RS: When I say I've never been in this sort of irrational climate, I remember the original Cold War quite well. And we had a real enemy. You know, whatever you thought about it, there were communist governments that for whatever reason, correct or incorrect, thought they were in a major life-and-death struggle with the west; so did the western leaders. The irrationality of the moment is that the only people around who adhere to an ideology that is associated with that original Cold War are the people who are producing all of these products that we buy at Costco and Walmart. The ideology-bashing turned out to be incorrect; communism turned out to be quite adaptive to the modern world, and actually the most energetic capitalists in the world right now are the communists. And Donald Trump, amazingly enough, predicts that oh, if we can cut a deal with North Korea, they'll go on to be one of the big, booming economies in the world. And what's irrational, and the reason I challenge -- not, you know, yes, Donald Trump has terrible manners and he has reactionary positions and he, you know, I've even called him a neofascist if we want to do name-calling. But the fact of the matter is that in foreign policy, Donald Trump is assuming -- not always, not around Iran and certainly not around Venezuela -- but assuming kind of as moderate a position as one would have gotten from Hillary Clinton.
What I am concerned about is that even though we were able to have a peace movement -- and people like Dr. Martin Luther King were able to say stop killing those Vietnamese, even though they're communist they don't threaten us and we can make peace with them, and he turned out to be right -- you can't get a rational discussion about Putin, who actually has advocated fairly sensible positions. I don't think he did anything terrible in Syria, I think he helped bring matters to a resolution and helped deal with the refugees. So I'm saying something very serious from my point of view. I think we're in a moment of madness where you cannot count on the establishment to be rational in its own terms.
SC: So there's two things here that need to be discussed. Are there people anywhere near where policy is made who share our concerns? We have in our own minor, maybe ineffectual way, tried to identify a handful of American politicians who share our views, and encourage them to do two things. To speak clearly and loudly, and to band together. It's too easy to pick 'em off -- look what happened to Tulsi Gabbard, whose foreign policy views are very good. And as soon as she utters them, NBC publishes a big attack on her on its website, accusing her of being the Kremlin puppet or something. So this is the new red-baiting, right? The Kremlin puppet. I've been called that, Katrina's been called that. Anybody who challenges what you and I are worried about is a Kremlin puppet. We've got to get past that. Dealing with Trump is a big problem, but it's an American political problem; I mean, it'll sort itself out depending on what the Democrats do or don't do. Learning to live with Putin, as you say, Bob, is really astonishing. Because Putin has not been an aggressive leader, he's been a reactive leader; he's constantly reacting. But let me give you one example, because I think all of us should think about it. Let's go to Syria.
So Putin said to Obama, I think it was around 2014, he said it to him diplomatically through the foreign ministers and personally when they met. He said, look, we have a choice now. Either Assad, the leader, official leader of Syria, will occupy Damascus, or the Islamic State will occupy Damascus. For Russia, and Damascus is kind of our backyard, there are 7,000 ISIS fighters carrying Russian passports. We're in this, whether we like it or not, and they've said when we kill the heathen in Syria, we're going to come home and kill the heathen in Russia. This is vital for us.
So he says to Obama, Putin says, join us. Join us in Syria. This is the citadel today of international terrorism. Let's fight together in Syria. And Obama is kind of back and forth on this, back and forth, and Obama pulls back. Whether he was thwarted in Washington, he was irresolute, or he didn't understand international affairs, or he just didn't like Russia. So that moment was lost. But that example Putin gave is a Russian way of thinking that we can't avoid. Who will occupy Damascus? The Islamic State, or Assad? I mean, it isn't going to be Hillary Clinton that's going to rule Damascus.
Real leaders make real choices in a real world, and the problem with the Washington policy elite is they urge on us choices in a world they've imagined that doesn't exist, with choices that do not exist. So to me, this is the most troubling part. The Russians have become, under Putin, I guess what you'd call the realist international thinkers. And they see so much opportunity for American-Russian cooperation. And we have become intensely ideological -- Trump's made it worse, but before Trump -- and unable to think about Russia the way we did the Soviet Union. When communists -- people who called themselves communists, they weren't much of communists -- but it was understood that this was a great power with nuclear weapons, and that if we were going to be safe, we were going to have to have rules of the game, and this meant negotiations and summits. And we didn't call it treason. I think at the moment that the real problem with the dangers of the new Cold War -- and the book argues why it's so much [more] dangerous than the one we survived -- that not all, but most of the basic problems are in Washington, not in Moscow. Because we still have, I think -- Putin wanted this for 15 years, I'm not sure he believes it's possible today -- we had an eager and willing partner for a new de'tente in Moscow. And he was rebuffed repeatedly, and no leader can be wrong for too many years and retain his position. So Putin has to watch his back, too.
RS: Bouncing off what you just said, whether we're liberals or conservatives or whatever, we have an obligation as intellectuals, as journalists -- I am supposed to be objective about Trump. That's what I'm supposed to do. I am supposed to struggle. So we do have our views of history, our views of what's important, and so forth. So the real question with Trump right now is this -- and he is a polarizing figure, and he's you know, boorish.
KVH: Deeply, deeply, yeah.
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