Timothy Snyder on America’s Superpower Suicide

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24:05Scott Galloway:It's another interesting insight, Professor, that, and it makes sense, in a capitalist society, scarcity is just, is a reality everywhere. and even America with one and a half trillion dollars in military spend, you're saying at the end of the day, a manager is supposed to allocate resources to its greater return. And the resources expended on Iran, specifically the munitions, you believe, had those assets been diverted to Ukraine, that the war might be over by now? Oh, I mean, that's, the discussion we had the first half of this podcast would be completely different. If just the patriots that we, because we don't know how to use patriots, Like we use patriots to shoot down anything which is in the sky.

24:47We don't know how to use them. We imagine that we have an infinite supply of stuff. And of course, the president says we do regularly, but we don't. And so we use it just in an incredibly profligate way, as we did in the beginning of Iran. And then we look around and say, oh, wait, we don't have any more of these things. It takes a long time to produce them. But there's a deeper problem here, which is that we are relying on, I mean, it's problem A, hey, we use this stuff in the wrong way in the wrong time, and we don't give it to the right people for the right reasons, which would have been to give it to Ukraine.

25:18But there's a deeper problem here, which is that the U.S. military under Hegseth and Trump are still relying on products like this, which take months and years to develop. And then when we shoot them out pointlessly into the sand in Iran, we then say, oh, we say to our enemies, oh, well, there's nothing we can do because our big weapons companies will take months and years to reproduce these, which is a terrible message to China, going back to your earlier point. But if you're an American confronting that, you should think, well, wait, what are the systems that are cheaper and faster to produce?

25:51And this goes back to your question, earlier question, and why aren't we learning from Ukraine, right? And I think the reason we're not learning from Ukraine is that Hegseth and Trump personally, Vance too, have a hard time processing that there's a country out there where people are actually showing moral and physical courage. I think they just can't identify with that. And I think the notion of people actually risking and losing their lives for their country is psychologically and morally very troubling for them. And so they want to push it as far away as possible from themselves as they can.

26:23Scott Galloway:So I hear Witkoff and Kushner, when they're over there trying to act as mediators and bring about peace, It strikes me that anyone who's going to bring about peace has got to have the trust of of all the parties Specifically the two warring parties And everything I hear from them I feel like they've essentially decided they're a proxy for russia It feels like their talking points were literally drafted by sergey lavarov and putin And that I I can't imagine The ukrainians have Any trust for america and whatever efforts it may It sounds to me like we've essentially rendered ourselves neutered in terms of our ability to bring about a peace, even when the atmospherics might be ready for it.

27:05Scott Galloway:Your thoughts? Yeah. I mean, just in fairness to Americans, there are a lot of Americans in civil society who are doing a good deal to help Ukraine. And I think in our doing so year after year after year, it's just not the U.S. government. And I mean, there's a deep problem with sending emissaries who haven't gone through any sort of civil service and don't, I mean, I'm trying to put this in a neutral way, but don't, as an everyday matter, identify themselves with the interests of the United States. Let's put it that way. That's problematic because in order to understand the interests of Ukraine, you have to first work from a model, a paradigm in which you believe that countries have interests, as opposed to a model in which only individuals have interests and everything is contractual or transactional.

27:54So I think it's not that Ukrainians don't trust Americans. They've had a lot of experience, good or bad, with Americans. it's that it's difficult for them when they're confronted by people who have don't visit their country except for you know a few hours very for the first time very recently who haven't experienced the war but and who also are unable to articulate Ukrainian interests right because if you're a diplomat you can say okay this is the interest of one side this is the interest of another side maybe we can find a way in between but the Witkoff and Kushner thus far although they're you know they're obviously talented people in their realms.

28:30They're totally unable to articulate what the Ukrainian interest might be in preserving Ukrainian life, in preserving Ukrainian livelihood, in preserving Ukrainian freedom, in preserving Ukrainian sovereignty. They just, they can't talk in terms of those concepts. And so there's a big mismatch between millions of people who are willing to take risks for something and a couple of guys who kind of turn up and, as you say, talk about how, you know, Putin has aspirations and these aspirations have to be fulfilled and the Russians have goals and these goals have to be fulfilled. That's, it's, it's a tough ask to imagine that they're going to take, be able to work with that.

29:07Right. And I think the underlying problem here is that for a Whitcoff or for a Kushner, Putin is a real person, not because he's a Russian or represents the Russian state, but because he's an oligarch. And that's the, that's the mentality that they're in, you know, that the world should be run by oligarchs and anybody else who has some other idea, they're kind of hard to understand. Maybe they don't deserve our attention. I want to move on now to the country we share, the largest undefended border.

29:33Scott Galloway:And I think any honest analysis over the last couple centuries would say it's probably, if not the tightest alliance, almost an alliance we take for granted because we feel so similar and so close. And that's the relationship between the U.S. and Canada. And things have changed dramatically. Your thoughts on what feels like an economic war against Canada, which quite frankly reminds me of that Animal House movie where they borrow, the fraternity brothers get access to one of the guy's parents' car and they trash the car. And the guy says to the son of his parents, you know, he says, you effed up, you trusted us.

30:15Scott Galloway:It feels like Canada deciding to trust us the way it has, 70 % of its exports. Canada's actually our largest customer. It seems just so, it just seems so weird what's happening now between the U.S. and Canada. You now live in Toronto. Give us your thoughts on whether you think this rupture can be repaired at some point or if this is going to permanently alter the relationship with Canada. I think the underlying common thread here between the discussion of Ukraine and the discussion of Canada is that the people who make U.S. policy now don't think in terms of the interests of the United States.

30:58They think in terms of short-term gains by particular individuals. And I think that's really where one has to start when one considers our policy towards Canada. Because, you know, you're right. Canada has been our ally in a couple of world wars. They've been our economic and cultural friend for a very, very long time. And they would still like to be. But the whole notion of alliance depends upon both sides seeing themselves as states with interests. And I don't think the Trump people see the United States as a state with interest. They see it as a vehicle for the pursuit of the individual gain of a small number of people.

31:40And I think what they've done is they, in their policy towards Canada, but also everywhere else, the European Union too, they export that same approach. So we don't really have a foreign policy anymore in the sense of a policy of a country. What we have is the exporting of a certain approach, which is to say, what are the short-term gains we could have, right? What are the gains we could have if we broke Canada and we could impose our own rules about tech companies? What are the gains we could have if we broke Canada and American companies could do what they want with, you know, with oil sands in Alberta?

32:14That's, I think, how we think about Canada now. It's not as a state to a state. It's like a few people thinking in terms of their own interests. And in this light, like living in Canada, the Kearney government, but not just the Kearney government, I mean the atmosphere in general, it's strangely normal and conservative in the sense that people assume they're living in a country and that their country has interests and that the government's job is to protect those interests. I think that's the big mismatch, that like Carney is really thinking in terms of the interests of Canada. And he has to react to this odd thing which is coming out of the United States, which is inconsistent with this alliance and inconsistent with the interests of Canada and the existence of Canada.

32:56But also in this weird way, as you say, it's totally also in opposition to the interests of the U.S. It feels as if every crisis birds some unexpected leaders.

33:07Scott Galloway:It strikes me right now that the most respected leader in the G20 is Mark Carney, and that oddly, he's kind of become the de facto leader of Europe, of all things. What can governments and politicians and people running for elected office learn from Carney's kind of meteoric ascent? I mean, I'm sure many people here would be glad to hear that description because up here, I mean, it does feel like, and understandably so, that Canada is embattled and that Canada is doing the basic minimum it has to do to defend itself. And Canadians are very far from, I mean, as a cultural matter, I think this is fair.

33:50They're very far from saying we're the leaders of anything or, you know, our guy is the leader of Europe or some kind of new alliance. I think your characterization is fair. I'm just pointing out that from here it feels much more like this is a kind of basic defense that we have to play. But I think that what the Carney government is doing is what they have to do, and the imaginative part of it is connecting with the European Union and also connecting with Ukraine. because if you are, I'm not talking about American politicians now, but if you're a Democratic politician in the wider world, you now have to think of not only China and Russia as dangers, but you have to think about the United States, at least under the Trump administration, as a danger.

34:38And the only way to handle that is for these democracies from Canada through the United Kingdom, through Europe, through Ukraine, to trade with one another and to tighten their political relationships. And that seems to be Canadian policy. And I think, I mean, I wish it weren't true, but I think that's the only sound way of dealing with this kind of triple Chinese-Russian-American problem is to have an entity which is a bigger economy than any of them.

35:05Scott Galloway:You're a historian. I'm curious if you have ever, or if there's any analogy for a superpower such as the U.S. in history that makes this sort of shift in their view of the world and the way they participate with allies and a reshuffling of who is an enemy and who is an ally. if you can point to another point or another superpower in history that has made this type of pretty dramatic, I don't want to call it a U-turn, let's call it a left turn in terms of the way it acquits itself overseas and domestically. Is there an analogy? And if so, what can we learn from it? I've really struggled with this one, Scott.

35:41A few months ago, I was asked to come down to the Council on Foreign Relations and have, you know, a talk about the place of U.S. in the world. And I realized the only, I couldn't sort of do it within the normal constraints and forms. I had to think of some other term and the term that I came up with was superpower suicide. Yeah. I love it. I use it all the time, by the way. I think that perfectly marks the age.

36:04Scott Galloway:Sorry to interrupt you. No, no, thanks. That's very kind. But because I think that we need a concept, right? Like we need something that captures the novelty and the strangeness and the rapidity of all of this. And also the way in which it's not just about the present, but about the future. It's not as though these guys are making a few bad policies. They're also undermining education. They're undermining scientific research. They're undermining the things which would make us a power in the future, right? This is not an analogy which I would push too far, but I tend to think that in the 20s of the last century, Germany had a chance to own the century to come, right?

36:40Germany had a chance to own the 20th century, and they blew it in various ways. They destroyed their democracy. They sent all their best scientists abroad, you know, and then they carried out these terrible atrocities and started this world war. But before that, there was the crash of democracy and there was the oppression of the best scientists. And that's a little bit of a comparison, right? Like it's the 20s of this next century and we are crushing our own science and we are weakening our own democracy for no particular reason. And then another partial analogy, and I think it's one which is actually relevant to Trump personally and people around him, is the end of the Soviet Union.

37:18Because I think they see that as a positive example. Like, I think they see the end of the Soviet Union as a moment where the oligarchs, like the aspiring oligarchs, people like Trump, who, you know, Trump never actually had any money. He's an aspiring oligarch, right? He needs state power to get rich. But they see that the end of the Soviet Union is a moment where a few guys were able to come crashing in and steal all the resources, which is a reasonable description of what actually happened. But I think they see that as a positive example for what you should do to the United States. And so that I think it's not a completely, it's not a full analogy and there are no full analogies, but I think that's a helpful example to understand how they see the world.

37:58That when you come to power, the idea is to break up the things that exist and then to kind of steal what you can. We'll be right back.

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39:41Scott Galloway:We're back with more from Timothy Snyder. You've written recently about 9-11, the 25th anniversary. Draw a line and make connections between 9-11 and what's going on today. I was looking at the media coverage of this, you know, before, and I just couldn't handle the general tone of like something bad happened to us. And that's all we're going to say. Yeah, something terrible happened to us. You know, I mean, something I was, I was in New York the day before and I was in New York as soon as I could get back. And it was, you know, people I knew, know, were affected. Something terrible happened to us.

40:22But we then blew it afterwards, right? Like we didn't do the right thing. We shouldn't have invaded Iraq. we should have invested in fusion and other high technologies true high technologies not the fake high technology of social media that would have gotten us out of the energy crisis out of dependency on the Mideast out of global warming and we didn't do those things we could have done those things and we didn't you know we didn't we didn't do those things we did the opposite we doubled down on all the bad stuff and that's that's on us we we made those mistakes and I think like when you think about a terrorist attack or any historical turning point, it's not the thing that happens.

40:59It's how you react to it that shows your freedom and your character. And I just think we have to recognize that we blew it and that the next time that there's a crisis, we have to react better than that. And we have to not make those same mistakes all over again. But more relevantly, I mean, the thing which is on my mind is the way that 9-11 imprinted on us as the way you react to a crisis, a terrorist attack, is you give the government more latitude to do things, right? And we gave the government latitude to form this, what became the Department of Homeland Security, which I believe was a mistake from the beginning.

41:38And we gave the government more latitude to invade a random country, Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9-11 at all. And that's a lesson which I'm worried that Trump and the people around him have learned. And so as we gear up for these midterms, I just, you know, without being alarmist about it, I just want people to think that one possible political move that somebody like Trump, whose party is way behind in the polls, might resort to is to try to drum up that kind of 9-11 effect again. And another reason why I think about this is that Viktor Orban, who of course is their political hero, the former prime minister of Hungary, he did exactly that.

42:19He tried a fake terrorist attack in order to win elections. It didn't work. Also, Putin, who Trump admires, came to power by way of a fake terrorist attack way back 27 years ago. So I just, the legacy of 9-11, that like if we're afraid we should trust the government, that's something which I think we might really have to resist at this particular point in our history. If there is a terrorist attack, fake, real, unclear, whatever, between now and early November, that's on Trump. I mean, that's his problem. That's something he brought about. It's not a reason why we should support him.

42:53Scott Galloway:Well, let's talk about the midterms. We're five weeks away from the midterm election you've called probably the most consequential election since the 18th century. It feels as if credible people such as yourself, to be honest, say that about every election. Why should we believe that this time it is actually the most consequential election for a while? Yeah. I mean, first of all, just to defend logic, it can be true that each election is the most consequential because, because, you know, 26 could be more consequential than anything before it. You know, and 24 could have been more consequential than anything before that, right?

43:26Like, if 24 had turned out differently, then 26 probably wouldn't be so consequential. But now that we are where we are, I mean, going back to your list of threats, right? And just bracketing, you know, for the moment, which are real and which aren't. But the number one one you mentioned, and I understand you may not agree, but AI. If we have Republican majorities in the House and Senate and Trump is president, you can kind of toss away any notion that we're going to have an AI policy. It's just going to be unregulated, right? There's not going to be any attempt on the part of the United States to get control of that.

44:07And then the Americans, so the statehood of the United States, I mean, that's the thing which I worry about the most as a patriot, but also just as a sensible individual. I'm not sure how much more battering our institutions can take because at the moment, all of them are being used to protect and further the interests of a small number of people. You can't keep a republic going that long on those principles. Eventually, something's going to break. So for me, that's like, that's the main reason the opposition party, It's not that I think the Democrats are supermen and that like they're going to fix everything.

44:46It's more that in a situation like this, you want the opposition party to win because you want to make sure that the institutions of a republic can still work in a normal way. And then the third, I mean, going back to like a conservative theme, if you want, is the shrinking power of the United States around the world. We are like we basically, there's still a parachute on our backs, but we have jumped off a cliff. And the question is, do we continue to enjoy falling precipitously towards the bottom of the cliff in terms of our power in the world? Or do we prefer to pull the parachute and slow things down and look around a little bit?

45:22Scott Galloway:You're releasing your University of Toronto course, Hitler and Stalin Today, to the public. It begins not with Hitler or Stalin, but with the empires that preceded them, a world where Europeans applied one set of rules to themselves and another to everyone else. Why did you begin there? And what are the most important parallels that period has for the world we're living in now? I love that question because I think that is really the ultimate issue in 21st century politics is can you get past empire into something which is better? And of course, I mean, if you're in the Western civilization tradition, you know that this goes all the way back to the Greeks.

46:04can you do democracy or you know the romans can you have a republic or ultimately does it have to collapse into oligarchy or empire and you know we americans imagine that we have a democracy or that we have a republic it's been flawed all the way down the line but the question is for us can Can we get over the habits that came from expanding across the continent, often violently? Can we get over those habits into something where we respect one another, we believe that everyone should have rights, that none of us should be rounded up off the streets, that we shouldn't have concentration camps, that we shouldn't have mass incarceration, that we should all have health care?

46:50Can we recognize one another as citizens? Everybody should have the right to vote and so on. or is the habit of having an in-group and an out-group, is that too deeply ingrained in us for us to get over this hump from being a big imperial power to being a democracy? The Europeans were empires and they don't think about this part of their history enough, but they have jumped over their own shadow, at least to the extent of forming a European Union, which is a post-imperial entity, right? Which is one of the reasons why both the Russians and the Trump people hate it so much because the way the Trump people and the Russians look at the world is it's all power.

47:26It's all about individuals. You should just kind of grab what you can. The European Union is beyond that. I'm not saying it's perfect or it's based on ideals or anything like that, but it's beyond that. It's about recognizing states as being equal and cooperating economically and then politically. So that's why I start the class with that. I know that the 500 years that preceded the 20th century were basically in the age of European empire. And the big question for the late empires, which were the U.S. and the Soviet Union, is can you get over that, right? Are you able to move into something better or are you stuck where you are?

48:03Scott Galloway:So I know you have a hard out. So this will be the last question. Just to end on an optimistic note, which is not easy these days when you're covering the news, something you said earlier in the podcast really struck me, and I want to double-click on it, and that is you said when winter arrives, which is just around the corner, you believe Putin is going to be motivated to end this war. Say more about that? I think the Russians, look, the Russians depend on us to keep the war going. and if our policy changes, even if the Democrats win and it's just declaratory and we start passing laws, even if Trump vetoes them, that's going to feel harder for Putin.

48:42The winner is tough for the Russians because they are going to have to rely on mobilized troops and they really aren't making advances. It's going to be hard on the Ukrainians too. But I think the Russians are desperate to win by spring. That's how I see it. And if that can be held off, I think then we can get to something better in Ukraine. But I mean, I can be more optimistic in general or more hopeful in general. These problems that we have, all the ones we've talked about, they're large, they're not like historically faded problems. These are largely problems that we've chosen to have ourselves and we've chosen to have them with great intensity in the last year and a half.

49:19A lot of the technological stuff, a lot of the things having to do with tech and wealth are a matter of thoughtful redistribution, which could be carried out with a better American government. I mean, we could be in a much, much better America than we're in right now. And I continue to believe in that.

49:37Scott Galloway:Timothy Snyder is a leading historian of authoritarianism to Ukraine and Eastern Europe. He's the author of various books, including On Freedom, On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and Bodlands. Tim is also a professor at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs. Professor, we have a lot of young people who listen to this podcast. and one of my first pieces of advice is you have to have role models such that you can think, what would this person do? And you, Ann Applebaum, and Heather Cox Richardson, in this moment have been role models for me because you apply your domain expertise in just how not only articulate you are, but just how unafraid you are.

50:17Scott Galloway:I get the sense that you guys don't really care much about what's in the comments. I really think it's a nice moment for historians such as yourself to have such an incredible impact on our country. And I think of you as real patriots and living up to the moment. Just so grateful for you, Professor. I appreciate your time today. Thank you. That's very kind. I also appreciate the kind words about Anne and Heather and, you know, the implication that historians can make a difference. We're trying. Thank you. Thank you.

50:54Scott Galloway:This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez, Laura Janir, and Asher Schwartz. Our video editor is Bianca Rosario Ramirez. Kami Reek is our social producer. Drew Burrows is our technical director. And Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thanks for listening to the ProfG Pod from ProfG Media.

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