Alex Ward on the Dualism of President Trump’s Foreign Policy Legacy

This podcast episode includes references to the Eurasia Group Foundation, now known as the Institute for Global Affairs.

Transcript:

April 22, 2020

ALEX WARD: Someone I spoke to, who is a Trump supporter and still critical of him, said that Trump is a lizard brain genius.

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MARK HANNAH: Love that.

WARD: Me too. It's a bit dismissive and derisive, but I think it appeals to a truth, which is this is a guy who genuinely, despite being an elite, does seem to understand an innate feeling among people who are unhappy with the way things are going.

HANNAH: My name is Mark Hannah, and I'm your host for None of the Above, a podcast from the Eurasia Group Foundation. Today, I'm very fortunate to be joined by Alex Ward. Alex is a reporter at Vox who covers everything international security and defense. He also co-hosts Vox's terrific, worldly podcast, which you should check out and subscribe to. Alex, very glad to have you with us.

WARD: Happy to be here.

HANNAH: What is it like being a journalist? You're one of the most productive journalists in the national security beat. How are you chasing down sources while you're on lockdown?

WARD: Well, it's a very kind thing for you to say. In a way, it's kind of easier because I know where everyone is. Everyone's at home, and they can't hide from me. Before, they were like, “Oh, I'm busy. I've got meetings. I've got to go from X, Y, Z.” If you're not responding to me, I know where you are. You're at home. You might be with your kids or whatever, but I know where you are. So in a sense, it's kind of easier to get people on the phone.

HANNAH: Now we're going to dive into Donald Trump's national security and foreign policy legacy because that's the thrust of today's episode. But just real quickly, how has he been handling the coronavirus from a political standpoint? A lot of people I'm talking to are saying, “You know what? Democrats have a lot of fodder for criticizing him, but they're not coming up with a very definite alternative to what they would be doing differently necessarily.”

WARD: I think we have to look at this from two angles. The first is—and having now covered multiple countries and how they're dealing with the coronavirus—I think it's worth pointing out that no one has this figured out. No country has the solution. I don't necessarily blame Trump himself for somehow not following a foolproof playbook he should have. That said, one thing that we do know, and is a truism now, is an early and aggressive and thorough approach to dealing with the coronavirus through widespread testing, through tracing and tracking, through other separation techniques, and getting at this right from the beginning. That's really the only way to curb the spread to lower the amount of deaths that Trump did not do. In fact, for months he kind of dilly dallied and waited, and we've seen this lost month—quote unquote—from February. You can absolutely hit him on that. The government waited way too long to do anything aggressive and correct. I guess I should say once it learned anything really of substance about this virus.

Interlude featuring archival audio

HANNAH: To what extent is this virus a national security threat? I put up a piece on War on the Rocks last week that argued the whole framing of this as a war on the coronavirus is deeply misguided. And it fundamentally diminishes or confuses the nature of the threat that Washington's tendency to view these complicated challenges, like a pandemic militaristically, is laid bare by the federal government's failure to keep its citizens safe from anything that's unconquerable with missiles and machine guns. Are you seeing this internalized among your network of sources as a definite national security issue?

WARD: I think they see it as a national security issue. There is one valid point to me about this—is this a war? And that is a good way to mobilize people to follow along with rules and to maybe allow certain extreme measures that would not be necessary otherwise. But other than that, this is not a fight. You can't shoot the virus. It does not scare.

HANNAH: I want to get back to something you mentioned earlier about the sort of tardy response of the Trump Administration to this pandemic. I know you're a reporter and can't observe this empirically, but what is it about President Trump's philosophy or mindset which caused him to ignore and downplay the virus for many of those early months? Do you think this is related to his nativist outlook, or do you think it is an anti-science approach or a power of positive thinking, hopeful naivete that this will all go away?

WARD: Who knows? I think my best guesses here are that, one, he does not like to think about bad things happening. That's clearly not a thing he enjoys thinking about. I bet he believed China's assertiveness early on that they had this under control. And he said that constantly, and he said the W.H.O. had this under control even before he decided to want to pull funding out of it. And yeah, I think he also knew about his political fortunes, which is that the best case he could make was that the economy was rising, that he kind of figured out global affairs in the way his predecessor had not. And this was almost a perfect encapsulation of everything people have been warning about Trump: that he wouldn’t listen to experts, that you can't always listen to the dictators who flatter you. And yet sometimes things go badly in the worst moments. And this was just the perfect storm for him.

HANNAH: Now, I want to turn to Donald Trump and talk about him beyond the coronavirus. He ran on America doing less in the world, being less beholden to other countries, and ending endless wars. But how has he actually governed as president?

WARD: I think we need to separate two sorts of things. There is Trump, the guy who does not like long interventions and American engagement, militarily, especially in the Middle East. And then we have the guy who does not mind using American military force almost all the time and consistently and, in fact, more than the presidents in recent history.

Interlude featuring archival audio

HANNAH: Well, it sounds schizophrenic.

WARD: That sounds like a pretty good moniker for the foreign policy of this president. This is a guy who in three plus years has not put the United States into a larger war. He has not necessarily added thousands more troops. He has not furthered a greater conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan or elsewhere.

HANNAH: He hasn't gotten us involved in a regime change operation.

WARD: Right, in Iran or Syria or wherever. Some people were trying to push him—North Korea even. But he has escalated military conflicts elsewhere. He is dropping more bombs in a lot more countries. We are at war in Somalia. I think you don't really hear about that.

HANNAH: Who knew?

WARD: Right? We are at war in Somalia!

HANNAH: And as we're negotiating with the Taliban to reduce the troop presence there by half, in Afghanistan, didn't he just announce 14,000 new troops to the Middle East, and there was a pledge to send American service members in service of Saudi Arabia?

WARD: Exactly. We're sending more to Saudi Arabia to deter Iran, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If you didn't want a foreign intervention, you're happy with this president. If you didn't want the United States to exercise its military might around the world, you're unhappy with this president. And that's the duality of Trump everyone has to contend with.

HANNAH: Would you say it's fair to say then that his outlook, his anti-interventionism, is less a product of a coherent and cohesive ideology than it is a product of a certain impulse?

WARD: No, I think it's part of an ideology. I really do believe he wants to use American resources more for things in the United States. You can agree or disagree with how he wants to use those resources…

HANNAH: Part of the economic populist platform.

WARD: Precisely right. And so he does not seem to mind using American resources to drop more bombs, to buy more military equipment, to get more defense deals, to combat terrorism wherever may be, but he does seem skeptical of using that for an ill-defined, long term, massive foreign intervention.

HANNAH: Do you think it has been a political failure or will prove to be, come 2020?

WARD: No, I think it's actually a political strength. I can imagine the bumper sticker now: “No new wars, but the bad guys are defeated.” Sounds pretty good. We didn't need to engage in a new Afghanistan or Iraq or go to war with Iran or Syria in order to put bad guys at bay. If I'm on Trump's team, and I'm thinking about how to sell this, I'm thinking, Afghanistan deal: almost done; North Korea deal: on the way; Iran: deterred; Syria: no real chemical weapons used at the grand scale and whatever—it's not really our problem; trade deals: done; China: also kind of at bay. The more you look at what Trump can say, it sounds pretty good.

HANNAH: And by the way, the deep state is having an identity crisis, and it's lighting its hair on fire.

WARD: Exactly. ISIS: defeated. All this he can say, regardless of what the intelligence community says, regardless of what expert class might say, he has actually come in and succeeded. He can make those claims. If you dig under the surface by an inch, you'll see they're faulty.

HANNAH: But he's not going to support a militarized form of democracy promotion or regime change. And he neutralizes the “Trump claim” that he was opposed to the Iraq war and that impression Trump claims to have had at the time, though his record, I think, is fairly neutral. Has Vox done some digging on Trump's stance on the Iraq war? I know this is kind of an ambivalent, ambiguous thing.

WARD: Trump has said more often than not that he was against it. There are some clips at the time that do show he showed some support for it. And I think, in fact, he can't really claim to be against it one hundred percent of the time. But he has been pretty clear about criticizing the intelligence community for getting the WMD stuff wrong, that Bush was wrong to go into the war, that these resources could've been used better elsewhere. I think on the whole, frankly, he has been more consistent on “Iraq war bad” than “Iraq war good.” But he has definitely said, “Iraq war good” on occasion.

HANNAH: And what do you think animates that opposition to the Iraq war, opposition to endless military entanglements? Is that sort of a principled prioritization of domestic policy over foreign policy? Do you think there's a nativism that's an extension of?

WARD: I've made the mistake of reading every single Trump book.

HANNAH: Wow.

WARD: Yeah.

HANNAH: You would make a great conversationalist. Good small talk at dinner parties.

WARD: Oh, yeah. No, I try not to mention that whenever I can, but in this case, I will. And he has been remarkably consistent. I know you may have heard this point before, but I've read it. He has been remarkably consistent. And I do think number one is, again, that same line of he really wants American resources to be used elsewhere. He believes that, frankly, other countries should pay us back for our military service.

HANNAH: It's like a transactionalism, like a zero sum, especially the obsession with the budget deficits. It's kind of consistent.

WARD: Right, the American military is a mercenary force, like Blackwater was. That's how Trump thinks about it. I know it's simplistic, but I do believe he's basically saying, “Why aren't the Iraqis letting us take the oil? That should be our compensation for this entire thing.” And he's saying this with the South Koreans: “They should pay a lot more for us having troops there with the Germans as well.” So he does have this mentality.

HANNAH: But is this a nativism or a tribalism thing? Or is it the fact that he doesn't defer to any greater ideal or power or principle beyond self-promotion in terms of this American self-promotion? Or cold and calculating assessment of our wins versus our losses or gains versus our cost and benefit?

WARD: At the risk of angering left-leaning folks, I do think there is a higher calling, a higher purpose to say the United States should use its limited resources to focus more on the United States. Now, whether the reason he doesn't necessarily want to use these resources in the Middle East is because he doesn't seem to like Muslims a lot. Maybe he hasn't necessarily said so in his books as Nasser said so explicitly in his speeches. He's definitely hinted at it a lot. But we can't say for sure that's what's leading him. But there's a notion that if you don't have some sort of grand foreign policy vision, therefore you do not necessarily have this cannon-like view of the world. And I think in his mind, his cannon-like view of the world is “America first.” America gets the resources, and where we can, we can use American power when it makes sense to us. But otherwise, what higher calling is there to make the United States a more powerful country? I think that's, at least in his mind, a higher calling.

HANNAH: And that doesn't necessarily make him antagonistic toward foreign powers because he says he respects that outlook of foreign leaders he met a couple of weeks ago, Narendra Modi in India and other nationalist leaders he admires, and people on the left will say, “Oh, he admires their authoritarian tendencies.” But maybe it's just a prioritization of their national interests. And he sees himself in that. Do you think there's some merit to that?

WARD: For sure. I do believe he is about the greatest manifestation of the realist school as one can make. He's like the exact sort of copy the realists would always want. And they can't get themselves to support him because he's a horrible human.

HANNAH: And not quite an articulate proponent of realism as a school or consistent in the application of that realism, potentially.

WARD: Sure. But I think he likes power above all, and let's not forget American foreign policy history. Is Trump the first-ever president to just hold hands with autocrats and try to make deals with them and work with them despite their horrible records? No. He might be a greater manifestation of that trend, but let's not pretend that up until Trump, America was only friends with democracies. We never kowtow to dictatorships we never thought we could get something out of. We never made bad deals. Well, wasn't it FDR—correct me if I'm wrong—who said, “He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch.” I think Trump sees it that way too.

HANNAH: To say he's a paragon of realism isn't that it's only about power, it's that he recognizes or appreciates the fact that countries will pursue power. But it doesn't necessarily mean you have to befriend autocrats or authoritarians because there are autocrats or authoritarians. It means you need to promote American interests sometimes. Despite that, some Trump critics will say, “Well, he admires these foreign leaders, not despite their autocratic tendencies, but because of them.” That’s a little bit of a divergence from traditional realism, as I understand it.

WARD: No. And I think that's fair. It is undoubtedly true that he seems to have a greater affinity for the autocrat, him or herself, than anyone else. And that may be because he wishes he could have that power and maybe he sees himself in them. Maybe he just likes these grand shows of splendor and extravagance. And when he goes to Saudi Arabia, they put his face on a hotel. He might just enjoy that.

And plus, the dictators always have politics, but they have less politics to contend with. And then they can basically tell him whatever he wants to hear, and he feels happy about it. Putin saying, “We didn't interfere.” Great.

It seems Modi was basically, “No, we don't really go after Muslims.” And Trump goes, “I guess it is a powerful answer.”

Xi Jinping: “It's really hard for us to deal with North Korea.” Okay, fine. I trust you.

Time and time again, they know how to play him. And yet he seems to be bamboozled by this grandiosity. So I would agree with that content.

HANNAH: And is it appeal? Did the foreign leaders figure it out like it's a one trick pony thing where they just know how to flatter, and flattery as a form of diplomacy—which is usually kind of a superficial thing or a way of buttering up or warming up an interlocutor—becomes the whole ballgame to some extent? Is there a way in which—you mentioned that Trump is bamboozled. In the process, so is the United States, right?

WARD: Absolutely. I don't think it's a stretch to say this is the easiest president of American history to play on the foreign stage. I don't think that's hyperbolic. When you have a president who is easily entranced by extravagance, by glamor, by glitzy-ness, and a guy who doesn't read his intelligence briefings, it's probably pretty easy to appeal to how he feels and tell him what he wants to hear. And then he just goes, “OK, that goes with what I'm doing. That goes with what I'm thinking.” In the grand context, yes, he might believe in this great game, and every state should go about what they need to do. I think he believes that and a grander theory, but he's also unable to execute that because these other countries, these other powers, are basically taking advantage of his ignorance.

HANNAH: Let's turn to Iran. What is going to be the line of attack against President Trump on the topic of Iran?

WARD: That he has made Iran more dangerous by leaving the Iran nuclear deal. Iran now is moving closer, and not close, but moving closer to a nuclear weapon. It feels more emboldened. It will start to spread more chaos throughout the Middle East. It will be more antagonistic to the United States. It will also hurt our alliances with Europe because a lot of those European countries wanted to stay in the deal and wanted to continue to invest in business, in Iran, and make money that way. And now they're struggling to do that because of Trump's unilateral decision. So in effect, it has been both making Iran more dangerous and losing American allies in one fell swoop. And I think that's a fairly powerful argument.

HANNAH: I think there is a kind of partisan splintering a little bit. We did a national poll at the Eurasia Group Foundation and found Democrats are about ten or thirteen percent more likely to see Saudi Arabia as a greater threat to the Middle East than Republicans do. And Republicans were ten or thirteen percent more likely to see Iran as a greater threat to the Middle East than Democrats. And, of course, Iran is broadly seen as the bigger threat than Saudi Arabia, but around the two main regional powers, Iran and Saudi Arabia, there seems to be a partisan fragmenting going on. And do you think Trump's coziness with Saudi Arabia, overriding with a veto of a congressional bill to pull funding from Saudi's war with Yemen—do you think Saudi Arabia is going to become a topic as well, and Trump's bucking of Congress on more powers?

WARD: For sure. I think Saudi Arabia fits into this Iran conversation. Let's not forget Saudi Arabia did kill Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident Washington Post journalist, and the fact that Trump did nothing, really, and after that, the Yemen war support, the general hugging of the regime. Saudi Arabia has become a partisan issue. It used to not be. In fact, our relationship really started with FDR and Forward, and it survived a lot of ebbs and flows. Now, it seems if you are a Democrat, as you mentioned, you're a lot more skeptical of the Saudi relationship. And if you're Republican, you're in fact more in favor of it.

Interlude featuring archival audio

WARD: And this actually becomes a bit of a problem, I think, for Democrats because they are going to want to curtail Iran. I think there's no Democrat that is happy about Iran moving towards a nuclear weapon, investing in missiles, supporting terrorism. But they differ in how to stop these things from happening. And they are more willing to do diplomacy, but it's hard to do diplomacy with Iran without Saudi backing. And this was Obama who found this problem, too. If you are wanting to curtail Iranian influence, you're going to need some Saudi support. That's hard to do if you're a Democrat because people don't really want the U.S.-Saudi relationship to be strong at the moment.

HANNAH: It's interesting. I was at the Council on Foreign Relations, and I saw the president of that organization ask the Saudi minister, “Are you fearful that the U.S.-Saudi relationship is essentially becoming a Republican-Saudi relationship?” And he quoted Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, who said critical things about our interests diverging with Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi foreign minister kind of waved it away.

But I want to ask you: do you see America's alliance structure and who it sees as its friends and enemies are in the world beginning to fragment country by country where a Netanyahu might want a Republican president? The Iranian leadership and Zarif and Rohani might want a Democrat. You have different European leaders wanting a Democrat. You have Saudi Arabia wanting a Republican. Do you see that becoming a partisan issue? And a second part B to that question is: does it open up the possibility of foreign meddling in our elections beyond Russia?

WARD: I think it was always true that other countries would prefer different administrations in the United States. I don't think this is a new phenomenon. What I do think is a new phenomenon is that in the United States, certain countries have become partisan issues. There was a post-1945 consensus that we do work with these countries and again. Those relationships often flow. But that's our general pieces on the chessboard.

Now, last year was the year China lost everybody. The Saudi Arabians lost the Democratic Party. Israel, or I guess more than anything, Netanyahu's government lost the Democrats. And that is, I think, what’s slowly changing. The South Koreans are even schizophrenic about how they feel about Trump because on one hand, he wants to solve North Korea. On the other hand, he wants them to pay a lot more for things that were already understood. The impact of Trump is that he has made our relationships more partisan. But again, I do feel other countries have always had a preference based on the current moment. I don't think that's particularly new.

HANNAH: These preferences other countries have—are we at a moment, right now, where they're able to push for those preferences in a U.S. presidential election? We saw Russia do it. What's to keep Saudi Arabia or Israel from doing the same?

WARD: I think we're already seeing it. In terms of cyberspace, it's Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran that are already starting to push some sort of influence in the election. We are seeing some countries come to the United States not only to get help in their own election, Netanyahu especially. But also I think Trump using the Israel peace deal is like, “Look, I solved it.” Doing the Israel peace deal the year in which he's going to run for reelection, thinking of pulling troops out of Afghanistan the year he's going to run the reelection—and other countries are either kowtowed into following along or to doing that.

This is also a normal process. If I recall, Obama also organized a withdrawal close to his reelection or his time in office, too. This is a normal process, but it's not hard for other countries to either get what they want from the United States at a time like this or to push their own priorities at a time like this, because this is when an American presidency is most vulnerable, when they're going for reelection.

HANNAH: Recently, President Trump stood with Bibi Netanyahu and announced the parameters of a peace plan between Israel and Palestine, and noticeably and conspicuously absent from that was any kind of Palestinian leadership. So what I want to ask you is what do you think the prospects are for Middle East peace as a result of all these negotiations by Jared Kushner and members of the Trump administration? Is this peace plan viable?

WARD: Well, I'll make a bold prediction: it’s not going to be signed before the next election. Put me on record. Put it on a mug. Hold me to this. It's a very bold, over the cliff—

HANNAH: That's going to be the thing Trump dangles. If you want to see peace in the Middle East, you've got to reelect me first, and then we'll sign that.

WARD: Look, the Palestinians decided not to engage after Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital. I think that was always going to be a consequence. And in fact, it was. In somewhat fairness, the administration and the Palestinians didn't have to completely disengage. They could have kept going forward. They chose not to. They have their own politics, and so that was their decision. You can agree with it or not. I think with this—and we shouldn’t call a peace deal yet—it was, in fact, an offer.

And it was the first offer of this entire process, really. And it was one that was basically a gift to Netanyahu right before his own election in March. And it was, in Israel, basically almost everything they wanted, and the Palestinians: really nothing. When you hear Kushner talk about it constantly, he's basically saying, “Look, the Palestinians have rejected every deal in the past. They don't really want to get peace. And so now they kind of have to suck it up and take what we give them.”

That's a pretty hardline position. That's a pretty pro-Israel position. And you could agree with it or not. But I would argue it was not really done in good faith. It was clearly done to bolster Trump's bonafides with Israel, to help Netanyahu win reelection in a very tough fight he's having right now, and really done more as a book report than anything. When Kushner is defending, it is like, “Yeah, I read twenty-five books. I talked to some people. That’s why I got this.” I could do that!

HANNAH: You could do that. You read every Trump book there is.

WARD: Right. Plus, I could write a Vox explainer that's probably just as good. I'm not going to lie. If I spent enough time, I’m sure I could do it, and I can’t draw as nicely of a map. And that's the other thing. They have to start actually drawing that map. And heck, in the past, there have been issues on the width of the actual tip of the pencil because then that includes parts of land. They haven't even done any of the hard work yet. They just propose the most Israel plan of all time. The Palestines were always going to reject it. And so I don't see any progress that's been made except this administration can say, “Yay, Israel is on board.”

HANNAH: And the details are it doesn't stop settlements. There's no two-State solution. Talk for a second about what the details are.

WARD: Sure. Most of it is that basically, all of Jerusalem becomes Israel's capital. Palestinians get a little bit of the eastern part, if I recall correctly, and they have to call it something else. So that's part one. Part two is basically, Palestine can have no military, whatsoever, that could threaten Israel, and Israel could be able to stop that. So fun. Three is the Israeli settlements, and a lot of them are basically just part of Israel now.

And we have that Swiss cheese problem that a bunch of people have worried about. There really won't be a contiguous Palestinian state. They've been given a bunch of land in the south, basically bordering Egypt. Cool. That sounds fun. And then on top of that, there's no right of return for Palestinian refugees looking to come home after they've been moved out.

So, again, you could agree or disagree with these things. You might believe the Palestinians should suck a lot of this up. But I would argue if that were true, you would probably want to at least talk to Palestinians throughout to do whatever you could to work with them to this point. The fact that they were completely cut out—and again I think Palestinians deserve some criticism for that—is disheartening.

HANNAH: In the Jordan Valley—

WARD: In the Jordan Valley. Exactly.

HANNAH: You focus very much on the day-to-day, ins and outs of foreign policy and American national security. But stepping back, as far as you can, zooming out as wide of a lens as you can, what will the legacy be of Donald Trump's first four years? First—maybe and last, but first—at least four years in office.

WARD: I think I'll give the positive spin first. I think he was an important correction to the excesses of American foreign policy. There was a lot of common belief and frankly, insular thinking in the community about what America should do. Some things Trump has done have proven correct. Some things, I would argue, more than some things have gone wrong.

But he was a bit of a stress test on our own thinking. He was able to at least create this notion that the United States can develop power and influence without getting further entangled around the world. And he did in a sense, not completely, but in a sense, prove that the U.S. won't lose all of its friends when you act in a completely bullish way.

HANNAH: So self-interested—

WARD: In a self-interested way. But of course, it's only four years, right? If you extend that another four years, you might—

HANNAH: They might lose patience with us.

WARD: Countries. Exactly. And I think a bunch of people believe this is a blip. But based on, as we've talked about earlier, how Democrats feel about this, I think this is the ushering in of a new, more skeptical era of adventurism in the world. And frankly, I thought a Republican was the only one who could do that because it was that party that was pushing for military engagement elsewhere more than anyone. The Democrats are very hawkish as well and believe in liberal alliances in America's role in the world. But I think you needed a Republican to come in to be like, “We need to stop the excesses of this military moment.” So I think that's his positive legacy.

The negative legacy is one of an America that stopped caring. And I know that sounds fuzzy, but I think this is important because again, post-1945, whatever may be, the system we helped create was a self-interested one. We didn't do it out of the goodness of our hearts, but we did make a strategic bet, which was that if we gave up just a little bit of our power, just a little bit, everyone else would come along. And if we didn't act as the total global bully, we will have a certain influence and a system we could continue to work within. And Trump has broken that up.

HANNAH: But the bet we also made was that pursuing preeminence in primacy was going to be necessary for maintaining stability. So, yes, while we have these international alliances and trade arrangements, global stability depended on U.S. leadership and not just the power of our example and our moral leadership, but also helping smaller countries when it came to calling the shots.

WARD: Fair enough. I think that's right. And I think the negative read of Trump then is that when you don't really follow that playbook, I think he did two things: he minimized the alliance playbook, and he optimized the primacy playbook and has seen the world collapse around him. On top of that, he has made really horrifying one-off decisions that have amounted.

But if we are stepping really back, what I think is going to be his legacy is he did also prove that the United States did have to play some sort of hub and spoke role around the world, and not this pyramid scheme, and trying to move the United States in the center to the top. This made the architecture around it fall. I should mention that someone I spoke to, who is a Trump supporter and still critical of him, said that Trump is a lizard brain genius.

HANNAH: Love that.

WARD: Me too. And it stuck with me forever. I should change my Twitter handle to that. But honestly, it's a bit dismissive and derisive, but I think it appeals to a truth, which is this is a guy who genuinely, despite being an elite, does seem to understand an innate feeling among people who are unhappy with the way things are going, who seem to have nativist views. I don't want to minimize that, but he's appealing to that. I think Sanders is appealing to that. And they have tapped into something that, as I mentioned earlier, has long existed, seemingly since the early ‘90s, that America has done too much and focused more abroad than it should.

HANNAH: Alex, thanks for joining us. You can check out Alex's reporting at vox.com where you can also listen to his podcast, Worldly.

I’m Mark Hannah, and this has been another episode of None of the Above, a podcast from the Eurasia Group Foundation. If you enjoyed what you heard, we would appreciate you subscribing on Google Play, iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you find podcasts. If there is a topic you want us to cover, please shoot us an email at info@egfound.org. Thanks for joining us. Stay safe out there, and see you next time.

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