Fentanyl Makes an Already Dangerous Drug Market More Deadly than Ever

– what are some of the key steps you would take to reboot that?

WH: Let’s start with foreign policy. After being connected to the national security apparatus or the national security community for over two decades, I have come to believe in a simple principle -- your friends should love you and your enemy should fear you. When you have the President of Ukraine asking us to do more and the President of Russia increasing the death and destruction, that means the President of Ukraine isn’t in love with you because he wants you to do more, and the President of Russia is not afraid of you because he doesn’t think you’ll do anything in response.

I think when it comes to the conflict that will determine whether or not the American economy stays the most important economy in the world, the fate of that conflict will be determined by a number of advanced technologies, like 5G, artificial intelligence cloud computing, hyper-sonics, and biotech. If the federal government continues to show an inability to introduce new technologies into the government at speed, or work with the private sector effectively, or cooperate with our allies in these areas, then the rest of the century is not going to stay the American century. I believe we can. But one of the problems we have in the government is we always think about the last war. We need to get our eyes looking through the windshield, rather than the rearview mirror.

RF: You mentioned Ukraine. As a former intelligence officer with the CIA and member of the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill, what is your assessment of the situation in Ukraine and U.S. policy in that regard?

WH: My assessment is that America should be doing more. The reason I say that is because we always think that we’re going to understand the second, third, fourth, and fifth order of effects of what’s going to happen. If we do something, we’re going to always get those things wrong. So go back to the first principles. And the first principle in this case is, are we doing absolutely everything we can within our power to prevent the massacre of innocent people? I’m not talking about sending American troops. But we should be sending as much equipment that the Ukrainians can absorb. Also, why did Vladimir Putin make this decision now? Because he watched what happened in Afghanistan and the disaster of the pullout from Afghanistan and he assumed that the American public had no appetite to support Ukraine. Putin misread the resolve of the Ukrainian people and he misread the resolve of the Western Alliance. But the longer this conflict goes on, the more impact it’s going to have on our European allies having to deal with the effect of sanctions and the growing humanitarian crisis with Ukrainian refugees. That’s going to put pressure on these governments, and we may start seeing fissures within the Western alliance.

RF: Finally, turning your attention to the upcoming election – Republicans are

Our political system today now expected to retake the is designed not to produce House and possibly the Senate. Do you have any problem solvers. It’s designed advice for your former to produce bomb throwers. colleagues as they campaign this fall and look to possibly take the reins of government next year?

WH: In 2022, when Republicans win, we are going to win because Democrats have been incompetent and because the American public is not interested in the kinds of things Democrats were trying to do. That means we have to put forward a vision of where we think we need to go. And when we have control, we need to actually solve problems. Because if we don’t solve some of these major problems -- which is going to require working with the Biden Administration -- then all of the problems in the country are going to get blamed on a Republican Congress, and then we’re going to see the exact opposite result in 2024. RF