Emotional Overload (May 30, 2025)

Welcome to Home & Away. Things got personal this week between Presidents Trump and Putin. On Sunday, Trump posted online that he “always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!” In response, the Kremlin’s spokesperson suggested Trump was showing signs of “emotional overload.” You could be forgiven for thinking the two leaders need therapy more than diplomacy.

Trump is hardly the first American president to cast his relationship with his Soviet or Russian counterpart in personal terms, only to be disappointed. FDR did this with Stalin, as did George W. Bush with Putin. Biden regularly talked about how foreign policy was largely about personal relationships.

Such thinking is almost always wrong. Personal rapport and the like can matter at the margins, but only at the margins—think one percent. Foreign leaders do what they think is best for their country and for themselves, and not necessarily in that order. Doing a favor for American presidents only comes into play when foreign leaders believe the return justifies it.

Meanwhile, what slim chance remains to negotiate a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine is fast fading. Worse yet, the war is escalating. Russia has increased its attacks on civilian targets while at the same time articulating demands that Ukraine would never accept through negotiations.

Trump finally seems to be getting frustrated. “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD,” Trump said on Truth Social on Tuesday. “He’s playing with fire!”

What Trump has thus far refused to do is define what he means by “fire.” On the Congressional side, a bipartisan move is afoot in the Senate to impose secondary sanctions on Russia. To be precise, to impose sanctions on those doing business with Russia—above all, importing Russian energy—as a way of encouraging those entities to reduce or end their trade with Russia, thereby hurting Moscow. We will see if this proposal becomes U.S. policy. But even if it does, any such sanctions regime would require time to have any effect, and what effect it would have promises to be limited, as critical countries such as China, India, and Turkey would likely find ways to circumvent sanctions. Putin could always find new outlets for Russian energy and minerals, and, in any event, has placed his economy on a wartime footing that, for now, appears to be durable.

A much better path for the Trump administration would be to commit to continuing U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. The White House has that opportunity, as the pipeline of arms for Ukraine is likely to run dry sometime this summer. Open-ended military and intelligence support of Ukraine is the best, and arguably only, way to convince Putin that he is wrong in thinking time is on his side.

Israel’s War over Gaza

Meanwhile, things are not going much better in the other conflict President Trump promised to swiftly bring to an end. I speak of the war—now some twenty months old—between Israel and Hamas. The two sides are negotiating but have yet to agree on a sixty-day ceasefire and a partial Israeli-hostages-for-Palestinian-prisoners exchange. Earlier this spring, after implementing the first phase of a three-part ceasefire, Israel walked away from the deal to avoid negotiating a permanent ceasefire and its withdrawal from Gaza. Instead, it has escalated its attacks and is now planning on a long-term occupation.

One price Israel is paying for its policy is that some twenty or so living individuals remain hostage in Gaza and the bodies of the two dozen or more dead hostages there have yet to be returned. Israel is also isolating itself from traditional supporters in the West, above all in Europe, where critical allies are now labeling the war unjustifiable and deliberating concrete economic and political consequences, including sanctions, against Israel.

Meanwhile, Palestinians are paying the price of continued military attacks, many of which are killing large numbers of civilians. Those surviving Gazans are suffering from a lack of shelter and basic goods. Before the war, Gaza was already one of the most densely populated areas on earth; today, Gaza’s two million residents have been squeezed into a quarter of the territory. Plus, there is the reality that what little food, water, and medicine are finally reaching Gaza after a two-month blockade are woefully inadequate and are being distributed inefficiently.

It is also worth highlighting what is going on away from the battlefield. One former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has openly stated that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a war crime. Another, Ehud Barak, charges the current prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, with prolonging a war that cannot be won simply to keep himself in power and to avoid his ongoing corruption trial as well as inquiries into his responsibility for the horrible events of October 7. As always, the Israeli debate about Israeli policy is far more serious and intellectually honest than what takes place here.

Making matters worse, on Thursday, Israel’s government announced plans to establish 22 new settlements, many of them deep within the West Bank. Defense Minister Israel Katz did not mince words, calling it a “strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel, and serves as a buffer against our enemies. This is a Zionist, security, and national response—and a clear decision on the future of our country.”

Just to provide some context. Some three million Palestinians and more than half a million Israelis now live in the West Bank, or what Israel terms Judea and Samaria, territory that Israel has controlled since the 1967 War. There are already just under 150 Israeli settlements and about an equal number of outposts that are not government-approved but scattered around the West Bank and rarely dismantled. Indeed, Thursday’s settlement announcement included the legalization of a dozen such outposts. The possibility of creating a viable, contiguous Palestinian state is on life support at best. This is clearly the intent of this Israeli government.

All of which raises two questions. One is for American Jewry and others who consider themselves stalwart supporters of Israel. Is it really in Israel’s interest to embrace policies inconsistent with it being both a democratic and Jewish state, to act in ways that threaten the fabric of Israeli society and that risk turning it into an international pariah? If not, and I would think the answer most decidedly is that it is not, then when are they going to say and do something about it? Blindly supporting Israeli policy decisions, even when they are not in the best interests of either Israel or the United States, is not doing Israel any favors in the near or long term.

There is as well a question for the Trump administration. Will it continue to look the other way while Israel carries out an inhumane policy toward Palestinians that undermines what chances exist for diplomacy? Such a stance will not just undermine President Trump’s desire to bring a quick end to the war in Gaza; it will also stand in the way of any normalization of Saudi-Israeli relations. It could lead to a break in ties between Israel and other countries that joined the Abraham Accords, arguably one of the biggest foreign policy achievements of the first Trump administration. And worse yet, it could set in motion developments that would threaten stability in both Jordan and Egypt, two of our closest regional allies and two countries that have long been at peace with Israel. Any of these developments would detract from the administration’s ability to focus on other foreign policy priorities. Not acting is every bit as much of a policy as acting. In this case, think of it as malign neglect.

Peking on the Potomac

Since we seem to be speaking about war this week, let me turn to a third front: Cambridge, Massachusetts. I speak, of course, of the war being waged by this president against this nation’s most iconic university, Harvard.

This week, President Trump threatened to take away Harvard’s $3 billion in grants and give it to “trade schools,” which do not focus on the critical academic and scientific research that Harvard undertakes through its federal funding. He wants to tax its endowment at a higher rate and take the exceedingly rare step of revoking its tax-exempt status. The Trump administration has also canceled Harvard’s $100 million in federal contracts. The Department of Homeland Security announced that Harvard will lose its ability to enroll international students, currently 27 percent of Harvard’s student body. And as if all this were not enough, the secretary of state has announced that all foreign students applying to study in this country must undergo vetting of their social media posts and that U.S. embassies are to hold off interviewing applicants for student visas. Secretary of State Rubio followed this up by announcing that the United States would be “revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”

The costs of these policies will be huge. At Harvard, leading researchers will lose the funding necessary for their oftentimes life-saving work and will go elsewhere, including abroad to countries that are now actively recruiting them. Schools will lose an important source of income that is frequently used to subsidize the education of American students who would otherwise be unable to afford it. The U.S. economy will lose all that foreign students spend here beyond just tuition. American students will lose the opportunity to exchange views with students from different backgrounds. This country will lose the innovation and the resulting economic growth and jobs that international students have historically stimulated, particularly in critical STEM fields. International students will lose the opportunity to get a first-rate education and exposure to a democratic, capitalist country—an experience that benefits them and their own country upon their return. We are all familiar with win-win outcomes; this policy promises to be the ultimate lose-lose-lose-lose-lose-lose proposition.

To add cynicism to folly, the Trump administration is carrying out these policies in the name of combatting anti-Semitism and keeping this country safe from radical foreign students. This is pure pretext. Of course, there is anti-Semitism on our campuses and a small number of foreign students have exploited their presence here for purposes never intended by their visa, but these problems ought to be dealt with directly and proportionately. Prominent American Jews have the obligation to speak out when the response to anti-Semitism is over the top and does little to address the problem while causing more harm than it solves. This is one such case.

There is the saying in the Bible and other ancient texts of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” It is often cited as justification for harsh penalties, but it actually was intended to do something very different—to ensure that the penalty for wrongdoing was not excessive. What the administration is doing is excessive by any and every measure. It is seeking to fundamentally weaken our leading educational institutions that have played such a large role in this country’s political and economic success—and to put up yet another barrier to even legal immigration despite the enormous contribution that these students have also made to this country’s political and economic success.

What leaps to mind is less the image of war than that of the Cultural Revolution. For those either too young or too old to remember, the Cultural Revolution was launched by Chinese leader Mao Zedong in the mid-1960s to consolidate his political control by rooting out what he judged to be undesirable political and intellectual tendencies among the elites. Intellectuals and educators were prominent targets. Over the following decade, the Cultural Revolution destroyed millions of lives and nearly destroyed the country.

America is not China, and history doesn’t repeat itself. But history does rhyme. And what we are witnessing should make us all uncomfortable. What is taking place will not make America great again. It could make China great, as we will be sacrificing much of our competitive advantages. And it might make other countries great, as some of the most talented in the world will understandably gravitate to them rather than us. As for America, it will make us less wealthy, less innovative, less competitive, less healthy, and less free. Quite the legacy.

The Coming Disruption

On Wednesday, Axios ran an important piece based on an interview with Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, a leading U.S. AI company.

Amodei issued what amounts to a stark warning, namely, that AI will be a disruptive force on a scale few appreciate, with consequences arriving sooner than policymakers and the public are prepared for. More specifically, he predicts that AI will eliminate a good many white-collar jobs in the service sector, including technology, finance, law, consulting, and beyond. He is especially worried that entry-level jobs, potentially half of them within the next one to five years, will be the first to go, leaving many young people unemployed and unable to start their careers.

This would not be the first mass job displacement in modern history. There was the agricultural revolution in the twentieth century, in which mechanical innovations dramatically reduced the numbers of people employed on farms. Many found their way to cities and industrial jobs. More recently there has been the loss of industrial employment, some because of trade, but mostly as a result of technological improvements that reduced the need for human labor. Some of those displaced took up service sector jobs or gigs of one sort or another, but many became long-term unemployed or under-employed with a host of adverse economic, political, and social ramifications. This will only get worse with robotics, AI, 3D printing, and other developments in applied technologies.

What makes this looming AI-caused disruption even more troubling is that there is no emerging sector of the economy to absorb workers who will lose their jobs or fail to find them. Amodei’s point, which alas is a good one, is that we as a society are unprepared for this emerging inevitability. We need to think hard and fast about how to tailor our educational system for this situation. And we need to think equally hard about universal basic income (UBI) and how it could be paid for in a context in which a larger number of citizens will not be able to find work. Amodei proposes a potential model in his Axios interview. As should be obvious, the potential for this coming economic disruption to cause political and social disruption is high. I do not claim to have the answers, but I do know we cannot afford to put off the necessary research and debate.

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