Eliot and Eric discuss the Munich Security Conference including its background and history. They review the contradictory signals sent by the many Trump officials who have been in different parts of Europe in the run-up to and aftermath of the Munich conference. They discuss Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's comments, Vice President J.D. Vance's lamentable, off-key speech to the conference, the predatory agreement for the US to colonize Ukraine's raw materials that Secretary of the Treasury Bessent presented to Zelensky in Kyiv and the announcement of US-Russian talks (excluding Ukraine and Europe) to be held this week in Saudi Arabia. They discuss the dangers of a foreign policy carried out by Presidential whim and whether the potential Ukraine War ceasefire will be a bad deal or a catastrophic one and the knock on consequences in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and for the global nuclear non-proliferation order. They focus on the human consequences of the rampage through government that Elon Musk and his "muskovites" are conducting. They praise the conservative prosecutors in the Southern District of New York who have resigned rather than carry out instructions that they considered corrupt and offer advice to those in government struggling with the moral dilemmas that have been created by the current Trumpian chaos.
Eliot on SecDef Hegseth's Munich Speech:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/02/ukraine-trump-foreign-policy/681685/
Eric on Bulwark on Sunday:
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast cosponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.
Watching this a week later after your grimmest predictions have come true. I am disgusted and deeply ashamed of our country for betraying Ukraine.
What an astonishingly fine program. Hooked by LINDBERGH. This one quite interesting, beginning to doubt Vances sanity too. What a chucklehead. Excuse ad hominem (sic) at least it's not hyperbole.
Canada needs nukes immediately.
Thank you for the episode "An American blunder in Munich". What a deeply moving, inspiring and educational podcast!
The quote about oaths, and damaged souls, cuts to the quick for this ship of fools.
Wonderful discussion, thank you. My favourite apposite book is Mario Vargas Llosa’s “The Feast of the Goat”, set in the Dominican Republic in the 1960s and about its leader, Rafael Trujillo. The most brilliant portrait of a dictator.
Wow, you (and Bill Kristol) are right about Lincoln's 1838 Address to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois: The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions. It is so apposite, so relevant to this time, when the Greatest Generation has mostly passed and even the memory of the Cold War is fading, as the founding generation and memories of the Revolution were fading in his time. He warns against the decline of the rule of law, and the potential for the rise of a strong man who "would set boldly to the task of pulling down." Just nine pages, but It would be a difficult read for today's students: beautifully written, but as difficult as George Eliot or Henry James. (As a bonus, the next item in the Library of America volume has his hilarious letter to Mrs. Browning on his failed engagement.)
What a disgraceful speech by Vance, and how shameful to meet with AfD's Weidel.
Thank you for your podcast. I really like listening to your conversations, and calm analysis. And an extra level of thanks today for the second half of your podcast about keeping sane in the current climate. You are right, even for those of us not directly affected, such as vulnerable people being left unsupported and workers losing their jobs, we are all feeling the waves of this tsunami. I write from Australia where many ordinary people are extremely worried about events unfolding in the US and Europe. We had an interesting experience of Chinese military activity this week which resulted in commercial airlines having to be diverted off their usual course between Aus and NZ because Chinese warships were doing exercises in that area. A somewhat unusual occurrence. A reflection of our changed strategic world perhaps??
Once again, a wonderful discussion, and my favorite part of The Bulwark. You guys are definitely the “wise men” of this operation. And I do so appreciate Eliot’s optimism, and his advice for how to survive this nightmare in which we find ourselves. I was a “duck and cover” kid, and still remember those exercises in elementary school. I have vivid memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis (and growing up in New Orleans, we always understood that we were a prime target with our port and our oil refineries). To realize that the Trump administration is choosing not to END Putin’s Russia by taking advantage of their current relative weakness, indeed the lowest point they have ever been at, but rather that to restore “normal relations” and remove sanctions against Russia’s barbaric behavior, makes me want to vomit. If you two guys can keep my spirits up and use what influence you still have to end this dystopian nightmare of a government, I will be forever grateful. The United States will be forever grateful. I pray that on our 250th anniversary in 2026, we still have a country and a Republic to celebrate.
Here's an old passage that is still relevant when thinking about how to survive under Trump. When Poland was 'liberated' from the Nazis by Russia a new authoritarianism took hold. Poet/writer Czeslaw Milosz observed the responses of his countrymen to the new regime -- adopt fully, go along to get along, or resist. Of himself, he wrote ...
"My own decision proceeded, not from a functioning of the reasoning mind, but from a revolt of the stomach. A man may persuade himself, by the most logical reasoning, that he may greatly benefit his health by swallowing live frogs; and, thus rationally convinced, he may swallow a first frog, then a second; but at the third his stomach will revolt. In the same way, the growing influence of [Russian rule permeating culture as well as government] on my way of thinking came up against the resistance of my whole nature."
-- The Captive Mind (1951)
With Trump, I am at the puking frogs stage.
I am from Upstate NY - Claudia Tenney, sorry to say, is dumb as a box or rocks.
The conversation from about 34:37 advising on navigating the moral dilemma is outstanding.
As an aside, I think it was Sarah Longwell who described the scene of Rubio's soul escaping from his body. There's definitely a reference in the recent Next Level podcast but I think she also said it somewhere else.
Thank you for an enlightening and thoughtful discussion and I enjoyed your positive endnotes. Good show guys!
Trump’s campaigns were all about blaming the scum and low IQ people running our government for the bad economy and social illness. Now that he is in charge and is disposing of all of these people he will have to improve things.
Don’t think it will take long for many of his voters to start feeling the disappointment. The senate has approved every single nominee so far. His government is cutting loose everyone that is not on board. In a few weeks they will have to start eating their own because someone has to take the blame.
Maybe Prime Minister Musk will get our 5,000 dollar checks in the mail soon and buy Trump a little time, but I am not spending that money yet.
How can you call this a blunder? It's clearly the intented result of the most successful long-term intelligence operation since the Renaissance. I don't understand how any serious person, aware of the trajectory of Trump's "business" career, aware of his statements and actions the first time in office, aware of his behavior and associates in the interregunum, and now the events of the past few weeks, can possibly conclude other than that Trump is and has been a defacto Russian asset, successfully run by Russian intelligence for decades. The degree to which he fully understands this--whether he is a Fuchs or Philby, or more a low-IQ fellow traveller chasing the grift -- that may be open to question.
For America, perhaps, Munich was a blunder... but the actual American blunder was failing to protect itself from MAGA and Trump. But as to Trump et al, whether witting or half-witting, the Trump regime's actions are not blunders. They are planned and intentional. And they have succeeded. Blunder?
If this was a blunder, it would have been a blunder had Hitler been able to replace Winston Churchill with Edward Mosely, or FDR with Lincoln Rockwell.
No, just Foetens cloaca in stercus fovea (a stinking sewer in a dung pit). And Sandberg’s The People, Yes!— what fools we have been to imagine, that merely because our little Republic, on a few statistical long tail throws of the dice, threw up one or two leaders like Washington and Lincoln, we were somehow an exception to the general pattern of history. Which is the dismal record of a continual uninterrupted sequence of cruelty, venality, cupidity, viciousness, avarice, and stupidity. Above all, cruelty.. and stupidity.
Oh, yes, pretense and mendacity. An example of which here we have, here: me—a posturing pretender to being a Latinist, but who in reality only knows what smatterings of Latin that have leaked into his circus of competence from all the books and poems he bumped into, amplified and hopefully corrected through Google Translate.
I am sure you, unlike me, did not have to avail yourself of such a crutch!
I came here to say more or less the same thing. I wasn't as sure about him being a Russian agent. I was figuring it was more that they were kindred spirits. In Putin's moral universe, Ukraine has a duty to submit to him as a strong man, and Trump lives in that same moral universe. It sounds like you've read more about Trump's history than I have, so I probably need to educate myself.
What amazes me — or did, at one time— is not that a person like Trump, and the same sort of person that seems to gather around him the way clouds of fruit flies show up around rotting fruit, would betray his country, but that the majority of Americans who truly believe themselves to be patriots would not only tolerate but actually embrace his actions. And are now even happy to have us change sides.
As I grow older my take on human nature has changed from surprise at such behavior on the part of my fellow citizens to surprise when they fail to act this way. Sic cadit in monte splendida civitas
Not so much the "shining city on hill" anymore, is it?
There's a third way between selling your soul to the Vichys and handing over the resignation letter. Protest and make them fire you.
Eliot: "JD Vance is a lout." Truer words never said. I've been reaching for the right word to describe this smarmy, arrogant and mean-spirited individual.
I totally agree with Eliot's advice to laugh at and make fun of these horrible people. This is why political cartoonists are so important, they see the farcical, the absurdity, and communicate it in a way that can be immediate and unbelievably piercing. I think a political cartoonist would be an excellent addition to the Bulwark team:)
Look no further than Ann Telnaes here on Substack.
https://open.substack.com/pub/anntelnaes/p/the-russian-nothingburger-is-back?r=1o9utf&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Hear, hear!
Wonderful conversation. Thank you. And, please, save me from my critical self by speaking ‘Danielle’ Sassoon’s name correctly, not the Daniel spoken, the male counterpart. A minor slip, but noticed.
Mr. Cohen~ This is an honest question. Regarding your advice as to not losing one's mind, what are your thoughts on what so many of us are grappling with in thinking/talking/deciding relative to opposition/protest action?
Sincerely,Jenmacin
(nee JoeMoakley/TipOneal Boston Democrat currently registered Independent)
Such an interesting and enlightening discussion. Much appreciated.
I am shocked how Eliot is incapable of seeing where this is headed. Eric sees it far more clearly. Eliot no one cares what wicker said. He literally pushed to have Hegseth appointed. His judgement is clearly awful and what he says is irrelevant, it’s what he DOES. Let me tell you what he will do: NOTHING.
Please Eliot stop looking for golden parachutes…the writing is on the wall for Ukraine vis-à-vis USA/europe.
It sounds like you are just making cynical, preemptive excuses for losing. Some of us intend to go down fighting.
Bruce can you stop responding to me please
Wait and see? Can Europe - the EU as European members of NATO - actually wait and see what will happen if Russia succeeds in destroying Ukraine?
The 2024 NDA passed by our Congress prohibits unilateral withdrawal from NATO so, if The Oath-Breaking SoB does not actually and publicly defy the law, he and his foreign policy MAGA sycophants will neuter NATO (as have those sycophants) by ignoring actions proposed by NATO members in support of Ukraine against Russia.
I really appreciate this pod.
You both have different opinions than my own on several things, but I think we share more common values than we have differences.
That was fabulous. I appreciate the considerate tone with which you two talked. There was almost a kind of kindness to the horror and clownish nature of the subject matter without sacrificing respect for the consequences that did leave me a bit more hopeful about what will come out of the other end of this presidency .
I disagree. I don't think we have time to wait and see and be "cool, cool considerate (wo)men". We can only do that if we have the privilege of not being in the line of fire. What about those who are? "Some lives will be lost" - true. Is that ok, if they are not ours?
Our house is on fire. If we wait four years, I'm not sure there will be a house. There might be - but is that good enough?
Cool, Cool, Considerate Men - 1776
https://youtu.be/LxaAw2viEIQ?si=B4cYhsPc4wIHw0tv