Pod Save the World - Biden Gives Israel An Ultimatum on Gaza

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

Tommy and Ben discuss Biden’s call with Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu and threat to cut off US support for the war in Gaza, Israel’s announcement that it would open more aid corridors into Gaza, and the head spinning change in political support for the war in Washington. They also explain why Ecuadorian police raided Mexico’s embassy and sparked a global diplomatic crisis, Trump’s “secret plan” to end the war in Ukraine, the election of a pro-Russian president in Slovakia, the Japanese Prime Minister’s State Visit with Biden, how a trillion-dollar Saudi infrastructure project has already become a disaster, and the world’s saddest political tweet via the Tory Party in the UK. Then Ben speaks to David Miliband, the President of the International Rescue Committee, about the moral and legal imperative to try to save lives in Gaza.Pod Save the World is nominated for a Webby award for Best News & Politics podcast! Vote for us if you can.  For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Great to see you. Back here. After the world tour. You really were on a world tour. Where'd we hit? Are we willing to share at this point? I mean, I'd share where it was Hong Kong, Taipei, Sweden, Copenhagen, Italy.

So, you know, I made the rounds. A quick side tour into Burma where you grabbed a rifle and fought with a resistance. I thought about it. I thought about it. But, you know, that's the next trip. They're doing well, by the way. It's exciting story. Well, it's an insane story, actually.

We should come back to it. But yeah, like, that's the thing that... It's like one of these things that in normal times, we get a lot more attention, that the junta is losing the Civil War. But alas, we're not normal times. Alas, it is not normal times. Ben, did you know that while you were gone,

we were nominated for a Webby Award? I did. I saw that. That's very exciting news. You know, I am a recipient of a... Nice. Webby Award winner. For Missing America.

Oh, nice. Right on. Yeah. I remember that, of course. But this is like, that's like a best supporting actor category. This is like the Big Cohoonah here. This is best news and politics podcast. Yeah.

And look. I mean, that's it, guys. So if World does, if you want to vote, right? I mean, this is. The cynic in me, like, you know, doesn't feel great asking for people to do this. But the hardest thing in podcasting is to get people to find your show because the discovery is just so bad. And these awards really do help.

It'll help us grow and they'll help us do more and make it better. So thanks to anyone who nominated us. I don't know how that process works. Thank you. Thank you. If you consider voting, go to vote. Dot webbyawards.com. Search for crooked media and you vote for Pod Save the World

and for some fun social media stuff that we did here as well. But it's, again, vote. Dot webbyawards.com. We'd really appreciate it. Yeah. And make it count. It's easier than writing a review and giving us five stars on Apple. Also do that.

Yeah. That also helps people find the show. Yeah. We have a great show today. We're going to talk about the latest, from Gaza, President Biden's spicy call, prickly call. Sounded like it was an unfun. Full and Frank.

Full and Frank. Yeah, what dipose speech. Yeah, yeah, yeah. President Biden reportedly read Bebeenit and Yahoo, the riot acts and demanded a bunch of changes for the way the war in Gaza is going. We'll talk about that. We'll also talk about the sea change in political opinion in the U.S. on this war. And we will talk about this sort of anxious wait and see to see if Iran retaliates militarily

to the Israeli military assassinating a bunch of its top generals in Syria last week. We're also going to cover a diplomatic crisis in Ecuador that is spilling into all of Latin America. That is a crazy story. I can't wait to talk about that way. I read a lot about that. Yeah, me too.

Trump's secret plan for Ukraine. There was an election in Slovakia. Japan is a state visit in Washington this week on Wednesday. There's also a fun update on our favorite boondoggle in Saudi Arabia and some more sad, embarrassing Tory party news, spend. It's the best kind. Best kind of documentary news. And then you did our interview this week. What are folks going to hear?

So I talked to David Miliband, former Labor, a foreign secretary for the U.K., but talked to him as the head of the International Rescue Committee, the R.C. The RIC is one of the eight organizations on the ground in Gaza. Doing the Lord's work. Yeah, and they previously actually had

one of their guest houses at their personnel were sitting at, you know, hit by an Israeli. Oh, Jesus. So they, you know, we talked about the aftermath of the World Central Kitchen Strike, obviously, the need to get more aid into Gaza. And Miliband was pretty clear that they've not seen any change since this call that Biden had. We can talk more about that. We talked about the difficult trade-off that they have to make about wanting to perform their mission,

but also wanting to protect their people because they have to make those kinds of hard calls. What kind of needs to happen in Gaza immediately, but also kind of what is on the horizon in dealing with this humanitarian crisis. you know, in terms of if there is a ceasefire, what still needs to happen. And then also they've been very active in Sudan. So we talked about the one-year anniversary of the Civil War in Sudan. Miliband was recently in South Sudan and talked a little bit about the UK and what changes we might want to see if there is a labor government. So it was a good, you know, full and frank conversation.

I was going to say, that's a great conversation. But people should actually listen because he gives kind of some real ground truth in terms of like what it is like to be a humanitarian organization. Gaza, what is the risk of famine? What does that look like? So people should really stick around for the interview. Yeah, and to your point, I mean, the risk of famine doesn't go away the day the shelling stops. That's what he said, actually. It was interesting, you know, famine. It emerges slowly, but then once it hits, it's really hard to address both the immediate life-saving needs, but then also the malnutrition needs. So we talk about that. Yeah, so it's going to be a long-term effort. Okay, well, let's turn to Gaza because, you know, last week,

we talked about the Israeli drone strike that killed those aid workers with a World Central Kitchen, which is that great relief organization founded by Jose Andrace. So in the wake of that airstrike, President Biden called Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. He reportedly read in the riot acts with a list of demands that included opening up more crossings into Gaza to getting into Gaza. And he called on him to drastically increase the amount of aid getting into the current access points into Gaza. And so it sounds, you know, according to the reports about the call, Biden,

also wanted those changes to be announced immediately. And he told Beebe that if they didn't happen, there would be consequences that could include losing U.S. support for the war or maybe the U.S. conditioning aid to Israel. It's not entirely clear what was said. So we do know that Netanyahu quickly announced there would be new crossings for aid to allow aid into Gaza. They seem to have allowed more aid at the existing crossings. So on Tuesday, April 9th, Israel says 468 aid trucks were inspected and transferred to Gaza on Monday 419 on Sunday 32. That is way up from the February average of 98 trucks a day. In other Gaza news, the CIA director, Bill Burns, was in Cairo for the latest rounds of talks about a ceasefire and hostage release deal. There have been reports that

the negotiators on the Israeli side were mad at Netanyahu for not giving them enough flexibility to make a deal. It sounds like that has changed a bit at least. According to Axios, Israel's latest proposal includes releasing 900 Palestinian prisoners in the deal that's up from 700. Netanyahu, though, is still promising to launch a ground invasion into Rafa, the city in southern Gaza, where over a million Palestinians are sheltering. He says he has picked the date, save the date, I guess. It's a weird thing to do. The defense minister, by the way, says there is no date. It's Mar-Benzeghir, the right-wing national security minister, says he will withdraw support from the governing coalition if Arafah invasion doesn't happen. So that's the politics.

It's probably why there's a thing about the date. Yeah, that's why there's a fake date on the calendar. The U.S. still says this is a terrible idea. We haven't seen a plan to protect civilians, so hope it doesn't happen. So that's like the big ticket policy disputes, Ben. I do want to get into the broader changes in U.S. political opinion on the war in a second. But I'm wondering how much do you think these, I don't know if it was quick action or quick announcements from Netanyahu at this point stems from the fact that Biden finally laid down

the law on this call or how much of it is like six months of public opinion turning against them and just knowing that this like airstrike on aid workers is indefensible. I think, and first of all, there's an interesting, you know, you and I were talking before about Milibans, you know, what he's hearing from people on the ground and not seeing changes versus some of these trucks getting in. But part of that is that they're also supposed to be these additional crossings where there may not be changes yet.

I do want to say, though, and I know you hit this on PSA, You know, world those were just like you. I listened to Potsie of America on my drive-in today. But it bears emphasis that the strategy as articulated was always like, you got to hug, BB, you got to only disagree in private. We can condition aid. We should recall, Tommy, that you and I, way back in the 2020 campaign, we're trying to get every candidate on the record about would you condition assistance, right? Shut up, Bernie. Shut up.

Bernie was a peat, Pete, Pete. Or remember, it was more narrow. It was like, would you condition aid if it's used to annex the West Bank? Yeah. It was hard to get people to agree to that. So what we've learned is that strategy is bullshit. It doesn't work. It's so self-evidently wrong to say, we'll never say that there'll be any conditions

and expect you to change. The first time that Joe Biden reportedly directly said, if you don't do X, we might consider why. So he didn't even, they weren't even specific. about, we'll cut off military assistance or offensive military assistance, just him saying that at least led them to announce this change in policy and to get some trucks in. So we have learned, we now have a data set. What happens when you say, we're not going to condition anything, but we'll counsel you in private? That didn't work for six months. Then there's one phone call in which

he said that. And guess what, they changed. And so the lesson that should be taken, not just for the next few weeks and not just until there's a ceasefire, but forever going forward. Forever. Is that if you have leverage, you need to use it. And this idea that we say that we'll use leverage with every other country, but not Israel, is an insane way of doing policy. And not since the George H.W. Bush administration, where they very clearly used leverage, as did Ronald Reagan, by the way. There were threats. There was public shaming. There was lots of criticism of Israeli government policies at the time. Yeah. And what I'd say is, you know, we in the Obama administration, I think could have done more, particularly in the Palestinian issue, to exert that leverage.

I frankly would have liked it at times. But on the Iran deal, where Nanyahu came and, you know, gave a speech to Congress opposing it, well, the leverage was we just did, you know, like, you can also take actions that are contrary to what Nanyai wants. So that to me. And win those fights. Yeah, that to me is like the headline of this last week. And again, we still, you know, haven't even seen a specification of what the consequences would be. It seems like it's offensive military aid, but this is a sea change in the Biden administration's approach if they follow through on it.

And if Israel doesn't follow through on their commitments, then we do really need to see some conditionality, not just announced, but actually imposed. Yeah. I mean, Ben, the other like quick point I wanted to make on this is it seems unclear whether these new aid crossings have been opened yet or not. But it does seem clear that, at least by, according to these railies, about 4X the number of trucks got in the last couple of days this week, then got in on average in February. I wanted to read for you a tweet from a guy named Ron Dermer. He's a top Netanyahu-Aid, really horrible guy. On March 26, he tweeted the following. Those who suggest that Israel has a policy of denying food or basic assistance to the people of Gaza are simply spreading falsehoods.

It's a blood libel against Israel. Well, it turns out that one phone call from Joe Biden can quadruple the amount of assistance allowed into Gaza through the existing crossing. So I don't know that that was a blood libel. It seems like it was a policy choice. Yeah. Well, it's a policy choice, too, that they announced in the first days of the war. Like the defense minister was saying, no food, no water, right? I mean, this is something that they went out and announced.

And look, this is not to excuse anything about Hamas. The reality is Hamas does not control those crossings. Israel does. That's just basic fact. You know, I'm sorry. Like, it's the case that we can see with our eyes that Israel controls everything that gets in and out of Gaza. And sure, there may be difficulty in getting aid to some areas if Hamas is operating there. But if you talk to Miliband, the other point he makes it's really important is that this isn't like charity.

This is international law. Right. Israel is internationally legally obligated to let this assistance get in. That's common practice in war zones. And so also to say it's too hard because it's a war zone, that's not how this works. And all war zones, the warring parties have an obligation to allow for assistance to get to civilian populations here. And so that's what needs to happen now. Yeah, this isn't like a siege in the Middle Ages.

This is a modern warfare. Before we move on to the politics in the U.S., I did want to play a clip from Jose Andrace from ABC News over the weekend talking about this devastating attack on his staff and what it meant to him in the organization. Your CEO said this was unforgivable, despite what happens with the investigation, despite however more is done, is this unforgivable? It is unforgivable. I will have to live with this the rest of my life. We all will have to live with this the rest of our lives. I've seen firsthand what has been happening in Ukraine. entire Townsend City is being wiped out by Russia and by Putin.

What Prime Minister Netajahu is doing is exactly the same. We both have been lucky enough to meet Jose, you know, not just in the context of his restaurants in D.C., but also just through the humanitarian work you did. And you can hear that the guy's just, you know, devastated by this. Yeah, and I met him a number of times, including he went with us to Cuba. Actually, had a very memorable dinner in Cuba with Jose Andreas. That was a special event. but I think he's emerged as an important moral voice here.

And I think he would agree with the fact that it is unforgivable that these World Central Kitchen Aid workers are killed. It is also unforgivable that over 15,000 Palestinian children have likely been killed. It's unforgivable that food has been used as a weapon of war. It's unforgivable, not just that these Westerners were killed, but that we've been seeing this. I mean, again, as Miliband said, me, like, there's not another time in recent history where a population went from no risk of famine to the doorstep of famine this fast, you know, like, this is not normal. It's not, it's just not something that we can can sit and watch and think that this is just how things work. You know,

this is not how things work. And I think, you know, he's a good sign of, I mean, to take a positive from this, Tommy, like a lot of people out there kind of feel like, world. events are going in this bad direction. Politics is going in this bad direction. There's nothing I can do. This guy was a chef. Yeah, a couple really great restaurants. We were in D.C. had a few good restaurants, you know, OML, Haleo, whatever. And he looked at the world and was like, you know, I'm going to do something. I'm going to try to help feed some people. And over a course of years, that grew into this massive sprawling humanitarian institution. It is a sign that, like, people can step up and do something, you know. And so that's the example I hope people take from

Jose Andreas. Yeah, and look, Jose has changed the politics on this war in Washington personally. More than any of us. More than any of us. Yeah, but it's also, it's hard to overstate how much the politics writ large have changed in the last couple of days or weeks. According to Haretz, a quarter of House Democrats now back conditioning aid to Israel, Congressman Gregory Meeks, the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on CNN that he wants to see Israeli assurances regarding civilian casualties

and how weapons are going to be used before he's willing to greenlight future weapon sales, including items like F-15 fighter jets that wouldn't be delivered for years, got Nancy Pelosi signing onto a letter with 40 House Democrats, asking Biden to withhold additional arms transfers until there's an investigation into the World Central Kitchen Air Strike. And Senator Elizabeth Warren said that she believes Israel's war will be considered a genocide. So that's incredibly, you know, she's leaning very far forward on this. But in case you hear that list and think, like, oh, that's just a bunch of liberal Democrats.

Please listen to this medley of comments by the former Council of Foreign Relations Chairman or President, Richard Haas, Joe Scarborough, and Democrat Chris Coons. These attacks are continuing, and yet so are U.S. arms transfers to Israel without conditions. They have been going on for six months. Why does Israel need 2,000-pound bombs to be used in high-density populated areas? Then, 10 days ago, what does Israel do? It expropriates 2,000 acres of land in the West Bank for settlement. construction. Where is the White House reaction to that? Let me ask you this. Why did Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump know in 2018 the sources of Hamas's illicit funding, and they still did nothing? They wanted that money to get to Hamas. I'd like to know why, because we don't know

in America. Have there been any investigations in Israel at this point? If Benjamin Netanyahu Prime Minister were to order the IDF into Rafa at scale, they were to order. drop thousand pound bombs and send in a battalion to go after Hamas and make no provision for civilians or for humanitarian aid that I would vote to condition aid to Israel. I've never said that before. I've never been here before. So Richard Haas worked in the Bush administration, both of them actually. Joe Scarborough was a Republican congressman. He was in that clip was ripping into the Israeli economy minister. Chris Coons is a moderate Democrat. He's very, very close to President Biden. So, Ben, like, as you were saying a minute ago, I'm going to

I'm very glad that the D.C. foreign policy consensus is moving to a better place. It is very gross that it took the killing of a bunch of white Western aid workers to get us there. I don't know. Let's talk about that. What do you think that tells us about U.S. foreign policy or maybe lessons learned to kind of speed up this evolution in the future, you know, and for people who are tearing their hair out saying, like, how did reports of thousands of kids dying not move the kind of D.C. blob faster? Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this, Tommy, because it is important, and I'm glad it's happening. But before I get to that piece of it, this was all obvious months ago, you know. So I'm glad, you know, Richard Haas, I'm sure who eats at Jose Andres restaurants.

I'm really glad he's out there saying what he's saying. But like, you know, why was the 2000 pound bomb that was dropped on a refugee camp early in the war? It was in November. It was in November. We talked about that at the time. We talked about the time, and we were talking about conditioning aid. And so that's just to say, I wish this happened earlier, and I wish it didn't take Jose Andres as people getting killed for it to happen. And I think that's important to note because a lot of people now are looking at where this is going,

and they're trying to get on the right side of history. They're trying to get on the right side of public opinion this time. And again, that's good. And actually part of what that shows is that the pressure that young people in particular and that Arab and Muslim communities have put from the bottom up is now being manifested from the top down because these are kind of the pinnacle of the kind of D.C. world expressing these views. And that is very good. And to speak to the people in Congress, Chris Coons, not exactly, you know, someone, you know, he's been very close to Israel over the years. Greg Meeks. These are not the squat, right? These are, this is a sea change in kind of the middle of Congress now being for conditioning assistance. And that's a massive shift that we're watching take place. I think, again, the question,

and it's the same thing with the Biden call, the question is, does that continue as the memory of this strike on the World Central Kitchen Fade? If Israel just makes some announcements but continues to do what they're doing, does that pressure stay up? Does the muscle memory of like political fear of APAC? Yeah. Does it return? Stick around. And also like, because, Another thing that's important to note is that a lot of this has become kind of personalized to BB, which is understandable. Like we personalize a lot of criticism to BB on this show. But, you know, if there's a Benny Gonson there, we should have the same concerns about settlements in the West Bank and violence against Palestinians

and obviously about the situation in Gaza. So I do think that this is, I've never seen anything like this in my life as it relates to the U.S. relationship with Israel. there seems to be a tipping point that was reached. And that has put even Joe Biden in this position where he's shifting. You know, when Jill Biden is backgrounding that she wants the war to end, like something is changing. That is an interesting piece of this. Folks I've been seen there are some reports that the First Lady was pushing Biden

the hardest behind the scenes to change positions on the war. Yeah. Yeah, which, you know, says a lot again about where this is. And it does, again, it really matters. matters because I just don't think that that the Israeli government could sustain what they're doing in Gaza if the U.S. were to withdraw support and withdraw offensive weapons. Not just practically that they want the deliveries of those weapons, but the degree of isolation that they would find themselves in. Netanyahu's whole case, as we've talked about, it's always been like, I'm the guy

that can basically speak smoothly to the Americans and just do what the right wing in this country wants to do. And that is now no longer the case. Yeah. Trump was on Hugh Hewitt show, a friend of the Todd, Hugh Hewitt. He was asked about Gaza again. Trump, we talked a week or two back about how Trump did this interview with Sheldon Adelson's newspaper in Israel. He, uh, these like, I think they're actual settlers. There were super far right wingers conducting the interview. Trump's answers freak them out. They interpreted it as him cutting off support for Israel. So hewitt asked him again. Here's a clip of Trump's response. Well, that's all the advice you can give. I mean, that's the advice. You got to get it over with and you have to get back to normalcy.

And I'm not sure that I'm loving the way they're doing it because you've got to have victory. You have to have a victory. And it's taking a long time. And the other thing is, I hate, they put out tapes all the time. Every night they're releasing tapes of a building falling down. They shouldn't be releasing tapes like that. They're doing, that's why they're losing the PR war. Israel is absolutely losing the PR war.

That's how I read your interview. I read your interview of saying they're losing the PR war. they've got to stop releasing bad video and win the war by going into Ratha. They're releasing the most heinous, most horrible types of buildings falling down, and people are imagining there's a lot of people in those buildings or people in those buildings, and they don't like it. And I don't know why they release wartime shots like that. I guess it makes them look tough.

But to me, it doesn't make them look tough. They're losing the PR war, and they're losing it big. but they've got to finish what they started and they've got to finish it fast and we have to get on with life. So I think, I mean, every Trump interviews a war-sec test, you know, he says nothing. He's like, finish it, the war, but end it.

He's not complaining about the death toll. He's complaining about the PR around the death toll. Never mind that Israel is not actually allowing reporters into the Gaza Strip to cover what's happening. So I don't know. Maybe he's mad about like social media that's being released by the IDF soldiers on the ground. I don't know what he's tough to dozed about.

But I find it kind of interesting, Tommy, because you heard Hugh Hewitt, who once, he's like bloodthirsty, you know, like. So Hugh Hewitt comes in. He's like, I hear you saying that they should go to Rafa. And Trump's like, no, they shouldn't release tapes. Like, Trump didn't, you know, what I hear there, and I think Democrats should hear this as a warning, right? Donald Trump doesn't know much about this. He probably doesn't know what Rafa is, right? But he knows this is hurting Joe Biden.

He knows it's dividing Democrats. And he's trying to do the same thing that he did on abortion, right? In the sense that he's not, he's going to be, he'd be worse than Joe Biden on this issue. Like he wouldn't be trying to get any aid in. He wouldn't give a shit. But he knows politically that this is bad for Joe Biden. So he doesn't want to be out there. I mean, he's actually been pretty.

He's not saying go in there and kill him all and stuff. He's trying to step back and stay out of it and let Biden just be in this political box that he's in. I think that's a big warning, right, that they smell a problem for Biden and they don't want to let Biden out of that box by saying the difference. He doesn't want to articulate a difference from Biden on this thing, you know. And he doesn't want to get BB's back, I think in part because of the politics you just described, then he knows that it's bad for Biden. But also, he's still pissed in it in Yahoo for not going along with the election. I remember right after October 7th, he was like, oh, you know, Bebe's terrible. He didn't go along with the Qasem Soleimani assassination.

He said, He's smart. He started attacking the Israelis. Well, yeah, so again, I want to be clear. I think Trump would be worse. But I'm just saying this to me is like a political warning more than anything else that, like, you know, when Donald Trump is not taking the bait that Hugh Hewitt's offering to try to say, yeah, I would be. tough ride. I'd go on a Rafa. He's trying to kind of keep a step back on this thing. Yeah. A couple more quick things on Gaza. By the way, what tapes is he? Anyway, I'm not sure. I think

there are like videos from the IDF of them like hitting targets and shit that's probably being released to domestic Israeli media to show how tough they're being and their response. Yeah. But it's weird that that's what surfaced the Trump out of all of this. The PR. Oh, God. So we mentioned this at the top. We are still waiting to see if Iran retaliates to the Israeli air strike over the last week. They killed a bunch of top Iranian generals in Syria. There were a bunch of scary stories over the weekend about an imminent attack.

The Israeli government was scrambling GPS service across the country to try to protect themselves. So the AP reported that Iran's foreign minister said that the U.S.'s failure to condemn the attack on the IRGC generals, quote, indicates that Washington had given the green light to Israel to commit this crime, end quote, the U.S. denies having advanced knowledge of the strike. Other news outlets have reported that Iran is said to the U.S. that if we can broker a ceasefire in Gaza, they won't respond militarily. So I guess we'll just all wait and see here. Huffpo had a fascinating interview with two top Hamas leaders. It's worth reading in full, but one important takeaway was that one of the Hamas guys, Abu Marzuk, said Hamas would reject and fight any force in Gaza, including an Arab-led

force, which complicates that path, is sort of an international Arab-led peacekeeping force. And then finally, Ben, this magazine, plus 972 magazine, they published this extensive investigation into the IDF's intelligence collection and targeting in Gaza. It is quite disturbing. It's this long piece, but some takeaways are, one, that the IDF was using artificial intelligence to select targets and selecting enormous numbers of them. Two, that they were intentionally bombing the homes of low-level fighters and killing their families because they knew it was easier to find them in the home. Three, that the fighters, like, if you're a fighter, you're probably, not at home. Yeah, yeah.

It's like literally they watch you walk in the door and then they just blow up these buildings according to this report. Three, that the acceptable number of civilian casualties for a strike involving a low-level Hamas operative was as high as 20. And in one instance, the army authorized killing 300 civilians in a strike targeting a senior commander. So again, it speaks to the total disregard for civilian casualties. So look, I don't, I haven't seen anyone else confirm the anecdotes in this report, but pretty

disturbing dystopian stuff here that would help explain that staggering death toll. But look, anything else jump out of you before we move on from the Gaza section? Well, on the, well, the AI stuff is chilling. And at some point we should have a longer conversation about the need to develop some norms around the use of AI and war. This degree of tolerance, war does something to obviously, above all the civilians who are impacted by it, but it also does something to the countries that are carrying it out. I don't think it's been healthy for the United States to be in the war on terror for two decades.

And yet, you know, one of the reasons we didn't take a strike at the bin Laden compound, but sent in a seal team at risk, was to avoid the civilian casualties of bin Laden's family. Their tolerance is 20 for a low-level person and 300. That's just, that's not, again, it's not normal. That's not rules of engagement at all. It's not, yeah. There are civilian casualties in war. The U.S. has caused all men are civilian casualties and more.

I'm not like suggesting that Israel is the only country that, but this kind of degree of tolerance is it's not good for Israel to be in a place where they think that's okay, you know? On the regional conflict, I think, look, the Iranians, this does feel like we'll have to wait and see what they do. reports of them getting more involved in the West Bank in trying to get more, you know, military assistance in there. They clearly intend to do something. The one point I'd make while we wait for this is this can get worse.

Like, you know, it seems like, you know, the war is somehow peaking and on the way to a ceasefire. Rafa would be a massive escalation in Gaza. And if Iran hits Israel proper, it's likely that Israel would feel they need to hit Iran proper in return. and then all of a sudden you could have literally a war between Iran and Israel, or Hezboa could do it, and it's a war between Israel and Hezbollah. So this can get worse, and that's all the more reason to get this to a ceasefire, because, you know, the worst-case outcomes that we've already seen, you know, could pale in comparison to the scale of suffering in Gaza with Rafa going forward

or the scale of instability in the region if the, you know, the Iranian response precipitates, you know, an even wider war. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about this crazy diplomatic crisis in Ecuador. All right, so we have this wild story out of Ecuador that has created a diplomatic crisis all across Latin America. Here is the backstory, Ben. So last week, Ecuadorian police broke into the Mexican embassy in Quito and arrested a guy named Jorge Glass. He is Ecuador's former vice president. Glass is a leftist. He served with President Correa from 2007 to 2017. Then he spent nearly five years in jail for corruption charges and was a about to be arrested again when he entered the Mexican embassy back in December.

According to the Financial Times, Glass was finally granted asylum on Friday and was reportedly about to flee the country with the Mexican ambassador when Ecuador security forces finally raided the embassy. Now, folks just note, forcibly entering a foreign embassy is a huge deal. It's a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which is the foundational legal framework for all global diplomatic relations. We discussed this a bit last week. in the context of Israel bombing Iran's diplomatic facility. Yeah, sure we did. And we said we were kind of concerned with this new norm.

New norm. Pretty big violation. Yeah, but as we noted, like embassy grounds are legally considered to be that country's foreign soil. So you could consider this an act of war. No one can enter an embassy without the ambassador's permission. So this raid, you know, kicked up a shitstorm. Mexico severed ties with Ecuador. They withdrew their diplomats.

The U.S. condemned Ecuador's actions as a bunch of countries in Latin America and Europe, the OIS, a lot of folks. Daniel Naboa, Ecuador's president, is only 36 years old. He took office in November of last year. He's the son of this billionaire, you know, banana tycoon guy. He was elected in a snap election to serve out the rest of the last president's term. So he's going to face elections again in 2025. Much like Naibu Kali and El Salvador, Naboa has, you know, launched a war on drugs and on crime.

He's authoritarian, but that has made him popular. So, Ben, it sounds so squishy and dorky to complain about violations at the Vienna conventions. It's just like diplo speak, but it is hard to convey how big of a deal this is. And also, you know, so two questions for you.

One, take a swing at, you know, explaining that. Two, I wonder how much of this is also a fracture along ideological lines because you have glass. He's a leftist like Amlo, who is the most outraged about not only the breach

of his diplomatic facility, but also sort of a fellow traveler getting caught up in raids. And the, Neboa, who's conservative and, you know, sort of an ideological opponent, But what do you think? It's just generally not a good thing to have this norm.

I know the word norm sounds squishy. I know the Vienna's convention sounds squishy. This just doesn't happen, though. This isn't like the kind of thing that periodically happens. I mean, we went through the Cold War. Like the Soviets didn't, you know, go into the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Same thing. Vice versa.

The U.S. didn't do that in our country. We had a whole podcast on this feed about a Chinese dissident who went into the U.S. embassy in Beijing. Right. Like, they didn't come get him out of there. The Ecuadorians, ironically, hosted Julian Assange, people will recall in their embassy in London. And when the Brits suggested they might try to go in to get him, there was a huge international uproar. And rightly, the Brits backed off, right?

So this kind of allows for countries to have embassies in hostile or confrontational or adversarial places. And so if all of a sudden you can kick down the door of the embassy, it becomes almost impossible to have an embassy somewhere other than like an allied nation, you know. And then how can you conduct diplomacy without, I mean, diplomacy, the ability of countries to sit down and negotiate things or just to have an embassy that you can help facilitate visas and services for your citizenry. It depends on this norm being protected. And I think that what is disturbing is this Buckele model, right? You put your finger on it, that this guy is probably, Naboa is probably more popular for having done this. I mean, it'd be interesting to watch that is what's the Ecuadorian public reaction.

But Buckele is kind of like this new guy, young guy, comes along, and just breaking every rule makes him seem like he's getting shit done. And I worry about a world in which the political lesson is, oh, that works. And so the way for me to be popular is to come in, break rules, kick down embassy doors, arrest, you know, my own parliament, you know, just do extrajudicial things to show that I'm a man of action. that's the slippery slope here, you know, and not one that I think is good for Latin America or for, and I should say, you know, Argentina's right-wing government, they did condemn this. Yeah, however you mean like, condemned it. Yeah, the anarchist. So it does kind of show that there's not, it's not just the leftists in Latin America

are upset about this. Yeah, and like we're also, we're obviously talking about this in a diplomatic context. But imagine, all right, Ecuador is a corruption problem. Glass got concurrent sentences totaling eight. years. He served five. He allegedly had a drug trafficker, bribe a judge to get him release early, and that's what he was about to be re-arrested for. The former president, Daniel Correa, was sentenced on corruption charges in absentia, and is currently chilling in Belgium hiding out. So clearly there's a problem, and clearly there's probably some resentment among elites. But we're talking

about a diplomatic sort of problem. But imagine if this kind of principle was applied in the U.S. It would have been great for Barack Obama to kick down a door on Wall Street in 2009, grab a fucking banker, throw him in jail for, you know, a long time just to show how tough we were on corruption. A lot of us would have loved to have done that. It might have benefited the country. But like, you know, you can't just act extrajudicially whenever you want in service of your politics. And it seems like that's what's happening. You're like Bukaley, when he stormed troops into the parliament building. Yeah. If Donald Trump wins, you know, and he starts kicking down doors and arresting people. That might be super popular with his

base, but, you know, mid-quick and media a little. It's a difficult workplace. You need some new locks. But we're in such a dangerous populist moment because people are right to be pissed. You're right. Like, I'm sure this guy is corrupt, you know. But that doesn't mean you kick down the embassy door. And so the question is, is this populism going to be a wave that kind of crashes over any boundary?

It's shocking to me that these boundaries kind of held by and large, I mean, all across the board, through like the Cold War. You know, but in this kind of weird world where it now. it's like, no, all bets are off. Crazy story. This guy's now sitting in like a super max prison. Yeah, the pictures, I mean, the pictures of this guy getting dragged away by like super armed dudes. It looks like military, like special forces.

And they roughed up the Mexican staff. I shouldn't laugh. I know, it's crazy. I'm laughing just because it's so crazy. I know, I know. You bust in, you beat up some, uh, God, it's, what a world. But again, I think this is the Buckele model, you know. This is what's happening.

Mexico clearly like the bigger fish in this fight too. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, okay. Well, they got cartels. I mean, there's a cartel problem. It says, you know, the Mexican cartels are very active in Ecuador. Yeah, Ricardo. Yeah, explain that to us.

Okay, a lot of updates on Ukraine, which we haven't talked about in a minute. So, Ben, the first is that the Washington Post got a hold or wind of Trump's secret plan for Ukraine, such as it is, not really a plan. It is also kind of exactly what we expected. Trump, according to the Post, would force, Ukraine to seed control of Crimea and the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine, limit NATO expansion. And then there's some nonsense in this story about, quote, enticing Putin to loosen his growing reliance on China. So that's part of this grand scheme. I mean, it's Vivek Ramoschwamy. Yeah, it is

revakes Ramoswab. Yeah. So basically it's capitulation. It's freezing the lines where they were. It's giving Russia another win on NATO. And it's pretending Putin would agree to stop working with China. No explanation for how you actually do any of this, how you actually force Ukraine or Europe to stop fighting. Back here in reality, President Zelensky signed a law that lowers the military conscription age in Ukraine from 27 to 25 and gets rid of some draft exemptions. The AP quoted an analyst saying that the change would add about 50,000 troops to the Ukrainian military, which is about a 10th of what Zelensky said he needed, I think, a December of last year. Also, the Zaporizia nuclear power plant was damaged in a drone strike over the weekend.

So add nuclear meltdowns in Ukraine back to your list of bedtime anxieties. I remember that one, early on. Finally, the Washington Post reported on leaked internal Russian documents that detail their PR campaign to influence U.S. lawmakers and prevent the U.S. from giving more support to Ukraine. Here's a clip of Republican Congressman Mike Turner, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee on CNN talking about it. We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor. I mean, there are members of Congress. today, who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO,

which of course it is not. Vladimir Putin having made it very clear, both publicly and to his own population, that his view is that this is a conflict of a much broader claim of Russia to Eastern Europe, and including claiming all of Ukraine territory as Russia's. Now, to the extent that this propaganda takes hold, it makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle, which is what it is. So the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson has reportedly told donors that he wants to get Ukraine funding passed. But the political reality is that Marjorie Taylor Green has threatened to oust him as Speaker if he moves forward with Ukraine funding. So she could be the one who ultimately decides whether the U.S. supports or abandons these guys.

What a world. Yeah. And she's the kind of person that like repeats, you know, it's not just the NATO point. I mean, there's been cases of Republican members of Congress, like literally retweeting, like, Russian propaganda. Yeah, you had David Cameron, the foreign secretary and former prime minister of the UK, flying to Maralago to try to, you know, unlock the supplemental. That's weird. Oh, that was he, he was lobbying for this. He was a lot like he was lobbying Trump to lobby, or to tell Johnson that it's okay to let this pass, you know. Interesting. And that just shows you where we're at.

interesting thing. And the thing about Trump that, you know, this plan is is nonsensical, right? The Ukrainians would never agree to it. It's not, America doesn't have the capacity to like deliver Eastern Ukraine and Crimea to Putin. And the idea that Russia is going to get any less close to China when, in fact, Russia's gotten much more dependent on China throughout this war for all their technology and all their economy, essentially, it just shows like that they're living this other planet, I do just wish, like, something has disappeared, which is some regard for the Ukrainian people. I mean, the people that are living in Russian-occupied territories, particularly in the Donbos,

their children being stolen and sent into Russia. They've seen reports of war crimes. So this isn't just like a casual game of risk, you know, where it's like, all right, we'll move our peace off this part of the board. I mean, they're real lives at stake here. And I do worry with the, you saw these, you know, as the front lines frozen, You know, the nuclear plan is the extreme case, but the Russians are now trying to essentially decapitate Ukrainian energy. You got the Ukrainians hitting Russian refineries. This war could

continue to kind of escalate in strange ways in the coming months here. Yeah, I mean, this week was the two-year anniversary of the Russians finally pulling out of Bucha, that city near Kiev, where there were just horrible atrocities committed war crimes by Russian troops in discriminated mass occurring of the Ukrainian civilian. So, That speaks to why it would be politically impossible for Zelensky to just say, oh, yeah, absolutely, you can have the Donbos. And also, you know, to your point, though, about like what is doing to society, the average soldier on both sides is over 40. The Ukrainians are worried about lowering the draft age because basically if they take too many young people out of their economy out of the workforce, the country just won't be able to continue going. Like they just won't have an economy anymore. Yeah. And Russia, meanwhile, says 16,000 people signed up for the military in the wake of the mosque. Concord Call Attack. So they're not having these problems of recruiting, or at least recruiting in air quotes, conscripting soldiers into their armed forces. Yeah. But the Russians have their own problems. I mean, there was a great report in the New York Times of the weekend about all these

convicts that they brought into the Russian military and the Wagner Group offensive. Some of them have now returned back to communities. And guess what they're doing? They're killing people. I mean, these are people that are already, you know, killers or criminals before, and God knows what kind of things they saw on the front line. You're going to have deeply traumatized communities in both countries. And obviously, our sympathies are with Ukraine because Russia is the aggressor that are going to reverberate for years and decades to come. Yeah, two more quick things. So, again, Marjorie Taylor Green might be the one who decides whether the U.S. supports Ukraine or not. On April 5th, the day of the D.C.,

She tweeted, God is sending America, strong signs to tell us to repent. Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things that come. I pray that our country listens. So good to know this is in her hands. Also, Ben, here's a clip from the new Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Watley from some TV show. Look, I think that we are seeing right now that this election truly, truly matters on national security, on every one of these issues. When America is weak, the world is a far more dangerous place. And right now, Joe Biden, factless leadership has shown China, has shown Ukraine, has shown Iran that they can feel free to be much more aggressive on the world front to the point where even they will try and meddle

with our elections here. So maybe that's a Freudian slip or maybe he really thinks Ukraine is an aggressor that needs to be confronted, not a country that was invaded. It's what they think. I mean, they remember the what aboutism on Russian interference? Is it the Ukrainians that actually interfered? Remember they had the DNC server? I mean, there's like a broken brain syndrome on the right about the Ukrainians that that is totally bizarre.

Yeah, and they think they're anti-Christian. There's just this. Yeah, there's there's been all these conspiracy theories about Zelensky and, you know, like he's persecuting Christians and he's persecuting journalists. Like there's like there's a weird information stream. Whatever there are information sources, it's not this podcast. Yeah, it does explain why Mike Turner, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, went on Zion. and then to say some of his colleagues are repeating Russian propaganda. I think we just heard a couple of them there. Okay, so Ben, we've also been watching how the war in Ukraine impacts politics across Europe

and there's some bad news out of Slovakia where a pro-Russia candidate named Peter Pellegrini won the presidential election on Sunday with nearly 54% of the vote. The position of president doesn't have much power in Slovakia, but he's an ally of the pro-Russian Prime Minister, Robert Fico, who halted Slovakia's armed shipments to Ukraine. Pellegrini says Slovakia is going to stay the course. They're going to be in the EU. They're going to stay in NATO. But it is an indication of the strength of the argument, the nationalist isolationist message in parts of Europe. So not great for the Ukrainian side. And again, just like a data point we're watching as we head into these European parliamentary elections in June. Yeah. No, and I was in Bratislava,

the capital of Slovakia a few months ago right after the prime minister was elected. And there was a real sense of foreboding there. And part of what happens is you have, you know, Bratislava is the kind of more urban, you know, globalist, if you will, capital of the country. But then out in these rural areas, you have right-wing Russian-backed media. You know, you've got a lot of forces coming in to support this. It's happening in part. Yes, there's some fatigue or fear about supporting Ukraine. But there's also a lot of effort being put into kind of turning segments of these populations to this kind of urbanist worldview. And, you know, Slovakia, ordering Hungary there, if they become kind of part of a growing block of countries that are in the

kind of more pro-Russian camp, more hostiles of the EU, that gets really complicated. And the reality is, too, the EU depends on kind of consensus decision-making. You know, as is NATO, by the way, which we saw Erdogan holding up, you know, the session of Sweden, if enough of these countries start just kind of throw in sand in the gears, it could also really mess up the functioning of Europe. So this is not, it's not an unexpected development, but it's not a good one. Yeah, I know if Orban can screw up the EU for everybody. Imagine if there's a bunch of a bunch of Orban's. A bunch of little mini Orban's. Not great. Let's turn back to the U.S. Ben, because President Biden is hosting Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishita for a state visit on Wednesday. He will also host a trilateral

summit with the U.S. Japan and the Philippines on Thursday. Japan is Biden's fifth state visit. The U.S. in Japan, they're going to talk about military cooperation, space cooperation. Apparently Japan wants to put an astronaut on the moon. Let's do it. Let's do it. They'll hash out a disagreement over whether a Japanese company is going to be allowed to take over the U.S. Steel Corporation. See about that. The trilateral meeting is going to, it's like, I don't know, do we care?

In an election year? Yeah, probably not. The trilateral meeting will focus primarily on China. Ben, so the Biden team has put a lot of time into bolstering these alliance in the Asia Pacific, the U.S. India, Australia, Japan. They call it the quad. I remember there being another quad, but whatever, yeah. They also did a bunch of work trying to calm tensions between Japan and South Korea. How are you feeling about the Indo-Pacific these days?

Bolstered, robust, robust, renewed? What diplo words are being missing? I think there's a series of robust partnerships that are creating synergies and a network among our alliances in the region that have never been stronger. This is hard because it's really important, but it's so boring. But no, the reality, what's interesting is two things. One is they clearly want Japan, and Japan wants two. play this kind of more assertive role. Like, and you saw the Japanese prime minister, you know,

talking about bolstering defense spending. And this is a country with a fundamentally pacifist constitution, largely written, you know, with an American looking over their shoulder after World War II. And you feel like Japan is now, you know, looking at the threat from China and North Korea and saying, hey, we're going to get more on our front foot here in terms of defense spending and being a defense partner, not just the United States, But the Philippines meeting is interesting, right? Because the Philippines has this maritime dispute, which is essentially China claims all of the South China Sea.

That includes, you know, islands that are Philippines territory under international law. And so the fact that Japan is talking to the Philippines, what the U.S. is clearly trying to do is take these different security partners and allies we have, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and get them working more closely together with us. but with each other as well. They'd like to pull India into that. That's why the United States seem to have renamed the Asia-Pacific region, the Indo-Pacific. Yeah, it's rebranding things.

But it is worth watching this defense build-up in Japan and what that does in the region. It shows you that the concerns about China are not limited to the United States, frankly. Right. You know, some long-term risk to a military build-up in Japan. Yeah, you know, you're considered out loud. We've seen that.

We've seen where that goes in the fast. It is interesting that you, You swap out President Duterte in the Philippines who would just massacre people. Yeah. Call it a drug war, just killing innocent people. Now we've got Bongbong, Marcos, son of a dictator. It's just kind of more normalized. Like Marcos is just like extreme corruption and authoritarianism without the kind of like extreme rhetoric and extradural killing of Duterte.

It's interesting how much they have kind of, you know, embraced Marcos. That maybe embraces a strong word, but like they've definitely soft palatable. Yeah, yeah. It's more our palette in Washington. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Corruption classic. Okay, two more things.

So the regular listeners to the show have heard us talk about Saudi Prince, Mahabban Salman. Yeah. His massive development plans for Saudi Arabia in particular. We cover some of this on the latest episode of World Corrupt, by the way, which is available on the Potsay of the World Feed. Please listen. But some of MBS's ideas are smart.

They do need to diversify the country's economy away from fossil fuels. Others are ridiculous boondoggles. My favorite such boondoggle is a project called The Line, which is conceived of being one day a 105 mile long linear city. So imagine a building longer than the distance between New York and Philly that is taller than the Empire State Building. So Ben, you'll be shocked to learn that this project is behind schedule. The government wanted to have 1.5 million people living in the line city building. by 2030, they've scaled back that ambition to less than 300,000, and now only 2.4 of the planned

170 kilometers will be done by 2030. So very sad news for consultants everywhere who want to get paid for this thing. This is just the, it continues to be the craziest story out there in a lot of ways, because it is just clearly like Mahmahman Salman, you know, like he's a Roman emperor who wants to just like leave some physical manifestation of his greatness. behind. And I don't know what on earth you saw, what sci-fi movie or... PowerPoint presentation. Yeah, PowerPoint's presentation. This is a $1.5 trillion project, I think, when you add up the whole cost. At budget, yeah. At budget. At budget. Like, there'd be no overruns to actually build this vision. And to what purpose?

Does this serve, like, you know, there are air conditioning questions that come to my mind? But I want to know, Tommy, is like, what do you think the meeting was like where they had to go in and tell him that, hey, this isn't going to be ready in 2030 and we got a downsize? Like, who gets nominated in the pre-meeting to be the one to us to go tell MBS, hey, that, like, cool, you know, model we showed you is actually going to be, you know, one, whatever, one-third size if that, you know. You pick the guy with the Kevlar vest on. Yeah. Go from there. Yeah, I wouldn't want to deliver that news. I mean, you're right, though, it is, it is pyramid-like.

Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. I mean, we interviewed Ben Hubbard about this. New York Times writer, Istanbul Bureau Chief, wrote one of the best books I read on NBS. And it's like, yeah, well, you know, cities like Jeddah or, you know, they just like don't have good sewer systems. I mean, you could improve the quality of life of citizens so easily just by refurbishing the things you have instead of this Neum project, which also includes a plan to create man-made snow on mountains. in Saudi Arabia so that you can ski three months a year?

Yeah, so MBS and, you know, his rural family types can go ski. It's just, yeah, you could spend a trillion dollars making people's lives a lot better, you know, and they have a large young population in Saudi Arabia, but, or you could build Niyom or whatever it's called. He's also like, MBS seems like a smart enough guy. Actually, I think he is a smart guy. How do you not know this is a bullshit idea? He had it pretty, like, you know, he, there's just a pyramid aspect to it. There's this, like, I'm going to leave something behind.

Other autocrats have tried this, right? Like, in Burma, they built an entirely new city because some astrologer told them it was unsafe to live in the current capital. And that city's, like, might be the weirdest place I've ever been. And completely vacant. Yeah. I remember coming in from the airport and it's like miles and miles of road, because nobody actually, but nobody lives there, right? to the government buildings from the airport. And we're driving like 100 miles an hour or something

because it's like a 20-lane highway. I can't tell you why this thing is, with no cars on it, you know. Not a best, in a country where people are starving, you know. I got a feeling there would be like one kilometer of line building that will live in a desert forever. I mean, the Emirates, like they, when they're not kind of financing the RSF in Sudan,

like they're building Dubai and Abu Dhabi. I mean, I guess they don't have a lot of land to use, but, I mean, build up Riyadh or Jeddah. I mean, I don't know. I don't get it, man. And then finally, Ben, British Prime Minister Rishi Sounak's Tory Party is once again being ridiculed, thanks to be truly stupid, now deleted Tori Party tweet. So this was, there was a subtext in an image. The image they put out looked like, kind of like a garage sale poster you might have made in high school with like clip art on your, you know, home computer. It said, quote, Britain is the second most powerful country.

in the world. It included photos of Rishi Sunak, King Charles wearing his crown with his like sausage fingers up in the air, England's soccer team, some fighter jets, an Aston Martin, a director whose name is escaping me.

So people on social media pointed out that one of the fighter planes featured was an F-35, which is made by the U.S., that the poster was supposed to be about the United Kingdom, but it only includes the English soccer team and the photo they used of the team

was from a game they just lost to Brazil. So I guess in fairness that does fit well with the number two narrative. There's no women featured despite the fact that the UK has some of the most powerful and famous women leaders in history. You have Margaret Thatcher on there,

the queen on there, right? It included an image of a container ship that some reports say was built in South Korea. Others say is owned by the Swiss. I don't know why it was there. And then the text that accompanied the image said, don't let the doomsters and naysayers trick you into talking down our country

but that too was deleted then I do have so many thoughts and questions here the second most powerful I guess are we number one is that the kind of suggestion first of all nothing in this picture like not a thing in this picture

even the American plane to me projects power in any way like Rishi Sunak like giving like Like, what was that looking? Oh shit. Blue steel? Yes, exactly.

Yeah. See, like a, like, Rishi Sunak, throwing a little blue steel with a skinny tie. A container ship that could literally be anywhere. Any fucking poured in the world? Like, that could be anywhere. And it looks like a child cut them all out and then paced them on like a poster board. And like, I'm just to say it right here, I actually love the UK. I love Britain.

I love England. But I'm just going to compile on here a little bit. The English soccer team, which gets bounced to every world. Cup earlier than they're supposed to go, right? They haven't one in a while, right? They haven't one in a while. Some guy looking through a camera that looks like he's making a movie in like 1952 or something. I forget what, it's a famous British director. I'm sure he's a great director, but it doesn't like exude, you know, and like King Charles. It's Christopher Nolan. It's Christopher Nolan. Oh, oh, oh, you know what? I take that back. Okay. I did my second. I'll give them one. I'll give them Nolan because I did my rewatch of Oppenheimer on the flight home. I got to watch that movie fucking bangs. Okay. Let's like, like, like, Like, I, like, and honestly, it bangs on the rewatch because you see what this genius, you know, let's just take Christopher Nolan out of this. Okay. And like, like, because I, I, full respect to that guy. Someone said the Aston Martin is actually owned by a Canadian.

I wasn't sure what they meant. Tweet at me if you didn't explain that. It's also like, it's not that cool anymore, the Aston Martin. I'm sorry. In fact, if I wanted to make the case for Britain, I'd have an entirely different. I'd keep Christopher Nolan. And then every other thing I'd have on this would be different, you know. You could have a bunch

Duolipa could be on there, right? Like, you know, what else could we get here, Tommy? Like, you know, I guess it's Harry Potter, it's Harry Potter canceled if we're doing the UK? Like, you could have Harry Potter on there. Yeah, sure.

You have some corgis on there. What else is, what is that? Like, what else is popping these days? Cricket? I don't know. Listen, all I say is, we need to brainstorm this, so did they. Yeah, yeah.

Benefit from a brainstorm. Benefort rainstorm. Did you see that the British and the French did like a freaky Friday-style palace guard switch? They had a bunch of French soldiers to the changing of the Guard of Buckingham Palace and the Brits did it, the Elysee Palace. It was ostensibly to celebrate the 120-year anniversary of some agreement or thing that you've never heard of. But I think it was just kind of like a, we're still friends after Brexit kind of sad thing. Again, I'm not bringing this up to knock the friends in the UK. This is a Tory party tweet.

I'm really not actually because I'm a bit of an anglophile. I'm just, this is not the thing I put forward here. Lammy, do better. Yeah. Yeah, come on. If the labor gets in there, let's see a different, let's see it's just a different thing. Nolan will keep him, let's, you know. The rest, scrap it.

Speaking of. I'd rather see one of those big red buses in the F-35. That'd be good. I like that. I like that too. My kids love it. Well, it's obviously soft power. You don't need a fucking fighter jet on there.

Yeah. Not blowing people up, but soft power. Yeah. Speaking of Brits, Ben, we're going to get to your interview with David Miliband in a second. But quick reminder, Pod Save America is going on tour later this year, going to Brooklyn, Boston, Madison, Phoenix, Philly, and Ann Arbor. We're also going to be at L.A. Times, the L.A. Times Book Festival in L.A. on April 21st. Come see us live to get tickets. Go to Krooket.com slash events. We're going to take a quick break.

We come back. You're going to hear Ben's conversation with David Miliband. I'm very pleased to welcome back to the podcast, David Miliband, the head of the internet. Rescue Committee, former Foreign Secretary of the UK, and a leading voice on all manner of international issues. David, thanks so much for joining us. Of course, Ben. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. So I want to start with the situation in Gaza. IRC has obviously been active as one of the leading humanitarian organizations in the world. Before we get into some of the specific issues that have obviously been front and center, just what is your sense of the current state of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and how is the IRC on the ground trying to address some of these needs?

Well, sadly, it's very simple to describe. It's a catastrophe that's getting worse. And what we know is that there's no precedent for a country that had no famine to turn into a situation where half the population are facing literally famine in the space of six months. But that's happened in the Gaza example. you'll have seen two or three weeks ago the international phase classification, which is a very small sea conservative technical technocratic institution that has assessed half of the population

are at international phase classification level five, which is catastrophic levels of hunger, and the rest of the population are at levels three and four, which are a crisis and emergency. And the situation is getting worse because famines happen slowly, but they then are very hard to turn round. And it's beyond awful that there were announcements on Friday that there would be a new crossing opened in Erez, that there'd be a new access from the Fort of Ashdod. But there's been no benefit. I checked with our teams overnight. There's no benefit of that. And so what you're seeing is famine, death on a very large scale, 33,000 people directly from the fighting, desperation.

and then of course all of the illness that goes with those kind of conditions because it's a public health emergency and those factors produce massive disorder as well and so i listened to uh or yeah it was on i think it was in the economist this week some there was a quote of someone who's just gone back to their house in khan unis a Palestinian civilian and he said um we are it's life as if we were dead and i think that brings home quite what a humanitarian catastrophe this is. Your teams have not seen any change in delivery since the announcement after the Netanyahu Biden call. That's exactly right.

Yeah. And we saw that the president had an impact on the words coming out of the Israeli Prime Minister's office, but the deeds on the ground have not yet changed. Before we get into the policy, too, just in terms of the IRC, give us a sense of what the IRC's been doing in Gaza, but also like, how do you make judgments as, you know, the leader of this organization? We saw what happened to the World Central Kitchen with their people getting killed. I know you guys have had some of the Israeli military operation come your way. How do you make decisions about obviously the whole purpose of your organization? You want to help

people, but you also have responsibility not put your people at risk. What are you doing? And then, how do you think through those tradeoffs? Yeah, that's a great question is one, obviously, We think about a lot and fear a lot. And there's no world where we work, where there isn't heightened risk. And the question is, do you have the systems to manage the risk? We are now into our fifth emergency medical team, which we run with medical aid for the Palestinians, who are a UK-based charity. We have between 8 and 15 doctors who go and work at various hospitals in Gaza.

We also partner with a range of local NGOs who are trying to distribute non-food items, who are trying to do child protection and women's protection work around the Gaza Strip. We did have an Israeli missile hit our guesthouse on the 18th of January, and we said at the time that this showed that the so-called deconfliction system, the system by which NGOs tell combatants, tell the Israeli authorities, authorities in this case, where they are and what their movements are going to be. We said it's not working and it's a threat to life and limb at the time. I think the death toll among aid workers was around 150.

As you'll know, the death toll is now over 200. My aid workers post the World Central Kitchen event. And the deconfliction system simply doesn't work. So we've had to more and more our medical team to take that as an example. They find a place to sleep in the hospital. They don't leave the hospital. even guest houses that have been deconflicted, which ours was, turned out not to be safe. And all to say that the most basic legal rights of an aid worker to stay alive and a civilian

caught up in war to receive aid are not being honored in this conflict. And so it couldn't be more serious. That informs our call for a ceasefire on humanitarian grounds, a sustained, an immediate, but also sustained ceasefire to allow us to do humanitarian work. But it also informs the calls that we're making in the absence of a ceasefire without in any way diminishing our call for a ceasefire for aid to flow in massively greater quantities because it's human decisions, sometimes bureaucratic, sometimes political that are preventing the flow of aid, but also more protection for aid workers. And you just spoke to a piece of this that I think is important to highlight, which is, you know, I remember when I was. government, you have deconfliction set up to facilitate the delivery of aid in conflict zones. There are legal requirements, international legal requirements that go along with that, right?

I mean, what is the interaction between the obligation to facilitate aid and to pursue deconfliction measures with international law? Well, I mean, international law, as you know, has four elements to do with military necessity, to do with proportionality, to do with distinction between civilians and competence, and to do with humanity. And that is a well-developed case law. What I would say is that we need an absolute paradigm shift, 180-degree shift, in the way we understand the rights of civilians and aid workers and their rights to receive aid, which is that

Their protection from danger and damage and their rights to receive aid is not a gift of conflict parties. We've got ourselves into a mindset where we should be grateful that aid is allowed to get through. No, no, no, no. It's the opposite. There is a responsibility on conflict parties to enable aid to go through. And a long time ago, we said that the conduct of all parties to this conflict was not honoring those most fundamental commitments. And it's very, very important that they are,

because we know it's not just in Gaza that impunity is raining. It's much more wide, widely spread. And this idea that somehow the protection of civilians or the distribution of aid is something that is a gift, a generous gift, is just wrong. Yeah. And one more piece of this is, obviously, you know, you've called for a ceasefire.

You've talked about these different prongs, the need for a ceasefire, the need to get aid in, obviously they need to comply with international law. It's not, though, like, even if you got to a ceasefire, that the needs would immediately go away. Have you been able to think through at all the medium and longer term challenges in Gaza that might be confronting the IRC in the international community if we do get to a ceasefire? I mean, I think that the short answer is obviously no, because there are so many imponderables. I mean, the scale of destruction is absolutely massive. The psychological damage matches the physical damage. We don't know what security arrangements will be in place.

You're seeing in the north how difficult that is. And obviously, we're still in a situation where we don't know if this Rafa offensive is going to go ahead. And so all of those factors make it very, very hard. What we know is it, if you think about it, if you think about it for those two million, people, what they face is the biggest reconstruction job that existed for generations. It's not necessarily the largest number of people who are affected by conflict. I mean, the conflict in Sudan is 25 million people in humanitarian need. But it's an absolutely massive challenge.

What we know is something that's important, which we're trying to spread at the World Bank Spring meetings and elsewhere. Effective humanitarian aid is the first step on the road to development. Stopping people dying is the first step on the road to development. Basic early childhood interventions to help tackle the trauma that's being faced by young people is step one. The tackling of the malnutrition. I mean, this is why I started this interview by talking about the famine and malnutrition. That's the apex of the pyramid, if you like, we know that in humanitarian emergencies, where there's famine or malnutrition, everything else is going wrong.

Yeah. And obviously, Gaza is very unusual in that no one can get out, and it's practically impossible to get aid in. but we know that these conditions have long-term consequences. Yeah, you said, I mean, one other thing I get you that come out of your question, you mentioned Rafa. I mean, it's almost hard to imagine. People keep not being able to envision how this could get worse, but I kind of can't get my mind around what the situation might look like in the Gaza Strip

if that Rafa operation goes forward, right? I mean, it would exponentially complicate everything from aid delivery to immediate needs to freedom of movement for organizations like your own, right? Yes, from a humanitarian point of view, it's clear. Look, there's a million plus people who have all pretty much all been moved already once, twice, three times. The scale of loss already is very, very high. There was a story today that 40,000 tenths have been procured,

but there's a million plus people in Rafa. And so that's why there's such grave, grave trepidation, fear. about what's next. Well, pulling back the lens, obviously the rest of the world doesn't stop suffering from conflict and humanitarian crises in the midst of what's happening in Gaza. I know IRC has been quite active in Sudan, a situation that I think in more normal times would be getting a lot of attention. How would you describe for people what the needs are there?

What have you seen and heard about what's happening in the Civil War in Sudan and how that's kind of spilling over into places like South Sudan. Yeah, there's a couple of things to say, actually, which speak to the wider global sense of, I call it a flammable world. I mean, the world's on fire in various places, and it's very flammable. And we produce an annual emergency watch list. Gaza was number two. Gaza and West Bank were number two.

Sudan was number one. As I said earlier, 25 million people in humanitarian need. It's the one-year anniversary of the start of this civil war. And I mean, I was in South Sudan in February. and I met a couple who I went to the border or near the border and a couple have fled 700 miles from Khartoum, 700 kilometers from Khartoum. She was a hairdresser, he was a shoemaker. Their kids were meant to be going to university. And now they're wondering whether they'll ever go back to their country.

I think there's a couple of aspects of it that are very striking. One, this is not just a Sudan crisis. It's a Sudan, South Sudan, Chad, it's the whole of northeast Africa crisis. And the second is that those who are much more expert than I in what happened in Darfur 20 years ago will tell you that there are very, very dark and chilling echoes in what's happening now of what happened then. So you've got, number one, it's affecting the neighbors massively, Sudan and South Sudan. Secondly, the Darfur element of this. Thirdly, every humanitarian emergency is a political emergency.

And the political emergency in this case is that you have different regional powers supporting different sides. You have the situation where authority for peacemaking has been devolved from the UN Security Council to the African Union. So you've got a different set of plays there, which is very involved with different strands of African politics, tying into Middle Eastern politics because of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, both very involved. Egypt. And so this political emergency is creating this sense of vacuum where people are really asking whether the country is going to exist after this. And you, I mean, you've written and talked a lot about a kind of culture of impunity here. And oftentimes we end up focusing on, you know, the worst actors, right, the people, the militias or the warlords or the warring parties in a

civil war. But as you mentioned, there's also these regional powers that are, are, arming different sides, backing different sides. You know, and some of those are, you know, actors like the Emirates, the UAE, that are, you know, very plugged into global politics. I mean, how do we try to align some sense of accountability or some sense of pressure or some sense of incentive for these kind of regional parties into conflict like Sudan to take more responsibility for their own choices here? I mean, to turn off the spigot of weapons and get to the table of negotiation. rather than to just kind of let these fires burn. Yeah. Well, I think the starting point is actually getting our own house in order.

Now, in this, one can actually point to something that the Biden administration has done that's very significant and very positive, which is their own new Department of Defense guidance on civilian protection in military operations does actually set a very high standard for what should be expected, not just of the U.S., but of all its security partners. Yeah. And that's, I think, really important. Secondly, to get active on the diplomatic front. Now, there is now a new special envoy.

Tom Pirello is the special envoy for the crisis. That's good because it needs the weight of the US if there's going to be any diplomatic progress at all. Thirdly, we're back to our old friend leverage. And it's about prioritization and leverage and the extent to which that is used. The US has a number of allies who are engaged in this conflict. The internationalization of this civil war is symptomatic of something that's happening. right around the world with civil wars that are burning longer with more ferocity because of external sponsorship. And so the U.S. needs to use its leverage. I would argue the West needs to use its

leverage more generally. Well, and I wanted to ask you, you have a piece out in The Guardian recently that people should check out about the role of the UK. And this is an interesting point for the UK. We're out of Brexit a couple years or a few years now. You also have an election coming up there. David Cameron's flying off to Mara Lago. It's to meet with Donald Trump. That's a little peculiar. He's survived. I think he's survived. He's had to have been sighting. He's been sighting. Okay. He's out. But what, you know, the, you're not, the UK is not part of the EU anymore, obviously. It's kind of floating in this new space. I mean, you, you know,

break down for people kind of the role that you see that the UK should be playing in this world of increasing disorder of increasing risk in a post-Brexit foreign policy and maybe, maybe post-Torry foreign policy. Well, fingers crossed. There are many of us who warned that Brexit would be an act of unilateral political disarmament. And I'm very, very sad that in all sorts of ways, that's proved to be true. However, Brexit is much worse than even I predicted on the foreign policy front.

It's actually very bad on the economic front as well. And I think the UK now finds itself in a position where it has effectively no relations on the foreign policy and defense front with the European Union. And it's got all of its chips in the NATO basket. Now, on Ukraine, the UK has actually played a good and positive role. But it's doubly stupid to have no relations on foreign and defense and climate policy with the EU, given that EU-NATO divisions have been so bridged by the Ukraine crisis. The EU, despite having, I mean, Ireland's neutral, but it hasn't stopped weapons being shipped. There are six million Ukrainian refugees in Europe who have rights to residents and to work.

The EU is a global trade and climate actor. And so I think the first order of business is a structured, serious relationship between the UK and its closest allies geographically who are in the European Union, 27 of them. Obviously, there's a second aspect of this, which is that traditionally, the UK has leveraged its relationships in the US for its European engagement as well and vice versa. Those remain very important relationships, but as you know, better than I, every country in the world is hedging both on the outcome of your election. And even if the Biden administration is re-elected on whether or not your divided government is going to be able to deliver the kind of patient, strategic, informed, deliberative international leadership that's necessary. Yeah. And so the UK is going to have to adapt what I call, or what was not my phrase,

but the phrase of Shashi Tharoa, the multi-aligned world. And it's a much more transactional, much more fluid set of arrangements where I think the North Star, just to finish the third point and go back to something you said earlier, the North Star for our international engagement as the UK, I think, has to be to uphold the rule of law and to fight impunity, because that is the great danger both to our interests and to our values. Yeah. Well, we'll hope that we get to see a new government in the UK committed to that. I want to just end, I mean, what I know that the IRC is, you know, you have local partners, you have staff around the world. I mean, what would you want people to know about what your

teams are doing in places like Gaza and Sudan? Like, give us a window into kind of who the people are that are on the front lines of these conflicts. Yeah. I'd love to. people to listen to the testimony of people like our head of our emergency health unit, Seema Jilani. She did an excruciating interview in the New Yorker about her experience as a doctor in Gaza, which I really recommend that people read. Look, the face of the IRC is now 25,000 plus employees in 330 field sites in 45 countries around the world and 3,000 staff in 30 US offices because we're working to support refugees and asylum seekers here in the US. We're an organisation that's unusual because we have this focus not on poverty per se,

but on people whose lives are shattered by conflict and disaster and are left in poverty and desperation. And our effort in the humanitarian sector is to be the solutions NGO. And if you're interested in malnutrition, we've got a different way of tackling malnutrition. If you're interested in early childhood development with Sesame Workshop, we've got a different way of tackling that. If you're interested in how can the tech sector help provide information to refugees and asylum seekers about where's safe, signpost is our solution for how that's taken forward. If you care about sexual violence against women and violence against kids, we've got very interesting program about how to tackle co-occurrence. And at a time when to be people get

accused of being a globalist rather than thanked for being a globalist, it's, I think, really important to assert that these vital work needs support. I'd love people to visit our website, rescue.org, to learn more about what we're doing. Great. Well, David, thanks so much for joining us and taking us through a lot of issues there. Thanks a lot, then. Thanks again to David Miliband for joining the show.

Welcome back. Thanks to Christopher Nolan. She's holding it down on that poster, man. I like the Rishi put himself in the center. Well, nobody thinks that about Rishi. Like nobody thinks that this guy like towers above, like, Britain and it's soft power. And also, you're not supposed to put the king on political things. And what do you think Rishi's name ideas outside of the UK?

Like 0.0.2. So that's pretty soft power. It's soft. Real soft. And we're done. Talk to you guys next week. See it. If you want to get ad-frey episodes, exclusive content, and more.

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