Pod Save the World - Coronavirus and oil shocks rock the global economy

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

Coronavirus update and explanation of why an oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia is rocking the global economy. More crackdowns in Saudi Arabia, why Putin might be the Russian President for life, more holes in the US/Taliban troop withdrawal plan, and hopeful progress for abortion rights in Argentina. Then Zarlasht Halaimzai from the Refugee Trauma Initiative joins to offer an Afghan perspective on Trump’s troop withdrawal deal with the Taliban.

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben and I have a giant piece of plastic between us because that of an abundance of caution. Social distancing. We're socially distancing. We're not actually joking about the coronavirus. It's fucking terrifying. Yes. Here we are. It's not a hoax. Yeah. So that's a big focus of the show today. We're also going to talk about the oil price wars between the Saudis and OPEC and Russia because that is having a massive impact on our economy. also we're going to talk about some of the major crackdowns in Saudi Arabia from the great reformer Mohammed bin Salman, whether or not Vladimir Putin may be the leader for life, the so-called peace deal with the Taliban, a North Korea update, and then a good news story about progress for abortion rights in Argentina. And then our guest today is Zarlash Halimzai. She's the co-founder and director of the Refugee Atama Initiative. And she's going to offer an Afghan perspective on this alleged peace deal that the U.S. government signed with the Taliban.

Ben. Yeah, we spend a lot of time talking about Afghanistan. Be good to have an Afghan voice weighing in. And I think you'll hear the complexity of both wanting peace, but being very nervous about what's coming next. Yeah, incredibly difficult situation. Two quick things before we get to the show. First of all, if you have not yet, check out our new podcast, to Hollow Shame. It is hilarious. If you want hilarious people telling you fun, quirky, weird stories from sports history, this is the show for you. It's perfect for a commute. It's like 20 minutes. Check it out. It's fantastic. Also, Ben, The Senate picture is starting to come into focus.

Cal Cunningham is our candidate in North Carolina. Steve Bullock jumped into the race in Montana, so things are looking better and better. The primaries aren't all over. So if you want to donate today to get these folks money tomorrow, go to Votesaveamerica.com slash get Mitch. All right. I'd like to get Mitch.

Get, let's get them. Mitch sucks. All right, let's do the coronavirus. So some quick updates. in the U.S., the coronavirus, the story is just moving faster than ever. So we're up to 800 cases and 27 deaths. Today, right before we started recording, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a containment area in New Rochelle, New York, right in Westchester. So that's right near the city.

It's going to involve deploying the National Guard, which I'm sure won't freak out people at all. Colleges and universities are spending classes, or at least in-person classes. Boston canceled the St. Patrick's Day Parade. So you know this shit is getting serious. We also know that individuals with the coronavirus attended these major conferences in D.C. Like A-PAC and the conservative CPAC conference, it sounds like a thing you take when you get the coronavirus for a few days. So some members of Congress have now announced that they came in contact with an infected person. So this virus got vaulted into the elite Republican circles really fast.

There are questions if Mike Pence was around someone who was infected. Ted Cruz is self-quarantining, which is probably a bummer for people who have to live with Ted Cruz. In Italy, it's really bad. Italy is up to 10,000 infections. The entire country is now under quarantine. You can travel for work, medical visits, or to buy food, but that is it. It is truly dire, not even close to under control. In the European Union, the virus is in every country in the EU, and there's seemingly no coordinated response. In China and South Korea's a little different. In China, Xi Jinping, the president, visited Wuhan China this week. Obviously, that's where the coronavirus originated. He's trying to signal that the outbreak is so. slowing and is under control. In South Korea, there were only 131 cases today, which is March 10th. That's compared to 909 on February 29th. So that suggests that the testing and the social distancing steps they're taking or helping. So Ben, there's been all this amazing reporting now on the way

the White House and his team bungled the response effort. They range from staffers being too scared to tell Trump about bad news to the CDC trying to create its own version. of the coronavirus test rather than using one that had been like ready to go by the Germans at the WHO. There's also bad interagency coordination. But you know, you've lived through several of these now. Did anything jump at you as like particularly egregious? Well, I think there's a connective thread to all the mistakes, which is the way in which you deal with something like this is to be prepared and to act very aggressively and forcefully out of the gate. And we've talked before about how they were not prepared because they had literally dismantled the infrastructure to deal with this. And

including the office at the White House had focused on global pandemics. And then clearly, they did not move out of the gate because Trump wanted to minimize this. And so the government reflected Trump's political interests of not wanting to take this too seriously or raise alarm bells. I think what jumps out to me, you know, really are a couple things. One, the complete, like, failure to try to mount any international coordination in the response, right? Where's the G20? Yeah, I mean, the thing here is that, like, so when a bowl, happen. And again, a bull is not as contagious as this, but the way in which we dealt with the threat

to Americans was by trying to and ultimately stamping it out in West Africa, you know, going to where it is and trying to contain the disease there and building a health infrastructure around where there already is contagion and to try to prevent that from coming to the United States. And again, granted, that is harder with a disease like this, but I'm not aware of any effort to really mount some robust international coordination. I mean, I know we send some people to China here, but really, where is, you know, if we were in office, Tommy, if we were in our old jobs,

President Obama would be getting on like a video conference with the leaders of UK, France, Germany, Italy, to talk through what's a coordinated U.S.-European response. He'd be talking to the Chinese leaders. There's no sense of a pace of trying to contain this disease where it's originated from or where it's, spreading. Ron Clay made this point. Like, Republicans, rightly, are often very focused on combating terrorists overseas before they get home. Why can't we get that kind of approach to migrate to

climate change or the pandemic response? Why is that so hard? And because it's what we did in Ebola. And the reason there were so few U.S. cases is because we stopped the disease where it was. Again, harder with this kind of disease. But then that leads to the second point, which is I literally cannot get my mind around this testing problem. I mean, it is, it is. It is either the most grossly incompetent thing or it's this kind of willful desire to not, as Trump would say, inflate the numbers, you know, inflate by actually accurately reporting numbers. If you look at South Korea, they deployed an enormous amount of testing, which allowed them to identify where this was, pursue social distancing, and shrink the outbreak.

10,000 a day. Right now, we're in a much larger country with many more people who are, very connected to the global economy, the numbers that we are seeing are clearly a fraction of the actual cases. I'm not trying to be alarmist here. It's just the facts and science suggest that we don't know how many cases are because we're just not testing at all. I mean, except in some very extreme cases and some very limited areas. And so this combination of the failure to mount any coordinated international response to this and then a failure to prioritize testing, those things together are the problem because the lack of international response limits your capacity to stop it from coming here,

and then the lack of testing limits your ability to identify and try to isolate and prevent spread of the disease from where it is. I mean, it's a national disgrace that this is where we are. And again, the only explanation for it, I think, is the obvious one, which is that Trump wanted to minimize this thing. and so the government acted in line with Trump's wishes. Yeah, I mean, this is a small thing, but the CDC wasn't even updating statistics over the weekend. They just, like, shut down. How is that possible? I mean, every weekend, you and I and Michael and Jordan talk about topics for this show,

and we try to steer away from Trump, but he pulls us back in. In a situation like this, like, he is the problem. So let's talk about disinformation. I mean, right now, it's self-evident that this is a virus of global concern, and it's truly frightening. But this disinformation campaign is ongoing. I mean, Trump is reportedly telling donors that de-virus is no big deal. He spent the weekend golfing, going to fundraisers and attending his son's girlfriend's birthday party at Marlago.

He's still shaking hands at rallies. So there's just no urgency. There's no effort to light a fire under his team by being at the White House. Today, on Tuesday, he was asked if he'd been tested. And he said, I don't think it's a big deal. I feel extremely good. So great messaging from a guy squarely in the demographic that's mostly likely to die from the coronavirus. Trump announced that he has a hunch that the death rate is lower

than the official count. Fox News is out there claiming that Democrats are spreading hysteria, that we're trying to tank the markets. And it got so bad that Tucker Carlson, of all people, went on a show on Monday night to criticize those playing down the severity of the threat. So Ben, like, what I think really worries me in my darkest moments is that we're a year away more from a vaccine. So the only way to combat the spread is what you were just talking about, collective action. social distancing. But if half the country is like, eh, not a big deal, Trump's shaking hands, he doesn't give a shit. How is that going to happen? Yeah, and this is the most terrifying piece of this whole puzzle here, because, you know, there's kind of a joke that you'd see,

you know, on the left in our circles, right, for the last few years of like every now and then, what's it like to go watch a few hours of Fox News and inhabit some alternate reality? And, you know, it's one thing when you're talking about the Ukraine calls a perfect call or, you know, all this kind of disinformation about things. involving Trump. But here we are. And the fact that they're applying the same mentality, that coronavirus seems to be bad for Trump, so therefore coronavirus is a hoax. Literally things that people are saying that Democrats are treating this like a hoax or we're all inflating this, when real people are dying. I mean, it's science. It's not like a debate. You know,

there's not two sides of this debate. And when you have the President of the United States, like it or not, more Americans are going to see what that person is doing than any other American. You know, that's the person who's on the news. That's the person who's in their lives. That's the person who's in their social media feeds no matter who it is. When Barack Obama was president during Ebola, for instance, we thought very carefully about what he did. And every day, basically, when there was a panic about this, he was out there surrounded by public health experts giving very fact-based information. Frankly, it wasn't good politics for us. It was in the middle of a run-up to the mid-term elections, and the Republicans were, were demagoguing this and fear mongering it. But Obama put his head down and just did this.

And he tried to model certain behaviors. And so, for instance, when it became clear that we had contained this, we wanted to show that people who had Ebola didn't have to be signatized. And he had a nurse who treated an Ebola patient into the Oval Office and hugged her. And that was kind of the signal to the country. It's okay to begin to move beyond this. Trump is modeling the worst behavior. He's not social distancing.

He's downplaying the threat. And when Fox News is like bragging about how people are still shaking hands, like let's be very clear about what they're doing. If you're communicating that it's okay to engage in certain social behavior that puts you a greater risk, like going into crowds and shaking hands, people might die because of that. And I'm not trying to be like some panic alarmist. It's a fact that people engaging in certain behavior

who are at-risk populations, older people, who by the way are more likely to be Fox News. viewers, if they're being told that, like, you can own the libs by, like, shaking hands, like, like, you're going to get the coronavirus to own the libs? Like, it's tragic. I will never get over the way that man, the president of the United States, talked about the unbelievably brave men and women from America and other places who went abroad to try to fight Ebola. I mean, there was a 60 minutes piece back at the time that was one of the most harrowing, emotional, brave things I've ever seen in my life. And he's, like, demagoguing those

people and telling them they're not allowed back in the country. And then, you know, your point on Fox, we've had Fox on in our office for a week just because it's been really interesting. And Media Matters did a super cut of Obama's Fox News Ebola coverage versus their current coronavirus coverage. And it is dear leader North Korea propaganda shit. You have to check it out. And they don't need to like criticize Trump, like just put health experts on. He didn't make the virus. I'm not blaming him. I'm not saying that Fox like needs to to be piling on Trump here, but give your viewers like the facts about what this disease is, and it just shows you how distorted our, not just politics, but our country has been by this massive disinformation

propaganda machinery that has Fox at its center that essentially people would rather watch content that validates their political worldview than get information that is necessary to keep them safe. Just think about that. Like, we have a lot of work to do as a country to climb out of this. It's not just a coronavirus, but a situation where that is the prevailing dynamic. Yeah. So last piece of this is the economic piece. So the stock market was off nearly 20% from its highs in February.

I think it vaulted back up five percent or so today, Tuesday, based probably on speculation about what Trump might do in terms of a stimulus package. Part of this market sell-off is tied to the oil price issue that we're going to talk about next. but the majority is driven from the coronavirus panic or the fear that people aren't going to buy stuff or do things. There's talk of a payroll tax cut, maybe more stimulus. But my question is, like, how does a payroll tax cut or any kind of stimulus work if people are quarantined, right? Because I'm not going to go out and spend if I'm stuck in my house or if I'm nervous to go to a movie theater, right? So Trump clearly only cares about the economic piece of the crisis, but he doesn't seem to get how inextricably tied they are.

I mean, the economy is unfixable while this thing is raging through the country. If you took the amount of money that is being contemplated potentially in a stimulus and had dedicated that to testing and trying to isolate and quarantine this disease, you would do a lot better good for the economy than this. And so Trump has kind of missed the core insight here, which is the better and more competently you deal with the coronavirus, the less economic fallout there'll be, the less political fallout they'll be for you. I think, you know, part of what is so concerning to me about the economic indicators generally

here is that, you know, number one, Trump has emptied out the canon that we have to fire at a recession because there's a trillion dollar tax cut that rewarded wealthy people and corporations that blasted a trillion dollar plus hole in the budget. That's money we don't have for a serious stimulus, right? There's, he's been bullying the Fed for years to keep interest rates low. so it's not like they can do deep rate cuts. So you're left with this stuff around the edges that doesn't solve the underlying problem.

And frankly, we talked about this in the China trade war. Like Trump's approach to these issues is to dump a bunch of money at essentially, in that case, agribusiness. He basically bailed that agribusiness that was suffering under his trade war. Now he's going to, what, dump a bunch of money to airlines and hotels and businesses

that are most hurt by this. But again, or shale gas, oil producers, But again, not only is he not helping the people who are on the other end of the economic damage here, he's not focused on the underlying problem that might avert the very recession that is coming at us. Yeah, agreed. So the other, like, very real challenge he's going to face economically is this massive drop in the price of oil that happened this week. So I imagine a lot of people hear, oh, big drop in the price of oil, and they think great news, cheap gas, good for the economy. but the truth is a little more complicated, so let's walk you through it.

So there's a relatively small group of countries that are responsible for most of the oil production in the world. You probably have heard of OPEC, which is 13 countries like Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria. So they got together last week with a group of non-OPEC oil countries led by Russia to talk about cutting oil production to keep the price up in the face of reduced demand for energy thanks to the collapse in economic activity that was driven by the coronavirus. Moscow said, no, screw you, we are not cutting supply, which infuriated the Saudis, who are known to be very rational. And then they said they would increase oil production and drive down prices even more. So you have reduced demand thanks to the coronavirus and increased supply

thanks to the Saudis and Russians. And that led to a 25% drop in oil prices overnight on Sunday to Monday, which is one of the biggest in history. So this will likely help consumers, at the gas station in the near term, it might help airlines a bit, although I think their fuel purchases are actually more hedged than that, so it's a little more complicated. But a lot of energy producers in the U.S. just can't survive when oil prices get that low. They need $50 or $60 a barrel to be profitable or to not lose money, and we could see it drop down to $30 a barrel, $25 a barrel. And then additionally, a lot of those companies, these domestic oil producers in the U.S., took out huge loans to ramp up production. So they are heavily in debt. I saw a stat from Moody's that oil and gas firms

have $40 billion in debt due this year alone. So, you know, that means you could see these companies going out of business, the oil companies, especially in places like Texas or North Dakota or Oklahoma. And then the banks that lent them money have to deal with these huge loan defaults possibly. That could mean tens of thousands of people out of work. And, you know, that might be part of the plan here by OPEC and Russia. They don't like the fact that Texas now produces. more crude oil than Iraq. They want to kill off these U.S. production companies. So, you know, Ben, we're too young to remember, you know, the oil embargo in the early 70s. But for listeners, who may have read about it like we did, like it upended the country. You had gas prices

tripling. You had people waiting literally for hours to get gas at the pumps. There were protests. Energy shortages, also crippled Jimmy Carter's presidency. And so, you know, I do remember you and I were both working on campaigns when candidates, especially Democrats, were running on reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil. And maybe we've forgotten how important that is to our national security. Yeah, one, you've got, you know, Putin and MBS in this kind of fluxing test of strength, right? That'll go well. Yeah, so what could go wrong there? And essentially, each of them, you know, Russia and Saudi Arabia, to the largest oil producers in the world, kind of racing to dictate what the flow of global energy markets is. And I do think,

if there's collateral damage in that they drive a bunch of U.S. producers out of business, like that's not bad from their point of view, particularly Prudence's point of view. They've been concerned by the rise of the U.S. shale gas industry as a potential threat to them. And yeah, whatever you think about fracking, you know, we can debate the internet. This is happening in a very destabilizing way that could put a lot of Americans out of work and that could kind of royal global energy markets, create all kinds of external challenges and shocks of the global economy, and it's at the whims of Vladimir Putin

and Mohamed and Salman, right? So not a scenario you want, where they're flooding the market with supply at a time when demand is low, driving competitors out of business, and kind of competing for some cornering of the global energy markets. Again, I think a common threat here, and I hate to once again take it back to Trump, But we're watching all these events play out.

Like, where's the U.S. president? You know, again, a normal president would be in this dispute, would be talking to Putin, would be talking to MBS. By the way, these are supposed to be Trump's two closest friends. Right. And there's... Doesn't Jared WhatsApp with Muhammad bin Salman? Yeah. Can we, like, pick up the dust off the phone and send a WhatsApp message?

Like, what's up, bro? You know? How you doing? Because it may be this is a part of, like, MBS's broader effort to kind of consolidate power, throw his weight around at a moment where he feels like, you know, he has maximum opportunity to do so. so just as Putin is doing the same thing in Russia, right? It's not a coincidence that both of these leaders, and we'll talk about this, are literally right as they're doing this, consolidating their own positions in their own countries. But as with coronavirus, the U.S. president is just not performing the usual role of seeking to mobilize collective action to problems around the world.

And it's like the weirdest thing watching this is nobody expects them to. You know, three years ago, or four years ago, if this happened to be like, what, what is Obama doing about this? Where's Obama? And it's interesting and kind of a sign of the post-American world that like, nobody's like, oh, what's Trump going to do about this? Yeah, I mean, you sort of hinted at this because it was a busy weekend in Saudi Arabia. Yes, yes. The Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, he arrested several members of the royal family, including the former Interior Minister. and then Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who is a former Crown Prince, he was also an interior minister, I believe.

But he had incredibly close ties to the U.S. He was seen as the era parent, who's someone we did a lot of business with during the Obama administration. And this isn't the first time that Muhammad bin Salman, who is dubbed the great reformer by a bunch of credulous U.S. media outlets, has locked up his relatives or locked up activists without cause. But again, like this is the regime, this is the guy that Trump and Jared Kushner have made the cornerstone

of their entire Middle East peace strategy or the Middle East strategy generally and where are the dividends. There are none. They're trying to put our industries out of business. Yeah. And to just get at this, I mean, Mohamed Naif was the crown prince

when Maham bin Salman was the deputy crown prince, right? So this guy was literally the next in line to the throne. That's the level of person that we're talking about here. I'm not suggesting that he was like Abraham Lincoln. What I'm suggesting is, like, just how extreme this crackdown is. Like, nobody, you know, Maham bin Salman hacked Jeff Bezos, the richest persons in World Phone, and he's able to detain the person who was supposed to be king before him, right? There's nobody, he's sending a message, just like he chopped up Jamal Khashoggi on his orders

in the Saudi consulate in Turkey. This message he's consistently been sending that is not subtle, that nobody is beyond the reach of my punishment, not the richest man in the world, not a journalist for the Washington Post, and not members of my own family in Saudi Arabia. That's a pretty disturbing, pretty dark. Wasn't it the first country Trump went to Saudi? Yeah.

That's where he gazed into the orb. And if you look at all of his other concerning actions, the war in Yemen, which we've talked about, still happening, right? We don't talk about it anymore because Trump has vetoed legislation to end it, or at least end the U.S. support for it. So you see these kind of consistently,

you know, dangerous and fairly obvious at this point indications that this is a really brutal dictator who's focused on one thing and one thing only, which is consolidating his own rule and eliminating any opposition. And you have a U.S. president who has given him total carte blanche to do that.

And like you said, what have we got in return? Now, Trump say, like, they paid for some weapons, you know, because they bought, well, like, I'd rather not have that money and not be validating this kind of behavior in the process here. And I would encourage people to go go back and look at what was said about this guy, you know, by a Tom Friedman or, you know, any

manner of U.S. columnist. 60 minutes. He's a reformer. Go back and watch 60 Minutes, you know, he's a reformer, a modernizer. And just, you know, how do American society allow itself just because this guy has a lot of money to be so duped, you know, when the writing was on the wall from the very beginning with Tom and something. A trillion dollars can buy a good PR.

You mentioned consolidating rule and a liberating opposition. which is a great segue to Vladimir Putin, our friends in Russia. So on Tuesday, Russia's lower House of Parliament passed legislation that would allow Vladimir Putin to run for a fifth term as president. We've talked about Putin's proposed constitutional reforms that's in quotes before. But back in January, the pitch was quite different. So we heard that Putin was going to push to make parliament stronger and make the prime minister's office stronger and then create this new body called the state council, which most

observers just assumed would be the place where Putin parked himself post-presidency and just served as the de facto ruler. But instead, today, a bunch of members of their lower parliament, the Duma, spontaneously, again, in quotes, took up a series of amendments that would allow Putin to just straight up run for president again. They said they had to do this to allow stability in the country. They basically just reset the clock on his term limit. So that legislation has to be approved by the courts. It has to be voted on in the national referendum. And it's not a done yield yet. Like we talked last week about how Putin is attaching all these divisive, bigoted social issues to that referendum to try to chin up votes. But, you know, the New York Times

noted that if he serves two additional terms, Putin will have been president for 32 years, which is longer than Joseph Stalin. So this is part of a trend we're seeing in places like China, Turkey, and New York City under Mike Bloomberg, where leaders change the Constitution to stay in power. So Putin's current term ends in 2024. So, Ben, I have two very different questions for you. So I'll to start with the first. It seems obvious now that the next president of the United States is stuck with Putin for a while. Should they give up the idea of a reset that wasn't just the approach Obama took, but Trump, you know, I think almost every president, including Trump, has taken with the Russians. Yeah. And because usually it worries me about this. Obviously, all this talk of reform is just

finding whatever the quickest path is to Putin's staying in power. Well, here's what worries me the most about this. if you look at the arc of Putin's time and office, right? His first decade, 2000 to 2010, roughly, you know, the countries are washed in oil revenues. Things are good. His popularity is rooted largely in a return to some order after a chaotic decade in the 90s, but also, you know, raising standards of living, spreading money around. Then the second decade, the price of oil falls, the Russian economy suffers. And so Putin realizes that in order to maintain sufficient popular support, he needs to assert himself in other ways. So you get the annexation of Crimea. You get this much more belligerent posture on the world stage.

You get a much more aggressive demonization in the United States. You get these campaigns against the LGBT community inside of Russia, enemies within, enemies without. And that was how he generated popular enthusiasm or supported at different times. the Russian economy is really in the toilet. I mean, it doesn't get enough tension, but the combination of sanctions, mismanagement, the lack of oil being the basis for an economy in 2020, it doesn't seem like that's going to get much better.

Putin's popularity has fallen in Russia. I mean, you know, I've said before, I think it's overstated, oh, you know, he always has 60% popularity there. No, that's where he used to be. I think it's much lower now. So what worries me is, what is he going to do over the next decade?

in order to justify his rule, in order to have some legitimacy. And the reality is there's a reason people don't govern countries for 30 years. They get worse at it, not better, at a certain point. And they get exhausted. They're running out of rationales for what they're doing. Fat and happy. Yeah. My concern is, and at the same time, Putin has enriched himself,

and so he doesn't want to leave power because if he leaves power, he probably thinks there's a threat that he could be prosecuted or he could lose that money. And so I think what has to concern any American president, including if the Democrat wins here, is what kind of Vladimir Putin you're dealing with? How might he try to lash out and assert himself internationally to have some basis for popularity at home? Or what kinds of crackdowns might he engage in domestically

that would be concerning? That's kind of what I would be watching here because the last thing he wants to focus to be on in Russia is what is the state of the management of the Russian economy. And so he'll want it to be on other things. So I think for an American president, you have to tread pretty carefully here. Yeah, it's just worth noting that under Trump and John Bolton,

when he was still in the picture, we've been dismantling major critical arms control agreements that date back to Reagan and George H.W. Bush. And Obama passed the New START Treaty with Medvedev in, what was that, 2011, 2012. And I don't even think we've started conversations to continue that treaty, which limits the number of U.S. and Russian deployed nuclear weapons. we're about to see a nuclear arms race. Well, and it gives you, yeah, it gives you verification, too.

Our experts are able to go in and have some transparency around the Russian nuclear arsenal. So the reason this matters, right, we've talked about how we've dismantled a variety of arms control agreements that limited, you know, the development of certain types of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. The only remaining piece of that infrastructure is a new START treaty, which puts limitations on the deployment of certain nuclear weapons and launchers. And again, allows verification. so we have some eyes into the Russian nuclear infrastructure.

All you have to do is re-up this for 10 years. You don't have to renegotiate it. And they're not doing that. So not only does that open the floodgates to potentially have Vladimir Putin trying to develop new and more advanced forms of nuclear weapons and deploying more nuclear weapons, which, again, if he's feeling somewhat cornered at home, maybe he wants to flex in certain ways on the world stage.

But we also lose any insight that comes with the verification measures in this treaty. So, again, one area to watch in another 10 years of Vladimir Putin is what happens with respect. respect to nuclear weapons? And could we be back in a place where we have to actually be concerned about the danger of a nuclear accident or some accidental nuclear exchange or even the conflict? Fun. The other piece of this is just authoritarianism, like, generally. So we have Erdogan and Turkey, of Xi and China and Putin and Russia. They're all clinging to power tighter than ever. They're expanding their own authority. They're getting rid of term limits or changing constitutions.

and they're using new technologies to just crush dissent. Ben, I know you were, like, obsessed with this. This could be the defining foreign policy issue of our time. So, you know, big question. Do you have suggestions for how the next president should approach not just Putin, but this as a trend? Well, I think this is the defining issue of our time, both because of what it means for life inside of all these countries,

including our own, but also because if you want to have better foreign policy outcomes, you're going to need better partners than these people. And I'm not proposing regime change here. I want to be very clear. But the point is, you care about climate change? Like nationalist authoritarians are not the kind of people who put the concerns of the future of the planet ahead of their own concerns. Right. So we would be better off if in our own country and other countries you had a different brand of politics. I think what makes me somewhat hopeful is that these people are past their expiration date. I think there is a growing frustration and resentment of these leaders. leaders, particularly in places like Russia and Turkey and Hungary in some of these places we've talked about. China's a little more complicated. So I think it's ripe there for there to be opposition movements that can gain some traction. And you've seen that in like local elections, which are often the only relatively free elections. You've seen defeats for Putin and Erdogan and Orban in Hungary through those elections. In terms of what the U.S. can do, I think, again, not in the

business of regime change or anything like that. One, obviously, I think we should be much more outspoken about these issues and not, you know, in any way, self-censor criticism of the human rights practices and records inside of these countries. Second, probably most importantly, we've got to get our own democracy in order, you know, so that we can once against an example. But third, I think there's a way in which the U.S. can really become a much stronger voice around corruption, exposing corruption around the world. All we have to do is tell people the truth about, how corrupt an Erdogan or Putin is, right? You know, like, all we need to do is provide people with facts.

We should be trying to pursue policies in concert with other countries to crack down on money laundering and tax havens, which would both be good for the economy, and guess where those efforts are likely to lead you back to? It's to these people in their inner circles, right? And so I think we have to join this fight that is taking place between progressives and small D-democrats and authoritarian and nationalists, both because it's a fight that will determine life in our respective countries,

but also because if we don't have more accountable governance that is responsive to people, we're not going to deal with climate change effectively. We're not going to deal with coronavirus effectively, as we've learned in both China and the United States here. Yeah, agreed. All right, three more quick things before we get to our interview. So we're going to talk more about the U.S. Taliban peace deal in that interview. But I just wanted to ask you about one element of it,

because we're starting to learn that this deal has a secret annex that is being kept from the American people. So it reportedly lays out all the conditions that both sides have to meet to continue the deal to keep implementing it. It has been shared with the Taliban, obviously, there are a party to it, but members of Congress are only allowed to see it in a classified setting. People like you and me and our listeners are apparently less trustworthy than the Taliban, according to the Trump administration. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who is a supporter of the peace talks, tweeted that the Taliban, security guarantees in the deal that he has been briefed on in a classified setting are so vague that they're basically meaningless. So I guess, like, if I take this at face value, my first question to you would be, how common is it to have a classified portion of an agreement like this?

Are there security arguments for keeping that information from the American people? But then, more cynically, like, what are the odds that this classified annex is being used to cover up how how weak this deal is or how thin it is. Yeah, I mean, you might have deals you negotiated at times that have classified annexes if they're protecting some particularly sensitive piece of information about what the United States military is going to do, you know, information that you wouldn't want an adversary. Now, interestingly, in this case, the Taliban has been the adversary. I think they're saying, oh, we don't want to tell ISIS. Give me a fucking reason.

Yeah, but look, a couple of things jump out to me here, right? the first thing is credible people who've looked at this say that this is crazy there's no reason for this to be secret you know i don't think chris murphy is lying here right uh the second thing is if the Taliban and security assurances right that's the centerpiece of the deal like that's supposed to be what we got that's the whole thing and so and what would be classified about that like why would it be classified what they're doing to hold up their end of the bargain if presumably all they're doing is some statement saying that they'll go after terrorist organizations. Like, why is that classified?

In fact, actually, like, the whole point of a security guarantee is that you know what it is. You know? And to me, I don't think you can get over how offensive it is. There are Americans who fought. There are Americans who have people that they love to die in Afghanistan who can't see this information. Like, this information is available to the Taliban, the people who've killed Americans. But not the Afghan people. not the Afghan people who suffered and not the American people who sacrificed.

Like, that is outrageous and ridiculous. And unless somebody can explain in some detail, like, why this should be classified, like, I have no idea how you justify this. And as I was saying, you're coming in, Tommy, like, there was all this stuff about, like, secret annexes in the Iran deal. And part because a lot of it was actually just stuff at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Europe. And Tom Cotton did, like, an inspector Clousseau mission where he went around tweeting, pictures himself looking for the secret annexes.

There were just descriptions of how we were going to do nuclear inspections that actually, frankly, were useful to us. They weren't secret side deals. I don't want to take you back into the midst of that. But the point is, like, you know, the United States has been a war in Afghanistan for decades. We have a right to see on what basis we are now ending that war and doing so in a negotiation, not with the Afghan government, but with the... the people that we've been fighting. Yeah. One more out of North Korea. So there's an upcoming

UN report that says North Korea has evaded UN sanctions by exporting coal, sand and gas while importing luxury goods like booze, cars, and robotic machinery. The New York Times got an early look at the report. They spoke to a bunch of analysts who were alarmed at how easy it seems to be for North Korea to continue funding its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program. The report also talks about China and Russia, weakening the sanctions on North Korea. So thank God for the great relationships Trump has with Kim Jong-un, Xi, and Putin. Kim Jong-un has basically refused to engage in talks with us since February of 2019, us being the Trump people. I don't work there anymore, which means that he has had years to develop more nuclear weapons and missiles, and we've just

done nothing about it. So meanwhile, the so-called maximum pressure campaign of sanctions has failed. The former director of Los Alamos National Labs estimates that North Korea has enough fissile material for 38 nuclear warheads, and they have resumed their favorite game of firing off these short-range missiles, so none of it's subtle. So just the summary here, like North Korea's nuclear and missile program advances every day. The sanctions regime is not preventing them from getting money and goods to the elites or advanced technology, but it is hurting the North Korean people who are suffering economically in every other way, and it will likely get worse when they're hit with the coronavirus. So it's just, it's one of those issues that there's no major news, but it's just a massive

gnawing problem in the background. Yeah, and problematic that, you know, if Trump doesn't pay attention to it, it disappears from public view. Right. So everybody paid attention to this when he had his summits and declared success. And, you know, here we are years later and they're still building nuclear weapons and now they're avoiding sanctions and they're firing off missiles. And it's like you would never know that unless you really sought out that information in the same way that Iran has tripled its nuclear stockpile and the same way that all these indicators are down. again, I really hope that there's space in this campaign for whoever the Democratic nominee is and their surrogates to insist that this record be fully aired. I will say was it booze, cars, and robotic?

Yeah, that was some of the things flag. Because can you ever see the meeting where Kim Jong-un was like, you know, I need some more booze and some fancy cars and get me some of those robotics? Yeah, well, people think that's a dual-use technology that he can use for his nuclear web. this program. Well, you may not be using your imagination enough as to what Kim Jong-un might do to kill time of robotics. Yeah, he's a terrible person. But yes, you're probably right. The dual-use aspects and the luxury goods tells you everything you need to know about the character of this regime, right? Because he's got starving people and what is he interested in, literally, the manifestation of one-man rule. He's interested in either what he can get to have a good time and what he can get to have

a nuclear insurance policy. Yeah, he's just the worst. Last thing, and some good news. So, Argentina may become the first major Latin American country to legalize abortion rights. Currently in Argentina, women can face prison time if they get an abortion. And activists have raised these instances where women have had miscarriages that were wrongly diagnosed and they received prison time. Or there was a woman who needed an abortion so that she could undergo chemotherapy and that was refused and she later died. So it's just horror story after horror story.

Argentinian president Alberto Fernandez said he will send a bill to Congress soon that would legalize abortion. and if it passes, that will make Argentina on a list with Cuba, Uruguay, and Anglican Guyana is the only countries out of 21 in the region where abortion rights are legal. So hopefully that bill moves soon and it passes. Yeah, and I think, you know, there's been a very healthy, you know, culture of civil society and progressive mobilization in Argentina and other countries. And, you know, I think this is a testament to people working for this for a lot of years.

cannot, you know, overstate the importance of this in a very Catholic country in a very Catholic part of the world. The Pope himself is from Argentina, right? And so it does send a message that there's room for respect for women's reproductive rights

and right to choose even in, you know, what have traditionally been more conservative Catholic areas. Yeah. And I think that's the work of a lot of activists and a lot of women over many years just trying to shift this debate and it's worthy of recognition.

We're even discussing this. Yeah, it's pretty incredible. Okay, when we come back, we're going to get an Afghan perspective on the U.S. Taliban troop withdrawal agreement. We are now joined by Zarlashd Halimzai, the co-founder and director of the refugee trauma initiative, which provides psychological services to refugees from all over the world. She's also an advocate for the inclusion of the voices of the Afghan people

and peace negotiations. Thank you so much for joining the show. Thank you for having me. So we've been talking about this so-called deal between the United States and the Taliban to withdraw forces from Afghanistan as part of this mostly secret agreement. I mean, do you think it's fair to call this agreement a peace deal? Who is this agreement bringing peace to? Well, that's a very good question. The reaction I had when the peace deal, the so-called peace deal was signed, was.

one of resignation and grief, because what seems like a unique event in foreign policy has a historical precedence, and Afghanistan that spans over 40 years. The U.S. intervention didn't start in Afghanistan in 2001. It started in 1970s. And the same characters that were active then remain powerbrokers in Afghanistan, and in the U.S., actually on the U.S., side to this day. And so when the negotiations were happening, it was clear to me and a lot of other Afghans that the aim of the talks was not peace. It's a hasty withdrawal of troops in Afghanistan, and many Afghans are afraid that it's a drive to privatize the war. The talks didn't include the Afghans. They didn't include the Afghan civil society, didn't include the Afghan government,

which, with all its fault, is a democratically elected government. and it was signed with a group that has very little domestic support. Last year, an Asian Foundation survey asked the Afghans a very simple question. Who do you think represents you the most? And they put the Taliban at the very bottom of that list at 3%. They rated the UN higher as a legitimate representative of Afghan people than the Taliban. So the result is a deal that doesn't represent or protect the Afghan people. and effectively hands over the country to a group that they're most afraid of.

Zaharlest, when you talk about these power brokers who've been around for a long time, I mean, I assume, you know, you've got the Taliban itself, you've got some of these kind of warlords, as we'd call them in the U.S., who've kind of been in and out of Afghanistan. And then I assume with the U.S. side you're referring to Zal Khilzad, who is an Afghan-American, who is our envoy for this. But I was wondering if you could just describe for people, who some of these characters are and how they've kind of re-entered Afghan politics in the last

couple of years and why that should be concerning? Sure. They haven't re-entered Afghan politics. They've always been active and somewhere and another. So during the 80s when the U.S. was, you know, supporting the Majahed in Afghanistan, the financial support that the U.S. provided some of these groups created these characters, you know. people that are incredibly powerful to this day in Afghanistan. So these are some of the people on the Afghan side are, you know,

Gulbuddin Hakmatiar, who was the one of the most popular warlords in the 80s, who was the recipient of the largest U.S. fund through ISI, and he's, you know, he's been in and out of power and different ways since then. He recently stood as a candidate, as a presidential candidate. And, you know, the Afghan people absolutely hate this guy. But he was dubbed the butcher of Kabul because of the amount of people that he killed. Some of the Northern Alliance warlords, the General Dostom, who was part of the Soviet government, these are people that have been active in one way or another on Stone for decades.

So they've kind of, they're known interlocutors to the U.S. How do they enter into this equation? They're not Taliban, right? So how do you see essentially the vacuum being left by the U.S. leaving, potentially being filled by both the Taliban and some of these guys? So again, because Afghanistan's war is so old, there's precedence for this. And in 1992, when the Soviet government fell and these militia groups that were headed by some the guides I've just mentioned, were left to share power.

And there was the Peshire Accords that was supposed to negotiate some sort of a peace deal akin to what's happening now. And of course, it didn't work because it excluded, you know, the Afghan government didn't just disappear. It fell. But there were obviously people on that side that needed to be included in those talks. And the Afghan people were missing the civil society. were missing from the table.

And what ensued was a bloody civil war that lasted for years until the Taliban took over the country. And that's essentially what's happening now because the U.S. is a power broker in Afghanistan, not just through its military, but also through the aid and the financial support that it provides to the Afghan government. And so obviously the U.S. negotiating team

and the US government has a lot of leveraging power. And what they're doing is they're lending legitimacy to some of these groups, particularly to Taliban. So the language and the deal mentions the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which is what the Taliban called themselves and doesn't mention a single time the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. So that matters because what they're doing is lending legitimacy to a group that has committed war crimes.

the fact that Mike Pompeo shook the hands of a Taliban leader, or Donald Trump making a phone call to the Taliban to congratulate them, that creates a lot of incentive for some of these warlords to start competing for power, which is exactly what happened in 1992, and a lot of Afghans are afraid that that's what's going to happen now. Yeah, I mean, I really struggled with this deal, because obviously the United States has nearly been there two decades. And the calculus in Washington, and Ben and I saw this personally when we were working in the administration, is that they reflexively assume that more U.S. troops in Afghanistan means that the Afghan people are safer.

But I think time and time again, you would see that not be borne out. And then under the Trump administration, air strikes have increased. They become more indiscriminate. And so I find myself wanting U.S. troops out because I don't want more U.S. casualties. and I also find myself wondering if the presence of U.S. troops doesn't lead to an increase in violence that leads to more suffering by the Afghan people. So I'm wondering, you know, I'm just sort of being anxious out loud about the scope of this deal, but I'm wondering what you make of that kind of argument. Well, first look, can I just correct? You told me the U.S. has been Afghanistan for 40 years.

Right. I mean under this post-9-11 iteration, yeah. Yeah, you know, the Afghans have enjoyed CIA presence since the 70s. Sure. I agree with you. I work with refugees that have experienced so much violence, and I work a lot with Afghan refugees, and there is not a single constituency than the Afghan public

that wants the violence to stop. So there is no question that that's what we want, and everyone is pro-peace. Everyone wants peace. the issue with what's happening at the moment is that a hasty withdrawal without proper consideration for its consequences is not going to achieve that. And I think after this long of an intervention, the Afghan people also deserve to have their perspective heard and their safety and protection to be taking into account. And so pulling the troops out in a way that leaves a vacuum and

potentially leads to civil war is not going to stop the violence in Afghanistan. And I personally think that, you know, after all this time and everything that's happened in Afghanistan, both the U.S. and the international community has a responsibility to try and avoid unnecessary bloodshed in Afghanistan. So an example of that is that the deal that was signed is exactly the same deal that was canceled in September. And since then, thousands of Afghans have been killed in the violence in Afghanistan. And then, you know, a few months later, we signed the exact same deal.

And so it's not a question of not withdrawing and not ending this intervention. I think everyone agrees that that's what should happen. The question is how do you do that responsibly and how do you make sure that in the process you don't destroy the progress that Afghans have made? and you protect, you know, Afghan people. Yeah. I mean, your point on timing is particularly well taken, given the, the wrestling going on for the presidency of Afghanistan, right?

I mean, we had an election, what, five, six months ago. It's been disputed. The results have been disputed by Ashrafgani and Abdullah Abdullah ever since. I believe they were holding competing swearing-in ceremonies this week. I mean, how is that political instability impacting the ability? the ability of the Afghan government to actually negotiate with the Taliban in the views of the Afghan people about whether or not they want U.S. troops out. Of course, you know, having this sort of political instability in disputed elections don't

help the situation at all. I think, but, you know, excluding the government has its consequences. And I think one of the consequences is that it's incentivized, you know, people like Abdulabd Abdullah to kind of start claiming power. I think that the views of Afghan people in this instance is that they want to protect their democracy, however fragile and imperfect, they want to protect the constitution. A large number of people that were interviewed for the Asian Foundation survey said that, you know, the person that represented them the most was Ashrafani. there's a there's a distinction, a very important distinction that needs to be made, which is

that this is not a question of, you know, the government versus the rest of the groups. I think a lot of anxious are about protecting the Afghan state. And so again, with this deal, not putting them at the table, not recognizing the legitimacy of the Afghan state creates more instability in the country as a whole. I think everybody or a lot of like-minded people at least would want there to be some outcome that could allow for a more peaceful future for Afghanistan, will allow for the departure of at least most U.S. forces. Clearly, this deal, we've kind of gone through the shortcomings it has.

It sidelined the Afghan government. It validated the Taliban probably returned to a dynamic where, the Taliban and some power brokers are competing. The question then that obviously follows is what would a better deal look like? And what is a process that could allow not just the Afghan government, but Afghan people, Afghan civil society, Afghan women who've made gains that would obviously be at risk if the Taliban continues to gain power? What would you like to see in terms of what would be a better process and a better way for the United States to use its remaining leverage? to influence a more positive future?

I think it's really important to make peace the ultimate goal and accept that that process is complex and potentially long. So I think that's the first thing, because a lot of the people in Afghanistan don't really think that that's the point of this peace deal. That's not what the outcome that everyone's trying to get to. obviously the inclusion of everyone in Afghanistan, I don't think that we can make peace at any cost

because it won't hold. There's a lot of evidence that, you know, if you don't include women, if you don't include civil society, if you don't include all of the actors, and that includes the Taliban. You know, I don't think that, I think very few people in Afghanistan

actually want to exclude the Taliban from the table. I think the argument that we're making is that they shouldn't be the only people at the table. I think inclusion should extend, not just from, you know, people being at the table, but also their interests being represented and protected. So it means, you know, all the sort of civil rights that Afghans have been fighting for for the last two decades, women's rights, young people, all of these rights are protected. And thinking about, you know, really having an inclusive process and defining what the

outcomes of a deal would look like. And the U.S., you know, the U.S. you know, the U.S. is a power broker in this instance, and there's a lot of, there's still leverage that can be used, but I think it's much more to do with intention, whether the intention of those around the table is to include both the Afghan people and the civil society and make sure that their interests are protected. And as you point out, you know, there's multiple sources of leverage because there's not just troops, but there's, you know, significant development assistance, there's diplomatic relationships, there's all the intelligence relationships. And that leads me to kind of my last question here, which is, you know, you speak of this 40-year relationship that is obviously

at times contributed to a lot of violence in Afghanistan and obviously a complicated relationship with the United States. You know, as someone from Afghanistan, how do you think of what the relationship should be between Afghanistan and the United States going forward. What would a more healthy relationship be after this kind of 40-year period of multiple conflicts? That's such a complicated question. I think that, you know, for me, I recognize that, you know, my life has been influenced so much by U.S. policy and that, you know, the fate of Afghanistan in this kind of quite a weird way. It's very much tied to the U.S. And I think a recognition of that and a recognition that there, you know, that it's not possible to sever what's happening and just sort of

cut and run would serve both countries and both communities well. You know, one of the things that I sort of think about about this deal is that, you know, the U.S. is essentially putting the Taliban as its counterterrorism partner in the region. And I think about the U.S. citizens that have, you know, that don't really know what that looks like because the contents of that, Paul, I believe is still secret. And I think about all the, you know, as Tommy mentioned, all the U.S. servicemen and women that have gone to Afghanistan based on this premise that they were protecting America. So I think a recognition that both sides need to work together to overcome this 14th. year old history and and support each other and kind of getting this over, getting this violence to stop. I think that's the way to go about this right now. Yeah, agreed. Well, Zerlis,

thank you so much for doing the show. We appreciate all the work you're doing. Do you want to give folks the website where they can find your organization and maybe chip in if they want to help up? Sure. Thank you for highlighting the work. So the organization is called the Refugeeum Initiative and our website is www. www. www. www. www.

www. org. Great. Well, listen, thank you so much for joining us and talking through this.

I don't suspect it will be the last time because this so-called deal feels pretty fragile. So thank you for explaining your perspective. Thank you very much.

Ben, that's it for today. Maybe I'll see you again here. Yeah, I know. We might be doing this thing remote. Yeah. As we sat here, like 15 different things shut down. It looks like the Ivy League

is canceling basketball. games. Our Slack circulated some fake news about Daniel Radcliffe having coronavirus. It is fake news. It's fake news. Full stop. I'm sorry. We were supposed to make that public service announcement. No, no, it's okay. But, you know, stay safe out there, wash your hands and look out for fake news coming for our president. Yeah, seriously. Look for the real information. If it's got a WHO or CDC stamp on it, it's probably more trustworthy than White House. White House. Yes, government. All right. Bye.