- 2 months ago
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00:00:00It's just a little, I mean, irony isn't powerful enough a word.
00:00:04I can't think of one.
00:00:05It's odd that the very same people who are saying we need to consider tactical nukes
00:00:10in order to preserve the territorial integrity of the sovereign nation Ukraine
00:00:13because national borders are sacrosanct.
00:00:17You know, that's our sacred norms are violated when those borders are violated.
00:00:22Are saying it's totally okay for this one country to like take over other countries.
00:00:27Yes, but this gets back to my point to you.
00:00:30Yes, I agree completely.
00:00:33We support Israel unconditionally, right?
00:00:36In other words, whatever Israel does, especially vis-a-vis the Palestinians,
00:00:42the United States backs them to the hilt.
00:00:45And the fact that they're changing borders.
00:00:48I mean, I look at what they're doing in Lebanon and Syria,
00:00:52and you would think that the United States would have a vested interest
00:00:55in trying to put pressure on the Israelis to stop causing murder and mayhem in Lebanon and in Syria.
00:01:03But we do hardly anything at all.
00:01:05And those are real countries.
00:01:06Those are ancient countries and beautiful, beautiful countries with sophisticated,
00:01:11intelligent people and like that the roots of Christianity are there.
00:01:14And like, it's not, in other words, I mean, there's a sense if you're fighting over Sinai or something,
00:01:19it's one thing, but like Lebanon, I mean, that's like one of the great countries in the world, Syria, same thing.
00:01:25And they're being destroyed.
00:01:27I don't understand why people allow that to happen.
00:01:29Well, let me explain to you what Israel's goal is here.
00:01:33First of all, Israel's goal is to create Laban's realm.
00:01:36That's what I was describing to you when I said what Ben-Gurion's vision was regarding borders.
00:01:44Could you define the word?
00:01:45Laban's realm means living room.
00:01:47You want a big country.
00:01:50You want lots of space for your people.
00:01:52Yes.
00:01:53Strategic depth.
00:01:54Strategic depth.
00:01:55Yeah.
00:01:56And so that's one goal.
00:01:58The second goal that the Israelis have is they want to make sure that their neighbors are weak.
00:02:04And that means breaking them apart if you can.
00:02:08Right.
00:02:09And keeping them broken.
00:02:10So the Israelis were thrilled that mainly the United States and the Turks broke apart Syria.
00:02:18One could argue that Syria was even broken before Assad fell.
00:02:22But the Israelis want Syria to be a fractured state.
00:02:28They want Lebanon to be a fractured state.
00:02:31What they want in Iran, you know, we talk about the nuclear program, the nuclear enrichment program, and the argument is sometimes made that the principal goal, the only goal is to go in and eliminate their nuclear capability.
00:02:45That's a lie.
00:02:45Well, it's just part of the story.
00:02:48You could call it a lie.
00:02:49What the Israelis want to do is they want to break Iran apart.
00:02:53They want to make it look like Syria.
00:02:56Right.
00:02:57You want neighbors that are not powerful.
00:03:00You want them to be fractured.
00:03:03Jordan and Egypt, they have a different solution there.
00:03:07And what's happened is because those countries are economically backwards, the United States gives them huge amounts of economic aid.
00:03:14I've noticed.
00:03:15Yeah.
00:03:16And that's done for a purpose.
00:03:18And any time the Egyptians.
00:03:20And what's the purpose?
00:03:21Because any time the Egyptians or the Jordanians get uppity about Israel, the United States reminds them, you better behave yourself because we have huge economic leverage over you.
00:03:33You have to be friendly to Israel.
00:03:36So Jordan and Egypt never caused the Israelis any problem.
00:03:40It sounds like our entire foreign policy, at least in the Western Hemisphere, is based on this one country.
00:03:45Well, I would say in the Middle East.
00:03:48Well, yeah.
00:03:49In the Middle East, there is no question.
00:03:53People now call it West Asia, I believe.
00:03:55I call it the Middle East.
00:03:57In the Middle East, our policy is profoundly influenced by Israel.
00:04:04We give, as I said to you before, we have a special relationship with Israel that has no parallel in recorded history.
00:04:14It's very important to understand it.
00:04:16There is no single case in recorded history that comes even close to looking like the relationship that we have with Israel.
00:04:25Because, again, as I said, states sometimes have similar interests, and this includes the United States and Israel, but they also have conflicting interests.
00:04:33And when a great power like the United States has conflicting interests with another country, it almost always, except in the case of Israel, acts in terms of its own interests.
00:04:43America first, America first, America first, but when it comes to Israel, it's Israel first.
00:04:49And if you go to the Middle East and look at our policy there, there's just abundant evidence to support that.
00:04:57So then the question, I mean, there's so many questions, but the question is why?
00:05:02Like, what is that?
00:05:04And I think it's really causing serious problems in the current ruling coalition because the contradiction is too obvious.
00:05:14It's not America first.
00:05:15And people can see that because it's so evident.
00:05:19But what are the causes of it?
00:05:21Like, why would, for the first time, as you said in recorded history, a nation spend, you know, whatever it is, a trillion dollars a year, in effect, to serve the interests of another country?
00:05:32Like, why?
00:05:33Well, I believe there's one simple answer, the Israel lobby.
00:05:38I think the lobby is an incredibly powerful interest group.
00:05:44And I'm choosing my words carefully.
00:05:47It has awesome power.
00:05:49And it basically is in a position where it can profoundly influence U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
00:06:02And indeed, it affects foreign policy outside of the Middle East.
00:06:07But when it comes to the Middle East, and again, the Palestinian issue in particular, it has awesome power.
00:06:14And there's no president who is willing to buck the lobby.
00:06:19What sort of power is it?
00:06:21Because it's not rhetorical power.
00:06:23It's not, you know, the most powerful movements in history are fueled by an idea that it's usually the most powerful or fueled by an idea that it's like true.
00:06:34Right?
00:06:35But I never hear anybody make a detailed case for why the United States benefits from the current arrangement.
00:06:43Never.
00:06:44No one.
00:06:45Ever.
00:06:45Nikki Haley came as close as anyone by saying the United States gets a lot more out of the relationship than Israel does.
00:06:51But that never explained how exactly that works.
00:06:53So it's not a matter of, like, convincing people, clearly.
00:06:58So what is it a matter of?
00:06:59Where does that power come from?
00:07:01Well, let me put this in a broader context.
00:07:04I think that in the past, when I was younger, the lobby operated on two levels.
00:07:12One was the policy level.
00:07:14And two was the popular discourse.
00:07:17Yes.
00:07:17And I think in terms of the popular discourse for a long, long time, right?
00:07:23And this would be well into the 2000s, the Israel lobby, the Israel lobby basically influenced the discourse in ways that made the Israelis look like the good guys.
00:07:38And it made it look like every time the United States supported Israel, it was because it was in our national interest.
00:07:46Right?
00:07:46So the discourse was not at odds with what was happening at the policy level.
00:07:53Right.
00:07:54Now, the situation you described, which I think is a perfect description of the situation that we face today, is that the lobby has lost control of the discourse.
00:08:06And people now understand that the United States is doing things for Israel that are not in the American national interest.
00:08:16Furthermore, they see the lobby out in the open, engaging in smash mouth politics.
00:08:24People are now fully aware that there is a lobby out there, that it's trying to control the discourse.
00:08:30And in fact, it basically does control.
00:08:34Maybe that's a bit too strong a word, but it's close.
00:08:37It basically does control the policymakers.
00:08:39So now you have this real disconnect.
00:08:42Well, it controls the policymakers.
00:08:43I mean, that's demonstrable, I think.
00:08:46It's measurable.
00:08:47Yeah.
00:08:48Yes.
00:08:49So what you were describing is the disconnect between the discourse and the policy world that now exists.
00:08:57But what I'm saying to you is you want to remember that the lobby was immensely successful for a long period of time because the discourse and the policy process looked like they were in sync.
00:09:09So successful that just basic historical facts about the creation of this nation state in 1948 are like unknown to people.
00:09:16And it's shocking to hear them and you think, well, that can't be right.
00:09:21That's like so far from what I heard as a child that that's obviously what all the Christians were kicked out.
00:09:26All these Christians were kicked out of their historic homelands there.
00:09:30And of course, many more Muslims.
00:09:32And did that really happen?
00:09:34I mean, people just have no idea what the facts are.
00:09:37It's kind of interesting.
00:09:38Yes.
00:09:38Well, the lobby went to great lengths to make sure that you didn't know the facts.
00:09:42And anyone who said the facts out loud was like a lunatic or a jihadist or a hater of some kind.
00:09:50An anti-Semite.
00:09:51Yeah.
00:09:51Self-hating Jews.
00:09:53You know, it's very interesting.
00:09:54I often think about my own evolution in this regard.
00:09:59When I grew up as a kid, I was heavily influenced by Leon Uris' book, Exodus, and the subsequent movie with, I think, Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint.
00:10:09And that, of course, that Exodus story portrayed the Israelis in the most favorable light and the Arabs or Palestinians in the most negative light.
00:10:20So, for much of my life, you know, up until the late 80s, early 90s, I thought the Israelis were, without a doubt, the good guys up against the bad guys.
00:10:31And it was really David versus Goliath as well.
00:10:34And the Israelis were David up against an Arab Goliath.
00:10:37That was the picture I had in my head.
00:10:39But then, in the late 80s, early 90s, a group of historians in Israel called the New Historians came on the scene.
00:10:49Benny Morris.
00:10:50Benny Morris.
00:10:51Avi Schleim.
00:10:52Yeah.
00:10:53Ilan Papay.
00:10:55Some of them were amazing.
00:10:56Amazing, yeah.
00:10:57I agree.
00:10:58And what they did was they had access to the archives.
00:11:02Yes.
00:11:02And they told the real story.
00:11:04And that was a moment where I think the country felt, Israel felt confident enough to allow that conversation internally and that honesty.
00:11:12I think that's exactly right.
00:11:14The lobby had been so successful.
00:11:16Yes.
00:11:16Israel had been so successful.
00:11:18Yes.
00:11:18I went there.
00:11:19I was amazed.
00:11:20What a beautiful place.
00:11:21Great people.
00:11:22It was great.
00:11:23Yeah.
00:11:24Yeah, they thought they controlled, they had things under control.
00:11:28They did.
00:11:28That's right.
00:11:28And that they could allow these historians to tell the truth.
00:11:33Now, I believe they could have gotten away with it if they had stopped expanding or if they had agreed to a two-state solution.
00:11:44The problem is that after the early 1990s, when this literature came out, the Israelis continued to act in barbaric ways towards the Palestinians.
00:11:56Well, they had a prime minister who tried to reverse the trend and then he was shot to death.
00:12:04He was moving in that direction.
00:12:06I think there were a number of Israeli leaders who understood that the course that Israel was on was unsustainable.
00:12:14You often heard them say that.
00:12:16Yeah.
00:12:17There was a robust debate within the country about this.
00:12:19Well, whether they would have agreed to a Palestinian state ultimately is an open question.
00:12:24But the fact is, Rabin was killed, Ehud Barak, who made moves towards a two-state solution, ultimately couldn't pull it off.
00:12:34And we are where we are today.
00:12:37And the problem is that something else occurred in the late 90s, early 2000s, which fundamentally affected Israel's position.
00:12:46And that's the internet, because once you get the internet and once you get social media and the mainstream media is not the sole source of information on these issues, the story about the real creation of Israel and what Israel is doing today is available to the vast majority of people.
00:13:10It's shocking to people.
00:13:13So you have to shut down the internet.
00:13:15You can't allow that.
00:13:18Yeah.
00:13:19You can try to shut down the internet, but there are limits to what you can do.
00:13:24So, but it does seem like, so you were describing the two separate tiers, the policy and the discourse about the policy, and that one remains basically the same, but the other has changed just so radically, so radically and so fast that it's gone off in some dark directions that I just want to say on the record I totally disapprove of.
00:13:45I don't think you should hate anybody, period, especially groups of people, it's immoral, and I mean it, but that's happened because there's been just like an avalanche of new information, a lot of which is totally real.
00:13:58People haven't seen it before, and their minds are exploding, and so public opinion is moving so radically in the other direction, I feel it all around me.
00:14:06Do you feel this?
00:14:07Of course.
00:14:08Yeah, and your life, I mean, I should say for people who aren't familiar with your background, you wrote a book with Stephen Walt of Harvard, you're at the University of Chicago, so both of you have tenure, are famous in your world, you're not crazy, and you write this book in 2007, and both of you are immediately attacked in pretty shocking ways, also defended by some of your colleagues, but really maligned for it.
00:14:33And now, 18 years later, people are saying, that Mearsheimer guy, actually, he was kind of right about everything.
00:14:41So that's a reflection, I think, of the change in public opinion.
00:14:44But that's not sustainable.
00:14:46You can't have in a democracy policy that's 180 degrees from public opinion over time.
00:14:53That just doesn't work.
00:14:54So you have to either change the policy or change public opinion.
00:14:58And no one's even making any attempt at all to change public opinion through good faith argument, through like, hey, I know you think this, but you're wrong, and here's why.
00:15:07There's zero, none.
00:15:09It's shut up, Nazi.
00:15:11Okay?
00:15:11And that's not working.
00:15:13So I really think the only option is to stop the conversation.
00:15:18Or maybe I'm missing something.
00:15:20Like, censorship is the only option if you want to maintain status quo.
00:15:24Well, there's no question that they're trying to stop the conversation.
00:15:30Yes.
00:15:31No question.
00:15:31I mean, they went to great lengths to shut down TikTok.
00:15:35And the evidence is that the lobby played a key role.
00:15:39Just banning one of the world's biggest social media apps because it says things you don't like.
00:15:45Yeah.
00:15:46Yeah.
00:15:46Well, this is the way they've always behaved.
00:15:49The lobby's always behaved this way.
00:15:52And, I mean, this is what happened to me and Steve.
00:15:54You know, we originally wrote an article.
00:15:57And we, at one point, thought the article would never be published.
00:16:01After we wrote the article and we went through all sorts of interactions with the Atlantic Monthly that had commissioned the article, we put the article in the back closet and just said.
00:16:13So, you were asked to write a piece about the influence of a foreign lobby, the Israeli lobby in Washington.
00:16:20Which is one of many foreign lobbies in Washington, but it's by far the most effective and the biggest.
00:16:25And you write the piece and they didn't run it?
00:16:28Yeah.
00:16:28Why?
00:16:29Because they got cold feet.
00:16:30I mean, what invariably happens in these cases is that down at the lower levels of a journal or a newspaper, people will be interested in somebody writing something on the Israel lobby or writing a piece that's critical of Israel.
00:16:45But then, as it filters up the chain of command and people at the top see it, they kill it.
00:16:52Right?
00:16:52And that happened to you?
00:16:53Oh, that's definitely what happened at the Atlantic Monthly.
00:16:57They killed it.
00:16:58And then, Steve and I went to Princeton University Press and a handful of other journals and asked if they would be interested in either the article or turning the article into a book.
00:17:10And in all of those cases, everybody at first exudes enthusiasm.
00:17:17They think it's a great topic.
00:17:19Something needs to be written on it, which, of course, is true.
00:17:22But then they think about it for a month and you get a call back and they've lost interest.
00:17:28So, Steve and I actually put the article, as I said, in the back closet and just said.
00:17:35What's wild is you're both, at this point, very well known.
00:17:39Can you explain who Steve is to your co-author?
00:17:42Yeah, Steve is a chaired professor at Harvard University.
00:17:46And at the time that we wrote the lobby article, he was the academic dean at the Kennedy School.
00:17:54Okay, so I'm sure a lot of people already know that, but I just want to make it totally clear.
00:17:59You're not two random guys on the internet who are like anti-Semites or something at all.
00:18:03You're like some of the most famous people in your field.
00:18:06And you're totally moderate.
00:18:08I don't even know what your politics are, but you're not a political activist at all.
00:18:11No, as I used to like to say, if Adolf Hitler were alive, he would have thrown Steve's wife and his two children in a gas chamber.
00:18:19Right?
00:18:20I mean, the idea that we're anti-Semites.
00:18:22I mean, this is a laughable argument.
00:18:24We're both first order philo-Semites.
00:18:27I mean, I can't prove that, but it's true in my humble opinion.
00:18:31But anyway, we were certainly at the top of our academic disciplines and highly respected, which is not to say people didn't disagree with what we wrote.
00:18:42But you weren't crackpots at all.
00:18:44And the other thing is, I want to make it clear that we worked very carefully with the Atlantic to get our final draft up to their standards.
00:18:53We did what they wanted.
00:18:56And you also want to remember that Steve and I are both excellent writers.
00:19:01Many academics cannot write clearly.
00:19:04Whatever you think of the substance of our views, there's no doubt that we're two of the best writers in the business.
00:19:09And it's the two of us working with the editors at the lower rungs of the Atlantic Monthly that produced what I thought was an excellent article.
00:19:19But anyway, it was killed there.
00:19:21And we couldn't get it published.
00:19:23Kind of proven your point.
00:19:24Yes, exactly.
00:19:26Exactly.
00:19:26And by the way, I probably shouldn't tell this story, but I'll tell you, we told the editor at the Atlantic as we were going through the process that we thought he was getting cold feet.
00:19:43And he was quite offended by that.
00:19:46And he said to us, just to prove that that wasn't true, he would give us a $10,000 kill fee.
00:19:52That means if they didn't take the article, they'd give us $10,000.
00:19:57So I said to Steve, I remember it very well, that's the fastest $10,000 we ever made.
00:20:03He said, oh, John, you're being too cynical.
00:20:06Anyway, we collected the $10,000.
00:20:08Did he pay you?
00:20:09Yes, yes.
00:20:10How ashamed was he when he, because I'm not going to name him, I know the editor, this is a pretty well-known editor who's just been in magazine journalism for decades.
00:20:21And, you know, has a high regard for himself and good reputation and all that stuff.
00:20:26And he's told from somebody else who's more powerful than he is, you can't do this.
00:20:30How embarrassed was he in that conversation?
00:20:32I had no evidence that he was embarrassed.
00:20:35Oh, so he has no soul.
00:20:36No, I mean, who knows, you know, what kind of face he had to put on things.
00:20:41I don't know what happened inside the Atlantic.
00:20:44I've never been told.
00:20:45But, again, he said he'd give us a $10,000 kill fee because he thought the piece was going to go forward.
00:20:53And somebody sat on him and told him that that was not going to happen.
00:21:00I don't know what happened.
00:21:01But I don't want to be too harsh on him because this is the norm.
00:21:07Yeah.
00:21:07This was the norm.
00:21:08He didn't own the magazine.
00:21:09And so what we did was we put it in the back closet.
00:21:13And I remember Steve and I had a conversation.
00:21:16And I think Steve said to me, this is why we have tenure, so that you can spend two years of your life writing something that never gets published.
00:21:24And you're not punished in terms of promotion to tenure, right?
00:21:27But anyway, what then happened is that somebody inside the Atlantic, who was actually involved in the original commissioning of the article, gave a copy to a very prominent academic who had contacts, close contacts at the London Review of Books.
00:21:49And that academic, who I knew very well, sent me a note and said that Mary Kay Wilmers, he said, I got a whole of your manuscript.
00:22:00And I sent it to Mary Kay Wilmers at the London Review of Books.
00:22:05And she'd be very interested in publishing it.
00:22:08And so I then, I remember I was in Heidelberg, Germany.
00:22:13I called up Mary Kay and she published it, thankfully.
00:22:18It was like a bomb.
00:22:19It was like a bomb went off.
00:22:20I'll remember that.
00:22:21I remember that so vividly.
00:22:23So the piece, The Atlantic Kilt, comes out in the London Review of Books.
00:22:26What's the thesis of the piece, if you could just sum it up for people who didn't read it?
00:22:30Well, the argument basically has four parts to it.
00:22:33The first says that the United States has this special relationship with Israel.
00:22:39It's unparalleled in history.
00:22:41We give Israel unconditional support, huge amounts of military and economic aid.
00:22:47That's the first part.
00:22:49Then the second part says it's not for strategic reasons that we do this.
00:22:55Then the third part is...
00:22:57Can you explain what that means?
00:22:59It's not in the American national interest.
00:23:01In other words, from a geopolitical point of view, right?
00:23:07Because Israel and the United States sometime have different interests,
00:23:11it makes no sense for us to support Israel unconditionally.
00:23:16We should support Israel when its interests reflect our interests, but otherwise not.
00:23:20But that's not the case.
00:23:22So that's another way of saying what we're doing is not in our strategic interest, okay?
00:23:27Third part is it's not in our moral interest.
00:23:32Because when you look at what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians, this violates basic American precepts, liberal precepts, right?
00:23:43So from a moral point of view, what's happening in Israel doesn't make sense.
00:23:48So then the fourth part deals with the question of why we do this.
00:23:52Right.
00:23:53Fair question.
00:23:54Right.
00:23:54If we don't do it for strategic reasons, we don't do it for moral reasons, why do we do it?
00:23:59And the answer is the lobby.
00:24:01So that's the story.
00:24:03The lobby.
00:24:04And the lobby is a very large, complex, informal organization of which AIPAC is a part, but not the total.
00:24:16Absolutely.
00:24:18And then you describe how that works.
00:24:20Yeah.
00:24:20It's very important to emphasize.
00:24:23It's a loose coalition of individuals and organizations like AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, and so forth and so on, that work overtime to support Israel.
00:24:38Loosely coordinated.
00:24:39I think your description was right on the money.
00:24:41Very important to understand.
00:24:43It is not a Jewish lobby.
00:24:45And it is not a Jewish lobby because many Jews don't care much about Israel, and many Jews are opposed to what Israel or the Israel lobby is doing.
00:24:57Including many religious Jews, Torah Jews, sincerely Jewish Jews disagree.
00:25:04I know some, so I know.
00:25:05Absolutely.
00:25:06There are a large number of Jews who are anti-Zionists.
00:25:09I'm aware.
00:25:09Right?
00:25:10So you're exactly right.
00:25:11So it's not a Jewish lobby for that reason.
00:25:15But also, there are the Christian Zionists.
00:25:18Yes.
00:25:18Who are a core element of that lobby.
00:25:21I've noticed.
00:25:22You know, Christians United for Israel, for example.
00:25:26So that's why we call it the Israel lobby.
00:25:29And what explains the enthusiasm of Christian groups for policies that kill Christians in the Middle East?
00:25:38Well, they have this belief that until Israel controls all of greater Israel, right?
00:25:49It gets back all the territory that is rightfully theirs.
00:25:57You won't have the second coming.
00:26:00So they are deeply committed, these Christian Zionists, to supporting Israel's conquests and supporting Israeli expansion for religious reasons.
00:26:12And are there defined borders that, when reached, will trigger the second coming?
00:26:17No.
00:26:18No.
00:26:19When we say greater Israel, do we have a clear map in mind of what that will mean, could mean?
00:26:23No.
00:26:24No.
00:26:24Whenever you talk about greater Israel, there's hardly ever a real map in mind.
00:26:29I talk about it in terms of the occupied territories plus green line Israel.
00:26:33But obviously, the Israelis themselves, most Israelis, I think, have a bigger map in mind.
00:26:42Do we know where that ends?
00:26:43I mean, it doesn't go to Cairo, I assume.
00:26:45No.
00:26:46No.
00:26:46I think the Sinai, what they take of Egypt, I think, if they can, will be the Sinai.
00:26:53And I don't think they would take all of Syria or all of Lebanon, but they would take big chunks of the south of those two countries.
00:27:03But the idea behind the Christian Zionists is that to facilitate the second coming, you know, for religious reasons, we should support Israel.
00:27:14But this does, as you say, cut against the fact that the Israelis oftentimes treat Christians as badly as they do Muslims.
00:27:25There was recently a case where they bombed a Catholic church in northern Gaza.
00:27:31And Trump was infuriated when he heard this.
00:27:34And he called up Netanyahu and told him, this is recently, like within the past two weeks, told Netanyahu that he had to apologize.
00:27:44And the Pope even spoke out on this.
00:27:47But even there, the criticism is quite muted.
00:27:49Because, again, hardly anybody in the West really criticizes Israel in a meaningful way.
00:27:55It is just a little bit odd that you could, on Christian grounds, support the bombing of a Christian church.
00:28:01I mean, there are lots of theological differences between sex and Christianity.
00:28:04But if you're getting to the point, like where Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, is where you think Jesus is commanding you to support the murder of Christians, you don't need to be like a theologian to think, maybe I've gone off course.
00:28:18Yeah.
00:28:19You're not going to get any argument from me on that.
00:28:22So, where does it go from here now that things that, you know, everyone was afraid to talk about any of this to the extent that people understood it because they don't want to be called names and because those names are as horrible to be called that.
00:28:37And it's almost, sometimes it's true, but for most people it's not true at all.
00:28:42They're not hateful.
00:28:44That's not why they have these views.
00:28:45So, once those slurs lose their power, as I think they quickly are, in the same way the word racist lost its power from overuse, like where are we?
00:28:55What happens next?
00:28:57It's hard to tell a happy story, but here's how I think about it.
00:29:01The first question you want to ask yourself is what are the Israelis likely to do moving forward?
00:29:07In other words, if the Israelis all of a sudden got reasonable, a lot of these problems would go away.
00:29:14But there is no sign the Israelis are going to get more reasonable.
00:29:19If anything, the political center of gravity is moving further and further to the right in Israel as the years go by.
00:29:27So, Israeli behavior in the Middle East, if anything, is likely to be even more aggressive and more offensive to people around the world.
00:29:40So, what does that mean here in the United States?
00:29:43It means that the lobby is going to have to work even harder than it's now working.
00:29:51And again, you want to remember, the lobby is now out in the open, and it's engaging in smash-mouth politics, but it's going to have to work harder.
00:29:59Now, you say to yourself—
00:30:00Most vicious people I've ever dealt with, ever.
00:30:02Yeah, yeah.
00:30:03Anybody who's dealt with them, and I've dealt with them for longer than you have, understands full well what you're talking about.
00:30:09But see, here's the problem, Tucker.
00:30:11The problem is that support among younger people for Israel is much weaker than it is among older people.
00:30:21Including Jews.
00:30:22Including Jews, yes, yes.
00:30:24Very important to emphasize that.
00:30:26Very important.
00:30:27So, the problem is that inside of American society, you're moving towards a situation where increasing numbers of people in the body politic are critical of Israel, extremely critical of Israel.
00:30:43Because older people are dying off, and those younger people are turning into older people.
00:30:48So, the body populace in the United States is going to be more critical of Israel over time, not less critical.
00:30:55At the same time, Israel continues to behave that way.
00:30:59And the question is, how long can we go on with the lobby operating out in the open and engaging in smash-mouth politics?
00:31:10And I—
00:31:11Attacking Americans in the most vicious way who have no animus toward anyone but just want to help their own country, they're somehow criminals?
00:31:21Like, that can't go on long.
00:31:23That's too stupid.
00:31:25To work over time, no?
00:31:27I agree.
00:31:28Look at what's happening on campuses, right?
00:31:31Here you have these students out there protesting.
00:31:34Protesting a genocide, right?
00:31:37Many of the students who are out there protesting are Jewish.
00:31:41This cannot be emphasized enough.
00:31:43Many of them are Jewish.
00:31:45And all of a sudden, they're turned into raving anti-Semites.
00:31:50This is all about anti-Semitism.
00:31:51It has nothing to do with the genocide that's taking place in Palestine.
00:31:58This is crazy, right?
00:32:01And I talk to people on campuses.
00:32:05Everybody understands this.
00:32:06Everybody understands that this has nothing to do with anti-Semitism.
00:32:10I've been in academia for decades.
00:32:15I've been at the University of Chicago for 44 years.
00:32:19Before October 7th, nobody at Chicago or Harvard talked about an anti-Semitism problem.
00:32:26It was just unheard of.
00:32:27Huge numbers of administrators, including provosts and presidents, were Jewish.
00:32:33Huge numbers of deans and faculty members were Jewish.
00:32:36Huge numbers of students, graduate and undergraduate, were Jewish.
00:32:40This is a wonderful thing.
00:32:42Nobody was ever critical of it.
00:32:45Was there an anti-Semitism problem?
00:32:47I never heard about it.
00:32:48And I don't know anybody who was talking about it.
00:32:51But all of a sudden, after October 7th, what we discover is that these college campuses are hotbeds of anti-Semitism.
00:33:00This makes no sense at all.
00:33:02Because, of course, they were not hotbeds of anti-Semitism.
00:33:05What they were were hotbeds of criticism of Israel and what it was doing to the Palestinians.
00:33:11But you can't say that.
00:33:14Why?
00:33:14Because you are, in effect, bringing attention to the genocide that's taking place in Gaza.
00:33:24And that is unacceptable.
00:33:28I mean, newspapers like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, they never even used the word genocide or anything approximating that.
00:33:35It's just verboten.
00:33:36And the idea is to make Israel look like, if anything, it's the victim.
00:33:41That's the Wall Street Journal's principal mission.
00:33:44Right?
00:33:45To make Israel look like it's the victim.
00:33:47Wall Street Journal is so discredited as a newspaper.
00:33:49It's like, I wouldn't, I'd rather read The Guardian.
00:33:53I mean, I'd rather read anything other than The Wall Street Journal.
00:33:56Well, I like to argue that The Wall Street Journal is two newspapers in one.
00:34:00The news and then the opinion.
00:34:03It's all been corrupted.
00:34:04It changed leadership.
00:34:06And it's just the whole thing is total.
00:34:07I know some great people who work there still.
00:34:10And they're honest people.
00:34:11So, but the paper is the most dishonest, I would say, of all papers.
00:34:16That's just my view.
00:34:17And I used to write for them, so.
00:34:19Well, you'll get no argument from me.
00:34:21As bad as The New York Times and Washington Post are, they pale in comparison to The Wall Street Journal.
00:34:26I totally agree.
00:34:27And at least The New York Times and especially The Washington Post are just like liberal papers.
00:34:32Okay.
00:34:32There's Democratic Party papers.
00:34:33I know exactly what you are.
00:34:35I'm not.
00:34:35Like The Guardian, just a left-wing paper, socialist paper.
00:34:38I'm not shocked by anything.
00:34:39They're pretty upfront about it.
00:34:40But The Wall Street Journal is uniquely offensive to me because of the deception involved.
00:34:47They pretend to be one thing, but they're very much not that thing.
00:34:49They're something entirely different.
00:34:51And they're stealthy and incredibly dishonest.
00:34:55And I look forward to their demise with unchristian enthusiasm.
00:35:00Excuse me.
00:35:01But anyway, can I just ask you like a question I should have asked before?
00:35:05Or you have this population of over 2 million people.
00:35:09How many remain in Gaza now?
00:35:10Do we know?
00:35:12There's no news coverage allowed, so I guess maybe we don't know.
00:35:15Well, there are 2.3 million to start.
00:35:18Yes, to start.
00:35:19That's the approximate number who are there.
00:35:24It appears that some have gotten out.
00:35:27It's hard to gauge how many.
00:35:29There was one person who told me he thought that about 100,000 had gotten out.
00:35:36Another person told me 50,000.
00:35:38I'm not sure.
00:35:39But not a million.
00:35:40Oh, no, no, no, no.
00:35:42The question is how many have been killed.
00:35:43Right.
00:35:44Do we have any idea?
00:35:46Not really.
00:35:48The estimates are around 60 million.
00:35:52I mean 60 million.
00:35:53Excuse me, 60,000.
00:35:55Do you think it's weird that in 2025 we can measure everything from your heart rate to sunspots that we don't know how many people were killed in Russia, Ukraine, or Palestine?
00:36:08We can't even get.
00:36:09I've never met anyone who can give me a hard number on Russian casualties, Ukrainian casualties, or dead Palestinians in Gaza.
00:36:17That's weird.
00:36:18It's weird.
00:36:19There are two different cases.
00:36:20I mean, the Ukrainians have a deep-seated interest, for example, in not revealing how many people have been killed.
00:36:30Of course, and so do the Russians, by the way.
00:36:32Yeah.
00:36:32And with regard to the case of Israel-Palestine, the real problem here is that so many people are buried.
00:36:46They're missing.
00:36:48There's a study that somebody did recently, it was a legitimate study, that said that they believe, or the study concludes, that there are about 400,000 missing people in Gaza.
00:37:00400,000?
00:37:01400,000, yeah.
00:37:03Now, I'm not saying that's true.
00:37:05I'm just saying that there are obviously lots of missing people, right?
00:37:11Well, if you look at what the Israelis have done in Israel, excuse me, what the Israelis have done in Gaza, I wouldn't be surprised if the number is, you know, 400,000 dead.
00:37:22But who knows?
00:37:26But I think, you know, 60,000, roughly 60,000 is the number that lots of people use on debt.
00:37:34So of the remaining, you know, probably less than 2 million, but close to 2 million people, it's a lot of people.
00:37:42Where do they go?
00:37:43I mean, this is a great question.
00:37:48Can there actually be in 2025 a transfer of people like that?
00:37:54I mean, the Second World War wasn't that long ago.
00:37:56Like, people have memories or impressions of what it looks like to move that many people.
00:38:02It's just not, that's not good.
00:38:04Well, the news reports say that the Israelis and the Americans are talking to the Libyans and the Ethiopians and the Indonesians about accepting the Palestinians, or at least a substantial portion of that, let's say 2 million that are left.
00:38:24But if they actually tried that, I mean, that's so grotesque that you'd think, I mean, wouldn't the world just blow up if they tried to do that, move hundreds of thousands of people against their will from one, from their land, which they've been on for thousands of years into some foreign country and just like, that's cool, we're doing this, it's for their safety.
00:38:50Could you actually do that?
00:38:51Well, I didn't actually think that the Israelis could execute a genocide in Gaza.
00:38:59I didn't think they'd be able to do what they have done since October 7th.
00:39:03I guess there are no rules.
00:39:04You just do what you can do.
00:39:05Yeah, we're at a point where you want to say that that is a possibility.
00:39:13I'm like you.
00:39:14I find it hard to imagine.
00:39:15I'm sickened by the whole process, the whole thing.
00:39:19You know what, they all get on boats or something and like people have iPhones, they can, I mean.
00:39:25Well, also, I think there'll be resistance, right?
00:39:28I mean, Hamas is still there.
00:39:30The Israelis have not defeated Hamas, right?
00:39:33Yeah.
00:39:34So, but your question is a great one.
00:39:37The question is, where do we end up here?
00:39:40What the hell?
00:39:40Where do we end up?
00:39:42You know, just to go back a bit, when the war starts on October 7th and then the fighting goes on into 2024, the Israeli military is asking Netanyahu to tell them what the final political plan is.
00:40:01In other words, once the war ends, what's the plan for dealing with the Palestinians?
00:40:07And Netanyahu refuses to give the military a plan.
00:40:12And the military says we can't.
00:40:14His own military.
00:40:15His own military, the IDF.
00:40:16The military says that we can't wage the campaign without knowing what the end game is.
00:40:23Yeah.
00:40:24Right.
00:40:24Okay.
00:40:24But Netanyahu won't tell them what the end game is because the end game is to drive all the Palestinians out.
00:40:31The reason that Netanyahu has no plan, right, for dealing with the Palestinians at the end of the fighting is because he expects them to all be gone.
00:40:41Okay.
00:40:42Now, what we're saying here is that hasn't happened.
00:40:45It's hard to imagine that happening.
00:40:48Right.
00:40:48And although the Israelis have been murdering huge numbers of Palestinians, at some point, a substantial number are going to be left.
00:40:56So the question is, what does that look like?
00:40:59And they probably won't be more moderate by that point.
00:41:02No, but what they're going to end up in is a giant ghetto, right, or a concentration camp.
00:41:08That's what they're building now.
00:41:09And, again, this gets back to our earlier discussion of what this means for Israel's reputation in the United States and in the West more generally.
00:41:18You're going to build a ghetto.
00:41:19You're going to put, you know, two million people in a ghetto and continue to starve them?
00:41:25Is this sustainable?
00:41:28It does tend to affect your moral authority when you do that.
00:41:33I also think it has a terribly corrupting influence on your society at large.
00:41:38I think once this war comes to a conclusion, hopefully that will be sooner rather than later, and the Israelis take stock of what they have done, this is going to have a deeply corrosive effect.
00:41:53Well, yeah, because, I mean, the things that are going on to Jewish Israelis at the hands of their own government right now, I'm not an expert on Israel, but I've been multiple times, and I've always really loved it.
00:42:08I mean, it's such an amazing place.
00:42:11But it was liberal in a fundamental way.
00:42:14That's why I always liked it.
00:42:15I mean, not liberal like Democratic Party liberal, but just like civil liberties liberal.
00:42:19If you were Jewish.
00:42:20Of course, that's a totally fair point that kind of went over my head on my trips there, but you're absolutely right.
00:42:28And it was designed to go over your head.
00:42:30And it did.
00:42:31You're absolutely right.
00:42:31But my point is, the things that are happening now to Israeli citizens are so shocking to me that total elimination of free speech.
00:42:42You say certain things, you go right to jail.
00:42:44Question like, what the hell happened on October 7th?
00:42:46Which is a completely fair question.
00:42:48In any free society, that should be allowed.
00:42:51Not allowed.
00:42:51Banning people from leaving the country?
00:42:56Your right to travel, especially to leave, is a foundational right.
00:43:00They're telling Israeli citizens you're not allowed to leave?
00:43:03I don't know.
00:43:04Why is that not a big story?
00:43:05I don't really get it.
00:43:06And then the treatment of Christians, which is disgusting.
00:43:10Those are all signs that the society is becoming illiberal, really, is becoming authoritarian.
00:43:16I mean, that's authoritarian.
00:43:17You're not allowed to leave the country?
00:43:18You can't say what you think?
00:43:20That's not a free country.
00:43:21And those are all downstream of the military response post-October 7th.
00:43:26So I think it makes your point.
00:43:28This is corrupting to their society, as this stuff always is.
00:43:319-11 is totally corrupting to our society.
00:43:35I agree.
00:43:36Just to add a couple points to that, the Israeli military has a huge PTSD problem.
00:43:44Oh, I bet.
00:43:45Really?
00:43:46Yeah, yeah.
00:43:47And the Jerusalem Post had a piece, I think it was the Jerusalem Post, had a piece the other day that said there have been five suicides during the past two weeks.
00:43:57So they're having a significant problem with suicide, significant problem with PTSD, and they're having huge problems getting reservists to report for duty.
00:44:09I bet.
00:44:10Because the Israeli military is heavily dependent on reservists.
00:44:15Yes.
00:44:15And the reservists have basically had it.
00:44:18And so this war is having a corrosive effect.
00:44:21And the thing you want to understand is there's no end in sight.
00:44:25There really isn't.
00:44:26Yeah.
00:44:27And now they're in southern Lebanon.
00:44:29Now they're in southern Syria.
00:44:30But didn't the United States shut this down tomorrow?
00:44:32Like, not one more dollar for this stuff?
00:44:34You blew up a church?
00:44:36No.
00:44:36No more money for you?
00:44:37The fact that the Israelis are so dependent on us, as we were talking about before, and we were just, you know, hitting on the tip of the iceberg, they are so dependent on us, means we have tremendous coercive leverage over them.
00:44:52This is why the lobby has to work so hard, right?
00:44:56We have tremendous coercive leverage on them.
00:44:58So we could shut this down.
00:45:00We could fundamentally...
00:45:02Like this afternoon.
00:45:02I don't want to go that far, but we'd need a couple days, but...
00:45:07Yeah, no more money for you if you do one more.
00:45:09Well, we could also punish them in significant ways.
00:45:13We could easily bring Israel to its knees.
00:45:15And by the way, I have long argued that that would be in Israel's interest.
00:45:20It is not in Israel's interest.
00:45:21Of course it would.
00:45:22It is not in the interest of Jews around the world for this craziness to continue.
00:45:28This craziness should end right away for the good of Israel, for the good of Jews, for the good of the United States.
00:45:33It makes no sense at all.
00:45:36To what extent is this Netanyahu?
00:45:39Netanyahu, like you often see him singled out as, you know, the guy who's pushing this, whose vision this is.
00:45:48If Netanyahu retired tomorrow, would this continue?
00:45:53Yes.
00:45:54The fact is that he is not unrepresentative of the larger society.
00:46:00There are surely people on, let's use the word left for lack of a better term.
00:46:05There are certainly people on the left who oppose what he's doing and would be more amenable to a political solution.
00:46:12But their numbers are small and dwindling.
00:46:15And I think the overwhelming majority of Israelis support Netanyahu.
00:46:21That's why he's still in office, despite the fact he was responsible for what happened on October 7th.
00:46:27Of course.
00:46:27He was in charge.
00:46:28The buck is supposed to stop at his desk.
00:46:31But he's not been held accountable because the Israelis want him in charge.
00:46:37So it's not like, you know, he's the odd man out here.
00:46:41Furthermore, if you look at the political spectrum in Israel, there are many people who are to the right of him.
00:46:50Yes.
00:46:51Who are growing in political importance.
00:46:53When you and I were young, people like Smoltrich, right, and Ben Gavir, right, who are far to the right of Netanyahu, you know.
00:47:01Well, there weren't that many of them, or at least that I was, I mean, again, I'm not an expert, I don't speak Hebrew.
00:47:06But, I mean, I've, you know, been around it a lot.
00:47:08And I felt like, again, it was a pretty liberal European type society.
00:47:13That was my impression of it.
00:47:15Well, those days are gone.
00:47:16Yes.
00:47:17No, I know.
00:47:17Those days are gone.
00:47:18And my point to you is it's only going to get worse.
00:47:21So the argument that Netanyahu is the problem, it's an argument that many liberal Jews here in the United States like to make.
00:47:29If only we can get rid of Netanyahu, our troubles will go away and we'll get some sort of moderate leadership and work out of modus vivendi with the United States.
00:47:42But I don't think that's going to happen.
00:47:44What happens on the Temple Mount, do you think?
00:47:47Like, so there's a, the second temple was obviously built on the Mount in Jerusalem.
00:47:53It was knocked down by the Romans in AD 70.
00:47:56And a few hundred years later, the Muslims built the third holiest site in Islam, the Al-Aqsa Mosque there.
00:48:04And beneath it is the foundation of the temple.
00:48:06That's the Western Wall.
00:48:07So that's the geography.
00:48:08But there is this push to rebuild the third temple, but there's a mosque on the site.
00:48:16My sense is that's coming to a head.
00:48:20Do you have any feeling about that?
00:48:22I think you're right.
00:48:23I think the further right Israel moves or the more hawkish it becomes, the more likely it is that will come to a head.
00:48:35There's no question that certainly the religious right in Israel is deeply committed to building a third temple.
00:48:44But you'd have to blow up the mosque to do it.
00:48:50Yes.
00:48:51And what would happen if someone blew up the third holiest site in Islam in the middle of Jerusalem?
00:48:56Well, the Israelis are very powerful vis-a-vis the Palestinian population.
00:49:05And they would, I guess, go to great lengths to suppress any insurrection.
00:49:13And if they had to kill lots of people, they'd kill lots of people.
00:49:15Look at what they're doing in Gaza.
00:49:17The Israelis are incredibly ruthless.
00:49:20There's just no question about that.
00:49:22And they believe that Palestinians are subhumans.
00:49:27Two-legged animals, grasshoppers.
00:49:30They use those kind of words.
00:49:32And you take what they've been doing in Gaza.
00:49:35It's easy to imagine them doing horrible things to the Palestinians if they were to rise up over what's happening with regard to the Temple Mount.
00:49:46And in terms of the Jordanians or the Egyptians or the Saudis, are they going to do anything?
00:49:52I doubt it.
00:49:53I mean, they'll make a lot of noise verbally.
00:49:55But in terms of actually doing anything to Israel.
00:49:59The Israelis basically calculate in all these instances that what they can do is horrible things.
00:50:04And then with the passage of time, people will forget.
00:50:07And not only will they forget, but we'll go to great lengths to help them forget.
00:50:11You know, we'll rewrite the history.
00:50:13That's the idea.
00:50:13So, I think that your assessment of what we should expect with the Temple Mount is probably correct.
00:50:22Feels like that's a, I mean, that's a, you know, there are a billion Muslims.
00:50:26But they have a huge collective action problem.
00:50:31What are those billion Muslims going to do?
00:50:34I mean, they can't organize themselves into armored divisions and strike into Israel.
00:50:39No, but they could, I mean, I think we learned from 9-11, a small group of determined people can have a big effect on events.
00:50:45Oh, yeah.
00:50:47Well, that's all coming too, right?
00:50:49I mean, this is one of the problems that many Western Jews worry about.
00:50:55You know, payback is going to come not in the form of attacks on Israel, but in the form of attacks on Western Jews in places like the United States or Europe.
00:51:05And I think that is a real possibility.
00:51:09Let's hope it doesn't happen.
00:51:11But the number of people who are in the Arab and Islamic world who are absolutely enraged by what is going on in Gaza is not to be underestimated.
00:51:23And they have a second strike capability, as you point out.
00:51:26You know, I was talking about building armored divisions.
00:51:29That's foolish.
00:51:29They're not going to build armored divisions.
00:51:31But there are other ways to deal with this.
00:51:33Again, you want to go back to 9-11.
00:51:35This gets back to the whole question whether Israel is a strategic liability or a strategic asset.
00:51:44Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is the principal planner of 9-11, now in Guantanamo, and Osama bin Laden, both explicitly said that their principal reason for attacking the United States on 9-11
00:52:01was the United States' support was the United States' support of Israel's policies against the Palestinians.
00:52:06You just want to think about that.
00:52:08The conventional wisdom in the United States is that Israel had nothing to do with 9-11.
00:52:13And these Muslims attacked us because they hate who we are.
00:52:18Nothing could be further from the truth.
00:52:23Osama bin Laden and KSM, again, have both explicitly said that it was U.S. policy toward Israel that caused 9-11.
00:52:32Why do you suppose that so many 9-11 documents are still classified almost 25 years after the fact?
00:52:40I don't know.
00:52:41I mean, why are so many Jeffrey Epstein documents effectively classified?
00:52:48Why are so many Kennedy assassination documents still not released?
00:52:53Still not released.
00:52:54That's correct.
00:52:54You know, you really do wonder.
00:52:57They obviously have something to hide.
00:53:01In most cases, it's very hard to divine what it is that they're trying to hide.
00:53:06And that's certainly true with regard to 9-11.
00:53:09But we just don't know.
00:53:13We don't know.
00:53:14And it does make everybody into a wacko thinking about it.
00:53:18I mean, if you want to end so-called conspiracy theories, tell the truth, and then, you know, no one has to theorize, would be my view.
00:53:26So you just, you have a piece out, this is my last question to you.
00:53:29Thank you for spending all this time.
00:53:32You have a piece out that describes what you believe the world will look like in 50 years.
00:53:38And I should say, just to toot your horn, since you're not going to do it, you've been right on some of the big, big, big questions.
00:53:43And you've stood essentially alone in your field, in your predictions that have been vindicated on them, not just about the power of foreign lobbies, but about China, about NATO.
00:53:54And so I do think your opinion on this matters.
00:53:57Can you just give us a sense of 10 years hence, what's America's place in the world?
00:54:02Well, I think if you look out 10 years, even if you were to look out 20 or 30 years, I think in all likelihood, the system, the international system will continue to be dominated by three countries, the United States, China, and Russia.
00:54:18And I think the United States and China will remain the two most powerful countries on the planet.
00:54:26And the U.S.-China competition over the next 10 years, and even beyond that, will influence international politics more than any other relationship.
00:54:36I think that once you begin to project out past 10, 20 years, the United States' position vis-a-vis China, I think, will improve for demographic reasons.
00:54:49I think the Chinese population is going to drop off at a much more rapid rate than the American population.
00:54:57And moreover, the Americans can rely on immigration to rectify the problem.
00:55:02So if you look at population, which is one of the two building blocks, population size, one of the two building blocks of military power, the other is wealth.
00:55:14The United States, looking out 20, 30, 40 years, looks like it's in quite good shape, right?
00:55:20Now, what's happened since 2017, and really even before that, is that with the rise of China, the United States lost its position as the unipole, as the clearly dominant power in the international system.
00:55:41And we now have a peer competitor.
00:55:43So when people talk about American decline, they're correct that we have had decline, let's say, since 2017, when China became a great power, although it started before that.
00:55:57That's the second time you made reference to 2017 as the threshold for China.
00:56:00What is the definition?
00:56:02How does a country go from being a big power to a great power?
00:56:05It develops enough military capability to put up a serious fight against the most powerful state in the system.
00:56:12Right.
00:56:13So you want to remember the two main building blocks of military power are wealth and population size.
00:56:18You take that wealth, you take that population size, and that's what allows you to build a powerful military.
00:56:24That affects your position in the balance of power.
00:56:27And remember when I talked about engagement, we made China rich.
00:56:31We made China wealthy.
00:56:32So China always had that huge population.
00:56:35And as a result of engagement during the unipolar moment from roughly, let's say, 1992 to 2017, we helped China get rich.
00:56:47And that rich, that wealth, coupled with that population side, China becomes a great power.
00:56:53So we are losing relative power over that entire time period.
00:57:01And that's when China then becomes a great power.
00:57:03And we now have a competition where the United States is still more powerful than China overall.
00:57:09But the Chinese are closing the gap.
00:57:11So we're still losing relative power to the Chinese.
00:57:15And I would bet over the next 10 years, we will lose relative power.
00:57:20Not a substantial amount, but some.
00:57:23But still, the United States will probably remain 10 years from now the most powerful state in the system.
00:57:29And the Chinese will be right behind us.
00:57:32The Russians will remain the weakest of those three great powers.
00:57:36But if you project out, you know, 30, 40 years, that's when I think the United States will widen the gap with China.
00:57:44Because population-wise, the Chinese population, as a result of the one-child policy, will decline significantly.
00:57:53And our population size without immigration will not decline as significantly as the Chinese population will.
00:58:01But we also have immigration as our ace in the hole.
00:58:04So we can bring in immigrants, as we have done in the past.
00:58:08And we will remain in quite good shape.
00:58:11So I think the long-term future for the United States, in terms of raw power, looks quite good.
00:58:19That's not to say our policies will be wise.
00:58:21Because as you and I know, the United States has used that massive power that it's had in the past in oftentimes foolish ways.
00:58:30Yeah, and is that power worth having?
00:58:32I mean, I don't know.
00:58:34It's more complicated than it sounds.
00:58:35I mean, do people's lives improve?
00:58:37Which seems like an important measure.
00:58:39Not the only measure, but certainly one.
00:58:41Well, this is the realist in me, Tucker.
00:58:44In the international system, in international politics, because there's no higher authority that can protect you if you get into trouble.
00:58:52It's very important to be powerful, right?
00:58:56You can't dial 911 in the international system and have someone come and rescue you.
00:59:03And in a world where another state might be powerful and might attack you, it's very important to be the most powerful state in the system.
00:59:13And the last thing you want to do is be weak.
00:59:16You want to remember, the Chinese refer to the period from the late 1840s to the late 1940s as the century of national humiliation.
00:59:24Yes, it was, too.
00:59:25Yes.
00:59:26And why did they suffer a century of national humiliation?
00:59:30Because they were weak.
00:59:32Because they were divided.
00:59:32Right.
00:59:32And remember, we talked earlier in the show about NATO expansion.
00:59:36We talked about why we continued to push and push and push, even though the Russians said it was unacceptable.
00:59:43And I said to you, we were going to shove it down their throat.
00:59:46And why were we going to shove it down their throat?
00:59:48Because we thought they were weak.
00:59:51You'd never want to be weak.
00:59:53You want to be powerful.
00:59:54The problem with making that argument today, for me to make that argument to you and to many people I know, is that we all understand that the United States has been incredibly powerful.
01:00:07And it's used that power in foolish ways, in ways that don't make us happy.
01:00:14And therefore, the idea of having all this power leads us to think or leads many people to think that we'll use that power foolishly.
01:00:22And I fully understand that.
01:00:25But my argument is, you still want to be powerful, just because it's the best way to survive in the international system.
01:00:33It's the way to maximize your security.
01:00:36But hopefully, you'll use that power smartly.
01:00:40Although, given America's performance in recent decades, there's not a lot of cause for hope.
01:00:46Do we wind up in a war with China over Taiwan?
01:00:50I think it's possible.
01:00:52I don't think it's likely in the foreseeable future.
01:00:57The problem is, it's an incredibly difficult military operation for the Chinese because it involves an amphibious assault.
01:01:05They have to go across the Taiwan Strait, which is a large body of water.
01:01:10And amphibious assaults are very difficult.
01:01:13And in all likelihood, the Americans will come to the aid of the Taiwanese.
01:01:17The other thing is, the Chinese, unlike the Americans, don't fight wars all the time.
01:01:25The last time China fought a war was in 1979.
01:01:28Just think about that.
01:01:29In Vietnam.
01:01:30In Vietnam.
01:01:31Yeah.
01:01:31They were foolish enough to follow in our footsteps.
01:01:35Yep.
01:01:36And we were foolish enough to follow in the French footsteps and go in there.
01:01:40So they went in in 79 and got whacked.
01:01:42But they've not fought a war since then.
01:01:44So they don't have a highly trained military that has lots of combat experience that would be capable of launching one of the most difficult military operations imaginable, which is an amphibious assault across the Taiwan Strait into the face of resistance from not only the Taiwanese, but the Americans.
01:02:06So I think that will keep a lid on things for the foreseeable future.
01:02:13I don't think the Chinese will attack.
01:02:16I think that what they'll wait for is the right moment to hope that the world changes in ways that makes it feasible for them to do it.
01:02:27They're good at waiting.
01:02:28They're good at waiting.
01:02:29That is, I think that's true.
01:02:31So I don't think, and I want to underline, I'm using the word think, the other point, just very quickly, we do live in a nuclear world and we have nuclear weapons and they have nuclear weapons and the incentive for them to avoid a war with the United States and for us to avoid a war with them because of nuclear weapons is very great.
01:02:52So that may really put a damper on things if we ever get into a serious crisis.
01:02:58Professor, thank you for spending all this time.
01:03:01That was wonderful.
01:03:03It's my pleasure, Tucker.
01:03:04Thanks very much for having me on the show.
01:03:07Thank you for doing this and congratulations on being vindicated after all these years.
01:03:14That must be nice.
01:03:15Whether you admit it or not, you have been.
01:03:16So thank you.
01:03:17I'm going to plead the Fifth Amendment.
01:03:19Thank you again.
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