Robert Kagan: We’re Transitioning to a Post-American World
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show, contributing writer at The Atlantic and senior fellow at Brookings. His most recent book is Rebellion, How Anti-Liberalism is Tearing America Apart Again. It is Bob Kagan. How are you doing, Bob? I'm great, Tim. How are you? I'm doing well. It sounds like Bob missed my live stream last night on YouTube where I bimbo-fied myself. And so if you guys also missed that, it might be something to take a look at. I thought I looked pretty good. I understand where Brian's coming from now, what the appeal is. And so we'll just kind of leave that there. I want to start with a little behind the scenes. I don't think this should embarrass you because it's kind of glazing you.
But last June, when we engaged in the 12-day war, we started bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities. You know, some of my neocon muscles were flaring a little bit on the podcast, and I was going, okay. You know, I don't really trust Trump. I don't like Trump, but... That's just a little, you know, just a little kind of mind sweep over the nuclear facilities in Iran. Don't hate that. And, you know, I was kind of vacillating back and forth on it. And some others in our circle were even more supportive of it than that. We'll just leave it there. And Bob calls me. I'm standing right outside there on my back porch. And he's like, don't let these old neocons... trick you into thinking this is a good idea. OK, this is a this is a disaster.
We can't predict how bad it is. You can't trust Trump. And I don't know, in that 12 days, I'm not sure you are quite vindicated. Ten months later, you're looking quite prescient on your view of wanting to oppose Trump and his adventurism in the Middle East at all costs. So why don't you just give us a little bit on what what your instinct was on this?
Setting aside my concern, which is not really worth setting aside, about the domestic consequences of Trump being at war, which I think we have still yet to fully discover. If we're going to be at war for several months, the opportunities for declaring national security issues on one thing or another, arresting protesters because they're domestic terrorists, et cetera, we haven't fully gone down this road. But more from a strategic point of view, I did not believe that bombing alone was going to solve our problem with Iran. And this is we somehow forgot. You know, we learned this lesson in the 1990s. There was this great idea, especially after the decimation of the of the Iraqi army in Kuwait in the you know, in the first Gulf War.
where our missiles, our airplanes, just completely decimated their force, really. And then it was just a matter of mopping up at the end. And this gave, I think, Americans and American strategists even a great perception that we could really accomplish our goals pretty much through air power alone. And you may remember, I don't know how much you were paying attention, but people like Don Rumsfeld and a guy who used to be a big She's named Richard Pearl, had this idea that you could pretty much cut the armed forces of the United States by a third and just do everything, you know, with missiles and bombs. And so and the Clinton administration tried to accomplish a lot through air power. You know, they bombed Saddam Hussein for four days in 1998, 99, and that didn't really do anything.
Then there was the long bombing campaign against Slobodan Milosevic in 99, which was supposed to be over in three days and then went on for three months. And it really wasn't until we threatened to send in troops. that he capitulated. Anyway, long, long way of saying we have learned before that bombing alone wasn't going to do it. And now we've had the most abject demonstration possible because it has been a free fly pretty much, although we just lost a an F-15, apparently. But for the most part, it's been open skies. We've been able to bomb Iran at will, hit everything that we want to hit with remarkable, you know, accuracy and the brilliance of our forces and their equipment, et cetera.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:12–6:08
2
How does the U.S. military strategy affect global alliances?
6:08–12:30
3
What are the implications of Trump's approach to Iran?
12:30–20:09
4
How has Trump's foreign policy impacted NATO?
20:09–25:36
5
What are the consequences of U.S. withdrawal from global leadership?
25:36–31:55
6
How are U.S. allies reacting to current military actions?
31:55–36:24
7
What are the potential outcomes of the conflict in Iran?
36:24–40:40
8
How does this episode reflect on the future of U.S. foreign policy?
40:40–56:36
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Bulwark Daily
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