We spend most Monday show talking about the exploding Somali fraud Scandali story that continues to utterly baffle him in bamboozle and swindle and defraud and all the works, all the additives. I think our fair game when it comes to this terrible story out of Minnesota, the repercussions of which we are only beginning to learn the extent of it.
As Cash Hotel said over the weekend, this is very much only the tip of the iceberg we have seen when it comes to the independent YouTuber Nick Shirley on the ground and from various other sources at this point. But the world keeps on spinning, and there's plenty of other events going on as well. And we're going to
bring on shortly to the show, rebeccaheim Res. Rebecca is a senior fellow at the Hudson Suit, one of my favorite thinkers when it comes to foreign affairs more generally, and we're gonna kind of just hop scotch across the globe because from my vantage points, Donald Trump is a
peace making president. Donald Trump is a pro peace statement, someone who has presided over god knows how many peace deals, ceasefires, military off rams, in this first year of his second term, whether it's Congo and Rwanda in Sub Saharan Africa, whether it's Armenia and Azerbaijan, a conflict that I saw up close and personal when I was there two and a half years ago. If you had told me that there will be peace there in twenty twenty five, I literally
would not have believed that. He has seen peace deals between two nuclear powers Indian Pakistan, Thailand and Cambodia, all sorts of Middle East peacemaking. He's been a phenomenal pro peace president. The big question and the question that we will get into in a few minutes here just with with Rebecca Himriz, is is this pro peace momentum going
to continue into the year twenty twenty six? On Sunday, Vladimir Zelenski of Ukraine was at mar A Lago visiting with Donald Trump, and on Monday Benjaminincinniak Whu was their mini president Trump as well. Russia Ukraine continues to be the huge question that is still looming out there when
it comes to the lack of a peace steal. If the were still raging this February, which unfortunately there is a very good chance it will be that will now mark four years since the carnage first started in the Dombas region of eastern Ukraine and in the Crimean Peninsula. It was in February twenty twenty two that Lamar Putin first sent the tanks over the border into Ukraine. And are we closer to a piece still now than we
were three to four years ago? Maybe it's kind of hard to tell sometimes, frankly, because both sides are not quite budging on some of their terminal demands. Russia is clearly the more obstinate party. They are the aggressor. They're the ones who are refusing to compromise virtually on anything, as far as I can tell a Zelenski Foid's worth. It's also not quite ready to compromise when it comes to territorial concessions in eastern Ukraine. What a mess, certainly
for me personally. As the calendar gets ready to flip from twenty twenty five into twenty twenty six, that is something that I will be paying very very close attention to. Is there anything, Is there anything that we can possibly do to try to cajole these parties to try to make mutual concessions again, Primarily from the Russian side. They are the more opnits of the two. Certainly at this time.
We'll get into all that, certainly and more on the Russian crane conflict with Rebecca Heinrich speaking of Primus Nataniyahu and his visit to mar A Lago on Monday, both men fully smiling. They seem to be very much in
lockstep on the same page. Trump's warm embrace of his longtime compatriot and ally Netsniaho's certainly doing a lot, I think to simmer the boiling tensions in this particular Bilatter relationship, which has really been dragged through the mud by bad faith actors, mostly on the left, but increasingly with some ferocity on the quote unquote right. And I use those
scare quotes deliberately. But whatever's worth whatever the naysayers and the conspiracists may be saying, they're certainly not reaching sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. They're certainly not reaching Maro Lago. Because Donald Trump doesn't give a crap what the conspiracists say.
He clearly believes strongly in this particular relationship. He clearly believes strongly in Benjamintiak, who, as an individual leader most recently, actually on this trip, the Israeli delegation announcing that they will be giving their Israel Prize, which is what they named their Great Annual National Prize. It's typically given to an Israeli citizen. This is actually the first time they're
give it to Donald Trump. Apparently, this is the first time they'll be giving it to a non Israeli citizen in seven and a half eight decades essentially in the entire existence of the contemporary Jewish date. So that just shows you how he is viewed, does to say how
Donald Trump is viewed in the state of Israel. And that's for good reason, because Donal Trump has been an amazing friend, an amazing friend to Israel where the rubber could potentially meet the road come twenty twenty six, and again we'll get Rebecca Himer's thoughts on this is when it comes to the reascendant threat of the Iranian regime.
Recall that it was now six and a half months ago that the Israelis first took out a lot of the Iranian air defenses inside of the country of Iran, and then the United States came in for the kude Grath for the death blow with those B two bombers dropping those massive bombs at four Donatans and various other Iranian nuclear sites. The big question right now is what
is the current state of the Iranian nuclear program. We know that there is some level of enriched geranium that is currently around there, and certainly we know that there is still a ballistic missile program that is in place there as well. So what is going to happen when it comes to the country of Iran in the year twenty twenty six.
I don't know.
We will go ahead and ask Rebecca. China, another huge issue that we have to pay very close attention to was actually just on Monday that Hijianping sent his military to perform some of the largest live fire drills in the entire history of the Chinese military. This time it was directed at you guessed it, at the island of Taiwan,
where they are really ramping up and ratcheting up the pressure. Clearly, Shijinping wants to reabsorb Taiwan into China, much as Varim Putin wants to reabsorb Ukraine and probably other places like Georgia and Belaries as well into broader Russia. Will he attempt something really crazy in the year twenty twenty six.
I don't know. I think probably not. What I do know is that China remains the number one threat to the United States, to the American citizen, and to the American way of life throughout this presidency and frankly throughout this century as well. And finally, that takes us to one of these foremost allies, one of the stalwart allies of Russia and China in our own hemisphere, and that
is Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela. This month's long pressure campaign against Nicholas Maduro and his failed tinpot socialist communist state seems to be reaching something of a boiling point and something of a fever pitch. How much longer can this pressure campaign go on? I don't really know the answer to that. What I do know is that it can't go on forever. At some point, there's gonna have to
be something that's gonna have to give. Maybe Madua will abdicate, Maybe he may pull a Baucher alasade and flee to the welcoming warm bosom of Lamyir Putin in Moscow. Maybe he will stay in power. Maybe the US will actually engage in tactical airstrikes.
I don't know.
There are a lot of open questions there at What I do know is that there are a lot of a lot of unresolved conflicts around the world. As we turn from twenty twenty five into twenty twenty six, Donald Trump's first year in office, the reputation is very much that of a peacemaker and is a very very welldess of reputation. Frankly, Donald Trump should have won the Nobel
Peace Prize for his efforts. If the Noble Peace Prize was not catastrophically induced and afflicted with TDS Trump arrangement syndrome. That didn't happen. There will twenty twenty six bring more of the blessings of fruits? Or on the contrary, will there be multiple one or multiple of these geopolitical hotspots around the world that could explode into a large scale, large scale tinder box or two. I don't know the answer.
What I do know is that we have to be prepared for the worst, hope for the best, but always always.
Prepare for the worst.
So, as we're saying there in our introductory monologue, there are no shortage of geopolitical hotspots right now, all around the globe, pretty much everywhere you look, whether it is South America our own hemispheric backyard, whether it's the Middle East, whether it's in Europe, whether it's China ever encroaching on Taiwan in the Indo Pacific, and many other hotspots in between. We wanted to bring on the consummates expert to go on and break it down for us, and that of
course is Rebecca Heinritz. Becca Hinrich is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute's one of our great thinkers when it comes to foreign affairs, and generally you can follow her on x at r L Heinrich. Rebecca Witching you a very merry belated and Christmas an early happy New Year. We really appreciate you joined the Josh Ammers Show.
Thanks so much, Josh, and Happy Hanaka to you.
Thank you so Recca. It's hard to know where to start to.
Honestly, I thought that we would kind of just do a bit a of a foreign policy Poe Pride is kind of hopscotch your way around all of the all all of the geopolitical hotspots. I want to get to rush to the Ukraine. When I get to to Israel with Zelenski and Netsiahu with their recent visits to Trump and mar A Lago. I thought I would start, though, with with Venezuela, which a situation that is rapidly escalating.
It's been escalating seemingly for months now, but it seems like it's reaching something of a fever pitch, with Trump recently acknowledging that the US did indeed strike this implementation area. He's calling it this dock where some of these drug voats were being loaded for possible shipment into the United States In North America, there is some sort of blockade around Venezuela right now. What is your read on the current situation? Frankly, Rebecca, I didn't have this one on
my bingo card. If if you had ask me what was gonna happen or in our own hemisphere back on January twentieth, I wouldn't have thought that there'd be this month's long pressure campaign against Nicholas Maduro. He's a very bad actor, obviously, I just didn't necessarily see this level of intense administration pressure coming.
What is your guests as to what happens.
Here in let's call the next two to three months and in the foreseeable future and what should happen from your perspective.
Great, So I don't think it was on anybody's BINGO card, so it wasn't just your bad Bingo card. So one thing I think is always notable as somebody who just like you do comments very regularly on events, is you know, Donald Trump actually has a very very high.
Tolerance to keep people waiting.
So he allows these pressure campaigns to just continue to build and we're all kind of waiting for the next thing or trying to understand it better, or something to break. But he's pretty impervious to this sort of just pressure to do something. So I think we might we might still be in this phase of just cranking up pressure for some time, even though it feels like we're reaching kind of a culminating point. I don't know if we're there yet. It seems to me that that what President
Trump wants. He obviously he wants the drugs to stop flowing. And he keeps talking about the seaborne drugs or down eliminated, you know, ninety eight percent or whatever the percentages. But I think more than that, Maduro represents a regime that is a drug regime. Has a symbiotic relationship. There's really not a difference between the drug cartels and what they're doing and Venezuelan government with Maduro in power, not only that he has permitted these other adversaries into our own
hemisphere by backing him, the Chinese, the Russians. You know, Trump tried to push out Maduro during his first administration, was unsuccessful in part because they backed off day of United We the United States backed off because the Russians sent in troops to back Maduro, and so we didn't want to have a conflict obviously with the Russians in Venezuela.
We're not seeing that.
This time because Russia is busy creating other problems in Eastern Europe. But I clearly I think that Trump administrations wants Maduro to go with the least cost to the American people, so preferably we do not want to have troops in Venezuela. But I do think that the president seems to have very willing to do conduct air strikes
on the ground in Venezuela. That's going to make members of Congress very uncomfortable, clearly, if they're not consulted and have some kind of way in here, which I know that there are many Republicans talking to the Trump administration pushing for that before any other, you know, increased escalation in terms of the United States directly launching strikes into Venezuela.
So a related question that follows directly off of that about this question of strikes, the proverbial or literal use of boots.
On the ground.
I mean, frankly, this term kind of gets bandoned about as a talking point more often than the reality. But this broad discussion also the recent intervention to strike some ISIS militants in the Sokota State of Nigeria to save the persecuted Belieguer Christians there. I think a lot of folks Rebecka are looking at the Maduro pressure campaign and
this humanitarian intervention in Nigeria. And to be clear, it's a completely righteous intervention, for sure, But I think a lot of folks are looking at this and they're trying to say, how does this fit into the Trump doctrine. You know, it wasn't that long ago that I think a lot of us were thinking about the Trump foreign policy doctrine as being very sober and narrow minded, concrete national interests, the notion of regime change for a lot of people was tanta amount to kind of throw back
to the Bush era. Now, distinction that I've made many times on this show is that it's very different. So you have us militarily imposed regime changed in the one tan versus just doing other sorts of tools to try to try to implement a change regime. On the other hand, but nonetheless, I kind of want to kick over to you, what is your attempt to kind of make sense from a Trump doctrine perspective of the Maduro situation in this more over the humanitarian situation in Nigeria as well.
You know, I think what the way, and I think that Trump two is very different than Trump one and Trump one. I think had you had more Republicans in the administration, longtime Republicans, people like Mike Pompeo, a Urma Master, or you know, others who lean more sort of conservative conservative internationalist types were in power and try to put some coherency in a grand strategy on the way President Trump operates.
This time, we have much less of that, and.
So we have much more sort of raw Trumpian impulse and the way President Trump oper rates. And I think It can be best understood as President Trump wants to do what is in the best interests of the United States, that is doable, that is doable and doesn't drag the United States.
Sounds so if you give me a problem.
You know, if you come in to President Trump and you say, there's Christians being slaughtered in Nigeria by ISIS or a variant of ISIS, and the Nigerian government is going to let us wipe them out. We should do that, sir, He'll say, great, let's do it, and then and so and we'll do it. And the American people support it generally, and it's not a long, dragged out campaign, military campaign. It makes that area a bit safer for Christians, at
least in the case of Venezuela. You know, it's like, look, we want to take out drugs that are just pouring into the American you know, into the United States. Fentanyl, of course, is the number one killer of Americans between the ages of I think it's eighteen and thirty five in the United States.
Fentanyl's not coming out of Venezuela. That's coc other things.
But there is this there is this sort of communist operation with the drug cartels in our own hemisphere that are sending in all kinds of drugs throughout the region. And so I do think that there is now beginning to be a bit of a theory here. Maybe it's Marco Rubio who's developing, and I'm not quite sure who the mind behind it does.
I think it's Rubio, but that.
If you can, maybe you can pressure these regimes to stop this, this this car the cartel regime kind of relationship, that you might be able to affect all of them, because now you've seen these other these other countries are starting to get nervous, and President Trump has said, look, Venezuela might.
Not be the only country. We do this too.
And and so I think again, it's sort of it's like whenever the Iran strikes whenever. When President Trump initiated Operation Midnight Hammer, that was something that was incredibly doable, but he still waited until it was as little risk as possible to the Americans who are going to conduct those strikes. He waited until Israel, of course did most of the work and taking out air defenses, et cetera in Iran. So I think that that's what he's doing. It's much less it's much less of a grand strategy
starting with which would be my preference. China is the biggest threat to the American way of life, and so you have to start there and then kind of see all of the parts, you know, how Iran fits into that, how Russia fits into that, and develop a coherent strategy work from there.
He's much more what.
Can I do with the least amount of harm to the United States that's possibly doable, so I can achieve an outcome, and I think we're.
Going to see some mixed results. Some of it's been.
Exceptionally good, and then you know, but we'll see what the effect is at the end of the second term.
Rebecca Heimrich, because a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, follow her on x at url Heimris, you mentioned China.
We're gonna get the China momentarily. I very much am. I think I was talking about that.
You know a lot of folks say they're China first, and they kind of use that as a pejorative to say, I don't really care about about other issues. Now I'm China first, while still caring about other issues. I really do think that China's most important foreign policy issue. I also care about all the other issues as well. We'll get the China just momentarily, but before then I thought we would kind of just touch on a couple of
these very recent visits and mar Lago. You had Vladimir Zelenski coming in on Sunday and then Natanyahu coming in just yesterday on Monday. Let's let's take the one at a time. Let's start with the Zelenski visit. Trump followed his Zelenski powwow with a phone call to Laimir Putin. And you know, you know, Trump says some shall we say, funny things I guess black of better word at some of these prescal conferences. I mean, he said, he said in front of Zelenski that Pudin wants Ukraine to be
made great. It's not entirely obvious what he means by that, other than maybe Putin just wants to gobble up Ukraine. I guess that's really Putin's vision of making Ukraine great. This situation, to me, right, Rebecca, is so frustrating because I feel like the rough contours of what a peace deal looks like have been so screamingly obvious for the past two to three years, and the parties just just just for for xyz reasons just just can't get there.
I think the administration frankly deserves a lot of credit for working as hard as they.
Have trying to get this peace deal in place. CLA.
It's not quite working though, So what has to happen what is not currently happening that you think has to happen primarily but perhaps not exclusively from an American perspective in terms of trying to get these two parties to actually reach a deal.
Yeah.
So on the first thing, in terms of the comments that President Trump says whenever he's in the middle of negotiating things, and I try to remind people, you know, go back and think about the first term too. He said flattering things about Kim Jung un whenever he was trying to respond to North Korea's you know, illicit missile testing and was preparing for a nuclear test, et cetera.
And so we had this big push to have peace with.
North Korea, and President Trump said all kinds of flattering things about Kim jungun. It's almost like President Trump is taking sort of how he operates in the business world, and he almost tries to will things into being.
Reality when they're clearly not reality, and.
So it is odd, it can be off putting, But once you realize that this is kind of how he does it and doesn't necessarily mean anything materially about the substance of the negotiations, then you know you can kind of be.
Put at ease at least a little bit.
No, clearly, Russia is still if vladivra Putin had his way, he wants to subjugate all of you, all of Ukraine. He believes that Ukraine belongs to this greater Russia, and so Putin is going to take whatever he can, whatever he can get away with.
And I think that Zelensky I don't like.
I mean, Zolensky has really he had a lot more willingness to push back on President Trump to he was was a little cock here in the beginning of this of this administration. I think President Trump has sort of put that to rest and now said, look, you're going to have to listen to the way the United States is going to negotiate this. So you know, Ukraine I think has come a long way in Dolensky's willingness to negotiate and to try to come up to a peaceful resolution,
at least temporarily. It's Russia that remains completely unwilling to bend at all. And so Zelenski even said, I thought Brettbahar had a great interview for Fox with Zelensky where Zalynsky said, look, if we if we've voted right now, eighty five percent of Ukrainians like want this war to be over. We want peace, but eighty five percent also do not want to surrender territory that the Russians have
not already taken through force. So if the Russians can't take this fortified area of dun Esque, they haven't been able to take it since twenty fourteen. If Ukraine surrenders that, and there's like there's men in there right now, I mean they're defending it. They've been defending it now for years. They don't want to give it up. There's people living around that area, they don't they see themselves as Ukrainian
and they don't want to give it up. And so Zelenski says, look, I'd be willing to even put this to a vote. Now, you want to have.
A referendum, let's do that, something that he's been unwilling to do. Until this point.
But in order to do that, you have to have a ceasefire. It has to be peaceful for people to come out and vote. And now the Russians are like, we're not going to do that though, And the Russians were refused.
To have a ceasefire before there is a peace deal, which makes no sense to me at all.
So and then now, of course you have a little bit of it's being sorted out I think in the media, and we'll hear what our own intelligence community says. But the Russians are claiming that during these high stakes negotiations that the Ukrainians launched an attack, an attempted attack on Putin's own residents, which Ukrainians have disputed. They said, we have not done that, but Putin told President Trump that
that's what the Ukrainians did as well. So there's a lot of just you know, wrong information I think coming out of Moscow trying to really muddy the waters.
And make this very difficult.
My last point, I would just say, Josh, I think the way this is going to end. I appreciate President Trump pushing for these talks, I really do, and I think it's going to get us in a better position.
For what security guarantees.
Look like for Ukraine, rebuilding Ukraine, you know, bolstering Eastern Europe, which I think is necessary to prevent Russia from testing the waters outside of Ukraine. All of that is very overdue and necessary, and Europeans have to step up and rearm and provide the bulk of that. So all of this is going to move us towards that, which is great. I do think we're going to have to increase pressure on the Russians. The Russians simply are just they are
not feeling like they need to make any concessions. And I do think that means we're going to have to ramp up selling weapons to Ukraine or selling weapons to the Europeans that they can send them to Ukraine.
And I think it.
Means more crushing sanctions on Russia and getting back and President Trump, I think was in a better place on this, sort of clearly on the side of NATO and Ukraine and pressuring Russia a few months ago, and I think we need to get back to that if we are going to have anything like even like a ceasefire temporarily.
Yeah, it does seem like Trump has shifted a little bit so around October, giver take has Tona shifted in a notably more pro Zolensky anti pun direction. And you know, now it's a little hard to tell, so it's entirely clear exactly what's going on. But Rebecca, real quick, before we move on to the Middle East, I kind of one your thumbs up thumbs down prediction here. Do you think we have a peace deal or a ceasefire in Rushi Ukraine in twenty twenty six.
Or no, I don't, No, I don't, but I do my I think sort of best case, best best case scenario that is most likely is frozen along the lines of contact right now between Ukraine and Russia, with a bolstered Ukrain ability to defend itself, hold the line and then hopefully rebuilding its own society. And then you know, a stronger, stronger NATO, a stronger NATO so that the United States is not providing the bulk of the conventional defense.
But that's Europe, and that, to me is going to be the best most realistic scenario.
Fair enough, And I hope that you're wrong. I fear you probably are not wrong, whatever whatever it's worth. So let's move on to another troubled part of the world, a perennially perpetually troubled part of the world, as the case may be. I speak of course, of the Middle East. There's all sorts of brand new developments actually in the country of Yemen. When it comes to this somewhat bizarre orchane dispute between Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
That's a little outside of.
The confines of our conversations, very in the weed stuff, but it was just breaking this morning. I'm definitely starting to monitor it a little more closely. We'll see what happens there when it comes to the ongoing decade longth civil war in Yemen. But sticking right now with Nantia, who's visit to Israel. So he was there on Monday, just yesterday, Rebecca. This seemed to me to be a very warm meeting between these two men who clearly share
a natural liking and sympathy for one another. Trump seems to genuinely like bibing Nantia Nyakhu as a human being based on all that I can tell there, and they seem to agree basically on what the Israelis came to present. So it seems that the Israelis brought their assessment of the current state of the Iranian ballistic missile program and the nuclear program. It's now been six and a half months since the B two bombers, since Operation Midnight Hammer.
We know that contrary to that classic trumpy and braggadocio, we know that the nuclear program is not obliterated. Rather, it was definitely dealt a very heavy blow set back by Xyz years. We can kind of debate exactly what the assessment is there. What do you think is the administration's mentality right now, Rebecca, when it comes not just to the bilateral US Israel relationship, but also to all the various Islamic radical organizations and state sponsors in the
Middle East. Because it's a little hard to tell, right because on the one hand, they're very sympathetic to this new Islamist sympathetic if not just our Iselmust regime in Damascus, Syria. They're definitely playing very nice with the rest of type Ertawan's Turkey, which is a huge supporter of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood there. On the other hand, they're definitely playing very very nice with Israel. They still seem to
take the Iranian threat very seriously. So it's somewhat hard to figure out exactly where they stand when it comes to radical Islam than the Middle East in general. Kind of curious just for your general take on all the above.
So I think that one I think you always be and this is a consistent now consistent from the first Trump administration the second Trump administration, was that key to any stability in the Middle East is going to be complete and total solidarity with Israel. So that's like, you know, starting that's President Trump clearly has that very clear in
his own mind. And despite some maybe pressure even from the far right of the of the Trump base or those who voted for President Trump, they wanted more distance between the United States and Israel, and certainly Trump and beating at in Yahoo and maybe from those advisors even inside the administration. So there was some chatter about that coming out in the in the media, reporting of people trying to push President Trump to separate himself, and he won't do it.
He won't.
Not only will he not do it, but it's almost like he's like doubly over the top. And his compliments of beating it in Yahoo and his leadership of Israel.
So that I think is obvious.
That's very very clear that he understands that US interests are inextricably tied to the success of Israel and it being secure in the region. And he President Trump was very clear that if Iran does, you know, build its ballistic missile program, rebuild it, which it is. It's been getting help from China. China's providing some of these precursors needed for the solid rocket fuel to that Iran desperately needs.
And so that has been ongoing for the last several months, and so there Israel is obviously going to keep a close eye on that. Remind people that one of the big reasons I was not supportive of the Iran deal during the Obama administration for many reasons, but one of them was it didn't include the missile program, and you need the missile program goes hand in glove with the nuclear program, So why would you let it build out its ballistic missile fleet and improve on its ICBM capability.
The Iranians are back to launching satellites again.
Satellite launches are directly that technology is directly applicable to an intercontinentiballistic missile, which means they could reach Americans.
So you can't let them have that.
And then, of course President Trump said, and if they were to sort of reconstitute and sort of work begin development again on their nuclear on the nuclear piece specifically, that it would immediately that it should be destroyed. And as you pointed out, Josh, you know, my nuclear deterrence and counterproliferation is kind of my specialty, what I really
focus on. And for years what we have said is that even if you blow up you know, four doh, these natans, these these nuclear facilities, nobody was under the illusion that it would completely eliminate every single particle of its nuclear program and.
That would be the end of it.
It would significantly degrade it make it very very difficult to operate and to work in there, to get the scientists back in there, and it sets back the program. It buys us time, and then you have to keep pressure on the regime to make sure that they don't reconstitute. So everything is actually going according to from our side, what we can manage and what the Israelis can manage
are according to plan. It's up to the Iran government if they're going to be so foolish as to try to get scientists back in there and rebuild it when the Israelis in the United States is watching so closely. And then to your point about Islamism around the region, I think that that the Trump administration is just looking at regimes that are just going to be generally cooperative with the United States and not proxies of the Iran regime. So Syria seems to fit into that category right now.
I agree with you, We've got some major problems with the leadership in Syria right now, but at least it's not you know, it's not it's not a sad and so I think that that's kind of what we're doing with what we're.
Dealing with, and same with with Turkey. What can we get out of them?
What can we get out with the Emordies, you know, the Egyptians, et cetera.
And then you point it out Yemen. You know, Mmen has been a proxy for Iran.
Iran has tried to make Yemen a proxy, and so that's where the Huthis obviously have been operating out of And so it's been the Amorandis and the Saudis who have really been hammering to make sure that Yemen does not become a totally you know, proxy state of the Iran regime. So that's basically I think how the Trump administration sees it.
Seems like sober analysis to me.
Rebecca Himris again is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, clearly a woman who knows what she is talking about. Follow her on x at r Alheimris Rebecca as we continue our tour eastward, I do want to touch on
the aforementioned threats of the Chinese Communist Party. It actually was just on Monday that the PLA, the People's Liberation Army, the military of the Chinese Communist Party engage in some of the largest live fire military drills that they've ever done when it comes to Taiwan, up to and including full simulated blockades of all of Taiwan's ports. There're certainly ramping up the pressure. I feel like it's been going
on for a long time. I mean part of me, Rebecca kind of looks at the and says, you know, if you guys are going to act on this, you really should have done it under the Bond administration, when he had a president who was just totally asleep at the wheel, who didn't even know what the difference between China and Russia and Iran. Was I mean, are you really gonna test Donald Trump right now? I mean maybe,
I mean, but clearly it's it's deeply concerning. And what I what I said to my show recently was I encouraged the administration to not take the foot off the gas pedal of China. There was a potentially troubling recent phone call that Trump had with the brand new, precocious Prime Minister of Japan basically trying to kind of coax her into maybe lowering down the decibel of her rhetoric when it comes to China Taiwan. Japan had previously threatened
military action if China had invaded Taiwan. There and my stance is, basically, this is not the right time to be telling our allies like Japan, Philippines, et cetera, to take their foot off the gas pedal. Frankly, I think it should be all hands on deck when it comes to China and Taiwan. I assume you view it similarly, But what would what would your advice to foreign policy makers at this time be when it comes to China More broadly, I guess Taiwana particular.
No, I totally agree with you. I mean that now is the time to be backing our allies. I mean this is this is actually just a great reaganie, you know, page out of his playbook in the Cold War, which is you just you back the countries that are closer to the problem, closer to our shared adversary, and who are standing up to them. And that's what Japan is doing. We have an amazing new ally leader government in Japan,
and she's wildly popular among especially young Japanese. I don't think that she's sort of one of these like picking for a fight, you know, looking for a fight. She's not that, she's not reckless, but she's tough. She's very very pro Japan, she's very very careful, and she has been I think very prudently and understandably pushing back on Chinese aggression against Japanese equities in the region.
And so I agree with you.
I think that now's the time for President Trump to be encouraging her and backing her and providing diplomatic cover for her public even and this kind of goes back. This is the corollary to the first point I said about the Trump doctrine, where President Trump wants to.
He likes to get these wins in defense.
Policy and geopolitically at a low cost to the Americans that are achievable. But of course a corollary to that is he seems to be pretty risk averse when it
comes to contending with peer adversaries. And that's where it gets me a little bit uncomfortable because the president, you know, his advisors should be encouraging him though that if you if you look like you're in any way week or backing down to our peer adversaries or near peer adversaries China or Russia because of its nuclear program, if you kind of back away, they just take that. They just
you give an inch, they take a mile. And so you know, now is the time, I agree with you to be bolstering our allies much closer to the threat, who are doing a lot and this this blockade, this new military you know, flexing their muscles, the Chinese flexing their muscles around Taiwan. They're doing that in response to the United States to prove the largest weapons sale of military equipment and weapons to Taiwan, which I think is great.
We have a backlog. We haven't even delivered everything. They've already purchased, so we need to get at that. But that's what this is in response to. And so it's you know, now is not the time to.
Be you know, hitting the brakes.
You got it. You got to hit the gas so that the Chinese know that they should not move on Taiwan and they should not test the United States.
So I do I do have one final substance question for you before lego, but before the final question, just very quick, you know, similar kind of thumbs of thumbs down fallow up to those remarks. Did you think that that China actually does make a legitimate move for Taiwan during this second Trump presidency?
I don't. I don't.
I don't as long as as long as we keep doing things like this weapon sale to Taiwan, I think we need a correct course and back the Japanese. I think we need to make sure that we're not removing US troops from South Korea or Japan, which Congress has already kind of put the marker down saying we're not
going to approve that. I think that my assessment has always been Hijin Ping will move on Taiwan as soon as he believes that the United States will either not come to the defense of Taiwan or is just simply ill prepared that we might try and then back out of it because we're not going to win, and because he really, I mean that his political will to fight is going to be very, very high if he goes
against Taiwan, and he's gonna want to win. And so I'm very worried about the possibility of the highest levels of violence with a country that is going gangbusters on
their own nuclear weapons program right now. And so I think that as long as the United States demonstrates that Taiwan is still a core interest of the United States, it does not want Taiwan to be subjugated by the Chinese Economist Party, and that we remain committed to making sure that there's a free and open Indo Pacific, and that means that China cannot push the United States out. As long as we keep pushing that and then demonstrates to get through building our own defense industrial base and
supporting our allies, I think we keep China deterred. And so I agree with you, though I thought man did the Biden administration when things were sort of falling apart. It's kind of wild to me that she's in pain, didn't make a go for it.
Yeah, and I agree with you for what I was worth in this second Trump term. Now having said that, if Gavin Newsom er god forbid, Jasmine Crockett AOC is in the White House, god forbid come January twenty twenty nine, I think all that's are off at that point, But for the next few years, I definitely tend to agree with your analysis. Rebecca, You've been amazing, so real quick before I let you go, just one final question for you. This is really not really particularly to current events, but
kind of just zooming out a little bit. You and I chat a lot, both publicly and offline about the states of the rights more generally and all these current wins that are blowing and cross blowing there, and I kind of want to just take your sense as to how you feel about the future. I'm gonna call conservative
foreign policy because that's self explanatory. I mean that doesn't need to be kind of gained out, but kind of going with like the more part is in part of this, I thinking about the Republican Party and a post Trump Republican Party. What are your current thoughts is the various ways that that foreign policy could emerge after twenty twenty eight.
Well, so, one of the.
Things I tell people, I am a conservative, So I'm dispositionally conservative. I believe in certain things that make me a sort of a conservative internationalist. That doesn't mean that everything that I prescribe in foreign policy I would expect everybody who's also a conservative to agree with it. It takes enormous amount of you know, just it's just study and thought, and people are going to come away with different, different ideas.
What I am most concerned about, though, is there does seem to be a part of the Republican Party they code right wing, I think sort of philosophically may this is for another longer podcast where we just talk about this. They're not even philosophically conservative, and yet they are part of the Republican coalition, or at least they say they voted for Trump, you know, multiple times, et cetera.
But maybe they hadn't voted for Republicans before.
But I do believe that they are They're not conservative, and they are they've manifest.
As anti Semitic.
They don't believe in the United States having a strong leadership role in the world. They you know, you see some members of Congress, like Marjorie Taylor Green now who's on the oules with President Trump, but she didn't used to be, and she gets frustrated when she sees President Trump even talking with world leaders, like she thinks that the president United States should just be sort of looking inward.
It's like, you know, the United States.
Regardless of what you think the United States should do to end the war in Ukraine, or to back Israel, or to you know, keep China at bay, all of us should want the United States to have the capacity, the strength, and the influence to move in the world on terms that benefit the American people.
And we are a global superpower.
We are the global superpower, and we want to use our power for good of the American people, the American way of life, and that requires the President of the United States to engage with foreign leaders. So I'm a little bit concerned with this sort of far right flank that's you know, like they pushed conspiracy theories, and I think, and I've written about this, I think that the conspiracy theories are really meant to confuse Americans about who we even are and what our role is in the world,
what our relative power is to our adversaries. Who is our adversaries and who are our adversaries and so but my hope, my hope is that there will be Republican leadership that will come up and will sort of put put you know, put these people in their place, and essentially say there is no Republican coalition, there's no conservative coalition with people who reject the idea that America is good, it's good for the world, and that it's good for us to be strong and to be the strongest superpower
and to back our allies and to you know, try to deter major power conflicts so that we can live at peace. That's my hope. But I think we really are in a time for choosing right now, and it's very dynamic, and so I always appreciate you, Josh, to stay in the fight and pushing back on this really dangerous wing, I think, and it's going to just take ideas fighting ideas, and may the better ideas prevail.
Thank you.
And likewise, Rebecca, and you know, one final thing I'll say is that a lot of these folks, I mean, in addition to being conspiracists, racist and de semites, again, not all of them but definitely some of them. In addition to that, they have a rather curious view of
history too, right, don't they? I mean a lot of them, like to quote George Washington's Farewell address, this notion of being aware of foreign entanglements, and to be clear that that's a probatally fine and suitable sentiments actually, But at the same time, there was the X Y Z affair, which is a total foreign affair kerfuffle in the later Washingt administration. They're also the Barbary Wars, so the first and second Barbary Wars in the Jefferson presidency when it
comes to fighting these Muslim pirates there. I mean, it's just a very very bizarre view of history, frankly, and a rewriting history many ways as well. But in any event, Rebecca, I share your sentiments made the best ideas when and we're proud to I'm so only proud to count to you not only as a friend but of someone who is on the sober side of all these issues. One fall on time, folks. Rebeccahim Risu is a senior fellow
at the Hudson Institute. You can follow her on x at rl HEIMERSUS Brekley been very generous for the time, wishing you a very happy new year. May twenty twenty six be a wonderful year for all of us and for these great United.
States you too, Thanks so much, Josh
And thank you for watching day's episode of The Josh Hemmers