← What Really Matters with Walter Russell Mead
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Foreign.
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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. Dozens of tankers filled with Russian oil are floating at sea without buyers as Western powers are seizing the aging ships the country relies upon. And buyers of Russian oil are demanding the steepest discount global oil prices since the early months of the war in Ukraine. It all spells crunch time for Moscow's most important economic engine. The west has tried to squeeze Russia's oil industry since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022. But a combination of European sanctions against specific ships, dramatic military seizures on the high seas, and President Trump's efforts to put a wedge between Russia and India have left Moscow's most important industry in a precarious state. Russia's main grade of crude, known as Urals, now trades for around $45 a barrel. India, until recently one of Russia's biggest customers, has retreated from purchases after sanctions imposed by the US on Russia's two biggest oil companies and by the European Union on products made from Russian crude. Walter, is this news or fo news?
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It's news. And it also, I think, testifies to why a lot of people have trouble trusting the media in the sense that this is actually a massive crackdown on Russia. It's one that is more significant in some ways than anything that people have done before. And yet it's clearly orchestrated by the Trump administration and couldn't happen without the Trump administration. But I think it would break the brains of a lot of our colleagues at some well known publications to actually have to say, oh wait a minute, apparently the key to world politics isn't that Vladimir Putin is blackmailing Donald Trump with info from the Epstein files or that Donald Trump is in an ideological alliance with Putin to make autocracy beat democracy around the world. These are actually broke brain ways of thinking, but they shape the worldview of some surprisingly quote, serious people. Here's a story where Trump is clearly, and this is only part of what we can see in terms of Trump's anti Russia moves in recent weeks and months. The crackdown on Venezuela is not only taking an asset out of Russians hands, it's going to be increasing, however, in however limited qualities. The oil on the, on the world markets which attacks Russia's price goals. The whole policy in Iran, whether it leads to a deal that then opens up the Iranian oil onto world markets or to a regime change which leads to the same thing. Who can say what's going to happen? But clearly looking to increase oil in world markets in ways that profoundly and pointedly disadvantages Putin. We also see that the US Is stepping up its efforts to solidify this Armenia, Azerbaijan pipeline and transit deal that cuts Russia out of its position as being the sort of a key terminal in the route of oil and gas from Central Asia to the West. These are, these are things. You, you can't miss them if you're in the Kremlin. They are like screaming at you, right? And they are a pattern. Our media cannot see this pattern. Now, I am not saying that this is going to succeed or that this is, you know, that there's, you know, what Trump intends to do or does Trump even put the pieces together. That's, I don't sit down with the president and listen to what he has to say about his thinking. I can't tell you. But if you simply observe the phenomena, they tell you a story. But again, you could read the New York Times until you drop dead of weariness and this story would not be in their pages. Bits of it would be, but nobody connects the dots.
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And then one follow up. What about the India piece of this? I think the last time we talked about India on the show, you'd recently gotten back from there and it was right after the threat of new tariffs and the kind of immigration and visa crackdown that was affecting a lot of Indian born citizens in America and the kind of explosion of anti Indian racism on the American right, at least on social media. You know, does it tell you anything that they do seem to actually be cooperating with what I assume is a pretty painful policy decision, which is to, you know, retreat a bit from purchasing Russian oil.
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Well, remember that the government in India isn't who purchases the Russian oil, it's private businesses. So we're not talking about some kind of state policy decision necessarily. You know, private companies change their business calculation for a whole range of reasons. But if I were looking at the fact that Russian oil tankers keep getting captured and their loads getting confiscated, including one recently, a long chase actually in the Indian Ocean, I might think, I don't know if I was some kind of a refiner refinery. I like to have a regular schedule of when my shipments are coming. And if I have a main supplier who for whatever reason is no longer able to give me the kind of supply that I need on the schedule I need, let's just say I need to diversify my supply chain. And they're not ruling out Russian oil and gas completely, but they're taking what looks to be a very rational. And this is without even thinking about the possibility of sanctions again. Also, if you're sitting in India, you're looking at the chance that if this whole US Engagement confrontation with Iran does lead to Iran getting back in world oil markets, Russia's a small thing compared to that. Venezuela is a small thing compared to that. The other thing that is helping with US India relations right now is that while India's tariffs at 18% are high, they're lower than a lot of their competitors. And so from an Indian point of view, there's a clear differentiation. And there are, you know, both India and the United States have red lines on imports, a lot of them connected to agriculture in both countries and some other things. So I think the deal that came out is a deal that, at least for now, both sides seem to think is in their interests. Who knows where it goes? But the big news, probably on US India relations is that now that Ambassador Gore is in Delhi, he used to be the head of the White House polis personnel office and was very close, is very close to President Trump. So there's now somebody in New Delhi who has President Trump's ear in a way there hasn't been in the second term so far. My guess is that going forward, we're likely to see India's concerns getting a little more of a sympathetic hearing at the White House. And I wouldn't be surprised if the Indians are thinking along those lines as well.
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All right, our second story, speaking of the New York Times. This is from a news report in the New York Times, not from the paper's op ed page, which may not otherwise be clear. President Trump on Thursday announced he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government's legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane, and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and other extreme weather. Led by a president who refers to climate change as a hoax. The administration is essentially saying that the vast majority of scientists around the world are wrong and that a hotter planet is not the menace that decades of research shows it to be. It's a rejection of fact that has been accepted for decades by presidents of both parties, including Richard Nixon, whose top advisor warned of the dangers of climate change and the first president George Bush, who signed an international climate treaty. Walter, is this news or fo news?
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Well, it's true in the sense that Trump has, that under Trump's auspices, the EPA is canceling this finding that does undergird a lot of the work on climate change that the government has done, a lot of the regulations they put in place. That's true. It's also true that most scientists would, you know, are on the other side of this debate. But it's also, I mean, but it's, again, so tendentious the way it's written. It does belong on as an op ed. This is a journalist who's a frustrated columnist. A lot of us columnists can be frustrated journalists, but sometimes it works the other way, too. And unfortunately, either an indisciplined or a pandering editor who isn't going to kind of impose the discipline that really a great newspaper ought to have. But it's also interesting, you know, if you read some of the other commentary that we're getting and there's been a lot of it around, what we're seeing, I think, is we're at a hinge moment. Up until the decision was announced, the commenters overwhelmingly this is going to kill the planet. This is the worst thing that ever happened. This is, you know, a monumental error and folly. And our descendants, if they survive, will curse the day this happened, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But what you're already starting to see is then, well, it's not really that important and many wonderful things can continue and you should continue to fund all of our climate efforts. And, you know, so that, so that the sort of, you know, again, this, the curse of modern journalism is that so many people think that they should use their platforms to advance a political agenda. All of us, we're citizens in a free country. If we have political agendas, we should act as political animals and do our thing. But if you're going to be a journalist, there's a level at which your first responsibility should be toward your readers or towards your listeners, in our case. Fortunately, again, as an opinion writer, you know, it's just my opinion and you can laugh at it and dismiss it and all you want, and that's fine. But we do try to be accurate about our facts on this show. And if we're wrong, we'll say so. So. Invitation to Readers Email Jeremy and with any, any places where we've gotten a fact wrong. And, you know, I don't like being wrong on facts. So, you know, and this, of course, what it does in the long run is it undercuts the very cause you hope to serve when you turn yourself into a propagandist. Then people figure that out sooner or later and they start to discount whatever you say. You make yourself unreliable. I'm actually heartbroken that so many bright people who have a lot of great journalistic skills and a certain kind of ethos of public service have systematically and unnecessarily sabotaged their own ability by poisoning the well of trust with their audiences. And that means that, you know, the boy who cries wolf, you know, someday there'll be a wolf and no one will listen to you. And that's kind of where, to some degree, that's where we're at already.
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All right, final story of the week. China is accelerating its Arctic ambitions, most recently unveiling a conceptual design for a nuclear powered icebreaker capable of breaking through 2.5 meter ice floes, ostensibly for cargo and tourism, but widely seen as having dual military civilian purposes. Since declaring itself a quote, near Arctic state, Beijing has established research stations in Norway and Iceland, invested in Russian mining and port infrastructure, and launched what it called the first regular Arctic container route between China and Europe, which can cut voyage times by 30 to 40% compared to the Suez Canal. While China frames its interest in terms of trade and research, the Arctic also offers military possibilities, from satellite warfare and lines of communication to submarine deployment. Russia, though cooperating economically with Beijing, remains ambivalent about ceding regional dominance. And Arctic states broadly oppose giving China any formal governance role, arguing Beijing is engaged in long term, quote, presence, building to stake future claims in an increasingly contested region. Walter, is this news or faux news?
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Well, it's old news in that China has been doing this for a very long time and gradually building it up. So I'm not sure why somebody decided, okay, this is the day that we have to write this article. But yes, China certainly does see that. And again, you will not find a lot of folks in the media connecting this with Trump's interest in Greenland. The fact that, for example, Norway and Iceland appear to have Chinese research stations on there. Gee, I thought what we were hearing was that NATO is united in wanting to defend the Arctic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, then why, Why a Chinese research station when everybody knows what they're trying to do? Now, of course, you could say, oh, listen, you know, the pent up tourism demand in China for Arctic tourism is so great that they're going to make so much money off nuclear icebreakers that it's a pure commercial project. You know, Clearly. Who doesn't want to see a walrus? It's a bit, and especially in winter, you know, that's when you really want to see the walruses. That's when the, you know, we have a summer Arctic boom when, when it's navigable. But what we need is a winter boom when people really want to be there. Right. Clearly. So you would have to be an idiot not to know what the Chinese are up to and what does that make you if you're then collaborating with their efforts. Now, I think there are better ways than threatening the annexation of Greenland to highlight to your allies the importance of security in what will be what is becoming a vital waterway. Now, let us, by the way, note that the same Trump administration that is canceling the EPA finding on climate gas is also predicating major elements of its foreign policy on the Arctic becoming a more important waterway for commerce. Well, you know, I'll leave that to our brilliant readers, to listeners to figure out the contradiction there and how that works. We need to be paying attention to these things. China has no legitimate business with a military presence in the Arctic. It also underscores, I think, the urgency in trying to end the war in Ukraine as some sort of, you know, as long as the war in Ukraine is going on, Russia has no choice ultimately but to concede to just about everything China wants, because without China, it can't fight that war. So the, the question of reducing Russia's absolute dependence on China is part, you know, would have effects in places like the Arctic and again in Central Asia, where Russia right now is profoundly disadvantaged in asserting its interest against China, forget about against the West. So figure, and so this is sort of, this is the Gordian knot here, is we have the war in Ukraine, which we don't want Russia to win. But prolonging the war in Ukraine also means cementing potentially Russia's long term dependence on China. That's an actual strategic problem. Again, I'm not going to sit and advocate that everything everybody in the Trump administration has sort of said and, you know, briefing the press or in an op ed or something is the right answer to this, but it's a question I don't see enough people asking. This is a little bit different from this naive idea of trying to peel Putin off so he'll be our ally instead of Russia's, instead of China's, but giving ensuring that Russia has the ability to pursue a more independent policy vis a vis the growing Chinese threat to Russian independence, that is something worth thinking about.
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All right. That does it for the news this week. Let's have the big conversation. Walter, you wrote this week about the shifting diplomatic and geopolitical coalitions in the Middle east among the Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia and the kind of big reasons that the Saudis have gone within the span of a year or so from being Abraham Accords curious to essentially leading a bloc against Israel or Israeli interests that includes Qatar and Turkey and excludes the uae. So this is a big change since the last time I think we talked about this. So tell us more about this change and what you think it means.
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It is pretty clear now people have talked about how the Saudi press has returned to having more kind of anti Israel content in it or anti Zionism content in it. That is not necessarily indicative of something. In a country where democracy is not really how things work, public opinion, what's in the press matters a little bit less in terms of where it might be taking things, except that obviously the Saudi press publishes only what the Saudi government is happy with. So this is telling us something. But more, more, more. So we see statements from Saudi ministers and so on. They're not flipping to, you know, full on Nasser style hostility to the Zionist entity and so on. I mean we don't, let's not overstate this is not Saudi Arabia joining a jihad against the Jewish invaders of the Middle East. But it is definitely the Saudi that is both stepping away from deepening cooperation with Israel as a path forward and moving in a sense in the Gulf, sort of cooling relations with the, with the Emirates and warming relations with Qatar and with Turkey and incidentally Egypt, which is also while the current Egyptian government got there by stomping on the Muslim Brotherhood again in international politics. That was last year's news. That's old news. Let's move on. And so Egypt and Turkey and Qatar are also kind of getting together a bit. This, you know, a lot, a lot is going on here. Part of it, really a significant part is Syria where in a, since Israel is losing the bidding war over the future of Syria and that the Saudis are not going, the Saudis are not seeing the greater Turkish presence in Syria as a threat of reviving an Ottoman domination, Ottoman style domination of the Middle east or something like that. I think that's how some of the Israelis were hoping that they would see it and so that there could be Israeli Saudi cooperation in the future of Syria. That's not happening. And what we're seeing is a kind of an agreement over supporting the current Sunni based and radical Sunni based in some ways government in Syria as something that both the Saudi and Saudi, Qatar, Turkey are all supporting and seem to have persuaded Trump to support as well. That's not the kind of thing that Israel hoped would happen in Syria. May not be the worst nightmare that you can imagine, but is not. Again, that's, I think they would have preferred a less centralized Syria, makes it easier to maintain buffer areas and so on and so forth. It also means that once again the Kurds get kicked to the curb and, and you see the US Is kind of pulling away from supporting the Kurdish forces. That makes the Turks happy, that makes the Syrians happy and Saudis don't seem to care. It makes the Israelis unhappy. But so, so there's the Syria factor that they've managed to, to reach a kind of, at least to some degree, a common vision about what could be happening there. And I presume also in Lebanon maybe, then I think we, we would say that for mbs, the price of cooperation with Israel has gone up and the value of cooperation has gone down. You know, hasn't gone up to infinity and it hasn't gone down to zero. You know, Saudi policy is nuanced as you need to be as a, as an oil state in a dangerous region. You need to think very hard and not necessarily like run to extremes all the time. But they, I think they do see the, That with the, you know, public opinion in Saudi Arabia watched the war in Gaza and it didn't like what it saw. And the Palestinian issue is a bigger issue now for Saudi public opinion than it used to be. It's always, never went away completely. So in that sense, if you're, if you recognize Israel without getting something obvious and good in return for the Palestinians, then you look pretty bad in Saudi Arabia. And not just to the falafel seller on the street or whatever, something like that, but to your cousins in the princely family, to religious members, maybe even of your own nuclear family, who knows that it's just a harder thing to do and at the same time you need it less. This is the paradox that now that Iran is almost flat on its back, the Saudis aren't that worried about Iran right now. And one of the biggest factors driving Saudi Israeli cooperation was the notion of Iran is a huge danger. The United States is unreliable. So let's work with Israel both to increase our defense against Iran, but also to pool our efforts to get the United States to do what it really should be doing from our point of view in the Middle east and now with less need for an anti Iran policy and an aggressively anti Iran policy policy. There is less need for a pro Israel policy. And then there's another little piece of the puzzle which is kind of fun and interesting, which is that the UAE and Saudi, while, you know, while they are, you know, we, we've grown used to think of them as being aligned, there actually are some very significant differences in their approach. And there's a lot of rivalry in that relationship. For years and years, the Emiratis sort of said, listen, okay, the Saudis may have more oil and they may have more money, but what Western company is going to want to have a headquarters in Riyadh? You can't go for a drink. You can't take your female co worker to a coffee shop for a cup of coffee. Nightclubs, ha, ha, ha, you know, no nightlife, religious police checking everything. Who wants to live there? Come here, we are open, we are liberal. Come here and bring your money and build your headquarters. And they've done very, very well with that over the years. Now, when the Saudis began to liberalize domestically, a lot of people in the United States, because so many, even of our seasoned observers of foreign policy tend to see things through very ideological eyes. They said, ah, a great victory for women's rights. Oh, we wish there was more, but they're ideologically moving in the right direction. And this is, you know, our values are winning. Well, you know, there's some of that. Saudi women are speaking to their husbands and their sons and their brothers and their fathers. And those of us who have women in our families have noticed that they can speak very effectively when they, when they want to and even have a lot of influence. I don't, Jeremy, I'm not telling you anything new. And so, yes, there's some movement, but a big factor in that is now Riyadh is a much nicer place than it used to be for Western expats and people from all over the world to live and work. It's more tolerant, it's more accepting. There are more options for what you can do when work is over. And at the same time, the Saudis were also saying, oh, and by the way, if you want to do a lot of business in Saudi Arabia, you need to have your regional headquarters here. Okay, this is not good for the Emirates. Obviously, one of their responses was, actually this is part of their calculation on doubling down with Israel. At least this is what it looks like, that, okay, well, Saudi Arabia, okay, fine, you have like a nightclub, we've got a synagogue. We are so much deeper than you into this liberalism thing, we're going to places you can never go. We got kosher restaurants and, you know, and so there was like, who's going to like, outgun the other in the quest for demonstrating? I'm a great open city that that can be the, the wonderful, best possible host for your multinational operations. We got art galleries, we got synagogues. You name it, we got it. All right, so this, the Saudis then I think very deaf. And the Emiratis doubled down on this during the Gaza war, you know, when a lot of other airlines stopped flying to Israel. Emirates Airlines kept, kept coming in and out. Well, now that the sort of public opinion tied on Gaza has turned and the Israelis, Israeli government, I think at this point is unable, just because of the, the makeup of the coalition to offer a kind of an olive branch for Palestinians. Even if the olive branch were just a fig leaf to cover, you know, a little bit of COVID for people overseas that wanted to be soften on Israel. The, the public opinion thing is real. And so now the Saudis deftly step away from the Israel camp and it kind of leaves the Emiratis alone very publicly hugging the skunk. And, you know, very clever little move by the Saudis on the kind of regional politics way. And at the same time, by reopening the door to Qatar and to Turkey, the Saudis are at least hoping that they can deal with a bit of the ideological problem that the Muslim Brotherhood represents for the legitimacy of their own rule. So you can see how there are a lot of things adding up into this. And then, of course, because the economic plans of MBS have not all worked out as hoped, they're not going to be able to build neom, certainly not on schedule. The big, big developments in Riyadh have been put on hold. A lot of the big spending programs just aren't working and just are uneconomic. And the price of oil, thanks to Mr. Trump, is too low to support some of the things that they wanted to do. The Crown Prince is aware that he's having to make some unpopular decisions and also kind of admit that some of the things that he enthusiastically backed might not have been as practical as he hoped they would be. And so in this, throwing a bone to the religious establishment and a more conservative public opinion by taking a harder line on Israel and Palestine kind of eases his path politically. And interestingly, again, he could do this in ways that, you know, some of the things the religious establishment would like him to do, and that would make him more popular with real conservatives in Saudi Arabia is like, get rid of some of these reforms and, like, get those women back in the hijab. You know, oh, there are a lot of things. But that would undercut his base among the younger generation, who are really his core base. The Israel thing makes the conservatives happy, and it doesn't. Doesn't cause problems for his younger generation. We can be liberal at home. We just want to help the Palestinians. All right, so it's. It's a smart move from all of these aspects. And I think, you know, I can't tell you which of these had which percentage of impact in the thinking of the decision makers in the kingdom. They don't share. They're not like us. They don't leak all their stuff to the newspapers. But you just look at the issue in the round, and you can see that this is something that makes sense on a lot of different levels from the standpoint of somebody who's trying to run Saudi Arabia.
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All right, that does it for the big conversation. Let's end on the tip of the week. Walter, for as long as I've known you, which is getting uncomfortably close to two decades, you've hated President's Day. Please tell us why.
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I really do. I hate President's Day. You know, I suppose some of this is biblical. Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord has given thee. I mean, come on. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are fathers of our country. Neither one of them was a perfect man. Not every decision either one made, good books have been written. Not only did George Washington own slaves, he, like, wasn't always that good at actually winning battles. All right, so this is not. We're not talking about, like, declaring them infallible or gods on Earth, but a day out of the year that we dedicate to the memory of the man who, more than anybody else, founded the United States and whose extraordinary act of renouncing power twice. Once after the revolution when he had the army and he could have kind of controlled what happened next. And the other after his second term, when he went home to Mount Vernon. He gave us so much. We benefit so much from studying him ourselves, making sure that our kids in school and elsewhere study his accomplishments, know what made him great. And my goodness, ditto for Lincoln, you know, some whose transformational leadership during the most difficult ordeal in American history, you know, has inspired people all over the world and remains truly one of the most glorious pages in American history. And I say this is a native South Carolinian. We had our problems with Mr. Lincoln, we, I can say now we were wrong. Even Jefferson Davis, by the way, at the end of his life, acknowledged the greatness of. Of Abraham Lincoln, the moral greatness, not merely the sort of political cunningness. So we diminish and demean ourselves when we don't honor and revere and study the accomplishments and the achievements and the characteristics of people who've done so much for us. You collapse this into President's Day. It just is like, first of all, really, you know, do we really want to celebrate as a group all of our presidents? I don't actually think so. I can think of a few that maybe don't deserve a lot of singing and dancing in the streets. So that's kind, you know, and it sort of says that getting elected is the great thing rather than accomplishing something important. Right. Is that really kind of what we do? We want to replace two holidays that inculcate sentiments of greatness and patriotism with one that, like, focuses on careerist achievement and used car sales? I don't think so. This was stupid and it was wrong. So I say go back. President Lincoln's birthday should be a holiday. President Washington's birthday should be a holiday. And kids should learn in school what they did.
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All right, there you have it. Thanks to our producer, Josh Cross, thanks to Alex Fatanov at Hudson, and my co host, Walter Eslide. 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.