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- [00:34]
Abe Greenwald
Hope for the best, expect the worst.
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John Podhoretz
Some preacher pain Some die of thirst.
- [00:45]
Abe Greenwald
No way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the.
- [00:52]
John Podhoretz
Worst Hope for the best welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily Podcast. Today is Thursday, February 13, 2025. I am John Pothoricz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe.
- [01:07]
Matthew Continetti
Hi John.
- [01:08]
John Podhoretz
Social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi Christine.
- [01:11]
Christine Rosen
Hi John.
- [01:12]
John Podhoretz
And Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti.
- [01:15]
Abe Greenwald
Hi Matt. Hi John.
- [01:16]
John Podhoretz
I'm having trouble speaking the English language today, so I may have to forbear and have you guys discuss the epical news yesterday about Ukraine, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin having a 90 minute phone call, both doing readouts afterwards that made it clear that they were very much in harmony about the need to end the war. And Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary in Germany, saying that it was unrealistic for Ukraine to expect to return to pre war borders. The administration therefore violating Trump's own negotiating principle, which is that it seems to be negotiating with itself on just how far it's willing to go to side essentially take Putin's side in the war. Is that an unfair characterization, do you think?
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Abe Greenwald
Matt yeah, I do. So if I were the Trump administration, I would not have gone to Europe and say Ukraine's never going to recover its 2014 borders, Ukraine's never going to be a member of NATO. But even if I wouldn't have said that out loud, everyone in the room would have thought it. So what Pete Hegseth really did in going to Europe was make the subtext text. He said what everyone is thinking out loud. And when you look at say, David Ignatius column in the Washington Post today, you find other parts of the speech that were not the headlines that actually gave the Ukrainians some confidence that they are not being thrown overboard just yet. And what are those signs of confidence? One is the idea of a demilitarized zone along the current line of control that would be backed by peacekeeping forces now again because of America. First Hegseth went out of his way to say there would be no Americans involved in this peacekeeping force. And this would not be a NATO mission because they don't want the Article 5 clause to be triggered if the peacekeeping forces come under attack. However, from the Ukrainian standpoint, that would be a sign of confidence in Ukraine because it would involve some type of security guarantee. Now, the outstanding security guarantee that the Ukrainians would like is the idea that America would support the peacekeeping force should it come under attack. And that might end up not being the case. But I think that everyone went to the headline here, which was the quiet part out loud and which is disappointing for many of Ukraine supporters, including myself, but it is also something of a reality will have to face. Just one more thing on the Trump Putin call. Trump is now the fifth consecutive president to want to begin his presidency repairing relations with Russia. And it always fails. You know, by the time Trump was president and having launched into his good relationship with Russia, or trying to, he was of course hampered by the Russian collusion scandal. Then he had the disastrous meeting with Putin at Helsinki. And then by the end of his term, he was actually quite adversarial toward Russia. And when you consider the weapons that were flowing to Ukraine, the fact that our forces destroyed a Wagner group brigade in Syria in 2018. So I have a feeling that this is going to work out the same way. And in fact, if I were maga, I'd be a little bit worried because the last time we were talking about European peacekeeping forces in the Balkans, America ended up becoming involved.
- [05:22]
John Podhoretz
That was 1998, of course. So. Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna bite back at you because the issue that I'm, I'm going with here is not that Hagseth didn't say the quiet part out loud, that's fine. I actually don't like the idea of stringing along policies when the policies are no longer extant. That's a famous. There was a moment in 2002 when the George W. Bush administration decided to announce to end the fiction and say that North Korea actually had gone nuclear. And the world greeted this with horror because the idea is don't, don't acknowledge that they've gone nuclear, because then that puts you. That means you have to sort of devise policies to deal with the fact that it's gone nuclear, which was true, but it's also has the. We shouldn't be lying or misleading people. And if you genuinely believe that, you know, this war is a disaster and should be ended. And as Trump says, he just doesn't like to see people dying, he Wants to end, he wants to stop people dying, then fine. What you, what you shouldn't be doing is negotiating the terms of Ukraine's surrender for Russia in public before Russia, Ukraine, the United States, the Europeans who are, are like actually at the negotiating table. It's a very peculiar way of going about things. It's not right. And there's an interesting aspect to the response yesterday. I noted among MAGA types and sort of peaceniks who have never been enthusiastic, to put it mildly, about, about our involvement with, in the Ukraine, in the war on Ukraine's side, which is that a lot of it seemed aimed at neocons. It's a lot of like, you see, we always said this war was never going to work. And you know, you know, I hope you all are happy now. It's been three years, it'll be three years next week that the, that the Russians invaded. I hope you're all happy now because we were right. There was. This war had no purpose and it should never have, you know, and so we're right and you were wrong. Well, okay, so let's rewind the tape to February 20th, 22nd, and Russia invades Ukraine with no casus belli whatsoever. And we don't intervene or the initial invasion goes really well. Let's just say the trucks don't, the tanks don't bog down in the mud, the Ukrainians don't respond. Zelensky actually gets on the plane to leave to exile instead of, you know, staying and saying, I don't need a ride, I need what I need, I need weapons. Russia would have taken over Ukraine. I mean, Russia would have, rather than spending three years in a grinding battle that has weakened Russia, which we should want and has, you know, has shown the world that, you know, aggression of this sort should and can be met with extraordinary resistance. We would be in a much less safe place than we are. We're not in a particularly safe world. Now, don't get me wrong, but at the very least, this idea that MAGA has that they're, they're triumphing now because they were right, that this was always a mistake, our involvement in this was always a mistake. Our involvement with this is a mistake only in the sense that we did it badly. We didn't, we did not give enough support to Ukraine to help it win. We gave it enough support so that it should be in this position of extraordinary World War I style stalemate with, with Russia, where Russia is, does have a bunch of Ukrainian territory, a little bit of Ukrainian territory has won since 2022, and Russia has, and Ukraine has a bit of Russian territory which it has seized and taken literally to have a negotiating chip when you get to negotiations, because there can be land swaps, you know, like, we'll give you back your strip, you give us back our strip and we'll go back to where we were.
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Abe Greenwald
Well, that, that's what Zelensky is saying. I mean, look, there's, it's three different positions. The United States set out its position yesterday. Zelensky seems open to hit for a variety of reasons. I mean, they have.
- [10:01]
John Podhoretz
What choice does he have?
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Abe Greenwald
Yeah, they have this huge manpower deficit is the fact of the matter. The war is grinding on Ukrainians and yes, what choice does he have? He's, he's very reliant on the aid from the United States and to a far lesser degree, Europe. But then there's Russia. And I think you're right to bring up the initial invasion because what were Putin's war aims? Certainly he wanted to seize the eastern parts of Ukraine that are culturally closer to Russia, let's say, and where he had been financing this low grade insurgency since 2014. But he wanted to topple the government. He wanted what he calls the denazification of Ukraine, essentially wants to turn Ukraine into a neutral state and he wants to be able to control it just like he controls the Republic of Georgia and to a greater extent or, you know, slightly different relationship, how he controls Belarus. So if the Trump plan is actually the settlement, Putin doesn't get what he wants. Right. He gets what he controls now. He gets an end to the war and the potential to restock. But Zelensky government is in place. There is a free Ukraine that has the potential, by the way. So NATO's left out, but the European Union was not mentioned in this speech.
- [11:45]
John Podhoretz
We should explain this maybe to people who don't. So since 2004, actually since 1993, when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons on the table, in theory, in the future, there have been two possible carrots for Ukraine, if it is a, you know, if it's like a good actor on the world stage. One, membership in the European Union and second, membership in NATO. So that's actually been more than 30 years since that has been on the table.
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Abe Greenwald
Well, the EU for sure. I mean, NATO of course, was proffered in 2007, along with Georgia. This idea of a potential member action plan for Ukraine and Georgia, which in a way set the ball rolling for the conflict we have today. And just finally, if the Trump settlement's enacted or what we can glean from it, based on these initial comments, there would be a European troops along with the Ukrainian military, which is still now the largest military on the continent. Right. So other than Russia's. Yeah. So I'm not sure Putin is going to see this as a win if this is what they get to, or even if it's possible to get to a place where we consider the settlement.
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Christine Rosen
But he did get the deference from Trump that he desired that the call first went to Putin and it did feel. And then later in his Truth Social post, Trump said, I will inform Zelensky of our conversation, very much sidelining Zelensky in negotiations about the war that he is overseeing, you know, and helping his people. I just found the contrast, we were talking the other day about how Trump spoke about Hamas. And I find the contrast in the way his tone, his rhetoric, his willingness to talk about concessions in advance of any actual negotiation with Putin very different from his rhetoric with Hamas. Obviously, very different situations. But, you know, we did just get an American hostage back from Russia, and I'm wondering, and I know that Zelensky is going to meet with Vice President J.D. vance at the Munich conference this week. So I wonder if there's some behind the scenes stuff going on that we're not hearing about. I hope that's the case in terms of making sure Zelensky doesn't remain on the sidelines of some of this. But I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I didn't like how congenial the tone was that, that Trump had with Putin, quite frankly.
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Matthew Continetti
I mean, if the, if the, if the, it depends on the details here. If, if the end to the war freezes the, what Russia has now of Ukraine, that's 20% of Ukraine, roughly, you could say Putin didn't win. He won 20% of Ukraine. He's expanded Russia into Ukraine. He has a, he has another, he's, he's, he's, he's moved the, the, the frontier for Russian military forward. You know, we had John, your sister Ruthie on the podcast the other day making a very poignant, excellent point about Israelis who don't want to stop fighting Hamas because they have lost loved ones in that fight and they don't want it for nothing. Ukrainians have lost a lot of people here. And I don't trust for a second that some future date Putin doesn't go for more and that the response to it will be wanting.
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Christine Rosen
I mean, look, particularly if America's not backing whatever security agreement the next Democratic.
- [15:26]
Abe Greenwald
President is, when he would go for more.
- [15:28]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, but look, the other thing is Trump. Trump engaged in a pretty terrible moral equivalence yesterday, by which I mean, he says there are too many dead, you know, too. I want. Just want to stop the kill. You know, there are too many dead people. I mean, I. I don't want to be naive or sound, you know, mushy or anything like that, but the way to stop the people from dying is for Russia to withdraw. Ukraine has no territorial ambitions on. Ukraine doesn't want to fight a war with Russia. Ukraine is in a pure. Is fighting a defensive war to save its country from being swallowed up by the Russian bear. And these are not equivalencies. The fact that Ukraine is killing Russian soldiers and that Russia's killing Ukraine soldiers are not equivalent. Ukraine would be happy never to kill another Russian soldier. The Russians are the ones who will not relent. And so Trump said it's not. Hegza said, it's not realistic for us, for the world to expect that, you know, Russia will withdraw from territory that it's captured. And I understand that as a great PowerPoint or, you know, being. Being like a serious person in a dangerous world, working with bad actors. That is true. But we are at risk of equalizing a completely unjustified invasion of a smaller country by a larger and more powerful country solely because it made the miscalculation that it should go into Ukraine in the first place. And I do think it's a miscalculation. I think probably Putin thinks it's a miscalculation. I mean, yes, they've expanded 20% into Ukraine. This was not what he thought he was going to get. He thought he was going to get to Kiev and take the country effectively, if not, you know, if not annexing it. But, you know, ideologically, there is this entire movement inside Russia. We've published articles about it by Leon, Aaron and others. This idea that Russian civilization actually originates in Kyiv, Kievan Rus, and that Novo Russia, a project to return Russia to its roots can only be done by. By. By. By swallowing up Ukraine. Ukraine didn't start this war. Ukraine has been astoundingly brave and creative and inventive and effective in stalling Russia or, you know, denying its advance. And even if we are determined now to end this and move on, it will be a great moral stain against the United States if we allow history to somehow record that, you know, there were these Russians and these Ukrainians and they couldn't get along. And then they had this big war, and then, you know, Russia got a bunch of Ukraine. And, you know, then things moved on. A world in which Russia had been allowed to swallow up Ukraine without any resistance. That's the second green light of the 2000 and twenties. That would have been after Afghanistan. That would have been just it's open season on the planet Earth. 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- [22:13]
Christine Rosen
Sorry to interrupt, but there are two sort of symbolic things that happened as well in this in yesterday's Russia, Ukraine news cycle, which is that Trump said, I'm going to meet with Putin. He didn't say where. It's probably not going to he's not going to invite Putin to the US Yet. But he's talked about going to Moscow himself or maybe meeting in neutral territory again, bringing Putin back into the fold in the sense of treating him in a way not as someone who started a war against an independent nation, but, you know, as someone he can negotiate with. And then Tulsi Gabbard's swearing in, where he was asked a direct question about Ukraine. Do you see Ukraine as a player, equal player in the peace process or some question like that? And he didn't say, yes. He paused and he said, well, that's an interesting question. We want peace. That is not the, I mean, the question of is Ukraine, does Ukraine get to decide its own fate and future in negotiating the end of this war? An American president should say, yes, they are an independent country. That has that right. And he didn't. And so again, it's always a fool's errand to try to read tea leaves in the immediate responses of Trump to any press question. But I just found that particularly telling in terms of coming on the heels of his other statement.
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Abe Greenwald
I think we should just look at it from the other end of the telescope. MAGA wanted Trump to cut off military aid to Ukraine on day one. They have no problem with Putin fulfilling his original goals that I outlined or taking going into Kiev and putting Zelensky on trial or something. Trump hasn't done that. In fact, my understanding is that the aid to Ukraine continues to flow despite the spending freeze. And interestingly, again, my understanding is that our aid to Taiwan is not is part of the freeze. Okay, so it's still going to Ukraine. We have Scott Besant, the Treasury secretary, going to meet with Zelensky or officials in Ukraine to talk about this rare earths deal, right? Where Zelensky is like, sure, we're going to give you access to our rare earth minerals in order to make it attractive to you to continue to support us. And again, there's this idea that we're going to play some sort of role in backstopping or at least supporting the peacekeeping force. So if you're, if you are an isolationist, you're looking at this and you're saying, oh, gosh, I mean, this is just going to be a mess. And quagmire, it's not, it's not what we want. And so I think that there's a way to look at what's happening and say that it's not a total abandonment. It's clearly not what people who would like Ukraine to recover its original borders and be independent and part of the west would want. But the only way, it seems to me, for Ukraine to actually recover some of this territory in the east, much less in Crimea, which has been annexed since 2014, is for America to intervene. And that's not going to happen. So you have to think about, well, what are the other alternatives?
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John Podhoretz
I mean, look, the tragedy here, and we've been saying it for three years. We've said it. We said it really after a couple of months that the war was in when the United States started denying Ukraine access to the best weaponry that we could have sent them for the purposes of reversing the Russian advance.
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Abe Greenwald
Right.
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John Podhoretz
And I mean, how, how often, five days a week, we do this podcast. How often did we say, why are they doing this? They say they want Ukraine to win. Why are they den them tanks?
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Abe Greenwald
Every single system, Right?
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John Podhoretz
Yeah, they denied them tanks, they denied them planes, they denied them anti missile weaponry.
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Abe Greenwald
Attack. Then the limits on the attack that eventually they lifted.
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John Podhoretz
But, yeah, but I mean, and so it would be a year until they would relent and say, okay, well, we'll send you some Abrams tanks. Okay, we'll send you some attacks. Okay? And it, it, it was always baffling because there was this idea that we should back Ukraine, but, you know, we needed to be careful because Russia has nuclear weapons. And there was always a terrible confusion here in relation to this, because if Russia wasn't going to use nuclear weapons to begin with, Russia wasn't going to use nuclear weapons at all when it got bogged down. And we're designing this policy where we talk like what we want is for Ukraine to remain free and independent and return to its borders. And then the Biden administration was pursuing policies that Made that goal, our stated goal, not Zelensky say go. Our stated goal impossible to achieve when not a single American soldier would have been involved. It was just weaponry. And what did Ukraine do? Again, just, you know, in the sort of annals of warfare, it had some, it didn't have much, and it started going crazy with innovation. These drone attacks, this, you know, sort of all kinds of stuff that it sort of pulled off the shelf or very cleverly handled. And at some point we're going to find out how that happened or what, what the story there was. But it's not as though we were backing a kind of ludicrous Third World army that had no shot. It was something else. And if we do a counter history again, where it's not that Zelensky is there and then we put our money where our mouth is, Trump may not have found himself in this position at all because Ukraine might have forced Russia to withdraw. I mean, Russia has suffered insane losses. I mean, according to the Institute for the Study of War, I think According to them, 350 to 400,000 Russians have died, soldiers and civilians have died in the war. Ukraine has a terrible manpower. I mean, we don't know what the death toll is in Ukraine, and I'm sure it's horrendous beyond belief, but we don't. The Ukrainians are amazing. They've been amazing in defense of themselves, and they don't. To end the war like this, we're going to impose it on them. That's the oddity. It's.
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Matthew Continetti
The entirety of it is a terrible moment for the US Because.
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Abe Greenwald
Putin had.
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Matthew Continetti
Us paralyzed from the start and he knew it. The Biden administration broadcast its fear of Putin and his nuclear capabilities from the start and continually. It's what Tony Blinken went out of office, in his, out of the government, in his interview, saying that, that his whole approach to Ukraine was balancing, giving the Ukrainians something without triggering this. These are these, these red lines. We essentially told Putin every day, we fear you. And once he knew that, it was over.
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John Podhoretz
So, I mean, Trump. The other thing is that this is elective in the sense that Trump didn't have to take this on as an early priority. He could have let it go. He did say he wanted to. You know, he could, he could, he could end the war on day one. So I guess now that this is, you know, week four and they're not even, they haven't scheduled a meeting or anything even, you know, he didn't, he didn't mean it or he actually, you know, was just playing rhetorical games. And of course, he did say, and I believe this to be true, I think we all believe this to be true, that this war would not have happened had he been president in 2022, that now maybe it would have. Because maybe he would have. He would have staged a terrible withdrawal from Afghanistan. We don't know what would have happened under those conditions. We really don't. He was the author of the Afghanistan withdrawal, the original determination to withdraw from Afghanistan. But let's assume that it had gone better under a second. Under a second, you know, Trump, if Trump had been reelected, there wouldn't have been an invasion of Ukraine. It wouldn't be on his plate. So, you know, this is. The what ifs here are just. Matt, to me, are just maddening.
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Abe Greenwald
And this.
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John Podhoretz
This is a terrible tragedy that is going to destabilize Europe. I don't think it empowers Putin because he's just in such terrible shape and his military is in such terrible shape that our greatest fear, which would have been that he would have rolled up Ukraine and then started casting his eye on the Baltic states. That was the real. Or like, really challenging NATO, right. Really challenging Article 5 of NATO by going after Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which are members of NATO, and triggering the idea that an attack on one country is an attack on all NATO countries. And then we really would have been in the soup. And I can't imagine that that is anything that is a threat for, you know, but sometime to come. And at a minimum.
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Christine Rosen
But can we step back and look at what message Trump is now projecting to the rest of the world? Because I don't think it's necessarily. I mean, I share. We've talked for years now about the Biden administration's message of weakness that was projected around the globe. But the Trump message is, I'm. I'm going to end this war. I can stop this war on day one. He said it about the Middle Eastern conflict. He said it about. He's saying it about Russia. The idea of how that I can stop a war. I want to end the war. I mean, that's a perfectly legitimate goal. But the means matter here because the aggressor should not be rewarded with territory and no consequences and no threats of future security coming in and stopping them if they become aggressive again, what messages this send to China, for example, if they want to go into Taiwan. So he. The I just don't want wars actually is an isolationist message. And the means matter now, because if he's trying to do some of this to satisfy his MAGA base. They will be quite satisfied if he can go around saying, look, I stopped all these wars, stopped the war in the Middle East. I stopped the war in Russia and Ukraine. I mean, what does that mean for deterrence to other aggressors? We have enemies. We have. And he is not treating our enemies as enemies right now. He's treating them as dealmakers.
- [32:55]
Abe Greenwald
I do think that there are plenty examples of Americans settling for half a loaf in conflicts. I mean, I mentioned the Korean peninsula, which has been divided right now for, you know, 72 years. Vietnam, of course, was supposed to be divided, but after Watergate and the Democratic Congress withdrawal of aid, North Vietnam took over South Vietnam, Iraq, in 1991, we did not topple Saddam Hussein, causing over a decade plus now of problems. So I don't think this would be out of the ordinary if we decide if we somehow reach a peace agreement where Ukraine is partitioned. As much as I find that unfortunate. And I would just say, too, I mean, this is Trump. He, he seems to me to be developing a view that there should be spheres of influence in the world and we have our, our area. Neo Manifest Destiny, Western Hemisphere. We're going to get Greenland. Canada is going to become the 51st state. We're going to take over the Panama Canal once more, and that's that. And this is our Monroe Doctrine, right? Europe, that's going to be Europe's problem and Russia's, as he said. And again, I don't agree with it, but as he said, well, Ukraine, maybe Ukraine will be Russian one day again, or maybe it won't be. That's, that's Europe and that's Russia. And I do think Taiwan now is in play, from what I understand. That's because that's China, that's East Asia. That's, that's a different set of powers at work. It's not ours. This is a very different view of American foreign policy since basically 1945. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, the. I think Woodrow Wilson had a, you know, a different global vision, but that was interrupted by the Republican era of the 1920s. So I think we need to begin thinking like that. And our. And for those of us who disagree with it, formulating new arguments for a continued American presence in the world.
- [35:18]
John Podhoretz
Well, Christine's argument is the ultimate argument. I mean, it's not an, it's not, it's not rallying, it's not ennobling, and it doesn't sort of give us the sense of, you know, America's Great purpose, but at the very least, the idea that we need to stand for an appropriate world order because the deterrence. What's going to be deterred if we do that are the threats to our economic security and stability and demands on us if things really go haywire, that will be much more severe than we would wish that we could nip in the bud if we simply pursued policies of deterrence. America had this same fight after the Soviet takeover of Greece and Turkey or attempted takeovers of Greece and Turkey in the wake of World War II and the Division of the world into kind of these weird spheres of influence at Yalta. And the kind of the consensus position that was come to that most people didn't really like was deterrence, right? It was, you know, very conservative people wanted America to work to roll back communism, and very liberal people wanted America to accommodate communism or at least see positive aspects of a world in which progressive ideas of this sort were being worked out and the America kind of settled on walk. Walked backward into deterrence and containment as the. As the way we were. And. And it became. And it was very difficult, right, because it ended up with mutual assured destruction, which was a very hard policy to kind of defend morally.
- [37:04]
Abe Greenwald
Two wars.
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John Podhoretz
Two wars. I mean, a lot of bad stuff happened. But you wonder, then you look and you see, well, the proof in the pudding is in the eating. The Soviet Union collapsed 42 years after George Kennan wrote the article that laid out this essential policy of deterrence. In 1947. He was the Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, a position. Now, this is an interesting point because the Director of Policy Planning at the Pentagon and the Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, one at the Pentagon, is going to be Elbridge Colby.
- [37:37]
Abe Greenwald
He's nominated.
- [37:37]
John Podhoretz
He has nominated and. And also nominated Michael Anton for Policy Planning at State. And they are both MAGA to the core. And here's the great challenge. So Elbridge Colby's argument in a book he published and others, is we're being distracted by globalism because there's really only one threat, and that threat is China, and that is we need to focus on East Asia and contain China, because that's really where our future danger lies. But if you push that argument with him and the people who have been advancing it, like saying, what are you bothering with this Zelensky nonsense for? We don't have a Putin's not a threat to us, right? But then it's like, okay, well, what. So what's your China policy exactly? What happens if China invades Taiwan. And they essentially say, well, if China actually ends up invading Taiwan, there's nothing we can do.
- [38:34]
Christine Rosen
Well, and. But there's two other parts here. It's not just about aggressive military action by a perceived enemy or a perceived rival power globally, economically. And this is the debate about tariffs. You actually can't be isolationist and set that aside. Do you know what took us to foreign countries during a time of peace? Terrorists came to this country and started blowing things up. And that is unfortunate. When that happens, we have to respond.
- [38:59]
Abe Greenwald
I think that's an important point because I don't believe that you can sustain America's global presence without a sense of direct threat to the American home.
- [39:12]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [39:12]
Abe Greenwald
And Americans hated communism. It was godless communism that threatened to destroy the world and religion and Christianity and everything. The family and Russia got the bomb because of communist spies in our government. And so there was a dual threat that people felt not just that the Soviet Union was on the march and then China fell to communists, but also that there were communists within the American government and American society that were undermining this country. I think the lesson of the post Cold War era is that it's very hard to convince the American people that America should be the global leader based on how well it performs for other countries or without a direct threat to the United states. So when 911 happened, we were hit, we were hurt. And he said, we need to go back and we need to invade Afghanistan, invade Iraq, and create this whole architecture to protect the homeland from terrorist attack. But as. As the sense of threat from terrorism has faded in my view, incorrectly, it's. Again, it's harder to make that argument. And Americans do not feel a threat from what's happening in Russia and Ukraine. It's not on the radar. They look at it, they say, that's terrible. It's awful. Why are they fighting? I wish they stop.
- [40:38]
John Podhoretz
Hard case to make. I mean, it's always that. My point is that it's always been a hard case to make. We ended up in ancillary conflicts with the Soviet Union for 40 years. Right. Korea and Vietnam and other conflicts that we paid for were sort of involved in that. We weren't directly fighting Nicaragua, Angola, other places like that. And the idea is we need to counter their growth. We need to stymie them and basically mire them in mud until, as Kennan said in his article, the sources of Soviet conduct, his famous telegram that he wrote to. To explain a new policy, they. They fall apart of their own internal contradictions. And if this is the Thing I reason I brought up Colby and Anton and their role in making policy at the Pentagon and at State. They. There's something. There was a misdirection here because I don't believe that they're actually hawkish on China.
- [41:39]
Abe Greenwald
Is.
- [41:40]
John Podhoretz
That was part of the point that I'm trying to make the, the credible threat to China of a, of a, of a worldwide response. Should it take, should it take time, try to take. Taiwan is very important. And if you start taking that off the table in your argument that we need to get tough on China so it doesn't take over Taiwan, there's something very suspicious making about whether or not you were advancing that argument in good faith or whether you're just. We're just trying to say don't get involved over here in Ukraine. We got bigger fish to fry over here. And the problem is that foreign policy of this sort that is intended, as I say, to head bad things off at the pass. As Christine would say, it's not that popular. I mean, it never was. It can't be. Yeah. Because as Matt says, like, what's the direct threat to us? And we have a real problem articulating the direct threat from China. We do it in this weird piecemeal way. On the one hand, we are desperate, we are incredibly involved to the extent that we can be in the Chinese economy. And yet now we have these tentative steps against China's influence. Right. The TikTok ban, you know, and to talk about how we need a foreign policy to be recalibrated and focused on the Far east in order to counter China's influence. But yeah, I don't think the American people feel a threat from China either.
- [43:09]
Abe Greenwald
No. I mean, but I do think they still feel a threat. There is still a threat from radical Islam. I mean, that's a funny thing. There is a division here between all these theaters and the Middle East. And where is Donald Trump finding the most support in this country? It's for his pro Israel policy. Right. Maybe people aren't the full. You know, Mara, Gaza. We haven't gotten the polling on that yet. As much as I think the idea is pretty attractive. But they do like the fact that Trump is supporting Israel. Trump lifted the Biden imposed restrictions on weapons to Israel. And I think that is. There is still a lot of memory there from what happened in 9 11. You talk about the Cold War, you have 30 years and it's just not. It's not real. It's not present in people's heads. And China is completely different. I mean, they love TikTok and you know, and many people went to China when it was still a thing you could do. And so I think we'd have to recognize that we're in this different world now. And what Trump is pushing for is something very unusual for us, for, you know, for people of a certain age who can hearken back to the older frameworks that, that dominated the world.
- [44:27]
Matthew Continetti
But not even Covid, you know, has stirred up.
- [44:31]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, Covid, weirdly coefficient. Well, but also that was sense. That was liberal censorship. Right. And a denial to even say that China was somehow behind it.
- [44:42]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [44:42]
Christine Rosen
There's another strain here that I think we have to consider, and that's that unlike during the Cold War, where a majority of Americans, regardless of party, had this sense of defending their own institutions, whether that's their own governments, their own. I mean, we, that the mistrust, the level of mistrust which is fueled not only by the progressive left, but by the maga. Right, the burn it all down, everything's corrupt. That affects a country's ability to actually have a sort of worldview, a sense of wanting to defend something deeply, uniquely American. That's important in terms of also being a moral force in the world. They actually are quite cynical about. There's a strain of self hatred that in their approach to our institutions, that's very damaging. That can lead to a lot of, you know, disruption and shake up that we're seeing now with what's going on. But that I worry what replaces, you know, if you really think that everything's corrupt and you want to burn all down in your own country, what are you replacing it with? What is the message in terms of institutions? What's worth protecting?
- [45:40]
John Podhoretz
That is a, that is, that is the question of our time. And yeah, so go back to 1972. And that was the implicit. The argument of the Democratic Party in 1972 with George McGovern as the leader of the party was come home, America. Now that sounds. It was kind of a quite a beautiful slogan in its own way, sort of touching. But of course it's like, come home, America. I don't know what the hell we're doing over there, number one. And number two, everything is so garbagey here and this country is in such terrible, rotten condition and it's doing the wrong things everywhere. So come home so we can heal. We could sort of like lick our wounds and sit together the living room and like, you know, sit shiva for, you know, for American ambition. And America really, really, really didn't like it as it turned out, I mean, it so didn't like it that Nixon, you know, won 62.
- [46:40]
Abe Greenwald
The more recent example would be Obama and nation building here at home and the removal of our forces from the Middle East. And what happened? ISIS came back, the terrorists came back. And Americans don't like terrorists. They don't like these crazy jihadists killing people randomly in the streets and so, or lopping off heads in Syria, which event essentially forced Obama back in. I do think there is one potential danger down the road for the Trump administration is its policy toward Syria and our forces in Syria. And if we were to remove that, we know what they, what the terrorists do. You know, as soon as the pressure is off, they begin organizing and preparing. So that I think would be a place where all of a sudden reality would mug the Trump administration. But in terms of until China starts threatening to bury us like Khrushchev did right in the 1950s, I don't think the American people are going to have the same sense of threat from either China or Russia.
- [47:42]
John Podhoretz
I mean, ultimately the point about deterrence also is, should fit with a certain MAGA conservative approach because part of the idea is that it's cheaper. See, it's that if we had given Ukraine the support that it wanted, that could end up being cheaper in the long run than the world destabilization represented.
- [48:06]
Abe Greenwald
Great point. Especially if eventually we are forced into war like we were in World War II.
- [48:10]
John Podhoretz
Well, that was the lesson of the two World wars, right?
- [48:14]
Abe Greenwald
Is we pull out, invest in deterrence rather than paying in lives down the road.
- [48:18]
Christine Rosen
But emotionally that's not how MAGA sees it. They see money going to a foreign country and they see people at home suffering that, that, that image. Like you see people saying, look, pay their bills versus money sent to Ukraine.
- [48:31]
John Podhoretz
For example, we had the space program right in the, in the, in the 1960s. It was the most wildly popular thing in the country, was like visionary and exciting and you know, future. And there were, there were, there were, you know, there were like terrible sacrifices form of astronauts lives and things like that. And then the mission was fulfilled. We got to the moon at the, by the end of the decade, as John F. Kennedy had proposed we do in the first months of his administration. And then the entire country went, okay, that's it. Like now you're going up and getting more rocks, like what, what, what are you doing? If you don't say now we have to go to Mars or we're going to build a colony or we're going to do something to advance this, well.
- [49:14]
Christine Rosen
The shuttle program was. No, the shuttle program was, that was the shift.
- [49:17]
John Podhoretz
But no, it was an effort. But I'm saying we, we, they cancele canceled the last two Apollo missions. I mean, so I only bring this up to say that you're right, that if, if, if you need a cause, you know, that was the thing that Biden did that was so crazy in Ukraine, which is that he said this is a, this is a cause, this is Europe. We need, you know, democracies to come together. We need to this terrible destabilizing effect. No, you can't have ATACMs. No, you can't have, you can't have our tanks. You'll use 30 year old European tanks and that should be good enough for you because we have other fish to fry.
- [49:58]
Matthew Continetti
And then he played, he played a sort of shell game with it because then as, as it became clear that, that, that both sides were bogged down there, Biden sort of focused on, well, NATO has never been stronger. That's, that, that became the, the accomplishment.
- [50:17]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. And that is a big thing because while for people like us thinking, well, look at NATO, it's the greatest, it's the most successful foreign policy alliance in the history of the world. It's lasted 80 years. If you go through sort of European history, there were, there were triple entente and double entente and this, that and you know, Austro Hungary is making deals with so and so and all of Those last like 20, 30 years. And then there's a giant conflagration. NATO's lasted eight, 80 years. It has, you know, it has, it has kept the peace in, in a place that was a sinkhole of violence for a millennium and led to these two, you know, ghastly civil, near civilization, ending world wars. And it did this work and so, but it's 80 years since NATO was set up and saying to people, it's so important, it's really important. Boy is it important. And then they're like, why? And people knew why after World War II. Everybody had a relative who died in World War II. Everybody understood or not everybody, but you know, people who need to understand understood. And as you say, like that's not, it's not a, it's not a commonsensical argument. That's why I go to the cheapness thing. It's like NATO is cheaper. And you know, what's more the expansion of NATO and what happened after the Cold War, the fact that we were able to withdraw so many forces from Europe after the Soviet Union fell that you Know that our military budget essentially declined by 50%, our military personnel declined by two thirds and all of that because we're no longer facing this direct threat. And so you could even say there, because we have this alliance, we were also able to draw down when we could draw down. But yeah, like if you're 25 years old, if you're 25 years old, you were born in the year 2000. You know, it's like none of that means anything to you. You don't even remember that NATO retarded a genocidal regime in the Balkans.
- [52:22]
Abe Greenwald
And the people who loom largest in your political imagination are the pink haired ladies who want to tell you what words you can use and that you're a racist and that trans rights are human rights. So they're not thinking that's what's at the radar, that's what's central on the radar screen, not this conflict in Ukraine. And look, I'm saying all of this as someone who believes America should support Ukraine, but I also think we have to recognize the political realities facing us in the, in the beginning of Trump's second term.
- [52:59]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [52:59]
Christine Rosen
It's also an indictment not to get on this soapbox that I, that I stand on for decades, but it's an indictment of the way we teach history. Not only the history of our own country and its role in the world, but in global history, which very few American high school students graduate from high school knowing anything about. That is, that is bad on us. We need to educate our citizens better in terms of global affairs.
- [53:21]
Abe Greenwald
I think, you know, if what you're talking about, you know, what happens after you do the demolition project. And the truth is no one knows, something's going to emerge. I thought it was very interesting that Trump wanted to swear in Tulsi Gabbard.
- [53:34]
John Podhoretz
Himself, though he forgot, he forgot to.
- [53:36]
Abe Greenwald
Do it and he forgot to do it.
- [53:37]
John Podhoretz
He wanted what he wanted, but what.
- [53:39]
Abe Greenwald
He definitely wanted was to be seen with her after the vote.
- [53:44]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [53:45]
Abe Greenwald
And you have to ask, what is that about? I mean, it is about the deep state and how Trump is just dead set on uprooting the intelligence community. Yeah. But it's also about the Trump coalition that into his mind, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK represent these elements that were not Republican and that only Trump could integrate into the party. So he wanted to show that. So to me, whatever comes next is going to have some of that flavor and it's, it's not going to be comfortable, but it is a sign of where things are headed I mean one.
- [54:23]
John Podhoretz
Thing that occurs to me is you're bringing up how he, he is moving toward a spheres of influence foreign policy. Right. That which is, I mean pre modern is not the right word, but I mean, I don't know what you would call it.
- [54:32]
Abe Greenwald
Sort of pretty 19th century.
- [54:35]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [54:36]
Abe Greenwald
Stuff.
- [54:36]
John Podhoretz
And similarly, you know, people may be wildly overreading the meaning of RFK and Tulsi's appointments and maybe I did too, but sort of the whole, and you know, this whole he's a Nazi, the Nazis are coming and you know, this is authoritarianism and he's not gonna, he's gonna try to, you know, seize a third term and all of that. What if he's a relatively simple politician and what he thinks is that marshaling the RFK forces and the Tulsi forces gave him 3 or 4% of the vote and that he wants that coalition and that, that is like old timey pre. That is like boss politics, Captain politics. Give them jobs, give other people jobs. You know, A, they'll be loyal to you because that's what patronage is for. And B, like you're trying to bring them into your tent and be your troops and all that.
- [55:33]
Christine Rosen
This is where. I'm sorry to interrupt, but this is where his vanity might be his undoing down the line. As Matt says, we'll just have to watch and see. But he, he's doing the same thing with the tech Bros. And the idea that, oh look, I'm bringing in all these people who weren't part of our coalition and now I'm stronger and better for it assumes that they don't have their own agendas that they will actively be pursuing under his nose while he pats himself on the back for bringing them into the tent. And that's actually where I do have some concern about how the people he's appointing at the lower levels will monitor what those guys are doing. And even to the point of Tulsi, like she, she's not, she might be a loyalist personally to Trump right now, but what is she loyal to in terms of values, in a sense of what her job is? Directing national.
- [56:15]
Abe Greenwald
I just wish I could be there for the first Tulsi Gabbard Presidential Daily Brief when she says aloha, Mr. President. Yeah, they, you know, the spirit, the spirit of aloha greets you as we survey the scene of threats to the United States.
- [56:34]
John Podhoretz
I mean, look, the, the all, all I'm saying here is that he, he is a, he's a very interesting, unexpected and wildly unprecedented political force but he is adopting ideas and tactics that we should be able to understand better than we do. And people, and you know, people go to the least or the wildest analogies he could just, you know, look, they're just very old.
- [57:06]
Abe Greenwald
They're old categories.
- [57:07]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, but the Deep state stuff is as simple as, look, I'm coming into this company and everybody in it is loyal to the previous regime and I did a hostile takeover and they're all on the other side. They want us to be, you know, building, you know, they want their. But they're, they're Anheuser Busch and they want Dylan Mulvaney to remain the spokesman for Bud Light or they try to the new CEO and they want to have, you know, Shane Gillis or, you know, Nate Bargazzi as my spokesman for Bud Light. And I got to get rid of them because they're going to try to.
- [57:42]
Abe Greenwald
Gum or, or the last time I was CEO, they tried to kick me out of the director's chair by saying I was an agent of a foreign power. And so now I'm CEO again and I want to get rid of all of them. That's why I think right now his interests align with the Doge because he doesn't trust anybody in the bureaucracy.
- [58:01]
John Podhoretz
That's clear.
- [58:02]
Abe Greenwald
So if they fire everybody, it's fine by him.
- [58:04]
Christine Rosen
But this is the tension. But this is the tension. That impulse, which I think Matt's described accurately, is in direct conflict with his manifest destiny approach to the rest of the world, which he mentioned. He used these phrases in his inaug inaugural address that requires inspiring your own population to understand your vision and help you pursue it. And that is in tension with everything is corrupt. They try. You know, there is a lot of.
- [58:27]
Abe Greenwald
There is no way he would ever inspire the bureaucrats, the Department of Education to get behind Neo Manifesto.
- [58:33]
Christine Rosen
But all the attention, all the attention is on what he's doing with the bureaucracy. And he has to inspire the people. It's the voters I'm talking about, like he's obviously not going to win the over the bureaucracy.
- [58:41]
John Podhoretz
You know, Matt, Matt mentioned something yesterday that is very important. You know, we barely touched it, which is the infl coming in at 3%. Chuck Schumer saying, you see Trump's amazing causing inflation. Now that's of course, you know, was president for 10 days, four years of.
- [58:57]
Abe Greenwald
Inflation is coming down. And what are you talking about? All you vibe, you're all buying into these vibes. And now suddenly it's like, well, we just checked. And as of 8:31am on February 13th. The price of eggs has raised, has gone up, you know, three tenths of a cent. Right. What are you doing about it, President Trump?
- [59:16]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. I bring this up only to say that, as Christine would say, you're talking about rallying the people toward the cause of Manifest Destiny. I mean, we have to, he needs to recognize, and I'm sure, by the way, that Susie Wiles does recognize as chief of staff and, and John Thune and, and, and, and Mike Johnson recognize that their entire future stands and falls on whether or not the economy can heal and whether or not something can be done.
- [59:45]
Christine Rosen
Number got him elected after the border.
- [59:48]
John Podhoretz
Right. And so, and, and what's more, the border is the number one issue in part because the Democrats had completely left the field. Right. And, and, and, and had no, nothing, literally nothing to say about it. This is, as we said again, for four years, every day people know when they're having economic, that's what they know, that that's, you know, it's not, oh, we can explain to you that you think you're poorer than you were last year. You're not really. And they're like, like, don't tell me I know that I felt better last year than I do this year or that, you know, that it's harder for me to get through the week on my, on my paycheck than it was last year. And there is literally no reason for the American people to have any sentimentality whatsoever about Trump and the Republicans if they don't have an answer to this. And all the talk about the bureaucrats and all the deep state rooting out and all everything, like all this culture war stuff, all of which I'm, you know, a big supporter of. Whatever is isn't going to make a hill, you know, it's going to make a dime's worth of difference if, if the country remains in a kind of weird, static, frozen state, not able either to end inflation or to sort of retard it, and no real policy that's spelled out in that regard. Let's, let's move on. Just for the last couple minutes. Hamas announced now, made it clear they are going to release three hostages on Saturday. So all week we've been talking about this question of whether or not the war would restart in Israel or whether it would not restart. And now we are in this very peculiar position because Hamas said we're going to stick to the original deal. Having said they weren't going to release any hostages, Trump is on record saying, you release 76. All 76. Where they'll be held to pay. And Netanyahu basically said release nine. Right. So Hamas has now come in with three. The Netanyahu release nine thing, fascinating sign that, you know, Trump is now further out on a limb about this than, than, than Netanyahu. Another sign that he's a very cautious politician and the people misunderstand him. I assume that the three is actually going to be sufficient to, to make this move on for another week at least. There's only two or three more weeks or there's only three weeks left of the ceasefire anyway. But I'm who know, I mean everything is so wildly destabilized.
- [62:25]
Abe Greenwald
I share your view. I think the threats forced Hamas to resume and we'll see the condition of the three hostages who are to be released. And again, if their condition is the same as the three last week or worse, I think there will be even more outrage directed at them. But it does seem to me to be heading toward an impasse at the end of this first phase. And no one seems to be suggesting what exactly should happen once the first phase ends.
- [63:00]
John Podhoretz
No, Egypt and Jordan together sort of issued a kind of joint statement saying what needs to happen is a, as you, as you mentioned, the other a two state solution, right. Which is like saying what needs to happen is for us to, you know, settle on Neptune. You know, it's really, there's water, you know, there's, it's, we could get there really fast and everything will be, everything will be just, just fine. So, so that's that, that's yet another detail. Meanwhile, Israel is awash in slow, slow moving, slow coming out details about what the hostage experience has been. Like you, if you understand that the hostage experience has been awful beyond belief. I really strongly caution you not to read about this if you can help yourself because it will, it will haunt your nightmares and all. And you already know, know it's very important for people who don't know or want to close their eyes to it and maybe they'll never look, so maybe there's no hope. But the political effect in Israel has, has, has this two faced quality, one of which is, well, these people are barbaric, inhuman, evil, monsters to a degree we hadn't even, you know, and we thought that already and so they must be destroyed and, and we've got to do what we can to get whoever else is there out because God knows what's happening to them this second. Like I can't even think about what is going on, you know, at 3:00 in the Afternoon in, you know, somewhere in Gaza and what tortures are being levied on the men who remain there in particular. So it's just a nightmarish situation. I'm going to conclude here with a quick recommendation. A very unexpected, really quite remarkable first novel that's really a memoir, but she calls it a novel called lion by the British actress Sonja Walgar, whom you may have seen on to All Mankind. She was on, she was penny on loss. That's the. She was the constant. Again, if you haven't seen Lost, you know what I'm talking about. She is a British, came to America, she's been acting here for 25 years. She got an English first at Christchurch at Oxford and has written this novel which is a memoir basically about her father, an Argentinian glamorous. Argentinian, wildly irresponsible, reckless and somebody who was sort of absent from her life for long periods of a time. And it's just a beautiful, heart rending, very short book, beautifully written, beautifully rendered about her life and her childhood. And it was published. One of the reasons I picked it up, because I was in a bookstore yesterday, is that I knew her name and then I saw that it was published by New York Review Books, which is the independent publishing arm connected to the New York Review of Books. And that is a highbrow publishing line and publishes very sophisticated fiction and fiction and translation and that sort of thing. And ordinarily if you have sort of like a TV actress, that TV actress would have her novel published by, you know, commercial press or some small garbagey press or something like that. And this is a very unexpected development and it deserves, it deserves its glamorous publication by New York Review Books. That's lion by Sonja Walger. That's W A L G E R and a very, very moving piece of literature. So with that, we'll be back tomorrow. For Matt, Christine and Abe, I'm John Podgorichouritz. Keep the candle Bur.