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Can America Still Lead? Foreign Policy in an Age of Division with Joel Rubin
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A
In these uncertain times, when the country is deeply divided, when the party in power promotes authoritarian norms over established liberal practices, and when the international landscape is characterized by regional tensions and the return of great power rivalry, we look for new sources of hope, new leaders, and new visions. Can a Democratic Party provide the nation with new ideas that can raise our hopes? While the MAGA world is energized by and unified around Donald Trump, what policy correctives can the Democrats offer? What goals can they articulate to help guide us through this transition period? What the foreign policy scholarly Charles Kupchen has called the Interregnum welcome to International Horizons podcast of the Ralph Bunch Institute for International Studies that brings scholarly and diplomatic expertise to bear on our understanding of a wide range of international issues. My name is Eli Karetney. I teach political theory and International relations at Baruch College and have for years been the Deputy Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute at the Graduate center of the City University of New York with our director, John Torpy on leave this year, I have the privilege of serving as the Institute's interim director, which means I have the honor of hosting this podcast. Here with me today is Joel Rubin. Joel is a foreign policy expert, media commentator, and Jewish community leader with more than 25 years of experience in Washington. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative affairs under President Obama and was a senior foreign policy advisor in the US Senate, earning the Congressional Staffer of the Year Award from the Military Officers association of America. In the nonprofit world, Joel has held key leadership roles as executive director of the American Jewish Congress and founding political director of J Street. Joel is also the author of the influential foreign affairs newsletter the Briefing Book on Substack. Welcome, Joel. Thanks for joining us on International Horizons.
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B
Eli, it's great to be with you.
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A
Let's start with U.S. foreign policy and global affairs. I want to ask you to address several global trouble spots, sources of regional conflict or tension which threaten the stability of the international system. But let's try to discuss these issues from the perspective of policy differences. How do these issues divide Democrats and Republicans? How might these issues create divisions even within the parties, possibly even leading to realignments or new coalitions? There was a phrase that was once operative that politics stopped at the nation's border, the idea that there's a kind of organizing principle in foreign policy where the parties come together and present a unified front in the foreign policy realm. In the Cold War, it was containment anti communism. There was an effort post 911 foreign policy to organize foreign policy around anti terrorism, the global war on terror. But where are we now in the foreign policy world in terms of an organizing principle? Is there such an organizing principle?
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B
Well, Eli, you are putting your finger on what has in many ways been the greatest gap in American national security that we've had since the end of the Cold War, which is this lack of a unifying mindset, a theory around which to organize, and a sort of vision that can bring broad swaths of the American people on board so that we can go back in many ways to the bipartisan worldview of America's role in the world. And I say that working in the midst of a political environment, that's incredibly toxic. As you know and as your listeners know, I've had the privilege, the honor of working in both Republican and Democratic administrations. I served as a career State Department officer in the Bush administration on military affairs and Middle east affairs. I moved to the Democratic political community on foreign policy on Capitol Hill afterwards and, as you mentioned, worked with the Obama administration as an Appointee began my career, like you, as a Peace Corps volunteer, which is inherently American first and not focused on ideology, but focused on peace and engagement. And I really feel like here in Washington, people are grappling with this gap and hurting from a foreign policy perspective by not having a theory that brings us together and how we should operate in the world. And you see the result is the partisanship and the debilitation of how we conduct foreign policy, the inconsistency, the flipping and flapping back and forth between administrations. One does a deal, the other undoes the deal, then the other one comes back in and rejiggers that old deal, and it's a mess. It's a real, real mess. And I think that for Americans, it puts us in a very weak position vis a vis. To your broader point, the competitions that we're in, which are real, there is a real competition with China, there's a real competition with Europe, there's a competition with Iran and adversarial ones. And we need to know what we're doing. And right now, we are, in all different parts, spread out and inconsistent and unclear about our role in the world.
- [07:26]
A
So before we look at some specific kind of regional trouble spots, you want to stay on this theme of some kind of unifying or organizing principle. You mentioned kind of national rivalry or national competitions. Are we in a world now kind of a return to great power rivalry and the pursuit of national interests. Is America first in a way? Is that the operating principle here, that not only America, but all nations are pursuing their interests? That's the way it's always been. That's the way it will now continue. And we had this maybe, you know, some pockets historically where there was international cooperation or there was a kind of a bipolar world. And, you know, some. Some big themes emerged to. To organize international relations, and that's just not there. And we're back to, you know, what the realists see as the kind of the norm, the historical norm, which is, you know, national competition and the pursuit of interests. Or are there. Are there potentially some ideas that can serve to kind of organize nations? Is there a possibility of dealing with a rising China? Is there an issue of managing American decline? Are we at a time where we're back to spheres of influence? What are some of the ideas that people, strategists in the Democratic Party are thinking through when it comes to foreign policy?
- [09:06]
B
There's a real competition underway right now in terms of defining what the theory of the case is for the Democratic Party. And then as a foundation and Then growing, of course, into the broader electorate. One of the things that I find most challenging at this moment as a Democrat is that like in many other issues as well, but certainly in foreign policy, there is now a trend to pander to our base at the expense of having a broader theory and a broader policy set to drive what our actual ideas are. And so if the base wants, for example, to cut off aid to Israel, or if the base wants to move, let's say move, move troops out of harm's way in a variety of areas where they are sitting and stationed, then that's what the base gets in a lot of the arguments and think tanks around town and people who are putting ideas together. And I love that you mentioned Charlie Cupchin, who's a friend and a neighbor not far from where I live. And you know, Charlie's of a different school. And there are other dynamics and they look at the broader, the broader consensus that one looks for. So now we see in the political environment and professionally, for me, I actually just sidestep and I'll come back to it. But I was a career guy at State when we invaded Iraq and felt the pressure of invasion coming from the political appointees of the Bush administration. It was not driven by the American people or by the career experts. It was a political choice by the Bush administration and its political appointees to move a policy towards invading another country. A disastrous idea from the get go. And what happened in that, in those moments, in that, in that period as a career guy when I was working in this space, it's like, my God, it's the political appointees that control the decisions. You can have all the best ideas in the world, but it's the political power that matters. And so for me, professionally, I took it took a risk and I went to work on Capitol Hill for the Democratic Party writ large and have stayed in that lane because the people who get elected are the ones that ultimately make the choices. They get elected in Congress or they get elected the White House, and they make appointments within the White House structure. Those are the people driving the policy. So the real question then is, for a Democrat, how does one keep the people in mind? Right? Like there's a theoretical argument, we need to support the American people. We have to have the American people support. I buy it. I agree. Now in a tangible way to explain it this way, if you don't have the votes, you don't get the jobs. If you don't get the jobs, you don't make the decisions. And so you have to do Something policy wise that is enticing to the voters. So they give you the power. Right. Very brass, tax, political. And that means elections are central. So who's winning elections? And the further we get polarized in the party, the further the base drives policy, the less likely we have, the more likely we have people elected who are pandering to the base rather than looking for broader unifying theory. And then we have the ping pong that I described a moment ago. So part of the, the argument I'm trying to make, and I'll make in my book as well, and making my book, is that we have to think bigger, we have to have policy that speaks to the broader. And this is where American community I'll close with this is where Donald Trump put his finger on something. When he said America first, he understood the negative political repercussions of the Iraq war. Forget the policy, the disaster, the lives lost, the trillions spent, the political implications he got. Now, he's not an isolationist, obviously, he's going everywhere around the world. He's not a pacifist, obviously he's starting a war, you know, Venezuela as we speak. But he understood the zeitgeist of the American people is that they didn't want stupid wars overseas and they wanted America first. And so that's what he tapped into. And so the challenge for Democrats is how to have an America first that the broad swathing America, American public loves, that also speaks to our values as Democrats in promoting of those values and working on democracy, working on human rights, working on climate, working on conflict resolution. That's the challenge. And quite frankly, we're not there yet. And we're heading in the other direction of a politicization of our foreign policy to the extent where we are sending people in or demanding they take positions that, that the broad majority of the American people are not necessarily on board with. That's the challenge that we're in right now.
- [14:11]
A
So you bring up this interesting dynamic where the party base and the kind of maybe the elites, the foreign policy elites, the strategists may not always be on the same side of some of these policy issues. So I wonder if we can turn to kind of foreign, four regional hotspots and get your view on kind of where is the base and where the foreign policy elites, how they might be viewing these issues. And you mentioned Venezuela and the Caribbean. You have your Peace Corps experience was in the areas.
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B
I'd love to hear how that in Costa Rica. Yeah.
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A
Where some of those experiences might have informed some of your views. About how, how best to handle challenges in the region. So maybe let's start with the Caribbean, broadly speaking, and then move to a few other areas. Where are the elites and where are the people when it comes, what's even happening, Maybe give a little bit of background what's going on in the Caribbean and under what authority is the administration even acting or considering action?
- [15:23]
B
Well, the burden of having served in the Congress as a staffer is that you get really like me. Like, I served in the Senate and then I was the senior point person to the House for Secretary Kerry. So I've worked with both chambers extensively. The burden is that we actually think process matters and that the Constitution matters, the rule of law, these arcane concepts, the structure of American democracy. The Congress has a role in oversight. Imagine that. Right. So, yeah, this is a highly illegal venture. What's underway right now, where we are moving aircraft carrier groups and striking civilian boats without clarity as to who exactly we're hitting, forget the policy about, like, whether or not it's effective, which, you know, we can debate. We actually should debate. I have an opinion about it, but we should have a debate about whether or not this is the right approach to do counter narcotics in Latin America. So that's the argument. It's counter narcotics, but methinks that's a little too convenient, to be blunt. I think we're moving in a slow regime change war towards Venezuela. Maduro as the leader is no one to be admired or applauded, but there's a long history of gumbo diplomacy by the United States and Latin America that we haven't done for a number of years. And I think what we're seeing then is a sort of theory for Trump and his team of America first, expanding to the Western Hemisphere first and moving military assets to Western Hemisphere, cleaning up the bad guys, bullying Panama or Mexico. Mexico, sort of like this is the region that matters and this is what we're going to focus on. And the Defense Department, it's national security and its defense strategy is aligning in that, realigning in that direction to focus on the immigration issues as well as part of that. And so that's what we're seeing. And if you stick on the Latin America hat, and having served in Costa Rica and Central America for a couple of years, you know, as an American Jewish kid, going to a small rural Catholic village and having the best time and feeling completely accepted and able to be my, my myself and learning empathy not through a book, but just by learning how to do work with people who you Organically have nothing in common with. And then you realize you have everything in common with because we're all just people, Right? Like that teaches me that we in the United States, we have a big debt that we still owe to Latin America. And so I backpacked throughout Central America a couple years after Peace Corps. I went to graduate school and then I came back and I backpacked all the way from Costa Rica through New Mexico. And you know, you can see the, the, the carcasses of, of bad ideas from the United States littered throughout Central America. You can see the bullet holes in, in Nicaraguan buildings and the anti American graffiti. And it's not anti American because they hate America. It's anti American because we were funding dirty wars in Central America and in El Salvador and Nicaragua, in particular in Guatemala. And, and we did that for whatever reason. The Cold War, we can get into that. I'm sure your audience does it better than I do. But the bottom line is that we left a lot of bad taste and we need to be mindful of that and we need to not stir up these old passions. We have a great relationship with Latin America now compared to any point in the long history of relations. President Kennedy kind of shifted it and moved to a development model and moved to USAID and Peace Corps and use that language. And of course Cuba. There's a lot of tensions with and always within. But it's a different approach from what the United States Monroe Doctrine, what we used to do, which is to just beat everybody up. We're now kind of returning to that previous model. And I think that's incredibly dangerous. I think it's un American. I think it's ahistoric in terms of where things have been trending. I think it's an opportunity for Democrats as well to connect the dots. So we are, we are stirring it up. And once you stir things up, having gone through the Iraq war experience and watching that and all, you know, you don't know how it ends. And we don't control, we don't control all the variables. A massage chair might seem a bit extravagant, especially these days. Eight different settings, adjustable intensity. Plus it's heated and it just feels so good. Yes, a massage chair might seem a bit extravagant, but when it can come with a car, suddenly it seems quite practical. The Volkswagen Tiguan, packed with premium features like available massaging front seats. It only feels extravagant. Hello, friends. Guess who? That's right, it is I, the replacer. Once again, I've been called on so you can play the new Call of duty. Black Ops 7 with three expansive modes, 18 multiplayer maps, and the tastiest zombie gameplay you've ever freaking seen. Call of Duty Black Ops 7, available now. Rated M for mature.
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A
So what could that look like? A kind of a democratic corrective. Taking into consideration all these complicated factors that you mentioned, you suggest that maybe Trump is moving towards a kind of regime change mindset in Venezuela. If so, that wouldn't be a regime change in the mold of the kind of neoconservative imperialism that we saw after 9 11. Right. Trump, and for good reason, and Obama as well, were harsh critics of neoconservative policy. The people, ordinary Americans, aren't on the side of supporting that kind of adventurism. So what makes Trump's potential regime change mindset more in line with kind of past Cold War practices? Maybe, you know, putting friendly dictators in place, you know, that kind of orientation of regime change versus, you know, versus not to defend democratization in the region. But if you can say anything positive, and this is why maybe so many liberals joined forces with the neocons after 9 11, that values matter. There isn't. It's not just about power and interests and as you said, kind of like, you know, beating up our enemies. There's an element at least of kind of being on the side of freedom and democracy. Now, for the neocons, that was mainly rhetorical. But is there, are there some lessons for the Democrats here?
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B
There are tremendous lessons in reminding the American people that you can't go into a war without. Without conscious belly. Right. Without a real justification. And the American people don't like that, and they reject that. And I, when I do panels and political, you know, commentary about that, the maga, the MAGA folks are always very nervous about, about that. But you, you know, to this bigger point about what's our Latin America policy, when I talk to folks who are the leaders on Latin America in the Democratic Party, friends I've worked with for a number of years, they will all tell you that this is so extreme, it's so out of character of everything we've been doing for the last six decades in Latin America in trying to build up development and build up institutions. And like I did a congressional delegation a decade ago when I went with a bunch of members of Congress and is it state. And we went to the jungles of Columbia and saw Usaida projects where we were spending millions of dollars to help farmers stop producing cocoa or coca. I'm sorry, cocoa too. Coca and move to regular crops. Crops. They moved actually to cocoa from coca, but basically to get out of the drug trade. And you look at that and you think that's the way to do it. I would call it a little more of a neo imperial transactional dynamic, which is what we're experiencing right now. This sort of idea that we, the United States can bully our region into conformity and submission. The American people don't buy that. And this goes back to the point. Politically, the American people won't vote for that either. A neo imperial foreign policy is not an attractive foreign policy, just like isolationism is not an attractive foreign policy. I think what's attractive to the American people overall get out of the primaries and into the general is the sense of pride, of patriotism, a sense of looking for partners and allies, of problem solving, of not making stupid mistakes and sending your troops into quicksand and getting them killed. Realistic, pragmatic, not adventurism. Right now we're, we're getting very close to adventurism with Venezuela. And this is not what they voted for. If you can say one thing about what the MAGA voters voted for, they did not vote for this. They voted for, if anything, the isolationism that they're not getting. And we could talk about in the context of Israel and Palestine, I'm more than happy to as well, but I don't think anybody saw this coming at all.
- [26:20]
A
So where does this. So let's shift to a few other regions and think through how these ideas, how democratic strategists are thinking about foreign policy in China, Russia, Ukraine and Israel, Palestine as well. Let's go kind of go in sequence maybe. Let's start with Russia. What would a democratic alternative foreign policy look like in terms of supporting Ukraine in the ongoing war with Russia?
- [26:56]
B
Well, I mean, look, I'll tell you, Eli, I was talking with some, I hate to say like this, but like, you know, I even work in Washington and I've been here for 27 years. So a lot of my, my community of democratic foreign policy folks, you know, we've gone through the ranks, and people have these great experiences. And I had coffee the other day with the former ambassador, and we were talking about Russia and Ukraine and the policy. And I'm like, look, the thing that really frustrates me is that Biden's policy on Ukraine essentially bled Russia. And you combine that with the decimation of Iran in the Middle east, and it was like, poof, went Assad. And if Russia had not been stood up to back in 2022 by American support, because we were the only backstop alongside the brave Ukrainian people, of course, they're the first. Russia would have taken over Ukraine, and they probably would have just colonized it and set up camp, and who knows if they would have gone further? But what it did was it extended into a place where they now have to import North Korean troops. They can't protect Syria. And so now we have a new leadership in Syria, and that's a good thing, right? So from a big strategic perspective, I am aligned with where the Biden policy was on that. I think that we stand up for our allies. I think that we reinforce our alliances and our partnerships. I think that we come to the aid of democracies in particular, and I believe that the American people support that. And poll after poll after poll. And this is why Trump has been unable to shake that policy loose from the Biden trajectory. His poll after poll after poll support that. They don't support backing Russia or withdrawing support from Ukraine. They don't want that. That's not what the American people want. And that's where you see the kernel of political power in the broad bipartisanship. When you see the base, and I see folks making the argument that, oh, we should just be realist, we should let Russia take over Ukraine. Why is that realist? Why is that realist? Like, who. Who decides that it's more that it's realistic to allow one country to gobble up another? And it turns out that wasn't even realistic. And they were wrong, right? Like, just to be very blunt, they were wrong. And, you know, you hear it from all sides of the aisle. And you can tell my annoyance about the realists, because I think the realists are faking it. They're not realists. They're just picking a side. And so they pick the Russian side. And the Russian side has not won this war. And so I think the American people are happy about that, not because they inherently hate Russia, but because they inherently understand the value of sticking up for our friends in a time of need. And to Me, that's where the Democratic foreign policy was a winner. It was a winner, especially juxtaposed against Afghanistan, which was the right call and a calamitous execution of that call. And so that's how we do it. We have to appeal, even if our base may not be happy, we have to appeal to the broader ethos of American values. That's how we make the arguments in the political context.
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A
So on this last point, let me gently push back. Let's say you're right on your strategic calculations and don't be gentle.
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B
Yeah.
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A
What if this is one of those areas where there's space between, you know, the strategic calculations and political calculations? What if the American people or the Democratic base is not in line with thinking through these things in this kind of strategic way that you're laying out? And the foreign policy strategists have one point of view in terms of ongoing engagement and support with Ukraine, which has these kind of potential secondary benefits. Bleeding Russia, weakening Russia, allowing kind of creating space in other parts of the world where, you know, an engaged Russia that's so committed to Ukraine can't be engaged everywhere. So maybe this frees up or frees up opportunities for Western and American interests elsewhere. So even if there's something to that strategic calculation, is that something to kind of, to convince the Democratic base of that way of thinking? Or is this an area where, you know, you got to win elections, you got to, you know, lean in the direction of what, what, what the base wants. Like how. How are people thinking through this?
- [31:39]
B
Couple thoughts. First of all, to the last point, you have to win elections, right? Like, if you want the money to flow, you have to have the people and the jobs that are going to provide that money. Right? So you have to win elections, and that means that. And when I say the base, what. So I, I actually, I. I mean, we didn't mention this before, but I was the national Jewish outreach director for Sanders 2020 presidential campaign. So I, I've worked and I've run for office before as well. Didn't win. Won some local races, too. That was actually a lot of fun. And town council where I live, so I've kind of been in these spaces at a national level where it's politics. It's not just political argument, but it's actually politics. And I'll tell you what our biggest failure is, Democrats, is our inability to communicate about foreign policy. Aggravation can't even begin to describe how I felt about the loss, the political loss around the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which in Many ways was the inflection point for President Biden's term. From a political perspective. He did not recover from that. And we didn't explain to the American people effectively why we were withdrawing after 18, 19 years. It was a base request. The base didn't protect him and support him. Instead, they put out statements of concern about what would happen to Afghanistan after leaving, despite lobbying for a decade to get out of Afghanistan. It was a Khan's calamity. And I still see it today in the Democratic Party, a bias towards only talking about domestic issues and just not talking about foreign policy. Just. No. And the result is that in these critical discussions like we're talking about with Ukraine, the strategy and the politics, the only way to connect the dots is to explain it and to make it real. And there was work done called Foreign Policy for the Middle Class by Jake Sullivan, who became National Security Advisor. He did it during the first Trump term. Did it? Carnegie Endowment, sort of looking at ways to engage the middle class on economic issues in the international context. And he probably didn't. I didn't read. I haven't read in a while, but I don't think he recommended a massive tariff policy. Okay, so we're getting the foreign policy for middle class in a different direction, but it was like that was an attempt to connect and communicate, but more of a consume it rather than sell it. Right. So the question now is we know the voters matter. We know that bipartisanship is essential and consistency is essential. We know the strategy debates in Washington are all over the place. But the secret magic glue in all of this is selling it and communicating and expressing it. And we are really weak right now in that lane in the party. So connecting the strategy, explaining why it is in our interest to stick up for Ukraine, why it helps American survival, why it helps Europe, why it helps the broader peace environment around the world, even though it's a military support that had to be beaten down into the heads of people every single day on Capitol Hill, through the press, you name it. And it just. It just the. We didn't run on it and we got beaten up for it. So good, so good, so good. New markdowns are on at your Nordstrom Rack store. Save even more. Up to 70% on dresses, tops, boots and handbags to give and get. Because I always find something amazing. Just so many good brands. I get an extra 5% off with my Nordstrom credit card Total queen treatment. Join the Nordy Club at Nordstrom Rack to unlock our best deals, big gifts, big perks. That's why you rack this episode is brought to you by Netflix from the creator of Homeland. Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys star in the new Netflix series the Beast and Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course course with fatal consequences. The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt, justice and doubt. You will not want to miss this. The Beast in Me is now playing only on Netflix.
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- [36:28]
A
So it's a perfect segue to shift to talking about China and trade policy, also Taiwan policy. But I want to kind of frame this by saying that we see, you know, despite the kind of MAGA world, you know, energized and kind of, you know, unified around Trump, that masks deeper divisions that are going on, you know, within the conservative world, you see on economic and trade policy, you see divisions between kind of old conservative libertarian free trade coalition. It was kind of oriented towards globalization and the new, the new right MAGA coalition, which is America first. And it kind of, you know, kind of Bannon's economic nationalism. So you see these tensions playing out there within the party. What are there parallel tensions playing out within the Democratic Party on questions of economic policy and trade policy and how that all applies to China?
- [37:33]
B
You know, what's fascinating about the tariff issues is that Democratic Party tariffs in many ways were a Democratic tool. You see a lot of domestic, especially in the labor space, a lot of intriguing and intrigue in tariffs. They'll all say, well, we don't want to do it the way Trump's doing it. I would actually argue, stepping back, forget the value of tariffs. What Trump has done is made him the center of the universe through this tariff policy. And it's quite fascinating. It's like, who needs a UN when you can have tariffs on the world and everybody has to come begging you for some kind of deal? Like, it's a pretty effective tool at making the United States the go to place for negotiation. Now, substantively, I'm shocked by it. I don't think to China we have any clarity on our China policy. We are not engaged with them on negotiations over nuclear weapons. We don't give clarity on Taiwan. The, the, the visit with Xi was inconclusive at best. In many ways, the sort of pressure on China is off right now. The spike in tariffs, the down the sort of credibility of the tariff policies and tatters because it's very much at the whim of one man rather than supported by Congress. We've seen Congress vote down tariffs towards Brazil as an example recently we see the Supreme Court testing whether or not they're legal under ipa, the International Economic Powers Act, Emergency Powers act, which is the base, which is the tool being used for tariffs. So it's a mess and it's confusing even. Peter Navarro, former Peace Corps volunteer Mr. Anti. Did you know that? Yeah. How about that Peter? Mr. China Hawk. Where is he? I don't know where he is right now these days. So I'm not sure what the China policy is any longer. And so I think for Democrats when it comes to the tariffs, there is a desire to use tariffs to protect and support certain sectors of the economy, but not as a bludgeon and a weapon to change broader national international policies because it's, you know, it's just not been a tool that we've used. And I think it's sort of, it's sort of, it's a very vulnerable tool. It's a very, it's, it's, it's, it's resting on quicksand for the, the descript, the reasons I described a moment ago. So I don't, I, I think with China, I'll tell you, I was in China in 2019 on a trip and it was a fascinating country. I find, found it really intriguing and obviously historically significant and also the most totalitarian place I'd ever set foot in and depressing in many ways because when human beings live in a totalitarian society, they're different. They look down on the ground, they walk past you quickly. They're not happy. You can feel it in the air. It's a different vibe in some ways. You know, it's like when we see the ice, you know, coming into certain areas or when we move the National Garden to Washington, people just kind of hid. They like self modulated. Well, I'm not going to go out tonight. Right. Everything just went calm. Did I lose you?
- [41:22]
A
No. Oh no.
- [41:23]
B
Good, good, good. Sorry, I saw a thing here. Sorry folks. I thought it froze for a second. So, you know, I think for, for us, we have an opportunity as Democrats to recognize A their major strategic challenges. But B, they're not our enemy, China. But C, we can't look away and we can't apologize. I saw some blogger, Hassan Piker was in China basically talking up how great the country is. Like really? Why don't you go ask to see the Uyghur camps, you know, go, go have at it. See. See what, See what's going on there. It's not cool. It's. It's not great. It's a great country, but what they're doing there is not great. And I think for Democrats, we have an opportunity to expand the aperture of the argument beyond just like human rights and democracy into all these different areas and really straighten out this relationship. Because the. I'll close with this. The Chinese, they know what they're doing. They have a plan, they have a strategy, and they are creating deep concern amongst our allies throughout Asia. And ever since the collapse of the TPP a decade ago, our strategy on China and containing China, dealing with China as Democratic Party is concerned, kind of has been, you know, even under Biden, it was. It was inconclusive at best.
- [42:45]
A
So many things you said really resonate, I have to say. My. My parents are from Soviet Ukraine. They left in the late 70s. And I, growing up, I often heard stories about what it's like growing up in a totalitarian regime and walking with your head down and being afraid to say what you really think and getting in trouble for telling jokes.
- [43:05]
B
Yeah, like, I'm not making this up, right?
- [43:07]
A
Yeah.
- [43:08]
B
Like, no, I never grew up in totalitarianism. We are so spoiled, lucky in this country that we can scream and yell out there and expect to have the right to do so.
- [43:19]
A
You know, it's funny you say it that way because, you know, when I, as a teenager, you know, once, once I became more politically aware when I got to college and my parents started hearing me, you know, criticizing American capitalism with my kind of newfound, you know, lefty sensibilities. That's exactly what they would say to me. They're like, you don't even know how spoiled you are. This kind of. Anyway, that's a whole nother discussion.
- [43:43]
B
But no, I do want to actually just take a moment to point out, that's why I love America.
- [43:49]
A
Right?
- [43:50]
B
That's why this is a great country. This is a great country, and it is a flawed place, but it has enabled, as a Jewish American in particular, enabled me to feel equality and openness and the right and the ability to be completely try to maximize who I am. And I'm not alone in that feeling. But that's why we fight for it, right? Like, that's why you get in the politics. That's why you get into policy. That's why you get an academia. You do it because you're trying to make a better place of Already a great place. We are very lucky to be living in this country.
- [44:27]
A
It's beautiful to hear you kind of combine both the kind of, the prideful elements appreciating, you know, American democracy and our kind of way of life and also maintaining a kind of critical perspective that there's a way to hold on to both of those. And nowadays you just, you know, in the political atmosphere that we live in, you don't hear that kind of nuance. It's either a full throated, you know, America first nationalism or a kind of overly critical, you know, everything is all evil.
- [45:01]
B
Very polarized.
- [45:03]
A
Yeah, very much. I appreciate hearing that from you. And I wonder if just to kind of look for where these elements are existing within the Democratic Party and to return our focus to a few trouble spots. Thinking about China still, you mentioned the contrast that I hear, your perspective and the way you presented Hasan Piker's perspective on China. And maybe it's indicative of kind of broader differences on the left. I wonder if some of these differences you see in the kind of the progressive wing, the Bernie Aoc Mamdani wing of the Democratic Party and the Obama neoliberal moderate wings, are these differences, to what extent are they still existent or maybe deepening on economic policy and on China policy?
- [46:07]
B
Well, they're really deepening on Middle east policy.
- [46:10]
A
I'm just going to hold off on that for the very end.
- [46:14]
B
We'll get here. That's the catnip of American politics these days. Jews, they love to talk about us. So, you know, and I worked on Middle east peace for years issues and have had my own, you know, challenges in different lanes, trying to keep an ethical perspective on it while understanding that there are, there are going to be different fights. And to this question of, of tensions, though, they're, they're, they're sort of tensions, but they're not, they're not, not so hard. But there are definitely. There are, there are, there are differences within the party between more establishment figures and more progressive figures. But in the broad architecture of how we think about America's role in the world, we're still generally there. Belief in institutions, a belief in the rule of law, a belief in America's force for good, supporting international development, aid and assistance, using diplomacy as the primary tool of American power, recognizing threats. But where you start to see the thing fray is when it really gets wrapped up into finger pointing and name calling and the sort of, the, the sort of, I think the, how do I put this, the kind of excessive attacking within the party that we saw Particularly around Gaza. It's just, let's just say bluntly, the war in Gaza has created deep fissures within the Democratic foreign policy community that by and large is aligned with what I said a moment ago. It's like Coke versus Pepsi taste test, where you're blindfolded, you drink one, you drink the other, you barely know the damn difference, right? Same thing with Democrats on foreign policy. If you were to blindfold yourself and see what they say, you barely find a difference. But for Gaza and the way it became used as a domestic political tool in both directions, Israel has been a domestic political juggernaut. And so now it's like the conflict over there in the real world is not necessarily at all reflective of the conflict over here in our politics about what to do about the conflict over there. And this disconnect, I think is the danger, I think that's the sort of red alert for Democrats is that our policy making arguments in foreign policy, when you talk politically, it's more about one's use of it as a political weapon for political gain here rather than problem solving over there. And that to me is where I think we're seeing some dangerous spots, if I made sense.
- [49:28]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But let's stay there. Let's kind of wrap things up on the Israel question. Israel, Palestine, Israel, the Gaza war seventh. And where these very complicated and emotional intense issues, how they play out differently in the parties. We're seeing lots of controversy with Tucker Carlson interviewing Nick Fuentes and how Harris responded and what the kind of divisions that are exploding on the right are these. Maybe you could say a few words about that. And then kind of looking on the Democratic side of things, how are kind of the Israel issue and more broadly speaking, antisemitism as an issue, how is that playing out within the Democratic Party? So maybe kind of if you could address a little bit of each of those things.
- [50:30]
B
Yeah, I got it for you in about three seconds. Look, you know, for the listeners, I bring a bio here that can't be stereotyped because I, you know, I worked on the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign as his Jewish advisor in 2020. I was the founding political director of J Street in 2008, our first lobbyist, as well as political director in charge of our endorsements. I worked for the American Jewish Congress, which is an establishment Jewish organization. I've grown up spending time in Israel, spending time in the Arab world, have family in Israel, am an American national security foreign policy guy. So I kind of, I bring a lot of different baskets here and I Try to think, when I deal with these issues and I go on TV a lot about them and try to think about how to talk about them, my sort of safe space, my core argument is always, what's in the American interest here? Right. Like what's. As an American, what's in the interest? What is in our interest? And on Israel, Gaza, you know, the Israelis, I just be blunt. The Israelis are a longtime American ally, a very important ally in the Middle east and a democracy. It's also a country that is deeply flawed, that it has been maintaining an occupation in the west bank in particular, and of course, surrounding Gaza now for two decades. That is an unresolved conflict after failed years of diplomacy for many years, where the Palestinian Authority after Oslo, dealt consistently with Hamas, undermining their ability to do peace negotiations and Israel got a prime minister assassinated for it as a result. Those are like facts. And the attacks on October 7th were heinous and dangerous to our allies survival. They were highly effective from the Hamas perspective at harming Israel's sense of invulnerability and security. And the Israeli response has been incredibly dangerous, damaging, and overwhelmingly horrific to civilians in Gaza, which occurred during a time period where the Hamas. Hamas refused to return hostages it stole in order to encourage Israel to conduct those kinds of attacks. Right. That's reality. I'm sure people can argue with me, differences in reality. But like I see that, and I say, as an American ally, Israel, we support your ability to both get your citizens back, your hostages back, keep your security, support that, and also keep the door open to a pathway for a solution to this conflict. A better day for the Palestinians, which by the way, Trump's team put in the UN resolution, draft resolution, the idea of a pathway to state for the Palestinians just yesterday. Right. Which is a good thing. So here, though, in our democratic political environment, it's now. It's now become essentially, do you believe Israel? It's going to happen. So Mamdani, when he ran for New York mayor, he was asked many times about whether or not he recognized Israel's Jewish state. And he would not say yes. That omission should be a red flag for anyone who believes that Israel is just a country that exists. Right. Like, why would you not say yes? Yes. And also add on, of course, Palestinians should have a state. Palestinian were represented by Arabs in 4748 who rejected the Israelis. Yes, I'll die going over the history. But by saying that, what he did is he lit a match in the democratic primary process, which he knew he was doing because it was in many ways the animating factor behind energy of his campaign. So now what we'll see is Democrats in primaries across the country being asked that same question. And there will be candidate questionnaires for endorsement like I used to organize at J Street, but we never asked that question back then. Was very different environment. In 2008. They'll be asked, do you believe Israel should exist? Did they commit a genocide? Do you think we should cut off military aid Israel right now or no money for offensive weapons? And that will now become a new litmus test for Democratic candidates. And so you have a whole new crop of candidates that will have to answer those questions. And that means less nuance in their foreign policy. That means they are being told that they have to be adversarial with an ally to get the candidates a group's support. So I fear it's going to further inflame and polarize our democratic debate over Israel rather than calm it down and be inclusive about as an American, what's in our foreign policy interest? You know what our foreign policy interest is? Not having a big ass war again, the Middle east getting peace, helping the Palestinians to get rid of Hamas and build a state of their own that lives in peace alongside the Jewish state of Israel, which also does have several million or a couple million Arab citizens of Israel as well in their democracy. That's the American interest. And so I fear that we are on the edge, a knife's edge politically in the Democratic Party of moving away from that into a much more polarizing argument in our primary process, which I don't know if I answered your question, but that's where my head was.
- [56:35]
A
So many important things you brought up there. And if we had more time, you know, I really want to push deeper into this.
- [56:42]
B
Sorry.
- [56:43]
A
No, no, it's, it's really, it's such an topic and I'm glad we're at least addressing it, at least beginning to address it. So maybe just to kind of wrap things up, let me take one step deeper in responding to what you just mentioned, several of the things you mentioned. But if the Israel issue, and to the extent that there's the Israel piece of it and then maybe there's the antisemitism piece of it, which are kind of interlinked but not the same issue, they get blurred, but I think it's important to pull them apart. But in this, you know, that checklist of questions that primary voters and you know will be asked, how did those issues, you know, should there be a Palestinian state Is this a genocide? Should the US Continue to be providing military support to Israel? These kinds of questions, are they questions that will continue to divide each of the parties, or could they lead to a kind of realignment where this issue is important enough, where the parties kind of reform partly around a set of issues, but this being one of the issues that wind up leading to a kind of party realignment? Did something like that happen?
- [58:09]
B
Well, this goes to the whole sort of theme of our conversation. I want to kind of go back to this, which is that to really not have this issue tear apart both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, you have to have success on the ground. You have to have a thing over there working. Right. And how do you do that as a Democrat? You support the process underway. You support the aid to Israel, you support the support for the Palestinians, the aid to the Palestinians, the end of this fighting. You cheer Trump when he gets a peace arrangement. I won't call it deal, but an arrangement like he had, you rebuild bipartisanship. If you really care about the Democratic Party not tearing itself in two of reform policy, you have to support Trump in doing the right thing because he's the president for the next three years. I think we Americans have gone through too much pain and suffering, not to mention people on the other side of our wars, by politicizing our foreign policy. Iraq, to go back to the original sin of our last 20 something years in the Middle east, the politicization of the Iraq war was calamitous across the board. If there's one lesson I've Learned in my 25 years or so plus of working in Washington, it's that politics does need to stop at the water's edge on these foreign policy issues. We can still be Democrats and Republicans. There will still be many, many issues to fight over for those who want to defeat Trump or his alkali at the polls, trust me, there's a lot of things you can argue about. Don't undermine the potential for peace and stability in order to gain political advantage, because that will boomerang back against you as well. Not to mention the fact that it's just the wrong thing to do. So that's, I think that's where we're at. I will criticize Trump on Gaza if he does the wrong thing, but I will support him if he's doing the right thing. And I think for Democrats, anti Semitism, for Republicans, anti Semitism, both sides are like having their moment of holy shit, excuse my language. It's really bad out there and it's only getting worse. What I don't want is to see what I'm seeing on social, which is a lot of the far left and the far right people hanging out with each other now, talking about how bad the Jews are. That is not a good thing for America, not to mention for Jews. And today it's Jews, tomorrow it'll be some other group. It's not good. So we have to we have to calm the waters. And the best way to calm the waters, ultimately, is to support good progress on the ground in the region.
- [61:02]
A
That very important point. Joel Rubin, thank you very much for an enlightening conversation. Really having you on the podcast. Thank you very much, Joel.
- [61:11]
B
My pleasure.