Israel’s Options, Plus Navalny’s Legacy And Ranking The US Presidents, With Dan Senor

>> Bill Whalen: It's Tuesday, February 20, 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 as usual by two of my colleagues, the historian Nial Ferguson and the economist John Cochrane.

Niall and John are Hoover senior fellows, or nearly HR McMaster rounds out our conversation, but the good general can't join us today, so we will soldier on, pun intended, without him. Thanks and great part to our wonderful guest today, Dan Senor. Dan is the host of the Call me Back podcast and author of two terrific books on Israel, 2009 Startup Nation and the Genius of Israel, which was published last November.

Dan in Apaslav was the senior advisor to Paul Bremmer and the US led coalition Provisional Authority and Baghdad, and a Pentagon advisor to the US Central Command and Qatar. Dan, thanks, everyone so much for joining us today.

>> Dan Senor: Great to be with you guys. I'm a longtime listener and fan, first time guests, although I will say several of your hosts have been on my podcast.

Which means there's one man left out here, which I'll make my case to Professor Cochran later on to come onto the Call me Back podcast. But we've had HR and we've had Niall.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, so if we had more time on the show, I'd ask you. You did a show with Mike Murphy once, Dan, where I think Niall is one of your most popular guests.

I'd like to get the background on that, but maybe when you have you back again. So let's go to Niall, who is sitting in Jerusalem right now having just come out of meetings with high ranking Israeli officials. Niall, to the extent you can tell us what we discussed, tell us what you learned today.

 

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, I learned today and yesterday that the Israeli defense forces are defeating Hamas, and they are probably a couple of months away from completely destroying Hamas, not only as a terrorist force, but as the de facto government of Gaza. And they are very reluctant indeed to heed international calls, including calls from us officials to have a ceasefire before this job is done.

The other thing that I'm very struck by, and this is based not just in conversations with officials, but also conversations with ordinary Israelis from a broad spectrum. I've been doing my level best to sample opinion right across from the ultra orthodox to the secular left. Ordinary Israelis are done with two state solutions.

As a conversation topic, they're done with it. And they feel, however much they may disagree on certain political issues. They feel to me very united in regarding this as quite inappropriate thing to discuss in the wake of the horrendous terrorist attacks of October 7th. That feeling is very striking to me.

I found greater national unity here than I think I was anticipating. I know, Dan, that you've been here recently, too. I'd be interested to compare notes, but those are my two impressions. The government is not about to stop this war against Hamas, regardless of what is said to them internationally.

And people are, broadly speaking, behind this effort and very uninterested in talk of a two state solution.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, let's go to Dan. You did a call me back episode recently with your sister, Dan, that was just heart wrenching. And her talking about the climate in Israel. Compare it to what you experienced, what Niall just said.

 

>> Dan Senor: Yeah, I had the same impression that Niall has. When I was there, I was meeting with a range of officials both in and outside the government and even within the coalition government. There's a range of views, obviously, because many of the members of the government, including members of the war cabinet, are bitter political enemies.

Netanyahu and Gantz basically hate each other personally. Gadi Eisenkat, who's a part of Gantz's party, which is, he's in the war cabinet, also has been very public in his criticism of Netanyahu. And yet on the issues that Niall just spoke about, there's more or less unity. I went there in these meetings I had in Israel looking for daylight.

And if you follow the press over here in the west, you're going there expecting there to be a lot of daylight, and there's virtually none. So take, for example, the issue of the two state solution and this effort by the US and the UN and some Arab capitals in the EU to try to push forward a very quick declaration or recognition of a Palestinian state.

The Israeli cabinet put out a statement on Sunday during their cabinet meeting that every member of the cabinet signed off on, including Gantz, including Eisenka, that basically said, no way. We are not starting this process with a declaration of a Palestinian state. We are not gonna make, they didn't use these words, these are my words, but we're not going to make October 7, Independence Day.

And that position is held across the board. And then you think about the political constituencies that could be for a Palestinian state in Israel, which did once exist and was very vibrant. A lot of it was wiped out figuratively during the second intifada. So, meaning the left in Israel was dramatically weakened during the second intifada in the early 2000s, when there were 140 suicide bombings over a thousand Israelis slaughtered.

And this was after Ehud Barak had went to Camp David and basically offered Yasser Arafat everything, right? He offered a Palestinian state. He offered East Jerusalem as the capital. I mean, he was willing to deal with every issue. And Arafat walked out, and Israel got the second intifada.

So that wiped out a lot of the political support for a two state solution. And now what was left within the Israeli political left in the last few years was largely populated in southern Israel in those kibbutzim. That is where the peace activists lived and were organizing and were working on coexistence with the Palestinian Gazans.

And those are the people who are sitting in tunnels today being held hostage. Those kibbutzim were the ones that were raided in 2014, which was the last time there was a major Israel Gaza war with a serious ground troop presence, lasted about 50 days. It was those Israelis in the south that led the protest movement inside Israel, calling on the israeli government to stop the war because they wanted peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians in Gaza.

And those are the Israelis that were slaughtered on October 7, and their communities were destroyed. And many of them are being held hostage today. There's nobody in Israel right now. Nobody really, like, on any of the fringes, nowhere can you find people that are arguing that this is the moment to declare a Palestinian state.

 

>> John H. Cochrane: May I ask you guys, and what about in Washington? It's hard for me to understand what our leaders are after here when they say two state solution. I would think the first part of the two state solution is, you guys who want your state, you have to recognize Israel's right to exist as a jewish state within given borders.

And to be peaceful about that, that has to be institutional, encoded in an way. Or is it just here, Palestinian people. PLO, the one organization everybody hates, right, to consider. Here, you go to your own country, and the route to importing the rockets is over here. So what are they talking about when they say Palestinian state in Washington, in Saudi Arabia and so forth?

I presume there's something more concrete than just that. And second, does nobody think aloud? There's a lot of people around the world who want their own state. The Kurds would like their own state. The would like their own state. So the answer is you get your own state, if you kill enough Jews, we reward terrorism here?

I can't imagine that that hasn't occurred to them. So the question, sorry to wind around the question, in Washington, in Saudi Arabia, in the UN, in all the worthy what are they talking about? And is there anything vaguely coherent here?

>> Dan Senor: Neil, you wanna take it or should I?

 

>> Niall Ferguson: Dan, I think you should go ahead, because this is much more your turf than mine.

>> Dan Senor: So I don't think they really know what they mean when they say Palestinian state. I think different parties here have different views in mind, I think, and different agendas. I think the Biden administration has a domestic political concern, which is, they need to get images of chaos in Gaza off the front page of the press and off of TikTok, and they need to be shown, in their mind, this is their view.

I'm not saying I agree with them, but in their view, the people around Biden need to bring down the temperature on the Palestinian issue and on the Hamas war issue inside the United States heading to 2024. Because they're concerned about the risk. They're concerned about, shall we say, deflated enthusiasm among the progressive base.

And somehow this issue has become representative to them of an issue that they need to deal with in order to deal with the lack of enthusiasm among the progressive base as Biden heads into a reelection. We can get into that. I think they are overthinking it. I'm skeptical that them dealing with the Israel-Gaza issue is going to deal with their progressive base enthusiasm problem.

But be that as it may, there's enough people around Biden saying that. And there are enough players in Arab capitals who they want two things, John. They want Hamas destroyed. Everybody I speak to in the Arab world, really, they all want Hamas gone. And they also don't want this to be a political headache for them in their own countries to the extent it's a problem on the quote unquote, Arab street.

So they want Hamas gone. They want Israel to finish the job, but they wanna be seen to be throwing a bone, providing something positive to the peaceful, quote unquote, Palestinian civilians, that have been as victimized by Hamas as anybody. That is their view. They need to show some momentum on that front.

What does that actually mean, practically? It means what is emerging is some sort of declaration that there is going to be a Palestinian state in Tony Blinken's words. A time bound and irreversible, his words, which to me are the two of the most dangerous words I've heard in talking about a Palestinian state, time bound and irreversible.

Now, keep in mind, that language has never been used before by the US government. The basis for negotiations that could lead to a Palestinian state have always been about the parties negotiating with one another directly. Israelis and Palestinians, without preconditions, just get to the table and negotiate. And it's not time-bound and irreversible.

It's absolutely reversible. Meaning if Hamas or Hamas 2.0 takes over the political leadership of a quasi Palestinian state, you bet the process is reversible. So the fact that Blinken used the word the irreversible to me is quite alarming. And in the past, historically, it's always been milestone-based, meaning this is the path we are on.

If the Palestinians meet certain milestones, then they will get more and more instruments and assets of sovereignty, on a path towards full sovereignty. I don't think would ever be full sovereignty. Meaning, I don't think anyone wants a future Palestinian state to have its own military or its own airport or jurisdiction over its own airspace.

But basically any path to sovereignty is gonna have to be milestone-based. That's how it's historically been talked about. I'm surprised, as I said, in, to some degree alarmed by how the administration is not talking about milestones. They're talking about making a move quickly and immediately towards a Palestinian state.

I don't know what that means. I don't think there's any political leadership in any Palestinian faction ready to take on the upper leadership of the state. So I think it's sort of like an empty declaration. It's like, it's just they wanna be able to say, the administration and the governments in the Arab capitals wants to be able to tell all the respective constituencies, look, we're doing something we've done something never done before.

We're declaring and recognizing a Palestinian state, that's never done before. We're not sure what that means. We're not sure who's gonna lead it. We're not sure what the path is, but it's happening and it's irreversible. The spaceship has taken off. They want that message. And again, to my earlier point, John, I just think, first of all, I don't think that's what Hamas wants, so we can get into that.

But I just think the message to the Palestinian people and to the broader Arab world, is a very dangerous message, to say the west has never recognized a Palestinian state, ever. October 7th happens, the biggest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust, a nd now we declare a Palestinian state.

 

>> John H. Cochrane: And there was a previous vision, the Abraham Accord vision, at least, which is, why don't we get you guys to be rich first? Get prosperous, make a lot of money, and then we can talk about political stuff afterwards, which as an economist, always struck me like a great idea.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, I'd like to point you gentlemen to two dates on the calendar. One is Sunday the February 26. This is Vladimir Putin. We're gonna talk about Putin in the second segment of the show, inviting leaders of Hamas and PLO to Moscow for what he called a, quote, inter Palestinian meeting.

Neil, you are a criminologist on the show. I'm dubbing you as that. And I'd like you to maybe get some thoughts on what you think Putin's up to. Then, Dan, I'd like you to weigh in on Rafah. We had Netanyahu the other day saying that Israel will assault that city.

This is the southernmost city in Gaza. It's a population of about a million and a half people, which is about the size of Philadelphia. Anyway, Netanyahu has said that if the hostages aren't freed by the first day of Ramadan, which is Sunday, March 10, Israel's going in. So, Neil, why don't you give us some thoughts on Putin and then Dan, Rafah.

And Rafah, is it really, Dan, I've seen the phrase key flash point? Is it really a key flash point, this word? Neil, you go for first.

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, before I came to Jerusalem, I was at the Munich Security Conference, which should really be renamed the Munich Insecurity Conference, in which Europeans couldn't decide what they were more worried about.

Was it Vladimir Putin gaining ground in Ukraine, or was it Donald Trump gaining ground in US opinion polls? But worried they were. And one of my reasons for being there was to try and explain, especially to our German hosts, why they needed to spend a little bit more than 1.5% of GDP on their defense.

And they needed to do it not just because Russia is in Ukraine, and not just because Donald Trump might be reelected president. They ought to do it, actually, for their own economic as well as national security. Good, now, what I tried to argue was that you can't view the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel in isolation.

They're part of a bigger geopolitical picture. And in that picture, as we've discussed on Good Fellows before, there's a kind of axis of ill will behind Russia stands China, Without Chinese dual use technology, the Russian war economy would have grown to a halt some time ago. Alongside Russia as a supplier of drones and other equipment is Iran.

Russia is a player in the Middle east, has been since Barack Obama let them back in at the time of the Syrian red line crisis and bringing up the rear, last but not least, is North Korea also a source of weapons for the Russians. The tendency at the Munich security conference is to have a panel over there about Ukraine and a panel over there about the Middle east and not to join the dots.

One person who did join the dots, incidentally, was former secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who gave a barnstorming speech I heard in which he said. Rather more forcefully than me, that we had to deal with these threats as one, as a single global threat. And if we saw it that way, we would realize that it would be folly to let Russia win in Ukraine and folly to let Iran win in the Middle east.

And Iran wins in the Middle east, if Hamas survives, Iran wins, if a Palestinian state looks like a concession to terrorist action, Iran wins. If the Houthis continue to disrupt trade in the Red Sea, Iran wins. If Hezbollah is poised on Israel's northern border with a far larger arsenal than Hamas has ever possessed, Iran wins.

If militias in Syria and Iraq are also converging on the scene. And so I do think it's extremely important to notice these connections when Putin invites, as you just said, Bill, Hamas and other leaders, and other organizations leaders, Islamic Jihad, too, to Moscow. It's not so that they can watch the Tucker Carlson interview together and swap stories.

This is part of a coordinated effort to undermine democracy and more broadly, the Pax Americana, that's what's happening. And I'm kind of glad that Putin is so averse about it because it makes it easier to persuade people these things are connected. And however you may feel about the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, and no doubt we should all feel compassion for those Palestinians who have nothing but loathing for Hamas.

And who are now in the midst of a war zone that Hamas created. Nevertheless, you have to understand, Israel must defeat Hamas as surely as Ukraine must not lose to Russia. This is a global challenge we confront, and it extends all the way to the South China Sea, to the Philippines, to Taiwan.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Dan, Rafa.

>> Dan Senor: Yeah, so I'd say two things just on Neil's point I mean, if you think about who Putin is inviting to Moscow. The idea that any of these factions could one day populate the leadership of a Palestinian state is so preposterous, so start with Hamas.

Where Yahya Sinwar has been saying since October 7 that there are more October sevenths to follow. So it's not like he's been jostled in any way, at least in his public statements, he says he would do it again. You have Khaled Mashaal, who's one of the leaders of the political wing of Hamas outside of Gaza, who two weeks ago was in Turkey and gave an interview, and he was asked about a two state solution.

And he said there's no two state solution, he says it's a one state solution, meaning the Palestinians, Hamas will be in charge of the one state. And that one state, to quote Khaled Mashaal, was from Russia, necro, up in Israel's north all the way to a lot in the south, and, of course, from the river to the sea.

So he wanted to be clear, he wasn't just talking about river to the sea, he was also talking from north to south, one state solution, so that's Hamas. Then you have the Palestinian Authority, obviously, Palestinian Islamic jihad is another version of Hamas, so same version. Then you have Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority in the West bank, in Ramallah, which has yet, by the way, yet to condemn what happened on October 7, repeatedly, repeatedly cajoled and consulted and has refused to condemn October 7.

The Palestinian Authority, which still has in place its policies to monetarily reward anyone who, any Palestinian who attempts Palestinian violence, terrorist violence against Jews. They name, still name streets out of terrorists, they still provide monetary war to families of terrorists who die in service of jihad, of slaughtering Jews.

This is the look at the textbooks in the schools in the West bank, they're full of indoctrination, of Jew hatred. So there's no sign that the, by the way, when I speak to officials in Gulf countries and Sunni Gulf countries, they also say that Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority is hopeless.

There's no way that they could be the leaders of a future joint Palestinian state, so who are these factions? I have yet to hear of a single player being invited to Moscow that is actually a real reformer that is willing to do the kinds of things that Neil's talking about in representing those palestinian civilians that want some normalcy.

And so I, I do think in that sense, it's clarifying, and I think our friends in the Biden administration who feel pressured to do something on the Palestinian state front. It is clarifying to say these are the characters who are being gathered by Oba, by Vladimir Putin, who you are rightly obsessed with, and just, it's clarifying about whose side, which players on in terms of Rafa, this war.

Neil is right that the Israeli leadership is extremely focused on finishing this war and ending it. And they can't finish it without going to Rafa, they just can't, there's close to 20 Hamas battalions, according to the Israeli leaders, that have been wiped out. There's still a few more, and they can't wipe them out unless they get to Rafa unfortunately, there's well over a million Palestinian civilians currently concentrated in Rafa.

The, everyone's putting pressure on Israel to figure out some kind of humanitarian corridor to get these Palestinians or a bunch of them out of the area and get them up to North Gaza. That is hard to do logistically, Israel's trying to do it, the risk, obviously, when you do that is a lot of bad actors will get out of Rafa and get up to the north.

So how Israel does this in a way that doesn't have bad, Hamas, remnants of Hamas sneaking up and getting safe haven up in the north, in the northeast of Gaza, back on Israel's, back on Gaza's border with Israel is difficult. So I think this Rafa situation is going to be ugly, and it is necessary.

And exactly what Neil said, the Israeli leadership that keeps saying we are going into Rafa is important not only because they probably do have to go into Rafa, but it's also sending a message. The international community and pressure from the international community has been unleashed on Israel. Every part of it, the EU, the UN, the media, the NGO's, the, I mean, just, obviously now, increasingly, the Biden administration, they're all pressuring Israel, saying, you cannot do Rafa.

And Israel is saying, were doing Rafa, and I think that sends a very important message to Sinwar and the people around him. Like, we believed we could catalyze a massive international response after October 7 that would put pressure on Israel to show some restraint. We knew they'd have to respond in some way, but to have to show some restraint.

And this, and the Israeli leadership saying, no, we're going, we're even going if we have to go in Ramadan, is sending a message that you're unleashing everything on us, right. You're sending genocide cases to the ICJ, you're I mean, you're throwing everything at us and we're still going That is a very important message, not only to the Hamas leadership, it's also an important message to all those regional actors that Neil talks about.

And I just wanna say early on in this war, there was a big debate about whether Israel should move quickly to negotiations for the hostages. And defense Minister Yoav Gallant, argued very strongly that Israel would do best on negotiations for hostages if they move aggressively militarily quickly. That is to say, Israel's negotiating position to the extent that they have one will be strengthened by a strong military response and will be strengthened by Hamas believing that Israel is willing to do whatever it has to do to wipe out Hamas and get the hostages back.

And he believes he's vindicated a lot. He has said this publicly. He believes that the deal that he got on the first round, which most on the Israeli side believe on that first round of hostages released was a good deal for Israel, was made possible because Israel moved so aggressively on the military front and convincing the people around Sinwar that Israel was willing to move aggressively.

And I think that the statements you're hearing them articulate on Rafa are of that same strategy.

>> John H. Cochrane: The north's end of Gaza seems like a terrible place to spend six months while Israel flames out the south end. The obvious place to go is Egypt. And it's interesting that the Arab states who say they wanna get rid of Hamas and say they care about the palestinian people will nonetheless not let a single one in.

I saw a picture of the border wall that Egypt.

>> Dan Senor: It's amazing what they're building. It would be like Donald Trump's dream

>> John H. Cochrane: To have a border wall like that. But yet a little bit of pressure from the US. Okay, you care about Palestinians, let them have a place.

Obviously, we know this game they are playing, the game of deliberately increased Palestinian suffering as a weapon against Israel. I wanna ask you the economic question, though. How long can Israel hold out if this will go on for months more? You got every country in the world, including the US, now giving up on them.

You wrote a book on the Israeli economy prosecuting war as there's more and more sanctions, more and more, whatever comes from the rest of the world and perhaps the second front, it's gonna be hard for Israel. How do they do it?

>> Dan Senor: So just on your first point, it is true and I agree with you John, I'm amazed that there has not been more focus on the lengths Egypt is going to prevent any suffering Gazans into their country.

The reason they're doing it is not only cuz they want to prolong the suffering, but I think the more paramount. The overriding motivation is they don't want these people in their country. That's what it's about. I mean, I spoke to an American official who was involved with getting out American-Palestinians.

So American citizens who are Palestinian that live in Gaza. And when the war began October 7rh, the US government was focused. This got less attention, but the American government was focused on getting out these American citizens who were living in Gaza. And he described to me how the Egyptian government was so nervous about any Palestinian leaving Gaza and coming into Egypt.

That if the American government wanted to get out a US citizen that was Palestinian living Gaza, the US government had to provide its own personnel to personally escort that person not only through the border, but once they're in Egypt, that American officials had to man the person in Egypt until they're in the airport and on the plane and out.

So it's like they do not want these people in their country. The idea that Israel gets these accusations of, quote unquote apartheid, if this really is their concern, Egypt could solve this overnight if they were willing to take in some Palestinian refugees. On the economic front, the worrying news is, I'm not worried about Israel's tech sector.

Let me start with that. There's about 400 plus multinationals with major operations in Israel, and it's all the big companies, Google, Meta, Intel, Apple, and also a lot of non tech companies like Procter and Gamble and the major auto companies. 400 plus major multinational companies have very expansive operations in Israel.

Not a single one of them has announced they're shutting down since October 7th. So I think that speaks to the deep tech and the deep innovation that there are d centers in Israel are doing. You don't just unplug that quickly. So the good news is they are staying.

They seem to be sticking it out. And some of them made very strong statements about why they're sticking it out. Venture capital. Israel tracks more global venture capital globally on a per capita basis in any country in the world. Obviously it's down, but it's also down globally. So it's hard to disentangle what's a secular trend in terms of global venture capital fundraising, in terms of what's going on in tech globally versus what's happening in Israel, and it's war.

The downside that I'm more focused on is just the simple reality for the last four months, somewhere between 10 to 30% of the senior executives of most tech companies in Israel have been called up to fight in reserves. And there's just the reality that that head of business development that was working on closing a deal with an American company or some marketing, theyre just not there.

Theyre gone for four months and theyre fighting, and stuff falls through the cracks. And that segment of the economy, which is the engine of the economy, takes a hit. Thats inevitable. Now, partly because of the economic pressure, the reserves are coming back, meaning theyre being reintegrated into society.

So most of the fighting are in the near term, and that could change. But most of the fighting in the near term is gonna be the regular army and not the reservists. So hopefully that pressure on the tech companies is going to go down. We'll see though, cuz there could be other fronts that open up, Neil talked about the north.

I mean, there's other stuff that could happen where Israel could be back in it again, having to call up hundreds of thousands of reservists. I think, and this is not me trying to look at this through rosy eyed lenses. I will say when I wrote startup nation, we looked at Salha and I looked at the history of the 91 Gulf war where Saddam Hussein was launching Scud missiles into Israel that the Israelis believed could be laced with chemical weapons and the whole economy shut down and everyone was in gas masks and sealed rooms.

And the tech innovation and the interdisciplinary skills, and the initiative taking mindset that came out of that period helped fuel a tech boom for the next couple of decades. It's not by accident that international investors view Israeli entrepreneurs as the most resourceful. They are unique. Mine and Neil's mutual friend Eric Schmidt told me when he was at Google.

He said, if you take the average Israeli 25 year old and you put him or her up against their peers anywhere in the world, he told me at the time, this was in around 2008, 2009. Google will hire the Israeli 25 year old any day of the week because they just have a level of maturity and interdisciplinary skills and leadership during pressure and crisis management skills that no young tech executives have anywhere in the world.

He says Google will hire the Israeli over anyone else any day. There's just no comparison. So if you think about what these tech executives that are being called up are dealing with now, many of them are in their thirties and forties, and now they're going back to their tech companies, and I just.

Think, I wouldn't wish this upon any of them. But the reality is, many of them are. You're gonna see a whole other level of maturing and crisis management skills. And so, I think ultimately the long run the Israeli tech economy is going to be fine. My bigger question is Israel's military industrial base.

I think that one wake up call for Israel, these last few months, is how dependent it is on the US, for munitions and other defense capabilities. And it's not to say that the us government is playing games with them. Politically, I do not think they are. I think the Biden administration has actually been very strong on this front.

They're trying to get Israel whatever, Israel needs, and the White House has gone to extraordinary lengths despite in the face of dysfunction in Congress to get them what they need. But the reality is there are supply chain issues in the US that Israel can't do anything about. There's other priorities the administration has, visa-v Ukraine, that Israel cant do anything about.

And I think there is this wake up call, I picked this up in a bunch of meetings I was in. That Israel needs to pivot dramatically, and quickly, to building out its own military industrial base and I think ultimately that's probably good for their economy. But in the short-term its a huge pivot.

Its gonna require a big increase in defense spending, and that will have real economic implications that I think could be, quite costly.

>> Bill Whalen: So, let's leave it there gentlemen. Neil, I hope you have a column in the near future. You've been to Kyiv and you've now been Jerusalem.

I think a contrast between the two wartime footage would be fascinating to read about. So, hopefully that's somewhere in your mind right now.

>> Niall Ferguson: That is actually what I woke up at four in the morning, thinking about Bill. That is exactly the contrast that I'm gonna write about, for my, column on Sunday.

It's, it's a fascinating one. I'll tell you one thing, just to sign off on this topic, Ukrainians global communications are so far vastly more successful than Israel's. Ukraine has really aced global communications, and everyone here admits they're quite clear about it, that this has gone horribly wrong. And I think one thing I'm struck by is that Israelis are shocked at how unpopular they've become, particularly amongst young people on both sides of the Atlantic.

This has been a rude awakening. They could learn something from the way the Ukrainians do this. So they have been offering some tips based on my trips to Kiev.

>> Bill Whalen: Excellent, look forward to it. Dan, as proof that no good deed goes unpunished, I want you to stick around for our second segment.

We're gonna talk about the mysterious death of Alexei Navalny. Mysterious in this regard. Navalny was seen in court just prior to his death. Mysterious also that we don't know his cause of death. I think Russian government called it sudden death syndrome, whatever the heck that means. Neil, I wanna play gameshow's host here with you, and I want you to choose between what's behind door number one, two, or three.

Door number number one, Neil, is the timing of this. This comes right before the russian election, which I think is on March 25. Door number two, Neil, would be what's next for Russian opposition? Can Navalny's wife, Yulia Navalny, can she step in and continue where he went? Or, door number three, if you want Neil, which is his legacy?

And here I turn to our colleague Michael McFaul, the Hoover senior fellow and former ambassador Moscow, who wrote the following in the Washington Post, quote. Navalny dreamed of a free Russia, while barbaric dictators such as Putin can kill men, but they cannot kill ideas. I do not know when, but I am confident that Navalny's ideas of freedom will outlive Putin's ideas of tyranny.

 

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, let me go through that third door. When he went back, I said to my wife, Ayan, he's choosing martyrdom. I wonder if that will work. I was talking to Russian journalist now in exile, at Munich at the security conference, and he said, no, he didn't think that it was martyrdom.

He thought he would be Mandela, of Russia. The Mandela of Russia. So, I think that fundamentally, he underestimated how utterly ruthless Vladimir Putin is, and how much he is the heir of the KGB tradition, and indeed the Stalinist tradition. I mean, in some ways, dissidents, by the time of Brezhnev, had a better chance of survival than dissidents under Putin now.

So, we really have gone back to a very dark time, to a Stalinist time, when opposition led to death. Led to the gulag, and then to death. The idea is a cheering one, and I want to believe it, that Navalny will prevail, and that ideas of freedom will ultimately transcend the tradition of despotism in Russia.

His widow, has vowed to carry on his struggle. It is nevertheless quite hard to see signs, that spirit, is going to stand a chance, as long as Putin lives. He has created a fascist regime in Russia. This is something that I predicted a long time ago, 24 years ago, in fact, when I said that Russia had become Weimar Russia, under Yeltsin, and, what came after Weimar, that was a point that I made in a.

An article way back when, in 2000, and with a kind of sickening inevitability. Russia has gone down the exact same path, the fascist path, and the path of aggression against its neighbours. So, Navalny died. I would love to believe that ultimately, his spirit will prevail. The consolation is that the fascist regimes do all die, but they have to be defeated.

They tend not to self liquidate. And it was only after the Third Reich had been decisively defeated, crushed, obliterated, that the tradition of freedom that did exist in Germany before 1933 was able to resurface. So in the end I think Mike McFall will be right, but only if this regime can be defeated.

And until there is a greater stiffening of resolve in Europe and in the United States and a recognition that this Russian fascist regime must be defeated. Then I'm afraid Navalny and all the other people Putin has killed, will not have the satisfaction beyond the grave of ultimate victory.

 

>> Dan Senor: Neil, when the Russia Ukraine war began, I remember there was a lot of speculation as to whether or not Zelensky would leave, would get out of Kiev, may even get out of Ukraine. And that the most important strategic and symbolic decision Zelenskyy made, was to lead the defense of Ukraine from inside Ukraine.

And to your earlier point about Israel it's part of his story, the myth, the global PR which I agree has been both impressive but also very authentic that he's been there in the fight. Do you think, Navalny could have been Navalny if he were not in Russia? I mean, do you think he ultimately made that calculation?

You make the comparison to Mandela. Mandela fought the fight, often mostly from a prison, but still he fought the fight from inside South Africa. Navalny, on the one hand, he probably. One would think he knew there was a risk that his life would end if he came back to Russia.

And yet, if he wanted to be Navalny, capital N, the image that he's the symbol he's become, sort of Zelenskyy has become this massive symbol. You can't do it if you're not in the country, that you're fighting.

>> Niall Ferguson: I disagree. And I would here quote our colleague Steve Kotkin, who's long argued that there needs to be a credible government in exile.

Would de Gaulle. Have become the leader of a free, democratic France if he'd given himself up to the Nazis. No, no, I think this was a mistake. I said it at the time, I said, he's chosen death. I'm not sure that's the right decision. But he believed he had to go back to Russia.

And I think he just miscalculated and thought that he could be Mandela. Looking back on Mandela, the Afrikaners were ruthless, but they weren't so ruthless as to kill him. But Putin doesn't care. Like a truly evil and fascist dictator, he is prepared not only to invite the leaders of Hamas, the perpetrators of October 7, to Moscow publicly.

Not only is he prepared to do that, he's prepared to murder the principal leader of the opposition, and he tried to murder him before when he was abroad. This is what we are up against in Putin. And it is a shocking and dismaying reality that now the russian opposition, now the people, the many Russians I know who yearn for a democratic Russia, they don't have a leader.

He's dead.

>> John H. Cochrane: I think Navalny had to go back because he wanted to be the leader of an internal opposition. De Gaulle came back with foreign armies, and no one's gonna invade Russia and depose the regime, at least anytime in the future. And there's plenty of governments in exile that are, I think the Habsburgs are still sitting around waiting for someone to call them back, and it's not happening.

I have to salute the tremendous courage of the man. Whether he knew he was gonna be a martyr or hoped he would be a Mandela, he knew there was a chance. And not since the Christian martyrs of the third century have I seen that kind of courage. But I also wanna point to why did it not work?

Yes, he may have underestimated the ruthlessness of Putin and company. Yes, the Afrikaners were at least decent enough that they were not gonna murder Mandela in prison. I also think he counted on being famous enough that Putin wouldn't dare. And thanks to Scott, who looked up the quote for us in 2021, Biden warned of devastating consequences for Russia if Navalny were killed in prison.

One more line in the sand. I think there was a feeling, that if you were important enough, Russia wouldn't dare because the rest of the world would do something awful enough to it about Russia. I think this is another sign of deterrence being gone. I wonder what devastating consequences the Biden administration has in mind.

Maybe, God forbid, allow the Ukrainians to win their war or something of the sort. But it's clear Putin knew he could get away with it. And there is an element of our deterrence, of the sense that there are limits you can't go beyond, even if you're Putin, even if you're a dictator.

That sense is gone.

>> Bill Whalen: We have just a couple minutes left here. I'd like to get the panel's thoughts on Tucker Carlson's sit down with Putin. This was eight days before Navalny's death, a two hour interview in which Putin just basically rambled on and on, interminable history lessons.

Then later trolled Carlson by saying he thought he'd get asked tougher questions. And then Tucker saying something afterwards he'd like to take back where he said that, basically he said, quote, was, quote, every leader kills people. Leadership requires killing people. Dan, this is somebody in the podcast space with here, what are your thoughts on what Tucker's trip to Moscow tells us?

 

>> Dan Senor: It was embarrassing. It, I mean, look, I don't wanna-

>> Bill Whalen: Go to pile.

>> Dan Senor: Yeah, Tucker's doing what Tucker's doing, I don't quite get what he's doing. It's so at leaving Tucker aside to the extent what he's up to is emblematic of something broader going on on the right or on elements of the right.

That's what worries me in the United States. There is, now, I will say Trump has said a lot of things about Russia and Putin that we don't like. He still has not come out, and I'm not trying to bait him here, as I know he's a loyal listener of the Goodfellas podcast.

But Trump has still not come out against aid to Ukraine. So there are a lot of people from Tucker Carlson to JD Vance to Josh Hawley and Rand Paul and Mike Lee in the Senate who are against aid to Ukraine. And I can't figure out if they are like the vanguard of something or they are, like, out on a ledge and they're gonna be embarrassed.

Because if Trump gets elected president, he will provide aid to Ukraine. He has not come out against it. So I've been going back and forth trying to figure out, is the Tucker kind of JD Vance crowd representative of something really big going on that we should be worried about.

Or is it actually just a lot of noise? And the press likes to cover what they're saying and doing disproportionately. And in fact, it's ultimately not that relevant and the bipartisan consensus on defending countries like helping to defend countries like Ukraine against threats from Russia will endure. Again I swing back and forth, I'm obviously hopeful it's the latter, but I'm at the edge of my seat.

 

>> Bill Whalen: John, quickly, your thoughts.

>> John H. Cochrane: I think we have to try to understand people. So why are people on this kind of fringe of the right ready to throw in the towel? Well, they might have lost a cousin in Iraq and are wondering why they might have lost a brother or sister in Afghanistan, which we lost.

That took us 20 years to lose that war. They ask why? Ukraine were kind of ready to give up the fight after two years, and they go, hmm, Israel looks like we're ready to give up and lose that one after three months. And these are the people who fight and die in our wars.

And I think they're ready to back an America that wants to win and knows what they wanna do. But they are skeptical of send more of my relatives and friends and maybe be off to incompetently led exercises that we then give up on and retreat from. Obviously, I'm a big hawk, I've been our Ukraine hawk all along, if that's possible.

And I think Israel needs to absolutely win this war, and I don't think it's expressed well and I don't wanna encourage Tucker Carlson and then this Putin adoration. But I think we should understand why the people who fight and die for these wars are wondering, are the people in charge competent at what they're doing?

 

>> Bill Whalen: Neil, you get the last word.

>> Niall Ferguson: I am beyond disappointed in what Tucker Carlson has become, because four years ago he was an impressive and effective broadcaster whose monologues I used to enjoy. I mean, Tucker, I don't know if you listen to this, but you have a chance to admit that you made a terrible mistake by going to Moscow, that you were made use of by a fascist dictator.

You don't wanna be the Walter Duranty of this story. You don't wanna be the useful idiot of American journalism who fell for dictatorship. So, my advice is own it. You made a huge blunder and you need to admit it and recognize that you have been used by a fascist regime.

And the fact that Navalny was killed just after you had been made a fool of in that interview, where- Putin filibustered, made stuff up that you didn't know enough Russian history to correct. All of this has all but destroyed your reputation and the only possible solution is a full and frank apology and an admission that you screwed up.

 

>> Bill Whalen: All right, gentlemen, on to the Lightning Round.

>> Speaker 6: Lightning Round.

>> Bill Whalen: We begin with a question from one of our viewers, John in Australia, he writes the following. Republicans are trading US credibility at home and abroad, for short-term political gain at the cost of US Hegemony. When the invasion of Ukraine began, I recall the US heroically proclaiming they were backing the Ukrainians until the end.

Given what is happening now with Republican Party's continued blocking of Ukraine aid, and why should a country like Korea, Japan, Australia or Taiwan trust the USA with future commitments? Dan, why don't you take it?

>> Dan Senor: Yeah, I agree, I think the combination of us looking like Ukraine is if they're not losing, they're not winning the war.

And the impression that the US is backing off to some degree from Israel. Now, my only caveat is we're 130 plus days into this and the US is still standing with Israel. Previous wars, 2006 Lebanon war it was 34 days before the Bush administration told, Israel, it's over, stop.

2014 Gaza war that I mentioned earlier was about 50 days. If you would have told me four months, four plus five months into this, the Biden administration may have concerns. Maybe flashing a yellow light, but is not flashing a red light, I would have been shocked. And so here we are.

So I think on balance, we're doing fine with regard to Israel, I have concerns. But if it looks like we're getting shaky on Israel, and if it looks like we're failing on Ukraine, I think there's gonna be more and more bad actors around the world that are gonna continue to test us and it worries the hell out of me.

 

>> Bill Whalen: John.

>> John H. Cochrane: What is the chance the US would actually go and fight for Ukraine? We're not even talking about providing some aid to Ukraine, not actually us fighting there. So the rest of the world, you may be a lot more on your own than you think and I say that very sadly as a big believer in Pax Americana.

But waiting for the cavalry to come is a dangerous strategy and I don't like a world where everybody is armed up to the teeth either. But counting on the Americans to come and fight for your country, given what's going on now seems, and given, by the way, we're gonna be tearing ourselves apart for the next four years, especially if Trump wins.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Niall, George Shultz always said, trust is the coin of the realm, so how good is us currency these days?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, John, our viewer didn't mention the abandonment of Afghanistan, which I don't think can be blamed on the Republican Party. The question targeted Republican blocking of Ukraine aid, but I think the interruption to aid to Ukraine has a lot to do with the complex politics of the House of Representatives.

This is a bipartisan failure, in my view, because the Biden administration successively failed to deter the Taliban, to deter Putin, to deter Iran, the backer of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. So it's a bipartisan crisis, but I don't think it's over, I think, actually this can be salvaged.

I think aid will probably get through the House and be restored to Ukraine. I don't think, having listened to Mike Pompeo, that the Trump administration is necessarily going to be an isolationist administration, the last one wasn't. And so I don't think it's time for Australians or anybody else in Asia to give up on us commitments.

This is a really critical point, there was much too much talk, I thought, in Munich, of the end of the transatlantic alliance. But it's not over any more than it was over in 2016 when Trump won the last time. Look at the national security bench he's likely choosing from I don't see many isolationists.

Tucker Carlson is not gonna be secretary of state and in that sense, I think people should calm down a bit and recognize that mistakes in foreign policy have been made by both parties over a prolonged period. But America is still number one and there's no other Pax than the Pax Americana available.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Our final question we have just a couple minutes here, gentlemen, I apologize for the brevity of it. The American Political Science Association is out with its rankings of the American presidents. Number 1, Abraham Lincoln. Number 2, Franklin Roosevelt. And number 3, George Washington. Joe Biden is 14th and Donald Trump is 45th.

Niall, thoughts?

>> Niall Ferguson: I think George Washington should be number 1. I mean, Dan, you know about startups, it was a startup nation then, he's gotta be number 1, sorry, no debate.

>> Dan Senor: Wait a minute, Bill, where's Ronald Reagan on that list?

>> Bill Whalen: Reagan is 16th, he is two slots behind Biden.

 

>> Niall Ferguson: What?

>> Dan Senor: Ended the Cold War, that's ridiculous.

>> John H. Cochrane: How many Republicans were on the panel, may I ask?

>> Bill Whalen: 154 political scientists, 15 Republicans who do.

>> John H. Cochrane: Thank you.

>> Niall Ferguson: That's about the right ratio.

>> Bill Whalen: John, what do you think?

>> Niall Ferguson: Tear it up, delete, delete, delete.

 

>> John H. Cochrane: I wanna as a remarket economist, I'm not quite as much a fan as Roosevelt as everyone seems to be. Most of what he did, a few things were good, but most of what he did made the depression worse, but made it seem like he was in charge.

Winning World War II was a decent thing. Yeah, I'll go with Washington one and Lincoln number two. Washington, especially for not becoming king, probably the most important thing he did. And I wanna put in a little word for my friend, Calvin Coolidge. Disclosure, I sit on the board of the Calvin Coolidge foundation, which is a wonderful organization, but little quiet.

Cal did some pretty remarkable things, especially got the booming economy of the 1920s going. His motto, harding's motto, but he took it, too, was return to normalcy. A motto, I think, along with a cutting the tax rate from 70 to about 25%, return to normalcy and an economic boom, that wouldn't be a bad thing for us to emulate.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Dan.

>> Dan Senor: My top five would be Washington, for the reasons Niall said, lincoln, Reagan and Truman. Reagan, for the reasons I said, won the Cold War, deserves a Nobel Peace prize for that. And Truman, obviously, for winning and ending the Second World War and taking a huge number of risks, not the least of which what he had to do with Japan, which was probably the toughest decision a president, commander in chief, has had to make.

And apropos of our earlier, earlier part of the conversation, his decision to recognize the state of Israel, which was by no means an inconsequential decision, and had enormous pressure among his advisors, and he stood up to them. So those are ones that I think should rank very high.

 

>> Bill Whalen: And we will leave it there, Dan Senor, go out and go skiing with your family. Niall Ferguson, you be safe in Jerusalem, enjoy your meetings. Look forward to your column on Sunday. John, you and I are in a very soggy California, stay out of the rain, my friend.

 

>> John H. Cochrane: Thank you.

>> Bill Whalen: And that's it for this episode of GoodFellows, we hope you enjoyed the conversation. We'll be back in early March with a new show, until then, take care, thanks for watching, thanks for your support, and we will see you soon. Bye bye.

>> Speaker 7: If you enjoyed this show and are interested in watching more content featuring HR McMaster, watch battlegrounds, also available @hoover.org.