Robert Kagan: We’re Transitioning to a Post-American World

Summary

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The Bulwark Podcast

Episode: Robert Kagan: We’re Transitioning to a Post-American World
Date: April 3, 2026
Host: Tim Miller
Guest: Robert (Bob) Kagan, senior fellow at Brookings, contributing writer at The Atlantic, author of Rebellion: How Anti-Liberalism Is Tearing America Apart Again

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Episode Overview

In this urgent, far-reaching conversation, Tim Miller welcomes Robert Kagan to assess the U.S.'s drastic shift from global leadership to what Kagan describes as a “rogue superpower” posture, catalyzed by President Trump’s Iran war. Together, they examine the military, diplomatic, economic, and ideological fallout—domestically and internationally—as America’s alliances erode, its credibility wanes, and global power balances shift toward China and adversaries.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Reflections on the Iran War and Trump’s Leadership

• Bob Kagan recounts warning Miller and others against supporting Trump’s military strike on Iran, emphasizing two main concerns:

  • Domestic implications: The risks of expanded executive power, protest crackdowns, and authoritarian drift at home if a major conflict drags on ([01:56]).
  • Military strategy fallacy: Historical proof that air power alone, without ground invasion, cannot achieve U.S. aims—now visibly failing in Iran ([01:56–05:02]).

  “We have learned before that bombing alone wasn't going to do it...now we've had the most abject demonstration possible...here we are, and I think we're still more losing this war than winning it.” — Bob Kagan ([03:58])

• Miller highlights the inability to trust Trump or his inner circle to act competently or ethically, noting their openness to authoritarian tactics and strategic incoherence ([05:02]).

2. Ethical and Humanitarian Concerns

• Kagan underscores Trump’s lack of interest in the Iranian people, referencing Trump’s infamous boast about “sending [them] back to the Stone Age” ([05:31]).

  “His concern for the Iranian people is something less than zero...I don't know what outcome anybody ever expected him to accomplish in this situation.” — Bob Kagan ([05:31])

• Discussion of the U.S. shifting to targeting civilian infrastructure (such as the B1 bridge near Tehran), a move described as akin to war crimes and reminiscent of Putin’s Ukraine strategy ([08:27]).

  “Now the strategy...will be to make [the Iranian people] suffer as much as possible and bring about...state failure.” — Bob Kagan ([09:00])

3. The War’s (Lack of) Strategic Rationale

• Miller and Kagan highlight that despite unprecedented bombing, Iran’s regime remains intact and resistance hardened. Hardliners control the government; diplomatic prospects are bleak ([10:23–11:46]).
  • Kagan: U.S. strategy is not coherent and now appears to aim for “state failure” rather than regime change.

4. Eroding Alliances and America’s Global Isolation

• Kagan laments the breakdown of traditional alliances:
  • The U.S. has “ended” its NATO alliance, is forfeiting influence in the Persian Gulf to powers like China, and is pushing Asian allies toward self-reliance and nuclearization ([12:24–14:09]).

  “We are, as a result of this, a very, very lonely country without allies. So that doesn't seem...to be a great triumph.” — Bob Kagan ([12:54])

5. Global Power Shifts and the "Post-American World"

• Kagan details how U.S. retrenchment is accelerating global instability and empowering adversaries:
  • Destruction of NATO: “We've given Putin the greatest prize...the destruction of NATO. That is what he's been seeking for 20 years.” ([14:09])
  • China’s gain: U.S. withdrawal lets China back Iran in controlling vital chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, and the potential shift to transacting in Chinese yuan threatens the petrodollar and American financial dominance ([14:09–17:01]).
  • The U.S. may lose its position as the “dominant player” in the Gulf, becoming “one of several players, maybe...we will basically have lost our influence in the region” ([16:22]).

6. Revisiting America’s Historical Role—and the Vacuum Left Behind

• Kagan and Miller discuss why the U.S. ever intervened in the Middle East:

  • Original rationales were global order and alliance security, not direct energy or security needs.
  • With Trump’s America First turn, those justifications and actual alliance defense “are gone”—leaving the rationale for current war muddled ([17:01–22:35]).

  “No one in the region, including Iraq in 2003 or Iran today, ever posed a direct threat to the security of the American homeland.” — Bob Kagan ([20:27])

• Even supposed motives like support for Israel now appear increasingly transactional and self-serving for Trump ([22:35–25:42]).

7. Implications for Asia and the Future of Nuclear Weapons

• South Korea, Japan, and India, unconsulted and now imperiled by energy crises, are contemplating militarization and distancing from U.S. support ([30:48–32:35]).

  • Kagan: U.S. unreliability will force allies to go nuclear, especially as Japan cannot align with China and must secure its independence.

  “That is the biggest picture of all...we are losing all our alliances...It is becoming popular in other countries to attack the United States for good reason.” — Bob Kagan ([32:35])

• Widespread public opinion in allied countries now shifting against the U.S. due to the collateral impact of Trump’s actions ([32:35–34:11]).

8. Economic Fallout: De-dollarization

• Kagan affirms that if Gulf oil is traded in yuan instead of dollars, it further erodes the U.S.’s leverage and global economic standing ([35:04]).

9. U.S. Strategic Limits and Reluctance to Accept Risk

• On re-opening the Strait of Hormuz, Kagan notes:
  • Technically, the U.S. could do it militarily. However, “not at any risk we are willing to pay for it” ([35:10]).
  • Ground invasion is the only decisive strategy, but no appetite exists for such intervention anymore.

10. NATO’s Demise and the Republican Establishment’s Shift

• Widespread break with the “Reagan wing” of the GOP: Even traditional Republican foreign policy voices rapidly embrace anti-NATO, isolationist stances ([37:40–42:08]).

  “A core principle of Reagan foreign policy...was that the European and Asian alliances are at the core of Americans grand strategy. And now...they are coming out against NATO.” — Bob Kagan ([37:40])

• Trump did not consult allies, making their non-cooperation inevitable. The Administration now scapegoats Europe for U.S.-provoked chaos ([39:43–41:41]).
  • Examples highlighted include Peter Meijer’s blaming of Macron instead of the U.S. president ([41:41]).

11. Empowerment of Adversaries

• Trump’s Iran war enriches and strengthens Russia, already contending in Ukraine, and distracts and debilitates Western resolve ([43:22–44:02]).

12. Cultural & Domestic Political Reflections

• Miller plays a viral clip of pro-Trump influencer Sneako now calling for Trump’s impeachment over the Iran disaster, a sign even “smooth brains understand what is happening here” ([45:31]).

  “If he's not impeached, then we are a failure as a country...I’m more vindicated every day.” — Sneako ([45:43])

• Kagan laments that even the Wall Street Journal lauds Trump’s unhinged leadership, indicating how thoroughly conservative elites have surrendered core principles for Trump ([46:23]).

13. Is the Post-American World Permanent?

• Miller asks if the next Democratic president could rebuild alliances. Kagan is skeptical: the degree of U.S. unreliability has likely created a permanent rupture ([49:26–50:34]).

  “I just don't see how we could go back to the way things were...If I were making long range policy plans...I would not say, 'Oh thank God the Democrats are back.'” — Bob Kagan ([49:26])

• Trust is broken; allies will never again rely on the U.S. exclusively for their defense.

14. Catastrophizing: The Nuclear Threshold

• Miller offers a bleak meditation: Trump and Netanyahu are now, arguably, the world leaders most likely to “go rogue and use a nuke,” far ahead of previous dangers from North Korea or Pakistan ([51:31]).

  “If you asked me right now, April 3rd, I would say probably Donald Trump is most likely to use a nuke, and maybe Bibi is second...I'm not saying it's a 50% chance, but it sure seems a lot higher than it was for all the rest of my life up until this point.” — Tim Miller ([52:21])

• Kagan’s response: U.S. retreat may lead not just to future crises but to escalations up to the nuclear threshold, as adversaries test the limits after extended American withdrawal ([53:14–55:10]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On American strategy collapse:

  “We have learned before that bombing alone wasn't going to do it...now we've had the most abject demonstration possible.”
  — Bob Kagan ([03:58])

• On Trump’s motives:

  “He loves to watch pictures of blowing things up. Maybe that makes him very passionate.”
  — Bob Kagan ([06:30])

• On civilian targeting and war crimes:

  “Trump has announced intention to commit war crimes...attacking the energy grid, that’s an attack on a civilian target. This is what Putin is doing in Ukraine.”
  — Bob Kagan ([08:44])

• On global shift:

  “We are at the beginning of a period in which things that we used to get basically for free...will be severely undermined.”
  — Bob Kagan ([14:09])

• On U.S. allies’ future:

  “The relationship with South Korea is in a total disaster...I don't think we're far away from them basically sort of saying they're going to go nuclear and be on their own.”
  — Bob Kagan ([12:49])

• On Trump’s foreign policy:

  “I don't think [he] plays one dimensional checkers.”
  — Bob Kagan ([25:42])

• On America’s isolation:

  “We are really losing [allies] because now it is becoming popular in other countries to attack the United States for good reason.”
  — Bob Kagan ([32:35])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening: Miller recounts Kagan’s prescience on Iran war — 00:12–01:56
• Kagan on air power fallacy and Trump’s motives — 01:56–06:43
• Civilian infrastructure targeting, war crimes, Iran’s regime hardening — 08:27–11:32
• Loss of allies, global chaos, China’s ascent — 12:24–17:01
• Historical rationale for U.S. engagement in Middle East — 17:01–22:35
• Transactional nature of Trump’s Israel policy — 22:35–26:12
• Asia fallout: nuclearization, de-dollarization — 30:48–35:10
• Strategic risk limits and reluctance to use ground forces — 35:23–36:42
• Breakdown of GOP foreign policy establishment and end of NATO consensus — 37:40–44:19
• Sneako viral impeachment clip — 45:31–46:23
• Why alliances may not recover after Trump — 49:26–50:34
• Nuclear escalation worries, post-American world meditation — 51:31–55:10

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Final Reflections

Both Miller and Kagan close on an unvarnished note of alarm: After just one year under Trump’s wartime presidency, the pillars of American global power—NATO, dollar dominance, key alliances—are crumbling. Miller posits Trump as the most likely leader since 1945 to use nuclear weapons, while Kagan warns a “rapid transition to a post-American world” is already underway. Even with a leadership change, America’s reliability, and thus its role as global linchpin, may not recover.

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Tone:
Urgent, deeply knowledgeable, and unsparing—critical of Trump and the right’s surrender of principle, worried about democracy, global order, and the long tail effects of U.S. abdication.

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Transcript

[Bob Kagan]

Foreign.

[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show contributing writer at the Atlantic and senior fellow at Brookings. His most recent book is Rebellion How Anti Liberalism Is Tearing America Apart Again.

[Bob Kagan]

It is.

[Tim Miller]

Bob Kagan. How you doing, Bob?

[Bob Kagan]

I'm great, Tim. How are you?

[Tim Miller]

I'm doing well. It sounds like that Bob missed my live stream last night on YouTube where I bimbo fight myself. And so if you guys also missed, that might be something to take a look at. I thought I looked pretty good. I understand where Brian's coming from now, what the appeal is, and so we'll just kind of leave that there. I want to start with a little behind the scenes. I hope. I don't think this should embarrass you because it's kind of glazing you, but last June, when we engaged in the 12 day war, we started bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities. You know, some of my neocon muscles were flaring a little bit on the podcast, and I was going, okay, you know, I don't really trust Trump. I don't like Trump. But this is just a little, you know, just a little kind of mine sweep over the nuclear facilities in Iran. Don't hate that. And, you know, I was kind of vacillating back and forth on it, and some others in our circle were even more supportive of it than that. We'll just leave it there. And Bob calls me, I'm standing right outside there in my back porch, and he's like, don't let these old neocons trick you into thinking this is a good idea, okay? This is a disaster. We can't predict how bad it is. You can't trust Trump. And I don't know, in that 12 days, I'm not sure you are quite vindicated. 10 months later, you're looking quite prescient on your view of wanting to oppose Trump and his adventurism, the Middle east, at all costs. So why don't you just give us a little bit on what, what your instinct was on this.

[Bob Kagan]

Setting aside my concern, which is not really worth setting aside, about the domestic consequences of Trump being at war, which I think we have still yet to fully discover. You know, if we're going to be at war for several months, the opportunities for declaring national security issues on one thing or another, arresting protesters because they're domestic terrorists, et cetera, you know, we, we, we haven't fully, fully gone down this road. But, you know, from a, more from a strategic point of view, I did not believe that bombing alone was going to solve our problem with Iran. And this is. We somehow forgot, you know, we learned this lesson in the 1990s. There was this great idea, especially after the decimation of the, of the Iraqi army in Kuwait in the, you know, in the first Gulf War, where our missiles, our airplanes, you know, just completely decimated their force, really. And then it was just a matter of mopping up at the end. And this gave, I think, Americans and American strategists even a great perception that we could really accomplish our goals pretty much through air power alone. And you may remember, I don't know how much you were paying attention, but people like Don Rumsfeld and a guy who used to be a big. She's named Richard Pearl had this idea that you could pretty much cut the armed forces of the United States by a third and just do everything with missiles and bombs. And the Clinton administration tried to accomplish a lot through air power. They bombed Saddam Hussein for four days in 1998, 99. And that didn't really do anything. Then there was the long bombing campaign against Slobodan Milosevic in 99, which was supposed to be over in three days and then went on for three months. And it really. Until we threatened to send in troops that he capitulated anyway. Long, long way of saying we have learned before that bombing alone wasn't going to do it. And now we've had the most abject demonstration possible because it has been a free fly pretty much, although we just lost an F15 apparently. But for the most part, it's been open skies. We've been able to bomb Iran at will, hit everything that we want to hit with remarkable accuracy and the brilliance of our forces, their equipment, etc. And yet here we are, and I think we're, you know, we are still more losing this war than winning it, because we can't finish it off with what is going to be required if we want to, which is a full scale ground invasion of Iran, you know, because there's no way, you know, we can get into this. But, you know, how to open the strait is not something that's going to be accomplished by air and sea power alone, as which is witnessed by the fact that we're sending ground troops to the region. So I was always skeptical that you could get where you wanted to get to by air alone. And now that has just become fully demonstrated to all.

[Tim Miller]

In addition to that kind of vividly remembering our conversation, you're also just skeptical that you could trust Donald Trump. And Pete Hegseth to do anything competently, even if they came up with the strategy, or that you could trust that they could do something not corruptly or that there wouldn't be other ancillary negative effects. Effects, whether it be, as you mentioned, domestic attempts to seize more authoritarian power or just kind of unpredictable incompetence. And we've seen a little bit of both.

[Bob Kagan]

Right. And in addition to which, for those like myself, who would like, and you, I'm sure, who would like to see the Iranian people freed from the brutal tyranny that they've been suffering under the mullahs, Donald Trump is not the person to deliver them from that. And now he is talking about sending not just the mullahs, but the Iranian people back to the Stone Age, where they belong, as he so felicitously put it. So his concern for the Iranian people is something less than zero. And so I don't know what outcome anybody ever expected him to accomplish in this situation.

[Tim Miller]

I'm sorry, I don't think that's right. Bob, I have to challenge you because Rich Lowry at the National Review said that he's just a sincere and passionate Iran hawk, and that's what we've learned. So I'm not sure. I think that maybe you're just not seeing Trump's sincerity and passion when it comes to liberating Iran.

[Bob Kagan]

I'm certainly seeing passion. He seems to be very passionate about killing as many people as he can possibly kill. Blowing things up. He loves to watch pictures of blowing things up. Maybe that makes him very passionate.

[Tim Miller]

He does like to watch pictures. Okay, I want to run through some news items and get to your Atlantic article that talks more about the geopolitical implications of all this. As you mentioned, Iranian media was reporting overnight, but now we have confirmation in American media that an F15 was downed over Iran. There's a search and rescue operation underway as we speak for the crew. The Iranian media, I couldn't tell if this was a cheeky troll of Trump or just how they actually talk, but, you know, was saying to the Iranians, if you're in the region, you capture this person, you'll get a prize. You'll get a nice prize or reward, which is a very Trumpian kind of thing I should mention. Just while we're doing news updates, just a little correction. The other day, I was talking about how Trump was talking about how there were missiles going at our ship, and I suggested that it was referencing the Gerald Ford, but that clip was taken out of context and he was talking about a Venezuela ship. And so I do think the other news item this morning is that the Gerald Ford that's going through repairs, that's the big ship, might be going back into the region. The other news item is, since we talked yesterday is we are now kind of beginning that going back to the Stone age style bombing campaign. The first attack on a major civilian infrastructure target intentionally was yesterday, which was an attack on the B1 bridge near Tehran. And that I think is signaling a widening of the US Military targets and a first step towards attacks on energy, water and transportation infrastructure. Trump posted a picture of the downed bridge and bragged about it like, which are civilian targets. Yeah. So Anyway, on the F15 and now the kind of missing airmen and the bridge, any thoughts on either of those items?

[Bob Kagan]

You know, when you carry out a military operation, you're going to have bad events take place. I mean, the Gerald Ford had to go back because there was a fire in the laundry, which, which military people who know much more than I do say is not completely inconsistent with a deployment which has gone on for well over a year. I think that many of these sailors have not had any leave. And so that can lead to all kinds of things. The longer you keep people deployed, the more likely there is for error. So that's one part of it. But I really do think people, people are saying that Trump has announced intention to commit war crimes. And so I think, I really do think it's important to note they can claim that the bridge has both military and civilian uses, but when you start going after the energy grid, that's an attack on a civilian target. This is what Putin is doing in Ukraine. He is destroying the energy grid in Ukraine to make the Ukrainian people people suffer so much that the government can continue the war. And so now the strategy in this attempt to liberate the Iranian people from this brutal regime will now be to make them suffer as much as possible and bring about what the Israelis, I think are looking for, which is not regime change, but state failure, by which is meant really the inability of any state to function. In Iran, if Trump gets what he wants, we will go sailing off into the sunset, having turned Iran into a smoking ruin where people are dying of starvation and disease and lack of access to water, etc. The regime has collapsed, the country is in total chaos, and we are on our way back to wherever we were before we, we started this. And the outcome of that is for the region and not to mention for the Iranian people.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And Washington Post assessment this morning, you know, is we're not there yet because actually the hardliners are still in charge. There has been an unprecedented kind of churn of the Tehran political and military establishment. And I think that a lot of us from the outside, it's kind of hard to tell who that has left in charge. We know that obviously the son of the ayatollah, we haven't heard much from him, don't exactly know their status. The president is the same, despite the fact that Donald Trump posted that the new president is much more reasonable. It's the same as the old president. The Post story says that who has been left in place is a hardline government. And right now there's little hope of diplomatic breakthrough with those in charge, according to regional and Western officials. So. And it seems to me that at this point what has resulted from our efforts is, is a hardening of the existing regime again.

[Bob Kagan]

Our strategy, insofar as we seem to have a strategy now is, is. Is sort of beyond regime change or it's regime change accomplished only through the utter destruction of Iran.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Bob Kagan]

You know, only through state failure. Whether he can accomplish state failure in two or three weeks of intensive bombing, I don't know.

[Tim Miller]

But.

[Bob Kagan]

So I don't rule out that. But right now what you're saying is certainly true.

[Tim Miller]

It seems like they've gotten to a deal on this DHS shutdown. There's some Republicans in the House who are mad about it. So it isn't 100% finalized where they'll separate out ICE and CBP funding from the rest of Department of Homeland Security and then they'll move forward with this reconciliation bill which allows them to get around the filibuster that will have funding for ICE and Border Patrol, but also the war funding and the budget number that they just put on, that is one and a half trillion, which seems like a whole lot to me. You know, putting aside kind of the congressional wrangling on this, I'm just curious what you think about the scale of what they're talking about as a long

[Bob Kagan]

standing, you know, defense hawk. I, I'm in favor of increased spending. You have to ask what exactly it's for now, given the new strategy of the United States, because we've basically ended the alliance with our NATO allies and therefore we will not be engaged, I presume, in the defense of Europe anymore. We are going to hand over the Persian Gulf to a consortium of powers, including China and Iran and others. And we will be exiting, apparently after we finish blowing the place up. Our Asian allies are now basically deciding that they also have to go it alone. The, the relationship with South Korea is in a total disaster. And I don't think we're far away from them basically sort of saying they're going to go nuclear and be on their own. So at the end of the day, we are going to be, as a result of this, a very, very lonely country without, without allies. So that doesn't seem to me to be a great, a great triumph.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, part of that spending is rebuilding. You know, a lot of stuff that has been lost in this, in this war that doesn't really have a clear strategic objective. Let's now go deeper on, unlike the global implications of this, and I think this is a lot of what you were talking about. Your latest Atlantic piece, which is titled America is Now a Rogue Superpower, subhead to that was Trump's conduct in the Iran war is accelerating global chaos and deepening America's dangerous isolation. I want to kind of go at a deeper level through all of those sort of regions and countries that you just went through. But I'm just curious what you think the top level implication is of our new status.

[Bob Kagan]

Well, we're at the beginning of a period in which things that we used to get basically for free in the sense that we didn't have to fight for it, like open access to the oceans around the world, basing in many, many, many, many countries around the world. The countries allow us to use their territory for bases, not only to protect them, but to project power in various different ways. Our substantial control of the international financial system is going to be severely undermined. And we've given Putin the greatest prize that he could possibly have, which is the destruction of NATO. That is what he's been seeking for 20 years. The Chinese are improving their position globally at our expense. They, they want us out of the Western Pacific and East Asia, and we are heading in that direction. But I, but I think I really do want to focus a little on, on the Gulf itself, because at the end of the day, there's going to be some basic objective reality that is going to be inescapable, and that is that the United States, at the end of this conflict, unless some kind of extraordinary event happens and Iran just collapses and becomes a friendly country, you know, within the next three weeks, where we're going to be left is we will have been substantially pushed out of the Middle east and Persian Gulf. That, that is the, the net consequence of this. Because if, when we quit, as Trump claims, leaving the Strait of Hormuz closed, that means the rest of the world is now going to have to negotiate with Iran on exactly how the Strait of Hormuz will be operated going forward. And Iran will no longer have to fear further American attack because we will have absented ourselves. Therefore, the balance of power will have shifted in Iran's favor, but we. But more than that, it will have shifted particularly in China's favor because standing behind Iran in these negotiations over how the Strait will be run will be China. And Iran is already talking about asking other countries to pay for transit through the strait in yuan, in Chinese yuan, which will basically, you know, strengthen the Chinese yuan against the American dollar and undermine the petrodollar system, et cetera. JVL has a great piece on this which is 100% right, except for one thing which we can get to. But that is the situation that we're going to be left with. We will have gone from being the dominant player in this region, which is the region that controls the world oil supply to a large extent and certainly the world oil price. We will go from having been the dominant player to one of several players maybe, or we will basically have lost our influence in the region. That is going to be the net result of this conflict.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I'm going to come back to JVL being wrong, because I do like that. Before we get to the yuan, though, and the impact of what is going to happen there, there was one thing that was interesting to me about your piece, just talking about the region broadly and it was kind of looking back on why were we there in the first place? What benefit did the US have to being there? What was the rationale for Iraq both times and just in general for us having bases there. And you make a pretty provocative but I think compelling point, which is that we weren't really there ever for our security. And if anything, it was encounter to our national security because the terrorism was partially spurred rather by the fact that we were there. And the reason that we are there was preserving this global world order that you're kind of talking about. Like the fact that the US that we benefited from being what people would have called us pejoratively, what the folks on the other side would have called us, pejoratively the world's policemen. We benefited from this because of all of these ancillary economic and security benefits. That was the purpose of kind of being involved there at all. So the point you make in the piece is if we aren't going to do that anymore, if Trump is reorganizing the whole world order and we're just going to have spheres of influence, and we don't care about any of that, then there's no point in us doing this, that this is actually that our involvement right now is harming us, even based on the framework that they're putting forth about what our role should be. Am I enunciating that correctly?

[Bob Kagan]

No, we are enunciating it brilliantly. And it is a central contradiction at the heart of this whole operation. Because, you know, if you go back to the original America first approach to the world, which was conducted pretty much in the 1920s and 30s, after World War I and the disillusionment of World War I, the United States didn't want to be involved anymore. We had no involvement in the Middle east, none whatsoever. And our involvement in the Middle east was entirely a consequence of the decision, which we partly forced into and partly undertook ourselves to engage in World War II, which then during World War II, the Middle east was a vital region for those we were trying to defend against those we were trying to fight. You know, control of North Africa was a big deal. That was, you know, that the fact that Germany was threatening to control that, control the Suez Canal, et cetera. So we fought in World War II in the middle east to secure it for those whom we were trying to save from Nazi tyranny. Then during the Cold War, it was a critical region in the struggle against the Soviet Union. We'll get to Israel in a second. But it was not because we needed the oil, you know, at that particular time. And I think in the immediate wake of World War II, the United States produced something like 50% of all the oil in the world. I mean, we were not dependent on Middle east oil. It was our allies who were dependent on it. So basically, it was a project of defending the world order. And particularly, and I'm not in an abstract sense, but in a really concrete sense, that the allies we were defending in Europe and in Asia depended on access to those, to that energy resource. The region was also strategically important. It was a constant sort of crossroads of great empires, et cetera.

[Tim Miller]

So.

[Bob Kagan]

But it was secondary to our interests. And no one in the region, including Iraq in 2003 or Iran today, ever posed a direct threat to the security of the American homeland. And of course, in Trump's national security Strategy, which was released, I don't know, it must have been all of, like, four months ago, they deliberately downgraded, as was logical, given their focus on hemispheric dominance and homeland security, they deliberately downgraded the Middle east as a region of American concern. They just said it wasn't that important to us anymore. And Donald Trump has spent the entire war saying it's not our oil, we don't need the oils, etc. Etc. So what are we. So what are we doing it for? Now, A lot of it is about defense of Israel. There's no question Iran posed a direct existential threat to Israel, not to us. And we have committed to defending Israel, but again, not because it's in our national security interest to do so. As I point out in the essay, and as everybody knows, most of the leading American officials at the time thought it was not in our interest to support the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. George Marshall, no less a figure, Dean Hutcherson, thought it was a bad idea because it was going to make end enemies of an entire Arab world, have basically 25 countries mad at us in order to make one country happy, et cetera. But we did it for moral reasons, and it was part of our America accepting sort of a global responsibility to sort of protect liberalism and the rights of human beings, God forbid. So that is why we were there. And now if we're not interested in Europe, and here's Trump literally pulling us out of NATO, and if we're not interested in our Asian allies, what are we doing it for? And it turns out we're not interested in the Iranian people either. Is this just for Israel's protection? Was this entire war for Israel's protection? Is this a crusade? You know, you've got Pete Tegseth, you know, saying, God, give us the power to smite our enemy, which is this like a Christian fight against Muslims? You know, I'd love to know, really.

[Tim Miller]

On the Israel question, JBL asked about this when we were on the post Trump speech live stream. I'm interested in your thoughts on this, which is even through the Israel prism. It's a little bit confusing because Trump is so transactional. You know, what he's getting out of UAE and Qatar and Saudi, his family's getting enriched by those countries. It's not quite as clear that that's happening. I'm sure that Jared is doing some deals, but it's not quite as clear or at least direct when it comes to Israel. And you mentioned your piece that there have been certain times where, like, Israel has been focused on their own interest over ours, which is their right. Right. And you use one, one example of, you know, when, when there were global sanctions against Russian oil after the invasion of Ukraine, Israel did not participate into that. And so that does kind of lead one to wonder, like, what Trump, you know, what exactly it is he feels like he's getting out of this. Like, to me, the answer is as, like, just base. Like, Trump is a megalomaniac, and he has been puffed up by Bibi and others and told that he's going to do peace in the Middle east and he'll be a great man as a result of this. And maybe it's as simple as that, but I don't know. I'm wondering what you make about the state of the relationship.

[Bob Kagan]

Well, I do think it's worth just going through, as what we all know, but it's worth repeating, what is the origin of American involvement here? Because, you know, clearly Trump was hoping to sort of bluster his way into getting the Iranians to accept some kind of deal in which they would give up their nuclear weapons. But, you know, that that was ongoing. But what. What happened was our intelligence showed that the mullahs and their whole leadership was going to have a meeting in the daytime, and we passed that information on to the Israelis and the Israelis and Bibi basically said, look, I have an opportunity to take out the whole leadership. Should we, you know, should we just go ahead and do it? And I think Trump thought he saw a freebie here. The interesting thing about this, we're all, like, beating our chests about how great the American military is, and it is great, and I'm not saying it isn't, but it wasn't the American military that took the initial step of taking out Iran's air defenses, which is the most dangerous element of the operation and which the United States would not have done because it was too risky for the stakes. Israel, because of October 7, completely changed its risk calculus and was basically, we have to do whatever we need to do. And so they did undertake the risk in the first instance of taking out the air defenses, which allowed us to then come in and prove how tough we were. And then when they said we could take out the whole leadership, Trump just said, oh, boy, do it. And it's the Israelis who took it out, not us. They were the ones who've launched a daytime raid, which is also very risky. So I think Trump just thought, I can come swooping in and I'll be the guy who took out the Mullers, and it'll be over.

[Tim Miller]

And then I'm riding shotgun. These guys are really talented. I'm going to get the credit. And this is a classic Trump story. Like, other people are going to do the work, I'm going to get the credit.

[Bob Kagan]

Exactly, exactly. And despite his reputation for playing five dimensional chess, I don't think plays one dimensional checkers. He didn't really go through what the possible downsides of this action where he thought he saw an easy operation, you know, this whole grand strategy. What is Trump doing? Trump's doing what he always did. He saw a shiny object and he thought he could grab it, and so he grabbed it. And he does love blowing stuff up. So he got another chance to blow stuff up.

[Tim Miller]

It was an interesting point you mentioned about the air defenses, about how this plays to Asia. And this kind of takes us back to that question about the yuan and whether China is being strengthened by this action right now. And you're making the case. Yes. You write this. As for China, combined Israeli and American forces have demonstrated impressive capabilities, but their success is not necessarily replicable. In the Pacific. Taking out an adversary's sophisticated air defenses is a dangerous operation, as you said, one that Israel shouldered in Iran. The US had the capacity to take that first step, but would not likely have assumed the risk. In the event of a Chinese aggression against Taiwan, will the Israelis take out Chinese air defense systems for the United States, too? It's a rhetorical question. I think we know the answer to that. But talk about just that and how China is looking at our actions right now in Iran, both in that specific instance, but also broadly.

[Bob Kagan]

Yeah, well, I mean, in the early days of the war and I mean, even today, there's been a lot of sort of like crowing about how our impressive military feat is now going to strike terror into Beijing and Moscow because they've watched us blow all this stuff up. And I'm actually quite astonished at how many people are like, israel's our real ally. They're our invaluable ally. They're the ones we can really count on. Look, look how we're fighting together here, et cetera, et cetera. So I just sort of thought what the Chinese saw was that the Israelis took all the risks. The Americans took no risks. I mean, not no risks, but took very few risks. So did we take out the air defenses? No. Are we sending our ships through the Strait to deal, you know, what we're asking the Europeans to do, even though they have much less capability, but we're also unwilling to do it. So what do the Chinese see? The Chinese see that when the Americans have a free target against a deeply decimated country like Iran, we will blow them up for as long as we possibly can. Does that tell the Chinese anything about what we would do in the event of a crisis in the Taiwan Strait, other than not wanting to send our ships into harm's way. We all enjoyed Hegseth noting that the reason we weren't sending our ships in to the Strait was because the Iranians would shoot at it. Yes, that is how that works. And that's also how it will work in a China scenario. Look, the big picture after we finish patting ourselves on the back for blowing everything up is we started this war and we are unable to win it. And we are unable to win it at a cost that is acceptable to us and to many of our allies. You know, we allegedly did this to some extent for the Gulf states. The Gulf states are furious at us now because we have kicked the hornet's nest and are threatening to walk away and leave them with the mad hornets. What did we demonstrate in this war? That we could start it, but we couldn't finish it. That we could hit Iran, but we couldn't protect our allies in the region. The UAE is arresting people for taking pictures of the damage that's being done by Iranian weapons. So.

[Tim Miller]

And you think these rich influencers that don't have a job, that have been moving to Dubai and moving to Abu Dhabi and, you know, bringing wealth and bringing money to the region.

[Bob Kagan]

Not anymore.

[Tim Miller]

And doing good PR for them, you think? Where are they going after this? Mykonos. They're going back to Mykonos.

[Bob Kagan]

Right. So they are not, so far net beneficiaries of this. And they certainly aren't looking at the United States as the solution to their problems, since clearly we are not the solutionary problem. So the biggest takeaway from this is I'm not at all sure we have increased our credibility. I think we may have decreased our credibility in dealing with Russia and China, not to mention the boon that this war has been for Russia, specifically in its war against Ukraine.

[Tim Miller]

I'm going to go back to NATO, but let's just finish in Asia really quick. So circling back what you read, the article you referenced from JVL was talking about one of the war developments that should truly scare us. And one of them was about the de dollarization that could be sped up if you, you know, more, you know, if the petro dollar becomes the petro yuan, et cetera. And then on top of that, as you referenced earlier, like, we have South Korea, India, Japan, who are about to be in economic crises where the value of their currency is tanking and they're going to have energy shortages, and we didn't consult any of them over this. I do think Trump called Modi and asked him if he was going to nominate him for the Nobel Prize before we got in. And when he said no, he's like, okay, I don't care. So, so talk just broadly about what's happening there, both with the risk of de dollarization, but also our relationships in Asia.

[Bob Kagan]

We would refer you to a very nice good article in Foreign Policy magazine right now, which is basically recounting this. A distinguished former American ambassador to South Korea who has spent his whole life in South Korea, basically an American telling the South Koreans that they really need to start striking out on their own now because the United States has become completely unreliable. And we are focused on how his, the breakdown of our relationship with Europe. But, but the Asia relationships are also breaking down for all the reasons. It's already the case that South Korea is starting to ration gas and other things with government vehicles. And they may put limits on, on people using it, but it also, it ripples through all of their industries, not just the oil and gas, et cetera. So they're, they're suffering and their choice is, and this is what this former ambassador recommended to them. And it is, it is the case, which is go nuclear, take full control of the South Korean military, which is currently jointly run by the United States and South Korea, and move closer to China. If the United States is not going to be there for allies, people are going to have to make their accommodations. Now, in the case of Japan, I don't think they can move closer to China. I think the bitterness between them is too great. And I don't think Japan wants to be part of the Chinese sphere of influence. So Japan will also undoubtedly at some point go nuclear and independent. And that raises all other kinds of questions about what direction Japan may go in. And we can get into that at another day.

[Tim Miller]

They have bombed us once before.

[Bob Kagan]

But you know, we've had some experience with all of this historically. So, and you know, by the way, that is the, that is the biggest picture of all, which is it's not just that we are losing our, all of our alliances around the world. And let me just say we're not. We are really losing them because now it is becoming popular in other countries to attack the United States for good reason.

[Tim Miller]

And imagine waking up in South Korea and just being like a middle class South Korean going about your day and now you have to ration gas. And you're like, why? Because the insane American president invaded Iran for no clear reason that I can Understand? And now my life is worse. Like, of course that would be a successful political tool to talk about how we're terrible.

[Bob Kagan]

And after we broke a trade agreement with them, we had a US North Korea trade agreement which Trump broke South Korea.

[Tim Miller]

I'm pretty sure they did love letters of South Korea, but I don't think we did a trade agreement, just the love letters.

[Bob Kagan]

Thank you. Just keeping that clear. Thank you very much, Tim. But we had a Korean American trade agreement which Trump violated to slap the tariffs on Korea. So now they are suffering under 25% tariffs. And a factory which was basically a South Korean, I think was a Hyundai factory in Georgia was raided by ice and hundreds of South Korean employees were shackled and sent back to the Korean people were horrified by this. They could not believe that the United States would do this to them. They've been such a good ally. And so as you just said, there's going to be money to be made in all these countries running against the United States, which is going to turn everybody against us. You know, in the back in the day we used to make fun of China, who's. They have a certain like two or three allies around the world and it was kind of like a Star wars bar. You know, they had North Korea, they have Pakistan. Right. And maybe some other like little countries. Iran, you know, those were their allies,

[Tim Miller]

a couple African countries.

[Bob Kagan]

We have 54 partners and allies around the world. Well, now we're going to be the ones where, let's see, our allies are the Darcy government in Venezuela so far, El Salvador, Viktor Orban, but he may lose the election. So then Hungary will be gone. So I don't know who else is left after.

[Tim Miller]

Well, we're in business with uae and so for the moment.

[Bob Kagan]

For the moment. But let me tell you something. The UAE has good relations with China. This is now I'm back to Sirius. Okay. Going back to the Gulf states and Israel. They have other options in the region. They already have played, you know, I don't want to say footsie, but certainly maintaining their good ties with China. And I think the result of our ex is they're going to have even better ties. So we're going to be pretty much, you know, on our own with a few stooges here and there. It's going to be love that I

[Tim Miller]

want to go to Orban and NATO. But just really quick, you never told me what JVL was wrong about the de dollarization. I think it is important to go.

[Bob Kagan]

JBL is not really wrong about anything except one thing. He said, which I just think it's worth keeping in mind. He said the United States cannot open the strait. That's not true. The United States can open the strait, but not at any risk. We are willing to pay for it.

[Tim Miller]

Well, and this goes to the potential troops question, which I think you're still. I think there's been a kind of a consensus developing. The troops aren't going to go in. I'm skeptical about it. It seems like you're a little skeptical about that too.

[Bob Kagan]

Well, go in. How is the problem? Because if, you know, this is why the Bush administration sent troops into Iraq in 2003, because they knew they could not accomplish their objective through the air and they knew they could not do anything for Iraq afterwards if they were not on the ground. If it really is an existential thing to open the Strait of Hormuz, we would have to do a full scale invasion of Iran. Because as every military person, I don't know whether General Hertling has gotten in. I'm sure he has. The difficulty of just seizing the territory on the coast of Iran is going to be enormous in a drone world that it's going to be very hard to protect the troops that we might land in Carg island and on the coast of Iran because they'll just be in an enclave. We won't have stopped Iran from ability to fight. So we are willing to do certain things to try to have our way, but not really to take any great risk to have our way in the region. And that's how we wind up where we are right now.

[Tim Miller]

So back to Europe. So we have the Hungary elections coming up soon. So that could be a rare silver lining of our discussion today. Like your thoughts on that and just in general about NATO. Well, let's just do Hungary first, then we'll talk about NATO, I guess.

[Bob Kagan]

The polls show that the opponent Magyar has a double digit lead in the polls.

[Tim Miller]

But Trump administration JD Vance is going to save the day for Orban.

[Bob Kagan]

Well, that's what I'm saying. The Trump administration is manfully trying to turn around around that election and sending Marco Rubio to make sure that the dictator of Hungary remains in power. So JD Vance and Marco Rubio are now actively lobbying. By the way, this is the America first group that says we shouldn't be pursuing ideological crusades around the world and we shouldn't be meddling in the affairs of other governments. Remember all that stuff. We shouldn't be promoting democracy. That's terrible. Promoting dictatorship. On the other hand, that, that apparently we can we can engage in that?

[Tim Miller]

We can do that. Okay.

[Bob Kagan]

The NATO discussion I think is really important and I think it's particularly important at this moment because now I am seeing that, you know, what we might have called the Reagan wing of the Republican foreign policy establishment has pretty much gone away. Because I would say that a core principle of Reagan foreign policy both before and after the Cold War was that the European and Asian alliances are at the core of Americans grand strategy. And now because of this war, even people who are part of what I would have thought of as the Reagan wing of the party are now coming out against NATO. The degree to which Republican foreign policy types are coming out against NATO now is pretty extraordinary. And it couldn't be more absurd. I don't know what you wanted to get into, so maybe I should let you ask a question. Just know ref, you know, when, when they say why aren't they helping us open the strait? Now any operation to open the strait with full buy in by the allies would have been 90% America anyway. They don't have the capacity. You know why they don't have the capacity? Because we have the world's largest and most capable navy in the first instance and air power and the way we arranged things in the world was everybody wouldn't have a world class navy. How many world class navies do you want to have? Were we going to have France have a world class navy that was capable of opening a straight by itself? Was Germany going to have a world class navy? No, we had a distribution where we were the ones with the world class navy. And now we're asking them, why don't you just take care of this? I can't. Trump is unbelievable. He says it's easy. Why don't you just do it? Here we are with all the firepower that we have and we don't want to send our ship in because as Hegthus says, they're going to shoot at us. But the Europeans should do that. So, so the notion of saying that we can't do something because the allies are not letting us or that even if they're not letting us use their air bases in Spain, you know, that had no effect on really what we were, what we were able to do here.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Bob Kagan]

So that's, that's the first thing. The second thing of course is we didn't even go to NATO for this operation. Do you know, I believe that if Trump had done what we do with our allies because you know, we have this whole thing about an alliance and we have like Consultations. And we have a NATO ambassador who, like, organizes things. You go to them and you say, look, we need to do this Iran operation. We want your support. Here's what we need from you. Let's talk about it. Let's work our way through with it. Let me tell you something. The Europeans are so eager to please Trump, I think they could have been persuaded to go along. He didn't even think about talking to them. He didn't even consult them. He didn't even consult his best buddy in the world, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, to the point where she's now denouncing him. You know, and so now we turn around. He's gotten us into this total mess, and now we're going to blame NATO for not helping us out in this situation. It's just, it's shocking to watch people that I've known for decades on foreign policy, and I really felt like I knew what their core beliefs were, just abandoning them in a heartbeat just to keep on the right side of Donald Trump.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, you saw this. We talked about this a little bit with Susan yesterday. So there's so many examples with this. So I kind of hate to pick on Peter Meyer, who is the former. Well, actually, I don't. I like to pick on him. Former congressman from Michigan, but who's in this wing, you know. Right. Of more traditional foreign policy. But he was just posting this week. It behoove our NATO allies to appreciate that this sentiment is very widely shared, including among former boosters of the transatlantic alliance. The sentiment being that people are like, these guys are motherfuckers for not participating with us. It is insane to me that anybody could look at this situation and look at the position that Trump has put our European allies in, not to mention given what he did in Greenland, and be like, you know who I'm mad at? I'm mad at Macron for not going along with this. Like, it's crazy. Trump is putting them in an impossible position and he's fucking them, by the way, with their own citizens, with their own electorate, with the energy crisis, and he hasn't given one wit about them. And he's been threatening to pull out of the alliance for years now. And they're supposed to go along with this cockamamie war that has no point. It's insane.

[Bob Kagan]

And by the way, it's not as if they're sitting around playing Parcheesi. They are engaged right now in trying to prevent the conquest of a European country, a free and independent European country, Ukraine, by a Russian Aggressor who clearly has ambitions beyond Ukraine and includes the Baltic state. So when a foreign policy intellectual says, let's pull out a NATO because they're not helping us in the Gulf, they're saying, let's let Putin invade Estonia and it's not our problem.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Bob Kagan]

And I'm just like, these are people who regarded the Russian threat to Europe as a central issue. You know, Mike Johnson, you remember Mike Johnson back in 2024 saying, Putin's got objectives. He's going to. He's not going to stop in Ukraine. This wasn't like some, you know, weird liberal internationalist problem. This was something that used to be a core concern of Republicans. And now overnight, they're willing to just sell all that down the river again just to sort of. So that they're hanging in with Donald Trump. I mean, we've talked a lot of people. You've talked a lot of people about the failure of our elites in this whole crisis of Donald Trump. This is a perfect example of it.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And we had a big fight in 2012. It was the liberals who disagreed with us that Russia was our biggest geopolitical foe. Everybody was in lockstep with Mitt Romney about this. This was like one of the big flashpoints of the 2012 election. And here we are. Russia is being enriched by this war and empowered.

[Bob Kagan]

And these are people, by the way, who favored every aspect of NATO enlargement. They wanted NATO to get bigger and bigger and keep moving eastward toward Russia, which, you know, a lot of people argue wrongly, in my opinion, is why Putin launched the war on Ukraine. But in any case, at least it's in the ballpark. And they were all for that. And now they're ready to abandon it because Trump made a mistake in Iran. And so.

[Tim Miller]

An obvious one. Yeah, an obvious one.

[Bob Kagan]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

I was going to say this again, but we're just going to do it. Now, there's this man that I'm sure you don't know, even though you listened to Fypod with me and Kam Keskey. So maybe you are familiar with this character. Are you familiar with the character Sneako? Do you know the name Sneako?

[Bob Kagan]

No. I have.

[Tim Miller]

So Sneako is somebody who is pretty handsome, I should say. He dabbled in gay porn for a little while, and then he took a hard right turn and became a far right reactionary. And I can say that in good standing because I posted the video I'm about to play for you and said the far right reactionary brocaster has now outflanked a lot of the Democrats in Congress when it comes to the question of how to deal with Donald Trump. And he retweeted that. So he endorses this description of it. He is a far right reactionary trad, you know, men should be men type guy. We don't need to get into the psychology of why maybe he would be. So may he be trying to overcompensate him for something with that. But anyway, he has a very malign influence on the youth in a lot of areas. But he's seen the light as a result of this war. He probably has an IQ of about 22. And so if somebody with an IQ of 22 can give this lucid of a analysis of Donald Trump's fuck up in Iran, then surely the people at AEI and Heritage and in the Republican Senate could also share it, but they have not. Let's listen to sneak up and Trump should be impeached.

[Sneako]

I agree. Trump needs to be kicked out of office right now. It's been a complete disaster. He's shown that he's not equipped for this war. He doesn't know what's going on.

[Tim Miller]

Correct.

[Sneako]

He's senile. He's lying.

[Tim Miller]

Correct.

[Sneako]

You know, he's just, he's glazing the media, then changing his mind. He doesn't know if it's a war, if it's a conflict, begging for more money, wanting troops on the ground. If he's not impeached, then we are a failure as a country. And I said this from the beginning and I'm more vindicated every day.

[Tim Miller]

From day one, Tniko knew that Donald Trump was going to be a failure and then he had dementia and should be impeached. And yet some of the great foreign policy, right wing foreign policy minds of our time are talking about how Donald Trump is actually doing 4D chess here. I don't really know what my question is, but I just wanted to demonstrate to you that even the smooth brains understand what is happening here.

[Bob Kagan]

I got to say, it's a real strain on again, what I, what we can call the Reaganite wing of the Republican Party, which still exists, you know, which I thought still existed, you know, because, you know, I love the Wall Street Journal, but the Wall Street Journal watches the speech that, that Trump gave the other night and says that it was, it was really a home run in terms of I, you know, I. What I thought they sort of fancied themselves independent, you know, kind of independent, you know, to call it the way we see it, you know, or highbrow

[Tim Miller]

if not independent, at least highbrow. It was incomprehensible.

[Bob Kagan]

So I don't know what happens now. I'm actually more worried today than I had been before. You know, people talk about, well, wait, boy, I can't wait till we get over Trump. You know, once, once we get past Trump, then it's all Dean Atchison and Harry Truman there on out, you know. And my problem with that is twofold. One is the Democratic Party is not the party of Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, if we remember a couple of years back, but now the Republican Party is not the Republican Party anymore. And I thought, you know, there were always signs that maybe there was some kind of, on Ukraine and other things, there's some kind of lingering, you know, Reaganite people. They're going to stand up, you know, for, for that at least. But that seems to be the wayside. By the way, one of these people who said we should pull out of NATO said we should still be supporting Ukraine, though.

[Tim Miller]

Why,

[Bob Kagan]

first of all, how, if we have given up on NATO, but, but second of all, why exactly are we going to, you know, only help countries that we think we like? It has nothing to do with strategic issues anymore. It's sort of very strange to that

[Tim Miller]

point on the NATO. And then, and then I'll close with some catastrophizing instead of with laughs, which is, I know what I tried to do on the Friday podcast, but I chose to have Bob Kagan on. So I think that that's, that alarmism is probably the appropriate way to close. I was talking to Bill about this and about having you on, and he was like, Bob is so negative on NATO and basically it's over. And this is kind of a lot of folks out there saying now that this question, it doesn't matter whether Donald Trump takes us out of NATO. NATO is done. NATO is the weekend at Bernie's carcass. It's getting pushed around. We're pretending it's alive, that it isn't. The pushback to that is okay, I hear you on the Democratic Party is not the Democratic Party of Dean Acheson. But I don't know who knows how things turn out in three years. I certainly think that the Democratic nominee will probably, probably be somebody that has a very strong view and opposition to Middle east war meddling as a result of this disaster in Iran. But it could be somebody that is like that, that wants to maybe refashion our relationship with Israel somewhat, but, but strengthen our relationship with Europe and other allies. Like that's an imaginable Democratic nominee. So in that instance, do you think that, you know, those alliances could be rebuilt or do you think that just like the trust is so broken that it's unrepairable?

[Bob Kagan]

I just don't see how we could go back to the way things were, put it that way, because I'm not even sure I would advise the Europeans to accept the level of dependence on the United States that they did accept for so many decades because we just are unreliable. Because even if you do get a sort of transatlantically oriented Democrat, assuming that we have a free and fair election in 2028, but assuming that you do, where would the Republican Party be? It's not inconceivable the Republican Party will be at that point even more sort of thoroughly America first and isolationist than it is right now. Which means that any alteration of power goes from, we're going to flip back and forth with each election between, oh yeah, we're your allies, where are your allies? Oh, now you can all, all go to hell. You know. So if I were making long range policy plans as a Japanese prime minister or a German or more importantly Polish government, I would not say, oh thank God the Democrats are back. I can throw myself totally back into the American alliance. So.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Bob Kagan]

That's, that's point one. Point two is do we see the damage that Trump has done? He's been in office a little over a year. Three more years, three more years of this kind of behavior. What can be done in the next three years? What has already been done is going to be much worse. And I think what we're going to start seeing now, we're already seeing it is it's going to be a very rapid transition to a post American world. Everybody right now is scrambling, sprinting to the existence to form new relationships to become less depending on states economically, politically and militarily. Look, if your goal was to make sure that the United States would no longer be a global power and would be fundamentally policing the Western hemisphere and basically bringing us back to where we were, a circa like 1840. That goal is well on its way to accomplishment.

[Tim Miller]

Which takes us to our final topic. I needed to regain my status, my EO or rain cloud status. Last time I had you on in early February, you were talking about your fears about the midterms. It's the one area where I'm a little bit more optimistic than some others in the pro democracy coalition. People can go listen to that conversation if you want to hear our back and forth on that. Here's an area where I think I might be on the outer edge of bleakness. All this conversation about preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon has just nuclear weapons rattling around my brain a little bit more. I was thinking earlier this week, I was like, if you'd asked me in the year 2020, who is the most likely country to be the next country to use a nuke, to go rogue and use a nuke, I would have said North Korea probably first, maybe Pakistan second. I don't even know who would have been third. Right. If you asked me right now, April 3rd, I would say probably Donald Trump is most likely to use a nuke, and maybe Bibi is second in the world, and then maybe Pakistan or North Korea. I'm not saying it's a 50% chance, but it sure seems a lot higher than it was for all the rest of my life up until this point. And I'm beginning to catastrophize on that topic. And I just wanted to throw that out there for your reaction. For your reaction and leave people on the Easter weekend with, you know, a little meditation on the possibility of nuclear annihilation.

[Bob Kagan]

Yeah. I mean, sure. You know, the only.

[Tim Miller]

I just outplanked you. That's what I was wanting to do.

[Bob Kagan]

You turn the tables, Tim.

[Tim Miller]

You have great.

[Bob Kagan]

You pretty. Pretty successfully turned the tables. But. But I will. I will give. Can I give a partially serious maybe answer?

[Tim Miller]

I want. I was hoping for a partially serious answer.

[Bob Kagan]

So here's the thing. I mean, Trump is setting us up now for greater challenges coming from Russia and China. In my opinion, they were already going to be a challenge, but now I think they're going to be a much greater challenge. And I think that they. We have increased the likelihood that China will, at some point either absorb Taiwan peacefully or absorb or take it through a. Through a blockade or some other measure. I think we are essentially encouraging the next war in Europe if Putin decides to do something. And then the question comes, at what point does this sort of retreat get to the point where it's too far for Americans? They actually don't want to retreat anymore. And this, of course, is sort of what happened before World War II, which was, well, then Italy invaded Ethiopia, and then there was the Spanish Civil War and the Nazis and the fascists involved in that. And then there was the Anschluss with Austria, and we were all like, we don't care, we don't care. It doesn't matter to us, et cetera. Then France falls, and it's like, oh, I don't know. And so ultimately we're in World War II. And so, you know, at what point do we reach where, where everybody says, trump, you've allowed now Russia to invade Estonia. We have to do something about it. But then the doing something about it does bring us up to the nuclear threshold, because then we will be having to contemplate going to war with Russia. A lot of what we've been doing for decades has been avoiding that, in part by guaranteeing others security and letting Russia know that we will stop them and we will get involved if they attack Estonia. So that is the scenario that does lead to where you're going, whether it happens on Donald Trump's watch or somebody else's watch, I don't know. But we are teeing ourselves up for a much bigger crisis down the road.

[Tim Miller]

My scenario is more like a dementia riddled old man decides that he gets, like, the idea starts rattling around in his brain. That's like. Like, nobody's done this since Truman. They'll be talking about me, they'll be talking about the news, I'll be on the news. I was like, more of that was really where my brain was going. Then there'd be like some sort of geopolitical, you know, escalation. You know, we go up the escalation ladder, but either possible. Okay, we'll leave people with that. Thank you for doing this.

[Bob Kagan]

It's.

[Tim Miller]

I wish everybody this Easter weekend was Passover, and so I appreciate that you doing, you know, coming on. On Passover. Producer Katie was Washington suspects. I don't know what this says about. I don't actually know what the norms are for Jews.

[Bob Kagan]

What it says is I'm a bad Jew. That's what it says.

[Tim Miller]

You're a bad Jew. Okay, well, I'm a bad Catholic, so a bad Jew and a bad Catholic. Wish you a great Passover and Easter. I appreciate you, Bob Kagan. Everybody else will be back with Bill Crystal on Monday and we'll see y' all then. Peace. This is a crisis I knew how

[Bob Kagan]

to come Destroying the fallen Doubting, unsettling

[Tim Miller]

and turning around wondering what will come next Is this the role that you wanted to live?

[Bob Kagan]

I was foolish to watch for so much.

[Tim Miller]

The Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.