Episode Description: This week, Reza breaks down why advocates of abandoning the Iran nuclear deal now own the consequences, how America can help shape a peace deal in Afghanistan while still withdrawing its troops, and why Trump’s effort to push China out of regional integration in Asia won’t work.
Siamak Naficy, Senior Lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Department of Analysis, chats with Reza about why some people accept endless war but not endless diplomacy, whether Trump is an aberration from or culmination of our endless wars, how the American soldiers that he teaches view our endless wars, and much more. The views expressed are Siamak’s and do not reflect those of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Navy, or the Naval Postgraduate School.
Click here for past episodes of The Message.
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Transcript:
Podcast Episode 12
Reza Marashi: Greetings, good people of the world. Come on in. Sit down, relax. Putting your fancy iPhone earbuds. You are now listening to the message, a podcast that breaks down American foreign policy, a lack of diplomatic engagement in military restraint that is guiding it, the cast of characters that are making this non-sustainable problem worse.
Now, all of this is firmly not in the national interest of the United States. I’m your host. And my name is Reza Marashi. Ex think taker, ex-state department worker bee, an all-around good guy who spent the past 15 years working closely with senior-level government officials around the world to facilitate diplomatic solutions to conflict.
If you’d like to say hi, find me on Twitter at Reza Marashi. Before we go any further, make sure to subtract this podcast on Apple podcast, Google podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, YouTube, or whatever your favorite podcast platform might be. And if you like what you hear, do me two quick favors. One, provide a review and a rating for the podcast to maximize the amount of people that will hear it.
And to. Go to iranian.com click on the donate button and help us continue to fulfill our mission of giving knowledge to the people. Every week. We’re going to do three things for you. One break down, three news stories that you should know about to interview smart intellectually honest people who deserve to be heard.
And three, answer your questions that you emailed to our mailbag. So without further ado, enjoy the show.
To kick things off this week. We’re going to go beyond the headlines and do a deep dive on three important news stories that the people need to know about. Why do the people need to know about these new stories? That’s a great question. Thanks for asking. The people need to know, because each of these stories highlights the core tenant that this podcast is built upon, which is that the foundations of American foreign policy are firmly not in the national interest of the United States.
Top Stories Of The Week
Story number one that the people need to know about this week, the international atomic energy agency has verified that Iran is indeed taking steps to respond to the Trump administration, withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal. Now, more specifically, Iran has now tripled its stockpile of low enriched uranium.
It’s increased the number of centrifuges that it uses to enrich uranium, and it’s limited access to inspectors who sought to examine facilities where nuclear activity took place in the past. Now, obviously each of these steps are reversible. Should the Trump administration choose to reenter the nuclear deal that it abandoned two years ago.
But all of this highlights and more important point, which is that the nuclear deal, opponents and skeptics have now gotten what they wanted all along. Many people, myself included, will continue to publicly articulate why the nuclear deal remains the best solution to a very tough problem. But we will also recognize that Trump’s team has done deep damage to the nuclear deal and his chances of survival.
I genuinely hope that the nuclear deal advocates succeed in their efforts to keep it alive, but I’ve always thought publicly and privately that it’s been a long shot since Trump got elected. Now assuming that the nuclear deal opponents continue to pursue their preferred course of action and work to dismantle the remaining vestiges of the agreement, it’s important for everyone to recognize publicly, loudly and repeatedly that they now own the consequences.
Make no mistake, they will try to make excuses and complain that any failure on their part is due to starting off in a weak position due to the nuclear deal being weak.
All of them. If they somehow succeed in getting a better nuclear deal or some other solution to the problem from their maximum pressure campaign against Iran, I’ll be the first to admit that I was wrong and more power to them. But I see no discernible reason to believe that the risks that they’ve embarked upon and dragged us into with them, we’ll find any sort of reward.
But if they fail, which I believe is far more likely in which all the facts speak to being the current trajectory, they must take responsibility for their actions. Make no mistake, they will try to make excuses and complain that any failure on their part is due to starting off in a weak position due to the nuclear deal being weak.
But this is nonsense. I mean, more generally, no policy starts with a clean slate. Nope. For Iran, Obama’s administration had to deal with the Bush administration legacy of the Iraq war and false claims of mass destruction. And Obama’s team also had to push sanctions onto a deeply reluctant international community with a US intelligence community saying that Iran had no active nuclear weapons program.
At the time. And lest we forget Obama’s team also inherited high oil prices, a global economy in recession, and a ton of political sniping from their opponents in Washington, DC so no Iran deal, opponents don’t get the benefit of a bad start. That’s life. And more importantly, it’s not true. So all of this is their responsibility.
Now. And when you take a closer look to have decided that abandoning the nuclear deal made sense, they had to convince themselves and others that they had a way of getting a new deal, at least no worse than the 2015 nuclear deal, if not a better deal altogether. And many Trump administration officials promised exactly that for years before they actually entered office.
They wanted this, they sought this out. And they succeeded. So I guess congrats to them, but perhaps it’s time for them to put the champagne away and get to work because now they need to prevent Iran from fully resuming its nuclear program to pre nuclear deal levels, and they need to solve all the rest of the problems with Iran that they disingenuously blamed the nuclear deal for.
And they need to do all of this without starting a war and getting a lot of people killed. This is not my opinion. This is what they have promised. So we are owed a quote-unquote, a “better deal”. That gives us more Iranian concessions for less American concessions. That is what we must hold them to because that’s the metric they themselves set.
I’d say good luck to them, but luck is for losers.
Story number two that the people need to know about this week. Trump is getting a lot of criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for his deal with the Taliban and Afghanistan. One of the biggest criticism being leveled Trump is that by withdrawing us troops before the Taliban reaches a durable peace agreement with other political stakeholders in Afghanistan, the U S is giving up all of its leverage to shape the outcome of those intra Afghan negotiations.
However, that view couldn’t be further from the truth. America can shape an influence, the upcoming intra Afghan negotiations in a variety of ways, while we simultaneously begin the process of withdrawing our troops, because we still have many tools at our disposal that don’t require endless war, for example, as it pertains to withdrawing our troops.
The agreed timeline that goes into the year 2021 takes us into a new president or a Trump not facing reelection. The Taliban has seen our troop withdrawal schedules come and go many times in the past, so they know we can change our mind at any time going forward. Then there’s also the issue of our military and financial assistance to Afghanistan.
Unless we plan on occupying Afghanistan militarily until the end of time. There was always going to be a point where we would have to see if the Afghan government could be a durable military force with us assistance, but not us troops. Now’s as good a time as any to help make this into a reality because it helps them develop a stronger negotiating position vis-a-vis the Taliban.
And as those negotiations progress, both the Taliban and the Afghan government know that I’ve gone a stone will need us financial support to maintain whatever details emerge from their negotiating process because no modern Afghan government has sustained itself on domestic resources alone. And last but not least, I’d say that the Taliban clearly seeks international legitimacy because they’ve spent over two decades internalizing the cost of being an international pariah, and they know damn well that America is the only gatekeeper that can truly remove their pariah status.
This provides the U S with a significant amount of leverage to help facilitate cooperation between the Taliban and other Afghan stakeholders. So all of this begs the question, how do we use this leverage? Or in other words, what do we need the Taliban and Afghan government to do? I would say first and foremost, we need Afghanistan to police its own territory against terrorist groups that seek to attack the United States.
There’s a deal breaker here. This is it, and I think the Taliban knows it. We also need some semblance of stability in Afghanistan because those terrorist groups that seek to attack the United States thrive in conflict zones with no end in sight to the fighting. To that end, it’s neither in our interest nor the Taliban and Afghan government’s interest to see another civil war break out because that provides fertile ground for all Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
Last, but not least. We also need to maintain the integrity of Afghanistan’s governing arrangements, which protect the rights of women, minorities, and others. Now, to be clear, we don’t have the ability to produce this on our own, but we can help emphasize the importance to Afghan negotiating parties as they work toward a durable peace.
There’s no shortage of data showing that negotiated settlements that includes such provisions are far more sustainable. So none of this will be easy, but such hard work is tactically and strategically important in order to maximize our likelihood of success. We must prioritize that which we truly have leverage over and we must ignore the political chirping at home while taking these important risks for peace.
Story number three that the people need to know about this week. Lost in the Corona virus. Pandemonium has been the Trump administration’s trade war with China more generally and its efforts to blunt Chinese regional integration in Asia. More specifically. Now, recently, Washington and Beijing did agree to a new trade deal, but this trade deal does speak to a larger trend of the Trump administration taking a more aggressive stance against China around the world.
And one can quibble over whether or not that’s a good idea, but at this point, it’s pretty clear for all to see. The way Trump has gone about it hasn’t been a good idea at all. To borrow a phrase from my former boss at the state department, the U S would better achieve its interests by leveraging addition and multiplication instead of subtraction and division.
Meaning we have a lot to offer, but we’re not going to get anywhere by trying to push China out of regional integration in Asia. Now, in my humble opinion, we’ve committed multiple unforced errors here. First and foremost, Trump’s team has directly been comparing what we have to offer to what China has to offer.
But that’s not the correct paradigm because America isn’t China, and thus we shouldn’t be comparing apples to apples. We offer something different. Yes, there are two different political and economic models being offered. You know, America is different than China in those regards, but they won’t apply equally in all situations.
The sectors or countries. The U S does some things very well that China can’t or won’t do, but China does some things that the U S doesn’t do, including in sectors where the U S isn’t active. So I think a wiser approach with leverage, our unique strengths. When you talk to government officials across Asia, there’s obviously a ton of mixed feelings about China, but nobody’s trying to push China out of regional integration efforts because they know that’s not a realistic scenario.
Nope. Ultimately at the political level, Washington spends far too much time playing defense against Beijing and it’s not going on or fence to simply trash Chinese initiatives that some governments in the region actually welcome. There’s also another risk to making direct comparisons between with the U S and China can offer what exactly is the U S going to put on the table, and more importantly, is it on the table everywhere.
Trump’s approach, risks, inviting comparisons, implicit and explicit between what the U S offers and what Beijing offers, and we should not simply presume that the comparison always favors us because it doesn’t. The U S is diplomatically challenged and commercially weak in more than half of the Eurasian continental landmass.
Thus, direct comparisons between the U S and China will often benefit Beijing, not Washington. And that’s not all. Trump’s trashing China’s initiatives rhetorically while failing to counter and compete with them, signals to other capitals in Asia that their countries are of little interest to the United States on terms that actually matter to the interests of those countries.
Their takeaway from this will likely be that America pays attention to them only in the context of its strategic competition with China. And that’s a bad message to send and an even worse strategy to try to operationalize. Oh, there’s no denying that many Asian countries have a deep suspicion of China’s intent, but there’s also no denying that the U S won’t get far by telling countries that they should avoid deepening their economic relationships with China for nearly every country, and especially the smaller ones, this is going to impractical choice and it’s therefore going to be rejected.
And the Trump administration doesn’t need to do this because it actually, I’ve done some good things on his China policy. It’s taking strategic competition with China seriously, and also taking seriously the need for America to actually get in the game. And that’s for the good to compete in geopolitics as in sports, business or life.
One actually needs to compete. Washington has to outperform competition from China. Not just be a little and whine about it, and I hate to say it, but the Trump administration sounds like a bunch of whiners. So why is it futile for the U S to try and push China out of regional integration? That’s a great question.
Thanks for asking. For starters, look at a map. China borders every sub region of Asia, Northeast, Southeast, central, and South. The U S does not, nor does any other big geopolitical player in Asia. And another reason is financial. China can drop a plenty of meaningful money into countries all over Asia where the U S and its firms are largely invisible.
So to fight against every instance of China’s effort to foster regional connectivity would thus require Washington to fight both geographic and economic gravity. And that’s precisely the implicit message when one tells governments across Asia that China offers nothing valuable because in reality.
Many of these countries think they’re getting something valuable from China, and therein lies the rub. The U S should spend more time on offense than defense. It’s a fantasy to think that the U S can stop regional integration with China simply by telling everyone to stop, so to breathe, bring things full circle here.
Addition and multiplication, beat, subtraction, and division. And the U S has massive strengths that it can play to. Thus, I would say that it’s better to dial down the trash talk. And instead really deliver for the region by actually using the strengths that we have at our disposal.
And now it’s time for this week’s mailbag where you ask me any questions you have about what’s going on in the world today. And I try to answer them to the best of my ability. If you have a question, don’t be shy. Email them into info@iranian.com with your name and location, and I’ll do my best to answer as many questions as I can on the next episode of the podcast.
So without further ado, let’s dive right in.
Mailbag
Question number one from this week’s mailbag comes from Mahamoud , who’s writing in from Tempe, Arizona. Shout out to Tempe. He says,
“Hi, Reza. Can you please share a little bit about how the foreign policy of Bernie Sanders vis-a-vis the middle East would be different than that of Joe Biden?”
Thanks. Yeah, it’s a great question, Mahmoud.
Thanks for asking. When looking at middle East policy, I think it’s most instructive to view it through the prism of Iran on one side and Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE on the other side. This is the regional fault line that exists today. Naturally, both Bernie and Biden say that we need to prioritize diplomacy with Iran, hold Saudi Arabia and the UAE accountable for actions that damage American interests and dismiss Trump’s so-called deal of the century in favor of a real two state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
I mean, the key difference between Bernie and Biden, all these funds is that Bernie is more likely to follow through and will go further than Biden will. I think Bernie has a decades long track record of calling for and fighting for the same diplomacy and peace based policies in the middle East that are more evenly balancing American interests across the geopolitical and sectarian divide in the region.
Biden does have ample foreign policy experience as the former lead Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee. But I hate to say it, he’s been wrong a lot. You know, he tilts too far in Israel’s favor. He supported the Iraq war in 2003. He advocated for breaking up the post war Iraqi state, along at the religious and ethnic lines.
I think he’s a little too chummy with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. So in other words, Biden has become very accustomed to the traditional way of America doing business in the middle East, which painfully and clearly is not working. I think Bernie, on the other hand, will likely pursue a more transformational us policy in the middle East that actually implements the changes that other presidential candidates typically talk about, but rarely act upon.
Now, the flip side to Biden, of course, is that he was vice president during an Obama presidency that produced the Iran nuclear deal, uh, produced a prisoner swap with Iran, and it produced the establishment of multiple channels of communication between Washington and Tehran. And I, it’s also worth noting that some, but not all of Biden’s top foreign policy advisors are very sharp, very reasonable people who do understand that we need to responsibly end our endless Wars and this dead prioritize the use of diplomacy to address policy challenges.
Like if I were a betting man, I’d bet that Biden’s foreign policy were more closely resemble Obama’s first term where he was cautious and influenced by perceived domestic political constraints, thereby keeping much of our interventionists hegemonic over extended foreign policy intact. Whereas Bernie’s foreign policy will more closely resemble Obama.
Second term, when he demonstrated a willingness to take risks for peace and start the process of addressing the deep structural problems that we have in our foreign policy.
Question number two, from this week’s mailbag comes from Sean, who’s writing from Washington D C shout out to D C. He says,
“Hello, Reza. When looking at the Corona virus outbreak in Iran, many in the mainstream media and the regime change camp appear to gleefully put all the blame at the feet of Iran government. My question is as follows, to what extent have Iran sanctions impeded the government’s response to the virus and moving forward, how can the international community and Iranian authorities do more to address this awful virus.”
Thank you. Yeah, it’s a great question, Sean. Thanks for writing in a while. I’d argue that Iran’s government has definitely mismanaged the Corona virus outbreak. I’d also argue that sanctions have undeniably made the problem worse. So simply put, even if the Iranian government faced zero mismanagement related problems, or even if the Iranian government started to take steps to address the mismanagement that it displayed, even at a higher degree in the outset.
And I do think it’s taken some of those steps and it does need to take more, , us sanctions have had a longterm impact on Iran’s ability to freely import medical supplies. I mean, before the Corona virus outbreak, it was well documented even in Western mainstream media that us sanctions were causing alarming medical supply shortages in Iran.
So I think looking ahead, Western countries in collaboration with the world health organization and other international institutions must take the lead on global medical diplomacy and directly provide as many coronavirus testing kits to Iran as is necessary to comprehensively address this public health crisis.
I think for its part, the U S needs to overcome its belligerent posture towards Iran, provide the medical and technical support that could save lives and ease the difficulties that American and European companies face in supplying medicine and medical equipment to Iran as a result of sanctions.
Anything less than what I’ve just outlined. Would it be criminal on the part of Washington and the international community?
Question number three from this week’s mailbag comes from Mike, who’s writing in from Los Angeles. Shout out to LA. He says,
“Hi Reza. Why does Western media typically refer to Al-Qaida and other jihadists chopping off heads in Syria as quote rebel groups or more recently as quote moderate rebels.
Why does the media not call them by name like say Al Qaeda or terrorist groups? Please help me understand. Thanks.”
Yeah, it’s a great question, Mike. Thanks for asking. I personally think the answer to your question has two parts and it’s pretty straight forward. First, not all rebel groups and opposition groups in Syria consist of fighters exclusively from Al-Qaida or other terrorist groups.
Some people better part of the groups fighting against Assad aren’t members of Al Qaeda or such groups. That’s why I’ve always tried to call them. the quote “Al Qaeda laced rebels”. It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one in war zones. It’s never good to paint with broad brush strokes because it inevitably ends up contributing to the process of innocent people suffering and dying.
And second, I personally think there is an unfortunate propensity in Western mainstream media to downplay or over-hype links to our Qaeda around the world depending on how it suits Western geopolitical interests. For example, everyone with half a brain knows that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel, Pakistan, and other countries typically viewed as American partners, have provided varying degrees of support to Al-Qaida at various points over the past 20 years.
And yet it’s not common to see robust media reporting on this fact. Nevermind us officials openly talking about it. Conversely, when the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, each took turns overstating links between Iran and Al Qaeda. It was front page news and every major media outlet incited by unnamed administration officials as potential grounds for an American war against Iran.
Well, besides the face value repulsiveness of such an approach, it’s also proven to be deeply damaging to American interests because when we punish some countries for links to terrorist groups, but give other countries a free pass, it really cheapens the concept of counter-terrorism efforts and it weakens the cost.
Perhaps that’s one of the many reasons why we have more terrorism in the world today than we did on September 10th, 2001 despite copious amounts of American blood and treasure lost in the name of fighting terrorism.
Interview
And now it’s time for this week’s interview, and I couldn’t be more excited to share with you guys because my guest this week is a super sharp and super thoughtful guy that just so happens to sit at a unique perch from which to view the various issues that we discussed typically on this podcast. So he has a unique vantage point.
The CIO, Mack Nafisi is a senior lecturer at the Naval postgraduate school’s department of defense analysis. An anthropologist with a wide ranging interdisciplinary approach to social, biological, psychological, and cultural issues. His interest range from the anthological approach to conflict theory to sacred values, cognitive science and animal behavior.
The views expressed are his and do not reflect those of the department of defense, the U S Navy or the Naval postgraduate school. I know you’re going to enjoy what he has to say. So without further ado. Here’s, see all Mac, my man, how are you?
Siamak Naficy: [00:24:19] I’m good. How are you man?
Reza Marashi: [00:24:20] I’m good, thank you. I appreciate you making the time to jump on the podcast today and give knowledge to the people.
Siamak Naficy: [00:24:25] Absolutely. I’m really happy to be here. Very happy that you called on me to talk to you.
Reza Marashi: [00:24:30] Well, you know the, the beauty of having your own podcast is that. Since you make the rules, you get to bring in all the people that you think are smart and have smart things to say that deserve to be heard. And so really it’s just a list of my friends that I’ve accumulated over the course of my career working in foreign policy and international affairs.
So just ticking them off one by one and now you know, now, now it’s your turn to, to suffer through all these questions that I have to ask you. So I appreciate it. My friend.
Siamak Naficy: [00:24:54] It’s like a Russian roulette with your friends. Just you just pick them off. Why did it,
Reza Marashi: [00:24:57] yeah. I mean, you know, for better or for worse, you’ve signed up for friendship with Reza, and this is, this is all comes along with it.
Siamak Naficy: [00:25:03] Well, I’ve certainly selected on you through the year. So this, yeah, it feels right.
Reza Marashi: [00:25:07] Well, you know, it’s funny you mentioned that because that’s a good segue into my first question. You and I have had many conversations about why diplomacy is preferable toward like the list goes on and on. Yes. We also agree that every war ends with some sort of negotiation, which is oftentimes, overlooked or perhaps not understood by people who don’t do this stuff for a living.
Now. With that in mind. You know, America has been fighting multiple endless Wars for going on almost 20 years now with little diplomacy and no peace in sight. I’ve got us down, not withstanding, and most of our political and military establishment simultaneously shun diplomacy when it doesn’t produce immediate results.
Like no one ever says that we should give war one day to work. And if it doesn’t, and we must. Engage in endless diplomacy for however long it takes, no matter what the cost. And I’m curious, why do you think that dynamic is, why do you think we’re, we, we as a country and we as a political and military establishment are so comfortable with endless war, but not diplomacy that doesn’t immediately produce results as opposed to a day of war, but not so much.
Diploma feed that takes as long as it takes
Siamak Naficy: [00:26:20] right now. And that’s an excellent question and a great opening to all this stuff. I think, um, I mean, so, you know, there’s like the Pat academic answer of saying like, well, it’s complicated and all that, but I think a better way of getting to this is that this is like a, an answer that on the one hand is exotic and you have another answer.
On the other hand, which is a little more mundane, the more mundane answer would be something like, you know, as Ben Rhodes who worked under Obama, talked about this idea of the blob. Not changing, right? So you have this overclass that’s in Washington and seeking to legitimize itself. You have this nostalgia for this liberal order fantasy that never really existed, right?
So there was an order, but it wasn’t exactly liberal all the time. We compromised all over the place and instead of looking at it, warts and all. They imagine they can return to this fantasy world where they could just dictate the rules of the game and they could just get their way and have their pie and all that.
Um, so you have, for example, Donald Trump, when he was, um, candidate talking about how, he was going to make the Saudis pay their fair share. He even blamed, I think, the Saudis for nine 11 a few times he talked about how NATO was obsolete and what we see, for example, and you also talked about, you know, giving Russia more free a ride on there.
Adventures and Ukraine and whatnot, and then as soon as he becomes president, we see him kind of step in line. I go back to the same policies as before. I think the very first country traveled to as U S president was Saudi Arabia, and he did that little Sabre war dance, right? Yeah, so that’s like the more mundane answer.
It’s like, well, you know, you have this culture that has taken hold both amongst the senior sort of politicos and the NSC, but also the military where we imagine we, we sort of think about this world that we’ve lost that never really existed. This liberal order. Based on rules and regulations and led by this, you know, led West, right?
That was all about based on premisey and not compromising. The more exotic answer is, I think, found, and I, I think our latest paper that talks about this a little bit that in anthropology and psychology test, we know that we’ve known for some time now. That there seems to be different cognitive schemas that when it comes to understanding violence versus diplomacy, where it’s a lot, you know, so you have different cognitive mechanisms, different domains of feelings and, and, and drug justifications about, about violence versus peace.
And so, uh, I mean, we often think, uh, that we use words. Where would I rather, our emotions come from our words that we, we come up with a judgment and then our emotions catch up. But the data suggests it’s actually the other way around where we have a . Feeling about something and then we use words to justify those feelings.
This is a really long winded way. I apologize for saying basically that it’s a lot easier to convince people to, to, to, to, to respond with violence when we don’t get our way. Than it is to try to talk to them about compromise and, and talking to your way through things, right? So there’s these studies in 2011 and then there’s replications with other people in later years that show that people are generally insensitive to the costs of retribution of violence.
That is, we think violence. When someone has crossed us, someone has threatened us. Violence has its own reward, and it’s another way of Ray defying us where to compromise or to talk to people about getting your way. You really need to know for sure that it’s going to work under the other side is going to concede and compromise with you or else it doesn’t work.
It’s a lot harder. In other words, I’m sorry. Another way of saying this and other better way of saying this maybe is that, it’s easier to seduce people with. Cheap cries, you know, a moral necessity of going against the bad guys. But we respond to this and there’s like arguments about how this is evolutionary.
At a time when we were in small scale societies and you didn’t have anyone looking out for you, you could be nickeled and dimed to death and you could have these existential crisis of being taken over. So it worked. But out of context, like any other adaptation, it’s, it can cause as much harm in the present day.
Reza Marashi: [00:30:20] Right? Absolutely. I think we’re seeing that. I think we’ve been seeing that in all of the endless Wars that have commenced since since nine 11 and you could even argue that. We’ve seen this to varying degrees, pre nine 11 through the, through the Clinton administration’s war of choice, you know, a sort of multilateralism responsibility to protect all of these kinds of things where like the paradoxic humanitarian intervention.
Then you fast forward through the Bush administration, which it wasn’t so much humanitarian intervention as it was just, you know, this crude display of military force for no, no unified, discernible. Set of reasons, you know, it wasn’t clearly articulated why it was in the American national interests. We were given a bunch of different reasons, depending on what the political necessity necessity of the day was.
And you fast forward to the Obama administration who, you know, was very much campaigning on the idea of ending endless Wars. And you know, that’s the. That the, the paradox of, you know, running as a progressive and governing as perhaps the centrist, that tilts a little to the left. And so we didn’t so much end Wars, we perhaps averted one, but we didn’t so much.
And the Wars that we were already in. And now you’re in the Trump administration, which brings me to my next question. Do you think Trump is an aberration from, or a culmination of. These endless Wars that we’ve been talking about to date and which you referenced in your broader set of remarks. the first answer you gave to my first quarter, right?
Siamak Naficy: [00:31:45] Um, no, I think that’s again, a great question. I, I thank you for referring back to my point about this. No, this is an excellent question in the sense that. Uh, you know, when you’re, when you’re trying to wrap your head around how w H on why the administration is behaving the way it’s behaving. There seems to be two broad ways of approaching this to categorical ways of understanding it.
One wants it to be simply about the merry-go-round chaos of this particular administration. So they focus on, you know. The material tools of the national security state. Like, you know, they talked about having the wrong slides put in and the choices of what to do about, you know, Soleimani for example, right?
And so misplaced slides misjudgment, miscommunication, this sort of really self aggrandizing notion of adults in the room, right. Where I just felt, uh, that somehow. It has something to do with simply with the personalities and the eccentricities of this administration. Whereas the other explanation seeks to look at the broader, broader ecosystem of an, of, of like, for example, the, the media that constantly repeats this dominant hawkish, narrative.
That the only way that a U S president needs to respond to other countries who are maybe obstacles to our notions of primacy or our, our notions on what are our interests is through either sanctions or through violence. Right? And that this has been recycled for two decades at least, and that, uh, this is something that is existed and pre-existed the Trump administration, right?
Again, going back to the spend Rose idea of, of the blob where Trump, in a sense becomes the culmination, not, uh, of the system and not something that’s outside the system. But of course, what’s really frightening is that many people who ought to know it better. Who are in the system are just now simply adopting by saying, well, no, that’s, that’s extraneous to the system, which is another way of the system adapting to the, to the crisis at hand, just reinventing itself.
Reza Marashi: [00:33:39] I think that’s absolutely right. I, I experienced it firsthand, but that’s neither here nor there. I think that. You know, when you get people who work in DC who are a part of the establishment, like I used to be before I left. If you get them, you know, into a private room, or if you get them at a happy hour, if you go to a super bowl party with them and you’re having a chat or you know if you gave them a truth, Sarah, because some people need that.
Unfortunately, all of them would admit to like, look. You know, if you go against the grain too much, you will be afforded less professional opportunities, less professional advancement, and you’re essentially an outsider as opposed to an insider. So any kind of criticisms of the establishment or what the establishment is pursuing, broadly perceived in terms of its policies, Republican or Democrat has to be couched within the existing rules of the game.
And people, it’s, it’s, it’s for the most part, an unspoken rule, but some people. The intellectually honest ones are willing to verbalize it publicly or privately once they reach a point where they feel like they are professionally or financially safe. I always like to use Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson as an example for those who are listening right now who are not familiar with him.
Google this man. Watch a few of the interviews that he gives. Read a few of the things that he’s written. This is the guy that worked for Colin Powell, and Colin Powell went and gave his infamous speech at the UN trying to justify the invasion of Iraq. And he’s come out and given the Mia culpa that everybody should have given, but he’s the only one that gave it publicly it Colin Powell, perhaps to a lesser extent.
And the only reason why this guy has been protected is because of Colin Powell. Right? That’s just, he’s never come out and said it openly, but it’s painfully obvious that that’s the case. Right? And so if for somebody who’s who’s younger or who hadn’t reached the levels of power that Colonel Wilkerson reached, you know, you’re jeopardizing your career when you stray too far, which is why it’s so fascinating to me about Trump because Trump came in and he’s completely reconfigured the Republican party, both in terms of domestic and foreign policy.
And he’s done so without having changed, uh, every single thing that they do, every set of prerogatives, policy, prerogatives that they pursue. But this broader ecosystem that you talk about, uh, especially as it pertains to the media, it’s super interesting to me because they, they’re very critical of, for example, what Trump is doing on Afghanistan because the one thing where I’m like, Oh my God, he’s actually doing the right thing.
Right. You know, I strongly believe that he’s doing the right thing and he’s the only one that would do it. Like no card carrying member of the DC establishment would have the balls to do what Trump has done in Afghanistan and his own advisors save a small handful of them, a very small who don’t have the same public persona as Mike Pompei and others.
I guarantee you that they don’t support it and they’re going to try to torpedo it so that it doesn’t succeed.
Siamak Naficy: [00:36:29] I’m glad you said that. That last point is one of the things I was going to actually respond and say, and that’s exactly right. And I was going to just say to two other things. One is, um, you know, ironically, so this idea of being replaced, if you stand out too much, you know, there’s like, what does the Chinese saying about if you’re a a, a nail that sticks out, you’ll get hammered down.
Right? This is one of the frustrations that my students, I’m sure we’ll talk about this in a minute as well. You’re right, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a topic that is important here. We’ll talk about that. They talk about often, is that. Sure they understand what we’re talking about. They agree with what I have to say a lot, but if you stick out too much, if you go against the grain, you risk not getting advanced and more than I was going to say so ironic about this is that you, on the other hand, people who have been wrong, everything you think about the of these people like bill Kristol or John Bolton, who continuously wrong.
And yet they’re still employed. I mean, they, you know, they, there’s no accountability apparently for being wrong. There’s no responsibility, but for being wrong. But if you question the system, then that’s, that’s, you know, that’s beyond the pale. That’s, that’s gone too far. And the last thing, last thing, to your point about our point, I guess.
But the media, repeating these, then, you know, the sort of shrinking the space of, of, of what you can ask. Think about you. I don’t know if you listen to the NPR, uh, interview with, uh, Bernie Sanders not that long ago when after Soleimani had died. And so you have these questions that are being asked to Bernie Sanders, which are steeped in pure ideology where they ask them questions like.
How would you reign in Iran? How would you deal with Iran? Which is, again, it’s a setup. It constrains the, the options of a U S president.
Reza Marashi: [00:38:10] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and if it’s the interview I’m thinking of, actually, no, I’m thinking of a different Bernie interview, but I, I give him a tremendous amount of credit on this particular issue because Iran broadly conceived, but also after suddenly money was killed, he did a big round of interviews.
He said all the right things on, on the specific. Issue of Sony money getting killed. But I remember Margaret Brennan, who I think is at CBS news, if I’m not mistaken, was interviewing him and she said, uh, you know, it was just a limited strike. And he’s like, Oh, just a limited strike. And I was like, you know, praise be to Jesus.
Why isn’t there more American officials. Saying like, there’s no such thing as just a limited strike.
Siamak Naficy: [00:38:49] You have these Orwellian terms like signature or Christ, or like, yeah, a smart bomb. It takes out an entire building. It’s super smart, dumb bombs we used to have.
Reza Marashi: [00:38:58] That’s right. Absolutely. Absolutely. So it’s, it’s an unfortunate dynamic and, and I think that, you know, it, it’s actually a good segue.
It means you’re right. It’s a good segue. I wanted to ask you. Uh, about, you know, you have a unique opportunity to teach some of America’s soldiers that we send off to fight in our endless Wars. Yes. And a common mainstream misperception about our soldiers is that they’re monolithically predisposed to loving war.
The reality, of course, is a bit more complex than that. So you just touched upon it, but I would like to flush it out a little bit. For the people who are listening, what are some of your top observations regarding how American soldiers. View our endless Wars.
Siamak Naficy: [00:39:37] I’m going to start with that with a, with a confession that, like many of you know, Nick, many other, let’s just say anthropologist, I had my own doubts and cynicism and prejudice about the military.
When I can’t, and you’re thinking they’re all monolithic, they’re all going to be kind of jar heads and, uh, simple minded and just interested in violence and killing things. You know, and, and some are right in a sense that some people always are.
Reza Marashi: [00:40:04] that’s not unique to the military, by
Siamak Naficy: [00:40:05] the way.
That’s what I mean. That’s what all people in the play straight. Some people are just going to be like that, but, um. I want to, what has been especially, um, not provocative, what’s the right word here? What has been illuminating for me is how wrong I was. Right? And so one of the things, um, that I, that I try to impress upon them is that this is true of other people to other folk too.
So for example, in the same way. That the IRG IRCC tries to present itself as a monolithic, simple, uh, be your regime minded kind of polity, where you actually look at the matters. They may not have people, so there’s going to be variation, right? And so, um, the, the military here is also, I mean, they have their picture chaotic.
They’re nationalistic, but there’s variation. Um, a lot of them are, you know, really bright, really conscientious people, most of them. And what they want is to know what they’re doing. Why are they doing what they’re doing? And they just want us to, you know, protect their country, protect, you know, defend their populations and have a nice job, have a nice career.
They like the adventure, but they don’t want to just kill people for the sake of killing people. Right. And they want to know, they won’t have a justification of what they’re doing. Um, and I think that’s true of people generally everywhere. And you’re going to have the, you know, the people who are just dating, blowing, shut up and things like that.
But that tends to be in the minority and they don’t tend to advance too far, you know, in the, in the officer ladder. Right.
Reza Marashi: [00:41:27] Right.
Siamak Naficy: [00:41:28] Go ahead. Sorry.
Reza Marashi: [00:41:29] No, I was just saying I was agreeing with you. I think that’s, that’s, I’ve also got been my impression in my interactions with, you know, the Pentagon and, and, and both on the military and civilian side.
So, but yeah, that was just agreeing with you.
Siamak Naficy: [00:41:40] Well, I mean, again, and so the reason I bring in the IGC here is that, and that I can understand why the Iranian government would want to portray. Uh, the RGC in this way, and I can understand why the leadership of the RGC would want to protect themselves in this monolithic way.
And the same way that I can understand why the U S military would want to present itself in this, in this sort of monolithic way without any kind of granularity, but that the truth is like people everywhere they’re going to be, there’s going to be radical antagonisms. There’s going to be variation. And there’s going to be granularity need to be, you know, as, as people who study people who need to understand this,
Reza Marashi: [00:42:16] I couldn’t have said it better.
In fact, it’s not even that I couldn’t have said it better. Uh, our mutual friend Nagas bajo glee, couldn’t have said it better in a, in a great book that she wrote. If you guys haven’t gone and listened to the first episode of the podcast, go do it because now there’s no better, there’s no better voice on the IRF GC in the United States, in my humble opinion, than now, I guess in her book is, and yeah, she speaks to this point that you’re making now, which is we have a unfortunate propensity to view, uh, our adversaries as monolithic, but.
Uh, Iran has politics, just like the United States has politics. Just like, uh, the military, political establishment and societies of every country in between or on in the U S have, you know, politics, different opinions then on monolithic. And, uh, it, it’s not that you have to take, uh, uh, all of the. Various political or or, or military views of foreign countries at face value.
But the importance of understanding those views and the, the, the range of views that exists is it, is it in the American national interest? Because look, if you’re interacting with an ally and you want to, and you want to figure out how to maximize the Alliance and maximize bearing fruits from the Alliance, you need to know the range of what’s being thought in that particular country.
Amongst the range of stakeholders that exist in that country. Well, if you need to do that amongst your allies, and nobody would disagree with that premise, isn’t it more important to do that with your adversaries? Where the issue of war and peace is very, very realistic from Iran to Russia, to China to, you know, insert name of bogeyman country here, right?
Siamak Naficy: [00:43:48] Right?
Reza Marashi: [00:43:50] Yeah. So nobody’s saying we have to give every, every country that’s an adversary, whatever they want. What we’re saying is you, you need to have diplomacy and dialogue in addition to intelligence and other forms of interaction to properly understand your adversaries to properly address and, and maximize the pursuit of the food, full pursuit of American interests.
Siamak Naficy: [00:44:11] Absolutely. And I, I think, um, you know, at the end of the day, I, I’d minimum you need to understand the difference between rhetoric and behavior. Right? So if you go to a, if you go to a therapist, right, and you just complain about your spouse all day long, um, you’re going to present yourself in a very particular way unless they’re willing to meet with your spouse, unless they’re looking to try to see how your rhetoric matches your behavior.
They can’t make a proper assessment of you. And so rhetoric is important. What people say is important, but about people do ultimately should matter to us more. And so we should focus on both those
Reza Marashi: [00:44:43] things. No question. No question. I think that those observations about, you know, uh, H how American soldiers view our endless Wars is, is important for people to understand here.
Because you know, on a domestic level here in the United States, you know, support the troops is something that has become ubiquitous. That few people would disagree with the premise of, of supporting the troops, even though it’s never flushed out what supporting the troops means. You know, when somebody.
Was that what he would come up to me in D C having conversations about supporting the troops. I’d be like, yeah, let’s stop fucking them on, you know, forced to deployments and lack of medical care when they get back from fighting these Wars, like porting the truth. Nobody wants to talk about that shit. So it’s, it’s, except for people like Bernie Sanders who absolutely.
They actually do a proper VA bill, but it’s, so, this is the kind of thing that I think is important to flush out. Like let’s not just have empty slogans. Let’s, let’s, let’s talk about what they mean and how it actually impacts people who are fighting the Wars because that’s connected directly to what these people think about the Wars themselves.
Siamak Naficy: [00:45:41] Absolutely. And to your point, I mean, it’s not an accident that support the troops is such an empty vessel because it’s supposed to be. That’s how periodic ideology works. Who’s going to disagree with support the troops.
Reza Marashi: [00:45:51] Yeah.
Siamak Naficy: [00:45:51] It’s like you’ve ever seen the movies Uhlaender so there’s this great scene.
It’s a great scene, right? It’s a great movie. Uh, with, um, Hansel, right? Owen Wilson is blank. Hansel, he’s given you an interview and he says, uh, yeah, the musician staying. I don’t listen to his music, but I really respect that he makes music. Most Americans don’t know anyone in the military. Right? And so, uh, when we say support the troops, who’s going to say no to that and just becomes this, this empty of $5 sticker you put on a back of our car and you never have to think about it again.
And Oh, every now and then on labor day, you thank them, right? And by the way, um, the, the American troops didn’t make you free. We had a revolution a few hundred years ago that which made us free. Right. And so, uh, yes, it riles me up when people talk about this idea of supporting the troops. Yes, I support the troops.
I support them by talking to them and engaging with them, figuring out what they need as opposed to putting a sticker on my car and not having any skin in the game. And just, and this is, you know, back to your point before. This is why we need some kind of skin in the game. As a society, we need to be involved.
Reza Marashi: [00:46:55] Yeah, absolutely. Anybody that’s listening to this podcast knows it on multiple episodes. I have said. Very clearly and very directly that I firmly believe that there needs to be a one to three year conscripted conscription period for every American 18 or older to serve in the military in the peace Corps.
I’d fuck plant some trees. I don’t give a shit. Because they don’t have that skin in the game, then endless Wars can continue because the average American doesn’t feel the impact.
Siamak Naficy: [00:47:23] And so this is something that we’ve talked about outside of this podcast before, and I completely share with you that this idea, and I think you’re, you made a point before the last time we talked, you said that because I made the push that, well, it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you have some sort of community service, some kind of service.
And you said, actually. Military service preferable because that’s how you cut against the, these endless Wars. And I think that’s so kudos to you, sir. That’s, that’s, yeah, that’s
Reza Marashi: [00:47:47] right on, you know, if it has to be a compromise scenario where, uh, things outside of military service are acceptable, then that’s better than nothing.
But if you really want to make it, and I frankly, I think that’s why they got rid of the draft. If you really strip it down to it’s, you know, after the Vietnam war. So they were like, okay, we’re not going to be able to do this again. So. What if we continue to have conscription? So what’s a way that will facilitate it?
And don’t get me started about how most of the Army’s black and Latino, right? Like, who’s going and fighting these
Siamak Naficy: [00:48:16] Wars? Native Americans actually, you know, native Americans are disproportionately in the military more than any other ethnic group
Reza Marashi: [00:48:22] based on sheer percentage. I, I,
Siamak Naficy: [00:48:25] I unproportionate well, and, and, you know, um, it’s not just the, the end of the draft, but with the beginning of the, you know, of the technological campaigns, right?
So, drone warfare. The colon. Palo talked about this idea of war without blood, at least on our side, which reminds me of like, you know, drinking, um, alcoholic beer or like sex without sex. I mean, virtual sex. It’s not real. You can’t have it that way and it’s gonna it’s gonna. You know, this idea, we can pursue these Wars because it would be America’s don’t have to see blood comes back and fights us in the ass.
You know, cause cause you know, we see these kinds of radical shifts in society. We see the coarsening of American foreign policy. And going back to the earlier question, this is why, uh, it’s, it’s better to understand that Trump is not outside the systems and natural consequence of the system. Again. So, you know, uh, I had a piece about this recently about, you know, solely Omanis assassination.
Um, people, uh, want to sort of criticize, you know, you sort of lay the blame for this kind of policy simply on, on Trump and pump payer. But let’s not forget that, uh, Obama before him tried to assassinate, uh, Kadafi in Libya and we hit the wrong convoy. And before that, George Bush dropped a couple of bombs on Dora farms in Iraq, tried to kill Saddam.
So this is just a further coarsening darkening of us foreign policy, not something that’s. Outside an alien to the system.
Reza Marashi: [00:49:44] Yeah, I completely agree. You know, Trump is a symptom. Trump has nothing cause exactly. You know, if you remove Trump from the equation, it might resolve some problems. I’ll be the first to admit, but it’s not going to resolve all the problems.
Right. And I, you know, Trump’s not going to be head of state forever. So I think we’re in for a rude awakening. Uh, to, to like we’re going to have as a country, regardless of who comes after Trump, Republican or Democrat, this come to Jesus moment. We’re going to allow, I think finally, not everybody, but a lot of people are gonna like, Oh shit.
It wasn’t just him. It’s systemic on a lot of these issues. Oh,
Siamak Naficy: [00:50:19] okay. we’re going to see an end to the Trump system. The administration at least, either 2020 or 2050 right.
Reza Marashi: [00:50:27] You leave it up to him.
Siamak Naficy: [00:50:30] Let me talk about like 70 more years or something recently.
Reza Marashi: [00:50:34] Anything. He floats at the podium. That means he’s actively considering trying to figure out how to make it happen.
So we joke about it, but it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s definitely on. It’s on his menu, we’ll say like, yes, but staying on the issue of Trump. You know, you make the argument, you’ve made the argument that Trump’s approach to fighting terrorism has key similarities and differences with the Israeli approach, right?
Terrorism. Right. That was really interesting to me when I saw it, I was like, huh. And I thought for a second, I don’t think that’s true. Now, what do you see as the similarities and differences between Trump’s approach and the Israeli approach?
Siamak Naficy: [00:51:10] Well, um, so with the, the, you know, these shifting excuses and rationalizations for the assassination of Soleimani, uh, especially, I came to realize that this reminds me of something.
And when it reminded me of was the way the IDF, the Israeli defense forces people talk about, um, their need and their justifications for killing various leadership and the Hamas organization or Hezbollah where, um, there’s this kind of seeing every obstacle as an, an apparent emergency and having it very existential sort of a sense of absolute security.
Right. And to your point in your question, either, um, the key difference of forces that the globe is in Israel, right? You know, so one of the, one of the problems going back to this, the, the systemic problem we’re talking about is if you remember the nine 11 commission argued that, um, the whole of the United States is the planet.
Following nine 11. Right? And so you have this like notion of like planet America where everything is, is a, is a crisis. Everything is a potential threat. And if you have this kind of absolute, you know, so the similarity is this apparent notion of absolute, a need for absolute security and an, uh, everything being a threat, an existential threat.
But the difference is, of course, that we don’t actually live in that kind of a place, right? So Israel may have that, arguably has that right? Geopolitical fear because it’s surrounded by hostile neighbors. We are not, you know, the geography still matters. I think people often mistake, uh, did it, don’t understand the difference between strategic space and geographic space in terms of physical places.
And, you know, this is a huge problem because we don’t, we’re not Israel and just stop pretending like we are. And there’s this, there’s this dominant narrative of, of seeing, you know, you saw this with, um. Mike Pence, his speech at West point not that long ago, where you said you’re virtually guaranteed to fight in Korea.
You’re virtually guaranteed to fight in the middle East, and you had, uh, portrays not that long ago say that Afghanistan is going to be a generational war. This is absurd. You know, this, this idea of seeing the globe as, as, as Israel, right? Like, we’re locked in this fortress.
Reza Marashi: [00:53:20] Yeah. No, it, it, I think that it’s, you know, I had never, until I, you know, I never, until you came along.
Connected the dots between the two, even though it should be plain for all of us to see like, Oh, where did we get this idea from? Well, who was the only one doing it prior to us? You know, it was the Israelis. And so now we’re, we’re locked in this paradigm that I think increasingly is being publicly discussed.
I won’t say, you know, we’re. Publicly shifting away from it or doing something to address the imbalances. But I think it’s more openly discussed now, and I think that’s an important first step to hopefully at some point in, in our lifetimes, you know, shifting away from it. But I don’t think we’re quite there yet.
Siamak Naficy: [00:54:00] Right. No, I agree. I mean, I just did just in case it’s not clear. It’s, it’s a, it’s with a real . Fear of the constitutional Republic that I’m, that I’m describing it this way, right? So you see this change in the utopia notions of what Israel is going to become and as it sort of secured itself in this kind of circling the wagons mentality all through the sixties and seventies and eighties.
You see this, um, giving up of social experiments in Israel in favor of this absolute sense of security. And likewise, you see the radicalization of American politics and society in America as a result of the 20 years of war, right? So it’s not simply about, you know, caring about the military folk that I teach, which I do.
It’s about the shifting culture in America, the shifting pot, the radicalization of, of, of the Republic as it’s mutating itself. Into the Spartan state that we shouldn’t aspire for by with this permanent military cast and a permanent political cast. Um, no, it’s, it’s quite disturbing. Something else you just said that was really interesting, uh, with regard to, uh, Oh, I was going to say with regard to when is it, when can it mean, might it change?
I fear that the only time we’re going to see a real change in the narrative. Of this sort of existential paradigm is if we suffer a huge setback, if something goes awry. And until then, you know, the overclass is going to perpetuate itself, justify itself by, we need more of this. You remember this with like with the 2016 election where you had Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump going against each other, and the one hand neither wanted to talk about how Obama had expanded the Bush Wars, right?
So the Democrats had this narrative that they’re somehow like not. You know, hawkish, which is a lie. And so they have to downplay Obama’s a militancy, right? Is his expansion of the Joan campaigns and whatnot, balmy gonio in seven different Muslim countries during the time of this president having the special forces operating like I think like 157 countries during his presidency.
And then simultaneous, you had Donald Trump. Trying to, um, talk about how Obama was this feckless, coward, which is again, a lie, but it’s also by sort of bolstering this notion that the Republicans are somehow, uh, more warlike than you know. And, and the, the other thing that they both talked about ISIS as if ISIS was an existential threat to the American way of life.
And I would argue that ISIS is probably as threatening to America as Cicely was in world war II. Right. So terrible, awful. You know? But it’s not an existential threat, but the way they were talking about it was a way of legitimizing the sense of they are the ones, again, going back to your first question, they’re the ones who can help us in this moral, existential crisis when we’re surrounded by
Reza Marashi: [00:56:39] monsters.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Siamak Naficy: [00:56:43] Yeah. And of course ISIS plays its part by wearing block and beheading people. So it’s scary, you know?
Reza Marashi: [00:56:47] Yeah. But I think they, that that’s part and parcel of a very intentional strategy that ISIS has, because we know that in order to breathe life into a stateless organization, yes, they need to perpetuate that which you just described taking place in the United States.
It’s mutually reinforcing. It’s
Siamak Naficy: [00:57:04] a codependent relationship.
Reza Marashi: [00:57:05] Yes. Hardliners enforcing hardliners, lunatics, reinforcing lunatics.
Siamak Naficy: [00:57:09] Yeah. You can make a make a sort of codependent in terms of like a relationship, like an abusive relationship between like the neo-cons and the J hottest. How one, you know, if they’re not on the same page on the story, the same paragraph, they definitely on the same page.
They’re feeding each other. This idea of binary civilization versus savagery. They’re both, they just point the fingers in the end the opposite direction. It’s like, you know, I’m gonna you can, the prequels and star Wars are always good for quotes and means, but what does that lie? I’ll be one says only the SIF think, thinking binaries.
Reza Marashi: [00:57:38] Yeah, right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I, I love a good star Wars reference and it makes perfect sense to me. And, you know, I, I was, I was screwing around on Twitter the other day, just kind of scrolling through, um, and I stumbled upon a back and forth between, uh, Susan Rice, Obama’s former national security advisor, second term, and I can’t remember who the Republican was, but it was this back and forth.
Of, you know, like somebody defending Trump, pulling out of Afghanistan and then Susan Rice, Obama’s national security advisor being very critical and saying, you know, what about the women of Afghanistan? What about the gains that were made? You know, you know, endless war talk, right? But you know, no disrespect Susan Rice or anything like that, it’s just to say like, huh, like you are, you weaponize this against, like, it’s become a domestic political football.
And at the end of the day. You know, both political parties are guilty of feeding into this endless war. There’s no end in sight. And then one guy comes along who couldn’t be further from the establishment. Now granted he’s trying to change the political establishment and mold it to, you know, be shaped around him and show fealty towards him.
That’s another, but that’s separate from the point that I’m making right now, which is he’s going at other establishment people and he’s not wrong on this issue.
Siamak Naficy: [00:58:57] Right. Right. I agree. I mean, isn’t it ironic that John Bolton, uh, and his criticism of the end of the pulling out of troops that Afghanistan likened it to something that Obama would do?
The irony is there, first of all, Obama didn’t do that. Second of all, he’s using Obama as a foil to criticize a Republican president. It’s absurd. Yeah. And anyone who’s paying attention Odyssey this. But again, we have feelings first. Like, my tribe is right, their tribe is wrong. And then we use words to justify this stuff.
And that’s, that’s, that’s a problem. As an instructor, I can tell you it’s really hard to deal with because at the end of the day, um, facts and data don’t change people’s minds. Um, and, and stories might right. Interactions, uh, and conversation and stories. But
Reza Marashi: [00:59:42] yeah, no question. Personal experiences go a long way.
And, um. That’s why it’s so valuable to have that kind of, you know, real person to person interaction or country to country interaction. You know, I, again, not screwing around on Twitter. I see a photo of Mike Pompei shaking the hand of the senior Taliban guy and where the goal, I thought, I can’t believe how hypocritical the Trump administration is criticizing the Obama administration for meeting with the Iranians and doing.
You know, the same with the Taliban, right? Fair point. Yeah, absolutely. Fair point. But like, don’t use that attic as a criticism of what Trump is doing on Afghanistan because we are finally having the kinds of conversations that we need to be having with very real stakeholder on the ground who isn’t going anywhere.
We do not have the capability of bombing them out of existence. Right. Right. So it just kind of goes to show, you know, hopefully this kind of very fragile and nascent, uh. You know, a process of dialogue continue in a conservative, it can be incubated into something that’s foundation from which you know, you know, more peaceful future can grow because that’s the only way a peace, a peaceful,
Siamak Naficy: [01:00:50] I mean, I mean, one more, just one more example to throw at you.
It’s, it’s remarkable to me that arguably one of the best things that Trump has done, again, there’s lots of potholes along the way, right? There’s lots of diversions and terrible things along the way. Um, but one of the things, arguably one of the better things he’s done, if not the best thing, is that this idea of talking to the Russians and you see how Democrats are targeting him because of this, this idea that you can’t, you know, have diplomacy ever being a bad thing of conversation ever being a bad thing.
Communication ever being a bad thing. And yeah, this is stuff that we need to be smarter about.
Reza Marashi: [01:01:25] Yeah. Which, by the way, Obama himself tried to do. You know, in his first term, and then for the first half I would argue of his second term and even through the, the, the, the duration of his second term on specific issues, whether it’d be like, you know, you’re on nuclear deal or, or, or Syria or any number of issues, whether they agreed on it or not, there was always channels of communication despite the broader geopolitical conflict that was taking place.
Between the two sides. So, you know, the, the impulse of trying to have some kind of diplomacy and dialogue with the Russians is, is absolutely the correct impulse because it’s actually detrimental to American interests to not,
Siamak Naficy: [01:01:59] to not, I think the Prussian Bismarck who said, you know, like, like aF like a good orchestra.
You need to have the diplomacy side and the operational side together. That’s how you get leverage. That’s how you got options.
Reza Marashi: [01:02:12] Yeah. Diplomacy without the military is like an orchestra without the instruments.
Siamak Naficy: [01:02:16] Yes.
Reza Marashi: [01:02:17] Nicely said. Yeah, it’s true. You know, like you want to have that military in the background that can be seen, but you don’t want to actually have to use it once you, once you’ve used it, like that’s your leverage, your leverage is gone.
Right? And the only way you can ostensibly try and regain leverage is through use of force in a variety of different ways. But I think the jury’s in on whether or not using military force builds up greater leverage over like 20 years. It does.
Siamak Naficy: [01:02:44] Right, exactly. Exactly. And it’s not just in the, in, you know, in the politics of America or Afghanistan or Iraq that this has played out.
But for example, you know, the Iranians can look around and say, well, at least we’re not that. At least we’re not Afghanistan. And so outsiders, third party audiences will be affected by our adventures. Yeah. All right. I need to mindful of that.
Reza Marashi: [01:03:07] Very, very much so. Yeah. No doubt about it. You know, that kind of begs the question, you know, if you, if Donald Trump asks you for a private one on one meeting to get your advice on what the U S should do to craft a middle East policy that, uh, that, uh, would be best for American interests, and he promised to implement your suggestions.
What, what do you, what would your top three recommendations to Trump B C on that? Like assuming he pronounced your name right. See on that advice?
Siamak Naficy: [01:03:37] I love the impression, yeah. See it back. So this is a really interesting question. Uh, just the idea of, you know. I don’t think, uh, I, I know it’s a hypothetical, right?
Oh, I have to say, I have to be agnostic about the possibility of this being a question that this current administration will ever ask. Not that, not that we shouldn’t try, and not that we shouldn’t be open to it, but just, it’s a little funny to think about Trump asking you this question, but, um, to, to come up with three answers.
I think one. Would be to understand that. Um, you know, so Madeline Albright, you remember her?
Reza Marashi: [01:04:10] Of course
Siamak Naficy: [01:04:11] she had this great, terrible quote, but it’s really quotable. This idea that, uh, America sees further. Uh, and this is why it makes our violence righteous, right? And so the first thing I want to have people understand or consider is that great powers don’t see further than that.
At the same time, as you know, we’re less powerful than we imagine we are. Well, we are also safer than we imagined. We are.
Reza Marashi: [01:04:36] Totally.
Siamak Naficy: [01:04:36] So let’s, let’s again, so let’s look at the liberal order that was, uh, with warts and all. So for example, understand that the liberal order idea itself as a contradiction in terms this idea of having a liberal order doesn’t work, right?
It’s even when, at his height, when it was working during the cold war, not everyone had bought in and were making ill. Uh. Compromises with lots of illiberal folks from the shop, Iran. So SmartVault and others. Right. Um, and so, you know, there’s this notion, along with this, this notion of like, you know, we’re the bill nine policeman of the world has to be sort of reconsidered because Hey, the world is not like a neighborhood, you know, geographic space matters.
And B, this notion of we’ll just benign policeman, that’s not how international work. Uh, you know, uh, politics actually work. So, not like this idea of, um, uh, uh, that we’re bad, but that this does this dispense with the, you know, the American exceptionalism notion and this idea of an unelected leader of the, of the free world.
The second thing I’d want to talk about is, again, cause I just advise on is this getting a proper sense of proportionality here. That, um, for example, Al Qaeda even, right? He’s not the threat that it possibly was before nine 11. Understanding that geographic space, as I mentioned before, and, and strategic space are not the same thing.
And that when you lunge from one place. To another place. You don’t have as much influence politically, economically, militarily. And so this is why we see all these Davids beating Goliath in the long run. And so to kind of push back on this idea of, um, every vacuum needs to be occupied by our power. This is a sign of a decaying empire, right?
We need to live, you know, we need to balance our commitments and our power, right? Proportionality. And the third thing I would advise on is, is, is this. Um, I think something that you’ve made have said before to me, this idea of, uh, enduring security relationships require inclusion and not exclusion. And I think we do our American interests a disservice by not fully engaging in our, all our options.
And by that I mean simply like, for example, when it comes to the middle East. We need to pull leverage and have options with everyone involved, all powers that can wreck any kind of security deals, such that if, if we had a working engagement with Iran, not that we have to be best friends with them, but you need a working relationship, you know, such that you can be rivals, that you can use Iranian leverage to offset Saudi spunkiness.
The similar way that you could use Saudi leverage to offset whether your audience might be wanting to do such as no power, whether it’s Israel or Iran or Turkey or any of the, of the, of the nations in, in the, in the neighborhood have premisey you need to have something that, um, can endure. Right. And by doing so by, by including everyone at the table, by giving them incentives to stay rather than directed deal you.
That’s how you build longterm peace. That’s how you build longterm
Reza Marashi: [01:07:35] stability.
Siamak Naficy: [01:07:37] Absolutely. Does that. Is that too abstract or is that,
Reza Marashi: [01:07:42] no, I think that, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re approaching it from a strategic mindset. So a strategic perspective where a variety of like individual subject issues or, or even broader regions can fit into the strategic outlook that you just outlined.
And I think, you know, the, the irony is that, you know, I, and, and I think you probably fall in this category, well, not the biggest fans of Donald Trump. However. I agree with everything that you just said. And I have a sneaking suspicion that Trump probably does too. He agrees with those three premises they use.
Siamak Naficy: [01:08:17] You could explain to them in such a way that I think the American exceptionalism stuff he might have a problem with, but this idea of withdrawing troops, letting people, by their own way, letting people all sort of, you know, uh, pay their way forward. He then he did behind that.
Reza Marashi: [01:08:30] He doesn’t think America needs to fill every power vacuum.
Yes. I think he understands the general premise that the more options you have, the more leverage you have, you know? And, uh, so yeah, I think, I think he would, I guess this is just my roundabout way of saying, so I’ll just, might as well say it directly. When it comes to these three things, I actually don’t think he would be the problem or the obstacle.
I think, you know, surrounded himself with like vom, PEO and R and cooks and creditor would be, they would be the, they would be the filter, if you will, that would filter out the good ideas and keep us, you know, in, into something that’s more resembled status
Siamak Naficy: [01:09:06] quo. So this, the system is the problem. It’s systemic, not individually personality based.
Reza Marashi: [01:09:12] And then there we have just come full circle. So yeah, look, I mean this is, this is great and I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to give knowledge to the people. And. I really enjoyed the chat. So hopefully we can, uh, we can bring you back again sometime soon when the situation calls for it.
Siamak Naficy: [01:09:28] I enjoyed the heck out of it, so I love, thank you very much.
I love, I loved being here.
Thank you, sir.
All right guys. That’s it. That’s the episode for this week. Thank you all for listening. This has been the message. I’m Reza Marashi and I’ll be back next week to give more knowledge to the people.
