Pod Save the World - Abandoning our allies in Syria

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

Tommy and Ben discuss Trump’s decision to pull US troops out of Syria and let Turkey begin a military campaign against the Kurds, a key US ally in the fight against ISIS. Then they try to understand why Republicans are only willing to criticize Trump’s Syria policy, explain why the NBA and Chinese government are fighting, and try to understand why Gordon Sondland, the US Ambassador to the European Union, was part of the quid pro quo with Ukraine. Finally they cover the latest on North Korea, Russia and Boris Johnson’s Brexit. Then Washington Post Beirut bureau chief Liz Sly calls in to talk about protests in Iraq and the view from the ground in Syria.

Welcome back to POTSave the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, it's been an interesting week in the news. Another great week. Another great week. We're going to talk about a lot of stuff today. We're going to talk about President Trump's decision to pull troops out of Syria and the impending Turkish assault on northern Syria. I'll talk a little NBA news. This has become sort of an NBA podcast because your boys are the end of Cantor. But it had a little dust up with China over the issue of Hong Kong. It's a little impeachment news with a special focus on. on Trump's utterly unqualified U.S. ambassador to the European Union, dip into North Korea, talk about a special treaty that helps us monitor Russian military movements and a secretive Russian military unit that does really fun stuff like assassinations and espionage, so that's terrifying. And then we'll check in on our friend Boris Johnson over in the UK. Our guest today is Washington Post, Bay route bureau chief Liz Sly. She called in to help us understand the view from the ground in Syria.

and then this building protest movement in Iraq that's not gotten a lot of coverage, but could be a really big deal. A lot of people got killed. Yeah, a lot of people have been injured and killed, and so it's something we should be watching. Before we get to the news, just two quick housekeeping items.

I hope you guys have checked out America dissected by Abdul Saeed. The third episode is about the fact that prescription drug prices in the United States are way higher than anywhere else and about our fucked up political system and how it is cave to pharma.

It is an amazing series. Abdul is so smart. you will learn a ton and he is funny and empathetic and everything you want to host. So please check it out. The other thing I wanted to flag is that there are some really important elections coming up in Virginia where Democrats just need to flip two seats in the House of Delegates and two seats in the state Senate to win back the majority, which means we'll have a lot more power to draw fair lines when we redistrict in 2021. So if you go to Votesaveamerica.com, you can find volunteer opportunities.

You can also go check out our fuck jerrymandering fund, which helps see. send money to some Virginia candidates in some of the closest races and make sure they have the resources they need in the final stretch. So Votesaveamerica.com, check it out. And with that, let's talk about the news, Ben. Let's start with Syria. So at 11 p.m. or so on Sunday night, the time when you normally put out a White House statement, the White House released a statement announcing that Turkey is going to move forward with this long planned military operation in northern Syria. He also said the U.S. would pull 100, 150 or so military personnel out of the area. Right before we started taping today on Tuesday, I saw Reuters report that suggested Turkey was already hitting Target, so it sounds like this fighting might be happening already.

Trump is going to try to portray his decision as getting U.S. troops out and handing the fight against ISIS over to Turkey. But in reality, this is far more likely to harm the anti-IIS campaign because Turkish forces will attack some of the Kurdish fighters who have been our allies in the fight against ISIS. It's a little complicated, so we'll do a bit of set up. up here. So Kurdish fighters make up a big chunk of these Syrian Democratic forces who have been doing a lot of the fighting against ISIS and have lost thousands of fighters in combat in places like Raqa where it was really brutal like hand-to-hand house-to-house combat. Additionally, the Syrian Democratic forces are SDF. They're holding an estimated 11,000 ISIS fighters in these like makeshift jails. So they are really on the ground, like leading the anti-IS campaign and doing

some really important work to help stop ISIS from returning. So the question you might ask is, why the hell would Turkey attack them, which is a good one. Turkey's stated objective in this military campaign is to clear a 20-mile-deep safe zone on the Syrian side of the Syria-Turkey border so that they can then resettle Syrian refugees who are currently in Turkey into camps in that safe zone. But the problem is that Turkey views many of these Kurdish forces in Syria as an extension of a group called the PKK, which has been fighting for independence in Turkey. for a long time and is designated as a terrorist group, both in Turkey and in the U.S. So if the Turks roll their troops into Syria, the Kurdish forces will likely stop fighting ISIS.

There's a chance they'll stop guarding these ISIS prison facilities and they'll start fighting the Turks. And if we let this happen, it is very likely the Turks will get slaughtered by the Turkish military and by ISIS all at once. They'll just get squeezed. So it'll be truly awful. Trump was immediately criticized by Republicans for this move. and I want to dive into why Republicans seem to get so alarmed by this issue later because it's notable.

But in an effort to spin his decision on Monday, Trump tweeted, quote, If Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey I've done before, perens, exclamation point. So we are now abandoning the Kurds and threatening to economically obliterate a NATO ally. Ben, that's a lot of background. Let's pause there. What did you make of this? And can you talk about the U.S. mission in northeast Syria and what you think will happen if the Turks start this campaign?

Yeah. I mean, I guess a little background might be helpful here for people. So we started the counter ISIS campaign in 2014, and we were going to be using a lot of air power. But we needed partners who would actually fight against ISIS on the ground. And there was a big battle in northern Syria in a town called Kobani that ISIS was seeking to take, and that would kind of consolidate their control over that part of Syria. And there were some Kurds fighting against ISIS on the ground. We started air-dropping weapons to them, and then we opened up a land route to get weapons to

them. And lo and behold, they started fighting back, and they won this battle for Kobani. And then we started a process of steadily arming these Kurds and ultimately bringing in some Arabs as well into the Syrian Democratic forces. And these are literally the people who fought and won the battle against ISIS. So tens of thousands of Kurds were killed, fighting alongside U.S. Special Forces who were helping them kind of plan their operations, giving them intelligence. Also, U.S. air power was providing their air support, and that went all the way to Raka. And so the counterizes campaign that began in 2014 under Obama, and it ended with the fall of Raka last year, literally could not, would not even have been fought if these Kurds didn't take the lead on the ground.

and essentially taking back all this area in northern Syria and eastern Syria that had previously been under control of ISIS. At the same time, the Turks were always threatening to go in and clear out these Kurds and saying that there were an extension of the PKK. And so part of what we did is we had U.S. troops, special forces, in these areas, and frankly, they were kind of a bit of a tripwire. You know, the Turks weren't going to go into some combat area if there were going to be U.S. troops there. And so essentially we were protecting the Kurds from this Turkish operation. What seems to have happened is Trump has kind of lost interest in this fight because Raq has fallen, the geographic territory that ISIS controlled is gone. But as we talked about on this pod, ISIS is still very much present and would be looking

to regenerate itself as they've done in the past when they've gotten an opportunity. So it sounds like what happened is Taip Erdogan calls up Trump, one authoritarian to a I need a favor, though. The favor is, why don't you pull out those U.S. troops and we'll handle ISIS and, oh, by the way, we'll do our operation into northern Syria. And the reality is these Kurds are very vulnerable to a Turkish operation like this. They're great fighters on the ground, but they depended on us to provide them all kinds of support in order to conduct the operations they did.

And so we could be in a position where, number one, these Kurds who helped us deal with the threat to our security, ISIS. could be massacred. Number two, you could have a much more violent situation reemerge in northern eastern Syria. That's the kind of place where ISIS could regenerate itself, so it could also put us directly at risk. This is not the important point. Apparently Trump was supposed to meet with Erdogan at Unga. I bet he didn't happen because he was having an ongoing meltdown about impeachment, so they laid on this call.

Could you imagine being the staffer that like drags your ass into the White House at like 6 p.m. on Sunday being like, oh, man, staff this call. be home in time to watch the session. And then 11 p.m. rolls around and you're drafting a statement announcing that we are pulling out of northern Syria and about to allow our closest allies in the region to get fucking slaughtered. Yeah. And look, Erdogan is a notoriously kind of difficult and prickly guy. Yeah. I used to have this joke with Obama because Erdogan would always ask for what we would call a pull-aside meeting, which is not a formal bilat. So it's like, oh, we'll just meet, we'll pull aside, you know, Erdogan and go to another room with the G20 and meet for 15 minutes. Those meetings would always go an hour and a half.

So Obama's thing was always like, you know, if it's a pull aside with Erdog, it's an hour and half meaning it's a bylade, it's two hours. But Erdogan is a very inflexible guy when you're talking to him. He doesn't try to meet you in the middle. He just says, here's what I want. And you have to be firm in saying, no, I cannot do that. Here's what I can do. And it just seems like Trump got rolled.

And so part of what the story is here is that art of the deal, this guy can just get steamrolled by a tough interlocutor. And Erdogan just kind of ran circles around them. In fact, Newsweek quoted a current NSC staffer who leaked to them that Trump just got rolled. Yeah, yeah. Basically in your words. That's what happened. Yeah. Clearly.

Yeah, it's funny when you talk about the, if you underestimate the length of time a meeting is going to take for Barack Obama, he will remember it forever. He still calls Michael Neal 20 clicks because a photo line was 100 people, not 20. But we digress. Okay. So on Monday, Trump signed this trade deal with Japan. And he took some questions about... and some other issues around it. And what was...

You really stayed on message for that trade deal. Yeah, he really did these. Those poor, like, Japanese businessmen are behind him as he's, like, ranting about all this stuff. But the thing that was surprising to me watching him was it was honestly the most convincing, calm, like, cogent argument I've heard him make about any policy discussion, any policy position ever.

In part, I think, because he was honest about how complicated this all this. He talked about how difficult it will be to deal with the tens of thousands of ISIS fighters and their families who are being held now and how European capitals refused to take their own nationals back, let alone other bad actors. He mentioned how there are big, powerful countries in the region like Turkey and Russia and Iran who have money and they have infrastructure and they can share the burden. He said he wanted to move these U.S. troops away from the border because he was worried about them being in a dangerous position if this Turkish operation happens. And generally, he wants to bring our troops home from the wars for fighting abroad because he said

we shouldn't be the world's policeman, and we shouldn't inject ourselves into centuries-old conflicts and tribal wars like what's happening between Turkey and the Kurds, and that Russia and China want us to stay in Syria and get bogged down because it benefits them. And so, Ben, like, there's holes in that logic big enough to drive a truck through. But, like, it's not totally wrong, and it sure as hell sounds convincing. So I know you watched this piece, this press conference, too. What did you make his argument in terms of the policy and the politics? Yeah, no, I mean, I think we do need to take it at face value. Look, first, he's not wrong that this is incredibly complicated and they're contradictory kind of objectives for the U.S. We have a NATO ally in Turkey that is worried about these Kurds. We've got Kurdish allies who fought with us. But you know what? It is complicated. That's kind of like part of the job, right? The job is complicated. And it's the Middle East. So it's even more complicated. And yes, are there centuries old conflict? Absolutely. But like the reality is part of what we had to do, just to manage this, I remember, is a tremendous amount of diplomacy with the Turks, right? So we'd be supporting these Kurds and we'd be sending the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to staff to Turkey for dialogue. And our counter-ISIS envoy, Brett McGurk, was constantly in Turkey, explaining our logic. We just so we didn't have a Kurdish-only force, which kind of spooked them. We recruited all these Arabs to fight alongside the Kurds to show.

was multisectarian, that there were people of different ethnic groups in Syria who wanted to get rid of ISIS. And, you know, part of, you know, the job of president and being in national security and foreign policy is managing complexity. So, yes, he makes some interesting points, but you're just looking at this kind of narrow problem of how do we keep ISIS from re-emerging, how do we not disincentivize people from ever trusting us again? Because the risk of selling out the Kurds is the next time we need someone to help us deal with the terrorist threat, they might not think we're reliable. And then, you know, how do you go to Turkey and say, look, while we understand your concerns with the PKK, this is not in your territory. And we will be there and we will try to make

sure that this is not about strengthening the PKK. It's about strengthening these Kurds in Syria. And you just are kind of constantly managing it. On the ending war's point, which I'm obviously sympathetic to. I think the other reality here is this is not like Afghanistan. I mean, we've not been taking on a lot of casualties in Syria. I can't even recall the last one we took. Yeah, Brett said no Americans were killed in it. Brett McGark in a tweet storm he did. This isn't like we're losing guys. They're basically there, you know, as both an insurance policy for the Kurds and just to kind of help organize them and to get them intelligence and things like that. So it's a deployment, but I do think those of us who want to end the wars, you know, do

have to draw a distinction between guys in Afghanistan or out in the fight, taking casualties, you know, versus this kind of ambiguous special forces deployment, which again, you might be against that. Okay, that's fair. But you do have to separate it out from, you know, essentially the U.S. being in a war like Iraq and Afghanistan. I also think do we want to, and we talked about this the last time he tried to sell the Kurds. You could negotiate. some process to get these guys out of there. And I could be totally for that. That's not what happened here. Like he surprised everybody in his own government, including those troops and including the Defense Department by saying, oh, they're going to be out and the Turks can do their operation.

What you'd be trying to do is negotiate very carefully. These guys will be leaving over this period of time. We need to get these assurances from Turkey as a part of that, that they won't go into certain parts of northern Syria. There are parts of northern Syria that are essentially protected for these Kurds. And, you know, it's a negotiated end to our presence there. And the problem is he short-circuited that process to get to the end he wanted, which is just pulling these guys out. So happened to be what Erdogan was also asking him to do, rather than saying, okay, I'd like to get these guys out over the next X period of time. Let's negotiate a process for doing that. It also kind of removes us from being able to try to be more of a part of how do you seek a broader peace settlement

in all of Syria. How do you try to rebuild some of these areas? that were destroyed in the fight against ISIS. We're just kind of washing our hands of that too and leaving it to Russia and Turkey and Iran to kind of figure this out. And we at least want to be at that table. Yeah, it is naive at best, dangerous at worst to think that handing a problem off to them

and saying yours now means they will actually deal with it in a way that we'd want them to. At the risk of making my own head explode, you're seeing a lot of lazy comparisons to Obama getting out of Iraq, mostly by Lindsey Graham, who's just the world's worst person recently. He was suggesting that this was an Obama approach because Trump decided to unilaterally pull like 150 guys out of this region of northern Syria and somehow compared that to the Iraqis voting to ask 10,000 U.S. troops to leave their country after we had spent a decade there building up a 400,000 person strong Iraqi defense forces. It's just the stupidity of these comparisons, right?

Yeah, you covered it. I mean, you know, we don't have to fully relive the thing. I think that the more notable point is just the kind of intellectual dishonesty here, right? Because, okay, Obama built this relationship with these Kurds, began arming them in the counter-racist campaign, and now, you know, Trump is pulling the plug. And Lindsey Graham can't even just make a point on the merits. It has to somehow be Obama's fault, you know? And because Obama initiated the policy, like he has to go back to something else Obama did, which is not leaving a residual force of 10,000 troops in Iraq, when the Iraqi government literally would not give us any authority to leave that residual force there. To me, what it really shows is that they can't even, like, frame, we're three years after Obama here.

And like, they're still shadowboxing Obama because they don't want to recognize the clear and present danger that their president, Donald Trump, poses to our national. security. Yeah, I think a lot of offices deal with the, uh, the, the compliment sandwich where every criticism has to be glued between two sort of saccharine compliments. Lindsay Graham offers all criticism of Trump with like a healthy spoonful of Obama shit talking for no reason. Maybe he thinks that's how Trump will actually listen to him. Yeah. Okay. Well, so you sort of alluded to this. In December of last year, Ben, uh, Trump basically did exactly what he's doing now. He declared that ISIS was defeated. He said all U.S. service members are coming home from Syria. And just Like today, I mean, Republicans freaked out and then he backtracked.

And interestingly, it also seems like the military just kind of slow walked his decision to buy time, which, let's be honest, is not a good or acceptable outcome either. Like it or not, like he's the commander in chief. And it's weird when you hear reporting about how they ignored him, but I digress. But so, okay, this week Trump announces this Syria decision late Sunday night. Once again, Republicans go nuts, criticize Trump in ways that you never, ever see them do. And I think the important question is why. It is true that giving the Turkish military the green light to slaughter the Kurds, the guys we've been fighting with against ISIS, is just like morally wrong and repugnant.

But so is sexual assault. So is holding military a to Ukraine ransom for dirt on Joe Biden. Right. So I've been trying to figure out why this is the breaking point for Republicans. Every time, yeah. Yeah. And I think part of it is, you know, right, it's obviously their right to criticize him. But I also think that part of it might be lobbying by evangelicals.

Christians in the U.S. because they're worried that these religious minorities in the region will just get slaughtered, including an ancient Christian community. A lot of Christians. Yeah, like this ancient community that speaks Aramaic, which is what Jesus spoke. So, you know, I think that's probably why this week you saw Pat Robertson condemn Trump's decision. And the last time he floated Assyria withdrawal, he got attacked by the family research council. These are usually his closest defenders, because we know he's a devout Christian himself who lives the word of God. But I don't know. Like, why do you think that, The only thing that breaks through the Republican psyche and offends them these days is ending wars. Yeah, it's remarkable to watch because, you know, this is the same thing where, like, Jim Mattis, this is the only thing he ever raised his voice about. Right, he quit. He quit over this. And let's, you know, be very clear, you know, putting kids in cages, separating families, kind of selling at the foreign policy, United States of Vladimir Putin, trashing the U.S. intelligence community, you know, colluding and aiming to collude with her pressure Ukraine to interfere in our election, trashing alliances. All of these things have been okay, but this isn't.

And also, I should add, breaking international agreements and not sitting by alliances has been the core of the Trump farm policy for three years. That's a really good point. And that's what he did to the Kurds, right? So, like, it's utterly predictive. This is not out of character for Trump. This is very in character for Trump. So it's more jarring to see the Republican response. I think part of it is, yeah, part of it could be the evangelical Christian focused on this. I met with those Syrian Christians. It's fascinating. They really do seem like they walked out of the Bible or something. You know, they're an important community. I also think that the U.S. military, you know, Republicans love to kind of wrap themselves

in the military. And obviously the military's been resistant to the military. And, obviously, the military's been resistant to this move. And, but there's a broader point here, which is that, you know, the Republicans have constantly tried to define themselves as being these kind of reflexive hawks on national security. And so if you look at it, Afghanistan and Syria, the two places where a guy like Lindsey Graham stands up to Trump, and part of what's interesting me about that is they don't even understand, like, his appeal, you know, like his appeal, a big part of his appeal is actually saying he'd get out of these wars, right? So there's this kind of interesting thing where the Republicans are tone deaf to a message that Trump has used that is actually a politically

effective message, which is what the hell are we doing in Syria? What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan? It's time to get out of there. And they're so kind of saturated in this kind of DC, militarized version of foreign policy, version of toughness that has to do with kind of being militarily present in as many countries as possible. Having, you know, obviously, an outsized role for concern for, you know, Christian minorities as part of that. But to me, it just points up the kind of abject hypocrisy, because if you're worried about this, because of the logic that we aren't standing by allies and we're breaking international agreements, how can you not have been worried about all the other times for the last three years that Trump has

screwed over allies and broke international agreements? Yeah, it is very bizarre. I think they also just kind of feel, one of the things is interesting and relevant to the impeachment, though, is there's a herd mentality? Yes. So it's like they feel comfortable because they all do this together. So it's not like just Mitt Romney

with a sad tweet. It's like 20 Republicans all put out statements about Syria. And suddenly they all feel comfortable doing it. Yeah, collective action is their great weakness. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll keep watching this one

because hopefully this thing, hopefully he walks this back in some way. I mean, it's like not that many guys. You should leave him there. But who knows, we'll see. Let's go to the NBA for a minute. So if you guys have not been following the story. Last week, the Houston Rockets general manager, Darrell Mori, tweeted,

quote, fight for freedom, staying with Hong Kong. So that was a reference to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. We've talked about this before. There's a bunch of protests that have going on for several months now. They were initially about a bill that would have allowed individuals in Hong Kong to get extradited to China and then sucked into their horrible legal system, which is terrifying. But, you know, over time, they've become a bigger movement about freedom and basic human rights for the people of Hong Kong. So that tweet is something, I I think literally everyone should be able to get behind. But the Houston Rockets are very popular in China, in part because a Chinese player named Yao Ming used to be on the team.

So the NBA generally and the Houston Rockets particularly look at China and they see a billion potential fans and a billion potential wallets. So I assume that the popularity of the Rockets earned Mori's tweet some extra attention. And I don't know how to describe the response from China other than that they just freaked out. They, Mori was denounced by the Chinese government. He was denounced by random Chinese businesses. He was denounced by the Chinese Basketball Association, which is now led by Yao Ming. And then everybody in the U.S. just cave. The rocket's owner publicly threw Mori under the bus.

League sources were speculating that he would be fired to various publications. And then the NBA released this pathetic statement calling Mori's tweet, regrettable, and they dissent itself from him. China apparently smelled weakness in this initial response. they did what they always do. They doubled down. They released another statement saying, quote, we oppose Silver's claim to support Mori's right of free expression and that they, quote, believe that any speech that challenges national sovereignty and social stability is not within the scope of freedom of speech. Holy shit. Just put your cards on the table. Yeah, put your cards on the table. So they're referencing NBA Commissioner Adam Silver there when I said Silver. So Adam Silver had to release another statement Tuesday to try to clean up the botched cleanup where he said,

that the NBA is not going to regulate what players and employees say on various issues. He's also traveling to China for meetings where I try to smooth this all out. I should say like, you know, the other league commissioners like Roger Goodell, a bunch of fucking idiots. But Adam Silver is like legitimately impressive guy. Either way, they made a mess of this. There are some issues when you're dealing with China, like the Dalai Lama or Taiwan, that you know our red lines and you know if you speak out on them, the response will be like disproportionate and predictable. China freaking out about Hong Kong seems pretty new.

to me and a little bit ridiculous. It seems like they're trying to send an early signal to intimidate the rest of the world to stay out of this sandbox. I'm curious what you think about all of this, but also if you think there's any risk for Xi Jinping here. You have hundreds of millions of Chinese nationals who just want to watch some hoops. And now Xi Jinping might rob them of that pleasure because of something in Hong Kong. Like, that seems stupid. Yeah, I think there's a China angle and then the NBA angle. And this is a fascinating story, Tumpac. The first thing is, is what the Chinese did here is clearly deliberate and manufactured, right? Right.

So I honestly do not believe there was any natural groundswell in response to Daryl Morey's tweet, right? The general manager of the Rockets. The guy you look to for everything. Yeah, to tweet something that literally anybody could, you know, and American politicians on both parties have been tweeting the same thing. The Chinese clearly decided, and by the way, Twitter is not even widely available in China. Right.

So the Chinese clearly decided to take this tweet. and make it an example to the NBA of don't fuck with Hong Kong, right? And so they take this anodyne tweet, they gin it up, their state media kicks into gear, they're threatening to shut down NBA businesses, they're sending all kinds of messages about how this is endorsing separatism when that's not what the tweet says. It's just endorsing basic human rights. And this is what the Chinese do. If you are an American business trying to get in there,

or American media company trying to get in there, they try to bully you and send a message of if you want to play ball here, you're basically have to sign up to our view of politics and all these different issues. And so they wanted to test whether they could bully the NBA into submission and silence. And I think the NBA market in China is already worth $4 billion. So there's a lot of money on the table, right? Because basketball, I think, is the most popular American sport there. Now, that's what the Chinese are doing.

It's very obvious. The NBA got it totally wrong out of the box because they, clearly looked like Mori had done something wrong, you know, and this was a problem of Mori's own creation, and they're apologizing that the statement that they put out in Chinese, or at least the Chinese translation, kind of went further than the English one and saying that Mori hurt the feelings of all the Chinese people over this, you know. And it's kind of absurd. I think Adam Silver appropriately walked back that statement and said, look, like, we're not going to police the speech of our employees, our players, or our team employees.

We're just not going to tell them what they can and cannot say. And that's the right principle of position to take. But the broader point is it's also right to lay down to the Chinese. Here are our markers, right? Like we're not going to infringe upon the free speech rights of our players and our employees just to get into your market. And you should know that now too, you know? And whatever relationship the NBA and China works out, over time is going to have to account for this tension between China's extreme sensitivity about certain issues and the MBA's commitment to not policing the speech of its people. And better for an American business to be clear with the Chinese up front, here's what we will

and won't do. And part of what the NBA could say is like, look, we respect you of a different political system. We kind of, you know, we respect that when we're in China, like, we're not going to attack your politics. But if we have individuals who are part of the NBA community and speak their mind, we're not going to tell them they can't do that. And that's kind of the deal, right? And we did the same thing. Like, they would try to go around and bully people into not meeting with the Dalai Lama, you know. And we said, look, and they said he was a separatist and he's a terrorist and all these things. And we'd be like, no, look, we're just, we're going to meet with the Dalai Lama. We're going to do it and we're going to do it regularly. And each time they'd protest, but they

learn to live with it, right? And so I do think the message for an American company and a major American brand like the NBA is if you succumb to bullying, it's like any bully, then they'll just bully you more, you know, and they'll bully you on more things. You have to be very clear in saying, no, look, here's what we're not willing to do. We're not willing to tell people they can't tweet about certain things or talk about certain things. And that's it. And that's the nature of this relationship. And yeah, as you said, Tommy, if you want to keep all NBA basketball games off Chinese television, because of that, then, you know, you won't get our product. And frankly, I think it's important for people, companies to stand for that. The NBA is already profitable. You know,

might they lose some money in China? Yes. Is it worth losing your soul to get into that market? No. And I think in all these authoritarian questions, I would like to live in a country where we have institutions, companies, businesses, universities, etc., who are willing to take a principled stand on something rather than just to bend over this kind of bullet. Yeah. And look, I run a business that has no chance of ever being successful in China or allowed in China. So what the fuck do I care? I don't know anything about this. But, you know, look, it's a, what, $10 trillion economy that if you're Nike, if you're Reebok,

if you're all these companies, you want to do business in. But even if you're a startup like an Airbnb or something like that, I mean, you already have all these enormous hurdles you have to leave. You have to establish some joint venture partnership and take a minority position in a Chinese-based company to be able to operate there. There's a constant risk of intellectual property theft. There is a opaque-at-best system with princelings that have to get paid off. Like, I mean, there's already massive impediment.

Like, again, I don't know anything about running a Fortune 500 business that needs the Chinese market. But, boy, would this make me nervous about basing any of my business plans or growth over the next decade into, on Chinese market access, because we're in the middle of a trade war. Shee Jinping is locking down everything. And then like a beloved sport can get a fastball to the head like this. Like who's next? Yeah. And because it also gets at like what is the nature of the appeal of something like the NBA, right? I mean, part of the reason why the NBA has become so much more popular over the last five, 10 years is because they have these individuals

who are interesting characters, right? And LeBron has been very vocal about his politics. That has helped the NBA not hurt it. Right. So like I think if something the NBA is a bunch of automaton's who are reciting, you know, kind of Chinese state propaganda lines about things like Hong Kong, it actually becomes a less interesting product over time, right? And, you know, same thing. I could say, as a foreign policy analyst, I could calibrate everything I say to not offend the Chinese government, but then I wouldn't be saying anything interesting, right? And so I think that, like, the compromises imposed on people to do business or to have a foothold in these authoritarian systems, you know, ultimately diminish the value of what you have to offer

in the first place. I was in Singapore recently at a conference, and I did notice that some of the kind of some of the people there were kind of, you know, taking a Chinese line on, you know, these protesters or must be paid by Taiwan or something. And then you just say, like, guys, come on. Two million people turned out, right? Like, they're not all paid by some foreign power. Like there's clearly something happening here. And yes, might there be some core of these protesters who have been violent, who have been separatist, who might have some foreign support? That's possible.

But that certainly doesn't explain what's happened in Hong Kong. It certainly doesn't explain two million people coming out. What explains it is the fact that they don't want to live under a totalitarian system. It's pretty obvious. And that's why I think once we start compromising the most basic forms of free speech, like Daryl Morey deciding to tweet, you know, stand with Hong Kong, stand for freedom or whatever it was, if we can't even say that, then we're really truly in a new world. Yeah, I mean, like, I'm glad that Adam Silver stepped in and cleaned up the cleaned up because I think a lot of people were inspired by, impressed by the NBA when they were letting their players express a variety of opinions on political and social issues where when the NFL was pretending that Colin Kaepernick didn't exist and letting themselves get browbeaten by. our Xi Jinping, Donald Trump via tweet, every Sunday for months and months and months.

But yeah, not a great early handling of the challenge. No, no, no. And it shows you it's a great, the reason this is an important story is it's a window into choices that a lot of American institutions are going to have to make about China in the coming years, right? Because the Chinese are taking a harder and harder line. And what are you willing to compromise to get that market? Yep. And when is it too much?

Yep. Let's do a little impeachment news. I'll give you guys a little dessert here. So we want to get our fix. We want to focus today on a guy named Gordon Sundland. So on Tuesday, he was supposed to testify before the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees as part of the impeachment inquiry, but the State Department, the heroic Mike Pompeo, friend of all investigations, Benghazi cheerleader, blocked him from being part of an impeachment inquiry, so that's notable. I think everyone, you probably heard of Gordon Sondland because of the text he sent about

the ongoing efforts to extort Ukraine. for dirt on Joe Biden. Sondland is the genius who is always saying, call me. Or like, there is no quid pro quo. I do not know what of you speak. Like all the dumb sort of ass covering statements of the records that do not absolve him.

I did not do crimes. I did not do crimes. But so the bigger question for us today is like, who is this guy? Why is he involved at all, right? So Gordon Sondland is the U.S. ambassador to the European Union. And unless I miss some very big news,

Ukraine is not part of the European Union. So he also has no diplomatic experience. He basically ran a hotel chain and he's a big Republican donor. But he wasn't even a Trump donor. Initially, he was a Jeb Bush guy, which I thought was like an unforgivable sin in Trump world. At one point, during the campaign, he publicly distanced himself from Trump. But he miraculously got this ambassador job by only donating a million dollars through four different anonymous LLCs to the Trump inaugural committee.

So that's how things work. That's legal corruption right there, I guess. Weirdly, Ron Wyden vouched for him, despite Sondland having no relevant experience. I guess there's a state-based relationship. Whatever. But, so, Ben, I did a little Googling here, a lot of heavy research for this episode. So the previous U.S. ambassador to the EU is a guy named Anthony Gardner. Now, he was like a finance guy.

He was appointed by Obama in 2013. He was not a career diplomat either. But let me read you his resume for a second. So he was director for European Affairs on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration for a couple years. He was a BA from Harvard, a degree in international relations from Oxford, a JD from Columbia, and a master's in finance. This guy sounds annoying. He speaks, I know, I dislike this guy already.

He speaks French, Italian, Spanish, and German. It's like, okay. It's like Pete Buttigieg. Listen, like, we were talking about this before. Obama didn't have a perfect record. Like, Obama appointed some donors to the ambassadors. It happened in a lot of places. Some of them were fucking fantastic, like Matthew Barsen.

Some of them were terrible, like the guy who humiliated himself at a hearing whose name, I don't remember. And we'll block out. But like, this is a pretty big role. And I think it's important for. for everyone understand how weird it is for Sondland to have this job in the first place, to be a part of talks involving Ukraine, given that the EU has no role in this discussion, and to be involved at all because the president personally asked him to be. So I'll just leave it at

that. Like, Ben, what do you make of our friend Gordon and like all that he is doing here? Well, it's actually, it actually kind of points to the heart of the issue, because you're right. the EU ambassador would not normally be involved with Ukraine. Interestingly, the only scenario in which the EU ambassador might be involved is we coordinate with the EU in imposing sanctions on Russia for what they did to Ukraine. And we might coordinate with the EU in the provision of assistance. This guy, in other words, should be entirely only involved in this account in support of providing assistance to Ukraine or maintaining the sanctions we have in place with Europe on Ukraine,

he's doing the opposite in this, in this, you know, weird scheme that Trump has concocted. He's getting involved in pressuring the Ukrainian government to do certain things, investigating Trump's political opponents, as a quid pro quo for getting that assistance that he should normally be advocating for. And it speaks to the way in which he views this Department that Donald Trump knows that career people are going to be uncomfortable carrying out crimes and acting against the interests of the United States. The interests of the United States here is clearly a strong Ukraine that can stand up for itself against Russia, right? So he knows, okay, our ambassador in Kiev wasn't on board that project. She didn't want to meet with Rudy Giuliani

and be a part of this, so he fires her. Then they know this guy, you know, Bill Taylor, who they put in as chargerie, probably not going to be that comfortable doing it either. And the text showed that. He's like, I think it's crazy to leverage foreign assistance in order to get help with the political campaign. That's what the career guy said on tax, right? Very smartly laying down a real record. Yeah, laying down a marker, right? And then we should just know that Sondland reportedly called Trump in the intervening five hours between that message being sent in his response, which was some cover my ass, like, I think you are mistaken. There is no quid pro quo, but anyway, sorry. No, no. Well, and then you have Kurt Volker, who was once a diplomat, then was out, but he's

kind of in that world, so he's kind of in between, right? And he is acting in between. He's trying to thread the needle, right? So you've got the career people, the career diplomats who know this is wrong and either want nothing to do with it or they're writing down so that the record shows, I don't think this is a good idea. Then you've got this guy Volcker who's kind of in the middle, right? He used to be a diplomat, but then he kind of ran the McCain Institute, so he's been appointed by Trump. He's trying to finesse it. And then there's just this complete and utter hack hanging out in Brussels who's sending these texts to these people in Kiev being like, you know, how set up this meeting and get Rudy's meetings and like, you know, here's what

President Trump wants. Why on earth is this complete unqualified hack camping out in Brussels and getting up in the shit of people who actually know what they're doing in Kiev to try to get them to do a crime? And he's talking about like, you know, the names of key advisors to the president of Ukraine. like that's not his business. He's not a diplomat in Ukraine. He should have nothing to do with Zelensky or the people around him. He should have to do with the EU that Trump has declared as like one of our top geopolitical

adversaries here. So what it shows to me is Trump has to, he knows he has to corrupt foreign policy to get them to commit his crimes. And he can't just ask the ambassador to do it, get the ambassador out of the way, get my political guy in Brussels to be the hammer to get these people to do something. Then these people get uncomfortable. They're like, we don't necessarily like these crimes. crimes, this guy calls back to Trump, tells Trump what's going on. Trump's like, I've got a great

idea. Why don't you write no quid pro quo? And then we won't let you testify in front of Congress. That's what's happening here. And it just shows you that they can't, they're trying to completely distort and corrupt the foreign policy of the United States. And they can only do that with hacks like this who answer to nothing other than Trump, no national interest. Yeah, you're a million dollar henchman. This is not, again, this is a side point. But it is worth noting that Sondland and all these guys are having very sensitive policy conversations via text message. We just spent an entire election focus on Hillary's private server and her emails, and I'm not relitigating that. But the stuff these guys are texting about, like sensitive

diplomatic conversations with Trump and foreign leaders, military aid to Ukraine. That is information that foreign adversaries, in particular Russia, would love to have. And it should be classified. In fact, I bet it was. And the whole team is just doing their business on their personal phones, the bare minimum it should be on State Department email. But like these guys are just dicking around on text and I message as the State Department is going back and looking at every email sent to Hillary Clinton by her team at the time years ago and potentially retroactively classifying messages to put them in legal jeopardy. It's just like it's so frustrating. Yeah. I mean, to be clear, the baseline is if you are doing anything that is government business, you're supposed to do it on a government email account because that is a matter of public record.

Right. So classification issues aside, even though those do come into play, like the whole idea is you put this stuff on the government servers precisely so you can't go and commit crimes on the side so that the public has the capacity. No. And so the only valid criticism they had of Hillary's server was that. It's not really the classification stuff because we've talked about that. That's kind of bullshit. It's like Hillary Clinton mentions she talked to a foreign leader and they're like, oh, that's classified. secret, yeah. No, but the thing that was a fair criticism was, while creating a separate server means that this isn't being stored for public record. Now, again, the problem with that is the people Hillary was emailing were generally at the State Department. So it was still getting memorialized in the public record. So part of the reason why their criticisms of Hillary was such bullshit is that Hillary was emailing all these people on State Department email accounts. These people are just texting each other. God only knows what we don't see.

Can you imagine the text between Jared and MBS? You know, like the WhatsApp chains between, you know, Ivanka Trump and her China business partners or whatever. You know, the signals taking place between CC and, you know, some creepy guy who works around Trump. I mean, so the irony is that Trump's whole criticism of Hillary Clinton that she was hiding information on another server seems to be precisely how his entire administration conducts business, particularly when they want to commit crimes. Yeah. Okay. we're going to do a little foreign policy speed dating to close because we got a bunch more. But the first thing is North Korea.

I can't believe this is like the seventh item on the list given what happened. So last week we talked about how John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor, was out like sounding the alarm on literally about the failing North Korea talks and policy. Last week, I think over the weekend, North Korea tested a new submarine launched ballistic missile, which is a pretty significant technological step forward. and since they hadn't actually launched an SLBM or sub-based missile in three years, it was clearly designed to be provocative. Then the U.S. and North Korea sat down for talks in Stockholm for the first time in eight months over a couple days ago. Those talks broke down in just a matter of hours.

So, like, again, you and I have this conversation. I have no idea what to do about this. But, you know, Trump is basically greenlit these short-range missile tests by saying, oh, I don't care because he doesn't want to look dumb and ended up not checking. North Korea, but he's not like denouncing these SLBM tests, the submarine-based tests. The Europeans are freaking out about it. They want, you know, a UN Security Council discussion or a session on it. They're getting threatened in response by the North Koreans. And like, it just feels like no one is in charge. Like, no one is focused on this huge nuclear threat,

getting worse by the day and potentially spiraling out of control, except John Bolton. Yeah. I think, you know, what's interesting to me in watching this, first of all, when the North Koreans test a whole bunch of shit, it's usually because they're trying to work something out. So I remember the first couple was like, oh, they fired a projectile. Maybe they're just doing it for symbolic reasons. But now we've seen a clear pattern of different tests

and tests getting into pretty sensitive stuff like submarine launchers, which, by the way, if you just think about it, would not be a good thing for us. No, no. Because the North Korean, part of what we've been worried about is can they move missiles closer to us to actually reach the United States? Can they kind of expand the range of what they're able to hit? well, if you can fire things from submarines, it does open up new possibilities.

They got old Russian subs that they could take over to Hawaii if they wanted. Yeah, I mean, I haven't studied the sub program, but it seems worrying, right? The thing that's interesting to me is I actually assumed, of all these areas where Trump has open accounts, Iran, China, North Korea, that North Korea was the one to be most likely to have some deal because Kim, like, has an interest in Trump getting reelected, right? So I thought that Kim Jong-un might kind of agree to something symbolic, like, you know, we'll get rid of our big reactor at Yang Bian. You can come inspect it and Trump declares victory. What it seems like now is that North Korea is so comfortable that they don't even give a shit about that. I mean, to me, the most remarkable thing is that they canceled those talks, right?

Because they're basically saying, wait a second, why should we even agree to anything? Trump's given us a lifetime get-out-a-jail-free card here, you know? So long as Donald Trump is personally invested in the appearance of success. in his diplomacy with Kim, he's not really ever going to do anything. There's not going to be another UN Security Council resolution. There's not going to be more sanctions. There's not even going to be the enforcement of the current sanctions. And so it's pretty remarkable to think about this,

but they're so comfortable in this kind of status quo where they've given up nothing. And in fact, they've increased their number of nuclear weapons. They've increased their testing. They've improved their missile technology. All the trend lines are moving in the direction that in any normal world would be freaking people out, but because Trump is so adamant that this is working, that they can just do that and give nothing away. That's a remarkable indictment of what a failure this is. Yeah, don't take our word for it. Read John Bolton's remarks. Two Russia things. So Tuesday, the House Foreign Affairs

Committee Chairman Elliott Engel tweeted out a link to a letter he sent to Trump's new national security advisor about something called the Open Skies Treaty. If you have never heard of this treaty, you are not alone. The gist is it helps the U.S. and our European allies monitor. Russian military deployments. It was signed in 1992. It allows all the nations that are party to to basically fly unarmed reconnaissance flights over the other member's territory to collect information on military activities. You can do a lot of this collection. The U.S. can at least with satellites, but not everyone has that capability. So the whole idea is increased transparency. You could plan a flight path with like three days notice that gets vetted and agreed to a day before by all sides.

The equipment used to standardized. The data collected gets supplied both to the the collector and to the country that allowed the overflight. So it's just been a helpful tool, I think, to monitor like Russian military activity in Ukraine, for example. And so Engel's letter expressed as deep concern that the Trump administration is considering withdrawing from the treaty. And the question, I think, is why. So there is some rumblings that the Russians have been restricting these flights in some areas, but that doesn't seem to come close to justifying, pulling out altogether, especially when there was no consultation with Congress or our allies or seemingly anyone on this matter. So it's just, it's one of those ones that really makes you

wonder why. It does because the people that this would benefit is Russia, right? They'd like to get rid of any transparency. They'd like to get rid of the predictability that's been part of kind of European security since the end of the Cold War. Our allies like this the most, our European allies, because it gives them a greater sense of that they know what's going on, As you mentioned, we've been able to use this in Ukraine to kind of monitor certain movements. It really makes, at a certain point it gets hard to escape the fact that all these things help Putin. I'm not a conspiracy theorist here. It may not even be intentional, but if you're systematically dismantling all of these treaties that we put in place at our point of maximum leverage at the end of the Cold War,

so that there's no constraints. It's a really good point. Yeah, so that there are no constraints on Russia's ability to build and test new nuclear weapons. There's no verification of what they're doing. We're getting rid of all the transparency requirements and understandings around how militaries operate. Like, that is going to benefit Russia far more than anybody else in Europe. It's just not even a close call. I can't for the life of me think why you would do this unless you're just so hostile to any treaty, any international agreement, that you just think we should get rid of all of them, right?

But again, like, you're also doing precisely what Vladimir Putin wants. It'd be hard to design an American farm policy for the last three years that is more friendly to Vladimir Putin's interest than this kind of systematic dismantling of arms control treaties and arms agreements and kind of predictability around how nations operate in Europe. Like, that's what Putin wants. It should be obvious to be. Yeah. And let's talk about who Vladimir Putin is. thanks to some great reporting by the New York Times. So on Tuesday of the Times published this fascinating story about an elite secretive Russian military unit called Unit 29155 that specializes in assassination, sabotage, and espionage.

The Times described their work as, quote, coordinated and ongoing campaign to destabilize Europe. The report says that the unit is responsible for an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016. Assassination attempts against a Bulgarian arms dealer. I'm sure he was nice. and an assassination attempt against a former Russian military offer named Sergei Kripal who spied on Russia and then defected to the UK and was living in London. So, Ben, this is a pretty scary story showing their willingness to, you know, assassinate people in foreign countries like London and cities like London. So the timing of the report is interesting, too, since we recently learned during a phone call that President Trump was pressing former British Prime Minister Theresa May on the Scripal poisoning. I guess spent 10 minutes telling her he didn't believe that Russia was actually responsible for it.

So anyway, just an interesting sidebar. Yeah, no, but two things. Because one is connects to what we just talked about. Because one way to think about this is people will say, well, there are all these international laws and norms and treaties and the Russians violate them. So what do we need them anyway? Just get rid of them. But that's kind of like saying because there are some people that break the law, that there should be no laws. I mean, we need to set the standard by which we hold Russia accountable.

right? So getting rid of all the laws, all the treaties, just is literally a green light for this kind of behavior. I think the second thing it's important, having thought about this a lot and lived through the 2016 election and the Ukraine situation and everything. It's useful to think about everything Russia's been doing in the West as one operation. So what do I mean by that? We tend to think of like, okay, Russia made a decision to intervene in our 2016 election, and that was an operation that they did. And then they, no, no, I think Russia made a decision, probably after Putin came back into the presidency in 2012, that they're going to go on offense into the West. And there are going to be many different dimensions to how they do that. They're going to interfere in our politics by unleashing troll armies and thousands of bots and sewing division and disinformation. They're going to hack different material and release that to, again, sow division and disinformation.

They're going to potentially assassinate or poison or bully political opponents in the West, right? And so if you look at it that way, it makes more sense, you know, that this isn't a series of coincidental Russian operations. No, Russia has an operation whose objective is to weaken the West, to sow division into West, to bully any critics or opponents that they may face emanating from the West, and they do that in lots of different ways. And one way is this kind of cracked unit that might conduct even assassinations, and another way might be having a troll farm. that is firing off hundreds of thousands of tweets and Facebook posts and fake news stories into the American internet ecosystem, right? And that's kind of really what we're living through, which is, and it's interesting to take it back to the China.

The Chinese are trying to bully us through kind of strong-arm tactics, and the Russians are trying to do so through this kind of more insidious offense that they're undertaking. All of this necessitates a very thoughtful, coordinated U.S. response in coordination with our allies. And the danger is it's just not happening. So at a time when Russia and China are getting more aggressive and assertive and pushing their kind of brand of politics and their agendas, we are lowering our defenses. Yeah. I mean, to be clear, the Russians were involved in this assassination plot in Montenegro because they wanted to prevent them from joining NATO. Yes. And then in response, we've spent the last two years, our president has shitting on NATO and

attacking our NATO allies. That's really important point you just made because that's how you connect this back, what do they not want? They don't want NATO to be strong in United Alliance. They obviously don't want countries like Ukraine to join European and transatlantic institutions. They want having these kind of corrupt authoritarian type leaders in power in European and American countries because they're easier to cut deals with and they end up not being able to work as a cohesive unit, right? So they want to divide the West, weaken Western institutions, undermine the credibility of the democratic model in the world so as to maintain their power. So what they're doing is quite logical, even if I find it reprehensible.

And we're just not really playing with a full deck in response. No, no, we are not. Okay, let's close with the latest on our dear friend Boris Johnson over in the UK. So since we last recorded, The Guardian has printed the European Union's point-by-point rebuttal of Boris's latest Brexit plan. So bad for Boris. an oversight committee is asking Boris to explain his relationship with a woman named Jennifer R. Curie, who Boris allowed to join him on overseas trade missions in 2014 and 2015, and whose business got tens of thousands of pounds in grant money when he was mayor of London. It seems very sketchy

since she's an American. Lastly, and this is a very sad story, there's a growing controversy in the UK after the wife of a U.S. diplomat was involved in a fatal car accident and then she fled the country. She was apparently driving on the wrong side of the road and struck and killed a 19-year-old kid named Harry Dunn, who's riding his motorcycle, the UK foreign secretary has expressed frustration that this woman invoked diplomatic immunity, fled the country before she'd be questioned. So, you know, that's not a boris problem until it is because, you know, I imagine that there will be some deep and understandable frustration among British citizens who want this woman brought back and questioned in a legal proceeding. And if we fight that extradition or, you know, Trump bullies Boris in response, it could

create another political hurdle for him. So things are not going well still. Yeah. First of all, I mean this, unfortunately, deadly serious. Like, I really mean this. Like, I'd never drive in the UK in part for this reason, like that I'd get confused about what side of the road I'm on. But I'd say, you know, for Boris, what's a common thread between these things? It's his lack of maneuvering room. And because these things are actually connected, right? The EU plan, he doesn't have another plan. There's no plan. He's been promising that he's going to somehow leverage this negotiation.

The EU's not going to make more concessions than they made to Theresa May. Why would they? Why do they want to make it look like it's easy to leave the EU and get a good deal? Why would they want to throw Ireland that's staying in the EU under the bus in these talks? So he's kind of checkmated there. Then this woman kind of speaks to the point that when you're prime minister, the kind of buffoonish behavior that you might have gotten away with in the past is going to get more scrutiny.

The Jennifer O'Currie, the woman who got the grants. Yes. Yes. You know, because clearly, by all indications, he was in some relationship with her. Right. Again, when you're just kind of lovable Boris, you know, gadfly, provocateur, it's one thing. When you're a prime minister, suddenly this stuff looks like a little different under harsher light. For sure. And so I think he's running into the reality of maybe the same things that were the kind of rogue, charming things, you know, in the past suddenly looked like corruption when you're prime minister.

And actually the last thing. with this American diplomat's wife, part of what he's promised is like he's going to have this special relationship with Trump and the U.S., and that's going to lead to all kinds of stuff, like a new trade deal. Right. And I think what he may find is it's going to be tough to get this woman extradited to the U.K., and that will show that he has no real special, you know, sway here. So all these stories actually in a strange way do point up that the rhetoric Boris used,

I'll get a better deal, right? I'll have this special relationship with the United States. And oh, by the way, I'm Boris, so the normal political rules don't apply to me. None of those things are proving to be true with him as prime minister. He can't get the better deal. There is political gravity for him more so than for Trump in interesting ways. And frankly, like Trump's not going to be able to bail him out. No.

Boris is not, it's a lot harder to be in charge than being the opposition. Well, yeah, a lot of these people, it's a lot hard to be in charge and to just, you know, hurl insults of people. Especially when you're an unsurious hack. Okay. when we come back, we'll have my interview with the Washington Post Bayroot Bureau Chief, Liz Sly. I am honored to be joined by the Washington Post Bayroot Bureau Chief Liz Sly. Liz, thank you so much for staying up late to talk with us. Thank you for having me. You interviewed a Kurdish general last week, which was before President Trump announced that he was pulling U.S. troops out of northeastern Syria. He expressed concern that was unrelated to Trump's move that a camp in Syria was already at risk of falling under ISIS control. If Turkey does invade northeastern Syria and start to engage Kurdish forces in combat,

what do you think it means for the Kurds and for the counter ISIS campaign generally? Well, to start with the detentions, first of all, the immediate area being targeted by the Turks in northern Syria doesn't contain any of these prisons. However, the Kurds made it very clear that they won't see guarding the prisons as a priority if the Turks come in. They might have to send their best men to fight the Turks. I don't believe that they will release any of these prisoners because the first people the prisoners would kill

would be Kurds in the nearby vicinity. They would pay the heaviest price for that. But you can sort of see their point. I mean, it's the only bargaining chip they have. Please, you know, don't abandon us because look, we've got all these prisoners on our hands and we might have to let them go. Now, in general, the Islamic State fight also could be vulnerable to any Turkish incursion,

not because the Islamic State is necessarily poised to make any kind of comeback at the moment, but the Turkish incursion could trigger any kind of conflict in any kind of place. And of course, groups like the Islamic State thrive in a vacuum, and they would seek to take advantage of any instability, any drawdown in Turkish forces, anywhere to go and fight the Kurds to try and make a comeback. Yeah. So one of your story referenced the fact that I believe 12,000 members of the Syrian Democratic forces have been killed in this anti-ISIS campaign in combat.

Can you help listeners understand how the roles break down between these SDF forces, these Kurdish or Syrian forces, and then the U.S. and the international coalition against ISIS? Like, who's doing what? Well, basically, northeast Syria was taken over by a Kurdish force called the YPG, which was newly created in 2012. And it was taken over from the regime in a kind of bloodless battle. The regime was up there fighting rebels and revolutionaries who were holding demonstrations and things like that. One night, they kind of left and handed over a lot of bases and a lot of equipment to the Syria. Kurds. The regime, government people, will tell you they had a deal that the Kurds would give it back at the end of that time.

Another important thing about this handover is that this group is actually a kind of offshoot of the PKK, which Turkey regards as a terrorist organization. Then you fast forward to 2014, the end of 2014, and ISIS was bearing down on these Kurdish areas. The US jumped in eventually and created an outfit called the SDF, which we have seen from things that US officials have said. They even kind of suggested the, the US even kind of suggested the name. No, the US didn't suggest the name, but they said that they would have come up with that name if they had thought of it. It was the US idea to create a vehicle for arming the Kurds

that wouldn't make Turkey angry because it wouldn't look like they were arming the PKKKK if you see what I mean. But it's kind of well known that the dominant group in this SDF and the good fighters and the ones who have really led the battle are the Kurdish fighters of the YPG. They've become very, very close to the US military in this time. They've cooperated extremely closely on the battlefield. And they've taken a huge area back from ISIS. I mean, I don't really know how it breaks down geographically, but they sort of control the big

chunk of Iraq and the big chunk of Syria. The YPG kind of got like half of everything they controlled back roughly. At the same time, this put them in control of this huge area of Syria, most of which is not even Kurdish. And so the Turks across the border have looked with absolute horror as this group they regard to terrorist organization has been armed and aided by the US and appears to be establishing its own little statelet. but at the same time these guys genuinely put their lives on the line with the US and on behalf of the US to get rid of ISIS and on behalf of themselves of course

so it was sort of in my view in inevitability that you were going to reach a point one day where America couldn't go without a deal with Turkey that would encompass much bigger issues involving the Kurdish problem than anybody's dealing with right now Turkey was always going to go in when the U.S. left, and the U.S. was never really wanting to stay there for very long because it only went there to fight ISIS. So this was something that we've been sort of waiting for, basically since the U.S. first went in there in 2015 and began giving these guys arms. Yeah, I think that's right.

And I think that's totally fair. So on top of, you know, Erdogan's belief that a lot of these Kurdish forces are a terrorist group, in part because they've been fighting for an autonomous. I guess you'd call it a Kurdistan, like a state of their own for a long time. He says Erdogan says his stated objective is to create a safe zone for refugees on the Syrian side of the Syria-Turkey border. Basically, that safe zone would extend the length of the border and would be about 20 miles deep. This is a big if, but if that plan didn't involve fighting with Kurdish forces who have been

this bulwark against ISIS and pushing them out of that region, do experts think that creating a safe zone for for Syrian refugees is a good idea. Is this something that might be part of a long-term solution for what to do with all these folks? Well, I think anything that smacks a demographic change or demographic engineering makes a lot of people who watch the region a little bit alarmed. We accuse governments or militias or non-state actors of demographic engineering when they do that. We remember ethnic cleansing with the Serbs when that phrase first seem to come up. If you deposit a large number of Arabs in an area that they are not from, which once had a mixed Arab Kurdish population, under the control of a government that is at

war, effectively at war with the group that controlled, with the Kurdish group that controls the area, you have a recipe for demographic change. So, yeah, I don't think anybody thinks that this is a good solution, just planting Arabs in what happens to be the only Kurdish area in Syria. It's not like Iraq. A lot of people confuse it with Iraq. Northern Iraq, the three provinces that were created as Kurdistan are wholly Kurdish. This area is not holy Kurdish, but it does have a sizable population of Kurds, and there are many towns and villages there that are wholly Kurdish. And if you're going to just transplant a load of Arab refugees there, yeah, you set up another long-term problem that will take another hundred years to resolve.

Yeah. So not a good idea by Erdogan all around. So you have, you reported this. A lot of people pointed out that this isn't the first time that the Kurds have felt betrayed or abandoned by the international community. There's actually a long history of this. Can you give us just a quick sense of some of that history and how they've been abandoned in the past? Well, the last time they said they felt abandoned was December last year when Trump said he would draw down the U.S. troops from, he was pulling out the U.S. troops from Iraq. And I think he, from Syria, and I think he said in 24 hours. And there was a massive outcry.

And the time they felt abandoned before that was about one year before that when he also said he was pulling out the U.S. troops and then didn't. So there is a slight sense of Peter and the Wolf going on here at the moment. I think the Kurds are still clinging to some hope that the Americans aren't really going to go anywhere or completely abandoned them. But yes, one of the, if we're going backwards in time, one of the, another of the key moments was the 2017 referendum. There were lots of pros and cons arguments about whether the US should or should not have supported the referendum or gone to the help of the Kurds when the Iraqi army merged into Cook. but they didn't and Kurds feel it was a great betrayal especially as the Kurds of the Kurdistan region in Iraq had helped in the anti-IS war as well and they've been saying for some time those Syrian Kurds are being really silly because you can't trust the Americans and I mean it all goes back to 2019 1919, 1920 when the great the great powers met to carve up the

Middle East and create states. And the Americans wanted to give the Kurds a homeland. They were the only ones who recommended a nation, but they didn't fight for it. They didn't push it. And they didn't get it. Yeah. You've mentioned Iraq a couple times. So I'd like to turn there for a minute. There have been pretty widespread protests in Baghdad and elsewhere to protest the Iraqi government. A lot of the protests have gotten violent. I've seen reports of over 100 Rockies killed, thousands injured. Can you help us understand why people are protesting and why the government has been able to crack down with pretty brutal violence? Yeah, well, there is just such a tremendous sense of despair in Iraq. There's a government that's elected by elections, but it's not accountable in any sense of

democracy anywhere else. These guys just sit in the green zone and they sit on this vast oil wealth which they can squirrel away into their bank accounts. Iraqis haven't seen any of the country's quite substantial wealth from the oil. pumps every day. There's a, the growing power of the militias and who are in turn linked to Iran is also a huge sort of part of this anger. There's a sense that guys who are behold into a foreign country sit in the green zone and milk the wealth of the country while ordinary Iraqis on the street are left to fend with themselves and they have no recourse. And yeah, this this anger just exploded on the street and it does it every now and then. There was a huge explosion in Basila's

year. And it didn't spread to Baghdad, but this year it hit Baghdad and it's been really, really severe. I think it's a shame it hasn't had more media coverage, actually, because you've seen an incredible amount of violence on the streets. And it really reminds you that Iraq is a tinderbox still after all this time. Yeah. Is the U.S. engaged in any way that's meaningful to try to mediate or help resolve some of the underlying tensions? Well, I haven't seen anything. I was just hooked on it last week. I spent so much time in Iraq. I was just amazed by what was happening. And then I got diverted by this Turkey Syria stuff. But I have not seen like a Pompeo phone call or any evidence of any American engagement in that situation.

It really feels like America's washed its hands of Iraq. Yeah, it does. It does. I've been looking for any sort of evidence of engagement too. And all I saw, honestly, was this call with Erdogan. And I wondered what was that all about? And things have gotten way worse since that moment. But, well, listen, I just want to say thank you so much for doing the show. Everyone should read your stuff in the Washington Post and follow you on Twitter. It's just at Liz Sly. But thank you for helping us understand what's happening on the ground. And I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks Liz Sly for joining the show today. Ben, thank you. Yeah. For all the NBA hot text. Do you see Ennis's tweet about this? Ennis was on message. He mailed it. And Ennis made a good point.

The NBA totally backed him up when he got no further in authoritarian government. And so when they didn't back up Mori, the only difference in Turkey and China, is there's more money in China. So it did kind of just highlight the problem here. But it was good to see Ennis applying a consistent standard. Yeah, Ennis has got to be one of my new favorite NBA players. He's a Boston Celtic. Oh, yeah, that's right.

He hates sleeves, but the reckless abandon. Well, if you had guns like that, man. He looks yoked. He might come off. He's a, the NRA should back him. Okay, thank you guys for listening. Talk to you next week. See, yeah.

Potsy of the World is a product of Crooked Media. The senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Seglan is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Malconian, and Milkoam, who film and share these interviews on video each week.