Filmed March 19, 2026
BILL KRISTOL:
Hi, welcome to Conversations. I’m Bill Kristol. Very pleased to be joined today by Aaron Friedberg, professor of politics, international relations at Princeton, author of Getting China Wrong. Great China expert, but more broadly, strategic policy expert practitioner, two years in the White House at the beginning of the Iraq War. Maybe we’ll come back to that in a minute. And I just want to say it was at a very nice ceremony, more than a ceremony, a series of substantive panels honoring your four decades, is that right, teaching in Princeton?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
I’m going to be one year shy of that when I retire at the end of this semester.
BILL KRISTOL:
Okay, so almost four decades. Yeah, that’s really something though. Very impressive. And you had no Princeton connection before that, right?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
I’m sorry. Yeah, I’ve been here the whole time.
BILL KRISTOL:
But I mean, you hadn’t gone to Princeton. I mean, is this sort of like–
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Oh no. No. No, no. I was rejected actually.
BILL KRISTOL:
Oh, really?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Yes.
BILL KRISTOL:
Did they know that when they hired you? That was like, yeah—
AARON FRIEDBERG:
I didn’t tell them.
BILL KRISTOL:
Do you lord and over them a lot, the students tell them—
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Every so often. Kennedy made some remark and my version of it is I got the best of all possible worlds, Harvard education and a job at Princeton.
BILL KRISTOL:
Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Anyway, well, it was a really terrific event, a very nice tribute to you, obviously, and so many students you’ve had over the years and colleagues, but really a high quality set of discussions I’ve got to say. So I really enjoyed that. So thank you for including me in that and thank you for joining me today.
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Thank you. It’s a pleasure to see you again.
BILL KRISTOL:
So let’s talk about where we are in this war that we’re now, what is it? It’s March 18th, to get it straight. Wednesday, we’re two and a half weeks in. How did it happen? What its implications are? Where might go? What its implications are? Especially, I really want to focus on that for Asia, your area of specialty, but also for the broader geostrategic, geopolitical context. I was thinking you came to Washington in ‘03 shortly after the beginning of the Iraq War, for two years to work in the White House. Yeah.
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Yes.
BILL KRISTOL:
And so you saw a war being managed from the White House. You saw it pretty close up even just before it began, certainly in its beginning stages, and then as various adjustments were being made. So you’re familiar with how that process works and how chaotic it can be. What strikes you from the outside looking at the launching of this war?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Well, in that case, and I have been thinking about it a lot, although I arrived on the scene after things had been set in motion, and in fact, as things were about to unravel in the summer of 2003. But in that case, whatever one may think of the outcome, the Bush administration went to great lengths to try to justify what it was going to do, to try to rally congressional support, to try to persuade allies. I mean, it succeeded to varying degrees in those things, but it took it seriously and did get a vote from Congress supporting what it was about to do. There were critiques after the fact about the planning, particularly for the post-war planning, but there had been elaborate preparations for the war itself. In this case, maybe there were military preparations. There obviously had to be, but I don’t see much evidence of anything else.
Obviously, there’s been no attempt to explain to the American people what we’re doing. No going to Congress. I mean, we’re sort of in the further stages of the devolution of the constitutional system that the founders created. We’ve gone from Congress has the power to declare war. Well, we don’t do that anymore. Then after the Vietnam War, he had the War Powers Act, and various administrations observed that to varying degrees. Now we don’t even have that. This administration has chosen, essentially, as nearly as we can tell on the judgment of a single person to take the country to war. And here we are.
BILL KRISTOL:
It is pretty astonishing, and it is a real war, right?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Oh yeah. I don’t know what else you would call it. Yes, definitely.
BILL KRISTOL:
I mean, more than a one day … I mean, you can sort of understand killing Soleimani in 2020, the one-day operation in June, maybe the Maduro operation. I do feel that this is … Yeah, I agree that this is really quite something that we are two and a half weeks in. I mean, you’re a student of American political system too. Two and a half weeks in, and Congress not having been consulted beforehand still hasn’t been consulted and isn’t really insisting on being consulted.
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Not as far as I can tell. I mean, in that sense, this is a continuation of what we’ve seen Trump do across every policy domain, which is essentially to take to himself the power to make and execute decisions with minimal consultation. So it’s consistent with everything that he’s been doing, but it’s a little surprising. It sets him up for trouble later on down the line because as we saw during 2003 and after, even if you’ve gotten congressional approval, it doesn’t mean that people will stick with you if things start to go badly. In this case, people are already peeling off, at least on the Democratic side, and I suspect we’ll see more of that from Republicans too. So there’s a reason to go to Congress. It’s not just a nicety, and Trump has chosen to bypass that.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. I mean, Iraq became so controversial, of course, and ended up very difficult domestically for Bush. But he had a lot of leeway that first year or so because he had a congressional authorization and bipartisan support for it. People forget how things did start to go south a little bit as soon as he showed up in Washington. But he had a year to try to fix it and all. I mean, yeah, it really does make a difference I think in terms of the … Well, does it make a difference on maybe or can Trump just keep doing it? I mean, what do you think about that? How much does it constrain him?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
I think it does make a difference or it could make a difference. And the fact that he didn’t perhaps give some insight into his thinking, and maybe we can talk about that, although nobody can answer that for sure. But it does seem consistent with hypothesis that various people have advanced, that he saw this potentially as like other operations that he had authorized and that had been more or less successful over the preceding six months, including Venezuela and the first bombing in Iran, and thought this was going to be a one-and-done, do it and get out. So maybe he didn’t anticipate that things were going to drag on. I don’t think there’s any reason to think that he did anticipate that. Had he, there would’ve been all the more reason, I think, to go to Congress because you want to try to bolster that support.
I assume it still matters. I mean, the way the Republican Party has been behaving and not fulfilling even the minimal requirements for oversight, maybe that’s no longer true, but people are going to start bailing out if things really begin to go south. And I think not having been asked makes it even easier for people to do that. In the case of the 2003 war, people could say, “Well, we voted for it. We have to stick with it for a while.” And that of course didn’t keep him on board forever. But in this case, no one has their fingerprints on it except for the President himself.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? What operationally do you think has surprised them? I mean, that is to say, I very much think he wanted to do it quickly. And I guess in retrospect, could he have, after three or four days, just said, “We’ve further degraded their missile capacity, the nuclear stuff. We’re sort of giving up on the regime change stuff, but that could still happen.” And I guess I’m slightly bewildered. Everyone now takes it for granted, well, we’re in it’s in the third week and it looks like it’s going to go longer and I guess that was somehow what had to happen.
But I’m just curious, why did it happen? Did Iran make that happen or was that a choice of Trump or Israel? Explain what happened here.
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Well, I guess you’d have to back up and ask what was the plan? What was the objective, the strategic objective? And the thing that strikes me, and it’s not a novel observation, I guess, but we have this fantastic military machine with highly competent people in charge of it and a very complex and thorough planning process for conduct of military operations. But then there is supposed to be a strategic level that sits above that where presumably there’s some kind of consultation consideration of various alternative scenarios, and there doesn’t seem to be any of that. And then when you stop to think about why that might be so, it’s not so surprising because there is no National Security Council in effect. It’s been cut down to bare minimum. That’s where that kind of interagency planning would go on. So who was it who made these decisions? I assume it was Trump and maybe a handful of other people, but there would be no mechanism for producing plans and thinking through the various alternatives as there would be in a normal situation.
BILL KRISTOL:
And maybe no mechanism for saying three days in or six days in or two weeks in, okay, we need to have a serious long meeting about where are we and what are our options?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Right. You could imagine going into it and making a plan and saying, “Look, we’re going to do this. We’re going to hit the following targets and we’re going to declare that we’ve accomplished our objectives and then we’re going to pull back from it.” I mean, follow up to the nuclear strikes, maybe, joining Israel and attacking Iran’s missile capabilities, maybe. You could have set some ceiling and had in mind that there would be a point at which you would take an off-ramp. It doesn’t seem like they thought that through. So it seems as if they’ve been caught up in this process.
I mean, I’m sure there were plans that went days, weeks, Trump has referred to four weeks. And I think when he says these things, it’s usually a reflection of something that he’s heard or something that he’s been told. So maybe there was a kind of four-week campaign plan. At the end of which, what? Did they think that at that point the regime would’ve collapsed? That’s certainly the way Trump was talking when this all started out.
But to answer your question, yes, you could have imagined the scenario in which we would go in and pull back. Now, the other part of this, which it’s hard to know for sure, is what the Israelis were thinking. They seem to have had a more thorough campaign plan in mind. I’m not sure about their strategy if they really think that they can bring down the regime. They seem to be doing a lot of things that would suggest they hope that that’s what will happen. So maybe we’re in sync with them and carried along by the momentum of what’s happening. But now, of course, because of the closure of the Strait and all of the complications that that produces, it seems to me it just gets much, much harder simply to declare victory and go home. I think that’s going to be tough. It doesn’t mean that Trump won’t do it, but the TACO option seems to be much more difficult than it would’ve been when the war began.
BILL KRISTOL:
Well, let’s talk about that. I guess the Strait, Iran’s closing of the Strait is the biggest … Well, Trump has said is the biggest surprise for him, I guess, and the biggest variable, so to speak. One could imagine a scenario where they didn’t do that and we pummeled them, and Israel pummeled them, and they hit some Arab countries and killed some Americans even in those strikes and so forth. And it was sort of going along that path. The Strait, of course, is not just the Strait, it’s the world economy. And then you suddenly have energy prices and gas prices and looming further economic effects on many sectors.
And what do you make of that? I mean, why didn’t they expect it? Were they right not … Was it a surprise? Was it a surprise to you? It was something people hadn’t … They haven’t done it in the past, I guess, people didn’t anticipate it? Talk about that.
AARON FRIEDBERG:
It shouldn’t have been a surprise because people have been talking about this and thinking about this for almost 40 years going back to the Iranian Revolution. Yes, they haven’t done it, but it’s always been a possibility. I guess there were some stories that suggested, as you might expect, that maybe it was General Caine, the military in briefing, Trump referred to this possibility and he apparently dismissed it. I don’t know why, what his thinking was there, but I’m sure that people thought about it.
The question then is, what exactly did we do to prepare for that possibility? The fact that we’re now running around asking our allies whom we’ve been insulting at every possible opportunity to come and bail us out doesn’t look like something that was planned in advance. The fact that we’re talking about other countries having mine sweepers, the fact that we’re pulling units from the Pacific to bring them into the theater once the war is already underway doesn’t suggest that there was a lot of advanced thought to this scenario.
But it would be the logical thing for the regime to do if it felt that it was being pushed to the wall, which pretty clearly it does feel this is the most powerful tool that they have and they’re using it. And it turns out, of course, it creates enormously difficult problems for us and for others. It’s one thing to close the Strait, it’s another thing to force them open. That may not even be possible.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, we’ll talk about that. I mean, I guess it is a real economic thing. I mean, it’s not as if this is a symbolic thing. Sometimes there are war important symbolic openings, closings and so forth, strikes and counterstrikes. But here, the actual economy is taking a hit already, I guess, quite a large one. And how does that affect, do you think … Well, how should that affect the planner’s thinking and how do you think it’s affecting the Trump administration’s thinking?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
I assume that at least the political people, and maybe they’re all political people at the high levels of the administration, have to be very concerned about this. I mean, after all, what was one of the reasons that he got elected? Because people were angry about inflation and they were mad at Biden and blamed him for it. And now there’s a real risk that that is going to take off again because increase in price of oil, as people have pointed out, it’s the increase in price of just about everything. Things that have to be transported, it’s going to have an impact on food prices because of shortages of fertilizers.
So the longer this goes on, the more painful the economic consequences become. And I would assume the greater the pressure on Trump to try to wind things down and get out. I mean, I assume that part of the reason that he did it when he did it, because it doesn’t seem like there was anything that would’ve made them believe that there was an imminent threat that had to be dealt with right now. I assume that part of the timing from his point of view was that this is the early spring and we have a congressional election coming up and he’s given lots of indications that he’s concerned about how those are going to go. And if he thought this was going to be a quick victory, that would be something that might help him out.
But the fact that it doesn’t look like it’s going to be means that the pressure is going to mount, the political pressure is going to mount. And of course, not just the domestic political pressure, but from all quarters, including from our own allies who are going to be feeling the effects of this increasingly with every passing day.
BILL KRISTOL:
I want to come right back in just a second to this key question of where Trump might go from here, given that he is presumably getting towards the fork in the road of either looking for a way to wind it down or conceivably trying to force the states open, which implies various military moves, which you could discuss. But one thing I’d be curious about, you’ve been close to the Pentagon, you’ve done a lot of work with the Defense Department and a lot of friends and students actually who’ve been there and know people there up and down the chain, civilian and military. What about Pete Hegseth? I just have to ask you about that because I’ve been so startled, but how do you react as someone who knows that building and knows that the culture of both the military and the civilians there actually to the way Hegseth’s been really on the public side, at least conducting this war?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Well, I don’t know, of course. I always think of the scene of all of those flag rank officers sitting in the auditorium at Quantico and listening to Hegseth lecture them about physical fitness and whatever else it was he was talking about and of course they’re blank and expressionless, but you can just imagine what’s going through their heads. So one thing that I’ve noted in this, which is, you know, it’s another disturbing trend that I think we’ve come to take for granted, but the way in which our top officials, Hegseth being one, Trump being another, talk about war and seem to glory in the destruction that we’re wreaking… I guess, the White House—I don’t know if they’ve taken them down—but they had some little video clip that was interspersing scenes from various action movies with gun camera footage basically of things blowing up and the music playing in the background.
This is just so unserious, especially when you stop to think what’s actually happening in those videos on the ground of people who are getting incinerated and blown to bits. So the lack of seriousness about warfare just has to rankle with people whose careers are built around careful preparation for, if necessary, for the use of force. I can’t believe that this is something that inspires them or gives them confidence in the judgment of the people at the top.
I mean, going back again to this question of who was in the room, I really wonder, I guess there’s some indications that the President’s confidence in Hegseth has diminished. Was he playing a role in the planning? The only serious adults in the cabinet seemed to be the Secretary of State, maybe the Secretary of the Treasury. Were those people involved? Perhaps they were. But it’s not as if there is or has been strong civilian leadership of the Defense Department. There’s been lots of intervention in the whole building and the whole process, including in the military and the promotions and so on, but it’s not like Rumsfeld trying to transform the Pentagon or one of these other successful secretaries of Defense taking the building by the lapels and shaking it. It’s hard to believe that things are working smoothly there.
BILL KRISTOL:
In terms of the public, what do you think about that in terms of the public presentation by Hegseth?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Well, I just find it shocking. It seems to me so inappropriate, and I don’t know what the effect is on the American people. I guess the thing that we’ve experienced over the last 10 years is a kind of overall degradation in the quality of the discourse on everything political, up to and including war. And we saw this, I guess, starting with these attacks on boats that were alleged to be carrying drugs. I think people refer to gamification, the transformation of warfare into a kind of game, because when you watch it on a screen maybe it looks like it does when you watch it on a video game, that’s not good. It seems to me that is not conducive to serious thinking and serious discussion of what’s at stake. And I wonder how that sits with people, even with people who might for a variety of reasons, be sympathetic to Trump. A lot of military veterans… Not all veterans are supportive of the administration, but some of them clearly are. I wonder how they feel about the way all of this is being presented. And we’ve been relatively lucky so far because there have been a limited number of American casualties. But if unfortunately those numbers were to increase, that lack of seriousness I think is going to come back to haunt people.
BILL KRISTOL:
Oh, that’s very interesting. Well, let’s then get to the question of what’s going to happen. And I guess you seem skeptical about the TACO alternative. I’ve always thought that would be Trump’s preference. And I guess I’m a little … Yeah, explain a little why you think he can’t do that, I guess. I mean, why isn’t there a deal to be done where without calling it an explicit deal, maybe some European can come in and broker some tacit agreement that basically we stop bombing and Iran opens the straight. That seems like the obvious quid pro quo, and it’s sort of, I would think, in Trump’s interest, and Iran would be happy to stop getting pummeled. And I don’t know. But you and others I very much respect, seem to have moved over the last two weeks—not moved—in an intelligent way, reacting to real world events from thinking that’s likely to thinking that’s maybe not quite so likely as I would’ve thought. So tell me, explain that.
AARON FRIEDBERG:
I guess it seems to me there are at least three scenarios. One, of course, would be the administration gets extremely lucky and the Iranian regime collapses and some more favorable regime emerges. I don’t know what probability to assign to that, but it seems like a pretty low number. Second is—and I think this is what they’re doing now—they believe that they found ways to ratchet up the pressure on the Iranian regime even more, so as to force them to come to terms. Whether that means just backing away from closing the straits or something more, handing over portions of their nuclear program, whatever it would be, the pressure would have to be extreme in order to reach that point. And that’s what I interpret as the significance of talking about Kharg Island and maybe the significance of the strike that occurred earlier today on gas fields in Iran. There are things we can do to further damage the Iranian economy, and in particular to make it difficult or impossible for the Iranians to continue to earn some money from selling energy. We haven’t done some of those things because they would be enormously disruptive for the whole global market, but it looks like we’re thinking about that at least, and we can talk about that. Those options seem to be pretty risky.
And then the third possibility, and I think this is probably where we’ll wind up, would be to try to strike some kind of a deal that would be face-saving for us and would let the Iranian regime off the hook. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I think it may be that that’s where we’re headed. One of the reasons that I’m a little skeptical that that’s going to happen easily or quickly, aside from whatever it is that Trump is thinking, and I don’t think he wants to appear to have been beaten, although he’s perfectly capable of spinning whatever happens as a great victory for himself. But I think the Iranians want to inflict pain on him and on the United States and on everybody else that they think is against them. And that partly may be rational.
They may feel that they need to do more to deter people from ever contemplating doing anything like this again. And the more pain they inflict, maybe the greater the deterrent against any kind of repeat performance. But I do wonder if there’s also a maybe not so rational element to it, which has to do with hatred and vindictiveness, which wouldn’t be entirely surprising given everything that’s happened. And I always think of, it’s not parallel really, but I always think of the events that surrounded the eventual release of the hostages back in 1980. And you remember the Iranian revolutionaries held onto those hostages until whatever, one minute after Jimmy Carter had left office and Reagan had taken over. What was the reason for that? They’re really sticking it to him.
So that’s one reason why I think it may not be quite so simple just to say, okay, we quit. It’s not clear to me that the Iranians are ready to quit yet. But I do think eventually something in that range is the most likely. I don’t think regime change is very likely, although we can talk about it, maybe it’s possible. I don’t think some kind of clearcut military victory is very likely. So what’s left? It’s not exactly TACO, but it’s some kind of semi-negotiated ceasefire at least that reopens the straight. And the Iranians would have some reason to want that to happen eventually because of course the closure makes it hard for them as well as for everybody else.
BILL KRISTOL:
I mean, it seems to me that the biggest semi-inflection point on the way to this bigger decision or possible decision or some decision by Trump and the Iranians is ground troops. I mean, I was in a meeting yesterday here in—just a discussion really, of people not in government currently, people like you and me though, who mostly have been a little bit—and there’s a lot of focus on that. I mean, is it just another intensification of the pressure? Obviously there could be casualties, but we’re also pretty strong in the ground as we are in the air. Or is that kind of a big moment where you might have a real rethinking by Trump one way or the other, and also real world consequences one way or the other?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
I would think it would be a very big decision, partly because he’s made such a thing of saying that he wouldn’t do something like that. Which doesn’t mean that he can’t, but partly also because the risks go up inevitably. If you have people on the ground, they’re going to be vulnerable no matter how powerful we are. And we’ve learned this painfully and repeatedly. So I would think there would be a long and careful consideration of whether that was worth doing. It’s also not entirely clear to me what the purpose would be. And I can imagine three possibilities. One, say instead of destroying Kharg Island, you seize control of it. And that’s the facility through which Iranian oil exports are put on ships and sent out of the country. So it’s a way of choking off the limited flow of oil that’s coming out of Iran and increasing this pressure on them to come to terms. So that’s one possibility.
And maybe the attacks that have taken place, which supposedly were only on military facilities are a precursor to that. Trump notably said that he didn’t order strikes on the energy facilities out of decency, which is not a word that I would normally associate with him. So that’s one possible mission. I guess the other—I would’ve been interested to hear the conversation that you were involved in yesterday, because I don’t consider myself expert on this and I don’t know what would be involved—but it does seem like if we were trying to force the straight open or to make it reasonably safe for tankers to pass through, we have to control the portions of the littoral that abuts the Gulf so that Iranian forces couldn’t fire missiles that could strike ships as they passed along the coast. And of course, those are narrow waters. So that would be another.
I don’t know how difficult that would be or how big an operation that would have to be, what the scope of the area is that you would have to feel you could control in order to increase the likelihood that ships could pass safely. But it seems like it would be something pretty substantial, not just 2,500 troops from a marine expeditionary unit, but something bigger than that. And you’d also have to provide air cover and you’d have to be able to resupply. It doesn’t seem like that’s something for which we’ve prepared. Again, I don’t know what the scale would be, but I imagine it would have to be fairly large and the American military, like any really high quality professional military, is very conservative in its planning and it’s not going to want to take unnecessary risks putting significant number of troops in harm’s way without the assurance that they can be backed up. But that’s the second way of maybe achieving a kind of a military victory. The third thing that people have mentioned, and it’s not directly related to energy, but is some kind of operation to seize what remains of the Iranian nuclear program, and in particular, the highly enriched uranium that’s thought to be buried under the ground, partly as a result of US airstrikes. And I’ve seen some discussion of that. I don’t know how informed it is, but that seems like an enormously risky thing because it’s further inland, you probably need troops to establish some kind of protected zone in which you’re doing this. Then you need all kinds of heavy equipment to actually dig down and get the stuff. Then you need to be able to transport it safely. And the highly enriched uranium is extremely dangerous, radioactive, it’s toxic. I can’t imagine that we would do something like that. That just seems, of all the options, that seems like the most risky. So yeah, there are some ways you could use force, but none of them look particularly appealing.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, there’s a reason people wanted … I mean, in Iraq, no one wanted to use ground troops, but it was felt that if you can be serious, if we thought there were weapons of mass destruction. So if you’re serious about getting those, and you’re also serious about getting rid of Saddam, such a brutal dictator and aggressive one to his neighbors and so forth, you had to go for regime change, which meant ground troops and a lot of them. And I do think there’s something, absent regime change, the idea that we’re going to send a lot of troops into a non, what do they call it? A non-permissive environment or something like that. And I mean, some could go in obviously, especially for raids and for immediate actions, but to secure something, that means having a presence.
The Kharg Island thing, again, this is I think a price maybe the public discourse pays. I say this as a member of the public, not as any kind of expert there on the military stuff. I mean, it’s been a little silly. I mean, it’s like ground troops, okay, maybe. Kharg Island, that’s very important to Iran’s export of oil— correct. Therefore, ground troops to Kharg Island, which is okay if you want to shut off, I think, their export of oil. Correct me if I’m wrong, it doesn’t open the straight. I mean, the straight opening is really an entirely different operation, which would have to do presumably with securing the border of the straight and making it hard to either send little speedboats out to blow up ships or use drones or lob missiles and so forth. I have no idea, not being a military person at all, how deep that would have to go, how long, that’s a pretty long stretch, I think along the straight. It’s mountainous, some of it.
I mean, but anyway, that’s sort of a different operation, but I don’t know. I mean, maybe you’d want to shut down their oil and that would strangle the economy of Iran even further. I suppose that would be one strategy, but that’s probably not an immediate … Well, I don’t know. I shouldn’t even say, I don’t know. But I am struck that we’re talking … I mean, I guess it’s always the case in war. There are many options and it’s perfectly legitimate to raise them all and discuss them. But does seem particularly … I mean, hopefully they know what they’re doing inside a little more, but the public discussion is pretty … don’t you think, kind of all over the place? I don’t know.
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Yeah. Well, and again, Trump saying these casual things about, “I could destroy it tomorrow, just take one word.” Yeah, but it wouldn’t solve the problem of opening the straight. You’re right. It’s a totally separate thing. I guess, what would be the theory? Well, we’re inflicting pain on them just as they are inflicting pain on us and everybody else. And at some point, they’re going to cry uncle if we do that. I don’t know what reason there is for believing that they would do that quickly, even under those circumstances. Yeah, but those are totally separate things.
The other part of the discussion of all this, again, largely coming from Trump, that’s sort of disconnected is he’s saying, “I’m going to our allies and asking them for help on keeping the straight open. They’ve got minesweepers and so on.” But the help that our allies can provide is not useful for dealing with what is currently the threat. I suppose if the Iranians do mine the straight, which to my knowledge they haven’t done, then okay, maybe minesweepers are important, although you wouldn’t want them operating in an area where they were vulnerable. So it’s not like that would solve the problem. But at the moment, that’s not what the threat is. So talking as if if only our allies would step up and do the right thing, the problem would be solved is nonsense, because there’s nothing that they have to offer right now that deals with the problem as it currently exists.
BILL KRISTOL:
I guess the German defense minister just sort of ridiculed and said, “Well, we’re going to send a few frigates? The US Navy can’t do this, or is choosing not to do this? Which is fine if that’s the choice, but then we can’t make any … Our frigates are not going to make a difference.” And as you say, a few minesweepers would make a difference if there were mines there, but right now that doesn’t seem to be the problem.
AARON FRIEDBERG:
No, I think the only reason why our allies might be not … and I guess many of them have flatly said that they won’t be involved, but some aren’t ruling out the possibility that at some point they might send forces to be involved. But I assume they’re thinking of a scenario in which active hostilities have ceased and they’re escorting ships during a period when things are returning to normal. That’s one thing. But again, that doesn’t address the current problem.
BILL KRISTOL:
Well, since we’ve just gotten onto allies, let’s talk about our allies. And I do think a lot of the discussion has been interesting and intelligent, honestly—by other people, I mean—of the Middle East situation and the war itself and the straight and so forth. But people haven’t focused as much as I think you do when you think of this thing as some big picture geostrategic way. But what consequences is this having and will this have around the world? And maybe even we can get back to the Middle East if you want, but let’s begin with the area you focused on the most in the last couple decades, which is China and East Asia. And I mean, you’re following developments there closely. What do they think? What are they doing? What are they saying? What lessons are they taking from this?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Well, to start with China, there’s a good deal of semi-official commentary. Officially, they’re saying the things that you would expect them to say in a situation like this. Unofficially around the periphery of the decision-making apparatus, you have people saying various things. But I think overall, the sense at this point is, and maybe this is always the way it is with the CCP regime, because after all, they’re ostensibly Marxists and they believe in objective forces and they always claim that they know what’s going to happen, so they’re never surprised. But I think they see this as consistent with their overall assessment of where things stand in their relationship with us and where we stand, which is to say they think we’re still very powerful, potentially very dangerous, but in decline. And I think they believe whatever happens in the near term in this particular set of events, that it’s going to accelerate that process of decline.
So I think they have concerns in the near to medium term about how it could play out, but I think they see it as eventually working in their favor. They have to be concerned about Trump’s demonstrated willingness to use force, not that they think it’s going to be coming at them, but we’ve attacked two friends of China, Venezuela, knocked off the regime there, and now we’re at war with Iran, which has had a close relationship with China. I don’t think either of those countries in the end is that important to China, but from where they sit, it might appear that we’re sort of picking off their friends one by one, and that has to make them uncomfortable.
They do see Trump as a disruptive force. I think they regard him as somewhat different from the run-of-the-mill American presidents they’ve dealt with in the past in ways that are dangerous, maybe have possibilities for China, and we can talk about that perhaps. Opportunities to make deals that maybe weren’t there before, but they do see him as a risk-taker. I haven’t seen any kind of professional assessment of the military operations. I expect that some of that will start to percolate out as time goes on because they’re very close observers of anything we do with respect to the use of force, and they have respect for what we can do. And we’re doing something that they couldn’t dream of doing at this point. And we’ve done it before, but projecting power halfway around the world, bringing all of this enormous firepower to bear, they can’t do anything like that through the air, on the sea. They might have a dream of someday becoming a global power on that scale, but they’re nowhere close, and that has to be intimidating in its way, also impressive.
I wonder also about, and this would have to do with Israel as well as with the United States, but their interpretation or their assessment of the ways in which, presumably we, but obviously also the Israelis have been able to acquire and use extremely high quality, timely intelligence for targeting purposes. I don’t know exactly how that’s being done. It’s not clear to me how the Israelis are able still to locate and hit from the air one leader after another. I’m sure the Chinese are watching that very closely.
One other thing which is sort of interesting and hadn’t occurred to me, but you see some Chinese commentators saying this. One thing to say is, whatever happens in the world, it’s always all about them. So everything that they see, they interpret through those lenses. But some Chinese writers are talking about what’s happening as sort of a model for future American power projection and American exercise of hegemony, which is we are in the background and over the horizon, but we’re relying heavily on highly competent local allies to do a lot of the dirty work for us. So they see Israel in that light, and you see some talking about Japan in the same way. Of course, Japan is totally different, but they’re viewing it in that way as well. The thing about the CCP is it has an enormous amount of strategic inertia. They’ve set a course, and it’s been consistent over a period of decades, certainly over the last 20 years.
And I don’t see any indication of their deviating from it. They see themselves locked in a struggle with the United States, out of which they hope to emerge as the preponderant power in the world, but they continue to see us as occupying that position. They believe that we are and will do everything we can to hold them down economically, militarily, and so on.
And they believe as a result, they have to do everything they can to strengthen themselves, to reduce their vulnerability, to become more self-reliant, as they say, economically, technologically, in anticipation of the moment when they’re able really to step up and assert themselves as the preponderant power. They worry a lot about the possibility of direct conflict with the United States. And one of the things that’s coming out of this conflict I believe is a reaffirmation for Chinese strategists of the wisdom of what they’ve been doing to try to reduce their dependence on imported oil, and in particular oil from Middle East.
And of course, they can’t just rid themselves of that, but they’ve been trying to diversify the sources of supply. They’re increasing overland energy from Russia, both oil and natural gas. And of course, they’ve been pushing towards electrification, relying on electric vehicles instead of gasoline-powered engines. And they’ve been doing this for 20-some years. And the reason for it, I think the driving force behind it, is not primarily concern about the environment, although maybe that is part of it, but it’s a concern about the strategic vulnerability that they’ve felt really since the end of the Cold War, that is the result both of their increasing reliance on maritime commerce, both to import the things they need and to export all of the things they’re manufacturing.
The mismatch between their dependence on the seas and their ability still to defend sea lines of communication, and the obverse of that, our ability potentially to cut those sea lines. That is something that deeply concerns them. And a lot of what they’ve been doing, I think, including parts of the Belt and Road Initiative, the enormous investment that they’ve made in stockpiling. And one of the things that, again, has emerged in the last couple of weeks is that China increased its stockpiling over the last several months.
They’ve been increasing it over a period of years, but they’re increasing the stockpiling of energy. Some estimates are that they have something like 120 days’ worth of oil if they were to be cut off completely. And they’ve been stockpiling all sorts of other things, minerals, food grains. Why are they doing that? I think it only makes sense if you believe that they take seriously the possibility that at some point they could be involved in a major conflict with the United States, and that the United States would use its superior maritime power to try to choke them off.
So whatever else these events are doing in their thinking, it’s reinforcing the sense that they need to redouble their efforts to reduce their vulnerability.
BILL KRISTOL:
And also to have good relations with other regimes in the region that can help with the oil situation and with energy in general.
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Yes. And in fact, they’re importing a lot more energy from the Saudis and from other Gulf countries than they are from Iran. They’ve been the virtually the only purchaser of Iranian oil. And because of sanctions, they do it in a roundabout way through this so-called ghost fleet. And a lot of this stuff, when it arrives, is labeled as having come from Malaysia or something like that. But I believe it’s over one million barrels a day, which is a significant fraction of what the Iranians are selling, but they’re much more dependent on the other Gulf countries and they’re more dependent on Russia than any one Gulf country.
So the Iranians are not that important to them as an energy supplier. But yes, they’re investing a lot in deepening and expanding their relations with as many of the Gulf countries as they can. And that’s partly because of energy, but I think it’s also because they see these places as potential purchasers of various Chinese-made products, including electric vehicles, solar panels, the things that the industries that the Chinese have dominated and that some of these Gulf countries are now increasingly interested in as they try to move away from their own dependence on fossil fuels.
So China has invested a lot and is doing a lot of business in the greater Middle East, and especially around the Gulf. And it’s been, I believe, the biggest growth area for their exports in the last year or so. So it’s important to them for a variety of reasons.
BILL KRISTOL:
And so they’re impressed by our military strength, but they’re not pulling back as a result of it. And you say and also, they sort of think we’re in decline? How does the great military strength and all those capabilities fit in with the notion of a nation in decline?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
I think it just makes us more dangerous from where they sit. So yes, and you see some Chinese commentators, again, not official spokespeople, but saying the Americans will become more dangerous. As they decline, they will lash out to try to preserve their position. And I’m sure—I haven’t seen it, I’ve seen people saying things like this before all of these events—but I’m sure there are Chinese commentators who will point to what’s happening now as an example of this, an illustration of this.
The one caveat there is if somehow this breaks our way and the Iranian regime goes down and it’s replaced by a regime that’s more favorably disposed and maybe even friendly, ultimately to the West, that’s bad news I think for China. Thinking back, we were talking before about the Iraq war. At that time, my impression was that the Chinese, on the one hand, were very concerned when the war began in 2003, that the United States was going to roll up Iraq, be very successful very quickly as it had been in Afghanistan, was then going to go on to put pressure on Iran and maybe somehow topple that regime, and that that would leave it sitting on top of the Gulf and be able to control the flows of energy coming out of the Gulf, on which they were even more dependent at that point than they are now.
And they were very worried about that, but there was nothing they could do about it. And as time went on, they were more than happy to see us bogged down, and they believed that that had really profound and beneficial effects for a period of almost 20 years on their ability to continue to rise and to begin to close the gap with us. So it kind of worked out okay for them, and they may be thinking about what’s happening now in the same way. So there’s a risk if somehow the Americans pull off a success, and they have their hands around our throat even more tightly than they already do.
On the other hand, there’s a potential opportunity if we stumble, if we get bogged down in something that drains our energy and deflects our attention away from them and damages our relations, especially with our allies and with everybody else. So I’m sure that’s what they’re hoping for. We sort of saw a pattern like this—again, the situation’s a bit different—but with Ukraine and Russia. China doesn’t want Russia to be defeated. And when it looked like Russia might be defeated, they were quite concerned about it. What did they do? Well, there’s a limit to what they could do, but over time they’ve found ways to help Russia and to keep it afloat and keep it in the fight, and they’ve been more and more open about doing that, and they feel like the situation has stabilized and may have turned to their advantage.
I expect that if this conflict is not over quickly, they’ll begin to come off the sidelines more, not in any military way, but providing more of the kind of assistance that they’ve already provided to the Iranians. And they’ll certainly be interested in helping them rebuild. After the 12-day war, they shipped large quantities of chemicals that are needed for rocket propellants to help the Iranians rebuild their rocket forces. So again, we’re not seeing anything like that now.
It’s far too dangerous, a situation for them to become directly involved, but I’m sure they’re hoping that things will stabilize and they can begin then to reassert themselves and to keep this friendly country afloat. If it goes down, if Iran goes down, well, that’s too bad, but it’s not the end of the world from the Chinese perspective. But if it doesn’t, then they have opportunities to enhance their influence and perhaps to see our position damaged and further weakened.
BILL KRISTOL:
That’s so interesting. I mean, it’s a good reminder that we always say the enemy has a vote, and we think of that in terms of Iran. And that’s been very important in this war, since the Trump people didn’t seem to necessarily think that they did. Iran had a vote, but other countries have votes and actions. I mean, these are all parts of one big jigsaw puzzle. It’s not like, well, this is a Middle East conflict, so China has no stake one way or the other or Russia or Japan. We should get to that in a second.
Well, before I get to Japan, what do you make of the cancellation or postponing, I guess, of the Trump-Xi meeting, which Trump was talking quite a lot about until about three days ago, which I guess is sort of a big deal. I don’t know when the last meeting of a US president with … Well, it happens every now and then, but not that often.
AARON FRIEDBERG:
I assume that’s a disappointment for them because I think they were hoping that they could get some kind of deals that would be beneficial to them. I think they’re very aware of how much Trump wants to make deals and make deals with them, so they’re certainly going to be looking for all the opportunities they can there. I think they’ve also hoped that they could stabilize the relationship with the United States to some degree. Again, I don’t think this changes their overall perspective of what’s going on, but they have no interest in seeing relations deteriorate further.
I think they were worried in the first six months or so of this administration by what it was doing. And I think they feel they won the early exchanges on the economic front, and essentially you’d have to say that they did. Trump imposed all sorts of tariffs and threatened to ratchet up various kinds of export controls, and then the Chinese wheeled out this magic weapon of control over rare earth minerals, and we very quickly backed away. And there’s been an uneasy stability there, but I think they have to believe that this was proof of concept of this leverage that they had worked to obtain, and they were able to use it in a way, at least in the short term, that really benefited them.
But I have to think that when they read the national security statement or the national defense strategy, and they see these indications of softening, at least the rhetoric that the administration is using, on the one hand, I don’t think they believe that that means there’s some profound change. On the other, it’s beneficial, and they would like to encourage it to the extent that they can. And they have to be hopeful that the administration’s seeming lack of enthusiasm for confronting them and its eagerness for making deals will give them opportunities.
So I would think they’d be a little disappointed, but at the same time, they really don’t like surprises. And I’m sure they wouldn’t want to have their leader in a meeting with the American president, where he might turn around and berate him or demand that he do something. Not that he’s going to berate him because he doesn’t do that to powerful dictators. But the fact that there’s so much uncertainty now about what the US is doing and what’s going on in various theaters, I would think that that would make the Chinese anxious and so happy to kick this can down the road.
I haven’t heard anything definitive about how exactly the meeting came to be canceled. I assume it was canceled by the US, not at the request of the Chinese, but I don’t know for sure. It’d be interesting to know how that came to pass.
BILL KRISTOL:
How about Japan, which gets a large percentage of its energy from the Gulf and quite a lot through the Straits, which seems to have been utterly unconsulted about this, though they are kind of a close ally with a real … I mean, it’s kind of astonishing to me. I mean, I was in the government so long ago, and it was such a different administration, a different world where consultation was sort of the thing one did, both in the Cold War and then obviously in the first Gulf War. But I don’t know, the idea that Japan— the Japanese Prime Minister may have found out about this at the same time the rest of us did is a little astonishing?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Yes, and they also don’t like surprises. And especially under the current Japanese administration, they’ve been very friendly to the United States, and not that the previous one wasn’t, but even more so, and even more hawkish on China. So there’s a lot to work with there. Trump certainly has contempt for the Europeans, and maybe we can talk about that, but he doesn’t seem to have the same kind of attitudes towards the Japanese. I mean, the Koreans he’s critical of because he feels like we’re doing too much to defend them.
But the Asian powers are different, I think, in his mind than the Europeans, and yet he treats them with the same casual disregard. I don’t think the Japanese would have … I think made clear that they’re not going to be involved in anything like this. I guess they did participate in escorting ships, I think it was after the first Gulf War, but that was after hostilities. Maybe it was … I’m not sure when it was. I think it was after 1991. But you could imagine if we had consulted with them, for example, and indicated to them that we might have to shift some units that are otherwise devoted to the Western Pacific and to, among other things, to the defense of Japan, that they should increase their activities.
I’m not sure exactly what the arrangement would’ve been, but it certainly was something that should have been discussed with them. And now their Prime Minister, I guess, is coming. Is it tomorrow? I’m not sure when the meetings take place, but they have to be extremely anxious. I’m sure they don’t want her to be confronted by Trump demanding that Japan do more, but I think they’re really stuck with us.
Our Asian allies are in a different situation than the Europeans. I don’t think they feel in the long run that there’s any choice but to stay close to the United States because of the size, proximity, and hostility of China. So they have to put up with a lot from us, but it doesn’t make them happy. And certainly, they have to be considering how they might hedge their bets. They’re a long way from seriously contemplating acquiring nuclear weapons, but you do hear more conversation about that in Asia, certainly in Korea, than you would’ve a few years ago, and that’s a direct result of their increasing uncertainty about the commitment of the United States.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, I think we all grew up in a world with these alliances and these allies, and for all the things that happened and zigs and zags and mistakes and setbacks, Vietnam, God knows and stuff. And in retrospect, I think historians will look back. I mean, you teach this stuff one thing at these 80 years and think those are pretty stable alliance structures.
I mean, they’re set up literally right after World War II—in this case for obvious reasons. In the case of Japan and Germany, the two biggest countries really involved too. And there they are today, kind of the same. I mean, Germany got unified, that’s a big change. And then the NATO stuff is—you know, much biggerNATO—but the same coordinations. Australia, it’s kind of striking. And one does feel that this is not … I mean, I don’t know that it wasn’t sustainable.
A lot of people had an interest in saying that this is old and was creaky and was fading. I actually have the slightly contrarian view, people tell me if I’m wrong about this, that you could argue that five years ago, these alliance structures were stronger than they had been for decades. Certainly after Ukraine, we worked much more closely with Europeans in a very intense and pressured way than I think we had for most of the preceding quarter-century. And I don’t know enough about Japan, but I have the sense that that was a close relationship, and Australia and so forth.
And so I don’t know that it was necessary that these structures got so problematic so quickly, but I feel like that’s an under-reported side of what’s happening. Maybe we’re only partway down where you say they’re not going to become nuclear tomorrow and stuff, only partway down that road, both with Asia and Europe. But the Europeans really, don’t you think that we’re further down that road? I mean, they are looking at this and thinking this is not sustainable.
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Right. Yeah. I think back on your initial point, yes, absolutely. These were structures that we established 75, 80 years ago, and they’ve evolved, but they’ve also survived all kinds of crises, including some fairly serious differences over policy. Moreover, I agree with you. I think they had been getting stronger and not only the relationships between the United States and our European allies and the United States and our Asian allies, but even between the Europeans and the Asian countries, particularly Japan, especially after the start of the war in Ukraine.
It seemed to me at the time that that provided an opportunity for us to do what I still believe we should be doing, which is to try to consolidate a transoceanic alliance system, maybe not formal alliances, but a coalition that consists of democratic powers on the western end of the Eurasian land mass in Europe and in the eastern end in Asia, backed up and supported by the United States, which is sort of the structure that we had during the Cold War. And yes, it was starting to unravel a bit. Maybe some people had become convinced that it wasn’t as necessary as it once was. But we’re facing several, including two big, very aggressive powers that have been pushing outwards and trying to exert their influence and change the status quo in their own neighborhoods. And the logical response to that is to cooperate to try to counterbalance it. The notion that somehow we had reached a point where we can no longer afford to do what we were doing and that we had to get out of Europe and leave them to their own devices supposedly so that we were going to concentrate on the Asia Pacific, I don’t believe that. We could and we still can play a significant role—and I think we have to or should play a significant role—strategically in both of those theaters, but we’re making it harder. And I agree with you. I mean, the Europeans are stuck, at least for the time being. I think this… you always hesitate to say that something’s the final straw because for one thing, even if it was, what exactly are they going to do about it?
It seems to me they are working about as hard as you could expect them to work to increase their defense capabilities and to become less reliant on us. For the moment, because of the war in Ukraine, they are still heavily dependent on us. But I think they’re trying to move as far away from the condition of dependence where they currently find themselves as quickly as they possibly can. And this is only going to intensify this. I think it may further damage the transatlantic relationship kind of on both ends. One is, of course, because of the Europeans’ anger at being thrust into a situation which was not of they’re making, subjected to Trump’s pressure to do things that they don’t want to do. And remember, of course, this comes on top of the things that we’ve been doing to them in the economic domain.
BILL KRISTOL:
And on top of the rise in energy prices that they’re confronting as much as we are.
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Yeah. No, we’ve gone from a situation in which they were wondering about our reliability and our willingness to assist them, to one in which I’m sure they now see us as the source of their problems, or at least part of the source of their insecurity. So that’s on the one hand, and they’ve been worried about that for a while, and this is only going to intensify that. The other part of this, which is troubling to me, is the possibility that these events will also intensify Trump’s inclination to cut the Europeans off. He’s been saying these things about, “Well, why aren’t they coming to help us? And it’s just a little thing. And we’re asking them.” And then he said something like, “Well, I always said that they wouldn’t be there when we needed them, and now they’re not.” I worry that this is going to feed that narrative in his mind.
And also it’s going to strengthen the hand of some people in the administration who advocate and have advocated really pulling away from Europe for reasons that I don’t think are primarily strategic. The National Security Strategy statement that came out at the end of the last year was one of the most bizarre documents, I think, to emerge from the White House in modern times. On the one hand, absolutely no mention of liberal democracy, human rights, universal values, all of that stuff just amputated and done away with, at least rhetorically. And on the other hand, the insertion of this kind of odd, and I think rather distasteful, civilizational rhetoric, which is, I think, really racial arguments for being unhappy with our European allies for letting in all these immigrants and indulging in woke whatever and are urging them to pull their socks up. It’s very strange.
But if there is support in the administration for an element of foreign policy that would be a significant change from what we’ve seen in the past, probably it points in that direction. So I worry that these events are going to just strengthen that and encourage Trump to agree with that point of view and to do something which he’s sort of been itching to do for a while, which is to pull further and further back from our European allies. They have to be worried about that too. But at this point, I don’t think they have any confidence in us whatsoever. And as I said, they see us now as a real source of problems, if not danger for them.
BILL KRISTOL:
No, that’s really an extraordinary situation, isn’t it? I mean, I’m also very reluctant to say the last straw, or this is the moment, the inflection point, and these things happen. There are many last straws, semi-final straws, quarter-final straws. But in a weird way, it’s a war that doesn’t directly involve either of the Asians or the Europeans, except for the economic energy consequences. And in some way, you could say, like many other Middle East wars, very important for the Middle East, important for us as we’re so much more directly involved, but they don’t really… You could write a history, I’m guessing, of US European relations or US-Asian relations and not have a huge section on the ’73 war or the ’79 even Iranian Revolution. It was so oriented towards other threats, really Russia and China, basically, Soviet Union and China. These things were on the side, you might say. But I wonder if this one really is in this post-Cold War moment… It’s not so huge in and of itself, I guess, maybe. It’s not as big a war as Ukraine, obviously, but it could be sort of a trigger or whatever the right thing is, a signal, just a moment where people say, “Oh, wait, what are they doing here? How are we reacting here?” And do things start going more rapidly? I mean, I suppose this fits in with what was already happening with the Trump administration, but accelerates it. Is that a fair way of maybe putting the question?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
I think with respect to the Europeans, that’s what I would anticipate, that it was things were already moving that way, and this is only going to accelerate it. Thinking back to what we were talking about earlier in 2003 and the Iraq war, both domestically and in our interactions with our allies, there was opposition or concern about what we were planning to do and then what we did in Iraq, but it’s not like people didn’t understand why we might be inclined to do that. It’s coming in the aftermath of 9/11 and we had been attacked and there was an enormous provocation. Whether you thought that had anything to do with Iraq or not is another question, but it’s not like it was just coming out of the blue. This seems like it’s coming out of the blue. I mean, yes, there were preceding events that brought us to this point, but it’s not like any of this was imposed on us that we had to act or that people here might, as outside observers might see, reasonably inclined to take some kind of action.
So that also has to be disconcerting. I mean, especially when you take that in combination, for example, with the earlier discussion about Greenland—which mercifully seems to have dropped out of the headlines, at least for the time being—the sense that the United States is unpredictable, but inclined towards aggression, capable of doing things that might have appeared unthinkable before, is not going to dissipate. And so what do you do? If you’re reliant on a power like that, you have to do things to try to put some distance and to increase your options. I just think that for the moment at least, our allies are kind of stuck with us for reasons that we’ve discussed. But they’re already looking for ways to reduce that dependence. And maybe that’s not the end of the world. I think the Europeans should have been spending more on defense. They were starting to do it, not because Trump hectored them, but because Putin invaded Ukraine primarily, and even before they were starting to do it.
But this is only going to intensify those inclinations. And in the big picture, yes, it would be better if our European allies were still our allies and were still cooperative with us in various ways, but took on more of the burden of their own defense that yes, that makes good sense. It makes good sense for us to increase the extent to which we’re involved in the Asia Pacific. And that’s sort of what we were told we were getting. It’s the other thing I had mentioned earlier, the national security statement, and I forget the exact wording, but it basically says, in addition to what it says about Europe, “Oh, the Persian and the Gulf, Middle East, we’ve gotten bogged down in things there, but everything’s kind of settled there now and we don’t really have to worry about that. And the locals can take care of that.”
And now here we are in the middle of a war that’s, whatever else it does is going to upend existing arrangements in that region. And if things go badly, potentially it’s going to be a major destabilizing force. I mean, we haven’t talked about the possibility that Iraq could begin to fall apart or could lapse into some kind of internal conflict, which doesn’t seem like it’s impossible.
BILL KRISTOL:
Iran, you say?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Iran, I’m sorry. But then you have something like Syria except on steroids because it’s so much bigger and that has to be a real worry too, because who is going to be receiving large numbers of refugees and so on? It’s going to affect our European allies. So they can’t just be indifferent to this.
BILL KRISTOL:
I suppose, I mean, we should close up but being an aggressive and unpredictable power that also isn’t very good at always exercising its aggressively exercised and unpredictably exercised power. It’s one thing to have an impressive snatch and grab of Maduro. I think people think, “Okay, well, I wouldn’t have done it maybe.” And I kind of wonder what the point of it was if we have the VP, the vice president taking over, but no, didn’t disrupt their world. And maybe it lays the groundwork for some improvements there and so forth. Maybe it lays the groundwork for some unstability there, instability there, but it’s kind of whatever, not a big deal. But being unpredictable and rolling dice on an important… Playing with matches in an area like Iran in a way that they’re not sure we know what we’re doing with those matches to mix metaphors here or whatever, rolling the dice without knowing which way they’re coming up. I mean, that’s-—
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Yeah. And one of the lingering consequences of the Iraq War I think was to raise questions about our strategic competence. Our intelligence was faulty. We weren’t able to stabilize the situation. A lot of things happened that we hadn’t anticipated. It made people wonder whether we were in fact as competent as we were powerful. And I worry that this is only going to increase those sentiments, which again, it doesn’t mean that our current friends and allies are necessarily going to be siding with our current enemies, but they’re not going to be as eager to cooperate with us in dealing with those enemies because they have doubts and concerns about whether we know what we’re doing.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yikes. What do you think? Do you have any predictions you’d like to make over the next weeks or months? Where do you think… I guess I really don’t know. I feel like we really don’t know. I mean, Trump could really go all… We could have ground troops in Iran in three weeks and we could have a, in effect, negotiated ceasefire, don’t you think? Or neither, or just going along in the current course, I suppose?
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Yeah, I guess so. Although I think the mounting economic costs of that are going to put a lot of pressure on us and maybe also on the Iranians, because they’re going to be feeling it too, to wind things down and bring them to a halt, at least temporarily. So I guess if I had to bet, I would say a month or two months from now, the Iranian regime is going to continue to exist in some form, which is bad. They’re going to maintain some portions of their nuclear capabilities, at least in the form of materials that they would need to make a bomb, and that’s also bad.
What are we going to have accomplished at that point? I guess, yes, we’ve set them back, we’ve weakened their ability to project power, weakened their missile forces. The Israelis have weakened their regional allies, so maybe in that sense, things are somewhat better off, but I fear that we will not have solved this problem, the problem being Iran, and that it’ll come back in some form and maybe even a more dangerous form because at least up until very recently, the Iranians were maintaining the fiction that they weren’t trying to acquire a bomb. I would think if they survived this, they have absolutely no reason to pretend that they’re doing anything but racing to get some kind of nuclear capability because as they would say, they need it to protect themselves because they’ve been attacked by their enemies. So I guess that’s what I expect. I try to keep an open mind and entertain the possibility that maybe this is all going to work out better than it looks. And I can see some ways in which it might, but I don’t assign a very high probability to those outcomes.
BILL KRISTOL:
And the other thing you didn’t mention should also be on the negative side is it’s not like the economic hit goes away. I mean, it stops getting worse, obviously, if the Straight opens up and oil returns to what it was and so forth, but it’s a real hit. I mean, whether it’s two weeks or four weeks or six weeks or eight weeks, it’s not nothing. So that’s a negative too. I mean, it can’t be good for—
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Yeah. And that on top of the disruptions that have been caused by the tariffs, I mean, this administration has done, I won’t say as much as it could, because there’s always more, but they’ve done a lot to destabilize the global economic system. And I guess it’s a testament to its resilience and its size that it’s not so easy to knock it totally off its axis. But at some point, you begin to get really, consequences that are difficult to foresee and to control and that could linger. I mean, think about the oil crises of the 1970s. The situation is much different, but the effects of those lingered for a long time.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yikes. Well, on that note, we should let you go. And thank you for taking all this time. We need to get back together and see where we are, honestly, when this thing, well, gets resolved, or at least you should say temporarily resolved. That’s another very important point you make just in passing at the end though, that I should want to just put a pin in that. I mean, it’s not as if—if it’s resolved in some ways—sometimes things really are resolved.
Other things are resolved and just kick, but really that just means kick down the road and then things can get better or they can stay just the way they are or they can get worse, as you say, if Iran decides, “You know who isn’t being attacked? It’s North Korea. Why is that?” It’s like, maybe it’s because they have nuclear weapons. I mean, it doesn’t mean they’d say they’re going for it. I suppose there’s risk that of Israel coming right back and pulverizing them again and us helping. But I don’t know. I mean, yeah, it doesn’t seem like it’s a recipe… It’s hard to see how this ends in a satisfactorily stable way.
AARON FRIEDBERG:
And it’s hard for me to see how it ends in a way that enhances our position in the world generally, and in particular enhances our position with relation to the country that I still think is our principle strategic challenge, namely China. And that’s what really worries me. I said before, China has an inertial quality, and that’s not always a good thing, but they know what they’re doing and what they want, and they’re pursuing it vigorously. We’re kind of all over the place now. Is China still our number one strategic concern or not? And if it’s not, what is? And if it is, what are we doing about it? We’re in danger of taking our eye off the ball, and that can only worsen our position in the long run.
BILL KRISTOL:
Well, let’s hope things go better than we expect, and let’s get together in a few months to get an update on that. But Aaron, thank you so much for joining me for this very enlightening, if not always, cheering conversation today.
AARON FRIEDBERG:
Thank you, Bill.
BILL KRISTOL:
No, and thank you all for joining us on Conversations.
