Pod Save the World - North Korea and Gaza

Episode Date: May 17, 2018

Tommy talks with Washington Post reporter Anne Gearan about the on again, off again North Korea summit, the situation in Gaza and the Trump administration's response, and Rex Tillerson's harsh criticism of President Trump.

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. This is Tommy Duthor. Thank you guys for tuning in. I'm in the studio today with my puppy Luca, who is just hammering at Donald Trump doll back and forth as I conducted my interview with Anne Gehrin. It's a fantastic reporter for the Washington Post. We talked about the on again, off again, North Korea summit. We talked about the ongoing humanitarian crisis and protests in Gaza and the Trump administration's response to those situations. And then we talked about. It's a pretty pointed criticism of President Trump in the administration by former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and what it might mean for Trump's foreign policy decision making going forward. She is as dialed in and smart a reporter as you will find a national security circle. So you're going to want to hear what she has to say. And here is the interview. My guest this week is Anne Gehrin. She is the White House correspondent for the Washington Post. She is a focuses on foreign policy and national security.

She's also covered Hillary Clinton's campaign. state department and is someone I used to personally harass frequently when I was a National Security Council spokesman. So, you know, I think it means that the fact you're willing to talk to me today means I didn't screw up the relationship too badly. So thank you for doing the show. Happy to be here. And no, no, you didn't, you didn't harass me too badly. I know I harassed you once in a while. Sometimes you'd call me back. It was fun. It was fun. I missed not calling you guys back. I'm just kidding. Okay. You were good at it. Yeah, I was very good at it. Me and Robert gives. So let's start with North Korea. They threw a wrench into President Trump's plans to

hold a major summit with Kim Jong-gun on June 12th in Singapore when they canceled these high-level talks with South Korea, they said in protest for U.S. and South Korean military exercises. The statement seemed to catch everybody off guard. The White House included a criticized Trump's new national security advisor, John Bolton by name, and reject the sort of core idea behind these talks that they would abandon their nuclear program in exchange for economic support. Publicly, the White House has seemed to kind of brush this off. But what are you hearing from national security officials privately and how do they interpret this latest flare-up? Well, yes, the White House is sort of brushing it off saying they haven't heard anything official

about any cancellation or change. And they're continuing to plan for the Singapore summit on June 12th as they were several days ago. Behind the scenes, though, there's a fairly high level a freak out. There is, there are a lot of moving parts. And while it's true that the Trump administration hasn't heard anything official, what they're hearing from the South Koreans and elsewhere is somewhat disturbing or maybe more than somewhat disturbing to them. And you pointed to the fundamental issue on the table at this summit and for any talks that would follow in the view of the Trump administration, which is North Korea's denuclearization. That is a founding block and founding understanding on which the summit would take place.

But another part of it that the North Koreans are now publicly objecting to is also worrisome to the U.S. and to South Korea, which is that they're objecting again, as they used to do regularly, to these joint military exercises taking place between the United States and South Korea. Now, this had been a regular irritant, as you know well, and something that the North Koreans used to jump up and down about, you know, every single. single time that the U.S. and South Korea did it. This year, they had not done so. There was an understanding communicated from Secretary Pompeo and I believe others to the North Koreans, like, hey, this is what we're going to do, this is what we're going to do it. Please don't freak out. They had said, okay, don't worry, we won't freak out. And now they're freaking out. Right. Which is, in many ways, back to the traditional North Korea negotiating playbook, which is constantly keep your adversary off guard by changing your positions and seemingly

arbitrary ways. But the Asia experts, I regularly annoy via email, even though we no longer work together, still think the summit will happen and that this is Kim, you know, softening Trump up to get more leverage. Do any of his aides, Trump's aides, privately worry that he seems maybe a little too eager for a deal and might have lost some leverage? Well, if you read between the lines of what John Bolton said on television on Sunday, you might conclude that he thinks that. I mean, he was, If North Korea is reverting to type here, then so was John Bolton. And he was expressing extreme skepticism, not that the summit would happen, but that it would produce anything quickly. If anything, I do hear concern on the Hill and among Asia experts and others in Washington.

that Trump doesn't seem to have a very firm grip on exactly what would be possible during a one-day meeting with Kim and how long any negotiations to fulfill any agreement he would be able to make might take. I mean, if you better than most, we'll recall that it was 10 years from the start of the pressure campaign, at the end of the Bush administration, the start of the pressure campaign on Iran, before the 2015 nuclear deal was fully ratified with Iran. Certainly the North Korea example would be different. It could go much more quickly. Some of the pressure campaign part of that has been underway for a couple of years already.

But still, it would be under even the rosiest scenario. It would be a couple of years at least. before there would be, you know, the kind of results that you would have a big parade about. And that is what I do hear some concern about with President Trump, that he sees this as a very much a personal relationship, a personal negotiation, and thus a personal victory for him. And it is unlikely to be something that is going to be extremely good news and the kind of personal victory he expects, that would be unlikely to happen quickly. Yeah. And a lot of interested parties who are our allies who want us to, who want to be considered in these talks. You mentioned

the mustache in the room, John Bolton. The North Koreans called him out in their statement by name. They said, quote, we do not hide our feelings of repugnance towards him. And they were particularly pissed off by suggestions that North Korea might follow the, quote, Libya model of nuclear disarmament. They actually cited Libya five times in their statement, I believe. Can you talk about the Libya model for a second and why that might upset Kim Jong-un. Well, sure. But first, props to the North Koreans, no one does insult comedy better than they do. Truly.

It's awesome. It really is. And Bolton's response was, well, they've been calling me names for years. I'm used to it. I think he probably can take it. But what Bolton said on Fox News on Sunday is something that he had said when he was being interviewed as National Security Advisor is something he had said on Fox. news some months before, at least once, I think more than that, as a Fox News commentator,

which is that the North Korea denuclearization project, if it ever came to pass, could or should look like the Libyan denuclearization project of 2003 and 2004. Then dictator MoMAWar Gaddafi made a strategic decision in 2003 to give up his nuclear program. There was some dispute about exactly how far along it was, but it was pretty clear to everyone that he was seeking an active nuclear weapons program, a deliverable weapon. So he decided he would give that up and ship the nuclear material, the stuff, and the means to potentially make a bomb out of the country. And he did this on the theory that it was better to get on the good side of the United States than risk being blown up by the United States and a good way to get on the U.S. good side would be to give up his WMD.

The U.S. was skeptical initially of this, but then went along with the whole project. By the time you all came into office, that project was complete. However, eight years after Gaddafi agreed to get rid of his WMD, he was arrested and executed by his own people. And was certainly his view at the time and no doubt the view of Kim Jong-un looking on at that assassination, that execution was taken, took place with help from the United States in the form of support for the Libyan rebels. That's right. Yeah. I mean, it seems pretty obvious to me that this is not a comparison that Kim Jong-un would want as you. Well, no, neither one of the examples is, you know, from his view would be a good one. Libya or Iraq. Those are what you got, right? And in both, cases, you got a dead dictator. Exactly. Gaddafi was deposed by NATO, killed in the streets by his own people. So, I mean, that makes me wonder, why mention it, right? At best, it's obviously self-evidently

tone deaf in a fraught negotiation. A more cynical person might say, this is a deliberate attempt to screw up the talks from a guy who has previously said, we need regime change in North Korea. Are there whispers about his motivation here among administration officials? Not so much. I mean, I think there are certainly whispers all around town about his motivation. What I've heard from people talking to Bolton and talking to others in the last few days is, you know, this is what Bolton believes and he's not going to disguise it. What we don't know is whether having taken this job after the initial efforts towards some kind of North Korea dialogue were underway, whether he's actually, you know, trying to sabotage it. He certainly says in interviews and elsewhere that, and talking to people on the Hill and elsewhere, that he, he wants this to succeed, that he wants the basic bargain here to go forward, which is, you know, that North Korea would give up its nuclear weapons. It's fully operational and tested nuclear weapons in exchange for economic benefits and the potential for, you know, investment in the country going forward. That's another thing that he talked about, and Pompeo has

also talked about, that isn't getting as much attention, which is, you know, part of the offer here on the U.S. side, part of what they're dangling is the prospect of making North Korea a rich country through international investment and tourism. It certainly has every possibility for that to happen. It's a research-rich country. It's a beautiful country. It's a place that is, you know, could be easily connected to lots of commerce. I mean, you know, China, lots of other countries that have resources and would want to trade with North Korea, if North Korea had the economy and the infrastructure to support it. And that's part of what the U.S. is putting on the table. Yeah. Column me a little skeptical that ClubMed Pyongyang is going to fill the coffers quickly.

Well, you're not going to sign up? Come on. It sounds awesome. You can go to the Magic Mountain, right? Hope springs eternal. Literally, they have a magic mountain. Well, that sounds fun. Last question on North Korea. One thing that drives me crazy as a former national security spokesperson is that Trump has proven adept at demanding credit for things without actually accomplishing anything, right? Like we pulled out of the Iran deal, but that in and of itself is not an accomplishment. I get to see what we got for it. We bombed Syria a couple times, but nothing has changed on the ground. He's, you know, liked to talk about getting the Nobel Peace Prize or pretend he wouldn't talk about it. But North Korea has not conceded anything yet. So what is the plan

as far as you can tell for North Korea. I mean, like, how do you hold someone accountable to follow through on these proposals when we can't even ascertain what they're going to try to do because his own staff is all over the place on Sunday shows? Well, I mean, it's kind of like we were talking about it a minute ago, right? For Trump success and what he would claim credit for would be having the meeting, having some kind of agreement on paper or verbally between he and Kim Jong-un about what would happen next and probably along with that an agreement about what will happen

in formally ending the Korean War, which, as you know, is not actually ended on paper. So, I mean, that would be enough, more than enough in Trump's view clearly to claim success. But then, of course, the very hard work of actually coming up with ways to denuclearize North Korea would follow. I mean, it is inconceivable in the minds of any expert I've ever talked to that Kim would say on the 12th of June, okay, here you go. Right. Here are the keys to all the military sites where all of this stuff is kept. Here are the names of all the scientists who will give up all of their research and basically the keys to the nuclear kingdom on day one. Now, if Kim has made the strategic decision that the United States hopes he's made to give up his nuclear weapons, this is going to be a painful and drawn out process. And he is likely to fight elements of it along the way.

If this week's blow up about whether the summit might be delayed or canceled as any indication, you know, expect more of the same. Yeah, more of the same. The crisis in Gaza is hardly new. but I think a lot of people in the last few weeks have been exposed to just how dire the situation is. There are reports of up to 60 dead in one day in some of the protests, thousands wounded. So the Israeli position is that this was all incited by Hamas, a terrorist group that controls Gaza. You know, Palestinians, Israel's critics say that they should have shown more restraint or even accuse them of war crimes. It is obviously very hard for us sitting in America to figure out what exactly happened on the ground, but it is clearly dire.

So putting aside those protests for a minute, I mean, people, In Gaza don't have clean water, they have intermittent electricity, there are no jobs, there's limited freedom of movement. Is there any discussion or work being done in the government, the State Department, about talking about improving the humanitarian situation on the ground? I saw Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders send a letter calling on the administration to do more to ease the suffering. Is there any traction there? Yeah. In fact, it's interesting that the peace process office that the Jared Kushner, the peace process effort that Jared Kushner is.

still at least, you know, in theory leading, held a day-long summit on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza at the White House a couple months ago. And it was one of the very few outward signs of anything happening at all on the Dormant Peace Project, which has been dormant ever since the embassy decision was announced the first week of December. So the administration would claim, and I'm going to, you know, I'll be devil's advocate here for a minute. Their answer to you would be, yes, we fully understand the depth of the humanitarian crisis and the political crisis in Gaza. And we're trying to mobilize the neighbors, the Arab neighbors and humanitarian groups to do something about that, trying to open up some of the ports and access to Gaza, trying to address the water and electricity problems.

and the health crisis. There are a number of health crises in Gaza, some of them related to water, but a lot of them relating to not enough working hospitals and staff for those hospitals. So that's what that was about. You know, fast forward to the protests earlier this week and the rushing of the gate and the fences between Gaza and Israel, and the fact that there's an enormous humanitarian crisis in Gaza, kind of becomes not the issue.

Right. I mean, now you have civilians, women, children, families, not just, you know, young men who are the, this is usually the issue when Israel says that Palestinians are causing potential problems at the border or, you know, I mean, basically the people who usually get shot are young Palestinian men. These were, yes, young Palestinian men, but also old men, also women, also women. also children coming to the border fence and in the view of the Israelis, dangerously rushing that fence and trying to get past the Israeli border guards, Israel claims that they have evidence of plans, at least maps and guidance given to some of the Gazans about what to do if they were able to actually get into Israel, what the fastest routes toward Israeli. towns would be and so forth, that, you know, that this was not a benign protest of either humanitarian issues or of the U.S. embassy decision involving Jerusalem, that this was Hamas,

which governs Gaza, taking advantage of a moment of political unrest to try to get people, civilians, innocent civilians, to put themselves in danger by crossing these Israeli-we. border and then potentially to put Israelis in danger as well. Right. So, I mean, I'm glad to hear that, honestly. I mean, it's good into that Jared held that summit. I hope it actually leads to some outcomes because there's small things you could do that would probably materially improve the situation considerably. But, I mean, the broader Trump administration has been all in on its public defense of Israel's response. That included Jared's speech at the embassy opening that they tried to scrub. Do you hear whispers from the administration who think that the Israeli defense forces overreacted?

Or is Nikki Haley's comment at the UN that, quote, no country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has and her subsequent decision to walk out during the Palestinian representative's speech. Is that the consensus view? And I guess why walk out of a speech? Why not listen? Yeah, I can't answer why she walked out. I can say that certainly her relationship with the Palestinian delegation has soured some. They used to kind of suffer one another in silence. and that appears to have gotten considerably worse.

The Riyadh, Mansoor, as you know, the Palestinian delegate speaks his mind frequently. Yes. It gets around town in New York, so they do cross paths. There is, among some career diplomats, and I think others in the administration, some concern about whether the Israelis took things too far in the Gaza confrontation, but not on the part of the, senior people in the administration. I mean, I do not expect Trump or Pence or Haley or Pompeo or Bolton to publicly take the Israelis to task at all. Yeah. There's the conflict at the border,

the literal conflict, right? Then there's a broader public relations war, a war of information and ideas and public opinion. And IDF, Israeli Defense Forces spokesman this week admitted that Israeli forces fail to minimize casualties and that the tragic images that resulted from it gave a PR boost to the Palestinians and to Hamas. I think a lot of people were struck by the dueling images of Ivanka and Jared at this Ghazi embassy opening, split screened with protesters getting carried away on stretchers. I realized that those images didn't happen by accident, and that might have been part of the plan from Hamas or others, but they still matter. And when I was in the NSC, we thought a lot about optics and global public opinion because we knew

these allies to advance priorities. From my perch today, it seems like that concern is gone, basically. Do you hear from them with concerns about the way this is playing out in the press? Well, I mean, this administration doesn't like to be criticized any more than the Obama administration you worked for, likes to be publicly criticized for the way it deals with Israel or anything else. But Israel, for every administration, is a particularly sensitive issue. The question of what to do about Hamas, you know, went all the way through the Obama administration unchanged. And I don't see any fast track to a change under the Trump administration either. Hamas is firmly in charge in Gaza.

They are masterful at taking advantage of, to use your word, you know, public relations. And certainly there, you know, there are many in Gaza who chafe under the Hamas dictatorship, and let's call it what it is. But there's not a quick, viable path to getting rid of Hamas. There's no way to negotiate for the United States to negotiate with Hamas. There's no way for Israel to negotiate with Hamas under current conditions. And so it's a stalemate. And you have Gaza, which is a 25-mile-ish, long, tiny strip of land at the maximum of 7.5, 8 miles across.

That's at its widest point. You know, with a couple million people jammed into it. It's like Brooklyn, you know, if Brooklyn had three times more people in half the space. And fewer craft breweries and, yeah. E! No craft breweries. It's been a long time since I've been to Gaza. I mean, I recall some lovely, you know, seaside vistas and, you know, the thought of, wow, this place could be really wonderful.

It's lovely. It's on the sea. But Israelis will not let them have a working port. The airport is shuttered and crumbling. There's people can't go in and out. And that's partly Egypt's fault, too. That's not entirely Israel's issue. But for the Trump administration, really, like, what would they do other than, you know, maybe kind of chide Israel slightly around the edges, not to make matters worse in the public relations sphere while trying to help ease the humanitarian crisis?

Yeah. I mean, you make a lot of important points, right? I mean, this is a stalemate, but in my view, a stalemate like this that's allowed, the status quo ante, which has continued for years, is going to increase pressure, make people more angry and upset and make incidents like this be viewed as the only outlet people have to voice frustrations, even if terrorists are pushing them to do it. I mean, it's just, there's no conversation I have that I feel more like I'm on a tightrope than this stuff, right?

Like, you say one thing and you're told that you're an anti-Semi, you say something else that people don't like, and you're like, how could you say, can you, how can you sleep at night when you talk about the Palestinian people that way? It's true for us, too. Yeah, right. But it's like, it's also, there's this false choice like, well, why would, you know, why would these Gazans let their kids go to the border and these kids end up being killed? Well, I think people don't understand that there's not necessarily a choice. A BBC reporter named Julian McFarland tweeted about a story from her time covering Gaza where she met a boy who was dragged out of bed at midnight, literally had his kneecap shot off in the square and told he would be killed next time,

he posted an anti-Hamas message on Facebook. It's like there's not necessarily a lot of options for people to voice dissent. But if I were Trump, right, you know, you've given BB everything he wants. You've moved the embassy. You pulled out of the Iran deal. You've built up a lot of capital to call him and say, knock it off, cut the shit, no more live fire, allow more items into Gaza. You have maximum leverage, you know?

And if he gave a shit about people who lived in Gaza or the West Bank or, any other marginalized community in the world, he would do that. And he'd be perfectly positioned to do that, but it seems like he just does not. I mean, certainly the leverage issue, you're exactly correct. Trump has more leverage with Netanyahu than Obama had at the end. But any American president has a fair amount of leverage to begin with that never goes away. And as you all experienced, and I expect at some point Trump will experience. the Israeli leverage is simply not to do it. That's right.

Right? I mean, I just don't. Or to accept an invitation to go attack your president before Congress. You know, that's another way. Or that. But, I mean, Netanyahu's got his own problems at home. I mean, let's not forget that, you know, he's facing scandal at home. He's facing the sort of natural lifespan of, he's outlived the natural lifespan of an Israeli

prime minister in power. And he's looking at what happens next, how long. long he stays in power and what he does with that, there is probably more public outrage in the United States about Israeli actions dealing with Gaza than there are on the streets of his capital. And so, you know, he's going to look and see where, what he thinks he needs to do, if anything. All right. Let me ask you about my favorite former Trump official, sexy Rexey Tillerson. He gave a speech at Virginia Military Institute the other day.

that was interpreted as a dig at President Trump. Specifically, he said, we need to confront, quote, the crisis of ethics and integrity in our society and among our leaders, or, quote, risk American democracy as we know it entering its twilight. I have to say a lot of people were like, ooh, what a shot at Trump. I read this and it made me very angry because Rex was in the administration. He had a chance. He was part of this crisis of ethics and dishonesty. and I think in an era where Trump's calling Chuck Todd a son of a bitch at a rally or, you know, referring to shithole countries, I think we need to be a little more vocal and direct with these criticisms. But that's just my personal bias. You covered this speech. How did it go over? And was there any reaction from the White House? Well, I should clarify, it wasn't in Lexington for the speech. We were watching it and writing about it from Washington. I did speak to a couple of people who attended it. And, you know, the impression among.

those listening in person was the same as for us listening with our political ears on, which is that this was Tillerson saying what he thought not only about Trump and his relationship to the truth, but the potential danger that ignoring the truth or distorting the truth has for American democracy going forward. They were very strong words. And he prefaced them, before he got to the bit that you opened with, he prefaced. that whole section of his of his remarks by saying, as I look around at what's happening in our country and our leadership, comma, anyone on from there, right? So it's, the context couldn't be more clear. He never called out Trump directly by name. He never referred to the White House.

He never referred to the Trump administration. He really didn't refer that much to his own time in government. It was really only in context that you know he's speaking from direct experience. But to your point, you know, we have yet to see a Trump administration official stormout on principle, right? Right. Lots of them leak that they might. Some of them leak, you know, presumably to kind of show that they have a view that they're not expressing publicly. I mean, we assume that that's where some of the motivation lies. But for someone like Tillerson, you're right that he would have had that opportunity.

and who knows what might have happened had he not been, you know, fired by a tweet. But this is an ethical and a moral dilemma that predates the Trump administration. You know, do you, when faced with a moral quandary as a public official, is the best thing to do to try to make things better by staying where you are and working to make things better? or is the thing to do to expose the thing that you think is a moral issue and, you know, make a public show of it and storm out? And, you know, obviously every administration has, you know, some version of this, large or small, and different administration officials will make both of those choices in any administration. Right. So, I mean, there's a broader question here, I think, of do those voices even matter? You wrote a piece a few weeks ago about how Donald Trump is getting more confident with his gut instincts when it comes to foreign policy decision making and is becoming more dismissive of people pushing him into sort of respected international norms or conventional wisdom. Can you talk about how that has manifested and plays out?

Are there voices left on his on his national security team that are capable of protecting Trump from his gut instinct or are those guardrails just gone? Well, I mean, we don't really know the answer for where Bolton. Bolton will fit, whether he is a guardrail or not. He clearly has a far more skeptical view of many of the issues Trump is now confronting than Trump himself does. But in general, Trump is now surrounded by people who share some of his more important, you know, kind of guiding, I guess, principles. And those people include Pompeo and include Bolton to a degree. That piece you referred to, kind of talked about how Trump is pointing in his conversations within the White House and elsewhere to the example of North Korea. Now, mind you, this is before this week where, you know, the summit is in some jeopardy or some doubt. But Trump has been pointing to the extraordinarily rapid turnaround in the U.S. relationship

and stance toward North Korea and the possibility. of denuclearizing the New Korean Peninsula, which Trump takes direct credit for, how quickly that all happened to go from Little Rocket Man and Fire and Fury and all of that. I mean, from a few months ago to, you know, my good buddy, Kim, who I'm going to sit down with on June 12th, as Trump is saying, look, you know, I was able to do this and no one, no one, no one would have said I could have done it. And everyone would have told me not to do 15 of the things I've done that produce this victory or this possibility of a victory. And so, you know, that's what I think of your establishment thinking, you know, Rex Tillerson and H.R. McMaster.

Like, look, see, you know, I'm the guy who, through unconventional means and unconventional approaches and not, you know, not least, you know, the force of my own personality and ideas. I'm the guy who was able to make this potentially great thing happen. So I am not going to listen to you and to the likes of you on Iran, on the Jerusalem embassy, on any number of other issues where what he views as establishment nitpickers were telling him, you know, hey, watch it, don't move so fast. This is, you know, there are all kinds of pitfalls ahead of you. You know, there are established procedures for this. You're not following. the procedures, you know, he's basically saying, you know, screw you all. I am not going to

follow the established procedures. And I have this to point to as evidence of why I don't need to. Yeah. I'm all for questioning conventional wisdom, but he clearly, I mean, the guy hopped on a train being driven by Kim Jong-un in the South Korean, and then he slapped on a conductor's hat and declared himself in charge. And, oh, boy, Jesus take the wheel. Yeah, well, I mean, back to North Korea. Like, there's lots of chuckling in Asia Geek circles about how Moon has played Trump. I think we're still waiting to see whether that's really true, but, you know, clearly, you know, Moon has gotten what he wanted so far. Yeah, the South Korean President Moon's flattery has helped him immensely, it seems. And Gehrin, thank you so much for the great reporting

you're doing at The Washington Post. Everyone should subscribe to the Washington Post. I am a longtime subscriber. We at Crooked Media have several accounts because you guys are doing incredible reporting. And thank you for talking with me and dealing with some difficult issues. in a very thoughtful and helpful way. I appreciate it. You're so welcome. Tommy, it was really fun. I appreciate it up.

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So thanks again. And Lucas says hello.