Transcript: Martin Wolf on the US midterms -- Is American democracy safe?

Martin Wolf speaks with scholar and former Republican adviser Robert Kagan

This is an audio transcript of the Martin Wolf on the World podcast episode: 'Martin Wolf on the US midterms -- Is American democracy safe?'

Robert Kagan

I don't feel I need to be living under Vladimir Putin tomorrow in order to say that we're heading in the direction of dictatorship. I just think it's very hard for people to imagine this happening in America, but clearly it is happening. I wish I saw a deeper commitment on the part of the American people to the principles of the Declaration and the constitution, rather than for them to be only concerned if it's hitting their gas prices or if somebody they know that they like has been deported.

Martin Wolf

Is American democracy safe? I'm Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. Americans head to the polls for the midterms on November the 3rd. And I'm worried. Worried about what the result will tell us about the future of democracy. Can the United States continue to be the leader of the free world?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

My family's history taught me what happens when democracy fails. My mother was a Dutch Jewish refugee who fled the Nazis in 1940. My father was Austrian, also a Jewish refugee who fled to the safety of Britain in 1937, which is why I'm talking to leading thinkers about what's at stake in these midterms for Donald Trump, for American democracy and for the rest of the world.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I wanted to kick off this series about the US midterm elections on November the 3rd with a former Republican scholar, Robert "Bob" Kagan. He's someone who has been sounding the alarm ever since Donald Trump first ran for president in 2016. Bob, welcome to the show.

Robert Kagan

Thank you, Martin. Great to be here.

Martin Wolf

We last spoke for another podcast series that I did on the future of democratic capitalism back in 2023. That was ahead of a US election that saw Trump voted in as president for the second time. And you were already warning then about the dangers of America slipping into autocracy. You've since gone further, saying the US is not merely on a path towards dictatorship but effectively already in one. So to put it bluntly: Are these midterms just a waste of time, a foregone conclusion? So what's really at stake? What do you think?

Robert Kagan

It's a good question. I guess I feel like there is hope in the midterms, but I do think that we need to understand that these midterms take place in the context in which, as you say, we've already moved well into dictatorship. I find it rather remarkable to sort of take this for granted that the justice department has been completely subverted in its mission, that the justice department, which is the law enforcement agency of the United States, is now entirely a personal fiefdom of Donald Trump: doing his bidding, going after his opponents, using the power of the law against people he doesn't like, whether they've committed any kind of possible crime or not. We have an FBI that is completely controlled by the administration. We have a Pentagon and a military that is being turned into a personal arm of the president. We've had major elements of the federal bureaucracy destroyed and most of the professional people have been fired. That is a big shift from where we've been throughout most of American history, and I think it's worth keeping that in mind.

Now, even in full-scale dictatorships who hold elections for whatever reason, they do have to worry about elections and a bad electoral result can be a problem for them. The question that I have, since it looks like that Trump is going to have a bad electoral result, is he going to allow that to happen? And I must say right now, I think that it'll be difficult for him to overturn a lopsided election, but it will not be difficult for him to disrupt the counting and perhaps even the seating of the next Congress. So I think that we're still very much at risk. And then even if there is a big Democratic victory, Trump has been operating pretty much without Congress, without permission from Congress and with pretty solid support among his own party. He may continue to ignore Congress, so we haven't seen what he would do with an opposition Congress yet. But I suspect that he will not play ball the way most presidents normally do.

Martin Wolf

Before we go deeper into this, let's consider sort of a bit of pushback. There are still elections. It seems likely there will be some sort of midterm. We'll discuss them more in detail. The courts are certainly still blocking the administration, including occasionally even the Supreme Court. State officials have resisted federal demands, and state officials still are elected and have power. The press still attacks the president. So why do you think this is a dictatorship rather than just a severely degraded and threatened democracy?

Robert Kagan

Well, as I say, it's not a completed dictatorship. It's, you know . . . If anything, it's in a transition, but it's well down that transition is what I'm trying to say. And just the fact that we're having an election doesn't mean that we're out of the woods because elections have been part of transitions to dictatorship before. And I just think it's worth keeping in mind.

Now, we can't predict necessarily what Trump is going to do, but I must say that he seems more unhinged than ever. He is taking actions which normal presidents would not take on many issues, and I just don't rule out the possibility that he will attempt to use his power. And I think that's the most important point. It is possible he won't do it, but he certainly has the power to do it. He is in full control of what in other countries would call the power ministries. He can choose not to use them. He can choose not to try to attempt to consolidate his dictatorship further, but I think the jury's out as to whether he will or he won't.

And he certainly has people working in his administration whose sole purpose is to attempt to overturn the election. We see the justice department sending out . . . They're promising to send out a historic number of election monitors. Under this administration, those people who look at elections have done all kinds of things to disrupt them including questioning people's rights to vote, etc, and possibly intimidating people. So I would like to be hopeful that sort of the overall will of the American people -- which seems increasingly opposed to Trump -- will have an effect, and I don't rule out that it will. I just am worried that we are in the presence of a government that has the power, and I think it's reasonable to think that they have the will to try to prevent this election from leading to a fundamental change of power.

Martin Wolf

Could you say, from your perspective, at what point, what might happen that would allow you to say with confidence: we've crossed the Rubicon, this is now a consolidated autocracy?

Robert Kagan

Well, obviously any effort to prevent this Congress from being seated would be it. I mean, I think that even if all we do is move into what you might call a constitutional crisis, then we will be in a sort of state of civil conflict in a certain way and what the outcome of that is hard to say. The outcome of that could be the victory of democratic forces. But the fact that we would be in that struggle, to me, is enough to be worried about, you know? I mean, I don't feel I need to be living under Vladimir Putin tomorrow in order to say that we're heading in the direction of dictatorship. I just think it's very hard for people to imagine this happening in America, but clearly it is happening.

Martin Wolf

I have to say personally I thought it was quite plausible once he was re-elected; indeed, even when he wasn't convicted in the impeachment case after the previous election.

Let me talk a bit about your own experience in the following sense. You were a member of the Ronald Reagan administration. You have been engaged with Republicans in government. You know many of the senior Republicans, and no doubt some people you know well have accommodated themselves to or even fully embraced what's going on.

Robert Kagan

More than some. (Robert laughs)

Martin Wolf

Well, what do you . . . How does that feel? How do you explain that to yourself? How astonished are you that people who . . . After all, the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln. This would feel, I would have thought, like the most extraordinary betrayal. How do you explain that to yourself?

Robert Kagan

Human beings behaving like human beings, that seems to be obvious. I mean, I was shocked initially when I saw that some people that I thought I knew were willing to go along with the whole Trump movement. But they do it for the reasons that people always do it. They do it for reasons of careerism. They do it for reasons of belonging. You know, people are in Washington because they want to be part of the power structure in some way or another. And if you are at odds with your party, then you're out of the power structure. And I think the number of Republicans who have refused to go along with Trump have just become irrelevant. So that's the choice you face. You become irrelevant, you become ostracised or you go along. And I think that in the majority of the cases, unfortunately of human beings, and I . . . You know, this has been, for me, a kind of acid test of who has principle and who really doesn't ultimately. But I guess I haven't really been shocked to discover that the great majority don't.

Martin Wolf

Do you think fear is an important factor, or is it, as it were, greed and opportunism that are much more important?

Robert Kagan

It depends who you are. I think for a lot of the sort of senior Republicans, they're all out there making a lot of money right now. They're all in consulting firms. They rely on business support, which means they need to have a decent relationship with the Trump administration. So I think at the upper levels, it's more greed and ambition. But for other people, it is a matter of fear because, of course, you know, if you're talking about people who are in their thirties or forties, and they're married with children, and they have to make a living, and this is how they've made their living. So they're fearful of going in the wrong direction.

Now, you may be talking about a more profound fear, and that exists also. I think fear of being come after by the government in some way is also out there and with very good reason. If you look at the number of people that Trump has gone after for no particular reason, for like taking a picture of some shells on a seashore, it's not unreasonable to imagine that you could get in the crosshairs of the government. Fear is a big part of it, but so is ambition and greed.

Martin Wolf

So if you go back 10 years ago -- perhaps even earlier, but that's when he really burst on the scene, a little bit more than 10 years ago in early 2016 -- I wrote my first column in March 2016 under the heading Donald Trump is how great republics meet their end, so I think it was a reasonable call as it turned out. But he's achieved this extraordinary power. The way he governs now is completely different from the government of the first term. How has this happened? How has he accumulated this power in the context of what we all thought was a pretty well-established, consolidated, trustworthy republican constitution?

Robert Kagan

Well, starting from the end of that, what we've learnt and what I think we should have always known is that the institutions that were established in the constitution were not self-enforcing. They were not like a machine that snaps into place when there's a threat. They depend on people to carry them out. And, you know, I think it turns out the founders weren't anticipating political parties. And I think political parties, while in some ways they're beneficial to democracy, are also clearly a potential hazard to democracy because you have party solidarity superseding fidelity to the constitution, basically. And that's what you're seeing in Congress.

But then why does he have so much more power than maybe he did in the first term? And I think that answer is obvious. It was the winning of a second election. I mean, he had democratic legitimacy. And he also came back, basically getting a free pass to do whatever he wanted to do by the Supreme Court. I mean, you say the Supreme Court has been blocking him. I would say whatever they're doing now pales next to their declaration, effectively, that a president could do whatever he wanted in office, whether it was legal or illegal, and Trump is taking full advantage of that.

But, you know, between our misunderstanding of the strength of our institutions, and the fact that Trump won a popular victory, and the fact that he personally is an unusual character in the degree of his megalomania -- not unprecedented but certainly I would say, compared to past American presidents, we're dealing with a megalomania that we've not seen before -- all those ingredients together take you where you are right now.

Martin Wolf

I suppose one other factor is that over the years, a real group has emerged. Obviously, the Heritage Foundation played a big part in this. To me, fanatics, I mean, people who were genuinely committed to the complete transformation of the American state and the American constitution. And that takes time, doesn't it? So he's now got a group of people around him who have a plan; they've worked it out and they're implementing it. And we underestimated that, or some did. And that's a big part of why they're getting so far, isn't it?

Robert Kagan

No, absolutely. And you know, when Trump came into office in the first term . . . First of all, I don't think he ever expected to win the presidency when he started running in 2015 or whatever it was. Then, so when he came in, he really didn't have, you know . . . Most presidents come in with some kind of entourage, and he really didn't have much in the way of that. And he picked a lot of Republican sort of stalwarts or one kind of people who are nominal Republicans with base, and they obviously were not the best people to be carrying out his mission.

In the second term, he has true believers -- true believers in him and true believers in the mission of changing the American system fundamentally. They have a different ideology. They are not liberal. They're anti-liberal. They're post-liberal. They want to live in a society of hierarchy of race and religion and sex, and that's what they're trying to create right now. So I wouldn't call them fanatics, but we should identify them as fundamentally hostile not just to the American constitution but more importantly to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which the constitution was designed to protect.

Martin Wolf

So it seems to me that one of the principles they're putting forward here about the president is that, in fact, he has the powers of an absolute monarch.

Robert Kagan

Yeah. But for them, you know, for a purpose. I, you know . . . For Trump, it's for himself. But I don't think that they're so much interested in the monarchical aspect of it as they are in establishing a racial and religious hierarchy in the United States. I think that's their number one goal. Trump has been a vehicle of that goal. And by the way, you might say, and I'm sure they feel this way, a very imperfect vehicle. I hate to think of how much more effective they would have been in accomplishing their objectives if they were not dealing with an egomaniac who ultimately is more concerned about himself than any mission. I mean, in this respect, he's not Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler was the ambition and the mission fused into one person. In the case of Trump, he's sort of a vessel rather than the author of these views.

Martin Wolf

If you look at the rulers today around the world -- the sort of autocrat, fairly representative, there are quite a few of them -- and to compare them with what we had in the '20s, '30s, communism, fascism and so forth, the difference was that many of the latter were genuine fanatics. While these people -- many of them, there are a few exceptions -- look more or less like gangsters.

Robert Kagan

Yeah. Although, again, I hate to . . . I don't think it's normal to view a dictator like Putin as without ideological content, but Putin definitely stands for a fundamental anti-liberal ideology. And, you know, insofar as he's selling anything in Russia, it's very much traditional conservatism, which is why, of course, so many of the post-liberal anti-liberals in the United States view Putin as something to be emulated, not as an enemy. And I think, you know, as we look at Trump and the administration dealing with Russia, it's worth realising that they do not regard what Putin is and what he stands for as something that's bad.

Martin Wolf

That is rather clear. Indeed, I've touched on this. Now, if you look at the major institutions of the government and the constitution -- Congress; political party; the courts, particularly the Supreme Court; the bureaucracy; the military; the press, which is, of course, not strictly speaking an institution of the state but clearly was seen as having a very important role in a free country -- does any of them, in your view, come out of what has been happening with its reputation enhanced and its courage clearly established or re-established in these difficult circumstances? Has any of them covered themselves with any glory or even a tiny shade of it?

Robert Kagan

Which of them has done well? Right. The overall picture, and I'm gonna come up with one minor caveat to it, but the overall picture is a complete collapse of the American elite. If you want to ask me what I've been surprised about, it certainly has been the degree to which, initially at least, the legal community caved to Trump. You know, those big New York firms that cut deals with him. The degree to which the universities have . . . I understand their plight and I feel badly for them, but the degree to which they've allowed the federal government to bully them into all kinds of agreements on specious grounds, etc. I am shocked that the retired military, a lot of the people who are out there, you know, speaking about one thing or another, are not clamouring about how the US military's being turned into a personal arm of Trump and the Trump movement.

I would say the press . . . If you're talking about journalists in particular, I think the journalists have been the bravest and the ones who have been fighting back the most. I have all kinds of criticisms about the way the press deals with Trump, and I wish they were tougher, and I wish they had a better understanding of what their role is in this situation. But the headline, Martin, is yes, it's been shocking the degree to which elites who did not have to cave so quickly accommodated themselves even before he was elected. You know? Jamie Dimon was out there giving talks at Davos, making it clear that he was down with Trump if necessary. He was cool with it so that he and the rest of the corporate community could get right with the new boss.

Martin Wolf

If we look at possible constraints on him, there does seem to be pretty clear evidence from polls which are still being taken that his popularity, his approval ratings are pretty poor indeed, remarkably so. Is that a serious liability for him, or isn't it because he really doesn't think it'll affect him at all because he's going to, to put it crudely, rig it?

Robert Kagan

The fact that he is unpopular and that we are going to hold elections is a problem for him, you know? I think that, you know, all things being considered, he'd rather that there were no elections. He's not going to annul the election. I think more likely we're gonna move into some period of chaos, constitutional crisis and, in a certain sense, civil crisis -- but which is bad enough -- but I don't know that he has the capacity to do that.

And this sort of gets back to what I was saying before about he's just a vessel. He's not a particularly . . . His egomania gets in the way of successful accomplishment of his objective. You know, he's unpopular because of two decisions that he made that had nothing to do with him being an autocrat, that had nothing to do with consolidating power, but which have damaged him. You know, getting into the Iran war and the tariff policy have created conditions -- economic, in particular, conditions -- that have led to a lot of discontent. I hate to think of where we would be right now if he hadn't got into the Iran war and he hadn't pursued this absurd tariff policy, and if things were sort of moving along swimmingly and gas prices were closer to $3 and to $4. I'm not sure we would be seeing a great rebellion against Donald Trump. So while I'm happy to see, you know, the fact that he's got himself into this pickle, I would love to have a better view of what it actually means.

And the only thing I would say is that Democrats running for office, for the most part -- as far as I can tell, I live in Virginia and I see the ads that they're running -- they don't wanna talk about Trump at all. They don't wanna say we're in the middle of a constitutional crisis, that the fate of democracy is at stake. They wanna talk about dynamic pricing and data centres, which, you know, if that's the way to get elected, that's fine. But it's not as if we're having a referendum on democracy here either, you know? And I only say that just because I don't wanna get too optimistic about the American people yet. I've not seen among the American people or the elite institutions the kind of horror at what is happening in our country that is appropriate to the situation.

Martin Wolf

It does at least suggest a slight upside that even an authoritarian president -- an increasingly authoritarian president -- is vulnerable to ordinary political failures and misjudgments, and he seems to be capable of making real lulus in this area.

Robert Kagan

No, I think that's true, and that . . . And look, we're in uncharted territory here. There's never been a country like the United States, and the United States has never gone through this particular kind of a crisis before. So we're in inconceivable territory right now. I love looking for shoots of optimism, but the fact is we're already, you know, at the gates of hell as far as I'm concerned. Even if we get a Democratic victory or a change of government in 2029, the damage that's been done to our institutions, I don't know exactly how we're gonna be able to fix everything.

Martin Wolf

Well, that's clearly a very important point, which I would like to discuss. One other issue, maybe secondary, of moment, when one felt -- at least from this side of the Atlantic -- that there was a reaction which shook them a little, and that was the over-reach, put it mildly, by ICE in Minnesota. Was that a moment that you felt actually ordinary Americans started behaving the way you thought ordinary Americans should?

Robert Kagan

You know, I think everybody was like, it's great that the people of Minnesota are fighting back, but I didn't see anybody else in the streets anywhere else protesting on behalf of the Minnesotans. It was sort of like if it isn't happening to me, it's not a problem. And I, you know . . . Unfortunately, that ugly quality of human beings has been well revealed in this whole period. And I think particularly about all the people of Latin descent who voted for Trump, and many of whom, even today, believe that the only people who are being deported are the people who should be deported and as long as it's not them. And then, of course, when it does get close to them, they decide that it's horrible.

And so I wish I saw something that would look a little bit more like civic virtue out there, that I wish I saw a deeper commitment on the part of the American people to the principles of the Declaration and the constitution, rather than for them to be only concerned if it's hitting their gas prices or if somebody they know that they like has been deported. You know, I'm afraid one of the things that this whole episode has revealed is how shallow true conviction is, even in the longest-standing democratic country in the world, to fundamental liberal values.

Martin Wolf

Let's suppose, you know, Trump and his men and women have a plan to make sure they don't lose power. I've always assumed they would do everything they could to ensure they won't lose power. So how might that play out? What could they do? How might they be stopped?

Robert Kagan

Well, there's obviously a number of different sequences of events that one could imagine. One is that, for whatever reason, they have election monitors at polls, and they claim that there has been some kind of fraudulent voting. And therefore the justice department decides, as the FBI did in Georgia, to go and seize the ballot boxes because we have to make sure that this has all been on the up and up. And so now we will have to wait for that investigation, and the elections are on hold. The results of the elections are on hold until we get there. And that could . . . And maybe that goes on for weeks, or maybe it goes on for months, and you don't really have the seating of a new Congress.

And that's sort of the mild version. I would say there's a more worrying scenario where, for instance, some types of government officials, whether it's ICE or the National Guard, start at least being in the vicinity of polling areas and potentially intimidating people, which then leads to protests against them. Then the Republicans will claim that the radical-left communist, Islamist jihadists are trying to overturn our elections. And then you would say, OK, so what happens when we're now in the streets, we're battling, people are being arrested? Do we think Republicans will say, oh no, that's horrendous; you can't do that. This is not fair. This is not . . . Or are they gonna say, yes, it's radical Islamic jihadists. We've got to do something? I think the latter. I think you can count on Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, to support whatever Trump's doing. I think you can count on John Thune, the Senate majority leader, to duck his head no matter what Trump is doing. And so I don't think you can count on the political leadership to say, no, you can't do that. That leaves it to the people in the streets. And that is not the democratic process at that point. That's why I say, at that point, you're sort of in an extra-constitutional civil conflict.

Martin Wolf

But the states have powers of their own in elections. I mean, America is still a federation, and many states are Democratic. Isn't it true, and certainly what we've seen elsewhere, that the sort of the margin of victory makes a difference? Rigging things at the margin, not counting ballots in certain specific very Black cities, say, is one thing. But actually overturning an election if actually they've lost decisively, which does seem possible, is gonna be pretty tough because he doesn't actually control everything.

Robert Kagan

If these polls hold up even marginally, it'll be hard to claim that there's some kind of surprise since everybody knows and that therefore there needs to be an explanation as to why this happened. It certainly makes it harder for him. And again, I don't foresee him overturning the election. I don't think that is possible for the reason that you say. I think if the polls were much closer and it was a matter of this district here and that district there, I think that would be closer. That does not seem to be the case.

So the only other option is basically to throw the system into turmoil, but I think that is a possibility. I do think that the idea that Mike Johnson will not seat a new Congress because there are irregularities that still need to be investigated, etc, is a real possibility. And now where does that lead? I don't know where that leads, but that's because we would be in no-man's-land at that point. We've not had that situation in America yet, and so it's hard to predict how it would turn out. It could be that there'll be such a popular outrage at what's happening, and that will be reflected in the politicians' behaviour that, you know, things will be righted in some way. But I also think that once you've cracked the system, then once you've sort of moved past having a fair election that is tabulated and the results are announced and the new Congress is seated, once you're out of that lane and now you're into a kind of a nether area between, you know, what should happen and what is happening, I don't know what happens at that point. I don't know how you get out of that necessarily. And in all of that, he doesn't need a Congress seated. So from Trump's point of view, he's still president in all of this. So it's no skin off his nose if Congress is never seated. For him, then he just moves on.

Martin Wolf

So if the US remains without a Congress, and he just moves on, as you say, this will really clearly be a coup. The executive closes down in some obvious sense or captures the parliament -- Congress -- completely. This is quite demonstrably a completely different constitutional set-up.

Robert Kagan

It's not gonna be a clean cut: oh, look, the president's conducting a coup; there's gonna be a huge national argument about what's happening. When you have major news organisations that are under the control of the administration and you have an entire Congress full of Republicans who are now absolutely committed, they have nowhere else to go but to support the president under those circumstances. It'll be very risky to break from the party at that point. All kinds of things have been done that ought to have caused so much outrage as to be inconceivable, and yet Republicans have repeatedly endorsed them. The Republican Party has become the party of dictatorship. It cannot be relied upon to ever stand up, and that's why it's so important to get a Democratic Congress in right now.

Martin Wolf

So let's talk about that possibility. The elections turn out to be relatively normal. The result is a pretty decisive victory, and then we have a Democratic Congress, possibly in both houses. What might happen then? Could it start a civil war? Could it do something quite different? What do you think?

Robert Kagan

I think if there's a full . . . If there's an elected Democratic Congress, especially if it controls both houses, that is a big deal, and that is the best hope we've yet had of basically trying to turn things around. At that point, Trump would have to go into full dictatorship mode, and I'm not sure the country is ready for that, I guess. This is where I feel like he hasn't had enough time really to consolidate the situation. People still think we're living in a democracy, so Republicans are behaving as if they're having elections. You know, they are turning against Trump to some extent on some things, which is a hopeful sign. And if there is a huge Democratic victory and politicians are still concerned about getting themselves elected rather than marching behind Il Duce, then you can imagine, basically, a breakdown of Maga. And I could see . . . If Trump is not running in 2028, I think the Republican Party is gonna fracture. I think there is no leader to take charge from . . . to sort of take over for Trump. I think the party has got a lot of different factions now and that they'll have a hard time.

So I do think that if you successfully get a Democratic Congress in this election, they will spend all their time demanding impeachment, demanding hearings, whether people show up to these hearings or not. But even so, I think the Democrats will be in a much stronger position. And just the national repudiation of Trumpism, I think, is what is probably most important. Because that is my hope out of all of this, that Trump has done such a horrendous job -- both for the American economy and with the Iran war, and with ICE and all the things that we could list -- and this election will represent a repudiation of that. And it's important not just to defeat Trump electorally, but really to defeat the whole movement of ideas that has fuelled his success.

Martin Wolf

We're quite fortunate that he is, in many ways, such a fool. Do you think there are people in America -- and I've thought about this quite a lot, particularly the former presidents, and you can think about some of them -- who could have articulated more effectively, as it were, because they're not part of the current political game, what is at stake now, and how extraordinary the behaviour is, and what a catastrophe the disappearance of America as a functioning democratic republic would be? I've been surprised at how little we seem to be hearing, as it were, from people who obviously must think this. Are you surprised or . . .

Robert Kagan

Are you talking about George W Bush?

Martin Wolf

No, I was thinking among other . . . the people of Barack Obama, who certainly must understand this.

Robert Kagan

Oh. Well, I think for Barack Obama it's complicated because he himself is sort of a reviled figure among a certain part of the Republican Party, and therefore him speaking up against this maybe isn't as helpful as other people.

And the one . . . But the person that I've been most disappointed in is been George W Bush because not only should Bush be, you know, upset about what Trump is doing to our republic, but there are some very specific things that Trump has done to repudiate policies that Bush undertook that he was very proud of. And one of those was Pepfar, which was, you know, the HIV programme in Africa, and other foreign aid programmes which Bush, you know, was personally very deeply committed to. And the other thing was his policy on immigration. I mean, Bush was very open on the question of immigration, very much pro-immigration in the context of his time, and so he should be horrified. And of course I'm sure he says to himself that, you know, former presidents should keep out of things, but that didn't stop him from endorsing some Republican candidates for Senate recently. And I think the real reason is the same reason that all these Republican big figures have refused to break. They just won't break from the party. It's like a big country club. They can't imagine it, which is just appalling. I think George W Bush should really be embarrassed for his failure at this critical moment.

Martin Wolf

We know very well that you identified America and American influence in the world, particularly in the postwar period, with the promotion of freedom, liberal democracy, constitutional order. What do you feel and how do you make sense of the fact that, as you describe it, basically America's on the opposite side? What does this say to you about America, about democracy, about the stability of values? Does it sort of suggest that the darkness is always there and we're sort of very likely to fall back into it?

Robert Kagan

I would say if there seems to be one thing that has emerged in American history -- and I find this very much the case on foreign policy, but it looks maybe also increasingly to be the case on domestic policy -- is that the one constant is oscillation. We are constantly moving back and forth between two different poles.

On the domestic front, it's sort of the battle over American identity between the identity of a white Christian nation and the identity of a polyglot, you know, nation of immigrants, and also a nation that believes in universal human rights. And we've gone back and forth on it. And you know, people sort of forget that in the 1920s and '30s, especially the 1920s, were a high point of American racism as sort of a major fixture of our society and higher than it had been before. And on foreign policy and in terms of what America's role in the world is, it is worth remembering that at least a sizeable portion of the population in the 1930s, and certainly this was true of a sizeable number of the elites, had decided that democracy didn't work. Some of them decided that only communism was the right answer, and some of them thought that fascism was the right answer. There were people like Joseph Kennedy and others in the America First movement, Charles Lindbergh and others, who genuinely thought that perhaps fascism was the future.

And so we're perfectly capable of doing this, and I think what happened was we mistook what was a period of liberal ascendancy, which was very much the consequence of events. The Great Depression and World War II basically discredited a strain of American conservatism and led to a kind of liberal ascendancy, which lasted up until, you know, fairly recently. I think you could see signs of it deteriorating and eroding in the 2000s. So that's where we are now. I would say we've been much more in a period of reaction. And it's as if the America First movement really had won in the 1930s in terms of our relations with other autocratic powers because they were perfectly willing to do business with Hitler and Mussolini, but they were never in power. Now we've got people like that, who are in power. So I guess what this ultimately suggests, and I think this is probably true, is that this is not the end of the story.

Now, the one thing that I would worry about is that if Trump was able actually to consolidate a dictatorship, then you might break out of the cycles that we've been in because the institution would not permit the changes necessary for those cycles to play out. But if, in fact, we're about to have elections where the Democrats won and the popular will is actually expressed, I don't rule out the possibility that we will now go through another phase in the oscillation, both in terms of our domestic approach and in terms of our foreign policy. On the foreign policy front, the problem will be it is too late because Trump will already have destroyed the world order. But I do think in terms of America we could be in yet another phase of oscillation.

Martin Wolf

How easy is it actually to undo this? Because, as you rightly pointed out, they've obviously done enormous damage to the institutions of federal government. They've done enormous damage to other very important institutions: universities, the law, science. They've affected people's confidence in America. That doesn't sound like the sort of thing that you can sort of turn a switch and say, that's all over. We're going back to where we were before. 'Cause you need new people, you need new credible people, you need to rebuild. And destroying things, as you know very well, is so much easier than rebuilding them.

Is that a plausible perspective that we, at least in the outside world, have to say to ourselves: the old America we loved, admired, respected and thought would look after us has gone? And similarly, in America itself, the institutions we thought were strong and robust and vigorous and so important -- not gone, but they've been damaged for a long time.

Robert Kagan

Well, in terms of America's role in the world, you should think that there is no going back to where we were before. And the most optimistic scenario is that we are now in a world where other countries cannot really depend on the United States for their fundamental security as they have for decades, and therefore need to be able to find ways to look after their own security, but in a world in which the United States is positively inclined towards them and their values. I mean, so if America emerges as not the global hegemon that it was, but as sort of a more limited superpower, if you will, but on the right side, I think that will be good.

Now that, nevertheless, is a world of incredible complexity. Domestically, take the justice department, for instance. I think that you're pretty much gonna have to fire everyone. If a Democrat comes in, you have to fire everyone who was brought in. There's election deniers. There are people who are clearly substandard and they're in there just because they're willing to pay fealty to Trump, etc. And so you're gonna have to have a complete change, and I think that's gonna be true certainly at the top levels of the FBI and in other institutions and, well, the state department. And then you're in a situation in America which we'd got away from, which is, when a new administration comes in, you clean house. You basically have done away with a real reliable civil service. I don't know how you re-establish this. Maybe everybody just agrees that we're gonna try to go back to the way things were, but certainly in the near term, it's gonna be a bloodbath. And how does a Democratic president now create a justice department that is even more independent from the presidency as before, when, of course, a president still wants to be able to use the justice department? So there's gonna be all kinds of complexity in making things right.

And then at the largest level, can we reinstil sort of some basic values of fidelity to liberal values and the constitution among the American people? Because at the end of the day, let's face it: the American people did this. You know, they're not the victims in this case. They chose Donald Trump. They continue to support Donald Trump. I mean, not everybody but enough. And, again, what I think has been most revealed in this period has been the shallowness of Americans' commitment to the basic principles on which our country was founded. Now maybe that can be reinfused, as it was after World War II. But I don't . . . I hesitate to ask what kind of crisis would be necessary to do that. So I think it is gonna be very hard to right the ship. And certainly from the rest of the world's point of view, the best you can hope for is a more benevolent America, but I don't think that there's any returning to the role that the United States played before.

Martin Wolf

And we haven't even discussed the scale of the corruption.

Robert Kagan

Well, and we should actually because, you know, from a foreign policy point of view, that's quite relevant. The United States is now a predatory criminal enterprise. It's not really a foreign policy anymore. It's just, where is the dough and how can we get it? And we'll use the powers of the government to do that. Now that I think you can get over, but the damage being done in the meantime is really quite extraordinary.

Martin Wolf

It's certainly extraordinary and unbelievable to me that the main question that seems to be being asked by the people responsible in relationship to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is how we can do a profitable deal with Russia, and who cares what the outcome of that is for anybody.

Robert Kagan

Except for the people whose wallets will be fattened.

Martin Wolf

Who are quite close to the president.

Robert Kagan

Right.

Martin Wolf

Thank you very much, Bob. I think that was perhaps not the most cheerful of conversations but realistic. And people need to be realistic about what is happening and what we might confront. Thank you.