Pod Save the World - The coup in Myanmar, explained

Episode Date: February 3, 2021

Tommy and Ben discuss the military takeover in Myanmar and how President Biden should respond, Alexey Navalny's sentencing in Russia, Poland's near-total abortion ban, the Biden administration's pause on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, textbook revisions in Saudi Arabia, and disparities in Israel's mass vaccination campaign. Then Ben talks to journalist and host of the Black Diplomats podcast Terrell Jermaine Starr about how domestic activism fits into American foreign policy.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 POTSave the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Then I think the theme for today's show is threats to democracy and what the world can or should do about it. Because we got the coup in Myanmar and what options that the Biden administration has or does not have to respond to it. We will talk about the sentencing of Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny. There's a major attack on abortion rights in Poland. We'll get into President Biden's decision. to pause arm sales to Saudi Arabia in the UAE and then some, actually some interesting and notable reforms made in Saudi Arabia and then Israel's vaccination effort. But it does feel like, you know, democracy is being tested in a lot of ways right now, maybe shortly after our own

was tested. Yeah. No, there's a common theme here, common thread. Yeah, it's, you know, not ideal, but good. We'll fight through it. And then our guest today is Terrell Germain Star, the host of Black Diplomats. It's a great podcast. He's also a senior reporter at the route. You guys just talked. Can you give us a preview of what folks will hear in the interview? Yeah, I really wanted to just, you know, Torell's doing some really interesting stuff at Black Diplomats, and I wanted him to explain kind of the worldview that infuses what he does, which is that you need to structurally take on the lack of diversity and representation and foreign policy and media, but not just about, you know, getting people in jobs, changing the mindset. What happens

if we deal with white supremacy across the board, including in our foreign policy, how would that lead to different outcomes? How would that lead to America, you know, not just showing a different face, but acting differently at home and in the world? So Terrell really takes us into that. It's a cool interview. That's fantastic. I'm very excited to hear that. Also, Ben, you have some big, big, personal breaking news to announce exclusive for Pod Save the World listeners. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no. So today, My book, after the fall, being in America and the world we've made, is live for pre-order. I'm clapping.

And yes. And I've, you know, I've dangled bits and pieces of this on the show. But, I mean, I'll just describe kind of what I sit out to do. You know, a few years ago, I basically set out to write a book to try to understand what the hell is happening in the world, you know, what's happening in the world, what's happening in America, what was happening to me feeling like so exiled, essentially, from the things I worked on that were being dismantled by Trump and in my own country that was unrecognizable to me. And all those things have to do with why was democracy collapsing everywhere? And what was interesting about it is

I went abroad, right? And I spent a lot of time talking to Russian oppositionists, spent a lot of time talking to people like Alexei Navalny, who told me his whole story of what's happened in Russia in his life. And why that led him. to make the decisions he did and take the risks that he's taken, and really unpacking the nature of the Putin regime and how corrupt it was and how it had a playbook of authoritarianism that had been repurposed in place like Hungary. And I spent a lot of time in Hungary talking to activists

and opposition leaders about what had happened in their country. And one of the things it was particularly alarming there is that the playbook that had been run in Hungary was verbatim the playbook that the Republican Party has run in this country You know, get elected on a platform of right-wing backlash to the financial crisis, you know, redistrict to get a majority foothold, have propaganda outlets and disinformation outlets that get your message out, pack the courts, get corrupt cronies who finance your politics, and have this kind of nationalist us versus them message that demonizes immigrants and Muslims and even, you know, George Soros, like the same thing. And I started to see America more clearly by looking. looking at what had happened in places like Russia and then Hungary. And then spent a lot of time talking to people from China and particularly Hong Kong about how even if we look at Russia and Hungary as kind of the vanguard of pushing back against democracy, China is the one with

the different model. And what does that feel like to people in places like Hong Kong who were being encroached upon by this kind of techno totalitarianism where they can literally feel their freedom slipping away? But the thing that was so interesting to me is, is I realized a book that I set out to write about the world was actually about America, because I had to reckon with the fact that the 30 years since the end of the Cold War that America has been this kind of unchecked hegemon, we made this world. Our fingerprints were everywhere. And it was really in a few different areas.

Our kind of embrace of unbridled capitalism, unregulated capitalism and globalization after the Cold War kind of created not only the financial crisis that collapsed people's confidence in America and our leadership, but also created this void in people's lives, where they didn't have anywhere to turn for meaning. And so they turned to these traditional brands of nationalism. And then post-9-11 militarism, where you had people like Putin literally, you know, using the exact same rhetoric that was used to justify the war and terror to justify what they were doing. And, you know, copycatting even some of the authorities that the U.S. pursued after 9-11. But chiefly, creating this kind of us versus them politics where you demonize the other

constantly and how that bled into China, right? Where China said that it's putting a million Uyghurs in concentration camps was the people's war on terror. You know, they very clearly align themselves with that. And then lastly, obviously technology and the kind of unregulated explosion of social media and the internet that we thought was going to be this tool to connect everybody and became this kind of perfect weapon of surveillance in the Chinese. case and disinformation in the Russian case. And, you know, we have to wrestle with the fact that

all these things happening around the world aren't foreign. They're the same things that are happening here. And in many ways, they're the outcome of 30 years of what America has chosen to be. And so the biggest part of the book actually deals in America. And in my experience, kind of questioning every assumption I had about who we are and what we do in the world, going back and unpacking some of the things that happened in the Obama years through a new lens. And, you know, I left it feeling oddly more hopeful, even though it sounds like, because I met these amazing people, you know, Alexei Navalny, Zana Nemchova, an amazing Russian woman whose father was killed by Putin outside the Kremlin, these Hungarian oppositionists, these Hong Kong protesters,

people like fighting for the things that America is supposed to stand for, right? So I'm sorry if that's speechified a little bit, but the real point I want to make here, Tommy, is that, like, you sit down to write and it's hard as hell. You've got a blank screen. It's even harder in a pandemic. And you try to think of, like, who is your audience? Because you're, you know, you're trying to tell a story to somebody. And my audience is you guys, it's whirledos.

Like, that I was thinking about you guys because we have this conversation every week. And I'm like, I'm traveling. I'm meeting these people. I'm wrestling with these things. It's a very personal book. has the feel of a memoir. And it was kind of an effort for me to try to explain everything that I've been processing these last few years. So I really hope, I hope everybody picks it up, of course, but I particularly, particularly hope that the worldos pick it up and feel like it's part of

this conversation that we've been having the last couple of years. That's awesome. I cannot wait to read it. And also just I'll say it till you don't have to. If you want to buy this book, pre-order it guys listening, because that helps Ben get on like the New York Times bestseller site. It helps other people find it. It helps us knock like Dan Bongino's fucking book that like the R&C bought 400,000 copies of off. So check it out. It's incredible. You've heard bits and pieces of it on this show.

Ben has been generous enough to share anecdotes from his travel along the way. But I guarantee you you will love this. By the way, also if you guys love news and jokes, subscribe to our Whataday newsletter. It's hilarious. It's informative. It's nightly crooked.com slash subscribe. Also listeners to Potsay America know that I'm the unofficial president of the Keep It fan club. That's our our pop culture and

politics podcast. I literally never miss an episode. But this month is especially great because they're hosting a series of discussions with black creators, business leaders, and guests for Black History Month. So it's just really great stuff. Check it out. Check out. Keep it. Okay, Ben, so let's start in Myanmar. Very sad news out of Myanmar. Some people call it Burma. Long story there. We're just going to go with Myanmar for the purposes of this show. But over the the weekend, the military staged a coup. They surrounded Myanmar's parliament building and arrested top civilian leaders like Aung San Suu Kyi. The commander-in-chief of Burma's military is now de facto in charge. The military has declared a year-long state of emergency. For those who don't

know, Aung San Suu Kyi is a political leader, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who spent decades under house arrest because of the military. She's a revered and also a controversial figure. So, Ben, we could start this story in a lot of places, but you go like 2011, 2015, 1962, 1948. But I think for now, maybe we just go back to November of last year. That was when Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy Party trounced the military's proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party in these parliamentary elections. I think her party won like 70 or 80 percent of the vote. And this threatened the military's control of the country, which they had a lot of because

of how Myanmar's constitution is set up. And so the military quickly declared that this election was fraudulent. There was a lot of chatter and concern and speculation about a potential coup. It sort of increased ever since November when that election occurred. I should note that election observers, international observers, don't believe there was fraud. But this coup finally occurred over the weekend on the day that the parliament was supposed to convene for its first session. And not coincidentally, this also means that Myanmar's top general goes from this sort of lame duck figure who is going to retire in June to a de facto dictator. So Ben, what else do you think people need to know about what happened? And like despite, you know, all these concerns and sort of predictions that have

been building over time, were you surprised that the military ultimately went through and just seized power in a very classic old school military coup this weekend? Well, I mean, I think, you know, first and foremost, it's a tragedy for the people of Myanmar. I think what people need to understand is that the competition between Aung San Suu Kyi and the military has never been resolved, and it goes back many decades. And the military has been in charge for most of Myanmar's history as an independent country. Aung San Suu Kyi went back to the country and won a landslide Democratic election in 1990, and the military invalidated it and threw in prison and put her under house arrest, essentially. And it wasn't until 2011 that she was able to reenter politics. And there was this

moment in 2015 when her party, the NLD, won a landslide election. But that didn't mean that she had the power. She became what's called the state counselor because the Constitution expressly prohibited her from becoming president. There was a provision in the Constitution written into the Constitution that said if you had foreign-born children, you could not become president. It was written with her in mind. The military under the Constitution prescribed itself a 25% block in the parliament, which was enough to prevent them from allowing the Constitution to be amended. So you can see what was going on here. The military was trying to keep its power, right? And keep its economic interest, by the way, too, because they're corrupt, they enrich themselves. All their power,

all their money could be at risk if Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD could reform that. Constitution. And so since she won that election in 2015, her five-year term, the five-year parliamentary term, was very tense because she wanted to reform the Constitution. The military obviously didn't want her to do that. You had, but we talked about a lot, the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, which got a lot of attention, where she seemed to not want to challenge the military, in part because she didn't want what just happened to happen. You know, she thought that she might be able to co-op some of the military, to make a deal with them, to show them perhaps that she wasn't as threatening as they might have thought. But this question was unresolved. And she had a very

negative relationship, let's just say, a rivalry with this commander-in-chief, Minong-Lung. The two of them did not like each other, did not get along. I met when I met with her, but when I was still in government, she would complain about him that he wanted to do something like this. She spoke about fears of a coup. So this has been lurking in the back. despite kind of the partial democratic opening that's taken place in the country. Now, what happened here is they had an election and the NLD won overwhelmingly. That is not surprising. Every time there's been a vote, you know, 1990, 2015 this year, the NLD wins by about the same

amount. You know, they win like 80 plus percent of the country because Aung San Suu Kyi is literally the national hero. She's the daughter of the founding father of the country. She's revered in the countryside everywhere, right? We can talk about, obviously, she's a flawed leader. She obviously didn't use her moral authority or her political power to do anything to help their hensha.

But in the country, she's the person who's the unifying figure. The military made these claims of massive electoral fraud, sound familiar, that an independent election commission said didn't take place. And what happened, Tommy, is that there was a period where they wanted to negotiate something. Minong-Long, the commander chief, was required to step down. He was about to lose his power because he was essentially kind of term-limited out of his job as commander-in-chief. And he was trying to negotiate with her that he would become president and she could still be the state counselor. And she just kept saying no to that for reasons that you might understand.

And so there's this kind of irreconcilable difference where the military really didn't want to accede to the result of the election or wanted something in return from her in order to validate the results of the election. she wasn't going to budge on certain things. So I wasn't necessarily surprised. The only reason I was a little surprised is that for the military itself, their interests were already pretty protected. Like I said, they had this 25% block in parliament against really transformative constitutional change. They still controlled the ministries of defense

and home affairs, the kind of the core security ministries. I'm sure they still have their corrupt interest. This really seemed to be about this one guy, Minong Long, who felt like he was about to get pushed aside, perhaps. And so this is his power play. And clearly what he was able to do is bring the military along. And what is an old-fashioned coup? And what is, again, tragically, not new in Myanmar,

it's a return to the old status quo, the military kind of dictatorship that has prevailed for most of the country's history of independence. Yeah, I think that's like a very good laydown. I think of what's happening in Burma. Predictably, a lot of the U.S. coverage of what has happened has framed this as, you know, a test for Biden or even a test for the U.S. and its moral authority. So I think we should get it to the options that are available to the Biden team. Already the Biden administration has formally declared that this was a coup. Biden pointed out in a statement that the U.S. used to have a whole bunch of sanctions on Myanmar, but those were removed over the course of about

a decade because the country made progress towards democracy, the clear implication there being that Biden could reimpose sanctions if he wants to. Congress could introduce legislation to sanction Myanmar. There are also these previous horrifying allegations you referred to that Myanmar's military conducted a genocide against a Muslim minority population called the Rohingya. I say allegations. I am confident that this happened, but the Biden team is reviewing the set of facts to see whether this was a genocide. And that process should be separate, you know, based on the merits, but a lot of the same people, the same generals in Myanmar are implicated in the genocide, you know, so that's another pressure point. Ben, you know, what tools do you think the Biden

administration has available to influence the military's behavior? And like, how impactful do you think those tools are against this, you know, military government in Myanmar? And then like one very leading question for you, which is, do you worry as much as I do when you read all these reports about this issue as, like, America's problem to solve? I worry about where the logic goes there. Yeah, I mean, look, the first priority here should be that the United States needs to do whatever we can to get as many other countries on board with delegitimizing this as a coup, which is not as easy as it sounds because a lot of countries in that neighborhood in Southeast Asia, are not democratic and don't want to take this on. But most importantly, you know, obviously in addition

to kind of Europe and Japan and our allies, you know, countries like India that is a, you know, big neighbor of Myanmar is coming out strongly that this is illegitimate, that this is a coup and calling for a return to democracy. Very delicate and interesting diplomacy needs to be done with China, which has a lot of influence in Myanmar as well. Actions at the UN, UN has brought a chorus is possible to just indicate to the military in Myanmar that the world is not going to accept this and that they're going to be isolated and that what people expect is a return to democratic rule in the country. Then you want to use that to try to get into some window for diplomacy. Can we get back to some diplomacy inside of the country that allows for a process

of discussion negotiation for a path back to the NLD being seated in parliament. You know, the military said it once had of another election. I mean, the NLD clearly won the last election. I think the starting point should be seat the parliament that already won the election. But the question is, can we just make sure

that there's a capacity to return to democracy? In terms of what tools the U.S. has, in addition to that, yes, there's sanctions. I think that the important point here is that this should focus on the people most responsible for this. So we mentioned Minong Long, the commander chief. This is the guy, I think, who needs to be the most pursued in terms of isolation and sanction

and whatever circle of people is enabling this. Because you want to kind of send a message to the rest of the military. Like, don't follow this guy down this path, which, by the way, and this is part of the reason why I was surprised, could be devastating for the military for the country to descend back into, you know, the civil wars with ethnic groups in that country escalate. You're descending back into extreme poverty. Obviously, you have sanctions, although a lot of these military leaders have learned how to make money on the kind of the dark market of drugs and jade and rubies and things like that. But you want to indicate a choice to these people, don't go down this road.

The world is not accepting this result. We're going to come after this guy and his cronies in terms of sanctions. But we're going to offer a window of diplomacy for you. to climb back from what you did. And that's your best. It's a long shot. I'm not suggesting it's easy, but that's the play available to the Biden team.

You know, international delegitimization, sanctions and the threat of additional sanctions, and really aggressive diplomacy as fast as possible to try to get some diplomacy going inside of the country so that there's a path back from this precipice. Yeah. I think what just made me nervous was reading all these articles, in like straight news reporting about how this is a test of Biden, a test for democracy.

Yeah. And then you read like the neocons, right? The Wall Street Journal editorial page wrote, the top U.S. priority in Asia is limiting Beijing's ability to control independent states like Burma, which is strategically situated in the Indo-Pacific, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't mention, you know, the 54 million people. Right? It's like, this feels very like Vietnam era domino theory.

We must roll back the bad guys. And it's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, let's talk about the tools available. What's sort of like in the realm of possibility? And then I think the lessons of the past 20 years, right, is don't act quickly and make things worse. I mean, that's my fear here. Not that we're going to really invade Burma. I don't think Joe Biden's going to do that. But, you know, it was like hard to read all these things and think no lessons have been learned.

Well, yeah. I mean, because first of all, if you dump all your sanctions on them right away and you just start yelling about the Chinese, then that's going to be the status quo. And by the way, we may end up there, but you need to give yourself some window to try to affect the situation positively. Again, because of those 54 million people who are suffering who are at risk, you know, I've heard from lots of friends inside of Myanmar who are scared and worried and concerned and want there to be some possibility that the current direction of events doesn't continue. I think the second point you make, Tommy, just like name this elephant in the room like of, you know, the same coverage.

And, you know, this is Obama's failure. These countries aren't baseball cards that we try to compete with the Chinese for. These are countries where people live. They're complicated places. This dynamic inside of Myanmar is very difficult in the sense that we all want a democracy. That's what we support, right? That's why we supported Aung San Suu Kyi, because she would win democratic elections, right? That was complicated in its own right, because even after she won Democratic elections, she didn't exactly govern as we would like, particularly on the Rohingya issue, right? So this, these are not, this is not some play that can be orchestrated from Washington, right? Yeah. There are too many actors involved inside of Myanmar. There's such a complicated

history there. There's ethnic civil wars. There's a military that has always had power. I mean, this is what's also so ridiculous about this. They never fully relinquish it. They partially relinquish the power they had. Now they're trying to take it back all of it. And that's the tragedy here, right? And I do, I do, I hope that what we try to do on this show is give people a sense that there's context to these issues. And when we make it just like a, you know, a test of the political narrative in Washington, that sometimes doesn't lead to the right kind of nuance that you need in dealing with an incredibly difficult. situation. Yeah, we don't need another domino theory of the case. So let's talk about some of the

context in this recent history here in the ways Myanmar opened up during the Obama administration. Because both of us were on President Obama's trip to Myanmar in 2012 when he became the first U.S. president in history to visit. He met with the president at the time, a retired general named Fensen, who I think later came to Washington and met with him in the Oval Office. He met with Aung San Suu Kyi. He delivered a major speech about the U.S. Myanmar relationship. And that was, you know, the early stages of a process that really started in 2011 and that culminated in the lifting of longstanding U.S. sanctions on Myanmar and really saw this remarkable opening up of a country that had been totally isolated and controlled by a military junta for decades. Again,

obviously it was an imperfect opening. You talked about some of the structural problems within the constitution itself, but it was still remarkable. But, you know, even at that time, there were people saying Obama moved too quickly, you know, like he was too thirsty for a deal to open Myanmar up. Others said that there was not enough attention being paid to the treatment of the Rohingya, the ethnic minority that we believe was the victim of a genocide and that, you know, more attention should have been paid to their rights in that time to try to prevent what ultimately happened. Ben, you know, you spent a lot of time working on this issue in government. You've been back.

What since you left? You've written extensively about it in the Atlantic. Like, neither of us is a dispassionate observer here because of the fact that this is part of the Obama legacy. There are issues we personally worked on. But I do want to try to, like, think about the decision in hindsight and see if, how to judge it because I guess the questions I have are like, is it just too soon to know whether the opening was the right move in 2011, 2012?

do we think that this decade of opening up could be just a good thing no matter what because it showed the people of Burma that there was this better future, there was more democratic that's now available to them, was the military given too much leeway? How are you thinking about all of that work in hindsight given the events of the weekend? Well, again, it relates to what we were just talking about in the sense of, like, we didn't create the opening. It happened inside of Myanmar.

You know, like the Burmese military, Thainzane saying the president, began to open up. And the United States had long supported democracy in Myanmar and supported Aung San Suu Kyi as kind of the emblem of the pursuit of democracy in Myanmar. So, you know, again, first of all, this wasn't some situation where the United States pried something open with a crowbar. This was the country started open and we thought, how can we encourage that? What is the best we can do to try to encourage that? and President Obama engaging them, restoring an ambassador to the country. I don't know why would you not do that. Like looking back, I honestly, those initial steps, right, of having an ambassador

and sending Obama, you want to encourage countries that begin to go down a path. And that's what we did. And mindful of the fact that not all the problems in this country were solved. So on the first question of just like should we have gone and should we, well, of course we should have. Should we have favored the military state? I don't quite get the logic of the alternative of not supporting the opening and Anxan Suu Kyi's reentry to politics and an election, right? Because there might be a coup several years later, right? There's a question of did we lift sanctions too fast, which is a very valid question to debate.

And again, my view is, was at the time, and I still tend to think the military has its own, they lived under sanctions for decades, right? They have their own sources of corrupt financing. They trade in drugs and gems and all kinds of stuff, right? And so our calculation in consultation with Aung San Suu Kyi, by the way, was that the sanctions were punishing the people. in Myanmar. And not necessarily, the generals were rich. They were rich under sanctions, right? And, and again, people can debate this. But my belief, and I continue to believe it, is that we sometimes overstate, overthink the impact of these sanctions. Look at Cuba. Look at Iran. Sanctions aren't changing their governments, right? So to me, it's the tragedy of the fact that the Myanmar militaries

began to go down a path of relinquishing some power. And when they got to the precipice of where they were going to have to relinquish a lot of it, they pulled back. And in the last several years, nothing changed their calculus from pulling back. And now they pulled back all the way. I also want to say, Tommy, like,

people should question us. But like, what the hell happened in the last four years? Did Donald Trump ever engage Zhang Tseng Suu Kyi or anybody in Myanmar? He actually just tried to do the same thing that the military did and saying that there was a electoral fraud and overturned elections. This is not pure what aboutism. The point is that the stories of foreign countries don't begin and end with American administrations.

There's a 70-year history to what's happened in Myanmar that extends through multiple administrations here. And I stand by the idea that when there's an opportunity to take to try to promote democracy, you take it. and you do whatever you can to try to move it forward. And to me, I guess the more missed opportunity that I consider is like, could we have done more to try to broker something between Aung San Suu Kyi and the military when we were still there in 2015, 2016.

That, you know, let's think about that because sometimes people just think of sanctions. Well, like, and we tried, but like, could we have done more to try to resolve some of these structural issues. Maybe not, and maybe it wouldn't even have been us. Could we have worked with other countries to try to do that? Those questions should all be asked. But I don't think, I think it would be a tragedy, frankly, to draw a lesson that because there was just a coup in Myanmar that 10 years ago, we shouldn't have encouraged a Democratic

opening that had a chance of success. You know, that would be a dangerous lesson to draw, I think. Yeah, look, I agree. I am sort of channeling the Washington, D.C. conventional wisdom that talks about diplomatic agreements with more scrutiny than like most wars that are waged. But, you know, I think good to think through. It's always good to think through and invent this stuff. And again, we have a point. I have a, you know, I personally was involved. So people should question, please, like, they should criticize. But what I hope they don't do is think that somehow the U.S. ever, ever had all the control, that we were able to determine what was going to happen in Myanmar

in 2011 or 2015 or 2017 or 2020. This is a complicated country with a complicated history. We have to do the best we can at every given moment here. And yes, hopefully they can get back to democracy. Hopefully the experience the last 10 years means that they'll be better the next time there's another opening. You just have to keep trying. You can't give up on these places and you can't give up on democracy. So let's turn to Russia because I think actually it is kind of related. The last several weeks we've been talking about Alexei Navalny, the Russian anti-corruption activist, opposition leader,

General Thorne and Vladimir Putin's side. Last August, Navalny was poisoned. He was nearly killed by Putin's go to Germany for treatment, but decided to come back to Moscow a few weeks ago where he was immediately arrested. There were big protests over the weekend. Today a Russian court sentenced to an additional two and a half years in prison for what was essentially a parole violation. You know, you know that this verdict is a joke

because, you know, some of these alleged parole violations happened when Navalny was recovering in Germany from being poisoned. Near the end of the trial, Navalny denounced Putin and said he will go down in history as Vladimir the poisoner of underpants. The reason he said that is the poison used against Navalny was reportedly put on his underwear. That's how they applied it to him. So as we were preparing to record hundreds of riot police have filled up Red Square and other places and said, Moscow. Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State, is called for Navalny's immediate and unconditional release. Ben, this seems like a big change in terms of how Putin is dealing with Navalny. This trial was like big and it was public. Previously, Russian authorities hadn't punished

Navalny nearly as severely. He'd gotten house arrest. He'd gotten shorter sentences. But, you know, the thinking then seemed to be they didn't want to martyr him. Now he may be locked up for several years. I'm sure that Biden's national security team is like debating all of this as we speak. What do you think the range of options are here to respond? And like, what do you what do you recommend that they do? Well, you know, I think the sentence, again, it's a human tragedy for Navalny, although he knew, you know, he knew the risk he was taking and he may want to force the issue. And he's proven the massive support he has. And I think this will only increase the support, you know, because people see the unfairness and corruption of this ruling.

I think for Biden, again, you know, it's related to what we just said, that he can't, there's no action he can take right now that it's going to force Russia to release Alexei Navalny. What he can do is shine a spotlight, never stop talking about Alexei Navalny. Every single time that anything comes up with Russia, Alexei Navalny's case should be front and center. The world's attention needs to stay on his case every single day that he's in prison.

I think more importantly, because people can talk about sanctions, but we've mentioned this on the show before, what has Alexei Navalny really honed in on that has resonated with the Russian public? It is Vladimir Putin's corruption. You know, that video he showed of this billion-dollar palace that Putin clearly felt, you know, like he got caught because he's been denying it. And now they trotted some guy out saying, oh, no, it's my hotel when it's pretty obviously Vladimir Putin's, you know, billion-dollar house that he goes to hang out at. And I think what Joe Biden can do in the Biden administration is continue the work that Alexi Navalny was doing and revealing Vladimir Putin's corruption and spotlighting that corruption and highlighting for people just how much money this guy's worth and where his money is and how his money flows to the financial system. That's what we can do is we're not going to be able to force an outcome here.

But what we can do is carry this fight forward and do the kind of work that Navalny was doing, not just us but other countries, I hope. because the corruption is the vulnerability for Putin. And that's why Alexei Navalny is in prison. And so I really hope that the Biden team stays focused on that because this story is not over. Alexei Navalny has tapped a vein here that speaks to the deepest frustrations that Russians have with their own government. And those frustrations are not going to go away because Navalny's behind bars. Yeah. Hopefully, hopefully the opposition can sort of sustain all the protesting and the work they were doing and, you know, Navalny will be safe in jail, but yeah, pretty harrowing stuff. Okay, we have a few more issues. We're trying to tick through a little

faster. So the first one was something we've talked about before, which was last week, Poland finally imposed a near total ban on abortion rights, which now are only permitted in cases of rape, incest or when the mother's life is in danger. This ruling by Poland's constitutional court first came down in October of last year. It sparked massive protests that delayed the implementation of the law, which seemed like a hopeful sign. And then last week, it seems like Polish citizens were actually quite surprised when the government published a law enforcing this ruling. Poland's ruling party, the Law and Justice Party, is this extremely right-wing group. This move is seen as part of a broader attack on social freedoms and a play to appeal to the country's Roman Catholic

population. It doesn't seem like the protests are going to end anytime soon, despite bone-chilling temperatures. You know, Benny, and we talked about this story a few months back, I was a lot more hopeful that the protests could, you know, indefinitely delay this ruling or give some time for the legislature to work. Do you think there's any role that the international community or institutions can or should play in trying to, you know, push back on the repressive trajectory in Poland? Or do you think that kind of goes into? messing with their sort of internal lawmaking? I think it's hard to do.

I think that, you know, one thing is that you're having an administration that once again is, you know, not afraid to promote women's health and women's choice around the world. That alone is useful, right? And so we just shifted from a Republican administration, you know, that bans any funding whatsoever in U.S. development assistance, for instance, to going to anything that could have to do with reproductive health. That's changed. And I think we can speak about these.

issues publicly in forums around the world. I don't think there's much you can do bilaterally to Poland. I think you can raise concerns about these types of issues. But ultimately, this should be something that galvanizes kind of cross-border movements. You know, we talked about the movement in Argentina that succeeded in legalizing abortion. I think, you know, the biggest threat to laws like this is people getting mobilized inside of Poland, getting involved in politics. And we've seen women marching in the streets there. And I think the solidarity we can show to those people is ultimately what's going to change. This is another common thread, right?

These fights are never over by Navalny in prison, this law passing, even what happened in Myanmar. But we just have to put our heads back down and recognize that in all these issues, there are movements that are across borders and need to support one another. And that's the role that we should think of for ourselves. Yeah, agreed. Okay, so some good news here. last week, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that the Biden administration has imposed a temporary freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and that they are also reviewing weapons sales to the

United Arab Emirates, including the sale of the F-35 fighter jet and advanced drones. Those F-35 fighters and the drones were promised to the UAE by the Trump administration as part of the Abraham Accords, which was their effort to get Middle Eastern countries to officially establish diplomatic relations with Israel. The fact that that Biden is reviewed, viewing these arms sales is very good. It's especially good for the people of Yemen. The war in Yemen has led to horrific famine. And thanks to amazing work by activists over many years, there is now bipartisan support for ending U.S. involvement in that Saudi-led war in Yemen. That U.S. involvement started under Obama, which was a mistake. It was greatly curtailed by the time he left office, but then Trump

ramped it way back up and just, you know, it was indiscriminate, horrifying death that led to famine. So, Ben, you know, I'm starting to see some handwringing about how Biden might need to work with the Saudis more closely. He might need them on Iran that cutting off arms to the Saudis will lead to some broader rupture in the relationship. I think it's also worth remembering that the Biden administration will likely declassify and release an intelligence report on the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. So, you know, there's sort of like two pieces to this news. There's the Saudi piece. there's the UAE piece. Curious, have you're at all worried about this, you know, sort of rumination you're

seeing in the press about upsetting the U.S.-S.-Saudi relationship? And then with respect to the U.S. UAE arms sales with these advanced fighters and the drones, if the Biden folks say they want to build on the Abraham Accords, do you think we should assume that most of this arm sale will ultimately get approved? And these are like very long-term horizons we're talking about when it comes to arms sales. They can often take decades. Yeah, it's a very positive step, and it shows that they're really looking at these relationships, you know, because it's the war in Yemen, it's arms sales and it's Skashoggi. Those are the near-term things where we want to see action, and they've said all the right things about all three of those. And there's no reason, you know, for the EU to get tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons to normalize relations with Israel. That doesn't make any sense. It's not, why is that required, right? They should want to make, you know, people. They ever uses the word peace.

They weren't at war, but they should want to normalize relations with Israel because it's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do diplomatically. It's the right thing to do morally. And so, yeah, I hope that it's not the kind of situation where they review it, but then the just all goes forward because it's not relevant to normalization. It shouldn't be the price of normalization shouldn't be giving them, you know, every lost weapon system they want. And at the same time, I think they're going to figure out like how to, you're not going to, like, even people like me are very critical, you know, of the golf relationships. Obviously, you're not going to like sever ties with these countries. They have to think through what is a more rational approach to countries where we have, you know, serious differences with their human rights concerns.

And that's related to what we've said, we've been talking about, Tommy, because, you know, to the Saudi relationship even more than the Amradi relationship, that gets thrown back in our face. We're going around the world talking about democracy in Myanmar and Russia. And then we have like a friend of Mohammed bin Salman who's chopping up journalists. So to me, how they articulate kind of what they see these Gulf relationships being in a more rational way that factors in human rights concerns, it factors in concerns about Yemen, where we did make a big mistake in the Obama years of supporting that initial effort. That's going to be the real proof here. And of course, Iran too, whether we're giving.

them a veto on whether or not we reenter an Iran agreement if the Iranians comply with it. Those are all things that I think will be evident in the next few months where the administration lands. So far, so very good. And they deserve a lot of credit for what they're doing. Yeah, agreed. I'm very eager to hear about the JCPOA decision soon. There was some good news out of Saudi Arabia that I wanted to highlight because I think we're often understandably pretty hard on the country. So for decades, there have been Saudi textbooks that have included anti-Semitic content, hostility towards religions other than Sunni Islam, and then homophobic and misogynistic content. But experts say that a lot of that objectionable material has recently been edited out of these

textbooks. So the revision started in 2019, and I guess even more removed for 2020 editions. Again, these textbooks are still far from perfect. There's stuff in there that would offend a lot of people. But the head of this Israel-based institute that monitors school curriculums called the change is quite astonishing. So it seems good. Ben, this is very dark. But I also read that executions in Saudi Arabia were down 85 percent from 2019 to 2020. Some of that has to do with COVID restrictions, but some was a reduction from what appeared to be reforms, like a ban on capital punishment for drug crimes. So, you know, this does strike me as the kind of stuff people were hoping to see when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ran around the U.S., getting

great press, calling himself a reformer and convincing journalists and tech CEOs that he was a good guy. But, you know, I do think they deserve some credit for these like incremental but important changes. They do. And again, I've been very critical, right, but like we should give people credit where credit is due. And these are important changes. They're kind of seed changes. And what has been a history of anti-Semitism kind of problematic content. So yeah, I mean, this is a good thing. And again, like this speaks to the fact that, like, yes, the idea of modernizing, reforming elements to society is good. The question is, you don't need to be a dictator that doesn't tolerate dissent in order to modernize. So, yes, I hope, you know, that this is the beginning of a broader

of changes that gets at some of these social elements, but that ultimately also gets at tolerating human rights activists and dissenting voices, too. That would be good. I'd rather that happen than have to be critical a lot here. So we should welcome it. Yeah, definitely, definitely good news. Two stories about Israel that I wanted to flag. So the first is the forward wrote an interesting piece noting that while Biden and B.B. Netanyahu talked. about 10 days after Biden declared victory in the presidential campaign. They have not spoken since Biden became president. They pointed out that Biden has talked with the leaders of Canada, Mexico, Britain, France, Germany, NATO, Russia, and Japan. That's not a ton of calls in two weeks, Ben.

And, you know, Biden's top national security team, they've, like, three of them or four of them have called their counterparts. But, you know, people are pointing out to a notable omission. Like, basic question for you. Do you think there's a message here from Biden's team to Netanyahu that, you know, they're not his biggest fan? Or are we all just like over interpreting, you know, the call list when Joe Biden is like trying to negotiate a COVID deal, blah, blah, blah, like do a billion things? I think it's probably a little bit of both. I mean, I don't think it's like some huge thing. But, you know, look, the reality is that Joe Biden was the vice president and administration that Netanyahu, you know, fought tooth and nail for most of eight years. And

the fact that you wouldn't be at the top of the call list, it shouldn't be a superintend. It shouldn't be a surprise, right? At the same time, I don't think it's an indication of any more kind of substantial shift in how they're going to approach Israel. I think, you know, it's going to be, he's going to want to have a good relationship with Israel. That's Joe Biden's orientation. But it probably does indicate a little bit of like, hey, we didn't forget what happened there, particularly in the second Obama term. Yeah, fair. The other part of this story is that, you know, Israel has run the best vaccination campaign in the world, and they deserve credit for it. As of the weekend, they had administered five million vaccine doses to Israel's population of about nine million people.

So we're talking about the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine. So some folks have gotten one jab. Others have gotten two. And so they're fully vaccinated. But Israel is vaccinated like a quarter to a third of the population, which, my God, that makes me jealous, given where we're sitting here in California and in the U.S. And the good news is that like that vaccination campaign has been wildly effective in terms of driving down case numbers. hospitalizations, et cetera. But here's a very important caveat that I think is worth talking about.

The Israeli government is not vaccinating Palestinians living in the West Bank or in the Gaza Strip. And Palestinian health officials will probably have to wait months for their vaccine doses to arrive because they acquired them separately. Over the weekend, the Israeli government announced it would transfer 5,000 doses to this Palestinians to immunize frontline workers in the West Bank in Gaza Strip, but obviously that comes no over close to vaccinating even a big chunk of the population. It's probably not even all caregivers. So inequality when it comes to the distribution of vaccines is not just a problem in Israel, right? In the U.S., you're seeing black and brown communities get vaccinated at a lower rate. Rich countries like the United States have been able to buy up

hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines while poor countries will have to wait longer. But I did think that this was a pretty egregious example, given that, you know, when it comes to Israel, we are talking about territory that in one instance Israel occupies. And when we're talking about Gaza, they control access to. There is a broader and more important point, which is admittedly very hard to make when we're all scared and we all are stuck at home and we just desperately want to get vaccinated, which is that like vaccine nationalism, worrying about your country first is not a winning long-term strategy, right? Because even if we vaccinated, we're just a vaccine. We're just going to every American, we're not going to be safe if COVID is like flying around the planet,

replicating, mutating, maybe making vaccinations less effective, right? And so similarly, Israeli citizens aren't safe if they're Palestinian neighbors aren't getting vaccinated and they're commuting in another country for work. So kind of a, you know, important detail in what otherwise would be just like a total success story. Yeah, and a great credit to them for what they've done. As usual, like when Israel puts his mind to something, it's extraordinary what they can do. to your point, it's a, it's a, one of the reasons why they hit such high targets is because it was a relatively small geographic space. So is the West Bank in Gaza. And, and for moral reasons, and for practical reasons, like you say, they should be, they should not be practicing this

type of vaccine nationalism, which, again, we might see in other places too. So, so, you know, my hope is that that, that, that, that changes. It's really, you know, given, think of how close people live to each other across some of the lines that divide the West Bank and Israel. Like, you know, they can do this. And if they want to be, you know, they're in occupying power, they should do it. Yeah. Yes, they should. Last thing, just on vaccine supply, just to close out here with some good news. I saw right before we came into the show that there is preliminary data that shows that Russia's Sputnik 5 vaccine is over 90% effective and it's 100% effective against serious illness So again, that is great news.

There is no great power competition when it comes to developing vaccines. We need billions of these things. So that just made me very happy. Again, another thing, like public health should be the most apolitical thing. You know, I don't care where the vaccine's from if it works. I want everybody to get the vaccine, even if it's people I don't agree with. Like, let's just, we can put everything aside to get this done. I don't care if it's called Moderna or Sputnik or whatever else it's called.

Like, let's just get shots into people's arms, guys. Agreed. Okay, so just going to do something unusual here to go into the break, which is play some music for you. This is Anastasia Vasilia, a doctor and close ally of Alexei Navalny in Russia. She was playing the piano as police investigators entered her home to search the place, and they ultimately arrested her because she is in the opposition. And so we'll leave you with this music. and when we come back, we'll have Ben's interview with Terrell Jermaine Starr.

I'm really glad now to be joined by Terrell Jermaine Starr, who's a senior reporter at the Root and the host of Black Diplomats podcast. Terrell, thanks so much for joining us on the show here. Hey, thank you very much. Interesting enough, wanted to be a guest. Oh, good, good. Well, I'm glad we made it happen. Yeah.

And look, I wanted to, you know, just kick it off by just, you know, naming something that we don't talk about enough, which is, you know, you know, You know, I spent eight years in the White House, NSC meetings, principal committee meetings, deputy committee meetings. And you look around the room, and it's almost always largely white faces. I can't tell you how many times I'd looked around the room

and the only black or brown face in the room was President Obama. And I want to, yeah, you know, I mean, he was the boss, but still. And so I want to explore kind of why that is and what we can do about it. But also importantly, like what, what kind of policy outcomes that leads to. So just for starters, I mean, as someone who's explored this and everybody should check out your podcast, how would you describe this problem?

Why is it that foreign policy in particular, more so probably than just about any other policy area in the United States, despite, you know, real gains, Lloyd Austin, Linda Thomas Greenfield, why is it that this has been, you know, such a difficult endeavor to promote meaningful diversity in the workforce? And then we can get into what that means.

for outcomes. Yeah, absolutely. So when you think about national security, you really should be thinking about what makes people feel safe. And so when you think about what makes people feel safe, particularly with people of color, we think about our,

we don't think about the world per se. We think about what's going on in our communities. We think about what's happening with our, you know, with food being able to put food on the table, thinking about our next job. And so when you think, so the first of all, First of all, when you think about national security, it's this perceived as this faraway thing

that we don't have a grasp for. And I'm saying this as a black man who grew up in inner city, Detroit, whose world I just could not see beyond Detroit until I went to school and started traveling. And you also have to think about where are the gateways into this field. And so normally the gateways are foreign service. It is some form of government work. And you normally have to know someone who helps you to kind of be in a, you know, to know it's normally the tank communities.

And I can speak from my experience in that I found that culturally these places are very difficult to navigate, you know, particularly if you're just in the comfort of having the conversation about security. For example, if you're thinking about Iran, right? You know, think about the fact that my number one observation about Iran, for example, is that I don't think that a lot of us legitimately give Tehran. the grace of feeling threatened, right? You know, like the basic stuff like, you know, they are Persians.

They're not Arabs, for example. And I'm bringing all this up to say that I think that we spend so much time thinking about foreign policy and the concept of military and thinking about it in the terms of neoliberalism that a lot of people of color who would be good candidates to fill these roles may not feel comfortable bringing that perspective. And so I think the Black Lives Matter movement has manifested in this country a new bravery and confidence that we're capable of being in these rooms. And we don't have to be a particular type of person in order to fit in. And so we see these improvements taking place right now, but you're going to see more as the Black Lives Matter movement and boldness folks to feel like it's okay to infiltrate these spaces.

And I know for me what helped was I had a number of people who told me that, hey, you're talented, Terrell, and you have the capability. And your personal experience is important and it's valuable. And I see the world, interestingly enough, through my uncles who sold drugs. You know what I'm saying? You know, like, it's just an irony thing. I've actually written about this. And so just feeling safe to say that and being able to flesh that out in an intellectual

framework, it makes all the difference in the world. You know, it's really interesting, and I want to unpack kind of some of the different angles of this, because I was always struck, again, I'm just drawing in my experience, right, which is working for Obama, that he had this different... Which is a big experience. It's a big experience, right? But he had this, you know, he had this double experience that he brought to that office that nobody had before.

One is, he lived in Indonesia right after a coup that the CIA sponsor. that killed hundreds of thousands of people. So he saw as a kid like the other side of American power, the side that Americans don't like to look at abroad. And then he had an experience as a black man in the United States of recognizing that the authorities, you know, sometimes can do things that make you feel less safe, right, make you feel less insecure. And I think that that led him to kind of think about, you know, some of the negative consequences of things that America might do around the world, you know, militarily and otherwise sanctions in ways that other presence wouldn't. I know I just offered kind of a pretty leading question, but the question

itself is, if we bring different perspectives, particularly black and brown perspectives, into the room, how do you think that that might lead to different outcomes in terms of, you know, looking at American power through different eyes, considering restraint before we act? How would that, you know, how would that interface with the issues? that American foreign policy deals with. Well, for one, I think that it's not just about having people of colors, but having people of color who are interested in challenging a neoliberal construct that is foreign policy.

And so, you know, there are plenty of people of color who are fine with things the way that they are and they're just fine with ascending to the top. So I think that is about bringing folks in who really have a healthy appreciation of deconstructing this economic construct that, that feeds into our militarism, for example. And so when you think about safety, when I talk about safety on my podcast, Black diplomats, my whole thing is how do I get you engaged in this conversation?

Because the same folks, you know, Biden, for example, he won a majority of the black vote this go around. And so he's gonna be making a lot of foreign policy decisions. And a lot of us don't feel like we're engaged and we don't feel like we have the language to have those conversations. And so first of all, you have to get people language. and to work around.

And so what I've found to be most productive is saying, hey, what are some things you connect to? And the number one thing that I've heard are veterans, right? And because so often veterans are connected to, you know, our armed forces and those are the people who are sent off to fight wars. And we often look, unfortunately, at foreign policy through the lens of military, you know, through the barrel of a gun. And so what is it like to divest from the Pentagon?

for example, we saw some more progressive members of Congress are pushing for a 10% cut, you know, in the Pentagon. And so what can that be divest, what can that be reinvested into? Should that be, that should be reinvested into the State Department, right? And so people who are actually skilled at diplomacy, and I don't think we spend enough time talking about dive, you know, when we talk about divest to invest, divest from the Pentagon, and we know that they have billions of dollars in waste that could be going to State Department officials who are very talented, a state department that was decimated under the Trump administration.

Let's be, you know, blunt about that. And so when you start telling people about things that they can tangibly touch the nail, start to have an understanding of it because they'll be able to talk to people, you know, they'll be able to talk to their cousins. They'll be able to talk to their children. They'll be able to talk to their parents. Because the military, you know, for a lot of folks, is a gateway there. Another thing is, you know, I find that, you know, bringing people of color into these conversations who really have an analysis about these things. It can also mean that we will have different relationships with people who are deemed adversary.

So you take, for example, with Iran, I brought it up earlier, is that, you know, one thing I respect about Obama in the Iran deal and the first step he took with that was he didn't care about the grievances. Well, he cared about the regional grievances, but this whole thing was, I do not want to Iran to create a nuclear weapon. That was the that was in and you know this as being a part of you know national security meetings and things like that that was like the big grasp of it and it was working until Trump unraveled it. And so I think that there are a lot of ways in which you know, you make a decision about who's an ally and who is the person that you can work with. And Iran is one of those places where, okay, we're going to determine that they're the acts of evil, but there's.

so many people, you can make an argument that Saudi Arabia could be on that axis of evil. It's all about how you perceive things, right? And so people make these decisions and you can reimagine these decisions. It's really that simple. And so I think that people of color and the people who have been on my show have begun reimagining what it means to be an adversary, what it means to be an enemy of the United States. And I think that we would be able to help to deconstruct this Cold War mentality towards Russia as an area that I'm very keen on. And, you know, there's a way in which we deal with the Kremlin.

And I tend to say the Kremlin because I don't like to stigmatize Russians by saying the Russians. So, you know, when you look at the Kremlin, you know, there are, we need to negotiate them with New START. We need to negotiate with them in regards to, you know, when you cause, you know, nuclear non-proliferation. But there's still ways in which we're going to have to be strong, you know, strong and, you know, from a sanctions perspective over Crimea and a number of other things. And so we have their relationship with Russia, right? So why can't we have it with Iran? Why can't we have it with other places? And so a fresh perspective of people of color perspective will also help America look at its own flaws, right?

You know, America forever has been this country that says that we are the model for the world. And I think that when you see people like myself, people, you know, black men and women, people of color who are locked up literally in cages, you know, they will say, wow, you know, this is how America treats his own people. How can it just sit on this pedestal and preach to us? And so you're going to have people from these experiences reimagining what safety means. And that's going to have a very different outcome for the ways in which we engage folks who we deem our average. because it definitely needs to change. Yeah, I know, and you make a powerful argument, you know, that they're getting different people in the rooms allows us to look at things differently, allows us to make different priorities on things like defense spending, challenging certain aspects of the neoliberal consensus. There's also, you know, what do you think the opportunity is abroad? Because, you know, I think Americans don't fully sometimes appreciate how much our legacy of white

supremacy, you know, impacts how people hear us when we talk to them about things like democracy, you know, which has been a feature of American foreign policy. And I also noticed the power of showing up in other countries, particularly in, you know, increasingly important countries in the global South. Right. And showing up with not just a Barack Obama, but Susan Rice, you know, when I was working there, that, frankly, you're puncturing some of the skepticism people have about American democracy. You know, if we have different representation abroad in the Foreign Service and in the people who are showing up with the president, you know, what is the opportunity there to kind of reshape how the world looks at America's own flaws and make us a kind of more credible voice on

things like human rights where we seem to have lost all of our credibility. Well, that's actually a very good question. In order for American diplomats, people of color, who are put into these roles to be representatives of America, we have to have good leadership at home, right? So it's not just enough to appoint, you know, people of color ambassadors to critical areas of the world if we don't have good leadership at home that are actually creating domestic policies.

You know, for example, like what it means to stop sending military aid and selling military arms to local police, departments, you know, Biden is already taking steps, you know, we're going to take steps in that regard, so that's laudable. But this, this, when you, it took, it has taken hundreds of years to create this white supremacist construct and it's going to take many more to unravel people's minds around the, around the reality that we don't have to live this way. These, so, so it's, so the representation part is important, but there are some structural things at home, you know, for one example is that we saw it in Georgia.

Just a, you know, people panned Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, you know, where I'm at right now in Ukraine, like the Ukrainian president Zelensky on his Axia's interview for saying that, you know, I look at America differently. Now, on one point, I do respect the fact that because Ukraine is constitutionally limited in regards to its authority and as much, in much of his powers linked to defense and national

security so maybe it may not have been the most diplomatic thing to say but on his face he was not wrong right and so there are plenty of people who are a lot more independent who have the capacity to point the finger and they have power and the independent power from us where they don't have to you know beg us for support so i think we you know just think about the fact that we had january 6th a literal attempted coup right the ways that we talk about other countries Karen Atia at the Washington Post has an incredible series of stories where she says, well, if this were happening in another country, this is how Western media would cover it. And so America still is kind of high on its own, you know, pseudo-democracy supply, if you will.

And, you know, I think that there needs to be a reality check with ourselves to say that, in many respects, we are, our democracies are just as fragile in many respects as a lot of the countries that we like to criticize. And so keep in mind also that you have a Democrat, you have a Republican Party that essentially is functioning as a de facto terror cell or at minimum a propaganda tool for, you know, larger domestic terrorist sales in the United States. Now, sounds like hyperbole to people, but it's a real thing.

We have a functioning powerful party that has the capacity to elect presidents that is actively and openly undermining, democracy. Think about that. So it's, it's one thing to send in diplomats, but the work that activists did in Georgia, you know, it's, it's just, it's remarkable. And so as much so, so the work that, you know, Latasha Brown is doing, Stacey Abrams, there's so many other activists around the country who are trying to save, quite frankly, white America from itself. And so diplomats who are deployed across the world are benefiting from that. So the more that we showcase that activism is improving our country and the more that people

like President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats, because Republicans just don't care, but Democrats embracing the movement, that is going to create a stronger foreign policy and a stronger diplomatic core because we're going to. strengthening democracy at home and we're giving diplomats that we're deploying, you know, the proper support in showing them that, yes, we're calling for democracy in your lands, but look at what we're doing at home. And this is the example that we want you to follow. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, some of this is the story that's told, too, right? I mean, the media is even less diverse than the workforce. And, you know, you're in the media. You got a podcast.

You write. You mentioned Karen Atia. She's great at the post. and bringing new voices in. How important is it to change who's telling the story about these issues? I'll tell you, the reason why I started black diplomats was because I felt like for a long time I was shut out of national policy conversations. And I didn't feel safe in these spaces because, quite frankly, my perspective is different. And I've always been willing to talk to people about how I view things. But, you know, there was a point where I almost quit the Russia area studies feel roughly about six, seven years ago. And the reason why I almost quit was because it's already tough in the U.S. Press Corps. We've had a Black Lives Matter movement, I think,

but really Boyd, black journalists in particular was the 2000, well, not only black journalists, where people are color journalists, were the uprisings and, you know, in Ferguson, right? In 2014, the untimely, you know, killing Michael Brown. And so when you saw not only, you know, working journalists, but you saw activists taking over social media platforms and retelling a story, then that gave black journalists, people of color journalists, and newsrooms more powers. So the movement empowered us.

And I don't know how, and we really need to start really giving activists their props, right? I mean, because I know that there's a separation. between activists and journalists and everything but if it wasn't for those activists newsrooms would be weaker black people would would be weaker in our newsrooms if it wasn't for the black lives matter movement and so that in itself gave me courage to try right because if it wasn't from my social media platform people reached out to me based on how I was tweeting about Ukraine because I didn't need anyone's permission to tweet yeah yeah okay and so slowly but surely people started

asking me to write and then I started getting opportunities to speak and so I started developing the confidence that I can do these things and I found black people who said hey I study Russian at Georgetown or I study Russian you know at Ohio State and so we developed a small group of camaraderie of black people who are interested in Russia and Central Asia and Eurasia and so we had similar stories about being shut out being shut down and being ignored and being insulted by white people and, you know, media in Eastern Europe and think tanks, et cetera. And so we developed a union. And so it was them who actually encouraged me over the years to create a podcast.

And I also saw the fact that there are a lot of people of color who left the Obama administration and they had a hard time getting hits on television. And so I said, you know what? Let me give you a space. And so I started a Kickstarter and raised a, money to get, you know, this equipment that I'm using to talk with you right now with because it's expensive, you know, and so I, but, but also it, I also, the, the thing about a podcast is that it's very different from appearing on CNN for a three minute segment or a five minute

segment where, you know, you're just hitting your talking point. You know, you, being able to do this work, getting, getting on this microphone and you do it in talking to somebody for, hey, the time that we're speaking to, you get to really understand who a person is, you get to flesh out their views and their ideas and their perspectives and the way that you can't do in a succinct sound bite. And so I gave a platform to mostly people of color. And I haven't had one white man on my show yet. And it's not because I don't like white men. I mean, you're cool, Ben, you know. But it's like, I just feel like we've heard those perspectives and you can go anywhere for them. And so I'm really proud to say that I'm approaching my 30th episode.

And everybody that's been on my show has been a person of color and a person of color who has a mentality about challenging neoliberalism. And so a number of people who are on my show were on my show in the past are now in the Biden-Harris administration. That's something I'm very proud of. And there's something I'm working to build on. And I think, and people have told me, Terrell, you know, I can't really say this publicly, but I listen to your podcast every week because you say, There are a whole lot of things that I want to see in meetings, but I can't do it. So there are a lot of people in the State Department that listen to me. There are people that work across the United States federal government, but also folks

who felt like they didn't have access to it because they see someone like me. They see somebody with my politic and say, dang, man, you make me feel safe. I can ask questions. I don't want to sound dumb. And so it's nothing like seeing someone like yourself that makes you feel secure and being able to ask the next question. And so black diplomats is really about talking about safety and security in a way that we all can understand. Because safety and security for black folk is an entirely different thing for white folks.

And it has nothing to do explicitly with our skin color. It has everything to do with how we walk this earth. And so once I bring in policing, I bring in the military, I bring in all these sensory points that people can touch on to, then I give them. I give people a variety of entry points that they could, that they can engage the conversation that they otherwise wouldn't have in a more kind of route or a very kind of, the word I'm looking for is, I guess that for lack of a better word, because I can't find it, is, you know, like a straight shot type of approach that says, hey, this is what Russia is doing. This is what China is doing.

And quite frankly, it's like people can't grasp it because they don't know where to hit at. And so with me, I talk, one of the things I talk about safety and security is I spoke with Latasha Brown. And she was talking about, I talked to her about her activism, but a lot of people don't know. She said, I wanted to be a diplomat. I wanted to be a UN diplomat. And so we spoke about that. And so there are a lot of activists out there who have studied abroad or they speak another language. or they may have an immigrant experience.

So they could talk about the perspective of I've come here as an undocumented immigrant and now I've gotten legal status. I've become documented now. But they could talk about safety and security from that perspective. And so those are the voices that I have intentionally sought in is gaining traction. Well, look, you know, we wanted to have you on to kind of get that sense of your mission and hopefully encourage some of our listeners to check out Black Diplomites.

I'd love to have you back on at some point to just talk Russia and Ukraine. Yeah, of course. I'm ready for it. I'm a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council. One thing I want to shout out, and I spend a lot of time on these things, and so I'm more than willing to provide that perspective.

I'm looking forward to it, so please, I'm waiting. Yeah, let's do it. Because, you know, unfortunately, we know that, There'll be a lot of twists and turns in those stories in the coming weeks and months in Russian Ukraine. But look, we loved having you. And again, everybody should check out Black Diplomats, follow you on social media and hope you. I'm sure it's a little colder in Ukraine than it is where I am in L.A., but I hope you have some time down there too. All right, thanks a lot for joining us.

Yeah, absolutely, man. Thank you so much. That's all we got for today. Thank you to Terrell Jermaine Star for doing the show. Ben, I'm very excited to buy your books. Remind me again where I can find that link. Well, you know, you can go to Amazon or you can go to your independent bookstore and support your independent bookstore. Or if you go to my Twitter feed, there's also the random house my publisher's link.

So there's lots of ways to get it. But I really hope people check it out. Fantastic. I cannot wait. Talk to guys next week. See yeah. 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 Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yel Fried, Nar Malkonian and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.