Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. We are off for the holidays, but
Speaker 1: in advance, we made you a fantastic show. Today. Spencer
Speaker 1: Ackerman of the newsletter Forever Wars looks back on two
Speaker 1: years of Biden's foreign policy to show us the patterns
Speaker 1: he's seeing. But first, the author of The Uninhabitable Earth,
Speaker 1: New York Times climate correspondent David Wallace Wells, Welcome to you,
Speaker 1: Fast Politics. David Wallace Wells, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Good to be here, very thrilled to have you. I
Speaker 1: think first we should talk about COVID, and then we
Speaker 1: should talk about let's do it. You have written a
Speaker 1: lot about COVID recently. There's a lot of interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: But the thing I want to talk to you about
Speaker 1: is learning loss. Anyone who has kids who lived through COVID,
Speaker 1: and I have many have seen a learning loss and
Speaker 1: what an issue that is. Where are weay with addressing
Speaker 1: that because it seems like there has not been a
Speaker 1: ton done there. It depends how you want to think
Speaker 1: about a ton done. And I think it also is
Speaker 1: important to contextualize some of the losses themselves, which is
Speaker 1: to say, the data is really clear that American kids
Speaker 1: suffered setbacks over the course of the pandemic, and that's worrying.
Speaker 1: Judging by standardized testing, American students were not doing especially
Speaker 1: well to begin with. It was especially hard for low
Speaker 1: income kids places in you know, under under resourced areas
Speaker 1: to thrive according to these standards, and those gaps got
Speaker 1: much larger over the course the pandemic. So there is
Speaker 1: damage there that we should want to address in a
Speaker 1: variety of ways. It's tricky because we don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what to do to get people to learn better. I mean,
Speaker 1: if we knew that, we'd probably be implementing those tools,
Speaker 1: you know, long before the pandemic. And there is some
Speaker 1: evidence at the state level, at certain in certain states
Speaker 1: that already something like half or so of the learning
Speaker 1: loss that was observed over the course of the first
Speaker 1: two years of the pandemic has been recovered basically simply
Speaker 1: by kids being back in school and having face to
Speaker 1: face um learning. But I also, you know, my own
Speaker 1: view is a little bit unorthodox here, which is that
Speaker 1: I think that we've made a little too much of
Speaker 1: these losses, which is to say, when you go into
Speaker 1: the gold standard data, the best testing data that we have,
Speaker 1: we're talking about nationally average test scores on a scale
Speaker 1: of five hundreds, falling from like to twenty to seventeen
Speaker 1: to sixteen. Like I said, those are real losses. You know,
Speaker 1: they are setbacks. They mean that many kids are behind
Speaker 1: where they would be otherwise. But it's not like, you know,
Speaker 1: eighth graders are now reading like second graders. It's not
Speaker 1: like kids are graduating high school unable to do basic math.
Speaker 1: It means that some fraction of kids are a little
Speaker 1: bit behind where they would have been without the pandemic.
Speaker 1: On that point, I would just say, you know, the
Speaker 1: whole country is by where we should be a lot
Speaker 1: of points because of the pandemic. And when you look internationally,
Speaker 1: you see that even places that didn't do nearly didn't
Speaker 1: have nearly as many interruptions to schooling the UK, like
Speaker 1: Denmark have had roughly comparable learning losses to the ones
Speaker 1: that we've had in the US. So while there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people want to point the finger at school closures,
Speaker 1: and I personally think we should regret a lot of
Speaker 1: the school closures I also think that the ultimate impact
Speaker 1: of that policy was relatively limited, and it's probably I
Speaker 1: would say, and this is you know, this is speculation,
Speaker 1: it's it's not exactly proven science. But I would say
Speaker 1: that when we look at those setbacks and those learning losses,
Speaker 1: what we're seeing is the effect of what it means
Speaker 1: to live through a pandemic as much as we are
Speaker 1: the effect of what it means to suspend schooling for
Speaker 1: a period of months at a time. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I do think there's always this idea that there's somehow
Speaker 1: people did the best psycho right during that period when
Speaker 1: we didn't know a lot. Yeah, I mean, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, especially early on, everyone was very worried about
Speaker 1: kid is getting sick. We wanted to take a lot
Speaker 1: of precautions. I think, you know, if you have been
Speaker 1: looking closely at the data, then you you could have
Speaker 1: seen that children were much lower risk than other age groups.
Speaker 1: But of course, because we didn't have vaccines, it was
Speaker 1: also a lot harder to imagine that we could sort
Speaker 1: of prevent the virus from spreading through kids to older,
Speaker 1: more vulnerable people, and so there was a genuine public
Speaker 1: health imperative to try to limit spread in all directions
Speaker 1: and all ways, and that governed a lot of the
Speaker 1: policy in that first year. I think, looking back on
Speaker 1: it now, we probably, if we had a chance to
Speaker 1: restart all of that, would have done more to allow
Speaker 1: those who are not themselves at all that much risk
Speaker 1: from COVID infection to live slightly more normal lives, and
Speaker 1: probably should have done more to target our protections to those,
Speaker 1: especially the elderly, who are at much more risk. As
Speaker 1: you say, you know, it was a it was a messy, chaotic,
Speaker 1: very anxious time, and I personally think it's it's somewhat
Speaker 1: hard to judge, you know, most of our leaders for
Speaker 1: the decisions they made, especially in those months in the
Speaker 1: spring of by the fall of I think most schools
Speaker 1: should have been and we should have spent those six
Speaker 1: months or so preparing to make sure that by September
Speaker 1: all kids were in school, and the fact that in
Speaker 1: a lot of places they weren't is bad. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, most schools were open to some degree at
Speaker 1: some point over the course of that year. So it's
Speaker 1: all messy, it's all tricky. I think in general, the
Speaker 1: harder we try to narrativise the pandemic, the more complicated
Speaker 1: those stories become. Pandemic learning loss is like one of
Speaker 1: the things that certainly happened over the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: But exactly why and exactly how to fix it, I
Speaker 1: think is not so easy to say. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm reminded of when I came back from from seepack.
Speaker 1: One of my kids school nurses, because I had gotten
Speaker 1: that letter that said I have been exposed, was like,
Speaker 1: please just keep your kids home. She's like, we don't
Speaker 1: know anything. She's like, just please. Yeah, she was just
Speaker 1: like is a favorite of make which I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: people were really scared. Well, I think that it continues
Speaker 1: to this day. I mean, the truth is that many
Speaker 1: kids have died. I don't want to downplay that. The
Speaker 1: ultimate cost of this pandemic to children. You know, the
Speaker 1: numbers around over a thousand, which is a horrible tragedy,
Speaker 1: and thousands of horrible tragedies, and the grand scheme of things,
Speaker 1: kids are much safer than older people. That the age
Speaker 1: key was really quite dramatic, such that you know, unvaccinated
Speaker 1: people are in their eighties or like thousands of times
Speaker 1: more risk than little kids. And yet of course we
Speaker 1: have all of these intuitive, reflective, protective gestures that you know,
Speaker 1: because we believe kids are vulnerable in general, we have
Speaker 1: a hard time seeing them as safe and resilient. And
Speaker 1: you know, those were reasonable feelings to have to It
Speaker 1: was just, you know, everybody felt really unsure. Nobody had
Speaker 1: lived through a pandemic like this before, and you know,
Speaker 1: in those cases it's a perfectly reasonable thing to say
Speaker 1: the precautionary principle should be the governing principle. Here. Have
Speaker 1: we lived through a pandemic now? You mean we on
Speaker 1: the other side of it? Yeah? Or are we in
Speaker 1: this sort of messy endemic period. Well, you know, we
Speaker 1: still have over two hundred Americans dying a day these days,
Speaker 1: and for about six or eight months it's been steadily
Speaker 1: between three hundred and five hundred, and that's an annualized
Speaker 1: total of over a hundred thousand Americans dying a year,
Speaker 1: which would make COVID the third leading cause of death.
Speaker 1: It will be the third leading cause of death in
Speaker 1: any two and it presumably will be the third leading
Speaker 1: cause of death in too. So you know, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of that, a lot of the question of
Speaker 1: where we are is a bit of a semantic one.
Speaker 1: I mean, COVID will be for the foreseeable future a
Speaker 1: meaningful additional mortality burden on the country. All of the vaccination,
Speaker 1: of the boosters, all that, you know, all that, all
Speaker 1: that stuff, all the pexlovid can only get us so far,
Speaker 1: and it's not going to eliminate this from our disease landscape.
Speaker 1: But you know, the COVID deaths are well below cancer
Speaker 1: and heart disease, and we don't obsess about cancer and
Speaker 1: heart disease in the same way that we obsessed about
Speaker 1: COVID even now. So there's probably some degree to which
Speaker 1: we're coming to terms with this new normal, on this
Speaker 1: new abnormal to quit a phrase, um and exactly how
Speaker 1: we live through that says a lot more about what
Speaker 1: are sort of priors and biases and values are than
Speaker 1: it does about the state of the disease, which is
Speaker 1: pretty clear. It's like the disease is spreading pretty rapidly.
Speaker 1: We're not really doing anything at all to stop it spread. Um.
Speaker 1: The cost of that in terms of lives is much
Speaker 1: much lower than the same number of infections would have
Speaker 1: been a year or two ago. That that that risk
Speaker 1: is concentrated very heavily in the elderly um which means
Speaker 1: that people who are under the age of sixty five
Speaker 1: and are vaccinated are at extremely low risk, and yet
Speaker 1: at the social level, at the national level, it's still
Speaker 1: killing a lot of people. And what you make of
Speaker 1: that and how you again, how you narrativise that is
Speaker 1: sort of up to you. But the data doesn't say
Speaker 1: that it's over. The data just says we're in a
Speaker 1: new phase. So I want to talk to you about
Speaker 1: this United Nations Climate Conference which went off without a whimper,
Speaker 1: really and what happened there because Glasgow was such a
Speaker 1: big deal and this one sort of fizzled, puttered along. Yeah,
Speaker 1: part of that is by design. So the way that
Speaker 1: these conferences work, they happen every year, but each one
Speaker 1: is meant to do a different kind of a thing.
Speaker 1: In the Glasgow one was designed to be the five
Speaker 1: year anniversary of the Paris Accords. They ended up pushing
Speaker 1: it back a year, so it was six years after,
Speaker 1: not five years. On the five year anniversary of the
Speaker 1: Paris Accords. Basically all the countries of the world, we're
Speaker 1: supposed to come back and for the first time since
Speaker 1: Paris formally announced more ambitious pledges of decarbonization, which meant
Speaker 1: that in the lead up to Glasgow, we just had
Speaker 1: a whole number of promises being made by the biggest countries,
Speaker 1: the biggest emitters in the world, and they added up
Speaker 1: to something quite significant, you know, now, something like I
Speaker 1: think it's about of all on GDP and global emissions
Speaker 1: at least are governed by these net zero pledges, which
Speaker 1: is countries promising to get all the way to carbon
Speaker 1: neutrality by sixty And those are paper pledges. They're empty
Speaker 1: at the moment, you know, they're in most cases they're empty,
Speaker 1: but they're still it was still a quite significant rhetorical
Speaker 1: step forward that happened in Glasgow, with all those countries
Speaker 1: making all those promises. This conference was never designed to
Speaker 1: do that. It wasn't in the in the sort of
Speaker 1: rhythm of the COPS, the Conference of the Parties which
Speaker 1: goes by cup. In the rhythm of these cups, this
Speaker 1: was not meant to be one in which countries announced
Speaker 1: more ambitious pledges. It was meant to be what was
Speaker 1: called an implementation cup, which meant that the countries were
Speaker 1: sort of trying to figure out what they needed from
Speaker 1: one another to meet the promises that they had made
Speaker 1: in Glasgow, and that meant that there was basically no
Speaker 1: news on the like a mission pledges or decarbonization front
Speaker 1: this time around. No no significant news, but there was
Speaker 1: some movement that I think is actually quite remarkable on
Speaker 1: some other issues relating to climate justice and what's called
Speaker 1: loss and damage, which is basically the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: the rich countries in the world are responsible for almost
Speaker 1: all the world's emissions today, they're especially responsible for historical
Speaker 1: emissions which are still hanging in the atmosphere and heating
Speaker 1: the planet, and yet they're not the ones who are
Speaker 1: suffering most from the impacts of climate change. That is,
Speaker 1: the poorest countries in the world who are who have
Speaker 1: done the least to create the damage. So to put
Speaker 1: a number on that, Pakistan which has this incredible months
Speaker 1: soon flooding this year that left by some measures, about
Speaker 1: the third of the country underwater, certainly a large fraction
Speaker 1: of the country underwater, displaced over thirty million people, and
Speaker 1: produced a huge wave of infectious disease because of all
Speaker 1: the malaria and denga that was spreading because of mosquitoes
Speaker 1: and the stagnant water. This is a country that suffered
Speaker 1: the most devastating climate impact this year two and it's
Speaker 1: a country that has produced in its entire history only
Speaker 1: as much carbon emissions as the US produces every single year.
Speaker 1: And that kind of dynamic holds true across South Asia
Speaker 1: and in Southern Africa, to to some lesser degree, Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: It's really this perverted, inverted moral logic where the countries
Speaker 1: that did this damage are not suffering all that much,
Speaker 1: in the countries who didn't are suffering most. And for
Speaker 1: a decade or two, those vulnerable countries have been coming
Speaker 1: to climate conferences and saying something needs to be done
Speaker 1: about this, like you guys need to help us recover.
Speaker 1: These are countries like the Maldives, right, yeah, Muhammad Nashi
Speaker 1: who is the former president of the Maldives, I believe
Speaker 1: he's now the prime minister. There was one of the
Speaker 1: leading figures beginning about two decades ago and doing this.
Speaker 1: Mia Motley, who is the Prime Minister of Barbados, is
Speaker 1: now one of the leading figures. But you know, there
Speaker 1: was always on the margins of these conferences that it
Speaker 1: was the small vulnerable countries who are saying we need
Speaker 1: some help, guys, and really over the last few years,
Speaker 1: but especially over the last year and then kind of
Speaker 1: culminating at this conference, there's been a kind of significant
Speaker 1: shift in the discourse where this is now pretty central
Speaker 1: to the way that almost everybody is talking about the
Speaker 1: challenge of climate change. How is it that we can
Speaker 1: help those countries were most in need? And there was
Speaker 1: a landmark agreement reached in this conference to build what's
Speaker 1: called a loss and damage facility. The details aren't exactly
Speaker 1: clear yet, they're going to be negotiated over the next
Speaker 1: couple of years, but basically it was a commitment of
Speaker 1: the world's wealthy countries to provide some way through an
Speaker 1: institution like the World Bank or the i m F,
Speaker 1: to direct funds to climate vulnerable countries so that they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be suffering as nakedly or as brutally the impacts
Speaker 1: of climate change that the wealthy nuctries countries the world
Speaker 1: actually produced so interesting, So did anything besides that come
Speaker 1: out that was good? I mean, it strikes me as
Speaker 1: a sort of outside of the road that there's more
Speaker 1: focus on on greenwashing and some of the sort of
Speaker 1: the housekeeping that makes it look like people are doing
Speaker 1: more for climate than they are. Do you think that's accurate?
Speaker 1: And how anxious are you about that? Yeah? I think
Speaker 1: in general, you know, on on one hand, it's a
Speaker 1: sign of progress that countries and corporations are making promises
Speaker 1: and feeling obligated to make promises. Relatedly, it's also a
Speaker 1: sound of progress that many people are looking at those
Speaker 1: promises and really really being strict about them and saying, actually,
Speaker 1: you're not on track to meet these goals, and there's
Speaker 1: no plausible pathway to the decorganizations speed that year applying here,
Speaker 1: you need to either really dramatically up your ambition and
Speaker 1: make serious investments, or be a little bit more honest
Speaker 1: and transparent about where you're actually heading as opposed to
Speaker 1: where you're where you want us to believe you're heading.
Speaker 1: That's a shift that's happening in the culture as a whole,
Speaker 1: I think as part and parcel of climate change becoming
Speaker 1: more and more central to the way that people think
Speaker 1: about politics and policy and geopolitics over the last five
Speaker 1: years or so. But there's been sort of significant movement
Speaker 1: within the u N Climate community to a scent of
Speaker 1: guidelines that was published during the Charmel Shake, cop led
Speaker 1: by Catherine McKenna, who is a former Environment Minister of Canada,
Speaker 1: but with the support and endorsement of the Secretary General
Speaker 1: Antonio Guterres, that basically outlined a series of standards for companies,
Speaker 1: in particular saying like, if you don't meet these standards,
Speaker 1: you can't say that you're going to get to net zero.
Speaker 1: And there's not yet an enforcement mechanism that would actually,
Speaker 1: you know, hold them to that. But I think it's
Speaker 1: the first step to say, here are the basic sets
Speaker 1: of standards we should be applying here. You know exactly
Speaker 1: what that where That leads in terms of whether corporations
Speaker 1: will up their anti will increase their ambition, or we'll
Speaker 1: just back away from the rhetoric. I think we don't
Speaker 1: really know. A few years ago, as a major major
Speaker 1: it was celebrated as a major step forward when black Rock,
Speaker 1: which is this unbelievably large invest in investment firm, I
Speaker 1: think it's like, I don't remember the numbers off the
Speaker 1: top of my head, but it's something like it would
Speaker 1: be one of the world's biggest economies. They promised that
Speaker 1: they were going to be holding all of their portfolio
Speaker 1: companies too much stricter climate standards and then like a
Speaker 1: year and a half later, they were basically like, actually,
Speaker 1: forget it, We're not going to do that. So you
Speaker 1: know exactly what happens as a result of these new
Speaker 1: holding these people's feet to the fires unclear. And you're
Speaker 1: seeing in the US a lot of Republican attorneys general
Speaker 1: suing to push back against climate policies so republican, it's disgusting.
Speaker 1: It's especially disgusting because we're the beginning of partisan shift here,
Speaker 1: which is to say, especially because of the ira but
Speaker 1: also because of all the green energy investments that have
Speaker 1: been made over the last decade. You know, there's just
Speaker 1: there's a lot of money being made in clean energy
Speaker 1: in red states right now, and I genuinely don't think
Speaker 1: that five or ten years from now, you know, wind
Speaker 1: power and solar power are going to be coded in
Speaker 1: the same blue, red left right way that they are now,
Speaker 1: Which means you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot
Speaker 1: if you're a red state saying you're going to push
Speaker 1: back against the ira A tax credits. It's like your
Speaker 1: state's going to be in a much better position if
Speaker 1: you take those actual credits and build out a new
Speaker 1: energy system, right right right, That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: I do think that partisanship will stay because Republicans have,
Speaker 1: like we saw during the pandemic, been largely anti science.
Speaker 1: You know, you had people who are actually dying and
Speaker 1: they were like, no, they're not. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: larger percentage of Republicans dying of COVID than Democrats. Still,
Speaker 1: so there's probably this anti science way of thinking will continue,
Speaker 1: you but certainly there'll be financial incentives hopefully. I look
Speaker 1: at it like, you know, we had these three bills
Speaker 1: the past over the last year that touch on climate,
Speaker 1: and the biggest was the i ra A, the Inflation
Speaker 1: Reduction Act, and that got no Republican votes in part
Speaker 1: because it was understood as a climate bill. But there
Speaker 1: was also the Chips Act and there was also the
Speaker 1: Infrastructure Bill, both of which were not pitched as climate
Speaker 1: bills and yet had a lot of climate spending in them,
Speaker 1: and those both got a fair number of Republican votes
Speaker 1: because it was really you know, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: pork barrel spending. It's like, you guys are gonna get
Speaker 1: your your battery factories, you guys are going to get
Speaker 1: your money for your transmission lines. And it's hard to
Speaker 1: turn that down. If the temperature on the culture were
Speaker 1: part of climate can be turned down a little bit,
Speaker 1: I think that there's a chance to get Republican support
Speaker 1: for that kind of stuff going forward, even if I
Speaker 1: don't think we're gonna get a second I or anytime soon. Right.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: This was super interesting and I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 1: Of course, you had great to talk and let's talk
Speaker 1: against Spencer. Ackerman writes the news letter Forever War Forever Wars,
Speaker 1: and is the author of Reign of Terror, Welcome Too Fast,
Speaker 1: Politic Expense or Acraman. Thanks very much, Molly. First, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the Biden administration. We are two
Speaker 1: years into the Biden administration. Tell us about the good,
Speaker 1: the bad, and the very weird two years in. I
Speaker 1: think like we can draw a kind of large, if
Speaker 1: preliminary judgment, which is like looking at the two years
Speaker 1: worth of Biden handling of foreign policy, I think we've
Speaker 1: got like a clear story of what this administration will
Speaker 1: ultimately be known for when obviously a whole lot of
Speaker 1: unexpected stuff could happen in the next two years, or
Speaker 1: you know, if they get re election the following four.
Speaker 1: But all of that said, I think this administration is
Speaker 1: going to be remembered for both inheriting and then taking
Speaker 1: ownership of what we'll look back on in the future
Speaker 1: as two coal wars at the same time, Russian and China.
Speaker 1: You see this a lot in the much criticized national
Speaker 1: security strategy that they put out, which is getting the
Speaker 1: kind of like typical sort of blob reaction that you know,
Speaker 1: this doesn't make any actual priorities between stuff. This doesn't
Speaker 1: tell you what it is that the administration would actually
Speaker 1: choose if sort of stacked against each other in terms
Speaker 1: of blood, treasure, attention, stuff like that. Nevertheless, you had
Speaker 1: an historic decision by the Trump administration to say that,
Speaker 1: in fact, the long term enemy of the United States
Speaker 1: is China. Probably, you know, with the exception of the
Speaker 1: Abraham Accords that took the Mid Eastern anti Iran coalition
Speaker 1: out of the shadows. No Trump decision was applauded on
Speaker 1: the foreign policy side more readily than than that one
Speaker 1: pivoting the United States towards a twenty one century and
Speaker 1: they like to use the term great power competition with
Speaker 1: China um as well as the Biden administration upon taking office,
Speaker 1: seeing the Russians in you know, not the same weight
Speaker 1: class as the Chinese, but the same I guess like
Speaker 1: mentality that these are enormous geopolitical actors, obviously China more
Speaker 1: so than Russia, that the United States needs to array
Speaker 1: itself against. They don't like to use the term cold
Speaker 1: wars for I think pretty obvious reasons. But you know,
Speaker 1: if you look at for instance, US officials going to
Speaker 1: the Manama Conference in Bahrain in November. While you know,
Speaker 1: those officials took really great pains to tell like the
Speaker 1: Golfees and the Israelis that you know, we're not actually
Speaker 1: doing cold wars. We don't want blocks, they were simultaneously saying,
Speaker 1: do not hedge against US with Chinese, particularly communications or
Speaker 1: military purchases. So the administration really is saying, regardless of
Speaker 1: the presentation that great power competition doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: a cold war, that when they go talk to client
Speaker 1: states or states that you know, maybe client states, the
Speaker 1: message is fundamentally you you should choose us and not
Speaker 1: them for these varieties of reasons. I think that to
Speaker 1: an astonishing degree, given the two Cold Wars at the
Speaker 1: same time, framework. Thus far, I think they're succeeding on
Speaker 1: their own terms. We're not seeing the enormous downstream negative
Speaker 1: consequences not just on economies that factionalize around the world,
Speaker 1: but the blood that Cold Wars mean outside of the
Speaker 1: imperial center. You know, think of what the Cold War
Speaker 1: meant in practice for Latin America, for Africa, for the Caribbean,
Speaker 1: for Southeast Asia, as well as you know, for Europe,
Speaker 1: and then domestically in American politics. But that's gonna, I
Speaker 1: would argue, that's going to come that inevitably in a
Speaker 1: instruct like this, you are going to get more and
Speaker 1: more dire choices of this sort that the American officials,
Speaker 1: you know, Collin call Brett McGurk, you know, very respected,
Speaker 1: you know, professionals on the Democratic side, with a whole lot,
Speaker 1: you know, in Brett's case in particular, a ton of
Speaker 1: you know, bipartisan you know, foreign policy credentials. That's the
Speaker 1: choice that ultimately the aligned world or would be aligned
Speaker 1: world faces, and the downstream consequences of this haven't manifested yet.
Speaker 1: And I think the danger of that is that looks
Speaker 1: to the blob, for lack of better term, like success
Speaker 1: the administration. The Biden administration, I think is also benefiting
Speaker 1: from like it looks like what foreign policy professionals kind
Speaker 1: of think of when they think of a coherent and
Speaker 1: cohesive foreign policy team. You know, the classic example is,
Speaker 1: you know, the one that exists um in the rosie
Speaker 1: memories of the US policy establishment. Is like the way
Speaker 1: the National Security Council worked under you know, George Bush,
Speaker 1: the father, a very coherent, minimally factionalized team. And you know,
Speaker 1: you are not seeing what you saw with you know, like,
Speaker 1: for instance, the Bush administration deeply factionalized and unable to
Speaker 1: get the outcomes it wanted on the world. You're not
Speaker 1: able to you know, it doesn't look like the Obama
Speaker 1: team deeply deeply factionalized, where a tremendous amount of the
Speaker 1: Security States simply did not trust and sought to undermine Obama.
Speaker 1: And also the team typically didn't you know, get certainly
Speaker 1: in the first term what it thought it would achieve,
Speaker 1: and usually simply acquiesced to the Security States priorities. And
Speaker 1: then you're also not getting what you got under Trump,
Speaker 1: which is tremendous factionalization. Yet again, and with the exception
Speaker 1: of like arraying for the Cold War, and for the
Speaker 1: Abraham Accords, not really something that you would say achieved
Speaker 1: its objectives either. The incoherence was the proof of the factionalization,
Speaker 1: whether that had to do with Syria, whether that had
Speaker 1: to do with Afghanistan and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: So the Biden team is what I guess I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say, is like for the first two years, certainly
Speaker 1: you are just seeing a lot more of the you know,
Speaker 1: major players growing in the same direction. And accordingly that
Speaker 1: looks although that's an input like success in an output,
Speaker 1: and I think all of this is going to turn
Speaker 1: out to be sort of dangerously illusory. Okay, you had
Speaker 1: many thoughts there, we have, so we're gonna slow down
Speaker 1: and break this all down. The central tenant of what
Speaker 1: you're talking about is that the Biden administration, I would
Speaker 1: say that they are more aligned than previous administrations, even
Speaker 1: I think with the Trump administration it's hard. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think they're a good example of anything, because
Speaker 1: I mean, basically they did a little foreign policy that
Speaker 1: Jared liked, right, Trump loves autograds. But I mean there
Speaker 1: wasn't like a unifying foreign policy there. But with the
Speaker 1: Biden administration. You sort of think that the biggest danger
Speaker 1: of the Biden administration is that their foreign policy is
Speaker 1: too unified. I think it's more that there is a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of consensus around the idea that what the
Speaker 1: United States needs to do in the twenty one century
Speaker 1: is to the term they like to use is great
Speaker 1: power competition. I think in real terms that means too
Speaker 1: cold wars at once. They won't be the same sorts
Speaker 1: of cold wars that you know, the United States wage
Speaker 1: against the Soviet Union. But when you see senior officials
Speaker 1: saying to long time US allies, don't hedge against us,
Speaker 1: meaning don't start buying a lot of Chinese stuff, particularly
Speaker 1: on the communications and security side. Stay with what we
Speaker 1: already have deep in our alliance. We unlike China. And
Speaker 1: this was another argument that Brett McGurk and Collin call
Speaker 1: in Bahrain in November. Have your regional interests against the
Speaker 1: Iranians in mind, the Chinese will not, and the Russians
Speaker 1: are now for you know, drones in Ukraine dependent on
Speaker 1: the Iranians. So you're not going to get those sorts
Speaker 1: of support for your priorities. And so the thing is
Speaker 1: is that if that continues to succeed, and again lots
Speaker 1: of consensus for it, then we get a kind of
Speaker 1: tripartite division of the world at a time in which
Speaker 1: to be a little bit you know, dramatic about it.
Speaker 1: You know, the viability of human life is really running
Speaker 1: out unless we unite, Yeah, which is a climate stuff. Yes,
Speaker 1: And like there is simply no way not withstand. We're
Speaker 1: recording this right after this like massive fusion breakthrough that
Speaker 1: the Department of Energy announced yesterday. I when I was
Speaker 1: at Wired, had to write a whole lot about like
Speaker 1: enter G generation through lasers, but I'm still not qualified
Speaker 1: to be able to talk about the implications of what
Speaker 1: like a major resource transition of the century. But you know,
Speaker 1: putting all of that aside, there is simply no way
Speaker 1: that humanity will come out of the twenty one century
Speaker 1: with anything like the sustainability necessary for continued human civilization
Speaker 1: unless there is a kind of posture, primarily of cooperation
Speaker 1: with these feuding great powers, and we are driving further
Speaker 1: away from it. And that, I think is is what
Speaker 1: I mean when I say that, That's what I mean
Speaker 1: when I say the danger of this foreign policy and
Speaker 1: the consensus that it represents is that while it is
Speaker 1: succeeding on its own terms at the moment, from the
Speaker 1: big picture perspective, that moves us in a direction that
Speaker 1: like our grandchildren will curse us for moving in and
Speaker 1: then on, you know more are quotinion ways in which
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say Quotinian, but like ways in which you know,
Speaker 1: the disastrous effects of which will manifest earlier. You know,
Speaker 1: Biden I think has done um a pretty good and
Speaker 1: responsible job of limiting the American commitment in Ukraine. But
Speaker 1: once you commit to arming, you know, the Ukrainians to defeat,
Speaker 1: you know, an aggressor's invasion that has itself all built
Speaker 1: in escutory pressures, and like you can just imagine a
Speaker 1: successor administration where this administration under greater pressure from a
Speaker 1: Republican Congress changing their Yeah, just just being like, you know,
Speaker 1: we've been adjusting the range of the high Mars artillery launcher,
Speaker 1: which can basically like hit nearly if you were fire
Speaker 1: it from you know, New York where we are, it
Speaker 1: would basically like hit somewhere just shy of Baltimore, right,
Speaker 1: Like we're not like the the administration is mono find
Speaker 1: like the range on the high Mars, so that like
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians don't hit inside of Russia, but they could,
Speaker 1: but you know, perhaps not forever. You know, right now
Speaker 1: there is an active discussion. You know, we're recording this,
Speaker 1: you know, right as the Pentagon is still saying like
Speaker 1: we've made no decision yet, but to provide patriot batteries
Speaker 1: for you know, greater air defense. All of these escortatory
Speaker 1: pressures are built in the longer the war goes on,
Speaker 1: and that will require on the one hand, you know,
Speaker 1: very careful management, but also an administration and a political
Speaker 1: climate that's interested in that kind of careful management. It's
Speaker 1: interested in limiting the commitment, like limiting the range of
Speaker 1: possibilities within already a pitiless war. Okay, so stop for
Speaker 1: a minute. I want to ask you the Cold War
Speaker 1: is Russia and China. There are two Cold Wars, right,
Speaker 1: One is Russia, one is China. These two foreign powers
Speaker 1: are not the same. Certainly not China. That's a forever war, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, Russia is like on the verge of being
Speaker 1: a hot war. Would you even try to like make
Speaker 1: some kind of Dayton was China? I think you know
Speaker 1: Dayton with China and also we should mention like you know,
Speaker 1: as part of the Biden administration waging this you know
Speaker 1: cold war against China, it's launched like a massive bet
Speaker 1: to decouple its economy from the Chinese, which is that's
Speaker 1: one way in which the China US competition just doesn't
Speaker 1: resemble the US Soviet competition, Like the trade ties are intense,
Speaker 1: like the manufacturing relationship is like, there's just nothing like
Speaker 1: that with the US and the Soviet Union in the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. But the Chinese say quite often like this
Speaker 1: is an unfortunate posture of the United States, and we
Speaker 1: would just you know, discuss this more with them, And
Speaker 1: that I think probably has to be the way in
Speaker 1: which both this administration and future administrations adjust to the
Speaker 1: rise of China. That management of all of its different
Speaker 1: suite of issues has to be the subject of constant diplomacy,
Speaker 1: because you know, history tells us as the economic might
Speaker 1: of China increases, so well the foreign ambitions of China
Speaker 1: so well, its resource dependence. So will also the ways
Speaker 1: in which, much like the United States before it, the
Speaker 1: terms of like infrastructure, doing what the Chinese called, you know,
Speaker 1: the Belton Road Initiative become debt traps become the ways
Speaker 1: in which satellites are formed. All of this has to
Speaker 1: be negotiated between Beijing and Washington, between you know, larger
Speaker 1: macro political structures, international structures ultimately deal with one another,
Speaker 1: not because this is an easy thing to bridge, but
Speaker 1: because the needs of everyone are so massive and so
Speaker 1: dependent so urgently on this happening. So you know, it's
Speaker 1: simply has to be kind of particularly if the United
Speaker 1: States is going to sort of stay with a construct
Speaker 1: of the Chinese being a principal adversary and then the
Speaker 1: Russians being kind of the next guy down, that that
Speaker 1: is the geopolitical relationship that matters the most and requires
Speaker 1: the most attention. One thing I would say a consequence
Speaker 1: of all of this, I've said, this has gone pretty
Speaker 1: well for Biden so far. One enormous consequence that right
Speaker 1: now you could cut either way, but I don't know
Speaker 1: in the future if it will stay that way, is
Speaker 1: you know, last February four the Chinese and the Russians
Speaker 1: agreed to what they called and no limit friendship. Now
Speaker 1: that's been very complicated for the Chinese by Russian like
Speaker 1: seeing that as a green light to invade Ukraine. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, you know, while a lot of
Speaker 1: people focus on how you know, Russia can't really help China,
Speaker 1: China can really help Russia. If I'm Russia and I
Speaker 1: have an economy smaller than Italy, what my best possibility
Speaker 1: here is to become an adjunct of Chinese power basically
Speaker 1: the lead. Basically this analogy doesn't work for a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, but just politically I think it it'll capture
Speaker 1: it somewhat be Britain to China's United States. I don't
Speaker 1: think China has much appetite for that. From a resource perspective,
Speaker 1: it surely does. China is already becoming a massive energy
Speaker 1: customer of the Russians, and that will likely continue that.
Speaker 1: It's also what Hijin Peng's recent visit to Saudi Arabia's
Speaker 1: winding up that the Chinese want what the United States
Speaker 1: didn't really see a need for until nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: which is a diversified energy supply. And that's a sense
Speaker 1: in which the Chinese and Russian relationship won't be equal,
Speaker 1: but is something that really does kind of makes sense
Speaker 1: on its own terms, and really makes sense in the
Speaker 1: context of the United States declaring, we see both of
Speaker 1: these major powers, one obviously bigger than the other, as
Speaker 1: our principal adversaries. That drives China and Russia together in
Speaker 1: precisely the way that I think of the meme. You know,
Speaker 1: the worst person you know made a great point, something
Speaker 1: like Henry Kissinger made a point of saying like, just
Speaker 1: as a matter of basics, we cannot have China and
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union aligned with one another. We have to
Speaker 1: break that, and right now that's broken against the United States.
Speaker 1: Spencer so interesting. Well, thank you, Molly, I appreciate you
Speaker 1: letting me go on my little spiel. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and Friday to your the best minds and politics makes
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
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Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.