Pod Save the World - Brexit breakdown

Episode Date: January 23, 2019

First, Tommy and Ben talk with David Lammy, a member of parliament from the UK, about the slow-rolling disaster that is Brexit. Then they discuss Trump's announcement of a second meeting with Kim Jong Un, recent Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in Syria, and the latest from Afghanistan. 

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. This is Tommy Vitor. It is great to be back talking with you, as always. Good to be back in the office. We have a two-part show for you today. First, Ben and I talk with the member of parliament named David Lammy about Brexit. It is an ongoing rolling disaster, much like our own government shutdown. He tries to help us understand how they got themselves in this position to begin with what's happening with Theresa May's plan to manage. Brexit and what will come next when things likely fail. Then Ben and I talk through a lot of the world's news. First, there's the announcement from President Trump that he's going to have a second summit with Kim Jong-un in February. We discussed whether that's a good idea, what the downside risk is to letting the North Koreans drag this out and how these talks came to be. Then we talk about the fact that the Israelis are now striking Iranian targets in Syria. Seems a little risky, but there's a lot of complexities here that are worth walking through. We talk about Brett McGurks, the former head of the Global ISIS Coalition,

he wrote an op-ed about ISIS and Syria and the state have played there. And then finally, we conclude with Afghanistan. There was a pretty serious Taliban attack on an intelligence base in Wardak province that, you know, I think speaks to the country's ability to stand up on its own after we're gone and, you know, just the state of play with the P-Tock there. So it's a great show. We've covered a lot of ground today. And here's the conversation with David Lammy.

On the line from the UK is David Lammy. He's a member of Parliament in the United Kingdom and a member of the Labor Party and a recurring guest. Best British Friend of the Pub. On POTS, that's right. David, thank you again for joining us. Thank you. It's great. Thank you.

So, David, you and I talked in the fall when, you know, the car was kind of careening towards the edge of the cliff, and this outcome seemed somewhat preordained. But I do think it's worth just for some of our listeners, let's go quickly all the way back to the beginning here. And I think it's worth it for you to just explain one more time, both why the Brexit referendum happened and also what that Brexit referendum. mandated, right? Because that anticipates this question that we'll get to of whether or not there could be another referendum, right? So what are the origins of that first referendum under David Cameron? The best way to understand the fact that we had the first referendum is to think about the Tea Party. So we had our version of the Tea Party, and that was UKIP, who were kind of biting away at the traditional conservative party in the UK. And they were biting away on issues primarily around

immigration. And it was kind of like an independence movement. The idea that the UK should be independent of the European Union. And somehow we were giving the European Union lots of money, pooling our sovereignty with all the 27 countries in the European Union. We, should get that money back and that we should go back in time, if you like, to a kind of empire period where trade deals with the rest of the work on the EU. But the real issue was immigration. David Cameron, foolishly, in order to assuage this tendency on his right flank, promised them a referendum. He assumed that the referendum would be a no-brainer, that it would be easy. The campaign was very poor. And we lost that were never, ever deliverable. That we would

have 40 trade deals on day one, that it would be easy to leave the European Union, that they would be better deal because we're such an important country. It would be beneficial to them. And so we find ourselves now in 2019 with a really poor deal that may have striked, maybe you could get in the circumbole for the UK in so many ways. It's not clear we'd be able to strike our independent trade deals. It causes tremendous problems on the Irish border. We would be very little say a bit of a mess. And for that reason, it was rejected in Parliament. Let me just say, the rejection was massive, 230 votes, unprecedented in the history of the British Parliament. very surprisingly, Theresa May still in office because, frankly, she's the only person willing to continue to do this.

And, you know, we're in a real pickle in the United Kingdom. I mean, that's the best way to put it. Yes, I mean, you talked about how Teresa's made Brexit proposal lost by 230 votes. I think it was long, technical, complicated. But I am really curious about this question of how her Brexit deal could go down so overwhelmingly. but she can also survive a vote of no confidence. Is that because nobody wants the job of Prime Minister until Brexit is resolved? That's right.

Theresa May will not be leading the Conservative Party into the next general. And most people think she's a very poor campaigner and a bit of a technocrat. But the truth is she has been negotiating for us. There are lots of people who want her job, but they want to wait until they get Brexit out the way and then present themselves as some kind of savior. I think the other reason is a technical reason, and that is that you might remember that David Cameron was in government for a large part with the liberal Democrats, a smaller party. He created a coalition to actually form a government, and he changed the rules when they had

a small majority, and for those reasons, Theresa May is managing to retain power. But she's incredibly weak. And the most important thing is she is at the hard right wing of her party. People like Boris Johnson, who many of your listeners will know, Jacobs-Rees-Mogg, who if you don't know, you should Google, because he's a very strange character and do with some very strange views. But the right wing of her party, she's pandering to them, they're effectively keeping her in power.

She's trying to strike a deal across the Conservative Party. The problem with Brexit is it's not a party political issue. There are differences of opinion on exiting the European Union across the political divide. And therefore, she should have set out to strike a deal, a sort of consensus deal. And she may have got there. But instead, she's trying to strike a very sort of hard right deal. This is a Brexit. I described it as that you would lead to a very deregulated United Kingdom.

It would break up the NHS. I have no doubt if we try and strike a trade deal with the United States. states, there'll be a lot of organizations that want to get their hands on the NHS, and we would become kind of a very deregulated sort of workers' rights for environmental standards. There's lots of reasons why this deal and this Brexit that they're set on is a very, very bad idea. Yeah. Well, David, so now we're entering the endgame here, right? You've got this March 29th deadline to exit the European Union. And, you know, you're going to. the courses of action, none of them seem particularly good. There's a hard Brexit, right,

where you leave with no deal, huge disruptions to the UK economy, huge uncertainty about the future relationship with Europe, you know, potentially a trillion dollars kind of leaving the economy there. That's one way to go. Another that you have called for is to somehow execute a second vote, a people's vote, essentially on both the plan to leave. and potentially on the question of Brexit itself. And, you know, a third way is to kind of try to muddle through on another deal. As near as I can tell, you know, May hasn't been able to come up with much that is that different from what she had originally proposed. The EU doesn't want to give her much more. You know, Jeremy Corbyn doesn't want to negotiate unless he has an assurance

that there won't be a no-deal Brexit. I mean, I know that nobody there can predict what's going to happen, but how would you describe, I guess, the possible scenarios here between now and March 29th? That's a big question. Look, the first thing to say is that the no-deal Brexit, it's extraordinary that there are politicians that seem that. It's incredibly worrying. Many of them are very wealthy and, frankly, would make quite a lot of money out of a no-deal

Brexit. Some of them already investing in Ireland and moving their money abroad, you know, very well-known Brexiters. James Dyson, a well-known Brexeter businessman, has just announced that he's moving his HQ to Singapore. A no-deal Brexit is catastrophic for the UK. It would see our economy shrink across the world. And of course, it would be detrimental to the European economy and it would have some effect on the global economy. Yet it is still in play. There is no, there is a strong view in Parliament that we cannot have a no deal Brexit. So I think that next week we will see Parliament attempt to make a no deal Brexit. Theresa May wants to keep it on the table because she wants to keep this hard right of her party in play. But I think we will see

that blocked. There are also big attempts in the UK for Parliament to us and be in the driving seat of these negotiations or the way that things should deal. And if you like, all of those attempts are really about creating a soft Brexit. And what that means effectively is a relationship with a single market. A customs union so that we can trade without tariff across our borders and we haven't got the problems in Ireland. That's what Parliament's attempting to do. But I think that we will end up.

in a place I'm pushing for it ultimately where we have to give this back to the British people. And that's because politics is stuck and is broken. When the politicians can't reach a consensus, they can't actually legislate for this and get it through Parliament, the only way out of it is to have a fresh election to see if you can get a new government where the people have decisively gone in one direction and given, if you like, the government of the day and instruction, or to go with a referendum. And the truth is, there were so many promises made in 2016 fantasy about what Brexit is. This time around the British people, if they're granted that second referendum, that people's vote, will know what they're voting

for. They will either vote for Theresa May's deal, or they'll vote to remain in the European Union, or some suggest that we should also put no deal paper. And so I think we will end up in that place because ultimately the British people need to have a final say. They've seen the mess that this created. Are they sure they want to do that? And of course, I will be campaigning hard for us to remain in the European Union. Now, look, let me be clear.

That does not mean the status quo. The European Union, too, needs reform. Britain should be there are issues in Europe about spending and money and how money is spent. There are issues around free movement of people across Europe, of course. These are issues that Britain can lead on, but it's in our economic interest to remain in the European Union. The only thing I can say for cert, I do think that the clock ticking to the 29th of May, and we will see the end date extended. So Article 50, the...

The acts that comes down that makes us leave the European Union, I suspect will get extended through to the summer. That's good. And that will give us more time to argue and to fight, legislate and create the verandum on whatever deal emerges. David, we know it's late over there. So to ask you one last question. You may have noticed that our government over here in the U.S. is currently shut down. You guys aren't shooting yourself as directly in the face as we are. but I imagine that the effort to deal with Brexit, to manage the negotiations with the EU,

it's just been all-consuming. Can you talk about some of the things that aren't getting done, some of the opportunity costs of having to focus on justice for two plus years? Look, the key connecting thread here is, and the big question is, is the Anglo-American world, is populism, particularly on the right of creating an atmosphere that's toxic, where there's a lot of blustly, the real issues of the day, how do we deal with automation in our economy, how do we give people jobs where jobs are no longer,

how do we educate people and fix our education systems fairly and with equity across our countries? How do we deal with health care and the fact that we're living longer? And, you know, we need to continue to find cures for diseases, and give people access to primary health care. These issues are the central issues of our time. And, of course, alongside that, there are still groups in our society

that are discriminated against, that find themselves at the back of the queue. How do we address those issues with equity? Those are the central issues. They're not getting discussed. And actually, I think also social media seems to be driving further and further division. and who is gaining whilst this happens in the Anglo-American world.

Well, there are certain individuals in the global arena, people like Vladimir Putin that are gaining tremendously, and some suggest, are behind some of the discord in our country, and it would seem have co-conspirators with them aiding and abetting this because they're making money on the side. that's the central issue. It's happening in the UK. And what I would say to friends in America is at least Americans are having the debates about who's pulling the strings. Here in the UK, we're not having an honest discussion about how our referenda in 2016 was affected, who was involved, who was engaged. Where's our Mueller inquiry looking into these issues in the United Kingdom? I'm afraid we've got some real problems to deal with this and face it down. It has to be faced down just as it was, frankly, in the early part of the 20th century. Well, look, David, we really appreciate this. And I think we may need to hear from you again.

But I will say that, you know, you and I have talked about this. And some of those people who've made common cause of Putin are in both of our countries, notably Donald Trump and Nigel Farage and I would add Boris Johnson to that list. But those people who are looking for forceful, progressive voices should definitely check out David, who's really emerged as a leader in the Labor Party in pushing for a second referendum. I think I'll say David, you know, has moved the Labor Party more forcefully in that direction. Anyone looking for a real concise yet robust denunciation of Theresa May's Brexit deal should check out the speech that David gave in Parliament in opposition to that deal. So again, glad we could continue this conversation about both Brexit and what you just touched upon,

which is the need for kind of progresses to come together across borders, frankly, to push back on some of these right-wing national trends. And yeah, we'll have you on a call probably, David, as this Brexit drama continues. Well, that's very kind of you. And look, Ben, I was simply trying to replicate some of the best of your speeches for the great man. So I've really honored that you said that. I'm pleased to speak to you guys and keep you up to date as best as I can. We've really got to stay connected. It's the same themes across the Atlantic with slightly different actors.

Just slightly. Yes, just slightly. Well, thank you so much for doing the show. We really appreciate it. And best of luck dealing with your mess. We'll try to clean up ours over here. Yeah, we'll see who gets cleaned up faster. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Take care, David. Ben, David Lammy is very cool. Yeah, I love that guy. I was thinking hearing, when he mentioned the tea party, I was like, the Boston Tea Party? That thing really came full circle for us over here in the U.S. Hoisted by our own pittard. Well, I do hope they figure this out because sometimes you look at Wall Street

and people investing in the U.S. and jobs. And I think about how much political risk doesn't feel like it's baked into the financial market between the government and the U.S. being shut down for nearly a month and the UK sort of slowly walking to this disaster, it feels ominous to say the least. Yeah, there's like three things happening, all of which Trump either initiated or supports, the China trade war, the government shut down, and Brexit, that if those three things kind of continue to care in the wrong direction, we are in for a serious recession. I mean, the IMF is already cutting global growth predictions.

Consumer confidence is now at the lowest point in any time the Trump presidency. There are indicators that are blinking in our faces. that we are ignoring. And these are all, it's amazing to talk to David. These are all self-inflicted wounds. Yeah. And as here, just like Trump knows Mitch McConnell, he says to know the shutdown isn't working.

They can't climb down off the cliff because they're so scared of their own right-wing base. It's like the same thing for May. Like she knows this isn't working. And yet the whole country is just kind of stuck in place because she's more afraid of, you know, Boris Johnson than she is of doing the right thing. It's not a lot of political courage on either side of the pond.

Well, let's get to some different news. North Korea, President Trump just announced a second summit with Kim Jong-un in February of this year. There's some speculation that it might be in Vietnam. It would be different from the Singapore summit last time. The announcement that this second meeting will happen came after a visit by North Korea's top nuclear negotiator, where he apparently spent an hour and a half with Trump in the Oval Office, also met with Mike Pompeo. the negotiations since the Singapore summit have been stalled because as everyone predicted, the North wants sanctions relief first and we want them to dismantle their nuclear weapons program

first. So, I mean, I guess, again, I remain happy that we're talking. I remain happy that we're not tweeting about fire and fury. But like, do you think it's time for another summit? No. I have to say, they've actually accomplished far less than I even expected at this point. I mean, I thought that the North would do some symbolic things, right? They might blow up some nuclear sites and, you know, ship some stuff out of the country, but not really get rid of their nuclear weapons or missiles.

And they hadn't even really done that. I hope that all this press that gave Trump kind of this clean shot at having this summit appear historic, even though nothing was agreed to, uses the fact of this summit to highlight how much nothing has gotten done. You know, they're not giving up their nuclear weapons. Trump said that he'd solved this problem. Nothing's changed. They have nuclear weapons. They have missiles, right? And the only thing that's changes he's now praising Kim Jong-un, giving him legitimacy at home,

probably having the sanctions regime fray a bit. I am also struck Tommy by the difference in, you know, when we had the Iran negotiations, it was kind of like a constant process, right, with experts sitting together and meeting and cabinet-level people, John Kerry, Ernie Moniz, our Secretary of Energy, meeting constantly with Iranian counterparts, grinding it out. This is just what is happening here? You know, like we don't see anything. Presumably there's some secret discussions happening, but there's no appearance that there's kind of this, the work that needs to be done for a complex nuclear negotiation, to how do they dismantle their nuclear infrastructure, how do they submit to an inspections and monitoring regime?

none of that is apparent. And Trump seems to like the big, splashy show. And again, for him to sit in the Oval Office for an hour and a half with some kind of North Korean hack, I mean, my God, I'm trying to imagine if Barack Obama met with, and this will be the one time I do this on this podcast. But if Barack Obama met with like the Iranian nuclear negotiator in the White House, having gotten nothing in return for an hour and a half, it just seems like the North Koreans can flatter Trump and give him these occasional spectacles. and get away with essentially keeping their nuclear weapons and missiles. Again, I think the Trump people will try to, you know, hold up some symbolic concessions by the North at this meeting, you know, something about a commitment to denuclearize, maybe some show for the international press where they blow up a nuclear facility. But my strong suspicion is they won't give up their nuclear weapons or their missiles. They'll want sanctions relief. They'll want international legitimacy. And the North Koreans will get it because they've been winning these negotiations.

Well, so to your point, just days after they announced the second summit, a think tank report identified another secret North Korean missile base 160 miles northwest of Seoul. So this is one of roughly 20 undeclared missile bases. So it seems like not only are they not dismantling their program, it's actually getting worse, which to me was always part of the risk of these negotiations, which is North Koreans can stall for time and actually strengthen their program and increase their hand in the leverage. Yeah, and again, we have to condition ourselves, you know, as with many things, Trump, this is not being covered normally. Like a second summit with Kim Jong-un would be a huge story normally. It barely broke through in the government shutdown. again, if we were looking at this in a normal circumstance, this has really been a terribly run circumstance where we've just been giving up all these things in North Korea in terms of legitimizing Kim Jong-un, praising him, heaping praise on him for very little, if anything, in return. You know, my fear is that the North Koreans can see the end goal two years from now, like a lot of countries.

And they're playing for a scenario where Trump, after he leaves office, they've got. a nuclear deterrent. They've got their nuclear weapons in place. They've got their missile program in place. De facto been acknowledged, recognized by the United States. The sanctions regime is kind of unraveled. And the new U.S. president has a new reality, which is acceptance of the North Korea as a nuclear weapon state. That's clearly the game they're playing. Everybody can see this. And, you know, the problem is it's so hard to evaluate what the Trump administration's actual play is. Like, could you define what they think successes, Tommy? Like, you have any idea from, from Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump, like what they're trying to achieve in this negotiation?

I sincerely believe that for Trump, it's headlines. He tweeted that the problem has been solved. Yeah. It's deeply frustrating. And like, we should just be clear. I mean, again, glad there are negotiations. But the massive challenge of North Korea with sitting on 60 nuclear weapons developing an ICBM that can deliver a warhead on the United States changes the calculus for everyone in the region,

for Japan, for South Korea, for us. I mean, it's a destabilizing event. And I'll be honest. I think it would be hard, if not impossible, for any administration to achieve through negotiations the full and complete elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons program. What I do think you could achieve is a lot more than what Trump has. Right. You know, if you held out the legitimization of the summit, if you squeezed the sanctions harder, if you were savour with the Chinese and the other countries in the region, the capacity to at least get inspectors into these facilities and to at least see a. rollback of North Korea's capabilities and to at least not be granting them, you know, this kind of

get out of jail free pass in terms of international opinion that Trump is, you could see a scenario where you might not completely eliminate this threat, but you could much more credibly roll it back and said, as you say, Trump is not only not doing that, there's indications that the North is advancing their programs while going through this charade. Yeah. So let's sort of peer under the hood of the negotiations a little bit. So the Wall Street Journal reported that the North Korea talks were in part made possible because there have been secret intelligence agency to intelligence agency talks between the U.S. and North Korea for years. So some of this reportedly happened during the Obama years. So you and I have to be elliptical about talking about specifics.

But I do think it's interesting because you have been involved in highly secret sensitive negotiations with the Cubans. You were in every single meeting about negotiations regarding the Iran deal. Can you talk about how common it is that intelligence channels are the negotiations or that there's this private channel and why it makes sense for intel folk to talk rather than say the State Department, the military, the vice president? Yeah, I think there are a number of reasons. I mean, one is when there are two countries that are total antagonists and don't have diplomatic relations, you know, we don't have an embassy in Pyongyang, for instance, the act of having a meeting in public or between our diplomats is a big deal and usually signals something. It signals a change in the relationship. So the ability to be able to talk discreetly out of sight allows you to explore whether you can make progress. So, for instance, when I was talking to Cubans, we kept those negotiations secret.

Because we didn't want to have to deal with pressure from within our two systems. We didn't want to deal with their Communist Party hardliners criticizing talking to the United States or our congressional hardliners criticizing that we were talking. So it just allows you an amount of discretion. I think another thing that's important is in systems like North Korea, they kind of take most seriously intelligence and security channels. They're a police state, right? So the people who run their system are their intelligence people. So they assume that that's who they should be talking to on our side. And again, I don't think it reveals much, you know, in some cases in the journal.

We used intelligence channels with the North Koreans in the Obama administrations. We established them. You know, just to take a public example, we sent Jim Clapper to North Korea to help get an American who is detained in North Korea out of prison. And I don't think it's saying much beyond that to say that for some of these other issues, around Americans detained in North Korea, often intelligence channels presented one way of communicating. I, for instance, was not surprised that the Trump channel grew out of a CIA discussion, you know, when Mike Pompeo was at the CIA. You know, that was in line, frankly, with the channels that had been established, or one of them at least. I do think, however, you use the secret channel

to set up a negotiation. Now, I mean, everybody knows there's a negotiation. Yep. And, And like I said, what I don't see on the Trump side is like, where's the expert team? Where are the nuclear experts and the sanctions experts? And we had a team on the Iran nuclear negotiations that had like dozens of people supporting it. And nerds who knew about nuclear physics and nerds who knew about, you know, how to enforce sanctions and diplomats who could sit there for 12 hours in a room with the Iranians talking in circles, right? And all that effort was necessary to get to a deal. Here, I think they've made use of the intelligence channel, but I haven't seen it evolve into something bigger. Yeah, I haven't either. There's a great quote from our old friend, Danny Russell, who is an NSC official. He worked at the State Department on Asia. She's during the administration. He said, generally speaking, countries like North Korea, the foreign ministry has limited influence. You need to be able to speak to the guys with the guns.

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. But he also makes the case that, you know, so there's a counterpoint to it being a good idea to have these intel to intel channels, which is that those. are likely to be some of the worst actors in some of these systems. They're likely to care the least about human rights. They spy on their own people. They spy on others. But Danny points out in the journal story that in the event of a crisis, it's great to know who to call. You don't want to be calling the North Korean switchboard if there's a nuclear standoff. So establishing these things early makes a lot of sense. Yeah, no, it's smart. And he's exactly right. It's kind of, if there's something that blows up, if there's an incident out the Korean Peninsula, you know, you don't want to be calling the North Korean ambassador at the UN or something. You want to be calling the North Korean ambassador at the UN or something.

You want to be calling one of the guys with guns. I will say part of what makes people nervous as negotiations evolve is our allies don't see the intelligence channel. So when we're in the Iran negotiations, once we move that into a diplomatic process instead of a secret process, you know, everybody is at the table. Our allies are at the table, the French, the British, Germans. We briefed the Israelis on everything that happened even when they didn't like it. And I think, I think, and based on some of my own conversations, too, that the South Koreans and particularly, the Japanese feel a little bit unsure that they know what's happening in these talks, right? That we have this intelligence channel and all these secret conversations and are we selling them out,

you know? I mean, is Trump talking about pulling our troops out of South Korea? Are we not talking about the things that the Japanese care about? And so another risk of the intelligence channel is it's so opaque that allies who have a real stake in the conversation feel shut out of it. Yeah. The Israelis announced this week that they had hit a series of Iran-linked targets in Syria, including a training camp, a munition storage site, and something at the Damascus airport. I don't know what exactly it was. They also reportedly carried out a daytime air raid in Syria. And then I guess a rocket was fired back at Israel by Iranian forces. There's actually this wild video. There's a person skiing in Israel in the Golan Heights. And you can see they have a GoPro on or something. And you can see.

see the missile careening in, then you can see the Israeli Iron Dome missile defense system fire up and intercept the thing in midair. It's nuts. Anyway, the context basically... First of all, would you go skiing in the Golan Heights timing? I didn't know that was an option. There's a lot of places to go. I mean, yeah, I hadn't thought about it. Just imagine your GoPro just picks up an Iron Dome lunch. It is a good reminder of the very different context for talking about these issues. We live over here versus the safety of California. But I digress. stepping back, right? Iran has been backing Assad from the very beginning. He's been sending troops and material to Syria from day one. The Israelis see Iranian troops in Syria as a red line that they

will stop. I'd note that Pompeo, Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State and John Bolton, National Security Advisor, they agree with the Israelis. It's not clear where Trump is on this issue. He changes day to day. So, I mean, I don't know that I have a question, but this seems like a Tinderbox. Yeah, yeah. Well, again, looking back on our administration, I don't think this is, again, revealing anything beyond what's been public, but the Israelis would occasionally hit things in Syria while we were in office. And usually what they would hit is if there was a particular weapons shipment, say, going to Hezbollah, that they didn't like.

They was going to markedly improve Hezbollah's capabilities. They would just take it out. And I had a great deal of respect for the kind of relentless professionalism of the Israeli military in saying, like, hey, we've made clear to you, you can't access certain weapons systems if we see that we'll take it out. This does feel like a market escalation from that, though. And again, I'm not privy to all the information. But now when you're talking about any Iranian presence in Syria, well, there's been an Iranian presence in Syria since, you know, forever. I mean, we're not forever, but certainly for a long, for decades, right? I mean, in other

words, predating the current Syrian Civil War. Yes. There was an Iranian presence in Syria in terms of the fact that they basically sponsored Assad, they sponsored Hezbollah. I'm sure they had kind of IRGC advisors. That presence did go up because a lot of Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders and fighters literally fought on the ground with Assad's forces and with Hezbollah. But if the new red line for Israel is any kind of Iranian personnel or presence inside of Syria, that is an escalation from what they've previously. you know, hit as a trigger for military action. I don't necessarily fully know that how far they're

willing to take that. In other words, you know, and look, that may be what they want, some ambiguity here. You know, I think they're on solid ground and saying we want to make sure that any Iranian threat to us that could lead to, you know, substantial increases in Hezbollah's capabilities on our border needs to be dealt with. But it's tricky if you start to say, well, no Iranian president. or influence in Syria because there is going to be Iranian presence and influence in Syria as long as Assad is in power, right? And we're back in the question of, are you going to remove Assad? I think the tinderbox element of this is we've talked on this pod, including last week, about the risks of getting into war with Iran. And you could kind of see this is one of those

trigger points, right? That if the Israelis keep hitting things in southern Syria and the Iranians do something in response, you know, they fire something in Israel, Hezbollah, kidnaps, you know, some Israeli soldiers like they've done in the past. Israel responds. The Iranians respond, again, like you could see this escalate. So I think everybody needs to watch this space in particular and to try to understand what the Israeli objectives are and what the U.S. support for those objectives is. Because if John Bolton and Mike Pompeo want to find their way into a conflict of Iran,

they might be encouraging Israel to take these actions. And they might be, you know, examining options to. get the U.S. more involved in what could become a regional conflict. And so this is this balance between, you know, what is Israel's legitimate security interest versus what is the risk of this careening into a conflict that would not be in people's interests? Yeah, I mean, the other country that's taken notice is Russia. They essentially warned the Israelis to stop firing into Syria or they said they'll supply them with even more weapons. And we're not talking about machine guns.

I mean, what the Russians recently gave Syria was something called the S-300 air defense system, which is basically the most sophisticated that I'm aware of, surface-to-air missile system that exists, which means like if our F-35s flew over Syria, for example, the S-300 would provide an enormous threat to those airplanes. Or Israeli planes. And look, this is one of these things where, you know, Netanyahu's been kind of going and trying to cozy up to Putin over the years. But, I mean, and you've even seen the Saudis say, well, maybe, you know, we need to be dealing Putin.

But, like, let's be clear on which side of this conflict in the region Putin's on. Like, you know, Russia has been aligned with Syria and Iran, you know. And this is another case where there's kind of the rhetoric of conflict. And John Bolton and Mike Pompeo saying, we're going to eliminate every vestige of Iranian influence in Syria, which was a good talking point from them when Barack Obama was in office and they wanted to criticize it. But now they're in office. What do you mean? How are you going to eliminate? You're going to kill all of them? Sure, I would like that too. Like, let's be very clear. It'd be great. It'd be great if Bashar al-Sav was not in power. But what are you actually going to do? Are you going to go to war with Iran and Syria and maybe even Russia to eliminate the Iranian presence in Syria? And this is where the kind of tough guy rhetoric of foreign policy needs reality. And we don't know whether we're going to actually follow the logic of the tough. by rhetoric, which would lead a Sudan war with Iran, or whether this is, you know, a lot of posturing on behalf of Nanyahu and the U.S. government.

So sticking with Syria, last week, a suicide bomber killed 15 people in Syria, including four Americans. You know, this is part of what people, I think, largely assume, will be ongoing guerrilla warfare tactics used by ISIS that will essentially be the new normal since they lost all their territory, but are still there, the ISIS fighters. Relatedly, Brett McGirk, who was like managing the global anti-ISIS coalition until he resigned shortly after General Mattis resigned as Secretary of Defense. He wrote an op-ed for the post where he talked about how ISIS hasn't been defeated, like Trump said. He talked about how we're still taking airstrikes. Trump also apparently claimed the Saudi government would pay to rebuild Syria,

and that's not true. The Saudis have denied it. So, I mean, basically it's a mess. And we've talked about this before, but I don't know the answer to solve Syria. But it does seem like if we are taking out our own guys piecemeal, we're going to increase the risk to them, increase the risk to our partner. So I'm just not sure what we're doing. Again, still don't know what we're doing. We don't know. And like, nobody knows more about this than Brett McGirk. He was literally the man responsible for running the least the civilian side of the coalition against ISIS for the last couple of years. And he thinks that, you know, we've made a tragic mess of this. I think that, look, Trump's rhetoric,

First of all, is it not helpful? By declaring that ISIS is defeated, you are basically inviting ISIS to do something to show that they're not defeated, right? And it's not to draw direct causation to what took place in that attack. But if you want to analyze kind of what provokes terrorist organizations to lash out, it would be the President of the United States standing up and saying that they've been defeated. And there are these guys that are saying, well, no, we're not. I'm going to show you that we're not. So one is, you don't use rhetoric like this that is

intended for a domestic political audience, but makes our troops less safe because it's putting a big bullseye on them. It's giving ISIS every incentive to demonstrate that they're not defeated. That's the first thing, right? The second thing here is this is also why

you don't kind of whirl the waters and announce that people are living in 30 days, and then and, you know, signal that, well, maybe, you know, they'll take a little bit longer, but they're definitely getting out. You know, you kind of want to do this if you're drawing down in a way that doesn't kind of create a bigger target on troops, but has kind of a natural handoff to the other forces that are on the ground there, right?

So over time, you reduce the number of Americans serving there, and the forces that you've been training and that have been your partners are moving more into the forefront, and you execute a withdrawal that way, again, without trying to land on an aircraft carrier or without going out and saying that we've defeated this enemy. I think the third thing that you have to recognize is that ISIS was the Iraqi insurgency. That's who they were, right? They changed their name. They didn't exist until we invaded Iraq, okay? And then the worst part of the Sunni insurgency essentially in Iraq became ISIS. Point being, they know how to fight. They this way, right? This is actually more normal for them than holding territory. They sucked at

holding territory, and the coalition that we built gradually took all that territory away from them. But they're very comfortable in the world of car bombs and IEDs and terrorist attacks and restaurants, right? That's what they did for a decade in Iraq. So I think we should expect them to be doing that. And that's all the more reason, as we're leaving, to have a much more aggressive effort to be pumping assistance into these areas, to be pursuing kind of UN-supported peace talks to try to resolve the broader conflict in Syria, to do all the types of things that the Trump administration has neglected. If you're transitioning from a military-led policy to something that is sustainable, you need foreign assistance, you need diplomats, you need all the elements of American

foreign policy that he doesn't have any interest in. You need people like Brett McGirt. Yes, yes, to organize a big, vast coalition with trusted partners. I just finished this book called A Pretext for War by an author named James Bamford. And it's like essentially it starts with 9-11 and it goes through the invasion and the way the intelligence agency was abused. One thing I did not realize, one failure in Iraq that I didn't realize was that they had these like acre upon acre wide ammo dumps that we just raced pass on the way to Baghdad and never secured. So all of the munitions you would need to fuel an insurgency for a decade, probably until now, was just literally left in sheds that were not even locked in some cases. Yeah, yeah. This is not the most well-planned and executed.

I mean, never mind dismissing the entire Iraqi army so as to create the actual insurgency that then fought our people. I mean, it's pretty astonishing. Let me ask you had. It's enraging, right? And I saw Chris Hayes tweet this. Like every now and then you have to stop and remind yourself that the people who did this are still walking around. They paid no reputational damage. Like, you know, Condi Rice is like a welcome surrogate anywhere in the country.

John Bolton. John Bolton is a national security advisor. You know, I mean, like the scale of the incompetence and the catastrophic strategic and human error of invading Iraq has really not led to any kind of cleansing. in our foreign policy and our foreign policy establishment in the upper ranks of the Republican Party. And the failure to do that, I think, has a serious cost for us. Trump was not wrong about that. Last topic, Afghanistan. So over the weekend, the Taliban infiltrated an intelligence base in Wardock province in Afghanistan.

It killed up to 50 folks working there and wounded dozens more. This shocked a lot of people in the military observers because these intel bases and teams tend to be more well. trained, hardened, professional. It came just hours before the Taliban announced that they had resumed to peace talks with the United States. So there is, you know, sort of like what you mentioned earlier, there is a pattern where there's often very acute fighting right before negotiation. You know, you really want to threaten the person you're negotiating with before you go in.

But, I mean, one, I don't know if this bodes very well for the government's ability to hold territory in Afghanistan once we leave. And President Trump, again, has announced that. 7,000 of the 14,000 U.S. service members in Afghanistan will be leaving on some timetable TBD. But I wonder if this will prove it serve as a reality check, if it'll leave them there longer, or like, how it will impact negotiations. But it's just, you know, it's a reminder that these wars are ongoing and very hot. Yeah. And, you know, it's a reminder that there's never going to be in Syria or Afghanistan, you know, a perfect solution.

because I should add, like despite the tragedy of that attack in Syria, that's not a reason to stay forever, right? That's a reason to not boast. That's a reason to not kind of provoke ISIS in your rhetoric and to try to do things in a smart, deliberate way. However, in Syria but also in Afghanistan, talking about Afghanistan now, the Taliban's not going to surrender. They're not, right? And the reality is that they actually, they hold territory in Afghanistan today. And they did, at every part of the Afghan war, they held some piece of Afghanistan. A lot?

Yeah. And so they're not going to surrender that in negotiations. And sometimes the thinking among, you know, people who work in Afghanistan and the government had been the Taliban has to see that we're going to stay. A resolve. Or resolve in order to surrender. Well, the Taliban lives there. You know, they're not going to leave.

They're in Afghanistan. And it may just be. that our presence is not something that is going to make them stop fighting. It's going to incentivize them to keep fighting as long as we're there, right? And that the legitimacy of the Afghan government in the eyes of the Afghan people is not helped by us being there in some parts of the country. It's probably set back. And so I think we have to be disciplined in making our own choices about what is in our national security interests, right?

It is not in our national security interest, I believe, to stay in Afghanistan forever, just because there's still some Taliban there. And just because the Taliban tragically has the capacity to conduct attacks from time to time, that in a weird way is giving the Taliban the capacity to keep us there forever, right? That if any time we withdraw, if the Taliban does anything,

that's a rationale for us to stay. We should be able to say, it's time for us to stop spending this much money, it's time for us to stop sacrificing lives. There are people fighting in Afghanistan who were born literally after, that war started, Americans, right? It's time to bring this to a close and to support an Afghan process to have a negotiation about the future of their own country with the Taliban. And by the way,

that should be, you know, Afghans talking to each other, not necessarily us negotiating with the Taliban, but the Afghan government negotiating the Taliban. I think it shows that, look, the reality is that Afghanistan is going to continue to be a violent place, whether we're there or not. And therefore, we need to make decisions about what we think is in our interest. And I'm glad that people like Elizabeth Warren and others have been unabashed and saying, look, I believe it's in our interest to leave. And we continue to arm the Afghan security forces and to provide them advice and support.

And we may need some kind of counterterrorism capacity to take a shot at any terrorist training camps are set up. But we're not going to be the business of trying to achieve an unachievable objective in Afghanistan. Agreed. That's all I got. Any other stories that you're grinding your gears? No, I mean.

Mike Pompeo for Senate? Yeah. Well, you know, it would be interesting, it's actually, it's going to be an interesting test case, right? So Pompeo, Secretary of State, they're trying to recruit him to run for Pat Roberts? No. Is it Pat Roberts? It's Pat Roberts.

Okay, got it. The Senate seat in Kansas. You probably thought he wasn't still in the Senate because he's so old. But there's like a bunch of senators like that, you know. But I, because if you're Pompeo, right, like this is the way to pull the rip cord and land softly in the Senate and, you know, be there for 10 or 20 years. Yep. Whereas if you stick it out to the end of the Trump presidency, two years from now, you leave

and kind of disgrace. You're doing celebrity big brother with the fucking mooch, okay? that's your future. You're on, or you're like, you're in the afternoon Fox hour. You're not even like prime time. Yeah, you're Sean Spicer. You're trying to get a streaming show on, you know, on the Fox News subscription service. Yeah, it says it can be a good test case of like whether people, like the most diehard Trump people,

like Pompeo, you know, take the lifeboat instead of, you know, sticking on the Titanic. I mean. Cut and run, buddy. Yeah. That's what I would do. I would say, I would say so. I will also add, Tommy, I, um, I, I didn't mention this. last time I was in Burma, but I was thinking about the shutdown.

There are diplomats there that I know who were saying that, like, they have to curtail their activities. Their budgets are squeezed, right? So travel that they had in the country, suddenly, you know, everybody, but the ambassador, that gets a lot harder for. We're not seeing, like, the secondary effects. Like, it's not as important as people not getting food stamps and people not being able to pay rent. But I think, you know, from the perspective of our audience, this is cutting back our diplomats capacity, you know, an already hauled out state department is on a shoestring now.

And typical diplomatic business is not getting done. So again, in the unseen world of how this shutdown is impacting other aspects of our government, I do think one thing that is not on the front pages is our ability to conduct diplomacy at a time when there's a lot going on is curtail. And a whole bunch of DHS people can't prevent cyber attacks and TSA. They're all calling in sick. I mean, we are substantially increasing the risk we all face just as Americans every day. And can you imagine if there's like a terrorist attack or something? God help us. Any way to tie that back to this shutdown?

Pray to God it does not happen. All right, well, that's what we got for this week. Thanks again to David Lammy. Yep. He is smarter than me and I appreciate the knowledge. Use that articulate Brit thing going. It's, yeah. The accent makes everything sound cool.

It does. It helps. It helps. I mean, let's face it. All right, guys, thanks again. Bye.