Foreign Affairs Expert Leslie Gelb: Masters in Business (Audio)

I thought it would be a good good time to bring in somebody with a broad and deep expertise on foreign affairs, and I was fortunate enough to somehow talk Dr leslie Gelb into joining us. You know, if I read his his curriculum Vita on the air, it would take up the whole ninety minute podcast. He's just an incredibly storied guy. Well we get into some of the

broader aspects of what he done. What he's done. UH started as a just a PhD professor at at a school, gets recruited by Senator Jacob Javits, was the you senator from New York State to the U. S. Senate, UH and from there the Department of Defense, the State Department to the New York Times to the Council of Farm Relations just he called it failing upwards, but let's be honest,

the guy is just a fascinating, amazing person. UM. General McNamara appoints him to the head of the project that essentially produces the famous Pentagon Papers, which was a broad and deep look at the U S involvement in Vietnam while we're still in the midst of Vietnam. It was sort of a moment of reflection to figure out, Hey, what are we doing right and wrong and what lessons

can we learn about this for future military entanglements. His concept of how to UM, how to interact with other countries, the limits and positives of projecting both military and economic power quite fascinating. What he has to say UM about China is amazing. He has some insights as to how their military works, UH and where it works and where they've purposefully avoided military entanglements is really quite quite fascinating. UM. He tells stories about dinners with Fidel Castro and and

presenting to the UH generals of Cuba. Just really really amazing stuff. I found it absolutely interesting. He is not without controversy, UM, but usually it's for for good reasons because he says things that the powers that be don't like to hear, even though they're fact based and throw and time and again have turned out to be correct. Oh I left out in the middle of all these jobs.

He takes a position um in The New York Time with The New York Times as a a foreign policies correspondent and ultimately wins a Pulitzer Prize for his work reporting on Ronald Reagan's strategic Defense Initiative in depth six part series. Ironically, here's a guy who never so much has written for a high school paper, rights for the Times. Wins of Pulitzer just just incredible, incredibly accomplished, unbelievably knowledgeable

and insightful. Given all the things that are going on in the world, all the really major macro uh situations that are roiling countries and currencies and economies, and of course that impacts the market. Uh, what better time is there than today for a conversation with Dr les galp So, with no further ado, here's our discussion on foreign affairs with Leslie. Help. This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. I have a very special guest

and the timing could not be more opportune. Dr Leslie Gelb, whose curriculum Vitae, will take up the entire show if I read it, but I will just give you the brief overview as to why our guest is so perfect given everything that's happening in the world, uh these days. Dr Gelb got his b A and m A from Tough University before getting his PhD from Harvard in nine. He then taught government at Wesleyan before Jacob Javits recruited him to become his executive assistance. Javits was the senator

from New York and one of my favorites. He ultimately ended up becoming the Director of Bureau of Political Mill at Terry Affairs. He was appointed by Secretary of Defense McNamara as director of the project that ultimately produced the Pentagon Papers. He then moved on to The New York Times, where he was a diplomatic correspondent, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism for a six part series on the

Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative. President of the Council of Foreign Relations, President Emeritus, and the rest of this list is too long to go into author of numerous books on foreign policy. Let me just stop there and say, Dr Gelb, welcome to Bloomberg. Could you be here? So the timing is really fortuitous. We've been talking about this some time ago, but here we are with all sorts of things happening in I ran Uh, Cuba, China. The world has just really been um just going through all

sorts of of changes. Let's start with with your career from the beginning. How do you end up going from a professor out of college to essentially running the office of a US sender. It was a miracle. You get jobs initially based on connections who you know where, and when I was doing my PhD at Harvard, I met

a lot of people. Some of these people were involved with Republican politics in Congress, and one of these guys heard that Javits was looking for an executive assistant to focus on foreign affairs, international economics, defense, so forth, and recommended me. I went to see Javits and then all the rest of the career kind of flowed from there because and this is something your your business people, financial

people will appreciate, is actually justice. I think two jobs if you show you know how to get things done. You're in a one cent at the top, and everybody wants you because it means they don't have to worry about doing it themselves. They give you an assignment and it gets and it gets done and gets done at a decent quality. And I demonstrated that. So the rest of the career just flowed almost miraculously and without any planning.

I mean, when The New York Times offered me the job is a diplomatic correspondent, I told A Rosenthal, who was the executive editor of The Times, I said, I've never even been on a junior high school newspaper, and that ultimately, so let's talk a little bit about the Times. Although there's a lot of career in between Javits's office and the Times. In between. Um Secretary of Defense McNamara was that his title at the time, sectors, he was

a Secretary Defense. Appoint you to a committee. The person running the committee, if memory serves correctly, dies in a plane crash and you end up taking over the project or my misremembering, it didn't happen that way. My me, my immediate boss, Assistant Secretary Defense John McNaughton was promoted from that Assistant Secretary job to be Secretary of the Navy. A few days later, he and members of his family

died in a crash. But I was at the time director of Policy Planning in the Pentagon and another office for which I was not qualified. I was thirty years old and I had that job. But then within weeks of having that job, I was also given the task of doing what became the Pentagon Papers, the history of US involvement in Vietnam. And we're going to definitely talk

more about Vietnam a little later. You say you weren't qualified, but you were awarded from the State Department the Distinguished Honor Award, which is their highest recognition for the work you did. So when you say, okay, I went from Javits to the Defense Department, and I also got the highest award there too. So that suggests that perhaps you were somewhat qualified, or it suggests that they give away the awards. Okay. So that's the other side of the argument.

I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, and um, well, I'm gonna have to go to Wikipedia and rewrite your bio. They give these awards out. How do I get one of those? Can I just apply or I don't think they give him out all that often. And to have one both from the Department of Defense and and from the State Department, that's a fairly respectable right.

That's a fairly respectable achievement. So now you essentially oversee the creation of the Pentagon Papers, which details in tremendous specificity what happened in Vietnam, what the goals weren't, and where it went wrong. This was supposed to be an internal study, not released to the public. Correct And so there I believe there were fifteen copies, some of which were leaked, parts of which were leaked to the New

York Times. That's right, Ellsberg. Daniel Ellsberg leaked almost a full set of The Times that he didn't include the four volumes on the Secret Negotiations. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Dr leslie Gelb, an expert on foreign affairs and the

projection of power and influence around the world. One of the things that you've written that I've always found fascinating is it's not necessarily just military strength, but it's the underlying economic strength that really has a giant impact on foreign policy. Let's start discussing that what is the role of of the fundamental economic power of a country to influence its foreign policy. Economics is really now central two

power in foreign policy to power in international relations. Throughout history it was military power, military force that was the main arbiter of things. Big countries made demands on lesser ones. If they didn't obey, they got cracked, they got defeated on the battlefield. Now, isn't the underlying economic strength of go back to the Romans or the Greeks, or whoever we want to look to in history, the ability to field a large, well equipped, well fed, standing army. Isn't

that a function of their underlying economy. The economy, of course was important in in in sustaining a large and effective army, but it wasn't a typical instrument of foreign affairs. When things came to be settled between tribes or nations, it was by force. If you look at most international transactions today, there is very very little force. Historically unprecedented little force between nations. They used to go out and fight each other all the time. Uh, it's very rare.

Now you see one nation attack another nation. Almost all the wars are within nations, within Afghanistan, within Iraq, within Vietnam, and so forth. That's a huge positive development the amount of wars and and battlefield skirmishes between countries. So Russia and the Ukraine that that's an aberration. Well, Russia isn't

in open conventional warfare. They sent in their special forces and they built up units of you of Russian speaking Ukrainians, and basically that's how the war is being fought rather than by main force Russian units. So it was really they sort of fomented a civil war. Interesting. So, so back to the economy. Here we are in the early

decades of the twenty one century. Uh, the United States remains the largest, most significant economy in the world, but China is, despite their recent stock market issues and they're slow down in their economy, is soon to be the largest economy in the world. How does that play into their ability to project influence around the world. See, China is a perfect case of what I'm talking about, because China is the first global power, global great power not

to be a global military power. China has no real military punch worldwide. China's military strength is restricted almost entire elite to its borders and to adjacent ceas. Now they're building up their air force. They're supposedly adding all these different carrier and submarine groups. They're taking a lot of their newfound economic wealth and directing some of it to the military. What does that meanthing more and more of it to the military. But it's almost entirely in the

Asia Pacific region. To become a world military power, you need basis worldwide, and you need the capabilities to move navies and air units around the world. They don't begin to have this. What what does that say to us about China's aspirations that this doesn't seem to be a focus of theirs at least at present. Well, that's the

necessary qualifier, at least at present. What they're doing is what China has done throughout its history, really uh to make sure that they were the strongest country on their borders, and they're shoring that right now. But they in the process, they are developing a capability to project their military power further than they ever did before. But there's still nowhere near it. There a decade or two away from having that kind of capability. Now I've seen urgent but just

to finish the point. But China counts around the world, not because it can apply military force in the Middle East or Africa whatever. No one even thinks of China momentarily in those places, but because of its trade and investments. Is there a lesson there for the United States? They? They you look at how much we spend on our military depending on which study you look at, it's the

next twelve or fifteen countries combined. Are we hurting ourselves by having uh an over emphasis on on military spending versus competitors like China. Yeah, it's not the next ten or fifteen total equal in the American total defense now it's about eight eight or so of the next most uh still a big number, Yeah, it is. It is a very big number. And you know, the Chinese military budget probably is in the neighborhood of a hundred fifty billion bucks, and we're still up around five hundred billion.

But it's not just that. It's having experience and being able to control military technology to make it operational. We've been in wars, so our military knows how to use this stuff. China is much less proficient at it. So what does that mean going forward? Is China because what I'm hearing from you is China is obviously an economic competitor, but not really very much of a military threat to

the United States interests. Yes, but China is ensuring that it controls its borders and the immediate UH water areas. And that does mean something because we have allies in that area, South Korea and so forth, Philippines, We have treaties with these countries, and they feel the threat coming from Chinese muscling, Chinese muscling into the islands in the South China Sea and claiming them as part of Chinese

territory and the like. But you see, as much as the nations of Asia are turning more and more to the United States for security protection, they don't want to go too far. They don't want to anger China because China is still the most important factor in that part of the world when it comes to trade and investment. You're listening to mass there was in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

My special guest today is Dr leslie Gelb, author of many books, winner of numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, currently President Emeritus on the Council on Foreign Relations. Is that correct and an expert on all sorts of issues related to foreign affairs. Let's start with a really broad question in the segment. Are we entering a new era

of diplomacy for the United States? It's a new era of foreign policy generally, because problems are becoming more and more difficult to solve, not just within our country domestically, but worldwide, because major powers don't have anywhere near the power they used to have, and we used to be able to combine with Europe and get a lot of

things done. And now the problems, as I explained four, are less between nations where you can apply that power that leverage more within nations, they have their own political problems, they have their own civil wars, and it's much more difficult for the power of the United States or China or Russia or whatever to influence events within countries rather than between them. So so you mentioned Europe at one point in time, I always I thought of Europe as

a great power. You look at the history at least of of Western civilization, and first it was Spain, and then it was France, and then it was England, and Europe seemed to be the center of the world. That's not really the case anymore, is it. For hundreds of years, Europe was the center of the world, and that's where power was located. And they went out and they in effect rule the world, conquered all these territories, created colonies and the like, including us here in the United States exactly.

And now now Europe is a second tier power at best. It's military punch is far, far less than it has been historically. Uh. You know, Germany used to be one of the great powers of the world, Britain and so forth. But now they're all they're really all second tier. What

about what about the EU as an economic power. It's one of the biggest economy is collectively it's one of the biggest, But it doesn't do a very good job of exercising economic power because the damn organization is so bureaucratic and it thinks less in terms of using power to accomplish difficult things and more in terms of just getting along without creating problems. Quite quite fascinating. Let let me shift gears a little bit on you and talk

about oil. I understand the whole economic thesis that strong economy equals strong um projection of power. Let me ask a question this way, is the price of oil driving policy, or is policy driving the price of oil. Well, in the case of the Gulf States, let's say they have so much money they don't have to worry about five extra dollars per barrel, of extra dollars per bowl. They're loaded, So their primary concern is foreign policy. So why is

the price of oil as low as it is. It's as low it is because they're keeping it that way, and they're keeping it that way in anticipation of Iran joining the oil market again in a major way, and they want to make sure that Iran can't put its hand on as many bucks as the Iranian leaders may may hope, so they're keeping it low. They realize that Iran is going to have more money and therefore more impact,

but they want to lessen that blow. And Iran has been a little bit of a troublemaker in the Middle East to say the least. Yes, Iran has been a trouble amerker. But if you ask me, Saudi Arabia has caused the United States far more trouble over the last thirty forty years than Iran as So let's let's focus on that. That's fascinating. Let me let me just explain that because most Americans just aren't aware who on earth funded all these Jahadi's al qaeda isis al Nustra. Whore

Where did these funds come from? Where did the arms they've been fighting with come from? They come mainly from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries. They've been financing it, They've been creating the problem. Are our big partners there from that part of the world, uh for their own their own reasons, usually religious reasons, and their their opposition

to Western values. And you see this most clearly in the thousands of madrasas He's are Islamic schools funded by the Saudis and other Gulf states around the world, and they preach extreme fundamental versions of Islam right and anti Americanism and anti American values. So in the last minute, we have in the segment why do we think of Saudi Arabia as our ally because our government lets them get away with it and doesn't make an issue of it.

But you know, it's a fact that the arms that isis used at first came or financed by the Saudis and the other Gulf states. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio, my special guest today is Dr Leslie Gelb, an expert on foreign policy and foreign affairs and the impact of a domestic economy and how it

affects the country's ability to project power less segment. We talked a little bit about UH, this new era of diplomacy before before we go back to Iran, let's talk a little bit about Cuba, which I think was a surprise for a lot of people. No one really expected anything, uh from a lame duck president, and yet seems to be a lot of diplomatic initiatives that are starting to bear fruit. What what are your thoughts on our change

of status with Cuba. I'm glad we're doing it. Overdue, Yeah, way, way, way overdue. And the only thing that prevented it really was the power of the Cuban American Foundation, group run by Cuban emigres, who really locked on Cuba policy in many ways like the American Jewish community locked on Middle East policy and on Israel. So they the Cuban American Foundation, prevented are doing any kind of opening with Cuba where it didn't make any sense. And here for fifty years

we had economic sanctions against them. We tried to tighten the noose around them and every way possible. It doesn't work. Economic sanctions can hurt a country, and sure it's hurt Cuba a great deal, but it can't bring them to their knees. It can't make them capitulate. We face the same issue with Russia and Ukraine and we never learned the lesson. And when the economic sanctions don't work, people start talking about, well maybe we have to go to

war now. Haven't the economic sanctions worked with I Ran, didn't we get them to really dramatically reduce their nuclear program or not? What? What's the take on that we got them to dramatically reduce it? Which is why I think this agreement is a good one. We can come back to that we did get them to dramatically reduce it UH for ten to fifteen years, unless there's cheating and there's a breakout or so forth. So so let's

let's talk go back to the sanction issue. You have a group in America, the number of different Cuban American groups who don't want to see relations normalized is the reason for that. They have a degree of power and a voting block, and once this goes away, their power goes away. At what point did they just become a self defeating, self sustaining, for no more purpose political group. Thanks too long for that to happen. Well here it

is half a century later. What what what do we to make of either of the Cuban American group or the Jewish Amerner group affecting these sort of policy negotiations. You know, uh In my wife and I were invited by del cast Vote to Cuba and we had dinner with him one night, the two of us, he and his foreign minister or whatever, and and we we were talking about what democracy was. And I interrupted him and I said, you know, you don't understand that democracy is

minorities rule. The Jewish American groups of the primary influence on Middle East policy, the Greeks on Greek policy, the aged on elder elderly. Um. The that's fascinating. That's acting gun lobby, the gun hobby controlling guns. You look issued issue. Who controls financial legislation, it's Wall Street. And that American democracy is is minorities rule. What did he said? You see,

that's what I'm talking about. You don't have a democracy. Yes, I said, what we do because we have the power to change the minorities who do rule, and that can't be done here in Cuba. You're the minority and you can't be changed. He's a minority of one versus versus

an open That's a fascinating, fascinating insight. What what else took place in that conversation with Fidel Castro that was memorable, Well, I think almost almost all of it was memorable, but the sense that, look, he is a dictator and he's done some terrible things, and his brother running the country also a dictator. Yes, and they put a lot of innocent people away and there's no disregarding that. And they did foment revolutions and Latin America. Some people thought those

revolutions were good, others thought they were terrible. They certainly weren't liked by the United States. So I'm not making any excuses for Castro, but they they are really afraid that the United States was going to conquer them, to come attack them, and they had plenty of reason to believe that. For Castro was well aware of all the

attempts that we made on his life. Um. Another meeting we had was with the Cuban Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of their Joint chiefs Staff, who gave a long spiel to my wife and me about how they believe we were still going to attack them full scale Americans still still to this day. And when he finished, I said, I think there is no chance the United States of America is going to invade Cuba. And then I gave him the reasons why he started to cry. He stood

up like we being like tears. Yes, and he came around the table to hug me. Really, you know, that's fascinating. I I don't believe that was an act. I believe he really thought the United States was going to invade Cuba. That that's absolutely amazing. So we're speaking with Dr leslie Gelb, expert on foreign affairs. Let's shift a little bit to Iran. I don't get the sense that any of the Mueller's are gonna be hugging anyone from the United States anytime.

Own They won't. Molas are very dangerous guys, really sure they are. So who's driving the atomic desires in in Iran? I think that the Iranian people from everything we know, from all the reporting we have going on in that country, Iranian people support a peaceful nuclear program. Do they really need that given their vast oil reserves, well they think

they do. Who we to say they don't. I think we could legitimately say, not only do you have vast oil reserves, you're in the middle of the desert near the equator. If you want to set up solar farms, you probably have more energy than you could ever consume in a thousand years. Why on Earth would you need a nuclear program except to build a bomb. They think this is a cheap form of energy. They can They're worried about being able to sell oil in the future

as energy um sources change. That's a fifty year concerned. But they are concerned about it. Again, everything we know from the reporting countrywide is that there is considerable support for having these nuclear peaceful programs. Uh. Not that the people are calling for Iran to have nuclear weapon. There's no evidence of that at all. None, And even the Ayatollah, who we don't like it. It really is a troublemaker, keeps repeating they don't want to build a bomb. So

what do we think. I don't believe them, by the way, I don't think a lot of people believe that claim. What do we think the odds of this treaty actually getting past doesn't require approval from the Senate. All they

could do is stop it. Do we think that this is actually going to be put into effect, Chuck Schumer notwithstanding, Yeah, I think that before Schumer announced his opposition, that they did a vote count in the Senate and they came to the conclusion that a presidential veto two bring the

treaty into force would be sustained. So Schumer's vote was not going to So there was a little political horse trading, and well, I don't know if there was horse trading, but Schumer could go ahead and make his announcement, which I think wasn't based on much substance, uh, without fearing that he was going to kill the treaty off. And and he's appealing to one of those minorities, the Jewish

American lobby that's been very vocal about this deal. They've made it an enormous issue, and it's going to hurt Israel's standing here in the United States, really, including with people who oppose the agreement. It will because they've gone too far in interfering in American politics. Benjamin net and Yahoo speaking in the UN speaking to the on the floor of the Senate. You think that boomerang's back against

Eventually it will hurt. Yes. So we talked briefly before about oil, and let me pose a different foreign affairs question. You know, the United States has been a huge importer of oil for a long time, and now between what we've found in the Gulf and fracking, and we're rapidly approaching the day where the US becomes energy independent. And I'm not talking a century or many many decades. Sometime in the next cold five to ten years, we're going

to become a net exporter of energy. When that happens, what does that do to our interests in the Middle East? I hope, but lessons are interested in the Middle East because I don't, as you could tell from other things I've just said, place much hope or reliance on our Gulf state allies. They've done some great harm, and I

think we've you. When you say Gulf state allies, you mean Saudi Arabia, Israel, and I don't mean Israel, just Saudi Arabidi Arabia, Guitar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and the like, the people who have funded these jihadis all over the world. Where do you think the Taliban got their arms and money from they got it from heaven. They didn't get

it from heaven. So with friends like these, who needs enemies? Indeed, So if in the last thirty seconds we have if people want to find your writings, where's the best place for them to to see your your views in your perspectives? In two places. One is the Daily Beast. I've written a lot for them over the last eight or nine years or so. And in the National Interest magazine Fantastic, we've been speaking with Dr Leslie Gelb discussing foreign policy.

If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and check out the podcast extras where we let the tape role and we continue the conversation. Uh. Check out my daily column at Bloomberg View dot com or follow me on Twitter at Ridhults. I'm Barry Ridhults. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast extras, Dr Galb or Less. As you've asked me, Nicole, you thank you so much for doing this. This is really absolutely fascinating to so many things I want to go over.

We haven't even talked about what's happening with China. And their currency. We'll we'll get to that in a little bit. Let's go back to the Pentagon Papers, which we really just quickly touched on. Describe what that process was like creating that, what sort of hell broke loose when the Times got their hands on it, and what it meant for the Supreme Court to issue their no prior restraint decisions, if if if I'm remembering all those things, uh correctly. So,

so let's start with creating the Pentagon Papers. What was that process like? Well, it's not like you hear about it because McNamara at first started the project to answer one questions that he and a few other people had set down about ten of those questions were historical and the others were about the pacification program, about the political process and Saigon and could at work and so forth. There were a hundred questions that one of his military

aids wrote out by hand. Really yeah, and we were to answer them. Then I put together a small group and basically everyone agreed that we would give the same kind of bologny, superficial answers to these questions if we just sat down to to write them and to get some perspective on it. We ought to look at the history of our involvement, sent a memo into McMurray said, go do it. Let the chips for where they made.

So we started to do these monographs, and basically the monographs, which very few people have read, are sort of straight recounting of the issue. There's one on pacification that sort of tells you, document by document, summarizing them what the history of how we handled pacification was, or why we made the decision to send in the Marines and March

and so forth. And the only sort of analytical parts of the Pentagon papers were the brief summary statements at the beginning of each monograph, which I took the creditor blamed for in my transmission document. And I did so because most of our authors were military and they didn't want to get stuck with having an opinion on this

and that to their superiors. So I took responsibility for writing all those analytical statements, which really weren't very analytical or very presumped she was they put more or less straightforward. So so within that, within the research and creation of depending on papers, the question that I mean. I was born in sixty one the Vietnam War as a kid was always a background there. And the question that to this day I still can't answer is, so, why do

we really go in there? What? What was the point? That was the key question because it applies today too. Look, Ellsberg created the impression that we got in because our government lied to the American people about the stakes and what was involved and why it was important. But that's just false. It's plain wrong, including Ellsberg himself. Ellsberg himself was a big supporter of the war through a good chunk of the sixties. He joined the Marines, he went

over there, and he fought. Uh. The reason we got involved in Vietnam, and it's critical that we understand it for what we get into trouble with today. The reason we got involved is we believed our way into the war. We saw Indo China as the cockpit of the war between Soviet Union, Chinese Communism against the United States of America.

When you say we believed our way in, yes, we thought the biggest threat to the United States was from the from the Chinese Soviet Alliance and from World Communism. And just as we saw Berlin as the major focal point for this in Europe, we saw Indo China as the make major focal point in Asia, and people believe we had to stop. I hardly knew anybody in the foreign policy profession who differed with it, including Dan Ellsberg,

including my buddy David Halperstan. His nineteen sixty four book The Making of a Quagmire ends with a chapter that is the best argument for the domino theory I've ever read. Really, Yeah, so we believed our way into the war. But wait, so he argues for the domino theory, meaning that if we don't stop them here, it'll be country after country until it's at our doorstep. And yet the book is about in ninety four. That's pretty early to say, hey, Vietnam is going to be a quagmire and and for

the next decade it was. Indeed it was, and how important it was to win that David's views changed over time, David Albert stamps Uh has did mine. I was a supporter of the war. I didn't know anything about Vietnam, but to me, it was the crunch point in the battle against communism, and it took a long time for me to evolve. It took a very long time for my foreign policy profession to evolve because we believed in it. The same thing happened with how we fight Afghanistan or

how we fight Iraq. We believe our way into these wars because we make these decisions without knowing about the countries were getting involved in. You know, on Vietnam, I had read one book. I wrote a good many of the memos of the Secretary Defense to the President of the United States when I was Director of Policy Planning in the Pentagon. And I had read one book on Vietnam, Bernard Falls the Two Vietnams, and that was more than most people they had read. We have no knowledge of

the place. The same applied to Afghanistan. The same applied to Iraq. All of a sudden, we throw in the troops as if force is going to solve centuries of culture, politics, and internal problems, and it never does. So, so let's I want to come back to Iraq in a minute.

Let's let's stay with Vietnam for a second. So if the theory is that we're containing communism and therefore we have to project power all around the world to prevent the domino theory, doesn't that say we really don't have a belief, a strong belief in our own system of capitalism and free markets and open trade isn't because that's how I always I am astonished at the stop communism argument. Well, if our system is so vastly superior, and I think history has shown that it is, why can't we allow

the system itself to support itself. Why can't the benefits of free markets stand on their own without military invention? Interventions all around the world creating this very very different sort of battle. It's an economic battle, not a military battle. Or is that the wrong way to look at this? Well, it depends on the country. In the case of Vietnam,

it was nationalism that we were fighting. That was the root cause of you know, I was very close to an army officer went out and commanded an air cavalry battalion in one of the main battles that was fought in the central highlands of Vietnam. When you say air cavalry,

I think of apocalypse now, helicopters round troops. And he was the commander of a battalion who was a lieutenant colonel at the time, and he wrote me a note I was working for Javits at the time, Roman notes, saying we we just had first major battle with North Vietnamese forces in the central Highlands of South Vietnam. And I can't tell you how proud I was of of my troops, how well they fought, with such skill and such courage. There was only one problem. The North Vietnamese

fought better. And there are only two explanations for this. One as they were on dope, and the other is they were on nationalism. And if they were on nationalism, boy are we going to have trouble. They're defending their own home country and there's an advantage to that. And Ho Chi Man was regarded by many Vietnamese as the

father of Vietnamese nationalism. Uh you know, I don't like his communist system or anything like that, but he had the monopoly of nationalism not only in the North but in the south with the Vietnamese VIETNAMIN forces who were also backing him. And when that's what you have going for you, it's hard to deal with it. Look at at Syria today, you have these fanatics fighting and the people we trained for years in Iraq and armed with

the best of armaments. As soon as the ISIS attacked them, they dropped their arms, they took their uniforms, off and ran away. So so let's supply the lessons of Vietnam to Iraq. First question is the same question as Vietnam. Why do we go into Iraq? Nobody really believes the weapons of mass destruction? That was well, I wouldn't say that.

That's so, you know, I was. I was very friendly with George Tennant, who was the director of the CIA at the time, and I asked them outright at the time, Uh, do we have a smoking gun on the weapons of mass destruction? And he said, no, we don't have a smoking gun, but all of us very much believed that they do have these weapons of mass destruction programs. Believed our way into another war is that is that we

just believe it because here Saddam had attacked Iran. We didn't like Iran, but they attacked them, and it was a seven year war, and they used chemical weapons against Iran. They've been using chemical weapons though for a long long time. Well, they did have a record of it. They also use chemical weapons against their own Kurdish people. And they had just invaded Kuwait and we had to fight to kick him out of Kuwait. George W. George H. Wright, so

we knew he was hostile. We knew he was aggressive, right, and there was genuine concern that he had these weapons of mass destruction? Was their proof? No, but there was enough evidence floating around in combination with his behavior over the previous ten years plus to make people feel you had to go after him. Now, they didn't take the next step which they must must take in order to have a rational policy, and saying, then, what are we going to do? What are we going to conduct this war?

Nobody doubts for a second that the United States military isn't gonna steamroll over the National Guard. But after that, and now, the current thesis that I keep hearing is ISIS is essentially the reconstituted uh Saddam troops and weaponry that laid low for a few We don't even know that, we know that some of Saddam's officers are involved with them, but that these are you know, Sunnis who escaped from Iraq and are now Syrians fighting for ISIS. I think

that's exaggerated. So so this brings us back to the original question. September eleven happens in in two thousand and one, we go after Afghanistan, which is where these attacks um come. From By the way, you mentioned our friends, the Saudis funded a lot of the uh not only the Taliban, but a lot of the hijackers themselves were Saudies, so so they were very much involved. So we go into Afghanistan and then somehow not to by two thousand and three we tax some some how we change and shift

our focus to Iraq. It was was that a prudent either foreign policy or military response to where we were at the time. It was dumb, and I endorsed it at the time. So you you you indorsed it, but now you're saying that was after three months, and I saw it. That's the fastest reversal of everybody was. It was fast. But I was for it initially, and when it was clear they didn't have the weapons of mass destruction, I opposed it. And on top of it, I saw we had no idea what we were doing. There been

no plan for fighting the war. That that's so so

it seems, you know, it's it's funny. There's a joke about people in finance and and it it's essentially says um no tour people in finance or notorious for refusing to learn from experience in history, But I it sounds like finance people don't really hold candle to military people, nothing like foreign policy people and making mistakes, the same mistakes over and again, which is why over time I developed the philosophy that guides me and thinking about foreign affairs,

that you're going to make the mistakes, they're inevitable, podcasts smart you want because we're involved in various parts of the world where our knowledge is slight and where our power doesn't add up to our desires, and we're going to make mistakes. And the most important thing you can do is keep your mind open to the possibility that you did make a mistake, so that you can see it and fix it and not caused the blunders and

the suffering that we do when we persist in our mistakes. So, speaking of persisting in mistakes, let me ask you a question, which was worse the errors in Vietnam or the errors in Iraq? Um? I think Vietnam really was. You know, we we lost over fifty thousand men killed ten times what we lost in Iraq. And people forget, but we had five hundred and fifty thousand troops in Vietnam and nearly old draftees not a whole lot of voluntary conscripts.

That's a very different war than sending a hundred thousand people who were volunteers to another contra. Absolutely, and the ramifications domestically to the Vietnam War looks like it was very, very significant. Iraq has created some pushback, but nothing like what we saw in the nineteen sixties. I think that's right. Sixties really was a revolution inside the United States, and frankly, I think it caused a lot of people, two good people,

to stay away from politics. I think the quality of people who run for office today hold office today are as good as were when I was a young man in Washington. You know, it's funny. Let's let's shift gears and talk about politics a little bit. So. I grew up in Nassau County out in Long Island, very Republican area, and Jacob Javits was my senator. And whenever I try and describe and and people on the left and right, none of my friends believe me. But it's absolutely true.

I described myself as a Jacob Javits Republican all right, And four quick bullet points, low taxes, balance budgets, no overseas adventures, and keep the government out of people's bedrooms. It's pretty pretty fair statement those four uhs, because he actually was pretty much of a hawk on foreign policy.

He was a big supporter of the Vietnam War. Well, when I got to when I learned who he was, he had reversed himself and following the Vietnam War, I recall him saying things like, look, if we're gonna project powerful, gonna go to war overs ease, it can't be for some abstract theory. It has to be to protect uh, the United States and not so I didn't. I was too young to know him when he was a hawk.

I knew him as no overseas misadventures. Yeah, he became the author of the of the law that sort of gave Congress a chance to say no to momentary involvement after thirty days. That that's how I know him, as opposed to maybe how he began when I when I was a uch much younger child. But the funny thing about that corner of politics, that on the spectrum a fiscally conservative, socially progressive, call its center right political position.

You can't find that amongst the Republicans anymore. The whole spectrum has shifted so much that what was once a center right possession position now seems like it's a left wing position. Uh so, what does that say? How much of that traces to the reaction the pushback to to Vietnam socially and just the parties becoming more extreme and from my perspective formally thinking I'm center right and suddenly

finding myself center left. To me, it looks like the right wing has gotten the left wing has gotten some extreme elements, but the right wing looks like it's really tacked to an extreme um political position, some of which is the Reagan Coalition starting to fracture and people um really tacking to that far right base to to get we see it in the primary part. By the way, that's the most you're gonna hear me say about anything

this whole interview. But I'm really curious as to your view on how the this political spectrum in the United States has shifted. We always had nuts on the left in the right. When I worked for for Javits, they were there, to be sure, but they were kind of marginals.

The difference not that they were marginalized, it's that they were what I would call five or so national interest senators of both parties who if an issue were really important, would put politics aside and try to get something done. So if it was critical and you needed a law pass that in order to solve a problem, they would get together and do it. So what happened to that

it disappeared. You see, they all left party first, so Bradley, Sam Nun etcetera, etcetera, youth, centrist, moderate, they all left the place because they got totally frustrated with American politics. And it began at the time of the Vietnam War. The people who unfortunately didn't get frustrated with the extremists, particularly on the right. Uh, they decided that this was their great opportunity to go in and control politics. And

they've been fairly successful. Yeah, including in defeating moderate conservatives. Which is astonishing to think that that battle between the right and the far right is being won by the far right. That's not usually it's always been the center holds and and that's where the power lays, but that seems to be changing. They want it hands down, except for presidential nominees. Reagan being the exception people bring up, and in fact, Reagan was not a crazy right wing

president at all. He was a conservative president. The argument is not by any means. The argument is that Reagan couldn't get nominated today. I don't think he could. That's an astonishing, that's an astonishing He raised repeatedly. Well, let's he first, he had a huge tax cut. He took that top rate way down. He got rid of all those crazy you know, tax shelters and real estate shelters and all those things, which is why some guy named Donald Trump was not happy with him way back when

UM but slowly raised taxes to balance the budget. You know, today you have the pledge UM, you have Grover Norquest. You so that center right moderate or or even just ordinary conservative, they don't seem to really be finding a voice UM in politics today, interestingly divided on foreign policy national security, where you have the Tea Party guys like the Polls who tend to be touch isolationists very much. In fact, he isis caused Rand Paul to back off

of that UM. But they're very much isolationists. And I respect the hey, we're spending way too much on the military argument from on Paul Um. Rand Paul seems to have less of a commitment to that than his father did less because he's running for president and he thinks he's got to modify it for that. I think for that reason is Dad ran for president and never changed anything. Dad was more of a true believer. So so let's see he's to say the least. So so let's come

back to um, the Middle East policy. We we talked about Iraq, Um, what's going to happen with our relations going forward with Israel? Um? Are they going to be chasened by their overreaches there? Are they going to have a possible change of leadership? What what happens? There's no chance of a change in leadership position inside Israel, and there is overwhelming opposition within Israel through this agreement with Iran,

and none of that is going to change. Obama has tried to compensate by offering Israel some arms, some high tech arms that he had previously denied them, but that's not going to change their mind about any of this. And we're going to go through a few years of just very nasty talk from Israeli leadership about Democrats because

of their support for this. Hillary is trying to avoid it by as usual, not taking a position strong position on it, but you'll you'll get a lot of anti democratic feeling from Israelis as far as American Jews are concerned. The polls show SI are in favor of with Iran and about twenty are posted very much against it. So if you have six of US Jews disagreeing with Israeli's supporting President Obama, what does that mean for the odds of this policy, this, this um treaty actually becoming the

law of the land. Well, I I think it will. At least the people who do the vote atting say that a presidential veto will be sustained in the Senate. I don't know about the House, but in the Senate that's really the only place that matters. If you can't override into both houses, that's it. This becomes law. Is there any chance down the road that there's a detant between Israel and Iran? Is that something that's possible not

for a long time to come. Look, I've spent a good deal of my life working on arms control, even though I didn't believe arms control was arms control. I think arms control was managing relations with an adversary. And if you look at the history of all the arms control treaties we reached. They didn't solve the problems. They minimize the problems to varying degrees. They lessen the problem, or they put the most serious problems off into the future where there was a better chance of managing them.

We've kind of forgotten that arms control agreements are not agreements of surrender by one party to another. You're you're trying to bargain with another state that has its own interests and it's not going to give certain things up, and you make agreements to lessen the threat, which this agreement absolutely does. Even the critics say the main point is well inten to fifteen years, they can decide they

don't want to abide by this anymore. It's a long time as opposed to Tuesday exactly, And that's the central point to keep making the people. But it's hard to get through when the hysteria has reached the proportions it has. There certainly are histrionics coming out, and it's a coming up on a presidential election year, which just amplifies that even more. All Right, so let's let's shift gears and I'm gonna take you to a different part of the world.

Let's talk about Russia and the Ukraine. So you had said previously that they had set up Russian Ukrainian speaking Russians and special forces within Ukraine, and we're fomenting civil descent the Russians. What's their endgame? What does Putin want? He got Crimea, what does he want from Ukraine? Yeah? I think what what he wants is to establish Russia again as a major power and wants to be treated as a as a major power. Is Putin not treated

as a major power. I think that there's a lot to show from a Russian point of you that we diminished them, and we diminished them in all sorts of ways, certainly economically economically, including in Ukraine, where the Europeans made a proposal in effect to incorporate Ukraine into the European economy and push Russia aside. It's intolerable to give a caution history and to somebody like Putin. The central thing about Russians and foreign policy for hundreds of years is

they like to flex their muscles. They like to be the great power, they like to be treated like the boss. And they lost the Cold War. The country was diminished in size and in power all these respects and then you know, here we do this with Ukraine. We bring the Baltic States into NATO. These are states that used to be part of the Soviet Union and now they're under NATO. Uh. It looked like we were going to bring in Georgia and Ukraine, and Tonedo was as well.

And I think Putin has been fighting against all of this. Now I wouldn't give him the right. These countries don't belong to this, but as a great power, he has a right to a say in those countries and what happens there, just as we would have a right, uh to to what happens in our hemisphere. People have forgotten about the Monroe Doctrine, which is a pretty blatant assertion of US authority and rights in the hemisphere. What if China would open up military bases in Mexico, what do

you think we would do about that? We would go insane. So you have to understand it from Putin's point of view. The second thing you have to understand is that on their western borders, Russia has military superiority over the United States and the West. You see, people don't know that though, um about World War two of Germans. If they weren't. If Hitler didn't attack Russia, the outcome could have been

very different, There's no question about it. But here today people think, you know, Russia is on its knees on its borders western western borders with Ukraine. Yes, aircraft, air defenses, whatnot. A couple of months ago, the the Supreme Allied Commander for NATO, General Breedlove Americans. Sure. He was on Christian almanpor on CNN on CNN, and he was saying this to her, that they have a massive military on the border and they can trump us militarily whatever we do.

We want to put a more eight to Ukraine, they can put in even more to their supporters in eastern Ukraine. You want to start shooting bullets, they can shoot more bullets right on their borders. Beyond their borders, we have the superiority. But on their borders they've got it. And Christian responded when he was finished, Wow, no idea, no idea, She said, wow if you if you know World War

two history. And I don't call myself a military history buff, but I read Keegan's book, and I read a lot of the big um fascinating stories about what took place, not too long ago. I was in St. Petersburg, you know, you see some of the old memorials and what took place there. Russia always has had a massive European looking military force they have. Let me tell you the end of that conversation. Now she says, wow, and then she says,

but then, what would you do about it? He said, well, of course we've got to keep up our military strength, but we need diplomacy. This is a general saying this to the general, And I've had loads of conversations with senior NATO generals. They all say the same thing. You need diplomacy. You need to work a kind of relationship with the Russians where they are treated like a major power. You don't give them the Baltic States or Ukraine, but you take their interest into account. Look, how do you

how do you judge where the Russia matters? Russia is no longer a global superpower, but they are a great power. And how do you measure that? You measure it in terms of whether Russia can help or hurt us in various parts of the world, and they can. Who can help us more than any other country in dealing with what's happening in Syria and Iraq. It's Russia fighting terrorism. Russia has one of the best anti terrorist operations in the world. Intelligence in terms of nuclear proliferation, Russia is

a major partner of ours. Look, they just didn't with Iran. They by the way, fascinating the Russian interest in Iran and how much they were really a key actor in helping that treaty move forward. They were there, were central to it. And in the case of their states on their western borders, they can hurt us unless you have some diplomacy that takes their interests into account, doesn't give them control of these countries, but gives them a say so that they're treated like a major power like we

would expect to be treated on our borders. So given you know, if it would have been a president like George Bush who wasn't a big believer in in diplomatic efforts, I would say, well, of course we're not having any

luck with Russia. But the present administration I ran Cuba elsewhere. Um, although we seem to not be very successful with China on certain diplomatic efforts, why isn't this an administration recognizing what generals like breed Love says, and and paying Look, no one expect the United States to pay homage to Putin, but it sounds like he's looking for some respects, some recognition, and some input into the decision making process. Given how helpful he was in Iran. Why aren't we having a

better engagement and better relationship with Russia? A good question. There there are a lot of people inside even this administration, who think they can knock Russia to the floor. Well what's the upside of that? Why? Why? You know? I

think they're just dead wrong. But there're people inside and people they consult on the outside who have this point of view, and not all generals agree with Breathlow, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and testifying before the Senate a few weeks ago, said the Russia is the biggest threat security threat of the United States. So you have people who say these things and then they don't

say what they're going to do about it practically. Yeah, you know, the in St. Petersburg, there's a memorial to the civilians. During World War Two, the Germans encircled the city, which is really very much on the western border. It's long before they went deep into the Russian winter. Further further east, and they tried to starve the city out. And I'm trying to some ungodly number of civilians died in St. Petersburg, just insane, insane numbers. And the Russians,

these are really tough people. They didn't it went a year or two. They didn't surrender, they didn't give up. They kept the Germans at bay. Not a lot of cities could have survived with the Germans put St. Petersburg through. Anyone who thinks that you're gonna just shove the Russians over and they're gonna topple, you just have to read military history. That ain't gonna happen. Do you need to go back to Napoleon. That's not gonna happen. But you see,

it's not just it's not just to Russia. It's we thought we would do it with Cuba. We thought we could do it with Iran, and none of economic sanctions, political pressure, even military pressure did not bring these countries to their knees. And what do people want? Do they want to go to war with Iran? What do they think the consequences of that would be? Did we want to invade Cuba? Only some nuts wanted to invade Cuba. So I only have you for a couple more minutes.

Let me go to some of my favorite few short questions that I ask all my guests, and then we'll we'll get you out of here on time. Um. So aside from Senator Javits, who were some of your early mentors, well, I would say Clark Clifford, who replaced McNamara's secretary Defense, was a a major influence in my life because he really brought home to me the importance of thinking through strategy before you made your first moves on any area

of importance. And if it took two weeks to do it or whatever, you take that time to do it before you start moving. Otherwise you get you trap yourself. Sounds like it sounds like common sense, but it's pure common sense. But it isn't done. You can see it time and again and in decisions made by presidents after presidents. So aside from Clifford, let's let's talk a little more philosophy. What what thinkers influenced your approach to either foreign policy

or or economics. Yeah, I would say the Realist school. Henry Kissinger was my PhD advisor, are really and I was his teaching fellow and his courses there. Uh. And and he's a realist. If if nothing, he's a realist. And I think that's basically the the framework I've adopted in dealing with the with the world. I believe in power. I don't think you get things done through what we like to call soft power. Uh, that we persuade people,

we understand their interests better than they do. We think our values are going to get them to restrain themselves. It just doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. What happens is power, where you get people to do things or not to do things because you change their calculus about their interests, what they're gonna gain, what they're gonna lose. And if you can't affect that calculus, you're not going to be able to achieve what you want. Pure carrot and stick.

It's pretty much that. Yes, So we talked about the shifts in in politics. What major shifts have you seen take place in diplomacy and are these a good thing or a bad thing? Yeah. I don't think we've adjusted to the world of the twenty one century US in the United States, our foreign policy mostly US really Yeah,

because we have more responsibility than any anyone else. There's any any problem anywhere in the world, people immediately turned to the United States, and unfortunately, to often we try to go respond to it without knowing what they're doing, without thinking through a Clifford Clifford's approach, actually give it real, real thought. Um, what what are some of your favorite books that that have influenced either you're thinking or changed

your mind about different aspects of FIGN policy. I think mainly history books. I try to immerse myself in history, mainly to see how things went wrong and on those few occasions, how they went right, to give myself more of a finger feel and intellectual appreciation of the difficulties of dealing with problems that you can't control, where you have to use your power, and the power can't make things in and in and of itself come out the way you want. Let me let me shift up my

second to last question. I always ask people, um, what advice they'd give to a millennial or someone graduating college about their career. But let me ask you it slightly differently. Uh, someone comes to you just graduating career, graduating college and says, I'm interested in a career in in the State Department or foreign affairs or diplomacy. What sort of advice would you would you give them? I would say, first, demonstrate to your boss that you know how to get things done,

which means you think through the strategy. I'm sensing a theme here. You think through his strategy and you figure out how to deal with people well enough to move the pieces along so that in whatever it takes a week or three months, your boss sees you've accomplished it. And if he sees that you're going to get ahead. LA question, what do you know today about foreign affairs, diplomacy, military power, economic might that you wish you knew when

you began fifty years ago. I think, uh, that I should have had a better appreciation of what our power could accomplish in different places at different times, and what it could not accomplish. Limitations on the projection of and what you could do to what you could do what you couldn't do. Fantastic, Dr Gelb, thank you so much for being so generous with your time. There's so many things we didn't get to, but I know you have

other places to go. Today we've been speaking with Dr Leslie Gelb on the impact of the economy and projections of power. If you enjoyed this conversation, look an inch high or lower on Apple iTunes and you'll see the other fifty or so shows we've done. Um be sure and check out my daily column on Bloomberg View dot com. Follow me on Twitter at rid Halts. I want to thank Mike bat Nick, my head of research, for helping us out. Charlie Volmer is our producer, and our engineer

today is Matt Ryan. I'm Barry Rich Halts. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.