Global Elections, Foreign Affairs, and National Security — with Admiral James Stavridis
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Welcome to the 307th episode of The Prop G-Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Admiral James Stavridis, a retired four-star U.S. Naval officer and currently partner and vice chairman of global affairs for the Carlyle Group, a global investment firm. We discuss with the Admiral his thoughts on the elections happening all over the world, foreign affairs, and national security. We also get an update on the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. I would love to have Admiral Stavridis on the ticket. I find he's just incredibly measured, reasonable, thoughtful, relatable, and he's a great guy.

you know, he joked to me, I could never run for public office because I'm five foot, and he said, five foot seven. I thought when you're

When you're standing on the bridge of an aircraft carrier, you're seven feet tall. This is someone who has made a huge difference and obviously is able to command the respect of thousands of people. Okay, what's happening? I am in Munich, where I'm taking my son to see the semifinals of Spain versus France. Gotta go with Spain. Gotta go with the Spaniards. Hola, Española. France wins too much in football.

So I'm rooting for the Spanish, but mostly I'm excited about tomorrow flying to Dortmund and seeing England beat the Netherlands. Go team England! And of course, of course, I will be in Berlin at my favorite Soho house, best gym in Europe in my view, and going to go see the final, which I'm super excited about, and I'm hoping that it's team England versus, I don't know, versus someone. Anyways...

Germany and football. What could be better than that? Beer. Beer. They also have that here. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Okay, what else is happening?

So the thing that is dominating the news cycle day after day is whether Biden should drop out of the race or continue. After July 4th weekend, the president sent an open letter to Democrats saying that despite all of the speculation, he is committed to staying in the race to the very end. On MSNBC, the president said he's getting so frustrated by the elites. What we've had here is that wealthy donors are reportedly threatening to withhold donations until Biden exits the race.

I think the way I would describe it is if you bucket the donors into three buckets, the whales, the dolphins, and the minnows, the small dollar donors. I think the big donors, although I just spoke with Reid Hoffman and he says they're concerned, but I think they're just sort of at a standstill. Whereas the dolphins, I would consider myself a dolphin. Somebody gives thousands or tens of thousands, but not hundreds of thousands or millions. That we're sort of an open revolt that we're calling very...

explicitly for a change in the ticket. And one of the things that frustrates me is that the amount of incendiary pushback you get, you know, shut the hell up or just focus on Biden. We need to unite. It's almost, it feels almost like a, we accuse Republicans of being cultish when they have this knee-jerk reaction of being devoted to Donald Trump, regardless of the situation or how insane his behavior is. And I would argue there's just, that cult is just a strong,

on the far left where you get this immediate pushback of sign up or shut the hell up. And the notion that there isn't enough time, which is sort of their go-to, and also the only brand position right now around a path to presidency is I'm not him, specifically I, Joe Biden, am not him, Trump. And I don't think that's a compelling value proposition. And the notion that we don't have enough time is just, in my opinion, fucking ridiculous. Britain had an election start to finish in six weeks.

France basically turned back the far right and changed the entire complexion of the race in about seven days. By the way, I think that's going to be very interesting to see what happens because the far left, in my opinion, can sometimes be almost as dangerous. They're well-meaning, but they can be bad, maybe not as bad as the far right. I'm going to be very curious to see what happens in France over the next...

A couple years. Anyways, I think we could turn chicken shit into chicken salad here. What would you do? The president obviously needs to step down. It's got to be him. There's no kind of viable way to ask those delegates to go somewhere else. They've already committed to Biden, but let's assume that he decides to drop out of the race with enough pressure, enough voices, senators, congresspeople, donations come to a halt. Finally, his wife says it would not be fair of me

my dear Joe, to put you through this or to have you go through this. And I think a lot of this comes down to scenario planning, right? So let's talk through the scenarios. By the way, scenario planning is not a means of trying to predict the future, but trying to imagine possible futures and then run a strategy or a course of action through all of those futures that has the best outcome. And there's some basics here. One, or basic scenarios. One, he stays in the race and wins.

Good for him. I think actually that's the worst possible outcome for Joseph Biden. As someone who has been very involved in their parents' life as they have gone into their 70s and 80s, I think President Biden, based on what I have seen in terms of his cognitive decline, is going to have a very difficult four and a half years ahead of him, much less trying to experience that decline in what is the toughest job in the world. I think this would just be a series of small mistakes.

private and public humiliations with people hiding him. Keep in mind, the last three presidents to be reelected, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, were 52 when they were reelected on average versus 82 when

The worst thing that could happen to his family and reputationally for Joe Biden is if he stays in the race and he loses. He then becomes this pariah, which is the ultimate example, historic example of malignant narcissism that not only hurt a woman's right to bodily autonomy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, delayed a lot of judges getting appointed, Dianne Feinstein.

But Joseph Biden becomes a malignant narcissist that let us slowly burn to fascism when almost anyone else probably would have staved off Donald Trump. What we aren't focused on is that Donald Trump had an absolutely terrible debate and that anybody else with a pulse, in my view—

And I want to say with a pulse, the Democratic bench is incredibly strong here. How do we turn chicken shit into chicken salad? You have a eight, six and then four member series of debates all held the two weeks before the convention. You have Julie Louis-Treyfus host the convention. It's a real convention where we nominate and select somebody. America gets to know just how incredibly strong our ballot is. And we mature a candidate that not only scares the shit out of Biden and tears him limb from limb in a debate, which

any of these would. Whitmer, although publicly she said she's out, but can you imagine a Newsom on a debate stage?

with the president. Can you imagine the contrast in terms of height, youth, hair, how articulate it is, how compassionate it is? How many people and how many IHOPs across the nation, when interviewed by Fox, CNN, the BBC, PBS would say, I'm going to go with that young, good-looking guy. A lot. A lot. We would go from being six points down, which, by the way, is the greatest margin

to the upside that Trump has ever enjoyed since he started running for president in 2015 to being up probably five or six. We would see the greatest swing in presidential politics if we matured any one of these candidates. And even more powerfully, as we sometimes overestimate the power of the president,

would be the down-ballot impact. Because if the nation got a chance to see, and they would, this would be the media spectacle of the last decade. If they got to see how powerful, smart, impressive Josh Shapiro is, you know, if they got to see Vice President Harris on the debate stage where she shines versus what has been a fairly mediocre tenure as Vice President, if they got to see Raphael Warnock, if they got to see... There's just so many governors, there's so many talented people here

Let Amy Klobuchar back on stage to talk about antitrust. These are... Pete Buttigieg. I mean, this is an impressive...

And the team of the best players wins, and Democrats would win up and down the ballot. It would basically be a two-week-long commercial. What do the voters who decide this election have in common? They don't give that much of a fuck about politics. They're like me in my 20s. Oh, it's the election this week. Maybe I should vote. And then they just start thinking about general perception of these folks. Let's strengthen the perception of the Democratic Party from the top of the ticket all the way down and have a competition here, not a coronation. But I believe if...

President Biden decides to stay in the race, the strategy and the positioning of I'm the other guy, which is his primary foot forward, is going to not work as someone who's been in branding his entire life.

I would love to be, if I was a mendacious fuck and didn't care about our country and had somehow decided to develop a fondness for fascism and was advising the Trump administration, it'd be pretty easy. It'd be a three-point communications plan. One, run a video loop of the zombie apocalypse of useful idiots at our elite colleges and say, this is what happens when institutions become 98% democratic, as many of the faculties are of these elite institutions. Two, run another video loop of what's happened in the downtown area

metro areas of some of the biggest cities on the West Coast that are democratically controlled and say, this is what happens when Democrats get control of a city. And finally, three, run a series of edited videos that basically portray the president as a vegetable. And I just think, I think Biden, as good a man as he is, as successful as a presidency as he's had, as better a president as he would be, I think he's going to get slaughtered

against the media machine and the perception of a more vigorous former President Trump. I really hope that people who have influence over the president sit him down and convince him that, look, boss, you drop out of this race, and this is scenario three, and every ruling

room you walk into for the rest of your life, you get a standing ovation, and you are a top contender to be chiseled into the side of Mount Rushmore. This is the path to a better America, simply put, and that is the president, who has done an amazing job, needs to drop out, and we need to mature, battle test, and rally behind another candidate such that America continues to push back on the greatest threat to democracy and the greatest threat of the 20th century in

And it's emerging again, and it's a threat we thought was going away, but similar to Jason, but just with a different hockey mask. Fascism is rearing its ugly head, and we need to push back on it. And this is not the guy to do it. America has been the front line against fascism. We will continue to need to be the front line against the gender apartheid that's taking place globally, anti-Semitism, polarization, divisiveness, extremism, climate change, and

an expansionary Russia, a China that has its eyes on Taiwan, income inequality. And let's be honest, America is the most impressive country in the world. We need to mature the most impressive person in the party to lead the Democratic Party and be the front line. And that is not the president. That's the bad news. The good news is

is we have a ton of people who could hold that line. It is time. We need someone else to enter the race. President Biden needs to step down. We'll be right back for our conversation with Admiral James Stavridis.

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Gain access to the HR tools that the world's biggest companies rely on, no matter how big your business is. Visit JustWorks.com slash podcast to join the thousands of small businesses that trust JustWorks to take care of payroll, benefits, compliance, and more. That's JustWorks.com slash podcast. Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Admiral James DeBritus, a retired four-star U.S. Naval officer and currently partner and vice chairman of Global Affairs for the Carlyle Group, a global investment firm.

Admiral Stavridis, where does this podcast find you? I am in the northern part of Florida near Ponte Vedra Beach. It's one of the beach towns for Jacksonville. So I would just love to get your thoughts. As someone whose name was constantly floated as a potential vice presidential candidate for Secretary Clinton and other Democratic hopefuls, give us a sense for what you think is

is going on here. And if you were to attempt to speculate what might play out over the next week, this is, I don't know if it's the strangest political moment I've ever experienced. Maybe I'm just, I'm much more attuned to it now, but obviously a tremendous amount of doubt around the Biden campaign, but their camp says they're steadfast in their commitment to stay in the race and

But there's sort of this drip, drip, drip of party elders coming out and suggesting that he step down. Give us a sense of someone who's been pretty close to this and someone who thinks a lot about strategy. What do you think is going on here that the public does or does not see? And what do you think plays out?

I'll give you the historical piece, and I at least am old enough to remember a similarly difficult moment to absorb, and that was, of course, Watergate and the resignation of a president in advance of criminal proceedings being brought against him, Richard Nixon. That's a long time ago.

So, yeah, we're in 50 years of kind of uncharted territory by comparison, although we've seen now three impeachments, one of Clinton and two of Trump. So we're not complete innocents in this sort of strange season. But here's where I'm at on this one. As I watched that debate, I felt sad for the country. The choice we're being presented is...

At this moment, a convicted felon with multiple, multiple character flaws on full display. And on the other side,

an individual for whom I have a lot of affection, a lot of respect. But Father Time appears to me to have caught up with him, and he is not, from all that I can see, in a good place to be prepared for four more years. I think you could have a conversation if we were looking at it for a year in advance. But four more years, when you look at the

progression. So a bad set of choices. In terms of how it plays out, I can answer that in three words. I don't know. And nobody does. Literally nobody does. Not even Joe Biden, in my view, knows how this one's going to play out. So what I think will happen over the next week or

to 10 days, the Democratic Party is going to have to make a choice of either putting itself 100% behind a president who seems physically frail and weak and hope for the best in the fall, or they're going to have to find a new path. And I'll conclude with this, Professor.

there is nowhere in the Constitution where it says Republican Party, Democratic Party. Someone said to me the other day, oh, they have to go with Biden because...

The Constitution demands that neither Constitution nor law govern political parties. We've had a plethora of political parties in this country, and they get to make up the rules. And so they have every opportunity to conduct a mini primary or they could pass the baton to Kamala. They've got a convention coming up. I think we are in extremely unpredictable waters. Does the military or the arms? Do they have a voice here?

No, and you ought to be very glad that they do not. Every military member at every grade raises his or her right hand and swears an oath as follows. I state your name to solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of

of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That oath is sworn to the Constitution. The military will resolutely avoid being embroiled in this, and that's the kind of republic we want to be. That's well said. There's a lot that's uncomfortable about this, but one of those things is, do you see our adversaries being more emboldened while we're in a state of chaos? Do you think they sense weakness and tumult and are more inclined to

be more offensive or bold in their actions? I do. And that is a significant risk. And you can break it down, frankly, into two significant periods of high risk. One is from now through the election. I think there the risk is going to be a massive

a mal-actor deciding now would be a good time to launch a, for example, massive cyber attack against the United States. There's distraction. There might not be a resolute response to that. It's a little ambiguous. That period between now and the election, simply because mal-actors, Russia, China, North Korea, etc., will have a tendency to believe we're too distracted to react.

respond. That's one package of time. After the election, Scott, unfortunately, I think we're going to have this interregnum in which it would seem to me at least a better than even chance of one side or the other if it's a close election, which it appears it probably will be. There'll be a further series of legal challenges. There could be untoward events like a

January 6th. Who knows? That second period of time until the inauguration of the new president, I think, is a second and somewhat even more risky period. So yes, we need to be leaning forward. You asked about the military. The military is not looking internally, but I assure you

The intelligence agencies, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the combatant commanders in a position in which I served for eight years, two different combatant commands, they are looking outward to try and see any signs of risk directed against the country during these very, I think, concerning periods from now through the inauguration.

Let's talk about the Middle East. On MSNBC, you said that you believe there's a one in three chance at best for a ceasefire in Gaza. Talk us through how you landed there.

Number one, the Israelis feel as though they have not yet completely dismantled the military capability of Hamas, but they're close. And you hear that from even from Prime Minister Netanyahu, certainly from the Israeli general staff.

So I think, temporally speaking, the Israelis are closing in on eliminating Hamas. And I believe I've said this to you before, Scott, but...

But the military center of gravity is actually not Hamas. The military center of gravity is that tunnel complex. 400 miles of tunnels, the Israelis are destroying those. When those are done, Hamas loses its opportunity to train, equip, organize, and launch attacks as they did in October.

So that's a military equation that is coming to fruition. I think that's

Pretty close. So that gets me to still more combat opportunities and actions, but probably the Israelis are getting in a position to make an accommodation. On the Hamas side, what I see is a lot of pressure. It's been insufficient so far, but increasing pressure from both Qatar and from Egypt as

to get to the point of pressuring Hamas to take a deal. I feel both sides are kind of closing toward it. If you'd asked me three months ago, I think I was saying about a one in five chance. Now I'm up to about a one in three chance. The forces pulling against it are, in addition to the two sides we just discussed, Iran, Iran.

Iran would like nothing better than to see Israel continue to be targeted, its resources drained, see this fighting go on in Gaza. So Iran is kind of pulling against it. But I'll conclude with this. Now the Iranians have had an election, elected somebody, I hate to use these two words in the same sentence, Iranian moderate, but by Iranian standards, a relatively moderate candidate.

candidate. There might be a little loosening of some of those activities. So when you put all that together, it's not a slam dunk, but I think it's getting close to one in three, maybe even a little better than that right now. You referenced that one of the strengths of America, and I agree, is that our good men and women in uniform basically say, all right,

good or bad decisions. It's the Oval Office's decision, and we respect the command and control structure here. I thought it was really unusual or extraordinary that the IDF publicly came out and said, we need to see an end to the war or calling for an end to the war. That struck me as if you at some point came out and said to Trump or Obama, you know, in a conflict, it's time to end this. I thought that was pretty bold. Your thoughts?

beyond bold. And from a U.S. norm perspective, that officer, she or he would have been fired the next day. We do not want our admirals and generals, no matter how senior, opining publicly about what is in essence a political decision. Closest I can come to that

by the way, would be Douglas MacArthur, five-star general, a general of the armies, victor of World War II. Now he goes through and is in charge of Japan, all going well. He comes back in command for the Korean War,

And ultimately, the president, Harry Truman, had to fire him for his insubordination because he advocated ramping up the campaign, possibly using nuclear weapons and attacking China. We're not paying the generals to opine about that in public. So, yes, I was quite surprised.

verging on shock. And finally, I know the IDF extremely well. Spent four years when I was NATO commander. My other side hustle was I was in charge of U.S.-Israeli military-to-military relations. So I was in Israel quite a bit, became very good friends, for example, with General Benny Gantz, the former head of the IDF, General

Gabi Ashkenazi, former head of the IDF. I can't imagine either of them, while in uniform, opining on that level of political controversy. Really shocking. Benchmark the IDF's capabilities and technology and personnel relative to the other fighting forces in the Middle East or even, say, for example, Russia.

The IDF has advanced technology. I'll give you three very concrete examples. One, they reportedly have nuclear weapons. Two, the Israelis have weapons.

I'd say the top four, certainly top five cyber capabilities, offensive and defensive alike. And they have a superb air force that has the ability to conduct long range bombing attacks, has fairly good refueling, although they're buying additional capability products.

from the U.S., nobody else in the region remotely is at that level with them. What they don't have is massive manpower. They're a nation of about 9 million, about 7 million Jews, so it's a limited manpower pool compared to Iran and

compared to any other potential opponent in the region. They don't have the big pool of manpower to draw on. But if you ask me, which hand of cards would you want to play as a general or an admiral, I'd grab the Israeli military. It's a jewel.

You mentioned the tunnels, and it strikes me that every time there's a major conflict, out of it comes not a surprise, but a piece of technology that played a bigger role. Like we saw tanks in World War I, but my sense is they really had their day when Hitler rolled his tanks into Poland and was met with the Polish cavalry. And we saw, okay, tanks are better, right? And then we saw aircraft and jet engine, all sorts of stuff, radar, etc.

You said, or there's two words, and you said one of them that struck me that we're going to hear a lot more about in terms of military strategy and technology and machinery. One is tunnels and the other is drones. I'd love your thoughts on that and if there are others that are coming out of this conflict. Yeah, tunnels actually have been with us in warfare for centuries, but the degree to which Hamas was able to build this underground complex,

pretty striking given the restrictions on Hamas. Comparably, the North Koreans have a very sophisticated underground tunnel connectivity system. So yes, tunnels, I think, are something that is old but is new again. Drones, let's expand that idea. Let's say unmanned

So that means everything from satellites in space. A satellite is a drone, right? It's an unmanned vehicle, long dwell surveillance drones, command and control drones, what you think of as reapers and predators, attack

drones carrying missiles, surface drones. The Ukrainian Navy is using surface boats, drones, to strike Russian warships, and drones go all the way to the bottom of the sea. Here's

The third piece of the triad that I would mention, it's artificial intelligence. And we're seeing the edges of that emerging now in Ukraine, where AI is being used to direct these drone swarms on both sides of that firing line. Still very nascent, but as I look at the future of warfare, it's unmanned cyber warfare.

It is tunnel complexes. I'm going to throw in special forces into that mix. And above all, it's artificial intelligence that will knit all of this together. The truce that Biden outlined, kind of this five-step truce, and it includes rebuilding of Gaza. Realistically, and I don't mean to sound like a nihilist or a fatalist here,

Isn't any truce, given the history here, just kind of ready to be broken again? I'm struggling. I recognize that you're a military man, but as someone who's been considered for these diplomatic posts, what do you think? Is there a sustainable state of being there right now, or could there be? One thing.

phrase that has always stuck in my mind from a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Pete Pace was asked a question roughly along those lines and he said, war will continue in the Middle East until the people of the Middle East learn to love their children more than they hate their enemies.

That's a very profound line. And it gets to your point that is it possible to undo centuries, frankly, millennia of bitterness, particularly between these three competing religious groups in the Middle East. There's a fabulous book about this written probably 20 years ago. It's a great title, The Battle for God. It's by Karen Armstrong. And it's a book about

Christianity, and Islam in their seemingly endless ability to find their way to war and to bitterness and hatred. So the short answer to the question is until the people of the Middle East

collectively decide they are going to reject the nihilistic aspects of their religious bitterness and disagreements and free themselves from the past and the bitterness over previous jihads and massacres in camps. And there are plenty on all sides. Until that happens, I don't think there's a quick solution. Now,

on a more positive note, if there is a path forward, I think the table stakes are a reconstruction of Gaza. I think table stakes are an Arab security force, not an Israeli security force, an Arab security force that takes over security for Gaza. And third, and most difficult for the Israelis to accept, some kind of a path towards statehood

I think if you could get in that zip code, then you could build on the existing diplomatic relations between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors. That's the point where the kingdom of Saudi Arabia could come in, Scott, and bring a lot of resources to bear on this problem.

All those are possible, but we talked percentages before. I think it's a one in 10 chance that we can really resolve this with something as simple as a five-step plan. We'll be right back. Support for Prop G comes from Life360. We've all had the infuriating experience of getting ready to leave and then realizing you've lost something you absolutely can't go about your day without, your phone, your wallet, your keys. I know I'm probably bringing back horrible anxiety memories just talking about it.

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$45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speeds slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. Since we last spoke a few months ago, the state of play in Ukraine.

Yeah, let's catch up. Since you and I spoke last, Russia has been on the front foot, making some gains in the northeast of Ukraine, putting some pressure on the second largest city, Kharkiv. You could

kind of see Putin with some air under his wings. What has changed, and how often do you get to put these words in one sentence, the U.S. Congress did a good job. I'll

I'll say them again. U.S. Congress did a good job. Finally, having exhausted all other possibilities, they did a good job in that they provided $60 billion in military aid, which matches the roughly $70 billion the Europeans have put toward this project. So now there's really

real combat equipment flowing forward, and I feel the momentum is shifting back. Bottom line, however, is, as I think I told you probably six months ago, ultimately, I think this will end in a stalemate. It'll end probably roughly where the battle lines are now drawn with Putin in control of about

15% of Ukraine. Ukrainians will hate that, but the quid pro quo for them would be security guarantees, a path toward membership in NATO probably in the three-year future, and a membership in the European Union. That's a

complicated problem boiled down to a few sentences. But I think that's how this one ends up. And therefore, I think we'll probably see more stalemate, a little bit back and forth on these firing lines through the fall U.S. election. That'll be the moment for a negotiation. The elections are, there's a, there's a, there feels like there's a leftward breeze coming out of Europe, which has shocked people. And I was reading about

the elections in France, and many of us were kind of celebrating the notion that it was great that they kind of left, center-left, and then the far-left got together and decided to coordinate to stave off the far-right. And I think initially there's a feeling of celebration, but when I look at some of the far-left policies that I think the center-left will have to accommodate, they're fiercely anti-NATO, is my impression.

What do these recent events and elections and new parties, what is the impact on NATO as an alliance moving forward? I will come to that essentially tactical question in a moment. Can we just step back for a moment and celebrate democracy? In the last month, over 2 billion people voted in elections that, from what I can see, were free and fair and

delivered some surprising results. 900 million people voted in the Indian election, and the outcome was kind of a surprise, a body check to Mr. Modi. Mexico elects the first woman and the first Jew in the most Catholic and patriarchal country, arguably in the Americas.

In South Africa, the ruling party gets a very significant body check. In the European Parliament, another 500 million people vote. And it's a, like you said, a little bit of a right-wing, left-wing, kind of hard to read, depends on the country.

And then you live in London, Scott. We see a complete shift in the government there coming from the left. And of course, as you allude to the results in France. Now, you can like it or lump it on a variety of those different candidates and outcomes.

But I say hail to democracy. It's delivering some surprising outcomes in some what appear to me to be free and fair elections. That's a good thing in my view, especially as we constantly, as we should, wring our hands about the authoritarianism in the world. Let's keep democracy in perspective. As Churchill said, the worst form of government except for all the others. So

That's the strategic chapeau. In terms of NATO, it's a mixture of reactions that I have. UK won't make a bit of difference. UK is going to continue to strongly support NATO, particularly having walked away from the European Union. In France, you're right to worry about

the tendencies of the far left. Macron, I think, has his strengths and weaknesses, don't we all? But he has come around on NATO, and I think he will work with the left to at least ensure that Ukraine continues to get support, and that's the main ball right now. Germany, I think, is going to continue to increase its defense budget. Poland is now spending as much on defense

as the United States on a per capita basis, maybe a little more, believe it or not. And there are other examples in the alliance. So overall,

the elections are going to, you know, cause that transatlantic bridge to creak just a little bit. But I think as I look at the NATO situation going forward, I think the alliance is going to continue to be in a pretty strong position. And by the way, I'll ask the follow-on question. Well, wait a minute, Admiral, what if Donald Trump is elected president? You know, someone who is...

talked publicly about pulling out of NATO. I don't see it. I think Trump, like all of us, has strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately, he's pretty transactional. I think if the Europeans continue to increase their defense budget and their spending goes up, Trump would ultimately say, yeah, that's pretty good value for the dollar for us to stay with NATO. So I think NATO comes out of all of this certainly not

in a blaze of glory, but as a pretty solid alliance. So it feels like going back to Ukraine, there's some winners, right? I would imagine the industrial military complex or weapons producers in the U.S. are winners. I also imagine that China is a big winner. They're getting cheaper oil and all of a sudden, you know, they become an integral, crucial partner for Russia.

Give us your read on China as it relates to the war in Ukraine and what that means in terms of everyone's favorite, you know, bogeyman, the possible invasion of Taiwan. Yeah.

I'd love to. Let me start with a bit of advice for Vladimir Putin. And I despise Vladimir Putin. You know, you may or may not know, I have 50 medals from 29 different countries. The foreign decoration I'm proudest of is that I'm sanctioned by the Kremlin. I'd put that at the top of my medal stack. So I despise Vladimir Putin. But

If I were going to give him advice, I would say, President Putin, be very careful of your relationship with China. You are about to become an extremely junior partner in that relationship. And think of it this way, Scott, you're the economist. You sit in Beijing, you look north, what do you see? You see Siberia, this vast, empty country.

land space. It's the size of the continental United States. Maybe 25 million people live there. That's it. That's Russia to the east of the Euro mountains. Here's what is there. Oil, gas, diamonds, rare earths,

arable land, timber, fresh water. You get the picture. The Chinese look at that like my dog looks at a ribeye steak. It looks really good. Putin is really taking Russia down a strategic rabbit hole here. In terms of how...

the war in Ukraine looks from Beijing. You know, if I were President Xi, I would be scratching my head. Just over two years ago at the Olympics, President Putin told his best friend forever, President Xi, hey, don't tell anybody, but I'm going to invade Ukraine.

And in five days, I'm going to sweep that country. I'm going to grab that little comedian, Volodymyr Zelensky. I'm going to throw him in Laforto prison, never to be heard from again.

And then I'm going to have control of Ukraine, which is full of all kinds of wonderful natural resources, oil and gas in the Black Sea, a huge agrarian factory. It's all going to be mine. That's what she heard. Here's what he's seen. He's seen two and a half years of the Russian military stumbling around, incapable of overrunning a nation that it should have swept

in the first week or two before the Western aid got there. Now, Putin has missed the window to do that. So his first question is, in terms of himself, you know, those Russian generals are pretty bad. I wonder what my Chinese generals are like.

He has no idea. He hasn't had a general here. He's shot, fired in anger. Not a single Chinese general. They haven't been in a war of any kind since a dust up with Vietnam and not in a serious war since the Korean War. That's 70 plus years ago. So the point is, Xi has a lot of doubt watching that.

He also has a lot of doubt about sanctions. He knows there would be sanctions imposed if he attacked Taiwan. He's looking at what's happening to Russia. So that's, I think, a second warning shot for him. And thirdly, if he's smart, he's looking at how those Ukrainians are fighting like hell.

You know, I don't know if the Taiwanese will fight, but I've been to Taiwan. I've met Madam Tsai, the former president, President Lai, the new president. I've met their national security team. I've seen their military in training exercises.

I think they'll fight. I think they'll fight hard. And by the way, that island would be a resistance fighter's dream. It's mountainous, wooded, surrounded by water. That's not an easy nut to crack across 100 miles of very difficult sea. So bottom line, I think she is playing this one

very intelligently. He's getting tons of free oil and gas from Russia. He's insisting they hard pipe it to the east to him so that can't be undone. He is doing everything possible to create that sense of junior partnership on the part of Putin. I think he's succeeding at doing that, and I think he's too smart to launch an invasion of Taiwan, at least for the foreseeable future.

Admiral James Stavridis is a retired four-star U.S. Naval officer. He is currently partner and vice chairman, Global Affairs of the Carlyle Group, a global investment firm, and is chair of the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation. Admiral Stavridis has published 13 books on leadership, the oceans, maritime affairs, and Latin America, as well as hundreds of articles in leading journals.

His forthcoming book, The Restless Wave, a novel of the United States Navy, will be published on October 8th. He joins us from his home in Florida. In terms of economy of words, Admiral, I feel as if our listeners get so much insight in so little time. So thanks for your crisp insights. Thank you, sir. I'd love to come back and talk about World War II with you when The Restless Wave comes out. I would love that. When things subside a bit, I would love that. Thank you, Admiral.

Algebra of happiness, it's difficult, but you need to train yourself to try and see the best in people when you don't know what's going on. I'm getting, I don't know if the term is paranoid, but I'm here in Europe and something I've noticed, I was in Turkey last

We were on a boat in Greece, and then we disembarked in Bodrum, which is a beautiful part of the world, and we'd spent time there 10 years ago, and we decided to go back. Turkey has had—what's the term? I don't like Turkey's policies on Israel, and I probably would have rethought the trip had we had more notice, and it didn't involve rearranging the travel plans for other people. But the thing I noticed that really bummed me out—

when I was in Bodrum is that it felt like there were just no Americans and no Western Europeans there. And it bummed me out. I thought we were just withdrawing from one another, that we're sequestering. It seems like we're turning into Western Europe and the U.S. versus everybody else. Or is that true? That's probably not true. But it does feel like we're separating. And it's really disappointing. And I was thinking about how wonderful my life has been as an adult because of

commercial jet transportation, and a fairly neoliberal viewpoint across all nations, including Turkey and the Gulf and Asia, that really welcome people from different cultures and appreciate them. And we sort of lay down our differences and enjoy each other's food and company. And one of the things I love about American universities is it brings in people from all over the world. I just think you're less inclined to declare war on a nation if a lot of people in that nation have spent a lot of time with

people from the other nation. I think mingling, mixing, interracial marriages are really important. We are supposed to mix. There's a reason that mutts are healthier and happier. We're not supposed to sequester and fall in love and be friends and have political alliances only with people like us. We benefit from this diversity, and I worry that we're in fact sequestering and bifurcating, if you will. Anyways, having said that, I was at a table today

And I'm staying here in Munich. And there was a table of four or five people next to me, four guys. And I don't know if they were speaking Arabic. I think they were. And they started passing around a phone. And I didn't know what was going on. And it was clear, it became clear, they were showing videos of me and then all turning around and staring at me. And I found it sort of threatening and intimidating. And I went to kind of a dark place. And then I thought about it. I thought,

They're probably just a group of guys here like me to see the semifinals of Spain and France and recognize me from one of my videos and we're talking about it. And so when they got up, I said, hey guys, and I just tried to be friendly and nice and they were friendly and nice back. And I use it as a cautionary tale that it's easy to digress as you get older into this sort of the walls are closing in on you and you become less and less comfortable with odd situations and

And you have, especially if you struggle a little bit with depression or anxiety or anger as I do, you have a tendency to make snap judgments and think the worst of people. And the reality is the vast majority of people out there are like you. They're good people who love their families, looking for a nice time.

good citizens, but it was sort of a, I don't wanna call it a cautionary tale, but it reminded me that if I wanna be happier and I want a better world, I need to assume the best. I need to see the world and see people as a glass half full.

This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer. And Ju Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn. And please follow our Prop G Markets Pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday, thepropgmarketspod.com.

It was number one in business. I think it's one of the best or most successful new pods in a while. We're really excited about it with my co-host, Ed Elson, the 14-year-old Irish person. Not sure he's 26 and he's British. But anyways, please tune in to Profiting Markets wherever you get your pods every Monday and Thursday.