Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, joined me this morning, to discuss his new book The World: A Brief Introduction:

Audio:

Transcript:
HH: I’m talking now with Richard Haass, who is of course the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. You see him often on television. He’s been a guest on my show for years. He has a brand-new book out, The World: A Brief Introduction. I personally love the subtitle more than the title, The World. I love A Brief Introduction. Richard Haass, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show. Always good to have you.

RH: It’s been too long. Great to be back.

HH: The World is being featured everywhere. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in, it’s sort of like Bill Bryson’s A Brief History Of Nearly Everything. But I am going to start with the toughest question, the very toughest question, which is Gaza. And I read everything you wrote in the Middle East chapters in this book, but you didn’t really dive into Gaza, because it seems to me there isn’t a solution, Richard Haass. What is the solution for the world’s toughest problem?

RH: Well, just for those who are not intimately familiar with Gaza, it’s probably the most densely populated small piece of real estate on Earth. It’s, you know, led by a group that has radical policies, and among other things, does not accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel. It also is led by a group that does not support the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank. So at the moment, there is no solution for it. I know Americans like to think that we’re a solutions, that everything’s a problem. Well, some things are conditions. And for the foreseeable future, Gaza may simply be a condition at best to be managed. And the pandemic has made it a much more difficult condition to be managed, again given the population density. And interestingly enough, Hugh, it is forcing a little bit of low key Israeli cooperation with the authorities there. But I think for the foreseeable future, this is not a situation that’s going to be resolved. So I think it’s simply going to drift.

HH: You know, Richard, one of the things that alarms me, of course I just finished watching Fauda, the third series, the third season of the Israeli Shin Bet thing.

RH: Third season, huh?

HH: So it’s all about Gaza. And then I read about it in Eli Siegel’s book. They’ve got a 97% water problem. 97% of the water table is polluted. That’s not an inhabitable place much longer.

RH: No, it is one of the most miserable places on Earth. You’re right. It’s got all sorts of environmental issues, water issues, unemployment is off the charts, and it is, in some ways, foments the very radicalism that is DNA. The question is at some point, do people there realize their leadership is something of a dead end? But at the moment, there is nothing going on diplomatically in any meaningful way between Israelis and Gaza. The Israelis are essentially glad to be rid of it. If there is any diplomatic possibility, it would be more with between Israel and those living in the so-called West Bank, though I think at the moment, the biggest dynamic is not a collaborative, diplomatic enterprise, but the big Israeli debate is about annexation. Essentially, what you have in Israel is many people, and beginning with the Prime Minister, but supported by the Trump White House, essentially giving up on the time being on negotiated outcomes and looking more for unilateral outcomes to essentially change the status quo on the assumption that the status quo, while not necessarily permanent, is going to be with us for years, if not decades to come.

HH: In fact, Secretary Pompeo’s probably on a plane as we speak headed to Israel. I always disclose my son works at State, so I don’t follow or go along on those trips, but it’ll be fascinating. In your book, The World, you write at Page 117, “As is almost always the case, it is useful to review the history to better understand the present.” As I think about Gaza, my last Gaza question, I think about 1948 India when Pakistan broke away, and that was a terrible time. A million people died, I believe. But eventually, resettlement was the only solution. Is that the solution for Gaza, Richard Haass, where very, very generous resettlement of Gazan citizens occurs?

RH: Well, the question is where. There’s not going to ever be a Palestinian right of return where Palestinians can move to what is now Israel. So the question is, you know, either Gaza has to be made to be a habitable place, which is very challenging given the density and the poverty, or some of these people may in fact need to move. And the question is, though, who in the Arab world would let them in? People are not raising their hands to do so. So again, you know, a friend of mine used to have on his desk, Hugh, three boxes – in, out, and too hard. And there’s something about Gaza that fits squarely in that third box. And that’s why again, at the moment, I just don’t see how it’s settled. Now you raise a really interesting point in history. There have been population transfers, which at times, even though it’s incredibly painful in the short run, provided mechanisms in the longer run, if not for a peace that everybody loved, at least a situation that people could live with. It was done in Europe in the Greek-Turkish areas early in the 20th Century. You’ve had elements of it elsewhere. But at the moment, I don’t see people lining up to do what you’re suggesting.

HH: It’s two million people, it would cost a lot of money, it would require a lot of cooperation. But I just, I don’t see a way out of that. Let’s turn to Cold War 2.0, which you don’t want to call it. When you were at Oxford, I was working for Richard Nixon, spending hundreds of hours with the former president in the Elba of America in San Clemente. And he always said call a problem what it is. And to me, this is a confrontation that is just absolutely Cold War 2.0. The Vice President did not want to say that on this show last week. You don’t want to say it in the book. You don’t want to say it in your New York Times piece. But Richard, this is the reality. They have unleashed this poison on the world, and the Wall Street Journal today reports they’re still not letting the world into Wuhan.

RH: Look, the Chinese behavior in Wuhan since the outbreak of the disease through today can’t be justified, can’t be supported. In many ways, we ought to be publicly criticizing it. We ought to be joining with others. That’s not the issue. The question is what you’ve raised, is whether a cold war construct makes sense. And I simply don’t think so. I think Chinese ambitions, while considerable particularly in Asia and the Pacific, are not global, certainly not in a military sense. And also, I simply don’t think it’s enough to inform American foreign policy. If we have a, if we think of ourselves involved in a cold war with China, even if we get the upper hand, it still doesn’t do anything to deal with, among other things, pandemics, climate change, proliferation, terrorism. It’s just an inadequate basis for thinking about our relationship with the world in the 21st Century. So don’t get me wrong. I think we need to push back against China whether it’s over its treatment of Hong Kong, or over its treatment of its Muslim minority. We need to make clear they can’t unilaterally act to created facts in the South China Sea. We’re not going to accept it. They can’t use force against Taiwan. I get all that. We’ve got to push back when they steal or try to steal our vaccines. We’ve got to frustrate them. I get all that. But I simply don’t think that this can be an adequate framing for an American foreign policy in a world that’s increasingly going to be defined by these global challenges. And by the way, we’d be better off if we could at least get China to help on some of these where they have a self-interest in helping. This is not Pollyanna talk. China is going to be one of the big losers from climate change. China’s potentially a big loser from pandemics.

HH: You know, my biggest argument, I like a lot of the book, The World. I always read your op-eds. But I did have a problem in your New York Times when you…

RH: Wall Street Journal, I think it was.

HH: The Wall Street Journal, excuse me.

RH: Just to be…

HH: That they bear enormous responsibility for the pandemic, but we can’t blame Beijing for our own lack of PPE. First of all, we didn’t run out of ventilators, we were short on PPE, but we can. I’m a lawyer, not a PhD. I’m not one of those. I’m a lawyer. I know proximate cause. We can blame them for everything. When you are the causative agent in an unforeseeable circumstance and you don’t do everything, you bear all the blame, Richard. It’s not our fault.

RH: But we can’t, but this is not, the world of international relations is not in a courtroom. So what we’re dealing with is a situation where yes, China, and continues to do things that I believe are outrageous when it comes to the public health problem. But here it is. It’s now what, the second week of May, almost the third week of May, and we still don’t have anything remotely close to what we need to have in testing. That, I cannot blame that on China. That’s on us. And the White House has not made it a sufficient priority.

HH: No, no, actually…Richard…

RH: We’re not, I’m not talking about…sorry.

HH: It’s not on us. The CDC was not set up for this. The FDA was not set up for this. We’re adapting as quickly as possible. I won’t blame them for what Tony Fauci told me was a technical gap that they didn’t intend. All of this is because China lied. All of it. And we have to pin the tail on them, or we won’t get to the right level of recognition of reality. I know you’re a realist like I am, but if we don’t, if we don’t pin the responsibility on the CCP and General-Secretary Xi, they will avoid it.

RH: Again, I believe we ought to be critical of China where it has, in this case, allowed these markets to open, or if it did come out of a lab, for not owning up to that, for its allowing people to leave Wuhan, for silencing public health experts. I get all that. But at some point in life, you’ve also got to look at what you’re doing. Climate change is another example. We can say to who, what extent is this the responsibility of this or that country or this or that business. But at the end of the day, we have agency. We have the ability to do things, and we’re not doing them. We’re not doing it, and we haven’t done it on the testing issue with the pandemic. We have agencies there. So you can say sure, this never would have happened had China acted responsibly. I get that. But at some point, we, you’ve got to play the cards you’re dealt. We have been dealt some very tough cards. It was inevitable this pandemic, this virus would reach the shores of the United States. From that point on, we, there’s, I can’t believe you would sit here and seriously say, Hugh, that the United States has done everything it should and could have done. Of course, we’re not.

HH: Oh, no, I don’t. I think the CDC, Dr. Fauci on this show accepted responsibility for the technical problem. I understand we glitched up the testing, but I’ve read Michael Pillsbury. I’ve read Graham Allison. I’ve read The Oracle, Dr. Kissinger. I’ve gone up to see Dr. Kissinger. I don’t know which one of them said it. It might be you in The World. That which is unified must divide. That which divide must unify. I think we have to look at China very clearly and begin to reallocate our chips back to Taiwan, and to begin to reallocate our forces to the Pacific, because they are far more lethal than I think you want to say, because you’re a diplomat, Richard.

RH: Well, I’m a diplomat, but diplomacy is just a tool, as it military force, as are sanctions and so forth. Look, as I said, we need to push back against China where they deserve to be pushed back. China needs to understand that unilateral uses of military force, whether to create facts or coerce, are unacceptable. So one thing we ought to be doing instead of beating up on our allies, as we seem to do regularly, let’s shore up our alliances. Let’s get closer to South Korea and Japan. This administration made what I thought was the seriously strategically flawed decision not to enter the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Let’s present China with a powerful trading and investment bloc that forces them to change their behaviors, or they’ll lose access. There’s lots of things we can do to push back against China that we haven’t done and that we should be doing.

HH: On that note, we agree. And so let’s close it there. I think The World: A Brief Introduction is must reading for people, and Richard Haass is always a great guest to have. The book is out in bookstores everywhere. You can get it from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble. The World: A Brief Introduction is indeed that, and it’s useful. Please get it. Thank you, Richard Haass.

End of interview.