Eric and Eliot discuss the rapidly unfolding events in Syria and examine the causes and consequences of the collapse of Bashar al Assad's regime in Syria.
Excellent discussion as always. Bashar al-Assad's ignominious exile to his new digs in Russia are indeed a cause celebration. His gilded cage on the Black Sea was originally reserved for Trump but... The Bulwark rightly focuses on the potential catastrophic degradation the second administration will inflict on our democracy. Your blasé wait-and-see agnostic approach completely ignores the long-term impact his obtuse, willful ignorance and proactive willingness to destroy the very institutions that have kept us safe from the next terrorist attack will have. And when it comes, it will hit large population centers. The people that suffer and die disproportionately will come from blue leaning population centers while those in rural areas who put him over the top will sit back and continue to rationalize their decision to put him back in power, already knowing full well that he was an incompetent buffoon. The irony is that Trump's appeal is only made possible by his masterful exploitation of the Obama/Biden/Harris's complete and utter failure to speak publicly
with brutal honesty about difficult issues, such as Islamic terrorism and immigration while at the same time, dealing competently with them behind the scenes. Obama's record on immigration is better than Trump's. Osama bin Laden was taken out on his watch. The fact we haven't had a major terrorist attack is something the American electorate has obviously taken for granted. The the intelligence agency professionals who dedicate their lives to keeping us safe staff the very institutions that Trump wants to dismantle and head with incompetent leadership. The resultant corrosive effect on the rank-and-file heroes who dedicate their lives to keep us all safe will follow just as surely as night follows day. We will all reap the whirlwind. Mark Twain once said or was it Franklin ' experience is a hard school, but a fool will learn in no other.' ?
'fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me.'
'The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars. It is in ourselves.'
I'm a flaming liberal who nevertheless craves good faith discourse with the "other side." I haven't liked any of the Republican presidents of my lifetime (except maybe Ford), but I tell you, these last several years have had me also craving the good old days of reasonable, thoughtful Republicans with whom I agree maybe 40% of the time but still respect. And that's why I listen to this podcast. May we all make it to saner shores.
Much of the hesitancy during the Obama/Trump/Biden administrations can be traced directly back to Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz debacle in Iraq. Hard stop. Inexcusable for those more recent administrations? Perhaps. In the eye of the public? We will reckon with the mistakes of the latter for much longer period of time than we should. It's why Trump, even right now, has said, "We need to stay out of it". I disagree, but my views aren't MAGA or progressive.
I think blaming the weak foreign policy of the last three presidents on Bush 43 is a convenient excuse, but the reality is deeper than that. Obama believed all the crap his Marxist professors taught him in college about how all the world's problems were cause by the US, and he was only beginning to unlearn it in his final year in office. I doubt Biden shared those leftist beliefs, but he was afraid to stand up to his fellow Democrats who did share them.
I also think many Democrats - and probably some MAGA adherents, as well - represent an ongoing success of the KGB's Cold War propaganda. They still believe the lie that dictators are provoked by strength, when in reality they are provoked by weakness.
I am curious if you have read the Obama foreign policy piece from The Atlantic in Sept 2016? He spends a lot of time praising Scowcroft, which Marxist professors rarely do. I don't think that was just 2016 Obama.
I get frustrated with this show when they inevitably circle around to blaming the last two Democratic administrations' foreign policy decisions with egregious selectivity and 20/40 hindsight.
They seem to deliberately ignore or handwave the impact that being bookended by four years of chaos, corruption, and incompetence would have on strategic/tactical decisionmaking at any given moment in time.
But I chalk it up to old habits and proclivities; it's like 15-20% of most episodes, and I deeply appreciate the information, analysis, and insight offered throughout the rest.
Good analysis. When W was elected, I thought it was great that he had Cheney and Rumsfeld because they had been in HW’s administration and I thought that had gone exceedingly well foreign policy-wise. What I did not know was that both Cheney and Rumsfeld were either restraining themselves or being restrained during HW’s term and they were unchained during W’s term. In other words, they weren’t following their true POV with Bush Sr, and they could unleash what they really wanted to do under Bush Jr.
Wolfowitz was a disaster from A to Z. I also remember reading in Foreign Affairs a long article about the guys who planned the debacle in Iraq under W, and found out that virtually NONE OF THEM had any real experience in the Middle East and that a lot of their ideas/plans originated in their PhD thesis in school. The Iraq war gave these guys a chance to try out their theories in real life. And guess what? The theories didn’t work IRL. Another shocker from those Foreign Affairs articles was to find out how many, if not most, of the people sent to Iraq to run the CPA from the Green Zone had to get a Passport in order to go to Iraq because THEY DIDN’T HAVE A PASSPORT PRIOR TO THE WAR (!).
We sent a whole bunch of intellectuals with PhDs and no real world experience, who had never left the country, to run a post-war Middle Eastern Arab Muslim country, and it was a disaster. This was the genesis, the beginning, of the isolationism we are seeing writ large in Trump and the current iteration of the GOP. It may also be why Bush Jr kept his mouth shut during the past election.
During his first term, Dubya farmed out foreign policy to Cheney and Rumsfeld. I think he came to realize his mistake and changed course in his second term, firing Rumsfeld and sidelining Cheney. Unfortunately, his new team had its own problems. The only Bush 43 foreign policy success that comes to mind is his effort to fight AIDS in Africa.
Great discussion! You’re the hidden gem of The Bulwark. Can’t wait for the next episode, and I second the request to bring back John Sullivan to talk about the recent developments in Syria and the Middle East (and their impact on Russia!).
My understanding is that Israel has the capability of assembling about 200 nukes on short notice. Is this an outdated number?
Excellent discussion as always. Bashar al-Assad's ignominious exile to his new digs in Russia are indeed a cause celebration. His gilded cage on the Black Sea was originally reserved for Trump but... The Bulwark rightly focuses on the potential catastrophic degradation the second administration will inflict on our democracy. Your blasé wait-and-see agnostic approach completely ignores the long-term impact his obtuse, willful ignorance and proactive willingness to destroy the very institutions that have kept us safe from the next terrorist attack will have. And when it comes, it will hit large population centers. The people that suffer and die disproportionately will come from blue leaning population centers while those in rural areas who put him over the top will sit back and continue to rationalize their decision to put him back in power, already knowing full well that he was an incompetent buffoon. The irony is that Trump's appeal is only made possible by his masterful exploitation of the Obama/Biden/Harris's complete and utter failure to speak publicly
with brutal honesty about difficult issues, such as Islamic terrorism and immigration while at the same time, dealing competently with them behind the scenes. Obama's record on immigration is better than Trump's. Osama bin Laden was taken out on his watch. The fact we haven't had a major terrorist attack is something the American electorate has obviously taken for granted. The the intelligence agency professionals who dedicate their lives to keeping us safe staff the very institutions that Trump wants to dismantle and head with incompetent leadership. The resultant corrosive effect on the rank-and-file heroes who dedicate their lives to keep us all safe will follow just as surely as night follows day. We will all reap the whirlwind. Mark Twain once said or was it Franklin ' experience is a hard school, but a fool will learn in no other.' ?
'fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me.'
'The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars. It is in ourselves.'
I'm a flaming liberal who nevertheless craves good faith discourse with the "other side." I haven't liked any of the Republican presidents of my lifetime (except maybe Ford), but I tell you, these last several years have had me also craving the good old days of reasonable, thoughtful Republicans with whom I agree maybe 40% of the time but still respect. And that's why I listen to this podcast. May we all make it to saner shores.
Much of the hesitancy during the Obama/Trump/Biden administrations can be traced directly back to Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz debacle in Iraq. Hard stop. Inexcusable for those more recent administrations? Perhaps. In the eye of the public? We will reckon with the mistakes of the latter for much longer period of time than we should. It's why Trump, even right now, has said, "We need to stay out of it". I disagree, but my views aren't MAGA or progressive.
I think blaming the weak foreign policy of the last three presidents on Bush 43 is a convenient excuse, but the reality is deeper than that. Obama believed all the crap his Marxist professors taught him in college about how all the world's problems were cause by the US, and he was only beginning to unlearn it in his final year in office. I doubt Biden shared those leftist beliefs, but he was afraid to stand up to his fellow Democrats who did share them.
I also think many Democrats - and probably some MAGA adherents, as well - represent an ongoing success of the KGB's Cold War propaganda. They still believe the lie that dictators are provoked by strength, when in reality they are provoked by weakness.
I am curious if you have read the Obama foreign policy piece from The Atlantic in Sept 2016? He spends a lot of time praising Scowcroft, which Marxist professors rarely do. I don't think that was just 2016 Obama.
I get frustrated with this show when they inevitably circle around to blaming the last two Democratic administrations' foreign policy decisions with egregious selectivity and 20/40 hindsight.
They seem to deliberately ignore or handwave the impact that being bookended by four years of chaos, corruption, and incompetence would have on strategic/tactical decisionmaking at any given moment in time.
But I chalk it up to old habits and proclivities; it's like 15-20% of most episodes, and I deeply appreciate the information, analysis, and insight offered throughout the rest.
Good analysis. When W was elected, I thought it was great that he had Cheney and Rumsfeld because they had been in HW’s administration and I thought that had gone exceedingly well foreign policy-wise. What I did not know was that both Cheney and Rumsfeld were either restraining themselves or being restrained during HW’s term and they were unchained during W’s term. In other words, they weren’t following their true POV with Bush Sr, and they could unleash what they really wanted to do under Bush Jr.
Wolfowitz was a disaster from A to Z. I also remember reading in Foreign Affairs a long article about the guys who planned the debacle in Iraq under W, and found out that virtually NONE OF THEM had any real experience in the Middle East and that a lot of their ideas/plans originated in their PhD thesis in school. The Iraq war gave these guys a chance to try out their theories in real life. And guess what? The theories didn’t work IRL. Another shocker from those Foreign Affairs articles was to find out how many, if not most, of the people sent to Iraq to run the CPA from the Green Zone had to get a Passport in order to go to Iraq because THEY DIDN’T HAVE A PASSPORT PRIOR TO THE WAR (!).
We sent a whole bunch of intellectuals with PhDs and no real world experience, who had never left the country, to run a post-war Middle Eastern Arab Muslim country, and it was a disaster. This was the genesis, the beginning, of the isolationism we are seeing writ large in Trump and the current iteration of the GOP. It may also be why Bush Jr kept his mouth shut during the past election.
During his first term, Dubya farmed out foreign policy to Cheney and Rumsfeld. I think he came to realize his mistake and changed course in his second term, firing Rumsfeld and sidelining Cheney. Unfortunately, his new team had its own problems. The only Bush 43 foreign policy success that comes to mind is his effort to fight AIDS in Africa.
Great discussion! You’re the hidden gem of The Bulwark. Can’t wait for the next episode, and I second the request to bring back John Sullivan to talk about the recent developments in Syria and the Middle East (and their impact on Russia!).
I agree. Great episode
We need former Ambassador Sullivan back to give us his thoughts on the new paradigm with respect to Russia/Syria.
Thank you for your insights!
I was hoping you two would race back in and record another pod! Thanks so much.