Pod Save the World - A very Worldo mailbag

Episode Date: November 25, 2020

In the inaugural Pod Save the World Thanksgiving mailbag episode, Tommy and Ben take your foreign policy questions, and a trip down memory lane.

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, this is our, I guess, annual Thanksgiving mailbag. I look forward to it every year. I'm thankful for it. I'm thankful for the questions. I'm thankful for your answers in this just miserable, miserable pandemic Thanksgiving. We actually just canceled our Thanksgiving plans. Yeah, I canceled mine last week. I feel so bad. You know, not seeing my parents. They'll be all by themselves this year on Thanksgiving. So, you know, a world, though, shout out to my parents. But yeah, it's just terrible. Yeah, we were going to go to see Hannah's family and then just the case number. It just felt it just felt irresponsible to do it. And it's like, it's one of those things

where it's like, okay, so you're scared to go visit someone because of COVID. It's not like being scared of flying where you get up and you get down and then it's over. It's like anxiety that's just going to live with you the whole time, you know? And then weeks after. after. And when you're visiting older parents, you know, the anxiety is the minuscule chance. Even if you wear an N95 and goggles and all the rest of it, you don't want to be bringing COVID into your parents' house, you know? Yeah. So I wouldn't want to be like sitting there stressed all Thanksgiving about whether or not, you know, I'm bringing a deadly virus into my parents home. No. Feels bad. Feels like something I'd have to live with for a long time. Yeah. Well, well, dear

listener, we're going to pick you up by answering all your foreign policy questions. And we're going to do so with a very wry sense of humor because Gallo's humor is all we have left. By the way, listeners, if you want to get any Cricket merch, so we got a Cyber Monday deal coming up, you get 15% off sitewide discount at the Crooked store. Go to crooked.com slash store. They made me say this. I know that was a weird transition. So we're going to start by just drilling Mike Pompeo. Because you know what, that's going to make us feel better. This is my mailbag question. My mailbag question is, could we devote some time at the top of the show to make Pompeo?

So, Ben, reporters traveling with Secretary Pompeo were just given this readout of his trip to Israel. The secretaries visit highlights U.S. government support of Israeli businesses in the West Bank to operate free from international sanctions as part of the Pompeo doctrine. Are you aware of Secretaries of State normally naming doctrines after themselves? Is that a standard thing? The man's ego knows no bounds. But, I mean, I wanted to just pause and ask, what is the Pompeo doctrine? Great question. Is the Pompeii?

You know, they just assert it like we would know that it's this great thing. You know, the doctrine of containment was the Truman doctrine. Is the Pompeo doctrine, the unobstructed commerce of Israeli settlements and the West Bank? Is that the totality of the Pompeo doctrine? Is the Pompeo doctrine anything that further politicizes our foreign policy on behalf of his 2024 seventh place bid shaping up for the Iowa caucus? Like, what is this doctrine? When he barely loses to Tom Cotton for like fifth?

Yeah. So let's just talk about what his trip has been. So he did three days in Paris, really roughen it there. He went to Turkey. I don't think he met with any officials. He did a religious freedom event that was focused only on Christians. Now he's at a vineyard on a West Bank settlement. He visited the Golan Heights.

And it seems like they're also, the State Department is attempting to curtail free speech here in America by directing the government to like make a list of entities that support the BDS movement, boycott, divest, and sanctions movement. So, yeah, Pompeo doctrine, I guess. I don't know. I mean, you know, we don't get too many more opportunities to do this. Mike Pompeo, it seems like, has only devoted his time in office to issues that he thinks have a political benefit to him at home. But like the record, you know, Venezuela, we had, like, the aborted, you know, coup that took place. You still have special forces guys sitting in a prison there with Maduro in power. You've got the Iranians, based on the recent IEE reports,

dramatically expanding their nuclear capability, and we're learning, installing. centrifuges that are more enhanced than the ones that they were using at the beginning of the Iran nuclear negotiations. Yeah. And then, you know, the West Bank, I guess if your goal is to make it impossible for there to ever be a two-state solution, the Pompeo doctrine is a smashing success and de facto legitimizing Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. But I don't know. I mean, celebrating this kind of progress with a bottle of Israeli settlement-produced wine feels like, feels like about where we're at, never mind that there are other issues in the world that could get attention here. Kind of gilding a lily.

It does seem like he's running for president of Sheldon Adelson's super PAC. So we'll see how that goes. A lot of competition there. You kind of previewed this argument last week that I'm now starting to see a lot more, which is it does seem like on a whole host of issues, especially on foreign policy. the Trump lame duck plan is to try to do maximum damage and impede Joe Biden's agenda and or hamstring his presidency as much as humanly possible, potentially in a bid to defeat him in 2024 or just because there are a bunch of spiteful, vindictive people who don't give a shit about the country. Maybe both. I know I think honestly, if you look at these kind of rash,

uncoordinated, unthoughtful pullouts from places like Iraq, you could see the most cynical scenarios that they want pots to boil over at the beginning of the Biden administration so that they can then launch investigations and attacks on the Biden foreign policy based on what they themselves did. But I mean, I think one of the thing we had to talk about Mike Pompeo is this is a man who took over the State Department with this kind of absurd egotistical assertion that he was going to bring the swagger back, you know, maybe taking a page out of his favorite rapper Kanye West, litany here. But I mean, he's also destroyed the State Department. I mean, he has probably the most negative reputation among the workforce, the most universally loathed Secretary of State and the

history of the State Department because he's ran the bus over any State Department employees who called out the malfeasance of the Trump administration. And he's continued this kind of jettisoning of expertise in the Foreign Service. So this is a guy who is loathed by his own workforce, is loathed by the vast majority of countries that he works with around the world, what is the basis on which this man puts himself forward as some kind of credible political figure, you know? This is a Fox News foreign policy that is designed to only appeal to the viewership of Fox News's prime time lineup. And that's been incredibly destructive in the actual world where people don't make decisions based on what the assertions are, the demands are of Sean.

Hannity. Yeah, he's a he's a belligerent sexist bully who is making Rex Tillerson look good, and I never thought that was possible. But thanks, Mike. Good to know you. Okay, let's get to some of these questions because that was just fun. So this first question came from Andrea on Instagram, Ben, which was what foreign leader should Biden visit first? Let me give you, so we talked about this on Positive America, too. So I'll give you kind of like my circuitous thinking on this. My guess is that Biden's going to go to Canada or Mexico first. Like, I think that's pretty standard. It's important relationships in the hemisphere.

After that, my question is, like, you know, how would you structure it as, like, a messaging opportunity, right? You could see, like, a big climate change focused group meeting of some sort, although that might be on the books. You could see a big summit on the coronavirus vaccine distribution or coordinating economic relief. You could see, like, a NATO meeting to reaffirm the alliance. You could see a trip to Japan or South Korea to reaffirm.

affirm those alliances. Do you have a take on how you might message, sequence, and prioritize these kinds of visits? Well, you know, first of all, hopefully there's a vaccine or else farm travel gets more complicated. I sure does. I think that not doing what Trump did, which is not flying to Saudi Arabia for your first visit and staring into an orb posing next to the Saudi king and and CC the dictator of Egypt, that's progress to begin with. I think that in this hemisphere, usually you're right, it's Canada or Mexico. I'd go to Canada first, just because Justin Drewdow has been one of the holdouts for progressive leadership in this Trump era.

And Amlowe's obviously been a bit challenging as a leader in Mexico. But then abroad, I think the couple principles I'd say are, first of all, what we did in the Obama years in 2009 is in that first year in office, we went to every continent except Antarctica, but we went to South America, we went to Africa, we went to Asia, we went to Europe. It was a very methodical effort to try to restore America's standing. So I do think it would be wise to try to get to all the major regions in that first year. I think in terms of his first overseas, you know, non-Canada visit, you know, going to Germany and seeing Angela Merkel would make a lot of sense too.

She's, you know, probably in the twilight here for chanceorship. She herself would say that. So it's a kind of passing of the torch in some respects that she probably has a wealth of knowledge about what's going on in the world and what trends she sees that he's going to need to know, and there may not be that many more opportunities to consult with her. I think if you went to Europe, you'd want to hit a few different allies on that trip to suggest that kind of we're back in the game and we're reinvesting in alliances. Biden's talked about having a summit of democracies early in his presidency, and I think that's critically important, both to restore alliances, but also to

kind of restore support for democracy. And then I think getting creative when you go abroad and trying to to bolster democratic leaders, try to bolster progressive leaders. Maybe if you go to the Asia-Pacific region, make a point of swinging by New Zealand to see Jacinda Ardurne, someone who we talked about a lot on this show. But the bottom line is, I think, you know, he should get out there and he should be seen in different places, and he should signal by the leaders he visits that democracy and alliances are at the forefront of our foreign policy. Those are very, very good ideas and good leaders to touch base with. This next one came from Twitter. How might a Biden administration handled the Israeli-Palestinian issue, particularly the recognition of Jerusalem? Will he further Trump's

Abraham Accords or change course? So, Ben, I mean, there's rumors that our former colleague and friend of the pod, Dan Shapiro might go back to being the U.S. ambassador to Israel. He served in that role under Obama and was also in the end of sea with us. I think that's great news for anyone who wants, smart, decent, good people serving in government. Dan's a great guy. He's really smart. But I also think it sort of signals an approach to Israel that is not antagonistic towards Netanyahu that will feel sort of like status quo kind of, you know, Democratic Party policies. For example, I don't think Dan or President-elect Biden supported threatening to condition aid to Israel if they annexed the West Bank. I think they both said that was a bad idea. So I don't know how the Biden administration

will approach the Abraham Accords. I suspect they will talk about the pieces that are good. Like, they'll acknowledge the fact that better relations between Israel and its neighbors is, like, a good thing in many respects. I hope they revisit the cost, especially the massive arms sales to the UAE. I don't know. I doubt they'll move the embassy. It feels like it's hard to put a lot of the toothpaste back in the tube here. But like, what's your gut on how they will think about this set issues? Yeah, I think there's very little space for any kind of major Palestinian statehood initiative at the outset. You know, I personally, what I'd like to see them do, on Abraham Accords, like you said, I don't think that they need to go through with this massive arm sale. I think they need to scrutinize that arm sale in the context of their Yemen policy, for instance, in the context of how they're looking at the region.

And if, look, the only reason that the U.S. if it is the case that the UAE only agreed to this, normalization in exchange for a bonanza of tens of billions of dollars of weapons, you know, that's hardly real peace here. So my sense is that the UAE would be unlikely to go back on that process. But I would think that they want to take a look at that arm sale. Then I think an important thing here is that Jared Kushner and the Trump administration did a lot of things to try to essentially, you know, starve the Palestinian Authority. They cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority, they kind of downgraded the representation of the Palestinian Authority in the U.S. So I think a good early project would be kind of reinvestment in the Palestinian Authority,

restoring that relationship, restoring those funding levels, so that you at least have a party in the Palestinians that we're once again talking to and engaged in diplomacy with, maybe trying to find some early wins that can be made in terms of improving conditions for the Palestinians. But then at a certain point, they're going to have to make a decision as to whether to invest diplomatic capital in this issue, and whether that takes the form of, you know, kind of recognition-type policies for the Palestinians, whether it takes the form of, you know, more aggressive efforts internationally against continued Israeli settlements as we had at the end of the Obama years. I think, you know, I'd like to see something in this space, but I think you're right.

I would expect a more conventional approach from the incoming Biden administration, but at a minimum, they can at least arrest the downward trajectory of the circumstances that Palestinians and try to extend a hand to the Palestinian Authority and begin to at least have a diplomatic partner there again. Yeah, that would be good. Actually, having, you know, talks that occur, you know, not, I think it's been like, what, two years or a year and a half since the Palestinians have spoken to the White House or the administration.

They're constantly denigrated by Jared Kushner and others within the administration. So yeah, but, you know, probably not the place for Joe Biden's going to be the most progressed fun foreign policy. Ben, a question for you specifically. So this came from a listener from the Caribbean. How can the Biden administration begin to normalize relations with Venezuela in a way that would alleviate the economic hardship in that country that has resulted from U.S. sanctions? Will the Biden administration resume talks with Cuba and open a path to finally dismantling sanctions on that country? Yeah. So first of all, I think with Venezuela, I think you want to take a look at this.

array of sanctions that have been put in place and try to separate out, are there sanctions that, you know, are imposed on the Maduro government or individuals in that government who've committed human rights violations versus what are the more broad-based sanctions that might be doing harm to the Venezuelan people? And I'd like to see, you know, a rollback of sanctions that are doing harm to the Venezuelan people. That might go beyond what the administration's is prepared to do, the Biden administration. But at a minimum, what you can do is start to carve out exceptions in certain areas so that certain types of goods are able to reach the Venezuelan people. But at a minimum, I think if there are going to be sanctions in place on Venezuela, which I'm sure

there will be, how can you make sure that those are targeted on a set of individuals and a set of bad actors and not just kind of broadly punishing the population? That approach is not working. and it's harming Venezuelans. I do think that there needs to be a bit of a diplomatic reset here. And instead of only talking to the number of countries in the hemisphere who totally agree with us on this issue, I think we have to talk to everybody, and that includes the Cubans. And I think it would be wise for the Biden team to do something of a listening tour, you know, to go around, get everybody's perspective, left, right and center about what the situation

is in Venezuela, and what can be done to kind of relaunch a diplomatic initiative. How do you begin to get the Maduro people and the Venezuelan opposition in the country talking to one another? And yes, I think you know, you do want to talk to the Cubans in particular, given the ties they have into Venezuela. You want to talk to the Caribbean countries who are often an afterthought in our diplomacy or are only approached, you know, when we have a Venezuela specific ask. And Joe Biden here has a lot of background. He had the lead in the second Obama term on most of our Latin America policy, including in the Caribbean. where we had a kind of energy initiative together with the Caribbean countries. So, you know, I think that we want to kind of signal a reset here of a Venezuela policy

that has not achieved anything other than really harming the Venezuelan people and helping to entrench Maduro and try to figure out what is our objective here. And the objective has been kind of regime change and stall Guido in place of Maduro. Is there some alternative here to de-escalate tensions and to move towards an election that can settle this issue, rather than suggesting that the United States is going to pick the leader of Venezuela citing constitutional provisions that we kind of cherry pick from Venezuela law here. So I do think a reset would be well in order. Yeah.

Look, not to be a total hack, but like the elephant in the room on some of this is the South Florida politics, and it does seem like the Cuban vote, the Venezuelan vote, the Latino vote generally in Florida kind of broke to Trump. But I do think we need to do a whole lot of extensive canvassing and survey work and, you know, door knocking to kind of like figure out what it was that led a lot of those voters to support Trump because it was weird to see that it wasn't just, you know, the conventional wisdom, right, was like, oh, Trump's tough on Cuba, oh, Trump's tough on Venezuela. But it was also Puerto Rican voters in the Orlando area.

It was a bunch of, you know, southern counties in Texas that are predominantly, you know, that went to Trump. So I do think, like, that will be, if we're just being honest, like, part of the conversation or something. We at least need to figure out as a party. And look, I don't think of making Latin America policy based on South Florida politics has been a good... Hasn't been great now. Hasn't been great for U.S. foreign policy for the last 60 years. That said, and as someone who has a lot of friends in that community, I think there are two points I make here, Tommy, which is, first of all, just being Trump-light doesn't help Democrats either. You know, frankly, the Democratic Party was on board with...

Trump's Venezuela policy, most of it at least. And that didn't help. And I think if voters see, well, over here we've got the Trump people who are the most hardline people possible. And then we have these Democrats who are basically, you know, packing off of Trump. Well, who are they going to choose? You have to give people an alternative. If you believe that a different approach is the better way of dealing with Cuba, Venezuela, then make that case. And Barack Obama won the Cuban vote in Florida in 2012. You know, after he'd said he wanted to engage Cuba, after he'd lifted restrictions in some areas on travel and reminences to Cuba,

I think people down there at least respected that, number one, we listened to them, and number two, when we disagreed, we went down there and explained what we were doing and what we thought. And so I really don't think the answer is to just try to get as hardline as they are, because we're never going to get to be as hardline as they are. And lastly, it's just, you know, maybe you're not going to win those voters over on your Cuba policy or your Venezuela policy. And so we should just do what we think is right. I know that's not always how it works, but that's what I think would be in the national interest.

Yeah, well, hope springs eternal. The next question from Instagram, what is Biden's stance on Kashmir? So I was talking about the disputed Kashmir region between India and Pakistan. So did a little digging on this because I didn't really know. Biden has been critical of the occupation in Kashmir, and he's called him the Indian government to resists. store rights for the people of Kashmir and to stop restrictions on dissent or like cutting off the internet. I think Kamala Harris leaned even harder into this one during the primary. And, you know, like she's in a unique place.

Obviously, she's the first Indian American vice president of the United States. So there's, I think, you know, interesting opportunity for public diplomacy for Kamala Harris in India writ large. Modi knows this. He tweeted at her when he finally recognized the Biden Harris ticket. as president-elect, he said, your success is pathbreaking and a matter of immense pride for all Indian Americans. So that was a warm welcome.

Biden more generally has condemned Modi's policies that stigmatized or discriminated against Muslims, including efforts that could be used to deny citizenship to Muslims or possibly deport them. The challenge is going to be like stepping back, like figuring out how hard to push India on Kashmir while also pushing them on climate change, while also mediating tensions. between India and Pakistan and India and China on the border, right? And so like that's not absolving Biden of the need to focus on Kashmir. It's just sort of like an honest prediction that this will be complicated. And they're going to get pulled in a bunch of different directions. The good news is that like Biden and Harris actually care. They care about Muslims in general. They care about

diplomacy in general. That alone is better than Trump, who is more than happy to let Modi, you know, run roughshod over millions and millions of people. Yeah, and don't forget that Modi basically endorsed Trump for re-election at the Howdy Modi event in Houston and then did this kind of bizarre joint event with Trump in India. At the same time as that event, there was some violent crackdowns taking place on Muslims in Delhi. Look, I think it is a starting point. The Indian government should expect that as a part of our regular diplomatic context, we're going to be raising these issues. We're going to be raising concerns about Kashmir. We're going to be raising concerns about certain actions that kind of delegitimize or make second-class citizens, Muslims in India.

And that's just going to be part of the relationship and that, you know, they're going to have to deal with that. And hopefully that could lead them to take steps to alleviate the humanitarian situation in these places to alleviate the violations of rights. And if they don't, then you consider what else, you know, you can do and how to show that this is an actual priority in the relationship. It's a big, complicated relationship that has climate change, has trade and commercial issues, has defense cooperation in sales, has geopolitical cooperation relative to China, but an equal pillar of the relationship should be human rights across the board. And by the way, we can make clear that we recognize we're in a glass house, you know, but Joe Biden can go to Modi and say, look, I just rescinded my Muslim ban to my country on day one here. You know, what can we do together to improve these circumstances? So I think it's unrealistic to expect he's going to come out, you know, guns blazing, you know, fists bared against Narendra Modi, the prime minister of a country of a billion people. But what he can do is make it very clear that this is going to be a constant part of the agenda, a constant part of our dialogue, something we are raising.

And we want to see improvements in these areas as we do everywhere, including in our own country, you know. And I think that I really do hold out hope that that can make a positive difference within India. It's not going to solve all these problems. It's not going to eliminate the fact that, you know, you have a new nationalist party and power that is moved in this direction. But it can at least make things better for some people. And I think after the Trump years, we see, you know, even that type of incremental progress is good. And hopefully it can lead to, you know, a broader reconsideration inside of India about some of these policies. One last thing I should say that Kamala Harris can do too is the Indian diaspora has been largely supportive of Modi and the BJP in this effort.

And the Indian diaspora is very influential. They're some very successful people. They have a lot of ties back in India. Hopefully one of the other things that can be done is enlisting the Indian American community to be more constructive voices. And that's not on Biden. That's on all of us, you know, especially this community. And what that means is, you know, making clear, I'm sure if you're in the American community, you love and respect and have a lot of pride in your country. But, you know, just like you would have concerns about certain

behavior here in the U.S., you would in India, too, and you're going to vocalize that, that India has to get back like America to seeing that diversity is actually a strength, and democracy is actually a strength and not a weakness. Leah via Twitter asks, what is your process for reading, understanding foreign policy news each day? Do you read specific publications? Google alerts. How do you prioritize what to cover on PODS of the World? Great question. Yeah, look, this is a huge change from when you're in the White House, right? We had a clips packet each morning. You had the PDB. I had a bunch of intelligence products. There were situation room updates of anything sort of relevant in the world that happened. We all had, you know, big picture meetings and memos on sort of like issues like Afghanistan that would help you deep dive into this stuff and learn. So there was like this amazing process to help you get information and to learn new things. And then on top of that, that, you know, you had this little yellow phone on your desk that could make top secret calls to,

like, any expert in the government to get information. It was the coolest thing ever to hell of a lot harder on the outside, right? I mean, first of all, we have an amazing team here. Our producers are Michael and Jordan, and that's on purpose, like number 23, they are The Goat. We also get amazing help from Quinn, who does great research. And, like, I think that's so important because, I don't know about you, Ben, But like my brain is biased towards things that I already kind of know and I understand. Do you know what I mean? Like I just find it enjoyable to read about like the Iran deal because I think I kind of have neuropathways that understand it already.

And it's good to have people who push you to expand your horizons and like dig into new things. Like I didn't know much about Belarus until a couple months ago. We all flag articles throughout the week. We dump them into a Slack channel. We dump them into a text chain. I spent a lot of time looking at the Times. the Washington Post and BBC international coverage because it's all in English and it's all very good.

I love when there's like a big heavy hitter New Yorker piece about foreign policy and you can kind of like dig into 10,000 words by like Dexter Filkins or Ron Ayub or something. And then like Twitter surface is a lot of great stuff. It's important to follow good people, internationally focused people and international press and activists there too. You know, you have this like super cool network of, you know, Obama Foundation people on top of all this. I don't know. You want to talk about, like, kind of how you stay in the loop. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'd say is like, you know, you can cover the wavetops, like you said, reading the Times, the Post, BBC. You know, the economist, even if you don't agree with the worldview, they cover the entire world in every issue. So you can at least, you know, oh, I'd forgotten that there's an African election coming up and I'm going to go research that more, right?

So there are these outlets cover wavetops. And then there are these outlets like the New Yorker and the Atlantic that occasionally has the really good 10,000 word piece that you can dig. into. I think what I've also tried to do, and I'd encourage world those to do, is if you get interested in particular issue, start digging and pulling the threat on where can I find good information on this, right? To be totally random here, listeners will know I've taken an interest in Hungary because Victor Orban is a particularly creepy nationalist, and it's kind of a laboratory can opposition overcome something like that. And so then I find, well, what's the great news source in English from Hungary. And I found a website called Direct 36, Direct with a K, right? And that's

all this investigative journalism in Orbán and its ties to Putin and its ties to right-wing forces in Europe. And suddenly I'm in a whole new universe of information of these Hungarian journalists who know better than what the, even the New York Times people are writing about Hungary, right? And you can usually find that. You can usually find that collection of people to follow on Twitter, who were close to an event in Belarus, we had one of them on, and she's excellent. You can usually find maybe a documentary. I mean, I remember Brazil. I've been following that, and I watched the edge of democracy, a great documentary about, you know, the rise of Bolsonaro and the fall of Lula and the Brazilian left. And that gave me a lot of context and texture. And so increasingly,

there's documentary film, too, about these issues. And so what I encourage people to do is, you know, follow the wavetops to just kind of have a sense of what's out there. And we try to do that for you on Ponte at the world. We try to kind of give you, you know, what are the stories that are catching our attention. But if you're interested in Hong Kong or you're interested in Hungary or you're interested in Brazil, there's, you're going to find a whole universe of stuff, you know, people on Twitter, websites, documentaries, you know, even podcasts. Like that's what's nice about this new media environment. You have to do a little bit of work. But I would, again, the best thing for me is if you find the 10 people that you can follow on Twitter, they'll guide you. I mean,

this is where Twitter is actually useful. Like when the SARS movement happened in Nigeria, I just followed a few Nigerians. And suddenly I'm getting links to some pretty cool articles that I never would have seen otherwise, you know? Or like Josh Wong and Hong Kong, like one of the activists. Like follow those people. They will steer you the right places. That's right. I follow a lot of these activists I'm in Hong Kong and they will steer me and make me see things that I wouldn't have otherwise have seen. One of their plug I'd put in is at Karen Atia in front of the pod. You know, the Washington Post global opinions has people like Ron Ayub and Jason resign, you know, one of the best friends of the pod and had Jamal Khashoggi, you know.

So that's, it's almost kind of distinct from the post. It's not the normal op-ed page. It's the global voices page. But that's another good one to look at. Dude, Washington Post opinion is like the gold standard of interesting international coverage. Karen has done an incredible job. Ben, question for you, because you did so much work on the Paris Climate Accords. How big an obstacle do you think sort of the current U.S. adversarial foreign policy relationship is with the Chinese in terms of, you know, getting to an effective international collaboration on climate. There's been some coverage lately, I guess probably from Obama's book. What was the climate summit where he and Hillary, like, kicked down the door and, like,

broke into the meeting with the Chinese? Where was that? Like, it was in Copenhagen. That was in Copenhagen. And yeah, I mean, I, I, what was that story? So I was there. It's a good story. it's worth a minute or two here. So we show up, and the idea of Copenhagen, 2009, it was a UN climate summit, there was meant to kind of come up with a new agreement to replace a Kyoto protocol, which was, that was the last agreement that a Republican president left. You know, Clinton had been a part of that, and Bush pulled out and climate kind of founded internationally. And so these expectations were hugely high that Obama would come in and there'd be an agreement. But none of the work had been done for this. And by the time Obama arrived, it was clear there wasn't

agreement. And the summit had fallen apart. I mean, I cannot overstate how bizarre it was. Like, people were wandering around this area. The leaders room that was supposed to be just for leaders or like random staffers wandering around in there. Everybody was meeting on sidelines. We had trouble finding foreign leaders. Our staff rooms were in like a mall. So I remember being in a room with a bunch of mannequins briefing like Brock Obama. Oh, yeah. I remember hearing about that. Yeah. Yeah, it's totally wild. And what we realized is the reason there was no agreement is that the Chinese had kind of organized the block of all the developing countries, basically all the non, you know, not the U.S., Europe, and Japan, everybody else, to oppose anything that required

them to do something. The idea was climate change is the fault of the rich countries because they're the ones who caused the problem, so we shouldn't be asked to do anything. And Kyoto, by the way, had not really asked them to do anything. And we obviously took the view that you can't solve this problem unless China is doing something. And so we're trying to figure out a way to sketch a framework for how to keep talks alive. We can't have an agreement, but maybe we can agree on what the framework should be for how the world deals with climate change.

And the key countries were China, India, Brazil, South Africa, these countries that are big economies but are outside of kind of the quote-unquote developed world. And we couldn't find them. We literally couldn't. Literally hard for Obama to find a leader for a meeting. They were clearly ducking us, you know. And then we heard that the Chinese were meeting with a bunch of these countries. And so Obama said, look, we're running out of time here. I'm just going to go crash their meeting.

And so we walked into this area where there were all these Chinese security guys, basically the Chinese Secret Service. And they tried to physically prevent us from entering this meeting. And Obama, of course, walked through, and they weren't going to hit Obama, and he was surrounded by Secret Service. I got pummeled by Chinese Secret Service guys. I mean, literally knocked on the ground. I remember lying on the ground in the scrum of Chinese.

security guys and watching like Hillary Clinton and Huma Abidine like draft behind Obama to get into this room, you know? And there in the room, the Chinese premier guy named Wen Joe Bao was literally chairing a meeting with Prime Minister Singh of India, Lula of Brazil, Zuma of South Africa, and Midvietta of Russia, the so-called BRICS countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. But China was running the meeting, right? So it was a sign of how much China had already emerged by 2009. And Obama just opens up the door and he says, are you ready for me yet when to win Japan? It was like the most gangster thing I've ever seen, you know, in eight years some do.

And what he did is he sat down, though. I mean, it was hugely important because he sat down that room and he hammered out an agreement with the Chinese and these other countries that, okay, we're not going to have an agreement here, but we will agree. The goal should be limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, and that became the Paris target. the goal should be that the richer countries will have to do more, but everybody will have to do something, and everybody will have to be accountable for their pledges. So if people commit to reducing emissions, there's going to be some process for the rest of the world to review whether people are keeping their commitments. And there was this idea that to help the poorer countries that, you know, are developing with coal right now, move to clean energy, the richer countries would

create some kind of funding mechanism to help them do that. Seven years later, that became the Paris Accords. That's basically what the Paris Accords is it took seven years to negotiate. What is every country doing? What is the reporting mechanism? How do we hold each other accountable? How much funding goes to these poorer countries? But we got there and it really did all start with that meeting. And as is quoted in the book, Reggie Love, his personally did say to him afterwards. That was some gangster shit. It was. It was. Reggie's fucking hilarious. I mean, I love that story and I love like the anecdote that also came out of the book about how there's like Obama wrote about how there's just shitty.

pens at the G20. It kind of does speak to the haphazard chaotic nature of these international summits. Like, you'd think that going to the NATO summit is going to be this big, glitzy, glamorous thing. In reality, you're in, like, a giant warehouse separated by, like, dividers. And then, you know, do you remember the trip we took to India? I don't remember if it was, like, 2009 or 2010.

We went to Delhi and Mumbai. And at one point, Robert Gibbs was trying to get the U.S. press into a pool spray with Obama and the Indians. And yeah, the Indian security tried to shut the door on him. So we put his foot in the door. And they were pushing so hard, he was like, you're going to break my foot, but I'm not going to move it unless they get in.

I mean, that was like, it was wild, man. Like, there was some pretty intense times in those things. You could find yourself in a tough spot. I was in a number of scrums, usually with Chinese security. But by the way, we should be the first true knowledge. Our security, secret service, I'm sure, worse. I mean, good in terms of what they're trying to do. I don't want to suggest it's a negative, but in terms of not allowing people into certain areas, like the service does their job.

You're right, though, there was this kind of bizarre, like the bigger summons like the G20s, like you were in these kind of set up like workspaces, and it was kind of amazing to be to G20 because there'd be this long row of kind of box-like, really unglamorous workstaces that are windowless because they're usually in convention centers. And like, there's the U.S. flag on the door one, and then the Chinese flag next year and the British flag. And I used to love to just kind of pop in to other countries. Yeah. Hey, guys, what's up?

You know? And it was because it was such a window. It was exactly what you'd expect. Like every country you'd walk in and the people there looked just like who you'd expect to be staffing the Saudi leader or the Italian, you know, the Italians are in there. It smells a bit like smoke, you know, and everybody's kind of young and kind of hanging out, you know. And so I loved, it was like a mini United Nations to go to those things. But Obama's right.

Like, you know, the swag was usually some like cheap souvenirs, some bad pens, like some bad stationary, like the tote bag. You know, somewhere I have like in my attic, like a whole bunch of like NATO and G20 swag that. Oh, me too. Let's just say it's not that great. Yeah, no, I have like 400 lanyards. And Hannah's always like, are you going to keep like this NATO summit 2011 lanyard forever? I don't know. I should throw all this crap out?

Like these are, I probably won't get to go to another one. Maybe she's just hang on. So the nerdiest thing I ever did in government is I saved every lanyard from, and I went on every single Obama farm trip except like one, I think. And I, every lanyard. And it's nice because you look at them and you remember something about that summit. You know, I look at the one, the Russian G20 in St. Petersburg and the absurd one-hour fireworks show that Putin put on to make it seem like he was a czar.

Like that pops in my head, you know, or like Copenhagen. I remember that meeting. So there are nice triggers to remember, you know, what were at least, interesting experiences. Yeah, the moment that always sticks out of my head was Obama's big speech about nuclear weapons in Prague and the Prague Castle at the top of this big, beautiful hill. And then me and a bunch of reporters decided to walk back. And we just walked down this hill and across this big bridge with this like mob of people, like 100,000 people turned out to hear Barack Obama talk about nuclear nonproliferation. Like it spoke to like the kind of his profile at the

moment, the excitement around his existence, basically, from a lot of foreign countries. Yeah, no, I mean, that was often the best memories of those things were the crowds that would come out to see Obama, because they weren't coming out to see, you know, J. Jinping or Vladimir Putin. And so you always felt it was such a privilege to not just represent the United States, but, you know, also to work for Obama. I know this sounds Kool-Aidish, but it's not really just about Obama. I mean, I remember, you know, going to Brazil. and you saw all these Afro-Brazilian, all these black faces along the motorcade route. And it wasn't just Obama.

He represented something as a black president. And I think in a lot of countries, my memory is seeing the motorcade crowds being people who were poorer or from minority groups. Again, part of it was some admiration that had for the U.S. part of it was some admiration for Obama. But a big part of it was just like the representation. that they saw that Obama provided them, you know, in these rooms where there usually weren't black people or people who are minorities from their countries. Yeah.

And Obama and the First Lady actually sought out meetings with those kinds of people, sought out meetings with opposition, sought out meetings with kids, especially when they didn't come from privileged backgrounds. And those were incredibly powerful events. Okay. Next question. Emmett O'Keefe via Twitter asks, I read Robert Draper's Iraq Warbook, great book. I was struck by the amount of uncertainty in the intel community that was ignored in the lead up to Iraq.

In a functioning and honest administration, what is a role of uncertainty in foreign policy decisions? This is a great question. So it's very rare that you get a piece of intelligence, I think, that is black or white. I mean, you know, Ben, we should talk about the Trump administration this week, like mysteriously dropping charges on Mexico's former Secretary of Defense, who apparently was a huge drug kingpin known as like the Godfather. to a Mexican cartel. But in that instance, apparently law enforcement caught him because they were surveilling someone in a cartel. And that person literally said, hey, look, El Padrino, the godfather is on television.

So like the DEA or forever, they just flipped through the TV and there he was. And that's how they busted the guy. That never happens, right? Like most intelligence is circumstantial. There's different degrees of confidence in those assessments. There's different kinds of sources. You have human sources, signals, intelligence, et cetera. Just like a long way of saying the uncertainty is the thing.

it's constant. The bin Laden operation is probably the best example. It was launched on an intelligence case that I think Barack Obama would tell you was 50-50 at best. The problem with the Bush folks in the run-up to Iraq was, you know, you had a bunch of people within the Bush administration seeking out intelligence to fit with a conclusion that they already had made about Saddam Hussein and they were actively suppressing any and all dissenting views. And on top of that, it came in the context of like post-9-11 hysteria where there was just this incessant drumbeat to do something, even if it turned out to be catastrophic. But Ben, you know, what do you think about like the uncertainty in a lot of these decisions? I think, you know, maybe it's not just uncertainty,

but it's like there's not often good options that you are presented when you're the president. No. And I think that, you know, in terms of how it should be handled and what to watch for, I guess. You know, how it should be handled is you should always try to tell people if you're in government, what do you know and what do you don't know? And, you know, why do you feel like you know what you know and why do you still not have certainty if you don't know for sure? And one thing that people can watch for is when the intelligence community is playing it straight, they do issue these public determinations with a level of confidence, low, medium high, right? And, And this is one of the reasons why the Russian investigation was so notable is that it was a high confidence assessment from the intelligence community, which is, you know, that's them saying like, this is as sure as we could possibly be about something. But oftentimes you'll hear them say it's a medium confidence or it's a low confidence. This is why I think public testimony from intelligence community officials in front of Congress is useful because they can poke holes and ask questions and pull threads and try to understand what the deal is. And I think, you know, when I look back, you know,

you always need to try to be as clear, and this is hard in an age of Twitter and, you know, social media, again, about what you don't know. And this, look, this was the whole, the Benghazi issue was when something happens on the other side of the world in the middle of the night, you're not going to know exactly what happened if you're sitting in Washington. What happened in Benghazi, right? And so, you know, Susan Rice goes on the Sunday shows. She said what we thought at the time. and she did caveat it by saying this is what we think at the time, but she did five shows and you could pick things out that she said and say, this was too certain.

The irony of that whole thing was that the more the thread was pulled, the more it appeared that the video had played a role in the attack. We don't have to go down that rabbit. Oh, yeah, sorry. I was trying to say there was not a video, like, there's not like cameras set up everywhere in the world that can tape things. You can learn exactly what happened. I didn't mean the innocence.

Yeah, no. And even when there was a, you know, when survived, surveillance footage from that scene was found and analyzed. It was just a bunch of dudes rummaging around and looting stuff that didn't necessarily answer all your questions about what the motivation was of the dudes who were there. And part of what was so, I think, corrosive about Benghazi was just the premise that anybody would know exactly what happened. Because the Republicans are the ones who were also asserting that they knew exactly what happened. And this was an al-Qaeda attack. And there were maybe bits of evidence for that, but there was bits of evidence that it was a

protests around a video in Cairo that had then led to some people to go down to the facility in Benghazi. Again, not to revisit that one. It's just a good example of like, we can't know with certainty what is happening everywhere, why it's happening, what the motivations are. And I think you just have to be candid about that when you're explaining decisions, you know. Yeah. You're not always operating with perfect information. The lesson of Benghazi was probably just don't tell the press anything until you have absolute certainty, but sometimes that's just not an option. Yeah, and in a case that you were involved in two times when we did want to get something out was Gohm, the secret nuclear facility that the Ronnings are developing. We had found

that there was all this construction happening deep underground at this facility in Goem. We had intelligence that suggested it was nuclear related. They were clearly trying to cover up with whatever they were doing in there. So when we presented this, we said, look, we think this is consistent with them building a new nuclear facility. But then we could kind of put the onus on them and say, well, if they're not, the Iranians should show us and give access to this facility. And lo and behold, they did provide access and it turned out to be a nuclear facility. And that kind of confirmed it. But I mean, you know, you can just kind of make your case and say, if you're talking about the actions of another government, give them the opportunity to disprove it to international

monitors. And that's why you have these international mechanisms, like on nuclear issues. It's not the U.S. intelligence community that was responsible for monitoring and verifying the Iran nuclear deal. It was the International Atomic Energy Agency. And on a lot of fields like this, there are non-biased international organizations. I'm sure people could allege that bias creeps in, but the reason you set these things up is so that there's some neutral arbiters, too. Yeah. Yeah. Jake asked via Instagram, which sub-cabinet post should we really be paying attention to? Good question. So, like, this might be obvious, but I do think that the NSC staff is very important, including, like, the deputies. You know, John Brennan, right, really wanted to be CIA director, had to pull out of that because he probably wouldn't have gotten confirmed, became the deputy national security advisor, became the top Homeland Security Advisor.

And I think developed such a close relationship with Barack Obama and people in that orbit that it worked out even better for him, right? and he ultimately became CIA director. Dennis McDonough, our friend, our colleague, was on the NSC. All these senior directors have a lot of influence. But I don't know, Ben, are there any, like, assistant secretaries or sort of, like, I don't know, any positions that you think are not paid enough attention to? I mean, if you're an assistant secretary, you're in a lot of big meetings making a lot of important policy before it gets run up to the more senior people.

Like, those folks do a lot of work. Yeah, I mean, I think the two I'd particularly highlight are the undersecretary of state for political affairs and the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, not household titles. No. But essentially, they're each the number three person in those buildings. So the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs is the number three person, but is generally seen as kind of the top diplomat among everybody else in the department. Also, the person who sat often in the deputies committee meeting, the interagency meeting that

made policy recommendations up to the cabinet-level people. This was in our administration, Wendy Sherman, who was the lead negotiator on the Iran deal. Before Wendy Sherman, it was Bill Burns, right? So big figures who both, you know, Bill's case, he went on to be the deputy secretary of state. So that's state. And then the undersecretary of defense or policy, in some ways even more important because the deputy secretary of defense is usually someone who thinks mainly about acquisitions, the budget and not about foreign policy. And so usually it's a secretary defense and the deputy who's

looking at this multi-hundred billion dollar enterprise. And then the undersecretary policy is the one who's again in those deputy meetings, making policy being kind of the foreign policy strategist in the Pentagon. So those are the two that jump out. If you have regional interests, the assistant secretaries of state for different regions become very important figures. So like assistant secretary of state for Asia, for Africa, because they're the ones running point day to day, on these things. And so they become kind of big figures in their own right in these regions. And, you know, in the Pentagon, the combatant commanders, who's running Central Command, which was responsible for the Middle East, that person is going to be a very powerful person. So those are

some ones to look for. Yeah, those are very, very big jobs. Ben, this is a good one for you. So T. Bebs via Instagram wants to know what it was like engaging with the Vatican on diplomatic international relations issues. I'm interested in this, too. I'd never talk to you about this, really. I knew you did Cuba-specific diplomacy with them. But, like, when you're doing diplomacy with the Vatican, are you just, like, talking to some random priest? Or do they have, like, a foreign policy guy? Like, how does this work?

So this is a really interesting story for multiple dimensions. You know, they have a diplomatic corps, but it's pretty, it's not the typical one. When we wanted to do diplomacy with them on Cuba, we knew we were dealing with a very sensitive issue. It was not public that we were doing these negotiations with the Cuba. Cuba, and we wanted the Vatican to play a role. So we went to the person who was the Vatican's kind of point person in Washington for a lot of diplomatic endeavors. Unfortunately, tragically, that person was Thedore Macaric, Cardinal McCarrick, who'd long been the Cardinal

in Washington. And it came out after the Obama administration that he was involved in child sexual abuse, Right. So, and they just issued a report out of the Vatican that they'd covered this up, you know, for years. So just put that aside, not because it's not important, but just because we didn't know that at the time. But the way that we really got the wheels in motion here, beyond just the contact with McCarrick, where we said we had this interest in Cuba, is that when President Obama saw Pope Francis, he said, I want to work with you guys on Cuba. And Pope Francis essentially deputized a cardinal in Havana and they got in Cardinal Ortega to be his. appointment for this initial effort. And McCarrick, when we met with McCarrick, agreed to set up a way for Cardinal Ortega to come from Cuba to Washington because it wasn't normal for him to do that. So he set up a

lecture for the guy at Georgetown, Catholic Jesuit University, right? So this guy, this Cardinal from Cuba comes up and gives some lecture at Georgetown. And then we snuck him in the back door of the White House to meet with Obama and me and Dennis McDonough and a couple other people. And he kind of read aloud this letter from the Pope suggesting that he was willing to host this meeting at the Vatican. We then had this phone call with someone in the Secretary of State's office at the Vatican. The Secretary of State is like the foreign minister, and it was a guy named Cardinal Perilene. But they don't do any business over email, which in retrospect is very wise. And we couldn't.

Smart and we couldn't tell them how much progress we made. All they knew is they were going to host a meeting with us and the Cubans. And I basically showed up at the Vatican with Ricardo Zuniga, the American. I was working with in the Cubans. And we walk in and the Vatican said, okay, we're going to meet with you, Cardinal Paraline, the secretary of state guy who's going to meet with the Cubans first and then with us. So he meets with the Cubans and then I walk in and Cardinal Paroleon looks totally stunned. And he says, are you really going to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba?

And I said, yes. And he's like, you're really going to take these steps to establish embassies and begin to normalize relations? And I said, yes. And then he looked at me and he said, who are you? He goes, does John Kerry know you're doing this? Who the fuck is this guy? I literally had to explain to this guy who I was. But then what was amazing is we had a good talk and they knew Cuba well.

They'd been there. We went into this big ornate room and we rattled out all these commitments that we've made. And the Vatican was serving as kind of the third party guarantor. We had to make our commitments to each other in front of the Vatican so that we couldn't break our commitments without the Vatican calling us on it. And what was interesting is that there were people in the room, all priests, who had served in Cuba that, you know, they were overcome by emotion. There were tears in their eyes. At the end, everybody hugged each other. And it was, so it was a feeling that was different from dealing

to other nations. And I remember the Cardinal made the speech that was quite moving where he said, look, you know, we're neutral. We just want to promote dialogue and peace between nations. And they meant it, you know, it wasn't just the standard BS that you hear from some diplomats. So it's like dealing with other countries and that they have embassies and they have diplomats everywhere. But it's also very different because it's secretive. It's not a lot of email. It's a lot of personal relationships. And what's unique, though, is that Pope Francis, I think,

has elevated the standing of the Vatican with the people around the world because he's such a revered figure. And so my hope is that going forward on issues like Cuba or on Venezuela or on climate change and other things that the Pope is interested in, that the Vatican can play an increasing diplomatic role. in helping to create, you know, essentially space for dialogue. God, let's hope they get back into a smarter policy with Cuba. That would be a great, great change post-Trump.

Two quick sort of last ones. The first is Emily via Instagram wants to know the first place you want to travel, once it's safe again post-COVID. Good question. I don't know. This is a hard one. I've really wanted to go to Thailand and Vietnam for a long time, but I think we might have to delete some episodes of this show before I'm able to do that

because I don't want to run afoul of some of their crazier laws. I'd like to get back to Italy in a big way. That would be fun. I don't know. Anywhere like on your wish list? So for me, you know, my two places that I kind of hanker for the most are like Southeast Asia. The food is great. The places are fascinating.

whether that's Vietnam or Myanmar or Thailand, just a totally different sensory experience from being here. And then just a big year, I'd love to be in a big European city. I travel a lot to Europe. I just miss, you know, yeah, you want to go to Paris or you want to go to Rome. But any big European city would, after COVID, it would be nice to just walk around for several days and hang out. I really just miss that feeling of landing in a different place and jumping into a different reality. God, me too. And then last question is a lot of people ask for any book recommendations.

I don't have any new ones. I don't know if you got anything. Like, I'm going to read Obama's book, sure. I have this book that I've been meeting to read for a while about Kim Jong-un that I was about about to start. And then there were all these rumors that he was dead, the great successor by NFAT Field, who was covering the White House for a while. Any stuff on your, like, nightstand that you're looking at.

going to get to? So I kind of caught people up to speed, I think, last week with a couple of the books I was reading. I guess I will say when I look back on the greatest hits of the last year for me in my reading, so these will be repeats, I think. This book, Kleptopia that I mentioned by Tom Burgess, which really lays bare the kind of corruption of how authoritarianism works in the world. And you go from, you know, Putin's Russia to London to Trump to. all manner of places in between. Kleptopia is a great book. We've talked about Ayadoktar's Homeland Elgies on this podcast.

I don't know if I mentioned a book that I read from a long time ago called Defying Hitler, written by a German guy at the time, right? So it was basically about being an ordinary German in the time when Hitler took power and all the kind of individual choices this guy had to make. He wasn't a particularly prominent person. He was just like a lawyer in Germany in 1933 when the, when the Nazis got elected, and then having to make choices about, you know, do you resist laws? Do you go along with them?

He had a Jewish girlfriend. And what's so interesting about it is I don't want to suggest that we're living in Nazi Germany here. But like, you'd be surprised how familiar some of this is, is like, you know, how abnormal is what they're doing. When should you be alarmed or when should you not? watching somebody work that through in real time when you know that the end of the story is the Holocaust in World War II, it's a fascinating book, this book Defying Hitler. And so those jump out to me. On that same dark vein, I read, It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, like right after

Trump's election, which is basically just about how a fascist takes over the United States. And it was a little too prescient. Maybe once Trump leaves office, it might be worth reading. Another fun one, as long as we're talking with Hitler books. Have you read Look Who's Back? The book, there's that movie of it too. It might even be on Netflix. But the gist is Adolf Hitler wakes up to find himself in the 21st century, like where his bunker used to be.

But he has no memory of anything after 1945. So this like real Hitler is just running around Berlin acting like himself and people think it's performance art. But it like is this reflection of sort of like the culture in him. It's just, it's hilarious. It's great. It's a brilliant book. highly highly recommend it. That sounds like a fascinating premise.

You would love it. You would love it. Yeah, I'll just repeat this book. The one I am reading now is also really good. Putin's People by Catherine Belton, which really diagrams the oligarchs there quite well. But yeah, we'll keep world as appraised here of our... I'm hoping to move out of this dark, athard.

If people think I'm very strange, because I was also going to say the origins of totalitarianism by Hanna-Rent, which I actually reread, as nerdy as that sounds. I'm writing this book, guys. I promise you, I will return to non... You'll read like a novel. Yeah, I'm going to read some light novels. But the last two years I've been working on this book that delves into authoritarianism.

And so that's guided my reading, unfortunately. So that's probably guided some pretty dark but very good recommendations, I hope. Very good recommendations. Well, hopefully we'll all be a little less dark, although I just saw a L.A. County COVID update recording this on Thursday a week before Thanksgiving that said 5,000 new cases in L.A. County today, which is horrifying. So everybody stay safe out there. Shit is getting bad. Yeah, happy Thanksgiving and stay safe. Stay safe. Zoom Thanksgiving, lots of turkey. And talk to you one roll back. Patsy of the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is

Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil, Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Quinn Lewis for production support. And thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Malkonian, and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.