At 8:03 a.m. on Easter Sunday, Trump

posted this to True Social. Tuesday will

be power plant day and bridge day all

wrapped up in one in Iran. There'll be

nothing like it. Open the straight, you

crazy bastards. You'll be living in

hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah.

President Donald J. Trump. That is even

crazier when you read it aloud. But

Trump followed it up with another post

on Tuesday that began, "A whole

civilization will die tonight. Never to

be brought back again." I don't want

that to happen, but it probably will. It

didn't happen. Trump backed down,

agreeing to a twoe ceasefire with Iran.

Then on Wednesday, he wrote, "The United

States will work closely with Iran,

which we have determined has gone

through what will be a very productive

regime change."

Trump has oscillated in the course of

days, even hours, from threatening an

apparent genocide to then excitedly

musing about partnering with Iran to

charge tolls to ships passing through

the straight of Hormuz and giving them

relief from sanctions and tariffs.

This is not the art of the deal. This is

behavior that should trigger a wellness

check. And look, maybe you'd expect a

liberal like me to say that, but listen

to some of the Trumpier voices, or at

least traditionally Trumpier voices on

the right. Here's Tucker Carlson. It is

vile on every level. It begins with a

promise to use the US military, our

military, to destroy civilian

infrastructure in another country, which

is to say to commit a war crime, a moral

crime against the people of the country,

whose welfare, by the way, was one of

the reasons we supposedly went into this

war in the first place. Look, I don't

agree with Carlson on all that much. I

do appreciate the register he found

there because he's right about what that

was a moral crime. To even conceive of

erasing Iranian civilization, much less

threaten it in public. It is a horrific

act on its own. Just imagine being an

Iranian parent that night, unsure if you

could protect your child. Imagine being

an Iranian living here, worried about

your family back home. What Carlson

correctly centered is something Trump

forgot or didn't care about as soon as

it was convenient. Iranians are human

beings. To annihilate them, to salvage a

war you started is a crime against

humanity. It is the act of a war

criminal. It is the act of a monster.

And I know there are those who say this

is all just a negotiation.

This was Trump pressing Iran to fold.

There are two problems with that. The

first is that Iran didn't fold. We did.

Trump appears ready to accept a level of

Iranian control of a straight of Hormuz

that would have been unimaginable 2

months ago. You have now JD Vance saying

that Iran might not even give up its

right to nuclear enrichment.

This is what it looks like when you lose

a war, not when you win one. The second

is that this is an immoral way and a

dangerous way even to negotiate because

what it does is it commits you to war

crimes if your bid is rejected. Megan

Kelly said this well.

>> This is completely irresponsible and

disgusting. This is wrong. It's wrong.

He should not be doing it. I don't care

that it's a negotiate. His negotiation

tactic is to kill an entire country full

of civilians, men, women, and children,

an American president, so that the

straight of hormuz will be opened. I

It's just wrong. A list of the Trumpy or

formerly Trumpy figures who just seem

appalled here could go on. You had

Marjorie Taylor Green calling for the

25th Amendment and Trump's removal from

office. She said what Trump was doing

was quote evil and madness. You had Alex

Jones agreeing with her. How do we 25th

amendment his ass?

>> You had Candace Owens calling Trump a

quote genocidal lunatic.

I am glad and relieved that Tuesday

night brought a ceasefire rather than a

war crime. The Iranian people have

suffered plenty. They do not deserve to

be buried in rubble to salvage Trump's

pride. But I am not sure that what Trump

said was wrong exactly. I am worried a

civilization died that night or at least

is dying. But it's our civilization.

It is very hard to see Donald Trump,

listen to him, watch him, and not think

that this grand experiment in

self-governance is falling into ruin in

just the way the founders feared. We've

entrusted tremendous power to a

self-deing narcissist and demagogue

who's becoming more dangerous and

erratic as he ages and as his presidency

fails.

What we saw over the last week was how

dangerous Trump becomes when he feels

himself losing. When he feels that

control is slipping from his grasp.

Donald Trump is a 79year-old man in

uncertain health in the final years of

his presidency. He is hideously

unpopular even now. He is very likely

going to lose midterm elections and then

he and his family and associates will

face a raft of investigations. How much

Gulf money has made its way into Trump

family pockets? Who's bought all that

crypto from them? What kind of deals got

made with the Trump family before

countries saw their tariffs knocked

down? The next few years will for him

carry the potential of terrible loss.

And so I don't think this is the last

time Trump is going to endanger a

country in a desperate gamble to avoid

the consequences of his own failures.

But that country often times is going to

be our own.

Joining me now is Fried Zakaria, the

host of Freed Zakaria GPS on CNN, a

columnist for the Washington Post, and

the author of, among other books, The

Age of Revolutions. As always, my email

is Kleinshowny Times.com.

Fred Zakaria, welcome back to the show.

Always a pleasure. So, I want to start

with Trump's now infamous post on

Tuesday morning where he wrote, quote,

"A whole civilization will die tonight,

never to be brought back again."

What did you think when you saw that?

I mean, I was horrified, but it goes

beyond that. It it felt like that tweet

was the culmination of something that

had been going on for a while, which was

that the president of the United States

was simply abandoning the entire moral

weight that the United States had

brought to its world role ever since

World War II. I mean, not to sound too

corny about it because of course we made

mistakes and we were hypocritical and

all that, but compared to every other

power that be that gained this kind of

enormous uh enormous uh uh dominance,

the US had been different. You know,

after 1945, it said we're not going to

be another imperial uh hegeimon. We're

not going to ask for reparations from

the countries that uh that we defeated.

We're actually going to try and build

them and we're going to give them

foreign aid. We invented the idea of

foreign aid. Basically that whole idea

that the United States saw itself as

different, saw itself not as one more in

the train of great imperial powers that

when it was their turn had decided to

act rapaciously to extract tribute to

enforce a kind of you know um brutal

vision of dominance.

All that was in a sense, you know,

thrown thrown away. And I realized it

was just one tweet, but there was the

culmination of something Trump has been

doing for a long time. And it it just

left me very sad to think that the the

United States, this country that has

really been so distinctive in its in its

world mission. uh and a country that I

looked up to as a kid and came to as an

immigrant

that the that the leader of that country

could literally threaten to annihilate

an entire people. When when you say

something like that, it sounds very

abstract, right? Civilization.

What we're talking about is, you know,

the the lives and and aspirations and

culture and dignity of a whole people. I

mean, you're talking 93 million people.

One thing that has always felt to me

core about the moral challenge

that Donald Trump and his view of

geopolitics poses

is it feels to me on a deep level

like a throwback to the

18th, 19th, early 20th century

when

individual

lives, individual human lives.

We're just understood as pawns

in the greater game of

dominance and strength and rivalries and

conquests.

As you say, I'm not saying that there's

not been disrespect or disregard for

human life in the post-war era. That

would be absurd.

But there was a commitment and a a

structure of values in which

you didn't

threaten

mass annihilation of civilians

simply because you were trying to

salvage face in a war you had started

for no reason and were losing that that

you know and you see this in Doge and

its approach to USAD that there is

something about

how you treat or don't treat how you

weigh or don't weigh

the lives and futures of the people who

are caught within your minations

that he just wipes away um as I think a

kind of weakness or

liberal piety.

If you watch um or listen to George W.

Bush when he is essentially losing the

war in Iraq. What is striking is the

difference. Bush for all his flaws and

you know and he made many many mistakes

in Iraq but for all his flaws always

looked at it as an essentially

idealistic aspirational mission. We were

trying to help the Iraqis. He never uh

demeaned Islam. He always tried to sort

of see this as part of America's great

uh uplifting mission.

And you almost miss that because even in

our mistakes, even in our errors, there

was always that sense that you know we

were we were trying to help this country

uh do better. We were trying to help

these people do better. And what you're

describing, I think quite accurately, is

Trump approaches it not just from the

point of view of the 19th century,

because sometimes people talk about, oh,

he loves McKinley and he like tariffs

and and he's like McKinley in in in that

imperialism. No, Trump is more like a

rapacious 18th century European

imperialist who did not have any of McK

you know McKinley said he went to the

Philippines because he wanted to

Christianize the the the place and there

was none of that sense of uplift or most

of it was just brutal and it was as you

say the the individual was never at the

center of it human life and dignity was

never at the center of it was all a kind

of self-interested short- term term

extractive game and Trump is hearkening

back to that. Um, and it's interesting

to ask where he gets it from because it

really is probably fair to say that

nobody else on the American political

spectrum if they were president would

speak like that. I don't think JD Vance

would speak like that. I I don't think

um Marco Rubio would speak like that. So

there's something that he brings to it

which is uh a a kind of callousness and

a contempt for any of those uh of those

those kind of the expression of those

values for him that's all a sign of

weakness. That's that's you know the

kind of [ __ ] people say. Um but the

reality is the way he looks at the

world. Here is what you will hear from

Trump's defenders. That this is all

today and it was on Tuesday liberal

hysteria.

That what we were watching was a

brilliant negotiating tactic that Trump

frightened the Iranians. He frightened

the whole world. He put forward a

maximalist and terrifying and immoral

position

and forced the Iranians to capitulate

into a deal they would not otherwise

have accepted. That night he did not

destroy civilization. That night there

was the announcement of a twoe

ceasefire.

Are they right? Is that what happened?

So let's just evaluate it on the on the

merits in the sense of you know if the

genius negotiating strategy

what we have ended up with is in a

situation where we began the war with a

country whose nuclear program had been

completely and totally obliterated.

Those were Trump's words but those were

words by the way echoed by the head of

the IDF in Israel. uh Israel's atomic

agency said is Iran's nuclear program

has been destroyed and can be destroy

kept destroyed indefinitely as long as

they don't get uh access to nuclear

materials which we were actively denying

them. So that was the reality of of

Iran. It had been pummeled. Its nuclear

program had been destroyed. Um that was

the the the what we started with. What

we have ended up with is a war in which

Iran has lost its military and its navy

and things like that. But it was, you

know, to be honest, it was not it was

not using those to attack anybody. What

it has gained is a far more usable

weapon than nuclear weapons. It has it

has gained it has realized and shown the

world that it can destroy the global

economy that it can block the straight

of hormones and that that would have a

cataclysmic follow followon effect. It

now seems poised to not simply be able

to hold the gust the Gulf States and

much of the world hostage because of

that pivotal position it has, but it's

now going to monetize that. Um,

presumably giving it $90 billion of

revenue every year, which is, by the

way, about twice as much as it makes

selling oil. Um, it has weakened the

Gulf states which now sit in the shadow

of this tension that they have to worry

about and navigate. It has brought China

into the Gulf, we learned because the

Chinese had to get the Iranians uh to

agree to this. It has weakened the

dollar because these payments that are

being made through the straight of

Hormos are now being made in crypto or

in yuan Chinese China's currency. It has

strengthened Russia because uh Russia is

now making something on the order of

four to five billion dollars extra per

month because of the in the price of oil

which will probably stay elevated for a

while and and it's almost wrecked the

Western Alliance because Trump in his in

his frustration and desperation when he

realized he wasn't getting his way has

decided to blame all of it on on all

America's allies as if they if they had

somehow joined in. this would have made

any difference when you don't when you

have a bad strategy with unclear and

shifting goals. It doesn't really matter

how many people you have cheering for

you on the side. But you take all of

that and you say those are the costs and

the benefit as as far as I can tell is

quite close to zero in the sense that

Iran already had a nuclear program that

was that was largely defunct. Israel was

already far more powerful than Iran and

could easily defend itself. Um, I I see

it as an absolute exercise in willful,

reckless destruction, a destruction of

lives, destruction of massive amounts of

American military hardware, a

destruction of America's reputation. But

I also think, you know, the what the

president of the United States says

matters. Um, and you can't just excuse

something on the basis on the argument,

oh, it's a clever negotiating strategy.

First of all, it was a stupid, lousy

negotiating strategy that has ended up

with the United States much weaker than

it was. But even if it were, I don't

think that, you know, the ends justify

the means in every in in the situations

like this. Not and certainly not when

the things you say

deeply erode your your credibility, your

moral reputation, your you know, the

core of your values. I think those

things are real and and throwing them

away uh for momentary gain in some in

some poker-like negotiation uh isn't

worth the price.

I think among

among the tells in all this to me was

that Trump in announcing the ceasefire

deal

said that he had gotten a 10-point plan

from the Iranians which he described as

quote workable basis on which to

negotiate. He also said that we're

dealing now with a change regime that

was much more reasonable.

Uh, the Iranians have released a plan.

It includes Iran continuing to control

the straight of Hormuz. It includes the

world accepting an Iranian right to

enrich uranium. It includes lifting all

primary and secondary sanctions against

Iran. It includes payment of reparations

to Iran.

I am not saying Trump or America or

Israel will agree to all or to any of

this.

But if this is the reasonable basis for

talks,

that is an Iran that has ended up in a

stronger position than it was. A

position where it will now have it will

have negotiated out control of the of

the strait and as you say that's a

revenue source. It is demanding payment

and relief.

It to

for Trump to describe that as that plan

is something he has won through this

war. That plan would have been

unthinkable as a negotiating start two

months ago. This is the key point. If if

if this is a workable basis for

negotiation,

why the hell didn't we negotiate on this

basis 2 months ago, 3 months ago, 5

months ago? Why did we need the war? The

Iranians would have made would have been

comfortable with seven of those demands

by which I mean there are three that are

more demanding than they would have ever

3 months ago. They would have never said

that they have the right to control the

straight of hormones. Right? So they

have added on additional demands if

anything. You would have gotten a skinny

version of these demands three months

ago. So we could have easily negotiated

with no war.

the straight of Hormuse. Trump said

something that was striking. He mused

about the US and Iran

jointly controlling the strait and the

way he described it clearly meant the US

taking a cut of those tolls as well.

Well, when you talk about the extractive

nature of Trump's view of geopolitics

and and and foreign policy,

whether that is where it ends up,

the idea that somebody said that to him

or he came up with it and that that was

compelling, that the end goal of all

this is

instead of America making sure that the

tradeways and waterways are clear for

global trade and the international

order, we will start extracting a rent

as part of our payment for a war we

chose to start because Benjamin

Netanyahu talked us into it. Apparently,

that too struck me as quite wild and

more divergent from what you could have

imagined America doing at another time

than I think is even being given credit

for.

>> I I totally agree. I think that is one

of the most telling uh comments that

Trump has made. And to give you a sense

of how divergent it is, the United

States's first military action in 1798,

something called a quasi war with

France, was over freedom of navigation.

The war with the Barbar pirates was

about freedom of navigation. The US has

literally for its entire existence stood

for the freedom of navigation and since

it became the global hegeimon after

1945, it has resolutely uh affirmed and

defended that right. Uh it has put in

place huge protocols about it and I

think it was 1979 Carter put in a whole

program for for it. Um, and it gets to

this whole idea that the United States

has always taken the view that it was

trying to create the open global

economy, the rules-based system, the,

you know, the the global commons. It was

trying to provide public goods for

everybody, not seek short-term

extraction for itself. And Trump's

entire worldview

is the antithesis of that. He hates that

idea that America is this benign

long-term

uh you know hegeimon that looks out for

the whole system. No, what he wants to

do is look at every situation and say

how can I squeeze this situation for a

little bit of money? You know, how can I

if I see a tariff uh a country and I see

there's a slight divergence in tariffs,

I don't think about well the whole point

was to create an open trading system.

No, I say I can squeeze you. If I see

that you're dependent on me for military

aid, I I wonder how how can I squeeze

you? His whole idea is the short-term

extractive uh I get a win for now. I've

talked to a couple of foreign leaders

about this and they also picked up on

this remark. Uh it would be stunning to

the world if the United States, the

country that has for example constantly

warned China that the straight of

Malacha through which more energy goes

than the straight of hormones I think uh

has to remain open and free that freedom

of navigation is a right not a privilege

conferred by anybody. um if we were to

now adopt the position the Iranian

position that no no no it's ours and we

get to do what it I mean it's a it is a

complete revolution in the way we have

approached the world

>> the foreign policy scholar Steven Walt

had an essay recently where he described

what America is becoming or attempting

to be as a predatory hegeimon

do you think that's the way to

understand it

>> yeah that's a very good that's a very

good phrase because you know it is this

predatory attitude towards everything,

but we are still the hedgeimon, right?

So, it's a it's weird. You see countries

like Russia acting in predatory ways,

but you think of them as the sort of

spoilers of the global system. They're

the ones that are trying to shake things

up, disrupt things. They don't like the

the rules-based international system.

They want to they want to destroy it or

erode it in some way and allow for the

freedom of the the strong to do what

they can and the weak to suffer what

they must in Thusidities's phrase

the US has never done that and the US as

hegeimon has been very careful to try to

have that longer term more enlightened

view again with lots of mistakes and

lots of hypocrisy

um but compared to other hegeimons it

really has played that role

And now it is it is it is trying to

extract for short-term benefit. And I

emphasize this because it's actually

terrible for the United States in the

long run. We have benefited enormously

from being the at the center of this

world. But so we're getting these

short-term uh gains at enormous

long-term loss to our position, our

status, our influence, our power. I

think this war has been a disaster for

the United States, been a disaster for

Donald Trump in part because we actually

never knew what we wanted out of it.

I think Israel did know what it wanted

out of it. And if you, you know, look at

the new reporting from my colleagues

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, it's

pretty clear that Trump was talked into

it after meeting with Netanyahu and the

MSAD.

seems that there are a lot of parts of

his own administration raising doubts

that he simply wiped away.

Has this war been good for Israel? Do

they get what they want out of it?

>> Look, I think for from from for a

particular view of Israel which has

viewed Iran as this absolute existential

threat uh which is clearly BB

Netanyahu's view uh Iran is destroyed

militarily. There's no question about

it. I mean, remember Netanyahu in that

opening video says, "I've been dreaming

about this for 40 years." He's always

been obsessed with Iran even before

there was a credible nuclear issue. Um,

and

so for for him and for people like that,

yes, you can make the case that a failed

Iran, a crippled Iran, even if it

descends into chaos the way that Syria

did for 10 years, uh, has its

advantages. It takes it takes a kind of

adversary off the field. Um I would

argue that Iran had been contained in

many significant ways particularly after

the Obama nuclear deal. Remember no

enrichment. 98% of its enriched uranium

had been taken out of the country. The

Mossad, Israeli intelligence, American

intelligence and the International

Atomic Energy Agency all said that the

Iranians were following the deal. Um,

and you had the the the reality that you

had the most intrusive inspections

regime that you had ever had in the

history of nuclear test. So, it was it

possible they could be cheating a little

bit on the side? It's possible. Very

very few serious observers of it think

that that was going on. So, there was a

way to contain Iran without the the the

extraordinary destruction. But I think

that what Israel has done has has come

at a cost. I mean, I I look at BB

Netanyahu's long reign as prime

minister, and I wonder if in the long

run, what people will will notice is

that his legacy was to to split apart

the alliance between the United States

and Israel. Um, he began by politicizing

it in a poisonous way when Obama was

president. He went and did an end run

around Obama, went and addressed

Congress. um he openly

sort of fought with Obama and tried to

to turn the issue of Israel into a

partisan issue and then has unleashed so

much firepower. Israel is this is the

superpower of the Middle East. Israel is

currently occupying 10% of Lebanon. Uh

it has it has uh displaced 1 million

people. Uh and this

>> and said 600,000 of them may never be

allowed to come back to their homes.

>> Right. Exactly. And and you put you look

at all of that and

>> I mean that on scale is a second knockba

>> right and you and you and just remember

you know we these 600,000 human beings

that's that's women that's children who

did nothing who were in no way involved

in Hezbollah's you know rocket campaign

against against Israel. So you you you

you ask yourself is the price that now a

majority of Americans have an

unfavorable view of of is Israel that a

majority of young people have a very

unfavorable view of Israel and if you

look beyond America it's not just

America I think the Dutch just joined

the South African case in the

international court to look at what's

happening even in Germany which for

obvious historical reasons has a very

strong you know moral urge to to always

see things from Israel's point of view.

Um, in in Germany, the young are being

increasingly alienated by what they see

and what they So, so, you know, is that

really good for Israel in the long run,

you know, and for what? Um, for it was

already the most powerful country in in

the Middle East. It was able to defend

itself. It was able to deter. Again, in

a kind of short-term narrow sense, yes,

BB Netanyahu has has found a way to push

back against a lot of Israel's enemies.

And some of it, like Hezbollah was a a

really nasty organization doing bad

things in terms of the way it was it was

attacking Israel. But you put it all

together, I mean, Bengorian said Israel,

you know, when it was founded should be

a light unto nations. I think for most

people in the world today

that's that is not the way they look at

Israel and that is a huge loss and that

is a huge moral loss because Israel had

a moral claim when it was founded.

>> I want to go back to where we began

which was Trump's threat to wipe out a

civilization. And in a way I thought

that wasn't entirely empty. It's just

that it might have been our own.

I think Trump has

wiped out the sense that America is a

civilized nation. I think that it is

actually core to his politics and in a

way his appeal

that he routinely violates

what we might have at another time

called civilized behavior. The way he

talks, the way he tweets or put things

on truth social, the way he goes after

his enemies.

And you know, you talk a lot about the

rules-based international order that

Trump is destroying.

And I always think that language sort of

obscures that beneath the rules or

values.

And what Trump has gleefully done from

the beginning of his time in politics is

to try to violate those values in such a

public way as to show them to be hollow,

uninforcable, that these things we

thought were boundaries or moral guard

rails or nothing. And I think it it it

forces some, you know, reckoning with

what those values really were.

So when you talk about that order, when

you lament the way Trump has undermined

it,

aside underneath the rules, what do you

feel is being lost?

I think at at heart, you know, the the

enlightenment project that the United

States is the the fullest expression of,

it's the only country really founded as

a as almost a political experiment of

enlightenment ideas. That at the core of

any value system had to be the

individual the dignity and and life of

an individual human being. that those

that that those were not porns in some

larger struggle. And when you when you

read I've been reading a lot about

Franklin Roosevelt recently because

Roosevelt is probably the man most

responsible for dreaming up that

post-war order. What you see is you he

goes at one point to to Casablanca and

he meets with the the Moroccans and he

said he came to realize just how

savagely the French had ruled over these

people and he said we are not going to

have fought this war to allow the French

to go back and do what they've been

doing for these past centuries and we're

not going to allow the British to go

back and do what they're doing that if

we are going to get in this war and save

the West as it were it there's going to

be a different set of values and much of

that post-war order comes out of that.

Why did he want free trade and openness?

Because he thought there had to be a way

for countries to grow to wealth and grow

to feel you know their power without

conquering other countries. So I do

think I think you're exactly right that

it comes out of a very deep moral uh

sense that there is a way to structure

international life differently than it's

been done for centuries. And the thing I

worry most about is that what Trump is

doing is irreparable. Because even if

you get another American president in

the world will have watched this this

display and said, "Oh, America can

America can be just another imperial

rapacious power and we need to start

protecting ourselves and we need to

start buying insurance and we need to

start freelancing in the same way and

protecting ourselves

and then you know you get into a

downward spiral, right? Because if you

think the other guy is going to defect,

you going to defect first. And that's

what I worry is going to start

happening. The Canadians, you know, you

look at what the Canadians did over the

last 30 or 40 years. They basically made

a single bet that their future was with

a tight close integration with the

United States uh politically,

economically uh in every way. and they

now look at the way in which the United

States used that dependence to try to

extract concessions from them and

they're now saying to themselves well we

need to buy insurance we need to have

better relations with China and with

India and and once you start going down

that path

that that it's that becomes difficult to

to reverse even if you know a a

wonderful more internationally minded

more valuebased president comes into

power the Indians the the same way have

been thinking to themselves, oh, we need

to course correct and we need to take

care of our own situation.

And if everyone does that, you're you're

at some point you're in a very different

world than the world that we created

after 1945.

You know, I remember during the Bush era

when people said that Bush had done

irreparable damage to America's standing

in the world, its global leadership, to

international institutions.

Then came Obama and it turned out the

damage wasn't irreparable. Let's go to

the first Trump term and you know again

you hear the same things and then comes

Joe Biden as thoroughly a liberal

internationalist. I think too much

frankly but as thoroughly a liberal

internationalist as you could get and it

turns out much of the world is very

happy to to welcome America back into

the same role.

I can't tell if the two Trump terms, the

the going back to it, the sort of

erraticness of American leadership now

has made this something different where

the structures are changing around us as

you were saying in a way that makes this

a structural change or in fact, you

know, if Trump is succeeded by a more

conventional figure or a more

allianceoriented figure,

this all snaps back into something more

like its its previous place.

>> Yeah. Some of it will depend on whether

is there an election that is a kind of

complete repudiation of Trump and

Trumpism in in 28 and the world would

would read that in a particular way.

Look, there's a demand for American

leadership. I mean, look at the

Europeans who are very reluctant allies

at various points during the Cold War

and now are desperate for an America

that will simply commit to the to the

alliance. The more the world imagines

what a world without American leadership

and without American power looks like,

the more they want it. The problem is

the world has changed. you know, in in

in during the Iraq war, China was a very

was nothing near not nearly as powerful

as it as it is today. Russia was neither

had not been able to revive itself

through all the oil revenues,

consolidate power as Putin has. Um, and

so, you know, the the world is different

today and America is different. Look,

Bush, for all his flaws, you know, he

was he always tried to appeal to broader

principles. the Iraq war. He went to the

UN. He tried to get UN resolutions. He

went to Congress. He he articulated it

as part of a much larger uh issue of

terrorism. Uh he got assembled in

alliance of whatever 45 countries.

Trump, you know, with this with this

Iran war basically

revels in the unilateralism of it. He

revels in the fact that he does it all

by himself. He doesn't want uh the you

know to bother with Congress, to bother

with the UN, to bother with uh with

allies until, you know, things are going

badly and then he starts screaming that

he wants them. But if Trump represents

something in in America that is deep and

lasting, uh then it's very different

America. It's an it's an America that

really has uh not just tired but soured

on the role that it has played as this

kind of longer you know this country

that had an enlightened self-interest

that looked long that that was willing

to forgo the short-term extractive

benefits. Um I hope that that America is

still around. But as with everything

that's happened with Trump, there are

points at which I've watched Donald

Trump

success and thought to myself, I can't

believe that Americans want this. I I I

just, you know, and I still have

difficulty with that. There's also

always been this leftist critique that

the story you're telling, something that

we're telling here about America where

we say it had this humanitarian vision

and these ideals and sometimes it didn't

live up to them but broadly did that

that's always been false. That Trump is

America with the mask off. Trump has

brought what we've done elsewhere home

and he has

given up on ways we hid what we were

actually doing. Was his promise to

destroy civilian infrastructure and

bridges and power plants to destroy

civilization.

Is that so different than what we did

when we napalmed Vietnam?

So there is this idea that that Trumpism

actually isn't different. it continuity

and its explicit and aesthetically

brutish but honest. What do you think of

that?

>> I totally disagree. I mean, I think that

you can only compare a hegeimon to other

hegeimons. In other words, yes, the

United States looks like it's it's it

has its hands much dirtier than Costa

Rica, uh, which doesn't even have an

army, right? But um let's think about

the last 3 or 4 hundred years. Is the

United States been qualitatively

different as the you know the the

greatest global power compared with um

the Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany, the

Kaiser's Germany, Imperial France,

Imperial Britain, imperial

uh Holland. Yes, th those were all

rapacious colonial empires. Um, if you

think about the Soviet Union and Nazi

Germany, obviously much much worse. And

the United States used its power to

rebuild Europe to bring uh Asia, East

Asia out of poverty. I it created, as I

said, foreign aid. Um, and you know, of

course, we made lots of mistakes. And

what tends to happen is when you have an

ideological conception of your foreign

policy and you think you have to you

have to save Vietnam for from these evil

uh communists you you end up destroying

villages to save them. But that doesn't

change this basic fact that I'm talking

about which is in the broad continuity

of history when you look at other great

global powers what did we use our

influence for? What did we use our power

for? until World War II, every every

power that had had won extracted tribute

from the powers that lost, including in

World War I. People forget. So I I just

don't I I I see the argument about, you

know, American hypocrisy because we do

have done many many bad things. But I

think when you step back and think about

it in a in a broader historical sense,

the the United States has a lot to be

proud for of. Let me try a thought on

you that I've been

wrestling with for bigger reasons, which

is that I've been thinking a lot about

why liberalism in its various

manifestations

feels so exhausted

and uninspiring

here at this moment when what so many

people are afraid of and reacting to is

liberalism. achievements being wiped

away, right? How has that not created a

revival of its strength or a recognition

of its moral ambition? And and I think

one of the reasons is this that that

liberalism begins with, you know,

profoundly ambitious moral ideas about

the dignity of the individual and what

it means to be free.

Over time and particularly in the

post-war period, it encodes those ideas

and ideals into institutions,

laws, rules. We keep calling it the

rules-based international order.

And then it becomes the movement, the

philosophy of the people who staff and

lead those institutions.

And institutions fail and they fall

short and they bureaucratize.

And the problem liberalism has, the

problem the ideas that you're voicing so

eloquently

have right now in acting as an answer to

to Trump is that

what we are left offending are

institutions that don't really work as

opposed to values that really do.

And I don't really know where that goes

because of course in the real world you

need to do things and act through

institutions. But as an answer to what

he is, I don't think you can go back to

where say Joe Biden was talking

endlessly about NATO and its importance.

It's not a like a a stirring call for

more participation in the UN that Trump

challenges something deeper. And I think

liberals fall back on a defense of

institutions

in a way that makes me feel like there's

been a a either a losing of touch with

or a loss of faith in like the the moral

concepts that once animated the creation

of those institutions.

There's a lot in there. So let me let me

try and respond um to several elements

of it because it's it's a that's a very

you put a lot into that.

One part of what

liberalism's problem and and we both

mean liberalism small L you know the

kind of liberal enlightenment project is

it's one too much um over the last two

300 years think of everything that

liberalism has advocated from you know

the emancipation of slaves to women's

equality to racial equality to child

working laws to minimal work you know

Everything has happened. And if you look

at the things that you know the

classical conservatives argued for

>> religious toleration

>> right radical in its time right you

think about all the things the classical

conservatives argued for you know for a

powerful king for powerful church for uh

you know the the domination of the of of

a certain church-based morality over

life for women to be kept in their place

all all those things have lost. Right.

So at one level the problem is as you

say that liberalism not only has won but

then institutionalized itself and those

institutions inevitably become fat and

corrupt and nonresponsive and I think

this is a real problem and and what

Trump can present is the kind of fiery

insurgent spoiler uh which always has a

little bit more drama to it. you know,

in the in the 60s that came from the

from the radical left. Now it's coming

from the right. But there was always

that ability to, you know, to kind of

say, I'm going to upset the apple cart.

And that, you know, there's a certain

energy there that the the people holding

the the card together aren't able to

aren't able to exercise. And I think

that's a real problem. And you know I

mean somebody like a Mamani has a way of

infusing it with a greater sense of um

passion because maybe he goes directly

to the values and even though some cases

I don't agree with his his policies I

think he has a he's a master

communicator and he has solved in a way

the that problem that you're describing

but I think there are also two other

problems. Liberalism has always been

somewhat agnostic about the ultimate

purpose of life. You know, the whole

idea because it came out of the

religious wars was um you get to decide

what what the best life what your best

life is and we're not going to have a

dictator or a pope or a commisar tell

you that. But that leaves people

unsatisfied. I think there's a part of

people that want to be told what is a

what is a great life? What what you know

what is this cause greater than

themselves? Um, and you know the the the

conservative answer is well it's it's

God, family, traditional morality and

those are the things that that that

matter a lot. If you listen to Vance and

Hungary, you know, he says go out there

and bring back the gods of our fathers

uh the god of our fathers. Trump

represents something different in some

ways that that that there you know Vance

and John McCain have more in common in

their critique of liberalism. the the

kind of the empty center of liberalism.

Trump is appealing to the most naked

selfishness in people. He's saying, you

know, what's in it for you? Uh why why

aren't we getting more out of this? You

know, that's one of the reasons I think

that he is so comfortable with the most

the kind of open corruption that he

represents because in a sense he's

saying look those guys had a whole

system and you know it looked very fancy

and meritocratic but they they they got

the spoils now I'm going to get the

spoils in a way he's I think thinks of

himself representing his people but in

any case they seem they seem comfortable

with him getting them but there is this

sense of an appeal to naked selfishness,

self-interest, short-term extraction.

And that's to me much more worrying

because the the problem with liberalism

not having this this answer for the

meaning of life, that's an old problem

and it's a hard one to solve because the

whole point of liberalism is that human

beings get to decide that and it's not

being forced on them. I I am more

skeptical than some that the absence of

meaning at the center of liberalism is

the problem that the post liberal right

wants to make it out to be and that that

it's a problem here. But maybe to boil

down what you actually said about Trump,

I think Trump's core argument

is that didn't work. This does. Now the

thing that he is doing is proving that

this doesn't work. what he is attempting

doesn't work. His uh administration is

not going well. People do not like the

tariffs. They don't like the war. They

don't like him.

That will probably be enough for, you

know, Democrats to win the midterms.

But, but philosophically, in this moment

of rupture, it's not enough to build

something new. That Trumpism doesn't

work. Doesn't solve the problem of

people think that what you were doing

doesn't work either.

You know, I was reading this thing that

Jusome Demsis, who's the the editor and

founder of the publication The Argument,

wrote, and she was writing about the UN

and and and and liberal institutions and

and the ways they've both failed often

to live up to their moral commitments,

but also the way that that that Trump

makes you miss them anyway. and she

writes, "Watching the Trump

administration rip up even the pretense

of caring about liberal internationalism

is a reminder that sometimes virtue

signaling and hypocrisy are a preferable

equilibrium."

And and that I agree with her in the

sense that that realism is true. I would

much prefer imperfectly trying to live

up to real values than this. And also

it's a political message that I think

liberalism is kind of settled into. You

know, our institutions suck, but you

should defend them anyway. It sucks.

>> But I think it's is I can't remember who

said, but hypocrisy is the homage that

vice play bas. But but I guess this is

the the the point I I'm pushing not

because I think you know have the

answer, but because I think it's

something people need to they need to be

replying to this challenge more on on

the level it's actually being posed. A

movement that has adopted the

institutional view can only ever really

be a movement of the status quo and

modest reform.

And I think it's not about like having

the meaning of life, but it is about

some mission about interest. And what

Trump says is your interest is purely

economic, extractive, power, domination.

It's a very old vision of interest.

Interest can also be values. They can

also be moral. They can also be about

identity. But th this question of what

is the answer to Donald Trump's way of

describing what you should be interested

in, what is in the national interest,

what is in your interest is I think a

pretty deep one because I don't think to

say you know you know recommitting to

alliances.

I don't think that's enough for it.

That's not a moral mission. That's a

procedural tactic. So I think you're

getting at something very very important

and I was trying to get at it when

saying you know if you looked at the

social democratic party of Germany which

was probably the most advanced social

democratic party uh in Europe in say

1905

almost everything that it had on its

party platform is now been been adopted

by every western country. So in some

ways what has happened is liberalism has

succeeded and these societies that have

come out of them out of it as a result

are wildly successful. People will often

say that you know there was a great

clash in the 20th century between

communism and capitalism and capitalism

won but actually in the political

scientist social Sher Burman makes this

point very very well. What actually won

at the end was was social democracy was

a mixture of the welfare state and

capitalism everywhere even including the

United States. We have a ve vast uh

welfare state. And so once you have

created that once the basic conditions

of creating a middle class democratic

society uh in which there are

protections for the poor, for the

unemployed, you know, there is health

care of some kind.

Where do you go? And part of what

happened is I think the the left in some

areas went too far left and in an

illiberal fashion. you know the the

emphasis on quotas and DEI and all that

kind of thing in other areas it decided

it wanted to go even further left right

so the challenge is I see the problem

with saying okay you know we've arrived

at this stage and a lot of people I have

to confess like me thought and maybe

this is cuz I grew up in in you know in

in India this is pretty amazing what you

have been able to achieve and you look

at the historical achievement of being

able to have these stable middle class

societies in which individual rights are

protected, where poor people are are

taken care of. This this is amazing.

Now, let's try to get it right. Let's

try to get the the the Rube Goldberg of

American healthc care to work better so

that you actually cover that last 20

something million or however many it is.

But that is unsatisfying as a you know

nobody writes poem poems about expanding

Obamacare. No, you know so I see the

problem. But you know I think that that

is the reality and when you start trying

to find things to write poems and hymns

and and fight battles for you're often

going in dangerous places. Now that's

the liberal in me. You know I I'm I I'm

suspicious of that much passion uh put

into into politics. and look at what the

passion on the right looks like. So I

don't have a good answer, but I do think

that the fundament I'm sure that the

fundamental critique that Trump comes at

this from which is that the United

States has done terribly over the last

30 or 40 years is just nonsense. The

United States has done extraordinarily

well over the last h 100red years and in

particular over the last 30 years with

one big caveat where we have not been as

good on distributional issues but which

we could easily have done that that

there was

>> yeah if Donald Trump and the people in

this party would have let us would have

>> exactly I'm wary of saying that the left

needs to go somewhere where there's

going to be a lot of drama and energy

and people are going to be singing songs

and because that often leads you in in

bad places. And there I do think look,

liberalism was born out of this distrust

of all that passion that religion and uh

and and hierarchy came from with with

the state and the church telling you

this is the right thing to do the the

you know here are the values. So there

is a a moderation romanticism in

politics is something to be taken to be

viewed with a certain certain degree of

skepticism. I think I've been coming to

a a more opposite view, but uh I'm I'm

going to pick that thread up with you

another time.

>> You're going to go back to the 60s and

and uh and start some some new new new

cult movement.

>> I think that the

I do not think that in the way politics

and attention works today.

You can have a political movement that

is afraid of inspiration

and afraid of passion.

I was reading Adrien Waldridge's new

book on liberalism and and he he sort of

has this paragraph early on. It's really

his thesis paragraph where he,

>> you know, talks about both liberalism's

radicalism, it's it's sort of radical

imagination, but then also exactly as

you just were, the importance of its

moderate temperament that distrusts the

passions and and wants to keep a a lid

on things. And I I just don't think

those two things hold together that

well. Now I can come up with balances of

things. I do believe liberalism to be

fundamentally a balancing act and I

think of it as a balancing act between

moral imagination

sort of plurality or what I often think

of as liberality

and um

institutions and your relationship to

institutions. So you are balancing

things if they come out of alignment I

think push liberalism into failure

modes. But I do think as liberalism

became the party of people for whom

institutions have worked, its

temperament has become too institutional

and too afraid

>> of things that could upset

>> the structures.

>> And so then if people don't believe the

structures are working for them, then it

really has nothing to say to them

because it just fundamentally disagrees.

>> No, I agree with that. And I and I think

you know what the where I would like to

see the radicalism and the and the and

the kind of reform is you know when I

look at the issue of of affirmative

action to me I I was always very

uncomfortable with it. I always thought

Lyndon Johnson's explanation of why you

needed it to help formerly enslaved and

and black people who had then lived

under 100 years of Jim Clo Jim Crow made

perfect sense. But then it starts

getting expanded and it starts being

expanded to all kinds of people, you

know, like people like me, people who

came which I thought made no sense. I

mean, America has been particularly bad

to African-Americans. It has been

particularly good to other immigrants.

That's why people from all over the

world have tried desperately to come to

America for hundreds of years because

the United States is unusually good at

welcoming and and accepting. So there

shouldn't have been affirmative action

for people of color, whatever that

means, or you know, things like that.

And then it becomes, it goes from being

affirmative action to quotas, and then

it becomes, you know, diversity

mandates. And you know I I I I feel as

though there should have been some some

moment of reckoning and saying why wait

have we have we completely lost track of

what the the core of liberalism which

was about as Martin Luther King put it

judging people by the content of their

character not the color of their skins.

And those are the kind of things where I

think you know liberalism gets so

institutionalized and conventional

wisdom forms and it becomes impossible

to to to course correct. What I worry

about is you kind of romanticism for

romanticism's sake. The people who run

around today are they call themselves

the principalists because they believe

they are they are adhering to the

original ideals and ideas of the 1979

revolution unlike the terrible

pragmatists who have been who've been

trying to find a way to compromise with

the west. There's another dimension of

all this that is not philosophical that

I want to touch before we end which is

one way of understanding the predatory

hegeimon moment is that it is the gasp

of a dying hegeimon that only has a

limited amount of time left in which it

can extract these kinds of rents.

Now, I would like to believe that that

is not true, but there are ways in which

it often seems to be how Donald Trump

acts personally. He's only got so much

time left on this earth and only so much

time left in this presidency. And he and

his family are going to try to like pull

out everything they can from it. And

he's always been very obsessed with the

rise of China before that, the rise of

Japan. And you know, you could

understand him as trying to monetize

America's power while it still has it

and in doing hastening America's loss of

it. You you wrote a piece that said like

the post American world is coming into

view. What did you mean by that? I I

think that you are seeing countries

around the world find ways to make

accommodations around America. So it's

not purely a kind of question of

American decline. is that we are no

longer leading. So you take something

like protectionism. Yeah, we've become

very protectionist. And what you notice

is very interesting. Other countries

regard the United States as okay, you're

the problem we have to deal with and

we'll cut some deal with you because we

you're too important for us not to. But

but outside of that, countries are

making more free trade deals with one

another. you know, the Indians with the

Europeans, the Europeans with the with

the Latin Americans, the Canadians with

So, in other words, the one thing that

the US had going for it was this agenda

setting power and that's gone. The US

has viewed as off on its own weird

track. Everyone has to has to deal with

it because it's too important. Uh, and

so they're they're they're doing things

and that is a sign of a certain kind of

decline. and and the other one is this

obsession to to have enormous

geopolitical control. You know, one of

the the the haunting parallels for me is

to think about the British Empire in its

last 30 40 years. Um people forget, but

after World War I, the British Empire

expanded to its largest state ever, to

its largest size ever, um only 20 or 30

years before it collapsed. And the

reason was that the Brit British elites

got very engaged and enamored with the

idea of controlling Iraq and controlling

Afghanistan and controlling, you know,

they would find these there was this

wonderful book um called Africa and the

Victorians by Robinson and Gallagher in

which they talk about how why the

British annexed FODA uh you in the south

of Sudan. Well, because they thought you

needed to control the sewers canal to

control the route to India. Well, if you

needed to control the Swiss Canal, you

needed to control Egypt. But if you

needed to control Egypt, you needed to

control uh upper Sudan. But to control

upper Sudan, you needed to control lower

Sudan. So, boing, there you were taking,

you know, sending troops to forod, which

nobody in in anywhere in Britain would

have any idea where it was and why were

they doing that. Meanwhile,

what they were neglecting was the

reality that Germany was becoming much

more productive. America was becoming

much more productive. And I look at what

we're doing today. I mean, you think

about it, right? This is the third

Middle Eastern war we have fought in 25

years. I do worry that this imperial

temptation to have the so much of the re

of the focus and the resources of the

country placed in these far away parts

of the world where it's not clear we're

actually gaining much. We're expending

enormous energy and we're expending a

lot of our our moral capital, our

political capital, our actual financial

capital. That part is very similar to

what happened to Britain. And I don't

know whether it's exhaustion or whether

it's a kind of imperial arrogance or

maybe a combination of the two. Uh but

that feels that feels it feels

hauntingly reminiscent.

>> I saw a Gallup poll that was coming from

their world survey. So polls, people all

across the world and approval of Chinese

leadership had passed approval of

American leadership. Neither was that

high. It was 36% to 31%.

But that the world now prefers Chinese

leadership to ours struck me as

if we were trying to do is make America

great again. I mean, that might be one

of the indicators you would look at to

see if it was working or failing. And

it's actually mostly a vote against us

because nobody actually wants Chinese

leadership. I think they don't know what

it would mean. Uh the Chinese for the

most part don't seem to want to offer

it. Look at what has happened with the

with this recent crisis. They got

involved a little bit. Mostly what

they're involved in is trying to see

that the currency settlements are made

in in Chinese currency. The Chinese are

a free rider. They want to they want a

free ride on, you know, the benefits of

American hijgemony while all the all the

while criticizing it. They don't have an

alternate conception. So what people are

going to find is unfortunately a world

without American power is going to be a

less open, a less liberal, a less

rule-based world. It's but it's not

going to magically re reconstitute

itself around a Chinese hedgeimon

because that is not China's conception

of its world role. It's not going to be

able to do it. It does not have the

trust. Uh we we still for whatever

reason uh for for good reasons have an

enormous amount of trust because we

built it over 80 years. Um you know look

at we have I don't know 55 treaty allies

in the world. China has won North Korea.

Um you if you want to add uh Russia and

Iran fine three you know so the the the

truth is a world without American power

will be a worse world for for for the

rest of the world as well and I think

many of them feel a certain nostalgia

for the for the old American power that

they used to denounce. I have somewhat

rosecolored glasses about these things

but I think America was very special in

its world role and I don't think China

will be able to do that. I noticed the

was in that.

>> It certainly was. Right. Right now, we

are definitely speaking in the past

tense. The the United States is

currently not exercising its world role

with the same level of strategic

thought, with the same moral vision, and

with the same humanitarian impulse that

it has done, albeit imperfectly.

I hope that that can come back. But my

great worry as I said is some of these

things uh are very hard to you know

they're very hard to reconstitute. The

world moves on the world changes people

your reputations take a lifetime to

build and it it's very easy to destroy.

It's true for human beings and it's true

for for nations maybe.

>> That I think is a good place to end. And

now it's our final question. What are

three books you would recommend to the

audience? So, one book I thought since

we do often talk about the rules-based

international order and it does sound so

wonky that I would I would suggest a

wonky book that explains it. The best

scholar who's written on this is a guy

named John Iikenberry at Princeton and I

think the book is called a world safe

for democracy and encapsulates what is

this thing the rules-based international

order the liberal international order

that the US uh created. The second is a

book by Rhynold Neber called the irony

of American history. And it's really all

about the great danger when you are

powerful of believing you are virtuous

and believing that uh you know might is

right. Um and the the call for humility.

Um it ends with a call for kind of

Christian realism in American foreign

policy. and the Christian there really

refers to the humility at the heart of

Christianity which sometimes we forget

when listening to Pete he hexath um and

the final one on similar vein is uh

Graham Green's book the quiet American

uh I think that one of the one of

sometimes novels do it better than than

anything else is a novel set in Vietnam

through the eyes of a sour despectic

world weary uh British journalist who

sees this very idealistic American who

believes that America is going to be

able to, you know, bring peace, justice,

and virtue to Vietnam. And you can

imagine it doesn't quite work out that

way.

>> Fred Sakaria, thank you very much.

>> Thank you, Ezra.