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- [00:13]
A
Join Willie Walker, Walker and Dunlop's Chairman and CEO, as we bring you fresh perspectives about leadership, business, the economy and commercial real estate. Willie hosts a diverse network of leaders as they share wisdom that cuts across industry lines. His guests are experts in their fields, from leading economists and CEOs to Harvard and Yale professors and everything in between. Our one goal is simple, providing you with unique insights, unparalleled data and real time market analyses.
- [00:46]
B
Welcome to another Walker webcast. If it is Wednesday, it's the Walker webcast. And as David knows, I stole that line from the late Tim Russert, who was a friend of both David's and mine who used to say, if it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press. My guest today is David Ignatius, the incredibly talented writer, reporter and editor at the Washington Post. David has a bi weekly column on foreign affairs for the Post, is The author of 12 exceptional novels, some of which have been turned into feature films with Hollywood's most talented actors, and is a renowned expert on the Middle east and the CIA. He has also been a long standing friend of my parents, Mallory and Diana, and even wrote a letter of recommendation for me to St. Albans School all the way back in 1976.
- [01:37]
A
You will owe it all to me, Willie.
- [01:38]
B
Oh man. I'll tell you David, it is a true honor and pleasure to have David back with me on the Walker webcast. Last time we were together was 2020, David, and I was very appreciative of your time then, in the depths of the pandemic, to talk to me about the world we were living in. And given everything that is going on today, you're busier than ever. You sought after for your thoughts and ideas on the world we are living in and what we are seeing happen. And I'm just super grateful of your time today and the discussion we're about to have. I looked at the headlines this morning, David, in the the Wall Street Journal World News page and the headlines were Greenlanders Favor Denmark, US China Closely Watched Panama Canal Ports case Trump tells protesters help is on the way. That's in Iran. Isolated Tehran finds China's Friendship has Limits and Iran's Gulf Foes warn us. So given that, and I know that you are not only studying all this, you're writing on all of this, you're talking to all the experts in the world. How is the US Doing today from a foreign policy standpoint almost a year after Donald Trump took office?
- [02:54]
A
So let's look at the pluses and minuses. I don't want to give a uni Dimensional analysis. We have a very disruptive president who is using power more aggressively and in some cases more effectively than anybody I've seen. Oh, gosh. I mean, I would say lbj, but LBJ didn't use power internationally as well as Trump has. And he's accomplished things that Joe Biden wanted to do but wasn't able to do. For example, actually getting a ceasefire in the Gaza war. It was there, it was available, all the elements were clear. But Joe Biden couldn't get it across the finish line, initiating real discussions about ending the war in Ukraine. Joe Biden knew he should do it, but he just couldn't bring himself to move into that space where he was pressuring Zelensky to rethink his options. Trump did it. And so we're now in a period. It's easy to say that Trump is simply tilting toward the Kremlin, toward Putin, and there's some truth to that. But it's more complicated, isn't it? And I think this is a more positive period for Ukraine than some people may realize. And then he's had these other kind of wild card events, like snatching the president of Venezuela. And I think that was a absolute tour de force militarily. I think Trump is drunk with, forgive the term is. He's not a drinker, but overwhelmed with the success and precision of that operation. It was incredible. They knew. The Cubans who were doing the security knew the US Was coming. It was a heavily guarded compound. And our special forces went in, took out Russian air defense defenses, turned out the lights in Caracas and grabbed this guy and took him away. I mean, imagine if you're president and you just sat there watching the military. You'd think you could do anything. And that's kind of where he is. And then this bizarre obsession with Greenland. I don't fault Trump for thinking that Greenland is important for US national security. He's right, it is. The Arctic is now a locus of US Russian, Chinese, great power competition and will remain so indefinitely. And we need to do more in Greenland. The Danes understand that and actually would encourage a sensible discussion of a greater U.S. presence and even greater U.S. investment and control of some of the mineral assets of Greenland. But the thing about Trump is that in this moment, where he just sees himself on top of the world, I mean, he runs this world, he's reshaping it, he's turning everything upside down. He's not in a mood to think the way I'd want him to about how to achieve his goals. And I'll just Say one more thing. I'm reminded of Trump's business career where he became so abusive and toxic, from what I know as a business person, that people just didn't want to partner with him, they didn't want to syndicate loans with him, they mistrusted him, they viewed him as just too litigious, just broke everything in the room. And so the things that he might have gotten, he didn't get. And I think that's, you know, if he was a more self reflective person, he would look at his experience in business from which he draws strength, and he'd say, you know, there's certain things I should be careful about not doing. You know, I just, it's really a mistake to piss everybody off because then you don't get what you want.
- [06:55]
B
Well, what will the Trump Doctrine be? Sort of, if you were to fast forward a decade from now and looking back on what the Trump presidency, and by the way, we're only a year into it, so it's hard to know exactly where this goes, but what would you call the Trump Doctrine so far?
- [07:11]
A
The American superpower will not be challenged. Where its interests are at stake. Something like that. There are additional layers that we're watching. It's hard to know how seriously to take them. One, obviously, is that Trump, believing in great power dominance, has a spheres of influence view of the world. And he's decided we're going to take the Western Hemisphere. Oh, no, by the way, Greenland is part of the Western Hemisphere. You look at a map, arguably it is. But if you look at the NSC Org chart, it already is. I mean, they've already assigned Greenland to our side of the world. So is it going to be, is that going to be the organizing principle, that the United States will take control of the Western Hemisphere, Meanwhile, Russia and Europe will battle it out for control of the Eurasian sphere. I think that's insane if we try to do that. But maybe that's a corollary. If you read the National Security Strategy, it talks about an almost equidistant US Position between Russia and Europe, that our job will be to buffer Europe, Russia tensions. That's crazy position for the US to be in. But that's where they seem to be going. What's the implication of that for Asia? Is Asia going to be. Certainly Trump seems to be heading toward conceding the South China Sea as an area of Chinese dominance. We'll have to see how that plays out. In theory. We're going to have three US China summits this year which will set the Rules for US China, security policy posture in Asia, we don't know yet. Anyway, it may be that that's what, 10 years from now we'll say was going on here, that we move from sort of America that always promises it's ready to fight two wars at once to an America that takes a more limited and realistic view of the specific things it's going to defend, conceding other areas to primacy by others, but asserting that where US national interests are at stake, we're going to jump in no matter what.
- [09:31]
B
Does a move on Greenland take down NATO, as the Danish prime minister said yesterday? And then second, does a move on Greenland assure that China moves on Taiwan?
- [09:44]
A
I don't think it'll take down NATO because I think the, for the Danes and for everybody else, the cost is too great. What I hear from my European friends is that what I hear from the Danes is that there is that they're trying to figure out, like, what's the deal that can get done here that will satisfy Trump and he can call it a win and satisfies our need to, you know, maintain our sovereignty and also respects the wishes of Greenlanders. The other I was saying earlier, what I hear from, from, from Europeans is what's the landing zone where this Greenland issue can settle? You know, what's most. Many of the same things. How do, how do you say, okay, Donald, we get it. You know, we get your interest. We want to concede some of those interests because they're in our interest, too. So I think there's a lot of effort to try to figure out what that would look like. But I have not heard anybody come up with yet with a version, but I think somebody will.
- [10:51]
B
Have they thought about putting a price on the table that we just can't afford?
- [10:55]
A
Well, yeah, that would be one way. I mean, so, I mean, this is so much like Trump's business career. You know, when a seller doesn't want to sell and Trump wants something, he just tries to make life so miserable for the seller. Threatening, fired, brimstone, ruin, you know, I'm going to sue you. I'm going to do this and that. And, and, you know, then sometimes people sell, but other times they don't. And usually I think history would show when they don't, he gives up eventually and goes on to something else.
- [11:27]
B
And the other question was, if we move on Greenland, does China immediately move on Taiwan?
- [11:33]
A
So I've always been of the view that China wants to win wars without fighting them, and it wants to take control of Taiwan without invading it. And I continue to believe that. And I think it's so well on the way to that. I mean, Chinese really hate President Lie in, in Taiwan. And you know, they are undermining him every way they can. And I, I haven't been to Taiwan in a while. I'm always reluctant really to pontificate too much about things like this where I just don't have the evidence. But my intuition is that the Chinese strategy will not be an all out invasion across the strait, which would be incredibly costly for them and their military, that they'll choose other ways to achieve their goal and Trump may accommodate those other ways. Yeah.
- [12:28]
B
So there was a Financial Times interview this week with the prime minister of Singapore, Lawrence Wong. And I just want to read an excerpt from that interview, David, and have you comment on it. He said we're in the midst of a great transition to a multipolar world, a post American order in a multipolar world. No one can tell how the transition will unfold, but there is no doubt it will be messy and unpredictable because America is stepping back from its role as the global insurer. He went on to say, we are in an uncomfortable position where the old rules don't apply anymore, but, but the new ones haven't been written. We must plan now and start taking action. And then he was asked if this transition is transitory or only due to Trump. And he said no, this is the American people and what they want to do with their country. A, do you agree that there is this transition to a multipolar world? And B, do you see this as being transitory on Trump or do you think that once Trump is gone, US Foreign policy could revert to its old, its old ways.
- [13:34]
A
So first, it's a very wise commentary and I, I agree with, with most of it. We are in transition from what would you say it was? It was the, the unipolar world had already ended a while ago. America's inability to achieve its goals through its vast power was the story of, of Iraq and Afghanistan. And the world saw it and so we were putting it in a different moment. And Trump is one approach to dealing with that. I think the Singapore prime minister is precisely right in saying that the danger is that the old rules based order is gone. And as I've been saying, we're now in the power based system. And power, it fluctuates, but it just carries it. But that's the factor that matters. The world's a lot more dangerous. Herman Kahn, the famous wizard of Armageddon nuclear strategist said once that a unipolar world is stable, a bipolar world is stable thanks to deterrence, and a multipolar world could be stable. It's the transition from the one to the other that's unstable. In other words, it's the period when you're moving from whatever this has been to whatever is emerging. That's the period of great instability. And I think that's exactly right. That's almost 50 years old, that comment, but it's as true as ever.
- [15:16]
B
Along those lines, David, you wrote an article after Biden was out of office about a year ago, kind of reflecting back upon Biden's foreign policy. And in it, you wrote what was missing in Biden's attempt to steer a steady course through four years of international turmoil. The answer goes to the core of his character. He was a consensus builder in a world that had turned adversarial. He was a defender of the status quo at a time when people at home and abroad were screaming for transformation. He sought normal order in a global system that had become dangerously aberrant. The things that were most admirable about him as an individual were sometimes counterproductive on the world stage. So with that as the backdrop of Biden's failings, is Trump not the perfect character and leader for these times?
- [16:06]
A
Well, he's certainly not a man of normal order. You got me there. So, as I tried to say in my initial comments, I don't reject everything that he's doing out of hand. I think some things are beneficial. I think it really matters how the war in Ukraine ends, for how people live, especially in Europe, but really around the world for the rest of my lifetime. And Trump's policies in that regard are inexplicable to me. He has this fantasy view of Russia's a future gold mine. He is bizarrely sympathetic to a Putin that most people who deal with him regard as an absolute scoundrel. So, I mean, in that way, he's not the leader for our times at all. He's the opposite. He does seem to truly want to end the war in Ukraine. And I'm about to head off on my seventh or eighth trip to Ukraine since the war began. And, you know, that war is, as Trump always says, it's a bloodbath. It's just a terrible, terrible war. So I, you know, I don't want to. I want to be properly respectful of his sincere desire to end the war.
- [17:33]
B
I think what.
- [17:34]
A
What he's shredding in the process of being this unpredictable person who, you know, Overturned Biden's sleepy accommodation, passivity, addiction to normal order. He's shredding a lot of the elements of American power. We began his presidency with the amazing attribute that although we were very powerful, we had a lot of friends and allies. Fried Zakaria on Sunday made the point on his TV show that was very wise, that usually very powerful quasi imperial hegemons generate opposition. People want to contain them. They worry about the power of the great big country. In our case, they've wanted to work with us. Even when we made mistakes, did stupid things, they still wanted to be basically on America's team. You'd go around the world, I mean, obviously our NATO allies in Europe, but Japan has been a great ally. South Korea has been a great ally. Singapore is weird, but a wonderful ally. So people wanted to be on our. On our team because we were predictable, because we defended a world in which they were getting richer. We didn't arbitrarily just take stuff because we felt like it. We didn't play that way. And, you know, Russia and China, by contrast, you know, they have trouble hustling up North Korea. North Korea and Iran, those are Russia's two big allies. Oh, yeah, and Hungary, too. I mean, you know, which hand would you want? As Graham Allison at Harvard always says, which hand would you want to play? So that's. That's what he's throwing away is, is this incredible power based on our values driven, rules, driven approach to global hegemony that has, I think, measureless cost to the United States again for the rest of my lifetime. I think it's just, you know, foolhardy. And so whatever positive things I'd say about Trump, smashing the thing that's most valuable to us historically, and I can argue, I can make this argument with great detail, is just, to me, it's just crazy.
- [20:00]
B
You said, when I asked you about Taiwan, you said, I haven't been there recently, so I don't want to comment. You did go over to Gaza in November of 2023, and in an article that you wrote, you describe the. With, with incredible detail, just the horror and the trauma that you saw in Gaza and the suffering and the wheelbarrows and beds of people being pushed down the road, and that issue was solved. And so two things on that. One, they got to a piece there that no one thought they could. And one of my questions to you on that is, how did we get to that agreement when Khalil Al Haya's son was just tragically murdered by an Israeli missile, when he was the point person on that peace negotiation, yet seemingly with nothing left on the table. That was pulled back by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and the Trump administration. That's question one. And, and I guess question two is you just wrote a part article saying this piece that has been achieved may be fleeting if we don't move on it quickly. And so go from a how did they get that done at the time? And then two to do we have a window here to keep the peace, but if they don't move quickly, it's gonna. It's gonna escape us.
- [21:20]
A
So taking them in the order you set up your question, they achieved the final ceasefire agreement because they essentially told the Israelis, this is it. You have no choice. I mean, Trump has been willing to do the thing that Biden never would do, which is really challenge DB you can see when he. DB Was in the Oval Office sitting next to Trump when Trump said, oh, and by the way, I'm going to negotiate with your biggest enemy, Iran. Oh, yeah, and also that Turkey, which you hate. I think the guy, he's a great guy. I really love him. And you could see Dibi sitting there squirming. So Trump had that leverage and got the ceasefire announcement and got the Israeli hostages, thank goodness, all the living hostages, almost all the dead out. Um, but the situation has really been frozen since then. And there are many sensible people who look at this and say, you know what? Given where things are now, Hamas won the war. Now, that may sound crazy to you, but as I talk to experts who look at the ground, Hamas now controls about 85% of the Gaza Palestinian population. 85% of the people live in parts of Gaza where the dominant force remains Hamas. There have been very good, clear plans for how to move toward the disarmament of Hamas and the reconstruction of Gaza, you know, not under Hamas political control. And the Israeli Israelis have actively resisted those approaches for reasons I just. I will never understand. They. They require the active endorsement of the Palestinian Authority, which is one reason Bibi is allergic to the pa. But they also require a kind of continuing aggressive American diplomatic engagement. I'm really happy that the Board of Peace framework finally this week was established with an outstanding person, Bulgarian diplomat named Nikolai Modenoff, as the, in effect, you know, executive director on the ground. He is universally respected. And you could quickly begin moving, the Saudi diplomats were telling me last week, all the things that they've got ready to go if you just would open the door to Palestinian participation. If you'd say, you know, there's not going to be any disarmament of Hamas unless it involves Palestinians. We're not Hamas who do the disarming. So that, you know, I want Trump to succeed what he began in Gaza. And I, and I know, I think what it would take for this to move forward. But so far, Trump has not been willing to go further. I hope the Saudis who do have on this a very clear vision. I really commend the Saudis for thinking this through. They've been working for several years before October 7th to try to reform the PA and make it a future viable governing entity. So it's there. Just a final thought. There's one problem with Trump administration being so thin on the ground, having basically demolished the national security apparatus. The interagency process, the process where you think of options, you have people who carry them out, et cetera, et cetera. That's why I'm so glad to see my friend Ladanov brought in in a key role. He's not American, but he's really good and he knows what he's doing. And maybe it'll be other people. Nothing wrong with that. Get other countries involved, making it happen, because we're not doing it.
- [25:28]
B
You spoke about the Oval Office and Netanyahu sitting with Trump who said, I'm going to start negotiations with Tehran and to his, you know, both disappointment and surprise in that comment. And yet that meeting in April of last year set off a series of actions by both the Israelis as well as the US that has completely neutered Iran on an issue that has been outstanding for many administrations and for decades as it relates to the Iranian nuclear threat. Talk for a moment about the 12 Day War, the bold move by the Israelis to begin it, and if you will, the bold moves by the Trump administration to finish it.
- [26:09]
A
Yeah, so I'm full of, you know, respect for both. I think Iran and its proxies have been been destructive beyond description in the Middle East. I was in Lebanon when Hezbollah began its rise. Hezbollah kidnapped the Lebanese state. Hezbollah is broken. It's important for the Lebanese army to finish the job, to be courageous enough to keep going. But that's, you know, thanks to Israeli military power and some pre diabolical tactics that exploding pagers that we'll remember. The war against Hamas, I think suffers from a lack of planning on the subject that we were talking about a moment ago, the day after. And the war, in truth could have been ended a year before was with a lot less suffering. And I do fault Israel and the US Both for not having adequate strategic thinking. The way in which Iran's security elite has been shown unable to protect its people, is only able to beat up its people. It can't protect them from others. I mean, what a sickening picture that is. You know, that it can go out and shoot people in the streets, but it can't defend them from Israeli warplanes. You know, again, how, as I, as I said earlier about the war in Ukraine, I'd say the same thing about what's going on in Iran. How this ends will really matter in terms of how the world works for years, decades ahead. It's easy to make mistakes. I don't think the right idea is to Send in the B2s and blow more stuff up. I'm working on a column today that just tries to think about post bloodbath. I mean, we're in the bloodbath phase now. Post bloodbath, how would you begin to think about transition? The irgc, the security establishment, the ayatollahs are not going to be able to rule Iran effectively after what's happened in the last 10 days. I think they're just too many dead people. So how's that going to work? And how do you think creatively about use of US Power secretly, overtly? What are the different avenues to try to begin? What's the DNA of a different regime? So I'm trying to think about that, talk to the people I think are smartest about it. But it's an enormous opportunity, again, I think basically would endorse Trump threatening the use of force but being careful about actually doing it. It's obvious he's just. He knows he's on the slippery slope here. War against Iran is really. That's. That's going to. That would tie his. His presidency down for the remaining years.
- [29:18]
B
You mentioned previously in the raid to get Maduro in Venezuela, the precision and somewhat awesome power of the US Military in doing that and how well they executed on it. You also wrote after the 12 Day War, the incredible technology and war powers, if you will. You wrote that the Israeli and US Sources describe that assault as on air. It was an air war. It was a spy war and an algorithm war, all at the same time. And from your novels, I have read and listened to you explain in great detail the various weapons systems and technology and the confluence of the two. When you write for the Post, you don't quite get into that detail, but in lots of your spy novels, you give us a really good insider's view of it. From your writing, David, it sounds like US and Israeli Technology and military might has worked in a way in 2025 just to bookend it at sort of the Iran attack and then the Venezuela attack at a level almost not even expected and beyond what we would think. Talk for a moment about that, because I think that it's important to sort of understand the power we have. And you said at the beginning Trump's acting almost as if he's drunk with power because he's watched this military act. Sending the B2s in. Just one quick thing on this, and then I want to hear your thoughts on it. Sending the B2s in to Iran. You and I both remember when Jimmy Carter in 1979 tried to make a Middle Eastern attack. It failed miserably. We lost US Soldiers, and that was the end of the Carter administration and the reelection attempt by him and the loss to Ronald Reagan. Trump has taken on significant risk in these military actions and tap wood and be thankful that they've all gone as well as they have. But these actions are not without significant risk to him as it relates to his leadership of this nation.
- [31:24]
A
So they are risky. I think showing that the United States is willing to use its military power, it has a enormously beneficial effect. It, it does restore credibility to U. S. Deterrence. One kind of, you know, trope of the pre Trump era was that deterrence was broken. We did our best to try to deter Russia from invading Ukraine. It didn't work. There were, you know, lots of other examples where the deterrence seem to be hobbled. And I think Trump has rehabilitated it. And the kind of braggadocious self dramatization that accompanies all these actions I think is counterproductive. But the rest of the world doesn't seem to mind. I think Trump is beginning to be a little bit more weary of starting fights that he doesn't know how to finish. And in the Iran case in June during the 12 Day War, he was capping a systematic Israeli operation brilliantly conceived to decapitate the regime. And then the B2s came in and finished it off. And I don't want to say that was easy. It was a very sophisticated operation militarily. But the most sophisticated part was what Israel did. And just to go to your point about this being an algorithm or what I, what I meant by that was the complexity of these operations, the ability pretty much simultaneously to take out all the senior IRGC leadership, the first three tiers of scientists who've been involved in the nuclear program pretty much at once just to coordinate all those attacks, coordinate all the signals, the intelligence coming in, the operations, tasking that goes out. And that's, that's just in terms of, you know, management of data and incredible. And it's, you know, the Israelis are very good at it. They have a lot of help from American companies, especially Palantir. So, you know, that's, you know, it is increasingly, it is, it's a new age of warfare. And I guess it should be reassuring to Americans that we're pretty good at it.
- [33:58]
B
Does your comment about our allies and about the sort of the fraying of the partnerships impact us from an intelligence standpoint as it relates to intelligence sharing and foreign countries not willing to share information with the US like they have in the past?
- [34:16]
A
From what I know it's beginning to. For years, other countries would be frustrated by American policy. You know, during the years when we were torturing Al Qaeda captives, other countries might limit their sharing of the fruits of that intelligence and anything related to it. But in general, the view was the United States is so big, their intelligence is so essential to us that we're gonna just kind of swallow things and let the relationship continue as, as always. I sense a little bit of a change in that. I think countries are beginning to think that protecting their national interests requires them to see the United States as a possible potential. I don't want to say adversary, that probably overstates it, but, but obstacle, difficulty, and that you need to guard certain secrets of your own just for self protection. The German, gosh, it was the German foreign minister, I guess, just had an incredible statement about containment of this new America, that it's in German's German interests to find ways to contain, limit, hedge against American power and what those countries will do. Somebody noted this morning that on his way to Davos, the Canadian Prime Minister is stopping off in China. I mean, to Trump insists on beating up Canada for reasons that is completely ridiculous to me. But the product of that is that Canada is doing what it has to. For the first time. It has to think, how do we protect ourselves against American power? And it's doing what any sensible country would do. It's going to the other, the other guy. It's going from Macy's to Gimbels and just see what they got over at Gimbels.
- [36:23]
B
If switching to Venezuela for a moment. And I want to be mindful of time because I know you're on deadline and you've got to get back to writing what you were just talking about on the Venezuela. You quoted Elliot Abrams basically saying, surprised that they didn't install the opposition leader who'd won the Nobel Prize in Venezuela. And when I read that, David, I sort of thought, well, you know, installing the opposition leader didn't really do us a lot of good in Iraq. We knocked out the entire government structure and put in the interim authority, which ended up causing us all sorts of loss of life and treasure in that. Why is leaving the vice president in power? Which, by the way, I was fascinated in the article that you wrote that said that the Trump administration had been in touch with her for months leading up to this action. That flabbergasted me that she was basically in touch, knowing what was going to happen to Maduro and getting ready to step into that power. That was shocking to me.
- [37:25]
A
So I didn't. In quoting Elliot Abrams, I just wanted to reinforce the point that this isn't regime change in Venezuela. People initially said, oh, my God, you know, Trump said he wasn't going to do regime change. And this is regime. Well, it isn't regime change. The key power ministries are still controlled by the same people. They were actually indicted in the 2020 indictment that included Maduro, that outlines the narco conspiracy. So the narcos are still running Venezuela. And Dele Rodriguez, their, you know, acting president, is. Is at the top of the system. The Trump people have been working this behind the scenes more intensively. And he'd even say, you know, cleverly than I had realized. And I think most people had. They had been in a conversation with her. They had been using their Qatari friends, among others, to act as intermediaries for a long time. They floated packages for Maduro that were very complicated, that go back a long ways. So I think they understood that they didn't want to do regime change. They wanted to alter the regime, do a big symbolic change that would reinforce the president's desire to have authority in the Western Hemisphere that won't be challenged. But they don't. They don't. They don't want to run Venezuela. They probably don't want to run Greenland either. You know, they're not doing a very good job figuring out how somebody other than Hamas is going to run Gaza. That part they don't do. Well, you know, they need help. But I think it was wise not to seek regime change in Venezuela. The only thing that I worry about is a policy that seems founded on naked economic self interest. We're going to take your oil. I just think we're in a world where, in effect, recolonization after the decolonizing period that followed World War II had as one component. Almost every oil producing country nationalizing oil resources, they're trying to reverse that and say, no, we want the oil. Why? Because we're big, because we can, we're going to take it. I just don't think that's going to work.
- [40:11]
B
So you talked a bunch about tariffs and the trade war that we got into with China. You talk in an article about the fact that in the escalation of those negotiations, basically China played the card of rare earths after the United States had threatened shutting off access to US Technology and essentially won that negotiation. And it was a fascinating article that you wrote about that. Is it a stretch, David, to think that the Trump administration then said, okay, we're not going to hold China back, we can't use trade and tariffs to sort of cripple China, but we can go after Venezuela and Iran to cut off the supply of oil? Venezuela was step one, Iran is step two. And then we get leverage back at the table with China as it relates to continued negotiations with them. Is that a stretch?
- [41:00]
A
I hadn't thought about it in those terms. Certainly the Chinese are big, well importers and Venezuela and Iran are two key suppliers. And if they're that clever, you know that, that, that would provide a rationale for what, for what they're doing. I think that the Chinese, I mean, so Trump, to his credit, does seem to understand having lost last year's tariff war and had to concede that China had escalation dominance, as people say, because, you know, it's, it's Trump card, forgive me, of rare earths was stronger than our Trump car of chip denial. He's now working actively on the rare earth problem. And as he said on Air Force One the other day, it's not a problem that we can't have access to the minerals. It's a processing problem and we don't need Greenland everywhere. All over the world, in Africa and Australia, people are looking for and finding these essential rare earths. But the processing is going to take a while. And Trump seems to be properly focused on that, understanding that that's a weakness that has to be addressed. Does he want counter leverage against China by controlling flows of oil? I mean, I just don't think the energy markets, so far as I can see, don't work that way. It's just, it's too developed and global a market. Even if ExxonMobil wanted to play ball with, with Trump on Venezuela, it'd be hard to do. So it's got a board of directors, you know, it's, I Mean, it's just people aren't going to do the arbitrary things you want. If you say, well, we're going to cut off supplies of oil to China, China's oil bill will be more expensive. But the idea that it won't find a way to get the oil, I think, I don't think the world works that way.
- [43:02]
B
Yeah, just one data point on that is that I think that when Maduro was taken out on that Saturday night oil, it closed on Friday at somewhere between 57 and 58 bucks a barrel. 57. And it's at 61.$5 a barrel today. And so I had expected to see the price of oil fall dramatically when we made the action in Venezuela. And clearly the markets have looked through that and said it's going to take a lot more than just removing Rodero to get the likes of ExxonMobil and others to invest tens of billions of dollars in Venezuela to upgrade the refineries and to take that dirty crude and bring it to the United States to actually process it.
- [43:37]
A
That's interesting. I hadn't, hadn't focused on that, the oil price number, certainly in the first thing I wrote about Venezuela, I did talk to some industry former CEOs, but people that know the industry really well and they just couldn't have been more emphatic that anybody who thinks that there's a quick way for the US to get a lot more Venezuelan oil doesn't understand the oil market and doesn't understand that the companies he thinks are going to invest won't. Their boards of directors won't let them. Many companies simply won't send their employees into places where they need military protection to operate. And Trump was suggesting, oh, well, you know, don't worry about instability. We'll have, you know, flying. We'll have soldiers there to protect you. You can't force these oil companies to, to do that investment. So, you know, the, I mean, I'll bet even though the price of oil's gone up a little bit, I'll bet those Permian rigs are not, you know, I mean, the Billy Bob Thornton is not rushing out to do a new landmark oil.
- [44:45]
B
That's one of the big risks is that oil gets down to a price where it's not economic for them to drill any further. And you, you get the exploration shutdown. Saudi Arabia, as you probably know, David, their fiscal 2026 budget is based off of an $82 a barrel oil price. 82. And we're at 61 and change today. So, I mean, that's a pretty big gap in the Saudi Arabian annual budget. Final thing for you. And then I gotta let you go. So you came back to writing your article. Let's fast forward a year from now. We've, we've kind of roamed the world as it relates to Iran, Israel, Greenland, Venezuela, China and Taiwan. What's the, what's the, what's the headline that we're not looking at right now? In other words, is it we've, we've taken over Greenland and it's part of the United States, we have true peace in Israel and there's a redevelopment effort that's going on in Hamas that makes eyes spin. Or is it there's something else that we're not even focused on right now that is brewing that we should be focused on over the next year that might come to bear.
- [45:52]
A
So some future headlines are not a year from now, but they're out there. You know, Iranian growth approaches 8%. You know, as investors rush to, you know, set up technology operations in educated, sophisticated, post revolutionary Iran. As I said earlier, the way the Ukraine war ends matters, one headline we could see is Europe and China announced an economic trade agreement to cope with America's unpredictable tariff policies. And you know, the Europeans were in the drew of leaning toward developing China. You know, I can remember the head of a huge German company saying, if you tr the United States really is serious about decoupling, we're going to have to set up a separate operating subsidiary because China is just too important to our future. And then they backed off of that. But I think people may get back on that, on that track. It's hard to see any of the current developments not being of primary benefit to China, secondary benefit to the United States.
- [47:26]
B
And final question, are we safer or more unsafe a year from now, given how we are wielding power around the world and also the changes to our defense and national security apparatus, whenever you.
- [47:38]
A
Take more risks, you're less safe and we're taking a lot more risks. National security was very well managed under Biden. You could say to a fault that it was over managed. But there was never a day in which people didn't think carefully about just precisely how we were using our power. Trump is rolling the dice. He's on a roll. He's like, we're going to get a gambler at the crap table. He won the last three times. Well, why isn't he going to win the fourth time? You know, he hasn't reversed the laws of gravity. At some point, what goes up will come down, will it come down with an enormous, you know, devastating boom, or will it come down more gently? Nobody can say in, in my comments to you, Willie, I've tried to say all the ways in which I think Trump's use of power is understandable, is not crazy, has benefits that accompany it. But I also tried to point out all the areas where I think they're real gaps. And if those gaps aren't filled, we're going to be less secure. And the potential benefits of this period of American reassertion won't be realized, which I don't think any of us want to see. And I hope your viewers who take, as you do, a balanced view toward this, not driven by ideology but rational calculation, will lean more on their friends in the Trump administration to think through the things that they're in some of these instances that I tried to talk about, I think they're not thinking through adequately. It's very frustrating for me as a journalist. All I can do is describe things I see, but I've never seen an administrator I'd never covered. I've been writing about the, about administrations for 40 years. I've never had less access, less of a dialogue with people, less of a sense of how they're really thinking things through than with this group. And I think that's illustrative of a broader problem. They just, they don't reach out to enough to people outside their circle, and at some point, that's going to cost them.
- [49:55]
B
David, thank you so much. I could keep talking to you for a couple hours. I know you're under deadline. Thank you for spending an hour with me. I'm super appreciative, and I look forward to following this conversation up a year or two from now and hear how we've all done. But thank you, David, so much.
- [50:12]
A
Oh, thanks for having me, Willie. I'm a. No, I'm a fan, Sam.