We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus

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Radio. Well, welcome. This
is the Bill Martina Show. Great to

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have you with the sharing a part
of your day. For more information on

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the show, check it out Bill
Martinashow dot com. We're gonna have Sean

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Mirsky app in just a moment to
talk about his new book, We May

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Dominate the World, Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus.

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In his debut book that I just
mentioned, Sean Miersky, the lawyer

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and US foreign policy scholar who has
worked on national security issues across multiple US

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presidential administrations, examines a lost chapter
of American foreign policies. And this is

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going This is incredibly interesting, and
I think you're going to sense the light

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bulbs going on as you listen to
what Sean has to share with us,

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specifically the period from the Civil War
to the end of World War Two in

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Latin and South America that illustrates how
the US went from a regional hegemony to

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a global superpower. Sean Mirsky,
welcome to show. Good to have you

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with us well, Sean, why
this book? In one word, China,

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it's a truism of international relations that
rising powers tend to be aggressive and

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expansionists, by which I mean that
they tend to pick fights there with other

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great powers, they tend to bully
their neighbors, and then they tend to

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dominate greater and greater slices of the
world. And I think China's bearing that

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out, but there's still a very
long runway. And so one of the

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questions that I had in my head
was why is it that rising powers act

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this way? And by understanding why
they act this way, is there any

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way that we can help divert China
into a more peaceful path. And so

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I thought it would be interesting to
look at the example of the United States,

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whose rise, of course was I
think astronomical, but at the same

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time was not quite as consistent with
American values as we might like to think.

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And so that's ultimately where this book
came from. So you might say,

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in the early days, as America
was spreading from east to west,

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that we were a bit of a
bully. You could definitely say that.

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I mean, certainly at the objective
level are foreign policy is filled to the

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brim with interventions, annexations, wars, and all of it I think ends

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up being much more aggressive and offensive
than I think most Americans would appreciate.

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And the heart of my book focuses
on this period from eighteen ninety eight to

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nineteen eighteen where we just really went
on a rampage to our region. We're

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using force against our neighbor as an
average of nearly three times a year,

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and in many circumstances. These are
stories that I think the average American and

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certainly I didn't know prior to kind
of looking into these things, but it's

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an important part of our history.
Well, and what you point out is

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what academia has been pointing out to
the kids in school, and this is

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given rise to a bit of this
anti American sentiment. Has it not well?

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Certainly the US record as I said, is not exactly consistent, I

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think, with the best view of
that Americans often hold of themselves. But

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at the same time, it is
part of our history, and I think

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it's an important part of our history
that needs to be understood in order to

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under stand both how to conduct our
foreign policy today and also how to deal

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with foreign policy challenges like China.
And one of the points that I make

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in the book is that even though
our foreign policy record was quite aggressive,

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it wasn't quite the story that I
think is often taught in universities today.

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Those stories tend to emphasize economic greed, that the US was going abroad essentially

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at the behest of banana companies in
Wall Street banks, and I make the

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case that that's just really not true, that the United States was ultimately acting

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out of defensive motivations, even if
it acted quite aggressively. Right well,

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And I think the opportunity here,
Sean in your book goes a long way,

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and helping us get on that trajectory
is to find that balance to where

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it's not necessarily all that the academia
is presenting in the classroom today, that

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there is some good to be taken
out of all this, and I think

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it's also an opportunity for America to
kind of have a sobering perspective on how

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we got to where we are right
now, because you know, you and

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I talked about this before. You
know, I talked to people in other

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countries, and the way they perceive
America, as you pointed out earlier,

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different than how we think America is. You know, we're the country when

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there is a national disaster in anywhere
in the world, we head on over

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there, we go into danger,
we provide services to help people out.

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But it seems that it's a bit
confusing for them because what they see is

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sometimes, you know, something that
seems to be a little bit more imperialistic.

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Absolutely, and part of the problem, I think is that Americans don't

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know this period of history very well. And so, for instance, most

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viewers or listeners might not know that
we occupied the Dominican Republic for eight years

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from nineteen sixteen nineteen twenty four,
or Haiti from nineteen fifteen nineteen thirty four.

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And at the end of the day
we might have forgotten, but the

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Haitians certainly haven't, and the Dominic
concern we haven't. And so there is

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still a legacy of these interventions today
that I think does color American foreign policy.

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But one of the other points that
I think is just worth making is

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many conventional accounts of our behavior during
this period tend to stress really malign motives.

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And I think the point that my
book tries to make is that American

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values didn't disappear from the picture.
It's not like the people in charge didn't

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care about sovereignty or classical liberal value. It's just that, for various reasons,

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simply having good intentions oftentimes is not
enough to prevent really tragic outcomes,

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right, yeah, exactly, Well, no doubt that that has been the

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case at times. But you know
what I'd like to, you know,

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see more and you kind of suggest
this in your book, Sean, and

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that is, you know, some
acknowledgement that look at nobody's perfect here,

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this was our intent. We may
have made some mistakes, or we did

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make some mistakes, not even may
make some mistakes, and you know,

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let's let's learn from that. It's
kind of like the issue of the current

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issue, or the most recent one, was how we got out of Afghanistan.

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I don't think we're fully transparent,
and I think what we've done,

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you know, kind of like you
said, whether it's Haiti or the Dominican

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Republic. You know, we came, we went, we left a mess,

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and you know, and I can't
help but feel for the people of

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Afghanistan who enjoyed some freedoms and liberties
like they hadn't before for twenty years,

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and then suddenly the carpet was pulled
out from underneath them. Yeah, And

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the parallels between our interventions in Afghanistan
and Iraq and the interventions that I talk

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about in the book are really quite
remarkable, because I think in both cases

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much of what we are trying to
do was essentially to nation build, to

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go in to set up political,
economic, and social institutions that would set

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up a peaceful, stable political order
for the people in those countries. And

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in doing so, I think our
motives weren't necessarily selfless. There were security

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reasons that we want to do that, but at the same time, we

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genuinely believed that what we were doing
would be helpful not only to ourselves but

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also to the people of the nations
we are intervening in. Unfortunately, again,

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good intentions don't always translate into successful
outcomes, and I think some of

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the same mistakes that we saw in
Iraq and Afghanistan can really actually be traced

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back to the interventions in the nineteen
odds in the nineteen tens, where again

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we went in with good intentions,
but we didn't really understand the local political

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culture. We didn't really understand how
forcible stabilization oftentimes has negative consequences and perverse

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incentives and sets up all sorts of
mechanisms and dynamics that can really lead to

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trouble down the road. And it
seems like a lesson that we have to

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keep relearning as a nation, from
Vietnam and Korea all the way down to

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as I said, Afghanistan and Iraq, and we need to slow down here

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a bit. And I think you
touched on something that's so key in all

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this, and I hope our viewers
are catching this, and that is we

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didn't fully understand. I mean,
you go into the Middle East and you've

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got thousands of years of tradition and
history, and we come in with our

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Western idea thinking we're all that and
a bag of chips, and we end

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up turning the tables upside down and
confuse the holy what have you out of

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the people that you know, they're
trying to figure out. All they want

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to do is, like everybody else, you know, find some peace to

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where they can provide for their families, educate their children, and life goes

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on. And then we come in
and think, oh, we're all that

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we've got these great Western ideas that
are so innovative and everything, and they're

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going, well, that's fine for
you, but that isn't necessarily important.

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No, but you're gonna do that. You're gonna love it, right,

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Yeah, Well, in a'sig difficult. Part of the problem was that I

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think there was a real reluctance among
American statesmen to get involved, and so

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there was a real search for kind
of silver bullet solutions. They're like,

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if you just tweak this one thing, if you just make this one reform,

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then somehow this is going to solve
all of these very deep seated problems

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in the nations we are intervening it. And so, just to give you

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one example, one of the solutions
that we thought was would just sort of

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solve everything was taking control of the
custom houses of the nations we are intervening

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in. And just by way of
background, at in this time, period,

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many of our neighbors, especially in
the Caribbean, almost all of their

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domestic income came from taxes on customs. There was no income tax, there

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was nothing like that. And so
if you look at Haitiur Dominican finances,

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nearly all of it was coming from
taxing custom from taxing trade in the form

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of customs. And that meant that
if you could seize the custom houses,

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the actual taxing authorities in a given
port, you would essentially gain control over

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the entire stream of revenue for our
government. And our perspective was, look,

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we'll just go into these nations,
will essentially seize these custom houses,

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sometimes with their consent, sometimes not, and by doing so, we can

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basically make sure that their customs are
run in a non corrupt way, we

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can make sure the money goes where
it needs to, and most importantly,

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we can protect those customs from ubles
and revolutionaries. And so the idea was,

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as long as you have Americans administering
the customs, then everything would be

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fine, and revolutions in civil war
would fade away, and these nations would

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go into this unprecedented about of prosperity. Not exactly the way it happened,

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and for a lot of different reasons, but at least one of them was

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that a lot of these nations didn't
really appreciate having their customs taken over by

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American officials, much in the same
way that we wouldn't really appreciate it if

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the irs was taken over by China. And so, you know, it

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exemplifies I think the part of what
you're talking about, which is this sense

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that, well, we can fix
these things just by applying sort of American

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ingenuity and values, and unfortunately it
just didn't turn out that way. Yeah,

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the culture is so important, no
doubt we're talking Sean Mirsky's book We

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May Dominate the World Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of American Colossus.

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You have so many stories in your
book here, Sean, and I just

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you know, I want to hear
more of the examples, these clear examples

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of where you know, you know, I want to say that our arrogance

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got in the way and maybe we
could have been, you know, better

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global partners at the end of the
day. That was my takeaway that I

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got from your book is that we
we could be even now, it's not

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all tell in a handbasket. I
think that some of this is retrievable to

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where we could, uh, you
know, God willing be able to be

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you know, better neighbors, better
partners than have better allies if we come

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alongside them in a more holistic and
constructive manner. Yeah, and in many

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ways, in a way that doesn't
involve us directly governing these places. I

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mean, I'll get an example in
Haiti, for instance, in nineteen fifteen,

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the president of Haiti was assassinated quite
brutally. He was essentially dragged out

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of the French legation where he had
been hiding and he was torn apart by

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a mob on the streets of Porto
Prolence. And this wasn't unprecedented in Haitian

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history. In fact, in the
last seven years the country had turned through

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seven presidents. I mean, it
was just one president after another was knocked

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out of office or assassinated. And
when you love that job, hey,

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you know I've been elected to be
president. No, I like living.

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I'm gonna pass. As I said, the presidency of Haiti was an act

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actuarial nightmare for that reason, but
for our from our perspective, this really

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was sort of the final straw because
the violation of the French legation led American

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policymakers to conclude that it would be
very, very difficult for European European nations

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not to land forces if we didn't, and so it was a sort of

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preemptive measure. We ended up landing
forces, and one thing led to another.

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In our initial landing of forces in
the capital led to the occupation of

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the full country. And as I
said, this was never intended to sort

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of be this long run occupation.
In fact, there was never really any

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sort of clear plan at all.
But once we got in, it was

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very easy to let things sort of
drag on and on and on. It

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was only in the late nineteen twenties
and early thirties where there were some significant

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human rights atrocities that led to this
global outcry that the United States finally left.

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And in a lot of ways,
it's hard not to draw the parallel

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to Afghanistan, where again we went
in in two thousand and one. We

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initially stayed in the capitol. There
wasn't this full scale occupation, but over

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time we decided that to achieve our
objectives we needed to occupy the entire country

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and government in its place, And
then twenty years later we left and the

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whole thing fall apart and again Haiti. As we know from Haiti's political situation

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today, something very similar happened in
Haiti. Yeah. Sadly, as you

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were putting this book and doing all
the research for it, Sean, how

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much of your initial idea changed,
you know, as I got to imagine

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with all these stories and the revealing
of history. I mean, maybe your

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initial theory on this book had a
certain formation, and then all of a

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sudden this started growing in inertia and
you end up with a you know,

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a deeper story. Yeah, so
the story definitely, the story changed,

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the theory changed. I mean,
at the end of the day, being

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a good historian means when you're confronted
with new evidence, you don't try and

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warp it into an interesting theory.
Instead, you just look at it and

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if it changed, and your theory
has to change, not the evidence,

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right. But it was funny because, unlike most issues that I explore,

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I really went into this with no
preconceived notions, in part because I knew

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almost nothing about it, and so
I was very much a blank slate.

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And I remember reading some of the
initial primary source documents and sort of being

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struck by how much there was a
preemptive, defensive security kind of undertone too

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much of what the United States was
doing, this desire to keep European nations

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out of the Western hemisphere. And
the thing that I started to see the

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more and more I read and the
more and more I started looking in the

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archives, was that this was a
theme that just ran throughout American foreign policy.

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And there were so many exceptions there, interventions that didn't really involve that,

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and in many cases interventions had other
motivations. There's no clean kind of

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story to be told here, necessarily, but there was enough there that as

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I started to go through it,
I realized that there really was an underlying

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theme that that was relevant and frankly
relevant not just to our experience, but

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to the experience of rising powers everywhere
exactly. You know, right off the

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top, you address weakness offers temptation, and this has been a recurring theme

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that we've heard over the last couple
of years, is that, you know,

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America's weakness is emboldening those uh,
those new bullies on the block.

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So this is this has universality,
you know, context doesn't it absolutely,

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And there's a little bit of an
inside joke in that title, because part

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of it is in fact the weakness
of the United States offering temptations. And

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the line weakness offers temptations comes from
diplomatic dispatch that was by Secretary William Seward

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during the Civil War, and he
was essentially saying that the weakness of the

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United States, which of course was
tearing itself apart, meant that it offered

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European nations an opportunity to intervene in
the New World. And they absolutely did.

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Spain recolonize the Dominican Republic, France
invaded and occupied all of Mexico,

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which is something I think a lot
of Americans don't appreciate about, you know,

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the world during the Civil War,
and all of this was directly driven

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by American weakness. At the same
time, though, the weakness offers temptations

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was not just the weakness of the
United States of a strong power, but

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also the weakness of the United States
as neighbors. It was the Dominican Republic's

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chronic in stability in civil war and
revolution and Mexico's chronic civil war and revolution

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that offered European nations and entry point
into their affairs, and so one of

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the key lessons that came out of
the Civil War for American statesman was not

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only should the United States not be
weak, but we need to make sure

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that all of our neighbors are strong
stable as well, because that's the only

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way that they can keep out our
European rivals. And I think also during

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the Civil War, I mean,
Abraham Lincoln realized the power of unity and

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what he had to do in order, you know, to hold this democratic

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republic together. I mean, he
sacrificed his own life for the sake of

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unity. And I know we hear
this time and again, but you know,

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it's built into our into our name, the United States of America.

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And when we become disunited, you
know, which you could argue that we

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are today, this is very dangerous. It leaves as quite vulnerable, doesn't

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it. Absolutely. One of the
fun factoids of American history is that before

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the Civil War, the United States
was often a plural now, which is

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to say that someone would say that
the United States are a thriving democracy,

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And it was only after the Civil
War that it started to become a singular

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now in the United States is a
thriving democracy. And part of that was

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because as there was this understanding that
the United States had to stay united in

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order to effectively meet the threats that
was facing outside of its borders. Certainly,

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if the Confederacy had prevailed during the
Civil War, the entire course of

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world history would have been quite different. There's just no chance that the United

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States would have ended up being the
same kind of global superpower that it is

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today. Yeah, without a doubt. We're talking with Sean Mirsky his new

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book We May Dominate the World Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the

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American Colossus. Interesting. You know, the pattern that's laid out here,

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Sean is typical of all bully nations, isn't it in a sense? Yeah?

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Right, rise. I mean,
all great powers tend to meddle in

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the affairs of their neighbors. It's
almost inevitable that if you have enough power,

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you're going to do it. But
rising powers in particular really tend to

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exhibify, to exhibit and exemplify this
behavior. And part of the reason I

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wrote the book was to try to
figure out why that was the case.

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And I make the argument, at
least in the book that part of it

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really is this sort of preemptive desire
to pre empt one's rivals from consolidating their

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influence in your neighborhood, and so
in the case of the United States,

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so much of our policy was driven
by the Monroe Doctrine, which listeners might

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remember from their US history classes in
high school, was this declaration in eighteen

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twenty three that the European nations are
going to stay on their side of the

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ocean. We're going to stay on
ours, and there's going to be a

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big keep outside in the middle of
the Atlantic Ocean that prevents Europe from coming

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and recolonizing any part of the hemisphere. And for many decades we didn't take

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that very seriously, but after the
Civil War it became the guiding star of

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American policy. It was literally the
most important thing for our grand strategy right

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up until the start of the Cold
War, and really it ended up coloring

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almost everything that we did. Well
Sean summer suggesting we need to review and

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reform the Monroe doctrine in the context
of today's emerging threats like China. Absolutely

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one of those people is me.
I wrote a op ed in the wash

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Yeah, I wrote an op ed
in the Washington Post making the case for

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a revised mon or doctrine, in
large part because since the end of the

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Cold War, we for many decades
didn't have to have or didn't have a

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reason to be worried about the expansion
of foreign rival influence into the Western Hemisphere.

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But that's unfortunately starting to change.
China's really expanding its influence in the

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hemisphere. And part of that is
just commerce. China's trading more with our

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neighbors, and of course that's to
be expected and even welcomed. Unfortunately,

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a large part of Chinese expansion is
much more political, strategic, and even

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military in nature. A month or
two ago, The Wall Street Journal reported

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that China has established four different listening
stations in Cuba, essentially despy on American

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traffic in the Gulf. And there's
talk as well of setting up a joint

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training facility between the Chinese and the
Cubans that would see Chinese true stationed on

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Cuban soil. And it's these sort
of entry points that I think are should

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be concerning to Americans because one of
our greatest advantages as a superpower is the

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fact that we don't have other great
powers at our doorsteps that we're able to

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go around the world and do essentially
as we please, while other nations have

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to worry about what's happening in their
immediate neighborhood. And so that's something I

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think we do need to focus on. But our southern border is wide open,

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and we already have reports Sean that
the Chinese are staging fighting men age

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Chinese insurgents who are already coming through
our southern border. They're paying off the

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cartel to er. We don't know
what kind of numbers that is, but

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it seems like it is a growing
concern. Well, not for my orchis

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in the Biden administration. They don't
need to be paying attention, but you

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know, for those of us that
see this emerging threat, because China has

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made it clear they want to be
the number one dominant force in the world.

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End a story. Yeah, well, and one of the I can't

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speak to those particular reports. I
will say that one of the things that

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seems to be going through China's head
is China doesn't like the fact that We've

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got military troops stationed all around its
borders. It doesn't like our involvement in

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Taiwan, and so I think in
some ways China's just mirroring our behavior and

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trying to set up shop in the
Western Hemisphere as a way of sending us

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a message that hey, if you
do this, we can do this as

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well. And so there definitely is
this sort of global contest for supremacy that

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is starting to develop well in much
the same way like what happened in Ukraine

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with Russia. You know, America
has allowed China to expand and claim sovereignty

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in the South China Sea, which
is increasing, you know, increasingly problematic

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here, you know. And it's
like that old saying you can pay me

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now or pay me later. The
idea of paying now it's less expensive and

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less complicated. Later it gets more
complicated in much the same way as we

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saw Russian troops mounting along the border
of Ukraine. You know, they weren't

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coming out there just for a bivouac
and an overnight stay. They were set

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up definitely for a military operation,
absolutely, I mean. And part of

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the parallel again to the United States's
rise, it's just really hard to miss.

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We used to say during this period
that the United States was turning the

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Caribbean into its own Mediterranean, and
the way that the Great Britain, the

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pre eminent navy of the time had
turned the Mediterranean into its own lake,

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and so we turned the Caribbean into
our own lake. But now you can

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actually see the Chinese talking about turning
the South China see into their own Caribbean.

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There's this direct sort of parallel where
they're looking at what we did and

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saying, you know what, if
this worked for the United States, this

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should work for us as well.
And so you absolutely see that expansion of

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Chinese influence in the South China see
everything from the Nine dash Lines. I

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think reports that came out this morning
and last night that the Chinese are yet

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again building an airstrip on one of
the contested islands in the South China see.

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And so again it's not that dissimilar
from the way in which we built

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naval bases throughout the Caribbean as we
are rising, yeah, and so here

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they are. I mean, we
see it as a threat, you hear,

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you know, our elected officials in
our government, you know, citing

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it as a threat, but they
don't do anything about it, Sean,

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Yeah, I mean, and part
of it is that there's a genuinely it's

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genuinely difficult to know what to do
in a sense. I mean, it

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doesn't obviously make sense to go to
war over you know, the construction of

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an airstrip in the South China see. But at the same time, this

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is part of china strategy. It's
a salami slicing strategy where bit by bit

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they do things that individually don't don't
amount to cause this belly but at the

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end of the day can leave the
United States in a much more perilous strategic

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situation. I am. I will
say that I'm greatly disheartened by the polarization

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in this country, but it has
cheered me a little bit over the last

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couple of years to see how much
there is developing a consensus around China and

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the need to do more about China. And certainly there's criticism I think that

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00:26:07.480 --> 00:26:11.519
can be leveled of both the Trump
had Biden administration policies. But and I

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would also argue the consensus is not
moving fast enough and far enough. But

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at least we're trending in the right
direction. I think we are waking up

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to the fact that for several decades
we have been in a competition with China,

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and China has been competing and we
just haven't and in fact we've been

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we've been helping them in significant ways. Yeah, I would agree with the

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00:26:29.920 --> 00:26:33.000
one hundred percent on that, Sean, because the thing is is, I've

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often said that experience defines preference.
We had a lot of experience in the

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last couple of decades with China,
and we're seeing that when they say something,

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they mean it and nothing's going to
stop them, whether it's their confucious

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institutes that they've set up, what
over forty in the universities here in the

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United States, you know, an
outpost on Cuba, what six seven police

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stations. Capturing are elected officials,
the capturing of princelings, as Miranda Divine

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00:27:06.359 --> 00:27:11.319
calls them, which are the relatives
like the Hunter Biden, the sons and

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daughters of elected officials, because you
know, I believe it or not.

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I mean, some of these politicians
still have a little bit of a conscience

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and they want to not be so
overt about taking you direct bribes. But

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it's okay if their children are ingratiated. Somehow they feel like that's an end

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around and acceptable when we know darn
well it's not. Yeah. Well,

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and I as a parenthetical, it's
it's remarkable how long this practice has been

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going on. I mean even during
the nineteen twenties nineteen thirties, you saw

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American banks at the time hiring the
sons of dictators in the Caribbean to curry

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00:27:45.839 --> 00:27:49.359
favor and get loans and things like
that. So it really is remarkable how

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much sometimes the interests of the business
community don't necessarily align with American security imperatives.

383
00:27:56.400 --> 00:27:59.720
Well, like you say, there's
nothing new under the sun, and

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00:28:00.160 --> 00:28:03.920
it doesn't take a genius to figure
out when you get elected officials who come

385
00:28:03.960 --> 00:28:08.640
in and you know, they might
be pretty well heeled financially, and somehow

386
00:28:08.880 --> 00:28:12.599
when they leave office, you know, there are a hundred times more wealthy

387
00:28:14.079 --> 00:28:17.440
on a you know, in today's
standards, maybe one hundred and seventy undred

388
00:28:17.519 --> 00:28:21.480
eighty thousand dollars a year. How
do you make these mega millions of dollars?

389
00:28:21.519 --> 00:28:23.559
I mean, you got your own, you know, private loto campaign

390
00:28:23.599 --> 00:28:26.559
that's happening in the back room there
in the Senator or in the House.

391
00:28:27.079 --> 00:28:30.480
Yeah. Well, and part of
the problem, obviously too, is the

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00:28:30.200 --> 00:28:34.279
Congress's failure to pass some of some
restrictions on its own ability to trade in

393
00:28:34.319 --> 00:28:37.079
stocks and things like that. But
at the end of the day, you

394
00:28:37.079 --> 00:28:40.160
know, we have I think a
long way to go and reform, but

395
00:28:41.319 --> 00:28:45.720
I will say that the situation has
vastly improved over time. If you look

396
00:28:45.759 --> 00:28:48.279
back at American history in the eighteen
seventies and the eighteen eighties, the amount

397
00:28:48.319 --> 00:28:52.920
of cleptocracy was just absolutely astronomical.
But in part because people like you and

398
00:28:53.160 --> 00:28:57.680
people throughout the country are raising these
concerns and putting pressure on elected officials,

399
00:28:57.720 --> 00:29:02.279
it does make a difference. It
ultimately does make a difference and helps lead

400
00:29:02.279 --> 00:29:06.359
to the sort of reforms that that
aligne elected officials interests with our own.

401
00:29:06.680 --> 00:29:08.559
Well, Sean Mirska, they took
a little pause there for a while a

402
00:29:08.599 --> 00:29:14.119
couple of years ago when it came
out, and even Nancy Pelosi had said,

403
00:29:14.200 --> 00:29:15.960
you know, hey, look we
got to back off on this.

404
00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:18.079
We're we're being a little too obvious. Uh, you know, but they

405
00:29:18.440 --> 00:29:22.400
just paused for a moment, gave
a show to everybody, and then its

406
00:29:22.440 --> 00:29:29.319
business as usual. But unfortunately it
does oftentimes seem to be two steps forward

407
00:29:29.359 --> 00:29:32.519
and one and a half steps back. So right, it's a slow process.

408
00:29:32.920 --> 00:29:36.680
Well, it's our humanity. We
just cannot we cannot help ourselves.

409
00:29:36.759 --> 00:29:40.200
You know, it's not like we
expect everybody to be perfect, but you

410
00:29:40.240 --> 00:29:44.000
know, we are striving in the
spirit of our constitution, you know,

411
00:29:44.079 --> 00:29:48.759
to come to this, you know, to arrive at this most perfect state,

412
00:29:48.799 --> 00:29:52.640
which is you know, it is
a procedure and a process, but

413
00:29:52.680 --> 00:29:57.279
you just can't abandon it altogether without
having some sort of measurement and saying,

414
00:29:57.319 --> 00:30:03.680
well, how are we doing relative
to our constitution and our declaration on behalf

415
00:30:03.680 --> 00:30:07.480
of we the people? Exactly?
And I think that actually, you put

416
00:30:07.480 --> 00:30:10.480
your finger on something that's sort of
important, I think to understand about the

417
00:30:11.119 --> 00:30:14.599
broader competition that we have with China, which is that we are very much

418
00:30:14.640 --> 00:30:18.440
as a nation imperfect. As my
book talks about. We have made many

419
00:30:18.519 --> 00:30:22.440
mistakes in the past, we will
make many mistakes in the future. Even

420
00:30:22.519 --> 00:30:26.720
internally, we're still improving, you
know, we're reforming ourselves and always trying

421
00:30:26.720 --> 00:30:32.240
to be a more perfect union.
But none of that process, none of

422
00:30:32.240 --> 00:30:36.559
that imperfection, I think means that
the United States should fall into this trap

423
00:30:36.680 --> 00:30:40.680
of what about ism or essentially saying, well, for example, you know,

424
00:30:40.759 --> 00:30:44.200
the United For Chinese officials, it's
easy to say, well, the

425
00:30:44.279 --> 00:30:47.720
United States did many of the same
things we're doing now one hundred years ago.

426
00:30:48.039 --> 00:30:49.880
Where does the US get off telling
us not to do it now when

427
00:30:49.880 --> 00:30:52.160
they did it, you know,
a century ago. And I think it's

428
00:30:52.200 --> 00:30:56.680
important to sort of not fall into
that trap and to sort of understand that

429
00:30:56.799 --> 00:31:00.519
simply because we make mistakes doesn't mean
we should endorse the mistakes of others.

430
00:31:00.039 --> 00:31:04.319
Just because you know, we engaged
in a practice doesn't mean that that's something

431
00:31:04.359 --> 00:31:07.839
that we should support today, especially
when it goes against our interests. And

432
00:31:08.440 --> 00:31:12.000
frankly, we're the difference between a
world that's dominated by the United States and

433
00:31:12.000 --> 00:31:15.880
the world that's dominated by China is
It's not a difference that's going to be

434
00:31:17.119 --> 00:31:19.359
good for most people in the world. And so I do think it is

435
00:31:19.359 --> 00:31:25.279
important for kind of the the American
exceptionalism that it really truly is part of

436
00:31:25.319 --> 00:31:29.759
American foreign policy to sort of continue
being being an important part of our policy.

437
00:31:29.880 --> 00:31:32.279
Well, to your point, it's
not so tyrannical, and what's wrong

438
00:31:32.319 --> 00:31:34.880
with saying, hey, look at
we did this, we bought the T

439
00:31:36.039 --> 00:31:40.559
shirt. It is not all good
news. This is what we experienced and

440
00:31:40.599 --> 00:31:45.759
we want to save you from having
the same complicated problem. So our experience

441
00:31:47.079 --> 00:31:51.559
and do a better job at it, because if we're consulting one another,

442
00:31:52.440 --> 00:31:56.200
you know, in the spirit of
unity and good, you know, good

443
00:31:56.240 --> 00:32:00.279
for all men. I think that's
a positive thing. Are we having those

444
00:32:00.359 --> 00:32:02.720
kind of discussion, Shun, We
are, but I think, you know,

445
00:32:02.759 --> 00:32:07.880
there's always room for more of those
discussions to be had, I mean.

446
00:32:07.920 --> 00:32:10.319
And one of the interesting things that
you see is that China very much

447
00:32:10.359 --> 00:32:15.720
does look at the example of American
policy, both present and past, to

448
00:32:15.759 --> 00:32:20.799
decide what policies it's going to undertake. And so, for instance, it

449
00:32:20.880 --> 00:32:23.039
is very much learned, at least
in the short term, from our mistakes

450
00:32:23.039 --> 00:32:27.759
in the Middle East. It has
looked at how long those interventions lasted,

451
00:32:27.799 --> 00:32:30.680
how much they cost us in blood
and treasure, and it has said,

452
00:32:30.759 --> 00:32:32.559
no, thanks, we are not
going to get involved in the same way.

453
00:32:32.880 --> 00:32:37.039
And from an American strategic perspective,
that might not be the best thing.

454
00:32:37.079 --> 00:32:38.480
In some ways, it would be
good for the Chinese to find their

455
00:32:38.480 --> 00:32:43.839
own Afghanistan, but certainly from the
perspective of kind of their neighbors and the

456
00:32:43.880 --> 00:32:45.880
rest of the world, I think
it's a positive development that the Chinese have

457
00:32:46.000 --> 00:32:51.200
sort of understood that this kind of
forcible intervention from the outside can oftentimes lead

458
00:32:51.240 --> 00:32:54.000
to quagmires that there really are not
in the benefit of any nation involved.

459
00:32:54.920 --> 00:32:59.599
We'll see whether China kind of continues
to understand that. Lesson, there are

460
00:32:59.720 --> 00:33:02.319
war signs that it might not.
But that is at least I think one

461
00:33:02.640 --> 00:33:06.720
one positive thing to come out of
our experience. Well, but Sean,

462
00:33:07.079 --> 00:33:09.400
I think that the American people in
the world could be encouraged a little bit

463
00:33:09.440 --> 00:33:15.039
because it's not like I mean,
I think sometimes our own imagination we create

464
00:33:15.200 --> 00:33:20.640
China into a bigger giant and reality
than what it is. I mean,

465
00:33:20.640 --> 00:33:25.000
they've got serious problems within their within
their boundaries, and as you mentioned before,

466
00:33:25.319 --> 00:33:29.839
I mean, they have some moral
deficiencies that you know, based on

467
00:33:29.880 --> 00:33:34.240
their construct that that's not going to
be answered. I mean, it's impossible

468
00:33:34.279 --> 00:33:37.480
for them, uh, you know, to reach the kind of heights that

469
00:33:37.559 --> 00:33:43.480
they want to reach, you know, just on sheer strength and oppression and

470
00:33:43.599 --> 00:33:47.160
power and tyranny. Uh. You
know, even our founding fathers realize that.

471
00:33:47.559 --> 00:33:52.079
And uh, you know, this
is why they, in my humble

472
00:33:52.119 --> 00:33:55.599
opinion, why they constructed the US
Constitution, and God gave them, you

473
00:33:55.640 --> 00:34:00.440
know, guidance in which to do
that to realize that you don't have a

474
00:34:00.480 --> 00:34:04.799
police force big enough to manage you
know, even you know, with our

475
00:34:04.839 --> 00:34:07.119
population in three hundred and forty million
people, I mean, you know,

476
00:34:07.159 --> 00:34:13.320
the communist Chinese we're talking you know
what over you know, over a billion

477
00:34:13.360 --> 00:34:16.719
people population wise, how can they
manage all that? There's not enough force

478
00:34:16.920 --> 00:34:21.679
in which to do that. I
think that's right, I mean, and

479
00:34:21.760 --> 00:34:24.400
I think in the long term the
Chinese Communist Party is very much headed for

480
00:34:24.400 --> 00:34:30.199
a fall because it really is difficult
to imagine that they can sustain this forever,

481
00:34:30.599 --> 00:34:35.800
and particularly when so much of the
sort of implicit political bargain that they've

482
00:34:35.840 --> 00:34:38.199
made with their people is really starting
to fray at the edges. I mean,

483
00:34:38.280 --> 00:34:45.639
for decades the Chinese have essentially,
the Chinese leaders have essentially promised economic

484
00:34:45.679 --> 00:34:51.360
growth and prosperity and exchanged for continued
communist rule. And as we all know,

485
00:34:51.440 --> 00:34:52.920
the Chinese economy is really starting to
slow at this point, and there

486
00:34:52.960 --> 00:34:58.719
are cracks starting to show that might
suggest China's even headed for recession, which

487
00:34:58.760 --> 00:35:02.719
is a sort of remarkable down from
the rates of oftentimes ten percent GDP growth

488
00:35:02.719 --> 00:35:07.960
that you saw in the past.
And as that implicit bargain falls apart.

489
00:35:07.960 --> 00:35:10.079
I mean, the Communist Party is
really looking for alternatives. One of the

490
00:35:10.119 --> 00:35:16.000
worrisome ones is nationalism, where the
Chinese leaders are really starting to stoke Chinese

491
00:35:16.079 --> 00:35:22.079
nationalism as a way of essentially justifying
their own continued rule. But the logical

492
00:35:22.199 --> 00:35:25.280
endpoint here is that if you're the
Communist Party and you're saying, well,

493
00:35:25.320 --> 00:35:29.960
Taiwan is part of China, all
you know, saw China see is our

494
00:35:30.320 --> 00:35:35.880
exclusive you know province, Eventually you're
going to get into a situation where the

495
00:35:35.960 --> 00:35:39.719
Chinese leaders feel that for domestic reasons, they might need to launch military interventions

496
00:35:39.719 --> 00:35:45.119
abroad. And so the situation in
a lot of ways, China's slow down

497
00:35:45.280 --> 00:35:50.639
is good from the perspective of a
long term competition between US and the Chinese,

498
00:35:50.960 --> 00:35:54.000
but it's also worrisome because it can
lead to incentives to use force that

499
00:35:54.079 --> 00:35:59.039
might set up a bigger conflict.
Yeah, when they get desperate, that

500
00:35:59.280 --> 00:36:04.320
creates all lines of you know,
dominoes to fall. We're talking with Sean

501
00:36:04.360 --> 00:36:08.400
Mirsky's book We May Dominate the World, Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise

502
00:36:08.800 --> 00:36:15.360
of the American Colossus. Sean,
the thing you know, as you were

503
00:36:15.400 --> 00:36:19.559
talking, you know I'm thinking,
Wow, New York is has a lot

504
00:36:19.679 --> 00:36:23.280
of empty apartments because a lot of
people have left New York, and you've

505
00:36:23.320 --> 00:36:29.320
got a lot of empty buildings there
in China as well. Maybe we can

506
00:36:29.360 --> 00:36:31.880
send some migrants over there, because
you know, I think New York is

507
00:36:31.920 --> 00:36:37.639
over, you know, over being
overwhelmed by the number of migrants, and

508
00:36:37.679 --> 00:36:40.039
they're realizing, you know, as
a sanctuary city that they you know,

509
00:36:40.199 --> 00:36:45.800
so designated themselves that they can't handle
what it is they wanted. I imagine

510
00:36:45.800 --> 00:36:52.400
the Chinese Communist Party would not be
thrilled with that idea. But perhaps But

511
00:36:52.480 --> 00:36:55.840
the other deal too is like what
we touched on early or Sean, I

512
00:36:55.840 --> 00:37:00.000
mean, you got more men.
I mean the ratio of men to women,

513
00:37:00.519 --> 00:37:05.440
I mean, there is no way. And you've got a lot of

514
00:37:05.519 --> 00:37:10.400
young men who are not married.
I mean, you're gonna throw them into

515
00:37:10.440 --> 00:37:17.519
a situation as we're seeing in other
countries where you know, unmarried young men

516
00:37:19.000 --> 00:37:25.639
who are not having a relationship with
a woman heterosexually. Can you know,

517
00:37:25.760 --> 00:37:30.559
can vote dangerous for its neighbors because
uh, you know, these aren't happy

518
00:37:30.599 --> 00:37:35.800
campers and they'll strike out just like
you suggested. Yeah, I mean that's

519
00:37:35.840 --> 00:37:39.480
one other kind of as you said, I think pressure on the Chinese to

520
00:37:39.519 --> 00:37:45.519
do something militarily. I mean,
it's not unprecedented history for nations that have

521
00:37:45.599 --> 00:37:51.679
in a sense of blood of young, unmarried men to engage in military expeditions

522
00:37:51.719 --> 00:37:55.480
that end up in fact somewhat morbidly
using those men up in the course of

523
00:37:55.920 --> 00:38:00.760
conflicts. And so that's definitely a
concern. Uh, definitely another thing to

524
00:38:00.800 --> 00:38:04.719
be concerned about. I think.
See that's the only thing. Then you

525
00:38:04.800 --> 00:38:08.360
then you start you know, channeling
your your John Lennon Yoko Ono. You

526
00:38:08.440 --> 00:38:12.280
make love not war. You just
send a bunch of women in the middle

527
00:38:12.320 --> 00:38:15.840
of all these uh fighting communists Chinese
and uh, you know, and they'll

528
00:38:15.920 --> 00:38:20.800
just feel better and maybe we can
get besa around here. I know,

529
00:38:21.039 --> 00:38:25.320
still surely I jest, but you
know, getting back to uh, you

530
00:38:25.360 --> 00:38:30.760
know the point here, and that
is that you know, China is emerging

531
00:38:30.159 --> 00:38:34.559
on all levels, as you mentioned, is not just here. Uh,

532
00:38:34.599 --> 00:38:37.360
you know, their Belt and Road
initiative. How they are you know,

533
00:38:37.480 --> 00:38:45.159
really setting things up not only near
but you know in other parts of the

534
00:38:45.199 --> 00:38:49.159
world. Yeah. Well, and
last time we spoke, I brought up,

535
00:38:49.239 --> 00:38:52.760
or you brought up the example of
dollar diplomacy, which was this policy

536
00:38:52.800 --> 00:38:57.480
that was followed by the United States
starting with really the Taft administration in nineteen

537
00:38:57.480 --> 00:39:00.719
o nine, and the idea essentially
was it was a policy with a lot

538
00:39:00.760 --> 00:39:06.599
of moving parts, but the essential
idea was that by exerting American financial control

539
00:39:06.679 --> 00:39:10.800
over the Western Hemisphere, we'd be
able to essentially squeeze Europe out. And

540
00:39:10.840 --> 00:39:15.199
so part of that was, as
I mentioned earlier, seizing these custom houses.

541
00:39:15.360 --> 00:39:21.519
Excuse me. Part of it,
though, was also refinancing loans in

542
00:39:21.519 --> 00:39:25.800
and around the region, European loans
through American banks, and so if Europe

543
00:39:25.800 --> 00:39:30.960
had taken out had loaned let's say
Nicaragua, a significant amount of money,

544
00:39:30.159 --> 00:39:35.239
the United States would go into Nicaragua
and essentially say, hey, here,

545
00:39:35.320 --> 00:39:37.679
let me introduce to JP Morgan.
JP Morgan is going to give you the

546
00:39:37.760 --> 00:39:40.880
money to pay back that loan in
full, and instead of owing the money

547
00:39:40.920 --> 00:39:45.480
to Europe, you'll owe the money
to the United States. And the idea

548
00:39:45.719 --> 00:39:50.119
was essentially to flush European influence out
of the region. In a lot of

549
00:39:50.119 --> 00:39:53.280
ways, it was actually quite successful
and China, China once again is taking

550
00:39:53.519 --> 00:39:58.000
a page out of the US playbook. You see that with br you see

551
00:39:58.000 --> 00:40:01.039
that with other initiatives that China is
pursuing, that there is this part of

552
00:40:01.039 --> 00:40:06.840
what they're trying to do as they're
trying to avoid having the US dollars sort

553
00:40:06.840 --> 00:40:10.960
of be uh well, to be
both the reserve currency, but also for

554
00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:15.519
these loans to be owed to American
banks, because they understand that loans can

555
00:40:15.519 --> 00:40:20.400
often be times oftentimes be used to
exert political leverage, and so more and

556
00:40:20.480 --> 00:40:22.639
more, I think part of what
you see with these Chinese loans is not

557
00:40:22.760 --> 00:40:27.400
just an interest in making money for
the Chinese state, although that's certainly part

558
00:40:27.400 --> 00:40:30.880
of it, but also a desire
to sort of push the United States out

559
00:40:30.920 --> 00:40:35.519
of its region and out of strategic
areas, and also to gain the Chinese

560
00:40:35.519 --> 00:40:37.079
state some of its own influence.
Well, Sean, you know, you

561
00:40:37.119 --> 00:40:42.480
talk about how the United States so
when took over their debt basically and you

562
00:40:42.519 --> 00:40:45.039
know, loan them money. We
loan money. If the truth be known,

563
00:40:45.519 --> 00:40:51.000
that's kind of maybe for some a
hidden secret. I think the communist

564
00:40:51.119 --> 00:40:55.519
Chinese olmous you know, trillions of
dollars that they have, you know,

565
00:40:55.559 --> 00:41:00.840
they've refused to pay back. They
did pay back England, but they didn't

566
00:41:00.880 --> 00:41:04.480
pay back the United States. And
that's just one of those things that are

567
00:41:04.519 --> 00:41:07.880
that's hanging out there, and I
think with compound interest. I'm not sure

568
00:41:07.880 --> 00:41:12.519
what that is amounted to, but
I know that it's you know, it's

569
00:41:12.559 --> 00:41:15.280
over a trillion dollars that they're in
debt, and they're claiming, well,

570
00:41:15.320 --> 00:41:21.960
that's the old management, we're new
management. But international law says there's no

571
00:41:22.039 --> 00:41:28.440
such thing as old and new management. That you carry the responsibility into the

572
00:41:28.480 --> 00:41:32.639
new management as well, right well, and one of the so that's generally

573
00:41:32.679 --> 00:41:37.840
speaking, that's correct as a as
a matter of international law. One of

574
00:41:37.880 --> 00:41:43.079
the I mean oddities of our competition
with the China right now is the degree

575
00:41:43.119 --> 00:41:47.320
of interdependence, not only financially but
also economically obviously, and so on the

576
00:41:47.320 --> 00:41:51.039
one hand, you know, China
owe the United States money. On the

577
00:41:51.039 --> 00:41:52.559
other hand, we owe China lots
of money. As you know, the

578
00:41:53.000 --> 00:41:59.360
Chinese have bought up US bonds.
I don't remember the exact statistics now,

579
00:41:59.400 --> 00:42:01.280
but at least for one point that
we're the you know, our nation's largest

580
00:42:01.280 --> 00:42:07.119
external creditor. I think I've heard
like thirty percent or something of the thirty

581
00:42:07.159 --> 00:42:10.199
two trillion that we're in debt something
like that, something might be just absolutely

582
00:42:10.320 --> 00:42:15.159
enormous, and and again it's sort
of one of the kind of oddities of

583
00:42:15.199 --> 00:42:19.679
the competition is trying to see how
it's going to unfold in this situation,

584
00:42:20.039 --> 00:42:22.000
because in the past and the Cold
War, for instance, we really didn't

585
00:42:22.039 --> 00:42:28.039
have this type of interdependence with Russia. The Soviet Union had its own block,

586
00:42:28.079 --> 00:42:31.960
We had our block. Economic relations
were largely within blocks, as opposed

587
00:42:31.960 --> 00:42:36.880
to across them. And so for
many years, I think the kind of

588
00:42:36.880 --> 00:42:40.920
prevailing theory of American foreign policy was
the more we integrate with China economically,

589
00:42:40.960 --> 00:42:46.039
the more we become interdependent, the
more peaceful things will become, because China

590
00:42:46.480 --> 00:42:51.960
won't want want to rock the boat
for sort of monetary reasons. And the

591
00:42:51.960 --> 00:42:55.480
more liberal China would become over time
liberal in a classical sense, it will

592
00:42:55.599 --> 00:43:00.440
would democracize, it would democratize,
that would be a middle class. But

593
00:43:00.480 --> 00:43:06.239
of course that particular theory I think
didn't work out, and I think that's

594
00:43:06.480 --> 00:43:09.760
that's what Richard Nixon at all,
poor Ryan Richard Nixon going forward, But

595
00:43:09.800 --> 00:43:14.760
certainly it was mostly I think this
theory really took off in the nineteen nineties

596
00:43:14.840 --> 00:43:19.639
under Bill Clinton, with China's accession
into the WTO, but it was a

597
00:43:19.679 --> 00:43:23.719
mistake frankly that was kind of perpetuated
by both the w. Bush administrations and

598
00:43:23.760 --> 00:43:29.199
the Obama administrations as well. And
you know, one of the things that

599
00:43:29.519 --> 00:43:32.519
history could have taught people who are
optimistic about this is that at the end

600
00:43:32.519 --> 00:43:36.840
of the day, security concerns are
always going to trump economic ones. And

601
00:43:37.480 --> 00:43:43.199
you might have significant parts of the
country that are invested financially in China's continued

602
00:43:43.239 --> 00:43:46.239
growth and continued success and vice versa, but it's just never going to be

603
00:43:46.320 --> 00:43:50.760
enough to really kind of overcome national
security concerns. And so I think that's

604
00:43:50.800 --> 00:43:54.320
part of what's contributing to the current
what is variously called decoupling or de risking,

605
00:43:54.360 --> 00:44:00.880
but the sort of gradual decrease in
the economic relationship, at least in

606
00:44:00.960 --> 00:44:06.239
some strategic sectors. Well, Sean
Mirsky is, uh, you know,

607
00:44:06.280 --> 00:44:12.199
we've become this globeless economy. There's
got to be some leadership. And I

608
00:44:12.559 --> 00:44:15.559
know when I say that, all
of a sudden, you know, the

609
00:44:15.599 --> 00:44:20.199
World Economic Forum, and this is
what Klaus Schwab, he envisions himself as

610
00:44:20.239 --> 00:44:25.920
being the leader of everything. But
there's got to be some you know,

611
00:44:27.360 --> 00:44:34.800
beneficent leadership on a global scale that
can bring these disparaging forces together for good.

612
00:44:35.480 --> 00:44:38.760
Is that is that just an illusion
on my part? I wouldn't say

613
00:44:38.760 --> 00:44:43.599
it's an illusion. I would say
that you might be waiting for a while

614
00:44:44.880 --> 00:44:47.559
to develop. Part of the problem
is that that is the role that the

615
00:44:47.639 --> 00:44:52.719
United States has played in the world
essentially since the end of World War Two,

616
00:44:52.400 --> 00:44:55.519
during the Cold War. Obviously that
leadership is limited to sort of the

617
00:44:55.519 --> 00:45:00.320
West, but at least since the
fall of this overt the United States has

618
00:45:00.360 --> 00:45:05.159
tried to play that global leader role, and I think the significant extent is

619
00:45:05.159 --> 00:45:08.320
still trying to play that role.
The problem has become that the United States

620
00:45:08.320 --> 00:45:14.199
has become comparatively weaker over time,
and we're now in a situation where we

621
00:45:14.280 --> 00:45:17.519
remain I think, the strongest power
in the world, but our extensive commitments

622
00:45:17.559 --> 00:45:21.519
abroad, as well as the mistakes
we've made, as well as the trouble

623
00:45:21.719 --> 00:45:25.519
frankly that we have at home,
has meant that our ability to exert that

624
00:45:25.559 --> 00:45:31.119
global leadership is somewhat limited, and
so unfortunately, I do think the trends

625
00:45:31.119 --> 00:45:36.360
in the long run are kind of
towards more of the disorder, both in

626
00:45:36.400 --> 00:45:38.760
a political military sense, but also
in a sort of economic financial sense.

627
00:45:39.199 --> 00:45:43.079
It is getting much much harder,
I think for for nations to sort of

628
00:45:43.079 --> 00:45:46.880
come together and agree on commonalities.
Sean, you you'd kind of touched on

629
00:45:46.920 --> 00:45:52.760
this lightly earlier in the conversation,
and it had to do with, in

630
00:45:52.760 --> 00:45:58.400
a sense, the way I heard
it is the spiritual background, backbone and

631
00:45:58.800 --> 00:46:04.400
morality of this kind free and how
this has been compromised, and what we're

632
00:46:04.440 --> 00:46:10.119
projecting to our allies and the world. I think people around the world think

633
00:46:10.280 --> 00:46:15.880
less of America because where we find
ourselves spiritually compromised. What do you think?

634
00:46:17.000 --> 00:46:21.159
I think that's certainly part of the
story that can be told. I

635
00:46:21.199 --> 00:46:29.599
mean, one thing that I would
point out is the American attitude towards towards

636
00:46:29.679 --> 00:46:35.360
values and morality. I think since
the beginning has been that the time was

637
00:46:35.400 --> 00:46:38.000
on our side, that essentially,
if the United States could just survive and

638
00:46:38.000 --> 00:46:44.159
sort of prosper on the North American
continent, that overtime democracy would naturally spread

639
00:46:44.199 --> 00:46:46.239
because it was a superior form of
government, and over time the world would

640
00:46:46.239 --> 00:46:50.880
democratize. And that was like the
prevailing theory ever since the founding. I

641
00:46:50.920 --> 00:46:53.320
think all the way up really frankly
to the present day, we're going to

642
00:46:53.400 --> 00:46:58.320
be that light on a shining hill, John Wynn exactly exactly, exactly that.

643
00:46:58.800 --> 00:47:02.119
And I I think one of the
things that Americans and I think there's

644
00:47:02.239 --> 00:47:06.440
much that's true about that story.
I mean, I think if you look

645
00:47:06.519 --> 00:47:10.559
at foreign people abroad, it is
remarkable how in nearly every nation, if

646
00:47:10.599 --> 00:47:15.119
given the chance, people would prefer
to choose their own leaders. I mean,

647
00:47:15.159 --> 00:47:17.639
it doesn't sound that crazy when you
put it that way, right,

648
00:47:19.159 --> 00:47:21.639
But at the same time, I
think one of the things that the United

649
00:47:21.679 --> 00:47:25.360
States has started to learn or relearn, I should say, is that when

650
00:47:25.400 --> 00:47:30.320
the United States is not itself strong, and when democracies are not themselves strong

651
00:47:30.360 --> 00:47:35.400
in terms of material power, that
that has downstream effects for the overall success

652
00:47:35.440 --> 00:47:39.400
of democratic ideology. And so in
the nineteen thirties, for instance, part

653
00:47:39.400 --> 00:47:45.760
of the reason that fascism spread very
quickly and spread to multiple nations is because

654
00:47:45.800 --> 00:47:49.960
it looked like it was the next
successful ideology. Democracy looked like it had

655
00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:52.920
failed, it had led to the
Great Depression, and it wasn't solving these

656
00:47:52.960 --> 00:47:57.599
problems in the way that fascism at
that time seemed to be. You could

657
00:47:57.639 --> 00:48:00.280
tell a similar story about communism in
the forties and the fifth where for brief

658
00:48:00.320 --> 00:48:05.119
period it really looked like a much
more successful mode of governance, and democracies

659
00:48:05.119 --> 00:48:08.440
where on the back foot, and
I think you're seeing something today, something

660
00:48:08.480 --> 00:48:13.159
similar today, where the American model
of governance, in part because of our

661
00:48:13.239 --> 00:48:17.840
internal divisions, looks less attractive abroad, and so that there is this sort

662
00:48:17.880 --> 00:48:22.159
of ebbing tide of democracy. If
you start looking at the statistics, it

663
00:48:22.199 --> 00:48:24.800
becomes clear that less and less nations
are fewer, and fewer nations are free.

664
00:48:25.119 --> 00:48:29.880
Fewer and fewer nations really qualifies democracies. Part of that is that I

665
00:48:29.880 --> 00:48:32.039
think we're getting weaker. Part of
that is our internal problems. Part of

666
00:48:32.079 --> 00:48:37.559
that is China is. China rises
and has a different model of governance.

667
00:48:37.599 --> 00:48:42.000
It's very attractive. I think about
a minute left here, Sean Mirsky United

668
00:48:42.079 --> 00:48:45.440
Nations. To that end, are
they helping or hurting us? I would

669
00:48:45.440 --> 00:48:50.679
say helping, but quite marginally.
I think the United Nations gets a lot

670
00:48:50.719 --> 00:48:53.760
of criticism for not doing anything or
in some ways being affirmatively unhelpful, and

671
00:48:53.800 --> 00:48:58.000
I think much of that criticism is
warranted. But the end of the day,

672
00:48:58.039 --> 00:49:00.480
the United Nations is not much more
than simply the sum of all the

673
00:49:00.519 --> 00:49:05.360
different countries in the world, and
so it shouldn't be that surprising that when

674
00:49:05.360 --> 00:49:08.519
countries can't agree on stuff, the
United Nations can't do much either. But

675
00:49:08.639 --> 00:49:12.800
certainly no reason to be looking to
the United Nations for the sort of global

676
00:49:12.880 --> 00:49:15.559
leadership that you're suggesting, because unfortunately
you're just not going to find it there.

677
00:49:15.960 --> 00:49:20.800
Well, when they're dominated by communists, I mean, the leadership,

678
00:49:21.159 --> 00:49:25.800
what can you expect? How is
that compatible with a democracy? Yeah?

679
00:49:25.880 --> 00:49:29.679
Well, and one of the mistakes
I think that the United States has made

680
00:49:30.119 --> 00:49:34.719
is not to be more involved in
the United Nations because what ends up happening

681
00:49:34.760 --> 00:49:37.400
is that a lot of a lot
of large number of these committees and sort

682
00:49:37.440 --> 00:49:45.079
of subbodies within the United Nations end
up getting led by Chinese individuals or by

683
00:49:45.079 --> 00:49:51.079
frankly, other nations nationals that simply
aren't don't have the same values that we

684
00:49:51.119 --> 00:49:52.760
do. And so I do think
it is important for us to make sure

685
00:49:52.760 --> 00:49:57.159
that we're involved, in large part
to prevent what you're talking about. Well,

686
00:49:57.159 --> 00:50:00.199
Sean Mirsky, thank you for being
with us. Sean is they while

687
00:50:00.199 --> 00:50:06.360
your US foreign policy scholar who has
worked on national security issues across multiple US

688
00:50:06.440 --> 00:50:10.079
presidential administrations. His new book,
We May Dominate the World, Ambition,

689
00:50:10.239 --> 00:50:15.679
Anxiety, and the Rise of American
Colossus, available at all the usual places

690
00:50:16.039 --> 00:50:24.800
and must read so that you really
engage your understanding and your level of intelligence

691
00:50:24.960 --> 00:50:30.400
of what America is about and what
the world is about when it comes to

692
00:50:30.440 --> 00:50:34.519
foreign policy and these emerging threats.
Sean, it cannot thank you and now

693
00:50:34.559 --> 00:50:36.880
thank you so much for being with
us. I appreciate it. You take

694
00:50:36.880 --> 00:50:39.679
care, Thank you for having me
Bill take care of Sean murskyar Thanks to

695
00:50:39.760 --> 00:50:45.280
him for more information and to be
part of this mighty Martinez movement to return

696
00:50:45.320 --> 00:50:47.559
to God and to save our country. Check it out Bill Martinez Show dot

697
00:50:47.639 --> 00:50:52.000
com. May God bless you and
keep you. Make his face shine upon

698
00:50:52.119 --> 00:50:57.079
you. May He be gracious unto
you and give you peace. Go and

699
00:50:57.199 --> 00:51:00.960
be a blessing. Thank you for
being with us. Take care,