Pod Save the World - 100 Days of foreign policy with Eli Lake

Episode Date: May 3, 2017

Tommy and Bloomberg columnist Eli Lake review Trump’s first 100 days on foreign policy. They cover Trump’s staffing decisions, US relations with Russia, willingness to stand up for US values, management of North Korea, ISIS, Syria and the Middle East peace process.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. On the phone today is Bloomberg columnist Eli Lake. Eli, it's going to surprise people to learn that we've actually been buddies for like 10 years now. Yeah. We certainly come from, you know, different sides of different perspectives in terms of foreign policy sometimes. But I think what has sustained our friendship is the ability to yell and argue about this stuff and then laugh about it minutes later, which is... It's true. It's been a lot of fun for me.

Washington could use more of this. Yeah, I feel like we've... We've become more divided in Trump era. Yeah, I love it. I love it. And I also love the fact that you're honest and you're willing to just yell at me when I'm wrong. So it's perfect. So thank you for coming on today.

Big fan of the pod, big fan of Pod Save America. And in the question of love it or leave it, I love it. All right. That's a huge endorsement. I will tell him that you said that. I'm a big fan of your writing. You've got a couple pieces out over the weekend. You did a piece on Trump and Russia that folks should read that I'll tweet out after this.

You did a piece about a number of pieces about General Flynn. and his ties. Taking the lonely road on that one. Taking the lonely road there. And then I think you're working on a piece today about Afghanistan. I don't know if that's poked yet. Yeah, when we can talk about it because it'll be out by the time this is. Okay, great.

Great. On the web. So what I was hoping to do today is talk a little bit about Trump's first 100 days. It's very hard to judge a president on foreign policy in just 100 days. So we should probably stipulate that the kind of best you can do here is incomplete and that's totally fine. But I do think you can get a sense of priorities and management style and a trajectory. So it would be used. useful to take a look back and see what we've learned and what we can expect.

So I was thinking maybe we start with staffing, which is because in some ways, personnel is the most important thing you can be expected to get done in the first hundred days. It's the thing you can control more easily than anything else. As we all know, his first national security advisor, Mike Flynn, has since departed. His deputy national security visors, KT. McFarlane are gone. Apparently Seb Gorka's now gone. I don't know that he was senior enough staffer to really matter here. The main players, though, are H.R. McMaster's National Security Advisor, General

that as the Secretary of Defense. Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, General Kelly, the Department of Homeland Security. What's your take on the team that he's put in place? There's been a line out there about, like, the axis of adults that references some of those individuals. Do you think that's something that's real an emerging force in the White House? Yeah, I mean, if you compare the first weeks when you had the travel ban that many in the government didn't know about and that the court struck down and it was chaos. Compare that to the process that produced the sort of asterisk recertification of the nuclear deal, saying that the Iranians were complying, but there was a review and we don't like their support for terrorism.

I'm sure we would disagree on, you know, the policy or the substance of it, but the way that that happened is very different than the very White House-centric approach to the travel ban. And I think that just kind of getting that process in place shows that, I mean, I use the line that the presidency is sort of normalizing Trump a little bit. And yes, there are these flourishes like meeting Xi Jinping over the most beautiful chocolate cake you've ever seen to announce that 59 Tomahawk missiles have just landed at a Syrian air base. That is not, you know, necessarily something we've seen from other presidents, or at least for him to sort of boast about that. or, but at the same time, the process for doing this stuff is not like, you know, me and my buddies sitting around over dinner. You know, there are professionals who are sort of drawing up options. I just wrote about Afghanistan and what their strategy is going to be. That was a

process that sort of went through with deputies committee and a principal's committee. Anybody who has covered the White House or like yourself as a veteran of the National Security Council would say, all right, that's kind of normal. That's the way of stuff is supposed to be done. That's right. And that's interesting because the other thing you hear is that, you know, General Mattis' classed with the White House over personnel. Rex Tillerson hasn't even started trying to fill like 200 jobs that require Senate confirmation. So it's interesting to me to hear that there is a normal deputies committee process going on. What do you make of the inability or unwillingness to fill these spots? And is it actually hurting the policy process or our

holdovers, you know, carrying the ball forward? Well, if I was you or like Ben Rhodes, I would be subtly figuring out a way to praise that, like, because it means that. that Obama holdovers are still in very important positions. You know, we know some of the names. Brett McGirk is still the U.S. envoy to the coalition against ISIS. And, you know, people who are sort of longstanding State Department, you know, career types are like Tom Shannon, are still in very important positions, you know, inside the government.

And, you know, I think slowly but surely there will be political that will be brought in. But there's a real problem politically for the term. Trump administration because the sort of best and a lot of the policy minds on the right and the Republican Party were part of what's called the never Trump movement. And I would say a lot of them now are maybe in the maybe Trump category. But that still, I think is politically, there's a lot of heartburn because of the harshness of the language of a lot of the op-eds and the letters that were signed. So the people that would normally fill those positions at the sort of mid-level to upper-mid-level

of the government in some ways are on a list of you know, you'll never work in this town again under the new Trump era. So how they negotiate that. We saw that a little bit

with Elliot Abrams who was perceived and I don't think he even signed an ever Trump letter, but he was perceived as being very critical of Trump. And he was, you know,

I think he was, you know, probably in line to be the Deputy Secretary of State and the last minute Trump said no. So we'll see if that starts to change.

But that's one of the factors I think is to why. they haven't really filled in more slots. So you made this point earlier about how sort of in the beginning, the policy process and foreign policy seemed very White House staff-centric as opposed to state DOD, NSC-centric. Along those lines, Jared Kushner has been described as sort of a shadow secretary of state. We should just state as a fact that he's not qualified to do the job. He and I are the same age. I'm not qualified to do that job. And his only relevant experience is marrying to the Trump family. But what have you heard about his influence? Is he pushing policy? Like, how does this work?

I mean, I have to say, I'm not saying it's not an overstate. I mean, he has the trust of the president, obviously, and I'm not really giving you much. But my understanding is that, you know, who is really influential is Gary Cohn, the chief economics advisor. He's part of the national security deliberations as well as economic stuff. And Dana Powell, who is a veteran of the W administration in Condoleezza, I think, is another person who's seen as a really, her star is rising. So those are in the national security side of the people who I think. are more equipped to sort of do this stuff. I'm not taking anything away from the influence of Jared Kushner, but as you know, if you're not kind of in this world, it's hard to even know

like what the debate is. And that's not a, that's not a diss on people who are coming in from the outside. But, and sort of to defend Ben Rhodes, who's tussled with me at times on social media for the years, you know, people sometimes say, oh, well, he was a creative writing major. I'm like, no, the guy was on the Baker Hamilton Commission and helped write this really important report before he was in the White House. So it's like he was part of that policy world in the 2000s before Obama was president. I mean, Jared didn't really have that kind of experience. So it's a steep learning curve. But that said, the president has every right in my view to sort of surround himself with the people he trusts.

He clearly trusts Kushner's judgment on these things. And I think that we saw in the kind of Kushner versus Bannon feuds, which my understanding now has died down and that Bannon is sticking around too. But it was pretty clear that the president made it sort of said, listen, you guys got to get along and you need to get along with Jared. You can't be calling him a globalist behind his back or talk or whatever it is, you know. Or all the above. So an issue that has gotten maybe more attention than almost anything else in the first hundred days is Trump's ties to Russia alleged or real. what do you make of this in terms of the impact on policy, I guess, to be my first question. He started off by saying, wouldn't it be great if we had close relations with Russia?

I think I'll get along with Putin. More recently, his team accused them of being complicit in a Syrian chemical weapons attack. Have we gotten anything out of this? Is there any benefit that you've seen so far, or softening of relations? Well, I was really worried, as I think most observers were that going into the Trump presidency, that Trump would try a sort of Yalta to, agreement where he would sit down with Putin and sort of chop up the world. And I, of course, think that's a terrible idea. And I'm happy to say it doesn't look like it's going to happen at this point.

So, you know, put that in the, you know, maybe the soft bigotistry of low expectations, but that is not happening. And that to me is a good thing. And then you look at some specifics here. And this is where I think it's hard to argue that in the first hundred days, Trump has been a stooge of Putin or stooge of Russia, or that if they have some sort of compromise on him, then you would expect it to win out at this point because he's done things that are not in Russia's interest so far. What am I talking about? One, the U.S. supported the accession of Montenegro, a very small Balkan country that probably shouldn't even be a country to NATO.

The Russians not only opposed that, but according to a chief prosecutor in Montenegro, they attempted a coup way back in October to, again, again, against the current government that wanted to join NATO. So right off the, that's a big deal, I think, from the Russian perspective. Second, the strike against Syria is a direct-a-front to Putin, who I think believed that because he had, you know, air bases in Syria would basically, that would mean that the Syrians would be sort of immune to any kind of strike, despite the fact that, you know, the Syrians clearly violated their agreement on chemical weapons that was forged in 2013, you know,

when we almost did these strikes against Syria and then, you know, sort of did the deal at the last minute. So that, I think, you know, really put Putin and the Russians on the wrong foot. And you're seeing it from the public statements. I mean, the Russians themselves are saying it's the worst, the lowest point in a while that we've seen. You know, you've got military, you know, four-star generals accusing the Russians of arming the Taliban, which sounds nuts to me, but, you know, that they're saying that is significant. and they're saying it publicly. And you can kind of go down the list and then look at then, compare that to China,

who was, you know, the bait noir of the Trump foreign policy on the campaign trail, if you want to call it that. And, you know, he's had nothing but nice things to say about the Chinese leader. He's dropped his threat to potentially blow up the one China policy, which would mean recognizing Taiwan's sovereign government. He's no longer, he's no longer saying that he's going to ding them for currency manipulation, something he promised to do on day one. And, you know, I think it was a good thing for China to totally kill the Trans-Pacific Partnership,

which was a trade deal with everyone but China in the region. So it would have been a good thing for us and a good thing for our allies and a bad thing for China, but he didn't like it because he considered to be one of these terrible trade deals, and he has his own reason for that. So so far, and the first, you know, they've had a leader-to-leader meeting, and he talks about how great Xi is. is, and there has been no such meeting with Putin. So all of that tells me, when you look at the fact that China and Russia are traditionally kind of the big Asian superpower rivals, that, you know,

so far the danger of a dangerous pro-Russian policy after they interfered in the elections, our elections, and they're interfering in the French elections, and they're generally acting worse and worse and worse over the years, that has not come to pass. I mean, it doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, you couldn't see a policy reversal from Trump. He is a bit mercurial. But for now, at least, you know, we've, I would say I'm pleasantly surprised. I mean, what do you think, Tommy? Yeah, I'm sort of with you. I mean, you know, I think there's all these questions about his campaigns ties to Russia, whether there was collusion, whether Carter Page was meeting with intelligence agents. And that's, can we talk about Carter Page for a second? Please, I'd love to hear what your thoughts are. Okay. I'm not a

Carter Page expert, but does anybody think this guy is, you know, like Philip from the Americans? He's Mr. Magoo. Yeah. This is like not, this is not somebody who, and there was that story, a great New York Times story where apparently like Russians free even sort of thing, wow, this guy's a little daft. I don't think that if the FBI began their investigation in the campaign because of Carter Page, that really is a pretty revealing fact because it doesn't look like Carter Page. Carter Page strikes me as a classic Washington character. We've both met these kinds of people who exaggerate their connections and their influence with powerful people, but are kind of, you know, I can say this, it's a podcast. They're bullshit artists.

I mean, like, this is a classic Washington type. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course I know. And I'm sure you saw this in Obama land, right, where there must have people who claim to have influence or connections and suction with Obama and the White House who didn't. and then, you know, basically did that to sort of advance their own interest. It looks to me that this is what Carter Page is about. Now, when we talk about Paul Manafort, who was like, what, for seven weeks the campaign manager, there is a more serious issue because we know that Manafort and Trump did have a relationship going back, I think, to the 80s.

And also, we know that Manafort is definitely guilty of not reporting income from various, you know, Russian oligarch types. And, you know, if the AP story is correct, then he had an under-the-table deal to basically, you know, advance Russian interests in the 2000s on behalf of a guy named Oleg Dera Pascar, although he disputes this, although he recently registers a foreign agent. So in that case, it's a little bit more serious, but my working theory, and I'm not ready to report this. So, again, this is speculation, is that I think the FBI may have gone to the Trump campaign

right around the time when it was disclosed that his name was on that ledger in Ukraine getting cash payments and said, listen, this Manafort guy, bad news, we're looking at him, and he was fired. Given the fact that the Trump campaign seems disorganized and prone to not doing the kind of basic vetting, as we've seen in a few cases like Michael Flynn that other political operations do, it strikes me as pretty plausible that Trump himself and what ended up becoming sort of Trump's inner circle were unaware. of the dealings of Manafort, although let's wait and see what the FBI comes up with. Yeah, I mean, I get Democrats who point at, you know, Flynn's failure to disclose to various intelligence agencies is his payment from RT. They add that up with Manafort in his work with various Russians and failure to register as a foreign agent plus Carter Page and whatever's going on with him allowing for the fact that he does look like more of a kind of a bullshit artist, as you said, than any kind of real advisor, even though Trump went to the Washington Post, I believe,

board and said Carter Page is one of my advisors on Russia. Right. At a moment when like there were three people who would like lend their name to the foreign policy, right? I was like, yeah, I got this guy. I got I got this, you know, I got this Lebanese guy who tells me stuff. I don't know. I watch the shows. You're geeking out with me on POTSave the World. More on the way. One of the things you can do in the first 100 days is you can demonstrate U.S. values and priorities through your words or your actions. And this is an area I think where where you've seen a trend or trajectory that has people worried.

You have, early on, he declined to criticize Putin, even when asked about his crackdown on dissidents and journalists. He welcomed the president of Egypt, President Al-Cisi and the Oval Office. Sisi came to power and military coup. He congratulated Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey for a referendum that, you know,

tightened his autocratic rule on Turkey. And most recently, he invited the president of the Philippines, President Duterte, to the Oval Office. Human rights groups estimate that Duterte's crackdown has killed, 7,000 people, half are attributed to his police. Apparently neither the State Department or the NSC knew who's going to do this. Do you think this is part of a strategy? Are they? I mean, Republicans attacked Obama for saying he'd be willing to reach out to adversaries.

I'm guessing where is the outrage here? Where is the criticism of his refusal to stand up or talk about human rights and invite some of the worst actors in the world to Washington? Well, you know, I'm a sophy when it comes to human rights. So I'm kind of still stunned by the Duterte stuff, but it's pretty obvious. And this was clear where the Republicans are, but particularly Trump, that, you know, Trump is not trying to, you know, like George W. Bush, you know, bring democracy to the world. He's not, this is not in any way part of his agenda. And I would, I mean, I think it's fair to say that Obama was not too keen on that either, though he didn't, you know, I mean, I think he often would criticize publicly, uh, leaders who, you know, have sort of

broken their legitimate, they did not have, no longer had legitimacy with their own populations in a way that Trump has so far proven he hasn't. And I do think it's short-sighted to embrace C.C. entirely and not making any kind of put any pressure on him on human rights, because it's not in C.C.'s long-term interest in my view to completely go after any legitimate opposition along with, you know, more dangerous components of, inside the country that I think really are harmful. So on the substance, I agree, and I do think it sort of is this new, it's almost like a return to Kissinger, right? I mean, this is the real politic of the Cold War, where the idea that, you know, our values have nothing to do with stability and we have to just pursue our interests. That's what Trump is really doing.

And, I mean, I think Duterte is a real problem. And remember, he said some horrible things about Obama. Yeah. I think he called him a son of a whore. And then also, you know, has done this, you know, bloodbathes. against, you know, in his war on drugs, which is kind of crazy. But remember, the other thing that he did, which was, which was really dangerous, was that he kind of reached out to China after the favorable ruling in the international Hague tribunal on the artificial islands that the Chinese were

putting up in the South China Sea. And so I'm not defending what Trump is doing, but there was, at the end of the Obama administration, this real concern that, Philippines had gone out of the ally category and when it sort of embraced China, he gave that big speech where he said, you know, we didn't want to have U.S. bases in the Philippines anymore. He didn't follow through on that. Again, I think you can walk and chew gum on this, coming kind of from an old neocon perspective, but there is a sort of question of if you pushed him too hard publicly, would he then, would you drive him into China's arms, which is exactly what the Chinese one, especially at a moment when Trump himself is trying to make nice with China

in order to get them to pressure North Korea. So, again, I don't want to say that, you know, what's the line like, oh, he's playing five-dimensional chess everybody? I'm not saying that. But there is a sort of, in the Philippines case, there is a kind of argument that maybe you downplay the public criticism on this now in order to make sure that you still have, that you sort of have this ally back in good stead, and you can, you know, use that to build pressure around China, if that is indeed something he wants to do thinking more strategically.

I don't think that that's the right move. But then again, as I said, I'm a kind of a human rights guy. Yeah, I know, I get what you're saying. I mean, listen, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that Obama didn't have to work with some bad actors, right? I mean, you get a lot of counterterrorism work done with the Pakistanis, and they are far from perfect on human rights or the Saudis, a number of other countries. What seems strange here is there's absolutely no, I mean, it seems like human rights and universal values have sort of been dropped from the talking points completely. And when you invite someone to the Oval Office, it just seems like he's winging it on these things, I guess. Because I don't know, it's like he's trying to butter these guys up, but he's giving them what they want before we've gotten anything back.

And it just seems like a bad strategy, even if it's real politic. Yeah, but you could turn around and you can say, listen, you know, George W. Bush talked about human rights all the time. And yet, you know, deepened our relationship with Musharraf and later, you know, other people in Pakistan, right? I mean, you can everybody kind of does this. I mean, Reagan talked all the time about human rights and then, you know, sold Saddam Hussein grain credits after Halabja. Or George H.W. Bush, I forget. You know, but during this time of, like, you know, great repression, you know, Reagan was a great supporter of sort of the, you know, when Turkey in the bad old days, although it's returning to the bad old days now. You know, I think it's, yeah, I cringe when I see congratulating Erdogan for that, you know, rigged referendum that basically,

going to mean that he's going to be in power for the rest of his life. It's terrible. I'd like to see the U.S. speak with more clarity on these kinds of things. On the other hand, you know, I've been around long enough to know that this is a legitimate perspective in foreign policy that people on both the left and the right, you know, would say is this is foreign policy realism. And why muddy the waters with a bunch of rhetoric that makes us feel really good when we have, you know, real deliverables that we want from these countries as imperfect as they are. I don't, again, I don't agree with that, but that is something that, you know, we've heard from both sides. And the old argument of Republicans was that they were so blinded by their

ideology and happy talk about democracy that they ended up getting us into these huge expensive wars that were no good. Indeed. So interestingly, I feel me on that. I do. I know what you're saying. I know exactly you're saying. I mean, I think probably surprisingly to Trump, he's probably put as much time in attention into talking about or managing, quote unquote, North Korea. any other situation. That could be because he got some alarming intelligence briefings on their progress in developing more powerful nuclear weapon and advanced missile technology. It's also probably just because Kim Jong-un continues to stick his thumb in our eye and test missiles and take all kinds of provocative acts. Did you see his interview, though, on CBS? Yes. He's a very smart cookie.

So that's another, I mean. Saying he had to kill his uncle? Yeah, he's killing him. I don't even know what to do. My brain's a little scrambled from that one. I got to be It's like, you know, and he does a similar thing with Xi Jinping reacts like they've now become best friends because they spent one weekend together. And do you think he just thinks he can butter these guys up and then maybe get what he wants? I mean, what is happening here? Well, okay, so I want to, I think we probably are going to disagree on those serious. I think the serious strike was great. Oh, I want to get to that.

I want to get to that. I've been listening to Pod Save America and I sort of share, like, I think it is kind of gross when you have like the television coverage and, you know, what is like, who Brian Williams was quoting Leonard Cohen and stuff like that. I mean, let's be real. These are, this is serious business. Let's not become enraptured with war. And that, so I grant that. But you needed to, this is a return to like Clintonian cruise missile diplomacy.

Nobody, I think, nope, I don't know anybody who thinks that we should send 200,000 troops to march on Damascus and then set up a coalition provisional authority and, you know, rebuild that hellhole of a, country at this point. No thanks. And the American people wouldn't support that. Trump obviously doesn't want to do that. But at the same time, it's, I think, important to say, if you back out of your agreement to get rid of your chemical weapons and never use them again, there's going to be consequences, and it's not going to be something that the Russians are going to be able to veto at the UN Security Council. And I would like to see Congress assert its war powers role more robustly. It's something that failed to do under Bush, failed to do certainly under Obama. But at the same time, like, it's important to just establish that he did it. And, you know, we're not in a shooting war with the Russians.

And, you know, we're not closer to, like, DefCon 2 or whatever. And that there is some, at least some consequence there. And I think that that is something that resonates because it came so early in his presidency with other adversaries that he would be willing to do something like that. In much the same way, I think that there was a very good effect that, you know, Obama was willing to order the special operations raid into bin Laden's headquarters in Pakistan without informing the Pakistanis. I mean, that was, I think it had a good effect in that we will act when we must. So you think, I mean, so you're viewing his handling of North Korea in the context of the strike on Syria. I do think that there is an effect. I don't want to overstate it.

We still have to see exactly what kind of pressure the Chinese are. willing to put besides these coal shipments on North Korea, there was just a New York Times story about how the North Korean economy is actually growing, which would seem to undercut the narrative that the Chinese are putting economic pressure on the North Koreans, but let's sort of see how that plays out. And then the big thing on North Korea, everybody should keep their eye on is it would be great if there was some understanding between the Chinese and U.S. militaries on what to do if the regime actually fell in terms of securing new and other dangerous material because you need to have some sort of contingency plan, so it's not the worst-worst case scenario. And what we know historically is that even these imposing facades of these awful dictatorships, they have cracks from within that we rarely can see from the outside. And before you know it, you've got a Tahrir Square. So if there is such a moment in North Korea, because it's such an odious regime,

it would be nice that if we could have some flexibility and understanding with the Chinese to secure their nuclear facilities and their chemical weapons and any other bad stuff that they're doing, which I'm sure they are. I don't know this, but I would certainly hope that there are a whole bunch of plans

sitting in top secret deaths in the Pentagon about what we would do. By the way, that's been a hard, I mean, I know that historically, you know, this is a problem that's gone back, you know, to at least the, Clinton in terms of the North Korean program. So since the 90s, we haven't had that kind of deal with the Chinese. So if Trump can get something like that, that would be great. You're listening to Pod Save the World. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. Shifting gears a little bit. Trump promised

that's a new ISIS strategy would be submitted by as generals in the first 30 days. I don't think that's happened yet, but I mean, it's not a particularly realistic timeline. Do you have any sense of what they're developing or what they're thinking? And is the fight against ISIS now? 100% focus on intelligence and military means because you see these strikes in Mosul where we've changed rules of engagement. The civilian casualty numbers are drastically going up. Have we abandoned like a strategic communications element to win the hearts in mind? Well, I wouldn't go that far yet because I think, I don't know if everyone's necessarily on the same page and they haven't come up with their sort of universal strategy on it. But there are some important decisions that have yet to be

made. One of them is in Syria, are we going to continue a strategy where we work with the sort of Kurds who are connected with the PKK and they're considered the Al-Qaeda of Turkey? Or will we push for a different approach where we maybe have more of a U.S. presence at first and eventually we try to have more of an Arab face to that? Because the big question is always what comes after. I mean, defeating ISIS and Raqa, I mean, we certainly can win that fight, but what do you do the day after? How do you restore order there and make sure that ISIS can't return? And what's your long-term strategy for, you know, who will control that territory? And it gets really tricky because you don't want to hand that over to the Assad regime,

but at the same time, you can't really have the Kurds in charge of what's considered to be Arab lands. So that's a particular problem. And then, you know, you've got a huge political problem now that Mosul is slowly but surely being liberated, which is, you know, who gets to return to Mosul? Will there be another list of people who were collaborators with ISIS? So there has to be a political and a communication strategy, even if it's not, you know, part of the thinking right now. And then what do you do about Afghanistan where, you know, we know that there's an ISIS presence and the Taliban has, you know, I don't know, estimates of 40% of the territory there? All of that seems like it's sort of connected at this point. And the strategies that you

pursue are going to have to be on several levels. I know that McMaster is a protege of David Petraeus, and Petraeus is somebody who does believe that you need to have a kind of a much broader kind of approach that includes strategic comms, as you point out, but also, you know, diplomacy and other things like that. And I think that, you know, Trump is kind of coming around. I mean, he is the national security advisor. Can you imagine? I mean, I don't think he can get rid of him. I don't think that's realistic, but you know what I'm saying? Even if he doesn't like some of what he has to say, you know, how would that look, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm glad you brought that up. I mean, this question of what do you do the day after? You can't just defeat ISIS or the

Taliban or these extremist groups militarily and eliminate their strongholds and their safe havens. You have to then put in place institutions and means of governance to sort of hold those areas and put them in the hands of the countries where they are. Afghanistan is a perfect example. During the Obama's review of Afghanistan policy, one of the things he talked about, about repeatedly was don't clear, meaning kill or drive out all the Taliban and then hold the general area if you can't then transfer it to local control to, you know, local Afghan government control. We're seeing that problem play out again because we're now sending troops back into Helmand province in Afghanistan. And it seems like we might be setting up a scenario where we

continue to keep more troops in Afghanistan or send more troops to Afghanistan rather than end the war there. And it sounds like you've been doing some reporting on this. And I wonder if you could walk us through that. Well, yeah, I mean, what I've got is that the president's going to have to make a decision soon. But the principles committee, which is the, you know, that's the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, although not everybody was in this meeting. Sometimes they have proxies, as you know, on Friday had decided on a strategy, and I don't have the troop levels and they're not there yet, but basically a strategy that says, all right, we're going to work with. Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, to support his strategy for building out an inclusive Afghan government and ultimately pressuring the Taliban through military strikes to reconsider their view now, which is to not negotiate. So it's similar in some ways to the 2010-era-Afghanistan strategy under Obama, which has increased the pace of strikes against the Taliban and support this, you know, anti-corruption initiatives, continue to subsidize the police and the,

military in Afghanistan and sort of continue to be there, which is, which, you know, I have to say, that is, you know, assuming, I don't know what will happen in 2020 or Trump's a one term or two-term, but this is a more than one-term commitment to Afghanistan if you think about it. That's the exact same strategy, and it's a serious commitment. I mean, yeah, our military is incredible and their attitude is can do. If you hand them a mission, they will figure out how to execute it, and they will do it incredibly well and professionally and they'll get the job done. The problem is how do we hand off places like Helmand province in Afghanistan to the local governments when you have an army that's not ready,

a police force that's corrupt, local government officials that are corrupt and they don't feel like they're representative of the people. We have not solved that problem in any way. And I don't know how this ends any differently until we solve that problem. Well, yes, except if you don't do it, then you're leaving Afghanistan to like the pre-9-11 safe haven for terrorists. And that may be an acceptable risk at this point because, you know, we're spread thin, we can't afford it, nation-building at home, not nation-building abroad. It's, I think in some ways it's like, it pits Trump's muscular, kill-the-bad guys campaign promises.

Like, I'm going to defeat ISIS and listen to the generals against his America-first approach, which is, let's get out of these wars where we're nation building. And the reality is that in order to do these things right, our best military minds at this point tell us that we need to do a lot more than just whack a mole drone strikes on terrorist leaders in Afghanistan. We need to commit to making Afghanistan great again. Oh, God. I mean, look, I— The new MAGA. I wish for their success.

I just, I don't. I mean, but I think it's a hard thing. This is the thing. It's a tough call. I'd love if we had a moment where both, you know, you and I, maybe we can start this. It's going to sound very no-labelly, but I mean this sincerely. Everybody, Democrats, Republican, left and right have kind of been on both sides of this. And we have to recognize it's just a hard dilemma.

Yeah. And there isn't a satisfying answer. Like, of course we shouldn't be there or of course we should be there. I mean, that's where I'm at. And I say this with somebody who was much more kind of of an interventionist, maybe 15 years ago than I would say I am today. You know, we just have to sort of recognize we have pretty bad options, but at the same time, there's no alternative to American power. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I mean, Obama's Afghan review was one of the most thoughtful, deliberative, long processes I've ever been a part of or witnessed. Except as soon as it was done, like, he started getting cold feet. I sort of feel like he's like, I always thought he must have said, I should listen to Biden. I knew what he's talking about.

I mean, I do wonder if everyone had the benefit of hindsight what the choice would be because I sit here. I pick up the paper and I read the stories about Afghan policy and I feel like deja vu all over again. And I wonder if the Bush administration people who are reading about what we were deciding on felt the same way. Because you're right. I mean, these problems feel intractable and there's no easy solution. I don't know what Trump's team. I don't have a great recommendation for them. You've also been doing it for what, it's been crazy.

It's 16 years. It's 16 years since 9-11, and it's like we still can't get a credible, I mean, the idea that we can build a, we can't build these competent forces in these places, I think it gives you pause. If you spend any time reading, I mean, I'd recommend Pod Save the World listeners to go online and look at these things called S-I-G-A-R. That's the special Inspector General for Afghanistan reconstruction. And that is really so important to read because it tells you, it shows you how futile so much of this has been and how the Afghan government is still a basket case and how there is all this widespread corruption and how despite all of the investment that we've made in this country, it's still in dire straits. So it's not, you know, I mean, that's my, that's my, I kind of always return back to that. But at the same time, a safe haven for the Taliban and at other terrorist groups, I think would be, disaster. Yeah. Speaking of intractable problems, the last issue I wanted to ask you about is Middle East peace. You are a great supporter of Israel. You're someone who's spent a lot of time there.

He's written extensively about the Israeli government, the U.S. attitude towards at the Middle East peace process. Your friend, Josh Rogan, wrote a piece over the weekend that said, if Trump has a plan for Middle East peace, it's such a tightly held secret that the Palestinians and Israelis don't know about it. President Mahmoud Abbas is visiting the White House this week. Trump is reportedly going to Israel and May. So this is going to be a bigger issue. It becomes an issue for every president. Do you think these guys have a secret plan or they just have no idea what they're going to talk with the boss about? Like, what are you hearing? It's funny. I'm about to sit down and write my column on this. And I mean, originally my idea was like Trump like every president since George H.W. Bush thinks he can solve

this problem, and he probably can't. I mean, I think that Trump does see himself, in some ways, it's similar to Obama as like a kind of, or in some ways similar to Clinton, right? It's like, you get me in a room, I'm really good at getting people to negotiate, and I'm great at finding deals, and this is, like, but it's not a real estate deal. And actually, the problem is that the positions of both parties are much further apart than I think they want to recognize at this point. I also think that a boss could find himself regretting this visit because my understanding is that they're going to bring up the payments to the families of the suicide bombers and stuff like that. And that's a, I don't think he, I don't think he has much political room to maneuver, you know, there. Already, you know, elements of his own Palestinian authority have said they can't stop those payments.

And already, you know, there's been this legislation now to basically cut off the Palestinian authority if they do. So that, I think, is going to be a major issue there. And, you know, I think that Trump has said for a year and a half since he started campaigning, he'd love to do a deal. I just don't know if he realizes how hard that's going to be. Yeah. You know what I mean? No, totally. I mean, like, he's out there and he's like, look, there's no reason.

There's absolutely no reason there shouldn't be a deal in the Middle East. There's a tons of reasons. Yeah. There's an infinite number of reasons. And it also— You would have no idea how many reasons there are. You literally don't know. I mean, it does seem like BB Deni Ann Yahoo is as emboldened as ever.

in terms of his coalition being strong, his ability to continue building settlements and to take care of that block. But do you think he's willing to offer concessions to Trump or more willing than he was with Obama or is he just blown right past that? I mean, yes, I think he probably is more willing to offer some, but I mean, I was like to point this out that originally BB did offer that concession. He did do the settlement freeze to Obama. But yes, by the way, that would have been true for Hillary Trute as well, right? because at the beginning of a president, you know, Israel will have to deal with this president for the next four to eight years. So, of course, I think he's going to be more amenable at the beginning of a term for any president, but particularly with Trump, who he sees as more aligned or sort of to Israel than, I mean, certainly Obama, that relationship was not very good. But, you know, Netanyahu is also politically, he's not, he's risk-averse himself, but he's in a tough political jam.

I mean, he's got the most right-wing government. Some people say in Israel history, and I mean, how much maneuvering can he really do? And then I don't think Abbas really has much. I mean, a boss is clearly at the end of his life. And, you know, so a lot of people have been, I don't mean to be morbid, but we're looking at who the next Palestinian leader is going to be. And then maybe that would present some opening to restart the negotiations. But at this point, to think you're going to start a major peace negotiation again, which I don't necessarily think they will do, but if they do that, timing is terrible. I don't think you're going to get anything under a boss. And Israeli politics

would have to change significantly to expect a significant concession from Netanyahu. Yeah, I agree. Last little question on this, and it's not necessarily do with the peace process is, you see these weird things where, you know, you have Seb Gorka, who apparently now is gone. But, you know, there are all these reports about his ties to a Nazi ally group. You've got Trump releasing a Holocaust memorial statement that didn't mention Jews. These weird things that seemed like I watched this from a former Obama aid point of view, and I think this would be the biggest mistake the administration ever made if that press release went out with the moral statement that didn't mention what was the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. But it seems remarkable to me that it doesn't get as

much attention. Why do you think that is? Well, I mean, did you see Trump did give a speech on Holocaust remember and say it was just pretty good, I have to say. I mean, it was, you know, I mean, I think in some ways they grade Trump a little bit on a curve. Yeah, I do too. Because he is such a, I mean, he's not a traditional politician, so we just sort of build in. I mean, similarly, I might say, we graded Biden for years on a curve because Biden used to say some crazy stuff. Do you remember when Biden told that group he said like, I think they want to put us in chains? I mean, like, you just let it go.

It's like, oh, that's Joe Biden because he's a very affable guy and that they both have that quality where like they can say outrageous bullshit, but it's like, oh, but look at him. he's, you know, he's a cladhander or whatever. And also, I just think that, you know, in the case, right now the right is, the political right in America is much more kind of unconditionally pro-Israel at this point than the left in America is because the left is much more concerned, I think, about Palestinian rights. And that is not me criticizing the left, okay? I'm trying to make an analytical point, right?

But it's just, so that's where we're at. So I think any Democrat, and particularly someone like Barack Obama who wanted to sort of break some of the shibolets of American foreign policies he thought, you know, and negotiate with Iran, negotiate with people who normally, you know, you weren't supposed to talk to, they were going to be under more scrutiny because of the sort of dynamics of where things are at this moment. And it wasn't always like that, as we know. And, you know, in 1948, it was the left that largely supported Israel on the right that really couldn't be concerned about it. And for years until probably the 80s, it was, you know, the Republican Party, which was the sort of bastion of the oil companies and the Arabists that, you know, weren't too crazy about Israel. And that, you know, inside the Democratic Party, you had a lot of Americans who were very, you know, very much drawn to Israel. And that dynamic, I think, is shifted, whereas now the Republicans have a grassroots of a lot of evangelicals, but many others who identify with Israel as sort of the bulwark against radical Islam. And I think you have a lot of people in the base of the Democratic Party who see Israel as, you know, continuing in untenable occupation and that, you know, has done bad things to the Palestinians.

So in that respect, the dynamics have shifted. So there will be more scrutiny, I think, on a Democratic president on these things than a Republican one. Eli, I could ask you about 100 more questions, but we both have to run. Thank you. This is a lot of fun. Good, thank you for coming on. Everybody read Eli's Bloomberg columns. And thank you for breaking the left-wing stranglehold on the Potsie of the World Voices. I appreciate hearing.

Yeah. Am I the first? Yeah. Oh, yeah. You and Glenn Greenwald, man. We're bringing everybody together. That sounds good. All right.

Thanks so much, Tom. All right, buddy. Good talk to you. All right. Thank you. Bye.