‘Ask Me Anything’—the Iran War Edition

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FP Live Introduction

0:30Hi, I'm Ravi Agrawal, Foreign Policies Editor-in-Chief. This is FP Live.

0:41So every now and then I do a live Ask Me Anything episode. We just aired one on our website on Monday, the 4th of May. We had a lot of questions from all of you from around the world. For obvious reasons, the majority of questions were about the conflict in the Middle East. So today's show is very much focused on that. But from a variety of angles. How each side is performing. Who are the unintended winners from the war. And what the Middle East might look like after the dust settles on this conflict.

Middle East Conflict Discussion

1:11So let's dive right in. And I asked our producer, Donna Scheran, to take over the hosting duties.

1:19Thanks, Ravi. I think we've gotten more questions this time than we ever have. So I'll just get right to it. The majority of the questions today were about Iran, but from a variety of angles. So here's one that I think is a pretty good place to start. Spiridon Mouralatos wanted to talk to you about the claims of victory. So what do you make of the White House saying that it has defeated Iran? Look, on the one hand, the claims make absolute sense. You would expect in any war, any combatant to say that they are winning and to try and

1:53use that claim to then generate support at home, maintain some, you know, advantages in the polls and to continue to get the support of your people. So it makes sense that the United States would try to do that. I think what has made this so much harder for them is that a lot of the stated objectives from before the war started have not quite been realized. Now, before I get into those, I think it's very important to mention that the United States has caused Iran immense damage.

2:24It has, of course, taken out on day one, that country's supreme leader, who's now been replaced by his son, Moshe Taba Khamenei. It's taken out many top leaders in the IRGC, in the military, politicians, nuclear scientists. It's hit many hundreds of crucial military sites, nuclear sites. It has severely dented and damaged Iran's ability to launch ballistic missiles, for example. But it hasn't ended that ability.

2:55It hasn't destroyed the regime. It has hurt it, but it hasn't toppled it. And therein lies the problem, I think, with any U.S. claims of a quote-unquote victory, because if one of its stated objectives was regime change, that has not happened. If its stated objective was to prevent Iran from ever being able to launch ballistic missiles, that has not happened. And then I think most of all, the fact that Iran now has, if not de facto control of the

3:28Strait of Hormuz, it has the ability to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz. And this, of course, is the thoroughfare through which a fifth of all crude, a fifth of all natural gas, and many other materials pass through, a third of all helium. With Iran's ability to disrupt this incredibly important global economic choke point, it has now found a means through which to hurt not just the United States, but the entire global economy. And in a sense, this is its nuclear weapon equivalent that it actually now has the ability

4:00to use because another country did the unthinkable in taking out its leader and declaring war on it. So if you add up all of those things, and the fact that we're still at this standoff, we still don't have a clear sense of when this ends, how it's resolved, whether Iran is better off or worse off, whether the United States has truly neutralized its nuclear ambitions. Since we don't know any of those things right now, and the world economy is still really hurting,

4:31I find it very hard to give credence overall to claims that the United States is winning this war or has won this war, because again, the evidence on the ground suggests otherwise.

US Weakening

4:44So we've talked then a little bit about how Iran has been weakened, but how about the US? This is a question from Katya Mashias, who asks, if the war is weakening America, the longer it goes on. And I want to kind of marry that question with one from Tim Reed. You know, we started to get into this already, but how much economic damage is happening not just to the United States, but the world economy? How are you gauging both of these things? Yeah, those are great questions. Look, I think in terms of hard costs to the United States,

5:16specifically from this war, there are several, and there are a range of ways of counting them. A CNN investigation recently showed that as many as 16 US military sites in the Middle East have been damaged, in some cases, damaged to the extent that they are currently unusable. Now, in terms of costs, it would cost a lot of money, of course, to rebuild those facilities. The United States has expended a lot of its missile defense interceptors. It costs a lot of money just

5:49to maintain all of the ships and tankers in the region. All of that stuff is immensely expensive, of course. And then back at home, the fact that the price at the pump has increased by as much as 40, 45 percent, depending on the state that you're in. That is basically a daily expense for regular Americans, which when you add it all up, is many, many billions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars for every day that this war extends and that prices remain high. So the economic costs for the United States are immense.

6:24The soft power costs for the United States are not to be ignored either. I think at this point, we now know that much of the rest of the world, including US allies such as Europe, are quite upset that the United States launched a war that much of the world sees as not necessary. There was no clear imminent danger. And it has thrust much of the rest of the world into immense economic pain. And I think

6:55this is a good moment to take Katya's question on as well, because, you know, and I've been arguing this in FP, while I don't want to diminish the immense economic pain that Americans are suffering every day through the increase of the price of gas and slowly other commodities whose prices will increase, the reality in much of the rest of the world, and specifically Asia, is that the costs are way higher. And the reasons are manifold. But to quickly go through them, I mean, for one, the United States

7:30is this massive energy exporter. It's the world's biggest producer of natural gas, the world's biggest producer of crude. Most Asian countries are net importers. So obviously, when you have the price of crude oil going up as much as it has, jet fuel going up as much as it has, Asian countries have to pay a lot more. They have to pay a lot more in US dollars, which are stronger than they were before. So it's a double whammy. And then the triple whammy to that is that these are all countries in Asia that have

8:02limited fiscal room for a variety of reasons. And therefore, they are unable to shield their consumers from pain. You add all of this up, Donna, and the effects for consumers in Asia range from the closure of universities in Pakistan and the Philippines and Bangladesh. They range from four-day work weeks in many parts of Asia. Cooking gas has been impacted in India, for example. You know, more than 300 million people do their daily cooking with liquefied petroleum gas. That is now

8:35currently in short supply. So restaurants have been shutting down. These are real hits to everyday decisions that people have to make in some of the world's biggest countries by population. I mean, if you're an auto rickshaw driver in Dhaka, and your rickshaw is powered with an LPG cylinder, which is quite common, the price of that cylinder is now much higher, or you have to wait for hours in line to get one, then all of that means this is a direct threat to your livelihood. So the reason

9:06why I've been arguing this is that, you know, I don't want to diminish the pain of Americans, but it is time that Americans realized how much more people in other parts of the world are suffering from a war that they had nothing to do with, that their taxpayer money is not funding, and that they never wanted. And for our listeners here, you can read that great article that Ravi wrote in much more depth, lots of data in there, highly recommend. And just to extend on that, you're describing so many

9:38losers in this war, so much pain happening globally. This is obviously true in a lot of conflicts. But

War Winners and Losers

9:44to take the other angle, Henry Ruchin wants to know, who's your take on the winners? Yeah, it's hard to think of winners. Wars are awful. And obviously, real people are suffering the most. But geopolitically, it is quite clear to me that Russia is emerging as one of the early sort of winners of this war in that two things have happened. One is the price of crude is much higher than it was before. And the second is that the United States has had to rescind some of the

10:18restrictions and sanctions that it had placed on Russian oil, which now means that a country like India, which had become Russia's biggest purchaser of crude, and then had to stop doing so under pressure from the United States, is now buying Russian crude again. So just in terms of numbers, revenue, for example, in the month of March, from oil for Russia, doubled, basically, compared to February, from something like $9.5 billion to $18. And that kind of doubling of revenue, I think much

10:52of it obviously goes to Russian companies, gas companies. But through taxation, a big part of that ends up filtering into the Kremlin's coffers. And in as much as Russia's economy had been struggling, not only from the war in Ukraine, but also from Ukrainian attacks on its oil infrastructure, this is a boost that I think Putin never imagined he would get from the United States. So that's one, I think, early winner. People have often cited China potentially as a country that is watching

11:28this war, watching the United States be incredibly mired in the Middle East yet again, and is seeing that as an advantage. And I think there is some truth to that in that Beijing, I think, does not mind it when Washington is mired in trouble somewhere else, and therefore is less able to focus on the most important and the biggest sort of geopolitical challenge of the 21st century, which is the US-China competition. But that said, China is a big net importer of energy. And so I think there are also pain

12:03points for the Chinese economy that are exacerbated by the higher cost of crude, and then also the higher cost of many other commodities, which we've been discussing on this show, but things like sulfur that go into fertilizer, which, you know, as fertilizer prices increase, then the cost of food increases. And China is a massive, massive importer of food. I mean, it does not have anywhere near as much arable land as the United States, for example. And of course, it has four or five times as many

12:35people and that many more mouths to feed. So there are elements of this war that are hurting China in a variety of ways. And it doesn't like that. And that's kind of why it's been back channeling with Pakistan and other players, in fact, many of the players in the Middle East to try and find ways to resolve this peacefully. You just mentioned the underlying China-US tension. And that brings us to the Trump-Xi meeting. We're still waiting to find out if it will go ahead later this month. But Andrew K.P. Long wants to know,

13:09if it does, what are you expecting to be the takeaway, the headline? Will it be a pause in the confrontation? Will it be a full strategic reset?

13:20It's a great question. We don't know if this meeting is actually going to go ahead. It has been postponed before because of this war. Look, if the meeting does go ahead, it will be very choreographed. It's telling to me that Trump is going to Beijing and not the other way around. I think in the current climate, it would have been very surprising to me if Xi Jinping would have come to Washington and gone to the White House and exposed himself in the way that so many other leaders

13:51have given Trump's penchant for the joint press conference and pressers in the Oval Office and sometimes the dressing down and embarrassment of other world leaders. So it completely makes sense that if this is happening, it's happening in Beijing. But I think the US-China relationship, especially under Trump, has changed. And the primary reason for that is that I think Beijing has learned how to call America's bluff. And so under Trump, as the United States ratcheted up pressure on China

14:25in the form of tariffs. You'll remember a year, year and a half ago, at the start of the Trump administration's second term, the White House was really imposing sky-high tariff numbers on China. And at some point, China decided to play the card that it's never played before, which is to say that it will restrict the export of critical minerals and rare earths. And as our viewers and listeners know, China, China, of course, has an immense monopoly, both in the supply chain of these critical minerals

14:57and rare earths, but more than that in the processing of them, because it is quite a dirty process. And there are environmental damages through it that China, of course, can explain off, because it's not a democracy, but it's so much harder for other countries to do that. So China basically said, you can't have these critical minerals, that basically the entire modern economy, the digital world, the world of semiconductors and chips and advanced manufacturing relies on. You can't have these things, we will cut it off. And of course, that wouldn't have been good

15:30for China anyway, but the United States quickly had to back off the tariff war. And what we have now is the world's two biggest economies essentially weaponizing the things that they have chokeholds on. And in this sort of new weaponized global economic system, one can imagine that the relationship between the United States and China then becomes a colder sort of conflict, one that is a standoff in

16:01which they're warily seeing who has the ability to cut off what, and also simultaneously to really invest a lot of resources in solving for the things that your opponent has a chokehold on. So China, of course, is going to do everything it can to insulate itself from any potential US action in the future. I mentioned earlier how China relies a lot on food imports. Well, food security is a massive part of Chinese policymaking at this point in time. And so that's going to be a perceived internal

16:36weakness that they're going to try and correct. And likewise for the United States, which through Paxilica and other means is trying to make sure that it is able to shore up its supply chains of critical minerals and rare earths. Now, I say all of this as a very complicated, long-winded way of answering the question of what do we expect when Trump meets Xi? And I expect a fair bit of theatricality, of choreographed stagecraft. I am not expecting too much statecraft. I'm not expecting massive outcomes

17:10that will shift the basic balance of power as I've just described. I'm also not expecting a massive shift on Taiwan, which in many ways would be to both sides advantage at this point, as they look at the chaos playing out in other arenas around the world. Stagecraft versus statecraft, I like that.

Trump-Xi Meeting

17:31But I want to turn back to where we began, the Iran conflict, and look specifically at India. We got a great question from Arun Sham. How do you see a country like India navigating the Iran conflict? He points out that New Delhi has significant stakes in Iran that predate this conflict. It also needs Washington. And then more broadly, he asks if strategic autonomy is becoming less of a doctrine and more of a luxury that few countries can actually afford.

18:05I think strategic autonomy or whatever you want to call it, hedging, is now an imperative for all countries, big and small. You can't rely on any one ally anymore. Certainly, you can't rely on the United States or China in either direction. So you need a network of alliances. You need to diversify all of your supply chains. You need lots of options. And then most of all, you need to look within and be able to manufacture what you can so that you're not over-reliant on any one other region or power or

18:40country for any one particular item. Now, not every country can do this, of course. Smaller countries are the most exposed because it's impossible for them to really manufacture everything. I think India, as a middle power, has the ability to try and at least bridge some of these gaps. I mean, it is making massive investments in this moment in solar and wind. But as it is confronted with this reality that it relies so heavily on the Gulf countries for not only crude but also natural gas, it is realizing

19:14it needs to simultaneously double down on coal and solar and wind and anything it possibly can. Because this summer, for example, which has already become incredibly hot in large parts of India, India's demand for electricity is already at the highest point it has ever been in its history. And you can imagine that each year, India will break records for how much energy it needs just because its population is still growing, its people are becoming richer, and therefore their

19:46needs are expanding and it's becoming hotter. So more and more people aspire to air conditioners in their homes and in their cars and in their companies. And that costs a lot of energy. So I think energy really is India's biggest pain point in the short, medium and long term. And it's going to do whatever it can to try and safeguard that. And that is partly why it has always maintained warm relations with Russia, or at least one of the reasons why the other was weaponry. Part of it is ideology. But it has simultaneously in the last 15 or 20 years really opened up to all of the countries in

20:22the Middle East. So despite its historic, long ties with Iran, which truly span millennia and cultural ties and shared language and all of that, Urdu, of course, comes from Persian. Despite all of that, India has made quite an outreach to the UAE, to Saudi Arabia, and also to Israel, as it looks to try and safeguard various supply chains, whether it's for weaponry, whether it's for oil or natural gas.

20:53I expect that strategy to continue for India. But as I was saying earlier, India can do that as a large, fast-growing economy. Not every other country can. And lastly, I'll just add that the longer this war goes on, I think India is going to end up being one of the losers. Yes, it is able to buy some Russian oil on the cheap right now. But the ripple effects that are filtering down to its people are genuinely painful. And New Valley has so far been

21:26subsidizing the price of petrol and diesel, or at least not passing on all of the costs. Very soon, it will have to start doing more of that because it is, of course, using up a huge amount of its fiscal reserves. Right. How long can that actually go on? Can you contrast that with Pakistan's situation? Islamabad has obviously been in the news recently trying to mediate between Iran and the US. But I'm curious if you can talk about why it's playing that role, and what does it stand to gain

21:58in all of this? Quite a bit was made recently about how this is a massive diplomatic coup for Pakistan as the arrival of a great new mediator on the world stage. But I've been looking at those reports and that form of commentary with some skepticism, because I think Pakistan needed this, first of all. They are more affected than almost any other country by this crisis. They rely on the Gulf for 80% of

22:28their crude, for a huge amount of their natural gas. And of course, Pakistan is completely a net importer of energy. It also has long been facing some version of a balance of payments crisis. It has gone to the IMF multiple times for bailouts and loans. And it has more recently, in the last few weeks, had to go back to Saudi Arabia for more money, in part to pay off a loan that it took from the UAE. So Pakistan genuinely needed and needs this conflict to end quickly. But I think beyond that,

23:03there weren't that many players left who could have mediated. The Omanis did the previous round, but they've obviously felt blindsided by the fact that the war was started pretty much as those talks were going on in Geneva. And then all of the other potential players who could have mediated, think of Qatar, the UAE, other countries that have relations both with Iran and the United States. Well, Iran is bombing them in the here and now, or at least it was until the announcement of the ceasefire deal. And so those countries were all ruled out. So yeah, it was two things. Pakistan

23:38needed this and the world didn't really have too many other options. And the jury's out for now on how successful the so-called Islamabad process has been, because as it stands on the previous round of talks, Trump refused to even send Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff because he felt like he wouldn't get enough out of the talks. And it was 18 hours to travel without much to show for it. So given that these talks aren't really taking place anymore, it's, I think, an open question as to whether

24:12Pakistan has been effective at all.

24:17Hey, we're taking a quick break. Back in a minute with more of our AMA discussion. Remember, you can catch all of these conversations live and on video on foreignpolicy.com. We haven't talked at all about Europe's role in this yet. But I'd like to go there. A subscriber

24:52named Mia pointed out just how much European leaders clearly distrust Trump. And she wondered, we've already talked a bit about hedging. So let's talk more about it. How are they hedging against a US dominated global order? They're hedging by beginning to find friends elsewhere. I mean, I think Europe is now opening up to China in a way that may not have been as possible or feasible a year ago, two years ago, certainly 10 years ago. I think our viewers and readers, of course, know that Europe has

25:23signed a free trade agreement with India, with Mercosur, the collection of Latin American countries. So there's the trade piece of it. I think defense is harder because it's been so integrated and reliant on the United States through NATO over the last several decades. But I think what one can't overemphasize is just the degree to which Europe genuinely feels betrayed by the Trump administration. There was everything that happened last year, of course, the tariffs, the threats about pulling

25:57aid for Ukraine, the threats about pulling out of NATO entirely, the strong arming of European countries into boosting their defense spending to 5%, which many of them will now readily admit that they needed to get to that point anyway. But I feel like the dam sort of broke in January when Donald Trump openly threatened to invade Greenland. And I think that threat was seen as not just rhetorical, but as incredibly tangible, as something that was existential for the people of Europe,

26:32that this could mean not just a United States that no longer wanted to be its closest ally, but a United States that was going rogue, a United States that was threatening to attack it, to invade it, to take its territory. And I think that shift is beginning to filter through now in a variety of ways. Just last week, we saw Friedrich Mertz, the Chancellor of Germany, say that it was humiliating that the United States was currently in the situation it was in vis-a-vis Iran, and that it spent all these

27:06weeks attacking Iran, and yet it doesn't have a clear when to show for it. And of course, from the European point of view, the war was illegal, it wasn't domestically or internationally approved. And they were, of course, asked to participate and to help clear up the Strait of Hormuz, and they refused, which was all part of a parcel of Mertz saying that this was net-net, a humiliation for Trump. And I just want to underscore how unprecedented it is for a top European leader to use that word

27:39with regards to an ally like the United States, and for then the United States to respond by saying, well, we're going to pull 5,000 of our troops from Germany. And those troops were, of course, there as part of an agreement under the Biden administration just a few years ago, to try and help with missile defense, but also a forward line of sorts against Russia. To take that away in that way in Europe, of course, is seen as immensely churlish, and one more step in some

28:12sort of a decoupling of Europe and the United States. And when you add all of that up together, it completely makes sense that every European capital now sees it as necessary for them to find other allies to diversify when it comes to defense, when it comes to supply chains for every single traded good, but also imagine things like AI and technology. They're deeply worried about the United States. And of course, those bases are part of the American war in Iran being used as deployment

28:48from there. I want to talk a little bit more about some of the oil implications of Iran.

Oil Market Implications

28:55Panaki Gaktar asked, what are the implications of UAE leaving OPEC? What are the implications there on oil prices? What are the implications on the global oil market, the global economy? I don't think there'll be huge implications on the oil market. OPEC, of course, is essentially a cartel of exporters who collectively, led by Saudi Arabia, they restrict supply or let out more supply of crude to basically manipulate the price of oil to their advantage and to their satisfaction. So they're

29:29sometimes a price check when oil prices are too high, or if they want oil prices to go up, they can restrict production. The UAE has long been part of this cartel, but it has begun to see its interests diverge from those of Saudi Arabia. And this is for a variety of reasons. I mean, on the one hand, I think Saudi prefers crude to be at around about $80 a barrel. It's currently well north of $100. But for the UAE, the needs are a bit different. They've diversified their economy much more than Saudi Arabia has. So they don't need high oil prices necessarily. They just want to

30:04maximize the volume of what they're producing. So their needs are different. Qatar had already left a few years ago. Of course, Qatar is more of a gas superpower than a crude oil superpower. So I'm not expecting huge changes with this. But I do think it is a signal of the expanding rift between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, not just on how to deal with Iran in the future, but also their roles in the region, their

30:35roles, for example, in the war in Yemen, in what's happening in Sudan. These two countries have their fingers in a lot of different pies in the region and globally. And I think the competition between them has been expanding for quite a while now. And this is one more example of how their interests are now more openly diverging. I want to marry a few viewer questions here and put to you a big picture

31:07geopolitical question. When the dust settles on the Iran conflict, what kind of Middle East do you see emerging? We just talked a little bit about Saudi and UAE, but what happens to Israel, to other Gulf states? How do they all navigate their new realities? That is a huge question. And I think a lot depends on how this war resolves itself. I think, however, whatever happens, there are a few things that we

31:40should consider to be baked in. One is that now that Iran has already weaponized its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz. I think that changes the game permanently for the countries in the region in terms of how they think about various choke points in the region, what kinds of diversification measures they employ. If you are Saudi or the UAE and much of your crude or natural gas goes through

32:10the Strait of Hormuz, you are going to want to reroute that and use the East-West pipeline or some other regional choke point through which to diversify how you allow things to go through, but then also keeping in mind that someone else could weaponize that choke point. So I think if you're in any of the Gulf capitals right now, there is a radical rethink underway of how to make sure that the things we have to offer to the world, how do we make sure we get them out without ever being

32:43cut off in the same way? The second is security. I think now a lot of these countries, which had bet on the United States and the presence of US military bases on their soil as a sort of guarantee that no one would ever touch them. I think that guarantee has just been shattered. And if anything, the US bases on their soil ended up being a target, ended up being a reason for them to be attacked by Iran. And so many of them in a variety of ways will be rethinking, recalibrating their relationships,

33:19their bilateral relationships with Washington. In some cases, they may need to double down. In some cases, they may need to diversify. They may need to look to China. They may need to look to other powers. And I think in this process of each country having to rethink what security means, what energy means, we will see more rifts between various Gulf countries and countries in the Middle East. I'm not entirely sure how that breaks down. But for example, in the early days, it is clear to me

33:50that the UAE is much more hawkish on the future of Iran than is Oman or Bahrain or even Saudi Arabia, which might be hedging a little bit more. When the dust settles, I think it'll be very interesting to see what kinds of moves each of these countries makes to try and imagine a future in which these last few months never, ever happen again. Israel, I think, is a much harder one to imagine. I think some of its future depends on the elections that are coming up, the two main sort of

34:25people that are often cited as figures in the opposition. They've united now to form one party to go up against Bibi Netanyahu. And it remains to be seen now if combined, they will be able to finally topple him. But I think longer term, Israel has so many questions left about its own security. It still has a number of forces in the region that wish it ill. The Houthis are still very much in place.

34:56And back to square one, we still have an Iran and an Iranian regime, which is, you know, brutal to its own people. But given that it is intact, it is likely going to double down on the old strategies, death to America, death to Israel. And that remains a fundamental problem for Israel. And I only hope that serious questions are asked about whether the last few years strategically have left them any better off than before.

35:27In the spirit of turning the tables on you, Ravi, I want to close with something that you've actually put to a lot of our guests. And it's a question that I imagine will continue to lead our conversations for quite some time. Tyson Nelson asked, is a return to the US led rules based global order, even possible? Or has it been now permanently undermined?

35:50It's been really undermined. I don't know what form of order or disorder lies ahead of us. But there is little doubt that the quote unquote rules, thou shalt not attack thy neighbor, thou shalt not blow up the global trading order with unilateral tariffs, the rules of the global system have completely been thrown up in the air, and no one seems to be defending them in a way at least that prevents impunity

36:23on the part of major actors. The fact that we have active conflicts underway with no clear sense of how to resolve them is not good for global order. And I think the United States in particular emerges from this less credible, seen by many countries as a rogue actor. And in the future, were it to do an about face and then try to preach rules or laws or order or norms, I think it just gets

36:54much harder for it to be taken seriously. Now, all of that said, you know, I think it's important to maintain some sense of optimism about these things as well. And, you know, I imagine two things as signs that we should be optimistic about. One is that for much of the rest of the world, we know that most countries still want order, they still want rules, they still want norms, and they are working together to figure out how to navigate their daily lives, their daily commerce and trade through those rules.

37:32I mean, as the WTO often loves to point out, 70% of world trade is still under WTO rules. So it's not like the system has completely been blown up. Just as the United States didn't completely invent all of this from whole cloth. There are certain rules and trends and norms that I think are going to survive. And many countries around the world will make sure that they do. But lastly, I wouldn't also write off the United States. I think we don't know what kind of United States will emerge from the next few years of

38:07elections. But the United States A is not going away, it will remain a massive, massive economic power. And I think it's in everyone's interest to try and encourage the United States to come back to being a defender, if not the defender, but a defender, and a participant of a more equitable rules-based order. And I think one of the things that might be required for that to happen is at some point, some form of reckoning in the United States, some public airing out of why this happened,

38:44of why the United States went down a path in which it so actively tried to blow up the global system as it had created all those years ago. And I think the airing out of that discussion could be cathartic, not just for Americans, but also for the world, if they are to trust the United States as a reliable participant and defender of whatever order emerges from here in the future.

39:14Well, thanks for finding an optimistic way to bring this all together, kind of. Kind of. Yeah. And thank you to all the viewers for such great and thoughtful questions. We really appreciate it. And that was our somewhat regular AMA with me, Ravi, answering your questions with the help of Donna. Thanks for being such a great audience. Remember, you can watch all of these interviews live on our website, and that is foreignpolicy.com slash live. FPLive, the podcast, is produced by Rosie

39:48Chulin. The executive producer of FPLive is Donna Schoen, and I'm Ravi Akrual. I'll see you next time. Thank you.