Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: For this week's call out, we interview retired US Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and discuss his new book and also how over the past few decades a short term transactional approach to international relationships as opposed to a long term values based approach has really sold American interest short.
I hope you enjoyed the interview and remember to subscribe like on YouTube or your podcast platform, because that really helps the show out.
We're joined today by retired U.S. army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who recently released a new book, the Folly of How the West Deceived Itself about Russia and Betrayed Ukraine.
Many may recognize him from when he testified before the House Intelligence Committee as a part of the impeachment inquiry into then President Donald Trump, who's current President Donald Trump, but during the first term.
Alex, first off, congratulations on the success of your recent book, which has been deemed an instant New York Times bestseller, as well as your earlier book here Right Matters, which was also a New York Times bestseller. And thank you for coming on with us and for your courage and patriotism and what are definitely worrisome times for many people.
I wanted to start just kind of, we know you released a new book. We've seen you do the media tour and so forth. And it's been very interesting, very engaging. The book itself is fascinating. But we note that the book takes aim at US Policy towards Russia over several decades, six presidential administrations. So it certainly challenges a lot of conventional thinking and could ruffle a lot of feathers. So has anything surprised you in the public's reaction to the book coming from any angle?
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting putting it in those terms. I guess I take a relatively provocative approach, but it's because the consequences of the mistakes has been so disastrous and so destabilizing has cost so many lives. And, and the risks are, you know, we're, we're managing them to a certain extent. But the risks are actually could very well amplify and have reverberations around the world. Think about like how this might encourage China to wage war in Taiwan and what the, the U.S. response could be. We're, we could be looking at something that precipitates a much, much bigger world war.
So yes, I, I take issue with the way we conducted ourselves across six administrations. I basically look at this relationship between the U.S. russia, Ukraine, the West, really with Russia and Ukraine. And there are some consistent mistakes that we make. We buy into, into this Russian narrative about how they're a great and singular nation based on their size, their size, or based on their military capability or based on their nuclear arsenal or based on their history that they, they tell about themselves, that, you know, they're entitled to these countries because of the fact that they dominated them, conquered them, and had an empire.
So those that buy into the exceptionalism forced us to look for kind of very, very small main, in a lot of ways irrelevant most of the time wins just to keep. Keep Russia engaged, keep them on sides. There were some notable wins that, you know, were meaningful, that, that we should have pursued, like arms control, reducing the nuclear arsenal, the new START treaties and things of that nature. Those were, those were important. But then there were plenty of things that were meaningless, like, you know, we try to engage him on climate change with their, which they weren't interested in, or that global war on terror, which, in fact, not only were they not interested in, but they actually put bounties on US Soldiers eventually in Afghanistan. So, so much for, you know, George Bush looking into Putin's soul and, you know, looking into his eyes and seeing a soul. The guy put bounties on US Soldiers. And then the other thing was misplaced fears. The fact that we were always kind of prey to these fears that Russia, we needed to manage this relationship very, very carefully. And if we were too provocative, too condemnatory, too conditional, that that could break the relationship and yielding ground consistently to the point where Russia was encouraged to push further, graduating from mischief making to hybrid warfare. So this would be like interference in elections or kind of cyber warfare and ultimately to military aggression. So I guess I, in taking this kind of relatively aggressive position, laying out this really comprehensive case, looking at, you know, the way we conducted ourselves, I thought that there would be more pushback from policymakers, from administrations.
And I think that this is partially because folks like Michael McFall, who's a friend of mine, was, was part of the mistakes that were made early on, let's say, in the, in the Obama administration, with reset, in, you know, in the first administration.
But now he's turned. He's turned into probably more of a hawk because he understands that Russia can't be, you know, kind of coddled.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: You need to be.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: You need to demonstrate resolve. And I would, I believe that the other presidents and other leaders that kind of point out where they may have fallen short, kind of recognize that too. So they've come around. The other thing is that the, the theoretical basis of this book, the title, the Folly of Realism, takes issue with a whole school of thought, realism, which says that all nations pursue their national interests, not, not values, but national interest exclusively and maximally, and that everything becomes a Transaction and I pick fights with some of the heavy heavyweights and so far I haven't really had to take that much heat for that. Interestingly enough, where I think I, you know, I'm cautious and thoughtful.
I do do some policy making also recommendations around neo idealism. And it's an, it's a little bit of an uncomfortable spot because I think my thinking is, is substantive.
It is grounded in the fact that what's we've done. So what we've done so far doesn't work and we need a different approach. And I talk about this idea of neo idealism, but I think there's a lot more work to be done in this, in this idea. I think the fundamental premise is sound.
The fundamental premise is that we should be acting on our interests, acting on our values. Yeah, values should be front and center.
The reason is that allows us to look past these bright shiny objects, these hopes and fears and act on something long term. Yeah, act on, you know, building relationships with fellow democracies because they provide us security that our most robust trading partners. But I think there's more to be done in this space. You know, how, how do you define this, this, this school of thought and we have a few years because nothing's going to happen under Trump.
I think, you know, I'll put some additional thought, maybe some other scholars could weigh in. And then we put together an idea that allows us to rebalance the scales, correct for this ultimately highly transactional approach from, from Trump to something that's much, that allows us to recapture moral leadership and be consistent and long sighted.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: No, that's, and I asked that question specifically because you, you propose or you attack some pretty established status quo thoughts and like you said, policymakers and so forth. And so that's interesting that, I mean, it might be that the things you're pointing out are things that if you look at it and say, okay, yeah, maybe we were looking at this at all of this time was not the way that we should. Like, at least now with the benefit of hindsight, we can see, okay, maybe, maybe this guy's onto something.
So tunde, you had something?
[00:08:08] Speaker C: I've got a quick follow up, Alex. That's great. And I wanted to ask you because like I said when we were talking offline, I do have a lot of people, like friends of mine in my personal life that, you know, they, they've just been exposed to various narratives. And so I'd like to hear from you.
You know, like, I'm thinking of the kind of saying that the first Casualty of war is truth. Right. And so I've heard from some of just my personal friends and things when we get in this discussion is, well, you know, Putin was justified in invading Ukraine because, you know, the west and NATO have been breaking all these treaties and they keep encroaching, you know, that closer and closer to the Russian border, so on and so forth. And you know, people want to pick certain dates in the last 20, 30 years of when things might have been agreed to or not. And so usually my comeback is, you know, it's interesting that you only, you know, you seem to only have information of one side of who broke treaties and when have you ever thought to ask how did Russia deal with treaties coming out of the early 90s, things like that. And you know, so maybe speaking to that as to why does it matter, you know, why should we care about the west, you know, trying to promote democracies in Central Europe, things like that, like, because I think that's where we need a little bit more conversation of why, why does any of this matter? Why are we protecting this small country?
[00:09:34] Speaker B: So that's a big question. I'm going to do the early part about the narratives about who is, who's at fault first. And then, you know, if I, if I wander too much, you remind me to talk about the big question about why it matters.
Look, the, the Russians have consistently been pretty darn bad actors.
People forget about the fact that in the early 90s, you know, along with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of these 15 different republics, the Russians played the role of the instigators to dom to continue to influence and dominate the region by driving what are referred to, you know, by a lot of people as, or experts as frozen conflicts. So think about, you know, right now there are Russian peacekeepers in Moldova, this tiny country sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine.
It was a breakaway region. You had more Russian speaking folks and the Russians, you know, so they, they try to separate. And the Russians basically came in and bolstered them or in Georgia with two breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia or Nagorno Karbak. This, this confrontation that occurred between Azerbaijan in Armenia. The Russians played roles in all these things. So those are pretty big in those, in those countries they were the words were defining. They kind of shaped the early independence period and, you know, exacerbated the massive challenges of transforming from communist authoritarian to democracies, arrested those kinds of movements. But those are pretty big highlights. But along the way got the two chin wars that The Russians were involved in where they absolutely leveled Chechnya and the city of Grozny, the capital.
They've threatened MO on multiple occasions.
This idea of the fact that Crimea was Russian territory.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: Rest signaling that in the 90s and then 2003, there was some, there was fire exchange on this like, little island not too far away from Crimea between Russia and, you know, Crimean Ukraine.
There were these episodes all along the way in which the Russians basically, you know, said one thing. It did something completely different. So multiple different agreements with these countries that were broken. Multiple different agreements with the, with the United States violations of like the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which we ultimately withdraw drew from on the, in the first Trump administration.
Tons of these things. Just constantly, you know, saying one thing, knowing that the, the, you know, the good actors on the other side of the equation were bound by their, you know, kind of their, their word, their ethics, their values, their national interests to be predictable and stable, reliable. And the Russians could just do whatever they want.
You know, it's the same if you think about it in the context in the United States. You know, the Dems to a certain extent have to hold the values and principles and the truth and the Russian and the, you know, Republicans especially Maga, could lie with impunity.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: So though that's the environment that you're kind of looking at specifically with regards to this idea of NATO enlargement.
There's this, this, this claim that the Russians received assurances that NATO wouldn't advance east, which is an interesting idea, you know, coming out of the fact that the Soviet Union collapsed. Russia and the Soviet Union were the biggest losers. Right. You have all these different countries emerge out of the Warsaw Pact. You have all these countries emerge out of the Soviet Union.
The west and the United States still were gracious victors. They were like, let's take into consideration the Russians. We want them to join the community of nations. We want them to be a fellow democracy. We want them to be a market economy, capitalist.
So we're going to be very, very gracious and we're going to take their thoughts into consideration. The Russians at the time were making this argument about pan European security, how important Russia could be as a stabilizing force contributing to European security.
And we did that. We were, we extended the House that hand of friendship and things of that nature.
Even at the, as the Russians demonstrated themselves to be, not truly refer, reformed and kind of again graduating through the different steps to, to, towards military aggression.
The, the Clinton administration was particularly very sensitive to the way they Conducted the enlargement in the, the 90s. They basically waited until the late 1990s. Even though there was a massive clamor from the Eastern Europeans that knew it was a matter of time before Russia was going to be aggressive. You know, the Eastern Europeans had to live with it. They were, they were occupied for, for decades by the Soviet Union. So they were clamoring that polls were at one point were making noises about developing their own nuclear arsenal as a hedge against Russian aggression. So we didn't just simply do it out of the kindness of our hearts. We did because these countries asked to us, you know, to welcome them into NATO. But we also did it because of hard nosed interest calculations that we didn't want them to, you know, kind of to take a much more radical approach. So we did something that served these countries demands and the mutual interests.
[00:14:57] Speaker C: Hold on, I just want to be clear. You're saying that those countries, those satellites, former Soviet satellites of Russia wanted to go and be more and caucus more with the West. They did not want to. They felt that the Soviet Union, when it was the Soviet Union was basically holding them hostage in a sense. That was after the Warsaw Pact of Second World War. They were just forced to be part of that.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Right. And they thought that the Russians in a moment of weakness couldn't control them, couldn't prevent them.
[00:15:27] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. So this is their chance to break away, like, like a bad relationship. This is my chance to run out. Yeah, and leave. So. And then you said something very important because I think this, this is important for I think us Americans to appreciate when you said they wanted to have exposure to market economies and capitalism. And maybe you can go into what's the relationship between representative governments or democracies, whatever. We can say pluralistic societies that are more open versus let's say Russia and other nations like that, they're more autocratic that have the same leader for two or three generations potentially.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: And economy.
[00:16:06] Speaker C: Why is it that those economies are.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: More patronage based or you know.
[00:16:09] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. With the corruption. Why is it that those economies don't tend to be the ones that we have traditionally wanted to ally with?
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of important questions. I just going to want to put a period on the, on the question about NATO enlargement. Who is the provocateur?
So those countries closest to Russia were some of the first to be invited. Ukraine was excluded because we thought it was too provocative to invite Ukraine.
So the last time that any NATO enlargement occurred was really in the 2000s, you know, decades ago.
And all the other enlargement occurred kind of in the Balkans and other parts of Ukraine. So the justification that Russia felt threatened and had to take action is pretty absurd when you don't have, when the cost Casa's belly. The, you know, the, the, the precipitating effector occurred a long, long time ago.
So to me it's absolutely crystal clear. It's, you have to take Putin's word for it. He talks about the fact that Ukraine is not a valid country. He talks about the fact that it's, it, it is part of Russia.
It is essential that Ukraine be folded back into Russia. And you don't have to kind of.
There are, are folks that spin different narratives to advance their own views. You know, maybe anti war views or don't think the US should be supporting Ukraine. But if you listen to what Putin says himself, it's pretty crystal clear now with regard to why we have relationships. We do, I mean, I think, you know, the, the story that we have with our allies, the closest allies is we have shared values. Fellow democracies believe in individual liberties, you know, protecting human rights.
We share, have shared interests because we understand this is a dangerous world and there are authoritarian regimes, regimes that believe in the rules of the jungle and you know, that we want to advance the notions of free trade sometimes. This, this doesn't always align because there was a gap between us and our, and some of our closest allies on threat perceptions like the, the Eastern Europeans believed that the Russians were much, much more robust and near threat than the Western Europeans because the Western Europeans didn't have to live under Russian domination or Soviet domination. The Eastern Europeans did, they felt that much more closely. Now we, we share those threat perceptions. So I think the fact is that, you know, why do we have the relationships we have in our lives because we have these commonalities.
The, the authoritarian regimes are very, very different.
There, there are no, it's ruled by law, not rule of law. So they're happy to use the law when it suits the, the authoritarian's interest to advance the interests of, of their kind of like minded elites or punish those that are an opposition.
They, they think about, they maybe prioritize the collective interests over individual interests. And I think we try to strike that balance here in the US and the west. But we have a strong, strong kind of lean towards individual and individual rights and liberties and things of that nature. So that to me explains why to a certain extent. Now I want to make sure I don't miss your, your earlier question tunde about why, why this matters.
Our most important alliances are with the Europeans.
When they, when, when the US was attacked in 2001 and we invoked NATO Article 5, this collective defense protocol, the Europeans were there with us.
They, they rallied in support.
The NATO alliance is the most powerful alliance in the world. Think about from an economic, economic basis, the kind of, that undergirds national power. The US is almost a 30 trillion dollar economy, although Trump is trying to knock that down a little bit.
The Europeans are about a 20 trillion euro economy. That's a 50 trillion dollar basis, roughly on which to build your economic power or on which to build your military power. So that we want to preserve those relationships.
They are a source of stability.
[00:20:38] Speaker C: So it would be in the interest of someone like Vladimir Putin to support an American leadership that would potentially not be as welcoming to maintaining this 50 trillion dollar alliance, right?
[00:20:49] Speaker B: Absolutely. I mean, this has been, this has been a stated goal of, of Putin for, you know, a couple decades, really since about the middle of the 2000s, to. He wants to be able to put the squeeze on states in his neighborhood. He can't do that. If there are members of NATO in the eu, those are too powerful a block. So if he could manage to break the NATO alliance and, you know, encourage Trump's very, very transactional views that somehow that NATO is putting the US in danger or NATO is not pulling its weight, he's going to do that in order to achieve this ideal outcome where the US Withdraws into the Europeans and then maybe the Europeans fracture between east and west because the risks increase that Russia may be a little bit more adventurous with regards to NATO, absent the US Than with the US or something of that nature. So it is, you know, why is it, it's not a remote, this is not a, the Russia, Ukraine war is not something distant.
Why do we have, why do we have a surge in fuel prices?
Because the Russians were a source of, of oil and gas and that shock to the oil and gas market caused a spike in, in prices.
The Russians, in a, you know, kind of a stable, peaceful system, we wouldn't have the same kind of volatility.
So these, and then of course, the very, very practical thing, if the Russians were to attack, let's say, a NATO member state like the, the one of the Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, we have a collective defense obligation currently we're signatory to this treaty that obligates us to, you know, to be involved. Now how we are involved is really up to us, but to be involved. So I think this is a, this is not a Remote threat.
It also feeds the Russians, the Chinese views of the world, the Iranians views of the world, other kind of the North Koreans views of the world on how aggressive they could be in other critical areas of the. Where we're involved.
[00:23:06] Speaker C: That's great, thanks. Yeah.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: I had a question for you though. Now I share a lot of the views that you have in terms of the importance of democratic nations being able to work together, to bring their economies together and so forth. I think a lot of that has to do with the shared values of operating under the rule of law, where contracts can be enforced and all that. And also it does appear throughout history that non democratic nations see democratic nations as a threat.
So if the others are going to be coming at us, then it would be a good idea for us to bundle together because we have that shared concern, so to speak. But I worry, and Tunde and I have talked about this actually just that are we witnessing possibly the fraying of a post World War II order due to just entropy? Like that's something that was eventually going to fray because nothing's forever, so to speak. Are we witnessing that? Or is this something that you think specific actors in the world right now are in fact bringing about? This isn't just some natural decay due to living memory and people prioritizing the right things or even realism and short term thinking.
[00:24:21] Speaker B: So I think it's, I think the living memory components is very, very valid. I think, you know, the more distance we are from World War II and the greatest generation and their sacrifice and what they were fighting for and the.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: Clarity of seeing what happened if this goes wrong.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: Right. You know, but I think there's, I don't believe in, you know, in the inevitability or kind of fates or something of that nature. I think put a lot of stock in the agency of individual humans, you know, because I've seen it firsthand. Like, you know, I, you know, I guess just as my own personal experience, I reported President Trump's corruption resulting in the first impeachment that kind of exposed the, you know, pulled the mask off of good governance and, you know, may have contributed to, to his loss. Yeah, Putin, excellent point.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: Yeah. There's no inevitability there. Yeah, it's the act of a man. Yeah.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: Has a lot of, has a lot of agency. He's, he's a unique actor and that took a country that, you know, was, was struggling with its democratic orientation and pulled it back into a much, much kind of, more certainly into the authoritarian sphere and an aggressive posture towards, towards the west, when, you know, the first decade, maybe 15 years were about an opportunity to cooperate between east and west, but Russia wanted it on its own terms. Donald Trump, absent Donald Trump, we would not be witnessing a lot of the things we're seeing. You know, the destruction of different aspects of different institutions.
And it's the confluence of different actors maybe acting in concert, whether it's intentional or not. You know, the Russians acting as spoilers, funding, you know, far right parties conduct, infiltrating and advancing disinformation and feeding these narratives about, you know, deep state actors or of what is it that the. I mean, the Russians have all sorts. They've got like this spaghetti at the wall approach, you know, whatever works and kind of divides, breaks confidence in government, feeds conspiracies and stuff like that. And then.
[00:26:38] Speaker A: No, we've actually. Sorry to interrupt, but we've done a couple of shows on something reported by the, the Rand Corporation and it looks, it's called the fire hose of falsehood propaganda model.
And it's. Yeah, it's. You said spaghetti against the wall, but yeah, but it's also throwing it up there.
[00:26:53] Speaker C: Yeah, but, but it's deep because we talk about also back in the civil rights era when they would bring Paul Robeson to try and drive a wage in American narrative and, and our own internal discussion and they would have them saying, oh, there's no segregation here. So the Russians know us very well, our culture and how to do absolutely.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: Tons of those things. But I think Trump shouldn't be underestimated as a unique kind of singular actor that runs really almost diametrically opposed to the traditional kind of Reagan Republican worldview. You know, think about the fact that, and you know, one of the organizations I, I work with, I run a think tank and I do politics to help get veterans elected.
You know, we ran an ad at one point talking about Ronald Reagan and is giving this famous point to hawk speech in which he talks about the world, the US Role in the world def.
Defeating authoritarianism, advancing democracy. That's the traditional kind of, kind of Reagan Republican view and Trump has kind of turned it on its head. So I think without Trump, we are in, in a completely different place. We have more fringe, less relevant actors that are kind of, you know, maybe, maybe messing around, but, you know, not, not going to drive policy and stuff like that.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, but and then what the question that really brings though is, you know, the public's appetite towards that, like will the public's appetite, because Trump is also very transparent about a lot of These things and so will the public appetite kind of reset back to more maybe where it was before. Because I know I've just been shocked, you know, as far as like I, I thought Americans were against autocrats, you know, and then the, the level of acceptance of it or you know, people that hold up, you know, Orbon as like oh yeah, we want this is, you know, kind of what we're. I was just surprised by that that people would say that. I, I assume there were people who thought that, but that they would say it out loud. So.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: Well, I think there are some interesting studies that, that reflect that, you know, at any given moment, you know, you'll have like 20% of the population that will is happy to embrace authoritarianism, advances their interest.
[00:29:04] Speaker C: And also real quick on that, Alex.
[00:29:06] Speaker B: It reminds me of a story when I was in Ukraine, the first like when I had my a year posting in Ukraine in 2000, you know, 9 and 10.
I remember reading an article this was heading into an election about like what the Ukrainian, you know, leader should be and the person there was an old woman, an older woman, kind of like, you know, with nostalgia for the Soviet Union saying we just need a strong man to tell us what to do.
It's, it's that kind of thing that I think people are, you know, happy to embrace, but the rest of us, you know, understand what that might mean and what the consequences of a strong man might mean.
[00:29:45] Speaker C: Let me ask parody how, how much influence? Because you make a great point there and it's got me thinking, so why. Because James has that great question, like why would so many Americans. That's what I was thinking too. Like it's Russia. I'm, we're close in age. I'm 47. So it's like I grew up under Reagan too and was all proud that we beat the Soviets. Right. James and I sometimes talk about this idea, the fire hose of falsehood, its ability and especially with the way that information can be disseminated to, through so many different channels now Internet you can get on your phone, you can get on the TV and all that.
The idea of this fireholes of falsehoods creating so much stress in a population that the three of us might say is unwarranted, these things aren't true and all that, but you know, perceptions, reality, people receiving things that want to believe it, believe it. So for example, I've seen a lot of rhetoric in the last 20 years, really the last decade bubbling up from places on the right, that, that Russia is the last great white hope you know, place for white people and stuff. And so the, the proliferation of things like the Great Replacement Theory that might get enough Americans disturbed enough to say, well, normally I don't. I like the idea of a democracy, but kind of like the woman you mentioned about when you mentioned that, that she said we just need a strongman, that if people think that their country is being invaded and their cultures are being changed purposely by these nefarious forces and there's a deep state in the government and all this, that they might just say, you know what? Yeah, we need it. We need to give up this democracy for a while and just let this guy come in and just vanquish all our foes. I mean, do you. How much of that do you think also plays into it?
[00:31:17] Speaker B: I think it plays into it a lot. I think, you know, the most significant information operation has been one that has sown distrust our government. And it's, it's, you know, it, it is not necessarily the, the biggest part of this is not really the, the Russians or foreign actors. It's domestically.
It's that we have a political party.
You know, one of the two political parties that continuously damns public servants and talks about the fact that, you know, they're lazy, corrupt, and has been doing this for decades to advance its kind of interests.
That then allows other narratives to kind of seep in and say, well, that makes sense because, you know, I don't have confidence in the fact that our leaders are, are going to do.
Congress has, was the. One of the lowest approval ratings that it's ever had, like some absurd number, single digits, like 8%. It's because people say that, you know, politicians are corrupt.
And now that's kind of accepted that it's the norm that, you know, 65 of the population in a, in a report I read, think that Donald Trump is corrupt, but they accept it because he is no more corrupt than any other politician or something of that nature. So I, I think that it's the, the lack of trust that is not then able to be amplified and directed in a particular.
Towards a particular aim that's been, you know, the biggest.
Created the biggest pathway for harm.
[00:32:57] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a slide. I see. It's a slide away from, you know, one of the things I think is one of the defining characteristics in your public Persona is loyalty to the Constitution to, you know, to the document, to the system that is put in place is. And what that does is it's very corrosive. Like people will then turn their back on the Constitution or the system and ask for a person to save them because they're thinking that the document or the system no longer is able to do that. And so I think it's very intentional in terms of making people lose faith in the real structures of what we're all doing here being the Constitution.
But there was one other question I wanted to ask you because I know we're going to wrap up pretty soon.
[00:33:44] Speaker B: We have some time.
[00:33:47] Speaker A: One of the things I was really fascinated by in the book was like how you defined realism and you mentioned it a little bit earlier and really the converse of being able to look at things long term, but kind of that connection between the short term and the transactional mindset.
My question for you is this. As we're talking about, we're looking backwards at ourselves right now. So is it possible or to what extent do our elections and the way our campaigning works and so forth promote this kind of realism that we're saying is that could lead us down, lead us on follies, lead us down the wrong direction.
And the reason I ask is because I feel like the voting populace in many respects not across the board, but has become, you know, like they've become disconnected. If you're so partisan that you can only look at one party, or even more so if you're a single issue voter, you're kind of a transactional voter at that point. Like you're, you're only in it for the transaction. You're not evaluating the character of a person or anything like that. You're just saying, are you going to give me blank? Okay, then I'll give you my vote. So do we have structural issues, you know, in terms of how we're approaching politics or campaigning that may be pushing us down this path?
[00:34:55] Speaker B: I think that our democracy is not keeping pace with the, the environment. You know, we're now in an environment where like we have access to every bit of information we want.
We have the ability to, I mean it's just, it's just up to us to really kind of find it and sort it.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: No, in information. We, we've done a lot of discussions on that. Information doesn't equal truth. And so I'm so happy that you use the term information there because it's.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, truth, truthiness.
So, you know, it's, it's interesting that I think our democracy is probably not sufficiently responsive to, to the public.
We have presidential elections every four years, Senate, six, House two.
What happens in between those cycles?
The population doesn't necessarily know. There's. They're not getting to talk to about what, what's being delivered to them with regards to services.
And I think, you know, one of my, my fellow grad students when I was working on my doctorate was working on this. The fact is, how do you make democracy more responsive?
I think that, you know, we, my organization, Vote Vets just did something where we had Pete Buttigieg in Iowa at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, do a town hall to hear the, the views of, you know, veterans and the citizens in their, in the region to understand, you know, what's on their minds. We need to do a lot more of this kind of retail involved connecting. And unfortunately that doesn't even get you that far because that was a seven, you know, whatever, 1500, 1700 plugged in folks.
What about the masses of other folks? They're looking at things, you know, they're looking at their feeds on, you know, basketball or, you know, NASCAR or whatever the case might be. How do you connect with folks that are really not interested in plugging in? And that's why we end up with some 90 million people not, not involved in politics, in elections. You know, I talk about this, I gave a speech at Cooper Union and I took it very seriously because, well, the topic was rebuilding the American Dream. And I delivered it speaking at Abraham Lincoln's lectern where he gave his kind of defining term, his term, term defining speech in 1860 in which he basically staked out very, very firmly an anti slavery view that was irreconcilable with, with, you know, the Southern states.
And it was kind of a weighty, weighty place to kind of talk from. And I was thinking about why we are, we're subject to these challenges we are today.
It's the dual edged sword of apathy and complacency. Apathy is the population that doesn't understand what democracy delivers. They're already having a hard time. They're much more interested in, you know, what, what's in, in providing for their families.
They don't necessarily think it could get worse. It's already bad for them.
And the complacent, those are the folks that don't see a threat either and believe that things are fine. You know, Trump is not going to destroy the country. He might deliver another 5 or 10% to their 401ks and they're fine with that or they're single issue voters. You know, that's the complacent of those that think about just that one kind of narrow area.
What I see happening under the Trump administration is really not that much room for fence sitters because I see a lot of damage being done, a lot of damage being done right now. A lot of it's focused on, on the most vulnerable, the undocumented folks that don't have a lot of recourse to, to defend themselves. And that, you know, there's a, there, this narrative around attacks from migrants is, is kind of taken hold and overcome the, I think the better angels of the American people that, you know, want to be helpful. Certainly they're very focused on their communities and good, good friends and support the folks in their communities. But it's the village over the city over that's, you know, being torn apart by immigration. Yeah.
So to me, I think the fact is that, you know, we see the graduation already. Tariffs are going to have an impact and even though they're temporarily suspended already, some of that shock is hit. There's going to be inflation. Now this attack on Social Security and Medicaid, it is going to make the folks that are apathetic recognize that things can get worse. And it's going to make the folks that are complacent that thought that Trump, you know, was going to deliver for their economic needs. It's going to make things worse. That's why we're seeing these hands off protests. That's why we're seeing these Tesla protests. So I think that we have an opportunity to seize and channel people power in a way that to me is reminiscent of the civil rights movement. That's going to be too hard for Trump, even with his attacks and his efforts to tip the scales in his favor is going to be too hard for him to overcome. So I tend to see the world and maybe this is part of the whole neo idealist view, but kind of domestically oriented rather than foreign policy that I talk about in my book. I think there's an opportunity to basically, you know, focus on, on the values and on the back end, leverage that people power to make a correction that doesn't just replace that what was, what was removed, but actually builds back. Better to take care of the, the, the things that the population needs. Like why is the richest country in the world not have, you know, something if not universal health care, kind of a much, much broader access to healthcare. Why can't we do border security and comprehensive immigration, immigration reform? We absolutely need to bring in immigrants. I know Tinder. You, you talked about your immigrant parents. I'm a product of, you know, I'm an immigrant myself. We need immigrants in this country because without immigration, this country ceases to grow, the economy ceases to grow and we start to fall backwards.
So we need that long term. So I think there are, out of this disaster that is the Donald, Donald Trump second term, we might have some interesting opportunities if. Or we find the leaders that could challenge, channel, you know, think through, cast a vision and, and, you know, develop policies that could take us forward.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up.
[00:41:18] Speaker C: Just.
[00:41:18] Speaker A: I'm gonna kick it to you in a second, Tunde. But the thing that really stands out to me about that is the, the, the talk of the opportunity, you know, like as you said, complacency and apathy. Well, those things kind of rely on things not being disturbed. And so there actually is an opportunity that's created a lot of time, a lot of people are worried and rightfully so. But the, the, the snow globe getting shaken up, so to speak, can also be put in your favor if you then can harness the energy that is created from that, that, because that will, as you said, that kind of. It's hard to be apathetic or complacent when that happens, you know, so there becomes an opportunity to, then to, to get people's attention and to move things in a direction, you know, that, that, that you think would be better. So, you know, so. But yeah, I know you had something next to.
[00:42:05] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I mean, I know as we're rounding out to the finish line here, actually just wanted to get your thoughts about some of the things that are a little bit more current, because in the geopolitical side, I find, and I'll just throw a couple things out here, you can grab at a couple of them. One is, I find it interesting. I'd like to get your thought as to where we are right now. We are in mid May of 2025, as relates to this whole thing with the ceasefire, the mineral deal, all that. Because it seems to me this is where I find that this could get interesting, that Donald Trump, you know, is transactional, mercurial. And the idea of his close relationship with Vladimir Putin and his, his desire, at least rhetorically, when he was running for office and after he won the election, saying he wanted to end the war on day one. Clearly we're on month four or five of his presidency and he seems to be actually getting impatient with Vladimir Putin.
[00:43:01] Speaker B: Putin.
[00:43:01] Speaker C: And so I know that I'm not going to count on foreign policy via social media posts, but I, this is the first time I've ever seen Donald Trump publicly distance himself from Vladimir Putin. Do you think that this is a Genuine attempt for Donald Trump maybe to start, that he's seeing Russia for maybe what you've seen for a long time? Or do you think that this could be some sort of just, you know, another version of psychological warfare from him just playing games with, with, with everyone?
[00:43:30] Speaker B: I think that there are a couple of different factors here. I think, first of all, Donald Trump doesn't do hard.
He wanted his easy wins. He wanted peace on day one. He put some effort behind it, put the squeeze on the Ukrainians and the Europeans really kind of accommodated Russia to get this outcome. And turns out that the Russians don't want peace. And the Ukrainians are willing to compromise a lot, but they're not willing to give away their sovereignty and they're going to fight on and the Europeans are going to back them. And the only way to, to, to achieve an outcome here is to put press back Ukraine, put pressure on Russia, get the Europeans to do, do more like they already are pledging to do.
So I think that you're what you're seeing, and I actually wrote a piece that came out yesterday morning, yes, yesterday morning, on this, about the peace talks and on my sub stack, avidman.com but basically, and I, I take a little bit more of a whimsical approach to it, to a very serious topic.
You know, I'm, I've completely consistently said that the, the Russians don't want to cooperate. Trump has delivered too much for them. He's looking to drive these wedges. He's driving these wedges between us and our, our allies. He's putting the pressure on, on Ukraine.
Russia might not be having success on the battlefield, but, you know, Trump is doing a lot of things that are helping them otherwise.
So taking the pressure off and ending this confrontation doesn't make a lot of sense for them.
The other thing is, to me, it's at this point clear that there are actually other, other leaders within the Trump administration that don't have the stomach to say anything publicly, are weak, need and kind of will publicly rally around Trump, but are also potentially crafty and manipulating Trump also.
So what I'm, what I, what I did was I laid out a case almost kind of satirically, in which they're saying, donald, you are a beautiful, bright man. You are the, you're, you're, you will achieve peace in our time with this approach that you've taken towards Putin, extending the hand of friendship and putting the pressure on the Ukrainians. But remember, he's a KGB guy. He might be playing you.
So if your first brilliant plan doesn't work, then your second, even more brilliant plan of putting pressure on Putin and supporting Ukraine will surely get us there. So I think you could see some of those lines play out in the way that Trump talks about shares, you know, starts the shares, frustration.
But there's a lot of baggage to overcome. There's deep animus towards Ukraine, you know, vengeance. He blames them instead of me or games, blames both of us for his impeachment.
He embraces Russia because it's an authoritarian regime. He wants to will the power that way. He thinks a lot of, you know, deals. There's a potential for a lot of deals. That's a lot of baggage to overcome. But he wants to be a winner. And, you know, if you convince him that the only way he looks like a sucker is if he keeps catering to, to Putin that, you know, says, yes, I want peace, but, and that's a big but that, you know, obstructs the cause of peace, I think you get, get, get them to come over. I describe that as a six month process. I did, I wrote about this, you know, months ago and that, you know, we're about four months in. You could see this kind of relationship with Russia kind of starting to wear.
But we might get there to a place where it's at least the status quo. We don't necessarily give the Russians, I mean, we don't give the Ukrainians additional aid grants, but they could buy resources, which they've got resources, they've got money to do that Europeans could buy on their behalf. The US Continues to share intelligence. All those types of things could play out in a way that, you know, keeps Ukraine in the fight. And I think the Ukrainians have more staying power than the Russians.
So the Russians are incentivized to stay on and fight on because Putin has given him a bit of a lifeline.
They might stick around for another year, test their luck. Even if, even though it's hard, where we could have maybe ended up in a peace negotiation framework, like robust, serious peace negotiation this year. I think Trump has kicked the can down the road, unfortunately, with his approach, his folly, but we might get there.
[00:47:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, yeah, I think the, you say it was satirical, but I think it's been demonstrated a world over that people do believe that flattery is the way to manipulate when it comes to dealing with the US Leadership. I think we see that in a lot of places.
So I also wanted to ask you just on a personal level, or we did, when you're not out here, you know, saving the Constitution and fighting for what's right. You know, what do you like to do in your, in your, in your spare time?
[00:48:24] Speaker B: So I, I, I try to do as much as possible, I guess on the things that, that are important to me. I, I, I keep think coming back to. On my first day out of uniform, I published an op ed in, in the Washington Post kind of explaining why I was, you know, forced to retire or retaliation, intimidation, my promotion was blocked and all that kind of stuff. But I also kind of wanted, I issued a manifesto to myself. I talked about the fact I wanted to continue to advance U.S. national security.
And I do that because I run a think tank and I write and you know, I wrote this book about policy. I write a substack, I do lots of media around it. I said I wanted to advocate for public service because I think public servants are beautiful people. They, you know, they, they are oriented on something other than themselves and they, they are under attack unfairly and rallying around public servants and bringing back trust to public service is important. And I said I wanted to advocate for values based leadership. So that's the, the stuff I do to help get veterans elected because I think by and large they adhere to their values and ethics and you know, display moral courage, physical and moral courage. So I do those types of things. I've got, I do, I've got a charity that helps Ukraine advance their, their, you know, defense and war effort.
I have a 14 year old daughter that's going into high school so I'm trying to spend as much time with her as possible.
[00:49:58] Speaker A: There we go.
[00:49:59] Speaker B: I'm in this community in South Florida which is love, what a wonderful place to be. I was, I actually had some doubts because I thought it might be too hard to do my, you know, D.C. work and academia.
I've got some academic academic affiliations with Hopkins. I've done a bunch, I do public speaking and stuff like that. So I, when I'm not doing a lot of travel, I'm here enjoying a nice home. My, my family and you know, and the community which I'm really, really happy to be a part of.
[00:50:33] Speaker A: That's really cool. Really cool. I mean, yeah, we all have, well, Tunde's been apparent a little longer but he has a young one still also. And I got young ones and yeah, that's always a big thing is trying to spend as much time with them and then just that family time.
[00:50:45] Speaker B: So before we get out too. Yeah, I don't know.
[00:50:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:51] Speaker A: So we just want to Get. I'm going to also list it into the in the show notes as well. But just could you tell us anything you'd like to promo? You know, I know you mentioned your sub stack. I'll have, I'll have links to the books, but just, yeah, give us the things you'd like to promo.
[00:51:05] Speaker B: I'm mentioning a couple things. So I've got a substack avidman.com on the social medias.
I work with Vote Vets to help get veterans elected and Vet Voice foundation houses my, my Institute for Informed American Leadership. And I also have something called the Hero Right Matters foundation, which is the title of my first book and, you know, kind of my tagline here@matters foundation.org to help Ukraine. But in general, you know, catch me out there. I think I'm pretty approachable, happy to engage and talk and get other people.
This has been one of the blessings of a book tour, kind of getting a pulse on, on how people are thinking across the country, lots of different places. So, yeah, like to do that.
[00:51:50] Speaker A: I mean, and that's, that's what free speech is for, you know, for us to speak to each other.
[00:51:54] Speaker C: And so let's end on this. Based on your experience traveling the country with your book tour, how do you feel based on what you're seeing, your anecdotal, like, are you optimistic or pessimistic based on your reactions?
[00:52:06] Speaker B: I think I, you know, I still believe that we are a good country filled with good people, a lot of whom are confused. We're, you know, 340 million people.
So 10%, you know, 20% of those are not, maybe not so good, weren't raised right. That amounts to tens of millions of people.
But by and large, we're good people that share common views about what we want to provide for our families, you know, what kind of, kind of country we want to live in.
And I think that, you know, there's an opportunity to wake up from this malaise, this apathy and complacency and wrestle back our country. I think we do that, you know, of the person this year, year, special elections, midterm elections, the presidential and, you know, rally, hem in the worst egregious behavior of the Trump administration and come back and build back better.
[00:53:01] Speaker A: There we go.
All right, well, thank you very much for joining us. Best of luck to you moving forward and we hope to talk to you again soon.
[00:53:09] Speaker B: Looking forward to it. Thanks.
[00:53:10] Speaker A: All right.
