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- [00:02]
Bob Kagan
Not sure how to tackle your taxes? Are you sweating the small print? You may be experiencing FOMO, the fear
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Harry Littman
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Bob Kagan
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- [00:34]
Harry Littman
It's free stuff. Download TikTok, search free and share the link. To get items for free, start slashing now. Welcome to Talking Feds. One on one deep dive discussions with national figures about the most fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives. I'm your host, Harry Littman. On rare occasions, a magazine article captures a moment in the news. Much more rarely, an article captures a moment in history. I think our guest today has written one of those rare articles. The the piece is in the March issue of the Atlantic. It's called Every Nation for Itself, and I'm very pleased to welcome its author, Bob Kagan. Bob is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer for the Atlantic. He was a longtime contributing columnist at the Washington Post, where we were colleagues. He's one of the country's leading historians of foreign policy and America's role in global affairs. His latest book, now out in paperback, is Donald Trump and the Anti Liberal Tradition in America. I really wanted to speak to him for some time, but never more than today, to discuss both his groundbreaking article and the application of its ideas to the Iran war. Bob Kagan, welcome to Talking Feds.
- [02:11]
Bob Kagan
Thank you, Harry. Great to be here.
- [02:12]
Harry Littman
Your article, Every Nation for Itself, and it's also under a different title in the in the the January website argues that the American dominated world order which has prevailed for the past 80 years, is over. Can you just explain, to set things up, what was that order exactly and what has ended it?
- [02:38]
Bob Kagan
Well, the order was put together largely by the United States, but in cooperation with allies after World War II. And its primary objective was to make sure that there was no more World War IIs. And so but the Americans decided, and I think rightly, that they couldn't go back to the old multipolar system, but that the United States really needed to play a role in providing security in the two major sort of cockpits of international conflict for centuries, which is Europe and Asia, and largely ultimately for its own interests. Because having experienced being dragged into two world wars, World War I and World War II. They understood that if they allowed the world to fall apart again, it would inevitably pull the United States back in. The United States could not be as isolated as it had hoped to be before World War II. The key features of that order was the United States providing security. And many great powers who had been great powers, the leading powers in the world, Britain, Germany, France, Japan, basically agreeing to forego their traditional geopolitical ambitions and rely on the United States to provide them for security. And that was really both revolutionary, but also a real aberration. Historically, it is just not the case that powerful nations turn their fundamental security over to some other nation. And so that system was very much based on trust. And the trust was twofold. One, that the United States would basically be by far the strongest power in the world. But it could be trusted in two ways. One, to, in fact, guarantee the security of these other powers so they didn't have to rearm and get back into the old game that had led to two World War. And also that the United States would not abuse this overwhelming power to take advantage of its allies. And so either economically or politically or militarily. So that system proved to be extraordinarily stable. It presided over the greatest period of economic prosperity in human history. It presided over the spread of democracy in an unprecedented fashion. And also, and very importantly, and in a certain sense key to all of that, it prevented what had been very frequent wars between great powers. There were wars during the Cold War, but there were not great power conflicts during the war. And so that was the value of the system. Now, a lot of Americans after the Cold War decided that it was too expensive, and they didn't really remember why we had done it in the first place. And Donald Trump really came into office intending to end that America's support for that order. And he has, in fact, ended that support. So what do we have now? We have a situation where the United States is no longer guaranteeing the security of our allies. We've made it very clear we want them to defend themselves, and we're not in that business anymore. And in addition to which, the United States now is taking advantage of its enormous power, essentially to exact tribute from the rest of the world, including our allies, by imposing tariffs as a means of getting more money for our coffers and generally being in the position of sort of bullying everybody around, which is where we are right now. So that was the order. That is how it's being destroyed. And therefore, I think that the result of that is the United States itself is going to be much weaker, much less influential, much more subject to crises than it was even during the Cold War.
- [06:42]
Harry Littman
Okay. And the sort of overall arrangement you've sketched, people think of as the Grand Bargain, and you've explained the general rationale for the United States thinking that it would inevitably otherwise be dragged into these disputes. Can you just flesh out why powers like Germany, Japan, even France and England were prepared to trust the United States and have been trusting of the United States for their basic security these past 80 years? That's pretty extraordinary. Almost an outsourcing of basic self defense to another country.
- [07:27]
Bob Kagan
Well, in the case of Germany and Japan, of course, it wasn't entirely voluntary at the beginning because they were both conquered countries. But they have had many, many opportun over the decades since when they got back on their feet and became wealthy enough to sustain military capabilities and great power capability that they chose not to. And I think that was largely because of the American track record. I mean, for one thing, the United States was not taking advantage of them in a way. On the contrary, they flourished during this period. Germany went through an economic miracle in the 1950s and 60s, and Japan then went through an economic miracle in the 1970s and 80s. And it basically was American policy to make sure that its partners were flourishing economically partly as a reason for why things would hold together. There was substantial harmony. So they saw that the United States was not sort of brutally taking advantage of its overwhelming power and that they were benefiting from it. And so I think that is why it was really remarkable. As you say, it's remarkable that it was sustained for 80 years because it's not as if the United States never did anything they didn't like. I mean, the Vietnam War was very unpopular in Europe, but it didn't lead to a parting of the ways between the United States and Europe. In fact, even after Vietnam, within a few years, the transatlantic relationship was almost at its height. So the fundamental trust and the degree of counting on the United States and feeling that they could count on the United States allowed us to get through a lot of bumpy patches in alliance relations, which I think now that has come to an end.
- [09:24]
Harry Littman
Well, no, as you look to the war, and I hope to move to it quickly, you see Europe saying today with Trump kind of hat in hand, trying in his fashion to implore people to help out, and you see Europe saying, that's not our war. Let's just stick for a moment to Germany and Japan as illustrative of what happens in the new world order. If you want to call it that. You've said as to them. And of course, they were the focus of the kinds of possible conflagrations that could really come to engulf the world. You said they become normal great powers again. Can you explain, and in particular, can you explain what that portends for potential war in the world?
- [10:19]
Bob Kagan
Well, the first simple answer is if the United States is not providing fundamental security to nations, nations have to find some way to guarantee their basic security. And the traditional way is to rearm and then re engage in typical, normal historical geopolitical competition. We're used to the idea that there are really only sort of like two or three great powers, the United States, Russia and China. But of course, prior to World War II, Japan was one of the greatest power. It was the strongest power in East Asia, and Germany was the strongest power in Europe. They can become that again because of their location and size and economic capability. And we are driving him in that direction. And, I mean, you wanted to get to the Iran war, and the Iran war has actually been pretty illustrative of this. First of all, Donald Trump did not go with cup in hand. He might have been more successful. He had gone in cup in hand. He basically said, and this is his word, I demanded that they send forces to. To open the strait, which, by the way, the United States is unwilling to do because of the risk. So we're asking much, much, much, much smaller European naval forces to do what the what, as the German defense minister said, the powerful American navy is not willing to do so. That's one thing. But the big point is Europe faces right now the biggest existential threat that it has faced since really, certainly the Cold War, but possibly even since World War II, which is the fact of Russian aggression in Europe. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was the first major territorial invasion, really, in Europe since World War II. And Europeans, who I think had not been taking the Russian threat very seriously for some decades after the end of the Cold War, are now correctly very worried about what Putin's ultimate intentions are. They do not believe he intends to stop in Ukraine. And so they regard the Ukraine fight in some ways as very much a battle for their own survival. So on the one hand, the United States has already indicated it's not as committed to the fight in Ukraine as it was. We have stopped supplying arms directly to Ukraine. We're letting the Europeans buy arms from us and provide them to Ukraine. But think about what the consequences of this war have been in that existential struggle for Europe. On the one hand, the oil Price spike has been an enormous economic boon to Putin. The war is costing him tremendously. They run budget deficits which were on the verge of crippling the Russian economy. But as a result of the war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and therefore of international oil supply, Russia now stands to make tens of billions of dollars over the next couple of months, which give Putin what he needs most, which is time. The war has been dragging on. Both sides are sort of barely holding on, and this was a big boon to Putin. And then when Trump decided to lift sanctions on Russian oil, which, by the way, he did contrary to the wishes of all the European leaders and, in fact, the G7 heads of government, that was a clear sort of strategic favor to Russia because of the trouble that we're having dealing in the war with Iran, which hurt European interests even more. And then on top of that, the United States and its Gulf allies in particular, have burned through a much greater number, I think, than anticipated, of Patriot interceptors and other forms of interceptors on which Ukraine is entirely dependent to defend its population centers. It needs those Patriots to defend its major cities like Kyiv, which are constantly under attack from Russian missiles. So that's another way in which the war has really damaged European interests. On the strategic question, which I think, as you just said, used to be a fundamental American preoccupation, the idea of Moscow invading Europe, but which now clearly the Trump administration, and therefore the United States doesn't care about at all, which is going to leave the Europeans sort of even more clearly in a situation where they really cannot count on the United States anymore, and they're going to have to undertake all these things themselves. And if you then look at Asia, Japan and Korea, and Japan in particular, Japan, I think, is reliant on 95% of its oil imports come from the greater Middle east, and 70% of those imports run through the Strait of Hormuz. So Japan is now suffering. The Prime Minister Takeichi says that they've been severely impacted on it, by it, by the way, with no consultation before the war with our closest partners, including Trump's friend Giorgio Meloni in Italy, and including the conservative new Prime Minister of Japan, zero consultations. So they are now suffering economically because the oil prices. And they are also noticing that the US in order to deal with this Iran contingency, I think, again, unexpectedly, has moved substantial portions of the forces that the United States has in the Western Pacific to deal with deterring China, and many of which are critical to a Taiwan contingency, where, if China attacks Taiwan. These are the very forces that are designated to respond to that attack. And now they are on their way or have already been sent to deal with the crisis. So both Japan and China can see that once again, when the United States gets embroiled in the Middle east, it has a real effect on the strategic balance in East Asia. So if you take those two things together, it used to be the case again that America was focused on the two strategic theaters of East Asia and the Western Pacific on one side and Europe on the other. I think if you ask any realist foreign policy expert, they would say those are the two areas that mean the most to the United States. And yet we are basically abandoning those two regions from a strategic perspective because of the America first approach, and now expending all of our efforts on a region which has always been important, but definitely secondary to these other strategic areas. So in a way, the United States has now turned its strategy on its head. It used to get involved in the Middle east as a sort of subservient, a subsidiary interest to its larger interests in helping defend the rest of the world order. Now it seems to be the only thing that we're concerned about while the world order basically fractures.
- [18:03]
Harry Littman
I mean, that's a breathtaking five minutes, Bob, and it shows. Just this one thread unravels the whole world. I just want to add from your article to the point of we seem more than indifferent to Russia. You describe it as we're no longer adversaries with Russia and China, but partners in carving up the world. This sort of 19th century Putin imperialist view is one that you know, in a back to the future way, Trump is taking to heart. Okay. And it does seem that in general, your naming a really radical change the country seems really clueless about or damn near. So there are a couple ways to think about this, but you end by talking about, man, if you thought it was expensive for us to play our world cop on the beat or peacekeeper role, wait till you see what's happening next. Give us a sense of what you possibly foretell as the change almost in day to day life in this country that Americans seem clueless about at the moment.
- [19:20]
Bob Kagan
Yeah, I mean, the thing is, and this is not, this is sort of normal for human beings, but nevertheless, it's important. I think Americans have come to take for granted the enormous benefits that they have gained from being the dominant power in the world in terms of our economy. Our ability to keep the vital waterways of trade open from which America benefits is based on the fact that we're allowed to keep, that we have bases all over the world to be able to do that. Those bases are hosted by our allies. We have bases in Japan, we have bases in Germany. And those bases, by the way, are not only for the purpose of defending those countries, but on the contrary, the bases we have in Europe, for instance, are where we fly from when we have to deal with a Middle east or a Central Asian contingency. So take the question of bases for a moment. In this latest Iran conflict, Spain didn't want to let us use their bases, which we would normally have used. I think if it becomes clear to countries like Germany and Japan and Italy that the United States is no longer providing security for them, that it's not particularly interested in their greatest strategic concerns, which we have demonstrated in this conflict, then why exactly again, are they hosting American troops on their territory? They don't have to. They've always been willing to. Because it's been part of what you call the grand bargain, you know, that we're protecting them. That's what the bases are for. If we're not protecting them, what are the bases for from their point of view? So we could find access to bases to be increasingly limited if we need them. And then in general, the overall sort of global willingness to allow the United States to be predominant not only militarily but also financially. The United States is the financial center of the world. That is something that I think is partly a result of our own wealth, but also partly because the world has accepted it that way. And the world accepted it. The world accepted it because they felt they could ultimately trust us to sustain the system without just using every opportunity to game it to our own advantage. Well, now we clearly have an America that is gaming everything to their own advantage to squeeze the last dollar out of this and squeeze, squeeze the last dollar out of that when everybody else in the world is suffering from high oil prices. Trump makes the point. Well, we make a lot of money when the oil price is high, so we don't care. When people talk about his success in Venezuela, he says, yeah, the government's great there, we're getting all the oil we want. So it's very clear now that the United States is being very sort of self interested, you might even say selfish for very immediate gain and is not thinking about a longer term. So therefore, does the world continue to say we're happy to have the Americans controlling all the financial levers in the world, or do they look for ways to get around that? And of course, we are Already seeing even from our oldest friends in the world, like Canada now signing new agreements with China. All countries around the world are trying to set up new trade patterns which don't rely on the United States. And they may turn to financial arrangements which are not so dependent on the United States. And that is also a form of influence that Americans have taken for granted, which doesn't have to be the case. I mean, basically, if we're not in a situation where the United States is the predominant power and everybody is sort of going along with that except Russia and China and a few others. If we're not in that situation, then a lot of the things that we have been sort of getting for free become things you have to struggle for. And for instance, in the Persian Gulf, Trump has invited China to help keep the strait open. Well, you know, we spent decades trying to make sure that the Chinese did not have the capacity to be a major naval power in the Persian Gulf. But if China becomes a major power in the Persian Gulf, then we're living in a different world from the American point of view than we were living in before.
- [23:50]
Harry Littman
And you've pointed out, in fact, that some of the countries that have been dragged into the war, that there are about a dozen, may start to look to China to try to give some guarantees of security that we're not giving. I want to stick with the war for one more question. And the ally who might be considered the biggest beneficiary of this new Trump approach being Israel. For Israel, even with the real show of force here, you point out that if they're, if the US Is not a long term consistent partner, even, even that country has to evaluate how to plan its future in the Middle East. And even that alliance becomes frayed by the new Trump kind of approach to foreign policy.
- [24:45]
Bob Kagan
You know, part of it depends on what condition Iran is in at the end. If Iran is completely decimated, weak, divided, falling apart, that may mean that what I'm about to say is less important. But if Iran is still intact in some way, Israel has now put itself in a position where it is essentially the regional hegemon. You know, it's invaded and taking charge effectively of southern Lebanon. It is obviously engaged heavily in Iran. But of course, you know, it is doing that right now in conjunction with the world's strongest military power, and it is a beneficiary of that military power. So the question is that I raise is once this is, once the smoke is cleared, well, how do you sustain this new situation? Can Israel sustain it by itself? Now, the People who've been pushing back on me have said if Iran is completely decimated, then the task is a smaller task and you don't really need it. But I suppose that's a best case outcome in a more complicated outcome where Iran is still there and it's still angry, it's weaker, but it's not gone. Don't you still need an American presence to sort of bolster the Israeli position, not to mention America's overall influence in the region, which is definitely gonna be greater than Israel's because of who the United States is? If I were the Israelis, I would worry that the United States is not a reliable partner here, and I would particularly worry that Donald Trump is not a reliable partner, just because it's pretty clear Donald Trump doesn't feel those kinds of allegiances with other nations or even other people. He's very clear. He's very much about, what do I want today. He makes deals with countries that he then breaks. You know, so if I were Israel, I'd be a little bit wondering whether what I have, whether what we have accomplished, which is no small matter from Israel's point of view, can be sustained if the United States is going to bug out. But that's just. I think that's something they could be concerned about. What I'm more confident of, because you're hearing it all the time, is that the Gulf states are not exactly thrilled with how this has all turned out. And since this was theoretically done in part for them, that's an interesting outcome. What was demonstrated in this conflict? What was demonstrated is that the United States, largely at the bidding of Israel, not the Gulf states, who were a little bit queasy about this conflict at the beginning at least, and we undertook this, and now they're the ones who are getting hit. So it turned out that even though we're the world's leading superpower, we couldn't actually protect them from the damage that Iran is able to inflict in this situation. And so you could read in the newspapers today a lot of off the record, but I mean, you know, anonymous complaints that the United States triggered a conflict on behalf of Israel for which the Gulf states are paying the largest price.
- [27:50]
Harry Littman
And it's all tied to the question, by the way, which you say, there are really two unsatisfactory answers of what happens. It's one thing to get the victory, it's another to sustain the victory. And whatever we're doing there, when it comes to an end, do we have some presence or are we just gone and Trump declares victory.
- [28:16]
Bob Kagan
I'm Michael Waldman, host of the Briefing Podcast. I'm a former White House speechwriter, a lawyer, and a constitutional scholar. And I'm president of the Brennan center for Justice. We work to repair and strengthen American democracy, from gerrymandering to abuse of presidential power, from Supreme Court reform to congressional corruption and more. What fun. You're going to hear new ideas in this podcast, and you're going to hear about the strategies and the legal and political fights that will shape the next phase of American politics. If you care about our democracy, the Briefing is a podcast for you.
- [28:50]
Harry Littman
Just one final question for you, Bob. So much of this revolves around Trump, his caprices, his psychopathologies. Why wouldn't it be the case? I mean, the article is really portentous and feels like, you know, it's 1989, 1945, a defense definitive turn of the page. But when Trump is no longer president, since so much of the change has been at his individual will, why mightn't we think that the world would return slowly, gradually, but to the place of the Grand Bargain that sustained it these last 80 years?
- [29:32]
Bob Kagan
Well, look, I wouldn't rule it out. I don't think it's an impossibility. The United States, you know, was almost as badly betraying Europe after World War I from their point of view as it is now. I mean, we went into World War I, we changed the balance of power on the ground. Even though they did almost all the fighting, we nevertheless turned the tide, and it was American power that created a new balance of power in the Versailles Agreement. But then the United States pulled out and the European peace fell apart, and Germany came back. We all know that story. So it's not as if the United States is. But then, yes, after World War II, we regained everybody's trust because we fought a world war with them and we conquered, we defeated Germany and Japan, and we helped France and Britain and China, et cetera. But that's what it took. The problem is, I think once you've lost the trust that held the Grand Bargain together, as we discussed earlier, it's not so easy to restore it overnight, especially because. And the Europeans, you could. If I were European and they said this, it was one thing for the United States to elect Donald Trump once, it's another thing to have elected him twice. And even if you get a different kind of government in power, let's say you get your favorite Democrat in power in 2028, you might still easily be in a situation where every time there's an alternation of power in the United States, you get two completely different foreign policies. After all, what Trump represents in terms of sort of feeling like the United States has been a sucker, that the global world order was not really in our interest, it was actually benefiting everybody else. He didn't invent that. That was a Democratic position for many years. If you look at the trade question, the Democrats were the ones who started the argument that the trade is disadvantaged to the United States. They were the more protectionist. Biden administration was pretty protectionist as these things go. So how could you even be sure, for instance, that when a Democratic administration comes into power, they get rid of all the tariffs overnight, for one thing, they, that'll be a big financial problem, you know. So I think that if you looked at, if I were looking at America from a distance, I would say it isn't like when the Democratic Party comes back, it's Dean Atchison and Harry Truman all over again. You know what I mean? That there is a consensus in America of dissatisfaction with the American global role. Now maybe we've learned our lesson. Maybe Trump will be discredited, maybe his foreign policy discredited. But I guess again, if you're asking countries to risk everything in a sense on the American bet, I'm not even sure I would advise them to going back to the way things were now, you could have a different arrangement that's more equal and I think that's probably desirable going forward. But the idea that we can return to the sort of miracle that existed after 1945 and persisted for 80 years, I really do think those days are over.
- [32:54]
Harry Littman
It's a killer and very important point. And it's a cross cutting point in Trump 2.0. In my own world, after all the destruction in, say, the Department of Justice, how do you put the pieces back together again? You just can't. At least not simply. Bob Kagan, such a pleasure speaking to you. The article again, which everyone should read. We've really only scratched the surface. Every Nation for Itself in the March issue of the Atlantic. Thanks so much for your time and hope to see you again on Talking Feds.
- [33:25]
Bob Kagan
Thank you. Thank you very much.
- [33:30]
Harry Littman
Thank you for tuning in to One on One, a weekly conversation series from Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts. And please take a moment to rate and review the show. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube where we are posting full episodes and daily updates on top legal stories. Check us out on harrylittman.substack.com where we're posting two or three bulletins a week breaking down the various threats to constitutional norms and the rule of law. And Talking Fez has joined forces with the contrarians. I'm a founding contributor to this new media venture, committed to reviving the diversity of opinion that feels increasingly rare in today's news landscape, where legacy media seems to be tacking toward Trump for business reasons rather than editorial ones. Rest assured, we're still the same scrappy independent podcast you've come to know and trust just now, linked up with an ambitious and vital project designed for this pivotal moment in our nation's legal and political discourse. Find out more@contrarian.substack.com thanks for tuning in. And don't worry, as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking. Talking Feds is produced by Luke Cregan and Katie Upshaw, associate producer Becca Haveian, sound Engineering by Matt McArdle, Rosie Dawn Griffin, David Lieberman, Hamsam Mahadranathan, Emma Maynard and Hallie Necker are our contributing writers and production assistants by Akshaj Turbailu. Our music, as ever, is by the amazing Philip Glass. Talking Feds is a production of Deledo llc. I'm Harry Littman. Talk to you later. Sa.