00:00As the president suggests that he is beyond reconsideration, I think the language he used when it comes to withdrawing
00:05from NATO, whether Secretary Ruta can change his mind this week.
00:13Well, I think that is going to be the reason why Mr. Ruta is coming, although, of course, the visit
00:20was already announced before those statements.
00:23He's going to try to find a way to tell Donald Trump that, in fact, NATO is vital to American
00:29security.
00:30That's not a hard case to make, by the way.
00:32Today actually happens to be the 77th anniversary of the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty by 12 nations, of
00:39course, including the United States.
00:40And for 77 years, the United States has been led by people in the Oval Office and everywhere else in
00:46senior military and civilian positions who have understood that it is much better to try to prevent war in Europe
00:52than trying to have to fight it as we did in World War I and World War II.
00:56It's better. It's cheaper. It makes us more powerful. It makes us more prosperous.
01:00It makes us more secure and ultimately makes us more free.
01:03That is the foundation of NATO. It is something that President Trump has never really understood or at least bought
01:10into.
01:11He thinks the burdens of NATO are larger than the benefits.
01:15And that is the challenge that Mr. Ruta will have when he comes to Washington next week.
01:20I was curious to get your reaction to the president's primetime address because there's been quite a lot of reporting
01:25going into that address that one of the things he was going to do was really go after NATO.
01:29He didn't really do that. He talked around it a little bit.
01:33He said, you know, if it's the oil that you need, you should go protect it.
01:36But he didn't name names and he didn't go after the alliance.
01:39I'm wondering if you think that was misreported or my instinct tells me that perhaps it was a recalibration that
01:45someone might have gotten in his ear.
01:47I'm wondering what your take is on that.
01:49And if you think he can be swayed by people he does tend to listen to, Ruta and the president
01:53of Finland who goes golfing with him, my sources are telling me, has a good ability to get him back
01:58into the fold occasionally.
01:59Yeah, no, you know, who knows what drives the president and who knows how this speech came together.
02:06It's still a mystery, I think, to most of us why he decided to deliver a speech that was, frankly,
02:12content free.
02:13The only things he said he had already said either on true social or interviews in the previous few days.
02:19But you're right, Christine, to underline that there was no statement that he was going to withdraw from NATO.
02:26In fact, he's been silent ever since the speech in the last three days on this until the next truth
02:32post, of course.
02:33And there are people who can talk to him and he does listen once in a while.
02:36Of course, Lindsey Graham and a whole bunch of senators are on record very much in favor of NATO.
02:44Senator Thune, a majority leader, made very clear that as far as he was concerned and as far as his
02:50Republican caucus on the Senate was concerned, this is not something that they would support.
02:55And, indeed, there is a law, an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023.
03:01Supported by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, then senator.
03:05I'll call it the Rubio Law that, in fact, says that the decision to withdraw from NATO, as then-Senator
03:13Rubio put it, is far too important to be left to a single president.
03:17It requires two-thirds of the majority in the Senate.
03:21So there are reasons to think that maybe, as we are celebrating the 77th anniversary of the treaty, that we're
03:30not going to withdraw.
03:31But the larger point is, I think, is not a legal one.
03:35The larger point is that if you are in Europe and you've listened to the president now for the better
03:40part of 10 years calling NATO obsolete when he first came to power,
03:44you're going to have to start to wonder, is the United States going to be there when the chip is
03:49down?
03:50Enter the Shadow Alliance, Ambassador.
03:52I'm wondering what you make of this meeting last week.
03:55The U.K. held a virtual conference with 35 allied nations, not just Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and others were
04:02involved.
04:02Is this the new coalition of the willing?
04:05Well, perhaps.
04:06And it's part of this middle power push that started with Mr. Carney back in Davos when he said that
04:17the United States couldn't really be trusted
04:18and we needed to bring together the allies of the United States to deal with the major problems, whether it's
04:24in trade or in security affairs.
04:25And it is noteworthy that a war started by the United States and Israel that predictably led to the closure
04:32of the Strait of Hormuz
04:33now may have to be resolved, at least the opening of the Strait of the Hormuz and keeping it open,
04:39by a coalition that does not include either Israel or the United States.
04:42And it does point to something fundamental, a new rebalancing of power in which increasingly European, Asian, and North American,
04:52Canada in particular,
04:53allies are starting to come together and say, how can we maintain a system that has served us?
04:58And by the way, the United States extraordinarily well, even if the United States is no longer willing to be
05:05part of that system,
05:06or indeed, even if the United States is actually upsetting that system from within through the actions both on trade
05:13and security
05:14and the use of force that it has created.
05:17So perhaps this is the beginnings of a new way of thinking.
05:21We've talked about the possible damage to NATO and the international system, but in an op-ed for Politico,
05:26you talk about the damage this conflict has already caused on the global economy,
05:30saying that the damage that's already been inflicted on the global economy is far greater than the economic consequence of
05:36the Iraq War in its entirety.
05:38But that's not all.
05:39Geopolitically, the U.S.-Israel war with Iran will also have far greater reverberations than the war in Iraq ever did.
05:45Can you explain that a little bit more?
05:46I know we've been talking about it, but why do you make that thesis and how do you back it
05:50up?
05:51Yeah, so, you know, I think many people look back at the Iraq War, I do myself, as one of
05:57the great strategic blunders since Vietnam.
05:58I think this is a greater strategic blunder.
06:01This was a war that was unnecessary, in fact, illegal, unprepared, with consequences that are far greater.
06:08On the geopolitical side, if we look at the way the world is organized, back in 2003, Russia and China
06:15were minor powers.
06:17Russia had been devastated economically as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
06:23Vladimir Putin had just arrived on the scene.
06:26He was focused on rebuilding the state, rebuilding the military, rebuilding Russia's standing in the world.
06:32He wasn't really capable of doing much more.
06:34And the same is true for China.
06:3625 years ago, China had just entered the World Trade Organization, was just starting the process of building up its
06:45economy and becoming the major economic power it is today.
06:48But today, China is strong.
06:50China has a major technological, economic and increasingly a military edge, not only in Asia, but around the world.
07:00And so when China looks at what's happening here, they see the United States withdrawing capabilities from East Asia, from
07:08Japan, from South Korea, and indeed from the Indo-Pacific, expending extraordinary amounts of ammunition and missiles and capabilities and
07:20saying, well, maybe this is not such a bad thing for us.
07:24The United States is getting weaker as we do nothing and just get stronger at the same time, Russia, which
07:32is suffering greatly until February 28th, was starting to relook at whether it needed to rethink the war it was
07:40conducting, which wasn't going very well, in part because the economic costs were extraordinary.
07:45Russia now, of course, is selling oil at 100 plus barrels, dollars per barrel a day to India and around
07:53the world.
07:54And the United States has even lifted sanctions on Russia so that Russia can now supply Cuba.
07:59So under those circumstances, who's winning and who's losing?
08:03We're paying the big price.
08:04The global economy is being torn at its fabric because of the straightforward moves being closed.
08:13But Russia and China are looking at the world and saying, when this is over, we're going to be in
08:17a much better position than we were before.
08:19And that just wasn't the case when the Iraq war happened.
08:22Well, Nancy Economist cover this week.
08:24It has President Xi standing behind an out-of-focus President Trump.
08:27And the title says, you know, never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake.
08:31It's pretty remarkable.
08:33Ambassador, I wonder, as a career diplomat, what you make of the way the administration is framing so-called negotiations.
08:40Iran, of course, continues to deny that they are happening and has called this an exchange of messages.
08:45Are these back channels?
08:47Do you believe the president when he says we're in negotiations?
08:51Well, it's a very strange time when, in fact, you have to wonder whether the president is saying the truth
08:58when he says that we are engaged in major negotiations,
09:01when he's saying that the Iranians are, quote, begging us for a deal.
09:05And you then talk to the Iranians and the Iranians say, well, I'm not sure what he's talking about because
09:10we're not even talking to you guys.
09:12I think what is happening is the president has found himself in a strategic box of his own creation.
09:18He thought this was going to be a quick, easy war.
09:21He thought that somehow, because we had done an extraordinary military operation in Venezuela, that that military was invincible and
09:29could do anything he wanted.
09:31And he just happened to forget one small thing.
09:34In war, enemies get a vote.
09:36And this enemy has been preparing for this war for 47 years.
09:39It knew that the day would come that the United States would engage in military operations against Iran.
09:45And they knew that they couldn't win a straight fight.
09:49They had to win a fight asymmetrically.
09:51They knew that they had geography on their side.
09:54And that's what they've been doing.
09:56So the president is trying to force a deal to allow him to leave.
10:00And the Iranians, unfortunately, aren't playing ball.
10:03We're living in a world in which the Iranians seem to have the cards and the United States doesn't.
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