Transcript
A (0:05)
They say if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. The idea being that we only get better when we surround ourselves with people who are brighter, more experienced, or more talented than we are. My name is John Dick, and I'm never, ever in the wrong room. At my company, Civic Science, the brightest minds in the world are studying people, culture, and markets in revolutionary new ways, providing glimpses into a future you've never seen before. Me, I drank my way through a party school in college and only became an entrepreneur because I couldn't get a real job doing anything else. I owe everything to a long list of colleagues, mentors, and friends who made me better, or at least made me look better. So I started a podcast to introduce you to some of the brilliant people I've encountered along the way. You'll meet visionaries in business, technology, media, entertainment, even politics. They'll tell us how they see the future and how they're making it happen. But we'll also keep it real. You don't go through life with the last name Dick without learning how to laugh at yourself. So we'll ask these incredibly successful people to share some of their most embarrassing stories, their dumbest mistakes, and how they made them into the people they are today. And we'll do all of that with data at the center of everything, because the world has never been in greater need of truth, and you can only get there with honest, objective, and reliable data, which is what civic science is all about. So please subscribe to this show on your favorite podcast player. Come listen to some of the smartest people I've ever met, and me, the dumbest guy in the room.
B (1:48)
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at the Atlantic. My guest this week will be my Atlantic colleague, Helen Lewis, and we'll be talking about comedy and politics and how the two combine. My book this week will be not a book, but a short story, Autretemps by Edith Wharton. Before I turn to either, I'm going to anticipate something that will be said in the dialogue with Helen Lewis, where she talked about one of our challenges in the face of the way modern media works is to keep rediscovering old truths. And so I want to open this show this week by talking about an old truth. If you've been reading the news, you have may seen that the NATO alliance is under even more intense pressure than ever before. The Russians are demanding from the Trump administration not only that Ukraine not be invited into NATO, but that NATO actually step back and the Trump administration has, is very hostile to NATO. The Vice president, even more than the President Trump, has often speculated about quitting NATO entirely. And the new National Security Strategy published by the Trump administration is seething with hostility to Europe and NATO allies. So I thought today I would talk about NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a little bit of rediscovering the old truths. How did it happen? Why was it a good idea? What's it for? Why do we care? Now, let me recapitulate a little bit, some history that probably all know somewhere in our brains but have lost sight of. At the end of World War II, Europe was in ruins and the Soviet Union was the dominant military power on the continent of Europe and in the Middle East. And Asia too was menacing, threatening and aggressing. Against the shattered remains of a war torn continent. Americans realized they had two urgent tasks if they were to ever enjoy any peace. Security and prosperity for themselves. They had to rebuild the economy of their defeated enemies, Germany and Japan. They had to rebuild the larger economies of Europe and northwest Asia. And they had to provide some measure of security because the last thing anybody wanted was to get Europe and Northwest Asia back into the game of arms racing for security, army against army. America would provide security for all, guarantee security for all, prevent the rise of independent security threats within these zones, and would use peace as a way to bring prosperity and use prosperity as a way to secure peace. And so NATO came into being. It was formally declared in April of 1949 and originally it had 12 members. Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. This group pledged an attack by any one of them would be an attack on all of them. Now this was a very unequal pledge, obviously. I mean it was if, if the United States were attacked, it would be nice to have Luxembourg by your side. Everyone would appreciate that, but it wouldn't help. But if Luxembourg were attacked, it would make a great deal of difference to have the United States by its side. So although it was a mutual defensive pledge of mutual aid, because in 1949 the United States was the only nuclear power of the group. United Kingdom would soon follow. But in 1949 the United States was the only one. Ultimately, NATO was a one way military guarantee. American power is including American nuclear weapons would protect the other members of the alliance. NATO gradually grew and along the way it grew, it took on new forms in 1952. Greece and Turkey, neither of them on the Atlantic Ocean joined and NATO then sent a message. Greece and Turkey had been historic enemies and NATO now became an institution that said not only are we defending our members against the threat from the Soviet Union, but we're also pledging that we're going to impose peace and security on our members, that Greece and Turkey are coming in together to signal that they will end and they may not love each other any better than they used to do, but there will be no more hostilities between them. And indeed, except for a brief clash in 1974, NATO has done a pretty good job of keeping the peace between Greece and Turkey with so many historical grievances between those two countries. In 1955, West Germany joined and NATO was saying that the enormous strength of West Germany, indispensable to European security, but also a potential threat to people, remembered fighting the Germans in two world wars. West Germany would come in and join a collective club. NATO would become a way for the strength of some to become a resource and a source of security for others and not a threat to them. You didn't have to fear German power if West Germany belonged to the same alliance that was guaranteed by the United States. In 1982, Spain joined. Spain had been a dictatorship since the Spanish Civil War until the middle 1970s. Then Spain made a transition to democracy. When NATO was founded in 1949, there was one non democracy among the 12 members. That was Portugal. But from then on, NATO said you can't. It became a rule. You can't be a NATO member unless you're a democracy. And Spain had to wait until it democratized to become a NATO member, which it did in 1982. NATO achieved its greatest triumph in 1989 with the end of communism in Central Europe and the beginnings of the peaceful reunification of the continent after 1991 and the end of the Soviet Union and the breakup of the Soviet Union into its constituent republics, Russia and others. NATO became a way to secure the loose nuclear material to make sure that there were no bombs that went off, but that the Soviet Union had breakup, I think had something like 50,000 nuclear warheads very poorly secured. And many scientists who had nuclear know how that could be sold. NATO became the instrument by which the warheads were secured. Many of them were converted into peaceful electric power. And the scientists were provided with gainful employment so they would not be tempted to sell their skills to some bad actor. In 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined NATO as if to say that Europe was no longer accepting the border imposed on it by the Stalinist division of Europe at the end of World War II, that Central Europe would join Europe and would be protected by Europe in the same way that other European democracies were. In 2004, NATO got its largest expansion, Bulgaria, and then the three Romania and the three Slovakia and Slovenia, and the three Baltic republics, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Now, this last, the joining of the Baltic republics is now a big MAGA talking point that Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump will say. It was so terrible that we allowed Estonia to join. They Forget that in 1994, the biggest advocate of those countries joining was Newt Gingrich. In fact, letting Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into NATO was point number six. In the 1994 Republican Contract with America, they listed 10 things they wanted Bill Clinton to do. And number six was admit Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into NATO. Forgotten now, but important to remember. More members joined Albania and Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. And in 2022, Finland and Sweden. The record of NATO is that once you're in NATO, you are safe, home free. You no longer have to fear the Russians. Those Russian neighbors, Georgia and Ukraine, who are not admitted into NATO, were both attacked, the Georgians, by Russia in 2008, Ukraine first in 2014 when the Russians took Crimea, and then again in 2022 when they made their lunge at Kiev and tried to take over the whole country. There are people who want to forget all this history and forget the incredible achievements, and they're usually motivated by two things. I get it that the leaders of Russia and China prefer to see their neighbors isolated, weak and defenseless. And I get it, too. Unfortunately, there are people in the United States, in allied countries, and certainly posing as Americans and Europeans on social media, who want the Russians and Chinese to have what they want. Isolated, defenseless, vulnerable, weak neighbors. But I think there's something that is going on that is much more, much less obvious, much less rational, and much more sinister, and that is there are people in American life, American politicians, including at the highest levels of this country, who say one of the things that happened when the United States became committed to defending freedom abroad after World War II was it became committed to reforming itself at home during the civil rights movement. It was again and again an argument for why the United States had to end racial segregation inside the United States. How could the United States champion democracy abroad, which all Americans in 1962 wanted to do, if it defended segregation and the denial of the vote based on race at home? And so the need to defend democracy abroad, the shared consensus the United States should do that, led to social changes at home. That made America a freer and more equal society. Well, supposing you want to undo those changes. Supposing you think the United States is on the wrong track and it needs to be more authoritarian, more reactionary, more hierarchical, more oppressive at home. Well, obviously, then, just as the desire to project and protect democracy abroad led to social changes at home, the undoing of those social changes at home requires withdrawal from those commitments abroad. And so it's not an accident that isolationism and reaction and authoritarianism go together. They're the same project. And when people are attacking America's obligations, both through NATO to European allies and through other treaty agreements. Japan's not a member of NATO, but there's a NATO like treaty with Japan. Australia is not a NATO member, but there's not a NATO like treaty with Australia. Ditto New Zealand. And the United States is drawing closer and closer to countries in Southeast Asia. And many are contemplating some kind of collective security agreement for that region, too, where the people who are opposing all of this, they're not just saying, I wish China would rule the world. I wish Russia could dominate its neighbors. Although some of them think that what they're saying is, I don't like the kind of country America is going to have to be if it's going to be a force for freedom in the world. I want a different America, a better, more brutish America, more reactionary America, more authoritarian America, more racist, more sexist, more corrupt America. And in order to achieve that end, I need to unravel the foreign policy that is pressing us to do more and do better. So when you defend NATO, you're not just defending the peace and security of the world, although you are. And when you speak for NATO, you're not just speaking for the ideals of collective security that have made this planet such a better place since 1945 than it was before 1945. You are upholding and vindicating the best American ideals for Americans here at home. And those who are on the other side are trying to unravel the best American ideals for Americans here at home. And now my dialogue with Helen Lewis. But first, a quick break.