World in Conflict: Israel, Russia, China, Iran | Walter Russell Mead | EP 326

Okay, what, what, what in the

world

is the reason to be soft and Iran. I don't see any reason for that at all. I mean, Iran is a terrible repressive theocracy with nuclear ambitions, it's a dangerous regime, so how can you be soft on Iran? What is the most important and easiest way to enter a war in the Middle East? It would be a confrontation with Iran, therefore you cannot have a confrontation with Iran. That's the way I think a lot of people are thinking, but I think it's logic. The position is that we have to say we don't want an Iranian nuclear weapon, but in reality, if we are given a binary choice between a war with Iran and the United States fighting Iran to prevent it from going nuclear and then or just hoping that that happens, if they get a nuclear weapon, we can deter them and Israel can deter them like everyone else with nuclear weapons has been deterred, they would say it's better to let them have the bomb than to have the war.

I think that is the logic of the position and that the Iranians. Smelling that, as the logic of the position, we have taken a very hard line in the negotiations and at this point our scammers continue to pressure the Biden Administration, that is what I think has probably happened. Hello everyone. I met Mr. Walter Russell Mead at a dinner in Washington. He is a prolific author and Wall Street Journal columnist, a very astute foreign affairs commentator. Today I am speaking to you well about the international situation in the

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as experienced by the United States and its Western allies, let's say. we talk about we're going to talk about Russia and China and Iran and Israel and Palestine all the what would you call them predictable villains and uh so Mr.

Walter Russell Mead is an academic writer professor who focuses his efforts, as I said, on international politics. and Foreign Affairs, he is the James Clark Chase Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and taught American foreign policy at Yale. Mead has worked as a columnist for publications such as the Wall Street Journal and was general editor of his American Interest books. include Mortal Splendor, the Power of Special Providence, Terror, Peace and War, God and Gold, and most recently, 2022, the Ark of a Covenant, which, Mr. Mead, has been a long time coming for thinking about foreign policy in many different aspects, without necessarily concentrating on any particular one. part of the world, but taking as much as possible a relatively global view, so perhaps we could begin our discussion by asking you to summarize what you think are the most important, what are the most important problems that the United States and the Western world. generally on the Foreign Affairs front in 2022 and maybe we can also talk about what happens in 2023 as we move forward, what is currently plaguing us in the West on the foreign policy front, well, you know, this is really In a difficult time, perhaps it is important to help people understand what is happening in the world, is to realize what the basic framework of world politics is and that is, about 300 years ago, the British began to build this kind of global trade order in which there is There is trade and the British were also concerned with creating a balance of power in Europe and developing their power globally so that this maritime trading system would develop and the Americans more or less inherited it or some would say who took over that system at the end of World War II. and this liberal international maritime trade system of power trading of political relations is the dominant reality in world politics and the world is more or less divided between countries that are quite happy with this system and would like it to continue, countries that have some complaints , they would like the system to be adjusted, but basically they are willing to work within that system and then the countries that want to tear down the whole thing and today, the leading countries that are in that are, you know, China, Russia and Iran. with certain smaller Hangers like Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and some others, and we have seen since the end of the Cold War in 1990 that it seemed that this Anglo-American system would last forever, people talked about the end of History, but partly because Countries like China have developed and become more powerful, but perhaps more fundamentally because Americans and our closest allies have not done a good job of understanding how to build, nurture, and maintain this system.

We have gradually seen a kind of opposition crisis approaching and 2022 between the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China's continued threat against Taiwan and Iran's refusal to rejoin the jcpoa, is its deepening alliance with Russia, We have seen this alliance of revisionist powers come together for a real challenge to this international system, so perhaps we can tour each of those countries in turn. I mean, the first reaction I have to what you said is that say what you can about the Anglo-American sphere of influence, in no way does it make it obvious that China, Russia or Iran stand out as shining moral lights to emulate as an alternative.

I mean, China is a desperately terrible totalitarian communist state. Iran is basically a fascist Islamist regime and although Russia seems to be an outlier to some extent, but Well, you know, because at least nominally it could be allied with the West, but it certainly proved extremely problematic in new ways since the end of the War. Cold, so I mean, on what basis can countries like China and Iran, for example, offer anything remotely similar? an alternative to the Anglo-American sphere of domination, let's start with China, well you know, China offers what China offers to countries or at least offered because its offer has become less attractive between the growing totalitarianism, the economic problems in which they find themselves and their reaction to greed was saying, look, you don't have to buy the Western package to become rich and powerful, and also, they were saying to someone like the ruler of a country like Zimbabwe or other countries they will give you money.

Technician, we won't ask you questions about how much money your brother-in-law is making on the deal. No annoying auditors. We will let him know that we are not like the Anglo-Americans. We will not try to force you to behave. What we're going to let you do is empower you to do exactly what you want now. It is not a positive agenda for an alternative world order, but it is an offer that many governments or many powerful individuals could find attractive, yes, powerful. and powerful and corrupt individuals, I mean okay, so let's break it down a little bit, so the first part is the proposition that you can actually be rich or, let's say, have abundant resources and a reasonable standard of living for your citizens, no for you without adopting something like the underlying metaphysics of the Western moral code and that proposition seems highly unlikely to me given that the only reason China is rich is because it managed to integrate with the West and essentially adopt quasi-capitalist principles. without really adopting the underlying metaphysics and I don't think his system is stable.

I don't think they will be able to spread that well-being in the future. I mean, you yourself said that China has bowed a lot under ji. towards increasing totalitarianism and that is quite evident and the fact that they can only sell their products with respect to um, what would you say? Their profitability on the dictatorial front to corrupt governments also indicates the moral bankruptcy of their offerings, so what if? What China has to offer is the ability to round up the world's corrupt dictators, which doesn't seem like a very plausible or sustainable alternative to Anglo-American domination, so, well, I mean China seems to be facing a Now there's also a a lot of problems, including demographic problems that are very serious, you know?

Jordan, this Anglo-American order is 300 years old and many people have tried to shake it over the centuries. You know you can go back to Louis political and it didn't work but he put up a good fight that shook the world for many years Napoleon really exactly the same challenging that Anglo-American world order still at that time British and saying my dictatorship my enlightened dictatorship can create a powerful economy that the stupid British can't match and an army that they can't defeat and he rampaged for quite some time, finally crumbled and rightly I think Kaiser Wilhelm II I think Hitler Tojo and Stalin all in their different ways had the same idea that the kind of technocratic dictatorship that. centralizes power and planning could challenge the creation of an economy in a society that could challenge this Anglo-American hegemony called the liberal World System and everyone has failed, but you know, no, everyone thought it was okay.

I learned from the past now I will win and I think China is also thinking in that sense. Yeah, well, I think there's a fallacy underlying that presumption that it's basically biological in nature. I mean one of the things I have observed. as a consequence of seeing America as an outsider, let's say for 50 years, 50 conscious years, let's say, is that the diversity of approach exceeds the efficiency of Monolithic View and therefore what I always see happening in the United States It's while you guys are crazy 80 percent of the time and going off the rails in five different directions, but there's always someone in the United States doing something incredibly crazy.

It's always innovative madness, so what seems to happen is that the United States hits the shores of various forms of political idiocy, but there is so much diversity of approaches in the US, especially given its massive population and its federated system and its genuine freedoms, that someone somewhere is doing the right thing and then the United States is, what you would call it, open-minded enough and adaptable enough. that if someone is doing the right thing then it spawns imitators very quickly and the Americans just capitalize on that like crazy and you get to this situation where you could imagine and I think the Japanese managed this for a while, you could imagine that if you happen to stumble With the right View, if you were an efficient, benevolent totalitarian, you might be more effective over a five-year period, but you're going to have a great time with power transitions, that's a deadly problem, and then if the world changes , If that is not in line with your ideological vision, then you have no alternative approaches to rely on and my observation has been that it not only sinks all these countries that try to compete with this free, distributed and creative Anglo-American.

The spirit and I think there is a biological reason for this is that you know one of the ways that biological systems calculate adaptation is by producing a wide variety of mutations from variant offspring and most of those offspring die, but the The only solution to that The problem of excess mortality, say on the biological front, is the provision of multiple variants and the Anglo-American system because it is distributed and because it places a substantial amount of power in the hands of individuals and subsidiary organizations, is creativity at medium long term. It just can't be beat and it's inefficient in the sense that you know a lot of the variants that the United States produces, a lot of companies and so on fail, but those that are successful can be spectacularly successful and that happens all the time and it seems like an unstoppable force.

And you know, you just summed up 300 years of history showing that these monolithic centralists who believe that central planning and efficiency will defeat distributed creativity are just wrong, one after another, you'd think over time we'd learn that was wrong. and maybe we have to some extent, yes, well, I think the circle is expanding of countries or cultures and individuals who do see this advantage, but as a student of History rather than biology or psychology, what I see is that we continue to have these wars and so I can say that I really believe in the Chinese system, the Russian system, in their own way, the Iranian system certainly cannot continue as they wish and they will fail in the competition.

I look at the devastation we have seen. The Napoleonic wars, the world wars, so our problem on our part is not simply to wait for the moment when our diversity and our innovation clearly triumph, but we have to try to manage or work in foreign policy and security policy to deal with of preventing a new type of new catastrophic war is on the scale, although the chances of us ultimately prevailing are quite good, it seems to me that right now on the Chinese front, I mean, they are experiencing a level of internal unrest that for China seems be unprecedented and it seems to me that perhaps it is clearly in the interest of the Chinese authorities to do something like extremely loud saber-rattling about Taiwan to divert the attention of its population from its internal failures and thus attack I as such, I mean, such Maybe I'm being pessimistic about it, although obviously a lot ofPeople are worried about China and Taiwan.

I mean, G seems to be trying to consolidate power in the same way as people like Mao. He has turned out to be a real a real totalitarian dictator rather than someone you know moving China maybe as a doubt like the Chinese leader who modernized uh was Adele, what is it? her name, um, yeah, exactly, it doesn't seem like another dungsho ping, it seems more like another Mao and that is very worrying on the Taiwan front, so what do you think is on the horizon on the China front and what? Do you think the West should do it right?

No, it's really interesting because from the Chinese point of view, first of all we have to understand that the people that people like me and you would talk to from China are not. representative of the mass of Chinese in China, the average China, the Chinese has never left China, did not study for years in the English-speaking world of an American or Canadian university or whatever, you know, and for them it seems very frustrating that they see China as this great nation with a growing economy, the largest population in the world, at least until India catches up, and then they look and see Iran, a small backwards country in many ways compared to China, which has been running the table in the Middle East, you know, it's in Syria, it's in Lebanon, it's in Yemen, it's causing problems everywhere you look, even Russia has taken over Crimea and accomplished things, has it?

Where has the Chinese government achieved? Do you know what was done? Iran did less than China, I'm sorry, than Russia in terms of expansion, so I think there is pressure on the Chinese government from a lot of Chinese public opinion, why aren't they more effective if we are as good as they tell us? Don't foreigners see that and cede ground to us, so there is a clash between what many Chinese believe China's place in the world should be and what they actually see and the government, as you say, at this time of enormous stress for your coveted policy?

They locked them up for years and now they still have a massive epidemic. In the real estate market, which is where most Chinese have their savings and investments. Home prices have been falling for almost three years. A major financial crisis is brewing in China. So the government is in a real bind as to what it will do next and that obviously makes it a bit unpredictable internationally. Well, I was curious to know your assessment of the Biden administration's response to the situation in Taiwan. What are your views on Biden's formulation of China's foreign policy regarding China?

I think the Biden administration has done a reasonably good job so far in terms of its messaging on Taiwan and US-China relations. act and you know it's putting economic pressure, it's trying to stop penetration, you know a lot of Chinese growth really comes from intellectual property theft and intellectual property from Chinese state subsidies to corporations you know in key sectors that are able of using those subsidies to compete unfairly in the rest of the world and we are starting to see that and this started in the Trump years and even President Obama talked about a shift towards Asia, so there has been a growing awareness in the US.

The US on the need to focus more on China and not just sit here and wait for capitalism to make China democratic, which is what maybe we were doing 20 years ago, so we are definitely ahead on that front with the start of the New Year. New. We, what better time than now to start developing the habit of prayer, just like physical exercise, daily spiritual exercise is essential for your well-being, especially in a world where attacks on faith and religion occur at our doorstep. around every day. Sanctify Christian prayer number one. The app in the US and the #1 Catholic app in the world helps you maintain a daily prayer routine.

It's packed with studies, meditations, and reflections, including the #1 Christian podcast, The Bible in a Year. Download the app for free and hallow.com Jordan, you can set prayer reminders invite others to pray with you and track your progress along the way make this year your year of spiritual growth and peace get an exclusive free trial of three months on hallow.com Jordan that's hallow.com Jordan so since I was a young person, what happened in China, well, first of all, when I started to become politically aware, let's say back in the 1970s, I remember going to a trade show in Edmonton, Alberta, it was one of the first trade shows that the Chinese participated in, probably not around 1974 or something.

So and we went and looked, the Chinese had a display of their industrial products there and it looked like things that had been made in the West right after World War II, it looked like things that were built in the 1950s, but that was the first time. In my life we ​​saw something of China and then of course when I was very young the threat of famine was still something that we associated with China and what I have seen happen in my life is that China has become an economic power that the threat of famine has diminished substantially that the Chinese have integrated at least to some extent into the world economy that the West has arguably benefited from an influx of incredibly cheap consumer goods as the quality of Chinese manufacturing improved as it did in Japan and for a long time it seemed that the Chinese were going to move in alongside us at the same time, albeit as competitors and cooperators, and take us all towards a relatively integrated capitalist future and, of course, the presumption was that when that happened, the state would liberalize, especially because there would be all kinds of individuals in China who now had a certain degree of economic power and you know that the Chinese would progressively become essentially allies that would play under the same system and I think that was really happening in quite optimistically for several decades until he decided to centralize control and become another Mao and it is not obvious that the optimism that the West had regarding China was exactly misplaced.

I mean, I think the Western Labor Clause paid off. a high price for the integration of China, but apart from that, you know that the Chinese are no longer starving, which is undoubtedly a great advantage and, as there were many positive aspects in the attempt to integrate the Chinese into the world economy, the downside was that we seem to have become more dependent on their generosity and goodwill than we needed to be and then of course China as a totalitarian model is a destabilizing force in the international order. Well, you're absolutely right and I completely agree with you on that, look, you know, see you in a few years.

A while ago I was traveling quite freely in China and a couple of my books were translated into Chinese and I spoke at Chinese universities and I spoke to professors and officials and the opinion that you just expressed was very common, this is what they felt in China. What it was doing and should be doing was moving towards this kind of integration to become what some Chinese used to tell me: a normal country is what they wanted China to become and I think there are a lot of people there who still hope that, obviously, it will. be.

I'm not going to say it now. It wouldn't be good for you or your family if you started talking that way, but I think what happened in some ways is that we tend to forget that the Chinese Communist Party is a real thing and it wants to maintain the right power, you know, and There are many people who see you, they know they look at the history of China. Yes, the Communist Party has killed more Chinese than anything else in the history of the world. He has died as a result. of Mao's famines and other things that far eclipse the death toll, say in his war against Japan, but having said that, as you have pointed out, the economic growth of the last 30 to 35 years in China is one of the great miracles of human history, yes, and you would have to have a heart of stone not to rejoice that hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty that new ways of life are opening new access to culture and education is what that life is what we should all be doing is its progress and it is good, true, but that same progress of society I think terrified the Communist Party because they could see themselves losing control, they could see, you know, and there is in Chinese history and culture, you know, it's a country. of four billion people, that's like four times the population of the European Union and it's not that easy for Chinese history is a story of balance between central and local governments, they have had periods of division, war and weakness when others They have taken advantage when the central government was weak, so instead of relaxing and liberalizing further as their economic policy became successful, many in the Chinese Communist Party became very worried that things would get out of control and for several years they even before we saw the international hostility, you know, what we saw was that gradually, sector by sector, they were tightening the control of this central communist elite and more and more, under one man, Xi Jinping, they were tightening more and more, using all the levers they could to impose a uniform uniformity in China to reaffirm even in companies, now every company has to have a Communist Party, so the part where we go back to the type of Communist Party yes exactly and obviously as an investor Western is a difficult thing when you have the cell of the Communist Party running your company.

Do you really own the company? Etc. So it's a yes, right, so they're moving. I think from a good period to a much more difficult one. I think it's okay. I also think that people were optimistic, and rightly so, after 1989, because once the Soviets gave up the ghost, it seemed that for a fairly long period of time you could no longer beat the communist drum very loudly and the internal contradictions that were an integral part of the spirit had manifested themselves in an absolutely unmistakable way and, just as the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its own internal idiocy, the Chinese Communist Party was doomed to eventual failure and certainly now, but I guess that's part of the problem.

It's that even in the West, you know, we don't seem to agree when we look at the contradiction between Western productivity and generosity, let's say, and general well-being at the citizen level, and the contradictions between that and a radical stance. leftist view of the world, right, I mean our own, our own society is plagued by this culture. The war was based at least on the part that capitalism is inherently oppressive and good, and so is Western culture in general, and of course the Chinese communists believe that, by far, If we can't put our own house in In order with respect to the pathology of these ideas in the West, in some ways it is not so surprising that the Chinese continue to be dominated by them, but the long-term consequences of that cannot be good.

I mean, what I see happening in the West, in the United States in particular, is that people are losing faith in China as a trading partner and we are starting to withdraw a huge amount of manufacturing capacity and decrease investment and move away from China. as a trading partner and of course that will only make things more desperate in China, which is not a good thing, yes, it is a complicated thing. In the West we read 1989 and the events in the Soviet Union as a glorious victory, but in China and Putin it is on their wavelength, here they saw it very differently.

What they saw is looking at the Soviet Union. Gorbachev tried to liberalize and introduce some democratic elements into the Soviet Union and look what happened in the Soviet Union. fell apart Russia was impoverished for a decade lost its status as a great power in the world and you know, and the West as they saw it in Russia and in China, you know, trampled them and did whatever it wanted and so on and the Iranians they also saw this so the message to these leaders is don't liberalize liberalism is a poison and even a small amount can start to corrode and destroy your society and if you let it in it will ruin your power and devastate everything so there actually they converted, they didn't say, oh, how lovely Western democracy is, they said how dangerous it is and we've heard Putin complain and talk about the color revolutions, the different liberalizing revolutions in the post-Soviet countries and they see us, they see the West as lead this type of subversion and that Western ideas and freedoms are a fundamental threat to their own power and, given the use that some of them have made of that power for their personal survival, it seems a reasonable concern for ideologically motivated totalitarians. motivated totalitarian dictators, it is definitely true that Western liberal ideals are not going to provide them with an environment in which psychopathic power play is going to be successful, so they have every reason to be intimidated by that right and I think our mistake wasnot realizing it that you know, we were saying, hey, no, you know, we're going to wait patiently for China to evolve, but on the Chinese Communist Party side they were saying, well, we're not going to wait patiently for liberalism to come in. and it tears us apart, we're going to preemptively do what we have to do to maintain our power, so I think maybe we should have known because they never wavered in their support for North Korea, that's right, and they were also very careful in say we always want economic liberalization, not political liberalization, yeah, yeah, like that's okay, so let's focus on that a little bit, so it's not obvious to me at all that you can have economic liberalization without political liberalization, in fact, I think the order of events in the sense that that causal link is reversed is that the reason we have material abundance and prosperity in the West is because of liberalism.

Liberalism is not the consequence of wealth it is the precondition for wealth and you can think about that particularly with respect to things like the right to private property and the right to the fruits of your own labor if your society is not based on wealth. idea that the individual is somehow intrinsically worthy and sovereign in that way that it is not simply a gift from the state but something intrinsic to the person as soon as you have that you have at least in principle an inviolable right to something that approximates private ownership of the fruits of your own labor and without that fundamental presumption that I think in particular is a biblical Judeo-Christian presumption of the entire capitalist enterprise and it is because it depends so much on trust and honesty, for example, to really flourish and of the right to private property is simply a failure and therefore This is a favorite slogan of the West: well, we can have all this economic prosperity or even more with a top-down centralized control system that is based in the idea of ​​equality, but it never really seems to work. and I don't mean that you could point to regimes like Singapore as a possible exception, but Singapore is not very old and we will see how it does with respect to things like power transitions, but the idea that you can have economic progress without that underlying spirit of individual sovereignty.

I don't think there is any historical evidence for that at all and there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. You describe that in terms of the constant failure of dictator states, you know it's interesting. uh that's what I mean, I think you're right and that the kind of human nature that you know exists in such a way that this kind of private property and the culture of individual rights together is honesty is the basis for greater prosperity , but the foundations of different cultures around the world have a very different relationship to that set of ideas and you know, I remember the first time I started traveling to Russia, it was still the Soviet Union, uh, one of the ones I'm revealing .

I guess I'm old, but one of the things I noticed there was that Marxism was culturally attractive to many people in Russia because there was a deep distrust of economic exchange and people intuitively felt that if at least this was it seemed to me that if a merchant went out to the countryside and bought a bushel of wheat for five rubles from the farmer and then took it to the city and sold it for 10 rubles to the city consumers, he would be cheating someone, you know, maybe he was treating the farmer, maybe he was deceiving his clients, but this type of exchange was fundamentally morally illegitimate and therefore Marxism felt good in it, you know capitalism was by nature exploitative for many people.

They were led to believe that yes, well, it is easy for that belief to be induced because it can take advantage of envy and envy is a mortal sin, let's say, and it is easy to be envious of anyone who seems to have something that you don't. Especially if you don't like to look at the other person's life as a whole, you see a characteristic in their life that somehow exceeds what you have been able to handle and then it is also extremely convenient for you to assume that if someone has surpassed you in one dimension particular achievement and the reason he did it is because he is corrupt and malevolent, not because he is useful and productive compared to you, so one of the psychological advantages that envious Marxism has is that it plays with envy in a way extremely powerful and the problem with that seems to be and perhaps this is another principle for economic advancement if your society is based on the idea that every difference in achievement or socioeconomic status is a consequence of theft and exploitation then it basically creates a situation in which no one can have more than anyone else, in which case there is no basis for trade and certainly nothing approaching wealth can be generated because there is simply no way for everyone to become equally rich. at the same instantaneous moment there will always be a gradation of distribution and one of the strange things that the West has achieved and this has something to do with that implicit trust is that we have actually managed to develop a society where there is not only tolerance for inequality, but There is a certain degree of admiration for it, I mean, and I think this is particularly true in the case of the US, while it is less true in the case of Canada and Europe, but one of the things that always me What has drawn such positive attention about the US is that there is a general feeling of admiration among the population for people who have been able to achieve spectacular and unique achievements in some area and some of that is associated with the wish that parents in the US have that their children could perhaps achieve the same, but it really is quite a miracle that any society has achieved anything.

You know, it's interesting in some dimensions, even in the Soviet Union, you could see it because if you went to a concert in the Soviet Union, classical music wasn't a big thing. The admiration that people felt for a great violinist or a great dancer was extraordinary because in all other areas of life it was completely corrupted by the party, if you had a good job it was because the Communist Party gave it to you, if you know if you were director of a factory, it was because your brother-in-law was the commissioner of the party, something like that, but in Arts you know that the violinist is up there playing it, you listen to him and that gives you, you know, so there was this direct contact with Excellence so the spirit human I think he responds instinctively to you know Excellency with admiration they were not thinking we are going to break your fingers you know that you play better than the others so you would like to lose a finger and then you will not play better than anyone else, but in this area of ​​​​the economy, no, you know they had a very different vision, whether you sell soccer balls or artwork.

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Orthodox Christian path. and I think the Russians are struggling with that to some extent and Dugan has tried to outline an alternative ethos but I don't see anything coherent emerging from that except antipathy towards the progressive liberal excesses of the West. The Russians have really managed to craft anything about giving a vision and so what do you think drives the Russians? Yeah, I think you know it's um, there's a tragic sense of history, um, you know, Russian history has been a bitter thing. Putin is not a communist, he is, if anything, he is a tsarist, he is a Russian nationalist and you know he actually hates communists because Lenin and, you know, Lennon's nationality policy really destroyed the Russian Empire in some way. way by creating this artificial Soviet Union in place of the Empire, the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine under Khrushchev was the kind of communist nonsense that Putin really loved, but there is something that Putin deeply envies and misses little about Russia today, and the Communist Party had a uh for most of its life.

The story had ideological roots in Russia, it had a network of informants, co-workers and loyal members, so there would be someone on every block watching what others were doing and reporting this suspicious activity to the bad guys to the secret police and to the police. through the network. of Communist Party cells, youth organizations, all this culture, the government had measures, means to control, shape public opinion. Putin is not doing so well, he is trying with Russian nationalism, with the Orthodox Church, he is trying to find and, of course, in places where, um, the majority of Russian citizens are Muslims, he tries to work through the Islamic religious authorities, remember that the Orthodox church and Muslim hierarchies were completely controlled by the KGB under the communists, so when the Soviet Union collapsed, all the KGB hacks and crackpots were in place now, of course, there .

There were some sincere believers here and there, but you know, there were black man material ways that you could control the Orthodox Church, ways that you control and Putin has tried to turn that into an instrument of state control, now you know it's not So. that is not as illegitimate in some aspects in Russian culture as it might seem to some of us because the Orthodox Church in its theology always supported the tsar much more than the emperor, you know, it comes from the Byzantine tradition where, then, there is In In a way, some people use the phrase Cesaro papism.

You know that Caesar, the emperor, is also a sacred figure, so you know that they have an agreement that somehow accords with tradition with traditional Russian ideas, but. Russian society changed a lot in the last hundred years, you know, Russia was a peasant society in 1920 and today it is mainly an urban society, etc. It has changed in many different ways, so Putin does not have the ideological elements to control the other problem. for Putin it is that Russian Orthodoxy and Russian nationalism do not export as Marxism-Leninism did at the height of communism. Stalin could count on the fanatical loyalty even of high-ranking spies like Algerhis in the United States and Kim Philby in England, who out of loyalty to communism would be agents and willing crackpots for Stalin Putin does not have what he expects with his opposition, you know some of the crazy things that are definitely going on here, he, Orban and some others are trying to create some kind of traditionalist conservative International that can do for them what the international communists used to do for Stalin, but it doesn't, it's not going to work out That way, it's a much weaker position, but Putin is doing what he can with the tools he can find to make Russia a great power, you know, I think in part it's weaker because if you try to ally Christian theology with the idea of a quasi-fascist centralized state, it doesn't actually work very well because there is such a strong emphasis on individual sovereignty and Worth, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, that you're fighting a pretty cruel rearguard action.

I mean, it was definitely the case that when the Bible was printed and distributed so that everyone could read it in the original, what happened was people recognized their own intrinsic value and were much more likely to take on both the rights and responsibilities of the Bible. informed citizenry as soon as they became literate and could understand the implications of that tradition, so it's not obvious It doesn't seem at all to me that Putin could get the Shanghai Christian tradition to ally himself with the idea that he should be something like a tsar , even if the progressive West has aired its excesses, which certainly has thehistory.

He just doesn't seem to have much power. I mean, it definitely is. Eastern Europeans are quite dismayed by the Western turn toward this radical progressivism, but that has not driven them into the arms of people like Putin. No, exactly, this is a You know, there was a very Russian tradition of the tsar as almost the leader of the church and also as the leader of the state, but that's not the case, and the concept of rights as we understand them is implanted in Jewish society. -Christian. Tradition was much more minimized in the old Russian Orthodox view, it was a much more collectivist type of faith, so the gap between Orthodox Europe and Protestant and Catholic Europe is a very deep historical story when it is more than a thousand years old. but, so, Putin put something that works in Russia at least for a while and is not exportable in the way that Putin would like it to be now he has another option that he works with, which is this free float, you know, like this that Putin will prove it. on the one hand, to be the champion of the people who rebel against the progressive excesses of the West, but at the same time he wants to take advantage of the other source of Soviet support. anticapitalism anti-western individualism you already know the extreme left and how those are the two things with the ones Putin is working on and in American politics it's interesting that you find people you know, the team tends to be very skeptical about American policy in In Ukraine, like people on the far right, there are a lot of legitimate questions that can be made about what we are and are not doing in Ukraine, but you will find this kind of, almost Putinian, sympathy among anti-Americans on the left, as well as among some traditionalists on the right, and that is Putin.

Putin doesn't care, you know he will use any tool he can find and that is how he sees these people, not as allies and partners but as tools to achieve his end, which is first, last and always Russian state power, does he? What do you think was their goal in Ukraine? When I looked at what was happening I thought two things, I thought well, three things I guess. Putin was not very happy with Western expansionism in Ukraine. He was also more than willing to extend Russian rule, especially in the eastern parts of Ukraine, and then I also thought it was possible that he didn't really care in some fundamental sense if Ukraine emerged. of this devastated

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as long as it didn't fall into the hands of the West, but I'm still unclear about his motivations and vision for The Invasion.

I mean, do you think he thought it would be a piece of cake like so many? Military leaders tend to show off when they march into a foreign country or whatnot. What exactly was Putin imagining? American intelligence also thought he was going to win. You know, the Americans told Zielinski that he would give you a plane so you could escape. We were telling the ambassadors of all the countries to leave, that the Russians are coming. There was panic, all right, so our message to Putin, by the way, was not a message of deterrence, it was a message of encouragement.

We think our intelligence is excellent and it says We're going to win if you do this, so you know, that's interesting. I think he thought he would get a lot of success very quickly, but as far as Ukraine threatening Putin, it's not Western, it's not like that. as if there could be Western troops in kyiv, it is clear that we do not want to invade Russia, no one in the West wants to invade Russia, no one, there is no support in the United States to send an army to Russia, of course, that is not on the table. but what is on the table is to assume that Ukraine democratizes and becomes a successful country.

Putin's whole argument to the Russian people is that, you know, democracy may work well for the English, the French and the Americans, but we, the Russians, are different, we, the Orthodox Slavs. we have our own tradition in our own world kyiv is really the Russian civil place, the birthplace of Russian civilization. Ukraine for the Russians is part of their heart and if the Ukrainian Slavs, the Orthodox Ukrainian Slavs are happy and prosperous in a democracy and achieve things than a corrupt and sterile stagnation. Putin's regime is incapable of achieving a happy, democratic Ukraine in Russia without lifting a finger and sending a single shot across the border.

It is a deadly threat to Putin's power and vision at home. That's the problem. Alright? That makes a devastated Ukraine and a Russian withdrawal a victory for Putin. I think, however, Putin wants Ukraine to fail, he wants and wants to be seen as dominant in Ukraine, those are the two things he needs and the minimal motives. for victory for him, yes, and the Crimea is fine, so, so. Okay, so what do you see? We don't know how the war between Russia and Ukraine will continue. I mean, the Russians have been pushed back, but ultimately they are incredibly heavily armed and it's not obvious exactly what kind of war.

Ukrainian victory would be in the face of that ultimately overwhelming, say nuclear, threat, and so I've heard, let's say, uh, hints that the powerful might be willing to come to the negotiating table. Now what do you think we are? We are in a long war. Are we in for a long, deteriorating war that is moving toward a nuclear exchange? Does Putin feel pressure to get to the negotiating table? What is his sense of where things will develop over the next year? Well I think. We are uh, we are behind, the war has already gone through several phases and it is important to remember that it has been a long time since we all thought about a big war in this way, we have all forgotten some of the things that are normal. in Warfare um and one of them is that war changes, just like in World War II, you start with 10 months of Creek grains, nobody does anything, then Hitler conquers everything and oh my God, he's going to win, but then another stalemate, etc., changes and in this war there was the initial phase of Russian attacks and people for a while thought they might succeed, then the Ukrainian defeat, then we entered that long period of slow Russian advances, then there was the encouraging Ukrainian setback and everyone said ah, everything!

The Russian army could disintegrate, etc. It seems like at least for now they have stabilized their front, we don't really know and with the missile attacks and Russia, you know, fighting on the borders, are we back to the War of Attrition or because you know the morale in the Russian military is quite low in some places, you know? Could we see more military collapses like we saw on the Russian side? Etc., so there is a lot going on, both the Ukrainians and the Russians still think they have some cards to play and neither. He's willing to give up until they think they can earn something extra by trying something else, so now you know, the West is saying to Zielinski: "Come on, at least it looks like you want to talk a little, so he says already You know".

I'm ready to sit down, you know, and discuss peace on the following terms, basically, completing the Russian withdrawal and reparations, and Putin also feels some internal pressure from and to others to appear like he's at least interested in pieces. Yes, I am interested, I want peace. talks about the surrender of Ukraine and about exactly what parts of Ukraine I will take, but neither side right now is ready to stop fighting, so I don't see many changes immediately and both and the future will be determined. Depending on how the armies perform on the ground, the god of battles will determine where we are and then, you know, as reality changes, the two sides appreciate what they can reasonably expect to achieve and at some point maybe there will be a change .

You see, you know a negotiated peace, but you think there's still quite a bit of war ahead because it's not obvious that either side is losing in any fundamental sense, right, it's still very ambivalent, each side has reason to believe we can win from where we are now and as long as that is the case, the tendency is for the war to continue yes, okay, let's turn our attention momentarily to the situation in Iran. I would like to talk about two different currents, the first. It would be the protests and then we could also talk about Iran in relation to Israel and also the Iranian nuclear program.

When I was in Jerusalem, I met with some high-ranking people who had worked in various ways for the Israeli government over the years and some of them were very concerned about Iran's ability to move very quickly towards developing a nuclear bomb and I understand that they are still experimenting intensively with sophisticated centrifuges that are designed to get them to the point where developing a nuclear weapon could require taking place if necessary within a few months and that is how it seems to me that Iran is the most enemy fundamental of Israel and is dedicated in some real sense to the eradication of Israel and that is extremely worrying in some.

What counteracts this is the fact that the Iranians themselves seem to be quite sick and tired of their state and only God knows what what's going to happen as a result of the protests and I mean we could possibly get lucky and see the Iranian regime. collapse, although a collapsed regime is often replaced by a worse regime, unfortunately, rather than a better one, so anyway, tell me your views on Iran, uh, in relation to the US, in relation with Israel, in relation to the ongoing protests, what is happening there, to the extent possible. Well, first of all, I think that hostility towards the United States and Israel and, more broadly, towards the West is built into the nature of the current Iranian regime, you know, and since they need a bad relationship with the United States they need a bad relationship with Israel, why else do you justify a clerical dictatorship if you don't have terrible enemies who are going to destroy you and also remember that Iran is a multi-ethnic and multi-ethnic country? - linguistic multicultural country has a large Azeri minority in the north it has many Kurds and the Kurds in Iran are restless like the Kurds in other countries they want independence for the Kurds you have the Beluga style you have the blocks in the south there is a large group of Arabs in Iran and most of the oil in Iran or a large amount is in the part inhabited by Arabs and the central government wants to keep pumping oil but spending the revenue. not in the Arab provinces where it comes from but in maintaining its power regionally, so Iran is full of these ethnic tensions and it takes something to keep a country like that together and Iran, for example, looks at what happens when the Soviet Union, when the Soviet Union The Soviet Union lost its faith in communism, so to speak, the cement that held it together, the Soviet Union fell apart, so there is tremendous fear in the government of Iran that Without an ideology that legitimizes and empowers the Central Authority, who knows what could happen and especially with other countries, whether it be Turkey, Russia, the United States, anyone who is trying to move away from their territories, so that is one of the reasons why they don't.

I think this whole fantasy that we can make a deal with the Iranians and everything could be fine was never very likely. but more than that because they need an enemy, I also think it has been very convenient for the Iranians to have Israel as an enemy as well and to channel support to the Palestinians and keep that

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boiling madly because, as you said, there is nothing that will help. legitimize an authoritarian state than the presence of obvious malevolent enemies, then you know that one of the preconditions for peace agreements is that both sides really want peace and that does not seem obvious to me at all, as you pointed out in the case of Iran . quite the opposite exactly and when it comes to Israel they have something else at stake, you know, Iran entertains the fanatic, we have talked about Iran's fears, what its hopes are, the hopes are if one country could control the Persian Gulf and all The oil there, even in this era of oil in other places and alternative energy that is a great power globally, would be like blackmailing the world and the Iranians look at these small Arab states in the Gulf, many of them know 90 percent of the population and some are foreign workers.

Bahrain has a country ruled by Sunni Muslims, but they have a law that they know they have a large Shia majority, there is a rest of Shia minority in Saudi Arabia, so Iran really sees opportunities and look what they have been able to do, thank you I think . to American stupidity in Syria but also in Lebanon Iran is really moving it's been moving all over the Middle East it's in Yemen so um but here's the thing arrest Shia Islam is not popular among Sunni Muslims it is considered a heresy and the Persians are You really don't know that the Persian Arab problem is real, so being the most anti-Israel is a way of advertising your credentials.

I hate that we are such good Muslims that we hate Israel and unlike all these nasty Gulf rulers, they are willing. compromise and all this, we are in this to the death, if you hate Israel, you know well, you love Islam, we are your leader, they are not going to give up on that, they are not going togive up on that, and if the other Arabs make him move away from the violence between the Palestinians, well, the Iranians would be more than happy to fill that void, so this is correct, you know the idea that they are somehow moderate and You know they're ready to make a deal.

Sure there are moderates in Iran, but I think the hard core of the power structure sees the logic both in terms of fears and hopes and they see no advantage in changing, we'll come back in a moment, first we wanted to give you a preview of the new documentary by Jordan logos and literacy I was very surprised how the translation of biblical writings boosted the development of literacy throughout the world illiteracy was the norm the shepherd's house was the first school and every morning I would begin by singing the Christian faith is a religion sung probably 80 percent of scripture memorization today exists only because of what is sung this is amazing here we have a Gutenberg Bible Bible printed in Johan Goodberg's press science and religion are opposing forces in the world, but historically that has not been the case now the book is available to everyone, from Shakespeare to education, modern medicine and science and civilization itself.

It's the most influential book in all of history, and hopefully people can walk away with at least a sense of So, let's dig a little bit into one of the things that caught my attention. I was reading your book, the latest book, Arc of a Covenant, published in 2022 and it is an analysis at least in large part of the situation in relation to Israel and the Zionist State and Palestine and I thought your book was remarkably Impartial, I have been fascinated by it. the developments on the Abraham Accord front. I interviewed several people associated with the Abrahamic Accords and, from what I have been able to understand, what essentially happened was that a group of people who were outsiders in relation to the foreign policy establishment decided to counter the conventional wisdom, which was that they did not there was a possibility of peace between the Israelites, the Israelis and the Arab world without including the Palestinians, just to put an end to that and start talking to them.

Arab countries that are actually interested in keeping Iran under control but also in making peace with Israel. The Israelis for strategic reasons, partly because they are a major military power, but also for economic reasons because many Arab states are now seeking to differentiate their economies. Far from dependence on the petrodollar, what seemed to have happened with the Abraham Accords was that a very large group of Arab countries decided that peace with Israel was definitely in their best interest, and that eluded the Palestinians. Now I have been quite understanding. say to the operations of the Israelis in the Middle East and I have been criticized a lot for not taking into account the oppression of the Palestinians and your work seems to be remarkably impartial in that sense and you commented Just before starting this interview, you wrote a book on a very controversial topic and that would be the situation between Israel and Palestine, but it didn't really contribute to an exacerbation of the culture war and it didn't really get the pillars read. and so what that seems to indicate is that you struck a kind of nice balance between advocating for the Jewish side in relation to Israel and also pointing out that by no means do a majority of Jews around the world even support the Zionist project and also extend a some degree of sympathy for the displaced Palestinians, so perhaps you could explain to us your view of the Abraham Accord and your view of the situation in Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians.

Let me start with the root. the Israeli-Palestinian situation, you know, Americans were actually pro-Israel before Jews were non-Jewish Americans in the 1890s, before Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, wrote his book on the State Jew. The president of the United States received a petition asking him to use his influence to promote a Jewish state in Palestine and this petition was signed by John D Rockefeller J.P Morgan and the entire American establishment was on board with this idea, and myself, you know , Thousands. from years of persecution, the horrors of the 20th century, uh, if any people on Earth need a state and, in fact, deserve a state, surely that's the juice, at the same time, you know that the Palestinians are a people, they became in a people in part because of the fight with Israel and with the Zionists um and they are human beings um and human beings have rights and as an American I believe in rights and rights like self-determination, so my hope remains, although it is difficult and complicated, that there would be Did you know that one day I could travel freely from the Jewish State to the Palestinian State and have friends in both places?

That's what I'd like to see in the book now. I don't make recommendations. You know, I think. It's very difficult to get there right now, but that's what I think most Americans would like to see and that's what I would like to see. Okay, so quote Mark Twain in your book and let me see if I can find it here. a Mark Twain quote I now see. When I spoke to Netanyahu, one of the claims that was made on his part was that before the Zionist movement the Palestinian territory, now Israel, was quite desolate and abandoned and, um, the Palestinian observers of that.

The conversation is very upset by that characterization, I feel that it is best for Zionists to portray pre-Jewish Palestine as a desolate and abandoned wasteland now, but you quote, let me read this still to Americanize the land that the Bible described as famous. with milk and honey it appeared completely dry and deserted in the 19th century and its few inhabitants, Arabs and Jews, seemed deeply unhappy and prayed to illnesses in poverty. Mark Twain in one of the popular travel columns he wrote from the time of Abraham until now Palestine has been populated. alone with ignorant, degraded, lazy, lazy, dirty and savage to Twain and to many Americans, the holy land was wasted by its present inhabitants, whose mismanagement had turned the land of King Solomon and King David into, as Twain joked, the most desperate and saddest piece of territory in the world. of Arizona now, certainly one of the claims to Israeli legitimacy, as I understand it, is the idea that this was a particularly God-forsaken territory; the Ottomans themselves were not that interested in preserving it, it had not been used. particularly effective and one of the consequences of the Zionist Enterprise is that it was once an essentially arid desert and wasteland has become an extremely populous, productive and economically prosperous and flourishing country and I have some sympathy for that point of view, but that makes that clear, uh, brings into focus the problematic elements of that story in relation to the Palestinians and so if you were to defend the Palestinians against the Israelis, how would you characterize that in light of this guy? of descriptions of pressureist Palestine, well, I don't want to pit them against each other, but I would say that my Palestinian friends would say, and I would sympathize with this perspective, that you have to remember that you know the Palestinians.

They were not autonomous in the 19th century, they were part of that part of the Ottoman Empire for 500 or 400 years, so they were ruled from Istanbul by Turks who, as you know, saw the Arabs more as a cow. to be milked that as they were, they were victims of Ottoman imperialism before the British came and you know I think that would be the kind of argument that people would make. I would go a little deeper and say a lot of those things. The redevelopment and flourishing of Palestine has come about thanks to modern agronomy and irrigation techniques that, in a sense, no one knew about in the 19th century and, as you know, the Israelis have really brought them, that is, people from all over the world They are using their dry farming techniques. and their irrigation techniques and some of their desalination and other things, so they really have contributed something, but comparing a 21st century Israel with a 19th century Palestine, you know, is a little complicated as a historical comparison.

I think it's right, right, right, so yeah. right, so you have multiple problems with that kind of comparison, yes, the advancement of technology is one of them, so how many people, how many people are we talking about, inhabit the place that is now Israel in the, let's say, a late nineteenth century? At the end of the 19th century again, do you know that estimates vary enormously because of course, again, the Ottoman Empire was not a place where you had careful statistics, so you didn't have the decennial census every 10 years with a modern bureaucracy organized by counting the numbers?

So, do you know how you estimate that population? You know what your basis for it is and when you have a politically contentious issue like Israel Palestine, where everyone has a point of view, everyone has an agenda without even cheating, you can find all kinds of ways to come up with different population estimates for 1890. If you know what I mean, yeah, I honestly don't think so, and you know in all of this one of the things I do in Ark of the Covenant, the book I'm trying to do. It is clear that in many ways this dispute between Israelis and Palestinians is one of a hundred such disputes, you know, Croats and Serbs and the former Yugoslavia, Hungarians against Romanians in Transylvania, all these national disputes and in all of them what you find It is these scholars, historians and ideologues who make all kinds of claims based on history.

I wrote that I was in Romania and someone said yes, the Magyars have no place here, they are intruders, they only arrived here in the 9th century AD, which is true. Right to an American, that's not a very compelling argument, but anyway, everyone comes armed with these battalions of facts that they just throw at each other. We are not going to get the solution by ultimately examining those facts that you know are going on. If you have a husband and wife who have been fighting, resolving every dispute in the marriage is not really the way to move them forward.

No, no, it's true, you need something like a unifying vision. No, I think that's very good. And I mean part of the reason why there are conflicts everywhere when there are conflicts is because the facts themselves are open to question. I mean, that's almost like the definition of the precondition for a war: we don't agree on what the realities on the ground are at all and we disagree with them so loudly that we can't even discuss them, we have to now kill each other to others and we don't agree with the rules, you know, what should adjudicate something, you know, then the Zionists will say. and his right to say it the League of Nations recognized the British mandate over Palestine as a national home for the Jews so it is legal the UN reaffirmed it in 1948 how much more legal at 47 how much more legal could that be and a Palestinian could Di well, you know the British were colonial interlopers who stole land from the Ottoman Empire, you know, and the Palestinians never had a say, which gave the League of Nations the right to say that the British had a right to the territory that is imperial , right, right, right. you and both are arguments um and people will have different reasons to support them well and then there is India there are also ideological reasons.

I mean, there are two things that you do very masterfully at least in this book The Ark of the First, I would say that Covenant makes this remarkable case that he mentioned earlier that an enormous amount of impetus for the Zionist movement was not specifically Jewish, but that it coincided with a current of Christian evangelism, that is probably the correct way to think about it. that you saw the rise of a Jewish state in the Middle East as part of the fulfillment of the biblical prophetic tradition and you point out, as you did with the Rockefellers, for example, and with JP Morgan, that there were Zionist movements on the Christian front that at least developed in parallel with the Zionist movement on the Jewish front and in many places preceded it, so one of the things I found quite compelling in his book was the detail of the remarkable and strange support that the Zionist project found in the Christian West and He also points out that if it were up to Jews around the world and they had a democratic vote, say regarding Israeli policies, it is by no means obvious that the Falcons on the Israeli side would be the most popular, say, the most proposed. popular point of view in relation to what the Jews themselves believe and that there is no evidence that, what is the name of the Vulcan Planet Theory?

It's kind of like the whole Zionist project is a conspiratorial outgrowth of the imperialist Jews and then you also present a parallel case that I really appreciate, so first of all, the Zionist story is much more complex than the Jews' attempt to steal Middle East, that's for sure, but there is also an ideological issue which is that of the radicals. The left in particular has developed this anti-colonial narrative that is based in part on the claim that every human relationship is based on power and exploitation and then what seemed to happen was that thatnarrative that explains, say, the colonial activities of the Westerners, although curiously absent in claims about, say, the Ottoman Empire, is that Israel is simply written into history as another example of the same thing, which is convenient for people who may only have a historical idea, but I don't seem to agree very much with the historical process that really gave rise to the State of Israel and if we look at the people again, we will hear all these people talking about what a Israel of sorts is a European colonial enterprise in the Middle East. a white occupation of a brown country, so to speak, and you know for a fact that Zion Herzl and his Zionist movement were strong among European Jews, but most of the largest groups in Israel today are not European, they are Middle Jews East, many of them were actually expelled from their homes in the Arab world in retaliation for what happened to the Palestinians, although these Jews who had lived in Iraq for thousands of years or their ancestors in Egypt and so on They had nothing to do with either the Zionist movement or the The war in Palestine drove them from their homes as refugees and they came to Israel and these people are sort of overlooked in the discussion and there were about the same number of Jewish refugees. of the Arab world more or less and people obviously argue about all these numbers and I'm not the great arbiter of everything here, but it is comparable to the number of Palestinians who fled or were expelled from Israel at the time of that war, so which is and these Jews who supported the way that is the core of Prime Minister Netanyahu's support not for European Jews but for Middle Eastern Jews and Russian Jews who have a different history, but these Jews do not feel guilty for thePalestinians, hey, he's a refugee.

I am a refugee, but where is the global sympathy for me? Where is the world's sympathy for me? Where is the UN with education for my child and free healthcare? I received? They call me a colonizer, right? European colonizer, yes, exactly, and then, on the other hand, there was. I visited Auschwitz a few years ago and saw a group of teenagers following the Star of David flag, so I went to see what was going on. They were Jews. teenagers who were visiting Poland because they were actually descendants of Polish Jews and they were coming back to see, you know, where their ancestors had been and I said, well, how was their trip and they said, well, it hasn't been so good, I said, what do you mean?

I said well, you know we went to visit the monument in the Warsaw ghetto, you know the Jewish resistance against the Nazis and a crowd formed there and they were shouting Jews, go home, my God, but you know they're going to Palestine and it's ju you know that they return to Israel and people will say that the Jews return to Poland, Poland, the Jews return to Palestine, people have to have a home, it definitely seems, what would you call it, almost malevolent, to consider the Jews who escaped the European persecution of Israel as European colonizers, I mean you can say what you want about the British and the hand they played in the establishment of Israel and you can defend the Palestinians that the UN had no right to do what it did and there is For some, that argument has some credibility, but considering European Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, for example, or Poland, as European colonizers, that is, Jesus, talks about bread in both directions at the same time, well, You know, it is also true and this is one of the Things that in The Ark of the Covenant I learned the most and that surprised me the most, it turns out that Stalin had much more to do with the Jewish victory in the war of independence and the nakpa than the exile of the Palestinians at that time.

Whether the British or the Americans, the British actually sided with the Arabs in the Israeli War of Independence and armed the Arabs and the Arab forces that were most successful were the British Legion of British equipped soldiers led by the British trained in the Jordanian army, uh, and they, you know, are the reasons why the West Bank was in the hands of the Arabs until the 1967 war and, on the other hand, the Americans, while we raise all kinds of things nice things about Israelis. an arms embargo which meant that desperate Israelis and for much of the war were losing the war and were being besieged in Jerusalem, they couldn't buy weapons from the United States, forget about American aid to Israel, they couldn't even buy us With cash, we put an arms embargo.

Stalin ended up selling through Czechoslovakia, where the Czech arms factory, the Skoda arms factory in Czechoslovakia had been making weapons for Vermont and when the Germans surrendered they had all these surplus weapons in the factory to help out. the communists take control of Czechoslovakia Stalin allowed the Czech government to sell these weapons these Nazis swore surplus weapons to the Jews and smuggled them into British controlled Palestine and it was those weapons that allowed the Jews to turn the tide of the war, so you know. to call this an act of Western colonialism, you know, this was, if there is one that you know of, to call an act of Soviet colonies and the reason Stalin got it right was because he correctly believed that the rise of a Zionist state in Palestine would disturb the British so much. relations with the Arabs that would dramatically weaken the power of Britain and the power of the British Empire in the Middle East.

He also thought, rightly, that it would help drive a wedge between the United States and Britain, so the whole story of you know the story that in people's minds this is the West imposing some of its great capitalist colonial project imperialist, it just doesn't match the historical record and, of course, in those days Israel was a cause of left, right, right and the democratic socialists of the United States who are now extremely anti-Israel for them in the 1950s, Israel was a proof that socialism worked well, while Israel's policies were, it was seen that with the glorification of the kibbous, yes exactly, and Israel had a planned economy and the unions were incredibly powerful.

Israel was much more left-wing. - wing in its economic policy than any of the social democratic countries in Europe, so when people said: "oh, under socialism there is no freedom", the democratic socialists of the United States say no, Israel proves you wrong, does Do you think that's part of the reason why the left has changed its position, let's say, in relation to Israel is because Netanyahu went to war, so to speak, against many of these socialist predispositions and revived the Israeli economy towards something very much more like a free market capitalist state, yes, it was a combination of several things. and this was a factor that in the 70s Israel went from being an example of socialism to being an example of Thatcherism and Reaganism, which were the ones that, as you know, began to introduce those economic reforms that have helped to create in particular the incredibly dynamic technology. sector that now gives Israel allies around the world and that will get to the Abraham Accords in a minute because obviously this is an important factor, yes, well, Netanyahu's statement is that he is fine, so he made two statements when I talked to him and I didn't. just obviously when I talked to him, but one is that he worked very hard to make Israel a formidable military power but he also worked very hard to make Israel a formidable capitalist enterprise and that it was the combination of those two things that attracted or forced, Let's say The Arab states that signed the Abraham Accords wanted Israel to be an ally against Iran, so Israel was powerful militarily and showed its prowess in that regard, but also because the Israeli economy had been freed from the restrictions of an idiot.

Centrally planned socialism had become an industrial and technological powerhouse perhaps now rivaled only by Silicon Valley and that also made the Israelis very attractive as training partners for Arab states that were interested in modernizing their economies. , so that's Netanyahu's speech, what do you think of it? Well, I think look, I think the statements are fundamentally correct, that Israel thanks to its economic reforms but also thanks to some intelligent state is not, let's say, fair, but you know that the state has been very involved in promoting its sector technological, but it is essentially done under capitalist principles and it has worked brilliantly and in this and that then investments in technology helped strengthen the economy in general but also increased military capacity and this, by the way, is a bit worrying globally in the old days when you spent money on defense you would weaken your civilian economy instead of building a school bus you would build a tank, but increasingly today because so much of defense capability is tied to IT, advanced data processing information and all kinds of things, a lot of that technology is dual-use. but also companies that are excellent at military planning and military investment are extremely powerful economically, so in fact large defense budgets tend to promote economic growth rather than restrict it and I think that change is driving the world in a dangerous direction towards more armed races.

And that's something you have to be really consistent about: is it driving the world into pseudo-fascist collusion between big business at the top of the state? Well, you know, I hope that again this is one of the tests. In the 21st century, it's clear that information and state power are very closely aligned, and in some ways information is becoming the currency of power, so if you're the United States, you don't want Tick Tock or Huawei have access to all the data about your population and of course vice versa if you are China, so one of the fantasies that we perhaps had in the 1990s was that the technological revolution would make national borders obsolete and create a good single global common.

It doesn't seem to me at the moment that this is how things are working, that the technological revolution may in fact be recreating strong national blocs and entities, yes, well, I think I think that the idea of ​​a centralized global control Elite and a citizens massive structures at your disposal is the model of the Tower of Babel. Yes, you know we need it. You see this in AI systems as well, because for an AI system to process information about the world properly, it must have a very differentiated hierarchy of distribution. In calculus there can't just be a centralized algorithmic system that works on the basis of a few algorithmic principles and then mass undifferentiated activity and the proper model for governance has to be something like, I think, something like the Catholic principle of subsidiarity where you have sovereignty inherent to various strata of the hierarchical system and that hierarchy is quite deep and dense and differentiated, so the problem with the globalist view is that there is the notion that you can have a centralized cabal that can make centralized systems relatively simple .

The decisions and all the power that should be distributed across all these subsidiary organizations can be accumulated in the Central Authority which simply cannot function, so there will be a place for something like sovereign nation states because you want governance to work as locally as possible. . you might be able to, so you need countries, you need states, you need provinces, you need cities, you need municipalities, you need families and each of those levels of organization needs to get its fair share when it comes to political and economic power. Yes, I have an overwhelming amount of information it's not going to eliminate that, yes, so that's the problem with the globalist view, as far as I can tell, what do you think of the Abraham Accords?

Well, I think it's broadly, I think basically, in some ways, the story that I was told that I think is the right story. What I would add, you know, is that you know that both the Arabs and the Israelis are looking at Iran and, by the way, in the future they might be looking at Turkey because they remember the Ottoman Empire. ruled both Palestine and the Arab world for hundreds of years and as Erdogan has tried to revive this idea of ​​an Islamic turkey, he has made many of his neighbors quite nervous, so the feeling is that Iran could be the threat today, tomorrow, but yes, the Arabs. and the Israelis now understand that they have a core strategic interest in common, neither of them wants any country to be able to dominate the Middle East because if any country were to do so, it would directly threaten the independence of both the Arab states and Israel.

I did not recognize this in the past because many Arabs had the dream that there could be an Arab state that would dominate the Middle East that was the Vision of Saddam Hussein it was the Vision of Nassar in his eccentric way it was theGaddafi's vision but this pan-Arab vision or in some cases, a pan-Islamist vision of the Middle East, that is, a kind of vision, the Arabs have lost faith in it in general and therefore there is an understanding that their interests with Israel's interests are connected in this very geopolitical way, but at the same time.

There is the problem of the energy transition. The Gulf Arabs in particular used to think, "We have all this oil, it's going to be around forever, now they're not so sure if we're going to continue using an oil-powered engine." economy in a hundred years, etc., and with all these talks about carbon neutrality and so on by 2030 2040, any year, I mean, I'm a little skeptical that all of these things are going to happen in the way that yes, it's not So. Well, they're definitely not going to happen. I mean, the Biden administration itself has projected that it will take until 2240 to produce something like 100 degrees of reliance on renewable energy, so these ideas that we're going to get there by 2050 are not only absurd, they're blatant lies, but still the Arabs have to calculate because, on the other hand, they have fracking and they have greater competition from other sources, the Arabs have to calculate the price of oil, their income from oil in the long term will be trillions of dollars less than what who ever thought that there will be a long term decline in oil revenue streams and that means that in a country like Saudi Arabia where the population is growing and the government to stay in power needs to keep the people happy in some way manner.

You have to think about economic growth. Well, that means you need technology. It means you need investment. It means you need to have good relations with the government. people who are good at this, so there is also a real economic dimension that is new and that is now added to the Strategic, the third thing, and I think that some of the Americans involved in the Abraham Accords have not talked as much about this. but the truth is that neither the Arabs nor the Israelis trust the Americans as much as they did before, and you know, part of it is because of things like the Iran nuclear deal, which they thought was sacrificing their interests for the interests of the United States, but you also know it.

We elected Bush in 2001, then we turn 180 degrees, we elect Obama, then eight years later we turn around, we elect Trump, and then four years later we elect Biden, so people in countries where the United States The United States plays an important role in their security, they have to think more than before, well, we don't know who Americans will elect in 2024. Will it be Elizabeth Warren? Will it be Donald Trump again? You know they have no idea what we're going to do and, frankly, they don't. or so um so that means they have to work together, furthermore, American weakness actually helped fuel the Abraham Accords, so one of the disappointments that I have experienced in relation to the Biden Administration was what I saw as its rejection ideologically motivated of the progress made on the Abraham Accords front, from what I have been able to understand that the Saudis were playing an important role behind the scenes in pushing for the Abraham Accords and it seems to me that if the Biden Administration had resorted to the Saudis with an attitude that unfortunately would have also allowed Trump to claim some credit for the Abraham Accords, if this Biden administration had gone with open arms to the Saudis in a sense, they could have been the next signatories of the Abraham Accords.

Abraham and it seemed to me that the Biden Administration allowed an extremely narrow-minded parochial ideological view on Both Trump and the situation in the Middle East are sinking and an incredibly promising opportunity, not only on the peace front, but Americans were also very interested in getting some more Saudi oil, something they apparently failed miserably and then To address you, you know charming, charming regimes like Venezuela, so what do you think is going on regarding the Biden administration and the Saudis regarding the Abraham Accords? Well, you know, this is a really interesting and complicated story, but I'll put it as simply as I can: the Democratic party has basically been hating Saudi Arabia for 70 years.

The last Democrat who really liked the Saudis was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who visited Saudi Arabia in 1944, but during the Democrats of the 1950s. He actually hated the Saudis in general because they were very pro-Israel at the time. and they saw that the Eisenhower administration was leaning towards Nassar and generally towards the Arabs. Well, you're preferring a bunch of evil feudal monarchs over democratic Israel because you want oil and the oil monopolies are your friends, so being a good liberal democrat was hating the Saudis and hating Eisenhower for liking them, then you get to OPEC , you know the 1970s and now you have the oil cartel.

I think we've been protecting you from the Soviet Union and your enemies and you turn against us and you're raising the price, yeah, and at that time the working class of America was basically Democrats and the price of oil was tripling at a time when people were getting like 10 miles per gallon on a car and it was ruining people's lives and it was the Saudis who were doing it, then you add something like you know, then 911 comes and there were the Saudis, but also the Saudis were Bush friends, the Bush family. had a long connection with the Saudi royal family obviously Hanky ​​Panky is at work is evil is evil so now on top of all that comes the oil and the greenhouse gases that the Saudis are destroying the world because they are pumping everything That oil the atmosphere and any good relationship with the Saudis is like bending the knee to Big Oil in destroying human life through climate change.

I'm exaggerating but you can see what I mean, very good, you also saw widespread Saudi support for the Wahhabis as well and they are hitting them with drugs in the name of a fairly restrictive form of fundamentalist Islam exactly, but it seemed very good to me , so it's a perfect storm, but it still seemed to me that the American choice in the last five years was something like: Is it Iran or are the Saudis and Israelis right? And it seems to me that despite the many sins of the Saudis, the idea that they are not preferable to the Iranians is a form of political insanity.

Well, I think we should also add a factor here, which is that there has recently been a huge scandal. about Qatar's influence in European parliaments, where they actually arrested the vice president of the former vice president of the European Parliament and so on, the Qataris are very anti-Saudi, they have had a big fight with the Saudis in recent years, they also have a sort of softer relationship with Iran, they're very involved, you know, in Washington politics. Network, the head of a major Think Tank got into big trouble because of a relationship, so there is a sense in which you know that all the parties in the Gulf with deep pockets get into Washington politics and acquire networks of allies. just say it, there's and and the Democratic side of the spectrum is more aligned with soft on Iran uh uh uh pro-democracy leans a little bit towards the Muslim Brotherhood again.

I'm not saying everyone does this, but if you look at Washington politics, I can see some threads moving forward, okay, but what's the rationale for being soft on a rat? I don't see any reason for that at all. I mean, Iran is a terrible repressive theocracy with nuclear ambitions, it's a dangerous regime, so how can you be soft on Iran? Well, can I call you Jordan, by the way, or Mr. Peterson, you can certainly be okay? Well, me and I are Walter, by the way, after two hours, I think we should, but I think I could do that, but I think, look, if you believe, a whole generation has come to believe in the United States and not the all for bad reasons, like the Iraq war was the worst mistake the United States has made in the 21st century.

People would say that. and a war with Iran would be even worse than a war than the war in Iraq and it is very easy to start a war with Iran, but once it happens, you know it will be shit, it will divert us from China and the Middle East. there will be a call, etc., etc., so your number and also, we have to get out of the Middle East and think about China. Okay, so what's the biggest danger? What is the easiest way to get into a war in the Middle East? "There will be a confrontation with Iran, therefore you can't have a confrontation with Iran.

That's the way I think a lot of people are thinking and I think you know it and they say it and they will say it, and now you know I can." . I'm not telling you this is what they think because they can't read their minds, but I think the logic of the position is that we have to say we don't want an Iranian nuclear weapon, but in reality, if you are given a binary choice between a war with Iran with the United States fighting Iran to prevent it from going non-nuclear and then, or just hoping that if they get a nuclear weapon, we can deter them and Israel can deter them like everyone else with nuclear weapons has been deterred, they would say it's better to let them.

They have the bomb that war. I think that is the logic of the position and that the Iranians, smelling that as the logic of the position, have taken a very hard line in the negotiations and at this point our scammers continue to pressure the Biden Administration. that's what I think is probably happening, okay, we've wandered over a lot of territory, we talked about China, we talked about Russia, we talked about Iran, we talked about the Abraham Accords, we talked about the complexities of the Palestinian-Israeli situation, so that... I've covered a lot of the territory that I expected us to cover.

Is there anything left that you'd like to draw people's attention to? Well, you know, there's been a great conversation. I really enjoyed it um and we've touched on so many things that I guess I'd like to end by giving a little reason for people's optimism because they know that the world situation is bleak and there is a real danger of war, but this 300 year old Anglo-American system of a kind of commercial capitalism Global liberal framework does not stay there by accident there are solid reasons why the world order as we know it is possible that it can continue to last who knows how long but they are forces that sustain it.

One of them that we have talked about is that a diversified society with capitalist principles is actually incredibly creative and vital and continues to generate new technologies. New economic productivity. New ideas. New institutions that allow. You have to continually adapt to changing conditions and that gives you huge advantages over people who try to follow other systems or other approaches. The other advantage is geopolitical. Look, the United States is a maritime power. You know we are. We're not trying. No? I have no interest in conquering France as there are some really nice places in France. We, you know, you don't know, we occupied Japan after World War II, but we left, we didn't want to stay and you.

I know, but on the contrary, land powers like the Soviet Union continue to expand and want to dominate their neighbors in a way that a maritime power simply won't when a country like Russia, Iran or China starts threatening its neighbors, everyone wants to be our allies, so as China becomes more threatening, we can see how Japan is suddenly doubling its defense budget, it is deepening its relations with Australia, with India, you know, they are really working very hard. To build the alliance, Indians are waking up and becoming very active geopolitically, so the Abraham Accords appear in the Middle East, polls and the Baltics are engaged.

You know, the Swedes and the Finns want to join NATO, so when this system is threatened. by ambitious great powers, the other powers are organized into alliances and this is not new this is how Great Britain defeated Louis World War I is what brought down Hitler and Tojo in World War II and it was what defeated the Soviet Union, so there are things on our side and we need courage and vision and maybe even a little knowledge of history that can help us understand and evaluate these incredibly threatening and dramatic trends in the world history we are experiencing.

I think it's a great way to end this on that optimistic note. Yes, I think the principles on which this long productive Anglo-American article has been based are rock solid. particularly in comparison to all the known Alternatives and it is useful for us in the West to observe that and be encouraged and also understand that to the extent that those fundamental principles have spread throughout the world, what they have produced mainly in their consequences is a productivity , incomparable abundance and peace, sowe could have more of that and I also think that's within our reach, so it's a good optimistic projection for 2023 and hopefully calm, stability and wisdom will prevail.

Thank you so much. for speaking to me today and to everyone watching on YouTube or listening on the associated podcast platforms, thank you for your time and attention. I'm going to spend an extra half hour now on the Daily wire plus platform. I am going to speak with Mr. Walter Russell Mead about his biographical progress. I am very interested in outlining the details of the lives of successful people. It's always an interesting story and I think it's useful for people to understand how a productive Fate works. it manifests itself over the course of life and that's what we're going to do, thank you to the Daily Wire and the people for facilitating this conversation and happy new year to everyone who's watching and listening, thanks again Walter for today's conversation.

Hello everyone, I encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com.