“This is Bibi’s War” - Harvard’s Graham Allison on the Influences and Endgame of the Iran War

I'm really excited to be joined by Harvard Professor Graham Allison, who's back on All-In. Professor Allison, welcome back to All-In. We last had you at the summit in Los Angeles, so it's great to have a conversation. A lot has happened since we last got together.

For the audience, Graham Allison is the founding dean of the Harvard Kennedy School. He's advised every Secretary of Defense since Kissinger. He's helped dismantle 12,000 Soviet nuclear weapons, and his book, *Destined for War*, remains the definitive framework for understanding the U.S.-China relationship. I think it's worth bringing forward some of the things that have happened in the world since we last met.

Let's start with Iran. The U.S. and Israel are in the middle of an attack on Iran, and the Supreme Leader is dead, but the regime is still holding on to power. Where do you think this conflict will take us, and are we sleepwalking into World War III?

Well, thank you again for having me back. I feel you have a great podcast. I enjoyed the summit, and I'm sorry we're not there in person to catch up, but I think—

Yeah.

About Iran, I have much to say, so this could be a long lecture. Let me just do 4 or 5 quick points.

First point, the most important point, is that there are more questions than answers. So there's a huge level of uncertainty currently about what's happening and what's likely to happen. Part of this is Clausewitz's famous fog of war, but this is a fog of war that's actually increased because we've got 2 big fog machines adding to the confusion: namely, Trump and the administration on the one hand, and Bibi on the other. And then we have all the chatter around it.

So I would say, why did Trump decide to go to war now? There are 6 different reasons he and the administration have given, and they bat each one around. What's the objective? There are 5 different objectives bouncing around. And when is this war going to end? I don't know—a day, a week, a month? Who knows? So it's very uncomfortable to recognize how uncertain things are. Most of the conversation about it tries to make it sound more certain, but I think the place to start is that there's a huge amount of uncertainty.

Having said that, I'll still give you my prejudices about a few of the points. Point 2: This has been an extraordinary demonstration of supreme military power and supreme intelligence power. The U.S. military and the intelligence community, and the Israeli counterparts, have been way, way, way off the charts. I think this should make all Americans proud of what's been built over these 2 decades of investment, but especially in the past decade.

Third point: There's no tears to be shed for Khamenei and the Islamic Republic regime. It's an evil leader and an evil regime. There's no bad thing that could happen to them that we shouldn't be cheering over.

The next point, though, is that breaking something is a lot easier than building something. Destroying targets is something that our military knows very well how to do. Building a new regime—regime change—is something that we know historically doesn't work very well, at least in Iraq and Afghanistan. We've heard every word that's been said in this case. And we then went all in and spent more than a billion dollars and many, many thousands of American lives. When we went into Afghanistan, the Taliban were ruling. When we left Afghanistan, the Taliban were ruling. So I would say, unfortunately, it's against a hard backdrop.

The next point is slightly more controversial, but I think this is Bibi's war. If you're a reader, or if you listen to this and remember *Moby-Dick*, you should go look at it again. Ahab had this fixation, this obsession, with the white whale and tried to find a way to kill the white whale whenever he could. For the last 2 decades, that's been Bibi's No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 agenda. He's tried to sell that war to Obama, to Trump 1, to Biden. How he succeeded in mesmerizing Trump, who I might have thought had his number, I'm surprised.

I'm pro-Israel but anti-Bibi in this respect. I understand he's brilliant politically, but I don't think the arguments that were made—that Trump has actually repeated—that Iran was about to attack us, I see no evidence for that; that Iran was about to get a nuclear weapon, I see no evidence for that; that Iran was building an ICBM that was going to attack the U.S., I see no evidence for that. There are many, many bad things about the Iranian regime, but not most of the claims that were made.

So I look at this and hope it turns out well, but I remember that in wars, very frequently, it's easy to get in and quite difficult to get out.

Let me double-click on that point. You mentioned there are multiple reasons that the administration has messaged for doing this, multiple views on what success looks like, multiple timelines for ending it, and that this is Bibi's war. How do you think Trump was motivated to do this? What is the real motivation?

I'll ask this in the context of the big delegation and visit to China coming up next month. Was Trump motivated fundamentally to create leverage with China and use this as a tool to try to maximize his negotiating leverage going into the Chinese negotiations?

That's a great question, and I wish the answer was that this was all part of a grand strategy. That would make me feel hugely better. But I do Trumpology, and I was actually having dinner last night with Bill O'Reilly, a former student, who I think is one of the better Trumpologists, and we were going back and forth through this.

It's easy enough to see why the window was chosen tactically: Here you had the Supreme Leader and 40 of the other leaders of Iran out in public. So that's an opportunity as a target—the best opportunity that's come along. The question is, why would you be attacking them? And especially Trump, given his campaign and his previous views about not repeating the mistakes of the people that took us into endless, winless wars.

I think Bibi is a magician. His single-mindedness is impressive. His agility in making and developing arguments is impressive. How he managed to persuade Trump that this was a good idea for the U.S. now, I don't have a good idea.

And I think that if I listen to the reasons that even the people closest around him have given, or that Trump has given, they don't seem persuasive. Now, partly Trump is erratic. Partly he acts on the basis of instincts. Somehow it came to him that this was something that could be done.

I think he may actually have painted a pretty upside picture if it's successful, and I hope now that we've gone into it, it will be: redefining security in the Middle East for a generation. So getting rid of the Iranian regime, as Bibi and company have gotten rid of the proxies of the regime earlier, which again, since October 7, has been extremely impressive, could possibly mean—you could say—there's going to be a whole new Middle East.

And if the Middle East were all like the UAE, that would be fantastic—fantastic for all the human beings that live there. So I think maybe he got excited by the upside, not quite careful enough about the risks or the downside, because the number of ways in which this could go wrong is substantial. If we woke up tomorrow and a couple of ships had been sunk or a couple hundred Americans had been killed, it would have a very different image.

And you think that this is independent, then, of the action with Maduro and independent of the big delegation headed to China for big negotiations next month?

Well, I wouldn't say entirely independent. With Maduro, I think Trump—again, this is my armchair Trumpology—but I would say initially he thought tariffs were a magic wand. Every leader thinks if you have a magic wand, that's fantastic. He's tried the tariff magic wand and discovered it didn't quite have all the effects that he imagined on Liberation Day.

He didn't discover the American military, which genuinely is a huge wand, and the Maduro operation was just spectacular. Again, it was a military and intelligence operation—brilliant. No other country in the world could even imagine doing something like that. And that actually makes all of us stand taller.

It can also, historically, encourage hubris and the imagination that this magic wand can work in many other arenas. I don't mind at all the proposition that every other country should take account of the fact that the U.S. has the most remarkable military and intelligence community in the world. That's not a bad backdrop for China and for a China trip.

So I agree that things may not be completely disconnected, but I think in terms of the timing, right now, when is the war going to be over? If you talk about 3 or 4 weeks, we'll already—he'll be in China March 29. So my inclination, again, if we were just doing a prediction market, is that he's going to find a way to declare this over before then, because he needs a little time to get his mind set on that.

But if you ask the folks at the Defense Department, if you ask the people in Israel, they're thinking this is another month or beyond for this war.

So again, there are things I don't think are quite in sync. Jason joined us for some hours, and it's always a treat to have you here.

See you.

Nice to see you. It's just amazing to have you on here and to give us this time. If things were to go extremely well, and Iran went from a monarchy to a dictatorship and now, in this third act here in the modern day, to a democracy—and you actually had a democracy with 93 million citizens in the Middle East—what impact would that have on the region? We've seen the Gulf monarchies evolve on human rights, but they're still monarchies. You have one other, I guess, democracy in the region, in Israel, but this could be extraordinary if it was a democracy. What would that mean to the global chessboard?

Well, it's a good question. If this could occur, it would be spectacular. But I would say this is way, way, way too ambitious. There are 100 things that would be wonderful outcomes, better than what's likely, that would be short of that.

I remember in Iraq, after Bush failed to find nuclear weapons, which was the initial, I would say, rationale for our going into Iraq. Condi Rice, who was the secretary, gave a speech about how wonderful it would be when Iraq was a democracy and market economy, quote, “radiating stability through the Middle East.” So we're pretty good at doing an “I have a dream” in that version. I think that's a way, way stretch.

I would be very happy with a regime there that simply was not about building nuclear weapons, was not about building missiles that threaten the U.S. and our friends and allies in the region, and not about supporting proxies. If it's a pretty cruel regime, unfortunately, that's unfortunate for the Iranian people—the Persian people.

As a student of history, I love Persia. I remember Cyrus, and I remember the Peloponnesian War. I remember—this is a fantastic culture and history. They've been hijacked by a terrible, terrible group of people. If those people can be somehow ousted, wonderful for the Iranian people and wonderful for the world.

If I were betting, again, I'd say go back to the first point: it's all uncertainty. Finding signals in the noise is extremely difficult. But if I were betting, it'll end up that the guys with the guns will, in some version, be the next generation. If they're tamer and less determined to threaten our interests, will this have been worth it? Well, again, we'll have to look at it over the longer run.

I think the other thing that we know about wars is that they're unpredictable and that they have many unanticipated consequences. I think as we watch what's happening now and ask, what impact does that have on oil and gas prices? Predictable. So you can see it going and going. What impact does that have on other countries? Huge.

The number of countries now whose economies are being disrupted by this impact, and therefore blaming us for it, is growing. I had a call from someone in Taiwan yesterday saying, “Wait a minute, did anybody think what this is doing for us?” About half of their electricity comes from natural gas, and that is now not coming.

If you ask what this means for Ukraine, all the Patriots that were supposed to prevent missile strikes from Russia on Ukraine are now in the Middle East. So that's that many more targets. This just, unfortunately, unfolds in so many different directions.

Now, I don't want to seem too pessimistic about it because, again, I think we've been shocked, fortunately, on the upside by how professional our military and intelligence folks have been, and also how pathetic—or hollow—the Iranians have been. On the first day of the attack, I was at the Defense Department, and I gave them a list of 11 things that I would do and be capable of doing if I were playing the Iranian hand. They seem to be—I don't know. I don't know how to even say this out loud, but they act like a paper tiger.

Do you think there's more damage that can be done by being more successful? If we think back to Iraq, Iran has twice as many people—100 million versus 50 million—four times the land area, a much better-equipped military, and, arguably, the military system—the regime—is embedded in every aspect of industry.

So the more successful the United States is in dismantling the Iranian regime—and as was advised by Condoleezza Rice, who apparently was just in the White House today and advising the president and publicly stated, “It's time to finish them off. It's time to go all the way,” et cetera—does that not then leave a country with no infrastructure, no leadership, 100 million people in tatters? That's the classic breeding ground for some of these extremist groups to seize control and seize power. We don't have the resources to go in and have another multidecade Afghanistan-Iraq problem.

I'm afraid I agree. Yes, I think the uncertainties about that—I mean, you can do 4 or 5 different scenarios for how this might conceivably end. It could end up being an extended civil war in Iran among the various national groups, even some of them possibly seceding. So, again, fairly chaotic. It could look like Syria plus. It could look like Iran or Afghanistan.

Well, excuse me, we were there for more than a decade with unlimited resources, hardly any constraints on the number of people. How did that work out? I'd say that I'm a small-c conservative and kind of think history is not always—not the only guide, but it's a good place to start.

Well, I'm nervous, yeah. Is it too late to have a Venezuelan outcome where we've taken out the head of the snake and we've simply replaced it? The snake can continue operating and living without too much destructive damage and effect, but it seems like we may be a little too far gone now in Iran, and that to take this all the way might be very difficult to manage. Is it too late?

If I were—again, we're all in the dark and all the uncertainty, so back to point 1. But after that, I would say Trump is erratic and impulsive, but he has some coordinates. One of them is his power. See? November 3rd is a big day for him. He's focused on that.

The economy is a crucial element of that. That's part of the framing of the China relationship. The impact of this on the economy is already evident, and could become more evident. Public opinion, again, I think he's—I saw today in the Journal that he's sent Hicks Hicks Smith out to sell the war. Good luck.

Mm-hmm.

I'm not sure he can sell. Public opinion of this is about 6 to 4 unfavorable because they didn't make the case for the war in advance. The impact of this on other parties, including parties that we care about, is negative.

So I can easily imagine, in the next week even, him declaring victory. If you look at the way in which he's left himself room to declare victory at having, as you say, cut off the head of the snake, destroyed their military and their nuclear capabilities, destroyed their ability to project power—or, in the Defense Department, we always say, “destroy or degrade.” Degrade has a lot of dimensions, as you would point out—and now it's up to the Iranian people to seize their own government and take advantage of it themselves.

The difficulty with that will be that Bibi wants to fight on until the regime is destroyed. That'll be an interesting struggle to see how that goes. Earlier, Trump demonstrated that when he thought it was in the American interest, he was prepared to pull Bibi's chain. So we'll see.

Before we move out of the MENA region, this is a topic that's coming up. There's obviously no support for this war in America. Most Americans put foreign affairs today at 1% or 2% of their concern. The economy and many other issues are high on their list. He's been pretty clear: “Hey, we're not going to put boots on the ground.”

Then there's this anti-Semitic underpinning that's happening in America that's become pretty acute. You had Rubio, whom you mentioned earlier, say, “Hey, we did this because the Israelis were going in anyway and we had no choice.” Then they walked that back.

Explain to the audience how we should look at that turn of events, where there's a group of people in America, specifically people in the MAGA party, who believe Trump has betrayed them and that he's captured by the Israeli government in some way and he's doing their bidding. I'm not saying that's my perspective, but that is an undertone that we're seeing. And that's something new in our lifetime, I think.

It certainly is. This is a big topic, but I'd say when I talk about it, I say, “I'm pro-Israeli and anti-Bibi.” Bibi is not Israel.

The people whom I know and respect most in Israel are the national-security barons—the people who've been the chief of staff or the head of Mossad or the head of Shin Bet, or the people that work in those structures. They believe that Bibi is actually destroying Ben-Gurion's Israeli democracy that they cared about.

Or take Tom Friedman. It's pretty hard to accuse him of being anti-Semitic, but he's been, I think, very clear and very courageous in pointing out that what Bibi's doing to Israel's democracy is really destroying it.

The impact of that on Jewish kids in America—I see this on campus, where they want to be proud of Israel. They deserve to be proud of the country that has been built over these years, but they look at the behavior of these crazy right-wing settlers and their activities in the occupied West Bank, or they look at some of the activities in Gaza, or they look at now the kind of unlimited war without any attempt even to make arguments about proportionality, and just say, “Wait a minute.

That’s not the country I want to be proud of. I want to be proud of Rabin’s Israel. I want to be proud of Ehud Barak’s Israel. I want to be proud of Ben-Gurion’s Israel. I’m pretty much of that persuasion.

I think what Bibi risks in this, and risked earlier with interfering in American politics, invites pushback. I think this could have a big, long-term negative effect in both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, especially among younger people. If you look at the polling for the under-30s on Israel, it’s just shocking.

Mhm. Can we move to China? I think this is going to be the big story over the next month. You’ve said publicly that ousting Maduro from Venezuela could embolden China to accelerate a takeover of Taiwan. The CIA, it has been reported in the media, warned Tim Cook of Apple and other tech companies about a possible invasion as soon as next year. You’ve separately met publicly with Chinese officials. What’s your view on the likelihood and timeline of a Chinese attempt to take over Taiwan? What are the motivating factors that might make that happen sooner?

So, let me clarify. I’m not sure, or I may have been misinterpreted, but obviously the Chinese watch very carefully. They study wars and will learn lessons from what’s going on here, but I don’t think that—I don’t think the Venezuelan operation, other than making them feel envious about the capabilities, will impact their likelihood of attacking Taiwan.

So, Taiwan, number one, I think the likelihood of an attack on Taiwan this year, next year, or even in 2028—but let me just do 2026 and 2027—absent some major provocation by Taiwan or some other third incident, is very low. I’d put it at about where the prediction markets are, 5% or something low. I’m not counting on that.

So, why is that so low? I’m just curious. Why 5%?

Okay. First, they have a theory of the case of what they call peaceful reunification, and they think things are evolving in that direction. The theory of the case is that the current government, which is a DPP government, is currently stymied by its opposition in Parliament, so they can’t even buy the arms sales that we previously gave them. There are $11 billion in arms sales that the Chinese have complained about, but Taiwan’s legislature probably won’t buy half of that.

There’s going to be an election in January 2028, and they think it’s likely that the former party, the KMT, will be elected. That would mean somebody much more sympathetic to China and to a devolving relationship.

Secondly, the Chinese have been engaged in a deep, deep purge of all of their military leadership. I mean, it’s hard to believe, and you read about it in the paper from time to time: He fired this guy, he fired this guy. He’s fired the equivalent of every four-star in our whole political system, every combatant commander, and every commander who would be commanding the forces to deal with Taiwan. So, while they’ve been building up that military capability, it takes a long time to get that back in order, in my view.

I would say that part makes me feel less likely. Third, I think he understands that if he were to do this, there’s a risk—not a certainty, but a risk—that the U.S. would become involved, and that the impact of that, either on China’s economy, which he’s got to worry about first, or on what its evolution would be, would be significant.

And finally, with Trump, China has the most accommodating president it’s likely to see with respect to Taiwan. Trump has made no secret of his views about Taiwan. In, I think, a couple of the memoirs, there’s this discussion where he’s in the Oval and talking about Taiwan. Somebody asks him about Taiwan, and he picks up one of those Sharpies and goes, “Thump,” on a spot on the Resolute Desk and says, “That’s Taiwan.” Then he draws a circle around the whole desk and says, “That’s China.”

So, I’d say I’m less worried about Taiwan on the current path. Now, over the longer run, the Chinese are absolutely clear—she and all the leadership—that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China. How that could be satisfied in a way that allows the Taiwanese a degree, or a substantial degree, of freedom for both their economy and their society is the challenge that we’ve been struggling with for a long time.

But the good news is we’ve been doing this for 50 years, and Taiwan has never seen such circumstances. So, I say to my Taiwanese friends, basically, don’t screw it up.

Are we taking the right course of action, do you think? I guess the big question for you is: What’s the strategic imperative for the United States to keep Taiwan from falling under direct Chinese control? Are we taking the right actions to hedge our bets, if you will, against that happening? Meaning, onshoring semiconductor manufacturing, but also, from a defense and positioning perspective, can you share a little bit about whether we’re—

Sure. That’s a big, big question. So, first—

It’s a complicated situation to begin with.

Secondly, Taiwan is halfway around the world, as President Trump says, and 90 miles off the shore of China. We’re far away, and we have a lot of other things to worry about. So, it’s a little bit like Cuba: inherently indefensible if China were seriously determined either to destroy it or to take it.

Now, on the other hand, since the opening to China and the Shanghai Communiqué, there’s been an agreement to maintain a status quo, with the U.S. commitment being what’s called strategic ambiguity. The U.S. and China have been committed to Taiwan’s internal development being left to its own devices, and China doesn’t use military force to prevent that.

But we say Taiwan is part of this “One China,” and that China’s only capital is Beijing. Then we have a little bit of an ambiguous way to talk about the relationship between Taiwan and China, but certainly letting it evolve in any way that the parties would be prepared to live with. Most people expect that over time this relationship will work its way out.

When I talk to Chinese about it, I say to them, “First, you’ve never seen 50 better years on either side of the Strait. So, this has been fantastic for both societies in terms of what they care about. And secondly, if they look at this situation, if China’s core strategy is correct, which is the inexorable rise of China, and that continues, in another decade or 2, Taiwan will look like a flea. Therefore, it’s not going to be an issue. If China’s main narrative doesn’t work, Taiwan is not going to be their biggest problem. So, they should work on the other issues.”

If you think about China projecting influence around the world, how important is it for them to continue to do that? There was recently an objective, I think, of GDP growth in the 5% range, 4% to 5%. Is that right for China, which—

The 4.5% to 5%, yeah.

The 4.5% to 5% range is a record low in recent history for them. Is it imperative for China to continue to extend geopolitical and economic influence around the world to grow its economy? Going back to the framing of the rising power, do they still need to do that to keep people happy at home, or is China going to be able to maintain happiness at home in a multipolar world, where China and perhaps the U.S. and perhaps some other countries share influence around the world?

This is one you raised and we talked about last time, which is interesting. I think we agreed. So, let me just, again, for people who don’t remember, start.

China is a meteoric rising power. Never has a country risen so far, so fast, on so many different dimensions. If you take a snapshot of the year 2000 and the year 2025 and compare China on any metric of power, it’s just dumbfounding. Dumbfounding.

A country that I’ve compared to something like a Formula 1 race—a country that we couldn’t find in our rearview mirror in 2000 because it was so far behind—we have trouble finding in our rearview mirror today because it’s beside us or, in many races, even slightly ahead of us.

In terms of GDP, it was less than 5% of global GDP, or less than a quarter of the U.S., in 2000. Today, by purchasing-power parity, it’s 25% larger. In 2000, in trade, it was 5% of global trade, and we were at 15%. Today, it’s 35%, and we’re at 25%. If you do advanced tech in any area, take 5G, my goodness, take EVs, my goodness, take whatever.

So, it’s a rapidly rising power. That’s the infrastructure for their grand narratives, which are the inexorable rise of China to its natural position in the international order, which they think is at the top of the pyramid. So, they are absolutely determined to be number one in their own arena to begin with. After that, maybe more.

They also have a second proposition: the inexorable decline of the U.S. They look at the various parts of the U.S. and its components, including getting involved in unnecessary wars, as part of that story, as part of their narrative.

That dynamic, the shifting of the seesaw, is what gives you this fluidity and dynamic that we discussed before, which most often—hard as it is to believe—but most often discombobulates people so much that then some incident or accident, like something that happens over Taiwan, leads to a vicious circle of actions and reactions that drags them into a war, after which they think, “My God, how did this ever happen?”

So, that’s a long story, but I would say the economic piece is essential for this. That economic piece means they want to be the manufacturing workshop for the world, the foundry for the world, and the supplier for the world.

There are 2 major challenges they have. I believe 1 of them is population decline; the other is unemployment, and the AI we've seen—and what's hitting first—could hit them in a major way. Manufacturing is moving to robotics at an alarming pace. Then you have things like self-driving, which is a major job there for many people. So, on those 2 axes, when you see youth unemployment, which I think is 15% or 20% in some locations in China, and population decline, are those 2 biggest challenges to deal with? And then how does that affect this bilateral relationship?

Good question. This is more in your old space than mine, because I've tried to follow it, but Elon says there's going to be more robots than people, okay? And if you ask him where the most advanced robots in the world are—the ones that are kicking his ass or that he worries about—it's China.

They have a huge number of robot companies. When I was there last—when was I last there? In January—I went to see a factory of Xiaomi, the phone company. Xiaomi decided 3 years ago that it would make cars. After watching Apple spend $10 million and not be able to make a car, within 3 years that factory was producing cars. They have a huge demand for these cars, and they have 3 lines. One of the lines is all robots.

So, they're putting a lot of robots to work. More than half of the working factory robots in the world are in China. Some people are saying, well, maybe demographics isn't going to be such a big problem, because if demographics is only a problem because of workers, we're going to have robots. In fact, American workers are more worried about robots taking our jobs.

Now, the issue with the impact on education is that they have a number of people who have been educated in areas that are no longer high-demand jobs. Unfortunately, we have a lot of that, too. If you look at college graduates now who graduated in, I don't know, DEI subjects, they're having trouble getting jobs. I would say there are more similarities there than differences.

The other thing is that the Chinese have demonstrated a much greater capacity, or readiness, to adopt and adapt to new technologies. If you look at Jensen Huang—I'm sure you or all of you have probably had him on—but when he went to China, he said, “Gee, I think I came to the future.” The people don't use coins. Not only do they not use coins, they don't use bills, they don't use checks, and they don't use credit cards. They just have their face scanned and then go through the store.

Let's shift around to what some have described as the longer-term playing field, which is near the Arctic. Some have argued that much of the recent push for Greenland by the United States is driven by the military threat coming over the Arctic from Russia and China. Could you help frame for our audience why Greenland is so strategic to the United States? Is this effectively a proxy for defense against China and Russia, and why now?

Another big question. Let me start with the bottom line. I think, at least from the judgments of the people whom I respect the most, that we in the U.S. can get everything we want from Greenland without invading it or owning it.

Greenland has been an important base for missile defenses—a Thule base. We had 2 other bases that we closed, but we can open as many other bases as we want, and they're very amenable to that. I think President Trump's right to say, “Well, yeah, but I don't want a short-term lease on these bases.” I would say a 99-year lease sounds like a pretty good lease to me. In 99 years, God knows what's going to be happening.

To the extent that missile defense is part of it, which it is, I would say that's a part of it. For the naval component, yes, I think that as the Arctic melts, you're already seeing an opening of sea lanes. The way territorial ownership works, the abutters have their claims to the local and regional waters. The main claims are Russian and Canadian. We have a chunk from Alaska, and then Greenland would be a piece of that.

I would say that's relevant, but those sea lanes, at least for the Navy people I talked to, aren't as important as they used to be, because now there are so many different ways to get at them. You're not going to try to blockade a waterway with ships. You're going to do it with smart minds, or you're going to do it simply by attacking the ships on the way. If it's underwater, it's pretty much all the same. But it's good to have narrow places and shallow places for looking for things.

I think Trump's Greenland venture was more for fun. Plus, one of the people who knows him well says, “Remember, he's first of all a reality TV producer and star.” He has fun starting with a drama, getting people very excited, letting the tension rise, and then finding a resolution. I think we're approaching a resolution there.

Let me push back just on that point. What I have heard is that there's rising socialism in Western Europe, with growing concern that, over time, as socialism becomes more of a mainstay in the governing models of Western European nations, those nations will fall more under the influence of China.

As a result, if you think about the influence that China could then have on Denmark and on Danish foreign policy, if the United States doesn't secure what it needs for the long term—and it may not know what it needs for the long term physically in Greenland today; we only know what we need today—we're at risk of China having outsized influence over Greenland tomorrow. That's the real reason for the big push today for Greenland. How does that sit with you? Does that align with what some folks are concerned about?

I have to think about it. I hadn't heard that argument just that way. Again, what socialism is is complicated. Certainly, the Chinese are socialists in some respects. I would say they're autocratic and party-led, but their economy is essentially fiercely capitalist.

One of my friends described it as a gladiatorial conflict that makes the competition in Silicon Valley look tame, as the companies fight each other.

Well, because you can't make money because the taxes are so high.

In their case, they decide they're going into an arena—let's say, for example, EVs—and they give advantages to companies getting started, even subsidies. Then they let them fight it out, and lo and behold, at the end there will be 10 or 5. But it's fiercely competitive in the meantime, and a lot of guys will get trampled along the way.

Then those guys have excess capacity, and they'll sell things off without any concern about the capex. They're just trying to stay ahead of the game, selling items or even selling out their inventory. I think watching the evolution of other countries, including Europe, and their relations with China as well as with us in this game is a very relevant point.

One of the things the Trump administration has had trouble with is recognizing that if we're in a fierce rivalry with China, they have 4 times as many people. We need to have some allies with heft on our side of the seesaw to keep it from going the wrong direction. Sometimes you need to give your ally a cold bath in order to get them to shape up.

But I think getting Canadians to think of us as an enemy is a pretty wild idea. If you take Carney, whom I know from when he was a Harvard college kid, he's as American as anybody—or he was. If you go and threaten a politician's survival, that's a pretty good way to piss them off. If you threaten to take territory from people, that's a pretty good way to make them feel hostile. This is an unusual treatment if we're trying to get guys with heft on our side of the seesaw.

At the World Economic Forum—I wasn't sure if it was Davos or another one of their forums—were you at the Davos one this year?

Sure. As a total aside, just considering President Trump's impact, it was 2.5 days of people wondering what he would say when he got there. The town shut down as people watched his 2-hour stand-up delivery. Then there were another 2 days of people trying to understand and figure out what had happened there. It really was a reality TV show, for sure. It took over the whole place.

This fellow, Butch, who was his communications guy for a week or 10 days until he got fired in the first administration, said on the first night I was at an event, “Remember, this is going to be a real reality TV show. It's going to start with the claim that we're going to invade Greenland, which, by God, invading an ally is a pretty big deal.”

He said, “Then you're going to watch the drama build.” When Trump had a chance to speak, he was going back and forth. But he then had just a paragraph in which he basically took the gun off the table. Before that, he was doing a mafioso act, with some mafioso lines about, “You could either have it the easy way or the hard way.”

That's a Godfather line.

And so people were saying, “Yikes, what has been let loose on us?”

So now you have all this drama, but then he says, “I've decided we're not going to invade Greenland.” He just passes that off, so now the temperature goes down. On the third day, he does something called the Board of Peace, and he says, “We now have a framework of an agreement.” I think half of the time he's having fun.

Yeah. It does get people's attention.

Sure it does. On a substantive basis, you shared a framework: 80, 80, 9. I've spent a bunch of time listening to the talk he gave and some people's reactions to it. Maybe you could share it with the audience and why it's important.

Oh, thank you. I'm glad you asked. I think this is a big idea. These are 3 numbers, each of which is the answer to a question. If you can remember the 3 numbers and identify the question to which each one is the answer, you have the big picture about international security in the lifetime of yourself and even your parents. That's virtually everybody who's alive today.

So the first 80 is the answer to what? How long has it been since a World War? How many years since a great-power war? Since World War II. Yeah. Now, whoa, wait a minute: 80 years.

This is the longest peace in recorded history since Rome. This is not natural. This is very abnormal. This didn't happen by accident. This was what the people who founded the international order after World War II were trying to build: a new world order, because they had just lived through a terrible World War II. Only 1 generation before, they remembered, “Hey, there was World War I.”

So if we just keep doing this, we should expect World War III. It should have already happened. It could have happened at the Cuban Missile Crisis. So, no great-power war: fantastic, but it's a fragile work in progress all the time, eroding inevitably for many, many different reasons. Right?

Second 80: how many years since we've had a nuclear bomb go off? Fantastic. So think about that. If there had been prediction markets and you'd gone in 1945 or 1950, you would have got 10,000-to-1 odds against that. It's impossible. The weapon that ended World War II, and you're not ever going to see any use of those weapons in war? Whoa.

And then 9: the number of countries, nation-states, that have nuclear bombs today.

Fantastic. You're right. How in the world could you have only 9 countries having nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons are your ultimate security blanket. Again, John F. Kennedy in 1963 said, “By the 1970s, there'll be 25 or 30 nuclear weapon states,” because he thought that as states acquired the capability to build nuclear weapons, they would do so. Today, 90–95 states could have nuclear weapons in 1 or 2 years if they decided to build them. Actually, into the 1970s, Sweden had a serious nuclear program. South Korea had a nuclear program. Taiwan had a nuclear program. The U.S. closed those down and created a so-called nonproliferation regime. That's accounted for this 9, but I would say again: fragile, eroding, not likely to be sustained.

So when I try to do my giving thanks for things that I should be thankful for, I'm thankful for 80 years without a great-power war. If there were a great-power war, you and I wouldn't be here, and we wouldn't be having this conversation, along with all the other issues we have to deal with. So I would say that the 80, the 80, and 9—we should not take them for granted. We should give thanks for the work that was done to build them, and then we should notice what's going to be required to sustain this.

And we almost had a 10th nuclear power in Iran. We did. And we had the latest 2, if I'm correct—you'll correct me, because you're the expert—Pakistan and North Korea. And we had that 1 doctor, A. Q. Khan, I believe his name was, from Pakistan, who was trying to spread and sell these. So, absolutely, did we make a critical error—we being the West, even the East, humanity, the leadership—in letting Pakistan and North Korea into this club?

Well, I mean, not into the club, but allowing them to get nuclear weapons—that's right. The Israelis have had a different idea. This goes back to the original attack on Iraq, on Osirak. They call it affirmative non-proliferation. So they say, “We're not allowing nuclear weapons in our neighborhood.” And they've destroyed the nuclear weapons project in Iraq. They destroyed the nuclear weapons activity in Syria when the North Koreans were building a plant there a half dozen years ago. And now they've been the leaders in the destruction of the Iranian nuclear program, which we participated in.

I, however, am uncomfortable about the wars, even in Iran. I had to cheer for this because I fear additional nuclear weapon states. And I wish that we had managed somehow—let's say, in the North Korean case. I've even said this to Chinese officials. I said, “You know, we and you made a terrible mistake. Maybe we made a bigger mistake to let North Korea get nuclear weapons. But what we should have said to you is, ‘Hey, we have an idea. Nuclear weapons are either good for North Korea and South Korea, or they're good for neither of them. Your choice.’” And that would have been hardball, but I think the idea of having Kim Jong-un have now more than 100 nuclear warheads and missiles that can reach the American homeland is crazy.

I mean, here we're talking about Iran and what it might be. Excuse me, it takes 20 minutes longer from Korea to get to Boston than from Iran, or maybe 25 minutes. So I think that's a useful perspective to remind us that we let this thing happen. It's a ticking bomb, as far as I'm concerned. If you ask me what to do about it, it makes me cry, because Trump in the first administration focused on this problem very, very seriously and did everything that he thought he could. And I thought it was a good effort, even though it was not successful. But the 20 other ways we've tried to deal with that problem were all equally unsuccessful.

How does China feel about nuclear proliferation and North Korea having these bombs?

Well, I think they feel a little ashamed, at least about what happened in North Korea, and kind of think, “Well, that wasn't really our problem.” But now, when you say, “Well, if things keep on the current path, maybe South Korea or Japan will have nuclear arsenals in their backyard,” they think that's a terrible idea. And we would not be very enthusiastic about a Venezuelan or Canadian nuclear bomb, either.

So, Dr. Allison, just to wrap our tour of the world here, let's come back to the United States. Since we last spoke, there have been a number of mayors elected in this country who are self-declared socialists or members of Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA. There's a rising populist movement in the United States that seems to be manifesting, in many cases, in candidates who look and act like true, deep socialists and want to enact socialist policies. What is the risk to the United States if this continues to go the way it's going? And what is the risk to the United States, do you think, in 2028 if we have a Democrat-controlled House and Senate and a very populist Democratic candidate who looks like a DSA member? Where does this take us?

Well, good for you all for thinking of uncomfortable, radical questions—but they're real. If you look at the numbers, I've been looking at them lately. They're hard to believe in terms of the split between wealthy and poor, or rich and poor. If you look at who's benefited for the last generation in terms of the 0.01%, the 1%, the 10%, the 20%—that's us and all the people that we know, virtually.

And therefore, when we say the market is in its third year in a bull market, and my goodness, here it's up 15 or 16%, for this 80% or 70% of people, this is not part of their lives. And when I look at the numbers about both what I think the facts are and, even more, people's perception, it's just not stable in a democracy if everybody gets a vote. If the top 10 or 20% are taking 80% or 70% of the pie, that's not stable and sustainable, I think. And it's the political invitation for a populist and demagogic movement. You don't even have to be a demagogue to say, “That's not fair. That's not reasonable.”

So I think this is beyond me. I can hardly deal with the problems I focus on. This one is 1 that I look over my shoulder and think, “Gee, wait a minute. This can't be true.” But whenever I've been looking into the numbers lately, they look as bad as they appear. And this is extremely dangerous.

I would say yes. I haven't heard people talking about plausible ways in which this could be addressed. But I think it's an invitation for some more radical ideas. While I like very much the Trump Accounts for Kids to give them some stake, I think that's a fantastic thing. I could probably be persuaded that people even at my level of income should pay another 10% in taxes or whatever for some more adjustment. I think the kind of adjustments that are basically putting people on the dole, or supporting nonproductive or semiproductive activity, makes me very uncomfortable—unless they're lame, ill, or aging.

UBI proposals? People getting a universal basic income—that takes motivation out of me.

I like incentive. I mean, I think the stuff of America has been the opportunity for people to be incentivized to invent, create, and create wealth that benefits everybody. But if the jam is not getting spread to 70% of the people, that's not a sustainable political situation. And I think—I thought it was in the New York campaign—we got to see some preview of a bit of this.

In the primaries, you're seeing people going into this space. I haven't seen anybody with a coherent program yet. But I think, for serious people thinking about what's good for the country, that's a good one to worry about.

Well, it seems, Friedberg, that there's a couple of proposals here: minimum wage, maybe some type of wealth tax. There are things that people are talking about. We may not all agree with them, and they may be hard to execute, but one of them is for the people at the top. I think you would agree, Professor Allison, the people at the top have the most to lose here. And they should be thinking about it, and maybe there's generosity in giving away wealth in a more thoughtful way, because there's so much wealth in this top 1% or 10% that they can't possibly spend. And so this might be something that that group of people should be thinking a little bit more about.

In the State of the Union, Trump called out Dell and a couple of other people for having stepped up and said, "Okay, I'm going all in on this."

Well, that certainly got my attention and made me think maybe I should be doing something different.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well, Professor Allison, they say that you can measure a man's knowledge and thoughtfulness by his humility. I will say, you have extraordinary depth, and you've thought so deeply about so many of these issues that this world is facing right now. And yet you act with such humility and grace when you speak about them. I want to thank you for that. I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us today. I really appreciate it and look forward to doing it again in person soon.

Yeah, thank you so much, on behalf of the audience and just on a personal basis. This is such a delight and privilege to be able to do this with you every year or two, and man, I hope we can just do it every year because it's the highlight of my year when we get to talk. It's an honor for me. Thank you so much, and thank you for what y'all are doing, and thanks for thinking of such hard questions out here. It's taking me home tonight to think about socialism.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.