I had the good fortune to talk with Rick Stengel last night. He is the former Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the Obama Administration, the former editor of Time magazine and an MSNBC political analyst.
Our Substack Live conversation was wide-ranging, but I want to share with you some snapshots, with the hope that you’ll give at least some of it a listen.
Here’s his observation on Trump’s mad talk of taking over Gaza, removing all the people and transforming it into a real-estate opportunity: “I mean, it's a complete violation of the groundwork, the foundation of international law, to move a people out of their homeland permanently,” Stengel said. “That's the definition of ethnic cleansing.”
Engaging Trump’s idea for a moment, he also noted, “As the cliche goes, it's a very tough neighborhood…Do you want to go surfing and, you know, have Syrian guns and Lebanese militias around you and the Egyptian armed forces?”
Zooming out, we discussed the larger implications of this approach to foreign policy. “It certainly undermines the international architecture which we, more than anybody, put together after World War II, these systems of international organizations from the UN to the International Monetary Fund to NATO, of course,” Stengel said. “And so we haven’t really tried in many, many, many years to sort of go it alone without allies. And it seems like a crazy idea. So there’s so many kinds of unknown unknowns, which the outcome is going to be bad.”
Addressing Trump’s “irrational style,” Stengel said, “There's not a lot of planning going on here and not a lot of gaming out what the consequences of these things are.”
He was reminded of “Richard Nixon’s madman theory of diplomacy, which is that if your adversaries and maybe even your friends thought you were capable of completely irrational actions, they would behave a little better,” he said. “The difference, I think, is that Richard Nixon actually knew the difference between what was insane and what was sane. And I’m not so sure that this guy does.”
While Trump is proudly unprepared—in the past, “people spent hours laboring over every phrase to make sure it’s just right and just perfect”—someone like Vladimir Putin (who Trump spoke to yesterday) is thoroughly prepared.
“He’s prepared for hours and hours,” Stengel said. “He also has an advantage—I’ve interviewed him before—that on these phone calls one side is speaking Russian, one side is speaking English, and then you have to wait for the translation…But Putin understands English perfectly. So he knows the nuance on both sides, which Trump doesn’t.”
We talked about much more:
On just-confirmed Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence: “Even put aside the lack of experience, the job is about judgement…Her judgement is suspect.”
On Trump’s other nominees: “What’s so bizarre about so many of these nominees is, like Tulsi Gabbard, they blame America first. Everybody in government I’ve ever known has a bias in favor of the U.S. and a bias in favor of us—that we’re telling the truth, that we’re honest, that our motives are benign. She and her ilk have the exact opposite view.”
On Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saying yesterday that Ukraine maintaining its borders is “unrealistic” and it won’t gain NATO membership: “They’re terrible negotiators because they give away their position at the top.”
On what Putin may take away from Trump’s Gaza talk: “Putin could look at that and say, ‘Well, I’m just going to say that about Ukraine—they’re not a real people. I’m going to bomb them away and bring them into Russia or some other place and not let them go back to their homeland.’ I mean, it just sets a terrible kind of ideological precedent.”
On Trump’s tariff threats against Canada and Mexico: “To me, it’s just crazy. Why fix something that isn’t broken?”
On Trump’s desire to take over Canada: “The thing that makes me laugh about Canada, the 51st state, is it’s bigger than the United States…it’s a kind of great ignorance of Canada, the pride that Canadians have and their feeling of resentment about their big brother to the south.”
On the foolish dismantling of USAID: “It was one of those post-war institutions that were a tribute to American generosity…both an expression of American soft power, but also a means of securing American peace and prosperity…[Trump’s first Defense Secretary Jim Mattis] said, ‘For every dollar you take away from foreign aid, I have to spend another dollar on a bullet.’ And it’s hard to say it better than that.”
You’ll find more valuable insights in our full conversation—and there were even a few laughs along the way. I plan to do more of these Substack Live talks, including tomorrow with Ukraine-based war correspondent Tim Mak at noon. Do let me know if you find these worthwhile as we try to make sense of our mad, mad world—and sort through the best ways to push back and move toward a more hopeful future.
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