← The Foreign Affairs Interview
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- [00:00]
A
Dan I'm Dan Kurtz Phelan, and this is the Foreign affairs interview.
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B
Putin may think that he's a world historic individual. She definitely thinks of this. But boy, is Trump trumping all of them because he really has gone into that phase.
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A
Fiona Hill has spent her career trying to understand and in one case advise leaders with grandiose ambitions, high risk tolerance and an unshakable sense of themselves as world historic figures. She has been a close observer of Vladimir Putin for decades as a scholar and a member of the US Intelligence community. And in Donald Trump's first term, she was a senior member of the National Security Council before becoming a household name during Trump's first impeachment for testifying about his relationship with Putin and with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Now Hill is watching as Trump and Putin, as well as Xi Jinping and others, upend global order and policymakers everywhere try to navigate the most turbulent period in recent memory, while the rest of us try to discern what might come in its wake. I spoke to Hill on the morning of Tuesday, May 5, about the wars in Ukraine and Iran, about the predicament faced by American allies, and about what Trump's second term foreign policy will mean for the future of American power. Fiona, thanks so much for doing this. It's great to have you back on the Foreign affairs interview.
- [01:22]
B
Thanks, Dan. Great to be with you.
- [01:23]
A
We last spoke early in Trump's second term on the podcast. The little more than a year since. That conversation has brought plenty of, you could say, turbulence, whether it's on relations with allies or with adversaries. We have two wars with Iran. One of those is ongoing a military raid in Venezuela, threats on Greenland, plenty else. I want to ask you a version of the question that I opened with last time. What has surprised you about the last, the last year of Trump's foreign policy?
- [01:48]
B
I think actually I've had a bit of a failure of imagination for some of the things that he could possibly have done. And partly that is due, I think everybody's been guilty of this, of thinking about the framing of his first presidency and then also his campaign, this whole idea to eschew forever wars or military interventions. Obviously he was elected to deal with the domestic side of things and he's transformed the United States in ways that he certainly didn't even the first time around, because he's got a second bite of that apple. But he's really embraced the foreign policy dimensions of his presidency in some unexpected ways. Some I anticipated but didn't think he'd go quite as far as he did. Greenland, for example, you knew he was kind of somewhat personally obsessed with it. But to push to the point that he actually made the D to think that he would invade, that's going further than I would have really thought. You know, and coming on top of his certainly belligerent statements about Canada, I mean, I knew he didn't like Canada or certainly didn't like Justin Trudeau, and seemed to have some kind of personal antipathy, you know, for a variety of different reasons. A lot of it relates to security and economics, but it really just seems to think that, I mean, now that his real estate magnet mind and map has gone to a larger imperial mindset, which has gone beyond quite what I certainly expected. And then, of course, the war against Iran in the Gulf, it was prefigured in the first term. There were lots of people pushing for it, but he himself was somewhat reluctant. And the fact that nobody got across to him the inevitability of the close of Strait of Hormuz, the fact that he really just thinks he can roll the dice over and over again and that he will never have some kind of setback is, I mean, that that is even beyond what I'd anticipated. I certainly see him as a person who veers towards megalomania, narcissism, messiah complex. We've seen all of this, and he works in an uninhibited fashion, but there was just no constraints in him whatsoever, and even the markets no longer seem to be able to constrain him. And, you know, when he moves to the point that he's taking on the Pope and he thinks that he himself, Donald Trump is infallible and the Pope is fallible, and then, you know, he even goes beyond, you know, sort of the dimensions of the way that he sort of thinks about himself. I mean, we've seen in the last few weeks reports that he's now thinking himself as a world historic individual. And actually, I think that's correct. And there's been, you know, quite a few articles about this, and I listened to a podcast a little while ago of a couple of historians talking about it, and I think he's definitely got himself into that territory. But of course, that's really troubling because he's thinking about that in real time. And that means that in many respects there are no bounds unless people start to impose them upon him about what he is considering and what he actually might do next. And that is a very worrying place for all of us to be.
- [05:04]
A
You spent probably more Hours than you care to count in the first term. Talking to Trump about U.S. adversaries, about allies, about American power, do you think his view of American power and its role in the world has changed, or is this merely a matter of. Of. Of there being no constraints? I mean, there are moments in the last year where Trump himself almost seems surprised by just how much power the US has, especially if you're not concerned about legitimacy or about, you know, kind of husbanding it or constraining it for the sake of limiting opposition.
- [05:33]
B
Well, I think he was more cautious then. It wasn't just the constraints, the inhibitions around him, but I think what's happened now, it's that sense of him himself having unbridled power, and that is a factor of everything that has happened. Two failed impeachments, multiple efforts to try to contain him, the fact that he's come back from political oblivion. Well, it should have been political oblivion. I mean, under normal circumstances, right, when he didn't win, you know, for the second term immediately, and kind of has come back to a second, non consecutive term, having been in exile in Mar? A Lago all this kind of time. So for him, that's the ultimate comeback. And, of course, the assassination attempts on him, all of the accolades that he's received from people, the fact that nobody ever really takes him on, and the people that do take him on, he kind of basically buffets away, including the Pope. And that, I think, is obviously something pretty significant, because I do think that he sees American power as an extension of himself. I don't think he sees it as anything particularly separate, because it's something that he is wielding in a way that other presidents, himself included, when he was another president, were too cautious, you know, to. To. To use that kind of approach. I mean, he sees himself, I think, as invincible. And that, again, is a major, major problem, because we all know, you know, in history, look, if we go back and start thinking about these historic figures who got into that same mindset, you know, the definition of hubris, it usually ended pretty poorly. I mean, I think there are few of those historical figures. Perhaps Genghis Khan is the one who kind of got away with it all. We're all descendants of Genghis Khan, according to some, you know, historians and experts, he was the one that you know, somehow sort of managed to keep on going. But everybody else has come to a bit of a bad end if we start to, you know, think. Think about these dimensions. And the other thing is that, you know, Trump is now in that kind of Phase where, I mean, everybody's talking about legacy, but again, he doesn't care about what happens after he's gone. He's trying to do everything in his own lifetime, and again, he's just accelerating everything. And he's doing enormous damage to himself, although he will never see that to the United States and obviously to the world, because he's actually basically involved himself in two system shifting, changing wars, one in Ukraine, not to a good end either. I mean, I think he's kept that conflict going, honestly, by his own interventions. You know, we now see Ukraine in a very different phase. I think that they've sort of given up on Trump and expecting anything of him. And they're, you know, kind of basically moving beyond the United States as other countries are trying to, and starting to at least contemplating that. And with Iran, he's completely put the world on its, on its head. Other global ramifications for what's happened there with Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz, showing, you know, if you have a choke point, as our colleague Eddie Fishman has pointed out to great effect in both his book and a recent Foreign affairs article, you can really hold the world at ransom. And Trump has facilitated that. He should have expected that Iran would do that and he should have done something against it. But like Putin, he thought he was doing a special military operation. He rolled a dice and believed that nothing could possibly go wrong.
- [09:00]
A
Do you find the analogies that some have drawn between Putin and Ukraine and Trump in Iran to be persuasive and illuminating?
- [09:07]
B
I do. I mean, the only thing is that the Ukrainians don't have that choke point, a chokehold that they can put on everybody. But, you know, in a similar way, they've managed to bog down a giant, a much larger military power, you know, in a, in a place which is not on their home territory. I mean, the Russians think that Ukraine is home territory, but it's really not. And it's always been that kind of frontier region of the, of the empire. And same with Iran. I mean, the United States has been in the Middle east for an extraordinary long period of time. And of course, the standoff with Iran has been going on for 40 odd years. But this is not a place that advantages the U.S. necessarily. I do see that. I mean, obviously Ukraine was not a threat to Russia in the way that Iran was a threat to the United States and to larger, you know, global security. There's no denying what Iran has done. Vicious proxy wars and, you know, attacks on US interests, you know, etc. Etc. But, you know, this is structurally, I think, very similar. So I think that analogy structurally really holds.
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A
So do you agree with German Chancellor Friedrich Merits that Iran is humiliating Trump? Whether it was wise, Emirates, to say that is another question. But do you agree with that basic assessment?
- [10:25]
B
Not wise for him to say it, but yes. And I mean, I think the other thing in the way that could have been referring to is all the memes. I mean, Iran has got an edge in the propaganda and AI space as well, in the information space, because they've got all, I mean, people are watching all of these. I mean, I obviously checked them out. I'm sure you have and many others have extraordinarily clever use of the public information space and making fun of Trump. And that's kind of could have been what Mertz is referring to, because they're using, in a way, his strengths against him and his weaknesses. I mean, he is somebody who's always out there trying to take control of the information space, and they're playing that against him. And one could argue that he's out there so frequently saying so many things that it's actually harming the ability to actually get the Iranians to make some kind of deal. They may well be ready for it. But every time he says something about them and against them, they feel incumbent upon them because of the way that they think. I mean, they also think, you know, in a way that they cannot let an insult, you know, take hold either. So, I mean, he hasn't really got their mentality. He hasn't understood it. They're just as bloody minded and single minded and narcissistic and nihilistic, you know, as kind of anyone could possibly be. They are a malign force. And it's so, it's kind of one maligned force playing off against another and trying to always get the upper hand. And they will never let him have the last word because, I mean, they're fighting. And it's also existential for them. And it's become existential for Trump in some respects that he will never understand, I think. But it's absolutely existential for Iran, just like for Ukraine it's existential. And now, you know, for Putin it's become existential for him. The war in Ukraine.
- [12:10]
A
I want to turn to Ukraine in a moment, but just to stick with Iran. If you would be willing to venture a prediction at this point On Tuesday morning, May 5, given your experience advising Trump or attempting to advise Trump, given your observation of him now, how do you think he will approach Iran going forward? Is he desperate for a deal, willing to escalate? What's your guess?
- [12:32]
B
He's always willing to escalate in terms of his rhetoric and everything else that he's thinking about. And I think that we've got ourselves into a vicious cycle here. You know, as I've already mentioned, I just think this is going to keep on going for some time. It's going to be really, I think, incumbent on others to really kind of corral this and to constrain this arena, be this, you know, a combination of China and other countries or, you know, what's left of US Allies in the Gulf, you know, kind of, and elsewhere, just trying to kind of narrow down the options of where this can go. That's going to be extraordinarily hard because, you know, right now it's a standoff between Trump and the Iranians, and it's, again, it's having global implications. This is not just something that he can pursue on self interest. And neither can they, frankly, either. And so, yes, they are desperate, but again, they're desperate and they don't want. I mean, where do they go? I mean, they've got nowhere to go. You know, the Iranian regime either. I mean, they're not loved at home. I mean, everyone is hunkering down. But, you know, the prospect of having this war end and being left with a completely broken country is not. Is not a good one. I mean, they thrive now and they're consolidating what's left of themselves in this atmosphere of standoff with Trump, and they're winning some points for that in a way. I mean, I think it's getting in the direction of where we do see Russia and Ukraine, where you can't really afford the war to end. There's certainly no kind of Putin can't, because what do you do with peace? And, you know, Iran is again, a nihilistic power regime that, you know, can't offer its people any future. And, you know, basically for them, they're going to have to really have something very positive to come out of this conflict for them. And I just cannot see that. I cannot see something positive coming out of this. So it's a question about whether everybody is left with limited choice.
- [14:29]
A
What is Putin concluding as he's watching the war in Iran? Obviously, as many have pointed out, he's gotten benefits in oil prices, and weapons stocks are being diverted from Ukraine to Gulf allies, especially interceptors, which are very important to Ukraine. At the same time, I imagine the just sheer display of American military power leaves some impression. How's he understanding the world and the effects of this war?
- [14:51]
B
Well, it's hard to say, really, because of course, we now hear that Putin is even more hunkered down or bunkered down than he was before because the Ukrainians, like the Iranians, are dispelling his sense of security at home in Russia. I mean, what Iran has done in the Gulf has also had a very negative effect on Russia, just to be clear, because so much of Russian money, including the heads of the biggest companies, the sovereign wealth fund, etc. Etc. Had found the Gulf a safe haven. You had a lot of people had been pushed out of Europe by sanctions or by various restrictions or out of Russia, you know, kind of previously, you know, because of the war or because it was actually easier for them to do business offshore, which is kind of some of the things that Putin has actually encouraged. And where were most of them? They were in the Gulf, in the Emirates, you know, all the flights going backwards and forwards from Russia to the Gulf states, tourists, you know, middle class, you know, tourists from Russia going there, as well as to places like Egypt and elsewhere. And that safe haven has gone. And there's now also discussions that within Russia itself, many of the big businesses, you know, that have prospered because of the war, maybe benefited from the rise in oil prices, are feeling that this situation is starting to become untenable. There's problems with the Russian economy. And now there's kind of questions of is there anywhere really safe, know, for Russian, for Russian money? And we're seeing also that Putin himself feels unsafe physically. There's lots of, again, reporting of this recently in the Financial Times. And, you know, I was just in London and hearing that from some of the reporters there who are kind of closer still to reporting in Russia. Some people are still, you know, kind of going backwards and forwards and meeting regularly, you know, with top, you know, Russian business people. And there's starting to be a lot of grumbling internally now that Putin has, you know, basically taken this too far. 5th year of war, you know, what is the future of the country? Just like the Iranian regime, he's not offering anything for the future. He's only offering a past and one that's looking, you know, increasingly shaky. Even the kind of the claims that he's making about Ukraine or Russia's position in Europe. And so I think the war in Iran has had all kinds of unsettling impacts. I wouldn't say that Putin was a close friend of Ayatollah Khamenei, but, you know, There had been rumors that the Ayatollah's son, his replacement, has been having medical care in Moscow. I don't know whether that's true or not, but you can be sure that the Russians would know the state of his health in any case. And seeing so many people taken out in that leadership, Putin's always been paranoid about that. In 2011, when Mar Gaddafi was taken out in Libya, that had a really negative effect on him. And he did start to think even more about his security. It was one of the reasons that he actually returned to the presidency, feeling he'd be more secure as President of Russia than he would be as being prime minister, or as a sort of a ex officio emeritus president and prime minister, you know, hanging out somewhere in Adapta that might not be secure, in a dacha, of course, meaning a palace somewhere on the Black Sea that we learned about from Mare Navalny. And the fact that he's had so many people taken out like Navalny and others, you know, he started to worry himself about his own physical security even more. And so, again, very unsettling. The war in Ukraine has actually been a major blow to him over time. Just the attrition, the. The loss of life, you know, the, the negative impacts that this has had on Russia. And it does look like he wouldn't be willing to settle without getting all of Donbas. And, you know, though they're still making, you know, some incremental gains here and there, the Russians are, you know, really suffering. Like, the casualty rates are phenomenal. Last month, it was like 35,000 casualties of people injured and killed, you know, a couple of hundred to 300 to 400 to 500 a day, depending on, you know, the battle. You can't keep that up. You really cannot keep that up. You said it can't keep that up forever. And Putin's expectations that, you know, Trump would hand him a victory. The more that the Ukrainians sour on the United States, which is becoming pretty evident now, the more that things change, the more that Trump becomes preoccupied with something else, actually, the less likely he is to hand Putin a victory. He's no longer literally his trump card.
- [19:19]
A
It's also striking watching Russia react to Iran, but also Venezuela. Or you have events in the last several days in, in Mali, where Russian troops were supposed to be protecting the government from insurgents, and instead the Defense minister ended up getting killed after those troops were overrun. Russia's looking like a pretty bad security provider or a pretty bad patron. The world's worst patron, as a piece by Sasha Gabalev and Sergey Vakulinko put it in our pages a little while ago. That must have some effect on Russia's global power and in Putin's sense of its own possibilities.
- [19:51]
B
Yeah, I think that is actually true. And to be frank, Putin started to get that kind of reputation pretty early on in the war in Ukraine. This is now pretty late on because the Ukrainians managed to hold him off. And there was already kind of a question then about all of those militaries that had got training from Russian specialists, be a Wagner or others, but also using Russian equipment that you were able to see the weakness of all of this. Now we know that Russia has innovated pretty effectively. It is also, you know, benefited just like Ukraine has from all of this real time battlefield experiments with different kinds of equipment. Russia's also moved towards mostly drone and automated warfare, but I mean, it depended, you know, heavily, first of all on Iran for the cheap production of the shahed drones, and also then on components from China. You know, so Russia is struggling somewhat and even if it does get more revenue as a result of higher oil prices, you know, the Ukrainians are absolutely, you know, destroying much of its refining and, you know, other energy infrastructure as well. So it doesn't necessarily have more money to buy more of these components. So if you're another country that's kind of watching that, you have to wonder about their training and their, you know, kind of capacity for battlefield acumen because, you know, the Ukrainians have brought them to a standstill. You're also not getting the weaponry that you were getting before because Russian arms sales have gone down by necessity because they're using them and burning them up. Just like the United States is burning up weaponry in the Gulf, Russia is burning it up on the battlefield in Ukraine. And you also see this dependence on components from other places. So you add that together and Russia was one of the top armaments producers for export in the world previously, and that has absolutely declined. And countries that did rely on Russia's capacity, Russia's, you know, whole posture before, which included China and India and other countries, you know, they're actually also moving beyond. And Ukraine was a military in the mold of Russia, obviously, because it had broken away from the overall Soviet military. And the Ukrainians, you know, know all the things that the Russians know and more. And so, you know, they are, they are demonstrating to everybody that you have to move beyond those sort of set pieces of Russian strategy and equipment. So I mean, I do think this is a lesson to all of those who have relied on Russia. I think the. The problem is for countries like India and others, they can't as yet, you know, afford to completely move away because China is that big uncertainty, you know, for India and other, you know, kind of countries that might have a tense relationship with China. They keep hoping that Russia will still be some kind of counterweight. But the whole war in Ukraine points towards the exact opposite. Increasing reliance of Russia on China for components and political support. And, you know, that still, the Ukrainians now say that they believe that China has the upper hand there and that if China wanted to have the war end, I mean, the Chinese tell people, including many of my colleagues here at Brookings, who have recently been in China and asked Chinese senior officials about the war in Ukraine and why they keep supporting Russia. And the Chinese officials have said to them all, if we wanted Russia to win, it would have done. And so the Ukrainians kind of also feel that, well, China might hold some of the cards there and literally getting kind of Russia at some point to move towards resolving this one way or another. But the sticking point is still very much that territory of Donbas that Ukraine continues to hold because it's also heavily fortified. And why would the Ukrainians want to give that up? To fall back to weaker positions? But that Putin kind of needs to be able to scope out some kind of win, because even even though he's taken vast territories of Mariupol and all those areas around the Sea of Azov and that whole territory going down to Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, he set his sights on Donbas. That was the crux of this conflict, certainly, kind of initially, and he still hasn't secured all of it, which he said was his main goal.
- [24:05]
A
And if Putin were to end the war without getting that territory, either through military progress or through a negotiation or kind of gift from Trump, would he be at risk of losing power at home? Would that kind of be such a blow to his image domestically that it truly would be a threat to him?
- [24:25]
B
It ups the ante. It could well be. Again, those dynamics inside of Russia. I mean, if people are complaining, they're not making it so evident inside. But you see how he had to respond to the woman blogger from Monaco, for example, who got millions of views and hits on her, you know, rather anodyne complaint, but still voicing the dissatisfaction of, you know, people around Putin who thought this war was going to end. These rumors, you know, that are percolating around in Europe in various journalistic and business circles, that many of the top business People are greatly dissatisfied again because of their lack of a safe place in the Gulf and start and think, well, maybe things need to change in Russia. And you know, the sanctions are sort of having an impact now because you know, they didn't have an impact while Russia could redirect trade flows and take advantage of everything happening elsewhere. But you know, this ironically, you know, perhaps transaction in the, in the Gulf against Iran could be the biggest blow because it is a system changing event. It could end up with neither. It's a bit like World War I, World War II, right? Some of the so called victors were not the victors at all. The United Kingdom was completely ground down by a succession of World War I and World War II. And at the end of World War I all the great empires had gone. It could well be that the United States and Russia are grievously wounded by this series of events. And I'm not completely optimistic on, on China's behalf either that they get to take advantage of this because the biggest impacts, negative impacts on what's happening are in Asia and you know, the insecurity and instability of the countries immediately around China. Even if China manages to weather the storm somewhat, what about all of its neighbors and the impact that that might have on China's own economy which is interdependent with all of these? I mean, unless the Chinese internal market is sufficient to compensate for this, there's going to be a lot of very negative knock on effects. A colleague at Brookings of our Prasad has written this book called the Doom Loop which has just come out.
- [26:38]
A
We ran an essay from him and there you are.
- [26:40]
B
Yes, yes, I had a feeling that you had. And of course that shows that China cannot pick up the global economic slack. And although there's some hints of optimism there, of people rethinking and refocusing and restructuring, which I think is inevitable, he also does believe that we've moved into a conflict, completely different world for the global economy. And you cannot think that we're just galloping from one hedge on to the next. And I sort of think that look, we're going to have, you know, maybe ultimately somewhere down the line, it could be decades that people might think, well this was a cathartic experience, sort of a world cataclysmic, you know, set of events that just had to happen to like a massive brush fire or conflagration that kind of clears the way for something new. But it's, you know, really hard to say at this particular stage what that new thing will be or that new set of things. But it's definitely we're in for a refresh here in the United States. I mean, you see this, the actual individual states reassessing the situation as well as the federal government gets dismantled and wondering, you know, kind of what they will have to substitute or, you know, how groups of states might work together. When I was recently in London and before that, you know, there were various visits, but by delegations of business people and the American and British chambers of commerce were talking about how US Individual states are trying to set up their own memos of understanding with European British counterparts because they feel that this tension at the top, that Trump speaking for the United States is actually doing a lot of damage to their own interests, which don't change. This isn't politics for them. It's kind of real life, real people's jobs, you know, the future of big states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, not to just mention Texas and California. And, you know, in a way, I think the United States themselves, the individual states feel as much colonies if they're, particularly if they're not red states, as European allies and other countries that have previously been allies of the United States feel at this moment in this Trumpian world that all of them are dispensable and that they're going to have to start thinking themselves about, about how they position themselves. And Iran kind of dragging the United States down and the more it's doing that will, I think, accelerate a lot of these already trends that we see.
- [28:58]
A
Do you have any speculation about what might come after that rupture, to use a word that's been used often in recent months?
- [29:03]
B
Yes. Thank you, Mark Carney. Look, I mean, I think Mark Carney is already showing the way to that. People are very skeptical about what Canada can really pull off. But setting up these various banks, you know, essentially bundling together funds to try to diversify Canadian economy away from the United States, probably very smart move. But also funds for building up Canada's own defence. Long overdue, frankly. And those are the kinds of things I think we're going to start seeing in other places as well. I mean, I hate to say, but the UK doesn't seem capable at this particular point between because of all the kind of political churn that's going on of moving, you know, forward in a way. I mean, the churn previously in Canada with, you know, weak governments was an obstacle. Mark Carney's got a mandate now, you know, from the electorate to move forward. So many other countries, Chancellor Metz as well, I mean, this is probably another spur, particularly the discussions about pulling troops out of Germany, which frankly, Trump intended to do all the way along. I mean, this is hardly a surprise. It's a question about where else he will take troops out of. It does hurt US Interests because one way to think about Europe and the UK is like a giant aircraft carrier, which positions the United States much closer to places it might be concerned about. But that's a decision that Trump has made and it will have consequences. But the consequences will be, again, more regional groupings of other countries. You've already got the joint expedition traditionally force the Jeff, which is a grouping of the uk, The Nordic, Baltic and other countries that Canada is talking about joining. That would position them to really kind of think about security in the high north, the North Atlantic, the North Sea, you know, for example. And that could also be used as a platform for more, you know, joint defense funding and procurement and development. You've got other regional groupings that are taking shape. I think if Trump goes ahead with what is threatening for the G20, you know, coming up this year to totally disinvite South Africa, you know, you'll get other countries starting to think, well, what's the point of having a G20? Why not, you know, kind of reformulate that? The G7 already looks somewhat dead in the water and obsolete. How, how do we create other regional groupings? It wouldn't necessarily just be the BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, but how do we get together for economic and trade purposes? Everybody wants alternatives, and I think we'll just start to see that happening, including in the United States. States will have to group together. You're seeing it on vaccine mandates. You start seeing that on higher education. You're seeing it on all kinds of different fronts right now, where the departure of the federal government from traditional areas of funding will mean that you're having to have new coalitions, maybe public, private, philanthropy involved in this. Private sector companies that, you know, have strong stakes in their own states, be it Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, California, who start to, you know, kind of work more closely with governors and mayors, et cetera. I just think all of these things are possible. So we'll see a pretty fluid space, I think, in the economic, security and other dimensions for some period of time before something else coalesces. You're sort of seeing the building blocks of something taking shape here.
- [32:24]
A
We'll return to my conversation with Fiona Hill after a short break.
- [32:35]
C
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- [34:11]
A
How do you rate European action on Ukraine as as the US has reduced its support?
- [34:17]
B
Well, look, countries like the UK have been committed right from the beginning and it's never really got much attention here. And you know, for all of the problems that the UK is facing politically and domestically, it's done a crack, cracking job. I mean there's the UK would say a bang up job in support for Ukraine and it's learned an enormous amount of I mean, if the UK military was given a bit more kind of free rein and some more resources, I mean that's been a big thing. I took part in the Strategic Defensive Review of the UK last year and there's just a lot of capacity there for innovation. And the UK military has absorbed all of those lessons from Ukraine in ways that frankly the US Military has not, despite talking about it and saying that it has because Trump's creating a bottleneck for it and we've got nothing to learn from the Ukraine. We're absolutely amazing ourselves. Wrong. Ukraine is at the cutting edge of future, you know, war fighting until the next war, of course. But I mean, that's kind of, you know, basically what everyone is looking at right now. And the Europeans are leaning into that. They're learning those lessons and they're thinking about how they engage with Ukraine. And so Ukraine is going to be the most competent military in Europe and it's going to be up there with Turkey and Finland. You know, neither of which have been tested in the way that Ukrainians have. And the Ukrainians are going to have an awful lot to offer for Europe and elsewhere. So Ukraine is going to be an asset over the longer term, which was they were hoping to be for European security. And I do think that that's now uppermost in people's minds. And the more that Trump distance the United States from this, the more that that will become apparent. I think we're already in that kind of post American world and sort of in terms of a mindset now, it is, of course, the case that there is still a great deal of dependency on the United States. And some people will argue, well, you know, it's high time, you know, that Europe starts to set up. There's limits to what they can do. But I think you've got a mindset now, stop telling us what we can't do, and let's look at what we can do. That is really starting to shift. And that's been shifting more in the last several months, especially since February, given this kind of massive attack on Iran and the consequences. So again, we always say in the United States, no, you can't do this, you can't do that. People start saying, okay, fine, but what can we do? So let's kind of take a look and let's be more creative. And that's where the Ukrainians are now. Yes, they're all beaten up, but they're not beaten. They're battered, but they're not battered completely down. And they've actually proven that they can keep on going despite all of the odds. And there's something in that. Despite all the exhaustion and the desire to have this war over with. And again, I think they are having an impact on Europeans. And even if Trump is really angry with people like Santos in Spain and others, if you listen to what they have to say about the way that they're thinking of Europe, they're thinking of a very different place from where it was before.
- [37:12]
A
You suggested earlier that Trump had prolonged the war in Ukraine rather than ending it in 24 hours, as he said he would. In what ways has that been true? Is that about the cutoff in intel support and air defenses at various points, even as Putin has reason to think that he can keep going? Or are there other dynamics here? And if I can ask you to imagine yourself back in your old job on the National Security Council in this term, what would you be advising Trump about? How to actually end the war?
- [37:40]
B
Yeah, I mean, I would have advised him to do all of the things that he's done honestly, apart from maintain that support. And I do think there were people around him, including General Kellogg and others, who were trying keep him on that path for a period. I mean, he should have had complete unity with his allies, and they should have been kind of figuring out how to bring this to a conclusion by making it apparent to Putin that he couldn't secure the territory that he wanted to without these incredible losses. Now, Putin's still been having these losses, but he always thinks that he can shift things on the political playing field and that Trump is going to basically browbeat the Ukrainians into handing a victory over to him. And that definitely kept things going. Certainly, they took the edge off Ukrainian offensive that could have been more decisive. Maybe they even drove the Ukrainians into doing things that were unwise. I think it was very unwise for Ukraine to go into Kursk. Of course, that was on Biden's watch. But that was a door period where Trump was actually pushing, you know, from Mar a Lago to have, you know, kind of a total cutoff of, you know, assistance to Ukraine as well. So even when he wasn't in power, he was kind of, you know, talking down, giving or continuing to give Ukraine aid. He was not wrong, of course, that Europe should have been doing more. And, you know, that kind of push to get Europe to do more should always have been imperative, always pushing Europeans to do more, to take, you know, charge of this, but not undermining their ability to negotiate. Because, you know, what's happened is the negotiations have been all about Trump. This is all just about Trump negotiating with himself even more so even with Putin. It's all been about Trump and Putin and the Trump and Putin relationship, or the relationship between their entourages and the business people around them who can enrich themselves on various deals. It's had little to do with Ukraine and very little to do even with Russia and the United States. And so that's kind of really what's been the problem. He's made it all about him and at all times. And the humiliation of Zelenskyy, I mean, completely and utterly uncalled for, is your
- [39:43]
A
expectation that the war will continue until there's some exogenous shock that fundamentally changes dynamics.
- [39:50]
B
Yeah. And look, maybe. Maybe this is one of those shocks. I mean, initially it looked like it was a shock in favor of Russia, but it might not be. A very wise analyst in the UK Described it to me last week as deadlock rather than stalemate. And that got me thinking for a while because I kept Thinking, what's the difference between. Between stalemate and a deadlock? You know, one, of course, comes from more chess, and the other is a case of stalemate. And obviously, you know, neither side can move. But I think with deadlock, as he was describing it, one side could decide to break out of that and to make a sudden move. You know, it could be. It would have to be a concession from one to the other, you know, but. But it's that kind of refusal to move rather than the fact that they can't move, that is kind of part of the problem there. And so, you know, it could be that Russia or Putin gets forced to make a move, you know, to say, okay, that's, that's it. But again, the consequences could be pretty dire, as we've just discussed.
- [40:48]
A
And given your understanding of Putin and how he operates, what might it be that would prod him to make that move?
- [40:54]
B
I think a concerted pressure from not the United States, but China and maybe the Gulf states. Just saying, look, enough. But I mean, it's. Again, it's. I can't quite think about what the pathway would be, you know, to this at the moment. Again, you know, the Ukrainians are pretty convinced that, you know, China holds the key, but it may be that more parties hold the key here and the. And also it could be internally, as Putin kind of feels he's got limited room for maneuver and he's starting to get pressure, I mean, particularly if he starts to feel fearful for his own safety and security. But then again, it makes it really difficult to imagine peace. Same for the Iranians, the regime in peace. What do you have? You know, so sort of a. We see now with Trump that he's moved from the domestic to the foreign policy front, and he has to be constantly in the center of action and doing things all the time. And for Putin, he. He has become a wartime president. He passed being the peacetime president a long time ago. I think there's very little that he can go back to at this point. He can't offer something different. He can't offer a future. And so the question is, will somebody else offer one?
- [42:08]
A
The other dimension of the US Russia relationship that seems particularly worrying, though it doesn't dominate headlines in the same way, is on the nuclear front. And a couple months ago, the last remaining arms control agreement vanish. New start. We see, you know, various attempts to modernize or innovate on nuclear arsenals on both sides. How worried are you about a piece of this?
- [42:30]
B
I'm more worried about the proliferation issues at this particular point, which I think gets us into a pretty dangerous territory overall because all of the lessons from both the war in Ukraine and war against Iran are nuclear lessons, which is, you know, one country is getting attacked for being close to getting a nuclear weapon, probably wouldn't have been attacked if it had one. And another country is was attacked because it had given up having, you know, some fashion of a nuclear arsenal, legacy arsenal that it got from the collapse of the Soviet Union. And you know, if you're then sitting in Pyongyang and you know, everywhere else, you know, that might be worried about your neighbors, you start to think, well, yep, let's kind of accelerate where we are now and others in the Gulf are thinking, why the heck don't we have a nuclear weapon? Why were we just kind of sitting back and others who were under the United States nuclear umbrella, what's that worth? Because here you've got Trump threatening NATO members with all kinds of things, talking about NATO as a paper tiger, his own led alliance that had the nuclear umbrella as the paramount security. He's basically saying all of this is for not. And it's kind, it's creating all kinds of debates in Europe about, you know, what about the future of the UK Trident submarine deterrent, can that be still relied on if it's intertwined with US Technical expertise and if it's a sort of almost in word joint enterprise. What about the French? And you know, their decision of course was after Suez and elsewhere to kind of go ahead with their own deterrent because they never really did trust the United States. They seem to have been born out in terms of that decision. So should other European countries be talking about their own nuclear weapon or creating a European nuclear weapon on the basis of either the French force or some combination of France and the UK and then of course your Turkey know, why does Pakistan have a nuclear weapon? Saudi Arabia, the Pakistan, India, you know, standoff is always, you know, kind of incredibly dangerous. So I worry about all of this. I worry about that we've now the United States has unleashed proliferation because of these injudicious, unwise steps that, that Trump has made. And that is a tragedy in that because Trump actually did want to have strategic stability talks, have a new arms control deals he personally did, even if people around him might not necessarily been quite as keen with Russia, particularly after the end of the ABM and the INF and other treaties new start, he wanted to have his own Super Trump arms regulation treaty. You and I have talked about that before. And with China, with North Korea with Iran. I mean, all of this has been about for him, the nuclear weapons problem, programs. That's about really regime change and everything. But yeah, it's not panned out. There's the tragedy and all of that because he didn't really understand all the dynamics.
- [45:39]
A
As you look at the transatlantic relationship, do you see a real risk that NATO could come apart in the next few years?
- [45:45]
B
I see a different configuration of NATO because I think that all of the other countries really benefit from it. And, you know, we've got Sweden and Finland in there now. Canada is stepping up. And I think you could see a kind of still a North Atlantic Treaty Organization with countries in the North Atlantic, obviously. And there's an Arctic power as well, we know, with a lot more dedication and commitment from the Europeans as there should have been all the way along. I mean, the point about all of this is there should have been a renegotiation and a more of a Europeanization of NATO a long time ago. And that discrepancy between EU security and NATO should have been worked out probably 15 plus years ago. If we go back to 2009, the Lisbon Treaty, when the UK was still part of the EU and there was that sort of discussion about the EU becoming more of a geopolitical actor and having more of a security and defense perspective, then that would have been a really good time to open up that kind of debate about how Europe should have done more for its own security. What would the future be then of a NATO? If the. With the EU having a somewhat different configuration but supposedly taking on more security, how would European Union members be contributing more? Would there be more money coming from the eu kind of paying into NATO as well. And that's, you know, was long overdue. But of course, we had the financial Crisis immediately afterwards. 2009, 2010 was not a good time to talk about that. But I think Obama did try that again. But of course, the EU wasn't present at the Wales summit for NATO in 2014. That was when there was the agreement of 2% of GDP. But that could also have opened up a set of discussions with Europe and the European Union. Is what I'm meaning there when I say Europe to European Union about how they would contribute more to the security. And of course there was Crimea and, you know, the beginning of all of that upheaval. But the Germans were reluctant to do this. Frankly, there was a lot of blocks on the European side. So that is on them, you know, so we are long overdue. But I think that now, you know, Germany has fully appreciated all of this. I was asked a question, I was at a parliamentary hearing in the UK last week about whether, you know, the kind of US Support for NATO had really infantilized Europe. And I think that's a fair question. I think in some respects, yes, in the case of creating more of a sense of dependency and people not being able to think beyond that dependency, which is where we still are now in many respects. But that also means that the US can't think beyond that dependency either. I mean, frankly, the way that people in the U.S. both sides of the aisle, Democrat and Republican, have talked about Europe as if it's an unwashed mass of idiots. I mean, I heard that in the Biden administration just as much as in the Trump administration, is a problem in itself because the United States has infantilized Europe. And seeing these kind of dependencies and not seeing what they even talking about when they talk about Europe, you know, I think they think about Eurocrats or, you know, Nigel Farage cartoon character depictions of Europeans. They're not thinking about the Finns or the Norwegians or the Swedes or, you know, others, you know, kind of certainly not like the Ukrainians haven't fully understood who the Ukrainians are and what they're about either. And I think that that is problematic. So it's a kind of a two way street here. It's a two way problem in the way that people conceptualize Europe and Europeans. Because I mean, again, there's going to be a lot of sorting out to do in that European frame. But we know people are starting to talk about that now. There needs to be national conversations. One of the reasons I was over in the UK was because the Strategic Defense Review had prefigured a national conversation about defense, looking first of all at the threat environment, which of course has got worse in the past year, and then what society as a whole would have to do about it. Not just the Ministry of Defense and that, you know, really needs to take place, but we need one in the United States to too. I think at the end of all of this, there's going to have to be a reckoning here in the US about the state of play, the fetishization of the presidency. I mean, that was not pre figured 250 years ago. In fact, it was forewarned and, you know, foretold as a real risk and everything was done to try to head that off. And here we are. And also about how the states and broader society have a say through Congress on all of these particular, particular Issues. I think we're going to have to have the same debate about what the United States wants to be now that it is grown up 250 years on. And Europe needs to think about a world that is not dominated. It has been for the last 30 years by the United States. I mean, I keep thinking how ironic it is about Mark Ritter. Totally cringeworthy, talking about Trump as daddy,
- [50:41]
A
a NATO Secretary General.
- [50:43]
B
Yeah, I mean, that was just. I don't know about you, but I hung my head in embarrassment about that. But he had a point, because Europe has thought about the United States as daddy. But when, you know, your parents get to be 80, you know, sometimes you have to make decisions on their behalf or decisions beyond them. Right. So 80 years is more than enough time to be moving away from this relationship. And, you know, Europe has been on notice for a long time that, you know, that this moment was going to come. It has now come.
- [51:12]
A
Can you imagine that Europeanized NATO functioning without the United States? If the United States withdrew, I wonder
- [51:18]
B
whether the United States would want it to function without them, because, I mean, again, it's going to be a big blow to United States leadership. You know, this moniker of, you know, the leader of the free world. Forget that. In fact, most people. Nobody's using that now, honestly, because they see Trump as, you know, something completely different, certainly not the leader of any free world. And of course, as he said, nothing is free anyway. It's all taxes and tariffs and kind of sanctions and all kinds of things anyway. But, you know, putting that joking aside, you know, the more that Europeans invest in their own, you know, defense structures, you know, the less that they will be looking to the United States. And frankly, the United States are saying, look, we don't have the capacity. And, you know, it is. It is risky for US Trade. You see that US Businesses and again, US States want to keep those very important relationships that they have with their trading partners and with their customers. And so, I mean, I think that there will be a push from within the United States. The United States also does rely, whether Trump realizes or not, on a lot of, you know, data and equipment. And, you know, a lot of that will be lost. You know, in Europe, when the interviews were going on for the Strategic Defense Review, you know, many sessions here in the US because, of course, the UK did not want to have a rupture with the US at that particular point. It still saw, you know, the United States as its number one defense partner, even if the writing was already on the wall that the United States was going to do less and less over time, irrespective of who became president in 2024. But one very senior US Pentagon official described the UK as an aircraft carrier for the United States. You know, a bit like the correlate of Hawaii, which, of course, you know, nobody really thinks of Hawaii in the United Kingdom as very similar, you know, but in terms of strategic location configuration, you know, as an, as a set of islands and, you know, kind of ability for the United States to launch itself off. Which is why, of course, Trump has been so angry initially with the United Kingdom for not immediately allowing the bases. Because, I mean, the United Kingdom has laws against preemptive war. It has to, you know, basically facilitate something on the basis of defensive operations, which, of course, you know, eventually Prime Minister Keir Starmer came to and the United States has been using the base. In fact, the United States has been using many of its bases across Europe. And I mean, that again, is a lesson that the United States won't necessarily have access to this if it kind of goes down this kind of particular path. So, look, many people in Congress know this. Many leading US Military strategists do. It's just kind of a question about how much damage, you know, will have been done to these, these relationships. So again, I think it's not just a question of can Europe do without the United States. I think this is a two way street here for the US Will be certain things that the US Will regard regret deeply if, you know, it really is fully ruptured. I don't think that's in anyone's interests. And even as I'm advising the UK and other Europeans to do their best they can to diversify away from the United States, it's more about getting rid of those things that are real vulnerabilities, getting back some sovereign capacity which frankly, they should never have given up, not destroying or moving away from the things that are mutually beneficial and make sense.
- [54:42]
A
What seems especially challenging for European governments at this point is that you have the US on one side questioning support, throwing up economic challenges, but then the other great superpower is China, which economically at least is similarly threatening or more threatening. How do you understand the range of European views and approaches on China right now? And do you see a real change there?
- [55:04]
B
Well, I think in terms of the way that we see some courting of China and, you know, the way that they did, you know, years ago. But going back to, it's mainly just trying to kind of figure out the limits of possibility, what is possible with China without getting the, the blowback and, you know, the vulnerabilities. There's no desire to go from one hegemon to another. So even though Trump is denouncing some of these moves, it's just, you know, the Europeans trying to find some kind of rebalancing because, I mean, the Germans, the Brits and others have been on Canada privacy prior to this were burnt by overexposure in China as well, because we know that China has been reverse engineering everything, you know, from the US and from all of its European counterparts to do everything itself. That was a Chinese goal and it's pretty much achieved this. And people see the entry of China into the WTO being just as damaging for industry and for workers in Europe as it was for the United States. And Germany's, you know, export orientation towards China has kind of proven to be, you know, not total dead end now, but certainly not what they anticipated. Certainly wasn't going to something that was going on forever. But, you know, they have to deal with China while China is still the leader in green technology. I mean, that's something that the United States has completely given up on. On. Not completely, but, you know, certainly under Trump has stepped back on, which is pretty foolish, honestly, because everything that's happening in the Persian Gulf suggests that all the countries are going to actually have to double down, whether they like it or not, on moving away from hydrocarbon dependency, even if it's not, you know, easy. And it's going to be extraordinary expensive. I mean, the uk, it's been so expensive, you know, quite damaging to the economy. But there's a sort of a feeling now that they can't really turn back. You know, maybe they need to have more emphasis on nuclear. But then again, you know, you've got all the problems of why you're getting the, you know, uranium for enrichment etc, and then all of the disposal. But, you know, again, companies like Rolls Royce are heavily, you know, invested in creating these small modular, you know, reactors. And that's a UK company, even though, you know, it's obviously doing that in conjunction with the United States, for example. You know, there's a kind of an understanding you're gonna have to look at local grids and kind of think kind of outside the box, but you can't go on as you are. And although American LNG and everything else is an important factor in this kind of interim, particularly given what's happening in the Gulf, there's just a real reluctance now to have any more dependencies and vulnerabilities. And China, the Same, you don't want to be reliant on everything made in China and having China dominate critical minerals. There's a lot of discussion now about recycling, you know, trying to get, you know, reclaim any of those components. Can you look for other sources of, you know, lithium and, you know, salts and other, you know, catalysts, you know, for electrical currents that could be, you know, organic and not, you know, kind of based on critical mass. There's all kinds of research going on. And in the UK and, you know, elsewhere, it's just a question of getting, getting it to scale because people are worried about exactly that same, you know, problem down the line. So it's not a question of running from the US To China. Nobody wants to be in a block world now stuck between China and, and, and the United States. That idea of a, you know, tripartite world carved up among China, the United States and maybe Russia, that's just not what anybody is envisaging.
- [58:34]
A
Do you think Trump finds appeal on that idea?
- [58:36]
B
I think he might have at one point, but I think he's gone beyond that now. He's just sort of thinking himself as world dominating, the world's historic individual. There was a piece in the Atlantic, you know, the YOLO presidency, but I don't really listen to a podcast about this. You've had things about this in the pages of Foreign affairs, and, you know, I, for my 60th birthday, walked along Hadrian's Wall and falling into that, you know, kind of cliche of the person who thinks about the Roman Empire all the time. I am that person. It's not all just men who do think about it, you know, once or twice a day. I do, you know, because I grew up right next to a Roman fort when I was a kid. So it was inevitable, you know, was thinking about the bloody Romans. They were, they were there, they were omnipresent. Every school trip was to some Roman fall to the wall. But I kept thinking about that, that, you know, Putin may think that he's a world historic individual. XI definitely thinks of this, but, boy, is Trump trumping all of them because he really has gone into the, that phase, the rebuilding of America. It's just like the building of the wall, you know, I mean, Hadrian didn't build the wall until he was part into his, into his reign. And it was a long time after the Romans had made it to Britain because he was trying to demarcate out his empire. All of these emperors go in these building phases to say they are someone and they want it all done in their lifetime so they can take advantage of it. Hadrian went around the entire Roman Empire after getting a bit depressed about the loss of his lover. And it was just to kind of make himself feel that he was real again. And I think, you know, Trump is being relevant to himself. He just can't imagine a world without him. And he wants to, you know, just indulge himself in this building frenzy.
- [60:11]
A
What about Xi Jinping? Is he navigating this geopolitical moment? Well.
- [60:16]
B
Well, we'll see, won't we? We'll see whether he decides to do something or not do something on Taiwan. If I were him, I'd wait and see how this all plays out. But I don't know whether he feels that time is on his side or not. And Putin, you know, and she of the same age, I mean, they're in their 70s. They'll hit, you know, sort of 74 or roughly, you know, this year. I mean, they're a bit younger than Trump, who hits 80, for God's sake, in June, but they've got to be, you know, wondering as well. And both Xi and Putin have been engaging in purges of personnel, consolidation, creating verticals of power. You know, they obviously don't feel secure. We've got that hot mic incident with them both. I'm talking about organ replacements and can they live forever? Putin obviously uses a lot of Botox. I mean, I just, you know, it's like these. These guys were trying to turn the clock back. I mean, you. You've got to make fun of it, because otherwise, you know, what do you do with this dark moment in history? But, yeah, we are indeed cursed by this too. Interesting time with three major world figures and the poor Pope trying to make sense of it all in the middle of it.
- [61:24]
A
One more leader I want to get your thoughts on is Viktor Orban, who was of course, seen as the kind of at least symbolizing, not as world historically important as the other three, but symbolized this kind of illiberal tide. Do you see his defeat in a recent election as a major turning point? And if so, what are the. What are the lessons in that?
- [61:43]
B
Well, it's a cautionary tale. I mean, we could also pick out Erdogan and Turkey and others. It's a cautionary tale for hubris and, you know, for robbing the country. I mean, ultimately, it wasn't necessarily because of his rollback of democracy. I think that's kind of part of the issue. It's really running the economy into the ground and taking too much of the pie. And so there is a cautionary tale there. And the other point is that it really took all of the opposition to swallow their pride and to get behind, I mean, the wonderfully named Peter Magyar, because, of course, Magyar means Hungarian. So it was a Hungarian for Hungary. And others decided, well, he was the most likely person to be able to defeat Orban because he knew him best. And he was still a conservative candidate who stood for some of the same things that Orban did, which is obviously more resonant with the broader population of Hungary. But everybody else in the opposition got behind him because the main thing was trying to, you know, restore some semblance of democratic choice. And it's the anti corruption and the, you know, the, the running the economy into the ground. Look, that's exactly what we have in the United States. The corruption is off the charts. I mean, it's just shocking on the outside. When you go, you know, to Europe and the UK people, people are stunned by what's happening here. I find it, you know, hard to imagine that Americans really can stomach this kind of thing because Trump is so evidently all about just enriching himself and those around him. He is not for the average American. And I mean, it took a lot, you know, a lot of time in Hungary, but people are really hurting here. And the inequality is off the charts in a way that it wasn't in Hungary. I mean, Hungary isn't home to, you know, trillionaires and billionaires on the scale. I mean, Russia, you know, has that kind of level of inequality. But, you know, Russia has always had that kind of apex predator culture with the vertical of power. And the United States was supposed to be more of a, I mean, maybe it was sort of fully egalitarian society, but one in which, you know, anybody could have a chance. Well, almost nobody has a chance now unless you know Trump and you're related to him.
- [63:51]
A
Do you see that, that corruption having a distorting effect when it comes to American foreign policy and power?
- [63:57]
B
It's an incredibly corrosive effect. I mean, all the foreign policy is just about pandering to Trump and to the people who make money around him. I mean, a lot of the foreign policy moves that we see are being driven by people's profit motive. I'm sorry, that's just exactly how it is. And it's seen exactly like that. You know, bringing the man gold bars and, you know, kind of getting his family members, you know, sinecures. And I mean, this makes anything that happened under the Biden administration and all the discussions about Hunter Biden pale into, you know, insignificance in comparison. And all of those things are bad. All of the kind of corruption that we've had over multiple presidencies, you know, that, that has been, you know, revealed by people taking advantage, their positions close to power. You know, usually we try to actually stop that, but here we're just feeding it over and over again. And also, I mean, the media distortion, I mean, people are enthralled to Trump. They can't stop talking about him and thinking about him. And, you know, we need to stop this. I was listening to the Tucker Carlson interview on in the New York Times, and just the way that he was describing this. And he's as guilty as everybody else is, in fact, more guilty than most about feeding this beast. There's going to have to be a lot of people sitting, you know, with themselves in a darkened room and thinking about their responsibility for this.
- [65:17]
A
Let me just return to close to this idea of Trump as a world historical figure and he imagines himself that way. You seem to think that that's true as well.
- [65:24]
B
If you and I are still around in a few decades from now, Dan, we could write a nice history book about it.
- [65:30]
A
Great. Well, what do you think that inflection point is likely to be if that is, in fact the case?
- [65:35]
B
Well, I think it's already happened. I mean, just the way that he came back and, and, you know, the decisions that he's made, particularly the decision to go to war against Iran. I mean, it's like Napoleon going to Moscow in the middle of winter. It's Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon. It's better Napoleon, remember, ends up in Elba, maybe dying of arsenic, maybe dying of stomach cancer. You know, will we ever really know Alexander the Great, you know, getting all the way to India and having one, one banquet, banquet too many, you know, none of these people ended particularly well. Again, apart from, as I said before, Genghis Khan, who seemed to kind of, you know, go on for a very long time and have lots of sons who, you know, the scorns of the empire. There's a. Maybe that's the Trumpian result. You know, eventually the, the sons of Genghis Khan, you know, kind of all went off and did their own thing, and eventually it kind of broke down into multiple little, you know, hordes, not less golden, each one less golden than the, than the last. But, you know, if we think about Ivan the Terrible and, you know, the impact that he had, you know, Elizabeth the first, another, you know, world's historic figure. Also, far too much makeup eventually gets arsenic poisoning and all the teeth fall out. You know, there's just, there's all kinds of ways in which, you know, one can make a horrible history out of this. There was a great BBC series of horrible histories, usually featuring these kind of world historic figures. And there's usually something horrible that kind of comes with all of the massive change. Even if, again, as I said, decades from now we might find some of it was cathartic and important in terms of clearing the way for something else. There's also been a lot of damage and destruction.
- [67:16]
A
That's a rich set of analogies to close on. So, Fiona, thank you so much once again for doing this. Happy belated 60th birthday and
- [67:25]
B
okay, okay.
- [67:26]
A
I thought it was last week when
- [67:27]
B
you were walking Forward into my 61st year. No, but it was just, it was a great thing to do. I highly recommend to everybody go and walk Hadrian's Wall or do a kind of a nice long walk for your birthday. Clears the mind.
- [67:39]
A
And I suspect that one headline coming out of this will be about how often you think about the Roman Empire. So we will.
- [67:43]
B
Yeah, yeah, I know. I am that sad person who thinks about it frequently.
- [67:48]
A
Well, thanks so much, Fiona, and we'll look forward to doing this again before tomorrow.
- [67:51]
B
Thanks, Dan. Thanks for having having me.
- [67:58]
A
Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show@foreign affairs.com this episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Elise Burr and Kanish Tharoor. Our audio engineer is Christopher Cook. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Arina Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts and if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.
- [68:48]
C
We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview. Don't forget to visit foreign affairs.comspotlight to sign up for Dan Kurtz Phelan's free weekly newsletter featuring more of the clear headed analysis that you enjoy here on the podcast. Sign up today@foreign affairs.com spotlight.