← What Really Matters with Walter Russell Mead
What Really Matters with Walter Russell Mead
Iran, Data Centers, Daylight Saving, and Lindsey Graham
00:33:11
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- [00:06]
A
Welcome back, everybody, to what really Matters. I'm Jeremy Stern with you in Los Angeles. I'm here as always with Walter Russell Mead of tablet, the Wall Street Journal, Hudson Institute, and the Hamilton School at the University of Florida. Let's start with this week's news. First story of the week. New York became the first state in the nation to impose a moratorium on the construction of data centers this week, a potential setback for artificial intelligence companies that politicians once courted for investment but have now triggered public fears about energy prices and water use. Governor Kathy Hoj signed an executive order pausing environmental permit for large data centers for up to a year, saying the delay would give state officials time to craft rules to protect the electrical grid, the environment, and communities where developers want to build, quote, as data center development threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources and create uncertainty for New Yorkers. She said it's my responsibility to take action and lead. Walter news or fo news?
- [01:04]
B
Well, news, but news of idiocy and despicable foolishness. You know, it's not news in the sense that it's going to seriously inconvenience data centers. I look at the taxes in New York and the costs in New York, I can't imagine there were thousands of eager companies all, oh, if I could only build in New York where the taxes are so high and everything is regulated up the wazoo with billionaires, like, migrating out of New York at a pretty stunning clip. I don't actually think that she was standing in the gap, stopping the tidal wave of data centers up. And you wouldn't be able to see the banks of the Hudson river because of all the data centers. I don't think so. And then this business of, oh, we got to give our regulators time to revolve. You know what? It's been at least a year that people have known that there's a lot of data centers coming. It's been several years. Like, they could have had those things in place two years ago. So this is, I think, almost pure grandstanding. And it is grandstanding that is very much not in the interests of the people of New York State. It makes maybe folks in Brooklyn really happy. But there's a lot of places in upstate New York where, where there's no investment, there's no jobs, where young people have to leave because there isn't a future. There isn't a tax base to support good education or good services. You know, it's. I mean, it's good news for the other 49 states in the union. I will say that you think the
- [02:44]
A
chance that the, you know, concerns about data centers, water and electricity usage will, you know, they'll be able to turn it into a salient issue, or are Democrats just really overestimating how salient this is for, you know, their coalition and their base? Kind of like the Keystone pipeline issue, I remember, you know, it was like a, a big sop to a couple interest groups that ended up just not being very popular for the party as a whole.
- [03:10]
B
Well, again, I think it may depend on place to place. You know, there are some states where these, you know, Vermont is, is not going to be home of the data centers. You know, just not, not it. But, you know, the question is, what about swing states? What about even Pennsylvania, which New York banned fracking. Pennsylvania fracked. I think Pennsylvania's a lot happier with its decision than New York is with its. Maybe not. But what I, what I do think is that we see so many decisions being taken now of blue states, states engaged in what we've always called the blue social model, systematically destroying their own economic future or at least impairing it. And that trend looks like it's going to continue. The schools in Illinois are going to get worse and worse and worse because they have unresolved pension problems. And at the same time, taxes are going to go up and up to pay for bad schools. And people are going to say, well, why am I doing this? More and more companies will leave. Chicago used to be the city that works. It's not the city that works anymore. You know, and meanwhile, states like Texas and Florida and, you know, other states that are more open to this will continue to kind of grow and push forward. I think we're going to see in 2030, the census will, will shift even more, you know, political weight in the country to the parts of the country that, that are embracing a pro growth. So I do think it is part of a psychology of decline and a kind of almost embrace of decline. And, you know, people want to vote for that. This is a free country. You should vote for what you want, but you're going to have to live with the results.
- [05:07]
A
Second story. President Trump told Benjamin Netanyahu during a phone call this week that Israel should start redeploying its forces out of Syria and urged him to do the same in Lebanon, according to U.S. and Israeli officials. Three months ahead of an election that is existential for his political survival and personal freedom, Netanyahu is unlikely to take any significant steps to withdraw Israeli forces from territory it occupies in Syria or to allow further redeployments in Lebanon beyond the one he's already agreed to, according to Axios. But Trump's requests do add to growing pressure on the Israeli leader. The Trump administration has spent months trying to reach a new security agreement between Israel and Syria before eventually concluding that Netanyahu does not want to make the concessions it sought, leading to increasing frustration. Walter News or FO News?
- [05:53]
B
I have to say at this point, I dismiss a lot of news of insider whisperings and so on as faux news. That article started with the premises that Bibi's personal freedom depends on winning the election. I mean, I read in other sources some of the core allegations in the indictments are collapsed. The judges are saying to the prosecutors, throw these things out, you know, so I think there may be maybe has political considerations in his mind. The election's a long way away, but he is behind in the polls, who knows, a lot of things going on. So, you know, there will be all kinds of swirling speculation moves about this and that. But I would have to say that in general, the last couple of weeks have seen a narrowing of gaps between Israeli and American perspectives on overall what's happening in the Middle East. I'd also say again that it is very much to Trump's advantage in the Middle east and elsewhere as being seen to tell Bibi, don't do X, don't do. Yeah, and maybe not necessarily so much in his interest to follow up and make sure Bibi actually listens to what he's being told. You know, particularly in the Trump administration, where President Trump really doesn't use speech as a means of sharing information, but he uses it as a means to elicit responses from people. This kind of who I have the inside account of, you know, what so and so whispered to so and so. And oh, it's a really big deal. It's probably not a big deal. You. As you remember, Jeremy, we went through this on the Memorandum of Understanding. People are like parsing out paragraph four. Oh, my goodness, you know, Trump has given this away, or Iran, and the whole mou, you know, has just melted away. So none of that news about the various specific terms actually mattered. There's a lot of this going around right now. I suggest everybody take a deep breath, look at the big picture. And in any case, it's much too early to get very hot and bothered about the results of an Israeli election that's going to come at the end of October. There are going to be acres of newsprint covered with, with speculation and inside gossip and okay, and then on October 28th, everybody's going to know who won and no one will ever, ever, ever go back and read any, any of that speculative. And so actually, my advice to our listeners is save yourself some time. Invest a lot less time reading speculation about what might or might not happen tomorrow or in October and maybe spend a little bit more time trying to see what's actually happening. All right.
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A
Final story of the week, near and dear to your heart. Walter. I think the House voted this week to end Americans practice of switching their clocks twice per year, delivering a win for Donald Trump who has called for permanent daylight saving time over the objections of medical groups and lawmakers who represent Midwestern states. The bill passed by a lopsided 308 to 117 vote but still needs to clear the Senate. The Sunshine Protection act would stop the annual practice of springing forward and falling back by placing most of the country permanently on Daylight saving time. The legislation has been championed in both the House and Senate by bipartisan members disproportionately from southern and coastal states who argue it would allow Americans to enjoy more outdoor afternoon and evening activities during the winter. It also has drawn support from golf course operators who say the extra hour of daylight in the evenings would notably boost their business. Walter, news or phone news?
- [10:02]
B
Well, until the Senate actually passes it, I would consider this not even phone news. It's non news. All right. A law becomes a law when it's passed by both houses of Congress and actually in the Senate, some of those, there's actually more weight for some of the states that are skeptical of daylight savings time. And in fact, it was always going to pass the House. It's not a surprise that it passed the House, the whole thing. If it passes the Senate, that's news. But who knows what's going to happen in the Senate. I'm really in favor of half of the clock changes. The fall back. I love, I love the extra day, you know, the extra hour of sleep. I hate the spring forward. So let's just abolish spring forward, shall we? And every day move the move every year just move it back another. I mean, why not or why not pass a law that says they're going to be 27 hours in every day? I mean there's, you know, or how about eight days in every week. It was Benjamin Franklin who wrote, really, I thought brilliantly about the original concept of daylight savings time that he never understood how you could make yourself warmer by cutting a foot off the bottom of your blanket and sewing it Back onto the top. I hate it when it's dark at 4 o'. Clock. I really don't like it at all. And I love it when you can sit out and enjoy a long evening. Seven, eight, even nine o', clock, that gentle evening light. I wish. You know, I think we should just pass a law against the sun, you know, or the earth, like tilting. We should, like ban the tilting of the earth or something, or fix it so that it's always the midsummer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. Like, let those people in the south just. But these, you know, let's see. But spring forward, abolish, fall back, entrench in the law.
- [12:11]
A
All right, that does it for this week's news. Let's have the big conversation. Walter, you wrote this week about the collapse of the MoU with Iran, which you mentioned, and in particular why this conflict is, in fact war and what you called an irrepressible war at that. So tell us more what you mean and the historical references you had in mind here and what you think is most important to understand.
- [12:42]
B
Yeah, sure. The big problem that we have that the Americans and the Iranians have with each other, let's say, is the Iranian regime, and I'm calling it a regime in part because so much of it has been killed. It's not quite how much power to the civilian authorities are. Who's actually running Iran is not as clear as it was a few months ago. But in any case, they are really committed to the idea that Iran should control, should be the hegemonic power around the Gulf, which will give it essentially control not only of the, of the Gulf's economic resources, but of its religious resources, sort of having much more influence and maybe ultimately control over the holy sites in Mecca and Medina, at the pilgrimage sites and so on, as a way of cementing a kind of Shia revival in Islam as a. As a precursor of a global revival of Iranians, we consider the right kind of Islam, you know, very much on the agenda. But in addition to that, and parallel to that, you get to the point where you control who could get in and out of the Strait of Hormuz. You control. You make the Arabs pay you off. You can make the rest of the world pay tolls or whatever you want to put on the Strait of Hormuz. You can set the world price of oil more or less the way you want. Unless, you know, to the extent the United States and others aren't able to produce energy beyond the Gulf, it is a huge prize. It. If Iran got it Iran would clearly move to the top table of world politics and things would change. Things would change. They want it, they know that the United States opposes it, but they can see reasons why they have a shot at getting it despite America's nuclear edge and its supremacy in conventional warfare. You know, they look around and you know, we look around, we say, well, you know, Hezbollah's been knocked back, they've lost Syria, they're actually having trouble in Iraq. This is really, you know, it's not good for them. There is some truth to that, but their point of view is, you know, the Americans are kind of lazy and weak willed. They get, they're very hot tempered and so they, they'll like go ah, when, when something happens but you know, you hold on and ultimately they go home. Look at what just happened in Afghanistan, look at what happened in Vietnam. We care. Ultimately the Americans don't care about this as much as we do. And this means if we hang on, we can prevail. And furthermore, the Iranians look at how world opinion has turned against Israel since October, the, the beginning of the October war and a lot of the Middle east and actually in a lot of the world people actually can't believe that the Jews have built a strong state and that that's why Israel is strong. They have, they have an exaggerated, conspiratorially minded, you know, the Jews are really good at like behind the scenes conspiracies and financial manipulation. And so what the Jews, the reason Israel has been successful is because the Jews have been able to like bewitch the Americans into backing them. And without the American backing, Israel could never succeed. And now they look at like, you know, every little poll in America that shows that people under 35 or less sympathetic to Israel or whatever, it's like headline news, you know, it's about to fall. It's, you know, at last we're winning, we're winning. And they believe this stuff. They don't actually think Israel is a country, a nation that is capable of defending itself and will defend itself after all of this time. The refusal to believe this is sort of part and parcel with the refusal to believe that Zionism is a legitimate ideology. Jews are not a people in that sense and therefore they cannot have a strong state. So the Iranians are, have kind of worked themselves into a belief, not obviously all the Iranians, but some of the more fanatical ones and the sort of hardcore IRGC people who, you know, I don't want to shock people may not be that deeply grounded in the study of World history and, and aware of, of, of how things look outside Iran that these folks think they're winning. And they say, look at the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah, we've, you know, we've lost Lebanon, at least for now. We're on the back foot in Iraq. But, you know, the Strait of Hormuz, our drones will stop the Americans. You know, we, we can win. And the Americans will get tired. Trump looks at, is looking at the midterms and so on. And so, so the Iranians have a goal, control of the strait, control the oil, becoming a great power this way, and they think, they see the way to achieve it. The Americans, on the other hand, for 80 years, this is not something that Donald Trump just woke up one day thinking. But since the time of Franklin Roosevelt, it's been one of the fundamental axioms of American foreign policy that we cannot allow anybody else to have the ability to block the flow of oil, oil and gas from the Middle east to global markets. And Jimmy Carter proclaimed the Carter doctrine about safe passage in the Persian Gulf. I mean, so a very dovish American president who, who really was not interested in imperialistic designs and so on. Jimmy Carter saw this as a fundamental element of American national strategy. And I think, by and large, the American strategic community continues to agree with this. And so from that American point of view, we must stop the Iranians from taking over the strait. And I think President Trump actually, and we've, we've talked about this before, and I mentioned it in some of my columns as well. I think people, you know, a lot of observers, because they don't have any confidence in what Trump is doing, so on, assume that Trump must also share their sense that Trump is completely blown at this time. He's desperately looking for a way out. Oh, Trump knows what. It finally knows what an idiot he is. And he's just trying to stop. Save his fat skin. You know, this is the kind of, this is the level of analysis that a lot of people are bringing to this. That is not, I think, the way Trump thinks. I mean, he may be wrong. You know, we, you know, let's not, you know, presume here the future is a, is a, is. Is not an open book. But Trump actually looks at this and he says, I've destroyed a ton of their stuff. We're not even talking about, you know, any nuclear threat from Iran right now because that stuff really is kind of pulverized. And yeah, they're lobbying these ships and so on, but I am able to blockade the strait. And furthermore, four months or whatever it is now into this war. I've actually been able to keep both oil prices and global financial markets from imploding while a shooting war has been going on in the Strait of Hormuz. When I thought I needed a ceasefire, I was able to get one. I could send Vance over and we negotiate this mou. And, you know, everybody's very happy with the mou. They complain, whatever, but, you know, we have one, then it's not working for me. I get rid of it. Well, who knows, we can do another mou should I need it? So, you know, Trump's sense is that he's actually doing okay and he does not perceive a need to get out of this right away. He's as aware that the midterm election is coming as anybody else is. He knows that the price of gas should not go up, you know, right before the midterm and so on. But Trump also, I think, genuinely does not trust the Iranians together. I think, again, from Trump's point of view, you know, voices like Tucker Carlson, Kendace Owens are weaker now than they were at the start of the Iran war. And you can see this kind of perceptible decline in the energy of far right anti Semitism and anti Trump isolationism has actually gotten weaker. Again, to Trump, that's a signal that things are going well for him, that instead of breaking up his coalition, the Iran war has actually consolidated his hold over his coalition. So, again, Trump could be wrong. I'm not. I'm not trying to say all this to say, oh, the great genius Donald Trump has saved the world by his magnificent foreign policy. We'll see what happens. But from Trump's point of view, he is not desperately trying to escape from a terrible trap in which he's fallen. And that means, I think, that both Trump and the Iranians are more willing to fight this out than a lot of the analysts, a lot of conventional analysts have understood. And as you know, Jeremy, that's kind of been my consistent position during this whole thing, is that people were significantly underestimating the chance that this war might have some legs.
- [23:14]
A
One final question going back to what you said at the beginning about Iran's ambitions, not just being about being a powerful state or country and establishing a chokehold on the region's energy supply, but also being the predominant external power in Syria and in Lebanon and Iraq, and also perhaps, you know, one day gaining control of the. Of the holy sites in Islam. Given all of that, why does it, at least from the outside, still always seem like this is a US Israeli problem. And that the Saudis must be very concerned about this and others, they must be kind of panicked about it periodically. But ultimately they seem to have a more fatalistic attitude about it, which is, you know, the, either the US and the Israelis will solve this problem for us, in which case that's great, or they won't, and we'll just have to accommodate it ourselves to it. Is that accurate or.
- [24:06]
B
Well, because that is sort of true. You know, it's like, okay, the Saudis cannot win a war with Iran, right, any more than Belgium could win a war with Germany in 1914 or 1940. What, you know, what do you do in that case? And what, you know, they would clearly prefer for Iran to have its wings clipped. And to the extent they have confidence that the Americans in particular have a clear strategy and a clear commitment, they will back our play. But if they, you know, to the extent they have doubts, they need to hedge. And part of, you know, Trump's diplomatic method is, I think, is to create uncertainty in everyone's minds, including your allies. So, you know, so the, so the Saudis and the Emiratis and so on are both hedging and bandwagoning, as they say in political science. And they're quite right. The whole problem, and it says the whole reason the Gulf is an American problem is that without us, there is no local coalition of states that can defeat the Iranians, possibly the Israelis, by dropping, by using nuclear weapons, you know, to kind of wipe out the Iranian state could do that. But the Americans are as worried about that as anybody else and don't want it to happen and don't want Israel to be backed into a corner where existentially the Israelis think that those are their choices because people think that actually in that case they would use them. So there's a sense in which the Americans as interposing between the Israelis and an existential threat from an empowered Iran. Right. We're not only assuring our own interest in the smooth flow of oil in and out and tranquility in the Gulf, in the world's oil markets, and denying Iran the ability to blackmail the world whenever it wants, we're also preventing a nuclear conflict that we really don't want to see for all kinds of reasons, some noble and humanitarian, some short sighted, perhaps and selfish, but they all point in the same direction. So the Americans end up, we, we share with the Israelis and the, and the Gulf Arabs a desire amounting to a determination to prevent the Iranians from dominating the region. But we also, again, we have an American interest, distinct from the Israeli interest, of not wanting to see the Israelis forced into a position where they think either the Iranians are going to nuke us or we're going to nuke them. We don't want things to get to that state.
- [27:18]
A
That does it for the big conversation. Let's end on the tip of the week. Senator Lindsey Graham from your home state of South Carolina died a bright abruptly this week. Walter. After a brief and sudden cardiovascular disease. He'd represented South Carolina in the Congress in one form or another since 1995 and was one of the most consistent and vocal. And I think many people feel effective members of the Senate's legislative and other work in foreign policy in particular. So give us your thoughts on the late Senator Graham.
- [27:55]
B
Well, he is a real loss, loss to South Carolina, lost to the, lost to the country. And, you know, he probably had another good 10, 10 years or more in him, too, by Strom Thurman's standards. He was still very, very, he was still new in the job. I do think. One thing that I think has been really interesting about his death is the number of people in both parties who have stepped forward and said, you know, I often really disagree, agreed with Senator Graham, but I liked Senator Graham and I felt you could trust Senator, you could work with Senator Graham, you know, and that, that is so important that he really was one of the men, one of the people who believed in the Senate, believed in working with your, your opponents to try to find some kind of a way forward, but who was also personally gracious. There were stories about political enemies that he had stepped in at a, at a tough moment in their lives or whatever to, you know, offer comfort or in some cases actual help even to people who'd been bitter critics of him. This is an example. I hope that will inspire a lot of us to try to do a better job of remembering that even when you're involved in politics and policy and all these very high stakes and emotional contests and all we are actually human beings. We have duties toward one another. We are all going to be judged by the same God who will apply a fair and impartial standard to all of us. And we all know that there are certain moral truths we Christians talk about, you know, the, the Golden Rule. But this is something that you find in so many religions and philosophies. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. And Lindsey Graham, to a really interesting extent, made that principle. You know, he acted on that principle in politics. So I I really hope that, that this will, will just remind a lot of us of the need. I certainly need reminding of it. And I think other people do, too. So I'm, I, as a South Carolinian, I'm actually proud. Not all South Carolina politicians leave an odor of sanctity and distinction behind them when they go. But Lindsey Graham added honor to his own name and honor to his state.
- [31:00]
A
There you have it. Thanks to our producer, Josh Cross, thanks to Alex Fatanov at Hudson, and my co host, Walter Russell Mead. I'm Jeremy Stern. We'll see you next week. And until then, please go rate and review us. This helps other people find the show.