Pod Save the World - President Biden, Saudi Arabia and human rights

Episode Date: March 3, 2021

Tommy and Ben talk about the newly released report on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and how President Joe Biden is approaching the US-Saudi relationship, US airstrikes on Syria, how Iran has responded to outreach from the Biden administration, why another French President is going to jail, Salvadoran elections, India and Pakistan reaching a ceasefire in Kashmir, Mike Pompeo’s bad stand up at CPAC and more. Then Ben talks to historian and author Thant Myint-U about where Myanmar goes from here and whether the US actually has a role to play in bringing democracy back to the country.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, I want to wish you and all our listeners a happy Merck Johnson & Johnson vaccine collaboration day. I don't really know what that means or how it'll work, but I'm just going to continue to play up anything that makes me feel like I might get vaccine soon because I'm losing my mind. How are you? I've never had such positive feelings about Big Pharma, Tommy. I know. It's like it's so. weird to be rooting for big pharma, but I am. Go Merk. I just wish I knew people in the health care space because, boy, I'm lonely in here. We got a lot to cover today. We are going to talk about the not at all funny situation with Saudi Arabia and the Biden administration's response to Saudi Arabia's

murder of a journalist named Jamal Khashoggi and why it has disappointed a lot of people. Talk about some new U.S. sanctions against Russia. The Biden team strike against Iranian-back militants in Syria. Another former French president is going to jail. El Salvador's young president has some human rights activists worried, and we'll explain why. Some very troubling news out of Ethiopia, some very good news out of India and Pakistan, and then the comedy stylings of Mike Pompeo. So we've got a range of stuff to cover here. And then, Ben, you did our interview today on a wild time zone difference. What did you guys talk about? Yeah, I talked to Taant Mianu, who's really the leading kind of Burmese historian, political analysts, also the grandson of the former Secretary General of the United Nations.

And we covered, you know, what is driving the mass mobilization movement, what are the key actors in Burma want, the military, Aung San Suu Kyi and her political party, the young people in the streets. And it was just really great to get, you know, a perspective, you know, this is a country we often talk about, but we need to listen more to people from Myanmar. So people should really check it out. Tant's interview is great. And he's got a great book, too, Hidden History, that deals with kind of the recent history of Myanmar,

I think would be great context for anybody who wants to learn more about what's happening there. That's great. I'm excited to hear that. I feel a pit in my stomach every day when I see that little update on Twitter about how the Internet has been cut every single night. by the military does not seem good. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I mean, the good and hopeful thing is that, you know, there's never really been this scale of mobilization across the country, which is inspiring that, of course, the tragic thing is now the military is using violence and response. So we cover that and more in the interview. Great, great. Two quick things before we get to the news. So in the latest episode of Rubicon from Crooked Media editor-in-chief Brian Boiler, he has a great conversation with writer Matthew Iglesias about the debate over whether President Biden

and should forgive student debt. So check out the Rubicon podcast. It covers the first 100 days of the Biden administration. And it's just been great. Also, Cricket Media's political director, Shaniko McClendon, has a fantastic conversation

about HBCUs, historically black colleges and universities. She talks with representatives, James Clyburn, Alma Adams, and Corey Bush. So go to YouTube.com slash cricket media. You can watch Shaniqua's interviews and then just generally smash that

subscribe button because there's all kinds of good stuff there. All right, Ben, let's start with Saudi Arabia. So the backstory for folks is that in October of 2018, a Saudi Arabian dissident and journalist named Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. It was pretty much immediately clear that Khashoggi was killed by the Saudi government, and, you know, news outlets quickly reported that U.S. intelligence believed that this hit was ordered by the top, by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS. MBS for listeners. He's the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia. He's next in line to be king. The Trump administration, Trump himself,

covered up MBS's role in this killing. They refused to provide Congress with information about the murder despite being legally obligated to. Bob Woodward later quoted Trump saying he had, quote, saved MBS's ass, end quote. During the campaign, President Biden said that MBS was responsible for Khashoggi's death and that the Saudis would be held responsible. Let's play a clip of that. President Trump has not punished senior Saudi leaders, would you? Yes, and I said it at the time. Keshogi was, in fact, murdered and dismembered, and I believe in the order of the Crown Prince.

And I would make it very clear, we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them. We were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are. There's very little social redeeming value in the present government. in Saudi Arabia. So obviously that was candidate Biden. He wasn't yet in control of the intelligence community. Now he is. And last week, Biden's intelligence team released a declassified report about the

killing, the one that Trump had suppressed. And it unequivocally stated that MBS approved the Khashoggi assassination. Some of the evidence includes the fact that seven members of the assassination team were part of MBS's personal security detail. So as punishment, State Department announced sanctions on 76 Saudis. They created a new category of sanctions called the Khashoggi ban that will ban visas to anyone linked to the repression detention of dissidents and journalists. But here's the problem, MBS himself wasn't punished in any way. So, you know, Ben, administration officials said Biden was worried about punishing MBS because it could like sever ties with the guy who's positioned to lead the country for decades. It might made it harder to cooperate on Iran. That one I don't really

understand at all. And they point out that historically the U.S. is not sanctioned, leaders of countries that we have relations with like Putin and Russia, Xi Jinping, and China. Of course, we have sanctioned the shit out of leaders in Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, at other places. They also point out that the Biden administration has previously announced the end of U.S. support for Saudi Arabia's offensive military operations in Yemen in a freeze on arms sales. So, Ben, a lot of contacts there, but let's pause here. I found this very disappointing.

I know you did too because I read your Twitter. I think Mohammed bin Salman deserves to be punished for his actions, treated like a global pariah. The Khashoggi family deserves some measure of justice here. But it is bigger than just this case, right? Because there are reports that the Saudi set another group of assassins to Canada to try to kill a former intelligence official there. So this is something they've repeated. And, you know, clearly MBS and his crew are just acting with impunity. I'm not pretending this is an easy set of issues, but the outcome seems to have disappointed most people.

What was your reaction to this decision? And what do you think the penalty should have been for MBS or the Saudis more broadly? Yeah, well, look, I mean, I think they do deserve credit for releasing the assessment. They've definitely made good on their promise to halt support to the war in Yemen. The arms sales piece is a bit ambiguous. You know, they've kind of halted it, reviewing. They're trying to draw distinctions from offensive and defensive weapons, which is not quite as simple as it sounds. So TBD, I think the thing that's concerning to me is twofold. One, the general and the other is specific. The general issue of, well, you know, he's the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia. He's, you know, likely to be the king of Saudi Arabia for a long time. And we need the Saudis, so therefore we can't risk this relationship. I question the premise of that. Like, what do we need them for that badly? You know, in the sense of, the arguments given were like we need to work with them to counter Iran. Well, it's the Saudis who want us. What did you make of that, right? Don't, yeah. It's such a blobby argument because it's a, it's a self-fulfilling circle because the Saudis want us to do more to confront Iran on their behalf. And so then we have to do more to confront Iran to make the Saudis happy, but we need them in order to do that. Like it just, you know, it's a failure sometimes in the American foreign

policy establishment to step back and question underlying assumptions. You know, we are the stronger party in this relationship. By the way, we used to depend on them to supply, you know, a lot of oil to the global economy. Well, that's less and less important as we shift towards clean energy. The U.S. has surpassed Saudi Arabia as even a producer. And the reality there, too, is it's not like the Saudis are going to stop selling oil on the global market to get back in America. That would hurt them, you know.

So I question that assumption generally. But then the specifics of, well, by going on saying we don't want to sanction leaders, what kind of message are you sending to MBS? Because you're kind of saying, we will never sanction. You know, if you can't sanction somebody for killing a U.S. resident who works the Washington Post in your consulate, you know, if that doesn't cross the threshold, what would? You know, is there anything that someone could do? And so I think that's the logic question. And in terms of what they could have done, I think, look, you're not going to freeze MBS's assets. That's a little complicated.

The guy's sitting on a trillion dollars, right? He's sitting on the Saudi National Oil Company, the sovereign wealth fund that is deeply invested in the American economy. I get the difficulty of, say, trying to somehow impose a financial penalty on someone who has bottomless financial resources. But a travel ban, you know, saying that this guy can't travel to the United States, that's a personal consequence he faces and saying publicly that Joe Biden will not meet with him, will not deal with him.

You could say that other U.S. officials wouldn't necessarily deal with him either. That would have a cost because it would indicate that, you know, what, this guy, we're not going to afford him the same, you know, privileges that we would, leaders who haven't murdered journalists, you know, who are U.S.-based journalists, U.S. persons. So, you know, that's where I think that there was an opportunity missed. You know, there's something in between like a full sanction type policy and a direct personal consequence to MBS. And I think this idea of what is his status, what is his travel status, is an area that

they could have pursued. Yeah, former CIA director, John Brennan, who was, you know, worked in, lived in Saudi Arabia multiple times, suggested a similar thing. You know, so that Biden audio that we played for. you guys was from a democratic debate. Later on in that same answer, Biden says, quote, we must make it clear that we stand for human rights. We should be going to the United Nations seeking condemnation of China, what they're doing with one million Uyghurs and concentration camps. He also mentioned Hong Kong. I think that's another key point here, right? Like China is watching,

Russia is watching. They are constantly assessing whether there's a cost for human rights violations. And my guess is this decision will lead them to believe they'll get a pass. I'm not suggesting that we should sanction Xi Jinping necessarily or that it would be simple to do so. But, you know, it does, you know, candidate Biden and President Biden don't seem totally synced up here. Well, yeah, there's a specific issue of, like, leaders where, look, I've expressed a lot of skepticism of sanctions, particularly these broad sanctions that target the population. And we talk about this in the Burma context in the interview. But you know what, individual leaders, like increasingly, as we've had this drift towards like nationalism and authoritarianism,

are increasingly responsible for very specific things, like killing Jamal Khashoggi or like poisoning Alexei Navalny. And I'm not sure why, you know, why is it okay to sanction the whole population of Cuba or the whole population of Iran, but not a leader, you know, when oftentimes U.S. sanctions hurt innocent people. We might as well focus on people who are guilty. I was thinking a lot of, if I was,

government. I'd be the Biden people. I'm sure they're frustrated with people like us and that they're thinking, look, we're trying to do something important here. We're trying to change the Saudi relationship. We're not Trump. We're not giving them a blank check. We're suspending these arms sales and reviewing them. We've stopped our support for the war in Yemen. And they've committed to this kind of human rights mechanism to protect journalists. And I have to say, like, if they follow through on all those things, that's hugely important and should not get lost in the kind of political controversy over this one decision. That said, I learned from the Obama years that sometimes these symbolic events, they really matter, you know. And I think analogy I used with you on

our text chain, Tommy, is that we canceled the meeting with the Dalai Lama that Obama was supposed to have in 2009 because he was going to go to China. And we didn't want to have a really disruptive meeting with the Dalai Lama to kind of sour those relations. And so we went and we had a lot criticism and we got very defensive and we said, don't you see, we're trying to actually impact the Chinese and this is a better way to do it. But you know what? That was wrong because early in the Obama administration, we sent a message through that not meeting with the dilemma that we seemed to be willing to adjust our behavior on a human rights issue because of the political difficulty of it. And so I think people have to recognize that, yeah, this sent a message. It was an early

kind of test of where will they weigh human rights and democracy type issues related to other priorities. And it's impossible, even if it wasn't their intention, it's impossible to not draw the conclusion that there was a kind of old, old line realist calculation made to not do something that they probably wanted to do, but, you know, in sanctioning MBS, but concluded they couldn't. And yeah, you're right. There's no doubt that that that's a message. Yeah, look, I've enormous sympathy for all of these issues being hard. Yeah. I can imagine the situation room meeting where, you know, generals with four stars on their

shoulder talk about how we need the Saudis for the variety of reasons. The intelligence community talks about their critical cooperation on AQAP in dealing with Al-Qaeda and they're all rights, right? You know, but yeah, look, this got built up as being about something bigger and about U.S. values and protecting journalists and, you know, the rights of free expression. And I think that people are understandably a little bummed out by the outcome. Also, right before we started taping today, Tuesday, the Biden administration declassified a report that said the FSB, a Russian intelligence agency orchestrated the attempted assassination of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the Biden team

sanctioned members of the Russian government. They didn't sanction Putin. They didn't sanction Russia's top intelligence chiefs, presumably for the same set of reasons. right? We have to meet with them, work with them on things. But these sanctions essentially mirror steps that have been taken by countries in Europe. So like they are taking action against these sorts of violations and at least naming and shaming the people involved. It's a, yeah. I mean, look, across the board, this is a huge improvement from where we were that. And I'd say, like, I've often thought that, you know, MBS probably wouldn't have done what he did with Jamal Khashoggi if there was Joe Biden as president or Barack Obama or frankly, anybody.

So it's not an Obama point. It's just Trump, he knew he had such impunity with Jared Kushner sucking up to MBS and Trump hugging the guy that he could do this. I do think it matters that the U.S. now is putting some guardrails around these issues. That said, I think that given the backsliding around democracy in the world, given the aggressive challenge to democracy in this country and from China and Russia around the world, there has to be kind of a paradigm shift where the way in which. human rights have been dealt with an American farm policy in recent history, certainly, is it's

always kind of secondary to some other interests, you know, a counterterrorism interest, an economic interest, a climate change interest. And if people know that it's something you care about, but it's something you care less about than something else, they're not going to take it quite as as seriously as if you put human rights on the same plateau as those other interests. And that's asking a lot of the Biden team to make that paradigm shift. And I don't claim that we made it in the Obama years. I think at times we did, but at other times we certainly didn't. But I kind of feel like that's what if you really want to revitalize democracy around the world and you really want to engage in this kind of battle on behalf of civil society and journalists and democracy activists,

people need to see you do it when it's hard, you know, not just do the sanctions that are expected or the, but, you know, when are you willing to make a trade off and say, you know what, we will suffer a bit of consequences with the Saudis if we take this route, but we're willing to do that. And that would send a message, this is, this is changing. This is different. So credit to Biden on moving the paradigm back to caring about these things and raising them and being a spotlight on them and being a source of accountability. But I think, I truly think that the time has come to go further to where you're elevating human rights to the same prioritization that you put on other things.

Yeah. Let's turn to Syria and Iraq. Because last week, the U.S. carried out air strikes in eastern Syria against buildings and individuals that said were associated with Iranian-backed militia groups that were operating in Iraq. The Pentagon said that this strike was in response to a rocket attack on American and coalition personnel that happened in mid-February. That attack killed a Filipino contractor, and it wounded six others, including five Americans.

Biden's team described the strikes to press as relatively small. They told reporters that President Biden chose the most limited of the options he was presented because he didn't want to escalate hostilities, especially with Iran. Several Democrats criticized the strike and they questioned the legal basis for it. I reached out to the Pentagon about that legal authorities question and they pointed to the president's article to authority to defend U.S. personnel to deter risk from future attacks. They also pointed to the right of self-defense under international law. So, Ben, I think we could just take this in two parts.

First is this legal question, right? Like, members of Congress are absolutely right. That offensive military action has not been authorized in Syria. We need a new AUMF, Tim Kane, Chris Murphy, lots of Democrats have been talking about this. I also think we should question whether retaliation against these groups, these militia groups, actually deters them, right? It might. But we were told that assassinating Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general, would deter Iran and would deter these militia groups when Trump killed him back in January of 2020.

but it hasn't. But I guess the question is, what do you do if you have forces in Iraq that are getting attacked by these militia groups that are operating just over the border in Syria, right? Like, you don't want a situation like you have in Afghanistan where the Taliban have this safe haven in Pakistan and can operate there with impunity and then attack your folks. Like, it feels like a similarly tough problem. Yeah, this is a hard problem. On the legal question, like, obviously this comes to forward through this individual strike, but there's really just a bigger issue. And the bigger issue is that U.S. troops are in all these places and doing all these things, whether it's Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, under these authorities that were given to them in 2001 and 2002

by Congress, you know. And so it's been like 20 years since we've had a real revised AUMF authorization for the use of military force from Congress, that needs to happen. And so I know the Biden team is doing COVID relief and, you know, you can understand they're juggling a lot of things. But I think some of the agitation from Congress is just, hey, we need you guys to send up a new AOMF or we need to negotiate with you on a new authorization for the use of military force. Less about this one strike and more about just what is the legal rationale for all of our military engagements in the Middle East and South Asia. Yeah, it's important.

It's important. And then the other thing that caught my attention is, look, there's been these proxy attacks from Iranian-backed militias or, you know, groups inside of Iraq on U.S. forces, on U.S. contractors that we're working with on Iraqi forces. And there are often U.S. military reprisals. I think what was different is that this was in Syria. And that was different. That kind of, the first time I saw And by design, too, right? Because they said they didn't want to upset the Iraqi government or create a political problem for them. Well, and by design, but I remember when I saw the news alert, it took me, I did kind of a double take because I saw the reprisal for what happened

inside of Iraq, and I assume that we bombed somebody in Iraq, you know? In the Obama years, even as we had the counter-Isis campaign in Syria, we did not go after Iranian-backed militias inside of Syria. That's a different target. And in some ways, there's an escalation and saying that we're now fighting Iran in Syria as well as in Iraq. And so, you know, that does merit, scrutiny, you know, and I think Congress is right to ask questions. They may have a clear rationale, and I think if you listen to the Biden team, they were clearly trying to indicate that this is not meant to be some big escalation. You know, they chose a site that's on the border, on the Iraqi Syria border. They went out of their way to say it wasn't the biggest, you know, most robust

strike option available to them. But you can't get around the fact that they took their first strike in Syria, not in Iraq, doing something that was not, you know, the norm in the Obama years, and we also had these kinds of attacks. By the way, not even the norm in the Trump years. You know, the Israelis often hit Iranian-backed targets inside of Syria. The U.S. usually doesn't. So I can see, you know, we can see the intelligence. If they think they had to do it to protect our forces, you know, again, that should be scrutinized by Congress.

But I would be concerned if this becomes a regular kind of escalatory cycle where suddenly we're fighting a proxy war in Syria as well as Iraq and everything else, you know. I did the exact same double take. I got a text from a friend about what had happened, and I assumed it was in Iraq, and I didn't really read the full story initially and then realized that the strike was in Syria and realized that it's actually a far bigger deal than I realized. The other thing just worth pointing out is we've all, I think, just gotten so numb to and used to there being military activity in the region that I'm not sure if you caught 60 minutes over the weekend, but they did a segment on Iran's response.

to the assassination of Qasem Soleimani back in January of 2020 when the Iranians fired 11 ballistic missiles with 1,000-pound warheads at Al-Assad Air Base in Iraq. And like some of the men and women serving there had cleared out. Others were left sheltering in bunkers that were just insufficient for weapons of that size. And the takeaway from this report was it was a miracle that U.S. service members didn't die. is a miracle that the fighting didn't escalate into an even bigger conflict. It's really worth watching the piece. They have drone footage of the missiles striking our base, and you can see just how close we came.

They talk to the men and women who live through it, some of whom still have traumatic brain injuries and are suffering to these day. These are not insignificant actions. I think that was like the big takeaway. I think you have to live through that experience to fully understand it the way they did. Yeah. And I will say, too, that it's a fascinating piece and there are great things about it. I also though think in that piece they were a little too credulous, you know, the claim was made that there

was intelligence Soleimani was going to strike our troops in days. That's not what we learned at the reporting of the time or from Congress. They stopped asserting that. Yeah. And CBS didn't really push back, you know. But which by the way proves the point of like there's usually just a kind of we take at face value that there's tit for tat military action in this region and you don't kind of scrutinize the basis. We challenged, you know, and said at the time that that intelligence should be made available to Congress. I think that Biden administration from what I hear has done the right thing in providing that basis to Congress. And we have not heard any complaints, which would suggest that in this case, there really was a tie between this militia group and this

target and what had happened to U.S. forces. But you're right. And if you tally up kind of of a few things that have been happening recently where there's been this, you know, the Iranians have not responded to the offer of diplomacy over the nuclear program. Frankly, the Biden administration appears to be pretty hawkish heading into that diplomacy. They are talking about needing to counter Iran and the decision not to sanction MBS. Now we have this strike on a reigning back militia. Just because Biden doesn't want to have a conflict with Iran doesn't mean, as you point out, Tommy, that an event couldn't intervene that leads to an escalation. Yeah.

Well, let's talk about this broader set of issue with Iran because you previewed it well. I mean, last week, like you mentioned, Iran rejected the European Union's offered to hold direct nuclear talks with the U.S. because Iran wants still, they've said it many times, they once sort of guarantee that those talks would lead to sanctions relief. Iran has also proposed having the EU serve as some sort of mediator to broker a process that would lead each side to making concessions. But so, Ben, the thing that's really jumping out of me is that the clock. is ticking, right? Because there's a presidential election in June. Hassan Rouhani, the president of Iran, he's term-limited out of the job. He can't run again. So we don't know if the next president will be a hardliner, will be someone more moderate. I mean, odds are if history passes prolog,

it'll be a hardliner. You know, so you have the Biden team, like, you know, taking a pretty hawkish position. Republicans are demanding an even more hawkish position, right? They want the negotiations to tackle all of Iran's malign activities. How worried are you about this upcoming Iranian election and the possibility that Iranian politics could get in the way of a deal? Well, there's no question, you know, that there's always a risk that the Iranians will be intransigent about negotiations, about returning to the deal. Again, I also think, so what does the U.S. control? I mean, I think, you know, Chris Murphy spoke about this well. If you want to check out his Twitter feed and he's written about this recently.

there was an assumption that the Biden team was just going to try to reenter the JCPOA. And I think they've been less and unequivocal in saying we will come back in the deal, compliance for compliance. We will return to compliance if Iran returns to compliance. And we talked about the sequencing issue. But the reason that's important is, one, that's your best shot of just getting in the deal. And I think that the U.S. should be willing to return to compliance first. And then if the Iranians don't comply, then you can pull back out. But second, Secondly, even just diplomatically, if the U.S. indicates that they're prepared to go back into the deal and comply with the deal, then the ball's more in the Iranians court than it is right now. Because all the U.S. has said now is we want to have these talks about returning the deal.

If it really is the case that the Iranians can't get there, well, test the proposition and test it in front of the world. And then it'll be clear, you know, who's responsible for not returning to the deal. So I'd just like to see a bit of a more forceful diplomatic push year to put the onus. on the Iranian and say, we're willing to come back in, and that's what we're here to discuss. And if the Iranians refuse to do it at that point, well, then, you know, then you have a problem. But if you don't do that and the time ticks off the clock and there's more of this tit for tat around other issues, you know, you could lose the window. The window could close to return to the JCPOA. And then we're just kind of back in a situation where the Iranians have a nuclear program

that's creeping forward and you have this risk of escalation in the region. And you know what? you may think that you're kind of putting off Iran as a problem, but it has a way of reemerging events can bring it back to the forefront here. So this does bear a lot of watching here in the next few months. Okay, like every administration before us, we wanted to focus on the entire globe. We got a little bog down in the Middle East. So let's turn to France. Former French president, Nicholas Sarkozy was found guilty this week of trying to illegally get information about another illegal case against him from a judge in return for giving that judge favors, maybe another job. He was sentenced to a three-year prison sentence. Most of that, I think, will be suspended.

Sarkozy will have to stand trial again later this month in a separate case. And then there's another even more serious case against him that dates back to allegations that his campaign back in 2007 received illegal contributions from the Libyan government. That was under Gaddafi. So Sarkozy, he lost his campaign for rear election in 2012. He tried and failed to make a comeback in 2016. Sarko joins a long and growing list of senior French officials who have been prosecuted, including former president Jacques Chirac. Ben, I have to say, reading about this case made me a little jealous of a legal system

that actually prosecutes corrupt former presidents. I don't know if we need to call over there. Maybe we should take a fact-finding mission to Paris, get some advice. What do you think? Well, yeah, I had the same thought of like, you know, France has a strong presidential system, right? So these are strong, you know, huge figures in French politics and they're not above the law. And so, you know, maybe the U.S. Justice Department can take a glance across the Atlantic Ocean and realize that our former president is not beyond the reach of the law. I'll say it's just a wild story. Like Sarkozy used to take a bigger than life kind of eccentric figure. And the Gaddafi angle is fascinating because they were super cozy with Gaddafi clearly, too cozy. And then Sarkozy actually led the charge to go to war against Gaddafi. He was out in front of that whole effort.

And then, of course, that's the thread that started to unravel all these corruption charges. And he's got the whole story, he's married to Carla Bruni, the kind of actress, singer, celebrity, whatever you want to call her. It's got all the makings of a great made-for-TV movie or podcast year. But I mean, I think the broader lesson here is French politics is a rough place. But, you know, kudos to the French justice system for following these things for years and not seeing anybody's above the law. By the way, any studio heads out there, any executive producers, I know I have a writer friend who, you know, is a real expertise in politics and some high school French. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, if you don't, you can pick up Babel.

No, okay. But yeah, no, I, I, there's just the kind of stories you need to get told, Tommy. Yeah, get that pitch in good shape. Let's get it out there. Let's talk about El Salvador. Naïve Bukhali is the 39-year-old president of El Salvador. He was elected in June of 2019, and a poll taken back in November found that he had a 96% approval rating. That is like, like Putin, Kim Jong-un-Rig-Pole-type numbers. Bukhali started a new political party, Nueva Ideas, New Ideas. In 2018, he's accrued a remarkable amount of political power in a very short period of time. He's the first president in recent Salvadorian history who didn't come out of either the

right-wing arena party or the left-wing FMLN party. He ran on promising to root out corruption and reducing gang violence. And there's some evidence that he has reduced the homicide rate pretty dramatically. I don't really know why exactly, but there's statistics out there. Buckely's party and his allies just won a super majority in El Salvador's legislative elections, which means that they could control almost all of the government. Now, this has greatly worried human rights advocates, and apparently the Biden administration, if you believe, background sources and news reports, because Buckely has been willing to use the military

to pressure the legislature. He literally like stormed troops in to try to force a vote at one point, which is scary. He has called his critics' traitors. He's attacked the media, which is reminding a lot of people of El Salvador's pretty recent history as a military dictatorship. So, Ben, you know, the Trump administration loved authoritarian leaders of all stripes. They loved them in Latin America.

They love them in Egypt. They love them everywhere. But, you know, the Biden administration has talked about his plan to strengthen and renew democracy in Latin America specifically. How worried do you think they should be about this? Because, you know, when I was researching this segment, I saw some polling that found that satisfaction with democracy generally among Latin Americans has dropped from like 44 points to 24 points over the last decade. Lots of leaders in the region have used the military to bolster their image during times of crisis. You know, you can look at Brazil, a bunch of other places.

How worried you about this potential, you know, autocratic turn in El Salvador in maybe the broader region? I think it's something to be worried about it. I should start by saying, you know, I understand the impulse in El Salvador, the frustration with political elites. I was thinking when we talked about this issue, Tommy, we went to El Salvador in 2011. And the president at that time was a guy named Rizio Funes, who was also from outside the political establishment. He'd been like a TV journalist, you know, and he entered through one of the traditional parties, but people were hopeful that, you know, there was such frustration with corruption and elites and gang violence and corruption between the gangs and the government

that people were hoping that this guy could be something different. And of course, that ended up being dashed hope over time. And that was 10 years ago. And there's just a horrific gang violence and grinding corruption in the country. And so you can understand why people are like anybody who's different. You know, like I want someone who's just outside the political establishment, someone young, someone different. You have to understand the mentality of the El Salvador electorate, if you will. That said, you know, there has to be an effort if what the U.S. is trying to, in what the U.S. is trying to do with the Biden administration is trying to do just to channel that energy, you know, into institution building and not into kind of one man, one rule or one man in the military rule

type approaches that in the long run, you know, that kind of cult of personality tends to lead to pretty bad places that are not just undemocratic, but they end up being corrupt and they end up being the thing that people didn't want in the first place. And so I think from a U.S. policy perspective, but not just the U.S., like the Americas, like what people should be focused on across the Americas, is trying to strengthen institutions to be less corrupt and to be more responsive to people. And even if a charismatic leader comes along, that the energy of that charismatic leader is directed to making the institutions work more effectively reforming the institutions, not just saying, screw it, I'm going to work with the military outside of this. Because that leads to bad places everywhere, including Central America. Yeah. And also, I should just note that I am well aware of, ashamed of some of the history in El Salvador, the way the U.S. has helped foment civil war.

Desquins. Yeah, I was watching some interviews with Buckele and he was talking about how, you know, one of the reasons they have such a big MS-13 problem is because the U.S. started deporting MS-13 gang members back to El Salvador, who set up shop down there, right? So, like, we are a piece of the puzzle here. And we sell guns. You know, they come up to the U.S. to buy guns or they smuggle guns from the U.S. down. You know, yeah, no, we're part of the problem. But we're also like, I think we have to think of, you know, people think of Mexico a lot. Like, we are very intertwined with El Salvador, the number of Salvadorians in here in L.A. Or in the D.C. area where I used to live.

And a chunk of the El Salvadoran economy is the remittances that people in the U.S. and back down there. Obviously, a lot of the stuff at the border emanates from El Salvador in Central America. You know, so in the long run, we have like an interest of responsibility. a moral responsibility to stay engaged and try to help solve some of these structural problems in countries like El Salvador, you know, for self-interested reasons, right? Because if you want to stop enormous floods of unaccompanied children coming to our borders for humanitarian reasons and for, you know, secure border reasons, if that's your perspective,

well, the only real way to do that is to address the underlying causes, some of which we helped create that are facilitating that kind of migration. So there's all kinds of reasons for the U.S. to really stay engaged here. And it's not easy. But what it takes is sustained effort, you know, five years, 10 years, bipartisan, which is always hard, support for the kind of, you know, assistance and engagement and relationships that help, again, strengthen institutions to be more effective so that people don't think that the only recourse is to just turn to some guy who's going to grab the military and impose his will. Yes, agreed. So I wanted to a quick update on Ethiopia. We talked a couple of times last year about, you know, the beginning of a civil war in Ethiopia.

To catch you up, like in November of last year, the Ethiopian central government declared war on fighters in a small northern province called Tigray. Teigre is home to about six million of Ethiopia to 110 million residents. The central government led by the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has longstanding tensions with leaders in Tigray. They're part of the Tigray People's Liberation Front or TPLF. And he started attacking targets in that region. So Prime Minister Ahmed claimed he was acting in response to a TPLF attack on a government military base. We don't really know. When the fighting started, the central government caught off electricity. They cut off phones. They cut off internet in the area. So it was very hard to get information out about what was happening. There were some

disturbing initial reports, even last year, about hundreds of people being killed in the fighting. Now, after several months, reports are starting to trickle out about mass atrocities, including at Ethiopia's most sacred Orthodox Church, where the deacon there says he believes that 800 people were killed in that surrounding area in just one weekend. I've seen estimates that over two million people may have been displaced. What makes these reports, especially jarring, is that the prime Minister, Prime Minister Ahmed, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for cutting a peace deal with Eritrea, Ethiopia's neighbor. Now there is considerable evidence that Eritrean soldiers were working with Ethiopian forces to hunt down these local militias. And those Eritrean forces are accused of some of the

worst war crimes and atrocities. The New York Times reported that an internal U.S. government report says that the Ethiopian government is leading an ethnic cleansing campaign. The president of the TPLF accused the central government and Eritrean allies of genocide. side, Biden's team, led by Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State, has been publicly and privately pushing Prime Minister Ahmed to end these hostilities. Then there's also concern about, you know, the violence spilling over into places like Sudan, destabilizing the entire horn of Africa. Are you seeing enough engagement from the international community to address what's going on here? Because it seems like we're just beginning to see how bad it actually is.

Yeah. And to the backstory, you know, Tommy, you weren't around, but after the mid-term elections in 2014 heading in the last two years. In the kind of a cheesy Ted Lasso way, Dennis McDonough, was the White House chief of staff, handed out stickers that said fight cynicism to everybody in the White House. But, you know, because the reason I say that is like, man, it's cynical. If you look back, because I, like everybody, like the people who gave Prime Minister Ahmed, the Nobel Prize, thought it was great when he ended the war with their war. Eritrea. But the cynicism is, huh, was that all part of the play to set up, you know,

working with Eritrea to go into this area of northern Ethiopia where he could, you know, take on his political opponents who were also where Eritia is? I hope not. But it's hard not to calculate that there was a pretty cynical bargain behind all this. You know, the, I, the Biden team has been, like what I like about what they've done is they've been outspoken from from the transition, they started talking about this, clearly getting more engaged. I think what's necessary now is to really involve the international community and the U.N. is the right venue to try to do more through the UN, through the Security Council, work with the-

We're the president of the council this month. We're the president of the council this month, so this is a good issue. Linda Thomas Greenfield was the assistant secretary of state for Africa. She definitely understands the dynamics here. So I think that there's an opportunity that. this month for the U.S. to really push this at the U.N., push this working with the African Union, which is based in Ethiopia. And, yes, to both, you know, try to first and foremost put an end to this fighting

and try to channel some of this into a political negotiation. But, yeah, if need be to look back, you know, are there, is there accountability necessary? You know, the U.S. is often at odds with the international criminal court. Trump sanctioned the ICC. Yeah. Yeah. People are wondering why Biden hasn't pulled back on those sanctions yet. I meant to prepare that for today, but just ran out of time. Yeah, but, well, the reason not to attack the ICC is it's the place that you would refer, you know, investigations of this sort, but the UN can do them too under their auspices. So, so yeah, that's what I'd look for next is, is there a multilateral effort that can be launched maybe through the UN to, I mean, and there already is activity. I don't want to suggest that's not going on, but, you know, kind of amp it up. For sure. And Biden called President Kenyatta of Kenya as well, too, and I think mentioned this.

Yeah, no, the Biden team, I think, has been, they've been good on this. They've been on top of it. They've been vocal about it. They've signaled it's a priority. So I think they've done the right thing. I think they now have another opportunity with the Security Council Presidency to continue taking that to the next level. Yeah.

Two more quick things before we get to the interview. So last week for the first time since 2003, India and Pakistan announced a ceasefire in the disputed Kashmir region. This is clearly great news, right, to nuclear arms countries that have been in a low-grade war for decades. And that cross-border fighting over the 400-plus mile border in Kashmir increased significantly in 2020. There were lots of shots being lobbied back and forth. Last year, we also saw Indian forces in the Kashmir region getting into fights and standoffs with Chinese troops. So lots of reasons to be happy about a ceasefire, even if it's a bit precarious.

but it was, you know, how often do you get a breaking news alert like this about an India and Pakistan or something, like any sort of regional conflict where you were surprised in a good way by that outcome? Yeah, no, it's a good outcome. And look, I think people, you know, I used to always think when I was in government, like what are the worst case scenarios in the world? And an India-Pakistan war that could lead to a nuclear exchange was usually in the top of the list.

And so anything that makes that less likely is very welcome. It doesn't address some of the other issues in Kashmir, like the Indian government's repression there. That's a separate matter. But in terms of the India-Pakistan risk, this is positive. And what you'd hope is that there can be continued dialogue between Indian Pakistan and continued kind of normalization of their relationship, which is going to be hard, given the nature of the two governments.

But this is at least a positive step in the right direction. Yes, agreed. Finally, last thing, our friend Mike Pompei, I have a friend Mike Pompeii. spoke at CPAC last week, the right-wing, nutty, conservative political meeting. I watched it because I'm a masochist, Ben, because it's funny to me that Mike Pompeo thinks he's going to be president. I want to give you just you and all the listeners, just a little taste of how Pompeo's speech went down with the audience.

We'll play a clip. We show up Paris Climate Accord. It was a drop-destroying joke, so we said au revoir. Do you hear that? Do you hear that raucous applause from 1400 Magaloon? Arvois. Here's what I don't understand. I mean, there's so many things I understand Mike Pompeo.

But like, I honestly don't, I can't understand how there's any human who looks at that and is like, that's an appealing politician. You know, like, no charisma, clearly completely full of himself. Like, even in the Republic, like, Donald Trump, like, there's an appalling human being. and a horrible fascistic autocrat. You could see why people watch The Apprentice, though, you know? Like, you listen to Papeo there. Like, who's the audience for that joke? Like, who's sitting there like, oh, yeah, that's the guy I want to see at the podium.

This is why, like, I said you, Tommy, like, they did the straw pole of CPAC, and he got 1% among that group of nutcases, you know? Like, so when I see people talking about, like, Mike Papeo getting ready to run for president, I'm like, good luck with that, buddy, you know? Yeah. Even in the poll they did without Trump in it, Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, resting dumbface, Ron DeSantis, got like five or six times what Pompeo got. Christy Noam beat him. Donald Trump Jr. beat Pompeo.

Pompeo tied with Ted Cruz in a poll of CPAC attendees that didn't include Donald Trump. That is not good. I don't think the Abraham Accords is your path to victory here, buddy. Your idiot, MAGA friends are busy today talking about Mr. Potato. head. Yeah. Dr. It was like all culture war shit.

And Pompeo was trying to get back into that swim in that stream. But he's just, I don't know, maybe he's not good at it. You know, and, and like his Twitter feed, which I became more familiar with when he, like, you know, libeled me, you know, is basically a series of bizarre assertions of the historic success of his tenure as Secretary of State. And, like, I don't think anybody believes that except Mike Pompeo. Like, like, I don't even think that, like, I don't even think that, like, Jared Kushner, like, the other world, because not only do people not believe it, like,

nobody gives a shit, Mike. Like, there's nobody out there that's like, what does Mike Pompeo think about the issues of the day or, gee, I really think Mike Pompeo's going to go down in history as a, as a, like, like, you know what, Mike, like, just, you're going to be in the, the C-list speaker's list at CPAC behind, like, Louis Gomar or whatever the fuck that. Gummer, yeah. Like, you're behind that guy in the line because, like, you're just in the crazy people's line over here.

So you're the Eric Trump of the CPAC crowd. No one even wants to see you. Joe Biden just tweeted, now with our efforts to ramp up production, we'll have enough vaccines for every American by the end of May. How about that? Yeah. I love it. I love it.

And I have to say, like, for the Biden people, like, to the stuff we were talking about earlier, like, you know, they're thinking, and this isn't important we should talk about. I mean, like, they, they're probably thinking, I remember the beginning of our administration was like, we got to save the global economy. Oh, yeah, they're just dealt huge with shit. And so they're thinking, like, we got to get COVID right. We get these vaccines distributed and we got to pass a COVID relief bill. And some of the reason why is there's a bit of like a tentativeness on some of these other

things is probably because of that. I understand the mindset of that, even if I think they should still be, you know, more forceful on pursuing, you know, nuclear deal of Iran and consequences on Saudi. But that's great news on COVID. And they've been great on on on COVID in general. Yeah, they have. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and we come back. We'll have Ben's interview about the situation in Myanmar. So stick around for that. So I'm very happy now to be joined by Taant Mientu, an historian, a former UN official, and the author of a number of books, including most recently the hidden history of Burma, race, capitalism, and the crisis of democracy in the 21st century.

Tom, thanks so much for joining us here. Pleasure. Good to see you. Good to see you, too. And I should add, people should check out your book. And actually, your previous book, The River of Lost Footsteps, which is also the history of the previous part of Burma, I think everybody in our White House read that book. So if you want to know more about Burma's history, what's happening now, definitely check out Tantz's work. So I wanted to start with, we've seen these dramatic images of the mass mobilization in Burma. We've talked a bit on this podcast about just the context of

what's happened. But just to begin with, how would you describe this movement? Who is it? What is the scale of it? And what do they want? I think it's the closest we have to what we've seen in Burma in a long time to a spontaneous sort of uprising. And it was triggered by one thing in particular, which was the February 1st coup. It wasn't as if there was a kind of movement that had been swelling up over many months. I think when the coup happened a month ago, people were shocked and stunned. I think some of us who were following it very closely thought, you know, in a few weeks leading up to it, that something like that was possible. But I think for millions of people around the country, this was not anything that they had expected. They had just gone to

the polls a couple of months ago and voted overwhelmingly for the NLD. I think that you have a whole generation of young people who've grown up over the last 10 years who are incredibly upset, angry, frustrated at the idea that their whole future is being taken away from them. So it's a grassroots movement. It's spontaneous. You have some people like the General Strike Committee, which is a mix of different NGOs, civil society organizations, political parties, trade unions that are trying to organize things. You have other groups that are saying, They're umbrella groups as well. They are the NLD party kind of activists at the local level.

But by and large, these are, you know, tens of thousands of ordinary young people, middle class, working class, who've taken to the streets and have organized themselves in this amazing way over the past few weeks. And it seems to me in watching it that it's all over the country. You know, you might expect protest in Yangon, right, the traditional capital city, most cosmopolitan city. But this seems like it's everywhere. It's almost everywhere. I mean, there are some exceptions. So, for instance, in Rakhine, which we've heard of a lot over the years because of the Rohingya ethnic cleansing and violence there, it hasn't happened. There's some other exceptions.

But in general, yeah, it's almost everywhere in the country. It's in not just the big cities, but in small towns as well. But I think the big focus has been in Yangon and in Mandalay, at least over these past several days where we've seen the first violence against the protest. as well and a couple of dozen, at least deaths as well in clashes between the protesters and police and army. And why do you think the military is escalating violence, as you said, using live fire and munition in places, and obviously there have already been detentions, but it feels like something is escalating. What do you think the calculus is there? I think that when they first took over, the commander-in-chief and the army thought that this would be not just a bloodless coup,

but it would be a surgical kind of removal of Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD from government and that they would be able to reshape the political landscape and maybe hold new elections and everything else in the country would remain as it was and that there wouldn't be these protests. I think they've been genuinely taken aback by the scale, the strength, the determination of the protests and protesters. And I think they had originally thought that they would just, you know, time was on their side, they would sort of wait, they wouldn't use violence that over a few weeks these protests would die down. they haven't died down. Instead, they've seen some escalation in certain places. They've also seen things like the very high profile statement by the Burmese ambassador at the UN, which I think made them

think maybe we're looking weak in the eyes of the world. And I think there's a side of them that now feels enough is enough. They need to crack down. I don't think their policy is to spill as much blood on the streets as possible. But I think we have to remember, as you know very well, that this is a very brutal army that's fought a very brutal counterinsurgency campaign for decades that's that's capable of it of extreme violence and so when they do crack down I think they will do whatever it takes to to clear the streets and to crush the protesters but on the other side of that we have an incredibly determined incredibly well-organized protest movement so I think it's it's very difficult to say exactly what the next few weeks might look like and and how would you

I'm recognizing that there's a diversity of people within the movement itself. You know, how would you sum up the overall demand? Is it simply we don't want this coup? We want the government that we elected seated. Is it as simple as that? Or the economic situation in Burma is obviously very dire. Does that enter in it? How would you describe what they were?

Maybe three different things. I mean, one is that you have people who are incredibly loyal to Hong San Suuji who voted for her. who are members of the National League for Democracy, her party, who feel that this has been a stolen election, and they want nothing more than to reverse the coup and have Aung San Suu Kyi back in power. And I think that's a lot of the people who've been on the streets and who are very active. Then I think you have a lot of younger activists and others who come from a much broader spectrum of society who didn't necessarily vote for the NLD, who don't necessarily see Aung San Suu Kyi as their leader, but who don't want to see army rule.

I think they maybe through the telling of their parents or grandparents know the history of military rule and domination in Burma over many decades, don't want to go back, really felt that their lives would be different from the lives of their parents. And now, as I said before, you know, sort of they see their future being taken away from them. So you have that kind of broader base cuts across ethnic, racial, religious lines. We've seen people from many different ethnic minority communities also demonstrated in Yangon, but also elsewhere. And then we have what you just mentioned. I think we have this very dry kind of tinder because we have, you know, a year with COVID of rapidly declining economic conditions. Burma is an extremely poor country anyway. And income poverty has skyrocketed over the past year. It's gone from, according to one survey, 16% of the population to 63% of the population making less than $1.90 a day, which even in in Burma or Myanmar is not enough to live on. So you have people who are really desperate as well. And I think that desperation, anxiety is also fed into the warehouse has helped to kind of fuel the protests on the streets as well. So then, and just to cover the broader political dynamic, what do you think the militaries, when Minang Lang, the commander-in-chief executed this bloodless coup, you mentioned he didn't anticipate the scale of resistance in the country.

But what do you think is basic players? Like what is what is the military hoping to achieve, you know, what system are they hoping to set up? I think what's the, yeah, I think they're confit. And I think one thing that would be wrong, I think whether we look at the protesters, whether we look at the NLD, whether we look at the Army, is that to think that anyone has any kind of grand strategy. I think a lot of people are playing tactically right now. A lot of things are very contingent.

A lot of things are going to be shaped by just events day to day as well. I think in the Army, though, you have a general sense that the 2008 Constitution is their endgame or was their end game. It's what they wanted. It's a hybrid system of government where the military shares power with elected politicians, and they are the guardians of that system. And I think they've convinced themselves that the only problem with that setup over the past 10 years, which has led to huge kind of improvements across the board for much of Myanmar society, that the only problem with that was Aung San Suu Kyi and their relationship with her. So there's a, there's a part of them that thinks if we just removed her and the NLD from the equation,

that system can still work for us. I think then there's the personal ambition of the commander-in-chief who wanted to be president and perhaps probably still wants to be civilian president. And so in a way like the Thai prime minister, who was the coup leader as well, I think would like to see a rerun of the constitution, a reset to the old setup, sorry, a rerun of the elections, but set up in a way that he's much more likely to win. So there's his personal ambition. And then I think, you know, there's what's happened in just recent weeks.

I think there was a lot that happened in the run-up to the coup that was about pride, that was about sense of humiliation, that was a military sense that they were not being treated respectfully. I think with the protests, they're both fearful, perhaps, to some extent, but also really angry at the protesters for different reasons. So I think there's a lot of human emotions that have come into the equation over the past several weeks as well. And then if you shift to Aung San Suu Kyi in the NLD,

you know, despite these allegations of fraud, which have echoes to an American year, you know, the NLD, her party won overwhelmingly in this election as well as in the 2015 election, as well as in just basically any election where she's, her name has been associated with an alternative to military rule. What is your sense of what, what she, you know, what she wants in the current situation or the NLD leadership? how are they thinking of a way through this? Are they open a negotiation or is it basically there was an election

and we are willing to be, do whatever to be seated again? I think it's very difficult to say, partly because she's been incommunicado since the day of the coup, right? So she's been under house arrest or she's been detained and she hasn't been able to communicate

with anyone, perhaps her lawyer at most. That's true also, to some extent, for most of the NLD leadership, their central executive committee, many of the members of the previous government. You have the MPs who've been elected, who've set up something called the committee representing the parliament who've put out statements.

But the top of the NLD structure isn't really there to lead them. So I think they're trying the best they can under very difficult conditions. I mean, many of them have arrest warrants out for themselves and they're in hiding as well. So I think their main demand is just to record, you know, for the results of the November elections to be respected and to go back to the day before the coup. I think beyond that, they haven't really said anything specifically.

So it's hard to guess if they have kind of alternative tactics in mind. I think what's important to just remember, to note is that, you know, we've had elections. It's not necessarily the case that elections are going to solve problems going forward either. I mean, democracy is certainly what people want. Democracy is almost certainly the best system of government for Myanmar. are, but elections themselves can also be really divisive, right? And we have to remember that even though the NLD won these elections overwhelmingly 60-something percent of the vote, 80-something percent of the elected seats, we also have lots of ethnic minority communities. And in the specific

kind of electoral system that we have, a first-past-post system, those ethnic minority communities often didn't do very well in terms of voting for their own ethnic minority parties as well. So I think looking forward, we have to think in terms of democracy and we have to think terms of elections, but we also have to kind of think about what kind of political sets of compromises, discussions, transformations are also necessary to make the system workable, what kind of dialogue is necessary. And, you know, we can try to will the army away, but it's been there for a long time. And to some extent, at least, they're going to have to be part of whatever transition comes as well. And so obviously these are the issues that are going to be fought,

struggled about negotiated, hopefully, inside of Myanmar. But what would you, though, tell the U.S. and kind of the broader national community that's focused on this, what is the most effective set of policies or tools or approaches for, say, the Biden team to be taking right now in response? I would say three things. I mean, one is that it is really important to encourage, especially the young people who are risking their lives in the streets, the protesters right now. and to make them feel that they're not alone in this,

that the world is watching, the U.S. is watching, and that people, and that, you know, there are continued calls for not just restraint on the part of the government, but just no, on the part of the military authorities, but that there's no lethal force used against these protesters, against these peaceful protesters. So I think the statements are important in and should continue. I think secondly, I think it's important that when we think about sanctions,

which is the normal kind of thing that people, think about in these circumstances, that we have to be really careful. I understand the targeted sanctions. I think that the targeted sanctions probably won't have much effect in a place like Myanmar, where the army guys have no assets or interests or very few outside of the country. And any broader sanctions, I think we have to really remember that this is a country which is not only really poor, which is not only facing acute economic crisis, but where we have all of these ethnic armed groups, but we also have drug-related drug trafficking. related militia. We have a society that's incredibly fragile. And I think that the best thing would be

that if we had a democratic transition right now, the second scenario is that we have some kind of consolidation of power by this new military administration. But then there's a third, even darker scenario, which is a collapse of the country. And I think we're not too far away from a situation where we could see a general collapse. I think we have to be really careful, especially with instruments like sanctions. And then thirdly and lastly, I think we have to, you know, obviously think multilaterally as well. I think it's good that there is at least some, if not a consensus, at least not an all-out fight at the UN on this issue so far. I think the UN should be used. I think ASEAN should be encouraged. But there's no silver bullet. There's nothing easy. And I think at

the end of the day, I think whatever happens in Myanmar is going to come from within Myanmar. and it's going to come from this really difficult, from within this really difficult dynamic between the protesters and the army, but also many other groups and people inside the country. I think whatever happens from the outside, it's just going to be a marginal part of the overall story. Yeah. Well, and I just want to, before we wrap up, I wanted to step back here. And again, people should check out the hidden history of Burma, your most recent book,

to understand both what's happened in the country, but you also do a great job of pulling out, you know, how and why this matters, you know, obviously matters first and foremost in Burma, but it connects to a lot of trends that we're seeing in the world in terms of the challenges that Burma faces. But I wanted to just ask you, you know, we've gotten to know each other a bit. I've really enjoyed that. And I was thinking about this, you know, I kind of seen you periodically or talked to you periodically over the last decade at these different moments, You know, some very hopeful, you know, shortly after the 2010 transition inside the country, you know, President Obama's second visit there. And then, you know, some were difficult, you know, when I was out in Burma looking into largely what had happened with the Rohingya and Anxan Suu Kyi and some of the Western, at least, or international dashed expectations.

But stepping back, it's been such a fascinating, painful, difficult, promising decade. And now here we are. Just what are your emotions in this journey of the last decade and where it is now, but also what you're seeing in the streets? Like, how do you process all that? Yeah, no, I think on the one hand, obviously, like, I think for everyone, just seeing the images on the streets and speaking to people, I think it's an incredibly difficult and stressful time

because I think people know that there's very, every likelihood that there'll be more violence over the coming days and weeks, and we could escalate into a situation that's going to be difficult for anyone to control. I think what I also think is that, you know, given this explosion of kind of emotion against the coup and the military takeover

by literally millions of people, I think it should kind of tell us that the last 10 years have actually been quite special in some way, that the reason that the people are feeling so angry and frustrated right now is because the last 10 years have probably been the best 10 years in Myanmar history for, you know, in the lifetime of almost everyone in the country. I think it was a much more fragile transition than than we thought. I think there were many things that we should have done to try to hold things together and not take things for granted over these past 10 years. I think on the one hand, I feel incredibly pessimistic because I just don't see how between the demands of the protesters and the people who are on strike and the army, I just, it's very hard to see where the room for any kind of dialogue or compromise is right now. So it's very easy to think that

not only will we see more violence, but we also could just see protracted instability that leads to, you know, sort of overall collapse in the country. At the same time, it wasn't as if the situation before the coup was perfect. I mean, it's not just the violence against the Rohingya, it's the decades of racial, ethnic, religious discrimination. It's the long history of the civil war. It's the extreme poverty and inequality in the country. It's the climate change that we're facing as well. I mean, the whole society needs a basic transformation that goes beyond just the political. And maybe in some way that this crisis is going to be the start of that kind of fundamental rethinking that I think needs to happen within Myanmar society. And I know that a lot of young people are thinking in that

direction, whether or not they'll actually have a chance to see it through over the coming year or two. It's very difficult to say right now. Well, look, we certainly, we hope so. And I hope, as I mentioned to you, I hope that, you know, if there is that opportunity to kind of have a reopening, if you will, or at least a negotiated process of trying to improve things, that there are things that can be drawn lessons from what went well and what went wrong of the last decade. But I share your hope in that the place you look for hope is younger people, and they're certainly mobilized.

And I would encourage people listening, you know, obviously, as Taunt mentions, you know, solidarity with the people who are protesting is important. Understanding the country is important, too, and Taunt's books are a good place to start. So thanks for connecting here, and I hope you and your wife are well. and your many, many friends in Myanmar, of course. Great. Thanks very much, Ben. Thanks again to Taunt Me and you for joining the show today.

Thanks to you, Ben. Thanks to Joe Biden for apparently getting us all vaccines by the end of May. Bizarrely, like, thanks to Johnson and Johnson and, I mean, and don't worry. Don't worry, like Red Roses. Like, I get the evils of Big Pharma. Like, I do, I'm just, like, that's all root for them to get these vaccines out, you know. Some guy I really like, tweet. do like a virtue signal tweet that was like, if Fauci appeared before you and said I could vaccinate

you or X number of random people before you, like what's the number of people that would be required for you to forego your own vaccine? And I was like, buddy, are you kidding me? I would stick that thing in my arm and dump the rest on my head like a Gatorade cooler. I am so desperate to get this vaccine in my arm. I can barely even jump it out of my skin. Yeah, no, me too. I will say like, you know, because there's been some great reporting here in LA about, you know, there's kind of three ways to get the vaccine, right? Like one is just kind of wait your turn in line and when it seems like you've been called to show up. Yeah, I've been choosing that way.

I've been choosing that way. It's not going so well for me. There's another way where you like kind of hack the code for like the site you're not supposed to be at and you go get a vaccine. Some cheating going on. And the LA Times has done some good reporting on that out here. There's another way, though, that's interesting to me ethically, which is like just the surplus vaccine at the end of the day thing, which actually...

I think that's good. I think that's totally good. And because if they're going to throw, if it's use or lose, if it's basically like they're going to throw out some vaccine. And so what I hope they do is communicate, you know, more clearly like, hey, we expect, because it seems like we're about to reach a point where there's more and more vaccine, like armchair, we've all become armchair experts on this stuff, right? So I want to suggest I know what the fuck I'm talking about.

But like it does seem like we're reaching a point where in some cases, supply may actually outstrip the targeted demand. And in that case, like, throw up the bat signal, man, I'll be there waiting for the excess vaccine. Yeah, there's got to be a better way than just like waiting outside of CBS. But exactly, I digress. I'll do it anyway. Just tell me where to go. Okay, that's it for us this week. Talk to you guys next week. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital.

Digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yel Freed, Nar Malkonian, and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.