Transcript
A (0:00)
Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Shadi Hamid. Shadi is an author and columnist for the Washington Post. He used to be affiliated with the Atlantic and Brookings. His books include Islamic Exceptionalism, the Problem of Democracy, and the Case for American Power, which is what we're talking about today. In this episode, we discuss whether the war in Iraq was justified. We talk about why American hard and soft power is good for the world. We talk about the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iran, the America first movement, whether the United nations is a force for good or for ill, and much more. So without further ado, Shadi Hamid, Shadi Hamid, thanks so much for coming on the show.
B (0:53)
Hi Coleman, thanks for having me.
A (0:56)
So I guess it's been a. I think I did. I had you on a couple years ago for your last book and your new book is is really good. I really recommend people read it. The Case for American Power it's called. It fills a very interesting hole in the discourse on foreign policy because you're making a full throated argument for American power, not just American power, but as you say in the book, American dominance on the global stage. But you're making it in full view of a lot of earnest critiques you have of American foreign policy, including our support for Israel and a lot of so in other words, you share a lot of the reservations of critics of American foreign policy, but you ultimately arguing for a thesis that most critics of American foreign policy would find super uncomfortable, which is that American dominance is a good thing. So tell me a little bit how you came to that position and how you thread that needle intellectually.
B (2:03)
Yeah, thank you. Great question. So I come at this from the left side of the spectrum. I kind of cut my chops politically during the anti Iraq war movement. I was going to protests, I was organizing die inside, doing that sort of thing. Reading Noam Chomsky so very much, I kind of was raised in this milieu of anti American sentiment, if we can call it that, or maybe that's not fair. But to say that me and my fellow comrades at this time, we were blaming America first. America was this font of evil and destruction. And I think over time I just started to come to various conclusions. Naturally, first of all, that American power wasn't intrinsically bad. It can be used for bad things, of course, as we've seen time and time again, but it can also be used for good. And I think there was also this sense that I didn't want to be on the outside looking in. I didn't Want to be powerless. I felt very powerless during the Iraq war because we were organizing all these protests. Millions of people across the globe were taking to the streets, but we couldn't stop the war. So I think there was a lesson there too, in that if you want to change what America does, you have to be comfortable with power. Power is the only way you can get the things that you want. And I've been uncomfortable seeing folks on the left, when you bring up power, when you bring up words like dominance, they feel, they feel very uncomfortable. They can't quite grasp it. And this book is my effort to try to make the case to my fellow left of center friends and colleagues or even folks who are on the far left, young people, progressives, Arabs and Muslims who are very skeptical about America now because of the Gaza war, and to say, hey, it doesn't always have to be this way, and America has at times been a force for good. We can look at the 1990s, for example. We were the only power that could have saved Kuwait from the Iraqi invasion and occupation, or the fact that we intervened to save Bosnians during the Bosnian genocide or to save Kosovars from ethnic cleansing in the late 1990s. So the record isn't entirely bad. And there's also another. Any number of other examples. We provided the security umbrella for Europe post World War II to rebuild itself. The international institutions that we take for granted now were created because of America's superpower status after World War II. So I think the picture is more nuanced and I think that as you get older, hopefully you start to see things in a more nuanced way. So in this book, I wanted to kind of trace my evolution over time. But all of that is to say that I'm not even sure my argument is full throated, because as you said, I do have a lot of reservations still. And in light of what's happened in recent months with the, with the, the war that we're waging in Iran, it's a hard, it's a hard time to make my argument. I feel like I'm facing an uphill battle and sometimes I even doubt myself. Like, wait, is American power actually the way that I describe it? Because we're using American power for awful things that I disagree with. But we can sort of unpack that, I suppose.
