S1E125 - Ambassador Dennis Ross - Statecraft 2.0 and the Middle East
A discussion of ongoing negotiations with Iran began this episode with the former leading Middle East negotiator and author of Statecraft 2.0 Ambassador Dennis Ross, and proceeded to dialogue about Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Israel and the shift in regional balances of power in the Middle East. Michael Krasny brought up President Trump and statecraft as well as Trump's tariff strategy, the way he views U.S. allies and his overall mendacity. Ambassador Ross spoke of leverage diminishing without geopolitical successes and the reality of our presently no longer being in a unipolar world.
This rich and highly engaging conversation went on to include discussion of deterrence and compromise and working with China and leverage Trump has with Putin if he would use it, as well as the difficulties policy makers face in making objectives clear – Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam, Joe Biden on Iraq and Barack Obama on Syria serving as the Ambassador's examples. Former White House Chief of Staff James Baker and current Secretary of State Marco Rubio were discussed along with the tools of statecraft, including the role of kindness and empathy, the importance of focusing on issues and the role of social media. Krasny and Ross went on to talk about Yasser Arafat, which led the Ambassador to highlight what he could have done better with the PLO leader, and to reflect on the Camp David talks and what he wished he had done. This richly expansive dialogue concluded with reflections from Ambassador Ross on present day Saudi Arabia under MBS and what both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must do to move forward toward peace.
In anticipation of Mother's Day, this episode added, following the Krasny-Ross conversation, an interview with Eva Hausman, co-founder of the Mother's Day Movement, which gives assistance to mothers around the world.
Biography
Ambassador Dennis Ross is the counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He also teaches at Georgetown University’s Center for Jewish Civilization. For more than twelve years, Amb. Ross played a leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process, dealing directly with the parties as the U.S. point man on the peace process in both the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. He served two and half years as special assistant to President Obama and National Security Council senior director for the Central Region, spending the first 6 months of the Administration as the special advisor on Iran to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Prior to his service as special Middle East coordinator under President Clinton, Amb. Ross served as director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff in the first Bush administration. He played a prominent role in U.S. policy towards the former Soviet Union, the unification of Germany and its integration into NATO, arms control negotiations, and the 1991 Gulf War coalition. During the Reagan administration, he served as director of Near East and South Asian affairs on the National Security Council staff and deputy director of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment.
A graduate of UCLA, Amb. Ross wrote his doctoral dissertation on Soviet decision-making, and served as executive director of the Berkeley-Stanford program on Soviet International Behavior. He received UCLA's highest medal and has been named UCLA alumnus of the year. Amb. Ross is the author of five books on the peace process, the Middle East, and international relations, most recently Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel's Most Important Leaders Shaped Its Destiny (PublicAffairs, 2019), written with his colleague David Makovsky, which was published in September 2019. It provides profiles of four Israeli prime ministers who made historic choices and explores the lessons from those decisions to see if they can provide a guide to dealing with the fateful choice that Israel's leaders must soon confront or by default become a binational state.
Previously, Amb. Ross authored Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship from Truman to Obama (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2015). That book was awarded the 2015 National Jewish Book Award for history. He also co-authored Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East (Viking, 2009) with Mr. Makovsky. An earlier study, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004), offers comprehensive analytical and personal insight into the Middle East peace process. The New York Times praised his 2007 publication, Statecraft, And How to Restore America's Standing in the World (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007), as "important and illuminating." His most recent book is Statecraft 2.0 (Oxford University Press, 2025).
Conversation recorded on April 25, 2025.