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Presidential Transitions & the Freedom Agenda

March 31, 2023
Notes
Transcript

Eliot and Eric welcome back Duke Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Director of the Program on American Grand Strategy, Peter Feaver, pinch-hitting for Meghan O’Sullivan (whose illness prevented her from joining us) to discuss Hand Off, a book that Peter and Meghan (along with SOTR guest Will Inboden) edited consisting of all the Bush 43 Administration’s NSC transition memos prepared for the Obama Administration. They touch on Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia and China and whether or not “the Freedom Agenda” serves as a coherent framing of the Bush Administration foreign policies, the opportunity costs with Russia and China that resulted from the focus on the War on Terror, and much more.

https://www.amazon.com/Hand-Off-Foreign-Policy-George-Passed/dp/081573977X

https://halbrands.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/12___20___2017_The-case-f.pdf

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This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:06

    Welcome to Shield of the Republic, a podcast sponsored by the Bulwark and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and dedicated to the proposition articulated by Walter Littman during World War two. That a strong and balanced foreign policy is the necessary shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman, a counselor at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments. A Bulwark contributor and a nonresident fellow at the Miller Center. And I am rejoined after a week off by my partner in crime, Elliot Cohen, back from travels in in Europe.
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:41

    Elliot, how how did it go? How was the staff ride?
  • Speaker 2
    0:00:44

    So this was terrific. So at the school of advanced international studies, we’ve had a tradition now for over two decades of doing international staff rise. I’m let’s say that the practice has spread, including to several that are have been run by our guests today, on this trip, we were doing the Cold War. And so we were in Berlin and Prague primarily with a detour to the place that had been the headquarters for the group of Soviet forces, Germany. And I must say there were some chilling moments.
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:14

    We went to the Stasi Prison in Berlin. And it was such a vivid reminder, particularly when, you know, when you got all the details of how they did things. Of just how important the victory in the cold war was. It’s not something to be taken lightly. Not something to be taken lightly that the frontier of freedom moved a couple hundred miles east and that the people who ended up being liberated, benefited enormously.
  • Speaker 3
    0:01:42

    But
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:43

    we’re
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:43

    probably not here to talk about that. We’re probably here to talk to our friend Peter Fever who is joining us again For the second time, I think he was last with us in October. He is a recidivist therefore, and so gets no mercy. Peter, of course, Professor Duke served as served repeatedly in the United States government and expert on civil military relations public opinion, a whole bunch of other things, and is a co editor, a very interesting book, which I’ll leave it to you to describe Eric but Peter, I just wanted to welcome you back to the show. It’s
  • Speaker 3
    0:02:20

    good to be back. Thank you.
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:21

    Peter, I’d really appreciate that you’re a pinch hitter because as our listeners know, we were meant have one of your co editors of this book. Handoff, the foreign policy, George w Bush, passed to Barack obama, which you and Meghan O’Sullivan and another former guest on on Shield of the Republic, William Boden, have co edited. Megan was gonna join us. She is ill, but we will have her back at a later date to talk about the new geopolitics of energy. But thank you for pinch hitting at the very, very last minute or coming in out of the Bulwark at the very, very last minute.
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:55

    I won’t use any basketball analogies because Duke is still recovering from, you know, an early out, you know, in the tournament this year. So tell us about the book Peter. How did it come to be? It’s an unusual enterprise. I I should say in full disclosure to the audience.
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:12

    I’m I’m somewhat, you know, complicit in this. I was one of the reviewers of one of the memoranda that was selected for publication in this book.
  • Speaker 3
    0:03:22

    Well, this is the book is something of a labor of love by Steve Hadley and a labor of love for Steve Hadley. Once you’ve been a staffer, you’re always a staffer. What he did was he went back to the Bush library and reread all the memos that he had had the see prepare in preparation for handing over control of the government to whoever was going to win in two thousand eight. And he started this project under president Bush’s and Josh Bolton’s direction early in two thousand eight well before it was known that it was gonna be president Obama. What they did know was whoever was gonna come in was running against president slash.
  • Speaker 3
    0:04:10

    So there was a strong critique of Bush foreign policy from senator McCain and a even stronger critique from senator Obama. And both were whoever of those was gonna win in two thousand eight was gonna take over two wars. And a very complex geopolitical situation. And so president Bush, Josh Bolton, Steve Hadley wanted to prepare that team as best they could. And so Hadley had the strategic planning office of the NSC coordinate a memo writing exercise.
  • Speaker 3
    0:04:52

    Where each of the directors was assigned to review the Bush policy. What was the situation we found when we came in, in two thousand one? What was our strategy for dealing with it? What was the situation we were handing off to our successors in two thousand nine. And alongside that would be a folder filled with sort of primary source documents that they would need, membranes of of conversation, presidential phone calls, agreements, sidebars, all the things that give texture to an overall strategy much of which would not necessarily be knowable from the outside.
  • Speaker 3
    0:05:39

    So whoever was gonna come in were experts in their areas, but they might not be privy to all of the the deals, all of the promises, all of the understandings, if you will. And so the idea was we’ll hand all of this off over to the new team and that this was a thick binder full of memos. Peter,
  • Speaker 1
    0:06:03

    I did wanna interrupt you for one second just to draw attention for our listeners that much of the material you’re taught talking about that would have been added to these memos in appendices. The presidential Memcon’s phone calls, exchanges of letters at etcetera, would not be not only were they not knowable to those outside of the government because they were classified but they wouldn’t be readily available to the new team coming in because typically, you know, if you wanna see the flow, literal flow of power in Washington, you know, during a change of presidential administrations, you go January twentieth, to as close to West Executive Avenue as you can get, and you’ll see eighteen wheelers loading up with all the documents and they pull out of there. You know, on the nineteenth and twentieth as all the files are being taken off to the national archives and the new team comes in essentially to empty file cabinets. And digging up these records is is
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:05

    really difficult. By the way, this is always something I have found completely incomprehensible. I mean, it’s United States government deciding to give itself a frontal lobotomy every four to eight years. And, you know, particularly in a dangerous period of time. The idea that people walk in to what are essentially empty desks is crazy, but that’s that’s another matter.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:32

    One thing I I did wanna ask, so this is this book, it it is unique. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s about the Bush administration. We’re gonna be talking about the Bush administration. I I do think out of fairness to our listeners, we should all fess up about our roles in the Bush administration because well, I mean, you know, we’re that that shield of their public being what it is.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:56

    It’ll be tough and intellectually honest. But let’s face it. We were all part of it. I’ll start off since I was the most marginal member of the Bush administration. I served on the defense policy board, which is an advisory board, pedagon until secretary Rice asked me to become counselor at the Department of State, which is the interesting kind of position, which I did for the last two years of the Bush administration.
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:23

    I think it’s fair to say that I was frequently a member of the loyal opposition, whether it was about Iraq or anything else and in a way that was my very interesting job as counselors. So that’s that’s my Bush administration story. Eric, why don’t you tell yours and then Peter should tell his?
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:40

    Yeah. Well, I served throughout the Bush administration in three different positions. First, as the deputy national security adviser device and Cheney from two thousand one to three, at which point I went off to be the US ambassador to Turkey from two thousand three to five. And then came back to be the under secretary of defense before policy, the third ranking policy position in the Pentagon. And as a sub cabinet member, worked closely with you as the counselor and with Peter as the director of strategic planning for the National Security Council.
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:17

    Peter, fess up.
  • Speaker 3
    0:09:19

    Yeah. And I flubbed my job interview at the in the first administration. So In two thousand two thousand one, I I got didn’t do well in my interview, and so didn’t get in any jobs in the first term. And I did better in the second term with my job interview and and Steve Hadley hired me to stand up the strategic planning sale. In the on the NSC staff, which I ran from two thousand five to two thousand seven with Will Saletan, another good friend of the show.
  • Speaker 3
    0:09:48

    And it was this office, the strategic planning office that then eventually was tasked with creating the transition book. That became this the book that we’re talking about. And
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:59

    just to round it out, Megan O’Sullivan was basically running the Iraq and Afghanistan portfolio. On the NSC until when did she leave the NSC staff around?
  • Speaker 3
    0:10:11

    Late two thousand seven.
  • Speaker 2
    0:10:12

    Yeah. So so all of us have this look, I think Eric and I were actually physically there for the transition, which left me some be personally some strong views. But you know, so you’ve got the three of us here with a certain amount of knowledge of it. Can I let me if I could begin And I think, Eric, you’ve experienced transitions on both sides? Let me just say, I think the value of the book is that it does give a very good picture of the White House official mind, if you were, of how it assessed its own foreign policy, how it assessed the world that inherited and, you know, the best case going forward, although some parts of the some of the memos are moderately self critical, I would say.
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:05

    The the two things that I found that that I — Yeah. — I would say to a reader of this is a, Remember, these are the transition memos from the White House, not from the departments. And, you know, the any any regional policy is seen from the White House might not be the same way that regional policy was seen from the Department of State, and I dare say the same thing about defense policy. But I I have a somewhat jaundice view of the efficacy of this. That doesn’t diminish the importance of it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:36

    Because I, you know, I vividly remember my own transition the State Department transition experience. They talked to the career people, the political people, they interviewed at the end as a courtesy. It was clear that the memos that we wrote flew out the window I mean, I was interviewed by two people who became very see very senior in the Obama administration. They were, you know, being polite because they had known me from before. But it was just clear that they had no interest really what we have to say.
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:04

    And I think by and large, the Obama administration, when they came in, we’re not particularly interested in foreign policy. I think, you know, contingency planning for, you know, various kinds of disasters, particularly immediately after inauguration they were. But but I don’t think these memos had any impact whatsoever or or I shouldn’t say that. Had very little impact. On the foreign policy decision making of the Obama administration.
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:30

    That’s my take.
  • Speaker 3
    0:12:32

    I think that’s not totally unfair. I do think that the seriousness of the effort that went into it, of which the the memos were apart, but only just apart, did have a profound impact. You mentioned the contingency planning. There was numerous efforts to do tabletop exercises to prepare the team so that on day one at minute one, they would know what the US government could do what capabilities it had, which were much more extensive in two thousand nine than they had been in January two thousand one. The last time this team you know, had had the rains of power.
  • Speaker 3
    0:13:15

    And so they very much appreciated that. There also was an effort to ensure that the wars themselves would be managed with as minimum disruption as possible. It’s that it had been decades since a war had been handed off, whilst the shooting was still going on, you have to go back to sixty nine really to have that kind of challenge and that that’s a difficult to change commanders in midstream. That’s a that that could be difficult. There was, I think, a good effort between the the two of them.
  • Speaker 3
    0:13:50

    The two administrations, a good faith effort to to minimize those. And then, while it’s not the folks of the the book, remember, they were also managing a serious financial crisis as a series of financial crisis as we had faced since the Great Depression. And so and that, there was tremendous coordination between the two economic teams. So I act in in hindsight now, people see this as the high watermark, and there’s two points of evidence of this. One is Much of what the Bush administration did voluntarily has been codified in laws.
  • Speaker 3
    0:14:25

    Now everybody has to do it, best practice. And second of all, when it became time for president Obama to hand over in two thousand sixteen, seventeen, they try to recreate this process to the best of their abilities. So could I I
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:41

    just come back on on that one bit and then Eric, I’m sure you’ve got better informed views. I I will take all that. Although, I think the critical thing for continuity in the wars is that first shared, Bob Gates, a secretary of defense in both administrations. You obviously had the same chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and probably most importantly, you had Doug Lute, who was the deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan. So But it is no accident,
  • Speaker 3
    0:15:08

    comrade. I mean, this was all part of
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:09

    the club, but I just never The point is, I don’t think it has anything to do with the memos. I’m not gonna say about about But I’m
  • Speaker 3
    0:15:15

    not crediting the memos. I’m crediting the seriousness of the effort that president Bush I
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:21

    don’t I don’t dispute the seriousness of the effort. I I think you’re absolutely right, by the way, on the financial crisis. But I I also think, you know, there’s a and I saw this, I thought, what what’s the Latin Apollo give Provita Suwa where, you know, you’re trying to explain this is why I did what I who I am and why I am what I am. You know, you’re you’re, I think, at the end of administration, you know, you’re even as you’re getting kicked in the teeth every day in the press, you know, you’re looking at the distant horizons where history with a capital h looms. So in a certain way, you know, you’re not writing for Ben Rhodes who thinks you’re all bunch of jerks.
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:03

    You know, you’re writing for eternity. This
  • Speaker 3
    0:16:06

    is what makes the book so extraordinary. Right? And and that is the memos themselves would not have been declassified for another ten, fifteen years if ever. Right? It was extraordinary to get them declassified on an accelerated basis.
  • Speaker 3
    0:16:21

    And then the the rest of the book is asking the same teams to the extent that they they could reconstituted to write a reflection postscript based on what’s happened in the intervening twelve years. Now, how does how does our the scorecard we gave ourselves in two thousand
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:40

    nine? How does that look twelve years on? Eric, you outrank us, so you should comment.
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:45

    So let me make a few observations about transitions in general. So speaking now as a thirty year career public servant who went through the transition in nineteen eighty one, nineteen eighty nine, nineteen ninety three, two thousand one, and then the two thousand eight, two thousand nine transition. So my former foreign service colleague gave Bolan. It was the daughter of ChipBolan. The famous Russia hand in the state department, used to have a kind of bomb about the career foreign service view of transitions, which was no matter how much you hated the last bunch of political the new group inevitably makes you have nostalgia for the last one.
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:34

    And my own observation of, you know, transition is every four or eight years, as you said, Elliott, the, you know, the outgoing team, really by and large in good faith, tries to prepare the incoming team by telling them, look, this is not something that’s partisan that we’re giving you. We’ve learned through a school of hard knocks, how tough these issues are. They’re all tough issues, you know. And here’s what we’ve learned. We really don’t want you to have to you know, make mistakes, you know, step on rakes because we haven’t warned you and and, you know, this is our prize pig and we hope you really love it, you know, and and we hand off, you know, something that looks like this doorstop that Peter and colleagues were involved in preparing.
  • Speaker 1
    0:18:19

    And that you and I were involved in preparing and, you know, in our different agencies as well. And the incoming team looks at it and say, says, yeah, it’s a pig and, you know, throws it in the in the trash. But very soon thereafter, the incoming team starts to bump up against the realities. And their and their first reaction is to say, oh my god, you know, the last guys were so stupid and we’re so smart. We just got elected.
  • Speaker 1
    0:18:46

    So obviously, we’re really smart. And the last guy screwed it up so badly that it’s gonna take us at least a year to dig out of this mess that they created for us. Nobody else before us has ever gotten the same steaming plate of crap that, you know, our, you know, our predecessors have be queaved us. And then in the second year, they’re basically saying, it was even worse than we thought. It’s so bad.
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:08

    It’s gonna take us four years to dig out. Maybe eight to dig out from this mess, which is why we deserve to be reelected because we have to dig out from this. And then, you know, rinse washing and repeat. I mean, it’s it’s a very repetitive and predictable cycle, I think. I do think that the Bush administration
  • Speaker 3
    0:19:29

    And
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:29

    I think most people in the Obama administration would, you know, admit that, made a really good faith effort because of what Peter was saying. This was the first, you know, hand off in forty years in the midst of a war. And we had the we already had the presidential transition act, which had been put in place some new ability to handle this kind of transition. In a thorough way. And as Peter points out, it’s now been amended several times to incorporate some of what went on in bush administration.
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:01

    And having been very deeply involved in the Romney transition, I can tell you that we were, you know, we we definitely were beneficiaries of what the Bush people had done in terms of thinking about, you know, about transition. But having said that, you know, I do think You know, there’s just an inevitable degree of self justification that goes on in these memos. It’s impossible not to do it. Because you’re trying to explain how you got to where you are and, you know, everybody collectively, it’s some level is implicated in all of these decisions that were involved. I think it’s worth focusing on maybe a couple of specifics.
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:43

    I mean, part of the problem of trying to deal in a fifty minute podcast with a book like this, which is nine hundred pages. I mean, the memos cover everything from, you know, Iraq and Afghanistan, which, of course, were major sources of concern, but also, you know, Pepfar and policy in Africa, the Millennium Challenge Corporation and Development of all sorts of things. Some things not covered, which is also perhaps, you know, interesting and worth you know, commenting on. For instance, I don’t think correct me if I’m wrong, Peter, but I don’t recall that there’s a climate change transition paper on the international side. There’s a lot in here, but I think for our purposes, maybe we should focus on sort of, I would say, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, and China kind of the big muscle movements.
  • Speaker 2
    0:21:32

    Isn’t there an forarching theme though, that this is really a question to you, Peter, and also to you, Eric. And that is the so called freedom agenda, which has been characterized, but I think was center became central to George W. Bush’s thinking it’s not where he started out. It’s certainly not. I think where my old boss, Conde Rice, started out.
  • Speaker 2
    0:21:54

    I doubt that is where Steve Hadley started out. And, you know, one thing that did strike me about the volume is it does sort of begin with a, you know, as always, a beautifully written piece by Pete Weiner and the last the late Mike Gerson on this subject. So is that you know, as as the three of us think through the the foreign policy of the administration we’re part of, is that an overarching theme? Or can we decompose it into
  • Speaker 3
    0:22:24

    Afghanistan, Iraq, China, Russia, war, and terror? So I I would say two things. One is that the the book in its maziveness, comprehensiveness, is itself a corrective to one of the characters caracatured critiques of the Bush administration, namely that Bush was only all about Iraq, Afghanistan, global war veteran. That’s it. There’s nothing else to the Bush administration.
  • Speaker 3
    0:22:56

    They they they didn’t try to do anything else. They didn’t do anything else. They couldn’t do anything else because they were a hundred percent myopically focused on Afghanistan and Iraq. And that’s just flatly false. It’s ahistorical.
  • Speaker 3
    0:23:10

    And the the book documents in in somewhat numb in detail, all of the lines of action, all of the other things that the administration was trying, some of which worked, some of it didn’t work. The second thing is, and and you just put you put your finger on it, that over time, there was a logic that was guiding the administration. It wasn’t a procrast cross in bed type of logic where they tried to squeeze everything into the the Freedom Agenda, rubric, but that there was certain logical claims that the president had about how the world works about what the direction of US interests were and where where US would find more reliable allies and where they wouldn’t, and that this logic which can be summarized in the Freedom Agenda shows up in other places besides just Iraq and Afghanistan. And at the risk of triggering Ellie in an earlier debate we had, you can find some of this logic in the national security strategy, which particularly the two thousand six version of it, which lays out. The the ways in which the Freedom Agenda might apply to, say, development aid or global how you deal with global the problems of globalization or other regions.
  • Speaker 3
    0:24:45

    But again, it’s pushing back on a caricature because the caricature of Bush is that the freedom agenda means invading other countries and trying to force them to have elections at gunpoint, which of course is would be a stupid policy if that was what was attempted and wasn’t, and in fact, what the administration attempted. But, you know,
  • Speaker 1
    0:25:05

    it’s
  • Speaker 3
    0:25:06

    also the case. It would be stupid to say that we are indifferent as to whether we’re dealing with a dictator or whether we’re dealing with a democracy. We treat them all the same. That that also would not be a a sound policy.
  • Speaker 1
    0:25:20

    I just wanna pull on that thread a little bit. Because one of the, I think, really, very positive qualities of this volume is not only is it an apologia prosuevaeta as you know, Elliott was suggesting, but there are critical essays appended both by the participants looking backwards to, you know, kind of grade themselves a little bit, but also independent scholars like Martha Kumar and our friend Mel Lefler who review this and and have some criticisms, you know, of of their own. And I think one of Mel’s criticisms here particularly apt. I mean, he he talks about the freedom agenda, but the truth is, I in my view, anyway, the freedom agenda, you know, really was very focused on basically one, you know, part of the world essentially. I mean, maybe maybe you could say it was also parts of the third world outside of the Middle East, you know, Africa through the Millennium Challenge Corporation and and other mechanisms But it’s really quite striking that, you know, Russia and China were not apart in some sense of the freedom agenda.
  • Speaker 1
    0:26:32

    You know, if you will.
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:33

    So No. I disagree. So let me push back if I could. That
  • Speaker 1
    0:26:38

    You can. The
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:40

    they certainly weren’t part of the caricature version of the Freedom Agenda, which says we’re going to topple your regime at Musket Point and force you to have an election. We didn’t approach Asia that way. But the hedging strategy with respect to China took very seriously the concept that we had some Democratic partners in the region, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and crucially, India. And the perception that in the long run, India would be a better strategic partner with us in part because of shared democratic values that that we weren’t insensitive to all the many ways in which The geopolitics are complicated, etcetera, etcetera. But at the end of the day, the fact that India was a democracy was a relevant fact to the geopolitics of Asia and therefore a relevant fact to how we hedged against China.
  • Speaker 3
    0:27:42

    That’s the first point. The second point was The Bush administration after some debate made the same bet that the Clinton administration made, which they made after some debate, which was the same bet that Bush forty one made, and namely that over time, China, if we brought them into the international system, over time, economic liberalization would lead to political liberalization. And that bet, which, of course, now has come a cropper, was a open eyed bet made at the time. And when it was Huuzhou, leading China, the bet seemed to have a little bit more promise to it than when it was Xi Jinping. And so it was an and it was informed, therefore, a little bit by the freedom agendas.
  • Speaker 3
    0:28:36

    What I what I would say. Now in the end, in hindsight, Xi Jinping blew that strategy up. And so we have a very different China today. And I think it’s worth asking, could we have done something different in the in the eight years that Bush had with China? That would have put put us in a better position today vis a vis China.
  • Speaker 3
    0:29:00

    It’s a hard bet to make.
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:02

    Elliot, let me just let me just address some of what Peter said, and then I’ll be happy to kick it back over to you. So Peter, all fair points that you make. But I think there’s a flipside to that where the the freedom agenda, you know, is not in evidence. And that is and you’re you’re correct that the administration made the same bet on both Russia and China that the Clinton administration did. But under
  • Speaker 3
    0:29:28

    Obama And and Obama made the same bet. Yes.
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:31

    Yeah. And I would say that that, you know, in two thousand seven by two thousand seven, and eight, although it was Huuzhou, but and not Xi Jinping yet, my view is it should have been clear already that in both of these cases, the nature of these regimes was gonna make them very serious problems for us going forward. There are already plenty of signs of it at the time. And that I think in in this instance, I, you know, I in the spirit of, you know, criticism, self criticism, ism.
  • Speaker 3
    0:30:03

    Maoist self criticism.
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:05

    Yeah. So I I would I would say that, you know, there was a huge opportunity cost to the fact that we were very focused on Iraq and Afghanistan. I certainly in the defense department, when I was there from two thousand five to two thousand nine, that was my overriding concern because we had two hundred and twenty five thousand US soldiers sailors, airmen, and marines, in the CENTCOM AOR fighting two wars. And, you know, it’s very hard for any administration really to have much bandwidth left after that. I’m not saying we didn’t do all these things that you were talking about and that are reflected in this.
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:41

    But I think we missed a bet, you know, on on Russia and China. There was an opportunity cost to the focus that we had on on the nine eleven wars. And I I I think it’s a mistake to just sort of whistle past the graveyard about that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:56

    So if I could just pile on that, you know, with regard to the idea that our relationship with Japan and Australia and India is part of the freedom agenda. I I don’t really buy that. I’m in the same it is, you know, as in ways she just pointed out, Peter, a result of continuity of American foreign policy from Clinton. And and the truth is, you know, we don’t like to admit that there’s actually a lot of continuity in American foreign policy. Which makes one again kind of doubt the significance of all these memorandas.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:24

    There’s a logic there. Could we put ourselves in a better position Vesevi China. I I think one of the big mistakes. And here, you know, I’m I’m very sympathetic to the freedom agenda. Don’t get me wrong.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:38

    But, you know, one of the mistakes to my I that that I think gets made is to assume that we can really in very important ways affect the internal dynamics of societies like China or Russia. And I think one of the things that we’re learning is whether it’s China or Russia. Actually, there was no way that we could really turn those in a more liberal direction. There were very powerful internal dynamics which are pushing in the other opposite direction. So what was incumbent upon us was to try to contain that, block it, subvert it, but but I think a mistake to think that we could we could really change that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:18

    And and I I do think that that is somehow connected with some of the irrational optimism in some parts of the government, not all of it, about what we were actually achieving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, you know, I as counselor, my job was chiefly to walk into the secretary’s office and say, I know you think that things are going reasonably well. My job is to tell you I’ve been looking at the evidence and it’s and it’s not. And so I do think that there was a certain degree of intoxication with this, and there was never really, particularly on Iraq and Afghanistan, one of my critiques of how we and I say we because I was part of the administration too, of of how we approaches. We never really set ourselves What’s a reasonable set of expectations for a place like Iraq or Afghanistan?
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:09

    I mean, we know that we’re not gonna turn them into Sweden.
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:12

    You
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:12

    know, should we be satisfied with a not excessively thuggish dictatorship? And instead, I think we never really went through that setting of the, you know, a reasonable target. And then the last thing I want to do is really just I think, Eric, your point needs to be made even more strongly because a large part of foreign policy’s words and words are very important. And, you know, in that sense, memos are important. But The main thing is those wars really prevented us from putting the money into defense modernization that we really needed to.
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:51

    And it was a they were a major distraction in some way, but that that really put us quite in a quite a challenging position vis a vis China, particularly if we had recognized the challenge that they were going to pose. And I have to say rereading the the Russia memo was a bit better than the China memo, but I think neither of them really saw coming at us the challenge that those two states were gonna pose. I mean, there’s concern. There had to be concern because of things like Georgia. But, you know, there there wasn’t a whole lot of foresight now.
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:31

    You know, is that on Bush? No. It’s even much more on Obama, I would say. But I think that’s the fact of the matter. And we are paying for some of the misallocation of resources that happened during the administration we were part of.
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:47

    So
  • Speaker 3
    0:34:47

    I understand the critique, and I think some of it is is fair, but not all of it.
  • Speaker 1
    0:34:52

    The
  • Speaker 3
    0:34:54

    what is a fair critique is to say because not the Bin Laden attacked us on nine eleven, that created a urgent near term threat that the administration had to deal with and that it could not not deal with that. It couldn’t say, you know what? Sure. This is not a big problem. We’re gonna just focus on it, but
  • Speaker 1
    0:35:17

    nobody’s
  • Speaker 3
    0:35:18

    saying that, Peter. Okay. So but it required a a serious response, and that response was OEF. And we can have a debate at the the invasion of Afghanistan. And we could have a debate about, well, was there a better outcome that was possible in Afghanistan?
  • Speaker 3
    0:35:43

    If we had say, resourced it more heavily in two thousand two, in two thousand three. So is the counter factual that you’re arguing that the Afghanistan was winnable, but it was only winnable if we made different choices in two thousand two, two thousand three. For my for my money, the the hinge the turning point in Afghanistan was in two thousand six, when Musharv cut the deal with with the tribes. And that’s when Afghanistan went from a manageable problem into a much more serious problem because, of course, the tribes didn’t honor their agreement They lifted up pressure on the Taliban, and the the Taliban was able to reconstitute as a regime threatening problem. The cigar lists all sorts of other problems that went wrong in Afghanistan, but but really you’re either saying Afghanistan was never winnable.
  • Speaker 3
    0:36:43

    Okay? Then what were you going to do on in October two thousand one? Or you’re saying it was winnable, but it needed to have been one before Musharv makes this deal. And I I haven’t heard a an argument that you know, is compelling to me about how we could have won it differently. So that’s Afghanistan.
  • Speaker 3
    0:37:05

    Now Iraq is a different problem because, of course, the war in hindsight was a mistake because the intelligence predicate for it turned out to be flawed. Would the world would would it the world have been a perfect even if we hadn’t invaded that Iraq in two thousand three. I don’t think so. People are forgetting what we would have could have known and could have not known. Right?
  • Speaker 3
    0:37:32

    We now know that if we had not invaded Iraq in two thousand and three. Saddam Hussein would have done all the things that we thought he had already done, but he was delaying that until after he got out from underneath the sanctions. So the description of the Iraq threat, which was not accurate in two thousand two, would have become accurate by two thousand four, two thousand five, if we had not invaded. And so you would have that problem, which was a decade old problem managing threatening a crucial portion of of the globe, namely the Middle East and the relevance of the Middle East for energy security. So I think we still would have had a big problem that would have diverted the United States, but it wouldn’t have been as big a problem.
  • Speaker 3
    0:38:21

    As the one we actually had because we invaded and then found out he didn’t have the WMD that was expected and and more crucially, the early years of the war were about phase four were not handled optimally. And so the war was in danger of being lost in two thousand six. So it’s a more complicated assessment is what I’m saying. So
  • Speaker 2
    0:38:46

    so, you know, for my sins, I spent most of my time and state working on Afghanistan and couldn’t go there and to pack stand a lot. And the conclusion I came to was the problem wasn’t Mishar from two thousand six. The problem was Pakistan. And there was no way that the Pakistani’s were ever going to let us stabilize an Afghan regime that was not under their control. I mean, that makes it virtually a, you know, undoable, and perhaps that was the case.
  • Speaker 2
    0:39:18

    I, you know, the part of the problem I think with both wars, you know, I you can make the case for both of them and I did, and I I and I take your logic. The execution was really pretty poor in both cases. And that’s something to reflect on. And again, that’s that part of foreign policy, which is not in memos. It’s in people and
  • Speaker 1
    0:39:38

    organizations and equipment and and actual action. I’d like to actually further that point, which is there’s been a lot of focus on the civilian side of this. You know, the things that got, you know, got done wrong in terms of various assessments. There’s, you know, I’ve got I’m looking at my bookshelf and there’s literally two two shelves full of books on Iraq and Afghanistan and the mistakes of policy that were made. I don’t think there’s been enough serious introspection on the part of the military about the military contribution to this.
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:13

    I completely agree.
  • Speaker 1
    0:40:15

    You know, to Peter’s point about know, phase four not having been adequately done. That’s because the CENTCOM commander flat out refused to to plan for phase. Space for. And that’s, you know, that’s clear from the two volume history of the US US Army in Iraq. And that was his responsibility, you know, and just didn’t do it.
  • Speaker 1
    0:40:37

    So, I mean, that’s just one example among many that, you know, could be offered. And I think that’s an important thing going forward. There really has to be some much more. I think that’s a task for scholars, frankly. To, you know, do a kind of no holds barred review of how the military actually performed in these two wars.
  • Speaker 1
    0:40:58

    There was a lot of heroism don’t mean to, you know, minimize the sacrifices that individual families and soldiers made but there also were some, you know, very serious, I think, command failures, which I don’t think have gotten adequate attention mention. I and I don’t disagree with what Peter said about, you know, the decisions with regard to Iraq and Afghanistan at all. But I do think there’s an element here of, you know, attention diverted. There’s also though an element of the Russia and China problems are are manageable even though I think they were starting the head certainly by the last two years of the Bush administration in in directions that indicated they were gonna become a lot more problematic. In in other words, some of what we start to see, for instance, in Chinese behavior, in in Southeast Asia, in the in the, you know, South China Sea, for instance, starts to emerge in two thousand ten.
  • Speaker 1
    0:41:57

    That’s, you know, close enough in time to the end of the Bush administration that you can’t say, well, that, you know, that was unknowable in two thousand eight. And there clearly were already signs of the Chinese doing stuff that was gonna be a problem for us. In terms of their military build up, in terms of their attitudes. I’ll give you one example. President Bush asked Huuzentau when they met, I can’t remember now.
  • Speaker 1
    0:42:25

    Peter Yule remember better. It was like two thousand five or six. Wanted to start dialogue on nuclear weapons and have a dialogue between Stratcom and the then second artillery division, which was responsible for nuclear weapons in the Chinese system. Never happened for three years. Couldn’t get it to happen.
  • Speaker 1
    0:42:44

    Still hasn’t happened after efforts by serious efforts by both the Obama and administrations to try and get that kind of dialogue going. And now we’re looking at the prospect of fifteen hundred, you know, Chinese nuclear warheads in twenty thirty five according to the Pentagon’s China military power report. That was already a trend that was discernible. You know, in two thousand six seven. We we should have been more alive to that.
  • Speaker 1
    0:43:10

    I’m I’m this is really self criticism. I I myself think you know, I wasn’t, you know, attuned enough to this in retrospect.
  • Speaker 3
    0:43:19

    Well, I’m happy to criticize both of you completely and and I feel very comfortable doing that. But I I I would add two other dimensions and that is that the trade dimension and climate change. And both of those play in slightly different ways than the narrative you’ve struck now, which is because we were obsessed with Iraq. We couldn’t do anything with respect to China. The Bush administration what was building a trade policy a global trade policy that was designed to Hammond China is to is the wrong word, but it was designed to create a rules based system that would pressure China into playing fairly.
  • Speaker 3
    0:44:09

    The problem is not competing with China. The problem is competing with the China that doesn’t play fairly. And the original idea of the the CTP where the the Asian trade architecture was designed at late bush administration and then handed off to the Obama team and the the expectation was they would move that down and and get that cemented in and then you would have an economic architecture that would help manage the rise of China. In a more effective way than we have now without it. You could say that by bush should have gotten further on that in two thousand eight than he did.
  • Speaker 3
    0:45:02

    Okay? But that was really squandered by the the successor and they were late in pushing for it. They did they were late for trade protection authority.
  • Speaker 1
    0:45:12

    They waited till the election season when it was, you know, dead dead on arrival.
  • Speaker 3
    0:45:16

    And by two thousand, but, you know, it was too late. Right? By the by the time that the administration was fierce about it was too late.
  • Speaker 1
    0:45:23

    The great thing about that is in twenty sixteen, We had three candidates running for president all running against it.
  • Speaker 3
    0:45:30

    Including the Secretary of State who had helped —
  • Speaker 1
    0:45:33

    Yeah. — Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and and Donald Trump. Yeah.
  • Speaker 3
    0:45:37

    But the the second thing and this I have more sympathy for the Obama team on. But it complicates the picture enormously, and that is climate change. They had a theory of the case that climate change was an existential threat to the United States. And you cannot have a game changing approach to climate change in two thousand nine without engaging China. You just can’t.
  • Speaker 3
    0:46:04

    And so they had to they Obama had a strategy that said, we have to engage with China, cooperate with China. And so it was It was not a confront confront China. It was an engaged China. In fact, they were flirting with a g two. Idea of, you know, a condominium of these two groups.
  • Speaker 2
    0:46:26

    Great. But I I think that I think that was naive tag, Peter. I I mean, I yes. It was
  • Speaker 3
    0:46:30

    not necessarily for the fact that’s not my bush. Right? That that the point is No. No. If if it’s not a pushback, I wouldn’t have done that yet.
  • Speaker 3
    0:46:38

    I’d rather
  • Speaker 2
    0:46:38

    But here is here is what is, I think, on the administration we were part of. I, you know, I think it’s not so much that they the people are so well, people were very busy with Iraq and Afghanistan, and I vividly remember as I’m sure Eric does going to all those meetings of the principals occasionally and his seat meetings. You you just see people were completely exhausted and drained by by Iraq and Afghanistan and just the desire and knowing that they were deeply unpopular just wanting to get out with their skin intact. But but I think there’s another element, which is and and this way, I do think the way the freedom agenda was framed distorted things So was it the second inaugural that president Bush talked about ending tyranny as an objective, which forgive me, that was looney tunes. In fact, I think I said that at a private meeting that you you invited me to, Peter.
  • Speaker 2
    0:47:32

    I
  • Speaker 3
    0:47:32

    think John Gabbes, I came up with that phrase,
  • Speaker 2
    0:47:35

    John John Gaddis came up to it and with all due respect to John Gaddis as a formidable historian. It’s looney tunes. And I I was dismayed that it it got into the president’s speech. But the point is if you’re if you’re framing things in that way, it’s very hard, I think, to then say, the problem is we’ve got two big powers here, one really big, one still kind of big and lots of nuclear weapons, which are revisionist, which are hostile, which are, you know, developing their militaries very, very quickly, which are not going to be amenable to kind words or playing by our by the rules of the international systems we conceive them. And we need to be ready to deal with that in somewhat real poll not entirely realpolitik way, but in a somewhat realpolitik way.
  • Speaker 2
    0:48:24

    So I, you know, in that respect, I do think The Bush administration made a mistake. Now why I say I’ll just say on this because I see we’re we’re really pretty close to the end. Know, there there’s an interesting issue, I think, for all of us, for anybody who’s been in administration. You know, what what blame do you take for what happened or what responsibility and say, or accountability. Do you take for what happened on your watch?
  • Speaker 2
    0:48:49

    And how much, you know, it really depends on the the people who took the next watch and what, you know, what is it, what are the things we should feel badly about? What are the things that a lot of people should feel badly about. But I I do think this is one where the framing that the Bush administration used blinded them somewhat to something that you could see coming around the corner, and that was really pronounced under the Obama administration, which, particularly with regard to Russia, with regard to China, too. Just did not wanna see this coming.
  • Speaker 3
    0:49:22

    Well, my homework assignment is to read chapter ask you to read chapter two of the two thousand six NSS where that phrase ending tyranny is defined, and it’s not quite as grandiose in its How could it be anything other than granny? Use chapter two and we’ll we can recon No.
  • Speaker 2
    0:49:41

    No. If you can’t if you can’t explain it and two syllable words to our listeners. Forget about it. That
  • Speaker 3
    0:49:48

    isn’t where if you had a little info in that here, you would you would get it. It it’s not ending all abuses of human rights around the world in our time. It’s ending a particular form of government, not all autocrats are tyrants. It’s a particular form of of autocracy. So So is is Putin a court is not is not a tyranny.
  • Speaker 2
    0:50:13

    Okay. Is Putin a is Putin a
  • Speaker 3
    0:50:14

    tyrant? In two thousand eight, probably not. In two thousand
  • Speaker 2
    0:50:19

    Yeah. Two thousand eighteen. He certainly was.
  • Speaker 3
    0:50:21

    Right. And in two thousand one, almost certainly not. Right? So he this is one of the big things that I think a historic perspective brings to bear, which is to recognize that the Putin we’re dealing with today in twenty twenty three is in one sense the the same human being I don’t subscribe to the conspiracy theories that say there’s four mutants and they swap them in and out, body doubles. In one sense, he’s the same mutant.
  • Speaker 3
    0:50:49

    In other sense though, he has evolved into the worst form of himself and this and his policies into thousand twenty three are not the policies that Bush administration were facing in two thousand one. That it just wasn’t.
  • Speaker 1
    0:51:03

    Well, I don’t know. I mean, in by two thousand seven and the Munich speech
  • Speaker 3
    0:51:08

    Okay. But That’s two thousand seven. Not two thousand. And by two
  • Speaker 1
    0:51:11

    thousand and by two thousand eight, the invasion of Georgia. I mean, I think the writing was pretty
  • Speaker 3
    0:51:17

    clearly on the wall. Absolutely. And and the Bush approach to Putin evolved over those eight years. I mean, I that the memo makes clear, right, that they there was an attempt at a reset in two thousand one, and and it was working for a while. Putin was one of the best allies in the early year or two of the war on terror shared a lot of intelligence, as you know, particularly with respect to Afghanistan.
  • Speaker 3
    0:51:45

    And so there But by two thousand seven, actually, I would say too earlier with the color revolutions of two thousand five. Which is when you begin to see Putin shifting — Absolutely. — he perceives any flowering of democracy. See on his near abroad as a threat to his regime survival. And so he becomes he becomes closer to a tyrant by two thousand two at seven, two thousand eight.
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:13

    Wait. Look. I mean, there there there there’s John McCann, the light beloved John McCain’s famous line, a present person says he looked at the guy’s soul. And McCain says, yeah, I looked into his soul and I saw the letters KGB. You know, I I think I think an unallusioned observe or would have said that not to criticize — Right.
  • Speaker 3
    0:52:33

    — as an argument. But but the but the Bush administration’s policy on Russia in two thousand eight was very different from the Bush administration policy in two thousand one.
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:43

    Well, we we had we had we had to react to the invasion of Georgia. Although even there, we were gosh. But my my point is our framing of the world, as I recall, at least in two thousand eight, was not a a world which there’s going to be contests with great powers that would be very difficult for us to influence in internally. And it was it was I’m sorry. There’s just no way you can turn the language ending tyranny into you know, kind of a reasonable view of what you can do in foreign policy.
  • Speaker 2
    0:53:15

    I’ll I’ll let Eric adjudicate
  • Speaker 1
    0:53:16

    this one too. I’m not gonna try in judicate, you know, between former pupil and student I mean, and teacher. I mean, that’s that’s not my my job here on the children of the Republic. But I I we are gonna have to bring this to an end. I I would just point out to our listeners that we have spent almost an hour vigorously dis gussing, maybe eighty pages out of this nine hundred page tone in terms of the material.
  • Speaker 1
    0:53:42

    Maybe it’s a hundred page is out of nine hundred. But I do think this is a very rich historical resource. It’s a real achievement. I I’d really take my hat off Peter to you, Will, and Meghan for doing all this. And for Steve Hadley having, you know, undertaken this prize project, which I do think serves the greater good.
  • Speaker 1
    0:54:03

    We will undoubtedly have you back Peter to, you know, talk about all sorts of things. There are a lot of a lot of civil military relations questions that I really wanna ask you about, including a very interesting recent article in which you appear prominently. I think it was in political about the remaking of of Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
  • Speaker 3
    0:54:28

    Well, Elliott Cohen will allow me back on. I would love to
  • Speaker 2
    0:54:30

    Oh, yeah. He’ll allow you to that, and this will be my swan song today. Peter, as always, you’re wonderfully good humor. I, you know, I Will Saletan is very difficult, I think, for many members of the Bush administration, particularly with all the trauma associated with Iraq. To kinda sit down and have a candid conversation about, you know, where did we do the right thing and was misunderstood, where did we do the wrong thing?
  • Speaker 2
    0:54:58

    In fact, I think you may have been present at an event we had. This was during
  • Speaker 1
    0:55:02

    the
  • Speaker 2
    0:55:05

    I guess the twenty twelve campaign where, you know, I tried I tried after dinner to get a Chinese self criticism session going. And we just had to call it off after fifteen minutes because people’s you know, the veins were bulge in people’s necks and foreheads and voices were getting raised. So I, you know, I do very much appreciate you know, the ability to have a civil conversation about it. Because I think, you know, the thing about the the thing about it, and I I do think this is something that listeners should be aware of. You can’t read these memos, and no shuffler makes this point.
  • Speaker 2
    0:55:40

    And think these are these are anything other than highly intelligent public spirit and thoughtful people wrestling with a very, very difficult and in many ways intractable Bulwark. And it’s the nature of being involved particularly in things like wars that, you know, people get very passionate. But it’s also very important to be able to have a a candidate conversation about that. So I wanna thank you Peter and you Eric for that. And I do think the book is a contribution to that too.
  • Speaker 2
    0:56:11

    Well,
  • Speaker 3
    0:56:11

    thank you. And I’ll just say that I do think I encourage folks to get the book and dip into it. Whatever chapters of interest to them, I think they’ll see that the post scripts are fairly candid in calling balls and strikes in hindsight where we see them. We don’t pull punches in evaluating our successors, both Democratic and Republican. So there’s some critiques of president Trump’s administration in the postgroups as well.
  • Speaker 3
    0:56:39

    But I don’t think you come away with this thinking that this is pure propaganda. I think these are, as you said, Elliot, serious people wrestling with serious problems, and it’s striking how much continuity across very different presidents. You see on so many of these issues. That’s because when fair minded people are wrestling with what to do, they end up sort of homing in on a on a handful of courses of action. They try one, if that doesn’t Bulwark, they try the next one.
  • Speaker 3
    0:57:11

    And I think we are grateful, or we, as a country, should be grateful that there are folks taking it that seriously. And I hope Folks who read the book will agree with that.
  • Speaker 1
    0:57:22

    Well, Peter, I look, I agree with that. I I think I’ve thought for some time that it would be difficult to get a, you know, a fair assessment of the Bush administration historically for two reasons. One, because the war wars in Iraq and to a lesser degree Afghanistan were so controversial, but also because of the circumstances in which the Bush administration came in. The disputed election in two thousand, the supreme court case, the fact that Bush was a minority president who actually lost the popular vote by five hundred thousand votes. I think there were a lot of people who felt he was an illegitimate president And as a result, you know, everything that he and vice president Cheney and the rest of the administration did were, you know, the Bulwark of the devil.
  • Speaker 1
    0:58:15

    I do think this book, I think Mel Loeffler’s essay in his book, and I think think Mel’s book on confronting Saddam are the beginning of, I think, what I would call, serious historical reflection, you know, on that period this book is a tremendous contribution to that. And I would just say one, you know, thing that I think doesn’t get remarked on enough. Which is for those of us who, you know, live through the nine eleven experience and I was in government at the time. I was in the White House when it happened. If, you know, you had told me then that we would go through the next eight years without another their mass casualty attack in the United States, I would have said that’s highly unlikely.
  • Speaker 1
    0:59:00

    And I think that is, you know, without a doubt, an important achievement that the Bush administration had. It was I think the primary driver for president Bush for the rest of his seven years in office. I think that was appropriate. I think it serves us well to think about what may be opportunity costs that were for that single-minded focus that we had. That’s pretty much what we’ve been discussing today.
  • Speaker 1
    0:59:27

    But I I really thank you and your colleagues have done the nation of service by by putting this book together. So thank you for joining us, Peter.
  • Speaker 3
    0:59:34

    Thanks for having
  • Speaker 1
    0:59:35

    me.