Yeah.

Welcome to the Aaron Harbor Show.

My special guest.

The emeritus president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass.

Richard, grea to have you on the show again.

Good to be back on.

You were, of course, special assistant to President George H.W.

Bush.

You were special envoy to Northern Ireland.

You're currently a senior counselor at Center View Partners.

And, you have a Substack home in a way, so we can constantly hear from you, if you so choose.

What do you think is the greatest threat to humanity right now?

We have had a global system that's basically kept, great power, peace for 80 years.

It's been a remarkable run of history.

World got wealthier, more democratic.

Live longer.

And again, we avoided, as I said, great power war.

And I would simply say a lot of that is at risk or at stake, because it's clear tha the United States in particular, the 47th president is not, sur he wants to continue that role.

Indeed he seems to be, pretty confident he wants to change that.

And then the question is, what comes of it?

So essentially we are dismantling, in many ways the order that has been not quite clear and what we're what we're transitioning to.

Worst case what do you think could happen would be a world of much more conflict.

It could be a world where many decid they need to take their security into their ow hands, develop nuclear weapons.

It could be a world that there's less trade and investment.

Could be a world in which there's less cooperation to deal with, either climate or global health, challenges.

So it could be, quite honestly, a lot messier world.

And who would benefit?

It could be that China would benefit considerably, possibly Russia as well.

In my opinion, the Obama administration and the Biden administratio failed to do was to really make an effort to educate people about different issues.

And as a result of that, from my perspective, it was it became very easy for President Trump and then then President Trump and now currently President Trump to fill that, that void and to make statements that a lot of people simply take as fact, simply because they're really not informed about a lot of issues.

Is that a fair statement or am I being too tough on Obama and Biden?

I think it's fair to say that most presidents don't do a very good job of taking advantage of the opportunity to use the Oval Office as a classroom.

It was surprising in Obama's case in particular, given that he was such a gifted speaker.

It didn't surprise me so much in President Biden's case.

In some ways the best president to have done that in many ways was Ronald Reagan.

Of th of the modern, presidents.

But there's lots of other reasons that we are where we are.

You've had economic problems from recent inflation to the 2000 and 708 mortgage crisis.

You had the, the fact that for decades, standards of living in the United States drifted, and your take home income, drifted.

You have the unsuccessful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which really disillusioned people about the world.

You had Covid.

And we can make a long list.

Essentially, a lot of people got truly disaffected with where things were.

Disillusioned about government.

And they became open increasingly to populism.

And by the way, it' not unique to the United States.

We've seen this all over the world.

So populism Donald Trump is a populist.

That's not a criticism.

It's simply an observation.

People who advocate for fairl wholesale change, people saying, I don't like what we have.

I'm going to try this.

You referenced earlier, one of the issues you referenced was climate change.

And it strikes me agai on the educational front that, I think, surprisingly to me, I don't have the impression that most Americans are significantly concerned about climate change.

Is that is that an unfair statement?

It's not unfair.

I think it's complicated, though.

Climate chang has taken on an odd coloration.

If you believe in climate change or if you don't, it's almost a cultural divide.

A little bit like wearing masks or vaccinations during Covid, it's very hard to have a quiet, rigorous, normal conversation about about climate change, where I think American would be ready to come together, maybe on adaptatio and resilience, to do more, to, make us less vulnerable to wildfires or floods or storm surge and so forth.

There there might be, some common ground.

But, yeah, I think on climate change itself.

No, the country is clearly divided on that, quite honestly, despite the evidence that, among other things, we are about a degree and a half centigrade warme than we were.

How significant?

Do you see that issu becoming in terms of its impact?

And and is that the challenge here in the United States that we have the resources to adapt, to those impacts more than most countries?

But there are a number of countries who don't have those resources.

But again, the American people know that the American people even care for the American people.

They've got a lot of other issues that ride much higher.

If you look at the polls, usually the economy issues, crime, immigration, and so forth.

You're right, the climate change will hav a big impact around the world.

It's generating, people who are have to leave.

It's become a big generator of what's called internally displaced people who move elsewhere in their own country, not voluntarily or refugees.

About more than 1 in 100 people in the world now would fit one of those categories.

It's increasingly costly.

So but I don't I don't think at the moment people see connections.

And by the way, one of the reasons also is even if the United States improved its behavior, what about the rest of the world?

There's no mechanism for bringing the world together yet on this topic.

Indeed.

You know, here we are.

We're sitting here 2025.

Each year, energy use goes up.

Each year, fossil fuel use goes up.

Also true that renewables are going.

It's basicall all of the above is is going up.

But at the moment I se nothing that would suggest to me the world is prepared to come together on this issue or make sacrifices on this or this issue.

These annual gatherings, the so-called Cop, the Conference of Parties, quite honestly, are feckless.

They don't accomplish much of much of anything.

So the only place I see potential optimism is in technology.

It was technology that got us through Covid.

If you think about it, mRNA vaccines zoom.

So we didn't have to make fateful decisions.

I think if we're going to manage climate, it's ultimately going to be through through technology.

One of your, areas of expertise is China.

And obviously our relationship with China has been very complex.

You now have a presiden who has a different perspective, I think, than the the previous president, to some extent.

It's hard to know what to believe, I guess.

So I'm not sure what his perspective is on China.

We have a pretty good sense about Russia, maybe Ukraine, maybe the Middle East, China.

The president says he wants a deal.

He's not discussed the, contours of the deal.

Let's take a step back.

What's so interesting is President Trump 1.0 introduce a far tougher policy on China.

President Biden kept it in plac and actually doubled down on it.

So the real question now is whether President Trump continues that he's done it on the terror front.

On the other hand, what about geopolitically?

I think that's a big question mark.

We don't know, for example, what he might do if China mad some sort of a move, on Taiwan or against, say, the Philippines in the South China Sea there.

The administration simply as yet has not revealed its hand.

When you look at the president's perspective, certainly with Russia, and, and his own, interests in Panama, in Greenland and making Canada the 51st state, it seems tha basically what he's saying is, I'm interested in having the United States acquire, you know, mor territory, different countries, territories, whatever the case may be.

And it seems that if he's saying that, Putin is being given a green light to do what he wants, that's one of the danger of what the president has said.

It seems to imply which people in my business would call spheres of influence.

China can have a free hand in Asia.

Russia could have a free hand in Europe.

United States would want a fre hand in this part of the world.

The countries in this part of the world have made clear they want no part of that, whether it's Canada.

What we've done is move Canadian politics, shall we say, rather violently in a in a anti-American direction.

Panama wants no part of it.

Denmark wants no part of it, and so forth.

But I think the combination of distancing the United States from Ukraine and, beginning to move towards Russia more than beginning, I think, is.

Yes, led people to think tha that might be President Trump's vision of what the alternative would be to the world order we've known for the last 30 years.

Problem is, the transition to that world could be very violent, that world would be more violent, and it would certainly be less prosperous, and less free.

And ironically enough, China and Russia might be better positioned to impose their leadership on their spheres than the United States.

In the long history of the United States running into friction in Latin America.

And my hunch is, if we wanted to become what you might call an imperial country in this part of the world there'd be a lot of resistance.

If you look at what the president is, you know, his perspective, which is, I'm interested in acquiring new assets, new territory.

Certainly from Putin's perspective is that, well, he's kind of saying this kind of policy is acceptable.

So whether I, you know, go further into Ukraine or if I go elsewhere as well, I'm, I'm taking the same approach.

Why wouldn't China say the same thing?

Why wouldn't China say, well, if the United States, in terms of President Trump is saying, you know, if you want to if you want, if you want to acquire other territories or countries, whatever, it's okay with the US, it's okay with with Russia.

Why shouldn't we go ahead and take Taiwan?

And why would Presiden Trump respond to that militarily if he's already setting the standard that that type of activities?

Okay, I look I hear what you're saying.

I wish I could sit here and say you're dead wrong, but I expect there are people in China who are salivating over that possibility.

And, you know, what happens in Ukraine is also setting something of a precedent, not just for Vladimir Putin, but for XI Jinping.

So, yeah, you're you're you're right.

There is that risk that we the United States, are signaling that this new era of international relations is going to be one i which great powers enjoy special advantages in their in their own neighborhoods.

And, you know, people like me, and I hope lots of people would worry about what that could, could set in motion.

It's premature to assum that President Trump's got four.

You know, he's got four years, if you will, to flesh all this out.

But sure, that is now on the agenda.

It's less certain than it was, and it was never quite certain, but it's less certain than it was that the United States would certainly come to the defense of NATO and Europe, unless certain that it was the United States would come to the defense of Taiwan.

One of my concerns on the political side is that the I think a lot of Democrats are assuming that, the Trump presidency will be a disaster and that they're going to win in 2028, maybe even 2026, in control of Congress because of, the Trump presidency.

My sense is that they're they may be terribly wrong and that that even if they'r not overwhelmingly successful, that Trump has the ability to blame the Democrats for for any failures.

And on top of that, there are issues that were salient in the 2024 election that Democrats have not backed away from, and I think they will get punished again in 26 and 28.

And so, so worst case, if you're a Democrat, my argument is you could have Republicans control the House and Senate and you could hav a Republican in the white House for the next 12 years.

That would be a worst case i you're a Democrat on your hand.

History suggests the midterms.

The Democrats will win the House.

In terms of Donald Trum succession, it all depends upon how well he is perceived to have done.

And if, for example, the United States has real economic problems, if we fall into a recession, if inflation is rekindled, as many think is likely, well, then suddenly it's not going to be so popular either.

Republicans, in which case the next Republican might be a Nikki Haley or Glenn Youngkin rather than J.D.

Vance or somebody like that.

Big question, regardless, for the Democrats is where do they go?

Do they go to the left?

Do they double down or do they go to the center?

I very much hope they go to the center also.

One other thing, which is ironic, the success this president has had, closing the southern border in a funny sort of way, removes that issue to a large extent.

I don't think the next election is going to be fought on immigration nearly so much.

And if it's fought on the economy, again, as we just discussed, a lot will depend upo how Donald Trump's performance, has been on the economy these days.

The news is coming at us as, you know better than anybody through a fire hose four years from now, or, you know, it feels like beyond an eternity.

I can't even imagine it.

I just want to get through, you know, a week from now, I've been fascinated how, the president has literally, media wise, weaponized the white House.

I mean, during the Biden presidency, I was getting, you know, 1 or 2 press releases a day.

The Trum White House sends me 20 of them.

This administration is quite dominant.

Even the, the recent speech before the, the de facto state of the union presiden was really dominant president.

The Democrats didn't know quite how to react, and I thought they reacted poorly when Americans were introduce to sacrifice for this country.

Whatever Democrats should be abl to stand up and cheer for that.

I didn't understand their their response.

The only downside for thi president and dominating again, is if things don't go well, it gets harder to pin that tail on the donkey of somebody else, right?

You own it though.

So and he's such a dominant president that yes, he could try to spin it, but it's gonna be very hard to spin a failed economy and blaming it on the Democrats.

Republicans is going to have to deal with debt ceiling.

Republicans are going to have to defend the House.

Republicans are gonna have to defend inflation if and when, it resumes.

So I actually think this president, in part because he is so politically dominant, he's going to own what happens in this country and around the world.

I think he can get away with it during the first year after that.

You know I think you're probably right.

Certainly his inclination seems to be to withdraw from NATO.

He doesn't seem to se our allies in Europe as allies.

He seems to see them as enemies.

What is that about an why is that the seem so basic?

He's long viewed allie as freeloaders or free riders.

He also has an instinct against American entanglement in the world.

So he has no enthusiasm for NATO.

He sees European countries less as geopolitical allies and more as geo economic competitors.

I think he's already basically done in NATO.

No one living in Europe could assume that if Russia were to attack tomorrow, that the United States would be there.

NATO is built on an article o faith which called article five that an attack on one is an attack on all.

What I think is now happened i the United States has put that, article under under doubt.

No one can be confident, which is why you're seeing the scrambling in Europe to come up with some kin of a stronger European defense.

But I think we've essentially entered a world in which the transatlantic relationship is the central to European security.

When you look at the president's positions on Ukraine, Ukraine has been an ally.

We've been supporting Ukraine.

You now have a president who who clearly is far more interested, number one, in supporting Russia, who has withdrawn military support from Ukraine and intelligence and who's withdrawn intelligence.

You have Elon Musk saying we might shut off Starlink, which is critical to, the Ukrainian military.

I'm trying to remember any time and you certainly have greater expertise where where we were on one side of a war and we did that to our ally.

What?

What is that about?

What does that mean?

And what is going on between Trump and Putin?

You ask more questions than I have answers for the, take your pick.

Look, the Trump Puti relationship is a mystery to me.

What this obsession is with improving U.S relations.

I simply do not understand.

Russia's a tiny economy.

It's almost all energy.

Russia's economy is the size of the economy.

I think of California.

I'm not even that.

Not even close to that.

And what there is, is all natural resources.

So Russia, Russi is not a serious modern economy.

It's a dwindling demography.

You're probably down below 140 million people.

It's not doing well in this war, if you think about it.

After three years, essentially it's been brought to a standstill by Ukraine.

So I do not understand what the President Xi's and Putin or Russia, the abandonment or distancing from Ukraine, I think is, morally but also strategically, in error.

And I and ironically enough, the president says he wants peace.

So do I.

He, I think, began with an insight that the Biden administration refused to have, which was a good insight, which is that you our policy cannot be based on arming Ukraine until it liberates the lands it's lost since 2014.

That's a nonstarter, never going to happen.

So he wants to have peace based upon some version of the status quo.

But in order to do that, the only way I know to get that peace is for the United States to stand by and with Ukraine.

So Vladimir Putin wakes up and says, damn it, I can keep this war going for two more years or four more years.

The Wes is not going to abandon Ukraine.

I cannot prevai unless this president does that.

He will never get a real or lasting peace.

So his own policy works against his own goal.

And that is the problem.

But I think he does feel he can get a real and lasting peace.

But, under term that are terribly disadvantaged, it won't be real.

And then it won't be real and lasting, because it won't be a real peace.

It'll set the stage for future violence.

Ukraine won't accept it, I believe.

I think they need to They'll fight a guerrilla war.

Europeans will help them.

It won't be enough.

So I think the administration is kidding itself.

If it thinks it can impose a truly one sided false peace on Ukraine, it will not.

It will not succeed at that.

I was very critical of the Biden administration because I felt that the president essentially was tepid in terms of his support of Ukraine, that he while he supported Ukraine, it was never enough.

At the beginning of the war, if we had had a no fly zone Ukraine would have would have, I think would have literally won the war.

Just as an example, we didn't provide them the arms that they needed.

He did invoke the Defense Production Act so that he was generating the kind of weapons and munitions we needed.

Why was his policy so tepid, oh so timid?

I hear you, I hear you, the critique.

I'm familiar with the critique.

There are times I wish we'd done more.

The president was trying to thread a needle between helping Ukraine but not doing so much.

So it caused a larger war with Russia.

You and others might think he was too much on one side of that, but that was the balance.

That was what he was trying to do, accomplish.

That's a flawed policy because if you're saying, well, I'm gonna disagree, that's not a flawed policy.

Okay.

First of all, you took off the table direc American military involvement, which is why we didn't have boots on the ground, which I think was right.

He didn't want to have a no fly zone, because, again, you don't want to have American aircraf clashing with Russian aircraft.

We avoided that during the Cold War.

Last I checked, that turned out okay.

Could he have done more?

Sure Would it have made a difference?

I would say not.

I have yet to see anyone make a persuasive case that if we had acted with a little bit less restraint on what we provided when we provided it, the amount we provided, it would have tipped a military balance.

So could we have done more?

Sure.

Would it have funded?

Would it have given Ukraine Crimea back?

Absolutely not.

So actually, I don't think it was that significant at the end of the day.

And Biden got it mostly right.

What do you got?

Right was I'm going to support Ukraine, you said, and Ukraine is going to remain a viable independent country.

And three years later, despite the this Russian war, he he he accomplished a perfect no, but not bad.

I would disagree.

I don't think he did.

I thin one of his greatest failures was was not informing and educating the American people about the importance of supporting Ukraine.

And by failing to do that, he created this vacuu that that Vance and Trump filled and made the argument, hey, why should you know, we why spend $50 billion or $100 billion in Ukraine when we need to spend those resources here?

Okay.

Fair enough.

Bide was one of his real weaknesses as president was his inability to articulat and educate the American people.

He was one of our poor presidents of that.

But even if he had done that it would have been a hard sell.

Because Americans, wheneve they see big domestic problems, people like me can stand up and say what we're spending on defense is only half our Cold War average as a percentage of GDP, which happens to be the case, but people don't want to hear it if they see real problems at home, economically, at the border with crime, they want to turn inward.

So yes, the president could an should have done a better job, making the case for support Ukraine.

And it's not 350 billion, as President Trump has said, it was closer to 120 billion that went there.

But I actually say it was money well spent.

And in no way is it responsible for the flawed Biden border policy that's stood on its own merits or lack of merits, doesn't explain the wokeness, doesn't explain.

I go down the list, the inflation, ove stimulating the economy out of, coming out of Covid.

They made those mistakes.

But, you know, if if they hadn't, Kamala Harris might be, president right now or whatever.

But then the reason he lost wasn't because of Ukraine.

The reason he lost, I would argue, is because of border inflation and the cultural issues and also physical, the fact that, yeah, I felt any infirmity, whatever word you want, is he stayed in way too long.

I don't know how Kamala Harris would have done if she had a real set of primary challenges, whether that would have strengthened her or defeated her.

We'll never, we'll never know.

But getting this truncated political season clearly did not help I think, for 107 day campaign, it was admirable, but clearly obviously not sufficient.

I mentioned NATO, do the key European countries can't?

Do they have the resources?

Can they generate the resources to support Ukraine without the US?

Not nearly, but there can't be a 1 to 1 substitution.

They can do more, but they don't have the defense industries.

They don't have the inventorie to substitute the United States so they can do something.

Ukraine itsel can probably provide the bulk, mayb at least half of what it needs.

But no.

If the United States does not provide arms, ammunition, intelligence, then the rest of Ukraine will b at a significant disadvantage.

Certainly the president's strategy is to pressure Ukraine to enter into a settlement it probably doesn't want to enter taking.

If you're taking Ukraine's perspective, would you say, or is there a point where you either say, we're going to have to make, whatever deal is imposed on us and we'll take it for now and live to fight another day?

Or would Ukraine ever say we're not going to take a deal and we're going to fight on wit the help of European countries and not with the help of the United States?

It's one thing if it's a ceasefire, another thing if it's a permanent peace, Ukraine will not sign a permanent peace treaty that forfeit their rights to their territory.

They might they might accept a for a flawed ceasefire.

Funnily enough, on the assumption that Putin will probably be violated at some point, I'm surprised at the number of people who communicate with me on the right in their attitude is, the president's doing a great job.

They don't care about the terms of the peace.

Their attitude is if if he can end the war, that's all that matters, can always get peace.

If all you care about is peace.

But you'd never want to get peace at any price.

You want to get a peace that, is going to put down roots.

In order to d that, it's got to be accepted.

It's got to b it's got to be seen as fair and and legitimate, or as soon as one or the other sides rebuilds, they will overwhelming.

So you will not get peace.

At most you will get a temporary cease fire, if it's seen as, once one sided and at some point again, Russia, Ukraine will will violate.

And there's no reason to go down that path.

I actually think the ball is teed up for this administration to get a lasting cease fire.

But the only way to do i is by getting closer to Ukraine, not distancing itself in Ukraine.

And by the way, the threats the president's put out against the Russians for tariffs and sanctions, that won't be enough.

If he's serious, he needs t put the turn the spigot back on.

Not for an unconditional thing not go back to Biden's policy, not to say we're going to support you until, you liberate all your land.

Rather, we're going to support you until we can negotiate a fair, reasonable ceasefire.

I actually think that's possible.

How would you define grea leadership or great leadership?

And I would always argu you set out certain directions as well as the means to get there.

You can't just be visionary.

You got to be practical But you can't just be practical.

Then you're just a manager.

So you've got to marry the strategic direction, but also tactical implementation.

How do you think in the last 2 or 3 decades, leadershi has changed?

It's gotten tougher in the business world.

It's gotten tougher because it's not enough for a CEO just to deliver a pretty good, performance.

You've got all these constituencies.

If anything, the business world has becom more like the political world.

You've got multiple constituencies to satisfy, so it's gotten tougher.

I also think technology has made a tougher social media and so forth.

Again, it's a it's a world where you've got lots of things coming at you from lots of directions.

And it makes it it just makes it, tougher.

Whether you're in the private sector and government, whatever, leadership's become far more difficult than it was because of political changes, cultural changes and above all, probably, technical changes.

I would argue that the vast majority of Americans reall don't know how government works or what it does.

I have three recommendations here.

I'm all yours.

One is I want civics to be mandatory in our high schools and colleges.

Yeah, we don't have to agree on what the content is, which is a tougher issue.

That's a separate question, but one is civics in our schools.

Second of all, I want to teach people what I call information literacy.

How is it you navigate this information landscape, which is really complicated?

How do you know a fact from an opinion?

How do you know a trustworthy source as opposed to another what's good practice, what's almost good information, hygiene, multiple sources and so forth.

Public service would help, if not careers.

Or since maybe you know between high school and college or various stages of your lif where people would, would, would see the government isn't so bad at democracy for all of its laws, has worked pretty well for this country.

I worry that so many Americans don't understand, the worth of their inheritance.

Don't understand also what it takes.

That's why I wrote a book about, obligations and not just rights.

I want Americans to understand that democracy is valuable.

It offers you things called rights, but it requires things from you as well, called called obligations.

My last questio is some examples in your mind, 1 or 2 of people who you think ar or were great leaders and why?

Let's talk abou some of the ones I worked with.

I was lucky enough.

One.

Was it software?

Being someone who was a military man in Israel, who saw that situation change and was willing to try a piece, not naively but conditionally, and talked about it openly.

And he was skeptical about it.

And I remember standing out there on the white House lawn saying, this is not easy for me, but because it was difficult for him as he almost led himself to a point where he could accept it, he also led his people to, accept.

And unfortunately, an assassin's bullet ended.

His life and changed the course of, history here in the United States.

I would say, Ronald Reagan, to me, was, a really impressive leader and understood the power of communication.

Now, when I wrote my last book, I went back and read a lot of Reagan's speeches, including his farewell address.

Just really, really powerful person I was closest to was George H.W.

Bush.

You mentioned him in the introduction.

I worked with him for for four years.

Very different style than Reagan, much lower keyed, but also was, which shows, by the way, you don't have to be a big, enormous personality to be a successful leader.

And Bush was a really good listener at times, whether it was with helpin Gorbachev overcome his domestic difficulties.

But, you know, the way we got the United States through the Gulf War triumphant minimal cost and so forth, and also understood sometimes with leadership, where you have to say enough not to get caught up in the moment.

But when he didn't go on to Baghdad, it showed that, don't let tactical success necessarily change your strategic vision and your goals.

And it took a strong man to say, no, I know we could try to do that, but here's why it wouldn't be a good thing to do.

That was impressive to me.

He didn't take the easy path, but he took the right path.

Richard, thank you so much.

Thank you.

That was Richard Haass, the emeritus president of the Council on Foreign Relations, currently at Center View Partners.

I'm Erin Harbor.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.