The State of U.S. Foreign Policy with Connor Echols

Connor Echols is the managing editor of NonZero. Connor came to NonZero by way of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, where he worked as a reporter covering global conflicts, the arms trade, and other fun stuff. His work has also appeared in the New Arab, the Intercept, and Injustice Watch, among other outlets. Based in Washington, DC, Connor writes about the people and ideas that drive American foreign policy. 

Today we talk about the current situation in Ukraine - including the impact of President Biden's decision to approve Ukraine's use of long raise missiles into Russia - the Israel/Gaza conflict, U.S. relations with China, what a Trump approach to international relations, and the prospects for a better approach to the world.

You can find Connor's work at https://nonzero.substack.com and follow him on X at @connor_echols.

Chapters:

03:10
The Current State of the Ukraine Conflict

06:10
Trump's Potential Influence on Ukraine

09:08
Impacts of the Ukraine Conflict on U.S. Interests

15:09
The Situation in Gaza and Israel's Actions

20:55
The Future of Gaza Post-Conflict

27:01
The Role of Arab States in the Israel-Palestine Conflict

37:01
The Palestinian Rights Dilemma

39:18
Iran-Israel Relations and U.S. Involvement

46:06
The China Challenge: U.S. Foreign Policy Dynamics

53:15
Trump's Foreign Policy: A Balancing Act

01:00:06
Democratic Foreign Policy: Continuity or Change?

Show Info
-----
Twitter
@KevinAMaley
-----
Email
ZipcodeZeroPodcast@gmail.com
 -----
Music
Urban Deer Hunt:  https://linktr.ee/urbandeerhunt

Transcript

Connor (00:00)
My name is Connor Echols. I'm the managing editor of the non-zero newsletter. We cover, you know, lots of different international affairs issues from the point of view of kind of the idea that, you know, there's this increasing connectivity for the world and that there are kind of extraordinary advantages to focusing on these non-zero sum outcomes, you know, like win-win.

outcomes rather than doing kind of outcomes in which one side loses in focusing on those. My background before this, I worked as a reporter at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, which is associated with the restraint movement in foreign policy. I did lots of reporting on a wide range of issues there. And during my previous time, I was focused on the

Middle East, kind of in my educational background, so I speak Arabic, you know, have generally focused on that region, but now report on international policy issues more broadly.

Kevin Maley (00:58)
Cool, well welcome to the show, we're glad to have you on.

Connor (01:02)
Yeah, thank you.

Kevin Maley (01:03)
So just kind of kick things off, the situation that we're seeing in Ukraine currently is that the Ukrainian forces are doing not too well. Russia has been gaining ground.

And they've been doing that for the better part of this conflict. We're starting to see a kind of general acceptance in the West and the Western media that the original stated goals of the West in expelling Russia to pre 2014 borders is not likely to be the end outcome of this conflict. And we may have to go to.

some sort of diplomatic solution along the lines of what people were proposing years ago, something along the lines of the conflict freezes in place and perhaps Ukraine stays neutral and there's no Ukraine in NATO. The other day, I don't know if it was Friday or Saturday or Sunday, I couldn't keep track, but The Biden administration announced that they were going to reverse a position that they had preventing Ukraine from

using long range missiles, ATACMS missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory. So not just in the conflict zone, but actually have the ability to go deep inside Russia itself. I'd like to get your thoughts on that decision by the Biden administration, kind of what their end game is there, because my understanding is this is not going to materially change the conflict, but it does escalate.

Tensions with Russia. I think Russia responded by saying they now view NATO and the United States as a direct party in this conflict if they weren't already. So greatly raising the sort of nuclear shadow over this conflict once again. So just the situation on the conflict and What is the Biden administration's end goal? Is it to prevent the collapse of Ukraine before Trump gets in so Biden doesn't own it? I mean, I just can't wrap my head around why they would make that

decision two months before they're out of office.

Connor (03:07)
Yeah, I mean, I think that this decision is a reflection of the Biden administration's kind of broader problems with having never really set clear goals, clear achievable goals for their policies in Ukraine. So we've kind of seen this over and over again. The reason that this would be seen or perceived as escalatory, this idea that they can fire further into Russia is because Russia has said so.

Right. And Russia has kind of said over and over again at different moments throughout the conflict, that there were these certain things that were either, kind of red lines or significant, you know, kind of escalatory measures that they felt were drawing them into closer con, you know, closer direct conflict, with the West. This is another one of those. it, and it's kind of naturally what happens. You got the slow kind of pulling forward.

of the tactics and the slow moving escalation when you have a situation where the Biden administration is kind of unwilling to set more practical goals or more realistic goals for the end of the conflict. And I mean, it's a real challenge for Ukraine because, you know, they kind of get these individual small victories, right? They get this, finally, we can strike these targets further within Russia, or finally, we can do this or that.

There's no real chance of that having a significant impact on the overall dynamics of the conflict. You pointed to, will this stave off collapse of Ukrainian lines or things like that? I would say definitely not. This is going to allow them to strike more deeply within Russia, maybe hit weapons depots, hit more Russian infrastructure, which is seen as a bit more of a direct one-to-one with what the Russians have been able to do.

But all it will do is kind of increase the temperature by another 5 % and kind of keep the situation on the ground more or less the same.

Kevin Maley (04:57)
Do you anticipate the Trump administration settling the conflict? I mean, during the campaign, Trump was never fully clear, I would argue, on his position on Ukraine. He had stated many times that it just never would have happened if he were in office. He said the same thing about Gaza. But it's not clear to me. I think a lot of his supporters interpreted that as he will end the conflict. JD Vance had an op-ed, I think it was in the Washington Post or the New York Times.

about a year ago proposing a solution for the Ukrainian conflict along the lines that I talked about a moment ago, kind of freezing the conflict in place and not having NATO as a part of Russia. But it's never been clear to me that Trump himself would do that. As Trump pointed out, when he's defending himself against these attacks that he's a puppet of Putin, he was the first president that arms the Ukrainians against Russia.

This is something the Obama administration had declined to do after Russia went into Crimea and the Donbass in 2014. Trump also had put sanctions on Russia and done a few other things. it doesn't seem clear to me that he's the dove that a lot of his supporters hope he is. And given the foreign policy establishment's very anti-Russia position and the kind of

apocalyptic rhetoric that we've heard for years on if Russia wins, quote unquote, they're gonna march on to, I don't know, Poland and Paris and Lisbon or something like that. What do you anticipate the Trump administration doing on the conflict? Is it just gonna be keeping on the same? mean, something we've both mentioned a couple times, the idea of Ukrainian collapse. Sooner later, the status quo cannot.

continue on.

Connor (06:47)
Yeah, well, what you pointed to there at the end, think is really important, right? The status quo seems to a lot of people, to me and to, think, a lot of people from across kind of foreign policy reporting and the foreign policy establishment even, like it's clear that the status quo cannot continue. There are fundamental disadvantages that Ukraine has in terms of manpower, in terms of even defense production.

in relation to Russia that will make it such that the longer this conflict lasts, the more challenging it will be for Ukraine to get anything resembling victory without significant escalation. And by significant escalation, I would mean like the actual involvement of NATO forces or forces from NATO countries or things like that, setting aside nuclear escalation risks at that point. there's no real, there's, the reason I use that as the introduction is that Trump

It's always hard to tell, but it's clear that he will be bringing a different perspective to the issue, right? He's got some kind of core aspects about his personality and about his approach that I think make it sincerely possible that he could end the conflict. I think what's most likely that we're going to see is having him, you know, send forth probably more aid to Ukraine. I don't expect aid to Ukraine to immediately cut off.

I expect him to do the kind of peace through strength thing where he goes and he says, hey, you know, Putin, we are going to arm the hell out of Ukraine. We're going to do this or that. And maybe even something further than just arming them, maybe do this direct thing against you. And if you don't back down and like enter peace talks that are at least on even terms, then we won't be able to then, you know, we'll we'll do this and we'll we'll we'll defeat you one way or another.

And I think that's the attitude that we've seen from Trump in different theaters, right? Like that was the logic behind Trump attempting, like Trump's assassination of an Iranian general in 2020 was very much based on that idea that you, know, this kind of like escalate to deescalate idea. So that's a thing that I think Trump is going to try to pursue. It's not super clear to me whether that will work, but it is very clear to me that what's happening right now is not working.

is not working in Ukraine's favor, is not leading to kind of like a long-term security solution for Ukraine. So I think there should be, I think people should be a little open to the possibility that Trump could change things. I don't think that he's thinking about this in some super complicated way, but I think that he could reach a solution to the conflict for sure. It'll be an unattractive solution to a lot of people.

That's going to be one of the big challenges because there's no world in which Trump comes in and somehow, you know, does these things that I've kind of said already I think are impossible without, you know, NATO involvement, right, which are taking back Crimea, taking back, you know, much of the Donbass, things like that. So I think it, you know, any peace deal will either involve like, you know, kind of a freezing of the front lines and unofficial acknowledgments that that is now Russian territory, but not formally Russian territory.

or it will involve an actual concession of land. I don't see a different path forward.

Kevin Maley (09:59)
And what do you see the impacts of this conflict? Because from one perspective, it's been pretty detrimental to the United States or the United States interests and the idea that you've got one of the lynchpens of Europe, Germany, kind of in a weaker economic state, which is people don't entirely but somewhat attribute to.

sanctions against Russia, loss of cheap fossil fuels, natural gas, that sort of thing, which raised prices for its industrial sector, which is a major part of the German economy. You have the Russian military in a much stronger position than it has been in at least a generation, if not more, because a generation ago was probably the 90s when it was.

and not a very good position at all. You have the Russians in theory closer to the Chinese, to the North Koreans, to Iran. And you also just have the failure of what were stated goals of the conflict by the United States of getting Russia out of the, back to the pre-2014 borders. there's, I don't.

I don't think this matters that much, but a lot of people in the foreign policy establishment view this concept of credibility as very important. So if the US falls short of its goals, it's got a credibility problem that will, don't know, in theory make it weaker in the future. Is that a correct assessment? I mean, what do you see as how this conflict impacting the United States and US interests?

Connor (11:36)
Yeah, it's a really challenging question. I think that everything you've pointed to is true, right? It just depends on how the US is thinking about what it wants to do in the world, right? What does it mean for the US to strengthen or weaken Europe through this conflict? There's kind of this Eastern European point of view that strengthening Europe must go through expelling Russian troops from an invasion of a European country.

And then there's, think, this sort of American and maybe German point of view that you're highlighting that says a lot of the stuff about needing to support Ukraine and arm them to the teeth and all this, like recognizes that there are significant challenges, both economically and geopolitically associated with pursuing a really active conflict with a country that is capable of keeping up.

Maybe not in the sense that Russia is able to defeat the West, but in that it's able to kind of just keep this war going. this is much more of a core interest to Russia than it is to the US. So there are a lot of trade-offs to be dealt with there. I guess another one that I might highlight that might speak to the foreign policy establishment more, and one that you're seeing from a lot of these incoming Trump officials, is this idea that this war is going to distract a wave.

you know, both resources and attention from what is kind of the bigger geopolitical challenge of the 21st century in East Asia, you know, dealing with China. So I think that there's all kinds of opportunity costs associated with this conflict. There's all kinds of reasons to be concerned. And one that I would add into is it has added, it's made climate change, you know, maybe 10 % harder to deal with.

or 20 % harder to deal with because that's one that I think doesn't always get brought in here. one result of this is that while Russia is still exporting the same amount roughly of oil and liquid natural gas as it was in the past, the US in part because of all these things have, of the inability of European countries to get access to these goods is now doing more production and more exports of various fossil fuels to Europe.

It slowed down the ability of all kinds of technology transfer. There's very little chance that Russia and the US will be able to work together on anything. And climate change would be one of those issues that they wouldn't be able to, they'll certainly not be working on while this is happening. So it really prevents us at that grander level from dealing with these major transnational issues.

Kevin Maley (14:07)
Yeah, I think you even have Germany reopening a lot of coal plants because they no longer have cheap natural gas from Russia. They are getting more imports from the United States. I'd say the conflict has been a boon to, you know, not just the Raytheons and the Lockheed Martins of the world, but also the LNG, the fossil fuel companies in the United States who are have a more thirsty Europe for fossil fuels. So it's definitely part of the conflict that people are not seeing as much, but.

is a very unfortunate outcome. I did want to pivot though to the Middle East, something that caught my eye recently was a UN special committee report that came out I think last week that stated in its conclusion, and I'm just gonna read the quote so I have it exactly correct.

The developments in this report lead the special committee to conclude that the policies and practices of Israel during the reporting period are consistent with the characteristics of genocide. I know that term is thrown around a lot. The International Court is doing its own investigation on genocide. This is just one special committee out of the United Nations, but certainly a very detailed and interesting way to look at the conflict, which is I think somewhat horrifying.

What do you see, I guess, is the outcome there? We have what I would characterize as an ethnic cleansing campaign going on in Gaza, at least in the northern half of Gaza. When you go into the details of that report or many other reports, you just find Gaza's been completely destroyed. The population, enormous suffering, enormous death. And you have some Israeli ministers talking about...

you know, putting settlements back in, again, taking the northern half of Gaza. When, you know, the Trump campaign had kind of made it known to Netanyahu that they want him to just kind of speed up the conflict. I think because it's just been bad PR is what we heard from Trump, bad PR for Israel. And I doubt Trump even just wants to deal with it. I don't think he cares about the suffering in Gaza, but I think he wants the conflict just kind of wrapped up. Do you see that?

ending anytime soon and then what is a post-conflict Gazi even look like?

Connor (16:22)
Yeah, well, exactly. mean, the the end point that you had there, what does post Gaza post-conflict Gaza look like? We kind of have no idea because we can't even imagine what it looks like for Israel to achieve its stated goal, which is the complete destruction and dismantlement of Hamas and Gaza. Right. So that, you know, they've it's very similar to, know, I had a piece about this recently that we initially ran in our newsletter and then an adapted version.

in the Washington Post as well, talking about this idea that like nation building is sort of back in vogue in this interesting way, right? These core ideas about having, you know, the desire to completely remake another society through force has really come back in major ways during this past year of conflict. We're seeing it in Gaza, this idea that extraordinary power, extraordinary military power,

followed by some sort of kind of vaguely worded reconstruction will allow Gaza to become this kind of prosperous hub in the future, this powerful thing in the future. It's really outlandish, right? We're seeing similar things in Lebanon where they're saying that this is an opportunity for the US to push for a new political reality in Lebanon. And that's simply not going to happen. But the problem is that the Biden administration has, as we've seen,

you know, demonstrably has been unwilling to sort of stand up to Israel in any serious way when it's pursuing some of its more kind of unusual or particularly brutal campaigns. And Trump, I don't really see as being capable of standing up to Israel very much either. I think that the wild card in all of this is that this is obviously Trump's last term as president.

He has a little bit less to worry about when it comes to donors. He has less to worry about when it comes to this sort of traditional Republican view that Israel must be kind of protected and defended in a way that's different from other countries, right? Because the US has lots of allies that do things that Republicans will have good or bad feelings about. But Israel is kind of one way you're not. You really try to avoid any kind of real criticism, right? I think that there's a chance that

Trump bucks that trend, but it would require this kind of extraordinary, you know, farsighted vision that I don't really think we've seen from him as a political thinker. So, no, I think that I think there's a chance that the war in Lebanon ends at some point, mostly because I really don't understand how the Israeli military is going to be able to maintain a multi-front war.

for an extended period of time. They've already had to bring up all kinds of reservists over the past year, all kinds of people that wouldn't have expected necessarily to be fighting. I think that it's going to be really challenging for a country with a population as small as Israel's to even keep this kind of thing up for an extended period of time. But kind of getting back to my earlier point there about Gaza and rebuilding and a lack of goals, the war in Gaza just

isn't going to really end in a snap of a finger, I think. Israel will continue to have extraordinary security concerns arising from a place where they have now done a lot to radicalize a lot of people even further than they already were. There will continue to be things like attacks within Israel. There will continue to be people that want to fight back against any extended Israeli occupation of the region.

Unless Israel kind of starts over and just completely withdraws from Gaza and does the same kind of fence it in approach that they had done for however many years prior, 15, 20 years prior, there's just no real way that this ends in any kind of concrete way.

Kevin Maley (20:10)
So you'd said there's a chance, a small chance that Trump kind of bucks the trend on Israel, but I'm wondering what that even looks like. mean, a lot of people think that the two-state solution is completely dead. Kind of anyone that you talked to on the ground there has that perspective given that the West Bank has somewhere between six and 800,000 settlements now. During the conflict with Gaza, Israel has been escalating.

attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, continuing expanding settlements apace. I mean, I guess in theory, you know, they could freeze settlement expansion for a period of time, but it's clearly a long-term project. So it's hard for me to envision what a different reality would look like. What is your perspective on like a different change of course that could go vis-a-vis the US and Israel?

Connor (21:04)
Yeah, I mean, in terms of a long term shift, in terms of a long term shift toward, you know, in perspective on the fundamental political problem that you're pointing to, I don't see a possibility of Trump changing much there at all. Right. That's a little bit different. I mean, more the sort of immediate term actual fighting going on in that sense. But what you're pointing to is true, right? This idea that there can be a stable two state solution, that it's just around the corner.

You know, and that there's going to be some sort of resolution to this conflict that is this interesting, very well managed and very carefully planned thing. I just think that that's extremely unlikely at this point as well. Anyone who's spent time, you know, I've spent time in the West Bank for sure. I've spent time both in settlements and in everything from like refugee camps, settlements, regular towns and cities. There is no feasible way without extraordinary human suffering.

that I don't really think anyone is super in a rush to initiate to remove either, you know, the Palestinians from that land or the Jewish settlers from that land. There's no practical way to separate those two polities. They are fundamentally connected now. So the question that will be faced over the long term is whether there is a willingness to pursue kind of a bi-national state, a state that

you know, has that does contain the whole area, but that actually allows Palestinians to be full citizens with full representation. I think that that is unlikely as well. Certainly in the short term, I think we might see a kind of South Africa like, you know, 60, 70 year generational, multi-generational projects that might culminate in that. know, Nora Erekat is a famous Palestinian American human rights lawyer who has

a book about that that people could check out if they want more on that issue. I don't really see anything happening under Trump that accelerates the path to a political solution except in so far as it accelerates the problems. Trump, think, is very likely or reasonably likely to accept greater settlement expansion. think he's reasonably likely to

accept the full annexation of either Israeli settlements in the West Bank or the entire West Bank to Israel. And that is definitely the fervent hope of Israeli officials right now. You can see that in what they're saying. The new Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, said after one of his first meetings that he was hoping to use this opportunity to strike out against Iran. And then you've got Smotrik.

Who is the the finance minister who's saying that this is an important opportunity to finally nationalize? You know to finally annex these settlements And and they're seeing this as a real moment to kind of go all out. So I think that you know to the extent that Israeli opinion is the thing that's driving What's happening? They feel very emboldened right now and it'll kind of be up to to Trump personally to decide whether he wants to continue that trend but I mean, it's

The prospects for any long-term solution, the only thing, to get back to what I saying there, that could speed up any kind of solution would just be the idea that they're speeding it up by making it worse, right? That annexing the West Bank will force a full apartheid-like situation or a full apartheid situation throughout the country that will eventually, over the course of, again, 60, 70 years, lead to some sort of...

civil rights like or apartheid like resolution. So that's kind how I see it.

Kevin Maley (24:41)
Yeah, and I want to dig a little deeper on that because you hear about this idea of Israel formally annexing the West Bank. And when I hear that, think in some ways that is worse for Israel, at least sort of reputationally or the optics of it, because you have had formal Israeli control of the West Bank since 1967. You've had this settlement activity that basically began right away and is now just under a million people there.

But when people accuse Israel of being an apartheid state, they point out the status of Arabs in Israel proper, and the West Bank is treated as this separate entity. I don't even think that you're not supposed to call it an occupation anymore, but it's this separate entity kind of on the side of Israel. But if they formally annex the whole of the West Bank, and so not just the settlements, but the whole of the West Bank, doesn't that just...

get disappear the mirage that it's not a part of Israel. And once you have that to your point, how do you deny that it's an apartheid state anymore if you have these, know, Jewish only roads that Arab Muslims can't go on, if you have, you know, housing restrictions, all the trappings of a formal apartheid state. I would think that would be somewhat worse for Israel reputationally, but maybe it doesn't matter. mean, it doesn't seem like a country that cares too much about its reputation.

outside the halls of power in the United States where it has a pretty good reputation. And that doesn't seem to ever be at risk.

Connor (26:13)
Yeah, Israel clearly, the general kind of center of gravity in Israel of public opinion is that the world fundamentally misunderstands Israel, fundamentally misunderstands kind of the longer history of the Jewish people and the need of the Jewish people to be protected against these security threats. And I think that's only been doubled down in this past year, right? Because there is a really deep belief among most people within Israel that

They are being completely wrongfully maligned for what they're doing in Gaza, that they face real security issues that need real solutions. And that's what you will hear if you talk about these potential reputational costs, right? They are going to, you know, not everyone in Israel obviously is in favor of annexation of the West Bank, but there's many that are, and they'll argue that, you know, on top of it being necessary from this sort of political perspective, they'll add that

You know, this, this makes sense from a security perspective. you know, when I've talked to, you know, Israeli, you know, military, officers and people like that, they'll sometimes talk about how, you know, if Israel doesn't have the West bank, then it's about, know, you look at a map, it's, it's like an inch wide or it's like half an inch wide. That's kind of the argument, right? It's, it's true that if they, if they don't hold onto that over the long term, then Israel will have a, like a 20 mile wide section.

that goes down the middle or 20 or 30 miles wide, like genuinely very small. I think that they're going to focus a lot more on the security aspects. And I think that they'll argue that they are simply doing what they have to do to protect their country. I think it's an extremely bad idea to focus that narrowly, right? Because these are these very short term issues that don't acknowledge that the primary security challenge that Israel faces is secondary to the political challenge.

that we're talking about, right? Like the political problem that, you know, the fact that there are, you know, however many million, seven, eight million Palestinians who are not meaningfully enfranchised, who are more or less stateless, that are living in these places, that live under really challenging conditions, and who simply want to kind of live on the territory of their ancestors, that political problem won't go away. But I think that they have a belief that they can solve that political problem.

through security means and through military means. I just don't see, know, I think to a certain extent, the idea of a two state solution was always pretty fanciful, right? It was this idea put forth by international actors that thought that somehow a Palestinian state made up of, you know, sort of East Jerusalem plus the West Bank plus Gaza would somehow be able to live.

kind of naturally alongside a rump Israel as well. When you just look at a map, doesn't make any sense, right? It's this very unusual plan that sort of ignores political realities. And it was the same during the Oslo process. I think it was the same even when this was talked about during the 2000s. I don't think that a two-state solution at this point or perhaps at any point.

is like workable or practical.

Kevin Maley (29:26)
Yeah, and you hear that a lot, and yet you have this Saudi peace plan, which I think was first put out in 2002. It's kind of representative of many Arab states, not all the Arab states, but many of the Arab states that says in exchange for Israel allowing a two-state solution along the parameters that you mentioned, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states have signed on to this.

normalize relations with Israel, have full diplomatic relations, all that stuff. Saudi Arabia recently reiterated that position. There was this idea that following the Abraham Accords under the Trump administration, that Saudi Arabia was kind of on its way to normalizing relations with Israel, and this was the next step. And there's this idea that, at least in part, Hamas was reacting to that.

because they were being left out of this conversation when they made their attack on October 7th. But Saudi Arabia, I think it was within the last year, said, of restated this position that they're not going to normalize relations with Israel absent a two-state solution. Do you take that seriously from the Saudis? And the thought behind that question is,

for the sort of implicit protest behind that statement from Saudis that they are in favor of political rights for the Palestinians, you really don't see much beyond some rhetorical protest, that sort of thing from the Arab states about what is a pretty dire situation going on in Gaza. And the blockade that Israel instituted in, I think it was beginning 2007, something around that.

has always, there's always been a border with Egypt. I think it's the Rafah crossing. In Egypt and other, know, effectively client state of the United States, gets military aid from the United States, has always kind of participated, at least, I guess since Camp David in the late 70s, always kind of participated in this situation, enforcing this situation with Israel. And you know, you have the Jordanians, I think a majority of the,

Jordanian population might be Palestinian and Jordan's always been concerned about that population, what to do with them. on the one hand, you have, again, these kind of rhetorical statements from the Arab states like Saudi Arabia saying we want a two-state solution. But on the other hand, you kind of wonder, do you really care? Israel's this advanced wealthy state of trying to have economic relationships with these Arab states which are led by

dictators that have either security agreements or economic agreements with the United States. They trade all their oil and dollars, that kind of thing. What do you make of that situation with the Arab states? Are they allies of the Palestinians or is this all just to quell their own domestic populations?

Connor (32:17)
Well, there's a lot to kind of pick apart there, but where I might start is, you've accurately identified this pattern throughout the region where there's a significant disconnect between the sort of these like autocratic leaders who are very transactional in their politics, who are practical, who see the US as their most important kind of partner and thus see Israel as a necessary one.

and who would kind of like to get over all of these different problems that the kind of Israel-Palestinian crisis has allowed to fester throughout the region. But then you've got these publics that are seriously, seriously passionate and seriously engaged on the issue of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, right? You you mentioned Jordan, know, Amman itself, the capital of Jordan, I lived there for

you know, a collective year and a half over the years or so, is like probably 90 % Palestinian in Amman itself. And then the country as a whole is probably 50 or 60%. And so there's this enormous commitment to that cause, but there is on the flip side, this huge hangover from the Arab Spring, where a lot of people are very, very afraid of instability.

and are very, very afraid of anything leading to a potential conflict within their country, either as a civil war or as a multi, you know, multinational war that happens across borders. And that fear of greater conflict has, especially in Jordan and in states like Saudi Arabia, made it very difficult for activists to do really much at all in terms of critiquing the government.

especially when it comes to issues around Palestinian rights and things like that. They'll be allowed to protest about these things, but they are very fearful that civil unrest could spread and could turn into a civil war that would lead them to live like they've seen their neighbors in Syria living for these past almost 15 years now, 13 years, and how people have been living in Iraq. so the question of whether these leaders actually care

about the Palestinians, you know, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, MBS is often how you'll hear him referred to. I don't think he like sheds particular tears for it, right? I don't think that he sits around and worries about Palestinian self-determination and about human rights violations committed by Israel. I think that his father, King Salman, who's technically still the leader, but who...

has had failing health for a long time, may be one of the last things preventing MBS from kind of shifting even more kind of towards the Western Bloc and even more kind of in favor of normalization with Israel. But it does pose a political challenge regardless, because, you know, MBS was about to try to pursue this actual kind of normalization deal prior to October 7th, or at least that's what the Biden administration

fervently hoped. And this past year has made it such that public opinion really does require that you have to at least pretend to deal with the Palestinian problem first before you get to normalization. So I think that we'll have a little bit of that. But I think if current trends continue within five or 10 years, I don't see any reason at all that Saudi Arabia will continue to not recognize Israel. And I don't envision

the Palestinian cause being saved in that time. you know, I guess the answer there would be, I don't think that they will end up standing up in the end. think that they will over time slowly just be able to let it happen and normalize relations without any fundamental change to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Kevin Maley (35:58)
And then looking at Iran, so you've got Iran and Israel have had kind of a tit for tat on missile exchanges, I think fairly restrained on both sides intentionally is to kind of not escalate the conflict. But even outside the relationship with Israel, I'm wondering your thoughts on the relationship with the United States. You know, we've had.

Not good relations with Iran since the revolution in 79 and the hostage shaking and all that sort of thing. There were potential openings for a better relationship, some conversations in the 90s, and then I think the Iranians had made an overture after 9-11 to kind of have better relations with the United States, unsurprisingly rejected by the George W. Bush administration. You had the nuclear agreement with the Obama administration. Trump pulled out.

correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Biden administration actually started going stronger against the Iranians in terms of pressuring them. And so not, not trying to go back to the nuclear agreement, the JCPOA that, that Obama had put in and then Trump coming in is, I don't know, there's some, what I would say is some dubious intelligence that Iran was trying to kill. Trump on the campaign trail. I don't know how true that is, whether or not it is.

How do you see relations with Iran playing out under the Trump administration, but just in the future? Like, how do we get to just a normal relationship with Iran? Does it have to be a different regime that is not an Islamic state?

Connor (37:28)
A normal relationship with Iran starts with a normal relationship with Israel is what I would say. We need to be able to pull back and have a broader vision for how American interests can be served by a more stable Middle East. Part of that would be taking steps to seek, to not empower the states that are doing the most destabilizing stuff, which is to say Israel right now and to...

a similar extent Iran, though to a lesser extent, to be honest, right? What Israel's done has particularly destabilized the Middle East here. So if you want to have a US policy that is able to properly normalize with Iran and is able to take advantage of the fact that Saudi Arabia and Iran have normalized relations and are talking and are exchanging diplomatic visits and things like that during these crises,

that could genuinely help keep a lid on things and help prevent regional war, you're going to have to have a pullback in US focus on Israeli national security interests and an emphasis on the broader American interest of stability in the region that can only be built by actual, not interfered with by the US to a significant extent, engagement between regional parties that are able to find a balance of power.

That they can live with going forward, right? So I you know, that's kind of like a you must first, know invent the universe answer to the problem But I I don't really see a way that we can have more normal relations with Iran Unless we can kind of pull back from that reflexive Emphasis on Israel's security that I think warps our view of the of the sort of strategic landscape

within the Middle East. think Trump on the narrower question of, you know, could we see maximum pressure and then a return to some sort of deal or things like that? I think that's not impossible. It's going to be really challenging. know, the Biden administration, I think, did sincerely come in wanting to potentially return to something like the JCPOA. I don't think that they took the steps that they should have in order to pursue that path.

I've written about that. I don't think that either Jake Sullivan or Tony Blinken were really in, that was not super high on their priority list. I think that there were lots of other small challenges between the US and Iran that made things complicated. And then the potential for any big foreign policy initiative was pretty much dashed as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine and that became...

sort of the center of the universe for the second half of the Biden administration. so, you know, that I would say that to a certain extent, you know, events intervened in that case. And who knows if Biden would have been able to get a new deal if he had been more serious about pursuing one. I think it's possible, but it would have been challenging. You know, Trump, it's just if you think that his sort of piece through strength escalate to deescalate thing, if you if you think that works,

Which I have misgivings about I have doubts about but you know is possible It's a theory of the world that a lot of people believe in Then there's a chance. Yes that that there could be normalized relations or not normalized relations, but like Made more normal in the colloquial sense right that it could become less truly chaotic and and less You know always on the brink of war between the US and Iran and there could be genuine restrictions on

on the Iranian nuclear program. And I don't think that that requires a change from the sort of extremely unusual governance structure that Iran lives under. There's a lot of, Marco Rubio is poised to be Secretary of State. He is someone that has actively, throughout his career, sought the destruction of the Islamic Republic per se, right? He's wanted to replace that regime and have one that...

is different, I guess, to come after. the possibility of actually pursuing that kind of goal seems pretty remote to me. The idea that you, with anything short of a direct invasion, could topple the Iranian regime is pretty unlikely to me. And I don't think that they are going to want to actually invade Iran because, as people have talked about in all kinds of contexts,

fighting Iran is very different than fighting, for example, Iraq, totally different topography, totally different kind of military challenges. It would be a really hard fight if the US wanted to do that. And as I've talked about earlier, you don't really know what's gonna come after. So I think that that would be a very dumb policy. But I don't see the regime.

I don't see US actions leading to the fall of the Islamic Republic anytime soon, and I do think that there will just have to be a modus vivendi.

Kevin Maley (42:14)
So then jumping further east to East Asia, China is another big flash point. It feels like in the halls of power in DC, everyone's a war hawk these days when it comes to China. The Biden administration effectively ended the one China policy with regard to Taiwan. We've had this, I don't know if you would call it informal or formal policy that the US only recognizes one China.

And that effectively Taiwan is not this independent sovereign state. Biden, for the first time, I think, explicitly committed the United States to the defense of China. I feel like the Trump administration may have hinted that they would do that, but Biden was pretty explicit about that. You had, think some people call provocative movements like Nancy Pelosi going to Taiwan and making these statements. I think Kevin McCarthy might have gone to Taiwan too, but

So it's, you know, we keep hearing from both parties, like we've got to get ready for war with China. get, know, China is going to be equipped to invade Taiwan by 2025. We've got to arm Taiwan more than they already are and that sort of thing. And, you know, there's a lot of China hawks, including Rubio coming into positions of power if they're confirmed early next year. Where do you see this? I don't want to call it a conflict, but potential conflict. Like is it?

Is there any way we can just go back to having a normal relationship with China? Or is China's rise a kind of prelude to war the way like Kaiser right Germany was or something like that? Like, is it always when a new power rises, there's gonna be one of these conflicts.

Connor (43:54)
Yeah, I mean, I'm not a believer in the, you know, there's this sort of academic theory that you're hinting at there called the Thucydides trap based in this, you know, this historical book about the Peloponnesian War that makes a similar set of arguments or kind of demonstrates this idea that when a great new superpower, a new great power rises, it inevitably leads to conflict.

There is lot of evidence that it leads to severe tensions, right? And that it can lead to conflict. The Cold War is a very clear example of the ways in which it can lead to something that doesn't resemble war in the way that we traditionally think about it, but that is extremely destabilizing, extremely unpleasant, and only ended when the Soviet Union literally collapsed, right? So that's foreboding. There are definitely negative signals, I think, that American politicians, I can't tell, you know,

the extent to which it's a deeply held belief that China is a threat that we must deal with and kind of all things because, you know, in a time where it's very hard to get things passed through Congress and a time where it's very hard to justify things that will get bipartisan support, saying that you're doing it to fight China gets a lot of support. Saying that your AI policy is based around defeating China in AI leads to more support in Congress, leads to bills getting passed.

leads to things like the Chips and Science Act that would otherwise be difficult. So there's that kind of like mechanic playing out that incentivizes you to continue being doing these kind of provocative things towards China. I don't think that war between the US and China is inevitable at all. But I do think that the Trump administration is likely to make it more likely. I think that they will take more steps.

beyond what the Biden administration already has to sort of undermine China's economic goals. They're going to do more to restrict, I'm sure, China's access to not just strategic goods, but probably to a wider range of things. You know, I could see more separation of the economies and I could see more hawkish rhetoric around Taiwan for sure. I don't think Trump himself

I've thought about this, I've gone back and forth on this. I think a lot of people around Trump would intervene directly or would like to intervene directly to defend Taiwan in the case of an invasion. I don't know if Trump himself would do that. He has this sort of interesting instinct that does seem to, he seems to sort of balk at bloodshed. He seems to sort of balk at the idea of being seen as losing or losing, you know.

actual soldiers in a situation. I think the idea that he would go and send US troops to fight and defend Taiwan just seems a little bit outlandish to me. I think that he would not be overly moved by the impressive track record of the one China policy that you mentioned, this policy whereby, and it's connected to this other policy that's referred to as strategic ambiguity.

which is this idea that the US always says that it could intervene on Taiwan's behalf in case of an invasion, and that acts as a deterrent, right? So it's unclear whether the US will do so, but the possibility that it could acts as this kind of stabilizing deterrent that prevents anyone on either side from making big moves. Because one thing that people forget is that these policies are also designed

in part to discourage Taiwan from unilaterally declaring independence or doing any other types of things that would tend to lead to further escalation. So yeah, I don't know. There's a lot of different factors at play there, but it's going to just be a really hard to imagine challenge. Like if you thought that the Ukraine war was difficult and that it stretched supply chains in the West and that it

know, revealed weaknesses in the defense industrial base that have been going on for a long period of time. war over Taiwan would be 10 or 100 or a thousand times worse on so many different levels. And the U.S., if it directly participates, will lose tens to hundreds of thousands potentially of soldiers, like sincerely. That's not based on just total, you know, making it up or things like that. That's based on just what we've seen in war games over Taiwan.

You know, in the first couple moves of most, you know, popular public war games like the Center for Strategic and International Studies carried out in 2023, China sinks one or two American aircraft carriers, right? And an aircraft carrier is a floating city. That's 10,000 soldiers lost at sea, right? And I think that that's just going to be a really challenging conflict for someone like Trump to actually want to fight through. It would be the, it would be a scale of conflict that the U.S. hasn't been involved with.

really since Vietnam. And so I think it would be really challenging. I think that Trump, through his rhetoric and through his policies, will make that war more likely. But I also don't think that he is likely to step in and defend Taiwan.

Kevin Maley (48:51)
What do you think a broader Trump foreign policy would look like in the second Trump administration? Because you've got, again, this idea that, you know, he's not, as you said, he's kind of squeamish about direct conflicts. He's been critical on the campaign trail. He made himself famous, not famous, but made himself, and dear to a lot of people in the 2016 Republican primaries when he denounced the war in Iraq.

attacked the George W. Bush administration for not protecting the US in 9-11, but was a critic of US foreign policy over the last 10 years as being overly ambitious and US focusing on wars overseas. During the campaign trail, he denounced Liz Cheney and her father, who Kamala Harris was campaigning around with, calling them warmongers who just want to kill Arabs. During his presidency, he was also critical of

John McCain and also Lindsey Graham, who's a close ally of his for being kind of warmongers who just never met a country, they didn't want a bomb. So you get this idea that he is for a kind of more restrained foreign policy, but his incoming cabinet, if they're approved, is pretty hawkish. We talked about Marco Rubio, there's Pete Hegseth at defense if he gets approved, who seems pretty hawkish as well.

incoming national security advisor. Is it Mike Waltz? Is that it? So he's got a reputation for being pretty hawkish on all the conflicts that we've mentioned. All these people hawkish on Russia wanting Ukraine to kind of push to the end. I think they've curtailed their statements in the last year, but they're a deeper history on the Middle East, on China. So it kind of makes one wonder how much of Trump's

whether rhetoric was real or whether it was just campaign bravado or lack of bravado rather and what we're going to see is a kind of more hawkish foreign policy.

Connor (50:49)
Yeah, think that Trump, I think part of the key to all this is that, you know, Trump is perceptive in that he sees that there's this really sincere split on the right between what might be called, you know, some version of foreign policy restraint and some version of this traditional sort of hawkish consensus that's mostly based around this idea of, you know, big military, don't be afraid to use it. You know, the US goes

goes it alone and will be strong alone because we're the most powerful country in the world, right? So that's obviously different from this new restraint movement. He's, I think, tried to almost distribute, you know, distribute bounty to different parts of these movements and to do sort of this, the way that a political boss in a city would have in, like, the early 1900s, right? He's looking at constituencies and he's giving things to them.

But in this case, I do think that he has heavily calibrated it towards the hawkish side, you know, with some of these early picks. I don't know how he's doing this mental math or if he is doing it the same way, right? But like you said, Waltz, Rubio and Hegseth, they're all quite hawkish. Rubio and Waltz have said more restraint-oriented things on Ukraine. They've expressed a desire for that conflict to come to an end or at least to have concrete plans, but they're still, you know.

They're more traditional hawks. The biggest disappointment was that no one like, know, not necessarily for me personally, because I'm of the left, so I don't particularly like any of these guys too much, but for restrainers, a big disappointment was Elbridge Colby not getting any of these real blue chip jobs. So, you know, they ended up giving the main things to the hawks. They've given some.

people associated with restraint to one extent or another. Tulsi Gabbard, for example, they've given her a job over at the office of the director of national intelligence. She will be the next director of national intelligence, assuming that she can get through Senate confirmation, which is a big if, is definitely a big if, but she's probably kind of the biggest fig leaf to that group.

But again, all of this just so depends. There's lots of research that's tried to determine, presidents make decisions based on their own view of the world or based on the views of their advisors or some mix. There was interesting research that I wrote about earlier this year that was kind of highlighting the role that advisors play. It seems that advisors are able to, by shaping the options on the table for a president and by doing, by

the way in which they describe things, the way in which they advocate for things, do a significant amount of kind of shaping the decision making for presidents. And if that's true, then yes, I'll expect Trump to be potentially more hawkish even in this term than he was in the first one. But at the same time, Trump has this, there's this X factor where he at any moment could decide like he did with North Korea in 2018.

that he wants to pursue normalization and that he wants to kind of buck everyone and make everyone really mad, but go and try to do this personal one-on-one deal with a foreign leader. And so there's a chance that at any moment for any of these conflicts that Trump will do that, right? That he'll stop listening to his advisors or he'll tell his advisors, you you work for me, you're loyal to me.

we're going to do this, we are going to try to like, to the extent that he sees opportunities for that, I think he'll pursue it. But I don't think that Trump, I don't think Trump is ideological about foreign policy in the sense that I don't think Trump has an ideal vision of how the world works, right? I don't think he's factoring that into his decision-making. I think that he wants to do things that advance his personal interests.

and that advance his read of the interests of the United States in very transactional and very individualized circumstances that act more like business dealings than they do like traditional international negotiations or conflicts. So yeah, I think that the kind of general Trump foreign policy perspective will be, you know, frenetic. I think it'll jump back and forth between different things. I think that it will not make coherent sense.

from the outside and I think that's because of who Trump is as a person or how he's shown himself to be.

Kevin Maley (55:02)
And then what about the Democrats? Because under the Biden administration, it felt very much like a neo-Khanish foreign policy. You had these kind of neo-concertive acolytes dating back to the George W. Bush administration, people like Victoria Newland and Elliott Abrams. And we talked about Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney, but in the actual policies of people who in the administration, which Liz Cheney was not, it felt very hawkish, very aggressive.

the seemingly accurate thwarting of diplomatic overtures with the Ukraine conflict, going all in, supporting Israel as it attacks Gaza and Lebanon and Syria and Iran and Yemen, the hawkish attitude toward China. It feels very, not exactly a peaceful rules-based order international policy despite their own rhetoric on that.

You talked a moment ago about what influences foreign policy. Is it the advisors and the machinery of government versus the president himself? But there's also this idea that foreign policy does not change that much between administrations, between parties. It kind of reflects more the internal power dynamics of a state itself. And so I'm wondering, is it possible

for the Democrats to have a materially different foreign policy than that of Trump administration, but also the Biden administration and one that actually does follow international law and try and respect human rights. Are we just kind of gonna follow the same pattern that we've been following?

Connor (56:41)
I mean, I would like us to obviously change patterns. think the most likely result, you know, in most situations is that things will continue roughly as they've been. And there's been a broad sort of foreign policy consensus that views, you know, that has a very wide view of US interests. This is the sort of fundamental difference between people who view themselves as pro-restraint.

and people who are maybe internationalists or there's a lot of different words that people will use. in order for the US to pursue a lot of the goals that I think both you and I would like it to pursue, it'll require a narrowing of those goals. We can't really lower the defense budget right now unless we also lower what we want to do with our military.

and kind of restrict that and take a different perspective on how the US will act in the world. The possibility of something like that happening in the near term is relatively low. I think that those types of change tend to kind of come after major crises, truly major crises, right? We wouldn't have the modern world order if not for World War II. They would have seen little

reason to create something like the UN to create these sort of, you know, the Fourth Geneva Conventions, things like that, that gave us a lot of this modern aspects of international law that restricts state behavior to a certain extent. think it's fairly unlikely that the US really does anything fundamentally different unless there is a significant external shock or a shock that maybe could be caused internally, but that, you know,

has external reverberations. And I would hope that it could change just through force of us arguing that it should. And I hope it does, right? That's a lot of what I spend my time doing is arguing that we should narrow our view of our national interests, that we should, we'll narrow them in certain ways and widen them in others, right? Because it is in US interests for states to comply with international law, right? The US has,

a disproportionate influence over the creation and the kind of monitoring of international law. And why don't we press our advantage on that, right? Like we should be encouraging and demanding of our allies, like Israel, for example, that they comply with the laws of war, that they allow food into Gaza, as they obviously should be doing, right? Those things also were down to our benefit. But

But the broader picture is that we have to change that top line mindset about what the US military and what US power is seeking to actually do in the world. that's part of what really worries me with the China competition, Is it's this attitude that the goal of US power is sort of simply to continue reproducing hegemony, is to continue reproducing

military predominance and true dominance in all theaters. you know, China and what we do about the rise of China will give us a good indication of if the US can change on that front without, again, something traumatic happening because, you know, it makes eminent sense for the US to enter into a more equitable balance of power with China in East Asia in order to avoid war, but it means

kind of rejecting this more primacist idea that the US should be able to be the main one guaranteeing shipping lanes, for example, in all theaters across the world, or that it should have things like complete freedom of navigation in all places, or that it must be able to dominate and project power in a way that no state can even do within its region.

But do that in other regions rather than our own which is obviously highly secure, right? There's where we don't face national security risks close to home in any meaningful sense. So yeah, there needs to be a really broad rethinking of what it means, of what the US wants to do in the world for these things to change.

Kevin Maley (1:00:51)
Yeah, and I think that's a good point because it raises the question for me on what an ideal foreign policy would look like for me and for many people of the left versus a kind of just realism on the reality of the world that we live in. And so just examples of that, like I would love it if the US said to Israel, you've got to follow.

not just international law, but human rights issues. You've got to give political rights to the Palestinians. And similarly went to a lot of these autocratic regimes in the Middle East and said that as well. And that doesn't mean we invade them. We're not gonna invade Saudi Arabia if they are not giving people the right to vote, but we're not gonna be chummy chummy with them. And so having that kind of foreign policy,

is ideal in my head, but then I kind of wonder, so then what if the repercussions of that are Israel and maybe Saudi Arabia and these other states just form closer relationships with China and Russia and then all of a sudden you see those kinds of bases in the Middle East and you see oil being traded in rubles and that kind of thing instead of dollars and you start to see, you know,

One could make the argument the reason we haven't had another Arab oil embargo, one, is we have these autocratic regimes who are very economically intertwined with the United States. We talked about they give military aid to Egypt, so it's kind of paying them off. So if we do put on a more kind of squishy heart foreign policy that I'd like to see, are there negative repercussions?

for the United States. And I recognize it kind of goes back to what you're saying about it depends on how you define the interests of the United States and do we want to enforce military control over the world. But I don't know, how do you resolve that kind of tension that when we seek these kinds of things, if we really push human rights everywhere, we're really just gonna start to lose control and our influence of everywhere. And should we even have that control and influence?

Connor (1:03:03)
Yeah, I mean, you're right that you're pointing to a real tension and a real challenge. guess I would say, you know, to the specific human rights question, my view of that is that we should be in the business of rhetorically encouraging human rights and trying to get human rights like labor protections and things like that into global trade treaties and into things like that. But we should, to a certain extent, this is kind of a

the more kind of realist, like foreign policy realist, not realist in the colloquial sense, side of me, which is that we should by and large not do a ton to intervene in the internal affairs of a given state, right? To the extent that those internal affairs don't cross a certain line, because obviously there are lines that can be crossed, I think that I wouldn't consider even under the most laissez-faire approach.

I wouldn't consider what Israel's doing in Gaza. It's like an internal affair that we can just look to the side at, right? Like we do have to take that seriously and we do have to think about that. I just don't think that the world is quite, you know, I think that the way that you framed the question is sort of derived from this more Cold War mindset that I think worked a little bit better when you had

There was a distinct idea of a first, second, and third world, right? There were really distinct blocks. You had different advantages from being a part of them. And the states that were going towards one block or another were way, way weaker than the US or the Soviet Union or any of the other ones, any other state that might want to enforce participation in either of their blocks, right? Today, a state like Saudi Arabia not just wants to deal

with both the West and China, it will. Saudi Arabia has genuine power on the world stage as sort of what international relations scholars will refer to as middle powers, right? These kind of sort of free agents of the international system that have a certain amount of power. They're not a great power. They're not like the United States. They're not like China. They don't have the ability to...

to pursue expansive strategic goals that change the international system fundamentally, but they do have the ability to deal with both great powers, like in this situation, the two great powers, which is the US and China, and to seek advantages from both of them. So the extent to which the US over the next however many years will attempt to make sure that Saudi Arabia remains in our camp and that they stay on our side.

It's just not going to create some durable thing where Saudi Arabia won't just like, you know in the snap of a finger turn and work with China at the same time because they get benefits and in their pursuit of their national interest will have a ton of reason to make pragmatic decisions about their relationship with each country. You know, the only way that you could take it further and make it, you know, if you want to really make them sort of not fully like a

vassal state or anything, but like, you know, a state with a close relationship would be to offer full security guarantees or things like that. You know, that's a little bit of a different thing. If you're saying that you'll protect them against enemy attacks or that you'll come to their defense in the case of a war. But no, I don't think, I don't think that there's very much the U S can do today to, to, you know, shape the preferences.

over the long term of a lot of these middle powers. You know, I mentioned Saudi Arabia, but other examples, Israel is a bit of an odd case. Israel already has a decent relationship with China actually, and an okay relationship with Russia at that. And that hasn't led to terrible issues for the US. But India is another major example of this. I mean, the BRICS countries, right? This expanded BRICS. guess Saudi Arabia isn't going to be a part of it anymore, or, you know, I forget, they went back and forth.

But, you know, Brazil, India, South Africa, all of these countries have much more power than they did the first time around during the first Cold War, and I just don't think that they are going to pick a side in a recognizable way this time around.

Kevin Maley (1:07:13)
Well, Connor, I really appreciate you coming on. I know we went all over the world on this and left out actually most of the world, including a lot of the Bricks countries, the entirety of the Western hemisphere, that sort of thing. I appreciate all of your perspectives and insight. It was a real pleasure talking with you.

Connor (1:07:30)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Kevin Maley (1:07:32)
And can you just remind us, Henry, instead of the top of the cloud, but where people can follow your work.

Connor (1:07:36)
Yeah, for sure. So if you want to see my writing mainly, that's going to be at the non-zero newsletter on Substack. You know, I'll occasionally write elsewhere, but that's the main one. And then my Twitter handle, I think is just my first name followed by my last name, but I should double check that before I say that. Yeah, it's Connor underscore Echols. So, you know, feel free to follow me there as well.

Kevin Maley (1:08:01)
And we will put that in the show notes. All right, thank you.

Connor (1:08:03)
Alright, much appreciated. Thank you.