The Realignment: What to Do About Russia + Intro to Venture Capital
Episodes of the week, Aaron's response to Joe Weisberg, and more
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Welcome Back to The Realignment
We hope everyone had a great week and enjoyed our episodes. We’re particularly curious what people think about the Russia/Ukraine debate?
Next week, we’ll air episodes with Erich Schwartzel on his upcoming book, Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and and the Global Battle for Supremacy, and Peter Goodman on Davos Man: How Billionaires Devoured the World.
Both are available at our Bookshop.
This Week’s Episodes
Episode 197: Joe Weisberg: An Exit Strategy for the Second Cold War with Russia
Episode 196: Sebastian Mallaby: How Venture Capital and the Power Law Shape the Future
Aaron’s Response: Joe Weisberg on Russia
Each week, our producer/researcher Aaron Visser will summarize/review one of the books/shows covered.
The first thing you should know about foreign policy is that you don’t know anything about foreign policy. The second thing you should know about foriegn policy is that our leaders also don’t know anything about foreign policy. So you might as well have an opinion about it.
Foreign policy has two aspects.
The first is values. Some people care about strengthening America geopolitically, while others care about the lives of our troops. The driving consideration in foreign policy calculations has always been “protecting US interests,” a value that has been interpreted as protecting American business, spreading democracy, preventing imperialism, and fighting terrorism.
The second is predictions. People with similar values can advocate drastically different approaches due to varying predictions of the future. Some, like Graham Allison, advocate ceding China an Asian sphere of influence and control of Taiwan to prevent war. Others, like Jacob Hellberg, advocate strong military deterrence to get the same outcome. The cliche example is in the policy of appeasement before WWII. The Great Powers were so eager to prevent war, they acceded to all of Hitler’s demands and ended up with the largest war in history. This failure of prediction can occur in the most informed places. During the 1980s, the CIA pumped arms towards Mujahideen fighters resisting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It was a Cold War free lunch, harming our greatest enemy cheaply and with no risk to American lives. But looking back, after these Mujahideen networks helped form Al Qaeda and provided the basis for Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, it no longer appeared like the CIA was following the national interest.
This brings us to Russia and Ukraine. I will divide my thinking on this topic into values and predictions, not too tell you what to think, but to raise questions to think about. That’s what Realignment strives to be about.
My first value and that of every rational person is preventing a broad war between the US and Russia. This would be horrendous for reasons I shouldn’t have to enumerate here. Thankfully, this scenario doesn’t seem to be in the cards (this is now a prediction). The US and the UK have both ruled out sending in ground troops, ruling out wider escalation.
I care about preventing Russian imperialism. Ukraine has a long national history, with most of that history having been under Russian hegemony. They have their own language, culture, and shared solidarity. The ideal that countries can’t just invade one another is worth maintaining.
We can’t outright prevent Russian invasion, but we can raise its cost by providing arms to Ukraine and threatening sanctions. The Biden administration is pursuing this course. This comes to the murky area of predictions. Experts agree that Russia will suffer in an invasion, but are split over whether an invasion will occur. Not everyone has to agree with this logic. We’ve already placed many sanctions on Russia for no obvious gain. They might argue that the only way to prevent war is accommodation. This might work in the short term, but what about the next crisis? What about the next time Putin rolls up with 100,000 troops and has a new list of demands?
Personally, I agree with the current course taken by our government. Russia should not be able to determine who is and who isn’t able to join NATO. However, experts and governments are not infallible. We have good reason to be skeptical of our government’s ability to foresee the repercussions of its actions overseas. Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq were disasters. Predicting the future is hard and the proper course of events only look clear in retrospect.
No matter how this conflict plays out, America must rethink its relationship to Russia. Our current approach using sanctions has failed to reform Russia. This situation is a dry run for the much more important conflict with China over Taiwan. The conversations about appeasement will only become more important. And you’ll know which podcast will host them.
The Realignment Bookshop
As a reminder, we’ve created a Realignment Bookshop affiliate store showcasing books by guests, what we’re actively reading this year, and deeper dives into the featured topic of an episode.
If you purchase a book using our link, the show gets a 10% commission, a local, independent bookseller gets support, and you get an awesome book!
We’re reorganizing our book lists over the next few weeks, so for now, check out our primary one:
Let us know what you think about this or any other week’s episodes. Please share The Realignment with anyone who’d enjoy the podcast.
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Great summary as always by Aaron!
One potential source of future guests might be historians. Historians of the 1800s, historians of media, historians of political and cultural revolutions, historians of radical political movements in the U.S. and abroad. It would help meet the mission of the show to explain the times we're going through and also put meat in the bones of analogies like the one between today and the launch of the printing press.
For example, a historian could answer the question of whether the ideological conformity in universities today is something new or a reversion to the way most universities were managed outside of the U.S. in the 1800s, as organs of the ruling elite.
Judging the appeasement policy solely off the actions of Hitler's is a half truth approach. He was a very unique figure, so why would we expect others to have the same world domination mindset? Along with factoring in the life of the 1930’s - 40’s, we are far more interconnected technological, culturally, and militarily. So the appetite and capability for a war of the past to be within our future is not as realistic as one might believe.
With that said, I will admit that as long as the world has different counties, there will be conflict’s. But it’s a common mistake to believe the solution to the current issue will solve/prevent the next. Life is never that easy. Take a second and think how many counties Putin looking to take over? Honestly, how does that senecio play out? It’s not a Putin = Hitler therefore X+Y =Z. Unlike Adolf, Putin is a highly intelligent person so we should assume he has realistic goals and intentions.