The Wars in Ukraine and Gaza Have Changed. America’s Policy Hasn’t.

Joe Biden’s presidency has been dominated by two foreign policy crises: the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The funding the United States has provided in those wars — billions to both Ukraine and Israel — has drawn backlash from both the right and the left. And now, as the conflicts move into new stages with no clear end game, Biden’s policies are increasingly drawing dissent from the center. Richard Haass is an icon of the U. S. foreign policy establishment. He served as the president of the Council on Foreign Relations for 20 years and currently writes the newsletter Home & Away. He’s recently been making the case that our foreign policy is insufficiently independent — that we’ve become captured by allies that have interests that diverge from our own. His view of this moment is a signal of larger shifts that could be coming in the U. S. foreign policy consensus. In this conversation, we discuss why he thinks America’s current strategy on both Ukraine and Israel is untenable, what he thinks the north star for our strategy in both cases should be, the Republican Party’s 180-degree turn from internationalism to isolationism, what America’s biggest national security threat really is and more. Mentioned: “The Two-State Mirage” by Marc Lynch and Shibley Telhami Book Recommendations: The World That Wasn’t by Benn Steil Sparks by Ian Johnson Diplomats at War by Charles Trueheart Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Ezra Klein?

  From New York Times Opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show.

• 0:23Ezra Klein?

  Joe Biden's presidency now is dominated by two foreign policy crises: Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Hamas's attack on Israel, which then led to Israel's invasion of Gaza. Early on, both crises lent themselves to clarity: there was no justification for Russia's invasion, there was no justification for Hamas's massacre of Israeli civilians. Both have become considerably more complex. Ukraine does not seem able to fully liberate its territory from Russia. The scale and ferocity and displacement and death toll of Israel's response in Gaza has made Israel, in the eyes of much of the world, in the eyes even of many Americans, into the aggressor. In both of these, America is a supporting actor. We do not call the play.

• 1:07Ezra Klein?

  We give Ukraine arms and encircle Russia in sanctions. We give Israel arms and money and protection from UN resolutions, and we ask in return that it act with some respect for Palestinian life, with some view of a peaceful future. But what happens when the lead actors in these conflicts refuse to act as we wish? This is the phase of the wars that we're now in. Zelensky continues to call for full repulsion of Russia's presence, long after many believe that is possible. Netanyahu is prosecuting a war so brutal that Biden is criticized in public. But though we keep supporting Israel, Netanyahu routinely and publicly rejects our vision of both how the war should be conducted now and what should happen afterwards. And that's put Biden in a tough spot.

• 1:50Ezra Klein?

  Americans disapprove of his handling of both Ukraine and Israel. Republicans are turning towards isolationism, and I think, more accurately put, they're turning towards Trumpism. Whatever Donald Trump says is what they believe. They're refusing to even vote in the House on the latest Ukraine aid package. Israel is splitting the Democratic coalition. It is a central problem for Biden in 2024. It has become not just a foreign policy problem, but a domestic politics problem. And an interesting signal of the frustration and fracture here is Richard Haas. Haas was president of the Council on Foreign Relations for 20 years and is now president emeritus, served in multiple presidential administrations, and he is, as much as anyone

• 2:31Ezra Klein?

  anywhere is, the walking, talking center of America's foreign policy establishment. But I've been noticing in his media appearances and in his Substack, which is called Home and Away, a very particular kind of critique emerging, that our foreign policy is insufficiently independent, that we've become captured by allies we do not control and are not willing to confront, and oftentimes don't even really seem able to influence. Haas has been urging Biden to go around Netanyahu to speak directly to the Israeli people. He's been arguing that we need a new strategy on Ukraine, and so I wanted to hear him out. As always, my email, [email protected]. Richard Haas, welcome to the show.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Great to be with you.

• 3:17Ezra Klein?

  So last Friday, the Netanyahu government released a proposal for what they think the day after in Gaza should look like. What did that proposal say?

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Well, it actually told us very little, other than the day after looks like today. It looks like continued Israeli military occupation, some, I think, unrealistic hope that they would find, quote unquote, "locals" to work with, no mention of the Palestinian Authority. So as I read it, Ezra, it sounded to me pretty much like a recipe for open-ended occupation and still lacking the political, what would you call it, complement or analog to Israel's military strategy.

• 3:55Ezra Klein?

  What was the Biden administration's response?

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Well, Jake Sullivan said he had some concerns. I think it was decidedly unenthusiastic, and I think the administration, not that it needed any reminding, got reminded that this Israeli government and this American administration are on very different pages. Indeed, in some ways, they're not in the same book.

• 4:16Ezra Klein?

  I'm going to admit, and I think I'm somebody who follows this reasonably closely, that I'm confused about how to describe America's position on this now. So, we support Israel, we think Netanyahu is wrong on almost every particular, and we're going to do like nothing about that divergence. We're going to have concerns about that divergence. Or another version of this might be that we support Israel's right to defend itself. We think that defense has gone way too far. It's over the top, as the president said at that press conference. But we support Israel anyway, that there's what feels like a quite growing gap and a very explicit gap between what Israel and the Netanyahu government say they want, what we say we want.

• 4:58Ezra Klein?

  But then nothing that I really see happening to close the gap between our articulated hopes, desires, beliefs, strategic needs, and what's happening there. Like, what am I missing here?

• 5:11Speaker 01

  You're not confused. Essentially, the United States and Israel see this very differently. The administration has been quietly and increasingly critical of what Israel is doing and not doing. But what's missing is any so what. So you have a situation where from almost the get-go, the president, as everyone listening to this will remember, was extraordinarily supportive of Israel's right and necessity to respond to the barbarism of October 7th. But then you had a real divergence from what you might call the heavy-handed, not discriminating nature of the Israeli response. We've been almost like a disappointed uncle, saying, gee, we really don't think this is

• 5:56Speaker 01

  the way to do it. Gee, we really don't think this is in your interests or ours. And let me take a step back. What's odd about US policy now, that we're five months into this, is everything seems to be premised... On the notion that we can persuade this Israeli government, this Israeli prime minister to see things differently and to do things differently. But there's virtually no evidence, or precious little evidence, that that hypothesis is working. Yes, the Israelis have let some aid in. But otherwise, they are going in a very different direction. So to answer your question, I don't think the policy of quiet or gentle persuasion is working. What the administration has to contemplate is whether it's willing

• 6:39Speaker 01

  to set out on a much more independent policy, not with this Israeli government as a partner, but almost to distinguish between this Israeli government and this prime minister on one hand, and Israel and US Israeli relations on the other.

• 6:54Ezra Klein?

  Let me try to strong man the Biden administration's view here. When I talk to them about this, what I hear is something that you said there too, which is, you don't know what we're doing behind closed doors. You don't know how strong the president's communications and conversations with Netanyahu are. You don't know the kinds of things that we are pushing them on, preventing. You know, sometimes it is not emotionally satisfying to work behind closed doors, but it is the path of maximal influence. Now, one response to this might be that it does not feel to a lot of us like we are being very influential. In fact, it feels like Netanyahu almost takes a certain delight, or maybe to frame it less emotionally, that he sees a certain important politics for himself

• 7:37Ezra Klein?

  in publicly spitting on what we are, saying he's very public about his disagreement with us. But one thing I think that this theory misses, that is very present in a lot of at least liberal thinking about this issue and liberal feeling about this issue, is that, you know, the question a lot of people have about foreign policy is not simply, what are we doing? How influential are we? But what are we complicit in? And for a lot of people, where even the administration is saying, what has happened in Gaza has gone much too far. The idea that America is supplying arms to that, that it is protecting it from UN pressure, that we are not just complicit but supportive in it, whatever we say, like we are actually providing material, feels terrible, right? There is a moral dimension to foreign policy. How do you think about that set of concerns?

• 8:21Ezra Klein?

  Both the pushback from the Biden people and the kind of slightly less realist take that I think is powering a lot of liberal backlash?

• 8:30Speaker 01

  A couple of reactions. One is that this is typical of a situation where you have a close relationship with another country, but it doesn't mean you agree on everything. So we can't throw the entire relationship to the side because we disagree, for example, with how Israel is prosecuting the war in Gaza. Israel faces some very real challenges, from Iran, from Iran-backed proxies and so forth. So how we thread that needle is not easy. One idea I've been advocating for is we can continue to provide Israel with military help, which gets at what you were suggesting, but say it can't be used in certain settings. If we provide you with certain types of large ordinance, large bombs, those can't be used in populated areas of Gaza.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  And there's other areas where I would say the administration has been unwilling, I think the president more than anyone else, has been unwilling to separate himself. We finally have begun to distribute a draft resolution in the UN Security Council after vetoing three over the last few months. We should have done this much sooner, where we could control the text and we could distinguish ourselves between what Israel is doing and what we are. I've advocated the president give a speech. I've actually advocated the president go to the Knesset, take a leaf out of Bibi Netanyahu's book, who came to the Congress, trash Barack Obama's Iran deal. Well, I think the president should go to the Knesset, speak over the head of this Israeli government directly to the Israeli people.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  In some ways, don't let Bibi control the narrative. We could get tougher economically. We could, for example, start saying that any Israeli good produced in occupied areas, in settlements or something, that those are going to face a special tariff, or they're going to at least be labeled as coming from occupied territories. So there's lots of things the United States could do to express disapproval with Israel without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

• 10:21Ezra Klein?

  I want to go back to the question of arms for a minute. When I talk to a lot of people on this issue and I say, what is the leverage America has here? What should America actually be doing that it is not? A lot of the debate is about things like calling for a ceasefire, but just in a practical way, if they wanted to use leverage, what do they have? One thing I'll hear is that we should just stop treating Israel exceptionally from the perspective of our own arms. I mean, we have laws, the Arms Control Export Act, the so-called sort of Leahy rules, and they require for anybody getting arms shipments from us, a pretty stringent look at whether those arms are being used in ways that violate human rights or go against American policy. In what we give and do not give Ukraine, there's been a very public debate about which arms

• 11:05Ezra Klein?

  they can have and what they can do with them and what going too far would look like. And there are all kinds of things Ukraine wants that we don't give them. And you know, the argument for some of these people is that we should just de-exceptionalize this, that Israel has been given special exemptions from some of these rules. There was a State Department official who resigned in part over this and has talked about it. We've sort of created a special pathway for their arms, but that this is a problem, that we actually don't need new laws, we don't need new rules, we just need to enforce the ones we have. What do you think of that?

• 11:34Speaker 01

  I'm pretty sympathetic to that. Look, we had obvious disagreements with Israel in 56 during the Suez Crisis. I was involved in something in 1991. This is when the Iraqis first launched missiles against the Israelis. And the Israelis went to then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and said, please give us the codes, what's called IFF, Identify Friendly Versus Foe, so that Israeli aircraft could fly against Iraq. And we said, no. We didn't give them a green light there. We said, that threatens the cohesion of this coalition we built. We'll take care of it, thank you very much. You've got to stand down. The Israelis weren't happy and they stood down. We subtracted out certain aid from Israel during the loan guarantees, also during the

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Bush 41 administration. So we have had times where we have... Basically not given Israel carte blanche, however you want to describe it. We have disagreed with them and they've paid a certain price for it. So I'd be prepared to do that. Now, now, again, all I'm saying is it's got to be measured and we've got to recall that, again, Israel faces a larger menu of threats, which is why I would not be in favor with holding arms, say. But the idea of saying we're going to insist on certain what are called end user controls, that you can't use these arms in certain situations where there's lots of civilians present, I think is totally legitimate.

• 12:54Ezra Klein?

  I think that's an interesting thing in the American debate about Israel, that Israel faces a large menu of threats, as you put it, which is true, very true. In a way, you'd think that would give us more leverage in the relationship. Israel really needs American support, right? The fact that we put battleships nearby to say, if Iran gets into this in any significant way, they can somewhat expect that we are going to have a role as well. That was an important thing that happened right at the beginning of this war. And yet, in some ways, it is used often in the opposite way. I think the question I've had about the Biden administration, the one that I don't feel like I'm able to get a good answer to, but maybe you are, is what is the resistance to using the actual leverage we have?

• 13:36Ezra Klein?

  At this point, given that, again, there's a divergence in articulated policy, there's a lot of political costs being paid by the Biden administration at this point for the level of support they've given Israel. In ways that do not track how we are in other places, there feels like a real resistance to saying, we're going to do anything here but words. Why?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Let me refer to a wise man I once appeared on a television show with, named Ezra Klein. You divided American thinking about Israel among three generations. And the oldest generation, which essentially is the president's, is extremely sympathetic, sees Israel still in the founding moment, 1948, probably through 67. Israel is David. Israel is democracy. It's a special relationship. And I think the president's still there. My guess is, more than my guess, younger people in the administration feel differently. And that's also, by the way, at the risk of getting ahead of ourselves, something of a warning, I would suggest, to the Israelis. Joe Biden's reluctance to take on Israel

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Is not the future. In some ways, it's the past. And one of the things that I'm most worried about, because I care about this relationship, is times the cavalier approach, the Israeli leadership acts towards this relationship, assuming that it will remain special, assuming that Israel will always have a degree of freedom that no other ally or partner of the United States enjoys. I don't agree. I don't see that. So I think there's a shortsightedness there that potentially will come back to haunt Israel.

• 15:07Ezra Klein?

  I want to come back to, Adia, that Joe Biden should do what Bibi Netanyahu has done and go around Netanyahu and give a speech directly to the Israeli Knesset, which is their version of our Congress. What would you want him to say in that speech?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  It's essential that the President of the United States stand up and say, I'm sympathetic to what you're doing. Draw the parallel, say, to 9/11. But then he says, we overreached after 9/11, and that led to Iraq, and we paid an enormous price. So it's understandable that you want to do what your government is doing, but from where I sit, and I'm sympathetic, I'm even empathetic, I also am critical. I just don't think it will work. And I would go through the logic, or if you will, illogic, of some of the Israeli position, the idea that you can eliminate Hamas, that you can only bring to a situation military instruments and not have political instruments.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  It's almost as if Clausewitz was never translated into Hebrew. Where is the political dimension of Israeli policy? And the president can sympathize and say, look, what happened was barbaric. I understand all the opportunities the Palestinians have had in the past. What he should do, I would say, is make the case why Israel's policy is not in the long-term interests of Israel, if you want it to be a secure, prosperous, Jewish, democratic state. Occupation can't go on forever. Why it's not in the interest of the US-Israeli relationship. He would talk about the various conditions and tests that would be presented to Palestinians. He wouldn't stand up and even necessarily even mention two-state solution, only to say,

• 16:50Speaker 01

  I think that's the ultimate thing. I understand that you're not ready for it. Well, let me talk about some of the conditions or tests the Palestinians would have to meet. So I think the president, how would I put it? If I had to choose his approach, he would take his lead from Itzhak Rabin, not Shimon Peres. Itzhak Rabin was a reluctant peacemaker. And as a result, he could bring the body politic of Israel along. When he said, this isn't easy for me. Israelis got it. Shimon Peres was never really successful because he was an enthusiastic peacemaker. So I think President Biden has to sympathize, empathize with the Israelis, but point out the error of their ways, present an alternative trajectory, but reassure them, it's not going

• 17:34Speaker 01

  to be imposed on them. Here's the test that will be applied and make the case that if we can get there, that is far, far better for Israel than the alternative of not getting there. You've been lobbying the administration directly on doing this. What has been their response to you? I believe there's considerable sympathy on the idea of the president giving a major speech, probably not going to the Knesset, but giving a major speech before some audience here in the United States. The administration is also now circulating its own draft resolutions. Not quite clear to me whether they really intend to go forward with it, or it's a bit of leverage against the Israeli government. I don't get the sense that they're prepared yet to put conditions on military aid, though

• 18:18Speaker 01

  I think they could on its use. They've introduced the sanctions. I don't get the sense they're prepared to broaden economic sanctions yet. But these things are being talked about. The last four or five months have, I think, brought home to most senior people in the administration, not to mention a lot of junior people in the administration, that our policy isn't working. I just come back from the Persian Gulf. And it's not just that Israel is radicalizing a new generation of Arabs, who couldn't care less about Palestinians six months ago. Suddenly, the Palestinian cause has been reawakened in the Middle East. It's not just that Israel is slightly poisoning its own relationship with the Arab world, but we are losing standing.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Everywhere I went, this is a really toxic combination for America's reputation, because we're seen as not standing by certain friends who deserve us, and we're standing by, too uncritically, by others. That is a really bad combination for the position of the United States in the world.

• 19:18Ezra Klein?

  When I've thought about this canister idea and Joe Biden giving a speech like this, one of the things I wonder about with it is whether in American politics, we sufficiently appreciate or take seriously how right-wing Israeli politics has really become. They don't like Netanyahu anymore. He has failed them. They would like to see other leadership. Benny Gantz is a more reasonable person than Netanyahu. But in terms of the things that are dominant beliefs among US policymakers, particularly things like the only answer to this is a two-state solution, that Palestinians should be responsible for governing the West Bank and Gaza. It's not just that Netanyahu disagrees with this now, but that the Israeli center disagrees with it now.

• 20:02Ezra Klein?

  I saw a poll not long ago that asked Israelis, if supporting a two-state solution was a cost of keeping American support for Israel, should Israelis support a two-state solution, or they should give up on American support for Israel? And a majority, a solid majority, said, give up on American support for Israel. And so that's been a question in my mind, that, you know, when you were talking about Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, when I talk to people who work on this issue and have worked on it for a very long time, and I talk to them about who they talk to, right? And these are all people who know Israel much better than I do. I always get a bit of a sense that their contacts, like the people they know, are not the people in power anymore, by and large.

• 20:42Ezra Klein?

  That like there's a, like a desire to work with the Israeli government of 2007, but not really a plan for what to do with the Israeli polity of 2024.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  I was smiling because I tend to agree with you. I think a lot of Americans, particularly American Jews, have this view of Israel, which is Paul Newman in Exodus. It's Ari bin Canaan, and it's outdated. It's a liberal, Western-oriented Israel. And that just ignores the demographic shifts and the policy shifts within Israel. There's no longer a Labor Party to speak of. This Israel is qualitatively different. So I don't argue your basic point that Israel has shifted dramatically to the right for all sorts of political and demographic reasons, and has to do also with the influx of refugees from places like Russia, the large families of the ultra-orthodox, the emigration of a lot of the startup nation people to this country.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  So all of that has made for a much more right-wing Israel. That said, Bibi Netanyahu, to me, has failed one of the first tests of leadership. He is following public opinion. Where has he challenged public opinion in the wake of October 7th? The great leaders in history, whether it's the Churchills, the FDRs, what have you, they don't just follow public opinion polls. So if you thought that what Israel is doing is understandable but perhaps counterproductive, a real leader would take it on. I haven't noticed one ounce of that from Bibi Netanyahu. Also, if we ever do use the phrase "two-state solution," it has become so freighted with

• 22:22Speaker 01

  symbolism, we've got to be really careful and make it clear that it's not unconditional. It's got to be demilitarized, it only comes about in stages, and we've got to remember that Israel has post-traumatic stress disorder, and it should collectively. And we've got to understand that as we approach it if we want to bring it along. We can't rush it, and we can't jam them, but we do have to begin that conversation because left to its own devices... This is not going to end up well. This is not going to end up well for Palestinians, for Israelis, or for Americans. And what I'm most worried about is that rather than this crisis being midwife to something better, that this crisis will be a midwife to more drift and what I like to call or

• 23:07Speaker 01

  hate to call the one-state non-solution, that's the most likely outcome, where you have an open-ended war, low-level war in Gaza, and you have continued settlement of the occupied territories, and the Israeli-American relationship grows more distant, particularly among younger Americans. That is not a good outcome, but left to its own devices, that's where we're heading.

• 23:31Ezra Klein?

  There's an argument out there that I've been mulling, that the problem with American policy, or one of them, is that we don't accept this dark one-state reality that exists now, where you in fact do have Israel in control of the West Bank, in control of Gaza. In Foreign Affairs, Mark Lynch and Shibli Talhemi have this interesting piece on this, and they're talking here about what the aim of US policy should be. They write, "US policy should be centered, not on implausible efforts to revive talks of unachievable outcomes," by which I mean the two-state solution right now, "but on forcefully spelling out the legal and human rights standards it expects to be met." What do you think of that?

• 24:11Speaker 01

  I disagree. I read the piece, as you would expect, from the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations. I have to read, enjoy reading and learn from Foreign Affairs. They've given up on the two-state solution. We may get there, and that's a different conversation, but I'm not there. And I think it's a mistake. To paraphrase Churchill, "The two-state solution is the worst possible approach to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, except for all the others." So we ought not to give up on it. We ought to think about how we can bring it about on terms that would be acceptable to both Palestinians and Israelis. I think the Saudi willingness to normalize relations with Israel potentially gives us some incentive, some leverage to work. Because I think it's way premature and counterproductive to adopt the position that the two-state

• 24:56Speaker 01

  solution's dead. It might be on life support, but it's not dead. And the real question is, can we revive it? There was a piece in the same issue of the magazine by Martin Indic, which said this is a strange reaction, but you're now seeing the resurrection of the idea. And I think the reason you are seeing the resurrection of the idea is people have looked into the abyss. An open-ended war in Gaza. And continued settlement of the occupied territories. And now you have the right wing in Israel talking about transfer of Palestinians out of these areas and so forth. It would destabilize the region. And it would basically put Israel on a perpetual war footing. It would give Iran tremendous leverage and tools to work with. Why is that in anyone's interest? So I don't want to have the conversation about how to make what I call the one-state

• 25:40Speaker 01

  non-solution better. I think the focus ought to be still on can we revive a two-state approach?

• 25:47Ezra Klein?

  One of the things that I think is interesting in their argument is that it gets us away from a problem in the two-state conversation, which is that in the two-state conversation, because Israelis have a state and Palestinians do not, it becomes about all this conditionality on what Palestinians have to do to earn this thing that Israelis already have. So you've mentioned this a bit yourself. It should be demilitarized. How is it governed? What is the condition to the Palestinian Authority? But the structure of that, it has all this conditionality on Palestinians. And one thing I think makes our role in this look quite unfair to the world is that we don't impose a lot of conditionality on the Israelis. So the fact that the settlements are functionally illegal under international law, it's something

• 26:32Ezra Klein?

  that we've mostly just given up on. We're not withholding our aid because of it. Occasionally, the president will lament that it is true, but we have no plan for rolling it back. And so one thing I find somewhat appealing about these more behavioral approaches as opposed to imagining a kind of final state settlement is it focuses us a little bit more and a little bit more neutrally on the behavior of both sides in the here and now and allows us maybe to act as a more honest broker with more equal standards.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  But you have to stop doing certain things. We can't go from where we are to two states. But the thrust of US policy should have been and should be and now and going forward to preserve the option of a two-state solution. And we have been lax to a fault in looking the other way. It's almost as if we had a settlement resistance fatigue, we got rolled. And it wasn't easy to stand up to it. I remember when I worked again for Bush, the father, and I was his Middle East adviser at the White House, to stand up on those issues was politically brutal. I actually think now it wouldn't be as brutal because the domestic context here, the political balance has shifted in this country and the debate about Israel.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  But no, we should, our position should be, nothing should be done that prejudices the possibility of a two-state outcome. That means for Palestinians, we push back on things like violence. We insist on good government, not necessarily democracy, but a degree of good government. And I think in the Israelis, we've got to push back on all sorts of settlement creation and expansion. Then we have to think about what's the appropriate responses if and when our position is flouted. Yes, that's what American foreign policy should be willing to do here.

• 28:40Ezra Klein?

  The other major crisis that has occupied Biden's term has been Russia's invasion of Ukraine. We're ending year three of that war. Where is it?

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Well, the glass half full would say, what an extraordinary accomplishment, that this country with what, not even one-third the population of Russia, a military that's a fraction of Russia's, has essentially held its own over the last two years. Russia's net gain of territory the last two years is negligible. They're essentially where they were after 2014, holding Crimea and the East and Ukraine with substantial help from the United States. And Europe has done remarkably well in more than holding its own, inflicting great damage on the Russian forces. That's the glass half full. Glass half empty is Ukraine has paid an enormous price for this economically. Just the other day, President Zelensky talked about 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers lost their

• 29:35Speaker 01

  lives. Those numbers many people think are low. I don't know how many injured. Perhaps more worrisome is you and everyone listening to this knows in the last few weeks, we're beginning to see some discernible shifts on the battlefield. Russia continues to throw enormous mass at the battle, both people and equipment and ammunition. And Ukraine lacks, it just more than anything lacks the ammunition. And even though Ukraine has moved, which people like me argued for for some time, into defensive stances, which require less in the way of resources, they're still increasingly overwhelmed. So they're beginning to lose some towns. We'll see where that goes from here. And the psychological trend has changed.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Six months ago, if we'd been having this conversation, or nine months ago, at the beginning, say, of the second year of the war, there was all sorts of anticipation about the counteroffensive, what could Ukraine accomplish? People like me were skeptical, but so be it. That's a very different conversation than we're having now. Now the feeling is almost what the Soviets used to call the correlation of forces is slightly shifted against Ukraine for any other reason because of us. Not that they've gotten worse at fighting, not that the Europeans have gotten less supportive, it's us. So that's where we are now. And so the question is, I think year three, by the end of this fighting season, the map looks somewhat like, pretty much like it looks now, probably somewhat in the Russians' favor.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Couple of percent, maybe more of territory, I don't mean to be cavalier, because that's people's lives and towns, but the Russians will pick up. The big variable is still USAID, whether it's forthcoming at any point. If it is, it will stop the Russian gains. So I don't think anything decisive will happen on the battlefield. I don't think anything will happen diplomatically, but all things being equal, I expect you'll see modest Russian gains as the year goes on.

• 31:24Ezra Klein?

  That aid, there's a $60 billion bill stuck right now in the House. The expectation is if Speaker Johnson would bring it to a vote, it would pass, it would pass in a bipartisan way. The expectation is Speaker Johnson will not bring it to a vote. How would you describe?

• 31:40Ezra Klein?

  Where Republicans have moved on Ukraine and what their policy is? Like, what is the strong man version of how Republicans see this right now?

• 31:50Speaker 01

  So, full disclosure, I was a Republican for 40 years. I left the Republican Party about three years ago, though I often quote Ronald Reagan. I don't feel I left the party. I felt the party left me. And this is one of the principal chapters and verses as to why the Republican Party went from the most internationalist and often willing to have a dimension of military force in American foreign policy now to being isolationist. It's also quite critical of allies. And then on top of that, you've got this bizarre romance with Russian authoritarianism that seems to be an extension of the former president more than anything else, but no one seems willing or able to stand up to him.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  I think the arguments I've heard on the Republican side, I guess, are a couple, and I don't agree with them, I'll just articulate them. One is where the war in Ukraine, we're focusing on the wrong place. Either we should focus at home, classic butter versus guns, or we should focus on China and the potential threat to Taiwan. So I see two groups of Republicans opposing this focus geographically. Some might have a third, we should focus on helping Israel or taking on Iran. That is basically the wrong geopolitical focus. There's also some criticism of Ukraine that you see this from Senator Vance, and now there's a little bit that we're pouring good money after bad, that Ukraine's definition of success can never be met.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  So why are we contributing to a policy that is destined to fail? And that's where I think, by the way, the friends of Ukraine haven't done in any favors. All this talk about complete military liberation of Russian-controlled territory, it's not that it's not desirable, it's not that it's not right, it's just not going to happen. So it's always a mistake in foreign policy or in life to define success in terms you can't meet, because it gives those who have no interest in that, it gives them a pretty good argument. So we're seeing that. But I haven't heard anything else. I think it's basically classic isolationism. In some cases, they've got a different set of foreign policy priorities, or in some cases, they simply think this policy can't succeed, so why should we fund it?

• 33:51Ezra Klein?

  Let me pick up on that last point. So I was watching Jake Sullivan on Unmeet the Press over the weekend.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  But at the end of the day, Ukraine still has the capacity, if we provide them the tools and resources they need, to be able to prevail in this war. And it is up to us, the United States and our allies and partners, to deliver on our commitments. And that's why it's so important that Congress act.

• 34:14Ezra Klein?

  Zelensky's view is that Ukraine will win. It will get its territory back. And nothing less than that is acceptable. And Sullivan's argument was that victory is possible, and it is possible so long as America keeps funding Ukrainian counteroffensives, giving it the weaponry it needs. Victory might have been more possible, may still be more possible, if we really did open the spigot of all weapons, right? But we're not doing that. I was having some trouble with this because as somebody, I would like to see this aid pass. I also didn't really believe that Jake Sullivan believed victory is possible if we did the aid. And I'm not, you know, it might have been a little more couched than that, but that's what he was saying. And so there is a way, and I feel this in some ways echoes some of the things happening with Netanyahu and the administration,

• 34:59Ezra Klein?

  where it's like we, you know, we like Zelensky a lot better than we like Netanyahu, but we're a little bit yoked to him. And it's very hard for us to say something different than what he is saying. But what he is saying, I think, is no longer believed, that the goal is achievable. And we've not really articulated now a different policy. We're just sort of putting money into his policy. What should our policy be? Like, how do we manage a situation like that, where we support Ukraine, but maybe have a different view of what is now realistic?

• 35:27Speaker 01

  So a couple of reactions. At the risk of agreeing with you too much, you're essentially right here. And for two years now, the administration has basically said, our policy is whatever Ukraine wants. And I've argued against that from the get-go, privately and publicly, and said to people, since when is that American foreign policy? We should do what we think is desirable, but also achievable. We've got to look at the entire world. This is not the only consideration. And we can't set ourselves up for failure. So I think the idea that Ukraine is gonna... Was or is going to militarily liberate is not going to happen. It's just beyond their capability. And I've never suggested, though, that Ukraine should give up the ultimate goal of

• 36:12Speaker 01

  complete liberation. But who said that has to be done through military tools? That could be done diplomatically. Indeed, I my view is if they can hold their own and fight Russia to a draw, which they've been doing, I think the day will come, probably under a post Putin or a post post Putin leadership, where that conversation can happen. And you could have now the best we can have is a stalemate, maybe a ceasefire or an armistice. Down the road, I think you could potentially have a peace agreement. But that's not with Putin. It's with some future Russian leader who might want Russian reintegration into Europe and the West. It's one of the reasons, by the way, I want to save those frozen assets as an incentive one day for that Russian. That's the money we've frozen of Russians abroad. Yeah, about $300 billion in Western financial institutions.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  And some people are saying, give it to Ukraine now. My view is when I want to save it as leverage down the road, too. What Ukraine needs now is not money to rebuild. It needs arms. This won't help them. I think it's somewhat tangential to their immediate need. So I think the administration has been unwilling to look, what's the word, insufficiently supportive of Ukraine. They're worried that they're going to get criticized. But I think their position was and is untenable. I think we make a larger point. In foreign policy, we spend so much time thinking about how do we deal with our adversaries? And we have a whole playbook for that. Balance of power, military tools, negotiations, arms control, sanctions. Okay.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  What's interesting is how much less developed is the foreign policy playbook or toolkit, whatever phrase you want to use, for dealing with friends. And here we are, we just spent some time talking about one friend, Israel. Now we're talking about another friend, Ukraine. And in both cases, we're not exactly in the same place. We're a very different place with this Israeli government. So the question there is, how do we support Israel without supporting Israeli policy? Very hard to deal, to navigate that. And with Ukraine, we don't have as much problems with the leadership, but it's not going to work. So again, how do we be supportive without giving them a blank check? Particularly given the critique that, why are you asking us to fund a policy that can't succeed?

• 38:23Speaker 01

  So I think in both cases, the administration, particularly in Ukraine, it's been directionally right, the Biden administration policy, but it's for way too long been unwilling to have the tough, honest conversation, hey, this isn't going to work. And again, as we discussed before with Israel, I think there has to be, both privately and publicly, a greater willingness, almost to strike out on an independent path.

• 39:15Ezra Klein?

  One thing that scares me in the politics of foreign policy right now is I think that there is a distance between the somewhat high-minded and somewhat legitimate arguments you will hear from congressional Republicans on Ukraine aid right now, which have validity. And what is actually happening in the party on Ukraine? What is actually happening when Donald Trump says, if our friends don't give enough to NATO, I'll let Russia do whatever the hell they want? What is actually happening when Tucker Carlson, until like 25 minutes ago, the most important media figure on the right, is going, giving these slavish interviews with Vladimir Putin and being like, they have bread in Russian grocery stores. Can you imagine that bread?

• 39:59Ezra Klein?

  What is actually happening when Republicans are knowingly being part of what is a Russian election op in what they're doing with Hunter Biden in the House? Like, this has all come out. We now know we were getting disinformation from Russian agents, but they just sort of quietly delete that from their list of particulars. There's no soul searching on what's actually going on there. And so there's this thing happening where, on the one hand, you have a Republican Party that seems to have a lot of tendrils reaching out towards Russia. You then have another part of the party afraid of crossing that part of the party, that's trying to figure out a reasonable policy description of why it's going to do what Russia would kind of like and not give this aid to Ukraine.

• 40:39Ezra Klein?

  And then on top of that, you have Donald Trump, who is wrapping this in both some crazy commentary, as is often his wont, but then a sort of neo-isolationist, guns and butter argument that I will say in my just travels and reporting and talking to people about the elections, I feel is resonating. I feel there is a resonance of his, "This is a mess. Why are we spending this money over here? America's crumbling and broken." It's not my view of America or our fiscal reality, but it feels like there is some energy in it and that this needs some kind of defense, and there isn't a very good one because there isn't a way to wedge out the kind of fake Republican arguments from the real Republican arguments.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  So two things. I felt a little bit uncomfortable when you asked me to talk about the Republican defenses of their opposition to aid to Ukraine because I didn't want to dignify them. And that's what you got at just now, that, yes, there are serious arguments for opposing some aid to Ukraine, whether it's because we ought to focus on helping Taiwan, or this isn't going to work, or what have you. But that's not an argument for opposing all aid to Ukraine. If the Republicans were serious and saying, "We can't put so many eggs in the basket," then the conversation would be, "Okay, if you don't want to put a dozen eggs in the basket, what about 10? What about nine? What would be a serious, where we don't lose Ukraine and all its accomplishments?" I don't see Republicans saying that.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  If they wanted to have a foreign policy conversation, we could have it. About how to reallocate US resources, but they're not. Because no serious foreign policy conversation would say, no aid to Ukraine. So this is not a foreign policy position. This is one totally born of domestic politics, partially the isolationism that's always there, partially just Donald Trump, which again also reflects this bizarre, right-wing, Republican fascination with Putin's anti-woke, homophobic, Christian, white Russia. There's something going on there that I don't pretend to understand, but it resonates clearly in in some circles. On the isolationism, look, it's always there. It's never that far from the service.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  And by the way, it's Republicans don't own it. It's in the Democratic Party, too. It's everywhere. And on one hand, it's kind of attractive. Well, why should we be doing so much over there when we have all these problems over here? And then you've got to explain. And anytime you're explaining in politics, you're behind. But there are real explanations. Well, we've learned that what we do over there can be good in and of itself, plus it can help us. There's those arguments. What we're doing over there in the way of spending on defense, as big as it is, is probably, what, 50 or 60% the Cold War average of what we spent as a percentage of our GDP on defense. And I think we learned during the Cold War that we can have both guns and butter.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Also, you have to explain to people that the problem with what ails us domestically, and there's many things, it's not because of a lack of spending. You know, we spend twice the OECD average, twice the advanced industrial country average on healthcare. But the last I checked, Americans aren't twice as healthy and they don't live twice as long. So how much we spend is not necessarily the critical thing. It's how we spend it. So let's have a serious conversation about how we spend our money domestically and so forth. You want to get serious about budgetary issues, you've got to talk about entitlements. Last I checked, Donald Trump and Republicans don't want to talk about entitlement. So I think you can engage the conversation on isolationism, but it's not a simple or easy one. And you've got to talk about it, both the case for involvement over there and why what

• 44:19Speaker 01

  we're doing over there is not responsible for the border issue or the lack of quality of schools or healthcare costs. But it ain't an easy conversation to win.

• 44:28Ezra Klein?

  The foreign policy conversation, to me, right now...

• 44:33Ezra Klein?

  Feels more confusing and opaque than at other times I can remember covering it. In the sense that it sometimes feels like neither side can actually say what their real foreign policy is. So Republicans, for the reasons we've just discussed, and the Democrats a bit, because a lot of our foreign policy is being set in a real way by difficult allies, by Netanyahu, by Zelensky. I think Biden can be more honest about his foreign policy than others can, and there's been an extremely strong set of arguments made by the administration about what our foreign policy is towards China and how it understands strategic competition, right? If you go back to, you know, all these Jake Sullivan speeches, they actually represent a pretty big effort to shift American foreign policy positioning.

• 45:18Ezra Klein?

  But when it comes to the issues, the crises that are in Americans' faces every day, that are leading the news every day, they're much more constrained in a way, unlike what they're willing to say and what they're willing to do, because they are trying to be supportive to allies they do not control. So you have this sort of weird thing where Republicans have public and private rationales, and sometimes, I think, a lot of just fear of crossing Donald Trump. And so it's not really an engaged debate on that side in a way where you can argue with things people are saying and feel like you are arguing with the thing that you are actually confronting. And on the Democratic side, I actually don't feel, if somebody follows this quite closely,

• 46:01Ezra Klein?

  that the Biden administration is really articulating a strategy on a bunch of these things now. I mean, there, you can kind of like figure out what it is, but it is just become complicated as they are in this delicate dance with their partners. And so it's made for, I think, a very strange debate.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  It's not just that they're in a delicate dance with their partners. I think they're also in a delicate situation in terms of domestic politics. Though there's some difference between the two. I think what explains the administration's reticence to take on Israel more directly is the president. He's just not there, and he is uncomfortable doing it. He's edging in that direction. And here we are, February turning into March, and he's now farther along that path than he was in October and November. But he's somewhere along that path. But my guess is, he will gradually move in that direction of more distance between the United States and Israel, and more what I would call an independent American foreign

• 47:00Speaker 01

  policy, rather than a foreign policy that's only trying to persuade Israel to act differently. I think in Ukraine, the administration long ago realized that Zelensky's goals were unrealizable, that it wasn't they weren't desirable, of course, they're desirable. You just can't get from here to there. And not, by the way, I think because they were reluctant to provide certain arms. I think that's exaggerated. Even if they had done it, I don't think it would have turned the tide. But I just think they were worried about looking insufficiently supportive of an ally, and they they held back. But privately, they understand that a definition of victory of complete military liberation is a nonstarter.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  That's why they're very comfortable with circumstances that have forced the Ukrainians to shift to a much more defensive oriented strategy. They'll get through this year. I think there will be real diplomatic prospects. The real question is whether Ukraine will be negotiating from a position of strength or weakness. I do think diplomacy will ultimately come. The administration didn't want to be seen as pushing a friend that was reluctant and somehow selling them out when Ukraine could at least credibly claim that it was trying to recover what was rightfully theirs and in the interests of principles of world order that we subscribe to. The administration was just reluctant to take on that fight.

• 48:22Ezra Klein?

  You said a second ago that part of what explains the reticence, the sometimes opacity here is domestic politics. And I was thinking about whether or not that felt right to me. And one of the, I'm not sure this analogy is right, but I want to try it out on you. That these crises have a little bit of a feeling to me of the way COVID politics changed over time. There's a period, and this is a period in which Joe Biden ran and the early part of his administration, in which a quite strict lockdown-oriented, distancing-oriented, obviously then vaccines, maybe even vaccine mandates, when that politics was very strong. And it took liberals, it took Democrats, some time when that politics had weakened

• 49:05Ezra Klein?

  because variants made it so the vaccines stopped preventing transmission. A set of things happened and people wanted to get back to their lives. And liberals struggled for a while to get into that phase of COVID, right, where they were sort of open enough. And it's felt to me a little bit like on Ukraine, and then now more recently on Israel, that Democrats, or at least Biden's administration, is a little bit stuck in phase one of both conflicts. That domestic politics, it looks to me like where they are is actually unpopular and is causing real political problems and actually opening space for Trump in a way that concerns me. But it still feels very much like the first round on Israel, which is like Israel's been attacked and we need, you know, it has a right to defense and it

• 49:47Ezra Klein?

  is our ally. And on Ukraine, a this is an unprovoked, I mean, this is true still, unprovoked aggression by Russia. Russia needs to be stopped. Like, the Ukrainian forces are heroic and our job is to help them win. And even as both of these now feel like they are in a different phase, it doesn't really feel, certainly from a communications level, like our policy is in that different of a phase.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  I would actually add another issue to the pattern you just set up, which is the border, where the administration policy is clearly not working. I think it was originally adopted to placate a certain constituency within the Democratic Party. It's clearly failed. It's alienating a much broader band of Americans to Mr. Trump's advantage. And the president is belatedly trying to adjust. So I think that is quite similar to the pattern you just set out. What's odd is that I think there is more scope for adjustment in all these cases than the administration seems willing to entertain. And I've thought

• 50:50Speaker 01

  about that a lot. And because the domestic politics now, as opposed to 50 years ago, being quote unquote tougher on Israel would probably play better. In terms of Ukraine must liberate every square inch of territory that Russia is sitting on through military means, I know there's some of the individuals who are big advocates, but I, once while I sort of say, who are the real friends of Ukraine? Is that a wise path to insist on? So I don't think the president would pay an enormous price if he said, look, we support Ukraine, we've done all this, we're going to continue to help them, but on the other hand, we can't get from here to there. Doesn't mean we're selling them out, it means we have to adjust what it is we do on there. Yeah, so I actually think the administration has more scope.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  And then the question is, and you're getting at it, why don't they take advantage of it? And is it sort of the Washington bubble? That they're so worried about what a couple of members of the foreign policy elite will say, or what a couple of columnists will say, or what a couple of Republicans might say? My guess is they exaggerate the price of angering some of the critics of looking unprincipled or quote unquote, being charged with selling out your friends. And my guess is, if you're willing to do something and explain it, and explain it again, and it has real substance and merit to it, my sense is you can bring most of the American people along with you.

• 52:10Ezra Klein?

  This is a place where I do think a different form of the domestic politics has created a set of problems. I'm glad you brought up immigration and the border, because I think that's an interesting case study from this perspective. It's such an interesting issue, because I've talked to the Biden administration a fair amount about this. And this is not an issue where they're saying Republicans have invented a problem. They will sit down in front of you and say, our asylum process is completely broken. It's a disaster. We need to do something about it right now. And so they back the Murphy, you know, bipartisan negotiations led on the Democratic side by Senator Chris Murphy, which was a big shift, right word, on immigration policy for the

• 52:51Ezra Klein?

  Democrats, that has, in that instance, in the Senate, Republican support, and is then killed by Donald Trump. And one of the things that I think is difficult for them in some ways...

• 53:05Ezra Klein?

  With where the Republican Party has gone is that it is useful to have bipartisan structures in which you can make your adjustments into policy. So you could imagine the Republican Party we're talking about that has only the high-minded objections to Ukraine, negotiating out with the administration, money that in both rhetorical ways and substantive ways is attached to an admission that the strategy needs to change, that it's more defensive, that we're not looking for a total victory anymore, that we're backing Ukraine up, but we have a different kind of view on what's going on here. But in practice, Republicans are just kind of at a no. Israel's more complicated, leave that to decide for a minute, but immigration, I mean, they did try to come to a deal, right?

• 53:49Ezra Klein?

  They did try to shift policy dramatically, and Republicans, probably to Biden's political benefit, just said no. But it does mean that Biden then cannot say, look, we actually did this, like, people were right, this was a problem and we've solved it. And that inability in a divided government to make policy adjustment through bipartisan compromise, it does feel like a very significant challenge.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  100%. The Republicans have ceased to be a party of governance or co-governance. Everything is politics and only politics. But I think there's a difference between the two issues of the border and Ukraine. On Ukraine, the president can't get the aid approved without the House of Representatives. That's a fact of life. So there, I think he has to simply be prepared to use the bully pulpit more. And it's not his strength, quite honestly. But the president has to be willing to spell it out and spell it out and spell it out again in press conferences and addresses. Think of FDR taking a reluctant America closer to entry into World War II through fireside chats.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  It takes sustained public conversation. The Oval Office is potentially a great classroom. The president is potentially the teacher in chief. This president is not comfortable in that role, and that's a real shortcoming. And I say this as someone who's, you know, on Ukraine, for example, I think he's gotten it more right than not. But he can't get to where he needs to get without the House of Representatives. That'll only happen through public opinion, essentially penalizing them for this position. The border, if he can't do the same thing there, then he's got to do more things unilaterally. He's got some executive authority. Challenge, challenge the Republicans to stop him. Challenge the courts to say he can't do it.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  I think there's much more he could do on the border issue, both rhetorically, but more important substantively, and he just has to be willing to do it and stare down his own left.

• 55:52Ezra Klein?

  It seems to me that a lot of the election is about to be fought on this question of stability. And I think this is something that people are not quite tracking in Donald Trump and his appeal. It is something that in terms of the people Trump has running his campaign now, who are much more capable Republican operatives than he's had in the past and are known for trying to turn the strength of the candidate they're facing, in this case, Joe Biden, against him. The argument Trump is going to be making, the argument they kind of are making, is that Biden, who represented stability, who represented normalcy, has not actually been able to bring you stability and normalcy.

• 56:33Ezra Klein?

  That prices went in all different directions, right, and mostly up, that the border is overrun. I think that is somewhat, but not totally invented, certainly very hyped. But it is real. And then we're in this morass in Ukraine, people are upset about Israel, and that the thing that Joe Biden was here to offer, a kind of stable world, a world where you had competent people in competent positions who were going to take care of things. The world doesn't feel that way to people, the sort of ambient sense of chaos, of crisis is a real problem. And that kind of ambient sense is always an opportunity for the strong man personality, which Trump has.

• 57:15Ezra Klein?

  And while Trump has his own challenges as a person for presenting any kind of calm or predictability, this seems like a real fight that's going to happen. Like, I think there's a good chance that the candidate who wins in 2024 is the one who Americans trust to keep things kind of stable.

• 57:35Ezra Klein?

  And I think there's an assumption on the Democratic side that Trump cannot win a fight like that. And I'm not sure now that he cannot win a fight like that. I think Biden's age does not help in this respect. I think that he does not appear to people to be up to this. Whether he is or not is a different question, but I think that's a real problem for them. I'm curious how that tracks for you.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  I'm with you, except for the word stability. I agree strongly that this is a populist moment. To take Reagan's question, are you better off than you were four years ago? Americans feel, they don't feel they are. Without attributing causality, if bad stuff happens on your watch and you're the incumbent, you pay a price for it. If good stuff happens on your watch, even if you don't deserve the credit, you get it. It's just correlation. It's association. So there's enough that's going wrong, whether it's higher prices, border issues, several wars. This is not a good moment to run as an incumbent saying four more years. Doesn't really resonate. So it's a good moment for Trump, or any outsider

• 58:36Speaker 01

  who represents a populist, who represents change. And I don't think the argument would be stability. In a funny sort of way, what Trump could do, and it worries me because I think it has the potential of working someone, of resonating, is saying, we face real problems. He'll attribute them all to Biden. And he'll say, and you need somebody like me. You need a strong guy to fix them. Order. Order. And that's the Orban code word for illiberalism. That order, no pun intended, trumps everything else. And that Americans know there's something that's gone wrong in this country. And the difference in some ways between the parties is we have a very different set of prescriptions. I travel around the country a lot speaking about American democracy and about what's gone wrong with it, which I actually think

• 59:21Speaker 01

  has become our biggest national security threat. And whether the groups are to the left or the right, people nod their heads. They know something's wrong. Something's gone off the rails.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  And what worries me is those who are selling the snake oil of order, even at, shall we say, the cost of certain democratic rights, that there might be an audience for that, there might be a market for that. And I think that's the danger as we head into November.

• 59:49Ezra Klein?

  I think that's a good place to end. So as our final question, what are three books you'd recommend to the audience?

• 59:55Speaker 01

  I'm glad you asked that question. First is a book by Ben Steele, former colleague of mine at the Council on Foreign Relations, an economic historian, who's written a book recently published called The World That Wasn't: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century. And Henry Wallace was FDR's third vice president. And if he had been his fourth vice president, or if FDR had died before the end of his third term, history would have played out fundamentally differently. And the idea that somebody with such a radical, in this case, pro-Soviet sympathizer or worse, fellow traveler, set of views, could be literally a heartbeat away from the presidency was quite extraordinary.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Second book, also by a former colleague of mine at the Council on Foreign Relations, in this case Ian Johnson, who's one of this country's leading historians of China, wrote a book called Sparks, and the subtitle is China's Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future. And it's a story about these truly courageous Chinese historians who have fought the party, fought the leadership, showing tremendous bravery. And it's also, it's fascinating how much the party cares about history. And you realize that the battle of history is not some arcane thing about the past. The battle over history is a political struggle for the present and future. And it's just wonderfully written.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Third and last, I got sent a manuscript out of the blue a few months ago, about six months ago. And someone said, I thought you might be interested in this book. I don't know about you, I get a lot of these. And I was going to put it aside, but I thought I recognized the name. And the, the subject matter intrigued me. And what it was about was two diplomats who became the ambassador and the deputy chief of mission at the American Embassy in Saigon in the early 60s. And the book's called Diplomats at War: Friendship and Betrayal on the Brink of the Vietnam Conflict. It's just published about two weeks ago by Charles Trueheart. And it's just a great foreign policy story, a bureaucratic infighting, regime change. And what do you do?

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Coming back to the conversation of today. What does the United States do when it has strategic interests as it sees them? And it doesn't have a person it sees as a partner? So I found it such a timely book, unexpectedly so, really nicely done.

• 1:02:26Ezra Klein?

  Richard Haas, thank you very much.

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Ezra.

• 1:02:39Ezra Klein?

  This episode of the Ezra Klein Show is produced by Roland Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Gelled with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. We have original music by Isaac Jones, audience strategy by Kristina Cemuluski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser. And special thanks here to Sonia Herrera.