Pod Save the World - Defining Victory for Ukraine

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

Ben and Tommy talk about Iran using Syrian earthquake aid to smuggle weapons, Syria being readmitted to the Arab League, the drone strikes on the Kremlin, Title 42 and Biden’s immigration policy, the arrest of Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan, gun control in Serbia, the treatment of women in the UAE and some wild stories out of Australia. Then Ben interviews The Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg about defining victory in Ukraine. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome back to POTS Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, right before we came in, Puck News reported that Tucker Carlson is joining forces of Elon Musk. Tucker is going to forego, is $25 million owed to him by Fox Corp and relaunch his show on Twitter, which is exciting because what Twitter needs is more right-wing adjutant. Is that true? Did you... No, it's really true. Yeah. It's been a busy day. There's been a lot of news today. That wasn't... Are you sure that that's just not a query that you put to JetChat GPT? What's Tucker Carlson's next move?

And that's the AI answer? Because that is the perfect answer. That is the AI answer. Tucker Carlson will relaunch his show on Twitter with help from former Fox News staff. He will forego at least $25 million owed to him. Well, what it all could be concerning about the world's richest man teaming up with the world's most dangerous, officiastic commentator? Yeah. Nothing could go wrong there, right?

Speaking of Adjaprop, did you watch the King Charles Coronation all over the weekend? I have to say, I just consumed some highlights. I couldn't really get in like the PIMS cup. vibe of watching a grown man put a crown on his head. Well, it's so early for us. I was up early. I was up around 6 or 530 and I turned it on and it was basically over. They were heading back.

Was it before, after they rubbed the olive oil on them? Yeah, a hard pass on anointing in public places, everybody. But yeah, I don't know. It was fine. I saw the 200-year-old gilded carriage getting parked. I saw them go out onto the porch and wave. I don't know.

I can't get that excited about it. Didn't feel like a lot of energy. there. No, no, did not. If you want more, I talked to Nish Kumar about this for Potsave America yesterday, but Potsave the UK has excellent, funny, hopeful, smart British politics and news coverage every week, so subscribe there. Yeah, I got my takes on the coronation from the social content out of Potset the UK,

which is hilarious. Perfect. That's all you need. So, Ben, we got a lot to cover today. We're going to talk about Iranian weapons, getting smuggled places, relations with Syria, a drone attack on the Kremlin and a very angry Russian oligarch. President Biden has this looming, or maybe some would say it's already here, immigration crisis. There's the latest on the classified documents that have been stashed in various former officials' homes. The president in Pakistan

was arrested again. Serbia and guns, dumb TikTok trends in Y Australia. It's just the best, pound for pound, the best content creators of anyone in the world will explain why. And then, Ben, you talked with some heavy honchos over the Atlantic today about Ukraine. Did you guys, did you win the war? The last issue of the Atlantic, if that doesn't win the war, I don't know what will. No, I talked to Jeffrey Goldberg, who's the editor-in-chief there. He just went to Ukraine along with Ann Applebaum. And they interviewed. And Lorraine Powell Jobs. Good to bring the publisher. Yeah, yeah, the boss went along for the ride on this one. And they interviewed Zelensky. They went around the country. And it's a, you know, it's kind of a window into what is the Ukrainian mindset right now before this counteroffensive.

What are their objectives? And what I really talked to Jeff about is that the vibe of the peace from both, you know, the Atlantic and from the Ukrainians was total victory should be the objective, right? And just, you know, I tried to unpack with Jeff. What are the, is that not just morally right, but is that achievable? what are the risks involved? What does that mean for the United States? And this question, I think, of what are the objectives and what is achievable is going to be the dominant issue

on this matter for the next few months. So it was a good place to start and have that conversation. Yeah, I'm excited to hear it. I popped in at the very end, and I said hi to Jeff through Ben's mic, and he called me Baseball Kepchomsky, which is very funny. So look, that's the spectrum you're going to get on the show. Yeah.

Okay. So he was referring to your expertise in linguists. That's right. I'm a linguist. So let's start with this Iran Discord leak because they haven't talked about Iran in a while. So there was a leaked intelligence document, the whole tranche that was leaked to discord. One of them talked about how Iran and its proxy forces have been secretly shipping weapons into Syria by hiding those weapons in earthquake relief.

That relief has been trickling into Syria since the February earthquake. It was 7.8 magnitude killed 50,000 people at least in. Turkey and approximately 10,000 more in Syria. This is obviously a ghoulish thing to do. And it's why Western countries hesitate to support relief efforts like this. But no one should be surprised that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would pull something like this off. The shipments include small arms, ammo, drones. They're delivered to Shia militia groups. And those groups then attack U.S. forces and allies in the region. The intelligence also highlights the fact that the Iraqi government has basically been unwilling to do anything about these Iranian back groups. There's

currently about 900 U.S. troops in Syria. They work with mostly Kurdish forces to fight ISIS. The Washington Post said that the intelligence, quote, raised dire questions about the ability of the United States and its allies to intercept Iranian source arms used routinely to target American personnel, partner forces, and civilians in the Middle East. That seemed a little hyperbolic to me, given that, like, clearly we caught them doing it. And you've got, like, the Israelis are hitting targets in Syria all the time, usually Iranian-connected groups. So, you know, obviously, like, that interdiction is imperfect, the intelligence is imperfect. The U.S. contractor was killed in Syria in March. But, Ben, I mean, I don't know. It seems like this is like a pretty well-known

problem that's been managed well. I just wonder if you were surprised by this intelligence or, like, that assessment of it. Nothing is surprising to me about it. I mean, the Iranians have used every means possible to smuggle arms around the Middle East, particularly in Syria for, you know, that was certainly the case when we were in the Obama administration. We, you know, did everything we could interdict their shipments at sea or, you know, commercial aviation they would try to use, or often we had to demarch and go to the Iraqis to try to get them to do more. Usually they didn't do enough. Love a good to march. Exactly. I can't believe I just use that word. I apologize. Okay.

But the fact is that it doesn't make it any less grotesque and awful that they would do this, but this is what they do. The IRGC, who are the worst elements of that regime, are opportunistic in how they do this. They use Syria as a staging ground to get weapons to everybody from the Saudi regime to Hezbollah and Lebanon to into Iraq. By the way, they also have a very large land border with Iraq and presumably can use that as well. so this isn't the only way they do this. I do think there's a bigger question. You mentioned the U.S. troops in Syria. They came up when that contractor was killed,

which is how long are these U.S. troops going to remain in Syria? We keep talking about them needing to be there to fight ISIS. I mean, at some point, presumably that won't be the case. And there's going to be this question of, is this some kind of permanent presence of 900 troops? I mean, so I think this has been something that's been kicking around for the last year or so. the question of, you know, you don't want to, Americans hate to have the perception that we left somewhere because we were threatened by the Iranians. On the one hand, on the other hand,

how long do we just need to keep these people in Syria? Yeah, well, also ISIS attacks these Shia militia groups as well. I mean, they're fighting each other. They're fighting each other. Yeah, very complicated. Speaking of Syria then, on Sunday, Arab nations voted to readmit Syria into the 22-member Arab League. This comes about 12 years after Syria was expelled for, you know, essentially gross human rights violations during the early days of the Arab Spring, the attacks on indiscriminate slaughter of protesters. The next Arab League meeting is in Saudi Arabia next month. There's some speculation about whether President Bashar al-Assad will attend himself.

This move is, you know, the latest sign that Assad's neighbors believe he has won the Civil War, the Syrian Civil War. They basically want to move on from it. I think a lot of Syria's neighbors want an excuse to push Syrian refugees out of their countries and back into Syria. The U.S. has opposed these normalization efforts with Syria. The Saudis apparently have really ramped up their efforts to push for them lately. So this decision by the Arab League was probably inevitable.

That doesn't mean it doesn't suck. You know, Assad's a deplorable human being. You don't want him sitting at a, you know, table with 22 of your allies in the region. But I saw Senators Rish and Bob Menendez called on President Biden to say it was willing to sanction, say he was willing to sanction countries that restore relations with Assad? I'm trying to figure out how that would work. Are they recommending the U.S.

sanctions the entire Arab League? Forget this? I assume so. I mean, look, what's clear to me is that the Saudis and the Emirates are probably driving this train and that they really want to kind of close

some of the accounts that are still open from the Arab Spring. The Amarades have been driving this since like 2018. The Emirati, you know, they've already met with Assad. They've done all that. They're usually kind of the stalking horse for the Saudis on these things. And I think they just kind of want to be turning the page decisively on this era of instability and kind of, you know, unify at least the Arab League countries around a kind of new paradigm of stability in this region. Now, it does leave their kind of festering proxy conflict with Iran in place. And look, you could see to some extent

the attraction of that, turn the page on what's been a very tumultuous era. But it's also obviously intended to kind of, you know, you might ask, well, what's in it for the Saudis and the Emirates? Like, well, it's intended to kind of solidify this autocratic order, you know, that Assad may not be the guy they wanted to come out on top and that civil war at the outset. But, you know, he's an autocrat and we know what that means. And that's predictable. And it can be transactional. And we can start, you know, pumping some money into Syria, just like the Iranians do. And maybe they can flip this guy over time away from the Iranians and more towards their direction. That's not going to happen overnight because the Iranians obviously are the reason or one of the main reasons Assad's still there. But that's clear what's happening. The U.S., this is definitely a case where

I don't think there's anything the U.S. could do to slow this momentum. So while it being, it's totally morally reprehensible to, you know, to be dealing with a guy like a Assad, I just don't, I think it'd be wrong to assign an agency to the Biden administration that they don't have here, you know, and threatening targeted sanctions, I don't think is going to stop what is, you know, clearly, you know, clearly the momentum of this whole enterprise. Yeah, I mean, it seems like a way to sound tough in a press release, but I don't see a lot of practical levers that Biden could be pushing here to prevent this from happening. Yeah.

I don't know. Or at least the, well, let me leave it there. Yeah. So, Ben, you're going to talk a lot about Ukraine in the interview with Jeff. There were two things I thought we should just touch on, though. The first was this mysterious attack on the Kremlin from last week. There's lots of footage of it, which is remarkable. It appears that two small drones either hit or exploded near the Kremlin happened in the middle of the night.

No one was hurt. The Russian government said that Ukrainian forces tried to assassinate Vladimir Putin. That is dumb because Putin doesn't even live there. And it was small explosions. President Zelensky denied that Ukraine was behind the attack saying, we don't attack Putin or Moscow. We fight on our territory. We're defending our villages and cities. We don't have enough weapons for this.

Some people suggested this was a Russian false flag operation to, I guess, like, increase public support for the war. I don't know. It doesn't make a ton of sense either. I read an interesting BBC analysis of Russian state media reporting on the incident, which said that Russian news outlets led with this news, but they didn't show the footage of the drones, like blowing up near the Kremlin, presumably because it made it look ill defended or Putin. week or something. So just notable. This incident occurred a few days before Russia's annual Victory Day parade, which commemorates the defeat of the Nazis in World War II. Victory Day was pretty muted this year because of security concerns and the reality that Russian weapons and soldiers that are usually paraded are busy fighting. They're not marching around Moscow.

I read there was one tank at this sad little parade that Putin held. So, Ben, with a huge caveat that, like, we have no idea what happened. Does one of these explanations sound more plausible to you like Russian false flag to, I don't know, move public opinion in favor of the war or, you know, some group, either the Ukrainian government or this mysterious group that seems to be doing lots of actions against the Russians, usually outside of Ukraine, to send a message to Putin or say, we can hit you in Moscow. I, like, first of all, when you go through the list of things that were charged here, like, the first thing the Russians said is that the Ukrainians sent these drones to assassinate Putin.

I just don't think that happened. Like, it's hard for me to see Zelensky being like, let's send some kind of miniature drones all the way into Moscow to dive bomb the Kremlin where he doesn't live. Yeah, Putin lives 20 miles away. Yeah, like it doesn't make sense. It doesn't add up. Then they accuse the U.S. of trying to assassinate Putin. Oh, we got a call. We got called out.

That was even crazier. Like, that's clearly not something that we did. So then that leads a couple of other possibilities. The false flag thing I considered for a moment. And what I was concerned about is that they could use this as a pretext to start to try to decapitate Zelensky again. They haven't taken a shot at, you know, Ukrainian government buildings in a while. Interesting, yeah. But we haven't really seen, you know, yes, there have been Russian airstrikes.

It doesn't feel like this was, you know, it's certainly possible as a false flag. What could be in it for them other than creating a pretext? It could be part of their messaging to the global south, you know, just muddy the waters, who's the aggressor, look at what these guys did. So to me, it's still possible that this is some kind of false flag thing to just gin up a sense of mutual aggression. But the other answer is plausible, which is, again, like drones are pretty widely available, you know, and it's getting easier and easier, I think, to do weird things with drones. When AI comes fully online, it will become even easier. And if that is the case, if this is just a collection of individuals or some shadowy enterprise that engages in sabotage in Russia,

to me the headline is like that you could get a drone that close to the Kremlin that could explode, you know, not because it was going to take out Putin, but just because if you think about it, you know, there's not air defenses everywhere in Moscow in the same way there's not in Washington, D.C., you know, and to me, actually, what it could suggest is a new normal where weird, you know, Remember, like a few years ago, Maduro was almost killed with a drone like this in Venezuela. Like, it's possible that we could see more kind of strange, non-governmental, you know, things like this happening. Yeah, there's a famous story of something like a sort of teenager landing his plane in Red Square. I mean, yeah, you think if you're really going to target Putin, you do it like, I don't know, today when he was giving a speech in public.

There's also a weird story about a car bombing that seriously wounded a problem. prominent Russian nationalists and novelists that happened in Russia. It's the weird things going on all the time. You mentioned the victory parade. That was notable. Like, first of all, that they had no, like, tanks and planes to use at their parade. Because every year, there's usually, like, a massive show of force. Clearly, they're pretty stretched, you know, the most they can muster.

It's like a, I don't even think there was a flyover, you know. It was just kind of generally muted. It was only an hour long. Putin kind of mailed it in with the normal speech about the death of the West and the, you know, destruction of whatever. But last year, I think there was a big show and there was a concert and, you know, things like that. It does feel like it's a window into the fact that they're pretty stretched, they're pretty insecure, and they're in the middle of a war. Yeah, and maybe a little freaked out by this drone attack that happened, you know, which suggests, you know, somebody not Russia

doing it. The other, I think, pretty remarkable development in Russia involves a Russian oligarch, we've talked about a lot named Yvgeny Prygozin, who's the head of the Wagner mercenary group, So the Wagner forces have done a lot of the heaviest fighting in Ukraine, including in Bakhmut, often without enough equipment or proper equipment. They recruited, the Wagner group did, recruited tens of thousands of men from Russian prisons and sent them into the fight. Most of them are probably dead by now. Over the last few months, Progoshin has been waging this war of wars against Russian military

leadership, especially Sergei Shogu, the defense minister. That war of words escalated last week when Progogian threatened to pull his guys out of Bakhmut. he later walked that back saying, okay, well, I got the ammo and I needed now, so I won't do it. But Progoshin popped off again this week then right after the victory parade. So Putin finishes his muted victory day speech, but he called for unity, he called for everyone to support the war. And then Progoshin releases this video accusing the Russian military of abandoning positions near Bachmute. And again, saying, like, you're not giving me enough ammo. So it's been interesting to watch this because,

Putin has given Progogian and a lot of these sort of right-wing guys, a lot of leash to attack the military leadership. You know, I think maybe it insulates him or gives him someone to blame. But you do wonder how close he's getting to the line. If Proggeon says, I'm going to pull my guys out of Bachmute because, you know, I'm not getting what I need. Or seems to, you know, contradict Putin's speech that he gave seconds earlier. Yeah, and it also just kind of suggests, like, the dangers of having this kind of fractured. military enterprise in Ukraine? Because what we've seen is you have the Russian military, but then you've got the Wagner group that, I mean, Bachmoud has been the center of gravity

for the war for a few months, right? These guys are fighting on the front lines. Now, you've also had, you know, a bunch of Chechens down in, like around Maripal, with like the Kadeirov, the Chechen kind of warlord leading those troops kind of separate from the Russian chain and command. There are risks to, look at Sudan. I mean, it'd be, you know, like, like pictures some weird mix of like the proud boys and you know obviously it's not total analogous but there there risks that the longer the war goes on the lack of a unified command leads things to fracture it would be bad for them if the wagner group kind of disintegrated or pulled out of bakhmud obviously because they have been you know the tip of this nihilistic spear and sending convicts

and waves at the front line um so it really is something to watch here because ultimately and we i get of this with Jeff, like the Ukrainians' theory of victory, you know, doesn't necessarily anticipate them defeating the Russians militarily in every inch of Ukraine, but rather can they reach some tipping point where the Russian military kind of implodes and fractures, you know? And these, you know, these things represent cracks. Now, this could be prognosin trying to get more ammo for his guys. It could be some power struggle with Joy Gu. It could be him trying to position himself politically. but all of it does suggest, you know, a lack of unity of effort on the Russian side, which, you know, should be alarming to Putin at the end of the day. Yeah, and also maybe just a reminder that their system's a mess, just like every other government's a mess, and they're going to have different people acting out at different times and causing problems.

I also saw the UK announced that they're going to send long-range missiles, I think today up to 200-mile range. So, you know, the sort of escalation ladder continues. Yes. Ben, turning to the U.S. into President Biden. So on May 11th, the Title 42 authorities expire. Title 42 is this pandemic era policy that allowed Trump and then Biden to quickly expel basically every migrant who came to the border, including asylum seekers by citing public health concerns.

The White House is understandably concerned that the expiration of Title 42 will lead to a big increase of migrants making the trip to the southern border because they, I guess, just think they have a better chance of getting in. Here are some of the things that the Biden administration is doing to try to get ahead of that Title 42 expiration. They've deployed another 1,500 service members to the southern border to assist with Customs and Border Patrol agents processing people. The U.S. cut a diplomatic deal with Mexico that tightens and coordinates immigration policies between the two countries. So that includes Mexico agreeing to take in a set number of migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua if they're turned away by the U.S. In the past, we talked about how the U.S. agreed to accept 30,000 individuals per month from those four countries to let them work on the U.S. for a couple of years as long as they meet certain conditions.

And then the U.S. has set up these processing centers in Guatemala and Colombia that are being run by a U.N. agency. They're supposed to provide people with information about migration, asylum, refugee status. And you can apply to get asylum in the U.S., Spain or Canada. So they're trying to, like, share the burden here. So, Ben, like, getting your hands around Joe Biden's quote-unquote immigration policy is very hard because it depends on where you're from. It depends on whether you're an individual or you're a family or a refugee or an asylum seeker. Like the immigration laws are broken and outdated. So the White House response has been patchwork.

But stepping back a bit, I mean, we know this is a big crisis. Everyone's been talking about the crisis coming. It's going to be the only thing that Kevin McCarthy and Fox News talks about. about and Trump talks about going forward. Do you think there's more that there should be doing? Do you think this is manageable on a policy level or even a communications level without Congress doing something? Clearly there's going to be like a greater influx of the border when this policy expires. As you said, they're trying to get ahead of it. The reality is that the flow of people to the border is probably never going to go down.

This is the thing that nobody wants to talk about, right? When you consider the imbalances and inequality between life in Central America and most of this hemisphere and the United States, and then when you consider what climate change is projected to do in terms of diminishing resources, we keep thinking like there's going to be some moment when this calms down. And I think part of what we have to do is change how we think about this. Thus far, the problem the Biden team has had is that they rhetorically want to be distinguishing themselves from Trump's more excessive immigration policies. But in practice, like a lot of that infrastructure, including Title 42, has remained in place.

And so that kind of creates a situation where nobody's happy, right? Because the advocates, immigration advocates are unhappy that you still have these policies in place. And, you know, the right-wing people just want you to be more bloodthirsty. and want Steve Miller to be the face of the immigration policy. So what does that mean they should do? I mean, I do think at a certain point, they need to figure out a way to talk more honestly about this. You know, I think Americans get this. This is a challenge and it's going to be ongoing.

And by the way, building a wall is not going to end the challenge either. People find ways around over walls. Because ultimately what you're going to need is a massive collective response. requires legislation, that overhauls the legal immigration system that deals with guest workers. As you say, there's these favorability treatments, you know, like for certain countries, you get temporary protected status here. A lot of those people never, you know, don't leave for a long time, at least. You're going to have to rationalize all this through legislation and resource a whole new

approach. Between now and that time in the distant future, given the nature of our politics, you're going to be dealing with patchwork. and you're going to have to be trying to do things in Latin America that we've talked about that they haven't yet done to improve life in some of these countries. Most of these countries are suffering under U.S. sanctions and things that make it worse. Yeah, so. Bob Menendez, Senator Bob Menendez is attacking the Biden administration for some of the things they're doing. I'm like, well, one thing you could do, Senator Menendez, is end the embargo on Cuba or pull back the sanctions on Cuba so that Cubans don't run out of gas.

Yeah. If you ended this kind of cruel embargo on Cuba, tomorrow you would deal significantly with this immigration challenge. And same thing with Venezuela sanctions. So, you know, we have to confront our own hypocrisy and agency in kind of creating these conditions in some cases. But I do think that like a more adult conversation about the border is required at some point because, you know, you've been in communications.

Like if all you're trying to do is communicate that you're solving the problem when you know that the problem can't be solved. Yeah. Someone's going to, you're going to end up taking a hit one way or another. And you're right that the problem's going to get worse. And the politics are going to get worse. You know what I think about all the time is, remember back in 2015 and 2016, there was the Isle of Lesbo, the Greek island.

Yeah. And they were nominated for the people, the fishermen on that island were nominated for Nobel Peace Prize because they were rescuing so many Syrian refugees. And five years later, same people, same island were pushing their boats back into the water. and like jeering at and screaming at families who are seeking asylum there. And it's not those people didn't go from being good people to being evil people. They were let down by a system and a process and got angry because hospitals were overwhelmed. And the system was like, so you just need to figure out a systemic orderly government response to this problem.

And I think the challenge for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party is the Republicans think that that only entails. building a wall that we all know doesn't do anything to deal with an influx of asylum seekers. Yeah. You know? And so I don't know how to bring the two parties together to do something rational, but that's obviously what it's going to take. That's obviously the only thing that can truly make a dent in this thing, that and changing some of our Latin America policy.

But then I do think there has to be a different way of talking about this that doesn't suggest that we can fix this problem in the immediate term that is honest about what we're doing and why we're doing it. because, you know, the same thing, ultimately you need a whole new global compact around this stuff. Like, everybody is increasingly ignoring asylum laws, you know. The whole system, yeah, the Europeans, like you said, the Greece example is a good one. They kind of pushed this problem down to Greece and they kind of paid off Turkey in the same way that we deal with Mexico. It's like, hey, could you host a bunch of these people if we give you a bunch of money?

And that's not a really sustainable solution. The British are sending people to Rwanda. You're right. Everyone's just sort of like pushing it away. Pushing it away. It's horrible. Ben, quick update speaking to President Biden and Trump on the investigations into the classified documents found at their respective golf clubs and residences. So for President Biden, CNN reported that his former executive assistant Kathy Chung told investigators that she wasn't aware that there were classified documents among the paper she packed for then vice president Biden.

She didn't like go through eight years worth of documents. She just stuffed folders into boxes, which makes sense. I also hadn't realized that Congressman James Comer had suggested that she had been selected by Hunter Biden for the job and had ties to the Chinese Communist Party, I guess because he's a racist asshole. So that's where that stands. Well, yeah, what were her ties other than having a Asian American background? I mean, it's actually, it's that, it's that racist and overt. And then over at Maralago, the Department of Justice has reportedly found, according to New York Times, a confidential informant on the property. DoJ is looking at. to whether Trump ordered classified materials to be moved when the government was looking for them. DOJ also subpoenaed information pertaining to Trump's dealings with the Saudi-backed live golf tour, which as regular World O's know, has dumped millions into Trump's properties and, you know, hosted tournaments there.

Ben, I did some wildly irresponsible speculation on why you might subpoena the live element of the story. Care to join me? Yeah, let's do good on the rabbit hole. What do you got? The widely irresponsible speculation that I'd be making of this is that the, I mean, you know, you could have, the question is what did the Saudis want in return for the money, right? I mean, that's where you're jumping off point should be, right? If they're pumping millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars into Trump properties and into Trump himself,

like, what are they asking for in return? Are this really the best golf courses? Are they getting the best deal? think they're the best golf courses? I don't know. You know, I don't really think so. I don't play golf. And so are they getting information in return, you know, are they getting access in return?

Right. Like what is legal and what is not? Are the Trump people or associates doing things for them without registering as foreign agents to advocate for their interests? It's a really interesting way to launder money back into his pocket. for something else. For something else. And the basic point is if they, if Trump or his people or his son-in-law, who's like a human

manifestation of Saudi corruption just walking around with a pulse on planet Earth, like it's like in some Saudi matrix or something, if, you know, there's kind of an infinite number of things that Trump could be doing in return for that money. Some of those things are illegal, you know, including, by the way, just if there's representation taking place on behalf of Saudi interest, just not, you know, registering, you know, and a lot of people have gotten in trouble for that in recent years. So the corruption is clear, and it's happening in plain sight. But what's not often answered is what are the Saudis getting in return other than maybe an asset in the White House, you know, as President of the United States.

Like that may be the ultimate down payment they're making is we went Donald Trump back in the White House doing our bidding. We went Jared Kushner back in a position of influence doing our bidding. probably enough, but you know, Trump has been sloppier in the past. It sure has. Let's turn to Pakistan and Ben, because before we started recording, former Pakistani prime minister, Imran Khan was arrested Tuesday by a police unit focused on corruption. It's called the National Accountability Bureau. Imran Khan was actually arrested while sitting in another courtroom. I think, like, in a hearing for another case, the accountability cops like broke the glass and and kicked down the door, essentially.

The interior minister, the current one, said the charges related to the purchase of land by a charitable trust that Khan and his wife control. You know, last April, Khan was pushed out of the prime minister's job by a no-confidence vote. Many people believe that was orchestrated by the Pakistani military. Khan says he's the victim of foreign conspiracy orchestrated by the United States. That's a theme today. And he has been protesting and rallying his supporters ever since. after Khan's arrest Tuesday, his party called on supporters to protest in response.

The Pakistani government started restricting access to social media platforms. The country is dealing with like massive economic challenges. I think they have like one month's worth of money left to spend. They need the IMF to come bail them out. They're supposed to have elections coming up in October. The current prime minister, Shabashirif, is very unpopular. The charges against Khan could disqualify him from running again. Sort of a big question here, if that's the play here.

And the arrest happened the day after Imran Khan accused a senior army general of backing a failed assassination attempt against him. I think he was shot in the leg during a parade. Yeah. Fairly recently. Can't make this shit up. So, yikes. These guys have a lot of nukes been. This feels very bad.

I don't know what else to say. Well, first of all, this kind of anti-corruption unit, the corruption that they're most focused on is people who voice criticism of the military. I noticed that too. That seems to be tantamante corruption in Pakistan, whereas if you're general and you're very wealthy and you have property in London and places like that, that's not corruption. No big deal. But if you say that the military is bad, that's corruption. So let's, I'm not saying Imran Khan is as pure as a driven snow. I'm just saying that, you know, I don't think this is about corruption.

That's clear, right? This is about politicians usually reach a certain point where they either cout out to the military and fall in line or they end up living in London. you know and there's not a lot or Dubai and there's not a lot of in between and Imran Khan has just been this guy who won't go away and you know maybe it's because he comes from a non-traditional background he's a cricket star he is his own base of support so I think it sets up this kind of ongoing in a way that they need each other right like Imran Khan like he gained some of his stature by being this guy who stands up to the military and and gives voice to like people's frustrations of the political system the military always needs enemies in terms of

I think what's interesting to think about this, Tommy, is that, like, decade ago or 15 years ago, like the hot take was Pakistan, the most dangerous place in the world because they've got this broken political system with an entrenched military, an intelligence service with ties to, like, Islamist groups and even terrorist organizations, nuclear weapons, conflict with India, and, you know, think pieces everywhere about the, you know, with alarmist headlines, like, the most dangerous place on Earth. When you put it that way, it's a pretty good pitch. But the thing is, none of those things have changed, you know? Like literally, they're all worse, right? Like, every one of those metrics is actually probably a little bit worse than it was. But because we just kind of got bored with that and the war in Afghanistan has ended and Osama and Laden was killed, like we've all kind of moved on. But this is still like a steaming, you know, dysfunctional, you know, quasi-military autocracy

with nuclear weapons. And there's just not really any pathway towards clear. political stability in the near term. Yeah, it doesn't seem like this election in October is going necessarily go off. I don't think that's going to settle it. I mean, what happens sometimes is you get to some election and they get a new government and it does kind of just chill out a little bit. And so I think the, you know, the scenario that maybe the best case scenario or at least a scenario that probably the military is trying to get to is that, is that there's some democratic process that gives some veneer of legitimacy to a civilian government that ultimately is not calling all the shots, but is running

some of the administration. The reality that people should watch going forward is that Pakistan is right in the crosshairs to be most negatively impacted by things like climate change, right? And so I think that this, yeah, we've seen it with floods. Like this could get like worse and probably will. Yeah, it's depressing reality. Let's turn to Serbia, Ben. We haven't talked about Serbia much in a while, but last week there were two awful mass shootings in Serbia killing 17 people. One was at a primary school in the capital where a 13-year-old boy opened fire in his classmates. It's a familiar story now in America. The next day, a 20-year-old man wearing a pro-Nazi t-shirt shot at people at random in a couple of villages.

Here's what's happened since. Also not unfamiliar. Yeah, also not unfamiliar. Yeah. Here's what's happened since those incidents. One, Serbia's education minister submitted his resignation. Two, Serbia's president, Alexander Vuchic, announced a one-month amnesty. for illegally owned guns and ammunition.

Basically, you can turn in your gun, you turn in your grenade, like whatever the hell you're hanging on to from the Soviet era. No questions asked, you're fine. And then three, they announced that those who fail to turn in their unlicensed weapons during that amnesty period will face prosecution in potentially long jail time. So the Geneva Graduate Institute found that there are 39 guns for every 100 Serbians. Only 44% are officially registered. that's the highest rate of gun ownership in Europe,

but it doesn't come close to the 120 guns per 100 people owned in the U.S. So congrats everybody. But mostly this story just enraged me because add Serbia to the long list of countries, including Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Canada, Norway, that responded to mass shootings by swiftly taking action, changing laws, firing people, putting new restrictions on gun ownership. And guess what? It works.

Yeah. Yeah. Gun deaths go down. I'm sure gun deaths will go down. This is a country that does have a tradition of gun ownership, unlike a lot of European countries. And part of that's tied to the fact that they were relatively recently engaged in civil war. And the fact that they could move this fast is an ultimate indictment of the United States. I mean, part of what was so interesting watching this is just the feeling that we see stories like this every couple weeks here.

You've so rarely seen another country. but it does just show you that the kind of norm against gun violence is complete in the democratic world everywhere but the United States. Like if you look at gun ownership levels, it's like the United States is at the top of the list in the world. And I think Yemen is number two. Yes, it is. And that's not like a- Not where you want to be. It's not where you want to be because they have guns in Yemen for different reasons than we do.

Again, civil war. Right. So that to me is the big issue. You know, the other thing that is, You and I were talking about, like, things that we've read recently that were interesting. There was a piece in The New Yorker a couple weeks ago by Ed Caesar, who's, like, one of the, like, really good New York writer about, I don't know if you saw this, about police in Europe kind of figured out a way into the kind of dark phone network that criminals use. So basically, people were building all these phones that were meant to be offline encrypted, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And basically, it opened up this treasure trove of how this organized crime actually work in Europe. The reason that connects is that a lot of that smuggling and organized crime, which can be pretty ugly, ran through places like Montenegro, Serbia, like the Balkan states. And in some of these places, the political leadership is afraid of, it's kind of a mafia system, right? Political leadership is afraid of the organized crime because they're so armed and so powerful. Understandable. So I was thinking about that in this case, too, which is that there are other reasons to crack down on particularly unregistered guns because you want to get them out of the hands of these criminal networks. And so that's yet another reason. If you want to put a dent in organized crime in Europe, putting a dent in the number of guns washing around the Balkans is another part of that.

Yeah, net benefit, man. I can tell you, like watching the coverage of some of these latest mass shootings, it's the first time I've turned to Hannah and said, you know, this is what would make me move to London. Like, I mean, our daughter is five months old now, so we got a wild force in school, but like you view this a very, very differently all of a sudden. I mean, to a certain point, like, it is an unsafe environment to, like, have kids, you know?

And terrifying for them. Yeah. And, well, I, I, you know, you're not at this level yet. Like, when do you tell your kids about mass shootings, you know? My kids' schools have drills, but they don't say it's for shooters. it's like a swarm of bees might get into school and so hide under a desk, you know. And it's just, it's something that nobody else has to do in the rest of the world. You know, it's ridiculous.

Horrible. Yeah. Horrible. Speaking of horrible people, Ben. So Brazilian police are investigating whether former president, Jaiy Bolsonaro, falsified his vaccine status to gain entry into the U.S. Bolsonaro is a famous anti-vactor. I'm going to guess yes on that one. I'm going to guess yes, too.

They raided his office. arrested some of his associates. I think they might have searched like a dozen properties. And the suspicion is that he had a bunch of his goons while he was still in government, while he was still president, go into the Ministry of Health computer system, enter in false information about Bolsonaro, his daughter, and several aides in their families and say they were vaccinated. The COVID-19 pandemic killed 700,000 people in Brazil. A Brazilian congressional investigation said Bolsonaro's handling of it should get him charged with crimes against. humanity, but it's good to know that the pandemic didn't slow down his vacation plans and he found

a way around this. Well, and he's such a tough guy, such an anti-vaxxer, but he'll like take the fake Vax card. I mean, does this undermine his cred? You know, like with like the hardcore people that refuse to get those kind of documents. You know, I think it shows you how full shit this guy is. He really is. That like he's willing to bend the rules like this for himself. Also like, is this guy selling in Orlando? We decided. you and I to kick him out of the country a few months ago. Like, I don't know, you know, after they had their own January 6th down there, like, get his ass out of here. It would be funny, both Bolsonaro and Trump had, like, incited insurrections and got arrested on, like, technicalities like this.

Yeah, yeah. They're both kind of in the Al Capone, you know, category. I think he must be back, right? I mean, if they're arresting his people. That's true, yeah, yeah. I hope so. Jesus Christ. I just didn't want him in, like, fast food restaurants in Orlando much longer. No.

You know, Florida would be the place for me. Florida will welcome him. Maybe he can get in prison, thrown in prison in the, prison they're going to bill right next to Disney World. Oh, that's a good idea. Or maybe you could join the J6 Choir. Did you see? Okay, for everyone who doesn't know, the J6 Choir is like a bunch of the most hardcore

violent prisoners from the January 6th insurrection. Yeah. Who wrote a song that Trump. American dystopia. Yeah. For those who want a little peek behind the curtain, a member of the former CNN reporter on the White House press corps, this guy named Ed Henry, according to the Washington Post, produced that song.

He now works as something like a real American voice. He might be a Trump spokesman. But like to go from CNN White House correspondent to later a Fox correspondent to producing the J6 choir song is that's quite a, that's a sad path. I mean, you left out like a couple stops in the Ed Henry train because he was a CNN guy. Then he was at Fox. I thought of him as a kind of buffoonish, amiable guy. I remember when like Fox was dogged me and like hanging out.

camera cruise in my stoop. I went to Ed Henry. I was like, this is fucking bullshit. To his credit, he's like, I'll talk to people about not having camera crew stalk your wife and stuff like that. But then his answer was like, but you should come on Fox, answer every question we have about Benghazi. Of course.

That would put this to rest. But then he got fired over, like sexual harassment doesn't begin to explain what was going on. It was like, do you remember this? Yeah, I do. I don't remember all the details, so I wasn't going to raise it, but I just, you know. Let's just say like it wasn't you know if you google at henry like some pretty you know dark shit will come up

and then he pops up here doing the j6 choir producing a so it is just like a like a classic instance of circumstantial radicalization yeah because this guy point is it's a grift you're like he didn't start here like he was perfectly happy to be the cnn white house correspondent a decade later he's fucking co-producing the j6 choir with uh oh the other producer was really good too I mean, it was just like a who's who and Maga World. Yeah. And then blaming the left for like radicalizing them somehow. Wild story.

Read the post story about who these guys are in the J6 Choir. Ben, a couple months ago. Chase Sixth Square. We did a segment on the show. We talked about the Forbes 3050 summit. This was a summit held in the United Arab Emirates. I think we made fun of it. We did.

It was held on International Women's Day. It was back in March. We ranked the event on a cynicism scale or sort of like a corporate like greenwashing type scale because these events are clearly. are clearly an effort. You're whitewashing the UAE's real record when it comes to the treatment of women by giving some high-profile individual speaking fees to come and talk and holding a conference. So I just want to do a quick follow-up. For anyone who thought that segment was unfair or fair and wanted to learn more about the UAE's treatment of women, you need to read a report out in the

New Yorker this week titled The Fugitive Princesses of Dubai. It details the utter brutality with which the current ruler of Dubai, the prime minister of the UAE, Sheikh Muktum, treats his own daughters, let alone other individuals, you know, his entourage comes across. It will discuss you in so many ways the conduct of the Sheikh, his entourage, the way they use former UN officials and media officials to be complicit in, you know, the treatment of these young women, the way the British Foreign Office covers up, what these ghouls do while they're in the UK. It is very worth your time. I mean, people like ask us about, like, you know, well, what is like sports washing or reputation washing and all this?

This is like literally the quintessential example of it. Because the point is that you have a ruling family that sits atop this kind of gleaming enterprise in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and Dubai. And they treat their own people horribly, right? Like they are, you know, they, in their own families, has just details. Like, let's just say it's not a very liberal view of women's rights. But they're the ones spying on dissidents and installing spyware and harassing journalists and they're arresting academics and they're just kind of chilling dissent. Foreign workers who come in, not unlike Qatar, like they get their papers taken away. They're kind of indentured servants.

But the world sees, you know, know, a bunch of high-profile women and Western business leaders and politicians smiling and, you know, speaking at conferences about women's and International Women's Day and praising shake so-and-so and that for their, you know, enlightened attitude and moderation and all these issues. And that's reputation laundering. It's basically like this is designed to make you, consumer, think when you see Dubai or Abu Dhabi, You think luxury, you think conferences, you think global celebrity establishment, and you don't think about like what is actually happening there. You know, and there seems to be a catch up, you know, the New Yorker, the Times have had more and more stuff. The UAE, man, like turnover Iraq.

You're going to find some stuff there. Yeah. Read the story because, you know, the leader of Dubai is accused of beating, imprisoning, drugging, torturing his own family. Yeah. You know, let alone, you know, imagine what does outsiders. And then, you know, paying six-figure fees for, like, Westerners come give speeches there. Yeah, it's disgusting. A couple of quick things we'll get the Ben's interview.

So, Ben, Israeli customs officials busted at least two American couples trying to sneak more than 650 pounds of fruit roll-ups into Israel. According to the Times of Israel, the country is experiencing a, quote, dire shortage of the snack due to a TikTok craze. I wanted to know if you were aware of said craze. and I wanted to ask the people smuggling fruit roll-ups, what the hell are you doing? They're not that good. I could pick like infinity other snacks that will do you better. Is that like a Chinese operation?

No. I just, I ate fruit roll-ups and I was a kid, and it's one of the things when you're a kid because they're kind of sweet and chewy until you get to a point where you realize that they don't taste good and they're not made of anything that appears naturally on earth. No. It was fun to wrap them.

around your finger. You could wrap it around your finger and kind of suck on it or like, which is kind of gross at the same time. Yeah, now that I think about it, then your finger would be all sticky and discolored. I mean, Fig Newton's would be better. Orio's like, there's got to be something better. Got to be something better. Ben, also, I have some upsetting news for you, for me, for all the world is out there, which is that according to a report in Ladd Bible Australia, where I get a lot of news, the story about former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and shitting himself at a McDonald's in 1997 was made up by a Sydney-based musician named Rowan Dix.

This guy was literally said he was just literally shit-posting. Dix admitted this on the Hello Sport podcast, as one does, and it was written up by Ladd Bible Australia. It's not clear if that means the bronze plaque that someone installed at the McDonald's in question will have to be taken down. Friend of the pod, Dan from Irrational Fear. Yeah, but, you know, look, I think I was to say,

Pod State the World regrets. its role kind of in spreading this information. I don't necessarily regret it. I mean, I think people were asking questions about whether Scott Morrison shit himself in the McDonald's. You know, when people ask that many questions about whether Scott Morrison should himself in McDonald's, and it's plausible that Scott Morrison could be the kind of guy that could shit himself in McDonald's and not take the appropriate action to make sure it's cleaned,

that you would then say, well, we've heard that Scott Morrison may. have shit himself in McDonald's. We always caveated it. And he seems like the kind of guy that would shit himself into McDonald's. These guys were talking about, this guy just tweeted it. And he said he sort of tweeted

similar things about other celebrities. And this one just caught buyer and they said that Scott Morrison, like they couldn't put him on kind of like morning like zoo radio shows because it was the only question you'd get. Yeah. Like it is sort of a lesson in just

disinformation doesn't have to be complicated. No, no. It's just something that's like, you kind of want to believe it. You know, it's like funny enough. that you wanted to leave. Last thing, Ben, it's like a new new hero alert. So a 48-year-old woman survived five days stranded in the Australian bush, Australia again, by eating sweets and drinking a single bottle of wine. This woman had taken a wrong turn in it. I think she was

going to visit her mom. She doesn't even drink. But she was driving to visit her mom. It took a wrong turn, got stuck, had this bottle of wine as a gift and basically nursed it for five days. but this is the part I thought you would love. So a helicopter or a plane or something finally spotted her. And she was quoted like, what did you think when you saw them? She said, the first thing coming into my mind, I was thinking water and a cigarette. She told 9-News Australia. Yes.

Thank God the police woman had a cigarette. I love Australians. You know, we have to do go to Australia at some point. Because like the content that comes out of this country is just, you know. It's incredible. Never mind like bluey. I know you love blue. I just think that, like, there's clearly something going on as a certain kind of genius, you know.

And just toughness, five days on a one bottle of wine and like some snacks. What do you think that looks like? That's like you take a sip every... Get a ration that. Two hour, three hours. You take a tiny sip. Five days. How tempting.

How tempting must be to just down that bottle of wine, you know. Oh, yeah. Say fuck it. Like, I'm out. I'm out. Just, you know, I'm going to go out well. Call it. Five days.

too. I mean, I think what the rescuer said is she was smart because she didn't like walk off and try to find her way home. Find a cigarette. She stayed by the car. Yeah, yeah. You know, hung out. Stick around. Yeah, next time, you know, she should take some nicarate into the bush. Yeah, or maybe have some waters in the car. That's another good lesson. Maybe two bottles of wine. Yeah. Okay. That's it for the news. We're going to take a quick break and we come back. You will hear Ben's conversation with the Atlantic's Jeff Goldberg about all things Ukraine. So stick around. for that. All right, we are very pleased to welcome to Pod Save the World, I think for the first time, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. Jeff, great to see you. It is the first time. I'm not insulted. I'm not insulted, but I'm just noting that it is the first time. Well, this is exciting. This is historic. Very loose definition of history. Yes. I am speaking of historic, you all have a cover story that everybody should

should check out in the latest issue of the Atlantic about the interview you did and trip you did to Ukraine with Ann Applebaum and Lorraine Jobs, the chair of the board, with President Zelensky and, you know, kind of the lay of the land in Ukraine before this counteroffensive. So obviously I want to talk about that. So I wanted to start with Zelensky himself. We'll get into some of the questions raising the article. It's interesting watching this from afar. You've been out there a couple times now. You know, Zelensky's social media is kind of an interesting portal into a guy who is out, you know, consulting military leaders. He's at the front. But then, you know, Richard Berenthens is popping in for a few minutes. You know, like the whole world is going to see him

to express support. I'm just, what does you get a sense of his day is like? You know, when you, when you meet him, what meeting is he coming out of and what meeting does he go and after? You're an observant guy. I remember when you used to meet Obama, you'd pay attention, whatever else was doing around. Like, what is your sense of what his normal day in Keev is like? I mean, the first most obvious thing to say is that he's sort of trapped in the presidential palace, the presidential compound.

I think moving him around is dangerous, or they consider it to be somewhat dangerous. So he doesn't, you know, he doesn't, the bear is not loose very often to use. to use the old Obama expression. I think you're right. I think there's something very odd and disjointed. I didn't ask him about this, but it is strange situation. You know, you're meeting with wounded soldiers. You have long meetings with your defense chiefs.

You have meetings with ambassadors. And then all of a sudden, you know, I'm using this as a, you know, Taylor Swift wasn't literally there, but it's like then you have this kind of like, Taylor Swift level celebrity situation coming through where it's it's and it's not just it's not just performers and actors and Sean Penn giving you his Oscar and and you know all this sort of all this sort of odd stuff it's also You know you you've got prime ministers Of pretty small countries coming through who are coming through for photos with him in a kind of way

There's very little that some of these people can do for him. But his position, and I think it's, you know, I think the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, of this position is, you know, of this, of this position as apparent. His position is that we'll take whatever friend we can have. I mean, one of the constant messages that Zelensky is delivering to the people of Ukraine is we are not alone. Yeah, no, it's interesting. To your point, I saw yesterday, for instance, he met a delegation of people from Utah. And clearly Republicans, and that's smart, right? He needs all the support he can get, you know.

Yeah. They're very not Zelensky. Let me be clear when I say that I didn't learn this from Zelensky himself, but people at the high reaches of the Ukrainian government are exceedingly focused on Republicans. Yeah. Right now. And, of course, they're for obvious reasons worried about. Donald Trump's continued relevance in national politics and obviously extremely worried about what could happen in 2024

But yeah, absolutely preoccupied with Showing themselves almost that Republican elected leaders From the center right of the Republican Party at least if not the right right of the Republican Party are interested in their cause Yeah, no, it's it's smart and necessary and for them. Well, I also wanted another atmosphere question before we get into kind of the argument of the piece. You know, I couldn't help but notice it's very powerfully written piece. There's a weird and, you know, tragic kind of discordance. And on the one hand, you describe a lot of almost

positive energy, like a startup kind of energy, problem solving energy around military questions, societal questions. And yet at the same time, you know, you meet with a young drone operator who's kind of innovating. And then a few paragraphs later, we learned that he died. Yeah, the next day, weirdly. Or you're in Carousone. And then, you know, a paragraph later, we learned that, you know, three people were killed in a Russian missile attack. And I know you've been in different war zones over the course of your career, but I'm just wondering about what your sense of that, that vulnerability is, or people fatalistic? Is this just part of life, that the death is part of life there? how did you process being in a place where there's so much energy around the cause,

and yet there continues to be on a daily basis, this awful tragic loss. I don't want to oversimplify what it's like. I remember millions of Ukrainians have left the country as refugees rather than not passing any kind of judgment whatsoever. People leave for all kinds of reasons. But there are people, Kersen is a great example. most of the population fled. Some of the population collaborated with the Russians

when they occupied the city. Some of the people are partisans who drove the Russians out. Some have this kind of insouciance that we in the West now associate with the Ukrainian cause. It was really one of the most unusual things. I've seen about a block from the river.

The river is the line of Conte, is the border between the Russian forces on one side. Ukraine, for something the other. There's a very nice little cafe serving oat milk lattes and other things. And we were talking to the young women

who were running this cafe and it's otherwise abandoned street and it's like, why are you, what are you doing? Yeah. And they're like, it's our cafe.

We work here. What do you want? Anyway, they're like, the shelling hasn't, you know, come close to our cafe. The closest was 15 meters. I was like,

15 meters is, you know, that's pretty close. Yeah. So, but it's this admirable quality that you see that runs through the society. It, the first manifestation of that, the first two manifestations of that, and this obviously, these were hugely important moments for the West because it showed that the Ukrainians weren't folding and collapsing. It was the Russian worship, go fuck yourself, that, that amazing moment from the beginning of

the war. And also the possibly apocryphal thing. that Zelensky is alleged to have said, you know, I don't need a ride, I need ammunition. Yeah, yeah. And you see that, that brave, insusient attitude among many people, but you also, but that's also not there, you know what I mean? And, and, and, and we can spend too much time talking about the plucky Ukrainians and not enough time talking about all the plucky Ukrainians who've been killed in this war.

It's hard to find too much coherent, right? It's a large place and there are many people and many people have reacted in many different ways. And, you know, we've only begun to see the stories surfaced of all of the Ukrainians who collaborated with the Russians and maybe still collaborating with the Russians in areas still occupied by Russia. So it's a confusing and complicated picture. Yeah. No, and I think, well, that sets up kind of the main thing I wanted to talk to you about, actually, because believe or not, Jeff, I don't know what I think about something. I don't know. I don't believe you.

I'm trying to figure out. And it gets to the core question. Take it so you make it. Why don't you just make up something? Well, that I can do. But I'm not in government, so I don't have to, like, have a decided opinion. And that's this question of victory and expectations, right? And so you take a very, I think, strong position that we need to support a kind of total victory for Ukraine.

And you define it. Very, like, specifically, they need to take back all their sovereign territory, which includes Crimea. which we'll get to in a minute here. They need a sense of safety. And I thought Zelensky, this connects to what you just said, just that a restoration of a sense of being safe, which they've lost. And they need a measure of justice

for the war crimes that have clearly taken place. Everybody is trying to figure out this question of victory. And we're at a place where, you know, I think the expectations for this counteroffensive that's coming are not that they will achieve all of those things. in this offensive, obviously. And I just wonder in a macro sense, is there a risk that the Ukrainians projecting so much confidence, and they really do through your article, project confidence that this victory

is inevitable, it will happen, that there's a danger to that, right? That how do you balance the need to rally the Ukrainian people in the world around the kind of clarity of the victory they're pursuing and the moral case? for that against the reality that it's not clear how or when that will come to be. You know, did you find yourself struggling or wrestling with that at all? Yes, but I would start by arguing that the position we take is not a radical or overly, I hate this Washington word, but overly muscular position. I thought of this in terms of, and I think Ann Applebaum, who wrote the piece with me and

traveled, we traveled together through Ukraine. I think we viewed this in much the same way as the United States and Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher and George H.W. Bush understood the invasion by Iraq of Kuwait in 1990, which it was not considered a radical position or an overly muscular position to argue that in the Westphalian system of nation states that we have, that one UN member state can't invade and occupy another UN member state. And the response to that by the world has to be to help whatever way possible the occupied, the invaded UN member state kick out, the UN member state that invaded it. And so to, to Ukrainians, I think, you know, are pretty much in agreement on this point,

which is the response to, uh, the, proper response of Russia to its decision to invade Ukraine is to leave Ukraine, all of Ukraine, including the parks that were occupied in 2014 in the, let's say, the initial phase of this long war. So I don't see it as particularly radical. You know, there's two conversations here. There's, well, the three conversations. What is right and just, right? That's one conversation. What is actually achievable. That's another conversation. And then there's the optics questions.

And I find probably like you do, the optics questions and the expectation management questions impure. Yeah. You know, it's like we're not running for, you know, we're not talking about a race for the governor of Michigan. We're talking about life and death, good and evil, you know, authoritarianism versus freedom, et cetera, et cetera. But I understand why there's anxiety about the expectations that are set. And the reason for that anxiety is if Ukraine doesn't do as well as people hope it will do in the upcoming offensive, and it's this perpetually upcoming offensive, right, then Americans who are not known for their patience, right? and long commitment to strategic goals,

will get, quote, unquote, tired of this war, even though no American troops are fighting in this war. We'll get tired of the war, and we've already gotten tired of the war, I'm sorry to say. There is this worry, and that worry can translate into some kind of reality that the West, in particular, the United States taxpayer who is funding the movement of weapons to Ukraine,

the weapons that Ukraine needs to survive and thrive will get tired of it. So I understand why this is a question. I just, it just bothers me as a question. Well, let me try to get more specific then because I think you're right. Look, on the first question, your three categories. Like on the moral issue, there's no question, right? Like, total victory for Ukraine is the just outcome of this world. I even like, I even, I get, I, I, I, I get, I, I,

I don't know. It's a little frustrating to hear it's not you. Everybody uses it, but it's the idea of total victory means, can I just have back what was mine and what was mine as recognized by the international community and international law? We have this entire, the globe has this conversation around Ukraine. Like, Ukraine is asking for something insane by saying, hey, if you don't mind Russia, could you please leave the territory that you occupied, and could you also stop raping and killing our civilians? Thank you very much. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I know what you're saying. I guess how I'd frame it is in putting aside the optics questions, which count only insofar as they affect, you know, America's capacity to sustain some military

support. But the second category, the achievability that, you know, you talked about, that to me is where this really matters. And let's take crime here because I think that's the example, Because, you know, I was struck in your, the Ukrainians, the way they described this year, and they, you know, who knows, they could be planning to invade Crimea tomorrow and throwing off the scent, you know. But they kind of describe a situation where they anticipate a degree of victories in other places that will lead to the Russians kind of abandoning Crimea because in one place they described the Russians will want to leave who are there because, you know, they'll feel like they're not secure there. Somebody else described it as kind of there'll be a political victory that leads to, but from a military basis, and the reason it matters to Ukrainians, not just people outside Ukraine, is that the longer the war goes on, you know, the more Ukrainians will die for the side Russians. And so to me, the question of the achievability of taking a place like Crimea, the cost of doing so, and then the risks, right, of potential, you know, obviously people see that Putin might see Crimea is in a different category. from Mariupil when it comes to things like nuclear deterrence. I think you were circling around something important in how the Ukrainians are talking about this.

It seemed to me like they weren't suggesting that they would necessarily anticipate needing to win a battle for every inch of territory, that they're trying to achieve some kind of tipping point in which I guess maybe that's regime change in Russia happens. Maybe that's just the back of the Russian military is broken. And what do you think their plan is for restoring sovereignty over all their territory? Because I thought that was an interesting subtext of this piece. Well, look, you know, when you talk to, let's say, senior defense officials in Ukraine, and you say, wait, do you really think you're going to take all of Crimea? You know, they say yes.

And then you say, but you really think you're going to take all of Crimea? And then the answer sometimes becomes a more nuanced. We want to change the balance here. we want to throw the Russians significantly off bounds in a way that perhaps we can induce them to come to the negotiating table, at which will negotiate the liberation of Crimea. I mean, there's all kinds of hopeful scenarios in their minds. What they have right now is, from their perspective, not very good at all. They have trenches.

They have for several months an unmovable front. They have the Russians firmly locked into Crimea. And they know that they're not going to be a normal country as long as this goes on. And by the way, this is a parenthetical, but I think it's really interesting. When I asked the defense minister, when we asked Alexei Reznikov, the Ukrainian defense minister, how he defines victory. He said the following, it's actually smart and kind of moving. He said, victory for me is when I can get in an airplane, a commercial airliner in Kiev, and fly to the Hague and serve as a war crimes prosecutor prosecuting the Russians who did this to my country.

Right. And so, and let me focus on that first part. Remember that there's no air traffic into Ukraine. You can't run a country. You can't have a normal, modern country with a normal. modern economy when you can't have air traffic. They haven't had air traffic for more than a year. You have to take trains or drive into Ukraine and you can't move by air.

One can imagine a scenario in which, a creative scenario in which Ukraine has the security and the facets of normalcy, the aspects of normalcy, including and especially commercial air travel and freedom across borders, easy freedom across borders. and yet in places like Donbass and Crimea, maybe there's vestigial Russian forces. They're ostensibly to protect Russian ethnic people who don't want to be affiliated with Ukraine. I mean, this can go any number of ways, but what the Ukrainians are arguing is like justice demands that we get all of our territory back, what they will say privately from a strategic standpoint is we have to be on the move, we have to be winning, and perhaps, perhaps we can negotiate

from a position of strength. Perhaps this is enough to tip Putin over. And perhaps, and by the way, one final point on this, perhaps we have an Afghan situation in which just as the, I mean, obviously the sides are different here, but just as the Afghan National Army just stopped fighting and President Gandhi left a year and a half ago, just got on a plane and took off from Kabul.

Perhaps the Russians just realized that this is insane. and the Russian army disintegrates, or at least units of the Russian army disintegrate on the ground, in a way that forces a kind of victory. Whether it's 100% pure, the last Russian leaves, Ukraine, walks across a bridge as they did in Afghanistan when they left, that's an interesting question. But I think having the goal is smart strategically,

it's smart tactically and it's smart morally. Well, that kind of leads me to the last piece here, which is Russia itself. A lot of people say the Eastern European mindset about Russia, right? Which, and you're the kind of more alarmist mindset about Russian intentions and Putin's intentions. And a lot of ways have been proven right, right? In these debates we had back through the Obama years and all the way back to the Bush years. And Ann Applebaum, your co-author, I think, has been at the forefront of kind of warning about the nature of the Russian regime. The dangerous thing about that in a way is that they're precisely because they're correct,

it's hard to see any scenario in which Vladimir Putin is alive, and he allows that scenario that you described to take place, right? And at some point, if it is existential for his kind of regime, that's when nuclear weapons come into the picture, because why would he allow himself to lose a war, you know? And so I guess how do you square what we know, if we've decided that Russia is the worst version of itself, or at least the Russian leadership is,

that would suggest that they would never allow that to happen. So how do you kind of, how do you factor in it? Because if you're Joe Biden, you're saying, the way I'm thinking, the thing I can happen is in nuclear war. You're not obviously in government, but how do you account for the risk of the fact that- Thank God for that, by the way. Yeah. But the risk of this war, as you describe it, has to end, really has to end in Russia, right,

almost more so than it ends in Ukraine. How do you account for the risks associated with that? There are risks. I want on a personal level and on a national level to resist nuclear blackmail as long as possible and understand I try to read everything I can about this, what Putin might or might not do if his back is against the wall. I guess the way I would phrase it, I think it's premature to fold in the face of Putin's implied or not so implied on occasion nuclear blackmail. the U.S. is not threatening the regime. It's not threatening his leadership. The U.S. is supplying weapons to an army that is trying to kick another army out of its territory.

Joe Biden has done a good job calculating the pressure points here, I think, to date. But it's a dangerous, it is a dangerous game. But if we in the West prematurely fold in the face of an inchoate and theoretical fear, we have just invited China to think differently about Taiwan. We've just invited Iran to think differently about its neighbors. We've just invited Russia to think differently about Moldova.

And I have to imagine that the Biden administration, if it felt that Ukraine was on the president, of what we might call catastrophic success might force a state that is utterly dependent on it for weapons and munitions. Yeah. To calculate carefully how far it pushes. Yeah. But I understand your point. If Putin feels like his life is in danger, if Putin feels that his regime is in danger, he might make irrational decisions.

I understand that point. But again... Or you might wake up in that. Some stern-faced gentleman may announce on Russian television that Vladimir had an accident last night, you know. I mean, that's a... No, I mean, like, anything can happen, and I don't think we should be counseled only by our fears. Yeah, exactly. And I don't envy the folks in the Biden administration now have to think about this day in and day out.

Because it's, you know, Putin's mind, to some degree is a black box. I mean, obviously we can hear some of the discussions that are happening and we can analyze the discussions. But I think we're walking a fine line here between acquiescing to terror and authoritarianism and just, you know, I mean, it's brutal what Russia. I mean, here's the thing. And, you know, you know this from different conflicts at different times. You try to keep your strategic analysis from being colored by the things that you've seen. but Anne and I were both in Boucha, this is a year ago, in Buccia right after the Russians were expelled from Buccia, which is right outside Kyiv. Yeah. And, you know, we were at that church on a little bit of a rise, and the back of which was a mass grave.

And we watched the mass grave, but the bodies be exhumed. And what you never forget from those kind of scenes is the smell of the body. coming out of the of the ground. And so, you know, what, what Russia is doing is evil. And I think we have to take the position that we have to help the Ukrainians get themselves free and keep a good, steady eye on some of the larger ramifications of Ukrainian success. Yeah.

No, I know. And we can wrap this up. I, you know, the last point that popped him out as you're talking is like, it seemed like from reading this piece that the guys you're interviewing in Ukraine understand that this may also just be a long haul. This may be a year, five years, 10 years, but they're going to see it through. The Atlantic, you know, kind of area focuses, you know, internationally, these questions around the future of liberalism and democracy, but also very much in the U.S., right? The future of this country is the bulk of the And part of what's interesting to consider is whether the U.S. has it to stick with something that long, given our own. And this is not just like a will Trump get elected point, is that can the U.S. find its own moral center enough to be involved in a conflict that has this kind of moral dimension that may go beyond strategic interests, you know. Well, what I would say is that so far it's been, the U.S. has been. in a bipartisan, mainly bipartisan way, put aside some Fox commentators or recently X-Fox commentators, et cetera. The U.S. has responded enthusiastically, but with strategic calculation

to the threat. Ukraine, all credit is due, obviously, to the fighting people of Ukraine, but they would not be where they are today without the supplies that the United States is providing. And look, there's a huge, huge difference here from the American perspective. And this is an argument for patients or for the ultimate triumph of patience. We don't have American troops on the ground in Ukraine.

We are providing support to people who are fighting for themselves. And that's all we're going to. do. And their sovereign state, they're not like a proxy force, you know, like we have in other areas, right? Right, right, right. So, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Right. And you know, there's another, there's another point. And I know we need to wrap up, but there's another interesting point. And I'm not sure why the Biden administration doesn't make this point more clearly. But when when certain people on the far left and the far right talk about, oh my God, we're spending billions and billions of

dollars on Ukraine and on America, actually, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, you know, That's completely false. We're paying billions of billions on American products. To American contractors, yeah. Made by American workers and American factories that we then load on trains and planes and boats and ship over to Ukraine. I mean, this is a, the Russians have done many inadvertently good things for American national security in a kind of weird way in this last period. And one is to like help us get the rust off our production lines. Yeah, right?

Yeah. And so that that's false. But right now, this is like a kind of a Goldilocks strategy where, and we know from South Korea and we know from Germany and we know from all the rest that the American people don't object to engagement in foreign conflicts, cold or sometimes hot, as long as American soldiers and civilians for that matter. But American soldiers are not directly engaged in that conflict. We've been in South Korea forever. But there's no particular objection to it because American troops aren't fighting and dying. And so, you know, there's a reasonable chance that we can continue this. Obviously, Trump is the huge wildcard because I think it's fair to say that if Trump became president again, he would switch sides.

He would, yeah. very, very blatantly just switch sides, which is a kind of astonishing thing to think about, but we could think about that another day. Yeah, yeah. Well, look, thanks for coming on to unpack this a bit. I think this is the central question that is, you know, is building anyway in American policy and globally, too. I mean, in Europe, this is probably even more cute.

So people should check out the article, cover story in the latest issue of the Atlantic, buy a hard copy. Yeah. Nothing like reading a hard copy of a magazine. Buy a hard copy. If not, you can go online, but thanks for coming on to talk to us about it. Thank you. Thanks again to Jeff Goldberg, joining the show.

Thank you. And apologies again to Scott Morrison. And thanks to the good people at Loud Bible, Australia, for setting us straight. Yeah, I mean, apologies for raising the questions about whether Scott Morrison would have, you know, shit his pants on. It must have been gross if you had. It would have been terrible. It would have been gross. Anyway.

In any case. But thanks to Jeff and for the Chomsky in a hat line, which will be the main takeaway I love living the world where I can be called a neolip-lip-shill and Nome Chomsky all in one day. Well, you could, you know, you are simultaneously chomsky in a hat and a war criminal. Right, right. Depending on your Twitter feed. That's our plight. That's America.

All right. Talk to you guys next week. POTSave the World is a crooked media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. Our associate producer is Ashley Mizzuo. It's mixed and edited by Andrew. Chadwick, Kyle Seaglin, Charlotte Landis, and DeCilius Futopoulos are our sound engineers.

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