End Games: America Strikes Back, Congress Strikes Out On Immigration

>> Bill Whalen: It's Thursday, February 8, 2024, and welcome back to Goodfellows, a Hoover Institution broadcast examining social, economic, political, and geopolitical concerns. I'm Bill Whalen, I'm a Hoover distinguished policy fellow. I'll be your moderator today, joined by our full complement of our good fellows, as we jokingly refer to them.

I wanna include the historian Neil Ferguson, the economist John Cochran, and the geostrategist, former presidential national security advisor, Lieutenant General HR McMaster. Neil, John and HR are all Hoover institutions senior fellows. Guys, it's good to see you today, and sadly, we all have very heavy hearts today, and that's because the Hoover Institution has suffered a terrible loss.

I'd like to spend a moment on this before we get on with the show. As I mentioned last week, the Hoover Institution had a real jolt, and that was the sudden, very unexpected loss of Karen Weiss Mulder, who, along with her husband James, died tragically in an automobile accident last Friday.

Karen was the Hoover Institution's chief operating officer and chief financial officer. She did more, though, than merely manage the money and keep the books. If you were trying to get a project off the ground, trying to get someone hired, you'd go to Karen. And if your idea made sense and she had a great hedge for these things, she'd come up with a solution for you.

Karen loved the Hoover Institution. She loved to find creative ways to advance our programs and allow fellows like Neil and John and HR to carry on with their research and do the great work that they do. And she was, by the way, a fan of Goodfellow, so I'm happy to report.

Karen is more than a colleague to many of us who knew her both in and outside the office. She was a friend, a mentor, a North Star, and just a lot of fun to be around. And I can attest to that personally. To Karen's son Zach, to Karen and James, extended families and their circle of friends, we share in your grief.

To say that Karen will be difficult to replace would be a gross understatement. Her death leaves a very large hole in our organization and an even bigger hole in our hearts. But we take comfort in having known her in the last two decades that she called the Hoover Institution home.

Godspeed, Karen, and James, we miss you. Gentlemen, we have two topics to discuss today. I want to get into a column that John Cochran wrote for the Wall Street Journal. John, venturing outside the world of grumpy economics into the world of politics, and asking the question of Donald Trump's popularity and why it is that Trump's detractors don't get it.

But first, I want to turn our attention to the Middle east and events that occurred since the last time we did our show. The last episode of Goodfellow was January 26. Two days after, on January 28, three US service members were killed in a drone attack on a remote outpost in Jordan.

Five days after that, February 2, the US carries out strikes on more than 85 targets in Syria and Iraq. The next day, February 3, the US and British warplanes launched strikes against dozens of sites in Yemen controlled by Houthi militants. The day after that, February 4, the us forces destroyed a Houthi cruise missile believed to have been pointed toward us ships in the Red Sea.

Then finally, yesterday, February 7, the us drone strike. And Baghdag takes out a high-ranking commander of the Kitai Hezbollah militia connected with the aforementioned attack on the US troops in Jordan. HR, I wanna start with you. In 1996, a book was published by the National Defense University. Its title was shock and awe achieving rapid dominance.

I imagine that you read the book, you lived the book, because shock and awe was the theme behind the US attack on Iraq in 2003. I know that this is 2024, it's not 2003. The goal here is not rapid dominance. The goal is not taking out a regime in Baghdad, it's trying to change the mind of a regime in Tehran.

But HR, here's my question. Attacking 85 targets simultaneously is an oppressive use of force. We can all agree taking out a militia leader in Baghdad, I understand the drone hit a car. They lose in, this is something straight out of a James Bond movie. This is pretty remarkable intelligence and technology.

But the question HR, does this really change matters in the Middle East? Does all of this retaliatory action, does it really move us forward toward deterrence?

>> H.R. McMaster: It can play a role in restoring deterrence, Bill, but you don't really accomplish outcomes with strikes, right? My friend and historian Conrad Crane had a great essay in the early 2000s called The Lure of the Strike.

And it makes you feel good. And a lot of times, it's important to impose costs on an enemy like Iran's proxy network that go beyond the costs that they factor in when they conduct aggression against us. And that aggression was at least 165 attacks against US facilities and US personnel since October 7, since the horrendous attack against Israel.

So it's a step in the right direction, Bill, but it's not gonna be decisive in and of itself.

>> Niall Ferguson: I'm struggling to make sense of the administration's Middle East policy, we've discussed this before. But I could never really understand why they wanted to try to resuscitate the Iran nuclear deal, cut some slack to Tehran, and in the process, I think, inadvertently derail what had been going so well under the previous administration, the Abraham Accords and the progress towards reconciliation between Israel and the arab states.

It never seemed likely to me to work, and it always had an obvious downside risk that Iran would feel emboldened and would also be financially in a better position to encourage its proxies in the region to make trouble. And this is exactly what's happened, and it's happened in ways that the administration clearly didn't expect.

Otherwise, Jake Sullivan wouldn't have published his essay in Foreign Affairs, confidently saying that all was well in the region only days before catastrophe struck on October 7. I don't think Iran is being deterred by any of this. My sources in the region say that these attacks are very carefully calibrated and signposted, so that they have almost a demonstrative quality, symbolic rather than militarily valuable quality, and they don't directly hurt Iran.

And Iran, therefore, feels it can continue to make mischief in the region with something close to impunity until Iran is made to pay a price for the antics of its proxies. It's highly disruptive antics because not only are lives being lost, but global trade is being subjected to considerable distortion by the actions of the Houthis in the Red Sea.

I think the region is going to be in a very unstable state. And I was much struck by Bill Burns article in Foreign Affairs, which struck a very different tone from the article Jake Sullivan published. This is an article just came out by the director of Central Intelligence saying that he cannot remember seeing the Middle east in a more dangerous state than it is now.

But I have to say that's a terrible indictment of the administration's policy. I think this could be salvaged, but it's getting harder and harder because I'll say one more thing. I still don't really see a good endgame for Israel in Gaza. That doesn't leave Israel exposed to attack from Hezbollah in Lebanon.

And so the core of this problem, which is the greater insecurity Israel has been experiencing, looks very difficult to fix. And it's almost impossible to see it getting fixed if the Biden administration is not only doing too little to deter Iran, but it seems more concerned to lean on Israel to wind up its military operation against Hamas.

In short, I find the strategy baffling and I don't see a good endgame.

>> John H. Cochrane: But let me try to be the, I'll be the simpleton here who gets to-

>> Bill Whalen: Unbaffle us, please.

>> John H. Cochrane: Well, I'll put up the view that you guys can swat down and maybe that make you more effective.

It seems to me we're at the stage of a bar fight where the two guys are pushing each other to show who's tougher. And my initial reaction was, I've never been in a bar fight, but the advice I've heard is land the first punch and land it well, sort of what HR said, sort of the Powell doctrine.

We don't do things for show, you do things only to completely diminish the opponent's ability to fight and you fight to win. But there's a good Wall Street Journal article that I sent around and we talked a little bit about email that led me to rethink things. And here we're kinda turning around on Ukraine, originally I was the Hawk and Neil was, don't die.

And we don't wanna escalate and endanger that thing. And here I'm wondering, I have been influenced to think that maybe what the Biden administration is doing is not so bad. Iran clearly wants to keep out of a major war. They wanna have their proxies cause trouble, but just enough to stay out of a major war.

And it's not clear Iran completely controls these guys. They all have their independent ideas of what Shiites do. Some of them are Sunnis, some of them are Shiites, and some of them are Persians and not everybody here gets along, just to start with. Where are we? There has been no Hezbollah war yet.

Saudi Arabia still quietly wants to pursue a peace accord with Israel eventually. That involves some sort of promises about two state solution, and nobody ever talks about exactly what that means. Will the Palestinian state say? Yeah, we recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.

That's like number one, and that's the one that isn't happening. But is it so bad to try to keep this at the pushing stage of the bar fight and keep it from turning into a major? Attacking Iran would turn it into the major war that we're trying to dance around, not doing.

So why am I so dumb here?

>> H.R. McMaster: I'd just like to point out that the problem with that John is that, Iran is pursuing a strategy based on the ideology of the revolution and the objectives. The associated objectives to really expand Iran's hegemonic influence across the region, push the United States out of the region, as the first step that ultimately seeks is the destruction of Israel.

 

>> John H. Cochrane: They did not send Hezbollah to start a major war, so they are still, they're willing to do this so long as it doesn't involve a big war with Iran.

>> H.R. McMaster: Right now they're doing everything on their own terms because they're holding back the 150,000 or so rockets in Hezbollah to deter Israel and deter us from direct strikes on Iran.

And what that does is that also gives them, as Neil mentioned, really the ability to escalate this fight on their own terms with impunity. Their strategy is essentially to expend as many Arab lives as necessary in pursuit of their objectives, to keep the Arab world perpetually weak and enmeshed in sectarian civil wars.

And to assemble essentially proxy army and terrorist organizations around Israel so they can implement this ring of fire strategy. So as long as we play by their rules, by acting like we don't know what the return address is, they get to pursue that strategy essentially with impunity and at really no cost.

 

>> John H. Cochrane: What are you guys arguing for? So should the US strike Iran now? We just agreed we don't necessarily think strikes widely telegraphed in advance so that nobody gets hurt. Strikes to show how tough you are might not be the greatest idea. Serious strikes to seriously degrade their military capacity, sink their whole navy or something of the sort.

What do you guys think actually about Iran?

>> H.R. McMaster: I think when you use acts of war bombing to send a signal or to communicate, which you've heard over and over again, I think that's ludicrous, right? Because using bombs involves killing and killing unleashes a psychological dynamic that goes far beyond any kind of diplomatic communication.

I mean, this is what I wrote about in the run up to the Americanization of the Vietnam war, is that this same assumption was made and the same language was used by the McNamara Pentagon and Robert Kennedy or John Kennedy's, I'm sorry, and Lyndon Johnson's advisors. And so they looked at covert operations against North Vietnam.

They looked at the first bombing of North Vietnam to communicate our resolve. Well, what that did is that elicited a response from North Vietnam, which was to intensify their support for Vietnamese communists in the South and then ultimately to compel the deployment of us troops. So you have to always think about what happens next.

Your enemy has a say in the future course of events. But I think in this case, imposing costs on Iran that go beyond what they factored in is immensely important to get them to throttle back their use of these proxy forces. I mean, there is a ship sitting right off the coast of Djibouti, it's called the Bashad.

It's an Iranian ship that collects all the intelligence on the targets for the Houthis. Why isn't that ship sunk? Well, they sought harbor in Djiboutian waters, but I don't think that should make any difference at this point. There are other actions you could take as well. You could eliminate the entire fleet, including the ROGC's fleet and vessels that are critical to smuggling missiles back into Yemen, oftentimes, most often across Oman.

So they make a short dash across the gulf and then move these missiles, components of these missiles over land. But you could begin to interdict that route as well. Put more pressure on the Omanis to help do that. You can employ some special operations forces to do that, as you've seen with the two seals who made the ultimate sacrifice just a week ago, an attempt to interdict a ship that was reseeding these missiles.

But then this has to be placed in context of Iran's nuclear program as well. And I know you've been following the news of the last week or so, further acceleration of their enrichment of more and more uranium, the race that they're apparently making to get to a threshold nuclear capability.

And of course, once they have that, then I think they feel as if they can continue this proxy war with complete impunity. So I think what you're going to see is at some stage the opening of the Northern front, and this is debatable, but I believe that Hezbollah will be brought into this fight.

You're gonna see a massive intensification of attacks against Israel assets in the West bank simultaneously. And then I think you're gonna see massive attacks against U.S forces again with these proxies in Iraq. The Houthis aren't going away, and until you go after Iran directly, it's all gonna continue.

It's just gonna escalate on their terms like that. I believe that Israel's already decided, because Israel's a big factor in this, too. And what happens next? I believe they've already decided to reinvade Southern Lebanon because they have concluded they cannot have a terrorist organization on their border with those kinds of capabilities.

That's the big lesson relearned from October 7. And then also I think Israel's already decided. They'll do everything they can to go after Iran's missile and nuclear program. That'll be in the form of all kinds of covert operations and maybe in cyberspace or assassinations, other forms of attack.

But ultimately, once they have the capability, they're gonna go directly against those targets. So this is not gonna get any better. And certainly, Iran is not going to moderate this behavior until we impose costs directly on them. Step A might be, sink that damn ship that's sitting right across from Yemen and helping the Houthis direct their attacks.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Neil, I want to turn to a column that you wrote in the Daily Mail, the headline the gathering storm. I think it's also a title of a Churchill book, also an HBO movie based on that. And thank you for the column, Neil, because I took Latin for five years in prep school, and you actually put some Latin, the Roman Maxim, si vis pacem, para bellum.

What does that translate to, Neil, and what was the purpose of your column? What were you getting at?

>> Niall Ferguson: The old Roman adage states, if you want peace, prepare for war. And my concern, which relates not so much to the United States as to Europe and the United Kingdom, is that American allies have been doing anything but prepare for war.

Defense budgets have for a long time been historically at very low levels, in some cases below 2% of gross domestic product, which is far below the levels we saw in the 20th century, during the Cold War, of course, during the world wars. And it's no coincidence, I think, that this period of very low expenditure on military preparedness has been a period when authoritarian states have become bolder about challenging what is, after all, the Pax Americana.

We call it a liberal world order, but it's an American world order. And without the United States, which accounts for, I think, 69% of total NATO military spending, there really would be very little order left. So I think there's a major problem here. And the problem is that Russia is gaining the upper hand in Ukraine.

That's something that's a really striking feature of current developments in that theater of conflict. Israel, as I said, does not have great options in a situation that seems to me increasingly worse than the 1973 crisis, half a century ago. We dodged something of a bullet in January when the Chinese did not react as I feared they might, to the Taiwanese election.

Sometimes in history, it's the things that don't matter, that really don't happen, excuse me, that are really significant. And the fact that there wasn't a Taiwan crisis in January was a very important thing, but it could still happen. And the Chinese have other options too. The Philippines, which is under increasing pressure from the Chinese government.

And I mustn't leave out of this account the increasingly threatening behavior of the North Korean regime. So because the western powers, the allies of the United States in particular, are not really are preparing for war, they're making the risk of war greater all the time. And this is, I think, where Churchill does seem an appropriate author to refer to.

Churchill always called World War Two the unnecessary war on the ground, that if only there had been adequate rearmament in the 1930s, Hitler and the other axis powers might have been deterred. Well, it seems to me that we're living through a period when we're consistently failing to deter an increasingly emboldened and well organized authoritarian axis.

I don't like analogies with the 1930s, because I think they've been overused a great deal in the past half century, but it just gets harder and harder to look at the world today and not see a gathering storm.

>> H.R. McMaster: John?

>> John H. Cochrane: Well, can I just cheer? Let me add, as the economist here, it matters not just how much you spend, but that you spend it wisely.

And when you look at the numbers of how many tanks and guns like Germany has left, military spending numbers include pensions and health care and so forth. So a lot of even the numbers that we talk about are not being spent on things that are important. And it's very easy to spend a lot of money, especially in the US, on overpriced weapon systems that will go down to the bottom of the sea in the first five minutes of the war.

So it has to be spent wisely. And one number I saw, I hope I didn't say this on a previous show, US has 0.5% of the world's shipbuilding capacity. China has 50%. When we built a nearly identical frigate, as South Korea did, it cost us three times as much.

You need to spend it on the right things, and you need to spend it wisely. Maybe HR will tell us what the right things are. More army, right?

>> H.R. McMaster: Well, no, it's the whole joint force. I was joking last time, but you need all the tools because there's no silver bullet technology, right?

And we've just spent about $250 million in missiles in the Bab el-Mandeb and in the Red Sea to shoot down of anti-missiles, to shoot down about $5 million worth of Houthi missiles. So, there are new contracts being let. There's a new Anduro contract you might have just seen on a really sophisticated, relatively low cost anti-drone capability.

The British just tested a directed energy anti-drone and anti-missile capability that's quite inexpensive relative to what we have now. So the technologies exist. But as you're saying, John, we lack the ability to rapidly procure these capabilities and field them in units. And this is what we have to get better at.

One way to do that is to look for these opportunities to enhance existing systems with these kinds of defenses, right? So you don't need another new big thing, but you can add some little and very capable things onto the big thing, and this is called project replicator in the Department of Defense.

But as we mentioned last time, I think we talked about it like two episodes ago, you need long-term predictable contracts so that you can send the signal to defense companies. They're not charitable organizations. They got to turn a profit. So if they have a strong long-term demand signal, they'll invest in the additional production lines and improve our capacity.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Let's do an exit question. Let's make it very quick. If we look at the Middle East as a game of poker right now, who is going to raise the stakes? Will it be the US and its allies with more retaliatory strikes, or will it be Iran and its proxies with more strikes?

I wouldn't be surprised if it was Israel for the reason that HR mentioned earlier. I don't think they can afford to let Hezbollah strike the first blow. It's not gonna be this week or next week, but at some point things are gonna come to a head on the Lebanese border.

HR, what's your guess?

>> H.R. McMaster: Well, I think it could be on the Lebanese border, and it could be because Israel's already kicking Hezbollah's ass right now. Because what Hezbollah's been doing is they've been engaged in these kind of performative attacks themselves against Israel, firing the eight kilometer range anti-tank missiles, some of their rockets.

But in return, they've gotten more than they've bargained for. And the Israelis have taken out some of their missile stocks and inflicted some significant losses on them. Also, the fight against Hamas, as ugly and difficult as this is, with the subterranean fight there, Israel has defeated about 17 of the 24 Hamas so called battalions.

That doesn't mean every one of those fighters are gone, right? And many of them are now in pockets of resistance and using guerrilla and terrorist tactics. But the fight in Gaza from Israel's perspective is actually going pretty well from a military perspective, I think they have mismanaged, as I've mentioned, the information war.

They could have done more to provide maybe humanitarian assistance under their control. But overall militarily it's going well for them. And I think, as I mentioned earlier, Israel's already made the decision to ensure that Hezbollah doesn't have those capabilities on its border. But to your question, Iran thinks it's all going in their favor right now for all the reasons Niall mentioned.

We essentially have concluded, I think, that they can continue to intensify this war with relative impunity. Because we still haven't acted as if we know what the real return address is for these attacks.

>> John H. Cochrane: Iran is going to keep ramping up minor provocations that don't cause an explosion, right?

They're not going to in the near term. Now, there comes the moment when they send a missile and flatten Tel Aviv. And that is something they've talked about wanting to do for a long time. It's certainly not gonna be the US who ramps it up. We are obviously in reactive mode.

And I think we've just learned in Ukraine how long the US attention span is for bucking up our allies, two years. And as we think in wider terms, even talking about fighting the war in Taiwan, this US is going to actually send our own military across an ocean to defend someone else's land.

You need not just the means, you need the will and the strategy and the determination to use it, which the Ukrainians had plenty of while they had nothing else. So anyway, I doubt we are gonna be the ones who raise the ante.

>> H.R. McMaster: And hey, Bill, I wanna highlight, Niall gave just a great summary of the interconnected nature of these cascading crises.

And so for those who make kind of the specious argument, hey, well, we can't support Ukraine because we really need those weapons for the Indo-Pacific region. The perception of Russia winning in Ukraine or Iran being able to defeat us in the Middle East will certainly embolden Xi Jinping.

And the longer those conflicts go and seem to be going in the direction of, I would call it the axis of aggressors. Then China's gonna at least take advantage of our preoccupation in these other areas. So, I think our desire to prevent this war from cascading, these wars cascading into the Indo-Pacific is a very strong argument for Congress getting off their ass.

And providing the assistance to Israel and Ukraine that they need.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, let's move on to the B block. John Cochran, you get to wear a lot of hats on this show. You're obviously our in house economist. You get to play a historian along with Neil and HR.

Get to play geostrategist along with your colleagues. Today, you get to be a political scientist, my friend. I'm referring to the column you wrote, the Wall Street Journal. The headline, Incompetent Elites Make Trump Look Appealing. Subhead, his supporters don't love everything about him, but are sick of being disdained and misgoverned.

John, your column ran on February the second, which is Groundhog Day, one of my favorite movies. It's a movie about a weatherman in Pennsylvania who has to suffer through the festivities of that day. He goes to sleep that night, he wakes up the next day, and it's Groundhog Day again and again and again and again.

I mentioned this John, because I read your column. I started thinking, back in 2016. What did we have? We had people fed up with politicians. We had the public upset about immigration. We had a very weak democratic opponent running against Donald Trump. People who didn't like Trump, just not taking him seriously.

And Trump won. I'm not saying Trump's gonna win, but, John, it's Yogi Berra said deja vu all over again. Is 2024 in fact 2016?

>> John H. Cochrane: No I think a lot of 2016 turned on that one word, deplorables. And what I tried to do in the column is, never Trump Republicans and most Democrats cannot fathom that majorities of people in surveys are saying they're gonna vote for Trump.

What? Who are these people? Deplorables, racists, white supremacists. But you have to get your hand, if your view of the world is that maybe 2% of the people should be voting for Trump and half of them are, you gotta understand. If you believe in democracy, who are our fellow citizens?

I tried my best to put a finger on it. And when you look at what's happened in the last four years, what makes it more than 2016 is not just the deplorables attitudes. It goes back, but it is the politicized incompetence of so much of our government institutions.

Now it goes back to, among other things, the financial crisis, when a lot of people in Trump's America lost jobs and businesses. And learned that financial regulators don't know what they're doing, in the COVID era, we learned that our public health authorities were censorious and politicized. And I think you can just tell one of the major things animating Trump supporters is the legal persecution of Donald Trump.

Now, many of us can go on with the fine points of just why Trump's documents are so much worse than Biden's documents. Or how awful it is for a Manhattan real estate speculator to have overstated the value of his properties on loans. Or misuse of campaign funds for legal campaign funds, hush payments to a parent store, and so forth.

But what many people see is the justice system being used for political purposes. And today the Supreme Court is going on with the state of Colorado trying to kick Trump off the ballot on the grand season insurrection. And I'll just say my next column will be about something I'm gonna say on every show until it happens.

We are heading straight to constitutional crisis over this law fair, over using the legal system for political means. If Trump wins, the Democrats will say he's illegitimate. They'll try to deny him office in the House. And just think about where it goes. If an entire political party has committed itself to believing that the other side is illegitimate.

And, of course, Trump already set that script. He just won't own the Justice Department if he's out of us in office. He said already, he's gonna use the Justice Department to do unto them like they're doing unto him. So we're heading in very dangerous ways, and middle America wants its country back.

Competent, apolitical bureaucracies give us return to normalcy, as I think Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge said it.

>> Bill Whalen: Niall?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, it's a tough one because I don't think it's 2016 all over again. That's partly because Trump is a known quantity seeking a second term and in some ways polling more strongly than he did at this point in 2016, when he still seemed an outsider, a long shot.

If you remember, there was still considerable skepticism eight years ago that he would get the nomination. Now he's almost as much the incumbent as Joe Biden. And its also worth remembering that Joe Biden's increasingly obvious frailty. Who confuses Macron with Mitterrand is an argument for Trump all by itself.

And that's, I think- I think another important difference with 2016, what's odd to me. And I know we're gonna talk about it, is that, for reasons that are hard to fathom, the Democrats have created a huge vulnerability with their handling of the southern border. And they did it almost as soon as the Biden administration came into office.

If there's one issue that populists historically gain from, its a perception of uncontrolled illegal immigration, and that's gonna shift a lot of votes over to Donald Trump. I read a very interesting interview last week with my old friend Andrew Sullivan. Who, if you remember, eight years ago, said, if Trumps elected, its the end of the constitution, its the end of the republic.

He was one of the most vociferous, never Trump writers on the right. But in this interview, to his great credit, he acknowledges the things that he was wrong about and the things that Trump is right about that make Trump highly likely, in his view, to win. I don't think it's that certain.

And here's the interesting thing. While people are furious about the border and also, I think, somewhat nostalgic for the Trump economy. There's one thing that can still trip him up, and that is if he's convicted in one of the criminal cases. The polling on this is really striking in the swing states.

If you ask people, how are you gonna vote? Trump wins, if you ask them how are you gonna vote, if there's a criminal conviction. It's a different outcome because independents and other less MAGA voters are really quite influenced by the notion of a candidate with a criminal conviction.

In that sense, the law courts are, as John says, a really important part of the story. We're talking on a day when the Supreme Court is weighing whether Trump could be legally removed from the ballot in a state such as Colorado. I don't think there's any way of getting the law out of this election.

It's quite possible that the law could decide it.

>> Bill Whalen: Right, I wanna talk about immigration. But first, HR, let me read a few words from John Cochran to you and get your thoughts. And here's what John wrote. What should Democrats do? Answer, listen. Stop screaming your talking points and hyperventilating that Trump is a dictator and waiting.

Stop falling into the obvious trap. Trump is gifted at provoking ridiculous overreaction from his opponents. You promised moderation, openness, conciliation, and simple competence. You delivered the opposite. It is still possible to acknowledge, listen, and pivot.

>> H.R. McMaster: Yeah, well, I always agree with John, you know, but, but, and I would just.

I would just amplify that comment by, they've actually engaged in behavior that was at least equally egregious of what they accuse Trump of. Of course they accused Trump of politicizing the military. Then they put these people into political positions who are pushing this nonsensical woke agenda on the military, and the military is resisting it, and the military is not woke.

But there are people who would love to see it in the same condition as the academy is in right now. And then, of course, they're talking about, really trying to improve energy security and so forth. While at the same time, they're putting a moratorium on us permits for US LNG export facilities.

Which is only gonna result in countries like Venezuela and Iran exporting or the gutteries exporting more LNG. The policies just don't make sense. They're the opposite of what makes sense. So I think this is gonna really bring even more supporters to anybody who's in opposition to these policies.

I'm hoping that people will also recognize that John is right in this essay, that Americans want Washington to be disrupted. There's a lot in Washington that needs to be disrupted. But sadly, Donald Trump is so disruptive that he disrupts his own agenda. He's not the person who can actually do it.

And I think this is the argument that Ambassador Haley's trying to make as well. And maybe, Neil, with a recognition of all these legal troubles, even if, as John mentioned, these may reflect to a degree, like weaponizing justice against a political opponent. If people can believe that, but also maybe believe that all this drama around him and all the focus on himself is distracting.

And would prevent him from delivering the kinda results that the American people would want to see.

>> John H. Cochrane: If I could quickly add, I know you want to move on. The advice in the piece for Nikki Haley was explain that you understand a little more clearly than she has the frustrations people have with how things work.

But tell people you are the person who is gonna be able to get that done. Trump is gonna be in legal chaos the entire four years of his next presidency. And he can explain, I think, quite well about that. Trump is amazingly good at getting the Democrats to overreact.

We have to recognize how great a politician he is, in the sense of he's here, nobody else would still be here. So that ability to just step over the line, to do something so outrageous that it gets the Democrats to completely overstep any sense of norms and decency is a great talent.

Which is a lot of wiser, which is, I don't, even if they convict him, that depends very much on which case goes under and what the evidence is. And a lot of people, I think a lot of Trump supporters are gonna say even more so it was a shame.

We'll see which one it turns out. And finally, I think a lot of the reason people are voting for Trump, supporting Trump, is poke in the eye of the elites. The more the elites hate Trump and say he's a dictator and hyperventilate about him, the more it's not.

This election is not about the twelve point policy program and the refinements to the capital gains treatment of taxes or even the economy. This equation, it's really deeply about where does American government and society go? And they're not voting him for policy. They're voting from screw you elites.

And the problem is, Nikki Haley is now still perceived among the Trump base as one of the insider Republicans.

>> Bill Whalen: Let's do a couple minutes on the immigration bill and then a few minutes on something that happened in the Senate this morning, and that's that they actually voted on a foreign aid package.

First, immigration, the immigration bill now dead on arrival in Congress. I'm confused, gentlemen. I went to the Wall Street Journal and I saw the following headline, a border security bill worth passing. I went to the National Review and I saw the headline, no to the border deal. And here's the rationale.

National Review rights. The deal is worthy provisions, but it's not going to compel Joe Biden to do anything he doesn't want to and further entrenches a system that is fundamentally distorted by mass bogus asylum claims. Okay, we then go to the Wall Street Journal, which writes, if Republicans reject this bill.

They will hand Democrats an argument that the GOP wants border chaos and then they can exploit is a campaign issue. Well, anybody wanna break the tie here?

>> John H. Cochrane: I'll jump in. I think both are right, because they had asked different questions. The Wall Street Journal was asking, hey, here's really tough border stuff that you've been asking for for a long time.

Why don't you take it and show you can get something done? And the other article is saying, this is far from what our policy should be. Yes, all our immigration is under this asylum business. We should have a sensible immigration policy that lets in lots of smart, hardworking immigrants who want to come join this country and become Americans.

And that's not in this border bill or. Or it's in every bipartisan, how do we fix this? Which is what needs to be done. So this bill was not what needed to be done, but it was a lot of what Republicans asked for, and they're now in sort of in spite not taking it.

So I think both are rights because they ask different questions.

>> Bill Whalen: Neil, where the policy versus the politics?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, in some ways, this is an extension of our earlier discussion because it hasn't a national security dimension. This is not just immigration in the way we used to debate it.

It was, of course, connected politically to whether or not aid for Ukraine would pass. By creating that linkage, I think the Republicans took a significant risk. I personally believe that immigration reform is a national security priority, and I think the way we should be going is to get the parties to find common ground with a view to immigration reform against China.

My argument is you can get just about anything through Congress these days if it's against China. So let's have immigration reform against China, let's have border security, and let's revamp our legal immigration system, make it more Australian or Canadian that's urgently needed. The United States is passing up the opportunity of the century, which is to be the ultimate talent magnet.

The talent wants to come here. And instead of welcoming it with open arms and smoothing the path to green cards and citizenship for the talented people of the world, we keep them out. We keep them waiting in line at visa centers in India and elsewhere, and we let a free for all play out.

And that free for all kinds of undesirables are crossing the border, including people who pose a threat to national security. Now, we've talked a lot about who is suitable to be president, but we have to ask questions about the suitability of the people in the House of Representatives on both sides, not to mention the Senate.

If our legislators cannot agree on something as fundamental as securing the nation's borders and ensuring that only those become citizens who have fulfilled the legal requirements, then they should be voted out of office. And it seems to me it's Congress's failure that's most infuriating at this point, they're letting Ukraine down.

A friend of mine is embedded with Ukrainian troops right now at the front line. He said the bitterness amongst those soldiers who are running out of ammunition because of the hijinks of American legislators can scarcely be overstated. That makes me angry, too. Those guys are laying their lives on the line for a border that's been overrun by an invading army.

And we play silly buggers with the domestic politics in the House and Senate, it's an indictment of our system that we cannot understand our own national interests better.

>> Bill Whalen: But Neil, there's news out of the United States' Senate this morning, and I want to get HR's thoughts on this.

The Senate held a cloture vote, which is its way to get out of filibuster, and it improved, at least they forwarded a $95 billion foreign aid package, the details of which include $60 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel, $10 billion in humanitarian assistance, most of which is gonna go to Gaza and by the way, $5 billion for Taiwan.

HR, what do you think?

>> H.R. McMaster: Well, I think they have to expedite it, right? And we've mentioned this before that the laws of physics apply in war, right? So when you allocate that money, that doesn't immediately manifest itself in the form of ammunition on the front line, as Neil is describing the difficult situation there, there's a huge time lag.

I've quoted MacArthur before that every strategic failure can be summed up in two words too late. So I hope that Congress does have a greater sense of urgency about this and gets it done.

>> Bill Whalen: John.

>> John H. Cochrane: Can I just hear? 155 millimeter artillery shells shouldn't be a scarce thing to people who are freezing in trenches defending their country and implicitly, ours and NATO and the whole west and all the rest of it.

So it just saddens me how we ran out of enthusiasm for even letting them defend themselves, let alone helping to win this darn war.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, I'll give you the last word. But let me ask one thing to you. You took a pretty good shot at the Congress, what about the president?

Has he given a big speech on Ukraine? Where's the bully pulpit?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, he gave a big speech in Ukraine a year ago. He went courageously to Kyiv, and he said, we'll be there for Ukraine as long as it takes. And that turned out to mean as long as the Republicans don't oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker and engage in obstructionism over aid to Ukraine.

I mean, I have to say, I warned the Ukrainians, I remember saying early in the conflict, when I went to Kyiv in 2022, don't be South Vietnam. And there have been times when I felt uncannily as if that's exactly what their fate may be. I'm extremely encouraged to hear what you said.

By the way, Bill, this news had escaped me as I was on my way back from giving lectures in Princeton. If indeed this aid can be passed, that this will be a great blessing and a welcome relief to the troops in Ukraine.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, very good, gentlemen. Let's move on to the lightning round.

 

>> Lightning round.

>> Bill Whalen: We're doing something new for the lightning round. We are going to try moving forward to include at least one question from our viewers. And today we have a question from Ed in Alberta, Canada, who writes the following. Having a prosperous Africa would be of great benefit to the world.

To that end, the rich nations of the world spend incredible amounts of money on aid to Africa with endlessly poor results. Would it not be better for western nations to choose one nation on which to concentrate and focus their money? Neil, a demonstration project, if you will, for Africa, what do you think?

 

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, it's not really true that they spend incredible amounts of money on aid to Africa anymore, that those days are long gone. Actually, many African countries are in a debt crisis at the moment because of the money that they borrowed when interest rates were low, that they're struggling now to repay.

There are currency crisis, including in Nigeria, one of the most important economies in Africa. And the real issue is not aid, its debt restructuring and debt relief for countries that are in a really desperate situation, it doesn't make sense to just pick one country. Africa is an enormous patchwork of countries, and some are better governed than others, to put it mildly.

There are the well governed countries, think Rwanda, and the disastrously badly governed ones think Somalia. But aid is no longer really the issue. The issue is actually managing debt crisis and currency crisis.

>> John H. Cochrane: Aid growth does not come from government to government aid. The US did not grow to be who we are because the British sent the US government aid.

The number one thing we could do is buy what they have to sell. How about that? HR.

>> H.R. McMaster: Well, I agree with John, you have to get away from aid and towards sustainable development and economic relationships. And as Neil said, a restructuring of the financial tools that are available and working on the debt problem.

All of these should be at the top of the list. And there's been a movement to do this for quite some time. A scholar named Mark Moyar, who's going to visit us in the coming weeks at Hoover, has a great book called Aid for Elites. And essentially, you argued that your aid as traditionally delivered, really just aids the elites in many of these countries that have corrupt governments.

And so sustainable development and then investments that actually get a return on investment, in contrast to some of the Chinese investments, for example, in the continent. Which are dwarfing US, and other loans, really, they're predatory loans that are aimed at creating servile relationships with African countries. As they are extractive in nature as well, to get the kind of raw materials and minerals, and so forth that China requires to dominate in manufacturing, and so forth, batteries, and everything else.

So I've had an African friend describe this to me, he said, what China's doing is a new form of colonialism. So I think it's important for us to provide an alternative development model. Ambassador Mark Green, when he was the head of USAID, was a big champion of this.

We initiated a program in the Trump administration called Prosper Africa, which I think was well conceived. I wasn't around long enough to see how well executed it was. And, of course, the president allegedly made some comments about countries on the continent that set us back a bit. But I'll tell you, when you engage most African leaders, you're pushing on an open door, because they want America present on the continent.

And they want an alternative to what they see as China's effort to actually get them to sacrifice sovereignty and sign up for a servile relationship with Beijing.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, one last question, it's a perennial question on Goodfellows, and for Neil Ferguson, it falls somewhere between a colonoscopy and a root canal.

Neil, who do you got in the Super bowl?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, obviously, it's going to be Taylor Swift who wins the Super bowl. I've still managed to get to my 60th year without hearing any songs by Taylor Swift. I'm rather proud of this achievement, I couldn't hum you a single Taylor Swift hit.

But it's extraordinarily difficult to avoid Taylor Swift on the Internet, on the train, at the airport. So the clear winner of Super Bowl 2024 is Taylor Swift.

>> Bill Whalen: John?

>> John H. Cochrane: I like that idea, I was gonna say 49, it was just at a local civic duty. But Taylor Swift is a wholesome young woman who sings songs about breakups.

Considering all the other stuff we've talked about, a politically polarized America, how great. And, of course, the focus of the craziest conspiracy theory, Mark, the Trump era. So I'll agree with, I'm voting for Taylor Swift.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, the running joke is Republicans live in fear for endorsing Joe Biden, yet 95% of her songs are about choosing the wrong guy, so go figure.

All right, HR, you might be the only one who-

>> John H. Cochrane: Yeah, maybe we'll have a national breakup song, maybe she can do that for us after the next election.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, HR, I turned to you because you're the one of the only three people in this tree who might actually watch the game.

 

>> H.R. McMaster: I think we'll be on an airplane, but I'm gonna tape it, and I think that's the way to watch, is to fast forward through all the commercials and everything. Hey, but I've got to go with the Niners. I mean, when I was a little kid, of course, I'm an Eagles fan, and we're not gonna talk about the Eagles complete collapse at the end of the season.

But John Brody was one of my heroes when I was a little kid, and then Joe Montan, all the great quarterbacks that San Francisco had. And you can't help, but be impressed by this guy, Brock Purdy, right? Here's the guy, last guy in the Draft, right? The word is that person who's drafted last is called Mister Irrelevant, and he's leading to the Super Bowl.

And then, of course, from a Stanford Connection, you've got Christian McCaffrey, who is a freaking animal, man. That guy, if you haven't seen his workout videos, that guy is phenomenal athlete. And just watching him is a real pleasure, too, so I think I've gotta go with the Niners.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, we're gonna leave the show there, Neil's got a plane to catch. John, I am sparing you mercifully from a rugby question I had teed up.

>> H.R. McMaster: That's Scotland, Wales match, killer match, man.

>> Niall Ferguson: No Super Bowl can be as exciting as Six Nations Rugby, I'm sorry, that aged me, I'm sure my beard is whiter because of that game we played for the first half and more or less threw it away in the second.

I feel at least 10 years older than I was in the last show.

>> Bill Whalen: John, what I was getting to is Netflix has a eight count, eight installment documentary on the Six Nation Rugby contest. If you're not doing the on Sunday, John, what a great way to pass the day.

I'll find something else, I'm telling you.

>> H.R. McMaster: And the first episode of Scotland is pretty cool, it's a really well done Netflix series. I hope Americans watch it and get into rugby, cuz Rugby World Cups coming to America, 2031, get ready. I feel you.

>> Niall Ferguson: Yeah, yeah.

>> John H. Cochrane: I'll go to England.

Great conversation, guys, Neil, go catch your plane, we'll see you all in a couple weeks. On behalf of my colleagues, Neil Ferguson, John Cochran, HR McMaster, all of us here at the Hoover Institution, hope you enjoyed today's show. We'll be back soon, till then, take care, again, thanks for watching.

If you enjoyed this show and are interested in watching more content featuring HR McMaster, watch Battlegrounds also available@hoover.org.