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I think the United States is in deep trouble. Uh, I, I don't know anybody in this country, whether they're on the left or the right or in the center, who disagrees with that assessment. Uh, it's very hard to predict where this all leads at this point in time.
But uh, when you look at the state of American democracy, uh, it's deeply worrisome. And there, I'd make two points. First is that I think, uh, whatever you, whatever you think of President Trump's policies, I think the fact that there are no checks and balances on him, uh, that there are no guard rails at play here is a very worrisome situation. Uh, he basically could do anything he wants at this point in time, and he does anything he wants, and he says exactly that. In his first term in office, from 2017 to 2021, there were real limits on what he could do. There were lots of guard rails, and this frustrated him greatly. And after he was defeated by Biden, uh, he resolved that if he ever got back into the White House, that would not happen again. And that's exactly where we are at. So you have this situation where you have an autocratic leader.
The second thing I wanted to say to you is that the country is deeply polarized. Uh, we have a, a real, uh, fight between people on the left-hand side of the political spectrum and people on the right-hand side of the political spectrum. And there's remarkably little tolerance embedded in either one of those wings, uh, of the political spectrum. And, uh, there's a lot of anger, indeed, a lot of hatred. And, uh, it's therefore hard to get any compromise. And there's not much of a middle left in the United States because if you're in the middle, there are, there are very powerful forces at play that pull you to either the left or the right. And then when you add to that terrible situation, uh, this recent assassination of Charlie Kirk and other examples of violence, uh, one can imagine a situation where large-scale violence, uh, something bordering on a civil war even, breaks out in the United States. I wouldn't argue that that's likely to happen, but it is certainly a real possibility.
You have people who, in this country, who have fundamentally different views about first principles. They have fundamentally different questions about the good life. Uh, and this means that they disagree on the role of, uh, government in our everyday life. They have fundamentally different views on subjects like abortion, on subjects like immigration. I mean, immigration is a really good example. There are lots of people on the left-hand side of the political spectrum who basically favor open borders, and people on the right reject that out of hand, and they think that open immigration of the sort that Joe Biden encouraged is going to undermine, uh, the American body politic. It's going to destroy what America is all about. Those are two fundamentally different views, and they deal with first principles. And as we all know, when first principles are at stake, or questions about the good life are at stake, people are often willing to kill each other. This, of course, is why you have a state. You have a state to keep people who disagree on core issues from killing each other. And, and again, I want to emphasize that people on the far, not on the far left, people on the left and people on the right feel very strongly about these issues, and they tend to view people on the other side as the enemy, and they think that the enemy has to be dealt with in, uh, a forceful way. And that's why we're in deep trouble.
I think Donald Trump is sooie genenerous. Uh, Donald Trump, you know, has argued that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't matter. One does have the sense that there's nothing Donald Trump could do, uh, that would get him into serious trouble. And Peter Mandelson is a different case. I would imagine, uh, if Britain's prime minister had any ties with Jeffrey Epstein, that he'd be out on his ear as well. But, uh, with President Trump, it's really quite amazing what he gets away with. Uh, because his ties to Jeffrey Epstein are very close. Uh, it's, it's really quite remarkable. And, uh, it's hurt him in the approval ratings, but not all that much. And nobody's talking about him being removed from office, uh, the way Peter Mandelson was pushed aside. Uh, so I, I, uh, when it comes to President Trump, he, he is a truly amazing phenomenon. Uh, whatever you think of the substance of his views, or whatever you think of, uh, how he governs, uh, I don't think we in this country have ever seen anything like him. Uh, and to be honest, I hope we never see anything like him again, because I don't think it's healthy for democracy. Again, as I pointed out before, regardless of what you think of his views, right, his way of governing in a liberal democracy like the United States, in my view, is, uh, is dangerous.
Just quickly, I voted for Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and then I voted for Bernie Sanders over Joe Biden in 2020. And in the 2024 election, I, uh, wrote in Bernie Sanders' name. So, I've been quite consistent in the past three presidential elections in who I favored. Of course, it didn't work out very well. Uh, but, uh, I don't think you're going to get a perpetual Trump term in the sense that he's going to run for office again. He's not been making much noise about running for office again. I think he's too old, and I think his health is at a point where another term is not possible. But one could argue if you get JD Vance, uh, that there won't be much difference between him and Trump. And you could argue that if the Democrats come back to power, you'll get a firebrand on the Democratic side who will go to great lengths, uh, to stamp out all of the Republican policies left over from the Trump years, and that this will enrage people on the right, and it will fuel the fires. Uh, so you could tell all sorts of stories about how this has a very unhappy ending and American democracy is undermined.
Uh, on the other hand, we do want to emphasize that the roots of American democracy run deep, and that the United States has faced major crises before and overcome them. Uh, and the American Civil War is, of course, the best example of that. I also, uh, remember the 1960s very well, having been, uh, a teenager and then a young man, uh, throughout the 1960s, that there was a great deal of turmoil in the United States, and sometimes it felt, especially in the year of 1968, like the country was coming apart at the seams. Uh, so we've faced trouble before, and fortunately, in all those other cases, we came through it okay. Uh, but sometimes, uh, things don't work out well, and the great fear here is that American democracy, uh, will be undermined at its core.
To take it a step further, the Democratic Party has self-destructed. Uh, Congress has rolled over and played dead. And here we're talking mainly about the Republicans, because they control both houses of Congress. Uh, and the Supreme Court is filled with people, uh, who share his basic political philosophy. So he thumbs his noses, he thumbs his nose at the courts. Uh, he can coerce the Republicans into agreeing with almost anything he wants to do, and the Democratic Party is more or less, uh, helpless in trying to resist him. So, we're in a terrible situation. And again, whether this was a Democratic president or a Republican president, even if Bernie Sanders were trying to do this, I would object greatly. This is not what you want in a democracy. It's very important to have checks and balances.
I mean, as you remember, when he ran for president, he portrayed himself as the peace president. And, uh, since coming to office, he's been anything but a peace president. Uh, I mean, he declared war against Yemen. Uh, he attacked Iran. Uh, he's been a firm supporter of the Gaza genocide. Uh, and with regard to the Ukraine war, which he promised to shut down, probably before he moved into the White House, but certainly right after he moved into the White House, he's failed on that front, too. And he basically continues to support Ukraine. So, you could make a very good case that if anything, he looks like Joe Biden number two.
But I would hope the British leadership would tell Trump that he has to change his behavior in the Middle East and most importantly, put an end to the genocide in Gaza. Uh, but Britain has a deep-seated interest in having good relations with the United States. Uh, what many Brits would call a special relationship. And furthermore, there's no question that Britain has a deep-seated interest in keeping the United States engaged in Europe. I believe that all European states have a deep-seated interest in keeping the American pacifier in place in Europe. But as I said to you before, the problem is that the United States has a deep-seated interest in getting out of Europe and pivoting to Asia. So I think, all for the purposes of keeping the American pacifier in place, the British should roll out the red carpet for Donald Trump. But again, I hope the British leadership has the good sense, uh, to put pressure on President Trump, as much pressure as possible, to change his behavior towards Gaza and towards, uh, Israeli behavior in the Middle East more generally.
I think that the United States has a vested interest in making sure no country dominates the Middle East. And I was always in favor of having some sort of rapid deployment force that could be moved into the region if necessary. I'm not in favor of deploying large numbers of troops in the Middle East at this point in time because there's no serious threat to dominate the region. Our policies in the Middle East today are driven in large part by Israel. And in my opinion, Israel is an albatross around our neck. And we should not be supporting Israel the way we support Israel. We should treat Israel as a normal country. But that's not possible here in the United States. We support Israel unconditionally. And the end result is that we've gotten involved deeply in the genocide in Gaza. Uh, we have gotten involved in wars that Israel is waging in Syria, in Lebanon, and in, uh, Iran as well. And this is not in our national interest. The United States should treat Israel as a normal country. And we should immediately put an end to the genocide in Gaza. We have the capability to do that. If we made it clear to the Israelis that continuing the genocide was unacceptable and we'd punish them greatly if they didn't stop it, I can assure you they would stop it. And furthermore, we should go to great lengths to improve our relations with the Iranians so that the Iranians don't acquire nuclear weapons, and we should work to maintain stability in the region. And the most difficult obstacle to stability in the region at this point in time is Israel. No other country. The idea that Iran is the great destabilizer in the Middle East, I think is not a serious argument. It's Israel.
The United States and Israel, and you know, they act as a tag team. The United States and Israel will just brush it off. They won't pay it serious attention. And of course, the United States has been going to great lengths to get the British and the French and others not to recognize a Palestinian state. Uh, but it, I think it is a step in the right direction. But, uh, what I'd like to see happen more than anything else is for the genocide in Gaza to stop.
Well, I think what's going on here is that the Israelis want to ethnically cleanse Gaza. They want to drive all the Palestinians out. And I think they thought that initially they could use military force to hit the Palestinians hard enough that they could drive them out by the end of 2023, maybe early 2024. Uh, but the Palestinians have not left. No other country is willing to take the Palestinians in. And again, the Palestinians do not want to leave. And the end result is that the Israelis continue to use military force to inflict massive punishment on the Palestinians, all in the hope of driving them out. But the end result is that it's morphed into a genocide.
I think that we should go to great lengths to bring the Ukraine war to an end as soon as possible because I think the Russians are destined to win that war, and the longer it goes on, the more territory Ukraine will lose, and the more Ukrainians will die. I think there's no way that the West can help Ukraine rescue the situation. In other words, I don't think the West can help Ukraine stem the tide on the battlefield. I think Ukraine will just lose more territory, lose more men. And I think that would be disastrous for Ukraine. So my view is we ought to shut down the war.
Now, I think the problem is you have to distinguish what Putin was saying before the war started and then what happened once the war started. Anybody who has studied war, like I have over a long career, understands that once a war starts, you have escalation. You have escalation not only in terms of the means that are used to fight the war, but you have escalation in terms of goals. And my argument was long, uh, has long been that before the war, there was no evidence, uh, that Putin was interested in conquering territory in Ukraine and making it part of a greater Russia. But there's no question that once the war got going, and especially after the negotiations in Istanbul broke down in April of 2022, that Putin began to think in terms of capturing territory. And I personally believe that the longer the war goes on, the more territory he's going to want to conquer. In other words, if the West continues to push hard in favor of Ukraine and against Russia, it will incentivize the Russians to take more territory, to take places like Odessa, Kharkiv, and so forth and so on, because the Russians will understand that NATO is never going to quit fighting against Russia, and therefore it makes sense for Russia to control as much Ukrainian territory as possible. I'm not talking about deserting Ukraine. I'm talking about getting the best possible deal for the Ukrainian people. If you accept a settlement now, there's no question that Ukraine is going to lose a substantial portion of its territory, uh, probably close to 25%.
Let me make a couple points. First of all, I do believe the United States is firmly committed to containing China in East Asia. And I do believe that we want to pivot fully to East Asia, and we've been unable to pivot fully to East Asia because we're pinned down in Ukraine and we're pinned down in the Middle East, and that is not in our national interest. But I think China is a pure competitor for the United States, and we want to deal with the Chinese above all else.
With regard to Europe, we have no vested interest in being in Europe. Russia is not a threat to dominate all of Europe. As you've surely noticed, they've spent the past three years just trying to conquer the eastern 1/5th of Ukraine. The idea that this army is the second coming of the Wehrmacht and it can conquer all of Ukraine, then conquer territory in Eastern Europe, and eventually be on the beaches of Dunkirk, is not a serious argument. This is not that formidable an army. And furthermore, Putin would be crazy to invade Western Ukraine because he would run into huge resistance. So the idea that Western Europe, or Europe more generally, is going to be left vulnerable to Russia, this great Russian juggernaut, is not an argument I think that is correct.
Well, if, uh, Russia is weaker than the NATO West, why is Russia winning the war and the NATO West, uh, in deep trouble? Well, what do you want to do? Fight a war? Or is that your argument that what the West should do is become engaged in the fighting? The question is, what's the alternative? What's the alternative to continue fighting? You, I don't think can tell a story, you, in the generic sense of that term, you can't tell a story as to how we can help Ukraine rescue the situation. We don't have the weaponry to give the Ukrainians. And furthermore, weaponry is not their principal problem at this point in time. Their principal problem is manpower. And we certainly can't solve the manpower problem. And furthermore, President Trump is slowly but steadily divorcing himself from this conflict and shifting the burden to the Europeans. And there's no way the Europeans are going to reverse the tide. So I, I'm basically arguing here, you have two, a choice between two bad alternatives. And I believe the least bad alternative is to settle.