YouSaid · the spoken record

Ivo Daalder

lines on the record: 83
first: 2019-01-10
most recent: 2019-01-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Not enough given what happened afterwards. I think there was a presumption in Washington that the Europeans would provide, this was a war that really had started at the urging of the French and the British that President Obama was reluctant to join, but then said if we are going to do what we're going to help you to succeed, the idea was we will enable you to execute the mission. 95% of the bombing were dropped by European countries, not by the United States.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we may have executed it in the wrong way in the end. I think we should have stopped bombing a lot sooner. I think we achieved most of our objectives a lot earlier than we did. What about the...”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Allies did do 10. And even today, of the 16,000 troops that are part of the NATO mission, 7,500 are provided by NATO countries. So NATO has been part of the Afghanistan mission from the very beginning that that mission has been an international one. So that's one thing. And of course, the Libya conflict. We can go back whether that was the right or wrong decision. Was it? I think that was the right decision. Executing.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Long debate in which you witnessed, and which I did as well on whether to do 40,000 troops. And in the end, he said, well, why don't we do 30? And maybe we can get the Allies to do 10.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That the argument was right But that the political will to do more on defense just wasn't there, in part because people didn't see the threat. They didn't see you couldn't mobilize your domestic constituency. I mean, we thought, for example, maybe what we should do is not put together defense ministers who all agree that we should do more on defense, but can't convince their own governments, let alone their parliaments that that's the case. But bring together the finance ministers. And we thought about what we need to do is get finance ministers to come together and have this discussion. So yes, we pushed, we succeeded sometimes in some places. We probably succeeded more in terms of real military operations. So tick two, Afghanistan. Remember was faced with this request for 40,000 more troops. President Obama. And there was a lot of...”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The financial ones? Yes. Yeah, you know, I have to bruises still to show on my head. And there was a general understanding?”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that was the idea of what we now call the liberal world order, the rules based order. And that if you seek your security at the expense of others, you're more likely to be insecure in the long run. If you see your prosperity at the expense of others, which is what we're trying to do now by saying that we shouldn't run trade deficits, you're more likely to be poorer. And indeed, if you seek your freedom at the expense of others, you may undermine your own freedom in the long run.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is in its own interest, but other countries are going to benefit from that. If you believe in an open and free markets, then you're not the only country that is going to benefit from it. Others are going to be as well. And the great insight of the greatest generation back during and immediately after World War II was this idea that the United States could secure itself by making other people secure, that it could be prosperous, by making other people prosperous, that it could be free, by making other people free.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, he does. He does. And he has a point. Clearly, one, it is a point that every U.S. president, since Harry Truman has made, back in 1952, Truman said that Europe needed to do more on defense, and every president has done it since. No president has made our commitment to their defense conditional on that kind of financial commitment, and that's one way in which Trump is a little different than his predecessors. But he's right. Clearly, as Barack Obama said, free riders aggravate me. A lot of these countries are free riding. They enjoy the benefit of an American defense commitment to their security. I would go further. They enjoy the benefit of a United States that believes that maintaining security globally.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is, but even so on an issue like NATO, for example, when he went to Brussels for the NATO summit, the only summit he's had so far, the U.S. Senate voted 99 to 1 to reaffirm America's commitment to NATO, and the House voted unanimously. So there is a strong view that this is important. It's not clear that he among the public.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On trade he didn't. On trade he did, and on the idea that our allies were taking advantage of us, that the idea that the United States was being played for a sucker is something that he's been saying for 30 years. He did this ad in the New York Times in 1987, an open letter to the American people in which he made all those arguments. It wasn't that different from what he's actually doing now, even though the world has changed. So in that sense, he's implementing the policies. They're not policies that his own party embraced at any time in trade.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And he can rightly claim that he's just doing what he said he was going to do. I mean, he's had the same view about foreign policy and America's role in the world for 30 years. It hasn't changed on trade, on all of these issues.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not the policy I can support. Jim Mattis just recently, of course, resigned in what was the most remarkable letter of resignation, in which he neither thanked the president. But then went out and said, this is what I believe in, and obviously you don't believe in this. And what he believed in was allies and partners and working together with other countries. So Trump is now, frankly, being Trump. And what we are seeing is a foreign policy that... He said he was going to want it to run on when he ran. Yes, exactly.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're all gone and they all failed in forcing Trump back into the more traditional pattern of foreign policy. We had this idea early on in 2017, throughout 2017, really that because you had these generals and these grown-up people surrounding the president, including John Kelly and Gary Cohn, who was the National Economic Advisor and people like that, that somehow they would be able to guide Trump back into a way of dealing with the world that was more known, more traditional, more along the lines of where they were. And one by one, they either resigned. Gary Cohn, he resigned when the tariffs were put on our allies, on steel and aluminum imports because those imports were supposedly a threat to our national security.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Competition, aren't we better off to do what we have done for the last 70 years to see how can we maintain our standing with our allies, with our friends, which is the great advantage we have over every other potential competitor? We have allies, they have clients. Aren't we much better off working with those allies to achieve the objectives of creating an order that benefits us, benefits them, by the way, as well, but benefits us in terms of our security, our prosperity, and indeed our freedom, a world in which everybody's out for themselves is a world in which destructive nationalist forces are more likely to take control.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is And his belief is that because we're stronger than anybody else, we will win. And that's right. The question is, what's the cost? For one, would we be better off if we continue the order building, order shaping, order leading kind of foreign policy that we've had for 70 years, which has been the longest period of peace and prosperity and freedom for the most number of people in history? Or should we go back to a competitive world where ultimately we didn't World War I on our terms? We did win World War II, but the cost of doing so were extraordinary, and now we live in an age of nuclear weapons, which we've never done before and had no wars in which nuclear weapons were possessed by more than one country. We live in an age of cyber and space capabilities that are far more frightening and far more destructive than anything we've seen in the past. So are we really sure that we can win that?”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“socially and in other ways. The other possibility is that, in fact, no one really takes control and that you return to a world that we have known very well, particularly in the interwar period and in the run-up to World War I, a world of competing great powers where everybody is seeking their own advantage, their own sphere of influence, their own ways of trying to get control of their both immediate neighborhoods, of their economic supply lines, of everything that is necessary for them to succeed in a competition of power. And that power competition can be balanced for a while, as it was in times during the 19th century, but it can also be out of whack, and it always does get out of whack and gets resolved in a way that history resolves these problems.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, in a book that Jim Either somebody else is going to take the place that the United States always had, or no one will take the place. So when you look at who is out there who can take our place, it's China, a rising power. And if China is going to work to build institutions to be diplomatically involved, to resolve crises or to advance its own interests, it's going to do it in a way that benefits Beijing. And because China doesn't have allies, it doesn't have friends, it's only going to look at what is good for Beijing and what's good for China. It's not trying to create a system that upholds an order, that benefits more countries than itself, but just itself. And that is very unlikely to be in our benefit. It's probably going to be at our expense economically, militarily, politically.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Came into office knowing that that was the case. Richard Nixon, White Eisenhower, Virginia Coltwar was a little easier, John F. Kennedy, or learned it. Like I think Bill Clinton did, and in some ways George Bush did, George W. Bush, who also was elected thinking that he could focus on what was happening at home, but had the rude wake-up call of 9-11. And in some ways, Barack Obama, the same, he had the financial crisis, which had an international dimension so forced him to be international in that way.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it's not, and I think that's one of the big changes. I think one of the realities is that from Roosevelt through Obama, in one form or another, however imperfect at times presidents may have acted, there was this sense of an obligation that the United States, for its own narrow self-interest, its own security, its own prosperity, indeed even its own freedom, needed to be engaged in the world that we could no longer be the country that we had been for 150 years to stand aside, let two oceans and good neighbors keep us safe, that inevitably because of the power that we had and the importance we had in the global economy and the global system, we would have to be part of what was happening in the world. And every president in one form or another accommodated himself either”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it took a while in some ways for Sandy Berger, who was his deputy, two very important people in the White House, Sandy in some ways politically closer to Clinton even than Tony was, to remind the White House writ large and the president in particular, that what was happening beyond the borders of the United States was going to have an impact on what was happening inside those borders. Politically, in the end, in the end, if you wanted to be elected, re-elected in 1996, you couldn't have had a war like Bosnia continuing on the forefront of the television screens, but also factually for the United States to succeed in the world, it needs to be engaged abroad. It doesn't have the luxury, as frankly, every other country has to ignore what's happening in the world, not only to focus on what's happening here, because the world looks to the United States to be there.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Quick and relatively easy and successful in its attempt. And there was this idea that now we needed to focus like a laser beam, as Bill Clinton put it on the economy and rebuild the economy. It's how we won the election. Against George Bush and foreign policy was a diversion for many in the White House. And then you had a series of crises. Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia that brought to the forefront this idea that maybe you couldn't ignore what was happening in the world and you really had to start thinking about how to deal with the world in a way that made sure that American leadership, American presence, engagement, involvement, military, and diplomatic was necessary still, in fact, in some ways more now than it had been even during the Cold War.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Remember when Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, there was this Cold War fatigue, the Fall War was over. We'd had a successful war in the Persian Gulf against Iraq and threw him out of Kuwait. But Bill Clinton came in.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why is it that we're letting this happen. This was the date that the New York Times had a front page picture of a woman who had hung herself because she had lost her entire family. And at that point with Dick Colbrook and Tony Lake and other people, Madeline Albright, decided to change policy and really to find a way to end that war. The administration was not...”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You were Yeah, I came in the NSC in August of 1995. In fact, my first day in the office was when what was then called the Intelligence National Daily, the National Intelligence Daily, sort of the version of the Presidential Daily Brief that non-important people like me can see had pictures of Srebrenica, the extraordinary proof of a mass killing that had happened weeks before that later the next day, Madeline Albright as UN Secretary Ambassador to the UN, showed to the UN and the world. So my initial day there was all about Bosnia and what was horrific. I wasn't part of, but I observed the change in American policy that happened as a result of it. There was this famous incident where Al Gore. Walked into the Oval Office to Bill Clinton and said, My daughter asked me.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot in many ways. I mean, it was this idea that something terrible actually can happen. So there is a deep pessimism when you read history. You know that things can really go bad. And of course, the Yugoslav war came at a time when things looked like they were moving in a direction that we hadn't seen ever before. The Cold War was over. The Soviet Union had collapsed. There was the Again, since 1945 in Europe, and the idea that this should not stand, that something had to be done, and that the United States as the most important country could not stand by and let this happen was very much part of my thinking, of my way of...”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Religion that I really identified with. I've merited a Jewish wife. We have a Jewish home. And that's part of who we have become. But it wasn't really part of my own. Early history”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Little, particularly on the religious side, none. My mother always said I became a Jew because Hitler told me I was. Heard you as she was from a completely assimilated family. She told the story that when they had to go to a Jewish high school, Jew was owned in 1942. She went to school on Yomkipper and the doors were closed and she had no idea why. And she told her mother when she came home. The school's closed. My grandmother said, well, maybe it's something Jewish. Turned out it was the most important holiday. So that was not part of my upbringing in terms of a religious sense, but in an ethnic sense it was and a strong affinity to Israel, a strong belief that Jews had gone through a very horrible period and now there was the opportunity to see if there was a better future. That was part of my upbringing. And since it was the only relationship,”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“British in some ways more than American, but deeply appreciative of what had happened in the 40-45. And the second thing that was important to me was Europe needed to find a way to avoid having wars, which was the first half of the 20th century. And the European project partly, as we now know from history, of course, stimulated by the United States, but also something that was deep in the European psyche, the idea that finding ways to cooperate, to overcome divisions that had led to extraordinary destruction for so many years and to find a way to have a new chapter in history, no longer war, but peace and cooperation, prosperity.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So one thing was it was talked about and in many other families in Europe who went through the war but including in Holland the war was not an issue. People didn't talk about it. They were either they wanted to forget about it, they wanted to look to the future. But in my case, the dinner table war was always there in some form or another. There was always a story that had an aspect of either pre-war or post-war or war related that was part of my upbringing. And I learned a number of things. One, I think a deep love and appreciation for the United States. That's one of the reasons I wanted to come here. It was the country that liberated Europe. It was the country that liberated my family. And that was always important. Both my parents were very much Anglophiles.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mother was Jewish and spent the first two years of the occupation in Holland, but then in a pretty harrowing escape with her older sister and mother was able to make it to Switzerland. And she spent the last two years of the war there, but the rest of the family was annihilated, as so many others in Holland.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The war was very vivid in an occupation and living through the occupation. My parents were 12 when the war started 17, 18 when the war ended. So their teenage years they spent through all that time there.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I grew up in Holland, a Dutch parent. My father was an academic, non-Jewish. My mother was Jewish. They're both war generation people. They went through the war. My father was in northern Holland during the war, which was not liberated until 1945 and went through the worst winter, 44-45. More people died in that country.”
2019-01-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 298 - Ivo Daalder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source