Pod Save the World - Biden Punishes China

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Ben is joined by guest hosts Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and Rana Ayyub, global opinion columnist for the Washington Post. Ben and Dan discuss a regrouped Hamas in northern Gaza, Secretary Blinken calling out the Israelis for not having a long term plan, Biden’s new tariffs on Chinese goods, the struggle to define America’s relationship with China, Russia’s new offensive in Kharkiv, and protests in Georgia over a foreign agent law. Then Ben and Rana talk about the Indian election, what a third Modi term would mean for India’s democracy, and attacks on Muslims and journalists in the country. 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 Pod Save the World. I'm Ben Rhodes and Tommy is out again this week. For those of you who are not close followers on social media, you may not know that he shared that he and his wife Hannah have welcomed a new baby boy. So a growing Vitor family, we're thrilled for them. And of course he's taking some time off with family. We do, though, have a great show for you today. We've got an amazing one-to punch. Two amazing guest, co-hosts and friends of mine. The first is Dan Kurtz-Faelin, who is the editor of Foreign Affairs Magazine, and the author of a really terrific book, if you want to go back to the history of the United States and China, kind of the origin story for how we got here today in many ways, a book called The China Mission. Dan will be joining us to talk about the latest developments in Gaza, Joe Biden's new tariffs on China, China policy more broadly, as well as the situation in Russia and Ukraine and protest in Georgia over a foreign agent law. then Rana Ayyub, someone we've heard from on this podcast before, will be joining me in the second half of the show to talk about the Indian elections, what another Narendra Modi term might mean for India and the world.

Rana is a journalist and global opinion columnist at the Washington Post. So before we get to Dan here, I just wanted to bring people up to speed on where things stand in Gaza. So a few updates. First of all, according to the UN, over 360,000 civilians have fled Rafa after last. week's evacuation orders were given by Israel. No food or aid has entered the Rafa border crossing with Egypt in over a week. That's one of the most significant through lines for aid to get into Gaza. And according to the World Food Program of full-blown famine is already underway in the north of Gaza, and that's related to the Rafa crossing because the fuel that gets in

for aid trucks has come across that crossing. Israel's continued to carry out what they call, quote, limited scope operations in Rafa. This is a way to kind of be somewhere in between doing nothing and a full-scale invasion. But reports of civilian casualties keep coming in. The overall death toll in Gaza has passed 35,000. Humanitarian organizations keep reiterating that there is nowhere safe to go in Gaza. A UN employee was killed and another injured in a strike on a vehicle with the UN flag flying on it. Some reports have said that there are larger numbers of Israeli troops massing on the edge of Rafa

that could signal a bigger military push that's coming. At the same time, there's a lot of diplomacy. Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, is planning to go to the region, in part probably to forestall a full-scale Rafa invasion. And all this is happening, despite President Biden saying in an interview with CNN last week, that he would cut off some offensive military assistance to Israel if a large-scale offensive in Rafa were to happen. However, there continue to be kind of mixed messages coming out of the Biden

administration. Last Friday, the State Department submitted a report to Congress that found that Israel, quote, potentially violated humanitarian law, but that report did not formally conclude that Israel did violate humanitarian law. And it said that the U.S. did not have, quote, complete information about whether or not U.S. weapons were used in those actions. So a bit of a hedge there. There's also now more fighting that's happened in northern Gaza where parts of Hamas seem to have regenerated and launched some attacks of their own. This has led to some of of the more vocal criticism of Israel's lack of an end game that we've heard to date from the administration. Let's hear a clip from Secretary of State Tony Blinken.

We believe two things. One, you have to have a clear, credible plan to protect civilians, which we haven't seen. Second, we also need to see a plan for what happens after this conflict in Gaza is over. And we still haven't seen that, because what are we seeing right now? We're seeing parts of Gaza that Israel has cleared of Hamas, where Hamas is coming back. including in the north, including in Khan Yunus. As we look at Rafa, they may go in and have some initial success, but potentially at an incredibly high cost to civilians, but one that is not durable, one that's not sustainable.

And they will be left holding the bag on an enduring insurgency because a lot of armed Hamas will be left, no matter what they do in Rafa. Or if they leave and get out of Gaza, as we believe they need to do, then you're going to have a vacuum and a vacuum that's likely to be filled by chaos, by anarchy, and ultimately by Hamas again. So that's a pretty, you know, searing indictment, albeit in Tony's understated way, of I think the gap between the Israeli military objective of destroying Hamas and U.S. concerns that that's not an achievable objective.

Just a few thoughts from me before we get to Dan on this. You know, first of all, Joe Biden's comments to CNN got a lot of attention. attention. I don't think they should have come as any surprise. He's warned for months now that Rafa would be something of a red line for him. And clearly the administration didn't feel like the Israelis had been able to address U.S. concerns about the civilian cost of going into Rafa. So that was, I think, the right step. Ultimately, you have to back up words with action and withholding military assistance is one of the biggest pieces of leverage that the U.S. has. But you still sense this kind of ambivalence around kind of following that logic all the way. The administration was

kind of walking back parts of it the next day. They seem to kind of not want to have the rift with Netanyahu, and yet the substance of the situation suggests a rift. Israel seems determined to go into Rafa in some fashion. It's not surprising me that Nanyahu is kind of trying to do this in a way in which he can say, well, it's not a full-scale invasion, but, you know, if you seal the border crossing and you're taking airstrikes and you're doing ground incursions, at some point this becomes about semantics. Possibly there's still efforts to negotiate some ceasefire. Jake Sullivan's going to Saudi Arabia on his trip that's also going to bring him to Israel, and that suggests they're still trying to assemble this idea of a Saudi normalization as a part of

an incentive for Israel to refrain from going into Rafah. But, you know, that's a long shot. And we'll see hopefully best case scenarios you get a ceasefire. If you don't though, it's hard to see how it's sustainable to have the U.S. and Israel in such different positions without Biden following through on his threat really to withhold offensive military assistance. And so we're kind of in this no man's land right now where there's a kind of slow motion invasion of Rafa threats of U.S. withholding assistance, some assistance being withheld. But, but were kind of poised before a real break between Biden and Netanyahu on the substance of this. And I will just note that the longer these border crossing, particularly the Rafa crossing, is closed,

the more the famine-like conditions and humanitarian crisis is going to be growing too. So unfortunately, that's the update and it's not a good one. A couple of things that people might want to also check out. the New York Times reviewed a trove of Hamas documents that I think effectively illustrates their brutality of their governance of Gaza over the years. And CNN has an amazing story with some Israeli whistleblowers about the mistreatment of Palestinian detainees. So again, a reminder that on all sides of this conflict, there's extreme suffering, especially for civilians in Gaza. With that, though, I want to turn to Dan Kurtz-Falen, editor of Foreign Affairs. It's a good friend of

mine. Dan, welcome to POTTA of the world. Thanks, Ben. Really good to be with you. I've listened to the show for a long time. So glad to be doing my best to channel Tommy under these circumstances. Well, here you are. Well, look, Dan, I want to start with this question about Gaza. And really, you know, you're somebody in your position who can take a step back and kind of look at trends and look at thinking and look at where debates are going. People should read foreign affairs. Has had some great. articles both online and in print about the future of Gaza, the future administration of Gaza, the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict generally. I think, you know, looking beyond kind of this parade of horribles in the news that I just went through, what are you seeing as

the key questions in this debate about what happens even after Rafah invasion in terms of how is Gaza administered? What do you see the contours of that debate in terms of who's in control of Gaza, and how you try to minimize Hamas' authority while creating some window for peace. So it's a really good question. I think what you see in that answer, or the clip you played from Tony Blinken, is in his, you know, quiet, diplomatic way, a lot of frustration coming to the surface. And I think that represents really pretty deep disconnects between the U.S. view of the course of this war and the future of Gaza that, you know, has been boiling for some time. I think, you know, use the word ambivalence. There's been a lot of ambivalence

about really coming out and, and reacting to that, you know, the withholding of some number of 2,000-pound bombs, but without being, you know, especially clear about what future consuls would be as I think a kind of example of just how difficult this is for President Biden, especially to do. You know, they've been talking for months now about using U.S. leverage to constrain Israeli action, shape Israeli actions, and are just, you know, finally kind of getting to it. in pretty subtle ways. But when you go back, I think even to the weeks after October 7th, there was this already a pretty profound difference between the U.S. view and the Israeli view about

how you think about success in Gaza, how you define success. And, you know, kind of understandably in those traumatic first weeks after the October 7th attack, the, you know, Israelis were very, very intent about talking about the kind of, you know, destruction of all of Hamas, you know, chasing down. every last member, also getting back the hostages. I think there was a kind of effort by members of the Biden administration, members of the U.S. government from, you know, Bill Burns, the CIA director to Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and others to, you know, kind of talk about what exactly that would take and what that would require in a sense from the U.S. said that there was never really a clear,

you know, kind of Israeli explanation, a clear, clear Israeli theory of victory. And the biggest disconnect is when it when it comes to this question of of governing Gaza and that's true in the you know the short term you heard Tony Blinken talking about chaos which is allowing Hamas to return if if Israel doesn't have you know some other vision of creating a new Palestinian governing authority in Gaza then it's going to leave the way up to Hamas short of a full scale Israeli occupation which it says it is is not going to do so even in the in the near term without some kind of vision, you are going to really undermine the very basic strategic goals of the Israeli operation. But then when you also step back and look at the long-term formula, you know,

everything that Washington is trying to do when it comes to this bigger regional normalization deal, trying to find some way forward in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, some path back to a two-state solution or negotiations around a two-state solution. It really requires some vision of a Palestinian state and a path to a Palestinian state. That's what all of the you know, regional governments say, whether it's the Saudis or or the Emirates or others, they say they're, you know, very willing to get back to some kind of diplomatic process with the Israelis, but there also has to be a Palestinian component of this. And that's where you get to the politics of this in Israel. You have a governing coalition led by Netanyahu, but with some extremely

right-wing figures who say they will never, never stand for a path to a Palestinian state. They have a very, very, very different vision of what should happen. And so all of the everything that the administration is trying to do, you know, kind of ultimately needs to create some kind of, you know, Palestinian components. I'm going to put political horizon for the Palestinians. And that seems still politically impossible for the Israelis. So you can come up with lots of different formulas for, you know, how you get a version of the Palestinian Authority, which is governing in the West Bank into Gaza. But how you square that with Israeli politics as I still think the problem that the administration still hasn't hasn't figured out. And you can see that kind of, you know, I have sympathy for them. I imagine you do too,

watching these, these, you know, smart people trying to find some way forward. But how you, how you overcome that disconnect between the Israeli politics and the need for some kind of, you know, serious path towards a Palestinian state, I think is just something that no one has a clear theory of at this point. Well, I think you know, you put your finger on it. You know, the best laid plans do rely upon politics. And moving to another issue in which there's domestic politics on both sides, the U.S.-China relationship, and this is really an area that you're one of the leading experts on. And so I want to start by talking about the increasing, well, it's been increasing for a while, economic competition between the U.S. and China. President Biden has now announced an aggressive new round of tariffs on Chinese goods,

including steel and aluminum, semiconductors, electric vehicles, battery components, critical minerals, solar cells, cranes, and medical products. The administration has been framing the policies a way to invest in the resilience of our own economy and our domestic production, in large part responding to overproduction from China. We were lucky, Dan, to have U.S. trade representative Catherine Tai here in the studio last week. We're going to be using that and a variety of episodes. But let's begin by listening to a clip of what she said in terms of the administration's motivations behind the terrace that she obviously played a central role in. You have to start with what is the challenge that we are facing today. So the inequities and

the relationship. What we in trade parlance call non-market policies and practices, of which IPR abuses, force tech transfer comprise one aspect, which is economic policies that are made by Beijing that are not based on, say, a supply and demand model. And the impacts that those decisions made in Beijing will have on markets far and wide because of the very interconnected and open nature of the global economy and our economy in particular. So you start there and you see the amount of exposure that our market has to these types of practices and the negative effects. And then you think about where we're trying to go. We're trying to get to a place where we have more leverage with respect to persuading China to change its policies, to blunt

the negative impacts on our economy. A place where, if they don't change, we can increase the resilience of our economy in our market, our ability to retain opportunities and create jobs here, especially in critical sectors. And then you have to map out if we're not where we want to be today and we can articulate where we want to be in the future, what is the best path to transition to get from today to tomorrow. So, Dan, that was very diplomatically stated by Catherine Tai.

Not surprisingly, China reacted negatively to these tariffs. I just wanted to ask you, one, how aggressive do you think this move is? How do you situate it in terms of the U.S.-China competition? And what do you make, how would you decode Ambassador Tai's kind of, you know, framing of how China's manipulating markets? So this is in some ways, you know, of a piece. with a lot of moves that have probably started even the Obama administration. I think a focus on the ways in which China's economic growth and more on the global economy

had affected American workers. Some of that was just the sheer fact of China becoming this huge exporter and that really undermining manufacturing employment in large West United States, the quote-unquote China shock. Some of that was about a new focus on theft of intellectual property, which Ambassador Tai was alluding to and, you know, concerns about China kind of taking American tech and using that for either its own just economic advantage or military advantage. But, you know, this has been kind of on a steady upward curve, kind of growing exponentially year by year through the Trump administration.

And then Biden has really, I think, amped it up to the surprise of the Chinese. And it's not what they expected. I think when Biden came into office, but when it's come to anything from, you know, export controls on advanced semiconductors to restrictions on investment into certain Chinese sectors, keeping the Trump tariffs on, and now, you know, really ramping these up in pretty starting the way. So even, I think people have been paying attention pretty closely to the economic, you know, to call the economic offensive is too strong and probably using a CCP talking point there. But the economic tools, the economic leverage that the United States is trying to use, both the pressure China in certain ways and also to protect our own, you know, critical sectors and our economy from the Chinese, you know, this surprised me, frankly, just in terms of some of the numbers that we saw the 100% tariff on electric vehicle, something that, you know, Donald Trump was talking about, right?

That was a Trump promise that Biden basically preempted. So it's a pretty striking, you know, strike and step forward, even if it's a, you know, It's not, you know, it's in keeping with the trends we've seen. I mean, two things that really strike me listening to Catherine Tai and then looking at these broadly. I mean, one is just watching the kind of, you know, politics and economics of China and United States just kind of crash right into each other. So, you know, as listeners probably are pretty well aware, you know, the Chinese economy, which had been growing at incredibly high rates for a long time has been really struggling in the last last couple. of years and the hoped for kind of, you know, big bounce coming out of COVID didn't exactly, didn't exactly happen. You have reports of extremely high, you know, youth unemployment in China,

like above 20 percent in cities, which is pretty scary if you're a Chinese leader where a lot of your kind of legitimacy and security, you know, the reason why you don't give your people political freedom is you're delivering this incredible economic growth. Suddenly, that's slowing, that's slowing growth is a really critical threat to you. And what, Xi Jinping has done is not, you know, resort to the kinds of economic reforms that Western economists might, might tell them to make, but instead is just really investing in these huge export sectors, electric vehicles being a great example of them where they're subsidizing these companies and trying to ship just incredible amounts of goods out into the world. So that's, you know, kind of critical to the regime security in China, to the future leadership in China. But it's running, you know, smack into the political and economic. interests of the Biden administration and an election year when there's going to be a lot of, you know, pressure to protect these sectors. So even with all of the efforts, I think, pretty well-meaning and well-handled efforts over the last six or so months since President Biden

and Xi Jinping met in San Francisco in November to bring some degree of just stability to the U.S.-China relationship, you know, not to make it dramatically better, but to make it a little bit less scary and unstable. I think a lot of that's going to be kind of swamped by just these very, very different economic interests that are running smack into each other here. And then one other thing that really, I think, is quite striking in what you hear from, you know, Catherine Ty, but also from Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken and the president himself, it's just how broadly we think of national security now. So, you know, when you look at the things that fall under those tariffs, you know, semiconductors, you know, that makes sense as something that we think of as part of

national security, but, you know, solar cells and cranes and medical equipment, you know, all, it used to be that there were a few things that we would think of as kind of having special national security carveouts when it came to the economic relationship. And then a lot of things you could kind of, you know, trade normally and we kind of leave it to businesses to figure out what made sense from a commercial or financial perspective. And now there's just more and more that's getting swept into this category. national security. And you know, you can look at each one of those and even things that, you know, the average person might not think immediately have big national security implications. When you,

you know, hear the explanation, it does make sense. You know, when you hear that the cranes, for example, have sensors that might be sending information about American ports back to, back to China. So, you know, all of that makes sense. But it does kind of raise this question of where this ends, right? If you assume that you want some to preserve some economic relations, that it's good for, you know, the healthy American economy, that it's probably, you know, probably good for their relationship to have some ballast that comes from an economic relationship. It's hard to know where you stop kind of adding things to that category of national security. Well, this is a good, this is, we're about to wind up here, Dan, to the question I was most excited

to ask you. To set that up, we have one more short clip from Catherine Ty, and then I'll ask you the question after it. I think that there are some people who are surprised by that. Yeah. I think there are people who make. you aren't very read into the challenges of the U.S. China trade and economic relationship. Ben, I know you served in the Obama administration. In that second term of the Obama administration, so 2012 through 2016, I think that it was pretty clear that this relationship, the tensions were really intensifying. Over the course of that time, if you remember, there was that moment where President Obama brings

Xi Jinping aside, at least as it's been reported and says, hey, we know. what you guys are doing with respect to cyber thefts. Yeah, that's, yeah, I remember that well. You need to stop it. And that got reported out and it was commonly known. Yeah. So, you know, I think just on this issue alone, but more broadly, in the economic competitive tensions between the United States and China, I feel like no matter who was going to

take over as U.S. president in 2017, that this relationship was going to be on a very, very different track. Okay. I actually thought that set up something really well, Dan, which is, and what you're saying at the beginning there is that people might be surprised that Biden's gone this foreign terrorist, but they shouldn't be, right? What I want to set up here is you have a really great issue, and I'm not just saying this because I write for a foreign affairs sometimes and your friend of mine. This China issue that is out now, can China remake the world? I really liked it because it surfaced a debate. And to break this down, we're going to nerd out here a bit, Dan.

But for people don't follow this intricately, you know, the U.S. establishment, for lack of a better term, you know, for a long time after the Cold War kind of bet on engagement with China, right? The idea that by engaging China, we'd make them stakeholders in the international system. Perhaps as they plug into the global economy, they might liberalize. And as Catherine Tai was indicating on the economy, but the same is true on national security and politics. By the end of the Obama administration, I think there was a sense of like, wait a second, Xi Jinping is in charge. Their behavior in terms of trade practices is getting more concerning. They're claiming the whole South China Sea. They're becoming more threatened to Taiwan. And there was this kind of decision that everybody made, Dan, like, on mass, like, we need to become hawks on China. Like, we need to correct here. We need a correction. And she names it.

You know, it's starting, it was Trump, but whoever was president 2017 was going to be a harder line on trade, but probably on a bunch of stuff. As you indicated, with Biden, this has been, we, we. talked about the trade piece, it's manifesting the tariffs. There's also export controls trying to choke off inputs to Chinese technology, but also like a far more, I think, containment confrontational approach in terms of building U.S. alliances in Asia-Pacific around the South China Sea, far more of a willingness to arm Taiwan with things that are designed for China contingency. What I like about your foreign affairs issue is you kind of, I think, are intentionally reconsidering this. And not saying it was wrong, but saying, like, here's a variety of different

perspectives. And so you've got the hawkish view from Mike Gallagher and Matt Pottinger. You've got the, you know, I think a kind of view of China's alternative order. You've got the kind of alarmist view that China's part of an axis of bad guys. You've got a really good piece from a friend of ours, Evan Medeiros, about, hey, we're making a mistake here. We're acting like China's getting weaker. we need to realize they're going to be here. They're going to be players, right? And so I just, I wouldn't take this opportunity to ask you to step back. Where do you see this debate?

Like, because I'm, as you know, spoiler might have a piece coming for you where I'm beginning to get alarmed that like the logic of all this. Like you said, we're crashing to each other. There's reasons for it. But I kind of worry about, you know, like in the, when we've already got two words going, like we don't need a third, you know. How do you see the relationship now? And do you see some reconsideration, you know, if you had the engagement approach under Obama and then you had the hawkish approach under Trump and then a Biden version of it, do you think we're due for some other correction? Or how do you see things?

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I go back to a piece not to be overly self-referential here that, you know, now to senior Biden officials, Kirk Campbell, who's the deputy sector of state and kind of the, you know, most prominent kind of Asia hand in the administration and then Eli Raton. who runs Asia policy of the Pentagon wrote for foreign affairs in 2018, where they kind of declared the end of the engagement paradigm. You know, this was something that was happening under Trump, but it was coming from, you know, to people who had been in the Obama administration, been kind of very associated with that engagement model. And, you know, what they argued, I think it's easy to caricature this a little bit, but the basic argument is that, you know, we thought that by engaging with China through the, you know,

90s and aughts and I think into the at least the first part of the Obama administration, we would, you know, we're not necessarily see a, you know, China become just like us, right? A kind of nice, nice democracy. I agree with us everywhere, but it would become, you know, kind of more a different kind of player internationally and a little bit easier to work with. And we'd see, you know, if not democratization exactly, kind of political reform. You know, this was all kind of of a piece with that kind of end of history moment of the 1990s. And once we could know, and it was okay, we could kind of get our heads around China becoming richer and bigger and more powerful in a bigger part of the, you know, kind of global decision making if it was becoming a little bit more, you know, liberal, not in the, the American political sense, but in the, you know, kind of global sense and was kind of a part of the, you know, quote unquote rules-based order that we had, that we had been part of. And when it was no longer becoming more liberal, this really happened, I think, under, under, under,

Xi Jinping that people really woke up to it, that we were seeing a different kind of China that was going to be very nationalist, was actually going to be kind of moving backwards on a lot of the kind of political and economic reform questions that had been going in a different direction before Xi Jinping. We were just dealing with a really, really different kind of actor. And I think we've been trying to figure out exactly how to understand that relationship, you know, really ever since. And Donald Trump, I think, in his, you know, Trumpy way kind of really blew up that paradigm in a way that, you know, if you'd imagine a third Obama term or Hillary Clinton term, it would have, you know, kind of been a little bit more, probably more subtle, right,

it would more of an evolution. But it was happening. And the question now is where we think this should go. And I think what's, you know, illuminating about that piece that you referred to by Matt Podinger and Mike Gallagher and Matt Pottinger was the senior Trump figure on China and, you know, the one who was doing a lot of the actual policy work to make that. change. Mike Gallagher was a Congress where just resigned from Congress, but was leading the China subcommittee, very, very hawkish on China. You know, they're willing to come out and say, when we look at China now, we think we need to make American policy all about changing the nature of the regime in Beijing. And that doesn't mean they want to, you know, launch a war against China,

you know, Iraq 2003 style, but they do say we need to accept a lot of risk and not really care about having a especially functional relationship with the Chinese government and really set out to, you know, weaken its economy and put pressure on it, you know, both in its own region, but also domestically, which is a risky strategy. They kind of say, look, this is a danger, really dangerous strategy, but we have to do it. And I think you have people who are kind of justifiably kind I'm nervous about setting that as our objective, but really struggling to figure out what a different kind of relation looks like. So you have, you know, I'm sympathetic. The Biden administration will say, look, we don't, we want to manage competition. We want to find a way to compete where we need to.

The tariff announcement today is a pretty good example of, you know, a pretty hard edge, hard ed strategy. But we're, you know, we're not going to set out to to change China. Our goal is not to change the fundamental nature of China. But I think it's, it's still a challenge that's out. there for you know all of us in the foreign policy world to try to come up with some framework that will allow american presidents you know again of either party to um address the you know real threats when it comes to both some of the economic practices the things that china is doing in its region um but without going you know all the way to the very very hard line policy that um that gallager and pottinger lay out and so that to me is in some ways the kind of biggest question for american foreign policy we're

I mean, do you have a view on what our objective should be other than the, you know, managed competition as Pat and Jerry Gallagher say, like it is about process, not about outcome? I, yeah, I, and look, I actually thought that as useful. And I think Mike Gallagher is a thoughtful guy, actually. You know, he's more hawkish than I am, but, like, I, you know, it's good for them to lay that baseline down. I mean, my view, Dan, as I've been wrestling with this, is she shenbinginging is a concerning figure. He is pushing the envelope in a lot of ways.

And there is a limit to what can be accomplished to engaging with him. I guess where I am right now is, I think, in the kind of enthusiasm of the competition strategy, right? And like you said, even with the tariffs, like everything is national security, everything is a threat. I worry that there's an unintentional logic that leads to conflict. In other words, I actually think the number one objective, and this is where I might differ with Gallagher and and Pottinger is actually avoiding a war, you know. I mean, that's an objective in its own right. And I think we, in the competition, we may have lost sight of hate. Because even as someone who really cares about Taiwan, the best thing for Taiwan is for there not to be war, too, you know.

And so I think reintroducing that as an objective in the relationship. And I think that's what Biden's kind of been doing with some of the outreach. But then also, as a part of that, I think it's bad at the entirety of the relationship is negative, in part because we have things where we have to work together. You know, there's no norm building around artificial intelligence that excludes China. And so it's kind of weird. We're trying to limit their ability to develop AI, but they're going to develop it. And so we need to really, you know, get under the hope with them in protecting our populations from the excesses of AI. There is no climate solution without China. And if we just spend the next 10 years fighting over critical mineral supply chains,

I think that's incredibly inefficient in dealing with the climate crisis. And so, to me, you know, in addition to avoiding a war, finding ways to begin to thread their block together with ours, you know, on some of these issues like AI and climate, I don't, I know that's not easy. Like a wolf warrior diplomacy makes it a little harder too. But I just, if it's a pendulum that swung very hard in the hawkish direction, I'm not arguing it goes all the way back in the other direction, but I think we need to tick it a little bit back here. Because right now, feels like everything, every, you know, to use a cliche, everything is a nail, so we just keep reaching for the hammer, you know? And I thought your issue, you kind of elevated, okay, let's at least start

thinking about this again, you know? I mean, it's worth saying to the credit of the Biden administration, they're having, I think, this week, the first talks with China on AI. And it's, you know, it's not super high level. It's probably not getting to the kind of really, you know, hardest questions when it comes to the kind of military risks and, you know, the kind of scariest risk when you think about how both the China and the U.S. could be applying AI in a, you know, a war context. But it's that they are beginning to have the to have these talks. And, you know, the fact that we can apply tariffs on the one hand, but also continue to talk about those, you know, big, big shared issues that you lay out, I think is a sign of, you know, step forward in the relationship,

even if, you know, that might be kind of a low bar, but it's an important one. I also think the other, you know, really essential part of this. And this is something that, you know, I know this, I imagine this will resonate with you, but it's the focus of the piece by Liz economy in the issue is that, you know, China has actually done a pretty good job of convincing much of the world, that it's on the side of kind of, you know, constructive evolution. And it's not great for the United States to look like we're the kind of, you know, bitter defenders of an old order that no one's that happy with, while China is the kind of advocate of change that will appeal to, you know, governments and populations in a lot of the world, especially in developing world.

So part of working with China on those solutions is making clear to people in, you know, in the rest of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, even in Europe, that, you know, the U.S. is willing to be a kind of, you know, constructive, cooperative player when it comes to changing the way the international system works. Yeah, that's very well said. I mean, we're going to make a turn here to the other great power. I mean, if the U.S. is kind of the status quo power that's defending an international order that, As you say, I think rightly, a lot of people in the global south in particular don't think works for them. China is kind of building a self-interested global order. The wrecking ball is Russia. Xi Jinping's actually going to be hosting Vladimir Putin in the coming week, so that'll again spotlight the China-Russia relationship.

But I wanted to get your response to just the latest out of Russia and Ukraine. Russia has recently launched two cross-border offensives in the northern Ukrainian region around Kharkiv. President Zelenskyy said they anticipated these attacks. and was sending reinforcements to the region, but it's definitely a troubling sign for Ukraine. According to Politico, the governor of Kharkiv said that more than 6,000 civilians have been evacuated from the region. Russia was able to advance, in part, due to delays in Western military aid, thanks to the dysfunctional U.S. Congress.

And just to add in another bit of not so great news here, there's an analysis done by the New York Times recently that suggested that Ukraine is increasingly failing to stop Russian missiles. This comes from a combination of Ukraine needing more air defense systems and also Russia adapting their tactics. Look, I mean, stepping back, Dan, the bottom line is Russia seems to be on the offensive, not dramatically changing the front line, but if there is change, it's moving in the Russian direction. But also there are these kind of worrying signs that the kind of larger population in Russia combined with like an adaptive military industrial complex might be beginning to punch holes. and some of the Ukrainian defenses. You know, you've been obviously following this issue closely. What do U.S. and Western policymakers need to think about differently in terms of if the

strategy for the last couple of years has been just get as many weapons these guys as possible and kind of hope that what was the Ukrainian counterfeensive works? We're clearly on the other side of that. I mean, where do you see the policy discussion going given these developments? Yeah. So just one thing I would add on on Kharkiv, you know, it was in the fall of 2022 that the Ukrainians, you know, drove the Russians out of, out of Kharkiv. It's, you know, second biggest city, important province in Ukraine. And that was kind of this, you know, amazing moment.

I think that we all watched when it seemed like, you know, the Ukrainians really could, you know, win this war. It was a moment of such incredible hope. So the symbolic, you know, the grim symbolic value. of Kharkiv, once again, being under threat is I just think a kind of, you know, searing reminder of where we are and also just what the cost, it's worth saying again and again, what the cost of the delay and getting that assistance package to Ukraine has been because of, you know, our own dysfunctional politics in the United States. But when you, when you, when you, you know, kind of step back and think about where this war goes from here, I think the kind of key,

there are two big key questions to me and they're related. One is how you kind of show show Vladimir Putin that Ukraine and its backers in both the United States and in Europe are kind of in this for the long haul. So there's, you know, the 60 plus billion dollar assistance package that is starting to flow now is going to be really important to, you know, holding off it will probably be a pretty nasty Russian offensive in the coming months. And it'll be, you know, the kind of first ordered business for Ukrainians. Obviously, we'll be, you know, using that assistance to make sure that they can contain that offense as much as possible. I don't think they'll be able to, you know, hold the line everywhere,

but to, you know, limit Russia's gains in the coming months. But then to really send the signal to Putin and to the Russians that, you know, they can keep spending money on this. They can convert their, you know, entire economy to a war economy. They just changed the defense minister and put in someone who's, you know, much more focused on the kind of economic sustainability of this, which is, you know, a sign of what they're really, gearing up for, but really making, you know, making them see that they can continue to throw,

you know, additional men. They can recruit more prisoners, more, you know, convicted murderers and throw them into Ukraine. And that in the long haul, they're going to be facing the same exact, you know, challenges that they've faced in starting the war, you know, more than two years ago now. And then the kind of harder question, this is, I think, a hard question for supporters of Ukraine and obviously for Ukrainians is whether there's some kind of, you know, negotiating space that you can get to. And we've spent, you know, a lot of time in, in our pages, trying to figure out how you would think about that negotiation, what, you know, you might talk about in terms of neutrality and NATO membership and, you know, kind of how you settle the future of Ukrainian territory that's currently occupied by the Russians.

You know, we don't, we don't run those pieces because we think that's going to happen in time soon. but ultimately, you know, that's going to become a key question. But you can only get there if you make Vladimir Putin and make the Russians understand that there's not going to be any, you know, kind of kind of quick win and there's not going to be any slow win, right? There's that there, this is going to be a war that's going to go on for a long time. And Ukraine's backers are going to be there. And then it's, you know, you have to say that the, you know, the wild card here is

the U.S. election, right? If Donald Trump is elected in November, he said he'll end the war in 24 hours, what he means by that, probably he doesn't even know. I'm not sure. You know, anyone around him really knows. But if you're Putin, you're sitting there, you know, I'd be willing to take the bed and that I'd hold out to November no matter what happens on the battlefield over the coming months and see what you can get out of Trump. So, you know, you really have to get past that and then show that the Ukraine and its backers are there for the long haul. Yeah. Well, we'll see. You're right. The election is, you know, we'll see where we're on the back end of that. One last question for you. In Georgia,

we've been following this law that was recently approved by the parliament, which requires NGOs and media outlets that receive more than 20% of their funding from foreign sources to register as, quote, organizations carrying the interest of a foreign power. Now, this may seem, you know, like just a narrow law, but it's clearly like kind of a copycat of what the Russians have done as a kind of creeping way to shut down civil society. And so rightly, I think people in Georgia see this as a worrying trend towards autocracy and kind of a Russian view of the world. Russia obviously occupies big chunks of Georgia already. We've seen huge protests in the street, pretty inspiring protests in the street and clashes with authorities in some cases.

We're going to have more on this, I think, in the coming weeks. But just what's your reaction? How should people think about this as they're watching it play out then? I think you're right that this is the kind of law that can sound kind of technical and wonky. not the kind of thing that given everything happening in Gaza and Ukraine and U.S.-China relationship that people should be paying attention to do, but it did exactly the kind of thing that in, you know, places from East Asia to, you know, Hungary to Russia itself, it's the kind of law that is both a kind of sign of democratic backsliding and a kind of, you know, means by which autocratic figures really entrenched that kind of democratic backsliding. So it's, you know, extremely worrying for Georgia for that reason and all you, I think, you know, sympathetic to the constraints here on U.S. policymakers, but there are a lot of, you know, denunciations of it from the administration and European governments, but not a lot of response beyond that. It's also just worth remembering that, you know, this is ultimately about how Georgia relates to the rest of Europe. And, you know, that's about EU membership. It's about, you know, how it thinks of itself relating to, you know,

you know, Russia, the kind of, you know, dominant power to its north and, and Europe and the West. And I think, you know, European Union officials have said this is the kind of thing that would make it very hard to make Georgia part of the European Union. I think that's, you know, that in some ways is the real point here. This is a chance for Russia and Russia sympathetic politicians in Georgia to really, you know, keep Georgia in its fear rather than giving it a chance to aspire to kind of European membership. and being part of the West. And that's ultimately what Ukraine is about, right? That we talk a lot about NATO, but it's really about whether, you know, Ukraine is more kind of, you know, European and

Western or whether it's, it's in Russia's sphere. So it's very much of a peace with this, this broader conflict. Yeah, no, it's interesting. If you look along the eastern front of what used to be the Soviet Union, right, you got the Baltics in NATO, in Europe. You've got Belarus pretty much, you know, de facto Russian satellite state. Ukraine in a war. Georgia, partial occupied and now teetering. And then, you know, Armenia, Azerbaijan. I mean, it's, it's an interesting mix of fault lines. Well, look, Dan, thanks so much for joining us. Covered a lot of ground. I really loved catching up with you. People should check out your book and definitely check out foreign affairs. Look forward to, you know, continuing the conversation.

Thanks so much, Ben. This was really good to do. All right. If you listen to Pots at the World, Pots of America, you already know the stakes of the 24 election. If you want to get involved, but don't know where to start, join Vote Save America 24, organize or else. And we all know what that or else is. It's not very good. We lived it for four years. All you have to do is sign up, be assigned a team, and get matched with opportunities tailored to you and the causes that you care about. Vote safe America will track how many calls you've made, texts you've sent, doors you've knocked, and shifts you've filled as your team pursues the biggest prize of all, the continuation of American democracy.

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records so many podcast episodes in a week without spiraling into lunacy. Sometimes they do spiral into lunacy, but that's beside the point. If you want the answer to those and more questions, head over to crooked.com slash friends to sign up Now, so Indies elections are currently underway. As we've talked about on the podcast, this is a six-week-long enormous undertaking for the world's largest democracy, although as we'll talk about India's on something of a spectrum like we are when it comes to being a democracy, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of votes are expected to be cast, perhaps up to 10% of the global population will be voting in this election. The elections are now halfway complete, but there's not

any suspense about who's going to win. Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist BJP Party are very much the favorites. We wanted to go in depth on this, the political dynamics in India, the nature of Modi and the BJP today, and what his continued rule will mean for the world, for Indians, for minority groups in India, particularly the very large Muslim minority in India. So there is no human being on earth better position to give us this perspective. Then my very good friend, Rana Iyub, an Indian journalist, a columnist for the Washington Post, a terrific substack that everybody should check out and subscribe to. Rana is joining us from Mumbai.

Rana, it's great to see you. Hey, Ben, good to be back on the show. So, okay, Rana, let's just begin by setting the scene. As I just mentioned, this is an enormous undertaking across many weeks. There are 15 million people just overseeing the voting. what is it like to be in India just during the process of this election? What does it say about kind of India's democratic culture that, you know, despite all the problems that we'll talk about, the largest election in human history is taking place?

Well, then, despite the erosion of democracy that we have been witnessing in India in the last 10 years, elections in India are always this festive occasion where everybody feels like they have a stake in the game and they will be responsible for who comes to power. This election, though, has been a particularly long one. The announcement was made in February and the election results will be announced in June. So the election stretches across seven paces, across three months. So there's a lot that can happen. But this particular election, I think Western commentators have expressed their apprehension.

This will be the last every election for India because we have seen the attack on constitutional bodies, the attack on democratic values in India. But I would begin by saying that there's very little democracy left in this election. Everybody calls this the world's largest democracy and this, you know, and Modi is, I mean, my colleagues will disagree with me, but I can stick my neck out and say that this is, I think Modi will win with a good majority in this election. I've been traveling across India, including Kashmir, Manipur, northeast states of India. This is not a level playing field. This election particularly is not a level playing field because just before the elections, the central agencies arrested key opposition leaders, including Arvind Kejewal, who is seen as a direct

opposition to Prime Minister Marendra Modi. Again, a very cult-like personality is somebody who's been crusading against corruption. Central agencies have been allegedly unleashed against almost every dissenter journalist opposition leaders. We have a mainstream media which is, it's basically its job is to relay Modi's speeches more so. But one of the crucial elements of this election, which I thought, I mean, we all knew it is going to be a lackless election,

but it has been made very interesting that Prime Minister Modi has, you know, we know him as this Hindu nationalist nationalist who has always cast the Muslims of India, the 200 million strong Muslim population of India as the enemy. There have been dog missiles in the past. This entire career as a Hindu nationalist leader from Gujarat, where he was the chief minister when a thousand Muslims were killed, to this day has been about Muslims. But this particular election, and we have already crossed the fourth stage, the fourth phase

of election, every speech by Prime Minister Modi and his council of ministers starts with Muslims and ends with Muslims. So the ruling party has put out a video of the BJP that says that if you vote for the Congress party, your sustenance and everything that belongs to you will go to the average Muslim in the country. The Prime Minister has referred to Muslims as infiltrators, as child producing factories,

as people who have intruded in India, as people who are plunderers. He has never used this language in the past. He might have used dog missiles against Muslims in his days as a chief minister of Gujarat, but he has never been more direct in his attack on Muslims the way he has been this time around. He has said that if the opposition comes to power,

the cricket team will have more Muslims. If the opposition, the Congress party comes to power, then your right to the sources, your electoral right, your places of worship, everything goes to Muslims. So this isn't a level playing field because everything is skewed heavily in favor of Narendra Modi. And the biggest fear is that he is going to fulfill the ambition of Hindu nationalists in India.

If he gets a third term in power, many fear that he's going to change the constitution of the country because the one thing that Hindu nationalist really detest is the idea of democracy, is the idea of secularism. And I think that could be altered if Modi gets a third term in power. So I definitely want to come back to that. But first, just on the election itself, you know, the opposition's been somewhat fractured. The Congress party, which governed in you for so long, has struggled under Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the party. Although, you know, he seemed to kind of find some footing in recent years. What is your sense of the state of the opposition? What chance do you think they have in this election? And the one thing I wanted to ask about that is some of the analysis I saw Rana suggested that Modi was dialing up this anti-Muslim rhetoric in recent days and weeks, in part because perhaps he was worried that the BJP was underperforming in parts of the country.

And so he's turning out his voters with this kind of bloodthirsty rhetoric. I mean, how do you assess the opposition's chances and how would you describe for people who don't follow this closely, kind of what the state of the Congress? Party is under Rahul Gandhi? You know, to be fair, I mean, I've also been a critic of the way the opposition has conducted itself over the last 10 years. But to be fair to the Indian opposition, especially with the Congress party, with the odds stag heavily against them and not just the Congress party, but other the India Alliance in which

there's an umbrella group of opposition parties that have come together with each one of their leaders being arrested or being co-opted. You know, if some opposition leader has a corruption case and he joins the BJ, immediately his sins are washed. So the way the or so heavily stacked against them, they don't have the finances, they don't have the money power. But still, I think in the last two weeks, the Congress party with the way it has put this advertisement,

the way Rahul Gandhi has been going all about the Adani Ambani, the crony capitalism in India, the way he is consistently attacking unemployment in India. He is not ceding ground to Modi wants this entire election to be polarized on the basis of Hindus and Muslims. But to give credit to the, opposition they have been very consistent in talking about unemployment and inflation. But having said that, and I agree that Prime Minister Modi is talking this, this Hindu-Muslim

polarization, this anti-Muslim bigotry because there is a sense of disenchantment on the ground, that there are people who genuinely do not have jobs, that there are this genuine anger on the ground because there is inflation. But at the end of the day, Modi is also speaking a language which that is acceptable to a larger section of the Indian Republic. This is an average Hindu voter who has been made to feel like a victim in his own country. He's been told that ideas like democracy are being weaponized against the average Hindu. And he has found takers. For instance, Modi's inauguration of the Ram temple in January, and January 2022,

and a Ram temple which was built over a demolished mosque. And I had just left India and I came back around the Republic Day. And I have seen, I've never seen that site in India where on Republic Day, we normally have national flags in every Indian household. This time we had the saffron flag everywhere. And it's ironic that there are certain Muslim families who decided to post the national flag in the tri-color. And they were heckled for not posting the saffron flag. So there is this public wave and there are these well-being, including this well-being

people who believe that Modi is finally realizing the dream of a Hindu India. And this is not like a small population. I have friends who are Ivy League grads and we are on WhatsApp groups and, you know, some of them have these well-meaning conversations where they say that, you know, Muslims are so many countries. We Hindus have just one Hindu nation. Why can't Prime Minister Modi lead us to that? So I think that it is, I mean, yes, Modi is dialing up because yes, yes, he has failed to deliver

on unemployment. Yes, there is a great deal of propaganda, but all the propaganda has managed to stick with the average indeed. Because he has successfully managed to cast the 200 million Muslim as the enemy of the Hindu success or Hindu progress in India. You know, constantly dialing up, the Mughal invasion, constantly dialing up about, you know, talking about issues like, for instance, just about a week ago, the prime minister's internal, his own department, his own ministry, has released a population report, which is so skewed, where he says that Muslim population is increasing and Hindu population is decreasing. Now, by the time a report like that is fact-checked, that report has reached the average Indian, and they actually genuinely believe that this is the case, and we need somebody like Modi to stop this kind of Muslim implosion in India.

And that's what Modi's campaign has been about. And I don't think, I mean, I have spoken to people on the ground and these are people who are suffering and these are people I have met who say that, oh, they have not had jobs and they have, you know, they have taken loans. So they're unable to repay their loans. And then in the same breath, some of them have told me, but at the end of the day, he has got Lord Ram back in India. He has got Lord Ram the respectability by building this Hindu temple, which liberals have have not allowed us to have enough. own country. So he has in a way weaponized that and he has successfully used that in this election. A lot of my colleagues believe that Ram Temple is not an issue, that Hindu Muslim is not an issue. I think it's a very, very crucial issue with selection. And that's the only way Modi knows how to win elections. If you see his entire career trajectory from 2002 when he was a Gujarat chiefness until this day, the only way he has won an election is by bringing in the Muslim card. When 9-11 terror attacks happen.

I mean, now, of course, Modi does not come on television TV. It's just not taken a single press conference in 10 years. And I remember when 9-11 happened, he went on a television debate on any TV, where he cherry-picked verses from the Quran and alluded that Muslims are terrorists and Muslims are terrorist inclinations. So this is what Modi's politics is all about. And this is why he was elected to power, not despite it. He was elected to power because of the Hindu nationalist that he is.

and to kind of fulfill this dream of a Hindu India. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting how it's a Hindu nationalist flavor of a kind of ethno-nationalism we're seeing around the world, right? And make India great again. You know, it's, but I mean, for people who are interested, you know, you did a great podcast with me and Missing America on the background, but essentially the BJP, the Hindu Nationalist Party, has roots in kind of pre-World War II, literally fascism, the RSS, the origin group, that led to the BJP, espousing a Hindu nationalist vision for the country, rather than the kind of pluralistic vision that Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru and India's founding generation chose. So here we are at this kind of decisive point where Modi is consolidated power. He looks like he's poised to win another significant majority.

looking ahead to a third Modi term, and we'll start inside of India, and then the next question, I'll go global. But what is this scenario that, what do you think a third Modi term will be like? How far could he go in kind of transforming India into a Hindu national state? What does that mean for Indian democracy? What does it mean for the 200 million Muslim minority population inside of India? I mean, with the 200 million Muslim population, just, I mean, literally on the day of Eid, on the day of Ramadan, on the day Ramadan began in India, India notified the Citizenship Act. Now, this act gives citizenship to all persecuted minorities in Asia except Muslims. Now, this, when you combine it with the National Register of Citizens, Muslims will have to prove their citizenship in India, and which also means that poor Muslims,

on the borders of, in the bordering villages of Bangladesh, who might not have their papers, there are detention camps being built for them. I mean, Chief Minister of those states has clearly said that we are going to throw these migrants and these termites to where they belong. These termites is, of course, a dog vessel for Muslims. So I think it is going to be a very, very difficult time for the average Indian Muslim. A lot of Muslims that I'm talking to, I mean, the privilege. Muslims of course want to leave India because they have the privilege of leaving it there

because they believe it's unbearable to stay in the country right now. But what happens to, I mean, amongst the 200 million Muslim population in India, a majority of them are in, you know, are from the backward class and caste, right? They can't afford to leave the country. And the number of lynchings that have happened, hate crimes against Muslims that have taken place in the last 10 years of the Modi government, hate speeches against Muslims, live streaming of hate crimes. Muslims are being lynched on the acquisition of eating beef and that act is live streamed on YouTube and you know, you have Muslim, you have BJP candidates for this election as we are voting, going in front of a mosque and and in a way demonstrating that they're going to target it again.

I think this election is not just a challenge for the average Indian Muslim and it's also a challenge for civil society in India. You know, V-Dem, Freedom House have already downgraded India from a democracy to an electoral autocracy. World Press Freedom Index, we are on the 161st position. Civil society has almost been decimated. You know, most of the civil society groups have been, I mean, very, very Victor Orbanish, called as Soros-funded publications,

which are out there to discredit India. Some of India's finest student rights activists are behind bars under terror charges. So you have effectively silenced the people who would have made a difference, have acted as bulwarks against this authoritarianism. And on the ground, you have people who are Modi supporters who might not even be Modi supporters who believe that Modi has increased India's stature globally with Joe Biden giving him, you know,

the state honor and the world kind of feeding him. I believe that a third term for Modi would mean that it's, it's going to give him a blank check to basically do anything that he wants. with the Constitution, with the institutions, with the opposition, with journalists, with the centres, with absolutely no pushback from the international community because he has tested waters. I mean, we have seen over the last couple of months what happened with the class national killing of Sikh separators in America. He knows that there's going to be no pushback. And in absence of any pressure, and he has already cast all human rights group as enemies of the country,

So I think the world's largest democracy is going to be a democracy only on paper. I think we will still have elections, you know, the way Putin does elections in Russia. We will still continue to have elections, but it's going to be just elections on paper. Even this particular election, I think we have the Election Commission of India, which is supposed to moderate and implement the model code of conduct. But the Prime Minister calling Muslims child-producing factories at an election rally and the Election Commission of India looks the other way. There are voters, Muslim voters, who are not being allowed to cast their vote and the Election Commission does not interfere. The Election Commission, on the contrary, sends notices to the opposition leaders.

So almost every constitutional body that is meant to protect the Indian democracy has been decimated. So I can only fear the worst in the third term. how much more worse can it get? But I feel like we are looking at the worst ever for Indian history in the third term of Modi. I want to ask you about this kind of global perspective, right? Because you're familiar with it. Essentially, I'll go through a few different external viewpoints of India that essentially try to see a different Modi from the outside, right?

You have, I think, a global kind of business community markets that see India. as some potential alternative to China in terms of places to make investments and places, well, to make money or to make things. Then you have a global Indian diaspora, many of whom are, you know, small D democratic type people who are proud of Modi and proud of the way in which he's, you know, become a global figure and India's prestige is up. And then lastly, as you said, you have the United States which is very much courted Modi. President Biden had a state visit for him. It came out, frankly, that during that state visit,

there was a plot uncovered to assassinate a sick person in the United States. So you see all this projection onto Modi. He's a Democrat. He's in the small D-democratic team. He's part of our China strategy or this is a place to do business. or were Indian Americans and we're proud of Modi's stature in the world. What is your, how do you respond to that kind of view from the outside? I know you've come to Washington, you've met with U.S. government officials.

Like, what is your message when you try to talk to those constituencies? I mean, everybody that I talk to, including people in the White House and the State Department, over the last couple of years, I think they have been very, very clear and categoric that they are alarmed at the attack on the Muslim minorities, attack on democratic institutions. So the US State Department will please it its religious freedom report just before Modi goes to the US for a state visit. So it's not that America is less aware, but at the end of the day, strategic relationships triumph all these shared values and conversations that you talk about democracy.

At the end of the day, that's what the, that's what Biden administration, that's, I mean, that's what, I mean, That's what Gaza has in a way, in a way, revealed what, at the end of the day, human rights and democracy can be Trump when it comes to strategic interests. And, but what really is, you know, you're talking about creating a bulwark against China, you know, a democratic counterweight to China. But at the end of the day, what you're not realizing is that in the process, you're creating another Xi Jinping or Putin right now. Because this leader has the same tendencies, but you're not extending the same criticism that you do to put energy to Modi because you know at this point of time the United States needs Modi but as far as the diaspora is

concerned I think the diaspora has been one of Modi's biggest supporters even during the 2000 to Gujarat three years after which the United States did not even a visa to enter the country it was a diaspora which of course made a very significant troll it has been drumming up crowds of Modi all over in the US but I don't think the US the US can really tell India what to do and I mean but to roll out the red carpet the way it did with Modi despite being aware i mean a Washington Post report that came out last week recently revealed that the US government reached out to India and told them alerted them about the Washington Post investigation um i feel that this US regime um has been pretty hypocritical uh when it comes to dealing with

India and and Modi has two different projections. He has two different faces. When he goes abroad, he goes to the United Nations, he boasts, he prostrates before Gandhi. He will talk about democracy. I think the only question he has ever answered on international soil was in this joint press conference with Biden where he repeated the word democracy about 30 times in one answer. Right? I mean, it was, it was, I mean, it's the only time you get to see Modi use the word democracy.

And it's the only time you get to see Modi talk about Gandhi. because back home, his assassins are being celebrated. So it's... Yeah, Gandhi's assassins, yeah. Yeah, it is at this point of time, it is not... It is not the Gandhi ideology or the Nehru ideology with kind of Modi espouses in the West. At this point of time, it is the ideology of Nathuram Korsi

who assassinated the Mahatma, which is running the country. And the U.S. is well aware of this. I don't need to tell the U.S. what's happening in India. Nobody needs to tell the U.S. what's happening in India. There are the diplomats here who are being, you know, who are well aware about you know about about about the situation here uh i i do believe that uh america president joe biden has been and his administration has been pretty hypocritical when it comes to dealing with prime mr mody in a way enabled him uh in a way enabled him

and he believes that now he has a blank check because the u.s needs him vis-vis russia and china he has a blank check to go about and committing any forms of excesses that he might want to. I mean, I was watching Jay Shankar's interview yesterday. I think he spoke about that we might not have a traditional alliance with the US, but I sat down and convinced why it was important for us to buy Russian oil, and they were convinced. So these are the conversations that Jay Shankar is having. He's trying to convince the world that, you know, Indian foreign policy has managed to teach America what it feels like to have allies. And you know that better more than anybody is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't think, Ben, that this government, the Biden administration is any different from the Obama administration. I could be wrong here, but, you know, when he visited the United States for the first time in 2014, this was right after, it was the first time he was entering the United States after he was barred from entering the country, and everybody knew his track the court in human rights.

He has always used the U.S. card, that acceptability in the U.S., back home in the country, to who the vote does. Yeah. No, you're right. You know, we've talked about this over the years. I mean, the Obama administration, like the Biden administration, you know, wanted other things from Modi, wanted, you know, the Paris climate deal, wanted support for China policy.

I mean, Obama did, you know, speak more about democratic values in India, and Joe Biden hasn't been to India. But your point is absolutely correct. I do want to ask you, speaking of American hypocrisy, about God. You've been quite, you know, I've spoken about Gaza. And for people who haven't followed this, there's an interesting kind of bromance that over the years between Modi and Netanyahu, you know, Gaza, pro-Palestinian or just protest of the Israeli war in Gaza and India have been, you know, met with crackdowns at times. We, Modi was the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel back in 2017. after October 7th, when Israel revoked work permits from a significant number of Palestinians,

they kind of asked for Indian workers to come replace them. So there's this affinity between Modi and Netanyahu. I just wanted to ask you about that relationship and, you know, what the dynamic is like in terms of the Indian government's approach to Gaza and kind of what you're seeing as someone who's obviously concerned about, the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, how does Gaza kind of play out in Indian politics? So there are two projections again here. You know, when Jashenko talks about Gaza, when Indian representatives talk about Gaza at the UN,

they talk about a two-state solution. They support, they vote for Palestinian right to be elected to be a permanent member of the UN. But at the same time, on 7th of October, when, you know, on the day of the attack, The B.J.P. put out a tweet that said that this could have happened in India, preach Modi years. So we have awarded what is happening in Israel. We have avoided that from happening to Indian Hindus. So Indian Hindu nationalists have a very strange affiliation and strange love for Zionism, especially because their ideological, you know, their ideological inspiration have been the Nazis. The RSS draws its ideological support from the Nazis.

So you have a lot of these Twitter handles on, you know, Hindu nationalist Twitter handles, which are often followed by the prime minister who have Hitler as a display picture. And we're talking about teaching Palestinians their face and what Netanyahu is doing is the right thing to do. So I think it is, it stems from this, you know, this desire. of the supremacist's desire that a lot of Hindu nationalists believe that Netanyahu, Vibh Netanyahu is probably the only man who has figured how to show Muslims their place and how to establish supremacy in their country. I mean, Indians, Indians, Indian Hindu nationalists are fan-boys of Bibi Netanyahu. On the day of October 7 happened the way Israel has been

founding people in Gaza. The worst kind of hate against people of Gaza has been emanating from Indian Twitter. As far as India, as the Modi Netanyahu romance is concerned, India is the biggest importer of Israeli military weapons and surveillance. And it was the hardest report to reason ago that we are the biggest importers of military equipment and surveillance. So I think in that sense, there is a bit of bonhomie, there's quite a bit of a bonhomie between India and and Israel on an unofficial level. On an official level, on an official level, of course it is India's stated position that we endorse the two state policy. We care for people in Gaza, but at the end of the day, the Hindu nationalist project

really believes in Libby Netanyahu's idea of supremacy, because this Indian ethno nationalist project that we are practicing here, it derives its inspiration from the state of Israel, which is why you see this kind of bromance between the two leaders, which is why in fact all the leaders, many leaders of Modi might not be saying it, but leaders of the BJP have publicly endorsed what Netanyahu is doing, election videos in this election have shown that what is happening Israel could happen in India if Modi is not elected to power. So that's the kind of dynamic that both the Zionist and the Hindu national share when it comes to supremacy. With that, I mean, that is really interesting. There's so much happening there, there

there's so many layers there, right? Because India has this kind of post-colonial solidarity over the years with the Palestinian cause, but then now this kind of supremacist solidarity and anti-Muslim. That's fascinating. All right, I want to ask you one last question, which is about journalism. You are, I think people, you know, people listening to this, I'm sure, are wondering, wow, what's it like to be a journalist in India who's critical of the Modi government, who's a Muslim. You've also been an outspoken proponent of kind of press freedom globally. I think really one of the leading global journalists along with people like Maria Rae and the Philippines on behalf of the rights of journalism. Just I want to ask you, what is it like being a journalist in India today?

And how do you kind of connect your own continued insistence on your work and being in India with the kind of value of press freedom that is under attack globally? Well, just to give you an anecdote when the elections began the day, a week before the Indian elections, I got seven income tax notices and a demand notice for $300,000. And I wasn't the only one. I reached out to a couple of people, a couple of other editors and also received these notices. So basically, between fighting my defamation cases, my income tax cases, my money laundering cases, by the time I come back, there's hardly any energy left for doing the journalism. But having said that, I think I'm far more privileged. I've just returned from Kashmir. The largest Muslim majority state in India,

which is the most militarized zone in the world. And I spoke to journalists there. Kashmiri journalists have been detained, jailed, their passports impounded for just reporting the truth. And Indian, I mean, Indian journalism is, I think Indian mainstream journalism is as good as dead. We have 100,000 newspapers. We have about 400 news channels.

But the kind of attack that Indian press has seen over the last 10 years is unprecedented. Two months ago, the enforcement direct trade attacked or rated at least 40 journalists and the head of the news organization was slapped money laundering charges. Journalists in Kashmirah slab with terrorism charges. And more importantly, I think there's a distinction that I want to make here that earlier,

I mean, we have all been writing for international publications. But never before was there this pressure that if I write for an international publication, I'm bringing this repute to India. I can write an Indian publication. but I should not write critical pieces about in international publications because Modi has successfully managed to conflate any criticism of Modi with a criticism of India. Like any article in the New York Times of the Washington Post is seen as an attack on the sovereignty of India. Foreign journalists, foreign correspondents in India have issued so many statements.

ABC journalists in India was forced to leave last week following a documentary that she read in Niger. A friend journalist was lived in India for 23 years, was forced to leave last year, despite having lived here for two decades of her life. I think it's just a challenge right now, especially for so many of us who write for international publications, because the country has largely started seeing us as journalists who are selling India's sovereignty to the Western white world. And in India, we don't have the platforms to tell those stories. but kudos to a lot of a young journalist who are using YouTube, TikTok, Instagram reels, like journalists in Gaza to tell their stories. So I think in that sense, there is a pushback.

But in effect, I feel that mainstream journalism houses have been the biggest letdown. When we are not fighting cases, we are being discredited on social media. Largely, when I go out on the field and I tell people when I'm reporting, and I tell them I'm from the Washington Post, they don't want to talk to me, because they see me as the enemy of the state. So you're either discrediting me with multiple cases, assaulting me because of a Muslim journalist, you have labeled me as a Muslim who has an agenda against India,

and then you have these cases. So I still think I'm in a very privileged position as compared to the many journalists in India who are stagnating behind bars with absolutely little help in their case. So in that sense, I am privileged, but again, it's a big price to pay for so many of us or continuing to do what should be normal. None of us have to be really courageous to do what we're doing right now, right? It's a very basic journalism

that we're attempting to do. But that, I think, is impossible. Well, that's a very powerful note to end on, Rana. We really appreciate, I mean, I think that, however this period of history ends up, the essential thing that people could have done throughout it is to tell the truth and to report on what's happening and to not succumb to,

all the disinformation and misinformation. You're an island of objective reality in a sea of other information, let's just say. So people should read your stuff in the Washington Post and substack. You're on social media platforms. And thanks so much for joining us and shedding so much light on what's happening there. Thank you so much, Ben, for having me as always. Thanks to Ron Ayyub for her perspective. Thanks again to Dan Kurtz-Falen and to Ambassador Tai, the U.S. Trade rep. And thank you for listening. We'll see you next week. If you want to get ad freak episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends.

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