Is Resolute Global Leadership the Right Grand Strategy for the United States?

[Music] Hello and welcome to Net Assessment, where we debate the hard-to-vis facing America's national security and foreign policy communities. Today we're coming back to something we haven't discussed for a while, American Grand Strategy. What are the benefits and drawbacks of various schools of strategy as we see them through the lens of the last several years? Can we define what a strategy of Trumpism is? And does another option, Resolute Global Leadership, promise a sensible piece through strength that protects American vital interests? I'm Melanie Marlow of CSIS, here with Chris Pruble of the Stimpson Center and Zach Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute. How are you? Hello again, back, back in the saddle. Tanned, ready, rested. Tanned, rested, ready. Thanks to my good friend and colleague, Kelly Greco, for pinch hitting for me. She did better than I could have done. So that is true. I may have gotten myself out of a job here. Yeah, well, she thought the patriots were going to win, so didn't do so hot there. Is she available? Can she do this show, Chris? She's in mourning right now because her patriots did not rise to the occasion as it were, so yes, not a very fun game if you're a patriots fan. Or if you're really any fan. Or if you're a Vikings fan who watched your franchise quarterback just win the Super Bowl a year after you let him go. So, you know, there is that. So, yeah, small detail. Yeah. How were you otherwise? How was your trip? Do you want to tell us where you went? Or is this the state secret? No, it's not a state secret. And the bottley and I went to Abu Dhabi and then we were in Turkey. You were doing the Russia talks, weren't you? We were not actually. We went. Akra, when the rumors circulated that there were going to be Iran talks in Akra, that didn't actually happen. But yeah, it was really interesting. We'll have two field notes coming out from our research. The Abu Dhabi ones should come out this week and then the one from Turkey by the end of the month had a bunch of fantastic meetings. So, grateful to everybody who took the time to talk to us. We're just trying to understand how various different US allies and security partners are dealing with our current state of affairs and a little bit on the future. It was really interesting. I've been to Turkey now many times. I guess this is my fourth time there. And I just keep wanting to go back. It's my turn. I just keep wanting to go back. I just can't get enough places really, really interesting. Maybe they need a live episode of NetAssessment. There we go. That's right. So, how about you? I actually got something done. I was in Japan for Prime Minister, Takiich's giant unbelievable victory. And then I flew back here. I can't claim as much credit as Donald Trump appears to have claimed for her win, but I was there. I'd like him to see if he could focus on home. Correlation equals causation, Zach. How much you learned out? Don't you teach that to your students at Princeton? That's what I'm teaching today is that correlation is causation. How did you know, Chris? Correlation is causation. There you go. Can I say though, NetAssessment got me some credit at home yesterday for the first time in a while. My wife took our kids to a super bowl thing with some of our friends. And my children got to experience one of the people there as a NetAssessment listener. And so this person was very excited that my wife was married to Zach Cooper, which is really the only time that has happened in my entire existence. She's like, who? Yeah, right. That guy. Really? So, that happened to me. I think I told you last summer I ran into someone who was carrying a kid and I was being very nice. I'm like, "Cooing the baby when they were ahead of me." And they recognized my voice, which was terrifying. So that was kind of funny for my niece and nephew to be impressed with. But that actually happened with my brother-in-law who was here for a convention for work. And he was telling someone that he had to go meet his sister-in-law and blah, blah, blah. And his boss, too, levels up is a fan of the show. He's like, "What?" And so I know it was so cool. Awesome. There everywhere. Love it. Yeah. Yeah. Very awesome. So I did get to meet him last Friday. And then I went to the Kennedy Center of the weekend. Is that still an existence? It's not called that anymore Melanie. It's a. I know. Is it? Is it? The scene to be closed Kennedy Center. Yes. Soon to be closed. Yes. And I got to hear the Chekossi Kinkin Chair that I played so many years ago and again. The third movement is the best. The last 100 seconds. I feel like every boy I knew in high school crying during Rudy, you know, reliving the glory days. The last 100 seconds of the third movement of the Chekossi Kinkin Chair, that was good music. Yeah. New theme song actually. What are we talking about today? We are talking about grand strategy. And it's like you think I can't get enough of this stuff, but here we are. We are talking about a "Counson Foreign Relations Special Report" entitled "America Revived a Grand Strategy of Resolute Global Leadership" by Robert Blackwell. Robert Blackwell is the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy. At the council, he's also a Senior Fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. I think most people will know who Bob Blackwell is. He's been in this space for many, many years among his many writings. He has written at least seven other or chaired or been responsible for at least seven other CFR reports. So he is certainly a known quantity. And I should say at the outset, this report is part of a. There was a task force put together. He mentions in the acknowledgments. There was a task force on grand strategy, about 60 people. And I was one of the people that participated in these meanings mostly remotely, but there were eight people who presented their various strategies that are listed in the forward. And we'll talk about some of them today. Look, the report is, I think it's very readable. It's not very long. Don't be intimidated. It has 270, I just double-check this, 270 end notes. So the notes pages are almost as long as the text. And I think that's one thing to Blackwell and others who worked on this to their great credit. It was quite thorough. I'm going to quote a few passages in the course of the discussion, but mostly I just wanted to get your first impressions. I'll say that for me, again, I still want to belt Melanie's because she loves footnotes. And I presume she loves these footnotes. Another strength, I think, is that Blackwell did not confuse Trumpism for restraint. It is not. Trumpism isn't anything really. And I think Blackwell manages to explain why that is and to summarize it. Well, in spite of its slipperyness as a concept, and lastly, I think he makes a very strong case for a relatively liberal trading order and points out that for those people who declare the old liberal order dead, that will come as a great surprise to most of the other advanced industrial economies in the world, which are proceeding with trade liberalization even as the United States runs in the opposite direction with a few exceptions. So I thought those were some of the things that I liked most about the report. We'll start there. I'm sort of curious to hear from you, too. What jumped out at you is what you appreciated most about it. Yeah, I generally liked it. And maybe that's because I'm kind of sympathetic with where he comes down on the end. But I thought it was extremely well written. I think it was really honest. He gave every theory of grand strategy. What I believe was a good faith effort to not mischaracterize anything. As you said, it was clear that there was input from other people and who would have had these towards these other schools. So I think that that was really important. Not only when he was doing the critique, but also stating the benefits and not over promising what any particular theory might deliver. Of course, there's some blurring and exceptions to theories, you know, in terms of how they're carried out. And that's important to note. And I think we're going to see that other things I liked is at the end, he actually sits down and says, this is what these schools would do in actual practical circumstances. We always want to know, well, how would this be applied? And he takes several scenarios and gives his best effort. And this also has footnotes, even the yes or no answers have footnotes. But he gives his best effort assessing what would happen with these schools today. So I think that that was also really important. Of course, there's not a lot of nuance when you're doing that, but be sure. The footnotes I did love the 70s are particularly long. I think footnotes 75 is two pages and all of them are very long. And I would have loved to just sat there and picked out something from every page to read because it is a very full bibliography of good sources that people should be reading if they're looking at these things. So I think that this is very important. And it's also well timed for us to be reading after Davos and after, for example, Venezuela, Iran, the discussion of what's happening in Europe right now. The main crime is it says that we have 750 bases and we do not have 750 bases. Let me repeat that. We do not have 750 bases. How many do we have Melanie? How many? There's a secondary crime. It ends with a quote from Madeline Albright. We'll come to that. I promise you. We will come to that. And the thing is I have some sympathies with it, but it detracts from, in my view, some of the - Right. - Proceeding argument. So I think that there's a little bit lacking on what we should be doing specifically, like the means, the money, Congress, political willpower, all of those kinds of things, because you've got to have that if you are presenting your actual strategy. So that's missing. I do like that he has the list of vital American interests, but you know, he sees as being those and talking about like, then what exactly are we going to be preserving with this new strategy that he develops? - So there's a lot I like, and I think both of you have been eloquent about the positives. My biggest positive would be that, I think Bob does a good job asking big questions, and this seems to me like the right big question we should all be asking in our world right now, which is clearly something fundamental has changed in US strategy, and we don't know what that is going to look like going forward. And so I think we should all be trying to figure out what is US strategy going forward. And Bob, I think he's very thoughtful in trying to examine that question. My frustrations with this piece are more about some of the specifics, and I know we'll get into them. So for example, when he defines the nine core principles of each of these strategies, I'm not actually convinced about some of the key principles on most of the strategies. In particular, I'm not convinced that Trumpism as a strategy exists at all. In fact, I think Trumpism is a rejection of grand strategy in many ways, or a embrace of what he calls sort of American nationalism with some Trumpy adjustments, which are frankly unpredictable, and therefore not strategic. So I think that part is a little bit messy. Like Melanie, I largely agree where he comes down on strategy, but I fear that I think this basically looks like a strategy that seems very similar to past US strategy. So I'm not sure what is different about what Bob Blackwell is suggesting at the end of his piece, where he suggests resolute global leadership from what the US did, basically from 1945 to 1990. And to put my cards on the table, I think the US strategy from 1945 to 1990 worked pretty darn well. So I'm not objecting to that. But I worry that at this moment where it seems like American strategy is completely up for grabs to evaluate all the existing strategies, and then circle back and say, well, we should go back to what we were doing before. Well, I think that is true. I'm not sure that it quite meets this moment. And so that's sort of my big picture concern with this piece. But it's very thoughtful. People should read it. It will make you think. So I like a lot of it. I do admire his attempt to come up with a theory of Trump. And there have been some other ones. And maybe that's another show, like West Mitchell, various other people have written articles on the grand strategy of Trump. And maybe we'll do that. But it is really hard to do that. And I admire what he's come up with here because I think that he gets a lot of to Trump part right. Yeah. The six strategies, by the way, so the five alternatives that he considers are primacy, liberal internationalism, restraint, American nationalism, and Trumpism. And then his Resolute Global Leadership is the sixth. He admits, I think to Zach's point, he admits in the paper that Resolute Global Leadership is mostly primacy. The differences are spelled out, Melanie alluded to this. There is a table at the end of the report, there's actually two tables, table one and table one, goes on to two pages, that lays outside by side different policy approaches of the six. And only two things out of, I guess, a dozen differentiate primacy from Resolute Global Leadership. These are very, very similar strategies. Can I just really briefly make one point about this? Because I think this is also important. When we come back to talk about these six schools and how they differ, it's very notable that the comparison of American nationalism with Trumpism doesn't have any difference in that table that you're mentioning, except that in several cases, blackwells puts question marks for Trumpism. Yes. Question marks, yeah, exactly. Where he has answers from American nationalism. But on all of the coatings where he knew what Trumpism was, it was the same as American nationalism, which I think is important to note. True. Yeah, that's a good point. There are a number of question marks in the table for obvious reasons and footnotes explaining why there are question marks. And so that's important. Again, I want to emphasize that I think it was, it's not an easy feat to summarize these strategies and to fairly represent their strengths and weaknesses. I will say that weirdly, I do not think of myself as a nationalist. But I found the critiques of nationalism making me like it more. I'll read the passage of the core critique of nationalism. If Washington does not contest Chinese hostile actions in the end of Pacific beyond, Beijing would eventually squeeze the Western hemisphere and US regional and global trade, at which point the United States would be compelled to respond from a weakened position. It would blunt the US ability, et cetera, et cetera. There's a whole bunch of woods, seven, actually. And actually, there's also a similar critique with respect to restraint. America with, they're all wood, spawn, security, vacuums, which adversaries would exploit. And because resistance, wood, dim, allies, and partners would grow more vulnerable, et cetera. And the operative word here, I've already given them away the game, is wood. All of these things would happen. And I am not convinced that anyone can so confidently predict what will happen. In other words, all of these things are inevitable. And yet there are no bad effects associated with the other alternative grand strategies. There is no similar sort of prediction that a number of bad things would redound. And so look, I'm willing to concede that some of the things that he predicts in the case of US retention of any kind, from any part of the world, I'm willing to concede that some of these things could happen. But if many do not, then it seems to me that we should be open to other strategies that might be more sustainable over the long term. And again, we've already hinted at this. Blackwell allows on several different occasions that his preferred grand strategy simply isn't politically feasible at the moment. That the political order, as it stands today, is not conducive to resolute global leadership. And yet, he ultimately comes down on the side of primacy with a shade of some other differences. And so here we are back to where we started. And I just think that those critiques are a little bit too categorical, a little bit too confident, relatively speaking. - Can I just add here, Chris? I think one critical question is what the timeframe is that you're thinking about. And that is not something that Blackwell goes into a lot of detail on. - Yes. - But I think, for example, when you talk about primacy and you talk about the liberal internationalist strategies, these are strategies that, over the very long term, I think are meant to be beneficial to the US. They have very significant costs in the near term, but part of the argument is that in the long term, those costs will be acceptable because they will build a system that is more advantageous. I think part of what's tough in this piece, and it's not Blackwell's fault, because I think it's part of what we're all struggling with in this moment, is that the strategies of restraint in particular, but also to some degree, American nationalism. I think those are strategies that in the short term, have a lot of benefits, but in the long term, have potentially some very high costs. And so part of what's hard is, you're kind of comparing apples and oranges here, right? I agree with restrainers that if the US pulled out today of much of the world, the cost tomorrow would actually need not be that terrible. What worries me is the cost five, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years down the line, which I think are very real. But part of the challenge with this essay, is it doesn't really get into that time question as much. And if you treat everything like you're looking at this same time period, I think it misses this like broader point, which actually is some, which goes the core of what I think Trumpism is, which is about maximizing near-term gains right now today, at the sacrifice of long-term benefits. And that was one thing I wish had been pulled out more in this piece. - Yeah, I agree with that. I think that the sentence that you were bringing up about the, it's not politically advantageous right now to do, that might have been the last paragraph, if I remember correctly. - It's also in the executive summary, it felt like it's the last line in the executive, I'll read from it. So the very last line in the executive summary or the last paragraph, although the current political landscape is unfavorable to resolute global leadership, then he goes on, when the country confronts the implication of its experiment with Trumpism, resolute global leadership will offer the clearest route to a revival of American strength. So he says it right there, he's like, look, now is not the time, sometime in the future, is the time when we will be able to adopt Resolute Global Leadership. That's how I read that passage. - Same, and there's a couple of things that raise concerns about that. And one is exactly what Zach brought up. To me, I have short-term, long-term, all over in my notes on this, on some of the things that he said, but then also on resources like trust. Because the trust issue right now in the short-term is really important. And without it, we are not going to be able to do a lot of stuff in the long-term. So that is one thing. There's also, he probably doesn't want to get into a big political site. And I get that, that's not what this report is. But I wish he would have drawn out a little bit more on that, why it's such a hard conversation right now. Well, guess what? It's not gonna be easier tomorrow. This is stuff, and it says, this is like urgent. There's stuff in here that is urgent and that has to be taken care of. And to not, at least even delicately explain more about why it is so hard to have this conversation, even in generalities of everything so polarized and bipartisan and the issue of Russia and all of this, that I think is a deficiency. And then again, some of the things like where it just says, the United States should be willing to take on a lot, you know, because I understood the difference in the end of primacy. And again, like I said, you couldn't do a lot of nuance if you're gonna say yes or no to a series of questions. But to me, the primacy thing was relying more on allies. Even though I am sympathetic with, I'm sure we're gonna talk about his point that he doesn't wanna give up too much power because it's nice to have some leverage. But my understanding is like, we are not going to go back to the kind of unipolar moment that we had. And the liberal international order, like I want that back, but it is not going to go, like Social Security's 90 years old. We all talk about all the time. We cannot keep up our debt on domestic stuff like we have. Okay, there's a lot of institutions that are 70 years old, or 60 years old, or 40 years old, and those have got to be revised too. So I'm not opposed to some of those things that a liberal internationalist might think are important glue holding certain things together or preventing certain things from happening. But I'm not trying to go back to every institution the way it was in 1974. - Yeah, I mean, politics, it seems to me, is a pretty major oversight in this paper. In the few instances he mentions in his discussion about trade and the dislocations associated trade, he actually calls for expanding the Social Safety Net for those displaced by trade. So even when he does engage on competing priorities, the domestic priorities, it seems that he's calling for some additional expenditures on domestic, as well as substantial increases in military spending. Okay, I want to pivot to a discussion around allies, which we've just touched on, and it also relates to Melanie's point about trust. The point of confusion that I have, because I think that at various stages in this paper, Black will says several different things, but I think he comes down ultimately on one side. It says, "Should we want capable allies or should we want dependent allies, those over which the United States has leveraged?" And I think Black will ultimately comes down on the side of dependence, even though he says allies lie at the core of US grand strategy that then he explains, those diverse advantages of US alliances and strong partnerships are often missed when they are viewed exclusively through the lens of burden sharing. If allies were independent militarily, they would likely undermine American influence over those partners, them. And then he continues, "Thus, the United States should "could Joel allies to increase defense spending, "but not to the extent that would prevent them "to shed their reliance on the country "nor confidently oppose US national interests." So I think it's fairly explicit what he expects allies to do. He expects allies to spend more, but remain ultimately dependent upon the United States. And I think there are some real challenges there in light of the disputes we've seen over the last month and a half, especially with respect to the allies and the Greenland dispute and a few other things. And then the question becomes, what will ensure that allies remain comfortably within the US fold? And this relates to Melanie said, "Trust, "but there's a whole section about legitimacy." And this is what he writes about legitimacy. He sends international politics as a competitive realm, the immensity of American power can menace the interests of states that would perhaps rally against the United States on their own or with others. But artful international conduct, one that provides benefit system-wide espouses and attractive ideology and restricts force, can elicit acquiescence and even consent. And now again, anyone who reads John Eichenberry or hope or a bunch of other liberal internationalists will recognize that language, that's exactly what they say, well, Brooks and Wolfhorth and folks like that. But then he says, "To reap the benefits of legitimacy, "the United States should do a number of things, "bind itself to certain universal rules "and exchange for international acceptance "of its centrality and privileges." And that includes requiring Washington to be much more sensitive to how it exercise power, especially military force, forces only acceptable if it represents an inescapable choice to protect vital national interests. Well, that's a lot to handle, right? And I think there are two challenges here. The first question is, do we agree with Blackwell that the United States on balance is better off with dependent allies as opposed to capable and relatively autonomous ones? And do we believe that some combination of artful international conduct can keep them on side even when the US power disparity, again, presuming that policy was implemented the way that Blackwell wanted the power disparity between the United States and its allies would remain vast. There would be a huge gap still between the United States military capabilities and allies. What do you two think? - So I struggled a little bit with some of the language here about allies. Chris, obviously you and I come out on a different spot here often on alliance relationships. I am more willing to accept some degree of dependence on the United States because I think the logic of that is that it provides the US with more leverage to be able to determine the policy choices of its allies. And I worry that what's happening today is we are getting more capable allies who are going to do things that we don't want. Or who are going to pursue capabilities in many cases that just duplicate the capabilities of the United States because they don't trust that we're gonna be there in a crisis. And as a result, those allies are less useful than they would be otherwise. I probably come down on a slightly different place than you do. I think just one other point on this though, which is Blackwell has a different way of thinking about the regional alliances that I would in some of this assessment. So I'll give you one example. When he's talking about primacy, Blackwell says that one of the pillars of primacy, so for each of the first few strategies he lays out nine pillars of what this strategy is. And he says that one of them is to urge US allies in both Asia and Europe to play a greater role in regional security and deterrence with substantially increased defense spending. I think that's kind of a pillar of most of these strategies, frankly. But then he says something else, which I found confusing, which is that he says that primacy, a pillar is that the US should pivot at security forces to Asia, draw down US military deployments in Europe in the Middle East. I'm not sure that that's primacy. I think the primacy argument is that the US should be dominant in the Middle East, dominant in Europe, dominant in the Americas, ideally dominant in Asia. And so I think his treatment of allies is a little unclear to me throughout parts of this essay. Yeah, I agree with most of that. Although what he wants us to do in the Middle East is a little unclear to me because I feel like he wants us to still have quite a presence there. That's how I read that. Look, I want to have capable allies for sure and something between dependent and autonomous. So however it means that we can have leverage. Just right, the Goldilocks just right. I do want that. Yes, I want the just right leverage. I want when they are putting Huawei in their domestic law enforcement security, I want to be able to say, do not do that. When they are going to make trade deals that are going to decrease our security, I want to be able to use our leverage as a good trading partner and as a security partner to convince them that there are better alternatives than what they're going to do. I don't mind if you want to call it influencing, if you want to call it pressuring, if you want to call it sometimes strong-irming, I'm fine with that. As long as in the end, we are still perceived as being a good ally, helping them to get to the right decision and something that's right for us, I'm not going to lie. Right. By the way, I also think that the United States right now and we're going to lose it if we don't protect it, we have a convening power that is just different from what other countries have there. And I like being the head of NATO. Like I like having an American sit as the canning general. I can't imagine, I guess they would work it out, but you imagine France, Germany, bunch of those countries like trying to figure, again, they're all adults, they will figure it out. But the process for them to start to realign things would certainly be interesting to watch over a long period of time and people are doing about, then really see some fights about who spends more and who has the capability and who deserves to sit at top. So I mean, I'm sure it bothers me a lot less that he says that than it bothers Chris in that respect. But as far as that, ally, peace goes, I'm just looking at the Trumpism and so forth. And this is again where my concern about the political ability to have a real strategy and looking at the real costs of short-term thinking are going to be durable. And like Mark Karnie saying that he's going to have a trade deal with China and they're going to bring an EVs, that is so stupid. I mean, that is just stupid. That is teenage tantrum behavior. And I get that he has a domestic constituency that he has to fight back Donald Trump. And so I take a lot of responsibility for that. But it sure would be a lot nicer if we could again not be lashing out and looking at everything as like what interests and what benefits Donald Trump today. And having to have our allies depend on waking up every day and hoping they're not getting screamed at. Melon, you don't actually have to take responsibility for that because you're not the one that's causing them to throw a tantrum. But I appreciate the sentiment. Look, I think obviously to me, it is unrealistic to expect allies to do more and not expect a stronger voice at the table. That is a minimal sort of, that's the Goldilocks version. But I also think this is where the politics comes into play and Black will just does not engage this. So if you went to the American people's act, if you went to the American people and you said what you just said in a public address or you advised some major candidate to say, look, it actually benefits us if US allies are not as capable as they otherwise would be because we derive benefits from that. And yes, that means from a burden sharing perspective that we are carrying a heavier burden, make that case to the American people. Black will is fairly explicit on this point, but he doesn't position it in a way that you're trying to explain this strategy to the American people. It's just, you know, that's presumed to be understood. And it is understood by the people who are likely to read this report, but it's not understood by people in this country whose interest in foreign policy is fleeting at best. And I just think that's hard to sustain. So I want to pivot. We have a little bit of time to pivot to one other big discussion and then close on a small note. And that has to do with the unwillingness to reconcile ends and means. Again, he, I think he mostly ignores politics. I think that's to the detriment of the study. And I'm reminded that even the report of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, which also calls for substantial increases depending on spending as he does in that report, the commission is right, the ballooning US deficit poses national security risks. Therefore, increased security spending should be accompanied by additional taxes and reforms to entitlement spending. That's what to Melanie's point. And then later the report allows that it's preferred strategy primacy. It doesn't call it that, but that is essentially what that report is. It says that strategy requires the support of the public for mobilization of the economy, broader volunteering in military public and civic service and the willingness to sacrifice to taxation and possible changes to entitlement benefits so the nation can afford the cost of global leadership. Now, I'll also note that Eric Edelman, who is one of the co-chairs of the NBSC, presented to the task force on grand strategy, the very task force that Black will convene to write this report. And I don't know what Edelman said to the task force. But if he referenced the need for Americans to sacrifice, including by paying higher taxes and tolerating clutched social security and Medicare, that didn't make it into Black Will's report. That seems to me a major oversight in this report. What are you two saying? It's inescapable. I mean, I want to say something that can't go on forever won't maybe I'm wrong, but again today I saw that the Social Security Trust Fund's going to be delayed in seven years or something like that, not know whether they're shenanigans we're going to try to do, especially when the rest of the world is not really interested in supporting our economy as much as they have been and when we're making stupid choices and tossing $40 billion to farmers because of stupid political judgment, things like that. This is a real problem that has got to get addressed and no one is willing to do it. Republicans pretend like they're willing to do it, but the president doesn't want to do it. Nobody wants to talk about this in an election here. They want to talk about raising the defense budget. It's not going to be foreign half trillion dollars, but this is something that cannot be escaped at a certain point. The lack of the United States and the lack of leadership in many countries around the world to be honest about what has to happen and have a discussion and to go to the public if they are not making headway. Where are people making a series of speeches that will get a little bit of press attention or some clips somewhere talking in a real way about what an individual and I know that there's differences between individuals and parties on what they think the threats are. What the threats are and what we would actually have to do to meet those issues. I'm seeing that a little bit. I'm seeing that in Taiwan. We're seeing that now in Japan. Tom Tugunhat has just started a sub-stack trying to explain what we're confronting and people just toss around China and we, to varying degrees, look at China with concern or Russia or Iran or North Korea and we read the national security strategies and things like that. But where are the people who really want to say this is what we have to produce and this is what we have to do. I do say it with some people on ships. They're not making much headway either. But this is why like every time I saw primacy I just like, okay, just roll off me because that ship is sailed. Like the primacy ship has sailed. So I think on this defense spending point, you may both disagree with this. First, I think the United States could spend significantly more on defense and I think you could make a strong argument for why that is necessary in light of the China challenge. And in fact, Donald Trump has suggested that the United States should spend $1.5 trillion on defense. Here's where this report, a year, annual budget, yes, yes, 1.5 trillion in 2027, yes. Annually, correct. Here is one of the pillars of Trumpism according to this report and I quote, flatline or reduced defense spending and refuse to employ military force if it would produce substantial casualties. I quote, the second half of that might be true. But the first half of it clearly not aligned with where the president is some days. Right. I think the problem is that this administration and we talked about this on several shows is so confusing if you're an American because at the same time they're saying we need a huge increase in defense spending. That's what the president saying. But they also said that over the last year, the president without an increase in defense spending rebuilt the entire US military. And you can't say both of those things at the same time. Both can't be true. Right. So either we're in a crisis, which the president has not solved because we haven't actually increased defense capabilities by increasing spending or everything is fine because actually it was just the incompetent foreign policy elite that were ruining everything before and now that they're gone. We don't need to spend more money. But I think the spending issue we're just not dealing with it in a serious way in Washington. And I'm not sure that it's dealt with in a serious way in this piece either. So I just want to say two things. You said we could spend more and you could make the case. And so both of those things might be true, but nobody is as you as you finish is making the case. No, no, people are making the case. Like my colleague Mackenzie Eaglin has written a whole piece called affording defense, which I was part of. Yes, arguing for more defense spending. Now I'm not saying that I think that's realistic in the current political climate, but there are some people making the case. And I have an AI window opened here. Yes, on the final appropriations and like where this is going, but no one that is going around like a member of Sask, I mean Roger Wicker says it, but let's have the sustained case. Donald Trump, when this study was being finalized, he was right that Donald Trump wasn't going to raise spending. And his OMB doesn't want him to raise defense spending because it was only at Reagan when people started hearing there was going to be this massive increase. And I think it was after the new year that the number was actually announced. It was after the new year. It was absolutely is after the new year. Absolutely was. But now they do it. And it's just like, okay, so my Rogers might want to do that. But what's he supposed to do with it? But this is the whole problem with this administration. They are so whiplashed around by different things that they can't focus on strategy. They cannot focus about anything beyond what is happening today or this week. And that is to their detriment. I want to bracket Trump just for a moment because Melanie, everything you just said was correct. Trump sends out a truth, a truth. I love that. And the following day Rogers and Wicker both say, yes, hooray, we need a $1.5 trillion military budget. We're so glad the president is endorsed this idea. That's going to be the new baseline that we're negotiating from. So they sort of they try to lock that in. And I agree that it's just baffling. I just cannot explain why a president who issues a national security strategy and a national defense strategy that calls for using force less that calls for shifting burden to allies needs to increase defense spending by 50%. I just don't understand it. It doesn't make any sense. So I'm waiting for them to explain that. But before we close, I wanted to clarify one thing, Zach and I again, I'm not I know McKenzie's work, but I haven't read the most recent stuff. Do you believe or does McKenzie believe that the United States should increase military spending without addressing tax revenue and or entitlement spending or when and she talks about it when you talk about it, do you like the National Defense Strategy Commission, explain the trade-offs that should be undertaken in order to expand military spending? Yeah, I think we have to address the trade-offs. I mean, even if we don't increase military spending, we still have to address the budget. No, it's true. Because we're running deficits in debt. It would deficit every single year. But I think this is part of what is critical is if you're going to make the case for something like primacy. And I would not argue for primacy, right? But if you're going to make the case for a strategy of that sort, you have to make the case to the American people for why spending more is necessary. And I think you could make the argument that in the Cold War, we spent double, triple, sometimes quadruple, what we're spending now on defense. Sure. Yeah. Because we convinced the American people that it was important. They thought it was critical. Yeah. So it's not that this isn't possible. But I think you're right that you have to go make that argument. And I don't see a lot of political leaders making that argument today as you were saying, Melanie. Do you know who's making it? Don Bacon. That's true. I love Don Bacon. Do you know who's not running for Congress? Don Bacon. That's right. Again, Don Bacon. These things go together. All right. Last point before we wrap, we've already sort of danced around the fact that Blackwill allows that the grand strategy is not of resolute global leadership is not going to be embraced by a says neither the current president nor the current Republican party. But then he goes on. But the fact remains that there is no irreparable break in the post war war to order. Most of Trump's dangerous initiatives can with concerted effort be reversed. And then in the end, he closes by quoting Madeline Albright claiming the United States can, again, be the indispensable nation, sounding very much like Joe Biden, who also quoted Madeline Albright. I have to say, in this might sound a little harsh, both men remind me of the famous poem by Dylan Thomas, which begins, "Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day rage rage against the dying of the light." Is that unfair? Is Bob Blackwill, is Joe Biden, or others like them sort of pining for a return to indispensable miss? Are they merely raging against the dying of the light? No. I don't think that's. So maybe this is just because I spent the weekend in Tokyo doing a grand strategy simulation. And so. Maybe. Every time you try and imagine the world where the US is playing much less of a leadership role, the problem you come back to is if the US doesn't do it, who else is going to stubble? And I think the answer is no one. And I'm not saying that that means that we should go back to the world that existed 50 years ago, or even the one that existed in the mid-90s, that world is gone. But I do think it's fair to say that, look, if the US doesn't lead, who else has the capacity to do this? Maybe your answer is China. But look around the world at the great powers, or even at the secondary states. Like Europe is not united enough to lead as an entity. Can France, Germany, the UK do this? They have so many domestic challenges right now, just like we do, but they don't have the same amount of latent power. And, you know, Japan, Korea, Australia, India, they can't step in globally and replace the United States. So I actually kind of think that this statement is true if we don't do it, no one else can. And then I think the logical result will be that China and maybe a handful of others will start dictating terms in the system in ways that are really adverse to American interests. So when I brought that up at the beginning, I said that I was sympathetic to it, and I am sympathetic to that statement in the sense that ZAC has explained it. I agree with, I think, everything that ZAC just said. I don't like it because of the context in which Mavilan Albright said it, that there's nothing this country couldn't do. We could you intervene with military might and solve any problem. But what I'm saying, that ship has sailed that, you know, all these institutions are worth preserving perpetuity. That is not true. And so I do think that we're indispensable in the sense that ZAC described. And I want us to be thought of as that. I want us to have earned that kind of trust and to be able to again use some leverage on our partners and allies to help them to step up in a way that advances our interests as well. But if we aren't there, then I am worried about, like, you know, what Canada is going to do. Why? It was funny to see JD Vance and Marco Rubio ex-stalling the virtues of all of our allies coming together on the critical minerals ministerial the other day. And you're like, we're going to have this amazing partnership. Why don't we figure out how to build EVs in the United States and Canada and Mexico together to stop China? Like, that would be interesting. We're just not thinking in the way that would be so helpful to us. OK, I think that's a good place to stop. Ah, depressing. The tradition of festivists begins with the airing of grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people. Now, you're going to hear about it. OK, Chris, grievance. So my grievance is to Jeff Bezos and his cuts to the Washington Post. Now let me be very clear. I think that rich people and Bezos is one of the richest men in the world can do what they want with their money. But to purchase a news organization and an outlet like the Washington Post with an expectation that it'd be profitable seems to me in the current era really absurd. Instead, I think we're moving to a place where media organizations are going to be effectively non-profits, effectively a charitable organization. And in the same way that very rich people give to hospitals that name wings after them or universities that name buildings after them or chairs of various professorships, rich people buying media organizations should not expect them to be generating revenue. And I don't buy that argument, especially at a time when Mr. Bezos has made a number of other extremely curious investments, if I can even use that word, in things like a documentary film about the first lady. So I am sad about what has happened to the Washington Post and I am aggrieved of Jeff Bezos' role in that. Yeah, I agree with all that. I also heard that they had to start a GoFundMe to bring people back from their overseas assignments, which is pretty bad. Okay, sack. Yeah. So, both my grievance and my adipoi are Japan-related, but in opposite ways. So my grievance is with President Trump's decision to weigh in just before the Japanese election in support of one political party, the Liberal Democratic Party, the LDP, which one hugely as the president would say. It's not that this in the short term is going to be bad because it actually aligns him more closely with Paki G. Senai, which is potentially good for her because she's coming to Washington in about a month. I think it might reinforce some confidence in Tokyo about Trump's commitment to Japan, but as a general principle, even though I think the LDP being strong right now is probably beneficial to the United States, we should not weigh in on the political choices of our friends and allied countries and democracies. These are their choices to make. When those allies weigh in on American political choices, we get quite angry. In fact, President Trump himself gets quite angry when allies weigh in on our political choices. And in this case, we meddled in an election that I think, you know, in the long term, this is going to create huge problems. And now when the U.S. doesn't weigh in in favor of a political candidate, there are going to be questions about whether the U.S. opposes that candidate, right? So anyways, I understand that that's not at all what was probably going through the president's head or whoever wrote the truths for him. But the reality is that, you know, I think we're walking down a path that we should never have started down at all. Okay. Well, my grievance goes to the bulletin of the atomic scientists for the Doomsday Clock. What is the Doomsday Clock? This drove me nuts, Melanie. It is a project that drives me nuts every year. It's a project that began in 1947. It was set at seven minutes to midnight then. In 2024, it was 90 seconds to midnight. This year has been moved to 89 seconds, a new record. It is, you know, supposed to tell us a lot of people think that it's just supposed to explain how close we are to nuclear war. But no, in 2007, Jack Butler has an article in the Wall Street Journal and he tells us that the publication declared that climate change was nearly as dire threat as nuclear weapons. At some subsequent point, it made them equivalent. Its website argues that both could destroy humanity and are intertwined. The shift made it easier to creep the clock closer to midnight, garnering more attention. Its journey to the fateful hour hasn't regressed since 2010. The bulletin's admonitions have grown more pretentious and judgmental. It warned in 2018, two minutes to midnight about disinformation. It warned in 2020. 100%. seconds to midnight of a new willingness of political leaders to reject the negotiations and institutions that protect civilization. So now that we're at 89, the best part of this was all the memes that came with it, like the, you know, arrested development. You know, we want to be taken seriously all of these things. And my main grievance with it is just arbitrary. It's just there's no metrics assigned to it. It's a nice publicity stunt effort, but once you're starting to get more mockery than serious attention, maybe it's time to call it quits. Okay. Chris, Ada. Oh, yeah. My adda and I want to emphasize this is a highly qualified conditional and with multiple asterisks next to it. Ada goes to, I hope it's not your wife. No, androle founder, Pam or Lucky, who says that the United States spends too much money on the wrong thing with respect to defense spending. Now, let me be clear. I strongly suspect that Mr. Lucky, the real underlying message here is we could be doing so much better if we were just buying a whole bunch more of Androle's stuff. And if in fact, a whole bunch more dollars going to Androle and this notion of sort of like some wonder weapon magical breakthrough that's going to deliver advantages, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, then I'm not on board. However, I do think it's significant that one of the key beneficiaries of US military spending as it stands today, that is to say, Pam or Lucky and his company for someone like him to come out and say as he did, we spend too much on the military. I think that deserves at least a qualified. So way to go, Pam or Lucky. Great. Okay. Zack. So as promised, my adda is to the Prime Minister of Japan, Lucky, Chee, Sni, who won and really it was her not her party, just a massive election win yesterday. I was in Tokyo. It was snowing a lot. People were wondering what turnout was going to look like. I asked a very conservative friend who is a big supporter of Taki Yuchi's, whether he thought that they could get to two-thirds of the lower house. And he said, I don't know, that's probably too hard along with their coalition partner. They won two-thirds the LDP did alone. This was just an unbelievably huge win. The biggest victory in the lower house, the most number of seats ever in Japanese democratic history. And pretty hard to imagine, but six months ago, it looked like the LDP was just collapsing in on itself and they were going to lose power. And now here, they've won the biggest victory in decades. And this is good for the United States. Although I don't think the US should have weighed in at all on the election, a strong leader in Japan. Really? I know. Shocking. Yeah. A strong leader in Japan who has an electoral mandate, who believes that Japan should step up and work very closely with the United States is great. And I think we're in line to see her as sort of another Shinzo Abe or a Koizumi type figure. And that's good news. Is she sending China a thank you note? You know, I don't think the Chinese or the US weighing in actually made any difference good or bad in either case. I know. Yeah. I think what's interesting is, I think what Japanese wanted is they like a strong leader. They like that she's female that she's kind of going her own way a little bit. Maybe that's a lesson to all of us here that rather than nominating very, very old political leaders, we should find some people who are young and energetic. She looks like she's excited about what she does. Yeah. And it's so interesting because her popularity is the strongest of like 18 to 29. And then it declines as people get older. I mean, it doesn't decline very much, but it's so interesting to look at that. I worry that she, you know, can only go downhill from here. But anyway, she's off to a very good ambitious starts. That's great. Okay. Well, my ad it goes to Javier Malay, who has been president for about two years in Argentina. And Chris Lingle and economist notes that in that time inflation has gone from 300% to 30% poverty rate from 52 to 31% budget deficit from 15% to zero. Public sector debt fell from 500 billion to 446 billion. And is now 84 and a half percent of GDP down from 155% in 23. And the central bank reserves also have more than doubled. So and then to top it off and to make Deb Fisher super mad, he just got a massive deal to import Argentine beef to the United States. So, but I'm just a character. He's got had he's made his buddy happy. So that's very important. And then I think that both Zach and maybe Chris and I all have an ad for the secretary of the Department of Defense Greg Moriarty, who is going to be the incoming ambassador to the United States from Australia. So Kevin Red is on his way out on March 31st. And this will be a good appointment. He has a lot of good relationships in the defense sector. And that will be great. Zach, any thoughts? Well, I just think Greg is very, very smart and a very thoughtful observer of American politics and a perfect choice at this moment. So yeah, good on the Prime Minister for choosing somebody who's going to do so well here. I don't know this gentleman, but I trust both of you completely, as you know. And so if you vouch for him, then he must be great. I vouch for very serious and as Zach's a thoughtful workhorse who is going to come here and get some things done. Although bridge-colding may might make him turn his pockets out upon arrival. Okay. What do you have coming up? I am writing. I told you about the field note. We have coming out Abu Dhabi and the Emirates and the Gulf and then another one on Turkey. And then after that, I have several other writing assignments. Plus, I'm teaching two short courses, which I have to prepare for. So the next month is going to be a little nutty actually. So wish me well. Oh, okay. Zach. Going back to Japan in a week. So that'll be fun. Figure out how much stuff has changed there. And then, yeah, just looking forward to this piece I have coming out in foreign affairs, which is going to make everyone angry, which is my favorite past on now. You mean so any like any other show is what you're saying? Yeah, that's the whole point. Right. Okay. Excellent. Well, I'm headed over to Zach's neck of the wood at AI a little bit later today. And then I'm getting on a plane to go to Savannah for a few days to do some workshops. Jealous. Yeah. And getting out of the cold into the less cold. It is freezing by the way. It is freezing. Yeah, it is colder here. There isn't same poll. It folks here in DC. So there you have it. Yeah. When I landed back in New York last night, the windshield, when I looked it up from the airplane, said it was negative 13 Fahrenheit. Come on. Come on. Okay. Well, thank you for listening to this episode of net assessment. If you enjoyed it, please rate us at iTunes. You can follow us at CA Proble at Zach Cooper and Prof Marlo. Thanks for listening. And until next time, be well.