I Asked a Former Trump Official to Justify This War

I’m opposed to this war. The Trump administration did not consult the American public or try to persuade Congress before authorizing the strikes on Iran. I don’t think the administration is prepared for what the strikes might unleash.

But I wanted to try to understand President Trump’s decisions from the perspective of somebody much friendlier to his foreign policy. Nadia Schadlow is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and served as a deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first term. She led the drafting and publication of the 2017 National Security Strategy of the United States.

In this conversation, Schadlow gives the conservative case for war with Iran, and for attacking without first building support in Congress or with the public. And I ask her how she squares Trump the candidate, who ran on a promise of not starting new wars, with the Trump of today, who’s deposed two heads of state since the start of 2026, and now says he won’t rule out boots on the ground in Iran. Is there a consistent worldview here? Or did Trump change?

Mentioned:

“National Security Strategy of the United States of America”

War and the Art of Governance by Nadia Schadlow

“The Globalist Delusion” by Nadia Schadlow

“The Great Lie of War” with Ben Rhodes on “The Ezra Klein Show”

Book Recommendations:

America in the World by Robert B. Zoellick

The Mystery of Capital by Hernando De Soto

The Peacemaker by William Inboden

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(534)

The ‘But China!’ Dilemma Driving the A.I. Race

America is waking up to the critical risks posed by artificial intelligence. But every conversation about possible regulation tends to hit the same wall: “Well, what about China?”Chinese A.I. models a...

15 Sep 1h 5min

Why I Can't Stop Thinking About 'The End of History'

Francis Fukuyama's “The End of History and the Last Man” is one of the most insightful books for understanding the strangeness and instability of this political moment.Fukuyama wrote his landmark book...

11 Sep 1h 17min

What ‘Hyperpolitics’ Explains About This Era

Behind the intense political movements of the last decade, from Trumpism to wokeness and back again, there’s a strange and erratic rhythm. Movements saturate the culture seemingly overnight, only to e...

8 Sep 1h 8min

Best Of: The Tao of Rick Rubin

Whatever type of music you love, Rick Rubin has probably left his mark on it. Rubin, a founder of Def Jam Recordings and a former co-chairman of Columbia Records, might be the most influential music p...

1 Sep 1h 29min

Trump vs. the Bond Market

A lot of things are on track to get more expensive. The U.S. Treasury market is the bedrock of the global economy. When yields on those Treasuries go up, mortgages, car loans and credit cards get mor...

28 Aug 59min

This Is Why People Hate the Government

In 2024, Americans spent an average of six full workdays a year filling out government forms, according to the government’s own estimates. That’s a total of 12 billion hours, or $430 billion of uncomp...

25 Aug 1h 17min

The China Shock 2.0

Brad Setser follows Chinese trade closer than just about anyone else on earth, and he thinks we’re in the early days of a China Shock 2.0. The first China Shock was when China came to dominate low-end...

21 Aug 1h 5min

The A.I.s Are Already Out of Control

We are living in the world we were warned about. Frontier artificial intelligence models from OpenAI autonomously coordinated with one another, then broke out of their testing environment and hacked i...

18 Aug 1h 11min