the same problem that we have with
the Biden administration, which is that their foreign policy is
defined around what they won't do, and so they won't
give this weapon systems Ukraine, and they won't allow the
Ukrainians to use a particular weapon system that way, and
they won't you know, back Israel entirely, but they won't
say what you know, a final peace plan will be,
(05:11):
because that should.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Be for the stakeholders.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
And so you know, when you talk about principles, there's
a kind of vacuum I think in terms of you know,
what she said would be her guiding approach. You know,
let's take one topic like China, right, I mean, China
is going to continue to be a very serious, you know,
potential adversary for the United States. We're going to have
you know, a confrontational position these I eat China. But
(05:36):
but what does it mean that Kamala Harris is going
to continue President Biden's foreign policy towards China. Doesn't mean
that they're going to have kind of these intermit in
big summits and kind of push a few issues, you
know along the.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Way, you know, sort of kicking the can down the road.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Are they going to expand you know, the kind of
economic warfare that the United States is adopting towards China.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Those are all open questions. But what we don't have a.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Major foreign policy address from now Vice President Kamala Harris
about what her presidency would look like. And so I
think it's that kind of vacuum that has a lot
of is concerned.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So at the Democratic National Convention, Kamala Harris gave a
much more full throated defense of Israel's right to defend
itself and what she perceives as America's commitment to make
sure that Israel can defend itself than I have heard
from Biden. And even though she mentioned more than mentioned,
(06:34):
she commented a bit on the Palestinians and she said
she wants them to have self determination at least at
the DNC she didn't say anything about a two state solution,
which is a pie in the sky nonsensical goal for
any time in the in any timeframe that matters right now.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
I also wonder, you know she's married to a Jewish guy.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Do you think it's reasonable to believe Kamala Harris that
she is a pretty strong supporter of Israel?
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Well, I think that, as you point out, she made
a political calculation in articulating a particular stance in that speech, right,
And really, I think you have to have kind of
a model for decision making to when you have a
blank slate, like like Kamala Harris, what is it that
she would do?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Right? I want to just.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Offer your listeners, you know, kind of a little bit
of a frame of reference for that conflict, which is
particularly complicated and really small decisions can have huge consequences.
And let me just give you one example. When Ambassador
Orrin who was speaking at the Freedom Conference, first met
with President Obama, he urged President Obama. He said, please
(07:51):
don't allow, you know, concrete to be brought into Gaza.
We agree with you that there's a humanitarian need for supplies,
but don't go there because it's going to allow the
reduction of tunnels, right, and of course President Obama famously
allowed concrete to be moved into Gaza. And of course,
you know the ambassador was prophetic in his observation this
(08:12):
had become a huge problem and we've now seen the
proliferation of this just intractively difficult issue to deal with,
which is, you know, thousands of kilometers of tunnels that
allow the most nefarious actors there to do really bad things.
And so what I want to put to your readers
is what are or to your listeners is you know
what what is now Vice President's Kamala Harris's instinct on
(08:36):
really small pragmatic decisions like that.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
And I have to say, I'm not left with a
lot of hope.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
You know, she's been given quite significant portfolio items. She
was supposed to be in charge of the border, she
had responsibilities on space, and what did we see in
her decision making on small issues? There not not many
great choices. So you know, we can we can try
to divine what her emotional reallyationship to Israel. Right.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
You know we know that President and.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Biden was told by Goldenmeyer, you know there's a we
have a secret weapon we have nowhere else to go,
and that that, you know, kind of really changed, you know,
the way that now President Biden thinks about the region.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
But what is it that connects Kama Harris? I don't
you know.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
I don't know, and I think it'd be really tough
to figure out in that kind of ad mixture of
experiences and personal connections what she would what would be
to her decision making.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
We're talking with George Bogden, who is a Blankly Fellow
at the Steamboat Institute and an Olan Fellow at Columbia
University Law School. So let's move to the people side
for a moment. When when you and I were talking
kind of off to the side of the meeting room there,
you mentioned a name that escapes me now of somebody
you said would likely be a primary or maybe the
(09:51):
primary foreign policy advisor to Kamala Harris.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
And if memory serves you.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Didn't hold whoever that person was in particularly high Now
I could be remembering this wrong, but why don't you
just refresh my memory? Sure?
Speaker 3 (10:08):
I mean, I think that the gentleman that you're referring
to is named Philip Gordon, and he is currently the
Vice President's chief Foreign policy advisor, and on the one hand,
to those of us who are fascinated by these topics,
he's given us a lot to think about by his writings.
He's certainly interested in France as a as a foreign
policy actor, but also his most recent book called Losing
(10:30):
the Long Game as a kind of manifesto on why
regime change is such a bad idea now here again,
we have this problem of a bit of a vacuum.
It's easy to say that when the United States comes
in and tries to change a government, you know, it's
done a great choice usually and at leads to bad things.
But what is the kind of counterbounds? What do you
(10:52):
do instead of kind of dramatic interventions in a region
like the Middle East? And you know, I think one
thing I found black in the book is a is
a kind of discussion of what happens when you just
stand behind clients, you know, and and really ugly dictators
who are doing really nasty things. You can't always you know,
be Gene Kirkpatrick and convert them into kind of amplifiers
(11:15):
of your foreign policy. Sometimes they're very destructive. And so
that's that's one kind of aspect of the question is
if mister Gordon, doctor Gordon, is the main leading light
in her world on foreign policy, what is it precisely
that he sees as a kind of three big issues
that he's.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Going to push forward regardless of what role he might play.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
And having looked very closely at his written work, I
don't know that I have an answer at the top
of my head.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Okay, let's just do two minutes now on on Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
So, Donald Trump, as with all populists, I think, has
one kind of overarching philosophy, which is whatever he thinks
is better for America at a at the time, It's
not necessarily really a deeply principled based thing. I don't
know what kind of grade you would give Trump's foreign
policy when he was in I would say it's correct
(12:12):
that Vladimir Putin became adventurous before Trump and after Trump,
but not during Trump. And I think a lot of
people noticed that when Barack Obama did not enforce his
own red line against Basha Asad and Bashar Asad gassed
his own people, then Trump came in and said you
better not do that again, and Asad did it, and
Trump launched a bunch of cruise missiles at him. So
(12:35):
I think at least Trump put out this aura of
not being spineless, and maybe that's all, not all you need,
but maybe that goes a long way. And we certainly
haven't seen that from Biden nor Harris so far. What
would you expect from a Trump foreign policy and again,
(12:55):
do you think there really is one?
Speaker 3 (13:00):
I think that President Trump actually has quite a clear
foreign policy view, and I think that it's rooted in
his perception of what's going on in the world, right,
And I think you have to kind of grade someone,
if you will, against the realities that surround them, right.
And so President Trump, I think is now you know,
when people like Jamie Diamond are saying that he got
China right, you know, you have to kind of accept
(13:22):
that he had a bit of a real kind of
predictive quality. You know, he understood that we were moving
more towards a position of deep and trenched tension with
the CCP. Right, And so, just to speak more broadly here,
he sees the world as becoming one in which, you know,
(13:44):
great powers are struggling jealously guarding their prerogatives and trying
to establish and maintain dominance, right, And so in everything
from you know, how he approaches confronting China when it
is engaging in really provocative behavior when it probes all
those you know, red lines that you mentioned, but also
(14:07):
in how he deals with our major European allies like Germany.
You know, President Trump was was really the skunk at
the wedding in trans Atlantic talk because he, you know,
was very sort of stringent with the Germans. He said, look,
you know, you're putting Europe in a really bad position
by having this dependent relationship with Russia. And I have
(14:27):
to say, I think that he was quite right on
that subject. Now, whether if you judge someone on their
foreign policy by whether everybody likes them, and you know,
he's celebrated in diplomatic fora you're going to come out
with a different answer, right, But but I do think that,
you know, his collection of instincts are really, you know,
quite coherent, and they're unpopular for a reason. They're unpopular
(14:50):
because they look at you know, actors in the international
regent arena as as you know, serving their own interests
in the same way that he urges.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Us to think of American interests.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Right. And so that's my kind of general take on
President Trump. I think this administration is going to be
stopped much differently. There's a wonderful phrase in Washington personnelities policy,
and when you don't think you're going to win the presidency,
when everybody says you're not going to win the presidency,
as in twenty sixteen, and that you do, you have
to really find people quickly, and that's tough, whereas now
(15:23):
there's a whole infrastructure and instead of people really interested
in trying to move his agenda forward.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Excellent, that's a great answer, and I will just re
emphasize also what you mentioned from Jamie Diamond. Donald Trump
really was the main guy to wake Americans broadly, not
the foreign policy establishment, but Americans broadly up to the
challenge slash threat of China, and he deserves a lot
(15:50):
of credit for that.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
George, we got to leave it there.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
George Bogden is a Lanthly Fellow at the Steamboat Institute,
an Olin Fellow at the Columbia University Law School, and
a true expert on foreign policy.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Thanks so much for your time. We'll definitely do it again, George.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Ross is a real pleasure. You take care and the
thanks again.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
All right, Glad too, Glad too. All right, that was
so cool. I love I could talk about that stuff
all day.
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
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