Pod Save the World - Japanese PM Shinzo Abe’s assassination

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

Tommy and Ben discuss the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, protest in Sri Lanka, President Biden’s trip to the Middle East, the latest news from Ukraine and Brittney Griner’s prosecution in Russia, Condoleezza Rice’s new job and John Bolton weighs in on coups. Then Ben talks with long-time diplomat and Asia expert Danny Russel about the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, politics in Japan, and Abe's legacy. 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 POTA of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, are you admiring the images from the James Webb Space Telescope? I'm, I'm captivated by the images of the early universe, Tommy. I'm not going to lie. I love stuff like this. I absolutely love stuff like this. I will watch reruns of Cosmos while I fall asleep in bed every single night. But you're looking back in time. You're looking at the birth of the universe. That's very cool. Yeah, it just kind of does put a lot in perspective.

It does put a lot in perspective. Yeah, yeah. Very cool. Check it out of you have not. Ben, we got a great show today. We do. There's a lot going on. I mean, it was weird last week. Buckle up, guys. We did a bonus episode because of Boris Johnson's resignation. We could have done one the next day to talk about the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shenzhou Abe. Frankly, I think we both needed some more time to figure out what that happened over there. So we'll talk about that. We're going to talk about how protesters in Sri Lanka may have toppled the president. We'll talk about President Biden's

trip to the Middle East, why some people think it's a bad idea. The latest from Ukraine, Brittany Griner's case in Russia, an incredible story about a British track star, a fake cricket match in India. Condi Rice gets a new job. I haven't seen this, so I'm glad. I'm looking forward to the live react to this. And then John Bolton. And then, Dan, you're going to talk to our old friend, our White House colleague, Danny Russell, who's a brilliant Asia expert about all things. Shinzoabe, Japanese politics.

What else? Yeah, I mean, people may have heard Danny on about China, but Danny's really a Japanese. expert. Like he was a diplomat in Japan. So the number two, the DCM? Yeah, he was based in Japan for a long time, you know, all the Obama years, including the four or five years that we overlapped with Shenzhou Abe. He was the assistant secretary of state, free stage, so he knew Abe really well, knows Japan really well. So we're going to break down, like, who Shenzabbe was, what his legacy is, what does this event mean for Japan? So definitely, if you want somebody to unpack this, there's no, no better American diplomat than Danny.

smartest, also funniest people we got to work with. Danny and I had dinner out here in LA like, it feels like 100 years ago. It must have been like 2019. We saw the Game of Thrones creators in the restaurant. Oh, that felt cool. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. We're at night and market. Great. Love night market. I get, I get, I get some nods. Some nods. It's fantastic. Just don't go too spicy. Ben, if you like seeing podcasts in person and you want to see Pod Save America for some reason. Which I have never done. What? Yeah. Come. Yeah. Well, we'll figure, we'll just, we'll just, have you on one time. I've seen Lovere Leave it several times in person. You've done,

you have done a lot of sort of foreign policy segments at those shows, right? Yeah, but I've also been in the audience. And I remember going to the audience at Radio City Music Hall, sold out show. Oh, New York. And it was like watching like the Beatles or something. I've never been in a room of people that love John Lovett that much. And I love John Lovett. I know. I know you do. But it's really intense. That was a monster show. Well, if you want to see Lovett and you live in Chicago, he's there on Friday. I think it's the 15th. Pod Save America is going to Seattle, Portland, National, and Atlanta. Go to crooked.com slash events for more info.

And then, Ben, you're going to Sun Valley to do a writer. Go to Sun Valley, the Sun Valley Writers Festival, which is actually a very cool event. There's some great writers there. Ed Oktar, who's been on the show. Oh, great. Evan Osnows, a friend of the pod. And I'm doing two things there. It's live streamed this weekend.

So if you want to see that and learn more about after the fall in my book, if you haven't bought it yet, about how we ended up in this mess. Actually, you know, every week. there's like a news event that triggers my memory of working this book. And the announcement that Victor Orban would be speaking. Jesus. I'll never forget. I didn't include that in this.

Yeah. My editor, you know, was always like, you know, can we really start this book about Hungary to explain American politics? And the cascading proof of why we should care about Victorubon is, you know, once again getting a boost by Victorubon coming to Texas, which is kind of funny because he's not like a Texan kind of guy. No, he's just a jet. Jackass.

He's just a jackass. You and your hungry clickbait, always trying to lead your books with the clickbait, right? Evan Osnoss's book, Age of Ambition, Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in New China. I read that last year. It's fantastic. I had Octara's Homeland Elogies, right? Fantastic. Just a truly great book.

Just buckle your seatbelt with that one. And Evan's last book, Wildland, is really good. It's basically, it's actually kind of a, if my book is about going outside of America, Dunnish in America, Wildland is about coming back from being a foreign correspondent. and kind of using those skills to investigate what's happened in America. It's a cool book. That is really cool. So why don't we get to the news here, which is last Friday,

former Japanese Prime Minister Shinto Abe was assassinated while speaking at a campaign event. Ben, I know you're going to focus on this in depth in your interview later with Danny, but I do think it's just worth quickly underscoring. Just what a towering figure he was in Japanese politics. Abe served as prime minister from 2006-2007. You resigned because of a medical issue, but later made a comeback and served. his prime minister a second time from 2012 to 2020, which is the record for the longest

interrupted tenure for a Japanese prime minister. That is particularly impressive when you know that during that period, Japan was just churning through leaders like one a year. Yeah, we had four in the first term of the Obama administration. I mean, not good, not a lot of stability in Japanese politics at the time. Abe was conservative. He was a nationalist. He fought hard to reform Japan's constitution and give the Japanese military more flexibility and, frankly, allow it to be more aggressive and to deepen alliances with democracies like the U.S. in India and Australia. But generally speaking, I think it's fair to say that he is considered the most impactful

post-World War II political leader in Japan, which made the assassination, I think, all the more shocking. Ben, I just wondered if you had any strong memories of working with Abe or meetings with him from the White House days. Yeah, I guess, and, you know, because Daniel will go through the legacy a bit. You know, this is, like you said, a huge figure who kind of stabilized. Japanese politics and really dominated Japanese politics for much of the last 20 years. After a period of like really intense kind of economic stagnation, you know, he did kind of stabilize things.

He played this much more sort of role globally. I guess what I'd say leaving some of the legacy work to Danny is, look, he was politically not in the same tradition or place as Obama, right? He was a right-a-centered guy, more nationalist guy. But, and I'm not just saying this, in the aftermath of an assassination, like he, he, he, despite some occasional friction points, really wanted Japan to be like a better, closer, more robust ally of the United States. If that sounds like foreign policies to be, you know,

robust meaning like he wanted to play a role in global events, he wanted to play a role in how we thought about the Asia Pacific, he wanted to help develop new relationships between not just the U.S. and Japan, but all of our allies in the region. And in my memories that stand out to me are really two. One is that in 2016, Abbe and Obama went to Hiroshima together. And it was one of the most powerful things I've ever been a part of. And, you know, it was this kind of moment of reconciliation and remembrance and kind of healing.

and, you know, that Abe really wanted that visit to happen. Obama was really moved by that visit. Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to welcome Barack Obama to Hiroshima. Can't imagine that. Yeah, and the two of them gave these, you know, incredibly poignant speeches. I encourage people to go check them out and laid a reef there at Ground Zero where the bomb fell. And then Abe came to Pearl Harbor in December 2016. I think he was the last foreign leader that Obama met with in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor and Abbe kind of closing that circle.

And so he was a more complicated guy. You know, I've seen some people on the left. This guy was a nationalist, an ultra-nationalistic. It's true that there are some, you know, elements that you might find troubling, like he visited this shrine to the Japanese, the Japanese war dead, which includes some. Right. Far less reconciliation when it comes to conflicts with South Korea. But this is what I'm saying. like he was a little more complicated because the Hiroshima Pearl Harbor piece was a guy

that wasn't just celebrating the the nationalist past. He was recognizing the complexity of history, right? Then the other thing I'd say is that I went, and I haven't talked about this, I went to Japan with Obama in 2018, and Obama was going there to like give a speech and it was like part of his bigger trip to Asia. Trump is president, you know, Abe again, right-a-centered guy, finds out we're going. We had a three-hour sushi meal, right? With Abe? With Abe. At like a counter, you know, like the kind of thing

like you see in those documentaries. Was this the Girolo Sushi? I don't know if it was that place, but it was like a famous place, right? And it was like sitting there with like dudes just like bringing out course after course after course of sushi. Maybe not three, but it was definitely two hours. One of the best

meals in my life. And just was incredibly gracious to Obama and, you know, talking about the past, talking about like some of the stuff. those gone wrong with Trump, like asking some advice. And so he was like, I just came away from that thinking, like, you know, he was, he was an interesting layered figure who had a huge impact on Japan. And he really did have like a, like a decency about him, at least in all my dealings of them. And the act of him being killed like that with what looked like a homemade gun,

you just, you never expect to see that in Japan. I mean, like, Like, I think, like, one person was killed but with a gun in Japan, not by suicide, but killed, like, in the course of a year. Very, very low levels of gun violence. Yeah, I mean, look, Abe seems like an incredibly savvy political actor, right? Yeah. He famously jumped on a plane right away when Trump was elected, I think, brought him a gold-plated golf club. He did. Yeah.

But, like, look, when you're the leader of a country that relies in the United States for a bunch of security assurances, like, you're going to kind of kiss up to the president. Like, shit happens. Yeah, no. And it was like, again, complicated figure. Like, I'm not suggesting he was without faulty. But like hugely impactful and nobody, you know, nobody should go out like that, obviously. And the people of Japan, you know, it's like a just got a huge shock to their body politic. Yeah.

To have it like go down like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, sort of saying in the general region, listeners might have seen some pretty incredible images over the weekend out of Sri Lanka where protesters were. storming the official residence of the office of the president, President Roger Paxa. They were, people were sprawled out in his bed watching TV, actually watching footage of the

protests that they were involved in on TV. They were literally doing backflips into the presidential swimming pool. It was pretty amazing. Another group burned down the prime minister's house, a lot less funny, not laughing at that. But these scenes were the culmination of months, if not years of frustrations about economic mismanagement and poor political leadership that have led the country from the, from being, you know, really an economic success story to a truly desperate situation where in recent months, the government has been rationing fuel. People can't get food. They can't find basic

supplies. And President Rajapaksa's response has basically been denial. I think some of his supporters were attacking protesters. And then he tried to reshuffle his cabinet to make it look like he was making changes and sort of pulling power away from this dynastic family that he has, but it was all bullshit. This might be the end of the line for Rajapaksa and his family. Over the weekend, the Speaker of the Sri Lankan Parliament said that the president is going to resign on Wednesday. So the day this podcast comes out, we record on Tuesdays. We'll see. The Prime Minister would normally take his place, but he resigned over the weekend as well. After his house is burned down.

That's a good time to resign. Which means the Speaker of the Parliament should take over the presidency for like a month, I think. It's a caretaker role. Whoever gets the job inherits a desperate economic situation. And basically, I mean, I guess what do you do? You just go out and try to seek economic relief from India, the IMF, somebody immediately? Yeah, you know, you appeal to international donors, basically, to stabilize things. My reaction to this beyond just the insane images, like dudes, there was like the guy who jumped into the swimming pool from the roof. It looked like the scene.

Almost famous. Almost famous. But first of all, the Rajapaks, the president and his brother, you know, these guys, like, they win this brutal civil war against the Tomols, including with like atrocities at the end of that war in 2008, 2009. And then they never had a program after that other than kind of, you know, treating the economy like their personal, you know, fiefdom, essentially. And the things that stand out to me are that one of the things that they did, and this is

not to pick on China, but I think it's an important point to hit. they did all these big infrastructure projects with China, where China would lend them, you know, the money to do these projects that were not really helping the broad economy. They were kind of vanity projects or developing this huge port, which, by the way, the Chinese might use someday as a naval base. And an international airport named after the Roger Paxa family that is not being used, a cricket stadium in the middle of nowhere that's barely used. Yeah, very expensive infrastructure projects.

That, again, like what good is that to the public? It's nice to have a nice cricket stadium. but it's not creating jobs, right? So there's a warning sign in that because there are other countries that have gone down this route of kind of financing big infrastructure projects with Chinese loans as a part of the Chinese-led belt road initiative.

And I think Sri Lanka should be a warning sign to some other countries that, you know, China wasn't there when they appealed to China for relief on some of these debts and for assistance, literally, you know, the Chinese weren't going to make them whole. And so that's a warning sign. about some of these debt traps that have been created by Chinese finance infrastructure projects. And geopolitically, I think what you might see is India trying to move into the space because

India and China have kind of competed for influence in Sri Lanka. I don't usually like to see countries as part of some geopolitical struggle. But in this case, I think it is the case that China and India have competed for influence there. And so one interesting thing to watch going forward is whatever government emerges, are they turning to China, are they turning to India, or are they turning to India, are they turning to like the IMF and the World Bank to see where they go. The other thing is this is an early indicator of political instability to come because of inflation and the war in Ukraine.

And we've been talking about this, but this is kind of the first domino to drop maybe of a country where the inflationary pressure combined with post-pendemic pressures combined with maybe food shortages becomes really combustible. And I think we are going to see more scenes, frankly, like dudes jumping in swimming pools at the presidential palace in Sri Lanka, instability in other countries as we get six months out, a year out, with this continued inflation, with the continued food shortages, this should be a warning sign to other countries that have vulnerabilities like this. Yeah. I mean, and I think the Roger Paxa family got blamed because they are to blame in a lot of ways, but also because they've been around since, I mean, The family's been in politics since the 50s, but they've been in control for a couple of decades. They built all these stupid projects.

They named them after themselves. Everyone knew it. So people were like, absolutely not. You know, they blamed these post-pandemic drop in tourism or there were some terrorists, I think, threats or attacks in Sri Lanka that really hurt tourism and just crippled the economy. But, yeah, I mean, even these protesters who were so justifiably angry at the corruption and this management, the New York Times reported that they helped to pick up. trash in the mansion after people had stormed it. They were watering the plants. People found like 50 grand in cash that they picked up, counted and turned into police. So this is the most polite overthrow of a presidential office in contrast to January 6th, by the way. I've ever seen.

I will say that it should be noted Sri Lanka has a really vibrant civil society, a good activist community, and that speaks to the quality of the opposition there. Just to put a note on other potential places of unrest. We've talked about the Middle East and North Africa and the Horn of Africa, Central Asia. You know, we saw some pretty intense protests in a part of Uzbekistan recently. Yeah, those are scary. And so I just keep an eye on this, like this kind of thing happening in more places. Yeah, for sure. So on Tuesday, President Biden's heading to the Middle East. He's going to go to Israel, the West Bank, and Saudi Arabia. The The goals for the trip were outlined by the president in a Washington Post opette over the weekend.

The gist is Biden wants to push countries to have closer relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords for more coordination generally against Iran, hopefully some progress on ending the Saudi-led war in Yemen, and then to get the Saudis and the UAE to pump more oil. The timing here is tough. The Israeli government just collapsed. Yair Lepid is serving as a caretaker prime minister until the elections in November. Bibi Nintyahu is waiting in the wings, and for some reason, Biden is meeting with him. I hope that's not. God, I hope that's not true. I just, I keep seeing it, though. Interestingly, so Biden's visiting a hospital in East Jerusalem, which apparently is the first time a U.S.

president has gotten into that part of the city. He'll meet with President Makmoudabas as well from the Palestinian Authority. Things get obviously more complicated when Biden goes to Saudi Arabia. He will meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who ordered the execution of journalist Jamal Khashoggi back in 2018 among his long human rights violation rap sheet. So, man, let's just do this in parts. So first, the Israel West Bank trip. Do you think that this leg just got scheduled because Biden wanted to go to Saudi to make this ask on oil? And advisor said, look what happened to Obama when he went to Egypt without going to Saudi Arabia first? Like, you just get killed politically.

Because I feel like this visit went from fine, like kind of harmless to do, to a bit politically dicey with the government collapse. And then again, like, I know you meet with opposition leaders. I know you meet with people out of power all the time. But why BB Nanyahu? Yeah, I like I'm going to have a hard time. He's meeting with Neftali Bennett? Yeah, you can just meet with Lapid and Bennett because Bennett was the guy who's in on the deal. I just don't think it's at all necessary to meet with Bibi Nanyahu and Bibi Nanyahu like literally spent years undermining Barack Obama and nobody embraced Donald Trump more.

And does anybody think that Bibi Nanyahu doesn't want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States? He was like tweeting like doctorate images of Biden falling asleep. in meetings. Yeah, like a week ago. That's who we're talking about. So I totally unnecessary. That's first point. There's a couple of things that bother me about this. When you combine the two elements, because I think you're right. I think they realize you're going to Saudi Arabia. They decide to swallow that pill. And so it's like, well, we can't go there without going to Israel because we could get criticized politically. And if we go to Israel, we can kind of spotlight the Abraham Accords. You and I have talked about this. You had a great piece in the Atlantic

today about this. Yeah, and I'll get into that on the Saudi piece. I guess what I'd say, though, is it lends a flavor to the visit that I don't know they intended, which is that the JCPOA talks, the Iranial talks are kind of dead in the water, right? And a premise of the Abraham Accords is this kind of block that is being formed to confront Iran. And it feels like by having this really high-profile a multi-day visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia, like, they're kind of signing up for a much more hawkish confrontational Iran policy. And I just, where is that leading? You know, like I, I'm all for like, you know, standing up to Iranian behavior that endangerous interests in the region. But like, I don't know if they're back and into this or going into a head first, you know.

Are you referencing the, there's a quote from Jake Sullivan about intelligence suggesting that Iran was transferring drones, basically, to the Russians? Yeah, so I wasn't thinking about that directly. But yeah, so Jake Sullivan came out and said that the Iranians are going to start providing these drones to Russia. And then Putin came out and announced that he was going to visit Iran, right? And so part of what worries me, and this has kind of worried me in the back of my head since the beginning of the Ukraine war, sometimes you have a big war like that.

Like, it can pop up in other places, you know. And if the Iran kind of Gulf Israel confrontation becomes like tethered in a weird way to the Ukraine war and there's this heightened risk of military conflict with Iran over its nuclear program. Like I just, I think de-escalation should be what we're going for here. We'll get to the Gulf piece in a minute. But then also on the Israel piece, like I'm glad that Biden is going to East Jerusalem. But like, man, there's really nothing to show about what our. theory the case even is about the future for the Palestinian people, because as you talked about, they're totally left out of these Abram Accords, which they're going to wrap their arms around on

this trip. And there's not like a peace process. And there's not really an answer to the question, you know, announcing assistance to the Palestinians is all well and good, but like to lead where politically, you know. Never mind the fact the State Department sort of announced up what seemed like a whitewashed report on the killing of Shurina. Oh, yeah, yeah. We didn't talk about that. I mean, basically took the Israeli side that like, well, this seemed to come from where the IDF was, the Israeli defense forces, but we can't say that why that happened and they were conducting these, you know, operations. And it did feel like the best possible, you know, presentation, let's just say, of those findings for Israel. Yeah. So the Israeli government. I always, you know, of course. So let's turn to the Saudi

piece of this. So I think listeners of the show know that we both would prefer Joe Biden not go to Saudi Arabia for this trip. You really do get the feeling that Biden himself hates that he has to make this trip. He keeps emphasizing the regional diplomacy piece. Everyone else seems to think that the trip is about asking the Saudis to increase oil production. That rationale is kind of undercut by the fact that then you'll read experts in Bloomberg or whatever talking about the fact that the Saudis in the UAE can only increase production by at most three million barrels a day, which basically offsets what's getting taken off the market from Russia up from sanctions. But I mean, that might even be a generous estimate of what excess capacity they have. And that's like the best case scenario.

Best case scenario. And then U.S. refineries are operating at 95%. I mean, that's how your oil gets to gasoline. So there's not a lot of slack there. So, Ben, I guess I'm just sort of like at a bit of a loss for what the best case deliverable could be out of this trip. The one thing I could come up with that would really make it worth it if the Saudi said, we commit to fully, immediately end the war in Yemen full stop. Yes. So I do think the best outcome of this trip, if they can kind of take a ceasefire that has been kind of tenuous in Yemen and really pull that forward and move towards a political resolution

in Yemen, that would be good. And I think that would be like a positive outcome. As you mentioned, I have a piece in the Atlantic that I hope you guys check out because I really tried to unpack my grievances with this. trip. And so I'll try to do that quickly here. The first is that you kind of see this kind of lazy talking point that, well, it's a triumph of interest over values, right? And I kind of question, like, are Saudi Arabia's interests really aligned with ours? Like the Iran deal, which, you know, Biden said he wanted to return to. Like, they supported Trump and getting out of that and bringing

us to the brink that we're on with Iran. The war in Yemen that has been ongoing and that Biden committed to ending U.S. support for, that continues. And the U.S. has not tried. while the diplomacy's been good, we've not tried doing what the Democratic Party uniformly voted for in the Trump years, which is halting all support for Saudi-led military operations in Yemen. And by the way, also pausing arms sales to Saudi Arabia. You've seen Saudi Arabia meddling against stated U.S. interests in the region by getting interfering in Lebanese politics. And Lebanon's kind of gone off the rails. Truly the craziest story, maybe in years. Yeah, since they took the prime minister.

the prime minister hostage in Riyadh. Remember that one. Go ahead and memory lane on that. Fizar. Backing a warlord in Libya against the U.S.-backed government in Tripoli, right? The blockade of Qatar. Like, this is not, like, are those our interests? Like, you know, Saudi foreign policy, I would argue, like, how has it been aligned with our interest? So that that's the one point. Then the other point is that I think that they're worried about, you know, the Saudis and Emirates kind of drifting into the Russian Chinese camp, you know, in the context of Ukraine and lot of things. And that's always a concern of national security types. I would say, like, first of all, the Saudi and Emirati military dependency on the U.S. is not something that can be untangled in a few years with Russia. And, oh, by the way, it's not like Russia looks like a great bet for your military supplier these days, you know, if they're asking Iran for drones. And there's these rumors that

there are going to be these defense packs with the Gulf states, like kind of de facto alliances, And this is the bigger point, like, are these really in a battle of democracies versus autocracies? They are autocracies, right? And we talk a lot on the show that the existential challenges to the United States, to us and our children and grandchildren, are the survivability of democracy and climate change. And a reset with a oral rich dictator is not how you deal with those challenges. And at some point, like, we have to own that. It makes our rhetoric about democracy look like complete hypocrisy and completely self-interested. It makes our rhetoric about climate change look less important than trying to get like a dictator to pump some more oil.

And so, look, I get it. It's hard. And I said in this piece, like, I don't put this all in Joe Biden in part because it seems like he doesn't really want to go. But also, I think, like, Obama engaged the Saudis. Oh, yeah. I just think at some point we need to change this prison that we put ourselves in that we're somehow dependent on. on these dictatorships in the Gulf. Like, it gives them all the power.

It takes away all of our leverage and gives it to them. And we're just facilitating the laundering of their reputation post-Koshoggi, you know? Yes. This is worth a million. Like, how can you ask Newcastle, you know, how can you ask governments

to not deal with, like, the Saudis and things like buying a soccer team or financing a golf league if the President of the United States is over there shaking hands with them? Yeah, I mean, I think, like, look, historically, the U.S. position on human rights is wildly inconsistent over multiple presidents.

Multiple administrations, including the one you and I served in. Yes, and something we should work on. Own it completely. I do wonder if Biden would be in Saudi Arabia right now, if not for the war in Ukraine. And I imagine that will be a huge topic of conversation. So let's just talk about the latest. So some key updates in recent weeks, Russia has taken full control of the Lujan province in eastern Ukraine in their escalating airstrikes on the Dinnets province. Over the weekend, the Russians leveled a five-story residential building that killed dozens of civilians in Denezsk, so the war crimes continue. There is some anecdotal evidence suggesting that the new long-range U.S. missile systems are getting used effectively by the Ukrainian military to hit targets like Russian ammo depots.

There's rumblings that this might be the beginning of a bigger Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine, but none of those systems is going to be, you know, a quick fix. It's going to be a long war of attrition, literally. And then the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which brings natural gas from Russia to Germany, went offline for 10 days of scheduled maintenance starting on Monday. As we've discussed previously, Germany is super dependent, heavily dependent on Russian natural gas. I think 30% of their natural gas is from Russia, as there are several other European countries. And gas prom, the Russian energy conglomerate run by the state, has drastically reduced the flow

of gas through Nord Stream over the last few months. And German officials are worried that Russia might use this maintenance period, just cut it off completely. That has left German businesses scrambling to figure out how. how they would keep operating. The German authorities had planned to use this period in the summer to fill up their storage units of natural gas. That might not be able to happen.

The German parliament is like reaching out into telling individuals they're going to need to cut their personal consumption over the winter. The parliament, they've decided to lower the temperature in their offices by two degrees come winter. Like that's how the specific we're talking about here. So, Ben, I mean, look, first of all, not a lot of great updates there in generally. But, you know, talking about the long tail of some of the things where, you're going to see in terms of gas prices going up, instability, food prices going up.

I mean, no one is spared. This is Germany. Yeah. It's one of the engine of the European economies in the world. You've got like industrial bases saying like we don't know how we are going to continue doing whatever it is we do, manufacture, et cetera, if we don't have energy. It's very ominous. It is.

I mean, and it speaks to this like a war of attrition that Putin is going to want to wage where he's weaponizing everything from the price of fuel and gas and Europe to like literally tens of millions of people having enough food around the world. And like there's just going to have to be a really aggressive effort to find as many workarounds as possible. And again, I think in that regard, it's not just like Saudi's pumping oil. It's like, are there other energy solutions that can be brought into this picture? You know, are there efficiencies that can be developed in the energy space? But also like politically, like, you know, unfortunately, you're going to be able to mitigate at all. And politicians need to make the case for why their people

are going to have to make some sacrifice because of the war in Ukraine. I, that's hard, but like, you can't avoid it, you know, and I think that you saw this in the European population in particular, this kind of stirring of solidarity with Ukraine at the beginning. That's going to have to be, you know, continually maintained. But also, I think it raises questions about like, what is the end game in Ukraine? And can political leaders provide some sense of where this is going and what the outcome is that we're looking for? It may get to a point where just saying, you know, we need to make sure Russia loses, which is kind of the standard talking point. Well, is there, what is the negotiation that you want to pursue? Because, you know, because this

is going to become politically more and more difficult. Yeah, it's going to be really hard. I mean, speaking to politically difficult and more news out of it. Russia. So last week, WMBA star, Brittany Griner, pleaded guilty in a Russian court to charges of possession of hash oil. Griner said she packed quickly and accidentally basically brought vape cartridges in her luggage. She was flying to Russia. She flew to Russia to play in a league there that, by the way, pays a hell of a lot better than WMBA, so she's played there for years and has been detained by Russian authorities since February, right before the invasion started. Griner appears back in court on July 14th. Then I think the question is whether Britney Griner

guilty in an effort to conclude the trial quickly and then get to a stage where the U.S. and Russia can maybe cut a deal to get her home or maybe it allows her team to ask for clemency and just appeal that way. I don't know. I hope one of those things is true. Biden and Vice President Harris called Brittany Greiner's wife last week. And then at the hearing, an embassy official was able to hand Britney Greiner a letter from President Biden himself.

Biden's also under a lot of pressure now to get a former Marine named Paul Whalen out of Russia. Whalen has been held in Russia since 2018. So, again, super hard situation here. And one where, you know, look, there's going to be a lot of pressure, understandably, I think reasonably on President Biden to do as much as he possibly can. But the reality is that Putin and the Russians have all the leverage here because they are holding her. And this is a hostage situation. Yeah, I'm like entirely sympathetic to the Biden administration.

They don't, they can't control this. They can't make Russia return Brittany Griner. And I think what you've seen is different phases. Like the first phase, they tried to be quiet about it. And I think that's always the right approach, even if people would like to see more noise, because, you know, you want to see if you can kind of deal with this through the justice system. Now it's clear that the justice system was completely rigged against Brittany Griner because she should not be facing the charges she's facing for the amount of stuff that she had on her.

And so therefore, yeah, I think you're right. I think her plea feels like, okay, we're not going to get a fair shot. So let's kind of expedite the judicial process so that we can kind of get to some other outcome, whether it's clemency or whether it's a swap. And we talked about Victor, Victor, Bout, this notorious arms dealer. Horrible. The Russians won. Evil arms dealer. So I'm sure they're probably trying to find, is there anybody else that we can trade here?

Are there other countries that might be able to be helpful in brokering something between the U.S. and Russia at a time that we don't have good relationships? So you just try everything you can. I do want to like, you and I have talked about this, Tommy. Like I actually want to take on one kind of critique out there that I've seen that I understand where it's coming from. But I'm not sure that it's accurate, which is, as someone who admires, Brittany Griner and understands the frustration of people are like, why isn't there more attention on this? I totally agree that there can and should have been just kind of more public awareness and attention on this because of how important a figure she is. But this idea that if, like, LeBron James was in a Russian prison, he'd be home by now, like, actually, I actually think LeBron James

would be in Russian prison for a higher price, right? Like, you have to, you have to get into Putin's shoes here. I'm trying, he's going to try to leverage any American he can detain a prominence for as much as he can get in return here. So I don't, I don't think Putin would have, like, caved, you know, because of the prominence of somebody, I think what Putin's trying to do is leverage anybody in anything he can. Yeah, I think the fair criticism is that LeBron James never would have been in Russia because he doesn't have to travel abroad to get paid a fair wage, right? And that if LeBron James had been detained in Russia, it would have been the number one story in the news in the world for every day that he was detained there. Also true, that doesn't mean

that Putin wouldn't be a fucking monster. Yeah, I mean, remember, I only say that not to, it's not an attack on those critics, it's to keep people focus on like, Putin is the guy. Yeah. It's not Joe Biden. Like, Putin is the guy at fault here, you know? This guy is indiscriminately killing kids. Yeah. You know, that's what we're dealing with. That's what we have to remember. Here's another story of an amazing athlete, Ben, out of the UK. So Sir Mo Farah, he's a British long distance runner and gold medalist who's one of the greatest track runners ever. Do you remember him in the, I remember him those 2012? Not at all. Oh, okay. I don't remember. You flag this one like you were like super into this guy. Because he just fucking.

Crush those Olympics. So, yeah, he's like a multi-go medal winner. He was the hero of those Olympics. Okay, okay. So new BBC documentary where Farah talks about how he was actually trafficked to the UK as a child and forced to work as a domestic servant. Farah had previously said he came to the UK from Somali land with his parents as a refugee. But in this new dock, he says that at age eight or nine, he had to leave his parents.

He went to live in Djibouti and they got flown to the UK by a woman he'd never met before, who told him to say his name was Mahat. That was not his name and then forced him to work as basically her domestic servant. That situation persisted for a while until he started running track. His PE instructor obviously took, you know, acute interest in him because he's one of the best athletes on the planet. And then that PE teacher helped Farah get placed with a different foster family and he sort blossomed and became the star that we know today.

So, but this documentary is called the Real Mo Farrah and comes out on BBC One on Wednesday, July 13th of the day this comes out. It looks like an incredible story. Yeah. You know, first of all, like, I give him a lot of respect for telling his story, right? And there's some legal risk, right? He can't, you know, his papers, one more. He could lose his citizenship.

He could lose his citizenship. He's been assured that he won't. I think people, yeah, he won't. He's a sir after all, right? For sure, yeah. But, like, I, you know, there's, we're heavy on recommendations today. There's a movie called Flea. Did you see this movie?

Flea, who was nominated for Best, both animated film and documentary, but it's basically a story of a refugee. And this story triggered my memory of that movie, which everybody should check out. This is a common thing where traffickers, now Moferra's story is a little different than flee, but I'll get to that.

The traffickers in that movie tell the kid, when you get to Europe, flush your passport down the toilet, tell them this is your name, tell them all your family's dead, because that's how you will get to stay there. So in other words, some of these refugee children who are trafficked are basically told, you can't tell them that you have a family because then they'll send you back, you know, and the pain that people suffer because they essentially have to lose their identity to get to safe haven. That's a common problem. Now, what he's highlighting is next level problem.

which is basically modern day slavery. Yeah. Because he was sent up to the UK. And what this woman did is as soon as she got him into the UK, she literally tore up his papers in front of him. And we're like, if you want to be safe, if you want to be fed, if you want to survive, you have to be a servant, you know. And he at the age of nine was taking care of other people's kids and doing the dishes and basically was a domestic servant, you know. And here's this guy who is world famous and, you know, hugely famous in the UK who was a slave, essentially, you know, and a victim of human trafficking. And so I think he's spotlighting, I mentioned Fleab because he's spotlighting the whole spectrum of what happens to people in this world.

The worst end of the spectrum is people who are literally enslaved. But even people that go through perilous refugee journeys, they can lose their identities, they lose their papers. They're so vulnerable that they lose who they are and they have to spend the rest of their life recovering that. And hopefully this helps other people become aware of that issue and deal with it. This is a particularly acute, awful problem in the Gulf, in the person Gulf. There's a lot of individuals that get trafficked from name your country or told that they're going to work in Qatar or, you know, a country in the region. And basically, their employment. is controlled by, you know, the family they're working for,

and they will not let them leave. They have no freedom of travel. They take their passports. It's horrifying. And the worst, we shouldn't leave out, the sex trafficking thing, where sometimes girls literally find themselves in brothels in these situations. So this, hopefully this can spark like a just greater global awareness and action on this issue. Yeah.

Ben, my favorite story of the week is also a sports story. So four men in India were arrested for staging. a fake cricket tournament and accepting bets on it via the telegram app from people watching in Russia. This wasn't just any fake cricket match. It was a fake Indian Premier League match, which I think is the biggest, baddest, most famous league. And I know nothing about cricket, but this is what I read.

These guys staged more than nine games cricket matches, and they live streamed them with fake crowd noise, running commentary, actual players, like pitching, swinging the bat, umpire, sort of like coordinating the whole thing based on the bets so that they win. And they got a bunch of people in Russian cities to place bets. And I think they just bilked these Russians. Yeah. We're gambling on them. And so, I mean, I just say these guys should not be arrested.

I think they should be maybe given a daytime Emmy. Or a Hulu documentary. Or a documentary. Yep. Like, yeah, I mean, just sometimes the grift is actually, like, admirable. Did you see the sting? No. Redford Newman?

A long time ago. It's the same idea. Like, so they set up a whole fake horse racing thing, complete with announcers and everything. they bring this big gambler in to place a bet on a race that like doesn't exist. That's genius. Yeah, it's genius. So these guys, I mean, but don't you think it's like Hulu Doc? Yeah.

I'm sure someone's already optioned this IP. Probably Modi. Another sports story, Ben. So former national security advisor and secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, is joining the new Denver Broncos ownership group. Rice is a well-known to be a big football fan, NFL fan. She moved to Denver when she was 12 years old. She attended the University of Denver for under. grad and graduate school. So she has real ties to Denver. The Broncos were recently purchased by

an ownership group led by Walmart Air Rob Walton and his family. Time will tell. Ben of Condi and the new ownership group are greeted as liberators by the Broncos fan base. Former Denver Broncos GM, John L. Way was asked what value a former Bush administration official could bring to the franchise. And he said, quote, in football, there are no known unknowns and known unknowns, but when you play at Ohio, you can't let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud. So that's obviously a fake quote. And frankly, doesn't even make sense. I'm glad you said that because I was going to try to work in a smoking gun became mushroom cloud and you did it for me.

Do you remember, though, jokes aside. Talk about someone who's just escaped accountability. All accountability. Well, in 2018, Adam Schechter from ESPN, like one of the top two or three sports reporters guy who breaks all the news. He reported that Cleveland Browns wanted to interview Condi Rice for the head coaching job. Yeah, I don't get this. So basically, Connie Rice, I will say, like, football's always been like a weird part of

her reputation laundering because, you know, you know, because, you know, you know, You know, this is someone who is literally the National Security Advisor, the top official in the run up the Iraq war, said the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud, oversaw all the manipulation of intelligence, and then oversaw the catastrophic failure to plan for the war and everything, you know. And yet, like, the charming card she always played was that she was like a football fan. And it's like, so was like half of America. Like, I, like, she's gotten a lot of mileage out of being a football fan. Someone got an ESPN reporter to report that the Cleveland Browns were going to interview for head coach. Why? Why would? Because she did such a good job, bang up job with that whole Iraq occupation thing, that she's going to run the Browns defense? Yeah, I just like, certainly the NFL could, you know, diversify the ranks here.

But like the pretending that they're going to interview someone who's never coached a football team is like an incredibly condescending way to pretend to do it. There's obviously a lie to launder some reputation. Because she says she's like a fan of. lot. I mean, like, it's what I don't get it, but like, everybody's a football fan or most people are. Best of luck with the Broncos. I never, like, yeah, this. This got Russell Wilson. It just gives me a reason to not root for the Broncos. Sorry, I'm with you.

Sorry, I know, got a lot of friends in Colorado, and I respect how intensely they root for the Broncos, but I don't. It's hard for me to get into this. I don't give a shit about the Broncos. No offense. Well, you're a Patriots guy. Mack Jones's MVP this room? I think so. Oh, how about your little Jets scandal? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's, you know, my team's, when you're Nixon Jets fan, Mets fan, you know, you kind of doesn't go well.

If, uh, listener, if you don't know, we're talking about Google Jets quarterback mom friend. Yes. Finally, Ben, uh, I want to play our audience some words of wisdom from former national security advisor John Bolton. Take a listen. It's not an attack on our democracy. It's Donald Trump looking out for Donald Trump. It's a once in a lifetime occurrence. I don't know that I agree with you to be fair, with all due respect. One doesn't have to be brilliant to attempt a coup.

I disagree with that. As somebody who has helped plan coup data, not here, but, you know, other places. It takes a lot of work. I mean, like, that, it takes a lot of work, Tommy. His point is basically you do have to be brilliant to plan a coup. First of all, no, actually. No, because the coups he's planned. I mean, we talked about some of the coups that he's planned.

planned on this show. Like when he, when he stood up in the Roosevelt room and taped a video saying that, like, Venezuela was about to collapse and there's a plane taking Maduro out. I mean, like, and I think he was referring, I think there was a plural in his comment. Like, I think he was not referring to one coup. What? I think

he's referring to, like, many coups. Was he talking about his time in the 80s? And, and who knows how many places? I mean, I don't know. What coup is? Just add him up, right? And, like, at the end of the day, this fucking guy is there a classic case of someone that went to work for Trump because he wanted to do his coups and thought like Trump was like either a big enough lunatic or checked out enough that he could kind of just work under the radar and do his own coups and his own shit. And then had this opportunity to take a shot at Trump during the first impeachment and he famously refused to show up to testify because he was too busy trying to get his book out. out and get better paid speaking on the circuit than he would get from the Senate that was

conducting the hearing on impeachment. And now this fucking guy wants to put himself forward as some kind of defender of American democracy. Well, guess what? Like, part of the thing that led to the coup here is that the kinds of people like him that were doing coups in other countries, right? Like, how we act with impunity around the world is part of what happened here, right? I mean, like, he test out the coups in enough places and some people say, well, why don't we just try out the coup here? So that was Jake Tapper doing the interview. I was reading some more about this. Jake can usually, by the way, be quicker in response, but I think even he was probably- Jake was shocked, I think, yeah. But I guess Tapper later asked Bolton for more specifics on which

countries he has plotted coups. And Mr. Bolton, this according to Yahoo News, alluded to material he wrote about in a book on U.S. activities in Venezuela in 2018 and 2019. He's trying to get people to buy his book again. That's like probably pretty classified, sir, if you were planning coups in Venezuela in 2018, 2019? What about the dudes who are still in prison? Because they tried to do a coup in Venezuela. Remember those guys, those Special Forces guys who were Mar-a-Lago and then headed down there? I mean, like, could somebody maybe look into this?

I mean, and I actually found a video, Tommy, and I tweeted this, of him saying literally on-camera about Venezuela in 2018, 2019, it's not like this is a coup. This is not a coup. Oh, my God. So I guess John Bolton, you know, can lie with impunity like all these fuckers. I mean, sorry about my F-bombs. No, listen. John Bolton brings it out of me. He is the worst.

I mean, talk about someone who is just has no apologies for his role in the war of rock. No, no self-reflection. We sit here, you know, and we talked about Saturday before. Like, I'm more than willing to, and as you are all the time, like, wrestling with, like, things that the administration, we worked for. These guys never own up to anything, you know. Connie Rice with, like, her, you know, Cleveland Brown's coach over there and, like, John Bolton with his coups on television. I mean, I know that Trump is like the first order of threat, but, man, these guys are not far behind. I beg to differ.

It takes a lot of planning to do. Well, what's so amazing is what got him to do that wasn't Jake like cornering him. It was like he felt insulted. Yes. As a coup planner, you know, like the thing that offends him, I guess, about January 6 is that it wasn't a good enough coup. It was a poorly executed coup. You know? I mean.

And by the way, how do you like to be in one of those other countries? Like, you know, this just, like, what a message that sense of the world? I mean, you know, you and I had a lot of conversations with the Summit of the Americas and the refusal to invite Venezuela or Cuba and all these countries. And, like, this comment from John Bolton will just be played. Just crystallizes the ad nauseum in those places. The citizens and those people think. And why wouldn't they think that? They should, yeah.

They should be cynical. John Bolton is like, yeah. And by the way, it doesn't help, like, so for some of the people that might add us, how does that help the Venezuelan opposition? How does it help Juan Guido or Leopoldo Lopez to have a goon like John Bolton be like, yeah, you know, I planned a coup down there. It makes them look like U.S. lackeys. Yeah, Bupon's. Great job, John. Good to see you out on TV again.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break, and then we'll have Ben's interview with Asia expert. Danny Russell about Shenzhou Abe, his legacy, Japanese politics, all sorts of good stuff. So stick around for that. Okay, I'm very pleased to welcome back to Pod Save the World, a very good friend of our. as Danny Russell, the former Assistant Secretary of State for Asia, long-time diplomat, including how many years were you in Japan, Danny, a bunch, right? Well, yeah, I guess as a diplomat, probably seven or eight. Yeah, so Danny Russell, welcome back to the pod, and thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me, Ben. It's great to be here. So we want to talk about the assassination of Shinzo Abe. And before we get into Abe and his legacy, which is the bulk of the conversation, I just wanted to ask you to explain to our listeners, like how shocking an event it is in Japan for there to be this kind of political violence and this kind of gun violence in particular in the country. Right. Well, I mean, I think arithmetic is the clearest answer. You know, since the end of World War II, there have been maybe five, maybe six, depending on any count of acts of real political violence against major political figures, not all of which ended in fatalities. And I think that on an average year, there will be somewhere. between four and 10 gun deaths in all of Japan,

a country of 120 plus million people, of which half or two thirds are gangsters shooting at each other and awaiting citizens. So just from the arithmetic alone, you can see that this is the blackest of black swan events. It's virtually unthinkable and it really, causes Japanese people to ask themselves, you know, what have we become? How is this possible? Who are we anyway? Yeah. And again, one more question before we get to Abe. On the who are we,

it doesn't feel like this is a sign of, you know, guns being a rising problem because it seems like this guy kind of made his own gun. So it's not like there's a wash and AR-15's over there. but there is this question of his motives are kind of strange you know it seems kind of kind of wacky and conspiracy theory minded um is that a sign that some of the same kind of uh maybe social media driven or conspiracy theory driven type of radicalization that has plagued other countries is is you know taking root in some form in japan have you talked to anybody there about that yeah i really don't think so and i don't think that there are many the analysts in Japan who see that kind of infection leaching into Japan from the world.

There have been, you know, quite apart from the rare instances of political violence, there have been horrible crimes in Japan such as the sarin gas attack in Subway, which also had some pretty fuzzy religious. or pseudo-religious roots. There are the occasional stabbings in a kindergarten, I mean horrific crimes that I think most Japanese at least believe reflect the lunatic fringe of humanity that kind of these things happen. And I suspect that by and large Japanese people see the assassination or the murder of Abe,

not in political terms vis-a-vis the motive, but more as one of these rare but occasional outbursts. It's like a tsunami or a volcano eruption. It's destructive, but it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Now, it's a very unclear picture what the real backstory and motives of the attacker really are, and we may never know it. It's certainly the case that if he could have gotten a hold of a gun, he would have. Yeah, yeah. He went to an awful lot of trouble to create devices to kill. And I think it's pretty horrific that he was able to succeed.

I think the biggest impact is going to be on the Japanese special police, who clearly have a lot to learn about close protection. Yeah, no, you could see that in the video that there was basically very little protection. Okay, so getting into Abe, before we even get to like the extent of his legacy, which is enormous, one should just explain to listeners who might not follow Japanese politics that closely who Shenzhou Abe was and why he was such a big figure in Japanese political life. Well, I don't know whether to begin in like the Muramachi era of 1100 or the Aido period.

But let's suffice it to say that Abe Shinzo comes from an awfully long line. He's a blue blood politician. His grandfather was very prominent post-war, pre-war, during the war, post-war politician and prime minister. His father was foreign minister and was on track to become a prime minister, but died early of natural causes. He was very much to the matter born. And right now, I don't know the exact stats,

but the preponderance of the elected legislators in the Japanese diet members are children, which is to say sons, if not grandsons, of other politicians. So this is a guild system in Japan. And Abe was at the sort of highest echelon of the guild. So it was a given that he would become a politician. He inherited his father's seat.

What was not a given was that he would prove to be a successful and effective politician within Japan. Because in Japan, politics is a team sport. It's not about an individual with an idea, raising money, championing an issue set, winning primary. or anything like that. It's about these factions, which bear an uncanny resemblance to mafia families. You know, they raise money within the system. They back the leader.

The leaders make deals. They divide up territory, that kind of stuff. And there was no reason to think that Abe, who was perceived as a kind of hot house flower, a bit of a spoiled brat, had the wherewithal or the brass to really come out on top in that sort of rugby game of Japanese politics. And there were a number of flukes that broke his way. He really kind of made his name on the North Korea-related issue of abduction.

The Japanese citizens who were in the 70s and 80s kidnapped by North Korean agents from the shores of the sea of Japan on the west coast, brought to North Korea and used for spy training and for other purposes. He grabbed that issue, helped capture the public imagination, went with then Prime Minister Koizumi to North Korea, and used that as springboard for ministry, and ultimately for control of his own faction. And so then let's break this into two pieces, I guess, the kind of domestic and the foreign. We talked a little bit about this earlier. You know, he's the longest serving Japanese Prime Minister, two stints, one around 2006,

but then most prominently 2012 to 2020, when we overlapped with him a bit. Domestically, you know, you talk about abonomics. You talk about, you know, a guy with like a very clear economic program. What is his legacy within Japan on the Japanese economy and in terms of his domestic policy, you know, really coming out of what had been a pretty rough period for Japan economically for a couple decades there? Right. Well, there's almost no comparison, really, between the Shinsdo Avi that had. a brief and ignominious one-year term in 2006-7 and the guy who came back into office

and who served in office from 2012 to 2020. The second Abe was a leader. He came in with a well-articulated program with a tremendous amount of political sources. support. He won in a landslide and that again had everything to do with the fecklessness of the three opposition prime ministers, Hatoyama followed by Khan followed by Noda and much less to do with the traditional ruling party, the LDP that he's a product of in a member of. But nevertheless he came in with a huge political mandate, a tremendous amount of capital and with a brand. His brand was Japan is back. And I don't have to remind you, Ben, of what life was like dealing with a series of, you know, hobbled one-year

revolving door Japanese prime ministers. Yeah. We, I think President Obama had, what, like five and four years. It was brutal. The best thing to come out of that was the yes we con, K.A. and t-shirt that you got me once actually around one of those meetings yeah yeah yeah that that would that would go for like 20 bucks so um i think that it's not really abbe's domestic programs that that kind of made him um because after all um he really did not get very far um on his big ticket agenda items like the so-called three arrows of abenomics, you know, fiscal policy, monetary policy. But most importantly, structural reform to Japan's economy.

Yeah. That didn't really happen, and Japan never actually completely pulled out of the, you know, economic doldrums, et cetera. But he had a brand. He had an idea. He had a label. You know, he had something that people could understand that had an objective. This is the kind of country that we're trying to build.

This is what we're trying to accomplish. Same thing on a hugely important issue of women's empowerment. Yeah. You know, the role and the opportunities for women in Japan, I won't say they're medieval, but they certainly don't fit the sophistication and the modernity of the rest. of the economy and the society. Japan is a country that, you know, apart from water and so on, is not exactly blessed with natural resources like oil and gas and gold and so on.

But it certainly has tremendous human capital, of which approximately 50% is largely going to waste. Yeah. He got that. What he wasn't able to do was to really deliver much. really unlock it. Yeah. Women's empowerment.

But he was trying. He was headed in the direction that people supported. He did largely thanks to TPP. Yeah. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement, which renegotiated and then left and that he completed with a bunch of other countries. Exactly. Well, look, there's an extraordinary story there.

You know, early in the first term, there was great reservations. about whether we thought Japan could even join the TPP, even though in theory wanted it. In the second term, the president decided very clearly, absolutely we do. And it took a lot of work on the U.S. side to get ABE and the Japanese government to accept the very substantial openings

that it was going to have to make, particularly in the agricultural sector, You know, free trade open markets is, you know, that's not what's tattooed on, you know, the back of any Japanese politician. Like that doesn't really come naturally to them. But he largely, I think, because of what he saw as the strategic as well as the economic importance of TPP, he made some really tough decisions. and he showed a lot of political finesse in busting through some of the barriers that have been in place for a long time, particularly with the agricultural sector. So, I mean, he took up some big domestic issues.

But I think always with a view to the bigger international picture, what he needed to. what he needed to do, what Japan needed to do in order to help ensure that it would be safe in what Abbe recognized as a truly dangerous neighborhood. Yeah, so it's a great pivot to like his main legacy, I think, which is trying to reconceive Japan's role in Asia and in the world. And as you said, here's a guy who saw, you know, Japan had been through a period of doldrums, China, you know, rapidly emerged. as an economic and geopolitical powerhouse. What is his legacy in terms of the changes he was trying to make to Japan's defense posture, its foreign policy orientation and its relationships, particularly in Asia Pacific, but also around the world?

Well, a couple of things. I mean, everybody knows about Obama's famous pivot to Asia, but it's worth recognizing that Abe, in his own way, pivoted Japan to really partner with. America. Yeah. And that was not a given after the years of Hatoyama and company who promulgated this Isosceles triangle idea of equidistant relations between Tokyo and Washington and Tokyo in Beijing, that maybe the American troops ought to leave, if not Japan as a whole, at least the island of Okinawa. So that pivot was really quite a big deal. And we saw it in the tough decisions that Abe and the government made in order to make Japan a better ally, a better partner to the

United States. One of the biggest, which you will remember, because they sent people to the White House short-term apprenticeships had to do with the creation of the National Security Council in Japan. So he completely reconfigured national security decision-making in a way that overcame all kinds of bad habits and allowed for real efficiency and real policy focus. He also was able to engineer legislation in Japan that opened the parameters for what the Japanese self-defense force could do, including importantly what they call collective defense. In other words, if Japanese worship is exercising along with a U.S. 7th Fleet vessel that comes under attack, yeah, Japan can help defend the United States. So he did all this without actually

trying to open the Pandora's box of the Japanese constitution, even though. though I'm sure we all know that that was something that he wanted to do. Yeah, the pacifist constitution. So whatever his motives, he made some tremendous changes. He, I mean, again, something you'll vividly remember, did more than any Japanese prime minister before him to come to terms with the reality and the truth of World War II. Yeah. Now, he didn't meet the high marks of some of his neighbors and a lot of us in the U.S., but you'll remember his speech to the Congress in 2015 at the 70th anniversary of the end of the war. The joint visits that he and Obama made that you will never forget.

Yeah, oh, yeah. First to Hiroshima, then to Pearl Harbor. You know, these were really incredible things. I'd go much beyond that, Ben, to say that Abe took a kind of faceless Japan and gave it a personality as far as the world was concerned. He took a Japan that was very inward-looking and reached out not just to neighbors, not just to, say, Southeast Asia, not just to the Pacific Islands or Australia, but reached out to India in a big way and help to kind of drag India and Modi deeper into the Western camp. He sort of conceived of this arc of freedom, this free and open Indo-Pacific. He actually is, I think, legitimately one of the authors, if not the author of the quad,

at least of its early conception. But he also, he made- That's Japan, the U.S. Australian India, kind of having a regularized rhythm of of coordination yeah yeah and the I mean these are the four big major democracies in what's now called the Indo-Pacific I mean it went through an awful lot of twists and turns but you know his his brand in a way was not just Japan deserves respect I want you know more status on the international state

but working linkages, making and helping to build a kind of network. And I think the network served two purposes. One is he was adamant about the importance of continued active involvement by the United States in international affairs and in the Asia Pacific. And he was a big fan of the rebalance and he helped it in any number of ways. But secondly, and we really started to see this in the Trump administration, he harbored grave doubts about whether the United States was really up to the task, whether the U.S. was going to turn its back on Asia. And in effect, leave him and Japan as the Fort Apache outposts of democracy in a pretty nasty world with a lot of, you know, Kami bastard types. And so he, you know, he did everything that he could think of to keep Trump and the United States present and try to draw them back in. But he also created what to me looks like

a kind of league of middle powers. And the quad is part of that, the relationships that he built with Australia and with India, the partnership he established with the UK across the Atlantic, the work he did with Southeast Asian countries and so on to build some kind of consensus around the regional governance and the rules of the road. Part of that, I think, was driven by a concern that there may not always be an America to serve as the counterweight to China, not always be in America that would serve as the guarantor of regional stability. And lastly, I think that's part of what drove the push to modernize Japan's own defense capabilities and to develop some autonomous and indigenous defense, what they call strike capabilities.

The good news is that they've done everything in consultation with the U.S. and as part of the alliance with an eye on maintaining interoperability so that we're working together and not at cross purposes. The bad news, as I said, is that part of what's driving them is the uncertainty, and now it's very graphic, the uncertainty about 2024 of whether there's going to be the kind of America-Lews. left that will be there when democracies need it. What about, and just to make sure we're not, you know, we're covering, you know, the good, the bad and the ugly here, I mean, received some criticism for brands of nationalism that in some view, you know, he kind of had to be dragged into some of the reconciliation efforts with South Korea over comfort women, visits the Yasukuni shrine where there's some Japanese war criminals.

What did you make of his brand of nationalists? How much of that was like a healthy evolution in Japan? How much of that was problematic, potentially ultra-nationalism? Well, I mean, Abbe was a mix. First of all, he was a mix of ideological nationalism and extreme pragmatism. And so the fact that his heart was taking him in some direction that many Americans and many others find horrifying. But that in reality, his footsteps walked what ultimately was a tremendously constructive path. Yeah, this is my sense, too.

I mean, that's part of the, part of that sort of contradiction in Abbe. He didn't get, thank God, he didn't get a lot of the things that he probably wanted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he did harness that push and those desires in ways that actually worked well. Now, I mean, when it comes to history, first of all, Abbe's views in many respects were controversial in Japan. And there was great resistance, including in sort of the middle of the road political community. to some of his ambitions with respect to militarization or revising the peace constitution and so on. But in other respects, he was smack dab in the middle of the Japanese consensus.

You know, when it comes to history, the first thing you've got to remember is that Japan is living in a very difficult neighborhood with very significant territorial disputes with, you know, China with Russia, Russia with Korea. The second thing is that, you know, there's a lot of baggage in all directions. History didn't start in the 20th century in Northeast Asia, right? Yeah. Some of these issues go back millennia. I would also say, Ben, you know, I spent my whole career overseas as a U.S. diplomat. And so some of what we saw in Abey in his kind of reluctance to confront some of the horrors of the former imperial Japanese government in what seemed like an objective

way. It was not uncommon for the Japanese to hear more like, why can't you be like the Germans and accept responsibility. But I've got to say that as an American diplomat, I came pretty close to the edge more than once, you know, when foreigners were given me sanctimonious lecture after lecture about American racism and slavery and Jim Crow and, you know, smallpox infected blankets, you know, to Native Americans and, you know, colonial role in the Philippines, firebombing, Tokyo. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. I mean, there's some things that societies really have to come to terms with on their own. And that pressure from the outside brings out the worst in them. And that was certainly true in Abbe's case.

And I think it's true for many Japanese of his generation. You know, in Germany, the Third Reich was completely dismantled. And Nazism was categorically repudiated. And there was a break, break there that I think in many respects enabled not only the Germans to come to terms with their reality of their history, but enabled neighbors like France and the Netherlands, where I've lived and worked, to also bring themselves to forgiveness.

We didn't have that kind of break in Japan. The United States decided that it wanted continuity. Yeah, exactly. And so I think all of these things were, you know, contributing factors to the frustration and sometimes the repugnance that a lot of Americans and others felt in listening to or talking to Abe and people that were like-minded with him. However, to your earlier point, when you look at what he actually did with respect to the so-called Comfort Woman Agreement with the South Koreans that he reached in

2015. No question that President Obama played a very important role in facilitating it, but he did not grab the two leaders by the scruff of the neck and bang their heads together. This is something that they did. And I think that the fact that Abbe was able to reach an agreement with President Park against a lot of his political and ideological instincts is an important. important milestone. He, I know, because he told me, he was deeply skeptical that the Koreans were going to hold to the agreement. And he was very worried about being double-crossed. He, like many Japanese, felt that, you know, the Koreans are a kind of victimhood grudge society. And there, you know, there's no number of apologies that's ever going to be enough for them.

But he went forward with it in, I think, good faith. And he then had to sort of live with the change in government, the Moon administration, which did in fact repudiate it. But now we're back to a conservative government in Korea. And I think there's a real hope that Japan and Korea can get back on track. Yeah. Well, look, I think you really have to. helped us understand him, but through him, you know, Japan. And, uh, uh, it's a good note, Dendon. And, and I think what you see all these things you talked about, and you saw the LDP

Abe's party obviously perform incredibly well in the recent election, you know, this is the orientation of Japan going forward. So it's a living legacy, um, that closeness with other countries in the region, Japan playing this bigger role. Um, so, uh, you know, the story is not over, even if it is tragically for, for Shenzhou Abe. Danny, thanks so much for joining us, really appreciate you helping us understand and unpack this. It's great to see you and talk to you, Ben. Thanks much. Thanks again to Danny Russell for doing the show.

Thank you, John Bolton. Thank you, Condi Rice. Who else we think in here? John Elway. John Elway, although I didn't make up that quote in case anyone did catch that. John Bolton, man. Just takes your breath away. Thanks to the, like, I guess, thanks to, like, the former Oathkeeper guy that I

I'll testify that. Oh, I didn't see all the hearing. That takes some guts, you know, like... The former oathkeeper spokesman? Yeah, like, you know... I wouldn't want to cross those guys. Yeah, I was going to say. I was a little...

I hope that guy's got, you know, some security. Some witness protection. Yeah, we'll see. All right, well, on that uplifting note, we'll talk to you next week. Thanks to the people in Sri Lanka who returned the $50,000 and cleaned up the presidential palace after they had a good party there.

And the dude who did a backflip, you nailed it. Thank you, man. Thank you. That was a hell of the background. You are a golden god. Yes, for sure. All right. Talk to you next week.

Pots of the World is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. Saul Rubin is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth to upload our episodes and videos at YouTube.com

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