 This is the reason interview with Nick Gillespie today. I am talking to Will Ruger. He's the president of the American Institute of Economic Research. He's a PhD in politics from Brandeis University, a former college professor at various places and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. And he was nominated to be the ambassador to Afghanistan in the late Trump administration. That didn't come through. I hope we'll talk a little bit about that. But Will Ruger, thank you for joining us. And let's talk about Ukraine. Yeah, thanks for having me, Nick. So, yeah, how surprised were you as a international relations expert? How surprised were you that Putin actually invaded Ukraine? I think that it was not surprising in some ways and in other ways it was, right? I mean, so this is one of the largest uses of force we've seen in Europe since 1945. So in that sense, it shocks a lot of people. On the other hand, you can see that this was somewhat predictable. And again, war is not a everyday occurrence between different dyads, right? Two countries. But the fact is that there were aspects of this that were highly predictable. And here's how I would think about it, right? Clearly, it's not a good thing. And I think it's important to say that from the beginning, from a classical liberal perspective or an American perspective, or from the perspective of international norms and international laws. But the reason why we could think about it as being somewhat predictable is because even though it's unjustified, you could understand why it happened. And a big part of that is because of the fact that Russian national interests dictate that they should be concerned about the expansion of Western and American power eastward. And so when the United States and others kept talking about NATO expansion, you know, whether at the Bucharest declaration in 2014, which welcomed Georgia and Ukraine and their aspirations for membership, or it was the interoperability exercises that you've seen between Western countries and Ukraine, the arms sales, or simply the constant chatter about how, well, it's not going to happen tomorrow, but eventually we see Ukraine and Georgia being part of NATO. It's understandable that that would provoke what we call in international relations the security dilemma, which is when you try to do things that improve your security or the security of your allies, it stimulates a counter response where other states are concerned about that. And what you end up doing is can get an escalation. And what we saw here was an escalation of this competition. And so while again, it's unjustified, you can understand why it happened. Right. I guess before we get into some of what you're talking about there, especially about NATO and the EU and all that, how surprised are you that the Russian military, and we're barely into this. I mean, everybody, I think we're used to wars that take a weekend, right? Because that's what the first Gulf War did, and major offensives, they don't go on like they did in World War II or Vietnam even. But we're very early in this. But how surprised are you that Ukraine is kind of pushing back the way they are in that the Soviet army? I'm part of the problem here. The Russian army is doing so poorly. Well, I think that it's not unexpected to see states have optimistic or rosy predictions about how well. Are you kidding? Like, you know, don't we have 20 years of American, you know, just the 21st century of that, right? Yeah. I mean, again, I mean, it goes back to the, you know, to the whole notion that, you know, the troops will be home by Christmas, right? So it's the 20th century issue. But it's easy to have optimistic and rosy expectations. Now, some of that is obviously for public consumption, right? Because it's very difficult to say, Hey, you know, in 2001, well, we're going into Afghanistan, and it's going to be 20 years, but buckle up American public, right? People, you know, so some of it is for public consumption. But a lot of it is because of the fact that people actually believe it, right? They, in a way, since I'm talking to reason, right, they're high in their own supply, if you will. And I think that creates, you know, that's going to create some, I think, concern at home about, and you're seeing this with some of the Russian protests that we've seen concerned that, well, how long is this war going to happen? What are going to be the types of casualties and costs that they will see? You know, so I think that that is not unexpected. What is interesting is that you've seen, I think, a real lack of, and again, the battlefield is pretty opaque. So I think that's important for us to say, and we should have some humility about understanding what's actually happening on the battlefield. But I think that there seem to have been a clear lack of appropriate planning and an appreciation for the logistical challenges that you get, particularly because Ukraine is a large country, right? It's not as big as the United States or Russia or China, but it's a large country. And you're talking about pretty long lines of communication, what are called G-locks, right? Ground lines of communication. And so those logistical challenges are there. And so when you saw things like paratroopers or thunder runs, right, where they can outrun the logistics, you know, that creates real challenges for the Russians on the battlefield, particularly in the face of maybe either expected or possibly unexpected resistance by the Ukrainians. Is there, and again, we're early on this and Russia has one of the most massive militaries on the planet. But are they also kind of rusty? And, you know, is their leadership actually good? I mean, what are the, you know, what are the fights that Russia has been in that have really sharpened their ability? Or do I guess another way of putting it, do they have the equivalent of Donald Rumsfeld, you know, running their defense department? Well, I mean, again, we should be careful in a couple of different directions here, right? One, assuming that the Russians are a massive military superpower. The fact is, is that Russia has spent, you know, about a tenth of what the United States spends every year on its military. And its economy is about the size of a mid-major European country, let alone, you know, I think it's like the equivalent of Texas's GDP, right? Exactly. So we have to be careful about inflating the capabilities of Russia. On the other hand, they have fought, they fought in Chechnya, for example, they fought in Georgia, fought in Syria. So they do have some capabilities that are a little more battle-hardened than, then, you know, we then say the Chinese are, right, where the Chinese, you know, have not had that type of battle testing. And so you could expect the difficulties that states have when it's been a while, right? But again, the Russians have fought recently, but this is a different type of conflict in many ways than those others. And so we should expect, for example, that there will be organizational learning that will happen as the war proceeds. And this is why I think it's very careful, we should be very careful about getting too enthusiastic or excited about us understanding what the end of this will be. Right. I think a lot of the Twitteratzi, for example, has really been out there really gushing about Ukrainian bravery. And I get that. I too, you know, I'm excited to see people standing up against this aggression. But we shouldn't get too excited that this is necessarily going to end well for Ukrainians. I think they're going to get a good dousing, not a good one in a normative sense, but a serious dousing of cold water as Russia learns as it reconstitutes itself and starts to adjust on the battlefield, especially because, you know, like I think you alluded to, and this is where I think that you were both right and off a little bit. This is where you were right in that they are much bigger and more powerful than Ukraine. The balance of power favors Russia in terms of that local balance of power. And then the question is, what is the balance of will? Now, that matters. But that ultimate tip of the spear capability, particularly when the Russians, which I think they will do, will have air supremacy. And when they could start to exert the firepower that they have relative to Ukraine, in a way, at a certain point, no amount of bravery is going to be able to overcome that. So you think about the classic example of martial bravery, which is the Battle of Thermopylae, where the 300 and others Spartans stood up against the Persians. Well, that could hold for a long time. And it's the stuff of lore. And we may be talking about the Ukrainians in the way that we say, talk about brave defenders, small defenders, David's against Goliaths of the past. But not everything turns out so well in the terms of David defeating the Goliaths. If you think about the Millians, for example, fighting back against the Athenians, at the end of the day, it didn't end so well for those crying justice against the kind of real politic of the other side. Let's talk a little bit more about Putin or Russia's motivations. Should we be talking about Putin's motivations or should we be talking about Russia, the Russian government's motivations? Earlier I said, when I was like the Soviets, the overlay here, and Americans haven't really gotten out of the Cold War in a lot of ways. And so we kind of are throwing that overlay on everything. But is this Putin's war or is it the Russian government's war? And what are the motivations? How does this end for them? Can it end short of a total occupation of Ukraine and a capitulation by that government? Or is there something else that they're seeking? Well, I think we can disaggregate the different actors in a way. Because again, we don't want to reify states. States are human communities. And so when we talk about the Russian state, of course, we're talking about the actors that hold those levers of power. I mean, that's the classic vaporian sense of the state. The human community that successfully claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical violence. And clearly, that's Putin and the bureaucracy and administration that surrounds him. So we can speak in terms of state interests. There's a great book by Steve Krasner that talks about the difference between state interests and that there is a kind of objective state interest. And the difference between that may be in the interests of different interest groups or even of society. And I think as classical liberals, libertarians, we always should remember the state society distinction. That being said, we can, I think, talk about a rough national interest here, with all the caveats about disaggregating and methodological individualism that behold. But we can still think about it. The fact is that as Robert Tucker talked about, who is a professor at Johns Hopkins during the Cold War, talked about the state as an indispensable condition of value. And that's, I think, a long way of saying that for those of us who aren't anarcho capitalists or anarchists, that there is some value that the state provides for the nation or the people. And that is, is that ideally, right, it protects our collective property rights, if you will, and our individual property rights as part of that. And so we can think about the fact that there could be a Venn diagram overlap between, say, society's interests or the kind of addition of all our individual interests in securing our life, liberty, and property, and the state's interests in protecting itself. And in a liberal democracy, you might say, fulfilling its part of the social contract or an authoritarian state, at least making sure that it is overthrown by those same people. And so there is going to be some level of overlap there, even if you have a kind of pretty radical individualism and a notion about the states. So what's the Russian national interest then? And what does that allow you to predict for what Russia, how Russia is going to act over the next couple of weeks or months? Right. So I think the Russian national interest is that its independence is maintained vis-a-vis other countries, other nations. And so we can think about objective national interests that we all have, and every state has, in terms of protecting its territorial integrity, protecting the conditions of its economic prosperity, and protecting the system that it has at home. Now, in some cases that there would be a disjuncture, right? Some people wouldn't want that system. But the fact is, I think that generally speaking, they're going to want to make sure that the United States isn't able to, and NATO countries aren't able to exert disproportionate influence that would harm the Russians as they see it. And I think that's one of the reasons why they're so concerned about the expansion of NATO. And if we want to talk about that kind of just merely looking at the state interest, the interest of Putin and his administration, it's to make sure that he isn't the victim of regime change that's foisted upon him, either domestically or from abroad, or the combination of the two. Now, again, we don't have to have some type of, there doesn't have to be some actual active conspiracy or action to do that. I mean, the United States and the West could be totally uninterested in that, but the fact is, is that it's what the perception is of the state actors themselves and the fear that they have. So in international politics, states are always going to run scared that someone will compromise their independence or domestically overthrow them. And so that's why the enlargement of NATO, we look at it as, look, we're just expanding the zone of peace, or we're trying to just act in a defensive way. But even if that's 100% true, that's not necessarily how other states will perceive it, because we shouldn't rely on the intentions of states, you have to look at the potential power that they would bring if their intentions change. And then we have to look at the fact that the United States has frequently been a revisionist power in the international system for good or for bad, trying to promote democracy, expand democracy and expand its influence. And those are oftentimes co-mingled. And so I think that we can, again, we can be on our side of this, right, wanting the United States and the West to do well and still try to understand the motivations and concerns. Yeah, I mean, nothing you're saying here is, and this is why we should allow Russia to do whatever it's going to do. You're describing the mindset. What is the, what about from Ukraine? You know, what are their state interests? Because they have, you know, at least over the past couple of years, have been moving towards, you know, wanting, you know, tighter ties with Europe, with the EU, with NATO, elsewhere. How do you evaluate kind of, I mean, I guess first, what are their state interests? And then what is the proper role of the United States or of NATO or of the EU to help Ukraine achieve its goals, assuming that it's, it wants to be something other than in a Russian sphere of influence? Right. Again, at minimum, the Ukrainians want the same things the Russians and want the same things the United States and every other country, right? They want to make sure that they maintain their independence and that they can protect the conditions for their prosperity and protect their system at home. And so clearly they would like to be part of NATO because that allows them to spread the cost of their defense to other countries. You might even say it allows them to engage in a free ridership or a cheap ridership and it allows that it may allow them to actually operate with the feeling of more impunity. And that was one of the problems with Georgia is that after you saw the West signal to Ukraine and Georgia that NATO membership might happen and that we might have their back, Georgia was engaged in what scholars call reckless driving, which is a form of moral hazard in which they took more risks in terms of their relations with other states. And it ended up biting them in the butt, right? When we saw one in earlier examples of Russia fighting with its neighbors. Now, when it comes to what is going to happen here, what the United States should do, I mean, I think it's very clear. And this is where it's the unfortunate nature of a dangerous international system is that the United States can and should do very little for Ukraine. And let me unpack the first part on the can side, you know, if we if the United States actively intervened, right, we sent troops to Ukraine, or we engaged in in enforcing a no fly zone, which is something you've heard being tossed about in Washington, which is an especially, I think dangerous and in some ways very immature reaction to why why why is that and the no fly zone, you know, I think for most of us, if we're old enough, we remember that from the 90s in Iraq, you know, and the, you know, the the allies or the coalition, you know, which was the American army, essentially, or American military enforcing a no fly zone over much of Iraq after we had, you know, won the Gulf War. But why is a no fly zone a particularly kind of immature response? Because it's essentially going to war with Russia. Because the fact is, is that we would have to enforce it. No fly zones don't enforce themselves. It means that we would have to shoot down Russian aircraft that were involved in either bombing or close air support on the battlefield. And so what happens when you start shooting down Russian planes? Well, they're going to shoot back. And so you can imagine the escalatory spiral. But there's a sense particular, you know, of people saying, oh, well, like a no fly zone, that's kind of an easy thing to maintain. And it just will help. You know, it'll help the people on the ground kind of fight things fairly. Right. Now, I would like to think I would like to think that they're actually that the people advocating this are merely foolish. What I fear is that actually, they're not foolish in that narrow sense, they're foolish more broadly and thinking that the United States ought to get involved in this fight because I don't know how you could propose a no fly zone thinking that when we enforce it, that that won't encourage the United or mean that the United States will have to get more deeply into the defense of Ukraine and in a war with a nuclear power that could escalate into a nuclear exchange, which is what we should, I think, really be avoiding here because that's the only existential threat that this battle poses to the United States. Ukraine simply doesn't matter to America's security or our prosperity. It's unfortunate for Ukraine, but the fact is, is that we won the Cold War with the Ukraine being part of the Soviet Union. They just don't matter strategically. They're far away from us. They're even far away from some of our allies. And as long as our European allies can deter the to the to the Russians, just like we deterred the Soviets during the Cold War. So we should try to be avoiding an escalation of our involvement. But at the same time, it doesn't mean that that some lower levels of activities couldn't be low risk for the United States. So for example, some countries selling arms or sending arms to Ukraine or some of the sanctions. Now, I'm not sanguine about the effect of sanctions. Yeah, let's talk about that in a second. And before we get there, you know, you were articulating, you know, just as a kind of shared universal truth, the idea that American foreign policy should be, you know, it should proceed from an understanding of what is in America's national security interest period. So I mean, you do not, you do not believe that America should be the world's policeman. You do not believe that the that America should go around the world trying to establish, you know, democracy and human rights wherever we can, right? And you, you have a framework that in various things that you've written or talked about what you call kind of libertarian realism. Libertarians are famous for, you know, certainly over the past 30 years have emerged as the anti interventionist or non interventionist wing. You know, can you talk a little bit about that larger framework that you, you know, lay out as libertarian realism before we start talking about the other actions that we might take, including sanctions and whether or not they'll work. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I like the term realism and restraint, right? It's it's realism about the nature of the world and how the world works. That is a foundation for why we say this is we should the United States should be more restrained in its use of force abroad, that we should only use military power when it's consistent with our national interests narrowly defined in the way that I've talked about here, right? Our territorial integrity, the conditions of our prosperity. So I don't like to call myself an anti interventionist or anti war. I mean, functionally, I'm against most wars that the United States has either thought about or actually engaged in, whether it's Iraq or Libya or Syria or Yemen, Afghanistan. I mean, you were in Afghanistan. Were you against that war? Well, I was not. And that's why I don't think of myself as an anti interventionist. I'm a realist. And that means that most of the time these interventions are foolish for the country like the United States. But I don't think that it's a universal law that we should never fight wars. Right. I think that there are wars that ought to be fought. The problem is that there are very few that need to be fought, even if you're hedging, right? You know, so for example, you could think about Afghanistan, United States was attacked by al-Qaeda operatives that had been given support, state support by the Taliban government of Afghanistan. And so I think that whether you operate from a kind of just war framework or a realist framework, you could understand why we would use military power to secure our ends. You know, the same thing like if, and this is, I think relates to the Ukraine thing, is if the Chinese, for example, tried to conclude an alliance with Mexico and tried to put bases along our southern border, I think the United States would be justified in engaging in a military action. Again, we should try to use other means first, but ultimately might be justified. And I think that's the difference. And in a piece that I wrote for a reason that you referenced years ago, you know, I talked about how imagine if the French hadn't been willing to sell New Orleans to the United States. And given the importance of that to our future and to our security, one could imagine the necessity that might be forced upon us by the international system to engage in a pretty hostile way there. But again, the wisdom of America is that we've used diplomacy. I mean, again, I say the wisdom of America, the wisdom of America not in the last 80 years per year or in that last 30 years, but you think about the 19th century and maybe because we needed to be better at diplomacy that we were. But we were really good at this in the 19th century. I mean, think about Secretary Seward's ice box, right? People made fun of Seward buying Alaska. But think about the genius of that, not just from the economic standpoint, but it basically kicked the Russians. I mean, it did kick them. It bought the ability for them to leave, right? Because we bought Alaska or think about the Louisiana Purchase, right? These were skillful exercises, the diplomacy. Think about with Florida or with the Oregon Territory. We were really good at diplomacy. And as we've gained in power, it's almost as if it's like the guy at the gym who's really good on the bench, but there's no leg day, right? And so his legs atrophy. So our diplomacy, we're a light bulb in bodybuilder terms. We have no legs because we don't need them. Right. Well, we do need them, which is unfortunate because if the bodybuilder has to run after someone, you're engaging in a judo exercise. He's in trouble. But that's what we have. We have a bloated Pentagon that spends. If you add up all of the defense and national security spending, you're upwards. We're almost about a trillion dollars. And then our diplomatic funding is much less than that. But it's not just the spending, right? It's the energy, the attention, the atrophying of those skills. When we get into an international crisis, you hear us talk about where are the carriers? We should be saying, where's our Seward? Where's our John Quincy Adams? Because we want to achieve national ends, again, like leaving aside whether we're an anarcho-capitalist, or we're in the realm of being status, if you will. Right. We would like to see us meet our national interests through these non-kinetic means because war is costly. It's destructive. War is the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne talked about. And this is one of the dangers of like, we saw this in the beginning of the post-Cold War era, is this kind of version of libertarian imperialism, right? Or libertarian human rights promotion through the bayonet. And we've, I think we should, even if we hadn't learned that lesson. What do you mean by that? Are you talking about, I mean, Clinton, Bill Clinton certainly, you know, he deployed a lot of troops to a lot of places, but they were relatively small. But is that what you're talking about? I'm talking about the fact that from across the spectrum, including even some within the libertarian camp, there was this notion that the American military could be used to defend an advanced, you know, individual rights more broadly, and that, you know, whether it was because we were getting closer to the end of history or that just American might was so great, we could do this. And so we saw even some libertarians supportive of the Iraq war, not on the same grounds as maybe people on the other side in different camps, but even within a libertarian framework. Now, I think there was that idea that this was a particular unique moment in history where you could bring liberalism to the Middle East and to Iraq. And we could reshape the nature of the world that it would be constructive of our interests and others. And then you have the old kind of French revolutionary aspect, which is that our experiment in freedom and democracy will never be safe as long as there are those who don't ascribe to these values. And I think that that's poppycock, right? I think that that there isn't a seamless web of interest in the international system. Like, we could maintain our liberty at home, or even within the West without with the presence of non-democratic, non-illiberal regimes elsewhere. We can live with that. And then as libertarians, I think we could say like, how can we find other ways of of helping promote human freedom more generally? Right? Is it through long-term social change that's done by non-governmental organizations, by ideas, by diplomacy, by the example? Yeah, cultural exchange, economic exchange, opening up borders to... Yeah. And we ought to be careful about the modernization thesis being true, right? The notion that if we trade with China, they'll get richer and someday they'll be more liberal. The modernization thesis doesn't look so great right now. But regardless, there are... War is a very destructive way to bring about change and we ought to be very shy in doing so. Do you think in a U.S. context that part of it is... And I want to get your thoughts on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, a country that you might have been ambassador to and that you fought in. But given the horrors of that, which are in very recent memory, and we're coming off of 20 years of absolute failure in terms of military interventions, we have essentially nothing to show for it and a lot to answer for. But is there a sense among kind of ruling elites and cosmopolize... I don't want to say cosmopolize, that's a loaded term. But interventionists, that like, oh, well, here's something that we can do at relatively low cost to ourselves. And being on the side of Ukraine is kind of a feel-good exercise of like, this is what we're really all about. Well, I think there is a lot of feel-good virtue signaling in foreign policy and there has been for years, right? So, Michelle Obama stand with placards, right? And you're seeing that people put the Ukrainian flag on their Twitter. Which is also, I mean, like who doesn't want, you know, assuming Ukraine is, I mean, they're not, you know, it's not like they invaded Russia, right? I mean, they, you know, Ukraine for the Ukrainians, right? Yeah. And again, like, I don't, you know, look, I'm glad to see the kind of, you know, fraternal sensibilities here with people fighting back against aggression. Um, I think the danger, though, is when people in power talk about how, you know, you have our support, we stand with you, you know, and you saw that with the State Department, but what, but they don't really mean it. No, I mean, we're not even bringing in Afghanistan, you know, people from Afghanistan, you know, and they, we owe them. We, you know, we had contracts with them. So yeah, anyone would, would accept like a promise of anything from the US at this point is kind of crazy to me, but yeah, and look, I don't think that we're, you know, atypical here, right? Um, you know, the thing is, is that I think we just going back to kind of, you know, when you talked about the kind of worldview is, is when we think about realism, we want to treat the world as it is, right? That's the common way of thinking it, not as we would like it to be. And that, that means that we think about things differently. Realists think about the world and say, what is the balance of power? Not necessarily looking at people's intentions, but power, being wary of looking at intentions. Um, you know, seeing sometimes that ideas can be props for power, right? It means, you know, thinking about things about like the power of nationalism, and we've seen that, um, whether in Afghanistan, people don't like to be ruled by others. And even if you, even if we, we are, I mean, imagine that we're 100% altruistic. We just want good things for Afghanistan or Russia or wherever. The fact is, is other people don't trust that because look, it's good to have a healthy skepticism about other people having your best interests in mind. And we've seen that over and over again. I mean, do you think the people of Yemen think that the United States has their best interests in mind? Do you, um, what do you think about the response throughout Europe? Um, you know, both as, as kind of the EU, which Ukraine is, you know, working towards joining, but also NATO, which is a, you know, a different beast in many, many significant ways. But a lot of people have been talking about this, you know, what is, what is wonderful about this moment is that it's a kind of, you know, liberal states joining together to push back against a naked aggressor. You know, is, is that good? Is that bad or, you know, how do you read this type of thing? I guess I don't look at it in terms of like liberal versus autocracy or something like that. I think that's the wrong framework, especially because, you know, Turkey is not exactly the most liberal regime. And I've been hearing from Washington about how bad Hungary is for a long time in Poland, um, even though I think that that's a more nuanced story. So I think it's more complicated than to assume kind of a man of key and struggle of good versus bad. You know, because when Tucker Carlson went to Hungary, it was the good people versus the bad people of Hungary. And now Hungary's on the side of the good. No, it's much more complicated. And the problem of how, of thinking about foreign policy in that man of key and fashion is that it's just not nuanced and careful. But is it, is it perhaps, you know, that this is the beginning of a different era in European history where it's like, no, there is a more unified Europe, Europe where Russia is going to be squeezed down in the way that all of, you know, Ukraine, Poland, you know, a variety of other countries during the Cold War, during most of the 20th century were squeezed down. And maybe that's not a bad thing, right? Well, I mean, yeah, it might be a good thing, right? But the way I would look at it is to say that one of the reasons why Germany and other countries of Europe were not spending very much on their military, right? They were spending under the 2% levels of GDP that they were meant to be spending, that they had themselves pledged to spend for defense. And also, they weren't exactly getting a ton of tip of the spear capabilities in that spending. It's not just how much you spend, but what you get for it. They weren't spending very much. Why? Because they didn't necessarily see the same threat. And then what you see is you start to see a pickup in spending, not only from what Donald Trump was saying when he was pressuring the Europeans, but all the way back to 2014, when we started to see Russia throwing its weight around. And so I think you can understand this not again as liberal versus autocratic, but in terms of what are the threat perceptions that Europeans and others have in their neighborhood, and regardless of where that comes from, then I think that they're going to respond. Now, I'll believe it when I see it when it comes to the Europeans actually spending what they ought to because of the fact that they've frequently been desiring of more butter rather than guns and that guns butter trade off, especially because they've always relied on the United States, and they've been allowed to free ride. I mean, the United States has been incredibly naive, I think, about Europe. Have we been naive? Or I mean, we also get to throw our weight around a lot more. I mean, I'm not saying it's a good bargain from a libertarian point of view. From any point of view, I think it's insane that we spend so much on defense compared to every other country in the world. But with that comes, we're picking up the tab. So we get to wag our tail a little bit harder. Yeah. I mean, if we're paying the bill, we get to decide which appetizers and what kind of dessert and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah, some of that is true. But look, it's a cost-benefit calculation. What are you getting for that? So one of the things that we got is we got the ability to use Europe as somewhat of a launching pad for our adventures in the Middle East, like you know, Yuhu, right? That's great. I mean, again, it's good for the soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines, right? Because we have medical facilities in Europe and that is a good. But it has facilitated us being able to forward deploy easier. But think about the Iraq war, right? I was against the Iraq war. I know you were against the Iraq war. I think it's increasingly hard to find anyone in America who was for the Iraq war. Yeah, I mean, it's funny how that happens. It is funny how that happens. It's the same thing with Vietnam. It's obviously, you know, no one supported it. That's why we were there for so long. But if you think about the Iraq war and you say, look, the United States, you know, quos state, right? It decided that we needed to go to Iraq. Well, where were our allies when we needed them for that? You know, and so you could ask what you're actually getting. Now, I wish we had listened to them instead of actually going through with this disastrous conflict. But again, the other thing about it is that, and this goes back to kind of my justification for realism and restraint for America, which is that even our European allies are not critical to America's security interests. It doesn't mean I think we should get out of NATO tomorrow. But the fact is, is that the way the realist looks at the world is pretty, pretty, you know, in a calculating fashion. Okay, what are the threats to our interests? What are our interests? And how should what means should we use, including our military and our allies, right? So our internal capabilities and our external commitments, how does that help us meet our ends? And you look at our situation, I mean, we are the most fortunate great power in world history, bar none. Even the Roman Empire didn't have the advantages we did, right? So we have two big moats between us and the rest of the world. It's really hard to project power across big expanses of water. Hell, it's hard to project power across small expanses of land, as you're seeing the Russians face, as we face trying to supply ourselves in Afghanistan. So these big moats, we have weak neighbors, they're friendly, we trade with them. We have nuclear weapons, which means it's almost impossible for someone to attack us as long as we have the capability, credibility and make commitments. We have a big Navy, we have a big air force, we have a big naval air force, right? Like, we have so much security, and yet we run around fearful like we're a small state in Central Europe in 1640. Do you should NATO exist or should the US be part of it? You know, that's not a debate that's happening right now. I think the bigger question is one of enlargement, right? That's where the actual debate is right now. And I think it's very clear to me that enlargement creates problems where you may not have them. You know, so we're talking about the risk of getting into a war through a no-fly zone or through an escalatory spiral. We're seeing, you know, tanks rolling along the border of Poland on the other side of the border, right? These things I do not believe would be happening if it weren't for the fact that we got over our skis and over enthusiastic about expanding our commitments in a way that provoked the security dilemma with Russia. Now, again, that's one part of the puzzle. It's not just the expansion of NATO. It's the kind of creeping de facto alliance that we were forming with NATO. I mean, people don't understand that this didn't come out of nowhere, right? In the terms of the kind of concern and what the United States was doing, right? We, you know, I argued against the the transmission of javelins to Ukraine years ago. I think it was also the fact that the United States is engaging in military to military exercises with these countries. And you just look, this is unclassified. You know, this is part of our public communications as a military. The Army talks about how, you know, this group was in Ukraine to help with interoperability. Well, interoperability for what? Now, again, that doesn't justify Russia's behavior, but it does help show how these are not helpful to trying to maintain stability between between powerful actors. Let's talk about sanctions, which you mentioned briefly. Are sanctions and let's talk about it in at least two ways. One, first off, are the sanctions, you know, that have been announced and levied? And I suspect that they'll grow. Are they effective? And then, you know, apart from that, are they from a liberal, libertarian classical liberal framework? Are they moral? Or are they, you know, are they legitimate? I mean, the history of sanctions shouldn't leave anyone all that sanguine about their ability to affect the ultimate ends that you're trying to seek. Now, these sanctions may be so extreme in many ways in terms of like the financial, you know, if you impose essentially a financial blockade or, you know, that they may have more bite. But the question is, do they actually cause what you're trying to achieve? Or do they make it less, it make it much harder for actually for Russia to stand down? Because you could imagine Putin and the Russian state not wanting to appear to cry uncle to this pressure. And I think that's a real concern. And the more and this is, I think, a lesson of the literature on strategic bombing. So there's some good work on this done by a guy named Bob Pape at the University of Chicago, a book called Bombing to Win. He talks about how strategic bombing doesn't work. And strategic bombing is a form of collective punishment, right, where you're bombing the hell out of a country, hoping they'll cry uncle either because the state cares about its people, which is sometimes a dubious question when it comes to, you know, authoritarian regime, or because the people are so fed up with the bombing that they overthrow the regime. There's all kinds of mechanisms by which this could happen. But the fact is, is a lot of times it promotes a rally around the flag effect or it doesn't cause its ultimate end. People are resilient, they find ways around it. If you think about, you know, the German Blitz, there are ways in which like you sent your kids to the countryside, you went, you know, you went into more secure facilities within the big cities. You spread out your manufacturing, for example. So states are resilient, especially when you're talking about hardcore interests. You know, if you're serious enough to launch a massive war on another country, if the ends are so important that you're willing to do that, then it's unlikely they're going to flinch because of an economic pinch. Now, again, at a certain point, especially with blockades, it creates all kinds of challenges in terms of potentially the ability to hold it together. But you are talking about a very large country with a lot of ability to withstand some of these effects. Do you think, excuse me, do you think being kind of, you know, put into, you know, a timeout by the international community, does that have any effect apart from whatever kind of material deprivation this might cause? Or if you're an oligarch, if you're Putin, if you're somebody high up in the government, you know, suddenly your access to your bank accounts, you know, disappears, that's one thing. But, you know, does it matter or has it mattered when sanctions kind of say, okay, your country, you're not part of the world community anymore? Does that have any kind of psychological effect? Yeah, I mean, one thing that you feel besieged, right? And we know the power of nationalism, you know, you're more likely to blame others for your deprivations than your own country, particularly if you're being fed propaganda that resonates, you know, with you, right? And so you can imagine the Russians trying to promote the idea that they're being besieged by the West and that this is part of something that existed before this, that they could, they would try to sell this to their people as, look, NATO expansion is trying to encircle you and now they're trying to crush you. This is because they, you can imagine all the propaganda that you'll see there. And it doesn't have to be true for people, for it to resonate with people, especially because the power of nationalism, you think of, you know, a lot of people think of their government as their protector. Now, again, classical liberals, I think have the virtue of understanding that that's not always the case. But if everybody believed in classical liberal assumptions, we'd have a better world. The other thing I would say is that, you know, as, as I think people, I mean, one of the things that I love about classical liberalism, libertarianism is that it's, it has been informed by a lot of great economic assumptions. And, you know, I work for a place, you know, you know, that, that does a lot of work on economics, but we apply sound economic reasoning to areas outside of the kind of more formal, you know, economy. And one of the virtues of that way of thinking is looking at unintended consequences. You don't have to be a libertarian to believe this, but libertarians I think are good at it, right? We instinctually go to, you know, what is the unseen cost or the unintended consequences. And one of these is that, are we pushing Russia and China to, for closer together, right? And that's not in our interests. Right. Although that does, at least at the current moment, that does not seem to be happening, right? At this point, China seems to be, and again, you know, we're talking about, it's not even a week, right? Since this has all started, but no, I think you have seen balancing behavior on the part of the Chinese and the Russians in regards to the dominance of America in the international system. And I think it's very unnatural in this case. I mean, it's natural in one sense that, that both being, but seeing themselves as being, you know, besieged or you don't even have to be besieged. Like I said, you don't have to rely on intentions. You have to look at power and they can look at American and Western power and feel like there's a need to balance it. But in this case, I think in most, in the long run, this is unnatural, right? China and Russia, I think should be natural antagonists, maybe not enemies, but certainly adversaries and competitors, given that they're both on the Eurasian continent, right? Whereas the United States is offshore. We're technically, we should be perceived as a less of a threat to these countries. But instead, in some ways, again, it doesn't have to be intended, but it could be perceived that they perceive themselves as needing to, at least on some margin, have each other's back. One of the arguments that's being kind of brooded about is that we have to be really tough on Russia and Ukraine because China is watching and they're going to make a move on Taiwan or finish the job in Hong Kong or expand their territorial imperative. Do you think, does that make any sense or is that just kind of an unsophisticated kind of Cold War-ism going on? Yeah, I think that it's unsophisticated and it's not consistent with a lot of the scholarship on credibility. And you heard this, like, oh, the reason why Putin is doing this is because Biden withdrew from Afghanistan. That's just a terrible argument, right? I mean, if one of the reasons why I think it would be hard to imagine Russia challenging, say, Germany or France is because they look at, A, their own power, the power of Germany and France, but also the fact that these countries matter more to the United States. And so our credibility is higher for what we might do and that deters Russia. When it comes to Ukraine, they look at that and they understand that this just isn't that important to the United States relative to, say, Germany, France or the UK or ourselves. And when it comes to Afghanistan, they don't look at Afghanistan and say, wow, we withdrew from Afghanistan. So let's test whether they're going to defend Germany or whether they'll stand up and defend Hawaii. I mean, that's ludicrous. They're going to view these things independently. And I think when they do that, they'll see that Ukraine is not as important as Taiwan and Taiwan is not as important as Guam and that matters to the calculation that these other states make. Now, I do worry that when it comes to Taiwan, I mean, Taiwan is clearly not as important to the United States as Japan or as ourselves, obviously. And so our ability to deter China is less credible. Even if they were a formal ally, which they are not, right? Taiwan is not an ally. Ukraine is not. I mean, I was, it's so frustrating to see some of the public opinion polls where people, I think it was like 39% thought that Ukraine was an ally. It's not an ally. We have no commitment to them. Now, it's not surprising in some way they do that because elites have cued the public to believe this because whether it's in Washington at think tanks or even by members of the US government, they've talked about our ally Ukraine, our ally Georgia, because apparently, according to people in Washington, there's only like five countries that aren't our ally. But that's not true, obviously. And we have a strategic ambiguity position in regards to Taiwan that I think is a better position to be in than us trying to do what's called extended deterrence, making a commitment to Taiwan that the Chinese might test. But right now, I think in the short run, it's better than probably making it clear. You mentioned the withdrawal from Afghanistan. As somebody who fought there, you knew the reality better than certainly most Americans could. You were nominated to be ambassador. How did you feel about the withdrawal, both just the fact of it, but then also the way that it was handled? Was this, some people say, when you lose a war, you really, you are not going to set the terms of a withdrawal and it's going to be foobar no matter what. Is that your sense of things or how do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, at the point at which we withdrew, it was going to be somewhat ugly one way or another. And I think there are a lot of scenarios in which it actually could have been quite worse, particularly for the Afghans that we allegedly cared about there. Although this alleged care, I say that quite carefully because Afghanistan and some of the tragedies that the people are facing because of their economic situation, some of which is a product of how the United States has handled this, that's off the front page, that suffering. And allegedly, we're there because we cared about girl schools in Helmand and the plight of human rights in coast. And yet now it seems like a less of a concern, which makes you suspect whether how much caring there really was. But the implementation was messy, and some of that would have been inevitable. I do believe that if we had withdrawn according to the original schedule that the Trump administration and Ambassador Khalilzad had negotiated, that I think we would have been in a better position. I think the government of Afghanistan at the time would have been in a better position. It didn't mean that it was suddenly going to transform themselves into a capable government able to defend itself against the Taliban's advances. But I think that it would have been better if it had been earlier on that earlier timeline, part of which is because the Taliban hadn't had the time to have operational success on the ground, but also because of the nature of when it would have occurred. It occurred at a perfect time relative. And again, there's more is made of this than there should be about fighting seasons in Afghanistan, but it's certainly the case that there are differences. And so I think that we left at a bad time. But the other thing too is that I mean, I felt that this was the right thing for the United States. And so despite that terrible attack at the airport that killed 13 brave Americans, that was horrible. I was angry that they were still there because we should have had them out earlier. I've been angry for a long time that the United States was still there because even before the Trump deal, remember, there were no Americans killed in combat from the Trump-Doha agreement until to the implementation of the withdrawal. And so to me, we should have gotten out earlier because it was a lot of needless costs in terms of blood and treasure. We had won the war earlier that we needed to win. We needed to do three things when we went there. This is why I, again, back to the non-interventionism versus realism, I think we had to go in. We needed to do three things. We needed to atrit Al Qaeda as an effective terrorist organization that could operate against American interests. We needed to decimate them. We needed to punish the Taliban for its state support. And we needed to kill or capture bin Laden. And I favored killing him. And I'm glad the Obama administration did that. We achieved all of those goals relatively early, but then we expanded our war aims. In a sense, we got drunk on what we'd achieved early. But also because the problem is that American foreign policy is a Christmas tree that we put all these ornaments on, and then we're surprised when it falls over. I mean, we tried to do too much. And there were lots of different interests pushing their agendas in that country. I saw it firsthand. A lot of this democracy promotion, liberalization, human rights, women's rights, kids' rights. And again, I'm a liberal in the broadest sense. I want to see, I think societies are anti-Diluvian when they don't appreciate all of the wonderful things empowering women can bring to our society and allowing them greater choices in terms of what they can do with their life project. I get that. And so we would like to see Afghanistan get out of the, it's more anti-Diluvian, I think, ways. But doing it at the end of the bayonet, A, wasn't that effective. And B, it's not our job. What are our obligations to Afghans now, if any? Because in this, you alluded to it, there's a humanitarian crisis going on there, which is supposedly is just unbelievable, massive in scale, and we don't care. We don't care as a society. We don't seem to care much as a government. Do we have obligations to Afghanistan? Do we have obligations to Iraq? Is some version of the pottery-borne rule legitimate? I think it's a very great question. And it's a difficult one. And I think assuming that it's not difficult is probably being, I think, too flip. You know, in one sense, the pottery-borne principle is false. You don't have to, a state doesn't have an obligation or people don't have an obligation to others that is contrary to their own interests. So I don't think we have to fight in Iraq until it's a liberal democracy simply because we made the mistake of going in there in the first place. On the other hand, there are things that you do that create, I think, some minimal set of obligations, especially when they're contractual. So in terms of the interpreter issue, you're making promises either contractually or unspoken but recognized. And I think there's something you should do there. Now, again, not until the heavens fall, but some level of that. I also think that you probably want to be prudent. So imagine that instead of the Taliban that we see emerging in Afghanistan that hardly looks like the threat that David Petraeus is losing sleep over all night. But imagine if it was like a virulent ISIS al-Qaeda government that Afghanistan fell to. You might not want to be releasing tons of funds that might find their way into their hands. And so you have to have a kind of prudence about that. But it appears as if in Afghanistan that we could probably release more of that funding without it necessarily harming our interest. And I think that would be prudent. And the way the Biden administration talked about it is if we're going to just take half and you get the other half seems a little bit... It's mercenary or it's the caricature of a kind of brutal realism. Because it's not actually realistic. You were obviously on good enough terms with the Trump administration that you were nominated for an ambassador ship. How would you sum up Trump's foreign policy, the effectiveness of it? And also, how is Biden doing? He's a year into a job and things are getting pretty hairy. I think there were a very small bunch of us on left and right that were willing to call balls and strikes during the Trump administration and during Biden. And so I caught some flak from Republican friends because after the withdrawal decision by President Biden and his explanation of it, which was very much informed by, I think, a kind of realist logic. And in fact, I had people joke with me like, hey, they're using your lines. And I appreciate the fact that it's not necessarily my lines. It's the product of I think a long tradition of thought about how to run foreign policy. And so I applauded him. I mean, I think there were certain incentives that he faced for why he did this. I don't think it's just because he adopted me, Hans Morgenthau and John Meersheimer all of a sudden. And I talked about this. I had a New York Times op-ed that talked about some of the kind of ramifications about him being considered someone who is culpable for the war, the longer it went and him having to get back into the war would have been, I think, optically problematic and politically problematic, but he still did the right thing. And I'm willing to say that that's great. And that showed some political courage. I was also someone though, first, that praised the Trump administration for this. I mean, look, President Trump was the first American president in a long, long time that did not start a new American war. And again, that's might be considered a low bar, but it's a bar that Obama certainly because he also expanded operations of various places. But you're right. I mean, this is, you know, it means something, right? Yeah. And I think Trump's foreign policy ultimately should be viewed by realists as a relative success, particularly on the heels of consecutive failures. You know, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Obama, their foreign policies were quite horrible for American interests. And I think Trump's did a lot of good things. Like first, I mean, I think, for example, one of the biggest things he did to the benefit, I think of those of us who want a different approach to foreign policy, is that he broke a lot of China in the sense of changing some of the discussion around how the United States should do foreign policy. I mean, he talked about it in a very realistic fashion, like what's what's good for American interests, not in that kind of like George Bush's second inaugural, or even Joe Biden's sacred allies, right? He talked about it, America first, second and third, right? That is the way we ought to approach foreign policy in my view. And he did that. And it got Republicans, especially in conservatives, to have to think about these things, right? Not to just have a knee-jerk kind of primusist, neo-conservative vision, but to think about it. And I think that the China is broken and you can't put it back together, right? And you're seeing this during the Ukraine debate, right? You have the Liz Cheneys of the world, but you also have others in positions of power on Capitol Hill or Tucker Carlson and others that are saying, like, look, let's not have that old knee-jerk approach. And that's a good thing for our foreign policy conversation. Do you think that's also among Democrats as well? I mean, there's Republican, the Republican kind of consensus on not just spending a lot on the military, but also kind of using it whenever, you know, somebody has a cold, that seems to also be breaking up on the Democratic side as well. Yeah. And I said, I said that there were a small group of us that were willing to call balls and strikes. And there were some, I think courageous Democrats, Ro Khanna, for example, who were willing to say good things about the Trump administration on that narrow margin, right? Of some of their foreign policy moves, right? The instinct around getting out of Afghanistan. Remember during the year with Iran, right? We had a drone shot down by the Iranians and President Trump was basically like, I'm not going to go kill a bunch of Iranians because they shot down this hunk of metals, right? Those are good things. And I think people have stood up for that. Do you think, you know, one of the things is, you know, right now in America, certainly domestically and foreign policy, I think is almost always a function of domestic, you know, activity and energy. But we don't have a story that we're, we don't have a consensus story that we're telling about what America is, what we aspire to, what we represent in the world. So our foreign policy is kind of fractured at this point. Are we ready to, you know, one of the things that Trump said that I think many libertarians kind of rallied around on a certain point was when he was like saying to Europe, you know, you got to pay more for your own defense. We can't do everything, even though we're the best. I mean, it was always larded in all of these Trumpisms, but it's kind of a terrifying apparition to say like America really is not going to be the indispensable nation because so much of everything from some time in World War II all the way through has been like, we are the best, we're the biggest, we're the most moral, we're the most effective. Whether any of this is actually real is secondary, but we don't have a narrative where we can be comfortable as a country and be like, you know, what we're going to be one of, you know, several countries that are really kind of dominating the global and maybe not dominating, but having more influence than others. Yeah, I mean, look, I have my beefs with how the United States has conducted its foreign policy. I certainly have my beefs about our domestic policy going all the way back to the new teal. I mean, what classical liberal or libertarian doesn't. But I do think that we are the greatest exemplar of the ideals that we hold in human history. And so I have a version of this American exceptionalism while recognizing the downsides of it and the fact that some parts of it aren't true, right? But I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I mean, I worry I'm depressed in some ways about where our country is going. But I don't think it's wrong to be proud of the how the ideals that were part of the founding that we never fully, you know, kind of embraced, but we still were always striving towards them. And a lot of us still believe in them. Like, I think we should be proud of that. And we want our country to be what we know it can be and what we stood for. But I also think it's healthy to recognize that we don't have to be the world's indispensable nation, even if we are exceptional. In fact, there's a version of American exceptionalism that's right from the founding, which is we are exceptional. We're an experiment in liberty and democracy. And we need to stay out of all these other problems in the world that will embroil us and undermine our experiment and corrupt us. I mean, that's Tom Paine in common sense, right? That's the George Washington didn't end up so well for Tom Paine, right? Well, I mean, he didn't have a lot of friends in the French Revolution, right? He almost did, right? But this is George Washington's farewell address. It's John Quincy Adams' July 4, 1821 address, right? Like, we could be the well wishes of independence and liberty everywhere, but the defenders have only ever. We don't seem to be interested in that, right? I mean, this is where we're kind of a cheapskate nation, both in terms of, you know, thinking back to people in Iraq and Afghanistan, most clearly where we promised, you know, something after assuming that they were on our side and we're not delivering on that and we're closing down, you know, in terms of immigration and things like that, which is disturbing. Well, I mean, I think when you're the well-wisher, right, you're really talking about, you know, you're not necessarily saying like, hey, this requires us to do X, Y and Z, right? You know, I think it means that we're willing to use the pulpit of the State Department and of the bully pulpit of the presidency to say like, look, you know, like Russian aggression should be, is unjustified and we abhor it. That's also very different, though, of being the defender of Ukrainian independence. And I think that that should be part of our kind of basic modus operandi. Now, on your question about like, what should we do this? There's also the question of, can we in the future, right? The world is changing in ways, which means even if we want to be the indispensable nation, we might not be able to be. Because we, the world war, the post-World War II period is incredibly anomalous. And one of the problems with boomers, and I know it's like, it's open season on boomers. You are for the record, you are Gen X, right? I am a Gen Xer, right? Okay, yeah, I'm a late boomer. So, you know, come at me, come at me. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, again, everybody from the far left probably to Helen Andrews on the right, right? It's open season on boomers, right? But, you know, look, the historical experience and the mindset and assumptions that people of that generation had, I think are dangerous to looking towards the future. Because it's anomalous. Like, all of Europe was destroyed in World War II, right? Russia was battered by the Nazis. The Nazi Germany was battered by everybody else, right? Even the UK suffered. Oh, God, and when you look at the photos of Normandy, France, you know, the province before the Allied troops landed, it was, you know, every city was reduced to rubble. Yeah, and so, you know, you have, and then you talk about Japan and China suffered and the Philippines, right? Like, the world's industrial states were reduced. Yeah. And we were so fortunate because of our geostrategic blessings, right? And our wisdom in some ways of how we prosecuted the war, we were standing tall at the end of that. And we had the economic might, we had the confidence and enthusiasm coming out of that war. And so, we were at a height that we were never going to match. Right. And it's not because we're bad or because we've fallen, it's just that other countries... Yeah, we hit 400 for a season. And, you know, even Ted Williams couldn't do that, you know, every year. He couldn't do it every year. Yeah. Yeah. And there is a brutal irony to the boomer thing, too, is that, you know, in many ways the boomer generation kind of coalesced or its identity around a rejection of American empire and, you know, the New World Colossus and, you know, what we were doing in Vietnam and everywhere else. And it's kind of sickening to see, you know, the boomers in their senescence now essentially arguing that, you know, we really need to be, we need to be everywhere. You know, we need to be like Tom Joed at the end of grapes of wrath, but for, you know, every bad spot in the world. There's something wrong about that. Yeah. And we can't, right? Yeah. And I think that that's some of the frustration you see, particularly among the Washington foreign policy elite, is because especially at the end of the Cold War, we had another period, right, in which we were astride, you know, the international system. And we could do all kinds of stuff. You know, we talked about the notion of wars of choice, right? Right. Most, a lot of wars are wars of choice, not just the ones in the 90s or the hots, right? But those were especially, like we could, we could have completely ignored Somalia, we could have ignored the Balkans. And it wouldn't have mattered to us, right? Right. But can we actually do that in the future? The other thing is like, and I think this is understated in discussions of foreign policy. And it's something that I'm going to delve into in a book on foreign policy that I'm working on, which is, which is kind of like the aspect of our domestic social contract, right? It's not just unwise or not something we can always do. But it's actually a violation, I think, of the classical liberal nature of how we think about the state, right? The state is not something that, again, even in the classical liberal version, up to the most mythological version of this, right? It's really unlikely that we would ever imagine a consensual contract or state coming together where we would say, you know what, I have to send my kids to Somalia or to Ukraine or to Afghanistan in order to, you know, build girl schools or protect human rights or fight, you know, militias in Somalia, right? Like, it's hard to ever imagine that that could be part of a just state where the state could do that. Because, you know, I think that it's easy to imagine, you know, coming into a, you know, like nozikian kind of minimal state in which, yeah, like, I mean, I have two boys, you have a couple of boys, right? They're, my boys are almost fighting age, yours are. It's hard to imagine us ever being in an original position and saying, you know what, like, they should go do that. But I also imagine that you and I could imagine saying, like, you know what, like, I can imagine a situation where if China were invading the United States or the British were invading the United States, that that would be a noble fight in which even if they perished, which, you know, knock on wood would be quite awful to us personally, would be a noble sacrifice for something we believe in and that's something that actually served our interests as kind of rational human beings. That's not the case with these other issues. Very quickly, you know, Biden spent an office for a year, his foreign policy, how would you rate it? And are you optimistic about him being a model of restraint, you know, for the rest of his term? I'm not optimistic that he'll be a model of restraint. I think that there are certain domestic and foreign constraints that mean that it's going to be harder for him not to be somewhat restrained, right? So the chance of an escalatory spiral with Russia means that things like no fly zones, they said today, this is basically foolish, stop talking about it, right? Getting involved in Ukraine, I think that, you know, they understand those dangers. Getting out of Afghanistan, there were certain constraints. Again, I think it was courageous to stick to it because I tell you what, there would have been no Washington cocktail party opprobrium if Biden had said, you know, I'm going to send more Americans into the meat grinder here, right? And so I'm glad that he stood up for I think for the rest of the country. I mean, even during the worst time of the implementation of the Afghanistan withdrawal when the people were falling off planes, right? 78% of Americans in a Washington Post survey said that the withdrawal was a good idea. But we didn't like how he did it. Now, I don't like to talk from Biden about sacred alliances, alliances or means to ends. They can be pursued coldly. I think Washington was right, you should never have be so in love with the country or so much in hatred that you can't pursue your interests. So I worry about that. I worry about him continuing with some of the rhetoric and actions on China that could create problems in a very complicated relationship that is both, it's one of our most important trading partners, but also one of our most dangerous geostrategic adversaries. So I'd like to see, hopefully we'll see more nuance. Are you confident in the team, the diplomatic team or the Pentagon that he's put together? There's not like, and this may not be a bad thing, but there's not a lot of new blood, right? Yeah, I'm not a big fan of Millie. Again, he's not part of his political team in a sense. But although that kind of is itself a problem to think about the Pentagon being apolitical, that's largely mythology. But they're not per se partisan, but they have their own attachments politically in terms of their views of the world. But yeah, I mean, again, you got to grade on a curve here, right? The United States has not been blessed with the best foreign policy teams over the ages. And I say that in saying both on Republican and Democratic side, I mean, how much worse could you get than the George W. Bush team, right? Are you worried in the culture now? Well, beyond in the culture, like in Europe, Facebook is blocking Russia TV and Sputnik. People in America seem to be, or at least among the Twitterati, anybody who says anything that reeks barely has the lightest scent of moral equivalence between Russia and Ukraine or anything, you know, you get shouted down. Are you worried about these types of non governmental actions that seem to be trying to kind of rig the conversation in a particular way? Are you worried about that? Or is that just, you know, the give and take of public opinion? Yeah, I mean, a couple of things. I mean, I'm an old fashioned million. I think that a lots of speech, that's good. People should be engaging each other. I think it should be more civil. I mean, I look at everybody, I think thinks that but they don't necessarily behave that way. I'd like to see less ad hominems, right? I hate, like, I try not to call people warmongers, and they shouldn't call us isolationist. These are both like not helpful terms. You know, but I also recognize historically, I mean, look, the debate about the US's commitments to the French in the late 18th century, right? Right at our founding. I mean, our most important alliance in our history is arguably our alliance with the French during the Revolutionary War. And we flaked on that alliance. I mean, apparently, George Washington didn't think alliances were sacred. You know, but there was a huge debate in which there was lots of aspersions cast on either side. Now, they didn't have Twitter and Facebook, you know, imagine if they did, right? They had pamphlets. I mean, they had an analog of what we're at. And it was nasty. It was nasty, nasty politics. And so I and kind of casting aspersions about, you know, like, oh, you're a pro monarchist because you don't want the United States to get into the war with the French to fight for liberty, yada, yada, yada. Like, these happen then. So in some ways, it's like, you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. That being said, like, I will not go on RT or Sputnik. I will not go on any media that's directly connected to outlets in authoritarian regimes that, you know, that are that are state connected. That's a decision that I make. Do you think Facebook and do you think Facebook as a private entity is, you know, they're within their rights to do this? But is it is it a smart move to be like no to that? Well, I think there's two principles we want to think about as classic liberals. One is the liberal is the liberty principle. And the other is the openness one, because we believe that openness is useful for lots of reasons that help liberty. And I think that on the liberty principle, yeah, they can do what they want, you know, as long as they're, you know, as they're behaving within the lines of the law. But are they actually conforming to the liberty, to the openness principle? And there I think that in general, big tech is not performed well, whether it's in foreign policy or other areas. I mean, and again, like, regardless of your view about like, trans rights for children, you know, Ryan Anderson should not have had his book taken down by Amazon, discussing that issue, because it violates the openness principle, like, we ought to be able to debate that just in the same way people ought to be able to read really bad stuff written by, you know, the worst people, right, it's like the reductio ad hitlerum, right? Hitler's the worst ever and Amazon sells his books. If they can sell Hitler, they should be selling Ryan Anderson. We can take it. We're adults, right? Real quickly, and I appreciate your time and your insight here. You know, you're recently the president of American, the American Institute for Economic Research. What are your plans? This is an old organization, a legendary, storied organization. What are you hoping to accomplish there? Yeah, I mean, we've been around since 1933. We're one of the oldest institutions like this, that is an university, but as a research center. And I'm excited about what we can do. And there's been a lot that that AIR has done over the last several years. But I think that we actually are our highest ceiling is ahead of us. And I think one of those things is to do this, right? Make sure that we understand that that issues like sound money and the economic research behind economic freedom, these are things that we should continue to do. They're important. And in a lot of ways, you know, that's great because there are other classical liberal institutions that have focused on other things, you know, often for good reason, right? Like, you know, I used to work at a place that did a lot on criminal justice reform. That's fantastic. It had its moment. It was important. But I think it's also important for people to stick to those other issues that are important. And I'm with Milton Friedman, right? Liberty is a whole, right? You know, you have to look at personal freedom and economic freedom. Right behind me, right? Freedom in the 50 States, right? That looks at both aspects of it. And so economic freedom is important. So we should we need we're going to continue to do that. And I want to add talent here at AIR so that we can expand our role in the not just the classical liberal conversation, the economic conversation, but more broadly in the national conversation, you've seen some of that, right? My colleague, Phil Magnus, has been great, criticizing the 1619 project, criticizing Piketty, his economic work. But what I would love to see happen that we're going to do is to really try to defend individualism against collectivism of left and right. And that's something that I think will be a part of how we go forward and expand into that area while still maintaining excellence in those other areas. And that means defending against the collectivism of, you know, DEI, right? Against the collectivism of equity, especially of identitarianism, but also defending against the collectivism of a protectionist mindset, you know, things like national industrial policy, right? Bad economically, but bad to think about this in that collectivist way that we often see. And so I think that that'll be a great area for us to expand upon, not to mention to try to think about what are some of the aspects of our kind of cultural and moral ecosystem that are foundational to a free society. I think that's an underexplored research area. And this gets what I just said about openness, right? Like, is openness part of a culture that's important to a free society? And what does that mean? You know, what about some of those traditional values? Are they important or not, right? Like, and I think we could do scientific research to kind of get into some of those questions, as well as philosophical discussions. And I think we can do well to engage in those areas and to partner with others in the ecosystem of classical liberal organizations to try to advance the ball towards a free society. That means reason. It means Cato. It means, you know, defense priorities, but also looking at opportunities to partner with some unusual partners, right? Like, I'm more than happy to partner with a traditional think tank if it advances our understanding, say, of the danger of protectionism. Final question for Will Ruger, the president of the American Institute of Economic Research. How long do you think the hot war in Ukraine will last? I think point predictions are dangerous. It's like asking, you know, is Ted Williams going to hit a single, right? Like, well, four out of 10 times in 19, you know, yada, yada, right? You know, he's going to do that. You know, but I'm very hesitant to make a point prediction. My worry is that this is going to is going to go longer and that flush with some of the bravery and good news stories we've heard and with the arms that the West is providing that this could go on longer, but still result in the same kind of ultimate end, which means just a lot of casualties in the interstices, right? Do you think it ends up with Ukraine being absorbed, you know, by Russia? Or do you think it ends in a kind of, you know, stalemate? I mean, what I would like to see is that the Ukrainians put up enough of a fight. They show that their will and the actual balance of power, because like if we lived in a perfectly rational world, right, we wouldn't have to fight these wars because everybody would know the kind of balance of interest, balance of wills, balance of power. And you could kind of see the end result, at least, you know, in a point, in a kind of like impressionist sense. And we'd negotiate based on that balance of power. That's not the way the world works. And sometimes the battlefield is how we kind of know how we test it. And I think that's what's happening. And it would be nice if Ukraine put up enough of a fight that maybe there could be a resolution in which Russia doesn't get the whole cake, but they'll get enough so that they don't just try to win it on the battlefield. Because I don't want to see more Ukrainians dying, you know, but nor do I want Ukraine to be swallowed. But if I had to predict what would happen, I think, unfortunately, I'm worried that Russia will meet its end in the area, just that very high cost for itself and for Ukrainians. And, you know, that's not something that I'm excited about as a human being. Because again, I don't think American interests are implicated much here. If you add Ukraine to Russia, it doesn't become the old Soviet Union and start to challenge us across the globe. If the Ukrainians win, I don't think it changes and Russia, you know, disappears. So America isn't really all that implicated in the strict sense unless we implicate ourselves. And then, oh, mon dieu, right? Then we can really be in trouble. All right, we'll leave it there. Will Ruger, the American Institute of Economic Research, thanks for talking to me. Well, thank you.