What’s the Left’s Vision for Foreign Policy After Trump?

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I think we may be in a moment a foreign policy rupture in the Democratic Party. It reminds me of years ago when the Iraq War remained the Democratic Party. The Iraq War, which is why Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary, changing the course of American politics.

Because I will offer a clear contrast to somebody who never supported this war,

thought it was a bad idea. I don't want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us in the war in the first place. Right now Israel and Gaza feel to me like they are becoming the center of a similar rupture. The thing that started here for me was a few weeks ago Brian Schatz, who is a Democratic senator from Hawaii.

He's often talked of as maybe the next Senate Democratic leader after Chuck Schumer. So guy with an incredible sense of the pulse of the party. He tweeted, "I'm not into blacklisting anyone from future work in their area of expertise, but I do think it's fair to want a whole new crop, a whole new crop, a foreign policy staffers in the next Democratic administration.

It's not like the same 120 people are the only people who know anything. Then Senator Chris Fan Holland, again, very well respected in the party, very much someone in its mainstream. He wrote an opinion piece for the times, laying out how different he thinks in the Democratic Party's policy on Israel needs to be, how badly thinks the Biden

administration's policy failed, and then he went on to say. Primary voters won't trust any Democratic presidential candidate, who does not have a record of moral and strategic clarity on these issues. Especially if, as a legislator, he or she voted to send Mr Netanyahu bombs even as his government imposed a total blockade on Gaza.

Nor will they support a candidate who plans to re-enlist the senior Democratic decision makers who whitewash the truth during the Biden administration and refuse to acknowledge their complicity. Complexity is a strong word in a, in turn, a scene Democratic fight here. Then we've seen a number of Democratic primaries beginning to split over Gaza.

It has become an essential issue in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary,

where Abdul Al-Siyad leads in many of the new polls. You're watching Democrats bend over backwards in the most pretzel-like way to justify the war. They're like, this isn't a legal war, but if they ask me, I'd fund it. If you don't have the courage to call out the moral abomination of genocide,

“then what do you have the courage to call out in the first place?”

This is a moral Rochak test for our party. It was very present in the New Jersey House primary that Adam Hamawi, a doctor who had treated the injured in Gaza just one. I was running on something very simple, is that we should be spending on health care not bombs. We should be spending on our communities here, you know,

in New Jersey, in America, and not funding bombs overseas for, you know, atrocities and genocide. We should not be funding the endless wars that we're seeing. It's been at the center of the House primary in my district in New York, where Brad Lander is running against the incumbent, Dan Goldman. And much of Lander's attack is centered on Goldman's support for Israel.

Representative Goldman does not view what's happening there as a genocide. I've been fighting against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza since 1990.

I've never heard him say the word occupation in that context.

Lander II is well-headed in recent polls. Into all of this comes Trump's war in Iran, a war he has fought alongside Israel, and just the general failure of his tariff and foreign policy. And so it's made this moment a moment when something new really could emerge. The Democratic Party is not going to go back to Bidenism.

It is not going to try to replicate Trumpism. So what would something different actually look like beyond just Gaza,

“though of course, including Gaza, what would it do differently?”

Matt does is the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy. He's worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Center for American Progress. He served as Senator Bernie Sanders Form Policy Advisor. And he's advised Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

I want to have mom to explore question that I think might come to define the 2020 primary. What would the left form policy look like? What would it actually try to do in the world?

As always my email as recline show at nmytimes.com.

Matt does welcome to the show. Thank you. So you're at a piece in the nation recently saying that Democrats can't avoid a reckoning on Gaza. What is that reckoning?

“Well I think first it involves understanding that we're not going to sidestep Gaza as an issue”

as the party moves forward. I do think the Gaza debate, the Gaza debacle, the Gaza genocide stands for a lot that is wrong with our politics and I think if Democrats are going to be able to offer a compelling alternative vision of how they're going to govern, they really need to have a discussion, have a debate,

have a reckoning with what the Biden administration did, not just with the policy.

But with the campaign of what I think was clearly disinformation that accompanied that policy. And that's going to involve some very tough conversations. That's going to be putting a spotlight on some key officials who served in the Biden administration. And some of whom probably hope to serve again and probably should not get to. What do you mean by a campaign of disinformation?

I mean, I'm looking at the way that the Biden administration talks, the White House, the State Department, you have this constant refrain of, oh we're not seeing that, we've not made that assessment. We have not made an assessment or drawn their conclusion that they are in violation of international humanitarian law when it comes to the provision of humanitarian assistance into Gaza. Given the nature of Hamas' track record of colocating itself with civilians using civilians

as human shields, we're unable to make a conclusive determination as it relates to violations of international humanitarian law. We at this time have not made an assessment that the Israelis are in violation of U.S. law. And it was clear that they were choosing not to see things that were happening. Everyone else in the world could see these things were happening.

And Palestinians themselves were reporting these things were happening. Israeli and Palestinian UNRICE GOOTS is international NGOs were reporting that these things were happening.

“This is one of the things that I really, I think underlines this disconnect here is the Biden”

administration made an assessment within a month of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Within a month, Secretary of State Blinken came out and made an assessment that Russia is committing war crimes. And yesterday, President Biden said that, in his opinion, war crimes have been committed

in Ukraine. Personally, I agree. The idea that they could not make a similar assessment of a military into whose operations the United States has vastly more visibility, I think, is just just it's just not credible. See, you know many of the people in the Biden administration, you've talked to them.

What do you think happened? And when I said, I mean, in a very specific way, what do you think were the set of commitments or values, because these people see themselves as having deep commitments and deep values

“that in your view went wrong and led to the policy that we had?”

Yeah.

I mean, I think first this really does come down to Joe Biden, not only Joe Biden,

but Joe Biden, I think had a very particular conception, both of how U.S. policy towards the Middle East, how U.S. policy toward Israel should work. And he had a very serious confidence, I would say misplaced, but he had great confidence in his own judgment about how to use U.S. foreign policy. He had a view of the U.S. Israel relationship, he said many times there should be no daylight.

If there were differences in opinion, differences in policy, though, should be expressed privately, whereas in public, the United States should remain essentially in lockstep with whatever the Israeli government was doing. And I think he has had that view for a very long time. His view was us, okay, we're going to express some differences with what Israel is doing

here and there, but we're not really going to put any real pressure on them to change. Policy, you know, as a former staffer myself, I know that once the boss has kind of laid down the parameters of where he or she is willing to go and not go, I think staffers start to tend to shape. You know, you stop arguing and you say, okay, these are the guardrails and you start

to shape policy within those guardrails and Biden made clear repeatedly, and he made clear actually during the 2020 primary when Senator Sanders kicked off debate about conditioning military aid to Israel, I mean, Biden at the time called that a preposterous idea.

bombs, but other than that, there really no consequences for what the entire world could see was an ongoing set of atrocities.

I have a question about this that maybe you know the answer to because it's always confused

me.

“I think it's fair to say at this point for the left, Gaza exists as a, if not the central”

failure of the Biden administration. And I agree with you that much of that comes down to Joe Biden himself. When Biden was being pushed to step down, the some of the strongest people fighting that effort trying to keep Biden in place for Bernie Sanders and AOC, and I never quite understood why you know them better than I do, pretty given like the centrality of Gaza now and obviously

that was true in 2024, but what was going on there? I mean, I can say what I know, what I, from my perspective, I think their view was, you know, they knew Biden, obviously they disagreed with the Gaza policy. They were two of the most vocal critics of the Gaza policy. But they knew that when it came to other policies in domestic economic policy trade policy,

they at least had an ear in the White House. Joe Biden and his team had been willing to talk with, engage with them on a whole range of issues beyond foreign policy. But I also, I got to say, I feel like there was also, I think, a pragmatic sense. And this is just my suspicion, I'm not, you know, this, I don't have any insight information.

I think it makes sense. Like, listen, if someone's going to push Joe Biden out, it's not going to be the progressive left, they're very aware.

“I think all progressives in the Democratic Party are aware that we have a centrist”

establishment that is always looking for reasons to call this, you know, disunifying records.

So I think that kind of played into their hesitances as well. I mean, then ask you about the way the policy was changing. As you say, that in the 2020 campaign, Bernie Sanders kicked off to be an unconditioning aid, which is something that has been anathema in the Democratic Party for a long time. All of a sudden, it's not.

I thought the op-ed by Senator Chris Van Hollen was a pretty significant moment. I mean, he's an establishment figure who's been very outspoken on his role for a long time. It's worth saying. Let me ask it directly.

What in your view should the Democrats position towards Israel be, what is the right policy here? Well, I think first of all, it's to end aid. It's to end, I mean, Israel is a wealthy country. There's really no need for American taxpayers to continue to subsidize their defense

budget.

“I mean, that's a position that was put out there by AOC, and I think about five minutes”

later on, and then you came up right behind. So very interesting, these are two people who kind of represent different polls in the party, but I do think we're getting close to that. But then moving from that, I think it's not just aid. It is sales.

And we do have laws on the books. I mean, this is why I found the whole conditioning aid, conditioning arm sales debate. So bizarre, the way it was treated as some kind of, you know, kind of weird punishment. We have laws on the books that condition aid to every country, according to a set of principles, what is the lay he law, whether it's the Ons Act's important control act.

There are existing laws that, you know, prohibitor restrict the sale of arms to militaries or military units that have a proven record of human rights abuses. We have simply not appell those laws. Multiple administrations have simply simply ignored them. And again, this is what I was saying about the Biden administration.

Do you see, I have a question for you. Would you say we follow those laws in general and make an exception for Israel? Or do we not follow them in general? I think there are certain countries, Israel being one, Egypt, others countries that we have. Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia? Yes. I mean, so I think, listen, the arms lobby is an extremely powerful one. There is a strong incentive to just kind of push these sales through. Can you get comes from the arms lobby?

I do think comes from the American foreign policy, establishments or the presidents feeling that the alliances with these countries are important for other reasons. I think it's all those things. I mean, in some cases, it might be one more than the other. But I do think this gets to a much bigger problem is that the security state, the military

industrial complex, whatever word we're going to use now, I mean, this is a real problem. This is how we part of how we ended up in this ridiculous war with Iran, but getting back to what the Democrats' position should be on Israel. I think yes. So, you know, uphold our existing laws when it comes to arms sales, but also let's really

tee up a policy that empowers the best actors in Israel and Palestine rather than the worst ones. Because unfortunately, as I see it, that is what our policy has been doing for the past 20 plus years. Can you describe how it's done that and then what the alternative will look like?

Right. I mean, I think we've had a policy where basically all the consequences and disincentives and punishments and sticks, so to speak, have been focused on one side, not entirely, but mostly. That's on one side, the less powerful side, the Palestinians.

There's always some kind of new condition that's placed on them to receive aid, and, you

I mean, that is true, but at the same time, there are zero consequences that are imposed,

any real meaningful consequences that are ever imposed on the more powerful side.

The Israeli side, and I think this, this, this dynamic has really, you know, given Israel, very reasonable belief that they can just press forward with, with, they facto annexation, which is ongoing as we speak, with the trenching their control over all of the land of Israel and Palestine and perpetuity, and to weaken and diminish the Palestinian national movement to just, you know, a completely, you know, controlled subject population within a greater Israel.

That's the situation we're in right now, and the reason this keeps ticking in one direction is because there's no reason for it, not to. I mean, there are no consequences for more and more extremist leaders in Israel to raise an implement more extremist policies at the same time, you know, Palestinians look at that, and they look at their own kind of ineffective corrupt leadership, and they're like,

what is this? They, they see only more occupation, and then it empowers extremist voices, who are saying

“no, the way to get our freedom is through the gun, and that's what I mean, when, like,”

we have pursued policies that have empowered some of the worst actors who don't want peace, does it make for me? What are these policies and what would their alternative opposite look like? Yeah, I mean, I would say first of all, let's look at Gaza. You need, first of all, governance, basic, you know, Gaza, as, as I'm sure you're, you're

listening. No, I mean, it's, it's a ruin now. It's still, it's a series of 10 cities, but the way to bring order, the way to bring services to people, the way to bring real control, is to have it governed by Palestinians. That's ultimately the only way that you're going to be able to, to that include Hamas.

I think it has to include some kind of constant agreement with Hamas, as we, as we all know, Hamas remains in Gaza, it has not been destroyed, so they continue to be a relevant force, and I think what we have to come around to is just understanding that, you know, the disarmament

of Hamas will never happen under a situation of occupation.

It will only conceivably happen under a situation of legitimate Palestinian self-governance. And what does it look like on the other side?

“What, what have these policies been, what, what would they be choices are?”

I mean, first off, let's start to create disincentives for these policies. It's, let's state plainly that these, the settlements are legal, that officials who support them and facilitate their growth should face consequences, they should face sanctions. I think, you know, one of the very few good things that the Biden administration did on Israel Palestine was, you know, sanctions against violent settlers, but I think that's just

the tip of the iceberg. But I think it will start to shift the dynamic once you show that there are real costs for these policies. Let me ask you about attention here, something by the administration officials often told me was, including on the show at times, was that there was only so far they could push

or restrain Netanyahu and they thought it was better to remain in conversation, to remain with some leverage over these really government. It's funny when you were talking about why AOC and Bernie might have wanted Biden to stay on the ticket despite deeply disagreeing with him on Gaza, well, they had his ear. And, you know, even right now, there is huge amounts of criticism from these really

opposition that Netanyahu is listening too much to Donald Trump and not launching the scale of assault on Lebanon that he has promised and that they want him to launch. So like even the incredibly modest level of concession Netanyahu appears to be making to Trump has become a political liability frame in Israel. So there is some tension here between kind of maintaining, you know, the line of communication

in the possible, you know, influence over Israeli decisions, but then you're complicit in that market lately. Yeah. How do you think about that? Yeah, well, I would say three things.

One is, first of all, even if you don't change their behavior at all, you are at least no

longer providing arms for a genocide. I count that as a win in and of itself. Kind of all this idea that, okay, they could just move forward without us. I mean, we have enough, you know, Israeli security officials, not just recently, but going back many years saying, listen, without you a support, we could not, we simply could not continue.

I mean, that is what the Israeli security echelon believes. And third, this idea that they were just staying engaged to have influence, I don't buy that.

“And the reason I don't is, I'm going to go back to, I believe it was 2019.”

And this is when I was working with Senator Sanders on a war powers resolution on Yemen. The United States was involved in support of the Emirati and Saudi war on Yemen, massive humanitarian crisis at that time, the worse humanitarian crisis in the world. And Senator Sanders and along with Senator Chris Murphy, Senator Mike Lee, offered a war powers resolution, which basically says the president has taken the United States into a conflict

And at the time, a number of former Obama administration officials published a letter, which

“we really appreciated saying that they had made a mistake, because this war started under”

the Obama administration. And initially, President Obama and his team supported it for exactly the reason you just said, in Israel, which was to say, okay, we don't necessarily like this war on Yemen, but staying engaged in saying supportive of what the Saudis and the Emirates are doing. We'll give us some influence in how this war is conducted.

They said in that letter, that was a mistake. We were not able to have meaningful influence. And in fact, what we did was just give affirmation to a terrible war. And some of the people who signed that letter went on to serve in the Biden administration and are now out here offering the exact same argument for why it was better to continue

supporting Netanyahu and Israel and Gaza, and I don't buy it.

The other argument you'll hear, this sometimes from Democrats, very often from Republicans,

is that Israel is in American ally. We stand with our allies. Israel is a important strategic partner in the region in intelligence and cooperation and other things. And so there is an American strategic interest, more of a real estate than a values-based

take in maintaining a tight alliance. Do you buy that? What?

“I mean, are we benefiting from our relationship to the Middle East right now?”

What's happening? Are we benefiting from this relationship? I mean, yes, I hear this argument a lot. It's kind of almost a, it's like a holy rift in Washington. But I do question it.

Yes, it's good to have allies. It's good to have democratic allies. I think the United States should work with allies to defend their legitimate security interests. I think what Israel has been doing is not remotely legitimate.

When I hear people bring up, oh, they have this cooperation on technology, on tech, and my answer is what will for what? Well, obviously, this is very, very good for Israel. This alliance has been very, very good for Israel. But when I look at the costs and benefits, most strategically, ethically morally, politically

diplomatically, to the US's real relationship, I don't think it works out in the US's favor. I think so it is up to a larger, foreign policy debate that is happening right now about what should drive American foreign policy? And when I listen to some of the people, some of whom you have advised who are tickulating

this on the left, AOC Bernie Sanders, people like Chris Murphy and Jason Crowe, Congressman, something they center is that our foreign policy should be based on values. You're a lot of talk of interest, but they will talk a lot about values. What values? What does it mean to have a values-based foreign policy?

Well, I would say democracy is one self-government, a government that delivers for its people.

And that sounds simple, it is, but I would kind of take things back to some very first

principles about what foreign policy is for. Any country's foreign policy is meant to advance the safety and the prosperity of that country's people.

“That's what American foreign policy is for.”

I think as a progressive, I would add the word solidarity to that. I want to be in solidarity, not only with people in my country, but communities outside our country, and I feel like even though we don't have the ability to fix the world, I think what we can do at the start is to do less harm. There are places where the United States has done and is continuing to do enormous harm.

That's not the entire story of our foreign policy by any means. I think the United States has done enormous good over the past decades. I think the enormous good we can do into the future. I would also say, and this is something you've heard from people like Congressman Crowe from AOC, obviously from Bernie, from Senator Murphy, the people he mentioned, is we need

a foreign policy that really delivers for America's working families. I think we need to take things down to the wheel, so to speak, and I'm not in the habit of really complimenting Trump all that much, but I do think he has provided an opportunity or at least revealed an opportunity by challenging some of the very basic preconceptions of postwar unipolar moment American primacy that is enabling us to have a debate and we

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“So, I want to explore what that form policy will look like, and I think a good place”

to start is a speech that Congressman Crowe, who's from Colorado, former Army Officer, gave it the Center for American Progress, I think it was last October. I want to play a clip of it here. The biggest divide that I see right now, and how we view this problem is those who believe that Donald Trump is the cause of it versus those who believe that Donald Trump is a symptom

of it. That requires looking back over the last 30 years, and looking through the lens of the people that I grew up with, and a working class town in the Bergman West, those who I fought with, and those who I now serve. In those last 30 years, we've had over 20 years of failed military interventions, $3 trillion,

3 million combat tours, over 7,000 of our own dead, tens of thousands of others dead.

And what's not in those numbers is the unequal burden that was borne by the working class. He goes on to say, in that speech, that we often mistake the court debate here for being a policy conversation, but what is is a conversation about trust, and that the foreign policy establishment has lost trust, it has broken faith. So you're sort of half in and half out of that establishment.

“I think the good place to start is, how do you see this question of trust, how was it lost”

if it was, and what builds it? Yeah. Well, again, I mean, what Congressman Crowe said right there about the key divide being between those who see Trump as the problem and Trump as a symptom, I think is right on. I think that explains a lot of the debate right now.

I'm very much on the symptom side. And I think, you know, the lack of trust, I mean, it really does come down to this one line from Trump that others have used, and that is the system is rigged. And Trump gets traction with that, because he's right, the system is rigged. Americans can see it.

They can feel it in the lack of control that they feel over their own lives of economic

“lives, political lives, social lives, they feel, I mean, I think confronted by technology”

that is designed to trap them, they feel kind of exploited by different costs, you know, to extract the maximum amount of wealth of every step they take, every symptom of every disease, every, you know, every game that their kids play in sports. And I think that attaches to foreign policy, because one of the big, you know, whether it's, you know, the war in Iraq, which was, you know, again, sold to the Americans on what

were people understand now were statements are outright lies. You had the, the, the inner needle, financial crisis in 2008, which again, not necessarily a foreign policy crisis, but I think it's global impact and certainly it's domestic impact. All of these things add up to, you know, an elite establishment that either doesn't know what it's doing or is simply looking after its own interests. And I think one of the speeches that I've referenced

a lot is the speech that JD Vans gave, the Republican National Convention in 2024, where he talked about his own personal story. You know, as Congressman Crowe did there, but but JD Vans, I think spoke very, very effectively about, you know, someone who grew up in, in rural America as he did and, and what communities, deindustrialized communities suffered, the lie that was told about, you know, neoliberal trade, economics, NAFTA, the war in Iraq

that he served in. He laid out a whole story of a elite failure of lies that were told to working people like the ones that he grew up with. In small towns like mine in Ohio or next door in Pennsylvania or Michigan, and states all across our country, jobs were sent overseas, and our children were sent to war. And somehow, a real estate developer from New York City by the name of Donald J. Trump was right on all

of these issues while Biden was wrong. And I think what Democrats really have to do, and I think what Congressman Crowe was starting to talk about in that speech, what I think was

a really good speech, is, you know, Democrats need to come up first of all with an acknowledgment

of the real problem that connects with the one that Americans are feeling, but offer a compelling vision, okay, this is how we're actually going to govern in a way that can change your life

You mentioned J.D. Vance in the 2024 campaign, advanced ran that campaign very much articulating

of you. The Donald Trump was the anti-war candidate. The Donald Trump meant an end to these kinds of foreign entanglements, these dumb wars. Now, obviously, we are enmeshed in Iran. What happened? Well, it turns out that Donald Trump lies. That is one of the things that happened, but you're right. I mean, both Vance and Trump in the months and especially the weeks before

election day 2024 leaned in hard on this anti-war message, Trump was a pro-peace president. We were going to get out of these dumb enlist wars. That's actually something he ran on

“in 2016 as well. And, you know, I think it is very interesting. If you go back every election”

since the end of the Cold War in every election, including starting with 1992, with the one exception of 2004, the more anti-war candidate has won. I'm not going to say that they won because they were anti-war, but I do think that is a very interesting set of data, which I think says at the very least that there is an audience for a much less militaristic vision of America's role in the world. I mean, even Joe Biden in 2020, he ran on a pledge to end the forever

wars. He ran on a much less militaristic platform that he ended up teeing up for Kamala Harris in 2024 and Trump took advantage of that. Democrats just abandoned the anti-war lane and left it wide open for Trump. And again, I didn't, I said then, and I say now, obviously, no I should believe Trump, but I do think he had at least the political intelligence to recognize that that was an attractive message. And I think Democrats really need to understand

that, let me try to make the case for the outside of this, right? Putting aside the question of who performs law thoroughly, because I think that's kind of tricky and why they perform.

“You take Biden as an example. I think Biden thought he had learned some important lessons.”

And one thing that his people always bragged about was that he was the first president

in some time to have not committed American troops to New Wars. They ended the Afghanistan War. People hated the way that looked at the very least. That's when Biden's approval rating fell beneath 50% to never recovered. But then it wasn't Joe Biden who invaded Ukraine. It was Russia. I mean, you named earlier the very first value that a left-form policy based on democracy, right? You have Russia invading a democracy. Biden, I think, is trying through

this period to calibrate a response to that that does not invest American troops, but nevertheless does not abandon Ukraine to Vladimir Putin. You know, Hamas attacks on a corporate government. It's all another thing Biden responds to as opposed to something he is creating. How do you think about those from this perspective? Maybe not where the Gaza war eventually went. But these are early moments, because a lot of foreign policy is not what the president decides

to do. It is something has happened. And now he has to make a decision.

Right. I mean, let's take all of those. You know, first, yes. I mean, personally, I think all things

considered his response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a good one. He's gotten, you know, criticism from his right. Those who believe that he should have just given Ukraine all the weapons. Immediately, on the left, who say, no, we were provoking Russia. I mean, my own view is like, yes, Russia, what invaded Ukraine. It was reasonable to help Ukraine defend itself. I think there are legitimate criticisms that the Biden administration should have been more willing to,

you know, get into talks with Putin along the way. I am still unconvinced than Putin was ever interested in ending this war. I don't think he's interested in it right now. Obviously, he gets a

“key vote. But I think, you know, comparing that to Gaza. And I think he made a huge mistake in”

winning Ukraine with Israel in the speech he gave in October of 2023. Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common. They both want to completely annihilate and neighboring democracy, completely annihilated. Because yes, the precipitating factor for, you know, the Gaza war, what became the Gaza genocide, worthy attacks of October 7. But that war did not begin on October 7, as you know. I mean, it did not come out of nowhere. You know, Israel was not

just sitting quietly minding its own business. There was an ongoing campaign of expulsion of ethnic cleansing of violence that existed in the Palestinian territories that had done so for many years. Biden came into the Middle East having promised to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal. He came in and more or less kept Trump's policy in place. We're going to keep pressure on them to try to get a longer and stronger deal. And I think this was based on, you know, a belief of the need

to maintain the U.S. position as the regional security guarantor in the Middle East. And I think that was a huge mistake. So I don't think it's quite right to say just that he was responding

Obviously Hamas is a... That's a big claim. Say more what you mean by that when you say they try steps that led to October 7. I do think by buying into the idea. I mean, let's understand the Abraham Accords were about a number of things. But one thing they were about was sidelines in the Palestinian issue. Do you just want to describe these quickly? Because they started under Donald Trump not short. That's right. Now, so the Abraham Accords were announced in August

of 2020 and agreement first between Israel and the UAE. Broker, I guess, to some extent by the

Trump administration although they always like to take more credit. I think then they really

deserve quickly joined by Bahrain but they were significant because these were the first agreements in a very long time that normalized relations between Israel and regional Arab governments. They were presented as a major piece agreements. Despite the fact that UAE had never really been at war with Israel still. The fact that this relationship between Israel and the UAE which had gone on for years under the surface was now public was in achievement. There's no doubt. But from Netanyahu's

perspective and I think from Netanyahu's supporters perspective in the U.S., part of why this was

“a success is that it kind of demonstrated their longstanding argument, which was that we don't”

need to solve the Palestinian issue first. As many have claimed, we've kind of just pushed this to

the side and moved forward and have normal relations with the rest of the region. And I think it's

pretty clear that even though the Abraham Accords weren't like the precipitating factor for October 7, it was one of the factors that led to him as is thinking about why they needed to take action, horrific action, no doubt to kind of put the Palestinian issue back on the regional and global agenda. So to stay there for a minute, although I want to ask broader questions about this, what do you think the Biden administration should have done immediately after October 7th? Because

I mean, that attack is a, I mean, it is a more than horrific attack. It is a genuine act of absolutely more, it is more crimes. And done to an American ally, certainly, at that moment,

“what should the response have been? I mean, I think the response initially was the right one,”

which was to show strong support for Israel, for the people of Israel, for I think Joe Biden going there himself, but he didn't use that credibility to do what I think he should have done, which was very quickly. Within weeks, certainly I would say by the middle of November, it was abundantly clear that this was not an act of self-defense anymore. This was a series of atrocities meant to just obliterate Gaza and to kill civilians. I mean, I mean, I think this is kind of the

core understanding is that, you know, the way that the Biden administration in many in Washington talk about this issue is that they treat civilians suffering civilian casualties as if it's a regrettable, you know, kind of consequence of an overall just objective. It is not. Civilian suffering is part of the policy. And I think that became very, very clear, certainly by November. I think by the end of Biden's presidency, the feeling many Americans have about him

is not so much that they dramatically disagree with any one of his decisions. The public opinion on Israel and Gaza is split at that point. It's not like a winning issue in one direction or another. Ukraine is a kind of complicated issue. It's that they don't like the way America seems focused on these places that are not important to them. Prices are high here and yet we're spending all this money army Ukraine were engaged in somehow this war in that Israel's waging in Gaza,

that seems like a mess that seems horrible that you're seeing on your phone, the atrocities of. And like in some way, I think what people hated about Biden as them by the end was that the world felt out of control. There's something Chris Murphy, Senator Murphy wrote on his substectors

recently. He wrote, "We would be misreading a lot of the essential elements of Donald Trump's

foreign policy." If we just said it was about jingoism or xenophobia. Because a lot of what he talks about is really about power. His message is that these global forces that we are endlessly told are just out of our control can be inside of our control. I think this is actually a pretty

“important insight because I think one of the tensions of American foreign policy,”

and part of the American public opinion towards foreign policy, is on the one hand, we do feel sense of responsibility. We don't want bad things to happen elsewhere in the world, and particularly some said to them what we feel that we should engage in them. On the other hand, we don't want to get too much. And then when we do engage in a turns that we cannot control them at an acceptable cost or maybe, as we found in Iraq, Afghanistan at any cost, we get angry about that. And this tension

of wanting control but not having it is I think I'll real not at the center of the politics of foreign

really been a, he's one of these, he obviously he's a strong voice on foreign policy, but as you

noted there, I think he also has a very strong compelling theory of the deeper case of the problems in our politics right now. And I would agree with that, although I think part of this tension between wanting to do good, wanting to have control and losing control, I mean, that's going to keep happening, as long as we have this, this foreign policy that is driven by, you know, sustaining American privacy by trying to sustain America's role as a global, you know, headroom on.

What do you mean by that? Because the things we're talking about here, I actually don't buy that what we were doing in Ukraine is trying to sustain America's role as a global headroom on. I don't buy that in Gaza, what we're trying to do is sustain America's role as a global

“headroom on. I don't think that's how the Biden situation justified it to themselves.”

But I don't think that's really how they thought about it. So either do you disagree that that's

what they were really trying to do? Yeah. I would, I would agree with you a bit more on Ukraine. I do think there were habits of mind, especially from Biden, you know, who's not even a person, not a creature of the post-cold, or his creature of the Cold War. So I do think that, you know, this idea of the US helping to confront Russia was something that was kind of deep in his form policy DNA and I think part of what we saw in Gaza and what led up to it. As I was saying,

was driven by an effort through the Abraham Accords, through this proposed US Saudi Israel, peace agreement, which would involve, you know, security guarantees with Saudi Arabia was based in my view on sustaining America's role as a regional security guarantee and also to box China out of the region. I mean, because that was kind of the overriding focus of Joe Biden's forum policy.

“And if we remember going back to, I think it was, was at June 2021, we had a summit with Putin.”

I think the goal of Biden's Russia policy initially was to be like, all right, let's just park Russia and Putin over here. We're not going to have a great relationship with them, but we want to kind of bring some predictability to the relationships so we can focus on the real problem, which is China and I do think the China focus, you know, the kind of obsession with strategic competition with China, I do think that what underlies that is an effort to sustain America's global

privacy. So I do agree with that. I agree with this on China, but I think all these are a little bit different. I think the reason this distinction might be important is that obviously people's goals matter and the way I read these different events, involvement is the reaction of Russia, nation is really a view about Ukraine and Europe and what America's role was in that and not wanting to allow Putin just to begin taking territory because that would be destabilizing for the world.

“And we had to do it because nobody else could. I think if it was the case that Europe was more”

capable of, you know, being the munitions factory for Ukraine, America would have been happy to have led them to at least to some degree. I don't know. I hope they are doing that now.

I mean, I hope they are doing that too. Yeah, because ultimately that's sort of a unique thing.

On Israel, I think a lot was driven by Joe Biden's actual commitment to Israel, which is something sort of you said earlier as well. And then China, I think there's a different set of questions that are very real there about American Prime Minister. But the reason I'm focusing on this for a minute is that I think that there is a difference that gets conflated often in foreign policy and we move on different sides of it between is what we are trying to do uphold responsibilities

that may be, we don't really want to be doing the American people don't really want to be doing but in the long term it's better for the global system and somebody is doing it versus are we actually trying to dominate the system, bring it in our favor, keep competitors from rising up. And those are sort of two different problems. Because on the one level, if you say, we should stop just trying to ensure American hegemony, which I think is also a little bit different

in the Prime see, right? Hegemony is a control, Prime see is a leadership. I think a lot of people like not and agree and I'm probably not an agree. And on the other hand, I just think say Ukraine is a hard problem and that we don't really want to be doing this but a lot of things happen in the world that we don't like and we have to kind of make kind of tough decisions around them. But I'm not sure that in some of these cases that a President Bernie Sanders, a President

AOC, a President Chris Murphy, would be free from the pull of American responsibility, the sense that if we don't stop something from happening, it'll happen and then we will be blamed. Both, you know, they, we're here being this imaginary administration by either the American people who don't like what just happened or bad things will happen in the world, which will eventually end up on our doorstep. I think that's all. I agree with that. I mean, there are certain things that

some grand plan. There are a lot of contingencies that popped up, a lot of unforeseen events,

like the Russian invasion of Ukraine that the Biden administration certainly did not want to happen.

“And as I said, I think all things considered they respond to that pretty reasonably.”

But I do think that when you look at the sweep of Biden's foreign policy, you know, kind of captured in, you know, one of the things that he said about taking office when you went to Europe, America is back. You know, we've gotten past this brief little hiccup with this, this weirdo Donald Trump. And now America is back doing America things and everybody can chill in America is back in the business of helping, you know, the global system run. And I think

we had already moved beyond that, both in terms of what America was capable of, what others in the, you know, others in the world were interested in. So yeah, I would certainly agree. There are times when only the United States, as of right now, certainly the United States, you know, has the capacity, whether it's in arms, whether it's in convening capacity, whether it's in influence, whether it's in economic power, whether it's in diplomatic power, to help solve

“an address certain problems. But I think the debate has to be okay. What are those situations”

and what tools should we deploy in those situations? Let me take the American-label Hegemony question from a broader perspective. You said that the American foreign policy establishment often asks a question, how do we better sell, continuing American global military hegemony to the American people, rather than hearing that America just aren't that into it. Americans, you said, are just not that into global military hegemony because it's destructive,

it's wasteful, it increases inequality, it still is money from the working class, and it funnels it upward to a tiny, unaccountable eat. I think there's a broader than Ukraine or Gaza or even China. I think there's a broader view on the left that America's view of its role in the world and what it puts into maintaining that role in the world is destructive. So make that broader case to me and what it would look like to turn away from that in our foreign policy.

Yeah, I think Americans want their country to be strong, to be powerful, to play a major role in

the world. I think any country's people do. And more than that, I'll say, I think Americans want

“their country to do good in the world. That's how I feel. I think that's broadly shared.”

But I do think we have to look really, really take a very, very hard look at what this global military hegemony global whatever term you want to use for it is actually delivering. And this is where I would go back to J.D. Vance's speech at the 2024 RNC. We've had just multiple wars, we have them ongoing right now. They're not as big as a rock and Afghanistan or, but we have many American troops deployed around the world on counterterrorism missions. Do we actually need all

of this to keep us safe? How much are we spending on this? And to whom are the benefits really accruing? I think the question a lot of Americans ask, but they, you know, they see their communities having been de-industrialized. Their children face a worse feature than they do is, okay, I want America to do good. I want America to be strong. But again, as you said earlier in the conversation, I don't understand how these conflicts in our engagement in them is actually doing that.

You have this line that elite impunity is at the core of our political crisis. Tell me what you mean

by that. I mean the sense that the wealthy, the powerful, the well-connected, the influential

don't pay up price. They operate according to a difference that it rules. Then the rest of us, this is part of political corruption, it's part of the loss of control, it's a reflection of the system being rigged. So there's that broad version of it, but you've also made this point and I've seen others begin to make this point around the foreign policy establishment and around people on Democratic politics, people on Republican politics, Brian Schatz, the senator from Hawaii,

recently put up the street where he said, "Look, I'm not trying to blacklist anybody," but I think that the next Democratic administration should have sort of a full turnover in its foreign policy staff. You know, I've seen you sort of connect this to the need for a reckoning around Gaza. So what is it actually imply? I mean, I think there's two things about that. One is from Senator Schatz's comment, I think there's a sense that there has been just this kind of

group of Democratic foreign policy professionals that tend to cycle in and out of Democratic administrations and they move up to the next job and that we need to reach out to a much broader pool of talent. There are a lot of very smart young foreign policy folks in Washington and beyond

and, you know, the regurgitating the same policies in the same approach. But I think there's also

a second piece of it and I think Senator Chris Van Hollen got to it a bit more sharply in the

op-ed that he wrote in the New York Times a few days after Senator Schatz's tweet. That had to do with specific actors inside the Biden administration, who he said should not serve in future administrations. And I think this is part of accountability as well. We're going to have policy disputes, policy disagreements, policy debates. I do think that the Biden administration's Gaza policy was beyond just a policy dispute.

It was a policy of supporting genocide. And I think if, you know, part of restoring accountability is making clear that the senior officials who carried out that policy should not work in government

again. So does Gaza here become, is it becoming? I mean, I'm sort of watching this in primaries

“and I think it's a pretty important thing happening right now. You see it in the Michigan”

Senate primary, you see it here in New York where Brad Lander and Jim Goldman are running against each other. He saw it in New Jersey congressional primary. Discuss here become sort of like the Iraq war in the Democratic Party or Democrats more divided on that than they were on the Iraq war. I mean, there is this question of like the Democrats split over this. And the same way that I wonder about this for Republicans after Donald Trump, I mean Israel and support for Israel really seems to

me to be a question that is splitting both parties internally. I hope it doesn't become like the

Iraq war because I don't think anybody really paid a price for the Iraq war, at least, you know,

the officials who who carried it out. I want to see some consequences for the people who carried out the Gaza policy. I mean, in terms of the debate, you know, I do think, yes, this is becoming a litmus test. Your position on Gaza, you know, it really does go to credibility. The way someone chooses to talk about this, for example, you know, Kamala Harris, the way she, you know, the language she used, oh, too many civilians have died and we're pressing for a ceasefire,

just it didn't convince anyone. Even for people who perhaps didn't care about the issue all that

“much, they could tell that this was not genuine. And I think, you know, the reverse is true. I think”

for Zora Mondani, the way that he didn't raise Gaza, by the way. I mean, Gaza was raised by his critics because they thought it would be an effective way to weaken and criticize him. And they did that because they don't know what time it is. He stood firm on a set of principles under fire. And I think even for people who probably don't know or maybe care about the issue as much, they saw that. And that added to his credibility. So I do think, yes, for a lot of democratic

voters, many of them care about the issue. They want their leaders to be on the right side of it. But it also gets to a much larger, you know, idea of can I trust this person? Are they for real? Or are they just going to regurgitate the usual set of established talking points? So I want to play here something that Congresswoman Ocasio Cortez said at Munich. So I don't know if it's necessarily that we were in a post, if we are in a post rules base

order, I think it's possible that we were in a pre rules base starter. And we have an opportunity to explore what a world would look like if we upheld democracy, human rights, trade that actually centers working class people instead of accruing overwhelmingly the benefits of trade to the wealthiest. Tell me about that idea, then we were actually in a pre rules-based order. Right, I mean, I think it's a great line. I mean, what I've, you know, when I'm in conversations

about the so-called rules-based order, I've often referred to, you know, I think it was Gandhi's comment when he was asked what he thought about Western civilization. He said, I think it'd be a great

“idea. That's what I think about a rules-based order. I think that's what the Congresswoman was”

getting at there. Yes, there's a lot about the post-World War II order that is admirable, that's very optimistic. They're elements of it that we definitely should try to revive and save. I think the United Nations and all the various organizations that work under its umbrella are very important having a, you know, a global center where people can talk about their problems rather than fight over them is hugely important. As a concept yet, I do think we got into a point

where the double standards and the hypocrisies had gotten so stark that the system has just lost legitimacy. And, you know, what about the international system? Can we really revive and strengthen such that we can use the term rules-based order? Ironically. See, you've been bringing up shady events and I think one interesting difference between the way even skepticism of the foreign

shape as a critique of rules. And Donald Trump, I think in particular, holds to the view that America should not be bound by rules. Should not be bound by institutions. To the extent we are

“as you just create our own that we dominate in a more thorough going way. I think JD Vance”

has certainly been supportive of Donald Trump and his project to do that. I think on the left, there's more of this idea that actually the rules might protect us more than we think they do. But allowing ourself to be bound by them would be better than where we have ended up, that it would have kept us out of Iraq, right? Because we cannot, in fact, get the UN to go along. So I'd like you to go a little bit further with this when you say, okay, like if we did try this

rules-based order, if we were bound by rules, in these slow, frustrating, multilateral institutions where Russia and China can veto things on the UN Security Council, there is a tension between positive restraint and then being subject to the agendas about actors. How do you think about it?

Yeah, I mean, I think what you just laid out there is right. It's basically a zero-sum critique versus

a positive sum critique. I mean, for Trump, for Vance, as you said, it's all about America should be able to do whatever we want. If we're getting a good deal, others have to lose and vice-versa. But also, this is the kind of positive sum principle that kind of undergirded the creation of the international system. The idea that countries, including the United States, will agree to

“be constrained by a set of rules, and that ultimately makes us safer. I mean, I think that's it right”

there. But the process and the project of re-accrediting the concept of international order, the concept of international rules, I think is when we have to undertake, it's not going to be one administration. In order to do that, I think we have to re-accredit it with the American people. So I hope that we'll have candidates and hopefully a president. Is that possible to do? I mean, here are mindful of what Murphy said, because this to me is one of the

deep contradictions here. I don't think people, I don't think Americans want what we've ended up doing. And also, I mean, I was around in Washington at a time when the Royal Space International Order was stronger. That call it. And it was in many ways very unpopular. I mean, we got here on a pathway that comes, I think, from in the 90s, people feeling that the UN and other is made it almost impossible to respond to genocides and, you know, Rwanda and Yugoslavia, it goes to sort of a

George W. Bush after 9/11, and the American just has to do whatever it needs to, and it can't be

held back. And that I think was obviously a terrible mistake. There's just sort of an amazing moment

in the Obama administration where he says just a red line of in Syria, Assad uses chemical weapons. And then the last minute he says, I want congressional authorization if I'm going to do this, and he doesn't do it. And I supported that. I thought he made the right call, but I think certainly in Washington. He got an enormous amount of ongoing criticism from it, including by the way from Donald Trump for being weak, right? And this goes to this broader point of like the fight

over control, because what you're kind of saying to people is you will get better outcomes

“by giving up control, by binding yourself and the power you have to these rules and these institutions”

that you do not have full authority over. And you might end up not being able to do things that you think are a good idea that you were elected to do. And you know, in the teeth of this moment where we have a completely, I think, unaccountable president acting wildly erratically recklessly. All of a sudden there's a lot of interest in, you know, should we, should Congress retake its war powers? Should we, you know, reinvest energy in the UN in the World Bank and, you know, all these organizations?

But it feels like we just end up a little bit on this pendulum, and this pendulum I think is very much again about control. So how do you sell people on the idea that binding American power in rules that will bind us even when we don't want to be bound? It is a good idea.

Yeah, I mean, first of all, you have to show people that they have to be able to feel that it's

true. And let's be honest, I don't think an election is necessarily going to be one or lost on this argument. You know, it's, you know, just since you mentioned the red line comment, I think that gets to a lot of what we're seeing right now in terms of Congress taking control and taking responsibility. You know, there are some, as we see, the most, if not all Republicans are fine with letting Donald Trump just carry forward. I mean, they have had multiple opportunities to vote

I mean, they're choosing not to take ownership. And I, and I think this goes to a much deeper

problem. It's not a problem of one president or one administration. I think it really goes to the deeper political problem of how we've just, you know, the use of military violence has become just such a regular occurrence. And I, and I think people do have an, kind of, I think in a need understanding that it is not supposed to be this way, because it is not. This is something that Congressman Crowe really emphasizes in that speechy gave a cap that I think is really correct.

“The first question you should ever ask a member of Congress before they ever start talking about”

foreign policy is, are you willing to reclaim your foreign policy powers? Our founders believed that Congress had fundamental role in our foreign policy from trade to treaties, to war powers, and to appropriations. For decades, Congress has seated and given up many of those powers. Our founders knew that these things were too important to be entrusted simply to the executive,

because it needed accountability to those closest to the people. I think, I mean, let's premise here, the Iraq war is an absolute unmitigated catastrophe. And I think about the debate that led to it, and the absence of debate that led to it around. And I think that given how little sport there was for Iran, you could not have gotten

that vote through Congress. And so I'm not saying that having Congress will always stop you

from making dumb decisions, ultimately Congress did give a push power to go to war in Iraq. But nevertheless, it at least forces. It slows things down and forces a debate and forces a

“process that I think is valuable. And I think foreign policy can often seem very”

hard to pin down, because well, it's Ukraine, it's Gaza, it's China, it's Venezuela, I mean, all these are different situations. But I think something connecting many of them is they're operating without a process that restrains a president. It's very strange to me how little the president can do on most domestic policy right now, given the filibuster and a polarized Congress and which else. And then we give him all this power on foreign policy, which of course

also creates incentive for the president when he can't get much done domestically to start trying to create a legacy through ambitious foreign policy, adventurousism. And that feels to me like an interesting place where something could really change. And I've seen it from Bernie Sanders, from Rokana, from AOC, from others, a real focus on Congress should, you know, reclaim its role here, because at least forcing that through the more representative body where the American

public has more say in the moment. You can imagine that as a kind of more procedurally-based order that, at least, you know, do the extended binds us, it binds us domestically. I mean, I think that's right. It's not the whole story. Let's not, you know, put too much into the process, the process matters. But I do think that the criticism that some have made of arguments around war powers in an intent to agree is that, you know, for example, the problem with the

Iran war is not that Trump failed to file the appropriate papers paperwork. It is a manifestly

“stupid idea from the beginning. And I think keeping that second part in mind is really important.”

I want leaders. I want leaders. Yes, it's important to reassert Congress's constitutional authority over military violence. But we need leaders out there articulating why this is just a horrible idea. But this is your whole argument. I mean, I agree that we need leaders articulating why it's a horrible idea. But I think your whole argument, at least some of the rules based argument, is it sometimes you're going to have stupid ideas and some of you're going to have stupid leaders.

And the point of having rules and processes is because you don't believe you will always be

governed by the wisest of philosopher kings. Absolutely. That's right. The other dimension of a lot of the form policy arguments I've heard from people I go to see in Sanders is the idea that you need a form policy that centers working class and that form policy is domestic policy on some level that this kind of division we've created is not real. Now Joe Biden also said that he said he was going to have a form policy for the middle class. That was a big way that he and Jake Sullivan

and others express themselves as having a pivot from what had come before. So what is different in the way that you and others more on the Democratic Party's left flank are imagining this compared to what Biden and his team were doing when they sort of announced this transformation?

that's something I really think that deserves praise like to the Trump shocked everyone by winning

“in 2016 and I think that the form policy for the middle class kind of represented a real effort”

to a real self-critical effort to say what have we missed about what Americans believe and

don't believe about foreign policy. I mean in the language of recovery, the first step is admitting you have a problem and I think that that effort was a recognition of the real problem and I think it's kind of conclusions were represented in a speech that the Jake gave at Brookings in April 2023 and this was interesting because it was the national security advisor offering essentially a speech on the global economy, America's trade policy and it represented a turning of the

page so to speak from the old neoliberal era. So recognizing first of all that a lot of the theories that underlie that era, the idea that okay if we just get rid of taxes and we kind of let free trade people trade and make money and kind of constrain states from imposing restrictions and regulation

then rising tide will lift all boats so to speak. That was an important recognition

that you know that turns out that's not really true. It's produced a lot of very bad consequences

“that have led us to this moment but I think the question is having acknowledged that”

and having come back to the idea that yes it is right and appropriate for governments to play a major role in shaping and guiding the economy. The question is to what end and I think obviously one of the main ends is to benefit the safety and prosperity of the American people but I'm going back to what we've talked about with China being the kind of guiding focus of the Biden administration's foreign policy. You know I think there are a couple ways you could have

gone from that speech. One is how do we really invest in a genuinely more equitable global trade order? How do we invest it you know build an order that protects workers not just in the United States but empowers workers around the world including in China and does not pose American workers and Chinese workers as in a kind of zero some competition with each other and then there's the other path which I think they took which just say okay now we're getting back involved in the

economy because we are in the strategic competition with China and we now see trade as yet another

“weapon in in in tool box to kind of assert America in in this competition and I think that was”

the wrong choice I think we need to go with with option A. So what would option A have looked like in practical terms what would they have not done that they did or what would they have done that they didn't do? I think certain ideas I mean the global minimum corporate tax is one thing that they they worked on I think discussing a global minimum wage is another thing just for an example that's something that Senator Sanders has proposed for starters because I think part of

the challenge that that we face is you know we have you know a developing world if we can whatever term we want to use global south that is you know has very young populations they are already engaged in shaping the global agenda United States needs to have a relationship with these country obviously China has done a lot of work to build its own relationships in these countries I don't want to treat these countries as simply in arena for US and China competition

but I think we need to approach this in a positive some way what would the global minimum wage look like how would you apply that to a country I was in Kenya not long ago I mean huge amount of Kenya's in the informal economy yeah country or much of the country is very very poor right and certainly not the poorest country in Africa when you're imposing a global minimum wage on these countries presumably with some of the stick being American trade opportunities what is that

actually look like yeah I don't know what it looks like but I'm saying the United States I mean I mean getting the United States to propose this and putting the United States in the position but I must not get a good idea you didn't know what it would look like to know if it's a good idea yeah okay fair question still still working on what it exactly looks like but what I'm saying is proposing you know putting the United States in the position of we are not just there

to extract wealth we're not just here to empower the people that have been dominating and and exploiting you I guess maybe the question I was getting it because it's interesting to be where you went with that I think the question I was getting out there is is the global minimum wage and effort to protect American wages or to raise other countries wages because those are actually quite different projects I mean I think it's based on the idea that Americans security is bound up

with the security and prosperity of others around the world I mean this is not just a you know a high-flown bit of rhetoric I do think it I mean as someone on the progressive left that's an understanding that I bring is that if we can diminish deprivation disease and suffering in other

communities around the world ultimately that's going to accrue to our own safety I agree with that I

countries who is economies it doesn't really understand and certainly does not directly manage right you know when I do foreign economic reporting and probably when I do it from places that are

poorer I am always struck with how maddeningly hard it is to make a poor country forget rich just

middle middle income and so it's like I could see a version of this that is actually you've found another way to talk about a kind of protectionism because we're not going to do trade with countries it can undercut our wages by certain amount yeah that's not going to help those countries that will hurt them

“I think that's right but ultimately ideally this wouldn't be just the United States saying”

we're doing this by ourselves this would be something the United States could work with other countries including China to propose but this is also a place where the foreign policy for the middle class ideas it Biden had someone's that read from from Sanders and and I was seeing others it it seems to me that people don't always define clearly what it is the middle class wants and

one thing I think we've seen in recent years is yes the middle class the working class the country

wants good jobs a good wages and also the one things to be cheap and people talk about the era of neoliberalism now as a sort of a huge failure and I think one thing we've seen is that whether it was a failure in some respects or not and I think in many respects it was people liked the cheap goods and being in this extended period where post-pandemic and then in the Trump terror regimes and you know the Russian invasion of Ukraine on MG prices and then the attack in

Iran people are very angry about good getting more expensive and you know we could have much cheaper electric vehicles in this country if we will let the Chinese electric vehicles in the Biden administration put huge tariffs on those to make sure we couldn't have those but then also people were very mad about the cost of course in that same period and so there is this hard balancing of you can do quite a lot actually to protect American jobs and industries by making trade

harder or raising the various forms of standards wage floors etc within our trading regimes by walling off parts of the Chinese manufacturing juggernaut but then you make things here more expensive and then you get hit from the other side in middle classes like I feel stretched right so how is somebody who's been part of these discussions about a foreign policy in the middle class do you balance the effort to protect jobs the effort to raise wages and also

then now demonstrated fury that people have when tradeable goods increase in price yeah I mean

“I think part of is the I you know people are outraged not just at the rising cost but they're”

outraged the idea they're being knickled and done for everything you know whether it's for health care whether it's for education as talked about earlier I mean every step it seems like someone is extracting some little bit of value from everything that you do I think in order to address this question we really have to take a a bigger look at our entire social safety net or lack of one I mean I think that feels to me like a dot I agree through that we need to improve our social safety

net and get rid of junk fees and things but but on these questions like trade you'll have a direct question like you could make things cheaper by taking down the tariffs on China you could make them more expensive by increasing the tariffs on China those things might have meaning full effects on american manufacturing jobs and wages the question of what you're prioritizing

“like feels like like that feels like a fair question I think it is a fair question and and I don't”

think it's a dodge because I do think that part of what we lack right now is a sense of a common project I mean people feel that they're just being victimized and exploited they don't they don't have a voice there susceptible to demagogues like Donald Trump who come in and say listen I will be the instrument of your of your your righteous grievance so again I'm not going to say that we can tee up a good argument restore america's you know the shared sense of the american

project and people suddenly won't care about rising prices of goods but I do think that is

part of the answer is just addressing the idea that people just feel like they're they're getting hit

with costs all over the place these problems go back a long time but I think the crisis we're in right now is is a legitimation crisis people just don't feel that the systems under which they live are representing their interests are really delivering for them and I know this is a much bigger problem than I have an answer for but I think that recognizing the conversations that we're having about foreign policy you know we can propose all the good ideas we want on for how america

should should act in the world but if they're not rooted in an actual durable political consensus they will fall apart I think one interesting like maybe the sub theme of somewhat we've just been

and and and the reason I ask it like that is that there have been some moments where what I've

sort of heard is a you know very much a rising title of solboats that you know america can be out there making other countries more stable richer or more prosperous that would you know we bound to our benefit as well you know and then there's also a question about our common project

“there are a lot of policy tools that I think are I mean it's not all zero some but some of”

it is about privileging american workers over people in other countries and I think that's a very reasonable thing for national community to do privileging american industries over industries in other countries but but there are choices on the margin of these two projects how do you see that I mean I see myself very much as left internationalists but I also recognize that to develop a adorable and solidaristic internationalism it has to be rooted in an american domestic political

consensus and a lot of Americans probably most Americans for very good reason are mainly interested in themselves their family their community um in order to to kind of offer a workable for impolency that people will support it has I have to show and leaders have to show we have to show that it is answering those concerns. What does that imply for how america and americans understand the relationship the competition would everyone call with China? You know you earlier

were some critiquing the idea that our relationship with China should be built on maintaining america and primacy but if not that then what like what how do you understand what we want vis-à-vis China? I mean first we have to understand we need to co-exist with China. China has a huge

“economy it is already a major player on the global stage and I think there's a school of thought”

in Washington who believe that China's ultimate goal is to supplant the United States and to reshape

the global order in its image. I'm less convinced of that but for me the question always comes

down to okay what does the United States want? We're going to need to find ways to cooperate with China they're going to be areas where we have competition there's going to be areas where we have conflict but I think the problem with with the finding the relationship as competition is one that eventually will lead to conflict and I do think it's interesting I mean Donald Trump a lot of people were surprised including me given that in his first administration he is really the one who made

China the focus and Washington very very quickly shifted focus to that and Biden picked up the ball in his presidency and interesting Trump when he came back relatively little attention on China compared to what a lot of people assumed would be the case given how prominent

“it was in his first his first administration and I think you saw some of that reflected in the”

recent summit if anything you know I think we should be conciliatory he was very conciliatory because I think Xi has shown him that China has cards to play the United States simply cannot assert its will on China and that's a reality I think Washington needs to grasp is that we don't get to just set the rules and have China follow them at the same time I haven't really seen evidence that China just wants to supplant the United States I see China acting within and order

that the United States essentially help develop and I think we can work with that should American Prime Minister be a goal I think the question is is American Prime Minister necessary to keep American safe prosperous and free and I don't think it is I mean I want in America that is powerful I want in America that is influential I want in America that it can advance the safety of the American people and as I conceive of that safety it involves you know

promoting safety and prosperity and other communities around the world and then how does that make you think about immigration you know there's this interview I did many years ago with

Bernie Sanders that always goes around where I asked him out open borders and he's like no that's

a coke by this plot I think if you take global poverty that's serious it leads you to conclusions that in the US or consider out of political bounds things like sharply raising the level of the immigration we permit even up to the up to a level of open borders about sharply and over the borders. That's a coke on this proposal. I mean that's a right-wing proposal which says essentially the original United States. I think people thought that I was

asking him that because I support open borders rather than I was interested in what he would say but the reason I asked him that is that I have always thought the question of immigration is very hard on the left because if you have solidarity with people in other countries people who are trying to come here because their countries are unsafe people are trying to come here because the money is here because the better jobs are here because you can make a better life for your family

here and you actually do believe in the equal dignity of all people it becomes hard to say

very difficult one and I think it's more difficult on the left when there's less of a kind of

“bounding nationalism. But I think immigration is a much more central question in our policy”

foreign policy than it was and it is very tied up with a foreign policy for the middle class. I mean and it's also tied up in this question of control. I think part of what people hated about the border and abide in was it was out of control. So what should the left position an immigration be? I think the left position should be that we need a legal and orderly system for people to immigrate here but it's also based in understanding that we have long been

a nation of immigrants and I don't think that's just a slogan listen I'm the son of a

immigrant. This this this this country gave my family a lot this family let you know this country

let my family end when they were fleeing war that's true of so many other families right now today that means a lot to me about you know that's part of being American as I define it

“in addition I think there's clear evidence that immigrants are a driver of economic growth”

this country is stronger and more prosperous because of immigrants. So I think we need leaders who are willing to make that positive case while acknowledging yes of course we need to enforce the law we need people to apply for asylum and you know for immigration legally. Unfortunately it does it's one of these many issues it seems to have just become you know just an issue in the culture war but I think that the I think there are two questions here that are hard and that Democrats are

going to have to come up with an answer for Democrats of all stripes one is ideally how many people should immigrate here including legally you know in the first term Trump would often fuzz was he talking

about illegal immigration or legal migration yeah could I always talking about all immigration

yes right he doesn't want basically anybody coming into this country I mean not literally no buddy but they have but they meant by seal the board of Americans yeah white South Africans are welcome so there's that there's also the problem that the Biden administration faced I mean Kamala Harris took heat when you know she went and said like our message to you I'm paraphrasing here is don't come here right now. No I think that's an actual clue. I want to be clear to

folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States Mexico border do not come do not come and one of the things that I think we saw on the Biden administration was when the broad impression was that we were very, very friendly that Americans coming here that a lot of people came you know and so you know part of how Trump close the border is a pulse of cruelty like a constant pulse of cruelty and for the Biden administration they lost control

in part because they I think were caught between the desire for an orderly border which had to desire and the belief in kindness like that seems harder to balance. No I clearly is I think part of it is also addressing you know the sources of anger and grievance that drive support for dramatic crackdowns on immigration this I didn't you know that people believe that now these immigrants are coming and taking unfairly taking what's mind they're coming and changing the way that I

have to live. I think there's a way to address that that has to be part of the debate we have on on reordering our immigration system. And I want to end on on this because it's already I think a very unifying idea for Democrats but the question of how to make it tangible is harder. You like many others have seen have said that corruption and probably anti-corruption should be the center of foreign policy that we should understand that as a domestic question we should

understand it as a foreign question and that Democrats particularly as the Trump era wears on should find a way to make that core to the vision of the world. So how do you make that core to your vision of the world what what does it look like to center that in the way you've been

“describing? Yeah I mean I think this goes back to the kind of key claim that we discussed earlier”

Trump's refrain that the system is rigged and again this system is rigged people can see it and feel it. I mean there are ideas that we have and we've put out there as for like international efforts against kleptocracy closing down in a national money laundering for which the United States is a main destination. I mean who knew that trusts in South Dakota would be one of the main ways that kleptocrats abroad had their money but South Dakota apparently very popular.

But I think starting here with campaign finance and I know that's a tall order we've got Supreme

but what Congress can actually do to change the laws around campaign finance it may take a constitutional amendment and again given given our political polarization that sounds completely

“unrealistic but I think Americans will really respond to an argument that really addresses their”

sense of loss of control that elites have taken control of a system for their own benefit not for the country the country at large and I think one of the best messengers on this has been

George's John Ossoff who seems to drop an amazing video on this every couple months and I think

something he said you know a few months ago that really struck me he was like even before Donald Trump came on the scene the United States was the most corrupt modern democracy and I think that's true and I think you know getting out there on that message is a way to start addressing this. And so you think the way I agree that the way to start in the domestic scene is campaign finance reform and I also agree that look it's hard to change the constitution hard to change the

Supreme Court but you can build a politics as right did on overturning row on an extended long-term effort to do that and you can eventually succeed and there's a lot you can do on that particular

issue in the meantime too but in terms of foreign policy what does it mean to make that are the

people we don't work with I mean you know one thing I remember seeing with the Biden administration was that they were holding Saudi Arabia a little bit more arms length and then prices started to go up then all of a sudden they felt they couldn't anymore and so all the questions if human rights abuses and other things began to dissolve and that often is where I watch our foreign policy shift away from values people have good intentions but then there are other things that the American

middle class wants right the American working class wants like cheap oil that means you're working with autocratic strongmen and highly corrupt countries so what happens when the values you want to

put forward and and centering your foreign policy conflict with the things that you know

you believe the American people want and can only be God at the price they want you know from working with these countries I mean again it's going to sound like a punt but

“I'll acknowledge yeah there's going to be trade-offs there's going to be decisions you have to”

make sometimes you're going to prioritize those values sometimes you're going to have to kind of back foot them a little I guess I'd have to look at the particular situation to give an answer but I would say internationally for you know the United States is a major destination for for global club crats as is UK I would say the US and UK can do a lot I mean even for more we're sitting here in New York you know a lot of these buildings are just you know they're parking spaces for ill gotten gains

the same as true of London I think the US and UK just addressing their own houses could start to have an international impact I know that's separate from the question you're acting you're asking but I do think that that is a way to internationalize in any corruption policy I think some of these issues we're talking about it raises this question of where is the line between domestic and foreign policy particularly when we're talking about a foreign policy for the middle class how do you think about

what falls in one bucket what falls in the other what's in the wrong bucket is buck is even the right metaphor yeah I don't have a great answer to it I think a lot of the things we talk about I mean I'll say this I think we talk about foreign policy in ways that we don't often recognize as foreign policy like when we talk about immigration there are obviously huge international implications for immigration climate obviously same thing America's foreign policies impact

these things global trade, global economics jobs here these are all have a foreign policy component so and this is again something that I did appreciate about you know when I when I mentioned that the Biden administration's global economic approach they see to that as a part of foreign policy trade was not over here in foreign policy over here these things are deeply connected I think I guess the way I would try to answer it is to say whenever we are talking about foreign

policy whether it's about the Middle East whether it's about Russia Ukraine at least being mindful of locate how does this actually serve American communities even if every every speech doesn't necessarily

“have to have that paragraph you need to be able to answer it what do you think about places where”

I'm trying to think about the right way to frame this that it doesn't serve American communities but it is important elsewhere and I'm thinking here about possibly interventions in humanitarian crises sort of informs a foreign aid obviously the Trump administration has really gutted foreign aid how do you think about those moments when you kind of can't say our foreign policy is actually

country we are powerful country and we are going to use some of that power elsewhere yeah I think

there are going to be cases like that and we need a president to be able to articulate that strongly

“to the American people I think a lot of Americans are receptive to that but they need to hear”

it convincing argument for why this is doing the right thing even if that doesn't end with and here's how it's going to create new jobs in your community like I said I think Americans generally want the country to do good that doesn't mean we need to get up and everyone's business all to play all over the place all the time but I think when they're you know for example I think it's very interesting how fairly steady support for Ukraine's defense has stayed despite

Donald Trump taking a very different approach to it than Joe Biden to say the least I think there is something about the justice and the morality of helping a country defend itself from the aggression of a more powerful neighbor that Americans get even if they might not connect it directly to how

“that's good for them and their community and their family I think it's a good place to end”

always a final question what are three books struck men to the audience um well the first is you know

we we you mentioned center Chris Murphy and his his new book the crisis of the common good I've just been reading and I really I really recommend it because as I said I think center Murphy has been one someone who has really articulated a strong theory of the case of what really else are politics the loss of a sense of community um the idea that these these systems are out of control and they are unaccountable um the idea that that just wealth is being extracted from us at

every step and what it takes to rebuild a shared sense of purpose um recommend that one the second one

is by journalist Susie Hansen it's called from life itself it's a book about turkey through just exploring one neighborhood in Istanbul um that she she's reported on over 10 years how this neighborhood changed um the influx of of immigrants refugees from Syria um looking at the country's politics obviously the right of Errol Erdogan and the AKP how turkeys democracy has changed and diminished and the last one is um book by Leonard Cohen it's called Book of Mercy

so my mom recently passed away she's um she was among other things a woman of of deep religious

“faith and when and I was raised in the church um and when I was younger we we I'd remember”

I've just been thinking about the time we would spend talking about the Bible and the book of Psalms was a particular favorite of ours the Psalms of King David and the Book of Mercy or just Book of Mercy is what it's called it's by Leonard Cohen who people will know as a famous songwriter and singer but this is a book of modern Psalms um and like all of Cohen's work it struggles with pain and beauty and suffering and meaning and it's just been something that I shared with her in

her last months but is also in a great deal to me as I've been dealing with this and as I struggled with what this whole means Matt does thank you very much thank you this episode of this country's produced by Errol Erdogan who fact checking by Michel Harris with Mary Marge Locker and Julie Beer our senior audio engineer is Jeff Geld with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Johnny Simon our executive producer is Claire Gordon the show's production team

also includes Marie Cassione Annie Galvin Kristen Lynn Emma Kelback Jack McCordic Marina King and Yon Coble original music by Almanza Hota and Pat McCusker audience tragedy by Shannon Busta the director of New York Times opinion audio is Annie Rose Strasser you