“NATO Is DEAD” - The Insider Who Warned 4 Presidents About Iran | PBD #795

What's your position with NATO? >> NATO's dead. >> Do you think NATO's dead? >> NATO's dead. We're writing its obituary. >> at a dangerous moment. >> The world has learned that America can be beat. That's what I'm telling you. The Strait of Hormuz still blocked. >> What did the administration not know about Iran pre-going in? >> If you punish them enough, they're going to cave. They're not going to cave. And you yourself have said you don't understand why. >> Washington has insisted Iran must accept strict limits on its nuclear program before the war can end. I'm not siding side with it. >> start to punish you, Patrick, and I want that microphone from you, and I'm going to threaten to take that pen and stab it in your hand, what am I going to do next? I want your computer, or I'm going to do it again. I want the shirt off your back, or I'm going to do it again. Once you give in to the bully, you're his or her forever. >> Iran calling [music] Trump's effort delusional. >> three different types of people: fight, flight, freeze. Yes, but within that distribution, once you have that amount who will fight, you are in a different world of hurt. you could possibly find. >> Nobody would know who So, everybody who sees it like, "Wait a minute, what is your real name?" Cuz your real name is not Patrick. >> I understand. >> the thing we get all the time. I'm like, "Yeah, I'm a Syrian Armenian." So, anyways, great to have you on, truly. >> Yeah, really. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to this, too. I've seen your stuff. I want to say we both agreed on the in the back when we're talking. I don't know if anybody picks better titled names for books than you. Thank you. So, you got Bombing to Win, Yes. 1996. What a great title for a book. >> Yep. Dying to Win. So, one is Bombing to Win, Dying to Win, 2005. And it's And it's deeper than that, because if you had read Bombing to Win, and you I know you haven't, but if you had read it, and the academic world did, as soon as they saw the title for my book on suicide terrorism, they already had half of the story. Because once you get inside and understand what it takes to win, and then you apply it here. So, it has more meanings than it's it's a really interesting thing when you have multiple audiences. And over time, um so I've been an academic, but it's not only been an academic. I've been in the public since 1991. So, a long time. This is not my first rodeo. >> Oh, no. It's not. I mean Many, many times. And so I I and I'm I'm not where you got you guys live in the public, okay? I really still live in universities. But nonetheless, you understand multiple audiences. >> Mhm. No, no question about it. That's what these titles do. These connect with multiple audiences. >> And then you got Cutting the Fuse and your recent one which is Our Own Worst Enemies. >> That's right. I've you're all over the place. You got your PhD from uh uh uh Chicago. We just had John Cochran here, who's also I think he's a professor there as well. PhD from University of Chicago. And then you did a lot of work with the US Air Force. >> That's right. Teaching them for 3 years. >> Yep. Uh and then aside from that Dark Winter College >> decapitation of Saddam Hussein. I know all about that. And then also it was Pyongyang. So, we're dealing with North Korea. Uh so, this is deep discussions here. Actual >> what we're going through right now. Yes. And then I modeled, starting in 2005, the bombing of Iran for 20 years. So, so this is a there there's a there's a lot of continuity with this work. And then I've been adding layers to it over time. So, what what do what does the average person because when you think about from the There's two things we experienced the last 4 years. You know, Russia's going to attack Ukraine. Okay? Russia's going to destroy Ukraine. Yeah. It didn't happen, right? Uh US, you know, and Israel, they're going to attack Iran. Boom, it's going to be done because Venezuela quick, we got Maduro, we're out. Oh, boom. You know, we everything was so quick. Iran maybe going to be 2 to 4 weeks. Yep. >> It's not 2 to 4 weeks. So, what is the app cuz you advised Ron Paul, you advised Obama, I think in the 2008 campaign. >> just this weekend. I was at Ron Paul's conference down in off about an hour outside of Houston just literally 5 days ago. I had dinner at his house on Friday night. His He's 90 years old. He is firing the white heat. He stood up for 25 minutes on Friday night and gave a spectacular No notes whatsoever. I mean unbelievable getting rounds of applause on Friday night. And then he did it again on Saturday at noon. I'm just telling you you've been in the public. I you stand up and give those speeches. I mean oh my goodness gracious. >> He's 90. >> We had him on the podcast last year and I'm like I cannot believe this guy's energy at this age. And >> Yep. He's been out of for a long time. His story is >> and he's just I think a bit like me energized by the fact that this war is going the wrong way and he just wants to everything he possibly can to try to get on a better track. That's really I think what do you Where's that energy >> And I want to talk to you about that. I want to talk to you about that. But it's important because you you you did help Obama. You did help Ron Paul. Libertarian Democrat. Yeah. And then at the same time you've advised presidents the last 20 years as well as Trump's administration, right? So I think that's That was on Afghanistan. important qualifier for the audience to know. And although you were not negotiating on the deal with Obama with Iran, you were I read some places that you were advising. They were They were consultants. >> a whole story. So I was on I'm glad to do this in the public. So the in 2008 when I'm on the Obama primary team, I was on the Middle Eastern team because dying to win, okay? But I had a good friend Shawn Kay who was on the NATO team. So this is how it works in these primaries. You get carved up into different parts or different issues in the world. And I had I knew Shawn for a long time for decades. And so I called up Shawn one night and I said, "Sean, you know, the number one problem that Obama's going to face when he's elected is Iran getting a nuclear weapon." Now, this is 2008, February 2008. Most people are not They're focusing on beating Hillary Clinton, okay? This is I'm just saying. And And Sean and I agreed on that. And I said, "Sean, I got an idea. If you're really going to get real pressure on Iran, we need Russia. We need Russia." And I'm going to glad I had to explain what why I said that. But we need Russia. And Sean said, "Well, Bob, I'm on the NATO team. You know, Russia hates our guts. How are we going to do that?" And I said, "I got an idea. We trade away national missile defense in Eastern Europe, which is basically a not very good system. And I think this would actually move Putin." And Sean said, "I'll write the memo." He wrote the memo up the chain. That's what Obama did, 2010. So, how did you get the JCPOA in 2015? This is not starting in the story of 2015. Now, it starts in 2008 and it starts in 2010. You need Russia. And that not just Russia saying, "Well, I won't get involved." You need Russia to be part of the public coalition. Once you bring in the target's military allies, Patrick, now you got leverage and pressure. Right now, we're totally not doing that, okay? And it's Well, now they're eating our lunch. But But I'm just telling you that that you're talking to somebody who has been thinking about these problems for decades and who has said that And I've said this even in print in 2008 in the Weekly Standard, the number one problem that Obama's foreign policy is going to face is Iran getting a nuclear weapon. And everything needs to be organized around that. And he did. And he did. >> Would you consider JCPOA a success? Oh, yes, but it's a success because Russia and China were part of it, not because we had some brilliant diplomats. And oh, yes, our diplomats are just so much better than all the other diplomats. When you're in Washington, you want a job, you know how you get a job? You say you're the best diplomat, everybody else is not. Okay? I'm not looking for that job. Okay? I'm looking to what would you actually do to solve the problem? Um and I'm perfectly happy being a professor at the University of Chicago who sits around, thinks about these ideas, comes up with an idea, and then tries to persuade a White House that, you know, this is a better way to go. And I'm not looking to become uh that person in Washington. And the reason is because most of the time they self-destruct and go up in flames, and they end up having a disaster. So, look at what people who end up getting a Oh my god, yeah. Just look at over and over and over again. Post career, post job. >> Almost every I mean, since the the last time we had somebody successful in the West in the West Wing was 1991. >> [laughter] >> Who's that? Oh, Brent Scowcroft, uh Jim Baker as White House Chief of Staff, um who just who just died. Uh Colin Powell when he was good. You put then Colin Powell back up as Secretary of State, it's a total disaster. Okay? His reputation goes like that. You >> Yeah, let's let's bring it to today. So, you've been studying this for a while. Again, like your books, suicide bombing, you know, you said, you know, uh analyzing 30 major air campaigns across World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, and found that bombing civilian populations and economic infrastructure consistently fails to break an enemy's will. Yeah, yeah, that's the >> population This is the big point the public doesn't get. >> They turn So, what I what what I want to >> the public thinks is and uh President Trump probably thinks this. It's not unique and it's not a stupid thing to think. It's a smart mistake. There are stupid mistakes where you make it because you're stupid and then there's what I call smart people mistakes. So, keep in mind, I'm I'm educating people at the University of Chicago that have more than a triple digit IQ. I'm educating not just people in the Air Force, but future three- and four-star generals in the Air Force. These are not dumb people. These are people who are at the top of their game. They're coming in. We're spending months really focusing on things. Uh so, I have a very good understanding of where people start out, what their initial thoughts are, and then I also spend a lot of time in the public. I would just went to Ron Paul, spoke to 200 of his people, and then spent all day there. Do not do with a parachute in, parachute out because I want to soak it up. I want to see just This is me getting face-to-face. I want to know where they're coming from so I can better understand. And I'm telling you, you ask me, "What is the number one like misconception or mistake?" Uh first thing to say is it's not a dumb person's mistake. It's a smart person's mistake and it's that this punishment is actually going to work. And because once you believe that, then it's just a matter of well, what are the tools of the punishment and do we have some smarter ways to do it and and so forth. But once you believe that it's punishment who's going to get states to give up these massive topple governments, give up their weapons of mass destruction. Um once you believe it's that, you're going down all the wrong roads and that's what all this work really really has shown and that's why if you want to win, when we stopped the Bosnian Civil War, we didn't do it through punishment. We did it through hammer and anvil. Basically, Bombing to Win lays out the strategy for this. So, we won. We stopped the Bosnian Civil War. >> did the administration not know about Iran pre going in in or your opinion? >> The punishment was going to fail. That punishment was going to fail. >> Yeah, yeah. It's the other punishment of the regime. So so again, there's um couple different detail ways or specific strategies, but if I'm talking to President Trump here, uh I'm going above the the the details cuz he wants face-to-face like I'm talking to you. I'm telling President Trump the big issue here and you yourself have said you don't understand why is that punishment is not working. You try to punish the regime, it's not working. It's making them harder. You're uh now have the blockade and you're trying to punish the uh uh the economy, the society. It's not working. You threaten all 92 million at with punishment, it's not working. The fundamental problem here is you think punishment, if you punish them enough, they're going to cave. This is the fundamental misconception. They're not going to cave. >> [laughter] >> Is that they're not going to cave that punishment that doesn't work with anybody or punishment that >> Punishment doesn't work specifically with Iran. No, doesn't work with anybody. >> Tell me why. Uh the reason is because if um uh if I start to punish you, Patrick, and I want, say for example, that microphone from you and I'm going to threaten to really uh uh take that pen and stab it in your hand, uh and you say, "Okay, I'll give you the microphone." What am I going to do next? I want your computer or I'm going to do it again. What do I want next? I want the shirt off your back or I'm going to do it again. What if I What am I going to do next? I want your bank account. What am I going to do next? I want your family. There's no end. Once you go down this road, okay? Uh we need to just understand that uh and this is true in a lot of other You see this in The Godfather, you know, how does The Godfather become The Godfather in Godfather Part II? He doesn't keep giving in to the old guy. He literally kills him, okay? That's denial. That's actually a denial strategy. Um and he becomes a Godfather here, but it's not through punishment. He's not actually uh engaging in the punishment spirals. Do you see what I'm saying? Uh and this is the problem. The reason is that these are Another way to put it is once you see that I'm willing to hurt you this way, everything becomes uh about future pain. It's not just the current idea because why am I going to stop? >> [laughter] >> You And this is just true in general. So, the punishment Now, sometimes with the punishment, the other side just stays passive, so it doesn't always uh have the backlash, but often if they have an opportunity, like once I start to threaten you to take that and threaten to hurt put the pen in your hand, uh here what you're going to start to think about is, "Well, wait a minute. Um they're going to bring me a cup of coffee and while I'm looking down that's when you're going to hit me." You see, because you're lashing back cuz you you're you're worried that once I drink that cup of coffee, I'm coming right back at you with more demands, more threats to hurt you bodily. Uh this is just the way it is. So, almost like on the playground, you start to give in to the bully, you're his or her forever. You see, you're not just it's not a >> In this case, US is the bully and Iran is saying I'm not going to give in to you because I know long term you're going to get everything from you. >> Oh, absolutely. >> think about DNA and wiring of the people, you have three different types of people: fight, flight, freeze, right? So, we've heard that before. So, you know, some are fighters. That's right. Some flight, some freeze. >> Yes, but within that distribution, it's a distribution that's common across all people. So, within that 92 million, okay, let's just say it's a third, a third, a third. Well, that means you've got something like 25 to 30 million who are going to fight. Now, maybe you'll have 25 or 30 million who will freeze. Maybe you'll even have 25 or 30 million who will do flight. But once you have a third or even 10 or 15% as long as they have the guns, once you have that amount who will fight, you are in a different world of hurt because that's what happens on the playground with the bully. Uh so when uh uh I'm in uh uh fourth grade, uh Alvin was the bully, okay? And uh he was a lot bigger even what I mean our diff relative difference. He He was You're a big guy. I was telling you your hands are massive. >> I was in fourth grade, okay? He was in seventh grade. Okay, that's that's a difference. >> This is But in that age group, you also know that's a big difference. So Alvin was going around being the bully on the thing. Um and he um uh and then he started to pick on me and I just went right at him, got him down to the ground, okay? Now truth is I went home and and I had told my mom I I hit a door. I did you know she Why did I hit that? And I said I hit the door, you know, just the the kids cuz I didn't want to tell What does Alvin do today, by the way? Oh, you know, I don't I This is Erie. I don't know. That was a long time ago, so I don't know. I hope good. I hope I hope good. >> Alvin, if you're watching this, let us know what you're doing. We'd love to know where you are. >> Pennsylvania. St. Mary's was the was the elementary school. But the um uh but what happened is uh he left me alone. He left me alone. You see because when >> of the fight community. Well, that's not everybody. >> No, that's what I'm trying to say, but there was others on the playground. So but this is once you see countries are not one-on-ones, countries are distributions of people, then you can see um even if you have uh 25% um or or so who are the fighters, that's plenty because they're often then the folks who are going to be uh the ones rising up as the leaders cuz they will have fought at other different >> even think you need 20 I think you need 1% of extremists. That's all you need. A 1% of extremists >> if they have the guns. It It really is a matter. That's a That's a again, once you get into the difference and this is what I do. Once you get in the difference between Okay, so now let's say it's not 25%. Now you're talking about what you call extremists or or a terrorist, well then it's a question here of do they have the guns and do they have enough acquiescence by the rest of the population? That's the big issue. So that's what happens when um you have extremists. So you can always find some some one-percenters, if you would, of extremists, but they need a minimum 10%, probably 20% of others to at least go along and often support because they get killed. They get killed >> Of the 1 million military or of the 92 million? Uh of the No, it's more of um what I would say in in in the case of Iran is you you Well, what we've done is we've radicalized quite a bit of the 92 million at this point. So this is not a case where Iran is just 1%. Um but what I would say is that let's start with the 25% who are fighters. Once you start to get into this, uh then you will you will have with the leadership, you're going to have um thousands of um extremists who are part of the uh regime, the revolutionary regime, and that's because the Guardian Council, over decades, uh uh has um has promoted those kinds of people uh here for off of political office. That's because the Republic the Revolutionary Guard fought in the Iran-Iraq War, where in order to survive in that in that bloody war, which I know you lived through part of. Where did you live in Tehran? >> Tehran. Tehran, and then my grandparents were from Bandar Pahlavi, which is uh north, right uh by Caspian Sea. >> Oh, I see. I see. I see. So Pahlavi, okay, very good. So So the But you then >> Bandar means port, so think Port Pahlavi is where my grandparent and we did lived in Tehran uh 10 11 years. And and then you were I think I heard born in 74 if I remember right. >> 78. 78 so you're just about coming of age where you would have been paying attention when and understood >> the war with Saddam Hussein. That I I don't remember the revolution cuz the revolution happened 79 so I was an infant. I was a three I was born three months after the Shah went into exile. >> Yeah, so the kind of fervor once you're in a war of attrition like that the kind of fervor, the emotions here and they're going in different directions. I'm not saying it all points in one direction but my God these are emotional situations here. Well, this is infecting more than just like five leaders at the top or even a few thousand at the top. It's seeping into large parts of society. Now maybe it's not seeping into 100% again it's you can also look at it as the fight or flight but you are moving from that 1% and you're deepening that pretty far down. How far down it's a little hard to say but it's probably closer to 10 15% and once you have and they have the guns this is this is where you're you're not getting if if if Iran was going to be knocked off relatively quickly here. Actually the time that would have been most likely would have been when Saddam Hussein attacked right about a year after the revolution because the revolution wasn't really fully consolidated yet. As you know, there was a liberal part of the revolution that happened before the religious part of the revolution. So there's all kinds of factions going on in the country at the time. Foucault I don't know if you know that name. He's a famous philosopher liberal. He wrote articles for newspapers. He was at Berkeley and he was a big believer in getting rid of like American imperialism. So So he actually went to Tehran um in the early part of the revolution and he wrote articles for newspapers. This before we had substacks. Um and he was a big believer and then he literally watched as the revolution he thought was so good, so well-intentioned transformed into the worst awful religious uh dictatorship essentially that he could possibly imagine and he wrote continued to write those articles until it got too dangerous. And then he published it as a book. So you If anybody wants to relive that period from a liberal's perspective, you can read Foucault's uh book on this. It's the famous Foucault who wrote Discipline and Punish that many folks will have read. Um and you can really get a different window into this from somebody who starts out all good intentions, everything looks optimistic, this thing goes completely belly up. And I think what you're seeing here, Patrick, is the conservative flip side of that right now. People thought, had good intentions, they wanted X, Y, or Z to happen. Uh they're coming at it not from the liberal side of the house, from the conservative side of the house, and what they are seeing is the same problems Foucault saw. And it's not because it's a particularly liberal bias or conservative bias. People don't understand that punishment is not a very good strategy So let me ask you this. for a country, for a country. >> so do you think like let's just say let's go back to 8 weeks ago, pre-war. Yeah, yeah. You get a call, you get to the White House. Right. Let's just say you go to the White House. >> 3:15 uh on uh February 27th, Donald Trump says, "Hey, I've got Wyckoff and my uh son-in-law Kushner here, Professor Pape, will you come in on the phone?" >> go in and and they say, "Listen, when it comes on to Iran, how big of a threat do you think Iran is to the safety of America and the world long-term, 30 years. What was your answer to that? >> I I would say uh serious but not imminent. So, what I would say is that it's um uh not just yellow. If you can say green, no, it's not a green. This is some people are trying to say no threat whatsoever. This is a big mistake. A lot of my Democratic friends don't like it when I explain that this is a mistake. Uh it's not just even yellow. It's kind of yellow moving to red and the reason is because of all that enriched uranium that is now uh we have uh I have visible evidence of it dispersing around the country. If I have that evidence, I already know what's in the intel community. They're going to have a lot more and it's going to point in that direction. >> showing trucks that are moving things from the areas that were hit. So, if they're moving things with those trucks, we've seen those clips, it means you probably didn't hit what you thought you were going to hit. >> And and and some of it is now places you don't know anymore. >> Mhm. So, I am not at all surprised to hear the most recent leaks just now 8 weeks later is 20%. We don't know where 20% of that stuff is. So, Pete Hegseth last yesterday just testified, we know where it all is. I want to see that data and he should publish that data because I think that what the reality is from what I'm hearing from the leaks. Isn't that even a bigger threat if we don't know? Oh, for sure. >> if we don't know, so now let's go to >> That's how That's how by the way I was able to predict so accurately what was going to happen in this war. So, my predictions not to be But I don't want to do prediction. This is what I want to ask before we go to February 27th. Yeah, what I want to go to is what I want to go to >> the strategy. What should have been the strategy? Uh strategy number one is um you uh don't reject the deal, President Trump. You look at this as a long campaign. You look at this as you got a problem right now and it's getting worse. And between us, President Trump, you made it worse when you bombed Fordow. Never say that publicly to you, but you won't want to say that publicly, but you know you wouldn't be here in this room right now if bombing Fordow had solved the problem. So, that made the problem worse. So, we're at this uh you know, yellow now moving into early red. So, what do you need to do? You need to build an even stronger counterbalancing coalition that will have a real opportunity to build on the growing pro-democracy movement. There is a pro-democracy movement there. Uh we know that the regime has just killed some tens of thousands of them, but you're not going to solve this um over a day or a week or so. You need to come up with a strategy over two or three years where you're actually going to move this in the right direction, just like happened in Syria. So, it's uh the model here uh would be closer to Syria, where over time Now, Syria took 13 years, but over time this really did change. Uh and then the next step I would have said is, "Okay, so what's the concrete thing that you need to do?" Uh you need not to have um uh as the operational uh um counterbalancing coalition uh simply this vague idea of the Abraham Accords. Okay? Because the truth is um that what's happening with the Abraham Accords is it's uh there's a big contradiction inside of it once it gets serious, which is you're never going to be able to have the Saudi population, let alone not the leaders, or the uh UAE population support Israel as it's conquering Muslim ground. It's just not going to work. You know, you're even talking about that in Gaza. And so, what you need is you need to build a stronger anchor literally around Saudi Arabia and the UAE because they have the most to lose. This isn't about Israel has the most to lose. If you go down this counterbalancing coalition, the governments that are going to be toppled in the next year or two are MBS and the UAE. So therefore, as you have said President Trump many times, you've got all line interests and strategy, who has the most to lose here? It's not Israel, it's UAE and Saudi Arabia. They also have covertly tentacles, society tentacles, and you can build then a stronger societal bottom-up pressure here to change the revolution change the regime. And moreover, the supreme leader 86 years old. So what you really should be doing is not killing the supreme leader because that's only going to put in a stronger guy the the tougher guys. Let him die on his own and what you're playing for is to move the um the group of clerics who's going to put the new supreme leader in to make it somebody who's just one notch uh closer to your position. Not completely to your position, but what you want to do is have a longer-term strategy over a couple years. >> think that would work. And why not? I don't think that would work and I'll tell you why because again, my opinion and perspective just through the world. I would sit there and I would think any every president that's come in has tried to slow play Iran. They've all said the same script from Bush to never trust when you're negotiating with Iran to Clintons to Obama 20 They've all said the same thing about Iran is you know, number one threat in the world. We They've said it in many different ways. Okay. And every one of them says that to seem strong, but then when it comes down to doing it, hey, let's negotiate. Here's some money for you. Here's pallets of money and we've seen all the pictures. >> Yeah, no, that's not where I'm going. That's I went in a different >> you're not. I know you're not. But what I'm saying is he he knowing his style uh he watched what happened with Qassem Soleimani when he killed the number two guy. That guy was a player. He was not He was their patton. So it's not like they took out a regular guy. So he took out patton and he watched how they retaliated and didn't do anything. They hit a small base that nobody was at. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So then he's sitting there watching this and he gets the chokehold with Venezuela. So he knows China's relying on Venezuela. Then he goes and gets you know, what happens with Panama. Panama's president turns against C K saying you can't have control of the two ports. So now he's got China in trouble because China's had the US under a lot of power and I know you went to China last year for a couple weeks. I want to talk about that experience as well in a minute. So for him, if he waits to do it long-term No, no, no, there's no waiting here. >> Two to three years is long if you can do that. >> but let me So this is almost surely what he would say back. So I I really like Patrick that your your what you're articulating because um I've watched almost every single single one of President Trump's speeches over the last two years. This is I DVR them. So I really want to know what's going on uh here. >> You've laughed a lot though. Uh I've laughed yeah. He's actually pretty I've been to Butler. I've been to actually four of his rallies all day. I've actually spent the whole weekend with a 100,000 people there where you have to stand literally. There's no place to sit. That's why hundreds drop over and you got to have all the paramedics there. Okay, so you may not have been there. Okay, I've been to four of these things and I've also been to Kamala Harris where people get there an hour before. No, with the Trump rallies you if you're there at 7:00 a.m. you're late. Okay, [laughter] and he doesn't start talking till 5:00 or 6:00. He usually says 5:00 and doesn't get there till 6:00. So it but well, it's not ridiculous. They it's the amount of fervor Oh, they love him. >> So yeah, but you got to be there. I mean this idea you just hear about it. If I mean, being there and I did four of them. My wife came with me here on three of them. I mean, just to really and it's it's really but he but this is what you're articulating is very likely what he would say. And I would say President Trump, there's there's two issues here to really explain. I definitely understand that you're in a hurry here. You want to make this happen during your presidency. But here's the big the big issue you need to hear which is that idea of punishment that you're going to your change to the past is rapid punishment is exactly what other presidents have tried to do. Bill Clinton tried to do this with Slobodan Milosevic in March 1999 and that produced massive backlash which made a giant problem that was a problem a gigantic crisis here and this could be 10 times worse. And the reason is because what happens when you try to punish is what we were just describing before. You're going to get a fight or flight response by a distribution of people inside the government and also in the society and you only need a 25% or a third of that distribution to want to fight before this all becomes worse because what you may think you're going to do was knock off the worst of the worst here but that's not what's really going to happen. What you're doing is you're taking a risk that when you try to speed this up, it will become 10 times worse and you're going to have to walk away with a gigantic black eye. Here and that's what happened to Bill Clinton when he tried to do this and that's why when we went into this with the with the Balkans after this whole thing blew up. Yes, we finally fixed it and I was giving advice here and there as well. Sandy Berger's son was actually at Dartmouth where I taught at the time. So, he was the national security advisor. So, the bottom but with the bottom line is sir, that this is not the way to win. You may think and hope to win this way, but what you're doing is you're taking a risk that's even bigger when Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor. When Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor, they wanted a quick solution here. And what happened is they unleashed a tiger, a much bigger tiger, and they got crushed. This is the danger. The I understand the other way seems a bit slower, it seems not distinctive enough, but this is the way to actually win here over time. And sir, you just had this happen in Syria and you were part of this. So, it is not the case that there's no analogy that you cannot understand here, but it is not Maduro. This is a mistake. This is a complete mistake. Okay, what Rodriguez is doing is not giving you any oil sir. Yes, you can tell the public it's the spectacular victory, but the bottom line is you went into that wanting oil companies to pump out two or three times more oil than they said. And the reason they're not doing that sir, and this is on my ex account by the way when this came out, is not because you didn't pick up Maduro, it's because it is way too dangerous for those civilian contractors to go in. They told you that to your face. You did not like it, but the bottom line is you're not at that is the wrong analogy. The better analogy is actually Syria. It takes time and you're right, it's risky, it may not work, but the other alternative is 10 times more risky. By the way, I agreed that this is a very risky move he made. But the way I process it, Brian, let me uh clear clear my thoughts and then just Yeah, it's okay. This is I think you know, like you calendar your year, right? You and your wife, you sit down and say, "Babe, what are we doing? Hey, we're going to go Christmas, anniversary, blah blah blah. Summer, we're going here, we're going Okay." So, I think of him as a calendar guy. Okay? And And there's Some people calendar 3 months out, some people calendar a month, some people a week if you're on sales, but some people calendar out 4 years. So, he, my impression, try to compress time frames to do what would take somebody in three terms to do to do one term. And the way he looked at it, my opinion, is forget 2028. Because if you try to have something like this go into 2028 election year, you're going to give the victory to the Democrats. So, then you try to do it pre-midterms, enough time to see if you can get this thing done before World Cup, and that'll be a positive distraction, and everybody moves on to the next story if you get the victory, helps you out. So, he probably wasn't expecting this to take as long as it did. So, I'm thinking I'm with you, sir, with that. I think on the calendar side, on the calendar side, there's no way he can do the long-term ways because he look at this as two terms. First 2 years, second 2 years. Pre-midterm is one term that you have. The second 2 years, you're going to election 2028, and he probably wants his VP to win to kind of show, "Hey, look at me, I'm I'm a president, my VP became the president, or one of my cabinet members like Rubio became president, or we kept So, then my [snorts] response is >> So, then my response is, "Sir, I can't change your time frame because he's the president. I cannot do that. What I can then tell you is you need a dedicated backup plan, and you need to organize an entire team because when this does go negative, as I'm telling you, and I'm telling you it's 90% likely to go negative. And let's say I'm wrong, sir. You're right. I'm a professor, you're the president of the United States, you've won re-election, I have not. Do this, though. At a minimum, have a backup plan. So that when this goes completely south, you actually have a have have a plan here. And that is what I've done with the Air Force. So when I've had my debates in the Air Force in the 1990s, when I went toe-to-toe with uh the leaders of the leadership decapitation school, with the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, we had some of these classified debates over Easter with generals having to give up Easter with their families. And believe me, the idea that generals want to give up Easter with their families to listen to some 32-year-old professor, [laughter] this is not going down well. All right. But the nonetheless, my my real bottom-line argument was you may be right. You're going to do an um a bombing campaign that will do something no one has done in history in over 100 years. And and I can't tell you 100% for sure it will fail. But what I can tell you is the number one thing you should do is cover your risk. And what that means is is not putting on the side and say, "I'll get to that if it fail." No, you start now with an entire group of people, and their job is team B. Their job and you keep it classified, you keep it off to the side, but you don't wait here. You do this now as you're giving the go order because you know there's some chance I'm right. And if you >> is a chance. >> just trying to get So how do you cover the risk? And this is what This is the way you can actually move people in government, Patrick, because the truth is they do know things I'm not going to know. And that's going to be true. The president has the the the greatest >> way, did you vote for him? Uh Did you vote for him? Uh So I didn't >> Cuz you're a liberal Republican, did you vote for him? Have you ever voted for him? >> Uh >> uh um uh have I ever voted for him? Uh no, I have not. No, I have not. I voted for Republicans in the past. >> him specifically. >> But not him specifically, and I also have not always voted for the Democratic candidate. So, one of the issues, Patrick, is that there are times here when I haven't voted for anybody. And the reason is because if you go back to um you just said I'm one of the rare people here who uh was supporting Ron Paul, who's the extreme Republican, and also Barack Obama in 2008. Um what I'm doing is I'm looking for who has the best foreign policy for the country as a whole. And there are times when nobody has that best foreign policy, and I can't bring myself for principled reasons. See, I'm not looking to uh and this is probably why um I don't think I'll probably ever have a an uh an offer to become a say national security advisor, because I'm not doing the you the way you become a national security advisor is not just you talk and get on the media, is you've got to be a consistent soldier. What that means is you always will be politically behind whatever happens. >> with that. I get the vibe that you're very comfortable with who you are in your life. >> I get a chance because I get an opportunity that very few people have had in the last 20 years. Right. How many people have come in here who have advised for the presidential campaigns uh the uh a Republican who's on those stages and a Democrat who's on those stages at exactly the same time? And how many people have had an opportunity to advise four White Houses in a row, two Republican and two Democrat? >> Mhm. That That's just a very rare thing. >> It is It is very rare. But But by the way, but that's also reason why you get millions of views that people want to know >> Well, and and that's also and that's why I'm being very up-front. You asked me uh here, and I'm telling you something You push hard. Um Let let's >> No, I don't always vote for the I don't always I There are There are There are times when I do just sit it out and I don't like it because I wish there but this is what keeps me up at >> wanted to just sit this >> I'm not going to comment You've heard me You've heard me go pretty far down this road. >> for Kamala. I don't know if you had a chance to vote for her. But to me sitting this one out would I I hear I hear you. Let me just also say I was um uh very much uh not just uh in a mind So, I advised the Biden White House um uh probably a dozen times uh here in the West Wing. >> when you gave the advice? >> never No, never spoke to Biden himself but always on the West always in the West but the West Wing and half in person, half on Zoom because there was also COVID. Um and um uh and just to be clear, I was never a supporter of the open borders. Um and I thought uh and not just thought in vague way um that this was um um adding to the fuel of the fire that's happening inside the country. So, when you see the book that comes out and it's going to come out called Our Own Worst Enemies, you're not going to see me just say, "Oh, sure, if you had just voted for Harris, this would have all worked out. If you would voted for Trump, it was all going to work out." What you're going to see me explain is our country is now got at a minimum four parties and they have two radical wings and those two radical wings are taking turns uh here and spiraling in ways that are breaking the country apart. And we can't just keep doing that. So, that's what you're also seeing here in my personal behavior is that I cannot really get behind the just let's just destroy the country a different way because then I could maybe have a cabinet off No, that's not happening with Professor Pape. Professor Pape just is very um uh is is completely comfortable and actually honored to be in the position. We need we need guys in your position though. Like the the the main the regular people that are watching need folks like you to give your opinions for us to be like why is he saying like I just had a lady on Susan Kokinda and she is saying all this stuff that Britain's behind everything and no one is saying that so I'm like why would she say that right? >> That's right. And so you you're giving your own angles. I think we as the audience need to hear that on different opinions but let me let me go some people would say the following some people would say Brian when it comes out to the the blockade right? >> Yeah. You know I'm watching Trump the last couple weeks he's like well you know with the the you know ceasefire indefinitely is done or two weeks you have time and and then all of a sudden you know they better do a deal it's not a good idea they better do a deal and you're almost wondering now he's not in a hurry. So either he's not in a hurry because they have no other plans or he's not in a hurry because he feels the shutting down of the Strait the the the what they've done the blockade is destroying Iranians economy Iran's economy a million people don't have a job and another million people are indirectly impacted by prices are up 67% so people may turn against the regime and say we're sick and tired of this we don't have the internet so we don't know if it's happening or not but some people may say the way he's moving you have King Charles he seems relaxed telling jokes White House correspondents everybody gets up and runs out he's still sitting there he seems so calm as if they have everything under control. What do you say to those people? >> Well a couple things so first of all President Trump is the in some ways the greatest politician we've had as president in my lifetime. Now often people will say Ronald Reagan others will say Bill Clinton others will say Barack Obama and I realize people want their their their favorites here it's like fan favorites they want that. >> Bill was amazing. But what's really important to understand is that President Trump is uh if you saw what his demeanor was when he was just uh had a third assassination attempt. I think this is an even a better example of what I'm about to describe uh here is that uh he has been under personal pressure more than any of those other presidents. So, so it's true. Ronald Reagan did have uh Hinckley. So, he was and he and he by the way, similar to President Trump, told jokes with the doctors as they were as they were trying to save his life. So, just to be clear. So, I don't want to say that that there's nobody who even who had anything like but President Trump has had that three times. And in all three of those times, it's really quite stunning. His uh balance, his uh his poise, his ability to look beyond the moment to what the moment would mean for the future, just un- unbelievable, unparalleled. Now, others maybe haven't been as tested as much, but he's done this under fire three times. And what he did on uh Saturday night was really quite quite remarkable in the following way. It wasn't just poise under fire. What he said, which was extremely uh important and I'm sorry to say the Democrats did not uh follow up on this as much, is uh basically uh a he gave a unity speech. If you go back and listen to when he came to the podium when after this, he said there was literally love in that room. Just remember that phrase. >> I mean, I've I heard that. And what was in that room? The people in that room were not MAGA. This was not I mean, of course his cabinet was there. So, I I think >> 90% is not MAGA. 80% is not MAGA. >> imagine. This is a man whose wife could have been killed. Mhm. So, it's it's him he could have been killed. Uh if that shooter had just gotten another say 20 or 30 ft in into that room, they were so packed like sardines in that room. If he had gotten off five or six shots, you probably have every single every single one of those bullets would probably hit a person, maybe multiple depending on how how this could have worked. So, this was not This was a true near miss experience here, and you can see how panicked the media was cuz they're they're So, if you compare their poise to President Trump. So, in this particular case, we need to understand that he really is the most poised individual that we have seen, but not just a matter of poise. He was thinking about the future. And he offered an olive branch in this case. And I have said this publicly on MSNBC MS now, not not just in in I go on Newsmax, I go on MS now. I mean, it's really quite an honor here Patrick to be to be involved in these and it's because I'm I'm coming at it from what you're seeing here. And the and the fact is that this would have been a great opportunity for Hakeem Jeffries to have reached out. Now, I don't mean to make concessions. So, this is what people are saying well, should they make the concession with DHS? This need We need to get above this a little bit. And that's where President Trump was going. He wasn't on that night. He would and on the 60 Minutes interview, he was not talking about I want this particular concession. He was looking forward in big picture way here that presidents do, that leaders do, not that staff do. So, staff are going to come at you and say President Trump, get that deal, get that deal. That's not what he was doing. And I really believe maybe there's still an opening here. I hope this week hasn't closed it off, but you can see how quickly the the angry politics, I call it violent populism, is coming back in. And I really believe that's something we need to understand. There was an important olive branch there. And by the way, with President Biden, one of the things I was doing a lot was I was showing the data on our surveys on support for political violence in the United States and I was making the argument and he and and his people did and he gave the speeches that certain the way his rhetoric had to change. That he gave a speech a famous speech with red behind him called the Philadelphia speech and I specifically was was was arguing for a different approach. And then with these assassination attempts first the Pelosi attempt which was just before the midterms and then with the President Trump and attempts here twice he and then Kamala Harris they used different rhetoric. Their rhetoric was not we're right you're wrong. Their rhetoric was let's bring down the temperature overall and in our data what we were tracking with our surveys is it actually was coming down over that's one of the over the fall of 2024. So the the rhetoric here was actually moderating and then you could see the support for political violence literally declining in our surveys so that when the election happened and the Democrats lost I wasn't at all surprised we didn't have political violence. A lot of people saying where's the violence? Well, by bringing it down the the support for violence >> They learned from first term. I mean there's a there's a bit of what you're saying some people may say it's naive because the first time when he won they couldn't wait to get rid of him. They created rumors Russia collusion every day mainstream made his life a living hell. And they thought he would never get back in. So when they screwed up with Biden and then they brought Kamala in and they didn't choose somebody else like who's the fellow from uh Ohio? Who's the governor of Pennsylvania? I think you're from Pennsylvania. Yeah, Pennsylvania I'm sorry yeah from Pennsylvania like if they would have chosen Josh Shapiro who you know maybe would have been a better VP candidate to go with no they chose Kamala. Kamala was not qualified she destroyed the border all this stuff. The second time around when Trump won, the mainstream media has nothing to say. What are you going to say now? >> Well, well, what I'm trying to point out, Patrick, is that is that you could have had a different outcome that was bottom-up. And that did not happen here. And it didn't happen, and I believe part of the reason you've got You're You're right, there's another part. I don't mean to say this is just a monocausal outcome. Uh was you you literally did have um leaders um and uh I'm giving credit here to President Biden and some to Kamala Harris. But also, if you look at Mike Johnson's rhetoric here during this period of time, this was after the first Trump assassination attempt and after the second um here um you see it's it's a much more moderated. Everybody needs to bring down the rhetoric. >> Tell me about 8647. I mean, the director of the FBI is going in the other direction. Yeah, but they celebrated that. They said, "What's the big deal?" So, to me, a part of the target with the word, you know, what's being said. They've been trying to take this guy out for a while. Three times now they've tried, you know. Yes. And directly and indirectly, whatever you want to call it. But going back to it. So, specifically on the blockade topic, >> Yes. what do you say when when some people are saying it's working? You know, he is making progress. Iran is losing 450 a day, 13 billion a day, 413 billion a month. What do you say to that? They're looking at tactics, and they're not seeing the strategic effects are not coming like they want. So, tactically, as with the bombing, when the bombs were launched against um Iran on February 28th, bombs hit target, bombs killed leader. With the blockade, tactically, you have the same thing. In fact, we've turned around something like 40 ships, 38 ships here that was carrying Iran's oil. So, tactically, that is uh that's a success. Um if you also look at it tactically from the perspective of um um we've um uh um produced about a million unemployed right now in Iran. So that you could say is a tactical success. But look at the supreme leader statement just a few minutes before we came on the show today. Look at what's happening around the world in the last 36 hours 72 hours. This is a strategic disaster. This is not these tactical successes are not leading to strategic success. Similar with the bombing. The bombing was tactically successful. In fact, I taught the US Air Force. I have nothing but enamored with our our military. They are doing a fantastic job with what they're being ordered to do. They're doing it above and beyond what what you might know shirking here and so forth. And that's true with the blockade as well. So tactically you're seeing success. But what we're doing is it's too easy to confuse tactical success with strategic success. And this is one of the big points I make on the escalation trap. But since I taught for the Air Force in the 1990s here, this is one of the things I discovered by teaching colonels, lieutenant colonels, majors who were the best of the best. They think of them as like the top guns. That was too easy for them to confuse tactical success with strategic because for their last 12 15 years, they were tactical people. They were doing tactical operations and they're being promoted above they're the best of the best at tactics. But what's happening when they're a mid-level officer, when they're about to become a general, is this is a different game now. This is they're not going to be in those cockpits now. This is not the same thing. They're going to now have to think about strategy. Strategy is a different outcome. And the reason is because with tactics, what you're thinking is how bombs hit a target or how ships block other ships. With strategy, it's how does that military action affect politics? Politics. No matter how many times, how many sorties you've flown in either an F-117, a B-2, or an F-35, you're not focusing on politics there. That's just not happening. When you're suddenly now in the game of strategy, it's if I do X to the enemy, what is it going to do politically to the enemy? This isn't just a matter of how many launchers I'm taking down. That's my lane. That's what I deal with in bombing to win, my work on economic sanctions and blockades, which which is another 30 years of work uh here is also about the same thing. It's not just how to or I know a lot about the details of the tactics. I have to. But when I'm my lane, and when I'm talking to the White House is about is not how to rearrange what the military does. They're the best of the best. I know cuz I have been there up close and personal with them. Um the um um it's about when you do X, what's that going to do politically to the target? That is not something you learn when you're in deployment in Fallujah. That's just not what's going on. Now, you do actually learn more about it um uh over time and when you start to study it as I do, a lot of those um deployments, people will start to make some analogies, which is oh yes, now I see that when we uh when we started out in 2004 and we had these more heavy-handed tactics, we were actually producing more terrorists than we were killing. And that was went back then in 2003 and 4. That was the big issue I was engaged with, which is I I want to kill terrorists. I absolutely wanted to kill terrorists. It's not that I want to let them off the hook. I want to know, how do I kill the current generation of terrorists without producing a second generation that's even bigger. And even Don Rumsfeld finally started to say, "We're producing more terrorists than we're killing." That's why we changed strategy, not just tactics, but we literally changed our approach, and we ended up defeating AQI, and we did this through a political strategy by empowering the Anbar Awakening, who were this 100,000 set of Sunni tribes that were numbering 100,000. And we took a big risk here to get rid of AQI. What did we do? We gave them money. We gave the Sunni tribes money, not AQI. But when we gave the Sunni tribes money, this was a big risk because maybe they would turn their guns on us. And I knew this up close and personal because in February 2007, um even though I was a critic of the war here, and I was saying we're doing so much wrong, I was invited to go to the Third Infantry Division in February 2007, >> [cough and clears throat] >> speak to all 150 of their officers 2 weeks before they deployed to Baghdad. 2 weeks before they deployed. It was a 2-hour briefing, and they wanted to know, no kidding, how could they calm this thing down? No politics were in the room there. This was a no-kidding and they were their lives were on the line, Patrick. You think about that honor that when when we talk about the honors that I have had, this is just one of the many unbelievable. When we set out to create a shoe that blends [music] comfort, function, and luxury, we had the choice to make it fast, we had the choice to make it cheap. We chose neither. Instead, we chose Tuscany, Italy. We chose true Italian craftsmanship, each pair touched by 50 skilled hands. We chose patience, spending 2 years perfecting [music] every detail, and we chose the finest quality at every step. Introducing the Future Looks Bright collection. Not rushed, not disposable, [music] not ordinary. Rather, intentional, luxurious, timeless. If we were to say, make a list of top 10 books that officers and generals and sergeant majors have had to read the last 30 years, both your books are going to be probably on the list. >> But but let me go back to this cuz how you defeat terrorists here is a is is all part of the mix here. So, when I went in, I was asking the cuz I was uh brought in to this this big meeting with the Intel officers who were who were bringing me in. And I said, "Well, will you tell me a little bit about your orders that you're going to have when you go into Baghdad?" And they said, "Well, of course, sir, you understand it's all classified, but what I can tell you is that we are uh we are debating here. We haven't decided whether we're going to go into the it's called Sadr City in Baghdad, the Shia area of Baghdad. And um uh and then uh I uh took that little bit of knowledge and I was able to reorganize it to explain to them over 2 hours that if they would do that, they would probably double the amount of suicide terrorism in Iraq at the time and make everything worse and that what they needed to do was not go into Sadr City militarily, needed to keep to their main footprint, which was these more Sunni neighborhoods, there were seven of them. So, we got into the details here. Um and uh that if they would do that uh with some other uh uh ideas, too. So, it wasn't just literally that. Um this would have the best chance of putting the capping, I called it, of the volcano. Well, I can't tell you uh that I only go into these things for 2 hours, and then I go and I take all the questions, and I go home, and then they listen to other people. Well, they never did go into Sadr City. I can't tell you it's because of what I said, but what I can tell you is we did cap that volcano. And when we then um and this was under Obama in 2010 and 11 when we ignored the problem and allowed the Anbar Awakening, that that key force of Sunnis, to be crushed by the Shia Maliki government, of course ISIS was going to come back. And that's why I was right there tracking this thing, and as soon as ISIS came back, I was right there with the strategy of how do you defeat ISIS? So, so my goal here is Patrick hasn't always been to just say, "You're doing something wrong." It's been to come up with alterns. That's why when you ask me, "What would I have told President Trump on February 27th?" I actually have an answer, and it's not just making it up off the fly. It's because uh but you can't you can't go to the White House, knock on the door, "Do you mind if I come into your super secret classified meeting?" >> know I do know I think you said in one of the interviews that both Iranian state TV and Russian state TV invited you to be on or something like that. >> I won't go. Yeah, in fact, the they just recently wanted to get me on the they call you on WhatsApp or whatever. Yep. And you can't really tell. And you you when I get so many calls. So, I I answered the call, and they said, "Well, we sent you all these things." And I said, "Well, wait a minute. Tell me more about your organ- So, this is where you have to ask about your organization. You're you're famous. Not everybody's famous like you. So, um uh and then it was it was just uh it it was uh Russian television, actually. I just had masked the name of that. And I said, "Oh, I'm sorry. The reason is because um I just made a decision in 2014." This actually goes back to when Russia took Crimea. So, if you looked at my uh history here, in the the years before Russia took Crimea, I went on RT. I I used to do that. But then when Russia took Crimea, this was just quite clearly a um a a gra- I mean, this is just, you know, flat-out aggression. You're literally seizing territory that's not yours, and you're you're you're doing it. Now, it's a fait accompli. Didn't really have much fighting, but nonetheless. So, uh I had um a lot to say in the media about what we should do about that um as the pushback to that. Um but um I just made a decision that I wasn't going to do that. I've been offered uh trips to go to Iran multiple times, and I just won't go. And um uh and the reason is because I'm not here to uh become a uh Look, if I'm not willing to be a pawn of Republicans or Democrats in my own country, why am I going to be a pawn of somebody else? And and also, Patrick, there's there's lots of money here that So, when I make arguments and books, um this this does help certain groups. And you wouldn't believe the amount of money that I've turned down because they they throw money at you thinking, "Well, you'll just do things You're You're You're kind of going in that certain direction." Um and I'll tell you a case with uh 2014, what really broke the the back here um uh and the CIA knows this, and the FBI knows this, but I'll just tell the case publicly here um which is I got an email in uh uh soon around the time that uh Putin took uh uh Russia took um Crimea. And it was from a New York firm, New York law firm. >> [snorts] >> Um and they wanted to have a conversation because um they had some clients, and they knew I thought economic sanctions were bad uh here. That's true. I I I think they don't work very well. And they wanted to talk to me about what I might be able to do. So, I got on the phone and here it was a set of lawyers in New York and I won't say who the who the firm was. But it was a set of lawyers in New York and they wanted to pay me and they were willing to pay me a lot of money to do Freedom of Information Act requests. They wanted me to do to get information about the economic sanctions on Russia. I said, "Wow, okay, so but who's your client?" And they said, "Well, okay, it's Rosneft." Now, Rosneft, if your listeners will go, is the conglomerate of Putin, the croniest of crony Putin conglomerates of oil and gas in Russia. So, basically, I was being offered an enormous amount of money to do essentially work here for Putin. And I'm just not going to do it. And so, if RT wants to know, this is the reason. Okay? And everybody in the US government knows about this. So, I'm not I can't >> Oh, you reported it to the government. >> Oh, for sure. Oh, for sure. Oh, for sure. And by the way, you don't Was it real money? I'm not going to talk about the level of details. I just told you it's money. But what I'm saying is that people might say, "Well, wait a minute. Do you have to report?" I guarantee you that guarantee is a little strong. We should not be surprised. But they already knew. That they already knew that all this stuff that you you you we think like right now if we take our cell phone out so we're not actually even, you know, the cell phone is is it's all being completely monitored here and you can turn it off and literally turn That's why you have to put when you go in the West Wing, you're they're not just turning off the cell phone. Okay? [laughter] They're literally taking your cell phone and they're putting it in this unbelievably thick safe thing that no amount of material because we live in a world, Patrick, where it it's not cuz people are monitoring Professor Pape. It's because they're already monitoring everything from the other other side. So So this is So for me, I just simply I'm not going to go down these roads here. And it's it's really just based on on on principle here. And I'm perfectly glad to be the University of Chicago where every single dime of what I spend is constantly I mean, oh my god, you know, the amount of paperwork you got to do. If I have a driver who takes me to the airport and it's not through the Uber company or oh my goodness gracious, the amount of paperwork here. Yeah, so I got I got an email. The audience may think, well, you know, these types of things don't happen. I got an email 2018-2019. I made three China videos criticizing China in a big way. And then I got an email from a PR firm in uh New York. Um We have the entire paper paper trail. This Chinese charity uh this Chinese billionaire who was worth at the time 20-30 billion dollars wants to give you $600,000. In return, he wants to invite you to a charity event and he wants you to take 300,000 of the 600,000 and give it to the charity and he wants to take a picture with you. >> [laughter] >> We got on a call. Was me, a guy named Gerard, and Mario get on a call. They're presenting it to us. Uh man from China's on the call. The PR firm's on the call. And I said, "What charity is this?" And they're kind of going through the Well, we want to show you China because we want you to see the greater part of China. I'm like, "Great. And so let me get this straight. You want me to take 600K and give a charity to Yeah, that's all we want you to You can keep the other 300,000. So you want to for the rest of my life hold me hostage that I took 600K from you guys. Yes. Well, that's the second That's That's the second Remember how I told you the told you the story that if you try to bully people and as soon as you give give bully what they want here, they're just coming right They're going to do it again. >> Not interested. >> This is just So, when I see these stories in the in the newspaper here, it's it's just it's it just reminds me again, I'm in fourth grade, Alvin's in seventh grade, and we got somebody trying to >> We got to find us Alvin guy. Alvin, honestly, message [laughter] us. We need to figure this out. But, I'm just pointing out that it's it's it's it doesn't Well, it doesn't work with me, and I and I and I think >> your birthday? What month your birthday? >> Oh, April I just had my birthday. It was a It was the same day of Ron Paul I went to the Ron Paul's April 20th Friday last Friday, April 24th. Happy birthday. >> Thank you very much. And it was the Well, it was a great present. I hadn't seen Ron Paul in God, 15 years some long period of time. It's been a long time because the issues had moved and so forth. And now the Iran war, there was a reason to come back together. >> Yeah, getting the band together >> [laughter] >> is really quite interesting to see what happened. And and my wife got to be be there to see it all, which was really quite a you know, it's There are these personal things, you know, that have a chance to show off a little bit of your wife. >> So, so let's talk China. So, you went to China last year. I think last year June. >> During the bombing of Fordow, yeah. Right. During the bombing of Fordow, you're there for 2 weeks, 18 hours a day. Yeah. And you're in the factories, you're in places. What what what did you learn about where China's at that the rest of the world is not aware of? >> Yeah, what I learned is we're tracking about I would say from the newspapers, that is Wall Street Journal, New York Times, even the business side, probably about 10% of the real big picture of what's happening in China. Um what we are doing is taking a soda straw view of what's happening, focusing on individual companies. And I know cuz when I went, I wanted to visit the companies, BYD, Xiaomi, which is another electric vehicle um manufacturer. It's like the Porsche level. Uh and also Alibaba, also some laser advanced AI in Wuhan. and I wanted to go visit the companies because that's what I thought I should do. I wanted to see and I did. I visited the companies on the shop floor. I got a chance to see how the robots actually work there for for for hours, not just for a few minutes and and I did learn some things there and I'll come back to detail in just a second. But by doing this by going to um not just you know Beijing and Shanghai which many people will do all the time here but by going to Wuhan, Hangzhou, Shenzhen to actually go on the shop floor, spend hours and hours and hours there and then go to dinner with all the with the executives to really talk about the situation here also in the Middle East. I learned something really big Patrick which is what China is doing is not just simply uplifting a company. They they are doing that. They're uplifting whole [snorts] cities. So think not about an AI company in Pittsburgh. Think Pittsburgh itself is being uplifted. So what I saw was say I'll just pick Wuhan because Wuhan is a steel an old steel city like Pittsburgh is. Now it's 9 million. Pittsburgh's about 350,000 so it's it's bigger. But what they did in Wuhan was they are uplifting all of the medical industry. They are uplifting all of the cities transit infrastructure with AI. I don't just mean redoing the paving the potholes here. They are uplifting when you go to get your driver's license in in these cities that I'm in in. They have rebuilt the entire buildings where it's not that they just accommodate your cell phone, it's like start cell phone, build building around the idea of a cell phone. Okay? This is a completely different experience. Uh where you go into the buildings just to get a say uh either you want a building permit or you want your uh driver's license uh here, you're going in and the very first thing you do is you have to tap your phone so that you get everything downloaded on your phone. Because there's an awful lot of um uh forms you need to fill out and you might try to do this at home, but they explained to me, "Yes, but when we try to do that, we need to have people standing on the side so that there's always going to be a question here or there that you're going to have." And so then what do you have? You don't have these long line universe not um city of Chicago motor vehicle. Oh my goodness gracious. Just imagine if those of you could just imagine it's it's worse than you imagine, okay? Um but but what happens it um uh in these uh advanced city advanced cities now um is they have uh the equivalent of Starbucks right there. They have uh little areas for the kids to play because what the parents have to do, the people the adults have to come in and they got to go and work on their cell phones to fill out all these forms and then they will have about 10% contact with humans, other people there cuz it's not going to be just you can't do everything on your phone, but it dramatically reduces all of the issues we we deal with. So So it's um um they are they are uplifting whole city and then if you then one of the big fears we have here about AI is it's going to put everybody um uh it's going to make everybody unemployed. That's not what's happening in and Wuhan and Shenzhen and Hangzhou. You're having massive construction because what you're doing is you're feeding AI in at every single street corner. You're you're you're you're uh you're you're um when you get a um um uh you know, it's uh it will this will probably happen to us very soon. When you get a speeding ticket, now you know how we have the red lights here? >> Mhm. Okay. They take the picture. >> the picture and we get it about 2 weeks later here and you don't know that it happened for 2 weeks, okay? What happens in China and they showed me this literally the driver showed me this is when you when you run that speeding ticket, you get it in two seconds. >> Stop it. >> And they take it right out No, and you can just push pay now. Okay. This is hilarious. >> And so it's happening like that. And by the >> for me. I have way too many tickets. My my license got suspended for the third time 2 weeks ago. >> Well, I'm just going >> like, "You know your license is so" I'm like, "What are you talking about?" Yes, unpaid ticket. So, but that doesn't happen without massive construction. So, their construction workers are actually doubled what they were over the last 10 years. The health industry is growing as well because all of this it's not about the company alone. And then the other thing that I really was just knocked me off my socks was the integration with university systems. So, now of course I'm a professor and I'm interested in doing that and as I'm doing this tour uh they want to hear my my talks on say Trump foreign policy and tariffs, things like that. Uh so, that's natural I would also go to the universities, I'm getting these deep presentations, not just me talking to them about how they're integrating with the AI because um you've got a basically uh AI that doesn't need a BA, you've got AI that needs a BA, AI that needs a master's, and AI that needs PhDs. Um and then they started to take me these different firms. Um so, a lot of the firms are what's called uh vertically integrated where what they're doing is building their own silicon chips. Uh so, they took me to the chip factories. Uh so, this would be a chip factory I went in say Wuhan, which is part of a laser AI laser company. So, they have the AI lasers here that are doing all this special carving with with lasers and AI, but then they do their own chips. So, they took me to the chips where you've got to get all dressed in the suits because you can't have any any any spotty any dirt that gets in. And then they started to explain to me that and they showed me that what's really happening here is you can't do this with BAs. You've got to actually have masters and some of the chip assemblies here need to be done with PhDs cuz it's really very technical and very very specific. It's not just people turning widgets or screwdrivers like Howard Lutnick was was describing a couple about a year ago on Sunday show. This is a very different thing. So, you need to you want to work very closely with universities. So, I'm coming back and I'm looking at I'm from Erie, Pennsylvania and and I've seen Erie, Pennsylvania just kind of the bottom fall out since over the last 30 40 years. Breaks my heart. I mean, we basically have two We used to have all these industries and we had paper industries, all these tool and die industries here. You know what the big industries in Erie, Pennsylvania are? Hospitals where you're born and funeral parlors where you die. Okay? And this is just breaks my heart here. And and we just don't have any real approach like this, but what China is doing is they're not just uplifting a um a deep seek or an Alibaba. They're they are creating webs of doing that, but 90% of this is happening in a much broader context where they're taking say a St. Louis and they're uplifting the whole area. They're taking a Pittsburgh, they're uplifting the whole city. They're taking Detroit and they're uplifting the whole city. And they've done I went in In 2-week period I went to these four these four areas. It's about 50 million people that are being uplifted. Now, maybe they haven't uplifted anybody else. I don't know. I didn't actually they they're they're they're telling me that if I went to the more rural areas, I'd be impressed there, too. And maybe I will go back. But the bottom line is let's assume it's only 50 million people. Only 50 million people and we're going to look down on that? No. I think they're 10 20 years ahead of us, maybe even more. Not because of they're a couple months ahead or behind on deep seek or chat GBT, but because of uplifting the entire cities here. And this is you know, this is what digital China is is uplifting this whole area. And quite a few of these these business owners, when I had dinners with them here, they would tell me their personal story just like when we started out here. And almost you know, many of them said a very similar story, which was well, in the 1980s or or 90s, I lived in rural areas and I didn't even have shoes. And now look at me. Okay? So, this is this could be America. >> [laughter] >> Well, this is America. They kind of duplicated us. Without us, China wouldn't be successful. >> Where are we right now? You see, I I believe in the We are the juggernaut. We are the greatest country in the world that everybody copies and duplicates. And then let's get juggernauting. Okay? So, I am definitely I'm not I'm not going to become a salesman or you know, sort of supporter of China. I'm going and looking at this as let's get moving here. And I don't think we're even getting to first base. I don't know if we're really out of the batter's box here. So, we've got all these plans. We've got all these ideas. And I see the stock market in this this >> to have you been to Tesla's headquarters, SpaceX's headquarters, have you been to Nvidia's headquarters, have you been to >> I have not. And would this show invite me? Would this show invite me? Show me that you're at least as a head Now, with the the other thing I want to say to your your audience is, right away right now they're probably going to go and start to Google. Oh, okay, Professor Pape is saying all this stuff. I'm going to go see for myself. You can't see it on Google. And the reason is because they won't let the >> doing in China is the advancement. >> mean, the actual shop floor, just like you go in the West Wing, they take the cell phone. Okay, they don't want uh they could easily be [laughter] talking smack and bragging and showing all this off. They're just not doing that. And and that tells me we're [laughter] up against not just a competitor, but we're up against somebody who wants to keep going under the radar. >> what's interesting, because when when you go to places like this, they're only going to show you the good. They're not going to show you the ugly, the bad, the fact that their population has decreased 5 years in a row, and some people are reporting that the number of them being 1.4 billion is not the real number, that it's a lot less than that, because if you do the math from the moment they went to one child policy, you know, they're they're they're inviting you to show you the best. >> me give you a little bit of background, a little bit more. So, my first trip to China was 1979. 79. I was a uh first-year undergrad at the University of Pittsburgh. Uh I heard about a trip that 30 of our professors were going on to study the uh economic industries in China. Couple graduate students were going, and I said, "Well, are there any undergrads going?" No. So, I wrote a letter to [clears throat] the chancellor. His name was Wesley Posvar. And two-page letter. Brilliant idea. You're going to be the first university trip ever. Too bad you don't have an undergrad going. I got a free trip to China. >> [laughter] >> So, I always tell that story to my students. So, just write those letters. What do you got to lose? >> [laughter] >> Okay. And so, I get a 5-week trip. This was not a short thing. Five weeks. >> 79 1979. And what we did is we went um started in Hong Kong. Uh we went to Can- it's called Canton. It's not That's not the the Chinese name, but that's the the Americanization of it. And then we basically went to multiple cities just like I did here and my presentation shows I have the before and after uh here. Um and Shenzhen is like unbelievable. It was just a little fishing village uh uh back then. And what Um and what we did is with these 30 economists, I was there with them. In the morning, we toured the shop floor. In the afternoon, we'd spend time with all the leaders hearing all the stats and so forth that they wanted to collect cuz they wanted to know could China change? Could China That was the big issue uh here at the time. Well, I started to go back in 2012. Now, 2012, this is after the Olympics. You're talking about they don't show you the best. Uh well, this was during the air of Is that a good Olympics? This is after Well, they did, but this was during the air apocalypse, which your listeners can also look up. So, the air apocalypse was the worst atmospheric pollution that we have had in any urban area probably here in about 100 years. That we used to have this in uh in say uh uh London here long time ago in the 19th century where there was so much soot in the air from all of the um uh the chimneys that were churning out all this coal-driven energy here. It was literally pitch black at noon. So, when it's when it's you're at the in Beijing, you have to wear an N95 mask. This was before COVID. That's the first time I wore an N95 and I still went even though um maybe I shouldn't have, but I still went cuz I wanted to see what it was really like. And I wore the N95 uh here. So, I saw some and I used to to it You know, you said that China had the one-child policy. I called the air apocalypse the one-parent policy. >> [laughter] >> Because I said what's really half-joking, only half, I said China's got a doesn't want to have Japan's problem, too many old people. How do you do that? You have a lot of pollution. >> [laughter] >> Wow. And and I And but now what's happened in the last 10 years is they've gone huge into solar as most people know. Well, what does that mean? Far less pollution. Far less pollution. Uh here and you know that because you go to the cities and they literally don't have like the air apocalypse. I was there. I physically was there where when you take off from Beijing the airport in Beijing at noon and it's totally pitch black once you're at 15,000 ft the sun. Okay, this is this was this is real problems, you know, big problems, not just poverty. And so I I saw it, but I also see China they're cleaning things up and we got to get moving here, Patrick. We We got to stop talking we're going to get moving and just deciding that certain billionaires are going to fund their companies or help their companies get ahead. That we need to do more. See this picture? Is this kind of what you're talking about how it went from >> Oh, exactly. I I have pictures >> 10 days apart. That's right. And also then in if you so 2015 when I went to Wuhan, you would see Wuhan had cuz it's a steel it was a it's more of a steel company steel. So if you had picture from Wuhan 2015 air. Yeah, there you go. There you go. I was literally giving talks in Wuhan. That's exactly right. And then I went literally last June. Okay, and it's just a different it's a Now, does it ever get like that? It probably still does some, but I'm just pointing out that over time what is happening here is change is occurring in China. And the other thing I learned is that very few people from America have gone to China since COVID. So before in the last say the University of Chicago we opened our Beijing Center about now almost 20 years ago 18 years ago. We have a Hong Kong Center. It was really the thing to do the fad if you were in universities around the Olympics. You with the Olympics started all the universities Stanford you know etc. Open these open these centers in in China. A lot of them in Beijing. Well what happened with COVID and and there's also we're mad at China because of COVID I understand. But people stopped going and so the amount of tourism in general is gone way down. >> Specifically Wuhan right cuz you you you now know it was it came out of the lab and you now know they could have done something about it. They didn't move quickly and then boom. That's right. I went to the Wuhan lab. I actually went to the area that it was there. I took pictures of it and so forth. So I have a you know I I do have a a bit of a understanding of where the market was versus where the lab was. How far is it? What is it? Oh it's only a couple miles away. It's it's a very it's you you could we I don't think we've really gotten to the bottom of this with the public information and and I and I really >> see the story that came out with Fauci's uh two days ago? I don't know if you saw this or not. Literally a story was dropped two days ago. Former Fauci this was a New York Times story. Former Fauci aid charged with conspiring to evade COVID-related records request. X NIH official David accused of stealing emails. >> I haven't seen that story but just in the more basic level Patrick Um, after Pearl Harbor let me put this in a little my context, okay? After Pearl Harbor, we had an intelligence failure. Uh, it took a couple years, but only a couple years, and then our Congress did a massive uh, I think it's 76 volume study of the intelligence failure of Vietnam of of of Pearl Harbor. Uh, how that was an intelligence failure. In the middle of World War II, we did this, okay? So, we didn't wait till World War II was over. If you just compare that to what we have here, we have nothing like that coming out of Congress, and this isn't like >> I agree. Well, and and I just want to make a the other point. It's not like we just Well, it's not like we just need to flip parties here. What I see is that we are whether we have the Democrats running it or we have the Republicans running it here, at least with these current extremes on both sides, we're just not getting to the real information that would be helpful for the country. I don't think this is just about, you know, I know Epstein's a big thing here, but I it's not just about one thing, Patrick. It's about so many things. Um, and I think that the uh, what you're describing here, um, getting to the bottom here and why what exactly is it that we are protecting with um, all the source of method? And we you're telling me we really can't redact that we could do this here during World War II with uh, Pearl Harbor. We really can't make a fantastic more information available to the public to understand what happened, whether this was from a market, this was from a lab, whether we're providing the precursors to the stuff for the lab or not. Why why does this have to be in conspiracy land, you see? I don't believe this must be. Uh, and I believe that we used to operate in a in a world where we did massive we put massive amounts of information out there. >> Conspiracy is another one of those words to label on people so others question them and mainstream media will use that and they'll say, "Brian Babb, conspiracy theorist, da da da da da says this." You know that So so what I'm saying, Patrick, is exactly >> rid of that. Let's just keep >> Let's get and let's let's let's move forward on Maybe tens of millions of people agree with you to see, "Hey, what happened? Let's find out more." But by the way, what's your position with NATO? Where are you at with NATO? NATO's dead. You think NATO's dead? >> NATO's dead. We're writing its obituary. Tell me why. Once, so first thing people need to know about NATO is it's not just a political alliance. It is a political alliance where leaders get together and we have Brussels and so forth. But it's more. We have a thing that your listeners will hear called Article 5. Okay, we have we decide we're going to fight together in a war. Much more than that. Article 5 says that when you agree with Article 5, there will be an {quote} integrated command structure. What does integrated command structure mean? An American general runs the militaries of all the other NATO countries. Like World War II with Eisenhower, five-star general. So just pause for a sec. Notice how this changes your thinking. Okay. So Article 5 is not just, "Oh, now we're going to fight together and then sort out the command lines of authority." No. Article 5 is once we agree, and we've only done this with uh with Afghanistan. That's the one time we've done Article 5. It means that an American general, now we could second it. We can make a decision, just so you know, that let another general do it, but it would be The idea was American general is going to make the key decisions and sort out the roles and missions for everybody. Because if you don't have a sync, a commander-in-chief in a theater, that's what a sync is, commander-in-chief, everybody's going to not know their piece of what they're supposed to do, their geographic location. All of that needs to be sorted out or you can't efficiently fight and you'll have a lot of friendly fire casualty and all kinds of other problems here. So, you need an integrated command structure if you're going to have a what's called a combined set of militaries where you have militaries from other countries coming together. Well, that was the beauty of NATO, which is we run the show militarily, not just as a we're the biggest, you know, 800-lb gorilla in the in the on the planet. Well, now, what you've had, not just last year we had Trump tariffs hurting different countries, something very different happened with Iran. What happened with Iran is that when President Trump failed strategically, tactically succeeded but failed strategically, what did he say? He wanted the European militaries to send the militaries and because we weren't going to put our ships in harm's way. Think about that. This is too dangerous for our ships to go into harm's way. And what he said is he wanted them to put their ships in harm's way. Once you did that, I think there is no way that any European political leader or a military leader is going to essentially follow orders under Article 5 by General Keane. So, what Article 5 would would mean, again, that is an American commanders who are going to be running the show essentially here and what happened with this war is we've shown that uh by by the lack of strategy, by the disastrous way this has unfolded, and then on top of all that, Patrick, for President Trump to say "We want you to throw your bodies in front of our bodies." This is not This isn't going to work. And I am not at all surprised that what you see is Stormer that that's the leader in Britain here, uh Carney. Uh you you are seeing so much pushback >> it from your angle, because we also led the way. We led from for front. We gave all this money to protect Ukraine because they treated them like a NATO ally. And so uh Trump probably used it as a way to show the world look at these guys. They don't even pay their 2%, and I've been able to increase it from 3 in 2014 to now 32. But but the messaging is important. But but the point is all of this stuff we do for them, and they don't do nothing for us, exposed to the world. Now, why do we need to be part of NATO? >> Let me let me um come at this from a little different perspective. So, first of all, President Trump start in the first term. That's mostly what that rhetoric was from. He did move them from 2% to now mo- the average is near 3, and it's going to soon be 3 and 1/2. That part is not really what I'm That's true, and it was the first term. >> were paying 2%. Now it's 32. Exactly. That's first term, President Trump. So, that all came from the first term of President Trump. But let me tell you a set of uh data that you don't hear in this regard very much, by the Democrats, either. Which is um what matters for power in the world is your economy is so critical, because it generates the money and the technology and uh the resources for your military and your your your actual military. In 1990, when the Cold War ended, America's economy was 26% of the world's economy. Write it down. 26% of the world's economy. 1990. Okay. World Bank numbers, these are all verified, okay? Um um what is it today? >> 15? No. 26, 27% 2025 numbers. Look at our European allies during this time. Let's pick Germany for example. Germany was about 6, 7% of the world's economy in 1990. What are they today? 3 and 1/2. 3 and 1/2. What about Britain? Britain was about 4 and 1/2% of the world's economy in 1990. What are they today? 3. France? Almost exactly with Britain. 4 and 1/2 to about 3. I could go through Italy. So, what does that mean, Patrick? If you take power I'm curious what you think cuz I'm wondering what you >> show you the power here. In 1990, compared to our European ally European allies here, okay? We were certainly big, but notice they weren't trivial and certainly as a and as a group. But as we stayed at 26, they've fallen by a third. They've fallen by a third, Patrick. So, the way I put it to my classes sometimes, I lay this out for them and I say, "Yeah, we say we're Uncle Sucker, but who's the sucker here? Who's the real sucker here? See, what what I understand President Trump saying if he just looks at this statistic about who's who's paying for defense. And that's And he's right on the numbers. That this is not a mistake of numbers. It's not that President Trump's getting his numbers wrong. But as a businessman, you know, if you're up against companies here, if you're one of the big mega companies here and you're 26% of the market and your uh and your competitor is here at like 7, 8% of the market and you stay at 26 and they go to four, who's got the power here? Who's gaining power here? We're gaining power. I'm very concerned that what's going to happen in the next 5, 10 years is we'll go from 26 to 22 to 23%, something like that. Other countries, and I'm mostly worried about China, are just going to eat our lunch and then maybe even the Europeans will start to get their act together and start to become economically stronger. Now, I'm not saying they will for sure, but we have not had our lunch eaten from us here since the end of the Cold War. And this is over 30 years. So, this isn't just in a yearly thing. So, I really believe that we are not uh using we I keep trying to explain. We're focusing on issues of tactics. We're not focusing on the bigger picture numbers here, the bigger picture outcomes that matter for America's Another point I want to want to make. And what what does Bob believe? I want us to be 26%. I want us to be 30%. I don't want us going down. So, when we had our big conversation about China, I'm looking at this number. I'm looking at we're we're uh we're we're uh we're pulling ourselves and and hurting ourselves with trade. And I'm not coming at this as as some liberal normative, let's be make other people richer or something. No, that's not it at all. I'm looking at this from essentially a primacy lens. I'm looking at this, how does America remain the number one most uh powerful um wealthiest country in the world um for the next 20 years. And I think we need to understand that we have actually had quite a set of advantages versus Western Europe and also Japan. You know what Japan was in 1990? 10%. Japan was 10% in 1990. You look at Japan today, they're 4%. >> Wow. So just think about that for a moment. >> What has China gone from? China >> Oh, China went from two in 1990 >> Uh-huh. two to 17. Okay. Two to 17. >> the one that matters to me. Well, no, yes, but the whole thing needs to matter to you is what I'm telling you because you want us to be not just bigger better than China. You want us to be the biggest, baddest, richest here 26%. That's what's made America the place to come to be the golden goose, the place to come for entrepreneurs. Here, if we become >> waking up in the morning going to China. Ain't nobody waking up every morning going to Europe. >> China. I'm worried about that over time we are going to lose this and I think what we need to do is understand that we've actually made out quite well versus the Western Europe today. >> So you >> And also Japan. Yeah. >> They're not eating our lunch. >> Okay, so the What do you What do you think about the chances of US leaving NATO under Trump? Oh, he just announced well, so just in the last 72 hours. So I've been saying NATO has been dead for about 3 weeks now. So I've been on a lot of these podcasts and and so forth. And other people have asked me about this too. So I've said NATO's dead, we're writing its obituary. That line has been out there for 3 weeks. Well, what just happened here this week on Monday is merits the leader of Germany has come out vigorously. >> And he's slapping Trump right in the face saying that Iran has humiliated America. And then on top of that, if you look at the papers and I I looked at the actual documents that come out of the governments, not just simply the you know, what's out on 30-second TikToks here, they've come out with a new strategy, Patrick, and their new strategy >> right here. is to Yeah, this is the one. >> Club Rock? They let them travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result. A whole nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called revolutionary guards. And in that respect That's the clip. So, Americans may not want to hear that, and I can I'm I'm an American, and that that hurts me to hear that. But, we need to understand that's not unique. Macron thinks that, Starmer thinks that, that's the leader of of of France and Britain, Carney thinks that, that's the leader of Canada. They're all globalists. All of them are globalists. All undoubtedly she thinks that. You look at the smiles on Putin's face. So, Putin just met with um Are you surprised or shocked cuz I'm not? No, I'm I'm telling you that they with what what has the world has learned which they had not known since Vietnam, is an American can be beat. That's what I'm telling you. Uh now, when we had the Vietnam War, this was a material disaster, but it was a disaster for our power beyond simply the material consequences of what happened in Vietnam because that small country beat us. Uh in fact, what started me on my quest to understand air power as a dissertation topic in the 1980s, I wanted to know how we could lose to such a small country. I was going to go into the foreign service. I was going to become a in the Reagan administration, I was going to go get a PhD, and you know, I was I told you I was a liberal Republican. Uh Reagan's basically a liberal Republican. He might not have admitted it, but that but he is. Uh and I was going to go and and and try to spread democracy here, uh but I wanted to know if I'm going to do this, how did we lose? Because after all, I don't want to lose here. That's not the point. So, but what you saw then is the military, not just the Reagan administration, we upended ourselves in the military. That school that I taught at at the Air Force, it was a brand new school. Started in 1991 by Larry Welch, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and he told me and other four-star general generals directly told me because they wanted to fix the problem they saw in Vietnam is airmen did not know air strategy. And I was being hired because my book, my work, the only they wanted some civilians. Well, they couldn't find any who had studied air strategy, and and I'm the one who actually came closest to thinking about strategy the way it should be understood, which is not how to put a bomb on a target, but what happens when bombs hit targets to the politics of the situation. Um and so that went that we were in lockstep here at that point in time. What what you were seeing here though is is since Vietnam, we have not we we had Desert Storm 1991. We asked we've had other problems, but we haven't had a disaster like this since Vietnam. And we haven't And in Vietnam, America didn't do things that are wrecking the world's economy. So, this could be even worse than Vietnam on that dimension. What you're seeing with these world leaders is they have learned America can be beat. Why is the UAE pulling out of of OPEC? They don't want to be tethered to Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabia, even though it's a collective, does is the biggest one in OPEC, and they call most of the shots in OPEC. And they, as we know, MBS was on the phone right next to Netanyahu and encouraging Trump to do the regime change moment. So, if that's true, then you know that this Iranian regime, as it gets more powerful, they're coming at they want to topple now MBA the Saudi regime. Why are you in the UAE wanting to hitch your wagon to that? It's not that you want to have any love for Iran, but the last thing you want to do is get sunk by this these groups over here. You think that's why they left OPEC? I I don't know for sure. I have no deep knowledge, but I I I said on my Substack that as uh this was before they left OPEC, I said that what you're going to see is as Iran emerges as a far more powerful global player uh here and it's just beginning uh in the Gulf, what you're going to see is fragmentation. That you had um uh unity, you had this with the Abraham Accords, uh you had Trump and this was uh Jared Kushner's idea of really from going back to the first Trump administration, where you're going to try to counterbalance Iran. Now, he didn't use that term, but that's basically what's happening here. Well, what's happening and so you're going to build a coalition where it's it's Israel, it's uh the UAE, it's Saudi Arabia. If you can bring in the other GCC countries, that's great and that's what Trump's last May, you saw he did a wide swing through the GCC countries. And what they're basically doing, among other things, um is they're building a counterbalancing coalition against Iran. Uh and uh but what as Iran grows and especially as everybody sees what he is now articulating America is articulating is that we can be beat. This is this is not going to hold together. You you are not going to be able to keep this counterbalancing coalition together and it's not because of uh you know, um uh Trump's unique, it's because this is the pattern of history. This is going to fragment and then I explained they would have different countries fragmenting in different ways. It wasn't going to be a a unison everybody move to Iran. It's fragmentation or atomization and that's what's happening um um here or Iraq was actually the beginning of this as I point out in the Substack. They started to be far more critical of Americans. And what did Iran do? They started to let some Iraqi oil go through. So the more these countries are moving in even Macron was was making statements here that Iran found positive and they let a French oil tanker through. And [laughter] that's one of the reasons why Trump decided to uh blockade because he doesn't want Iran feeling its oats and using its power in this way. But what you're seeing is I believe the the beginning stages of what I was I was explaining would happen is fragmentation of the Gulf. It's not greater unity in the Gulf. And it's because once that power once everybody knows America can be beat, there's a power vacuum now in the Gulf. It's literally power going to respond on their own on their own for their own survival. They may make mistakes. They may do something good for their survival, but they're not going to simply listen to President Trump, Jared Kushner, and just simply say, "Oh, sure. We're just going to keep doing everything and and following your lead." And with OPEC now, this is this is a real this is a real sign of disunity. And you see this in the NATO here and the idea and you saw with Japan President Trump browbeat the leader of Japan and she would not budge. Well, they're only 4% of the world's GDP now. They're not 10% like they were. And why exactly are they throwing their bodies in front of this thing? What they and their oil where where is this idea that somehow we're going to Japan is an island state. I studied this in World War they are an island state. They depend so much on that incoming oil. Uh that's really one of the things that crushed Japan in World War II is we had a naval blockade that really worked to crush their military, their civilian, they didn't crush their morale, but it did work weaken their military. Well, this is still true today with Japan. And so, uh where are we bailing out Japan? So, one thing we could do >> 910,000 uh No, let me give you a real policy. You want to get the a Japan >> 40 days ago, I think a ship showed up from US, Rob, if you have that. No, no, let me No, let me give you an actual policy here, Patrick, to show. So, Japan's economy is about to go into the toilet as a result of all this. Where's the bill going through Congress that we're going to backstop all the loss of Japan's economy over the next 2 years? We're going to backstop it with American cash coming out of Congress. Where is that, Patrick? You want to get Japan on your side? You've just caused them You don't know how bad it's going to be. I'm not saying you give a certain number. I'm saying it's worse than that. We know the direction of where this is going for Japan. Why aren't we saying, "If it costs $5 trillion to backstop you, Japan, here's a blank check." We will back We caused the problem. We will backstop you. Where are we saying that to Western Europe? We're not. And so, what are they hearing? They're just hearing, "You want us to bail you out and take all your pain." They're not going to do it. We're not uh we're not even um um it's it's not just we're not admitting we're losing. This is much worse than that. When we're talking about these leaders, this is power politics of the first order here. And this would be like companies. This is like you're getting in a deal with a set of companies, and the leading company makes a decision that the whole group goes down, well, what would be the rest of them would want before they walk? Well, what if the leading company says, "Okay, I'll It was my fault. I made a mistake. I'm going to backstop you for, say, a year." Okay? That would be like a business way to handle this. All right? Where is that? Nowhere. And that was why President Trump is getting nowhere. Now, I don't think you could see right away getting that through the American the US Congress right now. Probably not happening. So, this is why we're in an escalation trap. I can give you solutions to get out of the trap. >> tells me how much more leverage is on is on his side. Everything you keep saying, I'm thinking, "Okay, that's even more leverage cuz we owe Japan what? A one 1. Uh they bought a 1.1 trillion dollars of our debt. I think they have more of our debt than uh China does. Right? So, >> well, they do, but if we welsh if we if we >> 1.24 Yeah, but if we welsh on that, what that's going to do is increase interest rates for the next round of debt. So, so, bring Scott Bessent on and you talk to him about whether we should welsh on this for real. Get him to really >> they're planning on doing that? They said they >> no, I'm just telling you what will really happen. >> But they're not they're not even talking about that. >> Well, I'm just but I'm just then we don't have leverage. If we can't welsh on their deal, we have no leverage over Japan. >> if that if if you There's no leverage there. The They have leverage over us. >> Did you see the ship that just came in and billing them out to get some oil that came in? 900,000 barrels that came from US just 2 days ago and how they're celebrating? Yeah, that's pennies on the dollar. This is pennies on the dollar. The There's no I'm I'm not I'm I'm I'm glad he's doing it. I'm not saying this is uh you know, take it back. >> This is almost forcing >> pennies on the dollar. I get that, but this is forcing uh a lot of these countries around the world to come in and say, "Hey, it's Hi, America. Hi, America." They're coming to us. So, some may say Well, the real future here will be if we want the rest of the world to come, they won't come while Trump is a strong president because he caused the problem as they see it. You're hearing them say that uh here. By January here, that is as we go to January as the world suffers for this in this time, uh Trump's presidency may be completely dead by that. Uh now, it may not be. We don't know what's going to happen in the midterms. >> people have been saying this and the guy keeps winning and >> No, I know. I hear you. >> drives people insane. You know I I hear and I went to Butler and I talked to I spent all day with those and I'm not telling you I have a crystal >> between being hopeful that he fails, which tens of millions are hoping he fails. Yep. And then there is the other part where you're like, if it fails. If If Yeah, but I'm not going down that road exactly. Just bear with me. What I'm saying is from the perspective of whether these other com- countries will come and organize with the United States to push back on Iran with controlling the Strait of Hormuz. They're not going to do that as long as President Trump is a strong president. Now, if you're right >> going to do that as long as President Trump is a strong president. >> No, because they he may stab them in the back again. Just like I'm saying with the bully. The problem here is that what President Trump did, you could say by not consulting, that's kind of a nice way to put it, but what he did is he took actions where the biggest losers economically were actually not going to be the American consumer. We will lose. The biggest losers are going to be in Europe, they're going to be in Asia. And so, essentially, he played with other people's money and other people's lives. >> They've been playing with our money for decades. >> Well, go back to the numbers. >> But, but, but no, what I'm saying to you is like you're saying it as if we're, you know, we've been taking care of the world for how long? You know, you go back and you think about China. China wouldn't be China without Nixon and Soviet Union because the triangular diplomacy, they were worried that Soviet Union was getting so strong. So, let's open it up for China to get strong. So, we've we've been taking care of everybody. but let's look at how much we've gained compared to everybody else. So, 1990, here the Cold War ends. Who makes more money on the Cold War ending than anybody else? It's American companies. We go in, so there's a power vacuum cuz you what you have is you have the Cold War ending and that isn't just ending in, uh, you know, sort of, Eastern Germany. It's ending in Africa. It's ending in Asia. There's a whole set of Soviet puppets here that is suddenly there's a giant vacuum. Well, this is what the roaring 90s was all about for America, a large part of it. Uh, there was some in our country as well, uh, for sure. But, a large part of this and a lot of the business people will know this, uh, and certainly Alan Greenspan would be able to come and tell you about this, is we are filling, this is the spread of global capitalism here to large parts of the world, uh, even Vietnam, for example. Vietnam today is a is almost a a golden case of growth here, um, and it's really soaring from the 1990s on as the Cold War ends. Well, that is a success story for America. So, we can say, you know, oh, poor us. All we've done has been taken advantage of by the world. We're making out like bandits here and I think we need to understand that that's really healthy for us. That's how we're staying at 26% of the world's GDP. We're making out as change happens. >> to say, to say, you know, you know, it's hurting them and this is not fair what America's doing because it's hurting them. Well, if America eliminates a potential uh, uh, uh enemy long-term that would like to kill the Western way of doing anything, IRGC, that doesn't want to do business with anybody, maybe that benefits the world. Now, you know, you could disagree and say I wouldn't go and take out the 50. >> I'm with you right there. It's just we have no strategy to get there with President Trump. >> You think. You're not on the inside. To say Can we make comments like that and we don't know, right? Uh to be honest, like All I can say is you are I will say there is no evident sign of that strategy. And there's a lot of evidence of everything going negative. So, if this were 2 months ago, that would be a different story, Patrick, but it's not 2 months ago. This is not just the opening days where we're going to have a short air campaign and things are going to work out and President Trump has many off-ramps here. President Trump, we're now at I believe this is day 60, if I remember right. So, we are now starting the third month of this. Uh and so, the uh it it is high time now for there if there is a strategy where we can be confident. >> It's it's time and the idea that we just keep uh what President Trump has said is his strategy cuz he was he was given a um set of options here just a couple days ago in the Oval Office. Uh it was does he start the bombing campaign up again? Um does he pull out everything? This would This would be well, we marched in, let's completely march out. Or does he do uh just keep the blockade? Those were the three options on the table. It's not a strategy. Those are just military options. They're not being tied to ends. That's just a mil- That's tactics. He chose the middle ground to basically keep the blockade going. That's not a strategy. That is a set of tactics. And there's no connecting that to the outcome. And I'm saying there's a big problem with connecting it to the outcome is where is the case of maximum economic pressure crushing a state like Iran. We have paid plenty of cases where we've done that. We just had Iraq. In 1990 in Iraq, we slapped on the toughest oil sanctions blockade in history bringing down Iraq's GDP by 47% for 12 years. For 12 years we crushed Iraq's GDP more than we had any other country before with with economic sanctions. And it was really a tight blockade because we stopped the the land routes as well. That's what led us to do a ground war. And what happened to Saddam Hussein's regime? It did not crumble. It did not crack. The same problem of the water you know, we're worrying about the water going in and this this was not enough. It did not happen to the extent and so forth. What happens instead and this is my area again how how the pressure affects the politics. When you take a country and you weaken it economically and you cut its pie in half and the government is still in place, what does the government get to do? Redirect the remaining half to its supporters, take away the resources from its opponents. And that's exactly what Saddam Hussein did and that's what the Iranian government is doing. They're it's the they're going to privilege the revolutionary guard. They're not going to first take money from the revolutionary guard to go pay the pro-democracy movement in Iran. That's Saddam Hussein, same thing. Yes, the the country's pie the economic pie is cut by half, but what happened is you became more beholden to support the uh, dictator you didn't like. And by the way, that's not unique to Saddam Hussein. When, um, Germany occupied, uh, France in World War II. You know, they beat France in 6 weeks and then they occupied it for 4 years. Notice that there wasn't an uprising by the French population. Why not? It's because Germany held all the keys to the economic flows inside of occupied France, including the food. You wanted food and ration cards? Guess what you had to do. Go to the factories that were working for the Germans. You don't want to go work for the Germans? No problem. You just don't get any food. Okay? So, there's We have books on this, so I'm not just that when I'm talking about studying economic pressure, I'm not doing the hand-wavy stuff, Patrick. I'm going through case after case. And the truth is, we just don't have this case of economic pressure crushing the resistance, crushing the regime without without military force. So, what you see is economic pressure is a precursor to conquest. If you want to use military force to conquer territory, perfect sense to weaken the enemy economically here. The idea though that you weaken them economically and that alone, this is President Trump again, up against the weight of history of a hundred years. This isn't up against, uh, just simply, uh, a matter of, well, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. With regime change bombing, something I, again, bombing to win's all about this. This is the book on regime change bombing. It shows since World War II, bombing alone has never toppled a regime. My work on economic sanctions, economic blockades, multiple academic articles, uh, about this, is showing side by side since World War I, economic pressure alone, meaning without follow-up ground conquest, is not toppling a regime. Now, if you want to get them to negotiate on a price of trade here or release a few hostages, you can have economic pressure do that. So, minor goals can be achieved. But, if you want But, if you want the big ones, topple the regime, surrender weapons of mass destruction, stop a military offensive like they're doing in Hormuz here, the record shows Trump is up against the weight of history. And these are the things that he and his folks need to hear. And this isn't coming from somebody who's, you know, the liberal goody two-shoes or somebody who's just trying to torpedo, you know, Trump >> to see him succeed. Oh my god, I want to see it because the so many >> see the IRGC fall. I would love to see the IRGC fall. I think the it is the most it is one of the most evil regimes and has become more evil that we have seen on our planet. Uh what we saw in on on January 14th here, where within about 72 hours, somewhere between 20 and 30,000 people were murdered in the streets. We have not seen that in a certainly a condensed period of time, that many people die at the hands of their own government um since the late 1980s when Saddam Hussein killed 20,000 Kurds in Iraq in about 2 weeks. Um we've seen in Srebrenica, this was in 1995, July 1995, we saw the Serbs kill 7,000 Muslims in in about a weekend or so, 7,000. So, we've seen some of this before. I don't want to say we've we've never seen this before. I'm not saying that, Patrick. What I'm saying is this this regime has has demonstrated is one of the most evil regimes that we have seen on the planet, period. And it has just now become even more evil. So, no, I am all down for as I said, 2008, I said the biggest problem Obama's going to have is Iran nuclear weapon. I didn't say it was rise of China. I didn't say it was Russia. I didn't say it was holding on to solving problems of 2% in NATO. I said this was the number one problem. And I got to say, I was not part of the Obama administration, but everything I saw is he took it seriously. It was his number one problem. Here, and he was willing to make deals with Russia and China in order to do what was necessary to do the coalition to get basically a weak deal. I am not saying that JCPOA was a great deal. I I lay this out in my class in detail. I tell them exactly what the limits of it were, what the advantages of it were. I just want something better. And the idea you're going to throw away something that is that's that's that's half a loaf for a a magical hope of a full loaf? No, that's my books would then be called bombing hoping to win. Okay? I do not hope to win. I'm I demand. And basically on the right and the left, and the left doesn't like it either when Professor Pape gets in the room, they cuz I I complain about their economic sanctions. And I explain that you're killing people with these sanctions because you end up having the malnourished, the young people here, the people under 5 years old, they die when there's more malnutrition. They die when there's more disease. So, these economic sanctions, this economic pressure is not humanitarian the way it's often print, you know, sort of articulated. And the truth is when I when I go toe-to-toe with the folks on the left on this, of which I've done in print, they don't like it either. So, I'm not really picking favorites here. I'm holding people to a common standard, which is have a strategy to win that takes into account the downsides for real, not just blow it off and say, "Oh, well, no, we'll solve those when we come to them." >> I think you're fair, and I think it's it's a voice that people need to hear. My opinion, this is why I listen and see what you're saying to see what blind spots uh there I hope the audience enjoyed it as much as I did. And we're going to put the links below to all your books, every one of them. Uh especially the most recent one that came out. Uh Rob, if you can put make sure put the links to all three and maybe put the recent one all the way at the top so the audience can go find it, direct link to Our Worst Enemies 2026, and the Substack that he has, if we can put the Substack there as well. >> Thank you very much. >> Sir, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming out. >> excellent. And I and I so appreciate that you I believe you ask questions and push back the way your audience would be if they were sitting right here. And and I I don't know, I've never met President Trump. I can't say that it would have been I I think maybe a version of it, although I suspect he would be pretty tough. Okay? Not necessarily nasty, but that's fine. I'm I'm up for that. Cuz if it turns out there's a better position than what I'm offering, I'm down for that. >> about you what I love about you is you're you're about America winning. That's right. >> And and as long as that's we can have different ideas and disagreements, as long as we both want to see this country win. Absolutely. >> the same team. We don't have to agree on everything. We want that to be the same. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Absolutely. You know, this whole thing with Valuetainment PBD podcast started with a phone me and Mario. That's it. 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