More Stress than Strategy: Episode 26

Alternate Shots returns with John Ellis and Richard Haass examining a geopolitical and domestic political landscape defined by drift. The crisis surrounding Iran and the Strait of Hormuz underscores a broader reality: deterrence is fraying, diplomacy is episodic, and the risk of miscalculation is rising. The United States faces narrowing options, caught between rising economic pressure, a lack of promising military options, and the absence of a coherent endgame. Beyond the Middle East, transatlantic relations continue to erode, as Europe questions both American reliability and judgment. At home, political fragmentation reflects a deeper institutional fatigue, raising doubts about the capacity of either party to address structural challenges, from technological disruption to economic insecurity. What emerges is a portrait of a system and a world under stress. 

Hosted by John Ellis and Richard Haass

News Items on Substack

Home and Away on Substack

Produced by Dale Eisinger 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Alternate Shots. I'm John Ellis. I'm the founder and editor of two Substack newsletters. One is called News Items, the other is called Political News Items, and you can find them both at news-items.com.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

I'm Richard Haas. I'm a recovering government employee. I also put out a Substack called Home and Away. It comes out uh weekly or twice weekly. And uh it's good to be with you, Mr. Ellis.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

And good to be with you. So let's start with Iran. If we go through the checklist, the Strait of Hormuz is now basically under the control of the Iranians. Nuclear negotiations are nowhere, regime change not happening, proxies uh not so good. On the other hand, the U.S. has reduced the Iranian economy to a desperate state. The U.S. military has behaved very effectively or executed very effectively. And there's a standoff of who can endure the most pain. And the most recent, I guess, development is that President Trump has said that we will guide ships and tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. So I turn to you to make sense of any and all of this.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

On the last item, uh so-called Project Freedom, I can't make sense of it because it is it makes no sense. The idea that we would guide without U.S. naval vessels doing the escorting these what marooned, I guess you'd call them tankers and cargo ships. Uh uh, I've seen numbers like 15,000, 20,000 crew altogether. They've been sitting there for two months. I assume somebody's been ferrying them supplies one way or uh another. I just don't understand it. And I gather the UAE recently had a tanker or ship trying to go through and it got shot at. So, you know, the Iranians are not are not buying it. So I I don't understand this latest wrinkle to U.S. policy towards the strait, but I think it at the end of the day, it's not central, John. I think what's central is whether the United States and Iran can agree to terms for opening or reopening the strait. One is they'd have to agree and then it would be reopened. The other is they could start talking about it and they would agree it would be open while they were talking about it so long as the ceasefire was being uh lived up to. The Iranians have put forward a so-called three-point plan. The first point, or phase, is all about the strait. And it's not, you know, the president has rejected it. His rationales are all over the place, but it's in part because, and this initially he said because it doesn't include the nuclear. Now he seems to say the Iranians must pay a price for their near five decades of misbehaving. It's it's a little bit uh unclear to me. But what I'm hoping is that we engage the Iranians on this first phase. Essentially, what would be the terms for reopening the strait and what would be the terms for keeping the strait open? I actually think that makes a lot of sense. And the central part to both of it would be that we would give up our blockade and they give up their control. Now, in exchange for what? That's what's got to be negotiated. I don't think we're gonna go back, it kind of gets to your checklist. We're not gonna go back to the status quo anti. I think the Iranians have discovered that funnily enough, it's probably more relevant than any nuclear program they might have, is their ability to uh shut down the Strait of Hormuz. So the question is, what are they gonna want and can we live with it? And I think if I had to summarize it, that's what the negotiation would have to be about. And people like me and some others have put forward some ideas about new arrangements and new fee structures and so forth. So I look, maybe I spent too much of my life doing diplomacy, but is this something that is negotiable? Absolutely. But that requires two sides that are both willing and able to negotiate. And the Iranian side, because of all the targeted killings, has been heavily disrupted. It's not clear everybody there wants to negotiate. And on our side, the president, again, is uh, I guess erratic would be a generous word or descriptive word, but it's not clear what he wants and what he would, you know, what he'd be prepared to accept. But I feel there's some urgency here on both sides. You mentioned how bad the Iranian economy is. That's dead on, it's absolutely true. But I actually think it's only a matter of days or most weeks before the economic impact of uh the closure really, really hits. And so far it's not hit. But I would just think the energy shortfalls and the shortfalls of raw materials that go into virtually anything and everything are going to uh hit. So I actually think there's time pressure on both sides, and we've got this bizarre international game of chicken between the United States and Iran, and it's uh it's possible the longer this game goes on, both sides lose. So what I'm hoping is uh we engage the Iranians on their proposal. Just by the way, John, parts two and three of their proposal. Two is the nuclear three is kind of meaningless. It's this regional security plan. But some of the nuclear stuff, it kind of looks a little bit like the old Obama agreement, except it's a little bit better. And so I could see that being the basis for negotiations there. And I could see, again, well, what the Iranians put down is not acceptable, but I could, it's also very vague. But if I were if I were advising the president, I would say come back with a serious counter on getting getting the strait reopened and what would be the terms of governance for it. I think there's a a window for them now.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Well there's the I mean, when you think about Saudi Arabia, you get two stories. One, they want the U.S. to quote, finish the job. On the other, they want the strait open as soon as possible. And then you think about the other Gulf states. What's your take on where they're where they are now on the negotiations, on the situation?

SPEAKER_00 5:45

If I maybe allowed uh a slight excursion, as the president might put it. Let me just say that one of the expressions that ought to be banned from the conversation, and this applies to the Saudis at times, to uh John Bolton, to Senator Lindsey Graham is finish the job. What the hell does that mean? What targets have not been attacked that they wish would be attacked, and if we successfully attack them, that would lead the Iranians to do what? Uh or do they think it's going to bring about regime change or capitulation? It's just a meaningless comment. And indeed, I think we've reached a point where a return to using military force doesn't make much sense. We've run out of meaningful targets. And the one area where it might make sense, sure, we could attack the Iranian power, yeah, energy infrastructure, but that is guaranteed to get them to attack the Saudi and UAE and Kuwaiti and Bahraini and Qatari energy infrastructures and maybe water infrastructure. So I think we've reached a point, it's almost a kind of mutual assured destruction kind of deterrence. I just don't get it. All this talk about finishing the job. So I think the Saudis are nervous or uneasy, if you will, about the current situation. But my guess is more than the UAE. I think it's where part of the difference is, because you know, since we last talked, I think the UAE left OPEC, the Saudis are prepared to have some type of an accommodation with Iran. And I think that was their policy beforehand. I think they'll have it again. So even though they they talk tough, my guess is they're prepared to coexist with the Iran that that we're gonna we're gonna have. There ain't gonna be regime change anytime soon. I think the UAE, which was close who's which is closer to Israel and has borne the brunt of Iranian attacks, my sense is the UAE is much more alienated from Iran. So we may be seeing something of another fault line, and I think the UAE exit from from OPEC is in some ways a signal of this new Middle East where we have something of a schism in the Arab world.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

One thing that's sort of fallen out of the U.S. press coverage and to some degree the foreign press coverage is where Israel stands at the moment. There was an interesting story in the New York Times about Hezbollah deploying, quote, sly drones, end quote, that apparently are fairly capable of evading uh Israeli air defenses. What what's your take on where Israel is right now?

SPEAKER_00 8:09

The Israeli policy of this government seems to be open-ended war. That if you can't get regime change, then you keep Iran on the defensive. And that means an open-ended or perpetual war against its proxies, i.e. Hezbollah or in Lebanon or Hamas in Gaza, and you keep attacking Iran, whether it's their nuclear targets or their ballistic missile targets or their drone factories, but it is perpetual because you never get to the point of disarmament. Iran always has capabilities that survive or they've regenerated. Proxies can be weakened but not eliminated. So I find this, if you will, I I guess you could call it a strategy, but it's a strategy that can't succeed, other than you keep Iran on the defensive, but it also means you exhaust your own society. And I think we're beginning to see signs of that in Israel. And it means that you're living in a permanent state of war with Iran, both directly and indirectly. But this is very different, John. I think what's interesting about this is that if that's if I'm basically right, and that's the Israeli strategy. One, we'll see what happens at the polls this year in Israel. They've got to have an election in the next six months. Well, regardless, or as they like to say in Washington, irregardless of uh the Israeli uh political outcome. I think this is a real divergence between Washington and Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, if you will. Because I think sooner or later Donald Trump wants and needs a deal. And the two elements of the deal from the American point of view are the strait and the nuclear. And quite honestly, a lot of whether Israel has 300 or 800 uh ballistic missiles, whether they have 500 or 5,000 drones or drone factories, that's not going to be central to any agreement. The U.S. is not gonna blow up an agreement over Iranian drones or over Iranian ballistic missiles. And I just think as a result, ceasefire is central to the U.S.-Iran agreement, which is it is if you look at the Iranian three-point proposal. Well, that covers everybody, including Israel. So my sense is what's interesting is this whole war was in no small part brought about because of Bibi Netanyahu persuading, we'll put it generously, Donald Trump to start this war. I can imagine this war will actually introduce structural friction into the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

One place where structural friction has emerged is in Europe, most sort of glaringly, with Chancellor Merz in in Germany, where he said, we're not going to join a failed war of the United States. I don't have the exact phrase right, but that's basically what he meant. So I wanted to ask you where do you think Europe is on all of this, and how seriously do you take Trump's uh withdrawal of 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany and implied sort of evacuation of Germany given its enormous importance to U.S. logistics? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

Look, I think from the European point of view, NATO exists more on paper than in practice. It's a shell. They don't trust this administration to be there for them against Putin. And they've also had the tariff experience, the Greenland experience, now this, I'm probably leaving out a few things. So I think Europe's alienation, I'll use that word again, from the U.S. is profound. Trump's withdrawing or saying he's going to withdraw 5,000 troops from Europe, which by the way, he can do. He could withdraw all U.S. troops from Europe without congressional approval. The only congr congressional role would be if he wants to get out of the NATO treaty. What he could do, though, is say and do things to make our ability to make good on our commitments to the NATO treaty increasingly, increase, increasingly empty, which is what he's done. So I don't actually see this, I don't like the 5,000 the troop withdrawal, but I actually see it as part of a larger pattern. So I don't think in and of itself it changes the conversation. It's just the latest punctuation. Donald Trump does not like allies, in particular, does not like European allies. I mean, read the national security strategy. It's a screed against Europe. And what Meritz was saying is very consistent with what most Europeans are thinking. They didn't appreciate not being consulted with. Then they don't appreciate being asked to support a war. Again, they weren't asked about and dis disagree with. And it's not just Merz. It also includes, as you know, the lead the Prime Minister of Italy and Trump's former friend in Europe. And indeed, the AFD in Germany is increasingly anti-American. So it's odd. It's kind of, I mean, I don't know what you think about it, but it's this bizarre situation where groups that we thought were in somewhat in Trump's spirit, I guess you'd say, years ago in Europe, have now all become anti-Trump because he has become such a polarizing figure in Europe, even for the right.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Yeah. One of the pipe dreams of Steve Bannon was that MAGA would be uh Europeanized or whatever, and that he, among others, would bring MAGA to Europe. And Trump is so toxic in Europe that even those that were thought to be MAGA allies now realize that that's a you know a doomed political position, and they're each one is sort of trying to out-assert the other that they're anti-Trump. It's a it's a fascinating uh turn of events, not what I don't think the Trump administration had in mind. But it seems to be not just there, but Canada and Asia. I mean it's uh it's kind of a rolling thunder of alienation, as you put it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Yeah, someone could point out the irony, so I might as well be the someone, that uh we tend to be against now, we're unilateralists, we tend to be against international collaborations and cooperations and these various institutions, which we've left, dozens of them, but we do seem to be uh having the effect of bringing a lot of the world together. I will just point that out.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Aaron Powell So one thing that uh has emerged in the great state of Maine, but also across Europe, is a sense that the sort of two parties ruling politics either in the state of Maine or elsewhere in the United States or in Great Britain or in France or in Germany, the story today was that it appears that as many as seven parties will have influence in the upcoming uh elections in UK. What's your take on this sort of subdivisions of political parties?

SPEAKER_00 14:26

I'll answer, but on one condition. I really want you to talk about Maine and your sense of whether Susan Collins, I know she's concerned, but uh whether she is uh that was meant as a joke because she's concerned about everything before she votes for it. Whether um she is vulnerable and all that, so I'll park that on the condition you come back to it. But yeah, I I have this theory, John, and you know, I've not done any research and I don't have any data, which is my favorite kind of theory, because it's hard to prove I'm wrong. Uh I was I'm assuming nobody else has done any research or data either. But it comes back to the article you referenced. I think it was in the uh FD, that the Tories and Labor have essentially lost their hold on British politics. And putting aside even some of the nationalist parties and local parties, you've got Greens and you've got reform and so forth. And whether that could happen here. And that, you know, if you think about it, we're entering an era of uh greater populism, and we haven't talked about AI this week, but imagine a lot of the joblessness that people predict or project does come to pass. And you've got a republic, you've got two major parties that don't have any answers to these things, or worse yet, can't answer them because they're beholden to certain special interests. Democrats can't adopt a serious position on education, which ought to be the great conveyor belt and ladder for American society, because the teachers' union. Republicans have certain views on AI and certain constituencies there and so forth. Whether sooner or later more and more disaffected Americans, particularly younger ones, who aren't as embedded but don't have 40 years of history with one of the two major parties, whether we begin to see the fracturing, is that the word, the proliferation of uh a party affiliation in America? And I can imagine that. And so what's that's what's interesting to me in Maine when the, if you will, establishment Democrat drops out of the race, Janet Mills, to the how does one describe the gentleman who's gonna prevail, the insurgent. Insurgent, thank you. But I could imagine in another time where he would almost be in his own party. And or MAGA types have hijacked the Republican Party. But what about if the day happens where MAGA types no longer find, say, a Marco Rubio Republican Party sufficiently radical? And then the progressives who supported this mayor in New York find the Democratic Party to establish it. I don't think it's crazy amidst debates over universal basic income and other such issues and taxing the rich and blah, blah, blah. I don't find it unimaginable that over the next decade or so we could begin to see one of those great political transformations in the in this country where the major parties are simply unable to co-opt the political movements that increasingly are dominating the country. Let me let me run that by you.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

I've long believed that an independent candidacy for president would fare surprisingly well, parotly well, in in the first go-round and would have a reason reasonably, if not really, good chance of winning nationally the national vote. I'm not sure how it would play out in electoral college, but I think the exasperation with the two-party system now is at an all-time high. Registered Republicans are roughly twenty-seven percent. I mean, uh, people who say self-declared Republicans are roughly twenty-seven percent. Self-declared Democrats are roughly seventy-seven percent, twenty-seven percent, and forty-five percent, roughly speaking, describing themselves as independent. That that's the foundation for the third party, essentially. And in Maine, you have a candidate who is by any measure flawed with Nazi symbols on his uh tattooed on his chest, and he's running against someone who was arguably one of the most impressive vote getters in the state of Maine when Trump lost in 2020 by, I believe it was nine points. She won her Senate race that same year in Maine by ten, which is a nineteen point swing, so absolutely a proven vote getter. And yet at the moment she is tied with the so-called insurgent, Mr. Plattner, and the question is, is the old system, is the old way so exhausted, so old and so hidebound that someone as flawed as Platner is can nevertheless win. Everyone I know says that, you know, eight billion dollars worth of negative advertising uh will do him in and Collins will win. But the interesting thing about that is that Governor Mills dropped, you know, a large amount of money on negative advertising and Plattner's numbers went up. So there I think you're exactly right. I think there's uh Fisher emerging. And the other thing I think is that it can happen much faster than people think. I think the idea that, you know, it's gonna take twenty years or thirty years at this our politics now move at hyperspeed uh in terms of communication, and the opportunity to vote against both parties is hugely attractive to a large, large body of electorates um everywhere, not just in Maine, but everywhere. I think the governor of Massachusetts, she should win her race by t uh, you know, 60 40, 637. And I suspect have no doubt she'll win, but I suspect the margin will be half of what it should be.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Look, I'm intrigued by this. And I agree with you, it's gonna happen faster. And AI might be one of the pacing developments if again there's a wide and deep, extended joblessness, because we don't have the social safety nets to deal with it. So much of uh what we have is for people who lose jobs as opposed to people who never get them in the first place, and a lot of these same people are gonna have student loans and so forth. I just I just think politics are gonna get radicalized. Um in some ways we might already have three major p parties here if the if MAGA hadn't uh under Trump hijacked the Republican Party. So it's possible at some point there's a split there if the Republican Party goes back to being somewhat more establishment. And I I can imagine the Democratic Party splitting. I mean, the idea that the mayor of you know of New York City, who also calls himself what a Democratic Socialist is a Democrat and Rahm Emanuel is a Democrat, there's not a whole lot of overlap uh there. And there might be single issue voters. Um you know, the idea that you could have a serious American Green Party, for example, is not a crazy notion. Uh five percent of Americans or whatever the number is could decide that's how they're gonna they're gonna vote. So I I don't know, the idea that somehow, you know, people almost seem to think that Republicans and Democrats and political parties themselves were in the Constitution. Well, none of that is is the case. So my own sense is thing are things are potentially much more turbulent than the uh conventional wisdom, shall we say, such as it is, would have one believe. One opinion.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

It's weird when you when you read these stories about the democratic contenders, quote unquote, lining up for the 2028 election, and you think, you know, where we're gonna be in 2027 and 2028 is, you know, a radically different political environment just because of technological advances.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Not to mention the midterms. I mean, we'll see not just the results, but how free and fair the midterms are. I can have, you know, let's see how this we we began by talking about this war. Uh gas right now is at four and a half bucks a gallon average nationally. Just say it's at five and a Half or six. I mean, to paraphrase a certain popular singer who's getting married in early July, it could be a cruel summer, and that would have real political consequences.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

I'm not sure our audience knows who that popular singer is. Oh, okay. Okay. Begins with S and ends with T. One of the top 30 songwriters, according to the New York Times this weekend. A particularly weak list, according to my son.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

I thought it was uh it was a politically correct list, or however long. There you go. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

All right, we're up against the time limit, which we set ourselves to be 30 minutes. So this leads us to a discussion of Mr. Cam Young, your favorite golfer and mine. When he was on the Corn Ferry Tour, which is sort of the AAA uh baseball of golf, he won two tournaments in a row wire to wire, meaning he led after the first round and he won the tournament after the four rounds were completed. And he did that eight consecutive rounds uh when he was on the Corn Ferry Tour. He won the Cadillac Championship at the Trump Durrell Golf Course this past weekend, winning wire to wire. He was head after the first round, and lo and behold, he won the tournament at the end. So the question to you is upcoming is Quail Hollow. And Cam says, by the way, that he plays hard courses better than he does easier courses. They all though, you know, not very many easy courses on the PGA tour, but there are notably very hard courses on the PGA Tour. Quail Hollow is one of them. Do you think he can go wire to wire again?

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Probably not, because it's harder to stay on top than get on top. Also, my expertise, my credibility here is adjacent but not exact. Like I was wire to wire this weekend in the opening day golf tournament at Sleepy Hollow, the the course that Cam Young hails from, his father was the pro there, but my wire-to-wire performance is I was towards the bottom of the pack. Nothing changed. So I I didn't have to prevail from beginning to end. Slightly more seriously, I was watching Cam Young. By the way, for every birdie he got, they were offering free drinks in the bar. So it's good that I'm sober on this podcast, John.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

I just want you to uh to uh I'm sure there were Arnold Palmers.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Actually, they were pathetically enough. Pathetically uh enough. But it was interesting watching him. He was paired for three days with Mr. Scheffler, with Scotty Scheffler. And the two of them actually I came away despite the differences in their swing and all that, their temperaments. Neither one has big ups or big downs. There's a consistency uh and a degree of discipline, almost stoicism, both emotionally and uh discipline physically about their their games, which is maybe well suited for for the golf tour, that they can just hang in there and nothing seems to rattle them. By the way, also if we are gonna talk about Cam Yonko, we I gotta mention one other thing. It was one of the great teaching moments. So there he is yesterday playing around, and he suddenly stops. He was over the ball, about to swing, and he calls over for an official for a ruling, and he says, I put my club on the ground behind the ball, and I noticed the ball moved. Nobody else saw it. And what he did was, and he called the penalty on himself. And at the time, I think it was probably about a half dozen or so shots in the league, but he he called the penalty on himself. It was a one-stroke penalty. No one else saw it, he didn't have to do it. And if there was a moment where you'd say, Moms and dads, this is why you want your kids to learn golf, because it's about character, and you do things because you should do them, not because you have to do them. I thought it was just a wonderful, a wonderful teaching moment.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Yeah, the other great moment I think for Cam was after he had sunk the par pod on the 18th hole and won the tournament by whatever it was, five or six shots. The first person to uh congratulate him as he walked off the green was Scotty Scheffler, which given the Scotty's, I think, inarguably the best player in golf, that had to be a kind of uh confirmation of Cam's arrival as a major PGA golfer.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

He's had a great season. If you think about it, he was, you know, in the Masters to the end until, you know, I think he came in third. He was the strongest American in the Ryder Cup. He won the players, and I think he's just shown a degree of excellence and consistency now. I agree with you. I mean, I think he's now in that very elite elite within the elite. And the fact that he played, he could hang in there with Scheffler for three three of the four rounds also just shows his ability to handle the spotlight. He's got a good personality for uh for that sort of uh thing. He he's almost as steady as you, John. And uh it's something that uh I might have impossible.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

All right, we've run up to the time limit. Dale can edit out a couple of minutes and we'll be right on the number, which is thirty minutes. Thank you very much for listening, and uh we'll catch you the next time.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Have a great week, John.