Trump's National Security Strategy: A Plan to Contain China or Carve Up the World? | Jamie Metzl

Summary

Hidden Forces Podcast Summary

Episode: Trump's National Security Strategy: A Plan to Contain China or Carve Up the World?

Host: Demetri Kofinas
Guest: Jamie Metzl
Date: December 22, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Demetri Kofinas is joined by Jamie Metzl—author, futurist, and experienced foreign policy practitioner—to analyze the Trump administration's 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS). Their spirited and in-depth discussion explores whether the NSS represents a coherent plan to contain China, a return to 19th-century-style great power politics, or an abandonment of the liberal international order that has defined US foreign policy since WWII. The conversation further dissects the implications of America’s current geopolitical trajectory, domestic political dysfunction, and challenges in Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. Touching on sensitive historical and current events, the pair wrestle with difficult questions of values, power, and unintended consequences for the world order.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Setting the Table: Jamie Metzl’s Background

[04:19 – 07:58]

• Metzl’s career: Born in Kansas City, then academic stints at Brown, Oxford, and Harvard Law. Early experience in refugee camps and service under President Clinton on the National Security Council, focusing on emerging threats like terrorism and technology.
• Long-term focus: Metzl has been preoccupied with the implications of genetics, biotechnology, and AI, using books (“Genesis Code,” “Eternal Sonata,” “Hacking Darwin”) to engage the public in these issues.

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2. The Importance of Self-Diagnosis: 9/11, Iraq, and Accountability

[08:07 – 18:35]

• Reflection on 9/11 intelligence failures: Both speakers note the “left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” dynamic due to siloed intelligence agencies, later leading to the creation of Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
• Accountability deficit: Kofinas laments the "biblical" lack of accountability, especially for Iraq:

  “There was no accountability for what was arguably the worst foreign policy set of decisions in American history.” — Demetri Kofinas [15:12]

• Metzl concurs: Iraq, if not the worst, is among the worst—“massively self-defeating... such a disaster.” [15:57]
• Iraq War origins debunked: Metzl refutes revisionist history that Israel or its lobby was the primary driver, noting it was American strategic thinking focused on empire and oil control, not Israeli interests.

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3. Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy: Diagnosis and Debate

What Is the National Security Strategy?

[23:30 – 24:03]

• Definition: Yearly document by the White House setting national priorities, intentions, allocation of resources, and U.S. posture toward the world.

What Story Does the 2025 NSS Tell?

[24:18 – 29:39]

• Metzl’s take: The NSS “says that the organizing principles of the post-war international order are wrong” and calls for a return to “balance of power” politics reminiscent of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He fundamentally disagrees with this worldview.
• Kofinas’s challenge: Reads the NSS as primarily about "containment of China" and a more naked exercise of American empire, with hints of spheres of influence.
• Metzl doubles down: Critiques NSS for not actually articulating a clear containment strategy for China and instead relying on vague appeals to sovereignty and transactional relationships with limited attention to values, alliances, or institutions:

  “If [the goal] were containment of China, I don't see that being articulated. What has been articulated is a return to national sovereignty, a sense of the world where great powers have their spheres of influence.” — Jamie Metzl [29:18]

On Spheres of Influence, Empire, and Power

[28:41 – 32:27]

• Both note the document’s shift away from multilateral institutions and toward a transactional, power-centric foreign policy.
• Metzl warns that such an approach “decimates” the alliances and frameworks that built postwar peace and prosperity.
• Kofinas: “We're burning the furniture to heat the house.” [32:27]

U.S.-Europe Relations and Right-Wing Populism

[32:32 – 39:18]

• The NSS’s section on Europe appears to support “transnational nationalist” right-wing movements, which Metzl derides as “nuts.” [35:21]
• Emphasizes the U.S. previously played a centrist, stabilizing role—now shifting toward undermining centrist liberal consensus.
• Metzl: “Our strength comes from standing for something and building a community of other people… Now we’re breaking [that] and replacing it with naked self-interest.”

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4. Migration, Demographics, and Identity Politics—Europe in Crisis

[39:46 – 43:51]

• Kofinas draws on personal experience in Italy and Greece: "You'd have no idea you were in Italy… [so many] non-indigenous cultures are taking over larger and larger footprints within these countries.”
• Both agree the issue is cultural integration, not “skin color.” Growing populations of unintegrated migrants, falling birth rates, and perceived loss of national identity fuel right-wing political movements.
• Metzl supports legal immigration and pluralism, but notes:

  “If we don't have structures and processes in place, then we’re going to see what we have [these breakdowns].”

• He cautiously notes a dangerous undercurrent: the administration's language seems to point toward “white Christianity in everything but just saying those words.” [43:48]

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5. US Policy, Information Warfare, and the Gaza War

TikTok, Youth, and Propaganda

[44:00 – 44:20]

• Metzl asserts: “So many people are getting their information from TikTok… Propaganda designed to turn them into these mindless, frothing zombies.”

Israel, Gaza, and Power Politics

[45:00 – 56:32]

• Kofinas makes a generational/psychological point: Older generations, more invested in the system, become “desensitized to fundamental acts of violence”; young people react more to suffering.
• Metzl frames the October 7th attacks as a horrifying Hamas strategy designed to provoke an Israeli response [47:55]. Argues Hamas uses Gazans not as human shields but “as human sacrifices.” [50:34]
• On a moral reckoning:

  “If any young person said, this is a tragic situation, there are injustices on both sides… I call on Hamas to surrender… [and on] Israel to pull back militarily… I would have hugged a person like that.” — Jamie Metzl [51:55]

• On Israeli politics: Netanyahu shares blame for the current impasse, but is “a political animal” with a complex record on settlements. Israeli and Palestinian leaders bear responsibility for failures on both sides.

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6. Historical Roots & Unresolvable Tragedy of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

[57:02 – 64:13]

• Metzl: Palestinians have repeatedly rejected “five peace deals”; their leadership “betrayed” them. Claims “one Gandhi” in 1947 could have changed history.
• Kofinas: The story is more about power than morality—“You don’t just get to have a nation-state.” Current realities reflect power dynamics, not right and wrong.
• Both agree the situation is deeply tragic, driven by history, cycles of violence, and the realities of power rather than simplistic moral binaries.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On self-delusion and looming crises:

  “Didn’t you see that while you were tearing each other apart… there was a ticking time bomb under your feet?” — Jamie Metzl [13:56]

• On US alliances:

  “Taking everything that America has now for granted… assuming that what we have hasn’t yet been eroded is just going to stick around—because it won’t.” — Jamie Metzl [32:27]

• On National Security Strategy:

  “If they were saying our goal is containment of China, I would agree with it. I don’t see that… What has been articulated is a return to national sovereignty, a sense of the world where great powers have their spheres of influence…” — Jamie Metzl [29:18]

• On Europe's rightward drift & US encouragement:

  “To say the United States is now trying to overthrow the centrist liberal consensus… in the name of right wing parties… it’s just preposterous.” — Jamie Metzl [35:21]

• On power and the Middle East:

  “At the end of the day, the current dynamic in the Middle East reflects the realities of power.” — Demetri Kofinas [54:18]

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Important Timestamps by Segment

• 00:00 – 04:19 | Host and guest introductions, Metzl’s background
• 08:07 – 18:35 | 9/11, Iraq, failures of US foreign policy & accountability
• 23:30 – 29:39 | NSS: meaning, intent, "containment" versus balance of power or spheres of influence
• 32:27 – 39:18 | US-Europe relationship, nationalist movements, and critique of NSS on alliances
• 39:46 – 43:51 | European demographic and immigration crises, integration challenges
• 44:00 – 51:55 | Information war, youth, and US-Israel-Gaza policy
• 57:02 – 64:13 | Israeli–Palestinian conflict, power politics, history, and tragedy

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Tone and Language

• The dialogue is intellectually rigorous, direct, and unsparing—sometimes humorous and self-critical.
• Both Metzl and Kofinas embrace nuance, criticize their own "tribe," and seek honest self-reflection, sometimes lamenting "ping-pong" politics between extremes.
• Emphasizes the tragic, complicated nature of international affairs and warns against reductionist thinking.

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Closing

This episode offers a dense, searching examination of America’s shifting national security philosophy, critiques the 2025 Trump administration National Security Strategy for its lack of clear vision or actionable alliance-building, and places urgent emphasis on the erosion of both US soft power and democratic norms. Kofinas and Metzl stress that without clear articulation of values and purpose, the US risks causing a destabilizing cascade both at home and abroad.

For the full discussion—including deep dives into China, the Middle East’s economic order, and Venezuela—listeners are invited to subscribe to the Hidden Forces premium feed.

Transcript

[A]

What's up everybody? My name is Demetri Kofinas and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs and everyday citizens to challenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. My guest on this episode of Hidden Forces is Jamie Metzl, an author and futurist with deep foreign policy experience, having served on President Clinton's National Security Council, in the State Department, and in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Jamie and I spend the first hour of this conversation digging into The Trump administration's 2025 National Security Strategy and the story that the administration is trying to tell to the American people and to itself about America's place in the world, where we went astray, and what needs to be done on a strategic planning level in order to make America great again. From there, Jamie and I debate whether the strategy amounts to a containment of China or or something closer to a 19th century balance of power where the largest and most powerful countries, namely the United States, Russia and China, will be granted the freedom to operate with impunity within their own spheres of influence, dealing a final death blow to the international rules based liberal order that the United States sought to universalize after the fall of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago. The second hour is a wide ranging tour through what this strategy might look like in practice, from the Western Hemisphere and Venezuela to Europe and Ukraine, and what power politics means when so much of modern conflict is fought through influence campaigns, institutional sabotage and cyber operations rather than through the use of conventional arms and occupations. We also explore the dangerous vacuum created when a superpower can no longer clearly articulate what it stands for at home or abroad, and how that confusion can create a cascade of unintended consequences that further destabilize the international system and leads to a new form of total war. If you want access to all of this conversation, go to HiddenForces IO, subscribe and join our premium feed, which you can listen to on your mobile device using your favorite podcast app, just like you're listening right now. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q and A calls with guests, discounted access to third party research and analysis, and in person events like our intimate dinners and and weekend retreats, you can also do that on our subscriber page and if you still have questions, feel free to send an email to infoodenforces IO and I or someone from our team will get right back to you. And with that, please enjoy this Spirited and vigorous conversation about the world and our place in it with my guest, Jamie Metzl. Jamie Metzl, welcome back to Hidden Forces.

[B]

Thanks so much, Dimitri. Really my pleasure to be here.

[A]

I have a sense, just speaking to you for a few minutes, that you've been a very busy man the last six years since you were last on the podcast, because I think it was six years ago when you were on and you were struggling to remember some of the details of that interview. And I'm sure you've done many, many interviews in the years since, including Joe Rogan, which really I've done.

[B]

You've done Joe Rogan twice.

[A]

Twice, yeah.

[B]

That was my prep for this interview. Joe Rogan's the warm up act.

[A]

That's right. And I'm glad you acknowledged that publicly. Jamie. Yeah, you were on the podcast, I think it was 2019. You written a book then on genomics, which was a topic that I was interested in covering that we. It was actually one of the early topics that I sought to cover when I started the podcast. And I think the first episode we ever did with that was with Eric Schott of the Eichen Institute on multi scale biology. And so I was very excited that you had a book out on that and you were out with a new book. And I'll have a chance to ask you about that in a second. But what brought us back in touch is do you remember you met my mother in law in an elevator at a conference? Cause she's a lab director at a large fertility institute, she's a physician and somehow I don't remember what. Do you remember what the conversation was?

[B]

I said I don't remember exactly.

[A]

I should have asked her. Something came up and she brought you up or something. I was like, oh, I know Jamie, that's great. Anyway, so let's just real quick, what is your background? Tell us who you are and what have you been up to?

[B]

So a lot of different ways, so educationally from Kansas City, Brown undergrad, Oxford PhD and Harvard Law School. When I was very young, 18, I worked in a refugee camp on the Thai Cambodian border. And that really opened my eyes to a whole lot of different things, ultimately led me to working when I was very, very young on the National Security Council for President Clinton. And when I was there, my then boss and still friend Richard Clark, who later became famous for being The Cassandra of 9 11, used to say that the key to efficacy in Washington and in life is to try to solve problems other people can't see. And for him, in those Days it was terrorism and cyber. And for me it very quickly became the big picture implications of what we now know as the AI genetics and biotechnology revolution. So that was 30 years ago almost, and it's just been an almost obsessive interest of mine. And it started with educating myself and then writing a ton of speaking, testifying before Congress. And I have multiple books now. And I first started out actually after writing a ton of papers and giving a ton of talks, writing two near term sci fi novels to try to get the story out there about this revolution and what it meant for people. Genesis Code and Eternal Sonata. And then when I was giving those talks and I could see in people's eyes that when I explained the science to them in the context of stories, they suddenly got it. They recognized that something big was happening and that they were personally part of the story. And that was what inspired me to write my, I guess it's now two books ago, Hacking Darwin, after which you and I met. And that got a great deal of attention. It was a pretty big international bestseller. I was invited by Dr. Tedros to be a member of the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Committee on Human Genome Editing. And when I was out in the world, I give a lot of talks.

[C]

To big tech conferences and medical and healthcare conferences.

[B]

And I have a rule to never.

[C]

Give the same talk twice, never stand.

[B]

Behind a podium and never use a.

[C]

Single note because I just feel like nobody needs to have a speech where somebody's just memorized the whole thing and you just stand on a stage and press play that.

[B]

For me, I want to incorporate everything.

[C]

That'S happening around me in the conference in the world.

[B]

And so in every talk I would give on the future of human genetic.

[C]

Engineering for Hacking Darwin, I would say, but human genetic engineering is just one piece of this much bigger story of our time. And that story is that after 4 billion years of evolution, our one species suddenly has the increasing ability to engineer novel intelligence and re engineer life. And the big question, not just for the future of humans, but for the future of life on Earth is whether we'll use to deploy these godlike powers wisely. And so that became the foundation of my newest book which is called, as you mentioned, how the Genetics, Biotech and AI Revolutions will Transform Our Lives, Work and World. And so these last two books have been translated into about 25 languages. I'm just starting actually as a commissioner of the Lancet Commission on Precision Medicine and Precision Health, because all of these issues, it's what super convergence means, all of these issues and all these technological developments are interconnected. It's one big story of what's happening to humans as we continue to co evolve with our technology. And that coevolution has greater and greater implications for everything.

[A]

So let's just go back a second to Richard Clark. He wrote a book that was published in 2004. I think it came out. Did it come out in 2004? Was it against All Enemies?

[B]

Against All Enemies, Yep.

[A]

Right. He was a lightning rod of controversy during a period where the Bush administration had really locked down or tried to lock down leaks and dissidents because he was also, as you said, he worked for the Clinton administration, but then also was, quote, terrorism czar. This is the period, the Bush era was when we first started using these terms, czars, I believe. Right. We had these different czars, which is such an interesting term. It was also the period when Bush had looked into Putin's soul, another czar, and saw something. But Richard Clark always struck me as a very. An unusually honorable individual. I agree. And he's been very successful since, and that's great. But he really stood his ground, successful in the private sector. I mean, he's gone on to have a really great career, but he really stuck to his guns. He took incredible amounts of heat. And there was actually an interesting interview that he gave. I can't remember when it was. Why do I feel like it was 2008 coincidentally? And it had nothing to do with the financial crisis. But he was interviewed by two guys named John Duffy and Ray Novosielski, who later wrote a book called why the Watchdogs Didn't Bark, which was a book about 911 and what happened on 9 11. And Richard gave this kind of explosive interview where he essentially insinuated in the interview that what had really happened in the lead up to 911 was that the CIA had been deliberately withholding critical and material information from the FBI, likely in pursuit of their attempt to embed themselves within certain terror cells on the west coast and also in Virginia. Terror cells which included members of the 911 hijackers. And at some point they became more interested in covering their tracks than they were in actually doing anything else. And that thwarted the FBI's own investigation. Basically, it was a much more detailed look into exactly what was meant by the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing, which was kind of how it was presented to us when we got the National Security Director Office, the ndi, which didn't exist prior to the Bush administration. Dni, sorry, the Director of National Intelligence. I'm curious, to what degree did you ever go down that rabbit hole of what happened on 9 11? Because we're now in a phase, Jamie, and this is relevant to the conversation we're going to have because I brought you here to talk about the National Security Strategy document. But we're at a time right now where there's a lot of looking back and trying to tell new stories or understand what happened about critical moments in our history, especially in the last 20 years, what went wrong, where things went wrong as part of this whole self diagnostic process of trying to determine what we want in the future. And the National Security Strategy is part of that. How much of you have you dug into the story of 911 and do you feel like we got some things critically wrong there and how we tell it and what happened?

[B]

Yeah, so I worked for Richard Clark in the Clinton administration, so it was before 9 11. But like everybody else I've been deeply curious about 9 11. And I directed the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Emergency Preparedness and response after 9 11. And so there's no doubt that structural institutional shortcomings at least made the possibility of made 911 more possible and feasible. And then we had the commission that put together all of these proposals, including one, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and two, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Because there were so many divisions between our intelligence agencies that we had actually it's like the people who talk about Pearl Harbor. There was a lot of information that could have been made actionable, but it.

[C]

Wasn'T because there were all these institutional divides.

[B]

So there's no doubt that we got.

[C]

Some pretty big things wrong in the.

[B]

Run up to 9 11. And there's no doubt that we got some pretty big things wrong in the aftermath of 9 11. Because looking back, the war on Terror.

[C]

All in all has been, in my view at least massively self defeating for the United States. We've done so much harm to ourselves and the terrorists who we were against seem to be doing okay. And so I absolutely think that America need, and any society frankly needs to go through phases or just regularly engaged in honest self analysis. And unfortunately, rather than doing that, America is really, it feels like it's coming apart at the seams. Because rather than coming together to take a hard, honest look at what's gone wrong, we are dividing into, at least, as I see it, lunacies of the far left and the far right. And we are those of us who at least think of ourselves as centrists in the middle, whether center left, liberal Democrat, liberal centrist Democrat or center right, we've seeded the playing field to the crazies on the far left and the far right. And there are lots of reasons for that, including just the structure of how information and influence and power are distributed in our societies. And so we're just going back and forth between one crazy to the other crazy. It's like a ping pong. And my fear is that if, and I would say when, if we keep on this current trajectory, terrible things happen to us in the future. We're going to do the analysis of right now. And that just like you were saying with 9 11, we're going to say like, didn't you see it? Didn't you see that while you were tearing each other apart, didn't you see.

[B]

While you were turning America's young people into mindless zombies following TikTok memes manipulated by the Chinese and Russian governments, didn't you see there was a ticking time bomb under your feet? And at that point we'll say, oh yeah, I guess it was pretty obvious. So this, right now, this is the moment. It's the equivalent moment to when we missed the signs of 9 11. We're doing all of those things now.

[A]

So let's talk about this a little bit. Where to begin? There's a tendency, I find for people who maybe engage or are very permissive about giving airtime to all sorts of different, alternative, not necessarily theories, but alternative, sort of endless, endless veins of questioning. There's a tendency to respond to the criticism of any of those alternative theories, which they're not even necessarily theories, by saying, well, what about so and so? This is the worst.

[B]

Oh, it's the worst. The whataboutism is a toxic disease.

[A]

It is, it is. But I do wanna acknowledge something though, which is that the lack of accountability has been biblical.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I mean, there was no accountability to the Bush administration. Let's just take them, because you can find examples across all administrations where there has been no lack of accountability. And I've harped on the Bush administration in particular because I was a young man, I was an adolescent, I was 18 when Bush came into office. So this was the formative period of my political development and there was no accountability for what was arguably the worst foreign policy set of foreign policy decisions in American history. First of all, would you agree that Iraq in particular, and the circumstances surrounding Iraq and the Iraq policy, everything that went around it, and US grand strategy, would you say that that was the worst foreign policy decision or set of decisions in American history.

[B]

You know, worst, who knows? But it was certainly among the worst. And it was so just self defeating.

[A]

And insane because it wasn't just tactical, it was strategic, which is worse.

[B]

Oh no, it was purely strategic. It was purely strategic.

[C]

So.

[B]

So the decision, I mean, whatever we did with Afghanistan, that was where Al Qaeda was. So we went into Afghanistan, then we withdrew our troops from Afghanistan. So while we had this advantage, we actually started the process that ended up with our losing in Afghanistan. Among other things, we pulled those guys away to go fight a war with Iraq that had nothing to do with 9 11. As a matter of fact, I remember when I worked for Joe Biden and we can talk about Joe Biden and why I really feel like he will go down in the annals of American.

[C]

History as probably one of the most disastrous presidents in our history. Even though I'm a Democrat and he's my former boss and I, I respect him in certain ways as a human being.

[B]

But I remember Senator, then Biden coming back from the White House during Afghanistan.

[C]

And he said, they've already made the decision, there's going to be a war in Iraq.

[B]

And at that time it just seemed.

[C]

Like, wait a second, didn't we just go into Afghanistan? And so it was already like, there's the old saying, don't miss the opportunity of a crisis. That these guys had this plan with.

[B]

Nothing to do with 9 11, that.

[C]

They wanted to remake the Middle east and this was their way of doing it. And it was just such a disaster for the United States on so many different levels. And then even after doing that, the decision to just disband the military with no real process, I mean, there was the insanity of these young people going in.

[A]

You're talking about the Ba' athists and the Iraqi.

[C]

Yes, the de Ba' Athification was necessary, but when Bremer, kind of on his own, it seemed, just said, all right, we're now abolishing the armed forces. It almost guaranteed the problems that came after. So not only was it a bad decision, not only was it poorly planned, the way that it was executed made some kind of defeat almost inevitable. I mean, Iraq isn't absolutely a basket case now, but it started out this whole chain of events that's really been disastrous. And so I would have thought George W. Bush at the end of his presidency, I remember thinking, God, it doesn't get any worse than this. But it turns out it'd never say that there can always be worse than the last thing you thought was worse.

[A]

Yeah. So Some historical context for folks. Bremer. Was Paul Bremer the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Was that the name of it? The cpa? Yes. I won't get into a conversation with you about whether de ratification was necessary or not. This is part of the problem. When you go into nation building. You start having to make decisions like, do we want to get rid of this particular party and what is it going to mean for the fractures, the tribal fractures within the nation and blah, blah, blah, all those things. We were so unprepared to go into Iraq that we didn't even consider whether or not we could form a unified democratic government of a country of three large ethnic groups with different percentages, one of which was a majority and which was also the same constitution as your neighbor Iran, which is supposed to be your largest geostrategic adversary in the region. The whole thing is so absurd. And now there's also a narrative that this was a war that was architected by Israel. And the response that I've given to this sort of idea, this revisionist idea that it was primarily the Israel lobby that drove the war is number one. That's just when you lived through that period. And this, again, is so important to me. And I think it's important that we do episodes like this where we talk about this, because those of us that lived through it, and you were much closer to this than I was. So I'm looking forward to your sort of memory of this. But my memory was very clear. Like the people that were advocating for this were advocating for American empire. This is part of a hegemonic strategy to control oil resources in the Middle east, primarily, whether they said it or not. And that was about having leverage over the Europeans, continued leverage over our allies, as well as China and other potential adversaries. And also there was an ideological war. And to the extent that there was Israeli support for it, I think that the divisions within Israel, there were starker divisions and starker debates within Israeli society about whether or not this was actually in Israel's interest or not than there was in the US because at least the Israelis lived in the region. They had some idea of how dangerous it would be to empower a Shia majority in Iraq.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So a bunch there. So first, the State Department developed an extensive Iraq Day after plan. And Secretary Rumsfeld said that nobody in the Defense Department can have any contact with the State Department. So the United States did have a plan that was completely thrown out. Secondly, I was in the US Congress working for Senator Biden at that time. So all of the influencers came through. It was not the Israeli lobby. And you're exactly right. The Israelis got understood very, very well what the dangers were in Iran. And the idea that the Israelis would want to empower the Ayatollahs of Iran, who were actually even bigger adversaries of theirs than the Ba' Athists in Iraq and Syria and elsewhere. It's just. It's preposterous.

[A]

Did Ariel Sharon support the war?

[B]

You know, I don't know the specific. I don't have all of the details on that. But certainly, you know, for an Israeli president, I mean, maybe Netanyahu, who I think has strengths and weaknesses, is a little bit different, but it wouldn't be like, at least in the history of Israel, US Relations, it would have been very rare for a sitting prime minister of Israel to come out and oppose.

[C]

Publicly a war by Israel's greatest ally.

[B]

And so, for sure, there were a.

[C]

Lot of concerns in Israel about everything. But I think that I totally agree.

[B]

With you that this idea that some.

[C]

Kind of secret cabal Israel lobby was responsible for this, it doesn't pass the smell test.

[A]

Yeah. So maybe we'll have a chance to revisit Iraq in the course of this conversation. There might be lessons there. But let's dig into the national Security Strategy document, which is the primary reason I brought you on the show. And I should mention this to people that may remember your first appearance on the podcast, which, actually, I think it was after we started doing the second hour. It was after we started monetizing the show, because I believe in the second hour, we spoke a little bit about foreign policy. And heading into that conversation, I had no idea that your background was actually in ir. And so this is a conversation that I've wanted to have with you for a long time. Even though you've done two books on genomics and genetic engineering and evolution and biological sciences. I actually wanted to have a conversation with you about foreign policy. So the Trump administration recently released its 2025 National Security Strategy document, and there has been, I think, a lot of misinterpretation of what's actually in the document to say nothing about whether or not the document itself is internally consistent and also consistent with some of the other public statements of the administration, as well as their actions. So, first of all, what is a national security document, and who are the audiences that it's seeking to target?

[C]

So national security, at least in the context of our government, is a document that the White House puts out every year and it basically says, here's what we stand for, here's what we're trying to do. And our intention is to allocate our energy and resources in order to do these things. So it has the potential to be.

[B]

An important signaling document for people certainly within the United States government to coordinate policies and also for our allies and others in the world to give them some indication of what we're trying to do.

[A]

So these documents usually have a theory of a case or a story about the world that they seek to tell as part of this sort of diagnostic process, followed by a prescription for what to do. What is that story that the document tells?

[B]

Yeah, what I would say it's that the post war, the organizing principles of the post war international are wrong and that America is better served in the type of balance of power, great power, balance of power structure that characterized the world in the 19th and the early 20th century. I fundamentally disagree with that. But if I had to say what I get as the essence of the message here, it's that that's interesting.

[A]

Let's dig into that a bit more because I don't necessarily feel that it's looking for a balance of power structure or a concert of Europe structure for the world. It felt very much like a containment strategy for China.

[B]

Yeah, I didn't really, I didn't read it that way as much because if we had said this is a containment strategy for China, we could have said, here's what we're going to do. And I'm actually, I've long been a quote, unquote, China hawk. And so if you said, well, here's what we're going to do, and we're going to work with our allies to make an economic alternative to China, we're going to work with our allies to have a military capabilities to resist China in a uniform way. We're going to articulate a vision of the future that is more appealing than what China is promoting or selling. So if somebody asked me to say, if someone said, well, containing China is foundational for US national security interests, which I for sure agree with, how would you do it? The last thing I would do would be this document. Because so many of the areas that are foundational for that, and certainly building relations with our allies, building our ability to stand up to China, thinking in an integrated strategic manner about economics, and that's not even to mention implementation and all of the antagonisms with everybody. And then the theory of the case of all of these tariffs was we're going to remake global economics to put more pressure on China, but this administration is easing up on China massively while not doing the same to the same extent with our closest allies. And so in the strategy, and when it talks about great power, competition and focus on sovereignty and hardly mentions common values, it undermines the institutions that have been foundational for the post war international order. It feels, to me, at least, and then it doesn't talk about standing up in any meaningful way to Russia for its attack on Ukraine. It seems to me it's trying to bring us back to an earlier model.

[A]

Well, to be clear here, everything you just said falls under the category of prescription. What you're disagreeing with is how is this going to be implemented? What, what I'm saying is.

[C]

No, no, no.

[B]

What I'm saying is I don't see an articulation. If they were saying our goal China isn't even mentioned until halfway through.

[C]

If they were saying our goal is.

[B]

Containment of China, I would agree with it.

[C]

I don't see that.

[A]

I don't read that there are more pages in the documented devoted to China in the subsection on China than there is on the entire Western Hemisphere. Monroe Doctrine corollary argument, which has gotten the large amount of play, which is this idea that the United States is pursuing a spheres of influence approach, which is to quote Jon Stewart in one of monologues, who said Russia gets its fear, China gets its sphere, and we get Latin America and the Western Hemisphere. But that's actually not how the document reads. In fact, the document specifically states that we want to prevent in some cases, regional hegemony by our adversaries. So that's obviously what are they talking about. They're talking about China and they in fact doubled down on the Taiwan Relations act and supporting Taiwan with arms explicitly in the document. I mean, the document reads a lot more like Elbridge Colby's strategy of denial containment than it does the Monroe Doctrine or even the Teddy Roosevelt corollary of. Yeah, I mean, in some sense we're basically saying we're going to lock. Yes. And we're going to lock down the Western Hemisphere. We're going to treat it like our colonial territory. And we're also going to use that as leverage as part of a larger strategy to contain China. That I still think that the, the document is actually a containment strategy.

[C]

Yeah, I think that there are little pieces that could be construed if brought together under a framework of articulating a containment strategy, that you could say, oh, this little piece could be used in a containment strategy. And this little piece could be used in a containment strategy, but in my mind, in a strategy document that is different than articulating here is what we're trying to achieve. And that, in my view, has not been articulated. What has been articulated is a return to national sovereignty, a sense of the world where great powers have their spheres of influence, where we don't intervene in other areas unless we absolutely have to. So I certainly agree that there are little pieces of that, but I do not see an articulation of containing China because that's what a strategy is. It says here's what we're trying to achieve. And I don't see that.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, maybe they could have been more explicit about it. Let me also state that while I think also the primary objective that I read into it was containment of China, that this was in service of a new form of American empire that is more naked in its use of power, that relies less, as you mentioned, on multilateral institutions, much more on bilateral relationships. And interestingly enough, the section on, I mean, the most, well, the least substantive section, disappointingly enough, was on Africa. And I felt that there should have been much more there, given what again was stated on the part of, in the section on China about the need to build up soft power and also to dominate the technologies of the future so that we become the primary commercial partner in these key areas rather than the Chinese. And one area where they were explicit about that was in Latin America. They want to make sure that no one gets to touch Latin America. No one develops relationships there. So part of the strategy also includes strengthening relationships with some of the local governments.

[B]

But it does that without articulating why. And the United States, just as powerful as we are, we're not powerful enough to do all of these things all of our own. The genius of the post war planners of the United States was to recognize that America will be better off if we build a system and other people want to be part of it. And so this strategy, quote, unquote, is just decimating all of that. So these countries in Latin America who are right now trading a lot with China, where China is certainly supporting in a very corrupt way lots of people who are in power in certain countries in Latin America, like Venezuela. So how are we going to do it? And so that's the thing is if we say we're not about alliances, we're not about values, we're not about norms, we're not about institutions, we're not about helping anybody else, we're just about the raw exercise of power. And then we want you, what we used to call our allies and friends and partners. We want you to partner with us not because we're articulating a vision of what we can do together, but because it's just in your naked self interest to do that. But what they're telling us, lots of people say, is we're not convinced of that. So even our allies are trying to hedge against us because they don't know who we are and what we stand for. So I just think there's in my view a pretty significant disconnect between taking everything that America has now for granted and now we're all about the naked exercise of national power and just assuming that what we have that hasn't yet been eroded is just going to stick around because it won't.

[A]

Yeah, no, see, that's such a key point, Jamie, is that we're burning the furniture to heat the house.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And we don't understand. We take the world as it is today for granted, not recognizing that the multilateral frameworks and fabrics and architectures that we've built have sustained the peace and prosperity that we have today. But at the same time, I do want to concede that there are clearly gripes. EU is a great example. It's become in many ways dysfunctional and a hindrance to national autonomy and national self determination. And it's, I think, contributed to some of the sclerotic economic policies in Europe. But what's interesting is the section on Europe it seems to promote. First of all, there's some language in the document that talks about. I might be paraphrasing here, but essentially we want to return to a world where the nation state is the primary focal point of relations or whatever, of self determination. The nation state still is. So I feel like in some ways there's a kind of a narrative that. And this has been going on for a long. I remember this back in the 90s with black helicopters and German UN soldiers sighted in Waco or whatever. This idea that the UN was going to invade America. I mean, on some level this story has always existed and it's always been exaggerated, but there seems to be an effort. And I started to notice this, Jamie, after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. There was a kind of argument that was resonating among the American right that Russia and the Russian people and Russian culture and the anti wokeness of Russian society had much more in common with America than some of the other European states which were under the yoke of this transnational vampiric, child molesting elite. And So I feel like part of the narrative that's being told in this story is that we want to use our national security objective includes supporting this transnational nationalist movement where we support parties within Europe that are on the right of center, which are nationalist, which support these quote, anti woke policies, which again this is, it's a very general term, anti woke. But basically there's concerns about censorship, there's concerns about pro gay or pro transgender. So it's an umbrella term for a lot of sort of what are seen as excessively liberal ideas or ways to control speech. But, but essentially the document seems to lay out a strategy, or not necessarily a strategy, but a desire. Cuz the document just has a lot of desires stated. I would say it's less strategic than it is. Like this is what we want. And it seems that what they're saying is essentially we want to support a transnationalist movement among right wing parties and this is part of our national security strategy. And I think that seems somewhat unique. I can't remember certainly the left had the word.

[B]

Nuts is a better word. Look, the United States, that we played the leading role in turning Europe from.

[C]

A place where these very powerful sovereign nation states had murdered each other for so many hundreds of years and then exported their murder and destruction through world wars, through murderous colonialisms. And the United States played the leading role in, in ending that and laying the foundation for the world in which we live today, which has led to the greatest period of peace and prosperity and innovation and wealth creation in all of human history. And the greatest beneficiary of all of that was the United States of America. And for sure I am a big critic of Europe. Absolutely. The EU has been sclerotic. Absolutely. Merkel made a mistake, even though it was a well intentioned perhaps mistake of letting a million refugees and economic migrants and terrorists into Europe all at once with no clue who anybody was. Obviously Europe has made a terrible mistake allowing hatred and Islamism and antisemitism to not just fester, but to be like an infectious disease infecting young people. It's happening there, it's happening in the United States, it's happening in a lot of places. But to say that the United States is now trying to overthrow basically the centrist liberal consensus that we have helped foster in Europe in the name of these right wing parties, many of whom are outright racists, it's just preposterous. And that we're saying, oh, we're for sovereignty and yet we say but we're going to try to overthrow the Governments we don't like in both Latin America and Europe. And we're against multilateralism and we're against internationalism, but our goal is to create an international network of right wing parties. And I think this section on Europe, even though I share many very significant critiques of Europe, and I feel like Europe put themselves in this mess because they were willing. They didn't invest in their own defense, they didn't ask questions about Russian energy.

[B]

They just took the trade with China as something based solely on their narrow short term economic interest and didn't incorporate any strategic thought into that relationship. So there's a lot of blame to go around. But the United States strength doesn't come from our being a lone bastion of American national self interest. Our strength comes from standing for something and building a community of other people, all of whom are pursuing their own national self interest in order to do something together. And we've done that. That's why NATO has been one of the most successful military alliances in history. That's why the values collaboration between the United States, Europe, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Korea and others has been transformative for the modern world. And that's why countries that have become wealthier and more powerful, with the very significant exception of China, have wanted to be part of this. So now we're breaking the attractive model of what we have and trying to replace it with a model of naked self interest. And so what we're going to get is the same world that we had in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. And the entire reason for the two world wars and for the post, all the post war efforts was to address that problem, address the problem that we are now striving to recreate.

[A]

That was the narrative after World War II. One of the narratives that emerged which was that nationalism was, was primarily responsible and part of the reason for the creation of the European Union was to bind the nations of Europe together and to unify the continent through diplomacy rather than through force. But I question how much really the issue is nationalism. And I do, while I'm sympathetic to much of what you said, at the same time I do think the situation culturally in Europe has become untenable.

[B]

I totally agree. I totally agree with that.

[A]

Yeah, I used to work in Italy and I'm Greek also and I can tell you, and by the way, I'm going to put some additional context around this because I think it's important because I don't think this is just about like, oh, we let the foreigners and the savages into our countries. I Think that it also is reflective of the collapsing birth rates. And Greece and Italy are two great examples. So as I said, I worked in Italy, I was based out of Florence and I hadn't been there in 20 years. And I went there this summer and I was, I mean, look, Florence was unique in how much it had changed from the day of the Medici. You know, back when I worked there, there was lots of Americans there. And it was not where the Italians didn't really live in the city center. But now I went there and it was basically like Africa and Pakistan and India. You'd have no idea that you were in Italy now if you're in the center of Athens in certain areas, same situation. And this is true in all sorts of areas of Europe. And while I don't think of this in racial terms, which is to say that I don't view the problem that Europe is facing as one primarily of skin color and these people don't look like Italians, it's rather cultural and how quickly you have these basically pockets of non indigenous cultures that are taking over larger and larger footprints within these countries. So how do you go about addressing that? Because it seems like the American right and right wing movements have been the only effort to really address this in the face of what has been really just perpetual gaslighting by the governing consensus in these countries.

[B]

Yeah, so I agree with you. I'm a liberal Democrat, pluralist. I think our societies are better off if we have different kinds of people and everybody contributing. But I also agree that all of our societies have political cultures. And it's not that there's like one grand old time of where there was some monolithic political culture and everybody who joins is some kind of outsider. But that's why there need to be some kind of processes so that people coming to the new place are in some ways bought in to the new place. And so I live in New York City and so we have someone like our current mayor Mamdani, who I oppose. I think it was an absolutely horrific choice by the voters of New York, but just showed up in like five minutes after becoming a citizen, is putting himself pictures of himself on social media with his middle finger at American statues. And I just think that every country has a history. No history is perfect. But if you want, if you're making the choice to join that country, then one, I support legal immigration and I'm very supportive of legal immigration. I think it should be liberal. And two, people who are coming, there should be structures to weave people in to those societies. But if you have numbers that are overwhelming. If people are coming in illegally, if there's not a process for integration, I think what you get is the kind of breakdowns that we're seeing in different places. And this is really a heartbreak because I think America's better off because of immigration. I think Europe is better off because of immigration. But if we don't have structures and processes in place, then we're going to see what we have. And just in the context of all of this Islamist violence and all of the radical antisemitism that we're seeing, and all these young people whose minds, I mean, they've become mindless zombies wanting to globalize the intifada. So we're seeing that. We're seeing it in the United States, seeing it in Europe, seeing it in Australia and a whole lot of places.

[C]

And so I am sympathetic, but not.

[B]

Entirely sympathetic to the view of the Trump administration that there's a cultural problem. But I feel when I read the National Security Strategy, it feels like they're talking about white Christianity in everything, but.

[C]

Just saying those words.

[B]

And I don't agree with that.

[A]

So you said let's talk a little bit about, or let's explore a comment you made there about young people who are. What did you. You said something like young people who are trying to export the global intifada.

[C]

Zombies. I mean, so many people are getting their information from TikTok. I think it was like 50% of young people in the United States are getting their information from TikTok, and it's propaganda designed to turn them into these mindless, frothing zombies. And that's what so many of these young people have become.

[A]

So this topic of US Support for Israel's war in Gaza and its larger war with Iran is something that I've explored on the show in great detail and with nuance. And as many listeners know, I'm very critical of simplistic takes on this subject. And also my general view is that you don't just get to have a nation state. So in the case of Israel, Palestine, this has long been a conversation point. But at the end of the day, like, lots of nations don't have states, lots of nations that existed within empires, like the Ottoman Empire, have not had a state. The Kurds are a great example of that. They have an informal state now, but they still don't have their own nation state. They don't have a seat at the United nations, essentially. You have to win that for yourself. But putting that first sight a moment, I don't want to minimize the feelings of young people when it comes to the US's support for what has happened in Gaza. I think if I was a young man, I remember what I was like, what it was like for me during the Iraq war period, and how much I opposed that war on humanitarian grounds, first and foremost, not because I had some more nuanced take on why I thought it was a bad geostrategic idea. And I do think that part of what happens as we get older is that we become a bit more cynical and a bit more detached from human suffering, in part because we become wedded to the system that's currently in place. We've worked for years, we've accumulated capital, we benefit from the status quo, and we've gained experiences that in some ways make us maybe a bit more desensitized to fundamental acts of violence and humanity. What do you think US policy should have been or should be when it comes to supporting Israel's war in Gaza? And is it in America's interest to support the prosecution of that war as it's been conducted?

[B]

Yeah, so a lot there. So let me say I'm entirely sympathetic with young people caring a lot about human rights and issues of justice. I know you did that then and now, and I certainly do that then and now. So I certainly don't begrudge any young people for having an interest in this part of the world or frankly in any part of the world where people are suffering. I think it's wonderful. I also personally have, for my entire adult life and teenage life, have supported a two state solution for Israel and Palestine, and I still support that. And I frankly feel that if there had been one Gandhi who could have had critical mass in that part of the world from starting to the 40s until now, that would be great. I'm also cognizant. There have been essentially five peace deals that have been on the table. All have been rejected by, I mean, the Palestinians weren't named as the Palestinians before the 1960s, but whoever it was, the Arabs or the precursor organizations or the now as the palest of five peace offerings have been rejected. I certainly think that America's investment in Israel has been a great investment for the United States and for Israel. And nobody, no sane person, no person with a heart, could look at the videos or the Images of the October 7 attacks or the videos or the images of the Gaza war and think, oh, that's great, that's what I would like to see. And so certainly, obviously anybody who can't look at the October 7th. And I've seen the raw footage of October 7th, and it's just horrible. It's like Hotel Mumbai, because you can hear the instructions of the handlers to the terrorists on the ground, and they're saying things like, cut off their head.

[C]

And film yourself playing soccer with people's heads. Film yourself raping the women, crucify people, and film yourself for social media. And so their strategy was to have it so horrific that Israel would have absolutely no choice but to invade. And they had spent 20 years building a Black Hawk down strategy with all of the tunnels and all of the weapons in order to trap the Israeli army in a Black Hawk down operation, which would force Israel to either lose huge amounts of soldiers, lose the narrative, and then lose the war, both on the ground and in the media. And so that was their strategy. And they thought they would get Hezbollah and Iran and others to join in. And so Israel could have at that point said, this is really complicated. We don't want to hurt anybody, so we're not going to do anything. They could have said, we're going to go in on the ground, because they had to do something, and they knew that they were going to lose. And so the only logical strategy for Israel wasn't to do carpet bombing, which Israel didn't do, but it was to do strategic bombing of all targets that were deemed legitimate. And certainly there was a permissive, and somebody could say overly permissive, but it wasn't that Israel. I mean, the main targets of Israel bombing were of personal targets of people, terrorists. And the second were these shafts going into these tunnels. But because those shafts were kind of everywhere under so many of these different apartments and mosques and schools and hospitals. And the tragedy is Israel also has all of these bunkers.

[B]

If the Israeli government had said anybody who goes down into a bomb shelter in Israel will be shot immediately, the Israeli death toll would have been massive. But that's what happened in Gaza. Gaza has 500 miles of tunnels. And the tunnels have electricity, water, food, shelter. They have everything. And the shafts are under pretty much so many of the homes and apartment buildings and mosques and schools and hospitals and Gazan people are just normal people. They love their kids the same as everybody else. Don't you think that somebody, that everybody in an apartment building when there is bombing, would want to take their kids down into these 500 miles of tunnels where they would be entirely safe?

[A]

They would.

[B]

They couldn't go there because the Hamas strategy is it wasn't using the Gazan people as human shields. By their own words. It was as human sacrifices. They wanted to get as many Gazan people killed as possible. And their strategy was to incorporate these people outside, through the NGOs and through the Students for Justice in Palestine, to have that as their war strategy. And so if any young person who, if they had said, this is a tragic situation, there are two groups of people, both are equally deserving of a state. There have been injustices on both sides. There have been multiple peace plans that have been rejected largely by the Palestinians. But you can understand in a way why these kinds of situations are complicated. And I absolutely condemn the horrendous and totally unjustified terrorist attacks of October 7th. And I believe that in executing the war, Israel has been too aggressive, and I'm uncomfortable with that. And so I call on Hamas to immediately surrender unconditionally and release all the hostages. And I call on Israel, after that has happened, to pull back militarily. Like I would have hugged a person like that.

[A]

Well, so first of all, I mean, isn't also part of the problem here that the people in power, Netanyahu, and many people on the Israeli right, are not just acting defensively? In other words, they aren't just caught in this security dilemma where they're dealing with decades of blood feud and distrust and dysfunction on the part of the Palestinians and inability to guarantee their own security, but actually they want territorial expansion. They have promoted settler expansion. Netanyahu is on record supporting Hamas because it delegitimizes the Palestinian government within Gaza. So it's hard to talk about Israel as a unified entity or Israeli policies. Unified entity, because you're dealing with people that are disingenuous actors that are currently in government, and they are part of the problem. They're part of why we're in the situation that we're in. Isn't that fair to say?

[B]

I'd say it's a piece of it, but not entirely. I mean, Netanyahu, who I'm not a big fan of in certain ways, is a very political animal. And Netanyahu, whatever, 20 years ago, put his whole career on the line calling for pulling back on the expansion of those settlements. So there was a time when Netanyahu was pushing forward in the opposite direction of what you're saying.

[A]

I don't know when that was, but I've seen a lot of interviews of Netanyahu going back more recently. He's always been.

[B]

The entire Israeli left was wiped out on this issue by Oslo because Israel negotiated Oslo. They elected two governments with the specific mandate of bringing peace with the Palestinians and fostering really an aggressive move forward. And that's when the second Intifada was launched. So once that happened, when Israel and Israelis felt that they had gone further than most people had been comfortable with to try to make peace. And the result wasn't a negotiation, the result was war. So I'm not a fan of many things in Netanyahu. I'm obviously not a fan of Ben GVIR and Smotrich. I'm against the settlers in the West Bank. But I just think that that's why this thing is complicated. And that's why my feeling is anybody who's out in the street and they're just saying this is a simple story and all we have to do is globalize the Intifada and have from the river to the sea liberation, that person is frankly functioning as a terrorist auxiliary.

[A]

So I'm gonna move us to the second hour. Jamie, let me just say some thoughts here. The problem that I have with this framing in general is that it's based in a sense of right and wrong. Who has a moral claim? I'm not saying. You're saying that's a moral claim. Well, what I'm saying, yeah, but it comes down to power. Israel's more powerful. They have a more powerful international lobby. The Jewish Diaspora has always been more powerful and more capable, which is why they got a state in the first place. And that was my. You don't just get to have a nation state just because you want one. And so during the Oslo Accords, like what the Palestinians were offered wasn't really a viable state. It wasn't a contiguous state. It was partitioned. And the interim Palestinian Authority would have only had so much power over this territory. And Israel would have maintained the top level security authority in those areas. There still would have been some. But to be clear, I want to be clear though. I'm not saying that because I'm saying that Israel was wrong or bad Israel. I'm saying that at the end of the day, the current dynamic in the Middle east reflects the realities of power. And the Jewish Diaspora also used, I mean, the founders of Israel also used terrorism to create the state. So you can't really argue that it's because the Palestinians rely on terrorism that they're bad and the Israelis don't. No, I'm not saying you are. I'm not saying you are. But I'm just saying that this is such an effed up debate because it's like, and the kids and young people are especially vulnerable to these sort of black and white ideas because they're like, oh, the poor Palestinians, like this and that. But actually it's not about that. At the end of the day, there has been a long multi century effort on the part of nations within these sort of disintegrating empires and the Ottoman Empire is one of them, to create independent nation states because that was the political unit after the post Westphalian world. And the Palestinians haven't been able to achieve it. And they don't just get to have it at the expense of Israel's security because Israel ultimately holds the cards. Israel is the more powerful actor in the region and it isn't just Israel. The Saudis wanted to deal with the Israelis and they were willing to bypass the peace issue or find some way to placate those that were on the Palestinian side in order to get a deal done. And in fact this was what Netanyahu was referring to when he said that they were on the verge of a historic peace right before the October 7th attacks.

[B]

That was the catalyst for it. And so yes, so that's the basic point. I mean nobody would benefit from a stable, secure, peaceful Palestinian state more than Israel. And so like I said, and more.

[A]

Than everyday Palestinians, by the way, to the extent that they felt though that it was a dignified end of the.

[C]

Conflict, the everyday Palestinians have been absolutely betrayed, most first and foremost by their own leaders.

[B]

Like I said before, one Gandhi, if.

[C]

You had had one Gandhi in 1947, who could have led a movement there would have been a Palestinian state. It would have been like such a great situation.

[B]

And frankly, when the UN made that.

[C]

Decision for partition in 1947, the Jewish community there in Palestine, they weren't saying no, we reject it, we want the whole thing. They were dancing. All the Arab states say we won't allow any of it. And that led to the independence war which was lost, and then the 67 war which was lost, and then the 73 war which was lost. And so I just think that this whole thing is a strategy. And I'm not saying that Israel is morally blameless, I don't think that at all. But I think that exactly with what you said, these young kids may be well intentioned whose minds are being rotted by many case foreign government propaganda on TikTok on top of this kind of there's the oppressor and oppressed stuff which the national security strategy in some ways rightly criticizes, have been led to believe.

[B]

There'S a right and wrong. And all you have to do is take out your pantone charts from Home Depot and you can figure out where somebody fits on the right and wrong spectrum.

[A]

So I mean, again, I want to move us into the second hour, but at the same time, Jamie, I have spoken with many Jews over the years, American Jews who don't actually really know anything about the founding history of Israel and are confused even about the origins of the conflict and are pro Israel. Also, I don't know that you mentioned Gandhi. I don't know that terrorism doesn't work. I don't know that the Palestinians would have even gotten the Oslo Accords if the PLA hadn't engaged in terrorism. So again, like, terrorism has been used throughout history because sometimes it can be effective to get more powerful and otherwise unwilling parties to the table.

[B]

I totally disagree with that because in 1947 there wasn't a Palestinian terrorist organization. There wasn't a Palestinian self identity. There were people there who had been didn't even call themselves Palestinians, but they were there. And some of them had been there for a long time and some of them were short time and some of them were people who were moved around or moved around themselves in all of the chaos of the 1940s. If in 1947 people had said, you know, it's a complicated world, there's a bunch of people here and they're not.

[C]

Going anywhere, and we're here and we're not going anywhere, why don't we see.

[B]

What we can do and how we.

[C]

Can live together and have two states go.

[A]

A year before that was the bombing of the King David Hotel. And that was part of the, the movement to create a state of Israel. So was that counterproductive?

[C]

I'm not saying that there aren't acts of terrorism and even acts of violence that don't play a role in international.

[A]

Affairs in getting you what you want is specifically what I'm saying.

[C]

No, they can't. But all I'm just saying is in India, the opposition to the British, they could have done terrorism.

[B]

And there were some people who were.

[C]

Saying, hey, our best strategy is terrorism. Gandhi, it wasn't because he just thought violence was inherently evil. He just thought this, I think this is the best strategy for getting what we want. And so I absolutely believe that in 1947, had there been a, you couldn't call it a Palestinian peace movement because there weren't a self defined Palestinian people at that time. But had there been among the Arab Muslims in that region a recognition that actually there's a group of people here and they have a legitimate claim to a state and there's another group here that has an equally legitimate claim to that state. We can have wars forever. We can try to wipe them out, which was what they said, their stated goal, or we can say, how can we find a way of living together? The whole history would be different. Just like you look at Poland and Ukraine now, they have these very old divisions over territorial boundaries. And they said, you know what? Rather than fighting these crazy old battles, let's just find a way to live together so we have choices. Does that mean that violence works?

[A]

Right, but those are two nation states. The Palestinians don't have a nation state. They have no, as you said, they have no really effective leadership. They have very corrupt political leadership. They have no control over their own borders. They don't even have borders.

[B]

In 1947, both the Israelis were in the same state.

[A]

Sure, but how many Palestinians were expelled from their homes? What was it, like, 2 million of them?

[B]

No, no. So there were about 8 to 900,000 people who were Arab Muslims who were living in what is now the state of Israel, who, for whatever mix of reasons, and it's complicated, left or were expelled from Israel. In the second half of the 1940s and early 1950s, there were the exact same number of people who were Jews in the Arab and Islamic states who were expelled at the same time in the ethnic cleansing that happened in those states.

[A]

You're talking about in the rest of the Middle East.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

You're saying in the same year in 1947, that whatever it was, 2 million Palestinians were expelled from their homes as a result of the creation of Israel.

[B]

Two million people, not expelled. I mean, so the numbers are almost exactly the same of the number of Arab Muslims who fled, and some of them of their own accord, some of them in the context of a war, and some were expelled. And the number of Jews who were expelled within that roughly same period of time in the ethnic cleansing as a.

[A]

Result of the creation of Israel, as.

[B]

A result of all of these. I mean, as a result of a lot of things that were happening in the sense that those communities had been there for many hundreds of years. And so as a result, is kind of aggressive language. And so that in the context of the divisions that were happening, because even if Israel had not been created, there was conflict that was brewing. It's not like you have to articulate some other vision of what might have happened.

[A]

All I'm saying. Jamie, Jamie, to be clear, all I'm saying is that it's one thing. I don't remember how this came up, but you were insinuating somehow that the Palestinians should have been okay in 1947, right after the creation of Israel and right after so many Palestinians had been expelled from their. Look at.

[B]

Anyway, some things there were mutual expulsions. It's like India, Pakistan.

[A]

Well, but those expulsions were happening in other countries.

[B]

No, but there was. No, but there wasn't a thing. You're assuming there was a thing. Palestine. And it had. No, I don't assume there was, but there wasn't.

[A]

I literally said there wasn't. There wasn't such a thing. I said there was no nation state of Palestine, but there were Palestinians living in their homes who had to leave as a result of the creation of the Jewish state as a result of a war.

[B]

They were not there as a result of the creation of the Jewish state because the constitution of the Jewish state actually afforded rights to these people. It was a result of a major war that was launched by the Arab states against Israel.

[A]

I see what you're saying.

[B]

So it would be one thing if this was a Rwanda situation where this group said we're gonna do an expulsion. That's not what happened remotely. This group was saying, actually it was foundational. It's enshrined in the constitution of the state of Israel that everybody has equal rights.

[A]

Okay? This is the right. So look to be clear again, what is always challenging with these discussions is that people come in with a presumption about people's views and they bring in their own context and so they infer certain things to be clear. Again, my view on this is that first of all, one thing is I have a policy not to come down on a moral view on other people's blood feud or other people's intergenerational conflict, which is largely my position on this. And then two, the other point is that I don't think that Israel has something to apologize for for being a successful nation state. And I think there are conversations to be had about Whether or not U.S. policy, foreign policy in the Middle east overly favors Israel at the expense of U.S. foreign policy. That's a whole different conversation. But the larger point I'd simply make is it is a tragedy what goes on in Gaza. There are other tragedies that happen in the world that look like that and that have happened historically. And ethnic conflict is one of the features of disintegrating empire in the post Westphalian world as nations try to develop nation states. And so I think the conversation is far more complicated. And I don't view either side as a villain or as a victim, as so oftentimes I think both supporters of Israel and supporters of the Palestinians seek to paint either side as. So in the second hour, I want to really focus on a bit more on China, on the China policy. The report talks a little bit about the Middle East. I don't want to necessarily talk anymore about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, but I do want to talk a bit about what the national strategy is with respect to some of the other Gulf states and capital investment in the Middle east, et cetera, and then also ending the Ukraine war, kind of where we are with that. And lastly, Venezuela. This has just been a source of confusion for me as well. It's really unclear to me what the administration's policy is in Venezuela, how much of it is theatrical, how much of it is part of this effort to kind of assert U.S. dominance over Latin America and using Venezuela as a kind of signaling mechanism to get other states in line, kind of in some sense like Iraq and hoping for additional situations like Libya, where when I say Libya, I mean we were gonna give up our chemical weapons program because you guys invaded Iraq and hoping that that would happen to other countries as well. So, as I said, that's what we're gonna talk about in the second hour. Jamie. For anyone new to the program, Hidden Forces is listener supported. We don't accept advertisers or commercial sponsors. The entire show is funded from top to bottom by listeners like you. If you want Access to the second hour of today's conversation with Jamie, head over to HiddenForces IO Subscribe and join one of our three content tiers. All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which you can use to listen to the rest of today's conversation on your mobile device using your favorite podcast app. Just like you're listening to this episode right now. Jamie, stick around. We're going to hopefully not light any more fireworks in the second hour of our conversation. Great.

[B]

And I'm going to tell all kinds of really intimate secrets in the second hour. So if you're here for the first and you liked it, it's going to be so awesome in the second hour. So we'll see you there.

[A]

I love having somebody promote my second hour.

[B]

Thank you, Jimmy.

[A]

See you all soon. If you want to listen in on the rest of today's conversation, head over to HiddenForces IO subscribe and join our premium feed. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, you can also do that through our subscriber page. Today's episode was produced by me and edited by stylianosicolaou. For more episodes, you can check out our website at hiddenforces IO, you can follow me on Twitter ophinas, and you can email me@InfoiddenForces IO. As always, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.