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- [00:00]
A
It's not clear to me that this is simply a case of villains and heroes, or competence and incompetence, or butchers and techno freaks, or anything remotely like that.
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B
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. I'm joined by my partner in all things Strategia, Elliot Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a contributing writer to the Atlantic. Elliot, you're back from the Great White Wasteland in Canada. How was your trip?
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A
It was fabulous. The scenery is just spectacular. We took this train that goes across the Rockies, double decker, so the glass top. But we also spent a lot of time in a number of towns, and then we ended up in Vancouver, which was glorious. And it wrapped it all up with afternoon tea at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, which I recommend to you. One highlight was at one day at Lake Louise, while I was nursing my aching knees after a hike up to a mountain tea house, somebody comes up to me and says, do you do a podcast? And I don't. I listen to Shield of the Republic every week. And it was turned out. As one of our devoted listeners from Palo Alto, I believe. And I. I apologize, I've forgotten your name, but I appreciated that. I. I have to say, Eric, the only downside was I. I return from this truly idyllic trip and what do I encounter? A model of one of OpenAI's artificial intelligence models breaks loose and begins hacking into all kinds of companies. There's an outbreak of Cyclops psoriasis, whatever that is. So that turns out lettuce will kill you.
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B
And cyclospora.
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A
Yeah, and cyclospora. And the. And the video clip that everybody is watching is the way that orcas hunt sunfish, which it turns out hunt. One grabs it by the tail and the other hurdles into it, smashing it into hundreds of little pieces. And that did kind of make me wish I was still back in western western Canada. But here I am. So I have two pieces of jackass. One is Donald Trump announced that he was going to impose 50% tariffs on Canada, the original rationale being all the smoke that was pouring into the east coast after having first covered a good part of eastern Canada, including Toronto, as a result of these wildfires in Canada, which are enormous, and that this was somehow punishment for them for not taking care of their forests. Now, he's probably not aware that I, I believe the statistic is that the Canadian forests are seven times the size of all of our national parks combined. And you know, there's a, there is a systemic problem as a result of climate change, which I know this administration doesn't particularly believe in, as well as things like beetle infestations which kill pine trees and so on. But the point is this is a monumental problem for everybody and there's no way humans can fix it. I mention it partly because it's so stupid, but, but partly because it's also a piece of what I think is Trump's genuine and deep animosity towards Mark Carney, the, the Canadian Prime Minister, who, who I think is a kind, even though he's not from New York, is a kind of midtown Manhattan sort of guy and represents, I suspect, everything that, that, that Trump hates. And Trump has felt excluded by Harvard, Oxford, International institutions and so on. I have to say it's also been reinforced by Bridge Colby, your successor is Under Secretary of Defense for policy making snide comments about middle powers. I mean, Carney probably shouldn't have given that speech that he did, but, but Colby's response was genuinely juvenile, was I think a sort of a pseudo sophisticates idea of international relations theory. That's one jackassery. The second jackassery is Zaran Mamdani giving, for those of you who are fans of George Orwell's 1984 A Two Minute Hate. And that was a video saying how much he wanted to arrest Bibi Netanyahu for war crimes. Now there are a couple of things that are striking about. There's a very good rebuttal of all this by Douglas Murray in the Free Press, who goes through the full list of lies and distortions and not even half truths, they're more like 1/10 truths in it. But, but I thought, what I thought really struck me about it is first, you know, the, the level of malice and malignity. And it was really quite striking. This wasn't Nice Guy Mamdani. This is the real Mandani, who is in this way and like a lot of the democratic left these days, really possessed with a kind of hate. And it's not just of Netanyahu, it's a hate of Israel. He also, however, managed to do this on the eve of Tisha B'Av, which is the major Jewish fast which at the moment I'm observing, which commemorates the destruction of the first Temple, the second Temple, the expulsion of the last Jews from Spain. In 1492, the fall of the Warsaw ghetto, all which occurred on this day. It was a particularly inept piece of timing, let's just put it that way. So he, he also gets a Jack Asprey award for me.
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B
Well, as to my successor several times removed. You, you can say that I can't possibly comment. Well, I would refer people to the interview he did with Ross Duthad of the New York Times. Quite entertaining. And as to Mamdani, you know, he, he engaged in something which used to drive me crazy when we were in government and I still think is ridiculous, which is the notion that localities should have an opinion about national security. Everyone, of course, is entitled to their own opinion, but the conduct of national security policy is the province of the federal government, mayors, city councils. It should not be opining it's performative politics of the worst kind. And for those on the left who rightly decry Trump's constant performative politics, it's important that when the moat is in your own eye, you take note of it. My jackassery is a less, maybe a little more momentous and serious, which is the President's tweet today in which he tries to respond essentially to the criticism of the not yet signed but not yet publicly made public agreement under Section 123 of the Atomic Energy act between the US Department of Energy and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on nuclear power development for Saudi Arabia. And it's hard to know because we don't know the full text of it. The President was responding to the immediate criticisms people had that the reporting in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and other news outlets about this suggested that it would essentially be opening the door to uranium enrichment by Saudi Arabia without benefit of inspection by the IAEA and in essence open the way for friendly proliferation, if you want to call it that, by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at some point in the future, because they're not subject in this agreement to the so called gold standard of, of these 123 agreements, which the UAE, which signed one in back in 2009, is subject to, which are limits on the ability to enrich uranium. Now, the President said, to be fair, this whole negotiation got started under Biden, although under Biden it was part of a broader effort to bring the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords and lead to the full normalization of relations between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A very worthy objective that both administrations have pursued. But the problem is, in this case, it's been done without reference to the Abraham Accords, and it does have this promise to examine uranium enrichment and it does remove Saudi Arabia from. It doesn't have them signing the ancillary accords to the IAEA that normally go in some kind of agreement like this. So the President's tweeted out, number one, that, you know, this will only happen if Saudi Arabia joins the Abraham Accords post facto. That's not what the Saudis agreed to. And two, that they're not going to be able to enrich uranium. Well, the agreement doesn't say they can enrich uranium now, but it says they can examine with the US the possibility. It clearly is opening the door to that. Why is this also terrible? Well, I think it needs to be put into its broadest historical context here so it's not just appearing as news from nowhere to our listeners and viewers. So, number one, the United States has, since the inception of the nuclear age, worked mightily to prevent other nations from getting access to nuclear weapons. Some critics have called this nuclear apartheid. And to that I say maybe the US is guilty of that, but all in a good cause. This extended, by the way, to Britain. And in 1945, when the war ended, we cut off, even though the development of nuclear weapons was a joint US UK project during World War II, we cut them off as a matter of law from information on nuclear weapons. Britain had to develop its nuclear weapons on its own and only tested its first one. I believe you'll correct me on this, Elliot, but I think it was 52 when they tested their first nuclear weapon. We did not want France to become a nuclear weapons power. We tried to prevent that in the 50s. So this has got longstanding policy. It's what one scholar has called strategies of inhibition that the US has pursued keeping other countries from getting nuclear weapons. This is a long standing part of US Policy. Why was that? Well, in part it's because people who worked in the early days on nuclear deterrence and nuclear strategy, including my predecessor several times removed as Under Secretary of Defense for policy, Freddie Clay and Bernard Brody and some of the other great names in the late 1950s at random, discovered what they called the Nth country problem, which was, it's kind of understandable how you could have a nuclear standoff, a stable deterrence between two nuclear powers. But once you enter other powers into this three powers, much less 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, this becomes a much less stable proposition because how countries react to one another is unclear in certain circumstances. This was something that Secretary of Defense McNamara explained to President Kennedy in a memo that built on this Rand paper, the Nth country problem. And it led President Kennedy, at one point, when asked about six months before he was tragically assassinated at a press conference, what was the thing that kept him up at night the most? And this was in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He said, my biggest fear is that at the end of the decade, that would have been 1970, we will have 9, 10, 20 nuclear powers, 30 maybe. And in fact, we're 60 years on from the Cuban Missile Crisis plus, and we only have 9 nuclear weapons powers. And that's because there's been a tremendous effort to prevent other states from getting nuclear weapons. Part of that has been U.S. security guarantees, our NATO treaty, our bilateral treaty with other countries, which were premised on a tacit bargain. We will extend our nuclear umbrella over you if you forego nuclear weapons. And that was important in East Asia. And Japan, as a matter of its constitution, foreswore the development of nuclear weapons. Germany similarly ended up not pursuing nuclear weapons, although Conrad Edenhauer in the 1950s was very concerned that Germany was being singled out, singularized as not being a nuclear weapons state after Britain and France had, you know, develop nuclear weapons. So this is a long standing policy and Trump is really carelessly calling it into question and casting it away, in part because he's been a very, you know, inconstant steward of our security guarantees to other countries. He's attacked our allies. He's now launched a war against Iran that has demonstrated he's not completely capable of protecting our Gulf allies from Iranian attacks. We don't know. We'll get to that subject in a few minutes. But, you know, from their point of view, he may well walk away from this, leave them to wrestle with Iran on their own, in which case they may, you know, want their own nuclear weapons. And this was a, I think, an example of what happens when you've got no process in government that will inform senior leaders of traditional policies, why they're there, the reasons for them, and the second and third order consequences of decisions you're making on the fly. And so it doesn't seem like a big deal. Maybe to a lot of people, it's a terribly big deal, because the Nth country problem remains, the more countries that have nuclear weapons, the more unstable the world we're going to live in, and the more likely it will be that at some point somebody will use these things in anger, which has not happened since 1945.
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A
I basically agree with everything you said and the urgency with which you said it. I Suspect with regard to Trump, that process part is probably in some ways the most important part of it, that these guys do not do careful diplomacy. And careful diplomacy includes knowing the history of the issue, of course, but also just how you go about drafting up agreements and stuff. I suspect also that he did not view this in the context so much of nuclear proliferation and nuclear issues in general as of the Gulf and a situation where the Saudis now find themselves, you know, blockaded at two ends, both the Strait of Hormuz and the, and the Bab El Mande. Now, the other thing I would say is, you know, on the one hand, we did have a lot of success in counter proliferation, not entirely. You know, the French still got weapons. We did lean on the Israelis pretty hard at one point, but we weren't able to prevent that. On the other hand, you know, in
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B
retrospect, North Korea, Pakistan and India.
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A
Well, right. But, you know, successes were countries like Argentina, South Korea, Taiwan, maybe even Sweden.
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B
So Iraq.
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A
Yeah, well, Iraq. The Israelis gave us some help with that at one stage, and then we finished, we finished the job. You know, I. Nuclear proliferation to responsible governments has not been such a bad thing. The problem is it doesn't stop there. But am I unhappy that there's a French or British nuclear deterrent? No. And actually I'd like the British nuclear deterrent to be modernized in the way the French deterrent is, not because it could substitute for us, but, but because it increases uncertainty on, on the part of the, on the part of the Russians. I, I also think, and, and by the way, we've been infinitely more responsible than say, the Russians and the Chinese, who, when you look at the history of the North Korean program, you know, they got a reactor and it was a reactor without safeguards, which has then allowed them to proceed. And there's also their Chinese, Pakistani questions as well. What I would say, though, is part of, I think what we're seeing is because of the unreliability of the United States as a guarantor and sometimes, alas, even as a sworn ally, I just think we're going to see more of it. And, you know, I completely agree with, you know, the basic sentiment, and I agree we should try to slow it down. But, but I also think part of our responsibility of people who think about these matters is to say, okay, what's, what's that new world going to be like? Because we, we did buy ourselves time. We had no idea what to do with that time, and that's kind of run out. We should, we should probably Move on. I, I guess the first issue that I'd like to raise with you is somebody who we both knew who just passed away, and that's Senator Lindsey Graham. And, you know, there have been very different reactions to his passing. There have been some people who said, look, he sold his soul to Trump. And, you know, it's a, it's a shameful degradation of a guy who was a close friend of two pretty principled politicians, Joe Lieberman and John McCain. You know, you and I both had the privilege of traveling with all three of them on more than one occasion. Then there are others who say, okay, yeah, he pay a compromise of his principles, but the result is he exercised some real influence on policy, particularly on, on Ukraine, which he had just come back from. So I'm curious, where do you, where you do, do you fall out on that spectrum? I, I have my own views, but I'm curious to hear yours.
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B
Yeah, I, Yes, I, I mean, I discussed this with, with our colleague Mona Charon on her show, you know, last week. So, man, I think, and I'll just repeat really pretty much what I said with Mona. I, you know, to me, Lindsay's really kind of a sad, tragic figure. And, you know, I say that because you and I know from talking to, you know, several of his Senate colleagues that they themselves saw kind of some of the psychology that, you know, was at work within Lindsey. So first, I agree, he, he played a very positive role when he was part of the Three Amigos with Joe Lieberman and, and John McCain traveling around the world, drawing attention to Russian aggression, drawing attention to Chinese human rights violations, drawing attention to what was going on in the civil war in Syria. I mean, there were lots of things that the three of them did together that were praiseworthy and deserve recognition and approbation for the positive role that they played both when George W. Bush was president, but also in particular, I would say, in opposition when, when Barack Obama was president. To go back to kind of Lindsey's personal, kind of psychological kind of demons, he was someone who tragically lost his father at an early age and became the head of a household. And it was, I think, palpably obvious to many of his colleagues that he was someone who was his throughout his whole life in search of a proving, you know, father figure. And when he came to The Senate, John McCain, you know, luckily for us and for Lindsay was that figure. But like a lot of people who are facing a, you know, a family member or a bous who is fighting a terrible disease, Lindsay did a lot of his grieving before John McCain even had passed and was already in the process as Senator McCain was in his final decline and sadly passing, transferring that father figure from, you know, from McCain to Trump. And what drove that, I think, was Trump being slightly older than Lindsey in a very powerful position, obviously, as President of the United States. But kind of the other driving force for Lindsey as a politician was the drive to remain relevant. I heard him say this any number of times sitting next to him at various dinners in Washington and as a Republican member of the Senate. The only way to remain relevant, despite all of the things that Lindsey said about Trump in 2016, when Lindsey was one of the candidates running for president against Trump, all of his observations about Trump were absolutely correct. And they were, by the way, among the observations we made in the Never Trump letter that you and I both signed in March of 2016. It was that compulsion to be relevant that I think drove him to compromise all sorts of views. I'm sure he justified it to himself as, I'm going to be a Trump whisperer. I'm going to influence Trump. I'm going to get him to do the right thing. And he certainly tried to do that on Ukraine, he tried to do it on some other issues. But in the end, I'm not sure that the juice was worth the squeeze and all that. I'm not sure he got what he would have hoped for out of Trump. And I think the price he will have paid is that his legacy and his reputation will end up being much diminished by the last decade of his political life.
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A
So, first, I think you're spot on about that quest for a father figure, and McCain really was that to him. And I think there is something to the idea that he sort of shifted some of that to Trump. I think that quest to be relevant, that's not just active politicians, but you and I both know a lot of former senior officials who, unlike the two of us who are perfectly happy just to pick up our slingshots and try to take out windows here and there, actually want to continue to play.
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B
There's a great virtue in being irrelevant.
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A
Yeah, yeah, there is. It's called intellectual independence and integrity. But I guess I come out slightly differently in the end. You know, the. I think that there were two different pieces about him, which I was very struck by. One both by friends of ours, Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic, Bret Stephens in the New York Times, and being very critical, I think Bret Stephens actually being much more retrospectively approving, say, him saying, look, yeah, I took these principled stands and had absolutely no influence. He had some. Here's my take. I think. It was partially rationalization, but it was partly real. I do think, actually, he moved Trump on Ukraine. I don't think that we. People like you and I, have stepped back enough to appreciate that we have not ended up where so many Trump critics, and I don't mean the crazy ones, I mean the perfectly sane ones, thought we were going to end up with Trump ramming a truly awful deal down Ukraine's throat. And instead we got. We're in a much, much better place than I think most of us, very much, myself included, thought we'd ever be. I think Lindsey Graham played a role in that. I also think there's a bit of a tell in that Trump's reaction to Graham's passing had the feel, actually, of genuine emotion and of genuine loss. And I suspect that that's somehow real. I mean, I don't want to go too far into Trump's psyche, but I. But my. You know, just the things he said, the way he said it were, you know, when people asked him about who should succeed, we said, you know, it's too soon for that. I mean, he's. You know, I'm grieving about this. I think there was somewhere in there some genuine sense of loss. The way I frame it is this. I think Lyn Lindsay did what he did for. From the mixed motives that we've discussed, I think he achieved some of the influence that he wanted to achieve. And that's. You know, that phenomenon is not an uncommon one. The problem is you pay a.
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B
I
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A
don't want to sound too mystical, have a psychic or a spiritual or an ethical price for it. You sell a little piece of your soul. And, And. And the fact. Now, the fact that you sell a little piece of your soul or you lose a little piece of your soul doesn't mean that you don't accomplish anything. You know, it's not the case. You sell your soul and you get nothing. He got. He achieved something worthy of achievement. But the price was one that I think is a. A very, very heavy one that, you know, you and I would not be willing to pay, but other people could see the argument for paying.
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B
Yeah, I hear that. I guess. I think it's a little early to tell where we really are with Trump and Ukraine, and I'm more inclined to. Lindsey may have had some influence. I think it was pretty marginal. I think the thing that's changed Trump on Ukraine more than anything else has been Ukrainian success.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And that Trump, you know, he likes a winner. And, you know, right now, kind of Ukraine is, you know, more or less winning on the battlefield, which is probably a good point for us to turn to Ukraine, I mean, because there's some pretty dramatic events going on in Kyiv right now. And I wonder if you, you know, want to talk a little bit about what's gone on there, because it goes to issues of civil military affairs close to both of our hearts.
- [28:40]
A
Yeah. If I'll just add one, one little thought about Lindsey Graham in Ukraine. Trump needs to have somebody telling him that the Ukrainians are winning because he won't know it on his own. I suspect that that's what Graham did. So the issue in Ukraine recently is Michal Fedorov, the defense minister in his, I think, mid to late 30s, who'd been kind of a key figure in the development of Ukrainian high tech, got into a real standoff with General Oleksandr Syrsky, age 60, who's been the commander in chief throughout most of the war. Zelensky resolved it by firing Fedorov. You had a series of public demonstrations. You had people, senior general officers, openly dissenting from this. Zelensky turned around and fired Syrsky and has replaced him with a general in his early 40s named Mikhailo Drapti, who is very much of the. The new generation of Ukrainian generals. Much more high tech, I think, much more in line with Fedorov's vision, which was built around unmanned systems and so on. And it remains to be seen if it's possible that Fedorov may come back as defense minister or in some other position. So, you know, know, there's a lot of reaction in the press about, oh, this is terrible, that, you know, this kind of internal divisiveness and so on. And I'm not so sure. You know, my feeling is we shouldn't judge this as a civil military relations episode against the standard of, say, the United States today, well established democracy, well established norm.