398. Dr. Jordan Peterson Speaks to a U.S. Hostage Negotiator | Ambassador Robert O'Brien

[0] Hello, everyone watching and listening.

[1] Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Ambassador Robert O 'Brien.

[2] We discussed the inner workings of international hostage negotiations, the ongoing success and legacy of the Abraham Accords negotiated under President Trump, the Russia -Ukraine war and its complexities, and the current perception of diminished American strength, a situation which leaves much room for improvement.

[3] So, Ambassador O 'Brien, you were the fourth U .S. security advisor under Donald Trump.

[4] So why were you the fourth?

[5] And what was it like taking on the job knowing you were the fourth?

[6] And what was it like working with Trump?

[7] And he's a mystery to many people.

[8] Maybe he's a mystery to himself.

[9] Who knows?

[10] But you stepped into a role that had obviously been contentious, and so there must have been some apprehension in that regard.

[11] Why did you do it, and what was that like?

[12] Well, thanks, Jordan.

[13] Great to be with you.

[14] I was the fourth.

[15] General Flynn was there for a brief period of time, and then General Ambassador and John Bolton.

[16] It's not a job I expected to receive.

[17] I was serving as the President's hostage envoy at the time, trying to bring Americans home from detention or wrongful detention or being held hostage by terrorist organizations.

[18] And I didn't really know the president.

[19] I'd been with another candidate in 2016, Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin.

[20] But I supported the president in the general election, of course.

[21] And he asked me to be the hostage envoy, and I got to know him through that job.

[22] I think one of the things President Trump appreciated about the work I did is we got a lot of Americans home.

[23] And President Trump gets the credit for that.

[24] Some people give me credit for it, and it's flattering.

[25] But when things go well for a president, the president should get the credit, and he deserved the credit for bringing these many Americans home.

[26] And so we developed a relationship.

[27] I was actually in Israel working on a hostage case trying to help some of the Israelis bring the remains of a fallen soldier home.

[28] And John Bolton had resigned or was fired, depending on whose story you believe.

[29] And I got the call to come in for an interview.

[30] And interviewed with the president, went well.

[31] and he asked me to do the job.

[32] So I was humbled and honored to have that position.

[33] I didn't know.

[34] I was keenly aware that I was a fourth person, but I also felt that I had a good relationship with the president.

[35] And I felt my job every day, and the prayer I said as I left my apartment every morning was that we'd keep America safe that day.

[36] And I think the president appreciated my commitment to keeping the country safe, and I appreciated his commitment to doing the same.

[37] And we had a good relationship, and it worked out well We had a lot of accomplishments that took place that last year and a half in office.

[38] So let's talk about the hostage cases to begin with.

[39] So how did you get involved in doing that?

[40] And then do you want to walk us through some of the stories and what it is exactly that you were doing before you became U .S. Security Advisor?

[41] How that set you up for the job?

[42] Sure.

[43] So I received a call in late 2017 from the White House asking if I'd be willing to fill this role of being the U .S. hostage envoy, the title is Spiha, which sounds like a Dr. Seuss character, but it's an acronym for Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs.

[44] And I just started a law firm with a partner, Stephen Larson, a former federal judge, and Los Angeles, we left a big national firm, and so I wasn't planning on going into government.

[45] But I always wondered, over my career, I've spent time traveling abroad all over the world in international arbitration cases and law cases and I always kind of wondered if our plan was hijacked if we got taken hostage would someone come look for us?

[46] And when the job was offered, I went and talked to my wife and we prayed about it and we looked at some of the cases of people who were held abroad and I thought, you know, I'm going to give this a shot and it's a sacrifice for the family and it's sacrificed for my law partners, but I'm going to go see if I can get some people home.

[47] And we did.

[48] did the job and we got a lot of people home.

[49] We're very successful at it.

[50] Again, credit for that goes to the president for his tough stand on bringing Americans home.

[51] I think he felt that Americans being held abroad just because they were Americans, just because they had a blue passport, was kind of the essence of poking your finger in the eye of the United States.

[52] And his America first view of the world was, if you do that, I don't care who the person is, why they were taken, if they were a missionary, if they were a tourist, if they were a business person, and a diplomat, a soldier.

[53] If you've taken somebody to leverage them, leverage our life to try and get the U .S. to change our policy or try and get a concession from us or money from us, we're not going to stand for it, and we're going to get that person home.

[54] And so that was the job I undertook, and it would, you know, didn't expect it to lead to becoming the national security advisor, but again, we had some success, and I can talk to you about some of the cases.

[55] And again, at the end of the day, the president gets the credit for making at a high priority.

[56] And you know, you're up against a bureaucracy.

[57] Other people in government have different priorities and getting a single American home.

[58] But for me, my job was solely focused on, in that position, was solely focused on bringing these Americans home.

[59] So what had set you up in your previous career to be able to conduct those negotiations?

[60] And why do you think that you were, apart from Trump's support, which we can go into, What do you think it was that made you successful at doing this?

[61] And what was it like to actually negotiate?

[62] Who are you negotiating with?

[63] And what was that like?

[64] How did you do it?

[65] Yeah.

[66] So great questions.

[67] I think my past experience as a diplomat.

[68] I'd been a diplomat in the Bush administration and had even carried over and working on an Afghanistan program for the Kandi Rice set up, but went into the Obama -Clinton years when Secretary Clinton was Secretary of State.

[69] That certainly helped.

[70] I'd been an Army officer earlier in my career and worked at the U .N., so I had kind of a diplomatic experience.

[71] But I think the day -to -day experience of being a lawyer in Los Angeles, I was a litigator, and we've got the toughest lawyers in the country, I think, in L .A. And spent a lot of time in mediations, hundreds of mediations over my career, both serving as a council for parties, but also then later serving as an arbitrator, a mediator, and a neutral.

[72] I think that was the experience that gave me the best background for the job as hostage envoy.

[73] And then to your question about it, who did we negotiate with?

[74] It was, you know, it's tough because, you know, we couldn't negotiate directly with some of these countries.

[75] For example, the Iranians, you know, I had to work through the Swiss.

[76] So we, our honor and alexer were the Swiss diplomats who were great diplomats.

[77] and we worked with them.

[78] We worked with other third -party governments to get to governments that we couldn't negotiate with.

[79] Negotiated with the Russians directly.

[80] We've negotiated with the Taliban directly.

[81] And you've got bad guys on the other side.

[82] You've got thugs on the other side to some extent, and you've got to be tough.

[83] And that has to be backed up by American hard power.

[84] The diplomacy is important.

[85] The negotiating skills are important.

[86] But at the end of the day, they're looking at you to see, what's America going to do if we don't comply?

[87] What tools does this guy have in his toolkit?

[88] What kind of support is you going to get from the bureaucracy?

[89] That goes back to the classic Ronald Reagan formulation of peace or strength.

[90] So working for a president who believed in peace or strength, who wasn't trying to appease or not provoke our adversaries, but who believed in a strong America and that a strong America was good for peace in the world, that helped me in my negotiations.

[91] So, you know, that was, you can you say that in the thumbnail.

[92] The other thing I did, Jordan, which I think was created a stir at the time, when I became the hostage envoy, there was a memo about the office that had been prepared in the prior administration, the Obama administration, that described what we did is in the office of the SPIHA.

[93] And it said, our first resort is diplomacy.

[94] And the very last resort we'll take to rescue Americans is military force.

[95] And I looked at that, and I said, this is exactly wrong.

[96] And I changed the memo.

[97] I said, our first resort will be to use our military, our special operators.

[98] And our special operations community was really, the modern special operations community was formed after the failed attempt to rescue American diplomats held in Iran in 1980.

[99] And that's how we ended up with Delta Force and SEAL Team 6.

[100] And it's very top tier group of operators.

[101] They were originally set up to be hostage rescue guys based on a large part on the SAS and the UK, the SAS regiment.

[102] And so I said, look, our first.

[103] first resort, if we can, if we can affect rescue, is we're going to use these highly trained national assets, these great men and women, U .S. Special Forces, to go get our hostages back or a wrongful detainees back.

[104] And then we'll look at diplomatic options.

[105] And I wanted to send a message to our adversaries that, you know, we're going to, this is a different approach and we're going to use American hard power.

[106] And so, you know, if you've got a chance to negotiate with us or negotiate with a third -party country that's coming to you on our behalf, take it because, you know, The other option we've got, and our primary option, is to go rescue our people.

[107] And we had a number of rescues that either using foreign partner forces that engage special operators of foreign governments or our own special operators that were really exquisite where we brought Americans home.

[108] And I think that sent a message to folks and backed up our diplomacy.

[109] So that was one thing that we did to kind of change the policy and at least send a message or foreign adversaries that either terrorist organizations or rogue governments that if you take an American there's a penalty to pay and we're going to get them back.

[110] Okay, so if I get this straight, so the people that were taking hostages came to know that they might have an opportunity to negotiate through the intermediation of third parties, but that the military option was likely to be brought forward very rapidly.

[111] Is that the right sequence of events?

[112] Crew, correct.

[113] And look, if we had a military operation that could be launched immediately, it becomes more difficult to launch these operations.

[114] If a hostage is aged, if they've been taken and been held for a while, because they're moved and some of the terrorist organizations have pretty good operational security.

[115] It's always tougher when a government is holding your hostage because they're helping a downtown jail and somewhere in Caracas or Tehran or Moscow.

[116] So those circumstances make the military option more difficult.

[117] But if we could find a hostage organization, we did this at the end of the administration in late October in 2020, a group had kidnapped an American named Walton and Niger.

[118] We launched an operation within 48 hours, rescued him, dealt with a terrorist, rescued him, brought him home safely, and the whole thing happened in a very short period of time.

[119] I think that from start to finish, 72 -hour operation from us finding and fixing where he was, where the terrorists had him, the kidnappers, and bringing him back to Washington, D .C. So sometimes, you know, negotiations weren't always an option, but it was for the bad guys.

[120] But if they'd secured the hostage somewhere, a government had them in a jail, that was certainly, you know, that was one course for them to take.

[121] Right, right.

[122] So were there any downsides to moving the military option up the list of priorities?

[123] Did that add risk in any situations, or do you think overall it, and in the specifics, it decreased risk?

[124] Well, I think overall it decreased risk, right?

[125] Because you let people know that if you've taken American hostage, the U .S. military is coming for you.

[126] We've got long reach.

[127] We can go from, you know, Fort Bragg, North Carolina to wherever you are in a very short period of time.

[128] But, and so we think it was a deterrent and prevented further hostage -taking.

[129] But any time you put the men and women of our armed forces into an operation, there's risks to them.

[130] There's obviously risks to the hostage in a rescue situation where bullets are flying.

[131] So, you know, and there's also a risk of an escalation so that a hostage rescue turns into more of a conflict.

[132] But our feeling was that the deterrent effect of letting folks know we're going to rescue our people and the high degree of skill and capability our special operators had to rescue hostages if they were taken outweighed the risk of either escalation or death to one of our service members or the hostage.

[133] But it's a, you know, those are tough calls to make.

[134] Wow, there's going to be risks no matter what approach you take.

[135] Has the approach that you put in place stayed intact as a consequence?

[136] of the transition to the Biden administration, or what's happened now?

[137] Well, we have a really terrific hostage envoy.

[138] The guy who took over for me is a guy named Roger Carson's ambassador, and he's a former military special operations guy.

[139] I've got a lot of confidence in him.

[140] But, again, he's working in an environment that is more of a, what I'll call it, do not provoke, appease mentality of the Obama folks who came and have now staffed the Biden administration.

[141] And I think there's a lot less emphasis on hard power and a lot more emphasis on just pure diplomacy and soft power.

[142] And, you know, look, that can work in some cases.

[143] You have different tools in your toolkit.

[144] But I think there's a perception of American weakness now.

[145] And I think that makes the job of the hostage envoy tougher.

[146] But I think Roger's done a great job.

[147] And to his credit, I think the current National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, who took my position, my final position, has been good on these hostage issues.

[148] But again, you're only so good as the environment that's around you.

[149] And if your adversaries know that military forces off the table and the likelihood of appeasement or a ransom or a concession is on the table, they're going to look for those results instead of just turning over the hostage and hoping that they don't get punished for having engaged in malign activity.

[150] And do you think that that's reflected in the broader geopolitical landscape?

[151] especially in relationship to say what's happened in Ukraine with the Russians?

[152] Look, sadly that's the case, Jordan.

[153] I mean, we saw a direct line from this catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the way that it was handled to Vladimir Putin sensing that America was weak.

[154] And American weakness is provocative.

[155] You know, American strength keeps peace in the world.

[156] But when our adversaries believe us to be weak, they take chances and they look for opportunities to exploit that weakness.

[157] And I don't think America is fundamentally weaker than we were four years ago.

[158] We're a very strong country.

[159] We've got geography on our side.

[160] We've got demography on our side.

[161] We've got innovation.

[162] We've got a tremendous military.

[163] But the perception that our adversaries develop over time, watching things like Afghanistan, watching the failure to deter Putin in Ukraine.

[164] I mean, you recall Jordan, all the talk with the pundits and the administration folks before Putin's invasion was we don't want to provoke them.

[165] We don't want to give the Ukrainians extra weapons.

[166] We don't want to do things that would dissuade the Russians because that could provoke Putin into an invasion.

[167] Dictators look at the world very differently than we do.

[168] It's maybe rational from their perspective, but it's not what we believe is rational.

[169] I remember commentators saying it would be crazy for Putin to invade Ukraine.

[170] Well, Putin didn't view that way.

[171] Putin saw us withdraw from Afghanistan.

[172] He sensed weakness.

[173] He thought he had an opportunity to gain geography, to get territory.

[174] He's got a demographic problem in Russia.

[175] He could gain 40 million more Russians.

[176] He could get access to agricultural land and increases Russia's ability to trade.

[177] Ukraine has some natural resources, some oil and gas.

[178] So he looked at that as an opportunity to take the whole thing, whereas we would think that's irrational for a big country just to invade its neighbor because it could, because might makes right.

[179] But for Putin, it was perfectly irrational.

[180] And so when he sensed our weakness, he moved.

[181] And we didn't do a good job to turn them.

[182] And that was a failure of policy.

[183] Now, we've done a pretty good job supplying the Ukrainians since then, since the invasion.

[184] But we lost a real opportunity to prevent the whole war from happening.

[185] And that was a shame for the Ukrainian people and frankly for the Russian people.

[186] Well, it was very interesting to me. I mean, Trump's a very complicated character, and the U .S. is a very complicated country in a complicated world.

[187] It was very interesting to me, though, especially having contemplated Trump's legacy in the intervening years, that when he first emerged on the scene, some of the fears associated with him were that in his sort of bullying and provocative manner, that he'd be a real bull in the China shop on the foreign policy side of things.

[188] But he seemed capable of simultaneously charming people like Putin and the leader of North Korea, while simultaneously keeping them on their heels, I would say, maybe as a consequence of his perceived unpredictability, but also his clear willingness, perhaps, to use force.

[189] And the consequence of that, and there's two consequences of that that I find quite fascinating, it's sort of reminiscent to me of what happened with Reagan when he bombed Gaddafi.

[190] You know, I was pretty young when that occurred.

[191] And when Reagan bombed Gaddafi, I thought, oh, my God, all hell is going to break loose.

[192] There's going to be terrorism everywhere.

[193] Because, I mean, I think Reagan, if I remember correctly, killed a couple of members of Gaddafi's immediate family in that bombing raid.

[194] And I thought all hell was going to break loose.

[195] But what happened instead was that Gaddafi was actually chastened and the degree of terrorist activity emanating from Libya declined to pretty much zero.

[196] And then when Trump took power, I think one of his remarkable achievements, and I really think that he has got far less credit for this than he deserved, was that there was a period of four years without, with no wars, like no wars.

[197] And that's pretty damn rare.

[198] And there's always some chronic, irritating conflict going on.

[199] I mean, Afghanistan was continuing, but Trump didn't start that.

[200] And also he initiated the Abraham Accords, even though the Obama administration had had an opportunity to do so, it was Trump who moved on it.

[201] It took a while, but he did it successfully.

[202] And that could have obviously been expanded, the Abraham Accords.

[203] They could have been expanded under Biden.

[204] The Saudis, as far as I can tell, would have signed those accords if Biden would have taken the opportunity that was right bloody well in front of him to take.

[205] And so we have this strange spectacle of someone who's pretty blustery and noisy and who might easily be regarded as provocative, actually setting up a circumstance where by your testimony, the negotiation for hostages was much more likely to be successful, but also where there were no incursions of the sort, say, that Russia undertook in Ukraine during that four -year period that would precipitate a war.

[206] and we also saw the initiation of a really large scale and major peace process because that's certainly what the Abraham Accords represent.

[207] So what do you make of all that?

[208] Well, so Jordan, you had a very perceptive comment at the outset of that question.

[209] And that was how could President Trump be cordial with some of these bad guys and yet still obtain the results that we wanted as America, that we're on a national, interest and to deter these thugs and dictators and tyrants from engaging in a malign activity.

[210] And, you know, there's an old saying that diplomacy is saying the nastiest possible things in the nicest possible way.

[211] And President Trump was really a genius at that.

[212] He was always very cordial in his conversations with allies, but also with Putin or Kim, Jennan, or Xi Jinping.

[213] I was on many of those phone calls.

[214] He was very cordial, got along well with him.

[215] But at the same time, time, we were sanctioned.

[216] We put more sanctions on the Russians than anybody since Ronald Reagan.

[217] And we put the Russians in a box.

[218] And yet the president was very cordial with them.

[219] And so they understood, here's a guy who's being cordial, wanting to reduce the risk of a nuclear war in the case with Russia, wanting to make sure that we got our message across.

[220] But at the same time, this is a tough guy who's not going to take any nonsense from us.

[221] And there was a level of unpredictability.

[222] And the president talked about this, that, you know, the odds of us troops of Ukraine were small if Russia invaded, but there was a risk there, and Putin had to take that risk into account.

[223] It complicated the lives of his planners.

[224] His military planners had to say, what if Trump does engage, then we lose, and that could be a disaster, so we better, you know, factor that into the risk and not invade Ukraine.

[225] So the same thing happened with North Korea, and the president had very cordial relations with Kim Jong -un, but it didn't start out that way.

[226] And I was a hostage envoy at the time, and when we were talking about little rocket man and fire and fury and my button's bigger than your button.

[227] But it wasn't just the rhetoric, and this is what American politicians oftentimes miss. It's backing up the rhetoric with hard power.

[228] So the president moved two aircraft carriers into the Yellow Sea, into the near North Korea, and said, look, you want to keep playing this game?

[229] I've got, you know, 80 aircraft per carrier and a good chunk of the U .S. Navy.

[230] sitting off your coast, how do you want to do this?

[231] Would you rather have a summit and try and work things out and denuclearize?

[232] And we obviously didn't get there, but we went down that path, and Kim John and committed to denuclearization, we didn't get there, but at least he committed to it.

[233] Or do you want to keep testing your nuclear weapons and see how it works out for you?

[234] And so it was that combination of cordiality and frankness and, you know, good cheer with our adversaries and with our partners as well.

[235] backing it up with American hard power and letting them know that, you know, if you cross a line and we're not going to be like Obama, we're not going to set red lines that we don't intend to enforce.

[236] But if we set a red line, no, it's going to be enforced.

[237] So you understand what you're getting into.

[238] That's your call.

[239] That's not on us.

[240] And that raises a very important point that you made.

[241] President Trump was the first president since Jimmy Carter.

[242] Technically, I probably argue Reagan as well that didn't start a new war.

[243] We didn't send, you know, we eliminated some of the other great terrorist threats to the country.

[244] We got Baghdaddy.

[245] We took other measures to protect the country, but we didn't start a new war.

[246] And the reason we didn't start a new war is the same reason Ronald Reagan didn't start a new war is because our adversaries understood if we cross American red lines, if we damage American national interests, there's going to be a heavy price to pay.

[247] And we better factor that into our planning, our consideration.

[248] And so they didn't engage in the activity that would have led to us having to engage militarily.

[249] And so the last president that really truly did that was Ronald Reagan.

[250] Now, he had the invasion of Grenada.

[251] But I'd argue that was more of a big hostage rescue of the medical students in Grenada that turned into taking over the country.

[252] But other than Reagan, in recent presidencies, Republican and Democrat, no one has been able to stop our adversaries without engaging in military action on a large scale until President Trump.

[253] And I think that's one of the great accomplishment, great accomplishment of his administration.

[254] I wonder if that proclivity that Trump has to strike terror and disarray into the hearts of his political opponents within the U .S., who seem to regard him as, you know, the next best thing to Satan himself, in terms of the danger he presents to the integrity of the state, I wonder if that is the same unpredictability.

[255] and menace, cordial menace that intimidates his potential opponents or the potential opponents of the U .S. on the foreign policy side.

[256] You think that's the same manifestation?

[257] You know, I'm not sure if it's intimidation.

[258] I mean, whether it was our allies, we had pretty competent and confident leaders like Macron in France or Boris Johnson in the U .K., Angola Merkel had a very different personality, but it was a very strong character.

[259] And then our adversaries, you know, Putin's a tough guy, and Xi Jinping is a tough guy, and Kim Jong -un is unpredictable himself.

[260] So I'm not sure if it was an intimidation of the leaders, but I think what it was, it was the resolve that he showed.

[261] And they understood that this guy represents America.

[262] And sometimes we look at our adversaries and think they're 10 feet tall, and sometimes our adversaries get ahead of us and we've got to catch up with them.

[263] China's gotten ahead of us on a couple of things where we've got to catch up with them.

[264] But the reality is America is a fundamentally very strong country.

[265] And if you've got a president that's willing to use all the tools of American national power, economic, diplomatic, military, and is resolved to protect our national interest.

[266] And the other guys know that.

[267] They can do an assessment of the balance of forces and decide are they going to win or lose if they press the issue.

[268] And I think with President Trump, they understood at the end of the day, this guy had a lot of backbone and wasn't going to fold.

[269] And so they better not cross the red line.

[270] So I'm not sure if it's intimidation or, you know, more a confidence that the president shows when he enters into a room.

[271] And look, that works with adversaries, but it also works with our partners.

[272] So one of the great accomplishments of the Trump administration that's inert to the benefit of Ukraine today and Europe today, is back in 2019.

[273] I hadn't been national security advisor very long.

[274] a couple of months.

[275] And we had a real problem with NATO.

[276] The president was very unhappy that our NATO partners weren't paying 2 % of their GDP, with the exception of not, I think at the time it was four or five countries.

[277] The UK was one of them, Greece, the Baltics, Turkey.

[278] But the rest of the countries were getting a free right on American defense.

[279] And we're spending three and a half to four percent of our economy, of our GDP to defend not only America, but the free world.

[280] And the president said, hey, that's not right.

[281] Everyone committed to at least two percent.

[282] That's still half of what we're paying, but you've got to pay the 2%.

[283] And the Europeans kind of chuckled and said, well, every president, I went back and looked at this, I actually wrote an article about it.

[284] Every president running for president since 1972, the theme has been, one of the campaign planks has been on both the Republican and the Democrat side is Europe will pay its fair share.

[285] You know, Europe will step up for its own defense.

[286] And no one got it.

[287] Even my hero, Ronald Reagan, couldn't get the Europeans to pay their fair share or bear their a fair portion of the burden.

[288] And President Trump made some pretty tough comments about NATO.

[289] And I thought, wow, I'm a big NATO supporter, and it's a great alliance.

[290] It's kept the peace in Europe for many years, 75 years.

[291] And so I thought, how is this going to play out?

[292] But it gave me the opportunity to go as the negotiator with Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, who's a terrific statesman.

[293] And Jens and I were able to go to our allied partners and say, look, the days of Germany, you know, getting cheap minerals from Russia, selling expensive finished goods to China and letting America pay for its defense while it runs up a budget surplus, that's just not fair.

[294] That's got to end.

[295] It's not fair to the American taxpayer.

[296] It's not fair to your other partner nations.

[297] And it wasn't just Germany.

[298] It was, you know, Canada was all the countries.

[299] And so the fact that President Trump was being tough in talking about, you know, does Article 5 apply, you know, if you're not paying your dues, so to speak.

[300] They weren't dues, but that's the way the president phrased it.

[301] That kind of struck some fear into the hearts of our allies.

[302] So we walked away from that summit with going from four or five countries paying 2 % to 11 countries paying 2 % of their GDP committing to it.

[303] But we also had an overall increase.

[304] And we didn't get Germany as high as we wanted, but we got a small increase from Germany.

[305] But because the German economy was so big, it was a lot of money, we got $400 billion in commitments for New NATO spending outside of the U .S. over the course of 10 years that December summit.

[306] And, of course, the hand ringers, the diplomatic correspondence and the folks that cover the state department and cover NATO, they rang their hands and said, this is terrible, and it's awful diplomacy, and the standing of America has gone down in the world.

[307] Well, yeah, I'm sure our European allies weren't happy in some cases that they had to spend the money.

[308] But guess what?

[309] They're happy now.

[310] I was at a conference in Prague recently, a defense conference, And I had Germans coming up to me saying, you guys were right, thank you for making to spend more money.

[311] And that additional spending, even in the initial three years from 19 to 2022, allowed some of those European countries to get new platforms and new weapon systems so that when Russia invaded Ukraine, a lot of those countries were able to send their old Soviet equipment, especially in Eastern Europe, their old equipment that was no longer, they'd modernized, and they went to stockpiles, and they sent that equipment to Ukraine.

[312] And so a lot of the initial equipment the Ukraine got was a direct result of the additional increase in defense spending that came out of that 2019 summit that President Trump was pilloried for for being arrogant and rude and putting America first and that sort of thing.

[313] And in fact, what we did is we put our allies in a position where they could defend themselves and help Ukraine.

[314] And so again, it's counterintuitive, someone taking that sort of an approach.

[315] And it's not something that may be grading to people and diplomats might not like it, but when you look at the results, they were incredibly successful.

[316] What do you think it is in Trump's character that makes it possible for him to do those things?

[317] Because that is, it's quite a track record, really, of success, right?

[318] Because you've laid out four different instances.

[319] You said he was very effective in relationship to hostage negotiation.

[320] He was good at keeping potential enemies at bay and established peace for four years.

[321] but he also he successfully negotiated the Abraham Accords which we'll turn to but as you pointed out and this is quite orthogonal to those other enterprises he was instrumental and successful in getting the NATO allies to pay their fair share which was something I was watching that from the outside from the Canadian perspective and I know certainly full well that we haven't pulled our weight at all and continue to not do so But it was quite striking to me that he was able to manage that.

[322] The justice of the cause seemed self -evident.

[323] I mean, it's completely absurd that America has to shoulder this burden by itself and also take all the moral slings and arrows that go along with being the prime defender of the West, right?

[324] It's just too much to be asked to pay the financial price and then to bear the moral, you know, opprobrium at the same time.

[325] There's no excuse for that.

[326] but Trump was very effective at negotiating for that to be rectified.

[327] And so what do you think it is about his character, the way he conducts himself, that makes him capable of doing those things?

[328] You talked about, you know, his willingness to rely on military force, say, in relationship to potential foreign enemies.

[329] But, of course, that's not going to be an issue when he's talking to NATO allies.

[330] So what's he doing right?

[331] Well, look, I think I didn't know President Trump before becoming his hostage envoy, and I got to know him a little bit during that period of time.

[332] and then came to know him fairly well as a national security advisor.

[333] But I think it's your background.

[334] We all bring whatever our background is to the new job, right?

[335] You've got a background as a clinical psychologist.

[336] Now you're doing political analysis, which is par excellence.

[337] And I think what Trump did is he brought his background as a real estate developer.

[338] Where you're in New York, you know, in the thick of it, whether he had a track record.

[339] Some people liked his track record.

[340] Some people didn't like his track record.

[341] but he built big things.

[342] He built big buildings.

[343] You know, he built a hotel empire.

[344] And in those real estate negotiations, I used to see this as a lawyer with clients.

[345] You've got to keep two things in mind at the same time, and it's hard for a lot of people to understand that.

[346] You're trying to do a deal with someone, and you're trying to beat the heck out of them and get the best price you can.

[347] And at the same time, they're a partner because you want them to consummate the deal, right?

[348] So you want to get, if you're buying land from somebody or buying a building, you want to get the very best price, But at the same time, you want to keep them at the table and not go to the other guy and sell the building to someone else because you want that asset.

[349] Or if you're selling the same thing just on the other side of the table.

[350] I think President Trump learned that through years of negotiations in real estate, 50 -year career and even younger than watching his dad, Fred Trump, do deals.

[351] You've got to be tough and you've got to get the best deal you can.

[352] But at the same time, you've got to prevent your partner from walking away from the deal and walking away from the table.

[353] And striking that balance, I think, is pretty tough.

[354] And look, a lot of people don't have experience with it.

[355] A lot of people come into government from think tanks or from academia or from the military where folks are used to following orders or even as lawyers, but maybe without the litigation or the deal experience.

[356] So they come to government and people expect them to be great negotiators, but they've never really had that experience.

[357] Whereas President Trump came to office, probably with more experience negotiating, And certainly anyone in his cabinet, anyone in his immediate circle, but also any other politician in the world that he was dealing with.

[358] So for good or for better or for worse, I mean, there are all kinds of different ways to prepare to be president.

[359] I'm not saying being a real estate developer is the best way to prepare to be president.

[360] But for president, Trump, it worked when it came to these negotiations that we've been talking about and trying to come to a deal where you get both parties to say yes, but you get a good deal for America.

[361] And so I think that's probably the best preparation he had for some of the things we've been talking about, Jordan.

[362] Well, you've worked as a diplomat and a litigator and national security advisor and all of that's involved negotiation.

[363] And, you know, one of the things I've noted in my private life, watching people and in my clinical practice, and I suppose in my role as a professor as well, is that generally speaking, people are very bad at negotiations.

[364] They don't say what they want.

[365] They don't admit what they want.

[366] They don't listen to the other side.

[367] They don't understand how to strike that playful balance between competition and keeping their partner in the game.

[368] They're not trained to negotiate.

[369] We do a very bad job of that in our society.

[370] People can't negotiate with themselves.

[371] They can't negotiate with their spouses.

[372] They're not good at negotiating with their kids.

[373] They can't strike a deal with their business, partners.

[374] It's a big problem, right?

[375] Because negotiation, there's no difference between bringing a successful negotiation to a conclusion and establishing peace.

[376] Those are the same things.

[377] Now, you've done a lot of negotiating.

[378] And as a diplomat, which is more diplomatic, obviously, as a litigator, which is more on the offense side, let's say, and then under stressful conditions when you're negotiating for hostage release, what is it that you've seen that makes a successful negotiator, what skills do you have to master, and what pitfalls do you have to avoid?

[379] And how have you mastered that?

[380] Or have you?

[381] You know, do you feel that you've mastered it?

[382] Well, I certainly haven't mastered it, but I have had a fair amount of experience and, you know, sometimes successfully negotiated deals or releases or diplomatic accords and sometimes unsuccessfully.

[383] So it's certainly not 100 % track record.

[384] It's a big question, and there's a lot that goes into that mix, and you talk about all the different scenarios in which we're involved in negotiation, whether it's in our home life, our business life, or professional life, putting it totally aside politics and international affairs, we're all negotiating all the time.

[385] I think there are a couple of things that have been lodestar for me in negotiating news.

[386] One is understanding that the other party has to get something out of the negotiation.

[387] That doesn't mean money necessarily.

[388] It doesn't mean, you know, but it usually means respect.

[389] So I think being respectful and being cordial with your adversary, even if they're a, you know, I've sat across the table from some pretty unsavory characters.

[390] But if you're respectful and you're cordial, that's one thing that you can give that costs you nothing other than, you know, some goodwill and some humility.

[391] So that's number one.

[392] Number two, you have to listen to the other side and try and figure out what is it they really want.

[393] Because they may be saying they want one thing, but they really want something else.

[394] and figuring out what their, you know, bottom line is what's the least amount they'd take to give you what you want, requires you to listen to them.

[395] Number three, I think you have to be honest.

[396] I mean, I've never done a negotiation in my private life or as a lawyer, as a litigator, as a diplomat, where I've lied to people.

[397] I just don't think, I may not disclose all the information I've got or that I know, but I don't lie to people.

[398] because once you get caught out in a negotiation telling something that's false or lying, you've lost your credibility and your ability to get a deal done goes away.

[399] I think the last point I'd make a response to that question, and again, probably 100 if we sat and thought about it and talked longer, you've got to be willing to say no. There has to be a point at which you'll walk away from the table.

[400] Because if there's not some level that you'll say no and walk away, your opponent will understand that.

[401] push and push and push until they've taken everything from you.

[402] You've got to have a red line.

[403] And sometimes it's hard because you know, saying no is going to mean somebody staying in prison longer or somebody, you know, being in a dungeon longer or not getting the deal you really wanted for, you know, your client if you're a litigator, or not getting the peace deal that would, you know, make the headlines and help solve a war.

[404] But if you're not willing to say no and your adversary doesn't understand you're not willing to say no, there's no limit to what they'll take from you.

[405] And so you have to have your own.

[406] That doesn't mean you have to disclose those red lines and tell them what you're going to say no. And that's kind of the interplay with the honesty issue.

[407] But you've got to be able to say, you know, oftentimes you're ambiguous about it where you tell the other side, there's a point that I'm not going to go beyond and you're getting close to it.

[408] And if you get to that point, I'm going to get up from the table, I'm going to walk away, and then you're going to lose negotiation as well.

[409] Because the point that they're there because they want something from you as well.

[410] It's not you coming as a supplicant usually.

[411] you know, they're there, they're not supplicating to you.

[412] You're not supplicating to them, but there's a deal to be had.

[413] You know, how that deal works out, you know, you have to see.

[414] But if they know that you're not willing to get up and leave, you're never going to get a negotiation done.

[415] I had this happen, and I'm not going to mention the country, but we're involved in pretty high -stakes negotiations when I was National Security Visor.

[416] We thought we had a deal with the leader of the country, and we came back to finalize it, and the foreign minister and some of the other leaders kind of trying to try to put new conditions on, try to renegotiate the deal.

[417] And I did something at the time.

[418] I was a little tired.

[419] It had been long nights and a couple days straight.

[420] I just packed in my briefcase.

[421] I had a whole team of State Department folks with me. And I don't think they'd ever seen that before.

[422] And I packed up in my briefcase and said, okay, thank you.

[423] We tried.

[424] We gave it our best shot, but we're done.

[425] And got up and started to walk away.

[426] And I think the other side was shocked by it.

[427] Certainly the guys from the career officials at the State Department were looking at me like it was a nut.

[428] and I said, come on, guys, let's go, we're out of here.

[429] And the other side said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, well, then we got back to the deal we had the night before with the leader.

[430] But, you know, our State Department guys had never seen someone pack up a briefcase and leave.

[431] Well, I'd seen people pack up their briefcases and leave a hundred times as a lawyer in Los Angeles, you know.

[432] And usually if a good plaintiff's lawyer didn't pack up his bags and leave three or four times during the day during a negotiation, then you weren't doing a good job.

[433] So you've got to be willing to walk away from the table if the other side is not serious.

[434] And that doesn't mean you don't come back.

[435] You laid out three principles there that I think are worth delving into because this is very important, I think, for people's proactive lives as well.

[436] So I learned something very profound from Carl Rogers, and a lot of Rogers clinician, a lot of Rogers' work has been instrumental in establishing mediating.

[437] processes over the last few decades.

[438] And Rogers delineated out what's come to be known as active listening, which is kind of a cliched version of what he was attempting to put forward.

[439] And I've used this a lot in my private life and also in my clinical practice because it actually works.

[440] It's one of the few psychological techniques, so to speak.

[441] It's not manipulative that actually is credible and not just cliched.

[442] Rogers suggested to the people he was attempting to inform the clinicians he was trying to train that when they listened to a client that they listened without interruption and then provided back to the client a summary of what they had just said and asked the client whether or not that summary accurately represented the intent of the communication.

[443] And that was useful in three ways, say.

[444] The first element of utility is that it indicated that at least that the listener was interested in and attentive enough to fully, and brave enough to fully understand what was being communicated.

[445] So that's very useful, because that's a sign of respect, right?

[446] Attentive respect.

[447] The next part of it that was useful was to indicate to the person that what had been said was actually understood, right?

[448] Because if you're going to put the gist forward, you have to have understood it.

[449] And that also often helped the person who was communicating clarify what it is that they were actually trying to communicate, because it's not always the case that the person you're talking to knows exactly what they want.

[450] And so you're offering them a gift, if you can summarize it.

[451] And then you also have some insight into the potential conditions of satisfaction that the other person is attempting to establish.

[452] Like if I'm talking to my wife, one of the things about something where there's some contention, and we've negotiated this as a meta -negotiation strategy, is that it's incumbent on both of us to say to define the conditions under which peace could theoretically prevail.

[453] You know, because you can ask someone, well, what would I have to give you, hypothetically, so that this went away and you were happy?

[454] Now, it isn't necessarily the case that I can or will deliver that, but at least I'd like to know, right?

[455] Okay, so that's active listening.

[456] And then you said also, and conditions of satisfaction, You also said, this is something I always told my clients, too, is that if you can't say no, you can't negotiate.

[457] And then no means, this is what no means.

[458] No means if you continue doing what you're doing, something you do not like will happen to you with 100 % certainty.

[459] Now, that might just be that I'll leave and that the negotiation ends, but, you know, it could be.

[460] other things as well.

[461] But if you don't have that in your back pocket, in the back of your mind, if there's no line that you've put forward that can't be crossed, of course you can't negotiate, because the whole negotiation's a lie, because really what you're doing is walking into the situation saying, I'm fully yours for the taking, but I'm going to pretend that's not the case.

[462] And if the person on the other side is the least bit canny or the least bit pushy, like a good litigator would be, They're going to figure that out by every nonverbal cue you put forward and by everything you say and don't say.

[463] So you need to listen so you know what the person wants.

[464] You have to find out their conditions of satisfaction to see if they can possibly be met.

[465] And then you have to determine, as you pointed out, that you can and will say no and that no actually means, well, it means that something that isn't pleasant is going to transpire.

[466] Otherwise, you have no strength as far as I can tell.

[467] Well, no, that's a great summary.

[468] And again, you know, I didn't have the formal training from Rogers.

[469] It was more of the kind of the school of hard knocks of litigating a lot of cases and working as a diplomat and, you know, learning those experiences.

[470] But I think it's a great summary.

[471] So 100%.

[472] And again, I think that being willing to say no is just critical.

[473] Folks have to know that there is a point.

[474] And as you know, you point out, there's a point of no return where the unpleasant thing may just be.

[475] that the negotiations end.

[476] But it may be that there's going to be a military strike, and maybe that there's going to be an economic sanction.

[477] I had this happen with a relatively well -known case.

[478] I was sent to Sweden to bring home an American rapper named ASAP Rocky.

[479] And it was somewhat controversial because he was being held by an ally.

[480] It was a result of a street scuffle, but we determined that he was being held unfairly.

[481] And the Swedes didn't like the fact that I was showing up as a hostage envoy.

[482] In fact, I remember one of the result of, reporter was joking, and as I was walking to the courthouse, are you sending a carrier?

[483] Are you going to send the seals?

[484] But we had to negotiate with our Swedish partners, and, you know, they're a new NATO ally, and they were close partners in.

[485] But they had no intention of negotiating with us.

[486] I mean, they, in their view, this is in our legal system, stay out of it.

[487] He'll get dealt with it as we see fit.

[488] But the problem is the President of the United States to put our credibility on the line.

[489] The President said he's wrongfully detained.

[490] We're going to bring him home.

[491] He thought he had to deal with the Swedish prime minister.

[492] The Swedish prime minister saw it a different way, which that happens or miscommunications and no blame to the Swedes.

[493] But I had to sit down and Mike Pompeo wrote about this in his books.

[494] I'll mention it because Secretary Pompeo mentioned it.

[495] When Mike sent me, I was a hostage envoy at the time, sent me to Sweden.

[496] He said, listen, you've got a carte blanche.

[497] You can use whatever economic tool you want and tell them they're never going to sell another Volvo in America.

[498] And so at that point, even though the Swedes were, weren't prepared to negotiate when we kind of said, we understand that.

[499] And that's, in fact, I actually told the deputy foreign minister, that's quite admirable that you're willing to stand up to the U .S. You're not going to negotiate.

[500] But, you know, this is important to us now because I've got hostages all over the world.

[501] I've got hostages in Lebanon and Syria and Iran and Venezuela and North Korea.

[502] If we cave to Sweden because, and don't get the result, the president said we're going to get, our credibility is shot around the world for, you know, dealing with other regimes.

[503] are going to say if the sweets can push you around wool, we're far nastier than the Swedes are, we'll do the same.

[504] I said, so I understand your point of view, and it's admirable, but you're never going to sell another Volvo in America.

[505] And so there are going to be factories in America that you built and factories in Sweden that you built, then that won't have, you know, you're going to have to fire thousands of Swedish workers.

[506] And if, you know, you've got to decide what's more important to you at this point, you know, keeping this rapper who you've, who is attacked by, some Afghan migrants, and they'd kept that out of the press and fought back.

[507] And lesson learned for those guys, don't attack a rapper in his posse.

[508] He was not a good idea in a street fight.

[509] But if it's so important, you'd put him in jail for a year or two in a kind of a dubious situation, their argument was that he had defended himself, but then the longer the fight went on it, he exceeded his self -defense rights.

[510] but I said on a relatively dubious thing that would never even be charged in a place like Los Angeles and it wouldn't even get to the DA's office the police would have dealt with it and it's so important that you're going to close down some of your factories to maintain that principle and God bless you.

[511] And we saw a newspaper article come out a day or two later that said the U .S. is bullying Sweden.

[512] We knew it was leaked by the Swedes because we didn't disclose it.

[513] And so I knew at that point that they'd probably made the decision that they'll blame the U .S. for bullying them.

[514] And that was fine.

[515] I wanted them to be able to stay face.

[516] And Sweden's a great country.

[517] They were helping us in North Korea.

[518] I remember meeting with the foreign – I'd become national security advisor a couple weeks later.

[519] I met with a foreign minister who was a really impressive woman.

[520] And we had a great meeting on North Korea.

[521] We let bygones be bygones with the ASAP Rocky case.

[522] But again, you have to – it's easy for a party to come to the table and say, I'm not negotiating with you.

[523] I get everything I want.

[524] And if that's what you're going to do, then just pack up your bags and go home or don't even show up with the negotiation.

[525] But if you're going to try and get the result you want and your credibility is on the line, then you've got to be willing to let people know that there is a consequence that comes with a no. You can say no, but there's a consequence that comes with it.

[526] And in that case, we were able to get the whole thing resolved.

[527] Sweden convicted them and then let them go for time served.

[528] So they safe face their justice system was was able to run its course I stayed for the trial and after the trial ASAP was able to get home and come back to America and it all worked out very well and we maintained cultural relations but it's an example of a negotiation where both sides were pretty well dug in and it didn't look like there was a way to get it done but we got it done.

[529] So on the, with regard to when you should say no so and this is tied up very tightly with the issue of honesty I think it's incumbent on you to say and indicate no when you're convinced of the fact that the alternative position, what you're going to accept instead, is actually an untenable solution in the long run.

[530] Like if you exceed to a negotiation, but you walk away bitter and resentful, and you believe that the conditions that you now have to abide by are not only unjust but unlikely to be maintained, then you should have said no more harshly during the negotiation.

[531] And that does take a certain amount of forthrightness and willingness to confront.

[532] And also the kind of honesty that has a long -term view, right?

[533] I mean, a successful negotiation should also appear to be, should be and appear to be just to both sides because otherwise it's going to be undermined in all sorts of secretive ways as soon as the negotiation concludes.

[534] Well, the old saying in L .A. litigation circles was, you know, it wasn't a good deal unless both sides walked away unhappy.

[535] You know, I think another way of restating what you just said, where both sides felt that they had some sort of win.

[536] And I'm not talking about the Chinese, you know, the Chinese talk about win -win negotiations, and it's always the Chinese win and you lose.

[537] But a real win -win negotiation, not a propaganda one, you know, both sides need to come away with something.

[538] But when it gets to your issue of no, and you're just a really good point, Jordan.

[539] you can say no in a negotiation.

[540] That doesn't mean we're done with negotiating.

[541] You can say, no, that's not a good deal.

[542] I don't want that, but let's keep going.

[543] But when you get to that ultimate no, that needs to be your bedrock because you don't want to say no and walk away and think, you know, I could have actually given a little bit more and gotten to where I needed to be.

[544] You need to be honest with yourself about where is it too painful for me to continue, but where, you know, I may say no because I don't like the deal and try and get a better deal.

[545] But where is the no -come where you pack up your briefcase and you literally walk away and you're not coming back.

[546] And you have to prepare for that before the negotiation and know what you're internally.

[547] That doesn't mean you share it with the other side.

[548] But you have to know internally what are my red lines and what's that point where I can't jump off the cliff and commit suicide, but, you know, how close can I get to the cliff and still get a deal that I can be happy with?

[549] And that's something you have to think about that before you start the negotiation.

[550] Right, right.

[551] Well, when I was working with people who were involved in celery negotiations, for example, there were often people who had worked quite diligently that weren't very good at reporting what they had done to their superiors, that were laboring under some degree of bitterness and resentment because they didn't feel that their contributions had been recognized, and perhaps rightly so, we would always ensure that before they went and had a conversation with their boss, that their CV was in order and they'd already checked out the alternative job market and they had at least a lateral move in mind and maybe a better move and then we'd practice the conversation so that they knew exactly what they were saying but the reason for them to get their CV in order and so forth was because they needed to walk in there knowing that they could tell their boss to that they would leave.

[552] Now they didn't want to, you know, that was an outcome but if they didn't have that in their back pocket they were weak and if they did have it in their back pocket they're much more effective negotiators.

[553] They knew what they wanted and they knew where their line was and that stiffened their spine in the...

[554] And you have to have all that straight in your head before you go into the negotiation.

[555] This is a great point.

[556] What I used to tell people and still tell colleagues who are thinking about leaving their job or aren't happy or think there's a better opportunity, I always tell them, keep one arm on the monkey bar when you're swinging for the other one, but don't drop it in the air and hope you're going to catch the other monkey bar.

[557] Make sure you've got it.

[558] Make sure you've got a plan B, you've got another job or you can keep your current job but don't drop the monkey bar and hoping you have enough momentum to get the next rung.

[559] It may work, but you could also end up in the sandpit down on your butt.

[560] Well, it helps as well.

[561] So, you know, it helps very much as well to walk into a negotiation, having plotted out what you'll do if it goes as badly as it could, right?

[562] Because there's going to be fears that beset you.

[563] What if this is a catastrophe?

[564] And the answer to that can't be, oh, it won't be a catastrophe.

[565] The answer has to be, if this is a catastrophe, here's the steps that I will take to ensure victory on a different front.

[566] And that also stops you from being pushed around.

[567] Yeah, yeah.

[568] 100%.

[569] How to mitigate the downside?

[570] And look, it helps to have a counselor, you know, and I'm not just talking about a national security advisor.

[571] It helps to have someone like you or a lawyer or a psychologist or, friend or your wife that you can sit down before the negotiation and talk these things through because sometimes it's hard to do it on your own.

[572] So if you've got people you can rely on, whether it's colleagues or professionals that you can bring in to help in the negotiation and you walk through these things, you know, you can become more focused and figure out, you know, here's my real red line.

[573] If I have to walk away with that red line, here's the downsides to me. How do I mitigate them?

[574] And here's how I can, here's how I can give the other side downs.

[575] You know, here's how I can, you know, prepare downsides to the the opponent, you know, so that they've got to keep that in mind when they're negotiating.

[576] Yeah, well, it's also very helpful to pre -negotiate with people who are quite pushy so that they can push your limits and test you out.

[577] And that's actually part of the purpose of critical thinking, right, is you can have all the weaknesses in your position analyzed by, you know, without any real threat, except maybe to your self -esteem and your ego, you know, with your inability to formulate your arguments clearly.

[578] But it's a hell of a lot better to have them pre -tested than to have them fail on the actual battlefield.

[579] 100%.

[580] Absolutely.

[581] So you characterized earlier, and this will be a lead into some questions about Russia, you characterized the withdrawal from Afghanistan as catastrophic.

[582] And so that's all faded away in principle, although we may be suffering from the aftermath of that in the form of this, you know, never -ending conflict or a conflict that looks like it's going to never be ending in Russia and Ukraine, why would you characterize the withdrawal in Afghanistan as catastrophic?

[583] I mean, the U .S. did extract itself.

[584] It was a messy, long -term conflict.

[585] So in that way, it's come to an end.

[586] And you could imagine that there might be some benefits from that.

[587] But obviously, that isn't the way that you look at it overall.

[588] And so what is it about the withdrawal that you object to?

[589] And why do you characterize it as catastrophic?

[590] So let me walk you through that, but let me first make a point when you said it faded away.

[591] And you're right, because we've got a short attention span in the West.

[592] It's not just America, it's Canada, it's Western Europe, Japan, Australia.

[593] What I kind of call it not the geographical West, but the ideological West.

[594] Hopefully India is becoming part of that group in other countries.

[595] But we've got a short attention span.

[596] We go quarter to a quarter with our stocks.

[597] We go election to election, two -year cycles for the House representatives here, four years for president.

[598] We've got a short, kind of short -term view.

[599] And I think that's true with Afghanistan.

[600] And so people have already forgotten that this just happened two years ago.

[601] But guess who doesn't have a short -term view, the Chinese Communist Party?

[602] So when I was in Taiwan in March of this year, led a delegation there for a GTI, a Global Taiwan Institute, to work on how do we improve U .S.-Taiwan relations and how can we strengthen Taiwan and make it more resilient to deter China?

[603] One of the things that they have, the videos that they showed on TikTok and on Instagram to undermine the confidence of the people in Taiwan in the relationship with the U .S., but also in their own ability to defend themselves, is they showed a picture of that C -17 that was running along the Afghan runway at Hamid Karzai Airport in downtown Kabul, and had the Afghans running alongside it and people climbing on the wing and people trying to get in the wheel well and they said, this is what America will do to you.

[604] This is how America leaves.

[605] This is, you'll be, in essence, you'll be these poor Afghans running along trying to hop on the American airplane as they take off.

[606] You better cut a good deal with us now because this is your future.

[607] And so that Afghanistan withdrawal that we might want to forget and, you know, forget the 12 or 13 gold star families who lost their loved ones at Hamon -Khazai airport and the suicide bombing, and we want all that to go away, our adversaries aren't forgetting it.

[608] And so it was, you know, seeing those videos emboldened Putin to go into Ukraine, but it's also the Chinese are very skillfully using it to undermine the confidence of our allies in Asia about our ability to stand with them in the event of a Chinese invasion.

[609] So, in other words, cut the good deal with us now because America won't be there.

[610] But going to your broader question, why was it?

[611] a catastrophe.

[612] You know, we wanted to get out of Afghanistan.

[613] That was a forever war.

[614] Secretary Pompeo and Ambassador Kalilad spent a lot of time for President Trump negotiating a deal with the Taliban, which we signed in February of 2020.

[615] And that deal was stop killing Americans because the president had gotten sick of going to Dover and was sick from going to Dover.

[616] And I was with him on three occasions.

[617] I represented him on another three occasions for the dignified transfer of the remains of our fallen heroes.

[618] And you'd have to go in and comfort those families and watch these young men come home and there were no women at the time, in my experience.

[619] But these young men coming home in a flag -drapped casket and it was a beautiful, dignified transfer.

[620] But that's not the way their parents or their loved ones or their wives wanted them to come home.

[621] And that's not the way America wanted them to come home.

[622] And those are heart -wrenching experiences.

[623] And we decided, look, we've got to end this Afghanistan war.

[624] Number one, it's taking too many of our lives, of our young women who volunteer to go serve our country and defend America.

[625] And it wasn't just America.

[626] It was Canada that was there in France and many of our partner nations.

[627] But it was also costing us billions of dollars every month.

[628] And while we were plunging billions of dollars into Afghanistan with very little return, Afghanistan was not on, we mentioned Sweden earlier, Afghanistan was not on the way of becoming a new Sweden.

[629] The Chinese were taking those same billions of dollars and launching a new frigate or a new destroyer every month.

[630] So they were engaged in great power competition, building the biggest Navy in the world, which they have bigger than the U .S. Navy.

[631] And we were pumping this money to Afghanistan.

[632] Much of what was getting put on pallets and cash and being shipped to Dubai because of the corruption there.

[633] It had to come to an end.

[634] But it had to come to an end in a way that met American national interests.

[635] And so what President Trump ultimately decided, and it took a lot of time to get there, is that we'd leave 2 ,500 troops there as a counter -terrorist force to deal with ISIS -K, to deal with al -Qaeda.

[636] We had 5 ,000 NATO troops.

[637] So for the first time, when we left office in January, January, 20, 2021, we had 5 ,000 NATO troops and only 2 ,500 American troops.

[638] So we had 2 -1 NATO contribution to America.

[639] NATO was bearing the burden.

[640] We were supporting NATO with exquisite capabilities, but NATO was bearing the burden.

[641] We kept Bogram Air Base because Bogram had been, Big fields of fire.

[642] It couldn't be overrun by the Taliban.

[643] It would have been the perfect place if we ever had to engage in a somewhat expedited withdrawal.

[644] Bogram was a place to do it.

[645] So we put everything in place.

[646] And then we insisted to the Taliban that you have to negotiate with the Afghan government.

[647] That, you know, this can't be, we're not turning the government, we're not turning the Afghanis in over to the Taliban.

[648] You've got to negotiate with your friends, your frenemies, your fellow Afghans, and you've got to have a government of national unity.

[649] And we're staying here until that happens.

[650] And even after that happens, we're likely going to stay because you're going to need our help, which the Taliban is now even admitting with ISIS -K.

[651] I mean, ISIS -K, the al -Q with the al -Qaeda offshoot, which is just a brutal terrorist organization, is alive and well in Afghanistan.

[652] And you know what's bad when the Taliban are calling them extremists, you know, it's pretty bad when the Taliban are saying, hey, those guys are Islamic extremists.

[653] You know, it's got to be pretty bad.

[654] they're not taking hold in Afghanistan.

[655] So had we gone with our plan, kept a counterterrorism force there, had the Afghan government and Taliban come together as a government of national unity, used American prestige but hard power to make sure that happened, that would have been a very different result than what we saw of Afghans falling out of wheelwells and plunging to their death at Hamid Karzai Airport, leaving behind thousands of Afghan collaborators who worked with our interpreters or Afghan Special Forces, Afghan pilots, leaving behind hundreds of Americans.

[656] I mean, there are still Americans trapped in Afghanistan, and that gives the Taliban leverage over the administration in every negotiation they have to free up funds or that sort of thing because they've got these Americans there, and they've got our allies who are still there that they could do harm to.

[657] So, you know, it was a very different scenario that we had a mind than what played out.

[658] And what played out led to what we talked about at, at the top of the show is this perception of American weakness, that we're so weak that we're running out with our tail between our legs, with the Chinook helicopters going to the top of the embassy and extracting our diplomats and racing them to safety while our Afghan allies suffered the results of a Taliban takeover.

[659] And again, maybe the Biden administration didn't expect it to happen.

[660] Maybe they didn't expect the government of Afghanistan to fall as quickly as it did.

[661] But in hindsight, which is always perfect, you can see how just one step after another withdrawing our troops down to 600 troops giving up Bagram Air Base in the middle of the night without telling our allies appeasing the Taliban begging them not to take this city until a certain number of days that's the sort of thing that led to this catastrophe and as Churchill talked about with the Munich Accords this is something that was going to carry on with us long down the road it was a defeat without a battle.

[662] And we're seeing that now with Xi Jinping in Taiwan.

[663] We're seeing it with the Ayatollahs in the Middle East.

[664] And we're certainly the most concrete example is we're watching Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine and with limited success, but also with it causing great and terrible humanitarian damage in Ukraine.

[665] And basically to his own people as well, his own soldiers who have thousands of young Russian lives have been lost in that meat grinder.

[666] So all of these things you can tie back to what happened in Afghanistan.

[667] And so in hindsight, it was a really poor decision by the Biden administration that did handle the evacuation and the withdrawal the way they did.

[668] Ending the war, good idea, doing it in that fashion, bad idea.

[669] Well, given that that plan was in place to keep 2 ,500 troops there and that there were 5 ,000 NATO personnel there as well and that that would have been a credible peacekeeping and deterrent force, Why do you think the Biden administration acted contrary to that plan and so precipitously?

[670] Yeah, I think there was just bad analysis.

[671] I think they thought the Afghan government could stay in power longer than it did, that they could get out quicker.

[672] I think they didn't quite understand the structure that we'd left behind, although we'd briefed them on it many, many times.

[673] And so you heard things like, well, this is Trump's fault, and Trump signed the deal.

[674] Trump didn't have a plan.

[675] Look, I think part of it goes back to what we talked about earlier was Trump's resolve.

[676] I mean, the Taliban knew not to push Donald Trump very far.

[677] They knew the results of what, you know, that he'd take.

[678] They saw the Baghdaddy rate.

[679] They saw, you know, how tough we could be around the world.

[680] I think they took it at a very different measure of Joe Biden.

[681] And so I think all these things played into it.

[682] And, look, I think another part is Biden always wanted to get out of Afghanistan.

[683] I mean, as did we, he wanted to get out of Afghanistan back in the Obama administration, and that was shut down.

[684] Yeah, well, I think they also wanted to see a, like, a quick accomplishment on the foreign policy side, and that beckoned.

[685] Let me talk to you now about the situation in Russia.

[686] We talked a little bit about what led up to it, although there's a lot more to unpack with regard to that.

[687] I mean, I see our relationship, I guess we can talk about that a bit.

[688] I see our relationship with Russia since the 1990s as an unbroken string of missed opportunities, virtually unbroken string of missed opportunities by the West.

[689] And I also don't understand what we're looking for, what our conditions of satisfaction would be in relation to the current war.

[690] So this is how it appears to me. In the 90s, after the wall collapsed, there were all sorts of attempts to modernize the Russian economy, often conducted by economists who were out of their depth because modernizing an entire nation's economy, bringing it into the capitalist realm is complicated beyond anyone's understanding.

[691] you need a bedrock of trust between people before that can even happen.

[692] And it's not easy at all to understand how to instantiate that trust.

[693] Right?

[694] I mean, in the West, we assume that the default economic transaction will be honest.

[695] And that's an absolute miracle.

[696] I have no idea how we ever accomplish that.

[697] Because it's so unlikely that distant people on eBay, for example, can conduct transactions without attempting to rip each other off.

[698] The fact that that's the case is an absolute bloody miracle.

[699] In any case, it looked to me like we had an opportunity to bring the Russians fully into the Western fold.

[700] And I think that by applying a Cold War mentality to that situation, either by commission or by omission, consistently for 30 years, we squandered that opportunity.

[701] Now, I know that people view Putin as having expansionist proclivities, and that may well be the case, if you look at what happened.

[702] in Crimea and the Donbass, but I also think that Russians regarded Ukraine as an extension of Russia and were very concerned about NATO incursion into Ukraine.

[703] And it isn't obvious to me, and I'm perfectly willing to be corrected in relationship to this, it isn't obvious to me that it isn't obvious to me why we didn't try to bring NATO into, or to bring Russia into NATO too, especially given that the fundamental concern that we're going to be dealing with in the long run is clearly China.

[704] And now Russia and China are much closer than they might have been.

[705] And that's further complicated by the fact that we're settling down into a very long war here.

[706] We're going to spend the sort of money that we spent in Afghanistan that could have been put towards strengthening the Navy, for example.

[707] We're going to spend the billions of dollars in Ukraine that we were spending in Afghanistan there.

[708] And I don't see what we have as a plan for either peace or victory.

[709] So that's a lot of things to throw at you.

[710] But it's quite a mess.

[711] So there is a lot of things to be thrown there.

[712] So anything you have to say that would bring some clarity to that would be more than welcome.

[713] Well, there's a lot to unpack there and a lot of good thoughts.

[714] I think starting in the beginning, how we dealt with Russia after the fall of the wall.

[715] And we missed opportunities, but I think the Russians missed a lot of opportunities.

[716] too.

[717] I think a lot of times in the West were very critical of ourselves.

[718] If we would have only done this, then they would have responded reasonably.

[719] I mean, Russia was a very corrupt society.

[720] It had just come off, you know, the revolution was in 18.

[721] So, you know, basically 80 years of tyranny, of Soviet tyranny, of the most brutal kind purges and famines and millions, I mean, tens of millions of people being killed.

[722] So there's no surprise that the fabric of this society across the former Soviet Union was afraid and there wasn't the trust that you talked about.

[723] And by the way, I agree with you.

[724] It's still a miracle that you can do a deal on eBay and most of the time, or on Craigslist or something, most of the time it works out.

[725] It's shocking.

[726] Yeah, it's like 99 % of the time.

[727] Yeah, it's, and it's a testament to, you know, that our system works and when we have faith in our system, it will work for the benefit and prosperity of all.

[728] but Russia didn't have that and I think the other issue is Russia was an empire Britain acquired an empire and then gave it up Russia has always been an empire there was the Russian empire there was no differentiation between Russia itself and its colonies and its constituent republics they were assembled in the Soviet Union but it was basically the Russian Empire and I think the Russians really struggled with the idea that you know what Ukraine is just not that into us I mean, if you go to Ukraine, yeah, it was subjugated by Russia, and there were Russian -speaking people in Ukraine, but most Ukrainians were Western.

[729] They had been at one point in the Austrian -Hungarian Empire, the Polish kingdom were, you know, they were Roman Catholics to a large extent, not Orthodox.

[730] And so they didn't want to be part of Russia.

[731] And I think that was very hard for the Russians to understand, just like a guy who's pining after a girl, she's just not that into you.

[732] the Ukrainians just aren't into the Russians the Bolts the Lithuanians, the Latvians, the Estonians not that into Russia didn't want to be part of the empire they'd been subjugated but it was very hard for the Russians to understand that some of these countries that they subjugated and dominated didn't want to be part of them and I think that was a failure on the Russians part so we may have there's a lot of talk about NATO expansion we tried to bring Russian to NATO We had a NATO -Russian partnership.

[733] The Russians had military officers in NATO headquarters, which you think now is quite shocking in 2023, but in 2002, that seemed like a great idea.

[734] And unfortunately, the Russians didn't take advantage of that.

[735] And I think the Russians are being very short -sighted.

[736] And this is something I pointed out to Patrachev when I negotiated with him in Geneva.

[737] A big part of Russia, and Russia's wealth is in the east, which is underpopulated in Siberia and eastern Russia.

[738] It's where their diamond mines are, their platinum mines, their oil, their gas, their timber, wildlife, I mean, their massive lands.

[739] A lot of that territory was taken or agreed to be transferred to Russia in 1860 under something called the Convention of Peking or the Treaty of Peking about the time of our Civil War here in America.

[740] China gave up thousands and thousands of miles and millions of acres of land to the Russians, including the city of Vladivost, stock, right in all along Siberia, resource rich lands, that the Russians forced the Chinese because the Tsar was far more powerful than the Chinese emperor at the time.

[741] They forced the Chinese to recognize that as all Russian land.

[742] Now, Xi Jinping has said many times that the century humiliation will be overcome by the Chinese people and that they'll take every square inch of property back that they believe was theirs, that they believe was historically Chinese.

[743] That's why you had Macau and Hong Kong and Xinjiang with the Uyghurs and West Western China.

[744] It's why you see him fighting the Indians today engaged in bloody battles along the line of actual control in the Himalayas.

[745] You see it with Tibet.

[746] Why?

[747] You see it with the threats against Taiwan, of course.

[748] This idea that China's going to assemble all this land that it lost to Western powers or it lost when it was humiliated because it was weak.

[749] Do you think they're not coming for the Russian lands?

[750] Do you think they're not coming for Siberia with its treasure trove of resources that the Chinese are desperate for?

[751] because the Chinese are relative for as big a country as China is as bereft of natural resources the way that Russia or America has these great stores of natural resources and wealth they're coming for that and I told that to the Russians and Tom Clancy wrote a book about it years ago it called the Bear and the Dragon or the Dragon coming over the mountain or something along those lines the Chinese are coming for that land and they're doing it very cleverly right now there's I think 9 million people in eastern Russia three million of our illegal Chinese immigrants.

[752] The Chinese are flooding into Russia.

[753] They throw a bottle of vodka at the border guard and get let in.

[754] And they're going to take that land back.

[755] And that goes to this national interest.

[756] Russia's national interest is not with China.

[757] China looks at Russia as being weak, as being a country that can be colonized or can be reabsorbed into China in large part.

[758] And they can be dominated by Xi Jinping.

[759] The Russians are proud people.

[760] And they're not, and they're no longer communists.

[761] They're authoritarian, they're imperialists, but they're not communists.

[762] They've got no ideological affiliation with Beijing.

[763] You know, Vladimir Putin or whoever comes after them, you know, the one thing we know about Russians throughout history, whether it's a czar or the general secretary of the Communist Party, they don't like to get a backseat to anybody as a Russian.

[764] They're very proud people.

[765] I don't think they're going to want to be a colony of China.

[766] And so, you know, unfortunately, what's happened is, I don't want to say we've pushed the Russians to China.

[767] The Russians would tell you the West has pushed the Russians to China.

[768] But we needed to come up with a way and we still need to come up with the way to deal with Russia that doesn't allow them to invade their neighbors, doesn't allow them to invade Poland or Lithuania or Latvia, or Estonia or Finland, or Ukraine.

[769] But that pulls them back away from this unholy alliance that they've got with Beijing.

[770] And how do you see that happening?

[771] And it's in the Russians' interests.

[772] So how do you see that laying itself out, given that this war is devolving into, well, it's very difficult to get accurate representation of the situation, but my understanding is that it's turned into something like a grinding stalemate with the advantage possibly shifting to the superior Russian forces.

[773] Now, like I said, I'm not confident in the information that I have, but what do you?

[774] you see happening currently and how would you outline something approximating a productive pathway forward?

[775] Well, look, I think you're right in describing this situation.

[776] And that's what I said, the Ukrainians are very tough and very Soviet at the outset of the invasion.

[777] And they really dealt the Russians a bloody, bloody nose.

[778] One of the reasons they did that was because we got them, in the Trump administration, we got them 600 javelin missiles, anti -tank missiles.

[779] They were highly effective at blunting those three armored axes that came into Ukraine.

[780] And, uh, Up until that time, when I was National Security Advisor, we were having a heck of a time getting the Pentagon to even deliver them to those javelins to Ukraine because there were people in the Secretary of Defense's office that didn't want to provoke Putin.

[781] It goes back to this whole theory that if we help the Ukrainians will provoke Putin.

[782] So after Russia invaded Ukraine the first time in 2014 and took Crimea and took parts of the Donbass, remember the Obama administration said, we're going to aid Ukraine and we sent him Gatorade and MREs and blankets and a few night vision goggles and what they needed was it's like Zlensky said this time when they offered to send him a helicopter.

[783] He said, I don't need a helicopter, I don't need a ride.

[784] I need ammunition.

[785] And we got them the ammunition to blunt the initial invasion.

[786] They got more from the Biden administration.

[787] I credit the Biden administration for doing that when it came time.

[788] But the Russians suffered.

[789] But what I've told people is the Russians aren't stupid.

[790] These are very smart people.

[791] These are technical people.

[792] They've got engineers and scientists and doctors and musicians.

[793] I mean, this is a culture that's, they got sputnik to space before we did.

[794] So don't count the Russians out because they're not dumb.

[795] And if you look at Russia's wars, whether it was Sweden or France with Napoleon or Germany with Hitler, the Russians always do poorly at the outset.

[796] And then because they're willing to throw men and material into the meat grinder in a way that we can't do in the West because the political constraints aren't on them, they can go through 100 ,000 dead young men without losing the presidency.

[797] That wouldn't work here in the West.

[798] It wouldn't work in Canada or America.

[799] But it works in Russia, and they use it to their advantage.

[800] Stalin did it.

[801] Putin's doing it now.

[802] And between their smarts and their cruelty to their own people, they're going to turn things around.

[803] I think they've started to do that.

[804] And so it's a, you know, we're in a very, very difficult situation for the Ukrainians.

[805] So now the big question, and look, I don't have the answer on this, Jordan, but we need to figure it out, is how do we resolve this situation?

[806] So the Ukrainians have a safe and secure country, get most of their territory back, if not all of it, in the war, give them security guarantees, and the Ukrainians are going to be skeptical of those guarantees because they had the security guarantees from the U .S. and Britain and Russia and France and the Budapest, of course.

[807] and, you know, that didn't help them out.

[808] That was a precondition for them giving up their nuclear weapons.

[809] Right, right, which, by the way, now, this whole thing is another argument for any country that's thinking about getting a nuke is get a nuke because, you know, that's the only real way you can defend yourself against a great power.

[810] So it makes nonproliferation tougher and counterproliferation tougher.

[811] So the question is, how do we get the Ukrainians what they need and the security they need and how do we get the Russians to back off and pull them away from the Chinese and integrate them more with the EU and the West and try and make them a responsible stakeholder and player?

[812] Well, especially because we need much of what they have to offer.

[813] I mean, the world can't do as far as I can tell without Russia slash Ukraine natural resources particularly with regard to fossil fuels, but also with regard to, well, the ammonia that those fossil fuels produce, that's a crucial issue, but also the amount of edible grain that both of those states produce.

[814] And of course, that's not their only contribution to the world's economy.

[815] I mean, it's hard to defeat a trading partner upon whose resources you're actually dependent.

[816] And, I mean, it's terribly complex, as you said.

[817] I mean, Ukraine has to be supported because they did give up their nuclear weapons, and that's obviously a bad thing.

[818] If they give up their weapons and strip themselves naked, and now they have no defense, that's not a good precedent for operating in the rest of the world.

[819] I mean, it doesn't look, I'm speaking out of turn here, but I'm going to anyways, because you have to start somewhere.

[820] I can't imagine the Russians ever giving up Crimea.

[821] I think they'd go backs to the wall to keep Crimea.

[822] With regard to the newer territories they took over.

[823] Their argument, of course, is that those territories were primarily occupied by Russian speakers who have a primary allegiance to Russia.

[824] And it seems to me that that could be, in principle, settled by something approximating a referendum in those districts if that was something that could be established under international supervision.

[825] And then to provide the Ukrainians with territorial integrity guarantees and to invite the Russians back into the Western game, It looks to me that something like that looks like a pathway forward.

[826] And maybe I've been accused in my attitudes of being a Russia appeaser, and I'm certainly not trying to do that.

[827] I think I'm fairly cognizant of the dangers of the Russian enterprise overall.

[828] I think that makes me more appreciative in some ways of Putin than other people might be, because my sense is that by historical standards, Putin is by no means the worst and most reprehensible leader that the Russians have ever managed to produce.

[829] And so, you know, it might be lovely to consider what the country would be like in his absence, but...

[830] Yeah, so it's a low bar for him.

[831] It's, that's for sure.

[832] It's as low a bar as has ever been established anywhere with the possible exception of the Chinese.

[833] So, so anyways, I mean, those are thoughts about what a potential move towards solution might approximate.

[834] I mean, what do you think of those thoughts and what do you think there is as an alternative?

[835] I mean, the Ukrainians, I think, are going to become increasingly desperate, and that also brings up the terrible danger of having the West dragged in, you know, which is the most likely outcome, dragged in by their sleeve into this terrible monstrous machine.

[836] Well, look, I think a lot of good points.

[837] And let me start with the first thing you mentioned about the trading partner.

[838] Look, if Russia could get integrated like it was on its way to into the West, selling oil and gas and agriculture.

[839] agricultural goods, and the agricultural goods are, they may not be that expensive.

[840] They may not be considered, you know, cash crops or the same as diamonds or platinum oil and gas.

[841] But that agricultural output of Ukraine and in southern Russia, that's a breadbasket for Africa, for Southeast Asia, for Asia.

[842] I mean, without that, we're going to face famine.

[843] And it's critical that we get this grain out of Ukraine and a lot of the Russians keep trading their grain.

[844] Because there's so many people that will just literally die in places like, you know, the Congo and Egypt and other places, Lebanon, that will have real trouble if they can't get access to it.

[845] The other issue in Canada has something in common with Ukraine and Russia here is potash, which you need for fertilizer and to grow crops on a industrial scale.

[846] Canada, Russia, and Ukraine, and the only folks that make potash at commercially viable levels, they can allow for modern agriculture, which has kept the world from going to the famine.

[847] So there are a lot of important things that, you know, to the world and getting this conflict resolved.

[848] As far as you're, you know, the kind of, the pieces or parts to a compromise or a settlement or an accord that you laid out, like, I think those are things that people are talking about around the world.

[849] The Ukrainians are smart.

[850] They're thinking about those issues.

[851] The Russians are thinking about them.

[852] But I think what's happened is there hasn't been, you can't get a negotiation if you can't get the two people, the two parties to the table.

[853] And right now Ukraine's not ready to come to the table and Russia's not ready to come to the table.

[854] And I think the other part of that is we can't do the negotiations for them.

[855] The West is particularly bad at negotiating for other countries and we're willing to, you know, we saw this happen with Vietnam.

[856] We saw it happen certainly with Czechoslovakia and Munich.

[857] When the Chamberlain talked about, these are faraway places of which we know a little about.

[858] So we'll just give up the Sudeten land for the checks and they'll be happy with it, and we'll end a war.

[859] And again, remember, that was incredibly popular in Britain.

[860] When Chamberlain came home and said, we had peace in our time, that's now ridiculed, that's mocked.

[861] That wasn't at the time.

[862] At the time, he was met by huge crowds at the airport.

[863] He came into Commons, the House of Commons, and had a standing ovation.

[864] For our five people, Churchill and four of his colleagues were the only one sitting in bipartisan, labor and tripartisan at the time, liberal labor and conservative, standing ovation for Chamberlain.

[865] So appeasement can be very popular, and we've got to avoid the temptation as America or the Europeans to come in and tell the Ukrainians what they have to do or negotiate a separate deal with the Russians and impose it on Ukraine.

[866] We've got to have the two parties if we want this to be long -lasting and we want to be stable, Russian Ukraine after the negotiations.

[867] We can counsel the Ukrainians, counsel the Russians, support the Ukrainians as we have been.

[868] And, you know, that's all important, and those are, you know, rightful roles for the EU and for America and Canada and our NATO allies.

[869] But we need to make sure that we're not trying to negotiate for someone else because that won't work.

[870] And it'll end up with another conflict down the road.

[871] Now, what leverage do you think the U .S. has given its provision of arms to Ukraine to entice or compel, which is more dangerous, obviously, them to the negotiating table sooner rather than later.

[872] With Ukraine?

[873] I mean, certainly it's the diplomatic, the economic, the military support that they're getting.

[874] That's huge leverage from the West on Ukraine.

[875] But you don't want to use that unrighteously or unjustly.

[876] I mean, you keep in mind Ukraine's been invaded.

[877] That war crimes have been committed in Ukraine.

[878] The entire cities have been wiped out.

[879] And maybe the most pernicious thing that's happened in Ukraine.

[880] And I know you did a show on OUR recently and the Sound of Freedom movie.

[881] 100 ,000 Ukrainian kids have been taken out of Ukraine and sent back to Russia.

[882] Now, I don't know if this was for sex trafficking or for my guess is the Russians were trying to improve their demographic situation because the demography of Russia is so bad that they get these kids and they incorporate them into Russian families and they end up with 100 ,000 more Russian kids and families and fathers and that sort of thing down the road.

[883] So Putin knows he's got a problem, but that's, think about the parents of these kids who were kidnapped and put with other families.

[884] I mean, And this is really dastardly stuff that's happening in Ukraine.

[885] So we've got to support them, and we don't want to be unrighteous in the pressure that we put on them.

[886] But if there comes a point where we believe the Russians are willing to come to the table in a good faith manner, and we think we could resolve the Ukraine crisis could help pull Russia away from China, and we could get a long -lasting solution.

[887] Then we do go to the Ukrainians, I think, and say, look, we've been with you from the start.

[888] we've given you hundreds of billions of dollars in aid.

[889] We think we evaluate this as being a real opportunity to negotiate.

[890] We'll be the brokers.

[891] We're not going to let the Chinese be the brokers.

[892] That's another mistake that we made.

[893] It was letting the Chinese take the lead in peace negotiations.

[894] That should be the U .S. and the West job.

[895] We'll sit down with you.

[896] We'll be the honest brokers and we'll help try and get a deal done.

[897] And look, I don't know if this administration has the ability to do it for a whole number of reasons.

[898] But I think a new administration, whether it's President Trump or potentially to Santas or whoever it is could come in with a clean slate and maybe lay the groundwork for that sort of negotiation.

[899] But it's a heck of a challenge, not just the Ukrainians who are bearing the brunt of it and have paid the biggest price.

[900] I mean, we spent a lot of money, but they paid the biggest price in human sacrifice for their soldiers, sailors, the Marines who have been killed by the Russians, and their civilians who have been killed and their children have been lost.

[901] But it's, you know, it's been a sacrifice.

[902] for everybody involved in the conflict, including, you know, third -party beneficiaries of grain from Russia and Ukraine who aren't getting the grain they need to stay healthy in Africa and the Middle East and Asia.

[903] So we need to figure out how to get this thing to a resolution.

[904] But I, and you've talked about some of the outlines of what could be a potential solution.

[905] But right now, I just don't see anything that's going to bring the parties to the table.

[906] Maybe if the Ukraine offensive stalls, if, you know, there's a change in government here in the U .S., if there's a change in government here in the U .S., if there's There's a change of government in Russia, which I don't see happening right away.

[907] There are variables that could speed up the process that we don't see now.

[908] But right now, things are pretty bleak.

[909] Right, right.

[910] Okay, well, let's close this.

[911] I also wanted to talk to you about the Abraham Accords, their current status, how you evaluate them overall, and how they might be extended.

[912] Maybe you could just start by reminding people who are watching and listening what the Abraham Accords were, and what they signified and how it was that they were successfully negotiated, which was somewhat of a miracle.

[913] And then what you see them having produced and may still be capable of yet producing.

[914] Well, look, I think it was one of the great accomplishments of the Trump administration, but I think it's an American accomplishment.

[915] I don't think it's just a Trump accomplishment or a, you know, Jared Kushner, or Mike Pompeo or Steve Mn or Robert O 'Brien accomplishment.

[916] I think it was an accomplishment for our country that we were able to, to use America's influence to bring peace.

[917] And it goes back to what we talked about earlier in the show about peace or strength.

[918] A strong America is good not just for America, but it's good for the world because it allows for peace to break out.

[919] The Abraham Accords originally started out as a deal between the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel to bring peace to those two countries, both strong partners of the United States, both small countries, but the small countries have punched way above their weight in international affairs and certainly in the region.

[920] And every effort to get peace in the Middle East up until this time had been stymied because the idea was if Israel couldn't do a deal with the Palestinians, they couldn't do a deal with any other Arab country.

[921] So we started out with the Palestinians, and we proposed a great deal as the kind of neutral mediator in the deal.

[922] We proposed a great deal with the Palestinians.

[923] We had to put a lot of pressure on the Israelis to accept it.

[924] The Palestinians, one diplomat once said, never missed an opportunity, to miss an opportunity, miss that opportunity.

[925] We were able to then have the Israelis go to the UAE and say, look, we gave this awesome deal to the Palestinians, they turned it down.

[926] Why are we going to, why are you going to allow them to keep us from having a deal, keep us from having peace between our two countries?

[927] And it took a lot of negotiations with the Saudis because none of this would have happened without Saudi approval.

[928] The Saudis didn't ultimately sign the deal, but had the Saudis been totally opposed to it, it wouldn't have happened.

[929] We did a lot of negotiations with the UAE, Bahrain.

[930] And I think the parties made a courageous decision because it wasn't just a political decision to make peace.

[931] It was really a physical security situation because we look at what's happened to past leaders in the Middle East that have made peace Sadat or Rabin.

[932] You could end up dead very quickly.

[933] And so I think it took a lot of courage from the Crown Prince, Mohan bin Zayed, from Bibi Netanyahu to the king of Bahrain, to King Muhammad in Morocco, who all entered in this peace deal.

[934] And, you know, it was improbable.

[935] It was improbable from the American side.

[936] We had to pull together our whole team.

[937] And, you know, the power that the National Security Advisor has isn't so much as a line, you don't have line authority.

[938] You can't order people to do things.

[939] You can't order ambassadors to do things.

[940] That's the State Department, that's the Secretary of State.

[941] You can't order generals to do things.

[942] That's the Department of Defense and the Secretary of Defense Secretary of Defense.

[943] But you can convene people.

[944] And we brought together a great team of Mike Pompeo and Secretary of the State and Steve Mnuchin and Jared Kushner and our team at the NSC and others.

[945] We got that whole team all running in the same direction and the same boat, which doesn't always happen in the U .S. government, unfortunately.

[946] And we got the president behind it.

[947] And we know it was a long shot.

[948] I mean, you know, we'd been counseled by very senior former officials that said, don't waste your time with Biddle.

[949] release peace.

[950] It's a mirage that every administration goes for.

[951] No one gets it and you waste all your time and energy pursue other priorities.

[952] But we thought we could get it done.

[953] And the parties took big risk to make peace.

[954] The Israelis gave up settlements, annexing settlements in the West Bank.

[955] The Arab countries risked their street rising up or being upset with them.

[956] They risk potential terrorism from Iran or from the Palestinians.

[957] But we got them together.

[958] And what does it mean?

[959] I mean, number one, militarily, and intelligence -wise, is a great alliance to these countries, or not quite a military or intelligence alliance, but a partnership against Iran.

[960] Because Iran wants to, like China and Russia, Iran wants to change how the world operates.

[961] And they want to place themselves with their Shia ideology, their end -times ideology at the top of the region in the Middle East, dominate the entire Middle East, and ultimately have great influence all over the world and change the way we live our lives.

[962] And this, you know, this Abraham Accords took a very strong, UAE is strong Israel and other countries and put them together and helped them stand up to the Iranians.

[963] So, number one, militarily, it was a, and intelligence -wise, it was a great deal.

[964] Number two, economically, you know, we've got the most dynamic country in the world outside of America, outside of Silicon Valley, is Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and Israel, the tech sector there, both on the hard tech side, the computers and ships, the soft side with software, but then the egg tech and figure out how to make the desert blossom and grow the food that we need and to manage the water, which is going to be as important as oil in the future, that's all coming out of this little tiny country of Israel is just blossoming.

[965] But they need investment.

[966] And so the UAE has almost an unlimited amount of capital to invest.

[967] They've got a very wealthy country.

[968] They've got very well -established capital markets.

[969] They're the crossroads of trade and not just for the Middle East, but for Africa and Asia.

[970] So to put the UAE in their capital and their trading expertise together with the Israelis and their tech is just going to create an economic dynamism that it's not going to be one plus one equals two, it's going to be one plus one equals like five.

[971] The benefit it had for us as Americans is, as we've pushed the Chinese out of our tech sector using the Sifius process and other tools, the Chinese were starting to invest heavily in Israel because they were going to go, you know, the Chinese are good at mimicking and, and copying, but they're not great at innovating.

[972] And so they were going to go where the innovation was happening.

[973] Well, now what's happened is this Arab money, this UAE money capital, is being invested in Israeli startups, and it's pushing the Chinese out of Israel, which is another great benefit to the United States.

[974] So you've got this military, you've got this intelligence, you've got this economic benefit.

[975] But the intangible is peace for peace sakes.

[976] We always kind of look at things in my world, national security, foreign policies.

[977] How do we advance American interests?

[978] How do we protect ourselves?

[979] How do we keep ourselves safe?

[980] It's kind of a hard analysis.

[981] But for human beings, every time I see a friend sent me an Instagram photo of somebody having their bat mitzvah or their bar mitzvah in Dubai and say, isn't this great, it's pretty amazing when you think about it, that this just happened, you know, three years ago.

[982] I mean, in September of 2020, and you've got all these Israelis kids wanting to go do their bad mitzvah, their bar mitzvah in Dubai.

[983] I mean, that's good for the human spirit.

[984] It's good for the soul.

[985] When you see Amradi's up on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, going to the Alaksa Mosque or the Blue Mosque and making the pilgrimage to what they believe is the third most holy site in Islam, and they can now go fly directly from Abu Dhabi to Jerusalem, to Van Gogh and Tel Aviv and drive up to Jerusalem up to the mountains and go have their pilgrimage.

[986] These are things that were just that were unheard of.

[987] I mean, no one would have even believed that they'd happen, you know, even when I was a hostage envoy and doing work in the region.

[988] You would have told me that there'd be, the peace would be breaking out.

[989] You know, it was something that, you wouldn't have thought possible.

[990] And yet it is.

[991] And so there's a human element and an example to other places in the world that no matter how intractable the problems are, and maybe even Russia, Ukraine, you know, that you can come up with an accord and, And I'm proud of the United States that we were the ones that brokered it.

[992] There was nothing we gained directly from it.

[993] We gained indirectly, obviously, from the security and the economics and just the goodwill for brotherhood of mankind.

[994] But this was us putting all of our political capital on the line of the president, taking big risk and putting his political capital on the line.

[995] You know, our departments and agencies don't always get along well together, playing together to make this push.

[996] And then, you know, again, I want to give credit to Netanyahu and Muhammad bin Zayed and King Muhammad and, you know, the others that actually signed the deal and put their own lives on the line.

[997] It was really quite an accomplishment.

[998] And I hope there's now some talk that Saudi, that the Biden administration is pushing for the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords.

[999] I mean, putting all politics aside, it would be great if Saudi joined the Abraham Accords.

[1000] Yeah, that's for sure.

[1001] That would be a real coup.

[1002] Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and President Biden, I wish him will.

[1003] luck because it would be you know putting it aside the politics of how it now of course president Biden will get the Nobel Prize for it which President Trump didn't know but that's okay well he should have got it but the team should have gone clearly but it's it's look it'd be good for good for the region good for the world and good for America if Saudi joins the Abraham cards and if Saudi does then you're going to have you know a good chance of Kuwait and Oman and other countries certainly some of them Islamic countries in Africa will join and I think you can have a real you know kind of gold rush for peace here and change the way that and then hopefully the Palestinians come along and get on board and have their own state and they're creative people, they're smart people, doctors and, you know, businessmen and well -educated folks, literate folks, but they've been kept down by these leaders, these corrupt leaders and the Palestinian Authority or the Islamic extremists in Gaza.

[1004] And if they get rid of the corruption and the extremism, the Palestinians would have a chance for a tremendous future in the Middle East and a free and prosperous Middle East.

[1005] So there's a lot of good that can, we did a lot of good, but there's a lot more good that can happen.

[1006] And I wish the Biden folks luck as they pursue this, the next piece, which is clearly Saudi Arabia.

[1007] Look, that's a really, well, it's very nice to be able to end on high note.

[1008] And I do think there's tremendous promise in the extension of those accords.

[1009] I mean, and that would be a miracle of peace and a miracle of economic expansion.

[1010] And man, we could definitely use, we could definitely use more of that.

[1011] Some union among the people of the Abrahamic faiths, I know they're pushing that hard in the UAE.

[1012] And so that's a hell of a thing to watch for, and it's something extraordinarily hopeful.

[1013] So, yeah, good luck to the Biden administration and pursuing that if they can manage it.

[1014] That would be real.

[1015] That would be very forward -looking of them.

[1016] And also, you know, it would require them giving the devil his due, and that would be Trump in that situation.

[1017] But, man, the payoff would be so great that, you know, you'd hope people could lift their eyes above the internecine conflict and look to the long run.

[1018] Thank you very much for talking to me today.

[1019] Thanks for having me, Jordan.

[1020] My honor.

[1021] Yeah, it was a pleasure.

[1022] It was a pleasure hearing from you and getting further educated on the, with regard to the issues that you've, you know, been so involved in and mastered to such a degree.

[1023] There's lots of other things we could have talked about.

[1024] And having said that, I'm going to continue talking to.

[1025] to Ambassador O 'Brien for another half an hour on the Daily Wire Plus side of things.

[1026] If those of you who are watching and listening are interested in that, please join us there.

[1027] We'll delve a little bit into the more autobiographical side of Ambassador O 'Brien's life.

[1028] And so you can join us there if you'd like to.

[1029] Otherwise, thank you very much for your time and attention here on YouTube.

[1030] And thanks once again for agreeing to talk to me today.

[1031] It was a pleasure.

[1032] Great to be with you.

[1033] Thank you, Jordan.