Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday, so he's back. Editor-at-large of the Bulwark, Bill Kristol. Hey, Bill. Hey, Tim. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. You know, I'm disappointed on behalf of all the Timothee Chalamet stans out there. It's three straight snubs for him at the Oscars. He should have three already and yet zero.
I think it's potentially discrimination against twinks. It's at play here. It could be something to that, but I don't know. We're hoping for more representation in the future. You should have him on the podcast tomorrow to discuss that. I've been trying. I've been trying. You want me to place a call? I could help with that, you know. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I'm sure you have some New Yorkans.
He's a New Yorker. I'm sure you guys have some, you know. same temple or something. We want to talk about Iran to start. And you had Bob Kagan on yesterday, your Sunday conversations with Bill. And as we've come to expect from Bob, not exactly optimistic about the state of affairs, but super insightful, knows the region, understands.
So why don't you just kind of summarize what he described as the fork in the road facing Trump and where we're at right now with this war? Yeah, sure.
You had him on about six weeks ago after his big piece in the Atlantic, which was sort of pre-war, obviously, on kind of what Trump was doing to our alliances and making the world much more dangerous. And I would say he views this war very much in that context. People should go back and look at your discussion with him and then look at mine if they want.
And I captured the highlights in warning shots this morning. No, what he's so good at, I think, Bob, is he puts it in the bigger context of And it is striking. I mean, this war has damaged our relationship with all of our allies, basically. Europe, not consulted, can't believe we've got into this.
Now we're calling on them for help after rejecting their help early on or mocking the idea that they could help. They care about Ukraine. They care about Russia. And this war is helping Russia with the oil sales, the oil waiving of the sanctions. So from a European point of view... And prices going higher.
Right, right. Exactly. Yeah, which helps Putin a ton. So it's a double.
What it seems like is things were kind of rickety there. So... From their point of view, it's like he didn't consult us. He's gone to war without a plan. It's helping Russia, which is really the existential threat we are having to deal with without Trump's help because he's not helping Ukraine these days. And so now he wants us to help in this trade.
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Chapter 2: What are the implications of the Iran war on U.S. foreign policy?
Yeah, right. It's not like those pansy French start cutting and running, right? That's notable.
It deepens the rift that was already there that you and Mom discussed six weeks ago and just makes it even harder to fix it. I mean, it's, you know... Iraq, the Germans and the French, I remember well, did not agree with our decision. We tried very hard to get them on board. We had endless meetings, two UN Security Council votes. We got a lot of other European nations on board.
And we respected, in a sense, the German and French decision. I mean, there were members of Congress who made fun of the French, you know, the French was... The Freedom Prize. But, you know, the Bush was polite. We continued to meet with them. They didn't go out of their way to cause trouble for the other European nations that were helping us.
So that preserved the alliance despite that pretty important rift, right? We're in the opposite situation now where we're really deepening the rift in the alliance, almost making it irreparable. The Trump people sold themselves. They're going to be tough on China.
And now Trump's asking for help from China actually to open the Strait and pulling troops out of the China theater to, I don't know what, maybe do a land operation, ground operation in Iran. And if the Chinese are watching this, it's like we can't keep the Strait open. You know, the Strait between Taiwan and China is...
It's a lot tougher to deal there with the Chinese military than the Iranian military. So I don't think they're getting very intimidated by what we're doing here in Iran.
We talked about this a little bit in a couple of the shows last week, too. And, you know, the Japanese, South Koreans, like we were moving troops. We're also moving weapons systems now to the Middle East. And also, you know, they are going to feel the energy costs spike even more acutely than we will, because like that's where they're getting their energy from. Right.
They get almost all their energy in Japan, certainly from abroad anyway, and a lot of it from the Gulf. So, yeah, totally. So they're losers on this. And again, we're consulted. Japan's kind of an important ally. We're not going to make a decision on the Gulf based on Japan, and they wouldn't expect us to. Would they expect to get a phone call at some point saying, hey, heads up? Yeah.
So, again, just treating them as if we don't care what they say, which Trump doesn't, I suppose. One point Bob makes that I hadn't really thought about is the Gulf states themselves. I mean, they've sort of cast in with us. They've cast in with the Trump family. There's a lot of deals.
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Chapter 3: How has the Trump administration's approach affected international alliances?
was kind of behind us as we cut all these corrupt deals and do our business dealings. And they've got to be thinking, was that really worth it? I see all that reporting that MBS has been for this war and behind it, which I guess must be true. But I don't think he speaks for the other Gulf states, honestly. And I wonder, I don't know what his foreign policy judgment is either.
Anyway, so basically, it's weakening us around the world. I think this is Bob's core insight that people, we look at these things so much in regional terms, it's understandable, obviously, and that is the primary effect, presumably, But the degree to which right now, two weeks in, we look like we don't know what we're doing. We went to war without a plan. It's not going well.
We keep saying it's going better than it is. We keep saying it's going to be over soon, but also we could be doubling down and sending in ground troops. And people look at this as the U.S. This is a superpower. If you're an ally, you're supposed to depend on. And if you're an enemy, you're supposed to be scared of. And in both cases, we've eroded that.
Yeah.
Just really quick on the Saudis. I don't want to pretend to be an expert on this stuff. I did do some work a couple of years ago for some Saudi Arabian dissidents who were being targeted by the regime. So I have a decent amount of familiarity with the politics there. I don't think it's crazy.
that there could end up being a little bit of inconsistency or incongruity between what they want and what UAE and others want, right? Because the big article in The Times over the weekend about how Dubai might ever recover from this, the types of people that move to Dubai are not really keen.
They have plenty of money and resources, and it's not really worth the risk that a missile's going to hit their high-rise condo to live there.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the Marine Expeditionary Forces in the Iran conflict?
There are other fancy places in the world they can live. And so... the Saudi and Iran, you know, geopolitical kind of competition is, is at play here. So I, you know, I, I don't think it's impossible that MBS is, you know, kind of working back to you.
I don't know if the president's son-in-law supportive of this and that maybe the, the other Gulf States were like initially kind of supportive and, and are starting to get weak. I don't think that's a crazy development potentially. Just one other thing on the Cagan conversation, in addition to kind of the strategic, um, problems that Trump has created throughout the rest of the world.
It's just like he now is kind of at a decision point a little bit about what to do. I mean, I think that many of us thought just based on Trump's past behavior that he was going to do what he's done before, which is kind of like declare victory. There's a guy I follow online who said one of Trump's great political superpowers is he can always just say anything.
hey, we did it, you know, and he'll have a base of supporters that will believe him and go along with him. That's the advantage of having a cult of personality. And so kind of a lot of folks, I think, assume that was going to happen here. I think Bob points out that that is getting a little tougher to do now, certainly than in the 12-day war, you know, for various reasons.
And, you know, potentially... At some point, they're going to have to have kind of a shit or get off the pot decision here that they both carry different types of consequences and ramifications. Just talk about that a little bit.
Yeah, that was the second big point, Bob. I see the New York Times is making this point this morning, too. It is, yeah, we're getting to a decision point. I guess Trump can delay it, but you pay a price for that, too. I mean, do we go in in a serious way and try to secure the Strait? I mean, the original goal, remember, the grand, the big goal was regime change.
You don't hear much about that anymore. Now the real big goal would be securing the Strait, which is kind of pathetic because the Strait was open until two weeks ago.
And getting rid of their missile capabilities. I think that's the other thing that they keep saying now. Right, but that we probably have done.
So I've assumed he would cut and run. I assumed tacoing was the more logical thing for him to do from his own personal point of view, which is always his main point of view. I kind of still think it's slightly more likely, I guess, than really going all in with Marine Expeditionary Forces landing on... on the Iranian side of the strait and all the risks that entails.
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Chapter 5: How are domestic politics influencing the funding for the Iran war?
I mean, you have troops there on Iranian soil. I mean, when the IRGC is still running the country, I mean, there's so many risks and that's such an escalation. So I still am 60-40 that he doesn't do that. Bob is more 60-40 the other way, I would say. He just thinks Trump has gone so far down the road of
bellowing about how this is so important and fundamental and it's going to be such a great victory that it's a little harder for him to back down. I don't know. You can't make a judgment about the war until we know which of those decisions he makes and then what the effects of each of those decisions is. Both are bad. Both are bad.
He could have bugged out, honestly, after the first 48, 72 hours, and I think taking credit, and I don't think it would have been more like June, And he could have done a huge amount of damage to the missiles and all this. And he could have just said, you know, we have made the world safer. We're the area safer. We weakened this horrible machine. We killed a huge number of their top leaders.
Thank you. Goodbye. A little harder to bug out two weeks in, but I still think he could and could. The damage, though, making us look weak would be real. The damage of getting involved, obviously, with ground troops and everything that that implies is a higher risk and more fundamental. What I said to Bob, I guess I did push him a little on, well, do you really think he's going to stick with it?
It's so risky. And Bob then sort of played the final card on that side, which is nothing, which is, are we sure that Trump doesn't see the advantages of having a war go on for a in terms of his domestic authoritarian agenda.
Presidents have used wars to crack down on free speech and crack down on dissent, and clearly they're interested in doing that, and they've got elections coming up, and the national security sort of excuse can be used to do all kinds of things, and that was the slightly dark note that the conversation closed on.
Yeah, I definitely think that you can't rule anything out on this front. We're going to get a little bit more into what they're kind of threatening right now, though it's been a lot of empty threats on this front, I think, too. We should also just be honest about All right, everybody, it is seafood season. I had a shrimp po' boy last night that was pretty yummy.
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Chapter 6: How is the war impacting global oil markets?
This is the mightiest military force in the world. We're overwhelming. We're intimidating. We're crushing. We only fight pipsqueaks that we can crush. But hey, could you guys all help? And it's the number one country on that list when he had the to eat or whatever it was, five or six countries he was asking for was China. How pathetic does that look?
And if you're Japan, you think, really, wait a second, aren't we supposed to be like, he's inviting China to come into the Strait of Hormuz? I mean, I don't know. It's just the degree to which this has a sort of spiraling out of control fiasco effect, I think is what strikes me.
It's also in pretty big contrast to the whole – how long ago was it that there was like a lot of high-minded foreign policy analysts talking about how Trump was changing the world order? And we're going to do the Don Roe Doctrine. And spheres of influence are all the rage now. And we're focused on Greenland because of its strategic importance on our side of the globe.
And it's like, well, OK, well, how did the spheres of influence down road doctrine turn out? Because now we're in a quagmire in the Middle East and Trump wants help from people in Asia and Europe and they're not going to give it to him.
I mean, the J.D. Vance's of the world, if they would say what they really think, would say, I guess, I mean, truthfully, I guess, look, hey, that all depended on us bossing around little countries in the Western Hemisphere or maybe Europe.
greenland sort of in the western hemisphere i guess and you know and and that's kind of what that whole don roe doctrine was this is why vance in a way is more consistent if you're america first you shouldn't get involved in these things the middle east but you can't really pull this off you know in the same way so but vance has been kind of quiet hasn't he been have you been you've been following it closely there jd has been quiet um
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Chapter 7: What challenges do U.S. allies face with the current military strategy?
Greenland is in the Western Hemisphere, right? You have me for a second. Just because of the time thing? I don't know. I'm a little confused about it. Those maps are very misleading. It's that curving thing that they do. I was pretty good at the geography B in third grade. I was like, I think that that's right. But, you know, your memory starts to fade. Yeah, JD's been pretty quiet.
Let's talk about the MAGA response to this a little bit. I want to come back to the economic stuff, too. JD gave one kind of speech where he was doing like the condescending JD thing where he was talking about how you guys want me to tell you what I really said to the president in our private repartee in the interview. you know, in the skiff and I would not do that because it would be illegal.
And, you know, he needs to get good guidance and we're not the same as the liberals that, you know, that tell everything to the New York times. And so I, and that was like what he tried to do. He hasn't been, he hasn't been fighting on social media. I mean, I think all you have to do is point to the gap between this and what happened after the Alex Freddie and Rene Good murders.
I mean, Rene Good got killed by a government agent and J.D. Vance was at the White House briefing room the next day insulting the victim. insulting the people that were concerned about it, insulting local law enforcement and talking about how good and right it was that we had masked people in the streets, like cracking down on free citizens.
So JV saw that as a political victory that he was in line with, like, and he was arguing with people on social media about it, like, like a random troll. Not now. You know, simultaneously to that, in this intro right feud, have you been following Megyn Kelly versus Mark Levin? Just so out of two tweets.
It's not the most elevated discourse, I would say, on the internet. And that's saying something.
Well, you've got Mark Levin saying that Megyn Kelly is a shill and doesn't know anything and is stupid. Megyn Kelly said that Mark Levin has a micro-penis and is wrong. Marjorie Taylor Greene this morning said this, I wholeheartedly support Megyn Kelly telling the world that Mark Levin has a micropenis. It's the most deserved insult, and I don't care if it's vulgar.
And Trump's gigantic defense of Levin only enrages the base more. People are done, all caps, MAGA, destroyed by micropenis Mark. So that was MTG. She's a little bit sharper on the nicknames. Trump's nicknames are starting to kind of taper off. But I think there's something there from MTG. You know, how much do these people matter? How much influence do they have?
And we see in the polls that Trump does have a cult of personality. There's a big group of people who go along with him with whatever. But it's pretty telling that Trump is out there complimenting Mark Levin, who was the never Trumper, was all in for Ron DeSantis. Was that a never-Trumper in the sense of voting for the Democrats? But within the Republican fighting, he was always anti-Trump.
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