Geopolitical Risks and Global Hot Spots: A Conversation with Dr. Richard Haass

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Text: "Wednesdays with Woodward" (registered trademark) Webinar Series. Geopolitical Risks and Global Hotspots: A Conversation with Dr. Richard Haass. Logos: Travelers Institute (registered trademark), Travelers, 15 years. Metro Hartford Alliance, UCONN School of Business MS in Financial Technology, TrustedChoice.com, American Property Casualty Insurance Association, Insuring America. Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA), Professional Insurance Agents (PIA). 

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Today, I'm thrilled and just honored to be joined by veteran diplomat and respected international relations scholar, Dr. Richard Haass. 

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Text: Speakers. Photos of Joan Woodward and Richard Haass. Text: Joan Woodward, Executive Vice President, Public Policy; President, Travelers Institute, Travelers. Richard Haass, President Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations; Senior Counselor, Centerview Partners. 

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Dr. Haass is President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he served there as President for over 20 years. He's also a Senior Counselor with Centerview Partners, an international investment banking advisory firm. 

He served under multiple presidents in the State Department under Presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, at the White House under George H. W. Bush, and at the Pentagon under Jimmy Carter.

He was U.S. envoy to the Cyprus negotiations and the Northern Ireland peace process; after 9/11, was coordinator for the U.S. for the Future of Afghanistan. Dr. Haass is the author or editor of 14 books on American foreign policy, one book on management and one book on American democracy. His latest book, The Bill of Obligations, 10 Habits of Good Citizens, was published in January 2023 and became a New York Times best seller. Many of you have taken advantage of our offer to receive a copy of it.

He also authors a weekly newsletter, which is fantastic. It's called "Home and Away," available on Substack. So check that out. A Rhodes scholar, Dr. Haass holds a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College, the master's and doctorate of philosophy degrees from Oxford University, and numerous honorary degrees. He's a recipient of the State Department Superior Honor Award, the Presidential Citizens Medal, the Tipperary International Peace Award. So what better person to join us today to discuss the global landscape?

It feels like the challenges around the world are just growing daily and increasingly complex, threatening and interlocking with each other. From the Israeli-Hamas war to the war in Ukraine and hostilities with Russia to tensions with China and Iran and other authoritarian alliances, there's no shortage of foreign policy and national security challenges. So for the next hour, we'll get to hear Dr. Haass's perspective on some of these global hotspots and geopolitical risk and the impact they're going to have on us back home, and also to our business and possibly our personal lives.

So, sorry, Richard. That was a long intro, but I had to do it all. It's a huge honor to have you with us here today, so thank you so much for your time.

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A split screen shows Joan and Richard side by side, each speaking to us from their own office. 

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RICHARD HAASS: Thank you, Joan. It's great to be with you on the alliterative Wednesdays with Woodward. And also, great to be back with Travelers. I spent a few days with you all in Florida, and I still aim to switch all my insurance over to you. What more can I say? 

JOAN WOODWARD: Excellent, excellent. We'd love to have you. I'm sure you're not that much of a risk.

RICHARD HAASS: Oh, I don't know. 

JOAN WOODWARD: And I'm sure there's a number of agent brokers out there that would love to have your business as well. So thank you. So you've been making or influencing foreign policy for almost 50 years now.

You wrote this book in 2017, A World in Disarray. Seven years later, the disarray looks almost quaint, I have to say. It feels very much that the disarray has multiplied exponentially.

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Have you seen this many crises at one time? And why is it that the world is just so volatile right now? 

RICHARD HAASS: The short answer is not-- look, we went through a cold war, which was informed by one central competition. Just before the Cold War, you had a World War. So it's not as though the past was perfect. So let's just stipulate that.

I think what's different now is you've got so many things going on at once, either actual or would be wars or conflicts in Europe, and the Middle East and the Asia Pacific. You've got global challenges. We've just got through a pandemic.

We're obviously facing a severe climate crisis. You've got strong states that are essentially get up every morning, the leadership, and thinks about how they can overturn the global system, like Russia. You've got other countries that are too weak.

They simply can't perform the obligations of governance within their territory. A lot of countries in the Middle East, and Africa and Latin America fall into that box. And all this is happening at a time, no one here needs me to remind them, where the United States is both divided politically, but also, there's precious little consensus about what we ought to be doing in the world. What's our definition of success? What's an appropriate level and direction of effort? So what makes this, to me, so worrisome a moment is not any single thing, but it's all of these things brought together.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, thank you for that overview. Let's go to each specific global hotspot, if you will. So first, the Israeli-Hamas war-- the war between them has been going on now for 10 months with really no end in sight, no incentive for leadership on either side to end it. So how, in your view, will this end?

RICHARD HAASS: So you're an optimist, Joan, and I appreciate that. The idea that wars end and then there's a clear, neat moment afterwards isn't always the case. The Korean War, the fighting ended, what, in the early '50s. But here we are, still don't have a peace treaty.

We have an armed border, an armistice. Cyprus has been divided since the mid '70s. So my guess is for Gaza, for the foreseeable future, there's not a peace agreement. There's not an actor representing Gaza that is willing to make peace with Israel that Israel would find acceptable.

Hamas is obviously unacceptable. This Israeli government is, shall we say, quite to the right. So my guess is, what happens in Gaza is the war doesn't end so much as it goes to a fairly low level. The intense phase of fighting has essentially come and gone, for the most part.

The Israelis are still going after the leadership of Hamas. But there's more than 10,000 Hamas fighters still in-- maybe 15,000 or more still in the general population. So I think you have some very messy situation of, every once in a while, violence.

It's not clear what kind of an international presence you'll have there. I think it'll be very hard under these circumstances to feed the population, much less rebuild. I think it just remains messy.

I think the other two theaters, though, of that part of the world are also worrisome-- the immediate ones. By that, I mean, the north. I think there's a legitimate question whether Israel and Hezbollah go to war in the north. Hezbollah is another group like Hamas, backed by Iran.

Right now, you've probably got 75,000 Israelis who can't go back to their homes. They're within range, within short range of Hezbollah rockets. And the question is, what does Israel do about that? They're stretched militarily, but this is ultimately an untenable situation.

And then the third area, which hasn't been getting a whole lot of attention, is the West Bank, which is the area of the greatest Palestinian population. And what you're seeing there is, you're seeing increasing violence there. You're beginning to see, in some ways-- and this sounds extreme, and I hope I'm wrong, but it's beginning to take on some of the complexion of Gaza.

And by that, I mean you're beginning to see much more radical Palestinian leadership. The more centrist-- whatever you want to call it-- Palestinian Authority is essentially getting shunted to the side. And you're seeing more armed clashes between Israeli forces and these radical Palestinian groups that, in some cases, have been inspired by Hamas. Meanwhile, you've got Israeli settlement activity continuing apace.

So if I added all this up, sorry to be so negative, I don't see any of the prerequisites of peace here. I spent a lot of my life, as you suggested, as a diplomat. There's not a lot to work with here. In order for diplomacy to work anywhere, you need local protagonists, leaders who are both willing and able to make compromises for peace. And I just don't see that at the moment anywhere.

JOAN WOODWARD: Well, another aspect is this. And President Biden has really been drawn in with these massive spring campus protests, political fallout, obviously, Prime Minister Netanyahu accusing Biden of withholding arms. And you've advised many presidents, as I said at the top of the show. What would your advice be now to President Biden and this administration on handling this and these arms? Are we actually withholding them? Do you know?

RICHARD HAASS: Basically, no. I mean, Israel gets $3.8 billion-- with a B-- of military aid from this country every year. We withheld a minute number of just one category of essentially large bombs-- 502,000-pound bombs-- because we didn't want those used in Gaza because they cause too many civilian casualties. That is 0.0001% of American military aid to Israel. So nothing is essentially being withheld.

Clearly, the United States and Israel are not on the same page. You mentioned the war has been going on for nine, 10 months. And essentially, most American advice, most American counsel has been rejected by this Israeli government throughout that time.

I don't think persuasion is going to work. We're not on the same page. So I would say, the United States needs a more independent policy, rather than saying our policy towards these challenges that you and I have just been talking about is going to be based upon our ability to persuade Israel. I would say, let's assume we can't persuade Israel. And what is it we want to do independently in the U.N.?

What do we want to do independently in the region in terms of diplomatic initiatives? What do we want to do independently, perhaps, to introduce some sanctions against Israeli settlements? What do we want to do to try to strengthen and reform the Palestinian Authority so there is potentially a Palestinian interlocutor.

Essentially, I think what the United States needs to do is stop channeling or funneling its policy here through Israel and increasingly do it independently, and perhaps find some other countries to work with, such as some of the Arab countries, leading with Saudi Arabia.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. So with all that you just said, I think it's really important to understand. So has the U.S. response to this war actually generated increased respect and appreciation for the United States and our involvement there? Or is it undermining our most important relationships in the region? How would you think about that?

RICHARD HAASS: I think it's been a net loss for the United States. Domestically, the U.S.-Israeli relationship has lost a lot of its support in the population. And I think it's hurt President Biden politically, and he's in the ironic position where, for the most stout, robust supporters of Israel, he's been too critical. And for many Americans, he hasn't been nearly critical enough. So I think that's here.

I think, around the world, anytime the United States advocates for something, and it doesn't happen and there's not much follow up, it diminishes our prestige. And I think we've allowed that to happen in the Middle East. And it's hurt our standing in the Arab world.

A lot of these images are being shown on Arab television. This is a very hot topic. And there's not a lot of love lost in parts of the Arab world for Palestinians-- long history behind that.

But at the moment, there's growing popular sympathy for them, even to the extent that places like Saudi Arabia. At the risk of getting in the weeds, a couple of years ago when the United States tried to get the Saudis to normalize its relationship with Israel like other countries did in the Abraham Accords, the Saudis barely mentioned the Palestinian issue. All they cared about was the security commitment from the United States and some help in the nuclear sphere.

Because of what happened since October 7, now they are requiring significant movement on the Palestinian front. Even authoritarian leaders have to be respectful or mindful of popular pressures. So I think what's happened since October 7 has radicalized-- or politicized may be a better word-- the Arab world, again, around the Palestinian issue to some extent. And I think it's hurt America's standing.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, OK. I mentioned at the top of the show that there's a lot of business owners, business leaders on this call. And again, this is a record turnout for us. We've had over 5,000 people interested in this webinar. So thank you all, listeners, for joining us.

But I want to talk about the U.S. economy. And what, in your view, is the economic impact in the U.S. of this continued-- this particular continued conflict, Israel and Hamas?

RICHARD HAASS: Almost nil.

JOAN WOODWARD: Almost nothing?

RICHARD HAASS: Yeah, that's what's so interesting. And it's one of the other reasons that might go on for a while. There’s not-- it's one thing where the world feels a crisis can't go on.

You take even-- we'll talk about in a minute, I expect-- the much more intense crisis in Ukraine. And the world's learned to live with that now, this phase of it, for nearly two and a half years. And you want to go back to 2014.

So the idea that it's somehow intolerable-- it hasn't affected energy flows meaningfully. I mean, separately, the Houthis, yet another group supported by Iran, have increased shipping costs for certain--  shipping has to take a different route. But this has been much more of a political issue than something that is affected the economy here or anywhere.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. All right. We'll get to Russia and Ukraine and how that's affected us as well. But I want to talk about an op-ed you recently wrote in The Boston Globe, saying in the wake of all this, university campuses-- all this protest this spring-- that students should be required to have a one-day session on free speech and how it relates to other people's rights and obligations. Can you talk about that for a moment?

RICHARD HAASS: Sure. I mean, think about it. A lot of people, particularly freshman, first-year students, come to universities. It's their first experience in a community like that.

They're not living at home. They're not living with people who go to the-- maybe go to the same church or people they've known for the last 17, 18 years. They're put into a very complex society, if you will.

And my view is schools need to prepare them for that. How do you debate? How do you disagree? What are the rules? What are the guidelines on ruling out violence when you disagree? What's legitimate free speech? What isn't? What are the rights of those with whom you disagree?

I wouldn't assume that students showing up on campus know those things. And so you've got a four-year-- two or four-year experience on campus, depending on the kind of school. And then you've got the rest of your life. Plus, 18-year-olds showing up at campus are old enough to vote. I assume most of them are showing up on campus with little or no civics education.

So I would think one of the best things schools could do-- it's often called first-year experience-- is that opening week, instead of just talking about the various social activities that are available on campus, or this or that fraternity or sorority, or what have you, let's invest in this. Let’s-- and I think there's-- one, it's a good way to bring students together. Then they have some common experience.

Maybe they've read some of the same things. Maybe they've talked about some of the same things. So they get to meet one another. And I think it helps prepare them for their time.

I'd also potentially like to see more offerings. If the Middle East is going to remain a hot topic, you may need to have more offerings there for students because so many of the people on campus don't have the background about the history and the politics. And what I just said about civics in high school, I would say even more in college. I don't think it ought to be possible to graduate from an American college or university without a grounding in civics.

We wouldn't let someone leave campus unable to read or write or have a degree of computer literacy. So I think we ought to give them a degree of what I would call civics literacy. What are the basics they need to know about democracy, about the obligations of citizenship? How do they navigate the internet and other sources of information when there's so much misinformation and so forth? So I think we need to do a much more systematic approach and make a commitment to doing it on campuses, high schools and colleges to prepare people for citizenship in this era.

JOAN WOODWARD: I love it. I love it. Yeah, what's more important? Learning civics and understanding how to be a good citizen or joining a sorority? OK, let's shift, and let's go to NATO and talk about Russia-Ukraine. The summit just occurred last week, marking 75-year anniversary, the largest political and military alliance in the history of the world-- 32 member nations committed to protecting each other.

So at the summit, everyone reaffirmed their commitment to putting Ukraine on a "path."

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She makes finger quotes when she says the word "path." 

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OK. You tell us what the path means over the course of the war. So obviously, NATO has sent a lot of military equipment, including the U.S., to countries like Ukraine, but also Poland. 

Poland has held Ukrainian refugees in the West, obviously has sanctioned Russia. So on the NATO alliance, I guess the question is to you, should the war-- tell us your view of what's going to happen in the war. Tell us your view of how much we actually spend on NATO and the rest of the world spending on NATO. And after two years here of this invasion, they're still very much struggling.

RICHARD HAASS: Let me say one or two things about NATO first. NATO, as you said, 75 years old. It's been a remarkable success.

The Cold War stayed cold. It was not a hot war, which is the exception to great power competition. And the last I checked, the Cold War stayed cold, ended peacefully, and ended on terms extraordinarily favorable to the United States and the West-- not bad, not bad.

NATO then stayed in place. And it's a good thing it did in some ways because we've had the reemergence of a Russian threat. And NATO has stood by Ukraine over the last couple of years. And some people disagree with me here, but I think it's been the last two-plus years since the February '22 invasion by Russia-- I think it's been a remarkable success. Who would have predicted-- and not many did, even, quote/unquote, "experts--" that Ukraine would hold its own against Russia? And it has.

And if you look at the territorial-- look at the map of Ukraine today, as opposed to February 2022, it's near identical. And that, to me, is a remarkable accomplishment by Ukraine. It deserves the bulk of the credit, but also for the United States and the European members of NATO, who have backed it with military support, economic support and so forth.

So I think it's been quite an extraordinary accomplishment. At the moment, the battlefield is close to a stalemate. No fundamental changes are in the offing. So that's where we are now.

JOAN WOODWARD: Should NATO do more? Should NATO do more? Should the U.S. do more, in your view?

RICHARD HAASS: I mean, we decided early on that we would have an indirect strategy. We wouldn't send our forces there directly. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. And I think an indirect strategy is just fine. What we try to do is support Ukraine, resist Russian aggression without bringing American and Russian forces or Russian and NATO forces into direct conflict.

That's something we avoided during the Cold War, and we'd prefer doing it now. We've provided enormous aid to Ukraine. Could we provide a little bit more aid in some cases? Yeah, but we're providing a lot. Could we reduce some of the strictures on Ukraine's use of aid? I'd say, yes. But I don't think it will make a fundamental difference.

The idea-- again, this is controversial. Let me just say so. But the idea that Ukraine is going to liberate all the land that Russia's occupying, the 20 or so percent of land that Russia's been occupying, mostly since 2014, all of Crimea and the districts in the East through military force, I think, is highly, highly, highly unlikely. So I just think that's a fact. But I think what's essential is that we continue to arm Ukraine because that's the only way to persuade Mr. Putin that time is not on his side.

If he believes time is on his side, he will prosecute the war and either try to eliminate Ukraine as an independent, sovereign country, which is liberal democratic with ties to the West, or try to impose an outcome on it that would be manifestly unfair and unprincipled. So I think we have to help Ukraine defend itself, and we have to persuade Mr. Putin that time is not on his side, that he could fight the war as long as he wants, but he's not going to get what he wants. I think, if we do that, I think we set the stage for negotiation, and that's what I would like to do.

Now, the negotiation won't give either side what they want. Russia won't get what it wants. Ukraine won't get all of its wants.

And I don't think either side has to give up its long-term claims or its principles. Ukraine could agree to a ceasefire or a so-called interim arrangement, a temporary arrangement, but keep its claims to getting all its territory back. Russia could agree to the same and keep its claims against Ukraine.

What I'm trying to do is not have, if you will, full peace. I'm trying to have an end to war, and that's ambitious enough. And I think that's possible. But again, the critical thing for us will be that we continue to support Ukraine militarily, not its liberation of all the lands it's lost, but we basically give it the means to defend itself and to inflict some pain on Russia. So Russia basically begins to come to the reluctant conclusion that the war continuing is not in its interest.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, but this new development-- I mean, the Biden administration has now given Ukraine permission to use U.S. weapons across the border into Russia. So the West is sending more weapons. But even with this added assistance, how do you view us saying to them, go ahead and go into Russian territory with our weapons-- our U.S.-manufactured weapons? I mean, can this strategy help them succeed more quickly?

RICHARD HAASS: Well, I think it's warranted. The idea that you would have Russian forces just on the Russian side of the Ukrainian border and they would somehow be in an area you couldn't attack, and you had to wait until they attacked or something and only shoot at them when they entered Ukraine seems, to me, silly. On the other hand, we don't want to give Ukraine unlimited freedom. Say, we don't want them attacking sites in Moscow. We're not looking for an all-out war here.

And so what the United States has been trying to do is strike a balance. And I would probably lift some of the constraints on Ukraine, not all of them. But again, you used the word "success." It all depends upon what you mean by success. If your definition of success is that we ought to give Ukraine the ability to liberate the 20% of its territory that's lost, I think that is unrealistic in the extreme.

That is not my definition of success. My definition of success is to end the war roughly on the current territorial distribution, keeping open the possibility through diplomacy and other means of a territorial and diplomatic outcome that would be mutually acceptable-- my guess is-- between Ukraine and some future leadership of Russia, not this one. I don't assume.

Even Mr. Putin won't be there forever. And it's not clear to me that his successor or his successor's successor will necessarily want Russia to be a pariah forever. But for the moment, I think the emphasis ought to be on ending the war, and that means inflicting a degree of pain on Russia and giving Ukraine the means to defend its own.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, I want to bring this conflict back to the U.S. So clearly, when Putin invaded Ukraine, it really was a trigger for United States inflation. Our inflation spiked to 9.1% shortly after the invasion. And as this ongoing conflict, unlike, as you said, the Israeli conflict, just doesn't have a U.S. component.

Well, this clearly did. It spiked inflation for us. Global supply chains were disrupted. So again, is this going to continue to impact our inflation and our economy to the same extent? Or is it subsiding?

RICHARD HAASS: I'd probably challenge your thesis about how much the war spiked inflation.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK.

RICHARD HAASS: Russia has not been a meaningful actor in the international economy. Its GDP is minuscule. The one area the war at least had some impact was on fuel prices, but that was fleeting. So no, I don't think it actually had. I think the behavior of the Federal Reserve Board had a much greater impact on inflation.

All the money we pumped into the economy to get us through COVID and out of COVID-- those are the inflationary things. I do not think this war has had a meaningful impact on inflation. So whether the war continues or ends, I don't see it, again, having a meaningful impact on inflation or the global economy.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. All right. That's good.

All right, let's talk about other things Russia is doing around the world to disrupt lots of different territories. First, I'm going to tick them off, and then we'll get to what you think of these. So Russia is sending ships to Cuba; Russia removing buoys, demarcating the Estonian border in the water; Russia continuing to make nuclear threats against the U.S. and Europe; Russia strengthening or making new alliances with China, Iran and North Korea.

We saw this new treaty, a major Putin-Kim meeting recently. Russia's war in Ukraine is now supported by China, North Korea and Iran with military assistance. So sometimes referred to the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea axis of upheaval-- not the axis of evil, but axis of upheaval. That was coined by George Bush, of course. So these countries clearly show a common thread about common interests of undermining the U.S., and Europe and the democratic world. So what, in your view-- what's the most likely result of this Russian mischief all over the world? And what can we do about it?

RICHARD HAASS: Look, Russia is a truly disaffected actor. When Henry Kissinger wrote about international relations, he often described certain actors in the world as revolutionary. And rather than work within the existing system, they actually wanted to overthrow it and have a different one. And I would put Russia in that area.

China's a more interesting case. China is a little bit of a gray area because they also are so much more integrated in the world than is Russia economically. And China benefits from the world economically. So it's a much more complicated case. But Russia’s not complicated.

And I worry about what it's doing in Europe. I don't worry as much about some of the things it's doing other places. I do worry about its nuclear arms.

A lot of the existing nuclear arms treaties expire-- I think it's 2026, if my memory serves me right. And I worry about whether we could have something of a new nuclear arms race. And Russia's conventional forces as non-nuclear forces have been shown to be so bad.

I worry that increases their reliance on nuclear forces in the future. I am uneasy with Chinese support for Russia, with Russia and North Korea. And so yeah, this is not the world we imagined would arise when the Cold War ended 3 1/2 decades ago. It's a much more fragmented world. We have many more forces arrayed against us.

The way we deal with this essentially is we've got to be strong ourselves. And that means keeping our-- I think, building up our defense, so we can deal in multiple geographies at once. I think we've got to dramatically increase our defense manufacturing base.

And then we've also got to keep our relations with allies robust. That's the great strategic or comparative advantage of the United States. We have strategic partners in Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East, and we have got to keep those partnerships robust.

We've got to get our friends to do more in certain areas or do more together. But that's the way. Again, it won't mean eliminating the Russian threat, but I think it does mean deterring it or countering it, if need be. I think that's realistic.

But the threat is growing greater. I'm not arguing your point. And I worry about the greater-- what's the word-- connectivity or collaboration among Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, what have you. And this is a stressful moment in the world.

When I wrote the book-- you mentioned I wrote a book called The World in Disarray. And when I came out with it, some people thought I was too negative. Well, guess what, I turned out to be an optimist. Who knew?

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And things have deteriorated pretty significantly pretty fast. So we've got a lot on our plate at the moment. And all the things you describe, they're some of the things that occupy the plate. 

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. Let's stay on China just for a moment here because some people say that China faces real significant internal challenges, including fragile economy, huge demographic problems, massive environmental cleanups, and inefficiency and corruptions that come with an authoritarian state. So can we expect this geopolitical rise that China's been on for decades now in any way to stumble in the coming years?

RICHARD HAASS: It's a great question. All those things are true. China is not 10 feet tall. It faces severe challenges domestically. I think the demographic is the great long-term challenge. The economic is probably the greatest short-term challenge.

On the other hand, they still have real strengths. There is massive public government-steered investment in select areas, which means China will be competitive in areas like AI, quantum computing, what have you. They are a major force in the global economy.

China possesses the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world. They have decided they want to become one of the big boys with the United States and Russia. They have a large and growing conventional military. They've got a very active aid program around the world, so-called Belt and Road. So China is a multidimensional challenge.

And even if the growth is slowed, which it has, even if they face severe domestic challenges, which they do, it doesn't mean that the challenge they constitute or pose isn't growing, because it is. And it's a much more complicated foreign policy challenge to us because, again, it's multidimensional. And China is one of our largest trading partners.

It is also the largest trading partner of many of our allies-- the South Koreans and others. It has a major role, obviously, with Taiwan. So the question is, it's not a one-dimensional relationship. How do you manage a multidimensional relationship? Very tough.

And what makes it even more complicated is just say the problems, Joan, get worse. That doesn't mean the national security challenge that China poses gets less. There's a school of thought that if China hits real headwinds at home, it might be tempted to look abroad as a way of gaining domestic political support. So again, I think the challenge for us with China is how do we restrain them?

How do we deter them from doing things that we think would be adventurous, to say the least, or worse? At the same time, we do-- we do trade with them. We have to restrict the trade in certain areas. We don't want certain technologies to go there. So it turns out to be the most complex-- I guess I would describe it as the most complex relationship we have in the world, arguably the most important, but certainly the most complex.

JOAN WOODWARD: Yeah. I mean, they also buy a lot of our debt, right? Every month at the Treasury, the bonds are auctioned off, and the Chinese are buying a lot of our budget deficit matter and our debt matters because they're the only one.

RICHARD HAASS: They're one of the two or three bigger holders-- Japan, China. I mean, none is at a critical level. They're all at the trillion or so dollar level. And for better or worse, mainly for worse, our debt keeps going up at an alarming rate. I think foreign holdings, government holdings of our debt, to me, is not the biggest problem with our debt that they're going to somehow manipulate it.

They might try. But I worry more that we have to keep going into the debt markets for more and more. And at some point, I worry that the world's going to grow a little bit weary of buying our debt. And one of the things we're going to have to then do is raise rates.

Well, normally, you raise rates to cool an overheated economy. If we have to start raising rates to attract people to fund our debt, then we've got massive economic problems. And also, we don't want to encourage people to move away from a dollar-centered world.

And if they lose confidence in the dollar, either because of our debt, or we try to inflate our way out of it or what have you, again, I worry about the impact of that on our borrowing costs and on our economy. And right now, our borrowing costs are out of control. We're now-- last I checked-- don't hold me to this, but I'm pretty sure we're spending as much or more on servicing our debt as we are on defense.

JOAN WOODWARD: That's right. It's $1 trillion last year. I talk about this a lot, actually. This is important to me, is the defense budget was $1 trillion. The interest on the debt and Social Security payments are $1.3 trillion. So you're right. It's a huge problem.

RICHARD HAASS: Yeah. And what's terrible about this money is, I want to see money invested in our future and training human capital, the physical capital and so forth. And what debt servicing is doing is taking this large and growing chunk of our wealth, and it's a totally useless place.

It's not investment. And so, to me, it's a necessary but negative use. But I got to be honest with you at the risk of being overly pessimistic.

I don't see, across the political spectrum, much will or interest in doing something serious about this. I think what it would take on either spending or taxes or whatever, but the idea that, we're simply going to grow our way out of it, unlikely. So my guess is the debt problem-- it's one of those problems we like to ignore, and we'll probably keep ignoring it until we can't.

Herb Klein's old comment, "that which can't go on forever won't." Well, right now, it's going on forever. But I think, at some point, there could be a reckoning. But I don't see a lot of political will to do what is necessary to avoid that.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. Thank you for that. We got off-- that's my fault. We got off on a little bit of sidetrack.

But let's get back to China for a minute because you mentioned Taiwan. And obviously, there's flashpoints all over the Indo-Pacific region. Let's talk about how we-- we the U.S.-- should be supporting Taiwan now in this moment. And do you see a potential for an accidental engagement maybe between the U.S. and Chinese forces over it?

RICHARD HAASS: Well, two things-- I'm much more worried about a purposeful engagement than an accidental one. If an accident happens, in my experience, it can get tense. It can get messy. But there's ways of communicating, and there's ways of turning the temperature down if people want to.

This isn't the start of World War I. So if the United States and China were to have an incident in the South China Sea or Taiwan, the means are there to put a ceiling on it, I believe, if there's a will. The more dangerous thing is that a crisis comes purposeful.

And it would become because China decides that there's an opportunity, and there's a whole menu of military possibilities from the limited to the fairly unlimited. So that worries me. And the question is, can we continue to discourage or deter China from doing that?

And we try to reassure them we're not supporting Taiwan's independence. Taiwan's not about to become independent. We want to keep the political situation as is. But we want China to know that if it were to do something dramatic, that it would pay an enormous cost that would outweigh any potential benefits.

What I think is uncertain is our willingness and ability to do that. China has been steadily building up its capacity to use force against Taiwan in that theater. And we have not kept pace.

And there's doubts again about our will and our ability. And I think that's a serious issue. And I think China will be far more tempted or would be far more tempted to use military force to change the status quo if they sensed that America was not willing to come to Taiwan's defense.

And if we were not willing to do that, I think it would have enormous consequences in what's the most critical part of the world, the Asia Pacific-- sometimes called the Indo-Pacific now-- beyond Taiwan, which is significant enough, a democracy with 24 million people, the largest producer of advanced chips in the world and all that. But I think it would pull the thread very dramatically on the sweater of confidence in the United States. Japan, South Korea, other countries, India would all rethink their relationship with us, with China.

I think it could become a powerful tool or-- what's the word-- incentive for countries to perhaps proliferate nuclear weapons. I think it could be an extraordinarily dangerous development. So the stakes with Taiwan are great.

And again, my goal is not to fight a war there. Don't get me wrong. I can look at a map. I understand the geography. I understand the cause.

My goal is to deter one. We've been doing that for half a century. But the demands of doing it have gone up, and we have to make sure we're willing to meet those demands, and we've not been.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. Thank you for that. It's incredibly complex. I understand. We only had three minutes to talk about it.

But last question on China-- how should U.S. businesses think about investing-- investments in China or trade with China? There's lots of talk now about potential tariffs. But give us your last thoughts about how this affects, again, the business community.

RICHARD HAASS: That's a good question, and it's a necessary question-- a little bit complicated. But look, it's grown much more difficult, certainly in anything to do with technology. So I think you have to assume that if you are in a business where there's an advanced technology dimension, that you are going to face all sorts of hurdles.

Now, Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary, talks about a fence in the yard. And basically, the yard's gotten larger, and the fence has gotten higher in terms of building obstacles to certain types of technology relationships with China. So that's one thing.

Secondly, before I get to tariffs, you've also had problems in the last few months. And you see it where the Biden administration has been talking to the Chinese and warning them not only about this-- this comes, by the way, because the United States and China are geopolitical competitors, and China has had a pattern of intellectual property theft over the last couple of decades. Also, there's real concern that China is reverting to an export-led growth model. China was experimenting with the idea of a domestic-- a greater emphasis on domestic-led growth.

That seems not to be working. Chinese citizens don't seem particularly interested in converting their savings into spending. So China is, once again, getting very-- is subsidizing and its export industries. And I think the United States and others are saying, we're not going to put up with it a second time. So I think there's that issue. And the question then is, where does that lead? And how does China potentially retaliate?

Then, I think, look, if Mr. Trump wins the election, you have an extra level then of tariffs, not just the tariffs across the board. You're just talking about a 10% tariff. But he's also talking about much higher tariffs against China. And then lastly, the question is, if there were to be some kind of a conflict between the United States and Taiwan, all bets are off.

So I would simply say, if you add up these various buckets-- the technology bucket, the Chinese-led, the export-led, the revival of export-led growth, possibility of tariffs, possibility of conflict-- you have to think really hard about how dependent-- how many of your eggs you want to put in a China basket, particularly if there's a technology dimension. And so I think companies need to think really long and hard about to what extent they can diversify both supply chains, markets. But I think highly China-dependent strategies are more fraught than they were and probably, in the future, are going to be more fraught yet.

But I should say, this is an area of some agreement between Democrats and Republicans. So there's a difference of degree between, say, what a second Biden administration and what a Trump administration would do vis a vis China. But it's a question of degree, not of direction. We are looking at a more confrontational economic relationship with China, certainly in the technology space, certainly over their subsidized exports, potentially if there were to be a conflict.

And I think the one big-- I think the real difference right now is the extent of tariffs. And I think under a Trump presidency, you would have more and higher tariffs. But just like the Biden administration maintained the tariffs they inherited from the first Trump administration, it's a question of degree more than anything else.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. And obviously, those potentially could be inflationary, right, to the U.S. economy?

RICHARD HAASS: Absolutely. Yeah, I think tariffs not could be, they would be. Tariffs would be inflationary. Massive changes to immigration policy would be inflationary. Government spending would.

So yeah, I think in the short run, the inflation may be coming down here. And I think there's continuing debates about the Fed lowering rates. But I think, depending upon policies and all that, I can see a renewal of inflationary pressures over the next year or two. Not everybody agrees with that, but I would say, a growing number of real economists, which I am not, would agree with that.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. I want to shift gears because this is a very important moment for us to talk about democracy and threats to the U.S. You recently wrote this, quote, "While the United States faces no shortage of dangerous threats from abroad, the greatest peril to the country comes from none other than ourselves. It's what keeps me up at night," end quote. So we've just covered all of these global hotspots, but you think the greatest threat is from within. Can you tell us why?

RICHARD HAASS: Yeah, absolutely. And it's not a place I ever thought I'd get to. So when I first came to that, I was somewhat surprised because I'm a foreign policy guy by training, by definition. But look, our ability to contend with all the threats we've talked about-- China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, climate change, you name it, terrorism, what have you-- depends upon our having the focus, the consensus, the resources and so forth to do something about them.

And if we are tearing ourselves apart at home, we're going to be distracted, or we won't be able to come together. I mean, you saw when we couldn't come together about aid funding for Ukraine. That clearly shifted the balance of power on the battlefield. Depending upon our politics, if we turn our backs on the world and say, it's no longer a priority, then I think we bring about a much more violent world.

And we could do it if we were to move away from Ukraine or signal that we're not going to come to Taiwan's defense and so forth. So I think a lot depends upon our willingness and ability to remain a significant actor in the world. We've done it for 75 years. Turns out to have been the best run of history in modern world history, not that we got everything right, but we got a lot of the big things right.

And look, I get it. There's dangers in trying to do too much and to overreach. And I think we have overreached at times in Iraq, perhaps in Afghanistan, Vietnam, at times in Korea.

But I'm also very sensitive to the dangers of underreach. And right now, I think that's probably the greater danger in the American body politic because I think, across the political spectrum, there's a sense that obviously we do have real domestic challenges. We need to do more to do them. But the way to meet our challenges at home is not by doing-- it’s not by not meeting challenges abroad. That won't help us.

In many cases, our problems are not how much we spend here at home. It's how we spend the money. So again, doing less overseas won't make things better. A world that's unwilling or unable to come together to deal with geopolitical challenges, or economic challenges, or health challenges or climate challenges-- we can't insulate ourselves from it. And these oceans on either side are not moats, and we can't pull up the drawbridge in a global world, like it or not.

So I worry about our divisions, which make it-- at best, they make it more difficult for us to come together to come up with policies to meet challenges, be it the border, education, crime, whatever. It's a long list of domestic challenges. Or worse, they totally distract us, so we're no longer interested in playing a significant role in the world.

JOAN WOODWARD: Speaking of that, so I want to talk about the role of foreign disinformation campaigns-- growing discontent that we're experiencing. As we saw in Europe over the last few weeks, lots of elections going on there. A lot of populism coming into that. Are we doing enough to counter foreign disinformation?

Should the U.S. government be taking a more active role, a more offensive posture in this geopolitical competition coming in? How could we do that? How could the government take a more active role in this foreign disinformation campaign?

RICHARD HAASS: Look, it's a good question. So what could we do more to defend ourselves? It's hard given we're an open society. We allow anonymous entities on the internet, all these bots and stuff. So we've made ourselves more vulnerable than we need to be.

Could we do more offense? Sure, but it's not clear we'd necessarily work in the way of deterrence. And because we're a more open society, we're probably even more vulnerable than they might be just by the nature of how we structure ourselves.

But let me give you a heretical answer, which you may or may not agree with. I'm much more worried about domestic disinformation than I am Russian or Chinese. So I'm much more worried about made-in-America stuff that's on the internet and various social media sites than I am stuff that's made in Russia. And I'm much more worried about the fact that a lot of Americans coming to those sites are not reading them or watching them with sufficient skepticism.

Several states have started, as part of the civics curriculum, information literacy to teach young people how to navigate the internet. What's a fact? How do you know a fact? How do you judge what's a trusted source of information and so forth? What's good information hygiene, multiple sourcing and so forth?

So because I believe we can't solve the problem of what's coming out there, and we're not willing to restrict what carriers carry on the internet-- we've had those debates many times. Congress and the courts aren't willing to restrict them meaningfully-- then I would actually put much greater emphasis on consumers being more informed, being better consumers. But again, I'm more worried what we ourselves are doing in the information space than what the Russians are doing.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, OK. There's certainly a whole, whole webinar on that, for sure.

RICHARD HAASS: For sure.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. So let's talk about your book, your amazing book, The Bill of Obligations, The 10 Habits of Good Citizens.

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Text: The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens. The cover of the book, "The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens," by Richard Haas, New York Times Bestseller. The illustration shows an American flag that's been cut in half and is being stitched together with a needle and thread. Text: Be Informed, get involved, stay open to compromise, remain civil, reject violence, value norms, promote the common good, respect government service, support the teaching of civics, put country first. 

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We talked about your concerns about the state of democracy. 

But your book is actually a guide about good citizenship and how our country, our neighbors, what they can do. So these obligations and your 10 habits of good citizens that you write about are on the screen right now. We're giving everyone-- obviously, we gave out the book if you were interested in that. But these 10 good habits-- how can we incorporate these habits into our daily lives and get others interested in this? As you well know, our CEO, Alan Schnitzer, created a whole program here at Travelers called Citizen Travelers that encourages all our employees to become more informed and engaged as citizens. So give us a few moments on these 10 good habits, and how can we really enact these in our lives starting today?

RICHARD HAASS: First of all, let me just salute what Alan has done and what Travelers has done. I think it's a model. And Travelers is an extraordinary corporate citizen, since we're talking about citizenship. And so I just salute it.

I applaud it. And I would love to see more large corporations in America take a page from your collective book because we don't just work at these companies. We're also citizens in our communities in this country.

Look, some things we've talked about already-- teaching literacy in our schools, how to navigate the information space, teaching civics. Having mandatory civics courses in high schools and colleges, I think would be good. I want to resurrect public service.

There's bipartisan support for it. We're also seeing new innovations at the state level, which I think gets public service. It breaks down the divide between citizens and government. It also brings people together who normally wouldn't get to know one another.

One of the big problems facing our society is we're siloed, we're separate. We don't know one another. We only hang out with people who watch the same media or go to the same church or whatever. And I think it's just too narrow. So I like the idea of public service to encourage that.

Look, we just had an awful thing in this country, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. I would love to see-- reject violence is the fifth of the obligations. I would love to see every religious leader, when he or she gives their sermon now, talking about that, that it's good, it's necessary, it's inevitable in democracies that we disagree and debate. That's healthy.

But it doesn't mean we vilify, and it obviously doesn't mean we turn to force. That is not the way we settle our disagreements in this society. There's a case for civility. They can do that.

There's a case to stay open for compromise. We have obligations to one another. So my point is simply that, just like Travelers is doing certain things, I think this is distributed responsibility.

Religious leaders have a role to play here. Educators have a role to play here. Corporate leaders have a role to play here. Parents have a role to play there. It's what we say. It's what we do.

But I don't think American democracy is going to be saved from the top down. I think it's actually, Joan, the wrong way to think about it. I think it gets saved from the bottom up, which is probably the way it should be. If you think about it, we the people-- that's the DNA of our political system.

We're only two years away from the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. So this is going to come from below, and it's going to happen in school rooms, and offices and dining rooms. You name it. And it's going to not be delivered from on top, but it's going to happen from many different directions and so forth. And I think that's the way we're going to preserve American democracy for another 248 years.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. We're going to get to a few audience questions. We're going to do a little rapid fire with you. But first, where can people follow you on social media or read your columns? Can you let people know? Because I'm subscribed to your Substack and at "Home and Away." It's just amazing. I'm going to read it every day. So how can people get in touch with you?

RICHARD HAASS: Thanks. As I say, thank you for asking. Yeah, the best place to follow me is on something called substack.com. It's basically a long-form social media site, for those of you who aren't familiar with it.

So you go to substack.com, and you type in my name, Richard Haass-- H-A-A-S-S-- or you type in the name of my weekly newsletter or sometimes more often called "Home and Away," and you press on it. And the good news is, everyone on this call, on this Zoom, can afford it because it's free. It will not affect your lifestyle.

And I include in that all my other articles. I write articles. I do a column. I write articles on foreign policy and other things.

So that's basically-- for me, that's probably one-stop shopping. I also include in it some of my television things. For example, tomorrow morning, I'll be on “Morning Joe.”

I do Fareed Zakaria's show a lot on CNN. I do Bloomberg or “Squawk Box” a bit. And so anyhow, so I'm out there that way. But probably, the easiest way, if someone wants to know what I think about this or that, both domestic and foreign subjects, hence, the title "Home and Away," is through Substack, through the weekly newsletter on Substack.

JOAN WOODWARD: Wonderful. Thank you for that. OK, some audience questions-- Lawrence Hunt of Hunt Insurance in Illinois asks, "How will Israel possibly make Gaza habitable again for its 1 million-plus displaced residents?" And is it Israel's responsibility? Or is it the U.S.? Who is going to rebuild all this destruction?

RICHARD HAASS: It's a good question. It will only be rebuilt when there's a context of stability. No one's going to throw good money after bad. No one's going to rebuild a building only to have it bombed the next day.

So in order for Gaza to be rebuilt physically, you're going to have to have security in place, a governance system in place. And then you're only going to get there, I believe, when there's an international presence that would, over time, midwife a new governing authority for Gaza. And that's going to require, I believe, Israel willing to work with Palestinian leaders-- not Hamas, but other Palestinian leaders in Gaza and in the West Bank to do that.

So we're several steps away from that. I'll be honest with that. So I think we're still in an open-ended-- how would I call it-- crisis situation, even if the temperature of the conflict goes down. Until there's a degree of stability and predictability in terms of the physical situation and the political situation, I don't think you're going to get a massive-- you'll get relief. There's a difference between relief and reconstruction.

So I think the emphasis for the foreseeable future will have to be on relief. I don't think we can pivot to reconstruction until the context changes, and that will take, in the first instance, some significant change out of Israel. And then I think it will find partners in the Arab world and in the United States.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. Thank you for that. Another question, Carder Dallas of Brown and Brown Insurance-- "How has international diplomacy changed since the start of the 21st century? How do you see it evolving in the years to come?"

RICHARD HAASS: Good question. I was last in government basically at the start of the 21st century. I left in 2003. I think it's probably gotten more difficult, and it's gotten more difficult for a couple of reasons. I'll just think out loud here.

One is the technology. And the technology-- social media has created an environment where it's just harder to get stuff done, harder to keep things secret. And sometimes things must be kept secret, at least for a time.

I also think-- going back to our conversation, Joan-- there's more capacity and more hands. So this is a less ruly world. This is a more difficult world to corral. So the challenge is everything we've been talking about. The challenges facing diplomat are many and varied.

So I think the technology's made it tougher. The geopolitics have made it tougher. And just to give you one example, the first crisis of the post-Cold-War world was 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

Basically, the entire world came together to resist that move and ultimately liberated Kuwait, threw him out. And that included the United States, still the Soviet Union, China, the Arab countries and so forth. Does anyone think if there were a problem like that today, we'd have a similar consensus? No.

Ukraine is proof of it. What happened on October 7 is proof of it. So this is a world that's far more politically fragmented, far more military and communications technology in many more hands. I think this is a much more difficult environment for diplomats to operate in.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. One more question here, and then we're going to sign off. Will Mays of Goss LLC in Michigan says, "Is the, quote, 'porcupine strategy' the best one for Taiwan to utilize to defend against China?"

RICHARD HAASS: Those who aren't familiar with the metaphor, basically a porcupine strategy is you let the aggressor come in, and then you're very hard to swallow from that point on, like a porcupine. The idea is to make them regret coming in. That could be a dimension of the strategy, but it can't be the first line.

The first line has to be to prevent China from coming in. It's a big difference-- coming back to the Iraq metaphor and Kuwait-- big difference between deterring and defending, between defending and liberating. A China that gets into Taiwan raises the bar, the requirements, of helping Taiwan immeasurably and far, far, far more difficult.

So if worse comes to worse, you may want to think about something with a porcupine to make it hard to digest. But what I want to do is have something more of an outer strategy before you get that close. I want to make it hard to get close.

And so, again, it's a dimension of it. And it raises a much larger conversation about Taiwan's level of defense effort, what they ought to be spending their dollars-- their resources on and so forth. That's a really important subject. And I would simply say, they're not doing enough, and they're not doing enough of the right things.

But that would be one dimension of it. But I think a big dimension is what the United States-- and the other country we haven't talked about is Japan. The two most important countries in defending Taiwan besides what Taiwan does for itself will be the United States working with Japan. And what we have to do is figure out ways of creating a larger space or environment that will discourage China from moving against it in the first place.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. Well, with that, I have to thank you so much. This hour has just flown by, and we would love to have you back on. It's just so incredibly interesting, and you're so thoughtful about it and you're nonpartisan.

You're not just bipartisan. You're nonpartisan in how you think about foreign policy. And we're the beneficiaries of that. And let's just hope that everyone takes you up on that challenge to be a good citizen and adopt those 10 practices. So, Dr. Haas, thank you so very much.

RICHARD HAASS: Great to be with Woodward, not just on a Wednesday, but any day. So thank you, Joan. And thank you, all. And again, thank you, all, for what you do. I've got tremendous respect, so thank you.

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JOAN WOODWARD: All right, folks-- thank you, Richard-- there's a link in the chat for our survey. Please take our survey. Please let us know who else you want to have on this program. We read every single word of them. 

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Upcoming Webinars: July 24th: Wind, Hail, Rain, Fire, LIVE from IBHS! Register: travelersinstitute.org. 

(SPEECH)
We also have one more program this summer, and it's a big one. So next week, we'll all be down at the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, or IBHS. And we're burning things down. We're going to have some hail come at us. We're going to have a hurricane, all simulated in the research facility in South Carolina. 

It's an amazing place. And we test lots of products down there. The insurance industry collectively does that. So wind, rain, wildfire, everything you're going to see on our program next Wednesday. So please join us.

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Watch: travelersinstitute.org. Logo: Linked In. Text: Connect: Joan Kois Woodward. Listen: wherever you get your pods. 

(SPEECH)
Also, check out our podcast. We have a podcast now on Apple and Spotify. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. And thanks again for spending your hour, your lunch hour, or your morning hour with us. 

These are all on our website, travelersinstitute.org. All the replays, you can find there. If you've missed this today or you want to send it to a friend, it'll be out shortly on the replay. Thanks again, folks. Enjoy your week, and we'll see you next Wednesday.

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