And where does the war fit in this?

It's interesting.

I think the Iran war is in one sense fully consistent with the policies that Trump pursued going back to his first term, and in another sense, it is very idiosyncratic.

And so Trump has been hawkish toward Iran since twenty seventeen.

He campaigned back in twenty sixteen on the idea that the US needed to get out of the Iran nuclear deal.

He did that.

He ordered the strike that killed Qasem Soleimani during his first term, and then we've seen a continuation of that during his second term.

What could all of this do to Trump, considering that if viewed objectively, he's not had all the successes that he wanted, and what could that lead to?

And where does the war fit in this?

So the ...

It's, it's interesting.

I, I think the Iran war is in, is in one sense, fully consistent with the policies that Trump pursued going back to his first term, and in another sense, it is very idiosyncratic.

And so, um, Trump has been hawkish toward Iran since 2017.

He, he campaigned back in 2016 on the idea that the US needed to get out of the Iran nuclear deal.

He, he did that.

What could all of this do to Trump, considering that if viewed objectively, he's not had all the successes that he wanted, and what could that lead to?

Strategically, what is it that the United States could or should do to heighten the contradictions, right? To make it more difficult for this, you know, North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, to a certain extent, how could we mess with them to make that alliance more expensive at the very least?

Yeah, I'm happy to address that, but maybe I can just take a few seconds to pick up on the fascism analogy because I think it's actually instructive about where we are today.

During the late 30s and early 40s, you had a similar set of regional conflicts, right? that gradually grew more interconnected.

But as you pointed out, there wasn't a huge amount of sort of direct support from Nazi Germany to Imperial Japan and vice versa.

They mostly helped each other just by doing their own thing, right? And so it was harder for the British to get serious about dealing with the threat from Japan because they were so hard pressed in the Mediterranean and in Europe and in the North Atlantic.

by Germany and Italy, things of that nature.

What we're seeing today actually features more direct cooperation in many ways than the original Axis did.

If you can now do much more nimble, cheaper tech, does it mean that we're going to see new players come online much faster than we thought possible 20 years ago?

What is it that they're trying to achieve?

Well, the U.S. has dialed back its objectives a little bit in the sense that when the war started, President Trump was talking in ways that suggested the U.S. ultimately wanted to overthrow the Iranian regime or at least get a more, a friendlier, more favorable government from the U.S. perspective.

There, there's not much talk of that at, at this point.

If anything, the regime seems to have, have hardened.

There are really two key U.S. objectives.

Um- The first is to undo a problem that was caused by the war itself, which is Iranian control of, of Hormuz, and I think that's the most critical objective from the president's position.

Uh, the second one, though, is basically to get the Iranians to do a nuclear deal that Trump finds acceptable.

I don't know if you have three, five, 12 [laughs] scenarios, but, um, what are some of the scenarios you see playing out as we kind of continue to go through this kind of morass? Oosh.

kind of

the Bible of American strategic studies.

And one of the contributors was Sir Lawrence Friedman, who had written a pretty hefty tome on strategy himself, where he made the point that strategy is most interesting when it produces Results that are different than the going in balance of power would suggest.

And to me, the U.S.-Iran war was a classic example of that.

There's no question about the power differential between the U.S.-Israeli coalition on the one hand and then Iran and isolated rogue regime on the other.

And there's no question that operationally speaking, the U.S. and Israel got the better of the fight with Iran, and it wasn't even close.

The U.S. and Israeli air forces basically managed to take control of Iran's skies relatively early in the conflict.

and again,

What do you see as the underlying factors that motivated this more forceful posture in the Western Hemisphere?

The one factor is structural, and the other is personal.

The factor that is structural is that the United States, because of its position in the world, typically tries to consolidate its position in the Western Hemisphere when the rest of the world is falling apart.

And so during World War I, during World War II, during the Cold War, the United States worked very hard to try to ensure its dominance in the Western Hemisphere, and it's not surprising that the US is doing the same thing as we enter a new era of great power rivalry.

The personal issue has to do with the president.

Thinking back to Trump's first term, he and his advisors talked about renewing the Monroe Doctrine.

Trump himself is very focused on this because he seeks a variety of benefits in the Western Hemisphere, from control of additional resources to control of additional territory, which he has talked about taking from Panama, Canada, and Greenland.

So what does this all mean for companies and investors? Here's what Hal had to say.

So you get at this in your piece, but what is the president up to? What is this administration up to with this focus on Venezuela?

I think there are probably three things going on here.

O- one is that drug imports do pose a meaningful threat to the United States.

There are tens of thousands of Americans who are killed each year, uh, due to the consumption of narcotics that come in large part from South America.

And, and so this is a real tangible threat to American security.

I think the second thing, though, is that Trump really likes the politics of this.

This is sort of the, the tough guy foreign policy, uh, where he is killing suspected drug traffickers and drug dealers.

But if he, if he authorizes strikes, not just on boats but on mainland, on the Venezuela homeland, what would that look like? Could that, would that drive Maduro out? What sort of potential chaos could ensue?

...for freedom or, uh, free enterprise at all. Reminds me of the late 1930s, uh, when you had the Axis Powers, uh, Hitler, Mussolini, and, and some others joining together to try to impose fascism on the world. And then you had Japan, which was a fascist state as well in the Pacific. Is there any difference?

I think there's some pretty strong parallels. Back, back then, the problem was that you had, um, a handful of separate aggressive countries that were all sort of doing their own thing in their particular regions, but the combined effect of that was to destabilize the wider world. And of course, eventually the United States got dragged into the conflicts that resulted. Um, today you have a similar phenomenon where Russia and China and Iran and North Korea, they, you know, they all want their own things, they all have their own agendas, but they're all putting pressure on the international system that America and its friends built at the same time. And if anything, they're cooperating more closely than the Axis Powers did in the late '30s and early '40s.

Yeah. Now from your vantage point, is there anything that President Trump should be doing or should not be doing? Um, if you were, uh, to have dinner with him tonight, would you have any suggestions for him?

I, I think he's on the right track in terms of putting a lot of pressure on Iran. I think Iran is the weakest member of this autocratic axis, and it is the one that has been most softened up over the past year, mostly by Israel for the imposition of this pressure. And so he's got a good chance to really squeeze the Iranians, um, and maybe get a stronger nuclear deal than the US got back in 2015 under the Obama administration. The thing I would tell him, um, not to do is not to think that he's gonna be successful in prying Russia and China apart. You've sometimes heard this, not so much from Trump, but from people around him, that if the war in Ukraine ends, maybe the United States can enlist Russia to help contain China. I just don't think that's how it works. I think-

Is there any difference?

I think there are some pretty strong parallels.

Back, back then, the problem was that you had, um, a handful of separate aggressive countries that were all sort of doing their own thing in their particular regions, but the combined effect of that was to destabilize the wider world.

And of course, eventually the United States got dragged into the conflicts that resulted.

Um, today you have a similar phenomenon where Russia and China and Iran and North Korea, they, you know, they all want their own things.

They all have their own agendas, but they're all putting pressure on the international system that America and its friends built at the same time.

And if anything, they're cooperating more closely than the Axis powers did in the late '30s and early '40s.

Now, from your vantage point, is there anything that President Trump should be doing or should not be doing? Um, if you were, uh, to have dinner with him tonight, would you have any suggestions for him?

Is there any difference?

I think there are some pretty strong parallels.

Back, back then, the problem was that you had, um, a handful of separate aggressive countries that were all sort of doing their own thing in their particular regions, but the combined effect of that was to destabilize the wider world.

And of course, eventually the United States got dragged into the conflicts that resulted.

Um, today you have a similar phenomenon where Russia and China and Iran and North Korea, they, you know, they all want their own things.

They all have their own agendas, but they're all putting pressure on the international system that America and its friends built at the same time.

And if anything, they're cooperating more closely than the Axis powers did in the late '30s and early '40s.

Now, from your vantage point, is there anything that President Trump should be doing or should not be doing? Um, if you were, uh, to have dinner with him tonight, would you have any suggestions for him?