¶ Trump vs. NATO
This is Gavin Newsom, and this is Richard Haas. Richard, thank you so much for taking the time to come on, particularly at a remarkable time in world history, particularly in history unfolding in the Middle East. Today. President Trump seemed to have a day that he's been looking forward to for years and years and years, pushing NATO to move
from two percent to five percent. What was your takeaway from this NATO summit, at least the first day, and just Trump deserve I think a lot of praise and for an accomplishment here.
I would argue President Trump, well, first of all, Gavin, good to be with you.
Thank you.
Look, I would argue President Trump deserves credit for spurring the Europeans to do what they ought to have done years before.
They ought to be.
Putting forward a larger share of the effort for what's a common defense.
I was just as an aside.
I would say, much more important to me than whether the Europeans spend three percent or two and a half or four and a half is how they spend it.
And I'd actually say something you'd probably agree with.
In public policy, how you spend money is almost always more important than how much you spend and The problem with European defense is not just that they spend too little, but each country pretty much determines how it spends its defense euros, so the whole ends up being less than
the sum of its parts. So I would be pushing if I were advising the president, I would say, yeah, push them to do more, but secondly, also push them in a sense to become more European, rather than country by country by country, which is the way they often go about it.
But I think that part is good. Less good is I think he's introduced some.
Doubts into the reliability of the United States and what you might call the automatic quality of Article five America's willingness to go to bat for Europe. And obviously there's also some fairly significant differences about how to handle the most immediate threat, which is Russia and the war in Ukraine. So I think it's a mixed bag. But yes, it's good to see the Europeans essentially getting pushed to do more.
And it's interesting just as you unpack and I appreciate how you spend and where you spend. It was interesting just looking at some of the details that their direct spend in support of Ukraine would be considered as part of that contribution as it relates to that breakdown of five percent. It was also, though interesting to see the
breakdown within the countries. Obviously Germany looking to move quicker by twenty twenty nine with close to seventy percent increase in their domestic defense spending, and then Spain, who was called to help by the President today, looking not necessarily to reach that numerica. Does that mean much to you or is that just that's just noise?
Most interesting part of that is Germany less what Germany is prepared to do in defense, though doing more as welcome, but Germany has changed its laws and essentially now is able to raise serious debt, which was something that modern Germany had an allergy to because of the whole Weimar experience.
And the fact that.
Germany now can really go into the markets and raise that gives them far more capacity to potentially grow their economies as well as to contribute to national security. And then even go so far as to say the most interesting figure in Europe right now is the new Chancellor
of Germany. And even though he had a rough start and getting confirmed and so forth by his parliament, I actually think the Chancellor Mertz is in a position to in some ways have Germany stake out the leadership position in Europe, something that historically since World War Two Germany has been reticent.
To do so.
Would I would watch that space, particularly since the French, the British and others are so gridlocked domestically. I think Germany now occup the critical position.
When you referenced the Article five sort of you know, I think the president when he was flying over there was some ambiguity once again sort of creating some doubt and anxiety. He seemed to shift tone a little bit when he landed, But that is just that on again, off again relationship to the Article five. Is that what you're referring to as sort of a lack of certainty and confidence in the president?
Yeah.
For those who haven't read the NATO treaty recently, Article five is the core of the agreement. We're essentially an attack on one who is considered to be an attack on all. Curiously, it's only been invoked once in NATO's entire history, and that was on behalf of the United States after.
Nine to eleven.
But alliances depend upon predictability and reliability and dependability and I would argue that President Trump has introduced a significant degree of uncertainty into that, which I think is counterproductive. He would argue, perhaps it was necessary to get the beans to do more. I would have said, well, probably there's better ways to do that. But that's where we are, and to the extent Russia sensus, there's uncertainty there putin who as we've seen in Ukraine, can be risk frunt
it might be more likely to take risks. So I always believe that the best way to deter is through certainty. So your friends know you'll be there for them, and just as important, your enemies know you'll be there for your friends. So I would like for President Trump, as the days and weeks and months unfold, to look for opportunities to make clear that whatever our differences are with Europe over their level of defense effort, we see it as an our interest to be there with them.
You're here.
What in terms of the actual bombing itself, and I
¶ Trump's Bombing of Iran
think my most objective standards, it was a success. Whether or not these sites were quote unquote obliterated, that's a separate conversation. Is that your assessment that this was a success, that in the spirit of what you just said. Around some certain that the President wasn't bluffing in terms of wanting to get diplomatic deal done. They appeared not to want to move in that direction, so then he asserted himself militarily.
I think it was the right thing to do.
For years, we've been playing this game with the Iranians where they were enriching uranium far far, far beyond levels anybody would need to generate electricity, so we all knew what this was about to put into place. The were prerequisites for a nuclear weapons program. I also understood we couldn't allow Iron to get on the threshold, much less
have nuclear weapons. We made that mistake. I would argue with North Korea, we don't want to have it now in this part of the world, because if Iron ever got nuclear weapons, not only would they act more aggressively imposed potentially an existential threat to Israel. But you know, and I know, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Turks and others would follow suits. And the only thing worse than the Middle East we've known is the Middle East I just described. So I think what Israel and then the
United States did was it was warrant it. We'll see what the results are. Whatever the Iran, whatever happened, the Iranian program was not obliterated. Elements of their program I expect will have survived the attacks on the three sides.
More important, I don't know.
You don't know, probably the president doesn't know what amount of uranium or number of centrifuges and so forth are under some roof of some warehouse and some other part of Iran. I actually think going forward, Devin, we have got to assume just the opposite to the Iranian program was not obliterating, but elements of that program exist. And what's worrisome to me, I'll be honest with you. I would think that a lot of Iranian leaders have said, Hey,
this never would have happened. Had we had nuclear weapons, we could have deterred the Israelis in the Americas. So I worry that going forward, I think their determination to develop nuclear weapons might, if anything, be even greater.
Well, you know, I want to just pick up on
¶ The Non-Proliferation Treaty
that point because that's an interesting observation and an important one. And we'll get to North Korea as well in a second. Because your reference goes back to the opportunity the United States had under the Clinton administration to take out their program before it proliferated. But I want to talk a little bit about the Non Proliferation Treaty. People have brought that up since the nineteen seventies. I think two hundred
countries were signatories to that, including Iran. There were a number of countries that have developed nuclear programs that were not original signers to that. Obviously Korea and Israel in the extent they have a nuclear program quote unquote, but certainly India and Pakistan. But those countries as a consequence, would make the claim you just made that they've been they've had that deterrent. Now Iran assumed that they would not be bombed, I presume under the terms of the
Non Proliferation Treaty. Does that put it risk the entire notion of the non Proliferation Treaty? What's just occurred.
So let me give you a slightly convoluted answered.
The Non Proliferation Treaty is only a small piece of the effort against non proliferation. I don't think it's a wildly successful piece in many ways because.
It really is a gentleman's agreement.
We declare what facilities we're doing, certain types of research or engineering in and then the inspectors come look at them. Inspectors can't look at places that are not known. So the entire treaty in that sense is based upon a degree of faith that I tend not to have. North Korea withdrew from the treaty and there was no particular penalty or anything for them having done so. It turns out the most important non proliferation tool out there is not the Treaty.
It's called America's alliances.
By giving countries the confidence that we are there for them, they don't need to become self sufficient, and the biggest way to accelerate proliferation will be, for example, the South Koreans or others come to have doubts about their relationships with US. So don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the Non Proliferation Treaty doesn't have some utility, and I think in particular the inspection provisions can be useful.
But we shouldn't exaggerate.
Uh, it's impact that Iran I would think was going to do is going to do what it wants regardless of its obligations under the street.
So back to what you were saying, I mean, so just let's speculate what goes happens going forward. Obviously, this
¶ Trump's Wish For Regime Change
notion of resim change, people sort of pull back a little bit, or least it appears the President's pulled back. I don't know if BB is pulled back on the notion of regime change. But what won't change is their pursuit, presumably of a nuclear weapon. As you note, we don't know that the program was quote unquote obliterated. Even if the physical sites may have been, we don't know where
this enriched uranium is and centrifugius you imagine. Now your concern is now what that they accelerate that program with the darkness, meaning without any international inspectors.
That's my concern.
It might not be their immediate priority, which I think is to shore up the regime. But at some point I do think reconstituting a program will become a priority, which means, by the way, the day may come where Israel, the United States needs to once again use military force if we discover some activity going on in the Iranians won't voluntarily give it up. It's not normal that problems
get solved. When I was the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, I used to discourage the Fellows from using the words solved or solution, because it's just the way history works. So I don't believe whatever it is we accomplished the other day, however much we accomplished, it didn't solve the problem. It may have reduced it, it may have set back the Iranian program, but that'll pop up again.
It's by the way you mentioned regime change.
It's one of the reasons that people, I think are attracted to the idea. If you can't solve the Iranian problem through military force or through diplomacy, then people say, what's left, Well, let's get a benign government. And I think that's why there's so much interest in regime change. The problem is it's easier to talk about it than bring it about. I don't see the prerequisites in place for it, and in any case, you can't base your policy on it. People don't like it when I say this,
but it's a wish more than a strategy. If it were to happen. I think it brings problems but obvious benefits with it. But we just can't count on it. And no president can give the order to so to say, Secretary of Defense or State and say, get me regime change and Iran they wouldn't have then the tools to necessarily carry.
It out when it comes to just issues of trust, and you know, I think one of the questions that I get and I ask myself all the time, I feel like, for most of my adult life, I've been hearing baby net Yao say they're just months away, a year away from having weapons, great nuclear weapons, and you know, a certain point you just stop believing it. But you're assessed,
you know, your own objective assessment. This time did appear to be different, that they were getting closer and actually appeared to be within a matter of months in a position where potentially we had a weapons grade weapon coming out of Iran? Is that accurate?
Pretty much? Look, this was a gathering threat. It wasn't an imminent threat. It was a gathering threat. And the question is how close Now we know they had done most of the enrichment work they need to do to get it uranium enriched a plus or minus sixty percent, that's not just sixty percent of the effort, that's actually closer than ninety percent of the effort. For reasons of physics that I couldn't explain because I don't understand them
well enough, but I think I'm right there. Well, we don't know is how close they were on some of the other things, the actual fabrication of explosive devices, the bomb and so forth. And there was the Israelis, believe the economists published some very interesting stuff about it, that they had made some breakthroughs, they had had some secret program amas and so forth. And I think we have to be tolerant, just like after nine to eleven we were less willing to run certain risks, say about what
Iraq could do. And this is not a justification for the Iraq war. I was against it, but just I understand some of the thinking. I think Israel after October seventh had less tolerance of running certain risks in their case. So I just think the combination of a change mentality in Israel, the evisceration of groups like Isbella, which couldn't really attack Israel anymore, and this new intelligence would suggested, however, far along the Iranians or they were farther along.
And I think for.
All those reasons, the Israelis decided to act and we came in behind.
Does this keep BB in power for another extended period of time.
Well, he's got roughly what sixteen seventeen months to run before he has to. I think the elections are scheduled for October of next year.
It certainly helps them.
Israel, as know, is deeply divided about issues on democracy, Gaza, what have you, whether the religious can be drafted and so forth. They are not divided on Iran left and right, hawk and dove. There aren't a lot of doves in Israel when it comes to rod. So it clearly helps BB. It changes the conversation a little, but it brings Israel together.
It's seen as an accomplishment, and he has. He has changed in many ways israel strategic reality, given the change in Syria, is Bulah, the weakening of a mosqu Whatever you think, however critical people watching this might be of what Israel's done and how it's done it in Gaza, the reality is that BB nets and Yahoo in the last what eighteen months, has dramatically reduced the external threat to Israel.