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Stephen Walt I would have cut off military assistance to Israel as soon as it was apparent that they were engaged in the mass killing of Palestinian civilians, whether one wants to call it a genocide or not, and that they did not have an effective strategy for dealing with Hamas, per se, without decimating Gaza. And it's striking that the Biden administration, which did all this, never came forth with an explanation for how what we were doing there was good for the United States. (...)
Sanam That's Stephen Walt, the Robert and Renee Belfour Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School, my guest this week on If You Were In Charge, with me, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini. Welcome, everyone. The show is brought to you by the Robert Bosch Academy and my organization, ICANN, where for 20 years we've been working with women peacebuilders on stopping wars and violence around the world. Each week, as you know, I talk with other doers and imaginers about the tough issues they tackle, and I ask them what they'd do if they were in charge. Steve Walt is a slightly different guest because he is an academic, but has done some really important work. Before joining Harvard, he was at Princeton and the University of Chicago in 2007 with John Mearsheimer. They wrote a book called The Israel Lobby, and it literally blew the lid off, a sort of a hitherto silent phenomenon in the U.S. around the influence of the Israeli government, if you want, in U.S. institutions, academia, the political space, and so forth. In 2018, he wrote the book The Hell of Good Intentions, America's Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy. And you can tell from the title that, again, he's critiquing very much what has been the sort of the standard norm or what people in Washington often call the foreign policy blob of Democrats, Republicans, regardless of the administrations that have come in and their view of the world and how they deal with allies and adversaries and what they purport to represent in the world in terms of, quote unquote, Western liberal values. Even though, oftentimes, we see that other people, you know, in Egypt and in Yemen and elsewhere, people might be risking their lives for human rights, but the U.S. is on the side of weapons and bombs and dictatorships. The conversation that we had reflects broadly on U.S. foreign policy, obviously prospects of the incoming Trump administration and the nominations that have been made so far for some of those key positions. But we also talk about the role of universities and academics in maintaining free speech and space for debate and space for facts and the price that people pay for speaking out. So what it means to go against the mainstream and be the outlier voice or be the voice of unconventional wisdom against the usual suspect. I hope you enjoy the conversation and see you soon. Thank you. (......) Hi, Steve. How are you doing?
Stephen Walt I'm doing well. How are you?
Sanam I'm fine, thank you. Where are you these days?
Stephen Walt I'm currently in Vienna, Austria, on a fellowship at the Institute for Human Sciences and working on a new book project.
Sanam That's very cool. Were you in the States when the elections happened or were you watching it from afar?
Stephen Walt I was watching it from afar, but with considerable interest and, needless to say, was not particularly happy by the outcome.
Sanam And how does it actually, when looking at the various nominations, especially the foreign policy ones, how does it make you feel?
Stephen Walt Not great. You know, first of all, we're seeing the appointment of a bunch of people whose views on foreign policy, I think, are dangerous. We're also seeing a number of people in some key positions who I think simply don't have the background, competence or understanding to do those jobs effectively. They're all people who are likely to be quite loyal to Trump, most of them, with a few exceptions, don't really have independent power bases. So they will serve at his whim, and he'll pay a little price if he has to get rid of any of them. And that, of course, will encourage them to do whatever Trump asks them to do. So, you know, if you believe in a sort of competent government that's based on reasonably systematic decision-making and a reality-based approach to analysis, this is all deeply concerning.
Sanam It sounds a bit, well, you know, dictatorial is, you know, dictators do this kind of thing, or as in anthropology, we sort of talk about charismatic leaders that emerge and, you know, basically become the center of power. And in a way, it's like a revolution, except the facade of our institutions are being kept. But from the inside out, these guys are changing things. Do you feel that? Is that something that you're worried about?
Stephen Walt I am more worried that the frog gets boiled slowly here, as opposed to the wheels coming off the Trump administration quickly. You know, they do a lot of dumb things. The consequences are immediate and severe. Backlash begins to form while institutions are still intact, et cetera. And therefore, the damage isn't all that great. In some respects, I'm more worried that they will proceed sort of slowly and gradually, and people won't realize that a lot of the fundamental institutions of democracy, checks and balances, norms, respect for rule of law, et cetera, have been, you know, badly eroded. And by the time people realize what's happened, it's too late to correct it easily. I just had one other point. I mean, I think people have underestimated Donald Trump all along. I mean, there are cartoon-like aspects to the guy, but his political gifts should not be underestimated. And he has managed to tap into a sort of resentment at elites, a contempt for expertise, and the sheer opportunism of a number of people, you know, quite effectively. If you step back for a second and consider what we've watched over the last eight years, you know, we have essentially a career criminal, white-collar criminal, but not entirely given the sexual abuse convictions and things like that. We have a career criminal who's just been elected president of the United States. And that is something that, you know, has never happened before in our history and ought to worry us all greatly.
Sanam As you say, the institutions are going to be under threat. I mean, he's already said something about changing how universities are going to get accredited. We already saw the House pass legislation around a non-profit status and NGOs, you know, having their 501c3 status revoked, basically, if they seem to criticize anything to do with Israel. But I imagine it would go on to other things. (.) As an American, do you see yourself or others in your community beginning to self-censor or worry about being attacked? Or are you actually going out, you know, a hundred times more saying what you've just said is like, you know, to maintain the space for freedom of expression? Is that a concern that you have?
Stephen Walt Well, certainly a concern that I have. And I worry that universities in particular are going to accommodate in all sorts of ways to try and sort of save themselves or protect themselves. And the problem there, of course, is if you go too far in that direction, you end up giving up what is the critical and really unique role that academic institutions play in a free society, namely the capacity to be independent checks on other institutions to at least be able to examine what's being done and criticize it from left or right, from lots of different directions. The challenge here, though, is, you know, self-censorship is very hard to detect. People will occasionally admit that that's what they're doing, but most of the time you just find people either falling silent or tempering what they're saying because they don't want to get into trouble. I haven't seen that happen yet. This is, I don't know a clear example, but I think it's almost inevitable in a world, you know, where you believe that there are powerful people in charge who have the capacity to punish you if they don't like what you've said. That'll affect universities. I think we saw it affect some newspapers during the campaign, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, pulling endorsements of Kamala Harris because they were worried about possible punishment if Trump won. And if that happens, it inevitably begins to erode the ability of the society to detect when things are going wrong and to make corrections. And again, regardless of who's in power, that's a bad situation because that's what leads, you know, to enormous errors that then don't get fixed for a long, long time. (.)
Sanam As an Iranian, having sort of lived through the Iranian revolution, we saw this change. And in a way, this idea of, you know, not saying things or being self, it's so deeply embedded in the DNA because people are always worried. You know, it doesn't matter which side it's coming from. But what I'm struck by is as we look at the U.S., and especially in the last year on Harvard, on the campuses of Harvard and these other universities, and we've already seen the crackdowns against the students vis-a-vis the Palestine protests, is that something that you, as a Harvard professor, is that something that's worried you? Is that, you know, have you seen any kind of constructive way of trying to get through these issues? Or is that kind of a precursor to some of the problems that we might see coming forward, do you think?
Stephen Walt It's worried me a lot. First of all, I think the accusations that have been directed at universities have been politically motivated and almost entirely incorrect, greatly exaggerated. that this idea that a place like Harvard or many other colleges are hotbeds of viral and anti-Semitism is just nonsense. There may have been a few isolated incidents, may have been outsiders who interfered in those universities. But I think anybody who hangs out at a university on a constant basis understands that that's not the case. It's quite the opposite, that these are institutions that had various points in their past, you know, at least a polite anti-Semitism, but are, if anything, phylo-Semitic and remarkably reluctant to engage in deep criticism of Israel. So that's, I think, was a politically motivated set of accusation, again, for political purposes and to try and silence or marginalize people who were upset by what Israel was doing in Gaza. The second thing that worries me, of course, has been the response that universities have made, which is instead of defending academic freedom, instead of defending the rights of students to engage in peaceful, non-threatening protests, instead of encouraging everyone in a community to express their views and listen carefully to what others are saying in a respectful way, which I think is quite possible to do. And I think Harvard hasn't managed to do that since I ended up on another occasion. And instead of doing all of those things and sort of saying, look, we're going to stand up for our principles here. I think Harvard and some other institutions have already started to go to great lengths to try and, you know, get themselves off the front pages, get the Congress to look the other way, get donors to be quiet or to be more supportive. And the problem is, of course, you're selling your soul when you begin to do that. You're no longer an independent arena for open thought and debate and discussion. And you become, again, an institution that is both starting to self-censor and also putting various forms of rather subtle pressure on everyone in the community that, you know, if you are too outspoken on this issue, you're going to get us all in trouble. And that won't silence everyone, but it's bound to silence some students. And it's certainly going to have an effect on some of the faculty.
Sanam So, Stephen, I became familiar with your work with the book, The Israel Lobby, that you wrote with John Mearsheimer back in 2007, 2008. You kind of blew the lid off an issue that was not talked about in the U.S., right? It was kind of, you know, nobody officially talked about the ways in which the, as you called it, the Israel Lobby was strategically involved in different institutions and so forth. And then with the hell of good intentions in 2018, you very openly talk about, you know, the blob of the foreign policy establishment that, as we see it in D.C., you know, you have not held back in your critiques. In the context of Harvard, with both in terms of the administration, in terms of the students, in terms of junior faculty, what are you trying to do now in terms of enabling these conversations to happen, given, as you said, the fear of self-censorship or the sort of the creeping silencing that might come on?
Stephen Walt I think there's several parts to it. I'm glad to have the question. I mean, first of all, you just have to remind people in a university what they exist for or what their core values are. And the core values of a university stem from its functions. It has two main functions. One is to expand a sphere of human knowledge to try and learn more about how the world works. That includes the social and political world. So we're trying to increase human knowledge. And that inevitably requires openness, the willingness to criticize existing ideas, existing orthodoxies. We have to be open to that or we can't do our jobs, whether we're physicists or biochemists or students of English literature or history or whatever. The second function, of course, is to try and transmit what we think we know to our students, but also without, you know, trying to impose our views on others or insist that they agree with us on every single detail. So step one is to remind the institution of what it's there for, that it exists to fulfill a particular function in society. And it can't do that if it doesn't create the widest and freest possible environment for the expression of ideas. The second part of this, though, is sort of twofold. One is I don't think faculty should be imposing their views on students. I even subscribe to the University of Chicago principles that academic institutions should not take institutional positions on political questions unless they directly affect the functioning of the university itself. So Harvard should not take a position as an institution on whether or not the United States should back Ukraine or whether the United States a position on gay marriage or things like that. It's not the institution's job. Individual faculty can take whatever views they want on those and many other questions, but not the institution itself. Because once Harvard or any other university takes an institutional position, that inevitably begins to put pressure on other members of the community who might disagree with and suddenly they think they're out of step. (.) Second part here is you don't impose your views on students. So I have strong views on a number of political questions, but I have students in my classes with very different views and I don't expect them to agree with me. You don't have to write papers that agree with my position in order to get an A in the class, et cetera. I want to learn from them by listening to their views and I hope that I can make them wiser by at least having to confront alternative views, but without necessarily agreeing with me. And then the last part, I guess, and this is just my personal view, is you do have to show a certain respect for people that you disagree with, including my colleagues. So I think you could argue that I'm something of an outlier within the Kennedy School, but that doesn't involve, you know, questioning the motives of the colleagues who have different views on American foreign policy than I do. When I've written about the foreign policy establishment, I've tried to be careful not to make it personal, not to assume the worst about what others are doing, but say, look, we have a disagreement on what the right policy is, but I'm not questioning other people's integrity or patriotism in nearly all cases, unless there's really clear evidence that there's a problem there. So I think those are the ways that you can try and navigate an environment where political pressures can be brought to bear, sometimes in a very subtle fashion, in the attempt, if not to silence people, either to marginalize them or get them to be a little quieter.
Sanam Are there kind of moments that you felt particularly proud, whether it's seeing how your students have responded or what they've done, or is there something that you think, okay, this is my contribution and it makes you feel proud? Or have there been moments of despair in the last years that you've been doing this, that you think, what am I doing? What am I saying? Why am I writing all this stuff?
Stephen Walt Well, it's a little bit of both. So I've certainly been proud of a number of my students, uh, you know, students who have gone on to, uh, to write, you know, books and articles that I thought were really terrific. In some cases, students who have gone on to public service and I thought have done a good job. A former student of mine was one of the people who resigned over Gaza, uh, not because of any influence I had on them, but, uh, because they put principles and moral convictions ahead of, you know, career advancement. And I think that's, that's deeply admirable. There have been obviously moments of despair, you know, mingled with pride. So, uh, I'm actually proud of the work that John Mearsheimer and I did on the Israel lobby. And one of the things I'm proud about is that we were not deterred by the consequences we knew we would face if we wrote the book. You know, we talked for a long time about, uh, writing the original article and whether it was a good idea, whether it would, you know, help the world in any particular way. And, uh, we knew we'd face a firestorm of criticism, uh, most of it completely unfair if we did. And then we finally decided that if, you know, two tenured professors, one at Harvard, one at the University of Chicago, weren't willing to write this book, uh, given that we already had, you know, established positions, then nobody would be willing to write such a book. And I'm glad we decided to go forward. I'm actually quite, quite proud of that. I am disappointed and sometimes, uh, you know, really upset by the fact that although the book clearly, as you said, you know, uh, sort of blew the lid off, got, uh, a taboo subject back out into the open where we could talk about it, it has not had, uh, the effects on U.S. policy, uh, that I might've hoped for or, uh, effects on the Middle East itself that I might've hoped for. It's impossible to look at the horrors of the past year, uh, in the Middle East and not be deeply disappointed that American policy continues to be as myopic as it is, uh, I think morally bankrupt as it is, and that Israel is now acting in ways that are isolating itself in a variety of ways. And I think ultimately threatening its future and that finally the Palestinians are suffering from those other two things, from America's moral bankruptcy and Israel's misconduct. I had hoped that things would move in a different direction if you could get American policy to shift to a more even-handed position. And that's been a big disappointment.
Sanam Yeah, I remember in, um, in two, I think it was 2008 when Obama came to power, you wrote an article about the dream team or the kinds of advisors that they could have into the, you know, in the new administration that would bring a different perspective. And yet we see the same people cycling, cycling in and out. Have you ever wondered that you would like to be there? Like, you know, it's time for you to actually go and, I mean, have you ever sort of either been asked or been, you know, considered, I really would like to be there making the decisions and, and having a say in what's happening. Do you get that sort of, any kind of frustration around that or, or imaginings around that?
Stephen Walt Absolutely. I mean, I had hope, I had hoped at some point to serve my country in some public capacity. And I didn't want to do that earlier in my career because I didn't actually think I was ready for it when I was in my twenties or thirties. Jobs I might have been qualified for were not necessarily ones I wanted to do it. But there was a point, you know, after I came from Chicago to the Kennedy School where I began to sort of seriously entertain the idea of going into government at some point. And John and I knew that when we wrote that book, that was probably a fork in the road. I'd be sufficiently politically radioactive that no administration would go near me. And that has turned out to be the case. I did, in fact, you know, go to the Obama administration's website during their transition in 2008 and, you know, put my name in. But I think that's, you know, not how those jobs are really filled anyway. And there was no way that that was going to happen. That's proved to be true in a number of other realms as well.
Sanam First of all, I think it's extraordinary for people to hear that in a way, you know, of course, we know how these appointments are largely done. But that, yes, there is a website and, you know, any of us can go put our names in and kind of be part of some selection process. It's there's something quite democratic about that. But again, as you say, the issue is that what you've said out of government or what positions you've taken in end up becoming such a black mark. I mean, the same thing happened with Chaz Freeman when he was nominated for National Security Advisor on some of his positions.
Stephen Walt And I might add, Chaz was, of course, official with enormous experience, a distinguished record of government service. And when Obama nominated him to be head of the National Intelligence Council, a job for which he was beautifully qualified, of course, he got shot down by the Israel lobby. He's a much clearer case than somebody like me.
Sanam It's just, first of all, it's depressing, right, to think that this is what happens, that some of the best people that we could have, and especially in a pluralistic society like the U.S., I always think that, you know, you kind of have the best of everybody. You want somebody who's an expert in Nigeria. You've probably got one of the best Nigerians in, you know, studying or working in the U.S. that could be your advisor. And yet we don't see new faces being brought in except under somebody like Trump, which is kind of ironic. It's slightly bizarre to be seeing this right now. And here's the question, you know, if you were in charge, and if you were given that position right now, thinking about Ukraine, China, Iran, Gaza, where do you think the U.S. should be positioning itself? What should the U.S. be representing and trying to do in the world if you were given that opportunity?
Stephen Walt Oh, boy. Oh, there's a lot on that plate. I will say, just to go back briefly to what we were talking about before, I mean, the reason you want to get a range of views within a government is that a narrow ideological conformity means that bad ideas don't get evaluated, don't get challenged. Walter Lipman had a great line, which is, you know, when all think alike, no one thinks very much. And I think that captures the problem. And of course, that's what our foreign policy establishment is good at. It's good at weeding out people who are slightly outside the lines or who have an alternative perspective on issues. And it becomes a self-replicating group of people that tends to all share similar beliefs. So, you know, if I were in charge, you know, I think American policy would be fundamentally different on a number of, in a number of ways. And I've, you know, written about this in the conclusion to Hell of Good Intentions and in a lot of my writings in Foreign Policy magazine. You know, basically, the United States should get out of the business of trying to run local politics in places all over the world. We do not need to dominate the planet in order to be safe, secure, and prosperous. And we certainly neither have the wisdom nor the ability to tell other countries how they should behave, who should govern them, et cetera. And certainly not try to dictate that with military force or economic pressures or things like that. So I do argue for a, you know, sort of a more modest foreign policy. Some of us have called it a policy of restraint or a policy of offshore balancing. If you start applying that now to specifics, you know, in the case of Ukraine, which faced an illegal invasion by Russia, an illegal invasion that was partly, not entirely, but partly the result of misguided American policies going back years, if not decades. The sad news there is that Ukraine is not going to win that war. And the sooner it comes to an end, the better for Ukraine. I wish that were not the case. I'd be happier if Ukraine had achieved a military victory and allowed it to regain all of its lost territory. But I think that's not going to happen. And the longer the war goes on, the worse it will be ultimately for Ukraine. I believe, by the way, that Kamala Harris, had she been elected, would have moved in that direction. I think Trump will move in that direction less responsibly or carefully. But that war is going to eventually come to an end. And then the question is how you try to keep whatever ceasefire or armistice agreement that emerges intact for as long as possible so that Ukraine can rebuild. In the Middle East, I would have cut off military assistance to Israel as soon as it was apparent that they were engaged in the mass killing of Palestinian civilians, whether one wants to call it a genocide or not, and that they did not have an effective strategy for dealing with Hamas per se without decimating Gaza. The United States does not want to be complicit in the activities that Israel was doing. those aren't good for our image, and they aren't good for Israel as well. And it's striking that the Biden administration, which did all this, never came forth with an explanation for how what we were doing there was good for the United States. All right. There were, you know, Israel had a right to defend itself, et cetera. We're going to stand with our ally Israel. But I wanted somebody to explain, how is this making Americans safer or more prosperous or more respected around the world? And, of course, the answer was, it was doing none of those things, and it was largely, again, a result of, you know, Biden's outdated beliefs and political pressure, I think, from the lobby. So I'd have a very different policy towards Israel-Palestine. And more broadly, the United States in the Middle East should stop having special relations with some countries and no relationship whatsoever with others, right? We should be more like some other countries, like China or Russia or others, who deal with everyone in the Middle East. Our European allies deal with everyone in the Middle East. We have relations of unconditional support with Israel, with Saudi Arabia, to some degree with Egypt. And we have no relationship whatsoever with Iran. And that makes no sense from an American perspective. What we want to do is have influence with all of those countries. And one way you do that is by talking to everyone. So that when you're talking to Saudi Arabia, they worry that you might be hearing something better from Iran. When you're talking to Iran, they worry that you might be hearing something better from Israel, et cetera. That's what the United States, as a major power that is not located in the Middle East, ought to be doing. We ought to be essentially playing a much more of a balance of power game as well. And then just last point, if I were in charge, I like America's liberal values. I'm glad that they still exist. I hope they will continue to exist over the next four years. But we can't impose those values on others. We can try to persuade people that they're good principles on which to base governance. But that's a decision for every society to make for itself at its own pace and in its own way. So what we ought to be doing is trying to set a good example for the rest of the world by how we conduct ourselves at home, how we deal with each other, and how we deal with other countries. And if we did all of those things and we're a little bit more patient, I think you would find that the values the United States likes to claim it stands for would actually become more popular and gradually would become more widely embraced around the world.
Sanam It seems it's funny you say that about the values being our values, because both, you know, with from my Iranian experience, but also working around the world, what I struggle with is that I'm dealing with Afghans and Yemenis and Nigerians who are literally giving up their lives for human rights or women's rights. They're risking their own livelihood lives and families for these things. And we don't listen to them. We don't listen to what they want from us when we intervene or we sort of decide to get involved in their countries. So the values seem to be universal. To me, it seems that it's more the way in which we, as the U.S., weigh in and think we know better than them. My father used to say, you can't bring democracy on the back of a donkey, you know, sort of in the middle of a square. The unfortunate part to me is that we don't understand that people actually, there are people over there who, as I say, who are fighting, you know, risking their lives for these rights. We sometimes and often are making it worse and we're not really listening. And as you say, then we're not even practicing it at home because now with all the internet and the availability of social media, people are looking and saying, oh, in America, the police kills people, you know, or the, you know, the levels of violence in your school shootings and stuff. The idea that somehow the U.S. represents these things is that image is also diminishing, which is sad because I don't think Russia or China is offering any positive alternative, right? So our sense of ourselves is slightly skewed here.
Stephen Walt Skewed is one word for it. I mean, I think that what we've seen over the last decade in particular, but not unique to that period is, you know, the sort of greater cognizance of American hypocrisy. There is a real gap between the values we profess, the things that, you know, fill the pages of magazines like Foreign Affairs when U.S. officials write, the speeches that presidents and secretaries of state give are all, you know, replete with these statements about a rules-based order and liberty and freedom and rights and human rights in particular as well. We like to talk a good game. And occasionally, you know, when it's not strategically inconvenient, we try to do things to advance those goals. So I don't want to suggest that the United States is, you know, completely hypocritical here. But whenever push comes to shove, right, then those values go out the window and more naked calculations of interest, power, or just, you know, political advancement tend to dominate. And it's not like people don't notice this. They don't like to be lectured about how to behave and then have the person giving the lecture go off and do something, you know, very, very different. And just to go back to, you know, familiar examples, much of the world has been really cognizant of the condemnations that we are quick to level at Vladimir Putin, and deservedly so, and the free pass that we are giving Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel in this case. It's not that these are countries that love Russia and hate Israel. It's just they look at the United States and they say, this is not a country that actually deeply believes in these principles. It uses them as a soundbite. And it looks the other way whenever they involve costs or inconvenience as well. And I think the United States pays a price for that, particularly given our outsized global role. And I think we'll continue to pay a price for it if our policies don't change. Just one final point, you mentioned Russia and China. Yes, I think they and some other countries don't have a more attractive package on offer that the world wants to gravitate to. But what they do have is less hypocrisy in some respects. If you want to do business with China, if you want the Chinese to come in and build you a railroad or build you a dam or put a factory to make lithium batteries in your country, you're not going to get a lecture from the Chinese on how to organize your electoral system or how you have to have an anti-corruption campaign or how you need to fix your domestic political order in order to conform to Chinese practices. And if you do that with the United States, the first thing that you'll get is a lecture about your human rights policies or some other aspect of your internal politics. So in some respects, China has an advantage when it's dealing or trying to influence others because it doesn't appear quite as hypocritical as we do.
Sanam That's so true. And what's worrying, again, going back to the question of, you know, how we look at Putin or Netanyahu is that we were quite happy for the ICC to say that Putin is indicted and has an arrest warrant out for him, right? Yes, we like the rules-based order. When it happens to Netanyahu, all of a sudden we're questioning the validity of the court and all these things. So it allows others to come in as well and voice their criticism, consternation, et cetera, about the rules-based order. So not only we're destroying our own reputation, but we're actually seriously damaging the institutions that have been built over decades with us and with others. That's what I find really disturbing about this. It's, you know, it's as if we're happy to take a wrecking ball to the ICC. Security Council, to me, is the un-security council or the in-security council. And we have enabled that. You know, we can't just blame Russia. The U.S. has, from the Iraq War to Gaza, we've actually been one of the biggest forces of destruction of the system.
Stephen Walt I think that's exactly right. And what people need to understand is that this isn't based on some, you know, serious philosophical discussions in the U.S. government, this isn't based on people doing a careful job of evaluating the pros and cons of ICC indictments one way or the other, the arrest warrant or the South Africa submission. This is based on domestic political politics, almost pure and simple, right? The United States would have a very different approach towards the International Criminal Court. So if the situations were reversed and, you know, a powerful Arab country was conducting mass killings of Israelis, we didn't have a problem at all when the ICC issued an arrest warrant from Mohammed Daesh, Hamas said, who may now be dead. And again, I think that was a deserved indictment. What Hamas did on October 7th was violations of international law, in my view. So I don't have a problem with that indictment. But we have a problem when they indict Israel, again, because our positions on that particular country are almost entirely shaped by domestic political considerations.
Sanam Thank you for saying it so clearly. So another question that I often ask people is, you know, if you were a billionaire, you know, if money was really not a constraint, what would you do? And in this case, we have Elon Musk running around. Did he meet with the Iranian embassy or mission in New York? Didn't he? What is he doing? If you had that kind of resource and access, again, it's an imaginative thing, but it's quite fun to think about it.
Stephen Walt Well, I have trouble understanding what it's like to be a billionaire. So I am probably not going to be thinking sufficiently outside the box here. It's also worth noting that, you know, given how rich someone like Musk is now, billion may not actually get you very far. You may be outspent by others, you know, on the other side. But to go back to where we began to talk about sort of the way universities and open societies operate, I think if I had that kind of money, I would be trying to use it to guarantee that we maintained an open, critical environment in which government policies could be effectively evaluated and criticized, regardless of whether the criticisms were coming from the right or from the left. And I would want to make sure that there were institutions like universities that were free from political fashions that didn't mind being contrarian. I would like whistleblowers to have both protections, you know, if they leave their jobs and can no longer pursue their chosen career, that they have a place to land where they can be protected and where they can write up their experiences and maybe disseminate them. So I would be trying to do whatever I could with the money to not to directly influence government policy, not to sort of go in and say, please do it my way. And if so, I'll donate to your campaign, but rather to try and ensure that over the long haul, you continue to have institutions that can see when things are going wrong, can criticize what everyone else is saying is, you know, reveal truth, uh, and then can start suggesting alternatives. And that's a, a muddy, lumpy process. And by the way, those have to be institutions that have at their bedrock, a commitment to truth. It's not just endowing a bunch of think tanks that have a particular view and will run roughshod over the evidence to advance that view. Uh, one of the great things about universities is they actually have standards and they, you know, it's hard to get tenure and you have to have done research that people all over the world have recognized as being, uh, major contributions to knowledge. And as a result of that, you are more likely to get creative and accurate answers as opposed to just politically motivated, uh, propaganda. So again, if I were a billionaire or better, I would try to be doing everything I could to guarantee that such institutions survived, particularly in a environment where they're going to face lots of both economic and possibly governmental pressure designed to neuter them.
Sanam That's really interesting. And I, and it's, it's funny because as you were speaking, I was thinking about all of the employees in the state department at senior levels, you know, maybe at the UN mission and so forth, who I sometimes wonder if they felt that they had some safety in terms of their livelihoods or their future outside of the system, whether they would have resigned, right? Whether they would have stepped down and said, I'm not going to vote for the veto or, or whatever, like how much of, of how much are people stuck and chained to their jobs and these, these positions that they have to take because of their own personal economics?
Stephen Walt Yeah, there's, there's two problems here. One is the personal economic point that, you know, if you have, if you have kids in college, you have a mortgage to pay off, et cetera, you want to make sure you're ready for retirement. Uh, there are real disincentives to leaving, you know, a good paying job. The second problem, of course, is in our political system, principled resignation pretty much means that that's it for your government career. You're not going to get hired again by anybody else because loyalty is prized so much. And future administrations might worry that, gee, if you, we bring this person back in and they're unhappy, they'll just resign again. And that'll be embarrassing. I want team players who won't cause me trouble. So if you're sitting in the government and you're thinking about resigning on principle, you're not just maybe losing your livelihood in the short term. You have to consider a completely different career track, or at least a somewhat different career track going forward. And that's actually a bit of a problem that we aren't willing to recognize that sometimes someone should be able to resign on principle, but still be eligible for a future appointment in an administration that sees the world more like he or she did. There are some cases where that's happened, but not very many.
Sanam I moved to the States in 2001 and I was working for a private foundation and completely kind of these things that you're talking about, you know, the loyalty to the head or the principle without any question. They were so new to me because I came from a nonprofit background in the UK where actually the space was for us to have dissent and speak and so forth. So I got myself into a lot of trouble, but over the years, I was like, well, you know, in a way being somewhat outside the system, at least I have the freedom to say what I think I need to say in the same way that you're saying that in the university system, you, you know, you wrote your book, closed one door, but it actually gives you the freedom to say the things that need to be said. And it's really important to have people like you. One of the things that strikes me is that in the aftermath of 9-9-11, it just seemed as if the US's approach became, if we can go to war, we will, or if we can bomb them, we will. If we can't do that, we'll sanction them. If we can't sanction them, then we'll go to diplomacy. It just seems that we've kind of undermined and undersupported diplomacy and the reform of diplomacy to deal with the, you know, the modern world. I don't know. To me, that seems to be one of the big gaps that I've seen in the last 20 years of being in the US and the types of wars that we've seen and the response to the US. Does that make, does that resonate with you?
Stephen Walt This is something that's been bothering me for a long time. I mean, some of America's greatest foreign policy successes were diplomatic. Things like the Marshall Plan, the formation of NATO, the peaceful end of the Cold War. These were not accomplished by armies on a battlefield. They were accomplished by diplomats at a negotiating table. You know, I go to Red Sox games when I'm home in Boston. And in the seventh inning, we always, you know, applaud a veteran. And I think there's nothing wrong with that at all. But just once, I'd love it if we applauded a diplomat, applauded someone who had been responsible for a successful negotiation, ended a war or ended a famine or something like that. Ways of valorizing what those people are doing. You know, we're a pretty crude species in some ways. And unfortunately, when people are attacked, when violence is being used, these are the moments when you ought to be thinking as carefully and rationally as possible and looking for ways to try and bring the trouble to an end with the least cost. And unfortunately, that's not what tends to happen. What it tends to produce is, you know, the desire for revenge, the desire for vengeance, the desire to demonstrate one's power and credibility once again, etc. So just at the moments when you ought to be being as careful as possible, you end up getting instead sort of rash, hasty, excessive actions like, say, invading Iraq after 9-11 that make the problem worse rather than make it better.
Sanam I've spent, you know, my life working with women on the ground who become peace builders. And they are exactly that. You know, things go wrong. And they're the first ones to take a stand to try and protect people, to mitigate issues. And the irony is that there's a sort of a trope around, oh, women are emotional. And I'm like, no, women are really rational. We can't afford to be angry. We have to, you know, get things done and resolved. And it's anger that's driving a lot of these wars. But again, there's like an invisibility about who was doing the work on the ground. And then, as you say, the big powers that come in.
Stephen Walt And by the way, just as a footnote there, the other thing I might do with the billion dollars you're going to send me later, there is, in fact, some really quite compelling social science research that suggests that in a whole series of spheres, improving the status and influence of women yields positive outcomes, whether that's in, you know, conflict resolution mechanisms, the functioning of corporations, the ability of teams to work effectively together. And unfortunately, at least in the United States, we're in one of these periods where, you know, misogyny looks like it's coming back in. And this is going to have all sorts of negative consequences. So I might try to use my billion to further defend and enhance women's rights, not just because that would be good for women, because it would be good for all of us.
Sanam Okay, so you get two billion. That's that you've made your case. (.) So one, my last question is, what gives you hope? (...)
Stephen Walt What gives me hope, I think, is that we do have a capacity as a species for all the problems we've already talked about, to empathize with others. And I also believe that human beings are boundlessly creative. We got mRNA vaccines miraculously to deal with the COVID epidemic. And let's hope Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn't interfere with that kind of development in his new job. There may be technological solutions that help us address the problem of climate change, although we have to do a lot more things other than count on scientists. There are going to be imaginative people who look at what appear to be intractable conflicts and will suddenly figure out a way. And we occasionally find visionary leaders, you know, the Nelson Mandela's, the Anwar Sadat's, et cetera, who refuse to accept the boundaries and the parameters that they've been given. And they find a clever, sometimes risky, but a clever way to try and transcend them. So, you know, I still have a lot of hope in the human species.
Sanam Hey, Sos. Hi. Are you back to knitting?
Soleh It's not knitting, it's crochet, but yeah.
Sanam What are you making?
Soleh I'm making a hat. Who for? //S02: Can I have one?// Lots of secret Santa things coming up. I need to impress everyone by making homemade things.
Sanam Okay, well, I, I, yeah. Can I put my name on the list, please?
Soleh You're at the bottom, but sure. (.) Charming. It's very long, this list.
Sanam Okay. So, my last conversation was with Stephen Walt. Steve Walt, as you heard, he has been a pretty vocal critique of a lot of U.S. foreign policy of the last 20 years. And I think one of, I mean, when I first came across him, it was in 2008, I think, when his book with John Mearsheimer was published, The Israel Lobby. And it was just extraordinary to see such a detailed accounting of how the, you know, lobby of one country has such influence in the U.S. But his more recent book also about the hell of good intentions, you know, is a, is a very clear discussion and critique over the last 20, 20, 30 years, I should say, of U.S. foreign policy. (.) A lot of the space that I was been, I've been working in, so it was quite interesting to see his perspective and, and, and hear what he has to say, and also the personal cost that comes with speaking out. What was your sense of the conversation?
Soleh I think it's like some of the things he was saying were, were interesting, particularly about the institution shouldn't be political and that they should like protect their own faculty, like who wanted to speak out and all that. Yeah. It's like, it seems like such a simple thing, but then it's clearly just hasn't been happening recently, even though on the surface, it's like, well, of course you'd think that universities and things like that would be doing that.
Sanam Also his point about the fact that you don't necessarily know when people self-censor, you know, that, that, and I, and I think that's so true. It's, it's, um, I think it happens a lot. And a lot of the times it's not just, it's not just sort of diluting what you want to say. It's actually just refusing, being silent in the conversations on certain issues.
Soleh Yeah. And then that tied in also with what he was saying at the end about what he would do with, like, if he was in charge to actually protect these institutions and like make them, or like make sure that there are places that are, I think he used the phrase something like protecting the truth or actually tied to the truth somehow and making sure that they are in fact, like fulfilling their, their purpose and that they're not so influenced by politics. If he had all this money and he wanted to have like political societal change, he would choose to go through institutions and universities rather than like short-term politics, I guess.
Sanam I thought what he said about creating a, I don't know whether he would have called it a think tank or what kind of institution, but a space, as you said, for, for facts and truth to come out and, and different perspectives and, and, and so forth was really important because his implicit, and, and, and I didn't, and maybe I should have asked him this very explicitly, but I think the implicit assumption and, and at least what we know in, in the US universe is that there are all these think tanks, obviously in DC that, that we see, but.
Soleh But they're not committed to actually finding the truth. Well, right.
Sanam I mean, it's, it's two things. I mean, they lean politically one way or the other, and they are funded by, you know, whether it's governments or private philanthropy or, uh, whoever it is that is giving them the money. often times there are sort of either invisible or visible strings attached and, and we kind of, we forget that because we see the brands, you know, I think, I think for a lay person, yeah, I don't know that I'm not going to mention because maybe I'll get sued if I mention something, but, you know, you see the, the names of these big brands and the assumption somewhere along the line is that they, you know, there is some objectivity or there's definitely objectivity.
Soleh I mean, I feel like let's not say cynic, but maybe like grew up in DC. If I heard that something was a, a think tank, I would immediately think that it had a political leaning. Like there would be no, no doubt to me that it was not.
Sanam Me of little faith. Yeah. I, my generation, we kind of, I don't know, there was a, there was a more, we had more awe or respect for institutions, whatever they were. And, and, and then, and then as time has gone
Soleh on, sort of, you know, I don't even really know what a think tank is. Like to me, a think tank is where I don't actually know the names of any think tanks, so we won't get sued. This is just broad, but I'm like, are they not places that like, I don't know, lobbyists go and like come up with ideas for what they're going to think up some new ideas for what they're going to lobby about?
Sanam It's, it's, I think it's a combination. You have people who are, who sort of have an academic leaning, right? And they do research and, but research with a policy lens. And then you get political appointees or, you know, people who've been in the policy universe and in government who kind of cycle in and out of governmental positions. And while they're out of government, they perch in various think tanks.
Soleh Okay. Sorry to all those think tankers that have just insulted.
Sanam Yeah, exactly. You've smeared them. But, but yes, I mean, this, this, this question of saying, can we have a space where we go with the facts and we go with different, you know, logical arguments and, and understanding and different perspectives, as opposed to what we want the truth to be, if you assume. Yeah.
Soleh I thought his point about whistleblowers or people who resigned from government institutions and protecting them as well as kind of a way to allow people to speak out or resign for like moral reasons, uh, within these government institutions that, as he was describing, like value loyalty a lot, um, and will, will like blacklist you or something if you are seen to kind of not be a team player. Yeah. So making sure that they kind of have some kind of protections and feel like they are able to do this. Like it's a choice that they can make. It was interesting.
Sanam Yeah. Because, you know, at the end of the day, for example, if we, if we take what's happening with Gaza, I know lots of people who work in the State Department who disagree with what's, what the position has been. Right. And they stay inside. Now, some of them will say, oh, we stay inside because we're trying to make the change from within. But then after a while you think, well, there hasn't been change from within. Right. So what's the, what's the point? Or some of them will say, oh, you know, we were before the elections, there was like, you know, the threat of, of, uh, of Trump. And so we had to stick together and, you know, we needed the Democrats to win. And then it's like, okay, you know, are we going to see more resignations? Um, now, I mean, it's, it's, it's the 11th hour. So, you know, does it really make a difference? But, but it comes down to, there is an element, I think that, that people will use excuses, um, to stay. And, and I think it comes down to what a lot of what he was saying around, you know, it's your salary and you've got college fees to pay, or, you know, you've got a mortgage. And, and, and in the end, if the people that know things, and if the people who are real experts on the, on the issues don't speak out because of fear of, for themselves, then the, the institutions also become undermined, right? I mean, the institution at the end of the day is a collection of the people and their willingness to speak out. So, you know, in the, in the grand scheme of things, it seems like a small point to say, oh, I'd like to have a place where people can come and, and feel safe and, and they'll still have a, you know, an income and so forth. But you realize that these small fixes are so important to the, to the bigger problem that, that that's out there. And then, and then I also found it quite ironic that right now, a lot of the criticism about, um, the Trump nominees and so forth is that, you know, he's only looking for loyalists, people who have to stand with him. He doesn't, you know, he doesn't want anybody who's going to go against him. And it's like, well, actually, you know, everyone does that, everybody does that, right? Or to some degree or another, it's, it seems to be like that. Um, certainly when we were in DC, there were certain policy issues. I remember at some point on Afghanistan and somebody called me and asked me to speak out. And I, and I asked them, why would you, why does it matter that I criticize something, you know, that's come out of the state department? There are lots of other people who have a bigger voice. And she basically told me, yeah, yeah. And she, she basically said, oh, well, they would, you know, people worry about losing their access. And then she meant access to the White House. And I was like, well, I don't have access to the White House. I can say whatever I want to lose. Yeah, exactly. But, but, but it is that it's that you're a slightly, you know, you're a loose cannon or, or you're not a team player, you know, you're not loyal, you're not team player. And, and again, for me, it's ironic. Cause I'm like the ultimate loyalty is the ability to show dissent and, you know, your freedom of speech or expression is a responsibility, not just a right. And you have to kind of, you know, the courage that it takes to, to speak out, um, is something that in a way I take for granted, but it, but you realize how, how important it is. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, so on, on the question of, um, his discussion about Harvard and, you know, reactions both to Palestine, but also looking forward, you're at MIT, you've seen what's happened on campus there. Um, if you were a student there now, or even, even where you are right now, you know, how did you react to his comments about, um, whether universities are actually standing up for
Soleh this freedom? I mean, they definitely like rang true. I mean, it's very clear that the universities are not standing up for the students. I mean, or large portions of their students. We talked about this also in the discussions about the police and like campus police and like they're, they're controlled by the university. Right. So yeah, it's, it's, it seems very obvious that it's, it's going to get worse. I think like a lot of the stuff with, when Trump coming, with Trump coming in about like Gaza and Israel-Palestine, like if, if people think it's bad now, it's, it's going to get worse. And I think that's, that the stuff on universities is going to not like no exception. Um, in fact, like it's been such a thing for Republicans to be like, oh, all these liberal institutions, blah, blah, that in order to like stay in the good graces and keep their access, like we were talking about, I'm sure that these universities are going to do. I mean, I hope maybe it'll like prompt them to take a stand, but I don't think that like unlikely that that will actually be the case.
Sanam Had you heard about the blob when, when he mentioned the, the foreign policy blob? Had you heard that term? No, that, that's something that again, in DC, it's sort of, I don't know who coined it. Maybe, maybe, maybe Steve did, but, um, it's this idea that there's like a blob of people that, that come in and out of government, regardless of whether they're get Democrats are in power or the Republicans are in power and they have the same kind of general view of foreign policy, which reinforces, you know, these things of like, you know, it's almost like institutionalized, you know, anti Iran sentiment. And then, you know, in institutionalized and pro Saudi or pro Israel without any questioning or, and, and, and of course, regarding other, other parts of the world and stuff. So it's like the mainstream, that's what Washington says. You just see the, you know, it's a repeated cycle. And then you have these outliers who do speak out, people like him and, um, John Mersheimer and Chas, Chas Freeman. And, and that was the, to me, that was kind of the poignant piece of the, the conversation where, when I asked him about whether he had any, you know, hope or ambition at any point to be in government, like, you know, did he itch to get in there to, to actually do what he believed?
Soleh Oh yeah. And he said he put his name on the list.
Sanam And the fact that he knew that when he wrote the book, that it would be the end of that path, right? It was like a fork in the road. I, and I was like, wow, you know, here you have one of the best minds on foreign policy in the US. And, and he writes a book, which is based on the facts of what's going on base. And he knows that it's going to be a dead end to that particular (.) career path. And at the same time, as he said, it didn't change foreign policy. So it's tough. It's, I mean, these are the kinds of things that I, that I some sometimes
Soleh It's annoying to have principles, isn't it?
Sanam It's annoying to have principles. Is that what your takeaway is? (..) Just kidding. All right. Well, thanks very much. And, uh, and I'll see you. I'll see you over the weekend. (.) I'm trying to make chocolate and pecan pie for some bizarre reason. And your sister is, is dumping me. She was my date tonight to bake.
Soleh Yeah. Good luck with that.
Sanam Yeah. No, but nobody seems interested.
Soleh Maybe cover, cover the, cover the fire alarm up. (....)
Sanam All right. Okay. I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Bye. This is an Africa digital audio production. My executive producer is Pierce Lynch, and it contains original music by Little Monster Media. Remember, you can catch a new episode of If You Were In Charge every Tuesday. A huge thanks from me to the Bosch Academy for making these conversations possible and to my own organization, ICANN, for allowing me the time to explore these big issues with my guests and spend some time with my daughters. If you want to get in touch, you can find all our social media links on our website, and the link is in the description of the episode. So that's it for If You Were In Charge. I'm Sanam Naraghi Anderlini. See you next time. Bye.