Pod Save the World - Netanyahu backs down

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

Tommy and Ben talk about protests in Israel and Netanyahu’s persistent attack on Israel’s democracy, a drone strike in Syria, reignited fears of a nuclear attack from Putin, a new deal between Biden and Canadian PM Trudeau, VP Harris’ visit to Africa, North Korea’s “nuclear tsunami”, French President Macron’s expensive watch, and Lebanon entering the daylight savings debate. Then, Ben is joined by China expert Evan Medeiros to talk about a potential US TikTok ban, Xi’s meeting with Putin, and where US relations with China stand today. 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 Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, quick football banter because the Patriots are rumored to be going after Lamar Jackson, fantastic quarterback. And you guys, the New York Jets are maybe getting Aaron Rogers after a little time on an ayahuasca retreat, maybe? What's the deal here? Yeah, the Jets have a tradition of picking up really good quarterbacks in, like, the last year or two, their professional careers when they're also kind of unraveling. Like, Brett Farve had a painkiller addiction when he was, like, he was a. on the Jets.

Sent some unfortunate text messages. Yeah, sent some very unfortunate text messages. Vinie Test Verity, late career. I could go on, unfortunately, but Aaron Rogers, who's been rumored to be coming to the Jets for, like, since the NFL season ended, has let it be known that he's coming out of this period of darkness. He's working through some ayahuasca. Like a literal darkness, like in a room where there was no light.

Yeah, a room where there was no light, but. And he didn't make it very long. either. I mean, the rumor is that he, like, you know, was supposed to be in this darkness retreat for a while, sorting some stuff out. I don't know what that means for his performance as a potential New York Jets quarterback. I can tell you that being a New York Jets fan is, like, living in a darkness retreat for my entire, like, like adult sports fandom. But I guess he's better than the, you know, Yehuis we had last year. Yeah. Well, speaking of people in the twilight of their careers living in darkness, we're going to lead the show with Israeli Prime

Minister Bibi Netanyahu and his temporary maybe cave to protesters in Israel for his judicial putch plan. The militant attacks in Syria that had been happening last week, why Putin is talking about nukes again, Biden's trip to Canada and the VP's visit to Africa, a bizarre and politically charged court case in India. There was a nuclear tsunami in the news, Ben, spyware crackdown, fancy French watches, and why daylight savings time is creating problems in Lebanon. And then Ben, you got to talk to our former colleague Evan Medeiros last Friday, I believe.

How's he doing? And what did you guys talk about? So Evan was like the lead China expert in the Obama administration for many years, senior director at the White House for East Asia. And so I wanted to check in with him on a lot of the news we've seen out of China. She's trip to Russia and what he's up to with Putin. We talk a little bit about TikTok and what China might do in response to a potential U.S. ban of TikTok. and just kind of generally taking stock of where things are headed with things escalating in U.S. politics and in Chinese politics. So if you want a level set on all things China right now, Evan Medeiros is your man. He has very sober knowledge that he dropped in this podcast interview. Check it out.

Also just a great guy. Is he done in Chile with Bernadette and his wife? He was the U.S. ambassador? So I did ask him if he's the first gentleman because his wife is... He's our Doug. Yeah, he's a Doug. Like if Doug's a second gentleman, he's a... He's the first gentleman of the U.S. Embassy in Chile because his wife Burnett, Mien, our former colleague, is ambassador down there.

He liked the title. It's the first time anybody called him that. But he said he's there about a little more than half the time. He was in D.C. when I talked to him. Fair enough. Fair enough. I'm excited to hear that because he's an incredibly smart guy. But let's start in Israel, Ben, because it's been a wild couple of days. So we've discussed in the show a bunch of times, Israeli Prime Minister B.B. Niyahou's plan to radically change Israel's judicial system, it would basically let the prime minister and the ruling government appoint the country's judges and let them override any court decisions they don't like. This would be a huge deal for Israel because they have very few checks on the government's power to begin with. Like think about the United States. We have the House. We have the Senate. We have the White House veto. The courts, the constitution. It's a bunch of competing interests, checks and balances.

In Israel, there is no written constitution. There is no slow-moving Senate with the filibuster. the party or the coalition that controls a majority of seats in parliament controls the government and currently only the courts can check their power. So this fight has huge stakes for the future of Israel as a democracy. That is why for months, hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens have been protesting. Significant numbers of reservist soldiers from across the Israeli military have said they wouldn't show up for duty if this plan went through. The Israeli defense minister warned that judicial changes were hurting morale and embolding Israel's

enemies and he called on Netanyahu to delay the plan, which is when things got real. And on Sunday night, Netanyahu fired him. The next day, there were these massive nationwide protests. There were strikes, including shop, schools, banks, non-emergency care at hospitals, until finally Netanyahu blinked and said he would delay this judicial change. So then I'm excited, obviously, about this victory. I'm excited for all the people protesting because it seems like their pressure really worked. But I also think Netanyahu is betting that a delay will take the wind out of their sales and then let him finalize this plan later in the summer and get it done. What do you make of that bet Netanyahu seems to be making about sort of a play for time? I think you're right. And

I mean, I've been thinking about this because I knew we're going to talk about this. You know, we've been beating this drum for a while now. Since this government got elected, we've been talking about this particular reform, but also on this podcast for five years, who've been talking about democratic backsliding in Israel, particularly related to Bibi Ninyahu. And the thing that kind of gets me, Tommy, that I think is worth flagging because it does relate to how the U.S. deals with this, is that suddenly there's like this, you know, in the last three days, there's been this, you know, outcry in the U.S. media like, oh, wait a second, what's happening in Israel? There's democratic backsliding. We are 10 years into the democratic backsliding. I mean, it's very hard for me to not be

triggered by these analysis pieces that are like, well, people are concerned suddenly about democracy in Israel, as if they weren't concerned when the occupation was expanding, when they were having nationality laws changing what it meant to be a citizen of Israel, when the media was being taken over by BNanyahu, so that literally most newspapers and television stations were just like a mouthpiece for him and his kind of right-wing agenda. We are 10 years into the Democratic backsliding. And I will tell you that what I'm impressed by is that the people of Israel are much more aware of this than people in the United States who like to put themselves forward as friends of Israel, because they are out on the streets and they're the ones who made

this delay, including people who are far to my right in Israel, who just get that this is kind of the last Rubicon that Netanyahu is crossing. So I say that as preface because I think it needs to be said that people should not be shocked, shocked to find out that suddenly Bibi Niaw is. and Yao has become undemocratic, this is who he's been, particularly since he came back into office in around 2009. In terms of what's happening now, I do think what he'll do is he'll try to tweak this and come back at it. If he can hold his coalition together and keep it from falling apart, he will come back with some maybe slightly amended version of the same thing. Because what matters to him is the trajectory. And the trajectory is moving Israel to the right and moving it to a more

illiberal place, which is where he wants it to be. And our, our buddy, Ben Gavir, basically said as much. He was one of the people who came out in support of this, you know, delay. But he's like, oh, you know, we'll be back at this, right? And Ben Gavir, the national security minister and to, you know, seemingly was handed control of sort of private militia force as a part of this delay deal. Exactly, right? So nothing about this suggests that Bibi's having some real reckoning. You know, He's not saying like, oh, you know, I've seen the error my ways and I want dialogue with the opposition. He's just saying like, I'm going to shell this for a little while because the heat got too much for me. And again, I think what is so important is that people in Israel and the different institutions and, you know, like the various sectors of Israeli society that have made their voice heard, that they keep doing that.

Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned itmar Ben-Gavir. There's a bunch of very right-wing ministers who are part of Netanyahu's coalition. who, you know, it's not clear to me whether they're leading Netanyahu around or whether Netanyahu is leading them, which makes sort of predicting what's going to happen in the future and the politics of this all that more complicated. But Ben, I'm very glad you were triggered by this because I too was very triggered by some of the reporting. So the New York Times had a story about the Biden administration's efforts to slow down this judicial coup plan from Netanyahu.

And it said, David Sanger in New York Times. It said Netanyahu was bombarded by warnings from the Biden team. The story highlighted a statement released from NSE spokeswoman Adrian Watson on Sunday night that included the line, quote, democratic societies are strengthened by checks and balances and fundamental changes to a democratic system should be pursued with the broadest possible base of popular support. The statement also called for a compromise. The Times said the White House believed that Netanyahu figured out he had overreached and was looking for a way out of the crisis and that he benefited from being able to say to his right-wing coalition partners that we were just mentioning that, look, I can't risk U.S. support.

We got to delay this thing. And so, Ben, some of my issues with this piece. The first is, look, I had the job of NSC spokesperson. I used to share an office with you. Often quotes, we would decide to put them in my name because we wanted to be on the record about an issue, but de-escalate it, right? Like, no shade to Adrian, no shade to anyone else who's held that job.

But if you really want to scare Eadis coalition partners. Yeah, burn it at me in. You put the statement in Biden's name. put it in Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State's name, you put it in the National Security Advisor's name, right? Like when you put it in the NSE spokesperson, that is like downgrading it, but it's getting you on the record and getting you in stories. Second, if Biden has now decided that public pressure on Netanyahu is helpful, can we apply that to the treatment of people in Gaza? Can we apply it to pushing them on negotiations for a Palestinian state? Like, I realize the

response to my comment will be, this is an existential threat to Israel's democracy, right? If you got the courts, but the issues I mentioned are existential to the Palestinian people. So it just feels like I don't get the big strategic change and how it isn't sort of self-evident that we need some pressure on this guy in all cases if it's helpful in this one. Yeah, I mean, all right, I'm really glad you said this because why is it an existential threat to Israeli democracy to be making these judicial changes? But the occupation and annexation. of the West Bank is not. You know, like that, like, because, and the reason they are connected is because the strategy

that Netanyahu pursues is when he, like, let's take a Gaza war, right? We've, we've covered, unfortunately, that on this podcast a couple of times and in government. What Netanyahu does is he pushes and pushes and pushes. And the U.S. is very quiet and doesn't want to weigh in. And then the U.S. kind of gets to a point where there's, like, NSE spokesperson. statements like we said. And then Netanyahu stops the war. And everybody says, oh, that kind of quiet deferential approach, you know, paid dividends because Netanyahu stopped the war in Gaza. But then guess what he does? He doesn't stop. Like it continues quietly. He continues to squeeze

the people of Gaza. He continues to have a blockade. He continues to make sure that life is miserable there until there's another war. And the reason I draw this comparison is that that's That's what he's doing to Israeli democracy. He's doing to Israeli democracy, this kind of slow motion, like, first, because we've seen this playbook with, like, Victor Orban, hungry. You know, first we kind of consolidate control the media, you know, then we have this kind of corrupt loop between people. And if you think I'm being hyperbolic here, Israel's own judicial system is trying to

prosecute him for these things, for, like, basically turning the media into, like, an influence scheme where if he doesn't get good coverage, like, he's going to come after you, right? And Victor Arbon didn't have a U.S. funded military and nukes. Yes. So like the strategy here is, yeah, like you push and push and push. And then the international pressure and the statements in the White House and the New York Times articles get to be a little uncomfortable. And then he pulls back. But he doesn't like reverse. He waits. Right. And then he pushes again, you know. And so like you're absolutely right that like nobody should be patting themselves on the back here, other than the Israelis who took to the streets, by the way, and actually forced this change.

And nobody should assume that this is somehow over and that we're going to be able to avoid the U.S. at a very high level at the level of President of the United States on down being hurt on this issue again. And like it seems like the only thing Washington seems to care about is continued progress on the Abraham Accords, which are these diplomatic agreements between countries like Israel and the United Arab Emirates. But Netanyahu's right-wing coalition is creating real tensions between Israel and the UAE in particular. It's reportedly preventing more diplomacy with Saudi Arabia. But again, like you said, like softening up, everyone's softening up here. Apparently the U.S., I think maybe Tom Niedz, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said that Biden is going to host Netanyahu in Washington in the coming months. And it's like, why?

What are we doing? Why would we, unless this is off the table, why would we host that guy? Yeah. Yeah, and like, because the thing is usually when there's things that Bibi Nenya is doing that we don't like, the goal in Washington seems to be to try to like make it go away. Not to actually try to change the direction of events, but like, can this get out the front page? Like, we'd rather not have to deal with this. And can we pretend like things are normal again? I mean, one of the things I saw in that story again, Tommy, was in multiple New York Times stories.

And I am singling out the New York Times here on this one. because they said things like Biden threatened Nanyahu privately that Israel was putting at risk its status as the one true democracy in the Middle East. This, it took this? I mean,

what is happening in the West Bank? You know, I just, you know, we're going to get shit for this, I'm sure. But like, like, we got shit for the things we said about Nenao being illiberal years ago and then look where we are now, right? And like, this is what's happening. happening and to think that we can revert to a normal with this guy, with BB Nanyahu.

I'm not talking about Israel because, like, Israel has had a great week. The people of Israel have been on the streets. Like people in the military, people in the security sector, people in the media. Like, Israel has made his voice heard. I'm talking about Bibi Nanyahu. The idea that we can, let's have this guy for whiteouts visit, you know, like, let's, let's boost him up because he delayed, like, overturning Israeli democracy. I don't know.

I just, like, to your point, U.S. pressure seemed to play a constructive role here. So the idea that U.S. can never apply pressure, I don't think bears out. I don't either. Okay, let's turn to Syria because last week, a self-detonating drone struck a U.S. military position in Syria, killing a U.S. contractor in wounding six other U.S. personnel station there. A previously unknown extremist group took credit for the strike, but most people think there was sort of a front group. and that this was just Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRDC that did it. U.S. officials say the drone used the attack came from Iran.

In response, Biden ordered airstrikes on militant sites in Syria linked with Iran. Those Iranian-backed militia groups then responded to the U.S. response and wounded another American. There are still 900 U.S. troops in Syria along with hundreds of contractors. Their primary mission, along with service members in Iraq, is to fight ISIS. They usually do it in coordination with Kurdish fighters from Syria. The New York Times reported there have been 78 attacks by Iranian backed militias on American forces in Syria since January of 2021. The attack last week was particularly deadly because apparently the air defense system at this base wasn't working. So, you know, Ben, a tragic incident, it does seem like as long as there are U.S. troops in Syria, even if they're doing, you know, an important mission, they're going to face these kinds of attacks.

And I also just think it's always worth remembering that when the Trump administration assassinated the head of the IRGC in January of 2020, they did so saying this is a deterrence. It's going to stop these kinds of attacks in the future. But the reality is it never stopped. They never even slowed down. It's just like violence leading to more violence again and again and again and again. And we're just stuck in this cycle. Yeah. I mean, the accountability loop that we have to hit here is that when they pulled out of the nuclear deal in the Trump administration, they said in part,

that pulling out that deal and pivoting to sanctions would curb not just their nuclear program, but also their malign actions in the region. Well, their nuclear program has further events than has ever been, and so are their malign actions in the region if they've had 78 attacks on these U.S. forces in Syria. I do think we can also fold this into what I termed like our World War Watch on this a podcast a couple weeks ago, which is that there are these flashpoints, right? I mean, Ukraine is a flashpoint that is on fire right now. But this is the one that has been quite concerning for a time now because you have Iran's nuclear program creeping forward.

You've had these things going boom in Iran, presumably from Israel, but the U.S. is kind of winked at it. And now you have these attacks, including a deadly attack on the U.S. presence in Syria. It tells me that the Iranians, you know, pressured by what's happening domestically with the protests, pressured by sanctions, but also as an extension of this kind of more belligerent phase of geopolitics that went with the Ukraine war, you know, that they're taking more risk, you know, that for them to be attacking like this at this volume and this pace, they clearly want to be seen to be kind of chasing the U.S. out of Syria, you know. And I bet the Russians, I mean, here I'm, I'm guessing, but, you know, the Russians are their closest partner on these things.

Something tells me that the Russians don't mind that either, you know, that this idea that conflict is everywhere now. I do think that it's worth asking, though, like, what are these U.S. forces doing in Syria? There's the ISIS campaign, but, you know, you hear periodically that this is still a threat and this is still necessary. I don't know that we know that, you know. Yeah, I'm a great handle of it. I mean, there's also apparently an ISIS prison there that,

They're sort of helping guard where there's maybe tens of thousands of ISIS prisoners being held and they might be freed if we just completely abandoned the area. So I don't know. But you know, you mentioned the Russian element. The Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi Arabia and Syria are close to restoring diplomatic ties after negotiations after negotiations, after the Russians would leave those negotiations. They're the ones who've had relationships with Assad. And many countries in the Gulf and around the world cut off ties with the Assad regime after the civil war started in 2011. The U.S. has opposed normalization with Assad. You know, we've pushed back on the Jordanians, for example, in the past couple of years when they've tried to push for these efforts. But it does feel like a decade plus later, like there's slow but steady momentum towards a bunch of countries, maybe restoring relations with Assad. I think that that's clear the direction of events. But, like, and you flagged this story for me, and I, it's pretty fascinating story, actually,

because it begins with this effort in Syria. But essentially what you also see is the Russians and the Iranians, not just trying to normalize relations with Assad. They're trying to bring Turkey into this thing in a big way. So they have these quad talks like taking, they're stealing our name. Yeah, our terms. Yeah, our lame terms.

So our lame like foreign policy jargon. But they have these quad talks with Russia, Turkey, Iran and Syria. And then they're bringing Saudi Arabia into these conversations. And what you can clearly see is, is an effort not just to normalize Assad, but an effort to really try to peel Saudi Arabia into this kind of Russian-Chinese diplomatic play in the Middle East that involved the Saudis and the Iranians in that rapprochement, but is now talking about other things, right? So it started with the Chinese kind of brokering this thing between Saudi Arabia and Iran,

but now it's spread to these kind of multilateral talks related to what's happening, in Syria. The Chinese clearly support this as well. Point being here that the Russians and the Chinese and Iranians are trying to kind of broaden the list of countries that they're interacting with on major geopolitical issues to include Turkey as well as Syria. And obviously, one is a NATO ally and one is this kind of rogue state. But that's something that the U.S. is going to have to respond to. And if we are the last holdout in kind of recognizing the reality of Assad being in power, they want to take advantage of that by having us not at any of these tables, any of these quads or quince or whatever they want to call them, that's their objective here, to take advantage of the

fact that we're going to be the last holdout. Personally, I would still do it. Like I don't, I don't think the U.S. should be talking to Bashar al-Assad. And nor do I like think it's that damaging to our interest to take a stand on our values and say, you know what, you guys can have a bunch of quad meetings, like, we don't want to be at those meetings, right? So this is one of these things where Washington will freak out that we're kind of losing influence in the Middle East, but actually, you know what? Like some things are worth like taking a stand on principle. I mean, I don't know if you, you know, what you think about that time. No, I mean, I think the only place that really gets complicated is, you know, after incidents like the

earthquake when you're trying to figure. figure out, okay, how much are sanctions harming the civilian population? How much relief could we actually get in? If we do try to, you know, lift sanctions for a discreet period of time, is all that relief, the money or whatever else is going in, food, just going to get siphoned off by the Assad regime and, you know, to help them politically or get sold for profit. We just don't know. That's like, it's incredibly, I'm with you, like, fuck Assad. I don't want in relation with that guy, but it's just such a difficult challenge to know whether U.S. sanctions are just hurting innocent people.

No, that's right. I mean, I think the sanctions basically probably have zero impact anyway. It's not like they're compelling Assad to do anything. So you're right about that. And I do think you have to find channels, right? I mean, there are ways of having channels of communication into a regime like Assad's through the Turks or through other people without the U.S. saying, like, you know, we're somehow kind of granting him some diplomatic status.

So this is tricky. I mean, what we're seeing, I think, is like a bit of a reorienting. in the Middle East, but I actually don't think necessarily that every single meeting that happens without us is like a test of our legitimacy as a country, you know. Yeah, that's like just hegemony. That's straight from that playbook there. Yeah. Let's talk about Russia. So, you know, in particular, the war in Ukraine. So the big news, you know, this past week was President Putin announced a plan to store tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus and said that Russia would help.

the Bella Russian military update their planes to carry nuclear weapons. So that's great. The U.S. says there's no sign that Russia has actually moved any weapons yet, but they call the rhetoric dangerous, which seems obvious and fair. In sort of unrelated news, this week, the International Olympic Committee or IOC laid out a series of conditions for how Russian and Bella Russian athletes could return to international competition. Just the plan is complicated. It's not final, so we won't get into all the details. But it was an interesting data point about softening from the international community on the treatment of Russian, you know, anyone, since the early days of the invasion when the IOC basically said we should ban all Russians or Bella Russians from

international competitions. Ben, we've talked a lot about the efficacy of sanctions and other efforts to hurt the Russian economy. One success story appears to be reducing Russian arms sales. The economists had an interesting piece about how Russian arms sales to Southeast Asia have collapsed since the war started. It's because of, you know, reputational risks. sanctions and then also just how poorly the Russian military has performed so far. I thought that

was interesting. And then finally, the World Bank released a report saying that it's going to cost $411 billion to rebuild Ukraine after the war. So, Ben, let's just pause there. I mean, we talked last week in some detail about how the Russian military seems to be faring better now than they were at the end of last year. Why do you think Putin then chooses this moment to go back to the kind nuclear well and, you know, flare up the tactical nuclear weapons fear again. I mean, I think that he needs to replenish that nuclear threat periodically, you know, it's a part of his strategy. And look, this is a big deal. I also think he's probably, what we don't see is his kind of slow motion de facto takeover of Belarus. The reality is

whatever nuclear weapons that are stationed in Belarus are not ever going to be. fired on the order of Lukashenko. You know, this is, this is basically a Russian military, turning Belarus into kind of a Russian military outpost. So part of it is, is consolidating some control over Belarus, which, you know, he may not have been able to swallow up Ukraine, but he may be in a process of swallowing up Belarus. And then also, you know, it may be that if he does want to act on a nuclear threat with tactical nuclear weapons, he may see some advantage in doing it from somewhere other than Russian soil. True. Good point.

Which is a bit alarming, you know, because like that, that's the thing that feels like it could be real. But all that said, I do think he, he's also trying to, and this ties into what we're just talking about with the Middle East in a way. I think Putin is trying to project that he's kind of on offense, you know, like he, he was on the back foot for most of last year. Like he was embarrassed. No question he was embarrassed with how the war started. And now he's trying to show, look, I've got G here. I'm like sending these nuclear weapons to Belarus. Like, to your point about the athletes, that's no small thing. Like, you know, we're coming out from under this isolation. And that's why I do want to say the thing about the athletes is I don't get this

decision. Look, I felt like, you know, it is always hard to punish athletes for what their governments have done. But if Russia was worth punishing a year ago, like, why, what has changed? Like, they're killing Ukrainian civilians and stealing Ukrainian children today, just like they were here. A lot of their athletes are in the military. Yeah. And Mara are kind of, you know, more than willing to wink at the propaganda. So this is, like, I think this is what Putin wants is like this idea that he's kind of back on offense. He's waiting people out, you know, everything from, again, the Chinese to the nuclear weapons in Belarus to the athletes and competitions.

he's showing that this kind of burst of support for Ukraine at the outset doesn't mean anything in the long run. That's what he's counting on. Before we move on, Ben, I just want to play a quick clip for you guys. This is a reporter named Sarah Ferguson. She works at ABC News in Australia, and this is how she started her recent interview with Russia's ambassador to Australia. Ambassador Pavloski, welcome to 7.30. Good day. Ambassador, you're here in Australia enjoying the... the benefits of a free and open society. How do you live with yourself representing the repressive dictatorial Putin regime?

You find that funny? I find what I find funny is your way to start an interview. It's a pretty straight question. Yes, too straight. That's a hell of a way to deal with the propagandis like that. I love that. I love that. Like, kudos to the Australians on this one.

And I love his ending, though, like, two straight. Two straight. Like, kind of a tell, right? I mean, like, yes, he's basically acknowledging you were correct. I shouldn't be able to live with myself. It got worse for him from there, too. Yeah, no, they're not sending their best as Donald said. No, they're not.

All right. Let's talk about President Biden and Vice President Harris, who have been hitting the road to go to foreign countries. Here are some highlights. So Biden took a trip to Canada. He met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The focus was Ukraine trade and immigration, basically. A couple episodes ago, we talked in detail about how there's been an increase in migration through the United States for folks seeking asylum in Canada.

This deal that Biden and Trudeau cut will allow the Canadians to send asylum seekers who unlawfully cross the U.S. border into Canada back to the United States. Canada also announced that it will accept 15,000 migrants from, Central and South America. In terms of trade, Biden announced that electric vehicles assembled to Canada will get to qualify for tax credits as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. That's a big deal for Trudeau who worried that production facilities in Canada would basically end up leaving country because if you're going to make cars, you want to be able to sell them in the U.S. So they qualify for these big tax credits. And then President Biden also delivered a speech

at the Canadian Parliament. Here's a clip. I'm very proud that both of us have cabinets that are 50 percent women. for the first time in this one. Even you don't agree, guys, I'd stand up. So what you can't see there, because this is a podcast, obviously, is that the conservative members of the Canadian Parliament didn't stand up to applaud the line about gender parity in the cabinet. And Biden is like, hey, you sexist morons.

Like, this isn't partisan. This is about fairness. Like, get off your asses. It was a pretty great moment there for Biden, I thought. I love that. I mean, like, that, you know, that takes some guts to do. that at a foreign country basically like get off your fucking ass guys like I think they did we're just like celebrating the fact that like women are in the cabinet I mean it does show you how like kind of weird

and retro and maga adjacent the Canadian conservators have gotten yeah I was struck I actually followed this visit quite closely what I was struck by is all the things that they announced right which dealt well put aside the border for a second but the Ukraine stuff the inflation reduction act they kind of touted in the press conference you know North America as part of this strategy for like this new coal war, you know, that we, we have not only like support for Ukraine, but we're going to have like North American supply chains and we're going to cooperate on EVs and we're going to cooperate on all this stuff and we're going to bring back manufacturing after too many decades of exporting it. You know, you did see, I think, what is a pretty meaningful

statement that of what like decoupling from China will look like in terms of supply chains and technology and everything. So I actually thought of. was like a more consequential than usual candidate of visit. Yeah. I agree. Because it played into kind of this whole arc of the Biden presidency on China and Ukraine and everything he's prioritized. The border stuff, yeah, it just tells you how much the politics of the migration issue

changed generally that we're like announcing draconian measures like with Justin Trudeau. It was like the most forward-leading Western leader usually in welcoming refugees and migrants. And so, you know, if that's the politics in Canada, it shows you like where things are, you know. Yeah, very bad. So the vice president is in the middle as we speak of a trip to Africa. She's going to Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia. The trip has been described as a chance to show that the U.S. views Africa as an opportunity for political and economic growth and not just, you know, a bunch of turf we're wrestling over with the Chinese for, you know, superiority or like, you know, a political problem. or a terrorism problem to be fixed by the United States.

So I think that framing is very smart. Here's a good example, I thought, Ben, of why this framing is important. So this incredibly awkward clip is from a meeting with the former president of the German parliament who was in Namibia doing a bilateral meeting with the president of Namibia, and this is from a pool spray. There is in Namibia, for example, the number of Chinese people living here in the meantime is four times as much as for example the German community. And in so far, it's not precisely the same

what takes place all over the world. There are differences and what I'm... Mr. Speaker, what is your problem with that? Why does it become your problem? It looks like it's a more European problem than have a problem. You are so sorry for us. I don't see... Chinese will never come and play around here.

as Germans are not allowed to do that. Which Germans are doing, by the way? You talk about Chinese. We allow Germans to come off our visas here. Red carpet. Our people are harassed in Germany. Even diplomatic passport holders. In Germany.

And you come in here. Germans come in here as they want. So why Chinese talk about Germans? How are treating us there? Chinese don't treat us like that. Diplomatic passport. We will handle our own country. Don't be sorry for us.

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. So the audio wasn't great there, but some of the lines that jumped out of me were this is, you know, the German guy starts talking about, you know, how there's more Chinese people than Germans in Namibia. And the president's like, this is a German problem. This isn't our problem. Like, don't be so sorry for us. We welcome Germans in Namibia. Germans harass our people in Germany, evenly have diplomatic passports.

And Max Fisher reminded me that there's a deep history in anger here because of German colonial era atrocities in Namibia. And Germany has refused to offer a full apology or full reparations. But I did think that last line where he says, every time a westerner comes, it's about the Chinese, was something you hear a lot in Africa. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think the African like view that you hear a lot in. in different places is it used to be that Africa was this like vague danger, right? Like the only prism through which people talked about Africa in the United States were, you know, conflict, terrorism, disease. Like you would think that the whole place was on fire or something, right?

And now that's begun to change to it's just this like place that the Chinese are going and building infrastructure. And yeah, like we had to beat them there. And look, the reality is that the U.S. has enormous interest in. in Africa across the board, though. It's not just China. It's the fact that, like, there's no solution to climate change that doesn't deal with clean energy in Africa. There's no solution to kind of sustaining global academic growth that doesn't involve

a continent. There's going to have, like, half the world's population a couple of decades. Massive population growth. I'm not sure there's a Chinese issue. You know, like, that's a part of the picture here. But if it just sounds like something that we use as a talking about to justify showing up there, then that's disrespectful to people there. Yeah, it looks like you're a competition over like rare earth minerals to put in our batteries.

Like that's as cynical as it gets. It is. But like, look, the reality is we can be honest about this and say like, you know what? Like we haven't paid enough attention to this continent. And like everything we care about depends on this content. By the way, including the supply chains for rare earth materials that are essential to batteries. Like, but we're not trying to do that to beat the Chinese. We're trying to do that because like a successful growing prosperous Africa is good for everybody.

you know, including us and the Chinese and above all people in Africa. And so what I like about what Kamala Harris is doing is she's going to Ghana, Tanzania, to Zambia, which is a country that has recently moved in a more democratic direction. And she's engaging, like, different sectors. Like she's engaging not just leaders. I saw her with like entertainers. Idris Alba is there. Yeah.

Entrepreneurs, like the rich cultural like parts of these countries. that are really politically salient in those countries and in the United States. I wish more American leaders would do this more regularly because I actually think, you know, we talked about the Middle East earlier. I was thinking about how these topics fit together today. We have more interest, I think, in the long run in Africa than the Middle East. Like, in a way, fine, like let the Chinese and the Russians talk about it Syria, you know. I'd rather be focusing a lot of that attention down on sub-Saharan Africa, where there's

tremendous amount of U.S. interest, you know? Totally. Yeah. It's a really interesting trip because, you know, there's going to be, I'm sure, you know, she'll talk about some really bad laws that have been passed across the continent that are cracking down to LGBT people. There will be economic and security assistance announcement, like sort of standard things. I think she has, the vice president has some personal ties to Zambia because she went there as a kid to visit her grandfather who was working there. I saw today she went to the, the, colonial era fort called Cape Coast Castle, which is where millions of enslaved Africans were held

before being shipped overseas. So it's incredibly sort of personal and emotional trip so far. But it does seem interesting that you saw this big Tony Blinken trip, Ben, the Secretary of State. Now you're seeing the VP trip. It does seem like they're really building to something and maybe building to a Biden visit and trying to sort of send a message of this big enduring commitment. It seems smart and strategic. It does. And she deserves. credit. By the way, I hope she goes back, too. You know, like, I hope they, like, and Tony Blinken goes back, too. Because I, I think what the African leaders that I used to engage with in government would complain about is like there'd be this kind of very episodic engagement,

you know, like sustaining that focus. Jill Biden went. Right. You know, recently as well. That kind of sustained engagement at the senior levels, Janet Yellen went. That will, take time. Like, you're not going to do this with a few trips. But if over a period of several years, African leaders and African people see Americans showing up and showing up to talk about different stuff, right? The economy, security issues, not just kind of showing up because, you know, we have some very progial interest with the Chinese that we're trying to rebut in one given country. That will pay dividends, but we'll take time and follow through. Yeah. So, Ben, regularly listening to the show know that we have been talking a lot and concerned for a while about the increase.

authoritarian direction that India is heading under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Here's another, you know, incident to throw in that pile. Rahul Gandhi, a member of parliament, an opposition leader from the Congress party, was sentenced to two years in prison for comments he made about Prime Minister Modi at a campaign rally back in 2019. Actually, the comments were about several people named Modi. Here's the offending quote, Nirov Modi, Lalit Modi, Narendra Modi, how come they all have Modi as a common surname?

How come all thieves have Modi as a common surname? End of the quote. So Narav and Lalit Modi are corrupt businessmen with ties to the BJP party, which is Prime Minister Modi's party. So these charges were brought against Gandhi by a member of the BJP party in a court in Modi's home state of Gujarat. Gandhi can now appeal his conviction, but if the conviction is upheld,

he won't be able to run again for election in 2024. He's part of this political dynasty that includes three former prime ministers, but his party, the Congress party, has gone from being in charge literally for decades to getting crushed in election after election recently by the BJP. So, Ben, this is just a weird case. Like, I obviously don't know anything about Indian defamation law or how it is possible to be charged with, like, defaming a surname. Like, that doesn't really make sense to me.

If I made fun of Why Are All Roads is bad? Ben Rhodes, Stewart Rhodes. Like, doesn't seem like I should go to jail for that. Cecil Rhodes, right? It's like about African colonialism, right? Let's go back to that. Yeah. No relation, by the way, just so people know.

Good. I've glad to know. But it does seem like this is a, I don't know, a way to sideline a big-time political opponent. What's happening here? Tommy Tuberville, you know. Yeah. T-names. If Vitor is a hard one.

Don't look too. This is a big one, too. And then no, I mean, but Indian democracy in Modi, I saw this. And look, Rahul Gandhi is a leader of the Congress Party, the sky on of this family that, you know, governed India for most of its history. The Congress Party governed India for most of its history has some issues with corruption. You know, what was so jarring to me, though, was what the charges were, you know. Like this wasn't some like, you know, corruption investigation that had some, like, you know, vein of truth somewhere in it. This is basically like.

incitement. Yeah, this is like a guy like telling a joke at a campaign rally that didn't even seem that, you know, striding. Calling out corruption. Yeah, yeah. Like he's just making like some joke about the guy's name or something. To me, it's a pretty brazen assault on democracy in India and the rule of law in India and the politicization of it.

And the fact is like Rahul Gandhi, who's had a bit of a comeback in the last couple years, but it's not like he's been some huge threat to Modi, too. So to me, it's not like some guy taking someone who's ahead of him in the poll. and like smacking him down, that'd be really bad too. But this is more like setting the message that like I broached no opposition. Like even this guy that I'd beaten like a drum in like a couple of elections, you know, he said something I don't like and I'm just going to show that, you know, through my allies, I can like throw this guy in prison.

I think it's kind of a pretty like five alarm fire moment for Indian democracy too. Yeah, really weird story. I guess he's got a month or so to appeal it and he's out on bail, but we'll keep following up on this one. Ben, here's a headline that sucks. quote, Kim Jong-un oversees launch of nuclear-capable underwater drone. It's from the BBC. Kim Jong-un is, of course, the leader of North Korea.

The initial reports that these news reports are all based on are from North Korean state media, so like take it with a, you know, nuclear-sized dose of salt. But they said the drone was capable of cruising deep underwater for 59 hours and that if it were used, the weapon would create a nuclear tsunami that could destroy coastal cities. it seems like every week there is a new missile test, nuclear story, like propaganda video out of North Korea. It is very hard to decide which ones really matter and which ones are just, you know, North Korean propaganda making ups up to scare us. Where does nuclear tsunami drone land on your list? It's kind of up there.

I mean, it's kind of worrying if it exists, right? I mean, particularly as people live on the West Coast of United States. Oh, yeah, we're up first. What if after all this discussion of like Russia and China and stuff like, In five years, the North Koreans just destroy the United States. And they've been planning it, like, all along. And they've been showing us that they were planning it. And we're just distracted.

Yeah, and we're just distracted. I wouldn't like that. I wouldn't like that. But it does seem like Kim Jong-un, the theory used to be that he wanted attention. Maybe he just wants to have these capabilities, you know? I know. Maybe he's not about attention. Maybe he's just, like, developing a really robust nuclear weapons program, you know?

Yeah, maybe he's just really serious about it. Two big tech stories, as we're kind of wind at the end here. So first, the Biden administration released an executive order that limits the federal government's acquisition or use of hacking tools that come from vendors who are selling them to users committing human rights abuses. This comes after the administration found that kind of spyware on devices belonging to 50 U.S. personnel serving overseas. Some of these spyware companies we've talked about in the past on the show, like the NSO group out of Israel, have claimed that you can't even use their software. on Americans or American phone numbers. But this revelation, lots of recent news reports, there was a recent story about a Facebook employee who was spied on in Greece.

All of that strongly suggests that Americans are just as susceptible to this kind of spyware industry as anybody else. So, Ben, hopefully this is the first step in a long-term effort to get a handle on this industry because of the U.S. government can't protect U.S. government employees abroad. They sure is how we can't protect ourselves. So, you know, the other story that's out there is that the CEO of TikTok had a pretty brutal hearing on Capitol Hill. It seems increasingly likely that they'll get banned. But maybe since you talked about that with Evan, we dig into the spyware stuff today and get to the TikTok piece, what and if that ban happens?

Because I saw, was it Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley was trying to get a vote on his bill as soon as next week. Yeah, I think on the spy where I'd just say that, like, this is a really good step that they're taking because they also like didn't need to do it. there's not like some massive political pressure on them. But they've had a good track record. They blacklisted the NSO group, right? So they kind of put it on a U.S. entities list. And now they're taking these steps to kind of prohibit the use of this kind of commercial spyware. They're doing it around this democracy summit, which means they're going to be trying to get other countries to take similar steps.

I think part of what is smart about this is, look, like the democracy story is pretty mixed around the world. We've talked about India. We've talked about Israel democracies that are moving the wrong direction on the show. but like you do want to be strengthening and fortifying the kind of nuts and bolts of democracy where it is right now. This is a moment to kind of protect our own democracies and to start kind of beating back these tools like spyware that have been used to encroach in democracies to bully activists, to bully journalists and potentially to obviously spy on people in the U.S. government

or people are prominent business. So that's a good step. I think the TikTok thing, I talked to Evan about this and what China might do response, we'll have plenty of time to talk about this because basically I think that the momentum towards a ban is gathering such steam, but yet how you actually implement that is going to be pretty complicated and tricky, both in the context of U.S. politics, but also in the context of like thinking through the precedent that you're setting, preparing for what their prisals will be. So I actually think this will take some time because it's not quite as simple

is flipping the switch that Josh Hawley would flip, even if there are some good reasons to phase out TikTok, as it were. Yeah, no, not at all. And we can dig into the pro and cons in a later episode. Last week, just to close the loop on an issue we discussed in Grattya last week, which was French President Emmanuel Macron's push to raise the retirement age in France from 62 to 64. We won't get into all the sort of details of what happened.

But he did it, jammed through this plan. And there have been huge and at times violent protest. and strikes ever since. And then last week, Macron was doing a TV interview about his plan defending it. And viewers noticed he was kind of gesturing a lot while wearing French cuffs and this big, fancy looking watch. And then in the middle of the interview,

he put his hands under the table for a second. And then when he brought them back up, the watch had gone. He was like a magician. Critics said he removed the watch because it looked really expensive and made him seem out of touch. There was one tweet of the clip that went around

that's claimed the watch cost $86,000. Now, that was totally wrong. It was probably closer to a $2,000 to $3,500 watch. But of course, you know, the wrong tweet went super viral. Regardless, McRond's staff said, no, that's not true. He removed the watch because it kept banging on the table and he didn't want to hear the sound, whatever. This is not the first time his critics have called him tone deaf

and said basically he's the president for the rich. they point to his awarding Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with the Legion of Honor the highest award in France last month as he's ran through this plan I saw Ben that King Charles is skipping a trip to France

probably a good idea given what's going on but I don't like this guy's politics make no sense to me anymore I just don't get it spoiler I am going to France next week on my

kids spring break and I'm curious whether the trash is going to be picked up where I am. But, because, like, that's part of what is going on here. Yeah. I just think that Macron, we've talked about who he's kind of this avatar of, like,

neoliberalism, you know? Maybe, like, he may be out of fucks. Like, maybe he just is embracing, like, that's who he is. He doesn't have to run again in an election. He doesn't belong to a political party, really. So it's not like he's trying to, like, you know, help his party make sure they come in behind him. He does seem like a guy who just doesn't give a shit.

But what's alarming about that is he still has like three years left, you know? He's got a long lame duck runway ahead of him. Maybe what he can do with that is give a lot of legion donors to like, you know, Bill Gates and various other, like, wealthy people. I don't know what he's doing. What's Elon up to? Maybe you can get him over there. Yeah.

Maybe you can get Gerard de Pardue back in France. Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, you should buy a yellow vest before your trip. Yeah, you blend in. hit the protest circuit. I also love, you gotta love that the French every few years

just like burn some shit down, you know? Because I, like, we're playing this trip and I was, like, reminded that I was in France during the Yellow Vest stuff and saw some crazy shit.

Like, I saw it, like, smashed windows in the Champs a Lise. That was only a few years ago, but like, it does seem like every, like, few years, the French kind of blow off some steam,

like they go to the barricades, they break some shit, you know. I admire them. They love to protest. Yeah. Yeah. There was a profile

of someone who'd been out there for like a full year. I saw that guy. Going hard. That guy's going hard. Like he quit his job to just protest full time. Hey, there you go. Okay, last story before we get to Ben's interview.

So I know that the U.S. Congress and our political debates can feel incredibly stupid and feckless at times because they are. But spare a moment for the people of Lebanon who have had to deal with decades of political instability. There was that gigantic explosion in Beirut in 2020 that killed over 200 people and caused 15 billion dollars in damage. The economy has collapsed. The currency has lost all its value. And their big political fight right now is over their prime minister deciding to unilaterally announce a delay of daylight savings time for no clear reason. Prime Minister Makati wanted to

postpone daylight savings time until April 20th instead of starting it on March 25th. There was this revolt. It was seen as a sectarian move to just do it on behalf of Muslims for Ramadan. Religious organizations refused. some media organizations refused to acknowledge the change. There's apparently a clip going around on the internet from the airport where a digital clock was flashing two different times at the same time. So he walked back this decision. They're not going to delay daylight savings time anymore, I don't think.

But my God, what a stupid waste of time for a country that desperately needs a functioning government. Yeah, and you see something like that at Lebanon. You're kind of like, I wonder who had a financial interest in moving daylight savings. time. Yeah, exactly. Who was like sliding like envelope full of cash to this guy being like, you know what, let's push back daylight savings time by month. It does show that the whole concept of daylight savings time needs to probably just go everywhere. Like that would be the simplest thing, but that's probably a special episode that we have to do. Love it's big on this. Don't, do not get him started. I've once made the mistake of raising this with him in the office and like,

I mean. An hour later, you're still there. I agreed with his point of view, too. That's the thing is I kept agreeing with him on it, you know, but to no avail. Look, just don't engage on that topic. Okay, we are going to take a quick break and then we come back. You'll hear Ben's interview with China expert Evan Medeiros about all things China. So stick around for that. I'm very pleased to welcome back to Potsay of the world. Evan Medeiros.

Evan is the Penner family chair in Asian Studies at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. In addition to being professor, he's the former senior director for the whole Asia Pacific region and the Obama administration, kind of our lead expert on China throughout the Obama years. And I should add, is the first gentleman of the United States Embassy in Chile, where his wife is an ambassador. I don't know if that's a thing, Ben, but I'll take it. Well, there's a second gentleman, right? So you'd be the first in that embassy. But good to see you, Evan. Great to see you, Ben. All right, so I wanted to have you on because there's a lot going on with China. And my stepping back and looking at this, Evan, is, you know, there was a narrative for a while

there, like China's on its back foot, you know, zero COVID is rough for them. There was kind of this assumption that they were embarrassed or uncomfortable with the war in Ukraine, you know, their balloon gets shot down. But if anybody had any doubt about how Xi Jinping was going to respond to these challenges, it feels like we're seeing a very assertive China and kind of a China going on offense now. So I want to start with the trip to Russia. She took recently a few days ago, three days, all the bells and whistles of a state visit, all these agreements about the economy. And I wanted to ask you, what do you think China sees actually, you know, we've always assumed or a vein of commentaries assume that they're uncomfortable with the war in Ukraine,

that they're uncomfortable with how Russia is dealing with it, they're uncomfortable with Western sanctions. But Xi seemed to be leaning in here. Like what opportunities from the Beijing perspective do you think Xi is seeing with respect to Ukraine? And how did that influence? his decision to kind of make this full embrace of Putin at a critical time in the war. So Beijing and Xi Jinping in particular has a pretty hard-nosed power-oriented view of international politics. And while Xi Jinping may not have encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine, I think he sees it as in his long-term interest to align with Putin. And it really, for Xi Jinping, it comes down to the belief developed over several years.

that China is now locked in a long-term geopolitical and ideological competition with the United States and now really with what Gideon Rockman of the FT calls the Global West, America, U.S. allies in Europe and U.S. allies in Asia, Japan, Korea, Australia, and others. And if you believe that you're locked in that kind of long-term rivalry with the United States and like-minded countries, then you need assets to bring to bear. You know, you need partners. And I think for Xi Jinping, while the roots in his relationship with Putin and Russia are deep, and we should talk about that, I think that he sees Russia, even in a diminished state, and it is in a diminished state, and will be more so over time, is an asset that Xi Jinping wants on his balance sheet. I also think

he doesn't believe that the costs reputationalally, materially, practically for China are nearly as great as, you know, many scholars and policymakers in the West think for the alignment with Russia. Yeah, and I'm going to dig into that for a moment here, because if I look out, and we've talked about this a little bit on the podcast, but with sanctions and Russia being kind of cut off from Europe, we've seen China buying more Russian energy and kind of becoming the buyer of last resort for Russia, so I'm presuming they're getting a pretty good deal on that energy. And helping them probably with sanctions workarounds. And if China can kind of wire Russia into its economy, right, if Russia becomes dependent on China for inputs, technological inputs to its

military industrial complex, for, you know, energy sales, is there a scenario in like five years where Russia, this, you know, nuclear superpower, is kind of this junior partner to China in a way they'd never been before? Like, is there a long-term influence place? that he's getting? I think Russia is there now, Ben. I think, you know, the war, the experience of the last year and all the deprivations Russia has suffered has accelerated the process that was probably inevitable anyway, even if there wasn't a Russian invasion of Ukraine, of Russia becoming a junior partner. And in many ways, I think it's been helpful for the China-Russia relationship, because in the past, it was trending toward an asymmetrical relationship. China was stronger. Russia was weaker.

but there was always this sort of veneer of symmetry, right? We're two major powers. I think Ukraine has removed that. I think Putin understands it's not a symmetrical relationship anymore, that Russia is in many ways a junior partner, but that's okay, which I think probably adds to the stability and the endurance of the China-Russia relationship, you know, over the long term. And I think Xi Jinping and Putin seem to be very, very happy with that.

And so when we look at Ukraine specifically, there do you think that China sees some advantage in the U.S. being kind of, I don't know, bogged down as a right word, but the U.S. is pouring weapons and arms in there, spending a lot of money. I was in Taiwan a few months ago, and you've worked a lot on Taiwan. You've been involved in Taiwan arms sales and began to hear that, you know, our own arms deliveries to Taiwan are being delayed because we're shipping so much stuff to Ukraine. Is there a circumstance in which it's in China's interest to kind of prolong this war? It is. Yeah. Yeah. And because I think that they think, you know, so competitively about international politics, I think they look at the war and they say, is it really that bad a thing for us? You know, while it's disruptive for the global economy and for global energy markets and inflation, etc.,

the Chinese get that and they don't want that. But on the other hand, they've just accelerated the process by which Russia needs China more than China needs Russia, right? China's going to get more energy faster and on better prices, right? And to your point, you know, one of the, I think one of the other Chinese conclusions is that, you know, the longer this war goes on, the more preoccupied strategically, the global West, the U.S. Europe and its allies in Asia will be with war in Europe. And materially, it just sort of draws down their stockpiles of stingers, javelins, ISR assets, all the kinds of things. that you would want to put more in the Indo-Pacific theater. So absolutely there's a bogged down diversionary quality to this that plays the Chinese advantage. And where do you think things stand in terms of this question of whether China would literally start shipping arms to Russia, not just kind of inputs for their military-industrial complex?

The administration obviously came out with that warning. Do you think we would even know if China was doing this? Do you think it's happening already? Do you think it's not going to happen? Yeah, I think it's pretty much happening already. I mean, it's important to distinguish between selling military equipment and then lethal military equipment. I think that, you know, it's pretty likely that they're already selling some military equipment or, let's call it, militarily relevant equipment, right? So if there are Chinese drone makers that are selling drones to the Russians and the Russians are just, you know, putting equipment on them that make them lethal, right?

Where do you assess that? The Chinese are very, very careful. They're very good at using proxies. They're very good at claiming, oh, the government didn't know. You had an entity to do it. But I think that, you know, I sort of operate on the assumption that one of Xi Jinping's top goals is ensuring that Putin does not lose, right? Yeah. Putin losing is bad for Russia politically and Putin politically, but it's also bad for China strategically because it now becomes isolated and becomes the focus of Western pressure. So I think that as Putin faces more challenges on the battlefield, the incentives go up for the Chinese to provide more military aid and lethal military aid. A question is, what is the

administration prepared to do about it? How good is the information on it? But I think that we have already, I think we have already probably crossed that threshold. Yeah. So, okay, so we can see this play here, like a dependent Russia on China. The West kind of bogged down, or at least, you know, prioritizing arming Ukraine versus arming Taiwan or other areas of focus on China, a Chinese peace plan that, you know. Statement of principles, Ben.

It wasn't a peace plan. Statement of principles, 12 of them. That are very advantageous to Russia because it lets them keep all the territory that they basically claimed in annexed. Just one more thing on the geopolitics of this, which is Taiwan, and I know you probably get asked this question all the time,

but there are two schools of thought, right, which is that China needs to wait because they need to advance their own capabilities, try to squeeze Taiwan more, see if they can achieve their objectives politically, or that, you know what, maybe while everybody's focused on Ukraine and Taiwan has not yet been armed up with all these capabilities that they would need to repel a Chinese invasion, that going sooner rather than later might actually be to China's advantage. I mean, I know we don't have a crystal ball here, but what should people be looking for in terms of Chinese signaling and decision making related to Taiwan in the context of Ukraine? So this is sort of feels like the 64,000 Remindbee question.

Everybody wants to know, what are the lessons Beijing's learning from Ukraine? Simple answer and the honest answer is I don't know and I don't know anybody that does know. I think the Chinese are still studying it. You know, knowing the Leninist political system like I do, it's going to take them a long time to study it. You know, so I think we're sort of far away from any kind of definitive Chinese conclusions. And my guess is the conclusions they'll come to will be a mixback, right? In other words, there's some lessons they will draw that will say, hey, you know, the Russian invasion of Ukraine helped us because maybe it gave us a roadmap to what the Western response is likely to be,

military response, economic response, technological, et cetera, right? So let's us, the Chinese, begin planning for that response, reducing our external vulnerabilities, reducing our reliance on certain technologies in order to minimize the disruptive effect of those kind of sanctions if they come out. Right. So they could draw those lessons. Other lessons that will be important is the role of nuclear weapons and Russian nuclear threats, right? That will be an important one. I don't know what the Chinese are going to conclude. You know, it is notable that, you know, the U.S. and NATO has have not deployed troops, right? They've obviously provided extensive assistance to the Ukrainians. And the question is, what conclusions to the Chinese draw from that, you know, and do they believe that

do they think that maybe the U.S. will be highly reluctant to deploy troops over Taiwan? I disagree. In the case of Europe, the U.S. and NATO, you know, and our allies didn't want us to deploy troops because they didn't want to get in direct conflict with Russia. Whereas I think in Asia, if China launched in amphibious assault against Taiwan. I think our allies would very much want us to get involved in a lot of the operational planning now is very focused on, you know, sort of joint operations with allies to push China back. But we don't really know the lessons they're going to learn yet. What I would say is I don't think anything is inevitable in international politics. I think agency matters a lot. I think Xi Jinping has basically told the PLA, be ready by 2020.

But I largely see that as a statement about the fact that 2027 is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the PLA, right? So Leninist systems use anniversaries, be ready by 2027. So the way I think about it is Xi Jinping is purchasing the option to possibly conduct a full invasion in 2027. But he has not yet exercised that option. He hasn't yet made the momentous political decision. may be the momentous political decision to date in the history of the peoples of China since, you know, it's founding in 49. So I don't think the Chinese or Xi Jinping are going to be reckless.

And it's hard to imagine they have ignored the costs that Russia has endured because of its invasion of Ukraine. And, you know, the thing about invading Taiwan, it's very hard to imagine a quick and effective scenario, right? I mean, the fact that it's an island as opposed to just rolling over a bunch of land borders changes the calculus, complicates the calculus significantly, right? I mean, Xi Jinping would be launching the largest and most complex amphibious invasion since Normandy, and it's probably more, it's probably larger and more complex than Normandy.

So, and then the other piece of... Without a lot of recent combat experience for the PLA. Right, of course. the other piece is that they the Chinese the PLA hasn't gone to war since 1979 right and in 79 it was a ground war it was an invasion of Vietnam and they got their butts kicked right so I mean the reality is is China has never fought this kind of war you know high intensity high tech type of conflict but it's not really clear the United States or anyone else has really fought that kind of war where you have you know cyber war space war and then very very

very, very sophisticated complex joint operations in a highly contested environment with a very capable adversary. Yeah. Well, this will be something we're watching for years. So, and just, you know, shifting gears to the technological and economic competition. Obviously, the tension this week has been on TikTok on Capitol Hill. Yeah, there was a brutal hearing yesterday, wasn't it? It was so not easy to watch. I'm glad I wasn't him? I mean, yeah, I guess like there was something a little uncomfortable where it felt like easier for these guys to pile on this guy than say Mark Zuckerberg, right? But, you know, I just wanted to play out this scenario, right? If at some point TikTok is banned and we don't know that's going to happen, but for either data privacy reasons or for propaganda concerns, how do you think China is thinking about this TikTok debate in the U.S.? And what do you think their response would be?

Like what does China do if TikTok is somehow banned in the United States? So I think Chinese policymakers in Beijing are not remotely surprised by this. It confirms the conclusions they've already made, which Xi Jinping articulated publicly on March 6, where he talked about the United States engaging in containing, surrounding, blocking, and suppressing China. Xi Jinping said that and attributed that to the United States by name, which was a really striking statement on his part. He doesn't usually call out the U.S. by name and attach those kind of aggressive verbs to it. So I think it just confirms their worst fears about overall U.S. strategy, right? As you know, we've gone after Huawei, ZTE, you know, other Chinese tech companies.

I think immediately if, you know, we banned TikTok, I think the Chinese government would use, a bunch of new export control authorities that they have to ban bite dance from breaking TikTok off. So I think the Chinese government's response would be, okay, you ban TikTok. We're not going to give you the pleasure of hiving off TikTok. So I think bite dance is going to face a real, you know, serious business challenge. I think that's the immediate thing. But the long-term strategy would just be to double down, triple down on their effort to build

a lot more redundancy into their tech supply chain because basically they recognize that, you know, they're vulnerable in a variety of different sectors. And so self-reliance is the name of the game. And Xi Jinping talks about that at every opportunity. So I think that while I'm not a fan of the term economic decoupling between the United States and China, I think if there's any decoupling, it's clearly in the tech sectors. And you already see that in semiconductors and AI. You know, we may see it increasingly in biotech, genetics. Let's see what happens with new energy vehicles and batteries.

But, you know, we're definitely there getting there very rapidly. Yeah. And I guess, you know, what's interesting there is that there's so much economic activity, you look like an apple, right? They're pretty exposed, given, I mean, how much, like all of our devices. But they're reducing their exposure, right? I mean, a lot of what I see is in companies that I talk to is basically they're staying in China to manufacture in China, but only for the China market. The manufacturing in China for external markets, including the U.S., they're moving offshore.

So that's really where. Vietnam, Mexico, India, if they can sort of get that to work, India is complicated. But, I mean, there is massive diversification going on in a variety of tech industries, especially consumer electronics. because of the fears of disruption and regulation, political risk, reputational risk, et cetera. Okay, so stepping back from all this as we wind down here, like I, you know, you and I follow this for years, you longer than me. I've looked to you a lot for your expertise on this. I think you and I probably fall in that category of people that, you know, understood the need for like a bit of a firmer line on some of these issues, whether they're geopolitical or

ideological or economic in the Sijian. era. That said, there's something a little uncomfortable right now that's making me, I'll just tell you my anxiety, seven, which is that, you know, the momentum is just, this train is going down the tracks. And we've got, you know, we had the shoot down in the balloon and the canceling of Tony Blinken's visit to China. We had this new committee set up in Congress. It's clearly going to spend two years just like whacking away at the Chinese. We're debating, you know, canceling TikTok in this country. We're, you know, threatening, you know, they're now involved in the Ukraine. Ukraine war, there are people in D.C. you don't like that they broker this Saudi Iran thing.

It feels like there's a lot of escalation and we're not really talking to these guys, you know, like there's not that dialogue, those trips, Biden-G. You're right. There's not. How worried you about this? And how do you think you balance that firm line with China with the need to set up dialogue channels? I mean, Ben, that is to me the central question, right? Because there's a lot of Chinese behavior that I find very, very worrisome, right? It was symbolically captured in Xi's visit to Putin.

I mean, in many ways, there's an alternative grouping of countries, China, Russia, right, Iran, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, you know, South Africa is looking, you know, looking worrisome. Brazil, right. Brazil's going to be in this picture. Yeah, that's right. Brazil's about to visit. So there's a group of countries that clearly share a sort of. share a vision of international politics that includes a much more constrained role for the U.S. and U.S. power, right? They're uncomfortable with many elements of the liberal international order, including the liberal trade and investment order that many of them have benefited from, right? And they're pretty agnostic about authoritarian political systems, right? So we should all be concerned, you know, to make an obvious point, we have an authoritarian government in Europe and one in Asia, right? When's the last time we saw that configuration, right? So there are elements of the 1930s here that we should

not dismiss. So there are real reasons to be concerned about trends in Chinese behavior and how that is shaping broader geopolitical trends, right? It's accelerating polarization. But in the other hand, you know, the U.S.-China relationship is an important one, and there's always a risk of an accident or miscalculation, given the fact that we have two militaries in close proximity. I think one of the challenges has been that the Chinese are not interested in talking to us. I mean, you like me have several former colleagues in the Biden administration, and I think that they've tried to open up channels of communication. And one of the thing about Leninist political systems is that when they decide you're in the

penalty box, you're just in the penalty box, and they're not interested in talking to you. And I think that the Chinese are pissed at all. our reaction to the balloon. They're pissed at us calling out their military support for Russia. You know, they're pissed about various Taiwan issues. President Tsai of Taiwan is going to, you know, do a dual transit in the U.S. next week. And so they've decided they're just not interested in talking to us. And so we have to decide, okay, do we chase after them in the hopes that we can pursue, I don't know, some form of stability or do you just sort of waded out? And my concern is, you know, China is new to the game of long-term geopolitical rivalry. Obviously, we have,

we had lots of decades of experience. And my big concern is do we need a Cuban missile crisis-like event to sort of shock us to the importance of regularized high-level channels of dialogue, investment in crisis management mechanisms, investment in confidence-building measures, because the strategic competition is simply too important but also too volatile not to be managed. And, you know, and I'm concerned the Chinese have not learned that lesson yet. So sure, yes, we should be talking. The administration's trying. The Chinese aren't interested.

Now, look, maybe in a couple months they'll decide, okay, we're ready to let you out of the penalty box and let's get talking again and maybe that happens. But that's really not a solution to, you know, generating long-term stability in the U.S.-China relationship. It's just a – it's basically a formula for volatility. And I don't know what's going to change Chinese perceptions about how they need to work with us to sort of manage this strategic competition because otherwise, you know, it could get very, very dangerous very quickly, especially if – you know, because we've got some – big, complicated issues of disagreement, like the Taiwan question. Yeah, no, and then throwing that mix, you know, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, you know. Right, we haven't even talked about a possible shift in government after the election and adoption of a much more, I mean, to shift from a competitive position to a confrontational position. The risks of conflict go way up.

Well, rough waters, I thought it's a good time to check in with you, Evan, and there's no. Nobody better for people to follow on this stuff so people should follow your work and your commentary. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, Ben. Thanks again to Evan for doing the show. Ben, I have some special copy I have to read, which is to ask our listeners to please don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. You'll see clips from this show every week. And more importantly, frankly, subscribe to the Pod Save the World YouTube page for access to full episodes and other exclusive content.

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You mostly are your footballs. Yeah, mostly are the good stuff. Well, that's what we got this week. Travel safe and see you soon. See you. Pod Save the World is a Cricket Media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley News.

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