Pod Save the World - Netanyahu Rejects a Two-State Solution (again)

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

Tommy and Ben discuss the latest news out of Gaza, including a potential ceasefire deal that would include a two month stop in fighting in exchange for hostages, a look back at Bibi’s rejection of a two-state solution throughout his political career, and the news that the Biden administration is preparing for a sustained military campaign in Yemen. They also talk about the UAE funneling weapons to Sudan, mass protests in Germany against the far-right ADF party, British conservative’s continuing attempts to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, Elon Musk’s visit to Auschwitz, and an odd auction item belonging to Winston Churchill. Then Ben speaks with Ricardo Zuniga, the former US Special Envoy to the Northern Triangle and Senior Advisor at the US Institute of Peace about the spiraling gang violence in Ecuador. 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 Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Happy New Hampshire primary day. Yes. It's another nail biter. Are you guys potting? We're potting tonight after results come in. We probably won't have to stay up too late.

Yeah, yeah, probably. You know, the latest poll, I think, had Trump at 60%. So that's pretty definitive victory. It's pretty clear. I don't know that there will be a yes we can speech. Yeah, I don't know if Nikki Haley can pull one of those out, turned it into a turn a, turn a, Lost into a win. Probably not.

Kind of a bummer. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Donald Trump's going to be the nominee, and we're all going to have to deal with that. Yep. And we also have, what, like a nine, ten-month general election? Can't wait. Can't wait. Well, we still. Through a minute. We got a great show for you guys today.

We are going to cover all the latest news from Gaza, the growing policy disagreements between the U.S. and Israel on what comes next. The ongoing U.S. airstrikes in Yemen, how the UAE is fueling the Civil War in Sudan. big protests in Germany, the fight over immigration in the UK. Elon Musk took a trip to Poland. And then we're going to talk about some hot items being auctioned off that you're going to want to know about Ben. Let's go. That's a teaser for you. Then you did our interview this week.

What do we got? Yeah. So we talked about the situation in Ecuador last week. Wild situation, obviously, scary situation with, you know, gangs and drug cartels taking over TV stations and assassinating people. So Ricardo Zuniga is our guest. Ricardo was the lead staff for on Latin America in the Obama White House. He was my negotiating partner in Cuba. He was recently both an envoy to the Northern Triangle, Central American countries,

and kind of principal deputy assistant secretary of state for the PDAS. The PDAS. But recently we're tired, so liberated to speak his mind and come on this podcast and break down for us what is going on in Ecuador. He does a great job. People should really check this out because he really unpacks exactly what's happening. I learned a lot, a lot of this points to like the massive power that has continued to grow for the Mexican cartels. And then we also kind of put this in the context of what's happening more broadly in Latin American politics, which, you know, like everywhere else, is not that great. But also talked about what are potential solutions, how do we deal with the violence, how do we deal with the cartels?

So people should check it up. Newly made former ex-officials are some of the best interviews because they have all the access to the the same information still. Yes. I'm floating around their heads, but now they can say whatever they want. Actually, you know what? Like, you nailed it because, like, he, like, this first answer, I was like, what's going on Ecuador?

And it's like, well, let me tell you, Ben, what's going on Ecuador? And it's like, boom, boom, boom. And, yeah, I'd also, the only thing I'd say, Tommy, it's like, you know, we spend so much time and we'll do it today, I'm sure talking about things like Gaza, the Middle East or Ukraine. In a normal world, which we haven't lived in for a while, like, what is going on with these cartels? And in Mexico and in Ecuador would be like massive stories.

So it's worth putting our on it from time to time. The one interesting thing about the Republican primary is how focused they are on immigration, because of the politics, but also on the cartels in fentanyl. And their solutions are insane, which are basically Ronda Sant is saying, let's just shoot at people indiscriminately. But they're not wrong about the problem and the way they're disrupting governments. Oh, yeah. No, to peel back the curtain here at Kirkhammedia a little bit, I like stumbled out of this interview into Fabro's office or your office too, but you weren't there, and was like, Yeah, this point, right? Like, it's not right to bomb Mexico, but, like, it's not wrong to be like, wait, look at this.

This is a mess down here. Yeah, scary. Scary, scary stuff. Well, I'm very excited to hear that. And he also regards the good guy. Yeah, terrific guy. So let's go to Gaza, Ben, because there's been a lot of news since we last spoke. So according to Axios, Israel has proposed a ceasefire deal that could include a two-month pause

in fighting in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza. The hostage release would happen in phases. It would be women, men over 60 years old, and people with critical medical needs first, then female soldiers, then men under 60 years old, and then Israeli male soldiers and the bodies of hostages who have died. So 130 hostages are still being held in Gaza, but Israeli officials believe that several dozen died either on October 7th or in the days since. In exchange, Israel would, obviously, there would be this two-month ceasefire, but they would also agree to release. Palestinian prisoners who and how many would be determined via negotiations, but you have to imagine a lot of them. The proposal also includes some language about moving IDF troops out of major population centers and allowing civilians back into northern Gaza. I have seen some reports that Hamas

may have rejected this deal already and instead is asking for something much more maximalist like Israel ending the military offensive altogether, getting all troops out of Gaza. But hopefully that's a negotiating position and they're going to work through it through the Qataris and the Egyptian mediators. But these reports come after a whole bunch of stories about how the IDF military campaign is not going that well. The Wall Street Journal said that U.S. intelligence believes the IDF has only killed between 20 to 30 percent of Hamas's fighters and that Hamas is enough weapons to keep going for months. The Hamas tunnel infrastructure is reportedly way bigger than Israel anticipated. They're saying like 300, 400 miles worth of tunnels. And then the New York Times reported that senior Israeli military officials increasingly think

that the only way they're going to get the remaining hostages freed is through negotiations and that the Netanyahu goal saying, we're going to free all the hostages and eradicate Hamas, is impossible. Seems like that was pretty clear from the beginning, but it's interesting that is leaking out. So Netanyahu is under a ton of pressure from the families of the hostages to prioritize these talks. on Monday, some of these hostages families broke into a Knesset Finance Committee hearing to protest. So, Ben, let's pause there. I mean, I'm glad to hear that these two sides are negotiating on a ceasefire.

How hopeful are you feeling about this getting done and then just generally anything else happening within Gaza that you've seen? Well, look, first of all, I think this may be the Israeli government responding to the pressure they're under. They kind of put this out there publicly. And so, you know, I think I don't know how serious, like, I hope it's good that there's at least, you know, a diplomatic proposal on the table potentially. But I'm not sure, you know, whether that's like a real thing or whether they just kind of felt the need to do something and put something out there because they're under a lot of heat from these families. So, you know, welcome the idea that there might be some negotiations and recognition that that's the only way to get the high. hostages out. But, you know, let's see what happens because sometimes, you know, they'll put stuff out there just to kind of make it seem like, well, actually, we are open to this and we'll see.

And Hamas, I mean, who knows what their position is. I mean, it may be that they, you know, this conflict has grinded on for so long that they kind of have moved on. I hope not. I hope there's a space for negotiation there. Stepping back, though, I do think it's worth expressing some frustration here was very clear, and I think we said on this podcast at the beginning of this war, like, you know, three months in to start to see headlines like, you know, the IDF is realizing that you can't achieve the objective of getting the hostages out militarily. It's an obvious point. I mean, the hostages got out only when there was a humanitarian pause and then a negotiation to get them out. And so I think what is clear from the laydown you did is,

both military objectives are unachievable. And that's not like because the Israeli, if it was the U.S. military, those military objectives would be unachievable. Like you cannot... You learn that the hard way. Yeah, you cannot like militarily defeat an organization like Hamas

that has leaders out of the country, that has, you know, all, you know, has basically been in for the last decade plus, like able to embed itself and in Gaza, build this tunnel network. Like... As a benefactor in Iran. Yeah, and the diplomacy was going to have to be a part of a solution.

Because look, not only can they not do it militarily and you hear the reporting is true, they've only taken out 20 to 30 percent of the military wing of Fas, but like the lot, so even if it was a higher number than that, well, what would happen the day after this military operation ended? You know, you obviously have a population in Gaza that has, you know, has been radical, and it's not to impugn that population, but it's just like, is that a sustained, solution, like just leaving behind two million displaced people. One percent of the population was killed.

Yeah. And so that's what I'd say, you know, at least maybe there's a reckoning now in the Israeli government as there, I think, probably already has been in the U.S. government, that this idea that a military operation is going to, you know, rescue hostages and defeat Hamas, you're setting militarily unachievable goals. And it's the same thing we were saying about the Houthis last week, right? You cannot military defeat, like, a people. Like, and that leads to my second point because it does feel like they're trying to kind of like militarily defeat not just Hamas. They're destroying Gaza. And what you see, things that have jumped out to me last week, right, like blowing up universities. Like, what is that about, you know? And even if they could say, like, well, there are some Hamas guys at that university. Like, they're controlled detonating and demolishing, like, the educational infrastructure in Gaza. Like, what is the point of that, you know? They're proposing, what, creating, like, artificial islands.

I mean, literally, like, the foreign minister of Israel presented this to the EU, like, creating some artificial island off the coast of Gaza for, like, a vague purpose. I miss that. Screening stuff coming in, but maybe moving people there. Then they're creating these buffer zones, you know, in the north, kind of just destroying, demolishing a lot of buildings to just kind of create some buffer space. But, like, this is, like, really chilling to watch because absent, like, a kind of, clear military strategy to defeat the military wing of Fmas, the strategy seems to be just kind of

leveling Gaza and then not really having any plan for what you do after you level Gaza. And that is, that is the worst case scenario, like that continues to unfold day after day, obviously, most acutely in terms of the human suffering in Gaza, but also just strategically, what is the objective of all this escalation? Like, it has to end somewhere, you know, and they don't seem to have any plan for where they sense. The only people in Israel, in the Israeli government at least, who've articulated clearly what their objectives are, are the far right. That's true.

Their objective is to displace everybody out of Gaza and to take the land. What does it mean to defeat Hamas? How are they going to govern this space? Who's going to govern this space for how long? None of that is clear at all. And it feels like they're making this up as they go along while killing enormous amounts of people and fueling all this regional escalation and kind of changing the world's view of Israel,

this is not worth it. Yeah, and there's also been reports of continued attacks on hospitals and medical infrastructure. I mean, the latest casualty estimates are over 25,000 Palestinians dead, 63,000 wounded, and 219 IDF soldiers have been killed in combat since the offensive started in October,

including 21 soldiers in an incident on Monday. I think it was a controlled detonation was they were trying to execute it and someone fired an RPG, which detonated earlier with all these soldiers in this building and a collapse on them. It's horrible thing. But you're right, though. Netanyahu was saying things like, we will not settle for anything short of an absolute victory. What does that mean, though? What is victory? This is like when George Bush used to say this. Yeah. What is the absolute victory? It's just rhetoric. There was this mini deal broker by France and Qatar to deliver medicine to hostages in some humanitarian aid for Gazans.

Unclear how effective that was if the medicine got to these people. But I don't know. I saw that And it gave me a little bit of hope that it meant there were more negotiations going on, but we'll see. And just like on the victory point, you cannot, if you're fighting a nation state, right, like Israel in its wars that it did win victories, right? In 1967, you know, 1973, like if you're fighting like a nation state that you defeat on the battlefield and then they surrender, nobody's going to surrender. You know, like Hamas is not going to come out and be like, okay, you defeated us. No, we surrender. And you're not going to eradicate every single member of Hamas. You're in the Palestinian people, they're not going to surrender.

They don't want to leave Gaza. So this talk, like it's always dangerous to me when politicians articulate these objectives that are meant to kind of mobilize the public behind a war, but they don't lead to anything that you can actually define. You know, like, what does it mean to militarily defeat Hamas? At what point will they say that that's been accomplished? Because it's not going to happen, you know, in the sense that nobody's going to give them, the Hamas is not going to say, okay, you won the war, you know.

So, again, this is the problem with how they've done this whole thing, which is lashing out, understandably being completely outraged at the horror of October 7th, but then kind of not being clear and like targeted in their objectives. And now we're at a point where nobody kind of sees where this thing is going. And it's the best thing is to just have a ceasefire. And, you know, they may be putting this two-month thing on the table because they have to figure it out themselves. Yeah. Well, what's your point?

I mean, Hamas arose as a resistance movement to the occupation. And you cannot defeat an idea. It will always exist as long as there is an occupation in the West Bank. And if you destroy all these schools in Gaza, like, What are those kids? And there's all this reports today about the mistreatment of people arrested and interrogated and detainees. I mean, it's like a lot of radicalizations happening. It's also becoming very clear, though, the U.S. and Israel just completely disagree on what to do after the fighting stops.

Like to your point earlier, last week, Netanyahu categorically rejected a two-state solution and the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. Bibi said Israel must, quote, have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River. That collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can we do? He continued, this truth I tell to our American friends and I put the brakes on the attempt to coerce us to a reality that would endanger the state of Israel. So not only there is Netanyahu rejecting the two-state solution. He's again bragging that he's the only one preventing the Americans from forcing a Palestinian state on Israel. But, I mean, again, this isn't just a problem for BB with the U.S. Israel wants Arab countries to pay for reconstruction efforts in Gaza. They also want normalization agreements with Saudi Arabia. Both of those things are contingent on the creation of a Palestinian state.

We'll get to this, but none of this should be a surprise. It's always been clear that Netanyahu opposed a Tuesday solution. We'll go through some of those quotes in a second. But Ben, I mean, it does seem like Netanyahu's comments pissed off a lot of people in Washington. You saw five Democrats sign on to a bill that would condition it to Israel, do the bare minimum, conditioned it on compliance with international law, but it moves some people into a better place in the Democratic Party. But confusingly, President Biden seems to be the one still convinced that there could be a two-state solution. He said there are a number of types of two-state solutions.

There's a number of countries that are members of the UN that don't have their own militaries. So we're talking about like a state light. What did you make of that quote from Biden there? But like what he's getting at in terms of how there might be hope still for a two-state solution. Look, this is why the Hugg Bibi strategy thing never made any sense, because this guy has no interest in a two-state solution. That's like his purpose. That's his like platform he ran on. We've talked about that. And, you know, in terms of what Biden may have been referencing, there have been proposals in the past, including, you know, in the Obama years when we're in these negotiations for like a demilitarized Palestinian state. A Palestinian state that not only doesn't have military, but for some period of time, maybe the Israeli, you know, military saw as like a security responsibility in the West Bank, which, by the way, is the hard pill for the Palestinians to swallow. Yeah.

But it's still a Palestinian state, and B.B. still opposes that. And what bothers me about this increasingly is, we'll get into why nobody should be surprised about this in a second. But what bothers me about this is this is a major issue now for American credibility around the world, you know, because when the U.S. government is going out and saying, well, you know, this has got to end in a two-state solution, and there's going to be a. Palestinian state. And then the Israeli prime minister who we're, you know, giving an open spigot of military support and diplomatic support to is like, no, no, they'll never be a Palestinian state.

Our credibility takes a huge blow because people are like, we're not, we don't believe you. Like we, we have Tony Blinken running to every capital in the Arab world trying to negotiate normalization agreements, trying to get them to pride support for the, for Gazans. And they're all looking at him like he's crazy. Yeah. He's like, yes, there will be a two state solution. They're like, of course there won't be. And then, yeah, I oppose it. And. And, and. And, And they'll all say, and the Europeans too, like, well, okay, well, go talk to, you know, the Israelis who you're giving all this assistance to if you want there to be two-state solution. You don't have to convince us, you know.

Like, everybody's for a two-state solution in Europe and most of the Arab world. And even countries that haven't recognized Israel, like Saudi Arabia, clearly are willing to do so if there's a two-state solution. This is not just about, like, obviously what the Palestinian people deserve in terms of their own state. And also, frankly, what I think is going to be better for Israel in the long run. Like, better to have a Palestinian state as a part of a way to secure Israel than this kind of open-ended conflict with your neighbors. But it also implicates American credibility.

We look ridiculous when we use these warmed over talking points about a two-state solution while the person we're dealing with in Israel is like, no, that's never going to happen. And you can't even, he's, you know, mocking us. And he doesn't care if, like, a few Democratic senators sign on. He'd be more than willing to kind of wait out Joe Biden. Donald Trump, he's bet on Trump because Trump doesn't want there to be a Palestinian state either. Do you think Donald Trump's going to work for a Palestinian state? No. And so, Bibi's play is clear.

It's like, continue this war because that's the only way he can stay in power and stay at a prison so that the guy Donald Trump who's just like him. Donald Trump, like Bibi, needs to be in power or to not be in prison. That's who he wants to win. So why would we help this guy? A different Israeli government, which is what's going to happen on the back end of this war, is better for everything, including the prospect of resolving this issue. Yeah, and so we wanted to show that we're just not people with a vendetta against Netanyahu, so we look back at some little quotes. In 1978, Netanyahu was asked if Palestinians had the right to a state. He said, no, I don't think they do.

It is unjust to demand the creation of a 22nd Arab state in the second Palestinian state at the expense of the only Jewish state. that's a pretty clear example. Over time, he got savier politically and was less direct. But again, in 2000, he laid out his vision for the region in his book. I talked about all of Israel security requirements in the West Bank and said, that is why when I'm asked whether I will support a Palestinian state, I answer in the negative. In 2009, he reversed his position and said he would support a Palestinian state, but then reversed it again by essentially saying over and over again that Palestinians can't be in charge of security.

there was that speech he delivered at the UN a couple years back where he held up a map that showed all of the West Bank and Gaza as part of Israel. So, Ben, I mean, I think what's frustrating about this is, you know, yes, Netanyahu's most recent rejection of a two-state solution got a lot of news and, you know, was seen by a lot of people in Washington, but this is who he's always been. And I don't know why people, I mean, I guess it was just convenient for everyone to pretend otherwise. Look, the only time that he ever indicated any openness to a Palestinian state was in 2009 when Barack Obama had been elected and was at the height of his, you know, global powers and under a lot of pressure from the United States, I was there. Like, he didn't want to say that.

No, he was pushed really hard. He was pushed really hard by the United States. And then he spent the next, you know, however many years in two rounds of negotiations, preventing and obstructing any movement towards the Palestinian state. while expanding Israeli settlements deep into the West Bank in ways that we're going to make a Palestinian state impossible. And then when he was facing a re-election threat in 2016, he said publicly in Israel, and like sometimes, you know, he doesn't say these things in English, that you should vote for him because he's the guy who's going to not ever allow there to be a Palestinian state so long as he's prime minister. Like that's what he ran for in 2016.

He was on a platform saying, vote for me because I'm the guy that will never allow that to be a Palestinian state. Like now he's got an even more right-wing government. And yeah, he's holding up maps at the UN just, you know, weeks before October 7th that don't have the West Bank of Gaza. They have Judean Samara. That's the terminology for greater Israel. And so this idea in Washington, the people are always like shocked, shocked to find out who Bibi Nanyahu is. Like, we've been living with this guy. And you make this point out of time, Tommy.

It's because nobody ever pushes him. You know, like the American media like treats him with kid gloves. Oh, yeah. He goes around Israeli media. by going to the U.S. Yeah, but whenever he opens his mouth in an election campaign in Israel or, you know, to his coalition,

it's always like, I'm the guy that's going to stop a Palestinian state. That's why you want me in charge. I'm the guy that can be the frontman for this right-wing coalition because I know how to talk to the Americans. This is who he is and what he's done, his entire political career. This is a guy who rode a backlash to the Oslo Accords into his first round as prime minister, right?

This is a guy who is inciting opposition and violence arguably and you know can go back and check the you know people have had different interpretations but at a minimum inciting opposition to Oslo right around the time that Yitzhak Rabin got assassinated I mean so this is who he is

and you're not going to get a Palestinian state as long as he's prime minister that's like what he keeps telling us that's why if I were in the White House I would focus my attention on pushing them to get a ceasefire get the hostages back and then figure out the rest with a new government yeah exactly because this guy's not going to do it for you the other sort of major flare-up

is over in Yemen. And on Monday, the U.S. and the U.K. once again conducted air strikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. This time, the targets were missile launchers, air defense systems, radars, weapons storage areas. It was a pretty sizable strike. This is the eighth round of air strikes since January 11th. President Biden was asked if the airstrikes were working to deter the Houthis. Here's his response. Are the air strikes in Yemen working? Well, when you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue yes. So I was saying, are they working?

No, are they going to continue? Kind of like, inadvertently, the perfect articulation of a lot of American farm policy right there. Is it working? No, but we'll keep doing it. Yeah, not just. I can apply that to a lot of different things. Vietnam. Yeah, Cuba.

Yeah. Yeah. The Washington Post reported the U.S. is actually planning for a sustained military campaign against the Houthis. This is a quote from that story. Officials say they don't expect that the operation will stretch on for years like previous U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria. At the same time, they acknowledge they can identify no end date or provide an estimate for when the Yemeni's military capability will be adequately diminished. So nerve-wracking there. Ben, here's a clip from Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh, who was asked if the U.S. is at war with Yemen.

Hey, Sabrina, is it now fair to say that the U.S. is at war in Yemen? No, we don't seek war. We don't think that we are at war. We don't want to see a regional war. Just to follow up on Idris' question, you said that we are not at war with the Houthis, but if, you know, this tit for tat bombing, we bomb them five times now. So if this isn't war, can you just explain that's a little bit more to us? If this isn't war, what is war? Sure, Laura. Sure. Great question. I just wasn't expecting it phrased exactly that way. Look, we are, we do not seek war. We are we do not, we are not at war. with the Houthis. In terms of a definition, I think that would be more of a clear declaration from the United States. But again, what we are doing and the actions that we are taking are

defensive in nature. What you hear there is the challenge of being a spokesperson. Can we just pour one out here? Because it's very easy we could try to poke fun and her, but like we've been there where you have this approved guidance, you know, and you've been told you cannot say it's a war. The lawyers won't allow you to say that. You know, for a good reason, which is Congress has an authorized to do. Yeah, and by the way, which we'll, yeah, we should talk about it,

but like the people that write the guidance never have to give the fucking grief. Yeah, they don't care. Just some lawyers in the back room. I took a lot of shit for, you know, I remember, well, anyway, like one time I was told the same thing about Libya, you know, you can't say this, you can't say this, you know.

And sure enough, like, I had into getting, like, mock on the daily show. And I was like, well, why don't you make fun of the people that handed me this? Yeah, or the policy itself, which is kind of the point here. So, U.S. troops are also, you know, getting attacked by, Iranian-linked Shia groups in Iraq and Syria, as we've talked about, those attacks were ongoing.

The U.S. Navy has been working to try to intercept weapon shipments from Iran to the Houthis in Yemen. Tragically, two U.S. Navy seals were lost at sea during one of those interdiction operations and are now presumed dead. So, Ben, we talked earlier about the hope that there might be some de-escalation in Gaza with this ceasefire agreement getting discussed. But the U.S. Houthi escalation is getting worse every week, it seems. Yeah, and again, I mean, it's a smaller version of the same point I made about the Israeli military operation. What is the objective here? What is the endgame here? Because you're not going to militarily defeat the hoodies.

They're not stopping their attacks on shipping. So how do you articulate what the goal is here? And the couple pieces I'd focus on are, number one, again, like, what is the legal basis for this? I mean, again, you could mount a collective defense or a self-defense because they've shot at, U.S. troops in the Red Sea, but Congress hasn't authorized anything, you know, and this is kind of this open-ended military campaign, like Congress has to get involved here. They have to get involved. If I was in Congress, you know, there's such a thing as the War Powers Act here. And there has to be a process. If they want to have an open-ended military commanding against Houthis, there has to be

a role for Congress. That's the first point. Well, you, because you have what? Is it 60 days? 60 days. To end the hostilities once it starts under war powers? Yes. And then you, need congressional approval after that. Which is why it makes some of these, you know, the background quote I read from the post story so surprising because they're like, oh, it won't take years, but we can't tell you how long. I mean, I would imagine you'd want to constrain the duration, at least in your public statements. Yeah, yeah. Well, and that leads me to my second point here, which is like how to add to what we've already

said about this. Like, where is this all going? You know, like I think what part of what is so unsettling here, and this, I think that you, But, you know, we're being a little hard on the Biden administration, you know, the last couple weeks. But, you know, in this case, look, they didn't start all these things. Like, you know, you know what it's like to be in the White House and shit comes to you. And you already have your plate full. And then suddenly, like, October 7th happens.

And then you got Bibi Nanyahu. And then you've got the Houthi shooting. But right now, we're at a position where if you're looking at this thing from the outside, you see these horrific military operation in Gaza. You see all this regional escalation. and from Iraq to Syria. And then you see this kind of new war military campaign or whatever we want to call it against the Houthis. And it feels all very reactive, you know.

What is the vision here? Like where does this go? Like where is all this escalation channel? Like what is the strategy to deal with this multifaceted war that's happening in the Middle East? And I just feel like people are unsettled right now because we're, you know, you never want to be in a position where you're, you're so reactive. And I've been there, you know, and I've been part of administrations that were too reactive.

So it's not new. But like they're in, they're in one of these moments where they're reacting and each of the individual decisions they make. Like, they might make sense to them that they need to take these shots against the Houthis. But when you stack this all up and you're kind of like, are you responding to others or are you kind of implementing like a vision of what President Biden wants to do in this region? Because right now, like the Houthis, you're responding to them. They want you in this war. Like, they want to be at the vanguard of the resistance to the United States and you're giving them that.

So I just think there has to be like a step back and think this through. Never mind the politics in this country. I just, you know, there's strategic and humanitarian reasons to not be doing this. But like the politics in this country, like Americans are looking to this and thinking, like, what really? We're more wars, more, like, what's going on here? Yeah. And I think, you know, big, big picture, Biden would have told you he wanted to get out of

military conflicts in the Middle East and pivot to Asia, right? I mean, that was the Obama, he wanted that same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Easier said than done. I've been there myself. Yeah, easier said than done. I mean, also complicating things. Iran fired a bunch of ballistic missiles and drones at targets in Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan. They said that these targets were anti-Iran terrorist groups and Israeli intelligence assets. It's not at all clear that they hit anything besides, you know, some random businessman's house or something in the area. But not help but things when you're firing missiles. And it's kind of like, remember, ISIS launched that attack in Iran. You know, when this kind of fire starts to burn, everybody's like, all right, you know, like,

it's suddenly like the norms, you know, it would have seemed much more dramatic for Iran to fire a bunch of missiles into Pakistan, you know, five months ago. But now it's kind of like, well, you know, let's have at it. Join the party. And that's kind of what worries me is there's this dynamic in the region where it's increasing it's kind of like, okay, like it's on. And so you start just swinging at everybody that you want to land a punch on. Yeah. Lastly, I mean, obviously most important of all is the impact on the Yemeni people who've dealt with nearly a decade of war. Here's a clip from a woman named Bushra Abdul-Kana about what it was like living in Yemen during nearly a decade of airstrikes. Living in a country like Yemen with the fear of being pumped for eight years before was undescribable.

Remembering how people were dying every day and how the ambulances all the time are nonstop. And you know that there are dead people on dead children. and women are coming in these ambulances, it's really terrifying. There was no safe place in Yemen in the past. And we don't know. Everybody is so terrified and so worried to have the same events and the same scenario happening, of watching people dying every day and in front of us.

And of course, it's not a feeling that I wish everybody would try to know or understand how it feels to be in such a situation. of not knowing where to go where you know that you're you're not safe and there's no other place which is safe in in the country just reminded you know this is a country where hundreds of thousands of people died in this most recent conflict people didn't have access to food or water or fuel or any sort of medical infrastructure there's just recently you know got this ceasefire agreement and ended the Saudi led coalition's bombing campaign in Yemen and this what's happening now with the the Houthis is putting all that at risk. It's just people who suffered an awful lot, you know.

Yeah, you know, I think it's worth like pausing on the fact that there's very few populations in the whole world that have suffered more profoundly already than the people of Gaza and the people of Yemen, you know, and these are vulnerable people. They're not fighting back. They're not like, And, you know, they're not like a, they're just suffering in these wars. And that's, you want that to end. You know, I mean, like this is not, and it's an indictment really of a, of a certain kind of order in that region that the U.S. is a big part of, right? And again, I was in an administration that, you know, was a part of, part of that. You know, I think it was a huge mistake for the U.S. to support the Saudis going Yemen. the U.S. and then the kind of all these autocrats, you know, nobody values that perspective, you know, like it's always some game, you know, with a free flow of commerce through the Red Sea or the, you know, some proxy wars between the Gulf and Iran or, you know, some Israeli conception of total absolute security that denies the Palestinians rights or some fucking Hamas terrorist ideology. like who is speaking for the voice we just heard? Like who is representing that view? Because it's just absent.

And I hope there's some way to move towards at least listening to these people that continue to suffer in this endless cycle of conflict. And also, by the way, doesn't solve all these other problems either. Yeah. A couple quick things before we go to the break. First, I hope you are all listening to Dissident at the doorstep. It is literally sitting in the POD Save the World feed right now. It is an incredible story about a Chinese dissident who escaped house arrest, made it to the U.S. consulate, got to America, and then all of a sudden one day was at the January 6th insurrection. It traces the story of the U.S.-China relationship, and it's already sitting in your feet.

You don't even have to go download it. So check it out. Please listen. And if you don't, I will come find you. Second, if you're looking for a way to keep track of important voting deadlines, volunteer shifts you're doing, whatever, Votesave America created a 2024 planner to help you stay organized for this year. It's got funny jokes in it. It's got some motivational tips. Go to crooked.com slash store now to check it out.

Also, final thing, don't miss the most recent episode of Political Experts React. You'll hear Dan Pfeiffer and Jen Saki go through a roundup of the best and worst ads from the 2024 Republican primary. You can find Political Experts React on the Pod Save America YouTube channel. Unfortunately, that was a pretty good setup to the next topic, which is Sudan. where for similar reasons there have been this brutal civil war going since last spring. The fighting in Sudan is between the Sudanese armed forces and a paramilitary group called the RSF. The fighting in April started in Khartoum, the capital, but has since spilled out into all other parts of the country and has had devastating consequences already. So the reports are at least 12,000 people are dead.

Over 7 million people have been displaced. All Arabia had a report on how farmers have been unable to sell crops they've harvested or plant new crops. which means there could be a famine if they don't figure out how to, you know, get the food in the ground soon. So the RSF, the paramilitary force, is currently winning the war. And weapons shipments from the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, is why they are winning. So the New York Times got their hands on an unpublished UN report that says, quote, this new RSF firepower had a massive impact on the balance of forces, both in Darfur and other regions of Sudan. The U.S. has been accusing the RSF of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.

Currently, Vice President Harris raised this weapons shipment issue with the UAE directly at the most recent climate change summit. But in December and January, this guy, Chmetti, who is the guy running the RSF, he was running around Africa. Real creep, yeah. Yeah, he went to like the capitals of Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda. He was met by heads of state. And so he's not only winning this war, but I think he's sort of being greeted as he's,

you know, the de facto leader of Sudan now. Here's a clip from a guy named David Shin, who is the former U.S. U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission in Sudan talking about the crisis. There needs to be an effort by the international community more generally to try to convince parties like the United Arab Emirates to stop providing the delivery of arms to the rapid support forces. I'm sure that effort has been made, but it obviously has not resulted in any success so far. These countries have to ask themselves, what are they gaining out of this? by destroying Sudan, which is exactly what's happening, how do they gain?

So to your point earlier, Ben, I mean, what's happening in Sudan is directly connected to Yemen because back in 2016, the UAE hired Hameti in the RSF to fight for them against the Houthis in Yemen. So two things, Ben. So I think everyone should just remember that the original Abraham Accord Agreement that Trump administration cut with the UAE was basically a massive arms sale deal. I'd love to know if any of those U.S. weapons are being used by the RSF now. Good question. And then, too, I mean, any thoughts from you on what the U.S. can or should be doing to pressure

the UAE to stop these armed shipments? I mean, the VP raising it is a big deal. I think Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, raised it. Tony Blinken has raised it. I don't know that we've heard anything about Biden calling the UAE. Maybe all the D.C. Glitterati could raise it with the UAE's ambassador to the U.S. at one of his fancy parties in Washington. Cafe Milano.

Yeah. I mean, that's the point, is it like the U.A is like very plugged into the, you know, the West and the U.S. and the mass events of arms sales, hosting international summits, including on climate change, you know, all manner of business. It's not like there's an absence of leverage or connectivity, right? It's not unlike, you know, what we're talking about with Israel. You know, if the U.E doesn't feel like its interests are going to be implicated or worsened by its continued support. to the RSF, it will continue to support the RSF. And if you're just raising it diplomatically, hey, we'd like you to not do this. They will just tune that out, you know. And look, the root of all this, too, people should remember there was a democratic uprising against the genocidal dictator of Sudan, Bashir, a few years ago.

And then the Sudanese military kind of backed by the Saudis and the Emirates were like, oh, we don't like popular uprising. So we're going to kind of scrap the transition to democracy stuff. And then it becomes kind of like a Game of Thrones because, you know, it's like, okay, whoever's going to have the strongest militia wins and the way you bet someone and some other people bet on some other guys. And that's how you get these scenarios. And unless and until we're breaking the cycle of this complete tolerance of this manner of geopolitics, like this is going to keep happening. And again, this put the Sudanese in the bucket with the Yemenis and the people of Gaza. Like, these are people that they don't have power.

And so they're just on the wrong end of this. Yeah. I should say the UAE denies shipping these weapons to the RSF. I don't believe them, but they deny it. The BBC also had a report about the UAE funding political assassinations in Yemen, specifically hiring a former U.S. Navy SEAL that the BBC interviewed to talk about how this process worked and the kinds of people they were taking out. It wasn't like terrorist leaders. It was people in politics. The Biden administration has apparently named Tom Periello to be the special envoy to Sudan. I think. think that nomination's been delayed by some bureaucracy, but that would be a good stuff. Great guy. Great guy. And look, if you're not going to fix the structure of autocracy, at a minimum, can you try to channel the UA does have a lot of resources, right? And can they kind of channel this influence into like some process that brings in other countries in the region to just try to stop the fighting, have ceasefires, get humanitarian aid in? So again, like, the world is what it is. You know, the U.E's, you know, not going to necessarily change. But like, you could at least,

least with a Tom Pariello, try to channel this into something that is less violent. You know, that alone would make things better and better, as our old boss used to say, better is good. Yeah, some intensive diplomacy would help. Ben, let's turn to Europe because over the weekend, people across Germany took to the streets to protest the far right alternative for Germany party or AFD. So in Berlin, police figure said 100,000 people were on the lawn of the Reichstag. In Munich and Hamburg, there were rallies where they had to send people away because too many showed up and they just couldn't fit them all. Some estimates say hundreds of thousands of people took part in the demonstrations.

The organizers said the number was over 1.4 million. So a ton of people were out over the weekend protesting the AFD. The AFD's popularity has been surging recently. There are polls showing them doing better than the centrist and center left parties. The protests were specifically in response to a report that last November, two AFD members attended a meeting with other right-wing figures where the assembled group of neo-Nazi types discussed a plan to deport millions of immigrants and refugees, including some who have German citizenship.

The Associated Press described the large turnout as, you know, this important inflection point for Germans galvanizing around opposition to the AFD in this new and meaningful way and really hitting the streets and taking action. And these protests come just months before there are going to be these regional elections in Eastern Germany where the AFD is doing the strongest, or doing the best. So, you know, you and I've talked a bunch of times about the rise of far-right parties in Europe or anxiety about them in Germany in particular. Did these protests make you feel any less anxious about that?

No, look, like the, you know, when I'm looking for hope out in the world, I mean, like the, it's like anything in life. Like, the first step is realizing you have a problem. You know, it's always good when people demonstrate an awareness that they see what's happening and they see the stakes. And so 300,000 people is not going to reverse the politics, but it does show. show that people are paying attention and that they know that we're entering into already living through a very high-stakes political moment, that is very good. And then it's an expression of kind

of a values proposition to counter what's coming from the FD. I also think that then that has to be channeled into like some approach to immigration in Europe as in this country, right, that balances, okay, on the one hand, like, yeah, you need to kind of make people feel like there's an immigration system that is working, that is controlled, you know, but at the same time, you need to call out, you know, there's misinformation from the FD, for instance. As with the Republican Party in this country, there's a lot of misinformation about, like, crime, you know, being like through the roof because of these immigrants when there's just not data to support that, you know. It's also the case that there's a lot of benefits.

You know, Europe has an aging population, like a young immigrant workforce, you know, it can be a good thing. There's a values proposition that Angela Merkel made that Germany has a special responsibility when it comes to refugees, which is one of the reasons why they took in so many. So, like, again, you need, you know, you need to kind of obviously meet people where they are. And if people are concerned about immigration, you have to have that conversation. And but at the same time, bringing some values into the conversation is important. And that's what you kind of saw there. Even if a bunch of those people may want to restrict immigration, fine.

But like, let's have a conversation about the humane way to do that. Deporting everybody's not that. You know, there are other ways of addressing it. In Germany, we're talking about the AFD, the far-right party, trying to use immigration to win power. In the UK, you're seeing the conservatives try to manage an immigration problem to, I don't know, stay in power or at least lessen their defeat. Because you got Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in the Tory parties, they're still desperately trying to implement this plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. So this was a policy or at least an idea that dates back to 2022. The idea was, let's deter immigration by sending asylum seekers who arrive.

in the UK to Rwanda and then force them to have their asylum cases heard there. And if asylum is granted, resettled them in Rwanda instead of the UK. Now, this idea is, it's idiotic on its face. Like, why would you send someone from Afghanistan to Rwanda? It's insane. And it was quickly met with, you know, legal challenges and other protests. The U.K. Supreme Court ultimately decided it was unlawful because Rwanda was unsafe. And they detailed all the ways that Rwanda's judicial system was just not set up to properly adjudicate these cases. And the outcomes could lead to people with legitimate asylum cases being sent back to their home countries and maybe tortured or mistreated in some way. So what Sunak then did is not listen to the courts, but he tried to negotiate a new

treaty with Rwanda to improve the judicial system or at least get them to agree to. And then he asked parliament to pass a bill that basically is the equivalent of saying actually Rwanda is safe, just sort of staving it as a fact. That plan hit a little road bump on Monday when the House of Lords told them to pump the brakes and delayed passage of the bill. So to sum it up, Ben, the UK has already paid Rwanda over $300 million to implement this plan, but no deportations have taken place yet. Sunek promised to stop the boats. That was one of his five promises in his campaign manifesto. This means that, in this case, migrants crossing the English Channel from France would be stopped.

The home office says that nearly 30,000 people were detected crossing the English Channel in 2023. So he's failed at one of his five promises. And on top of it all, the far right wing of the Tory party hates his plan and attacks it as weak and attacks Sunec for not implementing it. So this is not going well for him either. Yeah, but this is also like Ron DeSantis level bullshit because here's what, I mean, I actually got pretty interested in this. The reality of what's happening is there's a significant uptick. in terms of legal immigration into the United Kingdom, that is far beyond the people across the small boats.

And what it is is the NHS, the National Health Service, cannot function without immigrant workers, right? The whole care worker industry in the UK is dependent on immigrant workers, right? So people who want someone to look after their elderly parent, like, you know, they may be anti-immigration when it comes to, you know, stop the boats, but then they want somebody who can work in the care industry. the UK higher education system relies on a lot of foreign students. And they have a rule that if you are a foreign student,

your family can come with you. And a lot of these, by the way, are like rich people coming to a nice UK universities. So at the same time that they're all posturing and doing Rwanda deals just to show how tough they are, they actually are because they've so fucked the NHS with their austerity programs, like they need like a labor source. And because of fucking Brexit, that's hard for them to get. So this is the Tories being like, you know, this is the rotten, corrupt end of the Tories and that because of their austerity and Brexit programs, they're not, you know, answering their promises to manage immigration. It's going up because they need that to keep the economy going.

So they're going to posture around this Rwanda thing when, like you said, like nobody's even going, they're fighting this huge political battle over something that doesn't work. I mean, kind of credit to the Rwandans for pocketing 300 million pounds or whatever it is. Yeah, well done. Yeah, like, because this is all fucking bullshit. Rishi's doing like posturing for a bunch of people because he's afraid of the right-wing of this party. Just like the Republicans here. Yeah, and they're not going to win over all like the UKIP far-right people that they're trying to neutralize. No.

Those people want to see you like, you know, the World Navy and like fucking Dunkirk and the English Channel like fighting boats with asylum seekers on it. And they're not going to do that. So like this is what you get. No, they will not. Staying in Europe and switching gears here, Ben. Elon Musk's anti-Semitism apology tour continues. He's in Poland at the moment for a symposium on anti-Semitism. earlier on the trip, he and Ben Shapiro toward Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp.

This comes after Musk's trip to Israel last year, where he and Bibian and Yahoo toured a kibbutz that had been attacked by Hamas on October 7th. This all stems from an incident last year. Folks might remember where Elon replied to someone who posted an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, saying, quote, you have said the actual truth. No, they had not. Very bad thing to say. Here's a clip of Elon talking about anti-Semitism from his visit to pull. In the circles that I move, I see almost no anti-Semitism. And you know, there's this old joke. I've got like this one Jewish friend.

No, I have like two-thirds of my friends are Jewish. Twice as many Jewish friends as non-Jewish friends. I'm like Jewish by association. I'm aspirationally Jewish. As a member of the tribe, did that work for you? Are you concerned to switch? Every time this guy opens his mouth, I mean, first of all, does anybody doubt that the Elon Musk who tweeted, like you spoke in the actual truth is not the real Elon

Musk. Of course that's what he thinks, right? Like, it's obvious. And, like, going to Auschwitz with Ben Shapiro doesn't, like, you know, change that reality. And by the way, if he went and spoke, you know, with something that sounded like genuine evolution, because I believe people can change, or we have to at least hold open that belief or else, like, what's the point of all of it. But, like, that's, it didn't sound like a guy who's, like, really wrestling, you know, who's saying, like, you know what, like, I had these views and, like, now I've been forced to reckon with them. That's a guy like engaging in tropes. Like, you know, I've got more Jewish friends than anybody, so I'm not any, like, this is. It would be so much easier as to kick the Nazis

off Twitter, man. He's just like pissing on our leg. Yeah, like take the Nazis off Twitter. There's something in Elon Musk that, you know, like you said, action speak a lot of the more. So forget his tweet, like the fact that he'd invite all the Nazis back to Twitter. Like there's not, no content moderation of that kind of garbage, you know, just because like, and, you know, Ben Shapiro, give me a break. Like these are two people with mutual interest. Like Ben Shapiro wants like, you know, X to turbocharge his platforms and Elon can, you know, hide behind Ben Shapiro and say I have a lot of Jewish friends. Like, this is bullshit and we all know it. Yeah, and they want to just log on and attack trans people and attack DEI and just roll up.

It might as well be a Ron DeSantis, you know, well, RIP is campaign rally. Yeah, you can all talk about ESG and accreditation and, you know, whatever. No, with no acknowledgement that Elon Musk has benefited from climate investing by the government more than almost anyone else. But a story for another day. Finally, Ben, if you guys need an idea for what to get a loved one for Valentine's Day, we have you covered. Winston Churchill's teeth are for sale. For just $10,000, you could be the proud owner of Churchill's upper dentures,

which apparently were specifically constructed to maintain his natural lisp and were mounted on gold. The director of the auction house, this woman named Liz Poole, said, this set was probably made at the start of World War II. It must be among the most unusual items we've ever sold. Yeah, I hope so. Speaking of Churchill, DeSantis, I saw you saw this too, Ben. Yeah, fake quote. Desantis announced the end of his 2024 presidential campaign with a video where he

attributed a quote to Prime Minister Churchill. He said, quote, success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. Churchill never said that. So now there's one of those fun little community notes things under DeSantis's pathetic little dropout video saying it never appears. in any article speeches or books by Winston Churchill.

I mean, maybe if there's any money left in the like never backed down super PAC fund that was drained with private jets and, you know, consultant fees, they can scrounge up $10,000. Maybe Ron DeSantis could buy the dentures and pop them in and look in the mirror and read himself fake quotes. Yeah, yeah. That's a good idea. And see someone with some balls. Yeah.

That would be a better way to spend money than I think there was some, someone did it. It was like four grand, five grand a vote, something like that when you total up his spending and the number of votes you got. Get some dentures out of it. Not, not great. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, you'll hear Ben's conversation about what the hell is going on in Ecuador and what we can do about it. So stick around for that. All right.

So last week we talked a bit about the really intense situation in Ecuador. We wanted to go a bit more in depth on how we got here, what's going on, what potential solutions could look like. the president there, President Boa, has declared a state of emergency as he's dealing with enormous gang and drug violence, which has reached a real fever pitch this month with prisons overrun, hostages taken, kidnappings, terrible public spectacles, attack on a television station where journalists were held at gunpoint. It's a lot going on. To unpack all of that with us is my very good friend and full disclosure, former negotiating partner in the normalization of relations with Cuba, an all-around partner in crime, although I realized maybe I shouldn't say

partner in crime because some people might take that literally. But Ricardo Zuniga, who was most recently the principal deputy assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere at the State Department, spent many years working in Latin America. He is currently a senior advisor at the U.S. Institute of Peace and a partner at Dynamica Americas. Ricardo, so good to see you, man. Great to see you, Ben. And I think we're partnering crime. it was fine. Yeah, yeah. So I said a huge mouthful there, but I was thinking like who could help us get a bit of an explainer and some understanding of what's going on. Given your depth, I mean, people should know you were the lead staff at the White House on Latin America, you know, lead at the

State Department on these issues. What is going on? Can you explain why this is happening in Ecuador, why it's happening now and what the kind of structural reasons are that might be causing all this chaos? I mean, Ben, that's a really great point. This didn't just come from nowhere. And it's really important to understand what's happening in Ecuador because there are lots of other parts of Latin America that are vulnerable to this kind of violence. So it's not just happening there. But I'd say there's really four important things that led to what we're seeing now, the kind of the level of intense level of violence that we're seeing now in Ecuador. And the first is, geography. Ecuador is a perfect launch point for mass shipments of cocaine, especially to Europe and

Asia, which are the burgeoning markets right now. It sits between Colombia and Peru, two of the three largest producers of Coca in the world, and it has an excellent port in Guayaquil. So it was perfectly situated. So the first is geography. Second is regional politics. And this might be something that feels like a, you know, it wouldn't be logical, but the fact is the peace process in Columbia played a role here too, because the FARC combatants, the guerrilla force that reached an accord with President Santos in Colombia during the Obama administration, they controlled the drug flow in that part of the border. They were part of that drug trade. And when they demobilized, they left a vacuum in that stretch of border, which meant that a lot of that

cocaine flow, then moved over to a kind of this different set of games that had been there but hadn't had access to the cocaine market. And they do now. A third is criminal geopolitics. And you have to think about this. There are geopolitics around crime as well. And criminal groups, especially Mexican cartels, are really at the peak of their power right now. They have access to finance like they've never had revenue, weapons, and a level of sophistication and global networks that we haven't seen before. They were ready to service that spike in European demand, and all they needed were local partners,

and they found them in these gangs in Ecuador. So some of the violence that we see in Ecuador is actually a competition between competing cartels, Mexican cartels, Sinaloa and Muevahenaena and Aisione in particular. So that's another piece. And finally, it's the breakdown in governance in Ecuador. So local corruption had been an issue, but when you introduce these huge sums of cash,

the fact that governance was already weak in some rural areas, but also in urban areas, you combine that with, frankly, an increase in cash that was available to bribe local officials, and that became a huge deal. There's a courageous attorney general in Ecuador, the first woman, the first Afro-Ecuadoran, to hold that role, and she's documented widespread corruption that helped kind of create the situation. And finally, I'd say, I mean, part of this, too, is prison recruitment, which is something we see all over Latin America. All right. That's a lot. It's a lot. You know, I guess before, I'm going to get to the response from the Ecuadorian government and its supporters, including the U.S., but before we do that, so we've seen this surge, you know, there was an election.

President of Kavana was actually assassinated late in that election just a few months ago. and now we've seen with the new government in what seems like a pretty dramatic uptick in sensational violence and kind of flexing of these cartels and these gangs. What are they doing? Like you mentioned some of them, this is them fighting each other, but like what is their intent? Why are, you know, when you see people seizing television stations, you think, like, oh, is this a coup? But I don't think they're trying to take over the government.

I mean, why is this, why are they doing this? Well, the violence is the point. And when President Obama declared a state of internal conflict and he called them terrorists, you know, he's not right in the sense that the way that we classically think of terrorists having a political motive. But the violence is the point, just like it is for terrorists to show the authorities, but just equally the civilian citizens in Ecuador that they have uncontested power. And the whole point here is to cow the state and the population into acquiescing to their control and their power. And so they borrowed lessons learned from Mexican organizations during the early 2000s and the early teens.

And we're seeing it been in different parts of the region, even where our good friend is ambassador in Chile, Bernadette Meehan, is a fantastic U.S. ambassador in Chile, they've seen a spike in violence brought in by drug-related gangs where there's some. seeing the kinds of violence that they haven't seen before, and authorities and populations just are not used to it. The point is to show that they cannot be stopped. So President Aboa, as you kind of alluded to, right, he's a young guy. I mean, I kind of feel bad for anybody who gets elected in this context. And, you know, obviously his own life, you know, is somewhat on the line, given the assassinations we've seen there. You know, thus far, he's declared this state of emergencies. He's called them terrorists. He's, you know, using the military to try to crack down on them. I mean, what, what, what, what, what are, what are, what are the

options available to him? How do you evaluate his response to date? And, and what it's this balance between, you obviously need to do something here. But, you know, you look at El Salvador and you see the potential risk of, you know, suddenly you're like just basically arresting everybody, um, who's in military age male almost. I mean, how do you evaluate what he's done and what, what the playbook is that he has to work with? Well, he's got a terrible playbook. And he has done well with that with what he has, but it is, it's really insufficient to the problem. Again, I mean, the scale here is Ecuador has local tools and some international assistance that we can talk about in a second to help deal with this. But the fact is Ecuador is just part of this very, of this massive

international structure that exists to move cocaine right now, which is at, at, and, at historically high levels of production to markets that haven't existed at this scale in the past, especially Europe. And just to give you an idea, Ben, a kilo of cocaine in the United States costs about $28,000. In Europe, it's $40,000. It's easier to sneak into Europe right now, even with having to transport it across the ocean than it is to get to the U.S. border. There's a lot of reasons why it makes a lot of sense. And there's a lot of reasons why organizations like the Mexican cartels that have revenue in the tens of billions are able to carry this out. They have the revenue. They have the GDP of states, right? So this is Ecuador

against a global organization. And so what they can do is, I think you just saw the news, Chris Dodd, President Biden's senior advisor on the Americas, was in Ecuador yesterday with General Richardson, the commonwealth of U.S. Southern Command. And they were there to provide and immediate signs. The idea here is to have visual support for the government of Ecuador, but also to start laying the groundwork for greater level of cooperation, bulletproof vests, the kind of support that the United States provides to police to give them better technology. That's all important, but it's really about what Ecuador and Ecuador and institutions are able to do. And this brings me to one other really important problem, which is he doesn't have the

financing, he doesn't have the money to really combat. this problem at scale. Yeah, I mean, from what you're saying and having live with some of this myself, I mean, like, they have no capacity to deal with the scale this challenge by themselves. I mean, that's just obvious. So what are the pieces of like an international strategy? Recognizing it, we're in a time when everybody's kind of distracted by one thing or another. There's wars.

There's instability. Politics are a mess in lots of places. But essentially, just listening to you, it's like, well, the U.S. has a lot of capability, obviously on the security side, we have a demand issue ourselves with cocaine, other drugs. The Europeans, it seems like, have some role to play here, which is unusual in Latin America because it's their demand and it's the poorest nature of their borders in some respect that is feeding this a bit. And then I imagine also, obviously, the countries surrounding Ecuador, some of which are cocaine producers have role to play. I mean, what is a multilateral

initiative look like that might not solve it, but at least make it a little bit better? So I think what's really important here is to distinguish between the drug questions, which are crucial, obviously, because this is the main product. But it's not the only product anymore that we're talking about. People, the movement of people, the illicit movement of people in particular, extortion, and other criminal activities are financed from, you know, across borders. The point is really about international cooperation to deal with these sophisticated organizations and attack them from different directions. It's less about, although it's important to interdict drug shipments in the sense of just trying to deny them revenue, it's important to think of them as a criminal corporation. And starting to find ways to go after those pieces of it in different jurisdictions outside of Ecuador is going to help the situation in Ecuador. So it's not about equipment as much as it is about international organization.

Yes, multilateral development banks need to help Ecuador at this critical moment. Yes, Europe needs to provide police and intelligence support and certainly work on the demand reduction side. We do in the United States as well. But this is really about looking at these organizations in a different way. And I say this is important because they could start affecting countries that we don't think of as dangerous spots like Costa Rica and Brazil because of the power that they have and because these same factors are at play. So, and look, we should be clear, the U.S. has a lot of skin in this game. not excluding the fact that all this violence, right, is part of what is driving people to our

border. You were also the envoy for the Northern Triangle for Central America trying to manage that. But I want to talk about Mexico, because that obviously is like a hub of this cartel network. And you know, you hear, I think we're going to hear in the presidential campaign, you know, this kind of normalization of Trump wanting to, like, you know, bomb Mexico or go to war with Mexico, which, you know, probably not the right answer. But if I do look back, you know, before, you know, kind of leading into the Obama years under President Calderona, Mexico, you had really like a war against the cartels, a real effort to militarily defeat them. That didn't work.

It led to a lot of loss of life and it didn't dislodge the cartels. Then you saw kind of like a, while I was in government, it was kind of this mix of different capabilities. And, you know, under Penaenaetto, the next Mexican. president, maybe sometimes dealing with the cartels, maybe sometimes taking them on. And now you've seen under Amlo, the current president in Mexico, a bit more hands off, you know, with the cartels. Point is that like none of that is working. Like there's, so, you know, to be somewhat sympathetic to the Mexican government, you know, they've tried all these different approaches. None of them work. I mean, what is available? What would you be telling the Mexican government if, you know,

that they should be doing to try to get their arms around this? Well, look, they have, the Mexican government has one piece of this that's absolutely correct, which is part of this is cutting off the arms flow from the United States. I mean, I think that most people, most listeners may not realize how saturated Latin America is with weapons purchased by criminal organizations in many cases, but not always, that are in everywhere from Brazil to Mexico. And the Mexican government today started really pushing the United States on this issue. It's one part of it. But the real issue is that I think if I were to advise any government at this point, it would be to look at these organizations in a different way than we have in the past. They are not about drugs. They are not just about moving people. They're about making money. And the one area where I think we probably haven't dedicated enough creativity is in finding basically, you know, they are part of economies. and finding ways to block that and impede that and complicate that and raise the cost of business is as important as interdicting a drug shipment or a shipment of people, which is what they're also into these days. And so that's really what they're about. They'll adapt to anything. I mean, in Mexico, you know, production of fentanyl and it has become much more important than the flow of cocaine to a market that's pretty stable.

So they'll adjust to that. But they need to, it's about dollars for them. So it's really about imposing costs. Going after the money, yeah. And I also want to ask, you know, we obviously talk a lot on this podcast about, you know, Ukraine and Gaza and the Middle East. But, you know, there's some kind of weird troubling signs in Latin America in the sense, you know, you've got, you know, this kind of Bukkele model in El Salvador, of someone kind of this kind of non-ideological. dictator model, right? I'm just going to be a strong man for the sake of being a strong man. You've got this uptick in violence, which again is contributing to a flow of people to our

borders, as you point out, the same people, politicians that, you know, cry about that are also obstructing gun laws that might impede that violence, but we'll get that later. You know, you've got the predictable Maduro threatening to invade, you know, Guyana. You've got now in Argentina and the new president there, kind of weird libertarian. an idiotog threatening to dismantle his own government. I mean, what hell is going on? You know, like what is, how would you characterize the state of, because, and I say this with humility, right? Like, if I was in Latin America, looking at the U.S., I'd be like, what hell is going on with you guys, right? So this is not to criticize or single out, but I mean, what worries you about the

political trends and are there positive ones that we're missing to? I mean, how does this fit into the context of what's happening in Latin America generally? So I think, I think, you nailed it. Latin America is thoroughly part of the West. It is absolutely part of the same crisis of the West that the United States is experiencing, which is to say that there's not a, there's not an ideological challenge to, you know, democracy per se. There's not a, there's not a, as there was during the Cold War, there's not an organized entity with a competing ideology that's totalitarian or authoritarian in nature. People prefer to live in democracy, but they prefer to live in democracies that work that actually provide schools, police, and jobs and help kind of

create. There's in Latin America, much more than the United States, there is a role for the state right to left. There is belief that the state has a larger role than, you know, we say we believe in the United States. That's absolutely the case. But almost everywhere, you're seeing extraordinarily high levels of dissatisfaction with what those states and especially what those political classes are delivering. So in many, many ways what we're seeing is the exhaustion of the ability of political classes, of the older political parties to actually deliver the public good. And that is not alien to the United States, but take that and amplify it in country after country where it's much more extreme. And so there

you have people like Bokele who is new, but populism is old in Latin America. This is the non-ideological strongman is an old story. It's the oldest story in Latin America. So this is a new packaging of an old tradition. Yeah. And as with here, I guess it's just the fires that we're going to be living with and hopefully, you know, that we can control. Do you see, I mean, to try to wind down on a happier internet, I mean, where do you see promising signs of governance in Latin America? I mean, are there models that might be looked to as, you know, hey, this is somebody or some party or some place that is figuring this out? Yeah. And I think, Ben, that's really important because, okay, a couple of things.

One, the biggest driver of migration to the United States, there is certainly violence. There is poverty. Latin America recovered very slowly from COVID. But the truth is the biggest draw to the United States is the booming U.S. economy. And people are moving for rational reasons. they want a job in a market that's working. But the fact is that despite all of the challenges that we see in Latin America, like the quality of life has improved dramatically over the last 30 and 40 years.

People's access to basic services has increased and improved dramatically. The perception of high levels of crime is the one major outlier that we see there because it's not just a perception. In fact, it is more violent. Unlike the United States, it is more violent in Latin America than it was in the past. And so it's something that can be managed. In terms of human capital, in terms of innovation in terms of just drive, that's very present in country after country. And in terms of models that work, I would say that they're not necessarily models that would work in the United States, but you're talking about developing countries with a different need.

So countries that invest heavily in lower middle income are seeing a return on that. They see people brought into the economy. economy. So even, look, there's a lot of, Amlok has, it faces a lot of criticism from the United States, but even his detractors and some of whom I, you know, I really highly respect, acknowledge that he's hit a chord. He struck a chord because he's delivering sort of public service to a part of the population that's felt and forgotten. There are other places in, in the region where people are able to kind of see that improvement as well, again, at the lower end of the economic status. Let me just say there's a couple of long-term things that are really important.

Latin America is the largest provider of food in the world when you combine it with the United States. Brazil alone is one of the largest producers of corn and soy and proteins. Argentina as well for all the problems Argentina has suffered a remains, this massive provider. And we're seeing that kind of thing in Peru, in countries you don't necessarily think of as powerhouses. But these are really important countries to the world. And in terms of global food insecurity is solved in the Americas, first and foremost. So there is a lot to be optimistic about, but we have to be also realistic about what people are actually dealing with in real life in Latin America.

Yeah. No. Well, look, that's a good tour. of the horizon there and in Ecuador specifically sounds like it's you know it's going to be a long-term challenge hopefully not as long as Columbia was but uh it feels like it's is you know going to be flaring up for a while here right it's going to take a long time to deal with these problems these are very deep-seated uh there is there are ways to at least slow down uh what they're seeing but it's going to take years these are structural issues these are built into uh societies and you also again

They're international. So it's going to take, I mean, I think the real fight and the real, what's new here is the level of sophistication of organized crime. And I think all governments have to kind of figure out that this is a different moment and approach them that way. Yeah. No, that's a good way to frame you. Well, look, thanks so much for joining us. People can hear you can break this down in ways that, you know, very few people can. So we appreciate it.

And people should follow your work at the U.S. Institute of Peace. And, you know, one day I'll have you back on to talk Cuba, but we'll find the right moment. It's hard to find the right moment on Cuba these days. But thanks for joining us. Absolutely. Good to see you. Good to talk to you, Ben. Thanks again to Ricardo for joining the show.

Thanks again to Winston Churchill for having such pretty teeth. Yeah, for having such enduring dentures. Thanks. Thanks Jason Kelsey for giving us a little joy. I do like the sort of Kelsey brothers. I'm with it, man. I mean, I am in a household with like an absolute, like, you know, Chloe, my youngest daughter is like literally the head of the Taylor Swift fan club.

Right or die, yeah. Like, Ryder Di knows word every song. It walks her out of the house with like 20 bracelets on. So I, like, embrace this whole Kelsey thing. I'm all in on it, you know. So I'm not going to lie. In the beginning, I was like, ah, I was trying to be a little too, you know, seeing behind the curtain guy.

Like, here's what happened. There was one of the games Taylor Swift went to where Travis Kelsey was playing and they ran an advertisement for her concert movie that was coming out. And I was like, aha, I spotted it. I found the conspiracy. But now I just believe that they like each other. Yeah. And you see like the Jason Kelsey thing. You're like, these are real people. And do they have like, you know, PR machines? Sure. But it's fun to participate it. It's fun to pop the top at a bill's game. I'll participate in this. Go outside. Yeah. I'm into. All right, that's it for this week. Talk to you soon. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content,

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