Transcript 0:00 [intro music] Welcome to Trendlines, a podcast on global affairs brought to you by World Politics Review. My name is Peter Durrie. 0:12 For this week's report, WPR columnist Michael Cohen sat down with me to discuss the role of foreign policy in this year's presidential campaign in the US. 0:25 But before he explains where Trump and Cruz differ on international politics, I'm joined as always by WPR's own Judah Grunstein. So Judah, uh, what's on your plate this week? 0:36 Well, we ran two articles that tracked with President Barack Obama's current trip abroad, uh, his itinerary this week. Uh, the first was a feature article by Christian Cotes Ulrikksen on Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority. 0:54 And Saudi Shiites were in the news recently after the execution by Saudi authorities of Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shiite cleric and activist in January. 1:07 That execution, if you'll recall, sparked protests in Iran that degenerated into a, an attack against the Saudi embassy, uh, leading Riyadh to sever diplomatic relations and really upping a notch the tensions between, uh, Saudi Arabia and Iran. 1:26 And in the article, Christian shows how this is really emblematic of how Saudi Shiites have become central features in this rivalry, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry, with both sectarian and geopolitical dimensions. 1:41 And he, he outlines why historically the Saudis have viewed the Shiite community, which is concentrated in the country's oil-rich east, as a security threat, both to Riyadh's religious leadership role in terms of Islam, but also in terms of its increasingly heated competition with Tehran for regional dominance. 2:04 At the same time, he points out that despite the appeal of the Iranian model of theocracy to Saudi Shiites historically, uh, since the Iranian Revolution, that their grievances, grievances really are rooted in socioeconomic inequalities, uh, within Saudi Arabian society, and that they've been predominantly expressed within the context of Saudi national identity. 2:28 So in failing to address them as such, and in framing the problem in almost exclusively security terms, the Saudis risk creating a, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. 2:40 And, and so even though the, the article doesn't address head-on, uh, Obama's visit, it's an important story, story in terms of Saudi Arabia's internal societal fault lines that have, that has implications for its rivalry with Iran and by consequence implications for the US, which counts on Saudi Arabia as a, as a major regional partner. 3:04 Yes, it, it's, it never ceases to amaze me how, uh, how, uh, this kind of securitization of internal domestic disputes, uh, never fails to produce the problems it, it tries to avoid in the first place. 3:17 [laughs] Very much so. And you had a very good article on another, uh, station in Obama's trip in, uh, and which deals with the Brexit question. 3:27 Yes, and, uh, this was a briefing by Milton Ezrati on the Brexit, or the British exit from the European Union. 3:37 Uh, Obama arrives in Great Britain today ostensibly for the Queen's ninetieth birthday and also to discuss the military effort against the so-called Islamic State. 3:47 But Brexit will be on everyone's minds because it, it's, it will have major and, and clearly negative implications for, to put it very bluntly, British, Britain's value as a US ally. 4:00 Uh, the, the tricky part for Obama, as Milton's article makes clear, is that he'll have to tiptoe around actually making that case in terms of the economic and geopolitical impact of Brexit, which would be harmful, 4:15 because the major drivers of opinion for leaving the EU mainly have to do with sovereignty issues. 4:22 Uh, a lot of British resentment over having to follow directives from a Brussels that they see as undemocratic, uh, but also your, your basic run-of-the-mill nationalist and native, nativist issues like anti-immigrant sentiment. 4:37 Uh, not just immigrants from outside the, outside of Europe, but also internal EU, uh, migrants or, or b- because of the open borders who, uh, there's this perception that they come to Great Britain to take advantage of the generous social welfare, uh, benefits that they then send out, send out of the country as remittances, uh, even though statistically it's been shown that, uh, immigrants actually contribute more to that system than, than they withdraw. 5:06 But at any rate, for Obama as, as a foreign leader to come in and tell the British what's best for them 5:13 would probably be counterproductive in a climate of British resentment over Brussels telling them what's best for them. 5:20 So even though, uh, Milton's article doesn't address Obama's visit directly, it discusses a lot of these underlying issues, uh, behind, uh, Prime Minister David Cameron's, uh, calling of the referendum and his campaign for EU reforms to try to sell the, the continued value of being in the, in the union to the British electorate. 5:43 Um, but in a lot of ways, uh, the referendum is a very risky maneuver because to begin with, EU referendums almost always, uh, fail, uh, in the sense that they usually have very little to do with actually the EU and often have to do with sentiment toward the actual government in place or other issues. 6:05 Um, the, the other thing is that Arguing out, arguing the benefits of EU membership is, is sort of akin to, uh, c- convincing motorcycle riders who oppose laws requi- requiring that they wear helmets because they feel it's a government intrusion, uh, into their personal lives. 6:24 You, you can point out all you want the statistics about helmets increading, increasing safety, but that doesn't really respond to their core objection, and the same thing goes with the EU. 6:34 You can point out all the advantages in terms of ec- economics and politics. Uh, the resentment really has to do with sovereignty, and that i-i- it, th- those arguments just don't respond to that. 6:44 We'll see where, where it ends. 6:45 [laughs] Uh, we, we also, we also ran a briefing this week on a place that it's unlikely that Obama will visit in the near future, uh, the Niger Delta in Nigeria, which, uh, I'm sure you have some thoughts on. Yeah. 6:58 That, that was an excellent briefing by Aiso Van Eysenga, and he, uh, he looks at this issue which has, uh, slipped out of the limelight a bit in light of the, um, of the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria's north, but which is a v- very constant thorn in the government's side and the, and the side of the Nigerian government. 7:21 And y- you had a full-blown insurgency in the Niger Delta some years ago, which, uh, cratered the, uh, the, uh, oil production in the Delta, um, by about 50%, uh, it, it declined due to attacks on installa... 7:35 on, on infrastructure and personal. And, uh, the, uh, the then government, um, 7:42 got out of this mess by, basically by, um, proposing a very attractive amnesty deal, um, to the militants, uh, who were fighting for more, um, economic benefits, basically, from the local oil production. 7:55 And, uh, now the, uh, new president since last year, um, Muhammadu Buhari, um, he has just renewed this amnesty deal, um, in the face of rising, uh, a- again, rising attacks against oil infrastructure, 8:11 and, uh, at the same time, has tried to kind of combat some of the, o- of, of, of the egregious, um, outgrowth of the first deal, in the sense that that first deal didn't really approach the underlying reasons for the, uh, militancy. 8:26 Uh, it just, um, created a network of, um, of patronage a- and, uh, corruption, um, that, uh, made it more profitable for the militants to engage the government, uh, than to, uh, take up arms. 8:40 And so he, he has, uh, he, Buhari, uh, has taken kind of a stick and carrot approach. 8:45 He has renewed the amnesty, but he has also issued an arrest warrant, warrant for a very prominent former militant leader over corruption charges, and he has deployed more military, more government military to the, uh, uh, to the Niger Delta. 8:58 And, um, there's, um... 9:01 So Van, Van Eysenga makes the point that this, uh, doesn't look like we, we are seeing the return to full-scale insurgency, but, um, that it seems to be the case that there are people who didn't, uh, participate in the first amnesty program because they were either too young at that time or, uh, because they found it more con... 9:21 uh, they, they found it more lucrative to go to, uh, to form criminal networks to steal oil, and that these now try to get into, um, government patronage, uh, because the oil price has b- has cratered so much, has, has, has fallen so much. 9:38 Um, and stealing oil basically isn't profitable anymore. 9:40 So th- th- this is a very, very interesting dynamic, and I, it's, it will be very interesting to see if Buhari can, this time around, not only get the situation under control but also lay the foundation for a long times, long-term solution for the problem. 9:54 Um, so yeah, thank you. Thank you very much for, for joining me again this, this week. My pleasure, as always. 9:59 If you would like more from World Politics Review, sign up for our free twice-weekly email newsletter at about.worldpoliticsreview.com/newsletter or click on Newsletter at the top left of our homepage. 10:17 The US primaries are in the final stage, and we take the opportunity to look at the role foreign policy has played in the campaign so far, as well as the role it will play going forward. 10:31 Joining me is Michael Cohen, who has written about this topic regularly in his WPR columns. My name is Michael Cohen. I am a columnist for The Boston Globe and World Politics Review. Foreign policy has been, um, 10:49 a bit of a, a sideshow, I think, in the campaign to a large degree, except really for the issue of, uh, uh, trade. Our country is in serious trouble. 11:04 We don't have victories anymore. We used to have victories, but we don't have them. When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let's say, China in a trade deal? They kill us. 11:24 Trade has been one issue that has really played a big role, especially on the Republican side, but really un- in, in, in Democratic side as well. 11:32 Um, in general, I think, you know, you have to sort of separate the two, the two campaigns. 11:36 On the Democratic side, uh, foreign policy has, has, has played a much less significant role than I would have expected actually, uh, because, you know, uh, Hillary Clinton has a pretty big advantage on foreign policy. 11:49 She has a lot more experience than Bernie Sanders. Um, she's served as Secretary of State, obviously. Um, but just she was having... 11:56 Th- because of the sort of politics in the Democratic Party, I think she's been unable to run so much on that because of, uh, frustration, I think, among a lot of Democrats with her support for the Iraq War in 2002. 12:08 So I think that has limited her ability to talk too much about foreign policy. But- You know, to me, the gap between the two candidates on that issue is pretty broad. 12:17 You know, Bernie Sanders, for all of his, you know, positives aspects, is pretty clueless on foreign policy and has sort of shown that from the beginning of the campaign. 12:26 And he hasn't he's yet to give a single major foreign policy speech, which is 12:30 he gave a speech about about Israel to the APAC conference, didn't deliver it in person, but has not given sort of a speech laying out his foreign policy vision, his foreign policy viewpoints. 12:41 On the Republican side, you know, it's been sort of a competition to see who can who can out hawk the other candidates. And Donald Trump has so far won that competition, mainly by, you know, bashing 12:56 Muslim refugees, Mexican immigrants, foreign countries that are apparently ripping off the U.S. like China and Japan. He's floated some rather controversial ideas like pulling out of NATO, 13:10 committing war crimes, bringing back torture. You know, the thing is, though, except for the leaving NATO thing, a lot of those positions are ones that are actually held by other Republican candidates. 13:21 Certainly virtually every Republican candidate has talked about taking the gloves off with ISIS, which is tantamount to basically committing war crimes. And all of them have sort of talked about rebuilding the U.S. 13:35 military, even though it's the strongest military in the world. All of them talked about going after ISIS, although none of them have laid out a strategy much different from what the president is currently doing. 13:45 It's hard to say that foreign policy has really helped any of the candidates on the Republican side. I think I think it's helped anybody. It's it's probably been used as a tool for for Trump to, you know, to sort of 13:57 go after the other candidates on on the trade issues, as I said before, and also just sort of to prove how tough he is and how hawkish he can be. 14:04 But in a weird way, he's taken positions actually to the left of some of the other candidates and really hasn't paid any serious price for doing so. We have to form coalitions with predominantly Muslim nations. 14:19 I know how hard it is to form a coalition. I formed the coalition that imposed the sanctions on Iran, got Russia and China and others to be part of it. 14:28 You don't form a coalition by starting with insulting the religion of the people in the countries you're trying to get into the coalition. 14:37 And then when he turns his back on NATO, the most successful defense alliance in history, which has to be a part of our effort to defeat ISIS and to stop terrorist attacks in Europe and elsewhere, it doesn't show that he's strong. 14:53 It shows that he is dangerously wrong. He's in over his head. Hillary Clinton is probably going to run against Donald Trump. And if she does run against Trump, I think she will use the foreign policy 15:11 issue quite a bit, mainly just to attack Trump on his lack of experience. I mean, Trump has said all the public candidates have said some pretty crazy things about foreign policy, but Trump has said the craziest things. 15:24 And I think that it gives an opening for Clinton to go after her. But really, you know, I think the bigger thing is that it just lets her kind of 15:34 criticize Trump for his lack of experience and his lack and and and the risk that Americans will be taking in electing somebody like Trump. 15:42 I mean, somebody talks about who talks, you know, offhandedly about pulling out of NATO, talks about, you know, committing torture, talks about banning Muslims from entering the country. 15:51 Those are all of those things are, you know, play among perhaps Republican voters, but not among the rest of the of the electorate. And I think, you know, it would be very, very hard for 16:06 for Trump sort of walk away from those positions or escape those positions. I think, you know, Hillary Clinton will certainly use it against him. But, you know, in a way, that's not her strongest argument against Trump. 16:16 I mean, her biggest argument against Trump is that he is he is intolerant. He's xenophobic. He's racist. He is, you know, he's no experience to be president and so forth. 16:26 I think the foreign policy part just sort of just sort of adds to that message. It's it's one more piece of the puzzle for how you go after Trump. 16:34 And so, you know, it's unfortunate in a way, because, you know, instead of having a really interesting foreign policy debate in this campaign, you sort of are stuck with having a situation in which 16:53 there's not a real debate at all, actually, because Trump's positions are really aren't positions that are held by most Americans aren't positions that are really realistic. 17:00 So they're having a debate about, you know, what is the future of NATO and how should we deal with the rise of China and how do we best deal with terrorism? 17:07 You're just going to have you're not going to have one side of the conversation isn't really going to happen because Trump isn't going to be able to really speak knowledgeably about those issues. 17:14 And Hillary won't need to because she can just sort of bash Trump for being inexperienced. 17:19 So I think, unfortunately, you're not going to get a very nuanced and a very interesting conversation with foreign policy in this election. Looking at the differences between Cruz and Trump, it's interesting, actually, 17:31 in a weird way, Cruz and Trump are less hawkish than some of the other candidates who ran this cycle. You know, they're not. In fact, it's funny because Marco Rubio dropped out of the campaign a few weeks ago, 17:46 was actually attacking Cruz at one point for for not being hawkish enough on foreign policy. 17:51 Now, that's more an issue of Rubio and more a question of how, you know, sort of incredibly uber hawkish the the Republican Party has become, because Rubio's criticism of Cruz was that he wasn't 18:04 he wasn't fully in support of NSA, National Security Agency surveillance programs, even though he's largely supportive of them. He wasn't fully supportive. That was apparently enough of a problem for for. For Rubio. 18:17 Uh, and I think on, on some other issues, uh, Cruz has not spoken as much about using the US military for, um, uh, for sort of, for defeating ISIS and things like that. 18:30 I mean, he's taken positions that are hawkish but not as hawkish. Uh, Trump, on the other hand, you know, has taken a position of saying... It's almost like a neo-isolationist position on foreign policy. 18:41 Uh, basically, or, or, almost a mercantilist position and, and basically saying, you know, "We're not gonna help Japan and we're not gonna help the European, uh, European allies, and we're not gonna help other countries unless they basically pay us," right? 18:53 So it's, it's, it's a, it's sort of a quid pro quo kind of a system, um, where, uh, you know, we have alliances with these countries, uh, certainly countries like Japan and, and, um, obviously the NATO alliance. 19:05 And Trump s- seems to be arguing that unless those countries are willing to, um, uh, either give us p-tr- preferential trade benefits or, um, perhaps, uh, 19:18 uh, actually pay us money [laughs], we shouldn't be defending them. Uh, which is an unusual position to take. I think it's a wrong position to take. 19:25 I think it actually under, under, i- it underplays how much benefit the US gets from having these alliances, uh, and, and the cost is pretty minimal. 19:32 But th- this is kind of the approach that Trump's taken, which is very much indicative of his entire approach to foreign policy, which is basically the whole world's ripping us off, uh, taking advantage of us, and we need to push back on that, and we need to, you know, exercise our power in a way, uh, that nobody takes advantage of us. 19:47 And if that means forcing countries that are normally our allies, uh, to pony up, that's what we're gonna do. Um, uh, it's not really a realistic strategy. I don't, I'm not sure actually that Trump means it. 19:58 Um, but I think it's, it's one that certainly if he became president would be very dangerous. 20:02 And, and, and the real issue on, on trade is one that is, is very different view, and this is, I think, where Trump's had an advantage. People don't know like Cruz is pretty much a, a free trader. 20:10 Uh, Trump has taken the position that we, these trade deals for America are bad. They should be negotiated better, uh, and only then can, uh, uh, you know, US economy improve. 20:22 So he's talked about, you know, slapping tariffs on other countries, China in particular. Um, he's talked about antagonizing Mexico, which is obviously a huge trading partner of the US. 20:31 So, uh, I would say that, that, you know, Trump's approach to foreign policy, I, I, I... It would be u- unwise to call it coherent. I don't think it is coherent. 20:43 It, it's, but it is, there is an element there of saying, uh, it's more neo-isolationist than somebody like a Cruz, who I think is, is, you know, basically sort of a, um, hawkish, neocon-ish kind of Republican, maybe a l- not as aggressive as other neocons, but certainly in that, in that category. 21:00 Um, and I think in some ways it's, it's interesting because I think the assumption had been for a long time that you couldn't win Republican, uh, pr- nomination unless you were uber hawkish on foreign policy, and Trump has sort of proved that wrong. 21:13 And I mean, you know, he's taken positions like on the Iraq War, which he says he opposed, which isn't totally true, but he's, he claims he opposed it. He's attacked George W. 21:20 Bush for his conduct on the Iraq War, which is, you know, heresy in the Republican Party. Um, and he's not paid a price for it with voters. 21:27 [upbeat music] A couple of days ago, The New York Times had a headline that said, "Paris attacks complicate Hillary Clinton's alignment with Obama." Has it? Well, it's not the first headline I've disagreed with. 21:42 Um [audience laughing] Uh, look, I, I have made clear that I have differences, um, as I think any two people do. Um, I was very proud to serve as President Obama's Secretary of State. I think we made a good team. 21:57 Uh, we largely agreed on what needed to be done to repair our alliances, to get our [clears throat] country, um, in a position to deal with the wars that had been inherited 22:09 and to take on some of the new challenges we faced. [upbeat music] If Hillary Clinton faces off against Trump or Cruz, that she will win. 22:18 I mean, I think there's no, there's no, um, certainties i- in politics, but that's as close to a certainty as I can come up with. I don't think any chance really that Cruz or Trump can beat her in general election. 22:28 So that brings the question, what kind of foreign policy would she have if she became president? I think it would look a lot like, uh, President Obama's, um, with 22:38 the difference being that I think that Hillary Clinton has shown throughout her career that she's more willing and inclined to use military force than, um, than Obama has been. 22:49 I mean, Obama has not been shy about using military force, um, at all. But he's used it in limited ways, and he's done so in ways to, to limit US, um, exposure. 22:59 So you look at the, uh, at Libya as a good example of a, a campaign that, you know, uh, Obama was, was happy to join in, uh, maybe not happy, but he was willing to join in, um, willing to, to, to, uh, topple the, the, 23:13 you know, the rule of, topple Muammar Gaddafi, um, but then sort of wash his hands of the whole thing. 23:18 And, and I think that actually there's some interesting reporting on this that says that Hillary Clinton was, you know, opposed to that policy. 23:25 Um, I think, you know, someone like Clinton probably would've been more enga- more invol- more willing to get involved in some, in Lib- in Syria, um, than, than certainly Obama was. 23:33 You know, but having said that, I don't see her being sort of a, a, you know, some people called her a neo-con, but I think it's sort of silly. 23:39 I mean, I think she might be more inclined to get involved in a place like Syria, but I don't think she'd be willing to use US military force, U- US troops to do that. 23:46 Um, so, uh, in fact, I think she, she's made pretty clear that she doesn't wanna send ground troops to Syria. 23:51 And in fact, if you look at her Syria, her, her anti-ISIS strategy for, in Syria and Iraq, it's basically identical to Obama's with the exception of a, of a no-fly zone, which I actually don't think she's serious about. 24:02 I think she's saying it in order to differentiate herself from Obama. 24:05 Um, but, you know, on the big issues when it comes to, uh, things like, uh, the Iran nuclear deal, uh, even the rise of China, I, I just don't see a lot of, uh, significant differences between the two of them. 24:18 I think, I think what, uh, you know- 24:22 maybe is some bit of concern is that Obama has, seems to have pretty good instincts on foreign policy and seems to have actually remarkably good instincts on foreign policy, um, and seems to be very wary of using, of using military force or getting the US involved. 24:35 I think that, you know, Clinton, her instincts are not as good. 24:39 I think she's not, she's not as confident about for- on foreign policy as she is on other issues, and I think that she would be more inclined to use force, though again, as I said earlier, not the kind of force that I think, you know, that would start major wars like George Bush did in Iraq, for example. 24:52 Um, but I, I think, uh, y- you know, it would be surprising to me if you saw a huge change between her management of foreign policy and, and Obama's. 25:02 And, and by the way, you know, one of the reasons for that is, is that she was Secretary of State, so she knows a lot of these key actors. I mean, she's been involved in these issues. 25:09 I mean, I think she understands foreign policy maybe better than any presidential candidate on the Democratic side, you know, i- i- in modern history, uh, just for having been a Secretary of State for, for four years. 25:23 So I think from that perspective, she actually would be, you know... That experience will, I think, bode well for her. My thanks to Michael for sharing these insights. 25:37 You can find his weekly Reality Check column on worldpoliticsreview.com. And thank you for joining us again this week. Please subscribe to us in your smartphone app of choice. 25:51 We are in the new podcast section of Google Play Music, for example. Just search for Trendlines. Trendlines is produced and edited by me, Peter Dury. 26:01 You can follow me and World Politics Review on Twitter, and you can find links to pieces covering the issues we talked about in the show notes on worldpoliticsreview.com. 26:12 Have a fantastic weekend and see you next week for a new episode of Trendlines. 26:18 [outro music]
