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- [00:00]
A
I have a very bad feeling that when this is all over, you're going to see a lot of environmental fees being charged to ships transiting the strait. Welcome to Shield of the Republic, a podcast sponsored by the Bulwark and the Miller center of Public affairs at the University of Virginia. I'm Eric Edelman, counselor at the center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, non resident fellow at the Miller center and a Bulwark contributor. And I'm joined by my partner in this enterprise in all things strategia, Elliot Cohen, Professor Emeritus of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and an Atlantic contributor. Elliot, how are you and where are you?
- [00:46]
B
Well, that's a question you periodically ask. I'm in one of my favorite places in the world, Basin Harbor, Vermont, on the shores of Lake Champlain, where we're about to have a conference, which actually you will be speaking at. And you have a very distinguished role. One of the. You'll notice my. My vest here that says Fort Ticonderoga. So this morning my wife and I went off and we visited that place, which is, by the way, particularly for anybody who really likes early American history, this is a place to go. They're fantastic. It's a very, very interesting piece of American military history. They have terrific living history programs and, and all that sort of thing. But as you know, one of the reasons why I like this area, Eric, is because not far from here In October of 1776, Benedict Arnold, a much misunderstood man, yes. Conducted a brilliant rear guard action, one of his many contributions to American independence, which are undervalued. And at Fort Ticonderoga they have. They have actually an amazing collection and exhibits. And believe it or not, I saw that they had a lock of Benedict Arnold's hair and it made my heart go pit a pat.
- [02:06]
A
I'm sure it did. I will stipulate that as anybody who would like to read Conquered Into Liberty about the great Warpath, that he did play a heroic role in that particular episode. So, yeah, before he betrayed his country. But never mind.
- [02:28]
B
Well, okay, fine. Picky, picky, picky.
- [02:32]
A
Lots of jackassery. I mean, tons of jackassery to go around. I mean, I, I was thinking about, you know, saying something about Peter Thiel trying to take up Argentine citizenship to go with his Maltese passport. And I think he also sought citizenship in New Zealand because apparently.
- [02:50]
B
Oh, I'm sure these guys all have bunkers in
- [02:55]
A
deeply afraid that, you know, peasants with pitchforks are coming to get the tech bros.
- [03:00]
B
So I. Here, here's. But I just want to Say, parenthetically, I think all these survivalist tech bros who think that they're going to ride out thermonuclear war and populist upheavals, they. The one thing that they always assume is that their security guards will stay loyal rather than shooting them in the head and stealing all their gold.
- [03:22]
A
But, yeah, there's that.
- [03:24]
B
What do I have to say?
- [03:25]
A
They might want to interview Maduro in jail, see what he has to say about that. But I'll go with Jack Ashri this week with, you know, having failed to put Trump on a commemorative coin or a dollar, a silver dollar, you know, his factota have now come up with the idea of creating a $250 bill, which I guess is a sign of the inflationary times in which we live, which would commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States by putting Donald J. Trump's picture on the bill. There is law in the books that dates back to, I believe, maybe even the 18th century, but at least the early 19th century that prohibits the face of any living person from being on US Currency. And of course, George Washington set the precedent by declining to have his portrait struck on a silver dollar at the outset of the republic because he correctly believed that would be too monarchical and not fitting for a republic.
- [04:35]
B
Yeah, well, if they are going to have a $250bill, I think given the times in which we live, Elbridge Jerry would be a better person to put on a $250 bill. The guy who invented the gerrymander. My candidate for jackassery is this truly, I think, disgusting cage fight that Donald Trump is going to stage on the White House grounds, a UFC Ultimate Fighting championship. Thousands of spectators, soldiers being obliged to show up in uniform. This is barbaric, and it is, you know, it's just another example of the dignity of the office being trampled. Now, there have been fisticuffs in the White House before. Teddy Roosevelt, for exercise purposes, would challenge young Marine captains to fistfights, boxing. And as a result, he had one of his eyes basically blinded. But, you know, that was exercise and he wasn't doing it in public, which he would have thought was gross. So I find that disgusting. I. I do. Since, as you know, I, I am waging this campaign to cheer you up, as in this dark period in our country's history. I want to give a Profiles Encourage award to Congressman Jake Auchincloss. So he's a Democratic representative from Massachusetts, and he said that the Totenkopf tattoo, so that's the death's head insignia, which was a Nazi symbol that Graham Platner had tattooed on his chest, which he kept there for quite a while, by the way. For years he had it covered up. Later, when he realized it might be a political liability, is disqualifying, and I give him a lot of credit for that, because, you know, the. Frequently, the test of courage for a politician is going against your own tribe. I mean, it's a test of courage for anybody. And Auchincloss met that challenge. And besides that, I happen to think Platner is a pretty odious character who's now complaining about having been sent to go off and fight in Iraq, even though he was in the military for eight years, going from the Marines to the Army National Guard, and then volunteering to serve in a. And the successor to Blackwater in Afghanistan. So he could go one more time. But quite apart from that, I mean, the. The central issue is that Totenkopf tattoo, plus other things. And good on Jake Auchincloss for saying, no, this guy's not. Is. Should be disqualified from being a Democratic representative from any state, including Maine.
- [07:31]
A
Yeah, I've had, actually a couple of opportunities to be in some sessions with Representative Auchincloss, and although he's far more liberal than I am, and I don't
- [07:40]
B
agree with him on, I'm sure, a
- [07:42]
A
whole raft of issues, I have found him very thoughtful, very, very intelligent, and I wish we had more of, you know, legislators in the Congress, you know, like him for the reasons you've mentioned, but others as well. Okay, well, you know, the President had a meeting this afternoon where we're recording on Friday. It was a meeting that was meant to be the decision meeting on the MOU with Iran that will end the. The shutdown, slash blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and extend the ceasefire by 60 days and presumably pave the way for negotiations that will provide for the ultimate resolution of the Iran nuclear issue. Apparently, it met for two hours, but no white smoke. President still, despite having advertised this as a decision meeting, still has not made a decision and continues to say that they're negotiating effectively and they're exchanging documents and language back and forth, but he is not yet ready to sign off on this, by the way, on the Iranian side, the Supreme Leader, Machtoba Khamenei, has also not signed off on it, apparently, according to Iranian sources. So what do you make of all this, Elliot? Is this just a kind of Kabuki between both sides that neither side wants to sign off until they're absolutely sure that the other side signs off is Alphonse and Gaston or what's going on.
- [09:22]
B
So, so of course, my reading of it is this proves that I was right all along in, in a couple ways. First, that the correct bet is not taco, but tacos. Trump always chickens out sometimes. I mean, I think what's interesting here is he's not chickened out. And it's interesting a lot of the commentary has, I think, portrayed this as, this is a defeat. He's, you know, Trump is in a terrible predicament from, it's a quagmire. We could, I've wrote an article recently about that we can discuss. I think he's, there's certain deals he's not willing to make. I, you know, I think what's happening is the, the interlocutors that they have going, particularly on the American side, would like, you know, some sort of deal or some sort of way to postpone it. But, but the, the differences are so profound and so deep between two sides which don't understand each other and have totally incompatible views of who has the upper hand. It would be amazing if you did get anything other than some sort of temporary extension of a ceasefire. So I can't say I'm very surprised by this. I mean, I'm, I'm, I, I can imagine anything happened, but it's one of the reasons, as you know, I, I think most of the denunciations on this score of Trump, not on other scores, but on this score, are prematures because nothing's happened. He hasn't made a decision. He has not been nearly as weak willed as people thought he might be. And the two sides are profoundly far apart. And I don't, I, I don't know about you, but I don't see a compromise here that, that can bring this thing to an end. I think the Iranians think they have us by the throat, and I think Trump thinks he has them by the throat. I don't see that changing. What about you?
- [11:24]
A
That's true, but I, I, I guess I have a slightly different sense of the dynamic here, which is that the President keeps alternating between blood curdling threats. You know, either they're going to make a deal or we're going to destroy their whole civilization, you know, or, you know, the guy next to me, Pete Hegseth, he'll take care of it, you know, but the President has been clearly, I mean, after 40 days of strikes, we've now had more ceasefire than we've had kinetic military activity. And he's clearly signaling, whether he intends it or not to the Iranians by these constant postponements that he does not want to go back to kinetic military activity. And the result, I think, is that he's actually hardened their position. I think their position has gotten harder. To your point. I think they think they're winning because they, I mean, they've said this. I mean, they've said that, you know, we've discovered that something that we thought might be a lever for us, we've now proven that it is. And it's the economic equivalent of an atomic bomb. So we don't need the atomic bomb now. We have potentially this control over the strait. That is, of course, one of the issues they're wrestling about. The US rightly is saying we're not going to, you know, tolerate any tolls.
- [12:49]
B
But.
- [12:49]
A
But I have a very bad feeling that when this is all over, you're going to see a lot of environmental fees being charged by Oman and Iran to ships transiting the strait, which, it's a toll by any other name, but it also fits under certain maritime law categories for protect against environmental damage, et cetera, et cetera. So I, you know, I, I think it's very hard for him right now to kind of get out of all this.
- [13:23]
B
No, look, I, I think he clearly found himself in a situation he didn't expect. I mean, I think they expected this to be a very swift operation and to. For the other side either to cave or, or the regime to collapse, and that didn't. And that didn't happen. I think you're right. You know, he would like for this to be over, but he may not be nearly as desperate as people think he is. And even if he's mishandled the negotiations, which I completely accept, I don't think he wants to be the president who lets the nuclear program get away, and I don't think he wants to be the president that really lets them charge tolls on the Straits of Hormuz. And above all, he does not want to be humiliated by these people. I mean, this is, you know, I think part of the key of his. To his personality, and I think it does go to the malignant narcissism of Donald Trump. Is he, you know, the one thing he couldn't bear would be the idea of people laughing at him. You know, that did apparently play some sort of role in the final decision to launch with Maduro. And like I said, I think for the rest, unfortunately, we just have to wait. I mean, this is too Unpredictable. One more thing. He did say one, one interesting thing this week. He said, I don't care about the midterms. Now that may have been a lie, but I don't think it was entirely a lie. This is a very selfish man. He doesn't care if his party gets crushed so long as they, they will probably impeach him, but so long as they can't remove him from office, I don't think he cares.
- [15:03]
A
No, I think, I think there's, I
- [15:05]
B
really don't think he cares.
- [15:06]
A
I think there's a level of truth. I mean, he cares and he doesn't care. I mean, I think it's, you know, he's trying to turn, you know, the fact, I think he's sort of accepted the fact they're going to lose the House. I mean it would be completely contrary to all previous, you know, historical experience of off year elections for them not to lose the House given the, you know, circumstances we have now. So I think in one sense, kind of it's a sunk cost for him. He's written that, you know, written it off and he's trying to turn it into a virtue by saying, look, I'm not allowing political considerations to, you know, to affect my judgment here. It's only, it's only the national interest I care about. Which again is sort of a half truth. You know, I mean, I don't doubt that at some level he does care, as you say, about, you know, not being the president who let them get a nuclear weapon or he says that repeatedly or charge the tolls. Although one does not get the sense that anybody in this administration has thought through sort of, you know, what the, you know, follow on to all this is going to look like. Because let's say as part of this MoU that Iran says we will not charge tolls. You know, there's definitely going to be a. Understood or implied for now because as soon as the US Navy starts to vacate the region and we go back to a more normal status quo antebellum force posture, they'll be able to impose fees, whatever. And what are we going to do about it? Are we going to go back and do this all over again? Maybe. I think more likely we end up going to having a very large presence in the region, much not as big as what we have now, but much larger than what we had on February 28th. And it's going to be a permanent condition which is going to have problem, you know, create problems for us elsewhere in the world because of the inability to move forces.
- [17:17]
B
I mean, as I think I said to you earlier, you know, it reminds me of your old boss Don Rumsfeld's definition of low, low density, high demand assets. Means we didn't buy enough. I mean, I, I always thought it was a crazy idea to think that we could abandon the Middle east, which administrations have wanted to do for a while. You know, it was a reasonable investment of American military power to be there. And, and it, and it still is. We should probably move on a little bit. I, I will briefly flog a piece that I wrote in the Atlantic, which was basically an extended kvetch about the way people comment on this war. And I just want to. Want to highlight one thing, one word which particularly set me off, which I, I went after, which is the use of the word quagmire, which, you know, and in fact, I think I noticed on the Foreign affairs website one day when, you know, I get the Daily Update, they had two articles which had the word quagmire in the title. And the reason why I object to it is it just seems to me there's an awful lot of simplistic thinking about this war, and it's in part because of the demands of 247 commentary. So, for example, you don't have people taking into account the fact that, well, in some ways this is not an independent war. This is a campaign in the course of a war that's been going on for five decades or nearly five decades, which has been costing America.