Artwork for podcast The Jacob Shapiro Podcast
The White Nationalist Social Democracy
Episode 294 • 18th July 2025 • The Jacob Shapiro Podcast • Jacob Shapiro
00:00:00 01:09:16

Share Episode

Shownotes

Jacob interviews Dr. Van Jackson, an international relations scholar specializing in East Asian and Pacific security. They discuss the accelerating pace and volatility of U.S. foreign policy, characterizing Trump-era actions as part of a broader counter-revolutionary, oligarchic project. Van critiques both major U.S. parties and highlights the risk of diversionary wars as legitimacy crises grow. They explore the geopolitics of Iran, Israel, and China, and conclude with insights on North Korea and potential U.S. troop withdrawal from South Korea, outlining a rare “win-win-win” scenario for all parties on the Korean Peninsula.

--

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Introduction

(04:52) - Discussion on US Power and Global Politics

(08:30) - Middle East Policy and US-Israel Relations

(16:30) - Defining Fascism and White Nationalism

(23:32) - Trump's Base and Political Dynamics

(30:07) - Potential Diversionary Conflicts and Foreign Policy

(35:19) - The Inevitability of War with China

(35:52) - China's Strategic Interests in Taiwan and the South China Sea

(36:49) - The Role of Allies in US-China Relations

(38:25) - The Controversy Over Arming Allies

(40:57) - Trump's Foreign Policy and Its Impact on Alliances

(42:56) - Japan and South Korea's Dilemma

(46:42) - The Future of US Hegemony and Global Alliances

(51:01) - The Role of the Democratic Party in US Politics

(58:52) - North Korea's Nuclear Deterrent and US Relations

(01:05:15) - Potential US Troop Withdrawal from South Korea

(01:08:49) - Conclusion and Final Thoughts

--

Jacob Shapiro Site: jacobshapiro.com

Jacob Shapiro LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jacob-l-s-a9337416

Jacob Twitter: x.com/JacobShap

Jacob Shapiro Substack: jashap.substack.com/subscribe

--

The Jacob Shapiro Show is produced and edited by Audiographies LLC. More information at audiographies.com

--

Jacob Shapiro is a speaker, consultant, author, and researcher covering global politics and affairs, economics, markets, technology, history, and culture. He speaks to audiences of all sizes around the world, helps global multinationals make strategic decisions about political risks and opportunities, and works directly with investors to grow and protect their assets in today’s volatile global environment. His insights help audiences across industries like finance, agriculture, and energy make sense of the world.

--



This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp

Transcripts

Jacob Shapiro:

Hello listeners.

Jacob Shapiro:

Welcome to another episode of the Jacob Shapiro podcast.

Jacob Shapiro:

Today I am joined by Dr. Van Jackson.

Jacob Shapiro:

He is an American born scholar of international relations, specializing

Jacob Shapiro:

in East Asian and Pacific Security.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, he is a senior lecturer in international relations at the, at

Jacob Shapiro:

the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, and a senior research

Jacob Shapiro:

scholar at Security and Context, um, where he is co-director of the

Jacob Shapiro:

Multipolarity Great Power Competition in the Global South Project.

Jacob Shapiro:

Uh, he's written.

Jacob Shapiro:

Several books, um, which you should all, uh, check out.

Jacob Shapiro:

Uh, his, his, his new one is The Rivalry Peril, how Great Power Competition

Jacob Shapiro:

Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, from 2009 to 2014, he had positions in the Office of the Secretary of

Jacob Shapiro:

Defense as a strategist and policy advisor focused on the Asia Pacific.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, I said this about the Mike Conal episode, and I will say it now too.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, if you have come to my podcast to hear only things that you agree with.

Jacob Shapiro:

Uh, you are in the wrong place.

Jacob Shapiro:

There are plenty of Ben Shapiros and Rachel Maddows

Jacob Shapiro:

and other out others out there.

Jacob Shapiro:

If you just want your own biases confirmed.

Jacob Shapiro:

I'm here to bring you voices that I think are incredibly smart and give

Jacob Shapiro:

a different perspective on the world.

Jacob Shapiro:

Some of you listening to Van Jackson, especially those of you who are Donald

Jacob Shapiro:

Trump's supporters, or think of yourselves that way, you will react negatively to

Jacob Shapiro:

some of the things that Van is saying.

Jacob Shapiro:

You will even maybe at points think that he has Trump derangement syndrome,

Jacob Shapiro:

although if you stick around for the whole podcast, you'll see that

Jacob Shapiro:

van is an equal opportunity critic.

Jacob Shapiro:

He will, he will criticize the left and the Democrats just as

Jacob Shapiro:

much as he will go after the right.

Jacob Shapiro:

Uh, and President Donald Trump.

Jacob Shapiro:

I brought him on because I've been following Van's analysis for over

Jacob Shapiro:

a decade now and for my money.

Jacob Shapiro:

He is one of the smartest and most clever commentators that are out there

Jacob Shapiro:

and has an intellectual purity that very, very few analysts have out there.

Jacob Shapiro:

I sense no hypocrisy in him.

Jacob Shapiro:

His thinking is all incredibly consistent.

Jacob Shapiro:

Even when I disagree with it, it's all extremely sinewy and laid

Jacob Shapiro:

out, and for that reason, he's.

Jacob Shapiro:

Somebody that I follow and I would encourage you to follow as well.

Jacob Shapiro:

You can check out his, uh, podcast un diplomatic.

Jacob Shapiro:

He's also got a substack under that name if you're interested in following

Jacob Shapiro:

with him and adding people to your Rolodex that you also disagree with

Jacob Shapiro:

or who make you think differently.

Jacob Shapiro:

So I hope you enjoy the episode.

Jacob Shapiro:

I hope you will open up space to hear a point of view that you probably won't

Jacob Shapiro:

agree with everything that you hear from.

Jacob Shapiro:

If you want to tell me how badly you disagreed with things, you can always

Jacob Shapiro:

send me emails at jacob@jacobshapiro.com.

Jacob Shapiro:

I'm here, I'm listening, and I try to answer everything that comes in otherwise.

Jacob Shapiro:

Uh, it is Monday afternoon, July 14th that we're recording.

Jacob Shapiro:

I have to go get ready for an event, uh, this evening on the

Jacob Shapiro:

shores of Trout Lake in Wisconsin.

Jacob Shapiro:

Uh, but I hope you're all keeping well.

Jacob Shapiro:

Take care of the people that you love.

Jacob Shapiro:

Cheers, and I will see you out there.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, all right, listeners, this is maybe the most beautiful

Jacob Shapiro:

place I've ever podcasted from.

Jacob Shapiro:

I just got off a plane.

Jacob Shapiro:

I'm on Lake Trout in Wisconsin.

Jacob Shapiro:

Uh, home apparently of the, the Hoag.

Jacob Shapiro:

Some kind of strange mythical frog crossed with an elephant that was made

Jacob Shapiro:

up by a local person in the 18 hundreds so that he could use dynamite to, I

Jacob Shapiro:

don't know, I bought his biography, but, uh, van Jackson is with us Van.

Jacob Shapiro:

It's really, really nice to welcome you onto the podcast.

Van Jackson:

Hey, thanks for having me.

Jacob Shapiro:

Uh, van, I don't know if I'm gonna blow your mind or

Jacob Shapiro:

not, so I. Uh, my career started at Strat four as a Middle East analyst.

Jacob Shapiro:

My experience of most people who had anything to do with government, um,

Jacob Shapiro:

or who were in policy circles in the US government, when they heard Strat

Jacob Shapiro:

four, they basically thought we were like, if they were nice, it was single a

Jacob Shapiro:

baseball and usually it was not so nice.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like, we were like, just like Dantes who didn't do anything.

Jacob Shapiro:

But you might be.

Jacob Shapiro:

Surprised to know that there was a coterie of us who loved you at Strat four.

Jacob Shapiro:

Have always loved you at Strat four, followed you closely when I told, uh,

Jacob Shapiro:

all, all of us have since left Strat four.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yes.

Jacob Shapiro:

But when I told some of those analysts that I had finally got you on the

Jacob Shapiro:

podcast, they were really excited.

Jacob Shapiro:

So I'm, I'm really excited to have you here.

Jacob Shapiro:

I followed you work for a long time and, uh, you were, you were making

Jacob Shapiro:

waves even maybe when you didn't know it into corners of the intelligence

Jacob Shapiro:

community, you probably think nothing of.

Van Jackson:

Wow.

Van Jackson:

Yeah, my ears were burning, I guess.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, look, we could take this lots of distant different directions.

Jacob Shapiro:

I definitely wanna talk to you about Korea for a while on the back end of this, but I

Jacob Shapiro:

think we, we started a pretty open level.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, we actually, I think your appearance actually dovetails nicely because we

Jacob Shapiro:

had Mike Al on was our last Oh yeah.

Jacob Shapiro:

Guest on the podcast.

Jacob Shapiro:

He was a. Um, Biden era, I don't know, economist economic advisor.

Jacob Shapiro:

Uh, and now we've, we've got you coming from, uh, sort of the more

Jacob Shapiro:

strictly foreign policy level.

Jacob Shapiro:

But I guess just from, you know, we're sitting here, it's July 14th, we'll,

Jacob Shapiro:

we'll publish this in a couple of days.

Jacob Shapiro:

We've, we have veered back and forth from Liberation Day to bombing Iran to now

Jacob Shapiro:

it's Liberation Day again with tariffs.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, we're like seven months into the ride, only seven months into the ride.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, so I guess I'll just, I'll start with a really broad and open-ended question.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like how do you assess US power and us place in the world right now

Jacob Shapiro:

after these seven or eight months?

Jacob Shapiro:

And how much do you think has changed in these seven or eight months?

Jacob Shapiro:

Like, I know that the, the speed and the velocity and the volatility has even,

Jacob Shapiro:

you know, analysts like you and me who do this for a living, feeling both whiplash

Jacob Shapiro:

and like forms of emotional trauma.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um.

Jacob Shapiro:

But like, have, have things meaningfully changed?

Jacob Shapiro:

Are things that different?

Jacob Shapiro:

Is this just like an uncouth person who's using the government in the

Jacob Shapiro:

same way that everybody else did?

Jacob Shapiro:

He's just like less subtle about it.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like, I'm, I'm just, I'm curious like where you think we are now that

Jacob Shapiro:

we've sort of gotten our bearings and, and we're into the summer.

Van Jackson:

Yeah.

Van Jackson:

I mean like, like everybody who's smart, I think I'm caught off

Van Jackson:

guard by how fast everything is.

Van Jackson:

This, this speed run approach to, you know, everything is, is jarring.

Van Jackson:

But the velocity, I mean the, the direction of travel, I should

Van Jackson:

say, is just very predictable.

Van Jackson:

This is precisely why I was calling out Trump as a fascist very early on.

Van Jackson:

There's a way in which, it's a reason I ended up in New Zealand as early as 2017.

Van Jackson:

I made a bet basically with my professional life.

Van Jackson:

I saw this, I saw this coming in that much of a sense, you know, like

Van Jackson:

back when it was crazy to, I mean, nobody was picking up and leaving

Van Jackson:

America, you know what I mean?

Van Jackson:

Um, and so that this is not unexpected and like I specifically was predicting

Van Jackson:

war with Iran once I saw who he was appointing and who he was listening

Van Jackson:

to, because it's, it's an extension of, you know, US policy toward Israel

Van Jackson:

and Middle East policy generally.

Van Jackson:

But, so all of that, uh, is, is predictable enough, the

Van Jackson:

militarism, the trillion dollar defense budget, all predict, uh,

Van Jackson:

that was also predicted, right?

Van Jackson:

So like all of this is as expected, the global tariffs, you know, like

Van Jackson:

that's also, that was foreshadowed, I mean very, very plainly.

Van Jackson:

Um, so.

Van Jackson:

N none of this stuff has really surprised me except that it's super freaking fast.

Van Jackson:

Um, and that's that the one thing I had kind of like hoped was that in

Van Jackson:

US institutions and the courts and the so-called opposition party would

Van Jackson:

somehow act as speed bumps against this like counter-revolutionary project.

Van Jackson:

That's, that's which is kind of what it is.

Van Jackson:

Like, and counter-revolutionary, I should say, in like, uh, the Arnold Meyer Sense.

Van Jackson:

There's a scholar back in the day, he used Counter-Revolution as this

Van Jackson:

phrase to describe revolution from the right, like reactionary revolution.

Van Jackson:

So not, not countering a left-wing revolution, but kind of.

Van Jackson:

Building a like right wing world making project, laying it out.

Van Jackson:

Mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

And then doing it and what that amounts to is kind of like a, a, a mashup of, of

Van Jackson:

white nationalism and oligarchy, which is to me very succinct description of,

Van Jackson:

of what we're dealing with, like who's in control of the state currently.

Van Jackson:

Um, lost track of the question at this point, but it's not surprise.

Van Jackson:

No,

Jacob Shapiro:

I, but I, no, but I'll, I'll, I'll take you

Jacob Shapiro:

back 'cause that's perfect.

Jacob Shapiro:

'cause there's, there's two parts I already wanna unpack with you and

Jacob Shapiro:

I'm debating which one to go first, but let's go with this one first.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um.

Jacob Shapiro:

Because I think the Iran Israel War is actually very instructive to just how

Jacob Shapiro:

much he changed, because Kamala Harris went on 60 Minutes and said that Iran

Jacob Shapiro:

was the biggest foreign policy threat to the United States on the campaign.

Jacob Shapiro:

I remember wanting to self emulate when I heard that interview.

Jacob Shapiro:

It's pretty insane.

Jacob Shapiro:

Was what is, what is the difference between these two?

Jacob Shapiro:

Like, I don't, I don't actually get it.

Jacob Shapiro:

So do you think Kamala would've been different, or do you think that the

Jacob Shapiro:

United States would've been bombing Iran?

Jacob Shapiro:

Either way, like maybe Israel wouldn't have read Trump the

Jacob Shapiro:

way that they did with Kamala?

Jacob Shapiro:

'cause it seemed like Netanyahu knew exactly what buttons

Jacob Shapiro:

to push with, with Trump.

Jacob Shapiro:

But I don't know.

Jacob Shapiro:

Do you think it would've been different if it were Kamala?

Van Jackson:

Um, I don't, I would like to say yes, but I don't, I don't think so.

Van Jackson:

What I don't think would've happened is an actual, like US bombing campaign,

Van Jackson:

US support for Israeli strikes, I'm pretty sure would've happened.

Van Jackson:

I, like, I, I'm actually confident that would've happened.

Van Jackson:

You see that getting signaled in statements from Kamala, like these

Van Jackson:

absurdist statements about like, Iran is the greatest threat to America.

Van Jackson:

Like what?

Van Jackson:

Um, it's just like, it, it's, it evokes like 2002 brain, you know?

Van Jackson:

Um, so like, yeah, that has to find expression somewhere if that's

Van Jackson:

what you believe and that's what you're trying to sell the public.

Van Jackson:

And so, um, I I, I, I'm sure it would find expression in sort of

Van Jackson:

mindless support for whatever Israel wants to do in the Middle East.

Van Jackson:

And, um, actually wrote a thing recently, like on the left, there's a view that,

Van Jackson:

um, or not in the European left, there's a view, Jean-Luc Malon, the leader of

Van Jackson:

the French left, like popular front.

Van Jackson:

Basically he, he did an interview in the new left review and he was,

Van Jackson:

it was kind of all over the place.

Van Jackson:

But one of the things that he made a point to say was that like the US is all.

Van Jackson:

Oil in the Middle East and it's oil driven policy.

Van Jackson:

And that's why they support, you know, Israeli assaults on Gaza

Van Jackson:

and Israeli attacks on Iran.

Van Jackson:

And like, I think that's actually not true.

Van Jackson:

So like oil is not a non-factor.

Van Jackson:

Like it's always part of, you know, geopolitical rationalizations.

Van Jackson:

Like it's always there, but it's like, just in my experience inside the system,

Van Jackson:

there was never a point ever where we sat around the table trying to figure

Van Jackson:

out what to do and talking about we need to secure the oil, or we gotta get to,

Van Jackson:

like, it's just never in the conversation.

Van Jackson:

It's always mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

It's always in the background.

Van Jackson:

So it's not, I don't wanna say it's irrelevant, but like, it's never

Van Jackson:

as important as people suppose and materialist analysis, which

Van Jackson:

is what like a European leftist would, would have they focus on.

Van Jackson:

'cause it's like who benefits, right?

Van Jackson:

Follow the money.

Van Jackson:

Oil becomes the natural explanation for like, why we do

Van Jackson:

what we do in the Middle East.

Van Jackson:

But I think actually we do what we do in the Middle East, as horrific as it

Van Jackson:

is because of this misplaced belief that Israeli primacy is an American

Van Jackson:

good, like it serves American interests.

Van Jackson:

And so Israeli primacy requires bombing nuclear facilities of

Van Jackson:

its neighboring rivals, right?

Van Jackson:

It requires this mowing of the lawn, which is like a horrific way of

Van Jackson:

describing its war on Palestinians.

Van Jackson:

Um, and this is, so, like that's what we've signed onto and there's, there's

Van Jackson:

like actual formal expression of this in the forum of like the Pentagon.

Van Jackson:

There's an official policy called QME, right?

Van Jackson:

Qualitative military edge.

Van Jackson:

We, we, yes, we sell weapons to the Saudis and everyone in the Middle East,

Van Jackson:

but as a matter of policy, we make sure that we outsell them to Israel.

Van Jackson:

That that, that Israel, no matter how much we cause arms racing in the

Van Jackson:

Middle East or whatever, we make sure Israel is out arming everyone else.

Van Jackson:

And so, like, that's crucial that like, if you don't grasp that,

Van Jackson:

it's very hard to grasp, like, why, what's the deal with Iran?

Van Jackson:

Like, why would, why do we care at all?

Van Jackson:

You know?

Van Jackson:

Um, but it's tied up with this belief in Israeli primacy.

Van Jackson:

And like, I think it's a mistake in the sense that like, we're not

Van Jackson:

well served by Israeli primacy.

Van Jackson:

We're not well served by endless wars in the Middle East.

Van Jackson:

I mean, I think it's just a drain on American power basically.

Van Jackson:

Um, like I, I disagree a lot with like some of the maga foreign policy types.

Van Jackson:

One like narrow era where we agree is that.

Van Jackson:

The Middle East just, is it, it's a big siphon on American power.

Jacob Shapiro:

Well, yeah, and it's strange, like at the, when

Jacob Shapiro:

Trump was considering military action, you could almost see

Jacob Shapiro:

the MAGA base start to fracture.

Jacob Shapiro:

'cause Uhhuh, you know, Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon and all these voices on

Jacob Shapiro:

Twitter like they were getting, you could tell that maybe the algorithm was juicing,

Jacob Shapiro:

like anti bombing Iran things because like these, no nothing accounts we're

Jacob Shapiro:

getting millions of views for railing on Trump for even considering this.

Jacob Shapiro:

And yet.

Jacob Shapiro:

Nothing.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like I, I keep on going back to that.

Jacob Shapiro:

Maybe Trump had the analysis right, better than everybody else, that

Jacob Shapiro:

he really could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't matter.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like, it doesn't matter that he bombed Iran.

Jacob Shapiro:

It doesn't matter that he so clearly is like obfuscating,

Jacob Shapiro:

the Jeffrey Epstein stuff.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like, it just kind of moves on because I had, I had people in my life who voted

Jacob Shapiro:

for Trump who were telling me, yo, this Iran thing, this is gonna be the end.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like the base is going to turn on him because we did not want this.

Jacob Shapiro:

This is a betrayal of exactly what he said.

Jacob Shapiro:

And he went in and bombed them.

Jacob Shapiro:

And then he was like, okay, it's over.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like let's go back to business.

Jacob Shapiro:

And none of those people are saying those things.

Jacob Shapiro:

They're all back to, to what they were exactly saying before.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, and to your point about oil too, and this was another question I wanted to get

Jacob Shapiro:

at you, since we're on the Middle East.

Jacob Shapiro:

What you really cared about was oil.

Jacob Shapiro:

You would probably take out the Houthis and something I cannot understand for

Jacob Shapiro:

the life of me is that the Houthis are, they sunk two ships last week.

Jacob Shapiro:

Mm-hmm.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like they're gonna like enable Israel and help Israel bomb Iran back a couple

Jacob Shapiro:

of years to set back a nuclear program.

Jacob Shapiro:

But they're okay with the Houthis, just sinking vessels in the Persian Gulf.

Jacob Shapiro:

And I had one analyst who came on and said, oh, it's because they're

Jacob Shapiro:

like the sand people in Star Wars.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like they have such a low quality of life.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like, doesn't matter, they're in the desert.

Jacob Shapiro:

There's nothing you can do.

Jacob Shapiro:

But like that feels fundamentally unsatisfying to me.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like what?

Jacob Shapiro:

How are the Houthis still firing?

Jacob Shapiro:

So anyway, take, well it's, that's sort of a two part, to

Van Jackson:

your point, it's at odds with a sort of oil centric explanation

Van Jackson:

of Middle East policy, right?

Van Jackson:

Like yeah, it pre presents a puzzle at a minimum.

Van Jackson:

But the Houthis thing is like.

Van Jackson:

It is effectively unwinnable.

Van Jackson:

And I think you even saw that in the whole signal gate thing when they,

Van Jackson:

when they were all, you know, secretly planning hhy bombing campaigns on signal.

Van Jackson:

Like there was a section of the JD Vance types who, it's not that they were like

Van Jackson:

anti interventionists so much as like, and this, again, this is an area where

Van Jackson:

I converged with them weirdly, there, there's an unfavorable cost exchange

Van Jackson:

ratio with the Houthis, where like they spend $6,000 to take out something, like,

Van Jackson:

to take out a missile on our side or to take out a, a, you know, have like a F

Van Jackson:

18 fall off a runway or something, and then we spend a million dollars on a

Van Jackson:

missile to take out their $6,000 drone.

Van Jackson:

You know, and so like if you keep, if a conflict involves the repeated play

Van Jackson:

or iterative exchange of, of attacks.

Van Jackson:

That's the cost of attack on each side respectively.

Van Jackson:

Then the cost exchange ratio makes this like it will bankrupt us to go

Van Jackson:

to war with the Houthis, you know, and I think there was like some of

Van Jackson:

that energy in the JD Vance stuff.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, well look at us like we're, we're, we're 13 minutes in and we,

Jacob Shapiro:

we said the United States should not be bogged down in the Middle East.

Jacob Shapiro:

And here we are bogged down in the Middle East in our conversation.

Jacob Shapiro:

This is what, this is

Van Jackson:

what always happens.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, but let's rewind a little bit 'cause there was another thing

Jacob Shapiro:

I wanted to double click on in what you said, because I know there are some Trump

Jacob Shapiro:

supporters who were listening, and I'm sure that they want me to go back and ask

Jacob Shapiro:

you to define terms like fascism, uhhuh, and white nationalism and oligarchy.

Jacob Shapiro:

And I know lots of people throw those terms around and

Jacob Shapiro:

have no idea what they mean.

Jacob Shapiro:

I have read you well enough to know that you do know what they mean and

Jacob Shapiro:

that you have put some thought behind it, and that you're not just throwing

Jacob Shapiro:

those words out there because of Trump Deranging syndrome or anything else.

Jacob Shapiro:

So I'll start very simply and give you sort of a layup here.

Jacob Shapiro:

When you say fascism, like what are you saying?

Jacob Shapiro:

Like what are you communicating to the listener or what do you want the

Jacob Shapiro:

listener to understand about your characterization of the US government?

Van Jackson:

So you, you, at the level of the executive branch, you should see.

Van Jackson:

The firewall between domestic and international law enforcement and

Van Jackson:

the security state, like basically the military and the police.

Van Jackson:

You start to see that firewall drop, right?

Van Jackson:

That, that you, the military starts deploying at home, right?

Van Jackson:

That's actually like a huge warning indicator, right?

Van Jackson:

You should see the development of some kind of secret police,

Van Jackson:

which is effectively what ICE is.

Van Jackson:

You know, you should see militias roaming the country who engage in vigilante

Van Jackson:

justice, which I think we would've seen more of if Trump hadn't won.

Van Jackson:

I think in some ways his victory was like a, a release pressure valve on

Van Jackson:

some of the more like violent, far right white nationalist movements.

Van Jackson:

The three percenters and the oath keepers and stuff like that, they're

Van Jackson:

still out there and there's a concern that like this super surge of ice

Van Jackson:

funding is actually gonna basically put.

Van Jackson:

I mean, the short form is like they're putting proud boys on the payroll,

Van Jackson:

you know, of the, of the security state, which, um, it's just this

Van Jackson:

gray area, which would be common in a fascist regime, you know what I mean?

Van Jackson:

Um, but also like the, you're doing all of this to create, uh, a white national

Van Jackson:

social order in effect, which is literally what's happening when you're trying to a

Van Jackson:

romanticize this sort of like mid-century, 1950s model of what life was like, you

Van Jackson:

know, which was segregated and patriarchal and suburban and all this stuff.

Van Jackson:

And you can't recreate that.

Van Jackson:

It's not possible.

Van Jackson:

Like that was a singular moment in time.

Van Jackson:

Also, it was like, uh, if you weren't white, that was probably

Van Jackson:

not a great time to be alive.

Van Jackson:

Um, but also like even just putting all that aside, the,

Van Jackson:

the white nationalists like the.

Van Jackson:

What do you think the, like mass immigration purge is?

Van Jackson:

You know, what is it, what is it supposed to mean when you talk

Van Jackson:

about, I see this all the time being ethnically American, right?

Van Jackson:

Like, that is a gesture toward, uh, creating a white national social order

Van Jackson:

when you're taking brown folks and you're literally relocating them, uh, sometimes

Van Jackson:

even when they're citizens, you know?

Van Jackson:

Um, and there's so, like, this is, this is like, uh, zooming out a way

Van Jackson:

of understanding what's happening.

Van Jackson:

But it, and so people like Tooker Carlson and Steve Bannon, they,

Van Jackson:

it's almost like they wanna create a, her invoke social democracy.

Van Jackson:

So her invoke is a term that comes from apartheid South Africa.

Van Jackson:

As we know, the Apartheid South Africa project collapsed in on itself

Van Jackson:

because of enormous contradictions of the project they were trying to do.

Van Jackson:

It's actually like.

Van Jackson:

Hard to, impossible to, to create a white nationalist social democracy.

Van Jackson:

Right.

Van Jackson:

I, but I think that's especially within a, a multicultural country.

Van Jackson:

But I think that's what the, the Steve Bannon types actually do want.

Van Jackson:

And the, the difficulty and the, the, the hard limit that they face is that

Van Jackson:

they are in coalition with oligarchs, actual billionaires who actually

Van Jackson:

shape public policy in the law to their benefit, including the tax code.

Van Jackson:

The big beautiful bill is precisely the, I mean, it's just the tax, I

Van Jackson:

don't, I don't need to go on about this, the tax breaks and everything.

Van Jackson:

Um, so like, it's like the, the American state exists to the benefit

Van Jackson:

of the richest 1% of the country, and there's nothing populist in that.

Van Jackson:

And so, and the tech, the, the, the big tech class, the Silicon Valley

Van Jackson:

class of people who support Trump.

Van Jackson:

That's the sort of, that's, that's, that's a faction of capital that has aligned

Van Jackson:

itself with these, this her invoked social democracy faction that combines this,

Van Jackson:

this MAGA is like a new kind of fusion.

Van Jackson:

So during the Cold War, the conservative movement was this fusion movement, right?

Van Jackson:

Of like Christian evangelicals and neoliberals and like free traitors and

Van Jackson:

that kind of thing, and anti-communist.

Van Jackson:

And, um, they all sort of, uh, figured out they had different

Van Jackson:

priorities, but they all figured out a way to have like a common project.

Van Jackson:

And that was the, that was the Cold War conservative movement.

Van Jackson:

There was a period where the conservative movement was in the woods.

Van Jackson:

You know, like what are we after the demise of the Soviet Union.

Van Jackson:

Um, and so you have neocons and paleo cons kind of going in different direction.

Van Jackson:

MAGA represents this new fusion of.

Van Jackson:

You know, the tech elite of capital, the na parts of the national

Van Jackson:

security state and defense industrial complex, but then also this, this

Van Jackson:

like white nationalism in effect.

Van Jackson:

I mean, people call it different things, but it's like, it's the thing that Steve

Van Jackson:

Bannon is speaking to when he puts his voice out into the universe and Tucker

Van Jackson:

Carlson and they command millions of followers, including my fucking parents.

Van Jackson:

You know what I mean?

Van Jackson:

So,

Van Jackson:

so that's, and so that's the coalition.

Van Jackson:

Um, and so the, the who's, and you see so much of the tension that plays out in

Van Jackson:

Trump's public policy, his statements, all of this stuff in foreign policy,

Van Jackson:

even it's, it, it's often reducible to this conflict between what I would call

Van Jackson:

like the white nationalist section who's trying to do her invoke social democracy.

Van Jackson:

It they actually have a hegemonic project.

Van Jackson:

Right.

Van Jackson:

And the versus the oligarchs who are just trying to secure the bag, in

Van Jackson:

fact, and the, the most efficient way to do that is to divide the very large

Van Jackson:

working class along racial lines.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah.

Jacob Shapiro:

It's, it's the oldest trick in the book.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like, instead of thinking about class-based issues, which poor white

Jacob Shapiro:

people and poor black people and poor brown people all have the same interests.

Jacob Shapiro:

Mm-hmm.

Jacob Shapiro:

And things are going to get worse for them as a result of the one big, but,

Jacob Shapiro:

but let's, let's make it about race, or let's make it about immigration.

Jacob Shapiro:

And I, I will say like, there were two, two charts that I pulled

Jacob Shapiro:

from Gallup this morning that.

Jacob Shapiro:

Maybe gave me a little bit of of pause here because I dunno if you saw this one.

Jacob Shapiro:

There was one where they asked Republicans their preferred rate of

Jacob Shapiro:

immigration into the United States.

Jacob Shapiro:

And at the end of 24, early 25, that number skyrockets up to 90%.

Jacob Shapiro:

So 90% of Republicans are saying we should have less immigration

Jacob Shapiro:

into the United States.

Jacob Shapiro:

That number over just the last two months has declined to 48%.

Jacob Shapiro:

So it's basically gone up and we're round tripping back to

Jacob Shapiro:

where it was sort of normally.

Jacob Shapiro:

And then I also pulled from Gallup, um, political voter identification.

Jacob Shapiro:

So what parties people identify with.

Jacob Shapiro:

And for a long time, independent sort of stayed where it was around 15, 20,

Jacob Shapiro:

maybe into your mid 20 percents, and then the Democrats and Republicans

Jacob Shapiro:

would kind of go back and forth.

Jacob Shapiro:

For the last two years, Democrats and Republicans have been stuck at the same

Jacob Shapiro:

number, and independents are much bigger.

Jacob Shapiro:

As a faction, it's like 43% or something like that.

Jacob Shapiro:

And then the Republicans and Democrats, the fringes of the party are literally

Jacob Shapiro:

splitting things up halfway, which tells me that people don't like this.

Jacob Shapiro:

In general, people don't like the direction that things are going and

Jacob Shapiro:

say whatever you want about Trump.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like, I don't think I've said this before on the podcast.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like I don't have a sense that he thinks strategically or long term.

Jacob Shapiro:

I think he's just an instinctual being.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah.

Jacob Shapiro:

And when he sees something that works politically, he does it.

Jacob Shapiro:

And when it doesn't work, he just shifts to the next thing, which

Jacob Shapiro:

is like both terrible and also sort of good at the same time.

Jacob Shapiro:

'cause I don't think he believes in the things that you're just talking about.

Jacob Shapiro:

I think he's just this like instinctual thing that pushes on buttons.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah.

Jacob Shapiro:

And he decides that they work.

Jacob Shapiro:

No, but it, it looks to me like the electorate is not

Jacob Shapiro:

gonna go along with this.

Jacob Shapiro:

It's, I, it looks to me like most people disagree with this.

Jacob Shapiro:

So where am I?

Jacob Shapiro:

Why should I not be sanguine based on that data?

Jacob Shapiro:

Well,

Van Jackson:

so yeah.

Van Jackson:

So I think you're, I think you're right about the rising unpopularity of this

Van Jackson:

stuff, but like, it's like, well, who knew a episiotomies would be unpopular?

Van Jackson:

You know what I mean?

Van Jackson:

Like, of course.

Van Jackson:

So sorry.

Van Jackson:

No, you're good.

Van Jackson:

Um, that's why you're here.

Van Jackson:

So like, I think that's true enough.

Van Jackson:

I think the problem, the thing that's profoundly concerning to me right now

Van Jackson:

is that we seem to be in this moment, and I don't know if it's because

Van Jackson:

we all have fish brain and nobody reads anymore or what, but there we,

Van Jackson:

there's no, almost like, there's no accountability.

Van Jackson:

Like we're in a PA in the past.

Van Jackson:

Okay, this is a good example.

Van Jackson:

In the past, like the Iraq war, terrible decision, you know, every,

Van Jackson:

like everybody knew, half the country knew at the moment that it was a

Van Jackson:

terrible decision, more than half even.

Van Jackson:

But the Bush administration invested like a solid 18 months.

Van Jackson:

Running ba like a nationwide propaganda campaign, you know, mushroom cloud

Van Jackson:

rhetoric and hysteria, and going on all the Sunday shows and lining things up

Van Jackson:

with the allies and like, it was a hard, hard, whole of government push to sell the

Van Jackson:

Iraq war before doing the Iraq war Iraq.

Van Jackson:

Mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

In the chomps, the Chomsky would call that manufacturing consent.

Van Jackson:

Right.

Van Jackson:

You have to, as you have to like massage the public's imagination

Van Jackson:

into doing this thing, make it common sense, make it within the boundaries

Van Jackson:

of what would be acceptable or normal.

Van Jackson:

We seem to be in a post manufacturing consent age where like mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

The, the, the pol the political class to some extent.

Van Jackson:

Even in the Biden administration, the political class seems to like

Van Jackson:

not feel the need to manufacture consent so much anymore.

Van Jackson:

And I think the speed run thing that we were talking about

Van Jackson:

at the beginning of the show.

Van Jackson:

That's, that's kind of, uh, an, uh, an manifestation of that, like

Van Jackson:

your speed running as a way of avoiding manufacturing consent.

Van Jackson:

It's like an alternative to manufacturing consent.

Van Jackson:

Mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

And so in, if, if you actually don't need, or if you feel as a political elite that

Van Jackson:

you don't need the consent of the people to do what you do, and you just have the

Van Jackson:

best interests of the people you know, in heart or whatever, then it doesn't

Van Jackson:

matter if what you're doing is unpopular.

Van Jackson:

You know, like us position on Israel is wildly unpopular during the Biden

Van Jackson:

administration, and they just doubled down and tripled down, you know, so

Van Jackson:

like, I I, and so this is not unique to Trump, but I think it's, it's

Van Jackson:

heightened under Trump, which is that like, who cares what the people think.

Van Jackson:

They're gonna do what they're gonna do.

Van Jackson:

And so I think Trump is this kind of finger in the wind guy who will

Van Jackson:

just go in whatever direction.

Van Jackson:

Um, he feels pressured to go, but the public is not the main source of wind

Van Jackson:

that he's checking with his finger.

Van Jackson:

Right.

Van Jackson:

It's, it's one among many sources of pressure on him, others of

Van Jackson:

which are his oligarch buddies, you know, or his base separate

Van Jackson:

from the American people at large.

Van Jackson:

And so the, the Jeffrey Epstein stuff is super weird.

Van Jackson:

I, I don't have a lot to say about it, but it's super weird in the sense that I think

Van Jackson:

to a normal person, the Jeffrey Epstein stuff is like this niche conspiracy stuff.

Van Jackson:

And, uh, to the mega base, it's almost like a founding mythology.

Van Jackson:

Like it's very important.

Van Jackson:

It's a signal of what you believe about so many other things, right?

Van Jackson:

It's, it's like a syne.

Van Jackson:

And so, um.

Van Jackson:

The fact that like, so for normal people, I, they were not anticipating

Van Jackson:

that like there would be a maga base blowup over, uh, Jeffrey Epstein files

Van Jackson:

not being released and that Trump's FBI would be the one like sort of

Van Jackson:

holding things back or, or denying it.

Van Jackson:

But like that actually more so than anything else, and this is the moment

Van Jackson:

that we're living in, that's so perverse that kind of creates a legitimacy

Van Jackson:

crisis for Trump that's quite acute.

Van Jackson:

Like this is very serious for Trump because this is the only base of

Van Jackson:

legitimacy that he has separate from laws, separate from, you

Van Jackson:

know, correlations of forces with the Congress and all this stuff.

Van Jackson:

It's like he has a MAGA base that allowed him to give the middle finger

Van Jackson:

to every other source of power because he could claim that he was like their

Van Jackson:

stand-in and if they are burning their MAGA hats, which I'm seeing online

Van Jackson:

everywhere, you know what I mean?

Van Jackson:

He has a very serious problem, you know.

Van Jackson:

And this Pam Bondi, you know, cash Patel fissure or whatever.

Van Jackson:

I don't think it matters in itself, but you can like see how he's

Van Jackson:

processing and gonna react to this based on how he deals with that.

Van Jackson:

My, my real concern to get to the foreign policy stuff, I guess, is that

Van Jackson:

like, these are the conditions within which diversionary conflicts happen.

Van Jackson:

Diversionary war, you know?

Van Jackson:

Mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

Political scientists, like in general, who I, I don't think are incredibly

Van Jackson:

brilliant people by any stretch, but their conve, their conventional

Van Jackson:

wisdom is that diversionary war is like rare slash not a thing.

Van Jackson:

Like tail wag the dog.

Van Jackson:

You go to war to direct divert attention from domestic politics.

Van Jackson:

I think that is a thing.

Van Jackson:

I mean, I think it's more of a thing than political scientists think.

Van Jackson:

Um, and I would be worried about what a legitimacy crisis in Trump's

Van Jackson:

mind compels him to do elsewhere.

Van Jackson:

The willingness to put on, to create spectacle elsewhere,

Van Jackson:

what that will look like.

Van Jackson:

That's a concern for me.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah.

Jacob Shapiro:

We've already seen some of that, I have to say with the, with the Epstein stuff.

Jacob Shapiro:

I mean the, the, the imperfect metaphor I've been thinking of, they

Jacob Shapiro:

were burning LeBron's jersey when he left Cleveland the first time.

Jacob Shapiro:

And when he wanted to come back and got them the championship, they were

Jacob Shapiro:

like, cool, welcome back LeBron.

Jacob Shapiro:

And you got us a championship.

Jacob Shapiro:

Everything's fine.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like I really, I think Trump has the measure of his base.

Jacob Shapiro:

I don't think they'll even turn on him for this, but maybe this

Jacob Shapiro:

will be the time that it does it.

Jacob Shapiro:

But I take your point, and you can maybe read Iran as part of that.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like he has done a 180 on Russia, Ukraine here.

Jacob Shapiro:

Mm-hmm.

Jacob Shapiro:

In the last week in putting he in his place.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, you may want to talk about.

Jacob Shapiro:

There's, you know, there's ever a conspiracy theory out there

Jacob Shapiro:

that the United States is gonna go to war with, with China in

Jacob Shapiro:

the South China Sea and bridge.

Jacob Shapiro:

Kolby is there.

Jacob Shapiro:

And he has said before that maybe he's gonna manufacture

Jacob Shapiro:

something that's in there.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, so I mean, are we already seeing the seeds of the dive?

Jacob Shapiro:

And that's before we even get into Korea in your wheelhouse, which I wanna spend a

Jacob Shapiro:

little, we can do it now too, but I wanna spend at least some time with you on it.

Jacob Shapiro:

'cause I've been thinking about it a lot too.

Jacob Shapiro:

So do you think we're already seeing the seeds of that?

Jacob Shapiro:

Is that how we should read Russia, Ukraine, and even Iran and even some of

Jacob Shapiro:

the stuff that's happening with China?

Van Jackson:

Yeah, it, it's funny, I used to, there was a time when I actually

Van Jackson:

worked with Bridge Kolby, like we were in the same think tank milieu before

Van Jackson:

I, uh, grew a conscience and basically like, so he, he didn't change, I changed.

Van Jackson:

Um, but the bridge is like single-minded about World War III with China

Van Jackson:

and needing to be able to win it.

Van Jackson:

And half of him set.

Van Jackson:

Like I've, I track him closely because I knew him and because I, I knew that

Van Jackson:

he was the only like foreign policy Mandarin for a long time who openly

Van Jackson:

associated himself with the MAGA project, which is like sto beyond the

Van Jackson:

pale within establishment Washington.

Van Jackson:

And I knew that that meant that he was gonna become, you know, he was like

Van Jackson:

a DTE bench player in foreign policy.

Van Jackson:

Like, I mean, I'm not trying to disin like he was like a, a nobody basically.

Van Jackson:

And the fact that he was hitching his wagon to this, this project that was

Van Jackson:

defining half of the political spectrum in America, I knew that was going to

Van Jackson:

basically like shoot him up like a meteor, um, in terms of his career.

Van Jackson:

And that's precisely what happened.

Van Jackson:

Um.

Van Jackson:

So for those reasons, I paid close attention to him for,

Van Jackson:

for in the intervening years.

Van Jackson:

For a long time he has been obsessed with war with China, and part of him is, his

Van Jackson:

belief is that by optimizing for war with China, by focusing every ounce of our

Van Jackson:

like national energy and our resources toward that, that project being able to

Van Jackson:

win that war, we might deter that war.

Van Jackson:

And if we don't deter that war, well at least we'll win it.

Van Jackson:

And so that's the, and that the, the problem with that is that

Van Jackson:

that's not a war that's like worth winning and it's not winnable short

Van Jackson:

of going to nuclear exchanges.

Van Jackson:

Like you, you would have to come up with an argument or a scenario for how nuclear

Van Jackson:

weapons don't get used, but somehow you can still defeat this techno superpower.

Van Jackson:

90 kilometers from its own shores, thousands of miles from our shores.

Van Jackson:

You know what I mean?

Van Jackson:

Like the imbalance.

Van Jackson:

Mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

The, the imbalance of geography plus the technology makes

Van Jackson:

it effectively unwinnable.

Van Jackson:

And the only reason we kind of hang on to the need to be able to win it is because,

Van Jackson:

well, the military industrial complex has defined it as the, like the scenario that

Van Jackson:

we use to develop our force structure.

Van Jackson:

So the trillion dollar national security state plus it, it is indexed

Van Jackson:

against great power worth China.

Van Jackson:

That's what justifies most of it.

Van Jackson:

Right?

Van Jackson:

You don't need like nuclear powered submarines and six generation

Van Jackson:

fighters to go after Houthis or to target Mexican cartels.

Van Jackson:

You know what I mean?

Van Jackson:

Like he, the, that stuff is for China.

Van Jackson:

It's basically for China alone.

Van Jackson:

You don't need it for anybody else.

Van Jackson:

And that's a huge, that's a follow of the money thing.

Van Jackson:

Like that's a materialist analysis that actually has traction.

Van Jackson:

I think it has explanatory power.

Van Jackson:

Yeah.

Van Jackson:

Um, so there's, there's like that part of it, but Bridge doesn't like it.

Van Jackson:

I don't think he wants to create the war.

Van Jackson:

He thinks the war is inevitable.

Van Jackson:

Like he's one of these guys that thinks it's, it's gonna happen

Van Jackson:

and since it's gonna happen, we have to optimize for winning it.

Van Jackson:

Nevermind that.

Van Jackson:

There's just no scenario.

Van Jackson:

I've been in like a hundred of these war games on Taiwan scenarios.

Van Jackson:

Not none of it's winnable.

Van Jackson:

You know, in the south you mentioned the South China Sea,

Van Jackson:

sort of like casually or whatever.

Van Jackson:

Mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

That actually, like I could imagine scenarios where that is winnable.

Van Jackson:

I can't imagine scenarios where China bothers to fight it.

Van Jackson:

Like, I don't, like, I just, you know, like Taiwan is something where

Van Jackson:

for them the stakes are, are worth fighting for, fighting a great power

Van Jackson:

war for possibly, I was trying to see, it's like, you know, they, they

Van Jackson:

basically have their way there already.

Van Jackson:

They don't need to press their luck too much.

Van Jackson:

Um, it's, i, it, it is far, much farther away from their own shores.

Van Jackson:

So they have like logistical issues and it stretches them thin and it's

Van Jackson:

like, I don't think they're super interested in fighting a war there.

Van Jackson:

You know, I think they're may be interested in like asserting

Van Jackson:

influence in the whatever that means, you know, in the vague sense.

Van Jackson:

But in the PLA is a little bit rogue sometimes, but Yeah.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah.

Jacob Shapiro:

I mean we had Dale Copeland on the podcast maybe 12 months ago and he like did

Jacob Shapiro:

work with Bridge Kolby when he was still getting his PhD or something like that.

Jacob Shapiro:

So he, yeah, they had

Van Jackson:

a falling out I think, but they were friendly at one point.

Van Jackson:

I.

Jacob Shapiro:

They were, but we have an open invitation to bridge Colby.

Jacob Shapiro:

So if you're listening and you are more than welcome to come on the

Jacob Shapiro:

show at any time and talk about this stuff, I will put you through

Jacob Shapiro:

your paces on the other direction.

Jacob Shapiro:

But to, to me, like what you're, what you're saying, like, and I'll ask you

Jacob Shapiro:

this question, but like, I don't, not only do I not think war's inevitable,

Jacob Shapiro:

I don't think the Chinese want it.

Jacob Shapiro:

I think it's a fundamental misreading of what China's thinking here.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah, totally.

Jacob Shapiro:

They, they, they also just watched what Russia did with Ukraine.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like their blueprint is Hong Kong.

Jacob Shapiro:

They're just gonna do the exact same thing they did with Hong Kong and they would

Jacob Shapiro:

like to take it without firing a shot.

Jacob Shapiro:

So if you really want to prep for this.

Jacob Shapiro:

Well, and, and, and there's another, um, contradiction here

Jacob Shapiro:

too, which we can talk about.

Jacob Shapiro:

And this goes to the point of like, how is Trump thinking strategically?

Jacob Shapiro:

Because okay, you've got bridge kby and the trillion dollars and the six

Jacob Shapiro:

generation fighters, and we gotta prepare for great power war with

Jacob Shapiro:

China, and yet we're gonna go to the Japanese and the South Koreans and

Jacob Shapiro:

basically say, go fuck yourselves.

Jacob Shapiro:

Here are some tariffs.

Jacob Shapiro:

Uh, and by the way, are you gonna come defend Taiwan when

Jacob Shapiro:

China invades you better?

Jacob Shapiro:

'cause otherwise there's even more tariffs in the bag for you.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like, don't, like do it.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like how, how are you like supposed to be thinking about great China war

Jacob Shapiro:

power, all this other stuff, and yet fundamentally shitting on the allies who

Jacob Shapiro:

would be so critical to actually having any sort of efficacy in the war too.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like right hand and left hand don't seem to know what they're

Jacob Shapiro:

doing or don't seem to care that they're at complete cross purposes.

Van Jackson:

No, totally ridiculous.

Van Jackson:

Um, I do think that I, I was talking about this with somebody yesterday actually.

Van Jackson:

I think what's what's happening right now?

Van Jackson:

'cause like Bridge is doing a, on behalf of the Pentagon, he is

Van Jackson:

doing this review of Aus, right?

Van Jackson:

Mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

And then at the same time, he is the main source of this pressure on the allies

Van Jackson:

to like pre-commit to a Taiwan thing.

Van Jackson:

I think I, I don't know that he expects to actually get ally commitments

Van Jackson:

upfront, but he, this is a little bit, um, this is speculation on my part.

Van Jackson:

I, I think what he's trying to do is kill Aus because he thinks that we don't

Van Jackson:

need to be arming an ally at the expense of our military capacity, which is kind

Van Jackson:

of what Aus represented, like the sub.

Van Jackson:

If we, if we deliver nuclear submarines to Australia, it would

Van Jackson:

come at the expense of our ability to produce submarines for ourselves.

Van Jackson:

Okay.

Van Jackson:

And he wants to amass American power directly, not in conjunction

Van Jackson:

with our, you know, sub imperialist powers and client states.

Van Jackson:

And so I, because he, but like Aus is politically controversial.

Van Jackson:

It's contested, right?

Van Jackson:

Um, and there's a bunch of inertia in favor of Aus within Washington.

Van Jackson:

So he wants to kill this thing that he hates for reasons, military,

Van Jackson:

industrial base, whatever.

Van Jackson:

Um, but that's like not the easiest thing to do.

Van Jackson:

One way to make it easier is to alienate Australia just full

Van Jackson:

stop, like entirely, you know?

Van Jackson:

And so putting this, uh, pre-commitment pressure on an ally that, you know,

Van Jackson:

they're not gonna sign up for like.

Van Jackson:

Everything is depends on context.

Van Jackson:

The idea that you're gonna like pre-commit without knowing the context.

Van Jackson:

In a situation where America's already running this like highly

Van Jackson:

revisionist foreign policy that's like very aggressive on every front.

Van Jackson:

Like of course you're not gonna sign up for that, but in not signing up for it,

Van Jackson:

you're creating more, um, friction, right?

Van Jackson:

And if, if the, if the relationship is, is rupturing in a, in a way,

Van Jackson:

then it becomes natural to jettison August to shut it down, to kill it,

Van Jackson:

to come out with a review of policy that says this is not in the American

Van Jackson:

national interest or whatever.

Van Jackson:

And so, mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

I, that is kind of what I think is happening.

Van Jackson:

And then like tariffs create with, with all the allies.

Van Jackson:

I mean, especially with like Japan, it creates trade space where it's like

Van Jackson:

the Trump administration is trying to.

Van Jackson:

Maximize, whatever leverage it can get for like extracting from its allies and

Van Jackson:

allies weirdly get more coercive pressure than like non allies it seems like.

Van Jackson:

But um, that, I don't think that there's like some grand game in that necessarily,

Van Jackson:

but like the pre-commitment stuff plus tariffs, plus the Aus review, all of it

Van Jackson:

is basically saying like, if you zoom out, we're looking for block politics.

Van Jackson:

This is an imperialist foreign policy.

Van Jackson:

Are you part of an American sphere of influence or not?

Van Jackson:

The answer can be no.

Van Jackson:

In which case see ya, you know, because Trump is not

Van Jackson:

interested in alliances really.

Van Jackson:

Anyways.

Van Jackson:

Steve Bannon, Steve Bannon is not interested in alliances.

Van Jackson:

He said this in 2017, there are no allies.

Van Jackson:

There are only protectorates.

Van Jackson:

Right?

Van Jackson:

Which is again, that's imperialist foreign policy.

Van Jackson:

That's sphere of influence brain.

Van Jackson:

You know, so if the, if the sort of like MAGA foreign policy orientation

Van Jackson:

is toward spheres of influence and protectorates, but not alliances

Van Jackson:

well, how do you sort of like further that along or socialize that further?

Van Jackson:

And it's like you have to keep putting choices on the allies one after another

Van Jackson:

that makes them break away, which they're very reluctant to do, but they're

Van Jackson:

starting to do because of, I mean, it, you're, you're putting impossible

Van Jackson:

choices on them or they're just going to eat your shit and appease you and

Van Jackson:

fall in line, in which case, yes, they are a protectorate at that point.

Van Jackson:

You know what I mean?

Van Jackson:

Uh, yeah.

Van Jackson:

And so like the allies that have not come to terms with that reality yet,

Van Jackson:

but I think that's the hard choice that's being repeatedly put on them.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah, well that, that leads to a great question, which I'm really

Jacob Shapiro:

struggling with, particularly in, in, in the Japanese and South Korean context.

Jacob Shapiro:

Also to a certain degree in the German context.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like, 'cause to your point, it's tariffs.

Jacob Shapiro:

They don't even know what the United States is asking from them.

Jacob Shapiro:

That seems to change, like literally within meetings.

Jacob Shapiro:

So like they're completely perplexed, but the question is like, is it actually gonna

Jacob Shapiro:

change anything like it, what does Japan breaking with the United States look like?

Jacob Shapiro:

Like I know that Prime Minister Ishiba is using some pretty strong language,

Jacob Shapiro:

but he's not exactly strongly supported and Japan has serious interests

Jacob Shapiro:

like it, there's a reason that it's so aligned with the United States.

Jacob Shapiro:

It's been aligned with the United States since 45.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah, they're the same with South Korea.

Jacob Shapiro:

So like, are they just gonna have to eat it?

Jacob Shapiro:

Like, are they just gonna have to be the protector?

Jacob Shapiro:

It's what does it look like if they break away?

Jacob Shapiro:

And is that even possible for them in your point of view?

Van Jackson:

Well, so I don't think, uh, there's a lot of, uh,

Van Jackson:

stickiness here, path dependence.

Van Jackson:

Right.

Van Jackson:

And that, that, that weighs, I think, very heavily in many ways on our client

Van Jackson:

states, on our allies, especially Japan.

Van Jackson:

Especially Japan, right?

Van Jackson:

Like Japan has, has failed to imagine the situation that it finds itself in.

Van Jackson:

And I find that absolutely derelict on their part.

Van Jackson:

Like, you didn't see this fucking coming for the last 10 years.

Van Jackson:

Are you serious?

Van Jackson:

Like, do you understand American politics at all?

Van Jackson:

And I think no slight to, you know, the Japan hands in my life, but like

Van Jackson:

I think America's Japan hands in the foreign policy class, they have existed

Van Jackson:

primarily to perpetuate an illusion in Japan, in the elite circles in Japan

Van Jackson:

about American politics and about what America is about, and about the

Van Jackson:

realities of like, you know, America.

Van Jackson:

American decision making America the way it sees the world and priorities

Van Jackson:

and, and even American power.

Van Jackson:

And so like the, the expert class who like, sort of manages foreign

Van Jackson:

policy relations with, with these countries, Japan, Australia, South

Van Jackson:

Korea, they mostly have facilitated this illusion that made Trump impossible to

Van Jackson:

foresee, that made Maga and its rise and its prominence and its takeover

Van Jackson:

of politics, impossible to foresee.

Van Jackson:

And the, the consequence of that is that they had gone all in basically on American

Van Jackson:

hegemony, not realizing that we're in hegemonic decline for a long time.

Van Jackson:

I mean, this is not new.

Van Jackson:

Like Trump is just an acceleration of it, in my view.

Van Jackson:

And so they've never really thought of a plan B, you know, and it Aus

Van Jackson:

itself was a, was like a tripling down.

Van Jackson:

Like there's a, a great article by Jonathan Caley, he's a professor at the

Van Jackson:

Naval War College, and he was talking about how like Aus in integrates America

Van Jackson:

in, or uh, Australia into American, um, grand strategy at the level of like the

Van Jackson:

industrial base and operational plans.

Van Jackson:

And so like it's, it is like basically forsaking Australian sovereignty

Van Jackson:

in a way, in hopes of grafting Australia onto America that hard.

Van Jackson:

Right?

Van Jackson:

It's like that, that's what I mean by like tripling down on, on America,

Van Jackson:

like tripling down on this sort of unipolar vision of the world and mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

That is of course, stupendously problematic if you care about Australian

Van Jackson:

democracy and sovereignty and not being dragged into World War III or

Van Jackson:

being asked to do weird shit like.

Van Jackson:

You know, El Salvador in prisons, which I think is probably

Van Jackson:

gonna be coming at some point.

Van Jackson:

You know, like we have a bunch of people we're deporting, can you take them?

Van Jackson:

Um, that's like what we're using our, our political capital for now.

Van Jackson:

Um, but I forget what I was saying, actually, I just lost my own point, but,

Van Jackson:

oh, so Japan in particular, they, uh, don't have a plan B, but I think what

Van Jackson:

it looks like to break from the US is to diversify economic relations,

Van Jackson:

political relations, and maybe even security relations with China and with

Van Jackson:

the Bris nations and to ratchet down the hysteria about great power competition.

Van Jackson:

So mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

What we saw that what we're coming out of a period right now, the

Van Jackson:

past eight years or so, where the EU and Australia and Japan.

Van Jackson:

A little bit.

Van Jackson:

The Philippines, they were going bananas, inflating the China threat, in part

Van Jackson:

because the elites in these countries because it was a way of like, uh,

Van Jackson:

rallying the US to your side in a way.

Van Jackson:

Yep.

Van Jackson:

And so like, it was kind of sidestepping the reality of, of the whole MAGA project.

Van Jackson:

But in doing this threat inflation about China, they were antagonizing China.

Van Jackson:

And what they're finding now is that like rallying to America's side in

Van Jackson:

a geopolitical sense is very high risk and the upside is completely

Van Jackson:

abstract and not evident really.

Van Jackson:

Like what do you get out of that?

Van Jackson:

Unclear, what do you pay for that a lot?

Van Jackson:

And what, what's the, what's, what's the exposure risk?

Van Jackson:

World War iii?

Van Jackson:

I mean, like, it couldn't be greater, you know what I mean?

Van Jackson:

So as a value proposition, America looks really shitty.

Van Jackson:

All of a sudden, although if you had your, you know, if you were

Van Jackson:

right sizing it, it probably looked shitty for a few years now.

Van Jackson:

Um, and so seeing that America's not is a, is basically a liability

Van Jackson:

strategically at this point.

Van Jackson:

What do you do?

Van Jackson:

Well, you don't wanna antagonize America.

Van Jackson:

That would not be prudent.

Van Jackson:

You know, it's any more than you would want to antagonize China, but you do have

Van Jackson:

to start right sizing the China threat.

Van Jackson:

You do have to, like perversely, I think we're see, and we're seeing this

Van Jackson:

with Australia too, they're investing a lot more in showing restraint toward

Van Jackson:

China, trying to coexist with China.

Van Jackson:

And they're, um, they're, they're focusing more on trade, win-win,

Van Jackson:

blah, blah, you know, all that stuff.

Van Jackson:

Which is like normal shit, you know?

Van Jackson:

But there was just a period where we were all drunk on great power competition and

Van Jackson:

that it, it had to do with these like pathologies of like being attracted to

Van Jackson:

America as Uncle Sugar, who was gonna be our security source and all of that.

Van Jackson:

We couldn't imagine a different world.

Van Jackson:

Well now they're trying, starting to imagine a different world.

Van Jackson:

It's a little bit too late, but I think what that ends up looking

Van Jackson:

like is more aligning with China and the Bricks plus nations.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah, well, I mean, some are still drunk on

Jacob Shapiro:

the Great Power competition.

Jacob Shapiro:

I dunno if you saw Emmanuel Macron's speech over the weekend

Jacob Shapiro:

where he talked about another 10 billion euros for French defense.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah.

Jacob Shapiro:

And, uh, I, I actually wrote down the line that seared into my brain, uh,

Jacob Shapiro:

I, my French is not passable, but he said in English, uh, to be free in

Jacob Shapiro:

this new world, you must be feared.

Jacob Shapiro:

To be feared.

Jacob Shapiro:

You have to be powerful.

Jacob Shapiro:

The whole nation must be stronger.

Jacob Shapiro:

If I hadn't told you that was Macron, we could have guessed, is it Machiavelli?

Jacob Shapiro:

Is it, uh, somebody else?

Jacob Shapiro:

Like, who knows?

Jacob Shapiro:

So that's the thing that is out there too.

Jacob Shapiro:

I wonder though, like we sort of saw a version of this with

Jacob Shapiro:

the first Trump administration.

Jacob Shapiro:

'cause to your point, some of this was telegraphed and then Trump

Jacob Shapiro:

went away and it was a fever dream.

Jacob Shapiro:

And it seems to me that the Macca coalition can't survive without him.

Jacob Shapiro:

So unless he's gonna somehow enlist a third term, or his son or

Jacob Shapiro:

somebody else is gonna get in there.

Jacob Shapiro:

It seems to me that this house of cards falls apart for another three years.

Jacob Shapiro:

So I'm not saying this is the only scenario that a country like Japan

Jacob Shapiro:

could index on, but I have to imagine there's at least one analyst that

Jacob Shapiro:

is saying, you know what, keep your head down and get to the end of this.

Jacob Shapiro:

And in three years they won't be able to marshal this kind of incoherence and

Jacob Shapiro:

all the things that are coming, like the cuts on Medicaid and the problems in the

Jacob Shapiro:

economy that they're gonna create, and the inflation that's gonna be driven.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like just sit tight, like the United States will come back around

Jacob Shapiro:

to you and we'll feel guilty.

Jacob Shapiro:

It'll probably make it up to you.

Jacob Shapiro:

Do, is is there any credibility to that at all?

Jacob Shapiro:

Or we'll blow it up.

Jacob Shapiro:

So

Van Jackson:

I think there's no credibility to that.

Van Jackson:

However, I do think I know in fact that most Japan hands there,

Van Jackson:

these are the barbarian handlers.

Van Jackson:

They're telling the Japanese that they're telling the Japanese that

Van Jackson:

be, I, I think they have a poor understanding of America, frankly.

Van Jackson:

But like they're, they're telling the Japanese like, just sit tight.

Van Jackson:

Just keep a low profile.

Van Jackson:

Just buy time.

Van Jackson:

Do whatever you have to do to buy time because the pendulum will swing back.

Van Jackson:

Right, and I don't think that's true at all.

Van Jackson:

Like the, what the, the Biden administration itself was the illusion

Van Jackson:

of the pendulum swinging back.

Van Jackson:

It was like a desperate desire on everybody's part to feel the

Van Jackson:

restoration of normalcy, even though we knew it wasn't true.

Van Jackson:

And that's why we're living through this shit that we're living through right now.

Van Jackson:

2025 would not be such a shit show if it wasn't for the, it, like the, the pendulum

Van Jackson:

is in a totally different, I mean, the pendulum metaphor doesn't even work.

Van Jackson:

Like we're in a totally, it's, it's the river and the man, right?

Van Jackson:

A man steps into the river and then he steps into it a second time.

Van Jackson:

It's not the same river and it's not the same man.

Van Jackson:

Right?

Van Jackson:

It's, it's always changing.

Van Jackson:

And that's what's going on.

Van Jackson:

Like this Trump 2.0 is not Trump 1.0 for a second time.

Van Jackson:

It's a totally different beast.

Van Jackson:

And the Biden administration was not the Obama administration,

Van Jackson:

it was a nostalgia project to pretend like we could go to brunch.

Van Jackson:

And it was the unipolar moment again, and all was, well, we just gotta

Van Jackson:

keep this fascist out of office.

Van Jackson:

Right.

Van Jackson:

That was the sort of thinking that they had and that wasn't real.

Van Jackson:

And so they handed Trump all of this imperial power because they didn't

Van Jackson:

take seriously their own diagnose.

Van Jackson:

They didn't have a diagnosis of Trump.

Van Jackson:

They just, they, they used fascism as like name calling, right?

Van Jackson:

As opposed to, to a diagnosis.

Van Jackson:

And so in name calling him that, they were like, look, we can just close

Van Jackson:

ranks, make everyone vote for us like in 2020, and then all will be

Van Jackson:

well and we can keep going to brunch and then we can keep having meetings

Van Jackson:

with diplomats in other countries.

Van Jackson:

And so that's it.

Van Jackson:

So those people are the ones who are meeting with the Japanese government

Van Jackson:

and telling them, keep your head down.

Van Jackson:

This is Trump 1.0.

Van Jackson:

What worked in Trump 1.0, buy time.

Van Jackson:

That's different.

Van Jackson:

I do think what you're saying is that, that the thing that's right there is like,

Van Jackson:

Trump is the uniquely charismatic figure.

Van Jackson:

There's no obvious successor.

Van Jackson:

I don't think somebody like JD Vance can pull this off,

Van Jackson:

but there is no opposition.

Van Jackson:

There's no, like, the Democratic party has lost all legitimacy.

Van Jackson:

Like they suck.

Van Jackson:

You know, like, and they, they're denying any, anybody who steps up and tries to

Van Jackson:

act as a populist, anybody who's trying to respond to the needs of working people

Van Jackson:

in America, anybody who's against war, which is a low bar, like they don't want

Van Jackson:

their politicians taking those stances.

Van Jackson:

They don't want anybody who's gonna be cri critical of usis Israel policy.

Van Jackson:

You know, they, if, if you say abolish ice, they don't want you to be, uh,

Van Jackson:

a democratic member of Congress.

Van Jackson:

In effect, this is the leadership of the party and it's like, this is not an

Van Jackson:

op, this is not a meaningful opposition.

Van Jackson:

And so it's like not clear to me the reason people voted for Trump

Van Jackson:

wasn't because they loved him.

Van Jackson:

They looked at the Democrats and they're like, you guys

Van Jackson:

are just a bunch of Jeffrey.

Van Jackson:

You might as well be a bunch of Jeffrey Epstein's.

Van Jackson:

You know what I mean?

Van Jackson:

Like you're, and a lot of them are.

Van Jackson:

Yeah.

Van Jackson:

And I'd like to see that list too.

Van Jackson:

You know what I mean?

Van Jackson:

That's the view.

Van Jackson:

It's like the Democrats were written off a long time ago in the Biden administration,

Van Jackson:

once it became clear that like the IRA and Chips and Science Act, these like banner

Van Jackson:

initiatives of omics, they were utterly disconnected from the lived reality.

Van Jackson:

Of people in America who were increasingly precarious.

Van Jackson:

This is the source material that MAGA taps into.

Van Jackson:

If you can't recapture that yourself or address those conditions

Van Jackson:

yourself, we're all fucked.

Van Jackson:

It's all fucked.

Van Jackson:

It doesn't matter if there's no, I mean, JD Vance became senator as a, he was

Van Jackson:

AstroTurf his way to being a senator, not because he was charismatic, and you know,

Van Jackson:

it was totally because billionaire Peter Thiel bought him the seat, basically,

Van Jackson:

you know, so like I can imagine him becoming president or somebody like

Van Jackson:

him on AstroTurf grounds because in an oligarchy, again, the diagnosis matters.

Van Jackson:

In an oligarchy, you can buy the presidency.

Van Jackson:

You know, the Supreme Court has made that possible now.

Van Jackson:

So you don't have to be a charismatic leader.

Van Jackson:

You just have to have a movement that started with a charismatic leader.

Van Jackson:

Then everyone starts becoming more cynical.

Van Jackson:

Hegemonic decline, imperial decline accelerates.

Van Jackson:

And what does this look like?

Van Jackson:

I don't know.

Van Jackson:

California secession.

Van Jackson:

I mean, you know, like horrific scenarios start, start spinning

Van Jackson:

in my mind at a certain point.

Van Jackson:

Um, or I'm wrong.

Van Jackson:

And the pendulum could just swing back and we'll get President Buttigieg

Van Jackson:

and everybody will go back to brunch and pretend like it's normal until

Van Jackson:

the, the militias start bombing Starbucks or something, you know?

Jacob Shapiro:

Well, there's a rosy scenario.

Jacob Shapiro:

I mean, you, you, you made the point about the conservatives being out in the woods.

Jacob Shapiro:

Uh, you know, the left is obviously out in the woods too.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah.

Jacob Shapiro:

And the left doesn't stand for anything at this point, or to the extent it stands.

Jacob Shapiro:

With anything.

Jacob Shapiro:

It stands with very, very localized hyper-focused concerns.

Jacob Shapiro:

And not with the working class and not what it, and, and like has lost

Jacob Shapiro:

like in some sense it's, it's, you know, I can't blame some of them

Jacob Shapiro:

because in some sense it's a loss of faith in the American project.

Jacob Shapiro:

And I get that.

Jacob Shapiro:

I get why, you know, people get disillusioned with things, but you know,

Jacob Shapiro:

it's just that, that sense of American pragmatism and progressivism and that

Jacob Shapiro:

you can use government to fix things.

Jacob Shapiro:

Mm-hmm.

Jacob Shapiro:

Like that is just, that's just dead.

Jacob Shapiro:

And when you go to those Gallup polls and you see the 43% don't like, uh,

Jacob Shapiro:

uh, identify with any party, those are the ones that are telling you like, we

Jacob Shapiro:

don't like the MAGA guys and we don't like this meaningless cipher stick.

Jacob Shapiro:

Jeffrey Epstein also stuff with the left, like, can somebody please talk

Jacob Shapiro:

to us and nobody's talking to them.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, van, I could go on with you for three hours, but this is not the

Jacob Shapiro:

Joe Rogan podcast and I would be remiss if I did not at least give

Jacob Shapiro:

you a couple of minutes to cook on.

Jacob Shapiro:

Korea because one, oh yeah, sorry.

Jacob Shapiro:

One thing that is that, that was

Van Jackson:

like a, one of the major priorities.

Jacob Shapiro:

No, no, no, no.

Jacob Shapiro:

It's, I, I knew, I knew this was gonna happen and I, I don't wanna keep you

Jacob Shapiro:

too long 'cause we've already, I've already kept you for 55 minutes and I'm

Jacob Shapiro:

sure you have a busy day ahead of you.

Jacob Shapiro:

But the reason I wanted to come to it at the very end was because I know you said

Jacob Shapiro:

that, you know, different man, different river, but you know, the old trite uh,

Jacob Shapiro:

history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes.

Jacob Shapiro:

So we had the Iran thing, like if we're, if we're following, if we're following

Jacob Shapiro:

the same blueprint like North Korea.

Jacob Shapiro:

Should be right around the corner.

Jacob Shapiro:

And if we're bombing Iran, 'cause they have nukes, well, North Korea

Jacob Shapiro:

has more nukes and they're scary and they can actually hit us.

Jacob Shapiro:

And that sort of has been swept under the rug.

Jacob Shapiro:

And you've got a new South Korean leader who I'm extremely interested

Jacob Shapiro:

in who seems to, anyway, so just, just give us like, are you worried

Jacob Shapiro:

about that popping off next?

Jacob Shapiro:

Are you not worried about that?

Jacob Shapiro:

Popping off next, what do you think about South Korean, north

Jacob Shapiro:

Korean relations in the context of this new South Korean government?

Jacob Shapiro:

Like just, just cook on whatever you want for a couple minutes on this.

Van Jackson:

Yes, yes.

Van Jackson:

So I mean, so North Korea, now we're at a point where it has a pretty

Van Jackson:

reliable nuclear deterrent, which is the reason why we had all that

Van Jackson:

crisis, you know, on the brink stuff going on in 2017 and 2018, right?

Van Jackson:

That culminated in the summit diplomacy.

Van Jackson:

So now North Korea has that, so it doesn't have a need.

Van Jackson:

To antagonize the US at this point, except that it's under a pretty

Van Jackson:

like brutal sanctions regime still.

Van Jackson:

So North Korea has, um, like Kim, the Kim Jong regime has material interests

Van Jackson:

in getting those sanctions removed.

Van Jackson:

And it's always had a priority of, for the sake of its own security,

Van Jackson:

getting us troops out of South Korea.

Van Jackson:

The idea is not to wage a war.

Van Jackson:

They're not, I mean, war is just like not if, no matter what your regime is, war is

Van Jackson:

like not a good thing to be involved in.

Van Jackson:

You know, it's extremely costly and risky for your, your own safety and stuff.

Van Jackson:

So, like, north Korea's not interested in a war, but it won't be secure as

Van Jackson:

long as US troops are in South Korea.

Van Jackson:

And what's going on with, uh, EJ Meng, the current president, he's

Van Jackson:

kind of, I people say he is like South Korean, Bernie Sanders.

Van Jackson:

That's like a way overstatement.

Van Jackson:

Um, or like, not a perfect analogy, but it does capture something in

Van Jackson:

the sense that like he, he's trying to design public policy in South

Van Jackson:

Korea for the, the working class.

Van Jackson:

Um, and, and that's hasn't really happened in South Korea before, so.

Van Jackson:

Mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

He's trying to take seriously using policy to respond to this sort of

Van Jackson:

economic malaise that we face the reality of precarity that most people face.

Van Jackson:

Um, it's a little weird to do that in a place like South Korea

Van Jackson:

because it's an export based economy and the export advantage

Van Jackson:

is effectively cheap labor still.

Van Jackson:

You know what I mean?

Van Jackson:

So, mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

What does, what does that look like?

Van Jackson:

Well, maybe it looks like not so much redistribution of wages, but um,

Van Jackson:

redistribution of concentrations of capital into state projects of some kind.

Van Jackson:

Can serve, like, you know, investments in university or higher education,

Van Jackson:

healthcare may best betting on r and d.

Van Jackson:

There's a lot of that going on.

Van Jackson:

So like that, that is like the domestic part, the foreign policy part.

Van Jackson:

You know, he's representing the Democratic Party within South Korea.

Van Jackson:

EJ Mong the new president.

Van Jackson:

But, um, and that party has a tradition of conciliation toward North Korea.

Van Jackson:

They treat, it's all about diplomacy.

Van Jackson:

They're our wayward little brother.

Van Jackson:

They've, you know, they, they need to go to rehab, we're gonna

Van Jackson:

help them out kind of thing.

Van Jackson:

And like, so like we all know somebody like that.

Van Jackson:

So that's their, historically, their attitude, like a little paternalistic.

Van Jackson:

Right?

Van Jackson:

Um, it's not clear that Ejm is ready to go down that path.

Van Jackson:

He's looking to be more pragmatic.

Van Jackson:

He hasn't foreshadowed a lot of what he, he's not going to be

Van Jackson:

jingoistic toward North Korea.

Van Jackson:

And that's good.

Van Jackson:

No saber rattling.

Van Jackson:

That's good.

Van Jackson:

But he's not going to be, um, like this broadcasting peace diplomacy thing that,

Van Jackson:

um, the last Democratic party leader had Mu Jian, which was under Trump 1.0.

Van Jackson:

So the summit diplomacy that Trump and Kim had, a lot of that had to

Van Jackson:

do with Moon Jian, who was like pushing hard on peace diplomacy.

Van Jackson:

And that's not really, uh, maybe that could, that could come up at some point.

Van Jackson:

But like EJ Meg's priority is more like avoiding war overall and then managing and

Van Jackson:

improving strategic relations with China.

Van Jackson:

So like they, like we talked before about how Japan, Australia, they're in this

Van Jackson:

mode right now of like rights, right?

Van Jackson:

Sizing their threat perceptions.

Van Jackson:

Away from the threat inflation, away from the great power competition a bit,

Van Jackson:

um, interestingly, because you mentioned the Macron thing, Europe's Europe has

Van Jackson:

like so much distance from China and from China conflict stuff that it could

Van Jackson:

it do threat inflation on China and like their exposure to the consequences

Van Jackson:

to that is like far removed, you know?

Van Jackson:

And so like for Japan and Korea and even to some extent Australia,

Van Jackson:

they have to live with the shadow of China, like no matter what.

Van Jackson:

And so like, um, there's an incentive to kind of get along if you can't count

Van Jackson:

on America to get along with China.

Van Jackson:

That is.

Van Jackson:

And so for South Korea, that's very much the case and that's

Van Jackson:

where EJ Mung is right now.

Van Jackson:

Uh.

Van Jackson:

There will be probably some diplomacy with North Korea, but

Van Jackson:

it's not gonna be highly ambitious.

Van Jackson:

I don't think it will be much more pragmatic.

Van Jackson:

Um, the, the US is the interesting variable here because Trump doesn't

Van Jackson:

seem super interested in summit diplomacy, uh, with Kim Jong-un after

Van Jackson:

the previous rounds didn't go anywhere.

Van Jackson:

And Kim Jong-un feels burned by the fact that the summit diplomacy

Van Jackson:

didn't go anywhere in 20 18, 20 19.

Van Jackson:

So, um, we could end up in a situation where the US and Trump

Van Jackson:

is once again threatening fire and fury like that can actually happen.

Van Jackson:

But it would be in a context where Kim Jong-un already has the nuclear

Van Jackson:

deterrent he needs, in which case you're threatening fire and fury

Van Jackson:

against another nuclear state.

Van Jackson:

Like where, where's that gonna go?

Van Jackson:

To what end, you know what I mean?

Van Jackson:

So, uh, mutually assured destruction should hold, I would hope.

Van Jackson:

But like that's, that, that's, uh, an outlier possibility

Van Jackson:

that that could come back.

Van Jackson:

Um, and I think EJ Mong would be invested in a pro North Korea

Van Jackson:

projects to the extent that it prevents that or forecloses on that.

Van Jackson:

Yeah.

Van Jackson:

So stay out of a nuclear crisis.

Van Jackson:

That would be like the main thing.

Jacob Shapiro:

Um, yeah, your advice.

Jacob Shapiro:

But I mean, if, if he's casting about for diversionary conflict, I don't, on,

Jacob Shapiro:

on the flip side, if you're Kim Jong-Un, like you're, I don't know, it seems like

Jacob Shapiro:

things are going towards the United States withdrawing troops from South Korea.

Jacob Shapiro:

Anyway.

Jacob Shapiro:

Maybe I'm misreading things, but maybe just let Trump Oh, that was

Jacob Shapiro:

the, that was the Trump keep doing it.

Van Jackson:

That was the variable part that I meant to mention, which is the,

Van Jackson:

there is a win win win bank shot here between North Korea, South Korea, and the

Van Jackson:

us and it involves pulling out troops.

Van Jackson:

When I say us, I mean like the current presidency or whatever, but basically,

Van Jackson:

Trump doesn't want troops there.

Van Jackson:

He's, he wants to basically extort the shit outta South Korea

Van Jackson:

in order to keep troops there.

Van Jackson:

America is becoming more unpopular every day in South Korea.

Van Jackson:

EJ Young's presidency is not hot on America at all.

Van Jackson:

Doesn't think America is necessary in the context of China.

Van Jackson:

Like for, for South Korean security, right?

Van Jackson:

Mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

It's just been a, a historical thing.

Van Jackson:

Path dependence.

Van Jackson:

Um, there was a period where we were, us was needed to deter North Korea,

Van Jackson:

but we're past that now, right?

Van Jackson:

So there, there's a scenario where like American unpopularity makes

Van Jackson:

it politically easy to say, look.

Van Jackson:

We love you American troops, but we're not gonna pay out the ass.

Van Jackson:

We're not gonna get fucked just to keep you here.

Van Jackson:

So if it's gonna be we take it in the ass or you leave, thank you for your service.

Van Jackson:

Go, go fuck yourselves.

Van Jackson:

Go leave.

Van Jackson:

You know what I mean?

Van Jackson:

And so, and, and Trump would be just fine with that.

Van Jackson:

And at that point, of course, South Korea would also be just fine with that.

Van Jackson:

And like we said, North Korea has wished for that on a star for like 70 years.

Van Jackson:

So like that could be win, win-win and in an environment where, uh, there's no

Van Jackson:

US sort of umbrella over South Korea.

Van Jackson:

Interesting things start to happen on the peninsula.

Van Jackson:

I, I don't, I, that deserves more attention actually, like

Van Jackson:

what that would look like.

Van Jackson:

But the, the normal way that, um, people talk about unification in Korea.

Van Jackson:

There has always been this weird reactionary assumption that

Van Jackson:

South Korea absorbs North Korea.

Van Jackson:

Mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

And if North Korea has nukes that ain't happening, it's

Van Jackson:

gonna look like something else.

Van Jackson:

And the, the thing I had always feared was that South Korea would become

Van Jackson:

this predatory, extractive regime on North Korean natural resources.

Van Jackson:

Mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

So it's like mm-hmm.

Van Jackson:

Basically North Korea becomes a, a site of slave labor for a, like,

Van Jackson:

south Korean extractive project.

Van Jackson:

But as long as the regime in North Korea exists, it would be hard.

Van Jackson:

There will be some of that, some of that.

Van Jackson:

But, uh, North Korea would have to be getting a cut of it.

Van Jackson:

Of course.

Van Jackson:

And so, like, there could be some kind of like negotiated capitalist piece.

Van Jackson:

Weird as it is to say on the peninsula that is foreseeable in a world

Van Jackson:

where US troops kind of like vacate.

Van Jackson:

Um.

Van Jackson:

The question is, what if US troops vacate?

Van Jackson:

Does Japan go nuclear?

Van Jackson:

Does South Korea see a justification at the there?

Van Jackson:

So like there are second order questions that are not trivial

Van Jackson:

that would follow from that.

Van Jackson:

But in terms of just us, North Korea, South Korea, I think troop removal

Van Jackson:

is the bank shot that lets everybody take away something positive.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah.

Jacob Shapiro:

And I'm sure that Kim Jong-Un would hand deliver, uh, president Trump's

Jacob Shapiro:

Nobel Peace Prize nomination for engineering such a thing on the peninsula.

Jacob Shapiro:

He could just add to his stack of letters, uh, for people thanking

Jacob Shapiro:

him for, for such wonderful things.

Jacob Shapiro:

Yeah, man, I've already kept you longer than I should have.

Jacob Shapiro:

Thank you so much.

Jacob Shapiro:

Uh, and hopefully I'll talk to you soon.

Van Jackson:

Yeah, thank you.

Van Jackson:

This was fun.

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube