Pod Save the World - NATO Grows on Russia’s Borders

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

Max Fisher joins Ben to discuss the ever-weirder Prigozhin circus, the last-second drama over bringing Sweden into NATO, whether Ukraine should join, the U.S. sending controversial cluster bombs to Ukraine, a seismic shift in European politics and what it means for the future of the far-right, an American reckoning over Israel following the raid in Jenin, an attempt to deescalate China, and why Vietnam banned the new Barbie movie. Then Ben talks to Ambassador Julianne Smith, U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO, about Ukraine and Sweden’s NATO membership bid and her work in Vilnius this week. 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 to Pod Save the World. I'm Max Fisher sitting in for Tommy. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, I'm not a big sports guy, so I'm going to hit you with a movie question instead. Yes. Barbie or Oppenheimer? So, you know, I'm an Oppenheimer guy who lives at a Barbie house. So something tells me that I'll be seeing Barbie probably before. I'll probably be outvoted. I'll probably be outvoted on this one.

But I will get to Oppenheimer. Well, your adherence to democratic norms as always is admirable. Well, it's more like a, it's more dictatorial than that. I'm excited for Oppenheimer, too. I'm a little concerned by the promotional materials are really giving the impression that director Christopher Nolan acquired and detonated a nuclear device, which has concerning test ban treaty implications. Yeah, that, I mean, he is an ambitious guy. That would definitely be speaking to the kind of megalomania of both filmmaking and nuclear weapons development. But I always love the story of the making the atomic bomb.

Like it's endlessly interesting no matter what, like, lens you look at it through, you know. Yeah, well, I'm excited to see his lens. So some quick housekeeping. You can now listen to Pod Save America ad free by subscribing to Friends of the pod. Join at Crooked.com slash friends. Comes with all sorts of subscriber bonuses. And now you also get a link to a special ad free Pod Save America feed. Your ad, fast forwarding days are over crooked.com slash friends.

Also, later this month, Tommy will be done. joining Lydia Kiesling for an event launching her new novel, Mobility, published by Crooked Media. It would be a dynasty typewriter in L.A. on July 27th. Tickets at Crooked.com slash events. Vulture called Mobility. One of its 14 books, we can't wait to read this summer. It's out August 1, and you can pre-order crooked.com slash mobility. Ben, who'd you talk to this week?

So we are talking to Ambassador Julie Smith, who's the U.S. Ambassador to NATO. What a week for a NATO talk. I mean, this is like the world descends on NATO. The NATO summits in Vilnius, Lithuania, as we speak, Max. And so I talked to Julie, at the front end of the summit, we talked about the issue of Ukrainian membership and how that was being managed. We talked about some of the issues around support for Ukraine. We talked about, you know, the plans that have been put into this summit in terms of

how to defend, you know, Finland and Sweden and all members of the alliance going forward. And just a little bit behind the curtain of like, what is it like to be ambassador to NATO? It's not quite the same thing as having fancy parties at the embassy in, you know, Paris or London, but it's an important job. I bet it's cooler. I think it sounds more interesting. Yeah. You know, what she pointed out, which I didn't think about, is that since the beginning of the war, there's endless congressional delegations and visitors who want to go visit NATO headquarters. So I think a lot of her job is probably.

Now she has a part of coast. Yeah, there's a lot of chaperoning, but it's definitely important. Well, I can't wait to listen to that. Lots of wild, wild news out of Vilnius this week. Let's get into it. The big agenda item, of course, was getting Sweden into NATO. Sweden asked to join the military alliance last year after decades of neutrality in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine made sense to me. But Turkey's president, Recep type Erdogan, said he would block Sweden's membership unless it gave him a bunch of concessions like extraditing Turkish nationals who were accused of aiding militant. troops in Turkey. Sweden mostly complied, but Erdogan kept piling on more demands than over the weekend, said he would only approve Sweden if Turkey was brought closer to membership in the European Union, which is definitely not happening anytime soon. So it seemed like Sweden, joining NATO, might not happen until Monday when abruptly he dropped his demands, largely clearing Sweden's path to NATO. So, Ben, what do you make of this whole crazy dance? Is this Europe

almost getting pulled apart by its divisions, or wowing us by? overcoming them. I think this is Erdogan being opportunistic and unpredictably opportunistic, right? So it did seem for a while like he wasn't going to do this until after his election because he wanted to have like a card to play in case, you know, he had a lot of heat on him after the election. That didn't really happen. But then, yeah, I like everybody, was looking at that demand that, you know, he'd have to be fast-tracked for European Union membership as him killing it. That's what I thought. And then he does this huge pivot. But I think if you look at it, their economy is in pretty deep trouble, largely because of his own mismanagement. He desperately needs to kind of stabilize the political

environment after a close election and get greater investment. He wants the U.S. to sell him F-16s, which are held up in Congress because of concerns over him holding up Swedish membership. And I think this is him saying, you know what, I tack back and forth between East and West, between Russia, China and Europe in the United States. And now he's tacking towards the West for a while. And I don't think it's at all permanent. But I do think he thought, like, you know what, I've squeezed as much juice as I can out of the Sweden thing.

I'm going to get probably F-16s. I'll probably now get a friendly investment climate from the West, less pressure on human rights. And that's kind of where I want to be for the next year or two. So it's a huge development. It's a huge win, like an exceeding of expectations for this summit. And I don't know Max, like you've looked at Sweden for years, it's a big deal for NATO because if you want to know how big a deal it is, just look at a map.

Sweden is both a country with a huge border on the Baltic Sea, which is really important to the protection of the Baltic countries. And strategic islands in the Baltic Sea, too, that can be used for air denial and have this incredible power projection potential. That's right. Like, think of yourself playing a game of risk and just look at that map. And then also the Arctic, right? Like they now NATO has with Finland and Sweden, in addition to the U.S. and Canada, like,

NATO has as much, you know, of the presence in the Arctic border-wise as Russia. So it's a pretty big game changer for the alliance. This is not like just some, no offense to the smaller countries come. This is a, you know, a medium-sized military power with a huge Navy and a lot of strategic territory. A generational strategic loss for Russia, too, for sure. Something that really struck me about Erdogan's big pivot on this is an indeed. just these six weeks since his super close re-election, he approved Sweden into NATO. He said he would support Ukraine into NATO, which is further than most of NATO will go. He hosted the NATO chief for a visit.

He pushed to join the EU. He released some like Ukrainian fighters that he'd been holding in the country, which absolutely infuriated Putin who is scheduled to visit. And I think may have canceled. Like, his pivot to the West has been really stark. It's very noticeable. And I, and this clearly, you know, So again, I think he made a lot of bad decisions leading into his own election, bad not just because I don't like them in terms of autocracy, but like dumb economic mischargment. And I think, you know, I think this is his best bet to stabilize things. And so he's a pragmatist and a survivor and this is what he's doing. Right.

Still bad. We're not pro-rador-Wrida. We're not pro-Her-Rodew. Yeah. No better for political freedoms in Turkey, that's for sure. So more NATO news. Biden threw cold water on the possibility of Ukraine joining the alliance. saying the country is not ready. Here's a clip we have teed up.

I don't think there is unanimity in NATO about whether or not to bring Ukraine into the NATO family now at this moment, in the middle of a war. But I suspect you and I agree with Biden that there's no real way to bring in Ukraine during the war without triggering a like World War III basically with Russia. But what do you make of the arguments, which seems to be pretty popular among some of the like European? security elite that there should be a pledge to admit Ukraine after the war? First of all, like where they landed, which is essentially some formulation where Ukraine will be admitted when certain conditions are met, is actually, you know, I'm sure someone might dispute this who wants to elevate this outcome, but is no different than the status quo. Currently Ukraine has been offered a membership action plan, which means, you know,

essentially that. When they have a plan that meets a bunch of conditions, they might get in, right? And so like the outcome is actually really no different. I think that it doesn't make sense from my standpoint to be saying, you know, as soon as this war is over, Ukraine is in NATO or in five years, Ukraine is in NATO. Because precisely because this will be clearly a part of any resolution of the war. Like security guarantees for Ukraine are going to be a part of any negotiated settlement, if there is a negotiation. settlement and you know most likely that's how this war will end right and whether that security guarantee is the US and a bunch of other individual countries

coming together and offering Ukraine security assurances or whether NATO can collectively get every member state to agree to you know Ukraine coming in which by the way Joe Biden doesn't know he can deliver that you know so one of the reasons why I think he's being responsible here is like it's hard to promise something that you you don't know that you can deliver particularly if it's very much tied to the outcome of this huge thing that's happening, this war. I think Biden wants to preserve some flexibility to define both the nature of NATO membership or an alternative security guarantee, like if you talk to some people in Washington, you probably had these conversations to Max. Some

people point to like the Taiwan Relations Act, like a formulation where legislatively the United States is committed to helping Ukraine defend itself, but it falls short of Article 5. That's probably not good enough for Zelensky and Ukrainians. But it demonstrates that. There's kind of a spectrum of possibilities here, and I think Biden wants to preserve some of that flexibility. There's also a good case. I feel like that getting over your skis with a big preemptive commitment, which is, of course, the 2008 commitment the U.S. made in the first place, just ends up opening yourself up to all sorts of unforeseen problems. As we, I mean, again, I don't subscribe to the idea that that led inexorably to this war, but I lived it for eight years in government where it was awkward that in 2008, before Barack Obama was president. George Bush on the way out the door had basically been like, sure, Georgia, Ukraine, you can both be part of NATO someday. And that was clearly not going to happen. And yet that kind of lurked in the backdrop of every NATO summit.

Georgia was occupied in two places by Russia at that point. And it remains that way. Yeah, you're right. It's a really good reminder that you have to know what you can deliver before you make a commitment. Let's talk about the U.S. decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine, which is obviously super controversial. So, quick overview. Cluster bombs are a kind of artillery shell or rocket, but filled with lots of small grenade-like bomblets they're called that explode over a wide area. Much of the world has banned cluster bombs since 2008. The reason is that at least 10% of those bomblets and sometimes quite a lot more fail to explode on impact. And this leaves the ground littered with thousands or even millions of tiny explosives. Inevitably, after fighting ends, civilians will step on them, pick them up for years. years or decades after the war, you'll be hearing these awful stories, as you still are in a lot of countries, about, you know, farmers losing legs or it's often its children picking them up and losing arms or worse. Ukraine and Russia are not signatories to the ban, and there have been reports

of both countries using them already in the war. China, India and the U.S. also not signatories, which means the U.S. has big stockpiles. Ukraine says it needs American cluster bombs because it is running out of artillery shells faster than the West can ramp up production to replace them. Arms control groups say the cost to civilians is too high and the U.S. will weaken the global norm against their use. Ben, what do you think? Was this the right call? I don't think so. I don't like it. You know, listeners of this podcast have heard me rant about my experience in Laos. So just to summarize it, like I got very involved in the effort to secure funding to clean up unexploded ordinance in Laos, the most heavily bombed country in history was Laos during the Vietnam War and the Secret War in the Laos. and 80 million bombs were dropped on last.

Many of them cluster munitions. There are many of these bomblets. And children today are still getting their limbs blown off. They pick it up. It looks like a ball. It explodes. Or a farmer hits it, it explodes. So that's 50 years later, you know.

And so no matter what anybody says, like, the use of these weapons will lead to that happening in Ukraine. Now, some people will say, well, the Russians and Ukrainians are using it anyway. Look, I think where I side with the arms control community, on this is it like a lot of effort has been put into developing the norm against this. And if the lesson is that, well, an extremist, the norm means nothing, well, then the norm means nothing. You know, like, and so you, I worry in general about this war kind of being a death knelt

the arms control, like across the board. Like we've already seen like the nuclear arms control infrastructure fall apart. Russia is not even in the last remaining treaty of New Star Treaty. They're barely hanging on to that. and now you get into the cluster munitions. And look, part of the case that the U.S. has been trying to make throughout this war is kind of a moral high ground. Just saying, oh, while the Russians are using it, so we have to use this, you know, is not an argument that wins me over now. To be fair, there's clearly a military need.

Clearly, there's shortages of ammunition, and this can both, you know, make some of that hole and give Ukraine a greater capacity to break kind of an entrenched front line. So, yeah, is there a military necessity? Yes. Is Ukraine's military position probably marginally improved by this decision? Yes. I just still don't. I mean, if norms mean anything, you have to fortify them in hard times and not just good ones, you know? Yeah.

I think I lean the same way you do. I think if I had to articulate what I thought was the strongest possible argument for assenting them, but would be the Ukrainian argument that, look, if we run out of artillery shells and they push through our lines, Russian occupation is far deadlier than the long-term harm from cluster munitions and like let us make that calculation with our own soil and our own country. But the thing that gives me pause is that I don't think we actually know that they are on the verge of running out of artillery shells. And there's been a constant issue in arms transfers in generally where the Ukrainians are pretty far ahead of the West in terms of war aims. Like their aims are not just to halt the Russian advance, but to retake every inch of

Ukrainian soil, which I completely get as a war aim, but I think that it's valid to ask is the kind of gamble that you want to take one of a pretty lowish odds of using cluster munitions will help Ukraine retake more of its territory against the absolute certainty that it will lead to far greater civilian deaths. Yeah. And the other two pieces of this, first, there's some people who've said, and like there's kind of unnamed U.S. military analysts saying that the explosion rate of these unexploded munitions is much lower than, say, what was dropped on Lowe's, that it's only like one or two

percent. Which nobody believes. I don't believe it. Even military contractors are like it's seven times that I know. I really don't want to challenge, like I've been in rooms where you get the rosiest assessment. I mean, oftentimes when the U.S. government wants to get to a certain answer, they find the best data for it. And that's what this felt like to me. And the other thing is that like on the Ukrainian, the most compelling point beyond battlefield necessity is the one you made, which is like the Ukrainian saying,

look, it's our territory, it's our people. But they don't actually know what, it's not like they've been living with cluster munitions for decades. And they're like, yeah, we can handle this. That's true. They're, they're understandably not thinking 10 years, 20 years ahead here. But if like, to your point, And if they engage in some brutal effort to retake Crimea and peninsula with cluster missions,

then end up littering the entire peninsula, like, that's going to be a problem. You know, so I just think one of the reasons we're in trouble in general in American foreign policy is that we only abide by norms when it's convenient. And this is another one of these examples. Yeah. There's also, I feel like there's a kind of culture in Washington right now that the Ukrainians are always right, because it's the Ukrainian saying it. And I, you know, very much think they are the right side of the war.

I'm very glad that we are aiding them as much as we are. But I feel like when I get into the weeds, a lot of these armed transferred disputes, it's not clear to me that their assessment is always the best one. No, and their assessment is logical. Sure. It's just give us everything. Right. But that doesn't mean, you know, the fact that there's never been a weapon system that they didn't want

indicates that this is not like a, you know, carefully considered, you know, inventory. Right. And why wouldn't they take it while they think they have the political capital? If I was them, I'd be doing the same thing. I would do exactly. So let's do quick Progozen update, everybody's favorite time of the week. Our guys had another weird one. So after leading his mercenary army into Russia and taking the city of Rostov, we've learned a few big things.

First, a big military camp magically appeared in Belarus, where Pergozen and his Wagner fighters were supposed to be in exile, but the camp is empty, which we're. We know because the Belarusian government weirdly chose to show that to American journalists. And the president of Belarus said that Progosion was still in Russia. And a couple of days later, the Kremlin said that Putin had met with Progoshin to discuss the future of Wagner forces, which of course are deployed in Ukraine and in several countries in the Middle East and Africa. I've also talked to a couple of analysts who say that they think the more we learn about this, the more it looks to them like it when it's attempted mutiny, maybe more than it was a coup, in the sense that it was aimed at forcing. Putin to make policy changes rather than to topple him, although that's some speculation there. And they also think, and this I do find persuasive, that Progozin may have had tacit support from elements of the Russian military, which would explain how he walked into two major Russian cities

and seized them relatively bloodlessly and why it looks like it was actually FSB paramilitaries rather than Russian regular troops that blocked him from Moscow. So, Ben, what do you make of just the continued progosan circus. I need to preface this, as I think we all should, by saying, like, we don't know exactly what the hell's going on here. Of course. That said, it does seem like he's definitely still in Russia, right? There's just, you know, like these people are tracking his private plane flying around.

People are saying they saw him. The Kremlin's putting out redouts of meetings. It does feel to me like, number one, clearly Putin is not doing what he said he was going to do on television, which was this guy's a train. and he belongs in prison. So it still holds that, like, that was embarrassing for Putin, and he didn't follow up on what he said in threatening this guy. The fact that the way the Kremlin discussed it was, like, how Wagner is going to continue

to be in the fight is, like, it seems like a priority for Putin and the Russian, I don't know, military machine is to not lose these Wagner fighters, right? And what they clearly want is for Wagner to fight under the normal chain of command. Like they got a little uncomfortable with, you know, this kind of bifurcated system. I can see why. Yeah. Well, exactly, right? And so it feels like there's some negotiation happening around, you know, will the Wagner guys fight with the regular forces?

Will Progosion kind of stay in the tent? Is he going to be paid off? Is he going to be killed? Like, there's a spectrum of things that could still happen to Progosion. But this all feels like an effort to try to, you know, continue to hug Wagner. into the war effort under a different arrangement than was clearly not working out for anybody before the mutiny. But, like, I have questions, Max, like, you and I, you know, and Tommy, we had been tracking

towards maybe doing, like, a special episode on Wagner globally. Like, I keep wondering about what is Wagner doing in Africa? Like, who's running this last week? Who's running the mines? Who's running all this stuff? Who's running mines? He's running private security for, you know, certain African leaders. who's fermenting instability and disinformation campaigns from Mali to Madagascar.

Like, there's still, and that may be part of this discussion too. It's just like what, you know, given the distrust between Progosin and the FSB, which would be the other kind of candidate for doing that kind of stuff, like they may actually also be negotiating this global footprint, you know. I'm sure, because they need access to all of this. Progozen has a lot of leverage because he has the keys to all that stuff. If they just, you know, push him down an elevator shaft, it all disappears. Yeah.

I feel like something that I'm always being reminded of of Russia is that we think of Putin as the kind of like all-powerful dictator pulling all the strings in charge of everything. So if Progozen displeases him, then he'll disappear in a puff of smoke. But the end of the day, he's just a guy in a suit. And his power, this is a point that you've made too, I know. His power really comes from his ability to mediate imbalance between all of these power centers within Russia that he's built up. And Prozhen has a lot of actual power. So, you know, I think that he probably is feeling like he has some need to like, as you said, like keep him inside the tent, keep him on sides and keep him, you know, working well with everybody else in the system. Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

I mean, I think that any authoritarian system, we usually mistake it for like a monolith, you know. Right. And Putin in particular has got got so kind of pumped up, you know, over the course of the last decade and kind of the Western press into this kind of all-powerful one-man-one rule guy. And yeah, like he's clearly the most powerful guy in Russia, but like there are people with independent sources of power, you know. Often the people who end up getting killed or shoved off of balconies are not necessarily powerful people. Right. There are usually people that have fallen from power. You know, like it's a progosian after he's completely lost his empire and he's two years from now.

He's living in London that has an accident, you know. And so the people that control guns and resources and money tend to be in constant negotiation with one another with Putin as the kind of negotiator in chief. And that's what this feels like. I mean, the whole thing really reminds me of, and you and I were texting about this, the whole incident, like, sort of like internal domestic conflict in Russia in 2014 with Ramzan Kadyrov as the kind of like warlord in chief of Chechnya. And Kedirov was like really bucking Putin, not to the same extent as marching on Moscow, but he had these troops who were like paramilitary guys who were raiding Russian businesses. He was defying the FSB and I think actually opened fire in FSB troops at one point. And then all of a sudden

Putin disappeared for a couple of weeks. Everybody thought maybe there was a coup, but then he reappeared and all of a sudden, Kedirov, instead of being pushed at a window, is back on side. And now is Putin loyalist number one. So anything could happen. Yeah. I would not be shocked if Prozun actually was more loyal and more inside the tent than ever as a result of this. It's possible. Yeah. And one, it's interesting you might make that point about the FSB. Like I think another point we should make is that We hear FSB and just think, okay, the Russian version of the CIA. Right. The CIA for all of its warts over the years is not the FSB,

because the FSB also runs like a business empire, right? Like the KGB, when it collapsed, just like bought, like kind of took over a bunch of business interests. And so there are guys like fighting over just control of natural resources or businesses. And so it's not even like there's one normal intelligence service. They're all kind of in some grift, you know. I think the one takeaway, the reason I still think this has been really bad, for Putin, even if progosian returns to being a loyalist. Definitely not good for Putin. I'm with you there. Is it because his argument, which we've articulated on the podcast before, is like the

time is on his side. The more time goes on. The West will become divided. The West is more dysfunctional. Ukraine will be weakened. And this is the first indication that actually, you know, time might not be Putin's friend. Like it may open up risks for further mutinies or further infighting. And so that's, that's an important lesson here that that you know the idea of time being Putin's friend which he you know begun to beat into even people like me um well now that's called in the question so let's talk about the big news from Europe European politics had like I think quietly a super seismic shift yes this week I know you and I are both really excited to get into this so mark roota the Dutch prime minister since 2010 resigned on Friday his governing coalition collapsed over disagreements on immigration policy

which is why he's stepping down. And this feels, I think, like a very big deal to me because Ruta has always embodied how a lot of the European political establishment, especially the center right, responded to the rise of the far right over immigration backlash in the mid-20s. Some leaders like Angela Merkel in Germany

stood up to the far right on immigration and at the time actually looked like they could lose power over it. But others, like Mark Ruta, and he was the big leader of this faction, really tried to co-op the far right. right by embracing really extreme and really draconian anti-immigration policies. And the Dutch far right is very crazy and very scary. And Ruta argued that this was the only way to keep them out of power, which he did,

but he kind of sold his party's soul along the way and also a lot of migrants and refugees suffered for it. And his government collapsed last week kind of tellingly, not because of a disagreement with the far right, which has not gained that much power in the last 10 years, but rather disagreement with centrist parties in its coalition, who said that they just could not stomach more of his harsh immigration policies. So elections will be in November. Ben, what do you think this tells us about the trajectory of Europe, future of Europe? So just to be specific, right, like I think the policy was that he was insisting that the children of refugees, if you're a child

outside of the Netherlands, you couldn't be reunited with your refugee parents, even if they had status in the Netherlands for like two years, which was kind of just cruel. Like, who were we even pretending to help? Yeah. And so there's a few things that this says to me. Because you're right, Ruta is like a consummate survivor. He somehow made it through like 13 years in Dutch politics, which is a lot of coalition building.

And he's a, you know, a very capable, smart, center-right politician. The fact that he chose to lose his coalition. rather than acceding to like children being reunited with their parents, which also numerically would have been a very small number of people. This is a guy who's a weather vein who's telling us that he's his read. I'm not saying it's right, but his read on Dutch politics, and it's a pretty good laboratory for European politics generally, is that people are just want an absolute hard line in immigration. And then I would rather piss off and lose my centrist allies and collapse my coalition

than pick this fight with the far right. it doesn't mean that the far right is going to come to power in the Netherlands tomorrow or across Europe tomorrow, but it does indicate it's one more data point of how much the immigration issue continues to be a driver of European politics to the right. We talked about the Greek, you know, the disaster of 700 plus people dying in all the, in a migrant ship off the coast of Greece, all the kind of, you know, subsequent reporting kind of indicates that the Greek Coast Guard at minimum was negligent in this case. Do you see any uproar? In the Greek election, we saw a movement further to the right, which we talked about last week, right? So that's in Greece.

We see this in Netherlands. In France, we've seen protests over the totally unjustified killing of a young man, like, kind of familiar protests to Americans, had kind of a black-lized matter feel to it against the police. But it's led to, I think, a pretty robust backlash against the protests in French politics. It just feels like we're in a moment in kind of continental European politics where any immigrant attitudes are really building. There's no cost to being further to the right on those issues. There's few outlets for the left. And so the outlets lead to like protests like we've seen in France. And, you know, the other variable I put into this max is one of the things I was in Europe a couple times this summer.

are like, you hear a lot about the Ukrainian refugees, that this is not small. These are millions of people. This is costing us a lot of money. And even though they've been more welcome to white Ukrainian refugees than black and brown people from the global south, which is its own kind of difficult issue to wrestle with morally and ethically, it is like one more brick on the scale of societies being like, you know, we want to pull up the drawbridge. you know. So I was saying like you and I like one of our first kind of face-to-face encounters was when you came into my

office. Yeah. And like the late Obama years is like 15 or 16. Usually reporters would come in because they wanted to talk about like something that was blaring in the headlines. You wanted to come and talk about the trends of European far-right populism. It's one of the most important stories of our time. You were quite prescient, man. You're also talking about social media before other people were. So you should get credit for being ahead of the curve and all these things. I'm wondering what you make of this because you point out to me in text that on the one end it does feel that way. And there have been a lot of predictions,

including in the times where we read some side of the last couple days of like some far right wave coming. And meanwhile, Le Pen never gets elected in France. But I mean, how do you see this wave of developments as compared to previous, you know, boomlets for the far right?

So it's funny because I think I actually have almost the exact opposite reading from you on this. I want to be wrong. Yeah. And it makes for more interesting discussion. Yeah. I mean, I read it as, first in the Netherlands specifically, and then like what it means, like, in the Netherlands specifically, I read it as like Ruta kind of knowing that his brand as the like center-right guy who went to the far right was kind of toxic now because I think he retired too. Yeah.

Like I think he said he's out of politics. Yeah. I think, I mean, my read was that he knows that if not his party, then his stamp on the party is not something that the political system will accept anymore. And, you know, the far right in the Netherlands has been. completely stalled out for the last 10 years. And this is like... It's hit like a ceiling. Right, right. Wilders is like 10% kind of like 15%. And the thing is, if you look across Europe for the most part, every far right party hit a ceiling of 15% somewhere around 2015, 2016, and with a couple of exceptions. Like in Sweden, they bopped up to, I think,

17%. They mostly stayed there. So I think it kind of looked for a few years. Like, and I think honestly, like the American media played into this. Anytime a. far right party gained some seats or came in third an election it would be you know blared on the front pages the far right is taking over they're winning everything and they did advance in the aggregate in europe like 2014 15 16 and like very rapidly it was very scary and had a lot of major policy implications like in the netherlands or Poland or hungry with it to power but the things of you actually like talk to people who were tracking the data continental wide the far right has had like a catastrophic last few years. In, I think it was 2018, they lost seats, 2019 they lost seats, 2020 they lost seats,

in 2021. All four years in a row, they in the aggregate across Europe were losing their foothold, and losing popularity. And like, again, there were some places where they were gaining. But I think that you really started to see, like, once the arrivals dropped in the EU, which peaked in 2015, 2016, the backlash sort of faded. And also people saw what it was like to have the far right, even if not in power. Yeah, knocking on the door, right, and it was scary. And you're right that Marine Le Pen does continue to gain seats in the French parliament, which is scary. There are places where it's advancing.

But I feel like if you look at the numbers, you just see this consistent story of they get up to like one in six, one in seven support, and then they just stay there, which is really bad, to be clear. Yeah, I guess my fear, that's really well taken. I guess my fear is a little different. I don't necessarily see like a succession of. the far-right party is taking over Western Europe. But what I do see is the far-right setting the terms of politics, you know, to some extent. Which is what Ruta represented. Yeah.

And if you look at the, you know, if you look at the map, right, Greece pretty far-right right now, in addition to Hungary and Poland, Slovakia, you have a progressive leader who's not running again. And the far-right party are like the right-wing party somewhat ascendant. The Balkans has got some real issues with Russian interference. national leaders. So you have some real problems. Then you have like, you know, in Italy where someone has kind of moderated, like, you know, she's, she's not like as far right as like the Mussolini cautionary notes were. But like this is a, you know, pretty far right of center government in Italy. In France, you have a Macron who came up as a centrist and is kind of generally

looked more over his right children and his left. So I guess it's interesting. You're right to kind of throw some cold water on like the far right alarmism and yet it's still not clear to me what the center to left future is.

Right. Like there's Olaf Schultz very like very just shade to the left of center. There's some green parties that have made some minroads but they haven't taken control. Social Democrats have had some hard luck in the Nordic countries even recently. So like to me it might be less like a far right wave and more like a just gradual pulling of European

politics to the center right in ways that are probably not going to solve problems either. And so like I don't really know where that goes. I think France will be the bellwether. I think, you know, who follows Macron in a couple of years will obviously be a huge issue. Le Pen has consistently not been able to get even close to a majority. So I'm not sure it's going to be her, but their political parties don't exist. Europe. It's hard. Where do you think it's going? France especially. I mean, I think that in France to me kind of reads as its own thing because all their political parties disintegrated a few years ago, basically. But they also have our first past the post electoral system, which is just like the worst possible system you could have. Right. So they have, you know, in Germany, you can have like the far right gains a little bit, the center right gains a little bit. But because it's a proportional system with a bunch of parties, they work out a nice governing coalition and everything. is fine. But in France, because it's this winner take-all system, they have a presidential election.

Someone gets 2% more and they're the crazier candidate. And then we end up with a nut job in charge of Europe's second largest economy. I mean, I think that I guess where I land is that I think on the one hand, the optimistic thing is that I do think that the like firewall against the far right, it seems like it has basically held. And I don't see any reason to think that it's going to break. And I think the establishment parties and voters have, again, with the caveat of France, have learned how to like keep that in place. Yeah. But I think that your point is a really good one about policy generally moving right on immigration specifically, which Europe was already, like, pretty tough on immigration. And the fact that like there can be a boat with dozens of people on it that sinks and nobody in Europe blinks because, of course, that's beneficial policy for years as they want to encourage these kinds of things.

things because they think that that is a deterrent to people crying to cross. And I mean, Europe's immigration policy, I know as an American, I don't have a lot of ground to stand on, but it's really bad. Yeah. And that seems to be part of what the European establishment has set on is, okay, we're going to keep out the extremists in the far right by adopting the most draconian policies, the most extreme policies that we have to to keep arrivals, quote, unquote, under control. Yeah.

Yeah, it's on that issue, that, you know, that's just going to be source of tension for many years because it's not going to, the migration's not going to stop, but particularly climate change. I just, I, the only other thing I'd say to wind this down is, and I don't have the answer, is like, I think part of what I also saw in France is like when you have an explosion like that, public unrest and dissatisfaction, part of the reason why is there's no left political option. You know, there's nowhere to channel energy into politics, you know. And one of the things that social democratic parties and green parties and just left parties in general need to do in Europe is present themselves as like a vehicle for that kind of political expression, right?

Because right now it just feels like there are these far right parties and then they're these careful centrist politicians who like generally tack right on a bunch of stuff. There's some social Democrats who get to power when they are taking advantage of economic issues or it's their. kind of turn, but there's not like a coherent, it's not on like the United States, to be honest. Yeah. There's not a coherent like 10-year plan for the left year. So that, we'll do that maybe that's a special. Okay.

So let's talk about the violence in the West Bank town of Janine last week. Israeli forces about a week and a half ago launched a major raid in the Palestinian refugee camp in Jeneid, including air strikes and bulldozers, 12 Palestinians and one Israeli were killed, and thousands of Palestinian civilians fled what they called two days of terror that left homes in rubble. Israel described as an operation to clear out militants and weapons. Janine has a lot of significance in the conflict in 1948. Many Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes and what is now Israel as a result of Israel's creation ended up in the Janine refugee camp. A number of grassroots resistance groups have arisen there.

Some of those groups claimed nine of the 12 Palestinians. who died in last week's raids as their fighters. And about a year ago, an American journalist, Shereen Abu Aucle, was killed by Israeli forces while she was covering another Israeli military raid of the Janine refugee camp. Ben, what do you think this latest violence tells us about the long-term trajectory of the conflict or where it is now? Nothing good. I mean, like, in terms of new things it tells us, in addition to what we've, you know,

talked about on this podcast before, you know, one is the Israeli state under this government bringing kind of Gaza tactics to the West Bank is a new development, right? So like this wasn't a full-scale war on Janine like on Gaza, but it had a lot of those, you know, it had some echoes of that, right? It had like military incursions and airstrikes and kind of a really kind of brutal assault on a densely populated. I mean, Jinin is incredibly densely populated. And so,

like, usually that leads to kind of the continued use of that kind of tool. And so, like, if we are starting to see the Israeli government bring those tactics

into the West Bank, that's a new development. And if you, if you couple that with settlement expansion and kind of more impunity for settler violence and displacement

of Palestinians, like it starts to feel like a, the occupation evolving into something that is more aggressive in terms of treatment and displacement of Palestinians. Then the second thing is the Palestinian Authority is totally irrelevant. And, you know, we don't harp on this too much because oftentimes people blame the Palestinian Authority for things they can't control. But it is the case that this 87-year-old, you know, mock Muda-Boss, as long since, you know, ceased to be a relevant figure to young Palestinians. He's not delivering anything.

The Palestinian Authority kind of cooperates on security in the West Bank to some extent with Israel. But they couldn't address militancy in Janine if they wanted to. And so to me, like, people always warn of the collapse of the Palestinian Authority. Like, well, this is, to me, that always is probably more slow motion than it all at once. And this is kind of evidence of the slow motion collapse of Palestinian Authority. And so what does that mean? And I'm curious what you think about this, Max, because to me, it looks like a more aggressive far-right government in Israel and the West Bank.

And an even less, you know, relevant Palestinian Authority opening up a vacuum among the Palestinian public that could be filled by anybody. you know, or nobody at all. And none of that feels good, you know. I think that's exactly right. And what it really makes me think of are the predictions that I've heard, I feel like from a long time from people like Nathan Thrull, that what would happen when the two-state solution collapsed, which it has? Yeah. Is that the Palestinian authority would basically dissolve, not just in the sense of being a government, a nominal government for Palestinians, but being a tool that Israel is used to bring stability to the West Bank so that it can control the West Bank without having to occupy it directly or rule it directly through military occupation, which it did in the past and was catastrophic. It's part of what

the PA is supposed to do. It can't carry the weight of that anymore. So effectively does not exist as a stability and security guarantor. So I think part, kind of what we're seeing in the introduction like you said of Gaza-like tactics is we are seeing and inching towards a form of return to rule in the West Bank by direct military occupation, not in the sense of stationing troops in every corner in the refugee camp, but in the sense that they're going to hang outside these cities and then every time they feel like they need to go in, which even if it's just once a year, which is what it is so far, is catastrophic for these communities. But it's also not good.

I know this is the ultimate cliche when talking about Israel Palestine, but it's also not good for Israel because they did that before and it does not go well for anybody. Yeah, I mean, reading between the lines of all the coverage, like one of the things you start to notice, you know, sometimes you get more honest Israeli security officials speaking in my background. Right. And what a number of them pointed out is like they're not trying to dismantle like a well-evolved network in Janine. Right. Like some of these people like might have some association with factions like Hamas or Islamic Jihad or something. But like, some are just pissed off young people.

Yeah, it's just neighboring guys. So they're like, you know, there'll be some attack on Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv and then they'll go in there and try to get the people. But like the people are just, there's not, they're not mapping some terrorist organization. And that to what you're talking about in Nathan's good analysis is like that's a recipe for just like militarized, you know, direct rule. Right. Because. But it's also a symptom of it. Yeah.

Well, and it's going to exacerbate obviously all the grievances of Palestinians. So I, it's just it is what it is and it's not good. Yeah, I mean, it's ironically, in a way, in a cynical way, Israel would almost be better off with a Hamas-ruled West Bank because that's an organization that, you know, as they are in Gaza, like, brings a form of stability and has a form of like strategic calculus that Israel can deal with. And you can negotiate ceasefires with them. Exactly, right. You can negotiate with them. But what de facto, indirect, effective military occupation creates exactly as you're saying is. endless sentiment for you know guys in the block who want to pick up a gun because they're tired of living this way and a raid is not gonna solve is never gonna solve that no and and the recipe there's no you've got a far-right government

you got B B B and feeling cornered in the judicial system you've got people in his coalition agitating for more aggressive policies and you have a US election with a very cautious American president when it comes to any distance from Israel so the recipe for the next year is not not a great one. You know, that actually makes me think of something that the, so many of the people in the Israeli cabinet who are agitating for full direct occupation or annexation or de facto annexation of the West Bank, they're actually pretty young. And they probably don't remember what that era was like before the Oslo Accords, before the PA. So they actually have no idea

what they're asking for, what they're ordering up, which as if it was not catastrophic enough seems like an even bigger powder keg. Yeah, no, that's right. They're kind of the post-Ozlo reactionary generation. Right. And it's all just idealistic for them. So speaking of Biden, he had some harsh words, at least. It's words and words or something. For Benjamin Netanyahu, he said that he would not invite Netanyahu to the White House and called his government one of the most extreme he's seen in Israel. We have a clip. So let's listen to that. So it's not all Israel now in the West Bank, all Israel's problem, but they are part of the problem, particularly those individuals in the cabinet who say they have no right to be. We can settle

on where we want. They have no right to be here, et cetera. Ben, does this change Netanyahu's calculus nudge him in the right direction at all, do you think, or is it too little too late? I don't think so. I think for Joe Biden, that's going pretty far. Sure. It's progress. And I think it is a bit of a message that it's not just total politics as usual where we just pretend like what we're seeing isn't happening. There's nothing behind it, though. There's no like conditionality of assistance or diplomatic support. The U.S. is still very actively involved in a negotiation of Saudi Arabia for a normalization deal with Israel in which the U.S. would make all the concessions to help Israel. So like, it's a, you know, it's a rhetorical step. And, you know, to be critical of, you know,

Obama often took rhetorical steps without those kinds of substantive steps too. So I know what I speak. I do think it's setting up, I just think that particularly within the Democratic Party at some point in the next three years, there's going to be a real debate about this and probably not before the next election. But it just feels like it's going to get harder and harder to pretend like we're not seeing what we're seeing. And if even Joe Biden is saying, hey, I can't, you know, make a business as usual and have BB Nanyahu smiling next to me in the Oval Office, that really is a change. It does seem telling that even the Democratic Party old guard can't stomach. They just can.

Supporting this government anymore. I agree that it feels like, and I think everybody in the party basically knows that the reckoning over Israel policy is coming. And this feels like everything the Biden administration does feels like a tacit acknowledgement of that, even if it's just, Justin, like, we're not going to, what's the point of carrying this guy's water? But I do wonder if it's, if it's too late for that. I mean, you talked about this before. I think, yeah, it may very well be. But I guess it's still, it's still worth taking the right position because it's good to take the right. It's still going to happen. I mean, this is still, these issues are not finished. Right. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Well, let's end on some good news before we get to the interview. Or goodish, potentially goodish news, which is, it's what we aim for here. Yes. After a couple of really rough years of rising tensions between the U.S. and. China, there are some hints of maybe a possible thought. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited last week, no big agreements or take-homes, but it was congenial-ish, at least, which is something. And after the trip, John Kerry, the climate czar, announced that he would go to China, which I believe is going to happen this coming weekend. So how are you feeling about U.S. China

after this week? Well, I always thought like the most dangerous and disturbing thing kind of over the last year was this vacuum opened up with we weren't even really talking at any level and that's just and after a pandemic period where there wasn't a lot of talking just for obvious reasons and so just kind of rudinizing like blinking was there then yelling was there then john carrie's going like at least it feels like there's lines of communication so that it's like there's a floor underneath the the relationship yeah um and that may seem like just diplomatic but no like it it creates work right like you you know you work into the meeting and then out of the meeting and then the officials follow up on certain things. And instead of just kind of escalating countermeasures, you try to hit the pause button on some

that stuff, right? So talking is good. I did think that and carry going is important because everybody looks at this relationship has always thought that the one issue where we should be working together is climate. And we're both sides want to work together. We're both sides want to work together. Both sides have an interest in working together. The rest of the world wants us to work together.

So if John Kerry can get anywhere that is better than where we've been on climate, then that's a good thing, right? Because you can't solve climate crisis without the two biggest emitters sitting down and working together. The Yellen, you know, choreography was interesting because she opened with some pretty like harsh complaints about Chinese treatment of American businesses and some of the kind of onerous, you know, heavy hand of the Chinese state on foreign firms operating in China. So just kind of registered that, but then kind of pivoted to like, but we need to work together, we need to address kind of global economic issues. So I think that's probably meant to kind of chill out markets that were nervous about this. And kind of resume a sense that the U.S. and China are not like, like they're both a member of the global economy, you know. But at the same time, like the Chinese recently announced potentially some pretty far-reaching restrictions on chips coming.

the United States, in reprisal for the United States, having all these controls on technology flowing into China. We'll see if that continues escalate, you know, like the decoupling, the kind of split and supply chains between our two countries. So altogether, I think it's positive, and it's good that we're talking. But like structurally, it's not like they resolve something like that. They just kind of agreed we should at least be talking to each other. Right. It does seem like the main sources of the collapse in relationship over the last year. years are still there where the U.S. tech sanctions, China is increasingly hostile stance towards Taiwan. Hostile doesn't even capture it actually. Existential. Right. Yeah, existential threat to Taiwan.

And just generally the like zero-sum security view that both countries seem to take to one or other into Asia. But I agree that talking at all is, I think not just as a like, oh, it's a nice step. I think it's actually really valuable for the signal it sends to domestic audiences in both the U.S. and China to say, hey, we are now focused on working together instead of being angry at each other. I think that's really meaningful. The signal that it sends to Wall Street, investors, of course, the signal that sends to a lot of other countries in the region, which, you know, I know you talk to people in the governments of those countries.

And they were just... Right. They're losing their ship because they think that this war in Ukraine is going to look like a cakewalk compared to if there was ever a conflict between the U.S. and China. And I do think that there is kind of a semi-contrarian case that, you know, you know, you tensions between the U.S. and China could be the most important foreign policy story of 2023 if it goes poorly. Yeah.

But let's hope that things continue to improve. And we've been playing into kind of the Chinese narrative like in the global south too. Like we won't even talk to these people, even though it's been in two ways. We benefit from it. I think that the other thing I just dangled out here is that there's been total bipartisanship on China. It's like the only bipartisan thing in Washington, right? Yeah. And it's almost been like a competition for who could be tougher. Albeit the Democrats focus more on things like industrial policy, like bringing jobs back home and and Republicans just kind of more generally

hawkish. Like I've always thought that the pivot that the Biden team needs to make is like, hey, we're tough. We've done much more than Trump in trying to make sure that America can compete and win for the future of manufacturing and tech and everything. Right. But these guys on the Republican side could get us into a war and that's stupid. And so we need to be talking to China. And I think that's a message that Americans, like even Americans have concerns about China get. Like, I don't think Americans want to war with China. And so I think they need to start to message like we need to be talking to these people as much as we can, even as we're trying to out-compete the hell out of them and stand up for our values.

Because if we follow the logic of some of these like far-right voices in our own country, that that, you know, know, that risks a war. And so I'm curious if this evolves in that direction. And I think Americans don't know how bad things got between the U.S. and China because of that bipartisan consensus. Yeah. Because there are so many people setting the conversation in Washington who wanted things to get bad or thought like, this is great. Yeah. That I think people weren't getting the message that a lot of the rest of the world has been really freaked out by it. Yeah. Yeah. As a, you know, the war in Ukraine has had huge, you know, repercussions on global economy and food prices and population flows like and it's nothing compared to what a

conflict over Taiwan would be. Should we take a second to talk about the controversy with the Barbie film? Well, there we go. That's a good example, you know. Barbie banned from Vietnam because there is a shot, which you can actually see in the trailer where Barbie is standing in front of a like jumbled up cartoony world map. And on the like hexagon shape that I guess is supposed to be Asia, there is actually a nine dash line attached. The nine dash line, of course, is China's claim for the vast stretch of the South

China Sea, it says it controls, which it does not, according to anyone else in the world. And so Vietnam was very upset to see that in American film and ban the movie. Are they being crazy, do you think, or do they have a case? I mean, they've got a case. I mean, here's the right to say about this. First of all, the Chinese claim in the South China Sea is absurd. It's like they draw this line, the nine dash line, around this entire body of water that snakes along the coast of countries like Vietnam and Malaysia, right? So no rational person would look at that and say that makes any sense. And as a Southeast Asian leader once said in a bilateral meeting with President Obama about this, like, it's a shame that it's named the South China Sea.

But in international arbitration, should be pointed out that impartial international arbitration is found in favor of, say, the Philippines. So just, you know, that's relevant. But here's the stranger thing, Max. when you like look at maps or when you like you know um like I'm I show my kids maps like you don't normally draw a maritime boundary right and so this has come up a bunch of times with like Disney properties like ESPN yeah like ESPN at times has like shown maps with the nine dash line on it really and and I don't think it's because like that particular sports center host has a particular view about sure right and and it's not just Disney some other

you know, airlines or pressure to do this and other things. Why are we even drawing merit? Is there any other context in which like maritime boundaries are drawn? Like the Barbie map could have just had the map of the body water. Like it's kind of weird that they go this extra mile to draw this boundary. So I think it is Vietnam registering like, hey, we've seen China try to bully everybody by, you know, using its leverage of its market. Our market is minuscule compared to China's, but we're just going to show you that we can do the

same thing, I guess. And Jinnup National Assignment, I think a solution to all this would be to just leave maritime boundaries off of maps and movies. Right. Like, that's my solution for world peace for the time being, yeah. I will say it's like, it's easy to laugh. Like, I'm not, obviously, not for banning movies. And it's easy to kind of laugh off what Vietnam is doing is like wacky, Asian geopolitics

or being overly sensitive. Well, but the Chinese have done the inverse of plenty of times. Right. And which is, we don't, I don't know if that's why it appeared in this film specifically. I mean, it's possible that Barbie is a wolf warrior for Xi Jinping thought. And they just won in that market. They want Barbie to be shown in China. And one way to ensure you get on Chinese screens is to put the nine dash line.

Well, and this is the thing. The nine dash line has shown up in a lot of movies. And I get why if you were Vietnam and you were worried about we really need the force of the United States Navy as the kind of international arbiter to not just be steamrolled by China in our own waters, you worry about Hollywood doing the work of the Chinese government and teaching America. that this line has some kind of legitimacy. Yeah, because there are all these sensors that control what can go on Chinese movie screens. And again, if you look at gross for these films, like, they make more money in China than the U.S. often. And it may be that they insist that you have to put the nine dash line on if you want to get the max impossible screens. Like, I've never been in those conversations, but like, I don't think people would be doing it if there wasn't a reason for them to do.

My point is, like, I don't think American film, I don't think Greta Gerwig was just like, not that it was her choice, but she was a direct. director like, it's like, you know what? Like, let's make sure in this shot that we include the nine dash line. Like, clearly somebody in corporate is making that decision. Because they went on those Chinese movie screens and that, yeah, Vietnam is just trying to like make sure that that gets attention. The same way that Taiwan freaked out when the, the Taiwanese emblem was removed from the top gun flight jacket and top gun maver. Right. Right. So these, you know, people are pushing back in their own way. I'm very, very interested to see if Oppenheimer he references the nine dash line at some point. That'd be a tell. All right. So we go to, uh, you know, you interview with Julie Smith? Yes, yes, absolutely. I'm very pleased to be joined by the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Ambassador Julianne Smith, a former, well, a longtime official for Joe Biden. She was a Deputy National Security Advisor for Joe Biden in the Obama years and just one of the leading experts on Europe and transatlantic security in the world today. So thanks so much for joining us, Ambassador. Thanks for having me on. So let's just kind of start with a couple of issues that are dominating some attention. And then I want to get into kind of the broader NATO agenda.

Obviously, a lot of focus on Ukraine and its status. And the kind of basic reports are, you know, that while there's a lot of passion for Ukrainian membership on a shorter-term timeline, kind of the closer you get to the Russian border to like where you are in Lithuania, you know, the U.S. and Germany and other larger countries are obviously wanting to run a normal process where Ukraine has to meet the Alliance standards and frankly that, you know, recognizes that NATO membership in the midst of a conflict is not practical. what is success from your standpoint? You know, you always think about success coming into these summits. What is success for the United States perspective in terms of the message that

is conveyed about potential Ukrainian membership in Vilnius? Yeah, sure. In terms of success, I mean, it's pretty simple at the top. I mean, first and foremost, we descending here in Vilnius want to send one strong, simple message to President Putin, and that is you assume that you assume, that all of us would look away. You assumed that we would get distracted and give up and be occupied with something else a few months into this war. And the reality is it's now been about 500 days and no one's going anywhere. Not a single member of this alliance is wavering on its support for Ukraine. So that's the kind of overarching message that will be delivering. But more importantly, on the question of membership, I mean, there are different perspectives across the alliance.

there's no question. It's not exactly as simple as some of the reporting makes it out to be. It's not just 29 times against two. It's really 31 allies coming to the table and talking about, number one, we all support that Ukraine will eventually become a member of the alliance someday because we said that in 2008. But different views around the table on what to say today in Vilnius. And I think after weeks of talking about this, we've landed in the middle. Everybody has had to travel some distance. And I think when President Zelensky comes to the summit this week, I think he's going to be pleased with the message that he gets that this alliance is interested in enhancing its relationship with Ukraine. We're ready to provide more political support over the long term, not just for the war that's going on now, but to prevent future wars. And we're going to have some new and interesting things to say about their membership aspirations.

That'll be more than what we said in 2008. So without previewing exactly what we're going to get into at the summit, I will say, I think President Zelensky is going to be pretty happy by the messages and the deliverables that he's going to have in hand here in Lithuania. I imagine, too, part of what's complicated here is that there's a question of like full NATO membership. And then there's a question of what kind of security guarantees Ukraine might get from individual member states, you know, as part of some effort to wind down the war. on the full NATO membership, can you describe to people who may see things like Ukraine has to meet certain standards and has to undertake certain reforms and those are actually never indicated what those are? I mean, it may be obvious to some people, okay, you can't really have full NATO membership that triggers collective defense while Ukraine is an award. That's something I think people can understand. But what does NATO mean? What do countries mean when they talk about undertaking the necessary? reforms and measures to become capable of joining the alliance? Yeah.

I mean, you hit on the big one, and that is nobody across the alliance, not a single ally, is talking about issuing an invitation today. And in fact, President Zelensky himself has noted that that wouldn't necessarily be in the cards because we don't extend membership while a war is raging on your territory. But above and beyond that, let's say there was. a war in Ukraine right now, and we were talking about some of the reforms they would have to undertake. I mean, there's just some general things that we focus on. For example, civilian control of the military. They have that. They can check that box. But then there's a whole list of things under the

umbrella of a thriving democracy that has respect for the rule of law, that is taking the necessary anti-corruption measures. There are things that the Ukraine, have been working on. They've made tremendous progress since 2008. And what we're going to do here in Vilnius is we're going to applaud all that good work. But we're also going to acknowledge, just as the Ukrainians themselves do, that there's more work to do, that they will have to take some additional steps as they move towards membership. And we'll get into that. And there's a program, not to get too nerdy here, but there's a whole annual national program. the ANP, it's called inside NATO, that will help them map the steps that will have to continue to be pursued before membership is on the table. So we're all for nerding out a little bit here. That's a good thing about a podcast. Good, good.

And so in that, in that, guys, I mean, my memory of these summits, right, is there's always the things dominating on the front burner. And the war in Ukraine is much bigger than anything that that I experienced. eight years. But then there's also always an alliance agenda, you know, of capabilities and alliance management that is kind of comes above above the surface of the water for summits. What in your view is standing out in that regard? Like I noticed, you know, there's been long discussion of the need to have planning, war planning for the defense of every ally. And I know that features at this summit. What is what is standing out to you,

from just the war. I know everything connects to that in terms of what is coming out of the work plan and De Vilnius. Okay. Well, thank you for asking about this because it doesn't always get the love and affection it deserves. So I will walk out for a minute and say that this alliance is about to make a generational shift in its deterrence and defense posture. And I say that because we're about to roll out new regional plans that will literally enable us to defend. every inch of NATO territory. You'll remember after 9-11, the alliance pivoted its focus to terrorism and to operations, expeditionary operations in faraway places. This moment for the alliance is more of a coming home. We're returning to kind of the alliance's core mission of collective defense,

but in order to do that, we need plans in place to make sure that every member of this alliance knows what capabilities they need, what part of the territory they're responsible for, the resourcing that's going to be required for it, what level of readiness their troops need to meet. And from these regional plans, all of those answers will fall out. And so what we're rolling out this week, again, which may not capture the headlines, will literally have an impact on this alliance for the next decade in terms of NATO's core mission, which is to ensure that we can defend NATO territory. So this is a big moment. It's really interesting to do that here in Lithuania right up on the eastern flank so close to what's happening in Ukraine. And the

other piece of it is the defense investment pledge. You'll remember in 2014, in the Obama administration, NATO allies pledged to spend 2% of GDP on defense. And that pledge had a 10-year timeline on it. And so it expires next year. And so the allies are gathering to date, roll out a new defense investment pledge, which will be enduring and will basically lock in the 2% with the need to likely do more over time to meet the ambition that's laid out in those regional plans. So in addition to Ukraine, two big developments here in Vilnius, rolling out these regional plans and rolling out a new defense investment pledge. Yeah, no, and to give people a sense of how long the work as it leads into this, I mean, as you just indicated, Julie,

I remember both of these things. I mean, I remember early in the Obama administration being struck by the lack of any contingency planning for the defense of every inter-NATO territory. Right. And so that process was kind of set in motion back then. I mean, my follow-up on that is if you're basically talking about, you know, real actual planning, right, that is going to require resourcing over time for how do you defend against different scenarios? How do you defend different allies? Does that, is that going to drive kind of physical resources. Like we've seen the deployment of a lot more U.S. and other allied hardware and personnel to eastern front states.

Is that going to continue to evolve? Is that going to be made permanent? How does actual resourcing fit in with these plans? Well, there's a couple pieces to it. I mean, obviously last summer at the summit in Madrid, we had some major news, breaking news, on force posture. So after Russia went into Crimea, NATO added four multinational battalions in Eastern Europe in the three Baltic states in Poland. And last year, after Russia went back into Ukraine, we added four more. So now we have these eight multinational battalions on the eastern flank.

All of them need to be scalable to a brigade. The plans won't radically change that, but they will make clear to allies not only how we have to keep insuring. that we can meet the requirements associated with those battalions. But now we have Finland that has almost doubled the amount of territory NATO has to defend on the eastern flank. And providing, obviously, Finland provides enormous amount of capacity, but it also has to be worked into the plans so that we know how we will defend now that long border with Russia. And then Sweden hopefully will follow. Now, there's some other changes that will come with these plans. and that's C2 command and control.

We're going to be making some changes. SACUR will have to alter kind of how we lay out the command structure across Europe and how that attaches to the command that we have in Norfolk, Virginia, which will likely have to be plused up a little bit. It's a fairly small command. So, yes, there will be changes that will require real resources, capabilities. We're going to have to align our forces and our national defense plans to these NATO plans. And for the United States, that's something we've often kind of held back from doing.

We often say, okay, all of you can attach your national plans to NATO plans and just rest assured we'll be there for you. But this time, actually with SACUR's leadership, the U.S. is affiliating forces to these plans and linking them up with our own national plans. So lots of movement, but I wouldn't say a radical shift in our force posture in Eastern Europe. right now. Yeah, like an evolution. That makes sense. And you mentioned Sweden. Is there a role for the alliance here to make the case or is this something that people just kind of look to the U.S. and other countries to be leading negotiations? And what practically is held up from a planning standpoint, for instance, from Sweden not having the same formal membership that Finland does? Yeah. So it is kind of a question that's been handled through multiple layers.

So first and foremost, when Turkey raised its hand and said, hold up, we have some concerns on the terrorism front. We basically created this trilateral format where Sweden, Finland, and Turkey could go off and meet and talk about how to address some of the concerns that Turkey had. And that was an important process. And it often involved the Secretary General. He offered his good offices on many occasions. And in fact, just last week, he had a meeting with the foreign minister's chiefs, intelligence and the national security advisors of all of those three countries fly out to Brussels to carry on with those conversations. So there's that piece. We want Sweden to be part of the

regional plans and they are not yet. They will be when they become members. And then lastly, there's the individual allies that can put their thumb on the scale like the United States to say, look, this is important for the United States. It's important for Sweden. It's important for the alliance. This is a country that is a security provider. They're going to bring an enormous amount of capacity to the alliance. It's going to fundamentally change the face of NATO. This is something we need to do sooner rather than later. And it's also important for our friends in the Nordic-Baltic region. For a country like Lithuania, where we are right now, it's critical for them to have both Sweden and Finland. And it's very reassuring to widen the neighborhood of NATO allies in this part of the

globe. So multiple layers at work, President Biden was able to connect with President Erdogan as he was flying on his way to London. That was an important engagement. Like I said, Secretary General Stoltenberg hosted a bunch of folks last week. We'll have allies talking about it here in Vilnius. It's kind of all hands on deck. Yeah, it kind of like the, I mean, a lot of things in NATO these days. I mean, I was just going to a couple of questions to end, one on NATO and one on you, just for people to understand, because they'll see these commitments at NATO, the summit for Ukraine. How would you describe for the person watching this from the outside, when they hear about assistance going to Ukraine, they hear about these commitments that are generally made by individual nations, but they tend to be

almost all NATO member states. What is the role of NATO versus those individual nations? Like, how should someone think about, is NATO delivering equipment into Ukraine or, you know, How do you describe to like a normal person who doesn't follow this super closely what that division of labor is and what the alliance's role is and providing that assistance? Yeah. So obviously, we took a decision the day that the war started probably before it started, that NATO would not be a party to the conflict. We did not want NATO to get directly involved.

But we all came to the table that morning with a determination to not only strengthen the eastern flank to make sure that we had the deterrence of defense posture right on NATO territory, but that each of us would immediately begin providing humanitarian economic and security assistance in one shape or another. NATO has been the place where we have maintained unity. NATO is the place where we shared intelligence in the months running up to the war to warn our friends in Ukraine and the allies about this war that we felt was almost certain to happen. NATO is the place where we did all the necessary contingency planning to prepare for what eventually did transpire on February 24th. And NATO as an alliance, while it's not providing lethal support and it's not training Ukrainians,

individual countries are doing that. We are providing non-lethal support. And that's important things, whether it's winter gear in the winter months, night vision goggles, fuel, a whole array of capabilities that the Ukrainians need right now. So there is a role for the alliance. I would say it's primarily a political one. It's where we maintain that unity. We grapple with the counteroffensive and changing events on the battlefield. But it is the U.S.-led UDCG, where over Ukraine Defense Contact Group, where over 50 countries come together and offer security assistance to Ukraine.

That was really well done. Yeah. Yeah, but thank you for spelling out the acronym for people. Last question for you. What is the life of a NATO ambassador, right? It's a little different. I mean, some people are watching the diplomat now. Good show.

I'm not sure about the realism, but it's pretty good. But this is not a normal embassy, right? Because you're not just representing the United States to a country. Like, how does that look on a day-to-day basis? how much are you traveling? How do you like it? You know, just what's it like behind the curtain in the life of Ambassador Julianne Smith? Well, I love it. I absolutely love it. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in this moment. You know what a NATO nerd I am. It's a brand that, you know, I wear with pride.

But you're right. It isn't kind of your average diplomatic posting. In the bilateral postings, you take on a whole array of duties that can cross. cultural, economic and trade priorities, foreign policy. But at NATO, it's focused almost exclusively, obviously on national security matters. Almost everybody who works at our mission comes from the State Department or DOD. There are some exceptions. But you don't, for example, have folks from commerce. I mean, it's a very different opt tempo. You have a lot of high-level visitors coming through Brussels and coming through NATO especially now. So we're running all the time. But it has multiple layers. The U.S. is trying to provide leadership inside the NATO alliance on countless

issues. We're trying to not only stay focused on Ukraine, but provide leadership on issues like the PRC, emerging and disruptive tech, cyber and space. We're working with the interagency to make sure the voices and views of allies are inserted into that process. And, And working, obviously, with individual allies on specific issues. You know, we're a multilateral organization, but we don't always work at 31. There are clusters of countries that come together to solve problems. Sometimes we're working with countries on climate security. Sometimes a group of us will focus on events in the Balkans.

So it's a job that seems to change with the minute. And I love that. But it can be challenging to keep pace with all of that from day to day. I bet. I mean, I can't even imagine the line of congressional delegations because of the war. Yeah. You must be, you're not, you're not like hosting parties in the same way that some ambassadors are to countries, but you are entertaining. So we appreciate you making time for us. This would be a dramatic summit in Vilnius. To the NATO nerd thing, I'll never forget the first North Atlantic Council. That's what they call the, you know, these summits that I attended. I walk in with Mark Lippert, talking about NATO nerds.

is, you know, we walk in and suddenly all the, you know, the panorama of generals and politicians and aides scurrying around is there. And he just leans over and whispers in my ear, my whole life, I've wanted to go to a knack. It was like, you know, to some people, that is like literally the, as good as it gets. So I know we're glad to be represented by someone who has that passion. And so thanks for everything you're doing. Oh, thanks. Thanks, thanks, Ben. Thanks for doing this. Appreciate it. Thanks again to Julie Smith for coming on the show. And thanks to you, Ben, for having me to fill in.

Max, it's just like a progosion-style mutiny. Tommy's actually not on vacation. He's locked up in a closet so you could take this march on Moscow. I think he should accept exile in Belarus, finally. We've got a great camp form set up. We didn't dwell in this for like the fact that they were like touring the Wagner camp. Oh my God, it was so funny. Belarus is loving its moment in the sun.

I think they kind of are. Yeah. But hopefully, Tommy is on vacation and hopefully it's a good break. But yeah, it's great to have you feel and it. It's been a lot of fun. It was a blast. And Tommy will be back next week. Cool.

See you. POTSave World is a cricket 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 the Cilius Utopoulos are our sound engineers. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, and Milo Kim, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube every week and check out the Pots Save the

World YouTube account. Thanks to Saul Rubin for production support.