Bored of War: Episode 27

John Ellis and Richard Haass discuss the latest on multiple wars, actual and political. They review the absence of good options for ending the war with Iran, noting that wars dont necessarily end when one side (in this case Donald Trump) has had enough.  The big question as the President heads to China is what he might be prepared to give up on Taiwan or chips to get Xi’s help with Iran or on trade. The surprising good news is how the tide of war is slowly but steadily turning against Vladimir Putin in his increasingly unsuccessful war of choice against Ukraine. Peace or at least a lasting ceasefire may be closer than many realize. Closer to home, the two look at the partisan wars in several states over redistricting, which for now seem to be favoring the Republicans but no matter what the result are sure to leave American politics more polarized and the political center losing out to the extremes.  Last but never least, Ellis and Haass turn to sports, in this case to celebrate the Knicks who are playing their best basketball of the year and who could well end up in the NBA finals if they manage to keep it up and stay healthy.

Hosted by John Ellis and Richard Haass

News Items on Substack

Home and Away on Substack

Produced by Dale Eisinger 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

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

SPEAKER_01 0:15

I'm Richard Haas. I'm the author of a Substack newsletter called Home and Away, which as the uh title suggests, looks at uh things domestic and international.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

So we have our little checklist, Richard, and we'll go through it quickly. The nuclear situation in Iran, no progress. The control of the Strait of Hormuz, negative progress, at least so far. Proxies in the region funded by Iran, aided by Iran, no progress. And there's one more, which I forget. But basically, it's not a positive situation. You have been prescient in your advice to the administration, most especially, I think, in in the blockade idea. So what are their options now?

SPEAKER_01 1:01

I'll get to the options in about 30 seconds, John. Yeah, the other category is probably Iranian conventional armaments. And there was a big report in the Washington Post this week, which forms the backdrop in some ways to part of the conversation, at least, that it shows that an awful lot of Iranian conventional munitions and production capabilities have survived. So whatever the level of destruction was, it was, shall we say, uh incomplete and then some. And second of all, it suggested that Iran would be able to hold out for quite some time against the pressure of the American blockade. And this this obviously affects what we're going to talk about, the options, but let me just sort of say it was refreshing to see the CIA speak truth to power. And to have uh you know an agency in the federal government telling policymakers perhaps what they needed to hear rather than what they wanted to hear. Kudos to uh Mr. Ratcliffe. In terms of the options, there's basically three, John. I don't I don't know any of the way to slice or dice it. But one is to reintroduce military force, quote unquote, to escalate. And there the question is, what's the useful target set? Iran has showed its ability to withstand pain, and there's always the danger that things escalate. And escalation could mean, among other things, further destruction to the energy infrastructure of the UAE, which seems to be Iran's favorite target, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, what have you. And that would take uh, if you will, a crisis of months into a catastrophe of years. I just don't see the uh upside to that, particularly for the uh Trump administration. The second option is to stay where we are, and that's kind of where they are by inertia, and that's no peace, no war. You have this incoherent, maybe you can explain it to me, new poly this operation protect freedom, which I just do not understand. I've now read it 26 times, John, and I just don't understand what it is we are actually doing and what is the role of U.S. forces. Essentially, we have no we have no peace, no war. You have these ongoing indirect negotiations through Pakistan to deal with essentially two issues. One is the the future of the strait, and the second is the the nuclear issue. And we could live with this on the nuclear side so long as the Iranians don't do anything that we notice. The problem is on the strait side, it continues to impose economic hardship on the world. The third option is to cut a deal. And obviously the devil's in the details. And you've also got the difficulties in negotiating with Iran. Exactly what and who Iran is remains something of a mystery. And if these three options do not look wildly attractive, that is because these three options are not wildly track attractive. There's no good one here. And it's going to be extraordinarily difficult for the administration on any of the three to claim we're better off. And indeed, if we do escalate, I still think we're going to end up with one of the other two options. Okay, so you'd have a new volley, you'd have a new exchange. Then the question is, do you have a ceasefire of some sorts? Or do you try to have a negotiated outcome? And the wrinkle on the negotiated outcome, and I'll stop here, John, is you know, there's all this talk about this MOU or something that the Pakistanis are helping out with, but it is incredibly vague. What it doesn't settle is much greater than what it settles. So I think we're coming back to a version of what I've been advocating is some, let's do a straits first thing that's less complicated, and park the nuclear issue for a much longer term, more complicated negotiation. So I think that's probably the best outcome we can we can hope for. But again, it'll leave the quote unquote Hawks unhappy, it'll leave the Israelis unhappy because it doesn't deal with proxies and conventional forces, and it'll leave the administration in the difficult position of trying to explain why we're better off if that's all we got.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Yeah, Jerry Baker had a good column in the Times of London where he laid out basically what you laid out and said that the biggest problem is that there's there are, you know, powerful interests within the Republican Party and within the MAGA world that uh that vehemently oppose to each of the options. So, you know, if Trump decides to cut a deal, then the you know, the finish the job folks are, you know, in an uproar, and the political people want it over with as quickly as possible. So, you know, if it if any kind of extension of it gets them all riled up. I there's a report today in one of the magazines, I think The Atlantic, where the reporter uh talked to somebody who talks to Trump, and that person said that Trump is bored by the whole thing and wants it to go away. It would seem to me it would be the least boring subject for the President of the United States, but you know, John, this sets up this sets up a great pun.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

He has he's ready for it. He's already created the Board of Peace. Now we can have the Board of War.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

The companion in organization.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Maybe we should segue to the New York Giants here. But one thing that floats around in the press is that China is going to aid the reopening of the Straits by applying pressure to the Iranians. Does that ring true to you, or is that some wishful thinking?

SPEAKER_01 6:15

I don't think it's wishful thinking in the sense that China is a major importer, not just of Iranian, but regional oil. It built up a lot of str their version of a strategic petroleum reserve, but that's not unlimited. And more important, a lot of their supply chains rely on things that are energy dependent. So they would like to see this ended, and they would also want to avoid what I described a few minutes ago, an escalation that destroyed the energy infrastructure of the region, because that would be the kind of that would take years to fix. So the Chinese clearly, I think, would like to see this then they're an interesting question because it comes at a time where the postponed trip to China is now happening this week. And whether this sets up any sort of uh a deal, if you will, implicit or not, where the Chinese willingness to weigh in would in part be contingent on their getting some of the things they want, which in turn opens up a much larger question of this of the meeting. You got a day and a half of meetings, this slightly truncated quote unquote summit between the two presidents. It was originally going to be, John, mainly in economics only, dealing with such issues as trade imbalances, maybe set up a new structure for managing trade between the United States and China, also some investment issues. But the Iran issue in the foreground, the Taiwan issue in the background suggests that geopolitics cannot be sidelined completely. And that for people like me raises the question of not simply the details of any economic deal, but whether there's implicit or explicit consideration or trade-offs of geopolitical concerns. I don't have the answer to that. Let me see one other thing about China. There's been some ruminations online in China that a lot of Chinese foreign policy types see the United States as weak. We have not distinguished ourselves militarily. We've used up a lot of munitions. We don't have the ability to replace them anytime soon. We've been holding off arms sales to uh Taiwan. We couldn't protect our friends in the Gulf. And I expect on the Chinese side, this is stimulating a little bit of a conversation, shall we say, about whether this presents an opportunity to them. And I'm not suggesting they're going to do something against Taiwan this week, but I would think that one of Xi Jinping's priorities for the summit is to gauge Donald Trump's commitment to Taiwan. As the Chinese think through what are the potential costs and benefits. They saw what happened to Putin in Ukraine, didn't work out so hot. They see what happened to Trump in Iran, hasn't worked out so hot. So I think they're obviously, though, you know, considering what would be the likely costs and benefits of various kinds of moves or pressures against Taiwan. And I my guess is they they hope to learn something at this summit. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Yeah, you know, John Bolton uh wrote a book about his experience working for President Trump, and in that book, he quotes President Trump as saying that the United States, if China were to invade Taiwan, the U.S. would not come to Taiwan's defense because it was whatever it was, 7,000 miles away, and we wouldn't be able to successfully engage. You know, when you when you think about what's the need for the Trump administration, President Trump himself, to get the strait back open, it seems to me that he wouldn't say it outright, but it'd be sort of uh, you know, Taiwan, you do what you please, essentially, as a trade for help on on the ending the Iran war.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Which more broadly possi and even larger, I I don't disagree with that. It's a possibility. But when you think about Donald Trump's f approach to foreign policy, he's not particularly committed to allies, and Taiwan's I would call a de facto ally, and we have explicit commitments to them under the Taiwan Relations Act. He's not particularly given to military endeavors, and the Iran one is an exception and a funny sort of way to prove the rule because he assumed it was going to be quick and easy. A la Venezuela. It wasn't like he set out to get into a quagmire. He set out to have a second Venezuela. But most important, when you think about it, for Donald Trump, the business of foreign policy is business. The business of foreign policy is not foreign policy, it's not strategy, it's not order or things like that. So all along, I've been concerned that the Chinese, for whom the business of foreign policy is more Taiwan, see uh a potential trade-off here. And the obvious area is reduction in the massive trade imbalance, and they get and they get certain things. And I can I can even imagine if Xi Jinping, I'm not saying this trip, at some point reassuring quote unquote Donald Trump about uh chips in Taiwan.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

And and so forth to because that's the big prize. Uh you know, call me uneasy about this. And again, if it's not this summit, it's just down the road. But we've got still three years to go. And the Chinese may also say, who knows what would be the leanings of a future American president. Is this the American president under which or we have, we China would have the best chance of realizing some, if not all, of our ambitions on Taiwan? And I'm not saying that's the case, but I would think that's an act of conversation in in Beijing.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

One of your former charges at the Council on Foreign Relations, Sebastian Malaby, uh has written a book about Domus Hasabas, the head of Deep Mind, and he in a New York Times up-ed piece, he said that he thought there was a possibility that China and the U.S. might work together on artificial and sort of putting some guardrails around the development of artificial intelligence. Is that something you think likely or is that beyond beyond the other?

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Yeah, I know I'm agree I'm an enormous fan of Sebastian personally and professionally. He mentioned that, and then I ha I was asked to rebut it at one of the book parties. Which seems like a slightly unchristian thing to do, but uh there you go. I could see it coming up. So the two sides say they talked about AI and they mouse some generalities. But I would think the chance, John, of arriving at what you might call an AI arms control deal, like we had with the Soviet Union, where we put strict ceilings and parameters on numbers and systems and so forth, to have the equivalent of AI, I think, is far-fetched. I just think it's um happening in too many places. It's too commercially and strategically valuable to limit. And I think it's happening too quickly. I mean, think about arms control. Nuclear weapons were actually a fairly slow, laborious thing in terms of building them and so forth. Well, AI is changing every hour. So the idea that you could codify certain things, I think is really, really tough. And again, you'd be hard pressed to verify compliance. And people might just say this is too valuable to our economy or to our societies. Maybe certain areas uh like you wouldn't have certain limits to autonomous weapons or something like that without a human factor. But all things meekle to have broad areas of AI where you basically say we're going to allow the quote unquote good AI to happen, but we're not gonna allow destabilizing AI to happen. I just I just sorry to say, I just don't see it. Um ironically, we may try to do a version of it domestically, and then we may not be able to match it internationally. And it's hard to see how we would be better off if that were the case.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

I wonder, you know, if if Chinese intelligence or U.S. intelligence picked up information that a rogue actor uh in Thailand was developing a uh virus that would kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, would China then contact the U.S. and say, look, we gotta deal with this together.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Yeah. That's the old it's the old thing. If there was an invasion from Mars, would Earthlings band together? They wouldn't. Look, you know, China's performance on COVID-19 was not wildly reassuring.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

To say the least.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

To say the least. But that might have been qualitatively different because it came out of Wuhan and people like me think it came out of a lab there. If it came out of Thailand, if one had some rogue thing, the Chinese don't have the embarrassment issue, or whatever you want to call it. So it's not it's not inconceivable, particularly if they thought one, they were vulnerable and two, thought we could help reduce that vulnerability. It's not inconceivable under those circumstances that they could reach out to us.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

So we're doing this podcast today on Victory Day, celebrating uh the World War II victory of the Soviet Union over the Nazis. And usually they have a gigantic parade with all sorts of hardware soldiers in lockstep marching uh across Red Square, and it it's a fantastic event. And this year it's much reduced, if not completely reduced, which it it just strikes me as an incredible development if you think about where things were even a year ago, that the Russians would be so concerned that they couldn't defend their capital on the biggest day of uh, you know, the biggest celebrated day in the nation's long history. Am I crazy? Is that just unbelievable?

SPEAKER_01 15:31

John, my guess is when the history's written, April of this year might be seen as a turning point of sorts in two ways. One is Ukraine is more than holding its own on the battlefield against Russia. And second of all, even though Russia continues to target deeply inside Ukraine, Ukraine is now successfully targeting deeply inside Russia. And Russia Russia has a one-dimensional economy, and Ukraine is increasingly successfully targeting it, going after its energy uh infrastructure. And the fact that Vladimir Putin didn't want to have his hardware, not to mention his person, be potentially vulnerable in Red Square, to me is uh an awful, it's an awfully interesting admission of vulnerability and weakness. And so, yeah, and you know, you you you have people talking about a couple of day truce, which is not interesting. But I actually, for the first time, I am mildly upbeat that the tide is turning, Russian casualties are so high, Russian economy is in such duress that I think at some point, you know, here we are, we're into this fighting season still early on. We have six more months or so of this fighting season, John. But I wouldn't be surprised if at some point talk about a ceasefire starts to gain momentum. And the sort of thing I ironically enough, the Trump administration originally supported, I had been putting it out there. They supported, then they walked away from it after Putin talked them out of it. But I think you have a ceasefire in place, some type of an international force separating the sides. It's done without prejudice. Russia can keep its claims against Ukraine. Ukraine would keep title to all of its territory. I don't think you can get much beyond that with Putin in in power. But I actually think for the first time a ceasefire, the possibility of it, is going up rather than going down.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Aaron Powell One of my obsessions are the Russian mill bloggers who criticize or analyze the Russian war effort in Ukraine. And something new has crept into the mill blogger conversation, which is the overthrow of Mr. Putin and his replacement. How seriously do you take that?

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Not in the short run, but it's an interesting tea leaf that uh I kicked up a massive controversy the last few days. But I described uh Putin's war of choice, and I said it uh has not gone as well. I sh I drew a certain parallel to another recent war of choice. And I got both attacked and defended across the uh internet. But this is Putin's problem. This was a war of choice all along. He expected quick and easy victory. It hasn't turned out that way. We're in year five in this phase of the war. Casualties are unbelievable. Wait, is it 30,000, 40,000 a month? These are crazy numbers. The only reason the Russian economy is still afloat, funnily enough, is the Iran War, which has boosted Russian energy proceeds, but that's gonna be a temporary situation. So yeah, I think the idea that Russia's on an unsustainable trajectory is not a, I think, a crazy analysis. Putin's challenge is gonna be dealing with those p your buddies, those right-wing bloggers. And basically, because at some point, if he tries to declare victory and say we've done enough and we've gotten what we wanted, and they're gonna say, what no, you no, we didn't. And this entire war isn't enough. So Putin's gonna have the problem of justifying, if you will, an incomplete outcome. And you know, does that jeopardize his situation? I mean, he's a hard guy to read, uh, as you know. He's uh he's become something of a shut-in. And I think this will reinforce his uh desire to avoid crowds and be out in the uh open. But I don't look, I don't know enough about the intricacies of the potential political resistance. The danger is not bloggers, the danger would be obviously some senior military guy, people who presumably have a degree of power and access. I yeah, an awful lot of people have found their way out of open windows in the last few years. Right. They slip. Yeah, it's really it's it's clearly it's uh so can't explain it. So no, I my guess is it'd be hard to accomplish. But just the fact that people we're having this conversation and bloggers are saying things, I think this shows that Putin's he doesn't have unlimited time here. And that's why again I come back to thinking at some point he's gonna have to dec do a version of declare victory and sue for uh ceasefire. And so I actually think the chan chances of diplomacy might be going up here.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

When I read about the you know, I d I don't speak Russian, but when you get these translations of what uh the mill bloggers are saying, it seems uh the thing that's amazing to me is that Putin hasn't shut them down. The fact that they're able to communicate and that people all over the world can read what they're saying, that's a sign of weakness, it seems to me. Uh that's if you were Putin, you'd be a little disturbed by your own lack of uh control over what's going on on the internet.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

That's where the threat is to Putin. It's not some, you know, we in the United States like to think that the real threat to Putin is from uh, if you will, a liberal Western type figure. I don't think so. I would think the more immediate threat is from the right. Now that could set in motion a chain of events where one day, I still feel optimistic in the long run that one day you will have a Russian leader come to the fore who will denounce Putin and his war and will say that it drove Russia into a ditch. It cost hundreds of thousands, if not more, lives, it wrecked the economy, it wrecked Russia's relations with the world, it turned it into a pariah. I do think the day will come where you will have a reformist figure in Russia. Not immediately, it'll take time. But in the uh but the way to get this process going, I think you're right. It's more likely to come from the far right in Russia rather than initially from anything on the left.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

One more question I had for the for you on that is you know, there's concern, real concern, about Russia doing more military activity in Eastern Europe and doing everything it can to break apart NATO and so on and so forth. People it it seems to me if you're locked into the war in Ukraine to the degree that Putin is, can he realistically do other military, what did he call them, special operations in Eastern European nations?

SPEAKER_01 21:46

He could do small special ops to coin a phrase that's been used elsewhere, excursions. He can't do anything large. He just doesn't have the capacity to do it. The smart SME wants to To say, why bother? We're doing a pretty good job of wrecking NATO without his help. He should just sit back and watch. NATO's already a shell and so forth. And all uh but there is probably a window for Russia in the sense that US it's a version of our Taiwan conversation. Europeans are not self-sufficient, and U.S. willingness and ability to go to bat for Europe is diminishing. So there is something of a window. I just don't think he has the capacity right now to take on anything else big. And if he were to start shifting forces, then that would make him vulnerable to Ukraine. So I I think he could do nuisance things vis-a-vis vis Europeans, but I don't think he can do anything meaningful right now. He's already got more on his plate than he can handle.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

We're running up against the time limit, but we had, I guess yesterday or the day before, the Virginia State Supreme Court ruled that the uh governor's redistricting plan was unconstitutional and therefore would be thrown out, and therefore those gains that the Democrats anticipated making uh would not be forthcoming. This comes at the same time that uh Republicans, mostly in the South, I guess, are manically redistricting uh Democratic seats out of existence. Is there any good outcome from this, or are we just going to be eventually in a situation where we have two competitive districts and 433 sort of locked-in districts, red or blue?

SPEAKER_01 23:25

I think there's uh in the short run, and this is more your expertise than mine, I get the sense that the Republicans might be doing a little bit better in the gerrymandering, we're districting arms race than the Democrats, putting aside who might be the short-term winner. I know who's the long-term loser, and it's you and me and anyone who might be listening to this. It's the American people. It's not simply that we don't have competitive districts, that means we end up increasingly having the game of American politics played out of two end zones, where you have districts where no one has to appeal to the middle. And indeed, there's a disincentive to appeal to the middle. All the incentive is to appeal to your own side, to your own tribe, if you if you will. And that's an America that can't govern. That's an America that either can't reach agreement on anything or lurches from far right to far left, and that's a d disaster. Again, I'm not a lawyer, John, but to me, the Supreme Court's increasing what you call a deference, backing away from any real role in determining the outcome of these situations is a real threat to American democracy. And this is not what the House of Representatives was meant to be. But we're we're in some ways institutionalizing extreme polarization, and no good can come of that.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

It's possible if you take it to its logical conclusion that every single California district would be democratic. And California is home to the largest uh number of Republicans in one state of any state. It's I don't see anything good coming out of it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

No, and it also seems to be totally inconsistent with the spirit, again, I'm not a lawyer, of one one person, one vote. What it means is that tens and tens of millions of Americans, and some states Democrats and some states Republicans are being disenfranchised effectively. What a way to mark the 250th year of American democracy is that we're reaching new lows uh or highs, however you want to describe it, on on redistricting. It's a real it's a it's a real threat to the fabric of uh not just to our democracy but to our ability to get things done.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

So we'll do a quick sports section, and uh the quick way to do it is to ask you how optimistic are you about the chances of the New York Knicks progressing further into the playoff?

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Well, as I don't know when this podcast of ours is going to be up, but as of the moment, the Knicks are 3-0. They won six playoff games in a row, and they are winning in pretty convincing fashion. And they they won yesterday in Philadelphia without the player, one of their arguably what, two best players, three best players, Ojananobi. So you've got to feel good about the Knicks, and they've been using their bench pretty well, playing really good defense. So, yeah, they'll obviously win this series. Then they're up against the what Detroit or Cleveland? Detroit, probably, yeah. Probably Detroit. That'll be an enormous test. And then you've always got the other division for the finals. But could the Knicks make the finals? Absolutely. Could they hold their own in the finals? Maybe. I mean, Oklahoma's a tough team. Spurs are looking better. But you know what? It's great to have uh a New York team you can get excited about. It's been a while. Uh I'll just say that, though. The Yankees are kind of running in in first place, but that's too long of a season to get excited about. The Knicks are playing their best bowl of the year at the at the right time of the year to be playing it. So yeah, I'm feeling I'm feeling pretty good. But then, you know, tomorrow's a new day.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Indeed. And with that note, optimism.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

A rare note of optimism.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

We will we will conclude this edition of alternate shots and look forward to talking to you later. Take care, Mr. Ellis. Take care.