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June 30, 2025 17:15-18:13 - CSPAN
57:54
David Petraeus, Susan Rice and John Bolton Discuss U.S. Foreign Policy
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo Source
Participants
Main
d
david petraeus
15:34
j
john bolton
11:17
susan rice
07:49
Appearances
fareed zakaria
cnn 02:20
Clips
a
adam goodman
r 00:04
t
tammy bruce
00:12

Speaker Time Text
Hezbollah's Decimation? 00:05:54
unidentified
Conversation begins.
In a town where partisan fighting prevails, one table, two leaders, one goal, to find common ground.
This fall, ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN.
Next, a discussion about the global impact of the Trump administration's foreign policy with former intelligence and military officials, including retired General David Petraeus and former U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. Susan Rice and John Bolton.
The discussion was part of the 2025 Aspen Ideas Festival.
The Middle East that you dealt with when you were in Iraq in the early years after 9-11, almost 25 years ago, how different is the Middle East of today from that Middle East?
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
Well, it's transformed enormously.
And of course, after Iraq, I was the commander of U.S. Central Command, so he owned the greater Middle East and then Afghanistan and so on.
But this is dramatically different.
The last 18 or more months have seen that.
Iran has had tremendous degradation to its security forces of all types, not just the Artesh, the traditional military, but also the Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Many of their leaders have been killed, well over a dozen of their scientists when it comes to the nuclear program.
They're essentially defenseless right now.
Israel could fly at will anywhere they wanted, as did we, of course, in our brilliant operation.
And obviously, the nuclear program has been very substantially degraded, though we still need to hear if there is any 60% rich uranium and any centrifuges somewhere else.
So that is very, very significant.
But then beyond that, its proxies are all degraded by and large.
Hezbollah has been dramatically degraded by this brilliant supply chain operations with the Pagers all blowing up.
So the Hezbollah leadership wasn't just decapitated, it was decimated.
And then their command control communications were all destroyed.
The walkie-talkies blew up the next day.
And they are literally not the force in Lebanon, much less the threat to Israel that they were before.
And now the Lebanese armed forces are actually deploying between the northern border of Israel and the Latani River, taking that area away from Hezbollah.
Hamas is obviously dramatically degraded as well.
To be sure, Israel has not achieved its three objectives of destroying Hamas, keeping them from governing again, getting the hostages back, much less a fourth objective, which I felt they should have had from the very beginning, which is to provide a better future for the Palestinian people without Hamas in their lives.
And the strategy they're embarked on will not enable them to achieve that.
They're doing counterterrorism.
They need to do counterinsurgency.
The Shia militia in Iraq, they're sort of taking a knee.
You saw a few little responses to the attacks on Iran, but by and large, they're lying low as the elections approach in the fall there.
And then the Houthis are a bit quieter as well.
Very importantly, Syria is no longer an ally for Iran.
When the murderous Bashar al-Assad regime was there, there were lots of forces on the ground.
They had bases, all kinds of manufacturing facilities to support Hezbollah.
Now Hezbollah, which is again dramatically degraded, cannot be reconstituted by Iran traversing the Syrian ground to go into southern Lebanon, and that is going to make that vastly more difficult.
Not that Iran has a lot to spare at this moment in time.
So that's also, and then you have Israel really as the preeminent military power in the region, but with a very different strategic outlook.
We have to really appreciate how significant 10-7 was in terms of convincing Israel that they can never allow a threat to develop, not just on their border, but in the region as well in the face of Iran.
The Gulf states are dramatically and much more important.
They're hubs of innovation, developing sectors beyond fossil fuels.
They're anticipating the India-Mideast corridor.
And then the U.S. is still there.
Try as we might, leaving the Middle East for the United States is like Michael Corleone trying to leave the mafia.
You just keep getting sucked back in.
unidentified
All right.
Let's hold on that for a second.
And let's drill down on the big subject, which is, of course, Iran.
John Bolton, you have had a complicated relationship with Donald Trump.
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
It's not complicated.
unidentified
And on the days when you guys weren't getting along, he would talk about crazy John Bolton.
All he wants to do is bomb Iran.
But then he ended up bombing Iran.
Did you do the right thing?
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
Partially.
You know, Trump doesn't follow strategy or policy.
What he does at any given moment is always up in the air.
His decisions are like a vast archipelago of dots.
You can try and draw lines between them, but he can't.
So I can only say what I think, and that is what Dave said about the situation in the Middle East post-October the 7th is exactly correct.
To me, this is the moment to finish off the Iranian nuclear weapons program, which I think we have the capacity to do.
And most importantly, the key that has to take place before there's going to be real peace and stability in the Middle East long term, the regime in Tehran has to be overthrown by the people of Iran, and I think it's doable.
Iran's Dissatisfaction Crisis 00:03:27
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
I think the regime is weaker than at any point since the 1979 revolution, which I'd be happy to go into at length.
But I think we will never have an opportunity this good to remove not just the nuclear program, but the Iranian support for terrorism, which dates back to 1979 when they seized our embassy employees and it went downhill from there.
unidentified
How would you do regime change in Iran?
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
I think the people of Iran are extremely dissatisfied along several vectors, not all of which coincide, but do focus on opposition to the Ayatollahs.
There's enormous economic discontent in Iran.
There were riots in 2018 and 2019 that were brutally suppressed by the regime.
It was a countrywide effect.
I'm not just talking about Tehran.
It was all around the country.
What it proves is you don't put your economy in the hands of a bunch of medieval religious fanatics, but the economy has not improved since then.
The young people are enormously dissatisfied.
They know they can have a different way of life.
They can see it across the Gulf.
People under 30 are roughly 60% of the Iranian population.
That's a big number.
The ethnic groups in Iran are very dissatisfied, depending on your estimates.
They constitute between 40 and 50 percent of the population, Kurds, Azeris, Balukis, Arabs.
And the female part of the population is extraordinarily dissatisfied, as reflected in the response two years ago to the regime's murder of Masi Amini, a young Kurdish woman who was accused of not wearing a hijab.
And I just stress this is not an issue about a dress code.
It's a fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of the regime.
Because if they don't speak the word of God on dress codes, they don't speak the word of God on anything else.
And it's also different in kind from all of the other tensions and discontent.
Every Ayatollah, every general in the Revolutionary Guard, every general in the regular army has a mother.
Most of them have sisters, wives, and daughters, and they're hearing it from all of them.
unidentified
Susan Rice, regime change in Iran.
Color me skeptical that the population will successfully overthrow the regime anytime soon.
I think the conditions that John described are accurate, and of course, Dave's rendition of the state of play in the region I subscribe to as well.
But ironically, Israel and the United States bombing Iran may have had the unintended consequence of dimming opposition internally, because there's quite a bit of evidence that many regime opponents, among the most outspoken, reacted, as one might expect when their country is bombed by an outside entity, not to rally around the regime,
Objective Of Regime Change 00:15:20
unidentified
but to rally around the country and the national identity.
And I don't think that advanced the objective of peaceful regime change or internal regime change.
When I say peaceful, I mean not imposed from outside.
But I think the bigger question, Fareed, is: you know, are we in a better situation?
I think certainly Israel, from a grand strategic perspective over the last 18 months, is in a better position substantially because of the support that the United States has provided since October 7th, militarily as Iran attacked Israel throughout the last 18 months.
And that enabled Israel to dramatically diminish Iran's missile capabilities, its air defenses, et cetera.
And we've talked about the region.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
But on the nuclear program, I think the resort to military action when diplomacy had not been exhausted was a strategic mistake.
unidentified
It has long been the objective of every American administration, Democratic and Republican, to ensure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon.
That has got to be our objective.
The question in the debate has always been on how, how best.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
And the reality is, and we're back to this point today, only diplomacy and a negotiated settlement can ensure the sustainable and verifiable dismantling of Iran's nuclear program.
unidentified
You need inspectors on the ground.
You need verifiable constraints that are very significant.
And you don't achieve that by ripping up the 2015 nuclear agreement and replacing it with nothing.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
Trump had an opportunity, I think, before military action of using the threat of military action and the continuation of sanctions to get potentially an even better deal than in 2015.
unidentified
And we lost that opportunity as a result of military action that I think preceded when it was necessary, when diplomacy had proved that it could not succeed.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
And as a result, we're in a situation where even with the best execution and the military operation was obviously expertly executed using plans that Dave and I were familiar with going back to the Obama administration when we made the massive ordnance penetrator operational.
unidentified
They did a great job.
But there have always been inherent limitations to what can be achieved through military force.
You don't bomb the knowledge out of existence.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
There are materials that can be hidden in various places, and we have good reason to believe that beyond the three facilities that were targeted, Iran may have other places where it's hiding materials and where it may have operational centrifuges.
unidentified
So the bombing certainly degraded, severely damaged, set back their program in time.
But the results are really not clear.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
And we sadly may never know the truth about what was accomplished because the intelligence community is being pressured and manipulated to render the judgment that the president dictated merely hours after the attack when we absolutely couldn't know what the actual impact was.
unidentified
And so we have to worry about the nearly 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium that has gone, we don't know where.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
We have to be mindful of the fact, as I said, that the knowledge remains, that there are likely centrifuges and at least centrifuge components that could be reconstituted.
unidentified
They're hidden facilities.
We don't know whether we are months away from Iran having the ability to resume enrichment.
We don't know if Iran has the ability, if not to immediately weaponize in the traditional sense, but build a crude device, which some reportedly they had been working on potentially prior to the attack.
What we do know is that the intelligence community assessed prior to the attack that Iran had not yet made a decision to weaponize.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
They also assessed that were Iran to be attacked militarily, in all likelihood that would prompt Iran to rush towards weaponization and a secret bomb.
unidentified
And I think that is the biggest concern we have now.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
We don't know and we may not know, as we didn't in North Korea for many years, if Iran goes underground and rushes to try to create whether it's a crude device or a more sophisticated device.
unidentified
And we may end up inadvertently with the outcome that we have long sought to prevent.
So this is a precarious moment.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
We are back to a place where again, only negotiations and a deal that allows inspectors in and on the ground and the verifiable dismantling of their program can give us the assurance that we, the United States, Israel, and the region needs that the nuclear program is finally demolished.
unidentified
Dave, I want to ask you on this specific issue.
fareed zakaria ▲ ● ▼
The history of bombing has always been one where when you do the, when you eventually get the bomb damage assessments, the results were not as spectacular or effective as people thought, going all the way back to the strategic bombing survey of World War II that Paul Netzer and John T. Galbraith did.
unidentified
What do you think about this one?
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
I think this is a bit different.
No one ever envisioned a 30,000-pound bomb that could penetrate rock as deep as it does and then 5,000 pounds of explosive blowing up and not knowing what is inside.
Again, I think the damage has been very, very substantial.
We just don't know that the big unknown is, is there enriched uranium somewhere else?
Is it particularly 60%, which with the centrifuges could be with one turn of the enrichment process at weapons grade?
Keep in mind, though, that the Israelis and we also destroyed the Esfahan, so not just the two enrichment centers of Natansk and Fordo, but Esfahan, which actually takes this highly or weapons-grade uranium and then turns it into a metal so that it can actually be shaped into a device.
I also would submit that I think, as opposed to North Korea, Iran is really it's penetrated by Mossad to a degree that is almost inconceivable.
Remember, they stole all of the nuclear program records one time, right from downtown Tehran.
What Mossad did in the opening days of this is just, again, breathtaking, sitting out in the desert somewhere to get close enough for their drones to precisely take out all these.
You and I were talking about the meeting that was convened beforehand, which they hit, and that delayed the response by the missiles and so forth.
So we've always had quite good insights, as you say, in the intelligence world.
And I think that in this case, we probably will get to the bottom of whether or not there is some enriched uranium and centrifuges left.
unidentified
Can I ask a quick follow-up?
Sure.
As a former director of the CIA, do you worry about the it certainly seems very unusual for the president to be essentially tweeting out his conclusions about the intelligence before he's even gotten the intelligence briefings?
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
You know, I think it's always wise for people, and Susan was a good, and John as well, you know, to hear the intelligence community view.
And by the way, it's correct to say the DNI actually reported accurately the community view that the decision had not been made to make it to enrich weapons grade, but they had done everything else way beyond what could ever be explained by civilian nuclear enrichment to be in a position to do that.
And of course, they were arguably within weeks of actually being able to produce highly enriched uranium, weapons grade, which then would have to go through the process of being metalized and then shaped into a bomb and so forth like that.
So I thought, by the way, that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs gave a very sober, thoughtful, forthright assessment, and I thought the same out of the CIA, by the way.
unidentified
John, what do you think of the points that Susan Rice was making that we don't know whether this is going to cause them to rush towards a bomb?
We don't know whether there's still weapons-grade uranium hidden somewhere.
And at the end of the day, you're still going to have to negotiate to get clarity on those issues.
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
Well, it's certainly the case.
There's a lot we don't know.
And it's certainly the case that Trump was completely wrong to make the statement that he did immediately afterwards.
So there's no defense of that.
That's not the issue here.
The question is, you have to start somewhere.
And we will find out more, whether it makes us more happy with the result or less.
We'll see.
I mean, just for now, take what Rafael Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said.
He said there was enormous damage.
I'll buy that.
That's a good starting place.
What we need now is continuous surveillance so that we can see any efforts by the Iranians to move uranium or equipment around.
And then we need the resolve to destroy that, too.
The key point here, I think, is that all of this pushes in the direction of regime change.
And Susan is correct when she says that the knowledge of how to recreate a nuclear program exists in Iran, as, by the way, it did in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein kept 3,000 what he called nuclear mujahideen, his scientists and technicians, who could have rebuilt the nuclear program there.
The answer is regime change, but in the meantime, we want to make sure that there aren't any even possible successful efforts by Iran to do something with what they have.
And let me just make one more point on all this uranium.
From all that we can tell, almost all of it is still in gas form, which is very interesting.
But until you can fabricate it into metal, it's just gas.
And as David said, it looks like the Israelis took out the uranium conversion capability from yellow cake into gas and then gas into metal.
That's very important that the nuclear fuel cycle has been broken in so many points.
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
Can I have a two-figure really quickly?
unidentified
We do too quick, but I really want to move on because we've got the whole rest of the world to cover.
Two, a couple quick points in response.
Rafael Grossi, the IAEA director, also said yesterday that in his estimation, the enrichment had been set back by months, not more than that.
So I think there is a lot we don't know.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
And with respect to regime change, I mean, John, if it could happen the way you suggest in an organic uprising internally, I think all of us would be happy to see that happen.
unidentified
The likelihood is the question, and whether we can bank on that outcome is the question.
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
In the absence of that, let me just say for a quick two-second intervention, the supreme leader is 86 years old.
He's been in power 36 years.
He's not well.
He's going to die at some point.
They don't have a clear succession constitutional path.
That is the moment when the regime could fracture at the top.
unidentified
Maybe.
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
And that could come.
unidentified
Maybe.
But we can all hope and wish for divine intervention there and elsewhere.
Dave, very quick, too, because we really want to move on.
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
Let's remember the unprecedented position that the U.S. and Israel are in right now relative to Iran.
Iran is defenseless.
We could continue to do this as long as it's necessary.
If there is discovery of some enrichment capacity in HEU, then you go ahead and bomb it.
But what should be done, I do agree there should be a diplomatic agreement, but it basically should not be much negotiation.
It should be an ultimatum.
You stop all of your enrichment.
By the way, there should be something in there about missiles as well.
And if you don't, we're going to continue to bomb you.
unidentified
Okay, I want to move on because we've got it, but I want to pick up on something you said.
I'm sorry, Frank.
I take it you don't want to get to the places like Africa that are dear to your heart, Susan.
Or your European allies.
You know, I spent a long time on the nuclear agreement.
All right.
But let's move on.
If we have time, we'll come back.
How's that?
You said something about Israel in Gaza that I wanted to explain what you meant.
You said Israel is engaging in counterterrorism, whereas it should engage in counterinsurgency.
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
You said this from the very beginning.
unidentified
You said this from the very beginning.
fareed zakaria ▲ ● ▼
And I remember on my show, you said they will not succeed because of this mistake.
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
So explain what three objectives.
That's how you measure destroy Hamas.
They have not.
They've degraded them considerably.
They're nothing like the company's battalions brigades combat effective.
They're guerrillas now, but they're still the same strength.
There's no shortage of angry, grievance-filled young men who will take up an AK-47 and can still kill Israelis.
Seven were killed in a single starting to see improvised explosive device attacks.
Hamas is still the guys with the most guns.
They're not a formal government the way they were, but if the guns fall silent, they will be the predominant power, and they're still hostages.
Yes, they've gotten a number back, but there are still at least 10 or more alive, as well as a number of others that are dead.
And so that has not yet been fully achieved either.
And then, frankly, as I said, there should be a fourth objective: provide a better future for the Palestinians without Hamas in their lives.
The only way you can achieve all four of these is not by doing clear and leave operations, which is, by the way, what we were doing in the surge in Iraq, prior to the surge in Iraq, which was unsuccessful and violence kept going up.
Gaza's Path to Security 00:09:07
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
It's by going in and conducting a comprehensive civil military counterinsurgency campaign.
Start in the north, come a kilometer down, east-west wall, three north-south walls, four gated communities.
You tell them it costs a lot of money for a gated community in Florida.
We're giving it to you for free.
You clear every building, floor, room, and block all the tunnel entrances.
Let the people that belong there back in with biometric ID cards.
And then you have an entry control point to the rest of Gaza.
The minute you have security, everything is possible.
They do not have security now, which is why contractors can't deliver humanitarian assistance, why those deliveries turn into riots and so on.
unidentified
In order to have your solution, I mean, you're describing a situation where the fundamental objective is to make life safe and actually allow the civilian population to feel that they can thrive.
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
Exactly so.
unidentified
Israel seems to be putting almost the opposite, putting enormous pressure on the civilian population.
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
But again, there is no solution to this challenge, even hope, no hope at all if you don't do this and don't get Hamas out of their lives and keep them out by staying with them.
But the minute you have security, then the Arab countries will come in.
They'll take over.
They'll do the humanitarian assistance, restoration of basic services, reconstruction, and you keep going down.
It's going to get real complicated around Hamas, around Gaza City.
That's over a million people.
But this is the only way you can actually achieve security.
The famous John Paul Vann in Vietnam used to say security may be 10% of the problem or 90%.
Whatever it is, it's the first 10% or the first 90%.
There has never been security established in Gaza.
There's a security in their three little combat outposts that the Israelis have, but not for the population.
You have to separate the population from the enemy, the insurgents in this case, the extremists, and that's obviously Hamas and others.
fareed zakaria ▲ ● ▼
Susan, I know that under President Biden, you handled domestic policy, but this is a subject you know a great deal about, and you know that President Biden got an enormous amount of criticism from the left about not doing enough in Gaza and not pressing Israel to pull back and to be less ferocious in its response.
unidentified
Do you have any thoughts on whether the Biden administration could have done a better job?
I have lots of thoughts.
But my job was, as you mentioned, in the domestic policy realm, and much of what happened came after I'd left the administration entirely.
So I wasn't even indirectly privy to their decision making.
And I think there are a lot of ways in which we did not do as we should have.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
We were right to support Israel after the horrific attack and its need to defend itself.
unidentified
But I very much agree with what Dave has said.
I think this has been executed strategically in a short-sighted and ultimately failed way.
You were saying when we were in Aspen together last summer, exactly what you just said about the need to clear, hold, and build.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
And instead, we've got one more year of just utter destruction with enormous humanitarian consequences for the people of Gaza and for the hostages and their families who many of whom have been lost in the interim and continue to languish in the most horrific circumstances.
So instead of doing learning the lessons that we learned the hard way in Iraq and elsewhere about how to conduct effective counterterrorism, which is through counterinsurgency strategies,
the Israelis have engaged in a relentless campaign, which can only, as it goes on and on, result in more and more people with the undying anger and desire to wake revenge, which is not, in the long term, in Israel's security interests.
unidentified
I think the humanitarian situation is an absolute nightmare.
And what we're seeing over the last several weeks is the ceasefire that was briefly negotiated in January and February has lapsed, is more and more people dying in a humanitarian architecture which is a cruel hoax, forced and people being shot and killed as they try to access very limited supplies.
So we are long past the point where that conflict needs to end.
We need to get the hostages home.
We need to end the death and destruction, get rid of Hamas in a sustainable way and rebuild.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
And that has not been achieved, and I think it's a huge catastrophe that prevents the wider opportunity to take advantage of the changes that Dave outlined at the beginning in the region, which are beneficial to Israel and to the United States.
unidentified
But we can't consummate and expand the Abraham Accords.
We can't make progress in Gaza, in the West Bank, towards a two-state solution and lessen until Gaza is dealt with and we take advantage of a newly reset table in the region that has great potential, but it's being squandered at the moment.
All right, let me again, trying to move around.
fareed zakaria ▲ ● ▼
John Bolton, one of the things that one of your, I think it was your predecessor, General McMaster, as National Security Advisor to Donald Trump said, I think he says in his memoirs, I spent one year working almost every day with Donald Trump, and the one thing I could never figure out is why was he so partial to Russia?
unidentified
Do you have an answer to that?
And if that's, can you use that as a way to talk about the Russia-Ukraine conflict?
And the central question everyone has is, will Donald Trump ever actually put more pressure on Vladimir Putin?
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
Could I say a word first about Gaza?
unidentified
Absolutely.
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
I will be brief.
I take a somewhat different point of view.
I think the two-state solution is dead, if it was ever viable.
I think it can forget about it, given Israel's present circumstances.
I would split the question of the Gazan people from the people of the West Bank.
I would treat the Gazan refugees the same way every other refugee population in the world has been treated since 1945.
And that is under the principles not of UNRWA, but of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR's humanitarian principles.
Say refugees should either be repatriated to their country of origin, or if that is impossible, they should be resettled.
That is the answer.
And let's do one piece of history.
In 1957, the UN had a plan to resettle the refugees that were in Gaza then.
There were 300,000 people in Gaza then, of whom 100,000 were indigenous, 200,000 were refugees.
The population that has grown in Gaza are not the native sons and daughters of the soil of Gaza, they're refugees.
So, UNHCR, and I'll conclude with this on Gaza, you can say two things about UNHCR: it has never forcibly repatriated anybody, number one, and number two, there are no permanent UNHCR refugee camps.
So, it can be done.
Now, on Donald Trump and Moscow.
Look, if I had seen any evidence in my time there that Russia had some improper influence over him, I think I would have noted it.
I don't see any evidence of it today.
I have said before, and I'll say it again here: I think Donald Trump performs a rule, a role for Russia, first articulated by Vladimir Lenin.
unidentified
He is their useful idiot.
But why?
Why?
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
Because I think he knows nothing of history.
He sees international relations through the prism of personal relations entirely.
He's transactional, he's ad hoc, he's episodic.
Ukraine's War Dynamics 00:04:18
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
He thinks Vladimir Putin is his friend.
That's not his only friend in the world.
He thinks Xi Jinping is his friend.
When he met Kim Jong-un for the first time in Singapore to talk about the North Korean nuclear weapons program, he said, we fell in love.
That's how he thinks, and that's what's motivating.
unidentified
So, but keep going from there.
What happens in Russia-Ukraine then?
fareed zakaria ▲ ● ▼
Are you saying he just will not put the pressure on Putin that would be needed to get this resolved, to get Putin to the negotiating table?
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
I don't think he's been pushed to the point yet when he has flipped in his view of Putin.
It is possible he has flipped on other leaders.
He once was very antagonistic toward Erdogan of Turkey.
Now he's another of his best friends.
But it's not there yet.
So I think the near-term situation for Ukraine is that the war grinds on.
I don't think Trump is going to come back to negotiations soon.
He didn't get it done in 24 hours, which was never going to happen anyway.
It looks like a failure.
He wants to win his Nobel Peace Prize somewhere else.
unidentified
Dave, looking at it militarily, the Russians are gaining ground, but very slowly and at a very high cost.
What do you think happens over the next year if John is right?
And, you know, absent a huge American push that provides the Ukrainians with lethal weaponry, that puts sanctions on Russia.
Assume those things don't happen.
Where does this go?
So, as a former economics professor, I have to start by saying it depends.
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
It really does depend.
It depends on the U.S. coming through, as you mentioned.
There is some good news here.
Lindsey Graham reported that Donald Trump has agreed, President Trump has agreed to impose sanctions on Russia.
They're quite substantial, and that would be very, very helpful.
I've felt for a long time the big idea here is that the U.S. and Europe and all other freedom-loving nations around the world should provide so much additional assistance to Ukraine that they can change the dynamic on the battlefield and keep Russia from even achieving incremental gains at the exorbitant cost that they have been taking.
That's not that, I don't think, dreamlike.
The Ukrainians are going to produce 3.5 million drones this year.
Do the math.
I was in there a couple months ago, asked General Sirsky, how many drones did you throw at the enemy yesterday?
He said 7,000.
So this unmanned systems revolution that is taking place there on both sides, but especially in Ukraine, they are doing as well.
Yep.
But you could stop that.
Europe has been stepping up very, very substantially.
I don't think people appreciate what Ukraine needs in many respects is just money.
to build their arsenal.
By the way, now they're even going to start exporting for profit.
That's really huge.
And then they need the systems that they can't yet build, in particular, Patriot missile interceptors and the other interceptors that other countries have been giving to them.
So I don't think it is out of the question to envision a situation which Russia is really now just blocked on the battlefield.
Keep in mind that tanks and armor personnel carriers no longer can survive in the front lines.
They get hit by drones.
Look at what Ukraine is going into the Russian Federation.
A million dollars worth of drones took out or damaged or destroyed $7 billion worth of strategic aircraft.
But it is about providing more assistance.
The U.S. also announced just another couple hundred million of arms assistance they'll provide our existing authorities.
So my hope would be that the sanctions are first from the U.S., then the bipartisan majority in Congress that supports further aid to Ukraine will then position that Lindsey Graham, perhaps the leader of that as well, given his relationship with President Trump.
So I don't think this is by any means all lost.
I think it's about changing the dynamics and then determining if those dynamics are changed, is Putin really willing to negotiate terms other than replacing Zelensky with a pro-Russian figure, demilitarizing Ukraine, and giving up even more land than Russia has already taken, all of which are totally unacceptable to Ukraine.
Tariffs and Nationalism 00:15:06
unidentified
Susan, I want to ask you about to step back, the broader picture here of the United States and the world.
fareed zakaria ▲ ● ▼
The G7 meeting, rather than being a loud declaration of support for free and democratic Ukraine and things like that, apparently got mired in what has become the central issue between the Allies, between the United States and its allies, which is tariffs.
unidentified
The United States is imposing, in many cases, the highest tariffs on its closest allies.
It's having the biggest squabbles with Canada and Europe.
When you look at the kind of alliances we were trying to build in Africa, the dismantling of USAID probably has some effect there, some negative effect.
How much do you think this impedes American leadership?
Enormously.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
Let me elaborate, but I do want to note that, John, I think there is certainly a lot to your assessment of what motivates Trump, but it's fascinating, and it gets to your point, your question, Farid, that he only seems to fall in love with dictators.
unidentified
Why can't he fall in love with his G7 partners?
And what does that suggest?
And Putin, I think that love relationship is on an even different level.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
And I'm not satisfied that the explanation is limited to what you suggest, but I can't credibly.
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
I could go on, but go ahead and answer it.
unidentified
I will answer.
But I just, you know, a couple of years ago.
If you have a quick answer to why does he only fall in love with dictators, and then we get back to Susan.
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
Well, why an American president should be envious of anybody is beyond me.
But Trump thinks he's a big guy.
He likes doing big guy things.
Putin's a big guy.
Nobody pushes him around.
unidentified
Putin's a tiny guy.
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
Xi Jinping is a...
unidentified
I'm as tall as Vladimir Putin.
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
Xi Jinping is a big guy.
He is a big guy.
Kim Jong-un is a big guy.
Erdogan is a big guy.
unidentified
Why is he this kind of guy?
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
Metaphorically.
Why can't he just deal with the big guys?
unidentified
Okay.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
But it gets to a larger point, which is that in my view, if you add up all that we're seeing, aligning our interests in bizarre ways with our adversaries, picking wars or fights economically and otherwise with our allies, withdrawing USAID and VOA and all of our tools of global engagement,
unidentified
we are seeing a president that is systematically shrinking us from a global superpower to potentially just a regional great power, like back in the 19th century.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
And you got to imagine, you know, with all of his love for Xi Jinping and all of his love for Vladimir Putin, that he may well be content with returning to a sort of 19th century great power division of spheres of influence where, you know, Canada and Greenland and Panama are in our sphere.
unidentified
You know, let Putin do what he wants with Europe and let Xi do what he wants in Asia.
This is exceedingly dangerous when we are pitting ourselves against our closest allies.
We need to defend against adversaries like Putin and Xi.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
When we need our allies in Asia and our allies in Europe to be working together to counter what we're seeing from Xi in the Asia Pacific, but also globally, and instead we are alienating them, it's extremely dangerous.
And withdrawing our global presence through USAID is not just a humanitarian disaster, which is going to cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives.
unidentified
It is a strategic disaster because the assistance we have provided, whether it's in the health sector, in governance and support for human rights, in security assistance, in all of these realms,
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
helps to mitigate and prevent conflict, helps to keep Americans healthy and protected from infectious diseases that can span the planet as we've learned the hard way with devastating consequences.
unidentified
And when we withdraw and allow millions to die, we are not only creating great anger and animosity towards the United States, we are creating a vacuum into which China is eagerly deploying.
And that sets us back in very substantial ways globally.
John, can I ask you to pick up on what Susan was talking about, about Trump in some ways turning America away from being a global superpower to a regional power?
fareed zakaria ▲ ● ▼
I want to ask you specifically, there seems to be within the Republican Party now a large group of people who would openly and honestly admit to that, that they want an America that is more kind of Jacksonian unilateralist.
That is, we're big, we're tough, we've got a huge army, but we're only concerned about our hemisphere, maybe a few other things.
unidentified
You know, if the Chinese want Taiwan, they can have it.
If the Russians want Ukraine, they can have it.
Is that movement growing in the Republican Party?
And how do you assess the inter-party dynamic, intra-party dynamic?
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
Well, to start with Trump, you both give him too much credit for conceptual thinking.
But there are people in the Republican Party who do make arguments along those lines.
I think they remain a very small minority.
Both parties have isolationist tendencies that rise and fall over time.
The isolationist wing of the Republican Party is having a moment now.
But in terms of people around the country, in terms of people in Congress, I still think what you could call a Reaganite or Reaganite-Bush approach is where they want to be.
They don't speak up in Congress enough, in my view.
I think that's unfortunate.
I'm certainly doing what I can to change that, but I think they're intimidated by Trump.
The intimidation is real.
Ask Senator Tom Tillis what just happened over the weekend.
It's a great loss to the party.
It could cost Republicans the majority in the Senate if they're not careful.
But I think fundamentally here, both parties suffer from an absence of leaders who can speak to the people about the threats we face around the world and what we need to do as a country to ensure our security.
I think too many people said that we had reached the end of history after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
For 35 years, we have not had enough politicians who can make the case for a forward American position in the world.
It's true of both parties.
We're suffering from that now, particularly in the Republican Party.
unidentified
Dave, I want to ask you about what does the world look like to you now?
You've spent the last 12 years in the private sector.
You spent the entirety of your life, before that professionally, in government in the military, in government or in the military.
How much has the world changed now?
We talked about the Middle East, but if you were to, what do you do that, what are view the dominant changes in the world today?
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
Well, they've been also profound, and they continue, and they'll be amplified, I think, by the tariffs that are being discussed and still are not resolved.
But when I left government and went to KKR, you could describe the world as one of benign globalization.
All the barriers to trade, capital, investment, even movement of people and technology were being reduced.
Globalization, as measured by global trade, was going like this.
Twelve years later, we're in an era of renewed great power rivalries.
Most of that, of course, about the further rise of China, the more aggressive stance of China in a variety of different activities around the world, but especially in their seas around them.
All the barriers have been going up instead of down.
The Trump administration put 10 percent tariffs in Trump 1.0.
The Biden administration, I think, rightly kept those.
But then 100 percent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, a number of different sectors.
You can't invest in China in these.
You can't sell to them these, especially dual-use technologies, but also AI, quantum, microchips, biotech, you name it.
So now in this era, you see globalization, which is going like this.
By global trade, it's now slobalization.
And within that, you see regionalization.
And along the way, international organizations, of which we were often the leaders, which were active 12 years ago, never decisive, but still relevant, I think they have been diminished further as well.
The Singaporean foreign minister, the month before Liberation Day tariffs were announced, captured this beautifully.
He said, the world is now shifting from unipolarity to multipolarity, from free trade to protectionism, from multilateralism to unilateralism, from globalization to hypernationalism, from openness to xenophobia, and from optimism to anxiety.
Otherwise, everything is going great.
unidentified
And Susan Rice, you think that this shift, which I imagine you agree with, is largely produced by the Trump administration.
We're not reacting to something.
We're actually causing the shift to protectionism and nationalism.
We're certainly accelerating it and doing it in a strategically, I think, stupid way.
John Bolton, sometimes less is more.
John Bolton, tell us a little bit.
You know, look, you're the only guy who has sat down for hours and hours with Donald Trump.
And so we're all trying to, people sometimes ask me, what is the world going to look like?
And I always say, like, we're in this strange moment where to try to answer all these questions is to try to get into the mind of one single human being.
Because policy is not being made by the National Security Council.
It's not being made by interagency processes.
It's being made by this one guy.
And so when you think about how he's looking at the world right now, we've got three and a half years to go.
Sketch for us what you think is going to happen.
We know one thing, which you've talked about before.
He wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
But other than that, what do you think, how is this going to play out?
john bolton ▲ ● ▼
Well, I have no idea.
And I'm not troubled to say that because I'm absolutely convinced Trump has no idea.
It is really ad hoc and transactional.
And we were told the story when I first started at the White House that in the Trump organization, he never made a daily schedule.
He would come into his office each day and say, well, what'll happen today?
Maybe that's the formula for success in Manhattan real estate development.
It's not the way you want the U.S. government.
I would say, though, that it's important not to overestimate the damage that Trump is doing.
I think the tariffs in particular are shredding decades of American effort to build up credibility, good faith, reliance on us.
It's going to be very hard to get them back, but I think it's possible.
And I think, just remind everybody of my hero, Edmund Burke, who warned against overgeneralizing from insufficient information.
And I remain hopeful.
Look, in tomorrow's July, by the 20th, we'll be six months in, one-eighth of the way through.
unidentified
almost over all right I'm gonna ask I'm gonna ask each of you then to close on an on a hopeful note that that John Bolton has begun Dave, what you read out, the Singaporean Foreign Minister, and I was struck by that speech as well.
fareed zakaria ▲ ● ▼
So if the world is the way you're describing, more unilateralism, more protectionism, more anxiety, more nationalist rivalries, how do you think the United States should navigate this, and what makes you hopeful?
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
Well, by the way, and keep in mind that that was before the tariffs, and these tariffs are historic.
The resting heart rate could be larger than the Smoot Hawley tariffs where we'd say that.
unidentified
We're essentially quadrupling to quintupling the tariffs that the United States has against the world.
Yeah.
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
So again, that will amplify a lot of this, unless resolved.
And of course, you can use this as negotiating leverage as well.
And I hope that that's some of the thinking behind this with John's cautions ringing in my ears.
What makes me most hopeful is that we do come to certain solutions that actually have been pretty heartening.
NATO summit, who would have ever dreamed, you know, give President Trump credit for achieving something that no previous president, Republican or Democrat, all of whom railed about the inability of the European countries to spend just 2% of GDP on defense, much less now 3.5, with another 1.5% that is other ancillary actions related to that.
That is enormous.
That's great.
The real source of optimism, though, is the incredible productivity boom we're in the early stages of here in the United States.
And obviously, GDP is workforce times productivity.
Workforce is going to not grow at the rate it used to, given the measures against, again, immigration and so forth, many of which needed the southern border, especially.
But this productivity is so extraordinary that it's going to keep us growing in GDP, I think, and keep us out of a recession despite what could be the effects of some of the tariffs if they end up at very substantial numbers.
And that is truly amazing.
Struggling to See Silver 00:02:30
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
That is the engine of growth and opportunity for the U.S.
It's what's made us great again and again and again, and it continues.
And that's, again, my source of optimism when I wake up in the morning.
unidentified
Susan, what's your source of optimism?
And you can't say that we're going to run the clock out on Donald Trump because John Bolton is going to run the clock out on Donald Trump because John Bolton already said that.
I'll be honest, I don't have many sources of optimism.
We haven't even touched on what's happening in our own country, where the rule of law and due process are under daily assault and rapidly evaporating.
There's so much going on that I find enormously distressing.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
Dave, I hope you're right about productivity increasing, but we haven't also touched on the impact of artificial intelligence, not geostrategically, but just in terms of the domestic economy, we may have great increases in productivity and real consequences for employment.
unidentified
And no strategy or policy, it seems, to try to begin to address that.
So I struggle to see any silver linings.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
I guess the best I can come up with is that Europe seems to be waking up and recognizing that it needs to do more to step up to ensure its own security, that sadly, for the wrong reason, because it's concluded it can't dependably rely on the United States.
But Europe stepping up, not just with its commitments last week at NATO, which are significant, but with an understanding that it is going to have to change its approach to its own security.
unidentified
And Canada, the same.
And Canada, you know, sadly concluding that the United States at the moment is more of a threat than a partner, looking to strengthen its ties to Europe economically as well as from a security point of view.
Some of these dynamics are not bad outcomes.
The catalyst for them concern me greatly.
And I agree with John that it's going to be very hard to put many of these genies back in the bottle.
C-SPAN's Role in Democracy 00:02:56
unidentified
We haven't even talked about the dollar falling 10% for the most since 1973 in the first six months of this year.
susan rice ▲ ● ▼
I mean, we are just in a very precarious place where the reliability of the U.S. and our global economic strength has rested enormously on our adherence to the rule of law, our expectations that we were predictable and dependable and made rational choices.
unidentified
And when the President of the United States, if John is right, wakes up in the morning and doesn't know what he's going to do for the rest of the day, that's not predictability and stability.
And the biggest beneficiary of all of this, sadly, is China.
All right, we have to close on that slightly sober note.
Thank you all.
Really good.
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
You're a pro.
unidentified
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Cox supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy.
This show and C-SPAN is one of the few places left in America where you actually have left and right coming together to talk and argue.
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I love C-SPAN too.
That's why I'm here today.
Answer questions all day, every day.
Sometimes I get to do fun things like go on C-SPAN.
adam goodman ▲ ● ▼
C-SPAN is, I think, one of the very few places that Americans can still go.
unidentified
C-SPAN has such a distinguished and honorable and important mandate and mission in this country.
I love this show.
This is my favorite show to do of all shows because I actually get to hear what the American people care about.
American people have access to their government in ways that they did not before the cable industry provided C-SPAN access.
That's why I like to come on C-SPAN is because this is one of the last places where people are actually having conversations, even people who disagree.
Shows that you can have a television network that can try to be objective.
david petraeus ▲ ● ▼
Thank C-SPAN for all you do.
unidentified
It's one of the reasons why this program is so valuable because it does bring people together where dissenting voices are heard, where hard questions are asked, and where people have to answer to them.
Happy Monday Announcements 00:00:55
unidentified
State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce held a briefing with reporters and answered questions about U.S. foreign policy, including on Israel's conflicts with Hamas and Iran.
Happy Monday.
I'll explain in a moment.
I will explain in a moment.
Thanks for being here.
tammy bruce ▲ ● ▼
It's a Monday and I will be a little short today as the president is beginning some signings at the White House and the Oval Office.
unidentified
We don't want to conflict.
So forgive me in that regard.
But I do have a few announcements for you here, and we'll start.
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