1
00:00:04,800 --> 00:00:07,240
Speaker 1: On this episode of New World, we're entering a new

2
00:00:07,280 --> 00:00:10,280
Speaker 1: era of global cataclysm, in which the world faces a

3
00:00:10,280 --> 00:00:14,600
Speaker 1: deadly mix of war, climate change, great power rivalry, rapid

4
00:00:14,640 --> 00:00:18,360
Speaker 1: technological advancement, the end of both monarchy and empire, and

5
00:00:18,400 --> 00:00:23,159
Speaker 1: countless other dangers. In his new book Wasteland, Robert D.

6
00:00:23,320 --> 00:00:27,040
Speaker 1: Kaplan incisively explains how we got here and where we

7
00:00:27,080 --> 00:00:30,760
Speaker 1: are going. Kaplan makes a novel argument that the current

8
00:00:30,840 --> 00:00:35,640
Speaker 1: jeebuo political landscape must be considered alongside contemporary social phenomena

9
00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:40,479
Speaker 1: such as urbanization and digital news media. The singular dilemmas

10
00:00:40,479 --> 00:00:45,519
Speaker 1: of the twenty first century pandemic disease, recession, mass migration,

11
00:00:46,080 --> 00:00:49,680
Speaker 1: the destabilizing effects of large scale democracy and great power conflicts,

12
00:00:50,080 --> 00:00:53,720
Speaker 1: and the intimate bonds created by technology mean that every

13
00:00:53,720 --> 00:00:56,680
Speaker 1: disaster in one country has the potential of him a

14
00:00:56,680 --> 00:01:01,360
Speaker 1: global crisis too. According to Kaplan, the solutions lie in

15
00:01:01,440 --> 00:01:06,720
Speaker 1: prioritizing order and governing systems, arguing that stability and historic liberalism,

16
00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:11,440
Speaker 1: rather than mass democracy, will save global populations from an

17
00:01:11,440 --> 00:01:15,360
Speaker 1: anarchic future. I'm really pleased to welcome my guest, somebody

18
00:01:15,360 --> 00:01:18,560
Speaker 1: who I admired deeply. I have used his book The

19
00:01:18,600 --> 00:01:22,840
Speaker 1: Coming anarchy for a quarter century now as probably the

20
00:01:22,840 --> 00:01:26,520
Speaker 1: best single insight to what was going to happen and

21
00:01:26,520 --> 00:01:29,160
Speaker 1: how it's happened. He is the best selling author of

22
00:01:29,200 --> 00:01:32,320
Speaker 1: twenty books on foreign affairs and travel. He holds the

23
00:01:32,400 --> 00:01:35,480
Speaker 1: Robert Strauss who Pay Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign

24
00:01:35,480 --> 00:01:39,240
Speaker 1: Policy Research Institute. For three decades he reported in foreign

25
00:01:39,240 --> 00:01:42,080
Speaker 1: affairs with The Atlantic. I am thrilled to have him

26
00:01:42,080 --> 00:01:56,720
Speaker 1: with a Robert Welcome and thank you for joining me

27
00:01:56,760 --> 00:01:57,320
Speaker 1: a newt world.

28
00:01:57,640 --> 00:02:00,360
Speaker 2: It's a great pleasure to be here with you.

29
00:02:00,240 --> 00:02:02,840
Speaker 1: And you begin Wastelam by going into the history of

30
00:02:02,840 --> 00:02:06,000
Speaker 1: the Weimar Republic. Why did you start there?

31
00:02:07,040 --> 00:02:10,600
Speaker 2: I started there because I'm a journalist, and you start

32
00:02:10,680 --> 00:02:14,000
Speaker 2: with a long anecdote. You don't just jump into it

33
00:02:14,040 --> 00:02:17,880
Speaker 2: and tell your thesis, you know. And I thought that

34
00:02:18,040 --> 00:02:26,000
Speaker 2: the Weimar Republic was incredibly, yeerily similar to our world today.

35
00:02:26,639 --> 00:02:31,040
Speaker 2: That the Viimar Republic, to most people, connotades doom because

36
00:02:31,040 --> 00:02:34,800
Speaker 2: it led to Hitler. That's not where we're headed. But

37
00:02:34,919 --> 00:02:38,240
Speaker 2: the Weimar Republic could have turned out well. There was

38
00:02:38,280 --> 00:02:42,800
Speaker 2: a matter of contingency had this happened or that happened,

39
00:02:42,800 --> 00:02:46,160
Speaker 2: had the Great Depression not happened exactly when it did.

40
00:02:46,240 --> 00:02:49,240
Speaker 2: Hitler may not have come to power. But the reason

41
00:02:49,320 --> 00:02:55,079
Speaker 2: I chose Viymar was because it's how geography has been

42
00:02:55,200 --> 00:03:01,760
Speaker 2: shrunk by technology. In that sense, our world today, so interconnected,

43
00:03:01,919 --> 00:03:08,360
Speaker 2: so shrunken, so anxious, so claustrophobic, connotates and is similar

44
00:03:08,800 --> 00:03:13,720
Speaker 2: to the constant, permanent crisis of the Vimar Republic. It's

45
00:03:13,800 --> 00:03:17,800
Speaker 2: like our world is one big Viymar. Now we don't

46
00:03:17,840 --> 00:03:22,200
Speaker 2: have world government, there is very little world governance, but

47
00:03:22,320 --> 00:03:26,880
Speaker 2: there is an emerging global system. That doesn't mean order.

48
00:03:27,200 --> 00:03:30,720
Speaker 2: It just means that every place can interact with every

49
00:03:30,840 --> 00:03:35,800
Speaker 2: other place like never before, Like the far flung Germany

50
00:03:36,040 --> 00:03:40,000
Speaker 2: of the Vymar years, when there was always a cabinet crisis,

51
00:03:40,440 --> 00:03:44,920
Speaker 2: there was never a feeling of relaxation. It was just exhausting.

52
00:03:45,240 --> 00:03:47,000
Speaker 2: And that's our world today.

53
00:03:48,120 --> 00:03:50,880
Speaker 3: You have an amazing term. You say, Vymar is a

54
00:03:50,960 --> 00:03:52,800
Speaker 3: candy coated horror tale.

55
00:03:53,200 --> 00:03:57,400
Speaker 2: Yes, that's just a wonderful term phrase. Well, that's because

56
00:03:57,440 --> 00:04:00,960
Speaker 2: it gave birth to the arts, to the Bauhaus architecture,

57
00:04:01,280 --> 00:04:05,680
Speaker 2: to the atonal music of Arnold Schoenberg, to so much

58
00:04:05,720 --> 00:04:09,760
Speaker 2: else in the arts, in literature, to Thomas Mahn Renier,

59
00:04:09,960 --> 00:04:14,760
Speaker 2: Maria Rilke and others. And yet what it led because

60
00:04:14,800 --> 00:04:18,279
Speaker 2: it ultimately had a lack of order. And the reason

61
00:04:18,320 --> 00:04:21,159
Speaker 2: it had a lack of order was because the very

62
00:04:21,520 --> 00:04:25,800
Speaker 2: formation of the Weimar Republic in the central German town

63
00:04:25,880 --> 00:04:29,800
Speaker 2: of Vymar right after World War One was to prevent,

64
00:04:29,920 --> 00:04:35,120
Speaker 2: at any cost the rise of another Kaiser or another Bismarck.

65
00:04:35,520 --> 00:04:39,000
Speaker 2: And as usual, and as we all know, we all

66
00:04:39,120 --> 00:04:43,000
Speaker 2: tend to overlearn lessons, and that's when we make mistakes

67
00:04:43,040 --> 00:04:48,440
Speaker 2: when we overlearn a lesson, and Vymar overlearned a lesson.

68
00:04:48,720 --> 00:04:53,160
Speaker 2: They created a system which was so unmanageable that nobody

69
00:04:53,279 --> 00:04:57,040
Speaker 2: was ever really in control. And that lack of order,

70
00:04:57,120 --> 00:05:00,800
Speaker 2: that demonstrable lack of order, led to Hitler.

71
00:05:01,360 --> 00:05:04,119
Speaker 1: It's interesting I just recently got involved with this whole

72
00:05:04,839 --> 00:05:08,719
Speaker 1: concept that Weimar did not try to suppress speech, but

73
00:05:08,760 --> 00:05:12,400
Speaker 1: in fact the Nasense I think, lost some two hundred lossits.

74
00:05:12,880 --> 00:05:15,839
Speaker 1: There was a constant effort to push them down and

75
00:05:15,880 --> 00:05:17,080
Speaker 1: they kept bouncing back.

76
00:05:17,920 --> 00:05:20,760
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, that had a lot to do with vast

77
00:05:20,960 --> 00:05:25,960
Speaker 2: impersonal historical forces, namely the inflation of the early years

78
00:05:26,000 --> 00:05:29,120
Speaker 2: and the great depression of the later years of the

79
00:05:29,200 --> 00:05:33,000
Speaker 2: Weimar Republic. As I said, had the Great Depression not

80
00:05:33,240 --> 00:05:36,800
Speaker 2: come when it did, and as it did, Hitler never

81
00:05:36,800 --> 00:05:39,800
Speaker 2: would have come to power. So those are the vast

82
00:05:39,839 --> 00:05:45,279
Speaker 2: impersonal forces. The contingencies was the utter mediocrity of the

83
00:05:45,360 --> 00:05:49,000
Speaker 2: leaders right before Hitler, and how they thought they were

84
00:05:49,040 --> 00:05:53,080
Speaker 2: in control but they weren't. So what I'm doing is

85
00:05:53,160 --> 00:05:56,520
Speaker 2: I'm painting a picture of our world today where literally

86
00:05:56,640 --> 00:06:00,640
Speaker 2: anything is possible. It could get much better, it could

87
00:06:00,720 --> 00:06:03,919
Speaker 2: get much worse. But don't think we don't have the

88
00:06:04,040 --> 00:06:07,760
Speaker 2: raw material for tragedy in our world today.

89
00:06:08,440 --> 00:06:12,039
Speaker 1: And you suggest, as an example, that the chaotic US

90
00:06:12,080 --> 00:06:16,479
Speaker 1: withdrawal from Afghanistan might have encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine,

91
00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:20,000
Speaker 1: believing the West had lost any capacity to be effective.

92
00:06:20,560 --> 00:06:25,280
Speaker 2: Yes, there were two ironic results to the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

93
00:06:25,839 --> 00:06:29,520
Speaker 2: First is, if you're going to withdraw, don't announce it

94
00:06:29,600 --> 00:06:32,480
Speaker 2: in advance. Don't do it at the beginning of the

95
00:06:32,520 --> 00:06:35,839
Speaker 2: fighting in the middle of the fighting season in Afghanistan.

96
00:06:36,000 --> 00:06:39,360
Speaker 2: Do it slowly gradually during the winter when there's very

97
00:06:39,400 --> 00:06:43,080
Speaker 2: little fighting. Anyway, there are many different ways to withdraw,

98
00:06:43,600 --> 00:06:46,400
Speaker 2: and they withdrew in a way that led to a

99
00:06:46,440 --> 00:06:52,320
Speaker 2: catastrophe which had two ironic results. One was it demonstrated

100
00:06:52,720 --> 00:06:56,520
Speaker 2: American weakness in that it couldn't get anything done right.

101
00:06:57,000 --> 00:07:00,560
Speaker 2: The other thing that led to was the Biden Habinet

102
00:07:00,920 --> 00:07:05,440
Speaker 2: actually started to work better among each other after the

103
00:07:05,520 --> 00:07:08,560
Speaker 2: withdrawal from Afghanistan because it was like a coming to

104
00:07:08,720 --> 00:07:12,760
Speaker 2: Jesus moment kind of and so they were better equipped

105
00:07:12,800 --> 00:07:15,600
Speaker 2: to deal at least in the initially in the first

106
00:07:15,640 --> 00:07:18,920
Speaker 2: few months of the Ukraine War. But I think it

107
00:07:19,040 --> 00:07:23,520
Speaker 2: was overwhelmingly ironic because it gave Putin the idea that

108
00:07:23,560 --> 00:07:27,400
Speaker 2: the West was finished, essentially, that the West was not

109
00:07:27,640 --> 00:07:31,120
Speaker 2: going to challenge him, and that led him into what

110
00:07:31,320 --> 00:07:35,000
Speaker 2: I still consider to be a disastrous war on his part.

111
00:07:35,840 --> 00:07:38,720
Speaker 1: It's obviously a disaster for Ukraine, but it's also a

112
00:07:38,720 --> 00:07:41,800
Speaker 1: disaster for Russia. And I was struck that about two

113
00:07:41,840 --> 00:07:45,360
Speaker 1: weeks before the attack the channel that Joint Chiefs Milly

114
00:07:46,040 --> 00:07:48,960
Speaker 1: said in a Senate hearing thought to take the Russians

115
00:07:49,000 --> 00:07:51,520
Speaker 1: three days to get to Kiv and I have a

116
00:07:51,600 --> 00:07:54,320
Speaker 1: hunch that Putin's general is still them the same thing.

117
00:07:55,080 --> 00:07:59,400
Speaker 2: Yes, what I learned being embedded as a journalist with

118
00:07:59,520 --> 00:08:02,640
Speaker 2: the Marine and the Army in the Iraq War and

119
00:08:02,680 --> 00:08:07,560
Speaker 2: in Afghanistan was that the real jewel in the crown

120
00:08:07,640 --> 00:08:12,160
Speaker 2: of the American military, of the non commissioned officers, the NCOs.

121
00:08:12,800 --> 00:08:16,440
Speaker 2: They're really the heart and soul and culture of the military.

122
00:08:16,600 --> 00:08:21,880
Speaker 2: The officers devised plans, the NCOs carry them out, and

123
00:08:22,200 --> 00:08:27,800
Speaker 2: NCOs are sergeants, petty officers, corporals and the like. And

124
00:08:27,840 --> 00:08:31,040
Speaker 2: the reason our NCO corps is so great is because

125
00:08:31,080 --> 00:08:34,920
Speaker 2: we're a middle class society and we produced people who

126
00:08:34,960 --> 00:08:39,280
Speaker 2: are highly educated, even if they're not officers. Russia did

127
00:08:39,320 --> 00:08:42,800
Speaker 2: not have, in reality a NCO corps. It had a

128
00:08:42,920 --> 00:08:47,479
Speaker 2: very weakend CEO corps that did not matter in Russia's

129
00:08:47,600 --> 00:08:53,800
Speaker 2: small wars or imperial policing operations in Abkhazia and Sub

130
00:08:53,840 --> 00:08:58,160
Speaker 2: Saharan Africa. Syria was an air war. The Russians never

131
00:08:58,240 --> 00:09:02,400
Speaker 2: put troops in there on the so Putin was living

132
00:09:02,440 --> 00:09:05,720
Speaker 2: in this dream world, you know, where he learned from

133
00:09:05,760 --> 00:09:09,680
Speaker 2: all these policing operations and Syria that he could do anything.

134
00:09:10,080 --> 00:09:14,520
Speaker 2: And then he attempted a major land war where the

135
00:09:14,640 --> 00:09:19,319
Speaker 2: component that was needed was an NCO corps or an equivalent,

136
00:09:19,480 --> 00:09:22,760
Speaker 2: and he did not have it. And the first few weeks,

137
00:09:22,880 --> 00:09:26,240
Speaker 2: first few months, one could argue even longer than that

138
00:09:26,400 --> 00:09:28,640
Speaker 2: has been a shambles for Russia.

139
00:09:29,360 --> 00:09:32,760
Speaker 1: And it seems to me that the misallocation that's probably

140
00:09:32,800 --> 00:09:35,920
Speaker 1: the wrong word, but of both resources and human beings,

141
00:09:36,480 --> 00:09:39,640
Speaker 1: there's a diversion from what Russia might have become that

142
00:09:39,679 --> 00:09:41,520
Speaker 1: they'll probably never fully recover from.

143
00:09:42,080 --> 00:09:44,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the things I talk about in the book,

144
00:09:44,679 --> 00:09:48,480
Speaker 2: One of my themes is that all three great powers,

145
00:09:48,559 --> 00:09:53,360
Speaker 2: the US, China, and Russia are all in different ways,

146
00:09:53,440 --> 00:09:57,559
Speaker 2: in at different paces in periods of decline. You can

147
00:09:57,720 --> 00:10:01,080
Speaker 2: argue that, but I think Russia's the most extreme case

148
00:10:01,520 --> 00:10:06,080
Speaker 2: because the Ukraine War has gone on for three years.

149
00:10:06,200 --> 00:10:10,559
Speaker 2: That's a long time. That's a long time for intense

150
00:10:10,880 --> 00:10:16,240
Speaker 2: urban industrial combat, fighting over inches and feet, with large

151
00:10:16,240 --> 00:10:20,880
Speaker 2: scale casualties, thousands of tanks destroyed. The only reason we

152
00:10:20,920 --> 00:10:23,800
Speaker 2: don't read even more about it is because there's not

153
00:10:23,960 --> 00:10:27,319
Speaker 2: that much novelty value in recent months, and the media

154
00:10:27,440 --> 00:10:32,080
Speaker 2: loves novelty value, something new to talk about. I believe

155
00:10:32,360 --> 00:10:35,280
Speaker 2: as every month that the Ukraine War has gone on

156
00:10:35,800 --> 00:10:41,280
Speaker 2: has weakened Russia's ability to determine outcomes in the Caucuses,

157
00:10:41,559 --> 00:10:46,400
Speaker 2: in former Soviet Central Asia, in Siberia, and the Russian

158
00:10:46,559 --> 00:10:50,480
Speaker 2: Far East. So I think this war is really a

159
00:10:50,520 --> 00:10:55,480
Speaker 2: sign of Russian decline, however it may turn out in negotiations.

160
00:11:11,960 --> 00:11:14,760
Speaker 1: The one thing that I can't quite get my head

161
00:11:14,800 --> 00:11:17,920
Speaker 1: around is they do have as a remnant of the

162
00:11:17,920 --> 00:11:23,480
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, so many nuclear weapons. Even if they're decaying,

163
00:11:24,080 --> 00:11:28,560
Speaker 1: they're decaying with a potential due unimaginable damage. You have

164
00:11:28,600 --> 00:11:29,760
Speaker 1: to deal with them carefully.

165
00:11:30,640 --> 00:11:33,120
Speaker 2: Yes, And I bring this up in the book. I

166
00:11:33,160 --> 00:11:36,800
Speaker 2: talk about Henry Kissinger's book written in his mid thirties

167
00:11:36,840 --> 00:11:40,720
Speaker 2: as a young man, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, which

168
00:11:40,800 --> 00:11:43,720
Speaker 2: was a very revolutionary book for its time because at

169
00:11:43,800 --> 00:11:48,719
Speaker 2: the time we were pursuing mass destruction anyone messes with us,

170
00:11:48,840 --> 00:11:52,760
Speaker 2: we had hydrogen bonds. Kissinger brought up what was then

171
00:11:52,960 --> 00:11:57,040
Speaker 2: an original idea, which is you could have a conventional

172
00:11:57,120 --> 00:12:02,480
Speaker 2: war where a low level tactical nuclear weapons were injected

173
00:12:02,520 --> 00:12:06,000
Speaker 2: into the war in the middle phases by the party

174
00:12:06,040 --> 00:12:09,120
Speaker 2: that was not doing well, and that would be a

175
00:12:09,200 --> 00:12:13,720
Speaker 2: real danger. Don't just think of nuclear war as nuclear holocausts.

176
00:12:13,840 --> 00:12:18,240
Speaker 2: Think about it in terms of conventional war with nuclear

177
00:12:18,360 --> 00:12:21,840
Speaker 2: aspects to it. And if you look at today. I

178
00:12:21,880 --> 00:12:24,920
Speaker 2: don't know about Russia, but generally the trend has been

179
00:12:25,040 --> 00:12:31,640
Speaker 2: to develop low yield high tech tactical nuclear weapons that

180
00:12:31,720 --> 00:12:36,960
Speaker 2: are actually designed to be used, and that really raises

181
00:12:37,080 --> 00:12:39,680
Speaker 2: the danger in our world today.

182
00:12:40,640 --> 00:12:43,960
Speaker 1: Frankly, I think from our side, we have developed conventional

183
00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:47,640
Speaker 1: weapons of such power that in effect are the equivalent

184
00:12:47,720 --> 00:12:50,880
Speaker 1: of what a tactical nuclear would be. They're not psychologically

185
00:12:50,880 --> 00:12:54,240
Speaker 1: the equivalent, but they're devastating. You raise a point here.

186
00:12:54,679 --> 00:12:57,280
Speaker 1: People think of this as the beginning of violence in Europe.

187
00:12:57,320 --> 00:13:00,000
Speaker 1: The truth is the Balkans had been in a decade

188
00:13:00,080 --> 00:13:04,000
Speaker 1: of violence, much of a horrendous with real efforts of

189
00:13:04,080 --> 00:13:05,600
Speaker 1: genocide and bombing.

190
00:13:05,880 --> 00:13:08,360
Speaker 3: We'd intervened, We bomb Serbia.

191
00:13:07,800 --> 00:13:10,439
Speaker 1: So there was actually violence on the margins of Europe,

192
00:13:11,080 --> 00:13:13,000
Speaker 1: much more than people want to talk about.

193
00:13:14,200 --> 00:13:19,400
Speaker 2: Yeah. Remember it was only literally right after the Berlin

194
00:13:19,480 --> 00:13:24,480
Speaker 2: Wall collapse that war erupted in the former Yugoslavia. It

195
00:13:24,640 --> 00:13:28,200
Speaker 2: was months we're talking about. And one of the reasons

196
00:13:28,200 --> 00:13:33,760
Speaker 2: why the elder Bush administration did not intervene more dynamically.

197
00:13:34,280 --> 00:13:38,480
Speaker 2: They did send peacekeepers to Macedonia, which many people forget,

198
00:13:38,679 --> 00:13:42,920
Speaker 2: but they did not intervene dynamically was because, as James

199
00:13:43,000 --> 00:13:47,160
Speaker 2: Baker indicated, the Europeans have been lecturing us for years

200
00:13:47,160 --> 00:13:50,240
Speaker 2: that they can deal with their own problems. Well, now

201
00:13:50,280 --> 00:13:53,560
Speaker 2: here's a chance. Let's use this as a test case.

202
00:13:53,720 --> 00:13:56,480
Speaker 2: Let's see. So that was at the heart of the

203
00:13:56,520 --> 00:14:01,880
Speaker 2: original ghost slow approach of the elder Bush administration not

204
00:14:02,040 --> 00:14:05,720
Speaker 2: to intervene, and then it mushroomed into a much wider war.

205
00:14:05,840 --> 00:14:08,840
Speaker 2: And then we had the Clinton administration which had to

206
00:14:08,880 --> 00:14:09,760
Speaker 2: take action.

207
00:14:10,200 --> 00:14:13,120
Speaker 1: And they were confused, I think because as a member

208
00:14:13,120 --> 00:14:15,400
Speaker 1: of Congress of the time dealing with them, I think

209
00:14:15,400 --> 00:14:18,160
Speaker 1: they were so scarred by the blackhawk Down incident in

210
00:14:18,160 --> 00:14:22,320
Speaker 1: Somalia that they were just terrified of getting into a

211
00:14:22,360 --> 00:14:24,480
Speaker 1: situation where they'd lose a lot of Americans.

212
00:14:25,000 --> 00:14:29,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, that also influenced Rwanda, which occurred only six months

213
00:14:29,760 --> 00:14:34,360
Speaker 2: after the blackhawk Down incident. But yes, the Clinton administration

214
00:14:34,680 --> 00:14:39,480
Speaker 2: was very averse to getting sucked into a conflict where

215
00:14:39,480 --> 00:14:43,280
Speaker 2: there would be large numbers of American casualties. And I

216
00:14:43,360 --> 00:14:49,320
Speaker 2: think though it's interesting that the Balkans dominated the nineteen nineties,

217
00:14:49,480 --> 00:14:53,040
Speaker 2: you know, the horrific war and ethnic cleansing there, and

218
00:14:53,080 --> 00:14:57,040
Speaker 2: the US intervened twice in Bosnia and ninety five and

219
00:14:57,080 --> 00:15:00,360
Speaker 2: in Kosovo in ninety nine, but they were the main

220
00:15:00,680 --> 00:15:04,560
Speaker 2: small wars. They never mushroomed into an Iraq or a

221
00:15:04,680 --> 00:15:10,480
Speaker 2: Vietnam or anything like that. So Clinton really inserted forces

222
00:15:10,520 --> 00:15:14,360
Speaker 2: in a delayed way, of course, with limits. You know,

223
00:15:14,400 --> 00:15:17,680
Speaker 2: it could have been a much different decade had this

224
00:15:17,840 --> 00:15:21,680
Speaker 2: small war emerged into a middle sized war for the

225
00:15:21,800 --> 00:15:23,840
Speaker 2: United States and the Balkans.

226
00:15:24,560 --> 00:15:30,240
Speaker 1: Do you think that when Putin took over Crimea that

227
00:15:30,320 --> 00:15:32,320
Speaker 1: there was anything practical that could have been done at

228
00:15:32,320 --> 00:15:32,720
Speaker 1: that point.

229
00:15:33,760 --> 00:15:39,600
Speaker 2: That's a good question. Remember Crimea was always historically considered Russia.

230
00:15:39,680 --> 00:15:42,680
Speaker 2: It was thought of as different from the rest of Ukraine.

231
00:15:43,040 --> 00:15:47,920
Speaker 2: There was always romantic associations that Russians had for Crimea.

232
00:15:48,440 --> 00:15:52,200
Speaker 2: The Tsar had his summer home there, his warm weather

233
00:15:52,320 --> 00:15:56,360
Speaker 2: home there, not just one Tsar, but several czars. The

234
00:15:56,400 --> 00:16:00,800
Speaker 2: Soviet Politbureau would take vacations there for the warmer weather.

235
00:16:01,280 --> 00:16:04,360
Speaker 2: There was the literature of Tolstoy and all of that.

236
00:16:04,840 --> 00:16:11,920
Speaker 2: Crimea had emotional sentimental appeal to Russia that Donetsks and

237
00:16:12,040 --> 00:16:15,920
Speaker 2: some of these other places in Ukraine utterly lacked. So

238
00:16:15,960 --> 00:16:21,440
Speaker 2: that when they took Crimea, I think our options really narrowed.

239
00:16:21,600 --> 00:16:25,480
Speaker 2: And that isn't to say we succeeded at the terrence

240
00:16:25,600 --> 00:16:28,200
Speaker 2: for a wider war. We did not succeed at the

241
00:16:28,360 --> 00:16:29,880
Speaker 2: terrence in a wider war.

242
00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:35,080
Speaker 1: I think Khrushchev was married to Ukrainian and it's Krushev

243
00:16:35,120 --> 00:16:40,120
Speaker 1: who actually reassigns Crimea to be Ukrainian rather than Russian.

244
00:16:40,720 --> 00:16:42,920
Speaker 1: And I think that that was always sort of a

245
00:16:42,960 --> 00:16:45,520
Speaker 1: breakpoint that made it harder.

246
00:16:46,120 --> 00:16:50,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. And next thing you, Crimea was easy

247
00:16:50,480 --> 00:16:53,800
Speaker 2: for Putin to do. Actually, it was one of those

248
00:16:53,920 --> 00:16:56,960
Speaker 2: plans that were on the table, on the shelf for

249
00:16:57,040 --> 00:17:00,840
Speaker 2: any crisis that might erupt, and he did it and

250
00:17:00,960 --> 00:17:03,400
Speaker 2: there was nothing we can do.

251
00:17:03,440 --> 00:17:06,840
Speaker 1: You discuss the end of the Cold War as a

252
00:17:06,840 --> 00:17:10,520
Speaker 1: decisive victory for the West. From your perspective, you give

253
00:17:11,720 --> 00:17:16,280
Speaker 1: more of the responsibility to Gorbachev than to Reagan. Do

254
00:17:16,320 --> 00:17:19,120
Speaker 1: you think had they not picked Gorbachev, or had Gorbachev

255
00:17:19,800 --> 00:17:22,480
Speaker 1: not decided to try to be a modernizer, that it

256
00:17:22,520 --> 00:17:24,880
Speaker 1: could have gone on for the two or three decades.

257
00:17:25,400 --> 00:17:29,879
Speaker 2: It might have. Remember, Gorbachev had an opponent for leadership.

258
00:17:29,920 --> 00:17:33,440
Speaker 2: I believe his name was Romanov. I might be mistaken here.

259
00:17:33,520 --> 00:17:38,720
Speaker 2: It gets very obscure, but Gorbachev was chosen in the

260
00:17:38,840 --> 00:17:42,960
Speaker 2: wake He was chosen by the Soviet Politburo in the

261
00:17:43,080 --> 00:17:48,080
Speaker 2: wake of the SS twenty Pershing missile crisis in Europe

262
00:17:48,119 --> 00:17:51,119
Speaker 2: that came, I believe, in the fall of nineteen eighty three,

263
00:17:51,160 --> 00:17:54,080
Speaker 2: and then I covered as a young journalist where the

264
00:17:54,080 --> 00:17:59,879
Speaker 2: Soviets deployed SS twenties. There were massive peace demonstrations throughout

265
00:18:00,280 --> 00:18:05,439
Speaker 2: Western Europe. Millions and millions of people showed up, telling

266
00:18:05,480 --> 00:18:10,119
Speaker 2: the Americans, under no account, deploy more missiles, stop it

267
00:18:10,280 --> 00:18:14,240
Speaker 2: right here. And the Reagan administration went ahead and deployed

268
00:18:14,760 --> 00:18:20,240
Speaker 2: Pershing missiles, and this peace demonstration stopped, and the Pershing

269
00:18:20,320 --> 00:18:24,119
Speaker 2: missiles were deployed. And I think that impressed the Soviet

270
00:18:24,200 --> 00:18:27,879
Speaker 2: Pollock bureau, who thought, we have a really tough president

271
00:18:27,960 --> 00:18:33,200
Speaker 2: on our hands in Washington. We need someone who's really vigorous,

272
00:18:33,560 --> 00:18:36,879
Speaker 2: who's going to shake things up, somebody vigorous, not just

273
00:18:36,920 --> 00:18:40,280
Speaker 2: an old dying man. And I think that was the

274
00:18:40,320 --> 00:18:45,520
Speaker 2: background for choosing Gorbachev. And remember it was Gorbachev really

275
00:18:45,880 --> 00:18:49,200
Speaker 2: who ended the Cold War by trying to reform the

276
00:18:49,240 --> 00:18:54,000
Speaker 2: Soviet Union and it collapsed all around him essentially, and

277
00:18:54,080 --> 00:18:57,720
Speaker 2: he made the decision that he would not militarily support

278
00:18:58,119 --> 00:19:02,800
Speaker 2: the Communist parties in the Warsaw Pact if they ran

279
00:19:02,840 --> 00:19:06,240
Speaker 2: into trouble, which was a different policy than the Brezhnev

280
00:19:06,359 --> 00:19:10,920
Speaker 2: doctrine where they intervened in Czechoslovakia in nineteen sixty eight.

281
00:19:11,560 --> 00:19:14,560
Speaker 2: But I think Gorbachev was the key figure for ending

282
00:19:14,600 --> 00:19:19,040
Speaker 2: the Cold War, and he came into power indirectly through

283
00:19:19,080 --> 00:19:23,000
Speaker 2: decisions made by Ronald Reagan to deploy the Pershing missiles.

284
00:19:23,720 --> 00:19:25,200
Speaker 3: To me, it was an amazing moment.

285
00:19:26,040 --> 00:19:28,520
Speaker 1: I'd spent my whole career trying to understand how to

286
00:19:28,560 --> 00:19:29,800
Speaker 1: contain the Soviet Empire.

287
00:19:30,320 --> 00:19:31,399
Speaker 3: Suddenly they weren't there.

288
00:19:31,880 --> 00:19:34,040
Speaker 1: It was sort of a sense of a huge capital

289
00:19:34,080 --> 00:19:52,080
Speaker 1: investment gone. You make a point that I think people

290
00:19:52,119 --> 00:19:56,960
Speaker 1: really don't understand, which is as the world gets closer

291
00:19:57,000 --> 00:20:01,040
Speaker 1: to itself because of technology, etc. That doesn't mean it

292
00:20:01,040 --> 00:20:03,879
Speaker 1: gets nicer or it doesn't mean that it gets less violent.

293
00:20:04,359 --> 00:20:07,360
Speaker 1: You have more things crowded near each other, and if anything,

294
00:20:07,480 --> 00:20:10,520
Speaker 1: it can become much more unstad Can you expand on that.

295
00:20:10,920 --> 00:20:12,199
Speaker 1: It's a very important insight.

296
00:20:12,560 --> 00:20:15,720
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, as I said at the beginning, the world

297
00:20:15,840 --> 00:20:22,200
Speaker 2: is more claustrophobic and anxious than ever before because of technology.

298
00:20:22,560 --> 00:20:26,560
Speaker 2: It's not just new things, it's also the attrition of

299
00:20:26,600 --> 00:20:30,840
Speaker 2: the same adds up to big change. More jet airplanes,

300
00:20:30,920 --> 00:20:37,760
Speaker 2: more flights, more airports, higher populations, the Internet, email. Remember

301
00:20:37,760 --> 00:20:40,399
Speaker 2: when the Cold War ended, there was no Internet for

302
00:20:40,560 --> 00:20:44,480
Speaker 2: most people. There was no email, nobody had web addresses.

303
00:20:44,680 --> 00:20:48,520
Speaker 2: You didn't have all these fancy elite conferences that united

304
00:20:48,560 --> 00:20:51,320
Speaker 2: the global elite all over the world to come and

305
00:20:51,359 --> 00:20:54,720
Speaker 2: go to. None of that existed. All that came in

306
00:20:54,840 --> 00:20:59,000
Speaker 2: the wake of America's unipolar moment at the end of

307
00:20:59,040 --> 00:21:03,000
Speaker 2: the Cold War. So the world is smaller, it's tighter,

308
00:21:03,480 --> 00:21:09,280
Speaker 2: it's more connected, but because we still have our grave differences,

309
00:21:10,040 --> 00:21:13,639
Speaker 2: that only makes the world more unstable, because your enemy

310
00:21:13,760 --> 00:21:19,679
Speaker 2: or your rival is closer. Take US China relations. China

311
00:21:19,760 --> 00:21:23,919
Speaker 2: may be thousands of miles away, eleven time zones away,

312
00:21:24,800 --> 00:21:30,119
Speaker 2: but it's not it's one click away. So that cyber warfare,

313
00:21:30,720 --> 00:21:35,840
Speaker 2: cyber attacks shorten the distance between the US and China

314
00:21:35,880 --> 00:21:40,520
Speaker 2: and in fact help destabilize the US China relationship.

315
00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:44,639
Speaker 1: If you think about it in that context, it seems

316
00:21:44,640 --> 00:21:48,520
Speaker 1: to me that people, particularly among the elites, had this

317
00:21:48,680 --> 00:21:52,360
Speaker 1: notion that we were all kind of cookie cutters. We're

318
00:21:52,359 --> 00:21:54,159
Speaker 1: all going to be the same kind of human we

319
00:21:54,240 --> 00:21:57,240
Speaker 1: could all understand each other, and we could all somehow

320
00:21:57,440 --> 00:22:01,560
Speaker 1: get along in sort of kumbaya. In fact, both in

321
00:22:01,640 --> 00:22:04,080
Speaker 1: terms of power and in terms of ideology and culture,

322
00:22:04,840 --> 00:22:08,639
Speaker 1: there are really extraordinary differences across the planet.

323
00:22:09,560 --> 00:22:10,159
Speaker 3: Yeah.

324
00:22:10,200 --> 00:22:15,639
Speaker 2: Well, elites around the world are like each other because

325
00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:20,119
Speaker 2: they're all highly educated, multilingual, they live in different countries.

326
00:22:20,160 --> 00:22:23,600
Speaker 2: They are on the same corporate boards together, the same

327
00:22:23,720 --> 00:22:27,800
Speaker 2: foundation boards together, so they're alike. At the very very

328
00:22:27,960 --> 00:22:31,080
Speaker 2: top level, there is a kind of a unity, but

329
00:22:31,200 --> 00:22:34,400
Speaker 2: that's a thin top level. The moments you go down

330
00:22:34,440 --> 00:22:39,760
Speaker 2: there are real cultural and historical differences, and these are

331
00:22:39,880 --> 00:22:44,639
Speaker 2: hard to talk about because they cannot be quantified, and

332
00:22:44,720 --> 00:22:48,840
Speaker 2: elites love what they can quantify. That's what specialists do.

333
00:22:49,520 --> 00:22:53,440
Speaker 2: So when you start talking about culture, the antennas go up.

334
00:22:53,560 --> 00:22:57,800
Speaker 2: They get very, very nervous about this. And yet this

335
00:22:57,880 --> 00:23:01,280
Speaker 2: is what drives history and why China is such a

336
00:23:01,400 --> 00:23:05,640
Speaker 2: challenge because its culture is so different from ours, much

337
00:23:05,720 --> 00:23:10,440
Speaker 2: different than Soviet culture was because the Soviets were Europeans

338
00:23:10,480 --> 00:23:13,440
Speaker 2: at the end of the day. So there are real

339
00:23:13,640 --> 00:23:18,399
Speaker 2: cultural differences. And it's fine to talk about cultural differences

340
00:23:18,440 --> 00:23:21,919
Speaker 2: when you're praising a culture, but if you're making a

341
00:23:22,000 --> 00:23:26,159
Speaker 2: critique of it, that's not allowed. And yet it's those

342
00:23:26,359 --> 00:23:29,240
Speaker 2: kinds of things that can drive conflict.

343
00:23:29,960 --> 00:23:33,840
Speaker 1: How much does this inability to deal with reality by

344
00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:38,919
Speaker 1: the elites reflect back into the I think sort of

345
00:23:38,960 --> 00:23:42,800
Speaker 1: surprising ineffectiveness of the United Nations.

346
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:46,840
Speaker 2: I remember growing up in the late nineteen fifties, early

347
00:23:46,960 --> 00:23:50,240
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties, and the United Nations was a big deal.

348
00:23:50,359 --> 00:23:54,720
Speaker 2: Back then, everybody knew the name of the Secretary general.

349
00:23:55,040 --> 00:23:59,080
Speaker 2: Secretary generals were like commonly known about, and you had

350
00:23:59,240 --> 00:24:03,119
Speaker 2: great fame his speeches. You had Khrushchev banging his shoe.

351
00:24:03,320 --> 00:24:06,600
Speaker 2: Later on, you had the great speeches of Abba Eben

352
00:24:07,040 --> 00:24:11,119
Speaker 2: Daniel Patrick moynihan when he was UN ambassador. The UN

353
00:24:11,200 --> 00:24:15,080
Speaker 2: really mattered because it gave the promise of a global world.

354
00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:18,720
Speaker 2: But now what global world has actually come into being?

355
00:24:18,840 --> 00:24:21,840
Speaker 2: The UN has been diminished because there are so many

356
00:24:21,960 --> 00:24:27,160
Speaker 2: other global organizations. The UN was ultimately an elite project

357
00:24:27,200 --> 00:24:31,560
Speaker 2: about soft power. Therefore, it worked well when there were

358
00:24:31,640 --> 00:24:36,440
Speaker 2: no major wars going on, especially wars that involved members

359
00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:39,959
Speaker 2: of the Security Council. But now you have a major

360
00:24:40,040 --> 00:24:43,919
Speaker 2: war in Ukraine going three years on, where one of

361
00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:47,679
Speaker 2: the protagonists is a member of the Security Council and

362
00:24:47,800 --> 00:24:52,359
Speaker 2: another protagonists. The United States has been supplying billions of

363
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:57,440
Speaker 2: dollars of weapons. This kind of thing diminishes the United Nations.

364
00:24:58,240 --> 00:25:01,320
Speaker 1: If young leaders of the future came to you and said,

365
00:25:02,680 --> 00:25:04,760
Speaker 1: what should we be aware of and what should we

366
00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:09,080
Speaker 1: focus on to minimize damage to our world?

367
00:25:09,760 --> 00:25:11,200
Speaker 3: What would you tell them?

368
00:25:11,600 --> 00:25:15,119
Speaker 2: I would tell them that it's a good practice to

369
00:25:15,359 --> 00:25:21,359
Speaker 2: employ constructive pessimism, to always think pessimistically, but in a

370
00:25:21,440 --> 00:25:26,920
Speaker 2: constructive way, because in our lives, normal people who are

371
00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:31,240
Speaker 2: used to tragedy and are used to adversity always think

372
00:25:31,280 --> 00:25:35,240
Speaker 2: about what can go wrong, and foreign policy elite should

373
00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:38,199
Speaker 2: do the same thing, because if you think about what

374
00:25:38,400 --> 00:25:41,800
Speaker 2: can go wrong, if you think four or five steps ahead,

375
00:25:41,840 --> 00:25:46,480
Speaker 2: the chances are you will diminish the percentages that things

376
00:25:46,560 --> 00:25:50,679
Speaker 2: actually will go wrong. In lives and in foreign policy.

377
00:25:51,080 --> 00:25:54,040
Speaker 2: What goes wrong is what you're not thinking about, what

378
00:25:54,200 --> 00:25:56,560
Speaker 2: hits you over the back of your head, which you

379
00:25:56,760 --> 00:26:00,600
Speaker 2: hadn't considered. So I would say, like, as a discipline,

380
00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:06,959
Speaker 2: employ anxious foresight constructive pessimism. This is not new. Machiavelli

381
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:07,800
Speaker 2: wrote about it.

382
00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:12,400
Speaker 1: So if you think about constructing pessimism, do you see

383
00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:16,600
Speaker 1: any positive constructive pessimism for Israel in the Middle East?

384
00:26:17,640 --> 00:26:22,240
Speaker 2: You no, I think Israel has employed constructive pessimism. They've

385
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:26,240
Speaker 2: launched one attack on Iran but not others. You know,

386
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:29,520
Speaker 2: they're always thinking ahead of the curve. If we do this,

387
00:26:29,720 --> 00:26:34,040
Speaker 2: what can they do? If we attack Gaza full out?

388
00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:37,600
Speaker 2: Even now, what will happen to the rest of the hostages?

389
00:26:37,920 --> 00:26:41,600
Speaker 2: I think the Israelis lived with constructive pessimism every day

390
00:26:41,600 --> 00:26:44,920
Speaker 2: of their lives. Nettagne, who is attacked from the right

391
00:26:45,119 --> 00:26:48,359
Speaker 2: as well as from the left. People criticized him for

392
00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:52,080
Speaker 2: making this deal with Hamas, but who knows what was

393
00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:56,240
Speaker 2: behind it? Who knows what promises the Trump administration gave

394
00:26:56,359 --> 00:26:59,639
Speaker 2: him If he made the deal, maybe they made some

395
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:03,480
Speaker 2: concentessions on helping him with Iran. I have no idea,

396
00:27:03,880 --> 00:27:07,960
Speaker 2: but remember the Israelis. Whatever you think of net Tan Yaho,

397
00:27:08,520 --> 00:27:13,000
Speaker 2: he deals with levels of stress and anxiety that would

398
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:18,120
Speaker 2: immobilize the average American politician on a number of levels.

399
00:27:18,800 --> 00:27:21,440
Speaker 1: I've known BB since eighty four, and I think that's

400
00:27:21,520 --> 00:27:25,760
Speaker 1: exactly right. He has an astonishing endurance level. It may

401
00:27:25,760 --> 00:27:27,639
Speaker 1: be in part because most of it doesn't feel I mean,

402
00:27:27,640 --> 00:27:30,680
Speaker 1: he's trained himself, he's disciplined, and he doesn't let it

403
00:27:30,760 --> 00:27:31,240
Speaker 1: get to him.

404
00:27:31,560 --> 00:27:32,879
Speaker 3: I want to thank you for joining me.

405
00:27:33,359 --> 00:27:37,159
Speaker 1: Your earlier book on the Coming Anarchy, I thought was

406
00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:40,600
Speaker 1: a historic work and I heard everybody remember that also,

407
00:27:40,920 --> 00:27:44,639
Speaker 1: and your new book, wastelamd A World in Prominent Crisis,

408
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:47,880
Speaker 1: is a pretty good guide to what we're likely having

409
00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:50,440
Speaker 1: to deal with in our generation and our children and

410
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:54,960
Speaker 1: grandchildren's generation. It's available now in Amazon and on bookstairs everywhere.

411
00:27:55,280 --> 00:27:58,439
Speaker 1: It's a very important book because it resets how to

412
00:27:58,480 --> 00:28:01,160
Speaker 1: think about the world around us, and I recommend every

413
00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:04,080
Speaker 1: citizen get a copy and read it. And Robert, I

414
00:28:04,160 --> 00:28:06,159
Speaker 1: really appreciate you taking the time to be with me.

415
00:28:06,760 --> 00:28:09,399
Speaker 2: It's been my great pleasure to be with you. Thank you.

416
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:14,680
Speaker 3: Thank you to my guest, Robert D. Kaplan.

417
00:28:15,160 --> 00:28:16,800
Speaker 1: You can get a link to buy his new book,

418
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 1: Waste Lamb A World and Prominent Crisis on our show

419
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:23,919
Speaker 1: page at newtworld dot com. Newt World is produced by

420
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:28,280
Speaker 1: Gingish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer's Guarnsey Sloan.

421
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:32,720
Speaker 1: Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show

422
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:36,400
Speaker 1: was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team

423
00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:37,439
Speaker 1: at Ginglish three sixty.

424
00:28:38,320 --> 00:28:39,520
Speaker 3: If you've been enjoying news.

425
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:42,360
Speaker 1: World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both

426
00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:44,920
Speaker 1: rate us with five stars and give us a review

427
00:28:45,360 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 1: so others can.

428
00:28:46,000 --> 00:28:46,840
Speaker 3: Learn what it's all about.

429
00:28:47,440 --> 00:28:50,240
Speaker 1: Right now, listeners of neut World can sign up for

430
00:28:50,360 --> 00:28:54,360
Speaker 1: my three free weekly columns at Gingrishtree sixty dot com

431
00:28:54,440 --> 00:28:58,160
Speaker 1: slash newsletter. I'm NEWT Gingrich. This is neutrald