In The East Wing

Abdullah Najjar 0:00
All right, so this is my conversation with Professor Richard Mahoney, who was previously the Secretary of the State of Arizona from 1991 to 1995 Professor Mahoney has led a very interesting career in politics as well as academia, and he is currently a professor at North Carolina State University, where he teaches about US foreign or rather US national security. This is our conversation together, which revolved around some some pretty interesting topics pertaining to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, as well as recent US elections. It is a short conversation relative to the other episodes that I've previously recorded, but I hope that you'd enjoy my interview with Dr Richard Mahoney. All right, today I am joined by Dr Mahoney in the east wing. So, Dr Mahoney, welcome to the studio.

Richard Mahoney 1:04
Thank you very much. Abdullah,

Abdullah Najjar 1:05
absolutely. So there's, there's certainly a lot to cover. And there's been a lot going on recently in the Middle East with, obviously, with Russia and Ukraine. Biden approving, you know, the use of long, long range missiles. And recent, recently, Trump winning the elections. I mean, these are, these are big, big events that are unfolding in today's international arena. But before we touch on some of these, these recent developments, I wanted to highlight just a few things to give my audience a little bit of context about you. So you were before, I guess, joining NC State. Dr Mahoney, you, you were the Secretary of the State of Arizona, but you also had few experiences teaching in different universities, right? So perhaps, maybe you can share with us what got you into, I guess, the political arena, and how and when that transition happened, where you entered into the academic sphere?

Richard Mahoney 2:11
Yeah, from the get go, when I was your age, which was a long time ago, I was interested in the real world. So I was very involved in the anti war movement, and I was interested in the application of whatever academia has to offer in terms of ideas and, you know, understanding and knowledge in terms of real world activity. So I've really blended both of them throughout my career and with, you know, varying results, but so tried to bring some academic, you know, understanding and academic sort of interest in education to public service. And then trying, right now, for example, to bring public service to the realm of education. And I think it's a cross fertilization that we definitely need. I think it's not smart when a society has, you know, an ivory tower, on the one hand, so called, and on the other, a sphere that's pretty much removed entirely from education.

Abdullah Najjar 3:14
Yeah. What do you what do you miss most about the public service? How and how long has it been since you were in the inside, let's say,

Richard Mahoney 3:23
Well, you know, in terms of elective politics, yeah, I've been been a while, about 20 odd years. But you know, then I did speech writing for Obama in 2008 and you know, I have a couple of different NGOs that are definitely in the international sphere, one operating very actively now. So I've never really left it. But, you know, I've departed Arizona. I left Arizona pretty much in like 2003 four, and then moved to Argentina and got into film work. So I did that for about five or six years, did documentaries and, you know, news items for a channel in Windows eight and so then I came back. You know, I like academia. I enjoy it, but I'm a real world guy.

Abdullah Najjar 4:14
So what would you say suggest to someone who is in in one of your classes, or who has been a student of yours before? What would you suggest that they do in terms of either pursuing academia, public service, or both, you know, what's, what's, what would you think is the right path from your experience now that you've been all you know, you've had a rich experience of experimenting with all of these different aspects. Well,

Richard Mahoney 4:39
I think that you know, public service is a very, very broad area. And certainly working in NGOs, which is something, you know, I'm familiar with, and I'm doing right now, is a form of public service that I think is critical and interesting, and, you know, you know, very stimulating and important. And then, of course, there's a public. Director of being a civil servant, FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICER, an intelligence officer or a military officer, and those two are, you know, needless to say, very important elective politics. I kind of caution people. It's like joining the circus. It's pretty weird, and it doesn't stop, and you don't know what's going to happen in the next town.

Abdullah Najjar 5:22
Wow, did you know that going in? Or have you no

Richard Mahoney 5:29
having had my organs rearranged several times, you know?

Abdullah Najjar 5:35
Yeah, yeah. And

Richard Mahoney 5:36
in Arizona, you know, which is, you know, great state, but you know, a state with kind of a strong, how can I put this charitably, you know, high degree of social and political combustion. You know, there was, you know, a lot of at least threatened violence, and, you know, lot of confrontation stuff like that. You get used to it, yeah, but, you know, I don't really, really miss it very much.

Abdullah Najjar 6:04
And how long has it been since you were when did you transition to North Carolina?

Richard Mahoney 6:12
I've been here now 12 years. So I came here to be Director of the School of Public and International Affairs, yeah, which I did for about seven, eight years, and then I'm, you know, just your average professorial drone teaching my courses and allegedly writing, you know, stuff that's of some interest to the outside world.

Abdullah Najjar 6:32
Yeah, well, I do want to say before we proceed to other I guess, questions. I thoroughly enjoyed the course on US national security that I took with you. And I do remember a lot about, you know, reading about some of the stuff that we were assigned had to do with, obviously, the intelligence community and military and, you know, Afghanistan as well. And every, every time I have someone on the show who's had experience on the ground, whether it be in Afghanistan, the Middle East, or somewhere in one of those areas that might be a little bit too dangerous. I've always thought about, you know, I would conjure up some of the memories that we've had in class, where we watched documentary and the Korengal and, you know, we had these different discussions, these rich discussions. So it's sort of, I think that that, course, really, it was an experience. It was, it was an experience. Yeah, I just wanted to give a shout out to you in the course, I appreciate that. Yeah. All right. So, Dr Mahoney, I have a lot of things to you know, as I mentioned earlier, so much to cover. But, you know, I think that's why I might even have to do a part two, but, but I wanted, I wanted to talk a little bit about, I guess, this, this recent development with the with the Israel Gaza War, where we have the ICC issuing arrest warrants for both Netanyahu and Galant, in addition to Muhammad daif, who is still the IC already indicated that we they don't even know if he's still alive or not, because not a single there hasn't been Hamas did not come out with a statement. There was an independent investigation into whether or not he died, I think, over the summer.

Richard Mahoney 8:19
Right? That's right, in July, yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 8:20
third week in July. Yeah, so. But, you know, I guess the The interesting part is that Israel is not a signatory, if I'm not mistaken, right to the NCC, yeah, and the US is not right. And you have, I guess, right now in the EU certain countries, it's kind of split where you have certain people that sign or not, people rather states, but there's a split, I guess, decision in terms of whether or not they would act on the they would, you know, whether or not they would apply or adhere to the NC decision.

Richard Mahoney 8:58
No, I don't think there's any any doubt about that, yeah, yeah.

Abdullah Najjar 9:01
So I'm wondering here about the what you make of the impact that that is, that is sort of triggering. Is it symbolic? Is it, does it have more than just a symbolic, I guess, effect? I mean, this is rather, I guess, unprecedented, right, when it comes to because we've had the case of, I think, in 2009 of what was this Sudanese President, Bashir. It was, I guess, the first time a warrant was issued to arrest the sitting president. And now we have this happening with Israel. I mean, what do you make of that?

Richard Mahoney 9:36
Yeah, well, I think that it is very significant. It's significant symbolically, and I think it's significant, you know, actually and operationally, symbolically, it simply means that just because the state is powerful, it is not, you know, removed from sanctions of a very serious nature against its heads of. State. And that's very significant. That was the premise of the International Criminal Court for a generation, or maybe a little less, they really only targeted African heads of state, all of whom had committed, you know, war crimes, unquestionably. Yeah. And then, of course, that extended to Serbia after, you know, the Balkan area was after the Dayton courts. But whatever the case, it's very significant. The states, who are signatories, what are, I think it's over 100 are bound to arrest Netanyahu or Galant or dife if he's still alive. I don't think he is. And it's a wake up call to the United States, we have reserved the right to have a double standard where, you know, we talk about, you know, the rule of law, and we accept ourselves in terms of the rule of law, in terms of the International Criminal Court. Yeah, that's a double standard. That's not credible. And we do that because, you know, we think we're exceptional, and we think all this, but yes, it should, to some extent, maybe at the margin, govern the commission of war when war is you know, operationalized. It needs to undertake limits. And, you know, unlike, say, two generations ago, because of videos, because of reporting, because of, you know, the 24/7 news cycle, we know about these things. And so there's no question that Israel has engaged as diph did, in terms of masterminding the October 7 massacre. Has engaged in genocidal activity and continues to and the United States and Western Europe have not really had made, you know, much progress in terms of relieving the state of siege on Gaza.

Abdullah Najjar 12:08
And how does that when we talk about, I guess, the the idea that the idea of human rights and the idea that, you know, rule of law should govern, and you know, especially in the context of the US, when these these values are held to, I guess, a high degree, and now we see tremendous suffering happening in Gaza, death toll reaching more than 41,000 I think, I think that's the last assessment. If I'm not mistaken,

Richard Mahoney 12:38
that's a low number.

Abdullah Najjar 12:39
That's a low number? Oh, definitely, yeah,

Richard Mahoney 12:41
it's certainly 10 to 20,000 more. Talk to any practicing physician in Gaza. And what's not being counted at all are the wounded who who expire a day to, you know, two days later, or a month or two, or year or two, and there are a lot of them who die, right? It's just the day of Right, right? And so that's a 40 plus 1000. But, you know, so it's a low number,

Abdullah Najjar 13:11
right, right? How do you think that sort of impacts the, I guess, the image that perhaps the US puts on display about this, this idea of valuing, I guess human rights, or wanting, I guess democracy to flourish around the world. How do you think that sort of impacts the how people sort of receive that? Or how do you think that still maybe registers, especially after what we see now in Gaza? I mean, that must be really tricky to have to convince people that these are the ideals to strive for, whilst at the same time, the US seems to be not doing as much as they should when it comes to stopping what's happening in Gaza.

Richard Mahoney 13:50
Yeah, I don't think the United States has much credibility. I think you might argue that it has never had much credibility. But when the Ukraine invasion, or the Russian invasion of Ukraine took place in February 22 the United States failed to include or failed to persuade the majority of African and Asian and Latin American States to join it, and one of the reasons was they regarded that they might have been sympathetic to Ukraine as really a great power, a battle that that that in shouting that with human rights and democracy, yeah, they didn't think the leader was credible, so they didn't really get on board, Yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 14:37
and now that we have Trump is going back to power soon enough. And, you know, we have a recent decision by the Biden administration to allow for, you know, the use of long term US missiles into, you know, Russia. Do you think what sort of change do you think might whether. Minuscule or major might occur when Trump gets back in power and has the upper hand in terms of deciding what could happen with respect to supporting Ukraine.

Richard Mahoney 15:12
Yeah, I think that in rejecting the nomination of Mike Pompeo as well as Nikki Haley, he was never going to give her anything anyway, but there will definitely be a proposed hard deal early on in the administration, and it would basically be the exchange of conquered territory for an armistice and possibly the beginning of a peace treaty. Now, the question is, what would be the nature of security guarantees for Ukraine? Clearly, membership in NATO probably not a serious option, but so they're going to impose a quick, somewhat dirty deal. I think it's a sooner or later proposition. I'm not as just one person who analyzes this stuff, opposed to that. I think you want something that reaches a cease fire, and we're trying to work out the details of restraining Russia after the fact, I think is a very serious, you know, question and very serious threat, but so I think Trump will move. I think the Kremlin will drive a very hard bargain. I think the recent use of an intermediate range merged multiple independently retargeted vehicle strike. And ne pro indicates that, yeah, they're going to drive a hard, hard deal, especially since they're making pretty significant gains, no major cities or towns in in the eastern part, in the Donetsk of Ukraine. So I think there, there's going to be an attempted deal, yeah.

Abdullah Najjar 17:02
Do you think that is possible when it comes to what's happening in Gaza and obviously Lebanon as well? You think there would be a major shift, and maybe how the war is or how Israel is carrying out their operations, or whether or not the war will cease to or whether or not there would be some sort of peace between Hezbollah and Israel. And obviously, when it comes to Israel and Gaza,

Richard Mahoney 17:29
I don't think so. No, no. I think Israel is a it's a war government. They, you know, maintain power through the commission of war, through ongoing operations. If war were to stop the Netanyahu would go. He's extremely unpopular in Israel, and so I think he has a vested interest in continuing war in a fairly continuing basis, a very progressive basis. And so I think that, you know, we say in the news, they said we're very close to a deal in Lebanon, yeah, that might be, you know, a framework. The Biden guys have a, you know, I think a good negotiator there, but the Israelis are going to drive a wickedly hard bargain. They want Hezbollah eviscerated. It's partly eviscerated. So that's been accomplished. They want a security buffer in southern Lebanon that's probably of the order of 10 to 20 miles wide. They'll want it demilitarized. And they'll want to have it, you know, pretty much access to their own military. Are those things sort of sustainable for a Lebanese Government?

Abdullah Najjar 18:51
We'll see. Yeah. So we're close to wrapping up, but I did want to insert a few questions here and there, couple that that might so we can end on a very, I guess, a pleasant note. Yeah. So my first question is, what do you think? What do you if you were to, I guess, when say you retire from academia,

Richard Mahoney 19:24
there's several who are hoping that that happens. Oh, gosh. Now,

Abdullah Najjar 19:31
if you were to retire, what would you miss about the academic work? What is the thing that you would enjoy you missed the most enjoy right now? Yeah, I

Richard Mahoney 19:39
really enjoy teaching. I get to know people. I'm very sort of personal, as you might remember about the courses I teach, whether you know I have an introductory course, you know, I know everybody's name in week two, I want to learn something about them. I do all my own grading, right? I do all my own recommendations. And security clearances, and so I think, you know, you got to put in the time and effort, but I think the reward is, at some level, you help people in trying to sort of visualize what kind of a career they want, and maybe even transform some of their choices in terms of what to do. And so I, you know, I enjoy it. You know, sometimes professors feel, you know, somewhat, you know, be labored by by teaching. I don't feel that at all. I like to teach. I enjoy it. It's intense, good. That's why I've stayed in the business.

Abdullah Najjar 20:43
What about what is one of your I'm sure you've had extensive travel experience before. What do you think is probably one of your most prized possessions or tokens that you've perhaps purchased or received from your travels abroad,

Richard Mahoney 21:02
possessions. So I've lived outside the United States for about 16 years, right? Yeah, various places, Africa, Latin America, Europe, Asia. I was in China for about six or seven months. Yeah, you know, I have a, I'm an epicurean. That's a a term that in English has been completely, completely bastardized. It doesn't mean what it it should in terms of Greek and Roman philosophy. But anyway, I have a wooden, you know, wooden statue of the head of Epicurus, and it was carved in Cuba. Wow. I met some dude, you know, drinking rum, and I told him that I was an epicurean. He said, You know, I'm an epicurean. I said, Well, you're supposed to be a communist. You know, you could live here. He said, No, that's not for me. Anyway. So Epicurus was sort of the apostle of friendship. He was really a contemporary of of Aristotle and Plato, but just had a totally different approach. He wanted. He thought that everything in life was interpersonal, that all of these projections that we make about virtues, in the case of Plato or the golden mean, in terms of Aristotle, were pretensions and everything was about friendship and and so in friendship, he thought, you know, he had all these proverbs about Friendship. Friendship could be achieved at million, a million levels, right? And it was the thing that, you know, ennobled you. It enriched you. So I'm an epicurean, so this dude, he heard what you know as an Epicurus, if we started talking about it, he said, Well, I want to do something. And I said, Well, I don't know what you're going to do. He said, Why don't you know, I know this guy who carves heads. And I said, Yeah, head of Epicurus, yeah, he so he said, Well, what did he look like? I said, Well, we have the most basic representation of the Romans. Sort of figuratively. Gave him a visage. So we got that, and I have it in my office. If you come in, it's there. It is sitting Wow, gosh, yeah, people don't dare to ask me about it. I might give them a lecture. You know, on Epicurus. I

Abdullah Najjar 23:27
love that. I should, I should. I should get it. I should definitely see that one. Okay, thank you. Yeah, and one final question, what? What would be something from, from those tokens or souvenirs that you may have collected over the years, what would be something you wouldn't give

Richard Mahoney 23:46
away. I wouldn't give that away. And then, you know, I spent some time in China. I have a huge character poster, these things they used to put up on, you know, the size of buildings and all that. Telling, you know about my lecture on American foreign policy. And this was in 1980 and, you know, I walked out of the lecture and I saw my name, Ma, which just means horse, I said, Oh, you've got this, you know, me giving this lecture. I want that thing. So I took it down, and I have it in my office. Yeah, so I wouldn't give that away.

Abdullah Najjar 24:23
I should see that one as well. Yeah. Well, Dr, Mahoney, thank you so much for joining me today. I really enjoyed hearing about your analysis, and I'm glad that you mentioned this. Thank

Richard Mahoney 24:32
you very much. I mean it very interested. Happy to do this. I apologize, and I'm apologizing on the air for, you know, basically messing up continually in terms of trying to schedule this, you know, I'm happy to talk at any, you know, on any subject, I guess, not sure there's any value in many of them. But, you know, I appreciate what you're doing, very important. And you know, we have to. Live outside the classroom. The classroom is a venue, but you got to get out and meet other people and listen to, you know, podcasts like this. Pretty critical. Thank you.

Abdullah Najjar 25:11
Thank you, Dr Mahoney, and I'm glad we managed to do it after after all the Yeah. All right.

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