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Speaker 1: David Gurra and Tom King with Robert D. Kaplan.

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Speaker 2: Everyone knows my affinity for his realist international relations. The

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Speaker 2: body of work is absolutely jaw dropping. Years ago, my

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Speaker 2: book of the summer was the Return of Marco Polo's World.

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Speaker 2: My book of the year last year, a wonderful two

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Speaker 2: hundred and eighty pages, The Loom of Time between Empire

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Speaker 2: and Anarchy. He has been ferociously writing Robert D. Kaplan

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Speaker 2: and the must read waste Land, A World in Permanent Crisis.

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Speaker 1: David Gurra with Robert D.

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Speaker 3: Kaplan and few bring in sort of reference to history

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Speaker 3: and art and writing with ritual repertashes as well as

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Speaker 3: he Robert Caplan. Great to speak with you this morning,

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Speaker 3: and I confess I was thumbing through the galley of

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Speaker 3: your latest book, Wasteland, A World in Permanent Crisis, while

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Speaker 3: I was covering the g twenty leaders summit in Brazil

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Speaker 3: just a few months ago, and it was such a

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Speaker 3: strange moment at which we were looking to see what

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Speaker 3: President Biden might say or do. He really stepped back

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Speaker 3: and didn't say much of anything during the course of

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Speaker 3: that gathering, and we saw kind of the reconfiguration in

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Speaker 3: real time of alliances on the ground there in Brazil,

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Speaker 3: the role of America being questioned in other countries coming

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Speaker 3: together in new ways as a result, help us understand

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Speaker 3: the moment that we're in as we hear so much

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Speaker 3: about what's going to happen here, to the rules based order,

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Speaker 3: to the way things happen for so much time here,

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Speaker 3: as we see a President Trump returning to the White

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Speaker 3: House and espousing the protection's policies we first saw just

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Speaker 3: a few years ago.

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Speaker 4: Oh, thanks for having me on. I think we're at

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Speaker 4: the end of the post war order, post war I mean,

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Speaker 4: post World War Two, but also a few decades after

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Speaker 4: the end of the Cold War. We've had the same

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Speaker 4: international order since nineteen forty five. Essentially, the United States

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Speaker 4: has been an empire in reality since then. And you

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Speaker 4: see it not only with Trump's lack of interest not

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Speaker 4: just you know, making demands on NATO partners, but his

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Speaker 4: lack of interest in the Alliance in general, and the Alliance,

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Speaker 4: of course rose out of the ashes of World War Two.

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Speaker 4: We also see it with his attempt to gut to

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Speaker 4: close down the US Agency for International Development us AID,

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Speaker 4: because that too has been a pillar of the postwar order,

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Speaker 4: even though most people until a few weeks ago didn't

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Speaker 4: really know much about it because it was through us

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Speaker 4: AID that American foreign aid to countries throughout the developing

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Speaker 4: world was channeled. So you had hard power through NATO

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Speaker 4: and our Pacific alliances, and you had soft power through

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Speaker 4: us AID. Trump is going after all of that his

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Speaker 4: You know, it's not that he's an isolationist. That's absolutely wrong.

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Speaker 4: Trump engay with the world. What Trump is doing is

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Speaker 4: he's adding another layer to manifest destiny. Manifest destiny you

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Speaker 4: used to be about America conquering the West from east

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Speaker 4: to west, from the East coast to the West coast

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Speaker 4: in the nineteenth century. Now he wants to expand manifest

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Speaker 4: destiny north to south, from Greenland to the Panama Canal,

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Speaker 4: from the Arctic to the tropics. He sees a world

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Speaker 4: of regional rather than an American led post war order.

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Speaker 4: He sees a world of regional regional geography based alliances

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Speaker 4: with China, the United States, etc.

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Speaker 3: I want to come back to that in a moment.

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Speaker 3: But picking up on something you said a moment ago,

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Speaker 3: and that is him kicking that leg of the stool,

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Speaker 3: the soft power legout from the stool. What are the

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Speaker 3: consequences of that. I mean, we've heard from Samantha Power,

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Speaker 3: the most recent head of USAID, making the case for

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Speaker 3: preserving that organization and keeping it's good work going a

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Speaker 3: tool Gowande who worked there recently as well. I don't

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Speaker 3: know how much that's resonating. But what are the consequences

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Speaker 3: of losing that focus on soft power?

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Speaker 4: I think there are mens really because solt power you

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Speaker 4: need when things are not going well, when you're not

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Speaker 4: on top of the heat. When you have you know,

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Speaker 4: solf power is influence in countries, you know, having connections

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Speaker 4: in company, in countries, knowing people because you're working there,

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Speaker 4: you're doing things. In case of a hostage crisis or

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Speaker 4: some sort of crisis, you always have a phone number

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Speaker 4: to call people. You know. It's about building relationships and

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Speaker 4: all of that would go just the word on AID.

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Speaker 4: You couldn't make the case that AID has not been

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Speaker 4: managed as well in recent years. However, the way to

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Speaker 4: deal with it is the way the tough Republican presidents

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Speaker 4: of the past dealt with it, like Ronald Reagan and others,

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Speaker 4: by putting it, by fixing it, by putting in real

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Speaker 4: hard nosed business person types to run it.

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Speaker 2: Robert Kaplan with his folks in celebration of his new effort,

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Speaker 2: two hundred some pages waste land Gera.

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Speaker 1: Read it in Brazil. I haven't be honest read it,

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Speaker 1: but top of the pile right now.

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Speaker 2: The loom of time from Morocco out to Persia was spectacular.

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Speaker 1: In my book of the Year last year.

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Speaker 2: Robert Kaplan Egdone alluded to this this weekend in the Post.

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Speaker 2: But Richard Nixon in nineteen sixty two was an author,

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Speaker 2: and then he enjoyed losing as governor of California to

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Speaker 2: Pat Brown. He was at his bottom. What comes after Trump?

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Speaker 2: Have you framed out in your mind that this let's

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Speaker 2: assume he's not going for an FDR three terms, But

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Speaker 2: after President Trump, what next for our politics?

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Speaker 4: We've had a first of all, one of the problems

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Speaker 4: with America in terms of American power and America's trajectory,

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Speaker 4: is that it is that the center is gone. Rather

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Speaker 4: than a center right and a center left governing the

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Speaker 4: country where presidential elections were not existential, you now have

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Speaker 4: a progressive left and a populist right. Neither seems to

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Speaker 4: talk to the other. I think after Trump, what you're

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Speaker 4: likely to get is another populist right regime or go

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Speaker 4: back to the progressive left. The real story in American

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Speaker 4: politics is the destruction of the center, the destruction of

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Speaker 4: the political center, which is partly the result of the

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Speaker 4: end of the print and typewriter age and the beginning

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Speaker 4: of the digital video era, where where news is not

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Speaker 4: in the middle nuanced. It's all about passion and anxiety

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Speaker 4: and short bursts of simplicity through social media.

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Speaker 2: And David, I want to point out from Berkeley, Paul

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Speaker 2: Pearson and Eric Schuckler. Folks, for those of you in

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Speaker 2: the markets where you want one read here, it's Kaplan

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Speaker 2: really accessible Wasteland or the Loom of Time and a

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Speaker 2: little more dense. Paul Pearson and Eric Schickler, their book

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Speaker 2: Partisan Nation is shocking and describing what doctor Kaplan just mentioned.

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Speaker 3: I hear you saying that the center is gone, and

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Speaker 3: I can't help but think of the poem from which

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Speaker 3: your book takes its name, of course, the Wasteland by Elliot,

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Speaker 3: and how that's always been when we read in compliment

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Speaker 3: with or in conversation with the Second Coming by Yates.

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Speaker 3: Of course, center cannot hold. And what I'm very curious

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Speaker 3: about is, and I thought about it over the course

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Speaker 3: of the weekend last week as well. Is the the

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Speaker 3: role that Elon Musk and others from the tech industry

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Speaker 3: are playing now in the governance of this country and

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Speaker 3: sort of setting the policy direction of the United States.

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Speaker 3: It's something that you touch upon in the book, but

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Speaker 3: I wonder sort of how what we've seen over the

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Speaker 3: course of these last four weeks is advanced. You were

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Speaker 3: thinking on that relationship between Silicon Valley, what we identify

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Speaker 3: as a genius or technical facility, with managing this country,

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Speaker 3: with setting its direction, and how perilous that might be.

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Speaker 4: Yes, The late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington said that

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Speaker 4: America was always great, not because of its people, but

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Speaker 4: because of its institutions, the separation of powers, not just

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Speaker 4: in Washington, but between a county, federal and state out

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Speaker 4: out in the countryside. It was institutions that made America

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Speaker 4: great and the sanctity of them. What we're seeing with

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Speaker 4: Elon Musk is an erosion of institutions. You know where

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Speaker 4: think you know, more and more executive orders. This didn't

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Speaker 4: start with Trump, It started with Biden and even before that.

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Speaker 4: But more and more executive orders the increasing power of

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Speaker 4: the executive and the executive in more and more collusion

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Speaker 4: with oligars, you know, super rich people.

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Speaker 2: But then over the week so they were all at

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Speaker 2: the Super Bowl, Robert Kaplan with what you just said,

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Speaker 2: I think everybody of all political persuasions on this morning

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Speaker 2: commute across the nation are simply saying, where's the legislature,

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Speaker 2: where's the judiciary? Do you assume that there will be

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Speaker 2: checks and balances into March or April?

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Speaker 4: I'm not sure. I just know you can devise the

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Speaker 4: most brilliant constitution in the world, which the founders did

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Speaker 4: through the Federalist Papers. But it oh, and they said

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Speaker 4: it that we can devise the greatest constitution. But it

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Speaker 4: all ultimately comes down to, you know, to human character,

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Speaker 4: you know, you know, to the stability of people, to

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Speaker 4: their to their ethics. If you have people who are irrational, unethical,

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Speaker 4: or or are in some way do not have real

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Speaker 4: standing moral standing, the best constitution is not going to

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Speaker 4: help you.

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Speaker 3: I have seen you recently described as variously here a pessimist,

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Speaker 3: a tragic realist, and a Hobbesian. I wonder what gives

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Speaker 3: you any optimism here about the continuation of the American experience.

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Speaker 3: In light of the reading and work that you did

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Speaker 3: on this this latest volume.

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Speaker 4: What gives me optimism is that because America is a

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Speaker 4: boisterous democracy, it's gone through these periods before, you know,

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Speaker 4: stylistically and in other ways, this is not that much

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Speaker 4: different from the Jacksonian upheaval of the early nineteen in

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Speaker 4: century when Andrew Jackson, a rofun roughune unsophisticated on only

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Speaker 4: partially ethical uh frontiersmen came out and wiped out the

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Speaker 4: regime of the of the very feet aristocratic people from

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Speaker 4: Massachusetts and Virginia and the country. The country went on,

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Speaker 4: It went onto a new burst of of development and

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Speaker 4: and and and and and and dynamism, et cetera. So

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Speaker 4: it's a bad bet to give up on the United

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Speaker 4: States completely.

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Speaker 1: Robert T.

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Speaker 2: Kaplan, I have to talk here about your loom of time,

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Speaker 2: and I've just got a minute to do it. If

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Speaker 2: you were to write an epilogue of the Middle East

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Speaker 2: of Eurasia from Morocco over to Persia, what would you

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Speaker 2: write of today? What?

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Speaker 4: What I what I would write up today? In the

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Speaker 4: loom of time? I did not cover the Israel Palace

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Speaker 4: Stein issue, and that was good because I probably would

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Speaker 4: have gotten it wrong and the book would have been dated.

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Speaker 4: But I would constantly I would obviously have to write

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Speaker 4: about that what has happened in Gaza, and and and

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Speaker 4: I would just say that the big question out there

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Speaker 4: now that Israel has dramatically weakened Hesba Llah Hamas and

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Speaker 4: the Houties in North Yemen, the biggest question out there

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Speaker 4: is the future of the Iranian regime, because if the

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Speaker 4: Iranian regime were to implode in some way or a fashion,

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Speaker 4: it would be a world historical event that would change

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Speaker 4: the Ita East.

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Speaker 1: I got eight more questions? How many did you have?

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Speaker 1: Betty Moore authority have more questions for Robert Kapan. Oh

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Speaker 1: he's too smart for me. I'm sorry he's killing it.

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Speaker 1: Robert Kaplan, thank you so much. Too short a visit.

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Speaker 2: We thought we'd do that, folks, to frame out where

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Speaker 2: our X number of days into Trump second administration, Robert

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Speaker 2: Kaplan and celebrate of waste Land. Ger is the only

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Speaker 2: one on the planet who's actually read it, which is

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Speaker 2: very cool.

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Speaker 3: It is very readable and I commend it to everybody

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Speaker 3: you as well.

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Speaker 1: Tom Ya