America Keeps Me Up At Night with Dr. Richard Haass

22:59I think people need to have a certain understanding of some of the basic issues. So yeah, I would think that this is what we ought to teach in our schools. Again, I'm not interested in teaching policy outcomes or bottom lines. I'm interested in exposing people to the basics of our political history and culture. And some of the things I write about in this book, I want people to come to appreciate or internalize what are the behaviors, what are the attitudes we need if democracy is going to work. So I love the idea of students debating and simulating various things and then maybe switching sides at some point and learning how to disagree.

23:32That incivility, shouting and interrupting doesn't make an argument stronger or better. I want to see religious leaders standing up in their pulpits and saying, hey, there is no place for political violence in this country. I don't care how strongly you feel about an issue or it's having religious leaders looking out for their failure. We teach in scripture where our brothers are sisters keeper. Why aren't religious leaders taking that scriptural reference and applying it to American society and say, hey, we have the obligation to look out for one another rather than just ourselves. You used the word apathy before.

24:02Another word I'd also use is we become stunningly selfish. This is a society that increasingly only talks about rights and what we're owed. There's not a lot of conversation in this society of ours about what we owe others and about our obligations. My first assignment in con law, Larry Tribe made us read the Constitution. And then he got us in the class. This is the mid 80s Socratic method. What's the most important part of the Constitution? That's what he asked. And we went around the class and there was a gentleman there. He went on to clerk for the Supreme Court. He was a friend of mine. and he's now working for a big law firm in DC.

24:34He said something so brilliant that I'll share with you. You know, he was 23 at the time when he said it, but he said to Larry Tribe, it was the Commerce Clause. And Tribe was shocked because Tribe's whole thing was the Fourth Amendment right to privacy. And he said, why? And he said, well, the Commerce Clause prevented the taxation between the states, a result of which we created this amazing free trading block, single currency free trading block, which led to all of this great economic prosperity. And I maintain this gentleman said, Professor Tribe, that our economic prosperity has helped us with our rights, has helped us with our liberties.

25:09Sometimes when people are in squalor, they have a tendency to get less obligated to others. What do you think of that? What's your reaction to that? It's really interesting. I wish I'd thought about it. And there's a lesson here, a contemporary lesson, which was when governments don't deliver, say, economically, history suggests that people will be much less interested in democracy. Democracies are vulnerable less to an external invasion. I mean, Ukraine's an exception. That's obviously a democracy that's vulnerable to invasion. Most democracies come undone from within. And one of the classic or most famous cases or infamous cases is Weimar Germany and the inflation, the devaluing of the currency and essentially desperate populations when the economy goes really badly, frustrated populations are willing to overturn democracy in the hopes that someone will deliver either, economic stability or the rule of law and physical stability.

25:57And that's one of the reasons I'm so concerned about the failures of American democracy now and our inability to deliver, because it doesn't surprise me in polls, then we then see people don't value democracy and they're more willing to cast it aside when they hear this or that talk economically, or someone's going to promise physical safety against crime. And it's, again, it's one of the reasons that it's so important that American government at all levels deliver if we want American government to be supported by the American people. I think it's very well said. I want to step back for a second and talk a little bit about your upbringing.

26:30So like me, if I have this correct, you grew up on Long Island. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Where did you grow up? Small town, Valley Stream, Long Island on the South Shore. It's one of the - Valley Stream. So you're a South Shore guy, I'm a North Shore guy. We both love Billy Joel definitionally. Okay. So let me - Roslyn, New York, Billy Joel. That's right. Right. There you go. My father's place. You see, If we're both old enough to remember when he would ride up there on his Harley and he would take a beer out of the refrigerator behind the bar and start playing the piano. And then there were no cell phones back then.

27:00So you were either there or not there to get to see him do that, which was one of the fun things of growing up out here. So that we have in common. What we don't have in common, I am not a Rhodes Scholar, but you are. You are a Rhodes Scholar. Yes, sir. So tell us about that. Tell us about the influence of a young man. I'm assuming you did this after college, right? That's what happens to most scholars, right? So you leave now and you've been given this prestigious. And back in the day, it was a very hard thing to get, Richard. You and I both know how hard that was to get. President Clinton has it.

27:32Obviously, many of your friends in that community have it, but it's a very hard thing to get. You have now left your Long Island roots, Valley Stream, and you're heading off to Oxford, one of the oldest universities in the country, I mean, in the world. And here you are. Go ahead, set the scene for us. What happens to the young Richard Ashford? Well, I mean, a couple of things. One is, I don't know who was the most surprised I got it. Me, my teachers. Anyhow, I remember the interview one night for the Rhodes Scholarship, and you had to have a dinner the night before the interviews with the people who would interview, the former Rhodes Scholars.

28:08And I remember being looked up and down by this powerful lawyer, and he said, for a second there, Mr. Haas, I thought you were wearing a suit, but I see you or not. I didn't own a suit and I had a corduroy jacket and corduroy pants and one was kind of dark green and one was light green. And that was as close as I could get. And I figured any chances I had had just literally gone out the window. I got lots of stories. The boat ride over, seasick the entire way. Getting to Oxford, I said I wanted to, I was Middle Eastern studies. I'd done that as an undergraduate at Overland. So they call that Oriental studies.

28:40So I show up at my first day with the professor I'd been assigned and he was the wrong Orient. He was a Chinese scholar, not a Middle Eastern scholar. So I had a slow start, but I had a great three years, not because of the roads. The title actually, once you get at Oxford, nobody cares. They actually think you're stupid. They think you're basically an American jock. So it doesn't help you at Oxford. What was great about Oxford is I had three years of studying history and I just got steeped in history, all the history I never read because I wasn't a serious student, particularly when I was here in the United States.

29:09And I had a fantastic academic experience, great teachers. And then it was also interesting was the early 70s. So the stuff I was reading on the side, reading Solzhenitsyn and others, or watching what was going on in British politics, the breakdown of politics because of the rise of the labor union movement, the labor party went far left, ultimately sowed the seeds of Thatcherism. It was just a fascinating moment. So it all convinced me to basically, ultimately, I did a postdoc over there, but to come back and get involved in politics, It was just, it was so interesting, but it was the greatest education anybody ever could have had.

29:43So the first job, you're coming out of there now, you've got this incredible pedigree. What's the first job? I worked a little bit on the Hill during there. I was an aide to a Democratic Senator, Claiborne Pella from Rhode Island. Sure. Spent about a year there. I'm a beneficiary of some Pell grants just to really date myself, right? I had to get some of those to help me get through law. It's really decent, man. Old school. I did a postdoc at a think tank in London. But my first real job was I came to the Pentagon in the late 70s. And I was offered a chance to work there. And I got to the Pentagon in mid, I guess it was earlier, mid-79.

30:18And later that year, two big things happened. You had the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and you had the revolution in Iran. And I had spent time in both Afghanistan and Iran. I had just written my doctoral thesis on that part of the world. So I suddenly found myself still in my 20s, having unbelievable opportunities to get involved in serious policy things. And indeed, one of the projects I was involved in was creating an American military capability to intervene in the greater Middle East. What we now call Central Command had its roots going back to 1979 on a project I worked on with a few other people in the Pentagon back then.

30:57Very, very, very cool. You then, I guess, discover the Council of Farm Related. I don't know. Tell me the odyssey into the council. The council was much later. I worked at the Pentagon. I worked at the State Department for five years under Reagan. You worked for President Bush one, right? Or no? All four years for President Bush one at the White House. I was the Middle East, South Asia guy, Persian Gulf guy. So when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, that was my area of responsibility. So I had four great years working with that president, with Brent Scowcroft, with Secretary Baker. I actually think it was the most talented national security team we've had.

31:31wonderful people and really, I thought, major talents. Colin Powell was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense. Bob Gates was there. It was really an all-star team, I thought. I didn't come to my current job, the council, until 20 years ago. I had worked for Bush 43. I was at the State Department working with Powell when he was secretary. And I ran the policy planning staff. And I was also a roving envoy. Did the Northern Ireland peace talks and other things. So I came here, though, 20 years ago to the Council on foreign relations. And about coming to the end, 20 years seems like a long time.

32:04So, but it's been a great opportunity. If you could remake the world, if you could create a post-World War II architecture, I'm going to hold something up here, which you'll appreciate. It's a brand new biography of George Kennan. Now, my viewers, I get a lot of young viewers, so they probably don't remember Mr. Kennan, but he was the father, basically, of the policy of containment to help push back the Soviet Union and the potential aggression of the Soviet Union. He got wind of this basically when he was in Moscow. He sent a very famous cable back to the United States. He signed it with an X suggesting that Stalin had very aggressive ambitions.

32:43This policy was put in place for 40 years, maybe longer. You correct me if I've got it wrong. But it was a time in American history where there was some bipartisan commitment. The Republican majority leader in the Senate understood what we needed to do alongside of Harry Truman. The Truman Doctrine came into place. And then we had a bipartisan 40-year commitment to the containment and eventually the breakdown of the Soviet Union. So three things I want to ask. Number one, is there a George Kennan out there now that has this kind of great ideas for America? Number two, how do we get back to this long-term thinking?

33:19Because the Chinese have long-term thinking. The United States has sort of a three-minute cable news cycle thinking. How do we get back to this long-term thinking and do the great things that our grandparents did or our great uncles did? There really isn't any canon out there now that I see it. The analogous situation would be, you know, canon came up with this doctrine, what we call containment, which essentially provided something of a blueprint, how to be filled in for navigating us through the Cold War. Worked for four decades, as you correctly said. The problem was then the wall came down, just over 30 years ago in 89.

33:54And the question was, what then? And I think for the last 30 plus years, the United States has gone about the world without anything like a blueprint, without a doctrine. We've had various ones, different presidents had different priorities. And so the problem was one, inconsistency. And second of all, as you suggest, a lack of often bipartisan support. So I don't think we have a lot to show for the last 30 years. We had all these advantages is when the Cold War ended and 30 years on, what do we have now? We've got war once again in Europe with a truly alienated Russia. We've got a looming Cold War or something like it with China.

34:31We've got Iran on the threshold of nuclear weapons. We've got climate change far outpacing global responses. We just suffered and nearly 20 million people worldwide lost their lives in a pandemic. We've got new technologies from cyber to AI that no one can figure out what to do with or control. So I feel we're navigating this really dynamic, dangerous world without a compass, without an intellectual compass and without much in the way of political consensus. So my cliche line is, if you're not worried, you're not paying attention. And it kind of in some ways circles back, Anthony, to the book.

35:03I don't mean to keep raising it, but the idea that what makes it so hard is the inbox, the foreign policy inbox is tough by any set of measures, given geopolitics, global issues, technology, what have you. But what makes it super tough is we have to then figure it all out, given our domestic problems. And that's a lot on our plate at one time. It's why I think this is arguably the most difficult moment in modern history. Yeah, it's going to require a cultural reset. I think what you say in the book of obligations, if I have it right, we have all the base elements, all the ingredients on the organic table to reset this.

35:39And if we sort of follow these principles, this bill of obligations, we can get there. I guess what I worry about is the apathy that's out there now. I worry about the phone is taking up a lot of people's time. They're not as focused on these grand ideas, these big visionary things. We don't have these aspirational soaring rhetoric politicians anymore. And then when we do get them, they get blunted by the lobbyists and they get destroyed by the wood chipping of the establishment. But let's go there. I asked all of our authors, they come on, I come up with five different topics, ask them to, in a rapid fire way, give us their feelings about it.

36:17Let's go there. So let's start with Iran. Iran is anything but a status quo power. I'd love there to be systemic change there. I'm not convinced that it's going to happen, but the economy is in serious free fall. But Iran's dangerous. It's supporting a nuclear program that's parked just short of nuclear weapons, but they have a lot of the prerequisites in place. They won't need a lot of time to go there if they ever just decided to. And they've got all these militias there. They're supporting. So Iran is a handful for us at a time. We want to focus on other parts of the world. And that's a difficult combination.

36:51China. China's a very different kind of challenge. Unlike the Soviet Union, China's everywhere economically, as well as growing militarily. I don't think we've figured out how to meet the China challenge. And it's going to take a combination of domestic renewal. The one area I think we're doing better and, you know, foreign policy, building up militarily more in that part of the world. You know, the partnerships we have in that part of the world could be important. Indeed, the single most important ally for the next couple of decades may be Japan, if we want to, in some ways, manage China's rise and how China uses its power.

37:22But I also think we need more of a dimension of diplomacy there. Containment won't work with China, given that China is economically so involved in the world And just and given it's we can't do it ourselves, given that we also have obligations in Europe and elsewhere. Russia. Russia is the most alienated country in the world with the end of the. I think it's an interesting story about how we got to this point. Was it inevitable, given Putin and Russian political culture? To what extent did we help engineer it through NATO enlargement? That's a debate for historians. But the fact is now Russia is the most anti-status quo country out there with the capability to alter the status quo.

38:01So Russia is a handful. In the long run, I'm not as worried about Russia as I am potentially about China. I think China is a more defining challenge for American foreign policy. But in the short run, what Russia is doing in Ukraine and could do elsewhere is the biggest immediate challenge to this country. North Korea. You know, it's the most closed country in the world still. It's got a growing nuclear and missile arsenal. China could play a constructive role if it chose to. It is not chosen to. So North Korea opposes a conventional military threat to the region and opposes increasingly a nuclear threat, not just to the region, to the world.

38:38So everything we've tried, whether it's negotiations or anything else, hasn't worked. So there are certain things in life that are problems to which there are solutions. North Korea may simply be a situation to manage. I don't see a solution in the works. America. Still the most important country in the world. Again, the real question to me is whether we will sort ourselves out. And I hope so because the world can't sort itself out without us. But I think the jury is out on whether we will be able to find our way again to put ourselves back on the tracks. again, we're three years away from the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

39:17Now would be a pretty good time to begin that process because I actually think, you know, our own future and the world's future literally hang in that balance. Well, you've been very generous with your time, Richard. I really, really appreciate it. I think it's so well said. I'm just going to not interrupt you. The book is The Bill of Obligations, The Ten Habits of Good Citizens. Before I let you go, is there another book out there that you're allowed to talk about? Are you working on something? Is there something coming? Well, I'm still, you know. I'm trying to get you back on open book. That's why I'm asking.

39:45I appreciate it. Oh, there'll always be more books. I'm thinking of two. One will be, we talked about it before, what actually should Americans study when it comes to civics? So I may actually write a curriculum, what I think we ought to be teaching in our high schools and colleges. And then I might end up writing a book about what you and I just talked about a few minutes ago. How did we go from where we stood at the end of the Cold War, that remarkable moment of American primacy in the world, of possibility to today. What explains how things have turned out? Because there's very little about history that's inevitable.

40:17So why did this happen the way it happened? How did we get here? To what extent was it baked into the cake? Or to what extent did we make big mistakes that we need to recognize and learn from? Yeah, it's fair. I mean, I'm going to recommend something to you on the way out. And you probably read it already, but David Frompkin wrote a couple of very interesting books. One was about the Middle East, but he wrote one wasn't well picked up called In the Time of the Americans. And it was basically, how did these neo-Victorian men born between 1885 and 1900 set the American system up in the post-World War II architecture alongside of our allies, create this great economic prosperity and what they did and what their values were.

41:00And in many ways, they were a collect, you know, I know we both believe in the great man theory of history or the great woman theory of history, but there's also like a great group theory. You know, our founding fathers were a great group. And then there's a bad group theory, right? That's the Nazis that were taking over Germany, you know? And we had a great group of people in the post-World War II era that really was - Yeah, the book by Walter Isaacson and others. Another example, another rendition of that, right? Absolutely. So the question is now, do we have them, wise men and women? And also, I think the times are tough.

41:30I think this environment politically, given what's going on with social media and the rest, just given the sheer number of problems coming, I think this is a difficult time. It's a difficult time, if you will, to be wise. And then it's a difficult time to sell, to market that wisdom. Exactly. Because you're in an interesting time where you have to entertain these people while you also have to be contemporaneously a policy wonk. OK, that's a rough ask. But thank you. I really enjoyed this. Hopefully we'll get a drink at some point.

42:06So I love Richard's book. I have to say that we have an obligation as citizens of the United States to save our democracy. But one of the real tells in Richard's book was why. Ultimately, what we know from our several thousand years of history, that democracy, while it's an imperfect form of government, it is still our best form. And the main reason for that is the flatness that a democracy creates in a society. What we learn from autocracies and dictatorships and centralized authority is that the laws can change in very unpredictable ways, and people that are near the top or currying favor from the leadership get benefited and treated in a more fair way, if you will, than the regular people.

42:53And so what's happened here in the United States is nothing short of a miracle. We took people from all different ethnic backgrounds. We put them together in one nation and we gave them a very flat, decentralized system because of our democracy and because of the checks and balances in the system. And a result of which many of these people, my family included, went on to flourish. And I think what Richard is saying with this book is that we sort of have to renew our commitments and our obligations to the state and our civic virtue and to reconsider the things that tie us together. And so it's an incredibly thoughtful book.

43:29I don't want to be overly cynical because I'm worried about people really not understanding why or how this is so important. And remember, the first couple moves into fascism, businesses do better and people do get richer in the beginning. But then the second, third and fourth moves are way more malevolent because what happens is as the power centralizes, the leaders get very corrupt and they start doing very nefarious things.

44:00Hello? All right. You ready to join the show? Let's see what you're going to ask me. Oh, you got to lower the TV though. It's too loud. I know you're going deaf. You got to lower the TV. Okay. All right. Lower the TV. Come on. All right. It's off. All right. Today I spoke with Dr. Richard Haas. He's a great diplomat and he's the former head of the Council of Foreign Relations. He just retired from that post. He said something to me that I want to get your reaction to. You ready? He said that we get the government and the country that we deserve. And so what he means is that if we're not careful and we vote for morons, well, then we end up with morons inside the leadership.

44:36What do you think of that? I agree with him 100%. If you vote for people that are sleepers and outspoken and doesn't think when he speaks, you're going to have a disaster that's not to be believed. There's got to be someone that's very strong that can put the country together like you. All right, Ma, you got to stop with the like me, Ma. You're going to give me divorced. Okay, come on. I'm trying to keep a healthy family together. I mean, you know, you don't want me getting blown to pieces. What's one thing that you think we can all do to be good citizens, Ma? What's missing in America right now?

45:09Helping one another the real way. And the prices of the food and stuff is very, very high. And it's not even the middle class can afford it. It's only the upper class can really afford it easy. So the problems now with the inflation, the lower middle class people are struggling. There's food insecurity in the country. Right. And you got people stealing and some of them are stealing because they need the food. You know, it's sort of crazy that we're not smart enough to create enough flat opportunity in the country so we don't have to have people doing that to each other. Right. Absolutely. And another thing that I think is major is the homeless.

45:46It's very sad to me to see homeless people. I don't look at them like they're rejects. I look at them like they need help. Rockefeller closed mental institutions and if the mental institutions were open again and they could be in there and have the right people take care of them where they're not abused, I think that that's another thing that would help our country. We look like we're totally nuts when we see all these homeless people all over and they're very frightful because they look like they're mentally ill for some of them. And I think that they belong in a safe place and we're not doing it.

46:19And I think Eric Adams is trying to do it, but he has conflict. And I think Eric Adams has the right thoughts of doing it. He gets it more than anyone else ever has. Right. I agree with you on that. I think Eric is trying to do the right job, but he's got a lot of people that are trying to stop it. But we also have to build up these communities and give these people more education, they'll get more opportunity. They won't need to bring a cause towards crime. Are you a good citizen, Ma? Yes, I believe I am. Okay, tell me why. Tell me why you're a good citizen. Well, I think I'm very caring for the underdog, and I have been into mental institutions to see how people are treated, and it breaks my heart to know that they're like despondent and the people or not nice to them.

47:05All right, so there's a lot of indifference to the poor and the sick, and you try to be more compassionate. So that's good citizenship. How about breaking my bottle, my glass bottle, when I was four and a half years old and depriving me of the bottle? Do you think that was good citizenship, Ma? Yes, because you couldn't go to school with a bottle in your hand. Yes, I do. Okay, do you think you did a good job toilet training me, or do you think I'm a train wreck as a result of the way you trained me? I think that you don't want me to tell you how I feel, right? I think that you, like you're a perfect citizen of the United States and you have a life put together and you treat everyone equal.

47:42Right. Well, I appreciate you saying that, Maya. You taught me all that stuff. So, all right. So you get a letter A for good citizenship. I am Anthony Scaramucci and that was Open Book. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram. You can also text me at plus one nine one seven nine oh nine two nine nine six. I'd love to hear from you.

48:17I'll see you back here next week.